The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 20: Three-Man Pop Culture Podcast w/ Chris Ryan & Andy Greenwald

Episode Date: November 5, 2015

HBO's Bill Simmons reunites with old Grantland buddies Chris Ryan & Andy Greenwald. On the docket--Homeland, The Leftovers, Project Greenlight and current state of binge-watching. Special bonus announcement at the end! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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because they were nice enough to give me my own television show that launches next spring. Thank you, HBO. Are you excited about the Canelo Cotto fight? I am. On November 7th, there's a brand new Canelo Cotto 24-7, my favorite series, that premieres on HBO immediately following a boxing doubleheader

headlined by Timothy Bradley fighting Brandon Rios. Check it out. HBO, November 7th. Yeah. Chris Ryan's not going to like this. He's East Coast for life. Try to contain yourself. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry to have big and smalls. I know. It's like my mob deep listener card got pulled there's just now yeah well you don't have to deal with it

you're in the Bill Simmons podcast you're listening to Tupac uh this is exciting um we have an old friend who's joining us today yeah

one of your closest friends on the earth yeah your pot your former podcast partner yeah eventually your podcast partner again Andy Greenwald

Andy Greenwald hey guys what's going on man listen now here's my goal in life you guys you know we like to talk about the television show Mad Men which recently ended you guys remember the episode shut the door have a seat right that was when they suddenly just

ghosted on the agency and started a new agency in a hotel room. All I wanted was not to be Paul Kinsey. I just didn't want to be Paul Kinsey. I wanted to make it to season four, season five. And I feel, I feel honored. I'm excited to be here with you guys. Well, ironically, we had been talking about this for a while about reuniting you and mr ryan on a podcast because you are you were writing a book is that correct that's right and you had you needed time to work on the book and the timing was kind of perfect and the one part we couldn't figure out was well the grantland and and then grantland got liquidated yeah and andy that that book is called i'm not kinsey that's right it's called i'm not Kinsey. That's right. It's called I'm Not Kinsey,

My Own Explorations in the Human Sexual Response. Do you have a title for that book? Is it called like I'm not going to apologize for what I said about True Detective season one? Or is that too long of a title? No, it's that since I'm now on a podcast sponsored by HBO, apparently, I'd like to apologize for everything I've ever said about True Detective. That's true. That's a good point. That's how wobbly I am. No, the book is called How to Watch TV. Good title. I've always wanted to know. Because it's time. It's time people really figured it out. You know, I feel like they've been doing it wrong. Is it mostly an explanation of how to use a universal remote?

Listen, I've got six remotes, and I don't know how to use any of them. So I'm actually the worst person. You've actually only been watching one channel for six years. It's just been straight QVC, but I feel like I've gotten some good deals and I'm ready to take it to the next level. Well, let's talk TV. So go ahead. I'm just going to be, I'm listen, this is your guy's thing. I'm just sitting here. I'm going to be your third man in off the top rope. It's weird because we're like having our reunion and, but we're doing it in your office. So you can feel free to jump in at any point.

Yeah. I'm just kind of sitting there. Uh, Andy, you know what know what? It sucked because we were off the air for the last couple weeks, and TV got real good. TV got real good. I feel like our last show, we were saying that network TV came back and it was terrible, but finally things were about to pop off again. We had a lot of shows to talk about. All of our wacky friends from the CIA came back on Homeland. All of our hardy survivors and the leftovers came back to show that

you and I personally influenced every frame-up, apparently. Apparently. Is that true? How accurate is that? I mean, he said it in, David Lindelof said it in an interview that they did certain things in the leftovers just to piss me and Andy off. Yeah. David is an extremely, extremely

nice guy who has been really a big fan of the Chris and Andy show, whatever it will be called in the future. And he said as much and was very sweet about the ending of our previous show. But he also absolutely said in multiple interviews that that crazy opening with Clan of the Cave Bear Woman, like, you know, being mythical birds and birthing babies and snakes, was specifically done to piss us off. Well, I have, this reminds me of something I wanted to bring up at some point during this podcast. I've stopped watching The Walking Dead. Okay.

And I really liked The Walking Dead. I never wanted to stop watching it, but now I have two full episodes on my DVR that I have not watched. Is that, that's a first where you're falling that far behind? I've always watched it in the moment. And I'm starting to wonder if it's the same reason I stopped watching The Leftovers, which is I'm entering this world that's just sad and unhappy and bleak and there's no upside and no ceiling for anything to really improve ever.

It's just going to always be bad. And it's like, I just don't know if I want to be in that world. It just brings me down. I get unhappy. Is that a weird way to think about TV? No, Andy, do you think that there is, like, in general, like, would you say that, I mean, you were joking about the Mad Men stuff,

but coming out of that era of television, are we going into maybe a tonal shift where, like, people want a little bit more sunshine on their Sundays? Yes. I mean, yeah, I think so. I know I do. I just feel like it's always been sort of a weird fit

for those shows to be on Sunday night. And I feel like our old friend David Jacoby always described the ideal way to experience The Walking Dead, which was at the end of a long day of imbibing, treating yourself right, watching football, and then you could sort of think into it as like a sort of a crazy adrenaline shot at the end of the day.

But it's just a huge downer now that it is. And with Leftovers 2, that's kind of not how I want to start my week. It's rough. I feel like I'm surprised that the ratings for Fargo Season 2 aren't even better because the thing about Fargo is that it's actually kind of fun. And I miss watching TV that's fun. I feel like that's kind of the next big place for TV to go, especially these big dramas, because they can't get any darker.

Not after these two shows. Do you foresee a world in which these Sunday night prestige dramas, though, can they get... I mean, can drama be fun on Sunday night? Can these sort of... Yeah, I mean, you guys can jump in on this, too, but we joked about Mad Men.

We obviously all loved The Sopranos, and we all remember what a laugh at The Wire was, but seriously, those other ones, Sopranos and Mad Men all remember what a laugh at The Wire was, but seriously, those other ones, The Sopranos and Mad Men were serious dramas, and serious stuff happened, but they were both extremely funny half the time, and they also were kind of escapist.

The people who made those shows, definitely David Chase with The Sopranos, and definitely Matt Weiner with Mad Men, did not want you to walk away from those shows being like, oh, it would be so fun to whack people and or drink that much. But sometimes at the end of a long week or weekend, maybe you kind of think it might be. We forgot about the hilarious Ray Donovan. It took us 35 seconds to get to Bill Simmons' cavalcade of Showtime shows that only he used to watch.

No, I don't watch Ray Donovan. And Homeland is just kind of on as I'm going through emails. But I think Homeland's found its level, though. This is exactly where I want Homeland to be. I don't want Homeland. Like, it's second screen television. Like, I can look at Twitter while I'm watching Homeland. And I can zone out if there's a subplot on Homeland that I'm not interested in.

So it's a Lakers game. No, but it's intellectual. It's like a little bit more intellectually stimulating 24. Also, this year, they really hit pay dirt with, it's almost entirely comprised of like trending topics. It's like Syria, Snowden, you know, all the things that it's about this year are exactly what's in the New York Times every day. And it's just been a lot smarter

about how it's used its characters. Like it builds. So now it's a watch. It's pretty good. Everyone is getting double crossed and everyone's kind of on the run and a little bit under the gun. And it's a lot more entertaining So now I have to watch. It's pretty good. when you realize they're filming in Germany and all the German characters speak English to each other with heavy accents. We can deal with subtitles now. We can do that.

But at the same time, it's entertaining and engaging in a way that it hasn't been before. I just want them to be more on trend. I want them to be even more current. I want Carrie to buy a Volkswagen Jetta and just be like, oh no, I'm poisoning the earth. These emissions are all wrong.

I shouldn't have bought the Q7. Here's my other thing about Homeland. I feel like it's kind of the test case for the potential downsides of where we are with serialized drama TV, which is this show, this season, where they're in Berlin and there's information out there and leaks and the Russians are coming, would be so good if it wasn't also dragging the heavy corpse of the last four seasons behind it. You know what I mean? Like every so often the show sort of does a faint towards, oh, quality dramas serialize the characters over many years. So Carrie still has a kid, which no one cares if she has a kid, you know, or this thing where Quinn is in love with Carrie. No one cares if they're in love. It doesn't matter. Let's just

have them like investigate stuff and shoot guns. I have two additional thoughts. One is that I think coming to peace with the faults of something is important. And I remember coming to that point with Peter King's Monday morning quarterback column in like 2004, where it's like, you know what? There's stuff in here I like, and I'm just going to overlook the other stuff. Bill, are you saying there are 10 things in there that you like? Well, maybe. Would you say that you could are 10 things in there that you like? Well, maybe, yeah.

Would you say that you, could you list them by like alphabetical letters maybe? Yeah, yeah. But I think with TV shows, it's important. It's like certain shows aren't going to be a home run. They might be a single or a double. With that said, I think Homeland should have, I think Carrie should have died in a bathtub two years ago. I think she should have overdosed on pain killers and just been dead. And I think it's a better show.

And then the show's about who? It doesn't matter. I thought you were going to suggest that her baby, instead of almost being drowned by Carrie, would suddenly rise up from the water like a gorgon and drown her. Well, no, serious question. Carrie kills herself two years ago.

Rachel McAdams comes in as the new kind of tough, she's basically playing the true detective season two character in Carrie's job. Is that a better show? Like, yes, of course it's a better show. There's no question.

It has too much baggage. And even this year, um, one of Chris's all time favorite fantasy actresses, Miranda Otto is on the show and the horse lady of Rowan, the Lord of the Rings, my man. And she's such,

she's a really good actress and she's playing a really interesting part. I kind of want to just see what's up with her more. The Carrie stuff seems almost tangential to it at this point. It's the thing that happens with everything from old network procedurals all the way up to Bill, your favorite, Ray Donovan. It's ultimately going to be about the same person with the same flaws.

And we've talked about this before. I think we maybe even talked about it with Bill where it's everything, to be about the same person with the same flaws. And we've talked about this before, and I think we maybe even talked about it with Bill, where it's everything, especially in the movies, and then now you're seeing a lot of television shows doing this with older shows, but this idea of rebooting franchises. Yeah. If you're going to keep a show like Homeland on for this many years, what's the problem with just rebooting Homeland?

What's the problem with whether you jump time, go back in time, tell the story from a completely different perspective, or just use the same basic premise? It's not out of the question that people are going to start doing that soon. No, and I think it's probably more likely than not that it'll happen with a show that we... The people are talking about... Obviously, X-Files is coming back, Twin Peaks is coming back, but a much more recently killed show will probably be rebooted more quickly than we imagined.

But the reason with Homeland specifically is for as much as people like us have complained about it, the ratings have been really steady and really good. It's still Showtime's prestige show. I mean, that's the one that gets nominated for Emmys. Claire Danes gets nominated. Manny Patinkin gets nominated. And whatever they are doing is working just fine for them. It's just not really always working fine for us. You know, I love this topic because I think sometimes people make the mistake of not realizing that characters have too much baggage. And we talked about this before, but Entourage is the same way. Like, they should have gotten rid of everybody and kept Jeremy Piven and just started over with a new Entourage, like after season five. With Homeland, I can't watch Homeland in a serious way because Claire Danes was insane on the show.

And it wasn't like, oh, she's a little insane. It's like, this is a crazy person, and they overlooked all this stuff, and now she's running CIA stuff again, and I just can't get past it. It's like a fatal flaw. So for me, the show would be better off if she just died. Yeah, I mean, at least they're leaning into that right now, right, Andy? I mean, with the plot, like, did you see two weeks ago's episode? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, so spoiler alert if anybody isn't up to date on but she's working now she's working for this like german philanthropist she's his head of security and she gets there's a attempt made on her life when they go and visit um a refugee camp and uh she decides that she has to figure out who did it and to do do that, she goes off her lithium. She just says, I'm going to go off lithium because it makes me help. Yeah, it'll be fine. Yeah. And then she does the whole thing with the corkboard and all the pictures around her.

It was literally like the Ray Valcoro, just like a little by myself meeting he had. The eight bottles of cocaine in the punk records. I wish that that scene had been transposed into Homeland because at least it would have been fun. Instead, it really felt more like this is a core element of the character and we have to service it when nobody cares. I don't think anybody watching Homeland... It's weird. It's like, well, we got Batman.

He's got to get into the Batmobile. It's like, we've got Claire Danes. She's got to get off lithium. When you said she got a new job, the end of that sentence should have been she got a new job working as a diner, as a waitress. Because that's the only job Carrie Matheson should have after what she did the first three seasons.

Can you imagine her LinkedIn page? Yeah. A couple of years at the CIA, may have had some hiccups along the way. Would love to provide some references, but they all died in an explosion at the CIA building in season one. This is one of the more interesting things

about the collision of old TV into new TV. Because the thing about old TV, and it's kind of comic books are like this too, like the baggage of history just becomes unbearable, but yet the people who work in it, who have worked in the trenches for a long time, really consider that part of their craft and their job, sort of continually

wiggle out from under the weight of it. So I'm pretty sure that, like, having it, making a main character have a baby is the ultimate TV unforced error. It never adds anything, and it always makes the character worse and always has they always have to write themselves out of it but yet you know that in the homeland writers room which is staffed with veterans of like decades of good tv shows and and a lot of a lot of smart people in that room they were like no this is perfect because this is the ghost of brody and it adds so much depth but you still don't want to write it or watch it and that's where they keep screwing up.

Do they, the Damaged Woman TV character power rankings carries clearly one. It might even be number one historically. Yeah. I don't even know if anyone's topped her ever. Ruth Wilson on The Affair is a clear number two at this point.

But it does seem like TV is just gravitating toward anti-hero males. Yeah, they flipped it to difficult women. Yeah, and incredibly damaged women. And the Rachel McAdams True Detective season two, and it just seems like that is now the new blueprint for how to do dramas. Yeah, and it's sort of, I was going to say it's sort of frustrating, but it's really frustrating because it's this idea that like, oh, well, this is how we write women is we

just dump all the same garbage on them that we dump on the male characters, when in fact the really interesting or unique story to tell would be one from a completely different perspective. It's not just another dumpster for all the anguish and alcoholism that all the other characters have been slogging through. I mean, I'd like to think that True Detective Season 2 may have been the nadir of this stuff, but it probably wasn't. And you know what's funny about True Detective Season 2?

Big success all the way to the end. I think 12 million people watched the season finale. It hit this vortex of, I don't think HBO minded, it hit this vortex of it was still super duper relevant. It had relevant people on it. It had a couple people giving really good performances and it frustrated the hell out of everybody and it owned the internet on Monday and Tuesday every time after they had an episode

and ultimately I don't think it didn't hurt the franchise it was also a limited investment there was none of the speculation about how are they going to fix it what's going to happen next year when they have to figure out what's going on with this character or that character everybody knew what was going to happen everybody knew no matter what was going to happen next year when they have to figure out what's going on with this character, that character. Everybody knew what was going to happen. Everybody knew no matter what was going to happen, it was going to happen within an eight episode, two month period of time.

It was a limited investment. I think the only correct answer to the question, you know, what was funny about True Detective season two is nothing. And that was one of the problems. Like, we need a little more laugh with Detective Ray Velcoro and his bolo tie. But how many conversations did it spawn? You're right it's like, you're right about the fact. I definitely think you're right.

That, that all these networks are out there trying to monetize things that they might not have monetized before. And one of them is conversation. Like if people feel the need to see it, the networks don't really care if they need to see it because they love it or because they need to see why everyone's saying how awful it is. Like, or if it had good things and bad things,

like you guys talk about Fargo and I know it's a good show. I've never made the sit down commitment to watch it. Or if it had good things and bad things. Like, you guys talk about Fargo, and I know it's a good show. I've never made the sit-down commitment to watch it. I've never heard anyone have a Fargo conversation, you know? And I think that matters in the big scheme of things. I know it's doing well. I know I get nominated for stuff. So you feel like sometimes being bad is almost good. It's like if you're, like, bad enough to provoke a conversation.

I don't know. Here's the thing with True Detective Season 2. I don't know if it was bad like i think bad is something where you go i can't watch this anymore yeah like the leftovers for you know i know some people like it but for me i just was like i get away from the show i just i don't want to be with these characters i don't have anybody to root for true detective season two every time rachel mcadams was on the screen I was really into it. Like, I really liked that character. I was rooting for her. And I thought Colin Farrell, who I've had a tortured relationship over the years.

And Chris and I are the only two people who love the Miami Vice movie. But I'm always rooting for Colin Farrell. Did I ever mention that the Miami Vice movie has gone up in my estimation in the last two or three years? I'm all in. I own the Blu-ray. I'm all in on the Miami Vice movie. Great Cuba footage. No one loves the Cuba footage. That's right. I'm not going to defend it. in i am the blu-ray i'm all in on the miami vice movie great cuba footage no one loved it

that's not i'm not gonna fit it but anyway i think it had pieces of things and sometimes in tv now you just need pieces and that's almost enough to get by i think there's something you go ahead andy i was just gonna flip it and say that this is the real danger we're in for the next year with with dramas and we saw it a lot in the the fall pilots and the networks is that we're in for the next year with dramas, and we saw it a lot in the fall pilots and the networks, is that we're reaching the same, TV is reaching the same point that movies have reached, which is noisiness matters more than anything else, because it is a serious problem getting people to watch stuff.

Like, I was a big, and I still am a big defender of season two of Halt and Catch Fire, but because season one was bad, and I thought it was bad too, no one came back to see it, because you basically get one chance to impress people, and then you're out. And they haven't figured out a way to monetize this, the idea that, well, five seasons of Halt and Catch Fire will be valuable to AMC

once it's on Netflix and people catch up with it. So instead you have these pilots that are basically like movie trailers are now. As noisy as possible, as loud as possible, as big and basic as possible just to get people in the door. And then that doesn't leave them enough time to figure out what to do with them once they're actually in the door. The good analogy is there are lots of shows.

I love Fargo. I think Fargo is the best thing on television right now. But it's actually a worthwhile thing to mention here where it's almost like watching The Hawks last year. You knew what you were watching was basically perfect, but sometimes you want to see a guy take a long two and then scream at his coach. Yeah.

And just have something to talk about the next day instead of like what another great backdoor cut there right you know it's like really good acting yeah exactly it's just like oh it was no perfect again like sometimes you're like that episode sucked that was great you know like i would say that's actually an argument for the leftovers i was just gonna say that that that was in a weird way like the what the leftovers were doing is I can't remember a show, even True Detective, where I'm genuinely like I have no idea what I'm about to watch. Anything is possible. And it's messy in a way that like really good art is because Lindelof is just putting it out there. And sometimes it's like uncomfortable to watch in a good way.

Sometimes it's just uncomfortable to watch in an embarrassing way. But it's out there and it is not it is not like market research. It is not uncomfortable to watch in a good way. Sometimes it's just uncomfortable to watch in an embarrassing way, but it's out there and it is not, it is not like market research. It is not noted to death. So that, that alone makes it interesting and it makes it a lot more, you know, it makes it a lot more emotional in a way for us to, to invest in. If we're talking about, if we're talking about uncomfortable things to watch, can we talk about the Nick?

Yeah, we should talk about the Nick. So I don't know if you've watched the Nick at all. No, but I'll listen. So it bothers me that, that Andy liked the Nick so much, he actually turned me off. It was like, he was like my friend who was telling me to go to some restaurant over and over again to the point that to spite him, I haven't gone yet. This is, I mean, it's so good, but, you know, like, it's a tough ask to tell people, like, let's watch some early 20th century eye procedures. That's a tough ask.

Oh, I disagree. It is. Like, do you think they should be leading? Maybe they're doing it wrong, though, to be honest. Like, I feel like they're leading, Cinemax is leading with that, oh, here's Steven Soderbergh has made, like, this incredible, you know, artistic triumph. Maybe they should just be, like like Friday, 10 p.m., watch someone have a syringe full of liquid cocaine injected into his eyeball.

Like, the range would be much better. Yes, it does. My God. And he felt terrific. Yeah. So. I think one of the things for me is there's just too much TV, which is always an excuse now to not watch something like Fargo.

Right. Where before, like 10 years ago, if Fargo was on, I would have watched it because there just wasn't enough choices. And I mean, there's so much different things going on with TV right now. We have this Netflix model where they dump all of them together at once and you find yourself,

it's almost like deciding whether you want to go on a double date with someone. Hey, do you have room to go on November 14th? Do you want to go on a date? Or hey, do you want to go away for the weekend? And I feel like that's what watching TV has become. Where I see this show and it's like, so this is 11 hours. And you do this calculus in your head. Alright.

Do I have 11 hours? What if I get into the show? Do I have four hours that night if I want to watch it? And in a way, you kind of talk yourself out of it sometimes. It's an enormous commitment. And I was starting to tell people in the last year at Grandland that I don't know if my job was critic or if it was just like wealth management consultant, because people had a ton of options and they had limited time. And so it was up to me to basically

tell them where to invest their time. And they got really mad if I steered them wrong, because their time is precious. And as you said, if you watch one episode of something you're basically expected to watch 12 so I think the next big frontier and the thing that I'm excited about with TV is half hours like half hours are getting really creative really interesting and they just feel so much lighter yeah well it's always it's interesting Andy ever since like we took this quick this break that we had you know I don't feel the pressure necessarily to know every single thing that's happened on every show the morning after it's happened. You mean like the way you were worried about the Americans and the bridge?

Yeah, those were primary concerns of mine for the last couple of years. And now it's almost weird. I kind of rediscovered the binge watch. I watched all of this season of Homeland in a day and a half. Nice. And it was just really fun. the binge watch like i watched all of season this season of homeland in a in a day and a half nice and it was just like really fun and you realize you forget some of these shows are actually constructed to trigger that like it's almost like back to when you used to watch 24 but this season of homeland is very good binge watch and it's kind of fun to like go back and experience different

ways of viewing television because for a while there i think that because of madman because of these shows that were like well you gotta be able to talk about it on Monday morning. It almost felt a little bit like homework. Right. I was watching that show, the new Amazon show, Steve Buscemi's The Bookie. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great one. This is the one that Bryan Cranston's producing.

I was trying to real point you guys to that. You don't think I listened to your podcast? I was waiting for that. This is my new thing now is to make up fake shows to people and see, and see if they buy it. Like, no, I've heard good things about that.

And it's not actually a show. Did you hear me just panic? Like my entire body plunge up from 3000 miles away. You're like Steve. What? Like, did you hear me frantically Googling Steppenwall and bookie and Buscemi in the background?

The other problem I think these shows have, like we watched the first show of Red Oaks, which is on Amazon. Is this also a joke? No, this is a real show. This is David Gordon Green. Yeah, and it's basically set in the 80s. Oh, it's the camp one.

It's like Caddyshack crossed with 80 different 80s things you've seen in your life. And it was pretty good. But did I want to go in for another 10 hours? No. I watched one hour and I was done. And I think that happens a lot, too. You see more sampling than ever.

Did you watch Man in the High Castle? No. That's the one that's based off the Philip K. Dick story about what if... Is it based off Philip K. Dick? Yeah, it's what if the Axis Powers had won World War II, so it's an occupied America. It's America occupied by Germany and Japan. The pilot was beautiful,

and the whole series is coming, I guess, very soon, I think this month. Andy, can the Luther model work going forward? Because you talk about wealth management, time management, all that stuff, where you just have four episodes, and it's almost like watching a really good four-hour movie, and then it's gone for a year, and you have one or two characters you get attached to, and maybe that's where stuff's going a little bit.

I think that model, the British model, works really, really well, both in terms of audience engagement, but then also just flexibility. Like, people can go, like Sherlock, you know, Benedict Cumberbatch is becoming a big star, but he still goes back and does Sherlockie because he only has to do, you know, essentially a movie. He does three hours whenever their schedules align, and it works really well for them. But traditionally, that hasn't worked in America for a number of reasons, one of which has been, like, you know, just building an audience and maintaining an audience. But two, the way the talent contracts work, you know, like, I feel like a lot of people, a lot of the companies in this country, they want want to find the next benedict cumberbatch or whatever but then you want to sign him to a seven-year deal because chances are if he's on a hit show the next thing he's going to do is pull david caruso and you know and go make the global multi-million dollar smash jade but didn't they used to do that like on cable in like the 80s and 90s like tom selleck would make a movie where he kept playing like he played the

same sheriff like six times and it's like based off of uh war book or something like that yeah he did do that, didn't he? And then he would just come back every two or three years and make another one and you'd just be like, Selick's back.

But nobody cared, you know what I mean? Oh, I cared. Yeah. As the only, America's only Blue Bloods fan under the age of 70,

Bill cared. I watched 10 minutes of a Blue Bloods and couldn't tell if it was set in Boston or New York. I have an embarrassing confession. So Battle of Network Stars

has been on a lot on ESPN Classic and there's so many different great reasons to watch it but really the number one I have an embarrassing confession. So Battle of Network Stars has been on a lot on ESPN Classic. And there's so many different great reasons to watch it. But really the number one reason is to see what actors were unbelievable athletes back then. And Selick was like Bo Jackson. It was unbelievable. Selick and Patrick Duffy were like the Bo Jackson, LeBron James of early 80s TV.

And I just have a lot of respect for that guy. Did guys look older then? Yeah. Like did Patrick Duffy, who was considered like a kind of an attractive pinup guy. But when I look at pictures of him in Dallas now, I'm like, he looks like he's 56 years old. It was like a more,

it was more accepted to be like more rugged. You know what I mean? I think it was the cigarettes and the booze age people quickly. Here's my question. I know, Bill, you always want to bring back the Battle of the Network Stars, the Battle of the TV Stars, but they definitely, there are a million reasons why they would never do it, but one of them is you can't shatter the mystique,

because Jon Hamm, I feel like he could be an athlete. He used to go to the All-Star Game Celebrity whatever, and he was the position. He liked that. He would do it. But then we're talking about Homeland. Rupert Friend, who plays Peter Quinn, and he is a trained, cold-blooded CIA assassin

who walks around and rips off bandages from sucking chest wounds and just gets about his business. He is an English theater actor. That would destroy whatever career he's built. He would blow out his MCL. There's a million reasons why Battle of the Network Stars is never happening again, but this is way up there.

I mean, it's improbable that we had three networks back then and 20, 30 million people are watching every show. Yeah. And all these networks thought it was a great idea to let ABC have their stars that could look bad in any sort of, like either they, the athletic guy who all of a sudden is an athletic or some girl's boob

falls out or whatever the hell could happen. That would be terrible. And they just let it have. Yeah, sure. ABC take our talent. Like that would never happen. I know.

It's crazy. Uh, what other shows do we have talked about? Uh, well, I like, um, Andy,

there's some comedies like, I mean, we should talk about you're the worst, right? I mean, it's still pretty talk about You're the Worst, right? I mean, it's still pretty funny. You're the Worst is so good. It's on FXX now. And that's one of the things that I was thinking of when I said that half hours are just more interesting because half hours can suddenly be, I mean, they're ostensibly comedies.

So you always have that to fall back on. But they can now do some emotional stuff that dramas just don't have room for because the dramas are too busy blowing up the world so you're the worst this year is it was an incredibly funny like sort of toxic um relationship story in the first year about two people who are essentially assholes falling in love this season they could have just kept up with that but instead they've gone really darker and deeper with suggesting that gretchen characters played by a cash um is just has clinical depression and they're dealing with it in a very honest way. And the episode that was on last night, November 4th,

was just stunner. It was one of the best dramas I've seen all year, and yet it was still funny. And I feel the same way about the new Netflix show that Aziz Ansari did, Master of None.

It's debuting tomorrow. Oh, you saw it? Or tonight. Yeah, that was going to be one of my last pieces for the old place. Well, give us the 30-second review. Give us your five best lines.

Well, you know, I didn't actually write it because they didn't want it anymore. But you guys know the concept of this? It's basically, it's kind of a lightly fictionalized Louis-type comedy, which is basically Aziz playing an Indian-American actor, not unlike himself, and that he loves food and likes riffing on whether people should ever have kids.

But he's in New York City, and he's got a sort of interesting, diverse group of friends, and it's relationship stuff. It's not surreal like Louis, but it's really, really funny and really, really warm in a way that was surprising to me. Like, it's just very well made. I really recommend it, especially because he cast his own parents as his parents, and his dad is the best actor and comedian on the show. I had high hopes for it

just because there were some good behind-the-scenes people involved. Yeah, Mike Schur worked on it, and Alan Yang, who was one of the main writers on Parks and Recreation, co-wrote every episode with his views. It's really quality. And secretly, it's one of the best shows Netflix has made because Netflix has made noisy shows, but not that many great ones.

How dare you disparage cast of cards like that? I know. That's another show I stopped watching. When did you stop watching it? The China season? When they killed Kate Mara, I was done. I was like, how dare you kill Kate Mara? I don't even care what the reason was. Did you ever weigh in on...

Are you Team Kate in Rooney vs. Kate? I've gone back and forth but right now I'm probably Team Kate. Yes. Come to the winner's circle. She did some movie recently that disturbed me. The Martian? No, she had another choice in there. Keep talking.

Was it the movie where she plays the kidnapped woman? David Oyelowo? Yeah, and then he's got her hostage and reads the bible to her i didn't see that one but that sounds terrible nobody saw that one but i don't know how that got made uh i i've been saying this for for years i want to i want a movie or a tv show where the maris sisters are playing sisters or just why how hard is this work why can't they remake john woo's broken arrow? Yes. Oh, wow. I mean, or something, you know, or Face Off or anything, you know, like Mara's sister's Face Off.

Yeah, that'd be great. Why hasn't there been a Face Off 2? I don't know. Now you're talking my language, Chris Ryan. A Face Off with two sisters. But their faces aren't so, it would just be like, that would be the undercurrent, but you know, like they don't look so much alike that they couldn't conceivably do a face-off. Speaking of Broken Arrow, Christian Slater, wasn't that his young woman?

Yeah, that was him in Travolta. It was right around when his stock started dropping. Can I just say, I met him at a Mr. Robot panel that I did in New York the other week. One of the nicest people I've ever met in my life. Does he still hold on to Broken Arrow as his best work? He carries around sort of a smudged laser disc of it in a swinger bag. Asks if anybody needs a side coffee. Yeah, so Kate Mara had Transcendence and then followed that up with Fantastic Four.

That was a Fantastic Four is what I was thinking. I think that was a cumulative Rotten Tomatoes of like 20. Yeah. Not great for her. But this is not Kate Mara's fault. Kate Mara can't, you know, she can only make the plays that are presented to her, right? Like, it's someone, we have to talk about her team. Andy, quick pitch, though, for Kate Mara.

How to use her better? The sister show. I just came up with it right now. Okay. Two sisters. Right. Both actresses. Are we just revamping sisters, the show?

No. Okay. Two sisters living in L. LA, both actresses. One of them's more successful than the other. Career's kind of going one way. The other one used to be more successful, like when they were younger. Made a couple bad choices, bad relationship. Her career's veering the other way.

There's a lot of jealousy and envy and resentment, but publicly they have to pretend they're still close. But they're not. They're not close at all. In fact, one of them's undermining the other one. She's sleeping with the girl's boyfriend and the girl doesn't know and you got all that stuff going.

Okay. You're not in on that first one? Can I just say that this is, are you pitching a show or are you describing reality? I just came up with it right now. I pitched it. Do you do this, the Luther model, where it ends with a murder

or are we going to have this for like seven years? No, this is like a really, no, it's a four-year model. No, it's like Black Swan, the series. It's like dark jealousy. It's got a little hint of Black Swan, a tiny bit of Sisters. So a little bit of Cee LaWard, a little bit of Natalie Portman. Yeah, and just a whiff of Danny Collins. Just a whiff.

That is a spicy aroma I really I saw Danny Collins On an airplane And I've seen Two great airplane movies In a row San Andreas Oh San Andreas

Is a tremendous Airplane movie One of the best Airplane movies That has ever happened I had no idea Alexandria Daddario Was in it

And that she was Playing Carlo Gugino's Daughter And I really Almost needed to Take a walk around the plane i was so fired up after but yeah and danny collins is the other danny collins was excellent yeah who knew but nobody i never got the memo pacino is back he's he's back but he's all the movies he's made nobody's seen he hasn't done like a big big time movie in a while oh i know he's made nobody's seen. He hasn't done a big, big-time movie in a while. Oh, I know he's back, but I didn't know Pacino was back. Yeah. Pacino De Niro is reignited.

But only De Niro's taking his shirt off of Zac Efron, right? Yeah. Oh, my God. Now we're far away from TV. No, no, we're back. Chris is bringing us back. So, Greenwald, what are some of the stuff? There's a lot of mid-season stuff,

but there is no such thing as mid-season replacements anymore, right? Because stuff just kind of rolls out. And I know that New Girl comes back now. Did Fox not have that on because of the World Series, or was it just because it wasn't doing that well? It's because Zoe was pregnant. So they did the thing that Parks and Rec did when Amy Poehler was pregnant, where they filmed the first five episodes of the next season last spring,

and then they just took off. And then even when they come back, though, I think they're coming back with Megan Fox as a temporary roommate. Yeah, Megan Fox is replacing Zoe Deschanel for a couple episodes. Yeah. What? Mm-hmm. But actually, what you're saying has kind of been kind of interesting in that shows

aren't getting canceled anymore. Like, every fall, there would be disasters so disastrous, you know, that they would be canceled after one week, and then everyone would write, like, Viva Laughlin with Hugh Jackman or Lone Star, which was actually really good. But it's been interesting this year, like, everything is so kind of whatever, and no one has any better ideas, that they're just letting it play out, because it's cheaper to just burn off things, like, you know, it's better to just burn off the bad money than try to throw more money after it.

And it's also just that, like, it takes, the traditional shows that we're accustomed to just take longer to get made, right? Well, I mean, if we're talking about network stuff, they really don't know what they're doing. And they've also reached this point where I think everyone now used to expect the fall to be the exciting time where we would fall in love with our new best friends,

our new favorite shows. But now everyone knows that it's just a killing field. And so the smarter play is to hold the better stuff for mid-season because people are ready for a breath of fresh air. And that's what Fox did last year with Empire. And so basically anything Fox did with Empire is what everyone else is trying to do. Because they debuted in January and it felt like an event. And it was certainly treated like one.

Have the celebrity cameos officially turned people against Empire yet or no? Empire is dipping. But I feel like it's dipping in ratings only because it was so high, no one can sustain it, and they burn through plot the way like a Volkswagen burns through help me with the joke, put it back after that joke. The outer layer of our planet? Thank you, there it is. This is why we work well together.

But, you know, I feel like if they were really serious about keeping that show on the air for like eight years and making all of the money, they would have treated it more like a cable network and, you know, 10 to 15 episodes in the spring when everyone's ready. But instead they had to come back, you know, two months later because they needed the quick hit.

That's my biggest regret with the OC. I've talked about this before. They did five seasons in the first season. They, they, they, they ripped through plots to the point like there was nothing left. If the OC had come on today, I mean, I guess that was one of the great pilot episodes, but. Oh, that would have been the best Netflix show of all time. Right. But like, I just mean if the OC rolled things out slowly,

would you have stayed watching it today? Well, but the thing is they wouldn't make it today because networks don't make shows for young people. Netflix would have made that show. Yeah, it would have been 11 episodes and it would have made that show. Yeah, it would have been 11 episodes, and it would have been awesome. Listen, you guys both know where I stand. If you put somebody who doesn't have money from the wrong side of the streets

in a situation where everybody's rich and wealthy and kind of mean, I'm in. And I don't care where it is. Bill, this is going to bring us back to our number one podcast conversation topic and the only thing that you want to talk about that Chris and I don't care where it is. Bill, this is going to bring us back to our number one podcast conversation topic and the only thing that you want to talk about that Chris and I don't today, which is The Affair, which is the bad version of the show that you and I pitched to Hampton. I know. Hold this thought,

Andy, because our friends at Simply Safe, they're back again. Great. And it's funny because we rented this little house in an undisclosed location in West Hollywood for the four people who formerly used to work at Grantland who are now helping me develop a project. We just put in the zip line. We did the Silicon Valley house thing and it was like, should we move the podcast operation there? And then I was thinking, I don't know about the security.

I mean, SimpliSafe, thousands of people who want home security systems get ripped off every day. They write huge checks. They sign long-term commitments contracts with no way out. Well, SimpliSafe has no contracts. You'll get 24-7 protection for just $14.99 per month, less than half of what most companies charge. Maybe we should do SimpliSafe. Protect your podcast studio with SimpliSafe. should we just protect our little short-term house i'm sold just based

on that read i'm sold um visit simply safe bill.com and get an exclusive offer for 10 that's s-i-m-p-l-i safe bill.com-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F-E-B-I-L-L-I-S-A-F- started let's talk about the affair thank you i just want to ask though is has chris asked to divide the temporary house into rooms named after born legacy rooms like is one room this is the treadstone room all right the affair uh first of all i didn't appreciate your comments but go ahead no i'm just saying like the show that we pitched like you know the hamptons yeah the new version of the oc and it would have been terrific. And instead, we have, first of all, horse farms on TV don't work. It didn't work on The Walking Dead.

It doesn't work on The Affair. And frankly, if anyone's ever been to The Hamptons, I've yet to see the horse farms there. You know, you see a lot of things up there, but horse farms are not among them. Look, I feel like we need you to defend it because that show, I don't know who's still in on that show other than the C-suite executives at Showtime. God, I'll tell you who's in on that show.

Me? Yeah. I have not watched a single moment of this show since the pilot. And the way Bill describes it in his recaps, when he's like, oh, did you guys see the affair on Sunday? It sounds like the most depraved peep show

with the way you describe what's going on in it. It got a little NC-17 last weekend. All right, I'll defend it. I love Ruth Wilson. Okay. I think she's a great and interesting actress, and I feel the same way about her that I felt with McAdams in True Detective.

I think Ruth Wilson's gonna be like a real star. I think she's just really interesting. Every time she's on screen, you don't look away. I like how they construct it, where it's different. The first part is one narrative, and the second part is a different narrative. And it's kind of a microcosm of how people remember things the way they want to remember them,

but not how they actually were. So it's always fun to kind of compare. I like being in the Hamptons. I like shows where there's some mystery that hasn't been there. I mean, that's why people, Desperate Housewives is on for a hundred years for that reason. And it's just an easy, an easy watch. So that's my defense.

Now pick it apart. Did you see the season two posters where it's Ruth Wilson, but Pacey is growing in her hair? Yeah. I can't defend those. I'm in on Pacey, too. He defended Grantland after it went down. How can you not love Pacey?

All these actors are really good, and they're exactly the actors who I would watch on almost anything. I agree with you about Ruth Wilson. You know how everyone on the line right now feels about McNulty. Should he be playing a Nebushy Brooklyn writer? As a Nebushy Brooklyn writer, I say no, but thank you for the flattery. Maura Tierney, one of the great under-respected actors, certainly TV actors, the last 10, 15 years,

she's always good in everything. But they just probably shouldn't have had that affair. It really seemed like it screwed things up for a lot of them. It just seemed like it was a mistake. I'm with you on McNulty. And as much as I love the guy and I like the actor, it was the wrong guy to cast. It actually would have been better with a Josh Hamilton type of...

What is the deal with casting agents just being like... Was there no American actor who could have done that job? His accent comes and goes. Yeah, same thing with Rupert Friend. He's really good on Homeland, but we couldn't have found one guy who looked sketchy enough to be an assassin. He's nobody you'd see in a Brooklyn coffee

shop. I was watching The Departed last night and trying to decide whose accent was worse, Vera Farmiga or Jack Nicholson. And at one point Vera Farmiga, who's trying to pretend she's got a Boston accent and she's saying Cod, then she says behavior. I'm like, that's the easiest word if you're going to fake your Boston accent is she's saying cod. Then she says behavior. I'm like,

that's the easiest word if you're going to fake your Boston accent is I don't know about your behavior. She says behavior. It's like, that is a bad accent. How's Nicholson's accent?

I can't remember. Oh, it's an apocalypse. It's an apocalypse. Doesn't he just turn it off for episodes? And then he goes to New York and then it's like he's from Queens

for part of the movie. I don't know what he's doing. But this is how Chris and I felt when we watched the first season of House of Cards, which, remember, Corey Stoll's character is representing the more southerly parts of South Fishtown outside of Philadelphia. And everyone talks like they're from Brooklyn Heights. What is the Philly accent? Oh, it's like the Baltimore accent.

Basically, you say that you're going to go get a glass of water. Yeah, we're going to go up on the roof and get a basically you say That you're gonna go Get a glass of water Yeah yo hun We're gonna go up on the roof And get a glass of water You wanna go get a glass later Go get some water to the ponies And watch the eagles Yeah

You're saying Bradford's Terrible this season hun The Boston accent is 89% attitude And then 11% don't say the R's With words like behavior I lived in Boston And still feel like I can't

Cause like now my my memory of the accent has been so bastardized by all the movies when people do it badly in the movies that it's like cad yeah like they think that's how you do it but it's really like what the fuck are you talking about it's like attitude it's like there's an anger resentment and distrust the whole time with boston accent that's what it is. Rhode Island, I can't even pretend to imitate because that's like a whole other universe. What about, well, Emeril was Fall River,

right? That accent is just like, that's an incredible one. That's a bad one. What was the Christian Bale movie, The Fighter, with Satan Lowell? They did a good job with those accents. Because they actually had people from that area in the movie, too. And that's what Affleck did with Gone Baby Gone. And representing

our home team, Silver Linings Playbook had some silly accents. There was some stuff like that in the town too. Ham went crazy in the town. Ham. He put it,

I think it's in there a little bit and then he brings it out. You know? It's never good when they, This is the not fucking around crew. It's never good when

scene by scene it's a different choice for the accent. You kind of want that to be the same in every scene? You'd think that would be somebody's job. I'm surprised. After watching Project Greenlight, it seems like people are responsible for all elements of shit in movies. Good segue. There used to be a continuity person on set, but there isn't one for accents. Oh, we're going to talk about another show I haven't watched, but I'm ready to have an opinion.

Oh, you haven't watched Project Greenlight show I haven't watched, but I'm ready to have an opinion. Oh, you haven't watched Project Greenlight? I haven't. I haven't. Because there's too much scripted stuff. So I never touch the reality. This is more dramatic than any scripted show I've seen in a long time. That's what I've heard. I absolutely love this season.

And I was so into it. And I have such strong opinions about everything. Did you watch the leisure class? I watched the entire leisure class. I watched 90 90 minutes of but at least it was on film it was and the project green light movies are they never work out i mean like it's it's you'd think that after four or five of them they would have gotten one that was good by now but the thing is i enjoyed watching it even though the movie didn't work i because I had the framework of, oh yeah, here's the scene when the guy gets mad in the basement.

Here's the house that they couldn't pick. Here's the house and here's the car crash that didn't work. It was riveting. The car crash scene in Project Greenlight in the documentary was one of my favorite scenes I've seen in a long time. Anyone who watches... Everyone who watches... Everyone who watches the series has to watch the movie.

You just have to. There's no way to watch the series and then not watch the movie. It's hilarious. Sorry, Andy. You missed out. That's okay. I'm just listening.

I'm just taking it all in. No, it was... I mean, they really lucked out because the director they picked, they'll never pick a better director it was just like a guy who was actually hostile towards almost every element of what they were doing he didn't like the script

it was amazing probably felt stupid being on the show he hated the fact that anybody was telling him what to do much less like guys like Len Amato and all these people he wasn't appreciative at all and was basically at the end of it like I did the best I could with this piece of shit right which was his script. Yeah. Can I

spin it back to you guys? Yeah. What currently existing TV show would you like to have a 24-7 or a Project Greenlight about the making of? Oh. The Affair. I've got two ideas, but I want to know. I'll take my answer. I would

much rather watch a making of the affair than the actual affair. Yeah, that's another good one. I've heard some stuff. I would like to hear that. I would like to watch that too. I've also heard some stuff. Yeah, I probably True Detective season two would have been kind of amazing. See, the problem with that is I think

that those guys, I think a lot of that was just shot completely separately from each other. So even though there was a rumor of a kitsch fight like there was some kitsch was it kitchen vaughn there was a rumor of some discord but yeah but everything i've heard about that was that you know that that pizzolatto who made the show and the big stars that he attracted and that he clearly you know flattered and star whispered to to get them to do this stuff they were just kind of in a bubble with it and i think that they were all super into what he was making and bought in. So everything I've heard was that it was relatively fine.

It was just secretive. There will be a big defense of it two years from now. It'll be like a second look at True Text Season 2. Revisiting the genius, yeah. Better than we thought. I think that, Chris, I know you know and our listeners know that I don't really have the bandwidth to watch The Good Wife, but everything I've heard about Julianna Margulies.

Oh, yeah, the Margulies, Archie Punjabi beef is great. Archie Punjabi thing. Like, that is so, that is truly fascinating. So now it's like, so they did their last scene together. It was CGI. Split screen. And now every episode that I watch of Good Wife, I'm like, is this CGI?

Is Baranski really there? Is this CGI Baranski? Did she do a great job? We don't know. She did. Her outfits have been dynamite this year. But what could have happened for two actresses who spent their whole lives

pretending to be other people not being able to pretend to be two other people in the same room together? Like, short of I didn't even know. I mean, obviously To that degree, because you know, what percentage of actors and actresses actually hate each other

it's pretty high also this is CBS this isn't like this isn't Project Greenlight like you'd think that they would have contracts that were like I'm sorry that you're upset

of this person but you have to come to work and do this job and they both won Emmys you know I think like it's worked out pretty well for them it's certainly

I've spent more the most time I've googled something in the last five years and gotten the least amount of satisfying answers for. Which is insane when you think, where is the Woj for the good wife?

I know where he is. He's in that house with Juliet. Even she hasn't gotten to the bottom of it. But the other thing, the show I would most want to watch the behind the scenes making of is Empire because it absolutely feels like it's going to break apart like a meteor at any moment yeah two they basically said at a tca thing and i'm definitely paraphrasing and getting it

slightly wrong but someone asked them point blank like why did you give terrence howard's character a debilitative a debilitating fatal disease in episode one if you were going to cure him of it in episode 10 and they more or less said because we didn't know if terrence howard was going to be a lunatic or not and we needed an out. And Terrence Howard was sitting there laughing about it. Was it with the Globes

or the Emmys or when Taraji and Terrence were on stage together and Taraji was just like, you are a disturbing person. She just straight up looked at him and was like,

you are alarming me. But also, this is the show where when they were filming the season premiere, they wrote a character for Chris Rock to play, where he is an incarcerated gang leader, who, by the way, is also a cannibal.

And this was Chris Rock's idea. And they sent it to the network, and the network said, nah. And they just did it anyway, because Lee Daniels doesn't care. And they just shot it anyway, so then they had to edit it. So there are all these references to Chris Rock being like, this meat is delicious. While another guy cries, but he's just apparently eating normal meat. So I would like to watch that show.

Can we flip the script for a second? Sure. So you guys had a pretty good following for your pod. Yeah. And then all of a sudden you left. Uh-huh. And what kind of feedback did you get from people? Were people sad? Did people

think it was like Shawshank, where one guy left and the other guy was still there? What was it like? People have been really nice. People have been really nice. I wrote a book about emo, and this was much more emo than that. People were very, very sweet about it. People were offering to Venmo us money to record our phone calls, which I think was very nice.

Is that true? Yeah. Cause we had a good time. It was a great run. You know, um, I don't know if you guys did this, but like when the football season started and I wasn't able to do a pod with

Sal until week four, like the first week we, I think the first week we did a long phone call, almost like we did the podcast, guess the lines. And and it just it kind of made both of us sad so the next two weeks we just mailed each other you guys did it just to have it as a like on the record right we did it like hey would you guess here and like just two buddies talking which was basically what the podcast was there was no real difference and it just felt so weird to be like oh yeah let's do this as friends and nobody will ever imagine if i called you on monday i'm like let's go over last

night's shows big guy the truth is chris and i haven't spoken in six weeks it's like a julietta margulies archie punjabi situation he's not actually here we're such professionals all of andy's bits here were pre-recorded i do do think with podcasts, though, it's so much more of a personal thing with the listeners than writing is. Because you kind of invade people's lives. Like right now, somebody's listening to this and they're working out or they're in a car. You're doing great. Yeah, you're doing great. Get that shit going.

Go ten more minutes. Or they're in bed at night, or they're at work pretending like they're doing some project, but they're really listening to us, and it's like you're part of their life. It's like with a blog post or a column or something. People can click on it, but you don't know if they're reading it. In podcasts, they actually listen to it. It also did the same thing for us, because having the podcast allowed us to indulge our crazier obsessions with things like the career of Colin Farrell and the interviews of Jeremy Renner and crime fiction where people get their hands chopped off.

So connecting with people about that was very rewarding. And to be honest, you didn't go far enough with the Jeremy Renner interviews. I do. That should be its own podcast. Renner has been taunting us with all his action in the last couple of weeks. Yeah, we have a lot to get to. Renner is the most mysterious person of the last 15 years. I think he's really indulging himself, too.

I think he's like, you know what? It's probably not going to happen for me as a major movie star anymore, so why don't I just be really weird? But you know what? He was great in the town. Yeah, he was great. He has the town. He was awesome. He's great in her locker. He's great in her locker. I don't know how to channel that. Alright, let's say they made a movie about Wes welker about 11 concussions are you making that movie

well no just like some short receiver who just keeps getting concussions and keeps on and play like a modern north dallas 40 could we do the kentucky derby part yeah oh yeah absolutely uh but couldn't renner play like Wes Welker modern day North Dallas 40 I feel like he needs to make a sports movie so we'll call it The Slot

and he plays it's about the slot receiver starring Renner he's a little long in the tooth to play Welker but let's how old is Renner

I think he's gotta be in his 40s right yeah he's like early 40s you guys don't well Andy has a child, but way too young to be stuck watching terrible movies with them. My kids love Adam Sandler.

And it just made me think of somebody being miscast in the wrong role. My kids love Adam Sandler and they love this movie Pixels. Oh yeah. That he made, which I think was a little bit geared toward my generation and maybe even as young as your generation, too, because it's like 80s video games. Right. I mean, Adam Sandler is the Pied Piper for kids.

My kids love every Adam Sandler movie. Because he makes funny voices and does stupid stuff. Yeah, it's just they love it. He knows how to appeal to kids between 5 and 11, so I'm not going to trash the movie. I just wanted to point out that Kevin James plays the President of the United States. He's the President

of the United States in the movie during an alien invasion. And I don't know if either of you can top that as the most unrealistic movie slash TV president that's ever happened because I feel like Kevin James we've peaked. Oh, I thought you were going to link it back to accepting Jeremy Renner as the front man of a rock band like he does in his Remy Martin commercial.

Oh, I was saying like Jeremy Renner as Wes Welker. As a slot receiver. Who would play Brady then? Oh, Leo. You got to do it that way, right? Are we talking about a Deflategate movie here or what are we talking about? That hurt my feelings. I didn't like that.

And Pacino's back, so he could play Belichick. Pacino's my favorite football I didn't like that. No, if you're making a movie about... And Pacino's back, so he could play Belichick. Pacino's my favorite football coach ever in a movie. He's an incredible football coach. Might even be my favorite sports movie coach ever. I think Kyle Chandler's still my favorite football coach, but Pacino's got probably the best speech. Pacino's great in that movie.

Who would you rather hear? Underrated, the greatest part about Any Given Sunday is still james woods oh he has the trainer oh yeah it is funny though all these football movies from the 90s concussions are a huge part of every one of them and then in like 2009 football is like hey i have concussions we might have a problem here it's like yeah i knew that from all the movies i watched they're just catching up on the Netflix queue and finally noticed Yeah

What else before we go? I'm going to sit out You guys take the last 10 minutes I feel like we were teasing it Can we say that we're going to do a podcast again? Yes So we're doing a podcast again together We don't know what it's going to be called yet

But if you liked Hollywood Prospectus I'm sure you'll enjoy this We are launching a second podcast that will not be this podcast. It will be Pop Culture. We don't have a name for it yet, but it will be in all the same places that this one is. iTunes,

SoundCloud, Stitcher, whatever else we come up with. We'll have a name. We'll promote it. You'll know it's out there. It's going to happen. You guys are reunited. So you guys will be at least twice a week, right? That's the plan, right?

Yeah. We're really, really excited. This is, this is the best. Thank you for doing this. And a two man. I won't, I'm only on this one just cause this is my podcast, but for the future, it's you guys. If you guys are in this secure panic room of a house,

you could just duck in at any moment. That's true. Oh, simply safe. Yeah. If simply safe comes through, maybe I will be able to stop by. Or maybe they'll just lock you all inside and it'll become a much more interesting psychodrama.

Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart inside the panic room. I actually like the thought of you guys two times a week because, you know, like just guaranteed every time because you'll be able to go a little deep diving. Yeah, the idea is basically we'll do something on Mondays

where we talk about the Sunday shows and the big TV shows of the week and then something a little later in the week that's like maybe more of a deep dive, one of our obsessions. Yeah, maybe bring some friends on. We have some friends in the pod now. Hey, Renner, the invitation is always open.

Yeah, we should just post like these open invitations. Maybe we'll put it on his LinkedIn page where underneath, you know, band leader and renov Yeah, we should just post these open invitations. Maybe we'll put it on his LinkedIn page. We're underneath band leader and renovator, we could just say. What else? What else did you want to plug with that? I don't know. Do you have anything else you wanted to plug? Is there any other shows that people should be watching right now besides Narcos?

I'm always going to forget one. I always forget the one that we like best. By the way, what was the name of that show? Narcos! That's what I missed. Oh, it feels good. I mean, it's hard to top that. I feel like the master of none is good. You're the worst is good. And you know, now here's the thing. I got off the clock for three days, four days. I didn't have to watch TV, but now I got to get back into it. I got to put my boots on and go back into work yeah well this is great we're gonna wrap it up

yeah I'm really happy to be back with Andy next next week maybe hopefully hopefully

yeah hopefully something and in worst case scenario you guys can just guest host this but if we have our whole thing in place next week

then we'll launch it next week and if we don't we'll launch it two weeks from now but next week you'll at least be on here I don't know if you guys heard i have a lot of free time

now so whenever just just call me so at very least next week at some point either here or on the second podcast we'll go all right take us out all right andy uh i can't wait to see you next week man great job later thanks again to simply safe thousands of people who want home security systems get ripped off every day. They write huge checks and sign long-term contracts with no way out. SimpliSafe has no contracts. You get 24-7 protection for just $14.99 per month. Less than half what companies charge.

Visit SimpliSafeBill.com and get an exclusive offer for 10%. One more time, Simplisafebill.com. Play us out, Tupac. We about this bitch. Anytime y'all want to see me again, rewind this track right here, close your eyes, and picture me rolling. you