The Big Picture - Was 2007 the Best Year for Film? | The Big Picture (Ep. 40)

Episode Date: December 15, 2017

The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey, Chris Ryan, and Andy Greenwald go back to 2007 to discuss the most fascinating year for movies in recent memory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My favorite movie is There Will Be Blood. I think it's certainly the best movie of the century, maybe the best movie ever made. I'm Sean Fantasy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture. Today we're going back to 2007. That was when the first iPhone was released. Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron's all-time home run record. Beyonce's Irreplaceable topped the charts, and American Idol was the most popular television show in America. And at the movies? Well, it was just about the most fascinating movie year in recent memory. A time when a Coen Brothers film

won Best Picture at the Oscars, a small indie about a pregnant teenager grossed more than $230 million, the world met an oil man named Daniel Plainview, and Michael Bay showed the industry what a Transformer can do. Over the course of the past year at The Ringer, we've looked back at some of the most compelling movies from 2007, films like Superbad and Ratatouille. Just this week, we released a 2007-themed episode of the Rewatchables podcast focusing on David Fincher's masterful Zodiac. So for today's episode of The Big Picture, I've asked The Watch co-hosts Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald to join me to talk more in depth about the phenomenon of 2007 at the movies, why things happened the way that they did, and if we'll ever see another year like it again.

So without further ado, here joining me thanks for having andy greenwald is this your first appearance on the big picture i'm honored this this is a big chair to fill i mean you've had some names on this podcast yeah who are you most intimidated by david shoemaker and jason concepcion and those are two of the best so guys we're here to talk about the movies of 2007 and why that was the single greatest year in movies in the 21st century and damn there were a lot of movies that year yes and just to set the scene a little bit before we really get into the nitty-gritty i'm just gonna list some of those movies okay okay here we go no country for old men zodiac there will be blood the born ultimatum, a Chris Ryan favorite, Juno, Superbad,

Eastern Promises, Transformers, Ratatouille, Michael Clayton, Into the Wild, Knocked Up, Atonement. I have 50 more titles on my list. What number does Mr. Bean's Holiday fall? That didn't make the cut, unfortunately. Wow. This is going to be a contentious pot. So we can talk about some things that are off the list, but I think there are a lot of reasons why 2007 was such a profound year.

What I want to know from you guys is why it was special to you before we dig into some of the specifics. I think it was a lot of people operating at the peak of their powers. We joke a lot about Apex Mountain on the Rewatchables podcast. And I think that in each case with the directors we're talking about, you could say, well, I mean, I mean I like you know Miller's Crossing more than No Country for Old Men or I'm I'm partial to Fight Club or Social Network over Zodiac but what year can you think of where you have so many great filmmakers at about the peak of their powers because we often talk about oh this is a good year because we have a Tarantino and a Spielberg or a Tarantino and a Scorsese movie coming out. And it's like, oh, this is like somehow it's synced up.

The calendar synced up. But this is a year where these people were all seemingly firing on all pistons. And I can't remember another year that was like that. I also think it's worth thinking about in retrospect. Obviously, in the moment, that's one of the reasons why the year felt so exciting, even as we were seeing these movies in the theater and then seeing them win awards and make year end lists and et cetera. But eras aren't easily defined when you're living through them. You're often not aware that a page is being turned until maybe the page has already been turned.

And looking back from 10 years at this period, 2007 and these movies felt like the summation of something. And it wasn't necessarily something good. I mean, we were coming out of, I'm trying to stay relatively non-political, it was a tumultuous time coming from 9-11 through various wars and misadventures around the world through really the end of a presidency that was not my favorite. But regardless, in 2007, was essentially over. Congress had basically throttled this agenda and we felt like something was coming. We did not know it was an economic crash. We did not know it was Barack Obama and everything else that came after. Unlike, say, Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, these movies

weren't necessarily about what we had all lived through, but in some ways they feel like very pure expressions of it. Yeah, you can almost look at these movies as like the sea mist burning off and then you find out that the world is on fire, which is sort of what economically and obviously the reverberations of the economic crisis that happened in 08 are still being felt today. There's a lot of ambiguity. There's a lot of uncertainty in a lot of these films. And you almost wonder whether or not – I mean you're ascribing a certain narrative to them, but you almost wonder whether there was a feeling in the air that these films sort of captured a, what are we doing? We, as people who write or talk about culture, we love the idea of works of art having conversations with each other. That's generally our job to try and stitch those things together,

sometimes awkwardly or in a not necessarily natural way. The four movies that are arguably the Mount Rushmore of this year, and you mentioned them, of course, Zodiac, There Will Be Blood, No Country, and Michael Clayton. I don't think we need to do spoiler warnings, but I still won't get too into it. But all four of those movies end on profound notes of disquiet and ambiguity. That's a remarkable thing for any year, I think, for four major movies to end with a similar feeling. There's an unsettling feeling in the air when you walk out of the theater or after you turn off those movies that really mirrored how we all felt about where we had just been through and what was to come. I think there's a reason for that, too, that is specific to the industry, which is 07 is probably the last time that movies were truly the centerpiece of American culture. Obviously, Andy, you spent a lot of time writing about television. I was going to say, I spent a lot of time dismantling that.

Well, that may well be true also. But, you know, what we talked about as the golden age of television essentially starts right in this period. Mad Men premieres that summer, 2007. So there you go. And with that comes a whole new way of processing, not just where people's attention lies

and what people will spend money on, but also who will work on those things and what creative energy is going towards stuff, too. There's something really interesting about, there's a lot of masters who made great work in this year, and then there's also a lot of new people who came along and were making really fun and interesting stuff. So that tension is unique.

It's also the last year before Capes. It's the last pre-superhero year. Right, so let's talk about that a little bit. This was still during, this was the end of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man era when things were still, I would say, a little bit more ill-defined in terms of how to make a superhero movie. And the positive spin on that is this was still an era where you could insert a seven to eight minute jazz dance sequence and be like, well, this is right.

You could. This makes sense. If you should, that's the debate. I'll leave that to the experts. But one could. And that was just a way of saying that the concrete was still wet into how these things were going to be, let's say. No, it's very true. And so one year later, you get The Dark Knight and you get Iron Man.

And the entire game changes from there. But one of the most interesting things to me about this is the way that comedy unfurled at this time, too. I think about movie comedies in 2017 and i think with the exception of girls trip there just has not been a significant movie comedy but in 07 which is only 10 years ago that is the rise of super bad and knocked up in tandem like can you guys talk a little bit about what apatow did and how those movies changed things yeah i think if you look at comedies today they're sort of today they are where people used to joke action movies were in the 80s, where it sounded like they were pitched in between bumps of cocaine and an elevator at a talent agency. It's just like all it is is the concept of the comedy.

And they like, we'll just worry about the rest of it on the set because we get great improv people. They'll figure it out. We don't have to write a script but these films that came out in 07 uh knocked up super bad to some extent juno in terms of its were felt like that fresh combination of sketch and improv that was bubbling up under the surface in the alternative comedy scene meeting people who were raised watching mike nichols woody allen and these sort of more formally astute, solid filmmaking stories. Harold Ramis, who's in Knocked Up. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that there was a lifeguard on duty back then, and it had that feeling. Also, I think you're right about the point of things being cyclical. Because remember, 40-Year-Old Virgin is Apatow's first movie as director. It's two years before this. And that was a big, risky bet. It was a hard R comedy without stars. I mean, Steve Carell was just debuting on The Office and was known from

The Daily Show. But that was not anyone's idea of a sure thing. And the fact that it succeeded, nobody loves success like Hollywood, and they ran towards it. And it turned out it was one of those things. And it reminds me in a little bit of when we would cover music. If a scene was allowed to sort of grow naturally before the bright lights of industry, it would be exciting for a few years before it was picked clean. And Apatow had this whole repertoire of writers, of performers, people he had basically been grooming since Freaks and Geeks, who were really ready to be stars.

Yeah, I think that that permeates all of the movies that are made, too, which is that there was just more opportunity. There were more movies being produced full stop at the studios. One of the things that feels most important about this time is how much money and flexibility those indie shingles inside of huge studios had. Yes, you should explain that because I think that that was a big deal for a short moment. Well, in some ways, they still exist in a couple of the houses. But 10 years ago, 12 years ago, as a sort of reaction to the rise of Mirama is essentially to either find or produce movies for less than $5 million maybe and get us awards.

Get us awards. If you can make money, great. If you can find the next Pulp Fiction, fantastic. But give us some prestige. And they were low budgeted. Over time, the budgets got higher and that is part of their undoing. And we can talk a bit about that. The lines got blurred.

Exactly. But Paramount Vantage, Sony Pictures Classics, Fox Searchlight. budgeted over time the budgets got higher and that is part of their undoing and we can talk a bit about that blurred exactly but you know paramount vantage sony pictures classics fox searchlight uh these are theoretically corporate entities yeah but they were operating like small companies and you know i think that they sometimes get knocked like something like little miss sunshine which i think was 06 right and was uh was fox searchlight um it was held up as the like winner you know what's going to be the little miss sunshine of this year it was sort of a safe but edgy family drama comedy that could be many they could have multiple awards possibilities and i think that that kind of movie became a little bit cookie cutter it was a formula yeah so there was a formula it was also it was a it's a classic tweener

that like wouldn't get made now, right? It has, as you said, it has edge, but it has family. It has love, but it has a little bit of grit as well. Those are the sort of ideas and writer, the ideas, the scripts, and in many cases, the supporting actors who have fallen into television in the years since. Absolutely.

Juno in many ways was, whether it was accused or praised for being the next Little Miss Sunshine, it had that same reputation. And I think we forget now because maybe Diablo Cody's career didn't fully bloom the way that many people expected. Jason Reitman's career has kind of taken some left turns over the last few years. That movie made $200, $300 million. It was a massive hit, which is so strange given that it is about a pregnant teenage girl i do think you mentioned uh gross just then it's probably worth mentioning that our version of 2007 and the version that has last that has lasted this is always the case with

the year and movie discussions but if you do the top 10 of highest grossing films of that year it's pirates of the caribbean at world's end it's harry potter it's spider-man 3 with the dance sequence making 89090 million worldwide. And that movie was considered a failure. Yes, yes. And is not remembered fondly if it's remembered at all. The third Shrek,

the first Transformers and National Treasure, Book of Secrets making almost half a Billy. So Hollywood was still being Hollywood, but there it just seems like in this year there was both room for more Hollywood, good and bad, and there was this remarkable confluence of filmmakers and scripts in the moment. Yeah, that's something I wanted to point out, which is that it was quite a run for threequels that year, which is often sort of the most ignominious entry in most movie lineups, especially pre-Marvel when a third movie like Thor Ragnarok is one of the best threequels I've ever seen.

But back then, that often was the movie that didn't work. And we didn't even get to the number 10 grossing movie that year, also a threequel. It was 300, the sequel to both 1 and 200. I wish there were. I'm done. There's a lot to say about 300, and we will get there. But the threequels thing operating in tandem to Paramount Vantage giving Paul Thomas Anderson $15 million to make There Will Be Blood is notable. I mean, it was a different industry where you could succeed and fail in equal measure.

And there was no panic because the economic crisis of 08 had not yet arrived. Television had not yet subsumed. Also, can I say there's something to be said and maybe a parallel to be made. Paul Thomas Anderson obviously is still making movies and still making movies that do not compromise to anyone whatsoever. Paramount Vantage gave him the money to make There Will Be Blood, which was in many ways his most ambitious film to date, maybe still. And now Megan Ellison gives him the money to do these things. It's like the way GoFundMe has replaced other corporations in our lives in terms of like healthcare or supporting friends, that there's a comment to be made there about capitalism almost as strong as the comment

made in the film itself. Yeah, it's very much like politics. You often need a single donor, you know, and that is significantly different from the corporate atmosphere that had essentially everything that started in the late 70s and early 80s in Hollywood essentially calcifies by the mid 2000s and it essentially shattered shortly thereafter because now many of the major studios are essentially leveraged by either billionaires or Chinese companies that American citizens are not aware of. But at this time, it seemed reasonable to let Paul Thomas Anderson make this movie. Well, he still had line item budgets for that left over from the 70s. So this is the Artie slush fund that he's going to get. There's one other big key component that I want to hear you talk about, though, which is the is this the last great DVD year? A lot of these movies wound up then finding

audiences afterwards, whether it was on cable, whether it was on DVD. I don't know when Blu-ray becomes a pretty standard industry format. It's not far from this time. But I was thinking about a movie like Sunshine, which only made about 32 million at the box office, but became a cult classic after its release. You think about something like Zodiac, which only made about $32 million at the box office, but became a cult classic after its release. You think about something like Zodiac, which was, I think for the most part, misunderstood upon its release. And we're doing rewatchables about it. It should speak to its... It's only grown in stature as Downey Ruffalo and Gyllenhaal have become big stars.

And also Fincher has become regarded as probably one of the best two or three American filmmakers alive. So I think that... I'm not sure exactly how the DVD market was working back then, but I do get the sensation that there was life after the theater for a lot of these movies. Because of what you guys noted earlier, too, the ambiguity and the unanswered questions around some of these movies, those movies stand up to repeated viewings. You need to go back to them and think about them

and unpack how you feel about them, and they can grow in your mind. Whether this was the last great DVD era, I don't know. I still buy many Blu-rays, sadly for me. But there is something to be said about the inherent rewatchability. You know, we have not, in our rewatchable series, we have not pitched a lot of movies that come after this time. And there's something to be said about that. I don't know if that's necessarily a story of the industry

or just a story of the age of the people who are selecting the movies. But there is something unique about 07, 08 being the end of some kind of era. One more thing that I think is worth noting about recognizing when eras end and how things should be appreciated in their own time is that we have these surprisingly large number of movies that we think not only stand up as great art,

but also great exemplars of a certain period in American history. This year was, in many ways, like all years in Hollywood, in which Hollywood tried to set that narrative for itself. There were at least two movies released at the end of that year in Oscar season that were being made expressly to be the movie for the era. What were they? Lions for Lambs, Lions for Lambs with Tom Cruise and Redford, right?

Meryl Streep as well. And Meryl Streep, and that's about the fog of war. And then Charlie Wilson's War. This was designed in a lab, and I don't even mean that cynically, to get eyeballs and get nominations at the end of the year. It was sort of the post of 2007. It was directed by Mike Nichols and written by Aaron Sorkin and starring Tom Hanks, and there was something just so about Charlie Wilson's war,

which is just a very highly imperfect movie. Yes. But much, you know, much like the post, I think it can be in without saying anything about the relative merits of that film. I think it can often be flawed to suggest that we can know what we're

living through by just glancing in the rear view mirror for, and reaching for a comp. We, no one, I remember when Paul Thomas Anderson, when it was announced he was going to make another movie, it felt like it had been forever. It had been five years. And he's adapting Upton Sinclair's Oil.

And I remember thinking, my first thought was, oh no. This does not seem interesting. It seems impenetrable even in design. But of course there's much more going on there and the great artists don't do what we expect them to do. They show us what they want to do and we follow them. I'm looking at this list of movies from 2007 and I'm trying to remember

it does feel like looking back on it I had a median higher level of enjoyment of even the worst movies. You know I think I enjoyed even something like 30 Days of Night, which is basically just like a vampire action flick with Josh Hartnett in the Arctic,

more than I did, like, say, Assassin's Creed this year. But what else were you watching in 2007? I think this goes back to the TV argument. I mean, Sopranos was on. The Wire was ending. I think it maybe even ended then. There were a couple shows that we all liked a couple shows that we all loved

plenty of shows that we liked and we probably watch at our own speeds but otherwise I was still getting the red envelopes from Netflix to watch movies to watch old movies because that still had a more primary role in our culture. And so it's interesting to try and figure out,

was the median movie better then? Or was that just getting more of our attention and time and our standards were different? Do you buy that at all? It's an interesting question. I don't know specifically. I do know that the shift into genre as the dominant box office force in the last five years feels really notable to me.

The fact that 30 Days of Night and The Mist are essentially the only two horror movies that made an impact in 2007 versus this year, where those are kind of the only movies that can get people into theaters, feels really notable. And, you know, The Mist, I think, is underrated, and 30 Days of Night is in the Chris Ryan Hall of Fame. But I don't think it's like, I don't think there are any great shakes. The movies that you remember are either huge box office, uh, attempts, you know,

your pirates threes or their Junos and Juno feels a little improbable right now. Get out is the Juno of 2017 and it's a horror movie. I want to talk a little bit about 300, but I'm going to use a different movie to talk about 300 and that movie is Beowulf. Do you guys recall Beowulf? It's a mecca season. winstone cgi ray winstone that's what america wanted and cgi angelina jolie in in roberts and mecca's adaptation of beowulf many people when that movie came out thought that was going to be the future

the visual future of mocap yeah that and the polar express right those are the two like yes that was his first shot at it. And Beowulf was meant to be a more adult action themed story. Little did we know we'd have to wait for Tintin for MoCap to really pop off. Beowulf was not the future of MoCap or visual action, but it was 300. Let's just talk about Zack Snyder and the power to come. A bit of a villain in in movie artistry um you know certainly with the way that the DC comics movies have been received but just generally I

think people identify him as a purely masculine steroidal empty director at the time of 300 I think people were pretty excited about what the future could hold when people saw that because 300 was while it was a Frank Miller book that was adapted, it just didn't have a huge hype machine around it. Can I say that one of the main differences between today and 2007, certainly, is that the fanboy thirst was real. And a lot of the goodwill, I'm not saying the mass mainstream goodwill towards 300,

but a lot of the energy that fueled it, because the internet did exist certainly then, was people saying the artistry of Frank Miller, the artistry of opening a book and seeing the dynamism of his pencils and the way that the panels work together. This guy, Zack Snyder, has brought that to the art house. This is the equivalent of reading this book

because as we found out later, he literally like 4D Xeroxes it. I mean, that was the art house. This is the equivalent of reading this book because as we found out later, he literally like 4D Xeroxes it. I mean, that was the downfall of Watchmen. But I do think this was, as you said, the year before Iron Man and the year before Dark Knight, whatever residual resentment and bitterness and just hunger to see this art form validated by the culture at large was still really,

it was really present then. And it eventually, of course, devoured the whole culture. I think that you could make, there's a whole other conversation to have about the overbearing masculinity of Snyder's stuff. But I think that the issue that most people have with it is the fact that he was drawing stylistically, largely from the world of comic books

rather than from the world of film. He was bringing the pow, biff, whoa part of comic books. Always comic book fans' favorite part of comic books rather than from the world of film he was bringing the pow biff whoa part of comic books always like always comic book fans favorite part of comic books but i love when it goes biff yeah but that is his the language that he was talking in in in his films visually and i think that there is a degree to which you could even make that argument with transformers which obviously i really really like mich Bay movies, but those Transformers films are almost incomprehensible in terms of what is actually happening on screen. I mean, they're CGI robots fighting. So it's really difficult to understand where is up and where

is down. And all the rules of cinema that we kind of thought we understood from watching Jaws or something, they get broken. They get tossed out of the room. Transformers is really the harbinger of what's to come in so many ways. In retrospect, it is incredibly quaint that the other attempts at sort of engaging with fanboyness, whether it's through the technical specs of what you're doing or the content of what you're doing, came from a Frank Miller independent comic book and an old English story poem. Yeah, right. Because Zack Snyder went from doing that to literally having Batman and Superman fight

for a movie. He was given the keys to all the toys. Those were the toys of my childhood. So the idea of someone saying like, okay, I'm going to take these toys seriously, that felt novel and strange. And then now that is literally what half of the business is devoted to doing. One of the things I like most about 2007

movies is people getting a chance. This is the year of Gone Baby Gone. Let's think back on Ben Affleck. Let's give Ben Affleck a chance. Ben Affleck needed a chance at this time. Where was Ben Affleck's career? Well, he's a great example of a bunch of people

around who are the most popular stars using their capital for nominally for good so you know what you whether you had george clooney doing something like a a 70s character study like michael clayton or you had ben affleck being like i want to adapt the dennis lahane novel or uh even something like uh brad pitt doing assassination Assassination of Jesse James which is a passion project weird western that's almost three hours long these guys were not saying like how can I consolidate my wealth and make Iron Man 3 not no shots at Downey they were saying like I grew up watching these great films I I grew up you know in awe of Sidney Pollack in awe of Robert Redford I want to do what those guys

were doing in the 70s and make mass entertainment provocative, thought-provoking films. Why did that go away? It feels like that has stopped for the most part. Because you can make

$80 million in a year being Iron Man. Yeah, that is your forever war with Robert Downey Jr. Yeah. But you can also now dip into television,

should you so choose, and basically for the same schedule that you would be devoting to a movie, do six or seven episodes of something highly prestigious for HBO or Netflix or whatever, get a comparable paycheck, which is also key, and have no obligation to do it again the next year. Plus, there's no downside to it anymore. You scoop up awards, maybe at a different award show than you're used to, but you scoop them up anyway.

And there is no sense that you're slumming it. It's a different avenue. Guys, I want to know your favorite 2007 movies. Andy, why don't you go first? I think also we should note a lot of these movies, this may change, but it seemed to be on Netflix right now. It's kind of a great moment. Yeah, Michael Clayton is. Zodiac is. It is worth noting through 2017 Eyes how deeply and profoundly male these movies are in terms of who is behind the camera for them.

And I'm not saying that to suggest that these should be ripped from the cultural blind spots that I had, and I think many people had, that cinema or this level of high art cinema really was the recourse of talented, troubled, auteur genius men, many of whom who did their best work that year. And many of whom I'm excited to see their new work. Sean, you've seen Phantom Thread and spent a lot of time with Paul just rapping about it and the process, I know. A lot of time with Paul just rapping about it and the process, I know. A lot of time. Chris and I haven't had that pleasure yet, but it is an example of something that, for us, 2007 doesn't feel that long ago. But in terms of culture and what we're looking for in the culture and what we're excited about in the larger culture and the conversation we have around it, it feels like 100 years ago in that regard. I don't think there's a single film on my long list, 50 plus films, that was directed by a woman, which is incredibly strange. Even films like Enchanted, which was a huge hit that year and in many ways set Amy Adams' career off.

Yes. Directed by a man, written by a man. Sure. And then when, you know, even a few years later when Catherine Bigelow wins Best Director, and I think we were all cheered by what it meant representationally, but also the fact that it was a good movie and she's a terrific director, even then my brain was like, well, that's good. Things must be changing without any addressing the systemic... Ah, the Obama years. Exactly.

So it's an interesting perspective to have. You know, it doesn't change my top list of favorites. Yeah, tell me your deeply masculine favorite then. It's one of the most masculine ones we've said. It's Michael Clayton. One of my favorite movies of all time. It's very much intentional that I've picked the writer's movie.

All these movies are well-written in very different ways. Explain Tony Gilroy just for a minute. Tony Gilroy, I think you really can't talk about Tony Gilroy without talking about his ice skating movie, which was called... The Cutting Edge, man.

Cutting Edge, thank you. Tony Gilroy is a filmmaker now, but was a screenwriter, known as one of the best, most dependable guys. A studio guy. Did a ton of rewrite work. Wrote some scripts that did well. Wrote some scripts that he probably wishes his name wasn't on.

A very traditional screenwriting path. Got, cobbled together enough juice to basically punch his own ticket, and the script that he had that he had to do himself is this throwback movie, frankly. I mean, it was pitched at the time as kind of like a 70s movie. And it brilliantly took one of the biggest stars of the era,

George Clooney, matinee idol looks and persona, and cast him as the schnook, cast him as the guy who wasn't good enough to be the real lawyer, who was overlooked and forgotten. And they, you know, thank God he had a thing for horses or else he would be mincemeat on the side of the road. And it's really a movie about the people who just get run over, which in brilliant ways that we didn't expect foreshadows the economic collapse of the next year. But it is a, I would argue, hugely rewatchable movie. It is really funny. It has a deep sense of place, but it is just beautifully, perfectly constructed. And in an era now when movies are written as bake-offs between teams of screenwriters to meet projected dates demanded by shareholders to see a movie that was,

someone just wrote the shit out of it and then pulled it off, it brings a smile to my face. Can I say one thing about Michael Clayton that I noticed on the rewatch? Is it about the only good bake-off being the baguettes that Tom Wilkinson carries around? It's that the narrative that this is a movie about a schnook, it is true. Yeah.

But Michael Clayton and his gambling addiction are very much like paul newman and his debilitating alcoholism in the vertical it's still paul newman and george clooney but it's the movies i know you know that's what i like i'm just me i just mean like michael clayton probably would have played different if giamatti had played michael clayton true captain save a clayton uh what is your what is your choice you know i i feel stupid saying zodiac because i've spent a lot of time talking about zodiac so let's just say it's zodiac okay but i would like to shout out assassination of jesse james yes uh just because i am a huge fan of the uh the troubled

movie the movie that went through uh really tumultuous production andrew dominic is a guy who um probably has not had the career that I was hoping for him to have. He made this. He made Killing Him Softly. He was supposed to make a Marilyn Monroe movie with Chastain or with Michelle Williams at various points, it was rumored. And now he's attached to, I think, a Jim Thompson adaption or maybe a Cormac McCarthy one. He's always attached to the coolest possible literary adaption. But this is just, it really reminds you of movies from the 70s like McCabe and Mrs. Miller and its wandering,

kind of really marches to its own rhythm. It is probably the prettiest movie of the year. There's not a shot in it that couldn't be framed and put in a museum. Great ensemble performances from people like Paul Schneider and Jeremy Renner. Great Sam Shepard performance in that movie. Sam Shepard, Zoe Deschanel, Mary Louise Parker is great in it. And a staggering Brad Pitt performance, one of his best. Yeah, one of his best.

And one of the greatest examples of a star understanding what makes him a star and then using it like a color in a painting. Understanding that he isn't the painting, but if he's shaded a certain way, the movie becomes about something else. And about celebrity and the death of celebrity and about the consequences of actions. It's really a stunning movie. Yeah, it's one of those few films where you watch it and you're like, every element of this is on display in a great way, where it's the score by Nick Cave is iconic to me. The photography is beautiful. The performances are wonderful. It's adapted from Ron Hansen's book about Jesse James, and a lot of the language and the dialogue comes from it. It's just a fantastic movie.

Well done. Thanks. My choice is not No Country for Old Men, though. I think we should probably just devote two minutes to it. Sure. It won Best Picture at the Oscars at a very arthouse Oscars, I would say, which indicates a lot of what's to come in the Oscars. I believe it's the third lowest rated Oscars of all time. And because of that, shortly after 2008, when The Dark Knight was not nominated, they changed the voting rules to expand the the number of nominations to 10 for best picture should we say what the best picture nominees were

please read them off and um no country for old men michael clayton there will be blood atonement and juno no country for old men is the coen brothers masterpiece slash one of 14 masterpieces um you know i that's a perfect book and a perfect movie. And I don't think, I think it's the only time that's ever happened. What do you think? I think we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that Roger Deakins shot No Country for Old Men and Assassination of Jesse James. So a good year for him. One might say many years, because I think Assassination of Jesse James took a little while to make. But why did No Country, I mean, it's amazing that that won Best Picture.

And not just because that year with that lineup, because it was deserving and you can make arguments for the others, of course. And any year where you can make arguments for all of them at the Oscars is a good one. But why, if the Coens were going to win, you know, first of all, the fact that they were going to win Oscars

was not necessarily a given considering their prickliness in the movies that they make. Why that one? That specific McCarthy book, a lot of people feel like was written to be a movie. If you read that book, it's essentially the screenplay of the movie. And when you're reading that book, I still can't remember, but I was reading it and I think that I either heard that he was in talks or I just sort of assumed because you read

the sheriff character and you're just like, this seems like Tommy Lee Jones. And as soon as you think it's Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem, it's a wrap. You will never see anybody else as those people. It was a really interesting, it also had a certain Bridges of Madison County quality where it was essentially a bestseller that became a movie nine months after that.

So they really just connected all the dots with that property. It doesn't have a lot of fat, though property. It doesn't have a lot of fat though. That, that book doesn't have a lot of fat. That book has meaning, but it's not as biblically deep as say Blood Meridian or All the Pretty Horses. And there's two other McCarthy novels. And I think that it was something that Hollywood really likes to celebrate, which is the best version of a certain genre of movie. And in some ways, that's why La La Land was such a sensation, is because it not only was a celebration of Los Angeles, but it was like, great job making a musical.

As good as a musical could be these days. And in a lot of ways, No Country for Old Men was just about as good as a Western noir could be. It just still blows my mind in a good way that No Country was their Oscar winning movie and not True Grit. And True Grit was really good. Maybe even great. But of everything, anything I've ever done, that was the one that felt the most like, this is gonna... As with a lot of awards for longtime identified brilliant filmmakers, it was just sort of a that's it's time thing. It's just

they had amassed such a body of work that's it's time thing it's just they had they had a mass such a body of work that people admired so much and they particularly because they're not very public because they don't explain themselves often they have a sort of um mysterious i guess envy there's a people really like look up to them in a way that they don't we don't really look up to filmmakers anymore it's something that paul thomas anderson still has a little bit too but it's that's increasingly rare and it felt like just an acknowledgement of their mastery.

And I think it has something in common, actually, with a movie that came out this year, maybe an unlikely something in common, but I don't think that movie wins Best Picture if it doesn't have that Tommy Lee Jones soliloquy at the end of it, which you walk out of the movie feeling like it's important.

Not just that it's thrilling or scary or exciting or even graceful, but that it's meaningful about the or exciting or even graceful but that it's meaningful about the american west or what people do to each other and about you know violent inexplicable violence kind of reminds me of call me by your name which ends in a similar fashion there's sort of an explicative emotional speech that happens right at the end of that movie and it some people think it's a little on the nose i think you could make the case that the tommy lee jones soliloquy is a little on the nose great point but call me by her name is sort of explains itself at the end and it says like this is what love is actually about and what it's for

and i think it clarifies that movie for a lot of people and i think that may be why it's going to win best picture that's a different podcast too but movies like that need they need a hammer you know they need a button that is ultimately why i think it was it was rewarded um my favorite movie is there will be blood and that's not surprising to you guys you know that um i think it's certainly the best movie of the century maybe the best movie ever made there's a lot of reasons for that i'll be writing about that for the ringer.com you should read that um i do want to talk to you guys a little bit about that movie, though. It seems impossible to me now, particularly what we know about what Hollywood is willing to do, what it's willing to pay for, the themes that that movie tackles. I also want to note that I think it's also the funniest movie, and that's not something that it totally gets credit for. What is your memory of

There Will Be Blood? What I remember most about that movie was its beautiful and glorious impenetrability at first. It was as close as I can remember in a movie theater feeling like I was reading a great work of literature in that field. Or maybe when you read Shakespeare or something and you're in college and you're given a book and you know this book is being handed to you with the weight of history and of importance. And some books don't deserve that, but some do. And you read them, and all you want is to find the way in. And you're scrambling around looking for the window or the door that's been left open or the line that will make you laugh and lead you in. And I remember that level of engagement with the movie because at first I couldn't find my way into it.

And it took a while, and I think it took multiple viewings. But to feel that way about a movie, not a classic movie, but a movie that is new and fresh for us as it was then, was exhilarating. And then it ends the way it ends, which is maybe the greatest ending of all time. Apologies to The Graduate. Yeah, along the same lines, I have been having a real methadone addict relationship to film Twitter over the last few years. But this is obviously like kind of right before Twitter becomes a constant presence in my life and I think in a lot of our lives

and especially the pop culture industrial complex pumping us full of information about what we're about to see that hadn't quite happened yet. And so what I remember about There Will Be Blood was the wonder. And I think that I had read or heard maybe that the opening 25 minutes

were silent uh except for johnny greenwood score and just the immediate sort of feeling like i'm i'm i'm seeing a major work of art uh as soon as it started and like andy saying that kind of feeling of what is what is happening here like why are there two paul danos what's the score trying to tell me um you know the the ups and downs and the way that the film seems to just kind of unfold every time you watch it it's not it's not a narrative that you can sort of map out in any way i couldn't coherently tell you the story of there will be blood if you ask me for right now because it it feels so much like it's it's its own thing it's not like a novel it's not like the godfather it is

there will be blood and there's only one of those but yeah i i do remember going into it with a a kind of a sense of what it was but and and obviously a real excitement because of who made it and who is in it but not that feeling of let's see if it lives up to the hype i think a lot of these movies felt like that but that that specifically, I remember very much being like, holy shit, I was in no way prepared for this. Especially from, you couldn't be prepared from it looking at his previous work. Maybe in retrospect, we can try, dare I say it, a phantom thread through his career. But we love Boogie Nights, and people argued over Punch Drunk Love and argued over Magnolia, and we knew he was a major talent. But the things that I loved about Boogie Nights,

you'd be hard-pressed to find a one-to-one corollary in this film. Yeah, I've seen it many times now, and I remember when I first saw it, I felt... When the credits strike, I was laughing, and I felt like I was choking. So I was like, oh, my God, I've not had a thing that speaks to me so clearly. I immediately went into the most pretentious place I could go.

It was immediately like, well, this is the story of America, which is God and money. You know, it is oil and family. And those are the major key themes. And I was like, this is like a novel. I probably said that and should have been punched the minute that I said it. And it seemed important. And that felt important to say. And as I get older and I watch it more, I enjoy it much more for what it actually is, which is really funny and really strange and pretty scary at times and obviously technically so masterful and confusing. I don't really know how he did a lot of the things that he did. I've said that before on podcasts where I feel like I know how a lot of filmmakers do the stuff they do now. And I don't know how he did shots where things are falling down a well and they strike someone in

the head and that person slumps over. I don't really understand how the camera's moving. And that's kind of how you know something has permeated your skin where the smallest things are the things that excite you most about it. I don't get that feeling as much anymore. Yeah. You know, and the other thing, and Anderson's quite good at this, is making a film that completely captures a time period, but then be like, that's not really what it's doing. You know what I mean? So he was making a film that was based on a book called Oil at a time when oil was, there were wars being fought over oil, but I think ducked out on it being like, yes, this is obviously a metaphor for what America is doing in the world.

And that kind of goes back to the beginning of our conversation about these films not quite having their finger on the pulse but maybe pulse adjacent. And maybe sometimes being pulse adjacent is better because you don't want it to be on the nose. You don't want that speech at the end that says, hey, just in case you didn't know what this film is about, it's about this. There is no speech like that at the end of There Will Be Blood. He's just finished. He's finished. The trajectory that you just described, Sean, I think is almost impossible to plan for or create, but it is an incredible thing about any piece of art. Something that gets lighter as we live with it is really special. The best art always is both. It's always light and light and dark, funny and not,

but for something to, to grow with you and so that you can find the pockets of air, especially in something that felt so monolithic when it was presented to us. I think, I think that's reason enough for it to be considered the best film of the century. Chris and Andy, thank you so much for doing this. This has been The Big Picture, and we're finished. I'm finished. Thank you.