The Big Picture - ‘Wolfs’ Is a Clooney and Pitt Reunion. Is It Anything Else? Plus: Five Movies You Need to See This Month.

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Sean and Amanda react to some news around the movie world (1:00), before discussing ‘Wolfs,’ the reunion of Brad Pitt and George Clooney in a movie about two lone wolf “fixers” who get assigned to the same job (13:00). They discuss whether the movie is interesting beyond the charisma of its leads and get into the up-and-down CV of Apple Films through 2024 (30:00). Then, they discuss four more movies either available or soon to be available at home or in theaters: ‘The Wild Robot,’ ‘Will & Harper,’ ‘His Three Daughters,’ and ‘Transformers One’ (39:00). Finally, Sean is joined by ‘Transformers One’ director Josh Cooley to discuss his role as director in the process of making an animated movie, his rise through Pixar, his love for Transformers, and what he’s looking to do next (59:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Josh Cooley Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Conditions apply. Offer ends January 31, 2025. Visit td.com slash dioffer to learn more. I'm Sean Fennessey. to learn more. streaming service. Do you have that service? I do. Oh, great. That's great. Have you seen the film? I have. How exciting. We're going to talk about it on the pod today. This is our last recording together for a little while. It is. It's not the last episode people will hear you on. Yes. The next week we've, we pre-recorded Megalopolis. Yes, we did. Um, just to bring everyone on the inside. I briefly thought I was going into labor during that one. Uh, I think right around while Sean is talking about the conversation it was on youtube if you want to see that but um so far no baby so here we are again and this is yeah this is the

very last one bobby got me coffee cake which was very very sweet um both literally and emotionally uh so you've been saying on and off mic you were like the coffee cake gotta have it just want it and when i thought i was going into labor yesterday, as I said to you, I went home, I packed a bag, and I hadn't had time to pre-order the coffee cake that I am planning to take to the hospital. So it was like you knew, and you got me my coffee cake. But here we are. This episode is sponsored by coffee cake.

It is. And a sugar high and a very strange energy. Couple things I want to clear off the decks first before i have some announcements to make one the documentary series mr mcmahon is now streaming on a different streaming service it's on the netflix streaming service this is a six-part documentary directed by the great chris smith that ringer films helped to produce i'm very proud to be a part of this project. For many. Since 2018 is when I first got involved in this project. And I participated very little.

I was just very happy to be a part of it in any way. I think it's really great. And it was very cool to watch someone like Chris and the people that he works with, especially his producers and editors who are amazing, do what they do. If you want to hear more about it, Bill Simmons talked at length with David Shoemaker

about some of the production history of the series. Seems like it's doing well on Netflix. I hope people watch it. I just wanted to get that out in the world. I'm excited to watch it this weekend. I think you will enjoy it, especially since you are not deeply entrenched in the world of professional wrestling.

I think it's actually best if you come to it with a general knowledge, but not all of the arcana. So please enjoy. Second thing, there's a Rewatchables live show. I don't know if it's sold out yet. And if it is, I apologize for talking about it in this fashion, but we're doing a live show very soon. When did the tickets go on sale? Yesterday, they went on sale. Okay. So are they on sale right now? They're on sale right now. I missed that. You can go to your local ticket broker, which I think is Ticketmaster,

but I'm honestly not sure. October 7th in New York City. I'll be there. Chris Ryan will be there. Bill Simmons will be there, of course. Mallory Rubin will also be there. Oh, that's exciting. So all four of us are doing a movie. I can't say which film, but it is October.

Okay. So, all right. That gives a little bit of a hint. This show is happening at the Music Box Theater, which is on Broadway. So the rewatchable is going to Broadway. I'd like to tell you a little bit about the history of the shows that have been performed at the Music Box Theater in its roughly 100 years. This is where Merrily We Roll Along debuted. Wow.

In like the 80s? No, in the 30s. The original Merrily We Roll Along. Oh, okay. Sorry. Excuse me. This is where Wait Until Dark debuted. This is where Death Trap debuted.

This is where in New York City, after its Washington, D.C. prep run, A Few Good Men debuted. This is where Dear Evan Hansen had a historic run. Well, that's... This is a hallowed hall. We went from the most important rewatchable source material of all time to Dear Evan Hansen, but that's fine. We're doing our best. I hope you're more of a Code Red situation than a Dear Evan Hansen situation. I certainly hope so.

Do you think Chris has some Dear Evan Hansen energy? I, no. That's even, Chris isn't here to defend himself. Though I would love for Chris to come in and for us to try to explain the plot of Dear Evan Hansen to him. That's something we can do in the future. Yeah. We should bring your child, too, just to make it a family affair.

Speaking of Chris, he looked me in the eye and he tried to ask himself onto the show yesterday. I actually meant to text to see if he's here, see if he could just, like, swoop in. Too late. Sorry, CR. CR wanted to talk about the Sinners trailer. Right. This is the new film from ryan coogler okay so i want everyone to get ready because this is the last time for a little while that

a trailer will be discussed here in an environment with two people and like a seeming sort of open space well why do you say that a very special um trailer hut slash monologue cave has been built, especially for Sean Fennessey. And I almost want to make you do a debut on social media before I leave today just so I can experience it. But yeah.

Get ready for staring down the barrel, Sean. The monologue hut will be coming soon to a YouTube channel or social media platform. I have literally made requests for the knob that allows you to fast forward and rewind on trailers. And also I want a telestrator so that I can draw on the screen. I want the tablet where I can draw on the images. If I were to draw on the Sinners trailer, I would write, let's go.

I would write, I'd like to see this film. Yeah, it looks great. Like Ryan Coogler Cook. It's nice for him to not be doing franchise stuff. This is his first non-franchise movie in over 12 years. Fruitvale Station was his last film that was original. This is an original story as well. But after Creed and two Black Panther movies, I'm excited about this.

Michael B. Jordan, of course, his longtime star partner, is the star of this movie. He plays twin brothers, which I know that's actually the thing Chris wanted to talk about, and I will let him cook on this at some point. He's got a lot of takes about single actors

portraying brothers in movies. So I'll hold the water on that one. Haley Steinfeld also in this movie, Jack O'Connell, Wonmi Mosaku, and my my guy delroy lindo former guest of this show one of my absolute favorite actors i i will say there's not a lot of talking in this trailer but the accent i i noted it and per we can continue

to discuss it as we hear more but you should consider developing accent corner i mean that's that's a pretty established corner of the ringer internet you know but i'm putting in my two cents if i paused okay um but when michael b jordan is just walking towards the camera shooting a shotgun awesome his arms looked quite large yes they did even by jacked mbj standards he looked big. The logline of this movie is quite strange. Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.

Now, the thing is, we know that the greater evil is vampires. Do you feel like the trailer really indicated that this is a vampire movie in any way well there is a group of people gathering outside a structure late at night in a menacing way so maybe those men and women are just voters they've just been in line all day they're trying to register to vote please register to vote you guys if you haven't yet it's your last chance to say that to the audience here today just no i don't think that's true because we pre-recorded an episode that's going to air on election day i just want to apologize to everyone no i will not apologize um it did feature a lot of stay in lines so do stay in line um if you're a vampire stay in line so you can be slayed by mich B. Jordan.

I guess it wasn't vampire specific. It may not even be vampires, but I'm pretty sure it's vampires. Okay. Pretty sure. All right. Do you know the other thing about this movie that is interesting to me is that eventually Michael B. Jordan will own this film. Oh, good for him.

After a certain period of time, that was a big part of the negotiation. This is his first movie with Warner Brothers, and Warner Brothers granted him the right to regain control. To Michael B. Jordan and not Coogler. No, to Coogler. Sorry. Okay, sorry.

I was like that's Coogler and the Coogler estate. Right, because he's been talking like that's sort of been a talking point of his. Yes. That's great. Which I find is interesting.

That's something we know Quentin Tarantino did with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when he took that movie to Sony. I personally am fascinated by filmmakers kind of grabbing control of their art in this way. We will talk about Megalopolis next week.

That is another example. The film Horizon is another example. These artists own their work and they are essentially licensing their work to be seen. Cougars is a little different because it's a much longer stretch of time that Warner Brothers will own it. But nevertheless, I think that's a cool little wrinkle to the story of the making of Sinners. And goddammit, an original genre movie from a director who I know is great. What could be better?

Coming to you in March? March. March 2025. Okay. So you'll be back. I will. Oscars will be over. That's right. Yeah. I love, I love, yeah, that's such a relief. I fucking hate when I look at the March calendar

and post Oscars and I'm like, what are we going to talk about here? Do I really need to talk about Kraven the Hunter again? You know, like I really don't want to do this anymore. Is that still coming out in December? It is, yeah. Okay. That'll be my Christmas Day movie.

Me and Chris holding hands, crying, watching Kraven. Christmas Day is pretty lit now because they dated the Brutalists. They did. December 20th. Mm-hmm.

You're Nosferatu. Do you feel like... Thank you for asking. I don't know what it's going to be. The Brut. You're Nosferatu. Do you feel like... Thank you for asking. I don't know what it's going to be. The brutalists in Nosferatu are going to like split votes at the box office? No.

It's double feature time. Okay. It's seven hours of the movies. What are you talking about? That's how we roll. It's just like... I'd like your marriage to survive through the end of the year.

I'm good. I'm daytime screenings. That's getting me through. Yeah. But seven hours is... Everybody worried about me. I'm good. In fact, I have so many responsibilities with my child.

Just so you know that school is on break around that time. I just want you to be prepared for that personally. Maybe I'll bring her to Nosferatu. Okay. That was great. Get her an introduction. She's into Halloween. She's very into Halloween.

Yeah. There's a few other She's very into Halloween. Yeah. There's a few other things happening on Christmas, actually. We've got Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Oh, wonderful. Masterpiece. We've got Better Man, the Robbie Williams movie. Oh, okay. He's a space dog?

Yeah. No, you got it. I'm not even going to correct you. You got it. He's a space dog. Robbie Williams' famed British pop star is a space dog. No, he's like You got it. He's a space dog. Robbie Williams, famed British pop star, is a space dog. No, he's like a, is it a space monkey? He's just a monkey.

He's a digitally animated monkey. Moving on. We have a complete unknown. But everything else is normal. It's just like. I don't think that's the case. A monkey dancing, like, and take that or whatever. Do they dance and take that?

Yeah, well, you'll have plenty of time to figure that out when you're laid up. I encourage you during all your rest period to just watch Take That videos. Become like a really, really... Become a scholar. Yeah, like 40 years later. Okay. Complete Unknown.

Sure. That's Christmas Day. Okay. The Fire Inside. The boxing movie, Olympic boxing movie. Oh, right. We've got Mufasa, The Lion King. It's been really quiet on that one since they debuted the trailer.

It sure has, hasn't it? Yeah. This one was directed by Barry Jenkins. I remember. That's just remarkable. The Room Next Door. Oh, sure. The Almodovar movie.

And that's all I've got. Okay. That's going to be a noisy six-day corridor is it is the question like is there a hit in there or is it just a bunch of dads i mean sonic bob dylan sonic the sonic movies do very well sonic and that's true for the children and the bob dylan movies will do well with the dads and then they'll be upset yeah i hope it does good tweet going around that's just the substance and it's a picture of bob dylan now and then timothy chalamet and a complete unknown good job that was a good job i think that was david erlich who did

that tweet okay yeah great job um you want to talk about wolves yeah you're you're grumpy huh you sent me this outline and it's just okay let Okay, let's... Listen, it's fine. I feel very strongly about this. You went to see this movie. You went to the premiere. I did. In Hollywood. Razzle dazzle.

Yum. I saw it at a surprisingly full 3.30 p.m. on a Tuesday screening. Okay. At the Ipik Pasadena. Nice. I would say like basically every seat was taken. What'd you eat? Sweet potato fries and a Diet Coke. It was awesome. Good for you. So here's the thing. There were like 14 seats in an Ipik Pasadena. Nice. I would say like basically every seat was taken. What'd you eat? Sweet potato fries and a Diet Coke.

It was awesome. Good for you. So here's the thing. There were like 14 seats in an Ipik. So I'm not sure what surprisingly full means. At 3.30 p.m. on a Tuesday. Yeah. Was it only pregnant women?

No, it was only, it was me and people who receive discounts at most places they go to because of their age. Got it. Let's put it that way. Okay. Respectfully. Let me put it that way. Okay. Respectfully. Let me tell you something about Wolves. It's written and directed by John Watts.

He spent the last decade making Spider-Man movies. He's made one other film, Cop Car, which is a pretty cool independent film starring Kevin Bacon. As I said, Clooney and Pitt back together. This is their seventh collaboration. Amy Ryan's also in this movie and Austin Abrams. It's a very small cast. It's about two rival fixers. They cross paths when they're both called in to help cover up a prominent New York District Attorney's wild night in a hotel gone wrong.

So over one crazy night, they have to set aside those grievances and work together to figure out whatever the hell's going on. I didn't write the movie. I didn't direct the movie. I didn't direct the movie. I didn't get any money from the movie. I'm not saying that you did. I didn't even get to meet Brad and George when my husband did. Like, I'm just, I'm here sitting at the table, having also seen the film.

I have some very concrete thoughts about this movie, but before I share them, what did you think of the movie Wolves? No, I share what you thought, because you sent me a text message after the premiere. This movie stinks. This movie, like not to Jay Sherman, this movie is so mediocre, it's appalling. Like it's not bad. And that's the problem.

The problem is that it's nothing. It's nothing. It is absolutely nothing. It is tremendously talented people wasting their time. Which, come on. What? George Clooney and Brad Pitt know so much better than to make a movie like this. With a script this thin, with an idea this weak, with chemistry this kind of bungled.

Yeah, I don't. I don't know what they were thinking. You know, it's not the worst movie in the world. It's not a zero star movie. It's just that George Clooney and Brad Pitt got together to make a big movie and they're on the poster together and it's nothing. It's kind of boring. You don't really ever know what the stakes are. And when we get to a big conclusive finale, it's a little bit confusing and then it ends. Right. The problem is that the movie is for about four minutes at the very end. Yes. And then there's a funny music cue,

and they get their close-ups, and it cuts out. So what happened here? I really don't know. I mean, I would agree with you that it is not particularly memorable. Again, I showed up, I had some lovely sweet potato fries, and watched two of my favorite movie stars

just, like, gallivanting around for a bit. I mean, they also could have been in a Casamigos commercial, you know? And I would have, and like. The movie feels like a commercial at times. And I agree, visually, it is particularly dull. Flat. The chemistry is interesting. A thing I suggested is I wonder whether they should have switched parts.

It would have been interesting. But Brad Pitt's sort of asleep. Yes. And then when he has to turn on, he doesn't turn on to the right frequency. I thought Clooney was perfectly charming. He's fine, but his whole character is, what's this guy's fucking problem? That's the only acting he does in the movie. He has no other register.

Well, no one has a character. Not even the movie. He has no other register. Well, no one has a character. Not even the DA, who, I mean, you know, Amy Ryan. She's doing great. I enjoyed her minimal appearance in the film. And I actually, I think maybe a movie just following her character would have been more interesting. What is this strange aspirant politician in New York doing dragging this young man up into her hotel room. That was fascinating. And then also being able to afford

the penthouse of the luxury hotel as a candidate for DA? Or is she the DA and a candidate I think she's the DA and aspiring to governor or something else. Got it. Perhaps mayor, you know? Sure, yeah.

Well, now that seat's open. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exciting for, well, this woman's got some skeletons in her closet as well, so I'm not sure how well that's going to work out. Right.

I don't know how much we can or cannot spoil a movie like this, and I don't know how much longer I can talk about it, to be honest with you, because when I was sitting there, this is like, this is very similar

to the Despicable Me 4 conversation we were having, where I was like, this is fine, but like, it's a huge waste of everyone's time. Like, it's just nothing. It's just like, similar to the despicable me for a conversation we were having where i was like this is fine but like it's a huge waste of everyone's time like it's just nothing it's just like it's just soma it's just like a bland thing that you find and you're like okay this will pass the time that's not what movies are for that's not what this is about let's try a little harder like i

know you i know they're on the back no i agree with you i'm not trying i'm not mad at you and i'm not actually mad. I'm just like, I want more out of this stuff. You know, these guys, they... If Brad Pitt and George Clooney are going to get together to make a film and promote it, which, like, they mostly have. They have.

On the cover of GQ, they showed up to Venice. They were, you know, dancing together. It was cute. I agree that I would like more than, like, 30 minutes per night shoot in, like, a weird hotel room. How many takes do you think they did for each segment of this movie?

I mean, come on. They don't do any stunts. No. Right. So they just kind of stand there. Not that many setups. I mean, I made a couple of notes about this because it bothers me. But I mean, it's a comedy really without jokes.

It's true. I didn't laugh very much. It's a crime movie without any real crimes. Why? Okay, spoilers. Okay. Sort of. Yeah, you can spoil something. Go ahead. If you don't want to know anything about a movie about nothing starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney currently available on Apple TV+, skip ahead. Spoiler warning. Why was the tracker in the drugs?

I don't know. Yeah. But, I mean, there are some drugs. That's sort of a crime then there's like a little bit of a setup it's almost like they're like it's a guy who's doing a crime for a friend filling in like it's just like even the crimes are like there's no real there's no conspiracy here but like there is it's just revealed in the last okay how about this yeah it's a movie about fixers and they don't fix anything the whole genius of michael clayton is sure he's in over his head right but he's still able to be

successful at the end of the movie what are these guys fucking fixing this movie it is really tough that you watch large swaths of this movie where nothing happens no one says anything and you are just like thinking to your, you're doing the, I'm the janitor speech to yourself over and over again. If you've seen it enough times and you're just like, well, this is not that is it at all.

And that is the risk that Clooney specifically is taking by taking this part, having the legacy of having one of the great movies in this mode ever made. Right. And you know, I I'm being such a brat about it because I know that they can do better. Like, I just, I know that the production companies that contributed to this movie can do better.

I know that John Watts can do better. Yeah. So the idea of this being like a big fancy package, there's an interesting episode. I talked to Matt Bellany about this a little bit. Interesting episode that he did. He's been doing recently about development and talent and, you know, what is happening in the state of movies.

And that's long been an interest of mine too. And historically in the movie business, development executives and production executives are vilified. They're seen as like the bad actors. Biljah Biri had a really good interview with Brian De Palma recently. And he talked about how executives

were the ones who were making his life hard when he was trying to make his really cool and transgressive films. Nowadays, most movies are not developed at studios. They're packages. Wolf's is a package. Together, John Watts, this script, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, they all come together to Apple or to whoever bids on it and buys the movie. The movie doesn't then get developed inside the studio, or at least not in the same way that it would have 10, 15, 40 years ago. Right. So there's no one kicking the tires being like, so what if you explained how any of these things came together? Yes. And you've got all of these incredibly powerful people. You've got John Watts coming off a billion dollar Spider-Man movie

that everybody liked. And you've got these two superstar movie actors. And nobody is like, guys, what is this? Why do you want to make this? What is this movie about? Like, and it's not that it is horrendous because it's not horrendous because their floor is higher than many people's ceilings. It's just when you know that there's so much more potential in a package like this, it actually makes you admire, weirdly, the bureaucracy of an olden Hollywood. And I started thinking about that. I was like, if you just, like, let four other people talk to these guys about how to make this movie. Said like a PowerPoint man. But yes, I do understand your point. And to put it another way,

as Zach said, it's like when Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which is a movie I actually like quite a bit, has like a better conspiracy exploration than this movie about the same setup, then you're,

you know, you know you haven't done your job. It's not great. It's not great. But Mr. Mrs. Smith is also good. There is a part of me,

though, that watching this, and I couldn't tell if this was John Watts and his experiences over the last 10 years or if it's just more

about like a particular mode of acting now, but the like, get a load of this guy or like someone says something and then someone repeats what they say and they make a sarcastic face after they say it.

Like this MCU style of acting where everyone is Robert Downey Jr. This movie is riddled with that where like the interplay between these two guys who like, we love these guys together when they're boys.

Like when they're Rusty and Danny. When they're buddies, yeah. That's great. When they they're two guys who are like this guy's a threat to me and he's annoying the shit out of me but there's no real partnership until maybe the last 20 minutes and even then it's this very loosely i know but it is the only time that i got emotional is at the end when they're like spoiler alert i guess they're riding a subway and it's just like lingering close-ups on these two faces that i love very much coming together and they're on the subway and i was like oh it's my friends that's really nice and they're still very handsome just think the movie is relying too much on that it is but but it's like but that's two shots at the very end

that are very good um You know, again, I think it's hard to be funny. And as always, Steven Soderbergh is incredibly under-respected in what he can get out of people. It makes you really appreciate the Ocean's films, for sure.

Which, obviously, we are huge admirers of in the first place, but you can't... I guess, what can you get by with in your movie star charms is a question that this movie asks. And me it wasn't a lot which i i found to be

really disappointing i do think if you're at home just watching it on apple tv while looking at your phone or doing whatever you'll be like okay But what is the point of that for literally anyone involved? I guess including Apple. Duh. I mean, sure. It's all about money. That's why I'm super cynical about this. This was for money.

And there's no idea in the film. There's not really any passion. It's a job. It's a job just like the fixers would take on a job. They have no emotional commitment to the work and i understand that many many hollywood productions don't have a lot of passion deep spiritual passion but if you're these guys in your 60s and you only have somewhere between 5 and 15 movies left for something like this so dispensable to be one of them it's a drag

well i'm just reading into this, but do you think that this was part of a package? For Pitt, at least. Could have been. Doing this to buy the extra time and money on F1, which is also an Apple-financed movie and has been filming on location for, you know, longer than I've been pregnant.

It's absolutely possible. That seems smart. Clooney, you know. Well, Clooney spoke about this at Venice, right? Where he talked about this new era of the post-TV streaming era and this idea of being an arms dealer for content and knowing that you have to use these places

and these places have to use us. And I thought he was very thoughtful about it he's such a great kind of ambassador to what is happening in the town and such a smart person about these things but he's been making mediocre movies for like 15 years now maybe more i mean when we did the draft it's more mediocre movies than good movies it is and so that's incredibly frustrating. But like, I don't know, Plan B is like one of the best production companies in the last 50 years in Hollywood. And they're on this,

they're all over this movie. Like they make amazing films. Right. So to me, this is just a case of like, it's a lark from two super rich movie stars. And it will surely make plenty of people's nights. I'm sure there's people listening to me that's like, Sean has lost the plot.

This is a harmless movie. There's no reason to get bent out of shape about it. I don't think that's true. I think a lot of people might be like, Oh wow. George Clooney and Brad Pitt made a movie together and then they turned it on and they're like, what?

This is what you guys, but the difference being that at least they'll turn it on because it's Brad Pitt and George Clooney, you know, versus the instigators, which is Wolf's Jr. Very strange for that to have been the prequel. Yeah, I mean,

there's no Instigators conversation happening right now. I haven't even gotten text messages from people being like, I'm so mad that The Instigators was so bad. I think I had more fun with that movie, to be honest with you. Yeah, it has more going on.

Not that any of it makes sense but um and also like goes outside there are a couple car chases this is the other thing is this was like you know managed within a second of these guys lives i was not joking when i think they probably spent two hours and a day or night on set. Let's spend a little time going through Apple original films right now. I'm sure they're so thrilled. No, I mean, I think they've done some amazing things,

so I don't mind having this conversation. The thing is that there's ups and there's big downs with Apple. And it's relevant because they are making a good faith effort to get involved in the movie business and they're trying to use the highest level talent, which I think is good, smart.

They're acquiring package projects, which is very hard to do, like I explained. And so you get movies like, let's just go from 2023 forward. Okay. Here are the films that they released in 2023. Sharper, which was a Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan movie, which I kind of liked. Van Lathan and I talked about it on the 2023 episode. Actually, which was a Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan movie, which I kind of liked.

Van Lathan and I talked about it on the 2023 episode. Actually, the kind of thing that I think Netflix is getting good at but making more cheaply

with no stars, which is just genre-y, past-the-time movies that have a lower overhead. I thought that movie was solid and felt like something

that could have come out in 1997, but a little out of date. Tetris, I didn't think the tetris movie worked at all it was like a bio doc about the guy who so boring but they acquired the rights to tetris yeah like taryn edgerton yeah but it's him just being like i would like to buy tetris for two hours that wasn't great ghosted i would describe as a catastrophe of a romantic comedy chris evans and anna darmus genuinely bad but yes i mean a total catastrophe and one of the ones where it's like you know they walk out of one scene and into another and you're like wait what did you miss here you know like actual just editing and continuity issues but also it was like like the action setup part of it

was really stupid. It's not just that they made a romantic comedy. They tried to do like an international intrigue romantic comedy. It's from the guy who finished

Bohemian Rhapsody, Dexter Fletcher, and made Rocketman. And it's written by the teams that wrote Deadpool and the Captain America and Avengers movies.

Well, that's on you. So look into your heart. It's not on me. It's not on me. I watched it and I didn't by the teams that wrote Deadpool and the Captain American Avengers movies. Well, that's on you. So look into your heart. It's not on me. It's not on me. I watched it and I didn't like the movie. So it's not, I have no, I claim no responsibility for these men and their works. The Beanie Bubble.

I never watched this. Did you have Beanie Babies? It was like, did Kara have Beanie Babies? That sounds right. Yeah. I mean, not to gender essentialize, but I mean, for a while there,

it was like a financial opportunity as discussed in the beanie bubble. Were you a collector? I had some. My cousins were really into it. Mm-hmm.

And like seemed to know something about like the market value of the various bears. And there was like a Jerry Garcia beanie baby that I think was worth a fair amount of money. I think you're confusing that with the Grateful Dead pogs.

No, I think there was... Hold on, let's Google this. Jerry Garcia beanie baby. Was it the teddy bear? The tie-dye teddy bear? Yeah, he was a tie-dye teddy bear. Yeah, look. But I do think that he was rare.

Can you buy one of those for me right now? Where are you at on Jerry and the Dead? Jerry had the same birthday as me. That's not a take. That's just a fact. Well, I just wanted to share with you. But fellow Leo, so maybe you want to come in on that journey. Jerry did have Leo energy too, didn't he?

Yeah. A real leader, but like kind of obsessed with himself. Yeah. That's really... Jack liked that. Jack enjoyed that one. Okay, so you did have Beanie Babies. My sister did too. I never had them.

The Beanie Bubble, kind of negligible. Bobby, Jack, like do you guys have any knowledge of the Beanie Baby? Okay, Jack's nodding. I know all about Beanie Babies, yeah. My older sister had a ton of them. You know, sometimes i just i'm trying to bridge the generational divide but you guys were around for that yes i was okay okay what about flora and son did you ever see this i didn't because it involves like folk singing

right and i was like i can't do that to myself even though i really do like Eve Hewson. I do as well. This is John Carney. She's really good in A Perfect Couple. Well that too but Perfect Couple which I haven't finished yet. And everyone's talking about how bad Nicole Kidman's wig in that but I just have to say that Eve Hewson's wig also was not budgeted for. I also like Eve Hewson but this I would say Eve Hewson is my type. type. That's something I feel comfortable saying. Oh and Jack Rayner is also in this. He's also in A Perfect Couple or The Perfect Couple. He's a real shitbag in Florence

son. He's also a shitbag in The Perfect Couple. That's what. And in Midsommar as well. Yeah. Does he sing or does Joseph Gordon Levitt sing? Joseph Gordon Levitt is a YouTube guitar teacher and Eve Hewson gets lessons from him that's true story i saw this film it was all right it wasn't that bad it was very sincere you

know when you watch a movie you're like god this movie is really really sincere but like even i was not prepared for a youtube guitar teacher you know it's that's what i'll be doing in the in the monologue tent i gotta got to bring my acoustic in there. What can you play on acoustic guitar? What's your repertoire? All along the watchtower. Not a lot. I'm honestly I can play chords, but I'm not a very good guitarist.

I can't do it. That's what I never learned. I did once know how to play Closer to Find. Because I don't think like, you know, they don't let white women from Atlanta leave the 90s without learning that one. You know? But I don't think that I could do it now.

Did you ever see the movie Fingernails? About how if you rip your fingernails off you'll be able to determine whether or not you're really in love with your partner? No, you told me about this. Yeah, this is a cracked movie. Christos Nikola, Greek filmmaker, starring Jesse Buckley, and not a successful film. The Family Plan, never watched this one. This is one of many, many Mark Wahlberg streaming films.

Filmed between 4.30 and 7 a.m. before he got back to the whatever else he's doing. He seems to be very happy. And then we have this incredible moment where Killers of the Flower Moon just shows up on the Apple original movies docket. And now, you know, we had this news that Martin Scorsese's two next planned films are no longer going forward. Right. One of them was the Jesus Christ film. I can't recall what the other film was.

Do you know what it was? It wasn't The Wager. It was something else. Sinatra. Frank Sinatra. Neither of those films are not going forward. And so people are now saying, is Killers of the Flower Moon going to be Marty's last movie?

I mean, that would be an interesting way to go out. It's obviously a phenomenal movie. Yeah, it's a masterpiece. It sticks out a little bit here amongst the beanie bubble and ghosted. Just a little bit. Apple does follow this up with Napoleon, which is a movie that I like i still have i i

always liked it i was out here from the beginning being like this lamb chop was given to me by divine right okay so destiny has brought me to this lamb chop that's one of the best lines of dialogue of 2023 uh i still haven't watched the director's cut i will do it i will do it in a quiet moment and by moment i mean three hours and 40 minutes. Yeah. Then Argyle. That was tough. Nightmare.

Yeah. It was really, really, really bad. Genuinely a nightmare. Dually, but was only in it for two minutes. Then we've got Fancy Dance, which is the Sundance film that Erica Tremblay directed that stars Lily Gladstone, which was okay. I'm not going to pretend like it was some incredible achievement. It was not.

Then Fly Me to the Moon, which we discussed on the show, which is just like a near miss kind of a movie where it was like, if this was the pilot to a TV show, I would totally understand it. But as a feature film, it didn't make any sense. Then The Instigators. Then Wolves. And now the next two movies are going to be Blitz and F1. Yeah.

This is a very chaotic series of films. I mean, at some point, they were like, what if we gave money to directors who know how to make stuff? I mean, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Matthew Vaughn, I'm skipping right over. Mm-hmm. Doug Liman. But Matthew Vaughn, until this moment, was basically a proven commodity. Steve McQueen. Joseph Kaczynski.

I mean, you know. Doug Lyman, you know, like, the thing about this is, on paper, most of these make a ton of sense. And so the point I was trying to make was, just because this all looks right doesn't mean you're going to get something that is right.

And even Killers of the Flower Moon, which you and I love, which Bobby loves, many people didn't like that movie. Yeah. And we got to be honest about that. So the Apple original film's mandate is fascinating. It's hard to do this. It is, even when you have unlimited resources and seemingly no consequences? Yes. I don't know whether it's true

that they continue to have no consequences. It does. The scuttlebutt was that they were reorganizing and pulling back on some of the approach that they had previously taken. The consequences are coming. This is like, this weekend, I was just hid outside my son's room

while I listened to Zach explain to him about consequences and for your actions. And I was just hid outside my son's room while I listened to Zach explain to him about consequences and for your actions. And I was like, wow, I don't want to be a part of this conversation, but I guess it's happening. Can I let you know about something that won't be the last time you'll have to hear it? I've given it more than a few times in my life. But it was amazing. It was really like the first, you know, like the first time I like to explain something

to you. They're called consequences for when you're being a shit. And I don't know if it totally stuck with him, but it comes for everyone, I guess. What was Zach's approach? Was he like, sometimes if you hire Nick Sirianni, it means that your organization will go downhill? Listen, everyone listening to this right now, if you could, at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern, this coming Sunday, just send a thought to the Eagles and to me. I really...

I put Devontae Smith on my bench on my fantasy team because it appears as though he's not playing and A.G. Brown is not playing. It's not good. It's just... It's not good. I need to bring a child into a calm space, you know, and we don't have the tools at home to make that happen. So it needs to happen outside the home. You should try to give birth at the link. Just at the 50 yard line.

Do you think they have those services? They have a jail. They certainly do. We know why they have a jail. Yeah. I guess there have probably been people giving birth at ball games before football games yeah i mean i think it can happen pretty much anywhere you know that's true the wonders of life is there anything else you want to say about the film wolves i mean i

agree it wasn't very good i didn't i wasn't that mad but i'm don't put in the paper that I'm mad I'm here to just explain I but I agree like everyone could better spend their time like making you know commercials for their various uh liquor and skincare enterprises so I guess George sold off Casamigos so now he's just doing Nespresso those aren't going well does he own any of Nespresso? I don't think he owns it. He's just in the advertisements. I enjoy Nespresso. And then Brad was doing like a different coffee little K-cup situation for a while. Well, we know Kevin Costner is aligned with Green Mountain. Sure.

Yeah. But no, I feel like George, they sold off the casamigos for a lot of money he and randy gerber yeah but this truck still have george and randy on them i guess yeah the casamigos trust like i every couple weeks i see one and you get excited seeing a truck well because it's like 2012 george cluny and randy gerber which by the way they do look slightly different than they do now. Just gallivanting around. I think they're on motorcycles often,

just being like, the good life. This imagery is on the truck? Yes! How have you never seen this? And also, their signatures feature prominently on the Casamigos label and on the truck. Okay. You'll see them everywhere.

Next time I see it, I'm going to take a photo of it and have it tattooed on my back. But I'm just like, in some ways, that is better content than what Wolf says. But like, what are you going to do? You can not watch Wolf. You can watch these other movies that I'm going to tell you about. Oh, great. There are some other films that you could go see or that you could watch from the confines of your own home.

Yeah. Shall I tell you about them? Please do. I mentioned the Wild Robot to you already. When did we talk about this? Was it in the context of the big Oscar bet? I think it was. Yes, because we both picked it to win animated feature.

I've seen it. That's awesome. I liked it. I'm so glad. It's based on the Peter Brown novel. Lupita Nyong'o. A novel? A novel.

It's based on a novel. This is no picture book. This is some real book learning. You know, this is for the real heads who like to put sentences together into paragraphs and then they form stories and chapters allow allow me to read the description please please do shipwrecked on a deserted island how desert or deserted deserted okay um a robot named raz must learn to adapt to its new surroundings. Building relationships with the native animals, Roz soon develops a parental bond with an orphaned gosling. This was pulled from Rotten Tomatoes, so I did not write that.

I got to orphaned gosling, and then... You didn't think that was my style? No. That wasn't in my voice? I was like, okay. What's wrong with the orphaned gosling? I mean, I don't want it to be orphaned. And I'm happy it forms a bond with a robot. But imagine, it's not just about mothers that are biological.

You know, there can be mothers that are something more than that. I deeply believe that. And also, I don't know if I need to see the animated film adapted from the adult novel. Well, it's not a novel for adults. It's a novel for children. This is like Nabokov's Hellfire about a robot. All right, the wild robot book.

Okay, let's do like a page count. Are there any drawings? Oh, yeah. Well, okay, so it's a series. I see. So it's like YA sort of? It is. It's more for like nine-year-olds, I would say.

Okay. Juvenile fiction is apparently a genre. There you go, juvenile fiction. Okay. Well, I like it when kids read. The reason I see this movie is that it is incredibly beautiful. It's one of the most gorgeous-looking animated movies, especially mainstream studio animated movies of the year, certainly,

and even in recent time, in my opinion. Chris Sanders, who worked on it, he's the co-director of how to train your dragon lilo and stitch the disney movie from the 2000s one of the best animation directors around this is a very good movie it's a very good family movie i hope people go see it you're not going to go see it because you don't think gosling should be orphaned i i haven't come down on robots as parental standards yet i've like haven't done my ai research meaning you may allow it i just i you know what i'd want to do the work yeah before i opine you're really gonna be missed here i gotta tell you i don't know what we're gonna do you'll just be in the monologue tent with your robot. I have so many robot takes.

Another movie that is on Netflix this weekend, maybe after you watch Mr. McMahon, you can watch Will and Harper. This is the documentary that I talked about that first played at Sundance. And then at Telluride, Will Ferrell and Harper Steele, his friend, they met at SNL.

They later co-wrote a couple of movies together, including Eurovision for Netflix. Steele reached out friend, they met at SNL. They later co-wrote a couple of movies together, including Eurovision for Netflix. Steele reached out to Farrell during COVID-19 and informed him that Harper was transitioning to a woman. And they set out on having a road trip together. So the movie is this interesting series of dialogues. I thought the movie was actually at its most interesting when no one was talking.

They're sort of like sitting in a car together, like thinking about something that had just happened. You very rarely see movies take those moments. Kind of like that quiet moment in the subway between George and Brad that you were talking about. But it has this weird dynamic where it's like, it's kind of like my dinner with Andre. It's kind of like Wings of Desire. It's kind of like Easy Rider. Like it's all of these different kinds of movies. It's sort of a travelogue

though you're not really too worried about where they are at any given time. Sometimes they're talking very specifically about like their friends from Saturday Night Live

or things that they had worked on together. And other times they're talking about not just Harper transitioning but sort of like the big ideas of being alive. I thought it was

a very nice movie. I think a lot of people are going to like it. Yeah, it got like a rapturous response at Sundance. And I'm excited. It's now available, so I'm excited to watch it. It has...

There's something in the closing credits that I absolutely loved that I won't spoil. Great. But it's more my flavor than your flavor, is what I'll say. I mean, that could mean any number of things, including an orphaned gosling, so... Well, I won't spoil it for you. Let's talk quickly about His Three Daughters.

Okay. This is another movie on Netflix. It came out last week. I think, I think, did we both have Carrie Coon? We picked Carrie Coon, though. Now I'm wondering if I should, there's an Elizabeth Olsen wave as well. Is that a fact? In supporting, but that might just be my algorithm.

Okay. And a lot of people being like, Elizabeth Olsen stans, which I get. This movie is a drama. I believe it was picked up out of Toronto last year in 23. Written and directed by Azazel Jacobs. Another in a kind of series of movies about families in close quarters experiencing complicated moments in their lives. In this particular case, it's about three sisters who don't all share the same mother,

but Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen. And their father is at the end of his life and he's in hospice at his New York apartment. Natasha Lyonne's character

lives in this apartment. The other two sisters come in from out of town to spend time with him in his kind of final days. And these three women are very different. They see the world

very differently. They communicate very differently. Very intense movie. Yeah. I will say if you've lost a parent, this is a very interesting, especially if you've lost a parent and not suddenly. This is a very interesting text when you, like I have a big extended family. So like when I lost a parent, it wasn't quite like this. But the energy that the people are communicating is very recognizable.

Where like everyone is desperate to seem in control at a time when there is no control to be had. Where you're like you are at God's whim. There's nothing else to do. So I really liked it at that. It's a movie that is like kind of annoying and I feel like a little bit on purpose. Yeah, well there's a choice that is made that seems pretty clearly to be in the direction and then in the editing of honestly just the style of performance and the delivery of the movie, which is three people talking about their feelings in one closed space.

So there are play aspects to it, for sure. There's a theater quality. It's very Edward Albee. But the way that, and there are many monologues. And the way that the monologues are both performed and shot is a real choice. And so I took a long time to get into the actual like rhythm of the movie because it was to your point like probably purposefully a little

carrie coon's character is deeply unlikable on purpose yeah but it's not even it has nothing to do with unlikability for me i was like very aware of the choice like from 15 seconds in and I was like oh is this how this is gonna go and so it takes a little while to get into just like this style in which they are speaking to each other yeah yeah I thought it was ultimately successful it's another movie that has a fascinating kind of conclusive act um that I don't want to spoil for people who haven't seen it yet. But that's on Netflix right now too. And then the last movie

I'd like to speak to you about. Oh, yeah. Please, go ahead. I neglected to tip off that I have an interview with Josh Cooley coming right after this segment. He's the director

of Transformers 1. Transformers 1 is an animated Transformers movie. I'm 42 years old. I'm in a leadership position here at Spotify. I'm a father.. I'm in a leadership position here at Spotify. I'm a father. Congratulations on all of those achievements. I'm a sibling.

I'm a man. Yeah, and you love Transformers. I just, I like Transformers. What can I say? I'll see every Transformers movie. Are Transformers robots? They are, though I'm glad you asked because there is certainly, I thought about including Transformers 1 in our body horror asked because there is certainly i i thought about including transformers one in our body horror conversation because there's something kind of horrifying

about say more what the transformers do and are maybe fated to do the ways in which they transform because they transform into humans i thought they were just machines they're and it's like they are machines and you know a bulldozer can become but they have ancient traditions and souls okay so they are really more of just a metallic species they're not really robots there's something else okay there's a kind of life force in them right that we can't overlook is it like how like math is like the universal language and something it is not like that at all but i appreciate you trying to relate to me the basis of engineering which is how machines get made there's no math in transformers one well that i promise there's no math in anything having to do with transformers but this film takes place on cybertron that's the

transformers home planet okay this is an origin movie it's a prequel so it That's the Transformers home planet. Okay. This is an origin movie. It's a prequel. So it's how the Transformers came to be? Not just the Transformers but the key characters. Optimus Prime and Megatron,

his arch nemesis. What is Optimus Prime doing when he's not Optimus Prime? What does he transform from? Well, in the film we learned that he started out as a miner. Like a human miner? Well, in the film, we learned that he started out as a miner.

Like a human miner? No, a transformer miner. A robot miner. Okay, but like... You following me, Bob? I'm with you. Yes. No, so is that like... He's the proletariat. This is literally a movie about class. That's cool.

I'm just trying to stay with you. Okay, but so, as a miner, is he like a mining machine or is he like a transformer shaped like miner, you know, doing the work? The answer to that question is yes. Okay. He is one of thousands of... Transformers, as I understand them, are somewhat anthropomorphized, right? Like they have robot arms. They have hands.

They have arms. They have legs. They have hands? Of course they have hands. I don't know. I know the arms. The block arms. How did you expect Optimus Prime to hold this giant sword?

I didn't know he had a sword. I thought it was primarily like a laser domain. You know? I have to be honest. Listen, I've seen a transformer before. It's like a little machine and then the arms kind of swivel like this. They do a little Pilates. Well, the noise of transformers.

It's like a Lego block. But that's not, that's what you're doing is not accurate. And the arms, everything's perpendicular. That's not right. But I'll let you keep going and doing dances because you're ready to, you're on birth's doorstep. This is actually too fluid. You know, it would be more like. Wow.

Well, it's time for you to go. Okay, grandma. We got the wheelchair waiting for you. We just speed ran from like Harlan County, USA, in the Transformers universe, to like Amanda doing Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto, live on the pod, in like 30 seconds. That was great stuff.

I'm trying to understand the physiognomy. How do you say that word? Physiognomy. Of a Transformer. You can't. It's a mystery. There's also like something that needs to go into their center. Like an Iron Man thing?

Sort of, yeah. That allows them to transform effectively. This is a part of the plot of the film. Is that like a naturally occurring source or is it? It is, but they're rare. And is it only on? The key leaders. This is something that is explored as well.

Well, but like where do you get the source? Where does the material come from? Whole Foods. Sorry that I'm asking questions about your interests. Sorry, Erewhon. I meant Erewhon. No, this is... I would love to go to an Erewhon with you sometime.

Somehow that's never... Not really my thing. Oh, I mean, it's not my thing either. It's a little too... Expensive? Well, I mean, that. And then I'm just also like, mean it's not it's not my thing either it's a little too expensive well i mean that and then i'm just also like i mean did we really need to turn this plan into this many different things you know oh that's your issue my issue is like people who are desperately waiting to be seen in

a grocery store that's like i that makes me want to kill myself honestly i can't i can't hang with that that makes me want to go watch more transformers movies i just like going to grocery stores but i'm not trying to be seen. Sometimes I like to see what the wares are. You know, I find it very soothing. What the wares are? Yeah. Okay.

I'm not against that. You know me and grocery stores. I don't really want to chat. You don't want to interact with anyone or anything else. I'll look at the wares. But then the wares are just kind of like, you know, we found a grapefruit seed and turned it into this jelly for you. And I'm just like, well, I didn't need that, you know? And now it's $45 and you're not wearing the right kind of yoga pants.

I always knew in my heart of hearts, even before I saw wolves that this would be a cursed episode. Like I knew. What's cursed? Yeah, we did. No, we did okay. We did okay. Can I tell you one thing about Transformers 1

before we wrap this up I was asking questions you are asking questions I was trying to understand first of all Chris Hemsworth Brian Tyree Henry Scarlett Johansson

Keegan-Michael Key Steve Buscemi Lawrence Fishburne and Jon Hamm happy for those people those are the voice actors in this movie that's great

first of all why don't those people just get together to make a live action movie that would be entertaining i mean like transformers related or that would be really funny if they just acted out their parts like they did a table read for transform well that's not how they work teacher for that one if you could be a transformer what vehicle would you turn into um i mean some sort of truck to impress my son yeah you know and you know optimus prime is a big rig oh really yeah okay he's great you know but nox is really into construction vehicles right now so i'm like bulldozer there is a bulldozer

you know can't recall his name uh cement mixer though that's louder than i like you personally would like your own vehicle that you transformed into to be quiet it can have the power for you know okay but i'd like to be in charge of it the cement mixer just kind of keeps going and going what if i came over and i brought nox like a thousand transformers toys didn't they would go over well you know that chris and phoebe did that right they brought over transformers no they brought over a keyboard shaped like a cat oh yeah um and when you leave it on it just like meows occasionally to remind you that it's still on and then it also only like the keyboard is cats being like meow meow meow meow, meow, meow.

And they just brought that to our house. And now it lives in my house. Thanks, Chris. Sometimes when we acquire a toy like that, I'll just throw it out in the middle of the night and pretend like it never existed. So we don't replace the batteries? Oh, yeah. And, like, Knox doesn't know that batteries are a thing that exists and can, like, be replaced. Except for he does love music so much that we were guilted into replacing the batteries on the cat piano like it was dormant for six months and now it was like

we have to he have to encourage his passion so meow meow meow meow meow i will teach him i will teach him the great word i'll teach him Schubert on the meow keyboard. Schubert's where you'd start? I don't know if it's a good starting place. I think it would be a nice place to go eventually. Okay. You like Schubert? Yeah.

Of course. I just thought that was an interesting, you know, like pull out of the universe. Yeah. Do you think Optimus Prime likes Schubert? You would know better than I. Can I spoil something for the movie for you? Sure. There's a moment when he becomes Optimus Prime and I something for the movie for you? Sure. There's a moment

when he becomes Optimus Prime and I was like, I might cry right now. That's a true thing that happened. It was like a genuinely hair-raising, I was like, God damn it, movies. Who voices Optimus Prime?

Chris Hemsworth. Oh. And it's interesting because Peter Cullen is the longtime voice actor of Optimus Prime and he has an iconic voice. There have been many people

who have done Optimus Prime's voice but Peter Collins is the goat. What does his voice sound like? I couldn't even do it if I tried. But what I encourage people to do is to watch the original animated film. Okay. Which features the song from Boogie Nights.

I can't remember. The Touch was originally found in the original Transformers movie. He did that voice. And he also does the voice of Optimus in the Bay movies. Okay. But he did not do it in this movie. So Chris Hemsworth has to go from being bro-y Hemsworthian guy.

Right. And he becomes Optimus. And he realizes that they're so profundo that you need for the character. I'd like to thank you for asking questions about this. I don't think you mean that because you didn't like any of my No, I left.

my exploration into the physical world of the Transformers. As always, you are a great steward of cinema. Thank you for all that you bring to the table. You're so welcome. Shall I go to my conversation?

I want to know what vehicle you would transfer into. Amanda said truck. What would you choose? it's a really good question sailboat oh that's a good one spicy i like it right yeah you know like one of those america's cup sailboats i thought you're gonna say like the one from top gun maverick that they're just like oh yeah that would be good i would turn into Jennifer Connelly okay but so you're so you're starting as a transformer and then you so is that how they start they start as transformers and then they become machines and they're not machines

who become transformers whatever you said this is important philosophical stuff get ready for Megalopolis they're all the same they're all the same is it it's not the same no you you start out as a as a sort of robot figure with a soul okay and then you transform into a vehicle okay or just for like getting around or in the case of a beast war you turn into a a beast. Oh. A robot beast. Okay. They transform to be in disguise so that they can be on Earth without being there. But so you're saying that- More than meets the eye. Transformers.

They start as- That's the song. They start as robots. They don't get into the birthing process in the film, but I believe they're born as robots, yes. But these robots, it's just the race. Do they get into the birthing process anywhere in the canon only in the hardcore films yeah the fanfic yeah

Transformers fanfic birthing process yeah that's just gonna be happening in the monologue but there's a lot of hentai about Transformers and octopuses and here's the birth of Optimus

Prime that's beautiful well thanks for playing along you feel good about this this all went well shall we throw it in my conversation with Josh Cooley yeah I think that was a respectful That's beautiful. Well, thanks for playing along. You feel good about this? This all went well? Shall we throw it at my conversation with Josh Cooley? Yeah, I think that was a respectful note to introduce. Let's go to Josh Cooley right now.

In 100 meters, turn right. Actually, no. Turn left. There's some awesome new breakfast wraps at McDonald's. Really? Yeah. There's the sausage, bacon, and egg. A crispy seasoned chicken one. Mmm. A spicy end egg. Worth the detour. They sound amazing.

Bet they taste amazing, too. Wish I had a mouth. Take your morning into a delicious new direction with McDonald's new breakfast wraps. Add a small premium roast coffee for a dollar plus tax. At participating McDonald's restaurants. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Josh Cooley is here. Director of Transformers 1, Toy Story 4.

Some other stuff in the future, I imagine. I hope so. I haven't had too many directors of animated films on the show, even though I love animation. And I'm trying to figure out why that is. I don't totally know. But how do you describe your job? Oh, I knew that was going to be the first question. This is how I explain to a layperson, which is, you know, if you're filming us right now speaking,

you've, with cameras, you've got a lot here already. You've got the walls. You've got this, this feels obvious, but you've got us as actors. You have our clothes. You have the lighting in the room. You have a lot for free. Imagine if you had to create all that and you had to design what the walls look like, what the characters look like, what their their hair looks like what their clothes like everything needs to be you get zero you get nothing for free in cg in in animation so everything has to be designed

and down to you get the craziest questions which is like what should the haircut on this background character look like or you know how how many cracks are in the sidewalk? Literally, this is the questions you get. The great thing is I get to delegate a lot to amazing artists. So, but every single thing is designed. Every single thing is crafted. The more that you can make it look like it's not, the better. This is something you hear from directors of live action too, which is just the overwhelming

number of questions that you're confronted with every day. Obviously, there's a huge creative component to both live action and animated. But on the creative side, when you're the director of an animated movie, what does that specifically mean? Does that mean that you are the author of the style that you're pursuing, the pace? How do you explain that? All of it. Yeah. I'm working with the art department to create the look of the style that you're pursuing the pace like how do you explain that all of it yeah the um i'm working with the art department to create the look of the film i'm working with the um the

layout department to work on the to create the cinematography style of it um down with to the the obvious thing is the actors because i'm there in the booth with the actors um record you know directing them as they record could because think about it they're we only record them one at a time uh there have been a few times when i've recorded actors together but usually because of scheduling and everything it's one at a time and you know i know the scene in my head i've shown if i have storyboards i'll share with them but i know how far apart the actors the characters on the screen are or will be from each other because we record the voices first. So I know, like, in a scene like us sitting here, if I was recording, I wouldn't need to yell.

But my actor doesn't know that. So sometimes they'll come in really hot and they go, okay, hold on. Just so you know, we're about four feet away from each other. So every single little thing like that needs to be communicated. And, um, uh, yeah, it's,

it's a lot, a lot of questions. What is, how, how does, I have some questions about your life and the films that you've worked on, but how does one direct voice acting? What,

how do you communicate with the actors? Uh, what I like to do, just let me back up a little bit, even down to casting. Um, you know, when I listen to, uh, voices that are brought to me for casting specific characters i don't want to know who it is i want to just look at a picture of let's say for example for transformers i want to look at a picture of

uh optimus prime and and listen to voices because you're never going to see the person's face and an actor actors are really good at acting yeah and so if you watch a clip of uh an actor on screen and you're watching their face sometimes some of them don't need to talk and they can communicate so much but we can't do that so i don't want to look at a face i just want to listen to a voice i prefer to not know who it is that i'm listening to sometimes you just you just, you can tell, um, but I prefer to go that way. And that way it's completely fresh. And it's going to be like what it's like in the movie theater. Also, I want to listen to them on a talk show, not necessarily them acting because a talk show you're getting them, but a little bit heightened,

you know, they're still on, but it's still naturally them. It's kind of like podcasting. We always say it's you plus 10% podcasting. Yeah. That's interesting. And so that's, um, that's how I prefer to go into it. And so to direct it that way, they're bringing a lot of themselves and that's, what's so, uh, key to, um, to get such a natural performance, my opinion. But you also now with the two films that you've directed, have worked with very famous people, like movie stars doing voice acting too, which you must have a consciousness of, say, what Chris Hemsworth or Tom Hanks' voices sound like. with somebody who has not just an incredible career but like a star persona how are you coaching them through the especially in the case of someone like hemsworth like the creation of a character yeah you know every actor every character is different and um you know working with on toy story tom hanks has been doing that character for 20 plus years so there's very little i need to he

knows what he's doing he knows what he's doing. But it was all about communicating the story and what needed to be done. With the Ryan Pax, who's Chris Hemsworth's character, this was totally different because obviously there's an established voice for Optimus Prime, who is the Optimus Prime I grew up with,

Peter Cullen. I have some questions about that. Yeah, who's incredible and is that character. So after I joined on the film the first like panic i had was oh my god what are we going to do because this is a younger version of that character but he's also a different name so i was like okay that felt like we know where he's going to end up as optimist but what is it like before he gets there? So listening to Chris's voice, he had the weight and the gravitas of that character, but just a little bit younger.

And I was like, okay, that's really cool, but he's Australian. So what can we do there? And we were able to talk to him and he said, oh yeah, I'll do it. I can do it in American accent. But he got it right away. We talked a lot about how this character is not as wise yet, doesn't have the knowledge and the genius of being a leader. So he can't just come out the gate and be like,

we've got to do this. He's got to be a little bit looser and a little inexperienced. What about, there are a lot of recognizable voices in this film, and I feel this is an adult watching animated movies now you sit in the theater and you're sort of like who is whose voice is that and it's someone that you know but you don't want to be able to recognize it fully like do you and the actress have a consciousness about that about shifting the voice the voices to kind of timbre at all so that it feels similar but not too similar to a voice that you might have spent a lot of time with in other formats?

That's a great question. I would say no. I never really think about disguising the voice because I do want their personality to come through. That was the case with Scarlett Johansson playing Alita. Her voice is so recognizable. She's been in Her and so many different animated films and everything. But she's got such a great voice and such a great character. Like her character, her personality, it just pops on screen,

even though it's just her voice. And so I had worked with her on a previous project, and as we were casting on Transformers, actually after I left that project to go work on Transformers, she jokingly said something about, you know, if you need a voice, let me know. And I said, I'm going to hold you to that. I don't know yet, but I'm going to hold you to it. And then as we started creating that character, all I could hear was her voice in my head.

And so she was glad to do it. So let's go back a bit. I know you spent a long time at Pixar. 18 years. Can you give me kind of the arc of how you got there and what the shape of your career was there in a somewhat concise way? Yeah. I went to art school in San Francisco. And I went to study 2D animation, traditional animation.

And the year I was graduating is when all the traditional animation studios were shutting down. So I was going, okay, did I just learn a dead art? When you were in school, did you have any sense that that was happening? There was this talk of like CG. And of course, there were CG movies that were happening, but there was less and less hand-drawn stuff going on. And I knew I wasn't, you know, the the best so i so but i learned about storyboarding and got into storyboarding and um through through that i i met joe ramped who was the head of story at pixar and i became the first story intern uh at pixar animation and it was

like 2003 and started working on incredibles and cars and and ratatouille and just kind of worked my way up. I've heard people talk about this in the past, but what does it mean to work your way up through Pixar? Like does somebody, some, one day somebody knocks on your door and says, okay, you've been a storyboard artist. Now you're ready to be in the room discussing how you're, we're going to break the story for the next movie, or now you're ready to be a director or an assistant or like, how

does it, how does it work? It was, you know know it's funny i uh so i became a story artist and i worked on uh ratatouille up a little bit on wally and um i loved working with pete doctor on up and i told him like hey when you're ready to do your next movie like i'd love to be a story artist or a head of story and um he said yeah great and then eventually he uh called me when he was ready and he said i got this idea about emotions and i was like oh what about it he goes that's it that's it all right um okay cool well let's okay and uh so i became head of story on that which means i'm in charge of the other story artists on the on the team and um

there's this one day when he came into my office and he said, I'm trying to figure out what could happen in this scene. I want Joy to kind of keep sadness in her place, but I don't know how to do that. And I was like, what if in the back of the room she drew a circle on the ground? She said, this is a circle of sadness and you stay in the circle of sadness. And he was like, oh, that's good. Yeah, write that down. And I was like, oh, that's good. Yeah. Write that down. And I was like, what do you mean?

Like on paper or no, it's just type it into the computer on final draft. Yeah. Yeah. Just do that. All right. And so I typed it in cause I had read, you know, I know how scripts work. And so I go, how's this? He goes, yeah, that's great.

And try it again on this, on this scene too, this scene. And I was like, okay, okay. By the end of it i i was a writer on the movie that so i just kind of literally kind of just happened and uh but it also came out of my i just have a very sarcastic kind of of you know bugs bunny sensibility and that's what i was kind of putting into joy and so it just naturally happened and then i loved. I just kind of fell in love with it. Was that your intention to get to that place since you'd been at Pixar for a while at that point? No, it wasn't.

Interesting. What did you want to be? I was happy being a story artist. Really? Yeah, because I was drawing. I couldn't believe I had a living drawing, which is what I always just dreamed of doing. But writing allowed me to control what what was being crafted which i had never

really thought about um and then um you know it was crazy to be a writer on the original on the first inside out and then i did the um there was a short that was connected to that called riley's first date and so i wrote and and directed that as well and um then right after that I was in was that the first piece you directed uh technically yeah yeah yeah and then um after that I was asked to be the uh a co-director on Toy Story 4 so let's go even further back what were the things that you saw as a kid or as a younger person that like switched you on maybe switched you on animation or switched you on to the life that you're in right now well um i i can't remember not drawing and i think part of that is because my parents are artists and musicians and so uh they just kept

fed that you know and i remember like watching the disney films growing up peter pan alice in wonderland all they just were mesmerizing to me. And then I learned, oh, this is a job. Like this is something somebody can do. And I told my parents, I want to be an animator. And they said, well, yeah. Why wouldn't you do that? It's not a common story. No, I know. I know. They're like, what do you need to be a doctor? You're not gonna be a doctor or a lawyer. No, you need to be an animator. I was like, yeah, right. So I was never told they supported me a hundred percent. And I'm very thankful for that. And then when I was, I want to say 11 years old, I saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit and that completely blew my mind. That was the

movie that made me go, I love animation and now I want to be a filmmaker. That's a great pick and a logical, we're around the same age age so I think that makes sense. The work that you've done over your career is having a huge impact on my life because I have a three-year-old and she is so locked into basically all the films that you just mentioned that you worked on over the years. So, you know, I think

going from Inside Out and Toy Story 4 to Transformers feels like a somewhat unlikely leap. I'm wondering if you can kind of talk me through how you became the director of this movie, what your relationship is to this franchise, these characters, all that stuff. Yeah, well, you know, Saturday mornings of our lives growing up. I'm a Transformers dork, I will admit to you right now.

That's why we're talking. Well, there is something magical abouturday mornings in the 80s and i think it's a combination of um no school along with uh cereal and all the different types of cereal along with toy commercials and along with just animation and every half hour you got something brand new that's coming up and i just i have this such a love of that that feeling of saturday morning and watching and sitting on the carpet spilling like scraping you know captain crunch on the roof of your mouth you know fighting with my brother about what we're going to watch next but transformers was part of that it was like transformers gi joe thunderc He-Man, like all of those, basically all of those toy commercials.

They created toys first and then made animated shows to sell the toys. I just loved all that. And so when I got the chance to read, so basically after Toy Story 4, I had been in the Bay Area my entire life. And always trying to, not to get out. But before I got hired at Pixar, I was looking to work anywhere. And then it turned out to be kind of in my backyard area. So after Toy Story 4, I was ready to kind of to stretch my legs. And I got the script for Transformers 1.

And first I thought, you know, they've done seven, eight of these movies already. Like what's new? what's new here? And out of the gate, the first thing, I'm going to mess it up, but the first thing on the script, you know, open up the page, and the first thing that comes up is the title page, and it says, this movie has been formatted to fit your puny earth screens. And that made me laugh. And I was like like what is this and so it was this light kind of lighter take on transformers a little more tongue-in-cheek and um it it was really fun and really funny it always had the kind of um friends to enemies storyline but kind of done in a different way and i I saw what they were, I saw what they were doing. And I,

and I liked the idea of having something with a little different flavor to it. Uh, we didn't end up doing exactly go that cartoony with it or that kind of, you know, kind of loose with it, which I'm glad we didn't. But, um,

but what I thought was great was that they were trying something different. And I was like, Oh, I like this. And so I met with Lorenzo and Mark Rodian and the executive producers and and studio and i i pitched my my take on what they were starting to do here which was i think that this can be an epic almost like biblical tale it's so simple of an idea of going from friends to enemies but with these characters that we know and love and in a world that's completely different i just felt like there's something new and fresh there.

Lorenzo de Bonaventura loves an epic tale. That's like, that's his thing. He does. I mean, if- Did you know that when you're sitting down to pitch like that? Because this is obviously very different from when you're working inside of Pixar for 18 years and then you're out in the world and you're putting yourself up for something. What is that? What is that like? I didn't know anybody. I didn't know. I mean i i'd seen the bonaventura pictures had no idea that was lorenzo like i didn't i had to do some serious homework to go like oh i put the put the dots together as to who is who and so that's the biggest difference from working um at pixar which is amazing people but i knew everyone

i'd been there for such a long time and not you, you know, if I didn't know them by name, I knew their face. I kind of knew everyone. And so to be able to leave and go someplace new. And I worked on this film. I only worked with two other people that I knew early on, but everybody else was new. So it was, it just brought a freshness to everything. This is kind of a, sort of a related question to that period of your life, but you know, Toy Story 4 won an Academy Award. If you're an actor and you win an academy award it is like a windfall circumstance it's just like it's extraordinary you get to say academy award winner in front of your name every time you go off you make 20 million dollars on a movie in the world of animation and maybe you didn't make 20 million dollars on this movie but does it open doors in a particular way uh yeah yeah i think um i will say like um you know the the interesting thing

about that time at pixar is and that being my only kind of place i had in a career so far i was working on you know incredibles and ratatouille and up like almost every movie and during that run that we worked on one academy award so it was i don't want to say it took it for granted but it was like we were all very proud of that but it was part of that that run it was very it's interesting so but you know the director would come back to the studio and take pictures and it was celebrated and everything and um but then it was like all right time to go back to work and do the next one you know so that's the um it's not like the you know it's not like my phone's ringing off the hook or anything like that but i but i was like i'm gonna i'm and before i even won the award i decided it was it was time to go so um it made it definitely a lot. People want to talk to you for sure.

So once you got the Transformers 1 job, how meaningfully different is it then to embark on a production outside of the Pixar system? Well, I'll tell you this. My final day at Pixar was Friday the 13th of March, 2020. Okay. And I thought, after 18 years, here I go. I'm going on an adventure with my wife and kids.

Like, let's see what happens. And then March 16th, 2020 is when the world shut down. Unbelievable. And so I was like, oh, no. Have I just made the worst mistake of my life? Like, our health care just ended. You know, like, what do I do? So, you know we like everybody else

we just we held on just to see what was going on but luckily um i was still working with the writers on transformers one um andrew and gabe who are amazing and just um helping to craft where this was headed and that's one of the that's one of the blessings about animation so you've got you're basically making the movie before you make the movie. If that makes sense, because you're storyboarding the whole thing out and recording scratch dialogue. So you're making a very rough draft version of the movie before you make it. So luckily, that's one of the reasons why animation did so well during the pandemic is that you can do it from anywhere. Right.

It never really stopped. That was the one pipeline that didn't stop. Everything kept going. That's interesting. Was there anything in terms of like how you make the movie different? Did you bring some of the ethic that you learned at Pixar

to making this movie? For sure. I mean, I can't help do that because of how my education is that DNA of the place. And I had amazing mentors and teachers at Pixar

and they're just some of the greatest, not just directors and filmmakers but greatest people and um so yeah i couldn't help but bring that and some of my knowledge one of the things i found actually quite interesting was when um when i was working on toy story i was talking with andrew stanton who's done all the toy stories writers director um and um he uh said you need to watch lady in the tramp and i was like i've seen a bunch of times why is that he goes you need to see how everything's from the dog's point of view and he said that's how we did toy story we realized we need to do everything from the toys point of view this sounds obvious

but when you're actually crafting it he said if you get too close and you don't include things like electrical sockets and and shoes and stuff that's on the ground it'll turn into a little person movie and i was like oh interesting and and he was right like if you got too close with the camera it became you you lost your scale completely and so that's why if you watch toy story all the toy story movies you always cut wide to see the small character running across the field or whatever it is a playground and so um and i thought that was that's just part of the dna of toy story but i realized with this transformers movie it's all on another planet it's all on cybertron there's no humans in this movie so it allowed our human story to be about the robots are our humans. And we can tell a human story with them, which is totally new and cool.

But also, there's no scale. Without having a car, like a real car or a real person in the world, you don't know how big these characters are. So it was about kind of doing the same thing, which is, okay, Orion Pax to, or Ryan Pax is our, he's going to be our scale character. And now everything's in relation to him. So it's very similar to Toy Story in terms of scale. Interesting. So we're in this franchise fandom era the last 15, 20 years. And lore is something that people are kind of obsessed with.

I'm not sure how much I personally care about the lore of Transformers, but a lot of people do. And so when you're taking on something like this, there are some landmines you have to navigate. How much did you care about that? How much did you think about it when you were doing the story with the screenwriters? Yeah, there is. What I didn't know about Transformers, because I grew up as a fan watching the original show.

What I didn't know is how massive the lore is. I had not read a lot of the comic books or played a lot of the video games. There's so many different versions. And also, there's one thing to have like Star Wars lore where it's a very clear timeline. It's like the Bible. Yeah, but with Transformers, it goes back to the timeline. It's like the Bible. Yeah. But with, but with,

uh, Transformers, it goes back to the history of the creation of the toys. Like Jap, Japan was doing one version of the toys. Uh, America was doing the same version, but they had each different cartoons with different,

the same character designs, but different names. So already it was messed up. Oh, wow. Out, out the gate. But that's what kind of made the,

the, um, the, the sandbox of Transformers really kind of fun because you could kind of push pull you know push and pull

and pick things that you need and so talking with Hasbro a lot on this movie was actually extremely fun and I'd ask a question

and they'd be like we'll get back to you and they'd you know send me a PDF that's like you know 400 pages long it's the

history of everything and uh so it was a lot there's a lot to pull from but it was all about what's what do i need to tell this story so i was just keeping it on the focus on their relationship between uh orion packs and d16 who become optimus and megatron one of the snarky things you'll sometimes hear movie podcasters say is, I don't know who this is for, which is like a rude way of saying like, I don't get what your movie is trying to accomplish. But when I was watching Transformers

1 as a kid just like you who grew up watching the cartoon and was trying to understand what the movie was trying to be and then it gets to these moments of exaltation and then there were moments near the final 20 minutes where people were just like standing up and cheering. You know what I mean?

It was like, really like we did it. We're here, but you make us wait for it in some ways too. So who did you imagine you were making the movie for? If I can ask you that question directly. Yes. Uh,

I imagined that this film would be every for everybody. And I know that sounds like a stupid answer, but it is a hundred percent true because it's hard. I've had, I imagined that this film would be for everybody. And I know that sounds like a stupid answer, but it is 100% true because it's hard. That was part of what I brought from Pixar. Pixar films are for everybody. And I thought if we can do that with Transformers and actually make people care about these characters in a way they've never cared about them before,

then I knew that this could be something that could be really powerful. Which is a hard task because I wanted to make people that like are obsessed with Transformers, like go, oh, this is a Transformers movie. This is a story about Transformers. This feels right. And then people who have no interest or have never seen any of it before can come in completely clean and go, oh, this is, oh, now I get this. I see why people are into this. This is interesting.

This is different. And I kept thinking like the original Star Wars, you know, the very first one, like you're thrown into this world and you're like, what is happening? And there's a lot of that in Transformers, a lot of lore and a lot of, you know, lingo and words and like the robots are living metal. So it's wild so we had to really make sure that

that was clear out the gate what that all meant it was very successful in a way that I was not expecting I've got to be honest

I was very suspicious of this movie even seeing the trailer I was like I don't know if this makes sense but the first act at least

doesn't really feel like any Transformers movie ever it feels like something completely different so if you don't know anything you can come in clean and feel comfortable with what's

happening. And then it eventually does become something that kind of ratifies your interest if you care about some Transformers, I guess. Well, there's a certain, in the same way there's a DNA to Toy Story or any franchise, there's definitely a DNA to Transformers and just things that you come to expect as a fan and as somebody who's seen it before. And I knew we'd need to get there, but also wanted to earn the right to get there.

That was, that was one of the things I talked about with the team and writing writers was like, I want, I want to know, you know, eventually we know these characters are going to fight, but I want to understand why they're fighting.

I don't want to just be like, Oh, you're the good guy. I'm the bad guy. So we should fight. It can't be that simple. Yeah. In order to keep the audience engaged and to really care about these characters, we need to understand where they're coming from and kind of really empathize with them and really feel them.

Are you sticking to animation? Is live action ever interesting to you? Like, what is your, what are your intentions? I'm interested in all of it. I really am. Like I said, Roger Rabbit was a huge thing. i'd even be into hybrid i think there's i've wondered why there has not been more of that historically there's only like 15 20 examples of like true like you know hybrid where the characters are kind of living next to each other well i mean if you think about

it goes back to gertie the dinosaurinosaur and Alice comedies and Walt Disney. They've actually been doing that since the beginning of film. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, since the beginning of film. But you've got the Sonic the Hedgehog movies. Yeah, it's not a – you have to have a good reason for it. You really do. That's why I think Roger Rabbit is so perfect.

It's Chinatown but for it. You really do. That's why I think Roger Rabbit is so perfect. It's like it's Chinatown, but with cartoons. Right, right. Do you have another thing? Are you doing another Transformers movie? What are you going to do next? Just, you know, it's a great question. Finishing this one up. Okay.

I've got some other pokers in the fire, or irons in the fire. But we'll see what happens. So you said that you were trying to make this movie for everybody just like Pixar. Is there a secret to doing that? I think that's something that everybody is always curious about is like, why does everyone like Ratatouille? Why does everyone like all of these movies? What is the universality? You have to have a story that people care about and you have to have characters

that people are understanding and that, that it's, there's all the fun of the action adventure. I'm kind of being broad or any movie here. Um, values transformers, for example, all the,

all the transforming, all the vehicles, all the cool explosions, all the, all the, all that stuff. Yes, that's there, but you have to

have those moments what makes the character makes the audience feel something it's a huge magic trick all we're doing is a huge magic trick where here's a bunch of ones and zeros on the screen that none of this is real like i was saying earlier you had to make all of it and none of it exists none of it's real but you're, you're tricking the audience into feeling something because of these ones and zeros moving around on screen, which is, which is why I just think it's, I have the coolest job in the world.

Joshua, and every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? Have you seen anything great lately? Yeah. Uh, one movie. I,

I missed this movie when it first came out and i just saw it recently uh cop car oh yeah phenomenal yeah yeah john watts phenomenal movie so what did you like about it i loved how um it was full of so much tension because there was nothing in the frame i was blown away by how riveted i was because there's no safety in that movie. There's nothing for you to go, go talk to that person or call for help. Like you are out there with them. And it just felt like hell. It really did.

Wow. And I was riveted by it. And now I can't stop talking about it and I feel like you know it always happens or I'm still behind because we've been doing other things but um yeah I highly recommend that movie he got hired to make many spider-man movies off of that movie so it makes sense a great recommendation josh congratulations on transformers one thanks for doing so much thanks for having me. Well, thank you to Josh Cooley.

Thanks to Jack Sanders. Thanks to our producer Bobby Wagner. Thanks to Amanda Dobbins for all she's given this show before she transforms into what? A mother of two? A mother of two. Can you believe it? I wish you luck raising the next generation of young men teaching them about robots and things i'll be back well i mean i'm i'm on the next not only will we be back to be back on tuesday yeah we're talking about francis

ford coppola's long gestating megalopolis a lot of people were like really excited and then they were just like uh she's not she's who what what people i don't know the people who like really excited and then they were just like, ah, she's not. Who? What? What people? I don't know. The people who like build transformers on the internet and then leave comments. But that's okay because I extended an olive branch to them in this episode and maybe they can extend one right back. I'm sure that your generosity will be paid forward. Thank you. We'll see you next time.