The Bill Simmons Podcast - UFC vs. WWE, Rousey's New Career, & Re-doing the 2013 Oscars (Ep. 331)

Episode Date: February 26, 2018

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by The Ringer's David Shoemaker to discuss the WWE TV rights (6:00), UFC vs. WWE on Fox (13:00), Ronda Rousey's character in the WWE universe (27:00), and HBO's 'Andre the Giant' documentary (40:00). Then, Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey and New York Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris join to re-rank the 2013 Oscars (50:00) and review where the Academy went right and wrong five years ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network brought to you by ZipRecruiter. What if a QB completed 80% of his passes? What if a point guard hit 80% behind the arc? Trey Young did that for about three weeks and then he went on a slump. Well, when you're hiring, you can play at that level because 80% of the employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site in just one day.

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Just use promo code BS. Download the SeatGeek app or go right to SeatGeek.com. Today we launched a new podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. It is called The Recapables. Season one of Atlanta was broken down by Amanda Dobbins, Micah Peters, and Allison Herman from the Ringer. It's a very good pod. They gave out some awards for season one.

More importantly, season two, Thursday night on FX. And if you love Atlanta and you should, I thought it was the best show last year, then you're going to want to listen to this because right after the show ends on FX, we will post our first episode of season two of the Recapables. And we're going to do that all the way through the Atlanta season. And then guess what? Billions after that. Me and Mallory Rubin, Sunday nights.

These are little 18-minute podcasts. Basically, what happened? Why did it happen? What did you think? A couple awards. And then we're out. A little post-game show for you. We're doing Atlanta. We're doing for you. We're doing Atlanta.

We're doing Billions. We're doing Westworld over the next four months. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget to check out TheRinger.com. If you missed my column about LeBron and Michael Jordan on Friday, it is still on the website. We have a bunch of Oscar stuff coming this week. Pieces from Sean Fennessey and Cam Collins.

A bunch of videos that we brought Wesley Morris, my old Grantland teammate, back to L.A. to shoot a bunch of videos with Sean and Chris Ryan and Amanda Dobbins and Cam Collins. Broke them down into a bunch of different categories. If you remember the Grantland Oscar show that I did in 2014 and 2015 with Wesley and Chris Connolly, it's a little like that. It's not just like who's going to win Best Picture, who's going to win Best Actor, all that stuff. It's more fun subjects that kind of tie into the Oscars.

We're running those all week. All you have to do is go to TheRinger.com or you can go to The Ringer's YouTube channel. And coming up in a little bit, we're going to have David Shoemaker on first to talk about Ronda Rousey, WWE, all this stuff going on there. And then Sean and Cam and Wesley and I

tried to figure out the 2013 Oscars. What would happen if they waived the five-year waiting period? Oh, no. What would happen if they had a five-year waiting period? Yeah, I can't even get my own gimmick right. What would happen if you had to wait five years to give out the Oscars? So we used the 2012 movie season as the litmus test for how that would play out. Wait five years, and then what would

the oscars look like it's a fun one it's a weird concept we also wrote about it on the ringer.com today uh strange concept one thing we won't be talking about today college basketball although tate frazier is here tate is one shining pod just an fbi investigation every time now we're going to talk all about the FBI, all the many coaches that are somehow implicated, but they didn't know. Everyone didn't know. No one knew anything.

Arizona's coach just mysteriously could not coach on Saturday because there was an FBI thing that he's batting around a $100,000 figure for DeAndre Ayton. He's going to get vindicated, though. That's what we know. He's going to get vindicated. He's going to get vindicated. That's what he said.

That's what he told us. $100, deandre ayton it's a pretty good deal that's a that guy's amazing it's a good deal one year deal that's great he should go for he's got a million i think by the end of this first of all the pepperdine job's open titus comes out here on wednesday titus is going to be here your partner on one shiny podcast is going to be here for about six weeks. I think while you're here, we should drive over and try to convince Pepperdine and just give you guys a job. Do they have co-coaches in college? Yeah, we can figure it out. Like a player coach

maybe for Titus. Could he come back? Does he have any eligibility yet? We'll figure it out. College basketball is changing. He could be a bad guy for himself? Yes. David Shoemaker is here. Could Tate and Titus do you think they could resurrect the Pepperdine Hoops program? Absolutely. I was talking to Tate last week, I think, that Tate, your forces combined, you two should be the new GM of the Charlotte Hornets.

Oh, with owner Steph Curry. There you go. Oh, this is great. Listen to One Shining Podcast. Subscribe. It's heating up. College Hoops, you go. Oh, this is great. Listen to One Shining Podcast. Subscribe. It's heating up. College Hoops. You can win your March Madness pool.

And then David Shoemaker is here, host of The Masked Man Show. Is it show or podcast? The Masked Man Show. Masked Man Show. I never understood how we decided to do shows or podcasts in the title. It's so hard. Mine's the Bill Simmons Podcast, but it easily could be the Bill Simmons Show. I don't know what we were thinking.

Hey, one last thing. I am hosting the Ringer NBA show on Monday, which is today. Both of our hosts are flying back from Boston. So I'm the emergency host. So if you want to hear basketball, go over to the Ringer NBA show. Haral Bob-Volgaris, who's been on this podcast many times, he's on. Also talking to

Jason Concepcion, Justin Verrier, a whole bunch of people. So check that out. Ringer NBA show. Coming up, David Shoemaker, and then a little bit later, the 2013 Oscars. But first, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right. The breakout star of the Andre the Giant HBO documentary. America doesn't know yet. It's going to be watched by a ton of people. And people are going to be pointing at you in the streets.

That's the guy from the Andre documentary. Your whole life's going to change. I grew a beard since we recorded just for this. Just to be more anonymous? Yeah. It's all sunglasses and hats and beards from now on so last night i want to talk wwe there's a lot of fun stuff going on in wwe right now and i'm not just saying that because we did a documentary with them it's it's probably one of the best kind of stretches the company's had the stock is at

like 37 bucks yeah um it was at one point a couple years ago down to maybe 14, 13 or 14. Sure. And now has rebounded. They kind of figured out the WWE Network. It took a few years. I remember in 2014, you and I wrote a whole piece. Yeah.

They launched it, and we wrote a whole piece about like, whoa, this is cool. What a great idea. And yet they kind of botched it for the first couple years. Now they've figured that part out. They just signed Ronda Rousey, who we're going to get into it, but is one of the biggest stars they've ever had.

I'm not sure if she's going to be a good wrestler. But just things are good. They have the TV rights coming up. One of the unexpected things, let's talk about that first. They're in kind of the catbird seat here with tv rights and people thought the mma was going to be the big prize yeah and you know what's fox going to do how high will go who else is coming in and it turned out it was the wwe and it really sounds like they might go to fox what have you been hearing um well i think fox makes a lot of sense for a lot of different reasons. But I do want to be cautious in talking

about this because I don't want to make the same mistake that WWE did the last time their TV rights were up, which is to overly equate them to a sport, right? I mean, they do have the fact that Monday Night Raw and to a somewhat lesser extent, Tuesday's Smackdown Live are

shows that the vast majority, or a huge majority of fans watch live. So in that way, it's very much like sports. Obviously, it's a fake sport in a lot of ways. Oh, really? Don't tell my son. My son might be listening to this. Yeah.

No, but I do think that it doesn't have the same sort of drawing power. They were trying to get NBA money however many years ago it was when they re-upped nbc universal and they got nothing close to it right i mean it's just not the same thing right um i think that it makes a lot of sense for them to go with fox i but you you can you kind of see ufc and and wwe circling each other in this weird way where like ufc is envious of the fact that WWE has a Facebook show and has like this over-the-top network that's really that's really flourishing yeah because

they can do original programming WWE is you know interested in this sort of stability that UFC has but I don't know that either of them is going to be better off if they just like you know switch seats so Fox is in the catbird seat right now because they're basically deciding who wins this and it seems like they're gravitating toward WWE and if they do UFC's in trouble because I don't know if there's another suitor you know WME and uh IMG bought them I think it was three years ago and I think one of the big reasons they bought them was they thought the ott service modeled after wwe network more pay-per-views um blowing it out and then this big tv rights deal hurricane of money was coming and the reality is they might they might have been wrong and i'm not

sure that the money that they thought they were going to get is there in general like tv rights stuff has gone down for the most part um and i'm not sure who the other suitor is but then you look at wwe on fox and it just kind of makes more sense like i like imagine watching sunday football on fox and they're running ads for monday night raw the next day what kind of overlap is that audience versus on the USA Network? It's all those shows with lawyers in Miami and it's always really bright out. It's like a lawyer or detective

and they're trying to catch somebody. That's not really the WWE's sweet spot. Yeah, so UFC sold to WME not even two years ago. It was June 16. It's amazing how quickly the tide has turned in that span of time i agree i think that you know i'm a huge wrestling fan and write about wrestling so obviously i'm biased but i do think that but we both like the mma too yeah of course but i do think that there's the wwe is a sort of is this sort of asset that you can really sort of that you can force appreciation

on sort of like if you if you advertise it during football games you're right it's gonna blow up i mean it's gonna do really really well what usa the usa network has always valued wwe really highly and with good reason because they can say that they are the most watched cable network solely because of wwe and they can and they can boost ad rates across the board based on that fact i still don't know what the overlap is with the shows. There's very little overlap. They've tried to overlap. I mean, they've tried programming for the slot after Raw to be very, you know, to be kind of appeal to wrestling fans in different ways.

It's just really hard to do. And here's the thing. Here's how you know the WWE is a good TV property. I think they were the ones that created the extend past the time slot move. Yeah. Where it goes from, originally it was like 8 to 10, but it was really like, or 9 to 11, but it was really like 11.03. Yeah. And now they build it in.

Now it's like 8 to 11.07. And what happens is with the Nielsen ratings, you boost that next hour you have. So you don't see that with everything. So you don't see that with everything. You certainly don't see it with UFC. And I think the biggest thing that's changed since WME bought MMA was there's so much instability with the best people. WWE, it's like there is still instability and they have injuries and stuff, but the reality is John Cena,

like he was in the main event last night in the El chamber he's been there now for two full decades sure you know roman reigns has been there for five or six solid five years six years yeah um seth rollins is there bron strowman who they built up over the last two years ufc builds up these guys and then they just get beat yeah and that whole best versus the best, I'm not sure it's a good business strategy. No, I mean, it's really tough. It was impossible to look at UFC even two years ago and say whether or not that was a good time to sell or a bad time to sell

because it is so dependent on the star power, right? I think it was a great time to sell. Yeah, for the Fertitta brothers, it was a perfect time to sell. It's just so hard to predict this. And Chuck Mendenhall, who writes about UFC for us at The Ringer, and we laugh and we cry about this all the time because every time he's turning in a preview,

a UFC pay-per-view preview, one of the top fighters has washed out. He got hurt and he can't fight, or he or she. It just happened with that heavyweight, that phenomenal puncher. Oh, my God, he's going to bring the knockout artistry back he made it into the octagon but yeah then he got then he got you know then he lost and then that's it what happens that guy that's actually the flip side of what you're talking about you can build these guys if you to take advantage of the full

their full time on top which might be two fights it might be five fights it might be six fights you gotta start pointing that you started singling them out earlier. That's what they did with Francis Ngannou. And, you know, I think he still has an incredible career ahead of him, but it doesn't, it's not wrestling. You can't write the script. The script would have been for him to beat Mijic,

you know, and he didn't, and he didn't win. So then what do you do? I think the big mistake they've made, they're so desperate to distinguish themselves from boxing. And it worked to a lot of degrees because they're always like the best are going to fight the best this is how it plays out but boxing is still kicking it 2018 i mean the espn ratings have been as as kind of shockingly good yeah for and i think espn's been really pleasantly surprised by how that's worked out

for them but part of the reason boxing works is somebody gets a championship and they'll fight some meatballs and some tomato cans or some guys that kind of have a chance but not really, and they'll have that title for three, four years and keep building that equity. And then when they cash it in, like with something like the Canelo-Triple G fight, it means something. And UFC is not wired to do that.

But you could argue that it's actually a great way to do it. And it's not a bad thing for Stipe to beat the shit out of three more guys and keep his streak going, you know? Well, I mean, it's also the great wrestling tradition of squash matches. I mean, you just send Hulk Hogan out there to clothesline and leg drop somebody and the crowd goes wild. We'll wait for him to have a significant match. Yeah.

I think that's totally right i think ufc could do more of that but you get into what's one of the biggest problems the that they've had since signing their their fox deal and the thing that wwe is going to have to come you know stare down if they end up making a deal with fox is that there's just too much they're just taking up too much time on the air they have too many obligations of time slots to fill we hate the three hour raw three hour raw but i'm talking about ufc like you they have they're just taking up too much time on the air. They have too many obligations of time slots to fill. Well, we hate the three-hour Raw. Three-hour Raw, but I'm talking about UFC. They're running live shows on TV all the time.

Yeah, they've oversaturated. When they hit their first peak after the Ultimate Fighter broke out and all that kind of stuff, it was partly because you could just turn on Spike TV at any point in time and see some fights, and these were fights you probably hadn't seen before because it was just blowing up.

It was the library of 12 to 13 years of fights. Yeah, but now the library is largely exhausted and they're still just throwing out these like, they have, they can't keep people healthy to have enough good, I mean, good pay-per-views. And they're still rolling out these like fight nights on Fox that, you know,

sometimes it looks like there's guys in that cage that have no business being professional fighters. And that's thrilling in a way, but it's also sort of jarring. I think it's really hard for a casual MMA fan, which I'm a casual MMA fan. Sure. I will buy certain pay-per-views.

I will talk to somebody like you or Mendenhall or my buddy Jeff, who's my best friendff who's yeah my best friend is a huge mma fan who you met i don't know which shows to watch no i don't know which ones are the right ones and the wrong ones and i think this is something that jeff was really worried about when wme bought them because he thought he was reading between the lines of some of the stuff they were saying and he was like the worst thing they could do is have more shows and more pay-per-views and just devalue what we're watching.

He didn't think it was going to work. And I would argue that they're in a worse place than they were two years ago. And if you look at Meltzer's newsletter, which I really like, has done a nice job of kind of breaking down just kind of how dangerous 2017 was for them and if they didn't have the mcgregor fight which became the biggest thing that the ufc was ever involved with sure they didn't have that it was a disaster of a year for them especially losing rousey was a disaster they kind of lost mcgregor even though he was in that boxing thing but they kind of lost him as a signature guy john jones he flames out lesnar test positive like it even though he was in that boxing thing, but they kind of lost him as a signature guy. Jon Jones, he flames out.

Lesnar, test positive. It seemed like he was going to come back. And it's grim. I think they're in a dangerous spot right now. Yeah. I mean, it's been really tough. It's like as the sport's professionalized, like you said, the further it gets away from being a you know a circus sideshow um or human cockfighting is that the great american john mccain ones put it

um the more difficult it is it's a tough thing to put on as a real sport you know and they've learned a lot from wwe you can tell just the way they present fight their promo packages there's so much stuff um but it's but the you know the one ace in the hole that WWE has is, like you were saying, these guys are wrestling for a decade. I mean, even though they get hurt, Roman Reigns has had a share of injuries, but if Roman Reigns broke his arm the day before WrestleMania, if they wanted to, they could still give him a baseball bat and have him walk out there and smack somebody with it.

And they can always go out and get AJ Styles when they're one great wrestler short. There's always that one signing they can always go out and get AJ Styles when they're one great wrestler short. Yeah. There's always that one signing they can do. UFC can't really be like, oh, let's go get this guy. The other big distinction between UFC and boxing is that UFC is not a monopoly, but they want to be. I mean, they're getting there and they want to be more of one. Right. So if you eat all the competition, and WWE did this, too, to be fair. If you went to eat all the competition, that's great for that financial quarter or whatever, but then there's no one pushing you.

On the more meta level, you need competition. WWE, they made some really big mistakes with that network. I almost wish they had consulted us. I think we could have helped them. There was some common sense stuff they just missed but now they've figured out that basically the network is

live wrestling the library and some documentaries those quickie instant documentaries they do and that's really it you don't need to have like all these studio shows and all this stuff like just just have wrestling on there and they've been smartly buying up all

the rights to stuff what was the stuff they just bought from the early 80s they bought uh i didn't even see what did they get they got another tape yeah they added a whole bunch of um shit it was like it was like the early it was like rick flair and ricky steamboat and maybe it was the maybe it was they put it they just put it up on the network yeah they put it on the network yeah they roll they roll out the different they roll out different territories you know where they're big in big chunks whenever and and old wwe historical stuff too though yeah i get texts from friends you know so such excited texts where they're just like they just put up more prime time you know and and um they do a good job of sort of keeping all that stuff coming.

It's like a 40-year... This is what we wrote about four years ago. It's now like a 40-year history of wrestling because they own all the libraries of basically everybody that matters. Yeah. I mean, they cut back a lot in the past couple of months to save money in making their original programming. Which I don't think was a bad idea,

but I, I agree for the most part. Um, well, what do you disagree with? What do you wish they were doing? I just think if you're cutting back, I don't know what they're,

I don't know if they're, if they're, I think they're just trying to save money full stop. It would cost more money to make, to do the history really, really well. Right. Because the show is like the ride.

I mean, I think they're still doing right along, but when they, you know, having wrestlers talk to each other in a car or a restaurant or Rosenberg, make to do the history really really well right because the show is like right i mean i think they're still doing right along but when they you know having wrestlers talk to each other in a car or a restaurant or rosenberg show which i thought was really great which was like you know pti but that but that you know those are cheap cheap productions right and to really do a you know you can release all this all this crockett territory stuff but you should you should release it at the same time as you release you know a 90 minute documentary and also do like 10 hours of director's commentary with jim ross or whoever just talking through matches and you know you got to do all this stuff you gotta got you should layer it to do it really well um but they have they have figured out a lot of stuff and they're doing they're doing it a lot better using it for the platform for wrestling for

205 live and the cruiserweight classic and all that kind of stuff is and the british the uk tournament the may young classic all those things have been really really good and they cut back on the pay-per-views which i thought was smart because i thought they were doing that less i thought i think they've done a lot of the research and they found that it didn't really matter whether they did 20 pay-per-views a year or 12 like people are still paying as long as they had one a month that people could focus on i totally agree we both agree with that it didn't really matter whether they did 20 pay-per-views a year or 12. Like, people are still paying. As long as they had one a month that people could focus on. I totally agree.

By the way, we both agree with that. I've been saying forever, even if they're going to have separate Raw and SmackDown rosters, they should do the pay-per-views together and let wrestlers earn their way onto it. My biggest gripe with them right now is that it seems like the WWE title isn't the the most important title which i don't really understand i don't know what the mechanics were behind the decision to say i understand the

universal title thing but why not just call the wwe title the universal title smackdown okay so everyone listening this is already so confused there are two there are two shows raw and smackdown they have separate rosters separate titles they moved the wwe title they put the wwe title on smackdown to save smackdown from looking like a second tier show when they split the two brands by doing that they divided the wwe title yes yes but probably less so than if they just said this is the you know we'll just call this one the wwe you know international title nobody would care about the smack why not just make the smackdown the intercontinental title they should they should that was so stupid they should take the main title they should honestly take the the wwe title and put

it above both shows if they're going to have combined pay-per-views just have that that that you know the main event be separate from the from the brand split the great thing about the wwe title and the thing that i think they really made the mistake on was you know there was a real lineage with that i knew all the champions up through you know starting with bruno and he loses pedro morales and like yeah i knew i i used to know every single title change through like 88 yeah and now it's like so i don't so the universal one is the one i'm supposed to care about now? It's weird. Well, and even I thought you were going to make the point that that belt doesn't matter.

And I agree with that, too, because they've made a really conscious decision over the past six months or so. You know, Brock Lesnar is your champion, but Brock Lesnar only shows up four times a year. Right. So over the past six months, they've kind of made the decision on the way to WrestleMania to pretend Brock Lesnar doesn't exist so that they can hype these intervening pay-per-views as being important, right? Because he's not always there. But the numbers on Brock Lesnar is when he's involved in a pay-per-view, it definitely bumps it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

But instead of just being... I wish that wasn't the case, but there's really never been another situation in wrestling like this, right? Where we've had... Well, I don't know. Where we've had somebody who wrestles four to five times a year and that's it? Meltzer's the guy to ask about this.

Oh, no, to wrestle that rarely? I mean... I can't remember. Usually they don't reward somebody who barely shows up. No, but I mean... No, that's true. That's just not Vince's standard operating procedure, you know? I mean, but if you go back and look at like Hogan in his heyday,

I mean, it's not like he was wrestling a bunch of matches on Saturday mornings or anything. He was touring with the company. He was doing house shows. He always had his little story arcs. He would have the three-month, somebody turned on him and he had to defend himself. Lesnar's had a lot of story arcs even when he's not around

you know he's like he's like nominally feuding with Goldberg or The Undertaker even though he's not there every week but like

but yeah I mean at this point they're just sort of ignoring him now Roman Reigns is I guess gonna take him face him at Wrestlemania

and we'll be seeing a little bit more of Lesnar the polarizing Roman Reigns yes quick break to talk about MeUndies I wear MeUndies every day to the point that my family actually makes fun of me.

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slash bs what wrestler came the closest to seeming like they were wrestling in their underwear oh well i talk about this sometimes in the show if you are on the masked man show if you there's this really weird uncanny valley thing where a wrestler wearing his briefs is totally fine but if he's but he needs to wear knee pads and or elbow pads. But sometimes you see a guy like Titus O'Neill is wrestling right now. If you're a big guy in briefs, just the briefs and boots, you look like you're doing a strip tease. I still have my cowboy boots on and my underwear,

but I'm in the process of taking it off. It's unnerving. Here comes Guns N' Roses. Yeah. Um, Ronda Rousey. Let's do it. You and I are not happy with how this has been booked so far. Ooh.

Uh, last night at Elimination Chamber. I know you're going to talk about this on Wednesday on your show, so I'm totally stepping on it. I don't really care. No, let's do it. This is important. This is the biggest signing they've made since who? Oh, I mean, since Lesnar came back yeah yeah i mean it's it's

there's nothing like she's kind of staggeringly famous yeah and she crosses these two worlds people are super excited about it she came out at the end of wrestlemania and just pointed rumble yeah i'm sorry royal rumble and pointed to the WrestleMania sign. Yes. And then pointed to people, and that was just weird, and I thought that was really awkward. So it's very awkward because you realize, as gifted as some wrestlers are at sort of improv, they need to have... The script is a very important part of the process,

but what made it so awkward was that Ronda Rousey came out and the three people in the ring, I think there were three, were the two champions, Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss, and Asuka, who had just won the Women's Royal Rumble. My son's a big Asuka fan. She's great. She's great. One of the best ever. I mean, she's seriously top five overall talents in WWE. Incredible. but the three of them were in the ring we know that they're all

going to be at wrestlemania what we the wild card is we don't know what ronda rousey's going to do i'm talking about the royal rumble she came out and at that point it looked like she would probably have a one-on-one match huge pop everybody had been waiting for her to be in the rumble but she wasn't but immediately we all felt the uncertainty because wwe wasn't sure if she could wrestle or not you know like we signed her but we don't know what we have so and we saw that again last night at the elimination chamber where she had her big contract signing and at that point by the way how many televised contract signings have gone well zero zero as a longtime wrestling fan i've become suspicious of them i always feel like

there's something bad might happen i don't know yeah um but yeah i mean it look it looks like now that we're we're steering towards a tag team match which will have her and maybe i guess kurt angle against triple h and stephanie which is strange one because it shows the lack of confidence they have in her and that's fine she hasn't been wrestling for very long and it'll it's good for the company but it's but it does seem like a weird use of everyone else in that match that's not my biggest fear with this she might actually be like genuinely one of the worst mic skills people they've ever had in a prominent role i can't tell if she's just underplaying it now or if she's going to be really really terrible and they're going to have to do

the Brock Lesnar thing where she barely says anything and just looks menacing. Well, I think that would be fine. I said this last... But that's... Like, why not bring up Paul Heyman yesterday?

I don't know. I don't know. Why put her in the spot to be like... Because they don't want to get her booed. You know, I mean, there's a way to talk yourself

out of everything in pro wrestling. Or get a new manager. Get somebody we've never thought of. No, it should have just been Heyman. Get Tate Frazier. It should... Yeah. Or just have her not talk.

You know, if she just came out and she says, like, if you just grabbed the microphone and said, you know, sorry, Steph, I don't cut promos, I cut throats, and then just, like, signed her name on the dotted line, you know, that would have been enough. I don't understand why they've, for the most part, thrown away the idea of the manager. This is a big thing of wrestling when I was growing up.

Yeah. I still think it works. When you see what Paul Heyman's been able to do over the last 10, 12 years, it still matters. It does. And it really fills in the blanks if somebody doesn't have the personality. I mean, you could argue Roman Reigns

has needed a manager the last two years. I think that part of, for better or worse, Vince and WWE sort of made the calculation that they are sort of they're going to invest in like uh like high variant or you know they're going to make some risky bets and part of that was that we're going to expect all of our wrestlers to be dwayne johnson right not not happening sink or swim we're going to put the microphone in your hand we're going to put you in the main event you know if once you reach a certain level the expectation is you have to be the total package this is not a lex luger uh reference but

but um you know and not everybody's that way but you see it like there was a period a few months ago where just it seemed like every week they were just letting finn baller get in the ring and talk and finn baller is again another one of the top five guys in the in the in the business in my opinion as far as just potential and skill and everything else but he's not he's never gonna be you know sean michaels on the microphone making a bunch of jokes you know and and uh and and they just let him talk now the flip side of that is they they brought in guys like aj styles and to an even greater extent samoa joe gave him microphones and suddenly you're just like oh my gosh this guy's an actor this guy's incredible like and i didn't realize it before um but yeah it's you it's it's it's about they should they should have managers but they they i think they just see that as like a

crutch you know i think that's the wrong way to see it and i and i think actually you can make a case like there's some female comedian out there or somebody who used to be a wrestler who got hurt or just somebody that could help her and kind of like, like the Bella twins. One of them can't wrestle anymore. Right. Because she got hurt. They're both retired. I think at least one, at least informally. But yeah, I mean, Nikki, Nikki's neck was really messed up.

And I just had a kid, you know. And Nikki handles the mic stuff. The feeling I got the first time at Royal Rumble, but then especially last night, was that she's going to be really bad on the mic. And just point to me the success stories in the WWE with people who were just bad with the microphone. Well, she's not a bad talker.

It's just, you know, every time you see an actor that would show up on Monday Night Raw to be the guest host, acting for TV and movies and acting on a microphone in a wrestling ring are two totally different things. It's presenting a shtick.

Yeah, I mean... So she needs to figure out what her shtick is. And she needs... You can tell that she's sort of playing to the camera because she's used to giving interviews to, you know, Ariel Ariel Hawane and people.

When you're in the ring, you're playing to the person in the 100th row. Right. And she's not found that volume yet. She was playing to the person in the first row. Not even that far. She was just having a conversation with Stephanie McMahon in Triple H. Which is not how to do it. No.

I'm very skeptical that she's going to be able to flip the switch. I think we would have seen it yesterday. And they're really going to have to work with her and train with her to kind of become, I don't want to say a parody of herself, but she's got to become an exaggerated version of herself. It's a tough booking decision. I mean, Brock Lesnar is a good comparison from his earliest days, but he didn't come in with this level of expectations.

And Brock Lesnar's like weirdly kind of compelling when he talks, right? Oh, yes. When he chooses to talk. So she's got to at least get that. But the problem is she doesn't even have the ring. She's not an Olympic wrestler. She doesn't have this. She's a judoka, and she's incredibly gifted

and she obviously has a lot of mat skills. She's been practicing MMA for a long time. But, you know, learning to be a wrestler is a different thing, too. It would be different if it was, if this was bringing in the greatest wrestler in the history of New Japan, but they're not, like, you know, Shinsuke Nakamura. We bring in Nakamura, it's going to take him a while to get to where we want him to be on the mic. He doesn't speak English very well, you know? That, but we know he's got this we know he can wrestle we you know we know that half of the that half of what we need is in place rousey right now is training this is second hand but i mean training in you know florida with a with a black curtain wrapped around the ring so no one's so no one can see what's going on she's

like the markel faults of wrestling yeah well so we know her closer will be the arm bar right we know that she'll be able to do like a lot of fake punching and stuff like that yeah hip tosses you know the throws she's a good athlete like she'll be able to do some flips and things like that but the the problem for her is the women's division has gotten so much better yeah you know it went from like in the early days it was just like hot woman wrestling oh yeah that was like their their gimmick then it became like attractive women who could also do some moves and that was like the bella twins era sure and but lita was like probably i would say

the most would you say the most gifted of that era like she was earlier but yeah i mean but i mean like crossing into that oh yeah lita trish and then and then you'd have to go backwards and pick i'm sure there were some i mean i know there were some of some very talented wrestlers in the But I mean, like crossing into that. Oh, yeah. Lita, Trish. And then you'd have to go backwards and pick. I'm sure there were some. I mean, I know there were some very talented wrestlers in the 80s. You know, I mean, like Moola, fabulous Moola. I mean, not when we were watching her. But of that era, there were a lot of people who could sort of who could work.

But now we've gone into this era where even somebody like my son who didn't 100% love the woman's wrestling when he was six. Now it's like, he's into it now. The top five, he really enjoys watching and it does feel like there's going to be a sea change

with the woman's part of the division might actually become as successful as the men. I actually see a roadmap for it now where I didn't two years ago. I totally do.

I was saying this last night and I know I'm going to come off sounding like an idiot, but there's not, you know, there is so much talent in the women's division right now. I'm not sure who the sort of Dolph Ziggler of the women's division, I don't know who, like I was trying to imagine who you let Ronda Rousey wrestle night in and night out for six months when she makes it onto the Raw roster. Like when the Ultimate Warrior came up, they made him wrestle Rick Rude every night for for six months when she makes it onto the raw roster to like like like when the ultimate warrior came up they made him wrestle rick rude every night for like three months because rick

rude was that he knew what he was doing and if you messed up he would hurt you you know he would let you know it but for the most part it's like this there's no way you can have a bad match against rick rude right um there are other guys like that mr perfect like i said dolph ziggler is one now who sort of got tarnished by the fact that he's a good hand. I don't know who that is in the women's division because there's a lot of immensely talented people, but I don't know who. Bailey, I'm trying to think.

No one's really been slotted in as that person that you work with. Those people are all in Florida. They're trainers. Can I throw a radical idea at you? Yeah, do it. I thought about this during the Royal Rumble because the Women's Royal Rumble was actually better than the Men's Royal Rumble.

Oh, yeah. It was shocking. It was so good. And had more surprises. The big thing they messed up with the Men's Royal Rumble was that they have so many wrestlers now, there are no surprises. There was no uh you know

scott hall limping into the ring as like the 29th guy and those guys we need that what makes the royal rumble fun is the blast from the past people and they just weren't doing it with that yeah they have too many moving parts in the men's rumble what if they made smackdown an all-woman show they need to have an all-woman show that's the other thing is that isn't it isn't it the logical out and then we don't have to deal with this stupid universal title and all this stuff and raw's three hours but it's jam-packed with all the male wrestlers and then smackdown's two hours everybody's over there rousey's the face of it and i i just think it's a smarter idea i wish they would do it i wish they would take some risks like that i think that they have this sort

of this sure thing which is raw and smackdown I wish they would take some risks like that. I think that they have this sort of, this sure thing, which is Raw and SmackDown and when they go to sell their rights, that's what they're selling, right? But it's funny because if you're WWE

and you like zoom out and take a look at it, like look at what other providers want, right? Like when you make a show with Facebook, and I don't know the background

of how this was made, but it's the Mixed Match Challenge, which is a basically out of storyline show. I mean, they're still playing the same characters, but good guys are teaming with bad guys, and it's men and women who don't necessarily have relationships on Raw or SmackDown or tag team partners. It's a totally separate thing, which they find almost impossible to do,

and that's what you're talking about, having a separate thing. Hulu pays them who knows how much money to have a 90-minute episode of Raw that they have on Tuesdays, an exclusive, just like a 90-minute cut of cut of raw yeah it's a condensed cut of raw they've been doing it for years and as all of us wrestling fans are just sitting here begging them to make raw shorter than three hours you know my god it's like and hulu's just like oh no we'll pay you for that yeah if they loaded raw with just all the dudes you could go three hours if it's once a week no but you can't yes obviously you can do you can go three hours if it's once a week no but you can't yes obviously you can do you can go three hours like i'm not sure i'd want it but it makes more sense

to me than i i just think it's a bad telecast and it's a ratings grab and i don't understand if they if like it's like if you were making a movie if you're making fast and furious 11 and you have a great two-hour cut and then the studio comes and they say and they say for financial reasons, we want this to be three hours long. Right. Your choice is either make the interstitial shots,

the sunsets and the beer drinking, stretch that out to fill up an extra hour, or you actually go back to the writer's room, and you say, let's think of something good to do with this hour. And WWE's taken the long swig of Corona. Jonathan Coachman returned. Yeah. And he's on the long swig of, you know, Corona. Jonathan Coachman returned. Yeah.

And he's on the broadcast. And I got to say, he's really good. Like, he's, they've had a real issue with that third spot, especially in the pay-per-views. It's always been people that you and me and Rosenberg are sitting there going, wow, we would be better than this person. And now Coachman was really good. He had some funny throwaway lines.

I thought he sold it. And it was the first telecast in years that I thought was good. I agree. And I've never said I would be better than anybody in the WWE announcement. No, you used to tell me that all the time. No, that's not true.

You just said it at Starbucks the other day. You were like, this Andre thing, now do you think I can be the third guy? You know I'd be great. Coachman's really good. I will will say that here's the thing uh every new ww every new person in the ww announce booth is just really great for like two months and then we all turn on them it's just the problem is them is that they never change and i've been saying for years that what they need to do is let michael cole be the voice of pay-per-views and have and quit having set announced teams make it be like like for the average basketball fan

when you turn on a college game or even when you turn on a pro game you don't know who's going to be like doing color commentary and play-by-play yeah you know it's just like oh look another night with Marv Albert this is a nice treat I wasn't expecting this you know and like just let it be a rotating cast try out some different things like it's so that's so you me and rosenberg is that what you're pitching yeah just put you can put some crazy people in there you can put some wrestlers there for the whole show you know they used to do um but yeah coach is really good coach brings that air of legitimacy and frankly and and he's and they let him mess up too and that's the great thing he said some he's he said things that like you know michael cole said five minutes before and he didn't realize it you know and yeah but there's a there's there's such a humanity to that that

it's it's so much better than when it feels like every line's being fed to these guys he actually feels a little overqualified i mean he was on espn for a while like well you're when you talk about managers and when you talk about announcers the toughest thing is the legends of the sport and both of those roles are wrestlers who got hurt, who are looking for other jobs. And that's because they're they just you know, it's magical that Bobby Heenan or not Bobby Heenan. I mean, there's so many of these managers and announcers. J.R., you know, he was he was sweeping floors before he got his first job as a referee and then they let him call matches. You know, the hardest thing is not only above anything else, they've got to find people who are willing to be lifers.

And even Coachman, he left and he came back, but they're not going to go out and hire an actor to be a manager because Vince is, and the wrestling industry in general is rightfully worried that they'll leave as soon as they get an opportunity. I think Rosenberg could be a manager. He would love it. He would love it. Would he be a heel?

He'd be a heel. Yes. Oh, yes. People hate Rosenberg. The best thing about a manager and the part that I think gets underserved is we just don't see it anymore because everybody at WWE wants to be liked. I love when they go into the city and they insult the sports teams of the city. Oh, yeah.

It's the single most reliable way to enrage it rage of 15 000 people yeah like you go into minnesota and you and you're like hey minnesota sorry you choked against the or sorry you choked against the eagles yeah that was your super bowl but you guys didn't get it because you're losers yes and the fans just go crazy like it's like the most insulting thing you can do to a fan base and that's the manager is great at that stuff yeah it's really good

I mean because managers can just walk out in opposing teams jerseys in a way that you know wrestlers have to keep a little bit of dignity like your local sports team sucks who was the one who would walk out in the jersey that would enrage the fans because i remember like somebody did that in boston where they wore like a yankee jersey and it was like

they they almost i think cena did that a couple times because of it but yeah i mean there but there've there've been lots of people that'll just that have played with that it seems like it's a this century thing i don't feel like that was happening i need to find out christian used to do it right yeah i mean but but certainly the first person to be like, your football team, your baseball team sucks has got to be ages ago. I should try to figure out who that was. I'm a bad person to do this ad because I have a scraggly beard right now. And you do as well.

Oh, yeah. When did you start shaving? Like in life? Yeah. Oh, man. I don't even remember. When was that? Like eighth grade or something like that?

Ninth grade? I was like college. It was embarrassing. Oh, no. I didn't have anything to When was that? Like eighth grade or something like that? Ninth grade? I was like college. It was embarrassing. Oh, no. I didn't have anything to shave, but I wanted to be cool. I should have pretend shaved more because it would have made me feel better. My neck. Does your neck get really bad shaving zits and stuff?

Oh, yeah. I started using the Gillette Fusion Ultra Sensitive Skin Shaving Gel, and it saved my neck. I just used it the other day, actually. See my nice, clean, used it the other day actually. See my nice clean shaved neck? Recently I started using the Gillette Fusion Pro Shield Razor. I ordered and got four refillable razors and free shipping. Then every fourth

order free because I subscribed and now you can get Gillette Performance delivered to your door. Did you know that? Wow. Right delivered to your door. Oh yeah. No more getting mad at yourself because you just got back from the grocery store and realized you forgot to buy blades all you have to do is subscribe today you pick your favorite razor and you get every fourth order free visit gillette online at gilletteondemand.com all right before you go andre the giant our documentary april 10th

you can hear shoemaker's voice in the two-minute trailer, which apparently got a huge pop at Royal Rumble, and every time they run in a pay-per-view, the fans go nuts for it. In the beginning, you see somebody, and then you hear your voice in the background. And it's really good, and I'm excited, and we really needed you. I'm glad in hair the director called you the glue guy of this documentary. Yeah.

I think I've said before on, and on this podcast or in another one that the first thing that Jason ever sent me was just like a seven second clip of me starting a sentence and Jerry the King Lawler finishing it. Yeah. And I was just like, I'm good. I'm good.

I don't need to see anything else. I'm very happy with this production. Um, it's, uh,, I'm good. I'm good. I don't need to see anything else. I'm very happy with this production. It's really good. And I'm glad there's a couple of people that have been able to see it. So I know that I'm not crazy, you know, or biased. You know, I mean, I've seen, I saw several cuts. And that last one I saw was just, it was fantastic, man. Yeah, because when I was at ESPN and we're doing 30 for 30s,

and we did some great ones, when we're always a little bit prisoners to the time slot. Yeah. So if it was 90 minutes, the doc had to be an hour 17 with 13 minutes of commercial stuff like that. Oh, yeah, okay. It was really cool to do a documentary that, you know, we wanted to get it under an hour and a half. Yeah. But it was the exact time it should have been.

Sure. There wasn't like a wasted second to really like carve out every, every single second. I mean, it's like, it's like, it's his whole life. So there's a lot of ground to cover,

but I, but, but Jason found a way to do it just really, really well. It's good. And it tells the story of Andre and this guy who knew he was going to die basically from the moment he was like 20. But then also the B story about kind of the history of wrestling

as it transformed from the territorial to the big one. And I think I'm really proud of it. You're great in it. Thank you for your contributions. It's amazing. And wrestling fans, like even diehard wrestling fans, I know a lot of wrestling fans will be excited that HBO is making a wrestling documentary,

that this documentary exists they love andre but they you know they'll say i've seen i've seen andre docs before or i've read the read his the book about him i have a chapter in my book about him and i'll i'm gonna this is a thing that a writer should probably always say more quietly there's a lot of stuff i got wrong in my book yeah that jason just like jason's the first one to do the legwork to figure out some basic facts about Andre the Giant. And he went to his home, his childhood home. It's unbelievable. There was so much mythology with Andre,

we never knew what to believe and not believe. So we saw some of that stuff. Anyway, that's coming out April 10th. I think we're going to do a screening in New Orleans before Wrestlemania I'm hoping that weekend news to me

invite some wrestlers so stay tuned for that you're going to Wrestlemania New Orleans what match are you most excited for there's a lot of

there's a lot of a lot in the air a lot in the air I'm excited if they go through with just a straight up Roman Reigns versus Brock Lesnar match I'm excited to see how the crowd reacts I'm excited. If they go through with just a straight up Roman Reigns versus Brock Lesnar match,

I'm excited to see how the crowd reacts. I'm excited to see what those guys do to move us to the next era of WWE. And I'm excited also for this to be over. This match has been looming for three years. Great. Let's do it. And we can read you...

I'll be writing a couple times before WrestleMania. Okay. And the Masked Man Show. The Masked Man Show. Press Box. Podcast, sorry, subscribe. Oh, yeah, Press Box. You and Curtis. I know.

America's favorite longtime buddy friendship. After Andy and Chris. Yeah, it's one of the top two. Yeah, Press Box on Channel 33. Yeah. Breaking down media stuff. Yeah. And you're our art director.

I know. You're one of the hardest working men at The Ringer. Doing wrestling and media criticism, all this is just leading to just a showdown between me and Ramona Shelburne, I think, at this point. Thanks, buddy. Thank you, man. All right, I wish the Black Tux had been around

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Shipping is free both ways. Get started right now. Visit theblacktux.com slash BS to get $20 off your purchase. Again, theblacktux.com slash BS. The Black Tux premium rental suits and tuxedos delivered. Right now, here's my conversation. 2013 Oscars, redone. With Sean Fantasy, Wesley Morris, and a little guest cameo from Kim Collins.

All right, Sean Fantasy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer is here. Hello. Wesley Morris from the New York Times, former Grantland colleague, Pulitzer Prize winner, general good guy. Thank you, Bill. Beloved teammate. He's here as well. We're going to do something that I've talked about doing for years, and we've never actually done it in any form.

And now we're going to do it. In baseball, there's a five-year waiting period before anyone can get in the Hall of Fame. And I think for for basketball they might have the kid that might have that as well in general the concept of a five-year waiting period which seems dumb sometimes when michael jordan retires and it's clear he should just be in the hall of fame a year later but the waiting period is good and it gives you a little time and distance and space and you think to yourself you know something you thought in the moment, maybe it calms down a little bit or whatever. I wish we did this with movies and music and television,

but there's a lot of reasons that we don't. From a marketing standpoint, it doesn't make sense. From I think it would be weird to have the Oscars five years after the movies came out. I get all of those reasons. It's still a cool exercise. Yeah. So I thought we would try it for the 2013 Oscars, which covered

the movies in 2012. Yes. And what happens with this stuff, and what we talked about when we did the Get Out rewatchables, is sometimes the awards get it wrong. And you look back 10 years or 5 years or 20 years and you say to yourself, that's ridiculous

how did we let that happen what a travesty that is there are a lot of oscar travesties we're gonna try to fix them in 2013 and see if they even exist what is your biggest oscar travesty wesley of all time yeah you're number one that just drives you nuts it i'm gonna limit it to things that with situations in which oscars were given to to movies and our people okay uh there are the obvious ones are pretty obvious i would the thing that first leapt to mind when you said that was kim basinger winning supporting actress wow am i confidential oh god i i I don't know that's the first thing that leapt to mind more than like

Dances with Wolves over Goodfellas or that's just the first thing that leapt to mind of course I'm not gonna argue I have no argument

like of course duh the first one is Kim Basinger that's the first thing that comes to mind mine is Goodfellas that's a big one

and I like Dances with Wolves it's 14 hours long but and I'd never watch it again but i liked it and it was affecting and you know those it was like kind of the last era you watch it now and you would be like this talk about there are two kinds of movies they don't make anymore or wouldn't make now yeah dance dances with wolves i i it would be interesting to see the pitch on that in 2018 it would not happen

it's just not possible Ben Affleck pitching Dances with Wolves in 2018, good luck I'm not seeing it we, once upon a time when we worked together, we all worked on an Oscar Travesties package didn't we do a bracket?

the winner of that bracket was Stanley Kubrick never winning best director. Kubrick. Which is, that's kind of a, that's an interesting, whenever you're talking

about the Oscars, it's like, keep that in mind. Keep in mind that the person that many people think is the most visionary filmmaker of the 20th century never won.

Right. Great assault. 2013, to refresh people's memories, here are the signature movies. Argo. Les Miserables. Les Miserables.

Wow, this is great. Les Miserables. Go for it. Keep going for it. Les Miserables. Life of Pi. Lincoln. A movie that is not age well.

Silver Linings Playbook. Zero Dark Thirty. Django. Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amour, The Master, which somehow did not get nominated for Best Picture. There were nine nominations. Nominated for... Wait, it got nine... Oh, wait, no, yeah. There were nine nominated Best Pictures nominees.

I can't speak. Nominated only in the acting categories. And then Flight was that year. And there are a couple movies that got overlooked, including End of Watch, which we're going to talk about. This Is 40 came out that year. Ted, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, and Taken 2, among others. I think Skyfall 2 is an interesting one to think about. Skyfall, forgot about Skyfall.

In this context. Yeah. Which is like the only good Bond movie. That's my quiet theory. Interesting. I like Casino Royale, but I think I just have a gambling problem. It's one of the worst poker scenes of all time. So, best picture.

Here are the nominees. Argo, Amor, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Les Miserables, Les Mis. Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty. The winner was Argo. Yes. Which, as we're going to discuss in a second, is interesting because not only was Ben Affleck snubbed from Best Director, so was Quentin Tarantino and so was Catherine Bigelow. Yes. Wesley was writing for Grantland at the time and was very upset about all of this.

The director snubs. Although you could make the case they just had great nominees that year. And when you have eight weird shit happens. That is certainly true. I mean, I just sort of felt like i mean it wasn't just that i mean let's let's why don't you read who was nominated for best director bill well let's hit picture first and then we'll do director all right so first question yes five years later should argo have won best picture we'll go around the room. Sean Fantasy, you were first. Yes.

Not because I think it is the superlative film, but I think it is the best story that the Oscars was going to tell that year. This is a strange collection of movies, and I don't think that any win would have been satisfying because all of these movies are complicated in their own way. It's a bunch of number two starters. Exactly. There's no ace.

Exactly. I like Django a lot. It's a bunch of number two starters. There's no ace. Exactly. I like Django a lot. It's a baseball analogy. That was not my face. I understood what you meant. I just disagree. Go ahead. Okay, keep going. I think like Zero Dark Thirty, for example, is a movie that is aging worse by the moment. And the way that that movie, not as a film,

but the story that it's telling and the context it's providing. It's become much more complicated the more we learn about what we did in the context it's providing it's become much more complicated the more we learn about what we did in the middle east and how we pursued information and what was provided to that movie by the fbi and the cia versus what may have actually have been true so a win there would have certified it in a way that would have been complicated yeah i think a more and beast of the southern wild were never going to win right right yes lame is Mis is not good.

Oh, but go on. It's your rate. Life of Pi and Lincoln are achievement movies. I don't think that they're beloved movies. Silver Linings Playbook, I'm not a fan of. If people want to adjudicate it, we can do that together. Let's do that in a second. I think Argo

was a crowd pleaser argo was a crowd pleaser it was a successful box office story it was a an actor transitioning to director and kind of reaching his summit as a filmmaker not insofar as the achievement but like the story that that he that was being told about his career right and it was also it was that typical os Oscars thing where the Oscars loves a movie about Hollywood. Itself, yeah. Wesley? Yeah, I mean, what else? I mean, well, this is a thing that when we talk about the Oscars in certain sea changes,

and you put anything up against, you put any kind of movie up against a movie about Hollywood, and the movie about hollywood will win it doesn't matter what that movie is about i mean crash is a movie about hollywood argo's movie about hollywood the artist's movie about hollywood anytime you've got a hollywood oriented movie nominated for best picture it's just gonna win but did you think it should have won uh who would you but what is your dream what is should mean what was the best movie that year five years later of these nine movies yeah um i listen i think i think django unchained and lincoln are the two best of oh wait sorry a more django

unchained and and and and lincoln are the three best of those movies I don't think I mean and then what you're saying I sort of scoffed a little bit at your number two metaphor I didn't say they were bad number two starters they were like 16 and 11 with like a 302ER you're actually right

each one of the none of these movies is the director's best movie they are in a second tier of that director's yes movies um i mean argo i don't think it's as good as the town agree uh amour is certainly not michael hanukkah's best movie but it is very good beast of the southern wild the less said the better but it's this it's it's ben zeitlin's first movie and only movie to date and only movie to date django unchained there's a case to be made that it's one of his best movies and i really like it a lot i would not put it in the second tier of that director's movies les mis whatever inexplicable. Well, I will say for an hour,

that movie is, I was hooked. And I was convinced by all of those people doing what they do, except obviously for Russell Crowe. Even Russell Crowe. Except for Russell Crowe. But even that to me

is a fascinating movie star challenge, right? Where you have Russell Crowe pitted against Hugh Jackman, who I would say in some scenario might have been a market correction oriented sort of thing um we can think about that it's not quite completely satisfying but we can think about it um i don't know les mis is fascinating and then you realize that you also realize it's just a bad musical. Once you get to the second half, it's great for production.

Um, life of pie, not Ang Lee's best movie, not like it's a second tier Ang Lee. That's like a third starter. Yeah. That's like a 14 and 13. Maybe got hurt halfway through the,

but it is a directing achievement though. It really is. It is a very well directed. How many life of pie conversations have you had in the last four years zero i i can see that movie is a perfect reason to do a podcast like this it's that is a movie that is just lost in our memory completely yeah somehow that's the movie that who is like kind of a master that yes that he won his best director for this movie fyi that's gonna happen to shape of water well that's we're never gonna talk about that context three months from now it's good it's it is not Del Toro's best movie

what was that first sex movie that was weird and it won the Oscar, like what the hell happened I think that it's really weird that The Master is not on this list, I think there's a case for The Master this is where we go it's not nominated well first of all, it's incredible that The Master is not on this list

Amor and Peace of the Southern Wild are here and The Master is not you can make a case The Master was the best movie of all these movies if The Master not on this list yeah a more and piece of the southern wilder here and the master is not how did that case the master was the best movie of all these movies the master was on this list i would the the master was on this list i would i would still feel the way i felt i feel about a more in jingo unchained and in lincoln wait let's go through this list let's finish going through the list lincoln mid like top mid-tier spielberg I really like this movie a lot I do too Even the political shots that people Took against it

I have no problem arguing against it It's not a fun movie All of that Congress stuff Is really fun And the second half of the movie where James Spader And Who's his sidekick Is it

The little guy You guys are too artsy fartsy right now of the movie where james spader and um uh who's who's his sidekick is it um the little guy whose name is now you guys are two artsy fartsy right now we're talking about a spielberg movie starring daniel day you guys also like the john adams miniseries i think john adams is that was pretty good yeah okay there you go okay so there's two times this is so much better if you like lincoln and john adams are not really you can't bill you i'm not gonna let you jacko love l I'm not going to let you do this. My buddy Jacko loved Lincoln. I'm not going to let you do this.

It's fine. Lincoln is the most entertaining movie you're ever going to see about- The Master is better than Lincoln. Yes, but that's not what we're talking about. It's more interesting. It's more original. I agree.

Yes. It takes more chances. Bill, of course, yes, you're totally right. Silver Linings Playbook, I think at least 40% of that movie was that we were so enchanted by Jennifer Lawrence and her potential

as a star define we I would say most of America okay okay most most

non-cynical Americans okay okay and I think now after five years of watching the career choices

and some of the things she's done not as enchanting. Yeah, we can get to maybe her in that category, right? Because that'll, that, that tells. I'm going to keep doing a four sports metaphors. Little like Vince Carter, early Raptors, where you're like, wow, this is amazing. But now you look back and you're like, eh, you made the round two once.

Right. Congratulations. Here's the thing. She won a dunk contest in Silver Linings, though. She did. It's a dunk contest. that's what that movie is over him well she just in general the performance she won that she doesn't really mean anything it's just like look at my charisma well but right yeah but let's we can go back to that in a second but i also think silver linings playbook of these nine movies was the one that arm that sort of it arm wrestled america into acceptance and i think

that it charmed everybody who saw it i didn't want to like it uh i still don't think i do but while i was watching it i was i was i was totally taken what had one big thing too is that it was bradley cooper i think this was before limitless right no it? No, it's after. It's after Limitless. A little bit of a coronation for him as a real movie star. Yeah, as an actor. He'd give us a couple peaks, and then this one, he's really getting it. Yep.

And then Zero Dark Thirty is... I think her best... It had a moment. It was part of a cultural moment that people were ready for a movie like Zero Dark Thirty. I think. When it was released, it was. That helped.

That year was my second favorite movie of that year. I was pretty impressed. I was really impressed with how she told that story. It's her best. It's her best directing. Yeah. But now that's the story itself is, like I said earlier, just like way more complicated. It's very well crafted.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is. That is. That is very well crafted. Yeah. I mean, it is, that is, that is, of these nine movies, I mean, they're all mostly really well directed.

Yeah, but you can have other movies in there. Like that, for me, the master is in play. Oh, the master. All right.

So if we're leaving the, the confines of the best picture nominees. What was the best picture five years later? The master. The master is unquestionably, I mean, in the things that it's about are unquestionably timeless in some ways in terms of this this question, this quest of selfhood and this search for someone to complete that quest for you. people who fraudulence is like spiritual fraudulence you know economic fraudulence emotional fraudulence

it is just it is such a great movie about about America in a lot of ways without declaring any grand statement about America at all and the acting is great I think Amor was. And the acting is great.

I think Amor was really good. Amor is great. I don't think it should have won Best Picture because it's just too kind of under the radar. It was small. You have to have some sort of moment. And I think it won Best Foreign Film. Yeah, and a foreign film's never won Best Picture, right?

Is that right? A foreign film winner or a foreign film... No, a foreign film nominated for Best Picture has never won. If you just... The artist, does the artist count? Oh, the artist, yeah. Does the artist count? I guess it does.

I mean, it's produced by an American company. It's set in Los Angeles, but if you spent 20 days in a row and you had amnesia and you missed this whole year and you just watched these 20 movies in a row and just start to finish, which is the best one, the best crafted, the most moving, all that stuff. I think Amour wins. I think it's weird.

It would have been weird if it won Best Picture. I think how it ended up was good. It got nominated. It won Best Foreign Film. Yeah, it made a great international filmmaker a little bit more of a name brand in America. A few more people saw the white ribbon and and and um it's a heart and all of his you know the piano teacher and all the great michael

honica movies they saw them because a more got nominated for best picture which is a great thing so i i would have that i think the master should have won and i think jango is actually kind of like 15 underrated now and now maybe because of the moment tarantino's having you know it's going to get lost culturally and i think he's in a lot of trouble but we're in a re-evaluation period yeah just in general but um the master is so fucking weird i watched it with my wife again like a month ago and she'd never seen it and she didn't like it and was having a real visceral reaction to it but also couldn't stop watching it yeah and uh phoenix's performance the second time around or maybe it was the third time i said i don't know but he's so good in that i know we're gonna talk best actor it's just such a

there's just no movie like that movie i had a great viewing experience with with for that movie i saw it opening night thursday night at midnight at the arc light in hollywood i saw it with chris ryan and alex papademos your former podcast partner our former colleague and it was after a long dinner at muson frank and it was mobbed the dome was mobbed for the master and people came out of the movie theater at 2 45 in the morning and they were humming and 2 45 in the morning is not a time in la you know like the city shuts down at two so to see a fully packed dome lobby and seeing people like really excited about a movie that is a strange film was is like very is really burnished into my i don't think any of these

movies have greatness except for that movie. All these movies are really good. You don't think they have any greatness? No, just real unique greatness. I don't know. That's the one that stands out for me. I don't know. Django Unchained, that is a great directing performance. And it really is going for something in

terms of what it's arguing there's great sections yeah i don't know i don't think there's there's no part of that movie that doesn't interest me like and so it sounds like that's even the problems uh of the night of those no no no no no that's not true i think the master is like it is a perfect perfect movie there is nothing wrong with that movie every single thing about it works and you know the thing that of course kept it from being nominated for any it's not nominated for original screenplay or director press picture whatever i can make it i think the voters saw him jerking off in the ocean like 10 minutes in and they were like no bill that's off that's

not what hurt it it's this 82 year old voter it's the scientology thing maybe it's the it's the belief that it's the thing that got set in motion that this is a movie about scientology and no matter i mean clearly i'm not even positive that's true but it doesn't matter that's the narrative i'm saying i i'm that but that narrative that it's about Scientology, and it's like, I don't know. I'm sure there's pieces of it, and maybe it was inspired by that, but I don't think that's what the movie was about.

One other element of it, I think, that has made it age better is it's Philip Seymour Hoffman's last great performance. I mean, he passed away only a few years after this was made, and so it's strange now that it's not acknowledged in that way, that it has not become a part's not acknowledged in that way you know that it's it has not become a part of oscar history in that way because he's he's just captivating it is everything that's a top three hoffman how right yeah incredible how he how christoph waltz won

an oscar and in a category that included for your favorite movie jango i mean are we going to talk about this later should we just yeah yeah okay uh last thing just for we're gonna move what is your what is your pick who do you think should have won i think the master the master but what about the of the nominees i would i would have gone with jango and i don't feel great about it okay interesting uh argo i think's really good but i just it's hard for me to believe that won the oscar it's a really good movie gri Gripping. Good action movie. I feel like I've seen 15 different versions of that movie over the last 20 years. The guy criticizes a high-toned TV movie when it came out.

It's really good. Affleck's hair is very strange. It's hard to get by in the rewatches. He looks good. You like it? Oh, yeah. How do you guys feel about the gratuitous shirtless scene? Listen. Listen, man. They all do it. They all do it. How do you guys feel about the gratuitous shirtless scene? Listen.

They all do it. They all do it. And you're just talking to the wrong person on that one. I'm not going to complain. It's a choice. It's a good movie. I'm not positive I would watch it if it was on tonight and I had no other options. It's low-key a big win for magazine adaptations. It was like a magazine story that was made into a movie.

That's good for all of us. Best director was Ang Lee in One for Life of Pi. Michael Haneke, Amor. Haneke, yeah. Haneke, sorry. It's Haneka if you're doing it really right. The Beast of the Southern Wild Guy. I'm not saying his name.

Ben Zeitman. Spielberg for Lincoln. And then David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook. Tarantino snubbed Affleck snubbed No Bigelow Bigelow snubbed No Wes Anderson

No Paul Thomas Anderson for The Master Oh, Paul Thomas Anderson snubbed There's a whole other five director category There's five other best director nominees It's kind of a loaded movie, yeah, because the best actor category is really good. Wither Tom Hooper for Les Mis? Yeah.

That was a little bit of a tiny thing the next day. There was no Tom Hooper. I'll tell you what hasn't aged well. It was Ang Lee's Oscar for Life of Pi. That is in the fridge, and I need to throw it out. What's that smell in the fridge? Oh, it's Ang Lee's Oscar.

Okay. Throw that thing away. Let's pay a little homage to Ang Lee. Yeah, I mean, we have to. There's no choice. We have to. I think he's very good at what he does. He should have won the Oscar that year.

The Ice Storm. Great. You know where I stand on the Ice Storm. Hulk. I want to do an Ice Storm Rewatchables. Hulk. Would you be in the Ice Storm Rewatchables, Wesley? You ride for Hulk? What? The Ice Storm Rewatchables. Hulk. Would you be in the Ice Storm Rewatchables, Wesley? Yeah, you ride for Hulk?

What? The Ice Storm Rewatchables. Oh, for sure. That movie's fucked up. It's so good. That's kind of your era, that East Coast. Darien, Connecticut, man. I was in high school right near there, yeah.

Super weird. Were you Tobey Maguire in that movie? Please don't say you were Kevin Kline. No, but that inspired the key party that we have every week at my house on Fridays. The Ang Lee Oscar is awful. It's a make-up Oscar

for Brokeback. It's all... That's what it is. If that's what we're saying, that's fine. Brokeback didn't win. He didn't win. He should have won that year.

Wait, who won that year? I think Ang Lee did win that year. It was Paul Haggis, wasn't it? No, Haggis didn't win. Did he win? Maybe he did win. Ang Lee won for...ley won for he won for bro pack mountain this is not a makeup oscar you're right this is this is this oscar to make

up with him if he won the oscar no oh then that's a really weird no the angley listen i did what did you do you remember what you said to me like the day after this happened no i believe you were the person that got me on this american director's kick oh yeah that we've been talking about right right and that that he i don't know if i mean i can't remember who won the year before i think cuaron won the year before this right american white american men don't win or the year cuaron wins the year after. But since then... And it was just really... I mean, this is a guy who... I mean, you watch that movie

and it is such a director's movie. I don't know what people saw when they saw The Master that doesn't make that a director's movie or Zero Dark Thirty. I would say that's the most director-y movie, The Master. Yeah, I mean, or Zero Dark Thirty.

I mean, I don't know what the director's branch is going for or looking for when they when they cast their ballots um and i don't know i was gonna say i don't know what they see in beasts of the southern wild lincoln should have gotten snubbed too um fuck spielberg i think beast of the southern oh my god why don't you try again i mean sean was i needed to increase his sean had to look out the window when you said that. I just ignored it. The Ben Zeitlin thing in Vista de los Southern Wilds is weird and probably requires a little bit of interrogation. You know, that was a big hit at

Sundance and it was released in the summer and it did decent business for a movie with no stars and, you know, obviously Convention de Wallace became a bit of a thing that year. Never had one and obviously Convention of Wallace became a bit of a thing for me. Never had one conversation

about that movie since 2013. I remember Chris Ryan was a huge fan and I think it did a lot of... There's our first problem. Well, it did a lot of... The Dunkirk thing kills me with Chris Ryan. That's your Miami Vice brother.

You don't want to lose that. You definitely don't want to lose your proof of life. I have no other proof of life brothers. I think people thought it was like a formal achievement because he had no money and he made something that was magically real. That was the idea. It's definitely something and it is definitely, it is a kind of achievement. I just am not a, I just don't believe in that movie.

Really? They say they have an award for it. It's called the Independent Spirit Awards. I think part of the problem is that there were so many good director choices, and we don't know how they do the votes, if it's just first place, and most first place votes wins. Yeah, I mean, that's not a weighted ballot. I think it's a typical ballot.

So if you had nine different camps, and everybody's getting 11% of the vote, who the hell knows? Who should have won? This was Aang's second Oscar? That's so weird. This is a really weird win. Yeah. I mean, that's why I didn't think he was going to win.

Who would you have voted for? Everyone's on the table, Sean. Definitely PTA. Because that's the big vision. That's the super auteur movie that is like, I believe in something and I'm going to see it through fully, no matter how weird it is. I have that too. I agree. Of the,

of the five people. What's funny is Tarantino probably would have been my second choice. And I think Bigelow would have been my third choice. I don't have any of the five nominees. Moonrise Kingdom is his, is his bizarre is Wes Anderson's best movie. He basically got the nod for that on Grand Budapest hotel. Right.

Right. They kind of carried that over. Actor DDl one for lincoln cooper and silver linings playbook he's really good in that movie he's really good uh i don't think i realized his full name was patrizio pat solitano jr did you know he was a patrizio i did not well thank god they didn't beat us over the head with that because they'd have lost me patrizio really, really? Joaquin Phoenix in The Master. It's Freddie Quill. Denzel in Flight, which we're going to talk about in a second. And then just a travesty of a fifth nominee, Hugh Jackman for Les Mis.

I don't fuck that shit. Fuck Hugh Jackman. Fuck that movie. Explain the Russell Crowe-Hugh Jackman market correction. That's a great take. No, Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman market correction. That's a great take. No, Russell Crowe can't sing and dance. Well, but 30 odd foot of grunts would tell you otherwise. He's banned.

Here's the thing about their careers, though. This is the first time Hugh Jackman had actually been able to do that in a movie. Like nobody, all these dummies, I mean, with all due respect to the dummies in Hollywood, all the dummies in Hollywood wanted him to like be Wolverine and do things that were like Wolverine in other movies. Nobody wanted him to be the thing that Meg Ryan saw in that. The Boy From Us. In that shitty comedy that she, like the last of the romantic comedies

she made where they have to time travel Hugh Jackman into the present to find to like to satisfy the Meg Ryan urge for love oh good luck there yeah Kate and Leopold Kate and Leopold and nobody he became

Wolverine and he stayed Wolverine and then finally but on Broadway I, everybody knows that Hugh Jackman has jazz hands. That's not a euphemism or a metaphor. He just, he likes musicals. And that's not a euphemism or a metaphor either. And I just feel like this is the first movie that lets him do that. Okay, great. He shouldn't have been nominated.

He's really good for the first hour. It did predict too too like what the back half of his career is going to be like the greatest showman is a huge hit it's a surprise now if he got nominated for that i wouldn't have been offended well that would be a problem because he's not good in it but the movie is good it does put him to like the best use so you think jango is so good yet you don't think any of the actors should have been nominated i think dicaprio should have been nominated and i think jamie foxx should and i think samuel l jackson samuel l jackson should have been nominated we're getting that same we're not in support samuel jackson and jamie foxx are not nominated well that's the thing so jamie foxx

i'm giving you the hugh jackman spot here that's the thing. So Jamie Foxx, I'm giving you the Hugh Jackman spot here. That's fine. I'm going to protect the other four. I'm protecting Day-Lewis. I'm protecting Phoenix, Denzel, and Cooper. So that fifth spot could be Jamie Foxx. Jamie Foxx. It could be Jake Gyllenhaal on end of watch.

I wouldn't do that, but I support you. You know as a Jake Gyllenhaal fan. I'm a humong, but I support you. As you know, as a Jake Gyllenhaal fan. I'm a humongous End of Watch fan. I think that's been, as the years pass, kind of the lost one that gained steam. David Ayer's career has not aged that well, the director of that movie. He made Suicide Squad. He made Bright last year. At that time, I was like, this guy might be the new Michael Mann.

What was the Pattinson movie this year, Good Time? Good Time. That guy might be the new Michael Mann that was kind of what was the patent movie this year good time good time that was kind of the good time of that year yeah it was good it was under the radar everybody liked it and it's very propulsive I mean he was he did a thing to where he was kind of iterating on found footage and what horror movies were doing at that time and tried to apply it even though he broke the rules of it a lot that didn't bother you about that movie by the way that's the rule that's no the found footage thing.

That was that movie's big flaw. Yeah. Everything else worked except for that. The cops are good. Me and Michael Pena are great. He and Michael Pena are great for that fifth spot. Can I just say, this Oscar sucked. What were they doing?

These nominations are terrible. They're really bad. They've missed so many things here. There's so many choices that I would have just gone the other way. Like every year you're like, oh, this is annoying. This person got snubbed. This one in particular, I'm like, how are Jamie Foxx and Leo not nominated and Hugh Jackman is nominated? Well, Hugh Jackman.

This is why we're doing this. DiCaprio goes in the supporting category. Yes. Okay. All right. So let's. But Jamie Foxx, I was disappointed that that didn't happen. I think if this is five years later, I think he gets it.

He gets nominated? I think the voters are much more concerned now about what obviously was happening here, where they just voted for four white guys and Denzel. But first of all, that is Denzel's, that is his best thing in a long time. Well, so... At that point. He's very good in this.

This is a great category. It's a great category. Even with Hugh Jackman in it, it's a great category. That top four is fucking awesome. Who should have won? Daniel Day-Lewis. I really like DDL, too.

I think Daniel Day-Lewis. I wish I had some take against it. Can I make the case for Phoenix? Of course you can. What I grew up with, with De Niro, when he went haywire with roles like that, and we were all like,

oh my God, this is amazing, De Niro. For some reason, we don't do that with Phoenix. No. And I think he has a lot of baggage in a lot of different ways

that doesn't help him. He did that crazy movie with Casey Affleck that didn't help him. I don't remember if that was before or after this. That was after this. I mean, that was before this. That was before this. It was before this movie, right? Yes, that movie was...

I'm Not Here was before The Master. It doesn't seem like he has the weight. And it's almost like if this had been any other actor doing what he did in this movie, I think he wins. And it was like he got penalized for being him. Yeah. I mean, in a way. David A. Lewis was amazing.

I'm not going to argue against that. It was not an impersonation. He did all the stuff he always does. But if he's going to win for Lincoln, then he should win for every movie. He should win for Phantom Thread this year because he's equally as good in every movie. Right, yes.

So I don't know why this movie versus other movies, I guess, is my point. Here's Well, here's the, so I don't know why this movie versus other movies, I guess is my point. Here's my one thing about the Oscars though. I think if you're like, I mean, this will never happen, obviously, but I just like, if you're playing a living person,

you should go in a different acting category because I think the achievement, I think that what Denzel do and Joaquin Phoenix does and Bradley Cooper, all three of those guys, I just think an original, playing an original character who doesn't have any sort of pre-existing. So creating a character from scratch. I think what Joaquin Phoenix is doing things in this movie that I just have never seen an actor.

I agree. It's like, it's kind of a heat check performance. That moment where he goes under and I remember people writing it off as being a stunt and the look on the

people in the house, the other actors in the house as he's doing this, it's acting on the one hand, but it is real. You mean from the window to the wall? Yes. Yes. Oh my God, that is so good. You mean from the window to the wall scene? Yes! Yes! Oh my God, that is so good! What about the stuff he does with his body? Oh, everything. He's like weird.

He's cooked back. He's like a veteran. He's like a guy who is with the reward. It's almost like we should have rolled his performance over to another year when we had a bad winner and given him that Oscar. You know what's interesting too about this? There's something interesting about what Daniel Day-Lewis did this year

in Phantom Thread that also kind of needed its own category, which is like we talk about creating a character from scratch, but in Phantom Thread, he basically co-wrote the character with the writer-director, which is a different version of making up a character. And maybe Joaquin did this with PTA too, but that's just, uh, that's different.

That's different from Denzel getting a script and saying, I'm in. Well, but yeah, I, I hear you, but I think that, I think you're,

you're, you're refining my complaint. Right. Right. I mean, I feel like you and I are in the same page about this. As the arbiter, you both said the same thing.

Okay, great. Uh, best actress is, is, uh on the same page about this. As the arbiter, you both said the same thing. Okay, great. Best actress is the opposite of the best actor category. Jennifer Lawrence won for Silver Linings Playbook, which I had somehow blocked out of my mind. Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty, Sean's alternate universe wife. Emmanuel Riva in Amor.

Beast of the Southern Wild Lady. Quvenzhané Wallace. Yeah, I wasn't going to say it. And Naomi Watts got nominated for The Impossible, which was like a Netflix movie. It wasn't even a real movie. Wait, stop. Stop, stop, stop.

Did you see it? I did. It's good. And then the second half gets super fucking weird yes but listen i hate this movie i hate it with a raging passion but part of what i hate about it is what what it puts her and us through for i mean i all i hate it for them i hate it morally and politically and the way it like who and who it prioritizes in terms of suffering. Yeah. But that opening 20 minutes is just, I have never been, it's so complicated,

but what it does to her, and what she has to do, I don't know how much she actually suffered, but Naomi Watts can't be killed and is is is unconquerable even under the most horrific natural disaster circumstances holy shit the tsunami scene is it's just absolutely horrifyingly petrifying where it goes later yeah i think it's reprehensible this movie it's definitely the first half hour that movie sucks you in about as much as an action movie is going to do it. I can't believe she got nominated.

I'd forgotten. But any actor watching that is just like there for the grace of God because I... I don't even know who else really should have been nominated. It was just a typically horrible year for best actresses. It was a bad year for women. Can I suggest a couple? Yeah, sure.

Well, I'll save my hottest hottest take um i think marion cotillard in rust and bone oh it's like yes like a really really like maybe the best thing she's ever done i agree not recognized so good and and this is sort of beside the point but when you're a movie star it counts counts. She's so sexy in that movie. She's missing a leg and is in utter control of every single scene. And it's true she's working with Matthias Schonartz, who is like a bull who needs somebody to ride him. But she's so good in that movie. It is such a great movie star performance

my take is i think jennifer lawrence should have been nominated for the hunger games and not for silver lining oh damn oh because that's that's the burn on my arm is that's the jennifer lawrence that i think is great that's the jennifer law that I'm interested in, who is steely and tough. I also did love her in Hunger Games. That's Winter's Bone Jennifer Lawrence. Yeah. I don't know, though. I'm ready for that Jennifer Lawrence again. She returns to it in Red Sparrow, which is a complicated movie, but she is going for it in that same vein. Great. But wait, can we talk about before we move

on well who should have won you didn't tell me oh who should who should have won oh man i can't i can't say chastain it's chastain in a walk for me like it's not even close oh emmanuel riva i thought i really that night i would have said she was gonna win i thought she was i would have said the amour lady emmanuel yeah emle Riva of those five people. That movie really, really was affecting. It's very crushing. That would have been a good way to honor that movie, too. I would have voted for her.

Supporting actor, Christopher Waltz won for Django. I don't know how. Car crash. Alan Arkin, Argo, which is bizarre that he even got nominated. It's infuriating. De Niro for Silver Linings Playbook, which was just a career achievement. He's good in that, though achievement he's good in that though this was a good category this year

Tommy Lee Jones Lincoln and then the one that I just can't believe didn't win Hoffman in The Master but then also Leo didn't get nominated and Samuel L. Jackson is just how you can watch that movie

and it clearly demonstrates to me that those people didn't know what that movie was about. For one thing, I think they were uncomfortable. Yeah, they were uncomfortable. They picked the guy who is more the most morally correct, quote unquote. And it's ludicrous. It's ludicrous to me. I feel like Christoph Waltz should break that Oscar in half, mail half to Sam Jackson, and mail the other half to Leonardo DiCaprio. Because that movie clearly made voters uncomfortable.

As uncomfortable as it made people who watched it. I think he's the fourth person I would have honored in that movie after the top three. Even for a nomination. I would have honored Kerry Washington. Kerry Washington is better than he is. I wouldn't give it to Kerry Washington. It's just... Who did Kerry Washington get boned over? So I wouldn't give it to Kerry Washington. Oh, shit. It's just...

Who did Kerry Washington get boned over? So Anne Hathaway won for Les Mis. That category is too strong to include Kerry Washington. Kerry Washington doesn't have a lot of screen time. She doesn't, yeah. But when she's there, she's great. Anne Hathaway, Les Mis won.

Amy Adams, the master. Sally Field, Lincoln. Helen Hunt, the sessions. Yeah. Jackie Weaver, Silver Ladd silver that's the other person who got we could have made room for carey washington there i who yeah i think we could have made room for carey well i mean i'm open to that but i think john john hawks is the other person who who seemed like a lot to win the oscar that's wild that he wasn't nominated yeah john hawks

plays the guy in the sessionsessions who lives in the box. He's the guy that she's sex surrogating Helen Hunt is in that movie. And it's a classic Oscar winner performance. There's a person with a disability who learns to access an aspect of himself that he hasn't previously accessed because of the disability. I didn't like that movie. I didn't like it either. It's a great performance, but I'm just,

it just seemed like, I mean, that's how strong those other five guys are that John Hawks got kept out of it. So we all think Hoffman for supporting. Oh yeah. Oh, but,

but can we just go back to Samuel L. Jackson for one second? Cause I think Sam Jackson support. I feel like we take this guy for granted. And he says things that he shouldn't say. Does a lot of commercials. He does a lot of Capo 1 commercials. Pigeonholed as an action movie guy.

Well, he works too much to really be pigeon. He's pigeonholed as Samuel L. Jackson. And I think that was the thing that worked against him. I also think he just played a character that freaked people out. The movie basically blames black people's relationship to white people on another black person. Do you know what I mean? It lays the slavery problem at the foot of what we would classically call an Uncle Tom. I think you're right that the Academy was really uncomfortable

with trying to reckon with Steven and Calvin Candy and their relationship and what that meant. And to identify it would have been a real issue. So I think you're right. It's a bummer, though. The two of them are so good. And they make that movie in a way that Christoph Waltz doesn't. Christoph Waltz is great.

He's always great. He does the same thing thing he's doing the same performance in every movie he is like exuberant and not to be trusted until he is I think we've figured him out supporting actress Amy Adams Amy Adams and Sally Field we're just giving the master all the way around it's the best acting you're gonna see in a movie

Just almost period I mean even Laura Dern in her one scene on the porch is really good I'll tell you one thing And Rami Malek is really good I'll tell you one thing Anne Hathaway not winning would have been the best thing that could have happened to her career You know As crazy as that sounds.

I disagree. Okay. I'm going to ride for Anne Hathaway. Yeah. I don't care for Les Mis. I think she's, I think she's good. She talked to you at a Jacoby party one night, one time for three minutes. That may have happened.

Um, I think one, I'm going to ride for her acceptance speech, which was wisely derided at the time. And I thought it was nice. I thought it was nice too. And people are just assholes. She's aspirational. That is her whole thing. She wants it. She's a little thirsty and that's okay. It's

okay to want to be great. She tries really hard and when it hits I think she's excellent and she's made good movies since then. Yeah, Mark Lassanti the day after wrote a really great thing for Grantland about wanting it and how much she wanted it. And he was really... Oh, sorry. You're ambitious. I,

when did the ambition become a bad quality? I think for a lot of people, people are turned off by it. It's like, Oh, the St. Hathaway, she really wants it. It's like,

so what? There's a, there's a, there's a theater geek aspect to her that is so, so apparent. And you never really see in, in a world full of theater geeks, you never see somebody just never give

that aspect of themselves up. Let's quickly go through original screen pray. Django 1. Other nominees were Amor, Flight, Moonrise Kingdom, Zero Dark Thirty, The Master not nominated. Is this Tarantino's only win? He went for Pulp Fiction.

He did win for Pulp.iction oh yeah with Roger Avery bizarre it's just bizarre that that's what they chose to honor but that's what they do it's completely illogical who do you think should win it's between

I think Moonrise Kingdom is the best screenplay of those five and I think a more while it doesn't seem like there's a lot going on in that writing, there's a couple sequences that like on the page, just writing about the pigeon in

the hallway. And there's just so many great passages that can only come from writing in that movie. I think it's the best written of those five movies. But Moonrise Kingdom has the most delight for it. I don't have an own personal answer for this

because I never understand what the parameters are for original screenplay. It just seems to change year to year and I don't even know what they look for. I don't understand why Flight is nominated here. That's what I mean. Why is Flight on there but the Master isn't? Yeah, I find that screenplay embarrassing, actually. The third the third act is weird yeah and well that sequence in the stairwell

wesley and i ride for a flight i like it's pretty good yeah it's a good is the screenplay the thing you walk away from no that's what's great about it it's like really well made it's amazing start to finish i like and all the scenes when he's in the plane are fantastic. But when it turns into like AA karaoke, it doesn't work. Adapted Argo one. It beat Beasts of the Southern Wildlife, a pie Lincoln and Silver Linings playbook. I'm fine with that. That was probably a hard movie to kind of figure out

how to take different pieces from and turn it into a script this is a pretty mighty tony kushner yeah i just don't understand what what went on there yeah i just i can't believe you would have gone lincoln this is like the one of the five greatest living playwrights writing at his at his peak. At his peak! That screenplay! And one of the most pleasurable things about the shots people fired at that script was his defense of it, which was totally cogent to me. The liberties he was proud to have taken

with the Connecticut senators, with the Connecticut congressmen and their vote for the 13th Amendment. Well, here's what I understand, then. Why didn't it just win Best Picture too? I don't think people loved the movie, but I think to not acknowledge that it is just like a thunderously written movie.

It's a really well-written screenplay. I'm sorry. Okay. I still don't understand the parameters for that category. Well, I mean, you know. For adapted screenplay? Well, adapted screenplay to me is like, I don't know.

What is the first part of, what am I judging it on? Am I judging it by how difficult it was to adapt? Or am I judging it just by the script is good. Oh, and it was adapted. It could be one or the other. It seems like it's either depending on the movie. No, one or the other or both. I mean, I don't know what they were thinking in terms.

I think that also they were just... They wanted to honor Argo as an achievement. I think that was when I knew it was going to really win Best Picture. So Argo, this one is interesting because it's based on two different things. You don't see that very often. You don't see him pulling or a writer pulling from two different sources. I think it was a really hard movie to figure out. I agree.

In another year, it would probably go on a walk. I just... Tony Kushner wrote an amazing movie. Cam Collins is here. I think it was a really hard movie to figure out. I agree. In another year, it would probably go on a walk. Tony Kushner wrote an amazing movie. Cam Collins is here. So we're redoing the 2013 Oscars. You joined us late. And our big takeaway is that The Master was the most underrated movie of this year. What is your take?

Totally. I was agreeing with everything you guys were saying as I was listening. Currently writing about the same thing. Yeah, all the acting awards. I don't think that Philip Seymour Hoffman is a supporting actor. No, that's the other thing about that category. Oh, you think they're a supporting actor? I totally forgot. It's been so long since I've seen it.

How he's in the supporting category, by the way, makes no sense. Good point. That's really true. He's not in the first 25 minutes of the movie. People are dumb. Come on. He's not the one humping the sand. Well, also, that could have been a campaign thing to get him out of the way or whatever.

But like, yeah, I mean, Jamie Foxx is coming in sixth for me. Philip Seymour Hoffman is going back up to the best actor category. Sorry, Jamie Foxx. Oh, so you're flipping now. No, he's right. I forgot that. I mean, my memory i i didn't i don't remember being as outraged for as long as i have been about other supporting actor issues but this

is definitely one of those things where the category parameters got fudged in order to get him out of one category and into another and it didn't even work out because they wanted to give him a fucking oscar it didn't work at the Oscars. It didn't work at any show or any award, right? It just didn't happen. Do you think five years later Django underrated, overrated, properly rated? What has been the legacy? What is the consensus?

That it's good? That it's fine? We thought it was a little underrated. I think it's great. My mind is not changed. I can't divorce it from liking Inglourious Basterds a little more but I think Django's really interesting. I think it's great. My mind is not changed. I can't divorce it from liking Inglourious Bastards a little more. But I think Django's really interesting. And I think that is historically how it will be remembered. It's like Inglourious Bastards, as time goes on, for a lot of people that I have talked to,

think of that as his second achievement behind Pulp Fiction. Oh, really? Have they seen Death Proof? I love Death Proof. Have they seen Jackie Brown? Death Proof is very, very hard to reconcile with in this context, though. Because of everything that happened with the Uma Thurman story and all that. I mean, that movie looks like it was made as a reflection of his experience on Kill Bill.

And that is a tough way to absorb that movie. Jackie Brown, I'm with you. Jackie Brown kicks ass. That movie's phenomenal. Did that get any nominations for anything? Oh, it did. Jackie Brown. Robert Forster you. Jackie Brown kicks ass. That movie's phenomenal. Did that get any nominations for anything? Oh, it did. Robert Forster. This is a very strange Oscars. So here's my one big theory.

This might have been the last Oscars before the internet writing became good enough and the voters became savvy enough to kind of read things and find things to be like oh oh i should do this that guy makes some good points or that girl makes some good points whatever because the oscars started making a lot more sense after this year the following year is is the 12 years a slave gravity year which is a really interesting oscars that i don't think this wouldn't be as fun a podcast about that Oscars. Yeah.

You know, there were a lot of good choices that were made for lack of a better phrase that were not made here. Best director. If we had to do it over again, five years later, cam PTA. Yeah.

Or would you go Tarantino, Affleck, Bigelow, not Affleck, not, not, not for this. That was funny. There's such an outcry with Affleck. Not for this. That was funny.

There's such an outcry with Affleck. And meanwhile, he probably wasn't one of the best five directors. No. Well, that was the weird thing about the outcry. It was like, well, you guys think. But I mean, think about. I mean, they were trying to make him the next Warren Beatty. I even bought that a little bit.

This is it. He made this movie that's not that great but it's not that great it's not that great in the way that a Warren Beatty movie generally is not that great can I have your Warren Beatty stock for Affleck? you want to take it? yeah no I'm not giving it to you Sean do you have any? Warren Beatty never would have played Batman Warren Beatty played Dick Tracy that was a flex only Warren Beat baby could pull off no one had dick tracy on the brain batman was too high a grass what you guys you guys don't understand affleck

was just trying to impress his kids warren baby didn't have kids he wasn't thinking that way he had no kids right uh not at that point no affleck's just trying to get to a point you're trying to impress your kids god God, I love Warren Beatty. I do too. He's made some bad movies. Of course. Who hasn't? I like him too.

He made Reds and Heaven Can Wait. He's good. Heaven Can Wait is my favorite Warren Beatty movie. Shampoo is your favorite Warren Beatty. Heaven Can Wait should come back as a Netflix series. Sure. With a different scenario. Sometimes it's three. That'd be great. Oh, he's going to be a Netflix series. Sure. He's just going in a different body. With a different scenario. Sometimes it's three.

That'd be great. Oh, he's going to be a tech millionaire this time. Oh, great. Oh, he's going to be a barista at Starbucks. You know this isn't going to go well. He's going to leave this body. Parallax View is another one that could come back as a weekly series under the current reality.

They're making Three Days of the Condor. That's Condor, a TV show. All right. We're going to wrap of the Condor as Condor, a TV show. All right. We're going to wrap this up. Kudos to the master. I think you, I think, I'm glad we did this though. And I really think this would be a good idea

for them to do this, even though I know they never will. I think that, I think it needs about five years to decide what's good, what resonated with them. Yeah, we have no anxiety about like Terrell Owens and Randy Moss getting into the Hall of Fame. They deserve to go.

That was obvious. If we had tried to put them up the first year, people would have been like, I don't like those guys that much. They might have to wait. Terrell Owens, bad teammates. I still don't feel 100% of the Terrell Owens thing. I mean, he was a cancer. He was a cancer. He quit on teams. I guess it's fine.

No, that's not fine. Thank you, Wesley. Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Kim. Alright, thanks to Shoemaker. Thanks to Sean. Thanks to Kim. Thanks to Wesley. Don you, Sean. Thank you, Kim. All right. Thanks to Shoemaker. Thanks to Sean. Thanks to Kim. Thanks to Wesley. Don't forget to go to the Ringer NBA show. I hosted today's episode because all of our dudes were out. If you want to listen to that, just go to the Ringer NBA show.

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for free. Visit Gillette online at GilletteOnDemand.com Don't forget to subscribe to the Recapables launching this week with Atlanta Season 1 Recap Award Show already up. Back later in the week with more. On the wayside On the first side of the road I don't have to ever forget