The Rewatchables - ‘All the President’s Men’ With Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: November 8, 2018

The Ringer's Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan dive deep to uncover the details of the Watergate scandal as they rewatch the 1976 political thriller ‘All the President’s Men’ starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman and directed by Alan J. Pakula. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Rwatchables is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. That is the presenting sponsor of the Bill Simmons podcast. If you want to check out ZipRecruiter. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. They are the best at both hiring and helping people hire. Don't forget to check out the Ringer.com. Don't forget to check out all of our awesome Ringer podcast on the Ringer Podcasts Network, including the Big Picture, our new movie podcast with Sean Fentasy.

Hey now. You dickheads, you did top westerns. You started kind of doing no country for old men. you're on the rewatchables corner, you stepped on there. You stepped on it. You dipped your toes in the rewatchables water with no country for old men. I didn't appreciate it. Everyone was thirsty for that water, though.

That's why. Where'd the rewatchables go? We got to do that movie next year in 2019. Coming up. Is there anywhere you don't smoke? All the president's men right now. All the president's men. The story of the two young reporters who cracked the Watergate conspirators.

who cracked the Watergate conspiracy. White House. Howard Hunt, please. They stumbled into Leeds. Certainly, it comes as no surprise to you that Howard was with the CIA. No, no, surprise at all. And piece by piece,

they solve the greatest detective story in American history. Is there a cover-up? Don't you understand what you're on to. Mitchell knew? Of course, Mitchell knew. At times, it looked as if it might cost them their jobs. You guys were about to write a story

that says the former chance. Attorney General, the highest ranking law enforcement officer in this country is a crook. Their reputations. Why is the post trying to do it? I don't know. Perhaps even their lives. All right, the rewatchables is back. Special edition.

We're coming back with a full slate for 2019 that I've planned out and not shared with either of these two guys. Yep. But we're going to come back a couple more times of 2018. There's some good in. anniversary is coming up. This one we want to do. It's election week. We had the election. Taping this on a Wednesday. The election was yesterday. Kind of a political vibe. A little bit of a conspiracy vibe. It seemed like the perfect time to do the oldest movie we have done on the rewatchables. Oh, is that right? Yeah. I think this came out before Jaws. Right around the same time.

Was Jaws 75 or 76? I think Jaws is 75. Oh, crap. Second oldest one. All right. Jaws is One of the top two oldest movies we've ever done. This is a fascinating movie because not only has it not gone away, it's actually gained steam. And I've become convinced that the cable movie channels are showing it over and over again ever since Trump got elected as some sort of FU to some degree. But let's start here. Everyone has a Watergate phase who does this for a living. Mine was right after college. I read every book.

I watched all the presidents spent over and over again. I just completely dove head first into the whole thing. It's one of the greats. It's one of the great deep dives you can do. Did you have a Watergate phase, Chris Ryan? This movie is my Watergate phase.

So I think I didn't read the books. You didn't make final days, all that stuff. I didn't do any of the books or anything like that. I was never like a big Nixon kid growing up. I think that I'm like right around this. I'm kind of at a perfect age for this movie because I don't remember it happening so I don't have any like

I don't need it to I didn't need it to completely match history or what I remembered from seeing it in the papers but I'm just I'm old enough to remember how newspapers worked how it felt like to get your news that way what it you know all the ways in which we were communicating with media back then

all felt really familiar to me when I saw this movie Sean Fantasy did you have a Watergate phase I think I probably just had a little bit of a kind of a gateway acid trip off of this movie. This was probably the first time aside from a U.S. history class that I got interested in it. I took a high school journalism class, I remember. And as in all high school journalism classes, they showed this movie and set it up to be the paragon of journalism that you could aspire to, which I don't think is

necessarily the message of the movie that we can talk about that. I've read some of the books. I've read a bunch of the Woodward books from college, but I never have to. the same necessarily like high level conspiracy interest in it that you did, I think because I feel like we solved it. I feel like we mostly know what happened. It's not like JFK's assassination where there are millions of plausible things that could have happened. It's fun to talk about even though it's morbid. This is kind of, we got him. Like he did it. We know what happened. So I didn't feel the need to kind of go whole hog on it. I was a child of the 70s, which as we've discussed before, just conspiracy movies left and right there for six, seven years.

And this was right in the middle of that. When I got really interested in Watergate, it was right after college, like the summer in 92. And I don't know, it was like a safer time. You know, like it seemed like we'd raided the ship with politics and this stuff couldn't happen anymore. There was enough distance with it. And ironically, then you find out like, oh, I ran contra and all the stuff that happened

in Reagan's presidency and then Bush's presidency and then Clinton's president. and it's like this is a recurring, there's always something going on with the presidential administration. It's almost like there's something wrong with politics. Right. It really is. 92 was kind of a happier time.

It was pre-internet. It was Generation X, all that stuff. But anyway, really got into it. And one of the big mysteries was who's deep throat? And that was one of the things when you watch this movie, how Holbrook kind of became deep throat,

but we knew there was an actual deep throat. There were rumors where there three deep throats. We're going to get to how they solve the mystery of Deep Throat later. But the movie age really well. The conspiracy stuff, they age great. No matter what aired, it's either, remember when politics was crazy like this or politics is crazy and you can identify with it? Redford and Hoffman, peak of their powers to A-plus listeners.

The history of this movie, how they ended up doing it together is we can either do that now or do that during half-ass internet research. Yeah, I mean, we can do it now. I mean, it's definitely Redford is the person who really pushed for this. He was talking to Woodward and Bernstein before they even wrote this book and got fascinated by the story and definitely saw himself as Woodward early on. Yeah. And Redford is a really rare figure in the history of Hollywood. He's a producer, director, movie star. He in many ways kind of like design that mold.

There were people before him like Kirk Douglas and people like that who had done this. but he really like kind of shifted the paradigm, him and Warren Beatty at the same time in the 70s, making a lot of movies like this. And, you know, he gets a lot of the credit. And I think he knew if he was going to take on Woodward, he really needed a powerful counterweight. Right. So it's almost a little, Chris, like LeBron, where LeBron became this guy who also has his own production company and produces content. And now all the other athletes feel like they have to do that. I was basically because of Redford and Warren Beatty.

LeBron's same thing where it's like James Harden now as a content company. But you saw so many actors trying to follow the Redford model. And it doesn't really work. No, I mean, like... It's worked with Brad Pitt, I think. There's been some successes, but a lot of failures. You know, Clooney's had Hidden Misses. Like, these guys have gotten really into producing.

And if you... I think that that's actually why you do movies that maybe aren't as meaningful to you, but are obviously going to be box office successes as to accrue enough power to become. the person who writes your own story in a lot of ways and to somebody who lifts up material that they want to lift up. And those were the first two guys that did that, right?

Those were the first two actors that were like, I can also create my whole world destiny. Did Newman do that? Like, was Newman a little bit of a precursor to that? I mean, he directed films. He very rarely directed himself in films. He worked a lot with his wife, Joan Woodward. And I think he directed Rachel, which she was nominated for an Oscar for. But the idea of the person who was like the centerpiece of the whole thing, the way that Bady does it in Reds.

Redford doesn't direct this movie, but you can see that, I mean, he's rewriting the script all the time with Goldman. He's in total control of the production design, picking the director. Like, this is a thing. And I don't think anybody really has done it as well as him since. He really had amazing vision for how to be a great movie star and make movies that were serious but entertaining and populist and had a lot of cool ideas. But also, by the time we get to the stage, like, he's already made Butch Cassidy. He's already made The Sting. like he's been the biggest star that you could possibly be.

You know, Matt Nadee Idol, also like politically active. He was kind of everything already by the time of this movie. This run he had basically in the 70s, Jeremiah Johnson, my dad's favorite movie of all time. I don't know if you guys knew that. Yeah. I didn't know that. It's a great movie.

My dad's number one favorite. He would call me sometimes and then he'd be like, I got to go. Some say he's up there still. That meant it was like on. So Jeremiah Johnson, the candidate, the way we were, the sting, the Great Gatsby, Waldo Pepper, three days of the Condor, and then all the president's

been. That is a pretty nice run. There's not, I would say probably the Great Gatsby was the most flawed of all those movies. Like, the way we were is not a great movie, but for what it was and what it achieved. Huge hit. Huge hit, had iconic songs that came out of it, him and Streisand, the whole thing. The candidate, I mean, honestly, this would be a great double rewatchables with the candidate.

The candidate is probably one of my 10 favorite movies of all time. It's this incredible Michael Richie movie about a guy running for office. And it's interesting to pair these two movies together because there's so much ambiguity and ambivalence from his character in that movie. And there's something weirdly like committed but ambivalent about the way Redford does Woodward here too. The candidate has really held up nicely. Yeah, it's really interesting. And that was like what, 1972, somewhere in 1971, somewhere in there. And that could come out now.

and like my daughter would pay attention during that. She's 13, but it doesn't feel dated like a lot of the 70s movies. No, and it gets to something that I think even just in casual conversation when we talk about politics, kind of regardless of whichever way you lean, the question of like, why do people really want to do this? Why do people want to dedicate their lives to politics is kind of embedded in that movie and in this movie? Because it raises a lot of questions about what politics does to people. I think there's also like a certain, because you keep mentioning whether or not it's dated and obviously we'll talk later about what age the best and what age the worst or whatever. But, you know, there's

something about this, the best of these 70s films that I think, the thing that people respond to is the naturalism. And that's my favorite thing about Redford is that he looks, he's like one of the most attractive men, you know, you've ever seen on screen. But he has this kind of personability and this kind of effortless charm, which is based largely on his looks, but like what he's also good at is finding characters where he can play into the unknowability of a guy like that. And I think that his character in the Canada is especially like that, his character in The Sting is a little bit like that

where he's got a kind of like, I'm just too good looking to ever fail in this world. Yeah. You know, and I think that the way he plays Woodward and the way that they pair him with Hoffman and the way that they pair his waspy good looks with Hoffman's kind of more pugnacious pit bull kind of thing. And it's a fascinating thing off-screen, too,

to think about their careers. And Hoffman's obviously a way more talented actor than Robert Redford, just on like a bare bones level. You look at a Hoffman's run from 74 to 79. It's like, it's about as good as you can do in movies. You know what I mean? But Redford was a much bigger star than him at the time of this movie. Yeah.

Redford, you know, he basically had three moves as an actor for characters. It was either like the I'm so fucking handsome Redford. like electric horseman, which is a really weird movie. Yeah, it is a weird movie. It's basically, he's just a handsome guy's on a ranch, and that's the whole character. But he has that. He has like the kind of wide-eyed idealistic but secretly tough Redford. That's the sting.

Yeah, and it's kind of this movie to some degree. And then he's got kind of the enigmatic mysterious Redford, which is like Roy Hobbes in the natural, where you're just like, what is this guy? He's very quiet. I got to figure him out. And those were his three moves. he just vacillated between those three. Like, Brad Pitt always gets compared to him.

I think Brad Pitt's a much better actor than Redford was in the sense. Like, he would play characters. And we always used to say he was like the best looking character actor of all time. Well, it's like Brad Pitt almost a wear of that legacy. Like Brad Pitt is constantly trying to make himself uglier or dumber or have tics or do all these things to his characters to almost like deface himself, to deface the mural that he is. And Redford never did that. There's no character actor where he's like,

missing a tooth. Yeah, he's like, this is the money makers. He did different things. I mean, his challenges were often physical challenges. Like he did all, he's lost a few years ago

where he was alone on a boat. Yeah, but he was like 70 at that point. But Jeremiah Johnson is like a survivalist story. He never did things where he was doing like a weird accent or he has to wear a wig. He looks damn good in Jeremiah Johnson. He does.

And that was the thing I was going to say about this role in all the president's men. He does something that is unique. That is, he has a kind of beautiful but blank intelligence. Like when you're talking to him, you're like, this guy is smart. And I don't really know which way he's leaning on something,

which is really valuable for a journalist. A lot of this movie is just charming people into talking to him. And all the time, he's on the phone, he's knocking on doors. And there's something about, I mentioned if Robert Redford knocked on your door in 1976 and was like, I'd really like to talk to you. You would be like, I shouldn't, but okay, maybe. You really buy that. And frankly, you know, no disrespect to Bob Woodward.

Like, he does not look like Robert Redford. No, he does not. So Redford, he got the rights. Warner Brothers paid $450,000 for it. He was going to produce for the book rights. The book was a huge bestseller, massive hit. He wanted to originally make the film in black and white without any superstar actors.

Warner Brothers said, no. You're going to be in this. You're going to be in the movie. And at that point, obviously, he should play Woodward. He's much close. He's not going to play Carl Bernstein. So then the question, was, well, he can't be with another actor who he's a huge name and the other guys

of nobody. So ends up with Hoffman. And at that point, I don't know what the power rankings were in 1976, but Redford and Hoffman were two of the top five. Pacino's in there. De Niro's not De Niro yet. Right. Puccino is up there.

De Niro wasn't De Niro yet. Newman is too old. Newman's too old, but is still one of the A list. By this point, haven't they been paired a couple of times? Newman is always playing his older kind of sense. I was just trying to think of who the A-listers were. Like Newman and Brando are around. Nicholson doesn't...

James Kahn doesn't make sense. Nicholson, as Carl Bernstein. Although he ended up playing him, I guess, in Hartburn. Everything about the casting of Hoffman works towards this movie because it's just like we were even looking at a picture of them before we came in here. And I was just like, man, like, just the fact that he's a little shorter.

Just the fact that he doesn't wear his tie right. Just the fact that he just seems uncomfortable in his own body. You wouldn't get that if it was Jack Nicholson. You wouldn't get that if it was, yeah, Al Pacino might have a little bit of that. But Al Pacino has like a soulfulness that's almost like intimidating, I think, in certain ways. He's not a freaking godfather.

So it's like, I don't know, there's something like it could only have been Hoffman in a lot of ways. Yeah, he was, Hoffman was a frumpy, chain smoking ladies man, which was Carl Bernstein. Carl Bernstein was like, man, ladies couldn't resist him. And you're like, really? Carl Bernstein? Like, you see the pictures. You know who is the author of that myth?

Carl Bernstein. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Nora Ephron to some degree. Sure. He was married to. He cheated on me all the time and we had to get divorced. I think there's probably a couple of counter examples of people who could have played these roles. Like I think you could credibly say this movie could star Harrison Ford and Richard Dreyfus.

Hmm. Like that could happen. Okay. Is it a better movie? Probably not. But there were, because one of the interesting things was we always talk about this. The kinds of guys who could be stars in the 70s were very different from the way it is now. Everybody's Chris Pine and Hemsworth and all that stuff.

You could be Roy Shider and be famous. You could be Roy Shider. You know, you could be James Kahn. You could be Robert Duvall. Yeah. I actually had a perfect one that I think is actually could have been better than Redford. Jeff Bridges. It's like the perfect Jeff Bridges point.

He's done Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. It's right after last picture show. Hasn't been in King Kong yet. Yep. He's young. I could have bought him as Woodward. Redford's perfect, but... I think Woodward was 29 when this was all happening,

when the story started breaking, and Bridges probably was about that age. I think Redford's a little older. Yeah. Bridges and Dreyfus, the movie's not as good as having two of the best actors the last 50 years, but... So it got nominated for eight Oscars.

William Goldman. A man. Friend of the Ringer. Won his second Oscar for Best Screenplay. Jason Robards won. We're going to get to him. Let's hold that Jason. and Robarts thought.

The movie cost $8.5 million to make. Earned back 70.6. Third highest grossing film of 1976, Chris Ryan. What were the other two? Some good films that year. It outgrossed like, I think Rocky was one of them, and I think a star was born. I think that was your top three.

Not positive, though. Craig's going to look that up to make sure. This movie had a cast that included five Oscar winners. Can you name them? Balsam? Yep. Martin Balsam, one of the editors. Robards, Hoffman, Redford. Jack Warner?

There's a big one here. Yeah, there's a like sneaky one. That's why it's a tough question. Who am I? F. Mary Abraham. Yeah. Man. There's also one of the great kind of forgotten nominations for, I think,

Jane Alexander. Oh, yeah. Who plays the bookkeeper. Yeah. who's like amazing in this movie. And I feel like doesn't have like a big legacy, but we'll talk about it. Yeah, we're, we're hitting her too.

There are five Oscar nominees in this movie. Jack Warden, Hal Holbrook, Ned Beattie. Ned Beatie? Ned Beatty? I always get the Beatty-Bitty thing screwed up. It's Warren Beatty, too, and I was called Warren Beatty. Jane Alexander.

And last but not least, one of the strangest runs of the 70s early 80s, Lindsey Krauss. Oh, yeah. Slapshot, she's Ned Braden's wife. kind of thinking about getting it on with Paul Numa, but never does. And then she's in the verdict has one of the greatest he check. We're doing the verdict at some point.

She wound up marrying David Mamet for a time being married. I always loved her in House of Games. Yeah. David Mamet movie. It's a good one. The verdict. Who were these men? Who were these men?

So this movie's loaded. And then on top of it, Goldman writing the script at the peak of his powers. and as Sean Fantasy knows, because he named his podcast The Big Picture and loves William Goldman, a whole big chapter about his experience on this movie, won the Oscar, wishes he never took the movie,

was just so miserable and it never ended because I guess we could just talk about this now. Redford did this really weird revisionist history thing five years ago where he basically said they threw away Goldman's script and him and the director, one of your favorite, Sean. Alan Pakula. They rewrote it in a hotel room and then does this documentary too and basically reimagines this whole history,

which was clearly a fuck you to Goldman for this chapter and Adventures of the Screen Trade, which ended up being one of the great movie books of all time, and Redford was clearly still pissed about that chapter and tried to stick it to him, all debunked by somebody who did this whole paper about, hey, actually, Goldman has all these annotated screenplays with timestamps, and I went through all of these, and actually he did write this.

I looked at that, I just reread that chapter. Redford comes off pretty frigging well. I mean, like, William Goldman, obviously in the writing of that, is like I got screwed over a couple of times here, and there was some stuff that I didn't love. But he is, like, pretty fawning over Redford's place in the industry. and just the kind of rainmaker he was at the time. So it's kind of, it's an interesting, like, this happens too.

You know, I mean, like, Damon did, Matt Damon was, like, very critical of, like, Tony Gilroy's contributions to the Bourne movies. That was a bit of revisionist history, I think, I mean, who's to say what that was? But I think Tony Gruey made an enormous contribution of those movies. So it happens all the time, but it's a stunning thing to have happened for Goldman, who everybody seems to respect so much. And he, if you read all the stuff he wrote, all those books, which I think we've all read countless times.

He really revered the whole model of the movie star through, like, as a Redford type. Just, he writes about that over and over in these books. It's a theme that happens again and again. He's writing about all the time. He's always writing about these people. Stop trying to create movie stars, movie stars and movie stars, you know, when you see it.

And then, like, why certain people who are movie stars stop being movie stars, like he has a whole chapter about Richard Gere in the 80s. So secretly influential on like everything we do with The Ringer. The way that we talk about stuff is so much of it. He's probably the biggest writer influence I've ever had. Like just the way he thought about things and especially like wait till next year, the sports book he did, which was like the first time I'd ever read anyone writing from the fans' perspective.

But he was always questioning why do movies work this way? Why do people think they know something? Why is Richard Gere a movie star again with Pretty Woman? Well, let's go through his last date movies. He just made bad choices. He was always a movie star. He never stopped. But Redford, he just, he loved that type of movie star where it's just like, put that

fucking dude on a 60-foot screen. He's handsome. He knows what he's doing. And it's going to work. I know he says he wishes he'd never done it. But he says something really interesting in adventures that I think about a lot when, especially as we get to this time of year with the Oscar movies coming up where he's like, to paraphrase, he's just like, when you're making a movie,

you hope that people are going to see it. And then you also hope that it's important. And if it can be two things, if it can be both of those things, you have to do it. It's like not even a question. If you have a chance of making something that you think a lot of people will pay attention to

and you could make a difference with that movie or just to have an impact with that movie, so you got to do it. And that's another reason why I think this movie is kind of timeless, is because that actual essence of, mass entertainment that is actually thought-provoking. And that actually tells us something about a moment in American life. So he had a lot of trouble with the script and had the crucial revelation of just throwing out

the second half of the book, trying to take whatever the book was and make that a screenplay that had the same conclusion of whatever. And then he realized the movie was in the first 70 pages of the book. It's a fascinating choice. And the way that the movie ends is one of the all-time, I think, strange. endings in movie history. And I think it's really effective, but I think if you showed it to young people now, it would be a little confusing because there's an assumption of understanding about what

had happened because of when it was made that as we get further and further away from that moment is a little bit more confusing. Craig, the producer, were you confused by the ending? Yeah, it felt like the ending of like a Madman episode. Yeah. In 1976, you have to worry about it because it was everywhere. Right. It would be like if you made a 9-11 movie two years after.

9-11 and you're like, you didn't really need to explain what happened on 9-11. But you didn't want to make an eight-hour movie covering this entire book and then all of the kind of legal proceedings and introducing Nixon as a figure and all that. They didn't do any of that stuff. It was just the shoe leather, which was what makes

it so good. The movie has two kind of pseudo endings that add up to the ending, which is his last thing with Deep Throat in the garage and then them going to Robart's house, Ben Bradley. My favorite scene. Yeah. And that's That's really the ending.

And then once he's like, all right, here are the stakes. Fuck it. That's your ending. Yeah. And then we know how it happened anyway. So let's just get to it. Let's just go. Most rewatchable scene, a lot of choices.

A lot of choices. Bernstein trying to steal the story from Woodward. The whole little cat and mouse game, which is doubly fun now all these years later because people typing their leads and then put in the paper on copy desk and like I would have been terrible in 1970s. Like when I wrote, I used to like edit and rewrite

and backspace and go back and when I noticed I said when I wrote, Sean? Like I was retired from writing. It's heartbreaking. But the whole concept of just in one take banging out the entire piece you were going to write on a typewriter is fucking crazy.

There was a certain skill level to being a great newspaper writer. Not a newspaper report. but a newspaper writer. Yeah, but there are certain things that are still the same, though. It's like writers are competitive black jobs who are like angling for like, what can I get out of this?

Can I build off of something that someone else has started? How do I get credit for this? It's just like there are certain things that like working in that environment creates. It also creates this insane sense of teamwork and collaboration,

which is also the drug of it. You know what I mean? They're both the light and dark sides of working in that collaborative process that's so intoxicating. That scene is great. And I like scenes where it's clearly, like, even in the script, the writer is like, I'm going to put these two guys in a nice heat check position here.

I love when Woodward says, no, your version is better, but I don't like the way that you did it. Right. Yeah. I think mine's better, but you go ahead and read it. If you think yours is better, we'll get yours to the desk. I've got Colson's name up front. He's a White House consultant and nobody knows it.

yours is better you're gonna do it do it right here my nose you're gonna hype it hype it with the facts I don't mind what you did I mind the way you did that is so like

true to the essence of like there is an objective truth to quality incredible character beat because it's like Woodward is like I'm not that smart but I will not be outworked

and Bernstein is like I'm so talented but I cut corners yeah totally and it's like they don't have to say that out loud they do it all with the jargon of newspaper

but you know everything you need to know about those guys in 30 seconds, which is fucking incredible screaming. And it also sets up their entire relationship and why they need each other. It's a great scene. Redford on the phone with Dahlberg and McGregor going back and forth. So I didn't realize this, and I guess I should have, but I never thought about it. It's a six-minute scene and it's all done in one take. And apparently, slow zoom. When he screws up at the end and he calls the one guy McGregor's like, I'm sorry, Dahlberg, and he starts laughing. That's all I'm Mr. McGregor.

Mr. Dolphberg. I'm sorry, thank you very much. That was a fuck up that they just kept in the final cut. He does that thing with his eyes where he's like, God, I've been staring at this legal pad for like six hours. He's just like, everything he does in that scene. So if you're making the case that Robert Redford actually was a great actor, you would submit that scene.

He's definitely a great actor. I think it's just more like Dustin Hoffman's one of the greatest actors in the history of movies. So it's a little tough to measure them against each other. that scene is really, really great because that's a real thing that people do all the time. So even though he fucked it up, they just had the good sense whether it was Pakula or whoever

decided to say we're using that cut. It's just so genius, so naturalistic. One of the best lines in the movie is, I've just been through a terrible ordeal. My neighbor's wife has been kidnapped. Right. So true story. Yeah, true story. That actually happened. He's just like, I'm so sorry to hear that. Also,

the ability of Woodward to just jot down these notes from and recollect all these beats from a phone call, it kind of shows how it could go wrong in the wrong hands with the press. Yeah, I mean, we could talk about this whenever we want, but like, I just, I will watch this movie once

a year just for the ephemera of journalism, all the accoutrement that are in there. I grew up, my dad worked a newspaper for 30 years, he works at the Philadelphia Enquirer. I would go down there. I know how like the newspapers would smell as they were coming off the press, and it

would just like permeate the hallways, but those, and we can talk about the production, design, but it was just like legal pads and felt tip pens everywhere and just coffee cups and everything. But like that feeling of just seeing someone's legal pad and it's just my dad's notes on movies that he would be reviewing made no sense. They were all over the place and different like handwriting styles. And then you could tell when he got bored and changed pens or left and lost the pen and came back and tried to finish a sentence. And just to see all the journalism work happen on those pads like that, like you can just feel like you're in the middle of that

process. I used to be really good at that last decade, going on location and soaking in the scene and taking these little crazy notes that only I would understand and then being able to understand what the notes were later and be like, oh, that one word me, oh yeah, that was when I noticed. It's not actually an observation as much as you're trying to trigger a memory. Yeah, you're just like, I'm going to remember this, but what I'm going to remember it by is by saying like blue door on this weird bar, whatever. And then you're like, the reason that's there is because all this stuff happened outside of that bar or whatever.

You know what I mean? But you want to remember these little details. And he's like drawing cartoons in a guy. Being able to write notes as you're looking around. That's a whole other thing. It's like you're learning this short day. I remember I went to the Super Bowl, the first one, the past one in 2002, and I did a thing on Media Day.

If you go and read it, it's like a running diary like I did him for my computer. And it was all the famous gates, by the way. Oh, yeah. There you go. It was all shorthand, media day, me writing timestamps, and just being like 12-02 and just like things that I could remember later. I could never do that now. And now you wouldn't really need to do it. I think about this.

I was at a screening yesterday of a movie, and the person who was sitting next to me was furiously taking notes the whole time. And I never take notes when I'm watching a movie, even if I'm writing about it. And I think in some ways that's bad and in some ways it's good because it's good in the way that you're absorbing it fully. you're locked in, you're letting yourself remember it. I do have a very good memory. I've always had a very good memory, so that's not a problem for me. Maybe as I get a little bit older, I will struggle with that. Holler when you turn 40.

I'm sure I will have some bouts of forgetfulness. But there's something about not just the way that those guys kind of do their craft, but the way that they act as people, the way that they're kind of like charming people and then getting tough with people and the way that they ask a pointed question and then they pull back. I'm reminded of that scene with Sloan near the end of the movie when he's like oh, your wife had a baby? Oh, it's a girl. I love that scene so much

because it shows that there's like... Well, it's even better than that, though. They're about to leave and he's like, oh, hey, your wife had a baby. It was like business is done and then... We can be humans again. It was like he was talking to the baker. All the Hoffman's flirting with various people or he's just like, you know, she's like, oh, my friends told me about you. He was like,

what did they say? What did they say? You know, and he's playing a part. He's doing like... This seduction. Well, I think that's why one of the reasons why the three of us love this movie so much is because, and we did this, I think, three years ago when Spotlight came out, and we talked about Spotlight versus All the President Men, and we're talking about this new generation of writers, and we have some of them here, and we have great people. But a lot of them weren't out there reporting for years and years and learn the nuances of,

so we try to send people out, especially our younger people, just be like, go to the Lakers locker room and just go and try to talk to people. and make connections. But that's what the 70s were. The 70s were all about working people for sources and working people for information and going to courtrooms for eight hours, not knowing of anything was even going to happen.

That's the genius setup of the movie, right? From walking into that courtroom. Yeah. I mean, the scene, this would never happen now, but the scene, the famous wide shot of them at the Library of Congress, when they're just going through all these cards for hours and hours and hours and then,

now you're just freaking Google it, right? Yeah. You wouldn't have to do that. All right. Four more rewatchable scenes. So we have Hoffman trying to steal the story. Redford on the phone with Dahlberger and McGregor.

Robards, buying in for the first time. Run that, baby. And then he goes to the elevator. He does a little Fred Flintstone skip. I fucking love that. I love Robards. We're saving that.

The Jane Alexander coffee scene? Oh, yeah. Just great Hoffman. Good stuff. Just drinking. Great scene. So much coffee. Jane and Alexander are not trusting him.

He's got all these notes on like napkins and matchbooks pouring out of him. The way he sneaks into her house. Hi, I'm Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, and I just want to ask you a couple of questions. Well, you don't want me. You want my sister. It's for you. It's Carl Bernstein.

My God, he's the guy from the post. Could I just borrow one of your cigarettes there? Sure. You've really got to go. Sure. Could I just get a match? Where he's like, can I just get in? And the sister's like, hey, do you want coffee?

He's like, I love some coffee. And then Jade Alexander's rolled the eyes. The last deep throat meeting in the garage is an all-timer. And then the ending where they go to Bradley's house. They try to decide, hey, man, we got the story wrong. Here's what we have. It's actually this. We know we're right.

Deep Throat confirmed. And Robards does a little speech. So what is the most rewatchable scene? Can I nominate one more? Yeah. Okay. So again, Robards, it's the first time he edits the story. And he comes over and he sits down and puts his feet up.

Red pen. There's this master shot where you see it's like Warden, Hoffman and Redford and Robards. And Robards has got like these, even though it's Ben Bradley, kind of like really worn in loafers that like the souls of the loafers are actually worn in. You can see. And you're like, God damn it. that's like such an amazing piece of like costume design just to make sure like this guy doesn't change doesn't have a new pair of shoes every week like let's make sure even though it's Ben Bradley and he starts going through it with a red pen and he's sitting there with his

feet up and Woodward is like so eager to please and Bernstein's coming out of his skin because he's like god damn it this is a good story and he's just like I don't care you don't have it yet and the way that they all communicate through body language like and even warden's kind of like I need Ben to like this, but I also am trying to stand up for these guys. Like, you just learn so much about the journalism business. Like, even if you've never seen, you've never met anybody who's written a story for a newspaper, if you watch that scene, you're like,

oh, I understand. These guys have to eat shit all the time. And there's this thing with a red pen where they're just crossing out paragraphs of their work. I love that scene so much. I watch it. Like, I watch it all the time. So Goldman spent months at the Washington Post studying these guys and how they became very fascinating with not just Bradley,

but I think there was another editor who I think is the one Jack Warden plays. It's the one Martin Ballson plays Howard Simmons. He was the managing editor of the post at the time. And Goldman said he was so good and so funny in the meetings that the first script that he did, he tried to basically, and it just didn't seem real. It was like nobody can be this good and this funny in the room constantly. It almost seems like a Hollywood bit.

they had to like tone that guy back and then apparently he got pissed off about it when he saw the final cut. Yes, Simons was really disappointed because he was a huge figure in shaping the story along with Bradley. And he was the one who was the advocate reportedly before Bradley came on board. And you know, Ben Bradley is this like literally iconic figure in the history of American journalism. It's like extraordinarily charismatic, smart friends with the Kennedys, friends with Lyndon B. Johnson, you know, for anybody who saw the post, you saw Tom Hanks play him.

So it's obvious that he, you know, and Robards is a great actor, so he gets a big spotlight. But apparently, you know, newspapers are like any other place. It's like it's 100 people working on something. Yeah. There's so many people involved in the making. It's like when they make the movie about the Colangelo story and Chris just, you have Chris cut out. It's just the fantasy part. The fantasy part is just blown up.

The best part about that scene, though, or the most instructive part about that scene is at the very end, Robarts is like stick it somewhere inside. Which is the biggest part about journalism at that time was that it wasn't just this fire hose that was going 24 hours a day where you had to win the minute or you could just. be like, screw it, I'm ready, this is going out. It was like a competition to change five or six people's minds at your job that your thing needed to be basically on the front page. Because if you get stuck somewhere inside, only news junkies are getting that far into a newspaper, pretty much. I would watch my dad, he worked at the newspaper and he would kind of flip. He would read the front page, flip a little bit, flip a little bit. And then that section will get tossed aside. You know, and it's like, can you imagine just like that feeling of.

of being like, we argue about placement on a website, but you can basically flatten that so that everything is everything. Any good story is going to get found. Yeah. When I was at the Herald, the back page of the Herald was like the prime real estate. Right. And I remember the first time I got on there. And I had this story about where I got the whole back page was the story about homeschooled

high school kids. And one of them was suing whatever town they lived because they wanted to play for the high school team. And the high school team's like, fuck you, you don't go here. and ends up in this lawsuit. They put the whole thing on the back page. I was like, this is like the biggest moment in my career. I'm on the back page of the her.

Like, bought 10 copies. But, you know, that doesn't matter. I think we've had that. I mean, like, when you would see, like, if you had the lead review in the voice, remember, like, that was incredible, like, an incredible feeling. Yeah. It's amazing how ephemeral it is. Yeah, I know.

Like, because this movie is totally about the rush and the scoop and the energy and the momentum that you get from these incredible things. And then, for the most part, in our life. lives. We look back on them and they're like, eh, that was kind of frivolous. In this case, it's the most meaningful story ever told in a newspaper, probably. I had one time when it, when it's still, I still get fired up about it now. Like what? Like the second or third time I wrote for page two, remember they had all those famous people in there? And I had this piece and they led page two with it. And then underneath me were Halberstam and Hunter with two pieces. And I'm like,

I'm fucking leading, however Stanman Hunter right now. This is like the greatest moment of my life. But I should have. I had the best piece. Wow. That was that, I really did. God was the death. What a flex. I really did. I was like, I should have been leading. So what's the best scene, Chris?

Uh, man. I mean, it's just take your pick of the Robard scenes. Rest up, 15 minutes, then get your asses in gear. Yeah, it's got to be that scene. It's the last one. It's the last. The ending? Yeah. Got to be.

You guys are probably pretty tired, right? Well, you should be. Go on home. Get a nice hot bath. Rest up. 15 minutes and get your asses back in gear. I'm under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing's writing on this except the First Amendment, the Constitution,

freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters. But if you guys fuck up again, I'm going to get mad. Inspirational. It's a classic. They should play that during sporting events when they're trying to get the crowd. Oh, yeah, that should be like the new instead of 300. They should play before Lakers games.

Tonight we dine on Richard Nixon. I also think it's the ending. The ending gets me so fired up. I love how they show up at his house in the middle of the night. He's non-plussed. It's 3.30 in the morning. Tells them, we can't go in your house.

It's probably bugs. He's like, all right, cool. We'll go in the front yard. And then just magically delivers this great speech. You can get some insight into my management strategy by watching Robards in this movie. Yeah, a lot of baths. throw times.

Because you're like being up late or because you're... Well, I'm definitely up late. No, but just sort of like lightly unimpressed no matter how amazing it is that something has happened. Like that is like a tactic that he is employing. He's like, guess what? I was there when JFK died. There's nothing you could do now.

Does wonders for my confidence. Well, I love working with you. I think the best scene is Redford on the phone with for six straight minutes. It's a good one. Just for a degree of difficulty, but Robards is my favorite. What's age the best? I don't know where we start with this, but. I think we covered the biggest thing that's aged the best for me is just the old school newspapers

and just the whole world. They frigging built it. They got the desks from the place that leased the desks to the Washington Post. They recreated the newsroom. Like that's so amazing. So they used. Forget Avatar, man. Like that is movie magic.

They just built the Washington Post. They took hundreds of photos and measurements of the Wapos workspace and built a full size 33,000 square foot. Whoa. Repaca on the Warner Brothers La, Burbank, and they bought 150 desks exactly like the ones at the post. 33,000 feet is like, like in the ideal world where we had an awesome office building

for all the people we had. We had like 90 people at the ringer. Probably 20,000 square feet, I would say would be the perfect number. 33,000 square feet is how big big build. This was when you had to have a lot of filing cabinets, though. We don't have to have any filing cabinets more. I will say one thing that's interesting is that, you know, in the last like 10 years or so, I think that, you know, more and more like, you know, people need silence.

They need their headphones on. They need to like have there's always this talk about distractions, obviously, because of the internet. And like, I do remember going to the paper when I was a kid and seeing where my dad worked. It was just like not a very quiet workplace. Right. You know what I mean? It was like, if you were working, that was fine. But there was also maybe like three guys sitting on a desk talking about the Phillies last night. and then there was some other guy who was like kicking a vending machine and there was a lot of life happening in the office. You know what I mean? Yeah, and this movie, one for sound mixing,

we were just talking with Craig before we started recording about why because a lot of the dialogue is kind of muffled and this movie is very shadowy. But also, when you're in that newsroom, you can hear people banging on the typewriter. You can hear the chatter. You know, that's actually hard to pull off. Phone's ringing all the time.

There's just so much atmosphere. Yeah, yeah. That's an amazing thing. You know, the Showtime series about the New York Times where they're... What was that called? Is it the fourth state? Yeah.

I'm sure newsrooms are much quieter now. Because you have a lot of people. You don't have phones ringing. They're buzzing. You have people texting. All that stuff. That's one thing that's aged the best.

Just the old school newspaper set. I think this is the best version of it. I mean, my vote for this is just the overwhelming paranoia and suspicion that goes into examining politics. Like, that obviously has aged incredibly well. Like, you could apply this movie. to virtually every administration that we've had in the last 40 years. That's amazing. And it holds up this idea that there is value in journalists challenging preconceived notions of power. That is never

going to expire. Well, and that's what when we did all the president's members spotlight, I think that's my version of what's age the best for that is just the value of reporting and the value of the media and the value of getting a story right and chasing it and doing every single possible thing and not trusting the initial story someone told you and digging every fucking rock and stone to try to figure out what the actual story was and taking time and being patient and making sure you get it right because if you get it wrong there's no coming back from that and just all of it it's just that was that movie came out in 1976 because could come out right now and it's the same movie.

Yeah, I mean, ultimately, you know, you'd like to live in a perfect world where the institutions that we elect people to go work in, that we pay taxes to fund, that we count on to, like, basically protect us and everything else would be upright places. They would be like, they would be like moral places that had our best interests at heart.

We had to, like, we have to hold those places accountable. And that's what these people do. Like, that is, that is a role. of journalism is to do this job that actual government institutions too infrequently do do for themselves. And one of the reasons we wanted to do this this week, not to get too political, but we

have a president right now who just did a press conference this morning where he berated the guy from CNN and basically called him a liar and a crook. Without saying it, but it was just like you work for a fake news news place. You guys make up stuff. It's the same story.

It's the same story. It's just the more, it's the crazy year version of 1974. The way that the information is delivered, and it's interesting to think about the way that this story would have been told because Chris said, you know, maybe this would have just been a tweet and maybe that would have been a good thing that they would have started sharing their information on Twitter and it would have been able to build a case over time. Or maybe it would have scotch the story entirely, you know, and Haldeman would have gotten this shit together and they would have never gotten it let it get out.

It's hard to know. Yeah. But it's really fascinating, too, to think about, you know, in the film, the deep throats, it admonishes Woodward at one point because he's like, you guys have to understand with a conspiracy you build from the outer edges in. You don't start with the biggest thing. And you screwed it up by shooting too high and missing. And now you've made this, was it Haldeman?

Or Mitchell? He's like, I can't believe. He made Haldeman. He got people feeling bad for him. I didn't think that was possible. You let Haldeman slip away. Yes. You've done worse than let Haldeman slip away,

get people feeling sorry for him. I didn't think that was possible. In a conspiracy like this, you build from the outer edges and you go step by step. If you shoot too high and miss, everybody feels more secure. You put the investigation back months. We know that.

And if we're wrong, we're resigning. Yeah. And you think about that with the Russian investigation. You know what I mean? I mean, obviously, like, there are people working on that that know a lot more than I do and are much more, like, well-versed in how to conduct investigations, both journalistically and in a criminal investigation. But it does seem like part of what is fascinating, if you compare the two, is

Trump has always been the focal point of the Russia investigation, even if it's just the narrative is around, like, did he know is this collusion? And I don't know, I don't know, do you think that that has anything to do with like the attitude towards it? Like, what if it was like started

on the very far outsides with these characters like the people that Mueller's already indicted and moved in and in? That's probably what Mueller's doing, but the reporting around it is like pretty nakedly going up. It's focused at, yeah,

one of the great things about this is they kind of, over the course of months and months of reporting, stumbled into Nixon being involved. Initially it was like, wow, this is weird. And they thought it was people that worked for him. They never imagined that Nixon knew about the cover. I think one of the things that is complicated and interesting and makes it feel connected to today is obviously fake news as a phrase is very pervasive.

There's obviously an effort, especially by the Nixon administration, to sort of see notions of fake news. Like they show literal clips of lawyers and spokespeople. throughout the film kind of defying the post reporting. And you do get this sense from Redford and Hoffman's characters that at times they're like, shit, did we get it wrong? And what does that mean if we got it wrong? And this like real vulnerability and anxiety that comes from taking a swing like this,

that is pretty rare. You know, like a lot of time we just think of these sort of valorizing journalist movies as they have their capes on and they go in and they expose corruption and then everything is solved. But like, there's a moment in the movie about an hour and a half in where you're like, where they're like, shit. We didn't do this right. That's also like the whole non-denial denial moment

where it's like if its story is wrong, hang up. And he doesn't hang up. And then they're that they use that as confirmation. And obviously like, you know, there's a lot more anonymous sourcing that happens today. And I think for very good reason. But it's fascinating to see the different techniques that they were using back then.

And techniques that we were considered like pretty out there then that are probably, like would go by like oh yeah for sure you do that like that's that's fine the only other what's age the best i have because i think this whole movie's they did we could list 100 things but i just like see in 70s washington this movie does a really good job of making Washington a character in the movie we talk about that sometimes when the rewatchable when the actual city or location feels like one of the actors in the movie and washington they used the monument and we should probably say gordon willis's name here yeah the prince of darkness one of the greatest

cinematographers ever, shot the Godfather, shot other movies with Kula too. I think he did these do the parallax view as well. And he makes this movie he gives it the atmosphere that it needs. It's one of those things where for anybody who's been to D.C., you know that, like, D.C. while it is full of history, is not a terribly beautiful

city. No. And it's really concrete and there's a lot of kind of people walking all over the place and it's very touristy. And movies like this make you think it's different than it actually is. You know, it has like this really powerful film quality. DC will have certain spots where you do feel like you're in a movie.

Yeah, I guess if you're standing in front of the Washington Monument. Or if you're in one of the hotels that can see the monument, you're like, oh, shit, that's the Washington Monument. Can I just do Gordon Willis's 1970s really quick? Yeah, let's hear it. Clute 71, Godfather, 72, Bad Company, 72, Paper Chase, 73, Parallax View, 74, Godfather Part 2, 74. Oh, man.

All the president's men, 76, Annie Hall 77. Jesus. He's in the top three cinematographer conversation ever. He changed the way movies look. He also, and actually in some ways, created what I think our collective memory of the 70s is. Because it's like we're going to share these movies for the rest of our lives. We're going to think about, when you think of the 1970s, you start thinking of images from these movies. It's also like life happens in the shadows.

That's the whole conception. I was going to say, the way he used colors and shadows in those different movies, even different from movies to movie. Is Janice Kerminski went on the top three? He's in the conversation. Not as parent at my school. Deacons? What's age is the worst? Not a lot. I love this movie.

The diversity in the newsroom is just like in the current 2018 lens. It's like they have those meetings of like, all right, what do you got in this? And it's just white dudes. But that's what the 70s are like. You know what's interesting too is a lot of people in this movie are old. A lot of people in this movie are in their 50s or are their 60s. You know, obviously

Woodward and Bernstein are these young Buck reporters, but everybody who's in charge has been doing this for a long time. Yeah. And that's, it's not as much that way in the media anymore. The media has got a lot younger in the last 20 years. You know how old Jack Wharton was going to meet this movie? How old? There's no answer because he was never born. He's been 58 for 100 years. Jack Wharton was born 58 in the year 1624. He had like, he was bald with a mustache on the day of his birth. Jack Wharton could be alive right now and I might believe. leave it. Yeah.

Is he alive right now? I have no idea. I highly doubt it, but it's possible. It's very possible. He's like Tupac. The smoking has aged badly. Has it? And it's age great.

It's romantic. Smoking's in what's age the best and the worst. Smoking in an elevator. As well if Bernstein's vaping the entire time. But yeah, I mean, like the fact, but they make it a bit in the movie where he's like, you know, he's smoking in the elevator. He's smoking in the cars. Yeah.

I have a couple more what's age the worst that I'm going to say for. for the nitpicks. Casting what-ifs. There's really only one that jumped out to me other than Catherine Graham got cut. And they cast Catherine Graham and it was Fade Downaway. Yeah, they did all these different things.

And then they decided they basically uncast her before they filmed the movie. I can't remember who it was. I think it was Fade Down Away. There was a lot of people up for or they had been talking about for Deep Throat though. That's worth messing.

Yeah, but I couldn't, even in my half-ass internet research, it seemed like the different sites were just naming every white, actor who was 48. I love it. All the president's menu. Now you have to triple check. You've like deep sources. They named every single actor

who was alive. Richard Widmark, Christopher Plummer, Anthony Quinn, Gene Hackman, Bert Lancastor, Robert Stack, Robert Mitcham, and Tully Savalas. All rumored to have been considered for deep throat. For deep throat. Yeah. But here is a good I love Richard Widmark. Redford first selected

Al Pacino. After some thought, decided Dustin Hoffman was a better fit. And that was all Also a Pacino Hoffman was what Michael Corleone came down to, right? Was it Hoffman up for Michael? Oh, Jesus, really? I thought James Collins was going to be Michael. Yeah.

It worked out great for everybody. The Dionne Waiters Award. Wow. What are the parameters here? I don't know. The Robards case is about as it pushes it about as far as it can go. See, I feel like for this one, Robards rise. You're right.

I mean, Robards is like... Robards is in like eight scenes. Yeah. I think he has like 11 minutes of screen time maybe or something. So that's what I was thinking he actually might be eligible for this. I'm willing to go either way. If he's eligible, then we can move on to the next category because he wins, right? Because he's just, he's got his shirt off and he's flexing a whole time.

Has anyone ever won Dionne Waiters and won the movie? Well, that's why I was thinking of maybe holding it. I'm going to make him ineligible. So here are nominees. Hal Holbrook is Deep Throat, three scenes. The lady who played Sally Aiken. She's in two scenes, really good in those two scenes. Penny Fuller, was the actress's name.

And then Redford is like, do you think he said that to go to bed with you? And she fucking just death stares him. And it's great. But she's very like 70s sexy. You could totally see her in the newsroom and all the guys hitting on her and very bad menish. Jane Alexander, I think would be the other candidate. You better say this other... There's a couple more.

I got a couple. Robert Walden is Donald Segretti? He's great. He's incredible. Yeah. The rat fucking scene. I like that a lot. Oh, Adam.

I think Ned Beatty, who's on screen for like a minute, but is hilarious and brings this bizarre levity. Ned Beatty is like also just... I didn't love that scene, but... Oh, okay. And I think Stephen Collins is Hugh Sloan. I mean, he really is so important to the movie. And like, I think people think of Stephen Collins. And they think of like, wasn't he the dad on Seven Heaven?

But he was a really good actor and he's great in that movie. There's some not great Stephen Collins stuff too. Meredith Baxter. Yeah. As Hugh Stone's wife. I have a... I just think Holbrook's amazing.

We never totally see his face. And I'm happy to do him. And I like the Robert Wilden too, as Sogretti. Just immediately turning the tears out of nowhere. You're like, whoa, what's happening? There's one other one that I don't think I realized until I was reading about it. but Dominic Chiennese is

Junio Martinez and he of course was Uncle Junior on The Sopranos but like you barely even recognize him I just like that as a role I just like that Sogretti's like the 1970s version of James O'Keefe you know what you mean?

Like he's just like the dirty trickster guy and the way he plays him and like the way he immediately is just like so upset you know it's just a great team. I'm a lawyer, I'm a good lawyer and I'm never going to practice it. It's funny with Holbrook,

Woodward really pushed for Holbrook, apparently. They showed him like whatever the final list was. And then as it turns out, he looked a lot like Mark felt, which should have been a warning sign. And it was information. You know, we did have the information that Woodward was really passionate about how much he thought Holbrook was the perfect guy. That could have helped us solve deep throat.

Did Redford know Deep Throat's identity? I know. I think just Woodward did. Okay. Part of my big 1992 thing was trying to figure out deep throw was. And I was convinced it was Al Hague. But now looking back, it's like, of course it was Mark felt. Like he was like number two or number three at the FBI, but he was disgruntled.

Then, God, how did we not know? It was almost too easy. Yeah. Did you guys check out Mark felt the man who took down the White House starring Liam Neeson last year? I mean, who are you talking to? Of course I did. What did you think of that one? It's slow.

It's not good. Liam Neeson was like horribly miscast. That was the big issue with it. I almost would have gone with nobody. Who's our damn waiters winner? I'm going with Holbrook. It's got to be Holbrook. It's Holbrook.

Okay. Joey Pants Award. There's too many to count. And for most of our audience, they probably don't know who any of these people are. But Martin Balsam, Robert Walden, Stephen Collins. Stephen Collins is really like the seventh half of the guy. Robert Walden, on the other hand, was in a lot of stuff. most famously Lou Grant.

Yeah. But I know he's Robert Walden. I'm not sure a lot of people do. I feel like Martin Balsam is the winner here. I think Martin Balsam's been in a million things, and only people like us would know what his name is. So he's my winner. Yeah.

I mean, he's in Psycho. He's in 12 Angry Men. Like, he's been in iconic American films. If you're under 50, though. Who's this podcast for? I don't know. I thought this was for the over 50 crowd. I don't know who it's.

That's why I'm talking about Gordon Willis. So who's the Joey Pants Award winner? Who's the ultimate that guy in this movie? Some people would say Jack Warden. What about Lindsey Krause? Great. Okay. Lindsay Krause.

That gal. Who are these men? A couple half-ass internet research things. Goldman told this story in the chapter of the book where Bernstein and his then-girlfriend Nora Ephron decided to take a crack that's script. basically we're trying to to fuck him on it. He did a draft,

showed it to them, then he was going to go work on rewrites, and parallel to that, but unbeknownst to him, Bernstein and Nora Ephron wrote another version of it that included,

according to Goldman, more like sort of factual inaccuracies, you know, maybe that even Goldman's script have, or at least floor sheds. Bloss out the Bernstein character. Yeah, and blew out the Bernstein character. And I think that the,

was it the Florida like sneaking into The office part. The Florida scene they kept. Yeah. Which is the only, like, completely made up scene in the whole movie. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, there's a very famous quote from Woodward where he said, I don't know what the six worst things in my life that I've done are, but this is definitely one of them. And he said that to Goldman, you know, just like letting Bernstein and Ephron do that. And, you know, it's obviously so cockamamie that they let him do it. It's like William Goldman then had already won an Oscar and was the guy who wrote Butch Cassidy. Like, he was the guy.

In 76 alone, he has all the presidents of bank. out and Marathon man based on his. I mean, it's just... He was also the only screenwriter, anybody even knew. Right. He made like five times as much money as any other screenwriter. Maybe Robert Town, but that was probably it back then. Yeah, they were kind of neck and neck at that time. Yeah. One great Goldman thing did not go to the 1970s Oscars when he won. Because of the Knicks. Because of the Knicks. Oh, because of the Knicks. Wow. Yeah. Are you impressed by that? Of course. I mean... It was like Knicks finals or semi-finals.

and went to, and she just was like, I'm not going to the, like, people didn't care about the Oscars as much back then. It was like they mailed you the award. But he's in the 76 one, and it's on YouTube, along with like every other Oscar speech, which is one of the great rabbit hole deep dives.

He didn't go to the one where they won for Butch. He did not. Because he was watching the Knicks because they were so good that year. He was at MSG, I think, for that game. I think it was the same day. I mean, he's also, like, one of the reasons I look up to him

is because he's the emblematic Knicks fan. I was thinking about this listening to Dan Clores on your podcast. It's just like there's a certain kind of guy who is obsessed with the team, has his own set of complaints about the team, is like 25% unrealistic about. Right. But like senses history and glory from 73 and can't get that out of his head. Yeah. And those guys are so perfect for that. That's amazing that he didn't go to the 70.

Goldman still goes to the games. Also worth mentioning with the Bernstein-Ephron as an epilogue, like, then she winds up making heartburn. Yes. In which Jack Nicholson plays Carl Bernstein. Yes. Goldman's seats were right where the Carmelo, Marty Collins, Nuggets, Nick's fight was. Remember that? I do remember.

It was not like great... It was like a great... He almost got taken out by the fight. Oh, no. So, this was a good one. One of my favorite half-ass internet nuggets I've found. Jason Robards, during the film, we decided it was important for Ben Bradley to always be in the newsroom.

So his presence would always be felt in the film. On days when he wasn't shooting scenes with the other actors, he came to the set anyway, hung on in Ben Bradley's office, usually sitting in his desk and reading a book, so he would appear in the background and be around. Fucking Jason Robarts, man. What a fucking hero he was. It's a great one.

Also, like, not intimidating, too. You know what I mean? Like, the guy who's just like, you know, long days journey in the night, like whatever, whatever, else you want to say Robart. I mean, like, and he's just hanging out in the background. The last one, Redford and Hoffman memorized each other's lines as well as their own so that their characters could finish one another's thoughts as they discussed the case. I'd give the dialogue a natural flow.

Can I give you one? Yeah. Robert Redford is left-handed. Oh, yeah. Like almost all lefties wears his watch on his right hand, but every close-up shows him doing things right-handed, writing, dialing phones, etc. It's good. Redford. good touch

Apex Mountain Redford Oh boy I'm going to say yes I'm saying yes for Redford coming off that run I listed earlier then he makes this movie happen becomes a huge success

he established himself as a producer he's an AAA Lister I think you could make the case that this is his last iconic movie and I know Chris is a huge sneakers guy. No, but like the only other blip up at like of any significance is probably natural and out of Africa. Yeah. I'm not as big into those movies. I think actually in a weird way,

like Apex Mountains is a very hotly debated topic here. This actually is maybe the dictionary definition of Apex Mountain. He got this movie made off his name. It's an amazing, really successful, adored film. And I don't think he was ever as big as he was when he made this. I think it's APEC. I forgot to mention one thing in the internet research. Redford and Hoffman settled on a compromise, previously used by John Wayne and James Stewart and the man who shot Liberty Valance. Redford got top billing in the ads trailers and other marketing. But in the film itself, Hoffman got the top spot.

Bad deal for Redford. I'd rather be in the top spot of the movie. I think he owned points on the movie, so I think he did okay. Yeah, he's fine. Apex Mountain, Dustin Hoffman, no way. I think Kramer versus Kramer is him winning the Oscar and making this. iconic movie is... That's just a few years later, right?

It's like three years later. You could say Tutsi, though. I think Tutsi's the other... Is that like his biggest success is Tutsi? Tutsi's like really one of the only times he played Dustin Hoffman, basically. Yeah. Or it was like the likability of whatever likeability he had

as a person kind of came out in Tutsi the best. Kramer versus Kramer. I mean, that's in my top ten. You know Dustin Hoffman only made four movies in the 80s? Yeah, he did something weird. Dick Tracy. The 80s were weird.

Him and Pacino. Neither of them did a lot. Was Hook the 80s or 90s? No. Tootsie, Ishtar, Rain Man and family business. Weird. Oh, family business.

Remember that? Rain Man, though, bought him a lot of stakes. I want to do Kramer versus Kramer rewatchables where it's just me and hosts whose parents have got divorced. It's me and Dobbins. Just do the divorced. It's coming up on the 20th anniversary or 40th anniversary thing.

Well, Mao would be a wreck the whole time. Yeah. The COD. be pod. That'll be great. Apex Mountain Robards, not even a question. Oh, I don't know, man. There's like so many Robards

moments. Like, Robards is the king of Ice Man Cometh. Like, Robards doing Iceman Cometh on Broadway, he's considered the greatest iteration. I don't know. What are some other amazing Robards moments? Yeah. Come on. Paranhood. Stop. This is also his, is it his first or his second Oscar?

Because he won in this category, I think, two years in a row. He won for Julia, the next year. The only guy he plays Dachal Hammett Julia, yeah. Only guy everyone went back to back

in the supporting character. Can I share you a little tidbit? I think Mahershala Ali is about to

challenge this. He wouldn't be back to back. It would be twice in three years, but I think there's a strong chance that that

happens again. Yeah, you're recommending the green bucket nine to one. Yeah, I like it. So that's it for Apex Mountain.

I don't think anyone, I think what, this might have been Watergate's Apex Mountain. Alan Pakula? I'll let you take that one. I don't have his IMDB in front of me. I mean, Alan Pakula also with an incredible 1970s.

Yeah, let's hear this. Clute. The parallax view, all the president's men, comes a horseman, also with Jason Robarts, and starting over, which you talked about with Wesley a few months ago. Yeah. And then the 80s is a little up and down. He has Sophie's choice, but he also has, like, dream lover. Then in the 90s, he gets bounced back, and he does presumed innocent, consenting adults, the Pelican brief, and the devil's own. Ooh.

Which is a pretty good run for a guy in his 60s. It's just, it's such a thin, the margins there are so thin between Alan Pacula and Coppola or Alan Pacula and Scorsese. Like, those guys who were all in and around that same mix, Philip Kaufman's another one that's really interesting from right around that time, doing the right stuff. Yeah. And like, winds up kind of like not ever really like capturing that again.

These guys just didn't have publicists who were as good. They weren't larger than like personalities the way that people like Copla were. But they made great movies that are totally remember. to this day. But Alan Pakula does not have a big vision, even though like the Russo brothers will say that a Captain America movie is completely influenced by the parallax movie. Or like watching Homecoming, like Adam

Neiman wrote about it on the site. You can just see Pekul all over that show now. I think this is his apex. I agree. And you could make the case for Goldman. Butch is obviously the biggest success and he got paid and it was a huge massive hit.

But a lot of writers can have the one hit movie. he ended up having a career, and this is the culmination where he's got this end marathon, man. He's working with the biggest stars in Hollywood. He's making shitloads of money. He wins an Oscar. I would personally vote for this. I agree with you.

Should, would this movie have been better with Danny Treo, Steve Bouchemey, or Michael K. Williams? Bushemi would be unbelievable. Yeah. He could have played Donald Segretti. He could have been that. He could have a great Segretti. Yeah. Which made me wonder, was Robert Wilden, the Steve Bishemi of his time?

The Saul Rubinick, You stab me in the heart! For overacting. I, really only the FBI agent jumped out at me after the 338 viewing. The guy who Hoffman's trying to get information of. He's a little hot-headed for no reason,

and just wasn't impressed by his acting at all. What about... This is not an applicable movie. There's, like, really no overacting going on to this. I think he made the case that Jack Warden is, like, overcooking it a little bit. He's like heaven can wait, Jack Warden for some reason. A little bit.

He's like, because he's just, he's operating at a vocal frequency that is different from everybody else in the movie. Everybody's either whispering or talking in this very mannered calm tone. And Jack Wharton's like, we got to give these guys a chance. Yeah. Like really loudly and aggressively. He's just doing like ethnic New Yorker guy, but. Maybe like honorable mention to the guy who's trying to sell Ben Bradley like a comic strip

that morning when he's like, Ben, you know what's the biggest thing? Weather reports for people who were drunk yesterday. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going with the FBI agent. You know, Jack Wharton, though, I got to rethink that more. It's not that he's bad. He's just like in kind of a different movie. And Jason Robards is cool as ice.

And he keeps yelling at Jason Robards. Picking Nits. The only real picking knit I have for this is the count to ten scene, which I don't know if that happened in real life. or not, but I don't know. Is you really going to screw that up? I won't say anything about how old of it, not ever. I understand that we wouldn't want you to do that.

We know it's against the law for you to say anything. If there's some way you could warn us to hold on the story, we'd appreciate it. I'd really like to help you, but I can't. Look, I'm going to count to 10, all right? If there's any reason we should hold on the story, hang up the phone before I get to 10. If the story's all right, you'll just be on the phone after I get the 10, all right? Hang up, right? That's right.

You got it? We're straight. all right, I'm going to start counting. Okay? You give the guy complicated instructions, and then he thinks the complete opposite thing. That one never sat right with me. It felt a little too movie cutie.

The Florida office scene is the thing that jumps out, knowing that it didn't happen. That kind of trickery was not really what they do for the rest of the movie, where he's like, I'm going to call from a different room and trick the secretary and then sneak in, you know? Yeah. And also him just being like, oh, you got me, you got in here.

Like, I'll allow it. let's have an interview and I'll show you a bunch of records. Best quote, is there anywhere you don't smoke? Run that baby. Follow the money. Get out the notebook. There's more. Your lives are in danger.

You've done worse than let Haldeman slipway. You've got people feeling sorry for him. I didn't think that was possible. And then nothing's writing on this except for the first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys fuck up again, I'm going to get mad. I think Follow the Money became the iconic quote from this movie. There's a couple other quotes, though.

All right, give me a couple more. Call Ben Bradley and tell him, fuck you. Yeah. The way he tells that story about Lyndon Johnson and Jayhagra Hoover, and he's just the way he just delivers that line so flat, call Ben Bradley and tell him, fuck you. Also, you're both paranoid. She's afraid of John Mitchell and you're afraid of Walter Cronkite.

Yeah, I mean, we mentioned this one earlier. If you're going to do it, do it right. If you're going to hype it, hype it with the facts. I don't mind what you did. mind the way you did it. That's probably my favorite. There's too many best quotes to count. Probably unanswerable questions. So, they should have gone in picking nits. I'll just do it here. There's a flaw in this movie in the sense that the New York Times was way more involved in the Watergate coverage than this movie led on. And I think, I don't know what category this

goes in, but one of the problems of this movie, we've talked about it with JFK, where people watch JFK and they think that's what happened with the JFK assassination and sometimes these movies that lay out oh this is, it's based on a true story and they can take liberties. The biggest problem with this movie is that the New York Times

they were competing with them and the New York Times had some scoops and got some things. It wasn't just Woodward and Burr-in-Burring. They were leading the story for a minute and the movie kind of, not only like it lies that but kind of denies it. It kind of says like no one cares about this. Yeah, it made it sound like there's that.

There's that Bradley part where he's just like, when do we get, what's the lines? Like, when did we get the inside track on all this knowledge? Kind of, like, shouldn't there be other reporters on this if it's such a big deal? Yeah, I think the post, you know, the movie that came out last year, does a pretty good job of setting the scene here. Because you sense there literally is a scene that happens inside the New York Times office and you sense the level of competition happening between them. And it really tells that story, I think, a lot more accurately. But that's okay. You know, this is like, this is superhero shit.

Right. They had to do... They're legend making. They'd end up using 70 pages of the book and read for his trial. I could. Probably an answerable question for me is, is life more fun if we never found out who deep throat was? My answer is yes. I agree.

Sure. Absolutely. It's kind of sad that it was Mark felt and he finally came out just because his health was declining and he wanted to set up his family. But your obsession with this speaks to why that was never going to be the case. You know what I mean? Like just the fact that a guy like you was obsessed with Watergate, and doing your own theories. I mean, this is always going to come out.

I still think it was out. Like, it's going to happen when, like, they'll tell us when this person passes away. Wasn't that, like, going to be the case for a while? Yeah. That was what Woodward had always said. When he died, he would share it. But, yeah, I mean, you know,

in the kind of abstract, we're making a podcast kind of way, it's more fun if we never find out. But in the real way, it's like they clearly were trying to, you know, take care of his family and, like, get some proceeds from the life rights and everything that was going to happen afterwards.

To make a badly in Nisa movie. It did solve the question of a lot of people did feel like Woodward just took three different sources and made up the whole deep throat thing completely, which, you know, considering he's covered a lot of things over there, as it's nice to know that he wasn't full shit with deep throat. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that he was, I mean, I feel like that movie, that book has already forgotten. But three months ago we were talking again about like Woodward did it again. He went inside of an administration and he wrote a book of exposing all of the insanity happening inside this administration. I mean, he's literally written like 19 books.

and all of them are about how, with the exception of John Belushi's book, they're all about how politicians are not to be trusted. You know, he's still, like, insanely sourced. And then the other one for me for unanswerable questions, probably, is did this lay the blueprint for the Russians? Because basically the whole pick-fucking campaign and them doing what they did to the Republicans doing what they did to Muskie and McGovern and then culminated in Watergate.

And it was basically just trying to sabotage the other person's, the other party's campaign doing whatever means necessary. And now in 2016, it's so easy to do that. With online, the Russians figured it out. Right, the blueprint. Predates Watergate. I agree. And I think it also got really sophisticated in the 80s and 90s.

A lot of this stuff is kind of tick-y-tack bullshit. Like breaking into the DNC is just kind of nonsense. But stuff that started to happen in later years, which may or may not be depicted in the movie, Vice coming out on Christmas, I think is much more. was like sort of the modern era of this stuff and then maybe some of our international friends or enemies observed some of that stuff.

Last category is who won the movie but we never talked about Jane Alexander so let's do it now. Okay. Just very quickly. She's just great in this movie and it's the kind of part that she's also really good in Kramer versus Kramer.

It's this part, the quiet, thoughtful friend that you start talking to them and you trust them instinctively and you just want to start telling them stuff or they're saying a lot of stuff with their eyes and their posture. Yeah. And she was just a really good actress. And I remember there was a really weird HBO show.

I think it was called Tell Me You Love Me that my wife watched about all these people who... Yeah, Adam Scott was on that. Adam Scott was on and all these people who had like weird sex relationships, weird sex issues with their relationship. And they went to this therapist, Jane Alexander. and at that point she was like 65. And in that show, she just gets naked and has sex with her husband in the show. And it was like, Jesus, Jane Alexander still like, still bringing it the same way she did in the 70s where we got to the moment where you made us uncomfortable by making a sexual reference.

I didn't think that they could have. There's no sex in this movie. I didn't know. Like, how is Bill going to bring up an old person's a wreck. She did it again. I'm bringing this home. it was just, it fit in with the arc of her 40-year career. It totally, out of all the actors who I would have said,

who would have done this? Who would have gone there in their 60s? I think I would have picked her. And I have no idea why based on her body of work, but she had this kind of connection with other actors. And it made sense that she did this in the show. If it was another actress that would have been like, that woman's in her 60s?

This is crazy. I know you're looking at him skeptically, but I love it. I feel like he's really reaching out here. I'm having one of those moments where, and this is not uncommon with you, Bill, I completely understand exactly what you're saying and 100% agree, but I'm also fully mortified by what you're talking about. As is the family of Jane Alexander. It's just so unique to so many of your ideas. But like, what you're saying makes complete sense.

Totally. As an actress, she has this unique empathy and vulnerability, and it's what makes her performance in this movie good because you're like, man, she's, she's just not afraid to look a way that would make other people uncomfortable, right? And that's exactly what you're saying. As a 60-year-old woman, she was not afraid to take her clothes off and be on camera, which is an incredible thing to do as an actor. However, My point is, this is so weird.

She was committed to the craft. Yes, you're right. You're 100% right. And a lot of the choices she made, she was actually one of those actors where you go, why, she actually, why isn't she a bigger deal? She's totally forgotten, which is weird. I mean, she is a great actress. I don't know enough about her.

But she's, who's that actor that Chris loves? Tom Cruise. No, Tommy, not Tommy Lee Jones. Scott Glenn. Oh, Scott. It's kind of the Scott Glenn of the 70s, 80s. Not sure why she wasn't a bigger deal. Would Training Day be better if Jane Alexander played Scott Glenn's role?

When will Scott Glenn have sex in the screen again to bring us all full circle? She should have had sex with Scott Glenn. That would have been good. Everything would have worked. All right. Who won the movie? The candidates are Redford. Hoffman or Robards.

I'm going Robards. I'm going Robards as well. What about America guys? America, you can say America. So that went the jury's still out. Yeah, that's true. This Robards performance, which we saved for last year, because I think we all knew he won the movie,

actually makes me wonder why his, I know he had the Iceman comment like he's won two Oscars. Obviously he had a good career. But it also feels like it should have been even a bigger career than it was. I mean, he's one of the great. stage actors. Yeah. I wish he had been

in more movies, I guess, because stage acting comes and goes. Well, we talk about Jack Warden and Martin Balsam. Jason Robards is also a guy who I think

is the second half of his life treated his persona very well. Like, he's a really great older guy. You know what I mean? That's true. As an angry young man,

he was great. But like, once he started to grow into these roles like Julia, like all the president's men. I mean, he famously gives this incredible performance in Magnolia

when he's actually sort of dying. you know that Paul Thomas Anderson movie. I think that's a great point though, that he was great as a guy in his 50s. There's also just like something with him, and I think that there's a lot of actors from the 70s that have stuff like this.

He's just got that built-in hang dog expression that gives characters. The cigarettes in his lungs. Yeah, they just gives characters so much personality right off jump because you're like, oh, look at this guy with his like, he's just sad face automatically. It's always just like a sad face.

The Ben Bradley document. which I highly recommend. Yes. Does a really good job of capturing how important Robards was for the Ben Bradley Mystique because he won the movie at the time. And it actually, he's so good in the movie as Ben Bradley, that Ben Bradley became a bigger deal and became a much bigger star. And they were kind of tied.

They became friends. And it's one of my favorite under 15 minutes of total screen time performances ever. And I can't imagine who else. could have been brand, it really had to be him. He's perfect for it. I mean, there are a couple of other really great Robarts performances. Like Melvin and Howard, he was also nominated for an Oscar in that. We mentioned Magnolia.

He was in a couple of Sam Peck and Paw movies. He's in Packerard and Billy the Kid. He's in Cable Hoag. But he was like in Brewster's millions. Yeah. You know, like, he just had a really strange career and I don't totally understand it. There's some complicated stuff about him. My wife is a huge Lauren Bacall fan.

And she wrote Lauren McCall's biography. And they were married and they had a very marriage. and they had a very, very rocky relationship after Bogart died. And, you know, he was like a real tough guy. He was a World War II hero. He was really decorated in the Navy. And he just was like a,

he was a tough, old school, hard drinking, hard smoking, hard acting kind of figure. And like that, all that age. What's that? Hard to believe he's not alive. Yeah. The 70s chewed up a lot of those guys. Totally.

And that's part of what makes Magnolia so good too because he's like, you can feel that he's lived to that life. Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to even move my mind. now to recast this movie with modern actors. And I just don't know

that there's anybody who has the gravitas, especially in that age that Robards was when he played him. There's not a lot of like famous 50 or 60 year old actors. Yeah, those guys are like George Clooney now. Yeah. I was thinking Clooney, like the modern version of this movie. The problem

is that if you see George Clooney... And by the way, it would be an really interesting George Clooney part. Yeah, I think it would work, but he would have to have like a beard or do you have to be like 15 pounds and heavy? Yeah. You'd have to be like more like Siriana George Clooney. You can't have George Clooney from the Nespresso commercial.

Be like, I'm Ben Bradley. I just walked in here looking like James Bond. I mean, Hanks did it. And it's okay. I know you're not a big fan of it. I didn't love it. I didn't love it. Robards, she's great.

I just love every scene he's in. Yeah. And I think the most interesting thing, and then we'll go on this is just like, he's in a movie with two of the biggest stars of the last 50 years. And he feels like the biggest star. It's like if there was a third guy in heat that was better than De Niro and Puccino.

Yeah. It's, you know, if Trejo was the best part of heat. There is Henry Rollins. That's his name. It would be like. William Fickner and Henry Rollins. It would be like if Mike Miller blew LeBron and Wade out of the screen for every heat game for three years. It just doesn't make sense.

But he really does feel like the biggest star. It's true. So there you go. All the presidents men, it's a classic. It is timely or than ever. if you get into the deep dive on this, I would recommend the book. I would recommend the final days,

which was the sequel with the last days of Nixon's presidency. And the Ben Bradley documentary is really great. I would not recommend the documentary that Redford did in 2013. Yeah, all the presidents men revisited. Which was basically like,

I'm just going to grab as much credit as possible. I did not like that. Would you recommend like the John Dean and Haldeman books and all that stuff? No, you really need... The Haldema books pretty good. good actually. Okay.

Yeah, but those things, it's like they're just spinning their version of the story. But anyway, Chris Ryan, Sean Fantasy, thank you. Don't forget to check out the ringer.com, the ringer podcast network. Our new movie podcast, the big picture, hosted by Sean Fantasy. Chris Ryan pops on there. I popped on there two weeks ago. What about the watch? Shout out to the watch.

And the watch? Well, people know about the watch. The Watch is an established pop culture franchise. Yeah, we're like the Washington Post. We got the watch. We got the big picture. We got a jam session on Channel 33. We have on Shuffle.

A whole bunch of great pop culture podcasts. Good to be back. We'll see in a couple weeks. Collateral, me and Chris Ryan. What? Yeah.