The Press Box - Have You Seen Donald Trump? Plus, TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz

Episode Date: November 24, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss Donald Trump’s disappearance from the media and weigh in on what a post-Trump presidency will look like (2:10). Then they break down ‘Meet the Press,’ in a new feature called We’ve Got Notes (21:25). Then Ben Mankiewicz of Turner Classic Movies joins to discuss his career and his favorite media movies (48:40). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, the Trump campaign announced yesterday in a statement that lawyer Sidney Powell was no longer part of the president's campaign legal team. If she ever was, what I want to know is, is this the best way to find out you're no longer working for somebody? I mean, it's got to be a little bit awkward right after the attorney that is working for the legal team introduced you and stepped aside. that you could approach the microphone to find out that that was not, did not imply everything that you thought it did. That is a great way. I don't know. I mean,

they said that she's practicing law on her own, correct? If this happened to you or me, if Bill Simmons got on Twitter and said, I would just like everyone to be clear that Brian Curtis is not a host of the press box and not an employee of the ringer. He is out there committing acts of journalism on his own. At least like,

well, you would have presumably pay stuff to contradict it, but if you didn't, at least there's like a definition of this, right? You are blogging, right? You are, your journalism are just, they're just blogs. They're not really ours. Your, your podcasts are just you recording. They're not really hours. There's not really, the idea of like practicing law on one's own doesn't really exist, right? I mean, you have to have a client. Yeah. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the idea of profiling Joe Buck on my own.

I imagine how disappointed he would be. Just like, well, that he's just like, well, that he's just, like thanks for all the uh you know for for caring brian when is this piece going to come out and you just don't respond yeah i don't even have a substack it's just uh just it's just it's just kind of for me coming up on today's show have any of you guys seen donald trump lately david and brian give production notes on meet the press plus ben mankowitz of turner classic movies all that more on the press box a part of the ringer podcast network hello media consumers brian curtis and david shumaker here david we're doing our best not to talk about Donald Trump.

But we're at this very weird place right now where on the one hand, Donald Trump is trying to steal the election. And on the other, Trump is physically absent from our lives for the first time. I can't

remember him being since 2015, maybe before that. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's hard to remember a time when he was less present. And, but, you know, everything that's going on, the ceiling of the election, as you said, and I'm even going to say as you put it, because that is a statement of fact, is in some ways a lot more,

has a lot more volume than what we're used to with Trump, right? I mean, it's his, his silence is sort of deafening. And just in the fact that everything else that's going on is just, that's all we need to know, sort of. Yeah, it's everything Trump has done times, I don't know, 10,000. And yet the man himself is not vocally participating in it. I want to share some numbers I alluded from Josh Dossie's article in the Washington Post. According to his website called FactBase, Donald Trump has spoken about 8,000 words in the 18-day period since election day. In 2020, he spoke about that many words.

every day according to the same site. So 8,000 words publicly since election day, 8,000 every day at other times in 2020. Quoting Dossi again, Donald Trump averaged 48 minutes on camera every day in 2020. He has spent about 50 minutes on camera total since November 3rd. definitively, it is the quietest period of his presidency, fact-based owner Bill Frishing said. Here's what's weird about that. If you were trying to steal an election, David, wouldn't it be just as obvious a strategy to be out there? Yeah. To be doing maybe rallies in Michigan and Pennsylvania to put pressure on state legislators. Don't give them any ideas, all right? I mean, the last thing we, a rally, the Trump rally at this point would be,

could be a breaking point for democracy. The, the, the, but you're right. it's strange that he's not out there more, or it's interesting that he's not out there more. I think that it's, you know, you can usually use some form of, I mean, as we have many times over the past four years, some sort of, you know, psychoanalytical Occam's razor

with Donald Trump. And it, to me, honestly, just feels like if he had anything to say, he would be saying. And I'm sure there's, there's an element of this where maybe there's some dejection, you know, maybe he's just, this is how one acts when one loses, but doesn't have the tools to deal with loss or doesn't that, you know, to grapple with reality in that way.

But I do think that, like, if the people around him were really spinning hopeful conspiracy theories, hopeful just, you know, fictional accounts of the path forward, I feel like he'd be out there saying them. I feel like there were, you know, I mean, even places like, you know, newsmax are still staunchly in his corner, but are, you know, encouraging him, to go along with a transition just in case.

You know, I mean, like, there's, I feel like even the, even the, the far, the extremes are kind of pulling back on the stuff that would normally be fueling his tweets, his press conferences, everything else. I just don't think he has a script right now. Yeah, that came up in Dossie's article, too. I'll read you one more passage. Unlike 2016, when Trump doubted he would win, he is genuinely surprised by the defeat, advisors say.

Over the past few weeks of the campaign, advisors on Air Force one. repeatedly told the president he was going to win because of the large crowds at his rallies and showed him favorable polling, Trump mused about how he would mock the pundits and his critics after the election when he won again, advisors say. So Trump, David, had all the lines ready to go

about how the media once again underestimated him. I don't know, I don't think he knows what he wants to say yet, said one official. It's all over the place based on the day. So that basically is what you just guest, which is that Donald Trump just doesn't have a great answer for this. No, I don't, I mean, I think, I don't think that he does.

And I do, and it is an interesting way to frame it, um, what you just read because it's sort of like the way you talk yourself into like your team in the Super Bowl or like, the college playoffs, like some, like a like a supremely important game where all you do is just sort of you and your buddy just like, like, have like, like, like mantras going back and forth. There is no way, there's no way their offense can, can, can, can get through our defensive line. You just say these truisms, even if they're not true to yourself over and over again. And then when your team gets squashed, there are people who can, like, who are just lose their minds because nothing that they, you know, insisted for the past two weeks turned out to be true. Or you're

someone that watched the game and you're like, oh, there's a lot of things that happened to contribute to this win. And I understand them even though I'm disappointed. Trump, you know, clearly doesn't seem capable of actually just like witnessing the thing that just transpired and accepting it is true. And what's so funny about that is how many terrible hands has he tried to play in American life? We had to go back like, what, a month to think of like him spinning the coronavirus and his administration's handling of it positively? So you wouldn't think you wouldn't think losing an election, especially with all these elaborate conspiracy theories. We'll talk about here in a second.

Would really stop him. I mean, and again, I don't want to be the Donald Trump brainstorm session, so forget what I just said about the rallies. but I kind of expected him to do more of the like go into the White House briefing room and just yell at reporters. Yeah. And, you know, insist that Joe Biden did this and the Dominion voting machines did this and Hugo Chavez did this. I kind of expected that, but he has not seemed to have the stomach for that either. No, I mean, when he came out for that first coronavirus briefing post-election, that seemed like a potential path forward, right? That he would just come out and sort of be presidential or however he saw, however he wanted

to define that and be present, even if he's not actively debating the election results in public. But he hasn't really done that. And you can see the sort of deflation in his voice and in his posture when he came out for that briefing. And part of me, like I said, I just don't think he has the script. Part of me wonders if the people who would normally be, you know, providing that script are just sort of taking their vacation days before the clock runs out on the administration, right? I mean, it's like it's, it just doesn't seem like there's a lot of whatever the motive, factors were two weeks ago, it sort of seems like, or three weeks ago, it seems like we're sort of, those don't exist anymore. So you're saying Stephen Miller is like on South Padre

Island right now and Trump's trying to get a hold of him, but he left his phone in the hotel? I think people are taking work from home in the coronavirus era seriously for the first, mysteriously for the first time in the calendar year. I mean, I just, I think people are making in the White House. Yeah, in the White House. Yeah, yeah. I do think they're making excuses to kind not be around, but, but, you know, I'm, I'm just making things up. In this vacuum, two things have happened. Number one, Joe Biden is being president right now. We see a whole host of nominees for various cabinet posts for various administration posts.

His advisors are all over the Sunday shows. So this breach to me, and this is, again, a weird sort of irony of it, if that's the word of it, is that by being quiet, Donald Trump is essentially letting Biden publicly be the president. It's done a lot more for the cabinet in a lot of ways than it has for the Biden presidency. I mean, I guess it's done a lot for the Biden presidency too. But if Biden was, if the transition were happening in a conventional way, I don't think that you know, I don't think that Ron Clayne would have gotten the red carpet rolled out for him like he did last week. you know, I don't think that, I don't, I think that the nominee, that the nominees are sort of getting

more of a positive spotlight shown on them, right? It's not just about qualifications. It's not just about what, you know, the Republicans in the Senate have to say about them. It's, this is sort of, well, I don't know which government is, is in exile, depending on the way they're acting, but it does seem like they're, they're getting, they're really getting a moment in the spotlight. And Biden, for his part, has sort of done a hard pivot from his, his campaign stick, which was a sort of, you know, standing up to the bully defiance to just, I get, I mean, it's almost like his official,

the official campaign, the official campaign, you know, uh, mood at this point is just sheesh. You know, like everything he goes out there and every time he's appearing in public, it's just sort of like everything he says comes at the end of a long sigh, you know, it's just like, it's sort of he's, yes, he has a quiet, power to his voice, but quiet is the big thing. He's just like, I don't know what we're going to do,

but, you know, we'll get it done. Can you believe this guy? Did you see what he said? Yeah. He had one of those last week where he's standing in front of his office of the president-elect thing. He's like, can you believe this guy? It's almost like a very muted sort of reaction on purpose, which brings us back to the idea of stealing the election. Because of course, as quiet as Donald Trump is being, that is not a small news story. And that is an absolutely amazingly awful, hideous thing to try to do to whatever extent he's trying to do it. And the other person who has really filled this void is the lawyer, Sidney Powell. Yeah.

You might have seen her, David, when she appeared at a press conference at R&C headquarters with Rudy Giuliani last week and was described as part of the Trump legal team's, quote, elite strike force. she is no longer an actual member of the strike force having apparently left the team or never been on the team or we don't know. But listen to this. Here's how she entered the spotlight last week. What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China in the interference with our elections. here in the United States. The Dominion voting systems, the smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well,

not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out. Okay. when you explain it like that. Doesn't that feel like footage that would be clipped and then sort of narrated by Martin Sheen for the beginning of the Oliver Stone movie? Versus that kind of tour of all the boogeyman countries around the globe. Heavy use of the word communist.

Yeah. Communist. Yeah. I mean, Sydney Powell, I think, was getting a pass for a very brief winter. because I think that people generally weren't familiar with her and mistakenly believed she was, you know, one of these white glove attorneys that, you know, various news outlets have been threatening the Trump campaign would roll out. Everything she did once she got on the, you know, national stage has been just bonkers. I mean, just, I don't even know.

What's the equivalent of this? I mean, could you imagine Rudy Giuliani has enough promise. I mean, promise, enough problems. Imagine, but just imagine being Rudy Giuliani and being like, and now I'm going to turn this over to Sidney Powell, and she just gets up there and says that. I mean, you just have to be, I mean, you just be aghast. Even as you're spinning a web of just ridiculous and almost treasonous lies.

I mean, that's just bonkers stuff. Hair dye is running down the sides of your face, and you're the serious person in the room. you're the person we look to. It's also created this weird sort of media thing where Tucker Carlson asked Sidney Powell for evidence to support these various conspiracies

that I was given my whole week of the show for you to come on. She couldn't provide any. Then Powell started retweeting accounts attacking Carlson, including one that said Carlson had thrown, quote, one of his Fox globalist directed temper tantrums and quote, is owned by the syndicate

the syndicate capitalized. Not really sure where that is going. And then that, in the next sort of domino tumble, allowed newsmax, this sort of ascendant right-wing network that nobody can find on cable without really, really, really trying

to attack Fox from the right. That Fox is insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump because of that dastardly Tucker Carlson. Well, I think it's more than just because of Tucker Carlson, but I think the fact that even Tucker Carlson has been subsumed into the Trump hatred at Fox News, that's even, that's all the proof we need that it's, you know,

they've left the, they've left the movement. The think piece angle here, if we were writing this for the New York Times opinion section, is like, oh, this is what post-Trump media looks like. Donald Trump has just been dominating every second of television,

every inch of newsprint for four years. He's sort of backed off again. while trying to steal the election, he has just personally backed off for a couple of days. So this is what the media is going to look like post-Trump. I don't even want to do that think piece

because I don't think this is actually going to last very long. Yeah. And I'm just sort of waiting. I'm sort of fearful when we do this segment that Donald Trump was just going to like go in front of the media today and hijack it because there's no way he can resist

being the story for very much longer. Yeah, I mean the Carlson moment, I don't think, I don't know how much we can really read into that right now. The reaction at the time, obviously, you described the right-wing reaction. There was a lot of reaction elsewhere that Carlson had seen the light or that he even, this was proof that even he knew that the election was over, you know, and this is him

kind of pivoting to whatever the next version of Tucker was going to be. I mean, I think it could be as simple as he was really just like a moment of peak, right? I mean, that he just, that he was actually sort of offended that this person wasn't responding to him. and because this is the story he wanted to tell. Who knows what the real reason is, but I don't think it has to be that much, that complicated in either direction, I guess.

But yeah, I mean, listen, all he did was state, I mean, one presumes to be the truth, which is that she, he was asking for, you know, one bit of one, one breadcrumb of truth, and she told him to stop texting her. And then in response, people were like, well, I mean, like literally looping him in with like the Pizza Gate conspiracy theory and saying that he was a, you know, frequent goer of comet ping pong. I mean, it just, again, this is, I think in a lot of ways this is the future of media, which is the future of the news in the post-Trump era.

If narrowly defined in this way, Fox doesn't have, Fox is not going to be anti-Trump or whatever in any kind of demonstrative way because Trump's not going to matter to them to the same degree. I mean, obviously, they're interested in the presidency or the immediate or the people who are immediately there in competition to it, right? The Republican, the, the power players in the Republican side, they're into a very traditional source of, I mean, a very traditional source of power is what would drive their, their bias. And that's going to really open up the playing field for people to be reporting on news and points of view and conspiracy theories that nobody in the mainstream is touching right now. Fox in some ways sort of

serve to mainstream the lunacy of the Trump administration for the past four years. You know, they sort of set the terms of debate by which we would

discuss Trump on the right. And now they're not going to be in that business, presumably at all anymore. So it will be a very split up, a very, just kind of shattered media landscape. What will we do

without Jesse Waters is our gatekeeper anymore? Only we can, go to the back to the high standards of Watersworld. That boy, that was a golden age. It's still on. Waters World is still on. And he's on the five all the time.

I've seen a lot of Jesse Waters lately. There's been a lot of Jesse Waters. He has not given up the fight quite yet. All right, David, let's do the Overwar Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received anyone who watched that bizarre Rudy Giuliani election stealing press conference last Thursday, noticed a funny sight, David.

Yes, it was that black hair dyed trickling down Rudy's cheeks. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, Democracy Dies in Darkness. Thanks to T. Sizzle, Derek Burke, and Josh for that one. David, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley talked some smack about Florida States football team this weekend. Florida State had backed out of a game with Clemson over COVID concerns. Florida State, Haley tweeted, whether you lose today or a few days from now won't matter. Get it over with already.

Stop stalling. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, I think you misspelled Donald Trump. Thanks to Kevin Anderson. Can that possibly have been an accident that her tweet about Florida State was exactly what liberals are saying about Donald Trump. Seems unlikely. And finally, David, as a dad, I want to point you to this story in the New York Post. I'm quoting here.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says, Santa Claus is immune to COVID-19. Santa Claus is immune to COVID-19. This is real. It was an upward Twitter joke to write. The logical takeaway here is that we need to capture, kill, an autopsy Santa Claus. Thanks to Charles Pryor, the third. If you figure a Santa autopsy is the logical endpoint of 2020. Congrats.

You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. And we've got a new feature starting today. We're going to pick a TV news show, one that David and I hear about, may even use clips from, but don't always actually watch. We're going to watch it. And we're going to offer some production notes. You know, a football season, Dave,

whenever a team has a bad game and he's like, oh, man, they're really going to hear it from the assistant coaches on Monday during film study? I have heard that yet. We're the assistant coaches. Nice. You're going to hear it from us. So we thought we'd start with Meet the Press, the Sunday NBC News show hosted by Chuck Todd.

Here's how Meet the Press started yesterday. Welcome to Sunday. It's Meet the Press. From NBC News in Washington. The longest running show in television history. This is Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. How do we feel about the self-conscious grandeur of Meet the Press? Well, I mean, I feel like I'm just totally, just totally immune to it because

WWE does this all the time, you know, tuning their own horn, being the longest running cable television weekly episode. I don't even know what they say. well i mean with the at the risk of jumping too far ahead in the conversation it seems literally i mean it seems corny right it seems a little bit silly to say i mean and listen and the music underscores it i mean it underlines that at every commercial break when the music comes in you're like this all this does is remind me of a bygone era but and we'll keep coming back to this the like the number one thing that meet the press has going for it is it's legion of

legacy, right? And as Hammy as that comes across a lot of the time, and as much as they sort of let down that legacy, I think at times in every episode, I don't think it's a, I don't think it's, I don't think it's a bad idea in a general sense to remind viewers of that legacy on a regular basis. I agree. And I am, I am into Hammy TV grandeur. It's TV. It's not. It's not. a podcast. It should feel it should feel kind of big and and a little bit grand. If that theme song feels grand David, let me tell you where it comes from. Quoting from Slate here, in the mid-80s, NBC News commissioned a grand symphonic work called The Mission from Hollywood composer John Williams. Yes, that is John Williams of Star Wars and Indiana Jones. That particular song that you heard a bit of there is from the fourth, movement of the mission.

And it is called the pulse of events. I'm not making this up, folks. The pulse of events. But yes, I am into that. I want TV news to sound a little overrun. Do you think that when John Williams would give those like live orchestral performances in like,

you know, some LA park over the past the decade before he died and played like the Star Wars music, did he ever play this? Did he ever, did he ever have the orchestra perform this, this, whatever this is, this composition. All right, one correction. John Williams still very much with us.

I thought he died. No. Did he die? No, he did not. He's 88. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. John Williams.

Sorry, that's going to make his appearance on press box next month kind of awkward. No, just kidding. John Williams, when he was at the Hollywood Bowl, was he asked to play the pulse of events, kind of like John Tesh is asked to play the NBA on NBC theme? Exactly. Yeah. Like, does John Williams come out and there's some real, like, newsheads in the second row who are just, like, demanding it? Can we bump E.T. and Superman here? Can we play the pulse of events? I would like, I would actually like to see that live. But that probably says something about me.

Did you, Dave, before we'd hop into the actual episode, did you have a theory about Chuck Todd's beard versus Chuck Todd's goatee? Well, I prefer the beard. I prefer, I mean, but you wrote a piece about Chuck Todd at some point in the long lost past. I wrote a piece about goatee. Oh, that's right. And what was the explanation? Why did he wear the goatee? He was his dad.

His dad had a goatee and he was wearing it to honor his dad. Right. I mean, Chuck Todd kind of has the look with or without the beard of someone who hasn't quite figured out their look, right? And I think that that's part of his appeal. I mean, at least at the beginning, that's part of the charm. But it is, I don't know. I mean, I prefer, I guess I prefer bearded Chuck Todd. It's weird.

The kind of the look feeds into a lot of the other indirectly. It kind of feeds into a lot of the other complaints about him. And they all kind of become intertwined. So I kind of wish we just didn't have a, the goatee or beard weren't there for the discussion. But yeah, he looks great with the beard. You think he's going to have a time to go back to the old me moment where he shaves off the beard and goes back to the goatee. You're speaking to someone who just shaved his beard.

I'm sure he'll go back someday, yeah. Maybe he'll try something else. Maybe he'll just try the sole patch. If you haven't watched Meet the Press in a while, the structure is this. Todd does kind of a talking points catch up on the latest news at the top. Then he does a handful of interviews with newsmakers.

And then he has a panel. Yesterday, I thought his opening remarks were really good and probably tougher than I would have expected. He had this Chiron that said the threat to democracy in all caps talked about Trump undermining confidence in democracy, kneecapping the incoming administration, and on and on. Then he began the interviews. And the first one, as it turned out, was with Kevin Kramer, Republican senator from North Dakota.

Now, David, if Kevin Kramer had come up to your doorstep in New Jersey yesterday morning before meet the press, would you have recognized him at all? No, no, no, of course not. So this is somebody we don't know, but we probably could have guessed that Kevin Kramer, Republican for North Dakota, would be doing this thing that, quote unquote, respectable Republicans have been doing over the last couple of weeks, which is say, you know what?

Donald Trump is just, you know, he's just pursuing his legal means right now. Right. This is not a threat to democracy. He's just, he's just, we just got to wait. and let this work its way through the courts. In fact, that is exactly what Kevin Kramer did. Listen to how Chuck Todd comes back to him. I think what we're experiencing now,

everyone I just relax and let it play out in the legal way. We'll be just fine. You've implied that there's no damage being done just now in those comments. So you believe what the spectacle, I mean, yeah, well, I want to ask you, the spectacle of Rudy Giuliani on Thursday, using the headquarters of the Republican Party. I mean, at one point,

what are the lawyers accused a dead dictator of somehow being a part of this? I mean, are you really saying that the president is, you're out there saying the president's not encouraging somehow any way of sort of being disorderly about this? How is that not encouraging disruption and disorderly? He's accusing the entire system of being corrupt.

What a question. one one is tempted to sympathize with chuck todd trying to be a straight news person in the donald trump era but um but and and listen we're what one week removed when did this when when we one week or two weeks removed from chuck todd i think tweeting or going public saying that they and invited like all of the congressional republicans on the show and never and none of them said yeah and no one said yes um You know, it's not, one of the kind of abiding problems to meet the press is that no one feels the obligation

to appear on it that maybe they once did, right? That there's not, this isn't just like the only stage for any kind of public discourse to the degree that it once was. So I don't know if he feels like he has to hear people out in order to have them come on the show at all. But this is just doing a real disservice, I think, to the discourse in general,

to sort of like, say, I'm just opening up for discussion. You know, I mean, this is not a novel thing to say. I saw a tweet from Matt Negrin, who works for the Daily Show, previously worked for ABC News Tonight, I believe. He tweeted Chuck Todd is interviewing a flat earther on Meet the Press and asking him, sir, why do you think the Earth is flat? I mean, it's, there's, you know, there's a limit. You're not going to have any Republicans that want to show up on Meet the Press this week

and grapple with reality, right? So does that mean you have none of them on? I don't know what the right answer is to that, but it's this sort of time where we use phrases like the horse racie, you know, the kind of horse raciness or in the insideriness, the Washington centricness. This is where that stuff,

whatever it is intended to mean, really shines through. This is just, it becomes a conversation about a conversation. And I don't think, especially at a time like this, it's really particularly helpful. There's something about that give and take that feels so obligatory,

doesn't it? I asked the senator question. Yeah. Senator says whatever the senator is going to say, and then I ask the senator another question. Hmm. And it seems like that the rebuttal or like the follow-up question is prescripted so much of the time, right? I mean, I think that goes to the formality that you're saying. It's not, it doesn't, even if it's in reaction to what was just said, it feels like it's a canned reaction.

I would absolutely vote for having Kramer on. He didn't make a little bit of news yesterday or perhaps said something again, which was that he was all for the transition stuff to start with Joe Biden, which, you know, getting as many Republicans as you can, I think on that, on that train is a good thing. I just think Chuck Todd, if you know where that this interview was going to go, there's going to be a lot of stuff. And we, in the clip, before the clip we played, he was saying, you know, Kramer was going, oh, well, what about impeachment? What about, you know, them spying on Trump? If you know where that's going to go, you have to be ready. And you have to be ready to pin this guy down.

Chuck Todd likes to do the old Tim Russert trick. We're like, I'm going to put a quote up on the screen right now. And I want you to respond to this quote. Here's a quote. How about the quote where Donald Trump said the Democrats were trying to steal the election? Do you, Senator, think that Democrats stole the election? Do you think they rigged an election? These are Donald Trump's exact words.

So don't get off on crazy Rudy and all this kind of stuff. You've got this guy there, right? You need to hold him to the least. of his party's words. And if he wants to put some daylight in there, great. That's news. I couldn't agree more. I also think that there's an element to this.

I mean, just in terms of general, you know, we've got notes. The general structure of the show, you went over it, but to get more specific, it's the intro is, I mean, I timed this stuff out. His intro was six and a half minutes. The first two interviews that he did in the kind of A block took up 13 minutes. They went to commercial. They did some COVID interviews that were 10 minutes. and then we get to the roundtable.

I feel like in an age where we have nonstop daily news on one end of the spectrum and sort of, I don't know, this is a really arbitrary spectrum, but we have the nonstop daily news and we have, on the other hand, we have like podcasts and, you know, whatever else. I feel like you, I feel like there's having four interviews in your first two blocks is not particularly helpful. I would rather have one interview with someone I didn't particularly know about that actually got past the first 10 minutes of pleasantries

than just to kind of touch on everything else. The one big thing that, and we can talk about how Meet the Press functions, meet the press functions in a world of, you know, nonstop cable news coverage, including, by the way, a daily Meet the Press show on MSNBC, they don't have any obligation on the Sunday show

to cover everything. I'm happy that they're covering COVID at a time where it's like really significant, but if they didn't have a COVID segment, the world would not be lost for how to deal with COVID over the next week, right? I almost feel like they should have single subject shows

or more narrowly directed shows so that we actually get, we actually get beyond the first, like I said, get beyond the pleasantries on any one subject. How about asking Kevin Kramer about COVID? Yeah. In North Dakota enmeshed in this enormous COVID crisis right now?

Mm-hmm. Couldn't you kind of collapse all that thing? I completely agree. No segment on this show felt long enough. They all felt too short. The interviews felt a little too short, like they ended right before something was going to happen. The panel segments felt a little too short.

There's also maybe a design flaw here. Dave Weigel tweeted about this this week, and he said the classic Meet the Press format with a panel of reporters grilling one politician for 30 minutes was perfect and should be brought back. So he had political, Playbooks Anna Palmer and NBC's Hallie Jackson on the panel.

What if, David, we took them, put them next to Chuck Todd, and all three of them interviewed Kevin Kramer for a longer period of time? Well, I think you wouldn't have anybody coming on the show or at least in any kind of moment where you'd actually be interested to hear from them. I mean, that's the problem, right?

Again, there's no, they need to somehow set the terms for debate or set the terms for engagement in such a way that people do feel it's necessary to come on the show. And I know that it's really easy to say that, right? But even if it's as simple as, like I said, if it's a single subject, you can't predict this every time, but announce what the show is going to be about at the end of every show, announce what next week's going to be about, invite people on the show, on the show.

Like, you're like, you know, call people out. You have to find a way to get people there. And but if they are going to be there, yeah, I mean, listen, the discussion about Chuck Todd, the discussion about needing a new host is a little bit of a misdirection, right? I mean, people can have problems with Chuck Todd, but what you're suggesting is something I think that has a lot more value than sort of arguing about the personality sitting at the desk. I mean, Hallie Jackson, I mean, Hallie Jackson probably better at the job. I mean, Savannah Guthrie would probably be better at the job than Chuck Todd. That's sort of beside the point.

The problem is that all of those people, after sitting at those desks, sitting at that desk for more than, you know, two months are going to sort of absorb all of the inside baseball that makes Chuck Todd so much of what Chuck Todd does feel so smarmy, right? And a panel of, you know, around the horn but politics, a panel of like, of news people from around the country would theoretically be a little bit more impervious to that sort of insideriness. Yeah, maybe.

Then we got to the panel segments after those four interviews you mentioned, David. There were four panelists, the aforementioned, Hallie Jackson, Anna Palmer, plus Eddie Glaude Jr. of Princeton and commentary editor John Podoritz. again, a little too big for me, given how much time everybody got, I could have probably done with two panelists,

plus Chuck Todd as kind of a panelist himself. Yeah. They also did this weird Sunday show thing where the panelists only respond to Chuck Todd. Yeah. They don't talk to each other. I don't know if we need to defend cable news, but when Van Jones and Rick Santorum start arguing with each other,

it can be really terrible, but you can also get a moment out of that because they push each other in different directions, it felt almost a little airless when they're kind of just talking to Chuck Todd and answering questions like you were never really going to get any, any just spark of life, any sort of moment. God, I could not agree more. I mean, part of this is the moment that we're in right now in history,

that because of coronavirus, everybody was remote. And when you look at the TV screen, there is literally no difference between this and something, whatever's happening on MSNBC right now. Right? I mean, there's not, being, being in person allows for more discussion between the various guests. But I agree that it should be, I mean, there should be fewer people in that discussion. I don't think we necessarily need multiple, I mean, like, I love Hallie Jackson.

I don't, I mean, and I think that there's sort of a perfect world where she's more of an Andy Richter, you know, who's just there to sort of like be a backstop for anything Chuck Todd doesn't know or things he wants to fact check as a. opposed to being an individual guest, right? And whenever he would go to her, it felt like, I mean, she was sort of like giving a reality check, but he had to, like, set it up, tear up every time, which just seemed really unnecessary.

She should just be interjecting with things that she knows about the subject that are not coming across in the rest of the conversation. But yeah, I mean, I find it, I don't want to be, like, going too hard on the segment because, like I said, it's different when they're in person. I don't know if it's better when I'm in person. I feel like my abiding, when I think of me, the press.

And maybe this is because it's the time of the exact moment that I used to wake up when I was in my 20s. My abiding memory of Meet the Press is the second, the second half of the panel. When we come back from commercial, just that last segment of the show, and it's a little, like, they loosen their ties just a little bit. And it's both sort of revealing and like, and chummy, but also just a little bit like nauseating, you know, where they're just sort of like, all right, you know, like, like, what, ha, ha, ha, how are we going to solve this?

mess. I don't know what the fix is for that. I mean, because that's the in-person stuff I'm saying we're not having right now. But I just don't, I think that there was a lot of kind of formality to the show in general.

There's a lot of we're doing it this way because this is the way it's been done. And there is a denial of how the world around them has changed. And I think that part of that, like I said, is you have to react to the fact that most of what you do is being accomplished

elsewhere, both in terms of just the reality of other. news shows existing and going through the motions on all of this stuff, but also people having other outlets that they favor to go to to get the news out, you know, when they, when they want to get something out in the public sphere. And then the biggest thing, and maybe this is, maybe this is a little hanging through, but the thing I kept thinking when I was trying to watch this with a critical eye is that it's really inexcusable that the fake news shows, like the daily show, are better at every aspect of this. Even like Bill Maher's show.

which like I kind of washed through like my fingers at times is better at the panel stuff than this show. Like the funny shows are better than the real shows. And if that's because you need a better writer's room or a writer's room at all, if that's because you're not planning out the show in a way that a stage show is allowed to do, there are ways that you can accomplish being competitive with those shows. At least like you can't watch the show with a critical eye. And the opening of the show, like you said, was good. That opening monologue, but you can't watch.

it critically and not say John Oliver would have done a better job of that. No way. Right? And it's the same thing. It's the same premise. It's John Oliver's a better performer than Chuck Todd. I'm not like putting all that on Chuck Todd, but like you can accomplish a lot. You can accomplish so much more if you were willing to like, if you were willing to decide

what reality is, right? If you don't have to take a side. You have to take the side of truth, right? And you can accomplish so much more week in and week out if you sort of start from that point of you. I don't know. I, I, well, go ahead. It's funny just because TV in so many cases has been shaken by other technologies, by podcasts, by Twitter, by all these other ways we get information. But what you're saying is totally correct. The TV Sunday news shows were shaken by other TV shows by the daily show, by Oliver, by Bill Maher, those things, because they were just sharper

and they felt a little more dangerous. They didn't feel like they were wearing tuxedos on the air and their behavior was inhibited. Right. They're just, yeah, I mean, I completely agree with that. And I think there's got to be a way, you know, you're not going to be John Oliver, but there's got to be a way that you can say,

here's why meet the press is still incredibly important. And this is going to, something is going to happen here that's really important and that you need to pay attention to. A couple of final notes for you, David. Did you see the segment where Todd went in front of the big board? Yeah. It was kind of a Steve Kornacki-like big board, and he was talking about the importance of various counties in the election.

Yeah. Didn't that seem like what Chuck Todd would have been had his career not gone the other way and he became host to meet the press? Yeah, well, I'm glad you made that point about it because I was worried, I mean, it was word you're going to be overly complimentary about that segment. The segment was good, and yes, that is sort of the, in a lot of ways, the kind of version of Chuck Todd that I think I would rather have. you get you watch it new and and one gets the impression that they that's a segment that you know the producers are sort of high-fiving about feeling like they're really kind of evolving the show right and that was just such a small piece of what is otherwise just a fossil um but yeah i i agree about that that is that is exactly the right reaction the other funny thing was chuck todd was sitting in front

of a picture of the white house during his on-camera moments and hallie jackson was sitting in front of a picture of the Jefferson Memorial. So I guess if you work for NBC News, you just have to pick a different Washington landmark. It would be awkward if you were both at the same place, but neither of you were actually at that place. No, but it's like, yeah, exactly. Like if Andrea Mitchell was on,

do you think the Air and Space Museum would have been behind her? I mean, it's just like, that was just funny to me. And very finally here, did you hear Chuck Todd do a not joke during, during one of his autos. So he put a picture. I totally miss this. Yes, he put a picture of Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell on screen because they are going to

lead their respected parties in the Senate and House after the elections now are over. And Chuck Todd said this. When we come back, the changing faces of congressional leadership. Sorry. Not true. Same old, same old, same old. After the break. The first image I got.

was this. I must say, this is the thing that came to me. It's not. Oh boy. Not. Yeah. That's uncomfortable. I think that, again, avoiding, I said I was going to avoid the pylon. I think there's one thing we have to have to pile on. I think just kind of the last note that I have here on my thing. This is actually from a tweet that Soled out O'Brien. tweeted a week ago or something. There was a quote from Yamish Alcindor, I think it was appearing on Andrew

Mitchell's show. We're way down in the rabbit hole of names within names, within names. But she said that the two things that really stand out about the foundation of the Trump presidency is or Kellyanne Conway saying there could be alternate facts and Rudy Giuliani saying truth isn't the truth. So that O'Brien pointed out that both were said to Chuck Todd on Meet the Press and in both cases Chuck Todd laughed. He wasn't appalled or angry or. He didn't stop the interview.

He laughed. And, uh, listen, there is, there is a place for Washington insideriness, right? There was definitely a time where you, when you and I would watch these shows on Sunday morning, flipping back and forth between this and, and, and, and you would get, you would, you would, you would understand, begin to understand something about Washington by the way that people interacted, you know, that things weren't as dire maybe as they seemed or things weren't serious in the same way that you understood, you understood, but, um, that's not necessary for what would present itself as the most important news show on television.

That's not, that shouldn't be a part of it, frankly, anymore. And I think that if you find yourself, listen, this isn't a condemnation of the way someone reacts in a real time to just off the wall moment. But if that doesn't kind of spur change in the way that you do business, you got to ask yourself what the point is. I just think that's his affect in a way, because if you notice he was really smiling during that Kevin Kramer interview, who wasn't doing Tucker Carlson, frown face, which is all of cable news, you know, now when you're interviewing the Trump

person you do you do frown face. I just think that's his, I just think that's his manner. It's true. It's true. And maybe, we're going to do more of these segments talking about other shows and we're going to keep coming around to kind of a central question, which is when you, when someone refuses to answer a question, it's really easy to say on Twitter, they should just ask it until they say, until the person answers it, right? It's easy to, it's easy in the hypothetical to say they're doing that wrong. And it's a fact that they're doing that wrong if they're not getting the answer. I don't know what the solution is, though.

I don't know, short of just being like, I'm just going to sit here until you answer the question and then abiding five minutes of dead air. Yeah, or pulling the plug like we've seen some of these anchors do. Okay, I'm tired of this. I'm out of here. You know, I'm not going to let you be on my air anymore. I don't know. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it is a hard question, not just sort of spanishable. spiritually, but morally, but also like, you know, from a production standpoint. So, you know, they need to figure that out, but that's easy for me to say. David, we had one of our favorite TV people on today, Ben Mancoitz from Turner Classic Movies. He is the guy who does the intro when the African Queen comes on or when Casa Blanca comes on. he was also kind enough to put together a list of his favorite media movies, his favorite journalism movie. And I would just say,

I will just set this up because one of them, he wrote an abbreviation of the movie down on a piece of paper and could not remember it during this podcast. I'm going to let Press Box listeners listen closely and see if you can figure out which famous media movie he was trying to refer to. Here's Ben Manquins. Ben Mankowitz doesn't have all the coolest jobs in media. He just has two or three of them. You know him from his intros and outros on Turner Classic Movies. He is Our Man in Hollywood on CBS Sunday morning.

And he also does political commentary. He's here to talk about all this along with some of his favorite media movies. Thanks for coming on the press box, Ben. Oh, Brian, thanks for having me. It's an honor. I don't want to sound like the Taco Bell commercial voice, but in these challenging times, pandemic, fate of democracy at stake, do you find yourself retreating even more into old movies? Definitely.

And more so, first of all, it's always an issue for people with, I think, certainly for me. When you have all these choices that we get overwhelmed by the fact that we can go through Netflix and see 500 movies and Amazon Prime and what's available on the TCM app or whatever people have recorded on their DVRs. And, you know, we're like, oh, my God, I want to see this. I want to see this. But it's over when you're like, I'm just going to watch Shawshank Redemption. Or I'm just going to watch Casablanca Blanket, right?

And so I think there is more of that because, you know, being comforted means more than ever now. So, yeah, I am. I certainly think more about my job, too, at TCM, which I know provides some legit comfort to people, right? I mean, you know, I get it. We don't make these movies, but we bring them to you, and we've sort of taken over the stewardship of these films. And it matters to people, to everybody who watches and cares about these movies, because people care about them, deeply care about him. But I know we got a lot of viewers alone. So, you know, I get it.

We're not on the front lines. We're not scientists. We're not developing a vaccine. We're not doctors, nurses, everybody else who works in the hospital, respiratory technicians. or, you know, delivery drivers, all these people who were doing, you know, grocery store workers, all these people who are doing such great work. But I do feel like what we do matters. Besides the escapism of old movies, what is it about them, do you think, that makes them reassuring in this moment? I think that always, and particularly now, because we need extra comfort, you know, there is a,

nostalgia has been sort of co-opted by commerce, right? You just think, oh, nostalgia, I'm going to get an authentic, you know, that isn't authentic, you know, Oakland A's Jersey from 1973 or, you know. But nostalgia is real. It's a real, I don't know if it itself is emotion, but it triggers emotion. Nostalgia connects you to your history and your parents' history and your family's history and the history of your friends and the people who matter to you. So, you know, watching movies that you watched growing up with your folks or wished you watched growing up with your folks or that your parents watched, your grandparents watched,

or that, you know, look, these aren't documentaries, but you watch Casablanca, which I watched again Wednesday night, for no reason, not even thinking I might watch something, you know. You know, I turned it on hoping there was suddenly Wednesday night football. But, you know, and you end up watching Casablanca and you get. gives you an idea of, you know, how people dressed, how people talked. You know, they all didn't lead these thrilling lives and they all didn't dress this well, but you look around, you know, especially noir. And you see, you know, this is, man, this is what life looked like. These are the hats that men wore. You know, everybody wore a suit like all the time, you know. And I think

that, I think that matters. I think they can teach us something. But more than anything, I think they connect us to the people we cared about. And obviously, that's valuable. And that's not a pennant. Does Casablanca play differently in 2020 with Lamarceles? We're all pulling together. We're in crisis. We can, we can, you know, pull together and sing together to get through this sort of profoundly strange moment. You know, look, I think it plays as well whenever you see it.

It's impossible to watch stuff now and not think about what it means. I mean, I take more meaning. I never watched The Good Place because it's on network TV. but I knew people loved it and I started watching it on Netflix with my wife over the past a month and I take meaning from that now right about sort of what it means to be good right so definitely there is something more to everything especially things that are good and but I don't want to pretend like that scene that look it's the best nod in the history of art right when uh paul henryd says blay lamarcier and they won't do it because they'll they they do what their boss

says and not because their boss is a hard taskmaster but because they respect the hell out of him and they look over and in that moment bogart joins the fight right it's like in that moment he's like all right i'm going to help these people and i'm going to help victor i don't know how i'm going to do it but i'm going to do it and i might pretend a little longer than i'm not going to do it and he gives that nod and they play it And, you know, and then when Madeline LeBoe, you know, who was flirting with the German officer before when she starts singing it, I mean, if you don't cry, you're not paying attention. And then, you know, the gambling scene where he keeps the Joey Page from having to sleep with Claude Raines, which is really an awful scene. Like, I mean, we love Claude Raines. You're like, oh, he's bribing a 19-year-old woman to sleep with him in order to give her exit papers to leave him.

the country. Wow. Right. So, but that scene where he, you know, he tells Marcel Dahlio, yeah, no, 22, leave it there, you know, cash it out and never come back. And she tries to kiss him and he's like, just go. And then Sisa calls like, oh, they get it. They get it. And it's beautiful. and that scene always makes me cry too. This is way more elemental, but just watching movies over these last several months, too, it's amazing to, on a screen, watch two people or three people or four people stand next to each other and have a conversation. Totally. Right. Think about it all the time. I keep reading on Twitter people I follow, funny people I follow who say they get anxious when they don't see it happening, like especially

stuff that looks modern, right? I think it's easier in Casablanca Blanket to know that it's the past. It's black and white. They dress differently. They talk differently. But you watch, you know, if you're watching CSI or Law and Order, again, two shows. I watch because they're on network TV. But you're watching anything. I'm watching the good place, right? You just, you think, what are they doing? God, get the memo.

Come on, man. Wear a mask. Get some distance. Yeah, I think that's all happening. What are you watching when you say you're going through movies? What have you watched? Well, I was watching singles with my wife the other night. I'm not really sure why.

Cam and Crow movie, pure, I guess. It's pretty good. It's good. It's good. But watching, like, people having a date in a coffee shop. You're like, oh, right. That happened in 1992. In the coffee shop, right?

Not sitting outside at a table eight feet from each other. That's right. Yeah. You started a turn of classic movies in 2003. Did I read this right? By last year, you had appeared on the network more than 20,000 times? That seems high, but it's possible. I mean, you know, you're doing, I mean, it's thousands.

I have no idea. I have no idea. That seems high. This seems like a number that Robert Osborne would have hit. but I think he's in the 30,000. So I might have hit 20. I mean, it's been 17 years. He had nine years where he was doing four movies a night, seven days a week.

You know, there was no other host until I got there in 2003. And even then, I was just doing weekend days. They wouldn't let me call myself even a weekend post. It was like, no, no, weekend daytime post. I was like, come on, man. You know, I just, it was like I used, you know, I have memories of Monday night baseball. And, you know, we're like, you know, he's sitting 377 against right-handed pitchers at night who've been in the league more than five years.

And you're like, all right, sure. Okay, I'm not sure that matters. But yeah, that's, but then eventually they caved to weekend host and then host. They came around. It only took me about eight years. I read an executive say one time when you started, you had a goatee and they put you in something that looked a little more like a loft and you were, you were kind of the snarky alternative to Osborne a little bit? Is that how you were cast? Yeah, I would say that's right.

I mean, I, you know, I was, I hate that adjective, but I get what people mean. And I, I, you know, I'd rather have amusing. You know, I'd even, you know, I'd even rather have sarcastic. Snarky just seems like a guy you want to punch in the face. But I get it. That's not, certainly not what they meant, although there were people who wanted to punch me in the face. Yeah, we had two cameras, so I would walk a lot. I mean, Robert did too, but then, you know, you'd have to pick up the second camera, and we do everything in one take. So, you know, because there's no way to edit. We have no moments of, you know, we don't put pictures up.

We don't use photos. Very rarely we're doing it at the end of November for Sean Connery. Just work doing a night of four of his films, and I introduced three of them, and I wanted to make them long intros because I don't think Connery gets the respect he deserves, not that he's disrespectful, but he's an important actor. the history of cinema so I wanted to and so I was like hey can we jazz these up a little bit and give me a break when I'm shooting them that I don't have to run two minutes and 45 seconds without without screwing up um so yeah I had the goatee that it was in my contract man like

really I swear and nobody believes in the first line of the contract before length of contract or money artists shall keep and maintain a goatee failure to keep and maintain a goatee shall be considered a breach of contract by artist. You know, and then my agent was like, well, what if he gets something else and he has to shave it? Can we get a prosthetic goatee? Like there was those conversations actually took place. Wow. It's almost like they were imagining like the movie guy out of a Kevin Smith movie.

Totally. That's right. This is the guy we want. Yeah, I mean, in the clothes, I mean, I had all these layers, a t-shirt underneath and then a shirt and then a wonderful guy, Tom Karsh, was our general manager there. And he liked that look. And now those clothes, I've lost a tiny bit of weight since then. But they're gigantic.

I mean, I'm swimming in them the way, you know, guys wore double-breasted suits in the 50s. And you're like, what are you doing, man? That's four sizes too big. But it was, I mean, I'm just, I'm making fun of them because I love them. I mean, they lifted me out of, you know, 16 months of not getting paid, really. And, you know, and gave me, I auditioned for 175 jobs out here and got one. man, it was the best one I auditioned for. When you do an intro, are you speaking to film buffs?

Are you speaking to people who've never seen the movie before? Both, but mostly people who haven't seen it or are seeing it again and just love it, right? And not, first of all, I'm not a film scholar, right? I'm a broadcaster who loves movies and now knows a lot about them. But I don't want to lose people. Look, man, we're on television. I want to be entertaining, right? but I want to teach them something about the movie, but really that's teaching.

There's endless. I mean, in the last four or five years, I've really expanded what I think is the concept of an intro. And so I just talk less about the movie and the story of the movie. That's always a balance, like how much of the plot to give away. I now just try and say, you know, he's a detective and this, I use the phrase, enters the picture because I think it's clever and that's where. somebody enters the picture. And then you got it, right? He's a detective. She comes to him for help. You know, somebody's missing. And then you talk about the actor. You talk about the actress. You talk about the director. And you put it in this historical context. Movie was made, you know,

a fair amount of stuff during the communist witch hunts. And then I rip those. It's one of the, one sort of political thing that they have given me free reign to wildly criticize. Witch hunts are fair game. Witch hunts are right when you when you get people to destroy the lives of their friends and colleagues in order to save their career with the movie industry working in conjunction with the government yeah yeah we can call out a dark time in American history yeah no one is pro witch hunt at this moment in American history you'd be surprised at some of them uh I saw Ann Colter uh whose name we don't hear a lot anymore she years ago was defending the purge of communists from the fake

It wasn't a fake purge, but the purge of almost exclusively fake communists from the U.S. from, you know, any position of influence. It's a take, yeah, I guess. Sure, it's a take. Okay, that's right, yeah. You've talked about TCM fans. You said, I'm addicted to Game of Thrones, but nobody thinks I'll stand with HBO until the bitter end.

There's nothing like the relationship Turner Classic movies has with its fans. How would you describe that relationship? Well, since HBO Max is now part of our company in WarnerMedia, so I'm going to change that to, you know, I might love billions on showtimes. I might love succession. But no, but I mean, it's true. And even though those are brands that have really successfully, you know, I mean, having nothing to do with the company, I mean, HBO is the leading brand for quality television. Still, I don't think anybody has come close to touching it. Some of the shows might be as good elsewhere, right? But AMC, you're not in, you don't think, oh, my God, those incredible dramas, better calls. I mean, I love Better Call Saul, you know. But so, but even then people don't say, oh, man, I'll watch anything on HBO, right?

And HBO is part of my life, right? Showtime is part of my life. Sure. Epics. Epics is part of my life. That's funny. The, you know, it's right. I do anything for stars, action.

There you go. But the, but TCM matters to people as part of their identity frequently, you know. They wear it like a badge of honor. We did. And then they watch, they watch us and they watch us. Like, hey, we're watching the movies. And since you've taken stewardship of this, don't F it up. Right.

And if you do, we will let you know. And I like that. I mean, I think that's pretty cool. I really can't think of another non-news entity that comes close to that and even those. But that's a whole different, that's a whole different situation. But yeah, for a for a television channel to be a part of the fabric of people's lives, I think is really something. They are rabid, but thoughtful, you know.

In the before times when someone would come up to you on the street, what would they want to talk about? in the oh yeah um you know movies so yeah and and somebody will uh come up to me and and and and and because they know more about this movie than i do because it's their passion and i just wrote about the awful truth yesterday uh for an intro and and they'll say you know i don't understand why did irene dunn uh behave this way and and i can't remember the name of the actor who played her fill in the blank and i'll be like yeah I can't really help you right now. Like, I've seen it two or three times, but whenever I talk about it, whatever I talk about it,

I read about it first and it refreshes my memory. But that's pretty rare. And even then, it's incredibly warm and kind. And there's an openness to it. I think most people, I'll see people sometimes look and I know that they recognize me. I mean, I'm a, it's funny. I mean, I'm like an e-level known person, except to the people who care about. TCM, in which case, they're like, I don't know, George Clooney, whatever.

You know, there, Robert Osborne was even bigger. Oh my God, there's Robert Osborne. He's standing next to, I don't know. What's his name, Jennifer Anderson's ex-husband? You know, they don't care. So that's neat. I mean, you walk into a place. There's a 99% chance.

No one knows people. But, man, that 1%, they think it's a big deal. Yeah, they're serious. I was in Miami earlier this year, and I went down to Key Largo where they have the African Queen, the actual boat from them. That's right. Or what we think is the boat. And I'm out on the boat with this very excitable skipper. And I'm not kidding. As soon as we get in the water, he's like, what was Catherine Hepburn's character's full name? And what was Charlie Allnut's nationality? And I'm like, you, I don't know it to that level, but I started to get defensive. And I'm like, he was Canadian. You know, I'm yelling over the noise of the motor. But it had a real Star Trek convention quality to it, which you don't think of with movies like that. But there are people who take it that series. serious. Oh, no question. And I'm incredibly grateful to them. But I don't, I mean, I now know a lot. I mean, I know a ton. And I love knowing what I know. But, you know, I used to go to a pub quiz. I'd give it every six weeks and write. It was fun to write with a friend of mine, Michael Schor, as a political reporter. And then we'd go the other weeks. And, you know, there'd be some movie question. And they would like, oh, Ben, you'll know that. I'm like, I don't know a trivia like that about movies. I'm limited to, name, you know, the guy who played second base most during the 80s for the Astros.

And I'm like, oh, Bill Doran. You know, like, I can do that because that's what I had as a kid, you know, and that that stays with me. But I can't help you on most trivia. We just did the African Queen. Also, by the way, which, of course, we do all the time part of a night coming up of, I think it's Christmas night. Like, we do Christmas movies for that whole week.

and then we change on Christmas itself, like we counter program a little bit, and our night is too many heperins, and we go, Audrey, Catherine, Audrey, Catherine. All right, I'm going to call the boat captain and have him watch your intro with, make sure you don't miss anything. Your grandfather was Herman Mankwitz,

newspaper man who gets into movies and writes a screenplay for Citizen Kane. He died before you were born, but now he's being played by Gary Oldman in Mank. This movie's about to come out on Netflix, started to be out in theaters. What did you learn about your, grandad from watching make um i mean it nicely well i mean there are all kinds of little things i learned

but i'm not even sure what was true i then did a piece for cbs sunday morning with david fincher you know and i don't you know i used to think that biopics i still think that that that's things based on a true story matter if the story if people knowing the truth about the story matters but you know i they clearly captured the essence of every that I've come to understand through my father, even through my mother, who in the few years that she knew my grandfather, you know, got along with him really well and had a sense of who he was. So, you know, it's really nice to, you know, I guess I sort of picture Gary Oldman. I didn't really get, which is clearly true, how big a deal he was in Hollywood in the early 30s.

I mean, seen as the premier wit, storyteller, screenwriter, at which he could have been for years and years if he weren't incredibly self-destructive. And I like that they captured his rampant alcoholism and over-drinking and binge-dricking. Because what had always been relayed to me is, like, by my father, he's like, no, that was a loss because he'd come home and he'd be too drunk to talk to me, right?

But he was never mean. ever it was never a cruel drunk except to people who you know if you got drunk and made fun of harry cone or louis be mayor or william randolph hurst you're like no those guys that's okay um but he was always kind like there's a scene early in the movie where he comes home drunk and a woman is helping him into what appears to be an apartment and i'm like no man i the thing about him was he didn't fool around on my grandmother right and then of course it turns out who's helping him get into bed is my grandmother. Like he's, you know, that's who. And I was like, oh, okay, good, never mind. But Gary Oldman's amazing. I mean, just this, you know, we already knew how great he is. But he is really good.

He really captures the essence. So Amanda Seiford, as Marian Davies, also just amazing. Lily Collins is Rita Alexander, my grandfather's secretary when he was writing assistant. You know, these people just deliver incredible performance. It's a great move. You mentioned your dad, Frank, Mike. He ran George McGovern's presidential campaign in 1972, which for media freaks is also the Boys on the Bus campaign. You were only five, but do you have any images of that campaign? Not really. I knew my dad was doing it. I knew it was important. I remember being in the back of my best friend's car. They had a station wagon sitting in the back and his mom, my best friend's guy named Dan Hamilton. He's the dean of the UNLV law school. And he, his mom and his mom and

Hamilton was driving and so a bunch of kids in the back. And I remember saying, and it still makes me wince in order to, I don't know, get it my dad. I'm for Nixon. Oh, right, right. And just this, that little moment stands out for a, you know, five-year-old. But I don't really remember that. And, you know, it's a little like getting on the bills for losing four straight Super Bowls. Like, you know, we focused too much on winning. I mean, he got blown out, right? Lost by, I think, 23 points. didn't even win his home state. But, you know, getting there was amazing that they won that nomination. And I think Nixon was going to get reelected against any candidate in 1972.

He ran it, by the way, with Gary Hart. Right, right. You do a lot of political commentary to TCM fans of a different persuasion, shall we say, ever get on you for something you said about politics? On Twitter, sure. But, I mean, I don't, you know, I'm pretty careful. not to criticize supporters if I'm criticizing politicians or pundits. I never do it on the air.

There's no place for it on TCM with the exception of the blacklist. You know, and when it calls for a movie biography of Ronald Reagan, you know, I mean, praise him and then, you know, we'll mention that he, you know, lifted the country out of a great malaise, if that's relevant. But mostly, I use the same joke almost every time. You know, it's like he became an actor and he was president's screen actor's killed. And then he gave up acting oddly and no one really knows what happened. You know, it's not the greatest joke, but I enjoy it.

Yeah, it works. It works. So you were nice enough when we asked you before you came on to put together a list of some of your favorite media movies. And I'm always struck watching Turner Classic movies. How many media movies are there are? Maybe there are people like your granddad who drifted from journalism into movies. And that's the reason why when I'm always. on there, I not only see, you know, deadline USA, but I also see libeled lady and all these things.

And, you know, do we have a theory why there are so many media movies throughout the age? I think that sort of it lent itself to conflict. There was a really strong respect for journalists for a long time in this country that I don't know whether you know this. It doesn't exist anymore. Oh. And yeah. You don't say. I think it's been eroded somewhat. And these guys were smart and they were cynical and they were clearly willing to trade for information.

And frequently they were in the bag for certain politicians or certain titans of industry. And all that is interesting and compelling. It allowed the little guy. These guys never got paid. There were no rich newspaperman. And they took on criminal syndicates and they took on a big business that was either exploiting their workers or exploits. their customers or exploiting people. So it just lent itself to that.

And they were smart and they were funny. And yeah, and many of them came out and had been writers. The only topics of conversation for my dad growing up in Beverly Hills in the house with his father, Herman. I mean, they talk politics. They talk journalism. My grandfather was ashamed of what he did, ashamed of how much money he made. He didn't think it was serious. Being a theater critic, being a journalist, writing plays.

that would have been okay. But this pop entertainment designed as a way to sucker in Americans who didn't know any better. I mean, he was wrong, but that's how he felt. Yeah, at the time. So what's on your list? Favorite media movies? Well, the first one on this list that I made is Deadline USA. I mean, it's great.

You know, Bogart has two, I mean, he has a lot of great movies. But we were talking about African Queen. And other than Casablan of my two favorite bogey movies are, are a deadline USA in a lonely place. And I think his boxing one is the harder they fall. They're two so similar. But I love those movies. I guess that's his last movie, the harder they fall.

And so, but Deadline USA is great. And that is journalism standing up and getting at the truth, right? I mean, these movies had a production code that required the bad guy to get his. So, you know, this was journalist. This was always the little guy. you know sometimes fighting his publisher who was also in the bag right you know um but then doing the right thing uh you know in that last line what's that last line at the end of uh of uh of uh of deadline USA when he holds the phone up and you can hear the press running you can hear the papers you know

you know what that is that's the sound of and now i can't remember what he said no but it's great you know that's the sound of the press you know no one can stop it you know the truth absolutely um so i love that in Spotlight was great. I felt like Spotlight was a natural successor to probably the best journalism movie ever, all the president's men, which also makes me cry. And then, you know, Ace in the Hole.

Sure. My favorite, just about him. A lot of Billy Wilder movies I love, but that's Kirk Douglas, you know, exploiting a situation for his own gain, right? And hyping something and in the process, you know, risking someone's life. That's just a great, great, great, incredibly cynical film, which I love.

Facing the crowd certainly counts as a journalism movie. Sure. Because Ann and Bud Schulberg seeing the future so clearly in 1957, it's stunning. I mean, in many ways, it's really not relevant about him now. But when I saw it for the first time at TCM, I'd probably only seen it once before I got to TCM. But, you know, I felt like, oh, man, that's Glenn Beck. like that is exactly him. Yeah, that's one person it is anyway.

But yes, anyway, go ahead. Obviously, you can apply it to a lot of people. And you can, you know, we had Byron York on as a guest from the National Review, I guess, you know, sort of leading thoughtful, conservative. And he was a lovely guy. He picked face in the crowd and he thought it suited his view of where we've gone in this country of sort of elevating people, fooling. foolish people into demigod status.

So I thought that was incredibly interesting that we would take such different, we would have such different takes on it. And, you know, Citizen 4. But then there's a film called, that I had to look up the title, but a Kate Beckinsale movie directed by Rod Lurie called Nothing But the Truth. That's pretty great. Ooh. I mean, I just love journalism movies, man.

And I love backstage Hollywood movies. I mean, I love movies about making movies. And then, of course, I think you have to count Citizen Kane as a... And then I abbreviated a movie NW. And it's probably pretty good. Not sure I've caught NW. Newsweek. News of the world?

It might not be... It might be A-W. It might be A-V-W. It might be A-W. It's hard to say. But anyway, that one's great. We'll ponder that one. Yeah, totally.

I need a listener to chime in with probably what I meant by that. You mentioned Citizen Canaan, and that's kind of the funny second part of this, right? It's what is a media movie? You know, it happened one night, right? Clark Gable plays a reporter. Is that a media movie? If it is, it's probably on the list, right? Yeah, it's definitely a media movie, right?

I mean, so many movies where the lead character happens to be a reporter count as a, you know, count as a as a media movie but they're not movies about journalism right that's sort of what i focus on be movies about journalism as opposed to you know uh exactly you know uh what you say there um or you know or you know roman holiday where it's not really terribly relevant that the that gregory peck is a journalist yeah the um when you mentioned deadline USA two things stand out one is there can be no better portrayal of a crackling newsroom than Deadline USA, or at least what we imagine newsrooms used to look like and sound like at that period. I think they got it. I mean, that's, you know, my dad, that's how my dad said it was. You know, there was this constant action and this feeling.

You know, there's that great, I think it's an HBO documentary. I hope so. Let's just assume it is because it's good. That, you know, Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin documentary, right? And then you just see that it's okay to have sort of crusading opinionated reporters if their heart is in the right place they might be wrong right they might pick the wrong side from time to time but they care they had something valuable to say they were smart and they cared about what they did and then afterwards yeah like you see in so many of these pictures they you know they went to a bar and they drank and they yelled at each other and they, you know, loved being with each other. And mostly they were smart and funny. And smart and funny has a place in journalism. It doesn't really have a place in journalism

now on television, which feels regularly less and less like journalism and more and more like entertainment. In fact, that's just where it is now. Absolutely. The bar scenes and deadline are quite good. And I also love the way in that movie, Bogie says the name of the mobster, Ranzi. Ransy. Yeah, he's so great, man. Ransy. I can listen to that all day. All right, catch Ben Mankowitz on Turner Classic Movies

as you try to assuage your feelings of anxiety during these trying times. Also check out his podcast with Peter Bergdanovich, The Plot Thickens and his appearances on CBS Sunday morning. Thanks so much for coming on the press box, Ben. I'm sorry that I'm unable to come up with NW. I'm literally scrolling through. This isn't what it is, but by the way, as I see it,

Charlie Wilson's War, one of the great, great, great film. Oh, there you go. All right. So if anybody knows NW or possibly AVW, please come to Ben's rescue and let us know what it is. Thanks, Brian. All right, the answer to that, which most of you probably know was network. Network was what he meant to say. And Ben Mankowitz and I have both been suspended for six weeks for not remembering the name. Network. All right, it's time for David Schumacher guesses the strain pun headline. Hooray. Thursday's headline about Trump's failing legal strategy was the lawyer. of diminishing returns. Today's headline comes from Mike Shaw is staying six feet away.

It's from a Guardian newsletter. The story is that the United States, David, is planning to demolish the giant Aricebo Radio telescope in Puerto Rico. This is that giant telescope that was in the James Bond movie, Golden Eye.

Yeah? Your keyword here is Dish. Dish. What was the Guardians? Strain pun headline. Oh, man. It's a good one. Got to warn you.

Okay. Give me a second. Dish Network. Daily dish. End of the... Not an Andrew Sullivan pun. Yeah. The dish...

The end of the dish... What would we say if we were... So long and thanks for all the dish? Pretty good. What would we say if we were destroying something? Particularly building. Raising something. farewell uh what uh what's the verb here uh the building was demolish demolished

uh dis uh cut down bulldoze uh cut down completely uh oh sorry we're out of time and what was it dish leveled dish leveled oh my god that's both terrible and wonderful that's why we do this He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida. Production Magic by Erica Cervantes. In the press box newsroom, we don't do holidays. So we'll be back Thursday with an Ignore Your Family edition of the show. We'll be answering a big old bag of listener mail and we'll talk to Josh Dean who has an amazing new crime podcast called Camellian Hollywood Con Queen. And we promise to deliver our best lukewarm takes about the media as always. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.