The Bill Simmons Podcast - AD's Trade Request, Plus Steven Soderbergh on 30 Years of Making Movies | The Bill Simmons Podcast (Ep. 474)

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons talks Anthony Davis's request for a trade from New Orleans, and how the Lakers have a unique opportunity to land him before the summer (2:22). Then Bill sits down at Sundance Film Festival with filmmaking legend Steven Soderbergh to talk about his first trip to Sundance in 1989 with 'Sex, Lies, and Videotape,' making the 'Ocean's' movies, shooting on iPhones, his new film 'High Flying Bird,' sports movies, what the future may hold for film, and more (28:45). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. You know what's smart? Sitting out the third night of drinking at Sundance. Well, Kyle didn't totally sit out. I sat it out, though. I'm like a basketball player. I can only do back-to-backs. I can't do three games in a row.

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Talk to an agent today at 1-800-STATE-FARM. State Farm, here to help life go right. We're also brought to you by The Rewatchables, where we have Proof of Life. Me and Chris Ryan, our vanity project for The Rewatchables podcast. Even if you've never seen this movie, I urge you to listen to this podcast, which is coming out, I think, midnight tonight. Because we make a case why it's one of the most underrated movies of this century. I want you to listen to it.

It's a good one. TheRinger.com, a buzz right now with Anthony Davis, trade speculation. We're going to get into that right, right after we get to our friends from Pearl Jam. And then right after that, one of the best directors the last 30 years, Steven Soderbergh been dying to have him on. It finally happened.

We did it at Sundance. That is coming up first. Our friends from Pearl Jam so we're here at Sundance. We've been here all weekend. Just came to check it out. It's a great place. It's 30-year anniversary of Steven Soderbergh. Hitting it big here. And he's going to come on later to talk about that.

But I hadn't been in a while. I had forgotten. It's a lot of the film industry is here, obviously. You've got documentaries, movies. It's a free-for- industries here. Obviously you got documentaries, movies, it's a free for all for people that love movies. You're constantly hopping in Ubers and Lyfts trying to get to this screening or that screening. It's really fun to be in a theater when, when they're premiering something and everybody's there,

there's just a certain energy to it. There's a lot of people usually rooting for the movie and it's a, it's a good experience. We came down, you know, like to check this stuff out. I haven't been here for so long. I forgot about the energy that's here. That's really kind of inspiring. And just a lot of Canada goose jackets, Kyle. Canada goose all over the place. And to the point where if you don't have a Canada goose jacket, you, you feel like there's something wrong with you. So there's that.

And then you have the way that the bodyguards they have, not the bodyguards, like the bouncers, they have all these clubs. The space is never big enough, like for these little parties and house parties and events and they just don't care who you are once they fill it to like 45 50 100 whatever the number is it could be like brad pitt and george glooney online and they'll just there'll be some bald bouncer just be like fuck you guys you're not getting in so um it's it's really it's a weekend controlled by the uh people letting the bouncers letting parties, people into the parties and the Lyft and Uber drivers have the most power for the entire weekend.

I remember like eight years ago, I wrote a mailbag in about Sunday. It's saying how Sundance Mad was my new favorite kind of mad where you just have these, you know, these movie executives in their fifts who are just in disbelief. They can't get into a party and they're just screaming at this bouncer who's a foot taller than them. Very enjoyable. A lot of comedy here at Sundance. We went out late Friday and Saturday night

and I turned 50 this year. It wasn't a great idea. So nephew Kyle and I on Sunday, I really wasn't in great shape. I was afraid to go to a screening and I didn't want to be in a movie theater and just feel like I was trapped there, got overheated or whatever.

Nephew Kyle and I watched the entire Ted Bundy documentary on Netflix. It was four hours. We banged it out. It was riveting. It was four hours. We banged it out. It, uh, it was, it was, it was riveting. It was really well done. I just have one thing to say about Ted Bundy. Um, that was, they keep talking about how handsome he is and I feel like he's serial killer handsome. I don't think he's really handsome, but I think compared to the other serial killers, like if you're comparing

him to John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer and, uh, and Charles Manson, like, yeah, he's Brad Pitt. But he's serial killer handsome. He's not actually like handsome. Like JFK Jr. was handsome. This guy was like fine. You know, decent looking guy. But I think serial killer handsome and athlete funny are related together. Where you talk about like these athletes, like the guy's hilarious.

He might be a comedian. It's like, no, he's funny for an athlete. He's not actually funny. You know, people are funnier like Dave Chappelle. You know, Blake Griffin's funny for an athlete. He's athlete funny. He's not really funny. Charles Barkley is the only athlete we've had over the last 30 years

that was actually legitimately funny. Charles Barkley is the only athlete we've had over the last 30 years that was actually legitimately funny. But I think Athlete Funny and Serial Killer Handsome are two of my favorite ones. So if you have any more like that, email them to themailbag at therigger.com because I was thinking how this would be a fun gimmick for the pod. I want to talk about Anthony Davis really quick. The trade request finally came today. We could feel this coming for a while. Um, we wrote about it. Kevin O'Connor wrote about it late December. We have talked about it on this podcast multiple times. The seeds were really planted from the moment he hired Rich Paul who runs clutch, which also happens to be the agency that, um, I guess represents LeBron James probably more than that. But LeBron James plays for the Lakers.

Anthony Davis wants to be in a big market with a team that wants to win a championship. You can kind of see where this was headed a few months ago. What's interesting is the Lakers have basically a two-week window here to get them because if it goes past the trade deadline, then the Celtics can get involved. Thanks to this stupid rule

where you can't have two designated player contract, max contract guys in the same team. They have Kyrie Irving already. The only way they could get Anthony Davis is to trade Kyrie Irving for him, which they're not going to do. So the Lakers have two weeks here to basically overpay for Davis to make sure they get him.

Because once we get to the summer, it's just going to be a lot tougher. They're not going to have the same kind of leverage that they do now. And if you look around the landscape, everybody's coming up with, all right, what are the fake Anthony Davis trades out there? We talked about one on a podcast a couple weeks ago, Ben Simmons and maybe the Miami future first round they have for Miami and maybe one other thing for Davis. I think it's a really interesting trade that should be explored by both teams because if you're Philly and you have Embiid and Davis

as your anchors for the rest of the decade, you could argue that that gives you a better chance to win a title than Embiid and Simmons. Actually, I just argued it. The catch for them would be, would he want to stay? There's all this agency stuff in there too, because Embiid is CAA, Anthony Davis clutch. Is that going to work? Ben Simmons is already there as a clutch guy. Two clutch guys getting traded for each other. So even though it's a fun one to talk about on paper, I don't know how realistic it is, especially because of wherever the hell the Jimmy Butler thing is going to go. I think one thing that I haven't, I haven't been surfing the last couple, surfing the internet

the last couple of hours, but one thing is if New Orleans trades Davis, it also really makes sense for them to trade Drew Holiday and just completely blow it up and start over. And ironically, even though he came from Philly and was the centerpiece of the trade that launched the process where they got two first round picks for him, where they ended up getting, I think New Orleans, Noel, and I can't even remember what the other one was. Michael Carter Williams. No, maybe they took Mike, where they ended up getting, I think, New Orleans Noel. And I can't even remember what the other one was. Michael Carter Williams. No, maybe they took Mike. Whatever they got.

They got two first-round picks for him. But I actually think he makes a ton of sense coming back to Philly because if they could figure out, they could put Fultz, Zaire Smith, the Miami pick, whatever they need to get Drew Holiday. He's locked up on a great contract. And he's actually a perfect guard for that team because he can guard the other team's point guards. He's an incredible defender. But then on offense, he likes to play off the ball, which is good for Simmons.

So if New Orleans is doing this correctly, you'd want to trade Davis and you'd want to trade Drew Holiday and you'd want to bottom out and you'd want to get a top five pick. And you probably want to trade Drew Holiday and you'd want to bottom out and you'd want to get a top five pick. And you probably want to trade Meritage too. So we'll see if they can do that. They have one of, I think, the most controversial organizations. They're owned by the Saints owner. They've had Del Demps as their GM this entire decade.

He was the one that made the Chris Paul trade that David Stern hated so much he vetoed, which led to some good Grantland pieces for me. But I don't know, Del Demps. I don't know if this is the guy pulling all the strings here is trying to figure out the future of the franchise. And the other thing is, do you even trade him now?

Do you just wait till the summer? If you keep him and he's playing, that actually might hurt your lottery pick. So in my opinion, what makes the most sense is to try to trade him over the next two weeks and try to have the team bottom out in a big way. All right, so what's that trade? I think with the Knicks, if you get Porzingis back,

the Knicks made a big deal about how they want to be in this. You can't, the Porzingis is, you know, he's been in the league a couple of years now. New Orleans can't trade Davis for somebody who also might leave. They've got to turn him into draft picks and pieces of guys who are actually stuck there, which is why the Boston Celtics package is so appealing, like whether they want to put Tatum in it or not in the summer. But they have a bunch of draft picks and a bunch of ways for the Pelicans to kind of control who's on their team.

So to me, it's really Lakers or Boston. I think anybody else, it's just too risky because again, he has the chance, not this year, but next year he could leave. And he's made it pretty clear. He wants to play for championships. The difference of making 175 million versus 240 million, he doesn't really care or whatever those numbers are. And he's really motivated by the titles. I think the red flags are, he has a little trouble staying on the court. He kind of had one foot out the door this whole season,

which in general is a policy I don't love. If you're, if you're supposed to be one of the three best players in the league, which talent wise he is. I kind of wanted him to do what he did last year, where he just put the Pelicans on his back after Boogie went out. And he's like, fuck this.

We're not, I'm not going down like this. I'm we're making the playoffs and I'm going to kick ass. Did he's statistically has been really good this year, but I don't feel like it's, it doesn't feel like it's a get on my back type situation. It feels like it's headed for an uneasy ending. And if you're in new Orleans,

this is basically the future of basketball at stake for you now, because if you can't keep this guy, and the reasons you can't keep this guy, and the reasons you can't keep him are because it's a small market, you weren't able to build the right team around him, and basketball has just never really succeeded there. You can see it in the games. You can see the empty seats.

They have barely any media following them. New Orleans is a football town through and through. And there's just probably better locations for this team if you can't keep Anthony Davis. So you got that hanging over you too. This is a really important trade for them to say the least, because if they screw it up, I think it creates a path for them to leave and go to Seattle in the next three to five years or Vegas or wherever they might end up. They have to nail this trade. Last time they didn't, they did not nail the Chris Paul trade. It didn't work. And they lucked out because they won the lottery and

they won Davis. And if they had gotten the second pick instead of the first pick, they get Michael Kidd, Gilchrist, or Bradley Beal. Bradley Beal would have been nice, but they really lucked out because that Chris Paul trade did not work out. So, all right. So what do the Lakers have to give up? In my opinion, Ingram and Lonzo have to be in the trade. I think they both have to be in the trade. If you want to get them now, you have to overpay. So they're not going to care about first round picks because the moment they trade Davis to the Lakers, they become a top six or seven team. So that pick's not going to matter. And then you don't care about 2021 or whatever, because you know, he's going to be there for a while. So you probably want the picks to be as late as possible, like 2023, 2024, 2025.

You want like two from those years and you have to get Ingram and you have to get Lonzo or I'm not doing the trade Kuzma who the Laker fans love. She's not that good. It's 24. I think he kind of is who he is. He's 19 and six a game when he's taking a lot of shots. Not a great three point shooter. Defensively, I don't think he's ever an all-star. I think Ingram and Lonzo both have chances to be all-stars. And I've said this a million times.

I'm on the front seat of the Lonzo bandwagon. I love Lonzo. I still believe in Lonzo. If I can get Ingram and Lonzo and some picks down the road and expirings, that's where I want to be if I'm the Lakers. I'm sorry, if I'm the Pelicans. And even better, if I can dump a contract from next year

because they have, if I'm the Lakers, I'm like, I'm not taking more any contracts beyond the Davis contract. But if I'm the Pelicans, I'm at least trying to dump like the Solomon Hill contract on them or something like that. This is a big deal though. I actually, I went back and tried to figure out just what the parallel this is, where you have somebody who is a top five guy,

we're at worst top three guy at best, depending on if he's healthy and he's happy, just becoming available. So I went back, I looked through all the guys who have been a top three MVP. So meaning they either finished first, second, or third place before they turned like 28. And it's just not a long list of guys who have been traded. If you go backwards, like Will Chamberlain got traded. Will was selfish. You can read my book for more. Will got traded like right after he was averaging like 40 points a game, he got traded. Kareem got traded in 1975. That was the first kind of modern basketball trade where you had somebody

saying, I'm leaving next year. You should trade me now. Very similar to this. And Kareem was, I mean, he's one of the four best players of all time. I had him third in my book. LeBron's probably passed him, but got traded like at his apex. I mean, he would, Kareem was unbelievable when he got traded. He was the best player in the league and it wasn't close. And that, you know, they ended up getting the, the classic four quarters for a dollar trade. Moses Malone got traded, which anytime people have this conversation, they always forget, you know,

Moses got signed to an offer sheet by Philly Houston match. Then they traded him, I think for Caldwell Jones and a really nice pick that Philly had. I think it was a Cleveland pick. But Moses was probably the best player in the league for five years, or for the five-year span of 79 to 83, which makes it so crazy. He's just getting his number retired by Philly right now.

But he got traded. Alonzo Mourning got traded in 1996. I don't think he's on the level of the guys we're talking about, but he did win. At some point, he won a top three MVP after he got traded. Chris Paul, Carmelo, Dwight Howard, Kawhi.

Now, some of those guys became top three MVPs after they got traded. This is pretty unique. This is basically, you're talking about Will, Kareem, Moses, Anthony Davis, I think are the best ones. And I'll tell you another thing. Dwight Howard was really good. Dwight Howard and Carmelo, I think, are the two guys that the way their last few years have gone have made people kind of forget how good they were. Dwight Howard was the best center in the league for six, seven years. And was somebody that a lot of people thought won the MVP in 2011. I know some people voted for him. I think Zach Lowe voted for him actually, but he was available

within a year and it was a big deal when he got traded. Davis is a whole other level because he's 25. And I think Dwight Howard, I never knew if he was going to win an MVP. I think there's, I would be surprised if Anthony Davis didn't win an MVP, especially if he was playing with LeBron. So we'll see how this goes. I really feel like this is a pivotal time for the Lakers because,

you know, I don't know how many years LeBron is going to be able to play at this level. He's already had this, this groin injury this year where he's missed a month. And just in the old days, he didn't miss a month of injuries. So, you know, I do think there's a window with this. And they're caught in this crossroads of they have all these young dudes. And then they have this guy who's like ready to win titles now and needs a sidekick. And the reason I mention this is because if it's not Anthony Davis, you start looking around like, all right, well, who else could it be? They didn't get Paul George. All the other guys around the league are pretty much there.

There's, there's a weird Kyrie possibility that I don't feel like can be ruled out now that they're getting along again. Maybe, maybe that's somebody that would look at, but just for the most part, this is the best guy that's going to become available, I think, over the next 24 to 30 months. And this is their chance to get him and then get the third guy this summer. But you could also compete now for a title with LeBron and Anthony Davis. So I would bet on the Lakers getting him. I would bet on them overpaying and the package being a little more severe with stuff they're giving up than maybe people realize

it's going to be. Because if you're the Pelicans, you're like, look, this is your window because the Celtics just have more stuff. We get to the summer, the Celtics are going to get them. Now, if you're the Celtics, you're freaking out because you don't want the Lakers to get Anthony Davis. So you're in a position where you're negotiating with them, but you can't trade for them. But you could be like, hey, look, man, in June, here's what we're thinking. One thing that's really hurt the Celtics is the Sacramento pick has not been as juicy as I think we thought it was going to be. I don't think they're going to make the playoffs, but that's a pick that's going to be in the eight to 12 range. And if they were a bottom five team, that would

be a much more significant pick because now we have three potential franchise guys in this draft, including two of the most exciting prospects we've had in the last 30 years, Zion and Morant. So fascinating. We're going to be talking about this a lot over the next two weeks. This does not happen often. I will not tire of talking about where Anthony Davis is going to go and whether it makes sense to trade him now or later. Stay tuned for that. The only other thing I wanted to mention basketball is,

and then we're going to get to Soderbergh. So I thought the Celtics-Warriors game was really, really, really informative on Saturday night. First of all, it showed to me that the Celtics have a level in them that they can get to on a big stage, that they can rise to the occasion against a really good team. I didn't even feel like the Celtics played that unbelievable, but they're just good. They just have a lot of talent. And when they're all kind of aligned, I think it's the one team right now that can kind of at least hang with the

Warriors. I didn't, the problem is the Celtics might lose before they even get to the finals because they screw up. So in so many different ways, I just don't think Milwaukee or Toronto has the athleticism and somebody like Kyrie and Horford. They're just our best bet to give the Warriors a good finals, in my opinion right now, unless Milwaukee now a liability. And it's weird because he's also the playmaker they need off the bench to kind of run the offense when Kyrie's not out there.

So they have to keep playing him and they have to hope that by April, it's gonna turn around, but his confidence is gone. It's just gone. And it was honestly sad how he played in that Warriors game. He was really bad on both ends and just looked like, just looked lost. And that was a really big stage and a big moment for him. And they need him because one of the ways they have an advantage against the Warriors is to play him and Jalen and Tatum at the same time. And you have size on all these

wing spots, you can switch. And if he's just shot, they're really going to have to figure out, do we just give up on this for this year and give Jalen those minutes and really try to work with what we have? Or do we hold onto this hope that Hayward's going to turn around? And now it's the second week of February and we're two months away from the playoffs and there is no signs yet that he's going to turn around. The flip side is you watch Paul George on OKC. I think he's the third best guy in the league this year. For MVP, I would have him number three right now.

Doesn't mean he's the third best player, just he's the third most valuable guy this season. And it took him years to come back from the injury he had, which was similar. And so if you're the Celtics, you're looking at that, going, well, maybe that happened to Gordon. Gordon wasn't as good of a player as Paul George, I don't think.

But his confidence is shot and he really hurts them. The other issue with that game, I was so wrong on Cousins. I didn't think he was going to help them this year. I really thought the Warriors were not going to win the finals this year. I even said that probably two, three weeks ago on this podcast. Boogie came back and I think it's done a couple of things for them. I think it's invigorated them. It's like the new character in a TV show who just makes the show more fun. He's basically,

he's Richie Aprile or, uh, or Ralphie. It's just like, Oh, Ralphie's here. See what's new for season three. Oh, Ralphie. Oh, okay. And there's just an energy that he brings that I thought I said this last year. I thought they looked stale last year. Cause I think they're, they're just kind of used to each other at this point. And when he's in there, it's just different. You have this guy who can post up who sets these big screens that he's still committed too many fouls on, who can space the floor, and then on defense can really kind of bang some bodies. And I think the reason I mention this is I thought he looked good in that Celtic game.

He's still too slow. I think his legs are still going to come back. He seems like he's about 80 to 85% right now from where he's eventually going to be. Defensively, he was really impressive in that game. And the way that the Celtics were just trying to get him in pick and rolls and trying to expose him, and he was making the right decisions

and doing the right things. And it really reminds me of Bison Dele in 97 when he came in there on a Bulls team that had 172, that headed for 69. It was getting a little stale. And then he came in and just gave them a little extra and a shot in the arm. And Cousins is much better than Bison Daly.

But the stuff he brings to the table, they've just never had before. And it's made me completely rethink if he's going to be healthy this year. I just don't think anybody can beat them. I think it's going to be too hard. You saw the Celtics the other night went toe to toe and the Warriors just got a couple of stops, made a couple of plays and it's just too hard. And now they have looks. Now they can go big. They can go small. They can play Draymond as a four. They can play Durant as a three. It's fucking crazy.

So I went from thinking this Cousins thing was totally overblown to now thinking that it's going to ruin the playoffs. That's where we are. Lots more to discuss on Davis and all this stuff over the course of the week. We're going to put out a new trade value list for January. I did not write anything this month because we got swamped with some other stuff. So what we're going to do is just because I wanted to keep the monthly list out. We're going to put that out. I'm going to do a podcast about it and try to explain some of the decisions. I still want to write the actual trade value. So we'll probably do that either in February or in March, but we're going to put the new list out. And what's fun, and this is

my favorite thing about this, so many things have changed. Like I put the new list out. And what's fun, and this is my favorite thing about this, so many things have changed. Like I did the last list, James Harden was like 12th. And now it's like, who's Houston trading James Harden for? Giannis? That's it. So it accounts for a lot of that stuff. Paul George made a big move.

Some other guys slid the other way. And we're going to run that this week, and we'll do a pod talking about a lot of that stuff. And we also have Super Bowl and a whole bunch of things. One last note on pods. I'm going to go on Cousin Sal's Against All Odds pod. We're going to do most of our giant Super Bowl prop podcast on that podcast with the trifecta. And then Sal's going to come on mine.

We'll pick our favorite props from that podcast, do the rest on mine, and he'll do the Gary Russell bit. So there you go. We're going to take a break and then coming back with the one, the only Steven Soderbergh right after this. Hey, let's take a break to talk about Roman.

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And today, Roman is giving my listeners a free online visit and free two-day shipping at GetRoman.com slash bill. Check it out right now. All right, this is great. Monday morning here, Sundance. Here with the guy who is widely credited for being the first Sundance breakout star, right?

1989, 30 years ago? 30 years. Steven Soderbergh. Still walking around. When you were here in 1989, overwhelming? What was it like? I mean, it couldn't have been even 1 20th as big as it is now.

06.30 DM – No, it was very different. It was called the US Film Festival at that point. And hadn't become the market that it became the year after, Sexual Eyes. 06.30 DM – You started it. 06.30 DM – Well, there were a couple of films that were here that it was a good year that year. There was some really good movies. Yeah. Um,

but it certainly, it certainly was part of a, a, a wave that I think was inevitable in the late eighties, early nineties. You know, the eighties was not a great period for studio films. They kind of took over.

All of my heroes, like, crashed and burned in the late 70s. Studios took over, and it became a much more corporate business. And it felt like there was a hunger on the part of audiences to see things that were handmade. And so we sort of surfed that. I'm so fascinated by that stretch from 85 to 89, basically, because the 70s are so romanticized. Kyle and I watched, don't ask me why,

because I've seen it 100 million times, but The Godfather and Godfather 2 was on AMC last night. And we just got sucked into Godfather 2 with the commercials. And it's like three it's three plus hours long he's telling two different two different narratives that it just shouldn't have worked and it's probably the best movie ever made from start to finish um but i was thinking like god like what what is that movie now is Is that like a comic book hero? It's hard to say where, you know, I grew up with that dream of working, having filmmakers that were independent minded working in the studio system. Yeah.

You know, during that period from 66 to 78, 79, you know, all of my favorite filmmakers were working for the studios. So I didn't grow up as a snob. And I wanted to work in that system as well. I just grew up in a suburban subdivision in Baton Rouge and didn't know anyone. So I had to come at it through a different path. But there was a period from Sex Lives, I'd say through the mid-aughts, where that seemed to be working.

You had some really good filmmakers working in the system, and then it kind of went away. I think 89 to probably 95, even as the years pass, but it feels this way now, but I think even like 25 years from now, I think those five 25 years from now,

I think those five, six years are going to be remembered a lot like we remember the 70s. I got interviewed for a book that somebody just wrote about 1999. Oh, yeah, I heard about the book. And the list of films that came out that year. And you look at it, and it's a pretty great list. We do a podcast called The Rewatchables, and I was looking at that because there's a lot of, we like to tie it in sometimes to the anniversaries and stuff.

99 was ridiculous. Yeah, it was a good year. And all kinds of movies, too. And movies that, you know, we did this, we have a Rewatchables podcast coming tomorrow about this movie called Proof of Life that I felt like actually was a great movie that didn't get its just due, which is why we did it.

And it's probably like, it comes out in 2000. It's got Russell Crowe at his A-list apex, right? Gladiator just came out. Tony Gilroy script. Right, Tony Gilroy. And it's just the kind of movie that if you put 2000 Russell Crowe into 2019,

he's wearing a cape. He's not doing Proof of Life. 2019, he's wearing a cape. He's not doing proof of life. No, everybody's wearing tights. He's plastic man. You know, and it's like that part scares me for where things are going. But then the stuff you're doing, like I saw High Flying Bird. You filmed it on iPhones.

Like you're still experimenting. It's really good. It's really interesting. And that gives me hope that, you know, I still feel like the experimentation's there it's just i wonder like can godfather 2 still happen i don't know i don't either um but i'm always whenever i get into a despairing mood about that stuff i'm also aware that as i'm feeling that way somewhere in some room, somebody's making something that none of us know about yet. Right. And it's going to come out and blow us away.

So, you know, I'm always hopeful there's somebody out there. I'm always fascinated by the camaraderie of the directors of those seven, like that Spielberg, Lucas, Jenner, Coppola, all those guys. A lot of them were friends. They looked out for each other. You did not have that experience in the late 80s, right? Everybody was much more on their own. And eventually it seemed like it happened.

A little bit. I mean, there's, I think, a very – I think there's a good feeling amongst the people from around that period. We were going to festivals together, and you'd run into people. So in 89... So who were those people? Well, that year it would have been Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee. We were running into each other a lot,

and it was fun for me. You know, Spike and Jim were one of a handful of filmmakers during the 80s who were actually making interesting stuff independently. Jim in particular was very forward-looking and sort of legendary within independent film circles because he owns all his negatives for all of his movies. And for people like me, that's like, oh, my God, how do you even do that?

So, and he's still cranking away. So like I said, if you told me 30 years from now, you're going to be back here with another movie that's in my mind, you can draw a direct line from Sex Lies to High Flying Bird. Yeah.

In terms of its attitude and its approach to character, its willingness to embrace a movie that's about two people in a room, for the most part, talking. You know, I'm still into that stuff. Why iPhones? To inspire young filmmakers

that they can use anything they want to film a movie? Or what was it that attracted you? It's a combination of things. One, I think I'd like people to... I don't think people are aware of how advanced this technology really is and what you can do with it. For projects like High Flying Bird,

it's the right tool because of the ease of putting the camera where you want and how quickly you can move. So if I had a traditional camera package, even on High Flying Bird, there were certain things that I wouldn't have been able to do exactly the way I wanted. So the film, I think, would not have been any better. It might have been worse. It certainly would have taken longer. And so going forward, I think now we're about to be in a space where you're going to have a camera about the size of a phone with a full-size sensor. And that'll be a game changer. Because what's great about the iPhone is I can put it anywhere. Literally, I can Velcro it to a ceiling. I can do whatever I want. And that's very liberating.

But it's not, it was perfect for this. You know who sees that? Kids. Yeah. I have a 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son. And I live in LA, which, you know, I think LA is a little more artistic than most cities. And you have a lot of kids of parents who are in the film industry

or they're producers or directors or actors or whatever. And I'm amazed by some of the little films that my kids' friends made. And my kids have been in them, you know, and they're like, yeah, what did you do all day? Oh, we shot a horror movie. You did? And then they show it, and it's like wow this is like not terrible no i if i wish i'd had these tools oh my god i think that generation when they hit like 19 to 22 these kids

that have been because all the editing stuff is great now and they these kids are gonna have a sense of narrative structure how to cut stuff how to, that there's no generation that's had that. No, no. It's pretty incredible how quickly this technology has advanced and how literally with a laptop, you can make a really, really good looking movie. You really don't need much more than what's in your pocket and some software and off you go. I've seen projects where people did incredibly elaborate visual effects and it's all Adobe After Effects.

Like they're all doing it on their laptop. What would you say if I told you that Sex, Lies and Videotape is my mom's favorite movie? Like ever? Well. Would that explain at least some of my there's a lot to unpack there um tell her it really is that's hilarious it comes on cable every once in a while and she's like sex eyes and videotape is on hbo lately it's just amazing that's just an amazing movie i'm like do

you realize how weird this is that this is your favorite movie she's just j. That's so strange. It's just an amazing movie. I'm like, do you realize how weird this is, that this is your favorite movie? She's like, it's just, James Spader is incredible. That's pretty unexpected. It's really held up. It does not feel dated. It's weird because it would- It's super intense. To me, it seems very quaint now.

Yeah. That like, oh, he's got some tapes. It seems like a Jane Austen novel to me compared to what we're going through. Oh, my God. But I think if it's still able to hold someone's attention, it's because ultimately the technology is not really the point of it ultimately. It's, in this case, a way of someone creating a barrier between themselves and other people. We're still going through that now. It's just there's a lot more ways to create those barriers. Yeah.

I mean, the part that feels dated are cassette tapes and the close stuff like that. But I think that movie now, as the years have gone on, it's really a movie about sisters and the competitiveness with sisters and just how people can be super close but also do terrible things to each other but then forgive themselves in the end

because they're related. Well, and also you had four characters who are about to reach an inflection point. Yeah. But they don't know it's coming. And so I think that watching that start to turn and you realize, oh, this is literally going to be one of those, my life before this and my life after this. But they're all oblivious to the fact that this is about to happen. And I think that's satisfying to watch. That's one of your favorite, you gravitate toward that idea.

You've done that in a couple different movies. Like, here are these people here. It's about to change. Yeah. We're about to go to point B. Well, I guess I'm also to bring us all back to something like high flying bird yeah you know i think we all we all go through life trying to exert some amount of control over what happens to us um and it's mostly illusory like Like, we often are confronted with the hard fact that the amount of things that we can control is actually very small.

And forget about if it's your family or anybody close to you. Like, that's just not happening. But it's clear that's something that I keep returning to characters who think through an act of will that they can change the situation or the world and usually come up somewhat short. Do you think back how the arc of your career, which has been written about a million times, you have this huge hit, then you have the quote unquote slump, then you come roaring back. Like, do you think that? It's been two decades since Out of Sight, and then all of a sudden you're in the best director category for two different films at the same time, which I don't think had happened for, what, like 60 years? It's been a while.

I mean, that went so fast. What did it feel like in the moment to just have your career flip like that? It was, I was trying to sort of keep my eyes forward the the years between sexualized and out of sight were actually really crucial to my development yeah as a filmmaker and i had the luxury of making five movies in a row that nobody saw and most people didn't like but they were they were each really important steps in me trying to figure out what lane should I be driving in?

Like, what kind of filmmaker am I? And part of that process was determining ultimately that I wasn't a writer, that I had written, but I wasn't a writer. I wrote to get in because nobody can stop you from sitting in front of a keyboard. But once I let go of that, and it's a real issue for young writer-directors, they all want to emulate their heroes. And I realized my well is not that deep when it comes to writing. It's just not. And as soon as I understood that, everything got better immediately.

And so when you look at those projects, you look at like that run of five films from out of sight through oceans. Great scripts, great screenwriters, like everything got better. Right. That makes sense. I also think, and I tell this to people sometimes, you know, I've had successes and failures. The failures were really important you learn you learn a shitload from them i wouldn't i don't regret anything that that i've done that didn't work or didn't work as well as i thought it would because

you you take what what you get out of it you're still going to get something no the successes as it turns out are kind of a mystery a mystery and impossible to conjure at will. And you just have to surround yourself with people that can at least give you the best shot at having something work. So it's kind of I always viewed it as success is this kind of mysterious person you spent a night with and then is gone the next morning. You don't know anything about them. Failures like the family that comes over and won't leave. And you eventually have to like forcefully kick out of the house. But if the business has changed in a way that makes me feel for the generation that's coming up now, it is that I had the luxury of those failures.

Like, you can't do that now if you're a young filmmaker. You cannot make five movies in a row that nobody sees. You're in jail. So that, I feel, and that is, I think, a necessary part of anyone's evolution. Nobody, well, very rare. It's very rare. People don't emerge full blown right out of the gate.

It's really, really rare that that's the case. You need time to develop. Do you think online, Twitter, just the way movies are dissected now, would have been harmful for you in the mid 90s if that stuff was there if it had been around prior to sex lies i think i would have gotten into a lot of trouble because i was such a punk yeah about what i thought was good and what i thought wasn't good and um yeah i would have i would have gotten in some serious hot water, I think, just mouthing off about stuff.

Yeah, seriously. Yeah. Especially like, you know, you spend a year on a movie or something, then it comes out and you got these people shitting on it. Yeah, look, that's – And if you're in your 20s, like, oof. done any sort of self-education about how that stuff works you'll go back and find that many of your favorite movies that have had a huge impact on you were not liked um certainly weren't successful when they came out and that that's just part of the that's part of the thing i've been i've been i've had a very kind of i look at it as sort of, it's relevant to me in the sense that it can affect the commercial life of the film.

If you get good reviews or you get bad reviews, depending on what kind of movie it is. But I've never taken it on as any kind of definitive truth about what we made. I just have never taken it on like that. By the time I've finished something, I've been through a process with friends and family that's, you know, speaking of Tony Gilroy, when you invite Tony Gilroy to see a rough cut of one of your movies, you better be prepared for what's going to happen.

He's giving you the real notes. Yeah. I mean, you better be prepared for what's going to happen. He's giving you the real notes. Yeah. I mean, he's incapable of hiding how he feels about something. And that's the good news. And the even better news is if you're in a situation in which you need help and you have a problem that needs to be solved, he will roll up his sleeves and help you. So there's a group of people that I call upon, and I have to take a deep breath before I do.

I was going to ask you about that. How many people is that? Probably 20, 25 spread out. And I had one director friend of mine on a movie. Finished. The movie was finished, basically. We had delivered it, and he asked, you know, oh, you're screening it? I want to see it.

And he watched it, and he essentially grabbed me by the lapels when it was over, and he said, you need to throw the score of that movie out. He goes, it's... I don't know what its commercial potential is. As it turns out, the movie had none. But he goes, it's

ruining... It's one ask too many um and he was right he's right i threw the score out and had one completely rewritten and that was not something i wanted to hear in that moment but he was right my uh i was friends with william goldman who recently passed away, and there was all these different stories about him. And one of the ones that I thought was great was about he saw Silence of the Lambs, like a cut of it, and it was pretty much locked. And he was like, it's great, great.

You should take out that part with the FBI director when he gets his jobs in trouble. Just take it out. And Demi was like, the film was locked. And it was in his head. And he's like, let's go back in and see if we should take that out. And they took it out. And Goldman was right. Because it sounds like over and over again you hear that as a theme with directors and storytellers.

Sometimes the one thing you take out is the most important part of the whole process. It's great that that process is impossible to quantify or predict because it keeps it fresh. But it's also super frustrating because you reach a certain point. You're like, well, I've been doing this for a while. I feel like I should be able to go to the hoop right right but as it turns out every movie's different the culture the moment in the culture is differently you just don't know what is going to land and what it's it's i'm always surprised things you think are super clear to people are not and then things that you think oh that's maybe that's

maybe we're being you know a little too oblique with this and people like oh no I two minutes and I knew that so it's a it's a strange it's a strange process but never boring when did you feel like you had command all your pitches like was there a movie where you're just like I know how to do this When did you feel like you had command all your pitches? Like was there a movie where you're just like, I know how to do this? Well, Out of Sight was the first opportunity to really put into use what I felt I'd learned in the years between Sex, Lies and that. Yeah. It was a watershed movie for me in a lot of ways. Most importantly, it had to, regardless of how it performed,

it was important that it be perceived creatively as a success, that I could work within the studio system with movie stars and make a movie that is solid. So I felt under a lot of personal pressure while we were making it. And I had to do a Jedi mind trick on myself on set to pretend as though I was on the set of Schizopolis, that I could do whatever I wanted, which is what I did. I just went, it's 1971, I can do whatever I want. And I followed that and I had the support of my cast and my producers in the studio. So I was very fortunate. But once that happened and I was on the other side of it, I felt like, okay, let's go.

Like I set up a bunch of projects right on top of each other because I felt, I feel, I'm seeing the ball. Like let's go and so that you know five movies in three and a half years that was a good run I have no idea why out of sight didn't do better when it came out it really had everything summer we weren't supposed to come out it should have been like an October movie it was supposed to come out in October and they did they move it up no what happened was meet Joe Black was behind schedule. Meet Joe Black was supposed to come out this summer and they were behind. That's bullshit. What are you going to do? The head of the studio who gave me the job said, I got a problem here. I need a summer movie. You're done. You're ready. It's a good movie. And I went, okay,

it's your call. But it doesn't feel like a summer movie. I mean, in a weird way it worked out, but it probably didn't feel that way at the time because it's a beloved movie. It's fucking awesome. No, the perception of it is that it was successful. That's the good news. In retrospect, nobody realizes.

We got crushed by Armageddon, actually. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. But again, it did for me what it needed to do. It did for George what it needed to do. We hooked up at exactly the right moment. We both needed this movie to work. And so that started a relationship that turned out to be very fruitful.

So it was a good, that was a big one. I had, Sorkin was on this podcast two weeks ago, and we were talking about timing and luck and like how I mean it's not a secret but it's just how

incredibly important it is to catch people at the right point sometimes with movies totally Clooney and J-Lo at probably like the absolute perfect time

you would have wanted them to make that movie like I I still was like discovering J-Lo you know I'd seen seen a couple things but i didn't know that much about her that was the first time i really felt like i'm spending

two hours with j-lo and then clooney was basically the er doctor who hadn't really made it big in a movie yet and we didn't know if he could carry one then it's like oh yeah he can carry one yeah well i think we were both viewed as people with potential yeah Yeah. And the questions were starting to come up like, and when are we going to see what we think we see? And so, yeah, he and I bonded very quickly over that immediately. Like we had very similar taste in movies anyway. So we just sort of fell into this very, very fast. Was it a coincidence that you just start working with huge stars after that?

Did you gravitate to talent? No, I think it's a matter of understanding what's going to be best for the project. And not shying away from the fact that movie stars are a very important tool in your arsenal. They've been with us since the beginning of cinema. There's nothing wrong with putting movie stars in a movie. It's only a problem when they're misused or it seems inappropriate or it distorts the project somehow but um there's nothing i think for an audience nothing more satisfying than seeing one of their favorite movie stars in a role that you feel like they were born to play like that's that's like a real dopamine hit yes i remember tarantino was saying about pulp fiction

how he used to he loved john travolta he just felt like he was a movie star he's like i really want john travolta in this movie yeah I like John Travolta and there's it's really hard for an actor to pass that point where people feel that way about them

but like when you had Julie Roberts what was that like that was 2000 right Erin Brockovich and she was just she made all some strange choices

in the 90s but then kind of went back to being Julie Roberts my best friend's wedding and Notting Hill and it's like oh Julie yeah and then you hit her right as it's like oh she can do this too and uh that's like the most unique performance of her career because she's julia roberts but she's also you know it was yeah you're absolutely right that i was very aware that the timing of this was perfect.

It was exactly what she wanted to be doing. So she saw very clearly what the movie could do for her creatively. I had just come off. I'd been approached about doing Aaron Brockovich while we were doing Out of Sight because it was the same set of producers. They described it. So I remember where I was standing on the set of the mansion at the end of the film, Albert Brooks Mansion,

as they pitched me this idea between setups. And I literally said, that sounds like the worst idea I've ever heard for a film. Why would you think I would want to do that? Year and a half later, I'm in the middle of editing Hell with the Limey, which I'm not, it's not clear at the point that they re-approached me that we were going to be able to figure that out. Like it was one of the most terrifying creative periods of my life, the months of editing the Limey. Yeah. They came back to me.

They had a new draft of the script, and they came back to me. And suddenly a movie like that seemed to be the perfect thing that I should be doing. It's going in one direction. Yeah. It's very simple. All I've got to do is make sure I've got the camera in the right spot to capture this performance, and we're all going to be fine. So that 18 month period, I just needed to move

into another direction. But when I think back that, wow, that could have easily not have happened, I was lucky. Traffic couldn't have been as easy. No, that was- Those are tough ones. We didn't have the money until three weeks before shooting because the consensus was no drug movies ever made money which was true yeah and so every studio turned it down and it was graham king and barry diller at usa films who came in three weeks before and said okay we'll do it um it felt it was scarface didn't make money? I guess not. I don't think they viewed that as a drug movie. That was, you know, kind of De Palma, Pacino extravaganza.

Out of control. Yeah, I mean, it felt to us like a zeitgeist film. Like, it was an election year. It felt like this issue was was like building like people wanted to talk about it the sad thing is and we sensed this when we were making the film you could make that movie every five years because nothing's changing and in some ways things are worse so at the time it felt it has to happen now if we missed this window it's gonna close and we'll never get to make this.

And the funny thing was that traffic, for me, traffic and Aaron were not hard. Oceans was hard. Oceans was hard? Why was Oceans hard? It was a new grammar for me. It required a new set of skills. And I was terrified. And it was like, I spent more time on set trying to figure out how to do something than I ever had before. I was really, it was hard. And so the funny thing is- Are you talking about the look or dealing with the actors?

Oh, no, the actors were fine. The script was perfect. It was just, you know, I felt it deserved a real bravura kind of visual style. And it was just, I hadn't really made anything quite like that before. And it took me about a week before the math of it finally became apparent to me and i realized like oh okay the geometry of how all these shots should be designed and built and put together is this you know um so it was it was it was just the biggest thing i'd ever been a part of. You know, it was back, what, $89 million, which to me was like, it's a lot of money.

Yeah, how much was Sex, Lies, and Videotape? A million. But it's, the Oceans films for me are a kind of movie I really enjoy doing, even though they're tricky, because I get to play in a way that I don't really get to play on other kinds of films. They can handle a lot of trickery and sort of, you know, those are as close to comic book movies as I can get. Like, that's it. And I viewed them

sort of as comic book films in a way. Hey, I want to take a break to talk about our Super Bowl coverage here at The Ringer. I mean, we have some awesome football writers. A lot of them are in Atlanta. A lot of them are hanging out. Although I don't know who hangs out. Does anyone hang out with Kevin Clark? Kevin Clark. No, Kevin Clark.

I mean, he's got an entourage now. He's just, he's gone off the rails. But they're all there. They're writing pieces. They're doing podcasts. You can listen to the wonderful Ringer NFL show. You can listen to Dual Threat with Ryan Rosillo. He's going to have a Super Bowl preview. You can listen to Against All Odds, where I'm going to be on there doing the Super Bowl props with the degenerate trifecta. You could read all of our great coverage. And most important, not most important, but almost as important, as important,

just as important. There it is, Kyle. Just as important. We sent our social team down there and we're doing a bunch of videos that you can watch on our YouTube channel as we try to get our YouTube channel over 100,000 subscribers, inching our way closer. Kevin Clark's going to be doing Slow News Day from there. We're shooting a bunch of little short videos, trying to catch just the scene, what it's like down there. So check that out. TheRinger.com, Ringer Podcast Network, live from the Super Bowl all week. And then on this podcast, I'll be doing my big pick on Thursday. So there you go. Were you surprised all those actors got along so well?

A lot of famous people in that movie. Yeah. I mean, we, George and I, one of the things that we, I think, bonded over was the no asshole rule. So- Yeah, I was going to say, it's almost like putting together a basketball team where you want to make sure you don't have like the cancer asshole rule. So- Yeah, I was gonna say,

it's almost like putting together a basketball team where you want to make sure you don't have like the cancer. Yeah, so we, people were vetted. Interesting. And I'm glad because they were, it was fun to watch them together because they really liked each other a lot. They never left the set.

They just enjoyed hanging out. And I'm really, I think looking back, it's a real testament to the late, great Jerry Weintraub to be able to have retained that cast and made three movies in six years, that's hard. With all the choices that they have. That's hard. Like I challenge somebody to do that now.

Like it's, and it's because they wanted to do it. But that's Jerry kind of, you know, keeping everybody on the boil. Yeah, to borrow the basketball analogy, that's like keeping the Warriors together. Yeah. And preventing Durant from leaving. Do you think they're splitting apart?

I worry about where Durant heads. Because I think there's a chance he leaves. Really? I do. Interesting. Yeah. I think it's really hard to keep a good team together where uh it's this it's this world now where you touched on a little bit in your movie but it's this world now where

everybody wants their team and they want to be the guy on the team and um do you think that really like that beats for them like winning the championship well but the thing is if you've won a couple times then that becomes less important, right? Right. Because at some point you're thinking I think the media and the fans

care about the legacy stuff a lot more than the players do. They just look at it like well, if I'm the best guy in this team then everything

goes through me and I'm the guy. I mean, Kyrie left LeBron. LeBron was the second best player of all time. So I think there's a lot of dynamics in play. When you make the High Flying Bird sequel,

I think there's some stuff you can have in there about young superstars. Well, it'd be hard because obviously it's the difficulty now in trying to make a realistic sports film because none of the leagues will cooperate with anything that isn't a Valentine to them. Right. So we dealt with that with documentaries we've done. Yeah. Yeah.

It's really frustrating because now you can't make a realistic sports film about what's really going on. Like most people, when I see sports movies where the teams are fake, I'm like not really engaged. But you just can't. It's only kind of worked one time any given sunday they really put a lot of time and effort into the uh the names of the teams

and the uniforms and it was like all right i'm kind of in on the yeah on these fake teams we've created but yeah in your movie you were using they were saying ny instead of new york and stuff like that was that intentional oh yeah yeah oh yeah um so the nba was also interesting is you know we wanted to have some real sportscasters in the movie and the espn was like we don't want anything to do with this so we went to fox and they were like great i thought that was an interesting all i'm saying is i was right here i was ready for if there was a podcast with the agent or something you i would have filmed the podcast yeah Well, that's good to know. Yeah, for the sequel, I'm available. Okay.

So did you go to the NBA? And they were just like, no. No, there was no point. I knew we were, what kind of territory we were in. And it wasn't really, given what it was, it wasn't really necessary. Like it was. Yeah, it's really hard to notice unless you're looking for that.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it really is asking, the movie is just asking a lot of what if questions. And, and when somebody asked me the other day, well, you know, what would you hope the takeaway from this movie would be for people watching it. And I said, well, what I would hope is when they watch a basketball game now, they really think about the lives of those players. Like these are people and they're like, you're watching them on the court. They have another 22 hours that they've got to deal with, you know, and it's pretty intense. Like interviewing those three guys, it was clear, like the level of scrutiny and pressure they're under is just extraordinary. So for those of you who don't know out there,

you interspersed Carl Anthony Towns, Reggie Jackson, and Donovan Mitchell. And they just kind of pop in every once in a while. How long did you interview those guys for? I think each one was about 25 minutes to a half an hour. I got some good stuff. I should have probably put something together. They were incredibly generous with their experience. And it was fascinating to hear them talk about how the game is now

and how it's changed even in a generation for young players. And they talked about sort of what we were saying, that there's very little tolerance now for people who are kind of toxic or don't do the work. Like this idea, this cliche of like the savant player who can just like walk onto the court and create magic. They're like, that doesn't exist. Well, there's also, there's too many dynamics in place now for if you're an asshole or if there's some sort of power struggle between the stars or whatever, it just comes out now.

And, you know, 30, 40 years ago ago we still had people covering the teams but it wasn't like it is now where people would just be like sources oh my god think about the yankees from the 70s in today's environment i mean people i don't know how they would function the system's kind of designed for these guys not to get along long-term. Now you could argue basketball has always been that way. Cause you go back and it's like, you know, Shaq and Penny broke up. Kobe and Shaq broke up.

Oh, Michael Jordan and the bulls. Like they just decided they don't want them anymore. Well, it's just really hard. When you think about it, it's, I think part of that is driven by,

it's a physically intimate game. It's a small team. Yeah. You're, you're. You're like right there. Your pals are like sweating all over you. You're like touching people. It's a very intimate game. What I like about it is, I was saying to somebody the other day, it's as fast as a sport can get without becoming truly violent.

Yeah. So that's why it's so fun to watch. But there aren't the opportunities like there are in some of the other sports to like be over on this side of the field. Put me out wide so I don't have to talk to that guy. But here, you're in the pit. And so I would imagine it's a much more emotionally intense experience for those five people on the court. But it's such a, it's interesting to look at the game.

I don't know how you feel about how the, it seems to me like there are too many games given how many teams make the playoffs. Like if you're going to have 82 games, you can't have 60% of the league going to the playoffs. That's why nobody starts watching until march you know basically because you're like what were these first 60 games for it's weird that everybody's watching but there's no urgency with the standings right but i've been amazed that the biggest thing that's changed this decade just for you know for doing this for a

living and having websites like we had grantland 2011. And then the site we have now, the ringer, um, it's a 12 month a year sport now. And people care in July and August. And that was not the case before. Whereas like some other sports it's flipped. Like in baseball,

you get to the end of the year. And the, as soon as the championships over, it's like the draft, right. How about the draft? Yeah, exactly.

Where's he going? And then this guy, and he might want to trade. And we just get content out of it constantly. And then a sport like baseball, the two biggest free agents are still unsigned. That's crazy. And it's heading into February. I know.

And if this was basketball, we'd be having a heart attack. Like just today, right before we started taping this, it came out Anthony Davis demanded a trade from New Orleans. Really? His agent basically leaked it to Adrian Wojnarowski, who's the top basketball reporter. Right. And carefully orchestrated on Monday morning to start the news cycle. It's just what basketball is now. It's 2019.

It's like, if we're going to do this, I'm going to do this the right way. We're going to start the day with it. Everybody will get their shows out of it and then try to figure out where he's going. And that's what all we're going to do for the next two weeks is figure out what the Anthony Davis trade is. So it's just become part of what basketball is. You, you, you dipped into this lockout. We had Grantland. We started in June, June 2011 there's a lockout right after and there hit a point where it was like fuck

what are we gonna do there might not be basketball and I remember writing I was so mad I was writing these angry pieces about the lockout

but one of the pieces me and another writer we had Jake Haspin King we wrote a piece called The Renegade Basketball League

about what would happen if the players just said, fuck it, and started their league. Yeah, and we created fake teams, and we did an expansion draft, and the idea seemed crazy but fun. But now in your movie in 2019 with Facebook and the way we have cameras now and just the way you can be so accessible streaming. You really could do this. Yeah, you could. And you could finance it entirely on all the broadcast rights and all the merchandising.

And that's, of all the sports, it's the one I've always wondered like, why don't they try and take this over? Yeah, because you don't need as many players as football or any of the other stuff. I mean, the reason you wouldn't is because they all make an incredible amount of money you know they do and there would be there there might be a big change in the economic paradigm um and and make no mistake the

administering of a major sports league is an incredibly complex uh effort and so to say like yeah we're going to start our own elite like okay now let's sit down and talk about what's actually that's going to what it's going to take to do that and who's going to who's going to be running that like who do you then install in this position of authority to make sure this thing is going the right way but you know it is it is interesting to me you know the movie sort of gets into this idea of to what extent do the owners in these situations have rights over the players' lives and what they do when they're not on the court? Well, I think the players have pushed the envelope on that in all kinds of ways.

I mean, they're basically like, they do whatever they want on social media. Right. And the NBA has no control over it. And the NBA guys with social media, they're the biggest ones out of all of them. And, you know, LeBron's just, he can have his own press conference after games.

He doesn't need to talk to reporters. Yeah, right. Just skip the middleman. Almost like how conference after games. He doesn't need to talk to reporters. Yeah, right. Just skip the middleman. Almost like how Trump uses Twitter. He doesn't talk to reporters. Now, there's a benefit to talking to reporters. But, yeah, I'm really interested in seeing where all this stuff goes because – did you follow the Tiger versus Phil thing?

Yeah. So the basketball version – I watched. I paid. I watched. Yeah, I paid it too. So the basketball version of that is zion williamson who is one of the most exciting prospects ever yeah and then there's this other prospect moran on murray state who's a guard who's um basically like a taller

russell westbrook and he's also an amazing dunker those guys between the end of the college season the draft could just have a dunk contest and be like, it's $9.99. Pay-per-view it. And people would pay-per-view it. They would make money right away. And the NBA wouldn't be able to do jack shit. Absolutely. So I'll be interested to see if that stuff starts happening because I think it will.

And that was one of the reasons I liked your movie because you're foreshadowing where this world is going, which eventually everybody's going to look around and go, hey, do we need these old white owners anymore? Well, and I think the real, you know, that makes me think that this college athlete thing has got to be sorted out. That's what's going to come. This is just ridiculous that these kids are- That Zion's in class right now and he's going to be leaving in late March and that's it?

And is generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue for that school. And he gets nothing. Like there has to be, this can be figured out. You come up with a system, some sort of point system or something where there's some level of compensation here for these players who put in the hours. Like, it's just, it's hard to watch, frankly. It's gotten to the point with me with college sports, like, I don't enjoy it the way I used

to. Yeah. It's hard to watch. Because I think, you know, as we know, catastrophic injury, you're done. Right. That's it. You know, good luck with your degree yeah i think the nba has the key to this with the g league the g league i'm really intrigued by

because there's they don't really spend any money on the players or you know it's for whatever reason they haven't kind of gone all in on it, but they should. And when they do, they could basically, these guys could come right out of high school and go to the G League, get drafted, and you spend at least a year in the G League, maybe two. And with the way everybody wants content now, that is actually pretty good content. Zion's in the G League this year, the Knicks G League team.

It makes sense, too, because I'm talking to the three players that I interviewed. They agreed, I was sort of talking from the outside and I said, it would appear to me that of all the major sports, there's the biggest gap between college play and pro play in basketball as compared to any of the other sports.

And they were like, absolutely. They all said like, I just basically had to forget everything that I was taught until I showed up in the pros. They're like, it's just a different world. Well, we talked about failure before. All these guys were always the best or one of the best and now you get in the league. Like Mitchell says that in the movie,

he played like what, 22? He had 20 points in like 11 games or something. Yeah, 11 games or something. It's like that's – I guarantee the first time that guy's failed at basketball since he was like eight. Since ever. Yeah. So, you know, that's part of it too.

The Celtics are doing with that now because they have – they just have a loaded roster and they have these young guys that would be starting on any other team when we're playing 18 minutes. Right. And they're not playing well. And part of the reason they're not playing well is because they know they could be playing 40 minutes on a different team so it's complicated um i want to talk about sports movies really quick so a topic i've been fascinated by forever i've written a shitload about sports movies and there's these different genres right so you have like the 70s is like the first wave right you get the longest yard then you have rocky and then like

everybody ripping off rocky with every different sport basically all the way through i would say the mid maybe the mid 80s then there's a little more creativity we get to the late 80s and you get like the field of dreams and those type of movies. But at the same time, we're still making Rocky over and over again with Major League and those kind of things. Then it kind of dies down. Then it comes back again in the late 90s because they become profitable because you can put the one star on the poster. And then that leads to this next great wave of movies that the rumor of the Titans and

all those kind of movies. Then that starts to go. And sports movies can't make the same money. It's just not a worthwhile bet for the studio. Yeah, because the foreign is not very big. Yeah, because they don't – especially if it's football. So by 2009, it starts getting really interesting. The movies kind of go to another level and they become movies that kind of use sports which is what you do

you made it you made a movie that happens to take place in sports with no sports in it with no sports in it well what i was trying that's where we're heading what i would have wanted to avoid in any sports movie was is the situation in which your your emotional engagement with the story hinges on the outcome of a specific game. You know what I mean? That's just a trope that's in all sports movies. And it was one that I was not interested in following. Yeah. Andre and Terrell McCraney and I started talking about the movie is I realized, oh, this is this will be fun because it's it's never going to be. You never like rooting for somebody to hit one at the buzzer.

It's not. It's a sports movie without that cliche in it. Yeah. don't follow sports find it easy to engage with because the issues in it can be applied to almost any context. And it's fairly, you know, kind of I had in mind

when we were making it, Sweet Smell of Success, which is one of my favorite films. Very fast, verbal, contained period of time that the story takes place over. That was what we wanted to recreate. Yeah, it's interesting. Jerry Maguire, so I was 96.

It kind of flipped the script on what a sports movie was, but it still had the climactic game at the end. But that was, I thought that was such an important movie because it created this Rod Tidwell character that was like, this is the coolest sports movie character we've ever created. This is like actually a guy who could be in football. And there was real thought to the nuances of him and the stuff he was going through. And I think over the next 20 plus years, that's been the most interesting way that sports movies has evolved is putting a little more thought into the character.

Right. Versus just like, like all right here's the setup and then you know i think he's gonna rally back and then yeah yeah but what's crazy to me is that they still make the boxing movies how many boxing movies can we make i don't know i got approached by one i'm surprised you haven't made one you're like the only director that's ever made one where are you gonna go with that i don't know i'm i'm i just somebody I sort of stopped them before they got very far. And I just went, I have no idea where you can take this because there's been some pretty definitive movies about boxing going in a variety of directions. Like I just don't – I don't know what my angle on it would be and how I would shoot it in a way that's better than the way some other people have done it. Creed reinvigorated it,

but so much of that had to do with the Stallone hook to it and the fact that we had a history with this guy and now he was back. But I think part of it, I think the actor's getting in crazy shape and. And hitting stuff. And hitting stuff. And just like, it's almost like a rite of passage for great actors.

Almost all of them have done it. Yeah, it's true. You know, but I, it's weird that we've had so many boxing movies and like zero MMA movies. There's been like Warrior and that's about it. Part of the fun of making Haywire was working with Gina Carano. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, she was – it was so fun to watch her do all that stuff.

Like she was – one of my favorite images that if I had to pull out, it would be right up near the top of the list is this shot from Haywire. We were in Barcelona. She's running as fast as she can run. And the camera's three feet in front of her.

I'm on the back of like an ATV thing with the camera on a hinge. And so if this thing slows down or anything happens, there's going to be blood. And she's just, and she can run. Like, she can run. She looks like somebody that you wouldn't want to have chasing you. And Shoshana, the costume designer, she's wearing this black jacket, and the lining

inside is like this animal print. So you just see it flapping, you know, as she's wearing this black jacket and the lining inside is like this animal print so you just see it flapping you know as she's running it's very subtle you have to kind of look for it but it's super cool yeah you know and I just I loved watching her run I loved watching her hit people like it was there was something really satisfying about this very arresting looking woman just like beating the shit out of people right it was just i i loved making it you've you've done so much experimentation since you became super successful and i always really appreciated that somebody was out there doing that the thing you did two years ago where you did logan lucky and you're just like fuck it i'm not doing any of the i'm not doing

this old school model of the advertising and all that stuff. We're just – this can be a word of mouth thing. And it didn't work, but it was an amazing experiment. And now that movie, I feel like a lot of people – that movie is heading in the right place from people have seen it, people like it, but it didn't work. Why didn't it work? Because I would have thought with the internet and the influencers and all that stuff we have now that that actually should have worked.

No, the studios were right about everything. Yeah. We didn't have enough money. the illusion that with a smaller amount of money used in a very surgical way, you could achieve the same result. And we're talking about, we have to be clear what we're talking about here, wide-release movie, like opening a movie on 3,000 screens. This is what I was trying to see if there was a lane to be opened up that wasn't with a studio where a filmmaker like me could create a model where

they could put a wide release movie out for less money, more transparency in terms of how the economics work. Yeah, absolute creative freedom over every aspect of the release. It just didn't work. It didn't work twice because I did it again on Unsane and it didn't work again. We had $20 million in marketing in each case. It wasn't enough. They were right. You can't get out of bed for less than $30 million.

So it's just a pure awareness thing. You can't get awareness. You just can't. And we tried very different approaches on each one. Like, okay, this time we're going to put the money here. We're going to do this. It just didn't work. What was the movie you made when you released it at the same time? There were two, Bubble and The Girlfriend Experience.

Yeah, yeah. Bubble was earlier though. 2005. Yeah. And everybody got mad at you, the theaters. This is the end of everything. It was, yeah, it wasn't a popular idea well that's their worst fear but it seemed inevitable look what i think i was talking about

this yesterday to somebody this whole windowing thing that i think the problem the problem that we're seeing now is people are trying to apply a unified field theory of how this windowing issue should work when in point of fact every movie is different yeah here's what here's the argument i would make to nato who john fit the unit runs nato i've become very friendly with um the minute logan lucky and unsaid the minute i that Logan, Lucky, and Unsane were not going to work, I should be able to get that thing up on a platform immediately. You know what I mean? Like not that we planned to do it. It's just, I knew by Friday noon that we were dead. Yeah.

And I just spent $20 million. Dude, let me drop this thing next week. Yeah. Nobody's going. Like, I'm not hurting you. I'm hurt now. We're all hurt. Because now we've got to wait 60 days, 90 days, whatever. And then it's a memory. And so I think there needs to be some understanding that you're never going to have one approach that's going to work for everything.

It's not. So I think they should start having conversations about, we've got this movie of this scale with these people in it, this pedigree. We want to go out this wide. Why don't we, let's say the window on this is X, and we've got this other movie that's a little more experimental that we're not sure about. And let's have an understanding if it tanks that we can get this thing up quickly. That's what I would do. Yeah, it's still – I was thinking about this when I saw A Star is Born, which I really liked. He did a good job.

He did a good job. It was a good movie theater movie. Yeah. And I think that's the challenge these days. And it's a challenge in sports too, ironically. Because the TVs are so nice now. and it's so comfortable at home and it's like do i want to go to 81 red sox games a year or i just want to watch the red sox and i could be on my phone and i'm not dealing with assholes next to me and all that stuff and the coverage is amazing like yeah this is what

america does better than anybody in the world is sports coverage. The widescreen has changed the game for all these different sports including basketball. It's just much more fun. If you watch ESPN Classic or the Hardwood Classics

on NBA TV and you watch the 2000 finals. The square and it's blurry. You can't see anything. Yeah. And you would see so much more when you're into the game.

I've still value going to the games because I think you can pick a lot of the body language stuff, how guys interact, just how breathtaking some of them are. Like somebody like Giannis, like you just have to see him in person.

But it's not the necessity like it used to be. And I think movies are like that too. Yeah, there's a similar thing happening in movies in that when I was growing up, there was a big difference between what you saw on your TV and what you saw in a movie theater huge there's just not that big a gap anymore like these like you're saying these now we're in a 4k world you know 85 inch screens like this stuff is stunning and when you combine now we're I don't know you've all had this experience of going to theaters where people don't know how to behave anymore.

You know, they just think they're in their living room. Yeah. You're like, wow. They're on their phone. The glare of the phone is like coming out of the side of your eye. Yeah, they're just like talking and everything. They're literally like it's their living room so you know it's i agree that there are there are certain kinds of films that really benefit from the the theater going experience get out would be a perfect

that was example like that's a great creed was good like there's there's good theater movies yeah there's other ones that it's fun to go to the movie theater, but you don't necessarily need to see it in the theater. And I think how people find that balance with trying to get this stuff on demand because we have – it's worked. We've seen it work with different things where there's movies I want to see. It's like, oh, shit, it's on DirecTV already? Great. I don't have to go to the theater and I'm paying $9.99.

I don't know if that's good for the filmmaker or bad. I think it depends. I think everybody on both sides, the people making stuff and the people paying for the stuff that's made, are in the process of redefining what success means. Because the old definitions just don't apply anymore. The business has completely changed. And so I think it's important for filmmakers too to be clear about what they really want. I think if you ask most filmmakers, what they want more than anything is eyeballs. Like they just want as many eyeballs

on what they made as possible. And so somebody like me, I'm pretty agnostic about where it shows up. I just want you to see it. It's going to be interesting, I think, over the next three to five years as these companies begin to consolidate and really put down roots into this new, look, we're going to have a bunch more streaming platforms in 12 months. Yeah. All these big companies have decided, okay, we're really focused on that. We think the future is kind of heading in this direction.

It's going to be interesting to see five years from now if somebody looks at the P&L statement and just goes, I'm done. Like, I don't get it. This model, I don't see how we make a lot of money in this model. I actually really like where we are right now, because I think the next five years are going to be fascinating. Even like what you've seen with some of the stuff Netflix has done this year. They're making teen comedies. My daughter, like her three favorite, my daughter's 13.

Her three favorite movies this year were on Netflix movies. They had stopped making those movies. They weren't making movies for people like her. I love horror movies. There's like a million horror movies that are out now because their stupid algorithms are pointing to like yeah make horror movies well it's a tricky thing because as tough as the theatrical business is um and the and the economics of it are not very rational there's also at the same time there's no equivalent in terms of success in dollars of a movie that blows up.

Yeah. There's no, you can have a hit TV show and it'll throw off a lot of money over the years and stuff like that. But if you hit the jackpot on a movie that makes like a billion and a half dollars, like it's, there's just no other equivalent of that in the industry. So that's why people keep chasing it.

Well, it's like the Fast and Furious model where... The Decalogue. It's going to be a Decalogue. They're going to make 10 of them. They make Point Break with cars and it's good.

And they make two sequels that are okay, not great. They do well. And then it becomes James Bond. Yeah. And now they're just

going to make them forever until Vin Diesel, like he's going to be in a wheelchair getting into his Testarossa. Absolutely. Or whatever. She's going to go and go and go. I asked Sorkin this, so I have to get your answer on this.

Just because it was my new favorite question for people like you. What movie over the last 15 years were you the most jealous of? Jealous of? Yeah, jealous. Because you're a competitive guy. There's just some movie out there like, oh that's a good one i wish i made that well there was a movie that came out a couple years ago called under the skin jonathan glazer movie with scarlett johansson that's a masterpiece like this guy's made three movies he made sexy

beast that was his first movie which is a perfect film. Yeah. His second film was called Birth with Nicole Kidman, which is a fascinating movie. As close to a Kubrick movie as you can get without Kubrick being around. It's a very interesting film. And then Under the Skin is, to my mind, just kind of jaw-dropping. The reason I think about it a lot is that again if this was

a movie that came out when I was growing up everybody would have been talking about it everybody would have seen it it would have been it would have taken up a lot of cultural real estate and this thing just it was nobody saw it nobody talked about it

I mean the people that saw it was like, wow, this is really good. But there wasn't, I remember seeing it with my wife, Jules Asner. Yeah. Who said not to say hello. Oh, okay. We walked out of the theater and she's like, holy shit. Like, that was, you know, that's a piece of cinema that reminds you of, like, what you can do with the language. You know what I mean?

It's just such a stunning piece of work. And it was just like, in this country at least, it might as well have just not even shown up. So I see something like that. And that was a movie where I was like, wow, he's really good. I got to steal that. Like there was stuff in it that I wish I'd thought of, I guess. But- That's a good one. It is good. Look, it's- I like that answer too. It's unexpected. So if you did Traffic in 2019, is that a 10 episode

Netflix series? Oh yeah. Absolutely. There's no way you make that a movie, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And and they probably have a huge budget they did a series of it for a few years not long after the movie um i'm just saying now but well it's narcos i mean that's what yeah um absolutely look i think i certainly went through a period probably around the time I was doing the Nick where if somebody

broached an idea for a project to me my first thought would have been why is this not a TV series

yeah because I do but I say that knowing and understanding that there are certain ideas that are movie ideas

Logan Lucky is a movie idea. I thought High Flying Bird was. Yeah, exactly. That's not a series. Yeah, like there's certain ideas that really sing in that format. The Kyle McLaughlin owner character might have been a 10-episode series, though. There is an NBA owner show.

Him in the steam room with the coach's handkerchief. I thought one of the underrated scenes was just him on his giant private jet reading his newspaper and the stewardess is bringing the fruit. And it's like, these guys are like aliens. They're in a whole other world. And they all know each other and it's like this little secret handshake club.

And I'm ready to go into that world because I know a little about it. I think, you know, he had the wife with the dog, it was like, it was classic. Like, there's probably 10 owners that were like, is he making fun of me? Yeah, right. They probably didn't know who it was. What's your next one? It's funny you should ask.

For the first time in I don't know how long I don't have the next thing like I have things but I have not pulled the trigger on anything yet so this is weird usually when I'm in post-production and we're in post-production on a movie now you need a next one well I have stuff I just haven't I'm not sure what three of them are movies and I'm wondering sure what, three of them are movies. And I'm wondering, so, but where? Where should I make these? How should they be put out? You know what I mean?

They're not movies like High Flying Bird, you know, that are kind of smallish. They're, in theory, movies that did come out and go into wide release. And I guess I'm trying to figure out where's the forever home for these projects. I don't know. I would think this is a fun time to try to figure out what is the perfect situation for each idea. Because in the old days, it's like movie or TV show and that's it. And now it's like there's 19 different iterations of everything.

Even what you did with this, I thought was just really interesting. And I don't know what's going and that's it. And now it's like there's 19 different iterations of everything. Even what you did with this I thought was just really interesting. And I don't know what's going to happen to it. Netflix has a way of they can own the conversation for three days if it's the right thing. Like we just saw the Fyre Festival back. That thing owned the conversation for five days.

Talk about a scary movie. 20 minutes in I just like got the sweats because it's literally like I have nightmares like that yeah

literally where like things like that are going that way right that was it was really intense to watch like it was

I was really anxious when I was watching it have you have you made like gone all in on a documentary I made one a few years ago about Spalding Gray. Oh, yeah.

What'd you think of that whole process compared to a movie? Well, that was kind of a unique situation because what I decided while developing it was that we would essentially build a new monologue out of existing footage that had been recorded of Spalding over decades. I guess one day I was sitting around thinking, why would I interview people talking about the best talker ever?

Like, let's just create a new monologue out of all of the work that he's done, all the interviews he's given. And that's what we ended up doing. We had 90 hours of stuff, and we got it down to 90 minutes. And so it became like a new monologue. Yeah, that's cool. But it was incredibly – it was also very was also very it was upsetting like he was a friend it was a terrible tragedy and um it was hard it was hard to like be swimming in that for so long because i missed him as everybody who knew him did um but i'm glad we did it it's a i think a

nice testament to his he He had a gift. I think people, he made it, you'd go see Spalding, and you would think, oh, I could do that. Like, look how easy that is. Not understanding how hard it is. And you see other people try and do it and fail. And you realize his, apart from his performance skills, his storytelling skills, his writing skills, his ability, if you understood anything about his process, his ability to synthesize his experiences into a coherent narrative was exceptional. Why don't you direct an episode of Billions for Koppelman and Levine if you have spare time? I told them it's all or nothing.

Like, I have to do all of it. You do the whole season? It's like I'm on's like could you do that could you just step into somebody else's project and like it seems like something you would be you would have fun doing absolutely my i almost i won't name what project this was yeah i've always had a fantasy of getting a call from somebody eight days out from shooting a movie like can, can you come in and like take over? Like we've had a problem. Like there's been a health issue or something like where this thing was ready to go and

we're a week out. And you're like a temp. And I'm like, let's go. Yeah. Let's do it. I would do that in a heartbeat and it almost happened to me. Really? Yeah.

On a big movie. But you can't say what the movie was? No, I can't. And it ended up they ultimately decided to just table the thing. They pushed it a year and went and got like another director. But there was a like

two week period where I was in a conversation where it looked like I may fly to another country and just like walk onto the set and start shooting. Oh my God. And I was like,

that would be awesome. It's almost like an NBA coach taking like, a coach gets fired eight days before the playoffs and you just take over like the Warriors. Yeah, it's just, I mean, my attitude would be awesome. It's almost like an NBA coach taking, like, a coach gets fired eight days before the playoffs, and you just take over, like, the Warriors. Yeah, it's just, I mean, my attitude would be, you know, the fact that I'm here and we're gathering footage, like, that's a win.

So I would feel like no pressure to do anything but what I can do in that moment. I think you have to do one Fast fast furious movie over the next 12 years. Just bang out one car stuff. I hate car stuff. Shooting car stuff is the worst. And you're in those like big, it's just, yeah,

it's just figuring out, you know, whenever I see movies that have that stuff in it, it just, it just makes my head hurt. I just can't, I can't imagine. It takes so long.

It's hard. It takes a long time. It's dangerous. I don't, the few times I. It takes so long, it's hard. It takes a long time, it's dangerous. I don't, the few times I've done stunts, that stuff makes me, I am not of a mind that anybody should get hurt making a movie. So, I'd be the worst, I'd be the worst. You'd have a lot of scenes of people talking about

how awesome that thing they just did that you didn't see. Was, you know, I'm not the guy. I'm not the guy. This was really fun. I enjoyed the movie. When is it? It's on Netflix, February 8th? February 8th.

So you can watch that. Then the All-Star Game comes the next weekend. You think you'll get the big top picture? Netflix? You talk to them about that? Probably for like 20 minutes. You need it for like 48 hours. Yeah.

Look, they... I can't wait to see how it plays they've been great they've been very positive on the film the trailer they made I thought was terrific

I love the little the poster art that they did I thought was really cool like they've been super easy to deal with you also had a couple

actors in there that I just like and it was like nice to just see them in a movie including the lady from The Wire. Oh yeah, Sonya.

Who I just feel like she should be more stuff. Yeah. So I was like, oh, it was, I knew nothing about the cast. So I was excited. No, and I sent Bill Duke an email. I go every 19 years, we're going to do something. Yeah, he was great.

Yeah, he's awesome. Cool, good luck with it. Thanks for doing this. Thanks, Bill. Appreciate it. All right, thanks so great. Yeah, he's awesome. Cool. Good luck with it. Thanks for doing this. Thanks, Bill. Appreciate it. All right. Thanks so much to Steven Soderbergh. You can check out Hi Fine Bird on February 8th on Netflix.

Thanks to Rich Paul for waiting until Monday morning to do this Anthony Davis trade request. We love when this stuff happens during the week and we have everybody in the office and working. That was really nice of you, Rich Paul. Thank you. Worst case scenario would have been Saturday at like 4 p.m. Yeah. And then, yeah, we're back with more podcasts this week. Don't forget about the rewatchables tonight too.

Proof of Life. A lot of Russell Crowe conversation. A lot of Caruso. It's one of my favorite ones that we've done. So check that one out. Until then. On the wayside I'm a bruised son I never was And I don't have To ever forget