The Rewatchables - ‘Argo’ With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

This is the best bad idea that The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan have had, by far. They rewatch Best Picture Academy Award winner ‘Argo,’ starring Ben Affleck, John Goodman, and Alan Arkin and directed by Ben Affleck. Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I wanted to tell you about a new podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. It's going to be on the Ringer Reality Podcast. What's it called, Johnny Bananas? Death, Taxes and Bananas. We're going to be breaking down this season of the challenge, Hall of Fame episodes, and I'm going to be taking you behind the curtain of America's fifth major sport.

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Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. We're also brought to by the ringer.com as well as The Ringer podcast network. We're now in the 200s with the rewatchables. Chris, this is what I do. I get people out. Argo is next.

Our embassy has been seized. Six of the hostages got out. I need you to help me make a fake movie. You need a script. You need a producer. I fly into Tehran. We all fly out together as a film crew. Right.

You have a lot. 72 hours to get them out. This is what I do, and I've never left anyone behind it. You know who they are? It's over, Tony. Let's not make a movie. Argo, Redidard. Starts October 12th.

Chris Ryan is here. My name is Bill Simmons. This is a movie, Argo, that we covered pretty extensively in Grantland in 2012. Yeah, it was probably like one of the real first Grantland movies, right? Yeah, we had, um, we launched. in June 2011, so we missed the Oscars that year. And then 2012 was kind of our first Oscars. And then 2013 was like our first real Oscars. We had Fantasy was there at some point. We had Zach, the great Zach Barron was writing for us. He wrote our Argo Review.

We had Wesley writing our 2013 Oscars because we had hired him by that point. And we were all in it. We were doing podcast stuff like that. The category had expanded a few years earlier. people really cared about this stuff. There was this whole generation of people who kind of knew the history of things and Oscar snubs and stuff like that. And this movie, it checked all the boxes. People loved it. It was an old school Hollywood movie.

It got nominated for Best Picture. And then Affleck didn't get nominated for Best Director. And it turned out to be the best thing for the movie because all of a sudden the narrative became about that. And it sneaks in. It wins Best Picture, which I think we'll litigate in a little bit. But I think about this. To me, this was the Affleck comeback being complete from the dog days of Jalo and Jeeley

and Rock Bottom in the mid-2000s. We're back, though. We're back with it. Yeah, we're back. You could argue that his comeback is now complete because he's back. It's true. Now it's really back because he was J-Lo. But he directed Gone Baby Gone. Good stuff.

Good first director effort. He's in state of plays and the company men. He's starting to try to reestablish stuff. Then the town happens, which we've already done, one of the, the best rewatchables we've done. He directed, starred, great movie, then directs Argo and it wins best picture. And he goes up, he gives a speech, he becomes this sympathetic figure. He does Gone Girl with Fincher, I think a year and a half later, but this was complete where he's a real filmmaker now. This was like, these weren't two fluke movies. These were three really well-crafted

movies, including Argo, which has the legacy of the 1970s, all these great movies we grew up with, Paralex View and all those. And what's weird is he hasn't really directed anything great since. Right. Did you think after this, didn't you feel like we were going to get an Affleck directed movie every two, three, four years? It felt like he was like an A-List director, and he only did one after this, and it was, what was that one called?

Live by Night. Live by Night. Didn't do well, and that's it. Hasn't directed since. It's kind of a bummer. Well, it's tough, man. I mean, so I was going to say to you, I wanted to ask you if you thought that Argo winning Best Picture is why it hasn't shown up earlier in the rewatchables. Because I feel like winning Best Picture actually kind of dimmed its, it's rewatchability, even though it's a compulsively rewatchable movie.

And it wasn't talked about as much because when you get those Oscar movies, you typically talk so much about them for six or eight months. And you're just constantly pitting them against another movie. and you're talking about it's the Argo or Django or Silver Lining's Playbook or The Master or whatever. And then you're like, I'm fucking done with it. I don't want to talk about this movie for three years or four years. And I almost feel like Argo is way closer to Ocean's Eleven than it is the master. You know what I mean? It's way more fun to talk about and to watch Argo over and over again and catch it on HBO or Cinemax or whatever than it is as like as a piece of art or as like a kind of critical football that you would talk about. As far as Afflex directing career, I mean, obviously some personal stuff. stuff, right? Yeah.

And then I just, look, man, they just don't make those movies anymore. They just don't. They don't make movies like that. And Clooney has tried over and over again and often failed with the kind of movies he wants to direct. And I just think that probably if Affleck wants to keep directing movies, he's going to probably want to make them for a streamer.

You talk about the rewatchability of Argo and why we haven't done this yet. It's funny. It reminds me a spotlight, which we did. Mm-hmm. For some reason, you and I, we just, we talked about spotlight more. I think because there's... It had a real. really good Netflix run. That's why. It had a great Netflix run, but it also there was the All the

President's Men piece of it and then journalism taking a bigger importance in the mid-2010s. And then it had the Ruffalo speech, which was one of the original rewatchables categories for overacting. They knew, Robbie. They let it happen. And they cut those kids loose. The Catholic Church motherfuckers. And it had crew dip and it was just, but And Argo, I hadn't watched it for a couple years. And then it was on the HBO Cinemax rotation. And I got sucked in. And I watched it.

And then I watched it again two weeks later. I watched like the last hour of it. And that was when I texted you. And I'm like, Argo. Yeah. It's kind of brewing now. And I kind of forgotten how great it is. And it really is like we have access to all these great movies from the 70s.

And Redford's in a lot of them. But there's this whole era that we've talked about before of, you know, as the Nixon presidency. this whole distrust of Washington. And it just leads to some great art. It leads to some really, really awesome movies that from like 72 to 79, there's like 12, 15 of them. And there are all different forms, right?

There's invasion of the body snatchers. They do, they go that route. Three days of the condor. Three days of the condor. That's the easy route. But then like, even like Capricorn 1 where it's like, did we fake the moon landing? It's all about distrust,

which is the era where I now. Argo is a throwback to those. It's a movie that it's set in 1979 and feels like it could have been made in 1981. Yeah, he did a lot of stuff with the filmmaking that was very consciously trying to like ape Gordon Willis photography from those 70s. He talks about all the LA stuff

and Argo is supposed to look like killing of a Chinese bookie, the Cassavetti's movie. So Affleck knew as shit. It's funny that you talk about the distrust thing though because the heroes of this movie are a CIA agent. You know what I mean? Like we distrust, like in all those 70s parallel, Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor type movies, the enemy, the bad guy is the government.

The bad guy is the intelligence services. And in Argo, it's like the ingenuity and genius of this guy who even though his own government is tripping him up in different places and is like at the last second trying to pull a fast one and take away the plane tickets, Tony is still, you know, like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to get these guys out. But, you know, we can also get into the historical accuracy of Argo and whether or not that matters. That's good. There's some issues there. Wesley Morris writing for the Boston Globe because he wasn't at Grantland yet. And he wrote a review and he said, quote, just 2012,

Affleck is the first actor since Warren Beatty's generation of stars to make a persuasive case for himself as an honest to goodness Hollywood filmmaker. And that's why I mentioned the Affleck stuff at the top. Like, he became too famous again. Well, Batman happens. He does gone girl and then Batman happens. And he's married. He's got kids.

but he has completed this incredible Hollywood comeback. And at some point, you kind of lose your way a little bit. And I think he lost his way a little bit with this filmmaker side. Because I know, as I talked to him about it, obviously have interacted with them a bunch of times. But in that 08 to 2012 range, it was like somebody going back to ground zeros. He was like Rocky and Rocky 3 of like, I've got to go back to what got me in this business. I love movies. I want to start making them.

I want to start telling stories. And then he just became too famous again. And I think we've seen that happen with some people. It didn't stop Warren Beatty. He still directed movies and kept making them. I really hope he makes another one. I would love to see another Affleck movie. I mean, he was originally going to direct the Batman movie that he was going to

star him eventually collapse. Well, he's in Batman versus Superman, which we don't have to talk about. But then he was going to make his own Batman movie, which I think was probably the carrot that, was dangled in front of him. Also, like, he might just be a guy, look, Damon does the same thing, where Damon's made, you know, forborn movies and Affleck was off making these Batman movies and maybe he convinced himself that he was going to get to execute his creative vision as, like, the director of Batman. But I, it's a shame because, like, I do think that

Warren Beatty is a perfect comparison where he just has a popular sensibility, but like a real filmmaker's eye. And the cool thing about the town and Argo, is his performances in those movies are much different than the person he was in Armageddon and boiler room and shit like that. He has completely turned down and turned off that part of his movie star part and has gotten into just being like,

I'm going to let Jeremy Renner or Alan Arkin be the most sensational part of this movie. Yeah. And one of the reasons I love Argo is, you know, I think Affleck's like us. He grew up watching these movies. and this is an homage to a lot of those movies, which I think why I like it so much

and why it's so much fun to rewatch because it takes you back to this time, ironically in the 70s. And there's an element of like, it's just suspenseful the whole time and there's parts that shouldn't even really be suspenseful, but there's always this, you know,

this music in the background and you always feel like you're just like you need a shower after the movie ends. You know, every single piece of it is gripping. That's because Scoot McHare is smoked 74, cigarettes in two hours. Great job by him. Well, it's, they give us the, he does the opening credits, which are great, and it sets up the Shaw and what this whole event was in like three minutes,

really done well. And then we're right there. There's storming the embassy. There's like, there's no fucking around. We don't have like the scene of Tony Mendez at his son's literally a game and his wife being mean to him. Like we're in. We're in 1979 and the embassy is about to get stormed and we're off. And now we got to get, we got to save these people. And I just, just feel like a lot of the movies now they fuck that up. They've got to go bigger. This movie's two and a half hours in the wrong hands. And we're setting up these backstories. And we're getting we're getting more Canadian embassy scenes with the six where they're having dinner and they're like, you know, my dad, my dad loved baseball, what I wouldn't give to go to Yankee Stadium tomorrow.

And like those kind of dumb scenes. And it's like, fuck it. No, this movie has one objective. These people need to get home. We're getting them home. And they're in an unscathomable. safe place and if we don't get that home, they're going to be decapitated in front of 10,000 people. Right. And I think that the other thing that this movie does is that if you do, if you take all the people working in the embassy and you spend a ton of time on their backstory and how did these two meet and they love each other and they want to have kids, but these two haven't or whatever, then you don't actually have enough time to do what Affleck does, which is essentially make three separate movies. He's got the Washington DC spy movie with Titus.

Welliver and Kyle Chandler and Brian Cranston and Chris Messina. So that's one ensemble. Then he has the Hollywood movie, which is obviously demonstrably the best part of the movie with Alan Arkin and John Goodman. And then he's got the Tehran movie, which is the movie with Cleo Deval and Scoot McNary and Tate Donovan. He's got three whole ensembles in the movie. And most people wouldn't be able to fit that because they would be spending so much time with character building or whatever. But he's just like story, story, story, story, story. Everything is in service of this story. And it's only until the very end when he Spielbergs out and ends the movie like five times that he loses like hold of the of the of the whole plot. Yeah. Ironically, that's the worst part of this movie is that it has four endings.

Yeah. Is that like he feels the need he's got to go see Taylor Schilling at at the house and the hugger in front of the American flag? It's like, we got it, man. You won. I would have cut that. Yeah. That was in my notes. So AFUKET gets robbed. It's the first movie in 23 years. to win the Oscar for Best Picture without being nominated for Best Director, the one previously was driving Miss Daisy, which of course should not have won. But Argo was the, I think, was the betting favorite going into this. It was.

Oscars, yeah. This was a funny Oscars because this is the Seth MacFarlane Oscars. So this was like, I think this was like one of those, like, we're going to try something different. Everybody was like, oh, Jesus. Yeah, like, what the fuck is this? It was the first winner since Grand Hotel 1932 to not have been nominated for Best,

director or elite acting category. So it was 81 years since that had happened. And, you know, the category was bigger, and we could go through it now really quickly. We have Amor, not a comedy, Beast of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, La Miserab. Le, yeah. Le Miserabre. Yeah. Life of Pie.

Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and Zero Dark 30. Right. Good year. Good year. Nice mix of movies. And I think it was also an Oscars year where everybody decided who was going to win the Oscar five different times during the year. Remember it was like, oh, Lincoln's winning everything.

Well, the day, when they first started coming, like the early reviews of Zero Dark 30 came out, people were like, this is going to win director in picture. And then like, Django, it's like, oh, Django's went in. Right. And then it was like, no, it might be, actually it might be Silver Lines Playbook. Yeah. Might steal it.

It's a Hollywood type of movie, but ultimately, Argo, it had two things going, it had three things going in for it. It had the snub. It had just an old school Hollywood movie that was the kind of movie everybody grew up with, so they loved that. And then the third piece was all the inside Hollywood jokes. Like it has a literally has a WGA joke there. It's how Hollywood saves a bunch of people's lives.

Yeah. So it has all that inside baseball stuff. But best director was Angley, Life of Pie, won. the guy from Amore, Beasts of Southern Wild, Spielberg for Lincoln, David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook. Probably getting rid of Beasts of the Southern Wild. Yeah, I mean, I think P-C...

Probably sending out in packing. Paul Thomas Anderson got robbed here or two for Master. Well, Master didn't get nominated for Best Picture either. Yeah, so weird year. There was snubs. There was terrible stuff happening left-terrain. For Best Supporting Actor, Alan Arkin got nominated for Argo, did not win.

Christopher Walt. Christoph Waltz one. But that was a loaded category, too. That had him, Arkin, De Niro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Tommy Lee Jones. I've heard of all of those people. Yeah, that was an awesome category. Pretty good stuff.

All right, so Affleck gets involved with this movie late. Initially, it's a George Clooney thing. It's a 2007 Wired article by Joshua Beerman. It's called The Great Escape. And Clooney's company wins the bidding war for it, and Clooney decides I'm going to write and direct. I'm going to be Tony Mendez. at some point

he starts making other movies I think he made the descendants the script exists he's also like somewhere around there and he does Siriana somewhere around there which is essentially

like a very Tony Mendez part right and now he's like well hold on so the script is out there by Chris Terrio it ends up on the blacklist in I think 2010

and then finally Affleck gets involved and and they start making it the irony of Clooney wanting to write and direct it is this is exactly the type of movie I mean star and direct

this was the ultimate George Clooney how did he not make this? I think his directing has been pretty bad for the most part considering he's gotten a lot of swings at it and I just don't think he's been a good director but this movie him starring it the Tony Mendez part

it would have been perfect for him right? He's basically playing the out-of-sight guy maybe a little less charming but a little like sneaky trying to solve stuff and if he couldn't have directed this movie at a high level, we would have known once in for all that he wasn't a good director. Yeah, it's tough one for him.

The Mendez part, the way Affleck plays it, which I'm sure we'll talk about, is interesting because the way Affleck does it, you can kind of see why he would be ignored in that building. Right? Like, you have to basically play a guy who is down on his luck, but not in like a lovable way. Like he is actually just being ignored by his bosses.

He's probably out to see. professionally. It's kind of hard sometimes. Like, Clooney is an overwhelming charm guy. Like, it would be hard to believe that Clooney would, like, not get picked first in class in the office kind of thing. You know what I mean? Like, people would be like, oh, let's see what Tony wants to do. So, yeah, I think that Affleck did something really cool

with his performance in this movie. Yeah, you just identified the biggest problem with Clooney as a major actor is he's always George Clooney. Yeah. It's tough to see him. Like, it would have been hard to see him as Tony Mendez. If you saw that, you just be like, it's Danny Ocean. He's going to get these guys out.

And when he veers away from that, it's usually like a part like the descendants. Where he's still, it's beaten down George Clooney. But it's always George Clooney. You know, like Denzel, who's usually some version of Denzel in a movie, but he can also throw curve balls and he could be like... He does this year in flight. Like he plays an alcoholic commercial airline flight pilot who pulls off this crazy move in his plane.

We get drunk Denzel in that movie. We get, and he got game. He's like incarcerated, pissed off of the world. Denzel. He could, he figured out variations of himself that, that I don't think Clooney ever did. Yeah, that's a good way to play. Well, he's also one of the greatest actors we ever had. So maybe it's not fair to compare

them. But I think you're right. With Affleck, what's so interesting about him as an actor, we talked about him as a director, but as an actor, he's been able to play like the gone girl guy. he's been able to play the character actor Goodwill Hunting like the guy's fuck up Masshole Buddy guy

and he can kind of lose himself in this Argo part and some of the criticism with him in Argo was it was too muted I know well that he didn't want to be a big enough star in it but I actually think he played it pretty well he's only got like two flashy scenes pretty much in this movie like there's when he's at the conference table and they're presenting bikes or they're like

maybe we'll try and get them out as farmers or teachers and he's like, you're going to have to follow them for 300 miles with a tire patch kit or like with a bike pump. Yeah. And there's that scene and there's pretty much like when he first meets all the people from the embassy and is like, I get people like, I'm Kevin Harkins and I get people out. Other than that, all of the flashy stuff in this movie are, is either Arkin, Goodman, Scoot McNary or like Kyle Chandler.

They get all the scene. And the music and the soundtrack, yeah. Yeah, Afunk didn't write himself the scene where he's screaming. on the phone to Brian Cranston. Right. You better get these ticket, playing tickets for me, or I'm going to have six heads

that won't have bodies attached to them. Right. The only thing he says is, like, I'm responsible. That's it. That's like the most mute, like it's such a muted thing. If that's another actor,

maybe they're like, no, I want to be like, I'm responsible, you know? Like, it's that instinct probably helped that he was directing it. He knew what the movie needed. Well, it helped that he came up

with one of the weirdest hairdo beard things. It really didn't seem like Affleck. After a while, you kind of forget it was Affleck. He looks like he plays like he's the backup third baseman for the 81 Pirates. He's like hanging out with Kent Toccovy at night. Right. Yeah, he looks like he's right out of that 79 to 81 range in a way that I just don't think a lot of actors would have said. I don't see Clooney with that hairdo.

I think ultimately he's just not doing it. You know how like when you used to get like baseball cards from that era and it would be like a rated rookie and you'd be like, isn't this guy like, look like he's 51. But it would be like some guy who just got called up by the Mariners. Yeah, that Twitter account, which is great, Super 70s Sports. Yeah. I have that one book parked. And that's one of his wheelhouse things is some of the hair mustache, afro stuff that was

going on back then. And they really nailed that. So this movie ends up getting seven nominations. It won for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing. and a 44.5 million dollar budget made 232.3 million bucks with no chance of a sequel. You know, I forgot to mention this because I'm older than you and I think it's a really important piece to this.

One of the reasons I like this movie so much is the Iran hostage crisis, I think it was the biggest thing of my entire childhood, probably that and when we beat the Russians in the Olympics in 1980. I think those were the two defining things that happened when I was like, I don't know, age nine, age 10, age 11 that range. So was it did it lead the news every night for a year? Yeah, it was, it was massive. It's what led to Nightline.

That was like day 30. It's what led to the gas. The gas prices got all fucked up. So that became a whole thing. And it was the first time I could remember as a little kid feeling like, oh, it's not all safe here. It's not. Like we had stuff like we had a huge blizzard in Massachusetts in 1978 and it was like things shut down for three weeks. But you always felt safe at least.

I never felt like we're going to blow up. You were kind of growing up in that post-Vietnam era where you probably aren't thinking about that. Yeah. I know what you mean. I was thinking about like I was in jeopardy and the hostage crisis and it's like, wait, so they took our people and we're not getting him back and there's this, you know, at the time I'm thinking this crazy Ayatollah Khomeini. He's got the scary beard. Like, is he going to blow us up? and why can't we get these guys back?

And it tied into, I was a big polysia history guy in college. And I love the Carter presidency. It was so fascinating to me. Like, I really do think his heart was in the right place, but he was just the wrong president at the wrong time. He had terrible people around him. And this hostage crisis became the death of him. He couldn't figure out how to get the people back.

And we felt like we felt powerless. That's how David Kahn thinks of his tenure is. He will be. Wrong place. at wrong time. My heart was in the right place. But fucking Simmons wouldn't stop ragging on me.

God damn it. If it had just been three years later. But I'm glad this movie exists because even you see it throughout the thing. Like this was the most important thing going on for a year.

Do you remember any of the stuff that they show in the movie, which is like the tension in America about it? Like the people kind of showing up on the news and be like, let's fucking go to war and stuff like that.

Because that's like right around like Cold War stuff is really starting to truly get ramped up. Like it's not Reagan yet, but it is like I think that there is obviously like a bit of nationalism developing. So I do remember some of this because my mom, I was somehow mentioned how my parents got separated, but my parents were separated. And my mom's best friend was living with us in Boston. This was 1980.

And she started dating this guy who they met at some nightclub or something. But he was Iranian. My mom's best friend starts dating this guy who's Iranian. Okay. Who she dated for two years, who pretended he wasn't Iranian because it was so dangerous to be Iranian. Wow. In America.

So he pretended he was, I forget what it was, like El Salvadorian or something. And because it was like, if I tell somebody to Iran, I'm Iranian, I'm going to get jumped when I go to my car. But that was the level of animosity. And it was the first time, it was the first time. it was the first time I remember like real anger from a international situation. Obviously

it kept happening after that. But it was the dominant story. So it's cool that the movie exists. And I think like there was real tension that they were going to kill these people and they were, you know, they were going to show it on television, you know, and we'd have to have like blurt out

whatever. Like who knew? It just was going in the wrong way. So, but I was curious whether or not Because in the movie, you know, we understand, obviously, the whole movie is about these six people who get out of the embassy and get to the, get out of the U.S. embassy and get to the Canadian embassy, the Canadian ambassadors residents. But when did you guys become aware that there were these people outside of the hostages who were like, not until after it was over, right? Yeah, I don't remember. I was too young. I don't remember the Argo six. I don't remember that piece. I remember when the hostages got out. and how long it was. And it was so long that you kind of forgot they were there.

Well, it's a whole, if people are interested in this, I mean, like, obviously we'll get into like whether or not, like they, they obviously,

like, I think based on a true story, based does a lot of work in that for this movie. Yes, it's some based. There's a, if you're, if you found this movie interesting,

there's tons of really cool stuff to read about it. Like I was reading this morning about the botched rescue attempt that Carter had with the helicopters and one of the helicopters explodes in the desert. Did you know about that? Yeah. I had no idea about that. There's also some good movies that come after the hostage crisis

that are kind of tied to the paranoia of just the Middle East being a threat of stuff with like the CIA, CIA being incompetent stuff with that. But you had like there's that movie missing. There's that movie Falcon and the Snowman. There's like this two, three year run of movies like that, these thrillers that were kind of felt newsy for one reason. And even like a movie, it's different than what we're talking about, but like a movie like Silkwood.

Sure. There was a lot of like, this was fucked up, here's a story about it. Now they would be documentaries, I feel like, for the most part. But yeah, it's weird because the hostage crisis hadn't really gotten its right movie. But you think of like the Munich, the 1972, the Olympics, that whole thing, that was, you know, over and over again. documentaries, anniversaries, there were movies about it, and that kept going. But the hostage crisis, nobody really figured out until this movie. Rotten Tomatoes, 96%. Just had to mention that,

because this is kind of a modern movie. Most interesting thing for us, Roger Ebert, four stars. Yeah. Said Argo, the real movie about the fake movies, both spellbinding and surprisingly funny, and he chose it as the best film of the year. And here's why that's important. That was the last time he did that because he died in 2013. So this was his last film of the year. Yeah, his last best movie of the year. Yeah.

Check out the Cisco and Iber podcast, by the way. We're going to take a break, then we're going to do the categories. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce, and some very tasty, limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu, Chantililis.

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Taking Zepbound with a sulfonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-9-9 or visit zepbounds.lily.com. All right, the category is. This will be an interesting one to see who wins most rewatchable scene. First one is obviously the charging of the U.S. Embassy. the embassy, yeah. Holy mackerel. Just really good. An awesome, awesome, awesome electric eight-minute

scene. I think it's so many small little things. Like, the guy picks up the dartboard that has I told his picture on it. And he's just, he's so mad. He's just like, what the fuck? And he's the guy who's commanding the Marines. He's like, I'm going to go out and reason with them. And then he's just like, open the fucking, like, he gets immediately kidnapped and all the stuff. And then the people saying about like if you shoot one of them where this will be World War III, we can't shoot anybody. We will all die. Don't fucking shoot anybody.

You don't want to be the son of a bitch who started a war. They need an hour to burn the classified. I need you to hold. If you shoot one person, they're going to kill every single one of us in here. They also do a really, Affleck does a really good job, the screenplay does a really good job, and the performers do a great job of like

in that moment you learn everything you need to know about each of the hostages, or not hostages, but the people who are going to be on the run. Like, Tate Donovan, kind of leading them, but is sort of also like an airhead, scoot, bad locker room guy, immediate, immediate, like, kind of questioning, questioning the coach, you know, Cleodovall, like, Carrie Bish, like everybody kind of does exactly what they're going to do for the rest of the movie in that opening moment. There's so many good little things, like even when they go into that one lady's room who gets captured and the guy,

just takes her glasses off. Yeah. And as a glasses, I'm like, oh, man, just shoot me. Just shoot me over taking my glasses. But, and they're trying to destroy all the equipment. It actually reminded me of when things were going really bad with me and ESPN near the end there, when we had our one-hour evacuation plan at the Greatland offices, burn everything, burn the computers, burn all the files. But we didn't. They got me at 7 in the morning on Twitter. So we weren't able to execute it. I was able to destroy your last trade value. list. Anyway, amazing seven-minute scene.

The next one is Mendez goes in, meets with everybody, and shoots down every rescue plan. What we like for this is bicycles? Or you could just send in training wheels and meet them at the border with Gatorade. It's 300 miles to the Turkish border. They'd need a support team following them with a tire pump. We were just asked to sharpshoot this.

State is handling the yacht. I'm sorry. Who is this? Tony's an Exville spash. You got a lot of the Shaw's people out after the fall. Sir, if these people can read or add, pretty soon they're going to figure out their six short of a full deck.

It's winter. You can't afford to wait around until spring, so it's nice enough to take a bike ride. The only way out of that city is the airport. It's honestly, it reminded me of when Chuck Kosterman used to come to Grantland and we would pitch ideas and he would just shoot down each one of them calmly

like Tony Mendez did. Nope, that won't work. No, somebody did. that eight years ago. No, and just like all the way through. But that's the most smarmy kind of wise-assie Affleck is in the movie where he's just, he's so, he's so tired of these guys. This movie, like, when he's like exfills or like abortions, you don't want to need one, but when you do, you don't do it yourself. You're like, you're basically, you're just like, this guy. Come on. Clear out for Affleck. I told Ben not to use that as a high school yearbook quote

when he's high school. Like maybe don't put that one in. That scene's really good. There's also a lot of people in that scene. Like there's like, oh, that guy. Titus Welliver, Zalko Yvonik. Yeah. Next one, I'm combining the Goodman and Affleck, Goodman listening to the plan,

talking about how they would do this movie crew thing. I think Goodman slides in the, no, no, you're an associate producer at best. You can't build cover stories around a movie that doesn't exist. You need a script. You need a producer. Make me and produce. No, you're an associate producer at best.

It's such a good under the radar day, but then they go and they meet Arkin. And Arkin's just immediately, he's basically playing out in Arkin. Yeah. All right, I only got a couple of minutes. I'm getting a lifetime achievement award. Marzal Trophelostra. I'd rather stay home and count the wrinkles on my dog's balls. Okay.

Just ripping off lines like that. It's so funny he got nominated for this because he basically got nominated for this, because he basically got nominated to play out in Arkin. Yeah, yeah. But at that age, that's what you want, you know? Yeah. Great job by him. But I like that combo.

The movie, as soon as Goodman and Arkin show up, it's just like, oh, little levity, little comedy, you get a hollied, everything's outdoors in the sun. Are you including him going to Richard Kind to get to buy the script in this section? That's my next scene, actually. Arkin buys the script from Richard Kind for 10K. A couple of weeks ago, I was seeing a trade of Vix. I was enjoying a Mai Tai when my pal Warren Beatty comes in. He wishes me well.

We had a little chat. Seems he was attached to the star in Zulu Empire, which was going to anchor that MGM slate. But Warren confided in me that the picture's gone over budget because the Zulu extras want to unionize. They may be cannibals, but they want health and dental so the movie's kaput. Which means that the MGM deal ain't going to happen,

and your script ain't worth. with the buffalo shit on a nickel. So the way it looks to me through the cataracts I grant you is that you can either sign here and take $10,000 for your toilet paper script or you can go fuck yourself. With all due respect.

Good stuff all the way around. Yeah. Then I got a, it's short, but Mendez goes to meet the Canadian six. This is what I do. Yeah. I get people out. And leading to.

that's also like a great scoop moment where he's like that man out there has bad cards that man out there has got bad cards and he is going to lose and if he loses it's our lives and his life too they go out for the scout mission which is awesome the bizarre so intense the car is surrounded by everybody everybody's so angry um i got that three more the uh it's quick but Affleck prepping everyone for the airport trip. Some good AFLAC in there. Shoot him. He's an American. What's your job on the movie? Producer. Associate producer.

What's the last movie you produced? High and dry. Who paid for that? CFDC. What's your middle name? What's your middle name? What's your middle name? Shoot him.

He's an American spy. Yeah, hard, tough love. Hard coaching. That kind of coaching has kind of gone out of style. You know? I'm included in this even though it's like a minute long, but it's just so impressive that he got Zep to give them when the levy breaks.

I just can't believe. So did you see the little tidbit about that? Yeah, let's do it now. I had it. Go ahead. Do it now. So he got Zeppelin to give him the let him use the music, but the way he had shot it was when the levy breaks is on the beginning of the side of a record. And Zeppelin was like, you can use the song, but it has to be accurate when the levy breaks is like the second to last song on that side. Yeah. So you have to shoot.

The needle of the album has to be closer to the end of the album. So he had to go reshoot it, yeah. Which he was fired up to do. I think we should do a narrative podcast about people trying to get Led Zeppelin songs in their movies. Because it seems like every one of them there's a story. Like the Almost Famous has the best to lose. That was like the first time, right? I think there's way more of them where they never would let anybody have music.

But almost famous, they wanted Stairway to Heaven and they ultimately couldn't get the rights because Led Zepp decided, and not really feeling this one, but you can have Tangerine, the game of a couple others. but there's this eight and a half minute deleted scene where William is playing Stairward of Heaven for his mom to try to teach her about rock music and the daughter's boyfriend is sitting next to him and starts getting into this song. And it's incredible.

It probably doesn't belong in the movie, but it's incredible, but they're just really picky. So when the levy breaks, just hearing that in a movie was cool, but the way they use it as the night before they're about to really try to get out. But meanwhile, things are falling apart back home. Yeah.

It's just really, it's the perfect song. And Victor Garber's like, you know, destroy their, destroy their passports. It's best if you just don't show up tomorrow. Right. You've got the maid creeping around. Next scene is the last minute airport tickets. When the tickets aren't ready yet, Cranston's just running around. We got great little going back and forth stuff.

Affleck just doing the, would you mind check it again, please? Yeah. Would you mind check me again, please? And then we get into the, what was the purpose of your trip? And it's just from basically the last 20 minutes before we get to the five innings is the best part of this movie. Yeah. Everything until they say, we're happy to announce that we can serve alcohol because we've cleared Iranian airspace. That, like, that whole section is just so nervous.

The celebration montage. Yeah. So I got two more along those. The explaining to Angry Beard guy, the premise of the movie, where Scoot McNair is just like, guys. I got this. Clear out. Clear out. Those men who shoot me can.

I'm going to really go for it in these 45 seconds. Beard guy calls Arc and Goodman. And then we get that whole tension. And then they finally take off. And we get one of my favorite things, Chris Ryan. The celebration montage. Of course. and gentlemen, it is our pleasure to announce that alcoholic beverages are now available as we have cleared

Uranian interest. The Martian also has a great one. Yes. The celebration montages are some of my favorites, but they do a nice job. We get to go to like six different places with people celebrating. So watching this last night, we've talked a couple of times on rewatchables about celebration montages. Does this celebration montage have the.

entire spectrum of possible celebrations from oh interesting cransden dry crying scoot giving the i misjudged you handshake yeah yeah yeah my bad uh straight up like sports celebrations from like messina who prematurely celebrates and then gets to celebrate again like every single person like arkney goodman doing like a little dance yeah and then the married couple kind of like just complete relief no celebration. Yeah, they hit all of it. What's the most rewatchable scene for you? I'm gonna still go with the presentation

of all the different escapes. Like I really like a bunch of the stuff that's in Tehran, but like when Affleck is just like, when Christmas scene is just like, that's a black kid, that's an African kid when they show them the poster. Like it's just an amazing like assortment of actors. It's really well written. I love that scene.

I like from the moment they're in the air, airport to the celebration montage. And that was how I ended up starting to watch this movie over and over again. Because you just kept catching that? Yeah, it's like, oh, they're going to the airport, all right. Yeah. Okay. What's age the best?

Goodvin and Arkin. Yes. Stop the category. Stop the fight. Just great. Sometimes the casting is just a 15 out of 10. You kind of like, you know, when filmmakers are like yeah, you know, like

once we cast the roles, everything else was like 5% more to do, that's it. Like once you get the right people to be in the movie, it's not that much that there's not that much more to do. And you wonder about how many movies you see where you're like, oh, they just cast it a little bit better because this is so

perfectly cast with those guys and they could have gotten any number of kind of older, warmly received, beloved character actors, but they get Arkin and Goodman and they're so fucking good Well, what's interesting is they don't they don't really use any star power on the Canadian six, right?

They almost went for, and they show at the end in the closing credits, they went for people that really kind of looked like the six people. Yeah. And none of those actors were famous in any real way. So they used the star power, an Affleck and on Arkin and then on, you know, and Goodman and then all the government people. But great casting. Goodman, you know, he's had a really strong.

strange TV movie career. He's been in a lot of stinkers. He's been in a lot of really good movies. Like, he has one of the strangest IMDBs I think you'll ever look at where he was like Babe Ruth in a movie. He likes to work a lot. Yeah. He just likes to work a lot. I mean, you know, those guys that make two movies a year, they're going to have hits and misses. Two, he's making like four. Yeah. He's in flight this year. He's in, like, yeah, like he does a bunch of movies a year and he's still on the friggin' rosan spit off. he's at his best when he's in the drama where he can provide a little comedic

respite is usually his will house uh morewood's age the best afflex hair just continues to kill me I hope it comes back the uh all the inside Hollywood jokes yeah that they sneak in like you're worried about the Ayatola try the WGA

you almost need like the drum behind it yeah I like the concept of the intelligence star the award that you win that there's no ceremony for and you immediately have to give it back. I was thinking about doing that for the ringer. Chris, I'd like to present you the podcast star of 2021, but I'm not going to give you the word. I can't die out on it at all. Yeah. You can't die. Don't tell anyone. It's top secret. But you've loaded I'm just going to start doing that with all different people. Just like pin it onto my lapel. That's good.

Huge part for a cousin of the what stage is the best for the intelligent star. Affleck breaks out the will hunting, oh, he fucking did it. He went to go see about a girl face when Chuckie's on the porch and he does that kind of wistful, oh, he laughed and he does that kind of smile off the side of his mouth. Broke it back out for the intelligence star.

You know what the best part of my day is? We might have to do it. Should we just do that again with Riscilla now that we're in the 200s? The rewill hunting? Yeah. The rewunting. I think we have to.

Morewood's age. of us. The Iran location, I couldn't really totally find out where they filmed all of these scenes. Definitely some of it was in Iran, but I think they might have cheated with some stuff, but man, does it feel like we're in 1979? Well, they do such a good job

cutting together the footage that they're shooting with, like, news footage. So, like, that's another thing that I think he does very well is connect scenes with cutting to Ted Cople, you know, or cutting to news footage of of Afghanistan or of

of Toronto or whatever I'm not sure where they shot it when usually Morocco is usually the stand-in for a lot of of this region but I don't know where they shot this another would stage the best is the decision to make the day of the escape

just way more tense and there's a lot of you can go on the internet if you love this movie or you want to find out more there's a lot of think pieces written about the making of this movie and decisions made with it and over and over again

the theme of those pieces are they Hollywooded up the last day that it was actually really easy for them to leave. I figure we can get into this without getting overly involved in like the death of Osama bin Laden. But like a really good contrast to Argo is zero-dark-thirty. They're both really good movies in their own ways. But like Argo, I think very much relied on like

this is based on a true story. And Affleck, to his credit, was relatively up front where he was like, look, like, I took liberties. It is, in its essence, true, but I definitely made, tried to tell a very effective story. I think it's obviously tough if somebody comes out of that movie

and is like, that's what happened. There was this guy and there was like a moment at the bazaar where like they almost got jumped and then like there was, you know, the revolutionary guard chasing their plane and stuff like that. That didn't happen.

That's obvious. But like, then you give zero dark 30, which I think did actually purport to be like more of a documentary. You know what I mean? That was sort of where they got into trouble was when they were like, this is how it happened.

And people were like, wait a second. Like, where did you get your information? In any case, like, I have very little use for movies that are like based on a true story. And like I never watch a movie looking for history. I'm looking for a good story.

If it's a good story about something that happened, it only encourages, it should just encourage you to read more about it. But yeah, I understand the criticisms. I mean, it's pretty blatant in places. We've done, this has been a recurring theme in over 200 rewatchables that we've done in some of them of the based on a true story. Spotlight was probably about as faithful as any movie we've done. And even that one twisted some stuff around and merged some characters and things like that.

There's just stuff you have to do. Spoiler alert, this was going to come up later, but Alan Arkin's character doesn't actually exist in real life. It was a couple of characters they merged together. when you see based on a true story at the beginning of a movie, just assume it's based on a true story. Yeah. Like, we haven't done JFK yet. We're doing it later this year.

But JFK is the ultimate based on a true story. It's like, sure. It was a president got murdered. It had that in common. Other than that, he's just cooking from that point out, Oliver Stone. Right. So, yeah, don't trust movies, I guess is what we're trying to say.

Great opening credit sequence. The soundtrack, they have little T&A. A couple of inaccuritisms. There's a couple of songs that I think came out like The Suns the Swing, I think is too late. But, you know, again, what the hell? Dance the Night Away and when the Levy breaks. But just four bangers.

I've never been, I've never been precious about, wait a second, that song came out November 4th, 1979, and Mendez was in there in July. Like, you know, I remember my friend Jason Hare did the last dance. was fanatical about the music choices depending on the year. And my thing is, if you're going to go all in and do it, awesome. Like, that's, you should do it that way.

But for a movie like this, if you're off by a year, who's, or somebody scoring at home? Right. Like, oh. So it's a swing. It took me out of it.

Yeah. I immediately thought it was 82. My God. My last one's age of best was Scoot McDerry. Yes. Do you want to do this now? Well, I mean, so Scoot is probably like, I was going to save this for some of the later categories,

but Scoot's just incredible in this movie. He's like, there aren't very many, like, there's the guy who's going around to different houses being like, have you seen these people? But there isn't like a straight up like foil to Affleck except for Scoot. Like he has to basically be the person who's like, I don't believe you can pull this off. He does it so well. I just wonder, my question is, at what point are you just like, Scoot, you got to shut the fuck up? You know what I mean? Like when he's just like, we're going to die here.

We're going to get fucking killed. Wouldn't you just be like, man? I need you to go with the program here. Scoot McDerry, better, worse, or same career that he should have had? Because I'm going with worse. I like him more than the career he's had. He's like one of my favorite actors.

So I don't know if I'm the right person to ask. that's why I'm asking you. So I just think you have to accept the fact that he's a character actor. Like he's not going to be Spider-Man. I think where we missed with him was he, I do think he could have been the lead that I kind of know who he is, but I didn't totally see him as a lead until I was watching this TV show that he became the lead of.

And then it's like, wow, sco- All right, this is, here's a parallel. And I'm not saying he's as good of an actor as this person, because I think this other person is better. But Gandalfini, we had a history with Gandalfini before the Sopranos came out. When he's the lead of the Sopranos and it was like, wow, that guy's going to be the lead of a TV show. That's crazy. Right.

But I also love James Gandolphini. It's like, you know, he had a couple of the all-timer 90s Dean Waders' performances, right? True romance is like, I would say a top five Deon Waders' Waders' performance. ever considering what he had to work with. So I wasn't like shocked when he became a phenomenon on Tony Soprano because it was like, yeah, you could see it. It's surprising that he's a leading man, but the guy is an amazing actor. I don't think Scoot McNair is that good, but I do feel like he could have had like a Tony

soprano type role where he could have moved into the vortex in a real way. And instead he's on the fringes, a lot of good supporting stuff. Yeah, I'll be curious to see what he's, because I think he's going to be in more of the next season of Narcos, where he's like, I think he'll be more of like the star of that. It'll be cool to see him in that role. Like, he's, he's done a lot of good stuff, though. Like, he was good and true detective. Yeah.

Yeah, he has. Here's my theory. I think his name kills him a little bit. Scoot? Yeah. I don't know. I want to live in a world where a guy named Scoot is famous. No, I agree with you.

But if his name was Frank McNary, I wonder if his career is better. Scoot, it's like a little close to Skeed Ulrich. It's just, I don't know. I love Scoot McTherry, though. And this is probably my favorite Scoot McTherry movie. Any other with stage the best for you? Yeah, I mean, we talked about the 70s political thriller vibe. That's like...

And we talked about where he cribbed his filmmaking. And I talked a little bit about just the miracle of the fact that they've got three, basically, but two full ensembles in this movie of like, if you just were like, hey, this movie starts Titus Wellever and Zelko Ivanov and Kyle Chandler, you'd be like, I'm going to go see that. And then you're like, but it also starts Scoot McNary, Tate Donovan, and Cleo Duval. You're like, oh, shit. Like, I'll go see.

There's 15 good people in this movie. We're going to take a break and come back with what stage your worst. This episode is brought to you by Viori. Look, I'm not a big, let's hype up workout clothes guy. But Viori, I got to say, total game changer. Been wearing a lot. If you see me power walking around Los Angeles, probably going to see me wearing some Viori.

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orders over $75 plus free returns, exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. All right, what stage is the worst? I also had this in what stage is the best. Ben Affleck's hair. It's just so terrible. It's really...

We're thinking Whig there, right? Yeah. I don't think a normal human being could grow here like that. Another What's Age the Worst. When I saw this movie in the theater, I thought it was C. Thomas Howe instead of Scoot McNary for the first like 20 minutes.

I wasn't positive. I was like, did they... Did they... Do you... See Thomas Howell? What's going on? Yeah, the Irishman. He looks so much like Scoot McHare.

All right, there's some What's Age's the Worst stuff with the... There's some pretty not so veiled racism with the Iranians where it's just like every Iranian character in this movie is just completely angry and screaming. And we don't really have... It's a very simplistic view of this, yeah. Yeah, we only really have the housekeeper

is the only one who seems like they have any sort of conscience. There was also in very early whitewashing controversy with Affleck because Tony Mendez, I think, was half Mexican. and people are upset that Affleck grabbed the part but social media wasn't in the in the way it is now where people could have mobilized. Well, Mendez himself was like, I give this my blessing. I'm sure he was like pretty cool.

Like, Ben Affleck plays me, but... In 2021, I still feel like people would be like, oh my God, oh, it's the worst thing ever. We mentioned Lester Siegel is not a real person. Argo has also been criticized, as we're talking about what stage the worst, for minimizing the role of the Canadian embassy and the rescue for falsely showing

Americans were turned away by the New Zealand embassy and the British embassy and by exaggerating basically everything that happens the day of the plane chase and the big thing if you take away anything from all the reading if you ever want to do it is just like Canada basically

gets completely overlooked. It's like they do they're doing the last dance and it would be 10 parts about Scotty Pippen, basically. Right. It would be like Jordan's Canada and that. No, it's like Canada gets Luke Longlead in this movie. Yeah, totally. But so McLean's wrote, quote, the movie Rewrites History at Canada's Expense.

The guy Taylor played by, what's our guy's name? Victor Garber. A guy from Alias and everything. He's supposedly the real hero this movie. Tony Mendez was only in Iran for a day and a half. half. Affleck, here's his quote. I struggled with this long and hard because it casts Britain and New Zealand in a way that is not totally fair. But I was setting up a situation where you needed to get a sense that these six people had nowhere to go that doesn't mean to diminish anyone.

He's just talking about Britain, New Zealand. The Ken Taylor, the Canadian guy, people were more mad about that. Jimmy Carter weighed in. Jimmy Carter says 90% of the contribution to the ideas and the consummation of the plane was Canadian. Yeah. The movie gives almost full credit to the American CIA. With that exception, the movie is very good. But Ben Affleck's character in the film was only in Tehran a day and a half. And the main hero, in my opinion, was

Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador. I mean, there's little things like also, Carter didn't, like, pull the plug when they were in Tehran. He, like, momentarily pulled the plane tickets before the Mendez character even got to Iran,

I think. Yes. So, like, there's just little things like that. And Taylor got awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Ronald Reagan in 1881. Nice one. In this movie, it's just like, oh, cool, Victor Garber gets a couple scenes. We don't really, don't really bang home the Ken Taylor thing. What else age the words for you? Anything other than Salts of Swing being a year late?

I was going to say, yeah, that's just unacceptable. If Knopfler is going to make a song, you got to be accurate with the year. No, I was also going to say just the Spielberg endings, like where you're just like, oh, right, great movie. Oh, wait. So we're going to Cranston. Okay. Okay, Cranston. Okay, we're done. We're end of the movie. And then he goes to his house.

And then there's like five end title cards. It just feels like he didn't want to let this one go. The daughter with the, or the, a strange wife with the flag hug. And then reading the son. Just note to the directors out there. We're good with watching the parent read to their son in their bedroom. We're just good. You could just, they could have just ended it with.

Scoot McNary, shaking Affleck's hand on the plane. Yeah, you and the celebration montage. That could have been it. Closing credits, we're good. Because we haven't really established enough of Tony Mendez's personal life anyway than that he likes the sauce. Who doesn't? I'll just tell you this.

They won't have the reading the kid before he goes to bed stuff anymore because now you just throw an iPad at your kid. That's right. You'd be like, hey, you're going to bed soon? Casting what ifs. Really nothing except for the Clooney thing. I couldn't find anything either. Best that guy,

aka the Joey Pants Award. First of all, this is an all-star team. Victor Garber, do people know he's Victor Garber? I think they know him. I mean, I think he's been on a lot of TV shows. He's been on Alias. He's in Sicario.

I think he's like maybe a classic that guy, but many people do know him as Garber. I'm ruling him out because I do feel like he's, to me, he's Victor Garber. What about is Bob Gunton too big for that guy? Bob Gunn is Shawshank, but we now know he's Bob Gunn. Okay. Rory Cochran.

Yeah. From Days and Confused, who's like the most stone guy in that movie, which is really saying something. He's got the long hair. And he is now the kind of goofy guy with the mustache who's off. I don't know if he qualifies because he looks so different. You don't even realize it's Rory Cochran until the credits happen. I think for you and me and people of our generation, he's definitely like we've known he's

Roy Cochran. Yeah. So Zelko Ivonic is in this too. He's too big. He's the bad guy in the first season of 24, right? Yeah, he's 24. Oz has a great run on Oz. And then he's the guy from school ties.

That's right. That's right. He's the evil teacher guy. They steal his car. So the winner is Christopher Denham is Mark. Mark is one of the six. You've seen him. He goes on to do billions with our friends.

Cappellman and Levine. He's the guy who, he's kind of like the wolf in billions. He's the guy who comes in and... To fix stuff. To fix stuff. And he's just one of those guys. And I never knew his name until I researched it. His name is Christopher Denham. Okay. I think he's our winner.

Are you good with that? Yeah, I'm good. Did you know his name was Christopher Denham? I, only from watch it. Like, I think I knew, because I've seen him in a couple of indie movies. I was the only other person I would put up for this is Richard Kind, who's the guy, who they buy... He's Richard Kind, though. I think people know. who he is. Yeah.

The Vincent Hanna, give me all you got a word for overacting. You tell your people to call the White House, do your fucking job. Brian Carriston, just, it was like he knew that this was a category nine years later. He just goes for it. I know. And you don't decide if it goes. It is going. I really that close.

You are this goddamn close. I am not going to leave him at the airport with six people and his dick in his hand. You tell the director to call the White House. Do your fucking job. Unbelievable. Thousand up to 20. The Judd Nelson Award for a person who's in a different movie. I guess Affleck's wife.

She's in a different... She's in basically American Sniper. She's in Orange is the New Black. She's like the star of that movie, that show. She definitely is like... I'm not letting this scene go by without getting like a long close-up at a hug. Yeah. Because I've been cut out of this entire movie.

Yeah. I am really going to study your face, Tony Mendez. Deanne Waiter is a word. So are we saying Goodman, Arkin, and Brian Cranston are eligible for Deanne Waiters? Because I feel like they should be. They're in the movie less than 15 minutes, right? I will allow it, but I also have other candidates. The Argo 6 is not eligible?

No, they're in too much in the movie. They're in half the movie. Titus Welliver is eligible. Kyle Chandler are also eligible, although it's not the greatest Kyle Chandler. their performance. Also, he puts on a ton of weight. I don't know if that was makeup or what. Cranston, Goodman, Arkin. Who else do you have? Philip Baker Hall, uncredited cameo. I'm just like, are you, this is the, are you sure this is the best bad idea that we have?

Yeah. And Ali Saam is the guy who's going around being like, have you seen these people and making everybody like pieced together the printouts of their pictures? I like the British Secret Service officer a lot. That guy who gets the one scene in Turkey, Richard Delane, but it's obviously going to be probably Arkin or Goodman. I think it's Arkin. Well, I don't know. What do you think?

Well, Arkin got nominated for an Oscar. Is that too much to be Deon then? Can you get a Dion if you're also getting an Oscar? I think we break the rule here. I think it goes to both of them. Okay. Can't pick. They're two.

They're a team in this. They have to be together. I think we've done that a couple of times in the past. Recasting couch. I'm pretty proud of this idea. I think I'm going to be able to talk you into it. I think Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, and Cole Houser all could have been in the Argo 6. Okay.

I don't care if they look exactly like these people do at the passports and the closing credits. I think Christopher Denham easily, you could have slaved Casey Affleck into that spot. Yeah. Cole Houser put a goofy mustache on him. That guy doesn't really say that much anyway. Just have him do a little wild-eyed. And then we throw Damon in there, but we somehow keep Scoot McNary.

And then we have the two ladies and we're good to go. Why stop here, Bill? Why not go Walberg and DiCaprio? I mean, let's just get the fucking Departing cast in there. I just wanted the good little huntick true. Minimum, Casey Affleck should have been stuck into this movie. Just slid in as one of the six. I watched Gone Baby Gone the other night.

I don't know why you're resisting. Oh, for rewatchables? Yeah. It's too dark. Are you with me on that recasting couch or no? Yes, I am. That's very fun. What the hell?

Why not? Half-ass internet research. According to Tony Mendez, Studio 6, the phony production company, was so convincing that after it had folded, 26 scripts were delivered to the address, including one from Steven Spielberg.

That's how well they did. 2016, Vice did some research based on the Freedom of Information Act, found that the CIA was involved in the production of Argo and zero dark 30 as well. This one I was shocked by, bootleg DVDs in Iran were so popper, several hundred thousand bootleg copies of this movie and it became really one of the highest kind of watched movies in the country and people think it's a combo of like it's the most realistic.

It's like I hate watch, but it's also like a curiosity thing. Yeah. Combined with like kind of a silent protest a little bit too. There's a bunch of different ways. Carter only delayed the authorization by 30 minutes. It was well before Mendez had left for Europe. So they really bent some stuff around there.

They got after your boy Jimmy. the chase sequence never happened we mentioned the Led Zeppelin thing Affleck did the thing where the six actors he asked them to dress in character with their stuff on for a week and just hang out so they could have chemistry yeah

so he did that thing and then uh the character Jack Kirby who made the story birds was like a pioneer in the comic industry which I don't know yeah he's one of the most famous one of the O'Gs.

Comics Mountain. Wait, I got one more. I got one more. I got one more. It has to sender in research. If you read the original Wired article, do you know where the studio six offices were? No.

Sunset Gower. What? Yeah. I wonder what part. Michael Douglas's vacated China Syndrome article offices. Is that in the courtyard? I don't know. Jesus.

Amazing stuff. Need to find out more about this. All right, we're going to take one more break, and then we're going to do Apexmon. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car should feel like one less thing on your list. Not one more. With Carvana, it is. Just go to Carvana.com, into your license plate or VIN,

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Pick up fees may apply. Apex Mountain. Affleck? Wins the Oscar. Also becomes a sympathetic figure, which was even better than not getting nominated, pulls it off. The comeback is complete.

He's about to do a Fincher movie. When has he ever had more juice? I'm going to say yes. And then he gets Batman off the back of all that. So he basically goes, Gone to be gone. You were like, oh, that's a good movie. The town.

huge blockbuster, great movie, and he builds off of that, wins Oscar, like the world's at his feet here, and then he does a Fincher movie off of a bestseller. So yeah, totally. Apex Mountain for Affleck. Scoot McNary?

Yeah, I would probably say so. I say his well. Alan Arkin? Nah, a little in the sunshine. When are we doing that one? I haven't watched that since it was like an Oscar movie. That's a good example of a movie it wins an Oscar and you're like, okay, I don't have to, I'm never going to watch that again.

Producer Craig, Little Mitch Sunshine, where do you say in the movie? I've only seen it once, but I remember really liked it. I think that's like the perfect independent movie. I might like it more than most people. I think that movie is so fucking funny. And I don't know, that's everything I want from a movie that probably costs like $720,000 to make or whatever they did. John Goodman, no. movies or TV shows about the Iran hostage crisis.

I'm going to say yes. Yeah. Has there been any others? No, probably not. The other five people, not Scoot McNary and the Argo Six. I'm going to say yes. Yeah, Tate Donovan's Apex Mountains, probably friends, right? No, Tate Donovan's O.C., season one of the O.C.

Wait, you don't, wasn't he dating Aniston at a certain point? and like on friends. Well, he dated Aniston and Sandra Bullock back to back. Yeah. No, it's O.C. He's Jimmy Cooper. If Juliet was here right now, she would slap you across the face. I'd be furious. She'd be very upset.

Any other Apex Mountain? No. I think Affleck was the one I wanted to, I was most, most important to get across. Oh, Cranston. No. Breaking Bad. Yeah, but you could argue breaking bad's about to, Breaking Bad is gaining viewers each year. It's headed toward its season finale,

which was in, I think, 2013. Right? This is when everybody's catching up on it on DVDs and all that stuff. He's in Networks on Broadway. Now he's establishing himself as a movie actor. I actually think it is. Because I think Breaking Bad's at the point now where everybody knows how great it is.

Because we're going into the final two seasons. Yeah. Yeah. I think it is. I'm going, yes. the CIA? Did it ever get better? Coming off killing JFK

15 years ago, great comeback for them. That's true. They had some rough moments there in the Vietnam War. Yeah. When they started a war and killed our president, you know. But they didn't actually do anything in this situation. They like they didn't fuck it up. They sent somebody. Is this the

Apex Mountain for X-Fills? So what does Russell Crow do in proof of life, K&A? Would it be weird if we did the reproof of life? The reproof? I just watched it. Stuff of Legends! I just love that movie so much.

Who else does ex-fills? Craig, what's an ex-fills? I don't know. Do you know what it stands for? No. Exfiltration. They're trying to exfiltrate rather than infiltrate. Yeah.

X-fills. Yeah. Technically they're doing an ex-filtration. They're supposed to be ex-filling people. and Predator. But obviously they get sidetracked. I remember in 2015 when we had tires of ex-fills to get people out of ESPN. It was tough. A lot of meetings. Had to create a fake movie.

That's right. Pick of Nits. We mentioned all the plot stuff. The real Tony Mendez was 5'7 and apparently not a supermodel. And they're saying like not only was AF like too handsome. but also the fact that he was six foot four would have been just a red flag

across the board for people in Iran. Yeah, they would have been like what's Bill Walton doing here? Yeah, so he just would have been on the radar immediately, I think. Also, I have some Swiss air questions. Oh, like whether or not they have to turn around at all?

Or whether that guy should have noticed all the cars coming at him? Yeah, it's just, there's some questions. couldn't they have radioed the plane and said stop the fucking plane or we're shooting it down? But that didn't happen anyway, but yeah, of course, right. When the cars are going behind them, don't they notice the cars? Wouldn't they have shot at the plane? I guess he doesn't have side view mirror.

Well, they don't want to start an international incident. They just want these guys back. They just want the six back, right? Yeah. And then I think this is the right spot to do it. The stuff with the housekeeper. Do you feel like it's tacked on? I either needed more or less

because at the end she goes she crosses over to Iraq and I guess I'm supposed to say thank God she held the fort for these people but it feels like there's a scene cut I don't have enough they come to get her and she basically or they come to find out if people are there

and she basically covers up for them right and then she's I think that you're supposed to leave that Iraq scene being like for a lot of people this did not work out you know, for his trying to do. But I needed her, I needed a better reason for her to cover up for everybody. So I needed like a scene before they come to find out if the people are there where she's... Like to show her kind of interaction with the Canadian family.

Yeah, some sort of connection with the six. Right. Like they invite her to sit down, they ask her questions, anything. Even if it's two minutes where I'm like, oh, now I get it. Right. Well, I guess that's the whole point of the movie is that it's pretty forward momentum. They don't stop a lot. because the first time you watch it,

you don't even know who that is. It doesn't, it's not really, uh, that actress actually voices the opening credit sequence with the sort of presentation about the history of Rand. Any other dipicks? We've covered all the rest of them. Yeah, I have one that I think is, you could call it a possibly unanswerable question,

but I wanted to pitch you this. Is this movie better in retrospect if it treats the X-Fill the way Goodfellas treats the Lufthansa height? where basically you don't see it. So everything about the Exville is DC, and we get way more Hollywood stuff, but you never get into the faking a bunch of...

They're out. Yeah, like faking car chases and, like, the threat that wasn't there, but you have all of the political wrangling and then all the Hollywood stuff. Like, if you could do it again, would you make it that way and not have it be historically inaccurate the way it is? No, I like the historically and accurate,

accurate stuff. I just think not enough people take advantage of like the trick Goodfellas plays where you just don't see the heist. I think we would have seen the heist if it wasn't expensive to do the heist. Like maybe Den of Thieves. You shouldn't have shown the heist, you know? I just want to spend more time of Benny Hanna. Well, he would you have wanted the 10 minute bank robbery scene?

Because I still want it. Yeah, I'm good with it. It's fine. Yeah. I'm signing up for that. My other nitpick is just. I feel like nightline should have been more important. It should have been on in the background a couple more times.

It's more of a ticker. Yeah, I like that. I also would have thrown in the 79 baseball All-Star game, which was an iconic game. Which would have had somebody at least being like, wow, did you see that Dave Parker throw? That was from right field. Jesus, what a canon that guy has.

All right, here's a really important question. Next category. Could this be remade as a, a 10-episode Netflix show. Because this movie won the Oscar. It's tough to say, no, no, it would have been better off as a Netflix show. But it actually would have been an amazing Netflix show. If we had all the actors we have in this, we just had more time to spend.

I still vote for a movie, but I think it would have been a really good Netflix show. Would you still have the embassy takeover happen in like the first scene? Or would you have that happen at like the end of the first episode? No, that's like, that's episode like two or three. Okay. Yeah, we're embedded with these people as they start to get more and more concerned that something might happen. To me, it's like a homelands season. I would love to just know, there's definitely moments, like, even that like bit where Kyle Chandler's like,

this guy's planting flags on his lawn every day that they're hostages. And when he gets, when he runs out of flags, Ted Kennedy's going to win the primary. Like, I would have loved to have a whole episode about the political, the political storyline behind everything and like Carter running for real election. I could have gotten into a lot of Carter stuff. Even Hamilton, Jordan, like that kind of stuff. I think would have really worked. Yeah.

I bet we'll see. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw it in the next 10 years because it's such a great story. Probably in answerable questions. Is this movie better of George Clooney as Tony Mendez? Let's just answer it now. No, it's not. I think Affleck's really good in this. Is this movie better if it's Casey Affleck as Tony Mendez?

I don't think Casey Affleck is like, especially in 2012, did not. seem old enough to pull off this guy. All right. So we think Ben Affleck is... Would it be better? What about Mendez's Damon? Damon is Mendez. No, I don't think Damon could have...

No. I don't see it. There's like... Who's Tony Mendez now if they're making this in 2021? I don't know. It depends on whether or not they're going to adhere to, like... Oh, yeah, trying to make... The ethnic background.

I think they would at this point. any other in answerable questions for you? Like, do you think, who do you think you would be of the six? Like, what would your vibe be? So are you scoot? Are you immediately questioning everything and smoking a lot? Are you Tate Donovan, maybe listening to too much Zeppelin, drinking a little too much scotch?

Are you, are you Cleo Duval? So I... Watching out for what other people are doing. The big thing for me would be like, why didn't you use your real name right away? how come you were Harkins. Right. Well, you're supposed to have a legend if you're a spy.

You can't, you're not supposed to use it. So I'd be like, what's going on here? Why should we trust you? I would have been like, can you tell me about some of your other missions?

Give me like three successes. Can we just go backwards? They're classified. I can't tell you about that. Like if David Kahn shows up and he's like, I'm here to save your NBA franchise. Come with me.

Just give me a couple of trades. Can you tell me some other stuff you did? Just the last five transactions. Yeah. I ran a CBA team in 2005. I was, a sports writer. You're like, wait a second, you can't run my team. I probably would have, I would have been more like, hey, tell me more about yourself. I would have been trying to get

more information. Do you think that you could learn a new identity in 30 hours? So I thought about this because I would, I don't know how you would handle it, but I would have crammed everything the night before. I wouldn't have been like learning over the next three days. Yeah. Yeah, I would have I would have waited to like 1 o'clock, but like, all right, I got to fucking learn my thing now.

All right. So I'm... What else were you doing? Were you watching the fucking MLB All-Star game? When the levy breaks, I'm just listening that over and over again. You're smoking.

70-9 All-Star game. Maybe you can watch some highlights. Sure. Maybe the draft's happening, trying to figure out what the Celtics did. What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? Scoots glasses. Alan Arkins gold rolled Royce,

Rolls Royce. Yeah, it's the most 70s. It's just out of control. I can't, it's like out of Charlie's Angels or any like 20 shows that I watched in 1979. It's perfect. I'd pick that. It's also an expensive car.

But yeah, if we're going cheaper, it would be fun to have like the Argo script, the original Argo script. Oh, yeah, that would be cool. The storyboards would be cool. You could frame them. The storyboards on your wall. What's that? Who won the movie?

So, obviously, like Affleck, I think Affleck wins the movie. Would you make the argument for Arkin? I think Affleck wins the movie. Okay. But I think... I mean, he directed in stars in the movie. He won the movie. Do people... What is the cutoff for people

with Alan Arkin? I think most people... Holding him in the right esteem. Is it like people under 35 don't get it? Like, what age would be? I think most people like Craig's age, probably, if they know him, they know him from this in Little Miss Sunshine. But I have to admit, like, I'm not. not like an Alan Arkin historian personally.

I know him from those two movies. Okay. See. Can I give you a little movie called The Inlaws? Sure. That's where I know. That's, I think, a late 70s comedy that became like a real legitimate cult comedy in a lot of different ways. And that's when he was on the radar.

But you're right. Like, you go through his IMDB in the 80s and it's kind of all over the place. He's one of those guys that later in his... his career fell into who he was. And then I think Little Miss Sunshine bought him this extra like eight years of this incredible old guy comic relief stuff that was really great. And now he's on like Kaminsky method, right? Or he was?

Yeah. No, he still is. His performance of Little Miss Sunshine is in all-timer for that decade. I can't believe this is like this like I thought you would be like, CR, we got to do like 21 bridges. I can't believe Little Miss Sunshine is coming for like the rewashables gold. you'd want to do 21 Bridges? I would do 21 episodes of 21 Bridges.

I love that. I'll watch that a couple more times. 21 Bridges is such a rewatchable. It's fucking crazy. It's like they created it to be a rewatchable. Yes. Den of Thieves, they also tried, but then they made a couple of mistakes,

but 21 Bridges is just flat out. Also, just like absolutely, like, afterburners on Dionne Wader's performance from Taylor Kitch. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All right, I have that fuck winning it. Well, that's it. Argo, it's classic.

Right now, it is on Amazon Prime. It was HBO Max run. And now all of a sudden it moved over to Amazon. Isn't it crazy how those HBO Max or Netflix runs just like will unlock a movie for you? Yeah, especially they're really smart at promoing the right ones in the right spots. They know what they're doing. They're like, hey, we have the town and they fucking whip it out. and they just drop it on the table.

And like, come get some. It's the town for the next 30 days. Here we go. All right, that's it for the rewatchables. It was produced by our guy, Craig Horlebeck. We'll be back next week. Thanks to Chris Ryan. And we'll see you next time.