The Bill Simmons Podcast - Harden's 82-Point Quest, Best Oscar Films, and Warren Beatty Foreshadows the 2019 Rams With Shea Serrano, Wesley Morris, and Jason Gay | The Bill Simmons Podcast (Ep. 473)

Episode Date: January 25, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Shea Serrano to talk about James Harden's unbelievable play (2:20) before talking with Jason Gay about 'Heaven Can Wait' and the suspicious parallels between the film and Super Bowl LIII (25:30). Finally, Bill calls up Wesley Morris to check in on the Oscars race (1:04:40). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast and the Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you as always by ZipRecruiter. You know what's smart? Betting on James Harden to win the MVP because I think that's happening. You know what else isn't smart? Job sites that overwhelm you with tons of the wrong resumes. Luckily, there is a smart way at ZipRecruiter.com. They find people with the right skills for your job. They actively invite them to apply. Right now, my listeners can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS.

ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. We're also brought to you by TheRinger.com, the world's greatest website, where you can read a whole bunch of pieces on the Oscars, on the NBA, on the NFL. Robert Mays rewatched the first Rams-Pats Super Bowl, which doubled as one of the greatest moments of my life, and learned some things from that. That is on the website right now.

We are gearing up for Super Bowl Oscars, Game of Thrones. Harry Potter on Binge Mode. They finished the books finally. Now they're moving to the last movie. And then they're done. Then they move to Game of Thrones. Check that out, the Binge Mode podcast. Check out all the great podcasts we had. We had a really good podcast day today. Larry Wilmore talked to Pete Holmes.

Dave Chang talked to Somebody Smart. Isaac Lee was talking about that one. Ryan Rosillo got Tom Brady stories. You can find all those podcasts on the Ringer Podcast Network. Coming up on this podcast, we're going to talk about James Harden, whether he can score 100 points in a game with Shea Serrano, who wrote about this topic two years ago and wasn't expecting James Harden to be a possible answer for it. We're talking to him.

We're talking to my old Grantland teammate, Wesley Morris, about the Oscar nominations that came out this week. And we're going to talk old Grantland teammate, Wesley Morris, about the Oscar nominations that came out this week. And we're going to talk to Jason Gay from the Wall Street Journal about a couple of things, including Heaven Can Wait, which he interviewed Warren Beatty, who was the star of that movie. And there are a lot of Rams 40 years ago to now parallels that I want to cover. So that's all coming up first First, our friends from Pearl Jam. On the line right now, the ringer, Shea Serrano. We are also on the rewatchables this week.

We broke down a classic, the fast and the furious. I don't know how we top it, but let's try. I want to talk about James Harden. So you wrote a piece for the ringer, March, 2017, wondering if we would ever see another 100 point game. And you try to figure this out. Was this possible with the three pointer changes? Who could do this?

And I enjoyed it. And there was, you know, it was like, oh yeah, Clay could hit 23s in a game. Sure. But I never really thought it was possible. But now I'm watching this James Harden thing. And I was starting to do the math and trying to figure out what the perfect box score would look like. And could he get to like 90?

And at some point during this whole process, I was like, I got to call Shea. So here you are, Shea Serrano. Is it on your radar at this point? The 100-point game is not on my radar. Not from James Harden. Not right now. 90? I do think he's going to break 80.

I think he's going after Kobe. So I looked at Devin Booker, I think, is a good model for this. Devin Booker put up the random 70 on the Celtics, some of which was in garbage time. It is the 10th highest number anyone's put up in an NBA game. And this was after you wrote that piece. He played 45 minutes. He was 21 for 40 field goals. He only made four threes. He was four for 40 field goals. He only made four threes. He was four for 11.

24 for 26 free throws. Added up to 70. So I was trying to think, what's James Harden's version of that? So let's say he goes 24 for 40. That's realistic, right? He could do 24 for 40, I think. 24 for 40 overall? Yeah, field goals attempted He could do 24 for 40, I think. 24 for 40 overall?

Yeah, field goals attempted and made. 24 for 40. He could do 24 for 40, yeah, no question. It's conceivable. He put up 38 shots the other night when he hit 60. Right. So my thought was 24 for 40. I think he has to make 10 threes.

So I think he has to go 10, 10 to 20 from three, 24 for 40. Minimum of 10, three. Yeah. Yeah. 10,

three. So let's give him 10 threes. So I now have 14 twos, which is 28 points and 10 threes, which is 58 points. So now to get to Kobe's 80, 81, to get to 82, he's got to, got to match what Devin Booker did the 24 for 26. Basically that Devin Booker game lays the blueprint for what James Harden has to do.

Devin Booker, 21 for 40, four for 11 from three, the free throws would be the same. I think it's doable. And the way he's playing that, you know, he's, he's put up 50, he's top 50 and 60 just in the last like 10 days. So the frequency of it, that's what helped with Kobe. Kobe, the couple of weeks before, I think he had had 61 and three quarters against Dallas. Like he was just kind of sniffing around the general ballpark, which is what you need with this. So you think, where do you think he can get to? 82? 90? What's your limit?

I think he's going to, I think he will have a game where he hits 83 points. That's what I think is going to happen. I think he's going to get, he's going to get hot in one of those games. He's going to put like 35 up in the first half. People are going to start talking about it. Yeah.

There's got to be against the, against like the Timberwolves or somebody like that. Timberwolves and cat is sitting out. The middle is open. He catches fire in the beginning of the, in the, in the beginning of the first quarter, second quarter,

put up 35. And then I think he starts chasing after that. We've already seen, you know, Michael leaves him in there to go get those points. It's an important thing for James. And it's fun to watch him try to do it. The issue you're going to run into once you get to like

70-75 points is the other team is going to be like, you know what? Fuck this. That's why I think that Klay has a better chance because the other team can't do that with the Warriors. You can only do that with the Rockets because James Harden is doing every single thing.

That's going to be the biggest obstacle for him hitting those marks. If they're just playing straight up, he could absolutely get to 82, 83, no question. But once you get to 70, 75, the other team is going to say, yeah, okay, enough of this, enough. Well, here's my counter to that argument, which I thought made a lot of sense. He's not even getting assisted on these passes. He's doing basically everything himself.

Right. So now we're talking about a 21-game stretch here where he's averaged 43 points a game. And eight and a half assists and eight rebounds. I mean, this is like one of the greatest offensive stretches of our lifetime. So I think even if you're like, fuck you Harden, you're not getting this,

I still feel like he can get his shots off. Because this is like, this is hitting a level where not since Jordan late 80s, do I feel like somebody is getting the shots they want no matter what the defense is doing. We haven't really seen this in 30 years. Shaq would have moments where it's like, oh shit, Shaq's going for a hundred tonight.

And you could start fouling them and the refs could feel bad for the defenders, stuff like that. Harden's creating shots when the other team knows that he's going to create the shots. He's playing with an expansion team. Have you seen the guys he's playing with?

I have. I've been, I've been watching. It's incredible. James Harden is playing basketball so well right now that you and I are having a conversation about whether or not he can score a hundred points. And we're deciding he could probably get to 85. Yeah.

Nothing. Yeah. That's not like it's, it's been unbelievable watching him play. But again, I just, I, I can't talk myself into thinking they're going to let the other team is

going to let him get away with that because they would, I imagine if you're playing, like if you're playing the Timberwolves, eventually somebody's going to go, you know what? Fuck this game. I don't care if we win or lose this game. Triple team, James Harden for the entirety of the fourth quarter.

I feel like that has to happen. I wonder if Jalen Rose and the fact that the 81 thing has been a running joke the last 10 years, nobody wants to be the next Jalen Rose, right? And just have that brought up for the rest of their life? If there was no Twitter, maybe he gets there. But you don't want to be the person guarding James when he pulls up for points 98, 99, and 100 from 35 feet. You cannot be that person.

So the Knicks game yesterday is a good example of how this could go really well in his favor. He puts up 61. And it was like a quiet 61. It was the new, it felt like he was having an off night. He was only five for 20 from, from three. And yet still at 61 points and came within a basket of breaking the house record, which is one of my favorite. You know how much I love house records. What's the house record in San Antonio?

I love a house record. I don't even, well, we have like, we have a new arena. So it's not too, too high. I couldn't even tell you off the top of my head. Yeah, in Boston, they built the Fleet Center in the mid nineties and Todd Day put up like 53 and had the house record for like four or five years. And it's like, can somebody break this?

We can't let Todd Day keep this. So yesterday, anyway, it gets to Knicks. He's 17 for 38. So he missed 21 shots. He was 5 of 20 from 3. 22 of 25 from the line. Gets him to 61. Now, if he goes, let's say he goes 10 for 20 instead of 5 for 20.

Realistic. He's had games where he's shot high. Like on December 27th, he was 9 for 18 from 3. So it's not like he can't do it. So if he goes 10 for 20, now he's at 76 points. Yeah, he's right there. He's right there. Now it's like two more layups and one step back.

I'm at 82. I'm with you. I think, here's the thing. This is why, one of the many reasons why I want to do this pod, especially with you. I think there's a time limit on this because Chris Paul is going to come back soon. Once Chris Paul comes back, I don't think this is in play anymore. This is in play because he's playing with,

Eric Gordon's his best teammate by far. He's got Kenneth Farid who was like, you know, in the garage for two years. I don't even know where he was. He's got Austin rivers. Who's been on four different teams. He's got PJ Tucker, James Innes, the third, like this is an expansion team he's on.

And yet he has figured out how to keep them winning. And also they have to win. They're in the playoff race. He saved their season. It's one of the all-time MVP campaigns. I always used to have this joke about the size of the MVP trophy should be, the weight and size of it should reflect

how good your season was. So like the best possible season would be a 40 pound trophy. Like LeBron in 2000, LeBron in 2010 or whatever, or the LeBron 2013 on Miami when they won the 27. It's like, that's like a 40 pound trophy. James Harden's like, it might be a 100 pound trophy. It's a huge trophy. Like he almost can't even hold it.

Yeah, you can't believe what you're watching when you're watching him do it and then you're seeing everybody on the internet be mad that nobody can stop him which is one of my favorite thing i don't like i do not like the the rockets at all but i am rooting for james hard in this season because we're seeing a thing that we've never ever seen before is what it feels like to me i've never watched anything like what he has been doing. I don't know how you watch that and you're upset about it. He's bending basketball

in his direction. It's unreal, man. I don't even know what to say. I feel the same way. I do know what to say. He's only going to get 83 points. Only 83. Have that be my... At what point does Kobe try to get in his head,

like how he ruined Jason Tatum? Does Kobe do a detail where he's like, here's how James Harden can get better and put some Easter eggs in there that'll actually fuck James Harden up? He might have to. He might do a little psychological warfare. I was not a huge Harden fan until about a month ago. Cause I, I didn't like the

flailing into people. I, I respected him and I think he has some of the greatest footwork I've ever seen. I like how he continues to work on his game and make it better. He's only 29 years old. I think he became kind of, He's definitely one of the best forward guards, two guards of all time, heading into this season. What he's done this season, we are now talking... This is a whole other level.

I talked about this on the pod a couple weeks ago, about the points per game. He's now over 36 points a game. Now we're heading toward hallowed ground. This is like... The top, top level. This is like the fast five, uh, the last 20 minutes of fast five kind of level of, of greatness.

This is, let me ask you, let me ask you a question. If everybody always goes to the, if LeBron and Jordan play one-on-one debate, or that's like a talking point. If Jordan and Harden are playing one-on-one, how does Harden do? I want to say that he beats him. I feel like I want to say that. He's too big right now. He's too strong.

That's another part that a lot of people don't talk about, is how strong he is right now. He looks incredible. You see him in person, like, Holy shit, this is, this is an action movie star that can run a pick and roll. I have your answer.

Okay. The game never ends because they get in a fight halfway through. Cause Jordan's so mad at the fucking garbage. Harden's doing to get to like throwing himself into him, trying to get fouls. They just, it ends in a fist fight and James Harden's doing to get to like throwing himself into him, trying to get fouls. They just, it ends in a fist fight and James Harden loses the fight. So I guess Jordan wins again.

Jordan goes to jail, but he wins again. The Saturday morning, I don't know if you play basketball still, but there's like a Saturday morning pickup game that all the old men play. Yeah. And, and when,

and when the score is like nine to seven and everybody's tired, somebody will start a fight. Those are arguing about like a call. You found me. No, I didn't. Somebody else would take the ball, throw it across the court and be like,

fuck you to get, you know, go get it. And then everybody stands around for 45 minutes. Cause nobody wants to go get the ball. Like that's, what's going to happen here. Except there's going to be a punch thrown.

Yeah. That all of that's going to happen. And then it'll end with James Harden getting taken to the hospital for a possible broken orbital bone. I think James Harden one-on-one would

be just about anybody in history at this point because of the three-pointer and his ability to that step-back move. I just don't see how anyone stops him with no help. He's gotten to that point. It's fucking crazy. It's crazy to watch. I cannot believe somebody is this dominant offensively for this long of a time.

We've seen hot stretches. We've seen 10 game stretches. We've seen 12 game stretches. We've never seen this. This has not happened. No, this, I think we're past the point where it's a stretch i think this is just who he is when he wants to be this that's all that it is yeah it's the expectations it's like oh james harden only had 42 tonight damn yeah i think how crazy that is

yeah um how do you how do you get to 17 games in a row of 30 whatever points, and then you keep going after that? What the fuck is going on right now? Yeah, so when you're talking about a 21-game stretch that has lasted now for five and a half weeks, where he's averaging 43 a game, and again, not to keep pointing this out, but his team's winning.

This isn't like, we've seen guys carry a huge offensive load. Dwayne Wade did in 2009. Kobe in 06. TMAC did it. Iverson had a lot of seasons where he had a huge load. Westbrook two years ago. The team usually goes about, it's like a 43, 44 win team usually in this scenario.

Right. In this case, in that 21 game winning streak, they're like 16 and five or that streak, not winning streak. Right, right, right. And it's, he's created this model that I don't feel like is sustainable because of the

burden that he has night after night. The history of the league would say he's going to wear out, but at the same time, I don't know. And again, like the whole how do you stop him thing is a conversation. When was the last time we had that conversation? How do you stop this? We never said that during Westbrook's run two years ago. Nobody was like, how do you stop this?

It was like, eh, probably let him keep shooting and hope he shoots himself out of the game, basically. When was the last, how did we stop this conversation? Shaq? Yeah, 2001 Shaq. Yeah, somewhere in there. That's got to be it. Because even Colby, when he had his stretch of 40-plus games,

40-point-plus games, was that like eight or nine games max? Yeah. Like we got – if you had told me three weeks ago when Harden was at 11 games in a row of 30-plus points, I would have been like, all right, yeah, maybe this is – maybe he's just on a hot streak. But, man, I can't – I don't see it stopping. I just – he would – if he could get tired,

he would have gotten tired already. It's just not going to happen this is we're looking at something special here yeah remember when we thought when we thought uh Harden was this guy who was like oh man keep that dude out of the champagne club there was always this sense that he wasn't like as hard of a worker as

LeBron and those guys but basically just because he wasn't posting Instagram photos or videos of himself working out LeBron and those guys, but basically just because he wasn't posting Instagram photos or videos of himself working out. Right. Kobe Bryant against Dallas, which was an awesome game, December

2005, when he basically scored 62 in three quarters. He played 33 minutes, 18 for 31, 22 to Jesus, 22 out of 25 from the line in three minutes, 18 for 31, 22 to Jesus, 22 out of 25 from the line at three quarters and four for 10 from three. And that was against a Mavericks team that ended up going to the finals.

So that was no joke. So he was pretty, I got to say maybe Colby was the last one. Cause that night he, I felt like he was more unstoppable that night than the 81-point game. The 81-point game was really bad. It was bad coaching more than anything. It was like, what the hell? Why are you single covering him?

He's got 68 points. But Dallas was trying, and they were good. And he still annihilated them. So maybe he's the last one. I hate giving Kobe credit as to you. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. You can ask me a hundred different questions. Kobe's never going to be.

But you could ask me, like, when's the last time we had a great player named Kobe Bryant in the NBA? And I'd be like, Bill, I don't know that I've ever seen that. I don't know who that is. Who are you referring to? Yeah, Harden,

I think he's the clear MVP candidate right now, or favorite. No question. I do feel like, if I said to you, James Harden will have 82 points in the next two weeks, yes or no, what would you say? I would take that bet. You'd say yes? If you give me good odds, four to one odds, I would take that bet. You'd say yes. If you're giving me good odds,

four to one odds, yeah, put me down. All right, if any betting services out there are listening, give us odds on will James Harden put up 82 points at some point this season? We should be able to bet on this. I would say- We should. Knowing nothing,

I would say the odds would have to be plus two 20. Sometimes I think that you have to be a hundred dollars to win two 20. I don't think that's like an even better anything just because it's only happened once little Chamberlain. So you got to factor that in. But at the same point, the math is telling us now that this does seem conceivable. Before you go, will Spurs come back? Kind of? Spurs are feeling a little Spurs-y again.

Yeah, we're feeling fantastic. You and I spoke about this briefly when I was in Los Angeles this last time. Everybody was sort of talking down on the Spurs at the beginning of the season. We had a whole roster full of new players. Like, give us a few weeks to figure it out. Pop figured it out. We're going to be a little bit in trouble for somebody. My greatest hope is that we play Houston in the playoffs.

James Harden scores 99 points in the game. When he's going for the game winner in Game 7 for his 101st point on a layup, I can Derek White block them and we win the series. And you win, but Harden has 99 points. Yeah, yeah. But he could add 100 to win. What team in the West are you most afraid of

other than the Warriors? I am the most afraid of the Nuggets somehow. Did you watch them last night, the Nuggets and Jazz game? Yeah. I know the Nuggets lost, but still, I'm a little afraid of the Nuggets somehow. Did you watch them last night, the Nuggets and Jazz game? I know the Nuggets lost, but still, I'm a little afraid of the Nuggets, and I have no idea why. I can't name more than three players on the team, but watching them, I was like, holy shit, these guys are actually good now.

The Jazz are having an interesting renaissance because all of a sudden, Mitchell's playing well again. Mitchell went from sophomore jinx guy to all of a sudden he's kind of got his mojo back. I was working on the trade value list for this month and I had him 20 last month and I dropped him a little just from the way he was playing

but then the last, I would say the last week and a half moved him back because it looks like he's got it going again, whatever was going on with him. I'll be really interested to see who gets knocked out of this West thing because it does feel like there are 10 teams. Because right now, the Clippers are the eighth team. They probably fall out.

But you have the Lakers. Yeah, they're out. Lakers, LeBron's coming back whenever. They'll make it. But then the Kings, who are just kind of lingering at 24 and 24 and probably have a dumb trade to make where they go and get like, you know, they trade a couple of contracts and a future first for Harrison Barnes, or they do something, they try to go for it. So I feel like they, I don't,

I'm not ready to count them out yet, but Utah right of the ship. And we probably have, we probably have nine playoff teams, maybe 10, if the Clippers can get their shit together. But, but that's nice to have. It's nice that the Spurs, I think that would have made me sad,

like a 32 and 50 Spurs season. That would have made me sad too, Bill. With Pop just sadly looking sad in the sidelines, helpless, talking about the Becky Hammond transition plan. I don't know. I wasn't ready for it yet emotionally.

I'm ready for it like three years from now. I'm not ready for it yet. Yeah. All right. That's it. That's all I got for you, Shay. Oh, and we should talk the John Wick 3 trailer. We broke down.

Yeah. And our friend Halle Berry is involved. She doesn't know she's friends with us, but we consider her a friend. She's involved. It looks like she might be the savior. How many times have you watched the trailer? I have watched it four times an hour for the last 96 hours.

There's motorcycles and machetes, and I'll leave America with that. We're very satisfied with the direction of John Wick 3. All right, you can listen. We also did satisfied with the direction of John Wick 3. Alright, you can listen. We also did The Warriors for a rewatchable that's going to be in two weeks, but you can listen to the one now. We did The Fast and The Furious

and I listened to some of it yesterday. My favorite part was when your feelings were genuinely hurt that I didn't think Vin Diesel was that good of an actor. I'm still thinking about it. I was upset on the plane ride back to Texas. I was really good of an actor. I was still thinking about that. I was upset on the plane ride back to Texas. I was really genuinely mad about that.

We should have a longer conversation. Yeah, we should. In private. Maybe we need a therapist to help us hash that out. All right, Shea, as always, a pleasure. Talk to you soon.

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Jason Gay is here. We're going to talk about heaven can wait. Jason, we were just talking before you came on, you listened to the conversation I had with Jack Dorsey, the head of Twitter, which was on the BS podcast earlier in the week. And what were your thoughts? I was curious. Well, you know, my alarms were up, you know, as my hackles were up, I should say, I was ready to get really mad. You know, I was looking for a reason, but I found it instructive to listen to what he had to say. You know, I certainly think that Twitter has not done what it should do in terms of policing the just virulent abuse, which is so prevalent all over the platform. But having read a number of interviews with him, a lot of them really good, including one that came out in Rolling Stone yesterday, it was still instructive to hear him talk,

you know, and to hear sort of the wheels grind in his brain about how he's thinking about this stuff. It's a crazy job. Would you rather have that job running Twitter or running the Knicks? The Knicks would be easier. You're saying they convinced Durant to come. Yeah. I need one superstar and I'm good to go. But I mean, yeah, I just, when you think of tormented franchises, Twitter and the Knicks, and also, you know, ownership issues too. It was, I really liked talking to him and I thought, you know, I was satisfied with the answers he gave. The one thing I couldn't wrap my head around, which we kept circling back to,

you know, I kept bringing up the harassment and the abuse and how the onus from day one has always been on the person with the Twitter account to protect themselves versus Twitter. And they've made some moves, but not really. And then he, he went into his whole spiel about, well, you know, it's this rehearsed thing that he's probably given in all these different interviews about, we know we need to fix this. Yeah. But he wouldn't say when, and I was thinking about it after it's just, it's just weird where like, if you were interviewing me and you were like, Hey, um, chemicals are leaking into your kid's bedroom.

When do you plan on fixing this? I'm like, wow, you know, chemicals are a bad problem. They, my kids, we have a problem, Bill. My kids could have trouble breathing and you know, we know this is serious and we got to fix this. Cause I want, I want my kids to be healthy. Yeah. And at some point you're like, okay, so what are you actually going to do? Well, chemicals are really bad. And we know that, but it never seemed like a solution was imminent. And that was the one point I was trying to make was you kind of have to fix this now.

You can't just be, well, down in the future. And we know it's like, what's your answer? You know, there is an urgency. I don't know if it's nine to 12 months, like you suggested, but I think there's definitely an urgency to it. And I think that part of what, and let's face it, there's a media strategy that's happening here, which includes going on your podcast,

which includes doing numerous print interviews. I think they are trying to do the Facebook opposite. We're not going to hide. We're not going to put ourselves in a castle away from the media. We're going to try to ingratiate ourselves to you. So, you know, when shit really starts to hit the fan, you'll at least be able to put a face and a voice to this problem. I think that's part of what's going on here. But where I really sort of differentiate from what he was saying is there's this constant leaning on the idea of, well, if you take people off Twitter, if you remove too much of the craziness, you're in danger of creating a bubble. And that is true. True. But the bubble we're talking about in most instances is just be a bubble of civility, you know, just borderline manners to people and just being courteous to all walks of life and just, you know, basic human decency.

I'm not terribly worried. I mean, keep in mind, we lived, you know, thousands of years without social media and people did seem to have exchanges and conversations without social media that had at least a base layer of civility. And I just, I, my fear always, I always felt with social media and comment sections and all this stuff that, you know, when you got people in a room, when you got the actual human beings in a room, there are much more reasonable people. And that always just gave me faith. Like people were just not nasty in real life as they were online and anonymity gave them this cover of being jerks. I'm less convinced of this in 2019. I see the migration of the nastiness that people have online into real life and, you know, Washington and beyond. And yeah, I do feel it's seeping in like those bad chemicals you spoke of. I think it's pervasive in American life. It's weird that heckling at sporting events

has now kind of been replaced by being mean online. Yeah. If you went to a basketball game 30, 40 years ago, you'd hear horrible things and people screaming. And even at the Celtic games, the seats right behind the bench, they're just trying to get on the guy's nerves all game. Now, if you're at a Celtic game,

especially in the playoffs, and you put like surfing, Sully and Murph behind the bench and they're yelling at Jimmy Butler, even if it's totally civil, even if they're just heckling him, being like, Butler, you suck. Hey, Butler, why don't you try to get traded again?

Security will come over and say, you guys have to shut up or you're going to leave. That's what it's like now going to a sporting event. Same thing with people being drunk in the stands. And we've spent so much time and energy trying to curb behavior of people when they're around one another. And then no time and energy whatsoever with the online stuff. And people are online more than they're together. It's true.

You know? It's true. People are online and Apple does that thing where they tell you what your screen time's been this week. Do you have that on your phone? Oh, yes, I do. And it is a scary sight sometimes. It's always upsetting.

And then I'm like, well, I do have a digital media company. I do have to be online. It's not all too conspiratorial word, but they're happy to put the NBA Twitter out there as an example of what Twitter can be. And NBA Twitter is kind of the Shangri-La of Twitter, right? It's like everybody's clever, you know, being a total asshole isn't really tolerated. The players are on it. They're smart. League news travels that way. It just feels like the league is wired onto the program in that kind of civil, interesting, fun, stimulating way that optimally Twitter would be for everything, but it's clearly not. So I think that, like, I saw that he did a thing recently with Adam Silver and Rachel Nichols. I think they're very happy to talk about NBA Twitter anytime possible.

I think there's one key to NBA Twitter that we didn't talk about on that podcast and you didn't just mention. And I just thought of it as you were talking. The NBA players kind of police NBA Twitter to some degree. How so? It's one of the only places where they'll come back at you. Oh, yeah. They'll come back at writers. They'll come back at broadcasters. The NFL guys do it a little bit.

Like we had Derek Carr went after Max Kellerman and wanted to do a UFC fight against him. But it does seem like in basketball, they'll go at the media. Even CJ McCollum, there was some story this week where he was talking about, he mentioned me. He was like, I'm always in trade rumors. Bill Simmons, who's that guy, Bill Simmons?

He's been trying to get me traded for five years. It's like, I haven't been trying to get you traded. It's just fun to make up trades and put people in them. And that was a logical team because they have two guards that are basically, there's some redundancy. But the point is he, if somebody wrote a CJ McCollum slam piece and was like, he's the reason they're losing the Blazers have to get rid of them. CJ McCollum could take that piece, retweet it and be like, look at this clown. He's hating on me again. And then all the CJ McCollum fans would go and jump on that writer. So I do think in a weird way that the NBA players have become the sheriffs of NBA Twitter. It's true. And let's not forget, I think the all-time greatest NBA player response was that

Carmelo Anthony won to a fan about glazed donut eating. Something I probably shouldn't say. I mean, yeah. And this sort of dovetails with a topic that you and Curtis have discussed before, which is that the NBA in 2019, especially when you compare it to the serious stuff that's happening in other leagues. It's happy talk. It's good times. There aren't really eviscerations that are out there. Even the scandals are fun. The stuff that you guys kicked up last year with the Sixers, I mean, you know, obviously rough times for the Sixers front office, but pretty hilarious from the outside. And so, I don't know, it just feels like, you know, if it's entertainment, it would be definitely like sitcom entertainment. Yeah. And even the stuff that could be scandals either

gets swept under the rug or people are afraid to really dig as deep as it needs to go, like the tampering stuff. Sure. Which is a real problem with the league and get Lord only knows what's happening behind closed doors. But for the most part, people, you know, they're not going to dig as deep. It'll be interesting to see what happens the next time Seattle Supersonics leaving the city type situation happens and how people will handle that. Because you can kind of see the seeds

starting to be planted here with New Orleans and how that plays out. My point is the league hasn't had a very league unfriendly story since Sterling. And that was, I would say three and a half years ago, but they went from, they had Donahue. They had, um, the David Stern suspending Amari and those guys, they had the Sonics. Right. They had, uh, the Chris Paul veto. There was always something to get.

Yeah. Mouse had the Chris Paul Vito. There was always something to get. Yeah, Mouse in the Palace. There was always something to flip out about with the NBA. And it just recently has not really happened. Yeah, I mean, even last night, like there was a little tangle in the Jazz Denver game. And like, that just gets played for comic relief now. You know, it just is like, you know, it's instantly like chopped up and, you know,

put on social media in little clips. And that's the other aspect of this, of course, is the NBA was very, very, very shrewd in not policing its copyright. Yeah. And that really changed everything, House of Highlights and beyond. I wonder how much of that has to do with all these different media entities. And I include The Ringer because Lord knows we've beaten it into the ground. Gets 365 days of content a year out of the NBA media entities. And I include the ringer because Lord knows we've, we've beaten it into the ground has gets 365 days of content a year out of the NBA. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's not adversarial. Like the NFL, it's like, nobody likes the NFL, but we kind of need it.

I know it doesn't make me feel great. I always feel like I have to maybe take a shower after every season. There's always something to complain about. One controversy leads to the next one. Now, just recently, we have the referee thing, but it's always something. Nobody's happy with the NFL ever. No one gets mad if you just wail on the NFL as an institution. And what's fascinating is that it's very bipartisan. You have conservatives who are mad at the NFL for this, that, and the other reason, including the chief executive of the United States. And you have progressives who are furious with the NFL about its, you know, lack of action on concussion issues and beyond and

player health and safety. I mean, this is not like some sort of one-sided thing. Everybody likes to pile on. Whereas the NBA, you know, and I'm sure, you know, privately they would thank the NFL for existing because it sets them up as, you know, the smart foil here. But is by contrast, you know, it's hard to come up. You have to look for reasons. I think, frankly, and you'll disagree, I'm sure, but I feel a lot of what drives the creativity and NBA media coverage and a lot of sort of the subplots and storylines that are almost like Marvel comic-like. I think what drives it is that at the end of the day, even now, I know they've had a bumpy season. I think we all agree the Warriors are going to win the finals again. Right.

And, you know, like a movie, you have to have acts and structures and moments of, you know of surprise. And so I think things that would be relatively minor in a hyper-competitive parody league get blown big time out of proportion. Like the amount that people talk, say, let's take the amount of talk that happens about the Timberwolves. Now they've had ups and downs and interesting things happen this season for sure, including the firing of a coach and the departure of a star player.

But the amount of ink that gets spilled about a franchise like that, which has no chance of being competitive in an NBA final, is amazing. It doesn't happen in another league. You don't see people just spending days and days and days talking about the fourth place team in the AL East. Yeah, even in the NFL, Cam Newton was basically playing with a broken shoulder for the last half of the season. And in basketball, that would have felt like it would have been a bigger deal. Yeah. NFL, it's always about, I do feel like the gambling and the fantasy and all that stuff is a much bigger deal. And it's always about what's about to happen. Could this happen? What if this happened? Whereas the NBA does feel a little more player centric. Like even the Oladipo thing yesterday, he goes down and it was like, you know, there were reverberations in the Shangri-La of NBA Twitter, as you felt.

And people feel like they lost a friend. I mean, truly. I mean, you know, he's a very likable guy. There's no question about it. But, you know, he's well, well liked among people who cover the league, but also just fans. I mean, it's hard to, you know, how can you dislike Victor Oladipo? You know, a guy who can sing like Sam Cooke. He's amazing.

He's a great, great player. But how do you, you know, like translate over to another sport? I have no idea. You know, the NFL would love to get a little bit of that. Well, so the reason I want to have you on was you interviewed Warren Beatty, who was the star of Heaven Can Wait, a late 70s movie that is wildly underrated and was way more successful than I think I remembered. I like how you're talking about this like it's a dinosaur dig.

Well, it kind of was, though. No, for sure. But it is fun. It's a 40-year-old film. Have you seen How We Can Wait? No, I'm sorry. Yeah, I don't think anyone under 30 has probably seen it. Warren Beatty was one of the five biggest stars of the 70s and 80s.

When he made a movie, it was a big deal yeah and he decided to make a movie he's at a remake this very famous hollywood story called heaven can wait which is about somebody prematurely dies and now has to go back and they have a chance to go in other people's bodies. So this movie, the last, I don't know, 45 minutes of it ends with, he becomes, or maybe even more than that, the last hour, he becomes the Rams owner, this rich guy who's not that old. Leo Farnsworth.

Yeah, and who decides to start playing quarterback for the team because it's actually Warren Beatty in real life was the Rams quarterback. So he comes back so he can kind of relive his destiny as the Rams QB through the owner, which I feel like the collective bargaining agreement would probably ban now. It is the Jerry Jones dream though, isn't it? But then that ends up not working. Yeah. And then he ends up just randomly, the other Rams quarterback is going to die during the game.

And Warren Beatty goes into that guy's body and wins the Super Bowl. I know this sounds ridiculous. he ends up just randomly, the other Rams quarterback is going to die during the game. And Warren Beatty goes into that guy's body and wins the Super Bowl. I know this sounds ridiculous. It's a great movie. It was nominated for best picture, which I forgot until you wrote that piece. And even more strangely, it's the Rams. The quarterback whose body he inhabited was Tom Jarrett. The quarterback of the Rams right now is Jared Goff. So it's a Jared thing. They're wearing the same uniforms. Same number for Jared and Jared. And it's the only time the Rams ever won the Super Bowl. So the last time when it came out, I think the next year they made the Super Bowl, right? In 1978, the film came out and the 1979 season was when the Rams won the Super Bowl. So that's weird.

They lost, and ironically, lost to the team they beat in Heaven Can Wait. And we should clarify, it's the only time an L.A. Rams team won the Super Bowl. Yes. Yeah, yeah. The St. Louis Rams won. But, yeah, I mean, it is a film and I you know my reader demographic might be a little bit older than the Ringers

so it's been funny to hear from people who are enormous fans of the movie I did not have an appreciation as you know

like you said about it was a huge box office hit I think it made close to 100 million dollars nine Academy Award nominations there are just all stars abounding

yeah Beatty co-wrote the script with Elaine May yes the one and only Elaine May Academy Award nominations. They're just all-stars abounding. Beatty co-wrote the script with Elaine May, the one and only Elaine May who worked with Mike Nichols forever. It was co-directed with Buck Henry, who is also in the film as one of the heavenly escorts. You have James Mason, Charles Grodin, Diane Cannon, Julie Christie, Jack Warden,

Deacon Jones, Real Life, Rams, Jack Warden, Deacon Jones, real life Rams, Hall of Famer Deacon Jones, a young Bryant Gumbel. Oh yeah. It's incredible. Dick Enberg is in it. It is this great time capsule of sort of seventies LA too. I mean, there are some amazing shots of, you know, I hate seeing a bike accident captured on film, you should know, but there's an amazing Malibu scene at the beginning of the film. The first 20 minutes, he's living in Malibu and it's like this old school 70s Malibu that gets worked in there. But then you get like the whole Bel Air part of the 70s and the Coliseum. And the Coliseum, exactly. And he told this great story, Beatty, about how, you know, so this was 1970s L.A. Rams.

And he said to me, this wasn't in the piece, and I don't know whether or not to believe him. He's very political and, you know, literally and figuratively, Beatty. But he said 1970s Rams was on par with early Showtime Lakers. They did make the playoffs seven years in a row in L.A. in the 1970s. They had some really great teams. Carol Rosenblum died suddenly in 1979. The owner of the Rams, Georgia Frontier,

his wife was sort of a groundbreaker in terms of a female owner in sports. Seven-time divorcee, right? Or widower. She was married seven times. I think that's true. Yeah. Which was its own thing. And there was sort of this sizzle. And it's sort of funny to think of someone talking about the Coliseum as sort of the glamour days of the Coliseum, but it's, you know, it's true. And they filmed the movie, they filmed the Super Bowl scenes, which are, you know, another part of it underrated is that, you know, they got all the licensing, you know, in the olden days, that was hard to do, get everybody on board. So it's the real Rams and the real Steelers.

They come out and they shoot those scenes at halftime of a real Rams game. So the Rams are actually playing a game that go in after the second quarter. And then all of a sudden the baby Rams come out into the field and they don't do an announcement to the fans like, oh, folks, we have a movie going on. We just stay in your seats and clap and cheer. They just are kind of like doing it. And fans are utterly confused as to why there's suddenly a Pittsburgh Steelers team on the field and they're doing these long bomb passes and so on and so forth. But, you know, that's another part of this is that, you know, movies were filmed in a completely different way back then, too. Nowadays, most of it would be CGI.

And I would say it holds up reasonably well as a football scene. It's not any given Sunday, but it's pretty solid. Beatty's good. Yeah. I mean, you had in that piece that he wasn't sure if he was going to run all the football plays. He had the backup in place, the stunt person, basically. And then he ended up doing all of them. He's shockingly good. And I watched this movie. This is one of those movies I always get sucked into if I'm flipping channels. And he's shockingly

good. And he's really, I don't know, he's a little Drew Brees-ish, I guess. Because although in the piece you had that he was almost 6'2". He's almost 6'2", 185. So he's taller than Drew Brees. Here's a fun fact. When they made the movie, he was 41. Yeah. Like another quarterback. Like TB.

Nice. The other thing with that movie, it's incredible Jack Worden. Jack Worden who didn't age for like 30 years, but that's probably my favorite Jack Worden movie. Yes. He's the assistant coach who's good buddies with the quarterback who dies, Beatty's character. Yes. And then Julie Christie throwing like 105 miles an hour. One of the best actresses and one of the best looking actresses of that decade.

And she was dating Beatty in real life. So there's like this weird sexual tension. She had broken up with him before the film, I believe. And so they kept it professional. I mean, who knows? But I mean, I think they had broken up by the time they had started the film. By the way, is this just some sort of stealth executive order rewatchables that you're doing, bypassing fantasy? Is this what's going on here?

Yeah, it kind of was. It's like a little on-the-side mistress of the rewatchables. Because, again, I'm not sure how many people have seen it, but I do feel like it's aged nicely. It's dated, but not really. It's not a sports movie, pure. It's not.

It's not. It's basically a rom-com, but not really. It's not a sports movie. It's not. It's not. Yeah. It's basically a rom-com but not really. It is. And if you want to see something funny, if you go onto YouTube and you Google the trailer for it, there is not one hint

of football. It's as if an executive and maybe an executive did say, if you put football in this film, nobody's going to see it. it also speaks to the star power that he had at

the time oh yeah he pulled this movie off believably and uh and it's kind of insane but believably at 41 this is right after shampoo yes i'm trying to think like what other what other actors like burt reynolds obviously could have done it he played football in college and he usually could have been in this part sure other than that i don't i mean maybe costner i mean yeah you have dennis quaid when you get a little there are all kinds of lists of great you know cinematic quarterbacks from the johnny utah's to the you know so on and so forth and mac davis north dallas 40 and and stuff. But they have to carry the movie part of this. This is the best film, right?

It's a multi-dimensional film. And also like, you know, this is going to sound really rewatchable-y, but like it's a kind of film that just doesn't get made anymore. You know, it's a romantic comedy. It's not small. It's big because there are big people in it.

There's like big scenes and like big camera takes and so on like that. But it's very small it's big because there are big people in it there's like big scenes and like big camera takes and so on like that but it's very light on its feet it looks like it's like or it sounds like it's almost the first draft of a script and i mean that in a good way it's not like overwritten yeah it's like clever and sharp and that's sort of also a signature of like elaine may um it really crackles and i'm surely dating myself, but I think it definitely holds up as what we are leaving out the most significant little bit of trivia from this film. Yeah. Which is the first choice to play the part of Joe Pendleton in Heaven Can Wait,

which was Beatty wanted Muhammad Ali. Yeah. I didn't know that until I read your piece. That was right as Ali had beaten Spinks, I think. Yes. And it is a remake, importantly. Heaven Can Wait is a remake of a 1941 movie called Here Comes Mr. Jordan, in which effectively the same plot, but instead of a quarterback, it's a boxer. And so Beatty is reworking this film. And like everybody of that era, they think Muhammad Ali is the greatest person on earth,

which he was undeniably the most charismatic human, uh, and wanted him to do the part. And, you know, who would, who would have thought, you know,

you didn't put in the piece. Um, none of us will ever forgive Chris Rock for remaking this. Yes. What is the name of the one that he did? Was it down to earth? So it was so bad. Nobody even remembers that he remaking this. Yes. What is the name of the one that he did? Was it Down to Earth? It was so bad, nobody even remembers that he remade it.

It's still sitting there. You'd probably have to do a different sport again. Yeah. Because I still feel like, I don't like remaking anything that is still 100,000% rewatchable, which this movie is. But there's ways to do this

and maybe you could change the sex and make make a female lead and do it that way and um make her a tennis player or something i don't know well i'm really gonna sound like sean fantasy but i couldn't help but think that watching this i couldn't help but think of reminders of the of star is born of the bradley cooper i mean bradley cooper is sort of pursuing this kind of baby-esque career right it's like he's the writer he's the director he's the star he can do all these things he's so good looking he inspires envy men want to be him you know that kind of thing and yeah there's definitely vibes to that as well and if you did if you executed a star is born style remake, because think about it, the time difference. Star is Born with Christopherson was 76.

Same thing. It was 40 plus years. And it was the same thing when they remade this movie. And I do feel like when they remade this movie, it was part of the movie was that this was such a famous movie originally. Yes. Everybody had wanted to remake it for years and years. And I think a Star is Born was kind of like that too.

The Streisand-Christopherson thing. It was way in the rear of your mirror at that point. I think I'm okay with somebody remaking this again, but I'd want to spend. You know, the other thing, this is always a rewatchables category. Could this be a Netflix series? I actually think this would be a pretty good Netflix series.

You get 10 episodes out of this. Isn't that Scott Bakula's series? Is that he just kind of goes from- Quantum Leap? That's not it, is it? No, that's not the plot of Quantum Leap, is it? The Quantum Leap, every episode, he goes to a different year to stop things, right?

Gotcha, but he doesn't change bodies. No, he doesn't change bodies, but he goes back in time to stop nephew Kyle from trying marijuana in upstate New York in 1998 or whatever. In 2005. Come on, dude. 2006, 2007. Adherence.

Yeah, no. Heaven can wait. He could just keep trying out bodies and it could go a couple episodes and then something bad could happen. He could try to be an agent. Yeah. something bad could happen. He could try to be an agent. He could try to be the editor of the LA Times and just have these different jobs so that it doesn't work out. While I have you,

you're a Massachusetts guy. I don't know if Kyle is, but your thoughts, what's your dad saying about the legalization in Massachusetts? My mom sends me an article every day. Everybody's cool with it. Everybody's like, whatever brings more money into the state, we're all good with. Would you have been packing into the car and driving out to

Northampton on the weekends to go to these random places? I mean, I was there when you had to have connections in New Hampshire, and you had to like make the ride. Now the thought of just being able to go, you know, a block from the garden, buy some weed, it's kind of crazy. I don't know where this goes. It does feel like this is the unraveling of something, but I don't know what, and I don't know if it's a bad thing or a good thing. One question I have is that in Nevada, it's legal now, of course, and they've really built up a lot of infrastructure around the strip. There are a lot of stores. I wrote about this a while ago. When did the casinos start putting in their own places? Because the casinos,

there's never a buck that they don't want to grab. And when do you start seeing little smoke places in the casinos? Well, the casinos, it's always in their interest for their clients to be fucked up in some way. And never leave. Or compromised. And never walk outside. They don't want you to leave, ever. Being stoned would be the best of that. If they had somebody stoned at a blackjack table for six hours, they'd sign up for that.

Just be too stoned to realize you're losing $10,000. It'd be great. Yeah, I don't know where this goes, but I thought Gladwell's piece was really interesting. Yeah. Because I do feel like pot hits people different ways. And it doesn't hit everyone the same way. Alcohol, for the most part, hits people. If you have four drinks, pretty much everyone's going to be compromised at that point.

I think pot's a little harder to figure out. I know some people who just have a hollow leg for it. It's fascinating. I won't say if little harder to figure out. I know some people who just have a hollow leg for it. It's fascinating if you go to any of these. I won't say if it's you, Kyle. It is fascinating if you go to any of these legit places, and you have them now in California, of course. It's going to be a profession like a sommelier. There are going to be marijuana sommeliers who are going to be able to,

you know, when I went to the place in Nevada, I went before the Mayweather-McGregor fight. You know, I said, look, you know, I'm old. I'm getting old. I'm a dad. I don't want to be like, you know, running around with my shirt off. Like, you know, what do I need? And they know what you need. But it is not just, you not just one size fits all.

And that's going to be really neat to see how that evolves. I like when people are sommeliers of weird things. Because Cabot's, one of my favorite restaurants in America, Newton, Massachusetts, which is like this kind of semi-fancy ice cream diner, just done the best it could possibly do. But they have like 30, 35 flavors of ice cream. And they used to have this guy, I used to call him the sommelier.

He would come over and be like, can I recommend you something in a pistachio? I love, he knew so much about the ice cream, you could ask him questions. And I think if Pot had that version of the Cabot's ice cream sommelier, I would be super excited about that. Sommelier, is it sommelier or sommelier? I would say somm, but it's Sommelier. Well, there was a great story in the

Boston Globe yesterday about how they had a, like a lot of places, they had a lot of bad weather over the weekend and they knew they had a big storm coming in on Saturday and into Sunday and the Pats game was on Sunday afternoon. And there was a run on the marijuana stores in the same way like Trader Joe's gets cleaned out of milk and eggs, the pot store is all cleaned out of weed because people just needed it to make sure. It was like an emergency supply. Wow. We're really headed toward great places. Yeah.

I'm excited for all of this. Let me ask you one other thing. Yeah. And you can cut this out if you want. The symmetry. the Brady Super Bowl with the Rams, it is a very nice walk-away moment. I've given up predicting his career. I mean, it just is so defiant to everything we know

about football quarterbacks. But were they to win, and you were his consigliere, would you advise him? You know what? And it's hard, I know, for you to say consigliere and not just fan, but would you advise him to quit? I think he's staying until he's 45. He's thrown that number out multiple times over the last three years. And I think that's the number he has in his head. And I think he wants to create basically two plus decades of something that's just never been done because he's already the goat, you know? And it's funny because like Rogers was playing well for a little bit and people are like, oh, Rogers might be the goat. It's like, what are you guys talking about? We already solved

this in the Atlanta Superbowl. But every time he does this, he just distances himself further and further. But beyond that, even beyond the legacy thing, I think he does care about that a little bit. That's why I did the Tom versus time thing. I think he just likes competing. I really do. I think the great ones, as long as they have that hunger, you know, if you watch the way he played in that game, how he reacted on the sidelines, what he was like in the locker room. I always go and watch the Patriots, the footage of Mr. Kraft greeting everybody and Brady walking around hugging people. Seeing him on the podium, he just fucking loves it. And you don't walk away

when you love it that much. So I don't see it. Unless there's an injury, I think he keeps going until something happens. But at the same time, I truly believe everybody in his family, everybody in his family wants him to quit. And have you noticed that Tom has made a big point these days of like saying hello to his wife and to his family? Oh, his wife definitely wants him to quit. Yeah. Well, he had two concussions in two seasons in a row. And it's kind of like saying like, look, you know, like my head's still screwed on. Like everything's okay. And it's just sort of funny how he's been

like this kind of wacky guy at the end of the games and, you know, making sure to acknowledge his family. Yeah, I think there's a great deal of pressure behind the scenes for him to step aside. You think she just screams at him in Brazilian? It's time to walk away. You need to wash it up. You hang it up.

That is the worst Brazilian accent. Yeah, I didn't even know what that was. I don't know. You think she's like the Adrian in Rocky III? I mean. What do we have? We've got money. We've got cars.

What else do we need? I think for sure one thing that they are planning, and I think this is a couple's plan is I think that they see themselves as modern day anti-aging gurus. I think that they are going to be people who will be in public life for a long time as this is how you extend your life. And this is how you stay beautiful. And this is how you do this. I remember being in the Prudential Center a year or two ago, and there's this giant billboard of him next to a giant billboard of her for some Under Armour project. And I think there's a whole plan there to make themselves some sort of model for beauty and aging.

I hope it doesn't turn out like his version of Goop. That would be, I wouldn't sign up for that. Mays wrote about the first Pats Ram Super Bowl and made the point there's a Brady scramble in there and he's just more coordinated and agile now. And I think it's, he's talked about this. He's completely retrained his body, how to run. And you know, a lot of what he does is like building up your core, but also like if you're doing, if you're running motion or the way you jump or the way you throw is actually counterproductive to the way it should be, you can retrain it to some degree. Which is what Steph Curry did too, by the way, with his ankles.

Because the way he used to run was bad for his ankles and he retrained his brain to communicate to his body how to move. And that's what Brady did. And if you watch Brady at age 41 moving around, it's weirdly a little more coordinated than age 24. So from that standpoint, it does seem like he's still trying to improve. But I do feel like he has, you know, I felt like the era was over just because of the supporting cast he had of, if you're down by four with two minutes left, how is he going to go 80 yards?

We just don't have the weapons anymore. How's he going to do this? And what you realize is his brain is still so fast. He's just like, oh, the Chiefs are doing this. All right, Julian, I'll hit you over here. Oh, let's put Gronk down there. I'll hit Gronk, do this. And I don't know when that,

that might go to at least 45. It really might. I mean, by the way, all the Patriots haters are flinging themselves off of cliffs right now. But I do think- I'm sorry they don't like greatness. I'm sorry.

But you were saying throughout the season, and I actually thought you were full of it, where you were saying like, I think, you know, like, or maybe you weren't saying this until later, but that there was maybe a rope-a-dope happening

that he was holding on to something for the postseason in the way that I was hoping that I was you were hoping that okay I think it became clear after the first

playoff game I think that was true I think it's quite clear and I think that like especially you watching those games during the regular season I mean it's not like I went

back and looked at them but like he was just unloading the ball if he was in trouble he didn't want to get hit it just did It's not like I went back and looked at them, but he was just unloading the ball if he was in trouble. He didn't want to get hit. Like, why screw around? And a handful of those losses were close losses. You have the absurd

Dolphins thing, and I think they just like their chances when the games matter. They feel like the infrastructure, they know they have a chance to get the bye because they have seized. And then the infrastructure of oh we're going against the Chargers so we're going to play seven defensive backs

on defense and they're just going to do it again this week yeah we'll figure that out please come in and do that again so you know we'll see the Rams anytime they have two weeks they always have some good wrinkles the thing with the Rams is they

really kind of do the same thing all the time offensively. I'm interested to see if they use more tight ends and they try to mix things up. Because if you're going to just do the, this is what brought us here, we're doing it, that's when Belichick goes to town. Yeah, I will be very disappointed if Sean McVay doesn't have something a little special. Oh, he'll use tight ends. I'm sure he will. I think that sort of creativity will be one of the reasons this will be an interesting game.

I mean, you want... I think he's one of these people who appreciates the sort of moment of what he's in and is going to show you why he's who he is. Well, if Jared Goff gets knocked out and the backup quarterback comes in and is throwing BBs, that'll be weird. I'm so glad you mentioned this because a reader sent this to me today.

If Heaven Can Wait is made in 2019, he can't inhabit the body of Tom Jarrett because Tom Jarrett's in concussion protocol. True. He's in the blue tent. You're right. He's in there. He's taken out of the game. So he goes into the dead body of a quarterback

who is not allowed to return to the game. So the whole thing goes completely out the window. He'd have to teach himself how to pass the concussion test before he goes into the body. He'd have to talk to Jack Ward and get the sense. Jason Gay, we can read you in the Wall Street Journal. Check out the Heaven Can Wait piece. It's really fascinating.

I love that Beatty's 81 and still seemed like he was super proud of his football in the movie. That was my big thing. Very, very much. Very, very much. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Bye-bye. All right. All right, we're going to talk Oscars with Wesley Morris in a second. First, speaking of Wesley, he works for the New York Times. If you're listening to this podcast,

you've already figured out smart ways to spend your time. Here's another one. The New York Times crossword app, a fun, clever way to stay sharp. Every day there's a new puzzle, a new opportunity to challenge yourself and play. And now with the mini crossword, you can squeeze in a game in just a couple minutes. Each mini puzzle stimulating, quick, more important, fun. Play by yourself or challenge your friends, then post your best times to share the satisfaction that comes from solving, whether you have downtime,

discover wordplay every day. It's time well spent. I'm actually going somewhere this weekend. I'm going to be in the car messing around with the Crossword app. The problem is, once I go down that sinkhole, Kyle, I get super competitive.

You get cranky, yeah. I get competitive. I don't do as well. I'm still doing it. Screw it. Download the New York Times crossword app right now at nytimes.com slash mini. All right, we are going to get to our friend, Wesley. Here he is.

On the line, my former Grandland teammate, Pulitzer Prize winner, now at the New York Times, Wesley Morris. The Oscar nominations came out this week. I was under the impression for the last two months that A Star is Born was going to be the favorite that was going to be leading all these categories, had a chance for a sweep. And now you look at the nominees for the betting odds, and it is not the favorite for really any category. What happened to A Star is Born? I don't know.

I have no idea. I feel like it's a total mystery to me. You know, I feel like it's one of those things where it might have come out too early. I mean, that's where we are now, where the attention span for these things is just, where it might have come out too early. Oh. I mean, that's where we are now, where the attention span for these things is just, it's so tiny, that window.

And I think that, I don't know. It's just so, I'm just thinking about this. It's just so strange. I think one thing that didn't help was that Green Book kind of came along and it spoke to people in this totally perverse way and seemed to be about something that people in general could feel better about than this woman becoming a recording star and this other guy dying so she could become that recording star. It just, I mean, if you think about it, it really is kind of a grim movie. Um, and Bradley Cooper is not pretending that it's, that it, that it,

that it's happy. Uh, but here's the thing though, with what you said about how it, maybe it came out too early. It's not like the wife has a ton of momentum. It's not like I'm at restaurants and people being like, Hey man,

what'd you think of the wife? Nobody's even seen that movie. And Roma, I know some people love it. I also know some people who tried to watch it and couldn't finish it. I know some people who half watched it while they did other things. It's not like those movies have captured America's imagination, it almost seems like people, people didn't want a star is born to kind of be the movie. So they just started looking for other things that could kind of fill its spot. So it wouldn't get the credit. And it started with the golden globes. That movie to me was like, I think the golden globes are ridiculous. I don't take them seriously, but I thought if any, I'm glad you said it. Well, but I thought if any movie was tailor-made for the

Golden Globes, it would have been A Star is Born. That's like everything they want. They want celebrities and big high profile things and successful movies get rewarded more there. And then when it got snubbed there, I was like, wow, this is weird. Does any of it have to do with Bradley Cooper being an actor who directed it and people kind of like rubbing, you know, looking down on their noses at that? I, you know, I'm inclined to always be cynical about who wins the Golden Globes

and the idea that Bohemian Rhapsody was the movie that won. Because we're not talking about any of it, like a serious front runner at that point. We're talking about a very, very bad music movie beating a good one. Right. With, yeah, beating a good one that actually had more star power. Not to mention, the director of the very bad movie got fired with three weeks to go and

had the most bad buzz around him probably of just about anybody in Hollywood. And then some of it came out this week. All of it was shocking to me because I'm with you. My family loved Bohemian Rhapsody. I thought it was totally watchable. Millions and millions of people do love Bohemian Rhapsody. It's a hugely successful movie. I get it.

I get it. But it's not a good movie. No. No. I get why people liked it. It's a hugely successful movie. I get it. I get it. But it's not a good movie. No. No. I get why people liked it. It's entertaining. It's fun to have on. It's fun to watch Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury.

But, I mean, it took a lot of factual liberties that were beyond the normal course of factual liberties. But did you... And it wasn't a good movie. Did you even think Rami Malek was good? Uh, I was impressed that he was able to successfully do scenes and do singing scenes with the, with those chompers.

Yeah. I mean, they saddled him with the biggest set of chompers I've ever seen in my life. It's like, could they have toned those things down? If you're going to bend everything factually in the movie anyway, could you make his teeth a little more manageable?

Yeah, I just, I mean, I don't even know where to start with all the things I dislike so intensely about that movie. I, it just really, it really just makes me angry. And you know what the other interesting thing is, if you ever, if you've ever seen Freddie Mercury do anything and then you watch this movie, you really don't even want to know the Freddie Mercury story. If you're not going to tell it with any sort of remotely interesting sense of drama or, um, character development. I mean, it's just, it is, it is, it is a bunch of, of plot points in search of,

it just meant to sort of become a ladder to get to you to live aid basically. It is a bunch of plot points in search of, just meant to sort of become a ladder to get you to Live Aid, basically. Right, which then they bent the truth on Live Aid, too. I mean, it's really amazing all the stuff they did. We wrote about The Ringer. Lots of people have written about it. But usually you're used to people bending the facts, and this was like, they basically changed

really basic things that happened. They're just like, ah, fuck it. Let's do this instead. But the problem is for somebody like my son who loved the movie, who watched it five times, who is fascinated by Queen, who watches Live Aid on YouTube, and just really enjoys their songs. Now he thinks that's the Freddie Mercury story. So whether that's irresponsible or Berger story. Whether that's irresponsible

or not, I don't know, but I have an 11 year old son now who thinks that's exactly what happened with Freddie Berger's life. I don't know if that's great. To be fair to how bad the movie is, it is actually so bad that you really don't learn anything about Freddie Berger. That's true.

You learn he might have liked women, but not really for about three years. Right. I mean, you don't really learn anything about anything. And so I actually think I'm fine with your son having this quote version unquote of Freddie Mercury be his Freddie Mercury, because basically that means the songs are so good that they'll wind up being the story anyway. Well, but that's the great thing about that they'll wind up being the story anyway. But that's the great thing about that movie and why I will actually defend it. It turned people who either didn't know that much about Queen or people who liked Queen years ago and forgot about them or never thought about them.

It kind of revived their music and how good it was. And how original he was. Like, I still feel like he's top four or five all time for people you'd want as your lead singer of a band in an 80,000 seat stadium. So it revived all that. And I think that part's cool. And I think it's cool that the Live Aid concert

and, you know, and it was fun. It was fun to go see in the theater. It was like watching, when I was growing up. What was that Beatles ripoff thing they had? Beatlemania? Oh, yeah, sure. It was kind of like Beatlemania. It was just like, hey, if you like Queen, here's a movie with some Queen songs.

And it's not going to be very good. But people wanted it. They liked it. Yeah. So anyway, that atrocity is the movie that won the Golden Globe. And, you know, the way to be cynical about it, or like a version of cynical, like, just think about this is a movie

that didn't even have a director. Right. And the director that it did have is now, we now can actually confirm because it's been printed, you know, as a sort of really disgusting sex life. Yeah, horrible, horrible stuff. And I just, I don't know.

I think that this is going to be a very interesting Best Picture race, if only because there's no clear frontrunner at this point, although technically based on what wound up happening, what's been happening to Green Book has basically made it a sort of de facto front runner. And the thing that you could have said about about Stars Born is that, you know, if Bradley Cooper had been Best Director,

if he had been nominated for Best Director, you could tell the story that, like, Stars Born could still win, you know, the story that like the stars born could still win, you know, the top two or the top three or four Oscars. Right. Yeah. Um,

but now you can't even do that because he doesn't have a best director nomination. I think you made an awesome point about how queen didn't have a director for the last three weeks of the shoot. And basically more than that, cause there were other days when he, Brian singer just disappeared. It would be like if the Warriors won the title without a coaching staff, which they wouldn't be able to do. And Bohemian Rhapsody wins the Golden Globe and

doesn't even have a director for like 35% of the movie, which is fine. The Golden Globes are ridiculous. I don't really care. Anybody who gets upset about the Golden Globes, there's something wrong with you. But now it's nominated for Best Picture. And then it's like, all right, what the fuck is going on now? We're going to nominate this for Best Picture? Are you kidding me?

Ludicrous. Wait, but Bill, here's the thing about the Golden Globes though. Like they actually, we don't want to believe they matter, but they obviously do, right? There's no way it gets nominated. If it doesn't win the golden globe for best picture,

it does not get nominated for the Oscar. I don't think. And it, and it's certainly, I have no way of proving this. They've only expanded the categories eight, nine years ago. This is the worst movie that's ever been nominated for best picture.

Ooh. Ever. There can't be a worse movie. There can't. Let me think about this. You mean in this new system? You mean? I think maybe ever. I'd want to go through all the

movies ever to see if there's ever been a worse best picture movie. Nobody's ever going to beat Crash. Nobody. I mean, Bohemian Rhapsody really is quite, quite, quite, quite bad. But it doesn't satisfy that visceral loathing

for the people who main it that Crash does. Right? If I see Brendan Fraser on the street, I have so many nice things to say about him, but I'm also going to be like, you were in Crash. Yeah, but can I gently push back on this? Of course.

Crash helped heal racism in America. There's before Crash and after Crash. After Crash came out, I think everything got a lot better. I think we all understood each other. There's definitely no Obama if there's no Crash. Crash led to Obama. Led to eight years of Yes We Can. We saw Crash.

We saw Matt Dillon saving... Who did he save? Thandie Newton? Thandie Newton, that's correct. When he saved her, that opened the door for the Obama presidency. People don't... It doesn't get the credit for that. Bohemian Rhapsody as a best

picture nominee is just flabbergasting. What else? The other thing that's funny is if you tell people that it's a bad movie, they get mad at you. Like my, my wife and my kids were like, what are you talking about? Bohemian Rhapsody is great. I'm like, all right, it's entertaining, but it's not a good movie. They're like, why? Why are you such a snob? Why do you have to be such a snob about it? I'm like, I've watched movies my whole life. It's not a good movie. Stop.

So anyway, that's not a great movie. I get people like Freddie Mercury and it's really more a tribute to him and his stardom and his power. I think that's the defensiveness about the movie too. If you say something bad about Bohemian Rhapsody, you actually are dancing on Freddie Mercury's grave. And I think the movie is dancing

on Freddie Mercury's grave. So I think we're good there. Right. Well, now it's like, just make the terrible Michael Jackson movie. That'll get nominated for best picture too. Just have somebody put the Jericho hairdo on and do whatever you need to do and CGI the moonwalk and we're good to go and just lie about everything and blow out the Pepsi explosion,

make that seem like his life was in danger. Let's go. Let's make it. Bill, I've got some bad news for you about our friend MJ. Yeah. The SHIT is about to go down. Oh, I know. Yeah, the HBO doc. Yeah. It's not going to be good. I've seen it.

It is convincing. Yeah. It's not great. It's convincing. Well, FYI, the Vanity Fair stuff years ago was also convincing. People choose to remember what they want to remember. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where like hearing the two kids, the two men now, talk about their experience with him. Anyway, I doubt we're going to get a Michael Jackson movie now. Well, listen, if Bryan Singer can get fired from a movie

three weeks before the end of the shoot and it gets nominated anyway as all the shit's going down with him, I'll believe anything. Green Book, I think the poster should say catnip for 70-year-old white men. What do you think? I would support that.

I would definitely support that. Although, I have to be honest with you, I think everybody who sees this movie of a certain, both a certain generation and a certain willingness to just suspend all skepticism, this movie will work for them.

And I have now seen this movie three times, twice, with paying audiences. And the clapping and laughing and cheering at this movie is just, it really is, it makes me so jealous because I really wish I could not, I wish I could, I wish I could feel what these people are feeling, but I know too much and have too many feelings and have been at this movie

too many previous times for it to ever really work on me in the way that it works on people for whom it works. Well, right now it is plus 375 to win best picture. What does that mean? So that means it has the second best odds. Roma is basically even. If you bet $110 and it wins, you win $100 back plus your original bet. Roma, Green Book is 4 to 1.

And then Stars Born is plus 450. So that's basically you bet $100, you win 450 if that wins. Green Book is four to one. And then Star is Born is plus 450. So that's basically you bet $100, you win 450 if that wins. Everything else is 10 to one or worse. After the Patriots game on Sunday, my Uncle Bob came here for his 70th birthday with my Uncle Don and my dad. Uncle Bob? Uncle Bob is the best. Uncle Bob's 70.

My dad's 71. Uncle Don's in his early 60s. And they watch Green Book with my wife as I was recording my podcast with Sal. And I come in and they're really into it and they don't want to talk. And it finishes, they're like, that was great. That was great. Is that going to win Best Picture? And I was like, actually, probably not. Because there's this whole, you know, there's this problem where, um,

minorities, um, hate the movie. And, uh, and they were like, what, why? Like they just didn't, they didn't understand it. And I, and I think it's, it's the old, you used to, were you the one who created this, the magical Negro? Was that, were you the one who wrote about that? I've written about it, yes. You wrote a big Grantland piece about it, but I can't remember what movie it was.

The classical Magical Negro is Michael Clark Duncan in Green Mile, but I don't know what it was actually attached to. I mean, but, you know, it's a long trope of just exceptional black people who are like literally magical black people in the movies. Well, remember that Legend and Bagger of Vance was another classic. Yes. Yes. That is another classical. If you could just meet a magical Will Smith, he'd be better at golf. Could really carry him the rest of the way.

And teach him about some stuff too. Yeah, it does seem like this recurring theme. As you're, well, anyway, what was your biggest problem with the movie? I'm going to Google who came up with. I mean, before I even talk about my problems with the movie, I want to talk about the idea that what people like about it. Because I think that it's important to note, and this does not come up too often when people talk about all their issues with this movie. I think that it's worth talking about the fact that it's made by Peter Farrelly. And Peter Farrelly knows how to make a movie, A.

And B, he knows how to make a movie a and B he knows how to make comedy. And at the end of the day, this movie is, is basically a, it's basically a fairly brothers movie with, you know, civil rights era seasoning. Yeah. And all of the beats in the movie that are,

I mean, I think the ending of this movie is perfect. I think the last line that that said in the movie and the last shot is perfect i think there are two scenes or two two little two editing bits this movie was nominated for best editing which i think it in a weird way deserved um it there are two cuts that are just very funny cuts and one of them involves a car reversing to pick something up that was thrown out of it. And the other cut is to, I can't remember what the other cut is. There's another really funny cut.

It's constructed to be like a road comedy. And it's constructed to have a sort of moral gravitas so that things you're laughing at are there's some they're like more than they're more than funny yeah and there's a kind of human resonance the developing between these two men and if it's developing between these two men it's developing between these two characters and the audience. And I think people love watching loud Italian people in the way that they love watching Kevin Hart in other movies do a loud black person thing. People love a vulgar Italian.

And in this movie- By the way, I agree with this because I've been rewatching The Sopranos and it's just so much fun to have all those people back in my life. And it's really not that dissimilar. Anyway, keep going. Well, and I think that it just, the things that is satisfying are so constant and there's such parts of our movie going live that, you know, really all Viggo Mortensen is doing is his

vulgar Italian is playing Kevin Hart. You could Hart. If you didn't reverse the races in this movie, and you just made... I mean, it is driving Miss Daisy. It is basically pretty much the same movie is driving Miss Daisy, right down to the fried chicken scene. Yeah. I think that some of the perverse pleasure of the film is the movie thinks it's progressive in some way because it's found this reversal of not the cast system because the cast system remains in place. The reason Viggo Mortensen has to drive Mahershala Ali's character, Don Shirley, through the Deep South is because the cast system won't allow Don Shirley to basically drive himself because he'd be killed before he even got to the first stop. And so Beagle Mortensen sort of works as both a bodyguard and a chauffeur and a personal assistant.

And the comedy is supposed to come from the reversal of the class dynamic and the race dynamic, right? Like, you know, driving Miss Daisy, it's Morgan Freeman driving Jessica Tandy. Now Jessica Tandy is Mahershala Ali and Morgan Freeman is Viggo Mortensen. And Viggo Mortensen is basically playing like this vulgar Negro, you know, this sort of like big mouth loud. I mean, he is simultaneously an Italian type, but under the circumstances, what we're supposed to be seeing when we see Viggo Mortensen is this nasty, foul-mouthed Italian guy is a Negro. And that is the comedy of the fried chicken sequence, in which Viggo Mortensen's character basically can't believe that Mahershala Ali's character has never had fried chicken and doesn't apparently know how to eat fried chicken.

And it's like what's appalling about that sequence is simultaneously obvious in some ways. But it also is very complicated. The thing we're supposed to be laughing at or the thing we're laughing at is, you know, hey, this black guy doesn't know anything about fried chicken. But the complicated part is he is supposed to be a black person who can be more than a black person who likes fried chicken. But the movie, what it thinks is funny is the fact that this black guy is so estranged from his blackness that he hasn't had fried chicken. It's so weird! That's pretty funny.

By the way, Spike Lee was the one who created the term Magical Negro, or Popularist, I should say, in 2001, because he was doing college campuses. This is right after the Green Mile and The Legend of Bagger and Vance. And he had selfish reasons for it, because driving Miss Daisy, do the right thing, 1989, that whole thing. Right, yeah. But here's the thing about the Green Book.

It's the Green Book. It's Green Book. Green Book. No articles. Can I call it the Green Book? I think it's funnier. Yes. Here's the thing about the Green Book.

It's a good movie. I get why people have problems with it, but in the moment, if I'm just like, all right, I'm turning a movie on, I'm going into this world. I want to see good actors. Tell me a story. I want to feel some attachment. I want to see characters change. Like it does hit all the beats. What gets more complicated is the stuff like what you just talked about. It's, it's one of those movies where in the moment, it's like, oh yeah, it's pretty good. And then you're thinking about it after and you're like, oh man.

Oh, wait a second. And then you talk yourself out of it within an hour. Well, the problem with the, how did you put it? Like somebody changes, like a character changes? Yeah, it's like a classic, like the Rain Man trope of Tom Cruise. He's a dick.

He's a narcissist. But his autistic brother taught him how to care about other people and be a good brother. Right. But in this case, Rain Man is Don Shirley. It's the Mahershala Ali character. Yeah. And Tom Cruise is Viggo Mortensen, right? Yes. And it requires, I mean, oh, God.

The most depressing thing about this movie is that it really does work. And so you are able to watch it. It 100% works. Yes. You are able to watch it as a movie and not think about all of the problems that it presents. The biggest problem for me is it spends 15 minutes establishing what a racist life this guy lives, right? These repairmen are in his house, and when he wakes up from having had a rough night at work, he wakes up to the men in his family, in his extended family, being over his apartment to protect his wife because two black repairmen are in the kitchen with her. And they make these jokes about, you know, these two sacks of coal

doing whatever they come, they've come to the house to fix. And she gives them glasses of water and he sees that they've, they've had, they've, you know, drunk from these glasses of water. And he, he, when she's in the, in the living living room goes in the kitchen and puts the two glasses in the trash can and you spend 15 minutes watching this world unfold and then you so you know you know where this guy is coming from yeah before he meets don shirley but you never have a moment where Don truly experiences the racism that Tony Lip is very much a part of. And so that's, to me, why that final shot, that final sequence is so heartbreaking. You have this guy who is utterly alone, has this Indian ballet, right, this Indian basically assistant, Manny This Indian, basically, assistant,

Manny, I don't know what we call him. I'd call him a valet. And he gets back from the trip, sends that guy home for Christmas, and is sitting there thinking about who he can spend his Christmas with. And he does not pick his Indian assistant to go spend Christmas with him.

It's just such a weird choice. The thing that the movie is valorizing. He should go spend his Christmas with his racist family. It's just... Ugh! But you really liked The Star Is Born. I liked it.

Oh, stop it. Don't be a dick. Don't be a dick. Don't get too artsy fartsy on me here I'm not going to be artsy fartsy on you give me a better seven minutes in a movie this whole year than her going to the first concert and Cooper bringing her on stage it's fucking gold

it's a great seven minutes it's a great movie moment that movie is filled with really good movie moments. And the entirety of the movie, I definitely think the first hour is probably better than the second hour. But I don't know. It's an indelible movie. You can see certain scenes and faces and moments.

And it's everything I want from a movie if I'm going to the theater. If I'm going to the theater, you better keep my attention for two hours. Yes, I agree. And it has two major stars in star roles being stars, which I love, as you know. Uh-huh. I really do like this movie a lot.

I think that the stuff in the first hour is, I, I have to say, I just really didn't, I wasn't in love with any of the, if she had never become watch this woman try to live a, live a basic life and, you know, once a week she goes, you know, her, her gay friends let her perform at this drag bar. Yeah. I think I would have been really happy basically watching some version of Moonstruck set in a different city, in a different Italian family. Or she had the one moment on YouTube, but then it never really turned into anything. And that was just kind of her moment. Right, right. And I just, I feel like the movie was trying to say something bigger about pop stardom and nobody can have an honest musical moment and it's eventually going to turn into this. And I think some people misunderstood that because I feel like the SNL scene was intentionally bad, I think. And if it's not, then maybe I've completely missed on this movie.

But I felt like it's weird because that's not that fun of a scene, but it's a really important scene because that's what happens when you go on SNL. You become this skewed version of whatever got you there in the first place. So I actually liked that. I thought that was smart. I don't know why he had to kill himself. Sorry, spoiler alert. If you haven't seen Star is Born at this point, I don't know. But can you have had your car flip or your motorcycle skid?

I don't know. Do you have to hang yourself in the garage? Like, really? I, you know, I really like every person in this movie. I, I, I think,

I think it's crazy that Bradley Cooper didn't get a best director nomination. I, I, I'm, I'm still scratching my head about that one. I think that, um, it is the most, it is one of the most

convincing directing jobs by an actor. I think I've, I've seen, um, and I just think there's a kind of real balance of muscularity and, and, and gentleness. But the thing that really drives me nuts about this movie is the sequence where they get to Dave Chappelle's house. Yeah. And I just, that just made me a little bit uncomfortable. Yeah. Because I don't know, I feel like, I mean, he's not quite a magical Negro, but there's some magical Negroness to that passage of the movie where like these people are facilitating this sort of shotgun wedding or what it's not a

shotgun wedding, but like this impromptu marriage. Um, I, I feel like that is not my favorite thing. And you know, I am, I am,

believe it or not capable of looking past this sometimes with the movie. I really like, but I just couldn't figure out what premium this movie was placing on what kind of music the Dave Chappelle character was into, did, what the relationship between Bradley Cooper's musician and the other black-to-black musicians. Are they in Memphis at this point or Nashville? It almost felt like at the last minute, Chappelle figured out he could do the movie and then they threw something

together. It's like, all right, talk with an accent and I will be somewhere in the South. Nobody will care. It'll be fine. Yeah. I actually liked him in the movie.

I just didn't really fully understood why he was there. Yeah. I just didn't quite, that didn't, I was not convinced by that. And I think that if we had had any inkling that Bradley Cooper, that this character, that Jackson Maine had had other friends and friends is apparently deep and as good as this guy is with him, I think it would have gotten a lot of, I would have gotten a lot farther.

My credit, the credibility of that sequence would have been a lot stronger for me. I want to deep dive, I want to deep dive these movies because we have a few weeks. I want you to come back because there's,

I want to talk about the best actor, best actress, all that stuff with you. The last thing I want to leave you with, though. Spike finally gets nominated. Yes. For his fifth best movie? Fifth? Did you say five?

One five? Like five? Fourth? Sixth? It's definitely not top three. Oh, no. This is not even... I mean, this is me speaking. I mean, Spike, if you were to ask me on any day of the week wesley who's your favorite director and i'm like i don't really know i just feel like the thing and i'm gonna then spike lee is definitely the person who is like at the top of my of my of my little um you know family family feud

flipboard. He's on the board. And this movie, this man has done more for me and my sense of seeing a kind of life on screen that nobody else has

ever tried to show before. To do it with as much risk and ambition as he's done. Yeah. Um, this is not even close to one of my favorites. Okay, good.

I w I was, I was just trying to be nice. I don't have it in my top five either. Um, I thought there were, I tweeted this actually earlier in the week. I thought there were three times he absolutely should have been nominated and wasn't. So do the right thing.

C, Clado. Malcolm X. And you know how I feel about 25th Hour. Yes. And if you go back and you look at the nominees and the films that year, for whatever reason, 25th Hour just got kicked aside for reasons that remain unclear. It's an amazing movie.

I actually think that's one of my favorite movies of this century, just from like a quality acting, directing, what it meant when it came out, all that stuff. And didn't get anything. Ed Norton didn't get nominated for it. Nope. So I don't, those are theorton didn't get nominated for it. Nope. So, I don't know. Those are the three biggest robberies for me.

Do you have another robbery? Oh, Inside Man. What year was that? 2005. Oh, and that wasn't even a good movie year. 2006. Wait, what? I'm sorry, what?

05 or 06. One of those was bad. 06, 2006. So that was the crash Brokeback Mountain year. You don't think that Inside Man is good? No, I do think it's good.

I was saying it wasn't a good movie year. Oh, no. Not a great movie year. I have Inside Man fourth. Clockers. My favorite Spike Lee movies. Do the Right Thing.

Clockers. Inside Man. Let's save this because we'll do top five Spike with fantasy for the big picture podcast. Oh, that's a great one. That'd be a good one. But anyway, I don't think you should have to feel bad about not loving this movie. I'm not sure. I don't think you should have to feel bad about not loving this movie. I'm not sure. I don't know. I mean,

I think there's something about the KKK that just is, is like the idea that Spike Lee made a movie about the KKK that just like, it's too irresistible. Yeah. And you know, it's not that the movie doesn't work. It's just that it doesn't work as well as it could have. And I think the ending is terrible.

I had a real problem with the last 10 minutes I was really there you mean the Charlottesville footage? I don't like when he does that in general when he weaves in the real life at the end of the movie I just want to watch a movie and tell me what you're

trying to say through the movie but I also didn't like the actual ending before the footage. No, I do not like that at all. I just didn't like, I thought the last 10 minutes, it really kind of fell apart. But the other stuff I enjoyed so much, I didn't mind it. But, you know, it is what it is.

It was good and he got really good performances out of really everybody. But Adam Driver went to a level in that movie that I gotta be honest, I didn't know he had in him. I do feel like he's an A-list leading man potentially now, and I didn't feel that way before the movie. Yeah, I think Adam Driver is good.

I think there's something, when the movie is a comedy, the movie works. When the movie is a drama or an action movie or a love story, it does not work. There's this really, there's that great sequence in the beginning of the movie or toward the beginning when he goes to that – when Ron Stallworth goes to that sort of black power student meeting that Kwame Ture is this sort of rally where Kwame Ture is giving a speech. And Corey, what is that actor's name? Corey Hawk playing Kwame Ture, aka Stokely Carmichael.

He gives this speech and I feel like that sequence is fantastic. The editing in that sequence is fantastic. There's something evocative about the way Spike Lee brings that speech to life. That's, that's evocative. Um, I think it's a lot, it's only once the plot sort of takes over the movie and the machinations of the clan start to, to sort of take over the second half of the movie. I just sort of think it kind of gets away from itself. And the comedy, the comedy just gets too, you feel like you're watching an episode of something that was on CBS in like 1983.

Yeah, we gotta go, but last question. I really liked the favorite. Why hasn't, that has three actress nominations between the best and the supporting, which is almost unheard of. That does not happen very often. Yet it doesn't seem to have best picture momentum. I thought it was excellent. Do you see any chance that gets a little momentum over the next four weeks? No. Okay. I mean, I really liked the movie, but no. Okay. So what, if you had to guess now, cause we didn't talk about Roma, you think Roma wins?

Roma's favorite. Well, Roma got the most interesting diversity of nominations, I would say. I was really happy that the actress who plays the mother in that movie is also nominated. I just think that she is very, very good. And I think that it just like between Marina Tavira being nominated for Best Supporting Actress and Yalitza Aparicio being nominated for Best Supporting um, or best supporting actress and best actress. I think those two nominations sort of give this movie a momentum that it, that it wouldn't otherwise have. But for all the people that,

you know, who, who watched this and didn't feel anything, I know probably as many people who thought this was boring and overrated. Well, listen, after shape of Water could win, I'll believe anything.

I'm going to leave you with this. The Rewatchables, a podcast that you've been on, Tuesday's movie, Chris Ryan and I, we like to do the Rewatchables for the people but every once in a while

we do a one for us, just me and him. So we did Proof of Life. I know how Chris feels about this movie. I don't know how you feel about it. Oh, me and him are in the front seat. I ride for this movie like nothing other than Miami Vice for movies that nobody talks about. So we try to make a really compelling case that this movie needs to be revisited in a very big way. Well, you know how I feel about Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe.

So obviously, you've made my dreams come true. Listen, there's a 20-minute Russell Crowe conversation in this rewatchables that's coming up. I can't believe it. If you ever were sitting around going, I want to hear two dudes talk about Russell Crowe for 20 solid minutes. You've come to the right place. Okay. I have a friend, my friend, Brian basically fell out of his chair and almost died about the Godfather. I'm going to fall out of my chair and die about, about proof of life.

Russell Crowe conversation. I really think we've reinvented the history of this movie. I'm going to be really interested to see what happens. It might be, might get a retroactive Academy award. We don't know. We don't know what's going to happen. And Caruso, there's another 15 minutes about Caruso. So just be ready. Caruso is, it's one of the most amazing performances in the history of cinema it really is

it's out of control so anyway that's coming up Wesley I will I demand that you come on so we can talk about best actor

best actress and all that stuff before before the end of February and then we gotta do top five Spike Lee movies as well so all that's coming alright

thank you my friend go Roma see ya alright thanks so much to Shea Serrano movies as well. So all that's coming. All right. Thank you, my friend. Go Roma. See you. All right. Thanks so much to Shea Serrano, Jason Gay, Wesley Morris. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to go to ziprecruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to the New York Times Crossword. If you have two minutes, play the New York Times Mini Crossword. It's a fun way to stay sharp when you're not busy. The satisfaction of solving is endless. There's wordplay every day. Taking a break with the mini, it's time. Well spent. Download the New York Times Crossword app at newyorktimes.com slash mini. We're not doing the Sal podcast on Sunday night. I'll probably

have something else on Monday. Sal and I are going to do Super Bowl props, but we're probably going to do that midweek on this podcast. So if you're looking for the Sunday night post-football pod, we're not doing it because there's no football. I'm sorry. But we will have a giant Super Bowl props that's coming along with a whole bunch of other good ones that we have in store for you. So until I don't have a few years with him on the wayside on the wayside

never I don't have a few years