The Press Box - The 2016 Election Is Back. Plus: Masters TV Notes and How Everything Became a “Cult Classic.”

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

Bryan and David start the pod by reacting to the media’s coverage of last night’s episode of ‘Succession’ (00:31). After, they discuss whether the 2024 presidential election is mirroring the election in 2016 and Al Roker asking President Joe Biden whether he’ll run in 2024 (08:07). They also debate whether bringing back the political debate show ‘Crossfire’ would work today (17:30). Later, they give their Masters TV scorecard and ask: How did every movie end up becoming a cult classic (30:43)? Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Erica Ramirez, founder of Ili, and host of What About Your Friends? A podcast dedicated to the many lives of friendship and how it's portrayed in pop culture. Every Wednesday on the Ringer Dish Feed, I talk to my best friend, Stephen Othello, and your favorites from within the ringer and beyond about friendships on TV and movies, pop culture, and our real lives. So join me every Wednesday on the Ring or Dish Feed, where we try to answer the question TLCS back in the day. What about your friends? Did you happen to see Succession last night? I did.

I did. If you did not, feel free to fast forward this podcast about two or three minutes. Because I want to talk to David about how the media handled some major spoilers last night. So, again, this is your last chance to hit fast forward. Brian Cox's character, the media mogul and very difficult dad, Logan Roy, died on last night's episode. And just after I'd gotten the kids tucked in and was thinking about watching success, session, I go over to the New York Times homepage. And right there at the top, David, is a big picture of Brian Cox with the headline

how Brian Cox felt about that big episode three twist in succession. Not a spoiler exactly, but already I'm on high alert. This is going to be a consequential episode of television. Sure. the subhead was even funnier. It was a pivotal moment for this series, which orbits his character, Logan Roy, a conservative media mogul and political kingmaker.

Now, the LA Times took a slightly different tack. They wrote a proper newspaper obit for Logan Roy. Like in K-Fabe? Like as if this was elus, as if he exists in real life? Yes. With only a small disclaimer off on the side that Logan Roy is a fictional character. But the headline reads, Logan Roy, conservative media mogul who shaped contemporary politics dies at 84.

I'm so more, so I'm just so, I have so many questions about this. Was there information that was like external to the show? Like, did they have access to the show Bible or did they make things up? Well, they mind the show. for as many facts as they could. I'll just read you at the top of this. Just days ago, Logan Roy paid a surprise visit to the American television network newsroom and delivered a saber-rattling,

only in journalism word, speech outlining an aggressive vision for the conservative cable news network as it heads into a presidential election. It was mid-afternoon, and standing atop boxes of printer paper, the embattled, only in journalism, chief executive of media conglomerate Wastar, Royko urged his employees to vanquist. at n's rivals dot dot dot his final ambition was not to be however roy died sunday while traveling to sweden aboard a company jet he was 84 we think what is the we think like uh that is that in character or is that like we could or we couldn't figure it out by watching two

seasons of the show at press time we could not confirm the age of fictional character logan roy okay so that's pretty funny they also updated it with comments from the family, which were, of course, comments from that episode and the family got in front of TV cameras. They had a list of survivors toward the end of the O-bit. This is good content.

This is just fantastic stuff. It's really good content. There's just one problem. As soon as they published it, people started tweeting it out. And when you put that link into the tweet, you can see the headline, Logan Roy Media Mogul is dead.

Yeah. So that wasn't a winky, winky, something's going to happen tonight on Succession. That was just a straight up spoiler, if an incredibly clever one. So how do we feel about that? Like, you've done something really good. And by the way, if our old pal Julia Turner had anything to do with this over the LA Times, congrats, salute, you did a great job. Yeah.

But are we okay with creating something that, If successful, we'll be tweeted out and then ruin the show for some segment of humanity. Okay. I am in general, like a information nihilist. I am a borderline spoiler nihilist. And although I do think that like certain spaces should by all means be setting their own parameters. If you are, you know, frequent a certain Reddit page. You can set your, the community can set.

its own rules. Sure. But first of all, the Twitter, like the people tweeting it out is insignificant. You can make, the LA Times can make the decision for themselves about whether or not to publish this piece. Dissemination of said news or said piece should not be their primary concern unless it's like a national security issue or someone's life is at stake, you know, in the real world. Also, you know, TV is different, even in the modern age, even in the streaming age, TV is different than movies or than books or something else because there's a time on the calendar, a day and time at which this show airs. Right. You're not obligated to watch it then, but the news just happened then, right?

Like, CNN is not waiting for my dinner party if I'm out on election night to release the results. I can't complain that I'm not following along with the news. This is news. If you care enough about it to complain, you are implicitly acknowledging that this is big news, right? That's a good point. You can also just avoid social media for a while, too. Sure.

I mean, I think part of the problem might be that people are so out of touch with showtimes. They're so, you know, in their own space on when I watch the show, that it maybe doesn't occur to them to stay offline. But I think that the bigger issue, and I think this goes to the larger spoiler question, as if a story has earned that sort of reaction, if a story is well told, then the shock is only a small part of it. And if you're concentrating on the big surprise, the shocking reveal, then you're doing a disservice to the narrative that got you there,

that got you to care so much about it. If I'm running the LA Times and people are constantly talking about, something in our paper even in a slightly annoyed way. I think I'm I'm counting that as a win. Oh, absolutely. And even if it's a, even if people are mad, even if more people are mad than not, be proud of what you created, you know? I mean, that's good content.

Yeah, I'm rooting for the L.A. times, but we'll take the wins, baby. We're not going to think too hard about that at this point in history. We're going to take those wins when we can get them. Yeah. Coming up on today's show, are we rerunning the 2016? presidential election, Al Roker gets some answers from Joe Biden. Should we bring back the CNN show Crossfire or should we bury it even deeper in the ground? Plus, our master's TV scorecard.

And David and I ask, how did every movie become a cult classic? All that much more on the press box, a part of the ringer. Podcast Network. Media consumers. Brian Curtis David Shoemaker, producer Eduardo Ocampo. here sitting in for Erica. David, the last few days I have been reading a lot about the 2024 presidential election.

And there seems to be a notion out there that it has the same vibes, the risk of using that word, as the 2016 presidential election. Not only does Donald Trump have a very good chance of winning the GOP nomination, he has figured out a way to make the media cover him to the exclusion of everyone else. Now, there are two parts of this idea. One, as Politico's Sally Goldenberg and Natalie Allison report, Trump's Republican opponents are mad that they're not getting any attention. Did you know, for instance, that Nikki Haley was campaigning on the border last week?

I don't believe I knew that. Did you know that Mike Pompeo went to Ukraine? No, is Mike Pompeo? Well, not officially in, but... His hat is not in the ring, but potentially ringside? He's running. He has not had his incredibly, how shall we say, less than exciting announcement that he is actually running for president. But he is saber rattling, as the LA Times likes to say.

Did you know, David, that Ron DeSantis was holding puppies while encouraging pet adoption last week? That cannot be true. That would be the two truths in a lot. That would be the lie. All true, according to Politico. This is deja vu all over again, said Terry Sullivan, who ran Marco Rubio's 26 campaign for president. Trump dominates media coverage, making it impossible for his competitors to get any coverage or forward traction.

So that's the first part. Trump was getting indicted. He wasn't really campaigning. He's done barely any conventional. campaigning at all, but his very presence is making it hard for anybody to get attention. Part two of this is the companion media critique, which is that we are rerunning our 2016 coverage where we see what happens when we talk about Trump. You see those high ratings that came in for followed Trump's car to the Manhattan courthouse coverage. Yeah. One more quote from that

political piece. What's frustrating to me is we didn't learn a damn thing from 2015 or 2016 when it comes to just giving him absolute roadblock media coverage, said David Kokel, a veteran of six Republican presidential campaigns. I get it. It's a big story, but this was getting covered like dot, dot, dot, dot, the opening of the war in Iraq or the OJ chase. You couldn't escape it. Speaking broadly, as these critiques tend to be broad, are we covering Trump in a 2016 kind of way as we gear up for another presidential election. If there's a big win for Trump and being indicted by the state of New York, it's that he got, all the news networks got a little taste of what it used to be like again.

You had all the, you know, went to your meetings, major, major apologies. You've been living mostly clean for the. past couple years and then you just got a little whiff of it again and you're just like oh shit we got to that just it just makes it so much easier just to follow Trump around you know? Remember when CNN and Fox

were ignoring Trump? For different reasons CNN wanted to take that red countdown clock off the screen all the time Fox had the soft ban and then last week it's like never mind Trump's back yeah

yeah it's tough you know I mean, and especially, listen, I'm sure Ron DeSantis was doing more than cuddling puppies. I think on the one hand, we should probably, even at this early stage, do some delineation between the serious and the unsurious candidates. I guess even if an unserious candidate takes a trip to Ukraine, that merits some mention. How dare you, sir? Mike Pompeo is an unserious candidate for president. If Ron DeSantis is a serious candidate, I presume he did more than cuddled puppies. And so we can focus, you know, maybe you should focus on such things.

But I guess that all kind of begs the question, like what makes a serious candidate in the Republican Party in 2023, right? If you don't have the seeming will or trajectory to displace Donald Trump, then are you serious? That's a great question. So how much coverage should you be giving to the Pompeo Nikki Haley tier to begin with? Yeah. It's like if there was an open field. and like nine out of the 10 candidates were just, for some reason,

made it their platform position to say that like, Iowa is the worst state in the country. And one candidate was like, I love Iowa. And everything wrote on the Iowa caucuses. Would you really be taking the nine candidates who are determined to lose Iowa seriously? You know,

I mean, it just seems sort of like, you can't just like toss them out, but it just seems, there is a question that needs, that demands an answer, right? Can you, you really motivated to win.

Watching that coverage last Tuesday, if you told me that X number of minutes in all those hours devoted to Trump should have been devoted to the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, which a very important election, or the Chicago mayor's race, which are very important

and also very interesting election. Which, like, no one seemed to really have their head wrapped around until it happened. No, this is like one of those where you're just reading, oh, wait, this is happening today? Mm-hmm. I would, I would, I would grant that.

I also don't know what cable news at the risk of defending them is supposed to do. Former president is getting indicted. Yeah. I mean, I just don't know. And I also think these critiques tend to be so broad. I mean, I had CNN on here before we came on. And Abby Phillip was doing the Ukraine doc leak, the Tennessee Statehouse news from over the weekend, and the Dalai Lama. There was another mass shooting in my old hometown of Louisville, Kentucky today.

which has gotten some oxygen. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's not like there's any, it's not like on an otherwise calm day, there would have been room for, you know, your run of the mill candidate goes to the ASPCA photo up. Can we just agree that they should not have covered Ronda Santas holding puppies under any circumstances? What if he killed the puppies?

That would, that would be news. Okay. Remember the Mitt Romney thing with the dog on the roof or the car? That was a 2012 story. I got to run. If it was like a mites and men situation where he accidentally killed the puppy because he was too strong. Okay, we'll just move on. We're really going to some dark places here with the DeSantis campaign.

In other election news, Joe Biden, otherwise known as a copy stopper, is running for president. We think. I know where you're going with that one. But he won't say he's running. So this morning, a brave journalist. attempted to get some clarity on that question. Here is that today's shows Al Roker trying to pin down Biden

at the White House Easter Egg roll. So this is a fantastic event, one of my favorites in the year. I was just wondering, Mr. President, will you be taking part in the Easter egg rolls after planning on after 2020? Well, I plan on at least three or four more Easter egg rolls.

At least three or four more. Maybe five. Maybe six. What the hell? Are you saying that you would be taking part in our upcoming election in 2020? I'll either roll an egg or being the guy who's pushing them out. Come on. Help a brother out. Make some news for me.

I plan on running out, but we're not prepared to announce it yet. All right. That's the kind of honesty that we're all begging for from our candidates. I plan on running, but we're not ready to roll it out yet. When you say the thing that we all know, that's really super helpful, you know. It doesn't feel like we're not being played for Robs for a change. As political answers goes, that's pretty pretty on the mark. Yeah.

Biden even admitted he, hell, he might stick around for six more Easter egg roles. Perhaps looking at a Trumpian mandate to just be president forever. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, we've got some new president for life bills that we're trying to push through Congress right now. Does you like how Al Roker in the midst of a softball interview had the tricky way of answering the question. Will you be around for a few more Easter egg rolls?

Probably possibly two, three more Easter egg rolls, if you know what I mean? I'd debate Biden in answering it. This is from the file, David, of good idea or terrible idea. I can't decide which. Remember the CNN show Crossfire?

Of course. For two decades, it pitted one liberal against one conservative in a TV debate. Yeah. Until October 2004 when John Stewart entered the chat. We talked about this last week. Here's just what I wanted to tell you guys.

Yeah. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop hurting America. Okay. Now, and come work for us because we, as the people, how do you pay? The people, not well. Better than see an end, I'm sure.

But you can sleep at night. See, the thing is, Because we need your help. Right now, you're helping the politicians and the corporations, and we're left out there to mow our lungs. You just said we're too rough on them when they make mistakes. No, no, no, you're not too rough on them. You're part of their strategies.

You're partisan. What do you call it? Hacks. That was Tucker Carlson and Paul Bagala getting the business from John Stewart. Two amazing things about that clip. One is I had forgotten that it was in front of a live studio audience. Why was Crossfire Just being filmed in front of the studio audience

It was in an auditorium And you would think that the auditorium Showed up to see Crossfire But they were just cheering and applauding The guy who was making fun of Crossfire Was it a special like 90 Second Street Why episode of Crossfire Yeah I think he was a Georgetown Yes

The second amazing thing is that Three months after that interview CNN said you know what John Stewart was right These guys are hacks Shows canceled I'm sure that was already in the works, right? I mean, by that,

it's like when, uh, when, MTV pretended that Bon Jovi playing wanted that or alive unplug, or acoustically was the inspiration for MTV unplugged, even though it had already been in the works for some time, but it was a big media moment and they were like, let's give them credit.

We will relinquish credit and piggyback off of that hype. David, with an excellent cable bundle analogy there. Well, David, there's a new column. The real ones know what I'm talking about. It's a new column in Politico by Michael Schaefer, and he asked, should we bring Crossfire or something like Crossfire back to television?

His case is this. Cable news these days is people agreeing with each other. A host brings on somebody who is like-minded, and they just talk about how terrible the president is or how terrible the president's opponent is. if there are any confrontations on cable news, they don't tend to be roughly equal people arguing about an issue. They tend to be like MSNBC's Mediasan reading the Riot Act to Matt Taibi last week. Somebody getting just totally smoked.

So should we figure out we, meaning David and I as the new heads of CNN, find a way to pit a conservative, and a liberal against each other in television combat once again. Off the top, let me just say,

this sounds like a terrible idea. There are so many, I'm gonna indulge it. There are so many reasons why this obviously wouldn't work. Let us list some of them. If you are, I mean,

I think that the, I think in terms of money, in terms of audience, in terms of just general footprint, it's a much better gambit to just be an unopposed partisan hack on one side or the other. And so just by almost necessity

or by definition, the quality of crossfire contestants or co-hosts or whatever you would get would be lower level, right? Quality of hack, you're saying. Yeah. If you're not getting the best, it's probably not worth doing.

Also in the current climate, if you're not getting the best, it's not like you're going to get somebody who's really smart and yet just a little bit less ready for prime time. You're probably just going to get somebody if, you know, watching all the cable networks as any indication, you're probably just going to get somebody

who's just hackier, right? Just someone who's like less fun and also just like sticking to just really wrote talking points. Now, there is, I'm sure, like a fantasy football scenario here that anybody could come to where,

CNN hosts a Thunderdome, you know, once a week where like MSNBC and Fox sent each send two of this. Like, like, Bad Love the Network stars. We're like, you just, you know, each network sends two of their best. And they go at it and like, you know, Jeffersonian debate style or something. You know, I mean, yes, that would be fun and interesting. Although there's no, there's no way to do that, you know, I mean, there's, you know, obviously there should be so many logistical and financial and whatever else roadblocks to that, let alone that's setting aside the fact that presumably everybody you would want to see on television

would be first and foremost interested about not looking like an idiot on television and so they would turn it down it's the you know I'm going to draw all sorts of parallels here it's the sort of like the the lebron james declining the slam dunk contest invitation it's like there is literally nothing for me to gain right only all i could do is trip and fall that's the only thing that anyone would ever talk about um it's not gonna i mean it just wouldn't happen I guess if you were really, really committed to it and we're going to be really fantastical, you could see a world in which you just signed up

a bunch of people like a pro sports league to like, you know, crossfire farm league contracts or whatever and then somehow, you know, then you take the best of the best to put on TV. They'd maybe go one subject each or something and the fans get to vote on who talks. I don't know how to do. There's probably some way to do it.

But what John Stewart was complaining about was on the money and he wasn't concerned with the appearance of balance. He was concerned with hackiness, right? He was concerned with the appearance, not the appearance of balance, but the appearance of,

but the false premise of newsiness, right? And that was not going to get, there's no way you're going to make a show that solves that problem. It's almost more honest to have opposing sides, speaking in vacuums, if you look at it from the outside

and you're aware of what they're doing, then to have them have to, quote, unquote, face the facts, you know, or face opposition or whatever else. I don't know. There's a version of this. It's really fun to imagine. But, and I understand the theoretical,

the theoretical point that's being made here. But no, there's no way. There's no way. Crossfire 2023 is not going to be a solution to anything. That's I got to bring people back to linear. television, you know, thing? Related point to the one you just made

is that CNN during the Trump years was desperately trying to fill the pro-Trump commentator seat. Just on the panel shows. Tried Jeffrey Lord. Remember that era of television? Saw how that turned out.

They couldn't find somebody because if you found somebody to fill it, they weren't going to comply with the rules of the game. Like the telling the truth part of cable of you know answer or just answering questions in a straightforward fashion or dealing with your sides defects. Mm-hmm. It just didn't work at all.

But I will say this. Totally agree with everything you said. I do like the fantasy football aspect of it. Yeah. I do like it if you and I as executive producers were saying, okay, you have to do this. You have to come up with 30 minutes of Crossfire 2023. who's on your list? What's the best version of the show?

And I would almost say, like, let's throw out all the MSNBC Fox people. Let's keep them over there. We just got to go out and find two people that we think would be the most interesting television debate. And let's aim high here. Let's try to have a good or at least an interesting thing.

I got some names. Go for it. I think the conservative is hardest to cast. Yeah. But if you and I were to push Ross Douthit out in front of the TV camera against a liberal. All right. Don't you think we could at least get people to watch clips on Twitter? Sure.

Of how that would go. What if we have Ross Douthit and Bumani Jones, who I see on CNN a lot? I mean, I would watch that show. I'm not sure that rises to that show is the answer. Yeah, I'm not sure that rises to the list. level of, you know, appointment television. I put John Lovett on there.

Oh, okay. Yeah. If he was involved. Al Franken has resurfaced on Comedy Central, Chaffer points out. Yeah. Could do it. Matt Iglesias, I just threw down just for the, like, why not?

But which is he, is he, which side of the crossfire is he sitting on? Ooh, Matt likes to keep his guessing. What if he'd change seats during the show? I think he would pick the leftward seat, but on certain issues, that might not be, that might not be the most, like, you know, critical voice that you would want. What if he was in the center, but just a little more to the left than the right? I love it.

We just moved the seat around based on the guest partisan inclination. No, I think that's, I also put John Stewart on the list. Like, you got it, you, you screwed this whole thing up. You got to come back and fix it. Yeah. Why don't you be on the show? I would say that for this to work, I don't think I want full timers.

I think I want people to do a week. And I think you have to promise me that you'll come back. If you get your ass kicked, you have to come back the next day and the next day after that. Yeah. And you probably will want to come back. Because you don't want to leave,

as you say, there's something to lose here. And you don't want to leave a bad taste in everybody's mouth. Again, I don't think there's a good idea and anything, but would I kind of like to see this? Again, at least a clip of this on Twitter so that I could, you know, send it to you and we could have a nice chuckle about it? Yes, I would. All right.

I have another idea. What if we bring back Crossfire? But it's like the 80s version of Crossfire with, you know, the Braden-Bucannon era of Crossfire. Maybe you can take it back even further because I don't know if 80s feels old-timey enough, but I want old-fashioned political, like I want it to seem like it's like the film quality and the debating people are out of American history. Yeah, so somebody's smoking.

But they're actors, they're actors, they're performers, but debating current events in earnest, right? We can script their debates or at least script their talking points and have them like, yeah, smoking cigars, sitting cross-legged with a really low coffee table in between them. and somebody like playing Nixon like I don't totally understand who's doing this no no there's there they're fictional characters debating current issues like 1960s guy yeah exactly with glasses like well like the ones you and I are wearing now

yeah they don't have to think about this way we don't have to think about the people and whether or not they're acts no no they're earnestly scripted to the best of either side's ability So really we're just accumulating writing teams here. And then there's talking heads that go out with really no less legitimacy than most of the people that we see on cable television and debate these things. Coming up on the press box in just 30 seconds, how did every bad movie become a cult classic, a.k.a. the Mario question.

But first, David, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious. But all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the PressBugs pod where they are always, always gratefully received. Sure you saw this news in the NBA, Minnesota Timberwolves big man Rudy Gobert threw a punch at his teammate Kyle Anderson on the sidelines yesterday. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, wow, Rudy finally hit a shot outside the pain. You think that joke's worth four number one draft picks or, given David's polite chuckle, maybe just won.

Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, no book dump time. Did you catch any of the masters before you settled down to watch Succession? A little bit, not much. Okay. A couple of notes for you from the TV critic file here. Several listeners sounded the old guy still got it siren for us on Sunday.

Mm-hmm. When Phil Mickelson got into the clubhouse at 8-under. Phil Mickelson, 52 years old, wound up finishing second at the Masters, was wearing those really big sunglasses. Bruce Arthur on Twitter compared him to a weathered arms dealer. And speaking of which, this to me was the most interesting part of the whole weekend,

was the awkwardness of the live golf storylines. Yes. We know sports writers don't really care who wins tournaments, games, stuff like that, but they do root for stories. Yeah. They root for the outcome that will let them write the best story, the story they might already have a bunch of notes on or be inclined to write anyway. And it was clear at the outset of the tournament that many, many sports writers did not want one of the least.

of guys who left the PGA for the Saudi funding tour to win. Then Brooks Kepka started playing really well. Led the Masters through three rounds. He also had that press conference. I don't know if he saw this where he's like, you know, when I left, when I went to live, I thought my knees were completely shot. And I couldn't compete with these guys anymore. So I'm like, I'm going to take the guaranteed money because I think I'm just kind of done

physically. Then he got better and played amazing golf for three rounds. Not so great in round four winds up. Not winning the tournament. So there was at least a little like, okay, well, this would suck. But Brooks Kepka, this is kind of a compelling story. And then Mickelson comes along on Sunday. And it's like, oh, wow.

this is the guy who gave that unbelievable, unbelievably incriminating quote, Alan Shipman, the face of live golf. But a 52-year-old playing insane golf on Sunday at the Masters, you could feel a sports writer's psyche kind of doing an arm wrestling match with itself. Just being like, this is bad and weird, right? this would be a really impossible gamer to write on Sunday, right? Yeah. But also something kind of amazing if Phil Mickelson were to win the Masters. Mm-hmm. I felt it really hit the end point when Patrick Reed also played well on Sunday for a while.

And be like, eh, never mind. I'm not rooting for that. Yeah. You don't want that to happen. All good. Do not want to write a Patrick Reed wins the Masters gamer in 2023. also funny comment from Jim Nance. You and I noted that Live Golf after searching for a TV deal wound up on the CW.

Yeah. I want you to listen to how Jim Nance described this Brooks Kepka shot. Kepka had no choice but to lay up. He is right on the CW. The crosswalk. Oh, fantastic work. Were you familiar with that abbreviation for crosswalk? no i've heard the cw for the conventional wisdom in washington or something

no that's that's just that's just synchronicity and yeah i'm gonna tell my kids when we're downtown l.A. next time let's walk all the way down the block so we can cross at the cw a number of rain delays on over the weekend which meant that this really loud siren went off and then you could hear a voice speaking over what appeared to be a very old-timey loudspeaker telling the patrons what to do. Very strong, the regime has fallen vibes at the Masters. But the big technical innovation was the walk-and-talk. Now, there's a term I'd always understood to describe a reporter following a senator down the hallway at the Capitol. We're going to do a little walk-and-talk.

not going to stop and talk to me, but I can get a quote as we go here. It also turns out to mean interviewing a golfer while they're on the course. CBS busted out this surprise at the Masters on Thursday. Here is golfer Max Homa talking to Andrew Catalan as he walked up the 14th fairway. And Max Homa is joining us now. Max, it's Andrew Catalan. We had Rory join us back at the 9th. We thank you so much for joining us here at 14.

You just made your first birdie of the day at 13. How would you characterize your round so far? I'm very happy I made my first birdie before I had to talk to you guys with the O-First. So that was a big moment. Day's been pretty frustrating. Everything feels quite good. I've driven it well. Just made a sloppy bogey on eight and just gotten some distance control.

My distance control just hasn't been awesome. So that's where this place exposes you. but I don't know Maybe Lombardi will turn this thing around We've seen versions of this in baseball And in the pre-pandemic XFL Right

Talking to players and coaches During the game Yeah How do you feel about this Is the next frontier of sports television? I frankly think it's a smart move You know the other time that you hear the phrase Walk and Talk is when I think

Very specifically But it's been used other other times, but talking about Aaron Sorkin's show the West Wing, because so much of the show is so when a show is like that is necessarily so constrained to like a couple of tiny offices, the real brilliance of it was that you can have the same conversations walking down the hall from one room to the next and you can just sitting boringly around a coffee table or something. It gives it some urgency. And I think that there's, I think that that conveys into the sports world actually pretty well.

Sports is just, is by definition active. And even if you're not one of the people running up and down the field or swinging the golf club or whatever, I mean, you can see how much coaches just like the test being made to stand still for 30 seconds to say something about the half that they just played. Right? I mean, it's like, it's inherently like taking a break from the thing that matters to do another thing. the game matters, you know, whatever, but it doesn't really. It's not what you're there to do. And I think, you know, you catch somebody in motion between two things that they had to do anyway.

It makes a lot of sense. I think, frankly, those coaches would probably rather just have that conversation on the way to the locker room, like literally moving. Hey, you got to walk down here anyway. You know, maybe put the locker rooms a little bit further down. Yeah. It's like, it's like when you talk about, like, the sidle, all the different ways to, like, talk to players backstage. Isn't like the cream of the crop just like walk with me to. my car. Like, let's just, like, come on.

Like, let's go have this conversation. Yeah. The little, the siddle. Absolutely. But yeah, I mean, I think that, I think that doing it in motion has a weird propulsion to it, not just in the literal sense, but like, it, you know, it keeps you talking. Also, you're not, you're doing another thing. So you're almost by inherently not, like you, it's a little bit harder to avoid the point, right?

If you're, if you're walking down the street talking to somebody, I feel like in a weird way, you're more likely to get some honesty out of golf is perfectly set up for this because there's a lot of walking. So that Max Homa and that clip had just hit his T shot, he's got a long way to go. As you say, he's got time. And I think what's cool about it as CBS used it this weekend,

and the networks have played around with this with other golf tournaments before, is you can address the thing that you're doing right now. Yeah. It's not just, Hey, coach, what do you think of your defense in the first half? it's like you just hit a shot describe it to us

and then talk to us about your next shot and how you're going to hit it and how this green is where the hole is how this hole is laid out right you can actually give the viewer interesting information rather than just cliches

so that was really fascinating I totally agree yeah I think in general when you interview somebody you're looking to get detail, right? Yes. And some of the hardest things to do when you're doing an interview like you do on this show

is to put someone back in a specific place. I want to ask you about the time that you were filling in the, you know, whatever, and who knows if they're going to remember how that felt, how much setup it's going to take to get to that point. You know, there's a great value to like getting whoever famous golfer

or athlete in general to sit down for an hour and really dig in. But I'd say more often, than not, you're probably going to get more interesting answers by saying if you could just like appear in a puff of smoke and be like, tell me about what just happened. And what you're about to do next. Yeah. Like, Hohm is about to hit his approach shot.

Mm-hmm. Like, we can actually do what just happened and what's about to happen. Yep. Golfers, by the way, do this in my very limited experience being in those press rooms right after a round, especially at a major, they will sit there and often take the press through their round, whole by hole, especially they had a really particularly good round. Yeah. So as you say, you're just kind of doing that in real time.

Mm-hmm. And specificity, dude, absolutely. Whenever I get mad at those sideline reporter interviews after a football game, I'm like, no, no, I just want you to ask about a big play. Mm-hmm. Show the quarterback with your little stand there a replay of something that happened and get him to describe it and tell us something about that play that we don't know watching on television.

Yeah. And it was really clear in golf. It was so funny because so Homa hit his, hit his T shot. They talked to him. Then they basically eavesdrop to do sort of, you know, legal eavesdropping of him talking to his caddy. He hits his next shot.

It's not very good. And then they talk to him again about that shot. And then they eavesdrop on it on him on the green as he finishes up the hole. It's really, really cool. Now here's the thing that could kill. this, absolutely. If a golfer screws up immediately after doing one of these walk-and-talks. This is from the New York Post writing about Justin Thomas, who did one on Saturday. When the interview was over, Thomas promptly bogeied the par five-fifteenth hole to fall to two

over. Then he bogeed 17 and 18 to drop to four-over for the tournament and missed the cut by one. Thomas, who didn't speak to reporters afterward, looked distraught. so he did the walk-and-talk then he missed the cut and then he didn't talk to reporters after the tournament so we may get reporters weighing in on the walk-and-talk slightly differently

but if there's a walk-and-talk and then somebody does well do you think that will reflect positively on the walk-and-talk experience? Sure. If you do the walk-and-talk all the time, eventually you're going to get some birdies out of it some rolling ones.

Come get me again. Come, Come dial me up again. This is great. Let's talk some more. Golfers are superstitious just like anybody else. By the way, this is probably not going to happen like on Sunday at any tournament, especially a major. Trying to win a major.

I just kind of don't have time for this right now. I love the idea of them just having unfettered access, like someone's lining up the putt on the 18th hole or something and you're just like, hey, Mr. Curtis. Let me ask you what you're doing here. Mr. McElroy, can I just have one more second before you? Tap that in. One more topic for you, David. The new Super Mario Brothers movie,

number one at the box office. Yeah. The New York Times did one of those classic culture pages, pivots. We're not going to write about this Super Mario Brothers movie. We're going to write about the 1993 Super Mario Brothers movie. Oh.

Which starred Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo is Mario and Luigi. and you'll remember, because you are old enough to remember, bombed financially and has a 28% rating of Rotten Tomatoes. Well, this line in the story by Darren King stuck out to me. Today, Super Mario Brothers, meaning the 1993 version, has been the subject of something of a reappraisal, achieving a surprising cult status in the process.

Here's my question for you. have we reached an age in the media where everything, even stuff that objectively sucks, has become a cult classic, quote unquote. I started thinking about this because sometimes far I go to bed, I read Wikipedia pages. Everybody does that. And sometimes I'll read the Wikipedia pages of terrible movies.

It's a way to revisit them without actually watching them. And you'll notice it's like, the movie was terrible financially. All the critics hated it. But in later years, it has become a cult classic. I swear that line is in every Wikipedia page. And I'm like, is this really a cult classic? Like, I understand how the Rocky Horror Picture Show became one because they were playing in. And then people start coming to costumes and then they were doing the lip syncing.

And that became a cult classic. I understand how certain movies bombed at the theater and then everybody bought it on video or DVD. back in the day. Yeah. And it had this second life. But now we're in this age where if you have something that stunk in the past, somebody will make a podcast about it. Yeah.

Somebody will create a website. Somebody will make an amateur documentary that they'll put on YouTube about it. Yeah. So isn't everything kind of a cult classic at this point? Yeah, everything is a cult classic. Because first of all, everybody has their, the fandoms or sometimes ironic

fandoms, it's sort of indistinguishable, right? And then you start living in that ironic fandom and taking it super seriously. And also you talk about people buying VHS and Blu-ray. I mean, people don't really buy even DVDs anymore. No. But because of access on streaming platforms, and even

when we pay to download things and stream them, more people are almost, I guarantee more people are watching your run-of-the-mill box office bomb when it pops up on their streaming platforms, than ever would have taken the time to watch the Super Mario Brothers movie from 1993 before. Absolutely. It's just numerically, you know, I mean, it makes more, it makes sense that more people will have seen it now. So whatever the metric used to be for, you know, Rocky Horror Picture Show or whatever else,

that is going to get, the bar goes up and up. So many people are going to, you know, are going to watch. Also, people, everybody wants to have a unique sort of fandom. So like, whatever, you go to Comic-Con, there's going to be people dressed up is the specific Mario costume from the, you know, 1993 live-action film, right? Everybody wants to have their window. I mean, wants to have their little wedge. But it is weird.

I mean, I think that no one cares enough about the concept of quote classics or not enough people, I don't know who it would be. I presume someone out there does deeply care about. that terminology, but I guess no one really cares enough to dispute the point when it pops up on a Wikipedia page, you know? I mean, but there's, yeah, and there's, I think at the end of the day, we're really in a,

oh God, now I have two more things. One, because of our limited, because of the limitations of media and just our kind of resources, we went to a lot fewer movies when we were growing up than like we do now, you know, whatever. If the national, if Siskel and Ebert were like two thumbs down, that was just it, right?

Pauline Kale was just like never, this movie is trash. A lot of people would be like, thank goodness, I don't have to put that one on my list. I don't have to spend my time and money to go to deal with this movie. It's done, right? Now you just have it.

Now it's like, I don't care what anybody said. I don't care what Rotten Tomato said as much as people love to complain about the ratings on there. Oh, this popped up on Netflix at the exact moment that I'm looking for a thing. Okay, I'll push play.

You know, I mean, it's just we're so, we have so much more time and whatever. And you're interested to see a bad movie because it's bad. You know, you're just like, oh, I just want to get the flavor

of this thing. We just have so much more at our fingertips. And does that make it somehow different than what a cult classic? That's very different than what we think of as a cult classic. All of that stuff combined.

I agree. And by the way, I think that's cool that things can have the just constant reappraisal. Mm-hmm. It's not Siskelineabert and Pauline Kale and the old guardians of culture.

get to have the final say or just how the movie was released and marketed. Yeah. And that's it. I also do think it also creates this culture where nothing actually really failed because it was rediscovered at some point for a podcast. Yeah. Or Quentin Tarantino was showing it at the new Bev down here in Los Angeles. And it's like, by the way, he actually showed the old Mario Brothers movie the other day.

It's like there's just nothing. I mean, Bill had a riff on his pod. That was so funny a couple weeks ago where he was like, people will find an NBA draft bust and cut up like two minutes of clips of him. I think he was talking about Jason Williams. And he's like, Jason Williams was a problem. Yeah. And you're like, you're right.

This two minute clip package shows Jason Williams was the best basketball player of all time. Unfortunately, he was not. But we all love the nostalgia, right? It's like, dude, awesome. Jason Williams. I remember him. that's cool. I think that's the same impulse.

I don't know which of the various Jason Williams as you're talking about and I don't think it matters. That's kind of the best part about it. Yeah, no, you're right. I do think that there are also in a, when it comes to movies and stuff, they always say the opposite of love is not hate. It's like apathy, you know?

And there's probably a great swath of movies to which were so apathetic that we would never be having, they would never enter into the context of this conversation. I think bad movies end up rebounding in a weird way. I mean, movies that sort of get panned or whatever. That's sort of how you do this because we are in a weird just like all art is good art moment in history. Even though we all have opinions and opinions are spoken more loudly and more vociferously than ever by more people than ever in history, it's okay to watch 1993 Super Mario Brothers and be like, but Bob Hoskins was a problem.

You know, like, and I mean that as a compliment. I mean that in the two-minute highlight clip reel. Bob Hoskins was a problem. Look at what he did here. Look at that. He took you just the dumbest movie ever. Bob Hoskins turns in a freaking performance. It was a problem.

And you can, yeah, and you can appreciate it just for that, you know. I'm really interested in the new category, which is movies that flopped, but were not rediscovered as cult classics. Oh, yeah. I was trying to figure out what that one was. Remember the snowman that everybody made fun of? that is one that I've not, every time it comes up, my wife and I have both separately read some,

you know, Nesbo books. Like, we're like, you know, it's a, it definitely is in our wheelhouse, topic-wise and everything. And every time it comes up,

she's like, have we seen this? And I'm like, no, that's the one that's just famously bad. Like, but not like good bad. Like,

I think it's bad, bad. But that's apathy. That's where it's just like, should we give it a shot? And I'm like, I just don't, do we have any other options?

I don't even want to find out. Like, I'm not that interested. Do you still tweet, Dear Mr. Police? But that was from the trailer. That wasn't from the movie.

It's kind of a weird. As a meme. Speaking of memes, it's time for David Shoemaker guest is a strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about a Texas lawmaker

who wanted to ban Larry McMurtry was loathsome dud. Today's headline comes from valued listener Jeff D. Burrow in Toronto. It's from the Toronto star. It's about a golfer that won the Masters this year, not a live guy, John Rom.

Pretty straightforward here, David. Rom atop the leaderboard. What was the Toronto Star's strain punt headline? God, I feel like this could be a lot of different things. Rom on top, Rom, Romulus and Rom. Now you're going back to succession. Rom, rom, um, rom was built in a day. You want a previous major, so.

Yeah, um, Rom, um, so many things rhyme with ROM. Um, uh, what if I said room? Think room. Room? Rom with a view. Rom with it. That's funny, but. Um, um, um,

Room to grow, Dude, I have no idea. Sorry, time's up, Mr. Shoemaker. There's ROM at the top. Oh. There's ROM at the top. I would have never done that. It does.

It works. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Eduardo Ocampo. Thank you, Eduardo. I'm back later this week with Pressbox's final edition. Shoemaker and I return for another cold classic. Next Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian.