The Press Box - The 10 Best Media Movies With Sean Fennessey

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

Bryan is joined by The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey to discuss their top 10 media movies, and hand out awards for their Favorite Movie Journalist, Worst Movie About the Media, and more! Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Sean Fennessey Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Salick, and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, The Ringer Podcast Network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from grunge gods to Power Pot pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Servantes. We are joined by today's special guest host. Those of us who have seen him in track changes mode,

know him as the Ben Bradley and Walter Robbie Robinson of the Ringer. He's also the host of the Big Picture podcast. Sean Fennacy, welcome to the press box. Way overstating my accomplishments as an editor. I'm much more of a, I'm a guideer of stories. I'm not an in-the-lines nudging. At least when it comes to your stories, Brian. I'm very happy to be here.

You have such a gentle way of saying, Brian, you can do better than this. Sure, sure. A skill I learned at the feet of many great editors over the years. So we got a new movie she said coming out this week about the New York Times reporters who exposed the Harvey Weinstein scandals, plural. It is a media movie. And I thought we should take the opportunity to answer a question that listeners have been asking us at the press box for literally years. What are the best media movies? Now, as we cobbled together our lists, I only put one ground rule in place, which is, let's start in 1976.

An arbitrary year, which happens to be the year all the president's men came out, which is a pretty nice place to start. And I got to say, before we dive in, even though we're just considering modern stuff, there are a ton of media movies. I've got dozens that could be in my top ten. why are there so many movies about the media? Well, there's a variety of reasons. One, I think a secret feature of the media movie is that they're movies about TV and movies about performance.

Some of the movies we'll talk about here are set in newsrooms, they're set in newspapers, they're set in magazines, but a lot of them are set on television. And people who make movies are very good at looking at what makes great performance as opposed to what makes great reporting. And so there's a distinction. I think media is a useful word in this kind of,

conversation and not journalism, though. Journalism will come up. It's a little bit of a square rhombus situation. One is one, but one is not the other. And if you think about a movie, I'm sure we'll talk about, like, broadcast news. That's a movie as much about getting the story as it is what it's like to put the story into the world and what it is that's on your face when you're delivering the story. So I think filmmakers and especially actors are drawn to those kinds of tales. I think there's also, especially in the last 50 years, a kind of contemporaneous storytelling that is useful. We need to address what's happening in our society. And how do we do so? We tell the tale of she said. You know, this very relevant story about the era of Me Too and the era of this kind of brutal and

awful sexual assault and sexual harassment that's happening in the workplace for many years at, you know, the most common work-a-day places, but all the way up through Hollywood, Silicon Valley, all the broad experiences of life. So it's a way to feel like you're living in a modern time is to tell a story of people who capture a story about modern times. And then the third reason is I think they're fun. I think there's a kind of natural dramatic momentum that comes from uncovering a tale. And so they're kind of self-reflexive in that way, but invariably you want to see reporters get it, win, nail the story. There's something satisfying about that. So it just feels like this will be happening as a subgenre forever. What do you

think? There's a quest that is the natural backbone of a screenplay. I was talking to my old boss and spiritual advisor Jack Schaefer about this, who writes about the Bedia for Politico. And he was saying reporters and movies are basically like private eyes in movies. They drink too much. They smoke too much. They live in squalor. They stick their nose where it doesn't belong. And you could almost take Chinatown and turn Jake Giddison into a reporter and it would be the exact same movie. Right. So when we watch a reporter, an underdog reporter, you know, sort of waking up, you know, with newspapers stacked around him and going after the shadowy bad guys, it activates something in our brain because we've seen detective movies for so long. And so we

recognize that hero at some point. And again, that they're a journalist is cool, but it's not essential to the story. What we want is an underdog hero who's going out and fighting bad guys more powerful than him or her. Yeah, I think that there's also an opportunity to make those heroes anti-heroes. Some of the best journalism or media movies ever made are about people who are kind of scurrilous who do this work. You know, like we're talking, you know, post-1976, but if I were making a list of my favorite movies like this ever, ace in the hole would be near the top. And that character, which I think you guys talked about just recently on a show, I mean,

kind of preparing for this, that Kirk Douglas character is a real heel, you know, he's a real asshole, and he's a real climber and a real ambitious and unethical person. He's a great movie character. You know, same for sweets, smell of success. and the Burt Lancaster character in that movie. There are a lot of examples of guys who are without morality, really, that make for great journalism characters, too. So it's not just we want to see our hero win.

It's not just Woodwarden Bernstein. It's also what's like the dark side of our profession, and there is a dark side to it. Media movies are very good at scuffing up the profession and scuffing up their heroes, but by the end of the movie getting around to a general reverence for the profession. again, almost like detective movies where you're looking at and you're going,

oh, come on, he's cutting corners, he's going to his editor and saying, you don't know what you want to do. But at the end, there's almost this feeling of, but thank goodness for these guys, and gals, right, who are going out and getting the story. I want to return to a point you made about the times

and speaking to contemporary times. So there's a couple ways to do this, right? One is she said, where you take a contemporary story and just tell it. And then the other that's been interesting in recent years is going and finding something, in the past the way George Clooney goes and pulls Edward R. Murrow out of history. Right.

And shows him as this guy who says, both sidesism is not for me. I have to choose sides. Or I was thinking of Stealvin Spielberg's The Post, which comes out, perhaps accidentally, right at the beginning of the Trump era and becomes this sort of soaring testament to hero journalist. What do you think about the idea of using past or present journalists to speak to current political times? Well, as a movie podcaster

And somebody who thinks a lot about movies And what movies are for I think it can sometimes be a little cheap I think it's like I think it's a little bit fodder for your press junket Than it is like a meaningful idea for a movie I do think that there is a something useful In the sustained power of Murrow's legacy

And the fact that what he was exploring And you know Uncovering Exist in perpetuity in humanity. But I think the like this explains Donald Trump version of movies is not my favorite subgenre and not my favorite excuse for making a movie. So I think it has its upsides and its downsides.

I don't know. What do you think? Well, good night and good luck is not going to appear on my list. Yeah. Probably because it just feels a little ham-handed. It looks gorgeous. Yeah, I just think it's tricky. First of all, we know if you were to make a movie about reporters who were reporting on Donald

Trump right now. Now, which by the way, there are a lot of really compelling stories about that and compelling ways to do that. You would just set half of the country on fire with the mere existence of your movie. And also it just feels too close. But there is something to say about that, surely, and there are surely artists. We know it's Hollywood, right? There are artists who are fired up to try to pull a piece of that story out right now. It just, it's a little galaxy brain for me.

You know, it's a little like we desperately need to go back to the past. to understand our present. And maybe a Galaxy Rain is overstating it. It's a little U.S. History 101 and never as sophisticated as the filmmaker hopes it is. And so I'm trying to think if I have any single example on here that represents that. Now, that doesn't mean that period pieces don't necessarily adequately reflect meaningful themes in modern life. They often do. What I don't like is when we valorize the work of journalists in the past that only then tells us like it ain't like a used to.

to be. That's something that I worry about a little bit, too. I really hate that kind of movie and that kind of peace for that matter. I got a few awards to give out. Let's do it. Before we jump into our list, the worst movie I saw about the media? I'm going to challenge you here because you've seen everything. Have you seen

wrong is right? No. I don't know it. 1982. Sean Connery plays a globe-trotting television newsman. Of course he does. Who stumbles onto a nuclear plot. This movie wants to be Dr. Strange. love and settles for bringing a Zaz Brothers movie kind of like top secret?

No disparaging the Zaz brothers in front of me, please. But it's like Zaz without the laughs. Right. I mean, it is absolutely terrible. It is misconceived, misbegotten. It's also on Tooby, which is exactly where it belongs, if anybody is. Also, no disparaging to be in front of me, which is a wonderful resource, an ad-supported free streaming service that features many forgotten films just like this one.

There we go. But if you don't want to pay for wrong is right. It's on 2B. Somebody else paid for it for you. Favorite movie journalist. Now, we're going to discuss several great words. Okay. But is there anyone who has a two-fer as good as Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Truman Capote and Capote and Lester Bangs and almost famous?

Ooh. Well, not pure journalist, no. But you have another category here that I think actually tops the greatness of this one. What's that? Editor. Mm. Best movie editor. Yeah.

So with that, I'm going to go Michael Keaton for Spotlight and the Paper. Am I missing a great movie editor here? No, I mean, you mentioned Ben Bradley at the top of this when you overstated my skills as an editor. But I think that Robards' his portrayal in all the president's men is the signature. This is what we think movie editors or excuse me, what we think newspaper editors are. But Keaton's temperament, and isn't he also, is he also an editor in live from? Baghdad? He is the lead producer, so he's the boss figure in that.

Effectively doing the same work. He has a skeptical grace that I think all editors try to convey, or at least good editors try to convey. And he's quite good at it. Although I will say the paper, I don't know if you revisited the paper. I really struggle with the paper, Brian. There's a scene near the end of the paper that I think is one of the most ridiculous scenes of all time that takes place in a printing press.

a showdown between Glenn Close's character and Keaton's character that I find very unseemly. I'm all good with rolling the presses as a movie device. I thought state of play had kind of ended rolling the presses and then we got the tape. We nailed it like 70 years ago with Deadline USA. I mean, come on. We've been seeing this for a long time. Michael Keaton does one other thing, does this in all his acting, where he appears kind of distracted. Sort of like me making a pod.

It is. But, you know, like editors will put you at their desk right in front of you. they will look at you. They're paying full attention to you, truly giving you everything you need, but you can tell that they are also thinking simultaneously of three or four other things in their mind. Right.

And I know this because I've been working with you for quite a long time, Sean. So that is how I know the Michael Keaton performance is truly a great movie editor. That is his acting style, so I think it's convenient. You know, that's part of what made him an interesting Batman, too.

You know, it's part of what made him an interesting movie star in general was he seemed to have a lot going on. He was kind of a kind of, kind of a complicated guy, but imbued with this responsibility and responsible to other people. And so what's what's drama but people who are forced to make difficult decisions who have complicated things crashing into each other at all times? So I love that, I love that prize. I mean, as an editor, that means a lot to me that one.

Best scene where a journalist actually writes something. Okay. A lot of knocking on doors after midnight in media movies. Lots of reporters making that extra call. very little writing. Yes. I would suggest that even she said, which you'll actually join me in Amanda Dobbins

to talk about on the big picture this week, which is exciting, doesn't quite capture the anxiety, the boredom, the procrastination, the awkwardness of trying to nail a story. There are very few good examples. What's your award? I was going to give it to Jeremy Renner

and Kill the Messenger. The movie I like quite a bit on rewatch, he is starting to write his big story about drugs and CIA and everything else. And he puts on music and then he stretches and immediately as a writer, you're like, okay, he is delaying writing. Like, this is what he's doing. He's just killing time here. He kind of cracks his knuckles.

And then there's this great transformation where he puts on glasses. And so it's this kind of macho nerdy combination at the same time. Like, I'm going to break the big story. Let me see what's in my Manila folder over here, which is true journalism, right? We are not Sam Spade. We are Sam Spade with Manila folders, if anything else. How much...

Let's go into the hood with Brian Curtis. Let's long form you a little bit. How long does it take you to write a story from the first word to the completion? Hours and hours and hours. Honestly, how many hours? I have no idea. Your standard issued 2000 word reported Brian Curtis piece.

Long, hours and hours and hours. Give us some numbers. Twelve, eighteen. Sure. at least 12. At least 12. Just by going through it over and over again. You're a very good reviser.

I've seen you get one note from me. But this is important, though, because what we're talking about is dramatizing something that is practical work. We just talked about the film blowout on the rewatchables this week, which is a very good process movie about someone who is a sound mixer

and editor for movies. And one of the best things about that movie is it shows you how his work is done. You know, turning the knobs, you know, cutting the flipbook that he creates to match the sound with the image, there's a lot of really interesting,

it's propulsive in a way that it shouldn't be because it's kind of boring work and is really meticulous work. Writing is very similar. It's very slow. It's painstaking. It's pretty dull, pettitive.

Yep. The people who are doing it feel that it's very important, but very few people understand what goes into it, the kind of like emotional tax that you have to pay to execute on your own job that is like theoretically your dream job,

right? Like, writers are like, I'm so happy I'm a writer. I hate writing. Yep. And very few movies know how to communicate that. I think it's because it's better to look at the actor's face, but it would be more easily communicated if you just watch the screen or the typewriter.

Because the sort of like the fast typing and the smashing through your vomit draft and then deleting and rearranging and moving your, that's not my lead. My lead is all the way over here. That's not a good kicker. I need to strengthen that. Like all of those things that, you know, you and I have thought about a lot and that we've talked about a lot. and that we feel are inherently dramatic because this is part of our profession.

Most people are like, this is boring bullshit, and it shouldn't be in your movie. And that's why you never see it. We like to imagine as dramatic because we like to imagine ourselves as dramatic, interesting people. Important people, and we're not. Best movie quote about journalism.

There were a whole bunch here. I went to Absence of Malice, another movie that will not be appearing on my list with Sally Field and Paul Newman. Sure. Joseph Summer, wonderful character actor, who Google him, you will recognize him. plays Fields Editor at the Miami newspaper, and he says this,

I know how to print what's true, and I know how not to hurt people. I don't know how to do both at the same time. Kind of amazing. Who wrote absence of malice? It's Kurt Ludke, former editor of the Detroit Free Press, who goes on to win the Oscar for Out of Africa. There you go. That explains it.

It had to be someone who was in the biz. But he wrote a cuckoo media movie. I know, like a very unethical, like the pursuit of that story. is pretty rough. And nevertheless, like, that's a very true. That's a truism about publishing hard stories.

And it kind of works. It does. Best media movie that was totally unnecessary, let us go back to Stephen Spielberg's The Post. Like much of late period, Spielberg. So I'm a defender of the Post. Really? Yeah.

I've quarreled a bit with Bill Simmons about this. I don't think he's as big a fan as I am. Is it somewhat redundant? It is somewhat redundant. Did we need to necessarily see that story through the eyes of Catherine Greta? probably not. I cover movies every week on the podcast.

It's a very tricky time in movies. And we got a Stevensville movie with Merrill Streep and Tom Hanks. And I thought both giving very spirited performances and I liked them. And I just thought, is it, do we need it? We don't need anything. Does anyone need this podcast?

We're 14 minutes in. Is it going well? Sure, it's going well. Is it convivial? Yes, it is. I just, if it were not Stephen's people, If it's name on it, you would have thought that was one of the best movies of the year. And that is a challenge for Stevens Spielberg at this stage of his life.

That's my take. I don't think I would have. Because it's the wrong story. It's about the second most important newspaper in the Pentagon Papers story. Well, that is true. That's what's misbegotten about it. Why didn't he make a story about the New York Times? And the New York Times is in the movie, and the Washington Post played a very important role in history

and sort of backing up their sister newspaper. Is there an answer to this question? I don't know. I think that's just the way the screenplay. developed. But at the time, I remember journalists tweeting like, why are we, why are we getting this movie? And I thought, ah, pedantic journalists, what do you know about the movies? And then I'm sitting in a theater going, why are we getting this movie? They were right. Finally, movie I confused for a real life reporter. Okay. Kind of a particular category here. State of play.

2009 movie with Ben Affleck and Russell Crow. Russell Crowe is a newspaper reporter. He has this lion's mane of hair that he keeps throwing back in the movie, he's belt and whiskey, he's working over his sources. I swear to God, halfway through the movie, I began to imagine I was watching Wright Thompson. You want to do a little right here? Could you imagine Wright's voice? A little bit of a little more gravely than Russell Crow was capable of. But honestly, I just sort of made that transference in my mind. I don't know what that says about me, and I had to kind of snap out of it a few times because he looks like Wright Thompson. He has the manner of what I imagine,

Wright's like when he's on his story. I don't know. I didn't know Wright in 2009. Was that what Wright looked like in 2009? Because that, I can't answer. Maybe Wright saw state of play and thought, that's my style. Everybody is inspired by different movie reporters.

That's right. That's right. Look at me. I look just like Stephen Glass right now. Maybe some glasses and a button down, but you're getting there. All right, let's dig into our list. What is number 10 on your list of the?

the best media movie since 1976. So I'm really wobbling here because I made a critical error, which is that I had the parallax view on my list, and then I realized after the fact that it's actually 1974. So I'm taking that off my list. I'm going to put a movie that I think many people don't think of as a media movie, but that deeply is one if you're able to get to the second half of the film, which is Full Metal Jacket. Wow.

Okay. Full Metal Jacket. Of course, Stanley Kubrick's second to last feature, widely considered. in a masterpiece, one of the best films ever made about basic training, which is where the entire first hour of the film takes place. But the second hour of the film takes place completely during the Vietnam War and focuses on a journalist character played by Matthew Modin. And one of the more interesting portrayals of someone reckoning with the challenges of being a soldier and being a reporter. And it's not a story that we see very frequently. But the movie really, it moves away from being

about Arlie Irmey's drill sergeant and Vincent Xenofrio's, you know, tortured young recruit and becomes much more of like the kind of dissolution of a man who's also been forced to write down his thoughts about what he's seeing. And that is a job. And, you know, Michael Hare who wrote Dispatches, which is one of the kind of critical works of new journalism around Vietnam. and is a very inspiring and amazing book about being in Vietnam at that time was a huge part of putting together the story of Full Metal Jacket. And full metal jacket is based on a work of fiction,

but then Hare, I think, brought a lot of the sort of very similitude to the story. And the second half of the movie, it has become a kind of like, a real, like, posers note that the second half is as good or better than the first half, which is so iconic.

But I think that it is actually an incredible portrayal of what it's like to do some of that work while surrounded by things because a lot of journalists, they go looking for the story but they're not very rarely inside the story. It's what happened after the fact, very rarely what's happening in real time.

And so I like it as a version of that kind of media movie. I'm going to have to go back and rewatch it as a media movie. I had the very normy note about Full Metal Jacket, which is they killed off the two most interesting characters in the movie and then I lost interest. Now, you're talking to somebody who's seen every Kubrick movie like at least 15 times.

So when you've spent that much time with these movies, you tend to look for more than is there on the initial viewing. Okay, on the 15th viewing, did Vietnam look less like England? It is definitely still England. There is no question about that. Did I say it was one of the best Vietnam movies of all the time? I did not. It is an interesting portrayal, though, of like,

I have a guy doing the work. I love this reading as a media movie. Number 10 on my list is live from Baghdad. 2002, it ran on HBO. I'm going to be honest, I had not seen this. movie, nor heard of this movie when I started this project. This movie is very hard to get one's hands on. It is not on HBO Max. I finally had to be like 2002 and order a DVD. Did you? From Amazon, order some physical media. I know you're a fan. I am. People haven't seen it. It's about a team of

CNN producers led by Michael Keaton and Helena Bonham Carter going to Baghdad on the eve of the first Gulf War. It ran on television before on the eve of the second Gulf War based on a true story memoir of the character played by Michael Keaton. What I love about this movie is there are a lot of foreign correspondent movies, and there's going to be a couple more on my list here. There is no false heroism in this movie. In fact, the bulk of this movie is about Keaton's character negotiating with Saddam's minders and trying to be able to report something like truth on CNN in CNN's early days.

what comes out on CNN until the very, very end of the movie when Baghdad is attacked by U.S. forces is not truth. And in fact, is something like propaganda or something that at least people at home read as propaganda. I would encourage the new minders of CNN to watch this before they valorize what old both sides CNN really was. There's a line in the movie. It says Saddam Hussein thinks I'm fair and balanced. Well, that's one for the resume. It's an awesome performance by Keaton. I give it extra points because Keaton and Helena Bonham Carter's characters are very, very close.

They work together. They have a kind of emotional intimacy, but there is not a love story between them in the movie. I love movies that recognize that journalists can work together. We don't have to fall in love. Can I add a note to this? Sure. The director of this movie is named Mick Jackson, who is a fascinating figure in the recent history of movies because he spent his time toggling distinctly

between theatrical features and TV movies. And he made, I think, a lot of kind of like overblown and not so great theatrical movies. He made L.A. Story, which is a perfectly fine Steve Martin movie. He made The Bodyguard, the famed Kevin Costner, Whitney Houston Blockbuster. He made Clean Slate,

which is a kind of misbegotten Dana Carvey movie, and he made Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones. Those movies went to theaters. TV movies, he made a movie, a 1984 movie called Threads, if you've not heard of this film. It's a British production. It's widely available on streaming now.

And it's about what would happen in a small London town if the apocalypse came. One of the more harrowing movies ever made. I mean that sincerely. He also made indictment the McMartan trial, which is a movie I haven't seen

in a long time, but another HBO original movie that I remember being very effective about this accusation that is made about, I guess a nursery school, a kind of daycare center that James Wood stars in.

I remember being like a really fascinating docudrama and like challenge to the idea of truth. He also made Tuesdays with Mori. Which is a, you know, was an adaptation of a bestselling book. All right, Sean. What's number nine on your list? Number nine is a movie that I only discovered a few years ago because it was featured on the Criterion Channel.

It's called Between the Lines, which is a really interesting kind of dromedy from Joan Mickland Silver, who's the director of films like Crossing Delancey, about an alt weekly. An all weekly that is set in Boston. It's called the Back Bay Main Line, but that is more or less the village voice when you watch the film. And is this kind of like character piece, it's kind of like if the

Big Chill took place inside of an Alt Weekly. You know, it stars John Hurd, Lindsay Krauss, Jeff Goldblum, Bruno Kirby, Gwen Wells, Stephen Collins, a lot of very memorable, notable figures from film and TV over the ensuing 25 years. Just like a really loose,

fun, familiar seeming setting. I worked at all weeklies. I wrote for all weeklies. I've been in those newsrooms. It's pretty close to what that lifestyle is like. Now, it's very white. It's very 1970s. It's like its politics are very on the nose. It's very obvious. But it's a very breezy portrayal, I think, of the complexities of being enmeshed emotionally with all of your young peers doing this kind of work where like your job is to be at the forefront of cool stuff. is to tackle challenging stories, is to make sure that the paper comes out on time, is to make sure that the ad sales are working,

like all the stuff that matters to putting out the product. So I like this movie. It's fun, and it was like a fun and recent discovery for me. Has a businessman, too, that comes at the end and buys the alt weekly and ruins everything, which is the story of all alt-weeklies

throughout the history of time. Absolutely. I watched this also for the first time during this project. It was awesome. Love this movie. This is probably in my second 10 somewhere high up. I'm with you. First of all, John Hurd makes for a very, very good movie journalist.

He was an awesome actor. I loved him. And also, it's just the feeling of friendship in newsrooms, which is part of the reason we all get into this, is because you get to be with the coolest group of people in the world. You know, you're like-minded. Yeah. And before COVID, you get to see them every day.

I know. It is an awesome, awesome movie. Highly recommended. Number nine on my list is Nightcrawler. Right. It was right on the edge of mine. Didn't make it. Kind of a shortage of L.A.

journalism movie. I was texting with a pal the other day, and he said it's either this or Fletch would be your L.A. journalism options. Maybe I'm forgetting one. Jake Jellen Hall's a videographer. When I saw this in 2014, I thought, this is really good, but it goes a little too far into weirdness, and it kind of pulls me out of the story. Well, guess what's happened since then? More TMZ, more TMZ, the gruesome Kobe Bryant photo sharing scandal. And now all of a sudden this movie does not seem to be over the top to me at all, or if it is, it's just barely.

So this is a good example, I think, of creating a character that is not real, rather than seeking a real-life incident and trying to dramatize it. There is, of course, many figures like the Jake J. Jellon Hall character are working, maybe not to the extreme that his character goes to in this film, but using the same methodology to get the story that he wants. It's better to be an invented character. than it is to have tried to capture some like TMZ acolyte, no disrespect to our colleague Van Lathen,

that was maybe pursuing a more scurrilous story in time because it takes a film that could just be seen as satire into like a true paranoia thriller with a level of ridiculousness that is really exciting and intoxicating. It's Dan Gilroy, Tony Gilroy's brother, wrote and directed this movie. It's absolute banger. Great performance from Jake Dillon Hall.

Dude, Jake Jillenhall's eyes in this movie? holy mackerel. It looks like he has a coffee IV in the whole time. He's so twitched up. Amazing. All right, what's number eight on your list? Number eight's a little movie called Anchorman.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, is this movie about the media really? Is it about journalism? Is it serious? Does it have any ideas? The answer is yes. It has all the ideas. This is the skeleton key

for really Adam McKay's entire project. It is about vangloriousness and certitude in the face of the truth. And I think that it's a very, another example of a very resonant movie when you think about the people that tell you the news every day and how hard they think about the world and what's really going on around them and their obliviousness to everything and how they look and what their sex life is like and where they live is much more important of them than what they're actually doing in their job. This will come up again as we talk about people who are on TV talking about the news.

It's also obviously one of the funniest movies of 21st century. It's the launch pad for the Will Ferrell as movie star project. It's a movie that I like rewatching any day of the week. So, you know, the second Anchorman film, which is not as beloved and is not as successful, is arguably more incisive about what happened with cable news. Like its point, I think, is deeper. But as with the ongoing Adam McKay story,

like, as his point gets more incisive, his movies get less fun. This movie is just pure fun. But if you think about it, if you deign to think about it, It has some real ideas in it. It's spring-loaded with some interesting concepts about why people get into TV and how they might end up talking about the news, even if they don't care about the news.

And Ron Bergen, he doesn't give a shit about San Diego. He cares about being rich and being on TV every day. So it's an interesting. It's a really fun movie. And taken purely as a comedy, and I love it too. It is very close to what local news was like during its high period. Yeah. It's not that far away.

Having met some of those people in their late career or afterlife, they're like that. They're really like that. Yeah, they use that voice all the time. The voice, the mannerism, the kind of larger than life, local character who's just chewing scenery at 11 o'clock and 6 o'clock every night. Seems like a good life. Yeah. Can't blame them. That's what's so funny is you go for comedy and you get there, but you also capture a sense of reality.

For sure. Very interesting. Number eight on my list is spotlight. Not sure I would have put this movie on when it came out. I saw it. I liked it. I didn't love it. Thought it was reverential toward journalism,

but not one of my favorites. Went back and rewatched it the other day. And I was amazed by the fine grain in a lot of the performances and the moments they captured in the movie. Michael Keaton, again, obviously, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Leav Schreiber. There's a scene in the movie where Keaton is trying to extract something from Ben Bradley Jr., who's played by John Slattery, and he goes up to him in the hallway,

and he gets whatever he wants more time. I can't remember exactly. And he's like, thanks, goodbye, which is exactly what journalists do. I'm sure I've done it to you a couple of times. I'm certain you have. You get the promise, and then you're like, that's it, no more conversation.

It's like talking to your parents. Talk to you and you're done. You can go to McDonald's. Okay, good, let's go. And I just think it feels, maybe it's the chinos that they're wearing. The costuming is very good. Maybe it's the drab office and the little underground bunker the spotlight guys have,

but it feels very, very real. And I thought it had more texture than when I saw it the first time. So it's not on my list. I remember watching it and feeling like this is why I go to the movies, which is to say I was stirred while watching it. I didn't really feel like it was a very accurate representation of the newsroom, although I've never worked on the story, like the story that is exposed in spotlight. It's much more high stakes than the stuff I've done in my career.

It felt a little bit. inorganic, I would say, in terms of what the timeline is like for the development of a story. I felt often lost in terms of where they were in terms of executing. I thought there were too many times when the Stanley Tucci character

was more interesting to me than the reporters themselves and that I actually wanted to go back to his world. But I haven't seen it in a number of years. It's not a Hall of Famer, but I liked it as like a, our movie's great kind of guy and isn't journalism great kind of guy.

I'll be interested if you revisit it. I will. I will rewatch it. I think you might find something there. What's number seven on your list? Is the insider on your list? It is. Is it too soon to talk about the insider?

It's not never too soon to talk about the insider. Okay. So the insider, I think, is a fascinating document because it's a collision of a filmmaker who has the same level of dedication and kind of monomania that many journalists have. And Michael Mann, of course, one of the great stylists and thinkers

about crazy guys who are, committed to executing on their projects, right? He likes men. Yes, he likes men. And so in this movie, he gets two men, really. He gets both a whistleblower in the form of Russell Brand's scientist who works at a tobacco company. Russell Crow, not Brand, by the way.

Sorry, Russell Crow. Sorry. That would have been something. We have Russell Crow, who is, of course, a scientist who works at a tobacco company and decides to blow the whistle on his company and speak to 60 minutes about what he knows about the way that the cigarette companies have been developing their products and getting their consumers more addicted and lying about what the effects of their products are.

And then operating in parallel structure is the Lowell Bergman character is played by Al Pacino, who's a producer on 60 Minutes and a kind of famous muckraker of our times, somebody who is constantly pursuing stories to this day, and now most of his works on Frontline, who desperately wants this story and is attempting to protect the integrity of this story

from the vultures at CBS and CBS News. amazing story about vanity and power. Of course, the Mike Wallace portrayal by Christopher Plummer is an all-time representation, not an imitation, but a performance of persona that I think is really, really great. And it's just the right filmmaker,

the right visual attitude for this world. It moves fast, but it's a deliberately-paced movie, which is a hard balance to strike. And it's also similarly a great story. Like, you're really like, You want to see if they get it across the finish line and what is the outcome and we're with you all the way on the journey. I think it's like a real masterclass in movie making. Interesting structure too on the story because Wigand gives this tell all interview something like halfway through the movie.

In other movies, that would be the end of the movie. But then there's all these corporate obstacles and legal obstacles to get it on the air. So the second half of the movie is just about getting this interview. We know what he's going to say. We've seen him and Mike Wallace, who has very good performance. with the pulling the information out of him. Mr. Wallace. Yeah, exactly.

So it's weird in that sense. Is this, two things here. Christopher Plummer to me puts this movie up out of the top. By the way, it's number five on my list. It really bumps it up a notch. It's a great story about the two guys, but he captures this way, TV people who I talk to once in a while for my job, have an on-air performance and have an off-air performance.

I'm always fascinated when I'm talking to a sports announcer. And they're on the phone with me. And it's even off the record on background, whatever. And they are performing themselves off screen. Yeah. And it's like the on-screen version, but it's slightly different. Krisha Plummer absolutely captures that quality of TV people in this movie. There's a scene in the film where Bergman and Philip Baker Hall playing Don Hewitt,

the executive producer of 60 Minutes, and Wallace, as played by Plummer, are having a meeting. and it's a kind of confrontation, and Bergman is challenging Hewitt and Hewitt's integrity, and Wallace is sitting behind them, I believe, and he's sort of playing the back. And there's something almost impish and, like, powerless about him. It's like he is just the guy on TV.

These are the people making the decisions. And his fame is very powerful, and it comes to become more powerful as he makes a big decision near the end of the film. But I also like that kind of pulling back of the curtain. It's like when you're a teenager, you don't really know how this works. When you watch TV and you see Mike Wallace challenging a head of state,

you imagine that he is the person who's in charge of everything. And that's not what the power structure is in storytelling on TV at all. And Hewitt was a tremendously powerful and influential figure. And, you know, the story of 60 Minutes is an entire other podcast. But I liked getting into that world, too, getting into the teeth of how they made stories that tens of millions of people watched on 60 minutes every night. Is the Michael Manningness of this movie,

which I am all in on. Is it dialed down just a smidge for this movie among his movies? I mean, I think of the Russell Crow characters sitting there on the Gulf Coast with the palm trees in front of him. And Bergman in the Hamptons,

walking along the beach. I mean, there's always a man looking at water in the Michael Mann movies. And there's also the great scene where one of the lawyers is just flying a plane for no reason other than it looks incredibly cool that he's flying his own plane.

But it feels like that's all taken down just a bit, maybe. It is. I mean, it's one of the very few Michael Man movies without a gun in it. You know, and I think that that's notable. It's almost all of his films feature a very specific kind of crime. You know, burglary, bank robbery, just sort of drug trafficking. These are the things that he works in.

Even assassins, I mean, Tom Cruise is an assassin and collateral. There's no guns in this movie. So it's inherently very different. It's a pure drama. That being said, what Wygand has is a weapon, you know, and the movie is kind of kind of shifted around that. And the bank heist is actually the revelation of this truth about, is it, is it, is it R.J. Reynolds?

I can't recall which manufacturer it is. It's Brandon Williams. Brian and Williams. Okay. It's a great, it's like, it's an all-time movie in addition to being an all-time media movie. Number seven on my list is a personal favorite under fire movie from 1983. Another movie about war correspondents who are covering the Nicaraguan Revolution,

arriving just on the eve of the Nicaraguan Revolution. You will notice that war correspondents and movies always arrive on the eve of some thing. How convenient. Nick Nolte is a photographer. Gene Hackman is a Time Magazine correspondent who's about ready to get the bump up to network news. Joanna Cassidy is a radio correspondent.

The plot, as often happens in foreign correspondent movies, grants a lot of agency to the foreign correspondence to affect events that are much, much bigger than them in real life. But I love the acting in this movie. I love Nick Nolte in this movie, who really feels like a. genuine news photographer. He has this great line where he says, I don't take sides. I take pictures.

Then he has to take sides. It's a fantastic movie. So there's a 1986 novel called The Stars of Noon that Dennis Johnson wrote that is set in the same time period in the same country as this movie. And it's a great book.

This book was adapted into a movie this year, but the filmmaker updated the movie to our modern times. So it's kind of confusing because there is not a revolution in Nicaragua at the moment. but they make it seem as though it's notable. But I'm bringing this up to you

because I assume you haven't seen this film yet. No. There is one scene that is a meeting between a freelance journalist played by Margaret Quali and her potential assigning editor played by John C. Riley that I would like for you to watch

and maybe even address on this podcast. Oh, let's do it. It doesn't have to be with me and what the accuracy of that exchange is like. I think of it as I hear you talk about Underfire, which is a very good movie. All right, what's number six on your list? Number six is almost famous.

So before we started recording, you sort of indicated that maybe almost famous wasn't going to be on your list and that maybe it's, do you feel that it's not a strong journalism movie? I felt it wasn't as strong a movie period. Oh, my God. No, no, no.

My heart. It's like number 11, number 12. I tweeted that and everybody's like, have you been fired by Bill and James Andrew Miller and Sean and everybody else already? I saw it last night, in fact. I thought it was terrific. I thought Philip Seymour Hoffman was terrific.

Just a little below other movies on my way. Okay. When I was a teenager, I wanted to be William Miller. This was the job that I wanted. I wanted to work in a music magazine. I wanted to be a reporter at a music magazine. I wanted to write great, you know, middle of the book or cover stories about bands, about rappers, about musicians, about people in the culture.

That was really my aspiration. It's a loyal reader of Spin Magazine at a kind of like the real heyday from like the mid-90s all the way through the early 2000s of spin. And I was just intoxicated by this movie and I'll probably never be able to see it in a clean way ever again. It is pure burst of nostalgia for me. But it does have a couple of really interesting practical aspects that you very rarely see in movies.

One, fact-checking. Fact-checking is a huge part of what we do here at the Ringer, of what some of the best publications continue to do and some of the worst publications don't do any of. and the idea of someone like William Miller who's not good at recording his conversations who takes messy notes who is having trouble confirming some of the facts of his stories

is undermined in this story which I love the idea of writing leads and thinking about what a headline is of a story as you're reporting it is something that many reporters do being on the phone Ben Fong Torres So funny and shaping the story together and Ben Fog Torres' instincts

as a kind of commercial artist working in the field of journalism, working against William Miller, who's this, you know, kind of glorified fan, figuring out how to be a great writer and is, of course, based on the real-life experiences of Cameron Crow.

I just think are tremendously interesting and got me more excited about getting into journalism than just reading magazines. I was like, oh, this is a part of the job. And in fact, it's a part of the job that is useful, that has purpose. And it might explain why I ended up

becoming more of an editor than I did a writer because I got more and more attracted by the kind of construction of the work. So, you know, in addition to all the great music and the beautiful people and the great performances, and I'm Billy Crudup, I think, is just like a magnificent kind of guitar rock god figure in this film. I really like Patrick Fuget's performance. Kate Hudson becomes a star on the strength of this movie. There are many things to recommend it. As a pure media movie, I think it's doing a lot that many of its kind of quote-unquote

betters don't even care to do because Crow cares about process so much. So it's a favorite of The truth that really nails is that we are all dorks as reporters, and I believe Blester Bang says this. And the way famous people will co-opt us is to tell us, you are hanging out with me. You are cool. And that's how I'm going to get you to write what I want you to write. Yeah. It's by making you feel like you're close to fame, that you're cool for once in your life. You journalists who've never been called a cool person, that is such an elemental truth of what we do.

At the risk of a tangent, I wanted to ask you, you've had the good fortune to meet many of your heroes or people that you really admire who do what they do. You could chronicle some of the best in the business. You've been doing a series of interviews over the last year or so with some of the greatest broadcasters in sports history. Do you, one, feel that you are being co-opted? And two, if so, do you enjoy it? All the time is the answer to number one. Number two, I think there's a way of sort of enjoying the performance of the person trying to co-opt you. Probably liked it more when I was young.

Yeah. That somebody would even take the time when I was a 20-something, whoever I was. Now that I'm older, I hope I don't fall for it. But I almost enjoy the performance of somebody doing it. You know, like I can, I almost, and I come home, one of the things I write down when I come home was those kind of things that they told me. to kind of pull me in. I think sometimes when you and I are having shop talk over lunch here at Spotify HQ, I'm like, and here's what he said to me when I walked in. Well, you have a way of retelling stories that is accurate, especially now that I hear what you do in pod form, where, you know, over in Lundquist, I'll be like, well, Brian, it's a very good question. And you're like, the direct address that famous people know how to apply to kind of flatter your impulses and get you more open to whatever BS they're peddling. I think it's like a fascinating. side product of a lot of what we do here.

But I always think it's interesting. I mean, I certainly have been co-opted over the years. My favorite answer ever is great question, which means that doesn't mean great question. It means it's not one of the 25 questions in my head that I have the answer for. I'm not ready for this. So I'm going to delay, but it makes you feel good, interviewer. Of course.

Number six on my list, Capote, directed by Bennett Miller. Watches for the first time, I think, since I saw it in the theater way back when, I responded to two things. One was Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance, which is absolutely unbubborn. believable from start to finish. And the second one, speaking of co-opting, is a journalist's relationship with a subject. In this case, Perry Smith, the murder in Kansas,

who becomes part of Capote's nonfiction novel in Cold Blood. There's a scene in the movie where Harper Lee, and he's going on and on about Perry Smith, and he says, do you like this person? This guy who you know is a murderer, and he says, he's a gold mine, which is just a wonderful recap of how, journalists thing to think of their

subjects. How many journalists have we, you and I heard trash somebody, trash somebody, trash somebody? Oh, you'll come on my podcast. Well, you're the greatest person I have ever met. Thank you. Let's celebrate your work some more. That's a very low-stakes version of this. I love Capote. I haven't seen this as it came out.

Philip Seymour-Hoften, for those who've heard me on podcast before, no, my favorite actor. This is the one where as a super fan I felt like everyone was catching up to me. And it felt like a very suitable kind of Oscar win, which is to say, real person, transformation, doing a voice,

very kind of manicured and styled, not like his essence, I thought, as a performer. Not taking away from it. I have a lot of admiration for what Bennett Miller does as a filmmaker. There's a reason he's only made like three movies in 20 years. He's extremely meticulous about his movies.

And I definitely clock some of the things that you admire about it. I was not a Truman Capote person as a young reader of nonfiction. I never really in Cold Blood was not a book

for me. I was not, you know, I was asked to read his literary nonfiction in my literary journalism classes

and I always thought he was a great stylist but like is it, is it Brando that he has the famous piece about? That's right.

And the New Yorker. And I always thought that was kind of like a little bit of an overpuffed piece personally. Like a lot of, a little bit of

emotional grandstanding in that story. So for whatever reason, like, I'm just not hooked up to this one. But again, maybe I should just revisit it because there might be more there for me. Talk about Range. You do New Yorker correspondent and editor of cream in the same career. That's pretty amazing. Absolutely. The other thing about this movie is there was another movie exactly about these events

the next year, infamous. And if you watch it, you're like, oh, my God, here's how they could have gone wrong with Capotee. Daniel Craig is Perry Smith, weird movie. You know what's funny about that, too, is, you know, I think is very well cast as Capote and is a very, very good actor, but he's not Philip Seymour Hoffman, you know, and sometimes that's all that matters. Where are we at number five? We're not number five.

I picked Zodiac. Now, this falls slightly in the insider category where I'm just so enthralled with the filmmaker and I'm so committed to Fincher's work that I'm fascinated by it, but I think it's a brilliant portrayal of a certain kind of journalist, which is to say the Robert Taney Jr. character. which is a real kind of guy that we've come across. And there are fewer and fewer of those guys in journalism nowadays. Are they here? No, no, no, no.

About one of my colleagues walked here. Go ahead, Sean. I would like to see you in the Aqua Velva at 2 p.m. phase of your career. I don't think you'll ever get there. You're too responsible, too decent. Your father. You've got too much going on. But, you know, that RGJ character is very, very familiar as like a, as both a cliche and a real person.

There are a lot of journalists who are like, what's the famous line of like, the story's done? I just haven't written it yet. Yeah. Like that's real, obviously. Bullshit artist, great reporter, self-promoter, everything. Yes. I believe him immediately as a journalist. Completely.

The other thing I really like about this movie is the kind of compass set piece, when they drop the pin of the compass right in the center of the movie, it's every time they go into the newsroom and a new letter arrives. I love the gathering of the people to discuss what we should do. I've been in a lot of meetings like that over my career where it's like, something has happened, and we need to figure out what to do with it, how to solve it, how to manage the issue. And it's just a smart grounding idea to keep a movie like this

propulsive and not too out of whack because the Zodiac killer is such a It's a strand that could go on forever This could have been a 40-episode Netflix series And it works brilliantly as a two-and-a-half-hour movie In part because it has the chronicle as this grounding force. So watching it last night too

And one of the depressing things for me about it, depressing may be the wrong word, is that this would be a TV series now and not a movie. Without question. And I love it as a movie. I only didn't put it on my top ten just because so much of it is about

the detectives, Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards that propel the story. And it is a media movie, certainly, but also kind of a half-and-half crime drama, too. Well, what I like about it is is that the movie kind of climaxes with this convergence of police work and journalism. And what Graysmith is doing in the film

and that, you know, that famous door-to-door moment where Graysmith has put together, you know, he's found facts. He's reported the story. And ultimately what he ends up writing is this kind of like blend of kind of nonfiction that doesn't feel like newspaper journalism. But he's applying a certain kind of methodology

mixed with this kind of paranoid rumor mongering that is so prevalent in our modern culture that it's an amazing convergence, I think, of murder mystery, newspaper movie, and then whatever is in the blurry middle of those two things. Dreamiest newsroom, too, I can ever imagine in the movies. That yellow color that then you see when the cabby gets killed, you see the yellow cab and it occurs all through the movie.

It's magnificent. Absolutely great. Number four on my list is the killing fields from 1984, directed from Roland Jaffe. When I talked to people about this movie as I was putting together this list, I said, oh, I saw it in school. Like, it's like an almost an history instructional movie. I have one of these as well.

Yeah, and I almost thought, please watch it again because it's really, really good if people don't know Hang S. Nor plays Dith Prahn. Cambodian journalist who works with the New York Times as Sidney Shamburg, who's, of course, played by Sam Waterston. Pran decides to stay in Cambodia after the rise of the Khmer Rouge. He is unsubjected to the Khmer Rouge rule for many, many years. That's the second part of the movie. Nor himself was not an actor. He was spotted at a Cambodian wedding in Los Angeles, delivers this performance, wins the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Remarkable. I was watching his speech today. He said, this is unbelievable, but so is my entire life. Amazing movie. Amazing story of a movie as well. Beautiful movie to look at. Also on Best Cinematography. Roland Jaffe, an underrated filmmaker, probably not memorialized enough. Another movie I haven't seen in a long time, but is a movie that growing up felt like a very weighty, you've got to see this kind of like academy film. And it's not quite that. You know, it's a little bit more exciting, I think, than like homework. Oh, I think so too. And I think that is, you're right. There's a weightiness to it that maybe drives people who would otherwise be curious away from it. Also, this is Sam Watersden becoming a leading man. I was reading some of the articles. And to this point, he'd done Nick Carraway and the Great Gatsby and been in Heaven's Gate and been in all these movies. But he had never had a role like Sidney Shanberg where he's talking to that Massachusetts accent.

The other media part of this I really love is there's been this whole thing in journalism about big, bold-faced name. American correspondent or British correspondent going into a war zone and getting all the credit and all the bylines. Never mind the local journalist who is at their side who is being very, very important to them, who is making connections and doing just as much journalism. And in this movie, if watched the first half, Sam Waterson-Shanberg is very imperious. He's not saying we're equals here. He's saying, no, no, we're going to go win me some Pulitzer's here. And I think it's a very, very realistic, if, you know, fairly negative portrayal.

of that kind of relationship. Have you seen the greatest beer run ever, the new Peter Farrelly Apple film? I have not seen that movie. So it's not primarily a media movie, but there is an aspect of that story that reminds me a little bit of the killing fields. You know, it's certainly not the achievement

that the killing fields is, but the idea of the journalists in the foreign country as a Greek chorus for the audience, I think is a really interesting construct that's in that movie that has some resonance with the killing fields. Nevertheless, I'll check it out.

What is number three on your list? So number three is the movie that I was taught in school, which is Shattered Glass, which I think now in many journalism programs is kind of required reading. It's a pure docu drama, the story of the fraudulent journalist Stephen Glass, who wrote at the New Republic for a few years and wrote a handful of big hit, noisy stories that were completely fabricated. the movie isn't about really the fabrications. The movie is about dismantling the fabrications and the kind of paranoid destruction of one too ambitious young man. It features like authentically

brilliant performances of what it's like to be in a magazine, I think. There is a Stephen Glass at every magazine. And when I say that, I don't mean that there's a fabricator at every magazine. But there is a highly, motivated, over-caffeinated, performative

rising star. Notting? That's a guy in every place. Maybe you've been that guy at certain places. Maybe I have. I don't know. I've never been a fabricator, but I've certainly been somebody who's like, I got all the answers, and I got all the great stories, and I'm going to go get them, and I'm going to show you. And I love it as a portrayal of that. And then simultaneous to that, Peter Sarsgaard,

as the editor who slowly comes to grips with realizing what this kid has done. And there's a kind of anguish in his performance about how he has destroyed not just the trust that everybody at the organization had in him, but the sanctity of the work. Like, they take the work really, really, really seriously. And I don't know if this is specifically accurate

necessarily to what Chuck Lane was like at that time, but I believe it. I really buy it. And it, once again, is very practical about showing you how someone could get away with something like this, which is to say in the late 90s pretty easily, and then how you would have to prove that they lied. And I just like it as a pure procedural and there's also this kind of like ethical drama.

And I haven't said the name Hayden Christensen yet, and I'm going to say it right now. You were a massive Star Wars fan who I think was slightly disappointed by the prequel. Yeah, I think that's fair, yeah. And Hayden Christensen got certainly some of the blame for that with his performances. Anakin Skywalker.

I think he's brilliant in this movie. I think he is perfectly cast, and I think is a gifted actor who probably deserved more of a chance despite getting crushed as Anakin. If you want to see a movie where Hayden Christensen turns to the dark side, it's not Revenge of the Sith,

it's shattered glass. I totally agree, he is absolutely brilliant in this. This is a little almost famously for me. I got to the New Republic as an intern two years, almost exactly after the events depicted in this movie. If you ever folks want to understand the difference between me and Sean,

Sean grew up wanting to be on the road with bands writing cool piece of Rolling Stone, I grew up wanting to write think pieces. There we go. That was the difference. It was, I was not suspiciously talented, so there was no problem with me at the New Republic at that point in my life.

But it nails a certain kind of Washington striving. We saw this during the Trump administration where all these young reporters are trying to make their spurs. right and and also the thing it nails about it and you mentioned the chuck lane character there's one scene in there with there at the editorial meeting and glass is performing i think it's hack heaven and doing this great performance and everybody's laughing and clapping and then they go to chuck lane and he says well yeah what are you working on he says well a piece gabriel garcia marquez wrote about the falkland islands were and who in journalism please raise your hand if you haven't felt you are serious guy and you are so pissed off that unsexual and you are so pissed off that unsexuals serious journalist is getting the kudos while you're doing the real work. And by the way, if you have ever been cast as unsurious journalist, tell me that you have not felt a pang that you are not doing the quote unquote serious journalism.

It is such a thing. Among us love the movie. It's a perfect example of how specificity can make a movie. That's such a true moment that I'm certain happened in a meeting. You would never go to the Gabriel Garcia-Marquez example. if someone didn't know that that was the case. Absolutely. It's interesting because Billy Ray wrote and directed that movie.

It's one of the handful of movies that he wrote and directed. He most recently made the Comey rule, which is like kind of an interesting, kind of weird portrayal of James Comey as this modern American figure of, I guess, ultimately like moral confusion. And it's a little bit overheated in a way that I find Shattered Glass is not overheated. Because it's hard to tell stories like this. It's hard to tell these kind of explosive stories with an even, temper. He knew exactly what kind of story he had in this. And I think that's why this movie has

aged so well. Yeah. He told the story exactly for what it was. Number three on my list is the Year of Living Dangerously, directed by Peter Weir. Feel pretty much every Peter Weir movie except Dead Poet Society is underrated. Completely agree. And Dead Poet Society is overrated. I completely agree. Mel Gibson, I know, I know, get sent to Indonesia as a foreign correspondent. Again, on the eve of the ouster of the Indonesian leader, Sakarno, again, once again riving right at the big moment. Linda Hunt plays Billy Kwan, who is another journalist

who Gibson's character befriends. He also falls in love with an embassy worker named Sigourney Weaver. This is a big, big canvas shot on location in the Philippines. It has some really, really amazing scenes. It also has the obligatory scene of every foreign correspondence movie

where you will go to a bar and all the other correspondents will shit on your story. That happens in every movie about foreign correspondents. I'm a big fan of the year of living dangerously. Really fun movie. Real rousing, kind of old school.

It's not a Hollywood movie. It's an Australian production, but it's the last Australian production that Weir does before he becomes really a big deal Hollywood director. A couple years later, he makes Witness, and he makes the Mosquito Coast, and Dead Poets Society, Green Card Fearless, the Truman Show, Master, and Commander. Quite a run. One of the more underrated filmmakers of the last 30 years. Really good movie.

Linda Hunt wins the Oscar for her performance in this movie. and then here's some Academy trivia at the ceremony gives the award to Hang S. Nor who wins it the following year for the killing fields. What's number two on your list? I'm torn here because one and two are flipping and flopping for me

frequently. I think we might be in the same place, but please continue. I'm going to say all the president's men is at number two. It's number two on my list as well. Interesting. Well, do you want to share your thought? I mean, this is the press box. This is your show. have you ever spoken at length about all the president's men on this podcast?

I don't think so. Like you, I've watched it one billion times. Something new stands out to me every time. Since we saw, she said recently, and again, we'll talk about that on your podcast. I was amazed by how the William Goldman screenplay on the most recent watch of it and how much he tucks into that screenplay. It's a diamond. There are some really important things to know here at the beginning of this movie. like, what is the difference between Woodward and Bernstein?

That is in this movie. What are Woodward and Bernstein's respective statuses at the Washington Post? That is tucked into this movie. What do editors think of them? That's tucked into all this movie. All that information is really, really important. And the first time I saw the movie, I remember being just, as a young kid, just blown away about how lean it was and how it just seemed to just go and then stop.

And I was kind of like, what was that? Like, I loved it, but what was it? And then when you rewatch, you realize, oh, everything you need is in there. It's just done so economically. So one thing that distinguishes it, I think, from something like She Said or Spotlight is that when it comes to She Said and Spotlight, those are national stories that many people read. Many people read the books about those stories. But they weren't stories that we knew every single beat of. Whereas with Watergate, it is one of the national stories of the 20th century.

It is one of the most significant things that happened in a decade, in a generation. And Goldman doesn't have to worry as much about holding your hand through what's happening to Nixon at that time. It's more of a character piece. Now, it is a kind of structural procedure piece where you look at how someone gets the story, but the information they're getting is less important than how they're feeling when they're getting it, or what it looks like when they're getting it. Yes. And that smile Bernstein has when Martin Dardis unlocks a safety.

give him those papers that he desperately needs. Or the, excuse me, Jane Alexander's character, you know, the late night conversation that she has with him. Like, it doesn't even really matter what's said in that conversation. It's just like that sense of excitement and terror and confusion and anxiety for her and excitement for him. Like those things, I'm not sure that there is another framework where you could get them in this way.

So, I mean, I don't even, this movie is taught in schools. taught in J schools. Sure. I'm not sure that's a good idea. Because your life as a journalist is not going to turn out like Woodstein's life? Yeah, it's very unrealistic about what you can aspire to. It's not actually inspiring because actually Doom, I think, is like one of the prevailing themes of the film. It's like, you got the story.

We're still kind of fucked. It's made in the heart of this new Hollywood era, you know, where everything is kind of bleak and grim, shot famously in shadow by Gordon Willis. And I mean, it's incredibly propulsive. It's also, it is one of the few movies where I think, like, go back and write it again, go back and write it again, is accurately portrayed. You know, like, the movie opens very purposefully with the smash of the J-key against a piece of paper. After focusing on that sort of gray, white sheet of paper for just a second longer than it should be. The ultimate anxiety maker, right?

The blank page. Such a smart idea. It's just a movie full of great ideas, full of things. chew on. Here's a thought. Was somewhat fuzzy 70s photography, did that do newsrooms more justice than ultra-digital sharp 2000s photography? It helps, right? I do think that the post office is more brightly lit and honest than you would have expected a movie shot by this cinematographer made by this filmmaker. Like, if you see Clute, Clute takes place entirely in the dark. That's the movie, that's the Pakula movie that precedes all the president's men. The parallax view,

even more so. The parallax view, you literally cannot see the faces of the powerful forces that are making decisions in that film. They are shadowed. In this movie, it's fluorescent lighting over, you know, a very beautiful Robert Redford, obviously, but not quite, you know, the real Woodward not quite as beautiful. And built on a soundstage, which is just a miracle to me. A lot of work went into replicating, though, what that bullpen was like. There's a lot of great writing and a lot of great history around this movie. There's also a lot of great fabrication, if you do or don't believe Robert Redford's role

in unpacking this story versus William Goldman. Shaping the story at the front end versus Goldman's, yeah, a lot of arguments about that. But I'm always a stickler for newsroom authenticity, because you and I can tell immediately when something seems like a fake. This does not seem like fake. We weren't around in the Washington Post Newsroom in 70s,

but this seems to me like a very authentic newsroom. I'll give you a kind of self-reflexive example. When we were starting the ringer and we were getting office space, I was thinking about where my office would be or should be. And it wasn't that it needed to be in the corner. It wasn't that it needed to be in the center of the room, but it needed to be in a place

where if somebody needed to come around the bend, we could have a private conversation, but if it was loud enough, people would hear it. Because that's kind of what the Bradley character is doing. He's like, you're in the middle of the bullpen, but you're right off to the side. And when someone goes into the office, people notice. And there's a conversation about who went into the office and why.

Now, obviously, we're not doing Watergate here at the Ringer. But it, like, it codifies what the workplace, the journalism workplace is in a way that very few movies can because of its elegant design. So, you know, it's just so influential in so many ways. You did yell that one time. Curtis, got some harder information next time. I wish I banged my desk more in my era as the editor-in-cheon. God damn it, Curtis. All right, number one on your list, and I think we're going to wind up at exactly the same spot, are we?

Where are we going? Where are you going here? I'm going with Network. You're going Network. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to wind up in television news, but not at the same place. Tell me why you love Network. So number one is Network.

Now, with the caveat that for many years, Network was my favorite film of all time, I think it's actually a more honest portrayal of how we get our news than most of these cool movies about true stories with news, which is to say that news is a... corporate run media and that network is this incredible evocation of how when someone gets a little bit of attention, they run with it. And it's another example of a kind of created world that still says a lot about who we are today and who we are as a kind of news consuming force in addition to a newsmaking force. It's the story of a network news show featuring an anchor man who loses his mind live on air and then gets extraordinary ratings after doing so. It's written by Patty

Chayevsky, directed by the great Sydney Lumet. And I wrote about this film in light of the inevitable Donald Trump election. I'm sure many people did that. There is a great book about the making of this movie that David Schoff wrote about five or six years ago that I recommend to anybody who's interested in it.

It's a great movie about speechifying. It's a great movie about big, big, big ideas that seem like total bullshit when you hear the characters say them and then you step back. and maybe you look at the screenplay or you think about what they're saying and then you realize it is one of the ultimate prescient films of all time

and it's relevant I think to what you're going to talk about at number one because they are kind of paired in a way about the artifice of news as opposed to the acquisition of news all the president's men is about the acquisition of news network is about filtering it to the mainstream and what comes out the other side

and as a natural-born cynic, it's just much more in keeping with my vision of the world at this point. I give it total credit for Prussians. It's down my list a little farther because there are just so many speeches in the movie. Chayevsky loved to write speeches. And watching it, I found myself pulled out of the movie again and again.

When you get to that big Ned Beatty speeches giving to Peter Finch in the end, which is itself a really compelling piece of writing, it was just like, man, it's like reading, a long magazine article that has 12 nutgrass. I get it. I get it. I understand. And the second time William Holden tells Fay Dunaway, you're a creature of television. I know, I got it. I got the big ideas here.

And again, the ideas are right. And the ideas have been proven right. We talk about this on press books all the time. Like, this is Fox News. This is all these things. But it's a lot for me. And it almost just jars me out of the experience of movie watching, which I did not have a problem with on all these other movies. think I'm just susceptible to big theory idea movies.

And it's a movie that has great characters. The Diane Christian scene character is like an extraordinary creation, the Fay Donobey part. I think the William Holden character. Oh, he's so good. You know, on his last legs, long time kind of network news producer slash like a company manager man is this really heart sick, kind of pathetic middle-aged man who's, I think, has been in many ways of stand in for Chayefsky in his view of the world.

I just like speeches. I just like to hear characters yelling at each other in long-winded and overstated prose. So for me, it's an easy cinch. Number one on my list is broadcast news. The very last thing I'll ever say about myself was a junior university of Texas. I, in a very old school and analog way, sent an application in the mail to ABC News Nightline in Washington, a job I was not qualified for for an internship. Miraculously, they said, yes.

I went there that summer. I worked with Ted Cople. I was there for the dying days of grand old network news of the 80s and 90s. And then I got back my senior year and I watched broadcast news for the first time. And I was like, oh, my God, that's what it was like. That's exactly what it was like. The difference between performance of news, as you say, and actual depth and education of the audience, the tension between news gathering and having a news division that should stand on its own

because damn it, we think this is important and the commercial pressures, which were already encroaching on network television in 1999. It was, or 1998, excuse me, it was everything that I had just seen. It was miracle. I mean, it was so funny. So I had a very personal reaction to it. And then it's just a great movie. I could slide that criterion disc into the player anytime.

and watch broadcast news. So this is my number four. That's a huge movie for me as well. I believe I did a rewatchable episode of this movie with Chuck Closterman, Bill Simmons, and Chris Ryan. There's a lot of conversation about like kind of James L. Brooks's arc

as a filmmaker. He's, of course, one of the pioneers of television in the 60s and 70s. He worked in some of the best shows of all time. He's been a number of really, really, really good films. His career on the back end is not as great as it was on the front end. One of the reasons why I think this movie is great

In addition to all the great craftspeople, the amazing performances, Albert Brooks is an absolute ride in this movie. His speech about the devil is like, it lives in my heart. Susan Zorinsky, who is kind of a producer and was a journalist and news producer who the Holly Hunter character is very closely based on,

is clearly the skeleton key for this whole thing and has given them the pathway to making this feel as chillingly accurate, as you're saying. And most movies about journalism don't have, this and they don't care about it. They don't care about accuracy. You know what? I made a list of 120 movies that I think could qualify for this conversation in the history of movies that go all the way back to the 1930s. And they're movies. They're not docudrama. They're not documentary, certainly. They're just entertainment creations. This movie feels real a lot. Even when it's as silly and

funny, it feels like it's really happening. It's so involving. It's a never look at your phone movie. And that's rare these days. It's especially rare in this kind of story, which is not really adventurous. There's no bombs exploding. There's no massive scandal unfurling that we're invested in. It's just about these characters, just about these people, just about these people who make the news. It's an all-time classic. I love it. Before we go, I'll just say like on rewatch number, whatever it was of this movie, what jumped out at me that I had maybe not perceived totally the first 14 times was the fact that Tom and Aaron are both huge jerks. It's part of understanding this movie because I think a lot of us watch this movie and I'm an

Aaron guy. I'm depth. I'm quality. I'm not this, you know, vacuous, handsome sitting there spouting nonsense, right? With somebody speaking into my ears so I can understand the missile crisis going on. But then you watch it, when you watch out, brocci, like, oh, he's a big prick too, just like William Hurts' character is. It's just in a different way. So the challenge then, I agree with you, I think that's the right read on it. The question

there is, is Jane also a jerk? Maybe. And are people who get into this line of work inherently narcissistic and desperate in a way that is unseemly? You know, like, I think that they're like, obviously they're complicated, right? And they're, no one is neither good nor bad. the same way we wouldn't use that binary to decide between Tom or Aaron and this story. But I wonder ultimately, and I mean, it's a big question for you making this show. People in TV news to me, I just don't trust, and I never have. And it's not that there aren't people working really hard to tell great stories. Of course there are.

That's a broad brush just to paint with. But I think I've just been conditioned because of my love for movies like Network to just not trust these people. That summer drove me to print. I came back. I probably had a decent shot of talking my way into something, maybe a low, lowly job somewhere in ABC or something like that. And I said, I want to be in print. I don't want to do this. These people work freaking hard.

They're really, really smart. It's the same dynamic you're talking about with the insider where the producer is doing all the work in getting very, very little credit. And at the end of the day, I looked at their product versus the product of newspaper or magazine later websites and said, I want to be associated with that product. Not the former product. I don't want to do that for my life as exciting and glamorous and cool as that world is. Were you a big consumer of TV news as a kid? Yeah. You were.

Yeah. What was you like, did you have a program that you liked? I mean, I know this about the writing because we talked about it for years and years, but I don't think we've ever talked about it. Like, did you watch Nightline? Like, what were you into? Not sure I was picking Nightline over, you know, Carson or Latterman. Some kids are.

I don't know. Yeah, but, you know, the Sunday show, certainly in like World News Tonight. Amazon like a, hey, it's 630. Mom, I got a date with Peter Jennings. But I was watching a lot of that and loving the kind of production of it and the importance and how, you know, again, in those days, we didn't have the internet. That was how you found out what was going on. Did you have the TV on during dinner?

No, that was not allowed. Peter Jennings was on every night of my house at the dinner table. Speaking while you were eating dinner. He was. Wow. So I was nine years old and watching the news. I think it was the only time my mom had to watch the news. She didn't really, I guess she read Newsday,

but she was not a huge consumer of newspapers, but she was engaged with the world. That's where you got it. And Peter Jennings was her portal. Wow. Yeah. But I always wonder that because I was wonder like what people who work in media and in journalism,

more often, like you come to the things that you love a little bit late, like in your teen years or in college or you're like, these are the writers I love or this is the publication I have an emotional attachment to. But as a kid, certainly I know like you read the sports section. Right? Sure. It's a preteen.

But aside from that, it's usually television. And I'm sure now it's more like Instagram or YouTube or TikTok or whatever. But I'm always fascinated by people who, whether they watch like the nightly news or whether they watch 60 minutes or nightline or any of those shows or whether they penetrated their consciousness or not. Because for me, they did. But it didn't have an effect on me. I wasn't like, I need to get into hard news. I could not have cared less about hard news. I need to get that Rolling Stone gig where I'm following the bands around the country.

Yes. Sean Fennessey, thanks for coming on the press box. Let's watch all those media movies before 1976 and rank them sometime soon. Now it's time for the second weekly edition of David Shoemaker. Guess is a strain pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about Congress codifying same-sex marriage rights was Save the Date. Today's headline comes from listener Andrew Sutterby, who identifies himself with

a UT grad. Thank you for listening, Andrew. Takes us back, David, to the World Series, game four, where the Phillies, your beloved semi-local Philadelphia Phillies, were no hit by the Houston

Astros. Only the second no-hitter in World Series history. As you imagine, a bunch of zeros on the board, and I think that's enough. What was the Philadelphia Inquirers Strain Punt headline

Oh my gosh, I can't believe I didn't see this. Uh-ohs, um, uh, zero, uh... Don't forget the team that was throwing the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Astro. Astro. Astro. God, I have no idea. Astro.

Turf, Astro. Hmm. Astro. Just finish, just finish the word in a very normal way. Astro. Oh, astronaut. Or astronaut, an A-U-G-H-T. Yes, astro-noughts.

And that's great. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes back Thanksgiving week with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.