The Press Box - Undermining Jimmy Carter's Presidency, Donald Trump's Looming Indictment, and Quentin Tarantino's New Film

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

Bryan and David start the pod by discussing a recent article about Jimmy Carter that some are using to discount his presidency. Next, they dive into Donald Trump's possible impending arrest, listen to Ron DeSantis's comments about it, and break down the logistical complications of indicting a former president and what this might do for Trump's reelection campaign (6:11). After the break, they discuss FDU's upset over Purdue in the NCAA tournament, the rumors around Quentin Tarantino's upcoming film, and the life of film critic Pauline Kael (27:09). David ends the pod by trying to guess this week's Strained-Pun Headline (38:30). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You can listen to This Blue Up on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David? Yes. There was a very interesting story on the front page of the New York Times yesterday. It's about former president Jimmy Carter, who is currently in hospice care. But more to the point, it's about an effort to undermine Jimmy Carter's presidency, or at least his re-election campaign in 1980. Not an ongoing effort.

Not an ongoing effort. The damage has been done. All right. Back in 1980, there were 52 American hostages being held in Iran. Carter, naturally, one of them released. Carter's camp came to think that Ronald Reagan, his opponent in the 1980 presidential election, was sending messages not to release the hostages because not having them released would help Reagan win. Reagan's campaign was sending messages to Iran asking them to not release the hostages.

hostages. Yes, and as Peter Baker's story says, saying essentially, we'll give you a better deal if you just wait a few months. Turns out the hostages were released shortly after Ronald Reagan became president. So of course, there was a lot of conspiracy theories and not just conspiracy theories, but a lot of thinking of this clearly was orchestrated somehow. Right. Well, a Texas Democratic politician named Ben Barnes has come forward to confess that he and John Connolly, yes, the John Connolly, who was Texas governor and in the limo with JFK in 1963, went on a tour of Middle East capitals delivering that message that Reagan would cut a better deal with the Iranians to release the hostages, going from government to government, making sure this message was

conveyed. So naturally, this is very, very interesting. It's a very interesting story that I recommend everyone read. It's also interesting because you and I know the idea of the deathbed confession in which someone's near the end of their life and say, boy, I've got something on my chest. I just have to say this before I shove off. Right. This is a slight twist on this because it's Jimmy Carter who is in hospice care. And as Ben Barnes tells Peter Baker the New York Times, I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter, put it on my mind, more and more and more. I just feel like we've got to get it down some way.

This is like all the like, not like in a straight line in a linear way, but like, you know, the conspiracy theorists that think that the still redacted FBI files from the Kennedy assassination or whatever or whatever else are like there's some connection to the Bush family that, you know, Bush senior was working in the, you know, whatever, FBI, CIA and or awaiting his death and then his children's death or whatever to release it. But this is not that. This is, yeah, this is a reporter reporting out a piece because someone's time is drawing near. Right.

Because someone thinks someone else's time is drawing near. Right. And I hate to even use the word conspiracy theory because this is one of those where the timing was so perfect. Conspicuous. Yeah. Conspicuous is an even better word that we knew. something probably happened, but there'd been investigations and nothing had turned up. But now this guy is coming forward and saying before President Carter goes,

I want to make sure that the world knows this. And I guess the effect is that as we remember President Carter and that that process has already been happening in newspapers. If you've read lots of big pieces about his presidency and stuff like that, that this will be part of it somehow. Yeah. we're getting this into the story of his presidency as we sit down to remember it, I guess. I mean, I guess it does have a certain, it has a different flavor, a different tone than if you did it immediately in the aftermath of him dying. It might seem slightly more revisionist in a slightly more, I don't know, political way at that point.

I'm not even sure if it would feel that much different. But I guess it is nice to sort of correct the record to, you know, tell the story that, that re-legitomizes Carter's legacy, especially to, you know, a generation of readers for whom Jimmy Carter is either the guy who, you know, builds the houses for Habitat for Humanity or is known only by the Simpsons calling him history's greatest monster. So, you know, this is nice that they would do this for, that Peter Baker would do this for him on such a platform. Ben Barnes is a Democrat.

So his explanation is if I had confessed this at an earlier time, then I would have been seen as this traitor to my own party. Because I was going around and helping somebody, John Connolly, who was a Democrat turned Republican,

undermine the re-election campaign of a fellow Democrat. So that's why I have waited until this moment. That's why he didn't do it immediately. But then why is he waited until this moment? There's a different thing. Yeah.

Just thought it was interesting. A little bit of a different take on a end-of-life confession. Coming up on the press box, David, Donald Trump, at least according to Donald Trump, is going to be indicted and arrested in Manhattan. What does Ron DeSantis have to say about this? Plus, Quentin Tarantino is writing a movie about movie critics. Will it include any bravura performances? All that and more on the press box,

a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and Christopher Sutton sitting in for Erica at the production helm today. We have a potential indictment coming down. A former president Donald Trump, David, as the only in journalism word has it, an indictment is looming.

It's looming. It's looming. And free agency, see, rumors are swirling, but indictments are looming. In this case, the indictment is being pursued by the Manhattan District Attorney. It involves that famous hush payment made to Stormy Daniels by Michael Cohen, Trump's old fixer, who was later reimbursed by Trump himself. Did you see the post Donald Trump had on true social?

Yeah. It reads like this, the far and away, and that, by the way, is an ampersand between far and away. The far and away leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States of America will be arrested on Tuesday of next week. Protest, take our nation back. The first question reporters had was, wait, Tuesday?

You know it's going to be Tuesday, as in tomorrow? The New York Times says one person with knowledge of the matter said that Mr. Trump's advisors had guessed that it could happen around then and that someone might have relayed that to the former president. Fact-checking processes that... That weirdly makes more sense than the logical conclusion I had drawn previously, which was just in the absence of knowing that,

it was just that, you know, Trump made up Tuesday to sort of encourage people to protest immediately, or, you know, maybe that would naturally occur then on Sunday or Monday or whatever, or Tuesday. But it does kind of follow. what we feel like we imagine about Trump that they would have said, I don't know, on Tuesday, next Tuesday, Tuesday a month from now, I don't know, and he would just say immediately take the truth social to say Tuesday. It's just wild, right? That, I mean, obviously this is a very

narrow investigation. Well, the potential indictment is the result of a fairly narrow piece of the investigation. And it's certainly not going to come down. It doesn't seem like there's any way it's going to come down Tuesday. That being tomorrow as we're saying this. There seems to be more another interview of to be done. And then some deliberation after that, according to the experts, which I read very quickly on Twitter. But in a bigger sense, obviously Trump's entire candidacy is set at odds not with his payment to Stormy Daniels, but his incitement of an interruption on January 6th after he was previously voted out of office.

And it just seems, I don't know if it's perfectly fitting or just beggars belief or some combination of the two that he's sort of trying to do the same thing again now in what is, again, I guess, an effort to get him elected, right? I mean, listen, whether whatever the motivation is here, you have to be, I guess, you know, have a direct line to Trump to really understand. but it does seem like there's a, it's pretty easy to intuit that a big part of his current candidacy is a functional defense against arrest, you know, against indictment, because if you can politicize it, then it sort of insulates him from it. Yes. That's what we heard back in October when he declared, when he was thinking about declaring. But it's all, but it, but it just seems to be such a, just a mind-boggling step to go right

back to the well of not only am I trying to insulate myself, but on the off-change, that someone tries to arrest me. I want to make sure that there are riots in the street. Yeah. Take our nation back. This is not... I mean...

And if he knows... Sorry to interrupt. And if he knows that he... The Tuesday is not the real day. And again, who knows if that's the case. But if he's just sort of doing it to show... to flex the muscles, if you will.

That's not exactly like, you know, shooting somebody on 6th Avenue. Was that their quote? But it is like going out Sixth Avenue and waving your gun around and shooting off a couple rounds in the air, right? I mean, that's the point. Or what if I send a whole bunch of people to Sixth Avenue?

Yeah. And one's wearing a headdress that has horns on it. Yeah. I believe he was politely escorted into the Senate. You've been watching some documentaries, I see. Yeah. No, it is. And by the way, did you notice many of the Republican responses where this is a witch hunt,

this is politicized, et cetera, et cetera, but we don't need to protest. or let's be very careful about what protest means. Yeah. Even among Trump allies. So saying no, no, we line up with the former president. We feel this is a politically charged prosecution, but we would also like to depart from the former president in calling for that kind of protest. Yeah.

Because we're old enough to remember that, even if we haven't ever really held Trump accountable ourselves, this meeting the Republicans for what happened on January 6th. I would like to say a couple of things about this. First of all, can we just call off the predictions about Trump's political future? Like every cable news segment will end with, what do you think this does for Donald Trump's campaign for the Republican nomination? We don't know.

We really don't know. Remember when everything, every legal machination was going to be the end of Donald Trump's political career. And then it wasn't. So then we as a media community overcorrected and thought that nothing could ever touch Donald Trump, that he was this horror movie character who would just come back for sequel after sequel no matter what happened to him. Yeah.

And then, and so we almost discounted any legal rumbling. I'm trying to think of another word for machination here. And just said, oh, it's never going to matter. And now I feel like we just, we just don't know. There's no need for a prediction. We have no idea what this is going to do to the 20, 24 presidential campaign. Would you prefer all the news segments, the news channel segment, sign off with, and we don't know what this will do.

And Lord, Lord knows what this will do for Trump's reelection chances. I think we just don't need to ask the guest because the guest doesn't know. Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of interested in hearing theories, I guess. So maybe I am the consumer for this. kind of thing, but nobody knows. It means any idea. It's sort of like if you're on

sports radio right now to talk football or the NBA, they always, they close every segment with who you got in the NCAA tournament, right? It's like, that's not what you're there to talk about, but yeah, that's a fun outro, right? That should just be like, that should just be

instead of actually trying to analyze Trump's election chances, just being a guy, who you got in the Republican primary? All right. Talk to you soon. Thanks for coming on. I'm going to end every press box interview with that. Just a little curveball. I forgot to ask Adam Gopnik about that one.

One Republican we've been waiting to hear from, David, is Trump's potential rival for the 2024 nomination, Ron DeSantis. He said nothing for a few days. The Trump war room account, apparently speaking of DeSantis, warned that, quote, history will judge their silence, the silence of the people who have not condemned this investigation. DeSantis, well, as we say here on the press box pot, he broke his silence today. Let's listen to what he said.

The Manhattan District Attorney is a Soros-funded prosecutor. Say what you will about Ron DeSantis. Are we calling him Meatball, Ron? Is that name made a comeback? I think we may need to check with Trump War Room to see if that's still the... Say what you will about Meatball. ballron. But he knows how to

what's the more obvious thing than a dog whistle? He knows how he knows that a dog whistle to the extremes of the Cookey Right as well or better than anybody, or at least he has no shame about it. Whereas some national politicians outside of

our ex-President Trump seem to have some level of shame. You know, I thought when we just when we spoke yesterday about covering this topic, he hadn't said anything, and I thought we were going to come here and have a conversation about the necessity or lack thereof of someone in disandist's position of commenting on a fake arrest that, you know, like an imaginary arrest or a, you know, hypothetical arrest. You thought he was going to do one of those head coach interview things where he's like,

I don't do hypotheticals? Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean. That would have been fine. I mean. Got a focus on the opponent today, which is something happening in the Florida ledge. Normally when we, yeah, normally when we, when we, when we, when we talk. talk about people running against Trump. We say things like, you can't take half measures, right?

You can't just, you can't sort of like embrace, do the, do the Ted Cruz thing. We're like sort of embracing him and pushing him away at the same time, right? I mean, you have to be willing to say Trump is a terrible choice for president. That's why I'm running because otherwise you're undermining your own campaign, right? It does, it almost seems like the Trump campaign is, is veering unsteadily into a similar territory. Because what they're trying to say when they say history, will, whatever, frown on people who don't say anything. And Trump juniors out there, you know, saying they're taking names or I don't know if

that was Jack Pacea, whoever it was. It seems like they're basically trying to say no one's candidacy is legitimate except for Trump's. You're not allowed to run. If you want to be, if you want any of us to embrace you, you're not allowed to run. But they won't say that, right? The Trump campaign is clearly, like, the best thing that's happened to Ron DeSantis over the past two months is the fact that he's had Trump's ire directed it.

him. That Trump has sort of nominated DeSantis as the other option, right? Because DeSantis, despite all of his posturing and political, you know, grandstanding, various shenanigans isn't necessarily doing all that for himself, right? At least certainly not on a national scale. We talked to how he makes a lot of appearances on Fox News. But, you know, he's doing his thing. But I feel like Trump's attention to him for him is doing just as much. It seems odd that you would expect that for. from him, but not have the gall to say he shouldn't even be considered a candidate. Because he, I mean, Trump has said he'd be no one without me, but he doesn't, he's not actually trying to disqualify him, which doesn't seem like it should be beyond the pale for Trump.

Yeah. I just guess if you force all the Republicans to say that there is no legitimate basis for prosecuting Donald Trump. Maybe that's more useful. And you also force all the Republicans to just praise Trump generally. How are they going to beat Trump in a primary election. Because that's what he's done here, right? Like everything has been about you have to, you have, you cannot disavow me or my presidency because you need to peel off some of my voters

to win the nomination, not mention a hold all of them basically to win the presidency in November 2024. So it just becomes like this game of, well, you know, of course he doesn't deserve to be, you know,

doesn't deserve to be disqualified because he's been indicted. Well, okay, well, where are you going to get him on? You know, where are you going to run? Well, and also, I mean, by virtue of the fact that almost everything Trump has done since he was elected president has been investigated, you know, if you give him a pass, if you say, you know, he shouldn't be any legal jeopardy for any one thing, then Trump can easily turn around any debate and just say, I don't know how you can complain about that. They looked into that. They tried to send me to jail for that and you told me you said it was fine right like every like there's nothing there's no critique you can have of trump except his like demeanor that isn't something that like

you that he can say you pardon him for if you give him a blanket pardon that's what's so weird did you hear the rest of the desanta statement let's play one more clip of this because after he got through with doing the soros thing which sounded like chat gpt had written you know please come up with a Republican response to the Trump indictment. He then said something a little more specific. Here's that. You're talking about this situation with, and look, I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair.

I just, I can't speak to that. So that was kind of weird. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it seemed like he was very intent on making sure that we remember there was a hush payment to a porn star at that heart. You got that from that clip? those particular words.

It's not every day that one encounters a news story about a hush payment to a porn star or a potential presidential nominee discussing a hush payment

to a porn star. That still feels very pretzled up to me. He doesn't deserve to be indicted. But oh, by the way, don't forget this thing that he doesn't deserve

to be indicted for because I think that is partially disqualifying to him running for the Republican nomination one more time. It's a kind of Kind of a ricochet there that you're going for that I'm not sure it's going to work.

Is it to have your cake and eat it too? Well, have your pudding and eat it too? What's the right joke to be making here? It's funny because he just came off of this weird DeSantis, this kind of bizarre public statement where he said he was raised in Florida, but he was raised with the values of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Did you see that one? No, that's good. It was like Jacksonville by...

All those ring states. Yeah. Like Jacksonville by Burr. and Midwestern by the grace of God or whatever. Dick still notched New Hampshire is in my blood too. It seems like he's like a man who's constantly trying to have his cake and eat it to, but somehow ends up with the cake on his face. I'm not sure I'm not sure to reflect poorly on it.

At this point, I guess it's on Trump. I mean, you kind of put it back in Trump's court to say, I don't accept that apology because you were, you know, to made fun of me. me for having a hush payment to a porn star, then he gets it out there, right? It keeps the cycle going. But, I mean, I think the best case for DeSantis at this point is this sort of like cold war between the two nominees sort of continues apace, right? I mean, it's, like I said, it's only been sort of positive for him to be discussed in the same breath as Trump thus far. It was interesting when they were demanding that DeSantis respond to the indictment because in a funhouse mirror way, that

kind of mimicked what the press did for the entire Trump president. presidency where Trump would tweet a thing or say a thing. And then you'd go to the halls of Congress and be like, all right, Senator, what is your response to the leader of your party saying blank? And then Mitch McConnell would get this weird look on his face and be like, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, now we're doing that, but with DeSantis. And DeSantis is again, not saying, I think it's really terrible. It's obviously I should be the nominee, not him. He's saying, eh. Yeah. And by putting the focus on George Soros and on out of control liberal prosecutors, you know, who are hyper-focused on the wrong things, you can kind of, you know, choose your battles, I guess, within the context

of nominally defending Trump. But it does start a very weird precedent. I mean, maybe this is the lesson. If you want me to co-sign everything that you want, you know, if you want me to speak on anything that you demand I speak on, well, that I'm going to do it my way. Because otherwise, precedent is, you know, Trump could tweet out tomorrow or, sorry, put on truth social tomorrow, you know, uh, Nancy Pelosi says I shouldn't be president. What do you have to say about this, Ron DeSantis, you know, and then Ron DeSantis has, well, I, I'm not saying you should be, shouldn't be president, but, uh, you know, whatever, you know, you can't respond to, you can't, you can't agree to respond on everything that Don Jr, you know, puts the bricks to you on

or whatever. But I think the larger point is still the operative one. Donald Trump, remain president, won the nomination again, and retains his standing among Republicans because he scared everyone away from opposing him on just about anything. So we can say pick your battles, but as long as he has this hold, not only over the Republican rank and file, but over actual Republican candidates who are running against him. Yeah. I would just say, like, I want to see how somebody breaks. through that or pulls off this weird act where they were simultaneously saying, I support Donald Trump,

but I also don't think Donald Trump should be the nominee. If it ends up negatively affecting DeSantis in his campaign, and I firmly, you know, think that it certainly might. In some ways, this is the answer to your question from last week to the week before about whether or not DeSantis can run an entire presidential campaign without going on any, you know, news channel outside of Fox, you know, the answer might be no. And if so, it's, I mean, it's, it's not, it hasn't looked like a totally ineffective campaign strategy to this point, but if going on Fox means that your questions are dictated in part by what Trump has put on truth social that day, then it's really going to, that could really hurt a campaign, right? Whereas, you know, the previous dissentists,

desanti of the world, your Scott Walker or whoever else are out there on, you know, non-right-wing news media and, I mean, did not sequester themselves to Fox News. And so they were, you know, they answered questions that I think by most accounts would made them seem more presidential, right? You're not there in the mud with Trump.

Does the soft ban that Fox News apparently has would Trump apply to true social posts? I actually didn't watch since he's put out that post, but I would assume that they touched on it. the impending arrest of a president. Speaking of which, this is really Tira incognita, as you can imagine,

there is a whole process that will have to happen if Trump is indeed indicted about just getting him into Manhattan criminal court. I mean, through spectators, through its security,

all those kind of things. Then there's a process that would happen inside, according to the New York Times. He would presumably, we think, be photographed and fingerprinted there's a question open question about whether he would be handcuffed in such an instance or where he would be held while waiting his appearance in court.

There's a secret service agent with Trump at all times. It's afforded to him as a former president. I heard on MSNBC this morning that if he's booked, his secret service agent would be with him during the process. I don't know if the secret service agent is also going to be in the photo. just like one shoulder in the shot off to the side. Another funny phrase I heard on MSNBC today was Donald Trump, no stranger to legal trouble, which was an interesting turn of phrase because is there anything on earth that

Donald Trump isn't a stranger to? I'm sorry, I mean, is a stranger to, right? Like Donald Trump has experienced everything. thing. Yeah. It's also such a weird point to make because he is a stranger to actually facing the consequences of legal trouble, right? I mean, he's, he is more a stranger than that, probably than you or I, who have had to, like, appear in court to contest traffic fines, you know, like, whatever. Like, Donald Trump is more of a stranger, I would think, than most of us, to anything approaching an arrest or anything of that sort. So, yeah, weird, weird choice of phrase.

Coming up in 30 seconds, David, Quentin Tarantino has a new movie that he has written, that he is filming this fall. Is it about a journalist? But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

Send your nominees to at the Pressbox pod where they are always, always gratefully received. We had some big college basketball news from your part of the world this weekend, David, No, not Princeton. Oh, that's one level of Cinderella. But up there in beautiful Madison, New Jersey, a certain number 16 seed captured a nation's heart. Fairly Dickinson beat number one seed Purdue.

First round of the NCAA tournament, it's only the second time that has ever happened with a number 16 seed. It was a very overworked Twitter joke to pun on the names, the two teams, that game. Fairly big upset. Fairly ridiculous. And then on the losing side, spoiler makers and per don't.

I just love a low energy pun when you change one syllable. Love it. Like we were kids. I'd be like, yeah, there's no football that's crappier on this earth than that in the South worst conference.

Thanks to Marissa Matthew Shoneman and John Sloan. If you're in favor of New Jersey upsets, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, the notebook dumped up, David. There is a new Quentin Tarantino movie that is being circulated around Hollywood.

Boris Kit had the story in the Hollywood reporter. It's called the movie critic. Apparently it is going to film this fall and according to Kit, sources described the story as being set in late 1970s Los Angeles with a female lead at its center. It is possible the story

focuses on Pauline Kale, one of the most influential movie critics of all time dot dot dot. In the late 1970s Kale had a very brief tenure working as a consultant for Paramount, a position she accepted at the behest of actor Warren Beatty.

So after getting over your disappointment that this movie is not about Peter Travers, what do you think of Quentin Tarantino's The Movie Critic? Tarantino is a great filmmaker, obviously, and also just a master at working the press. I mean, for someone who is filmed, I mean, he's not exactly what you'd call prolific, right? I mean, he's obviously been, he's also produced,

he obviously produced movies very steadily since his, you know, kind of mainstream debut, but it seems like he's made about twice as many movies as he has. because I feel like we're always in a Tarantino movie news cycle, right? Yeah. That there's the, you know, there's the, the, the, the script is written is very rarely cause for a news cycle, right? And then, you know, well, we're used to casting news and that kind of stuff.

But for this, for his sorts of movies, I mean, it just seems like from the, from the, from the, from the, from the, from the, just the puriation of it all the way through until, you know, the Oscar season following the release of the movie, it's just nonstop. I think it'd be a good movie. I think that it's an interesting take. I haven't really been paying attention

to that much of the sort of scuttle butt around it. But I think my immediate reaction was if this is indeed going to be his last motion picture film, which is he has stated outright, I think, in the past, that this would be the last one. He said he's going to make 10.

And this would be number 10. 10 is, as Kit says, if you count the Kill Bill movies is one movie, which I think Tarantino does. Anyway, proceed. I don't know that there's any way around it, but you kind of, you know, this seems a little bit low wattage for what I would hope the grand finale of the, of the, you know, Tarantino Uvro would be. But that's being said, maybe it's perfect because I can't imagine the sort of chattering class, ourselves included having more to discuss on this one than something a little bit more,

I don't know, action-packed. You're saying it feels a little downbeat for the guy who made Pulp Fiction. Yeah. And Jackie Brown once upon a time in Hollywood, but it would make for a perfect press box segment. Exactly. Yeah. So I am interested in the whole idea of Quentin Tarantino stopping, which he's talked about at different points in his career. He said this about a decade ago.

I want to stop at a certain point. Directors don't get better as they get older. usually the worst films in their filmography are those last four at the end. Yeah. It's interesting because you and I invented the old guy still got a joke because of the absolutely opposite impulse that almost every creative person has. Yeah. Which they are going to make stuff and make stuff and make stuff and it's going to get worse

and worse. And then you have the press sitting there being like, boy, if we could just have one more great Steven Spielberg moving. one great Marty Scorsese movie, one last great John La Cary novel that reminds us of the greatness of Tinker Taylor, you know, we do this. And he's saying, no, no, no,

I don't want to be that guy. And I'm going to tell you in advance that I don't want to be that guy. I'm going to make one more of them, I'll walk away. Well, I think for a lot of the old guys who still have it, there are certainly people who are just, you know, just putting in innings, you know, just whatever.

I mean, but I'd say most of the great, the true greats still think that they're producing great work when they're, if Tarantino is correct. Do we think so? Well, who knows? But if you were to be correct, there's, I'm sure that a lot of those directors believe themselves to be making the greatest art of their career when, you know, history may, may deem that incorrect. Did Robert Altman say a Prairie Home Companion is, is next to Nashville my best movie?

Was that, you think he was feeling? that all the way to the very end? I don't know. No, but we're also talking about... I think they're trying to chase past glory. I think they're trying to hang into the game until they can recapture it, maybe. Yeah, and I think that, you know,

anyone that's had that level of success, they feel that there's a little magic built into the process, right? I mean, I'm sure that I'm sure that there's some that some directors can point at their greatest movie and say, I knew the moment I said cut, that that was going to be a masterpiece. And there's probably some that would look back,

at it and say all my movies feel the same to me until I watched them five years later and then I'm like oh that one was not as good as the other one until Paul and kale reviewed it in the New Yorker's yeah so I'm not sure that you would and listen I guarantee regardless that Tarantino at some point in the next 10 years of his life will have an idea that he will believe to be worthy of his time right it's not like he's been so so so discerning I think part of what makes I mean discerning is the wrong word but I think part of what makes Tarantino such a vital and interesting filmmaker is he'll is that when you hear of a Tarantino movie, this one was a great example.

You don't immediately say, that's going to be the best Tarantino movie ever. But it's the way that he, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the way that that idea gets flushed out

into a full movie that really makes it magical. I guarantee that he'll think of something. There have been people saying he's moving to television, that that would be the sort of, you know, cop out. I'm going to keep doing stuff.

Obviously, built into this is that he's not going to go broke. He's so many lots of money off of the movies that he's made and could and and knows full well that he can continue to be incredibly wealthy if he was just making income from like script doctoring and you know doing whatever else that he wanted to do on the side without being an autour is in the way that he has been way he's going to quit making movies and he's just going to ghost rewrite other people's movies as it wouldn't me that's what his background did but no but he talked about writing star trek for a while or whatever

that we had that totally that's a story in and of itself but like you know he is other ways to make money that don't involve him being, you know, he can still work without being a film by Quentin Tarantino, Quentin Tarantino. But yeah, it's, it's, I don't know. I mean, I think the best thing that could happen for this movie is the, you know, conversation about whether or not it's his last movie. I mean, that would be the case of any of them. Oh, my gosh.

I'm not talking about the film critic in particular. But yeah, this one in particular, well, I, I, I, I think that it's somebody once said, and this is probably on a, probably not someone I should even be quoting. I don't even remember. But I remember hearing long ago on one of these like freakonomic style shit podcast that like, you should always order the thing that sounds least good on the menu, on the menu of a very good restaurant because it's the thing that they're so confident about that they didn't try

to like, they didn't try to overstate in the description. Probably nonsense. But the point I'm trying to make is of all that, like the, the first blurb you read about a new Tarantino movie. This is the one that I'm probably least enthralled with, but also because of that, I'm sort of most excited to see because how it becomes a Tarantino movie is there's the most room for innovation. I agree. I agree. I'm very intrigued. By the way, doesn't this is my last film feel like this is my last heavyweight title bout or this is my last wrestling match? Mm-hmm. Meaning, thanks for the, thanks for bringing into the wrestling world so that I understand it.

No, part of what makes the boxing retirement so singular is that boxers never live up to it. But part of the reason why they retire in the ring and often end up going back on it is because the cameras are only on them live when they're standing in the ring. Right. Like that is the moment that they have the world's attention such as it is. Tarantino can announce his retirement six years from now and it will still get attention, right? It's like he has more cameras following him. He has more access to media than I think a lot of pro fighters do. But if you want to say the best time when the most people are watching,

I mean, it would probably be when your movie's coming out. Or when you're accepting the Oscar for it, that would be, excepting the Oscar would be the best time to renege on your retirement. If you just made a big deal on the retirement, you get the best, the best director Oscar as a sort of honorarium. And then you're like, I never actually said that I was done. Yeah, I got 10 more in me. Yeah.

I'm halfway home. Surprise. That'd be one of the greatest Oscar speeches of all time. I am told David by a source close to the process that this movie might not actually be about Pauline Kale. Was it just an assumption that it was about her because of the time period and the gender? I think it's an educated guess that it's about Pauline Kale because of the L.A. setting in the time period.

But can we use this as a segue to talk a little bit about Pauline Kale? Please. We had her, a couple of her volumes kicking around our apartment back in the early 2000s. Did you read much Pauline Kale? No. I mean, I did read from those books, but they were yours. And that was, you know, pulling the curtain back to our friendship and relationship. That was definitively your territory, right?

So that was, if you have Pauline Kale thoughts, I seed the floor. It's interesting. I loved reading those at the time. I found myself reading them less, I think, these days, just going back and looking at him. She is obviously a wonderfully talented writer. Anybody who writes about Yoda and uses the phrase he looks like a wanton and talks like a fortune cookie

obviously has a gift. Reading her pans nowadays. a lot of them feel like just massive overkill. Yeah. And they go on for thousands and thousands of words. And sometimes I feel like I'm reading a substack essay where I was like, you know, the first 1,500 words of that were dynamite. And now we're into overtime here or double or triple overtime.

And we're just, we're just going and going and going. And you don't like this movie. It's very clear. You have a very serious problem with this movie, but I don't know if that supports this many words. And so sometimes I find myself kind of going, okay, I'm good. The L.A. part of her career is really interesting. She was brought to L.A. into the movies by Warren Beatty.

It was about almost exactly halfway through her New Yorker tenure in 1979. I was reading Brian Kellow's biography of her today, which I recommend anybody who's interested in Pauline Kale. She got paid something about like $600,000 a year adjusting for inflation, which was needless to say way more than she was making at the New Yorker. She took a leave of absence at the New Yorker, but Kellos says that people he talked to say she was really moving into a different part of her career where she was going to help shape the movies. Not just be a critic, not just be the movie critic, but have a hand in what kind of movies get made. then she came out here to LA and it turns out like it does for a lot of people that she did not have the influence she wanted to have. She was unable to get movies made. Warren Beatty, there's a whole speaking of conspiracy theory is not quite to the Jimmy Carter level,

but there was a whole notion that Warren Beatty had brought her to Hollywood to get her to stop reviewing movies. Like she had been neutralized. This was this critic and she had a big influence back then, right? more than most critics do now. I know what we'll do. We'll give her a salary and we'll give her this job and then she won't pan our movies anymore. I don't know if that's true, but that was certainly going around at the time.

She wound up at Paramount working for Don Simpson, the Don Simpson who made Beverly Hills cop and top gun. She's about the least Pauline Kale person you could ever imagine. She also tried to dissuade Warren Beatty from making the movie Reds. according to Kello. That would have been kind of an interesting quirk in history. So I don't know.

It's funny. I mean, I think of that, if not as a Tarantino project, it's an interesting project for somebody because it's not, here is Pauline Kale writing a review, which is cool, but doesn't sound like the stuff of drama.

But here is the film critic being brought to L.A. Out of criticism to work with the people. she was reviewing, often savagely reviewing. And here is her put on the other side. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, that's it. Yeah.

There's a tension there for somebody, for something. Obviously, it's been written about a million times, but I don't know. Something there. Quinn Tarantino, his last movie. I can't wait. At least until he becomes the Rick Flair of cinema, making movies all the way to the end. I would rather Rick Flair come back

than have every interview be about how he regrets retiring and just trying to get someone to talk him into coming back. So, yeah. A couple of only in journalism words. We're not doing this bit anymore, but people keep sending them in. Doug Newkirk valued listeners, sends in one from the Chicago Tribune,

it's Bisset. We had Bisset as an only in journalism word. No, but it's a great one. Talking about former mayor Lori Lightfoot beset by problems, her administration.

And then Jason Gay, checking in from vacation, suggests Steinies. It's a headline from the high desert star out here in the California desert, County Steinies glamping resort.

Have you ever heard it pronounced Stimmies? So I looked this up before we got on the air. I'd be honest. Stimies was Stimies is my go-to. Oh, really?

But I was talked into stymies. Stymies is how I say it. Stymies is how I would say it or I'd say it. The only reason that I bring it up is because I immediately thought of hearing people say Stimis and sort of taking note of it, which means it's not just in journalism. I hear people say it. Now, maybe I'm hearing people say it on news shows or something, and that shouldn't count. But yeah, not a lot of stymie going on in your day-to-day life. Do we need Craig Gaines to come back in for a copy editor, you make the call?

Maybe so for the pronunciation or just the usage? Craig knows all. Do you think that any, no, you know, you say that, but like, defense is stymie offensive players in all kinds of sports, right? We've heard announcers say that. Sure. Okay. Is that journalism? Oh, I don't know.

It's journal. I think it's journalist writing. Nobody says, you know. Cowboys played great today, but at the end of the day, their offense was stymied. You only read that in sports writing. Speaking of which, it's time for David Shoemaker, guess, is the strained pun headline. Yeah. Last Thursday's headline, David, about the virtues of former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan was Hogan, colon, hero.

Today's headline comes to us from valued listener, MachuV. it's from the AP it's about the adorable animal known as the Nutria I actually don't know how adorable a Nutri is but there's a family A rat right? Yeah exactly

There's a family in Louisiana who fell in love with a 22 pound Nutria what the AP calls a beadyed orange tooth rat-tailed sweetheart of a Nutria but the local government down there,

which I believe is the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, was going to take the Nutri away and take it to the zoo because you are not allowed to own that as a pet. But there was a last minute ruling, David, that said it did not have to go to the Nutriot

it did not have to go to the Baton Rouge Zoo. It could stay with the family. Right in the nick of time, David. What was the AP's strain pun headline? Last second. Neutri. Oh, God. Right in the nick of time.

What kind of animal might a nutria be? A rodent, a rodent. Just in the nick of time. Whoa. We almost lost it. Close call. Close one. Dang.

Dang. Not a... Where are we going here? Not a moment. Without a rodent to spare? Not a rodent too soon. Not a rodent to say... Okay, that's great.

Doesn't really make any sense, but... Good pun. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Christopher Sutton. Thank you, Chris. Back later this week. And then back with David next week for more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.