The Press Box - How ‘Tony’ Turned Anthony Bourdain Into a Movie Star. Plus: The Latest on the Paramount Negotiations.

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan and David take a trip to the movies. They're here to discuss the Anthony Bourdain biopic, 'Tony.' They discuss their initial reactions to the film, the concept of a biopic about a writer, the way Bourdain was portrayed, and much more (4:24). Then, in the Notebook Dump, they touch on a handful of media stories, including an update on the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger (52:08). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producers: Isaiah Blakely, Jon Jones, and Donald LoBianco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Shoot first. And inquire afterwards. Margaret Qualley. Ow! Okay, tough guy. And Guy Pearce. Arm up! The Dog Stars, directed by Ridley Scott.

In The Theater's Friday. Get tickets now. David? Before we get to the movie of the week, can I put another media-adjacent movie on your radar? Yes, please. This Friday, at a theater near you, the movie Coyote versus Acme is opening.

Ian Frazier collection of pieces, which I remember buying at the Elliott Bay bookstore in Seattle. I even remember the shelf that the collection was on. Do you ever have memories like that of a bookstore? Ian or Sandy Frazier had a favorite. fascinating career and still having one, started writing for the New Yorker in 1974. He was a very well-known, very stylish writer who seemed resistant to the earthly temptations of being a well-known and stylish writer. According to the New York Times, he used the money he

got for the movie to buy a new Toyota Camry. That was his, that was his splurge. The piece I always remember of his is a profile he wrote of a woman named Ponce Cruz Evans who wrote the hints from Heloise column that used to appear in the newspaper. Yep. And this profile begins with this great, trippy Ian Frazier lead in which he's going to San Antonio to meet this woman. And he talks about driving there and he talks about looking for a motel in San Antonio and he doesn't want a chain motel so he finally finds kind of a...

Crummy Motel. And then it gets to the final paragraph of the lead section, what we would call the Nut Graph in journalism, so-called because you tell people what your story is going to be about. And here is Ian Frazier's Nutgraph in his profile of Ponce Cruz Evans. I had not been in Texas long before I started having millions of insights about the difference between Texas and the rest of America. I was going to write these insights down, but then I thought,

nah and then there's a section break I love that so much that's so good some of the tiny number of New Yorker writers who could get away with such a thing so he writes his piece in the New Yorker in 1990 which is about coyote Yilee Coyote Mr. Coyote in the piece's legal statement against the Acme Company

which is a very funny conceit one line says Mr. Coyote lost control of the rocket skates soon after strapping them on and collided with a roadside buildboard so violently as to leave a hole in the shape of his full silhouette. It's very funny.

I learned from a New York Times piece by Stephen Kurtz that there was some controversy about this piece because another writer had written a similar piece some years earlier in National Lampoon. Oh. And felt aggrieved that Frazier's

story got more attention. Because it was in New Yorker. And not National Ampoon. Not National Ampoon. It seemed like a pretty big venue in itself. Also, I learned from Twitter this week. Witt Stillman is on Twitter. What a fascinating follow he is.

Director of Metropolitan and other movies. He tweeted that he and Ian Frazier were up for the same job at the New Yorker. And that Frazier got it. Oh, man. How about that? Anyway, at the movies this week, Coyote versus Acme, write a humor piece, and you two kids could someday get a check and buy yourself a Toyota Camry. All right, coming up on the press box, David and I have seen another new movie.

Tony, we give our review and talk about what it captured about the Anthony Bourdain the world would come to know and love. Plus some news about the paramount California AG negotiations and more on the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Hello Media Consumers. It's Brian Curtis. It's David Shoemaker. trucking through late August, David. Two more weeks till Labor Day. Here we go. Producer Isaiah Blakely is with us as well today.

David, we got over to the theater to see Tony. The new movie, which is directed by Matt Johnson, stars Dominic Sessa as a very young Anthony Bourdain, a college-age Anthony Bourdain. The plot is that young Anthony, or Tony, Tony, as he was known at this point in his life, was a student at Vassar. He wanted to be a novelist.

He failed to get a fellowship in which he could write a novel. So he followed a woman he wanted to date to Provincetown. Turns out she was dating someone else. Young Tony has no money, so he takes a job in a kitchen. And there he discovers the camaraderie of cooking and partying and works under the tour.

tutelage of an unnamed chef played by Antonio Banderas. A relationship with woman develops, a relationship with drugs develops. He learns the intricacies of shucking an oyster and making lobster thermidor. And voila, Anthony Bourdain is born. What did you make of Tony? I thought it was fantastic. I was, I didn't, I was dimly aware of what the movie was, that it was, you know, just a kind of formative summer in,

the life of Bordane. But I think I was a little bit repelled by, I mean, listen, I love Anthony Bourdain. I'm a big fan of his writing. I'm a big fan of his television shows, you know? Like, I love Anthony, but the kind of cult of Bourdain is a bit distasteful for me. You and I are not members of that cult. Well, I don't think it's one of those, you know, I wouldn't want to be a member of any cult that would have me as a member or whatever, but, but, but, uh, to, yeah, but, but, uh, to, yeah,

But, but, like, do I love Tony, Tony? Do I love Anthony Bourdain less than I love Ian Frazier? Or less than I love, like, a list of other writers who I have on the shelf behind me, who are, you know, who are, you know, people I talk about all the time and would be the first in line for a movie about their formative summer? No, I mean, I'd like him as much or more than most of those. It's just the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. It's a... It's like Chuck Polaniac adjacent.

It's the sort of people who... The sort of people who beat their chest about it are not the sort of people, not the same sort of readers that I see I at eye with, usually. I never thought of that as a comp, but that is a really good early 2000s Anthony Bourdain comp. Or at least cult comp. Yeah.

Bordane's a better writer. Hmm? I think so? But... Well... they both have their strengths so that's a fascinating question I don't even know where to start with that

so yeah we'll save that for next month just long conversation but the movie was fantastic I mean I'm not surprising anybody to say that it was incredibly great and listen we talked we talked a million times as lovers of magazine articles and crime fiction

the smaller things make better films you know like less less, I mean, lengthy, certainly, but less ambitious thing.

You know, source material generally makes a better film because it leaves room for the ambition of the artists that are

making the film, right? And this was about as small bore as you could get in the, like, you know,

a few months in the life of a, well, a writer, or whatever, however you want to designate him. It's,

you know, it was, it was, it's, this is a pretty micro view, but you, you know, but it, but it, it, it weighs on, it bears on this, this writer's entire career, right?

And that's the way that we want these stories told. I think it was, it was really smart and borderline profound at times. What did you think? I loved it too. Don't you think it was smart to set it way back in the past? Yeah. To an Anthony Bourdain that we did not know. Sure.

Because there's a different kind of biotrip treatment where you show them as the chef, all, you show him writing that big piece for the New Yorker and becoming himself, or maybe, you know, doing drugs and living on the Lower East side, but a more recognizable version of him. And then what happens is we start going, I don't know, I saw that guy on TV, and Dominiccessor, whoever would have played him, doesn't look like that guy. Yeah. It doesn't sound exactly like that guy. And then you start getting into the whole problem of biopics with people that are really fresh in our minds. it would have been like Jacob Allorty with like some unnecessary prosthetic you know to look just like Anthony Bourdain

Sure But yeah And yes I mean the one thing that I'm sure every reviewer Again I just walked out of the movie And have not read anything It didn't read anything really in Preparation for this

Except a couple articles you sent me It's inevitable to compare it to the bear Right the FX TV show And thankfully I don't think there's a lot of point in comparison. I mean, I think that there's some very obvious things. There's very broad things that it has in common. And there are a couple of stylistic things

that I could point to. But I wonder if the bear didn't exist or maybe if the bear were more mainstream popular, maybe this movie would have been more like the one you described. Right? But it's sort of like I feel like it tried to deliberately

not be that. And I think that worked to its benefit. The kitchen stuff. which you could compare with the bear in certain ways was fantastic in this movie. Antonio Banderas as the unnamed chef that he works for is so great. I think of Antonio Banderas mostly from his 2000s period

as this very cheesy actor, which is probably not very fair. But he has found a way to be this self-contained middle-aged guy in a way that is enormously effective. Mm-hmm. He's really good in this. Dominic Sess is good in this as a guy who is in the midst of inventing himself. Yeah.

And that's what I think I liked about this the most. Oh. Is seeing somebody. The slump in his shoulders. Yes. Just the visceral youth and lack of confidence. The kind of discomfort with being tall. Yeah.

Not knowing exactly what to wear. And it's funny when you think of Anthony Bourdain because I feel he gets called authentic a lot of the time. And authentic is a word we sometimes use as a synonym for cool. Yep. Or a synonym for the quality of feeling comfortable in one's own skin. Mm-hmm. Point of fact, Anthony Bourdain invented himself just like we all invented ourselves. He was not born like that.

He was not the cool dude in the kitchen the moment he came out of the womb. He was a very, very self-styled guy. So to see him at the precipice of self-styling was fascinating. Yes, and we see the confidence. We see the coolness throughout the film, but we see how it's such a manufactured aspect of him. I mean, obviously, it's, you know, even if we're taking the character and Bourdain is the same.

same person. There's a lot of him in the ability to put to put on this facade, but it's still a facade, right? Just like it is for you and just like it is for me and just like it is for all of us. We're all self-creatic. But all of us, everyone listening to this, I'm sure, looks at a person, whatever person they view as cool and are mystified by them, right? In all of our lives, we look at the Anthony Bourdain's in the world and we're just like,

dude if I only had that self-assuredness I could have changed the world you know and you this that was one of the great I mean obvious and you know insights of this movie was that that's we're all sort of

we're all terrified you know by taking this slice of his life what does this movie show about what the world would come to love about Anthony Bourdain I think this movie does a really good job I mean listen it's at an oyster

bar, right? It said at an oyster bar. And I think that there's something like pure, there's like a pure board vanity in the, in the oyster, right? I mean, it's something that's like so simple, so natural, and yet it's transformative in the right, you know, from the right hands in the right setting. Right? It's the sort of, you can go pay whatever money for the fanciest restaurant in town, but that order, that oyster bar at the end of the street is going to be the best food, the best experience, the best whatever. And I think it's what, I mean, the oyster itself is the metaphor, right? It's like, it's not about the preparation of the meat. It's about, I mean, it's not about the, the quality of the meat. It's about just like the know-how to prepare it correctly, right? And the

environment in which you consume it. Can I step in here and ask, do you like oysters? Yeah. I wasn't exposed to them for most of my life. I think that probably helped a lot, you know, if I had had them at any point before the age of 30, I probably would have thought they were gross, but I, but I do. I like oysters. I don't like clams. I don't like, you know, there's some things I don't, I'm not crazy about, but yeah, I love oysters. I don't really like them, but I'm only half sure that I've ever eaten one. No, go have some. Go have some. It's great. Because you can- crabs and lobsters and stuff like that, but I've just never been an oyster guy. I'm not even that big on crabs and lobsters. I eat them. I love them. You know, whatever, but like, I know a lot of

people who will drive two hours out of the way for the right lobster or the right crabs, you know, and that's, I'm not, I don't feel that way at all. But oysters are, are special. I just literally, before we decided to do this episode, was, was, was, uh, walking down the street and saw a dollar oyster Tuesday sign. And I was just like, I would never go on in that restaurant, but I will be there tomorrow. I mean, in two days. Um, because it's just, I don't know, there's just something really nice.

And you should have them anyway, because it's not, opposed to clams, opposed to even, and lobster, you know, whatever shellfish you want to point at, it's, um, it comes with the shit to make it not taste like that, not taste like itself if that's what you so desire, right? Put a lot of, put a lot of the stuff on there, the horseradish, minnie, that, whatever, like it's, it'll taste exactly like the dressings. Um, and it's really more about the experience. It's like so much of what, of, of the Bourdain philosophy, right?

It's just like, it's the ambiance. It's the, the companionship. It's all that. It's sort of like every meal can be. And I think this is what the real appeal is about oysters in general. Like every meal can be an adventure, right? Every meal is like a chapter in your freaking travelogue, you know, just because he's like you're doing something novel.

Boom. You really hit on it. And when he was wearing that black leather jacket in the movie, I was thinking about Future Bourdain and how he kind of took the dream job of music writing and moved. it to food writing. Yeah. For so many decades, it's like, okay, I'm a nerdy guy, but I want to be close to the cool

thing and describe the cool thing. Therefore, I need to be a music writer. Yeah. Music was kind of, you know, losing a little bit of its hold on American culture. And boom, here comes Anthony Bourdain and shows a way to like, no, no, no, you want to be a food writer. Because everything is coming up before you hear, right? There's going to be this thing called Instagram where you can.

just show somebody a sandwich and take a bite out of it and all of a sudden you will have 50 bazillion followers, even if you add absolutely nothing to the thing. You can travel to different places. You can use food as a portal to talk about culture and politics and religion and whatever else it is you want

and your own background. Here it is, right? And he moved, he helped move it, I should say. There's probably other authors that we helped move it from one to the other. And I was thinking about that. Like he made this idea, the exact idea you talk about, you know,

writing about food, using it as a kind of diary into something incredibly cool, which I'm not sure it would have been thought of that way in like 1995. No, and this has nothing to do with the particular profundity of Bourdain or whatever, but like, he would, if you said the rock and roll, he would have been just another rock and roll critic, right? It's not novel to be a writer, a music writer in New York, and to be into, you know, to grow up loving the Stooges and Bruce Lee, going off the posters on the wall of his room, right?

It's not particularly novel to be that guy in suburban New Jersey. You know, you're probably less of a, you know, there are probably fewer compatriots around you, but I'm sure, but you're not the only one. But to be that guy and be a food writer is incredibly novel, you know, and that's, I don't think it's, like I said, not a big insight into his, into his, you know, life plan, but it worked out really well for him.

It seems so novel. And then he turns it into essentially a travel gig. And there's so many things about him. You mentioned the pros and the attitude, the way he carried himself. But I think also deep down, part of his appeal was this dude gets to go to cool places and eat cool things. Like, how many shows are there now where a celebrity gets on a plane to travel and or eat? I was watching CNN the other day. I'm like, oh, wow, the Conan O'Brien travel show is in its third.

season. It's just still going on. Stanley Tucci. I guess Michael Palin might have been doing it in the UK for a little while longer. But like that's just a thing now. Like I'm a celebrity. I can kind of write my own ticket. I know I'm going to travel around. Yeah. And visit places.

Well, it's the old joke. It's like what can I get the studio to pay for? You know, it's just like you always see that movie. Oh, I got the studio to buy me this car because I needed to drive it to and from set or whatever. But this is the big picture. I can get some. Someone will pay me just to travel around the world and eat things? Listen, I mean, and that is a huge percentage of the appeal of Anthony Bourdain.

I'm sure the huge percentage of the people that, you know, counting him amongst their favorite writers, came to him through TV, you know, came to him through that. I mean, the Anthony Bourdain experience is vicarious living of the most kind of like, sometimes intense but exciting life. It's just that's what, and he explained, oh, well, that was what working in the kitchen was right it's like when at the beginning of this film he ends up sleeping in a hammock on the on antonio bandera's unnamed chef's back porch and he wakes up the first morning not knowing

how he got there and turns around and can see the ocean and i'm glad he didn't but my expectation was what i felt in that moment is that wait i can live here just by like working in a shitty vacation you know town kitchen like that's that's the that's the that's the attraction It's like all this is attainable, but you just got to go and find it. It's the vicarious dream. But the funny thing about the vicarious dream is that like the vicarious dream is not that it's possible. It's that you want to be the person who's willing to do it. Right?

It's like that it's the, we had this conversation years ago, but at some point I made some offhanded comment like, man, I wish I had, you know, just lived on the road for a couple years in my 20s or whatever. And you were just like, David, you could have lived on the road. And the reason why you didn't is exactly because of who you are. You know, like, whatever. You got to live on my couch for several weeks. That's true. But like, but, you know, you're watching this movie. And on some level, you're saying, dude, I wish I was young Anthony Bourdain right now or whatever.

But like, in reality, you know, no, I'm the guy that's like standing. I'm the guy in the movie who's standing next to the refrigerator at the party saying, come on, dude, every time somebody snags a beer, right? Like, that's my, that's who I am. And the part of the vicarious living is not just, oh, I should just quit my job and go do that. No, the vicarious living is to switch places in the kitchen, right? Is to be the guy who Bourdain becomes in that scene by copying his friend, but to be the guy who's like willing to change who they are entirely. You and I were living on the Lower East side.

We literally had one party where we were the guy who was mad that people were taking beers. out of the fridge. Guys, we didn't know we're taking beers out of the fridge. I still remember that. And leaving the party with them, right? Yes. That's the big sin and Bourdain committed it.

It's just like, if you're going to steal, at least contribute to the fun, you know? We were absolutely that guy. Oh, yeah. Two further observations about Tony. Number one, he's portrayed here as a frustrated novelist. Frustrated novelist is a really interesting way to think about the entire career of Anthony Bordyton.

Dane. Yeah. So he goes to the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America. He becomes a chef. He publishes two novels. Those are the first two books he publishes. Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo, 1995 and 1997, respectively. But those novels did not sell.

And they were not terribly well reviewed. And according to Charles Learson's biography, which I highly recommend, Bourdain was in this period in the late 90s where he's like, I thought I was going to make it as a novelist, and I thought I was going to make it as a chef, and neither one of those things had exactly come true. Gotten a lot farther than a lot of people. Sure.

But he was not a literary star. So then he published his Kitchen Confidential in 2000, and in a way, he's still a novelist, right? He's using a novelistic style, great prose, Pithy observations. He's carrying himself like a novelist, especially on those travel shows where he's going to war zones

and going to far-flung countries and trying to capture the place. He just took those skills and applied it to food and travel. Yeah, I mean, and I would say, would you say he conducts himself like a novelist? Like, I don't even know that novelist. I mean, those are the exceptions to the rule, right? What Anthony Vordaen imagines a novelist?

I mean, you know, like when you look at the Graham Green Corpus, there's a couple of travel books and... No, but that's exactly it. That's a whole, I mean, in some ways, that's a point of the movie. Look around. He thinks that being a novelist is cooler or better than the life he has in that moment, and he's completely wrong, right? I mean, he could not be more wrong.

And I'm sure there's some, I mean, the lies had a lot to do with it, right? But, like, the, I mean, it's almost laughable sitting where we're sitting to think there was a girl who thought it was cooler to be a writer, to be in like a novel program than to be a chef. Right? But like that was, I mean, it's not that wasn't true, but it's just like so distant from like our, then like reality from where we are in this era. A lot of that has to do with guys like Anthony Bourdain to change the perception for sure. But the other thing, the thing that's like blatantly obvious to anyone who's ever tried to be a novelist or gone to writing school or whatever is that the best thing he could have possibly done for a writing career. But a fiction career in general is to live the life that he was living that summer, to actually have lived experience, you know, to have something. that you know in a better or different way than everybody else who's trying to write a novel. And, you know, he eventually realizes that,

not in the film, in real life, but throughout most of the film, it's two completely separate things, as you described it, and one of them is always slightly embarrassing to the other half of them. Such a good way to put it. Observation number two,

Tony really effectively solved the problem of making a biopic about a right, writer. We've talked about this with respect to journalism movies. The problem is writing is boring when you show it on film. It can be exhilarating when you're doing it, but what are you going to do? It's like, oh. Not exhilarating when you're doing it. Go ahead. I'm typing out my first novel. It's well received. I typed out my second novel.

Not so well received. Seen as something of a sideways step or even a step backward. Now I will work on my third novel. It's like, this sounds like a terrible movie, an absolutely terrible movie. So what they did here, and this is Matt Johnson, one of the authors of the screenplay as well, is just take it back to pre-novel times, right? We're going to take that show... Where it is pointed out to him specifically that he has never been... He didn't write a single word for the entire film.

Pre-writer times, I should say. We're going to take it back. Matt Johnson, Matthew Miller, Todd Bartles, and Lou Howe are the credited screenwriters here. And it's a really, really effective way. Now, part of it is we know Anthony Bourdain very intimately, or I think we know him very intimately so we can fill in a lot of the blanks

on where this is going. I heard Fennessee and CR talking about that the director had toyed with just like putting this movie out there and not saying that it was about Anthony Bourdain until maybe the end just like, because it is. My least favorite part of the movie was the wrap up at the end

where Anthony Bourdain went on to be a great writer. I don't care. I'm in it for like this kid who I'm watching on TV. You know, like it's so much better. It's almost a better film separate from what I know about Anthony Bourdain, the celebrity. That wasn't good, and the other not good part of this is the whole Tony versus Anthony thing. So he's known as Tony in the movie, and at the end there's kind of a laying of hands on him.

It's like, no, your name is Anthony. He's like, yeah, my name is Anthony Bourdain. And I'm not even really sure that's correct, that he was not known by Tony throughout his adult life. I read elsewhere that his mom was the only one that he said his mom was the only one that called him Tony. But, I mean, that called him Anthony, that everybody he knew called him Tony, whatever. So I obviously don't know. It was a real weird superhero origin story moment, like, oh, that's how he got that secret power. That's how he became known as Anthony Bordating, not Tony Bordating.

This is a whole separate podcast. What is it? The abbreviations are diminutive versions of names. And when you're like, you know, as someone who has been, who has never called himself Dave, but it's been referred to as Dave to the point where it's just 50s. 50% of the time, that's my name. It's an interesting thought. I also have a ton of Anthony's in my extended family.

A lot, and obviously they're all, I mean, they're all Anthony's on their birth certificate, but some of them are designated Tony from birth. Usually it's because their dad is the other one, you know, like whatever, or their close relative was, you know, Tony, so they're the Anthony. But then they switch sometimes. Some members of the family will call them Tony and some don't. It's all very, very confusing. I've never called you Dave, for the record.

in 35 years. No, but there was probably a point where it would have bothered me if you did, but at this point in my life, it's like, like, really? Like what? Like, I don't care at all. You can tell the audience

that you were trying to make Shoe happen as a nickname back in high school? Well, I would sign my comic book drawings, shoe, yeah. Shoe was always the name that, I didn't love being called Shue mostly because it was always like odd adults who would just out of nowhere

decide to call me Shoe. Like youth group leaders. It would be like, hey, Shoe, come over here and... What a person. youth group leader. Yeah, and I'm just like, Shoo, like how did you,

like, where did that come from? Yeah, no, no. Now, I think how, Kaz, my other podcast co-host calls me Shoes, which is kind of become

the modern version of that, which is, it feels more intimate. But yeah. Shoe, come on up here and read something from Ephesians to the crowd. Part of this movie's effectiveness,

we have to admit, is that it takes some liberties with the facts of Anthony Bourdain's youth. This does not hurt me. This does not make me upset. I think some journalists, you know, jump on any kind of factual contrivances in a movie

because it's an easy thing to get a think piece out of. They mistake it for a fact-checked article. This is not a Ross Barkin column in New York Magazine. This is a movie about Anthony Bourdain. It's okay, but it is just worth saying for the record. And I got most of this from Ellen, Stein's piece in Slate that the biggest

way Tony departs from Bourdain's real life is that in this movie he is pining for this woman Nancy. In fact, when he went to Provincet in real life, he went with Nancy and was living in a house with her and a bunch of friends.

And the reason he got a job in a kitchen to begin with is one of the friends in this house was like, hey you, you're the only one here who's not working. Yeah, not paying rent. You need to pay your way. Yeah. So then that is what gets him into the kitchen.

Like, this was not a case of unrequited love. It was actually requited love. But that's kind of put in here. Also, the chef character... But that would have been a much less interesting story. Much less interesting story. Also, the chef character is an amalgam of lots of chefs that Bourdain worked for over the years in Provincetown, out of Provincetown, et cetera, et cetera.

Just to put that out there. The flagship, which was the restaurant in the movie, is the place where he worked washing dishes, I believe, during that first summer. And there was obviously a real restaurant there closed in 2002 or four, like relatively shortly after Kitchen Confidential became a bestseller. But certainly before Mordane became the level of celebrity is now it's, you know, you see reports of like the one whatever faux table that he ate out. And he ate out in South Korea is like encasing glass now for people to walk by and point at.

it's interesting to think where that restaurant would have how it would be faring today if it had stayed open for five or ten more years oh my gosh what a shrine that would be yeah I looked up some other biopics

about writers that solve the problem of having to show a writer writing prose this is an incomplete list but I was gonna I was trying to think about that I was doing this like literally

on my phone as I was as the movie was starting what is the list so these are movies I've heard of more than seen. I'm going to be honest. There's Capote with Philip Seymour Hoffman, you and I did a whole podcast about.

Check the archives back in January. But that's, right. I mean, just, and you're going to say this, but just to stipulate, that is about him writing in cold blood. I mean, there's like a narrative. I mean, there's a very strong narrative that's... But a slice of life of Truman Capote's life.

Yeah, yeah. Johnny Depp is J.M. Berry and Finding Neverland. Oh, God. Okay. Gwyneth Paltrow is Sylvia Plath. L. Fanning is Mary Shelley Kira Knightley as Colette Cynthia Nixon is Emily Dickinson

and Renee Zellweger as Beatrix Potter I'm sorry sorry to laugh if that's a good move that sentence made me No they're all kind of funny I mean the only other one I thought of There's a brunch by the way This is a very incomplete list

Yeah before Night Falls obviously with Avierre Bardem is just an incredible film actually spans most of his life or up until his first publication. I'm trying to remember. It's been a long time. But most of the ones you mentioned are either just ridiculous or, like, as with Capote, a smart slice of the life that sort of contributes to a deeper understanding of the work.

I mentioned this on our New Yorker episode back in December, but I really have an affection for Mrs. Parker in the vicious circle, Jennifer Jason Lee playing Dorothy Parker. That's, again, a slice of life, a bunch of writers. on the screen talking to each other and doing wonderfully witty lines. And I've not read anything about it. I haven't seen it in forever, but I'm just assuming it's entirely fabulous. Right.

Like they're having conversations that didn't exist. Oh, yeah. I mean, those conversations weren't written down. Right, right. I mean, and certainly they're condensed and even things that people know. She's having that conversation with a different person from the sake of the story. I'm just saying, as it relates to Tony. Oh, yes.

there was no podcast of the Algonquin Roundtable, just FYI back in the day. No. And there certainly would be now. In fact, all podcasts consider themselves to be as witty as the Algonquin Roundtable. If the Algonquin Roundtable podcast, can we just make that with just voice actors?

It would have been a podcast back in the... I mean, if they were today, that would have been... If they had the technology, that's the entire point. It would have been a podcast. It would have... And it would have been terrible in its way.

You know? I mean, that's what mythology is made of, I guess. Here's a question I don't know the answer to. What was the formative province town-like summer in your life? That's a great question. Do you have an answer to this? I do. I'm trying to guess what yours is.

Um, it's sad to say I didn't much have one. Of all of my college summers, it would have been the summer before my senior year, because that was the only time I, that was the first time I stayed in the college town and worked a job. You were a bartender? Yeah. And sort of live the life of not a local, but yeah, functionally a local. A college town is basically is not my, is just sort of the calendar opposite of a, of a vacation town, right? Those three months of the year where there's no students there, it's a totally different world.

and I was like you know just kind of figuring out what being like what wanting to be a writer meant you know and writing novels of my own or trying and so that probably would have been it but nothing profound happened to me you know I mean

David was a bartender I'll just fill in some blanks here at a bar name called Six Shooters Junction Six Shooter Junction yeah not there anymore Shooter Junction which is the most Texas name for a bar imaginable By the way we sold T-Shutors sold t-shirts. I mean, it was a ridiculous

idea, but the owner who was not in the bar business before printed up a million t-shirts. There are boxes and boxes of boxes of them in the back where they said, where it would say, I'm a first-generation Texan, I'm a second-generation Texan, I'm a third-generation. They had

up to fourth or fifth-generation Texan, in all sizes. These are distinct shirts. Yes, small to double-X. You could get the, I'm a fifth-generation Texan shirt in whatever size you wanted. That's unbelievable. I remember driving up from Austin to visit you,

and I was so impressed because you had a kind of adult job. Yeah. There were a lot of internships. It wasn't a college bar. It was just in a college town. It was just a bar, but you were in charge in a way. Yeah. None of us had been in charge.

And also living like a sitcom character's existence as the bartender at a bar in a college town. Yeah. That had an amazing quality to it. That was summer of, summer of 99 we're talking about? Yeah. Yep. All right. So mine's the same summer.

I had gotten an internship, and you know this, because you and I were wonderful friends during this period. I got an internship at Nightline, the television show in Washington, D.C. And I had gotten it by writing out an application in Austin and putting it in the mail and mailing it to Washington to the able to the able. to the ABC News Studio on DeSalle Street, where PTI is now taped, point of fact, did a number of phone calls with Nightline and then was eventually accepted as an intern. So I go in there,

and what people need to know about 1999 is television was still really important. Yeah. There was no phone in your pocket that would put you on television. There was a barrier to doing that. So to be inside an actual television studio where a show was coming out every night that competed with David Letterman and Jay Leno.

It came on at the exact same time. And I worked every day that summer from 9 in the morning until often 12.05 a.m., which is when Nightline went off the air. Just going crazy. Of course, I love television news. I was very, very interested in that world. But here's the thing. I also, and I don't think you know this, that summer, I just went in there and I was like,

all right, Curtis, you are just going to be super intern. You are just going to, and I'm not talking about doing what everybody says, yes, ma'am, yes, sir, that kind of stuff. You are just going to, like, ask questions, get to know the business. So there was a woman who was a correspondent. I remember she had, like, an objection to something in a staff meeting, and she went back to her, like, kind of got into an argument, a staff meeting, and she went back to her office, and I just went to her office and sat down.

I was like, why did you say what you said in that staff meeting? I'm sure she was like, get the hell out of here. What are you talking about? Who are you also? Oh my gosh. Yeah, you were that intern. That's great. I was that intern.

There was also a course spotted named Chris Bury, still journalist. Great guy. And he's probably in his 40s at this point. And I just went up to him and I was like, hey, can we go out to lunch? Meaning like, can you take me out to lunch, sir? Yeah. And he was like, okay. And we went out to lunch and we went to his, he was a member of a club.

I remember him telling me that John Kennedy had been a member of this. club. This is a club in Washington. I don't know if I was wearing a sports coat or not. But we went in there and speaking of oysters, he was like, the crab cakes here really good. Do you like crab cakes? And I said, yeah. I had never eaten crab in my life. And more so than not knowing whether I like crab or hated crab, I just didn't know what the texture of it was going to be. Yeah. And I remember just in that moment thinking, okay, when this comes out, you are going to look at this food and you are just going to eat it up. Yep.

It's like the conversations I would have with my kids years later, all right, got to get serious. It's time to eat dinner, not screw around. Yeah. And I just remember just,

yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. And today, I was terrified of crab cakes for most of my life until I finally had one. But thankfully, crab cakes are rather self-explanatory. Like, it's basically what you get what you think you're going to get.

It's gateway drug crab. There's no cracking shells or eating a soft shell crab sandwich. You just eat something full of red crumbed. and spice. Yep. And it's absolutely delicious. But I will say my summer, and I have a feeling your summer was the same way, very different

than Anthony Bourdain's formative summer. Sure. In my case, no drugs, fewer women. Yeah. There's a lot of great needle drops in this movie. I don't think I listen to one song on purpose in the summer of 1999, other than just ambient music that would be on when I walked into a store or something like that, as a point of fact.

And I had a fantastic summer, but I looked back at that, I was like, dude, you were the biggest nerd. You were like, my life is network news. This is the most interesting thing

in the world to me. The most important summers, the most important moments of our formative years are always like simultaneously the most embarrassing. Yeah. To try to relive,

to put yourself back in that position. It's absolutely true. I mean, the, I mean, yeah. Dude, when I was tending that bar, we had a five-disc CD change. And one of the great, one of the ways that I felt coolest was that I got, I brought in my own CDs.

You were in charge. Yeah. Yeah. And not, I mean, but it was like, you know, it's the same way that people show off their musical tastes their old lives or whatever. But I was, that was like my only time of like, here's my playlist, you know, like whatever. And just you put it in five CDs and make sure it wasn't, you know, it was not too loud so that people couldn't talk. What was one CD that was in the changer that summer? Well, there were some local acts, you know, like Townie Adams.

One CD people now. Oh, oh, God. Aerosmith Toys in the attic. You know, like, it was just, you know, just rock and roll. Things with a little bit more. And what would have been of the moment right then? Maybe like the first Sunvolt album or the first Wilco album or something. Like, that would have been, that would have been fresh.

All right. Preview of Thursday's pod. Joel, what's your favorite Wilco song? I can't wait One last note about Tony Bourdain's mom Good, I'm glad you're going in That's like the note I'm looking at

Whose name was Gladys Is glimpsed in this movie She's a bit of a hard ass, would you say? A woman who's a stickler about words At one point Tony's showing off arcane bits of knowledge About language And he says he got it

from his mom. Oh, so good. Who, by the way, had basically only been a villain to this point in the movie and that's like two-thirds. The moment you're talking about is two-thirds of the way in.

Mm-hmm. I think it's worth adding this fact because I didn't see this in some of the reviews. Gladys Bourdain was a journalist. She spent more than 20 years as an editor at the New York Times.

Yep. And had a big career in journalism before that. And she was actually incredibly important and Anthony Bourdain's rise. So a lot of people know the story that Anthony Bourdain wrote a nonfiction story after publishing those novels we talked about

about life inside a kitchen. Here are the things to look out for, don't order the fish, etc., etc. He sent this piece to the New York Press, which was a free tabloid in New York that you and I, David, mostly assiduously avoided despite liking to read just about everything. it was that kind of publication the press sat on the story

and didn't publish it for a number of weeks and again in Bourdain's telling this is again according to Ligerson's book he then got frustrated put it in an envelope he said and sent it to the New Yorker that's not exactly what happened Bordane's mother Gladys

again an editor at the New York Times gave the piece to another reporter named Esther Fine Esther Fine was and is the wife of David Remnick. There you go. Esther Fine passed the story to Remnick, who was somewhat new in the seat as editor of the New Yorker. Remnick thought the piece was great, which it was.

He published it, and Anthony Bourdain, as we know him, is born. Yeah, you sent me an article about that before I saw the movie. And it weighed on my reading of the film a little bit. Or as I thought it was going to weigh on my reading of the film until I kind of got to the end of the piece. Because actually the piece you sent me was her obituary. It was. She died a couple years ago. In the New York Times.

But it ends up not, you know, there's a lot of talk about Nepo babies and whatever else in the world today. And obviously if you go back to, you know, the 80s, but especially if you go back much further than that, you will find. a higher percentile of Nepo babies, by the matter of degrees than there are today. I mean, it was, I think, much more common for places like the New Yorker to give staff jobs to children

of New Yorker writers or whatever in years past. Thankfully, that all got called off in recent years. Yeah, but really when you think about it, I mean, his mom was functionally a copy editor at the times. Copyedder means editor, though, in newspapers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But was an editor at the times, And the connection to Remnick was, you know, two degrees, right? I mean, his connection to Remnick was two degrees, a separation or three. I'm not exactly sure how we count these things. And even if she had been the most doting mother, which, according to this film and most of everything we know, she was not for most of his formative years. I mean, she was a realist when it came to his talent. Even if she had not been that, it still had to get through two brilliant people. And it wasn't exactly like done.

It wouldn't have been done as a favor to run this piece. It wouldn't have been done as a favorite of Gladys Bourdain, no. No, yeah, of course not. And when he talks about the fact that he couldn't get the book published, you know, he had this idea he couldn't get it published, you know, he couldn't get it. I mean, the movie doesn't talk about the novels. Obviously, it's before that, but a lot of his discussion of it since then was just he had this idea, he had this book, he couldn't get it published.

We're talking about a world like you described before where you're putting a manuscript in an envelope and sending it to literary agents, you know, and like you never, I mean, that's the craziest thing about that era is that we talk about, have our kids have, like, no concept of delayed gratification. There was, like, 90% of the communication you would have was like that. It would just, like, the most important things in your life, your job applications, your college applications, you put an envelope and send them off and just sort of, you know, clap your hands together and be like, well, probably the last deliver here of that, you know? Like, the toys that we got came in the mail. Like, everything was just like this incredible system of

hope, you know, of just fingers crossed like off into the future, who knows. And, you know, but you can understand how not hearing back from any of these manuscripts he sent out is probably pretty damaging. But the thing that really gets me most from what you said was

the New York Press part of that. Because you think about how important the placement is. The placement, the environment, the pages in which which you read something.

You could have read those exact same words, which certainly were actually not the exact same words, because the New Yorker copy desk is a machine, you know. But like, functionally, you'd read the same piece in those two places, and it would have been an entirely different experience. Dude, I mean, we are bound to call these sliding doors moments here at the ringer, but what if that piece comes out in the New York press? And it's just as good as the New Yorker version.

Do we know who Anthony Bourdain is? Nah, no. I have a couple of collections of like all weekly writers in my library, usually for one specific piece, not generally for like the entirety of the author's Uvra, but yeah, the odds of us knowing him. It's certainly the way, I mean, you don't get a, he said that, you know, a couple of days after the piece came out, he had a book deal. He did.

Which is, which is, yeah, which is exactly what would happen. And cameras outside L'Aol because he was a celebrity. Yeah. All of us. So, so, I mean, I mean, it's certainly. wouldn't have been like that. And you and I would not have read the piece in the same way. Actually, this is the Anthony Bourdain philosophy, right?

That like the environment, the experience of consumption is inextricable from the value of the consumption. Right? It's like the oysters don't taste as good if you're not on the beach with a can of beer next to you. And just in the exact same way, the piece would not have been read by any of us the same way if it had come out in a different publication. No. What would the New Yorker be a nice Pinot Grigio next to you? Well, I mean, no, I mean, the New Yorker in this argument is the beer in the beach because it's the best possible, it's the most, the best version of it, right?

It's the best reading experience. So it would have been the New Yorker, you know, at your favorite coffee shop or bar at, you know, as the sun was setting out the window or whatever with a cigarette in my hand. But, like, you know, whatever. I didn't mean I was scrutinize the metaphor. I get what you're gone. Yeah. Let me plug one more time, a couple things here.

This book, Down and Out in Paradise is the name of the book by Charles Learson. There'll be people who just love Anthony Bourdain and have an emotional connection to him. This might not be the book for you because this comes at him from a just very like, I want to find out the facts about this person's life. It is not part of the cult. I say that as a compliment to the book. It's a different. It's one of those kind of old-fashioned kind of here as the biography of the guy that was written after his death.

has some fascinating material in it. I read the hell out of this book and love this book and have recommended it to a lot of people. That's out there. I thought Sean and CR did a great job on the Big Pick talking about Bourdain last week and then before that, Chris and Andy Greenwald, did a fantastic job talking about Bordain on the watch.

I've avoided all of those for this show and I can't wait to listen to them. Any final thoughts on Tony? No, I mean, you talked briefly about the the fact-checkability of the story, that there were a lot of like, you know, it was more about the story than it was about the, you know, literal things that he went through.

The only thing that grabbed me, that was like tickling my brain about halfway through and it really only ever got worse, was the idea that this was one summer. When you think about not only one summer, but at the end, without giving anything away, someone is referencing August as a time in the future. So all of this stuff happened in presumably six or eight weeks, you know?

And probably the most bare like thing in the entire movie was the montage of waters getting thrown in his face every morning. And when you think about it in terms of the time scale, you're like, oh, we might have actually seen every single bucket of water being thrown in his face. because the montage makes you feel like this is three years of his life but it's really just like such a short amount of time it doesn't

really matter because the movie is obviously getting at just the fact that it tells a bigger story you know it actually makes it a story about the formation of this of this thinker of this writer of this character time is really not significant but but I did but I did take notice

of that as it was happening should I add here that I met Anthony Bourdain I don't even know this you met Anthony Oh, did you write a middlebrow about him? No, I went to, I wrote a piece for Outside Magazine about him. I went to a socky date with him in New York in 2007. And it has one of, and he was just doing the show, and he was traveling around, and he was eating crazy things.

And Mike Roberts, who's an editor at Outside, wrote one of the great headlines that has ever accompanied a piece I have written. Headline better than the piece itself in this case, by the way. Anthony Bourdain does not taste like chicken. That is a hell of a headline. Oh, that's so good. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at PMCF Walk. All right, in the notebook dump, David, a few quick notes for you. This Paramount Warner Brothers merger and the negotiations with the state attorneys general is dragging on. Rob Bonta, who is the AG here in California, was supposed to meet with Paramount today Monday. A scoop came out in the Wall Street Journal saying, hey, part of what Bonta wants, because that's been the question, right?

What does Bonta want from Paramount to get this deal over the thing? has been for them to sell off some of the television networks, which makes you think, well, wait a second, is selling off the television network? Is that CNN, the one we're really concerned about, so that CNN and CBS News wouldn't be under the same corporate umbrella? That was a scoop in the journal. Then Bonte came out and said,

actually, since the details of the meeting leaked, I will not be meeting with Paramount on Monday. And so the meeting was called on. The assumption being that Paramount leaked that? I mean, that's, again, that's a way he's playing it. I think the motives, well, motives is the wrong word. The end game here is so cloudy because people don't totally understand what this guy wants, this guy being bought.

Like what will it take to get him to sign off on this deal? Then you got the threat of Paramount to move out of California and everything. Anyway, I just want to put that on your radar. New York Times lost a defamation case in Alabama. Did you see this one? I did. I did. It was one of the, like,

I really did not expect to feel the way I felt after reading the piece when I just saw the headline. Go on. And how about this sentence from the Times' piece about the suit? The Times had not lost a defamation lawsuit brought in the United States over one of its articles in more than 50 years. That's from Katie Robertson. It involves an Alabama. It was an Alabama jury involves an Alabama basketball player. Kai Spears, the article read, sued the Times into 2023 accusing it of libel and

false light invasion of privacy. He claimed the article, which mistakenly reported he was a passenger in a car at the scene of the shooting, had caused him emotional distress and forever linked him with a murder. Three other basketball players from the school were present at the shooting, which killed a 23-year-old mother. So there's that one. 60 Minutes updates? We'll talk more about 60 minutes going into the season premiere, which is September 13th. But do you see the story?

This is in the New York Post that 60 Minutes. sized up Stephen A. Smith and John Cleese and Jerry Seinfeld for the Andy Rooney slot at the end of the show? No, I did not see that. That is amazing. Who is running 60 minutes and how old are they? It's a great question. Also, it's like... John Cleese. Yeah, I mean, it's three people who will... I mean, listen, Andy Rooney was like easy to...

easy to parody in his later years. But I don't think anybody would accuse him of, like, doing bits, right? Like, he, on some level believed everything that he said, and we're looking at three people who were, like, pure schick, right? Like, you would not assume that John Cleese, Jerry Seinfeld, or if you have a brain cell, Stephen A. Smith, really believed any of the things they were complaining about, right? They just saw, they thought of a funny hook, and that was it.

Yeah, Anthony was, um, I almost said Andy Bordane. Was Andy Rooney doing schick? I don't know. Boy, that's a tough one. I think he's probably closer to those people than we think. I just remember him one time holding up a can of mixed nuts and being mad that too few of the nuts are cashews. That's a real thing that appeared on 60 minutes, at least as far as I remember.

So let's not shine up Andy Rooney too much. Yeah, maybe he was doing shit. But at least the pretense was that he was not. And it says something interesting about the journalistic world we live in that you're willing just to be like, you know, I'm going to hire a clown to do this news segment. Jerry Seinfeld, John Cleese, and Stephen A. Smith. Hasseau got a new, I don't want to say a fight,

but kind of a Twitter shoving match with Nate Silver over the weekend. Do we need to talk about that or should we just let people discover that one on their own? I don't know. It was a very Brian argument. You know me in non-specific media criticism. Let's just do it right here. real quick. Nate Silver was talking about Thomas

Keene, which who is the congressman who disappeared earlier this year for a number of months. He was talking about and this is what he said. So Thomas Keene disappeared. Nobody could find him. And he later came forward

and said that he was being treated for depression. Hospitalized for depression. And that's why he had disappeared. And Nate's tweet was, the reporting on Thomas Keen has been way too gentle, to be honest, to be an elected official and completely disappear from public life for four months requires a much more compelling explanation than he's provided.

I completely agree with the second sentence. But he was linking to a story by Tracy Tully when he wrote that the reporting had been too gentle. Let me tell you about Tracy Tully of the New York Times. She covers Jersey for the New York Times. While Thomas Keene was absent from Congress, she saw him through the front window of his house and went up and knocked on his door. I call that doorstepping in the business.

Yeah. And then last week she went to a Thomas Keene fundraiser, was not allowed to enter, and someone called the cops on her. Yeah. So I'm like, if you only know political reporting from movies, you would say, hey, this is a good stuff. You're knocking on their door.

You're trying to show up. They're calling the cops on you. And I'm like, what are we talking about? What is gentle about the way she's covering this guy? and what do you want? But again, it's become so, I talked about this with Joel on Thursday, it's become so reflexive just be like,

if only the media would cover this guy, it's like, dude, did you look up the clips? Didn't you, wasn't it a different subject in the past week or so where you were taught, where someone was said, I wish the media would look into, what is it? Natalie Harp. Oh, Natalie Harp.

And you said literally everything I know about her is from the media. And I think that's really the point. It's sort of like the, we talk about it. in terms of like the right wing media places that are like, like, you know,

constantly wishing for the demise of the New York Times, but all they do is linked to the New York Times and all of their tweets and stories, right? It's like that's still the literally the paper of record for all intents and purposes. It's, how can you say like, I wish the,

like, you could say, I wish I knew more about this, but to say like, I wish that journalism would give me more about this. It's like, the only reason you're having this conversation is because of journalism. Right.

We would not be like, we would not be like at the coffee, shop hearing like fifth-hand personal tales about Nadley harp, you know, or about any congressman or senator, right? I mean, it would just be, we would know nothing

without journalism, without the journalism that is actively being done right now. And I am very in favor of specific criticism of journalism. Yes. You want to say the New York Times is ignoring the story, then that's fine. Then the New York Times can come back to you and say, hey, actually, our reporter is knocking

on this dude's door to try to get him to come out and showing up at his fundraiser and somebody's calling the cops, they can answer that. But if you just say, well, the media is not covering, then nobody actually can answer the, nobody can answer your criticism. No one can say anything because the media isn't anything, right? That's just, that's just a nebulous term. So you just, everybody's like, yeah, I agree with that.

It's like, well, that's actually just wrong in point of fact. Anyway, I've learned I've learned how to get in Twitter fights in my old age, dude. I've followed the teachings of Joel and Jake. Kang, right? I'm really learning to mix it up. Yes. And you say people are, you started saying before I cut you off, the people have this like movie, this movie Hollywood idea of journalism. It's totally true. It's not even

just movies. It's like the way that a lot of social media journalists these days present themselves, where it's like, if you don't see video of the knock on the door, it doesn't count. That seems to be like the general point of view, right? But like, in fact, there's a lot of these knocks

on the door that we just never find out about. People doing their job to the best of their ability. And in this case, it was just written into paper. She wrote it the paper that she did it. Anyway, it's time for David Shoemaker, guess is a strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Tuesday's headline about the rise of the so-called white wine thriller

was shooting blanche. Paul Grace checking in, alert listener, Paul Grace, checking in from Perth, Australia writes, Brian, surely the best pun for white wine thrillers would be Sauvignon Noir. There you go. Ryan Harrington also suggested Pino Grigio Noir. Today's headline, David, comes from alert listener Andrew Heck, David. It's from Smithsonian Magazine.

Not sure we've ever had Smithsonian Magazine. I really like Smithsonian Magazine as a part of this feature. Are you keeping up your subscription to Smithsonian Magazine? Sadly, no, but it's always a joy that come upon. It's a dream of yours to someday subscribe to Smithsonian. It's a story about otters, David. Otters. Sea Otters once protected Oregon's kelp forests.

But they no longer protect the kelp forests. Noodle on that, as you ponder. What was Smithsonian Magazine's strained pun headline? I'm immediately thinking of it that it's got to be a kelp help pun, right? That's good. Kelp, I need somebody, that sort of thing. But the otter's got to be in there too. Well, yeah, it's more of an Oregon headline.

Oh. We will remember the otters. We will remember them. They will not be lost to time. Oregon. You might say. Oregon with the wind? Oregon but.

Not forgotten. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. Oregon, but not forgotten. I liked your self-keleton. That is. Oregon sea otters do not taste like chicken. He's David Shoemaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Pretty sympathetic! By Isaiah Blakely. Some plugs here. Thursday's show with Joel, we talked all about the Natalie Harp story. And non-specific media criticism, too. That's on Thursday's show.

Alex Michelson, who hosts the late show on CNN, was also on that podcast. He came and did an interview with me in the L.A. Studios here. also showed a clip of that interview on CNN, David. I feel this is the first of ever appearance of the press box on cable television. First but not the last, I like to say. Joel will be back here Thursday. We're going to do the August issue.

It's going to be about college football. Big subject for him and I. He played and I watched other people play. Instagram at Pressbox Ringer. Pressbox Ringer at gmail.com. Please correspond with us. David, I will see you next week with more lukewarm, about the media.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family

to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca.ca.