The Big Picture - Top 5 Heist Movies and ‘No Sudden Move’

Episode Date: July 1, 2021

‘No Sudden Move,’ the latest film from Steven Soderbergh—now available on HBO Max—is a return to a familiar form for one of our favorite filmmakers: the heist movie. So in this episode, Sean and Amanda share their top 5 favorite heist flicks. (0:45) Then, Sean is joined by Janicza Bravo, the writer-director behind one of the year’s most entertaining films, the ripped-from-Twitter tale of ‘Zola.’ (48:17) Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Janicza Bravo Producer: Bobby Wagner Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's music critic Rob Harvilla curates and explores 60 iconic songs from the 90s that define the decade. Rob is joined by a variety of guests to break it all down as they turn back the clock. Check out 60 songs that explain the 90s exclusively on Spotify. COVID-19 vaccines are starting to become available to the general public, and getting vaccinated is the first step to getting back to all the things we miss most. I am so glad to be able to go back to a restaurant and spend time with my family and my friends, eating a meal together and feeling safe while doing so.

It's okay to have questions like, should I get it? Is it safe? Should I wait? You can get the facts at getvaccineanswers.org so you can make an informed decision. I'm Sean Fennessy I'm Amanda Dobbins and this is the big picture a conversation show about capers heists stings pilferages stick-ups filches and robberies and that's because no sudden move the latest film from Steven Soderbergh now available on HBO max is a return to a familiar form for one

of our favorite filmmakers. I'm talking, of course, about the heist movie. So in this episode, we'll be sharing our top five favorite heists. Later in the show, I'll be chatting with Jinik Sabravo, the writer-director behind one of the year's most entertaining films, The Ripped from Twitter Tale of Zola, which is in theaters this weekend. I hope you'll stick around for that. But first, let's talk about No Sudden Move. Holy cow, man, there's just a brand new Steven Soderbergh heist movie on HBO. Just dig in. How do you feel about it? Fantastic. Let's just do this every week, and I would be thrilled. It's really all I want for movies, and I'm pleased to say it really is like vintage Soderbergh heist movie. It moves

quickly. It's well-made. It does hold together at the end, though you and I aren't going to try to explain all of it, both because of spoilers and because, frankly, I could use a second viewing, but that's okay. It just felt like we got a fully cooked, grown-up heist movie, and I was thrilled. Very exciting. A lot of twists, a lot of turns, some double and triple crosses, as is customary in a heist movie and in a Steven Soderbergh heist movie, especially. So this is a 1955 set movie. It takes place in Detroit. It's about a few small-time crooks who are hired to obtain an object of some kind, what seems like a MacGuffin at first, but we learn is maybe a little bit more meaningful than that as we dig in, think about the setting and the time. And when you think about what this movie might actually be about, the plan of course goes wrong as it often

does in these films. And then there's a big search for the men who have taken off with the key items. Incredible cast. You're right, absolutely, that like the best Soderbergh movies, it has phenomenal pace. It's just great scene after great scene after great scene, great actors operating at a high level. This is a new collaboration with the writer Ed Solomon, who collaborated with Steven Soderbergh on the HBO series Mosaic. You know, we didn't talk about Mosaic when we did our Soderbergh episode too much. That was a kind of a unique project. I thought at times very successful, at times similarly a bit confounding the way that this movie can be at times did you dig into mosaic i was not my favorite of my favorite directors projects which is fine people people got to try things but sometimes you can there is a balance between experimentation and you know seeking new

forms of art and also you know enjoyable totally uh cohesive experiences And I felt this was slightly more on the experimental phase, which is like, that's great. Everybody's got to try things. That's how you grow. I just maybe don't need to be present for all of the growing. So No Sudden Move is a bit more conventional

than Mosaic, but it is also has plenty of the Soderberghian flourishes. There are some fisheye camera lens work here. There's some odd camera movement. There's something a little bit disorienting about this movie, which seems like a very purposeful strategy, essentially, to kind of keep us on the back foot as we go through this story. I, like you, was a little bit confused for the first hour of the movie. I don't know if I

necessarily know how every single plot strand tied together, but I felt like in the second hour, the story like really satisfyingly concluded, which is not something you can say about all heist movies. I mean, you're supposed to be confused in this one. This is the genre of heist movie where the main character is trying to figure out what's going on and what they've kind of been pulled into even as as the movie goes along it's not one of the like i have a master plan and now we just like get to hijinks ensue of it all so it's okay to be confused i'm like an hour 20 i was like am i gonna is this gonna come together for me was i paying enough attention and that was compounded by the anxiety of we're watching at home this is on hbo max let me tell you. I'm just really okay with people giving me Soderbergh level

quality films in my home. I, you just won't catch me complaining about it. People can moan about theaters and stock prices and the future of whatever, but just like give me like actually good movies in my home. Cool. But you know, my attention span, I didn't look at my phone. I was really locked in and I appreciated all of the cinematic flourishes because I felt like they kept me glued to the TV, but I was like, oh no, did like home brain catch on? Like, oh, did I just get distracted? Did I miss something? And I didn't, I just kind of had to trust the process, which is apparently something we're not supposed to be trusting anymore, but that's a different podcast. That's a problem in your household, not mine, thankfully.

But I do trust Steven Soderbergh, and it panned out. This is his 33rd movie. How crazy is that? He is so prolific. And you made the joke at the top about you would love to have one of these every week. The way that he works, it feels like you could have one every week. He has another movie that he's already shot, I think called Kimi. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly, which is coming later this year. And he is on a relentless pace. It was only six months ago that we saw Let Them All Talk. Chris Ryan said something interesting to me when I talked to him about this movie. He said this felt a little bit like a COVID-19 production. And I didn't feel that when I was watching it, but I guess as I put the pieces back together and the sort of a small number of people in rooms as essentially the mode of operation of this movie, it's Don Cheadle and Benicio Del Toro are talking to David Harbour. And then David Harbour is having a conversation with his boss. And then he's having a conversation

with Frankie Shaw in a room. And obviously, Men in Rooms is the raison d'etre of heist movies. But it did feel, after Chris said that, asetre of of heist movies but it did feel after chris said that i was sort of working backwards maybe it did feel a little bit like constrained by some of the moment yeah there aren't a huge number of of like dramatic set pieces even including the heist itself and again we're not going to spoil too much, but all of the kind of surprises and big cinematic ahas are more character-based and there are just a lot of people in rooms. So I see what he's saying. On the other hand, like for years, we've just been begging people to make more like people talking in rooms movies for like a hundred years, not even specific to heist movies. We were just like, isn't it great when people say witty things in rooms

and then they go to other rooms and they say some other things and sometimes the rooms are cool. So- Love a cool room. Some cool rooms. There are some cool rooms. Yeah, it's a great production design.

Sometimes you just, you know, want some cool rooms. So I see what he's saying, but I do wonder whether we all are just kind of like wearing COVID goggles right now and are like, oh, I can see how they had to do this and that. And, you know, I'm not that mad about it. It did remind me a lot of a movie that Soderbergh made about 10 years ago called Haywire, which is a real genre exercise. Soderbergh, of course, one of the reasons I think we put him on a pedestal on this show

is he still seems to have a passion for a well-mounted genre movie. You know, I think it's very similar with Quentin Tarantino, very similar to David Fincher, a lot of the filmmakers that we talk about here. They have a good sense of what is the container that Hollywood created 50, 75 years ago, and how can I reshape that container? And Haywire is very container that Hollywood created 50, 75 years ago, and how can I reshape

that container? And Haywire is very similar in that it is stacked in its cast, and it has a little bit of a back foot, wrong foot kind of a storytelling device. And it has a little bit of a, I don't want to say inert lead performance, but a very shaded lead performance. Gina Carano in Haywire and Don Cheadle, I think, is very withholding in this movie, as is Benicio Del Toro. They're not big, showy, loud performances. There's something much more restrained

about what they're doing. And I really like Haywire, just like I really like this movie. Is this the absolute pinnacle of Steven Soderbergh's work? I don't think so. I also don't think that's really much of a problem.

I love that he's in his kind of like 1960s era studio auteur mode where he's like, I'm Sidney Lumet. I make a movie every eight months. And some of them are great and some of them are not so great, but you can count on a reliably entertaining picture. It's so cool that he is one of the very few filmmakers who doesn't have the ego that every movie has to be an event that it's like, it's a job and I'm going to do my job as well as I can and go on to the next job. But it's also a job that he's interested in. And you can always tell there's something that he is trying in each movie.

And whether it's a new medium or a new form of storytelling, or whether it's just I would like to do the period piece spin on this type of genre that I've told several times. And what does that unlock in terms of both performances and, and, and style and production design and storytelling. But, you know,

he didn't, he doesn't get out of bed unless he like wants to do something. And that's like a very cool position to be in. And I'm interested in what he's interested in. I think he obviously has like fantastic taste, but you can always feel like the curiosity or the, like, wouldn't it be cool if we tried this? And isn't it interesting?

Like what was the result of this? And it's just serendipitous that this one is a heist movie, which is my favorite type of movie. One thing that is a theme that runs throughout his films, and we talked about it a little bit on the rewatchables around Contagion, but I think if you look specifically, I'd let them all talk, the laundromat,at, High Flying Bird, Unsane, and Logan Lucky, which are,

you know, effectively the post-retirement films. And a little bit Magic Mike XXL, which he worked as a producer and writer and camera operator on, and also clearly had a big hand in shaping it. Very, very suspicious films about capitalism. All of these movies. This movie is very suspicious about capitalism, especially when you get to the end of it. And it's amazing that he's able to wend those ideas into his movies without sacrificing the fun and the storytelling that you're talking about into the movies. He's still a filmmaker who, even though he works quickly, he has something to say, has a point of view, has themes that he returns to. He's creating a body of work that is consistent and consistently appealing and not repeating himself, which I know that we're overstating the case for him at this

point, but I'm consistently so impressed by how he's able to kind of close the loop on his ideas every single time out. Yeah. I mean, he's my favorite director working. I don't know what to tell you. And I like that sometimes it's something a bit stranger. I mean, Let Them All Talk is an exploration of late stage capitalism. It's like not the first thing that would jump to mind when you're talking about three women of a certain age on a cruise ship with Lucas Hedges. And, you know, I mean, based on a Deborah Eisenberg short story, but that he can find kind of the edges in every single situation that he puts himself in, but also that he allows room for all the other cool stuff that can happen around that idea,

that it's not so narrow-minded and that he still thinks that it would just be fun to be on a cruise ship with Meryl Streep and Candice Bergen and film in tuxes. You know, like, I mean, that's the funny part too of like, sure, what we need to film in tuxes in order to keep up with the atmosphere of the QE2, like no problem. Or the Queen Mary 2, I'm sorry. Like no problem. Steven Soderbergh has a tux. I appreciate the approach and the attitude and like the world that he has created around his movies, as much of the movies themselves, because they really do inform each other. I think that's a good word for it, is attitude. And even using the word capitalism to describe what I think he's putting his finger on, maybe that's too bland or too politicized a way to view it. It's really more a kind of cynicism about greed and power that I really relate to, that I really understand, that I feel a kinship with. It is

very Gen X. That's the Gen X part of my brain, I think, clicking. And he's held on to that. A lot of filmmakers, as they've gotten older or more successful, have abandoned some of those ideas or have sacrificed some of them in an effort to make something more commercialized or even something more personal and something more like emotional and raw. And I think Soderbergh is able to hold on to the themes that matter to him, tell personal stories, tell genre stories all at the same time. And that's what makes him a unicorn. But also keep working. And, you know, he has been inside and outside the system and Steven Soderbergh's relationship to the industry and his critiques of the industry are both like, you know, very forward thinking and also are just a whole chapter or theme in the book of Steven Soderbergh himself.

But he like, this is for HBO Max. It's not for, you know, for tiny arthouse theaters. He has found the opportunities. He still is like, I will make movies with movie stars that people will want to see, but I will try to work in my ambivalence or just my total distrust of the world that I'm operating in, even as I do it. One of the things that I like about the movie is it's a fun reunion with Don Cheadle and a fun reunion with Benicio Del Toro, but it's a stacked bench in the cast. David Harbour is in it. Yes. Where are you at on David Harbour these days? What a summer for David Harbour. Black Widow coming soon. He's sort of ostensibly

one of the leads of this movie. Who did you like the most? You're not really a Harbour head like our pal Mallory Rubin. She would die for David Harbour. No, but I'm not anti-David Harbour. I like him. I think that he and Lily Allen have a David Harbour. No, but I'm not anti-David Harbour. I like him. I think that he and Lily Allen have a beautiful thing going. You know, I wasn't really a Stranger Things person, so I also don't really have

that association. And then I didn't have to, like, live through the whole dad bod journey, which I applaud. I'm starting to live through it now, Amanda, let me tell you. I applaud David Harbour

and all with dad bods. I just, like, didn't have to go through that particular cultural reckoning and my relationship to it. I thought he was very good in this. And without spoiling the gray flannel suit style, you know, corporate pencil pusher kind of a role. It was nice to see Amy Simons in this movie. Amy is, of course, a collaborator with Soderbergh on the Girlfriend Experience television series, among other things. They have a partnership. I thought she was very good. She actually had something to do in this movie in terms of acting as opposed to some of the other people who just pop up. Jon Hamm doing the G-Man thing again. It's all he does.

What's up with that? He's just like the mean FBI guy. I don't know. We're going to talk about him as mean FBI guy again on this podcast. I guess it's paying the bills. I guess so. I was trying to figure out

if this was like self-parody at this point, not like purposeful self-parody. If at a certain point Soderbergh said, hey I got this part this is like a you part in a joking way and also in a serious way will you take it it felt like almost they were doing that self-consciously yeah I mean there's a winking element to almost all of these performances and to this movie which again one of the things I like about Soderbergh, there is like a light, self-aware, fleet, you know, fleet footed quality to all of it. But I think Jon Hamm is at least aware that he's played this role many times before. He definitely has. Never playing this role before is Julia Fox as Vanessa Capelli, the outer borough queen of my heart.

So strange to see Julia Fox in a period piece. I don't totally know that that worked, but it was nice to see her on screen. Steven Soderbergh is drawn to very attractive women who aren't usually featured in a traditional Hollywood capacity. So I like his consistency, and I was happy to see Julia Fox. I hope she had a fun time. The man has great taste. He's always had great taste.

I also really liked Kieran Culkin. I just would like to see Kieran Culkin in more things. Succession coming back soon, man. I'm fired up. Yeah, I think later this fall, I'm fired up. That's great. I don't remember anything that happened, but... Maybe a refresh. Very pro that show. A big picture refresh? Maybe that's too much TV. It's definitely a TV show. It's TV. Just like a... It's a great TV show and we need just pure great TV shows, but it's TV. I agree with you. So let's talk about heist movies more broadly. What makes a great one for you?

You're an admirer of the form. You've praised many of them on the show in the past. What are you looking for when you go into a heist movie? Yeah, I mean, it's like, we made our top five list and I just, I mean, I copped out. I was like, I'll just put my five favorite movies on this list. Who cares? I think that that was a good idea because I tried to go a little left. So we'll be able to have a nice, we'll meet in the middle.

Like, I don't know what else to say. Glamorous people who you like, even if, you know, maybe they're not doing everything by the book in their lives. And they identify a glamorous target and they make a plan and then they execute the plan and it works out. It is a combination of movie stars doing cool stuff and just total competence porn. It's the most satisfying

thing in the world to me. Even if things go wrong, almost always in a heist movie, I know it's going to work out and I know that everyone's going to just do their job and solve the plan and it'll work. So that says everything about the movies that you chose and nothing about the movies that I chose. I know. Well, it's a broad genre. I know. It's a fun thing to talk about because while I do completely connect to what you're talking about, which is glamorous people doing something that seems very glamorous while also being quite secretive and requires a lot of planning. I love to plan, Amanda. Yeah, I know.

And cool looking people doing cool technical stuff i didn't put thief on my list for example but i love the attention to detail that michael mann puts into some of the robberies in the movie thief and james conn at the height of his james conn-ness doing his thing in that movie i think also um a sense of stakes a sense of danger you know there is a sense that if things go wrong, there are mortal consequences to what's happening here and that everyone who's invested in it, even if it's a fun, zippy caper movie, caper movies still have to have a sense of danger for them to work. The other thing that I like about almost all the movies on my list, and it's true of most of your movies too, is there's a real real like let's get the gang together quality to these movies which i just love yeah and i have a couple that are just like a one or two man show but the world that you have to build around even like a small team in order to be able to to pull off one of these heists it's delightful what what is your

favorite part of the movie is it is it the heist itself? Is it the getaway? Is it that this is when things went wrong, the building the team? There are so many tropes that can be kind of revised and reinvented, but is there one aspect of it that you're like, I really just love this part? Sure. Several. I love building the team montage i love uh here's the plan you know if you're showing me blueprints yes right and and cutting into here's what's happening at this particular time and i really i like the chase part if someone is on the hunt of someone else it's not so different from a romantic comedy you you know? And when you have like the heist, the thief, I guess,

and the investigator, if they're like well-matched, you know, and it's like a cat and mouse game, really enjoy that as well. And I just, I also really like it when it's a very notable location that's being robbed. You know? I just like, the more famous the thing being robbed is, the more delighted I am.

So I see this as a kind of a two-tracked style of film. And it was tricky. I almost made this just a pure kind of quote-unquote caper movie, which is to say the thing that was being lifted was not necessarily bags of money, but an item. No sudden move is about an item. Some of the best heist movies are about individual things or a handful of jewels, something like that, as opposed to stacks and stacks of cash. Opted not to do that because I think that that would have made for a little bit more of a challenging conversation. But I do really like those movies, I think significantly more because you get to build more arcana around the item.

You get to tell stories about what the thing means. Actually, as I was revisiting Titanic for an upcoming podcast, I was thinking about that, the way that they talk about the, is it the heart of the ocean? What is the name of it? The heart of the ocean is that jewel that is, I guess, more valuable than the hope diamond. That's just in one sentence, I was like, there's a whole world of value in this item. So I do like when they introduce that into a heist movie as well the everything i know about jewelry which is very little but is from heist movies i'm not a jewelry wearer like i don't really have any dreams of having the heart of the ocean or anything else given to me so all i know is like the what are the the diamond weight value and what can it do and who owned it before and like you know what Medici or Russian

czar owned this particular ruby it's it's great great stuff one of my favorite items like that is from a movie that neither of us have on our list but I think we both really like a lot which is the great muppet caper and Charles Grodin's character's obsession with the fabulous baseball diamond is just that's one of my favorite objects ever. Just that look of insane desire on Charles Grodin's face as he's after that item. What else? Anything else? I was going to ask you, what is the item that you would steal in your great caper movie? Oh, that exists in the world? Not one that exists in another caper movie. Yeah, no, no, no. If you were, it's the Sean Fantasy heist movie, but you're stealing an object and not

all the money in the world. Not an NFT, you know, like a real thing. I have an answer to this. I have a very geeky answer to this. A pre-existing item that I would steal would be the Pulp Fiction briefcase. That's the thing that I want to know what's inside that briefcase. But I would raid Martin Scorsese's private film library and I would have it imported by helicopter to my home.

Okay. That's pretty good. Thank you. There's a lot of rare items in there. He's got like prints of movies that is like the one living print of a film from 1942. So that's some special stuff. Not exactly the same as the baseball diamond, but something cool. What about you? I asked this and now I'm trying to think of

what it would be. I mean, you and I don't care about jewelry. We don't care about things like that. Yeah. So there's no diamond. I don't really understand people who are like, oh my God, this amazing stone. It just stresses me out. I i'm like i don't want to lose this i mean the holy grail seems like a good thing to have okay i do as previously discussed i really like you know holy grail themed pop culture so why not make another uh entry into into that i don't know what other really about i'm looking for something with real historical value you know you don't want jewelry but you want the Holy Grail. Well, I would like...

What's another object that people are really obsessed over? Because I would like the power of having the object, even though we've always learned that it would come back to curse me. And so I really don't want it. This is an amazing prompt and frankly, a great idea for a podcast. What are the five items we're going to steal in the future? If you want to stay on the Jesus tract, I think you could go to Shroud Turin, perhaps. Right, but I don't know if that's proven.

We don't know if that's real, yes. Is the Holy Grail real? Well, if you would read the Da Vinci Code, you would understand that all of our Western culture is based around the idea of the Holy Grail. Though it might not be an object, it might just be a way of seeing the world and the relationship between men and women. Anyway. Interesting. Yeah. Once again, please read or watch The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

Why? Because it's really funny. And because one day you'll be able to understand why it's so amazing that the conclusion, spoiler, that it's in the Louvre exists. It's the best thing that's ever happened. That's the thing I would probably want to steal is a great work of art. You know, like I would really love to just have a Rothko in my house. I and I can't afford it and I'm never going to be able to afford it. And even if I could afford it, I would then have to donate it to a museum as an act of goodwill. So could I steal one Allah? What's that? What the hell is the name

of that movie? Contraband, the Mark Wahlberg movie in which they steal a Jackson Pollock and replace it with like a fake Jackson Pollock. I'd probably want to do something like that. Because I want the sense of sort of like utility and admiration. And I can't admire a giant diamond, but I can admire a great work of art. And I'd like to have it in my home. Anything else? Anything else you want to steal? I mean, art's good. I would steal a bunch of Ellsworth Kellys. Yeah, for sure. And I don't know. I mean, really just a whole museum,

but I also don't want to step on one of my picks. So what about if you could kidnap Ben Affleck and store him in your shed? Would you do that? No, because the power of Ben Affleck is that he's out in the wild being surprising. You know, so as soon as you just like put him on the shelf, all the magic's gone. Duly noted. Before we get to our top fives, let's take a quick break and hear from one of our esteemed sponsors.

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from our new sponsor. We're back. We're listing our top five heist movies. Amanda, do you want to kick us off with number five? Sure. This is my only vintage movie pick. I got really lazy with this. I already said this, but I'm just gonna be honest.

I just like put all my favorite movies. And I was like, well I really like heist movies, and I just want to talk about these. Sometimes greatness is greatness. No shame. Yeah, and this is also one of my favorite movies. It's To Catch a Thief, the Alfred Hitchcock movie from 1955 starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Cary Grant being a former jewel thief who lives on the French Riviera, so that's check. Glamorous location, check. Movie star, check.

Another movie star, check. But I was thinking a lot about the heist movie as a setting for romance. And it is pretty underexploited. And the reason for that is because Bonnie and Clyde is the obvious template and things don't end up well there. So it's really, once you think of two people just setting out on the road together to steal some things and find some love, you naturally don't think that it's going to end up with love, right? And this is a little more hijinks capery and Grace Kelly isn't really stealing much, but I like the the mood i like the you know light kind of sexual intrigue underlying all of it and obviously a great setting and and it works out sort of for the jewel thief

you know the heist movie is only about 10 years or so old at this point when this movie was made and it already seems to be doing what something like no sudden move is doing it's kind of subverting because you know the kerry grand character is this former thief but then there is this thief on the riviera who's robbing people and he's trying to save his reputation by pointing out that it's on him and catching the thief and it's it's a hitchcock is so good at self-consciousness in the same way that soderbergh is and understanding movie history. Fun movie. And I think that that is a major selling point of this genre, which is there are historical, very understood beats. And then it's how do you play with those and how self-conscious are you going to be and what flourishes or innovations do you add to it?

But it is within a set frame. And I like that. I think that there is a lot of fun and creativity that can come from working within some flexible boundaries. Yeah. So to that point, my number five, and for each of these, I pick kind of a B-side, kind of a companion movie that is thematically linked to it. But I'll focus primarily on the pick. The pick is another fairly obvious movie, a movie we've talked about on this show quite a bit, a Steven Soderbergh movie, a Don Cheadle movie. I'm talking, of course, about Out of Sight. Frankly, one of my favorite movies ever made as well. I don't know if this is one of the greatest heist movies ever necessarily, but it does the same

thing that To Catch a Thief does, which it has a consciousness about what makes a heist movie interesting. It has immensely glamorous male and female lead in George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez at their very best. It also is a little bit deconstructionist. The heist, certainly there's a bank robbery at the beginning of the movie that lands George Clooney in jail. And then there's also a kind of house raid, a house heist on Albert Brooks' home near the end of the film. And there is the hope of an acquisition of something valuable in that home and it isn't totally a let's build a team to pull off a robbery but it is a team movie and it is a movie that in very similar fashion to no sudden move has an like a jaw drop droppingly charming

ensemble some playing totally two types some playing totally against type and i was thinking about 1998 and and heist movies and like subverting the heist movie and then i noticed on amazon prime david mammoth's the spanish prisoner was streaming i don't know if you've ever seen this one we've never really talked about it here such a cool movie um campbell scott stars as a businessman who travels to the caribbean um to set about a new business plan. And along the way, he encounters a mysterious fellow played by Steve Martin. And Steve Martin turns the movie on its head. Let's just say that. And it's more a con man movie than it is a heist movie, but there is a kind of MacGuffin-esque

item at the center of it, an acquisition of some kind. Both of these movies came out within like two months of each other. And just to circle back to our sadness about the state of some of the movies, like I felt like these movies were falling off trees in 1998. Very few were as good as Out of Sight or The Spanish Prisoner. But boy, I long for those days of being 15 and getting to sit down and watch them. So anyway, Out of Sight, obviously, no brainer. What's your number four? So I mentioned that most of the rest of my movies are more recent, though many of them are either actual remakes or just straight thefts of other movies, which is fitting for the genre. So this is just a total remake of Heat, and it's called The Town, and it's directed by Ben Affleck, who I'm not stealing. So he can stay out and keep making more great heist movies featuring Jon Hamm in one of his original roles as the threatening G-Man. And they rob Fenway. I don't know what to say. I'm

not even from Boston. I don't really care about the Red Sox, but they just, they rob Fenway. That is amazing and really stressful. And it doesn't totally work out for everyone involved. But at the end of the day, Ben Affleck does just like stare at a beautiful bag of money that he then buries for his girlfriend. So I just, I love, I love this movie. It's a banger. I have not revisited it in a while, but it's a banger. And it is in some respects, a remake of heat in that you've got like a, you know, a battle scarred thief doing one last job who meets a girl along the way. And he's got to, you know, weigh whether or not she's more important than the job.

But it also, you know, those kinds of movies, that's, he doesn't own that. That goes back as far as the 30s and the 40s. No, I know. But I just, the debt is felt, but that's okay because we can have beautiful new things that are similar to other things that we love. How do you feel about the fact that the beautiful new thing is now like 11 years old, that the stuff that we are sentimental about that feels new is actually getting old? I'm still am I. I'm just, I'm making peace with it. I don't, I don't know what to say.

Frankly, I don't think that there's been enough respect for the town. So it doesn't feel as old because people are too mad that he won an Oscar for Argo and just won't give credit for the town. I do think that if the ringer went belly up today, if today we all just decided like we got to go somewhere else, everybody's got to get a different job on the same day. Our commitment, our debt to the town has been paid. We published an oral history. We've done a rewatchable. A wonderful oral history, by the way. I recommend it. Terrific piece by Alan Siegel wrote that piece. Okay. My number four, a pair of Jules Dassen films.

One of the, I don't know about one of the inventors, but certainly one of the geniuses behind the heist movie and certainly an inspiration to a movie that you'll talk about later on your list i'm talking about refifi um and then you can pair that with top cappy which is another one of his films this is a movie that i think perfected the um the heist itself the heist that happens in the middle of refifi which is essentially a 30 minute heist that happens in the middle of Rafifi, which is essentially a 30-minute silent film happening right in the middle of the film, has had such a profound impact on every filmmaker who's ever tried to make a movie like this. On Michael Mann, on Steven Soderbergh, on Guy Ritchie, on everybody who is interested in movies like this, they have probably studied, deconstructed, and rebuilt the heist sequence from Rafifi. Many people think Jules Dastin is a French filmmaker because this is a French film. Of course, he is not. He's an

American expatriate who went to France in the 50s amidst the blacklist, among many other things in Hollywood, and made some of the best movies of his career. He's made a lot of really good American films too, but Rafifi and Topkapi, I think, are the pinnacle of his work. And if you want to see, and I'll talk about this with my number three too, but if you want to see the bones of these movies, I think Rafifi is worth a visit. I feel like that is the classic 101 film school, or just if you are trying to educate yourself with a film library, that's where you start. It's a great place to start um okay you're number three thomas crown affair 1999 we did it i'm gonna talk about this movie some more i like how you have to say the

full year afterwards so as not to confuse the original it's a remake it's a remake but i love this film starring pierce brosnan it's better than all of his Bond movies. And also Rene Russo in just some truly iconic, chunky, sleeveless turtleneck sweaters. Speaking of the late 90s, really special. This is about a movie who, this is a movie about a very rich man who robs the Metropolitan Museum of Art because he can. And he takes the painting and then, spoiler alert,

he puts it right back. But he's just doing it for the love of the game. The game being just like stealing art and then having sex with Rene Russo on his marble staircase while weird music plays. And if you haven't seen that sex scene in a while, it was very formative to me at 15 years of age. I don't know what to tell you. Explains a lot. Explains a lot how you got here. That's what I'll say. But this is all fun. There are stakes in that they are robbing one of the most famous museums in the world. And they are stealing, I believe, like a...

It's a Monet. And then Rene Russo wants a Renoir. So he eventually steals a Renoir. You know, like priceless works of art. And the police are involved. and it's a big deal, but also it's like rich people and they've returned the art already. So it's kind of harmless as far as these things go.

And it is a great movie about the chase between Rene Russo, who is the insurance claims person and thus like not, you know, totally the good person because she works for the insurance company. So you don't have to like her that much. You don't mind Thomas Crown defeating the insurance company, you know. And but then also becomes a romantic interest for Thomas Crown. They go on a great vacation to Martinique, have thought a lot about that guest house.

And it's just really purely fun can i just throw a little bit of love to the original as well for one very specific and somewhat nerdy reason obviously i i think the 1999 version is very entertaining i think it certainly is less the 1968 version is has aged a little bit slowly you know it is a little bit more languorous in the way that the story plays out. But this is really the movie that put Hal Ashby on the map. He was working as an editor for Norman Jewison at the time.

And he obviously goes on to be one of my favorite directors of the 70s. And the way that he cuts this movie is so influential because it's all split screens and fast sliding cuts and wipes and all this really interesting, daring, funny stuff that not a lot of filmmakers are doing at the time. So a Thomas Crown double feature, I think,

is well worth your time. Yes. Okay. My number three is, in keeping with the Rafifi pick, is honestly the true blueprint movie. This is the blueprint that the filmmakers roll out before they start their heist. It's called the Asphalt Jungle. It's John, it's one of John Houston's first films. It is a hard-nosed, bare-knuckle, city-set heist movie, theft movie. And it features all of the tropes. It basically invents the tropes. It's based on a novel, but it invents the getting the gang together. It invents the way that the double crosses are executed it invents the hilarious nature in which the police and authority is portrayed which is to say on the one hand with a great deal of power and violence but also with some suspicion and some doubt about how they do what they do um incredibly tragic tale and it features one of the best, I think movie performances, the 1950s Sterling Hayden at the center of the movie.

He six years later would go on to make a similarly great heist movie with Stanley Kubrick called the killing. If you want a double feature, I would check out both of those movies, but this is where Houston who co-wrote the movie to essentially comes into his own and becomes like one of the more significant filmmakers over the next 30 years. We talked about the man who would be King recently onote the movie too, essentially comes into his own and becomes like one of the more significant filmmakers over the next 30 years. We talked about The Man Who Would Be King recently

on the 75 movie draft. John Huston's career is like, it's too big to wrangle into one podcast. You know, he's kind of a fun director, I think to kind of revisit over the years on this show. But if you have not seen The Asphalt Jungle, there's a beautiful version of it on the Criterion Collection

that I would highly recommend. That's number three. What's number two for you my number two is inside man the spike lee film which is a lot of different types of movie i think i talked about it recently on a new york movie i honestly don't remember it was on another list this is one of my favorite movies and also one of my most rewatchable movies, I think, um, because, you know, no matter what scene you're going to get a great performance and, and something pretty funny, but it's, it is,

uh, about a bank robbery at the center. Um, but it is also about power in New York and who has it and who doesn't. And with, even within a crime who has the power and who doesn't, who are you rooting for? Um, what is, What's a happy resolution?

And that's all wonderful. And then actually how they pull the heist off itself is extremely ingenious. And I mean, that's always satisfying, those last 15 minutes when the mechanism is revealed. I guess I won't spoil it, but it's a very clever and satisfying resolution, not just to all of the characters who were developed within the two hours, but also to actually how they did it. Totally. Love this movie. Totally in the lineage of the kinds of movies that we're talking about. One movie that I rewatched for the first time in a while, it was not the denzel washington

version of the taking of pelham 123 but the original version starring robert shaw and walter mathau i watched a couple days ago very similar kind of villain robber to the clive owen character you know an englishman playing the role in in robert sh or at least from the United Kingdom, I should say, and someone who is ruthlessly intelligent. You know, I think I really like that when the person who's running the heist is like not just competent. It's good if they're competent, but if they're ingenious, there's something like very sweet about that.

Yeah. If you are like motivated to be like them or to be like, oh, wow, wouldn't it be cool if I could do this as well? Which is you never can, by the way. Please don't stage a heist based on any of these movies. It's not going to work. But- Was that like a do not try this at home label

on this podcast? Which we had to do like multiple times during the Ocean's 12 rewatchables because I think that's the number one complaint against Ocean's 12 is that you couldn't pull off the heist in real life. And let me just be clear, everybody. You can't pull off

any of these heists in real life. Just don't do it. You know, what's a really good way to think about that is by watching my number two movie, which is called The Hot Rock, which is a Peter Yates heist movie that is super fun.

And also, it is a pretty good sign of why you shouldn't try to pull off a heist. It's really fucking hard and you'll make a lot of mistakes. This is a much more grounded kind of a movie. Features an absolutely gorgeous Robert Redford at the peak of his movie stardom and George Segal as his counterpart in the heist.

And screenplay by William Goldman, based on a novel by Donald Westlake, music by Quincy Jones, just everybody coming together at the right time to make a great flick. I think I've mentioned it a couple times on the pod, but right before quarantine started, I saw a print of this at the New Beverly. It was just so much fun. Like seeing a movie like this with a big audience where people are just cheering in the middle of it and they're laughing heartily at all the great lines. Just such an entertaining movie and hits a lot of the tropes, but doesn't necessarily rely on them to execute the story. Just a totally original kind of a film. Really love it. You like this movie too.

Yeah, I do. I mean, a classic Robert Redford and then also everyone else holding their own against just like really, really prime Robert Redford. You have to salute that. It's got a great like kind of breezy tone to it. And it's so funny that the next movie that Peter Yates made, he's probably best known for making Bullet, the Steve McQueen car chase cop movie. But one year later,

he makes The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a Boston set heist movie as well that is so grim and so dour and dire and cynical and painful about what happens to you at the end of a crooked life. And it's like a total contrast of the hot rock. Pretty impressive feat for Yates.

Okay. That's my number two. We're down to number one. Yeah. Ocean's Eleven, obviously. The Soderbergh version. You know, we talk about this all the time. But in this context, to me, this is kind of the modern classic.

You were talking about Asphalt Jungle as being like, this introduces the getting together and the scene with the blueprints and the you know what do you what should a heist crew be and how do you explain it at the end and i you know soderbergh is absolutely drawing from decades of history and cinema to make his but starting in 2001 like this is the reference for our generation and for everything going forward and still the how did they do it sequence at the very end i just there is nothing more satisfying to me in the world when it all comes together and it's so slickly and concisely and rationally explained by steven soderberg. Just a completely ridiculous type of heist that you could never pull off.

But to me, this is just the most purely enjoyable and also kind of starts a lot of careers, definitely spawns a lot of imitators, but nothing quite like it. Love it. It's one of the most fun movies of the 21st century. Truly perfect film. Speaking of perfect films, my number one is Heat for Michael Mann.

A movie that I think has loomed large over this conversation. That is definitely not necessarily a templatizing movie, though. There are movies like Den of Thieves now that have come out in the town, as you pointed out have pulled quite a bit from heap of man rewatched heat holy moly holy cow uh what a powerful and carefully meticulously managed and staged movie and a movie that has two big heists in it but is not necessarily oriented around the heist. It's oriented around the aftermath and the trauma of heist, which is a really kind of clever conceit for a movie like this. The first truck raid is really exciting and great and violent and scary. And then the big bank robbery in the center of the film is one of the loudest sequences in movie history and kind of intoxicating and tragic.

But it's all about the kind of catchphrase of the movie, the heater on the corner, are you ready to just drop everything? Obviously, Chris and Bill on the rewatchables have been building a shrine to this movie over the years. It doesn't necessarily need more emotional support from me, but kind of all Chris Ryan gags aside about it,

and Al Pacino imitations, it's just amazing. It's just a breathtaking piece of movie making. And I think Michael Mann's best and like the height of his powers. And again, like along the same lines of, I don't know if we'll ever be able to do this again. I don't know if we'll ever be able to do like a $75 million shut down

downtown Los Angeles so that Robert De Niro can fire machine guns at police officers, kind of a movie, you know, like that's just not movies are not made like that anymore right um they're made on green screen or they're made in you know in vancouver and so it feels like a last gasp of a great kind of a movie and if you're looking for a double feature also rewatch point break catherine bigelow's surf heist movie which is also in the same vein just like beautiful people just killing just crushing it um and stealing stuff at the same time and an fbi agent torn between the lore of

the heist life and the lore of being a g-man um if you if you had to choose what would you would you be an fbi agent like johnny utah or would you be a presidential mask wearing robber like patrick swayze i would be the robber. I can't be the FBI. I hate authority way too much for that. Just like rules. No way. I'd be like, this is boring. I would like to take the thing and go home.

Would you be willing to sacrifice your life to be that robber? I don't know. Sure. If the prize is good enough or if I'm bored enough, why not? If you had to sacrifice Lori Petty for that lifestyle, would you do so? Probably not. I don't want to bring other people into this. You know, I can only speak for myself.

Unfortunately, that's not how heists work. I know. It's also not how podcasts work. Good podcast though, Amanda. Thank you. Anything else you want to say about heists? I just really like these movies. They're fantastic.

They're so good. Pretty much all of these movies have been rewatchables. Yes. It's for a reason. You just can't go wrong when you steal something that seems interesting to people. When will Bill let me do the Rafifi solo rewatchables? Will that ever happen? Literally never. I'm sorry to tell you. Okay. Thanks, Amanda. Let's go now to my conversation with Janicza Bravo. Delighted to have Janicza Bravo back on the show. She's got a new film called Zola. It's an amazing movie. I love this movie.

I saw it 18 months ago, so it's crazy to be talking to you about it right now. Congratulations on the film. Take me back to 2015. This film is based on a Twitter thread, of course. Were you present for that Twitter thread? Were you engaging in that thread when it was going down? I was present, but not engaged. On the day that the thread came out. I don't know where I was. And at this point, I've been asked this so many times that I could do a little digging to figure this out about myself, but have chosen to kind of exist in this nebulous space. I saw the thread on the day, but at the portion of the audience got where it felt sort of interactive or like going to a concert or going to a play. When does this become a film project for you then if you were not necessarily an active, engaged participant right away?

Two years later, in the spring of 2017, spring summer of 2017, I did go after it though in 2015, or I made a gesture towards it, which is I read the Twitter thread. I sent it to my reps. I asked Twitter IP, how does it work? Get me in there coach. And 72 hours later, they come back to me. They say, there's an article in Rolling Stone and that plus life rights, dot, dot, dot, dot. And I'm like, yes, get me in there. But at this point, they're bidders as in they're people who have cash at the table and I don't have cash. So I don't make it to the table. And then a couple of years later, from 2015 to the top of 2017, there's another iteration of the film. It has another director, it has another set of writers. And the previous director is moving off of it or has moved off of it. And there is a hunt or an audition for a new

director. And I find out by way of an actor friend and, and I'm like, okay, this is my time. It's not about cash. It's about creative. I can do that. Uh, and so I end up meeting on the project and spend this like few months long audition process. And, and here we are. So let me ask you about something that you just said. So there was another filmmaker on the project. There have been other writers on the project. When you know that something like that has started before you come on, and you know that there has been some work done, even if that is getting completely junked, does that influence any of the creative decisions or the way you pitch yourself? Are you trying to find out

what direction that story was going and how you might go in a different direction? Or do you want to just have a blank slate? I mean, I think one of the positives to being a little bit green and maybe a little bit wide-eyed or optimistic is that I didn't have a model for what that was supposed to be like. So it just was that way. I had fallen in love with the story years before, and here it was being presented to me again. And my feeling or my approach was, I was going to massage this into the thing I meant. Because there had been another director and another set of writers, my assumption was that if I was going to be the one chosen, I would get to bring me to the table. The idea wasn't that I would bring me plus the other project, right? Like, that that didn't make sense.

Not that, I think I'm a pretty decent copier. I can do that if that's the job. You know, I work in TV. So there's some version of emulating what's in there before you. So I think I could do that, but I just understood that if I was going to be the one selected, that what they were choosing was me. Does that make sense? It does. It does. And I like what you said too, about kind of being able to emulate style and TV, but also knowing that, so this being a distinct thing, your film, your project, your vision of this story, why did, why was this story interesting to you? What clicked? What, what connected for

you? It was the way that she dealt with trauma. You know, when I was reading the piece that day in October in 2015, I couldn't stop laughing, but I also felt very uncomfortable and I was really stressed out. And when I was done reading the article, or when I was done reading the thread rather, I went and did some digging because I just needed to know more about who the individual was that had written this piece. And she's 19. She lives in Detroit. She works at a Hooters and, you know, she is seduced or lured into this trip offering some kind of, you know, adventure that obviously goes totally sour. Right. And I but I really was impressed, moved, inspired by the fact that a 19-year-old could have had that kind of experience and be able to then have a kind of distance in how they were going to tell it later. And that the thing that she was leading with was humor. And that felt, I felt so close to that. It was how I dealt with my own nightmares.

And I'm humor first, right? I think the humor first is a part of the processing, you know, obviously therapy, but then also humor first. The movie has such a distinct look and feel. And in some ways, I think maybe kind of reflects or refracts engaging in the internet and also the kind of like beat by beat tweet style storytelling that the story first originated in. Did you sell the movie that way? Your pitch on

the film was like, I want to try to create a visual language for this thing that we only understand as on our screen? Yes and no. I feel like I talked a lot about this being a love letter to the internet. Not that I understood necessarily how that would translate because so many of those gestures, there, there are a handful of gestures that are like direct, um, a kind of like digital homaging, I guess. I don't even know. I'm like, what are the words? I'm just learning them now. Um, the, some of that stuff is post, right? Like it's actually things that happen in the post process. And a lot of it is written into the script, but how it like rhythmically was going to actually manifest.

Some of those pieces really happen later, even though they're written into the script, right? Like I think that I was, my thesis, so to speak, in the room, I didn't actually know how it would translate. I wanted this to feel like it was of the internet and for the internet. A part of me thought, someone is going to watch this movie on a phone. I mean, I'm sad about that, but they're going to, and it kind of needs to make sense on the phone, right? It needs to feel like it's of the phone because the thing was born out of the phone. So can you help

me understand how you direct performances then? Because it feels like it's almost like a new version of acting in front of a green screen or something like that, where there's all of this sound design that you know you're going to put into post. You have this very distinct editing style. Did you find yourself directing actors maybe differently than you had in previous projects? The only time that there was consideration about a really aggressive consideration rhythmically was there's texting in the movie, like texting on a cell phone. And I thought, look, the whole, this is a Twitter thread, right? There's a lot of like cell phone stuff. And even when I showed up to the table,

and I remember early in my meeting, I was like, I can't do a movie where people are looking at their phones. I can't do a movie where there's like a lot of text on screen. I'm going to run into traffic. I'm going to hang myself. It's not going to work. Not for me, right? I'm not disparaging other films who have used these methods, but I felt a little bit fatigued or exhausted by the idea of looking at a young person looking at a phone and seeing the top of their head or seeing a glow. I just was like, I can't. I don't want that. And the theater person in me, I think the film is very theatrical. I think all of my work is want that. And the theater person in me, I think the film is very theatrical. I think all of my work is very theatrical. I'm always going to lean towards

a bit of the absurd or the surreal, you know, a bit bigger than life. And so the one thing we definitely discussed was like, how do we text in this world? And something I really wanted to try, and I feel in the end, it kind of worked. and it's one of the things I do feel very happy about in the film, is that they turned out to feel like these kind of Shakespearean asides, right? It's a person in life, but they're having a spotlight while next to the world. And I think it's something I would use again, right? Like if I am to work on something that has more phones and more texting, you know, life, I would do that again because I really, I felt it was successful for me and there something that had, it was maybe a little bit monotone and a little bit staccato as well. And that was supposed to like speak to the rhythm of how we found letters to be able to write through a phone,

which I am trying now as I am talking to you. Is that something that you were directly communicating to the actors saying like, I want like line readings and saying like, I'm trying to create a kind of ongoing rhythm for this. Never a line reading, never a line reading. I'm deeply allergic to those having done some acting myself. I find that to be really depressing to let,

I want it to be, I want to, when I am performing, I would rather not hear that because it makes you feel like the director's lost faith in your abilities. And I would rather hear, I'd rather hear the energy around that, right. And how to like, how to at least want to be given the chance to make the landing before being told how to do the landing. Yeah, there were conversations around it. We filmed both, there's two moments in the movie that are Taylor page and Riley Keough texting to each other and those we filmed on the same day

and they each got to see the other one do it. And we kind of had a collective conversation around what that choreography and that dance was. And, and I asked them to bring their own rhythm to it. Right. I described this kind of music that had a and then they were like, okay, that's how that feels to me. And so then they brought their own color to it, but we did talk about it in terms of, we talked about it sonically. In the same vein, both Riley Keough and Coleman Domingo are doing some fascinating and very entertaining accent work. How much of that accent work is something that you know what it's going to sound like before you start shooting? And how much is it, oh, wow, she or he is going there with this?

They both got coaches to work with on their accents. And that was discussed on our first meeting that there were accents that were not accessible to both of them. They didn't have them in their back, in their actor purse, you know? I think that's understandable. Yeah. So they each got coaches and they worked with their coaches for a few weeks leading up to working. They worked with them, I think, in person. I feel this was a time where we could hang out with people in person. So they had worked with those coaches in person. And then once we were on set in Tampa, I was invited into that process. And actually with Riley, a little bit more than Coleman for every session, I got the tapes. I gave notes. I talked to both her and her acting coach. And then with Coleman, uh, he would try it with me and I just felt really delighted. I had less

of an opinion of what a Nigerian accent sounds like, because that is an existing accent. Whereas with Riley's, we were actually crafting a sound, right? We were actually crafting something tonal. So I felt I injected myself more into that process than I did with Coleman, because I was like, sounds great. Is that how that is? Amazing. Beautiful. I just don't want this to sound artificial or mocking mocking with either of them. I didn't want us to end up in this place where we were mocking. I felt like with with Taylor's not her accent necessarily, but her line delivery to there was this, you know, this almost deadpan kind of like blankness to everything that is going on around her too. Is that something that you guys talked about?

I assume. Yeah, we did. I think like this happens maybe on the second day of shooting because I think the second day of shooting is when, is the first day I'm working with Riley and my second day working with Taylor. And Riley, we're working on the very beginning of the movie and Riley is doing something, you know, she's a buffoon basically in the film.

She's a real clown. And after she does a take, what I call cut, everybody laughs. And it makes Taylor feel like she's doing something wrong. You know, I think that the, getting those laughs in the moment are an indication that you're on the right path. And I think that her performance didn't have those in the moment. And so I think that it felt like I'm not delivering. I'm working with somebody who is delivering and it feels like I'm not delivering. And we discussed that. I think I'm first and foremost, a comedy director. And I think the film is taking from this classic comedy trope,

which is that, you know, when it's a two-hander, you've got a straight man and you've got a buffoon. Not to say you can't have two buffoons. There are successful versions of two buffoons, Dumb and Dumber, Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, Laurel and Hardy. There are others that are not coming to me, the Honeymooners.

But here we had a straight man, and we had a clown or a buffoon or a menace. And where the humor really shines is where both of these things intersect, right? They're not in parallel, they're perpendicular, actually. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, it's really effective in the film. But it's interesting to imagine Taylor's point of view, where Riley is doing this very big thing that is obviously amazingly effective and people are responding to it in a big way but her counterpoint is so well executed and so clean and so calm and so perfect for the film the thing about it the thing about that that is interesting to me though is the movie has this very delicate sense of the unreliable narrator. And obviously, a tweet is not truth, but Zola's story is her story. And then of course, there's Riley's character's story as well,

which is addressed in the film. What's your sense about how important it is that this story is true versus a reflection of the moment and the way that it's communicated? You know, it wasn't something I thought about. It is something I was asked about, and it is something I'm asked about, but I'm not a journalist. I'm not a documentarian. I'm an artist, I guess. I'm a person who's telling a story. I'm a filmmaker, I guess, a storyteller, a director. My job or what I set out to do, the thing that I fell in love with was the text. And the theater person in me, the theater kid in me, who were I to adapt, Chekhov, Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, you know, other people whose names are

not coming to me, Stridenberg, Ibsen, were I to adapt, I treated it the same way I would if I were to adapt any of those pieces. I treated it as though it were a great piece of literature, a great piece of theater, and was true to the adaptation. And where I, you know, that's not to say that I'm not adding myself. I'm definitely adding myself from my own point of view, but I, in those instances, you are treating the source material. The source material is Bible, right? The source material is, it's been, you know, catapulted in some way. And so that was my job. And the truth of it was, that's someone else's job or that is another job, right? Like the think piece that comes out of the truth of this piece,

that's something that exists somewhere else. So I believe Mika Levy to be the genius composer of this moment. How did they get involved in this movie? So, gosh, I think it gets involved pretty early. Trying to think. I think it's at the beginning of probably 2000. Actually, no, it's 2019. We have our first conversation when I'm filming in Tampa.

She's on my, you know, my top three list. I had worked with the same composer for like 16 years, whose name is Heather Christian and and Heather wasn't available to work on the film. And I felt really sad about that because it's the longest relationship I've had with anyone. And also, you know, like working with Joy, who is my editor,

this is our third time working together. There's something really special about not having to start at square one, right? You know, you're starting in the middle. And I think just the edit is as important as the composition. And they become, you know, the movie is all my DNA, right? Like I am the house that holds the thing.

And then the music is the wallpaper and the edit is the scaffolding. I've never said these words. So all of that might sound weird. And, you know, maybe if we talked about it again, I might be better at like what my, you know, simile is for all of this. You're doing great. Thank you. Thank you. I, uh, it's such an intimate part of the, of the piece. And so we met, I think she's the first person to see a cut of the movie after myself and joy. And that was really scary also because you're sharing, you know, we're like eight or nine weeks into our edit.

It's not shareable or it's not, it's not in a place that I want to share with anyone. And so she saw it. She was, I think promoting, did she do Marjorie prime? No, no, she did a movie called Manos. Manos. Yes. So she's in, um, I think she's in Brazil. She's somewhere in South America and she gets a link to the movie and she's watching it at a bar. She's sitting at a bar in the hotel and watching the movie with headphones. And there's a section in the film that we don't need to get into right in this moment, but that is not something

you want to watch in a bar. Right. And she doesn't know that that's happening. And she is just like so deeply distressed and just texts me and is like, Oh my God, but the movie. And I was like, yeah, I know. I mean, you don't watch it outside. I mean, you, you gotta have like a wall behind you. You chose, you chose wrong. Uh, but so Mika watches it. That's the first time she sees the movie and she texts me in the middle of it and is like, I'm in, what are we doing? What do you want to do? And I sent her a mix that I had put together of some energy or some vibes that I was having for the movie. And I, again, the only person I'd ever worked with was Heather. And so I only knew how to work with Heather and kind of

brought what we had done in that relationship, which I wanted to try here, which was that we tended to boil our protagonist down to a sound, using one sound that becomes the protagonist's voice. For some reason, most of the protagonists in my work tend to kind of be a little bit voiceless or tend to have some issues with like communicating or just have these very rich interiors. And so it's been helpful to have an instrument or instrumentation be used to communicate that which they don't have access to. And so here we boil Taylor down to a rose bowl, specifically a rose bowl quartz, which is like the, I don't know if you've ever done a sound bath, but it's that like deep hum in a sound

bath. And that was her voice. You mentioned joy and working with her. One of the things I like about this movie is it is so lean. It's just like no wasted effort. You're one of the few people to say that. Some people are like, why isn't it longer? And I'm like, you don't, come on. No one needs that. It's a beautiful length. I wish so many more films were this length.

But it also just feels appropriate for a movie that is reflecting the internet. Was there ever a version of it as there is so often with films that was like the two and a half hour cut or was it always this concise thing? Never. So this is my second time working with Joy on a feature and my third time working with her. And she knows I like a tight, I like it tight.

I, my fantasy is like 85 to 88. Like that's really like my dream place. It's not to say that a movie can't be longer, obviously. Right. Like, and it's not like I enter going, the movie is going to be short, but I just feel like, I think maybe I'm a little bit old in this way, or, uh, you know, I started this podcast with Utah calling myself a granny, but I may be granted in this way where I think about being in the lobby of the theater and looking at all the movie times and and it must be something

that happened when I was a child with my mother where I feel like my parents were making a decision about a movie based on like what time they were going to get dinner before or after yeah I really think that something like that happened and it really has landed, has stayed for me. Right. And I know that that's goofy, obviously, like the movie is going to be the movie's length that it needs to be like to tell the best story, but something about this idea of like, we got to have dinner after. So if we're getting out like after 10, like, where are we going? Like just having some, this is a part of how my brain is working, unfortunately. But the longest version of it was the assembly, you know, and the assembly doesn't really have any massaging. And that I think was an hour 45. And my very first note was, well, this is just so long. Who needs this? To which Joy responds, yeah, it's the assembly. I put all

of the things in it. Annoyed. I'm just like, well, you know that that shouldn't be there. And she's like, you would have asked for it anyways. So the longest version was an hour 45. And I think the first cut, which DGA requirement, you get 10 weeks before you have to hand it to your producers. I think our first cut is probably like 95 or 96 minutes. That's not true. I think it's a little bit, it was for me, it felt a little long. I think it's like 135, 135, 140. And I was like, it's going to be shorter, I promise. But that's just where we are right now. One other thing about that is, and I've seen some people comment on this, the film ends in an interesting way. It ends in a, I don't want to spoil anything, but it ends in a kind of like, oh, okay.

Is there a way for you to talk about that decision without necessarily spoiling the experience for everyone? Absolutely. I mean, I think that some folks are maybe disappointed a little bit with how it ends. And actually, when you saw the movie at Sundance, and I am really lucky, and I'm so thrilled that A24 was on board for this, and I had been able to get this with my last film producers as well, which is that because the work is comedy or because I believe it to be comedy, I think it's once you've been able to have a screening with a large audience of not people you're curating, there are things you'll learn about the movie, right? There are things you learn about humor. There are things

where you want more air or you're just like, that joke isn't landing. It doesn't land, right? The things you learn about humor, there are things where you want more air, or you're just like, that joke isn't landing. It doesn't land. Right. And being able to use that one big screening or those two big screenings to then go back into the film and make adjustments. And something that came out of it was this feeling that people weren't all the way satisfied with the end. I think a lot of people weren't satisfied with the end. There was some feeling of, I want to be here longer. There was some feeling that it wasn't, the loop wasn't being closed. And I think a few things about that. One, if you want to be in it longer, that's great. That's great. That's great. That feels good to me. I'm like, that's awesome. Then I feel like I really did the thing. Go see it again.

Yeah, go see it again. Exactly. There were a few things I was feeling about that end. One, I'm very attracted to an ellipsis. I'm very attracted to the dot, dot, dot. There is just, where in life have you found the loop closed? I mean, if you have, please show me the way. I would love to meet her because this dot, dot, dot is not working for me. So I'm very attracted to an ellipsis because that feels a bit closer to at least the life that I am living. The film, the period to this film is very, the opening line is indicative of what the period is for me.

The opening line is, do you want to hear a story about how me and this bitch here fell out? And when we are in our final scene, that final drive, that's that story. The period is, well, that's the story. You heard, this is how me and this bitch here fell out. What comes after is not that, right? What comes after is very much an epilogue. We made a book of the tweets and it actually came out today, available for purchase. And I'd had this feeling too that some portion of the audience would walk away wanting to know how it ended and that they could go back to the source material, right? Like they could go back to the source material, excavate, do some dramaturgical digging on their own to find out how, what happens after the dot, dot, dot.

So those were, that's kind of, that's what I was playing with at the end there was I knew what the end of my movie was. And if you wanted to know more, you would go and seek it out. And also the length of the movie to go back to what you were asking or saying before, like is a more, it's such a, I think it's a morsel enough that you could watch it again. And I think like the idea of watching it again, doesn't seem exhausting or like homework, you know, some films, newer films that have hearty lengths on them. I find myself walking away going, well, I don't know that I need that again. I already did it. I i agree i've now seen your film twice and i feel similarly i felt like the decision at the end tell me if i'm over reading this but the movie

opens with a tweet and i felt like it ends with a retweet that was yes you know it was like and this is how it goes i'm gonna steal that i like that okay i'm gonna start saying that and i'm gonna pretend like that's me i'm like movie opens with a tweet and closes with a wee tweet obviously it's it's it's your phone so you you can use it every like um i claim no credit for that insight uh just if i say it i will credit you fine i appreciate that um i charge no dollars for that kind of credit so i mentioned that i saw this movie a long time ago obviously you've been waiting a long time for the film to be released something like that um you know obviously there are more important things in the world than getting your movie out in the world. But I imagine there's a kind of anxiety that comes from,

boy, I had this incredible experience. I assume that Sundance was incredible for you. The movie was very well received. And then a long time has passed before it's getting out into the world. You know, what's that been like? Have you been working in that time? Is it odd when you feel like you've made something that you're proud of that people can't see? Yeah. Oh my gosh. So many things, you know, I was just texting with Eliza Hitman who made this fantastic movie last year. And, um, and I've texted with Justin Simeon and I've texted with, I've wrote with Miranda Delay and I'm citing these filmmakers because our films were all premiered at Sundance last year. And I got to see a lot of my peers release their films last year and felt somewhat envious that they were getting that release.

It wasn't the ideal release, but that they were able to basically put it away, right? There is something that happens when the thing leaves your body and no longer belongs to you and now belongs to the world. And I was, I mean, I was like edging basically, I was like never going to climax. And that felt incredibly frustrating and sad. And I mourned a ton of what I thought could have been. And also felt like there wasn't the room to mourn a film coming out when there was so much loss, global loss, epic loss, right? Where I was like, my loss is a movie. And, um, and then, you know, so it felt sort of goofy, but it was very real for me. And, um, I think something that came out of that or while I was in it, I was so afraid that I was going to miss the boat or miss my time. You know, there's like that thing about, I'm totally forgetting what

that thing is where like, it's something like a strike while the iron is hot or like, what is that thing that's said in our industry about like, like people will be like, oh, you're so hot right now. Or there's not one of it. What is the thing I'm looking for? I don't know, but it's something to do with temperature and being really hot. And I was like, I felt like I was about to be really hot and then I wasn't hot. And then I was like, now I'm tepid or now I'm cold. And I was afraid. I was just really afraid that I was missing. I was going to miss this boat. And there was also a lot of anxiety about like life and taking care of myself and being financially stable and, uh, and the responsibility of who else was I going to have to take care of in my

life. And I found myself thinking about very big adult things that I had not thought about prior to 2020. I hadn't been thinking about mortality in this way. And so I said yes to a lot of things that I don't know that I would have said yes to, because I didn't feel that I had the permission to be as selective as I usually am. So that was such a long, I feel like you asked me a question three days ago and I feel like I just finished it. What a marvelous three days it's been. So I do think this is a really great movie theater movie having seen it in a movie theater. I assume that that at least is exciting that you

will be able to say people will go and see this together. Yeah. I think it's a better movie in a theater. Not to say that it wouldn't be fun at home, you know, like when it's available, whatever that, what is that P-VOD, whenever it's available in premium video on demand, which basically is pay-per-view. I want to know why we got away from pay-per-view. I'm really missing that. What happened to pay-per-view? You want to bring pay-per-view back? I want to bring pay-per-view back. Pay-per-view connotes like $59.95. Oh, is film what it is i think it's just that's a very expensive number pivott is 1995 or maybe even 795 okay i think like there's a romance to your parent like my parents used to have these saturday hangs where they were watching a boxing match and their friends came over

and they did a pay-per-view like who's got the biggest TV and you know what I mean? So I think there's like some something nostalgic about that. But anyways, I think it is a movie to be experienced in a theater. I think it's a very fun theater film. You want people shouting things at the screen. I'm glad people will be able to have that. So we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen? Seen anything good lately? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, yes.

Oh my gosh, I've been watching so much Law & Order and I know you don't want me to say that. You're like the third filmmaker to cite Law & Order over the last year. Is that just a pandemic thing? Are you guys just all weird and into Law & Order? What's the deal with that? I missed it when it was on. It's been on for 40 years.

I understand this. And I missed it. And I'm talking original Law & Order, like not SVU, which I am also a diehard for Special Victims Unit, but old Law & Order, like Sam Waterston's first season. I just finished season five and I'm starting season six. Is that just comfort for you?

It is like a warm bath. I mean, it's like a warm bath. It is a warm caress. It is a warm kiss at the end of a long day. I don't know. It just really takes care of me and really soothes me. And it's specifically the older ones because you're also getting these fantastic theater actors, right? Like just solid theater actors. I've also just arrived at the moment where some people start repeating, where I'm like, wait, you were in this episode as a mom,

but now, you know what I mean? It's just so great. I just, I like wish I was in it. I also have a fantasy that I will be in the opening of a special victims unit. You know, there's a person who's like in a job, they're on a jog and then they find the dead body. Like I want to be that person. You, this is the secret. Just put that out into the world. Maybe Dick Wolf is listening to this podcast. You can be on the show. I hope that the next time we talk when I've made a third film, I will also be able to tell you that I'll be able to tell you about what it was like shooting my opening scene of Law and Order. I'm so excited for you. Hopefully not as the victim, but as the witness.

No, I want to be the person who finds the body. Yeah. Okay. Janix, it's so good to see you. So good to talk to you. Congrats on the film. Thank you so much. You have a great day. Bye. Thank you to Janixa Bravo and of course to Amanda. And of course, thank you to Sasha Ashal and Poppy Wagner for their work on this episode. Next week on The Big Picture, we are talking about the best movies of the year so far at the halfway mark, including the fantastic Summer of Soul, Questlove's directorial debut.

The Leader of the Roots will join me for a chat about the movie, which is now available to watch on Hulu. We'll see you then.