The Big Picture - ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ and the Coen Brothers Movie Rankings

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

Sean and Amanda discuss Joel Coen’s ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth,’ the latest Shakespeare adaptation, which stars Denzel Washington and is the director’s first without his brother, Ethan. They talk about how the story has been updated, and how it hasn’t (1:00), where it stands in the awards race (33:00), and how it stacks up in the Coen brothers filmography (1:12:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Derek Thompson, the host of the podcast Plain English. We tackle technology, politics, culture, history, everything that's happening in the world and why it matters. New episodes of Plain English drop every Tuesday and Friday on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started.

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about something wicked coming this way. Today, we're talking about Joel Cohen's The Tragedy of Macbeth, the latest Shakespeare adaptation starring Denzel Washington. We'll talk about how the story has been updated and not, where it stands in the awards race,

and how it stacks up in the Coen brothers' filmography. The movie is streaming right now on Apple TV+. So if you'd like to check it out before listening, go ahead. But honestly, it's Macbeth and you know the story, I presume. So don't be too worried about spoilers here in this conversation. Amanda, the Tragedy of Macbeth is Joel Coen's first movie without his brother, Ethan. It's a solo joint collaborating with his partner, Francis McDormand, of many, many years. What'd you think of the movie? Interesting. Beautiful.

And I am excited to talk to you about it. This is a problem in the big picture. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, so this is a curious one for me, obviously. I greatly anticipate all Coen Brothers films. And I was intrigued by the idea of Joel making a movie without his brother for the first time. You know, for many years, Joel was solely credited as the director by himself, even though it was understood that they worked together in a kind of writer-director partnership. Eventually, they both were credited as directors. And this one is a little bit

different than any Coen Brothers movie you've ever seen. For starters, it is not written by them. They've done very few adaptations in their career and certainly no adaptations as loyal to the material as this one. But on the other hand, this has an incredible cast, particularly Denzel and Frances McDormand, who I mentioned. And I would say that I liked and did not love this movie. I think it's possible to be a bit let down by Macbeth. I think I was actually a bit let down by this movie while acknowledging that it's quite possibly the best looking movie short of Dune of 2021. It is gorgeously shot and conceived and designed and produced. And then it is Macbeth. I know Macbeth really well. And it's hard to surprise. And I think actually you have to pay close attention to identify where some of the surprises come in.

Now, Shakespeare has been this topic of conversation on this show over the last couple of years. You know, we've had some fun at Billy's expense. You in particular. Yeah, well, you know, I actually was chatting with Joanna Robinson recently about Station Eleven on the Prestige TV pod. And I noted like really big year for Shakespeare,

you know, Station Eleven, a lot of Shakespeare big year for shakespeare you know station 11 uh a lot of shakespeare west side story you know the king lear of succession there's just shakespeare's he's thriving in the much like he thrived in the plague in his time he's thriving in this plague this is basically like when i'm like hey yeah i've read the bible once yeah Shakespeare's having a big year every year because he did every story I meant to ask you before we started I'll just ask you now where are you on the Shakespeare authorship question just generally um this is this is sort of like who killed j of k of its time right I know but let's I mean let's get into it let's have some fun I'm not a scholar you know know, like you studied the classics.

I did not study the classics. Like I don't have as firm a grasp on this. I've read most of the great Shakespearean works, but I haven't done zero scholarship around authorial credibility. And so I think, is it fun to imagine a world in which Marlowe was the true author of the Shakespearean works? Sure, that's a fun game to play. But you're going single author. You're a single shooter, single author.

No, I'm going like Oswald did it, you know, like alone. Like Shakespeare wrote these plays, these sonnets. He did it on his own. Iambic pentameter, God, Billy Shakespeare. Okay. I think that's good. I think that is where I am as well. I haven't done like a huge amount of the conspiracy theory reading because it is both conspiracy theory reading and then academic language, which are just, that's a lot to take on all at once. Juliette Lippman, a friend of ours, is a huge multiple author, theorist of Shakespeare. Who are these authors in that theory? I don't know because it's simple. She does start sounding like the, you know, the intelligence community called like the Cubans and then something else, you know, the intelligence community called like the

Cubans and then something else, you know, and you're just like, uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay. Right, right. Sam Giancana called Fidel Castro to write King Lear. But I brought it up just to say that like all of our stories are there. You know, we have the Bible and then we have Shakespeare and certainly like in the, the and Western literature, it's our reference for everything. So Shakespeare is definitely having a big year though. Some might argue that every year

is a big year for Shakespeare. And that's why I always like tease you when you're like, this is a bad story. And I, cause I'm like, cool, it's Hamlet or it's King Lear or it's Macbeth or it's Roman. It's like, we have these, it's foundational myth. It's our like semi-modern mythology, for lack of a better phrase. So this was interesting to me on a couple levels. I was actually kind of surprised by the interpretation of this Macbeth, which we can talk about.

It's firmly in the admire-didn't-love camp of a movie, which is like when I turn podcasts off. So I'm sorry, everybody. But I do like, but I do think that there is a lot to talk about both in terms of the setting and why they decided to make this Macbeth at all, but also the way that they did, which I would argue it sometimes is just like the highest class poetry reading in like a perfect art museum that you've ever seen in your entire life. And let's just go ahead and say that it's also some of the greatest poetry ever written, even within Shakespeare. I think Macbeth is kind of like the most off quoted, like tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and out, out, damn spot. And, and you know like all much of the Shakespeare

that you know and little snippets is from it Beth so having Denzel Washington read you some of the world's greatest poetry in like this immaculate tea magazine could never settings hard to argue with uh but as a take on kind of like the weirdest maybe like the most psychologically fraught and certainly one of the bloodiest of the Shakespeare plays it's it's new it's austere and you came out of it being like I don't know left me a little cold and I teased you and then I went and saw it and I was like oh this left me a little cold and I teased you. And then I went and saw it and I was like, oh, this left me a little cold. And maybe that's the point, but that's an interesting take on Macbeth. Yes. So let's talk about the decisions that Cohen makes here that I think perhaps left us a little bit cold and talk about maybe the way that Macbeth has been interpreted in the past, particularly on screen, which is not very frequently, but the handful of times that

has happened that has happened from some of the weightiest filmmakers of the last hundred years. This is, as you said, a profound text and a very bloody story. The changes here are especially interesting because I think Macbeth is probably best understood as a story about young ambition and a couple of strivers, people in their late 20s and early 30s who are looking for something more. I'm talking, of course, about Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and their desire to seize power and to determine a life for themselves, perhaps without a child, but to have a different kind of a child in the crown. It is so funny even to hear you put ages to it, though, because I think you're right. But

in my head, it's always been romeo and juliette teenagers hamlet insufferable 20-something dude macbeth on the verge of middle age and king lear old and you know regretting everything what is middle age in this century it's 32 maybe right but hearing like late 20s early 30s has like a very different valence but the idea of like are they middle-aged are they young are they old becomes very relevant in this particular interpretation it does childless 32 year olds in i don't know what century is this the 14th century um of course it is has a totally different meaning than a than a childless 21 year old at that time and so you know this movie has been of course radically redefined by casting 260 60-somethings in those lead roles, and Denzel Washington in particular,

67 years old. And so that puts a completely new spin on the story, and it shifts the story away from this story about ambition, and it makes it very much a story about legacy, about what was my life about, what was it spent doing? And how do I basically create some new meaning for myself at the end of this long life? Macbeth is this great warrior. He's been on the battlefield for long stretches of his adulthood. And so both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth himself, they're trying to find a way to make a little bit something out of their lives that they previously did not have. At least that's the spin that Joel Cohen is putting on it. That's a very interesting conceit.

And it feels like a strong conceit for a stage adaptation. And I wonder if it, in a filmed adaptation, sucks the most important thing out of Macbeth, which is its vitality. It's insanity. This is one of the crazy plays. This is the place where you're constantly, like you said, kind of trying to unpack the psychology of its two lead characters.

And Denzel in particular, I think, makes the right choice as an actor, but an unusual choice for a movie, which is he plays Macbeth as this sort of like mumbling and exhausted and kind of like wrung out warrior. And no one is more fun to watch on screen than Denzel Washington. But this is not really like a fun performance to watch. And we're with him a lot of the time. And he's just kind of this like sad, confused dick. And so I think it's like an interesting experiment

that like you said, like did actually maybe leave me a little bit cold. What did you think about that choice in particular? I had the same reaction. And I want to credit my husband with this observation, which is that it's very strange to watch Denzel Washington play someone as like fundamentally insecure and impressionable and malleable as Macbeth. There is the play is about his sort of like transformation or, you know, grab at power and then descent into madness as a result of that. But he's a person who's getting pushed every which way, whether it's like fate or his wife or, you know, his own insecurities.

And it is about like making this person who kind of wants to make a last stab at something, but embedded in that is a person who has not made a huge stab at anything, pun not intended, but intended, I guess, up until this point and is figuring it out. career and performances grapples with power and ambition and um the ugly sides of both of those things but from a place of being denzel washington and control and and power and it's strange to see him a little like it it i don't want to say it stretches belief because it doesn't because he's one of our great actors but you're not used to it and you do spend at least the first 30 minutes of what is an under two hour movie being like wait but so i'm supposed to believe that denzel is just like sure i'll do whatever you guys say saw weird witch and now i'm gonna do xyz you are bringing all of your denzel to it so it's a little it's a little jarring. And I think there's something about the film's pacing and maybe even the play's pacing. You know, I'd forgotten.

Macbeth is much shorter than the other tragedies. And it does have you jump to these people's wild flights of fancy very quickly. But he's not going for the wildness and the flight of fancy. And so you never really quite catch up to why he's just like, sure, yeah, I'll kill everyone. No problem. Well, the other thing about this is there's a way to interpret this story in a much more action film setting,

because battle is such a huge part of the storytelling. And if you look back at some of the previous adaptations of this, they're really action-packed. I mean, I'll probably go on and on about Throne of Blood when we get near the end of this conversation. But I mean, that's like the template for so much of the action filmmaking that we have right now. What Kurosawa did with that movie, even Polanski, his interpretation, a lot of it's taking place

on the battlefield. There's some really brutal stuff. There is one or two significant sword wielding scenes in this movie. But as you said said you use the word austere that's the right word it's at a remove there's a stillness to a lot of the way that this is filmed it is very much joel cohen's german expressionist painting movie it is not a movie about action and that is an interesting choice and it makes for a i think for some people what will feel like a little bit of a dull watch, especially if you know the material itself.

Now, I'll say on the second watch, as with all Coen Brothers movies, a lot more things reveal themselves, and there is a lot to recommend about this. There are a couple of other changes. You know, there's very few changes actually to the text of this story. There's one in particular, I think the line changes from, you know, Macbeth tells his wife, undaunted metal should have composed nothing but males, which is sort of like a shift from the possibility of having a child to the closing of the opportunity to have a child. And that colors a lot of what we're discussing here, which is, you know, Joel and Francis McDormand deciding to make a kind of like post-menopause movie. Gratefully, you and I are not in a post-menopause phase. And so maybe we can't relate specifically to that phase that they're in though they're in their 60s and they're looking

back on their lives and so this meet this this play has taken on a different meaning for them and but it does kind of shift that the the legacy child aspect of the play and what i you know there's a reference i think to a child that they maybe had and lost at one point, and it's still being a possibility, but not the window closing. And so they're going for this other thing and then going for other people's children in the play is essential for the play. It's like a major tension and opens up themes of like both masculinity and then the, what the Lady Macbeth character represents as a female character, which is a rich and I think pretty fun text. And that one is like closed. That one line reading as you identified it just is like, yep, no, it's over.

So this is all they have left. Which in a way, I guess, heightens the stakes, but also really, I don't want to say simplifies it, but kind of narrows what's on the table here in terms of emotions. I completely agree. It makes the story feel a little bit smaller. Denzel, you know, we've talked about his performance already, but this is not a stranger to Shakespeare. In fact, like there's a case to be made that he's one of the great American Shakespeare interpreters. He's, you know, I think a lot of people know that he was one of the stars of Much Ado About Nothing, Kenneth Branagh's adaptation. I just really love that movie. Everyone else thinks it's crazy, but it's delightful. No, it's a similarly interesting spin on that story. But this is somebody who's done Shakespeare on stage for many, many years. He had a very well-known run as Julius Caesar on Broadway,

I think about 15, 20 years ago. And I think he first got noticed in a production of Coriolanus with Morgan Freeman in the late 70s. And then he played Richard III at a certain point. And when I think about him, I think of Richard III and King Lear. These are characters that at this stage of his life, he probably would be comfortable portraying because of that brazenness in his character. And Macbeth is kind of an unlikely kind of figure. Francis McDormand, on the other hand, I will say when I first read about the film, I was like, this is a stroke of genius. This is going to go so well. And it actually went the exact opposite way. I think she's like kind of the fatal flaw of the movie, which is so weird for me to say. She's one of my favorite actresses. I always enjoy watching her, but I feel like her screen persona, and tell me, I'm curious if you agree with this, has gotten a little bit concretized.

You know, she actually, someone who started out as a great actor and now has become a great movie star, and now it's hard to see her in anything other than that steely resolve figure and not a woman herself who descends into a kind of madness you know lady mcbeth of course actually the she's the more complex character in this story and i felt like her performance was kind of flat i actually had a hard time buying her in this in this spot what did what did she's doing she's doing francis mcdormand doing lady mcbeth within the movie itself and I mean of course you'd have the same reaction of like oh let's see her go for it I agree I mean this is also where I think the restraint of the movie and the closed offness of the movie which is clearly intentional we're going

to talk more about Coen Brothers movies and it like, maybe just like something I always bump up to bump up against in Coen brothers movies is that there always is like, even as characters are losing control, there is a understatedness or a distance from the psychological what's going on. You got to mind for it a little bit, but at lady Macbeth, there's lots of like straight up lose her marbles.

That's the point of this whole experience and and it is you got to go for the the back row a little bit um in an interesting way and she's doing kind of an an arch winking version of it that again didn't totally land for me i agree with you yeah her her persona is to be the smartest person in the room or the person to call bullshit on what's going on. And Lady Macbeth is sort of the opposite. She's convincing everybody of her own madness. That's her role in this story. And so there's an interesting friction between the casting. And I think sometimes going against type can be really powerful, not just in Shakespeare, but in all works like this. In this particular case, it didn't land. You and I are very rarely so clearly aligned on something

like this. And I wonder if it's because Shakespeare has been this kind of political football of our conversations over the last couple of years. The one thing that I think is great about this, and I wonder if we had two different leads, if this film would have worked a little bit differently, is the supporting cast, I think think for the most part is uniformly great yeah the the standout is katherine hunter who plays the witches and also the old man and she's the best you know her career has mostly been on stage and she has this incredible smoky literally cigarette infused voice that it creates this incredible like vocal resonance throughout the story of course the witches are sort of like the key figures driving a lot of the action predicting a lot of the action but um what what did you think about

her a little bit a little bit of oscar buzz for for katherine hunter right now yeah and i can see it you pointed out that this adaptation is like more interested in or maybe just does better justice to the supernatural elements of macbeth because in addition to it being like madness and blood and gore and the people just making bad decisions, like zero to 60, there, there are the witches and this idea of fate and spookiness and prophecies and like, and riddles basically.

This is like the interpretation of the witches as performance art, but like great performance art. It's beautiful and is clearly like kind of the most compelling performance art but like great performance art it's beautiful and is clearly like kind of the most compelling artistic part of it but it it still is very like controlled in a way that doesn't totally feel connected to the rest of the story but that it's almost like interludes but i agree that as just like a cinematic experience, by far the best part of the adaptation. Yeah, it's kind of, forgive this, I just saw the new Scream movie. So this is top of mind. But this is kind of Joel Cullen's elevated horror movie. You know, like it has a little bit to do

with what's going on. It makes me think as I look through their filmography, with the exception of maybe the last 20 minutes of Barton Fink, they've never done a horror movie. They've done a couple of thrillers, but you get the impression that he's intrigued by this kind of style of filmmaking and storytelling. And when I say German expressionist cinema, that sounds like a pretentious thing to say, but literally the way that the movie looks, looks like Nosferatu or Dr. Caligari. Like it looks like one of those movies, those early 20s and 30s horror films that came out of Europe that so clearly influenced American cinema so much when you get to noir and, you know, movies like Night of the Hunter. And you can't tell me that the production designer and Bruno

Delbanel, the DP, weren't looking at all this stuff to make it because it is, like you say, much more entranced with those parts of the story. Now the rest of the cast is very good. It's mostly stage actors. There are a handful of exceptions there. Alex hassle plays Ross and Ross takes on a pretty big significance in this story. You know,

um, I don't have a lot of theories about the third murderer in, in Macbeth, but the third murderer is a thing. This is, this is sort of the about the third murderer in Macbeth, but the third murderer is a thing. This is sort of the grassy knoll of Macbeth, if we're keeping the JFK metaphor going. I love it. I love it. And Ross is clearly identified as the third murderer in this story. That is an interesting decision that people have made that choice before. Roman Polanski made that choice in

his adaptation from the 70s. It gives the story a different kind of weight to make someone so clearly that figure you know there's a way to to film this or to or to stage this where you have like a hooded figure as the third murderer there's some people who who pick um uh gosh i can't recall who the other possible theorist is but anyhow um i thought Alex Hassell was really good. I've never really seen him before. If I've seen him, I've never really noticed him before. And he stuck out to me just like Catherine Hunter did, where I was like, maybe it would have been better

to deem movie star this movie in a way to make it more effective because then I wouldn't have brought so much baggage to the personas of the figures on screen. Well, I think you're also identifying two places where Joel Cohen decides to fill in a little bit. And you know a lot of mcbeth it is faster moving and all of the main events like happen off stage in a like very like greek tragedy sort of way um and and there are as i said riddles and illusions and things that you can bring to the text and like when you're

making a movie adaptation you can show things that you can't show on text. And like when you're making a movie adaptation, you can show things that you can't show on the theater. And so like in a stage play. So the moments where there's an idea or like the text suggests this and we're gonna show you this way or like a performance will add this and the other is exciting, right?

Like that's why we do this and i think some of the other parts of the movie that are um so text bound or so kind of like recitational i mean at some point you just want to it's a movie you know you want to like see some shit go down like i i i agree i completely agree i mean that's a i'll just point out one other person which is cory hawkins who i thought was potentially like was one of the best parts of the movie. I thought he plays McDuff and a very interesting choice, I think, to cast Corey Hawkins opposite Denzel Washington in this movie that makes it sort of like a generational story as opposed to a story about two men in a similar stage of their lives.

Right. Corey Hawkins, not an actor. I would have have i would have suspected we'd seen a shakespearean adaptation but very much up to the challenge very much a person almost like you can feel him channeling his aspirant movie stardom by attempting to battle macbeth in the form of denzel washington i thought that was a very clever choice he's very very good in this movie and then you know brendan gleason and harry melling and some familiar faces that you would expect to see in stories like this are here. But to the point that we're really getting at here, that this is a very, very cinematic play on its face. There have only been a few signature adaptations of this story. It's actually one of the least adapted of the

Shakespearean great works. And I wonder if that's because the handful of times it's been adapted, it's kind of been nailed. I think Orson Welles in 48 did this adaptation in a very similar way, much more like a horror movie, this stark black and white, lots of shadow and light, almost noir-ish. He makes this weird mistake to try to do the Scottish brogue and it sounds terrible. It's like the only thing about the movie that really does not work. But a lot of what is done there, even though it's Wunderkind, Virtuosic, 1940s Wells

and not 67-year-old Denzel Washington, a lot of what's done there, I feel like has communicated well enough that it obviates some of this movie. And I thought it was one thing that was really interesting, Amanda. I was listening to some Denzel interviews and he said he had never seen this play staged and he

had never seen a movie adaptation so he's never seen someone perform macbeth i guess maybe outside of like his high school classroom which i was kind of stunned by i guess and then i started thinking about it and i was like well until i saw throne of blood when i was 18 in an english lit class i guess i'd never really seen it either. It's not the sort of play that you put on in high school, right? No. I think maybe you see one of the movies in high school while you're reading the play to try to understand what's going on. But I can't even remember.

I think I've seen the Orson Welles one, and I think it was in that context. In school. in school, in school, like in, in high school. But, but no, I got to see Patrick Stewart do Macbeth in Brooklyn and like 2008,

nine, 10, he did it at BAM and it was a fantastic production. It, he was wonderful. And that's also, he would go to Franny's down the road every night and that's how he met his wife, which is just my favorite. Shout out Patrick Stewart.

But that is the only time I think I've ever actually encountered it. And that was like luck of being in New York and getting tickets. It's not like, I don't know. What Shakespeare do they do in high school? I think Romeo and Juliet, you'd see. It's a little hard to do Lear with 16-year-olds. And then it's really bad. Yeah, you'll see Hamlet.

I mean, you'll see Midsummer Night's Dream for sure. Oh, yeah. I think the comedies, I think, are a little bit easier to do. Twelfth Night, they did in my college. I think it's hard to do the really, really severe adult themed tragedies. You know, it's very hard to do Henry V. It's very hard to do Richard III in high school. But I just thought it was interesting that Denzel,

because his interpretation is so different, that he was not using, he wasn't operating against anything. He basically was operating against his reading of the text and what Cohen thought this Macbeth should be. And it actually is a little bit closer, I think, to what Toshiro Mifune is doing in Throne of Blood. Throne of Blood is the movie version that they showed me in high school, which I had this great high school English teacher named Mr. Fates. Mr. Fates taught 11th grade English. And he showed us an extremely violent Kurosawa

movie in 11th grade. It's a pretty signature movie moment for me where you know watching you know the arrow sequence and the um the Burnham Wood sequence in that movie so eye-opening at a time when like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were dominating the movies you can see that movie and you're like oh wow it's all here all the pieces you know someone losing their mind the sort of tragic figure in the middle but like this is action movie staging and Mifune plays him as a slightly older guy going absolutely nutso and it has this kind of frantic quality to it it's much more energetic I would say than Cohen's version it's by far my favorite I've talked about it before one of my absolute favorite movies ever if you haven't seen Throne of Blood find a way to

track it down I think it's on the Criterion channel it's like worth buying it's such a great movie it totally explains movies for the next 30 years anyhow and then the macbeth version the plans he made i also mentioned which i don't think i saw until i was in my 30s which is interesting um it is brutal uh it is the difference with that one is that it is entire it is very internal it's very monologue driven a lot of what we hear Macbeth say we hear him saying in his head and that is you can certainly understand at the height of 70s new Hollywood cinema that kind of decision making where like psychology is very much driving a lot of the filmmaking decisions it makes for a little bit of like a it's almost like a parodic

watch now it's like a little bit feels like jo it's almost like a parodic watch now. It's like a little bit, it feels like jokey, like listening to John Finch hear him like narrate his own psychology. And then in the last few years, like we had a comedy called Scotland PA, which was a big Sundance movie that I don't think is very good. And then in 2015,

Justin Kerzel, the Australian filmmaker, made this big, massive, bloody, muddy adaptation with Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. Fassbender is amazing in this movie. I thought that movie was a slog.

I thought it was really, really hard to get there. It's like the Game of Thrones-ification of Beth. Totally. And so, you know, there were these two really big monuments of this film. And then the Polanski movie, which is, of course, very well known. And that's it. And I find that kind of interesting I was thinking about this too with King Lear there's not like a definitive Lear film there have been a lot of interpretations a lot of experimentations with it and you know you start to think about it and originally when we were

going to talk about this I wanted to do like a great Shakespearean adaptations episode I feel like a lot of the great adaptations are like spins on the story they're not these right loyal to the text kind of kind of films is there any like anyone that you think that is loyal that really really really jumps out to you that doesn't modernize or change the storyline to original language can like contemporaneous i mean i guess the olivier movies is probably the best example yeah the henry the fifth is a, and, and you mentioned the much to do about nothing, which with Kenneth Branagh is much about nothing, which Denzel is in,

which I like a lot as well. I was never a big on the Zaffirelli, Romeo and Juliet. Me neither. Even though that's like the classic high school one. I think that's where a lot of people see boobs for the first time and congratulations to them. That's huge.

That was a huge moment. Yeah. No, I, I think so much of the adaptation work is in not even really updating, but taking out of the stage setting, right? And Macbeth is particularly hard to do in that context. I mean, everything is a galaxy brain Macbeth adaptation if you think about it.

Oh, like a guy wants something more and then iseth adaptation. If you think about it, Oh, like a guy wants something more and then is undone by his ambition. Like, sure. We've seen that story forever. Um, but there is like the, the weirdness of the weird sisters and the,

the, the, like the kid thing. And the, like there's, there's so much that you can't really put it at like, you know, a cable news empire to like speak of succession or whatever. You know, like there's so much supernatural stuff feeding into the psychology that it's really hard to do wholesale. And I guess that's true for most of them.

But Macbeth is like particularly challenging in that respect if you could adapt or or appear in any any Shakespearean work what would you choose I mean Lady Macbeth's really fun that's the other bummer about this is like that character doesn't doesn't really deliver on this one and I would love to be lady macbeth that just seems like a great time for me that's uh like what else should i should i should have what else would i do like i don't want to be hamlet jesus christ batman's a new hamlet i don't care about that either and you know who else gets really good speeches i think falstaff that would be you would also you would be a funny Falstaff okay thank you

I think that's sort of mean but I would like to be Falstaff that would also Falstaff he he appears in so many of the plays you know he's he's he's in Henry the fourth part one and two he's in Henry the fifth he gets a lot he gets gets a lot of work Helen is a fun one in Midsommar you know if you're going for the comedies yeah that's good what about puck no thank you okay that's that's just mean i don't need to be puck what if i what if i um staged a one-man hamlet how would you feel about that would you come watch really every episode of this podcast in 100 meters turn right actually no turn. There's some awesome new breakfast wraps at McDonald's. Really?

Yeah. There's the sausage bacon and egg. A crispy seasoned chicken one. Mmm. A spicy end egg. Worth the detour. They sound amazing. Bet they taste amazing, too.

Ah. Wish I had a mouth. Take your morning into a delicious new direction with McDonald's new breakfast wraps. Add a small premium roast coffee for a dollar plus tax. At participating McDonald's restaurants. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Okay, well, let's go to the big race. Well, mama, look at me now.

I'm a star. So we're talking about Denzel. Denzel's going to be nominated for sure for this movie. He's portraying Hamlet in a Coen Brothers movie. No, not that. I'm a star so we're talking about Denzel Denzel's gonna be nominated for sure for this movie he's portraying Hamlet in a Coen Brothers movie so no Macbeth I'm sorry

he's portraying Macbeth of course I've got Hamlet on the brain because he is inside of me he's portraying Macbeth so he's gonna be nominated we've talked a lot about Will Smith

and Will Smith is the front runner and I look forward to Oscar night when you're cradling your newborn and Will Smith doesn't win. And then you scream.

You call me on a cell phone and say, send me the Zoom link. I would be devastated. I would be so mad. If Benedict Cumberbatch comes in. So last week or two, I don't remember when. The college football national championship game. And Georgia won football national championship game. Um, and Georgia won the national championship.

And I grew up in Atlanta as a non UGA fan. Um, and so I hate a UGA with a fire of a thousand sons. And when they won, like my first reaction was like, I don't want my child to live in a world where UGA is the national champion. And like, I really don't want my child to live in a world where UGA is the national champion. And like, I really don't want my child to live in a world where Will Smith doesn't win this Oscar.

I'm going to be hugely upset on behalf of like the future that I was supposed to secure for this person who isn't here yet. Like we just, if he loses, if he loses to Andrew Garfield, who I think is wonderful in Spider-Man and who I am rooting for as a human being, like all the way. I, I don't know what I'll do. I don't know what I'll do, Sean. I it's, it's going to be a very vulnerable time for me and I just don't need it. Well, you support, uh, the Tennessee volunteers as I understand it. And, uh, so you're used to losing, you know, you guys, uh, you you guys have been really good in a long time. So you know what? But we did win a national championship

in my lifetime. So I know what it looks like. Was that 98? When was that? When that was a long time ago? Yeah, because the Braves won in 95 and then they won in 98. You know, Peyton Manning

was our quarterback. Like I've had brushes with greatness. Did you do you support the Falcons or the titans i we just didn't really get into nfl football i didn't learn about it was college football focus saturday was the big day we did the tailgates we did everything like i had the little sweatshirts and the even the cheerleading uniform for the vols at one point. So, you know, Sunday we were driving home. It was not, wasn't on the radar. Well, I'm very sorry about the volunteers. It's not ideal.

It's really more just that UGA actually won. That was, ugh. Well, I guess Andrew Garfield is Georgia in this metaphor. And it's possible. I mean, here are like the 10 contenders for best actor right now, just to put some clarity around this metaphor. And it's possible. I mean, here are like the 10 contenders for best actor right now, just to put some clarity around this category. So Will Smith, Andrew Garfield, Benedict Cumberbatch,

I think, and then Denzel. That's widely considered the top four. And then we got this surprise last week with Javier Bardem in the SAG Awards. And I think that has elevated him up to that potential fifth spot. And then the final five has a bunch of interesting performances

none of which i think are really going to crack the code you got bradley cooper in nightmare alley bradley cooper starting to do a little bit of press maybe starting to feel a little frisky on the oscar scene uh that's that's intriguing um nick cage of course for pig i'm really looking forward to the nick cage episode i don't think you're going to be back by then maybe maybe that's good maybe that's good for you. I really liked this performance and I liked Nick Cage and I really enjoyed, I believe it was the Hollywood reporters round table. Oh,

fantastic. With Nick Cage's thoughts about a horse named Rain Man who tried to kill him multiple times. And then I think it was also like Jonathan Majors had also ridden Rain Man, but had a more positive experience. And then Nick it was also like Jonathan Majors had also ridden Rain Man, but had a more positive experience. And then Nick Cage was like, I'm just very sure that Rain Man had it out for me personally. It was really, really good. And credit to Andrew Garfield in that roundtable who's just like, you know what?

Everyone else stop talking. Let's ask some more questions about Rain Man. That's great interviewing. It is. Nick Cage is great. I really enjoy watching him. Pig is a very good film. I hope he's nominated. I don't think he's going to be. Rounding out the rest of the best actor

contenders, you've got Leonardo DiCaprio for Don't Look Up. You've got Cooper Hoffman for Licorice Pizza, not getting quite as much acclaim as his screen partner, Alana Haim. And Peter Dinklage for Cyrano, which is the film I thought we were going to talk about on this episode. And then I learned that Cyrano was bumped once more another month to being

officially released wide on February 25th now instead of January 14th. So we're not really going to get too into Cyrano except say thank you for dropping off that DVD Sean by the way that was very

nice Sean like a personal delivery service he walked all the way up the hill even though i asked him not to uh i did watch it um i i commend peter dinklage for singing in what turns out to be a new musical based on cyrano why we needed a musical based on the tale of cyranoák is another question that perhaps you guys will do in a podcast while I'm gone because I got nothing more to say. As I texted to you, I think we might just have reached our limit on the number of musicals that exist. Way, way, way too many. I don't know that we need any new ones. I have not seen a justification for a new one in some time.

I think that this is obviously the hangover from the Hamilton effect. Yeah, of course. Not just the incredible success on Broadway of that show, but putting it on Disney Plus and boosting Disney Plus in the way that it did during the early stages of the pandemic. A lot of these films were already in, if not production, a kind of pre-production or conception conception almost every single one of them has fallen flat whether it's at the box office or critically or what have you you know there are exceptions in both directions west side story is probably our favorite of the bunch unsurprisingly from tony kushner and steven spielberg but because it's working with shakespeare and a

sondheim bernstein score Like let's come on guys. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's, it, it, it,

I, I don't know. I mean, you and I have a fraught relationship with musicals in general. And I think a lot of modern musicals really struggle to capture what we love about the Technicolor classics. And it's just, I just,

I also am not musically a fan of recent innovations in, in musical writing. I just like the songs don't work for me. Music is important, but these are not important to me. So just gut check here. You think Will's going to win? Like we... Hold on.

Settle down. It's okay. It's going to be okay. It's just a it's a fair question i just need him to win i've been very clear on this from the beginning and i andrew garfield is so wonderful in so many ways but even watching like soundless clips of tick tick boom that get served to me on instagram reels, which by the way, is a service that I don't want Instagram. Okay. Just like give me quiet old person Instagram and keep the reels on TikTok, but whatever. I can't abide this performance. Will Smith is wonderful in King

Richard. Please give this national treasure an Oscar. You have not answered my question. I said, do you think Will Smith is going to win? I'm nervous. He hasn't been anywhere in like a month. And I think that's probably good because we got a little hot with the memoir and the excerpts and some things that I now know about his sex life. And I actually, I love Red Table Talk. I support them doing whatever they want to do, but it was a hard promotional press, I would say. Have read the memoir. I think you guys, if you have read any of the articles, you got a real sense of it. And that also, the memoir doesn't do what Will Smith does best, which is just be super charming in public. So I saw a lot of people

pointing out that the Golden Globes are a mess and we don't need them, but in terms of getting a chance to just shine in public and make people excited to have you around that, that's what Will Smith does. And so that's kind of a lost opportunity. Maybe he'll get to do it at the SAG Awards. Maybe he'll hit the trail again. I think a break was good. I think it's probably time for Charming Will Smith to come back. We were eight days now, nine days out from Oscar nominations voting to begin. And so I think you're right that he decided I'm going to take a nice little break from about December 20th through January 20th. And I would not be surprised to see him hoofing on the trail over the course of the next six weeks now. I mentioned that Hollywood Reporter Actors Roundtable.

Did not participate. He did not participate. And he has not been participating in a lot of like, I don't even think he's in the W actors issue. You know, the great performances where everyone like looks really zany. I enjoy that stuff. Let me just say. But he, you know,

even Len Hirschberg couldn't get him. So I, I'm curious. I'm wondering what's going on. Also, can we see King Richard again yet? Is, have they put it back? I think you can rent it on VOD at the moment. You can rent it on VOD. I'm not sure if it's available on HBO Max. It might be.

Let's take a look. I don't think it is, which just put it on your streaming service and get some Oscars for the love of God. It's not ideal. It is not ideal. You know, let's go to Stock Up, Stock Down. If it goes bust, you can make 10 to 1,

even 20 to 1 return, and down. If it goes bust, you can make 10 to 1, even 20 to 1 return. And it's already slowly going bust. I want to talk to you about a movie that has been stock up in my estimation for a while that I know you finally got a chance to watch. And I think running 11th in the Best Actor race, and I wish he was running third or fourth, if I'm being honest, maybe even second or third, is Simon Rex in Red Rocket.

Yeah. Which is currently in a wide-ish release. It's in like, I guess, 500, 800 theaters around the country. This movie was on my 10 best list of the year. Sean Baker's new film starring Simon Rex about a suitcase pimp who moves back to his hometown in Texas

without much and seeking a little bit more. What do you think of this movie? I've been dying to hear what you think of this movie for months. What do you think? I had a delightful time. To me, it was all Simon Rex. We can talk a bit more about the movie, but the Simon Rex performance at the center of it. I think I'm uniquely generationally

attuned to the simon rex experience he was an mtv vj in the mid 90s and you know then in a lot of crappy tv shows and movies and the scary movie franchise but also just unbelievably hot just like really really hot in like a late 90s way that as you're starting to like learn about the world i i mean what do you want me to say like you know exactly what i'm talking about the hair gel and the abs and the and it's like we know better but also you're 14 and you're just kind of like wow like the world is a wild and like vibrant place um and this movie is definitely playing with that idea of simon rex and that person and that character and that like particular like niche 90s moment but also this kind of charming dirtbag that is a character that you often love i like them when they are mega

charisma and this is like a pure charisma performance in a lot of ways this movie is like an explication of charisma um and I I loved it so I'm thrilled for him also while we're at it great press tour that I think caught caught a cut a little short because of just the release and people not being able to see this movie as much. But my guy is just like living in Joshua Tree now. He gave up everything. And Simon is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He bought a property in February 2020.

Okay. And he says that he listens to podcasts like they're his friends. And, you know, like... Welcome, Simon. And right, exactly like the rest of us and i don't know like spends his days making sure there's like enough water and then he like flies to can and then he like comes back to joshua tree and is like trying to figure it all out uh really special stuff so this is a great like performance that the movie doesn't exist without the performance which you know sometimes is a justification for a best actor nomination and sometimes

misses it because people like don't buy the whole movie you know yeah so sean baker has an interesting track record with casting performers you know not i think the the florida project and tangerine are the two where he really kind of like i don't want to say burst on the scene but kind of like confirmed his status as one of the you know indie auteur you know darlings and but he had been making movies before that i thought a lot about starlet a movie he made like 10 or 12 years ago it's largely set in the world of porn um and he was casting like professional or semi-professional or non-professional actors for a long time.

So he's well known for that. I guess it's almost like a trope now of dropping people into these worlds that he creates or finding people who are already in those worlds and situating them in the stories that he's building around them. Simon Rex is a little bit of a different thing. This is a little bit of a Tarantino thing where he's almost like reviving someone that we have a relationship to and you know I I don't I don't think I had the same quite as as horny a relationship to Simon Rex as you did which you know great good for you um but he's just speaking for America you know yeah of course no of course I mean he's got a lot going for him um but I I certainly have a like a nostalgic and like memory driven relationship to seeing him on mtv and a

little bit in the scary movies but mostly as a like a handsome talking dude he's like he is a true 90s dude and pretty funny he's unreal in this movie he is perfectly cast and he's perfectly directed and when i when the when the movie was first playing, I think it played Cannes in 2021, and then it hit the festival circuit in the States. And a lot of the feedback on it was like, oh man, it's tough because this guy's such a bad guy, but you're kind of rooting for him.

And I just feel like America might hate this movie. And there's this whole grooming subplot where he's with an underage girl and it's going to be so problematic and wait for the takes and yada, yada, yada. And I just feel like the movie is very, very aware of what it's doing. Yeah. Isn't that, it's shot around 2016 and like on the eve of the Donald Trump election, there are some not so shaded allusions to that throughout the film. There's a very, it's not necessarily that Simon Rex character who,

you know, is this porn star who basically like encourages and even compels young women to work with him in the industry. And of course he's like a deeply immoral and dangerous person. But who's very funny and charming and, you know, able to convince of course he's like a deeply immoral and dangerous person. Um, but who's very funny and charming and, you know, able to convince people because he's so funny and charming.

Um, and of course there's like obvious parallels to be made between the political system in our country and the way that people get snookered by politicians or, you know, leaders in, in industry. But there's also a way to look at the movie that is just like this

snapshot of people living in a town you know like you don't have to over read it to get a sense of i don't know about enjoyment but kind of fascination with the world that sean baker's building and his world sometimes leave me a little bit like they feel a little bit more anthropological than emotional this was actually the opposite for me where i was like well i'm way inside of this story i'm invested in all the characters you know brie elrod's character simon rex's kind of ex-wife or estranged wife i was like so into her story and everything that she was going through in a way that um even more so than like the florida project or tangerine i was like very invested so that just that's like an act of movie making that i can

really relate to setting aside all of the blah, bullshitty discourse stuff. Well, the discourse stuff, which I don't want to get into, it's so intentional. It's so this is a character who you should know better, but whose charm and who's delusion. I mean, it is sort of funny that we're doing this in a Macbeth podcast because I, you know, there's, there's no blood and no like ownership, but it is like a character who is trying to use what he's got to make one last stand, you know? And it's like, wow, everything that you're doing is like icky and terrible but also i can't help sort of just like be pulled in and it's no accident that donald trump is giving like rallies just off and hillary clinton as well like you know just just off camera that this examination of self-belief and and and you know public presentation and what can you uh convince people or what can you get away with if you're just like a real live blowhard who also happens to be very handsome and have a very large dick, which is definitely alluded to in the movie.

Congratulations again to Simon Rex. So that to me was more interesting than that's like what pulled me into the movie I did at some point I didn't get too concerned about it but pause a little bit like thinking about the Sean Baker project and I don't think tourism is a fair word word but like he does just like jump to these communities and it's like, here's a snapshot of like real life. But I was using air quotes and I hope you can hear them. And I think it's both compelling filmmaking. And at some point I start to wonder about some of the edges of how it's being

portrayed and what we're supposed to, is it condescending or is it like kind of outsidery or, how it's being portrayed and what we're supposed to, is it condescending or is it like kind of outsidery or is it still just like also movie making? And I'm not like too concerned about it. And I think there's something interesting in this movie where it's not like really the text, but this, this Simon Rex character is like oppositional to everybody else, right?

Like there is some acknowledgement that there is an outsider. We're not an outsider, but someone distance from the pack, like coming in and how those dynamics are working and how maybe he's not the best person to be interacting with all of these people. So I think it's aware of it but for me it's just it's the performance and and the character who is hilarious and fascinating um and gross let's be let's be clear it's gross terrible horrible person horrible but that's what's interesting it's investigating how much you still respond to it even though he's doing these completely awful things yeah i mean as you said i i often respond to it, even though he's doing these completely awful things. Yeah, I mean, as you said, I often respond to characters like this.

They're actually usually more in the ascetic, Paul Schrader, like damaged man mold. You know, they're not quite as like vibrant as Mikey Sabre is in this movie, Simon Rex's character. But I think what you're locating in the Sean Baker films

is very interesting. And I think that there is like an examination locating in the Sean Baker films is is very interesting. And I think that there is like an examination to do of all of his movies because one he tends to focus on on on sex workers and people working in that industry. And that's an industry

that is very under discussed. And I think it's not so much that he is a tourist in those worlds. I think he has like a kind of an affection and certainly a fascination, but like a true emotional interest in their lives and the work that they do. But because very few films, books, stories ever tell stories about them that are anything other than like this person was murdered

and left in a, you know, a cargo bin. We don't really have like a relationship to those stories. And so it feels like we're being dropped into this world that we don't see a lot of the time. I think it's possible to make something that is outsider art that can get swallowed up by mainstream commentary, like podcasts like this, where it's like, ostensibly, this is like a podcast for all movie watchers. If you like Spider-Man, you can listen to this show. If you like the smallest indie or foreign film, you can listen to the show. We're going to try to hit on as many of those things as we possibly can. You know, he's making independent films granted for a 24, which is a super independent, but it's still an independent movie studio on his own terms for not a lot of money about communities that are largely ignored, whether it be this community in Texas, which is a

small town that most coastal elites are not thinking about. And also the porn industry, which is something that like is sort of like consumed but not considered. And well, I mean, it is every generation gets its own David Foster Wallace. But anyway, that's true. There are always like these high minded intellectual, I guess, like consumed and reinterpreted things. I think his project is really, really unusual. And Simon Rex also has a background working in pornography. Actually, there is he's trying to, I think, unpack something about what compels people and brings people to this stage of their life. And if you look at the last four movies, if you look at Starlet, Tangerine, the Florida Project, and this movie as this kind of quartet of stories about this stuff, it's just constantly about young people trying to get out of their circumstances basically by selling themselves. you know, analog that you can make to all entertainers, all people that work in filmmaking, all people that want to be in front of or behind the camera that I think is like almost neat the

way that it fits where you're just sort of like, I just want to be heard and seen and express myself and get myself into a better situation. Maybe that's too empathetic a lens I'm casting on it. I like Sean Baker's movies a lot. Like they're just different from most of the films that you'll see out in the world. I didn't mean to identify that strain as like a condemnation by any stretch of the imagination I I just kind of like I did start thinking about it at some point which you know gives us something to talk about which most movies don't unless you know who Daredevil is or whatever which is that who shows up in the spider man uh daredevil does appear in spider-man noah yeah yeah but if you don't know who that is then there's not as much to talk about so it's

nice to have things to talk about at the movies i really wish you you could see scream right now because i i want to i want to talk to you about i think i think maybe i'll make chris talk about it at the beginning of our episode later this week. But again, like that Spider-Man point that you're making and where movies are right now. And Red Rocket is a movie that is not a part of this conversation. Although you can make the case that all movies are like this. We're talking about this tragedy of Macbeth adaptation. And I can't help myself but to tell you about all the other Macbeth movies that I've seen, you know. And I can't help but put Sean Baker's other movies into this context, this sort of like daisy chain of storytelling. And it does help.

It's a self-aware movie, Red Rocket. Oh, for sure. If nothing else. And so, and I do think it kind of knows what it's doing for the most part in terms of all of the connections that we were just making. Certainly the political ones, maybe not within its own internal universe. And the use of NSYNC's Bye Bye Bye as another totem of 90s nostalgia when we were so much younger and so much more vital

and how these things are reinterpreted and reexamined and what they mean to us. I mean, the movie in many ways is kind of made for you. I know. If there's so much in it that speaks to you progressing into this stage of your life, not that you're a person who, you know, grew up in the middle of Texas or anything, but not that far. And you've been you've seen the way that certain people observe powerful, influential hucksters.

Right. I'm not I'm not I'm not self. No, I was just kind of like, I don't need I don't want to claim Texas as a Southern or not. I don't want to claim it, but they're very particular and I don't, I don't want the Texans to come for me. Just like I'm confused why any Texas teams are in the SEC. But anyway,

yes, sure. It's, I mean, it's of a moment and there is a real like late nineties of it all. That is suddenly like middle-aged and being like oh god like what did we learn and what did we create and and and are we thinking about these things differently that is or like late 90s early 2000s also i should say um it's nice to have art made for you you know

i i agree with that um okay so that's Red Rocket there's no stock down because I don't know I don't want to I don't want to rag on any movies right now just feel like let's try to celebrate I ragged on Joel Cohen more than I ever imagined I ever possibly could in that tragedy of Macbeth review does it feel wide open to you still I know we did this last week a bit but it's sort of like stock question mark for the best picture race. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we're still stuck in this like we just decided in September of 2021

that it was the power of the dog most likely with Belfast as a possible upset sentimental old voter pick. And we just can't get out of that, even though I don't know. I just feel like King Richard and Dune and Licorice Pizza,

like these movies are just as worthy. And in a different kind of year, they could or should win. And with a slight narrative reset, maybe it could happen. But for whatever reason, it's just not happening. There's nothing shifting. And so it's making this like, frankly, not that fun to talk about. It's just a little bit dull.

I mean, there is a void just in the calendar in terms of this is when there traditionally would be a lot of awards shows and film festivals and lots more round tables and people glad handing and more will smith content and that's just kind of not there and then there also is this void you know i assume academy voters are using their screening site to actually watch these movies but king richard d Licorice Pizza, you just named three movies. It's very hard for a lot of people to see. So what are you supposed to do? It's not fun to talk about when no one's actually seen it.

If we were not in what feels like the 12th wave of COVID-19, Yeah. There was just a, there was a big West Side Story opportunity here because of the vacuum created by this circumstance and the fact that there's still a little bit of apprehension around Netflix, even though Jane Campion

is as bulletproof as they come reputationally. And if the first weekend box office report was not West Side Story bombed, I think that there would have been a way for this movie to kind of creep up and creep up. And maybe it still can, because very few people who have seen it have said anything other than like, wow, holy cow, Steven Spielberg. But still not a lot of people have seen it. There's not a

lot of cultural conversation around it. And it is, of course, a remake, which I think limits it in some ways. But that's the one that I don't I don't know how you change it I don't know how you fix it I don't think you can like put it on VOD and then everything works out and it plays well you know it's not going to be that kind of a thing but that's the movie that it satisfies older audiences because of its source material it satisfies younger audiences because it is a younger story it It's got an incredibly diverse cast, a lot of fresh faces. It features an older performer who's been recognized by the Academy and Rita Moreno. It's got all of these pieces to the puzzle that we think of when we think of a best picture.

It's not my favorite movie. I know it's one of your favorites from last year. I thought it was like, it's like a top 20 movie for me from last year. But it feels like a worthy candidate for what the Oscars typically selects. Yeah, I think you're right. And I really liked it, but also what a dire situation to be in

where we're arguing for a little scene remake of a movie that already won best picture to like win best picture and save the Oscars. Like that's bad things are things are bad out there things are are bad out there you know where they're not bad where uh in the coen brothers universe the filmography of the coen brothers what a segue of joel and ethan let's let's this is this is this is a 20 minute hark so i need you to just accept here's my hark so you have done this several times in public.

You can find Sean's original list on The Ringer. Yeah. So I did it in 2018 when The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was released. And at the time, it was self-parody. At the time, I was like, how stupid to try to rank these movies. And could you imagine if the Coen brothers sat down and looked at some dweeb on the internet's ranking of their movies? They have literally been making movies mocking those kinds of exercises for a long, long time.

And yet, I'm compelled. You know, I'm compelled. I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really love their movies. I have watched their movies so, so many times over and over and over again. I think there is something very, here's what it is informed, of course, by Preston Sturge's movies, which are also movies that I really care about. It's informed by great Westerns and noir thrillers and all kinds of classic genre exercises. They're also informed by Shakespeare and the Bible and this very kind of hermetic Bob Dylan influenced 1960s Minnesota upbringing. They know, they're dorks. And they're really like, they're like mean, cool dorks. And that's my crew.

Those are my people. And so I've always had such an affinity for them ever since I saw Fargo. Fargo was the first movie of theirs that I saw. And Fargo just completely changed my perception of not just what movies could be,

but what quote unquote important movies could be. Fargo winning best picture, much like seeing Throne of Blood around the same time. I was like, oh, wow. So it's not just like me and my weird little cubbyhole sleeping in the basement of my parents' house, you know, watching Star Wars. I was like, Entertainment Weekly and the academy awards told me fargo is worthy and so my like sense of insecurity and you know class identity and all the weird stuff that i have going on i felt like it kind of coalescing i i know i'm really over explaining it but it's all real it's it's an important one for you and i admire the coen brothers very much. And every single movie of the Coen brothers,

I have some memory of someone in my life, like absolutely loving it. And me being like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really, really good. Yeah, totally. Like from, from Fargo. I remember when Fargo came out and I wasn't old enough to see it, but like, I still remember my aunt Betty, like doing like, it's a Radisson, you know, like in the Midwestern accent, like she thought like she thought I was so funny my parents were like there's this cool movie you're not allowed to see called Fargo um I eventually did see it guys don't worry um you know the the forever famous just absolutely ethering of Amanda Dobbins we went to see Inside Llewyn Davis on Christmas um I think it was the first time my husband Zach had gone home for Christmas and we went with my dad dad and Zach just like you know so thrilled just like that was one of the best cinematic

experiences and I was like oh I'm so glad you guys like each other and then my dad just goes oh well Amanda doesn't like movies where people don't talk so which like in one sentence, just done. That's that's true. So it's another like a PTA type thing where I really like them and it's surrounded by people who are so, so invigorated by that particular tone. And I think that reserve in a lot of ways, which was kind of like what I was hitting up against with Tragedy of Macbeth. And in all of these movies, it's a lot of people who have a lot of feelings, but absolutely refuse to let them out, which no offense, Sean, that's I understand why you, why you love these movies. I'm letting them out here with you. I know. And it's nice. And I think that's great, but it's, it's like sometimes hard to get a word in edgewise because

that's the only time that Coen Brothers fans let their feelings out is when they're like talking about how much they love Coen Brothers movies and I'm just like that's cool it's been a wild time on this show when it comes to those things I mean I obviously process a lot of my feelings through watching movies and

you know we spent a lot of time with Quentin in 2021 he was on the show we had a long chat with him and chris you know i talked to pta this year licorice pizza came out processing all my feelings i guess going back to 2020 we spent some time at soderberg you know and now getting a coen brothers movie you know these are the these are really the filmmakers that speak to me the most that i have invested the most time in i guess spike lee is probably on that list i'm trying to think of a handful of other people that I have that like, you're 10 to 20 years older than me

and I really look up to what you create and what you create helped me better understand how to appreciate this art form, how to, you know, the sort of like- And the world. Yeah, and like the stakes of popular culture, I think in a way, you know, I think that they really like represent

what I wished a lot of more popular culture could be like which is like you know virtuosic and aware of the past but trying to forge a new history and emotionally compelling but also a little bit pointy headed all these things so anyway they're they're probably like even if i don't like their movies as much as i like paul thomas anderson's movies or quentin Tarantino's movies I um I return to these movies a lot I think they constantly give you something new to think about I think they're very very very intelligent filmmakers more than anything they're not emotional filmmakers they're very very intelligent filmmakers there's emotion in the stories but the design and the execution of their movies is flawless except for a couple and that's probably where i'll start um okay i

think it's well understood that they're like i guess two weak points for lack of a better word in their filmography and they come with this really strange time where you know in the late 90s they they're finally hailed more broadly as the masters that everyone thinks that they are they have this kind of twin killing of fargo no brother where art thou then they make this the man who wasn't there in 2001 which is like loving ode to a kind of noir film that they love from the 40s and then they make intolerable cruelty and lady killers back to back and that's where we're starting so the lady killers is just not good like i i i actually still don't know why. And I wrote about this a little bit in 2018.

I still don't know why they wanted to make this movie. It's a remake of an Ealing comedy, a British comedy from the 50s with, you know, a pretty terrific Alec Guinness performance at the center of it. And it's like, it's a real why. Tom Hanks is kind of miscast in this movie and it's not very funny and whatever social commentary it's after like i don't think lands quite as well because the tone is off it's the one movie where i'm like the tone here didn't click so it's always going to be my least favorite of their movies it's like it's i think it's the one

movie of theirs that is like not available on blu-ray actually because like no one's clamoring for it no one's re-watching it i think that tells you everything you need to know did you see did you see this one yes like many years ago and was like uh-huh okay but in any more of a like a clear way then uh-huh okay to i don't know burn after reading or or miller's crossing i love burn after reading so okay okay i i really like a lot of these movies. I'm just not, you know, my heart isn't bleeding out here on this list like it is for you somehow, even though they don't do that in Coen Brothers movies. Anyway, continue.

Well, people bleed out, but their hearts don't bleed. People bleed out, but yeah, not their hearts. So Intolerable Cruelty, that's one that I would think you would like. Yeah, but it doesn't quite work. You know what I mean? It doesn't. That's the thing. I like that they tried it, but it's't quite work you know what I mean it doesn't that's that's the thing I like that they tried it but it's not in their wheelhouse and so yeah this is like the Hepburn Tracy or

Cary Grant Rosalind Russell kind of screwball comedy starring George Clooney Catherine Sadie Jones everyone's kind of up for it you know it's almost like they did actually get the tone right I think in this movie and it feels like not just homage but they've modernized the story a little bit but there's something the story is just like a little weak or a little soft and you don't totally get invested and it feels like kind of a feels like a riff more than a movie and there's some funny bits to it but it just feels like somewhat incomplete which is not really a feeling you get from any of their other movies um after that i i think you could make the case that every single one of

these movies that they've made since with the maybe the exception and i feel like tragedy of macbeth is probably right in this zone here so if we'll go 19 for the lady killers 18 for intolerable cruelty i feel like the tragedy of macbeth is like right around here i would say it's like 17 or 16 what do you think it's it's where i would put it i you know recency bias it's like 17 or 16. What do you think? It's where I would put it. You know, recency bias. It's one of these things where in five years, we'll probably be like, oh, wasn't this masterful in this way or the other? But I don't know.

You got to give us time to live with things. Yeah. So when Ballad of Brass and the Scruggs came out, I think I overrated it. And I'll address that here in this ranking. And maybe we're underrating Tragedy of Macbeth, but I'm going to put it at 17 because as you said,

it is an amazing filmmaking achievement that left us both a little bit cold. Okay, so now it gets tough. I had Hail Caesar at 16 when I did this years ago. And I think it might be

better than I thought. I like Hail Caesar, but it's about things that are in my interest set as opposed to some of the dusty movies. I, to me, I think I feel like I had Buster Scruggs at 11 and I feel like it's my 16 now. I'm, I'm okay with that. As you know, I don't really enjoy short fiction.

That's right. Well, there are a handful of, um, there are a handful of brilliant pieces here you know what movie actually made this movie seem less good to me is the french dispatch okay where i'm like oh like when i re-watched the french dispatch a couple weeks ago i was like oh actually all the pieces fit together here like this is part of the same story the ballad of ruster scruggs is more like an old book of westerns which is what it wants to be and the stories i don't know they're are they really speaking to each other it's kind of funny that the james franco being hanged first time gif has become like the meme like that is the legacy of this movie

um have you ever used that gif when's the last time you dropped a gif on twitter um i not since the pandemic i don't know i have you ever dropped a GIF on Twitter? I think once in a while, but I just get very frustrated. I don't really understand how people find all the good GIFs. You know, even in my phone, I look for a while and then I'm like, you know, Googling Father of the Bride

and there are only like three GIFs. And I'm just like, well, the people who made this library don't have my references, so. You need to start doing some GIF making. I actually did try to learn and i just i don't have time for that i don't i have other things that i gotta put my time towards so i'm trying to think of how to continue to frame these because with the with these movies i think more

about re-watchability than i do about greatness necessarily And so like a movie that I don't rewatch that often is the man who wasn't there. And I feel like while it is like a masterful execution and black and white, there are only other black and white movie. Um, I don't know. I feel like I'm going to put the man who wasn't there next. I feel like Adam Neiman is going to be very mad that I do that, but I'm going to do it. Although he's not listening. So it doesn't matter. You had it at number 13. I had it at 13, so I'm going to put it at 15 now. Okay, so we're shuffling things around here a little bit. It's interesting. I thought that you were going to bring up rewatchability and then say, I need to fight against that instinct,

but you're leaning into it. No, because I think that these movies are made to be rewatched. I think that every one of these movies has little Easter eggs and sight gags and line readings that are meant to be kind of picked over and analyzed. And you get the sense that they do that. Now, when Joel and Ethan are interviewed, first of all, they treat interviews like such idiots. And it's one of the reasons why I would really love to talk to them, but I probably shouldn't talk to them because they're just going be like you're our clown sir um but anybody who tries to create like a grand theory of their filmmaking or who has like senses a bigger insight into the work that they're doing tries to just like blow it off as oh we just really wanted to make a western you know we just really wanted to make a thriller and they just like make people seem like complete buffoons but i i i feel confident

saying it's bigger than that um i just remembered the interview recently where someone was like did you know that the real lord macbeth was like 47 or something and they were just like and joel was just like interesting yeah i think if i was as smart and talented as joel cohen i would act like Joel Cohen. But I unfortunately don't have that level of confidence. I'm going True Grit at 14. Okay. I think this movie is very good.

I think it's one of only three adaptations they've done now. I think with Macbeth, No Country for Old Men, and True Grit. It's based on an extraordinary novel by Charles Portis, who passed away a couple of years ago. He's just one of the best American authors of the 20th century. It's better than the original True Grit, which won John Wayne an Oscar. It's not really at the peak of my interest for what they're trying to say. It feels very much like an exercise,

and it has a great hayley steinfeld performance a great jack bridges performance but again and not a movie that i re-watch very often so going true grit is this like a completely like banal exercise like are you just like kill me i have never been more hungover than when i saw true grit with my dad okay and i was like honestly just having a sense memory of how hungover I was. So you were kind of Rooster Cogburn in this story. I guess so. It was really, really brutal.

And not even the fountain soda and the popcorn could really revive me. So I'm glad that phase of my life is over. I don't know why I just said Rooster Cogburn. That's not the name of the character from True Great. What the hell is the name of the character from True Great? That's a different John Wayne character that he played many years ago. No, it is rooster cogburn was there were there two rooster cogburn movies jesus christ okay rooster cogburn is a great name that's remarkable okay let's keep going we have 13 more movies to go and i'm going to do this fairly quickly okay number 13 i'm going oh brother where art thou okay this is fine with me

i think this movie is actually overrated um i don't disagree with you i think it is uh also i guess i guess this is sort of an adaptation as they humorously note that it is based on the odyssey although all movies are based on the odyssey so um a little bit ridiculous there and there's a a self-owned a knowing wink from the coens it's uh it's just a movie that is like more best best remembered for its soundtrack and not for its storytelling and a storytelling is like kind of fun but I

I don't Clooney is not their best hero like he's not their best leading man and there's something almost like too on the nose about him trying to do Cary Grant in these

movies and that's very much what he's trying I guess there's a little bit of Henry Fonda too in this movie but for the most part it's good it's really really really good like i know david shoemaker the ringers david shoemaker loves oh brother where art thou i think he's upset to like if you ever do a rewatchables i want to be on the over brother where art thou i respect that

this is not in my upper tier didn't you try to put this in the deacon's hall of fame over like skyfall i don't know i think this like this prefaced the rango debacle that that that's that was quite a day that was an important day on this show i think that that day actually definitely unlocked whatever the hell we're doing now on the pod and uh for better and almost certainly for worse i that was what it was so delightful you were so angry you guys were just such dicks i'm just trying to celebrate cinema. Okay, let's keep going. I think Hudsucker Proxy is going next.

This might be considered blasphemy. Some of these like, I don't know. Some of the ones that have big reputations are not necessarily the ones that work as well for me. And I'm not trying to have like a galaxy brain take on the films because there's a handful that I love that maybe are not as loved because they're not as quote-unquote funny this is one of the funny ones is a big budget movie it's clearly the one that they had like the most

trouble with that had like a lot of production frustrations and you know it's like has a co-writer on it and again like very homage bound you know and the homage bound movies i don't think you know men who wasn't there uh oh brother where art thou intolerable cruelty hud sucker proxy these movies You know, and the homage bound movies. I don't think, you know, Men Who Wasn't There, Old Brother Where Art Thou, Intolerable Cruelty, Hudsucker Proxy. These movies are like really stuck on movies that came before. And so that's the stuff that doesn't totally work for me. They don't feel as like utterly original as Raising Arizona, where you're just like, whoa, there's like never been a movie like this.

There have been like Tex Avery cartoons like this, but there's never been a movie like this. So I'm going to keep bumping it down Hail Caesar is gonna go next I was gonna say you've really Hail Caesar had quite a jump yeah well it's been has it been five years since Hail Caesar I feel like it has almost six years um re-watched it uh just before the pandemic it's brilliant it's brilliant it is like homage bound in a way but it is uh it's got i think it's got more on its mind than just trying to animate a period in history and like it also i think predicts a little bit about our conspiracy culture you know there's like a lot about

groups meeting in secret that uh i don't want to say it's a q anon movie but like you could you could look at it as as a conspiratorial film for sure. It's all going to take us to get to Hail Caesar as a QAnon movie. Okay, minute one hour 18. That's a long time. We did start with like, you know, grassy Noel Shakespeare theories. So we did. I set you up for that.

So now the top 10 my top 10 is not going to change that much. I don't think I'm going to move a couple things around here and there. But from 2018. I mean, these are just every single one of these movies isn't fucking classic number 10 I'm going god damn it I don't even know what to do here is is this too high for burn after reading I know you like that one is it too high like it's 10 I think I think it's okay you think that's right okay yeah I'm going I'll go burn after reading number 10. Hilarious comedy. Also a comedy that is kind of a QAnon comedy about the ineptitude of people in office and with power and

how awful the world is. This is like them doing genre but actually adapting it to their own tone and making it feel complete. Yeah. I think that that's something that this isn't always true but Big Lebowski is a genre movie but set in modern times. Blood Simple is a genre movie, but set in modern times. No Country for Old Men is a genre movie set in modern times. A lot of these, not all of them, but a lot of them that are so stuck on paying respect to the past do it in the present. Now, there's a couple that do so in the past, but they feel like their own standalone thing. A Serious Man

and Inside Llewyn Davis don't feel like they're a part of some cinematic history. They're much more personal movies that just happen to be set in the past.

Okay, so let's keep going. Number nine last time around was Raising Arizona. Number eight was Llewyn Davis. Number seven was Blood Simple. Number six was Barton Fink. I think I'm putting Barton Fink at nine now. Wow.

Yeah. What happened? I don't know. These beloved ones are less interesting to me. I think when I was a kid and this was this kind of mock story about Clifford Odette's moving to Hollywood and trying to figure out how to be successful, I was like, this is some profound shit, man. And now I've read about every playwrightette's moving to Hollywood and trying to figure out how to be successful I was like this is some profound shit man and now I've read about like every playwright who ever moved to Hollywood and I know this story very well and I don't know it just doesn't click

as much the life of the mind doesn't click as much you're doing your own psychodrama all by yourself right now I know really amazing where am I gonna end up I don't know I'm I mean I'm here Bobby and I are your support team okay okay Blood Simple's going number eight this is the only one I rewatched it's uh just flat out one of the greatest debuts in the history of movies and if they did not have so many great movies it'd be higher it is a genre exercise it is a very lean

movie it's a movie that made for not a lot of money it's a super cool extra on the criterion collection of this movie that I'm going to tell you about okay so there are like commentaries on every fucking movie right just just hang with me this is this is interesting no it is interesting but i just like had a moment of like this is your life where you're just like i'm going to tell you about this extra on the criteria keep going i'm very sorry to have ensorcelled you into this universe but so

barry sonnenfeld was the director of photography on this movie who went on to become a successful director himself. They worked together on the first three or four movies together. Rather than do

a regular commentary, those three guys got together and they were filmed on a set and they each watched the movie on a laptop

or on like an iPad and they did it with a telestrator like John Madden would. So as they're watching the movie, they would pause the movie and they would circle things and say, here's why we did this.

Here's why we lit this this way. Here's why we made this decision and that decision. And rather than run the whole, you know, hour and 45 minutes of the movie, it's an hour and 10 minutes. And it's some of it is them talking.

And some of it is that like us watching the screen and watching the moments happen while they're circling things or identifying choices that they made. In some cases, it's like film school where you're like, wow,

I didn't know, like, I didn't understand that that's how lighting works or I didn't understand why the camera has to be over here or this idea that like, um, motivation and lighting is a huge part of telling a story. But what's most interesting about it is they keep pointing out all the things they fucked up,

like all the things they did that are so bad or amateur. And there's, they're as tough on themselves as they are on other people and the world and the ideas of the movie and it's really really really interesting i mean it's really fascinating you have to care about blood simple of course to sit through it i watched two hours of blood simple and then i just fired this thing up and i was like what are you doing you sociopath um but But it just shows the amount of critical thinking that goes into their movies. That kind of elevates them above other people.

That on their first movie, they're so hard on themselves about all the silly decisions that they made and how they improved upon it. That being said, Blood Simple is like a truly great thriller, a modern classic. Number eight. I would like a telestrator.

For this pod? Yeah. Okay, we'll work on that. And for movies in general i mean i feel like i could really i could shake it up you know uh yeah yeah yeah well i'll definitely i'll i'll try with spotify about that see what i can do see what i can do for you um i had inside lewin davis at eight last time i think we're up to seven and i still think that's too i think i'm going raising arizona seven okay i'm really killing my darlings here once upon a time Barton Fink and Raising Arizona were

core texts in my life no we grow we evolve we grow we evolve okay I think I think Llewyn Davis now it's six best movie ever made about a fucking loser Llewyn Davis is a loser he's really great did you watch the Moon Knight trailer with Oscar Isaac I did in the sense that I was in the room while it was on television and I looked at it and I said

there's Oscar Isaac and oh this must be his Marvel show yeah and then a lot of things happened and

I looked at my phone Ethan Hawke is in it and he's he's turning into Max von Sydow, but I'm enjoying it. Okay. So you were pro.

That was promising for you. You know, it was the sort of trailer where I was like, if this doesn't turn into a superhero movie, it's going to be one of my favorite shows. And then he literally shows up at the end of the trailer wearing a superhero. And I like superheroes, as you know.

And I was still like, okay, all right. I guess he has to be a superhero. And I know why this is the way that it is. But but can we just have Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke operating against each other and like a memory loss thriller wouldn't that be cool I mean from your lips to God's ears because God did not listen to me for 10 years running top five very hard I've done this exercise more times than I care to admit. Um, no country for old men. Number five.

Still, still seems low to me, but okay. It's adaptation. It's brilliant adaptation. And there are a couple of key choices, just like in tragedy of Macbeth that work really well. But this,

this top four, I, I, I don't know. There's a, there's a case that this is like along with PTA that this top four is mightier than any other top four is mightier than any other top four for me.

I'm going... I had a serious man as number one last time and I'm making it number four this time. Wow. Shaking it up. Okay. We got to shake it up.

Who is going to be really mad at you like Bill was really mad at you when you didn't put Boogie Nights at number two? I mean, no one. This is a completely self-indulgent exercise created by a buffoon and forcing his friend and that was a good I don't know if you were doing a Macbeth you know sound of you know fury signifying nothing reference but that was good but you are returning it with the milk of human kindness and so you know we're all we're all in this together in the tragedy of sean um okay

number three is is uh fargo okay i already talked about how it's really important to me that's right that's right um you know what's good is motherhood and maternity and the maternal power that's something i've learned a lot about recently how are you feeling about that i just like a hard unsubscribe until i until I have to. I just don't want to hear about it from anybody else. You need to bring some Marge Gunderson energy to this show when you come back. Okay? Okay.

Sure. Number two is The Big Lebowski. Okay. It's one of the funniest movies ever made. I agree with you. A Bogart movie starring a stoner detective. Did you have a white Russian face of course of course Eileen had an extended white that makes it sound like she was in rehab for several years she just she was she was very this is very funny imagining tasteful Eileen just like going hard on the white Russians I have

vivid memories of like being in Brooklyn bowling alleys, crushing white Russians with Eileen in the, in the mid two thousands. Remember at Christmas when someone asked Eileen, when she like had her first drink after having a child. And she just like very earnestly told the story of like barfing at a soccer game in like high school or something. Yeah, she did.

She did like to drink. She was a good drinker. She didn't barf. I shouldn't, I shouldn't i shouldn't she barfed she barfed i love her but it's okay it's high school these things happen that was one of the best things i've witnessed last year uh she's back to drinking thankfully in moderation it's really hard with an in with a six-month-old in the house you know it's just

you don't have too many drinks really ever uh something you'll learn about very soon don't tell me that okay don't tell me that i'm counting down to you save it you know you save it for like when the kid is 12 and then i can just get just want to go to happy hour and have a margarita the size of my face we'll do it we'll do it soon and then like you know go to sleep at seven o'clock i don't care oh boy you don't know what's coming uh number one's miller's crossing i made a big mistake at the end of last year did uh the departed on the rewatchables i called the departed the the irish godfather that's wrong um miller's crossing is the irish godfather that was a mistake and i'd like to apologize for that mistake.

I don't know what came over me. I was thinking about this. I was like, so Miller's Crossing is the Irish Godfather. True Confessions is the Irish Dog Day Afternoon. Okay. The Robert Duvall, Robert De Niro film. And The Departed is the Irish Goodfellas, of course. That was right there for there sure it was right on

the surface and i should have i should have known to make that comparison but um miller's crossing also coming to the criterion collection this month no next month february let it be known that i ordered my copy the moment it was announced and i have been greatly anticipating whatever stupid extras will be featured on it uh you know it's gangster movie, but it's a movie about, you know, fathers and sons and stolen love and secret identities and all kinds of big themes. And it's also a movie in which Albert Finney shoots a Tommy gun into a house, you know, like it's just a really fun, rollicking, clever, interesting riff on a certain kind of a movie. But it also is, I think, the best written of their movies. The dialogue is the best.

Ethics, the speech about ethics that John Pulido gives, it rings in my ear every day as we talk about things like Sean Baker's movies. So I feel good about my list. I'm going to read it back really quickly, okay?

Okay, go for it. Here we go. 19, The Lady Killers. 18, Intolerable Cruelty. Clearly the two worst of their films. Number 17, The Tragedy of Macbeth. Tune into this show in 2027 when I put it at number nine. Number 16, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

Number 15, The Man Who Wasn't There. Number 14, True Grit. Number 13, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Number 12, The Hudsucker Proxy. Number 11, Hail Caesar. Number 10, Burn After Reading. Nine, Barton Fink. Eight, Blood Simple. Seven, Raising After Reading. Nine, Barton Fink. Eight, Blood Simple.

Seven, Raising Arizona. Six, Inside Llewyn Davis. Five, No Country for Old Men. Four, A Serious Man. I'm sorry, A Serious Man. Number three, Fargo. Number two, The Big Lebowski. And number one, Miller's Crossing.

You feel okay? If you feel okay, I feel okay. You've been very generous for these last 18 minutes listening to me do this. I would say I was moderately generous. I was not as generous as I was during the PTA rankings. That feel okay. You've been very generous for these last 18 minutes listening to me do this. I would say I was moderately generous. I was not as generous as I was during the PTA rankings. That's true. You were a little tough on me there. No, I was nice in the PTA rankings

even when you did a crazy thing and I was like, Bill's going to be mad at you and he was, but that was supportive. This was like your descent into madness. But again, it was an on-topic podcast. Much like the French dispatch. I feel like this did all ultimately fit together in like one editorial mind. So congratulations to you for being insane.

Thank you for your grace on this episode. I appreciate you. Thank you to our producer, Bobby Wagner for his grace on producing this episode. Guess what? Little treat later this week on the podcast, the, the much asked for sequel to

the movie auction me and you amanda will be joined by chris ryan and we will be bidding on the films of 2022 who will get the movies we most want to see are you fired up for this i really am i was also going to ask and bobby maybe you can help can we do like a review of the two movie auctions and now like a 2022 assessment of who won and who lost we absolutely can it sounds like you're gearing up for some sort of victory lap we'll see if you deserve to take one i don't remember what i drafted i remember that i just remember chris 275 on house of gucci like maybe the cr heads are right you know i believe he also got venom let there be carnage of film i'm almost certain he $175 on House of Gucci, like maybe the CR heads are right. You know, I believe he also got Venom Let There Be Carnage,

a film I'm almost certain he is still not seen. So how we judge this, I do not know. But if you are excited to hear about the 2021 auctions and hear about the movies we're going to bid on,

tune in then. Thank you for listening, as always, to The Big Picture. Thank you.