The Rewatchables - ‘Enemy of the State’ With Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan are on the run after their podcast on Tony Scott's ‘Enemy of the State’ starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman, and Jon Voight ends up in the wrong hands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the rewatchables is brought to you by State Farm. Around here, we love talking about movies that we watch, rewatch, and watch again because they're just that good. The thoughtful details, the little things other movies don't have that keep us coming back. Here's the deal. When it comes to insurance, we can't get enough for State Farm. They have all the details. We appreciate to make insurance easy.

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individually packaged fresh meals and communities that need support. They formed hashtag chefs for America, coalition of restaurants and tech companies working together, provide meals to Americans that need assistant. And they're supporting workers and local hospitals who are working in wartime conditions right now. Those are the true heroes. You can directly help them in hospitals and clinics

who are fighting for us and learn about initiatives like frontline foods off their plate, feed the front line in Los Angeles and East Bay Feed ER. Help keep your local restaurants alive as well. more at WcK.org. We're also brought to you by the ringer.com and the ringer podcast network where you can find a couple new book of basketball episodes this week, including the 2001 draft, which I did with Zach Lowe. Sean's movie podcast is still humming, the big picture. Chris Ryan's pop culture podcast, The Watch, that's still happening. And also, if you like Chris Ryan,

who's about to be on this podcast, his music exists podcast with Chuck Klosterman, where they break down a lot of big picture ideas about music. You can find that exclusively on Spotify. The government's been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry since the 40s. Enemy of the state coming up next. This Thanksgiving, the threat is closer. Signal sweeping for transmitters. Just a party animal.

The secrets are bigger. I think you're too young to watch this party. And so is she. And the enemy is everywhere. I've been a law-abiding citizen my whole life. One day with you, I'm shooting. Produced by Jerry Brockheimer. He jumped to 17.

Directed by Tony Scott. You have something they want. Will Smith. I don't know what you're talking about. Gene Hackman. Enemy of the State, rated R. Starts this Friday. Sean Fantasy and Chris Ryan are here.

I'm Bill Simmons. We're doing Enemy of the State. A 1998 action classic. A cable rewatchable. A movie that I watched on Monday to do, take notes for this. And then it was on last. night, Tuesday night. And I was just like, oh, all right.

And I watched the last 40 minutes. And my wife walked into the room and said, didn't you just watch this? And I'm like, yeah. And she goes, why are you watching again? And I'm like, because it was on. And she just walked away and discussed. Chris Ryan, why is this movie so rewatchable? Because it's a techno version of North by Northwest.

It's just, it's an incredible paranoid thriller of the classical sense, of the Hitchcock sense of like the Coppola conversation sense, but it shot through the Tony Scott. Everything is like turned up to 12 or 13 helicopters everywhere. And it presages like a lot of stuff that would wind up being major themes of the 21st century. Peak Tony Scott, Sean? No, definitely not peak, but it's in that second tier. It's in that second tier really, really great. It's not top gun. You know, it's not quite at that. It's not Beverly Hills Cop 2. You know, it can't quite get to that God level. But it's really great. And it's also like a beautiful sequel also to the paranoia thrillers of the 70s. It's like a big callback to Parallax View, three days of the Condor,

the conversation, obviously with Hackman's character. And even though it's way more sort of schizophrenic than those movies, it's pretty much in dialogue with them the whole time. So it's fun to watch them kind of in succession, which is what I did. It's fun to rewatch this from a Gene Hackman's standpoint. And we have never really had the full-fledged Gene Hackman conversation on the rewatchables. And we're about to do it. I just wanted to quickly say, you know, the time we're in right now and some of the civil liberties things that are happening and, and, you know, we're in the middle of the quarantine and people are wondering how much autonomy should the government have and stuff like this. This is all stuff that Tony Scott seems really concerned about in this movie. And you think about this

in the context of what was going on in the mid-90s of some of these movies, the net, which at some point in life is going to be a rewatchable because it's just so bad shit crazy. And disclosure was another one where you look at like 94 and 95 how people perceived all of this technology

and how it was coming and how it could potentially change our lives. And it was all like, this could be bad. They'll be able to take all your stuff in five seconds. Enemy of the state is the smart version of that. They actually have, you know, a little more knowledge of how this stuff might work. Chris, it's still bad shit crazy, some of the stuff that happens in there.

When they're doing the 270-degree Lanzeret Shop camera, which is like technology, the NFL doesn't have now in 2020. There are moments where Jack Black is like, let me see what's inside of his bag from outer space. But the thing is, I think that the filmmaking style actually really lends itself to this because you can imagine Tony Scott really had an understanding of this. because his camera is always like poking in places where it shouldn't be. You know what I mean? It's like those rack focuses, those jump cuts. Everything is kind of like trying to be more and more invasive. So I think he understood this on a kind of almost elemental level. Yeah. Sean, anything to add on that?

Yeah. I mean, I think one of the fascinating things about the arc of the movie is in 1998 when it comes out, I think people thought, well, you know, maybe it's a little bit too paranoid for its time. Let's see how things shake out as the internet takes over our lives more and more. Y2K happens, or rather doesn't happen. And people are like, okay, we're over it. Technology is not that bad. It's actually very useful to our lives. We get more and more comfortable with it over the years.

Everybody has their phones stitched to their hand at all times. And then in the last five years, this incredible distrust and this, you know, the movie becomes a lot more prescient. And it's obviously a completely like coked out version of internet paranoia, the movie that we're talking about here. But a lot of the ideas and the notion of what the NSA is doing and how it's peering in on our lives is more or less documentary. I mean, it's really, really close to a lot of the things we got really concerned about that, you know, you saw in a lot of the Edward Snowden story and a lot of the WikiLeaks story and everything that happened in that sort of 2013 to 2017 period. There's a lot of dialogue, especially between Carla and Robert, you know, for the Regina King and Will Smith characters.

that is pretty much three or four years ahead of time of the kind of conversations people were having right after 9-11 in terms of if this is going to be what we're protecting ourselves against, it's okay if they want to listen to my phone calls. And people were having those kinds of debates about what is an acceptable amount of oversight or even surveillance if it means, quote-unquote, safety.

Well, I remember in like 97, 98, when Amazon starts to get going, the concept of putting your credit card online was still pretty scary. It was like, I'm going to do this and somebody's just going to take all my info. And I remember being like, fuck it. I make $35,000 a year. If somebody steals all my stuff, what's the worst thing that can happen? I'll lose a credit card.

I'm going in on eBay and I'm cleaning up with some of these stupid things that are available. We have it as a rewatchable scene that we're going to dive into later. but the key kind of big picture point for why I think they made this movie when Will Smith goes to Hackman's getaway Lair and Hackman says the government's been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry

since the 40s. They've infected everything. They get into your bank statements, computer files, email, listen to your phone calls, every wire, every airwave. More technology you use, the easier it is to keep tabs on you.

It's a brave new world out there. that's kind of, it's 22 years old. It's, it's, it's kind of true. Gene Hackman calls it in this movie. That is, that's not inaccurate. Yeah, it's pretty amazing how much it's looking ahead. And when you, when you guys first saw it, was there any part of you that felt like this was a realistic depiction

of the way that the government and technocrats work together to spy on our lives? No, I don't think so. I mean, I remember, especially in terms of its, its relationship to technology, you have to remember, like, in 98, like, I think I had a cell phone in case of emergencies that I was supposed to use if I was in like a car accident to call AAA or something. But I don't think I was even really like texting with any fluidity until the mid first decade of the 2000s. I was still a beeper guy in 1998. I had a beeper. It was pretty great. I got to be honest, I don't think I had anything.

I don't even think I had a cell phone yet. I think I might have had a phone in my car. Right. And so there's some extent this is an extension of the stuff that kind of like, I mean, I guess it happens a little bit. Matrix is 99, but this vision of a kind of like William Gibson's cyberpunk future that we were about to go enter into still felt really far away at this time. Yeah, it was good fodder for movies.

And Hollywood definitely, as I said earlier, was starting to get in on it in that 94 range and couldn't put all the pieces together. This is the first, I feel like, big budget, modern movie that felt semi-realistic. And it still has some absurd moments, which we'll get into. Some positives here. So Sean says second tier of peak, Tony Scott. I'm going to say second tier of peak Jerry Bruckheimer, a fantastic cast, Will Smith, right as he's becoming a real A-List alpha dog, which we'll get into a second.

And then most important, Gene Hackman. So Gene Hackman turns down this film, according to the research, several times. And then Tony Scott ultimately convinces him to come in. We don't see Gene Hackman until the 55-minute mark of this movie. It feels like a Gene Hackman movie. A whole hour goes by before we even see his face. But I wanted to start here. Gene Hackman's run from 1986 to 1998 is long.

in the shuffle of great movie runs of every actor. Here's just, here's a list. Hoosiers, No Way Out, Mississippi Burning, narrow margin, Unforgiven wins an Oscar, Geronimo, the firm, Wyatt Earp, the Quick and the Dead, Crimson Tide, Get Shorty, the Birdcage, the Chamber, Absolute Power, Enemy of the State. Sean, why was he able to pick script so well? What was it about Gene Hackman's eye for, oh, I should be in this?

It's a really good question. I think I don't necessarily know how he honed it. He was obviously very fortunate to come on the scene at a time when some of the best filmmakers of all time were putting guys like him in the center of movies, guys who weren't conventionally handsome, who maybe were a little bit grungier or a little bit more unconventional. But the thing that he does starting in the mid-80s

that he really follows through into the late 90s is he keeps picking projects where he goes opposite a really traditional younger leading man and then goes toe to toe with them and then blows them off the screen. We talked about him a little bit in the firm where he's kind of really kind of going toe to toe to with Cruz and then Gene Triplehorn

as well. He's doing some amazing, weird, erotic shit in that movie. But like go through all of those movies that we're talking about. The Quick and the Dead opposite Leo, Crimson Tide, opposite Denzel Washington, you know, the bird cage opposite Robin Williams. He keeps choosing these movies. And in some cases like in the chamber, he just annihilates Chris O'Donnell. Like he just wipes

the floor with Chris O'Donnell. And he knows that he can be the alpha, but even if he isn't the leading figure in the movie. And it's such a smart move that most actors don't make when they enter their 40s and 50s and 60s. And he is so confident and so powerful in his screen presence that it kind of doesn't matter if the movie's good or not. This is a kind of movie that if he's not in it,

it's just not going to be as good as it feels now. He really, he's a rare guy who can elevate that kind of like be material into something that feels much more credible. And crucially, I don't think he ever played those parts. particularly like Murtaugh style. He never said I'm too old for this shit. All of those characters that you mentioned in those movies

from Crimson Tide, the firm, like, yeah, they're getting a little bit older, but they still have their fastball. And I think that sometimes older actors start taking roles where they're really like in the twilight. They're in decline and they're trying to find someone new to kind of help them out in these situations.

And in all of those movies, including this one, it's not like he turns to Will Smith's character an enemy of the state, and he's like, you figure it out. It's like he's the one who basically saves the day. Will Smith's character picks up a cat. That's it. You know, Gene Hackman is the hero of this movie. He also went toe to toe against Denzel, too.

Yeah, you're right. If you look at the Gene Hackman run that I just laid out, it's a little like Michael Jordan in the 90s. He picks every superstar in the league to go against. And Denzel probably plays him to a draw. And then Eastwood's Eastwood. I don't even know how you go head-head with Eastwood. You're just kind of in his movie.

But you're right. I think Gene Hackman realized probably after Hoosiers, I can't carry a movie with an awesome director and a big budget unless there's somebody else awesome in it. Like I'm almost like, I got to be Scotty Pippin. But when I'm Scotty Pippin, I'll be completely overqualified to be Scottie Pippin. The crazy thing is he's one of those actors.

I feel like he's Gene Hackman in every movie. It's not that much of a variance of Gene Hackman, but yet each character feels different. But it's not like he's Daniel DeLewis, like, oh, man, he became the Phantom Thread guy. I always feel like it's Gene Hackman. And I've always loved Gene Hackman. The other thing is he just does an age,

which is a joke that's happened a million times. But he's just ageless. That's it. That's exactly what I was going to say. He was born to be 61 years old. When he came out of the womb, he looked like Benjamin Button. And so he's so perfect. Pretty much that.

It's like he's frozen in Amber from that run you're talking about, Bill, from like 1986 until his last movie, Welcome to Mooseport. He looks exactly the same the whole time for 35 years. It's fascinating. He and Robert Duvall were born to be thinning hair, middle-aged guys. You know, it's like you can't watch young Hackman or young Duval roles. They just don't make any sense. We also, we found out, we mentioned a previous podcast, we found out, I found out in the Mike Nichols book that Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and Robert Duval all live together in one apartment

for years in New York City, which is the greatest documentary of all time nobody could make because there's no footage. But I just can't imagine them arguing about the phone bill and who's going to get groceries and just, yeah, Gene Hackman gets to the point, I think because he was in so many good movies that in the research of this, they have an awesome cast, partly because people found out Gene Hackman was going to be in the movie. And that was like one of the reasons Will Smith really wanted to do it because Gene Hackman was going to be in it.

Took a little bit of a pay cut for it. Right. And there's, I just don't think a lot of actors in history that have hit that point, which makes me wonder, why don't we talk about Gene Hackman with the same reverence that we talk about Tom Hanks, Denzel, Pacino, De Niro, all these guys, because I do feel like Gene Hackman there for 12, 13 years.

Like, if he's in your movie, there was a credibility that just became inherent. It's a really hard stage to get to. Sean, how many guys right now do you think are in that, at that point of their career? Is it less than 10? Like, if Daniel Day Lewis is going to be in a movie, there's like, oh, shit, he's in it. Yeah, I'll do it. But is there anybody else, Leo? Leo every time he comes to play usually makes a great movie.

He's got so few misses. I feel like he's in a different kind of conversation. I also don't think Gene Hackman is a traditional movie star the same way that somebody like Leo is. He's that perfect combo of can be in the center of the movie but is an actor's actor. And like you said, all these people want to come to the table to be in this movie because he was in it, which is kind of strange because he doesn't share any scenes with anybody except for Will Smith. like it's cool that you know Gabriel Byrne really wanted to be in this movie but like he's some good time with Jack Black in the van you know at the very that's true uh but I don't I really

don't think that there's pretty much anybody who I'm trying to think of who could come out of retirement right now that people would be like wow I think Robert Redford is somebody still who whenever he makes a movie people say I just really wanted to meet and get to work with Robert Redford if you look at like the old man the gun and some recent films that he's made the people who are in those movies are so jazzed. And Paul Newman at the end of his career was the same way where people were like, you know what, even if Twilight isn't that great, I just really want to do it because it's Paul Newman. But that whole generation of actors, I don't know, you're like, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, those guys have made a lot of movies that just feel junkie.

So it's not the same kind of feeling of specialness that that Hackman brought to the table. Yeah, Hackman never really got to the Rocky and Bullwinkle stage. I would say that the era that you're talking about, Bill 2, it's worth noting. that even in the thrillers and the pulpier stuff that he was doing during that era, you look at the credits on those movies. Like, they were still pouring a lot of talent and a lot of money into movies like that back then, which they don't really do anymore. But, like, Aaron Sorkin and Tony Gilroy are uncredited writers on Enemy of the State, you know, like David Well People's wrote Unforgiven. We've talked about, like, all the people who worked on the firm. Like, he was going where the good

scripts were, and these were the good scripts. And then the scripts kind of dried up after this point because we go into a different era of filmmaking. Bill, what's your favorite hackman? Hoosiers. I figured. What's number two? I really like his performance in the firm. I thought it was the most we talked about it when we did the firm rewatchables, but I thought it was probably the most interesting performance he did because it was kind of a nothing part. And he made that guy so interesting. I'm a huge, huge, huge, no way out fan. Huge. Yeah. I love that movie. I love that movie. That to me is like a prototypical awesome thriller the way it moves. I would love to do it on rewatchables at some point.

I think he's really good in that. And Unforgiven would be my other one just from that 80s, 90s run. Unforgiven was I saw that movie with my dad in Cape Cod. And it was like significant. It was like, we're excited for this. It delivered. It was incredible. It was Clint in his 98 finals stage of MJ where it's just like the one last great

Clint performance, I feel like. And Hacklin's so big in that movie and so important. What year did that movie come out? That was like 92. Yeah. I remember because I was still in like early high school and I think I saw it with my my dad. And so I would have been like 14 or 15 or something like that.

I remember just be like, that's the best movie I've ever seen. It was just because I was like I'd only seen like 100 movies at that time. Right. My dad was a huge Eastwood guy. So that was one of the, I mean, Eastwood for the 65 to 75 age guys now, he was like the guy. He had such a great run in the 70s. My favorite underrated Hackman is this movie called Night Moves that he made in 19-75. And it's just such a great, like, noir thriller where he plays like a private eye, great Melanie Griffith performance.

Is that because of the 17-year-old Melanie Griffith performance, Chris? Yeah, that's right. I was serving that up for you. God. Her and Apollonia Corleon. own. Chris, writing crisis real house. Sean, movie nerd question for you. Yeah. It's the unofficial sequel to the conversation. And there's been a lot of film nerd stuff about was, was Brill and enemy of the state, really, this guy all these years later. And there's some hints. And he's got same jacket at one point.

He's got the weird layer. Do you consider this the unofficial conversation sequel? I mean, I think that's what Tony Scott wanted you to feel. And when it was being written, I'm sure that was a part of it. And that's why they waited until Hackman would become available. I mean, the two movies could not be more different, like, in terms of the way that they're made. You know, the conversation is so quiet and, and paranoid in a different kind of a way. And it's so meticulous the way that it's made. And it's so specific to that time period. And the idea of listening in on people and the privacy aspect of it, when technology felt very handmade, this movie is so bombastic in the way that it portrays that stuff, that, you know, it's not so much a sequel as it is like if you just put steroids inside of the conversation.

You know, if you just amplified it, then turned it all the way to 11. But, you know, Edward Brill Lyle and Harry Call, they're all kind of like the same word, you know, those two names that the characters have. So the illusions are super obvious. I think it would have been, if this was a true sequel to the conversation, the movie would have been about like Seth Green's character. and we would have gone back to his apartment and seen his sad life when he logged on to early message boards. Well, for people listening, you can find enemy of the states on Amazon Prime for free and it's also on Cinemax and it's in the cable rotation right now.

But the conversation is on Amazon Prime too. And at some point, if Sean cared on the big picture, he would go through Amazon Prime and find like the best 10 70s movies. Yeah, Sean, when are you going to start caring more about the big picture? Sean Care, just put more effort into it, for God's sakes. But like downhill racer, there's just some classics that I feel like nobody under 40 might even know about. Another good one is Crackle, which is free, but you have to watch some ads on it. But they have a ton of 70s stuff.

That's where I watch Shampoo. There's a lot of great movies out there that are pretty accessible. Will Smith, this was his young LeBron stage, 95 to 90s. puts out bad boys, Independence Day, men in black, enemy of the state. Also puts out Big Willie style, which was a huge job of him in 98. It was. And 98 was also when he turned down Neo to make Wild Wild West. A classic IMDB fork in the road.

Such a bad call. So I wrote this about Will Smith in 2011. He was trapped in the fresh prince of Bel Airset in the early 90s. screaming of starring in movies instead of selling Alfonso Ribeiro's jokes. Smith and his manager, James Lasseter, studied a list of the top 10 grossing films ever. Here's what Smith told Time Magazine in 2007. We looked at the list and said, okay, what are the patterns? We realized that 10 out of 10 had special effects.

Nine out of 10 had special effects with creatures. Eight out of 10 had special effects with creatures and a love story. he shifts into, I am only making giant action thrillers, movies with aliens. And I'm just, and maybe, and that's it. And I'm just going to grab this corner. Do you feel like Will Smith sold himself short, Sean? Well, it's so funny, we just devoted 20 minutes to Hackman. We've never really had a deep Hackman conversation.

This is the first Will Smith movie that we've ever done on the rewatchables, which is just crazy. because he is... I mean, he is one of the three or four most important people to movies in the last 25 years, especially for your regular movie-going audience. He, even to this day,

is a megastar. Bad Boys for Life is the biggest movie of the year. And it may end up becoming the biggest movie of the year, depending on the way the movies shake out this year. I don't think that he sold himself short. The problem is that he has much better taste in mainstream entertainment

than he does in prestige movies. And even when he got himself into a prestige movie, he got a lot of bad luck by getting the not quite great version of that. Like, Ali should be the greatest movie ever made. If you look at the people that are participating in the making of Ali and the story that they're telling in that movie, it should be on paper, the best movie ever. And when you watch it, you can't help but feel like, why isn't this working? Why isn't it congealing?

And it's not that Will Smith is bad. He's not bad. But he brings so much baggage to every movie because we know that about him, what you're describing Bill, this idea that he is like very meticulous and very strategic about what kind of movies he makes. And every time he makes a choice, I can't get out of my head as a viewer like, okay, he's doing this so that he can do the next Independence Day style movie that's going to come after this. And that's not, you want like more mystery. I feel like Will Smith doesn't have a lot of mystery. So when you take on serious work, it doesn't feel as strong. I don't know, Chris, what do you

think about him trying to like make a pop entertainment like enemy of the state into something more prestigious. The thing I always notice about his filmography is the compression. So, I mean, I feel like he has like Tom Cruise's entire career in six years and winds up where Tom Cruise eventually winds up now. He gets there in like 2003, where it's just sequels and special effects spectacles. And a couple of like misguided dramas. It's interesting that anecdote you told Bill is really fascinating because it's almost like he's trying to reverse engineer a successful career because yes, that's true of what these huge box office successes are, but actors themselves need to diversify the roles that they take and diversify the kind of movies that they make to keep

themselves interesting to wind up in those kinds of big box office hits. And I think that after Ali, but even really after Enemy of the State, Ali is almost an outlier. Smith just kind of like tries to build Will Smith Industries, which he has a lot of success doing. But it doesn't make for very interesting movies. I would argue that Ali is like the last. last great movie he makes. Right. And Ali was probably a better six-hour Netflix series because it's trying to do so many things. And Ali was, it's just so fertile all the stuff, all the different directions it could go. And it's just like zipping through, you know, from basically 1969 and 1975.

Frustrating movie, rewatchable in a lot of ways. I think it has some good sections. But there's just too much territory to cover. It would be like trying to do all three godfathers in two and a half hours. You know, you can't do it. I,

you know, it's funny, he had some really good moments on Fresh Prince, which some of them have lived on like the scene when he talks to Uncle Phil after his dad leaves again.

Yeah, when Ben Vereen breaks his heart. He unleashes like this unbelievable two minutes. And I think everybody who liked that show, including myself, really had high expectations for him as a movie actor. And then he does six degrees of separation,

which is a movie that I really like. And he's awesome in that. And you start thinking like, oh, this guy's Denzel. This guy, he's going to have basically the higher profile version of Denzel's career. Because Denzel, you know, for eight, nine years was toiling away in movies that a lot of people had in seen. And it just didn't seem like he wanted it. And I think I wrote when I wrote about him in 2011 or whenever that was,

when he turned down Django and Chained and Jamie Fox ends up taking the role. He just kind of never wanted the smoke. He never wanted to do anything too controversial. He was always protecting like the brand. It reminds me a little bit of the Michael Jordan, like the Republicans don't buy sneakers stuff where he was just like, I want to appeal to the most people possible. And that's tough because I think he could have, I think there are a couple choices he could have made that really would have been incredible, you know?

Like, what would, if he was in Pulp Fiction, you know, or Jackie Brown, like, think of just playing bit parts, being Will Smith for 20 minutes in somebody else's movie. Like, he just never seemed interested in that. It's too bad. I think you just get to a place when you're a powerful person where there's an expectation that you should be at the center of the frame all the time. And the truth is, is that he came up in a time in the last gasp of the mega movie star who could make a movie happen.

And so he's responsible for making almost every movie that. he made happen up to and including now. And, you know, we actually did talk about this a lot on the big picture last year because he was in Aladdin and Gemini Man and then Bad Boys for Life early this year. And it seemed like he spent the last couple of years just kind of channeling his past, you know, trying to find a way to reflect on the things that he did. I mean, Gemini Man is a very weird movie. Some of it is great. I mean, it's made by Ang Lee and some of it is just a mess and terrible. And it uses this odd technology to tell some of the story. But it's literally about a guy looking at a younger version of himself and trying to tell him not to make

the same mistakes that he made. And I wonder if Will Smith has regrets. I wonder if he thinks maybe I should have taken Django, you know, maybe I should have pushed it a little bit. I do think that he was able to make a lot of very, very good mainstream movies, though, which shouldn't be overlooked. I mean, he really made people happy for like 15 years. And even the stuff that I don't love as much, like, I Am Legend and Hancock, like those movies are huge hits and people still really like them. So I don't want to say he's like a failure by any means. He just, it does feel like we missed out, right? Chris, like on like two or three great things.

I think that there's like, whether it's the choices that he makes in terms of the people he works with filmmaker-wise or, I mean, because you can see even in concussion the germ of a good idea. You know what I mean? That that could be his version of spotlight or dark water or whatever where it's like, I'm going to make this like traditional 90s, us against them, civil action style thriller and that movie obviously just kind of got lost in being memed and then forgotten because people are like, I'm going to watch the NFL. You know, this doesn't change anything. I do think

that he makes him interesting. Like, we've joked about it, but focus is not a bad movie. It's like a pretty entertaining movie. It's just like it should be the- Bill's favorite movie of all time. It should be like the 15th best Will Smith movie, not the sixth, you know? And that's, and that's kind of where we are. Yeah, I like Focus because it's like Will Smith being Will Smith. And we're nitpicking. He had one of the best careers of anyone in the last 30 years. He's a major giant movie star. He made a cajillion dollars. I think all of us are probably a tiny bit disappointed that he wasn't Denzel or Leo, like that he didn't challenge himself a little more. That's why I wrote the piece in 2011. And the piece that I wrote was born out of, I had had lunch with William Goldman.

and I had asked him because he always used to write about movie stardom and who are the biggest movie stars and how that would change year to year. And his concept is always how many guys could actually just open a movie just because they're on the poster. And by 2011, Goldman was saying, it's only Will Smith. He's the only movie star we have. He's the only person that if he's on a movie poster, that movie will make $150 million. Now I think we probably have a couple more stars.

you know, I feel like Leo, any movie he's in is going to be taken seriously. But that's because he only makes serious movies. True. But I think there's other people who are kind of conditional stars. You know, Affleck, depending on the movie, if it's the right kind of everything, if it's Gone Girl, and he's the centerpiece of a movie that's also a Fincher movie. And it's really well done. And all the people, all the pieces around, he can be an A-list.

movie star, but he can also be the guy in Runner Runner. I think what was interesting about Will Smith was it didn't matter if the movies were good or not. They still made money. I Am Legend was not a good movie. I saw it in the theater, you know, because it's like, oh, the next Will Smith movie is out. So really fascinating career, and you can see in this movie, he's going to come up in the

they new award. There's going to be Will Smith, Kansas. He's a major star. and he's still kind of figuring out who he is as an actor. I thought Ali was the best performance of his career. Some of the stuff he did in that movie was really great. I certainly think it's the best, like, film of his career. Yeah.

But, I mean, should Will Smith have won an Oscar? I would argue, yeah. Like, he should have been in a movie that he was able to deliver an Oscar performance. The fact that he is going to end up, what did he get? One Oscar nomination for Ali, that's it? He lost the Denzel in training day that year. And that's it? Like that feels disappointing to me.

I mean, he's got to figure out a way to be an actor in his 50s. You know, I think he and Cruz are, as Chris was saying, like, they're now at the same place, even though Will Smith got there ahead of him. They're both still just trying to make super mainstream movies and trying to tap into an audience that was very powerful in 1998. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Aladdin and Bad Boys for Life were huge hits.

and Gemini Man was a huge flop. And so it's a little bit hard to see what choices he makes going forward. But I completely agree with what you said, Bill, which is that in 1998, he's just not ready to go toe to toe to with Hackman. Like he's just, there are some scenes where you're like, whoa, he has not refined his shit yet. Where he's trying to amp it up. Any scene where he's yelling in this movie and trying to be serious, it kind of takes me out of it a little bit because he's just not ready to do that kind of work.

And he actually wound up, like some of the humor in this movie is improv from him. him that he asks or he inserts into the movie like some of the lingerie jokes and stuff like that. I do think, because we're kind of ragging on him a little bit, it's worth noting that at the time of any enemy of the state, he's coming out of Bad Boys Independence Day. What's the third one? Men in Black. Men in Black. So he's arguably the biggest movie star in the world. And the list of people who can convincingly be a labor attorney and outrun a,

a Camaro in the Fort McHenry Tunnel is a list of like two people. It's Tom Cruise and Will Smith. I mean, whether or not it's because Leonardo Capri has never tried to do that in a movie, whatever, but like that list is super short where you're like, I believe that this man is a lawyer and also like an action star who can jump around roofs.

I don't feel like we're ragging on him. To me, it's like we're talking about him having a chance to be, have one of the all-time great careers. and from a success box office standpoint, he got there. I think I'm probably lower on him than you two guys. I'm just saying that in this movie, it's just like, oh, you can kind of see the special spice that he has. Yeah.

I wish he had challenged himself a couple more times. So right now, he's 51 years old. When Gene Hackman made this movie, he was 68. So you've got 17 years of movies for Will Smith now to take on those projects that we're talking about, to do that kind of stuff, to use his power, to challenge himself and make interesting movies.

It's not, I mean, he's actually fairly young because he got started so young. So I don't think that we need to throw in the towel on him having, like, one of the great acting careers by any means. I just hope that he doesn't, I hope he stops trying to replicate

the success that he had at the time that we're talking about here. I forgot to mention, I really liked him in pursuit of happiness, the movie when he's basically homeless, trying to get a job with his son. And I thought he did really good stuff in that. And I can't remember if he got nominated for an Oscar or not.

But I thought that was an unusually good performance by him. And at that point, he knows what he's doing. And when we talk about an enemy of the state where he's, you know, he's kind of self-parody in a couple of these scenes. I think by the time they make that movie, he's peak command of his powers. I wish he had done Django. I think that's such a fascinating fork in the road for him. and I just would have loved to have seen him with Tarantino.

And you think like the choices that Leo made, I don't think, I don't think Leo is necessarily a better or worse actor than Will Smith. He's probably a better actor. I don't know if he's got a higher upside than Will Smith does. But Leo was always so careful about working with awesome directors and trying to surround himself with the best people. Like he was fanatical about it.

And at some point, just it didn't seem like Will Smith wanted to do that. Let's take a break and then we're going to talk about the categories because we got a lot to get through here. Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I just wanted to make sure you were listening to podcasts on Spotify. Here's how you do it. First, search for your favorite podcast on Spotify's app. They have a library of over 750,000 podcasts at this point. So let's say you're searching for the Bill Simmons podcast or the rewatchables or Dave Chang Show or binge mode or the ring NFL show.

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Simmons podcast. Tell him, drunk Bill, the Bill Simmons podcast. Listen, on Spotify. Okay, so we mentioned this movie is now known as being way ahead of its time, because this comes out three years for 9-11, comes out before

the Patriot Act, Edward Snowden, all the things it was bringing up in national security and privacy was the first time a really successful movie. Did that. $90 million budget made $250 million. Roger Ebert, three stars. I bet. He's coming back after the Tommy Boy disaster, which is going to stain his 2020 and the rewatchables.

It's really tough. Really difficult to come back from that. It's on the comeback trail. He loved Total Recall. We did that one last, and now he's two for two here. He said, quote, by and large, the movie works. Most rewatchable scene. I have five, if there's another one, throw it in.

The Jason Lee Chase scene, when they break into his apartment, he escapes, is just like Tony Scott just flexing it. It's, it's, I want no other director than Tony Scott for those six minutes. All units target hitting north on rooftop. Columbia 18th requests immediate visual support over. Running, camera cuts. Barry Pepper just being evil things. He's on the roof. He's hopping. He's going through. He's in the laundry store. He's stealing a bike. He's coming around.

Uh-oh, there's a bus. This scene is Apex Mountain for running out of the back of stores. You never really think about this, but like, I guess all stores do you have a back door. But like, they find every single one of them in the scene. So accessible in this movie. Yeah. It's really great. It's some good Jason Lee. but if this is on, I'm watching it. If it's like, I'm in for these seven minutes. What's weird is it's really the only rewatchable scene

in the first like 50 minutes of this movie. This movie is really stacked for the second half. So I got that one. I have Hackman meeting Will Smith. In your phone was a GPS sat tracker. Pulsons of 24 gigahertz. I don't know what that means. It's like a low jack, only two generations better

than what the police have. And what does that mean? Do you speak English? Obviously not that well. Kind of a jerk, aren't you? It means the NSA can read the time off your fucking wristwatch. Great Hackman introduction. He's immediately throwing 99 miles an hour.

He's picking bugs off Will Smith's clothes and stuff. It reminds me how much I love things when things are bugged. It's a device that works in every movie. There's an incredible job by the Asian hotel couple with Will Smith going in there to hide. And they don't know what's going on, but they're kind of weird. enjoying it. And then you got the Will Smith climbing from

room to room balcony to balcony and Seth Green kind of narrating it like Jeff Probst. She's like, and laughing when he's like

he got down to the 15th floor. Like I can't believe this. It is a little Jeff Probstis. He's like in Boston Rob jumping the balcony. And then it ends with the insane hotel closet fire which will come up later

in picking nits. And then an ambulance escape. Have some questions about that. An ambulance escape, Hannibal Lecter-esque. It's a very satisfying seven minutes. Third scene. Smith going to the getaway layer. Hackman's getaway layer, I think if I could redo one thing about this movie,

I would have wanted to spend at least 15 minutes in there and maybe cut two scenes from the first 45 minutes. There's so many questions I had. I just wanted to be there longer. It goes fast. But that's just a great action scene. The building blowing up, another classic Tony Sky. they're going away. The fucking thing folds completely.

They end up escaping on a train. There's punching. Four scene. I just like when somehow they end up going to breakfast after this, Hackman and Smith. It's kind of calmed down for a second. It's like, hey, want to get some eggs? Sure.

At a bar that lets cats come in. Yeah. It's just back to normal for five minutes here. Meanwhile, Jack Black has this hand of God from the sky. I can follow them anywhere. And he does that Viacong analogy of, You got to win the wars You know you can win, win the small battles,

get them on their heels. You know, in guerrilla warfare, you try to use your weaknesses as strengths. Such as? Well, if they're big and you're small, then you're mobile and they're slow. You're hidden and they're exposed. You only fight battles you know you can win.

That's where they big Kong did it. We capture their weapons and then you use them against them the next time. That way they're supposed to. You grow stronger as they grow weaker. I like that. And then the fifth one is, I know Chris's favorite scene in this when Will Smith crashes the mafia dinner. True romance too.

Yeah, exactly. And John Voitz in there and Seismore's just eating. He wants it back. Really? I don't give you what he wants. Could we have some privacy, please? And maybe we should. We're getting kids out of here.

Come on, boys. And it's not one of those things where he's like, hey, man, this is, we're filming a lot of takes here. I don't know if I can eat this much spaghetti, Sysmores, like, an animal. Like, what can I do? How much pasta can I eat? I want to know, I just want to know for that Sizamor scene, like, is the sweat real or was that makeup? Like, were they like, hey, Tom, you're kind of like, you're secreting a lot during this scene. It's just, you know, it just reeks of garlic in that room.

It's just unbelievable. He's, he's gaming. He's gaming that whole scene. So that's what I have for five. We can go through him in a second. Any other rewatchables you'd throw in there? I would definitely nominate the opening scene, which makes you think it's going to be a different kind of movie. But you get five minutes of Jason Robards and John Void going toe to toe, which I love.

love. Also, you know, I've mentioned before on the show that anytime you open a movie at a wedding, it's going to be great. I also think if you open a movie with a mysterious conversation on a park bench, it's also going to be great. Like, this has this, like JFK, there are some great park bench scenes in movie history. And this one is really, really great as you're watching these two kind of, you know, really famous historical actors feel each other out. Robards playing this like very Chuck Schumer-esque kind of power broker. in Congress and real pat-lady vibes. Yes, yes, a grand man of the Senate.

And then the kill, the Barry Pepper needle kill is great stuff. Like the movie really kicks into high gear as soon as Robarts catches a needle in the neck. And his poor, is it his dog, his dog gets left behind as the car gets pushed off into the lake. I love that whole sequence. I think it's really, really well done. Tough break for the dog. That sequence also, it's like you have to, wait like 14 minutes before you see

an actor you don't recognize in this movie? Yeah. Because you got Lauren Dean who was really big coming off of Billy Bathgate. You know, you got it's Pepper, it's Ian Hart who had been, I think he, was he in Backbeat the movie? Remember the Beatles movie?

I think he's Lenin that movie and Robards and Voie and you're just like, what the fuck did they just empty the entire bank for this? I still have some Lauren Dean rookie cards. Didn't really turn out. I have his 94 Fleer rookie. Never happened.

What's that going for on eBay right now? Not a lot. 12 bucks? Six bucks? The dog, tough break. Going to the lake with dad. Maybe taking the next up.

Weird, weird, weird movie for pets. A lot of them, a lot of them in peril. I don't think Mallory could watch this movie. Do you think Tony Scott pet guy or not a pet guy? I think he had like probably like a really rustic like outdoor dog who just came around every once in a while, but it was like very self-reliant. Yeah.

Chris, what was your favorite most rewatchable scene out of those? It's got to get the Jason Lee pancake, man. It is one of the all-time chase scenes and all-time fucking bike truck deaths. Because you're like, this guy made it. He got away. I was trying to think what director is better suited for that seven-minute scene than Tony Scott, if we're doing like a fantasy draft? He's got to be the first pick.

Absolutely. Yeah, there's like a little synchronicity there too. No, because Hackman is obviously best known probably for the French connection and that is one of the all-time chase sequences and this movie features a couple of the all-time chase sequences.

My most rewatchable scene is also a chase sequence. It's when they're escaping the layer. It's basically the layer getting to see everything that he has and then when they get in the car and they drive away and then the movie kind of turns into a prequel to unstoppable where it's like a train movie for a second. But the moment that

they have in the car together where Smith's character is like, what the hell is happening? And Bill's like, I blew up the building. And Will Smith's like, why? And he's like, because you made a phone call. What the hell was happening? I blew up the building. Why?

Because you made a phone call. Which is like the trailer moment in the movie. You know, like every time you saw the trailer for that moment, you were like, I got to fucking see that movie. That movie looks awesome. Gene Hackman is blowing up buildings. I'm in. So that's definitely my favorite.

I also have that as my scene too Because to me this is a Hackman movie first So for most rewatchable He has to be in the scene And as I said I love the lair As soon as they're in there I'm just in They have like

The Faraday cage Yeah Will Smith kind of figured out At least how to go To toe to toe with Hackman A little bit at that point And there's some good back and forth There's some good one liners

That's like To me that could have been the whole movie You could have just started the movie When Hackman comes in And I honestly it would have been okay. You lose the Jason Lee scene and some other stuff. But, all right. What's age the best?

Lisa Bonnet. Just an icon. Capital I icon. Icon. Iconic icon from the 80s. Mount Rushmore, you could do your four from the 80s. You can have the girl from just one. of the guys, Kelly Preston, go any direction you want.

But Lisa Bonnet has to be on the Mount Rushmore. She just has to, I will never understand why she was one of the biggest stars of the world. Every person from the 80s who was my age, younger, older, was in love with her. Angel Heart, we don't need to get into. But she comes back here and it's like, oh, she married Lenny Kravitz and basically fell off the map, had a kid. and then comes back in this just reclaiming her territory. Like she looks amazing. Every scene with her is great.

That's it. That's my Lisa Bonnet monologue. I like that he has cheated on his wife with her. That's very realistic. I like that they aren't like, no, it's just all, it's all a setup. It was all like a lie told by the NSA. I like these like, I did cheat on you four years ago with Lisa Bonnet. It happened.

And justifiable because it's Lisa Bonnet. I feel like every way it's like, ah, all right. Yes. If it's a less attractive person than the most beautiful person who has ever lived, then you might have to take issue with it. But you're looking at Lisa Bonnet and you're like, this is crazy. It's also just downright eerie, how much she looks exactly like her daughter, like at the same age. I mean, she looks like Zoe Kravitz in this movie. And obviously they are mother and daughter.

But for there to be such a one-to-one replication of that look is so confusing. The other thing, too, is Wilson's got kind of a checkered history with romantic, leads in his movies and he doesn't always cast the right person. It's not always clear if he has sexual chemistry with the woman opposite him. And in this movie, you both credibly buy that he cheated with Lisa Bonnet and that he's married to Regina King, who also is like a good enough actor to be going toe to toe with him, even though this is way before she won an Oscar and was as well known. But she's coming off of Jerry McGuire and she's kind of staking territory as like the Regina King of Virginia in Kingtime. And you like buy him as a romantic lead in the movie in a way that you don't always

in a lot of his stuff. Yeah, focus is the only other one when him and Margot Robbie really had, I'm going to self-focused to our audience until the bitter end. Lisa Bonnet, so beautiful that even when she had a child, that it was just the child had to be beautiful. Her jeans was going to overpower her of the dad is, of course, she marries Lainty Kravitz, handsome guy. And when it was like they're having a kid. I think everybody's reaction was like, oh, that's going to be the most beautiful child anyone's ever had. And it was. She should have really challenged her. She should have, like, maybe she should have married like Giamati to like really challenge herself. Rick O'Kasick. I have no idea why she wasn't in more things. I don't know anybody who isn't

100% in on her. And I love Lisa Bonnet. So there you go. Another what's age the best. A little late 90s, Jason Lee. I love Mulrats chasing Amy, kissing a fool, enemy of the state, almost famous dogma.

Just rips that off in five years. And then when does he goes to TV like after that, right? Like a couple years after that. Yeah, my name is Earl. Yeah.

Really liked him. I think he was, he was like, Bill, you always talk about loving Chandler on friends and like, you know, identifying with the wise-ass character.

He was like the Sundance, wise ass to me. He was like the hipster wise ass. And anybody who thought that they were a clever, sarcastic asshole, like was modeling themselves after Jason Lee characters. Unfortunately, he, he reaches kind of a grim fate in this movie. But for the most part, he always kind of seemed like the smartest guy in the room. I always loved him. I love his one line of obviously improvised dialogue where he's like, fuck a duck. Right. Well, the funny thing is he could have played like 11 parts in this movie. He could have been any of the guys, any of the bad bad guys, any of the sarcastic bad guys.

Another, what's age the best? Barry Pepper's evil sprinting face? It's tough to really look evil when you're running full speed. Very few people can have the sneer in place. And Barry Pepper does it. He had a nice little run here. I really like the Roger Barris Mickey Mantle movie. I thought that was one of the best HBO movies.

And I love 25th hour. I thought he was great in that. He's incredible and saving Private Ryan. Yeah, and he had a couple more in there. And then things just got weird. Battlefield Earth happens and the wheels kind of come off. But nice little way. He's knock around guys he's really good in.

The troika of Scott Con, Jake Bucce, and Barry Pepper is really like, it might be Apex Mountain for white guy flat tops. Yeah, I have Scott Con's hair coming up later. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about the hair soon. Another Woodsage the best, which will be my winner for this. The incredible supporting cast, this is like one of the best IMDP pages. If you could take 10 IMDB pages on a desert island, this would be one of the 10. There's like 25 people in this movie.

It's ridiculous. You want to run it down? I mean, some of the highlights? Yeah. John Voit, Jason Lee, Regina King, Barry Pepper, Seth Green, Tom Seismore, Gabriel Byrne, Jack Black, Lisa Bonnet, the God. Lauren Dean, Jason Robards, Philip Baker Hall, Scott Conn, Jamie Kennedy, and Chris's guy, James LaGroose. How about also just like Anna Gunn, Skyler White, just showing up as John Voiced wife in there? Yeah.

I mean, it's sort of bizarre because there are some movies where you're like, oh, that's so incredible. Like, you know, Alec Baldwin did that scene in Glengarry. I totally get it. I don't know why Philip Baker Hall is in this movie. You know, it's like there's actually no reason for Jason Robards to do one scene and get stabbed with a syringe. But they're all in it. And it just makes it a better movie. I personally love when movies do this. Because I think you can do the half-ass version where like 40% of those people are in it. And then you do 60% no names or younger actors, whatever.

I like when they go, we're going all in. The first 20 parts of this movie are going to be people who are really good at their job. It's the 90s bro goon squad, man. Yeah. Yeah. You could have fielded a hockey team with the guys who were who were playing the N.S. agents and the FBI military guys or the military guys. I mean, it's just that that's such an incredible crew. Bill, it's also like a real feat of good casting, not just because of the big names that are involved, but because most of the people that are in,

you know, in those vans and looking at the people, all the young actors just hadn't really done a lot. Like Seth Green, Jack Black, Jamie Kennedy, um, Jake Bucie, Barry Pepper. All of those people were not famous. I mean, they were like, kind of a little bit well known to people, but it,

those are smart choices to dot the movie with all these people who we knew were going to have bigger careers. Yeah, it's true. I have another Wood's Age the Best Hackman's, his sneaky tricks in this movie, like how he always looks down or straight ahead because the satellite is looking at him. I could have done another 10 minutes in this movie

on all of Brill's little tricks from his institutional know-how of, you know, I don't even know how somebody would think of I had to do that. Any other what's age the best for you guys? I think just the chase sequences in general have really aged the best. I can't verify this with my own accounting work, but the average shot length

in this movie is apparently like two and a half seconds. And you really feel that in the chase sequences where it's just like, you know, in Unstoppable, which we've also done our rewatchable as we did that with Tarantino. And we talk a lot about how you always know where the train is and like it's everything is like these sort of wider master shots so that you're kind of constantly oriented in this movie you have no sense of orientation like it'll be a cutaway

and there's a helicopter flying and then it's a cutaway and there's a guy running down the hallway and then somebody's picking up a phone and then you're in an office somewhere in the NSA and the disorientation is supposed to put you in will smith's shoes so that you never know where the danger is coming from and i think that that just works great it's such a great addition to the chase dynamic. I have, I forgot one other what's age the best. Washington, D.C. is an action

thriller setting. It has a batting average of 100. Every time it works, it's the same kind of beats, the wide shots of some of the recognizable things, the parks, the highways with weird shit going on on the side,

like just everything. And it's one of those places when you actually go to Washington, D.C., you just feel like you're in a movie. Because it's such a perfect setting. out's another one where it's like Virginia. That whole DMV area, it always just works for me for movies. But for

what stage the best, I would go Lisa Bonnet 1 and the cast 2. I mean, the whole premise of the movie has to be number 1, right? The whole idea of the government watching us. Good call. You're right. Technology invades our lives. That seems like pretty profoundly aging well. You're right. I'm still going Lisa Bonnet 1,

but that's a solid number 2. What's age the worst? The movie doesn't really get going for 20 solid minutes after the Robarts thing. It's just I would have rather lost some stuff in the first 20 and... We got to get that Lilo Brancato scene though, you know? Yeah, it's just like, come on.

On an episode of PBS Nova titled Spy Factory, they basically shot to hell a lot of the stuff in this movie with the NSA's capabilities. Basically, the agency can intercept transmissions. That's about it. None of the stuff that they're doing the

satellite. I'm not even sure you could do now, much less than 1998, like the Victoria's Secret scene. In 2001, the NSA director at the time, General Michael Hayden said, quote, I made the judgment that we couldn't survive with the popular impression of this agency being formed by the last Will Smith movie. They actually did a PR campaign to combat some people coming out of this movie thinking, oh, the NSA can do all this. And then it turns out they probably could. Most of it anyway. And did. Yeah, and did. Another one's age the worst, Scott Conn's hair. I don't know what, what's going on. He's got a beehive on his head. It gets so crazy as the movie goes on. Like it gets wilder and wilder. And they start making, and they're making jokes in

the movie about Scott Con's hair. Another one's age the worst. I'm not sure why John Voight's character becomes pee-wipped in the second half of the movie where his wife's just like, just like killing him. And it's like, I'm supposed to be afraid of John Voight. John Void is this evil mastermind of this whole thing and his wife's yelling at him because he didn't bring home milk and eggs. Like, why is this in here? Are they trying to humanize John Void's character? We should also mention, oh, go ahead. I think there's a reason for it, Bill. I think it's, she's obviously 30 years younger than him and his second wife and they have a young child. And he is sexually enslaved to Anna Gunn. And that's why.

But why? That's why he walks into the bedroom with a glass of warm milk? Getting ready for a night of action with Skyler White? I don't know when John Voight character actor started. It was somewhere in the mid-90s, but this becomes a really nice. He's basically the championship belt holder of evil character in a movie where all the way through to varsity blues. But you can basically put him in any movie and he could be the evil guy. Congrats to him for that.

Mission Impossible, I feel like, right? Mission Impossible is where he really like cracks the code on that and then he does it like 10 times in a row. What's age the worst? Anything else? I don't know. Do you want to go with Voight being pee-wipped? Is that aging the worst?

I'm going to go with that just because I never thought of it before and it's really what makes pills special as a podcaster. Casting What Ifs, this is a familiar refrain for 90s movies. Tom Cruise originally signed out to star in this movie. and then had to drop out because of eyes wide shut. That's like 15 movies. Yeah, it's just like every, it's a compilation of Tom Cruise performances. Mel Gibson and George Clooney also considered for Will Smith's part.

And Will Smith took the role because he wanted to work with Gene Hackman. He even took a reduced salary and he picked this movie over Snake Eyes, a movie that I know deep down Chris really likes. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Sean Connery. the backup choice for Gene Hackman. The National Security Agency.

What do you think happens if Connery and Hackman flip roles in this and The Rock? That's pretty interesting. I think it worked out correctly because this is a better movie and it needed Gene Hackman more. And I like the conversation parallels. But they easily could have, you're right, they could have flipped Gene Hackman. If Gene Hackman's in The Rock, it's a much better movie. I love The Rock. It's one of my favorites.

Connery's kind of going for it in that movie. Have we done The Rock as a lot? of rewatchables? No. I don't think so. That could be a fist fight to see who's hosting that one. We're going to have a 55-person Zoom for that. We have five-person The Rock.

It's my favorite Michael Bay movie by far. Best That Guy, aka the Joey Pants Award, there's really only two nominees, Anna Gun from Breaking Bad, who is, I just need to, do people know her as Walter White's wife or do they know her as Anna Gunn? I need a ruling. It's like most people know her.

as the lady from breaking bad. She's also Seth Bullock's wife on Deadwood. So that I think is the first, I think Deadwood is the first time I really noticed her. And then obviously she goes on and does breaking bad. So is she in a gun or is she breaking bad lady? I feel like she might be in a gun. I think she's like an Emmy nominated actor.

Yeah. Okay. For sure. Well, then that leaves us with the guy from the Bronx tale, Lillabranchato. Nobody knows his name. They just know him as the guy from the Bronx tale who was also in the Sopranos and then went to jail.

So he has to win this. The Vincent Hanna They New Award is, it's lively. It's something, this category. We have every time size more scene. This is not that lively. This is a one of one. Well, there's some Will Smith moments,

especially when the Philip Baker Hall scene with Will Smith, when, for inexplicably, he just dials it up to 19 and does the whole, You ever beat off in the shower? You're trying to stay my life! You ever beat off in the shower, Brian?

You ever have any homosexual thoughts? Bobby, that is... None of my fucking business. You damn right, it's not. I love my wife and I love my son. Absolutely, with no equivocations. And that's none of your fucking business either. I'm screaming!

He's like, Brick Tamlin. Loud-dise us! I don't know what he's doing in that scene, but it's... it's really bad. But the totality of Seismore in this movie, he has to be the winner, I think. What do you guys think?

Bill, will you ever, like, if I ever, like, am mildly disagreeing with you on a conference call, will you just scream? You ever beat off in the shower? A thousand percent. All right, so we'll go Seisbord. The Deion Waiters Award. Apologies to Barry Pepper and his evil sprinting face.

And apologies to Tom Seismore and an epic. Probably cocaine out of performance. But Lisa Bonnet is in this movie throwing 130 miles an hour, and she's Dion Raiders every time. What's wrong with you? Oh, there's nothing wrong with me. Just, you know,

someone with whom you don't have quite so complicated a history. I don't know why she wasn't in more scenes. I feel sad every time she's dead. More than Robards. Yeah. The recasting couch. If you could recast any part,

what would you recast? I would recast the Robards part with Lisa Bonnet. I think it just gives it a different kind of heaviness and meaning if Bonnet is replacing the man who popularized Ben Bradley and is one of the great Eugene O'Neill Thespians of all time. You got to get Bonay batting leadoff in this movie. I have my recasting couch. I would have Lisa Bonay and Will Smith switch parts and make Will Smith the person she had the affair with and he pops in three times. And Lisa Ponae is the hero of this movie.

And Regina King is actually her husband. And it's just a Lisa Bonnet action vehicle because I wanted that my whole life and it never happened. So Regina King is actually her wife or Regina King? No, the Regina King character would be like Blair Underwood. Yeah. Like whoever. Pick Omar X.

Underwood. Omar S. Omar S. Omar S. So one Tony Scott. kind of makes that movie a couple years later. He makes Domino, which is basically Kira Knightley playing the badass figure at the center of the movie. Also, should have been Lisa Bonnet. This is a rare movie where I feel like you could scramble the whole

cast. You could take every single actor and put them in a different part and it would be kind of entertaining. Like if you put Jason Lee in the Will Smith part and you put Hackman in the Robards part and you put Void in the Hackman part, like you could move everybody around like puzzle pieces and it still would be entertaining. That's how much talent is inside the movie. If you put Jack Black and the Regina King part, you know? Hackman easily could have been the John Voie part. Easily.

And he's played that part. I mean, that's basically the No Way Out guy. Oh, yeah. I'm glad they stuck where they were. Halfass internet research, you mentioned Aaron Sork and Henry Bean and Tony Gilroy performed uncredited rewrites of the script. I think the script bounced around. The NSA refused to cooperate with the production.

What a shocker. The portable video games Can you imagine the NSA being like Yeah sure guys let us know Anything we could do If you guys want to use the offices You know we have a lot of extra phones Yeah

The portable video game system that Will Smith's son uses And the disc that won't work Was an NEC Turbo Express A Game Boy competitor That failed miserably Thomas Reynolds The Gene Smith character

Oh no I'm sorry Thomas Reynolds, the John Voight character. His birthday in the movie was 9-11, 1940. Which was when Bell Labs researcher George Stibitz demonstrated the first remote operation over a phone line of a computer machine. It's just weird. Three years later, 9-11 happens. That's all I got for research.

Apex Mountain. Weirdly, like, nobody except for post-Cosby show Lisa Bonnet. I don't really know what else you. would put here for Apex Mountain. Do you guys have any candidates? Lisa Bonnet's Apex Mountain is the day that Zoe Kravitz was born, just for the record. Would you give this Apex Mountain for Bodie Elfman? And the, uh, Jake Busey? Uh, I feel like Jake Bucy has a couple of, um, isn't he in Predator 2?

Starship Troopers is Jake Bucy's Apex Mountain. Oh, that's right. It's just, sorry, it's what I was thinking of. Yeah. Are you guys cool with just changing Apex Mountain? to Lisa Bonnet's Apex Mountain, like actually sponsoring, having her sponsor. Yeah, sure. Do you want to talk a little bit about how you feel about Lisa Bonay? I don't feel like you had a chance to share your thoughts. This is my only chance ever on the rewatchable.

She never made movies. Until we do Angel Heart, yeah. Yeah, that's like season 12 of the rewatchable. So we're like Angel Heart. Lou Seifer. Lewis Seifer. Get it? Other than that, I don't really know Apex Mountain.

I don't feel like anybody's peak of their powers. I think it might be Apex Mountain for the DMV on film, with the exception of all the President's men. It's one of the great DC Baltimore movies. All right. Pick a Knits. I have a few. I'm just going to read this from Wikipedia.

This is the premise of the movie, the first scene. NSA official, John Voight, meets with U.S. congressman Jason Robarts in a public park to discuss support for a new piece of counterterrorism legislation the U.S. Congress is pushing that dramatically expands the surveillance powers of intelligence agencies over individuals and groups. Robards believes it would destroy the privacy of U.S. citizens.

Reynolds wants an NSA promotion, so he has his team murder Hammersly. Are there better ways to get a promotion than murdering a U.S. congressman in a park? It just feels like maybe this could have been massaged a little easier than an assassination, basically. What are your thoughts on that? why is he present?

Why is he there for that? Obviously, it makes a great scene where they sit on that park bench like I talked about, but in what universe would the deputy director of the NSA be present for the assassination of a sitting congressman? That's insane. It's insane. And it's like basically the premise would be, well, if I can talk him into this, we won't kill him. But you've already told like the three other people, we're killing this guy if he doesn't go along with it. And then he does go along with that.

And it's like, cool. And just fucking murders a congressman. Feels like this would have been a bigger deal. They don't really do it in a very, like, private area. Like, did they, they didn't really check out the other side of the river. You know what I mean? And that leads to the second ridiculous part of that scene, which is they're borrowing from blowout with Travolta, which borrowed from a whole bunch of other movies.

But Jason Lee just filming a park that day, just putting his camera, the whole concept of these cameramen. These migrations, man. Yeah, man. Oh, wow. Wait, there's a murder at that park. I should check the tape. Like, oh, it's a flimsy premise for a movie.

And then him going back to get the tape and somebody studying it and realizing like, oh, that's a little dicey. But it is a Tony Scott action movie. Why did Will Smith handle the first mafia meeting so aggressively and so badly? That whole scene's just weird. I know they had to introduce Seismore and all. of those guys to, you know, to bring them back later. But he's just so kind of aggro in that.

And I didn't really understand as like a lawyer. Why are you even playing that way? That scene, I've seen this movie 12 times. I'm always confused by just that whole arc. Will Smith seems like a really bad lawyer. He just seems like a bad lawyer. Yeah. I'm not sure I understand all the like the labor law stuff that's going on in there in the

beginning. I don't think James LaGro does either. My big picking net is. human velocity in this movie. There's a scene during the Jason Lee chase. Barry Pepper is nearly keeping up on foot with Jason Lee on a bicycle for about like 30 seconds, like where it's like, is he steroid era Ben Johnson? Like it is unclear, but like Jason Lee is barely getting away from a man sprinting after

him while he's riding a bike. And then later when they're in the tunnel, Will Smith outruns a Camaro. So, like, I just think that there's a couple of really, like, playing fast and loose with, like, the ability of man to outpace machine. Sean, what's your favorite scene ever in a tunnel where the guy escapes by going through one of the sewage things? And the guys are running and he's gone and they go, damn it! It's obviously the fugitive. One of the greatest sequences ever. But, you know, Shawshank's probably got a claim to it, too.

I always like when the that just that trusty sewage thing that opens up and a human body can just easily fit through it and like if anyone can fit like that should be where like

the entire homeless population lives if it's that easy to just go in tunnels the hotel closet fire with Will Smith How many times does Will Smith catch on fire in this movie? Three? Twice. Twice.

He's just going to first of all what's your plan? I'm going to set myself on fire in this lock closet like how is that going to play out? Then second, how does he not immediately die? And then third, why doesn't he have like major burns? It's just kind of glossed over.

It's rough. Do you guys think this was the inspiration for Tony Scott's film Man on Fire? Maybe. Yeah, he was watching that scene. He's like, I have an idea. And then we mentioned earlier, the Jack Black going 2020, did Odell Beckham cross the plane of the goal line? Let's use all of our cameras in the end zone.

with the 270 degree turn. It just magically does this in a fucking lingerie shop with security cameras. He's like the voice of reason in this movie where he's like, yeah, but maybe it's not in his bag. It would be great if John would have been like,

no, good point. Yeah, let's forget about this whole app. It might be pound for pound the single most ridiculous scene of any 90s action movie other than the bus and speed being able to make that jump over the missing part of the highway

and somehow going up and going, 50 yards and landing. This is a 270-degree replay technology Jack Black has. I'll never understand why they ever thought this was a good idea to put in a movie. This is the security camera at the underwear store.

Freeze there. Rotate a 75 degrees around the vertical, please. Freeze there. Times 10. Focus on the drop. Now it would be ridiculous. In 2020, people would be like, that's weird.

It's one of the all-time enhanced. sharpen, enhance, enhance. There were so many movies where the camera would move in and closer and closer and closer and you would get incredible resolution on things that you would never be able to see even if it was 10 feet

away from you in person. That technology actually does not exist. No. I have a... My last picking knit is just I just feel like pets play too big a rule in this movie. I feel like Babe the cat, great cat actor,

but really gets a lot of screen time and there's a lot of like going back for the cat stuff that really drives me nuts in these movies. And I just find like the Porsche, the dog that Carla and Robert have to be kind of annoying. I have a tiny picking knit. I just don't feel like Regina King is forgiving him in the garage. And why is she wearing the lingerie? Why is she wearing lingerie? Why isn't she matter? He had an affair. They got through it. They had counseling. He's still hanging out with this person. There are pictures of them from the day. He's still lying to her after the affair's over.

And then she does the whole, I miss you baby, does that whole thing. It's like, I just feel like there's going to be a longer grudge, especially because, you know, it's Lisa Bonnet, the hottest woman of all time.

She's just going to be madder. She's not forgiving him. Best quote, we hit everything, I think. Is there a best quote we didn't mention? You made a phone call is probably the best quote. Yeah, I don't find this to be like a very scintillating movie dialogue-wise, but it's a lot of like, go, go, get them. We lost them. There is a true romance callback that is that I like,

which is when Will Smith says, actually, I believe the term Scheister is reserved for attorneys of the Jewish persuasion. I believe the proper term for me is eggplant. Yeah, eggplant. Which is pretty clearly the Tarantino line. And then they do the egg plan callback later too. Yeah, that is funny. Could this be remade as a 10-episode Netflix show? I'm going with yes. I actually would be kind of excited for this.

I think it's a pretty good idea. If we're going to remake movies, like this is a movie that you really could have dove into the Robards Voigt characters could have gone into. We could have had more Jason Lee. The whole mafia stuff. Gene Hackman, we get to like really spend some time in his lair. Like you could do like a wire type of,

yeah, a wire type of show. like 20 characters and go deep dive and have some sort of catalyst and then, you know, NSA, I think is juicy. I don't think it's a bad idea. I also think man on the run is like a great premise for a TV show. You know, like the fugitive originally did that. We haven't had one of those in a while. Yeah.

Yeah. In a lot of ways, I mean, when does 24 start? When did they start? When did 24 come on? 2001? Yeah. So I feel like this is a real like, this is really like a blueprint for 24. like the frantic camera work, like the constant movement.

So I feel like it definitely could lend itself to that kind of adaptation. Probably in answerable questions. I only have two. Carla, his Regina King's character, his wife in this movie, definitely on the Reddit conspiracy board in 2020. I think very early, early adapter to freaking out. She's getting newsletters, man. She's like, she's getting newsletters at like left-wing bookshops. She's on the Reddit conspiracy board right now talking about Bill Gates,

wanting to put microchips and everybody and the business elite, put the virus out. Like, she's definitely commenting on a lot of those posts. This one's really for Chris. You know, we love having Chris of the rewatchables. But there's a couple times where it's like you got to let the chef cook. And this is one of those times. Chris, what happened to Tom Seismore from heat to this movie? because it's only four years.

It's one presidential term. It's in Olympics. It's nothing. It's a small sliver of time. Heat Tom Seismore versus enemy of the state, Tom Seismore. Somehow, 27 years have passed. Yeah, I think when you think about the action being the juice, you really got to make sure you balance out the action with the juice.

And I just think he leaned too much into the juice. And that's all I have to say on that that whole subject. If you want to know about the dangers of a baby, you know, illegal substances, go watch Tom Seasmore in Heat

and then watch Tom Seasmore in this movie and know that there's no makeup or anything other than that's just, this is probably the last movie he was in, right? I mean, he makes appearances and stuff, but.

Yeah, but I mean, the last good movie with a real performance, this is probably it. I think also if you want to look at the dangers of big bowls of spaghetti, also you can check this movie out because my guy seems to have been crushing a lot of pasta in between time. Clam sauce. Last question. Who won the movie? Well, I would say Hackman, but I have a feeling Bonnet is charging from behind here.

No, I have Hackman. I think this is a great Hackman performance. Yeah, it's probably a lot of great Hackman. life. I think Hackman wins this movie. Lisa Bonnet wins everything else. All other pieces. Sean, what do you have? Definitely Hackman. As soon as he comes on screen, this is like a B-plus movie. And the plus comes from Hackman. You know, like it isn't Tony Scott's best. It isn't Will Smith's best. It definitely isn't Gene Hackman's best. But when he shows up and in every scene he's in, you're like, wow, this is really fucking important. He just makes movies feel important.

And I, I, I, he's the man. I love him. it's interesting. This is the last kind of Gene Hackman in his prime movie or in his whatever this version of it is because it starts getting weird after enemy of this state. He makes under suspicion. He makes the replacements, which has kind of become a belatedly entertaining movie,

but was not a great look for him in 2000 and he's basically playing the Hoosiers coach. It's at the time was kind of a ridiculed movie. I enjoy it now as a rewis. Watchable. Then does Heist in 2001. So now the wheels have come off. He's in Royal Tannenbaum's last

kind of good movie he was in. I would say 2001 is legitimately great for him. Because I really like Heist. I think it's underrated if you want to go return to it. Tennembaum is great. I mean, Tenenbaum's he was nominated for a lot of awards. And behind enemy lines, he's good in two. I actually really like that year as like almost like his farewell.

And then I pretend 2003 and 2004 didn't happen. Chris, where do you stay? on heist. I don't really have an opinion on that movie. Love heist. I think I saw it once. Okay. I need to watch it again. Nothing in 2002. Runaway jury in 2003. Welcome to Mooseport in 2004. Drops the mic. Still alive. Hasn't acted for 16 years. He's amazing. Amazing. Unbelievable. It's amazing. Nobody's just said, here's 10 million dollars being my movie or. I think people have. I think people have been trying to lure him out of retirement for the last 10 years. He just won't do it. Every single thing down. He just will not do it. He lives in New Mexico. He paints all the time. And he's very happy with his life. First of all, the fact that Gene Hackman lived tonight, he's amazing. He strikes me as a guy who lives pretty fucking hard. And he's still out there doing it. It's pretty impressive. Yeah. Well, maybe he'll make one more. We also, he survived Grantland trying to kill him. That's right. We talked about that in a firm thing where we had a kind of a headline that made it seem like he had died, even though we were just appreciating him. And then it became a new story.

Gene Hackman was dead. And then it was actually we had to change the headline and the whole thing. But yeah, Gene Hackman, 90 years old. Is he, would he be your number one big picture podcast guest choice right now, Sean? I'm a little, I don't, I don't, I don't, we definitely shouldn't do it in person. That's, that's, that's important that he stays safe. Good point. Speaking of staying safe, stay safe.

Everyone out there. Sean, Chris, pleasure as always. We'll be back. Later, Bill. On Monday. with the podcast that's going to get all of us fired, basic instinct. We're letting Mali Rubin on the podcast to talk about basic instincts.

So good luck. That would be the official end of civilization. Stay safe. Thanks for listening to the We Watchers.