The Big Picture - Top-Five Actor Transformations, ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye,’ and the Horrifying Future of Award Shows

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

It’s late September, and that can only mean one thing: We now begin that deathless march to the center of the hellscape better known as Awards Season. But will anyone care? Sean and Amanda discuss the lay of the land after Telluride and TIFF, including the reception of 'Belfast,' 'Dune,' and 'Dear Evan Hansen' (1:00). Then, they talk about 'The Eyes of Tammy Faye,' a Jessica Chastain showcase and possible Oscar contender, before picking their top-five favorite actor transformations (42:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dave Chang is an avid student and fan of sports, music, art, film, and of course, food. With a rotating cast of guests, they have conversations that cover everything from the creative process to his guests' guiltiest pleasures. Follow The Dave Chang Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation about transformations. Later in this show, we'll talk about the eyes of Tammy Faye,

a Jessica Chastain showcase, and a possible Oscar contender. Speaking of which, Amanda, it's late September, and that can only mean one thing. We have begun that deathless march to the center of the hellscape, better known as awards season. The Telluride and Toronto International Film Festivals are in the books. The New York Film Festival kicks off this week. Amidst it all, it seems like a new normal is taking shape. Prestige films are premiering.

Movie stars are very much running for these awards and the big races are on. Will anyone care about any of this stuff? I don't totally know anymore, but let's talk about it. Let's start with Toronto. So from afar, neither you nor I was at the Toronto International Film Festival. What'd you make of the whole show? What are your takeaways from some of the awards? How are we feeling about the beginning of this new season?

Well, because I was paying a lot less attention. It seems like everyone else was paying less attention, which is perhaps bias. Perhaps that's just one woman's perspective and not reality. But I definitely just kind of got an afternoon alert being like, oh, Belfast won the Toronto People's Choice Award. OK, so that's the thing that I got to put on my to do list or kind of like move up my to do list. It was obviously already on it. And everything else just seemed like

campaigning, which is great. It's nice to have movie stars back. I'm very pro the movie star aspect of the film festivals, the red carpet, the, the Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez of it all, like give me as much as you want. So that's nice. But the lag between the awards season and what people who pay a lot of attention to this stuff are doing and then when everybody else can see the movies and how those movies enter the consciousness just seems to get bigger every year. It does. Let's start with Belfast. Belfast was a movie I talked about after I returned from Telluride, a movie that I liked. That is a very nice film from Kenneth Branagh, one of your heroes. Chill out.

It's a personal film, a memoir of sorts about his time growing up as a young boy in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. It does very much resemble a lot of other recent kind of memory films like that, particularly Roma. It's a crowd pleaser, even though it's about a very difficult time in world history. And so it's not shocking to see a movie like this win that People's Choice Awards. Usually it's a movie that makes people feel good or excited or feels like it has a kind of profundity that is not difficult to locate, that is kind of on the surface, that's usually the kind of movie. And those movies often go on to be nominated for Best Picture. 12 of the past 13 films that won the Audience Award were nominated

for Best Picture. I think five of the last 12 winners went on to win Best Picture. So there's something to the relevance of this movie. You are right, though, that we are still seven weeks or so out from the world being able to see Belfast. Belfast is the kind of movie that I think would have very easily been an arthouse hit and maybe could have transcended that. It's a film that I think old people are really going to enjoy. It's got a beautiful portrait of old people. It's got a beautiful portrait of a different time. I think we got to work on our terminology. The closer we get to this bracket, you know, the more respectful we need to be.

I feel comfortable aligning with my generation. You know, I am on the brink of 40. I'm thinking maybe I'm old people. You know, there's a reason this movie worked on me in a way that I would have totally rejected it 15 years ago. So there's something I think I'm growing more sympathetic and not judgmental towards the geriatric. Okay.

I just do think when we talk about, this is rude. Old people are wonderful. Listen to them, learn from them. They also are the only people until COVID who still went to movies and who care about movies. So we have to respect them. But when we're having these conversations, I think we're sometimes talking about like this senior discount people who

really were actively going to the theater and not really as invested in the streaming experience as you and I were. So, and that is a separate audience from, from us, even though like, you know, put me on a glacier, basically I am old, but we're, we're, we're just, we're talking about a different generation. Yeah, we are. I mean, it's tricky, right? Because obviously, um, older folks are more, uh, susceptible to the virus. So there's a little bit more that it can be a little scarier, the idea of going to a movie theater. And so that might challenge the audiences to movies like this. This is a focus features movie. It's a universal movie universal movie so it's it is going to go into theaters first it's not a

streaming proposition whether that will help or hurt it in this award season i really have i really have no feel for that but we shall see kenneth brana appears to be very much going for it you know he is going he's going to run he's going to do the circuit. He's very excited to talk about this movie justifiably. Whether or not it is, I don't want to say worthy. I don't even know what the right word is. I don't even know what a good Oscar winner would be anymore. That's part of where I'm stuck. You want to share your partially snide tweet. It's okay if I ask you to share what you tweeted about it instead of you being like, let me share what I tweeted? I mean, nobody is better at rewarding something 10 years too late than the Oscars. And so the idea of not giving Best Picture to Roma a few years ago and instead rewarding Green Book and then identifying another black and white memory film told from the perspective of a child

about a tumultuous period in their life, that would be perfectly Oscars for the Oscars to just be late to the party when it comes to that sort of thing. There's also the whole complication of, you know, one film is in a foreign language and this film is in English. And, you know, so you can see. Now, I will say the truest crowd pleaser that I've seen this award season is King Richard,

which, you know, we're obviously very excited to do an episode about also coming in November. If that movie had played TIFF, that movie probably would have won the audience award. And then if it had, I think there would have been a big conversation around this movie. It would have put a lot of heat and energy around it. Without that, I'm kind of curious to see whether it'll just be the Will Smith show and whether he'll be racing towards a best actor Oscar. I don't know.

We're going to find out. Number one, please don't dismiss the Will Smith show. We should be so lucky to have six months of the Will Smith show. I've been thinking so much about how Jennifer Lopez was not nominated for Hustlers and just what a colossal mistake of survival that was for the Oscars. You idiots don't do that again just because someone is actually popular and successful and makes money. Like you need Will Smith this season. I really I know I'm setting myself up for so much heartbreak like right now. It's starting but I just we can't do this again. We need to have people that other people have heard of at the Oscars.

It's just my tip. I totally agree. I mean, do you want to just have the, that conversation right now? I mean, I didn't, well, maybe put it in the context of the Emmys. Like I didn't watch the Emmys. You did. I watched most of them. There was some DVR and, you know, prime, like number one television confusion in our households about who was, who was getting the big living room TV and, and who won? And then, not Amanda, and then spoilers were sort of given,

like not understanding that I would go to the secondary TV, you know, to watch. Anyway, so I didn't get to see Kate Winslet's speech, who won for Mayor of Easttown in the Best Actress Limited Series and 18 other things. I also missed the Scott Frank moment, which I heard was for the best. But I did get to watch the show as a show.

And the Emmys were on CBS this year. They were hosted by Cedric the Entertainer. And they were definitely trying to get back to, quote, normal, normal quote awards show, uh, quote pre COVID quote, like, I don't know, traditional. And I have to say it was not for me. They did all of the things that after the Oscars people wished would happen at awards. So There was a host. There were some jokes. I actually quite enjoyed some of the monologue or just the general host banter. That was fine. The pre-tape segments, not so much. But there were pre-tape segments. And then there were also clips.

And then there were also people who are on CBS shows that I've never heard of talking about the importance of television after the clips before hanging out the awards. So they really laid everything on and it just felt inert and completely like out of conversation with the moment. It was pretty weird to see a bunch of people in a tent, you know, COVID still being what it is. Seth Rogan made some jokes about that, but also pretending like it never happened. But also it's really, I don't watch CBS. Most people I know don't watch CBS. I understand that it's a popular network, but going back to the generational segmentation that we were talking about earlier, it's not aimed at my generation. So I had no idea who half the people were. And then the awards themselves went to shows I mostly like,

but basically three shows that get talked a lot about on Twitter. So there was this total disconnect between the people who are being honored, the ideas of what television are, and also the idea of what's entertaining on a screen. And I was like, man, I don't know how you do an awards show anymore. Yeah, I think there is some dismay about that. The fact that the show that they put on, as you describe it, is so radically in the opposite direction of the Oscar ceremony from March. And it really didn't matter.

You know, like they tried to do something significantly more traditional. It sounds frankly like a Bob Hope Oscars, what you just described, or at worst, a Billy Crystal Oscars. And, you know, Chris Ryan and I were texting about it this morning with Bill Simmons. And we were just saying like,

if more than 6 million people watch this, I'll be shocked. You know, seven years ago, 18 million people watched the Emmys. So this stuff is in a tailspin. The early numbers are in, and it is, I believe it was 7.4 million, which is- Oh, that's not bad, actually. That's better than I would have thought. Well, sure.

But as you just said, 7 million, as opposed to 18 million, 20 million. You know, the Oscars, when you and I were growing up on them, were like 30 and 40 million, you know, I think. I don't know. I'm just yelling millions of numbers, but a lot more people and 7.4 million is being touted as an improvement. And that's tough. I mean, they're in a hard position. These things are very hard to do in COVID. There's still a lot of uncertainty and it's very hard to solve for like such a, like a diverse streaming experience that so many people are watching so many

different things. And we're so completely siloed now. Like, what are you supposed to do? But I didn't enjoy it. I do. I'll, I have a proposal though.

Okay, shoot. I'm excited. That's primarily for the Emmys. And I, I think I've mentioned this before, but I feel now more than ever that the Emmys really need to move to the beginning of the year. And we need to have a dedicated awards season.

The Grammys are already at the beginning of the year. The Oscars are already at the beginning of the year. But the Golden Globes, I don't know what's happening with all of it. But presumably at some point they'll try to come back if they can get their act together. They being the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. But so you start kind of like a period of reflection, right? And it's after the end of the calendar year. That's one thing about the Emmys that's very confusing.

It's like, what is eligible? Hamilton won an award. The video version of Hamilton won an award. The video version of Hamilton won an Emmy. I saw this over Bo Burnham inside, which is frankly a crime. Well, we'll just claim inside for movies, but also

that came out definitely more than a calendar year ago. And was filmed three and a half years ago. And also, frankly, has been up for every single award for the last 18 months. And finally, they won one. That's a joke. That in particular is a joke.

Right. And you have to sort out some of the eligibility requirements. I still think that shows or movies or whatever should only be allowed to submit for an Emmy or an Oscar. None of this, just like playing the field, seeing what you can get. But if you moved the Emmys and you were like, okay, so now it's awards season, you would at least train people to be like, okay, so this is the time when we think about what was good and what was bad in the last calendar year, which people already do. December is year and list

month. It's coming soon guys. Just, you know, get ready. We're making hours. Get ready on this pod. We're doing a year end pod probably the first week of December. I know I saw that on the spreadsheet and I was like, oh my God, I have to start getting ready now. But anyway, it's, but it's true. But so people are already in that frame of mind and you can kind of corral people's attention a bit more. And I think it does, if we want to keep giving out awards which i do number one because it like does get people talking about things in a way that it's like increasingly difficult and two also because i like it when people wear fancy dresses

and give random speeches on the screen i still like it i don't know i'm not the only one i think i think you're on onto something for sure. If we just said, if we treated awards season the same way we treat, say, I don't know, the NBA playoffs, where in the NBA playoffs, we know we're basically going to have two and a half, maybe even three full months of engagement with just the playoff format. It could be the same with awards season. It could be the first week of January is the Grammys. The first week of February is the, excuse me, yes, the second week of the first week of February is the Emmys. And the first week of March is the Oscars. And then we have it essentially contained to a two month period. And obviously, like the industry

itself would not like that. You know, they like the idea of spacing these things out to kind of maximize attention. So if you buttress the Emmys with the Oscars, you've got the whole PR industrial awards complex converging on itself and they wouldn't enjoy that. But from a user perspective, from a viewer perspective, it probably would make more sense to compartmentalize it. Well, and movies are already doing this, right?

We have awards movies from September for critics and people who go to festivals and like late October to December for the rest of us. That's right. And then, you know, your summer blockbuster period is April or May or whenever Marvel decides to release its first, you know, big tent pole through July. August has like mostly gone back to like a dump month with like one or two things that people like to argue about.

What's up to Sean's free guy friends. And so there is a pattern. And I, I actually, I think organization long-term would be good for the industry as well. I know that they're just like, let me throw everything out. Let me just catch an audience every two seconds. But there's too much. And people are missing things. And people can't find things. And people don't know when things are available.

And there is like a nice inherent rhythm to these things. So, or like if there is a rhythm, people do latch onto it. People actually start to find things or they did before. So it might help. You know, you raise something interesting here. Last night in his newsletter, Matt Bellany, former editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter, who now is part of this new startup called Puck, wrote a piece about a meeting that the powers that be and abc and disney recently had with the academy of motion picture arts and sciences to address effectively what we're talking through here which

is the long-term viability of the academy awards as a tv show which was once one of the two or three most seen tv shows in america and is now at risk of slipping into 20th place, 30th place, 40th place. You know, there are episodes of like NCIS that are outpacing last night's Emmys telecast. The Oscars knows they need to fix something. They took a chance last year on a COVID production that was completely different from what they'd previously done.

I think it was roundly considered a failure. I know there were aspects of it that you enjoyed. There were a couple of things about it that I enjoyed, but it didn't work. And I, they're really at cross purposes about what to do to make this thing matter to people. Now, what it made me think of when I was reading Matt's piece was if we do what you're suggesting and we, let's say we bring, and I, by we, I mean mean the powers that be i have no power here i'm just a podcaster yeah uh but if we did that if we moved the emmys into that corridor what that would ultimately lead to is just consolidation which is we need one award show we need a pop culture

super bowl and we need to find a way to marshal all of the forces of entertainment together if you want to make that matter now that might ultimately still be a fool's errand because our attention has been so atomized and it's so diffuse and so diverse, as you pointed out, that Ted Lasso feels like it's dominating popular culture right now. If more than 10 to 15 million people are watching Ted Lasso, I'd be shocked. In the 1980s, 10 to 15 million people watching your show was like a solid performance. And Ted Lasso feels like the biggest damn thing in the world if you look at Twitter. So I don't know if we're ever going to get back to a point where that matters. If you look at Twitter, it's a very important asterisk and as always, like a disproportionate view of the world. It is. view of the world it is but i think a show like that effectively sweeping the emmys elevates it

you know beyond that you know discourse that is so easy for us to sneer at even when i'm participating in it though you are often not and i think it's challenging because obviously we've been talking about the primacy of movies a lot over the last three years on the show we've been looking at the ways that you know sometimes quentin Tarantino said it on the show a couple of months ago. It's like basically the best movie he saw last year was The Queen's Gambit, right? We love The Queen's Gambit. We did an episode on The Queen's Gambit because we were like, sure, it's six hours, but it's basically

got all the form and function of a movie. All this stuff is converging onto each other. Do you think ultimately if, say, in 2026 there is no Emmys and Oscars, it is one big get- is that a good thing is that a bad thing obviously golden globes has now been kind of pushed out of the frame here so there's an opening for something like this is it even possible could the two units get together

and form something i don't know what do you think well if the emmys and the oscars got together that's a different conversation i don't you know and maybe you have the emmys and the Oscars got together, that's a different conversation. I don't, you know, and maybe you have the Emmys and then you have the Oscars and then you have some sort of like Super Bowl of whatever. That seems pretty hokey in my opinion. And I'm thinking about all of the kind of also ran awards shows that have tried to do this right from the MTV Movie Awards, which, you know, whatever you think of them, teenagers watch, to People's Choice Awards, to the Billboard Awards, whatever those are, to, I mean, there's always something. The

Critics' Choice Awards is a recent example of an award show that, you know, tried to insert itself into the Oscar conversation, I think, so far with limited results results because really it doesn't have the budget. It doesn't have the production level and ability to muscle its way in, though maybe without the Golden Globes, we'll see. So I do think that some of the power of these things is still that they're grandfathered in, that there is a historical element to them. And there is also brand name recognition to an Oscar and to a lesser extent an Emmy. And do you think Emmys or Golden Globes

are more famous? Typically the Golden Globes, I believe in the last 10 years has outrated the Emmys. I could be wrong about that. I think that's the case. Right, but like the average person on the street, would they be more impressed by like, oh, she won four Emmys or oh, she won four Golden Globes? Ah, see, that is different. That is a credibility question. I guess awareness versus credibility. I think even casual observers realize that Golden Globes don't mean a lot,

that they don't ultimately reflect necessarily the highest quality of quality. But I mean, let's be real. Like, does the Emmys have the greatest track record of acknowledging the, you know, perfection in television work? Sometimes, sometimes I have no idea what they're, I mean, I feel like Modern Family won like 300,000 Emmys and Modern Family was a good show, but was it like, was it transcendent? It was, it was a good show. No, it's true. It feels like people only even started taking... I mean, I don't know that people take the Emmy seriously, but we only started taking TV seriously, what, 15 years ago? True. Which is rude to TV, and we were all wrong.

I think... It's so funny that you say that, because I was thinking about that very specifically, which is in part because I've been doing the Sopranos rewatch and thinking a little bit about how everything changed about 20 years ago on television. But TV essentially became much more canonical, I think, in this century. It became much more important to identify what is the greatest of all time. That doesn't take away from the fact that MASH and All in the Family and Mary Tyler Moore and The Jeffersons. And there were a lot of shows over that time that were considered great and culture changing. I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners. There was history in TV, but there was not this sense that it had become a profound American art form. It was a profound American form of entertainment.

And that did change, I think, in part with HBO and The Sopranos kind of taking the wheel on the format. Now, if the Emmys is supposed to be the place that shows us how the art form has evolved, I think actually in the nominations this year, they did some interesting work by saying like, hey, here's I May Destroy You. Here's The Crown. Here's Mare of Easttown. Here's The Queen's Gambit. Here's WandaVision. You know, here's some mainstream stuff that actually is doing really well by its source material. Here is some original storytelling. Here's some kind of grand adaptations of literary works. They did a pretty good job of spreading the wealth, but then once

you get down to the wins, as it so often does at these award shows, when you get sweeps in big categories or across these kind of subcategories, it doesn't seem very representative. It doesn't really seem like it's reflecting the art form. And there were sweeps in the main categories too, which is something that used to happen at the Oscars all the time, right? The movie that was nominated for 10 Oscars won eight Oscars. Yes.

And in the last five to 10 years, the movie that's nominated for 10 or 11 Oscars wins none. It's true. I mean, I think the one out of 10 or one out of nine or two out of seven thing is happening more frequently in the Academy Awards because the voting body is more diverse. The pool of films that they're trying to recognize is more diverse. And I don't just mean kind of culturally or racially diverse. I mean, diverse in terms of where they originate from or, you know, what kind of filmmakers are making them. It kind of cuts across the board, but I don't think that we're ever, we're obviously never getting back to where we were, right? The idea of even doing this show years ago was born out of some nostalgic sense of

centrality in the culture. And in fact, I think most of the time when we've had our conversations on this show, very rarely have we said, oh my goodness, the Oscars, they simply nailed it. They absolutely got it right. What a glory it is. No, Sean, we had one magical moment at Parasite One. That was amazing. That was amazing. And your voice cracked.

And then we all went home and didn't leave our houses for two years. Yeah, gosh, that really was the turning point in our lives and American culture and so many things that have happened to us over the last two years. That was a great moment. And it was representative of what the Oscars could be, obviously, and still could be again in terms of recognizing. But, you know, that was a all-time record low audience for that show. And it's only dipped since.

So, you know, that's the thing is things will just become smaller we'll still find a way to appreciate them i think when i look at the landscape of movies say that premiered at tiff some of the films i saw at telluride what is still to come in the year in movies there's a lot of stuff that i'm really anticipating or that i'm really happy to have seen i loved the power of the dog i think it's really exciting that the power of the dog is going to be in the awards race this year jane campion's going to be there benedict or that I'm really happy to have seen. I loved The Power of the Dog. I think it's really exciting that The Power of the Dog is going to be in the awards race this year. Jane Campion's going to be there.

Benedict Cumberbatch, who got rave reviews for the film out of TIFF. A lot more people saw the film now. He seems almost certain to be competing with Will Smith for Best Actor. Kirsten Dunst, likewise, I think is going to really compete for Best Supporting Actress.

That's cool to see. We'll talk about Dune. Dune premiered. I think my Dune point of view was ratified. It seemed like a lot of people had a similar response to I did, which is this movie is, there's a lot of wow in this movie and there's a lot of like, wow, it's over in this movie. And that's probably going to continue. Last Night in Soho premiered, mixed reaction, Edgar Wright's movie. The movie that probably got the biggest, the small movie that probably got the biggest buzz, I think was probably Stephen Karam's The Humans, which is an adaptation of his play starring Richard Jenkins and Beanie Feldstein

and a handful of others. That's an A24 movie. But again, that movie feels almost a little too small for the Oscars. Maybe it'll be an acting recognition. Dear Evan Hansen premiered. I still haven't seen Dear Evan Hansen. I don't know if you've seen it. I recognition. Dear Evan Hansen premiered. I still haven't seen Dear Evan Hansen. I don't know if you've seen it. I have seen Dear Evan Hansen. Well, we will talk about Dear Evan Hansen on this podcast on Friday because a lot of people, I would say that film did not get good reviews. I'm going to save it for the Friday pod.

And let me, you guys don't have to watch Dear Evan Hansen to listen to what I have to say on Friday. We will do a non-spoiler conversation about Dear Evan Hansen. No, it'll be a spoiler. But like, it's nothing that's not in the trailer. So Tiff is in the books. You know, there's a handful of movies like you can already see. I talked about The Rescue, Chai Vasarely and Jimmy Chin's documentary about the Thai cave divers who saved the 13 young soccer players.

That's a movie that clearly is going to compete for best documentary. And some people already think is a lock to win best documentary, even though the Chai and Jimmy won for free solo just two years ago. We'll see. It was interesting to see a film like that kind of take the lead early on in the race. from that though all i'm really counting on at the moment is will smith and benedict cumberbatch those are the only two things that have yet happened or i'm like okay this is oh and i guess kristen stewart and spencer that is the other thing that it feels like everybody is just has accepted that no matter even no matter what you think of that film she is marvelous in it which she is so new york film

festival starts this week neither of us are going. Bummer. I've actually been to the last few New York Film Festivals. It's really an amazing festival. That would be an amazing place for you and I to go together and do shows and talk to people. Maybe in the future. You've been re-watching Sopranos and I've been re-watching Sex and the City, which is not an accurate portrayal of New York as a thousand think pieces can tell you, but still really just made me miss it. It made me miss like the, you know, the random tour bus magnolia version of it even,

which I was not a part of. New York in late September is a marvelous place. It is truly one of the great experiences in the world. We're not going to be there. A couple of big movies premiering. The first and foremost, Tragedy of Macbeth. This is Joel Cohen's debut solo directorial feature. What was the podcast where we just started listing Shakespeare plays that we liked?

I don't know. That's been a lot of podcasts, honestly. That was like a deep summer. Things were getting really weird. It must have been a movie auction. And just everyone was just reassociating Shakespeare plays. What's the move here with Tragedy of Macbeth? Is it to do top Shakespearean adaptations as a pod?

Is that what we should do? That's a fun one because, I mean, it's been, obviously, did you know that Shakespeare has been adapted many times? I like that. So lots to choose from. But also we would just sound like idiots on it throughout because it's such a broad topic but yeah i mean i have so many favorites it's a it's a rich text there's no way to talk about it without incredible take that's just this really strong take by you thank you you're bringing it on monday morning churchill and shakespeare and italy and italy and yes yes

music winston churchill shakespeare italy what about food are you in on food very pro okay okay and Italy and Italy. Yes, yes. Music, Winston Churchill, Shakespeare, Italy. What about food? Are you in on food? Very pro. Okay, okay. So Tragedy with Macbeth is premiering soon. Parallel Mothers, which is the Pedro Almodovar film, which we'll talk about hopefully on this show.

I'm really excited for Paul Verhoeven's Benedetta, which premiered at Cannes, which is of course the kinky nun movie. I was gonna say, that's the sexy nuns, right? Yes, sign me up. And then The Souvenir Part Two, which, Amanda, I saw this movie. Did I tell you that? Listen, what's up with this?

My husband keeps getting invitations to see The Souvenir Part 2. You guys have my email. Like, I just, I don't, I don't need this strife in my home. It's getting, like, pretty heated because for whatever reason, he's just like, I'm going to go. Do you mind? I'm like, why can't we go together? Like, why? Like we have we we don't go on dates anymore.

Can't you just wait? Souvenir part two. Sounds like scenes from a marriage. Honestly, have you? I think you should do a solo pod about the souvenir part two, like Colin Coward style, where you just talk for 45 minutes uninterrupted. I have to see it i want to see it i love the souvenir part one so much um i it's it's a rich text part two it's an interesting film and it's part of a part of a series of thematically linked films that hopefully

we'll talk about after you get a chance to see it so one of the other things that happened at the toronto film festival was that j that Jessica Chastain was celebrated. She was touted for her work in the eyes of Tammy Faye. She was given one of the Tribute Actor Awards. I had a question about these. Were people in competition for these awards or was it sort of like the tell your ride predetermined you'll come to the festival and we'll celebrate you? I believe it was the latter. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

It's like, it's, it's good to know what's coming sometimes, but I was just curious. Yeah. I mean, she was, she was granted this award by the film festival,

not by the audience members. Okay. Um, the eyes of Tammy Faye debuted at TIFF and well, it's an interesting text. Let's talk about it. I'm going to give a little bit of a summary of what this movie is about for those of you who are not aware. Because, frankly, it opened in a small number of theaters and it didn't do great business over the weekend.

But that doesn't necessarily mean anything. We've seen this story before in award season. And just because a film opens small doesn't necessarily mean it's going away. This is a docudrama about the rise and fall of the infamous televangelist Tammy Faye and Jim Baker. They built and used their PTL, Praise the Lord, television network to construct a really influential ministry, amass a fortune. And that fortune eventually became their downfall because they were skimming from the top, as they say. Michael Showalter is the director of this film. You may know him as the director of The Big Sick or as a member of the comedy troupe, The State. Stars Andrew Garfield and Chastain as Jim and Tammy tammy faye in some ways i think it's a pretty

standard biopic slash docudrama about real life events in other ways it attempts to do something that i think a couple of other films that are coming out this year trying to do, which is to create this almost like psychedelic, hypnotic, over-dramatized portrait of these vainglorious people. And features kind of like a descent into madness of a kind for the two figures at the center of the movie. It's based on a

documentary from 2000 that was much more clearly focused on Tammy Faye and not as much necessarily on Jim Baker. And while Garfield is her co-star, it's very much the Jessica Chastain show. What'd you think of The Eyes of Tammy Faye? Well, I wanted to ask you, how much did you know about Jim and Tammy Faye Baker before this? I think I knew a solid amount. I would say I knew the bones of the story, but I'll admit to getting my televangelist confused

over the years, so I wasn't totally sure where we were going here. I think I actually knew more about, say, like the Jessica Hahn aspect of the Jim Baker story because I was a Howard Stern listener

and she became like a Howard Stern guest and that was where a lot of those revelations came from. And the film is really not focused on that very much. Obviously, it talks about those events. But I must not have seen the documentary from 2000.

And so I didn't really know. My Tammy Faye Baker experiences was watching her on like VH1 reality shows, not on understanding her as a figure of 80s and 90s popular culture, essentially. Yeah, I knew her as a figure of 80s and 90s popular culture, essentially. Yeah, I knew her as a reference and really as that kind of late in life visual of the makeup, which we'll come back to. But the confusing the televangelists completely, it was sort of like televangelist bingo watching this movie. At some point, they brought up the 700 Club and I was like, oh, I know what that is, but

that's you guys, but it's not. And they're all somewhat interchangeable to me, even though apparently the PTL headquarters and this all happened outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, where my mother's family is from. And I was spending time there, but shout out to anyone listening in Concord, North Carolina. I wonder if there is anybody, but I really had very little specific understanding of these people or what their story was about. And so I found it hard to understand what was being presented to me as a biopic and what was trying to say about these people. Because I didn't have the base understanding to build on whatever satire or skepticism they're trying to build in. I felt very similarly.

I think that there is an empathy for the Tammy Faye character in the film. And it does what I think, frankly, like more movies I wish would do, which is it shows a complicated portrait of a flawed person. This isn't a movie about a person who is perfect and who abides by the high totem of morality in any way. She's very flawed. Jim Baker is very flawed. There's a kind of greed. She's very flawed. Jim Baker is very flawed. There's a kind of greed.

There's a vanity. There's a sense of contradiction in a lot of what they do. They've given their life to God, but of course, they are these people that are very driven by a desire for money and wealth and access to power. So that's a good general frame, think for an interesting film the challenge is the tone of the film is really hard to wrap your head around sometimes it seems like it's trying to be funny sometimes it seems like it's trying to be mortally grave sometimes it seems like it's trying to be satirical to your point and so i feel like i could feel the tone slipping through my fingers as i was watching the movie despite the fact that it has something that I like, which is people really going for it in their performances and being uber committed. I'm very vulnerable to an uber committed Jessica Chastain performance. That's one of my favorite sub genres of movie. So there were things about it that I really liked, but I agree. I didn't have much awareness, say, of the constellation of Pat Robertson

and Jerry Falwell Sr. and Jim Baker and kind of how they all fit together in the universe. So some of that was kind of interesting to learn as it was going, but I was also like, how much should I even be trusting what I'm seeing here and how much of it is kind of like invented representations of things that happened and should that even

affect how i view the film it's it's a little bit hard to know whether or not this was successful because i don't know what the goal was i completely agree one more positive thing i'd like to say about it is that i i thought they did a very deliberate and entertaining job of recreating the PTL network. There's a lot of production design and attention to the aesthetics that are definitely a part of the Tammy Faye Baker story. But I sort of, I have like kind of weird blurry photographic,

like still memories of flipping through the channel and kind of seeing some of these things, but it's a very rich visual text that they had a lot of fun with and, and really commit to recreating. But even there in the recreation, it's like, okay, are you, are you trying to teach me about what happened? Are you doing an SNL skit? You know, and that's always when you're recreating with like people with visual flair and moments with visual flair, you do kind of edge up to SNL from time to time. And then it always felt, both in the recreation of the televangelism and even the Tammy Faye performance, that it's in dialogue with a public understanding of someone that I didn't have. And so I just, I kind of got lost in the contrast.

Or maybe the contrast doesn't land. Maybe it is a little confused about whose side it's on. Or maybe it's trying to, you know, show a nuanced or complicated portrait of someone that overcomplicates it. But I agree. What was I supposed to think of Tammy Faye Baker at the end? That, I don't know. And I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing. I will defend the biopic. I really like the biopic. And I like a biopic that complicates and kind of raises some questions about someone. But I didn't really feel like I got any answers to this.

Yeah, I relate to what you're saying. I don't want the message of a movie to be spoon fed to me. I think it's okay to leave it up to some sense of interpretation. I think the challenge here and maybe ultimately the lesson of the movie is that this person lived a very messy and complicated life, but it's unclear if this is a woman who's experiencing delusions of grandeur, whether or not she was profoundly talented at something and actually should be celebrated for that in a way it seems to have that aspect of it it also indicates that she was um just in deeply shallow if you can be deeply shallow like as shallow as it gets as a human being just really liked material things and had no sense of an interior life about why she liked those things not a lot of self-analysis going on for tammy faye which you know to each their own if you want to live a lifestyle like that, you're free to

do so. But it's like, is she the hero of this story? Is it an attempt to make us more deeply understand how she started out this way? Because I would say that the flashback element was probably the least successful part of the movie for me, where it was like, it showed her hardscrabble roots. And I was like, wow, this is just like walk hard. You know what I mean? Like, this is so, it's like, it almost seems absurd. And it doesn't really seem like Michael Showalter's strength as a filmmaker you know he's much better I think at like these kind of like grounded but absurd conversations between two characters you know like that's what really drove the big sick that's what's really driven some of his more arch comedy over the years and you know Wet Hot American

Summer and The Baxter and movies like that where you're're like, this is a true dramedy. Like dramedy is really what he does well. And this is kind of a dramedy, but it's also reaching for something a little bit beyond its grasp. Yeah. A crucial thing for me, I did go back and watch the documentary on which this is based just because I was curious. I was like, what am I missing here? And what can I understand? Or what don't I understand? And you pointed out that the original documentary is, is much more focused on Tammy Faye. And thus gives a bit, it's a pretty,

it's a competent, but straightforward documentary like about her and what happened to her. But it, it fills in some of the questions and it also doesn't add the confusion of just going to be real what i think is like a totally miscast andrew garfield performance and this is maybe like an interesting segue into the rest of our conversation because he i see why he was cast as jim baker there is some facial resemblance sort. It's not out of the realm of physical possibility. But then this movie feels like it needs to incorporate Jim Baker and Andrew Garfield

and Andrew Garfield's very big performance. My guy really commits to whatever he's doing, whether he's the right fit for it or not. And so I was confused. This is about him. Is this about them? I found it pretty distracting. I think it kind of muddled some of the, the focus or the exploration,

or maybe the lack of exploration of Jessica Chastain's performance and character. Let's talk about Chastain. Yeah. Is Jessica Chastain one of the biggest movie stars in the world? I'm asking that not knowing the answer. No, it's not. She's the biggest movie star in the world to you.

And I think that's wonderful. It's important to have favorites. Yeah. Well, she's been on kind of a dark road of late, if I'm being honest. I think this is really, you know, that TIFF award that we mentioned and her appearance on an hbo series right now is meant to be a kind of a comeback now she's only

really been a very a present figure in our lives for the last 10 years i would say maybe going back to take shelter is probably the first time i saw her in 2011 so that's almost exactly 10 years ago the jeff nichols movie she's wonderful in that's almost exactly 10 years ago, the Jeff Nichols movie. She's wonderful in that movie. And then she had a three to four year period in which she appeared in either terrific films or very high profile films that then had maybe complicated receptions. She, of course, in The Help was Oscar nominated for her performance in that film. That kind of really landed her in a big way for

mainstream audiences. She was in The Tree of Life the same year. And then she was in Zero Dark Thirty and Lawless and Interstellar and a movie I really liked, The Most Violent Year with Oscar Isaac, who she's co-starring in the HBO series with right now. And then The Martian. And I was like, wow. So she pretty much only does like platinum projects maybe not all of them are award worthy but she has a very discreet kind of taste and then something weird starts happening where she takes a Guillermo del Toro movie

and Guillermo del Toro is definitely considered one of the great auteurs at the time but she appears in an extremely committed performance I will say probably her performance most like the Eyes of Tammy Faye performance in Crimson Peak, which I think ultimately did not work for a lot of people and was not necessarily the big success that people wanted it to be.

Or at least not the filmmakers. It's an interesting movie, but it's a little askew. And she takes on the Huntsman Winter's War. Did you see that one? No, I don't think I saw that one. I saw the first one. This was the one, though. And maybe the second one? Is this the third one? This is the second one. And maybe the second one? Is this the third one?

This is the second one. I think there have only been two. But what's confusing about it is it's both a prequel and a sequel at the same time. Sure. So that's a little bit challenging. Time is a flat circle. It truly is. And then she's off on a journey.

You know, she's making movies like Miss Sloan, which like wants to be good, but is ultimately not good. And The Zookeeper's Wife. And these films that, you know, she's trying to create compelling standalone movie star characters they're not always hitting she of course takes on molly's game which we have devoted a lot of time to on this show i think it's a good performance by her but it's a movie that ultimately maybe didn't totally work then she starts showing up in dark phoenix the x-men movie which is just straight up bad it chapter two which i think for many people was a big letdown for fans of the first It when they move

on to the adult roles for the children characters in the film. It's true. It's tough to grow up. I think the Nate Digger was probably Ava, the 2020 action movie, which didn't go straight to Netflix, but felt as if it went straight to Netflix. And I just could not believe how not well made that movie was. And so really, it was a real valley for a long time for Jessica Chastain. Yeah. I'm going to put you on the spot here. Can you name an over 30 actor, movie star, female movie star who has had a good last five years? Charlize Theron. That's true. But that's, can you name a second? No. Right right so it's been really tough i was thinking about this i was thinking about another much lauded but uh never uh oscar-winning actress

amy adams who continues her streak of movies with dear evan hansen i she's in dear evan hansen both she and julianne moore i don't know it's, it's, what are we doing to these wonderful redheaded actresses? Anyway, it's been a tough run for the movies and for, and it's always been a tough run for

women over 30 in Hollywood. So, it's not all her fault is what I would say. No, I don't think, I think she was making

a very conscious decision to elevate her status you know elevate her level of fame which i think is more than her right it's an opportunity to make more money and to create more opportunity and you know she's a very politically active person so the more famous you get the bigger profile you have the more impact you can have on the world all that stuff makes sense i mean i think there's some actresses who have done an interesting job of balancing the inevitable struggles that are kind of out of their control. Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, there are a handful of actresses who have,

even if they have not necessarily always dominated the box office per se, they don't take as many risks in that respect. So they don't get it held against them as much. You know, Natalie Portman, she appeared in a Thor movie. Cate Blanchett appeared in a Thor movie. Aside from that, they don't really aim for the box office. When you make It Chapter Two, when you make Dark Phoenix, when you make a Huntsman movie, you're like, I'm trying to be Sigourney Weaver. And that's hard to do. You got to get lucky. You got to have incredible taste in your choices. This year feels like a reset. So we've got The Eyes of Tammy Faye. We've got a film that also debuted at TIFF called The Forgiven, directed by John Michael McDonough,

which I thought, I think was, I have not seen this movie. It got mixed reviews. Ray Fiennes co-stars. It's another sort of rich people on a resort vacation film. We'll probably talk about it when it comes out at some point later this year or next year. And she's in Scenes from a Marriage on HBO. Have you watched this? I'll be honest, I finished Sex and the City. It was like the next thing that was suggested to me was Scenes from a Marriage, which guys, I think you're misunderstanding

what's going on with all respect to HBO Max. And you know, Sean, I didn't click on it. It's interesting. It's of course based on the Ingmar Bergman TV, sort of frankly miniseries before there were miniseries. There were of course some big miniseries in America, but it was eventually like edited down to a film version. It's one of Bergman's most celebrated works.

It's a harrowing movie about what it's really like to be in a complicated marriage. I think anybody who is in a marriage, which is to say all marriages, will relate to certain aspects of the story. The adaptation on HBO is a bit confusing to me thus far. Last night's episode was the Chastain centerpiece, the showcase episode. She's wonderful in the movie. I think she's a very, I wouldn't say she's a subtle actor, but she's an actor capable of subtlety.

And it's a part that requires big moments of loud expression and also small moments of vulnerability, weakness, frustration with her lot in life. It's a very confined setting for the film. Basically, it takes place in a house between her, Oscar Isaac, and their daughter. It's very Tony incredible and polished and respectable. And it's an interesting pivot away from some of these disreputable X-Men movies that she's been making. I'm not totally sure that it's working. I'd like for you to watch it.

I'd like to know what you think of it. There are some things about it that are a little mannered for me. Do you remember the movie that Jessica Chastain made with James McAvoy like almost 10 years now? Is it The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby? Yes, it is it I mean I don't want to put it in the same sentence as Bergman but it was about a couple that goes through some tragic event and then it's his side and her side and that people just really going for it and love both those actors it didn't work for her then I would be surprised if it works for her now yeah that was

an interesting piece of work because that movie was written and directed by Ned Benson who had been in a relationship for Chastain for many years they broke up and after they broke up they made this film that was this two-part movie told from her perspective and told from his perspective Chastain is sort of returning to that story in scenes from the marriage and it's obviously like a subject matter that I'm interested in is the sort of like the unknowability of your partner and the impossibility of truly coming to terms with everything in your emotional life at all times. There's something very deep and noble,

I think about that pursuit, but I don't, I'm trying to think of what's really holding me back here. There's something like a little hysterical about it. You know, just like there's something a little hysterical about the eyes of Tammy Faye. It can't help but be big. And there's the fearlessness required to do that work,

but there's also kind of like something a little embarrassing about it, you know? Yeah, and I think something like Eyes of Tammy Faye is supposed to be big not just because of the person that she's playing but because we're conditioned in these roles as you said to watch actors who are going for it capital g capital f capital i and so that's part of the bargain you really expect her to unravel a little and be like a little too much. And, but when it's in the context of, first of all, in the context of a miniseries, I get very nervous when movie stars just go full losing it on TV, which seems to be the trend now.

They're all like making their prestige shows and then they're doing their really big movie star thing in the context of it's like episode five. And I'm like, we just got to reign this in. Like no one told you about pacing on a miniseries. You know what I mean? It's like your editor did not do right by you. But there's something about, I guess it's the different ways to be prestigey, you know, and it fits in one way, sort of, even though I think Eyes of Tammy Faye is, it's certainly in the Oscar conversation. So I suppose it wears a prestige hat, but it's not really. And then Scenes from a Marriage is wearing a different kind of prestige hat that maybe it doesn't quite live up to. Do you think Jessica Chastain will be nominated? She is running. She's working really

hard. And there is that kind of narrative around her of someone who deserves an Oscar and hasn't won it yet at this point. And she seems well-liked. I mean, she certainly has become an outspoken person in the film industry and seems to also be very friendly and have a lot of people who like are rooting for her still. So it seems very likely. My big question is. Do Oscar voters know enough about Tammy Faye? Like, is our problem being like, what is this? Going to be the problem for everybody?

It's an interesting question. I think, especially in contrast to Kristen Stewart, who, you know, is likely to be nominated, who, you know,

has, has never been nominated for an Academy Award. Jessica Chastain, I believe has been nominated twice before. She's also nominated for Zero Dark Thirty. And Kristen Stewart is playing someone who certainly has a, there's a mysteriousness and interiority to the princess Diana experience, but is as famous as a person can be.

Yeah. And what she chooses to do with that level of fame and interpret it is going to be a little bit more legible. Now, I don't know if the eyes of Tammy Faye is a better movie than Spencer, but it is oddly a more accessible movie than Spencer for mainstream audiences and probably even for Academy voters. So that's a factor. And there's obviously a whole bunch of movies that are coming that will have strong female performances that we'll have to account for as well.

But at the moment, it kind of feels like of the award season stuff we've seen, those are the two. Yeah. I mean, in the nominations, there's room for both. I don't know who will win, but this is the kind of thing, especially in the last 20 years, that wins you an Oscar. Absolutely. You're playing a recognizable person doing some sort of transformation, going for it in a big way. And it increasingly does not seem to matter if the movie is any good or not.

It's true. I mean, I'm just looking at Variety made some best actress predictions about a week ago. And Stewart and Chastain, of course, are at one and two right now in their predictions. Number three is Lady Gaga and House of Gucci, which we'll see about that.

I have my doubts personally. A transformation of sorts. Certainly. Transforming into the sister Karamazov. Penelope Cruz for Parallel Mothers, back with Almodovar. Getting more and more excited about that the more I think about that movie.

Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter, who by law must be nominated every year now. I'm okay with it. Yeah. I love her. She's wonderful. A very moving speech at the Emmys

when she did yet again win. Unbelievable. And then here's six through ten quickly. Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos

which we may or may not see this year. We don't know. Frances McDormand for The Tragedy of Macbeth. Again, that's another movie that no one has really seen. Jennifer Hudson for respect who I think was earmarked very early on in the Oscar suggestion and has fallen through the cracks a bit because that film was not terribly well received uh

Katrina Balfe from Belfast I'm not totally sure that's a best actress performance I'm not sure if she's feels more like a supporting actress performance. The child is really the star of the movie and in every frame, but nevertheless category for what happens. And then Jennifer Lawrence for don't look up another movie that nobody has seen and really knows anything about. So that's, that's not the strongest top 10.

I mean, it's a lot of famous people, a lot of very accomplished performers, but a lot of unknowns going on there. And it being the Ricardos is even like a three-star movie, Nicole Kidman will be nominated. Yes, because she's always nominated. And again, she'll be playing Lucille Ball, which fits right in the exact... It's what they love. There's a case here for all five of the nominees to be based on real life people. If we have Kristen Stewart,

Jessica Chastain, Lady Gaga, Nicole Kidman, and Jennifer Hudson, we would have effectively five biopics being recognized. That sounds like, I mean, it's not what anybody wants and also sounds like the Oscars. It sounds like something they would do. Although I just, frankly, if again, we haven't seen tragedy of Macbeth, but it is my understanding that what Francis McDormand will be doing will have some sort of relation to the character of lady Macbeth.

And I just don't really think that you can pass up the Oscars. Can't pass up Francis McDormand at late as lady Macbeth, even if she won last year. Come on. Yeah. I feel like there's going to be attacks there. I feel like if this was two or three years apart from Nomadland, and you know what might happen is we might ultimately see the tragedy of Macbeth and be like, actually, that was

the one she should have won her second for or her third for rather. But there will be some sort of like, and we just saw her, you know, it's like, if we see the Dodgers in the World Series again, this year, it's gonna be like, all right, like, I, they're amazing. But like, do, we just saw her. You know, it's like, if we see the Dodgers in the World Series again this year, it's going to be like, all right, like, they're amazing. But like, do we really want to see them win again? That wouldn't be as fun as seeing somebody else win for the first time. Right. But I mean, that depends on winning and losing, as I understand the sport of baseball.

And this just depends on the fact that the Academy really likes Frances McDormand, which I mean, listen, they've nominated Meryl Streep, what, 20-something times at this point? Yeah. She's been recognized quite a bit. You know, I was going to mention in this conversation just about the viability of the Academy Awards and where I'm putting my eggs. You know, the Mets and the Jets are just such a fucking disaster, Amanda. They're just such an abject bunch of failures.

And they just, they don't care about me at all. Like they literally don't care about my feelings. I know they don't. They do not. I know. I know. I've, I've been known for 39 years and I was like,

you know what? Maybe I should just get invested in the Oscars. That was, that was a dumb idea. That was stupid. That does not seem rewarding. We do it every year. And then.

What should we put our heart into? I mean, think about the next five years of the podcast. What are we doing? House of Gucci. That's coming out in a month, and then we're never going to talk about it again. I will continue talking about it, at least to the Oscars. Come on. Ben Affleck's 45th career transformation. Why is Ben Affleck not in you know, 45th career transformation.

Why is Ben Affleck not in the last duel trailer? I know why, because he is a small character in the film, but do you understand how to market movies? You do not just put the photos from the Venice film festival in the last duel trailer. Jesus Christ. How hard is this? Uh, I don't know why that's happening. The last Duel, that's coming out soon.

I know. It's Ridley Scott season. I'm open to it. Feels like it's being buried a little bit, if I'm being honest. I don't really think that it's going to be a hugely transformative experience, but whatever. Just put Ben Affleck in the trailer. Let us have our movie stars. We have five movie stars left.

I think from a purely on paper perspective, that movie has more going for it than any movie I can think of in the last couple of years. Affleck, Damon, co-wrote, along with Nicole Holofcener, whom we love, directed by Ridley Scott and Jodie Comer, who now after Free Guy is a movie star.

So on paper- That's so depressing. Now after Free Guy is a movie star so on paper now after Free Guy is a movie star well it's true though I mean a lot of people are excited about movies and now I just have to you know walk into the ocean well it'll be a very different performance than her performance in Free Guy let me just say Jodie Comer is not the problem with Free Guy I thought she was great in it just like I thought she was great in Killing eve so there's weirdly a lot to look forward to there we'll see what happens i thought of more things to be excited about okay top gun too if we ever see it sure we're gonna be dead before the movie comes out i know um related mission impossible movies do you have you been following just now paparazzi or like a tabloid staple in the UK?

It's just like Tom Cruise parachuted into someone's backyard. And because they're filming Mission Impossible. And like every week he's like surprising some hikers because he's finishing a stunt. Or he like has to use like some random British person's backyard for a helipad. Like every week my guy is just out there doing his own stunts and glad handing with the British people. He's trying to win something. I don't totally know what it's going to be.

Just the heart of nostalgia ultimately probably is what he's after. But we shall see. Let's talk just a little bit more about transformations. So Chastain transforms entirely into Tammy Faye. You mentioned incredible makeup work. This film will be nominated for best makeup and hairstyling because of the work that is done on her. It seems like it was a huge investment of time for Chastain since it looked like a lot of time in the chair to get that look going. She does transform, I would say physically, in a pretty meaningful way into that character,

kind of regardless of what you think about the movie, it's really impressive. And over time in the context of the movie, because as you said, it unnecessarily starts when she's like five years old. Yes. She doesn't play the five-year-old, but yes. Yeah, right. I mean, it shows her at like 19 being like,

yay, Jesus or whatever. Pretty credible, I thought. You know, considering she's like in her mid-30s. I thought she pulled off a college student. She looked great. Um, and then all the way through Tammy Faye Baker's just like embrace of permanent eyeliner and lip liner and, and, and permanent eyebrows, I believe as well. Truly, truly, uh, you know, I don't want to be mean spirited, but quite a freakish look that she had by, by the end of her life.

Actor transformations are a tried-and-true Academy Award bid. They are something that you do to get a certain kind of attention for your performance that the Academy has always loved. Why they've loved it, maybe it's just a, I don't know,

a degree of difficulty thing, ultimately, that it speaks to. The idea of committing that deeply to a part i think other actors really support we talk about how actors are a huge part of the voting body and also it's like i feel like it speaks to the let's get dressed up and try something quality that a lot of performers and filmmakers love you know it's just like let's put on a show that is different from doing an ibsen play in a small room you know and and therein lies the danger of most of these performances I had a weirdly hard time putting together my top

five lists that's because I put some personal constraints on it which I disqualified the four people that I felt do this the most often as a schtick okay who are Christian Bale, Charlize Theron, Jared Leto, and Gary Oldman. I did not include any of them either. Let's just say for the sake of this conversation that those people are in the hall of fame of that thing. Yes. Christian Bale, first and foremost. Absolutely. You can make the case that he does this as effectively, as showily, as interestingly, and also as boringly as anybody in the world. He always transforms. Yes. And the kind of Oscar-rewarded transformation has gone through phases.

I feel like 90s, early 2000s, it was about gaining or losing a remarkable amount of weight. and then it turns into making yourself as like traditionally unattractive, which that's a very fraught sentence. And some of the films actually engage with the idea of what is attractive and not attractive, but not what has been traditionally accepted as like a movie star glamour, right? Unglamorous. And now we're in the phase of just being somebody else,

but being somebody else so much that you are hopefully somewhat unrecognizable. So for whatever reason, I strayed away from just like the gaining weight and the losing weight performances because I don't know, that is a lot of work, but we've moved past it. But that does disqualify some of them. Several of the Christian Bale performances, for example. It does. My favorite kinds of these performances, and we don't have to belabor our list here

because I think a lot of this stuff is fairly standard. But my favorite performances are ones that are more about the monstrous, you know, about like transforming, not just to become, not just to uglify yourself or, you know, Nicole Kidman winning for the hours, for example, as Virginia Woolf, where I think people were wowed

by the fact that she would wear a prosthetic nose and thus not be the glamorous movie star that she is. It's kind of a dull version of this to me. I'm looking for extremists, I think. I'm looking for something

severe in terms of the change. I do have one that is probably a little bit predictable and down the middle that speaks to one that you tried to disqualify for your list. But for the most part, I'm like, I want people to go for it and to show me that they can radically change their appearance and their posture and their tone of voice and all those other things. Cause that's,'s interesting to me. There are some other, you know, you'll talk about somebody who transforms a lot, who I love, but it's not necessarily what I love about him.

Right. But it is something that is, in a lot of ways, is kind of this, kind of his trademark thing that he disappears into his character. Because that was another thing, I will surprise no one to learn, kind of gravitated towards the biopics or the celebrities,

people being other people, but actually transforming a bit, finding something interesting in a well-known character and kind of transcending the like SNL impression for the most part. But even that was a little bit tricky because what's the difference between a great performance and a great transformation? Like for example, Denzel Washington as Malcolm X is I think one of the great performances like in living memory in my lifetime, but that's a performance like that's, and there, there are elements of Denzel and in it as well. And I find what's interesting is watching Denzel grapple with that character and that history. And I mean, it's tremendous, but it's not on my list because it's not, he's, he's, he, there is Denzel of it.

So I don't know. I found it kind of hard to quantify. I think the other thing is like, as you said earlier, the Academy does like this because, or actors, other actors really like this because there is this like, let's dress up and like dance and let's do it. There's like a very good Colin Firth quote after like Mamma Mia that was like, you know, we're all Shakespeare trained or whatever, blah, blah, blah. But like deep down actors just want to like put on a silly costume and dance. And that is true. And often it's like Halloween for famous people in these movies. So the people who do it well and who actually find something new, it's pretty small. It's true. So let's just do our list. Okay. Number five,

what do you got? A familiar film. We were just talking about it on the draft. Oh yeah. Uh, Cate Blanchett as Catherine hepburn in the aviator i there are actually a number of kate blanchett roles she should probably be on the disqualified list because you could do her as bob dylan and i'm not there and you could do her as elizabeth in elizabeth and elizabeth the sequel yes um but i like this one because i think this is everybody else could have gotten it extremely wrong and playing Catherine Hepburn, someone who is so famous and so visually available to us. And we have a very vast record of what she was like looks like her and is dressing like her and doing the voice, but finds a little bit of the vulnerability and something other than the bravado that you see in every film and even every interview with Catherine Hepburn. I also randomly this weekend started reading Lauren Bacall's memoir.

Just I don't know why. It's fantastic. One of my wife's favorite books. It's so great. But Catherine Hepburn is a major character in that. And it's a different side of Katherine Hepburn. So it was on the brain. I agree.

Cate Blanchett could be slotted into any number of roles. She's similar to a couple of other people you have on your list where you don't necessarily go for Cate Blanchett because you know she's slipping into someone else. That's kind of her thing. I think in Mrs. America, she did a really good job at this too, where you were like, oh, she just vanished into Phyllis Schlafly. You know, like, even though she doesn't look like Phyllis Schlafly, really, when you get down to it, she embodied something about her that felt very particular. The tone of her voice and the cadence and the sort of like those subtle mannerisms that you're talking about that reveal a vulnerability that might not otherwise be present so um i like that pick i went with

runy mara for the girl with the dragon tattoo for number five here's specifically why runy mara has never come even close to doing a performance like the one that she did in the girl with the dragon tattoo it is so far afield not just from what we'd seen from her before which was very little um which was i think you know basically the social network was the only real high profile work that she had done and was partly why she was cast by david fincher in dragon tattoo but because that dragon tattoo character is such a complex thor, and visually aggressive figure. Like it did require her to change her body, change her posture, change her physicality,

change her hair, change her makeup, change everything about her, change her tone of voice, change her accent. It's the full-blown push. And it's not a famous person. It's a famous literary character in a way, but it's not a person that we ultimately have a literary character in a way but it's not a person that we ultimately have a relationship with maybe some people had seen numi rapace play the character

in the swedish adaptation of the film but for someone like me who hadn't seen that at the time it was a total aggressive transformation i think it would actually be fun if runy mara was more like this if she just did more like was like i'm i'm Cate Blanchett I'm Daniel Day-Lewis I just I transform every time because she seemed to have a knack for it or maybe it's just a testimony to her collaboration with Fincher and kind of what they bring out of each other but that is the movie that as time goes by in the Fincher oeuvre I'm like maybe I should be continually evolving my point of view on this maybe there's more going on here than I thought when I first saw it I'm just thinking about the time that I decided to try to watch that movie at like 10 a.m. before

a movie draft. And that's a really gnarly, gnarly movie. One of the great Daniel Craig. I mean, can you say a great torture scene? No, you can't. I'm sorry. But that seems really messed up. Incredibly effective. Yeah. Okay. What's your number four? All right. This is my throwback. This is my monster kids, things that really stick with you. And it's Angelica Houston as the grand high witch in The Witches, which I didn't revisit The Witches before this because I didn't really need to. It's just seared in my brain as a source of terror um i definitely read this book very young i saw this move this film this

is a 1990 film uh very young and it's i mean it's full prosthetics let me make myself a a scary non-human-esque person but it really works uh It's a great one. This is a terrifying movie. Yeah, absolutely. It's not appropriate for children or for people at the age that I saw it, but effective. It's a very scary Roald Dahl novel, but it's an even scarier movie. And a great example, very similar to my number four, which is a tie. It's a Tim Burton tie. It's Danny DeVito in Batman Returns and Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice, which is a tie it's a tim burton tie it's danny devito and batman returns and michael keaton and beetlejuice which is the same thing prosthetics makeup total out there character transformation ghoulish monstrous with a very dark sense of humor laced in between it you

know it's often been cited that many of tim burton's protagonists and villains resemble tim burton or what Tim Burton wished he could look like. You know, Johnny Depp is famous for kind of creating this outlandish, somewhat more handsome version of Burton over and over again in Edward Scissorhands and in the Alice in Wonderland movies. I think DeVito and Keaton, in short order, are like the very best of that. The Keaton performance in Beetlejuice is one of those things where it's like,

we could have fixed the Oscars by recognizing performances like this in 1988. And we just decided we don't do that sort of thing. But revisit Beetlejuice, tell me he's not hilarious and like utterly committed to developing the kind of character you've never seen in a movie before. And I like that. And I like that sometimes you need makeup

to raise the stakes on a performance. I don't think it always seems like stupid dress up. I think sometimes it can actually there's the Danny DeVito Batman Returns is so gross and like the sort of like black bile blood like dripping from his lips and like eating fish heads. And it's really visceral and really effective. And he's totally committed to the part to Dannyy devito underrated actor by the way very underrated actor um that i just really like when burton like pushes his actors to go for that kind of play is this the moment that we should say that heath ledger is as the joker is not on either of our lists even though i would qualify that as like that is a transformation i i with the exception of the, which I didn't do while I didn't do comic book characters is basically what it comes down to because it's somehow it, it seems like built into the definition of, of playing those, but they come with their own costumes. They come with their own, the, a lot of the transformation is just in the character itself. and you're just like putting on the cape so to speak but i think keith ledger obviously qualifies yeah i think i probably just

didn't even think of it in part because we've seen the joker many times and there's only so much that you can do with that iconography he obviously subverted it more than anybody on screen to that point it's it's literally in the in my top five favorite performances of the 21st century i mean it is literally it is a it is a he's amazing he is magnetic in the movie that but that's not really what i thought of with this particular subcategory i just wanted to reference it before you got angry tweets and i continued to live my life calmly i appreciate that uh what's your number three? Is the performance that you mentioned previously, and this was actually a Chris Ryan suggestion, but it's very good. It's Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln in Lincoln, which another historical

figure. I have several of those, but a historical figure that we don't have any like personal access to. He is of monuments and paintings and, and one of the great men and the Daniel Day-Lewis performance is, I think a really fascinating and effective mix of like both being the guy in the painting and also being a human being. And I mean, the voice decision is one of the great, I mean, it's a choice, but it's a choice that does work ultimately. And I think he does disappear into the role.

And even if the person doesn't feel totally like he's not relatable his lincoln is not like our pal but i don't really think that that's the point of his performance or the film lincoln um or american history your boy abe lincoln yeah or this interpretation of american history and it's i find it to be a very, like, fascinating, lived-in study of the idea of a capital G great man. It's a great pick.

Daniel Day-Lewis, to me, is an interpreter and not a transformer. That's, am I splitting hairs? One million percent. This feels very much like an interpretation

of Lincoln that is a good one and we we both really like this movie a lot and obviously i worship ddl uh i think i just think of him as a guy who like takes something that is known and tries to redefine it instead of becoming it um yeah i just think there is a lot of unknown in this character actually you're right which is what what makes it interesting yes there was no filmed footage of abraham lincoln so he had to interpret something there's also no filmed footage of uh frankenstein or the bride of frankenstein so my number three is boris karloff

and elsa lanchester in the bride of frankenstein this is the sequel to james wales 1920s film one of the like this is the movie that where I think let's read deeply into the subtext of horror really truly begins because it's a story about the relationship between man and woman and why we feel this intractable bond to partners.

And just what happens when you don't have words and what kind of a performance can you give? And watching Lanchester evolve throughout this film into something a little bit more freakish and watching Karloff iterate on what he did in the first film is just one of the great monster movies of all time and not scary so much as it is sophisticated and compelling. Really good movie, just a good example of the fact that you could do this 80 years ago. That's a good one.

I obviously don't have any horror films on my list, but that's okay. That's what you're here for. You have a queen at number two and a queen at number one. Yes. What's your number two queen? So it's, there are two roles from Meryl Streep that are not the iron lady.

One, Julia and Julia as, as Julia child. And two, as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. She's obviously playing Anna Wintour or a character based on Anna Wintour in The Devil Wears Prada. But these are both examples of Meryl. One, she inhabits a new person.

And with Julia Child, they're trying to make her taller than she is. And she's doing the voice and the accent, but it's, it's not prosthetics. It's kind of just her, her energy, honestly, the joy, the bon appetit, you know, and it, but, and it, and, and you can kind of see Meryl, but it is very fun how thoroughly she embraces the Julia Child spirit. And then the Miranda Priestly character. I mean, I'm brainwashed because I've seen this movie eight million times. I love it. But she just creates a whole new person.

I watched that movie and I'm not watching Meryl Streep. And a lot of it is like the very specific haircut and the clothes and the voice, which she models on Clint Eastwood. And it's, I mean, that's a true story. That's, she's like, he doesn't raise his voice. And I thought, wouldn't it be interesting? That's a different version of power.

But something that stands so alone from a woman who is like the most recognizable or most recognized actress of the last 50 years. So. Would be a list without Meryl. Yeah. It's a good pick. Also wouldn't be a list without Merrill. Yeah, it's a good pick. Also wouldn't be a list without Robert De Niro. Raging Bull. This is, of course, one of those gaining weight, losing weight roles that you're talking about here probably is the urtext of that, though it is probably the signature. Robert De Niro gained 50 pounds to play fat Jake LaMotta and

also got into the best shape of his life to play young Jake LaMotta. And obviously Raging Bull, one of the signature films of the 1980s, one of Martin Scorsese's best. A movie that I kind of vacillate on over the years. I think we did a Scorsese pod a couple of years ago and I was like, ah, Raging Bull, it's overrated. It's like number 11 for me all the time. Then I watched it during COVID and I was like, ah, this is actually the most important movie ever made about masculinity. Maybe it's number one or two on Scorsese's list. You know, your opinion changes. It's okay. What doesn't change

is the fact that obviously it's one of the most committed performances in movie history. It's not that De Niro doesn't look like De Niro. He does look like De Niro, but he becomes Jake LaMotta. And it's a slightly different version.

It's funny, the film is celebrated for this radical physical transformation that he makes. But a lot of the movie, he just looks like a young, handsome Robert De Niro. And he is portraying this animal, this truly vicious, conflicted wellspring of unexamined masculinity. And it's one of the towering performances.

So gotta go with De Niro. All right, we're down to number one. What do you got? It's obviously Helen Mirren as the queen, as Queen Elizabeth II, because you do have to specify, in the queen. It's uncanny.

I feel like this jumpstarts both, or is a comeback of sorts for both Helen Mirren and the queen herself, that the performance so embodies this person that people get like re-interested in the queen herself that the performance so embodies this person that people get like re-interested in in the queen which definitely spawns the crown if nothing else and we saw how well that's doing uh but then helen mirren is so good in it but it's so different in real life that people are like oh my god can you believe that's helen mirren that's so amazing she's

nothing like the queen and all she becomes like an international treasure again in her own right. It's really the power of really bad wigs. Speaking of really bad wigs, John Hurt in The Elephant Man, not really wearing much of a wig. It's just the full prosthetic exploration. It's a performance that is entirely in the eyes and entirely in the voice because he is covered in this, you know, really overwhelming amount of material to hide him. And the only way to get through is to express his desperation and his intelligence,

which is what that character does in the movie. This is a David Lynch movie, another figure who's, you know, very open to transformative performances. And it's a movie about like stricture,

you know, like when you are stuck inside of something and you just so desperately want to be understood. And that's what all these actors are trying to do. They're trying to just be

more clearly understood, more clearly heard through the lens of these big outsized figures. A lot of your figures are real people. A lot of mine are monsters. All of them are tempting, just like Tammy Faye Baker, to be better understood in the eyes

of an often unforgiving public. That's our list. Aren't we all? Amanda, we're going to go back to the well this week. This is a disaster. Every aspect of this is just going to be an angry-making disaster. That aspect of this is just going to be an angry making disaster. That's what

podcasts are built on. We just, we gotta, we gotta, you know, keep it, keep it interesting. Keep it fired up.

Keep it, I don't know, angry? Something. We're going to go back to our 35 under 35 list. We're going to discuss the movie Dear Evan Hansen,

Ben Platt, who may be too old to play Evan Hansen. Maybe not. We'll see. When I see the film, I'll weigh in on my take on that. And then we'll try to find a new generation of great young movie stars.

If they exist, should be an interesting exercise. Thanks, of course, to Bobby Wagner, our producer on this show. And we'll see you on Friday. Thank you.