The Big Picture - The “Should I See It in a Movie Theater?” Test: ‘Tron: Ares,’ ‘Roofman,’ and ‘After the Hunt.’ Plus, the Magic of ‘Mr. Scorsese.’

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Sean and Amanda begin the show by honoring the legendary actor Diane Keaton, who passed away at 79 last Saturday (3:19). Then, following a disappointing box office performance from a handful of new weekend releases, they have an extensive conversation around what audiences want from movies at the movie theater (9:54). They form a rubric from their main takeaways and apply it to ‘Tron: Ares’ (14:53), ‘Roofman’ (29:47), and ‘After the Hunt’ (0:00). Finally, they briefly cover Rebecca Miller’s new documentary miniseries, ‘Mr. Scorsese,’ a thorough exploration of Martin Scorsese’s fascinating and iconic career (46:54). They then have Miller herself on to talk through the incredible journey and process from start to finish (1:14:18). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Rebecca Miller Producer: Jack Sanders Unlock an extra $250 at linkedin.com/thebigpicture Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're excited to share that we are partnering with American Cinematech to screen one of the top five movies from our 25 for 25 list on the big screen with you. For those of you in L.A. will be at the Egyptian theater in Hollywood on Saturday, November 8th. We're keeping the movie a secret, but we promise you won't be disappointed. We'll come out for a conversation right after to talk through what we've all just watched together. Tickets go on sale this coming Monday, October 20th at 12 p.m. Pacific time, and more information will be available at the Ring or dot com slash events very soon. Again, we're going to be screening and talking about one of our top 525 for 25 list movies live at the Egyptian theater in Hollywood on Saturday, November 8th, and you can join us.

Tickets go on sale this Monday, October 20th at 12 p.m. Pacific with details to come on the ringer.com slash events soon. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the Big Picture and Conversation Show about going to the movies. As always later in this episode, Rebecca Miller joins me. She is the writer, director of a new documentary called Mr. Scorsese. The way you said that made it sound like Rebecca Miller joins you on every episode.

So she doesn't. Maybe she should. Maybe she should. I'm excited for it. She's great. Her new film is great. We're going to talk about Mr. Scorsese on this episode. And she's great in the documentary just as.

a talking behind the camera, but she gets a lot out of people. I usually don't like that when documentarians do that, but she was very effective in her usage. Also a filmmaker. She is. Also has a lot of experience with great dads. So with the capital G. Absolutely. Her previous documentary was about her father, Arthur Miller, the famed playwright.

This new documentary is even more expansive. It's a five-part miniseries really about arguably our favorite director in the history of movies. It's now available on Apple TV. We had a long conversation about how she. really got under the hood of his whole life, not just his films, but his personal life, his childhood, his influences, and the way he's living right now. It's genuinely an amazing piece of work. I hope you will stick around for our conversation. We'll also on this show be talking about three new movies, Tron, Aries, Roof Man. What's the third movie? After the Hunt. After the Hunt.

That's right. That'll be interesting. Luca Guadino's new film. And that has presented a confrontation for me about the future of movies. Not in a big way, but in a modest way. Let's slow play it right now for you and for everyone else. Okay, that's all coming up. This episode is presented by LinkedIn Ads. Sometimes marketing gets wasted on the wrong people. Like if you see an ad for movie-themed dog sweaters when you don't even have a pet.

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Before we get into those movies, we should talk about some news. We were in New York last week, and while I was there, the news broke. that Diane Keaton passed away at 79 years old. She, of course, is a genuine film icon, someone whose work we just celebrated on our 25 for 25 list with something's got to give. And she's just, it looms very large over a period in movie history

that I think we both hold dear. Both the 70s and the 80s and early 90s, 70s for me, my favorite period? And the 2000s. Yeah, I mean, she is like a new Hollywood figure and a titan along with all of the boys who we talk about it at great length. But The Godfather, Annie Hall, Reds,

you know, it's an incredible run of films that are like taken very seriously. Yes, in the canon. Yes, and they are letterbox. And, you know, and then my personal experience was every single woman I know on God's Green Earth reposting the scene from First Wives Club of Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Bett Midler,

singing, you don't own me. And Diane Keaton is the center of that one. And so she had a, not even a second career. She just, she, she kept working and, and broadened the scope of it, as Hollywood brought in the scope of it, and made a lot of different movies that mean a lot to a lot of people who aren't on letterboxed as well. So it's an amazing, incredible career. I was thinking, you know, she was pretty singular. It's hard to find adequate comparisons for her career. The blend of heft and flightiness. And there's a great Meryl Streep clip, I believe, at the AFI tribute

that is comparing Diane Keaton to a hummingbird. And it's just like, oh, she's over here, over there, wait, now she's doing this, what's going on, which, you know, Merrill Stoop is very good at her job. So it's a good description. I've been thinking a lot about a Nancy Meyer story. I looked everywhere on her Instagram and couldn't find it. So it must have been like an Instagram story. But it was about Baby Boom, which is a movie that Nancy Myers co-wrote and produced with her husband, Charles Shire.

And so if you haven't seen Baby Boom, it's about Diane Keaton as like as a yuppie in the 80s who inherits a child. Literally that's what happens. It was the 80s. Things are very weird. And so Nancy Myers was talking about the scene where Diane Keaton goes to, like, pick up the child at the airport and then, like, brings her back to the office and she says that Diane Keaton makes a decision, made a decision. It was not in the script. They didn't discuss it. But she's getting the kid out of the taxi.

And she holds the child under her arm like you would, you know, like a sack of potatoes. Exactly. Like, like, tucked under and the child is sideways. It's not the way you would hold a child. It's the way you would hold a piece of logo. Right, sure. I would hold one of your children in that way. I actually probably have at some point.

And, you know, it was funny and unexpected and says everything about the character and is a little daffy. And I found myself thinking about that moment throughout the weekend of just a thing that only Diane Keaton could do. Yeah, I agree that she's completely singular. There's a handful of other actors who emerged around that time. You mentioned Merrill Streep, Jane Fonda, a handful of icons of the 70s American cinema, who also were able to, to accomplish what she did, which is very rare, which is that she was an ingenue star in her 20s, a, like, industry leader in terms of taste and quality of work in her 30s and 40s, and a box office star in her 50s and even early 60s.

In her 70s, please don't forget book club. And book club, and there was, of course, book club. Not as many hallowed achievements in her 70s. She didn't make some films. I saw Book Club 2 in theaters. Okay. This is a podcast about going to see movies and theaters, and there I was. Thank you to the book club franchise.

she, you know, I think is also remembered for a kind of effortless style. Like, she kind of invented a way of looking on screen. Okay, yes. So you mean being on screen rather than that. Like, she also is very famous for her fashion styling, which I would not. Yeah, I would not call it effortless. It was a lot of hats, you know, like that she was, she was, she just popped them on. She was like quite literally a hat on a hat sometimes, you know?

But that's okay. It was great. It's distinctive. She's distinctive. She's very distinctive. If she pulled off looks that on most people would be absurd. And on her were absurd, but were often a match for the personality that she brought to movies. And, you know, just her work with Woody Allen alone is, like, enough to put her in a kind of movie Hall of Fame.

Like, she worked in them, I think, six times, all of her performance in those movies are great. They're all very different. If you look at the difference between, you know, love and death, Annie Hall, interiors, Manhattan Murder Mystery. like these are very different kinds of movies. So you put all that work, plus you've got the Coppola movies, plus you've got all the movies with Nancy Myers, plus you've got, you know,

I think Reds is her greatest performance for me personally. That's a very complicated character, and she's opposite Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty, who are kind of Alpha 1, Alpha 2 of that era. And I think she's like blowing them off the screen. Totally. And so, you know, that would be an interesting movie

for us to kind of unpack at a certain point because we haven't... I would love to. We haven't done a Keaton episode. We haven't done a Nicholson episode and we haven't done a Beatty episode. I think we will try to do a proper Dian tribute.

Our Redford Tribute got pushed to November so maybe Keaton in December so we can have some time to catch up on some things. She has a lot of underrated or overlooked, like looking for Mr. Goodbar is having a second life right now.

It's been reissued and people can find it finally. There's a handful of others. There's, um, what's the Lecaree adaptation? Little drummer girl. A little drummer girl. Mixed on it. Yeah, this is soft hole.

Like, there's a few other films from that 70s and 80s period. Morning Glory, the Family Stone. That's a good movie. The Family Stone actually is, I watch it. Morning Glory is amazing. Are you kidding? It's okay. She and Harrison Ford are news anchors, and he makes a frittata, and she does ballet with little children.

Yeah, yeah. It's really funny. Absolutely. And then Patrick Wilson is there. Uh-huh. I like him. You know, Rachel McAdams. Yeah.

Even though he works at, you know, CBS or 60 Minutes or whatever. Um, Yeah, a lot of great movies. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here. Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ. Built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move. Lift with confidence.

While Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus. at one peloton.ca. We'll talk more about her in the future, which she is a legend. So rest in peace to her. All right, so let's talk about the new films.

So you're not going to have a breakdown. I need you to state that right now. It's not one of those. It's not. No, it's like more of a thought experiment. Okay. Yeah. I mean, we just,

sometimes we get nervous when you've been thinking. Well, I have a lot of ideas and I'm exploring them adequately, I would say, in this venue. So three new movies came out last weekend. I think all three of them essentially underperformed their expectations of the box office. Two were in wide release.

One was in limited release. I'm not going to freak out about the box office, but the fact that these three movies, which are of varying degrees of quality, didn't quite click with audiences, had me asking myself the question, what do people want from movies at the movie theater? Because we have had some interesting successes, and we have had some big struggles this year. We clearly are in like a pullback in the Marvel era. We got news a few weeks ago that the Fast and the Furious franchise is it basically in neutral and may not be going anywhere anytime soon. A lot of the stuff.

That news was, Vin Diesel has not been telling the whole truth. Yes, hard to believe. It is another way of interpreting what we learned. You know, Jurassic World Rebirth did do very well, but not as well as the previous three installments. And not with you. And not. Well, they're all bad in some ways. But we're in a transition phase.

We're also, I didn't quite realize it was as perfect with this episode. It's essentially two full years since the WGA and SAG strikes ended. WGA was in September of 23, and SAG was in early November of 23. So we're starting to get far enough away from the quote-unquote recovery period, right? Usually movie production timelines are anywhere from two to four years in terms of development and production and completion. So now's the time where it's like we can't really use that crutch too much anymore. So are we in like a different era in terms of filmmaking? The other thing that's happened is is that the smashing machine, a big bold beautiful journey, Gabby's dollhouse, a handful of movies that like on paper, you'd be like, huh, I could see that doing pretty well.

Right. All did not do well at all. Right. I guess Gabby's dollhouse did okay, but there are like 300 episodes of that show on Netflix and it's a big hit and nobody went to go see this movie. So I know a four-year-old who did, but. My four-year-old hasn't seen it yet, but I think we will watch it at home. Which maybe tells you a little something. I know a four-year-old, it was her first theater experience ever.

That's beautiful. Did you like it? In New York. She did? Yeah. I heard it was good. This is not really a qualitative conversation. I like the smashing machine too, but that movie really, really did not perform well at all. And then the one battle after another box office thing, we talked about it with van.

It's been a big topic of conversation. That movie's probably going to end up making somewhere between like $175 and $200 million when all is said and done next year, which is not $300 million, which is what people say it should make for it to be profitable theatrically. Okay. We don't need to rehash all that. This coming weekend, we have the Black Phone 2 and Good Fortune, which I think are two more interesting tests, Black Phone 2, sequel to the Ethan Hawk Blumhouse movie from a couple years

ago, Good Fortune, the new Aziz Ansari comedy starring Keanu Reeves and Seth Rogan. Yeah. Two guys who are very familiar with successful movies in theaters. I don't know a lot of people talking about Good Fortune. I went to the theater this week to see all the movies for this podcast, and I was like, oh, yeah, I probably should figure out when I'm going to see that. I'm trying to see it tonight, but I was not invited to a screening. I was going to ask if we were.

No, I was not invited to a screening. So I don't even know what that's about. Yeah. Anyway, so I'm putting all this together in a stew and I'm like looking at what's going on here. And then I'm thinking about these three movies. And these three movies, as we said, Tron Aries, which was wide, roofman, which was wide, and after the hunt, which was unlimited, but didn't do so well unlimited. And it's having a little bit of a tough run right now in the, in the review space. All three of these movies are star vehicles.

All three of them are from major studios. All three feature components that we've seen drive interest in the past, right? Like social, spicy social commentary, a throwback to like a bygone genre that people really like. Or legacy IP, which is what Tron is. And I wanted to use three different components to evaluate the movie. So we can talk about them the way that we talk about any movie on any episode. But then when we get to the end of that conversation, I want to talk about the wow or fomo factor. which I think is a thing that drives a lot of movie interest these days.

Sure. Okay. Sure. The communal factor, which is how fun or not fun is it to see this movie with a group of people, a group of strangers. Okay. And then is this any different at home factor. Okay. Which is like if you could just watch it on your couch, does it feel exactly the same? Right.

Which is like something that we all, parents especially, have to think about all the time when you have to get a sitter and go out. It's more of a challenge. So we did an episode like this a couple years ago, and it was about the different ways to go see movies. So this is more like, what is a movie in a movie theater now? Let's start with Tron Aries, because it's the biggest of the three releases. You just saw it yesterday. I did. Thank you for your service.

You're welcome. Did I take a nap for 10 minutes, yes. Okay. Thanks for getting that right out front. Listen, I have to be really honest, because, like, you know, once they were on the hunt and I understood the teams. Not after the hunt. Not after the hunt. They were, right.

And I understood who was aligned with who And who I was supposed to be rooting for And you don't want me to set this movie up at all You're just diving right in Go ahead. Well, I just wanted to justify that brief Your nap, okay. The movie's directed by Joachim Ronning. It's the third movie in the Tron franchise.

It's the first since Tron legacy some 15 years ago. The music is by 9-inch Nails. Yeah. That's the best part of this movie. It stars Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jody Turner Smith, San Monage, Jillian Anderson, and Jeff Bridges.

Logline. Born of a battle between two technology behemoths, Tron Aries follows a highly sophisticated program called Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission marking humankind's first encounter with AI beings. Ten minute nap aside, what did you think of Tron Aries? I was happy for my neighborhood hero, Greta Lee, who, are you up on this?

I believe that she is a neighbor, but she got the cover of Vogue this month, and do you know where she did her Vogue interview? I don't. At Houston's Pasadena. Wow.

That's huge for you. I know. That's great. So I couldn't believe it. I was really, really proud of her. Wow. What a normie. Geez.

Don't say that. You know what? The Vogue writer said that as well. Really? The Vogue writer was like, Nailed it. This place is, yeah, but like,

this place is neither trendy or cool. And it's not trendy. But that is the hardest reservation to get in Los Angeles. It is quite hectic there all the time. Yes, I agree with that. What do you think they did for the interview, though? Did they like, how did they lock down quiet time? Do you think they called the restaurant said, hey, Vogue wants to bring Greta Lee in?

I mean, you can get a reservation. You just have to. Yeah, but even when you get a reservation, they're like, we're going to need you to wait nine minutes. For like 45 minutes by the Koi pond. There's like an older couple that won't leave. Once you sit down, though, it is, there's good volume control. So I think that's probably. That's true. It would be a good side.

If you get a back, back booth. Yeah, this is what people are listening to this show for. Right. Anyway, so that's why I went to see it. Gretelie, I'm happy for you. And are you? Because she's terribly miscast in this film. Well, is anyone besides Jared Letto appropriately cast in this film?

I don't think so. I think it's a product of, one, this movie is not good. It's a, it's a big misfire. There are a variety of reasons why it's a misfire, and we can talk through each of them. Individually, I like every member of this cast except for Jared Leto. And there are movies in which I have enjoyed his work. they all are not in they shouldn't none of these people should be in this movie you know son monage even evan peters who i think is like trying to do something like classical movie villains

like you know snively movie villain stuff is like doesn't really feel like he has his heart in it i mean he's also just like yelling at a computer screen literally for the whole time and that's part of the problem with the movie is is that there's a ton of exposition told through computer screens and news reports and it's an attempt to continue the story of tron which is a 1982 movie about a video game designer who gets trapped in the world that he creates, and then the sequel. But it basically ignores the events or the characters from those previous films with the exception of one lone moment of fan service that features Jeff Bridges,

which has been spoiled in all of the marketing materials of this movie. And so instead it's just like, what if Jared Letto was a cool AI? What if he was AI Jesus? That's what the movie is. It is. And Jared Leto, who's had some very unfortunate allegations made against him. him in recent years, and who also has basically never opened a movie successfully?

He's never opened a franchise movie. We just watched Morbius Bomb. He has an Academy Award. Yeah, that happened. And has some respect as an actor, but he, you know, he's terrible in Suicide Squad as the Joker. Like, he he's not a star. He's a known actor, but he's not a star. And he

was the person apparently who was responsible for getting this movie made because there was a Tron movie and turnaround at Disney. He loves Tron. He said, I'll become a producer on this film and we'll do it. And, like, he's just kind of a blank fish in this movie. He, like, doesn't do anything interesting. He's not fun to watch.

He likes Depeche Mode. Yeah, I guess that was cute, and I'm sure that that was inspired by his own taste. But it's like an inverted Terminator, where it's like, what if the evil robot was actually, like, a nice guy? Right. Empathy activated. Yes. Is, I think, one of the warnings said on the thing. Well, what's the timing of this movie at a time when all creative people are, like, AI is dangerous and we shouldn't be, like, trying to humanize it?

And they're like, this movie's about humanizing AI. What the fuck is that? I didn't like it. I took a nap. Like, I didn't want to go see it. I just, you know, I'm rooting for Greta Lee. I have this job. I show up.

Don't really remember what the first two trons are about. Okay. So that's why she, that's why she, I think I've seen the second one. And maybe I saw the first one to see the second one. The second one's not bad. It's Joseph Kaczynski. Yeah, I remember that. And, you know, I know about the lights.

It's not great. It's not great. It's not bad. I... So the video game thing is why Greta Lee's sister, who died, is... Okay, no, so Greta Lee is the video game programmer, and her sister was, like, trying to save the world through programming. Yeah, they were a duo who take over the company that Jeff Bridges founded. Okay.

And then Evan Peters... They took it over from Garrett Headland, who was Jeff Bridges' son. Sure, I do remember that. And he disappeared with Olivia Wild when she came out of the Toronto. world and they fell in love. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so cool stuff. Yeah, those people are hot, so happy for them.

They are not to be seen in this film. There's one photograph of them. They're in the real world? Yes. Okay. So, so are we. That's the whole thing, is that this is Tron comes to the real world. So it's like, where's Garrett Headland?

Is he just not available? Like, what is this plotting? Why are we yada yotting significant characters in a legacy sequel? Okay, that's fine. I have my own version of this for the other two movies. So, like, yeah, I'm with you. Yeah. I, like, I didn't care about, like, I didn't care going in.

Yeah, you know? I don't either. I'm not, like, talking about Tron. When I realized, let me tell you how I learned that Greta Lee was in Tron areas is when I read this Vogue profile and I was happy for her Vogue cover and all her Dior clothes. I see. So, like, I really, it was not on my radar. Okay. But, you know, that's, I'm sorry to the people who are disappointed about Tron.

I do think that. Do you know anyone who cares about Tron? Well, I'm glad you ask. Here is how I saw this movie. I was in New York City. Okay. And I was awaiting the arrival of my wife and daughter. Okay.

And I had three hours to kill before they got here. You make it sound like you're in like a costume drama from the 1900. Well, that is how it felt sometimes being in New York, which is very disorienting. And I'm so happy to be home. So I love New York. I had a great time. Thank you, New York. I'm from New York.

I have nothing bad to say about New York. It was disorienting to be away from home for so long. Anyway, I'm waiting for my family to arrive. And I was like, I got to see Tron Airies. point because we're going to do an episode about it. And there was a fan early access screening four blocks from where I was staying at the Lincoln Center ANC. And I was like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm just going to go. As soon as I get off, I'll walk back and I'll literally greet my family getting out of the car from the airport and we'll go upstairs. So go to the movie

and who comes out to introduce the movie but Jared Leto. Wow. And that was the response that he got. Everybody was like, oh. Cool. Nobody fucking cared. Because Jared Letto is not an intrinsic part of the Tron experience. And he's not really beloved. They were there for Tron and not for Jared Leto. But did you like, did you mingle? Did you ask them about Tron?

Well, there were, I was, I was, heavesdropping the conversations. There was one guy to the front left of me who was like, dude, this is fucking sick. Jared Letto's here. And then there were two other people to my right, who literally said, is that when he came out because he came out he was like what's up guys you know what it is tron aries time let's go and everybody was like who is this fucking guy trying to get in front of my movie anyway um nobody really cared and nobody really particularly cares about that that being said i do think there's a case for this movie as a like let's get very high go see it in 3d or dolby or 40x and just like let the colors and the nine inch nail score wash over you because it looks

cool at times. Some of the, like, especially the light bike sequences are pretty cool. And the music is good. Everything else about it is like totally negligible. Like there's really not anything to hold on to in the aftermath. Yeah. I still think that's a pretty narrow band of people that you're describing. So maybe if you make it on a much smaller budget and then it's like a specialty thing for the people who care about both Tron and, like, premium formats, you know? Yeah. And, and... I just can't make a big movie like this for not a lot of money, you know?

That's the thing. And it only made $33 million. Okay. So, you know, I find that those kinds of experiences only really work when the storytelling is, like, actually moving or involving. You know, like, Top Gun Maverick is one of those movies. Yeah. Like, this is spectacle, but I'm also emotionally locked in.

Or it's like the spectacle is unique and totally reliable. To me, that was why Rebirth worked earlier this year. It's just like there's only one franchise that really does dinosaurs well. Yeah. If you like going to see dinoes on screen, these are the movies, you know, like that part of it. And now they're taking New York. Yes, yes. Yeah.

I mean, your first two qualifications are magazine brain ways of saying it's either good or a good time. Right. And this was not, Tron Ares is neither good nor a good time. Okay, so it fails the wow fomo. Right. Because if it's good, then people are like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it. You need to go see this. And that doesn't carry everything to like to a billion dollars. But it does, it does inspire other people to be interested to like go buy tickets to go see a thing. I totally agree. What about the communal factor? Is it better? How many people were in your screening? I was the only person, which is why I took an app. I texted you from that. I said, I said I'm alone at Trond Aries. I thought it was like 20 minutes before the movie started.

Nobody came in. No, no, no, listen, come on. On a weekday, I'm showing up when the thing starts. I've got the timing's down. So just you? It was me alone at Tron Airs. Okay, that's extremely funny. They should make a movie about that.

I was at a packed early access screening. The energy was low, I would say. Yeah. I saw it with a good number of people yesterday, and the energy was also low. It was low. Yeah, it's a low energy film. Sure. Is this different at home factor?

Now, I would say This is the one aspect of the movie That you could say If this sucks in theaters, it will really suck at home Like if you watch this on a 40-inch screen You're really not getting any of what's cool about it Yeah, it was, I mean, and the score was very loud I also, in addition to, I'm going to be very honest

In addition to the 10-minute nap I also had to leave the screening briefly Because our heat is broken at home And so I had to call to speak to the technician And I, even though I was alone, I could not take the call in the theater. I see. Because the music was quite loud. And so I was like, oh, please hold on.

So you've seen roughly 38 minutes of Tron Aries. That's what you're saying. I got there right on time. I saw all the news clips. I saw the empathy activation. I saw Greta Lee, like, get taken over by the Tron bike. Okay. I know that Jody Turner Smith plays Athena.

And that was when they really lost me. I was like, okay. And I also know that they say, Ari is like the god of war. about 10 to 15 times, which just, you know, our Greek mythology literacy is one of many problems facing this green nation. Yeah, this movie does activate a phrase I have uttered before, but not in some time on the show, which is moron mode, which it just assumes that every person in the theater is an absolute idiot. Right. I hate movies like that. I fucking hate when they're like, okay, so just so you know, we named this character this because this is the definition of this character's name.

Bad stuff. Can I do a science corner real quick? Please. Draw Naries. Welcome to Amanda Dobbins' Science Corner They're looking for the permanence code because they can bring AI to the real world but it only lasts for 29 minutes before it disintegrates.

Yes, thank you for pointing that out. And so at some point, one of the characters, they're testing whether they found the permanence code and they create like an AI orange tree? Yes, an orange tree. Out of nothing, which is pretty cool. It's a nice orange tree. Arctic setting.

I've always wanted to have, like, that lush of an orange tree. Okay. But I... Maybe you should move to California. I did. And my citrus situation is just, it's dire. But so then Greta Lee's character, I don't remember her name. She's not Tess.

Her sister is Tess. Anyway, she picks an orange. Her name's Houston's in Pasadena. What do you think her order is? I got to be crispy chicken sandwich. Yeah, I mean, it's really the only way to go. Okay. And now I want one.

So she's holding the orange. And as I was sitting there, I was thinking, oh, what if she eats the orange and then it decomposes inside her? What happens? What do you think happens? I forget the point of science, coroner. Is it that you are answering the questions or just asking them? You know, it's a vigorous discussion, you know? You know, I don't know the answer to your question.

What you think happens. Particle physics, not really anything I studied at a college. Or AI particle. Like, and if there's like some 3D printing involved, I think. There is. There is. Well, that's more on the Evan Peters side, yeah. But they 3D print this AI orange tree.

So I then, is it AI? Is it what would like AI food? Well, the tree is alive, but it doesn't think. So it's not artificial intelligence. It's just. It's just 3D printed. It's just created. Okay.

But so could she even eat it? You know, they completely sidestep this question. She does hold it. She holds it. But I was like, are you going to peel it? Are you going to eat it? What's going to happen? I don't think they have that last down.

This is the number one podcast in America for stupid questions about movies. And I just want everyone to know that. It's very important that we put a big red circle around that. Toronto, Aries, would you recommend it? No. Let's talk about Roof Man. I'm so glad to talk about this with you. Me too.

I had a very different movie-going experience with this movie. I went in the middle of the day on Monday. Yes. No, Tuesday. At 2.30 to a movie theater in a mall, the Burbank Town Center 8. Ah, Jack's favorite. Sold out. Oh, it's not?

Six. Because they have the recliners. The six is good. I like the six. I'll go into the six tonight. Where's the town eight? The eight's in the mall. Inside the mall.

Inside the mall. There are three AMCs within 0.2 miles in Burbank. The 16, the 8, and the 6. The 16 is where the real gods go. Yeah, that's where I saw after the hunt. Yes, the eight is where you go when you have to go to Sears. The six is where you go when you want to get good parking and get in those recliners. The six is where I saw what Bo is afraid and someone was just like rolling calls on their laptop in the back of the six.

So, you know, we can experience it all in Burbank. Just so everybody knows, there are 30 movie screens within 0.2 miles of Burbank. Is that necessary? It is also where a lot of studio people live. That's true. And this is what this episode is about. It is also like the billboards strategically placed in everyone's neighborhood. Someone very high up in FX lives near where I live.

Interesting. Yeah. Roof Man. Yeah. Sold out 2.30 p.m. screening on a Tuesday. Okay. Awesome. So this is the new movie from Derek C. in France. It's his first movie in some years.

It's the first movie that he's made that we are able to talk about on this show. It's written by C. and Kurt Gunn. It's based on a true story. It's about a man named Jeffrey Manchester, who is an army veteran, who is also a struggling father, and he turns to robbing McDonald's to pay for his family's lifestyle, and he gets this nickname Roofman. Lifestyle makes it sound like he's too. Well, he buys a house. He's throwing birthday parties.

Well, sure. He can't afford to buy her a birthday present the first time. Yes, you know. That's very sad. Yeah. He gets caught. He goes to prison. Yeah.

He escapes prison. Yeah. And then he tries to start a new life, and then new people begin to come into his life. So this movie stars Channing Tatum, your girl, Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsoe Stanfield, Juno Temple, Melanie Diaz, Uzo Oduba, great cast in this movie. Amazing. What did you think of Roof Man? For the first hour, I was absolutely grooving.

Okay. And it's hard to end movies like this, but I have, I would like to discuss the last part where I think it falls part. The conclusion of the film? The conclusion of the film. Yeah, which is, I guess, also, I'd like to discuss life and how it regularly falls. This is a beautiful film. This is a film that we should be supporting on this show. You know what we are going to do?

This is not just about Roofman, but several other movies that some we've discussed, some to be released. Yeah. So we are going to have a Girl Dad summit at the end of the year. That sounds great. And that will, and we're going to interrogate all the girl dads and you. This is one of the, this is just a great Girl Dad movie. There's something going on right now in the culture.

I know what it is. But it's like, and it keeps going. There are more coming. I don't even know if Dark Scene France has a. daughter, but he's very tapped in on the energy, and as is Channing Tatum. You know, this movie is a big, like, 70-style character study showcased for Channing Tatum. It's like, what is Channing Tatum good at? He's good at blending very carefully, kind of like, losery, anguished guys who have incredible

charm, who utilizes his, like, innate athletic handsomeness, but also his kind of like dopey Florida boy regularness and matches those two things together. He's a really good star. Yeah. And he has not had a lot of star opportunities in the last five or six years. I think this movie really gets, Channing Tatum, and what he's good at. It kind of lets him play. It's very loose.

Totally. It's a little shambolic, the movie. You know, it kind of takes its time on unraveling its story. And maybe that might be where you tripped a little bit. No, actually, I was going to say, I agree with you that this movie understands what is great about him and is built around him. And also built around the first. fact that you are going to like this guy, despite what he is doing, which, like, it starts with an armed robbery and a McDonald's. And he is, he is stealing, lying, holding things

up. Very flawed guy, making a lot of mistakes in this movie. But he's also dancing around a Toys R Us at night, because what happens is once he escapes prison, he is, he takes up residence And it's, you know, and that part is like, you know, fun survival and genius, how's he going to get the M&Ms and what's he going to eat and all that's very crafty. I think what it understands about Channing Tatum and his appeal is ultimately the flaw in the movie for me as well because I don't think, I think there's Channing Tatum and I think there's this character. And it does not totally bridge the gap between the two.

and it is, it's pretty complicated. And the movie is sort of suggesting that he's both doing bad things and that it's flawed, but it doesn't examine really the connection between what, you know, the nice side of him and this compulsion that he seems to have. Let's talk about that. I'm really interested in what you're saying because the movie that I thought about while watching this movie is very different but has many of the same hallmarks. Catch Me If You Can.

Catch Me If You Can is a movie that is about a very similar kind of like grifter, huckster, criminal who's got a lot of innate charm. That movie is more globe-trotting. It's more kind of epic in its filmmaking style. It's not as grounded as this movie.

But it actually does do what you're saying, which is it kind of locates this, you know, disconnection from family in the Frank Abagnale character and like this circling back to the father figure and the Christopher Walkin and the guy who never really kind of quite got what he deserved and that, like, psychologizes Abingnail.

I think that that's appropriate for that movie. In this movie, I actually think it's okay to just be like, this is a guy who went to the service, got out, didn't really have any, you know, skills that poured it over and just kind of found himself with a kid and shit out of luck in terms of his prospects. So that all makes a lot of sense to me. It's as the movie goes on and really the resolution of the movie and when things get out of control for him again a second time.

And there are a couple leaps of logic and a leaps of it. I guess this is what he did in real life. But, you know, suddenly he's just out living a full life with no and has basically taken on his second family, which is complicated in its own way, you know? is presented in this is just kind of like, yeah, but he just, like, loves families. Well, I think it's that he's seeking connection. Sure. You know, that he's a lost person.

But, and, and maybe it's more that, like, the way that Channing Tatum, there's, there is, there is nothing damaged about what's going on with Channing Tatum besides that he really loves his family. There's, like, nothing weird going on. And so, as the movie continues, He makes a couple of erratic decisions. There are a couple of things that are going on.

This is a person that you're definitely rooting for, but is also not thinking smart. And it's not just because he is, as a, like, someone on the news says, like, a genius moron. Yeah. There is something weird that I don't think Channing Tatum communicates. Yeah, I mean, you're right, but I like that about it. Like, I, to me, it's like, that's what Dog Day Afternoon is.

Yeah, I'm not saying this is nearly as good as Dog Day Afternoon, but it's like fuck-ups making big mistakes. Right. But having an undeniable emotional connection to the character is a strain of filmmaking I love. Which I totally did. I think it also probably just like takes a little too long towards the end and so it's just like your straining, credulity.

But for me, the, you know, I knew it was real and I didn't know how it ended. So, oh my God, that was another thing. The scene, like the voiceover at the end when, spoiler alert, I guess, for Roofman. If you don't want Roofman, yeah, which is a movie that's out and then also is based on a true story.

So he is arrested again. Yeah. Because his girlfriend played back Gerson Nunts, like figures it out and calls it in. And then he's imprisoned and he like gives a whole like incarceration is great for me speech and I'm where I need to be and everything

which I thought was completely insane and was offended by. and... No, he was lying. He was lying? Yeah, that's the whole point because he breaks in the aftercard. It talks about how he broke out two more times.

Right. No, but like, so, and then it goes to the aftercard and he breaks out two more times. But the way that it is shot and the way that Channing Tatum is communicating that is not lying, is not threatening, is not like there's something going on here. It's not still waters run deep to me.

I don't think, to me, I read it differently. And I really, really bumped on it. I read it differently. I just read it as he, is a helpless grifter. Like, he cannot stop scheming. Yeah. It's, like, the only thing he's actually good at is these, like, plots and these plans and

this observational stuff that he's talking about at the beginning. And so he knows if he, like, if he answers yes to that question when it's posed to him about you still think about breaking out, that they're going to tighten the vice grip on him? No, it's the voiceover. It's when he's like, and maybe he's lying in that too, but he's literally giving a voiceover and it's a montage of, like, everything that's... But doesn't a guy ask him? Or what does a guy ask him at the end?

end. Yeah, at the end, he's asked point blank by one of his fellow inmates when they're in that therapy circle. He said, doesn't he say to him, like, do you still think about breaking out? Yeah. Or does he say, do you ever see Lee again? It's one of those two things. He definitely asks, did you ever see Lee again? And I, maybe in the voiceover, he's like, and I don't really think about breaking out anymore and all those sorts of things. I just saw that as kind of like the informant, you know, where it's just like this got, this is an unreliable narrator. Well, like, Chating Tatum is in Matt Damon, you know? And that is, that's kind of

one. I really like him. I thought he was very charming, but like at some point. the performance and the casting of Channing Tatum does not, to me, communicate everything that's going on under the surface. So I was a little confused by the end. Did you like Kirsten Dunst in the film? I thought she was great. Yeah. I mean, I like her. She's just basically the girlfriend, but she gets to do a little bit more. I would have been really pissed if someone bought my kid a car without asking me, let alone driving. But that's when she seems to things. It's an interesting scene. I thought Lily Callias, who plays the older daughter, was very good. She was in Good One Last Year, which is a good film.

Yeah, I think that one of the things that helps this movie is that it's just dotted with all of these insanely talented actors and pretty small roles. I mean, the Ben Mendelson stuff is elite. Ben Mendelso, Peter Dinklage is the manager of the Toys R Us. Lakeith Stanfield as his flunky Army Buddy. Juno Temple as his flunky Army Buddy's girlfriend hairdresser. No, it's really fun. There's a lot of little, it just felt. like a movie from 30 years ago.

Totally. And I was like, I love movies like this. Every single set piece for lack of a better turn. But like the escape, everything that he is doing to make a life in Toys R Us is like very real and exciting. And like in film really well, there's a scene where he's trying to get out of a truck. And I was like very stressed out. And it's, you know, one wide shot and the blocking and again, Channing Tatum's physicality. A lot of it is really, really good.

I just really bumped on the ending. So C in France has made a lot of very angsty, emotional movies about families breaking down. Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines, My Beloved. The Light Between Oceans. Those movies, I think, are all good and all accomplished. I have a huge place in my heart for the second of the three. They all, though, are very, like, kind of trying to put on somebody else's jacket sometimes. Yeah.

And you can really feel the weight of influence. a thing I like about this movie is even though it feels like an old movie, I don't feel like it is him making somebody else's movie. No. It felt like he felt very, it felt very comfortable in its own skin. And I just,

I feel it is my job to celebrate, to like lift up a movie like this. Totally. I think it is, what's interesting to me about it is I think that my, like, resistance or the thing that didn't compute about the movie for me is also what makes it hard to sell. Totally. And, and you expect one thing, you associate one thing with Channing Tatum, and this is a movie that's been marketed, like, around Channing Tatum.

Yes, it wouldn't get made without him. Yeah. Yeah. So. There he is. Yeah, there he is. You know, and it's like pretty funny. But, so I'm, I'm in one mode in my head when I'm going in to see it.

And I don't know if he quite gets to the other place that the movie needs. to get them to, but also if you go in expecting, I don't know, it's confusing. What are you telling someone, like a random person who's not us, what this is? Well, let's talk about the components then. Wow, FOMO Factor. I'm trying to create a FOMO Factor by talking about my enthusiasm for the movie, but I don't think that that exists in the movie.

It's just not that kind of a movie. It is a smaller film. It's not tiny or anything like that. It is still like very famous people and it's got a fairly expansive crime story to it. But you're not like missing out by not going to. this movie. The communal factor played really well in the room than I was in. People were laughing. They were emotional. It seemed like it was clicking. I again, I also saw this weekday afternoon. I saw it right after Tran Arias. And there were more people in my screening than Tron Arias,

but it was quiet. That's so interesting that this movie seems to be doing okay. I mean, by more, I mean like five as opposed to one. Well, it's also, it's, you know, ultimately like one of the very, can maybe end up being one of the last releases of the Paramount previous regime, you know, the Redstone era of Paramount, which is now changing hands. And it's the kind of movie that, like, I don't know if it would even be made at many other major studios. So, okay, is this different at home factor? Now, seeing France, the last thing that he did was a TV miniseries for HBO. And you could make the case that this is something that would play perfectly well at home.

However, I do think you would miss a lot if you were like, had your phone out. Well, that's always true. Yeah. But part of its charm, I think, is in, like, this, like, subtle character quietness where, like, if you put your head down for a second, you don't see that he's, like, going around the corner to do another thing or, like, what he grabbed off the shelf at Toys R Us. By the way, Toys R Us, did you have one where you grew up? Of course. What did you think of Toys R Us? It was, I tried to go there all the time.

It's the most important place in the world. Yeah, like, exactly. Yes. I was like, I would like to be there again. that's definitely where I bought the Tomogachi. I mean, I remember where it was located. It was next to the old Navy, like, right where you got on, like, Georgia 400, which my ATL people will know. So that was my local Toys R Us. Man, it just kicked ass going in there. That feeling, that rush.

A real issue now is that I have to locate a Jeffrey the Draft, like, a life-size one. Yeah, because... But Toys R Us has been out of business for, like, two decades? I mean, I haven't, like, deep-dived the eBay, but... Anyone knows where I can get a Jeffrey the Giraff, like life-sized costume, you know, that someone probably Chris Ryan can wear to my child's birthday party. That's funny. Please let me know.

Toys R Us. eBay. Okay. The store is closed in 2018. Okay. So that'll be interesting. I wish you luck. Jeffrey the Giraff, good mascot?

Knox takes aside. He wants to give him a hug. So I guess it's good. Cool. That's nice. Yeah. I like to Roof Man a lot. Okay.

I liked it. and I was pretty baffled by the, wow, $1,000 on eBay for this costume. And it's not even Jeffrey. It's Gigi. I guess that's why it's $1,000. It's Gigi, like this female companion? Yeah, she's the Mrs. Met. You can now watch the big picture on Spotify and the ringer's first ever television channel,

available exclusively on Samsung TV Plus, the subscription-free streaming destination, bringing you the best of TV. We watch some of our greatest hits like the 1999 movie draft, the best horror movies of the decade and more on the new all-day ringer channel. You can also settle in and catch up with your other ringer favorites, including the rewatchables, the ringerverse, and higher learning. To watch, open the Samsung TV plus app on your Samsung TV or Galaxy mobile device, navigate to the ringer channel and boom, you're in.

Let's speak about After the Hunt. After The Hunt is the new film directed by Luca Guadanino. Yeah. Boy, we love Luca on this show. Love it. We're two of his biggest fans. This new movie is written by Nora Garrett. It stars Julie Roberts, another actor.

We love. I.O. Debris also in this movie, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stoolbar, Chloe Seventy. Not sure if there's a cooler collection of actors. Yeah, all our guys and gals. That's a lot of great stuff. This score is done by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Sure is. You know what?

This movie was shot by Malik Hassan Said, who has not shot a movie in 27 years. But the last movie he shot was one of my favorite movies of all-time belly. He also shot a number of Spike Lee movies. in the 90s. He's well known for his music videos, including Beyonce's formation, one of the greatest eyes in the world. Right. Should this be the greatest movie of all time? Probably. It probably should. Unfortunately, it's not that. So I, famously to me, saw what I'd now know to be about 70% of this movie at the Venice Film Festival. And then I had to leave because

it started late. I won't say whose fault that was. And then I had to get to another screening. I've now seen the whole film. Turns out I left at the perfect moment for this to be a good movie. I see. And then I saw the other 30%. Okay, well, let's talk about it. This movie hasn't been seen by a ton of people, so it's hard to get in the weeds too much, but I have to get in the weeds as much as I can.

It's been a few weeks since I've seen this so you can help hold my hand through some of it. But it's a film about a college professor who's forced to grapple with her own secretive past after when one of her colleagues is faced with a sexual assault accusation. Right. So in the film, Julie Roberts plays, I guess, a middle-aged teacher going for tenure. That's rude. Is she not middle-aged? I'm middle-aged.

I'm middle-aged. She plays a professor at, a philosophy professor at Yale. She's a lady who's older. No, she's an esteemed woman. She's a, why does she not a tenure? I don't fully understand that. She's in her 50s. She had to take some time off.

Okay. Because she has a mysterious illness. and she keeps vomiting. That's right. Are you defending Julia or the character? I'm defending middle-aged women who are blazers, okay? Like, once you saw it, did you notice the similarity? Did you wear this on purpose?

Yeah, of course I did, yes. But this is my Julia outfit, but like, did I have many to choose from? I sure did. She styled impeccably in this film. I know, but did you also see why, like, did you see the Amanda similarities in the outfits? I think that's something only you see. Okay. Wow, that's so rude.

Okay. It was just a good line. I think, so she plays this professor who's up for tenure, her friend, and it seems like maybe he was a mentee, it's unclear given the age difference. Maybe there's like a 10 or 12 year age difference. Andrew Garfield's character is also going up for 10 year. It seems like maybe they've co-written papers together. They're in the same department.

They're in the philosophy department. They're close colleagues. They have what seems to be a kind of history between them, but it's unspoken. Right. They have... And it's... You pick up on that history because Andrew Garfield,

much like at the Golden Globes, only has two shirt buttons on his shirt buttoned. Yes. And is wearing a pendant and is just absolutely shooting lasers everywhere at all times. He's... This is Andrew Garfield in overdrive. I would say performance-wise.

Totally. Perhaps too much so. Okay. I.O. Debris is essentially Julia Roberts' characters, T.A. and she worships her, and we see her and the young cohort of students and grad students who worship these two professors and the discourse. And we also see this generational clash between how these younger students view the world

and how the elders view the world and the kind of cynicism that has grown inside of the older folks and the rejection of the more progressive ideas emanating off of the younger folks. This should be a very contemporary movie, right? This is a thing we joke about that this sort of stuff on the show, the time. It's obviously in the culture wars all over the place regarding any number of issues, not just sexual assault but world conflict and

you know, pay gaps and there's a million things you can make a movie like this about. But this one very quickly becomes a story about he said, she said, sexual encounter between an older professor who visits the home of a younger student and

something happens. We don't see what happens. The film very purposefully hides. It hides. the event in question and then it becomes a sort of like somewhere between a detective story

trying to ascertain the truth of what's happened but more specifically how this event affects this woman who is not the primary participant in the incident but is like

her knowledge of the people and the event looms large and sort of like what is the responsibility of someone with knowledge in these spaces

so that's like a very oblique setup for a direct kind of idea and while the film looks good and I think Julia Roberts is actually excellent in this movie I think this is like legitimately one of her best performances in sometimes she's really good

I thought this movie was like I actually have no idea what it was trying to do no clue what its script was trying to say it's very confusing I found the ending to be baffling the baffling I thought I owe Debris and actress I really like to be way in over her head in this movie

Though I did wonder whether that was a purposeful choice, like a performance choice. Possibly, but she just does not have the gravitas in a couple of moments where she's expected to deliver some might on the other end of her speeches. And, you know, I don't know if that's the direction. I don't know what it is. I did not think she was kind of up to this kind of material. And I think that the material was not up to its ideas. Yeah. The one thing that you left out from the description that I think is pretty central both to the,

the movie itself and then also perhaps its failure is that this is very much a campus politics movie too like it's you know it opens honestly with the title card and the Woody Allen font saying it happened at Yale and then there's like a little montage of campus life in Woody Allen's house which again I thought this was funny parts of this to me are amusing I was I thought it was going to be much more rye about these ideas totally because of that setup totally but super

And so it's campus politics. It is set not just like on a campus, on a college campus, but in the philosophy department of a of Yale. And so and there is a lot of, along with the campus politics debate, like a lot of intergenerational stuff. And, you know, much of it is older generation being like what's wrong with these younger people, but also maybe they're right, but what's wrong with them? and so that is just always kind of a dead end as a story, you know? Yes.

And even... It's a debate. It's not a movie. Right. And so it tries to infuse that and basically like what is sort of a cranky New York Times op-ed with like very, very soapy plot stylings

that like, sorry, you can't make tenure that soapy even if you want to and like they really do try. And then it completely like abandons all of the soapy plot lines as well. Like everything is just kind of fine. So it doesn't commit to any of the things that it is trying to do. With Amex platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race. Terms and conditions apply.

Learn more at amex.ca.com. Arc Raiders, a multiplayer extraction adventure video game set in a lethal yet vibrant future Earth. As a raider scavenging the remnants of a derelict world, you settle into an underground settlement. Hoping to thrive, you jump on the chance to start over. But doing so means you must return to the surface where arc machines roam, and survivors' motives remain dangerously unclear. But if you're brave enough, who knows what you might find? Play the server slam open test from October 17th through 19th on PlayStation 5 Xbox Series X&S and PC. To your point about the Woody Allen font at the beginning of the film,

the film that this is most indebted to is Crimes and Misdemeanors. Crimes and Misdemeanors, interesting movie to kind of unpack because it's two tales tied together about people whose lives cross over. In the one film, in the one story, you've got Martin Landau having an affair with Angelica Houston, and then afraid to be kind of caught in this. affair and he attempts to have her killed. Right. Very serious kind of mordant

character piece about the failures of masculinity, right? And then on the flip side, you've got Woody Allen and Mia Farrow as this couple who are like, he's a filmmaker and she's working with Alan Alda, who's a more successful filmmaker and kind of a blowharden.

It's got a little bit more of that like classical Woody Allen comedy energy. And you've got these two worlds kind of colliding and rubbing up against each other. One's pretty funny. Alan Aldous in that movie. One's really deathly serious in this kind of moral dilemma film. So it levens, the two sides.

This movie, especially in the final 75 minutes, is just like deathly serious. Like there's no sense of humor about it at all. It just slams on the break. Which is, for Luca, I'm just so surprised. It's really weird. I find that all of his movies, even his very serious films,

have like a kind of knowing sensibility about them. You know, a kind of like, I'm making my cannibal romance movie, but I'm making it kind of funny. Yeah. Even though it's gross, there's something kind of arch. So the first hour, though, and it was very funny because the second time I saw it, it was after you'd seen it, everyone else, the reviews have been incredibly. It's been getting pillared, yeah. And it's a pretty limited distribution, especially for a movie that stars Julia Roberts. So I went in in the first hour, and again, I'm Luca Pilled.

That is my personality. I was like, wow, he's kind of cooking. This is kind of fun. And the first hour, you know, and part of it is it's like, it's absurdly beautiful. The apartment is like my new dream apartment. Yes, it's amazing. And, you know, and well-observe and the costumes and the details and the way they speak to each other. And like the scene with Chloe 70 in three sheets, the bar funny about this miss.

You know, I was like, oh, okay, so I know who we're speaking to. We're speaking to me. To older, yes, yes. To older people. Yes. This is not a movie for 22-year-olds. It's a movie for 45-year-olds. No.

So there is like a knowingness to the way that he's making it. I know, but the script can't live up to that. But I agree with you. I agree that it doesn't. I completely agree that it falls flat on its face. But I, you know, the lukeness is there. And then it goes away. Yeah, he can't help, but bring his sense of production design

and the way that the film is lit is quite interesting where everything is kind of like, even in these lush, like, cream-colored environments or something kind of like washed out. Like, Julie Roberts looks like she just woke up or just threw up, like, the entire film. Right. Even though, you know, she's such a striking star.

She's doing a really physical performance in a movie that's very effective. And, you know, he's on this interesting progression now. You're like, if you look at challengers and queer in this film, it's almost like he's trying to strip out everything that like all of the energy from his movies. Queer is also this similarly kind of like ambling road movie that's like a psychological fantasia.

And this is like a much more practical movie, like an In the Weeds movie. Especially like there's a near the end, there's a very tense confrontation between Roberts's character and a Debrie's character where they're talking outside in a parking lot. Oh, I thought you were going to talk about the tar scene when it is Juliet in a blazer.

just absolutely excoriating students for their... Yeah. Well, it's, which is not well written. It's very overwritten. By the way, like philosophy is the foundation of civilization and also really stupid. So that's kind of what I took away from that. Philosophy Corner. But when she finishes it, she's just like, Marcus is here.

Julia Roberts is still really funny and good in this movie. And there is like a sense of humor to, at least what she and Luca are doing that, again, the script and the other performances don't live up to. Let's try to put another spoiler warning about this because maybe you can help me understand what you thought the ending was because I really don't get it. And if you haven't seen it or don't want

or you don't intend to see it, you can keep listening, but we're going to talk about the ending. Right. The movie here. So at the end of the movie, we learn a couple of things. We learn one that Roberts' character and Garfield's character did have an affair that they were together at a certain point,

which is very clearly insinuated in that first bar scene where she has a kind of longing towards him. We then learn that because of the physical way that he treats her when she finds him sleeping in her second apartment, that he probably did commit an assault, that it's more than likely, maybe almost certainly that he is responsible

for this incident he is accused of. As I.O. Dibri's character says, like, he crossed a line. Right. Yeah. Um, she is fired because she steals a script, a prescription page. Yeah, I was going to say, very different. Yes, I wish someone would steal this script, but she steals a prescription page from Chloe

70's character's office. She's a therapist and professor. And she gets pills. She's a psychiatrist because she can prescribe medication, which she does. But, uh, Julia, it's a controlled substance. Yes. Because Julia Roberts is like having, uh, unexplained pain like attacks. and barfing a lot throughout the movie.

And so she needs the quote-unquote good stuff. Right. But the prescription is flagged because it's, you know, and so she gets caught. Chloe 70 reports her tenure is, she's not fired, but tenure is paused indefinitely. Yes, she will not be getting tenure. She is then identified as not an ally to a Debrie's character

who then goes to Rolling Stone magazine for the second time to give her side of this story of sexual assault which is then I guess written in like a long feature in Rolling Stone magazine which feels like a very obvious

nod to a rape on campus yes the since debunked feature story that ran I think in 2014 in the magazine about a person claiming to be raped that was I believe entirely invented right I don't totally remember so let's just say that it was

There were falsehoods. Yes. But in this case, that story is meant to be true. So it's supposed to conjure this idea of something that transpire that we know about and then make us further question the environment and what is the truth of these events. Right. And then we then finally learn that Roberts' character, in fact, many years ago, as a teenage girl, had an affair with one of her father's best friends.

and she was in love with this person and he broke her heart because he left her for a woman who was more age appropriate and then she went to the press and told the press well did she go to the press or she reported you know

I guess I don't know is that what they say we don't know we don't actually know because we see a newspaper clipping yeah because Iodew goes to the bathroom at a lovely party and then is just rooting around in the cabinets. She's looking for toilet paper, but then she's, like, looking up under the taping of the thing.

What the fuck is that? I mean, I agree. 100% agree. So bizarre. What kind of movie bullshit is that scene? Quite lazy. I was also like, wow, good hiding place. So.

It is a good hiding, but like, why are you even cute? Like, you have a second apartment. Why is that not, that stuff not just in your second apartment? It's a great point because then at some point. It's fucking terrible writing. Julia Roberts burns everything else, but it seems like she has like a second and she burns a photo of the guy, but then she has a second photo at the Wharf apartment, which once again, like, this movie would love to, you know, someone watch Tar and then was like, let me try

this. But I think that's generous. I mean, I just like in the actual structural, there, she has the second apartment where all of the things happen in Tar. There is a scene in a blazer where someone of the younger generation is excoriated for having incorrect opinions about, you know, progressive politics or whatever. Yeah, yeah. There's definitely similarities to. it. I just, I think its aims are slightly different. And I, so we learn that she had this relationship. Um, and here's how we learn that is that because she has like another attack and she's hospitalized. And that's happening by the woke mob, quote unquote, outside of the campus. Sure. Literally. She's surrounded and then she collapses. And then, so it's perforated ulcers.

and her therapist husband, her analyst husband. Yes, played by Michael Stoobar. He was just having a grand old time. Absolutely conducting John Adams and cooking. Just a ridiculous performance that I really enjoyed. I don't know what movie he's in. Very funny. And then so she in the hospital bed tells him the story.

And she's like, I made it up. I loved him. And he, in the text, is like, no, he was older, no matter what you think, it's his responsibility, like you actually were assaulted. And then she, and then all she says is, I loved him. And then he says, I love you. Cool. Right. So great, great, great ideas.

We have that philosophy, ladies and gentlemen. That scene is not good. What's only worse than that scene is the epilogue. which is some years later. Five years later. And in this epilogue, Debrie's character and Roberts's character meet up at the same restaurant

where Roberts and Garfield's character had had a very tense discussion early on the film. Which is apparently a real like standby in New Haven. Okay. And made me want Indian food. At this point, we've learned

that Roberts' character has become the dean of another school. No, I think she's become the dean at, she's at another school? She's the dean. Yale? That sure looks like the office of the other guy. Maybe it, maybe maybe that's what it is. She's the dean of Yale

after not being a tenured professor. Well, I mean she's the dean of humanities. Okay. Which is presented earlier in the movie as an administration job and not as fun as thinking. Listen, I'm not in charge. The point stands either way. I don't work on campus. And also she's watching

a news report about the LA fires from January because it's January 2025. Just to let you know it's January 9th. So. Not ideal. Which I don't even know what that's a comment on. I don't either. She's just watching it.

And she's just like, wow, this is terrible. And then they meet for this lunch, and they have this discussion, even though they've had this world colossal falling out, these two people. And Debrie's character admits that she was in love with her. You didn't mention that there's a second Rolling Stone piece that Iowa's character writes that is, like, about how I had, like, a bad mentor. And it's just excoriating the Julie Roberts character.

That was the one that I was referring to. Because that's the one that really spins out, spins out Roberts's character. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it turns out that, like, they're going to let bygones be bygones and, like, very briefly discuss the events of the film and talk about how, like, it actually worked out well for both of them. Because now Roberts's character is the dean and DeBri's successful in her own way. It's insane.

It's psychotic. What the fuck is that? I think this is the part where I always miscarriage. And it's just, because I think that there are supposed to be something suggested. There's supposed to be, like, a lot of work under the, under the text. I mean, I still, that still doesn't justify it, but, like, that's not happening. She was both sexually assaulted and is also a sociopath? I guess so.

Or is that, does it communicate somehow that she's dressed totally differently? But it's so, it's so muddled because it's like, did this event energize her to then become more hard-bitten? is it that this was always this way and that she had this kind of talented Mr. Ripley thing going on with Roberts' character? Like, it's totally unclear. The psychology is so messy.

I have no idea what it's supposed to do. And not smart, man. No, I agree. And then Julia's playing it like complicated. But like, yeah, like so is life. There's this hint of like, you know what? We knew all along. Like us gals, we got to stick together

so that we can ride out this crazy moment in history. I'm like, what the fuck is he's trying to I really don't know. I didn't like it. Yeah. I didn't like it. I thought there was cool things about it. I liked the first hour.

Yeah. Kind of despite myself. I was like, oh, spicy. And then it was really very silly. It's not doing very well. Yeah. However, and there is clearly no fomo factor whatsoever with this movie, right? Because it's not even like a car crash because it's at Luca Guadino.

So like it looks good. Music is good. She's got style. That's striped couch, man. I need it. Absolutely. I need the striped couch in Stoolbarg's office. I need the whole kitchen.

Next August, we'll get on it. We'll figure it out. Should I be wearing like a white jacket like she's wearing at the party, you know? You might have to dye your hair blonde if you want to do that. I know. She has like really like 40s style. I can't really do that. Communal factor.

I saw this at a press screening. Okay. Wasn't a ton of energy in the room. I saw it at the Venice Film Festival and everyone was really pissed off because we waited in the rain for a long time. And then I saw this midday, Burbank 16, where the real head. go. I would say everyone was pretty quiet. Yes. The is this different at home factor? I kind of want to watch this again so that I can see if I can figure out what the hell's going on. Okay. I feel that I'm fairly good at understanding,

if not plot mechanics specifically, psychological intention of characters. Like, I actually think that that is something I am pretty good at when it comes to reading movies. Yeah. And I don't really know what this movie is trying to say. I don't either. So maybe one more viewing at home. Sure. What am I going to do? Because I don't really want to own this movie. What happens to the Lucas stack? That's between you and your demons. You're going to buy it. Are they going to release it?

It's Amazon MGM, so I don't know. Right. We shall see. Yeah, it's not a success. Yeah. And we got to get Julia W. You know? Yeah.

I mean, I don't know. She's fine. She's fine. She seems happy. She's still very beautiful, you know. Should we talk about Mr. Scorsese briefly before Rebecca Miller? So this was made over five years, started during COVID. Miller told me she just had the idea after making the film about her father.

Like, what would you want to spend some time digging into next? She told me the first Marty movie she ever saw was Goodfellas and that she was not like an allegiance of his until much later. Her husband, of course, has worked with him, Daniel Day Lewis. I thought this did a couple things really, really well. One, shockingly intimate. I've been following Scorsese's career extremely closely since I was a teenager. There's a bunch of stuff in this movie

I've never heard or seen before. Then, in addition to that, and I don't want to spoil what that is for people who haven't seen me yet. The second thing is that she gets basically everyone except Joe Pesci to talk. Yeah. Right?

Almost. There were a couple, but yes, basically, all of the major characters. Isabella Rosalini. Incredible, the star of the documentary. Like who he was married to, just like being quite severe about him at times. No, but also lovely. Very loving. It's really insight.

You know, this is a short man, you know, like let us not forget. I believe she used the word minuscule. The other part, the best part is when she was like, you know, I remember asking Marty one day, you know, do you really just think about, like, are we good, are we bad? What are we here for all the time? Is that what's going on in your head? And he's like, yes, what's going on in your head? She's like, what happened for lunch? It was great. It was very, very good. Robbie Robertson, who's since past, appears in the film. He's considered, you know, one of his closest friends and somebody who was with him during some really dark times in the 70s and 80s. Jay Cox, who many people know is his actual best friend, you know, Time

magazine journalist and film critic and then later screenwriter. And he's like kind of the keystone to the movie in a lot of ways. Like every time Miller's like, how do I pivot? that out of here, she just cuts to Jay Cox be like, and then this needed to happen. Yeah. Which works really well. And then just my favorite thing of all time, which is movie documentaries about filmmakers, specifically

analyzing their work and how it correlates to their personal life. Right. There's like some examples of this, like De Palma, the De Palma doc does this really well, but that movie's like 100 minutes. This is five hours. Yeah, it's awesome. And so, and it goes through the career. And it does also, it not only analyzes

though, like it understands, the work so deeply that like the editing and what it's pulling together and just what you're seeing in real time. You know, there is like a film school. It's made by a real filmmaker. So you're understanding, and he is very open to talking about what's going on in his life, how it connects to the work. The people who are around him at that time are also giving their, you know, their perspective. And then it is bringing together not just the movie in question, but other films from the career. and, you know, whether it's like recurring shots or recurring themes, it is beautifully edited and really knowledgeable.

Yes. Anything else that you wanted to cite that you liked about it? The kids, I think this was another thing that made me think about girl dads. And because he has daughters and his daughters are in it and it is a really interesting portrait of parenthood. Across generations. Across generations being an artist. You know, I noticed, to me, all of the stars of the documentary, all of the sitting, besides Mr. Scorsese himself, were women.

And, you know, so I think Rebecca Miller really, like, figured something out around him, but also how to talk to them. It's a very smart to lean on Thelma Schoonmaker in the movie. But then she has, like, the editing bay, and it's just showing you stuff, that's so smart. Yeah. It's really cool. Yeah, I loved even just seeing him storyboarding at like 10 years old and being like, I have the movie in my head. And he's like, I still do this shot and then it cuts to all the shots. That stuff is just amazing.

Yeah, it's so cool. Okay, well, if people should check this out. It's very worth your time if you love movies. And pretty rare for something about an artist like this to be this expansive. You know, usually it's usually much tighter. So if you want to hear more about it, let's go now to my conversation with Rebecca Miller. Rebecca Miller is here. We're here to talk about Mr. Scorsese. Rebecca, I thought we could start by hearing about the first Morton Scorsese film that you ever saw.

Do you remember what it was? For someone, actually, I remember seeing is actually Goodfellas. So it wasn't one of the early films. I had to go back and experience the earlier films after that. Interesting. So was there like a reason that you didn't check out his work in the 70s or 80s or just happenstance? You know, I don't know. I don't know why

I think I was I was a painter at that time I was drawn to other kinds of films I didn't um I you know I'm not really sure what happened but then

I wasn't open to them in some way and then when I once I opened that door I was just kind of blown away by them and got you know watched them again and again and then Age of Innocence was also a really important film for me Bulb was huge for me and so on and so on. And then, you know, I watched them all.

Tell me about developing the idea to make a film. I know you originally wanted to make what you thought would be a regular feature-length doc that has become this very expansive piece. You know, where did it start? How do you even broker a conversation? Martin Scorsese, I'd like to make a film about you. Can you talk me through some of the actual, you know, details of getting this thing off the ground? Well, I had this weird instinct that I should make a film about him. I had a conversation with my producing partner, Damon Cardasson, and I said, like, I'd like to make another documentary.

I really like the practice of making documentary and sort of alongside preparing features. And then he said, who would be your person that you'd want to do? And I just had this, I just said Martin Scorsese. And, you know, Marty and I had a kind of relationship where we had a, you know, a slightly social relationship back when they were making gangs of New York. And, but we didn't have, like, an ongoing social relationship. But he had recommended some voiceover films for me to watch from the, like, the 1940s English films because I was going to make personal velocity, which had a lot of voiceover. And I was very nervous about that film. And so I asked him for advice.

And he loves to give that kind of advice. So he gave me some films, you know, to look at. And then I showed him the film and he gave me a little bit of notes. Like he gave me, well, one really good notes. So then he somehow, he ended up watching other films of mine and giving me notes. And that became our relationship. I didn't have much of a social relationship, but he knew me sort of very well through my films. And then it turned out he'd read my books.

So that was already in the background when I said that. And I thought, like, I feel like I could maybe have an insight into him because I also had a feeling like I was really curious about his spiritual life and how it, what role it had to play in his movies, which it wasn't obvious. I just thought it'd be really nice to be able to explore that with him. You mentioned that he has this encyclopedic knowledge of film history and could give you reference points. Did he have a point of view on the director portrait? You know, this is a kind of a type of documentary. And there are not actually a ton of great ones, especially not made about filmmakers while they're still alive.

Like, did you talk about that form at all with him? We didn't talk about how he just was always saying, like, I don't know what you're doing. So it was just sort of like he didn't want to know, kind of. And actually, in the beginning, it started as a feature and then started to grow. And, you know, when I first interviewed Brian De Palma, who was one of the first people I interviewed apart from him. Marty. I said, you know, he said, you know, you can't do this in a feature film. And at that time,

I said, yeah, no, I think I can do it. I have a sense of how I can do it. And of course, a year later, he was like, no, you're going to get to taxi driver. You cannot do the whole thing. And he was completely right, of course, you know, like I totally couldn't do it. And luckily, I was able to change tack and they allowed me to make it five hours instead of like an hour and a half or two hours. But so I didn't really talk to him. Because I also didn't know exactly what I was going to do. I mean, I wrote him a letter. When I first proposed it, I wrote him a letter. I proposed it to his doc producer, who I knew, Margaret Bodie. And so she talked to him and he said, let her write a letter. So I wrote a letter. And

basically in the letter, I just said, I want to take an approach, like a cubist approach, where I'm like just looking at you from all different angles, like different, you know, both collaborators, family, all the different angles to make a human portrait. And that was kind of my, but of course, that's pretty vague. So that's where I began. And I didn't really know, and I didn't know exactly who was going to be in it either. It seemed like you had a number of sit downs with him. I know you've been working on this for a number of years. Like, how did you even determine what was the right order to talk to people in? Like, as a journalist, you sometimes don't necessarily want to speak to the primary subject first. You might want to talk to a bunch of people

first and then sit down with them. How did you kind of strategize around when was the right time to have sit downs with him? Well, I definitely started with him and there were, you know, more than it looks like because each sort of outfit that he's wearing represents two very long interviews. So there were about 20 hours of interviews altogether over this five year period. So when we would, we started on my porch outside because it was the beginning of the pandemic. And then, you know, we graduated to his office and then eventually to his inner sanctum, his buddy, which was my, which was my goal. And so, but yeah, so I really wanted to kind of, like, I was fascinated by the geometry of his first family, like his original family, you know, the mother to son, to brother, to father, etc. The neighborhood. Then I started to get these ideas about, okay, so early on I thought, well, it would be really great to get the friends. Because I could tell that the friends were essential to how he had become an artist and the voices. And I thought we've out of hear those voices somehow. So getting in touch with the friends was an immense, for me, it was like maybe the most exciting thing. It's one of my favorite aspects of the movie. I was so fascinated by that choice. I mean, do you even have to broker that with Martin and say, I want your childhood closest friends who know you from your most vulnerable moments as a young person to speak

openly about this? I assume that's how you would go about approaching it. I did. I talked to him. I said, because, of course, I didn't have their numbers. So, I mean, like, you know, apart from Salvatore, like Sally Gaga, nobody had his number. That was a complete accident. But everybody else, he was, you know, he was still in touch with. There was one guy that Robert De Niro brought. Marty was actually delighted by that. I think because he's such an anthropologist by nature that he liked the idea of preserving the neighbor

and preserving these people almost as a historical thing. And he was like, can I have, he wanted some of the footage just for himself to have it as because the way these people talk in their memory. memories are really history by this point. And, you know, times have changed. And so it's rare, it's rare already. And but he had a very strong sense of like, there were two going to be two sit downs. One was in a cafe Roma and one was in a restaurant that, you know, and there were different people. And they, those different people, you know, not everybody went with everybody else. And he was very, you know, he was clear about that, about who should be sitting with who and so on and the conversations

and kind of stemmed were wonderful. And part of the reason was that I think he had kind of curated that. So he wanted, and then I went to Florida to go and interview Robert Yoracola and John Bovona and then Sabatore. You know, his personal life has not always been neat and tidy. And this is a tremendously revealing portrait of him. I have a huge fan of his work and have been studying him closely, just a lot of as a fan for years and years. And you hear, like, faint whispers of aspects of crazy times in his life or his

relationships, but it's extraordinary how comfortable, it seems he is talking about a lot of this stuff, people he was in relationships with, extremely close friends. Did you feel like there was a moment where, like, a wall came down or there was a sense that there was not, the guard was not going to be up around some of the more sensitive aspects of his life? Definitely, it was a gradual relationship that was built between us, you know, because is so much of this is, it's really a conversation. I didn't know, like you were saying,

I really don't know very much about his personal life. I knew about, I had studied by this time the films very closely. I felt like I knew them well, and I had studied the films that I thought were relevant to his films and so on, you know, the influences. But there was a lot I didn't know. So all the questions I'm asking him are genuine questions. Like, you know, I, and I think, I think that,

Once he decided to go with me, he made a decision that he was going to be pretty honest. I think that there was an initial decision. And then as time went on, there was a trust that was built. And he just decided, you know, but he had also, like I said, he knew my work. He knew my previous documentary. So it was like, that's, I think, what informed his decision. I, you know, and then other people too, like somehow he got infected by him. his honesty, I think a little bit, and sensed, because of the way I was talking about what he

had talked to me about, they knew, oh, okay, so he's done that. He's talked to her about this stuff. So then they were talking to me also about it. Yeah, you had your credibility stamped through that. Yeah, yeah, because everybody wouldn't want to, you know, insult him or transgress, you know, but then once they realized that, oh, this is a different kind of situation, then it changed. So Scorsese's work, you know, it's a convergence of a lot of big ideas. You mentioned faith already and guilt and violence and passion and repression and all of this heavyweight stuff America, a lot of big ideas. Was there something that spoke to you about his work that you felt was unexplored or that you wanted to be a big focus of the piece? Well, initially I was

really interested in faith and violence, how a Catholic, somebody who's still, you know, looking at things through a Catholic lens is approaching these things. How does that work? What was the relationship to the sinner, you know, and like those, those questions, like, and that was the, my initial road in because I thought, well, I don't, I haven't really seen that explore deeply, you know, as far as I know. I mean, not that I've seen absolutely everything and read absolutely everything, but I just felt like there was, there were, you know, and then I was interested in his, you know, in the females in his life, you know, I was really interested in his mother. His mother is an essential character who, thank God, was captured in his documentary. And then there's another, you know, additional one that was taken, done in the 90s of him and his mother and his father. That voice, that personality, I feel like is really key. She's a larger than life figure and really has, I think, the personality of an artist.

You know, like she's just an electric figure. Yeah, there's something wonderful about her being a painter in Goodfellas, you know, that she is a person who makes art, you know, it seems to be him almost like communicating to us that he's getting something from her in that part of the movie. Absolutely. I think it really,

I think he really did get a lot of his, his, the artist part of him from his mother. I was fascinated by Jay Cox in the movie. It feels like he's almost like the bullshit detector. Like every time you need somebody to be like, here's what's really going on. You used him in such interesting ways. Tell me a little bit about, you know,

the idea of a friend like him over periods of time and the way that they can speak to his, not just who he is as a person, but his work in such critical terms. Well, you know, I knew that Jay was really his best friend. You know, Joe Morale was his best friend as growing up as a kid. And he's so wonderful. He's the one with the sort of tinted glasses with the bar.

It's like so frank. And then there's Jay who is like, saw him through everything. And I also knew Jay. I'd come to Noche because I was writing something with him. So I knew him as a person quite well. And so there was a certain rapport there between us. And I felt like, yeah, he's just, I wanted to kind of almost like reenact, like,

recreate scenes for the audience, like to really be there, to really be in the hospital with De Niro and him, to really be like there with, you know, Cassavetes, all these big moments, but to somehow like make people feel like they have. had actually experienced it. It's hard because, like, in documentaries, especially when somebody who's like 50 years on talking about something, it's like, it's hard to get back into a feeling of like visceral experience. That's really what I'm curious about the other side of that coin too, which is the truth.

Like how much do you feel you're getting the truth? Because as time passes, and especially in show business, mythmaking is a part of this. Like, how do you navigate whether you feel like you're getting what actually happened, what's been massaged. You know what I mean? Yeah, of course. I mean, but, you know, well, what is the truth anyway? The truth is that there's so many shades of truth.

My truth about what happened, somebody else's truth, it slightly shifts, right, because of point of view. And one of the things, the reasons I called it a portrait is I wanted to be clear that this is my portrait of him. There isn't like an angel that did some kind of like absolute piece of work. It's my truth, as I understood it. But the thing about Marty is, like, he is the most self-honest person that I've ever met. Like, he's really honest with himself.

He's not pretending to himself to be other than he is. And that's an extraordinary thing. And I've learned a lot from that, I think. And I think you can see it in his work, like the mercilessness of his work to some degree comes from his own honesty to himself. And, you know, so the answer to that question, I guess, is like you just try. I, first of all, to have an honest conversation with your main subject, but also get these points of view from different vantage points, and then hope that you're creating something that's

close to what, as close to the truth as far as truth can exist is. Who is the most difficult person to nail down for this? Because you definitely got a few people that you don't see sitting for a lot of documentaries. My husband was not that easy. I was happy to see him in it. It was not a slam dog. He was like, yeah, only because he's just like, you know, he doesn't really love doing that kind of thing. He doesn't, he feels that, you know, that he can't add anything. It's like a whole thing, but I'm so glad that he did it.

He was tricky, you know, as you can see, like Joe Pesci didn't actually step up. for an interview, but, but the nice thing is that there were some really great interviews of some of these people earlier. And in some ways, it's nice, you know, to just have it more in the period that they're in. And so when there was something like, um, like Ellen Burstyn, like for example, like there were these wonderful interviews that were done really on set for Alice doesn't live here anymore. And I just feel like I don't need more than that. Like how wonderful that she sat for that interview, you know? Yeah, there's a couple of them like Father Prince to pay, I feel like is one, two, or just having that. And I don't know, it's interesting.

He's, I almost feel like he has built his own mythologies in some ways, because he has all these skeleton key figures over the years, you know. You got to speak to Robbie Robertson before he passed away, it seems like, I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit, too, since they were, you know, quite, quite a pair for a long period of time. Well, that was another one where, you know, I think as I began to explain to him what I knew about, what he had already spoken about. He became more open about talking about time that they live together and stuff. And, yeah, it was a son. I mean, he seemed so well. I couldn't believe that shortly thereafter, like, he died, like, not that far after that.

I don't know if it was his last interview, but probably among the last ones. Yeah, that was a great interview. I mean, you know, the last walled sequence in the film is one of my favorite sequences because it's just so pure, you know, the purity of his impulse. He's shooting New York, New York. And I love that. I love that line that Robbie says, is like the one thing, Marty says, the one thing that big studios don't like when you're shooting a big studio picture is to go away and shoot another picture

while you're reading the first picture. And yet, like, he couldn't stop himself. That's sort of like that chapter of like, all this film is, filming isn't healthy. And he really paints a portrait. And then there's that wonderful footage of them together in the 70s, which is just, you know,

irreplaceable and precious. And so, yeah. I love when, um, when the film was Goonmaker comes into the film. film too. It does feel like she also has this kind of sense of what is really going on with Scorsese's work, you know, because she's side by side with him for so long. And it's basically been forced to look at more of what he has made than almost anybody. But even just that transition that you make in the film from his work on Woodstock, her coming into his life, even the

style of filmmaking that you deploy where it sort of feels like you're looking at Woodstock in that time is so interesting. What was it like, you know, chatting with her about working with him for 50 years? Well, I'm so glad that I shot her at the editing bay. I mean, I'm so happy with myself, you know, that she's just sitting there. She's able, because there's something about the way she watches when she's stopping it and talking about it. It's like a hawk, what her eyes. I mean, it's really special to watch how she is, you know, and the level of intimacy that she has with the work with him, having watched him through all these periods, just such a, it really is a beautiful testament to the collaborative nature of film. I mean, that you really, you know, there,

Marty was, I do believe, like, it's a word I don't like very much, but I do think he was born like a genius. I do think that's true. But that alone would not have accounted for what happened. I mean, he needed to encounter these, what I think of as these angels in his life. And she's definitely one of those people, you know, that he could trust. and that helped him make the work. De Niro is definitely one of them. DiCaprio becomes one of them. And then some of the people that actually allowed him get the money to do these things,

you know, because you can't do it alone. And that's one of the most interesting things about it is I really wanted that sort of macro, micro. There's him and his talent and his life, but there's also the larger, the people who help him and then the larger culture that's developing and changing in the country as time goes on. You gave a significant amount of time to almost every film that he made, which is part of just the absolute joy of watching this, is hearing the stories, hearing the mechanics of how it's made. You mentioned De Palma earlier.

There's a really interesting documentary about him that is much shorter. And there are so many movies that I wish they had spent more time on in the De Palma doc. Was there anything in your movie that you wish you could have lingered on more or you felt like you had so much material, but you just couldn't find a way to make the time for it? not for this movie if you know what I mean because this movie really is I mean yes there's a couple of places where oh I'm like oh should should is there a way we could have sort of shoe hearing something in that we took out but basically this movie lives and dies on how the life is affecting the art

and the art is affecting the life it's like this tango that goes back and forth and when we ran that there's a certain and there's only so much life you know there's like and it was like The films that really had the biggest effect on him or which life most affected are the ones that are most effective in the film, if you know what I mean. So, like, sometimes it's surprising, like Shutter Island becomes a very important film because he has this sort of semi-breakdown and it's a kind of hinge to the rest of his life. I mean, they're, they're, you know, so, you know, we do discuss deeply 32 films, which is a lot of films. but the man is made even more films. But we basically, I do feel that we, thank God, we got into a lot of them. And there is a sequence, like, for example, about how he kind of rescued Michael Powell

and the love story between Thelma Schumacher and right Michael Powell, which is a beautiful little, but it became almost like a little film in itself that was like a cul-de-sock. So I was like, I still want to actually put that out somehow as its own little film. That's an example of it just couldn't. you know, it just didn't fit into this film. Right. I still would take a 10-hour version of this if I've been totally honest with you.

The other thing is that you're able to show this incredible aspect of his personal life near the end of the film, which is something that maybe you hear about, but we've never really seen and is incredibly intimate and is such a humanizing capstone on the piece. And I'm kind of amazed

just as a longtime fan that he was willing to open up his world in that way. And I was hoping you could kind of talk about how you decided to do that, how you were able to spend time in his home at this stage of his life. His family was all, they were all very willing and open to talk, including Helen, his wife, and wanted to be part of it. And I think that they wanted to be seen, you know, because it's so important. And I really thought it was so important because, you know, you can't really understand a person just on their own, you know, in their office with their work. It doesn't work like that. People are not, people are rounded figures, you know, and it was very important.

It was hugely important to me that you see the arc of his life. And his life now that that you're describing and that's sort of like in the film is so important. And I think he somehow knew that, but also that desire to be in the film came also from Helen. You know, so it just sort of unfolded that way. That's how the whole thing unfolded. Like none of it was preordained. It kind of like, I didn't know where we were going. I just had this really strong instinct that I had to make this film. And thank God he agreed with me.

And then we just walked into the dark together. I mean, really, like, just I followed the breadcrumbs. It's very beautiful what you've done at the end. By the time you finished, what was the most surprising thing you learned about him or his work or really anything in that world? So hard for me to answer the question because it's almost endless the things that I learned. I mean, it's like I don't even remember what I was like before I started the film in a way because I learned so many things about filmmaking, about like thinking about how to shoot a sequence,

about working with actors, you know, about the influences. the turning points, how many times he was really almost left for dead by the industry or really didn't look like he was ever going to break in or thought that he'd finally broken in and then was sort of told that what he had done was really worthless and then he had to start to get, I mean, fired from his first, you know, film, there were so many things that I didn't, you know, no, and also was fascinated by the development of his relationships, you know, how different he is now in some ways. Like, I think in some ways he's exactly the boy that he was when he was seven and going, you know, going to these movie theaters because he could breathe in Manhattan when it was so hot and no air conditioning. And that person is still there.

But then you look at some of these, his persona and how dark he was in some ways, you know, there's a real difference. And it's very interesting as a protagonist. Somebody yesterday talked about him as a protagonist, like just looking at it as a film, you know, just saying it's a film, like never mind a documentary. He's a fascinating protagonist. He has all these trials that we know a lot about,

but then there's a whole host of others that we don't. One of the other things that I love, it's just essentially seeing that he was storyboarding movies at such a young age that like at seven years old, he has this camera brain that, like, perfectly unfolds. a story, which to me is just completely, that's just madness, you know, that somebody can think in that way. And that's where I say that that's genius.

I mean, that's like, what the hell is that? You know, because he understood film language and could think in that dimension. And it's so, it's wonderful, that one of my first things I thought when we were first sitting there, he's looking at his little storyboards, you know, that he'd done when he was little. And he's like, I'm still trying to do that, the shot. I love that. We have to animate these stories. Because, like, is that, you know, and then you see all the times, he's still doing it.

And it's like, my God, you know, he was kind of born fully formed in some ways and just had to take his whole life to realize a vision that really was born as in his childhood. It's really special. Rebecca, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing they have seen? I know you've been watching a lot of Scorsese over the last five years, so I assume it was not a Scorsese movie. Have you seen anything else good recently? I thought Marty Supreme was really good. Yeah. Were you there on Monday?

Yeah. It was so fun. What did you like about it without spoiling it for the folks who haven't seen it yet? I love the energy. I felt like it was very, it had the energy of the person who made it, like, deep inside. And I really, and I also really like the message about masculinity. I thought it was kind of beautiful. But, you know, like, I love that.

I couldn't agree more. Rebecca Miller, congrats. Thanks so much for doing the show. Thank you. So nice to meet you. Thanks to Rebecca Miller. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Thanks to Amanda.

Amanda, you will not be on the next episode because it's about the Black Phone 2. Sick. And the best horror movies of the year. You've seen a few of them. You saw weapons. I did. You saw sinners. I did.

You wrote Final Destination Bloodlines. I did. I have seen one scene from it. You know? Oh, yeah, you did. That's right. And I was the Science Corner consultant for that. So everything having to do with magnetic fields. Yes. And that's why it's so accurate, so realistic to what would actually happen. CR will be joining me for that episode and we will see you then. You know,

Thank you.