The Press Box - 'Monday Night Football,' Peyton Manning, Space Porn, and Brian Raftery on 'Siskel & Ebert'

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker open up the mailbag and answer your listener mail. They touch on the ESPN announcement that the Manning brothers will cohost a 'Monday Night Football' telecast (5:40), discuss Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson heading to space (15:52), and weigh in on Addison Rae’s short-lived UFC journalism career (20:56). Later, Brian Raftery joins to break down his new narrative podcast series, 'Gene and Roger' (31:50). Host: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: Brian Raftery Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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David, what's on your mind today? I am coming at you live from a very rather fancy hotel. And we'll just put it in the great state of Connecticut. Strange thing, though. So I walk in, I had this deja vu because I've actually been here. I came here for like a work, like a sales conference, like in a pre, like five careers ago. you know so i knew exactly where it was but it's just like plant-filled atrium lobby it's incredible it's like you know this giant you know they've been an immaculate pool you know all this all this space

and there's like a you know like a bar that's sitting in the middle of the atrium sort of like you know like a like a futuristic tiki hut and and you know it's just really cool place the rooms are great everything's perfect and then like we say like hey and i was like let's get let's get the kids ice cream sundaes like that just feels like a very like hotel pseudo pseudo vacationy sort of thing to do right yeah from both the 50s and 2021 yes exactly and so and we're like so where's the restaurant and they're like oh well there's no restaurant i mean it's closely we haven't reopened it yet post-covid and i was like okay that's cool and then i'm meeting some people i mean actually this is a work related thing so i'm like i'm meeting some people they want like do

do you want to do you want to just meet at the hotel afterwards and we can have a beer and go over this stuff and i was like yes let's do that there's no bar and nothing's open. And I realize that this is a, I know that this is like a, like a nationwide problem that, that this is very, and it's also very old man yells at clouds.

I don't, first of all, if you're having trouble bringing people back to work, then like, you know, like, good, good. Maybe this will encourage some people to like,

raise the salaries of their minimum wage employees and try to get, you know, try to re-restructure the workforce in such a way. But in the meantime, doesn't that feel like a thing that you should know you're making a reservation, like, yes, you can come to this fancy, expensive hotel,

but there's no food or drink available to you. Or, like, just put out a six-pack in the lobby and just be like, take it if you want it, you know, like sit in the chair and drink, have some of this wine. Like, it's just a very strange thing to be at a hotel, especially a hotel when you're not in like a, you know, a walking district of a downtown area. And you're just like, hey, what can I do for food? It's 9 p.m. And they're like, yeah, I don't know.

You know, this is the whole point of going to a hotel, even if it's for work. It's like, do you ever go to a hotel and not on the way in think like, oh, man, I bet the room service wings are great here? You know, like, I just can't. Like, it's so nice to be able to wake up to like a carafe of coffee at a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich sitting outside your door. You know, and it's, I don't know. It's just, it's a little bit heartbreaking. This is David's message to Dr. Anthony Fauci, reopen the hotel. restaurant.

Do you remember they're reopened. They just can't staff up. I don't know what the, it's, you know, there's a bigger problem here. But still, yes, I miss it. I miss it.

That's all. Remember when before Yelp, when you'd go to the front desk of the hotel and say, hey, is there a place to eat around here and they would have to do the obligatory well? I'd recommend our restaurant. I wish they could recommend the restaurant.

But yes, I do remember that. And then they would tell you like the actual good place down the street. You're the first person ever to defend hotel restaurants. Are you kidding me? Is there anything better than just being You're sitting at, well, okay, there is things better.

But there is something incredibly nice. There is something incredibly nice about having like that one beer that you wouldn't have had if you were a car right away, that last beer. Hotel bar, I feel that's a slightly different category. But yes, the hotel bar is immensely satisfying. Yeah, but I would rather have, I would rather have the sort of B plus B or say, let's just even say B minus like cheeseburger at the hotel bar and then just do it in one one shot, then, you know, if you're, if you're on a vacation with the intention of, if you're

in an eating city, I'm not recommending that you go to the hotel bar in like Memphis, you know, and get your food there or New Orleans or, you know, wherever you're going to just like experience food culture. But if you're just there, if you're, if you're at the hotel for the nice hotel, you know, they should be able to serve up the kids a hot fudge Sunday. That's all I'm saying. Next week, David is going to complain about the quality of the pretzels on Southwest Airlines, Not what they used to be. There's no peanuts anymore. Why should I care about someone else's allergies?

Coming up on today's show, we answer your listener mail questions about the Peyton Manning Monday night football broadcast, space porn for billionaires, and Addison Ray. Plus Brian Raftery stops by to talk about his new ringer podcast, Gene and Roger, about the great movie criticism TV show,

Siskel and Ebert. All that more on the press box. The Ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here along with Erica Cervantes. We got listener mail, David, and I wanted to start with the big announcement from ESPN this week. After wooing and wooing and wooing Peyton Manning, by the way, wooing kind of a great

only in journalism word, after wooing Peyton Manning to be a football announcer for years, ESPN has finally landed a deal not only with Peyton Manning but his brother Eli Manning. They will be on the alternate Monday Night Football telecast starting this fall. They're going to do 10 games a year for the next three years. So you're going to have the regular announcers calling Monday night football on ESPN and then Peyton, Eli, and an announcer to be named later calling a separate feed on ESPN 2 and perhaps ESPN streaming service as well. Are you going to watch the Peyton Manning Manning Brothers alternate telecast? Well, I have a feeling I'll be watching it for the show.

I would watch it out of, you know, some sort of fascination at the beginning. But the notion that the Manning Brothers will be calling an alternate version, the game does not, would not necessarily steer my attention there on its own. Not more that. I guess Peyton Manning has been a guy that the networks have been trying to hide. for a long time because he's famous and he's a good talker and he's in television commercials and stuff like that. I do think you bring us to a really interesting question. And Brent Anthony Colette sent this in about, okay, we're in this era of the megacast. We have a call of the game and

then we have another call of the game. And then maybe we have another call of the game. And it used to be hard to do this, but now once Thursday night football is on Amazon and Monday night football is on ESPN plus, you should be able to just change the channel and hear the announcers you want to do. So that's kind of interesting on one level. But my question is, how many more people are going to watch a football game because the mannings are calling a second telecast? Well, that's the thing, right? It's like you're not paying them like, how can you even argue that you're paying them like a salary that would be, wouldn't it be more valuable to? put them on the B game on Sundays to, like a, for a, for a, type of broadcast that like some

portion of the public is going to be forced to watch. Like, this is going to go on regardless, rather than putting them, paying them a ton of money to be on an alternate thing. I don't, you're right. I like the idea of an alternate thing. I mean, being able to hear the announcers you want. But if Peyton and Eli Manning are worth $10 million or whatever the number is, do we know the number? Do we already say the number? Let's just say hypothetically, if Peyton and Eli Manning are worth $10 million to do an alternate Monday night football broadcast. And like, how much money are we worth? Could we get like half a mill?

I mean, we could like, can we do the ringer, not just us? We get Bill Simmons and the ringer does an alternate telecast of the Monday night football. I mean, wouldn't that be worth like 10% of what the Manning brothers are making at least? Like if you can justify spending money to lure viewers away from your other telecast, like doesn't isn't anything possible i don't know it just seems sort of wild yeah i mean it's it's a great point i mean it's it's kind of wonderful for consumers for people who actually watch television which are mostly the people i am concerned about so you're giving me lots of different ways to experience this game that's cool right that's a good thing whether the manning telecast turns out

to be good or not but you're right i do i do wonder is like at some level are you just saying are you going to grow the 11 million-ish, I think that's the number of people who watch Monday night football every week, or are you just going to take that 11 million people and divide it into two parts, where 8 million go one way or 3 million go the other way? And the value of this three,

now maybe that $3 million broadcast becomes more valuable and the ads, I don't quite understand that, but I do wonder about it. You did also bring us to my second point. Why didn't you just hire Peyton Manning as an announcer to announce Monday night football. Oh, yeah. That's a great question.

They tried that. And, you know, I saw a lot of people tweeting this week. ESPN finally got Peyton Manning. They got their white whale after all this time. Well, they sort of got Peyton Manning. But if you look closely at this, what ESPN is doing is not hiring Peyton Manning as an announcer

where he has to go to all the games and do the research, right, interview the coaches, where they can produce him, ESPN has ended up as a co-producer of Peyton Manning content, which is different. So if you look at this alternate telecast, it is produced, co-produced by Omaha Productions. And I think that is really interesting because it's almost like,

you know how there's this Peyton's places on ESPN Plus right now? There's this whole feeling that with certain stars of a certain level, they don't want to go work at free ESPN. They see ESPN as a vessel to produce what they want to produce. So they're not Chris Collinsworth. They're more like Kobe Bryant when he was alive and doing detail. They're like Peyton Manning doing this alternate telekis. You're not going to get me on the road 17 weeks a year.

But if you want to be the co-producer of my show and I can take my thing and put it on your network now I'm interested. Now I want to be in business with you. How many former, you know, sports stars have said over the years and interviews in print or audio or whatever, like, I just didn't see myself as, you know, being a TV guy. Well, what they meant implicitly was like, I'm not going to give up my like swanky life to be a road warrior. Doing the work to be a TV guy.

Yeah. It's true. I mean, there, there was. Troy Eggman was on Flying Coach, a great ringer podcast, not too long ago talking about the kind of difficulty he had in reconciling himself to becoming a color commentator full time.

And a lot of it, I mean, there's a lot of really, really obvious justifications when it comes to family and stuff like that. He actually got to, you know, reconciled himself in the reverse way, because he got to spend so much time at home and only had to be totally gone a couple days a week, then it worked for him. But it cuts both ways, right?

And it's not, and you're right, it is a lot of work too, not just when you're on the road. It's a lot of work. This is a, this is sort of, I don't know if it's a no strings version of that job, of the, of the, you know, traditional color commentary job, but it is a, there are certainly fewer strings. And there's like an announcer to be named later as part of this package deal, right? So, like, the, the amount of work that one has to do is really up in the air, because you could hire one or presumably more people who were just going to carry 10% of the load or like 80% of the load. So, So, you know, there's a lot of, there are a lot of variables in play here. And you're right.

Why, why be negotiating a salary when you can be negotiating back in, right? Or just taking back in. You know, it's a, it's a totally different sort of calculus for someone on Peyton Manning's level. Totally. It's ownership or co-ownership. And it's, to me, it's almost more like what LeBron James is doing with uninterrupted than it is what Chris Collinsworth is doing on Sunday night football. And the caveat is that only is going to work for a certain level of mega, mega, megastar. Like, I don't think Julian Edelman could come to ESPN and dictate the terms like this. They'd be like, eh, you know, do we want the Julian Edelman show? Like, I don't know. We might be interested in having you come in and work for us as a commentator and be on get up.

But there's a certain athlete now that's just like, eh, I don't want to do this. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a, I agree. I do think it's interesting, though, to think about it because the way that this is obviously very different than the trails blazed by LeBron and Kobe is that this is an established property that they are now attaching themselves to, right?

True. And I think that is going to, I think people will probably be looking back on this as that sort of an important moment in time because I think we will see, I mean, we'll probably see, now that the doors open, is LeBron going to not going to try to attach himself to doing, to having the,

the LeBron version of the NBA finals after he's retired or even before he's retired? I mean, is this, I feel like there's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, dominoes that could fall after this. And frankly, you know, you're right, there's some people that wouldn't have this sort of bargaining power

that, you know, the same power that the Mannings did. But, I mean, you know, nobody, they also wouldn't have given, like, Pat McAfee this opportunity when he was the kicker for the cults or whatever, but like when he's, But now someone like Pat McAfee would be ideal for a thing like this, right? I mean, how many viewers could he get watching the alternate feed? So I do think that there's, I mean, if we're, like I said this at the beginning at the top,

it's long, if we're, if we're handing out money for alternate feeds that are potentially cannibal, you know, going to cannibalize our own viewership, there are a lot, there are a lot of interesting ways we could go. Yeah, it's a very, very interesting moment for a lot of, as you say, there are dominoes left to fall here. But before we move on, though, one idea. If we really want to boost the Monday night football ratings because they could use it, wouldn't you be more interested if every week Peyton and Eli just were the quarterbacks for the opposing teams?

No matter who it was, the two Manning brothers have to suit up and make the most of the situation? That'd be really funny. Yes. I would watch that extremely unlikely television production. The Mannings are playing quarterback against each other for the team. It's the Manning Bowl every week. Every week. That was such a big deal in the time.

Archie Manning up in the box, just like looking on. Yeah, okay. I get text from David over the course of the week about what we should talk about on the press box. And this week I got one that said, we got to talk about billionaire space porn. Because I think David has been watching CNN, MSNBC. No, this is both. It started off with MSNBC.

God love him. But it wasn't just that it. Okay, let me take a step back. We are actually a bit too young, as old as we are compared to most of the people who probably know what a podcast is. We're probably a bit too young to have the, like, abject fascination with the space race that many of the people who are, like, producers and talking heads in the cable news networks do. It's where you, one of the few ways that you really feel like a dramatic divide between you and I and the people who are like five years older than us, right? And you see it at moments like this when, like, Jeff Bezos sends a giant penis into space and everybody is just, like, falling over themselves to ooh and awe about it. Now, listen, it's cool.

I mean, as far as, like, the giant achievements of mankind go, I mean, listen, maybe it's just, you know, unrealistic expectations. but I kind of feel like with unlimited money, you and I could probably put a rocket into space. Maybe I'm wrong, you know, but like if you're, if you just have, if there's nothing, if, you know, money is literally no object, we'll probably figure it out. So, and, you know, there's, you know, the state of Texas is doing them a lot of favors and everything else. But setting the science aside, who knows, I mean, we're going to put all of our industrial waste into space like he, like Jeff says or, you know, we're just going to, this is going to be like a big Texas space tourism industry. I mean, who knows. but it's just the coverage of it was bonkers. Like it was, it was, they were like singing hosanas from the newsroom about this billionaire sending four people up.

And it wasn't even space. It was like a little bit higher than an airplane and back, right? I mean, and I don't mean to make this a bit. But like the fact that they had, on MSNBC, they had to keep asking themselves the rhetorical question about whether or not it was worth it, right? The announcers would, like, throw to Stephanie Rule, just be like, well, you know, there's a lot of people out there who are probably saying, if these guys pay no taxes, then why are they, how do they have all this money to build a rocket and shoot it in the space? And Stephanie Rule was like, that's a valid question. But it's legal. That's what you got to keep saying.

They're not breaking any laws. And what they're doing here is really amazing. And it's just like, all right, man. Like, I don't know. Like, I don't need to, I guess I just don't need a live feed to like every billionaire losing, using. is trillions of dollars to just sort of like fulfill childhood fantasies. It's fun

sometimes, but I just I have a hard time reconciling that to being just like a great achievement of mankind. It's like, you know, we all, you know, coronavirus paid for this rocket chip, right? All the packages that we had direct ship to our

doors because of a pandemic or what's paying to put this thing into space and we're going to act like he like, you know, he found the the fountain of youth or something. It's just he shot a rocket in the space. Let's just talk about something else. Journalists do this thing

where they get really excited when they get to cover or celebrate something that their predecessors did but they never got to do. Oh yeah. Okay. So, you know, we hear the political writers all the time, man, what if it's a brokered convention?

Just like David Brinkley got to do way back whenever he covered his first convention. adventure. And it's always this idea that maybe this thing that exists in this world of the past and of romance and of fedoras, maybe I'll get to do that too. I feel there's a little bit of this in the space thing. Yes. We missed the big moments. We missed Apollo, but damn it, we got Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. So we're going to treat it the same way. We're going to get as excited as we would have gotten in the glory days of the space race. There's something to that here.

Did you also see the Bezos soundbite that was well-traveled? This is from the Today Show. Erica, can we play the Bezos soundbite? Amid the celebrations, Bezos is facing backlash, though, for this comment. I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all this. there was a really big overworked Twitter joke this week that the moment that Jeff Bezos went into space that was a good time for all Amazon workers to finally take a break

I've been working at this hard hard, hard job and oh wait a dude the bosses in space or former boss now I can finally get that break I've deserved it is funny can we talk about Addison Ray David Yeah fill me in on this I was only paying very vague attention here Erica reminded, reminded us.

We need to talk about this. So did you watch the UFC fight? Yeah. On July 10th, Connor McGregor. By the way, one of the great sideline reporter-ish moments of all time when Joe Rogan interviewed McGregor after he broke his leg. He's just sitting there with a broken. I don't remember Joe Thaisman giving an interview on the field after he broke his leg. No.

Maybe I'm forgetting. Anyway, Addison Ray is a 20-year-old TikTok star. and on July 10th, the day of this fight, she posts a picture of herself on the UFC red carpet holding a microphone. And she tweets this. I studied broadcast journalism in college

for three whole months to prepare for this moment. Everybody got really, really mad. People that are studying broadcasting who have studied broadcasting and thought, wait a second. She is trolling us. She's saying,

she's saying that we work so hard to try to get a job like doing interviews at a big UFC event. She did not. She was a TikTok star and now she is she's rubbing our faces in that fact. So that was like a thing on Twitter for a couple of hours. And then, and I saw Taylor Lorenz tweet this and I think I retweeted her. They're like, you know, there is this thing. Like that is that is not cool. But at the same time, TV networks have been hiring famous people.

to sit in on sporting events since time in Memorial. Didn't we just have Snoop Dog call a boxing match? Yeah. Like 10 minutes ago. So while we might rather that go to that actual, you know, that broadcast journalist who's been working on their craft and is going to ask good question, all this stuff, this is just part of sports television.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that every sporting event you see, especially when you go talk about boxing and UFC with like the crowds are right there, you can see the, you know, celebrity sitting in the front rows, you know, like the NBA games always, like, focus in on Jack and, you know, Denzel and all those guys, the Lakers games. Do you think that they would be, do you think that any announced team that any network would refuse Denzel Washington the opportunity to come down and call the five minutes of the game? So we got the Manning cast and now we got the Denzel cast? I'm just saying it's what's, it's an interesting parallel, but like, like, nobody is going to,

I understand why this is getting under people's skin. And so maybe I'm being a little bit deliberately obtusive at it. But like, no, there's no broadcast. There's no, there's no network area of sports broadcast that would say no to a major celebrity being minorly involved in the presentation. I was looking back through my voluminous files about announcers. And I realized that Jason Priestley was involved in calling the Indy 500. Oh, no, the Indy 500.

Oh, yeah, because he got into racing a bunch. Yeah. Yeah. He did, did he have a hockey moment too? Well. Friends with hockey players. What was he, what was his thing? As a, I believe, is he Canadian?

As a Canadian actor, I believe it's in his, it's a bit in his contract that he get to ice skate on television. It's like they, man, the degree to which those Canadian actors can can play hockey is just, it's, they're, they're better at that we should be, American like soccer should be looking at the way they train hockey players in Canada because everybody can play. So he was, yeah, okay, so he had a hockey thing too. So anyway, back to Addison Ray. There was this big backlash. And then Addison Ray tweets, never mind, y'all got me fired. So everybody's saying, wait a second, she was hired to call, she was hired to be a part of the UFC event. She tweeted about it.

Everybody got mad. And now she's been fired. Well, it turns out this was a statement to insider from ESPN. Addison did some interviews with us for UFC 260. however she is not a full-time employee with UFC so it turns out that Addison Ray was there because one of the fighters was from the same city in Louisiana that she is this is again according to insider

she did an interview it appeared on ESPN's TikTok and that was her that was her involvement but not clear that she was fired or if in fact just completed what she had set out to do I don't know I just just a funny just a very, very funny. It's just a very strange situation.

And we may never know what really happened. But we know people got to complain. So that's kind of what matters. Do you want some only in journalism words before we do the overwork Twitter joke here? Oh, please. Yeah. Okay. By the way, we got at some point, one or both of us needs to sit down and actually make the list from all these episodes.

Because I'm still getting them and I can't remember if we've already had them. Like, for instance, do we already had a firebrand? I think we have. but if not, put that on the list. We might have already had Firebrand. It is still on the list. Winnow came up today. Winnow, I thought that was really good.

Be devil. Oh, be devil's good. Kind of an old fashion. Yeah, is old fashioned a separate category? Because we certainly use words in writing that are outmoded sort of, but like, are they, just because they're from another era, does that make, mean they're never used in speech? I don't know. That's a tough one.

The Yankees be devil the Red Sox today before a crowd of 20,000 at Yankee Stadium. You could see that in the old newsreel. This was a great one, W-O-N-T. Oh, yeah. And it's especially important to me because my first ever article at the New Republic, an editor inserted the word want into my copy. The phrase as is his want, I believe. So that was, and I'm pretty sure I didn't know what want meant.

but I was really happy because it made my it made my story really stink and really sing. Quick sidebar about want because I've certainly used want in my own writing, but can you use the word want that's not in the construction

of as was his or her want? I suppose so, but I don't know that I've ever seen it that way. I'm looking at it right now. There's an archaic... No, you could say as he is want to do. Oh, want to do. Right, right. So those are the two ways, but like If they always come in a certain construction,

I think that sort of exposes itself. But, well, anyway, we'll think more about it. A few more beleaguered. Mm-hmm. Install as with human beings. Like, he has been installed as the general manager of the Yankees. That's a pretty good one. I don't think anybody says that in real life.

Stint to describe a length of time, his stint with the Mets. and I really like this one Sion. Oh, yeah. Also, if you're at kind of a high flown publication, you can use like paterfamilius. Good, only in journalism word that I'm not sure

I've ever heard anybody say. Anyway, thank you for all these. We need to make a comprehensive list because I think we're getting into repeats at this point. All right, David, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media

at Twitter made it at exactly the same time, send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received piggybacking off that space talk. When Jeff Bezos blasted off, David, it was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Congrats to Elon Musk, the richest person on Earth. Get it because he was still. He was off the planet. Thanks to David Uberti for that one.

Weird tweet this week, David. Wait, what is that? Is there, you know, there's all those myths about like, what's it called, like the open seas laws like when you can like you can yeah does that count like you find like treasure ships and things like that is there no law when you're in outer space there has to be some law right yeah like if what would you find like if b's if jeff had like murdered his brother when they were in outer space if this had been part of a longstanding plan does he get international waters law like it's hey yay nobody has any jurisdiction over me

up here i'm gonna i'm gonna push back that that is actually the law of international waters that you can just free to murder people. You're right. I'm probably totally wrong about that. A weird tweet this week, David, from U.S. Representative Andy Biggs, a Republican from Arizona. Andy Biggs was trying to score some border hawk points,

and he tweeted, under Joe Biden, enough fentanyl to kill 238 million Americans was seized at the southern border last month. Where's the outrage in the media? It was an overword Twitter joke to write, read your tweet again slowly. It was seized at the southern border. That's what's supposed to happen.

Thanks to Scott Tobias for that one. In lieu of tweets, David, Donald Trump is still issuing statements. One of these statements said, if I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Millie. That is the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, if I did it. by the way thanks to summer of dad

how many people have actually read if I did it versus people that have made jokes about if I did it over the years that's a great question is it do you think there's a is there a deeper obligation to read

if I mean it came so long after all that stuff and it was like I mean you could probably ask the general question like of all of the ghost written like Regan Arthur books that came out in those like in that decade or two like how many of the how many people have actually read all that well I mean I guess some people probably read a lot but yes nobody's read if I did it I think that's fair to say I remember like a really funny New Yorker talk of the town

item with the ghost writer of if I did it I don't remember I don't remember what the punchline was but I remember it being good I think I think Jeffrey Goldberg wrote it all right David and finally remember Gilgamesh probably not a question you expected this morning remember Gilgamesh from high school? The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the greats. This was a tweet from the account Archaeological Photography. A new chapter of the epic of Gilgamesh is revealed

when the fragment of Tablet 5 was finally recovered. It was written in standard Babylonian, it dates back to the Neo-Babolonian period. A new chapter of the epic of Gilgamesh. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, New Gilgamesh just dropped, or we would have also accepted the new epic of Gilgamesh dropped

before George R. Martin's the wins of winter. Mr. Steve Satham and Mitchell, Tyler. If you made David and I remember Gilgamesh, congrats, you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump, we are joined today by Brian Raftery, excellent movie writer, author of the best movie year ever. That is a book.

And now the autour behind a new long-form ringer podcast, Gene and Roger, about the iconic, Seminole, movie arguing duo Siskel and Iberd. Ryan, welcome to the press box. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. This is really fun. All right. So you're going to see that David and I have very big memories, very big takes about Siskel and Ebert as an artifact of our youth. But for people who may be a tad younger than us,

how would you describe Siskel and Ebert to someone who never saw the show? Wow. You know, I think it's it's the way you, everyone who's young argues now, except in person and the arguments end after five minutes and they're only about movies, but they're also about how everyone feels about each other. I mean, they were like, you know, for people my age, these were the first two, this was the first conflict I saw in popular culture, was Gene Sisko and Roger Ebert arguing with one another because when I grew up, you know, watching 80s TV, you didn't see these kind of big, you know, fights.

You didn't see the grown-ups get out of control on television. And every week, Gene Cisco and Roger Eber would sit down. They would have five, sometimes six movies. They would go through them for about three or four minutes each. And they were longtime rivals who became TV stars together. And they had all this kind of beneath the surface tension when they talked about, you know, a movie like Anaconda. And for someone like me, it was, you know, when I first started watching, I was really young. I mean, like seven or eight, I think I'd just like watching, like I said, grownups fight on TV.

But when I got older, you know, Cisco and Iber for a lot of people, including myself, this was sort of in the pre-internet era. how you learn to think about movies. You know, I learned the, I heard the word cinematography on Siskel Niebuhr for the first time. I, you know, I realized you could disagree with someone and still remain civil with them through Cisco Niebuhr. So they were, they were remarkably influential on people my age in terms of popular culture and thinking about it. But what's kind of funny now is that I'm still seeing young people share Cisco and Iber

YouTube videos. It's like, it's like they're still, they haven't reviewed movies in 25 years and they're still relevant. What they think about, you know, aliens or platoon, people are still. still discussing today. It's true. You know, it's funny the way that you talk about how they kind of shaped the way that we think. And there was a sort of monoculture just in terms of the way that we learned film criticism. What kind of struck me reading and listening to your podcast so far is how my perception of them when I was a kid is exactly the same perception everybody else

had too, right? That there was a sort of like monoculture perception of Siskel and Iber, that I wasn't just I had a favorite or whatever. So describe their contrasting personalities a little bit, again, for the uninformed and the sort of, well, film archetypes that they occupied themselves. I think, you know, Roger Ebert, who I think because he obviously lived longer than Gene and had a very big, you know, sort of Twitter imprint until he passed away, and who was better known, I think.

But he is a little more of a film scholar, at times a little more soft-spoken, whereas Gene who loved movies, but was sort of, I could say, he could be a little more persnickety. I think he expected and hoped more from movies sometimes than Roger did. I think Roger sometimes

could be a little more forgiving. But, you know, Gene was very good at pushing back at Roger with a couple of good one-liners or, you know, one of my favorite reviews and we open the whole show is with is Rocky 4, where Gene, who hates sequels, loves Rocky 4.

Roger just starts going off on how much he hates it. And Gene, one of Gene's sort of default argument modes is he just starts saying, no, no, over and over again to every point Roger makes. And that is, I mean, I love the way they both argue, and I've employed both sides of that kind of the gentle way. You mean you didn't see this, what I see kind of way? And then there's more, no, no.

Like the disbelief that the person you're talking to didn't see this movie the same way you did. But, you know, they were also very unpredictable over the years. I really tried when I started the podcast. I was thinking to myself, I'm going to know by the end, what's a Gene movie, what's a Roger movie,

without having to look up how they voted. And I'm always wrong. I can never predict how they're going to land on a movie. I think, too, and you fasten on this in the podcast, is it's really important that they were print guys and that they looked like print guys. Because it did give them,

in addition to knowing that they were movie critics, just the way they looked on television in the 80s and 90s gave them a certain credibility. Did it not? These are not, you know, our blow-dried person on the local news who I don't really trust at all, but these guys wearing their sweaters looking a little frumpy in their various ways. They must know about movies. Yeah, I mean, they looked like my dad, who was a newspaper guy.

I mean, they looked very much like someone who you could sort of talk to in the lobby after a movie or you maybe listen to listen in as they talked. They did not seem like, right. They didn't seem like kind of blow-dried, you know, these empty TV news anchor shells, but they also didn't seem like very highfalutin, you know, Cajie do Cinema New Yorker guys. They just seemed like very, they seemed like guys you would talk to about a movie at a bar or that you would sit close to to to try to hear what they were saying at a bar. And I think that was so key to people feeling, you know, welcome to watch their show. I mean, I think

they, film was in the 60s and 70s was so highly regarded as like America's great art form once again. And I think people were a little intimidated to sort of talk about it sometimes. And Siskin Ebert were really, you know, they did not have, you did not get a sense of show-offiness from them. They were very smart, but I don't think they kind of lorded it over the viewers. I think they lorded it over each other sometimes, but never over the viewers. So there's a lot of things that go into making a show like this, the phenomenon that it is, and you've decided some of them. But if you had to, I mean, you described some of them, but if you had to break it down between the percentage of what degree it's like, the, presentation. I mean, the personality and what degree is just like the, just the physical

affect of the of them going, the unlikeliness of them. I mean, what do you think it is that really caught everybody's attention just from the moment the show started? I think it was the relationship between them. One of the people I spoke with was Tom Schell's from the Washington Post, and he had a really good point that as much as people loved movies when the show started, there wasn't a huge demand for film criticism on TV. It wasn't even the most widely read part of the newspaper. But as he pointed out, they made it work because they sort of turned it into a soap opera. And you did, even if you did not care about any of the movies they were reviewing within a certain week, you absolutely wanted to watch them in their personal dynamic

and see if they argued, see if they got along. You always wanted to check in, you know, like, let's see how Gene and Roger are doing this week. Because it did feel like a relationship that you were sort of invested in because you wound up getting addicted to them for so many years. And I do think, you know, ultimately they went through some years where the movies weren't great. they went through some years where maybe people were shifting their attention from movies to TV or things were changing in terms of how we consume and talked about film, but people always wanted to see what Gene and Roger thought. And I think it ultimately comes down to their personalities.

I mean, they were very smart and they had great opinions and they were very articulate. But I do think people just felt personally invested in Howard Gene and Roger getting along this week. I'd add one more thing, David, to Brian's list, which most viewers wouldn't know, but that is newsroom angst is what we were saying. Yes. Like back when we had newsrooms, here's the conversation in every newsroom, including the ringer.

That guy who has my job at the competing publication, he sucks. Right. And let me tell you how much he sucks compared to me. And by the way, and then when you get finished with that, you know that person who works at my same publication? He also sucks.

That's a different conversation. But to me, what they were doing was taking that newsroom shit talk that we hear all the time. And they were just, bringing it to the screen. Yeah, and I think people forget, you know, they started out in the mid-70s,

and it really took off in the late 70s and early 80s, but newspaper columnists, I mean, I knew who all the local newspaper columnists were in my town because they were some of the most heavily promoted personalities at a newspaper. And, you know, Gene and Roger were at competing Chicago papers that were like, you know, I don't know, 10-minute walks from one another.

It was a very, it was a very deeply felt rivalry in a newspaper town that, you know, deeply felt rivalries are a big part of Chicago culture. So, you know, that all kind of came across on the screen. And I do think that was a huge part of, you know, that angst really does play out with their kind of back and forth over the years. I mean, it got better. I mean, they definitely became friends in their final years together and sort of found a way to kind of soften their relationship. But yeah, those early years, the two of them, they, they were very different guys and they did very different personalities. But the feeling was genuine, you know, because we see a lot

a television today where you go argue with that person, but they really felt like you are an inferior film critic to me, and I am going to tell the national TV audience that fact every week. Yeah, I think they certainly felt that way about one another. I know, you know, and Gene, you know, when they started the show, Roger had won the first Pulitzer for film criticism. You know, no one had done that at that point. And that's a huge, you know, imbalance that I'm sure affected the sort of ego interplay between the two of them, because you're sitting across from the guy who has your job, but he also has a pulsar. I mean, that's going to add to that angst quite a bit, I think, especially in the mid-70s.

When they, I mean, you're absolutely right. Both of you, right, about the way they interacted. And Brian, you said at the beginning that there was a, you know, that we didn't see this much on TV. I'm trying to think back. I mean, it does seem like, you know, people would talk about, would try to read behind the vague, less than satisfied expressions of Johnny Carlin. at times to like you know to like put some sort of personification to to to whatever they thought they were seeing on on the screen but you're right i mean and and it's and it's not like tv today right

i mean the stuff we see on you know our on news news and sports shows is closer to you know archie bunker than it is to to at the movies but that back and forth pitterpatter the newsroom angst as Brian said is, I think, you know, such a huge part of it. And they, you know, they ended up, I mean, they took it. It was basically a road show. You know, they would go on the Tonight Show just to sort of go back and forth, right? I mean, this is what people wanted to see. Yeah, and I think that why it worked is because when you look at stuff, you know, certainly

they weren't the first two people to debate on TV. But when you look at stuff like, you know, point counterpoint, which was 60 Minutes, really big segment where they'd have two talking heads, it's, it's very scripted. and with Siskel and Iber they would go see a movie together sometimes and then they would just part ways they would not talk about how they felt about a movie until the cameras were rolling

so what you get is basically their sort of really first response and a lot of times sometimes it was an argument and it certainly felt like you know it was very very unscripted and I think some of the shows that came after Sisko Leiber where they would have two film critics talking

those feel much more scripted to me with Gene and Roger whether it was the Tonight Show or whether it was their own show, it never felt planned out. I mean, when you see one of them shooting a look of complete disdain or surprise, the other's opinions, that's not take five. That's the first take. And it seems very genuine. You mentioned Brian in the pod that there was no Twitter hive mind about movies in the 80s and 90s.

To what extent was there any hive mind with Pauline Kale and her brood, you know, kind of a general take on a particular movie or director that was out in the world. To what extent did that exist during that period? It's tough because we think so much of these sort of movies that came out in the 70s and 80s as having a critical consensus behind them from the moment. And when you look back, there was a lot more dissent among the print critics, among certain big movies. So I think there was a little bit of a scattered hive mind.

And obviously someone like Pauline Kale had her own kind of acolytes as a whole other sort of satellite. but I think, you know, the closest we had to like sort of a big pop cultural sort of movie hive mind was probably still the Oscars at that point, where in the 80s, I certainly remember the 80s Oscars was sort of like, okay, these are the important movies, these are the ones we all agree or good, whether they're nominated or whether they win. And I think, you know, one thing that I loved about Gene and Rogers, they would do these Oscar specials where they obviously everyone does them now. I mean, they sort of go on all year now as Oscar debates, But back then, having two really big critics look at each nomination and go, no, this isn't who should win, this is who should win.

This is the category they should be doing better things with. This is the kind of blind spots they have. I think that was probably, I think sort of talking back to the academy, even in the 80s, was kind of a pushback to whatever we think of as a hive mind back then in terms of how movies are thought about. That's interesting. In terms of the way that they went at each other, and you're right. I mean, you talked about Bert Reynolds at one point, how a thumbs down could end his career or whatever. I mean, I think those are the sorts of people who,

at least in my imagination, were sort of scarred most by the advent of Siskel and Ebert, right? Because there were some movies that it wasn't just the great movies who were quibbling over degrees of greatness, right? It's the sort of middle brow of movies that are suddenly, like, getting knocked around in a way they hadn't been before. Is that the right way of looking at it?

I think so. I mean, I think Roger would later say that, you know, sort of much to his chagrin, that you really couldn't stop people from going to see the biggest Burt Reynolds movie when it was opening that weekend, back when Burt Reynolds movies were a big thing. You really, it was very hard. I think they felt at a certain point in the 80s

that the PR machine, which had just basically come down to, here's a big star, big movie, go see it opening night. I think they had really started to push back against that. It's just Gene and Roger, because I think they felt that, you know, there was no real guidance for moviegoers. And I think those middle broad movies, it was the first time that people were sort of poking back at them in a big way.

There's a really great moment where, and I don't want to spoil episode three, but, you know, why not? There's a great moment on the Tonight Show with Chevy Chase, where they start talking about one of Chevy's movies, and Roger does not like it. And the audience just goes, whoa. Like, this is a big deal, not only because it's awkward to watch Roger Ebert, make fun of Chevy Chase while he's staying next to him,

But also, it was considered kind of like, wait, why would you, who cares about three amigos? Are these kind of movies we should really sort of think about more critically now and really kind of say, no, this is not good. But we need to stuff to make better movies. And I think they were very much, as you said, they were very much, as much as they loved a lot of Middlebrow stuff, I think they were reacting at a certain point to the way the 80s kind of big movie star system had kind of polluted Hollywood for a couple of years. They did not like the 80s. They were not really happy during the 80s. What's interesting about, though, is when, you know, as he go through the whole Ebert archive, which is, as you say, has been wonderfully available and has given him this whole kind of second, you know, sort of half of his career, you know, both both during his life and then, and then after he passed away, you will find that four star review for dances with wolves in the Ebert archive.

You will find the four star review for Forrest Gump in Eberd. Right. Yeah. He could be, he was a great critic and I loved reading him, but he could be. sort of conventional, you know, an insult to Roger Ebert, but he would often, you know, like that down the middle Oscar movie. As you say in this podcast, Gene Siskel was completely off on his own. A lot of the time. He, he, he, what were the old, butch Cassie and the Sundance kid in Chinatown? He pan. Yeah, he didn't love him. He didn't love him. Yeah. So he was, he was just, when we think of Gene Siskel, and I'm not sure I've ever actually read a Gene Siskel review in full,

but was he just completely operating on, you know, to his own, to his own beat? I think, you know, Gene's really fascinating. And I think, in a sense, yeah, I do believe that he was, he did not see himself as a contrarian. I really generally believe that when he gave Silence of the Lambs a bad review or when he gave, you know, I think it was break in the breakdancing movie, a good review. I think he's being completely sincere. I think sometimes he, and I think this is one of the things I learned from about talking about movies from watching Gene. is that it was okay to demand a little bit better from a movie.

And he could sometimes pick up on one or two small aspects of a movie that drove him crazy, and he would give it a thumbs down. And Roger, I think, sometimes would be a little more forgiving of those flaws. But they're both completely unpredictable, and they both love Forrest Gump. I mean, there was a lot of really big mainstream movies that they loved. And that's fine by me, because I love a lot of those, I did not love Forrest Gump, but I love a lot of those mainstream movies as well. But what's so interesting is when you read their reviews or watch their clips when they talk about these movies, you really do believe, I mean, you never doubt how they feel.

And to their credit also, Gene especially would go back and revisit movies. And he went, I mean, Apocalypse Now was sort of a 20, 30 year odyssey of its own where it took Gene a long time to really kind of fully embrace it. But he would go back and look at other movies. And I mean, he did go back and re-review Rogers Beyond the Value of the Dolls movie in the 90s, which he still. hated, but at least he would kind of go back and give movies on the shot. I think he had a real curiosity of, you know, what did I miss the first time around? What did you learn about them as human beings? Like, before they were famous, before they were, before they were on TV, that, that you, that helped you understand how they became the public figures, the public characters that

they were. You know, with Rogers, so much of his life was known, but I think one thing that, you know, Steve James did this great documentary, life itself, and Roger, wrote his memoir. But I think it wasn't until I sort of watched a few clips of him really talking about his childhood because he grew up as an only child in a very small town in Illinois. And, you know, he loved, you know, he wrote his own science fiction stories and he loved, you know, his own newspapers. And I never sort of connected how much of the work he did was sort of escapeism for him. And I think especially movies were his way of really looking at the bigger world and thinking about what it was like to be, you know, eight or nine or ten or even. And

a teenager and watching, you know, a true phone movie when you're still in kind of a small place and having the world kind of open up to you. And I think sometimes that does kind of explain why Roger still had this kind of wonder about movies up until, you know, until he passed away. I mean, he really, I do think he would sit down in a theater and just no matter who made the movie, even it was a Rob Schneider film or someone he liked, it didn't like, I think he really would sit down and be like, I'm open to being amazed by this experience because I think that was his relationship to movies as a child. I think they really transported him.

And I think for Gene, you know, Gene had a very tough childhood. You know, he lost both his parents when he was very young. And I think for me, the most fun thing about Gene is absolute, I always knew that he loves Saturday Night Fever. You know, that is his favorite movie. He famously bought John Travolta's white suit from Saturday Night Fever. He outbid Jane Fonda to get it. He saw the movie on his honeymoon.

He always said he saw it 17 times, but I, in the theater, but I'm sure it was more. But, you know, Marlene Eglitzin, Gene's wife, gave me some audio of him talking to Travolta in 1980 about Saturday Night Fever. And it's like, you know, it's not like the Chris Farley-S-N-L sketches where it's him sitting down with Paul McCartney, but it's like this is the biggest fan of a movie

sitting down with the star of that movie. And, you know, Gene talks about how he really wish he'd kind of had that crazy, you know, 70s disco life. And he kind of missed out on some of that in his youth. And I think that does explain why, Gene Siskel loved movies like Breaking. He loved, Gene loved musicals. He really, really did.

He loved kind of cool, tough guys getting up there and dancing. I think that was something that kind of came from, you know, missing out his childhood a little bit. So that definitely informed that kind of specific part of how he viewed movies. At the risk of spoiling future episodes, there was a Siskel and Ebert panic among other film critics who felt they were doing it wrong by doing thumbs up and thumbs down television. Will you tell us about what that panic was like? I think it was a generation of film critics who had grown up, who had come of age, only through written film criticism, or sometimes through maybe a very, maybe through Dick Cavett or kind of a panel show where you go on a great length about a movie. I think, you know,

the thumbs up, thumbs down panic among critics was this worry that we were reducing everything to a score. And once you do that, you're kind of cheapening the whole idea of criticism. And I remember I worked in Entertainment Weekly in the 90s and for a while, and I'm very aware of EW's history. I know that when EW started in 1990, and they had those letter grades, people were freaking out in the same way. They're saying,

how can you give a movie an F? And, you know, I think people are having the same reaction in the mid-80s. How can you give a movie just a thumbs down? I think what, you know, it was a shorthand. It was a convenient shorthand. I worked in a video store in the 90s. So if I said, well, Cisco neighbor gave it two thumbs up, people would say, oh, okay, I'll rent it.

I mean, without giving it much thought. but they did give context to their reviews in the show. I mean, it was only four minutes, but boy, it's a remarkable amount of context compared to people just creating a hashtag for a movie they hate now on Twitter. I mean, they did discuss it. There was depth to their conversation. But yeah, a lot of critics were worried that this is the future film criticism, and it's just you get three minutes to talk about a movie,

and you basically say yes or no, and you're creating a consumer guide rather than an actual kind of really work of art that's talking about another work of art. And I understand that. I understand the complaint. I understand the complaint, but it seemed at the time and it seems now so elitist. Just incredibly elitist.

Yeah, and look, I mean, one of the thing about Gene and Rogers, they were Chicago guys. You know, the film industry was centered in L.A. back then, and the media industry wasn't centered entirely in New York, but people in New York, as someone who worked in New York media

for almost 20 years, they do tend to think highly of themselves. And here were these two guys in Chicago who were newspaper guys who were not being, published in the New Yorker who were not being, you know, who were not thought of as like, at that point, as these high-brow critics who were giving thumbs up, thumbs down, and people, and millions of people were listening. So I do think there was something a little bit kind of,

I'm sure some people were off put by the fact that, you know, these were two Midwestern guys who, they don't live in Hollywood, they don't live in New York. What do they know about movies or media? But they were, you know, they were, Gene and Roger were just unstoppable forces in that regard. They had outflanked the famous New York film critics. Yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah. What did they think about? I mean, do you have any, did you find the answer to this? I don't know.

What did, how did they feel about their own format? Were they, were they advocates for it? Or were they just sort of like, this is what we have to work with? No, I think, you know, Roger, Roger did a great interview on Bob Costas in the early 90s where he talked about, he said, look, this is, what we're doing is not high-end film criticism on the show. It's a movie discussion. And it is, you know, he never said, this is a consumer guy, but that's, they knew what

it was. I mean, they were there to help steer people. opinions. You know, when they started the show, they had this, the show's creator was a woman named Thea Flom, who really kind of invented this whole phenomenon. And, you know, when they were doing the early episodes, which were going really badly, she would say, look, this is what people want to know. What's the movie about? Who's in it? And should they go see it? And that is, there is a value to that. And it might not be as valuable to people who want to sit and think about a movie for hours upon hours and discuss it for days and weeks. But for people who just want to know what to go see,

there's a real value in that. And I, I think we see it now with rotten tomatoes where we all, I mean, even I'm ashamed to admit, there's times where I'm sort of trying to decide if I want to see a kind of smaller indie movie that's gotten some good buzz. And I'm like, oh, it's got 93%. Sure. I'll watch. You know what I mean?

That stuff is helpful. Yes. It's absolutely helpful. I always think of that when people, you know, when you see that 4,000 word back of the book, New Yorker essay about a book where they mentioned like two things about the book and then they write this glittering essay and I go, you know what would also be helpful to tell me whether I should buy the book. Yes. Exactly. No, I know. Thumbs up. Thumbs down. And to the to your point about like, yes, it was, you know,

it was more of a consumer guy. Let me tell you, David and I growing up in Texas, the New Yorker was not coming to the house in our house. The New York Times was not coming to our house. Maybe the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram was coming to our house. That was by far the smartest film criticism we had access to the end, period. Yeah. It was so much smarter, yeah. No, and not just accessible, but smart, but high middlebrow, right? These people know about films, they know about Truffaut, they know about Scorsese. And I always just found that so funny, like, we weren't reading Paul and Calaver.

We have access to that. No, I mean, I think the only other thing, the only other sort of entity that influenced how I think about movies other than Sisko and Iber when I was a kid, I mean, we had great movie critics where I grew up, but, I mean, it was Siskel and Ibert and Ebert and Mad Magazine where the two ways I learned about it. movies and I learned about how to think about them. I mean, those were really kind of the two. I loved reading the Philadelphia Inquirer's film critics, and I read them every Friday. But, you know, as a really young kid, I mean, Mad and Siskel and Ebert, yeah, where else is I going to learn about movies and old movies and how you should talk about movies? There was no other avenue for that.

Well, and it's the gateway, too. I mean, you're absolutely right about Mad Magazine. That's an incredible pull. But, you know, like, I feel like I remember the moment in time in which Brian finally bought a Pauline Kale collection because of Roger Ebert's, like, hectoring over the years. Like, it's like, they, that was why. They were the gateway into, like, deeper thought about film and, and kind of anything else, because that was, and the gateway itself was meaningful. I mean, that's how we all, we all as writers

kind of think and function that way, right? It's like, you can't answer every question for somebody, but you can give evidence that you have, you can introduce people to other ideas. And they, they did a great job of that. Yeah, I mean, I think certainly there's a lot of Cisco Navy reviews that I remember, but the one I remember most vividly, but there's a lot of the horror movie ones I remember because I wasn't allowed to watch horror movies. But, you know, they dedicated at least two episodes to mentioning the thin blue line, the Errol Morris documentary.

I was maybe 10 or 11 when that movie came out. There was no way I was going to know, even what a documentary really was supposed to be at that point. And they talked about that movie in a way that I could not wait until I was, you know, 13 to finally watch that movie. I mean, they made it seem, they made a documentary. seem like the most exciting thing in the world. And that's incredibly valued. I mean, that was really valuable then

and it was very valuable to me now when I can still kind of find anyone who gets me enthused about something. And they really did that. That made me remember of all things. And Brian, we probably shared this memory. We didn't talk about it. But their review of hoop dreams.

Oh, hoop dreams, absolutely. Because that was sort of in some ways the culmination of a joint career of humanity in the way you described because just to hear those two guys in a vacuum talking about how moved they were by the mom getting her nursing certificate is meaningless.

But knowing Siskel and Ebert for two decades, that was the maybe, that episode was almost as moving as Hoop Dreams itself was. Just to see them react to it. It was so incredible. Yeah, and we get into this in there, in later episodes, but Hoop Dreams also, I mean,

aside from being a movie that I do think they convinced most of America to go see. I mean, I think they were, such, they went on, you know, Letterman and talked about it, but when Hoop Dreams kind of got snubbed in the best documentary category, that was the beginning of this kind of 90s period of Gene and Roger, as I think they would probably bristle at the word activists, but they, in the 90s, when they were at the height of their powers, I think they used it for the better good. And one of which, one of one was like getting people to see Hoop Dreams and getting people

to be angry about the fact that the Academy had not recognized Hoop Dreams. And I love them for that, because that's one of my all-time favorite movies. I'm positive the first time I heard about it was on Ciskel Neighbor. And really that points to a very basic function of Ciskel and Aibbord, again, for people like David and I growing up in Texas. We found out that Hoop Dreams existed. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Not just that we should see it, but that it was a movie at all because it was like one, David, one art house within 50 miles, two art houses within 50 miles. There was one art house that you could, and they ran one of those little thumb-sized ads in the paper, at least by the time we were in high school, they did. but I guarantee every single time I went to that theater, it was because I sought it out on the recommendation of Gene Cisdola Roger Ebert, right? It's like they would talk about a movie. It wasn't at the multiplex. Let's see if it's at the art house.

Yep, totally. They were great at that. I mean, stuff like, I mean, brother from another planet, all these lone star, a lot of John Sales movies, I would never have really sought out if it weren't for Gene and Roger. Yeah, again, and again, before Twitter was, like, telling you what to watch.

Yeah, and then I think it's important to note, that just like, these were two middle-aged white guys, but I think also there are so many black filmmakers and female filmmakers, especially in the 90s indie movement that I would not have really heard about if it weren't for Gene and Roger. I don't know if, I mean, their embrace of Spike Lee was very early on in his career, but they were, you know, they, I had to say, they were also very open-minded about what kind of films excited. They were not just, you know, they were middle-aged, but they were not, and they were a little middle-brow times, but they were not middle-of-the-road, say, when it came to movies. And that was also very important to sort

to hear about movies, you know, by Allison Anders or by other filmmakers that I may not have heard of otherwise. I love Siskelenebred as an artifact of 80s television in the sense of, wait, when is this show on?

You know, like, I don't, I wasn't, you know, wasn't always totally sure when it was going to air. Yeah. When you went to college, you had to find out what time it was on there.

Or like when you went on vacation, you had to figure out the channel or whatever. Like, it was so difficult. It's like 5.30 on a Saturday afternoon, maybe a Sunday morning. It always felt like it was somewhere in the world, and I wasn't sure where. Yeah, we taped, I think,

because I know that I would get up every Sunday morning. I would dutifully go to church, and I would behave because I knew if I came back, I could watch that week Siskel and Ibert, and I could watch that week Saturday Night Live. And I would sit there in my church clothes watching Gene and Roger talk about, you know, Robocop or whatever.

So I have no idea when I was on in Philadelphia, but I know that I watched it basically at 11 o'clock every Sunday and Sunday morning. You argue in the pod, Brian, that Siskel and Ibert essentially won the argument about how to argue in public about things like the movies. Where do you see the Siskel and Iber influence now? I mean, it's funny. I think I hear it now. I mean, there's so many podcasts about movies or TV or music where it's two people, especially now where a lot of friends are doing podcasts, you know, people who know one another who have a built-in relationship. I think that's where I see a lot of their influence. And certainly, on

TV, I mean, you know, Crossfire would have become Crossfire, I think, no matter what. But I do think you would see a lot, and starting in the late 80s, early 90s, you would see a lot of debate shows where it felt less than less scripted and more just, okay, here's your talking points that you guys go at it and just wrap it up in five minutes, whatever your fight is about. And that's where I think this is going to really came in. I mean, I mean, I interviewed Eric Rydholm, a creator of Pardon the Interruption. He, you know, he said, yeah, this was definitely a show we talked about when creating pardon the interruption. You can certainly see it in sports talk or in political talk, but now with podcasts. I mean, you know, I listen to podcasts about amusement parks where it's two friends,

you know, arguing about an amusement park ride. And I think that's kind of where that influence has kind of spilled down to. I will say the one difference between most podcasts, they are formatically like Siskel and Ebert, including this one, but they don't have the frenemy status. They don't, they lack the angst. It's hard to fake. It's hard to fake. Yeah. I'm not showing up on here. It's like, you know what, I want to make David look bad today. Like that's not my goal and I hope vice versa. Whereas with them there was that, there was that danger. There was that edge to it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's very hard to fake, very hard to replicate, very hard. You know, if you don't have the built-in, you know, almost a decade of pre-TV show rivalry that Gene and Roger had, it's hard to put that on the air unless it's really there. But yeah, I would love for some of the shows to have a little more of that element, but I think that's also just proves how singular Gene and Roger were. I hate to be reductionist about it, but as we're saying goodbye,

do you think of yourself, do you think of yourself as more of a Saturday Night Fever guy or a 2001 guy? Oh, boy. I, you know, I do love both movies, but I mean, John Travolta is basically, I mean, I have two problematic movie stars whom I've loved my whole life. It's Tom Cruise and John Travolta, but boy, I do love John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever. I mean, I love both those movies, but if it was a weekend night and I was going, going to the new Beverly or something to see an old movie, I would love to see a Saturday Fever in a theater and listen to that music.

I mean, look, one's got the Bee Gees, one doesn't, and that ultimately pushes it over the edge. When you have how deep is your love, you know, that's one of the greatest songs of all time. Now, if the Bejies that wound up in 2001, I would like to watch that fan-made cut if someone's got that. That would be very interesting to me. I, um, before we go, I also want to say, David,

I think we need more Siskel and Ebert in the world, maybe especially in the world of TV criticism, you know, because I look at TV, criticism now and there's a lot of here's what the showrunner a tour was trying to do uh here's a list of the easter eggs here's the list of the how it fits into the marvel cinematic tv universe you know what i want should i watch the show thumbs down just tell me do i need to invest the nine or ten hours it's going to take me to to pull through this thing i i actually think you could argue we need more of the bottom lineness of syscal and ebert now in our very wise-up

world of criticism. I mean, I agree. And I think actually that's one of the biggest digs against pitchfork is like for all pitchforks, you know, and I've been following it for 15, 20 years, they do give a number grade at the end. I mean, you can just go, let's get eight or higher. This get best in music. And I know that drives some people crazy with how reductive it is.

But, you know, for music reviews at least, there are still those consumer guides. And yeah, I think there could be more of that for TV, especially. All right. This was so much fun, Brian. The pod is Gene and Roger. How many episodes of this are we doing? doing? Eight episodes. Eight episodes. About half hour each, yeah, there's a lot of fun guests, and it was, yeah, it's a lot of fun. And if you, if you were a Siskel Niebert fan, I have tried to

find some of the best, you know, deep cut arguments. And if you are new to Sisken Niebuhr, I'm hoping you will sort of learn why they have such a huge effect over people like the three of us still all these years later. We were joking before we came on here that a lot of guys in New York and the early odds were passing around Neil Strauss's the game to one another. David and I were passing around Roger Eber's little movie glossary. This is the kind of guys we were. Yeah. It's such a good.

I mean, it informed everything that we do. I mean, it's so weird. We do this podcast and we keep coming back and sort of re-realizing the sources that made us the sort of writers and thinkers and podcasters, everything else we are today. But, but Brian, your podcast is just so invaluable, man. I mean, I cannot wait to finish it out. And I'm just so grateful for you coming on the show and talking to it. Oh, no, this has been a blast.

Thanks so much for having me, guys. And by the way, it's on the, it's called Gene and Roger. It's on the big picture podcast feed. Yes. It's part of it on part of the Ringer podcast network. So go check it out there. All right. It's time for David Shoemaker.

Guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Last Friday's headline about Pete Polar Bear Alonzo winning his second straight home run derby was Bears repeating. Today's headline comes from Andrew Joe Potter. it's from the Toronto Star, David. It's about the Milwaukee Bucks winning the NBA finals after finishing off the Phoenix Suns in game six.

You might say that Janus Atentacumpo is the proverbial man in the news. He's getting a lot of press attention. What was the Toronto Star's strained pun headline? Wow. Janus. I'll give you a key word. Is it have to be, is Janus in it?

Is it a Greek? Is it a buck, Greek? It's actually the word deer. Deer. Deer is where you want to start here. Deer in spotlight? Really close.

Deer in headlights. Deer in, it's the press, a lot of attention. Deer in headlines. Deer in headlines. Deer in headlines. That's great.

Deer in the headlines. I think that's the first one we've actually had that used the word headline in the strange. pun headline. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Big week on the press box. Next week, David.

We got Leon Nafak here to talk about Fiasco and Benghazi and all kinds of things about long-form podcasting. Plus more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.