The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep 181: The Oscars Disaster Recap With Wesley Morris and Sean Fennessey

Episode Date: February 27, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons brings on New York Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris and Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey to discuss the Best Picture fiasco (6:00), Casey Affleck's win (13:00), 'La La Land' losing (19:00), the Oscars voting process (24:00), and the 'Sully' snub (31:00). Then, they talk about 'Moonlight' moments (37:00), the 2012 Oscars (45:00), Netflix's model vs. traditional movies (54:00), and the best movies of 2017 so far (1:02:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's special WTF Oscars edition, apologies Mark Maron, of the BS Podcast is brought to you by SeatGeek, our presenting sponsor since 1975. We have college basketball conference tournaments and March Madness coming up. I can't think of a smarter, easier way to get tickets to these games than SeatGeek. I went on there today, coincidentally. There were a ton of good seats available for the ACC tournament at Barclays. This is what happens when you go on SeatGeek. You find seats.

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Not realizing that this would be like having a live post-game show after, like, Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald or something. Like, it was that kind of what the F moment and check that out The Watch you can hear them Andy Greenwald, Chris Ryan and special guest Amanda Dobbins reacting in the moment or you can listen to us right now we have Sean Fantasy and Wesley Morris coming up

to talk about the craziest Oscars of all time but first Pearl Jam. All right. Sean Fantasy, editor-in-chief, The Ringer, Wesley Morris, critic at large, New York Times. We all worked together at Grantland once upon a time. These two love movies more than anybody I know. That's not hyperbole. Last night's Oscars was headed toward a really blah ending, and then all hell broke loose.

Wesley, what was your reaction? Well, okay, so I was sitting there. I was watching. I think at that point, Jason Horowitz had not gotten up, or Jordan Horowitz had not spoken yet, one of the producers of La La Land. But I was noticing behind him, Warren Beatty and a guy,

like a stagehand with a microphone, was looking for something. And I just knew. I knew, I knew, I knew, I knew somebody had won the wrong Oscar. I don't know. I didn't know. I didn't know who it was. I didn't know. I didn't think it would have been La La Land. I actually didn't know, but I knew somebody had made a mistake and that mistake was going to result in somebody having an Oscar confiscation.

Sean? There is an amazing moment in that video where you see a body flash across the screen while someone's giving a speech and it looks like, it's almost like a recreation of the streaker from the 70s in front of David Niven but it's someone holding an envelope basically and it's totally bizarre. I was floored

obviously. There's no, this is insane. This is crazy these things are the most managed public acts in the world yeah so to get something like this wrong is utterly insane i think what your reaction was says a lot about you as a human being because my reaction was that somebody crashed the stage and was pretending that they won the oscar was trying to take it and they were trying to get this person off and it never dawned to me that they won the Oscar and was trying to take it, and they were trying to get this person off, and it never dawned to me that it was the wrong envelope because how could that happen?

They have a famous accounting firm that makes it, but then it was like usual suspects. Then you think like, oh, wait a second. Beatty did look at the envelope, and then he went in to see if something else and then it all kind of fell into place barry jenkins is kaiser soze yeah he did it yeah yeah well here's here's the mystery though right i mean still you should ask your question but i just want to present this to think about what did faye dunaway see when she said la la land because

i i think she just assumed that that was i think she might have inferred from emma stone's being our her name being on that on that card i don't know but but wesley i think it said i think it said emma stone and then la la land underneath it yeah and that's right but the print is so small on the identification of the category. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, it's not like in the largest font it said La La Land. It would have said Emma Stone, which meant that Faye Dunaway, eagle-eyed Faye Dunaway, just went right to the bottom of the card where it said it.

I mean, she's won an Oscar. She knows what the card looks like. That's true. Good points. F knows what the card looks like. That's true. Good points. Faye Dunaway is old. I think you got to just remove all whatever off the table. I hate to use the old people thing, but like if my mom was up there, first of all, my mom, when we're at a restaurant, needs like a bright light to, like she probably couldn't see.

She probably just saw Emma Stone and was like, oh, it's La La Land and wanted to get it over with would be my guess. It also wasn't her job to read that name like clearly warren beatty was going to read the name you see him open the envelope he looks at what's on the on the on the card and he's baffled yeah and then he passes the buck quite clearly right so well i think what i think was he was trying to show her how weird this was, but he couldn't say into a microphone, hey, don't you find this crazy? This says MSO. I want to know what you guys would have done in this scenario. I would have stopped.

I told you this last night, Bill. I would have pulled in Adele and just said, wait a minute. Stop. This is not right. I would have basically did. I would have done what Jordan Horowitz wound up having to do. Let's say Leo opens the envelope. He probably stops, right?

Because he won last year. He knows what the envelope looks like. But Warren Beatty had won an Oscar in how many years? 35 years. 35 years. And he's an old man. Well, Faye Dunaway was even longer than that. Right.

It went from being so happy to see them on the stage together like i saw yeah i saw some terrible horror movie a couple months ago i told you this wesley and faye dunaway was in it for for uh for two scenes and i was just kind of bummed out faye dunaway this iconic actress from the 70s and and now and now there's a relevancy again but i have two very important questions. Does this go in the first sentence now of Warren Beatty's obituary? When people write about Warren Beatty, are they going to say,

Warren Beatty, comma, who was involved in the craziest Oscars disaster that ever happened and also won a bunch of Oscars. How does this play out? Wesley, what do you think? No, no, no, no, no, no. Because, okay, no, if he dies tomorrow, maybe.

And from the look on his face, this is probably enough to kill him. He's lucky to be alive. He is. I just feel like, oh, man man I have so much sympathy for every single person involved in that scenario you know Moonlight was the movie I wanted to win most

I do not hate La La Land the way some people hate it I think it is a good movie with some like bad philosophical some bad political problems for me but I like talking about them. I would not wish what happened to anybody last night on my worst enemy, not the people at the accounting firm, not Warren Beatty, not anybody involved with either movie, not the poor stage

hand who had to figure this nightmare out. Like it just just it's so bad. And I think as far as Warren Beatty goes, no. Because he was a classy gentleman about it as far as I'm concerned. Okay, good. I mean, he honestly didn't know what to do. I mean, he made the wrong decision in as much as he like just didn't turn around and say, you guys gave me the wrong

album. Well, you know, it reminded me in a weird way of the Justin Timberlake-Janet Jackson Super Bowl, where it took two people to tango. And in this case, JT was Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty was Janet Jackson. Like, she was the one that said La La Land won. He was the one who was confused and didn't know what to do. And she barged in. And then the reaction was, oh, Warren Beatty, what happened?

It's like, what about Faye Dunaway? She's the one who ripped off the thing and showed the nipple. I think it was because he was so expressive in the moment. You know, he's become such a ham in his dotage, you know, and he's so good at kind of popping his eyes and making a face that makes you think like, oh, Warren's up to his old tricks again. Yeah. So i you know i think no neither one of them is really at fault i i was just at starbucks five minutes ago and i grabbed the wrong coffee someone got their coffee ahead of me and i went to go drink it and someone was like that's mine and i was mortified right

mortified because i had made that mistake and that was in front of five people in a Starbucks not 120 million not 120 million people can I ask you a crazy question did you take a black person's coffee no no no it was a small white woman and she got it you know I've known Kimmel

I've known Kimmel since November 2002 and he's one of those guys he's like he's like Nick from The Bachelor. You can read his face at all times. And he was really upset at the end. Like, that was the I'm genuinely upset Jimmy face. Like, I think he felt horrible about what happened and just didn't know what to do. And he actually handled it really well.

I mean, think about like if Seth MacFarlane had been the host for that or some of the other hosts they've had, like that could have been a disaster. Bill, I think Jimmy was a great host. He was really, really good.

I agree. He was there the whole night. He never flagged, but I will say that moment, he just, I mean, he like trying to add some kind of levity. And then he made a moonlight joke. And I think that was the one part of the night where his improvisational and fast thinking, it just didn't work because something serious was really happening.

And it just, it clearly wasn't funny to anybody that's a fair point i don't think he i i think when you're in the moment like that you don't realize the gravity of it you're just trying to be like oh man this is oh i i better but you know i think everyone goes under the bus here and no one was at their best in that moment there's this has never happened before it was incredibly weird even a lot of people have gone out of their way to compliment jordan horowitz like you pointed out earlier, Wesley, about the way that he handled himself. He did handle himself very beautifully, but there are plenty of people on the ringer staff who are like, yeah, but the way that he talked about my friends in Moonlight, that made me uncomfortable. You know, there's all kinds of criticism and undermining, and we're on uncharted terrain here.

Well, I... No, go ahead, Wesley. I don't know. I just think that... Oh, God, can you imagine? This is the Oscar dream that I have every year, except it never comes true. And it's always like,

this year I had it about Isabelle Huppert. I had an actual dream that Isabelle Huppert took Emma Stone's Oscar. I swear to God. She went up on stage and just took the Oscar out of Emma Stone's hand. I am not kidding. Well, you know who else dreamed that? It was Gamblers because there was some heavy Isabelle action.

She went from like 20 to 1 to 9 to 1. And then the other one that had a lot of movement was Denzel. By the time the Oscars launched last night lot of movement was denzel yeah by the time the oscars launched last night denzel was like a minus 180 favorite and that's like there's a lot of people that won last night just because of what happened and how it played out that overshadowed everyone else denzel's reaction during the kcf speech i think would have been a big deal today and now nobody cares yeah what did you make of that whether just look at the look on denzel's face when uh casey shouted him out from the stage again these these are scenarios in which you know they're for the great i don't ever want to experience any of that in my life

and denzel washington i mean i don't know he win. I mean, he and I think by the time last night happened, it'd be one thing if he hadn't gotten anything for that performance, but Denzel, we think this performance is better. I think there was also the sense that Casey Affleck would get dinged somehow by enough voters by the sexual harassment situation for that to be sort of distasteful for people. But I think Denzel's reaction was, the reason to love that man is that he doesn't act when he's not being paid to. That's a good way to put it.

I heard – so last night or yesterday afternoon, ABC was rerunning old Barbara Walters Oscar interviews. Oh. And they reran this one from Denzel from 93 after he did Malcolm X. When he was like Al Pacino. Right. So there was a couple of fascinating things about this. One is he's almost cocky. I would use the word cocky to describe it.

And he's completely unselfaware, which the internet over the next 15 years completely changes what a Barbara Walters interview is. And all of a sudden now people are tiptoeing and be very careful back then he's like she asked him like do you think you think you should win he's like well you know i see people talking about quinn eastwood but come on i love quinn eastwood but come on that's not what he did in that movie compared to what i did and you're like whoa like it's like shots fired at quinnwood. He's like the only one that, you know, Pacino won. I get it. He's won eight.

But, you know, very, very, like, this Oscar belongs to me unless they give it to Pacino. So I don't know. I mean, he's just a confident dude. I think what Wesley said is right, too. I think more so than anything, even aside from of the um political or social discomfort that some of the casey affleck stuff creates i think denzel just really wanted to win this was a huge passion project he directed that movie like it was a big deal for him and i think because of that sag award win he thought he was going to win and so you could see i felt like you could see in the moment

he was kind of like god damn it i can't believe i didn't get this i have yeah i'm i have a take that's gonna make both you uncomfortable casey affleck should have won he it was a better movie and he was better in it and fences was a half hour too long i'm sorry it just was it was a play brought to life and he's very denzel in it and he's very powerful but casey affle he's very powerful. But KC Affleck, that was like, you know, first of all, it's the best performance he'll ever have in his career. The role was amazing. The movie was so affecting. And it's one of those movies I'm going to remember watching 10 years from now. I'm not going to remember Fences 10 years from now.

Like, not with that kind of impact. Here's what I would say. I mean, you're right about F fences not being the movie the play is um it cuts a lot of corners it's not as deep there's something about having the camera in the way of these two people connecting and and and and figuring out their marriage together that really works on a stage that really doesn't work as powerfully in a movie. The other thing about Denzel is, and this is just like, this is just, you know, gender in America. Can you imagine? Now that's, what is that? That would be Denzel's fifth time losing an Academy Award as an actor. Meryl Streep has lost 17 of those bad boys, or 18 of them.

18. Can you imagine if she thought she was going to win for Florence Foster Jenkins last night? If she had sat there the way he had sat there, and it had just been like, I'm not doing this. This is ridiculous. I don't think he needed to win the Oscar for Fences to validate anything that's happened in his career. No. I don't know. I think he's been better in movies.

Do you think that was one of the three best performances of his career? I would say hell no. It's not, but it is one of the three best of probably the last ten years. Of his last ten years? Yeah. Yeah. And obviously, like I said, it's a very personal movie for him it's complicated you know i was almost certain that he was going to win after barry and terrell won for

the moonlight script and after my hair slow one and after a vital the davis one and it did seem like at least in the acting categories there was a very pronounced sea change i thought but i thought when lonergan won for screen writing that's what made me think that Casey was going to win. And the other thing with Denzel, the sun in Fences is just not good. And he has a lot of scenes with that sun. And it's like watching LeBron James playing pickup against the 15th guy in the Cavaliers.

The scenes are uncomfortable because the sun can't hang with Denzel. I think that's not that he's not good. I think it's just that you've got Denzel and Viola in a movie and they're just the wattages on a thousand. The son's not that good. If you compare him to the kid in Manchester, who I thought was really

good, Lucas Hedges, he's not remotely as good as that kid. Casey had a lot of good scenes with that guy. I just thought Casey was better. Here's the other thing to say about, oh wait, what, Sean? When Damien Chazelle won, did you think that it was over completely or were you still holding out even an ounce of hope for Moonlight? What I would say is, and I don't know if I mentioned this here before,

but no, I didn't. I haven't told you guys this. I think that when you've got a movie nominated for 14 Academy Awards, there are some things that you'll know instantly in the beginning of the evening how things are going to go for that movie. Right.

Especially if it doesn't have any supporting actor nomination. You just have to watch and see how many, like whether it wins some of those craft awards that under ordinary circumstances, it should never win. Like winning sound mixing and sound editing. If La La Land had won those two awards, it would have won everything. Because that would have just meant everybody was checking boxes for that movie. So I knew when it was only winning sporadically and there was

no clear momentum and people it was losing to movies that it should have lost to um although we can talk about the hacksaw ridge oh my god second yeah um but i think no i always thought that there was a possibility i always think there's going to be an upset at Best Picture. I mean, it doesn't always happen, but sometimes it does. Hey, Wesley? And I was, yeah. Speaking of winning. I'm here.

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I can't remember the last time I watched an Oscars where I felt like in the in the the six major categories I was completely happy

with all six choices Moonlight was by far my favorite movie last year I was really happy it won I can't usually I'm always mad

at whoever wins the Oscars and this year it was like wow they did it that was the most effective movie i saw the whole year and it actually won this is great not a lot of people saw moonlight though and so when i was just looking at my phone there's breaking news that this was the lowest rated oscars of the last nine years yeah that made sense which is something that people had been kind of talking about in the last few months um it's an interesting thing when a movie there's no like i like i wrote this morning there's no precedent for a movie this small winning um a movie with a budget this small with you know an

unknown cast with a filmmaker making only a second film set in a city like a place that people have never seen before there's so many factors that go into the moonlight wind that make it so extraordinary so unlikely um and that connection was a million dollars win that make it so extraordinary, so unlikely. And that's a million dollars. It was a discovery of a gay boy becoming a gay man. Yeah. You left that part out. That just won the Oscar. It's unbelievable.

Wesley? I am equally shocked. The thing that sucked about what happened last night is I was not allowed to really think about it until about 11 o'clock this morning. And there's a whole paragraph that you have to get through to get to what a monumental event that was. And, you know, what it says about the people who decided to make it happen, like the voters in the academy, the number of precedents that it establishes or shatters. I don't know. I mean, it's just, and it's from a studio that I would say basically has come out of nowhere

as A24 is having some of the best taste in film distribution, in American film distribution. It's unbelievable what they've done in five years. Yeah, I mean, it's really,

it's really, it's amazing. And I think it also says a lot about how broken Hollywood is, too. And this has nothing to do with how great a movie Moonlight is, but it's also really worth noting what those nine movies were and where they came from. And who was in them. And I mean,

there was a time when fences would have, I mean, fences would have been satisfied with, uh, with having Denzel and Viola be nominated. Right. The idea that it's a best picture nominee. I mean,

and it's not so much that that's not a judgment against that movie's quality. It's just to say that it was a pretty weak field. And I would say that Fences probably skated to that Best Picture nomination because those people in the Academy had to put something on their ballot. Yeah. I wonder if it also. How many. What have we had?

This is like year seven of more than five films. Yeah. 2008 was the first or 2009 was the first year. It almost makes it easier for a movie like Moonlight to sneak in if it's just, if it's five nominees. I wonder what the threshold is.

You know, every year we talk about this and this goes back to William Goldman writing about it a million years ago, but they don't show us the votes. I don't understand why.

I think it would be really interesting to find out, oh, Moonlight won by seven votes. I think that's implied. Here's the breakdown. Or Moonlight only had 17% of the vote and it won. We don't know. I'd like to know.

This seems like relevant information. There are a lot of complications with the voting. The rules are fairly arcane where if a movie doesn't get a certain percentage of first place votes then you start rendering the second place votes for for a movie it's actually more complicated i would like to know that stuff though yeah this seems important i think i think wesley's right there this is a weird very anomalous year like the fact that la la land which is a very strange unlikely front runner you know was thought to be such a juggernaut that it tied the all-time record for most nominations is bizarre. It's a postmodern musical made by a guy who loves the films of Jacques Demy and is obsessed with jazz.

That movie has no business being the frontrunner at the Oscars. Or making $350 million and counting. It's bizarre. Who would have guessed that either? It's bizarre. And it has been slagged off a lot in the last two months, but I think in some ways this is weirdly one of the best things that could have happened to La La Land in

people's memories, because now it has resumed as a little bit of underdog reputation. But nevertheless, like, I think that's true of, not just Fences, Wesley, but Hidden Figures, Hacksaw Ridge, these movies that, you know, are pure Hollywood spectacle, but oftentimes would be on the outside looking in of a prestige conversation.

You know, they would be maybe six or seven or nine in the conversation, but because there are nine opportunities and because there was not, you know, there was no Saving Private Ryan this year. You know, there's no Brokeback. No. Well, Brokeback probably, Brokeback wins if this is 11 years later, right? Right. Totally wins.

There were upsets, but there were no juggernauts. Yeah. Wesley. Yeah. This is a good thing, right? For movies? Or does this have no impact whatsoever? I think this is a good thing, but it is indicative of a bad thing.

I think this is a really good thing for a studio like A24. I think it is a good thing for people who produce and subsidize our movies to really believe that there is some kind of audience for a movie that does not star famous people, especially famous people like Denzel Washington, famous black people. I think it is good for movies that aren't about anything larger than just being alive. I mean, that's another thing that's unprecedented as far as I can remember, like a movie that's not about Hollywood. That isn't about war. That isn't about some thing that happened in real life from the headlines. And it's just about people living lives that, that movie is,

I mean, I'll have to look, but I can't recall maybe driving this Daisy crazily enough. You know what I think it is, Wesley? I think it's actually crash is the last time there was a... I was going to say, but that doesn't really count, does it? I mean, it does count, but it doesn't count.

Because it's about an issue, right? Yeah, it's a pat yourself on the back movie, but it doesn't fall into that traditional war biopic movie about Hollywood trifecta that a lot of best picture films fall into. It's interesting. So one of the things that's happened in sports the last five or six years, which I've talked about and written about, is that the sophistication of the internet and all the people writing

about what should happen and here's what was actually good and don't do this. And it's actually prevented us from MVP and Rookie of the Year and Coach of the Year, all those kind of disasters. You don't have massive mistakes with the MVP anymore. There's so much written about it. And I think the voters don't want to look bad. They are also more educated, I think, than they used to be when they read this stuff. And like, oh, it's actually not that good that he's averaging 30 points a game because it's plus minus. And you just go to this other level. And I if that's starting to happen with with the oscars i

don't know how old the the people who vote for this stuff is but you know well yeah but it just seems like the sophistication has to be up because you think about it like la la land wins cinematography right doesn't win screenplay. Lonergan wins screenplay, and he should have won screenplay because it was a better screenplay than La La Land. La La Land wins best song. La La Land wins best director. I'm fine with that. That movie was extremely well directed.

Emma Stone wins best actress. It's defensible, but it's like on down the line, there was no outrageous pick. And I wonder if that's where we're headed with the Oscars. Well, here's my interpretation of that. I think that you're right that in the, sort of the core six categories, for most serious film fans,

this is like, this is a pretty good outcome, right? You can go down the line and just say, I feel good about all these. You know, the Academy, obviously, in the last 12 months has made a lot of moves to diversify the voting body. That helps. They've added more young people. They've added more people of color.

They've added more women. They've added more international members. I think that that's part of the reason why this happened. But I think that the other part of this reason is just that this was a weird year. Like Wesley was saying earlier, in another year with a different kind of movie, if there was a Quentin Tarantino movie in this roster or a Martin Scorsese in this roster, there was a Martin Scorsese movie this year,

but it was not loved. But if there was something that was a little more traditionally Oscar- You liked it. I'm medium on silence. Oh, Chris Ryan liked it. Chris Ryan loves it. I'm in. I mean i mean listen there's a

whole other class of movie that i think the movies don't even recognize they make any and they just i think that movie was dumped um i think that there are a handful of other movies that were dumped by like good directors um what was the biggest? What was the biggest travesty for you in that respect? Travesty. Well, I mean, there wasn't a movie that I loved so much that didn't get nominated for anything. I mean, my two favorite movies were there. Moonlight and O.J. Made in America.

They were nominated and they won. So this was a magical year for me and this never happened. But I think that there was a time when, like, you know, Sully would have been, if there were five Best Picture nominees and not open to a field of ten, Sully would have been a Best Picture nominee. Hands down, no-brainer, easy peasy. But for some reason, I don't know what happened.

Like, Clint Eastwood would have fallen out of favor with these people, but Mel Gibson is back? It's bizarre. You know what happened like like clint is with fall out of favor with these people but mel gibson is back i it's bizarre you know what i mean like i i don't know i don't know what you can't tell a clean story about the academy with this batch of movies you just can't tell when it makes any sense i think the academy is as divided as the country is i think bill you're right i i agree with you i think every year we should know what the breakdown is. I think, Bill, you're right. I agree with you. I think every year we should know what the breakdown is because I'm sure that Moonlight did not... I'm not sure if the winner has to have a

plurality or a majority. It definitely has to have a plurality. Plurality. But I don't know whether or not... I just don't think that Moonlight got an overwhelmingly high number of votes. I just think that things are so split.

I think Hidden Figures might have come in second in the vote. Wow, great theory. I thought Sully should have been nominated because, as Amanda Dobbins said, it's 90 minutes. And that itself is a major achievement. To be able to tell a start to finish movie in 2017 that's 90 minutes you deserve to be nominated all of those shots are the first take because you know clint only does one take clint was done he finished the movie in three days amazing accomplishment and then the rest of his cgi plane crashes just had hanks coming in hey all right tom we're gonna

bang out that second courtroom scene right now you know your lines right i'll put the cue cards right here we can run by them by 5.30. Wesley, in five years, what is the thing that makes you the maddest about this Oscars? Oh, boy. About the show or the winners? The winners.

Or the ones who didn't win. Who were nominated? I would say, I mean, listen, I can't be mad about Isabelle Luperre. I mean, as great as she was in Elle, that is like the tip of the iceberg of how incredible she actually is. I mean, she's given so many great performances that should have been given something that is almost, you know,

if we cared about that sort of thing, really, we'd be up in arms about that. I think my thing is i think viola davis should have been in the best actress category i don't know how i mean i know how it happened i mean it's all it's all rigged for what happened to happen so she could win but i mean i think she would have won best actress last night i do too too. It's the equivalent of if Kyrie Irving, the Cavaliers had put him in the six man of the year bowing and it's like, Kyrie Irving started every game.

Well, we're putting him here. You can't say we can't. There's no rule that says we can't do it this way, but he never played it. He never came out the bench. We don't care. That's basically what happened. She's in.

I would say if you did a usage rate or you did time of possession of that movie, she might be in as many scenes as Denzel or at least like 85-90% of them. It's close. But that doesn't matter, right? For me, what matters is our Hannibal Lecter

theory, right? Yeah, that was wrong. Really? But that was wrong. We've argued about this. He was a supporting actor. He's in four scenes. I don't know. I don't think time is really... I just don't think that time... I mean, I guess this is an argument against my argument,

but I think that it's really the impact you have on the movie and the moviegoer's appreciation of what happens in the movie. I'm willing to argue that Kevin Spacey might have been an unusual suspect was probably a lead performance fair there's a great story there's a great story that orson welles tells about um why he took a role on stage for this play i think that was called waiting for mr chan and the reason that he took the role even though the lead character doesn't show up for the first 50 minutes of the play is because the character's name is in the title of the play and the whole

thing is sort of built around him even though he only appears at the very end of the story and that there is like there are movies i think silence of the lambs falls into that category of like silence of the lambs is about hannibal lecter it's about clary starling as well but the the energy around that movie was about hannibal lecter in the same way that i think historically the energy theory well i think people are going to remember fences in the same way because that viola win is it was so expected and excited that people are going to really remember that movie as the movie where viola won her oscar and not you know denzel's directorial debut or even an August Wilson adaptation.

They're going to say, oh, that's the Viola Davis Oscar movie. I'm going to remember it for the 20 minutes after it ended when it still kept going. After Denzel died. And then there's another 20 minutes after that. It's like, wait, is Denzel dead? We're still going? Yeah, we're still going. There's one thing that is important to remember about this everything that happened last night and the results of everything that happened

is that people think of the academy and the voting body as just actors and directors and there are a lot of people that vote for the oscars that are technicians and producers and you know people who deal with money and people who deal with the business side of things and people who hold uh lights to to shoot film like this is a it's a much more diverse group of people than you might think some of them are very old some of them are very some of them are not keeping up with the film industry on a b2b basis the way that we might but this is a it's a very random group of people you know that some of them are hanging out at the bar across the street and some of them are at the palm having dinner you know there's a there's a real um complexity to the way all this stuff shakes out and that's why some of it is inexplicable right now most memorable

scenes which should be an oscars category and isn't the the best scene that i saw all year was was casey affleck and michelle williams on the street with the little hill when she's apologizing to him like i i'm still haunted by that scene. What are they doing? Putting that in the reel for Michelle Williams? I couldn't believe that. Yeah. And,

and why put the Casey Affleck, the furnace exploded scene in there? Cause a lot of people probably haven't seen that movie yet. Denzel and Viola. The, the, the famous scene from that movie was amazing. Moonlight had like four scenes that are on that level or close,

which is another reason why I thought it was the best movie. It just, it has so many moments that you can just see in your head. I saw the movie once and I can see like six, seven scenes in my head. And that's why I feel five years from now, like I'm looking at 2012 Oscars. We,

we always said like, you should wait, maybe you should wait five years to decide who should have won the Oscar for each category, right? 2012, the artist wins over the Descendants, extremely loud and incredibly close, which was nominated. Wow. Yep. The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris Moneyball Tree of Life and War Horse

War Horse it's a tough year that's a bad year but who wins The Help that's the last wait wait wait

so you're trying to figure out what the best yeah who wins if we have the ballot right now I think Moneyball is the most fondly remembered of those movies

Moneyball might win The Help was a huge hit save us no I mean I think most fondly remembered of those movies. Moneyball might win. The help was a huge hit. Save us. No, I mean, I think the artist definitely doesn't win. I mean, can you believe it even won now? It's shocking. And it's weird because I feel like there is a way that, you know, entertainment as a race of people, like entertainers as a race of people, really, I mean, it obviously appeals to those people who, without maybe knowing that they think of themselves as a race of people, are kind of a race of people.

And there isn't one thing that I think one of those movies would bring enough people, maybe the help. I think the help's in the conversation. Best director? The guy from The Artist won. I think Alexander Payne wins now for The Descendants. Yeah, that seems reasonable. Would be my guess. Best actor?

That's probably true. That guy from The Artist won. I think Brad Pitt wins in Moneyball, going away. I don't think there's any question. One low-key winner of the Oscars last night is Brad Pitt wins the money ball going away. I don't think there's any question. Can I just, one low key winner of the Oscars last night is Brad Pitt. Yeah. Brad Pitt's production company, Plan B with Dee Dee Gardner was one of the apparatuses that shepherded

Moonlight. And you know, Brad was not there and there was not a lot of talk of Plan B, but Plan B secretly has now had five best picture nominees in the last 10 years and two wins. They also produced 12 Years a Slave. I mean, that's a pretty interesting thing for an actor's production shingle.

Those things are usually very vanity. They don't necessarily make a big impact in Hollywood, so it's just an interesting thing. Anyway, Brad Pitt. Especially Brad Pitt, who nobody can tell if he's just this dumb stoner or if he's like this brilliant, it's all facade, and he's actually like a genius.

Best Actress, Meryl Streep, Iron Lady. Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs, Viola Davis to help, Rooney Mara, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Michelle Williams somehow got nominated for my week with Marilyn. I think Viola Davis wins five years later. Sure. I would have gone for Rooney Mara.

I think Meryl Streep wins. I liked Rooney Mara. I like Rooney Mara too. Best supporting actor, Christopher Plummer won for Beginners And then it's a shit show And I don't need It's not even worth the conversation Octavia Spencer won for The Help

That happens again So we went like three for six That might be the worst Oscars ever It's a pretty bad one That was our first Grantland Oscars We were all excited for it And then it was like Yeah, it's gonna happen The artists I think we're gonna remember this year's oscars

a little more fondly than people even though the movies weren't huge i i think there's some good ones that are gonna stand the test of time i really feel like manchester's gonna be remembered the same way like we talked about you can count on me and some of those other ones and uh moonlight's gonna be an all-time indie classic and uh and i i don't know i think lala land it's gonna flip around the other way and people are gonna be like this guy made his passion project he never intended it for it to make 350 million dollars he never intended it for it to be the most polarizing movie in five years he didn't want any of this this. He just wanted to make this movie with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. That guy's a great filmmaker. I really think that this is going to be his fifth best movie.

I sincerely believe that. Yeah. No, I mean, here's the thing. I think that this is a movie that reads to me as a movie made by a person 10 years younger than Damien Chazelle currently is. I think that all the politics in that movie, while they're still there, are not things that I think he is creatively thinking about from here forward, at least in the way that he's currently thinking about, right? I think that whatever this Neil Armstrong movie is going to be, I don't plan on being annoyed by that movie.

You know what I mean? I just would be... I just want people to be able to go to a Damien Chazelle movie and just inarguably experience what

an extremely talented guy this filmmaker is. But because his two best-known movies are about jazz in some way, and they're about jazz in, I would say, a somewhat problematic fashion, you kind of have to wrestle with the content as much as you do with the form. But just looking at what happened last night and looking at those nine movies, the question that you really ask yourself is not so much how you remember them, but it's more how often you'll watch them.

And of the movies, I mean, I just think all... I don't ever want to see Lion again. I know people like it. I find that cheap and really offensive in terms of what it tries to do to your emotions. I'm with you 100% on that. I liked it. Oh, Bill. Oh, jeez.

Cheap tears. Cheap tears. Oh, man. That orphan, when they start grabbing the kids in the subway, that's about as scary as I've been in a movie in three years. That's the one movie, even more than Hacksaw Ridge, that's the one movie that made me feel like it was 1985. I was like, how is this here? How did this movie get made?

What is happening? It was like the schmaltzy, obvious. Nicole Kidman in a bad wig? Come on. Come on. It's fine. Everyone's too sensitive. I mean, Hell or High Water, extremely watchable.

I've seen that more than once. I could keep watching it. You know, if Fences comes on TV, you're not going to turn it off because either Viola or Denzel is going to be in the scene and you're just going to keep watching. I'm going to turn it off. Is it okay if I turn it off the last 20 minutes? Sure, of course.

Okay, thanks. They're not great. Yeah, okay. Wait, hold on. La La Land. Oh, keep going because we have to say hi to our friends at Wink. Okay. I think most of these movies are just extremely rewatchable, which isn't always the case.

Like, last year's movies are not. This is true. That's not true. Last year's movies actually are pretty watchable. What were they? Let's see. Spotlight, Big Short, Mad Max, Fury Road, The Martian. rewatchable what were they um uh let's see spotlight big short mad max hero the martian i would not describe the revenant as rewatchable personally i'll tell you one thing the martian

is way more rewatchable than i expected it is i jump in yeah it's it's not it's not on the castaway level for me yet but it's close hold this thought though we're gonna take a quick break talk about wine my wife loves whining about my faults, and she really loves wine. That's why I signed her up for our sponsor, Club W, because they made it so easy to get amazing wine delivered right to our door. Well, guess what? Club W is now called Winc, W-I-N-C, despite the new name and the improved look. It's the same old great wine company that works with winemakers all over the world to create wines you'll love. Wesley, you like wine.

You love wine. I do.. Wesley, you like wine. You love wine. I do. I've seen you drink wine. I'm sending you some Wink because you've been on like seven podcasts. Yeah, I'm signing you up. It's a personalized wine membership that recommends wine specifically for you and me based on the results of our palate profile quiz. They'll even take your feedback into account

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And I have some good news. Wink, offering my my listeners 20 off right now plus complimentary shipping if you go to www.trywink.com slash bs remember t-r-y-w-i-n-c.com slash bs fine wine personalized for your palate coming right to your door it's a miracle that's try wink.com slash bs okay um i was watching no country for old men over the weekend to me that's everything i want from an oscar movie it was great in the moment it it has little like career top-the-career moments for a couple different people in the movie. It made me think.

I liked it more the second time I watched it than the first time. And the scene from the moment Josh Brolin checks into the hotel room all the way through to when he ends up getting murdered at the pool, which we don't even see, I think is one of the best 35-minute stretches of any movie.

And Javier Bardem, he becomes another human being. I almost feel like the character he plays in that movie is not a real person and isn't even him. That's what I want from an Oscar movie. And I feel like of the ones we had this year, I think Moonlight comes the closest to that and might even match it but great in the moment i think it's going to stand this test of time i think the acting performance as well i think we're going to remember as an important movie

that's why i brought it up yeah that doesn't it's an interesting example right because that is an example of a bunch of people who have 25 to 30 years of experience at their peak. You know, from the Coens to Josh Brolin to Javier Bardem to Tommy Lee Jones. A little Woody Harrelson in there. Woody Harrelson, great Woody Harrelson. But it's also a very unlikely Oscar movie. And it's a good time to talk about it, too, because it's 10 years this year. Yes.

Because it's exceedingly violent. It's very strangely told. The climax is not on camera. There's just a lot of really unusual stuff that's happening inside of it. So it is both like a great example of what you're talking about. But, you know, Moonlight is almost the polar opposite. Everybody on screen, unless you're a big Luke Cage fan, you just have never seen these people before. It's, you know, it's Barry Jenkins' second film, but for most people it's his first.

It's kind of hard to know like wesley what do you see happening for this whole the whole diaspora of moonlight you know actors the writer directors producers happening now like did they become all become big stars because of this uh i mean mahershala might um naomi harris is just one of those actors who works all the time anyway um i don't know what changes for any of these people. I mean, this is the other side of what I was answering when you asked me before, Bill, what the pros and cons were of this Moonlight situation, like what changes. I don't know that a lot does. I think, I mean, unless, I have to say, I mean, Sean, you brought up Plan B earlier. Plan B is a really good example of entertainment people putting their money where their mouth is.

And, you know, he can build houses in New Orleans. He can help, you know, black filmmakers get black stories told, Brad Pitt. I think there have to be more people willing to lose some money or like roll the dice to make some money and get some attention and do some good in terms of storytelling. And I don't think it always has to be, you know, they can be crazy things like Get Out, which is the number one movie in the country, not winning any Oscars, but with clearly a movie that Jordan Peele felt like he had to make. Jason Blum gave him a little bit of money to do it. Jason Blum, who I think is officially the most important man in Hollywood at this point. Wow.

He's undefeated right now. Yeah, I mean, and he doesn't give a shit about the Oscars. He's had a one Oscar nomination. I mean, he produced Whiplash, or was responsible in some way for Whiplash. I think this is a guy who, I mean, he'll be at the Oscars again someday in like a major way, and he'll win. Once he finishes counting his money, yeah. Right. I think that he I mean, he's a really good example of somebody who will just tell the best stories by the best people. He did Shyamalan's movie. The movie is a huge hit and it's really good.

I think he's a good presiding influence over filmmakers. question is how many people like that and the plan b people are really going to give not like kid people who aren't damien chazelle chances to make movies that aren't a star wars movie forget that i mean those people aren't even making star wars being given the option to but what are you gonna what are we gonna see from people who are, you know, Asian American, Arab, Latino? I mean, there's so many profoundly, deeply, more intensely underserved movie-going populations in this country than just black people. And I think that there's a lot of, I mean, rewriting of a lot of capsized ships that has to go on, too. And if Moonlight winning an Oscar can get people to begin to really reckon with what it means to diversify my moviegoing experience, that's a wonderful thing. I am just, I've been alive long enough, and the movies have been around long enough for us to all know that that's not entirely the case well moonlight one

of the reasons it works is it it had to be a movie i think where where the big struggle has come and we've talked about this before just creatively is what's a movie and what's a netflix series and whether boogie night whether boogieights would have been a movie 20 years later or whether Paul Thomas Anderson would have taken his hard-eat money and just said, oh, Netflix has given me $20 million to make Boogie Nights as a TV show, I'm going to do it. And just goes that way. Moonlight had to be a movie.

Moonlight couldn't have been a Netflix series. Guess what Barry Jenkins is doing next? A Netflix series? An adaptation of The Underground Railroad that is not a movie. Colson movie colson whitehead's novel so you know that's how it goes that's that that is the state of creativity like wesley i i completely agree and it'll be really interesting to see if there is some sort of cascading effect of opportunity here you know i think in some respects there will be in others there won't because there's just people at the you know with their hands on the levers of power that are not totally comfortable making those decisions yet.

But if Barry Jenkins can get $50 million to make an amazing Netflix or HBO or Amazon miniseries, that's great. That's going to be great. I'll also just say that if Barry Jenkins is being given $50 million to make that and it's not going to the movies. The movies are dead. Yeah, that's not good. Well, we still have Mel Gibson. I mean, I hate to be that guy, but I just think it's true. I mean, we're at a point, we're at a real critical juncture right now where if you're, pick a great filmmaker and you're being – and the good money for good work is coming from the Netflixes of the world.

By the way, a company that to my mind is on the verge of wine-seating their movie, which is – or wine-seating their product. They get all this stuff. They just have it on the platform. You don't really know it's there. There's not a lot of advertising for a lot of this stuff. And it just kind of sits there as far as I'm concerned. There's no real cultural conversation around a lot of these works. And you just have to hope you've got a friend on Twitter who's also watching it. And I don't like that model necessarily. And maybe this is just like, I'm just old enough to kind of want

the sort of more organized chaos of what moviegoing traditionally has been. But I also think it says a lot about where movie making and movie production and and and entertainment production is too um everybody wants to be on a streaming platform because in some ways it seems like

like some sort of guaranteed i don't exactly know what the what the money is on it because they don't always they're not transparent company um well that it's transparent when you give somebody a budget like scorsese couldn't make the irishman for five years and netflix was just like here's 93 million go make it if they're gonna start doing that that's the game changer and then i think we could see a comeback for the movies like on the level of the departed like even they or like the affleck movie that he just made that nobody saw those Those movies are going to die unless Netflix is like, here's $90 million, go make it. They're dying, Bill.

One of the biggest commercials that aired last night was for Will Smith's new movie, Bright. Oh, that Will Smith thing, yes. And Brad Pitt's next big budget action film is a Netflix movie. And I think the thing we haven't seen yet that'll be interesting is how long and how aggressively Netflix puts those movies in theaters. Because they're always gonna put movies in theaters so they can qualify. Is it important to them to get the Irishman?

And Amazon too, don't forget that. Manchester by the Sea made $40 million because it was in theaters for 10 weeks. But will Bright or more specifically, the Irishman be in theaters for three months and if it is then i think in a lot of ways that's a good thing if it's just on the streaming platform that is a very closed environment like you said wesley you really need somebody to sort of recommend that experience do you have to hope that your two-hour mid-tier drama is as virally

appropriate as stranger things which is hard. Wesley, this is going to make you happy. I know somebody who knows somebody at Netflix. The Adam Sandler deal was phenomenal for them. Those Adam Sandler movies. Are you talking about your daughter right now? No, I'm not talking about my daughter. She couldn't watch those two Adam Sandler movies.'re really raunchy yeah yeah but they do great

everybody clicks on them like there's a reason they have the adam sandler algorithm and they noticed everybody was kept downloading and watching adam sandler movies and they said let's just give this guy what 30 million 50 million a movie and he'll just make them for us and those movies do great and i think we're headed toward a world where the streaming services are going to be like this this makes sense for us as a model we'll just do 10 of these let me just contradict myself for one second i will also say that the upside of some of this some of the streaming business as a person who for instance like really likes brit marling right yeah i as a person who enjoys brit instance, really likes Britt Marling, right? Yeah. As a person who enjoys Britt Marling,

I love that there's a world in which she is equal, according to Netflix, as Will Smith. They're equal people. Right. You know, I mean, there's no... She wouldn't seem to be... I mean, Britt might get a little more attention than the OA, but at the end of the day,

if I'm not paying attention to any of that and I'm just going to Netflix to find something to watch, they're going to be offered to me in probably equal measure. And it's up to me to make a decision. Yeah, and especially how they promote them. Like if they had bought, let's say that Netflix just made Edge of 17, a movie that I really liked

and I thought the girl was fantastic in it. And that was just like a Netflix original. Yeah, she did. She was. But they just bought that and they made it. It wouldn't have cost that much money. And then they're plugging it for a week. It probably does as well for them as the Gilmore Girls did on Thanksgiving.

A lot more people would have seen it. That's for sure. A lot more people would have seen it. It was good. I mean, she didn't even get nominated. She got a Golden Globe nomination. That'll do. I'm buying stock in her.

As my buddy Gus reminded me on Twitter last night, I'm the same person who way back when said Justin Timberlake was going to be a megastar. And now he has officially fallen after that performance from Trolls. No, come on. He was great. That was good. Yeah, white-splating Bill Withers to Denzel Washington. Give me a break, Justin.

All right, maybe that was rough. All right, we're going to wrap it up. Did we hit everything? I think we did. I think we did. Again, I just want to exclaim one more time how crazy what happened last night was. I mean, it's just crazy. It's not going to fade.

I feel really bad for the La La Land people. I feel really bad for Warren Beatty. But I'm really happy for Barry Jenkins and the Moonlight people. I really am. While we've been recording, PricewaterhouseCoopers officially claimed full responsibility for the screw-up, which is interesting.

I'm not sure if somebody was forced to take the bullet there. I wonder how many people got fired today. This is one of those, I mean, can you have a more public failure than what happened last night? It's the definition of you had one job. Hey, Wesley, quickly, 2017, what movie have you liked the most so far? Get Out. Okay. So I need to see that this week.

Get Out is the same. Okay. Yeah. Not John Wick 2? John Wick 2 is good. John Wick 2 is fun. I like Split, but I mean, Get Out is, it's not even perfect, but I mean the things that are imperfect about it are even kind of special and weird.

And it's actually, it's a horror comedy, but it is also, by the time you get to the final two or three scenes, it's a tragedy. It is a real honest-to-goodness American tragedy that is given horror comedy clothing. Well, my dad was in New York City this weekend with my two cousins and they saw John Wick 2

at a 4D theater, which he didn't know what that was. It was just what the time was. He was like, they were shooting water at us? The seats were moving? It was like he had no idea this world existed. He highly recommended John Wick 2. He said air would come out of his seat every time John Wick killed someone.

That was like smell-o-vision. Yeah. And he killed 128 people. I don't know if that's more or less extraordinary than the fact that Get Out is the number one movie in America and Moonlight won Best Picture on the same weekend. It's bizarre. Yeah. Wesley, 2017. All right, Wesley Morris, when's your next piece coming out in the times uh i don't know uh i'm i'm working on

that i'm having an awesome conversation with a.o scott manila dargis but other than that uh i'm working on some things all right and we can hear the still processing podcast on itunes and soundcloud and stitcher anding podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud and Stitcher and Overcast FM and wherever else podcasts are sold. You can. You can. Thank you, Wesley. Thank you, Sean Fennessey.

Thanks, Bill. You edit a website called The Ringer, I heard? TheRinger.com. Okay. There's some Oscar pieces. Several. And it's Food Week. It's Food Week.

On The Ringer. This is a hell of a time. Lots of food. Food Week. Food Week. Get in there. The 50 Best Fast Food Items. The Making of a time. Lots of food. Food week. Get in there. The 50 best fast food items. The making of a perfect vegan burger.

Many other pieces to come. I love you guys so much. A lot of Danny Chow. I love you guys so much. We're doing a lot of stuff. Adam Perry Lang is involved. We did some videos. Yeah, there might be some great chefs.

We'll see. I might have a hot take about food to me. Oh, boy. Yeah. Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast was brought to you by Shack House. That's our golf podcast sponsored by Callaway. This week, Joe House and Jeff Shackleford. Speaking of food, Joe House.

Hey, did we leave Joe House at a food week? Nah, it's not too late. We got four days left. They're back talking about the WGC Mexico Championship. Subscribe to Shack House at iTunes.com slash The Ringer or wherever you get podcasts. Thanks to SeatGeek. Download the SeatGeek app today or go right to SeatGeek. Download the SeatGeek app today. Go right to SeatGeek dot com.

Thanks to Pearl Jam. Sign up for a 10 club digital membership on Pearl Jam dot com and get full website access plus priority ticking, plus exclusive merchandise, plus tons of other stuff. That's at Pearl Jam dot com slash 10 dash club. And thanks to Wesley Morris. I miss you. Thanks for coming on. Always a pleasure. And thanks to wesley morris i miss you thanks for coming on always a pleasure and uh thanks to

shot fantasy we'll be back later this week on the bs podcast bye wesley bye wesley bye you guys food week i don't have.