The Big Picture - Top Five Quentin Tarantino Films. Plus: David Crosby, Cameron Crowe, and A.J. Eaton on ‘David Crosby: Remember My Name’ | The Big Picture

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

The ‘Cats’ trailer set fire to Twitter, and Marvel extinguished the flames by announcing its next decade of IP dominance—what are we looking forward to most (1:00)? Then, we finally hash it out: We debate the top five Quentin Tarantino movies (16:15). Lastly, producer Cameron Crowe, director A.J. Eaton, and titular star David Crosby join the show to discuss ‘David Crosby: Remember My Name,’ the long-in-the-works documentary about Crosby’s legendary life and music career (1:22:45). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Jason Concepcion, Chris Ryan, David Crosby, Cameron Crowe, A.J. Eaton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey, Editor-in-Chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the wide world of Quentin Tarantino. We are here because later this week we will see the release of Tarantino's ninth feature film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. After we get through this conversation, we got so much more happening on this show, including an interview with the great rock pioneer, David Crosby, the great filmmaking pioneer, Cameron Crowe, and the documentarian, AJ Eaton. We talked about their new movie, David Crosby, Remember My Name. But now I'm joined by my brothers in Tarantino, Jason Concepcion. Hello. Yes. Hello. Chris Ryan. Hello. What's up? I feel like we've been circling this podcast ever since we first met. Yes. Yes. We have been waiting for years to talk about what we love about

Tarantino and share our top five Tarantino movies. Before we do that though, I just do want to talk to you guys a little bit about everything else going on in the movie world. Because holy shit, 500 things happened since we last locked eyes. Including among them, the trailer for the movie Cats. Curveball. If we could create a vast distance between quality, as vast a distance as possible, from the South Pole to the North Pole and back again. That's Cats to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in pole and back again, that's cats to once upon a time in Hollywood. In my mind, Chris, I really want to know what you thought of the cats trailer. I'm starting to lose the, lose the grip on the rope here, man. Like I, uh,

I don't know. I don't really know what my purpose and role is in this culture. If this is what we're doing. Wow. If we're just going to have brought you to your knees, I'm a fake animal that sings. Like, you don't need me. You don't need my takes. Like, you know what I'm saying? Are you retiring? I'm just saying that, like,

I have nothing to offer cat's culture. Cat's culture, yeah. What is it? Jason, you're a dog guy. You know... Do you wish that Milton could sing?

No. Did I need to see James Corden as a cat? Various other people as cats? I don't know who this movie is for other than intense fans of the extremely long-running Broadway musical

Cats. Which is a utterly mediocre musical, by all accounts. Not really in the pantheon of the greatest musicals of all time. No, it's got a couple of jams. Memories is a jam memories is a jam okay but you know

what else I don't know they've assembled they've assembled a lot of talent do you think that this has like all time stinker written on it

I think it has all time film twitter meme lord written all over it will we find out that film twitter is not the real world I think that is

the most interesting yes that's the big question is the trailer hit on Yes, that's the big question is, the trailer hit on Thursday, everybody acted as if they got A Star Is Born, but in reverse. Yeah. Something that they thought was going to be bad,

and it actually looked worse than they thought it was going to be, and they leapt at the chance, like a cat, to make fun of it. Can I just read some of the names of the characters? Please do. Taylor Swift is playing a cat named Bambalurina. Sure.

Eagerly anticipating that performance. James Corden is playing a cat named Bustopher Jones. Yeah, yeah, of course. They used to call me that. Jennifer Hudson. Grizabella. Yeah. Grizabella is the singer of Memories.

Rebel Wilson? Jenny Any Dots? Yeah, cool. These are cat names, right? This is some creative writing. Jason Derulo, Rum Tum Tugger? Yeah, I know about that guy. Little known fact about cats.

Isn't there somebody named Jellica? Yes. Little known fact about cats is Andrew Lloyd Webber was nine years old when he wrote it. Surprising to learn that. So you guys are not anticipating this movie? Not much, no. Would you say you're anticipating it less than Top Gun Maverick?

Yeah, I mean, I think that if you could, if I could like get in a time machine and they were like, do you want to go back and kill Hitler? Right. Or, you know, see Alexander the Great cross the Russian steppes. I would be like,

can I just go ahead 15 months to see Top Gun 2? In the span of five minutes, you have retired full-time from cultural commentary, and you have stated that rather than kill Hitler, you would like to go forward nine months to see a Top Gun movie. These are high stakes here. I can't imagine. Listen, people's choices are their own choices. I can't imagine sitting through this movie.

Here's the issue with the realistic take on cats. Where are the genitals? Where are they? What's going on with them? You see, I'm watching this trailer and I'm like, I'm expecting to see a pair of hairy cat nuts. Yes. Are you not?

You are. Because it's a realistic description of cats yeah why are we doing it can they wear pants why are they not wearing pants who's uh Corden's character

Bustopher Bustopher's got like a little petticoat yeah so maybe he's guarding it guarding the galaxy some are wearing pants some are not what is the deal

what is the deal is this exactly what you hoped for when you invited us on? I was hoping that Jason would imitate Jerry Seinfeld seeing the trailer for Cats. So yes, this is exactly what I was imagining. I think, Jason, I assume you're excited about Top Gun Maverick though. Yeah, I can't wait to see it. I'm really excited. Even if it's just a shot for shot remake? It looks to be a shot for shot remake and I'm there. Let's do it. I have no problem with that. This is not like a sacred text. This is not like, you guys can't go back to this and mess with canon.

Like, by all means, go back and do a shot for shot remake with upgraded tech. Star Wars did it. Why can't Top Gun? It's very true. Do you guys know who's directing this movie? Joseph Kaczynski. Can you name Joseph Kaczynski's films? Tron and the Firejumpers.

Neither of those titles are fully correct. No, that was one title. Tron and the Firejumpers. It's like, you know, Jim and the- Yeah, one of my favorite prog bands, Tron and the Firejumpers. No, it's Tron colon Legacy, which is the sequel to Tron. And then in 2013, he made the Tom Cruise vehicle Oblivion. Oh, right. Yeah, not a bad movie.

Yeah, I like that movie. I also did not realize that Oblivion is based on Joseph Kaczynski's original graphic novel. What a fucking lord. What a lord. And then in 2017, he made Only the Brave,

a.k.a. the Firejumpers movie. A.k.a. the saddest movie ever made. That's a bold claim. That in terms of endearment. Okay. Fair enough. I'm not sure if Joseph Kosinski

is a great director. Is he a good copier? Just point and shoot, bro. Yeah. Come on. You got Cruz on set. It's the Top Gun story.

Just oil these guys up, bring in the beach sports, and let the jets fly. Just let Tom Cruise grin at you maniacally for 10 minutes, and that gives you all the energy and creative direction that you need. One thing I wanted to know, is Ed Harris supposed to be Viper and Jon Hamm's going to be Jester? Like, is that how it's going to, like? I think Ed Harris is playing the role of God,

and Jon Hamm is playing Jesus, our Lord and Savior, and Cruise is the second coming. Okay, I honestly cannot wait for Jon Hamm's call sign. Those clothes are fitting him quite tightly on the tarmac. Did you notice that? Yeah. He's got his beige on. He's cutting or packing. Yeah.

He appears to be cutting. Yeah. Shout out to Bobby Wagner. One other thing, movies that are coming out soon. Over the weekend at San Diego's Comic-Con, Marvel stepped forward and announced their future. Jason, in particular,

I wanted to know from you, what's your relationship in the aftermath of Endgame to Marvel movies? Do you feel like they are as, I don't know, essential to the popular culture for you at this point?

Do you eagerly anticipate Shang-Chi, Eternals, all these new movies they announced? I do, despite myself. I saw the latest. I saw Spider-Man Far From Home. And I was just struck by

this film studio is just good at what it does. It knows exactly how to do the thing it wants to do. And set up these ridiculously long-range plans in the future. So I have a lot of trust in what they're going to do. And I think, listen, I can't wait for Blade to come back.

Let's freaking go for Blade. The first two Blade movies are actually quite good still. But I can't wait for Mahershala Ali as Blade. Shang-Chi will be very interesting to see which way they go with that. He's started out as a racist trope in the comics and then recently turned into more of a Jason Bourne kind of type character. So it'll be interesting to see which way they go with that. And then some of the TV offerings are very intriguing. Obviously, they want to drive subscribers to that Disney Plus.

Without the tentpole figures, without Robert Downey Jr., without Captain America, where do they go from here? I think, you know, watching Endgame this weekend, just because, I was struck by, especially in the final battle in Tony Stark's funeral, just how many, like, weird ancillary characters there are.

There are so many weird secondary and tertiary characters that we could blow out to see bigger stories from them. Yeah, where's that grown-up kid from Iron Man 3? When's he going to get his expanded universe? We're already heading towards a world where Hawkeye's daughter is going to become Hawkeye

and have her own story, as she did in the comics. So I'm constantly impressed at the way Marvel Studios has managed to faithfully adapt the universe that they created in the comics and then do it in a way that seems absolutely natural for where it lives and can be scaled to really anything they want to do. I'm really excited. Chris, of the five films and four TV series and five other films that were teased, all

told, that were announced at Comic-Con, which of them, if you could pay $100 to see it right now, would you, would you want? I mean, it would, this is a boring answer, but it would probably be Thor. Uh, just because that I felt like they're just on such a heater with that one right now and bringing Taika Waititi back. And by all accounts, the comic that this one's based on is among people's favorites. It's really good. So I'm really excited to see them do more in the vein of Ragnarok.

And they got Portman back, and I'm really excited for that. Were you a big Jane head? Was that one of your fave MCU characters? Yeah, I mean, Dark World, I just do a lot of private screenings. Whenever I kind of meet a new group of people, we have a Dark World screening. How many active Dark World text chains do you have open right now? I just bring it into everything else. Like my Eagles text chain, my Liverpool text chain. I'm like, you guys want to talk Dark World? I was thinking about Jane this weekend. The one that

I'm most curious about is Eternals because I had a funny experience actually coming out of Comic-Con and watching a couple of the trailers for some of the TV shows like Witcher, Somewhat Watchmen, even Westworld 3. It was like a kind of a little bit, oh, an expanse, the first season of the expanse on Amazon, which isn't a show that I've ever had like enough time to really get into where I'm like I'm just hitting maximum world you know like I just I got a lot of worlds in my head right now and there's there's just uh there's only so many times I want to start over and be like well there's this planet and this race of aliens and this planet and that planet and I think the Eternals is like a huge gamble for

them and they've won almost every bet they've placed. But the idea of going out into outer space and having these almost mythological figures who by very nature are not necessarily that human and not that relatable. A lot of what drove interest for me in the Marvel movies in the first place, aside from obviously how important they are to the movie business, was the sort of relatable charm of Downey or Ruffalo or Evans or Scarlett Johansson or Gwyneth Paltrow. So I'm really curious to see if Richard Madden and Angelina Jolie are the next version of that. One of the things I love about Marvel is like, even when they lose, they win because of the structure of what they made. You know,

the first two Thor movies, the first one was forgettable and the second one actively bad and then the third one is maybe the best Marvel movie so they just have created a structure that that is if the movie fails at the least it introduces all these other things into the into the universe and the conversation about whether or not they're going to be hits or not seems to be over yeah you know I think I have a similar relationship to the forthcoming tv shows that you're talking about because the movies are much more important to me. I'm much more interested in them. I think they have a much higher ceiling,

but because I have virtually no expectations whatsoever for WandaVision, maybe that will be good. Maybe if I just try it, I will end up liking it more than I expect to because I don't really care about Scarlet Witch and I don't certainly don't care about Vision who I believe is dead. So, you know, you're right. Thanos really got after him man so I think whatever

they're bringing back with Vision he's gonna be in a different setup I wonder if they can get Benny out of that suit where are you at on Thanos these days you feeling you feeling good about his mission do you think his his pursuit was worthwhile I hope he shows up in Top Gun Maverick he would fit in on that aircraft carrier wearing that tight-fitted beige suit. A couple other things

about the MCU. Do you think that this is a potential mistake to put a lot of movies in a row that feature characters that people are not as enthusiastic about? Because there's a gamble

here to say, we're going to do a Black Widow movie and then we're going to do an Eternals movie full of characters you've never seen before. And then we're going to do a Doctorternals movie full of characters you've never seen before. And then we're going to do

a Doctor Strange movie and they're waiting a long time to get to Black Panther 2, Captain Marvel 2, Guardians 3. Or even characters, even if they haven't cast the characters yet, Fantastic Four and X-Men. Yes. And those are the ones where X-Men is, what do you need from me right now? Do you want my kidney?

I'll give you a kidney if I can even read a treatment right now. But is it possible that that movie is five years away? And if it is, at least five years from now, when we live inside of a volcano, will we need that movie as much as we feel like we do right now? I think that if you look at these movies as whether, you know, it's like the studio crime movies of the forties and then the Westerns of the fifties and sixties, if this is just like what Hollywood makes and what they do well I'm totally fine with that I don't necessarily think that they blot out the ability to make interesting dramas and thoughtful comedies and and like all

sorts of different genre movies if this is the currency then then that's fine with me and I agree with you yeah it's like a long time to, but I think that they do a really good job of explaining what's going on and getting you excited about what's to come. So this will probably be the hardest run for them is to just make sure that people are still engaged with this while they kind of recharge the batteries over the next nine months or whatever it is. Last thing about Marvel, you know, Jason, you mentioned Ragnarok might be the best Marvel movie. A lot of credit for that goes to Taika Waititi, who's coming back

for the new Thor movie. Right around that time, Ryan Coogler's Black Panther came out. Both of those movies were thought to be put more on the hands of the creator than some had previously

been before. A lot of these movies that are coming up are on the hands of unlikely creators, especially Chloe Zhao making Eternals, who's never made anything

one one-hundredth as big as a movie like this, and Destin Daniel Cretton, who's making Shang-Chi. Do you think that the movies will feel more like the products of their creators, or do you think that they will inevitably and invariably have to be MCU things? I think they'll be MCU things, as they all have been. It seems like the process is to bring in a director who will impute their own artistic direction on the quieter scenes, and then you bring in the heavy hitters to do all the action and make it feel like a Marvel movie. And the question is, who's the Russos? Because they're eventually going to need probably a go-to person,

whether that's Sean Watts or whoever, but they're going to need somebody who can handle the team-up movies. Maybe it's James Gunn. I don't know, but the safe pair of hands. I really am excited for what Chloe Zhao and Destin Daniel Cretton come up with for these movies, but we've kind of been through this carousel before

where you're like, can you believe that they're going to really let Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck make a 90s alt-rock version of... Come on. It's not what it's going to be. They've got to have a cat that's an alien. Yeah. They have to go out to space.

Okay. Well, if we're talking about filmmakers who are in total control of their own vision, we are seamlessly going to segue into a conversation about Quentin Tarantino. We're talking top fives. Before you guys start sharing your top fives, and I'll share mine as well, and for those of you who have never heard

an episode of this show, each person goes down the list five through one, their favorite films from this person. Just give me your general thoughts on Tarantino. What he means to you when you first encountered him and what your relationship to his work has been over the last, what is, coming up on 20,

30 years? Coming up on 30 years 92 is reservoir pretty pretty incredible i mean this is basically the span of our adult lives yeah i have filmmakers that mean a lot to me and i i filmmakers that even some of their movies i like more than tarantino movies for sure um there's no filmmaker that's as inextricable with my like personality than quentin Tarantino. I mean, I love the movies of Paul Thomas Anderson. I don't long to talk like Paul Thomas Anderson characters. You remind me a lot of the lead in The Master.

You have kind of a similar affectation. Yeah. I'll leave that to the audience to decide. Yeah. Jason, we were just talking before we started recording. We've talked about this on some rewatchables we've done about his movies. The impact that he had on the way people our age in high school and going into high school at that time had on basically how you communicated

with the world and how you interpreted the world is kind of indescribable. And I know that that might even seem nuts now to have a cultural figure who does that. But in some ways, he was kind of like the last of the really big iconic pop cultural artists who could shape your experience of the world. Like Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Prince, Steven Spielberg, like all these people who kind of shaped our idea of like entertainment and also the way you interface with the real world through that entertainment. I've said this, like I talk the way I talk because of Quentin Tarantino movies. It's not like I think that's cool, but it's undeniable. He introduced me to 80% of what I love.

So what do you mean when you say that? Do you mean the cadence? Do you mean the fact that you're always referencing pop culture? What specifically- Fast, profane, smart. I'm not trying to be like, but mixing high and low, knowing that there are people out there who care as much about French New Wave cinema as they do about blaxploitation movies, as about dime store detective novels and Russian literature. And you kind of constantly zipping around

and creating a narrative out of other narratives and out of other texts, which especially living on the internet the way we do is you're kind of constantly in touch with all these different tabs of culture. And that feels more relevant now than even it did in 1992 when it was much more like hard copy piecemeal, putting it together with your hands.

But I mean, I don't, what's your experience with it? I, so I saw a pulp and res on the same weekend in high school from blockbuster. Hell yeah. Um, it's hard to overstate,

which I was saying off mic before, it's hard to overstate like how, what a bombshell, the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs when they're just talking, sitting around a table, these hitmen, talking about, these thieves rather, talking about what Madonna's like a virgin means metatextually. And I think what Chris was talking about was right in terms of the way I process it, which is this radical democratization of culture. There was no such thing as highbrow or lowbrow. It's all the same brow, and you can argue it in the same way. And it was the first time I can remember watching a movie and being like, oh, this is how people around me speak. You know, this is what we talk about when we're sitting around BSing. We're talking about what does Like A Version mean?

What does this song mean? That movie, who was in it? But who was, like, wait, and what was the person who starred in that? Like, these are the conversations you have. And the ability to tell a story through that was mind-blowing at the time. I had never seen anything like that. I mean, that was my introduction, essentially, to cultural commentary. I saw Pulp Fiction.

My dad was a movie critic at the local newspaper in Philadelphia. He took me to a press screening of Pulp Fiction. And I remember you get out of the first diner scene, and Dick Dale starts, and the credits start rolling. And in the middle of the first diner scene and Dick Dale starts and the credits start rolling and in the middle of the credit sequence Cool and the Gang starts like the radio switches

and Cool and the Jungle Boobies starts and I'm not kidding I turned to my dad in the theater and I said are you allowed to do that and he said now you are and he was not like a Quentin Tarantino stan he was like that was a pretty that was pretty good I think it was like a little bit like vulgar for him. But that understanding that the rules are what you make them was also like hugely influential to me. Like the idea that like you can take this thing you love and do it the way you want to do it. And if you bet on yourself, you might be right.

The word audacious is often overused now, but at the time, particularly in the dialogue that you're talking about, Jason, and in the sort of structural design of a movie he just changed a lot of rules or he took rules from things like the french new wave and and made them more pop made them more accessible and the idea of jumping back and forth in terms of when you're telling a story or the way that a soundtrack moves throughout a film and what it takes that takes on a life of its own that stuff if it wasn't new it felt new and he it always felt like he was doing something new especially in that period that we're talking

about 92 through 97 98 there was it was before everything felt from him like pastiche and i think the pastiche stuff is great yeah and i love it and i love a lot of his later work but the 90s in particular felt authentically original yeah for lack of a better phrase. And it felt like this stew that he had been mixing and mixing throughout the 80s working in a video store. And his biography is kind of legion at this point. We don't necessarily have to rehash all of that. But I had a very similar experience seeing Reservoir and seeing Pulp for the first time, just completely mind-expanding. Yeah. I mean, I think we'll probably get into this when we get to these specific movies, but that period of time that you're talking about,

to me, is a combination of the stuff that he liked to read, Elmore Leonard, crime fiction, whatever, and shit that actually happened to him. Like, weird valley stories. Yeah. Like, parties that he went to that got really weird. A guy who OD'd in Glendale. Weed droughts.ale and weed droughts

yeah like weed droughts like all that stuff like trying out for roles like as an actor or whatever like all that stuff is like weird ephemera from someone's real life that then gets shot through this lens of like what if there was this guy named marcellus yeah hard genre yeah yeah putting the hard genre lens on the personal experience like someone probably told him about a guy like the GIMP. Yep. Right. I never cared about dialogue before Quentin Tarantino. You know, it's like I never, I wanted to see stuff blow up.

I loved action movies. Quentin Tarantino movies, the first time I'm like, wow. Continue this conversation for another 20 minutes. We did the Reservoir Dogs rewatchables. We got some most, like, best quote. We were just like, I don't know what you want me to say. Print the script. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah yeah it is I could sense my ears widening when hearing his movies for the first time because of the music and because of the dialogue at the same time

where are you at with Tarantino now do you have an as excited relationship to his movies to what he does because he's a he's a complicated figure

and I certainly don't want to adjudicate a lot of the personal history surrounding him but I'm curious because he has evolved and he's a guy figure, and I certainly don't want to adjudicate a lot of the personal history surrounding him, but I'm curious because he has evolved, and he's a guy in his 50s now. He is the establishment in a lot of ways. So are you eagerly anticipating the new movie? Have you liked his films in the last five to ten years?

I think for as much as I'm a little skeptical about how sincere it is, his stated cap on his output has affected how i look at his movies i don't talking about 10 years he said 10 movies 10 movies and i think that he might cheat and he'll do like a 12-hour miniseries or he might just be like well backdoor i'm allowed to do star trek or i've just changed my mind in two years and he's already cheated but there's something about one and two that's two movies he's calling it one movie there's something about that that makes me feel like

every time he puts out a movie it's a national holiday that it's an event you know and I don't feel that way about Martin Scorsese movies anymore and that's

one of the great filmmakers that's ever lived and he still makes really good movies but there's something about a Tarantino thing and actually you know you mentioned

how complicated a figure he is now. And it has been since 1992. I mean, you go back to The First of Our Dogs, you're like, whoa. Yeah, why are we doing that? This does not get made in 2019. And maybe for good reasons. A lot of charge, racial language throughout all of his films.

A lot of violence, a lot of sex. And I guess one of the things that I kind of like about it is that, you know, obviously he's pretty self-assured and he's like, I get to make these movies because I'm an artist and this is how my people talk. But I think it's interesting to have a filmmaker that makes us confront that stuff. And he's nothing if not confrontational. Yeah, I think that I agree with everything Chris said. The thing that I love about, you know, Tarantino, his entire career has been a performance and I think that is very apt for a artist who is so metatextual like his career is a metatext you know the eighth movie from Quentin Tarantino splashed across the screen who else why would you do that who else does that

um so I think yeah there there is I'm eagerly anticipating, you know, new studio, new circumstances. What does this mean? And especially, you know, coming, I watched Hateful Eight last night, rewatched it. He's at a really interesting place where I think he's, not that his movies were not artistic before, but he really seems to be grasping for a deeper meaning in a more overt way than he has with Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, which is an adaption. That's a different story. But like Hateful Eight really seemed like, I'm trying to say something here. And that's interesting to me. I don't know if he, I don't know if I ever perceived that Quentin Tarantino was trying to say something over the course of a movie before, maybe in scenes here and there, but not over the course of a movie like with Hateful Eight.

So I'm eagerly anticipating to see where he goes. That's very perceptive. I won't spoil anything about the new film. We'll talk about it later this week on the show. But I absolutely had that sensation when I walked out of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is, this is actually an effort to say something. As opposed to a lot of his other films,

which are big top genre entertainments. And even when he's re-imagining history in Inglourious Bastards you still kind of feel like he made a really fun action movie and maybe he's indicating something about that time or what we love and why we love it and what we use the things we love to destroy what we hate but for the most part it seems like it's most important for him to entertain you yeah it's like it's this is how i feel watching great escape for the 60th time yes and i want you to feel that way i want you to want to live in this world it's it's telling that that movie was initially his initial conception of it was like a 12-hour miniseries like he wanted to make it into like the most

panoramic thing and you know i think that I think that we, I remember I was watching, when we were doing Inglourious Basterds Rewatchables, I was watching a lot of interviews with him around that time. And he told Channel 4 in England something where he's like, you know, you can look at it

as a fantasia or this expression of like revenge, like, you know, real historical vengeance. But to me, if my characters had been real, this would have happened. And I was like, that's nuts. Like I can't, like, and he believes it. He believes that like his characters like could have changed the course

of history in some ways that that's the thing I think is the most complicated about him is that this is a filmmaking ego. That's not, not very common anymore. You know, maybe, maybe unprecedented, but certainly it's, it's uncommon to come across somebody who's like, I don't have to play by anybody's rules. I love that. I think this is a segue into our top fives. But one last thing I want to underline that I think is important is that self-belief

that you're describing and the willingness to create a universe of his own. And we talk about expanded universes now in movies. We were just talking about the MCU. Quentin was putting Marvel comic books on the walls of characters in 1992. He had a lot of foresight about how that would be the future

of the fanboy in some ways. On the other hand, he had a ton of foresight about imagining the interconnected relationship of characters in one movie that he wrote to another movie that he wrote. He thought generationally about how these characters fit together.

He created brands like cigarette brands. Red Apple. He created radio stations he would create full worlds and some of them felt you know just like just basic textual things

you'd encounter in your life but that created even more excitement it's a childlike imagination often what we think about when we talk about that stuff is like is the comic book stuff

but that's when you're a kid and you're sitting around with like a pack of baseball cards and then you like lay them out in the diamond and you're like, this isn't my new team. And like, I'm starting to imagine them getting treated for one another or talking to each other. And then all of a sudden you'd be sitting in front of nine pieces of cardboard

for two hours talking to yourself. That's Quentin Tarantino. He relishes that stuff. I mean, I'm thinking specifically of the slow-mo walk in Res Dogs and then the slow-mo walk of the Crazy Eights in Kill Bill 1. He loves, here's my team, set them up, and let's watch them enter the arena. All the actors who've worked with him before, like Diane Kruger was like, he showed me 25 movies. He had an entire biography of Bridget von Hammersmark. I was almost overwhelmed

and then I could like pick and choose from what he gave me but there was no question you could possibly have about your character that he couldn't A, answer

and B, be like and if you want to know exactly what I'm talking about watch this 1953 German movie where Marlene Dietrich turns to her left. Right, right. That's what I'm talking about.

And we could do an entire Top 5 podcast about his unproduced work too because there are so many movie story ideas. You know what I'm talking about. And we could do an entire top five podcast about his unproduced work too, because there are so many movie story ideas. You know, I have always wanted to see the Vega brothers, Vince and Vic team up to killer of crows. Yeah. Rob Banks for killer of crows, which is the African-American worst world war two story. There's so many, there were so many things that were rumored around him that absorbing all of the ephemera. I had never seen books written so fast about a filmmaker so shortly after his career began.

And that was part of what got me so excited about him as being 12, 13 years old and having two or three entire books to read just about the person. And it's amazing that he's been able to essentially keep this going. He's had, he's had ebbs and flows. He's had down periods. I think particularly that period after death proof before and Bastards, there was a lot of conversation about,

is Quentin cooked? But he's largely stayed consistently relevant and present through going on 28 years now. And it's kind of an amazing thing. Should we dive into our top fives? Yeah. Let's go. Chris, why don't you start us off with number five? So we should probably say at the top that we are including the what whatever quentin tarantino is sort of touched in a significant way as a screenwriter or whatever so my number five movie is true romance we're gonna have a little q a and at the risk of sounding redundant please make your asses genuine you want to test the field no wow this is my number four we've talked about this i think we

did we did a rewatchable man so i won't belabor it i it's the most deeply romantic thing he's ever written um it's probably the on like just a flat out like filmmaking level the flashiest best made thing you know tony sc Scott is technically I think a better filmmaker than Quentin Tarantino the merging of the two you get this neon dream that's just like these two lovers on the run Bonnie and Clyde with this amazing gallery of characters surrounding them Gandolfini, Walken, Dennis Hopper, Sizemore and Penn and all these different people, Rapaport, Bronson Pinchot, and of course, Brad Pitt as Floyd. It's probably one of my favorite ensemble movies in that way. And I just thought it might be an interesting conversation just briefly as we

get into the list of this sliding doors moment of what if Quentin Tarantino had been more of a player? What if he hadn't kind of walled himself off and been like, I make a film by Quentin Tarantino every three and a half years or whatever it is. There's people who are in the movies and then they go out of the movies. But this idea of Tarantino as the guy who wrote True Romance and Tony Scott directed it and then did some rewrite work on Crimson Tide. And what would have happened if some of his other movies had been directed by other people, like Catherine Bigelow's Kill Bill is kind of amazing to think about.

It would have been a very interesting last 25 years if Tarantino had been producing more people or writing more stuff or doing rewrites on different stuff or doing more work like he did on ER and CSI where he just drops in and CSI, where he just like drops in and makes a couple episodes of something. Kind of like a fascinating counterfactual, but yeah, True Romance is my number five.

I'm glad we got the version of his career that we got that he was in control of because of that self-belief, but that is a fun parlor game. I'm trying to think of, because some of his movies are indelibly his own. Kill Bill, I actually have a hard time imagining somebody else doing, because it's such a genre mishmash.

But something like The Hateful Eight, you could see any great kind of mystery filmmaker sliding their feet into. It would have been fascinating to see somebody else direct Jackie Brown, which I mean, I think is in some ways a lot of people feel like it's his warmest movie

and his most human movie, but I would be curious to know what would happen if somebody else had directed that. Nora Ephron's Jackie Brown. Yeah. James Earl Brooks. Yeah. I, I, you know, True Remnants is my number four. I was thinking about it a little bit in terms of the chronology of consumption. And I definitely saw this before I saw Reservoir Dogs because this was easier to find. This was a big studio release. It was probably much more prominently displayed in Blockbuster when I saw it. It had movie stars and it's a little bit like that first sip of Zima. It's like, this isn't what I'm going to be consuming for the rest of my life, but this is the entryway through the door of bourbon. It gets you situated because very similarly to

what Jason was describing about hearing that Madonna conversation, hearing Clarence talk about Sonny Chiba movies in True Romance was mind blowing. I, for a long period of time, thought Sonny Chiba was an invention of Quentin Tarantino's. I did not realize that he was referencing something real. And that is such a powerful thing to learn that somebody has access to all of this, these things you've never heard of, and then also can create this whole world that is fake. And then trying to figure out what goes where and why put it on top of like, put a 12 year old in front of a Tony Scott movie and they will be taken away. You know, Tony Scott, the like the stylist of all stylists,

one of the slickest filmmakers of all time, getting a chance to do crazy shoot-em-ups in a Hollywood producer's hotel room. With that dialogue. With all that dialogue. Just really a genuinely fun movie and a great like a living example of a filmmaker selling reputation off of the flashiest script he can write.

So as personal as that story is for him, you can tell that he's really trying to impress people with Drexel Spivey and things like that. Number five, Jason. I picked all movies that were just directed by Tarantino. I had a hard time getting True Romance. Would True Romance have been in your top five?

Yes, it would have been, but philosophically a hard time getting in there. I'm going with Kill Bill 1. Is that what I think it is? You didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you? You know, for a second there? Yeah, I kind of did. That is also my number five.

I think that it's the most uneven movies of the movies on my top five, but it's also, you just feel like here is Quentin Tarantino having the best time possible. You know, the fight scene with the crazy 88s is so over the top, and it does things that you just do not expect, like the switch to black and white the switch to the um where it's they're all in the blue lighting it's like what is happening why is this happening the absolute over the top over the topness of it where it's like all of a sudden morphs into comedy where it's you just see a dozen people with violent amputations crawling towards the door and groaning.

Almost cartoonish in the violence, but so incredibly shot and just visceral and vibrant in a way that you can't imagine anyone else doing it. One of the most fun experiences I've ever had in a movie theater. This movie in particular. I was the right age. A long time had passed between Tarantino projects. Quite a while. He made us wait. Jackie Brown is 97 and Jackie Brown, which is a brilliant film,

is very low-toned. It's very calm. It's adult. It's leisurely. And Kill Bill is the volume one in particular is the opposite of that. And I felt like Jackie Brown was so character driven and was such a character study. And what happens in Jackie Brown is actually so besides the point.

There's some smuggling and some money changing hands and some double-crossing. Kill Bill is all archetypes. It's like Bill, B, L. There's very flat. It's super physical. It's the most action movie of any movie he's made. I think that there's a lot of long dialogue scenes,

but for the most part, there's like a set piece every 10 minutes or 12 minutes or so across two movies. So in a weird way, the two Kill Bill movies wind up like kind of outliers to me in the rest of his filmography. I've always respected them more than I've enjoyed them. Returning to volume 1 in particular,

Volume 2 puts a cap on it and it feels actually a little bit more like a Tarantino movie to me because it's much more story driven. It's much more about the relationships. Volume 1 does a couple of things that I think he does better than anybody. One, he just shows you things at the beginning of the movie that you would think would be the big

reveal for the end of the movie. At the beginning of the movie that you would think would be the big reveal for the end of the movie. Like at the beginning of the movie, you see O-Ren Ishii's name crossed out right after she kills Vernita Green. And you're like, so now we're going to spend an hour watching her pursue O-Ren? And she's just going to kill her at the end. And we know because she already crossed her name out. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't make the movie any less fun to watch.

And that's such an incredible sleight of hand by a director to be that confident in the style and the look and the excitement around his movie that the end point of this two-hour kung fu extravaganza doesn't matter as much as watching that crazy fight that you're talking about. The confidence is so exciting. And also the confidence to just say,

I'm going to put an eight-minute anime short in the middle of this movie. Like that's just, that was so ballsy. And just being like, I'm going to make Uma Thurman a martial arts star. Even the special effects. It was not like what people thought Uma Thurman was going to do in the 90s. You know,

we think about Tarantino, obviously for his dialogue and his writing, but this is like, this movie felt timeless in the way that like watching Buster Keaton feels timeless because it's like the violence is so in the way that watching Buster Keaton feels timeless. Because it's like the violence is so over the top that it really becomes, you know, cartoonish and antic in a really interesting way. Even those scenes of like the plane coming in over the skyline are done in a way that's like

meant to heighten the unreality of what you're seeing. And it's just a really interesting movie for him yeah i love it chris number four for you jango lay your palms flat on that tabletop if you lift those palms off that turtle shell tabletop mr pooch is gonna let loose with both barrels that start off so this is um there have been a lot of lies set around this dinner table here tonight but that you can't believe this is um there have been a lot of lies said around this dinner table here tonight but that you can't believe this is my least favorite

I think of this movie so I'm curious to hear what you like about it I almost picked it because of that I think it's the darkest movie he's ever made it's the most uncomfortable

I've ever been watching a Quentin Tarantino movie I think part of it is that it actually does feel like a Sergio Leone western to me those movies are not like fun the highs are high and me. Those movies are not like fun.

The highs are high and like there's like really cool like meme worthy moments in those movies. But they're actually grueling slogs of vengeance. And vengeance is not like a fun thing. You know, you're obviously driven by trauma. And this is trauma on a like generation upon generation upon generation of of racial trauma that's going on in this movie whether quentin tarantino had the right to make this or handled it as sensitively as he should have i think is a really interesting conversation to have uh i think the reason why ultimately this movie is here is because i think dicaprio is

as uh calvin is is his greatest creation. It is the greatest monster he's ever written. And there's a real seductive thing with these Tarantino characters. Even Landa, who's equally a monster in Bastards. The dialogue is so rich and the drama is so rich that you can't help but just be almost attracted to the character, even if you're repulsed by their behavior. I don't feel that way with Calvin. Calvin is like, DiCaprio actually pushes past that.

And there's a lot of great actors who have done a lot of great roles in Quentin Tarantino parts, but I think that 20 years from now, we're going to look back on DiCaprio's performance in Django and just be like, that's one of the most chilling screen villains we've ever had. Yeah, that scene where he slams his hand on the table is so repulsive and also magnetic. The places he goes to to inhabit that character are truly chilling and revolt.

I was like I was watching the that scene when he's like gripping really getting like gripping Kerry Washington's head and you're just like I can't believe this is happening. Yeah. And that this was a blockbuster. This is something amazing that he does throughout his career is he identifies actors we have a relationship to. Right. Even if we've forgotten what that relationship is, and he manipulates us with that. It's the same thing with Travolta in Pulp Fiction.

We think he's this kind of person, and we see him do this kind of thing, and we're blown away. He dances. This is John Travolta we love. But also, he does this over here. He's a monster. And he has this innate sense of stardom

and the expectations of stardom, and he works with it so well. Similarly in the new film. I'll be curious to hear what he works with it so well. Similarly in the new film. I'll be curious to hear what you guys say about Leonardo DiCaprio in the new film because it's a lot of

playing with expectation in the same way. What else about Django? Because my problem with Django ultimately is I think it's a pretty bad ending. Yeah, the shootout.

Yeah, and I think relative to the Inglourious Bastards ending which is a similar explosively orchestrated big time set piece this one just kind of felt like overkill literally yeah and it always leaves me with a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth i i think that's a really valid criticism i i think in some ways i'm still unpacking how i feel about django and so many of these movies I'm like this is my thing about Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs so I I it almost my um inability to articulate my own feelings about

the movie led me to putting it here uh the ending is not great I do think that it's a it's a fantasy and it is sort of like what if you could go back and do this yeah what like there would be no overkill there would be no limit to to your bloodthirst kind of um to me the movie really ends in the last parlor scene with jackson waltz dicaprio and fox and that last sort of bit of exchange and um i couldn't resist and all that stuff would it surprise you guys to know that this is his most successful movie by far at the box office not really it would slightly surprise me, yes. It's going to be weird in 10 years when there's a Rick Ross song in the middle of this movie. I just need to cite that.

Jason, what's your number four? My number four is Inglourious Bastards. You're over the Apache. But Warren, if you heard of us, you probably heard we ain't into prisoner taking business. We into killing Nazi business business and cousin businesses are booming love this film this is my number three I just think there are a lot of things

in Quentin Tarantino movies that have not aged well and we'll talk about that I'm sure but I think one thing that's aged really well is the idea that Nazis should be treated with no mercy. We're going to be doing one thing and one thing only. Killing Nazis. Yeah.

No, it's true. We agree. And I really appreciated that from this movie. killing Nazis. Yeah. And I really appreciated that from this movie. I hadn't thought about it that way. You know, this idea of, it's obviously a kind of a wish fulfillment rage fantasy. It is a political action though. An overtly political action that I found really satisfying

on rewatch you know like listen all the dialogue's great all that stuff is great but I'm so happy that he put in

that end scene of just like two guys submachine gunning Hitler for three minutes like just clip it another

new clip da da da da da da da da da in the style of Starface. New clip. Because that is a really incredible, it's just like a really trenchant statement and feeling to be like, you know what? No mercy, no quarter for these dudes.

Like, let's not forget what it was all about. Let's not negotiate with them. Let's just like, here in this space where we can imagine a world in which we would be allowed to do this, let's just see what would happen

if we just wiped them out. And that's in keeping with a lot of the creative choices he makes throughout his career, which is same as crossing off O-Ren's name before you see her. Same as switching the radio station in the middle of the title sequence.

You know, it's like, I literally am setting fire to the playbook because I can, because no one says no. And that's such a weirdly empowering thing that very few people abide by. It feels like a lot of people try to get into the business of filmmaking or writing or anything that is a creative art. And they know because of the boundaries that have been drawn around other people that they have to exist because of the boundaries that have been drawn around other people that they have to exist inside of those boundaries. I've always admired his willingness to say, ah, fuck that.

I don't need to worry about that. And then on a more micro level, like the scene in the basement bar is a masterpiece. Yes, that's your thing. And is, you know, he's, Quentin is so associated with kind of Mexican standoff structure and that's his greatest one

ever his greatest one ever two gun three guns two sets of balls three guys staring at each other like yeah and each round of dialogue only heightens the suspense even when they're not talking about the thing they're talking around the thing the sense

of danger is immense just an unbelievable scene to hang that movie around chris you and i talked about this movie a lot on the rewatchables as well was there one thing what was the one thing that you were like shit i forgot to say this about this movie i feel like anytime we all do a podcast super long podcast so i can't imagine there's anything i would just distill it down to there's like there's a golf term called on plane like when you swing on planes this is a huge flex

I just mean like this movie is on plane like everything it does is in harmony with itself there's a lot of movies Rick Ross showing up

in Django is probably gonna be you sure we needed that you sure that works out a little hitch in his swing there there's no hitch in this movie there's everything basically feels of a piece.

Um, the fact that he writes the only 30% of the movies in English, like that's unbelievable. That is amazing. We like $200 million worth of people were like, yeah, I want to watch a movie in German. That is incredible.

A bunch of people I've never seen before, like Diane Kruger or Michael Fassbender or Christoph Waltz at the time like nobody was like can you imagine like if if you showed somebody

that movie and you didn't tell them anything about it and you showed them the first scene they'd be like I don't know it who are these people

like I've met Lappetit and Christoph Waltz and nobody knew who Lea Seydoux was nobody knew who Melon Laurent was they were like

how is this how is this going to be a box office smash? I mean, he's done that time and again. Yeah. Just shown us new people or people who are operating on the fringes of culture. If you look at actors like Michael Parks and Michael Bowen

and this wide range of actors. He made a star out of Michael Madsen, essentially. Yeah. A guy who really just has not had a huge profile, all respect to the movie Species. I'm sorry. I'm not still. You don't have to worry about it.

And he has this innate ability to not just do what I was saying earlier which is manipulate our expectations around stars but to create new stars. So where are we? So I've gone

True Romance, Django. You went, what's your five for? Kill Bill and Glorious. I've got Kill Bill volume one at five. True Romance at four. You're number three.

My number three. Let me tell you what Like A Virgin's about. Is Reservoir Dogs. It's all about a girl who digs a guy with a big dick. The entire song. It's a metaphor for big dicks. No, it ain't. It's about a girl who's very vulnerable.

So this didn't make my list. You mad, man. You need a didn't make my list. You mad man. You need a head check. It might just be because it's the one I've seen that's the furthest away from my rewatch. Yeah, sure.

So I rewatched everything and Reservoir Dogs came first because we did a podcast about it. Yeah. Now, I think you could probably choose any day of the week and I'd have a different top five. Sure.

And I love Reservoir Dogs, but what is it that puts it so close to the top for you? I mean, so much of what Jason said in the beginning about learning to love dialogue as much as you love the visuals. And I think also for me, it's the performances, which had a certain tone at the time. And even now, I feel like you don't see a lot of actors

who are willing to make themselves that ugly at so little reward. A lot of the times when actors do things that are kind of grotesque, they're kind of like almost expecting either a character redemption or some sort of statue at the end of the run where it's like yeah

see i had this weird eye twitch the entire movie i should be an oscar nominee and it's like nobody in this movie comes out looking good right they're covered in blood they're screaming racial epithets they're they're they're basically disgusting pieces of shit yes and i kind of admire the movie for that i kind of admire the movie for being like you can make a really interesting movie about really bad people really bad people and not have it be anything more than that or anything less than that i think i still really respect this movie for that yeah it's my number two um i just think the accessibility of it watching it this weekend re-watching it this weekend i was struck by how much of this movie,

you probably do 80% of this movie with your phone if you wanted to. And it really shows you what a talent he actually is. Because you could, you know, the tools are available. You can make that movie today. He probably was sitting around and he's like, if I can't make this movie, I'll probably do it as play. Yeah, there's one, it's like our town. There's one set, It's like our town.

There's one set. There's no props except guns. Yeah. And it's just guys sitting around in two rooms, essentially. And it's just so pared down and necessary to me in terms of understanding what it is that tarantino does um i and it's you know obviously the blue all the all the kind of elements of the style are there um i i love it i find it eminently rewatchable so we're doing this podcast mini series with amy nicholson where she interviewed quentin and in in her research she came upon something I'd never seen before, which was a video on YouTube of a rehearsal from the Sundance Labs

of sequences from Reservoir Dogs. I don't know if you guys have seen this before. And the majority of the sequencing is Quentin portraying Mr. White and Buscemi as Mr. Pink. And it's those early scenes and sort of the first act when they're kind of back and forth when they both arrive back at the warehouse. And, you know, it's shot on handheld and it's kind of moving around

pretty quickly and the staging is obviously not as elegant or clean or blocked as well as the film is. But you can see, even just in these rehearsals, he knows it all.

He sees exactly where this movie's going and he is acting. Hey, you still white, man, huh? Haven't you thought about this? Look, I haven't fucking time to think about Jack's shit, man. First I was just trying to get the fuck out of there and then I've just been dealing with him. Pitch perfect. He's not Harvey Keitel.

He's never going to be Harvey Keitel. He does not have the same movie star charisma. All that stuff, I'm sure. The beats are there. The hand motions are there. The intonations are there. It's kind of amazing how a year before he made this movie, it was right there in his head.

Yeah. And it's clear he was born for this. And that is a cliche unto itself, but it is literally true for him. So I'm down with the Reservoir Dogs even though it isn't in my top five. One more thing about this movie. You know, he's not, Quentin is not known for tender scenes, but the scene when, you know,

Keitel cradles Tim Roth as he's crying like, I'm gonna die. I can't believe this is gonna happen to me. I'm gonna die. You know,

is like back at the back at the warehouse is one of I mean, that's one of the most tender things that he's ever shot

and absolutely necessary for the brutal reveal which comes forthwith. I also like Keitel's very specific scientific knowledge of why it's okay to be shot in the gut. Yeah, yeah. Other than the kneecap, it's the most painful place to be shot.

Oh, I'm sorry. Are you a doctor? Anthony, are you a doctor? Are you a doctor? Okay, then. I think we've established that you're not a doctor. So. Mr. White strikes me as the kind of guy who really consumed a lot of Reader's Digest. He had a lot of stray info, you know, about waitressing, all those data points.

Really impressive stuff. So my number three was Inglourious Bastards. Jason, what's your number two? What's your three? My three is Pulp Fiction. Your three is Pulp Fiction. Okay. For all the reasons

that we've all mentioned before yeah yeah it drops to me I dropped it to three I had it to two but I dropped it because listen I think the weakness

of Tarantino is when he puts himself in the movies and here's a scene that you really don't need every character The Bonnie situation The Bonnie situation

in the year of Our Lord 2019 is extremely tough. And, you know, every character in this incredible dollhouse of like rapscallion characters kind of has a thing that you understand. And like, I don't get, I don't understand. Why Jimmy's in this movie. I don't understand what Jimmy's thing is. Like, what is, I don't understand anything about Jimmy except that he exists to drop, like, a B-52's, you know, load of N-bombs on a city. I think you need that scene

because you need to get the wolf into the movie. Right. But I wonder if you could go back if that's the one sequence that Quentin would edit. I don't know. He obviously thought it was fucking hilarious and amazing because he was like, I'm Jimmy. I am, watch this.

Yes. Let's save the rest of the Pulp Fiction conversation because I suspect it's going to appear later in our lists. My number three was Inglorious. I mentioned that already. Your number two you've already named. It's Inglorious, yeah. And your number two you've already named. I mentioned that already. Your number two, you've already named. It's inglorious. Yeah.

And your number two, you've already named Reservoir Dogs. My number two is Jackie Brown. Man, I ain't riding in no goddamn trunk for no minute, man. Why I can't ride up front with you? You can't ride up front with me. The surprise element is 90% of it. I'm sorry, man, but I ain't getting no goddamn trunk. I can't believe you do me like this.

Do you like what, man? I just ain't climbing in no goddamn dirty-ass trunk, man. Now, I think that the case for it has become a cliche as well. Right. Yeah. Which is that this is the mature film. It was dinged at the time of release. People didn't really get it.

They thought it was too slow. They thought it was too linear. They thought it was too sort of like obvious and dull from the guy who made Pulp Fiction. And then as it aged, as we aged with Quentin, it seemed more mature. It seemed like an evocation of a time in life that we're all kind of getting closer to. It's interesting to me that, you know, Jackie, when I saw this movie, her character, they noticed 44 years old. And I was like, she might as well be dead. And now it's like getting near to 44. I'm like,

some relatable shit going on with Jackie about what happens when you're on the other side you know what's your worth as you head into middle age and even though all of the kind of cliche life cycle

of the mature third film from Quentin Tarantino is true I still responded to it in an authentic way oh yeah it's still beautiful the one thing that I think

I mean there's a couple of things that date this movie namely Samuel L. Jackson's sort of hair and outfits. A lot of great Sam choices in this movie. But the part where he comes over

and turns her halogen lamp off, first of all, the fact that she has a halogen lamp, a floor lamp that dims. And he comes and he turns it off and then she's like, he's got his hands

around her throat and she pulls the gun on him. What she eventually negotiates for herself is $100,000 if she goes to jail. And it's like, this is a movie

about someone trying to eke out $100,000. You know what I mean? It's not, it's not major stakes. It's small time crooks. I don't even think

that like the gangsters in this movie are like crime lords they're like I mean he's trying to get half a million dollars out of Mexico half a million

and he's like and then I'm good I'm gonna like I'm gonna see the world on that yeah he's a condo gangster you know he's a beachside

mediocre gangster and then but when you watch even like Den of Thieves and they're like we're gonna steal 21 million dollars but when you watch even like Den of Thieves and they're like, we're going to steal $21 million today. And you're just like, what?

Do what with it? Like start like a PayPal competitor. Like I don't even understand what like some of the stakes are in this. And that's kind of gotten lost in crime movies. Like there's a lot of crime movies where they're trying to steal like a couple hundred bucks from a horse, you know, like a horse race or something. But once once again and we have talked about this recently it's not about

the stakes of the heist you know i think the stakes of the heist in some ways get really meaningful in his later films they get really meaningful in inglorious bastards they get really meaningful in django and in hateful eight in this movie it's just character yeah there's something this movie's about like losers honestly. Like I mean like in a very lovable way but these are people with like shabby apartments who are still

even Max Cherry you know not a big time guy. It's about people you ignore. Yeah. You know like you just don't really think about the stewardess

you had on the plane. about them. Yes. But like then Jackie Brown's not on my list and I think Jackie Brown's not on my list

because I couldn't not put these other movies on the list but it's if that's like his like if that's his like Wednesday night like seven innings giving up one earned run like that's fucking incredible I know it's impressive though that to make a whole movie and we should say it's based on Rum Punch one of the great Elmore Leonard books also a kind of I read that book at a very similar time in my life as when I discovered his movies.

And that is very similarly unlocked a lot in my brain about the way that characters can talk to each other. Dude, I mean, I remember reading before Elmore Leonard and I was like,

this is a slog. I don't plan on doing this for much longer. Totally. When they don't make me read anymore, I'll stop. And then you read Elmore Leonard and you just feel like that.

Yeah. There's a rhythm. Rat-a-tat. Jackie Brown is my number one yeah Jason flex love it take lord

I love it you're on the herd like for all the reasons I jumped ahead of you I'm sorry it's okay for all the reasons Sean said like that

there is you know the scene with Jackie and Max after she's taken the gun he comes back to get it and they're sitting around her kitchen table just talking about getting old this is territory that tarantino has never like tread before and it

was it's really tender and affecting there's that moment where uh you know the the bag switch is happening and jackie looks into the camera for a second and it's just like you everything's just right there like as you said it's all character it's like the stakes for her for a hundred thousand dollar little heist are basically her entire life like this is it it's all on the line she's working at the worst airline she's potentially got uh multiple felonies like hanging on her not to mention somebody looking to kill her um she's hanging on by a thread and it's all about making this one very small heist come off and then there's you know uh de niro playing with his own image in a way that is like he's so brilliant genius level

like oh my god he does so much with like little grunts like no no like and little like just head nods that is just like, man, this guy is, that's why he's so good. Yeah. He's incredible. I think Bridget Fonda

may be in like top 10 Tarantino performances in this movie. Louis, the way she hisses it, like in the. The entire sequence from Louis and Melanie

walking out of the shopping mall through the parking lot and then afterwards when Sam Jackson picks up De Niro and they're in the car together and he explains that he has killed Melanie

is some of the dead funniest shit I've ever seen in a movie in my life. Dead most hilarious freaking shit ever. So such a great such a great odd film and I

this is the kind of film you would expect him to be making now when he's got a lot of confidence. It's bizarre to go back and imagine him being 33 years old and making this movie. That's the other thing that really, why it's number one for me is because it's not like he was being restrained by forces or whatever. He was just understood what the right choices would be to make this a great movie

and that's what he did. He could have put all his flourishes in there and it would have been and people would have been like oh my, there it is, the Tarantino touch

but he didn't do that. Yeah, and he could have cast Halle Berry as Jackie and he could have cast De Niro as Max Cherry and he didn't do that and in some ways

that was kind of willful obscurantism and in some ways it was completely brilliant because I think both of those actors are so good that's not what a bail bondsman would look like exactly and then michael keaton as ray nicolette for the second time that decade is the is one of the strangest movie footnotes ever if you haven't seen jackie brown you have to go out and watch it immediately because it is fucking wonderful it's two and a half hours of pure character um chris i suspect you and I have the same number one.

Pulp Fiction. What does Marcellus Wallace look like? What? What country are you from? What? What ain't no country I ever heard of. They speak English and what? What?

English, motherfucker. Do you speak it? Yes. Then you know what I'm saying. Yes. Describe what Marcellus Wallace looks like. Pulp Fiction's the best movie? Is it the best movie?

Is it underrated at this point? While I acknowledge Jason's criticism of the Jimmy scene, which has probably been rubbing me the wrong way for about 25 years. It wasn't like, I don't think even at the time, nobody was like, man, that's cool. Good choice. It is awesome. It just so happens to be wedged in

one of like the singularly great scenes in movie history which is from when they blow the guy's brains out to when the wolf arrives and he's like scoop up all the little pieces of brain and skull gotta get in there i mean that head explosion scene, I remember, I think I was watching it with a friend who had seen it and was like, wait, wait, no, no, just don't. Because I started to talk to him about something. He's like, no, no, no, just hold on. You gotta, you know, in other words,

you gotta see this head explode. Yeah. I mean, I talked about this briefly at the beginning of the pod. This is what I was talking about, where it felt like his life experiences merging with being part of like a underground underworld crime fiction tradition of ne'er-do-wells and hitmen and sex freaks and

gangsters and boxers and it was essentially like an anthology that they tied these guys together they tied all these characters together and re-watching it the there are scenes that are iconic like girl you'll be a woman soon the dance scene um that you know you just basically thought about for about 15 months after the movie came out and And that soundtrack was huge. That's the urge overkill song with version of the Neil diamond song was just on the radio all the time. It's,

it was like a blockbuster album of a movie where the amount of catchphrases and all the catchphrases. And then Sean, do you get medieval on your ass? Yeah. I forget the Bible reading. You know what I mean? I forget parts of forget the bible reading you know what i mean i forget parts of this movie and you know you you you mentioned this where the way he plays with our relationship to characters and our relationship to movie stars you know the the vincent vega

character and the um and the uma therma character the way in which she shows up with marcellus later or he gets shot coming out of the bathroom and it's like there's such kind of like not expected endings to like the where you they're supposed to be is so was so challenging and interesting to wrap your head around as a kid i you know i keep thinking as i'm talking like i gotta mention the watch speech i gotta mention this thing i get there is there a movie where every moment is somehow worthy of dissection and discussion? I think it has the most rewatchable scenes of any movie ever made. But in addition to that, when I was rewatching it, the things that I picked up

on again last night, paying very close attention to it, were things that I probably wasn't mature enough to understand when I first saw it in particular and I remember adult critics citing a lot of this stuff and me feeling like this isn't what's cool about this movie but there is an incredible sexiness between John Travolta and Uma Thurman in this movie that feels like a corny thing to say until you get older and you realize like what real chemistry and tension is how absent that is from most movies this day. A hundred percent. There's so little focus on that. And it just zeroes in.

Or similarly, when Vincent Vega and Butch encounter one another at Marcellus' bar and the look that they give after the, you know, I'm talking to you, Palooka, you know, that whole thing. And the intensity and the camera holding on Willis' face for the entire moment until he exits that bar in the middle of the day.

It's just incredible stuff. It's very patient, you know? It's very precise. Like, he's not just the guy who does, and I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance. He can do that. He can write the crazy speech. He can do a big shootout. He can make you excited by an action sequence or a car chase.

But the little intimate moments are extraordinarily precise. Yeah, and it's like, it almost feels more like a story someone's telling you at a party rather than a movie you're watching because the way in which, you know, and then Bruce Willis,

this guy, he's walking out. He's going to leave him behind. But then he thinks, and then he walks back in, and then he sees the bat, and he puts the bat down and then he picks this you know and it's like it's like all this stuff

even the OD scene which is I think I remember when I saw that I had never like even I don't think I knew what heroin really was

when I saw this movie you know I couldn't understand it when I first saw it like what the problem was but even like the breaking down of like that's the

Acapulco gold and this is you know like all that stuff that was crime novel shit yeah that was like Acapulco gold. And this is, you know, like all that stuff. That was crime novel shit. Yeah. That was like, I didn't know.

And then you like, I think I knew people could overdose from drugs. I didn't know you could bring them back. Yeah. And, and that whole sequence where you're just like, and now this person who I've just been like quite candidly, like lusting after this entire movie has barfed in their own hair

and died and come back to life and is actually not going to be with this guy. I still try to wrap my mind around what happens

in Pulp Fiction and it doesn't work. Yeah, the thing that struck me on Rewatch is just like he, Quentin has an author, a master author's

understanding of how perspective works and how to make, you know, when I first saw it, I didn't, I didn't really grasp the kind of like a puzzle box, uh, chronology stuff he was doing because each little vignette is so grounded on the character that, or characters that it's depicting in that moment. Like when, uh, when Jules and Vincent are walking in to do the hit

at the beginning of the movie, there's all these little moments where they walk away from the camera and you're watching them. You're like waiting in front of the elevator while they go off and have this conversation for them to come back. So you're understanding the whole time of we're going to do this thing. Now we've gone on this little side path and I'm watching that happen, waiting for them to come back. He has all these things, all these little tricks with perspective that ground each scene in such a way that I didn't even notice that it was all, that the chronography was all jumbled up.

And I just think that is really masterful shit to really understand how to depict from a character's perspective what is happening. Yeah, and it makes certain things more rewarding too because we know about the showdown between Vincent and Butch. And then we see the execution accidentally in the bathroom later on in the movie. But that's not a purposeful thing because they have animosity. It's just by dint of storytelling that is misarranged purposefully. And I think I could see how some people at the time would think that that was kind of a gimmick, you know, that sort of fracturing. One of the movies we talked to him about on this series that we're doing is Point Blank, which is a similar kind of execution as John Borman 1967 movie, which kind of shatters our perception of what's real and what's not real

and things don't happen in real time. And, you was a pretty young he's like in his late 20s and he's doing this and he's got a real like you said a master author's grip on when to show us whose ideas we're seeing yeah he uh did he did he rip the there's that there's a scene in point blank where i forget the main character's name but he's walking throughX, kind of marching through LAX with the tile going by. Did he take that Jackie Brown kind of sliding scene from that? That's more of an homage to The Graduate, which is shot for shot in the LAX

when you see, I think you see Benjamin Braddock kind of moving on the escalator fast. But there's also a very similar shot in Point Blank, you're right. And that's the other thing that we've hardly even talked about, which is that all of these movies

are laden with homage. And they're all these little puzzle boxes into other movies that you can explore. Maybe that's why Pulp sometimes stands alone for me is because I just don't feel like Lance comes from another movie. Do you think this is Roger Avery's influence? I think it was their life. I don't know that these guys were partying like that or anything like, but.

There's a lot of real seeming people. Yes. And there's just like a lot of like, oh, like that's the car that Butch drives. Absolutely. You know, like that's the, that's the turtleneck

that Marcellus would wear. You know, like there's some of this stuff just feels like, hey, if we never get to make another movie, let's put everything in this one. Even though I'm sure he knew he was going to have a long career,

it sounds like he always had a lot of confidence about that and he had Natural Born Killers and True Romance going at the time. This feels like the document dump. And if we never get another one, let's put it like this. Who's your favorite pulp character? Probably Mia. What about you, Jace? Probably Butch. I like that choice who's yours peter green pretty peter green's character definitely not um

hmm i don't know the answer to my own question i think vincent vega is a pretty we fucking up by not just compelling figure yeah it's got to be Jules. I don't really understand Jules' internal life, but I like watching him talk, which is something you can say about almost every Tarantino character. Okay, let's wrap this up by giving me one bonus Tarantino thing that you love. This can be a movie he's written,

a snatch of dialogue he put in another movie. It can be a performance he's given maybe. You know, this is a guy who hosted Saturday Night Live. You know what I mean? He's done it all. As you said, he made an episode of ER. He made two episodes of CSI. I will say this is not aged well,

but I will say his performance in Sleep With Me. Explain that. So this is a really, really small, random 90s indie movie. the famous explain that so this is a really really small random 90s indie movie I'm having a hard time

remembering is it Craig Sheffer is in this movie he's the lead yeah I think he's the lead and who's the woman in it is it like Olivia Dabo

or something like who's in Sleep With Me I can't even remember I remember Body's Rest In Motion was Tim Roth and Bridget Fonda which is like kind of like the same thing Meg Tilly Meg Tilly Craig Sheffer who's in Sleep With Me? I can't even remember. I remember Body's Rest in Motion was Tim Roth and Bridget Fonda,

which is like kind of like the same thing. Meg Tilly. Meg Tilly, Craig Sheffer, and who's the other guy? Stoltz. Stoltz, okay. And it's just like

set in LA and it's basically a love triangle movie, a really talky love triangle movie, which was not uncommon in the early 90s. Shout out to the early 90s.

And there's a party scene and in this party scene, Quentin Tarantino shows up as like a party guest and goes up to Todd Field, who would later make In the Bedroom and Little Children. You may know him as Nick Nightingale, the piano player from Eyes Wide Shut.

Fidelio. And Tarantino goes up to Todd Field and is like, You know what one of the greatest fucking scripts ever written in the history of Hollywood is? what? Top Gun basically has like a three minute monologue about what Top Gun is about

and it's about a man's battle with his own homosexuality it is a story about a man's struggle with his own homosexuality that is what top gun is about man you've got maverick all right he's on the edge man he's right on the fucking line all right and you've got ice man and all his crew right they're gay and it's it's just stunning it

is like it's first of all you cannot believe they just were like let's stop this movie for a few minutes so quentin tarantino can do a speech about Top Gun. Also, I remember reading about this in Rolling Stone or Spin or whatever at the time. And pre-YouTube, it's like, well, how the F do I watch? I don't even know how to find this movie. He's like, an Iceman and his group,

they're like, come here, go the gay way, be on the gay side. It's all about these guys getting like... And when you actually watch Top Gun, it's a pretty compelling argument. But it captures his ability to communicate and his ability to basically make what he finds important and interesting

important and interesting to anyone. I am going to go with his, his kind of infamous turn as one of like five or six Elvis impersonators on Golden Girls. Oh yeah. Before he had made it when he was a struggling actor. She was like, it's a great lesson to all of us out there, you know,

just stick with it, stick with it. Keep plugging away. Keep plugging away. To that end um quentin has always been a tortured actor forced to make his own brilliant movies because no one else will cast him in those movies he did convince his buddy robert already gets to cast him in from dust till dawn which is a movie that i think does not have really like a long-term shelf life for most people

that now there was a series um and there's been a series of from dusk to dawn movies recently and there was a tv show on el rey but i don't think that this it has gotten quite the expanded universe treatment that it deserves and also what those movies and this series are missing are the gecko brothers now the gecko brothers are portrayed by quentin who plays richie gecko and by George who's a sex criminal who's a sex criminal I'm getting to that and George Clooney

who plays Seth Gecko so Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney are blood brothers so he was like hmm who can we get let's get Clooney

hot off of VR yes with the Caesar still yes this is a movie about two men who have robbed a bank right taken a hostage several hostages well they take one hostage and then they meet a family With the Caesar still. Yes. This is a movie about two men who have robbed a bank,

taken a hostage. Several hostages. Well, they take one hostage, and then they meet a family in a camper, and then they take several hostages. They go to a border town strip club, and they find overnight that this strip club is a den of vampires. They just don't make them like this anymore.

This movie is fucking wild. It's fucking wild. It is really weird. It has multiple sex crimes and then the vampires come. Yes. Star Turn by Selma Hayek also? Yes.

Incredible Hayek. Truly great Hayek seductress slash vampire lizard ghoul. This movie is insane. However, Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, I can't remember who the teenage son is.

Ernest Liu, who did not do a lot of work. Cheech Marine and Danny Trejo, my friend Danny Trejo. And Tom Savini. Our friend Danny Trejo. And Fred Williamson and Michael Parks and all these great kind of B movie figures that he and Rodriguez are obsessed with. I'm citing all of this to say, Quentin Tarantino purposefully, not just cast himself as the brother of George Clooney, but purposefully made himself a lewd sex criminal who becomes a vampire. I don't know if that's self-knowledge and self-awareness. When you think about who he has put himself in movies as,

it's Jimmy from Pulp Fiction, who is a racist with a lot of linens. Seth, no, richie gecko who is a sex criminal who turns into a vampire yeah mr brown right yes the australian guy who gets blown up at the end of that's right another racist piece of shit that's right traitor who gets blown up is that it when's the last Do you think he writes a film and then looks at it and says, who's the worst guy in this movie? No, I think he like has like parts in his movie and he's like the only man who can play this part is me.

Oh, he's also the voiceover in Kill Bill 2. He's also the voiceover in The Hateful Eight. Yeah. Right. He has become a narrator of sorts for his own films. I just, there's like a weird ballsiness to everything happening in From Dust Till Dawn. And I feel like the movie

is a little bit forgotten in time. It's important for me to note that he was a sex criminal vampire. What better ode to QT's career? Somehow thought he shared DNA with the most

attractive man since World War II. It was like, you know who I am, the brother of? The sexiest man alive. Any other lingering Quentin Tarantino thoughts, guys?

Let me ask, I broached this on the watch with Sean today, but I wanted to ask you. So we got Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, this is nine. One more movie. Does his Star Trek movie count? in Hollywood. This is nine. One more movie. Does his Star Trek movie count?

He says that that is kind of a loophole. So he's like, if it is, who cares? But if I don't want it to be, I can do another one. I will start by saying, bring me the Star Trek movie. I want the Star Trek movie. I want it. Do I want this to be the tenth movie? No. But I do. Really,

who cares? I want a Star Trek movie of these guys. Yes. Yes. That sounds fun. Yeah. But 10th movie, what kind of a movie

would you want to see? What have we got? We've gotten Western, martial arts. We've gotten, you know, a slave story. We've gotten a World War II story.

We've gotten a true kind of crime pulp novel. We've gotten a thieves movie. I would bring it back to where it all began in Rez Dogs with the Silver Surfer on the poster. Give me the fantastic for Quentin Tarantino.

Wow. Foggy, open your fucking ears. Yeah. And listen up. The Rocky guy. The thing. Yeah.

The thing. Give it to me. Quentin Tarantino. Fantastic for. And that invisible bitch. Yeah. Great stuff from holdaway in that movie. I love Holdaway.

He's an underrated character. What about you, Chris? Fantastic Four is an amazing call. I would be fine if he wanted to like, if now he wanted to do the Jackie Brown phase and just wanted to make like five Elmore Leonard novels. Anyone you would pick out? He could do Glitz.

He could do Mr. Matt. I mean, he could do any number of them. Like, if you wanted to resurrect Raylan, you know, I'm sure Timothy Oliphant would be like, absolutely. Yeah, sign the check. Let's do Pronto. Let's do Rumpel.

Like, you know, let's do these. Man. I guess, like, my cheeky answer would be go back to the Crimson Tide IP. Oh! And reboot that with Denzel in the Hackman role and then have a new young XO on a

nuclear sub. Have another showdown. GT punching up that Crimson dialogue, man. I'd like to see him do something. He needs to be recognized, I think, for the artist that he is. And as you guys know, I'm obsessed with the Oscars and always talking about the oscars and he's not really been fully recognized as the kind of oscar director that he should be and i feel like the way to do that is

to make a movie that isn't as good as his other movies but fits the format more clearly for what they want and i think that there's a historical epic in him a kind of of Ben Her style movie. Like biblical? Where he brings in the Tarantino style where the dialogue is very raunchy and low down and pop cultural to maybe the 500s. So he casts himself as Jesus. The greatest story

ever told starring Quentin Tarantino. A Jesus dropping N-bombs. And great coffee though. Yeah, the last temptation of Jimmy. Guys, this has been very fun. Thank you so much for sharing your Quentin Tarantino top fives. Now let's go to my conversation with David Crosby

and Cameron Crowe and A.J. Eaton. I'm delighted to be joined by the legendary David Crosby, the legendary Cameron Crowe, and maybe the legendary AJ Eaton. Thank you for being here, guys. Soon to be legendary. Soon to be. Thank you. We're talking about a movie about your life, David. And it struck me as I was watching the movie,

David, how many times did people approach you to make a movie of your life before this? Many. And what was your reaction when they would ask you? Normally, I would ask them what the budget was. That's a sneaky trick, but it tells you a lot. I turned down four biopic movie approaches that were made because of that, because I looked at what they thought it should do, and I looked at the budget budget which is where you find out what's actually getting serious and they weren't serious tries the documentary people that have

approached me have always approached me wanting to do what is how documentaries are normally made shine jobs and i ain't interested it's just that has no appeal for me at all. I've seen dozens of them. They didn't tell me, look, if there was a documentary about you, man, I'd want to know what you care about. I want to know what you're afraid of. I want to know who you love. I want to know stuff that matters to you. That isn't surface. that takes guys who know what they're doing and it takes hard questions and it's not easy it's also the only worthwhile way to go about it as far as i'm concerned as far as he's concerned as he's concerned there wasn't any wasn't any disagreement about it at all we had a complete unity about that we all did not want to approach this at a surface level.

Did you find yourself seeking out films about the artists that you came up with to see how they were portrayed? Or would you try to stay away from that? No, I have seen other ones, many of them. There were a couple that were pretty good. The one on Keith Richards wasn't bad. It was actually, you did catch an idea of who he was but it's rare man normally they are just what i said they're shine tops they're you know little glossy

ain't he cute pictures that we're not interested in at all when did this dawn on you agent make a movie about this person well on that tangent of um seeing movies i saw a movie called keep on keeping on and at the same around the same time i had met crosby that was a good movie thank you that was a good documentary that's the one that that uh joe mazurski yeah that mazurski was yeah she that's the main reason i started liking her was that documentary so and joe was a producer on this movie yeah yeah it's a movie about a musician named clark turd and it's a the jazz the jazz artist man it was hard yeah that was a hard piece of work man it wasn't that made me cry okay me too what do we want to do we want to

make you cry we want to make you laugh that's our job we want to make you feel stuff i kind of feel like let them cry if you when you try and make people cry you're right just you know i hate it when you're right it's bad you can tell there's like you hear a little rattling of a tin cup please i want your emotion i want you to weep with me it's like i fight that i fight that so much like there are tv shows where friends of my own call and say like you gotta turn it on right now and i watch it i'm like god they're just trying so hard i'm resisting yeah we aren't trying very hard where you actually never try for you know blatant emotional reactions i'm not trying for drama. Yeah. You know, and I think most people- It was in there.

Most people are, they're not trying to inform you. Yeah. They're trying to, you know, sway you onto their point of view or where they think it should go. And I'm not trying to do that. But the thing that works so well in this movie is you seem so unvarnished in a way that I feel like at least a lot of your contemporaries often are not, especially not contemporaries who were as successful as you were. What you're saying feels authentically angry, sad, regretful, excited, proud, and all of those things at the same time. But you must be self-conscious when these guys

are sitting with you and asking you questions and you're thinking about how to communicate about everything that has happened to you in your life. Yeah, I don't think about it a lot. The truth is I trust them. You've got to understand that's a very rare thing. That's another reason that this all happened. I've known him since he was 15,

and I've known him very intensely for a while, a couple of years now. Eight. I knew what was going to happen. But I also don't think there's any other way that i would be interested in doing i i'm there's no joy in trying to deceive you about who i am there is a joy in trying to portray any person for real there's a real joy in that cameron you already had trust with david aj how do you build trust with david to get the film that you want to make well when i met david he was working on

this album called cross which was his first solo album in 20 years and i just i met him and we connected about music you know i i was you know i was a i was a fan of of the music you know southern cross i love that song. Teach Your Children. Love Sweet Julie. Half-uttered bullshit. I'm going to call it bullshit. You didn't even know who I was. I did, too.

No. I did, too. Croppy? Croppy, Seals, and Croff? I have a story about that. One time, Crosby and I were in a restaurant, and someone said, oh, Wilford Brimley, good to meet you. That's a rough one. So anyway, but after I met Crosby, he's working on this album and I was totally surprised by what he was doing.

The music was fresh and it was like I saw a third act renaissance of an artist. And so I said to him, look, let's shoot some footage of this. And I could see that there was a story to tell there because what the music that he was working on was, I could see that it was like a window into the past. And so after a couple of years of shooting off and on, going broke a couple of times, nearly losing my apartment. Standard filmmaker stuff.

Standard film, yeah. Met Cameron, and we had a bunch of bizarre, bizarre Hollywood meetings too. I mean, one company was like, you know, we'll finance your doc if you can put our top hip artist, which I won't tell you what the name is, in the doc. And I was like, that's never, Crosby's never going to respond back to that.

So anyway, serendipitously i i jill mazurski going back to keep on keeping on we met we were over at bad robot to meet and there was the oracle himself mr cameron crow and i was like lightning hit my brain i was like that's it and so he agreed to meet with me and when we first started talking about how we you know he cameron, Cameron, you know, will tell this great story. But I, one of the things we agreed on early on is like, let Crosby tell his own story. Like a letter, like he's writing a letter to a long lost friend. That's his words. Yeah. Yeah, I just really, I had to function as a fan when I first ran into them.

Because we were involved in the hit TV show roadies at the time and not available I say hit with a wink but I like no we were having fun we just weren't you know we're working with JJ and I was not one of their Hollywood meetings I was just up there just hanging out I ran into him yeah and um I immediately went to a fan place where I was thinking just like you know across me is like Garrison Keillor or somebody who's just a really skilled storyteller. It's just in his blood. Don't know where it came from, but he'll just keep you kind of galvanized and give you details on a story and say like his pants were creased. It's woodstock.

He's very creased. The cops are just like a great young man cop. And you're like, wow, he's like a journalist. Anyway, I was like, keep the camera on Crosby. Mic it really warmly. Have his eyeline close to the lens and just have it like you've known him for a while. He's going to tell you anything. And that was just my fan advice, unsolicited.

And I think that day or the next time I talked to AJ, I was like, well, let me just do the first interview. Let me just give you an interview. We'll go deep and give me credit as the interviewer, go with God, right? And so we do our first interview and it's great. I mean, he immediately starts going deep, but there was even more there, you could tell. In the movie, you know, when he says like, I like a positive attention, like I like scratch me behind my ear. I like it. That's the first interview. And you can tell it's like, he's like happy to be there. He's like really kind of there for your questions and everything, but you still have one foot in all the other interviews he's ever done. If you like, we ended up doing many of the interviews and we went deeper and deeper

and deeper. The first time you see him in the movie, he's telling this story about Coltrane, this great story. That's from nearly the last interview that we've done. So you can see the difference. Now he's in his house. He's just kind of there comfortable on the sofa and he's just going to go there.

He's going to do Coltrane's, you know, sound with his voice. It's like, that's the guy he's just going to go there he's going to do coltrane's you know sound with his voice it's like that's the guy that's just like we are so far from an epk now we are so far from like you know a junket thing this is this is the shit you know and and so eventually you know i just had to stay in and really actually produce. The tentacles slowly. Because there are producers that put their name on stuff, and I always can tell. Like Scorsese, guys like that. When they put their name on something, you can tell they were there.

They have their sensibility in there. So I was like, you really want me to produce this, AJ? Absolutely, yes. You really want this, K this aj absolutely yes you really want this cross i really do you're at you've called me four times now say put your name on it you really want this yeah okay we're gonna fucking go there it's because we totally agreed there was never any question in their mind or my mind about what level to do it at or how to go at it it's a much harder place and it's and it requires real skill as an editor and it requires real skill as a director whereas their skills really

mattered if we do it the way we wanted to do it because you have to be really good to tell the truth i'm so interested in what your relationship has been like over the years because it's understood that you wrote a lot of stories about him you guys spent a lot of time together in the 60s and 70s were you in touch in the 80s the 90s i mean a lot of time you know when i went down the tubes he didn't want to watch i did i did exactly the truth that's i did see you he did see me i came to mill valley but i saw you once and it was distressing it was really uh he didn't want to see it nobody none of my friends did man no no friend of mine no friend of mine wanted to see that so was this conversation this series of conversations that you all were having reviving something getting meeting each other again for us great question for us you

know we've we've had pretty good contact over the years. We, it was something desirable for both of us. I trust him. I know what level he approaches art at, and this is art. This is what we do. And I,

I know how he feels about making film. I know what, what level they want. That's the only level I'm interested in. So it, it really couldn't happen with anybody else. And that's why only level i'm interested in so it it really couldn't happen with anybody else and that's why i turned everybody else down and that's why i would sought out these guys i was volunteering when you're i'm sorry go ahead say when you're writing

something you're always there kind of like in that lonely room trying to come up with a character that's memorable it means something to you. And it's always the bigger characters that I've ever been able to write or adapt or something. It's like the big characters, the one that just keep giving you gifts as you're making a movie. Jerry, what's his name? Jerry Maguire is kind of a big character.

Big Lebowski. Now that's like a big character. You're just like, what is he going to do? The whole movie is interesting because I love this big character. This is like a big character. You're just like, what is he going to do? The whole movie is interesting because I love this big character. This is like a big character. You said something about my weight. You're actually Mr. Slim

these days. You guys are all looking good. Thanks. Especially you. Having a character that is that big and you don't have to write anything. You just have to ask the right question at the right time and he'll give it to you as like a joy.

So there's this extraordinary clip of you on The Dick Cavett Show in the film and you are performing. You're being interviewed, but you are really in the moment. And there are moments, I think, when you're being interviewed in this film where it feels similar. And I wonder if it felt to you guys like you were being performative when you were talking or if you were just you know if you ask me a question about a thing that i'm that i'm i was fascinated with or that i i want to tell you a story about

then then yeah you're gonna get you know probably more than you expected we had an interview you know it's funny on that clip he's like you know i just donna me gm ford chrysler 76 and dodge should go out of business well we were playing at one of the film festivals and we were just introduced by the head of ford who was the capital sponsor and it was so funny though after where he came up he's like i liked that i loved the movie man but you know he did call for my company to go out of business. That clip is just a mini rosebud in a way. There's so much happening in that clip.

They've just come from Woodstock. There's always stuff that I've not asked you about that. That was a pivotal thing in my house. It was one of the first times my mom let us stay up late to watch something rock related. And I never forgot. I never forgot how eloquent and fun he was and uh and how beautiful joni mitchell was and anyway so years later we're in the editing room working working with the film and i studied the dynamic that's happening in that and you can answer this question i don't know who's high and who's not high, but the people who went to Woodstock are still in the moment. And poor Joni, who missed Woodstock, stayed behind and wrote the great song

Woodstock, she's clearly sharp and not high and maybe a little, in my view, maybe a little bit like, you know, just tender with the moment. And she kind of bonds with Cavett. And Cavett makes this great joke after Kross goes and says, these are my sponsors. Yeah, he goes, yeah, particularly because those are my sponsors. And everyone around, they're a little fucking slow because they've been at Woodstock all day. But Joanie is like right there with the best Cabot joke,

you know, possible in the moment. She's just electrically kind of connected to this joke that Cabot has made. So like, did it feel that way? Did it feel like Joanie had been with you or was outside of the gang that was actually at the show? Well,

she was outside of that gang anyway, but she did want to be in that gang. You know, that was, that was a Jefferson Airplane appearance. Right. That's right. It's a Jefferson Airplane with Dick Carruth.

Right. And then Stills and I got, you know, were there, you know, and so Cabot asked them, and they said, oh, yeah, they're our buddies. And then Joni was there and so that San Francisco was my peeps that's who I was most comfortable with them and Garcia

I liked that so much better than Hollywood and Joni wanted to be in a rock band she couldn't be in a band but she wanted to be in that group of people and you could see her you know but she was the only straight one wow you twigged wow wow good observation you twigged it exactly it makes total sense when you see the clip she does seem pretty even keeled relative to too late to get the audio on this and lay it in the sequence

come on we could that's yeah What was that? That's amazing, that answer. Yeah. But your perception is still pretty good. That's so great. Cool. Wow. Thanks. What was the hardest thing for each one of you guys about making this? I imagine there's some specific things about talking about your life. It was much harder for them

than me. Really? Yeah, for me it's just being naked in public. Yes, it's hard because I had a very checkered history and there's stuff I'm really not proud of. There's stuff that disturbs me mightily that I've done. But there are

lessons to be learned and there's a load to be lightened and there's light to be shed. And I think we made the right choice. Did you sense boundaries when you guys were talking to him about none not really no boundaries set anywhere we wouldn't want to exclude any possibility that we could find some grand you know granule of important truth we wouldn't mind any i'll lick the notes off the floor yeah we really honest to god had no boundaries at all

when these two when cameron and crosby started talking you know cameron has the ability because they they have this rapport that's different than crosby and i we and we left out a ton yeah to answer your question earlier like what was the big like challenge you know like crosby has lived this legendary amazing life that if it were in a screenplay and you were reading it, you'd go, this is not possible. Yeah. Out the door. So, you know, to make a movie about that and include all of these touch points was really terrifying because, you know, as a director, you want to make sure that you include so many things. So, you know, we found ourselves in the edit bay.

Cameron and I joke about this a lot, like, where do we put the liver transplant? Where do we put the Etheridge kids? You left out all the porno stuff. That's for another movie. I couldn't believe it. But that was something I wanted to ask you about. I mean, the movie is nonlinear.

You know, it starts, and it seems like it's going to be your kind of like, will this be the hagiographic bio, always are man because you have to not know where what's coming next you they're jerking you around these guys will jerk you around they're emotion jerkers yeah that's their gig make you feel stuff with some images and it has to do with which image follows which image they they don't want a linear story they want to smack you over here and then tickle you there and then touch up here and then they want to do that let the record show he's molesting i'm being touched but you are being in a very gentle way they want to do that because that's how they move you yeah and their gig is to

move you that's they know that but you never know where those moments are going to come from you have to spend the time in the editing room to find them like you looking at that house where our house was written and everything and you're just you're it feels to me like you're reliving those moments and you just have to exit frame because it's just that's over right now yeah i have moments like those that really kill me same way when i turn away yeah it's like i'm done well it's the best i i know what you mean and i and i you know when you said that that look that i give you at the end yeah i was looking for it this time and i uh yeah did you see it i totally did this is the look at the end that's kind of like a smirk or a smile or i don't know what it's like a little mona lisa moment it's not a smirk i'm smile, or I don't know what it is. It's like a little Mona Lisa moment.

It's not a smirk. I never smirk. I'm using your word from a girl once told me, your first song, where you go, well, a little smirk. I was too young to know it wasn't a good word. Okay, we'll throw smirk away. With a Mona Lisa smile. A smile on which you end.

Every time I see this movie, it's like I think he's thinking a different thing, which is really, really good, I think. Crosby is a human rorschach test he really is you look at you look at him as a portrait i mean just photographically and you can so many people see so many different motions and that was really what was a challenge for us editing too but like to talk about like the non-linear at the beginning of the movie i think it kind of takes a you know the same of the movie, I think it kind of takes the standard movie structure. The stakes are high. He's leaving home.

His health is, you know, the doctors are telling him he shouldn't be going on tour. His wife is emotional about it, Jan. And we go out on this journey. And hopefully the question is, you know, that the audiences will have is, is he going to make it back? And while we're on tour with him, he's remembering these key moments from his life. And we set out to do something that was different. And I'm really proud of the fact that we pulled it off.

Are you happy to see the film? Or is it painful for you to watch it? No, I'm very happy with it. I've seen a ton of these, man. And I did not like them not all of them i've liked under the influence a lot like for sure the keith richards one well that was good this is about the music yeah and it it gave you a sense of who keith is yeah you know because he was similarly honest yeah well keith wasn't afraid either right you know he knows who

he is right right and he did not hold back. He did not try to censor himself, which is immensely admirable. And it's where this starts. That's the jacks are better for doing what we did. You have to be willing in the first place. And then you have to have guys who are skilled enough to do it if you're willing to do it. We had all three.

Do you think you will hear from some people that you haven't heard from in a while if they see this? I don't even think they'll watch it. But we didn't make it for that. This isn't a flag to wave at them. This is something for me. This is about this musical resurgence that none of us really understands why it happened. I don't understand why it happened i understand some of the elements these incredible people that have dropped into my life that are

that want to work you know at it with me and uh you know i understand that but but it still in all it's a complete aberration it's not how it normally goes ever which is what we first looked at and said yeah he was working on his first solo album in 20 years cross and he's made four albums in five years i don't know halfway through a fifth one i don't understand how your voice still sounds so i don't either it's very strange look we've we've all asked ourselves about it it doesn't make any sense the only mistake i didn't do was cigarettes ah i did everything else um i guess the the lesson is smoke pot don't smoke cigarettes end every episode of this show by asking one specific question uh it's what's the last great

thing that you've seen we've talked about a couple of music documentaries i don't know how many films you guys watch but aj cameron lot javid what's the last great thing that you guys have last great movie that i saw that really moved me was The Judge. Oh, yeah, the Robert Downey Jr. movie? I freaking loved it. Wow, that's an unexpected answer. Well, you know, you got master class guys there. The writing was spectacular.

The supporting cast was utterly freaking brilliant. And it was an extremely well-done piece of work i i loved it i i loved three bridges i mean three billboards three billboards that one i loved it francia mcdormand is one of my heroes i i love her uh but i i haven't seen a lot of movies lately that i cared about most of the movies that you see now are Make the Robot Bigger. Yeah, it's fun for the kids and stuff, but it doesn't make me feel anything. Cameron, what about you? Broken Embraces, Pedro Almodovar, which I hadn't seen. That's from a few years ago.

I'm a huge fan of his, and I love Penelope Cruz. I've never seen it, and it's spectacular. It's so good. We're going to make a movie next year. So I'm kind of like going back through some of my favorite filmmakers to get you and Penelope or you and Pedro, me and me, you and you, hopefully we'll get some more people on board at a certain point, but it's, I just finished the script, you know, so I'm like starting to now think about how we're going to execute and all that stuff.

And Broken Embraces was a pretty great lantern to guide us down the next little path. Great one. Link me. I want to see it. I will. If you like it that much, I got to see it. Wrote a little part for him in the next one. No kidding.

Yeah, man. Hey, I'm not wearing the dress. I'm sorry. I won't do it. You're a movie star now, though. You got to keep that in mind. I won't wear the dress. I'm drawing the line won't do it. You're a movie star now though. You've got to keep that in mind. I won't wear the dress. I'm drawing the line somewhere.

What did we decide about the mustache? Yes or no? If I'm wearing the dress, I can't have the mustache. All right. There we go. AJ, what about you? Oh, well, you know, I have been immersed in this edit bay on this movie for like two years basically. See how wrinkled he is? Underwater for two years.

So I'm catching up on a lot of movie watching. But I did like Bohemian Rhapsody a lot. Oh, yeah. And I love stories of musicians and their struggle. My dad's a songwriter. He did a great job, didn't he? Great, great job. And he's a good actor.

Deserved that Oscar. I liked him back in Mr. Robot. I thought he was really exceptional for off the little screen you don't see that that level very often and I thought he

killed it I loved it I thought he did a great job you guys killed it too David Cameron thank you thank you guys

our pleasure thank you so much Thank you.