The Big Picture - Top Five Movies of 2021 So Far. Plus: Questlove on ‘Summer of Soul’

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

It’s been an odd movie year, but there have been a handful of standouts at the halfway mark. Sean and Amanda share their top fives of 2021 thus far and explore whether we need to define what qualifies (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the Roots drummer and now film director, to discuss his new documentary, ‘Summer of Soul (... or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),’ which is out now on Hulu and in theaters (47:03). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson Producers: Bobby Wagner and Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Watch is the latest and the greatest in pop culture from best friends Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald. Join them as they discuss TV, movies, music, and much more. Check out The Watch on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Davins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the best movies we've seen this year so far. Later in the show, I'll be chatting with Amir Questlove-Thompson, the drummer for The Roots, DJ extraordinaire, author, podcast host, and now film director. His new documentary, Summer of Soul, or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised,

is out now on Hulu and in theaters. I hope you'll stick around for that conversation. But first, let's talk 2021 movies. Let's start with Summer of Soul. Amanda, we saw it at Sundance in January, and we you'll stick around for that conversation. But first, let's talk 2021 movies. Let's start with Summer of Soul. Amanda, we saw it at Sundance in January, and we both kind of flipped for it. And it's exciting that it's coming out into the world. I think we're going to talk about it a little bit more as we get down to our lists. We sure are.

Have you had a chance to revisit this movie since you saw it in January? And do you feel like it's going to become something that you do return to because it's as much basically an album as it is a movie? Yeah, I haven't seen it again. And that's kind of been purposeful because it is a movie that's being released in theaters in addition to being released, I believe, on Hulu. And you and I have talked a lot about like the sound experience of being in a movie theater and especially the music experience. And this is a documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. And it involves a lot of previously unseen footage. So there is like a concert film element to this. And I think the

movie is very special for a number of ways, including like the footage is amazing, but also the way that it puts the footage in context and teaches you a lot about the festival itself and kind of what was going on around it and offers critique or analysis, even as it is just giving you this concert experience is really special, but it would be fun to experience the concert part of it, like in a room with very loud sound. And so I'm hoping to be able to do that at some point this summer. I would love to do the same. That would be a great way to experience it. One of the things I was thinking about with that movie in particular is you know there are a lot of great concert films or concert footage of incredible artists even include some incredible artists in that film

but there's not a lot of great late 60s early 70s concert film footage or standalone films dedicated to stevie wonder and this movie basically opens with stevie getting on stage and just being stevie doing a drum solo, playing the keyboards, doing all the things that make him amazing. So just for Stevie alone, and he's one of literally only 25 artists who appear in the movie, it's totally worth your time. I'm going to try to check it out on the big screen as well. Let's talk about movies this year. There is this sensation that this could turn out to be one of the best movie years ever because we've had tons of releases pushed into this calendar year. However, not a lot of those have come out yet. We're six months through the year. I wouldn't

say it's been a particularly strong movie year thus far. How are you feeling about what 2021 is shaping up to be? I feel like you're really putting all of your money on October 22nd, 2021. It's like if that doesn't come through four for four we're just absolutely screwed what's coming on october 22nd let's see if i can do it without googling june french dispatch your edgar wright movie last night in soho is that what it's called and i don't remember the fourth one because i think it's a horror movie the fourth film of course is jack s4 oh sure which is a horror movie of sorts yeah of course but also extremely culturally significant yes so i am putting a lot of eggs in the october 22nd basket

but you know i think it could be a good fall it could be a good winter thus far though it's been a little uneven i would say focused yeah how we say scattered highs and lows and relative enjoyment. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what to say. It's movies are, are back sort of, but they're not totally back and we're doing the best that we can to make a podcast and the way that movies are back, they're different than they were before they left. And some things that are not movies are movies. And some things that are movies aren't movies anymore. And we watch them all on the same screen. So it's, we're getting, it's better than this time last year for sure. And even the end of last year, I would say, right? Like there are a few more movies to talk about.

Some of them even like big blockbusters, but it's interesting when you try to make a best of list and try to apply some critical or qualitative thought to the list of movies released this year. It's really just been blockbusters that they wanted to show you on a big screen and or stuff that was forgotten last year during the pandemic. I think most of the blockbusters have been a little below average, if I'm being honest. Yeah. You know, I think F9 was a little below average for the Fast series. Godzilla vs. Kong, it was nice to have a movie like that at that time in history,

but that will not go down as one of the five best Godzilla or Kong movies. I don't know. I mean, Mortal Kombat was just not very good. You know, I wanted it to be good, but it just wasn't. And I'm sorry to say that Conjuring 3, that was not the best Conjuring movie. It's been a little bit slow to grow, I think, this year. There have been some really strong independent films. I think we ultimately, I didn't really have a hard time putting together a top five. There were probably seven or eight movies I really authentically like so far this

year. But you may have noticed on this podcast, we're doing this thing where we're like, The Queen's Gambit, that's a movie. It was very nice to hear Quentin Tarantino tell us he agreed with that, that The Queen's Gambit is, in fact, a movie. Can't get you out of my head, Adam Curtis's eight-hour megalith documentary, that's a movie. Bo Burnham's Inside, that's a movie. We're claiming everything now. Loki, maybe Loki was a movie. Was it a movie? Loki's not a movie. You've been trying to make Loki a podcast for however many months it's been out. Just go with that. I don't know what to tell you. I don't even like it that much, but I'm not watching it.

So what else? Anything else that we have been trying to claim here? There was a 30 minute short film by Pedro Amodovar that is quite obviously a film, but it is a short. And normally we probably wouldn't spend much time on that on this show. I think I mentioned it a couple of times because I'm like, this is pretty much as good as anything that's come out this year, even if it doesn't totally make my list because it doesn't have the standard 90 minutes to two hours format. I'm claiming Starstruck, the HBO Max series that

was essentially two hours long in total and like a perfect rom-com and sort of a 2021 response to Notting Hill. But I just like if you had released it just as it was in a movie theater, totally would have worked. So you mentioned you did some box office research. What research did you do? I just Googled box shit, but I closed the tab. I'm just looking at my tabs. I Googled box office mojo 2021. And this is why people tune in is the real work that we put into this podcast. Well, you got to know the stats. And every time we talk about Box Office Mojo and the redesign of Box Office Mojo, I do hear from people who are similarly upset.

That just really, really upended my whole research process. Anyway. It's criminal what they did to that site. Yeah. It's all the movies you would expect. A Quiet Place Part 2, Godzilla vs. Kong, F9, Cruella. Cruella made a lot of money at the box office even though people also apparently watch it at home congratulations

children the conjuring the devil made me do it ryan the last dragon demon slayer mugen train yeah you checked that out last night what'd you think i did tom and jerry mortal combat and peter rabbit too, and Peter Rabbit 2. And Peter Rabbit 2, the 10th entry, is $30 million domestic. So I don't know. People are sort of going to the movies, but also they're not going to the movies. It's been very tough going. It's been very tough going.

It's not surprising to me. I don't have any animated movies on my list. But it's not surprising to me that some of the sort of most consistent movies this year have been animated movies because those are the kinds of movies that you could really have worked hard on during the pandemic i think the mitchells versus the machines luca the new pixar film which we have not mentioned on the show thus far and raya and the last dragon are all like kind of three star movies to me maybe even a little bit better than that and they're really fun and they're obviously wonderful for parents to have to show their children at home or in the movie theater if they want to. Raya has been playing in movie theaters for months now. It's actually had a long tail. And so that's not shocking, I guess, given the circumstances of the year.

One of the reasons why we haven't had a ton of big releases is because there was not a ton of production happening last year. Quiet Place Part 2 was ready to come out in March of 2020 until it was pushed to 2021. What other animated films did you want to cape for here? I'm not going to make fun of animated films. I want to shout out kids who just don't seem to be snobs about movie versus TV. If it's a good movie, they'll just keep watching it.

They don't need to have new things all the time. They'll just watch Raya and the Dragon however many times they need to. And I think that's great. We could all be a little bit more like children, I guess, except for the fact that we'd have to like animated films, which is not really my bag. Fortunately, I have never given up on my childhood. I hold it close to the chest and I hold it warmly. What about the fact that this year feels a little bit disconnected because of the Oscars and the Oscars happening so late and movies being able to qualify up to February? That also, I think, has given me kind of a tilted sense of what is the movie year?

Because there's some movies on our list that feel like 2020 movies, but actually are not. Right. And we're eligible for Oscars and we're even nominated for Oscars. And I was very inconsistent in applying those rules to my own personal list because I have included some movies that were nominated for Oscars, but they were technically released in 2021. And I also saw them in 2021. So I did kind of like my personal windowing. I don't know. It's how we all live now right it's just with our own list but you know I was reading through the box office and I think Minari ultimately did make like five million dollars at the box office this year and I never thought to include

it because you and I saw Minari in Sundance 2020 and that feels like so long ago that even though it was also released technically to the public in february of this year and is a 2021 movie so now i feel a little bad but i don't really know what to say so i'm reading the wikipedia page of the film and it says it began a one-week virtual release on december 11th 2020 so i think you're i think you're clear of this concern i think it's officially a 20, because I didn't list it either. And it probably would have been at the top of my list. Yeah. I was like, what am I doing? This is a terrible list. I realized this like 15 minutes

before we started recording. It's definitely one of the best movies of 2020. So you can imagine it should have been on 2021. Okay. That's a relief because I was a little bit concerned that maybe I screwed up as well. Okay, should we dig into our lists? Yeah. Let's dig in. We have a lot of overlap. How do you want to do it? Well, your number five is my number four.

Let's just dig in. We just talked about this movie on a podcast last week, but we can just shout it out again because people have now had a chance to see it over the weekend. No sudden move. Steven Soderbergh made just a complete, delightful heist film and put it on HBO max for you to enjoy. It is like we're living in the future in a good way in that sense. And I accept it and really enjoyed this film. Me too. It's a little bit of a, um, it's a little bit of like there was, I was holding a slot for this film until I got a chance to see it. Cause I knew.

And so maybe there's a little bit of bias happening there. But I think when you look at the landscape of other movies that have been released this year, it's just a cut above virtually everything else that's come along. And even if it's, I don't know, maybe second tier Soderbergh, where do you think it falls in the grand scheme of Soderbergh? Like 15, 16, something like that? Well, that makes me do math because what?

There are 33 total. I would say it's like 10 15 10 range it's pretty good you know there's there's no part of it that's like oh well you didn't have time and you just kind of like fast forwarded through that i mean i guess there are a couple casting issues that um seem like quirks of the film but i I embrace them as a part of the movie. You know, another thing that I was thinking about with this movie, so often now when we get movies and particularly movies for streaming, even you and I are kind of like, this could have just been a TV series. And why didn't you just take a TV series and take the extra time and space since you have it. And I think that this is a story that could be a series,

but I like the movie version better and the pace and the choices and the kind of like, not quite confusion, but the slight mystery at the center of it and how it's going and the deliberate amount of time that he spends on each character in order to kind of present you this like world of action i i think it works better than sort of like a plot yet another like true crime heist plotting mini series i agree with you i think that actually the mystery at the center of the the story is not

strong enough to hold me on the line for eight weeks but it is strong enough to hold me on the line for two hours and so i was kind of relieved it's like i don't think you and i still 100 understand how the heist worked that like i'm like probably at 80 right that's okay that's fine but it's because it moves so quickly and it lands all the big spots so you're just like oh yeah yeah sure sure i get it that's they pulled it off but if you extended it then you would have to explain everything and everything would have to make sense and i agree it wouldn't hold up the good news about it is while the the heist itself

is a bit disorienting there is a scene with a very special guest star at the end of the movie who essentially explains the themes and all of the surrounding stakes of the movie in a beautiful ned baity-esque five-minute monologue and so if you were at all confused that character truly sets the table and serves you the meal as the movie comes to a conclusion so i appreciated that that's one more reason why it's a great movie it has a big set piece kind of monologue ending at the end that pays off if you manage to stick around for two full hours um let's just excuse me not two full hours it was like a clean hour 42 i want to say it says 115 minutes is the runtime okay well that's still under two hours under two hours um no sudden move it's great check it out it's on hbo max uh what's your

number four no actually i'll do my number five i'll do my number five my number five is saint maude i saw saint maude in february of 2020 i had not seen it since until last night saint maude is a lean genuinely upsetting a24 catholic horror movie It's about a young woman who works for private agency who cares after, um, people who are in the final stages of their life. It's written and directed by a woman in rose glass. It stars Morfitt Clark and Jennifer Ely, and it's your standard operating a 24 freak out horror movie.

And some, in some respects, respects in other respects it's a you know psychological terror that has a lot more in common with movies like rosemary's baby raised roman catholic as i was uh i think notions of guilt and terror and trauma and confusion and fealty and fear and disconnection from god are right on the surface of this movie um it's only 84 minutes it's not an amanda movie but for anybody out there who is looking for something to terrorize your friday night or your sunday morning this is this is a pretty pretty good one it's pretty exciting to see someone like rose glass come along in this space obviously a24 has a reputation for launching filmmakers like this in many ways with movies like the witch and

movies like um hereditary this is somewhat in the same vein but it is definitively british and uh brings with it all of the kind of mannered work that comes with the British lifestyle. Just a really, really, really well-mounted, well-made movie that has stuck with me. It's streaming on Hulu right now if you'd like to check it out. I'll never watch this, but I'm just really pleased that Jennifer Gilead is still in the mix. She's truly amazing in this movie. Yeah. She plays a woman who is in the final stages of a cancer diagnosis. And it's understood that she was like a hedonistic dancer in her life. And she's trying to recapture her hedonism in the last days of her life. And you know how sometimes a performance, you're looking at someone acting and it looks hard?

Yeah. It's not that you see their effort necessarily. It's like you're just thinking about the character and what it must be like to try to channel someone in that stage of their life. This is as hard as it comes. It's like someone who's desperately trying to be vivacious but is also completely stricken by this malady. Really, really great.

She's killing it. Okay, so number four. I went outside the box here, though you and I unilaterally decided that this is a film. So I'm going with Bo Burnham's Inside, which is, well, I guess No Sudden Move was also mostly shot during the pandemic, right? Yeah, I think that's right.

But I think that this is my only film that even acknowledges the events of the last year. But crucially, like, it never says pandemic, which I think is part of what makes it work for me. I am not really thirsting for a lot of pandemic content, personally. But what this movie does in terms of taking the circumstances of the world, but also of this person and of how to make art and, um, turns it into a meditation. And it was like, I think a very profound insight into the internet and how it's screwing up all

of our brains and what we see, like, you know, as we're living, but also kind of the art that we're consuming and the way that our brains are mangled now and how that influences our mental health, but certainly also like movies and TV and everything that we create because it all gets mushed together. I thought it was very smart and an achievement. So I'm claiming it for the movies. Thank you, Bo Burnham. I think you're right too. I'll tell you a quick story. I was in the office a couple of weeks ago recording a Rewatchables podcast and I got there a little

early and I sat down and the producer of that show, co-host of the Ringer fantasy football show, Craig Horlbeck was there. And Craig in a very whispery voice was like, hey, Sean, did you see Bo Burnham's inside? I know you made a podcast about it. I didn't listen to it, but did you see it? And I said, yeah, I saw it. And we started talking about it. And you know, Craig is a little bit younger than we are. And Craig was, you know, basically like, this is my guy. This is a guy who I have been following since I was a teenager. Bo famously started making YouTube videos, writing parody songs, doing a kind of modernized internet version of stand-up when he was like 15, 16 years old.

And so Craig was really, really invested in him and in what he's doing and in his journey as like a creative person, as a filmmaker, et cetera. I think you and I might've mentioned this when we did an episode about it, but we're really not. You were not a huge fan of eighth grade. I liked eighth grade, but everything before that I just didn't have any relationship to and so It's cool that I think he not only is evolving as an artist But I feel like is actually bringing more people kind of into his project I thought this was a really savvy way to do that. I think you make a good point by identifying that he doesn't He doesn't time stamp this because he doesn't talk about the pandemic.

He's talking about a different kind of isolation, a different kind of alienation or anxiety or whatever you want to call it, while also writing, I think, really funny songs and creating a level of performance that feels a little worryingly real, but also a part of the character that he has been building as a stand-up comedian that

in the past didn't necessarily click for me but i think maybe as we all started to have a very similar experience 2020 resonated a little bit more deeply i think just being a little older than beau when he was doing his shtick in 2015 or 2013 i was like i did i i feel separated from this and this actually made me feel a little bit closer to what he was doing. So it made it work. I mean, we rarely talk about stand-up comedy on this show. And I think-

Again, I'm not totally sure that I consider this stand-up comedy, even though that is his history and what he's doing. And like a lot of the skills that he developed in stand-up comedy are applied here. And I'm sure there are gonna be a million stand-up comedians who like try to do something like this and fall flat on their face, which is guess a different form of comedy but I the other

thing about I think some of it is just like age and time and it's as he becomes slightly more reflective and you know it hasn't like amassed more of an experience and and i you could feel his own history and career in this as well um and that the older you get is possibly the more easier to relate to do you think this is the last time we'll have a quote-unquote stand-up special on a list like this or do you think we're just at the beginning of comedians taking the bow model and expanding? In the sense that we are constantly blurring the lines of what is a movie, is a TV show, is a stand-up comedy, is performance art, is Instagram, is celebrity, is whatever. I don't think it's the last.

Do I think that every stand-up comedian has the ability to make something like this? I emphatically do not. And I am begging them not to try. Like, I am just absolutely begging you. If you were moved by this, same. And we have that in common. And I think that's really special. But unless you have this particular skill set, which includes, you know, writing songs and filming and editing and the understanding of craft, as well as his, you know, particular analytical analytical brain like find your

own inside but please please please don't just try to remake this it's a good point i think actually what ultimately recommends this is not the quality of the songs or the sketch writing or even the emotional insight i think it's how well made this is how edited and shot and conceived it is and that's you know that flatters our sensibilities about talking about movies but it is a really impressive act now he had a whole year by himself to probably not do too much else but i also like the idea of being able to see the seams of it you know being able to see how he did it that's obviously a very self-conscious choice to show us how he can't quite get the lighting rig to work properly or the way that he's kind of setting up the frame with his camera and kind of moving things around. But that idea that we have to do everything by our and a major tension, I think, of this special.

But that he's actually using the format in order to, you know, like the actual technical skills are also part of the analysis and the argument itself is i think pretty special i completely agree what would your um one woman oh my god film be called leave me alone it's just like a blank camera i'm just like i'm not there yeah i had a feeling that you were gonna go in that direction i just i mean i it's like i didn't plan that that was just like my instinctive answer um you know the apple commercial um that's like for privacy that with the delta 5 song minor business sure which has been playing a lot in our home because we've just been watching a lot of sports. And my husband is so mad that this amazing Delta 5 song is being used to sell Apple products.

And I'm just like, this is the best commercial that's ever been made. And I would like these powers. And I want this to be happening at all times with my own business playing. Just as I go through my life. All of our memories and joy is grist for the advertising mill. I think we have to accept that at this stage of our life. All of our memories and joy is grist for the advertising mill. I think we have to accept that at this stage of our life. So your number three and my number two are Summer of Soul, which we've talked about, which I'll talk about with Questlove on the episode. I hope a bunch of people have watched this over the weekend. What a solid movie weekend this was that people at home

just get to watch Summer of Soul and no sudden move yeah at sitting in their home that's pretty dope yes it's happy fourth of july america i guess once again we we did something um no it's nice what does that mean i don't know we established a nation of united states i guess so it's like let's just we got two good movies from two great directors and we got a day off, you know? Do you not want to talk about our founding fathers here and some of their achievements and their sins? Super do not. I wanted to, again, I wanted to take a vacation and I want everyone to mind their own business or leave me out of it. Yeah. Great holiday weekend i mean it is also interesting because historically this

you know independence day the movie would be released on like the wednesday before this weekend and then would just like be gangbusters i assumed that it was released on fourth of july weekend if it wasn't that was really stupid i believe it was you know let's talk about that movie very quickly thank you for bringing it up it's it's uh on the new episode of the rewatchables this week with bill and chris and shay and i think you and i have talked lovingly about it in the past primarily because we both just had gobsmacked you know pre-teen experiences seeing the movie in theaters with people just like cheering and screaming at the top of their lungs you know those videos those fan reaction videos of scenes from avengers endgame where you know, Cap catches the ham. You seriously don't know

what I'm talking about? No. People film themselves watching this and then like cheering. Do you really not know what this is? These are like very,

very popular YouTube videos of just, it's somebody brings, you know, their phone into a movie theater. A scene happens in a movie. They film the scene while sitting in the movie theater

and it captures the like screaming that happened at, like people screaming at the top of their lungs when a marvel character does something you don't know about this i mean i maybe i've like seen it on twitter you know in the way just like the passive scrolling and then someone's like there's a hammer and everyone's cheering but no i'm not subscribed to the channel like what are you talking about i'm a grown-up i have a life i go see these movies i listen to crazy people i love rant and rave about them and all the easter eggs you know i give as much of my brain and time to it i don't know why i even asked you this

nevertheless i was just gonna make a comparison because this is a strand of of of culture i guess of reactive culture where people do this now when they go to these movies and when a big moment happens they film them i have seen a very cute one of a father showing his son um the big eye like luke i am your father reveal in star wars and it's like a four-year-old being like oh you know that's in the same genre okay i feel like the originating version of that for our generation is will smith punching the alien saying welcome to earth yeah and then the bill pullman speech those two things when people were either like cry clapping because they were like, Bill Pullman is the president.

You know, Bill Clinton can die in a fire because it is now Bill Pullman's time. And the welcome to earth thing where I, I swear to God, someone in my theater, I think I was 13 years old when this movie came out, was like your goddamn motherfucking right. When we were like, we were all for will smith to become a movie star

and in one second he did it he did yeah in that scene that was so special what a fun movie love that movie i also in terms of reactions when the the ship opens up and just absolutely nukes the white house yeah you enjoyed that like well there's no going back that's because that's because you're an emotional terrorist. And that's what you appreciated, is those aliens coming down and destroying. That is, when you talk about disasters, we did this on our Apocalypse podcast, which is still, I think, the funniest podcast we've ever done. We were really in a weird place.

But someone says, the world is ending. And I see that giant laser down over the white house. Like that's it. That's just one shot. You know, it's amazing. We, we learned last year that when something like that is going to happen, it's going to be much more mundane. It's just going to be, you know, a bat bit of pig.

And then all of a sudden the world shuts down for a year. It's going to be contagion. Anyway, I brought up independence day because that all of us going to the theater and cheering while Will Smith punches an alien is how we used to celebrate this holiday at the movies. And it is quite different, if not better, that now in our homes we have movies by Steven Soderbergh and by Questlove that are wonderful pieces of art and definitely on our like top five movies of the year and not in like a cute independence day way though i probably in 1996 would have put independence day on my top five of the year i you know i again i was 12 so but it's it's different movies are different we'll probably find out when we get around to 1996 movie draft that'll have to happen at some point because you and I were both coming into

a higher level of consciousness about movies around that time. Okay, let's go to my number three. My number three is a movie called Test Pattern. I saw this movie for the first time last night. I had been told by a handful of people that it was really great. I would say I was even more knocked out by it

than I expected. This is a movie that was originally released in film festivals in 2019. It was not released to the public until February of this year. It's a first film from a woman named Shatara Michelle Ford. And I was, I was gobsmacked. I was blown away by this movie,

which starts out as a kind of like meet cute dramedy between a man and a woman in Texas and slowly evolves into like a true romance and then devolves into a kind of, you know, really frankly, a sexual assault horror movie and then turns into kind of like almost like a chase movie, like an anxiety inducing movie about the pursuit of a rape kit to kind of get to the bottom of what had happened. Now, all of this sounds very upsetting, and at times it is a very upsetting and difficult movie to watch, but it's also very gracefully made, very confidently made. Ford has such a clear vision of how she wants to tell the story. There are a few filmmaking

flourishes, the way that the film is edited, the way conversations are interrupted, the way flashback is used. Sometimes you see a movie and you're like, this person just has it. A filmmaker just has it. They have a total sense of what they want to do when they set out to make a movie. Again, like a lot of the other movies on our list, this is a very lean movie. It's only 82 minutes. You can rent it on VOD right now on Apple or on Amazon or anywhere else. It was released by Kino Lorber. Truly exceptional performances by the two leads, Brittany S. Hall and Will Brill. Two people whose faces you might have seen before in movies, but that are by no means stars. But I would guess if producers are

seeing a movie like this, that actors like this will get a lot more opportunities to do a lot more great work. I got to say, I was relieved, excited, happy to have a movie like this. It is a tough watch. It is a complex story. It's not just about sex and relationships and sexual assault and race and power and the idea of crusaderdom, which is, you know, I think a really complicated and relevant idea in 2021, but really, really sensitive and careful and even at times like funny and charming

and sensual kind of a movie. Very rare to see all of those things kind of in one big pot. So I would highly recommend Test Pattern to people who are looking for something a little bit more challenging than Godzilla vs. Kong. Yeah. Wow. That was quite a recommendation. Give it a shot. I mean, I really liked it. Okay. What's your number two, which is my number one?

Judas and the Black Messiah. This is a very good film that you and I both really enjoyed. Yeah. It feels odd to think of it as 2021, even more than Minari. Like I think this movie feels like it came out like, I don't know, 20 years ago. It's been a long year. I probably first saw it in December of 2020. I think, did you see it later than that?

No, I do think that I saw it in this calendar year. And the tricky thing about it was the way that it was released. It just got an HBO. It got a simultaneous HBO Max and theater release, I believe, but then was taken off HBO Max pretty quickly. In addition to all the hand wringing that we did about the HBO Max plan, it was a little bit revolutionary is too strong of a word, but it was an innovative idea to create a new kind of windowing to say that these movies are only available on this service for this amount of days and then it's gone for a while and i don't we're not going to tell you when it's coming back could

be three months could be a year it's a movie that i think i did watch it a second time as we prepared for the oscars and felt its power even more so the second time around. I think very similar to a movie like Test Pattern. When you're watching the movie, you're like, oh, Shaka King, he's got it. He's got camera moves. He's got a sense of pace. He really knows how to get great performances out of his actors, scale. There were some kind of concerns and complaints about whether or not the movie was focused on the right characters or

whether or not it was too much about William O'Neill. I think we talked about it at the time of release. I didn't feel that way at all. I think it actually would have been more of a standard biopic if it had been purely Fred Hampton focused for two hours. I liked that it showed this contrast that created this kind of Shakespearean cat and mouse kind of heist thriller strategy to it. It felt, frankly, much more similar to a lot of movies that we got in the 90s that you and I both really like. And I don't think that that trivialized the ideas in the movie either. I'm still trying to wrap my head around some of the reaction to it because when I saw it i there are not a lot of movies in the

history of hollywood backed by studios like warner brothers that are willing to support and and and portray political ideas that are this left of center and so i've been turning that over in my head as to like was it not far enough like what what animated that reaction specifically not that that matters to the quality of the movie but it has been in my head right and listen you and i are going to have one reaction and people are more than allowed to have other reactions and not feel like certain characters or performances are rounded enough or um it fully comes through to them i i think this was an interesting case of this was a movie that actually did spur discussion, which is cool. We don't get that many of those. And as you said, like a shot,

the king clearly has it. And so much of the movie is working and competent that you then get to like talk about the ideas. Most movies don't make it that far, but it's a combination of, of that level of conversation paired with the fact that it didn't seem like that many people saw it. And it was like, people didn't understand how to see it and it was hard to see. And so people were talking a bit, maybe around it or maybe around each other. It's like, you know, and I think you and I sometimes bemoan this sort of like hot take. Now there's 48 hours where everyone's just like all arguing about a movie all together and i do still bemoan that because a lot of times i think it's like bad faith or just you know bad ideas like not not everyone with a twitter account is um a high level critic but it does at least focus

you know when we're all talking about the same thing we're all talking about the same thing and i think this one just kind of got a little bit, everyone got to it at a different time. Yeah. So I, I think one, I think you're completely right that it's a waste of time to focus on whatever straw man internet reaction I'm responding to. I think, but I think I've, I've disagreed with, with our boss, Bill. I've just, we've disagreed with Wesley about this movie, you know, like there I've talked to a handful of people whose opinions I take seriously about the movie and it didn't click for them. You know, it didn't work for them.

And you're right that that actually is a good thing. It's a good thing for like the discourse of movies that something was good enough, worthy enough for that level of analysis

because you're right. It does kind of feel like we don't necessarily, even you and I don't necessarily get to kind of pull apart movies. We can't really pull apart Godzilla versus Kong. It's a it's a

helpless mosquito relative to something like judas which is you know really serious and and sincerely mounted movie um you know it's just i i don't know we may not get to a point where it's like there's now a kind of consensus or millions of people have had a chance to see this movie because on the one hand it's a historical drama and so that alone i think limits the number of people that are going to be interested in it it's obviously it's a primarily a story about black characters which also that means a bunch of people just won't watch it because they're racist or they're not interested in those stories or whatever and it's been confusing the way that it's been released and that is like the new normal now where it's like where can i find that when is it available to me and so that also contributes to the i don't know the kind of like dispersal of

big top monoculture conversation around quality films and that is much more important as a conversation point than like did avengers endgame make two billion billion or not. Who cares about that? That's like stock price ledger balancing stuff for corporations. For me, I really love Judas. I thought it was like a really significant film and I want to have more conversation about it. I want to better understand what people do or do not like about it.

I hope people check it out. One thing that would have been smart, I thought, would have been just put the movie back on HBO Max the day after the Oscars. Just for a week. It's not that hard. Just for a week. Create a campaign that's like,

hey, the performance of the year, Daniel Kaluuya and Judas and the Black Messiah, watch it now and put a huge promo behind it. But they didn't do that. Because the Property Brothers didn't want that to happen. It's a real shame. So that was your number two and that was my number one. So we're up to your number one. What is it? Yes. So it's a film called Quo Vata Saida,

which we talked about very briefly, I think, during the Oscars episode. And I don't know. Sorry to put like a bummer town movie as my number one. But this is a film directed by Jasmila Zubanich. And it's a film set during the Bosnian war and about a UN translator who is trying to manage her town and her family through what becomes a historic massacre. And this is one that, that you know had a lot of buzz but it's also an you know an international film so I it's like I scooped it up on Hulu one day like I was doing all of my Oscar research and I was like oh yeah I gotta see this and so I suppose my expectations were somewhat I don't want to say low but I wasn't like I'm sitting down for a masterpiece and as such was completely blown away by it. Like the tone and the pace and the quiet anxiety that just ratchets up throughout the movie while giving you a real sense of place of this main character of this town of what's at stake and what is going to be lost you know a historical event

in the 90s that I was aware of but didn't know as much about and so I do think it also really creates a sense of of of place and explains some of the history but not in a heavy-handed way and really just like devastating I that makes it sound also like homework. And I think that there is something really like propulsive and stressful, but something that keeps you watching to this movie as well, even as you know, it is ultimately an incredibly upsetting story, but I, I'm not selling it very well because you know, it is like an extremely sad movie. But it is also a very watchable movie, which sounds gross to say. But I really recommend you check it out.

You're right. It has a kind of thriller element from that first sequence where she's kind of like negotiating with the military and trying to come to some sort of, you know, peaceful way forward. You get the sense that the stakes are really high, obviously as high as they can be in a war movie but also that this character is feels trapped feels unable to figure out how to go forward and then that sets you up for i think you're right what is a very compelling movie sensitively made um yasna durchich who's the star i believe is like amazing in this movie she's so good you're also right that is reasonable to enter a best international feature nominee with a little bit of skepticism or trepidation and you know typically the the movies about like historical tragedies often have um just like a heavy-handed dutiful quality to them which i i don't mean to be disrespectful i but you don't expect like the level of of filmmaking and forward movement almost yes they

are they are serious films that are more interested in sending their message that necessarily than in being great films this is this is a movie that at times is doing both which is really impressive that's very good that's also available on hulu that's the thing with the exception of test pattern which i mentioned which is on vod stream all these movies except for judas and the black messiah which i hope maybe will be on hbo max again soon um anything else that you want to shout? Any honorable mentions? Anything?

One thing I noticed as I looked at your list is all five of your films are period pieces, including Bo Burnham Inside, which I think of as a true 2020 period piece. What do you think that means? You trying to go back to the past, Amanda? Well, I don't think that we had any movies made last year, except for, you know, Bo Burnham Inside. that we had any movies made last year except for you know boburnum inside i guess notice i didn't move but not a lot of movies like made in the present of 2020 and i definitely don't want any movies made in the present of 2020 i know we're gonna get them i know we need the tv shows and

the novels and the non-fiction and the podcast and you know like i i no no thanks like made it through i'm looking forward but i guess that's part of it is that that's all that's left like all of the present-day movies just didn't exist last year i i feel like you're discounting the michael bay produced film songbird you may have seen that the thriller you know and there was the doug lyman movie with ann hathaway and and she would tell edgier for that you know that was a harrod heist movie speaking of heist movies i forgot that one for um and then apparently sharon horgan and james mcavoy made like the british version of that movie even though that movie was also set in london so i guess i'll watch some of them but i would throw my life away for sharon horgan do you know that that's really

like yeah that's really my speed i might throw my life away for james mcavoy so wow let's give them a call maybe that's a future podcast for us um we're getting some good movies i think july and august is actually going to be a little rough as far as new releases go i think it's going to be a little bit of a grim summer you know i got an m night sham. Night Shyamalan movie, James Gunn superhero movie. Annette I think will be really exciting. The latest Carrick's movie that is premiering at Cannes, but then comes in August to Amazon. It's not really until September, though,

when things start cooking. Anything that you're just like, give it to me now. Like, give me a summer break here. I mean, Top Gun. Just why do we have to do that? I understand why. It's because they are just absolutely desperate for money and are waiting for everyone to get comfortable and things to kind of really get back in the flow. They didn't want to be the first one and they didn't want to be the, you know, kind of medium pandemic record box office whatever but i i mean just planes flying really loudly and tom cruise that's just that's a dumb summer experience give it to me that would have been nice unfortunately we're not going to get it but we are going to get a lot more movies very very soon thank you amanda let's

go now to my conversation with questlove delighted to be joined by amir Questlove-Thompson. Amir, what's up, man? How are you? Good. I'm good. Really good. Thanks for doing the show. Congratulations on your directorial debut. How are you feeling? Are you excited? Yeah, I'm excited because this is kind of territory uh not traveled before you know i thought all creativity was transferable but

um in this very specific case um you know i i realized early in the game that you get like your first album or your first book or your first sneaker design whatever so um i think the other times I just never cherished it as much. So being as though this is probably the last first I'm going to do unless I run for president in 2040. Is that on the table? No. The way my life is right now, I joke with people that this was not on my bingo card five years ago but um i'm one of those people that's just open to the possibilities of you know wherever life leads me so if if i'm indeed called to do that then i guess uh this is where i'll make my announcement so

um i'm gonna i'm gonna file that away for 50 years from now when I'm still doing this podcast. It's funny. I do want to hear about how you found yourself coming to this place because I was listening to your podcast recently and you were having a conversation with Catherine Bigelow. I was like, oh, okay. Questlove does love films. He's curious about films, but obviously this isn't something that you've done specifically before. So why this story and how did it come about? All right. So I'll basically say that I was approached by the two producers of the film, Robert Feivel and David Dinerstein. They told me about this mythical mythical festival in Harlem and, you know,

with all these acts on it, you know, as someone who grew up around music and, you know, producing and playing music and teaching at NYU and, you know, a music snob, if you will.

I, I hadn't heard of this festival. And so I wasn't fully convinced of its existence. So I thought, you know, I joked that I always thought those guys were just trying to finesse me for some Tonight Show tickets. But when I saw it, when they came with the footage, then I was like, I was mind blown. I had to be involved. But, you know, it was a shocker if you will i kind of came in a little arrogant like that didn't happen i never heard of that thing

and then suddenly like uh no this really did happen now i gotta do it so um i stepped up to the plate so what do you do then you learn of of this existence, of this footage. You start figuring out what's going on at this festival. What's the first phone call you make as a filmmaker to say, yo, let's do it? First phone call I made was to my manager. Get me out of this. I was like, are y'all crazy? Like, what?

No, you know, it first went to, you know, not that, uh, Hey, we'll do lunch. Have my people call your people. It was just like, yeah, we want to show you this footage. All right. Well, you know, come through, shake their hands. All right. Goodbye guys. And thought that that was it. Once I realized it was real. Um, then I was like, wait, y'all sure? Like, I just got my permit a second ago y'all sure you want me to drive this 18-wheeler like you want a first-time driver um and then they told me they basically told me that you know well we have been watching you and you're the perfect person to tell the story um you know you've written books you've curated things before um so this was actually a chance for me to put my money where my mouth was because you know even in creative quest where i encourage people to totally like just jump off the cliff uh without any second thought like like just jump into creativity now it was like my my chance to see if I was a hypocrite or not. Like, it's good for all of you, but not for me.

And so the first thing I did was, well, we had 40 hours of footage already transferred, I guess, from the few other times where they tried to sell the film in the last 50 years. There was a transferred copy made and I decided this is going to be my aquarium. I stole this aquarium idea from Prince. I shared a story a long time ago about how I once got fired from a Prince DJ gig and replaced with um finding nemo um prince famously kept uh a a sort of like a briefcase

with nothing but finding nemo dvds in case he loses one there's another backup um but he uses finding nemo as uh an aquarium so wherever he is, if there's a DVD player or in a restaurant, whatever, he makes them put it on so he can have, he says it does something to him. Like the visuals makes it like he has his own fish tank. It's not cool getting fired by Prince, but I stole that idea.

So for the next five months, I kept that constant aquarium on. Like even if I'm sleeping, even if I'm... No matter what, I had to transfer to my phone, traveling, my monitors in the bathroom. Five hours, five months straight of just taking this in. And I was trying to curate it like I was curating on like I curate uh any shows that I do um the first thing I want to grab is the last thing I think people tend to remember when they see shows how the show ended um which means that even if the show sucks you can you can use

that last 10 minutes your encore whatever to make them forget what they saw. In the beginning, people tend to remember how things started. So when things would hit me, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, see something interesting, take a note of it. And then that's how we pretty of footage and just figure it out. What's the right snippet to use out of all that generous footage we had? What was more difficult to contextualize in the film? Because it feels like there's two stories to tell. There's what was Harlem and what was maybe black life in New York like in 1969?

And then what was soul and R&B at the time? What was harder for you to kind of put into context? So see, there were four things that I was trying to get answered. Number one was like, how did they pull this off? Or the audacity of them to dream that pulled this off. So I was obsessed with that. And then I was also obsessed with the story of what happens in 1969 to black people pretty much mirrors all across the United States. So telling the story of Harlem is telling the story of every town USA with people having those same experiences.

But then there's also the story of why was this easily disposable or the dangers of being disposable? And then the fourth one was kind of where I think the advantage of getting a musician to direct a music documentary is there's some questions in places that I'll go if your average filmmaker would even know that was Sonny Chirac playing with Herbie Mann or, you know, who would know to ask Stevie Wonder, how did he get a limited red and white Horner clavinet series a year before it came out. So, I mean, I asked a billion questions about just general things. Because, you know, even as a touring group, you know, I was curious about, you know, was there a rider back then? Did you guys know what the word charcuterie meant? Like, was there a cheese spread backstage? Did Stevie Wonder have a... Probably for me personally, I got off on reading the contracts like I had no clue that I could have had Sly and the Family Stone like play my barbecue for like so cheap. They did that for twenty five hundred dollars.

So, wow. I was like, wait a minute. I don't even play my opening DJs that like so, you know, but just like hotel arrangements and you know were there drivers back then did you guys have tour buses like just general things I wanted to know even like the conga playing techniques of mango santa maria versus ray barretto like sheila explaining that so probably the four the four things, answering those four questions, but editing a lot because my first draft was like three hours and 25 minutes. So taking 90 minutes away was so painful. So I want to ask you about that specifically, which is you are renowned for your

attention to detail in recording history. You know, the studios where stuff happens, you know, guys who played on records over the years, there's a lot of opportunity to go down rabbit holes here. And you didn't, I feel like the movie is lean and flows and it has rhythm. And was it hard for you to do that? Was it hard for you to cut out the little nuggets that you care about, but maybe a mainstream audience might not cling to? Yeah. So there's one chip that I don't have in me. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I do not have a you can't tell me nothing chip. I don't have a my way or the highway chip. So I fully came in the gate to my producers and to my staff, to everyone. Your opinion counts here. And that's not like a self-doubt thing, but just the way I tend to work.

Focus groups are my friends. So I'm always gathering 15 people to individually play them something or show them something and figure out and just take a gauge on what they're attracted to, what they didn't like, what they gravitated to. And in this particular case, you know, everyone came to me from the gate like, yes, we know you come from the land of uh you know bloated you know my all-time favorite hip-hop album has 24 songs on it doesn't need it but you know and i came from just that bloated more more is more um environment and so our first draft it was like, okay, this is good, but we can always push further. And so I was just like, okay, well, I want this to really hit people to the place two hours. So it was like a lot of, probably the most I had to take away was the comedy element. Because I don't think there was a succinct way for me to really explain, because there's four types of humor there. There's like, you know, Moms Mabley, Brand of Humor, Pick Me, Markham, like his one and only documented full performance of what he did. Pikmin is performed at the Apollo more than any other artist in history.

Like, even his comedy dates back to, like, pre-menstrualcy, you know? So his evolution to where he was then and still killing, that was a sight to see. And then, like, Willie Tyler and Lester. So, you know, this fan trolquist act and George Kirby, who was, you know, get imitate Johnny Mathis and Sam Cooke. So even with a lot of editing, I would have had to spend at least 20 to 25 minutes on just comedy. And, you know,

I just had to pull it out altogether because then it would have been lengthy. So it was hard to do. But to me, it was more effective just to serve the film than to serve scratching itches that I had about writers and Stevie Wonder's signature. Small things that only I'm curious about. One of the magic tricks of the movie is proving not just to yourself that it was real, but to the people who were there that it's real and getting attendees to participate. How did you find people who were there? And did you have to have them prove to you that they were there? Okay, so here's the deal.

We were trying to figure out how to do this. And I just said, well, let me throw the first stone. So I put out a simple tweet. I was like, oh, Harlem residents, if you had an uncle or an aunt, do you have anyone that ever told you a story about the time that they saw Sly and the Family Stone and Nina Simone together on one stage and all these things? I got about 40 to 60 of them. A lot of them were like, oh, yeah, I heard about it, but I didn't go. So what's really weird is our attendee who booked ends the film,

Musa Jackson, he kind of gave us like a full disclosure. Like, look, I was only five years old when it came out. But, you know, I have fond memories of this. And first I was a little slow to do it because I was like, well, like what insight or point of view does a five-year-old really have to take in? But he told us, he said, this is the first memory I ever had in my life. So for him, it meant much more because he was just to the place where as a 57-year-old, he didn't know if he even had that memory like did i dream this i think this happened i'm not sure but um so we just collectively decided to okay we're going to end

interview you first without context just tell us everything you know about it and without just me asking like what are your memories of the home and then he just started he just one by one just started naming all these very specific things that unless he works for you know ap um there's no way he would have known and had access to a very specific new york times file um there's no way that he'd known these things and so we weren't even expecting it. But, you know, just so happens that we had some of the transferred film over. And because he mentioned the fifth dimension, we just happened to have that footage. It came to us like not even an hour beforehand. And so we're kind of watching it together.

But we were like, OK, well, let's tape him watching and see if anything else comes from this. And man, the floodgates just opened because it was like, you know, there's nothing better than the confirmation of like, wow, I was right. I was right. This really did happen. So, you know, to watch him see his history, to see him know that he wasn't crazy, that it wasn't a figment of his imagination. Because that's the thing. If I didn't believe these two gentlemen, that Stevie Wonder and Sly and all these people got together. Imagine him telling people, I went to a concert once and I saw all these people. And there's no documenting of it at all. So you tend to think that it didn't happen or it was just your imagination. And for us to give that back to him, that's when we knew instantly,

okay, we have to find other people on this level. And so that's when the door started opening. Because in the beginning, I was just going to have it just be a performance and nothing else. I got to ask you, did you start doing that before or after the last dance um we started i'll say we started the first round so this would have been before um i think around november of 2019 is when we started the rounds of interviews actually Actually, my North star here, I forgot about the last dance. My North star here was actually a amazing grace.

And the way that Sidney Pollack sort of framed it, where like you're in the room with them watching, you know, that shows you the power of Aretha franklin's voice where even without context um you're just with her the whole time you're in that church watching without knowing the stories it wasn't until after that movie in which you know i got to talk to chuck rainey and bernard purdy and then they just came with story after story of about like you know the rolling stones taking the parking spots away from james James Cleveland and him getting angry over that, tripping over the chords.

And when Clara Ward walked in and how that jolted Aretha Franklin, like, you know, was that a flex? Like, why? Why does she choose that moment to walk in like while she's singing like all these stories behind it. And then I realized like, Oh, I too want to know what was happening in context, but do it in a way so that you never leave the festival. And so that's, that was the challenge to, to give you guys a director's commentary and context without really leaving that festival. It's really,

it's really, really effective. It's really, really effective. It's smart. Thank you. I wanted to, obviously, seeing Stevie and seeing Sly and iconic artists like that is really exciting in the film, but it seems like you were relishing

getting to tell almost like a mini story about an act like The Fifth Dimension, which is a band that maybe a lot of people know the songs but maybe if you're someone you don't know the story at all and uh i thought i mean that was one of my favorite parts thank you you you validated me because lord i fought to keep that wild story they're like i don't know the The story doesn't serve the concert of me. And I was like, yo, you got to understand this was the, this was the most popular song of 1969 on both charts.

And they want a Grammy before they knew what a Grammy was. And this almost didn't, this lost wallet is what caused this to happen. Hell yeah. I'm going to tell this story. But you know, in the case of Merlin mccoo and billy davis jr so i grew up with them kind of in their second phase when they had left the fifth

dimension and you know when i was growing up it was all about variety shows now we have like competition shows and we have um reality shows but you know when i was a kid everyone had you know it's like donnie marie had a show and the jacksons had a show and then gladys night and the pips had a show and flip wilson sunny and share and you know merlin mccoo and billy davis jr also had their variety show as well that i watched religiously and so i noticed that with the performance of the Fifth Dimension in Harlem was way different than the performances that I've seen them do when they were in the Fifth Dimension, like on variety shows like the Ed Sullivan showivan show or the tonight show where you know they're more polished and more sophisticated and here i was like wow i'm not i wasn't used to seeing them be that loose and so i just you know i happened to ask you know billy like i never knew that you had a raspy gospel preacher voice into you like he was doing a lot of like a lot of that stuff and um suddenly i realized what i was witnessing because my band had to go through the same thing which is often like you

know um black groups often have to code switch um i mean black people in general have to code switch when they're in the professional atmosphere no matter where they are at work I only recognized it because it's like some nights the roots are opening for Soundgarden or System of a Down and then other nights the roots are

opening for Raekwon and Ghost or a tribe called Quest and so you have to adjust your show accordingly. And so recognizing that and realizing that I was seeing a very rare performance of the fifth dimension be just very relaxed and playful on stage, like a little too playful.

You know, Merlin just let the floodgates out was just like yeah like we this is the type of show we always wanted to do but you know when you're in a position where you constantly have the stress of being under code switching and and always being on your best behavior like it gets stressful sometimes you know because sometimes because it's a means of survival. The same with Sly and the Family Stone. What makes that performance so revolutionary that you're witnessing is, for me, the most interesting camera angle was camera four, which is on the audience. Because the only way I can describe it, when I describe it to um my girlfriend's kids who were like in their 20s you know I'm explaining to them because you know they're raised by my age my my era hip-hop parents

so they get the language and I tell them like this is the equivalent of if we were in a time machine watching a Wu-Tang show and today's Migos was like the opening act and that's it's clearly a dividing line between generations and when you see Sly and the Family Stone come out like every adult in the room is shocked because it's like wait a minute they're not wearing tuxedos they're not you know David Ruffin it's the middle of August and David Ruffin has on a wool tuxedo and a winter coat yes I was going to bring that up to you the the ruffled pink tuxedo and a winter coat. Yes. I was going to bring that up to you. The ruffled pink tuxedo shirt.

You got to be professional. Right. And it's sort of like you have to be professional before you're even comfortable. I was like, who would wear that in August? And it's just like your comfort doesn't matter. It's like what you have to do when you're in front of company. You have to dress up. And so for Sly and the Family Stone to just walk out on stage in their everyday gear, looking like aliens,

it took them four songs to win over everybody that I perceived to be over the age of 25. Like kids are losing their mind. Like Sly and the Family Stone. So I was like, oh, this would be like if my nephews were like, oh my God, Migos is here. And I'm like, oh yeah, they're cool. They jump around it's a lot of family stuff. So I was like, oh, this would be like if my nephews were like, oh my God, Migos is here. And I'm like, oh yeah, they're cool. They jump around on stage a lot.

But it was amazing to watch them totally convert that audience from half life to full-fledged fans in 45 minutes. It was amazing to watch that. Did you look at any other films before you started doing this? You mentioned Amazing Grace. Was there anything else that you thought, I like how this story is told as opposed to just, here's how the footage is positioned? You know, in general, as with a lot of things in my life,

I didn't know that I was preparing for this even before this happened. So that said, I will say that way before 2006, I was YouTube. I was the guy that had to carry these two big ass like Kipling bags of VHS tapes and DVDs. Cause you never know when D'Angelo is going to want to watch some obscure, you know, performance by Chicago in Denver. Or if I got to run blah,

blah, blah's manager and Al green performance to like, I was that guy. People call me up. Yo, can we borrow your, uh, your temptations live in japan uh

cd so so we can see you know how they structure their stage show like i was that guy from between 97 and really 2005 like i was the only person i knew that owned that prince michael jackson james brown moment and now the whole world knows it. But for a while, I was like the little boy that cried wolf. Like, really? You got Prince Michael Jackson, James Brown and Prince Falls off? Yeah, right. Whatever.

No, for real. I did it. Like I was that person. So, you know, I will say that all that time on the tour bus, my jobs and living on that tour bus with the Roots from like 93 to 2009, like my job was always the night before any run, I'd go buy $1,000 worth of DVDs, whatever. entertainment uh curator of both route store buses so you know this went way beyond like getting star wars and you know any trilogies or whatever like i would have to go to like you know art house or art store i'm sorry art house movie theaters and whatnot to get criterion collections and get so there's literally nothing that we've not watched 42 times over either director's commentary or whatever.

And so like I took it all in, but I won't say that I specifically said like, okay, let me watch the last waltz or, you know, this particular documentary. I just, I took in everything.

I heard that you're directing a Sly Stone documentary. That's your next film. I am. I got, I're directing a Sly Stone documentary. That's your next film. Yes, I am. I got to ask you about it quickly. Yeah. This is one of the most mysterious and genius people who has ever lived and has been living in a kind of obscurity for a long time. And I think we're now at the stage where a lot of young folks just don't know who he is or what that band did and all that stuff so i how do you how do you start how do you even tackle this yeah how do you do it

we we we had our first brainstorm um this past week so this is what i do know well yeah first if it's like what does the world know about You know, the world knows right now he's probably just operating on what older figures like myself tell you. Slashone was a genius. And then anyone younger than me or someone not knowing better is just going to trust that, okay, Amir knows what he's talking about, so I'll take his word for it. And then there's people that know the songs and then there's people that don't even know that they know the songs. It's like, I know you love the Humpty Dance by Digital Underground but without Sly Stone

that song doesn't sound the same. I know you love this particular song or these drums were taken from that or... And so there's so many ways to attack it. What I think is, what I was obsessed about when making this film is that this performance in Summer of Soul

is Sly having a dress rehearsal for the moment that turns into to a household word, which is Woodstock. Woodstock happens two weeks later for Sly. So he's doing this as a dress rehearsal. And, you know, from what I know is the world's in the palm of his hands. And all he has to do is just, you know, you have to dunk the ball. all he has to do is just you know you have to dunk the ball all you have to do is just a layup just put the ball in and what winds up happening you know

sort of remains to be seen because you know for all of our worship of there's a riot going on i have a very different relationship with that record. That's a very painful album for me to listen to. Like listening to There's a Riot Going On, if I had to put it in today's context, it's almost like the anxiety you feel watching Adam Sandler and Uncut Gems. It's, you know, Uncut Gems.

Uncut Gems is a gripping film. It's an excellent film, but it stresses you the fuck out. And there's a riot going on. Yes, it invented funk. It defined funk. It defines the way that we're going to play music for the next 100 years. If you're talking about funk music. However, I can't ignore the fact that this is one of the slowest deaths.

It's like a car accident that you're slowly riding by and taking photos of. And it's just, for me, what I want to do, one, I want to know what brought him to that place, because this still lends into the Merlin McCoo situation, where I know Sly as a disc jockey before the record deal. instrumental in planting the seeds of ideas that a lot of countercultural Bay Area, hate street hippies were getting into. Like that period between 62 and 66 that he's just a radio DJ. He's already programming the kind of rebellion that once they're teenagers, they're hippies and whatnot. So he's actually part of that counterculture movement too. And then on the other hand, he has a foot in Oakland

with the Black Panthers and the pressure to never forget and stay Black. And so I know that level of code switching has to be exhausting. And so I want to tell the story of a human being because we often tend to, when it's geniuses, be it a monster or a genius, like we have music figures that are absolute monsters and we have music figures that are absolute geniuses. But it's really hard to just get to the center of the heart of the situation and humanize them. So I'm going to try to really take away the tragic music figure that we've all seen, be it, you know, be it Kurt Cobain, be it, uh, Charlie Parker, be it Hendrix or whatever. Like he was a genius at his talent, but his life was tragic. Like there's something, there's something in between there that hasn't been observed yet. And that's where I, that's what I want to kind of peek and peek under the hood and see. So I have my work cut out for me. That sounds very exciting. I wish you luck. Um, Am you amir you're a you're a filmmaker now we end every episode of this show by asking

filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen i know you watch a lot of stuff there's this documentary that i got hip to um about mushrooms okay um hang on it is called i guarantee you're the first person to recommend this one oh it's called fantastic uh fungi okay and it's it's a film uh this director uh his name is uh lewis wait i'm trying to pronounce his name. Lewin Schwartzburg. And it literally explains why, how the earth sort of operates. You know, oftentimes when you see those, those films where they'll, they'll put a camera on a particular plot of land and you get to watch time elapse. Yes. Like they'll put it there for a week and you get to see it.

Yeah, I didn't realize the roles that mushrooms play in our everyday life and in like how it operates as medicine, how it operates for the earth. Yeah, this is literally, I literally became probably the human that I used to make fun of. I turned into that person last year. So, you know, quarantining on a farm alone, silence, not much TV to watch, at least not the level of television that I was used to watching

before my girlfriend moved in. So we watched just a lot of really cool documentaries and this fantastic Fungai documentary is a sight to behold. I highly recommend it. I'm going to check it out congratulations on uh on summer of soul man i really appreciate the time today thank you man i appreciate it thanks to quest love and thanks to amanda and of course thanks to kai mcmullen today's producer and bobby wagner for his work on this episode later this week on the big picture we're talking about the return of the MCU with an emphasis on the sea.

Black Widow is almost here, and we will review it. We'll see you then.