The Press Box - This Week in Ringer Culture (Nov. 13-17, 2017) (Ep. 385)

Episode Date: November 18, 2017

Featuring 'The Watch' on The Ringer's list of the 50 best superhero movies of all time, 'The Rewatchables' on favorite scenes from 'The Dark Knight,' 'The Bill Simmons Podcast' with Ta-Nehisi Coates arguing about the best season of 'The Wire,' 'House of Carbs' on the ranch vs. blue cheese debate, 'The Big Picture' with Greta Gerwig on the making of 'Lady Bird,' 'Jam Session' on an interesting tweet from Chris Evans, 'The Press Box' on the new Tina Brown book 'Vanity Fair Diaries,' and 'The Watch' with Joe Hagan on his book 'Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to this week in Ringer culture. I'm Liz Kelly bringing you the highlights from the Ringer podcast network. Also be sure to check out the Ringer.com this week. We gave you some awesome TV and movie recommendations, you know, for when you're bored at home or for Thanksgiving. And we did a lot of talking about superheroes, including a superhero draft that brought out some really alarming levels of competition from our staff.

So like I said, on Monday, our staff released their ranking of the 50 best superhero movies of all time. So on the watch this week, Chris and Andy discussed those rankings and some overrated movies in the genre. So let me just ask you, you were not part of the voting block? No. So as an outside observer, what did you think of the way the rankings sorted itself out? Just want to be clear on one thing,

because Thor Ragnarok, very recent film, made the list. Yes, number nine. Deserving of its very high stature, I think. But the much more expansive reboot of Birdman as Lady Bird, did not. It did not. Did not make it. I just wanted to be clear. That's too bad.

Yeah. I thought this list is fascinating because, first of all, it's just there are so many of them, you know. There are so many of them, and this happens relatively, it feels like it happened relatively quickly. It's like a lot of them within the last 10 years. Because let me tell you, this is probably the least popular part of this podcast when we do Remember When's, but like I remember when the X-Men movie, I hope not, happened. Yeah, me too. And I can't, and remember thinking, I can't believe they made this. Yeah.

And there's no way it's going to be popular. Like there was, it was so ingrained in the culture, not just in Hollywood, because I had nothing to do with Hollywood at the time, but in like comic book fans and fans of movies. That nerd culture thing of like, I can't believe they gave us a movie. Because they never will. Like there was just a deep understanding that this cannot happen. This will not succeed. And then it's taken over the world. One of the things that I thought was most interesting about this list, and maybe this speaks to how there is much more quantity than quality, is the transition from more or less garter.

to, oh, that's pretty good. Happens really suddenly and subtly in this list. You know, it is not scaled up. Right. I don't know if, like, 26, I'm just calling numbers out. I don't have the list in front of me. No, I've got it right here. 26 would be Dr. Strange.

Dr. Strange is the perfect 26 because Dr. Strange is, whatever, sure. Dr. Strange was a big sure. And then to get to the movies that we think of as, you know, actually quite good. Sure. I will say that looking through this list, there are very, very few movies on this list that I would say,

deserve to be on a list of greatest movies if you take away the adjective superhero. Sure. Which ones would you put in there if you had to choose? Superman. Okay. Superman, that's it? I think that's kind of it. Do you not like Dark Knight? I think Dark Knight is wildly overrated. Really? I do. Really?

I think it's crazy overrated. I think that it is... As a superhero movie or as a movie? As a movie. What do you think of it as being the number one superhero movie of all time? I strongly disagree. Okay, so what would you put instead? First of all, you told me that a movie like The Incredibles was not eligible. We don't acknowledge cartoons. Yet you have Guardians of the Galaxy 2 on the list.

So, okay. Here are some of my more positive comments about it, before I get like super nitpicky about it. Iron Man 3 correctly rated. Shout to the Shane Blackhive. I have, I have moles inside the office. Iron Man 3. Yeah, you're looking at it. What do you think? I give that thing like a nine. That's why it's up there. Good work. I don't know. I mean, Great Amanda Dobbins blurb, too. It's the one where all the Iron Man's fight. She got it. Yeah.

But it's also the movie that has the long... Detective stories in rural Tennessee. With a little kid and also the Ben Kingsley thing. We won't talk about it, but it's just... That brings me great joy. Spoil Iron Man 3 for all those heads out there. Who knows? We're saying it's good.

Maybe there are people who gave it a mess. You know, some dude is like, you know, I have... I still have Iron Man 3 in my red envelope, Netflix DVD, and I haven't returned it in six years. It's possible. Yeah. Sorry about that. Also, as part of the expanded content of this list, you have a villain list, which is completely correct.

And that list, it's the ranking of villains and superhero films. And number one is Heath Ledger in The Dark Night, correct? Two through 275 is everyone else. Yeah. Correct. Yes. No love for Lee Pace's Judge Bluehead in Guardians of the Galaxy One or whatever. Like, it is, it is totally thankless job, and I'm glad that's right.

Don't you feel like we've been living with Thanos for a really long time? Hasn't Thanos been getting teased for like eight years or is it my imagination? No, that's correct. Well, no, since Avengers. So five years. And it'll be six years before you even shows up. Speaking of which, what do you think of Avengers at two? That's what I was my next point.

Guys, Avengers isn't really good. Like, that's my take. Yeah. Everyone has come around to agree that Age of Ultron is not good. Yes. I would say both of those films, but even Avengers, which, you know, obviously usher in this idea of put all these people together, you can make a billion dollars, yada, yada. This movie is not rewatchable, my man.

Avengers is good, in severe quotes, in the way that the Force Awakens is great. What I mean is it proved something thought impossible was in fact possible and didn't offend a majority of people. It pleased enough people just enough. So keeping up with the superhero theme, next step, we have the rewatchable. where Chris, Jason, and Sean break down their favorite scenes from The Dark Night. The Game of Chicken between the 18-wheeler and the motorcycle.

One of my favorite movie scenes ever. Wow. What are you going to go with? I'm going to go with the Joker's party appearance. You get the sense that the Joker obviously is damaged in very deep ways, but he's also lying to you about everything, and it's just magnetic. You know, the way he lies about his scar.

He tells like two different stories about how he got the scars on his mouth, and he's just absolutely crazy. controls the room, controls the screen, and to have him there, like in the locus of economic power of Gotham, this crazy clown force is just really cool. I mean, Ledger is just absolutely burning up the screen in that scene. He's incredible. I like that one, too, and I think that when he tells the second story, because he tells that first story when he confronts the gangsters. And then he tells us a different story when he's at the party. Well, you look nervous.

Is it the scars? Beautiful. Like you. Who gambles and gets in deep with the sharks. One day they carve her face. We have no money for surgeries. She can't take it. I just want to see her smile again.

I just want her to know that I don't care about the scars. So, take a razor in my mouth and do this. To myself. And that's, I think, when you realize that he has a kind of an unreliable narrator quality where it's like this guy is either messing with everybody or is having a break from reality. There's something really exciting when you're watching the movie and you realize that. I would personally, though, go with the entire chase scene through the underground bridge. For when they put dead in the truck.

Yeah. Yeah. Transporting Harvey Denny after he's turned himself in as quote unquote the Batman. There's a lot of McBean lines in that. It's like, I hope we can get through this street where the fire truck is on fire. Let's talk about Mickey Kat's performance. this movie. Nikki Kat

plays one of the cops who is transporting Harvey Dent to, I guess, the prison. Yes. And he's being driven. It's got to go from city to county or something like that. And there's a really funny line

where one of the cops is like, once he gets to county, he's their problem. It's like, this would be, the National Guard would be here, guys. This is not like you've got to clock out in time to get to the bar to watch the end of the Bears game.

Right. So they're counting on Dr. Exposition, Nikki Kat. And he's being driven by what we call. Come to find out is Commissioner Gordon, who faked his own death at the assassination attempt on the mayor. Oh, is this? I hope you got some moves. Yes.

For some reason, while driving, he's wearing like a gas mask. And he's being pursued by the Joker and his army of escaped Arkham Asylum lunatics. And it's one of the best chase scenes ever made. It's one of the best grenade launcher scenes ever made. Oh, my God. A lot of bazooka. A lot of grenade launching. It's the single best that car flipped over scene in movie history.

my opinion, when the truck goes end to end, stem to stick. It's like, that is the hair on the back of my neck moment for me. And it's also the moment when you actually, there's actually a character note in the movie when Batman decides not to kill the Joker. That actually is a moment that pushes the psychology of the story forward as well as like getting you excited to see what's going to happen next. Yeah. Which is something that, you know, kind of only no one can do in these movies. And it is a great moment because that's the inherent sadism of Batman, where you really have to question this guy, how many people have died because you won't

kill the Joker? How many people have to suffer because of this weird code that you have? There's a moment in the fundraiser scene where he disarms one of the lunatics and then breaks down the gun and throws it away. I'm like, is this some sort of moral victory? Like, do you think that not everybody else out there doesn't have guns? And how much of it is because

you know, he likes this? He could end this, but he won't. He knows the Joker's going to get out because how many times has the Joker got out? This is, I mean, we're talking about the comic book. So, he knows someone's coming back, some evil the penguin, someone is coming back. And yet he always just, well, I'm not going to kill him.

I'm going to put him back in jail in Arkham. Yeah. Where they've broken out 15 times. Why? Why? Bruce. Does he, he likes this. Yeah, he likes it. Absolutely. It does seem like it keeps it going.

And you have to ask yourself, what is motivating a lonely billionaire whose only friend is an old British man? Yes. To keep going in life. What is driving him to pursue things? And it's basically making himself the hero and getting into fights so you can feel something. Absolutely.

So switching gears a little bit, and the next clip comes from the Bill Simmons podcast where Tana Hasi Coates, author of We Were Eight Years in Power, goes head to head with Bill to defend his favorite season of the Wire. My friend Jonathan Abrams, who worked with me at Grantland, is doing the Wire oral history

that I think has a chance to be special. But you were a Baltimore guy. You don't really, I didn't really, did you write about the Wire? I never... Not too much, but I googled it. I looked for... I wrote a few things for the Atlanta. But also by the time I started writing for the Atlantic, they probably were in four. They probably were at season four. That's the best season.

That was my favorite season. I'm about to cause a fight for everybody. Let's have a fight right now. We can end it on this. Season two is the best season of the wire. Oh, no. But none. It's not even a debate.

It's indisputably. Now I feel like Coats with John Kelly walking in the ring. Season two is so not the best season. It's the best season of the while. Season four is the best season of TV ever. Season four is not even, season four the second best season. Season 4, it probably is the second best season. It goes 2, 4, 1, 3, 5.

See, everybody's down on 5 and 5 has now become underrated. Because everybody gets mad about the newspaper play. The series finale of The Wire, I will stand by and ride to the death. The problem with 5 for me, and let's be stipulated we're talking about the wire. So anybody that starts with the problem with, and you're talking about the wire. It's a Mount Rushmore show. It's on the Mount Rushmore. I was saying.

I just felt like. Like, they, I don't know what new was said at that point. Like, I felt like they knew. And you watched McNulty tumble back. But, okay, I already know who McNulty is. I don't need to see him go back. I know. I got it.

I got it. Like, I know. You know what I mean. So you that it could have ended it for. Yeah. And then done like a movie for, like, before he comes back, right? Yeah. That shit, I didn't think that was going to end well.

I didn't think, I don't like, my mind. McNulty does not come back and they ride off into the sunset. Magnolty, I know who McNaltry. He wasn't going to be the mayor of Baltimore. No, that wasn't going to happen at all. That way I got to have, maybe you're right. Maybe I got to. Let me make the case for two right off.

Please. It's an unwinnable case, but I want to hear it. That's what you think. That's what everyone thinks, but everyone is wrong. Here's why. This is what people forget. Season one, you get drugs in Baltimore, and you get, it's not stereotypical, but the image of these black drug dealers is well within the imagination.

It's done really, really, really well. Yeah. It's done really, really, really well. season two he's like oh you thought this was some black shit fair no it's not I'm going this way quietly it just flips this is no no no this is this is Baltimore man

and as a person that grew up in Baltimore I knew they were poor white people in Baltimore I knew they were working class white people who had these problems you didn't you know see them in the same way but they say no no this ain't just black folks this is the system at large and it's eating at everything yeah I just thought that, like, I mean, what's that something you saw, like, white drug dealers, white urban

drug dealers? When is that? Is there a character like Ziggy on? Like, I've never seen that. I've never seen anything like that. It needed season two. The series as a whole desperately needed season two to exist. It was a tremendous act of courage.

So I just feel like from an ambition perspective, like to say, like, what was selling that? Like, come on, you started with these cast of characters. And now you're saying you're going to completely flip it and put them on the back burner. and we're going to have white drug dealers? Yeah. And shipping. And shipping. Right.

Shipping. That's what this is going to be. And docks. Right. And docs. And intricacies of the shipping business. Yeah. Can I only imagine the notes from HBO for that one?

Oh. Yeah. The only thing I can't... Black characters? Can we bring those back? The only thing I think is that they were making so... Like, the ratings were so low. That gave them the shield to say, okay, go for...

They just let it happen. Goffin. Do whatever you want. It's not like we're banking on you anyway. Were you an Avon guy or a Marlow guy? Oh, Avon, Bob. far. Okay.

I'm sorry about Mala. I couldn't, I feel like they didn't, maybe this was an intentional creative choice. I didn't get enough from Molo to get into him like I wanted to.

I think it was an intentional choice. Yeah, yeah, right. Now I'm getting excited to just rewatch the entire thing. I still stand by this series finale, though. I'm telling you. I don't even remember it at this point. That's the thing.

Nobody, everyone is just like, yeah, season five and they throw it off because of the reporter, Scott Templeton, he's like staging or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Next up, the eternal sauce debate of ranch versus blue cheese continues on House of Carbs this week.

House and Juliette give their takes on the debate, ranch mini kegs, and a cool ranch derrita recipe I cannot in good conscious recommend, but House swears by. Okay, next. This is a big one. This sent the internet on fire. This is big, literally because... Literally big. Hidden Valley, the dressing brand, sells a keg filled with ranch dressing. It's 10 inches tall and it holds 5 liters of ranch dressing and it flows out of the tap like fine wine. It's like buying one of those mini kegs of beer, but with ranch dressing. Yeah. So that's an 11 out of 10 idea.

Very well done Hidden Valley mini ranch. I mean, ranch dressing. It's just a mini keg. Do you have a ranking of ranch dressings? Do you have brands that you are loyal to when it comes to the ranch dressing? I don't really. I know this is really controversial, but I'm more of a blue cheese girl. I'm sorry.

You're allowed. And I like ranch. I've very slowly had my standards eroded. So occasionally I'll dip a pizza crust and ranch, though that's not really the pure way to eat pizza. But I just, given the option, I prefer blue cheese. So, you know, that's just where I stand. So therefore, I'm not like a ranch connoisseur. Are you?

I wouldn't call myself a ranch connoisseur. I do appreciate ranch. and I hold ranch and blue cheese. I hold them equal. They are both wonderful for the jobs that they serve and the purposes that they serve. I like them equally on things that people have strong opinions about. I like them equally, for instance, on chicken wings. I like them equally on pizza.

I think blue cheese is a fine. Blue cheese in that dressing form as a dipping sauce is a okay on a nice slice of pepperoni pizza. the spice of the pepper, especially if it's like a nice, like, you know, robust pepperoni chunk kind of pizza on there. The ranch dressing is a nice cooling agent. Gives a little bit of a sweetness to cut the acidity of that pepperoni bite.

So not afraid of blue cheese on pizza. They obviously, you know, I don't love ranch on a cheeseburger. I do love blue cheese on a cheeseburger. But, you know, to me, They are each lovely in their own respective ways. Wow.

You're so diplomatic. Well, they both have the attributes and qualities that belong to them. And they're pretty distinct to me. I know that they get delivered in the same context. But they're pretty different from each other. It's true. And the way we enjoy them. Yeah.

Also, I think the blue cheese taste is much stronger. Like, if you're opting for blue cheese, it's like not just, it's not just addressing. It's a much, much more. It's rich. It's a rich kind of experience most of the time. Agreed. But I like Hidden Valley Ranch. I have had Hidden Valley Ranch. I stand by Hidden Valley Ranch. I think Hidden Valley Ranch, listen to this. This is something that I've been known to do before. If you get the right size bag, it can't be the tiny bag. Cool Ranch Doritos. Get yourself a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos like the three quarter size one. It doesn't have to be the big one because we're not pigs here. But get yourself like the three quarter.

order-sized bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. Open that sucker up. Get yourself a little Hidden Valley Ranch, pour it directly into the bag, providing a nice, fresh, cool coating over your cold, cool, ranch Doritos, and enjoy. Interesting.

I gotta try that. The House recommends. Up next, we're talking about a movie I've been super excited about. Lady Bird hit theaters earlier this month and is already garnering critical acclaim and Oscar buzz. Sean got to sit down with writer and director

Greta Gerwig to talk about the film, in this clip from The Big Picture. I spent so long working on the script for Lady Bird and Noah and I took so long writing the scripts for Francis Hahn, Mistress America, because we don't do any improvisation, and I don't do any improvisation once I'm on my set. And it needs to work as a piece of writing, and I think that is the standard.

So regardless of where things came from, it has to resonate on the page and then ultimately on the screen. And I think I spend so long on the script because that's the first test of is it working. I remember having people read the script and gauging their response. And they were having the response to the script that I wanted them to have the response to the movie. So I was like, okay, so the movie has a fighting chance of working because people told me they laughed a lot and they got really weepy at the end, which. is what I want that movie to do. So for me, the script needs to do it.

It's also the way you get great actors. You give them a nice piece of writing and tell them this is, now bring your talents over to this playing field. Noah was here last week, and I asked him about something similar, and he said something similar. And so you guys are both maybe open-mindedly militant about the script? Open-minded in the interpretation is up for grabs, and exactly how it works is up for grabs. but the words aren't. For me, in a way, that comes from my theater background. Theater was my first love,

and I first understood dramatic writing by reading plays. And plays are not flexible. You don't make it your own when you're doing Shakespeare. You figure out how it's going to work by using that language. So I think I always instinctually had that as the idea of how it should be done. done, not that you would never do any rewrites, but largely that the text is not flexible. Do you remember the first day you started writing Lady Bird? No, I don't remember the first day, but I do know there's a draft on my computer at the end of 2013.

So I think I was writing the big messy version in 2013. I think I was editing it and pounding it into shape in 2014. Because then by 2015, I was writing, I was. was raising money and looking for my producers and my financiers. It's not like it was the only thing I was doing, but I do find that giving myself a certain amount of time is valuable because it lets everything settle. It lets all your anxiety settle. It allows you to have the story kind of come out at you rather than imposing your will on the story. Out of curiosity, how many things did you start writing before you started filming Lady Bird? Did you start like a bunch of other things to see if there were other things you would do? Or was this always going to be the first thing

no matter what that you were in charge of writer-director? I think once I had a draft that was good, then I knew I was going to direct it because I'd always wanted to be a writer-director and I just knew that if I didn't do it now, I wasn't going to do it. Why do you say that? Because I felt that I had been preparing for it for a long time. I had been working as, you know, co-writer and a producer and an actor, and I'd done a lot of different kinds of films. Some of them were very low budget, so everyone was doing everything, and that was part of my film school. And then I'd been hanging out with anyone who would let me get close to the process of making films. So every film set for me became an opportunity to talk to directors and DPs, and

and production designers and costume designers about what they were doing and how they were doing it. So when I had this draft ready, I thought, it's time. You're not going to learn anymore by not doing it. There's no more lessons over there. It's officially the holiday season now where love is in the air, and jam sessions, Juliet and Amanda talk about

one of my personal favorite pairs, famous exes Chris Evans and Jenny Slate, and their potential reconnection. We're going to DTR and take a deep breath. Let's just run the clip first. Okay. So this is from Chris Evans' Twitter. It was posted last week.

So I'm going to read the tweet first. Okay. This is Dodger's Stuff Lion. He loves it. He brings it everywhere, talking about his dog's dog toy. If you press its paw, punk grammar's not quite right there, but we're going to go past it. He's primary colors, Amanda.

It's fine. Keep it moving. If you press the dog toys paw, it sings. Today, Dodger, the dog decided to join in it. So this is a video of Chris Evans's dog singing along with a dog toy. And I'm just going to give everyone a tip here to listen for any background noise that might be available. Oh.

It's magic. Yeah. Okay. You know whose voice that is. That's Jenny Slate. You know that laugh. A once in a lifetime laugh. That is Jenny Slate in the living room.

With the dog. With the dog, Chris Evans is comfortable enough to post this identifying video clip on Twitter. They're back on. I guarantee he didn't think it through first. There's no way he was like, okay, here's a sound of my girlfriend's voice in my cute dog video. I don't think he thought it through. I don't think he's that primary colors. He's lived in this world for a while, though.

I don't know. Have you never posted a video? You're like, fuck, I forgot that had sound? No. That happened to me. So. I'm hyper aware of the effect of technology and media has. had on our day-to-day lives, Julietette. I do this for a living. I don't know. I just feel like

that wasn't intentional. However, then once the cat was out of the bag, she did not take it down. She followed up with a great tweet. Yes. This was November 10th from Jenny Slate. My boyfriend does many dreamy and generous things, but number one in my mind right now is how he celebrates my new turtlenex lets me show, again, we're having a lot of trouble with apostrophe s's. Let's me show him my online shopping spoils and cheers me on. I just think these two are in love. This is, I got here too. And they're just like, just going for it. Just like, look, we love our dog. Look. I'm by his turtics and he still finds it sexy. Like, great. I have totally evolved my position on this because this is not black, backsliding. No, I think they're in love. This is 2.0.

I'm just like, am I, are we going to have a Chris Evans Jenny Slate wedding? I feel, I feel bashful for them. I know. It's, again, it's like really nice. Really, they're putting it on display in a way that will come back to haunt them almost certainly. But yeah, they seem like they're in love. They found love in a hopeless place. The break was hard for them and they got over it. And now they're building a life together with Dodger the dog. How do you feel about the phenomenon known as cuffing season?

Oh, that, yeah. Could we be witnessing cuffing season? It's definitely possible. And, you know, we could also just be witnessing their shooting schedules or such that they figured it out. Or are in Atlanta together still. I suppose we don't know where Dodger the dog is. Yeah. Yeah. That all seems possible. I still think they're in love. I do too. Maybe cuffing season brings out love. Maybe we're just being really, maybe we need to believe in this love right now.

Maybe. I found myself extremely ready to do that. Do you think he was like watching when Harry met Sally and he was like, when you realize you love someone, you want to spend the rest of your time with them, like the rest of your life with them starting like immediately or whatever he says. Yeah. So one magazine that's actually covered Chris Evans and his ability to be a great ex-boyfriend is Vanity. Fair. And this week's press box talks about Tina Brown, who recently released the Vanity Fair Diaries, which is a memoir about her time as editor-in-chief of the magazine. On Tuesday, the legendary editor, Tina Brown, published the Vanity Fair Diaries, her previously private chronicle of her years editing Vanity Fair. Tina happens to be my old boss. I remember.

We were roommates in the Lower East Side when you were working for Tina Brown. Yeah, at the Daily Beast. Yeah. Remember that? I remember it well. I remember a lot of really, really early mornings and a lot of really late nights. There was a stretch where I didn't see you very much. It was an amazing thing about Tina.

She's getting a round of tributes, big piece in the New Yorker this week. But yeah, when I would wake up in the morning an incredibly early hour, I would notice that she had emailed me at like 1230 after I had gone to bed and then also at 4.30 in the morning. So she had been emailing me after I went to sleep and before I went to sleep. and before I woke up. Simultaneously. I always loved that. I also when I met her when she was interviewing me

for the job in 2008, someone sent her some of my clips and she said, Brian, I like you, except for your unfortunate preoccupation with sport. Singular sport. I love that.

My other great memory of her is that she was always working, she always seemed to be pushing so fast, so furiously, you know, just trying to do so many things that her in her email, she eliminated verbs. She just didn't use verbs.

She was just like typing stuff at it. Let me give you an example. So one time I had a piece that I had edited by Mike Schaefer. And she wasn't familiar. It was really funny story. And I sent it to her, you know, the night before something. And she wasn't familiar with her and said, wasn't familiar with Mike. So she wrote back and said, this inspired who this and how it happened.

That was sort of teen it without verbs. I love that. It's an amazing week to think about her because I feel we're at the end of this era of the great well-paid taste-making Lincoln Town Car writing creature known as the magazine editor. Yeah. Graydon Carter stepping down after 25 years of Andy Fair. Sure. This giant Joe Hagan book about John Winter and what a colossus he was in his time. And this Delano went to her. still at a moss, but we're at the end of this, right? This is this, this is passing from the world,

the person that Tina Brown was and could be, and you couldn't even be that if you wanted to anymore. Yeah, it's really amazing. I mean, there's, there, I think, you know, you and I both came up through, you know, the New York media world in an era where we, I mean, it was already fading, but there was, but, you know, I, I don't, think anybody of our of our age bracket didn't you know in new york in those years didn't imagine themselves in Tina or gregan carter's corner office one day right i mean that was the job that everyone aspired to and as as you know is discussed in the in the new yorker profile uh Nathan teller's new yorker profile of Tina brown all of the stories are kind of up from the bootstrap stories

you know you sort of imagine yourself as this as this uh pretend that somehow achieves really the seat of power. And I think that, you know, they were holdovers from a not too far, not too long ago era. And this is what I think is really key in which reaching the heights of the literary or journalistic world was as good as being any other kind of superstar. Weirdly, right? Yeah. I mean, she was, she talked about there's a line in the New Yorker piece about she kind of apologizes

for all the celebrities in the 80s, you know, that she mentions in her. And she's like, I was the 80s. But it was also, I mean, yeah, this was the era of, you know, of famous writer as like holding court at the biggest clubs in the city. You know, I mean, this was, it was a real, it was, it was an aspirational moment, I think, in the journalism and just literary world at large in a lot of different ways. And, yeah, if it's the twilight of the magazine editor, it's also the twilight of the overpaid magazine writer. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Six-figure salary, book deal, movie deal after your pieces. And both, I mean, and Grigin Carter, who had been at Vanity Fair for the longest time, you know, had a stable of writers

who had been his, his writers forever. Spine, the Observer and everything. Yeah, the people that he, you know, he made into wealthy, successful people and Tina Brown the same way. Obviously, you know, Tina Brown was at Vanity Fair in a previous, you know, a previous iteration of Tina Brown. But yeah, I mean, she, her, her career is just really amazing. And I, and I, and I knew who she was when you were working for, but it took me, like, it wasn't, I mean, it just seems so alien that you would be working for someone like Tina Brown, right? Just this sort of like grand figure of publishing. And it's interesting now that we're, that it's already, like you said, the era is, the era's ending.

Another book talking about an iconic magazine is Sticky Fingers, The Life and Times of Yon Wener and Rollingstone magazine. In our last clip of the week, you'll hear Chris and Annie chatting with the author, Joe Hagan, on Paul McCartney's relationship with Rolling Stone. I remember going in, this is really maybe close to the beginning of the process, thinking nothing's going to come out of this. This will be totally canned stories and a lot of... And this was in person?

It was in person. I went to England, took a train. There was a station called Rye. It was near the channel. I went out to his studio. He had an office. It was amazing. Can I just say also, what is that like for you?

Because you're flying across the ocean. You're going to London. And in the back of your mind, do you just have it loaded if someone asks you what you're doing? You're going to say, I'm going to meet a beetle. Like, is it, what does that even feel? Well, I definitely felt it, you know, as a person who's just an incredible, obviously, fan of just, like everybody else in the world. Yeah. And I was doing other interviews while I was there.

with people you wouldn't have known about or not as famous. So when I was going out there, I was thinking to myself, well, if nothing comes out of this, I'll have met Paul McCartney, and what the hell, let's go. So I went. And so I was surprised to learn that he had a lot to unload, that he had had a kind of like years-long tension and resentment of Yon and Rolling Stone. What was the moment that you realized that the interview was going in a different direction than you had expected? I think, well, what happened was, In the book, I don't know if you've gotten this far, but there was a Polaroid that had been sent to Jan anonymously, care of Johann Weiner, that I found in Yon's archive. And it was from 1974, and it had Paul and John together in it,

kind of cavorting with Keith Moon and Linda McCartney in some kind of patio scenario. And underneath the white space on the Polaroid, it said, how do you sleep? Question mark, question mark, question mark. Oh, yeah. Which is an allusion to the Lennon song that was hitting McCartney. And so I pulled this out and then lots of things began to flow with he told me. Had you seen that image in a while? He knew exactly what it was. In May Pan, I've learned since, published a book of other Polaroids from this same period. Because what had happened, as you learned in the book, and Paul told me, which was that Yoko Ono had come to him and said, you know, John and I are broken up. He's out in L.A. going crazy.

The Nielsen era, it was the Lost Weekend era. She actually asked Paul to go act as an emissary and tell him that she would take him back. And so he goes to L.A. with Linda, and this whole scenario unfolds in which he sees Lennon. Now, the reason this was significant is it sort of portended, you know, John Lennon going back to New York and living in the Dakota. And then, but it also was sort of a period where they were going to repair their relationship a little bit after the breakup of the beach. And Rolling Stone had been really in the middle of the Beatles breakup. Yeah. In the John Lennon interview of 71, which is the epic interview of really the biggest rock and roll interview, Yon ever did by any measure.

And that was a very painful interview for Paul. It had sort of, it was putting salt in the wound about what had the breakup. And, you know, he, Paul recognized correctly that Yon and Rolling Stone were partisans for John Lennon in this whole scenario. But you would think, okay, maybe that was an isolated period. But this went on for the rest of the history of Rolling Stone in Paul's mind. That Lennon, that Rolling Stone and Jan, especially after he died, had turned John, had gone to work hand in glove with Yoko because they became social friends, Jan and Yoko, to make John Lennon the only beetle it mattered. The true genius.

The true genius. And in fact, Paul says in my interview in the book, you know, I just booked the studio. That's what it seemed like. And this went on to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, too. That became another issue, as you'll read later. Which Jan is the gatekeeper, self-appointed gatekeeper of essentially. That's right. And Paul felt like he got screwed over by Jan and then his own induction.

And so it's a real, you know, listen, I was thinking, obviously these things all happen in the 60s. Clearly, they're over it. They're not going to be. No, they never get over it. They're always sensitive flowers. They're artists. Sensitive flowers. Exactly.

Okay, that's a wrap on this week. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a great weekend. And remember, you can find the full-length versions of all these podcasts and subscribe at theringer.com slash podcasts.