The Rewatchables - 'Michael Clayton’ With Chris Ryan, Justin Charity, and Lindsay Zoladz

Episode Date: March 29, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan, Justin Charity, and Lindsay Zoladz are not miracle workers, they’re janitors looking to delve into ‘Michael Clayton,’ the 2007 legal thriller starring George Clooney and Tilda Swinton and directed by Tony Gilroy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Rwatchables is brought to you by Seat Geek. Seat Geek is the best app for buying and selling tickets to sporting events, concerts, and more. For $20 off your first Seatkeek purchase on any gamer sporting event, all you have to do is use promo code rewatch, download the Seatkeak app or go right to Seatgeek.com. Hello and welcome to The Rewatchables. My name is Chris Ryan. Joining me today are Justin Charity and Lindsay Zolads. We are just three ponies standing in a meadow. And this is Michael Kloxie.

What happened here stays in this room. Attorney Michael Clayton. I need your help with ours. Protect secrets. Michael, they kill them. Those farms, those families. What are you telling me? You're not ready to hear it.

He knows something that would win the whole case. He will expose the truth. None of this comes back to me, right? We have a situation. Stay in the car, lock the door. I look like I'm negotiating. Michael Clayton. Okay, guys, before we get into this larger conversation about Michael Clayton,

just a couple of notes about the film itself. It was released October 5th, 2007, written and directed by Tony Gilroy, who up until this point had done a lot of work on blockbusters like Armageddon. He had written the first few born movies and would later return to the franchise to direct the Bourne Legacy. He had directed the sort of cult classic Cutting Edge, which is a beloved rom-com set in the figure skating world,

and had written scripts like for the devil's advocate. So he's around. He has a lot of uncredited or rumored to be uncredited work. that he's done. He was even, you know, recently was brought in to work on Rogue One, to do some interior shooting and to do a lot of rewriting for that film. So he's obviously somebody who knows his way around a blockbuster. But his heart lies in the American cinema of the 1970s, which we talk about a lot as the sort of, you know, time that we would all love to get back to if only the Avengers weren't stopping us. But there are reasons why we don't make

movies like this anymore is that they don't make a ton of money. Michael Clayton made $49 million at the box office, despite starring one of the biggest stars in Hollywood at the time, George Clooney. And I think that people could tell that there was something darker underneath. When you see the poster for this movie and Justin, I know you want to talk about this, when you see the poster for the movie, it's Clooney's face, it's got his character's name. Nobody knows who Michael Clayton is. And it's really unclear about what's going on.

It was sort of sold as this John Grishamie movie about one lawyer fighting against a huge system. But it's much more complicated than that. And that plays into Gilroy's fascination with films of the 70s. He said in an interview once that 70s movies are the heart of where my movie-going obsession really began. And there's still the films I go back and look at the most. It was a combination of muscular filmmaking with great subject matter and ambiguity.

And that's a really huge thing to think about with Gilroy is the ambiguity. He continues muscle and ambiguity and complexity and loose ends. That era of balls out to a full-stop pro-movie making that did. have the chaos beaten out of it. There are so many movies that fall into that category, the Pekula films, obviously Parallax View, and all the president's men. Clute was a big influence on Michael Clayton,

point blank, the films of Sydney Lumet, Hal Ashby, Frank Perry, and of course, Sidney Pollack, who is also one of the stars of Michael Clayton. So you're talking about a film that is once an homage to the 1970s American cinema, but feels very much of its time. The story is of a mega law firm's fixer, Michael Clayton, who is in Hawk to a loan shark

over a failed restaurant that was scrapped because of his brother's drug addiction. Michael Clayton is also nursing a gambling addiction, which we see in the beginning of film. He is not doing a great job with. He's playing poker. And he gets involved in a case that involves his mentor. Arthur Edens played amazingly by Tom Wilkinson and an agriculture conglomerate called U North that may be poisoning the residents of a small town who are using its pesticide. And it's ultimately a story about greed and conspiracies and morality, but it's also about midlife crises and addiction and failure and ambition and so much more. So Justin and Lindsay, let's talk about this.

What does, what is Michael Clayton about? Yeah, I was going to say, that was a lot of, there was a lot of neat summary of this movie, and yet I dare anyone to explain Michael Clayton. In the best possible way, though. We're talking about, yeah. What is the tweet? What is the tweet? What is the tweet?

The best mid-odd's post-9-11 movie about greed and corporations. I feel like that's a whole vibe, right? Like, that's my tweet. It's a vibe. Yeah. Michael Clayton is a vibe, man. It is the weird. Like, of that whole vibe of movies, this is like the most dynamic, weird, both alienating

and endearing. This movie is a real treat. I can't get over this movie. Lindsay, if you had to say, if you had to tell somebody why they should watch or rewatch Michael Clayton, what would it be? I, so I saw it the year it came out, 2007. And I don't think I had rewatched it until last night. And I feel like it is an amazing Trump-era movie. Yeah.

I really think it's aged well. And because it's so much a story about the kind of futility of fighting a corrupt system and how entrenched systems of power are that even when you go rogue, as Michael Clayton does in the end, it kind of doesn't matter on a cosmic scale. and there's just this sort of, yeah, like defeated sense of this movie that feels very how I have felt about politics in the last year and a half. But I also think it's a movie about complicity, which is a word we've heard straight around a lot in the past year and a half. And so we can like delve more into that in a bit. But I do think this movie has aged even better than I imagined it would have. and I see a lot of parallels in what's going on in the world today. It looks at lawyer the law as an industry in a way that I don't think very many movies did. I think it has some of the same zest and entertaining verve of adaptions of Scott Tarot books or John Grisham books.

But it goes deeper into what goes on in those anonymous skyscrapers than most films I can even, I can't think of another film that looks at the law in this way. this idea that there are these floating fixers working at these mega firms who do all the dirty work that happens on the margins of all these subpoenas and depositions and are doing all the things to keep their clients ultimately out of the courtroom

was so fascinating and Clooney who you would think is you know, Clooney's a Grisham lawyer. Clooney should be fighting for, he should be in to kill a mockingbird. He should be the guy who's like taking the underdog case and taking it all the way to the Supreme Court. But instead, he's this schmuck who has a gambling addiction,

who's got a brother, who's got a Coke problem, who went in on a restaurant, never go in on a restaurant. They all fail within the first six months. Especially not with brother Timmy. And he's in Hawk. He's in Hawk to a loan shark. And he's trying to get like an 80 grand gap loan from his firm. from his boss, Marty Bach, played amazingly well by Sidney Pollack.

That's essentially his motivation in this movie. It's only until later, as Arthur Edens, played by Tom Wilkinson, obviously is murdered by hip people, hit men, employed by Unorth, that it becomes more of a moral story. But even up until the last great, incredible moment where Cleene confronts, Tilda Swinton, I don't think you were ever really totally clear about what Michael is going to do. Is he just going to take the 80 grand and cut bait? Or is it the whole thing?

When he's laying out, though, like, I want 10 million. I want enough to walk away. You're still in that reality that this guy might not be doing it for the most altruistic reasons. Am I right? Yeah. And I don't think he knows what he's going to do until very, very late in the movie. I think the turning point doesn't come until the car bomb scene, which we, of course, get in the first sequence of the movie and then see in flashbacks.

So it makes more sense. But I think his pivot to me when he decides he's really going to do this righteous thing is when he throws his watch and his wallet in the fire and decides to fake his own death. Then he's really all in. But I don't think up until that, and that really happens like 10 minutes before the movie's over. I don't think he himself knows what he's going to do or what he can do if there's any way to make this right. he just seems really dejected and kind of blank before then in a weird way. Yeah, I will say, too, like in a movie that is full of strange aesthetic choices,

even then that feels like the most distinct choice about the movie is that it does not feel like a movie about a guy. It doesn't throughout feel like a movie about a guy who, will he do this or will he do that? He mostly just seems annoyed about the Arthur situation, the whole movie. And he's just like, I really need this $80,000. I just wish this situation would go away. Yeah, and you're right, Chris, like, I think we're so used to Clooney playing the guy who knows from the first frame that he's going to do the right thing and that he's the righteous crusader. And what I think is so interesting about his performance and why I think this is maybe my favorite Clooney performance ever is just he's not that guy. We're used to seeing him play the guy who would not have that much trouble getting 80 grand.

You know, that seems like a small amount for the amount of havoc. freaking in his life. It just, he's kind of down on his luck. And I think he plays that guy, that sad sack really well. He adds like 10 extra pounds to, there's something about the weight and the way he carries it. There's something about the fact that he's got this least Mercedes with a busted GPS. Oh, yeah.

There's something about like the way in which he's constantly having to charge his phone, very relatable, where you just feel like this is a guy who kind of had it all going from eight, 10 years ago, and it's just slowly been slipping away. And one of the things that's a recurring theme in this movie, and I want to ask you guys about a couple of different things from regards to this, is this constant sort of interrogation of his occupation, is whether or not he, you know, these cops think you're a lawyer and these lawyers think you're some kind of cops, you know, but you know what you are, or it's Tom Wilkinson saying to him, you know, you're a bagman, Michael, you know, like everybody has, I'm not a janitor, you know, I'm not a miracle worker,

I'm not the janitor. I'm not the enemy. I'm not the enemy. Then who are you? Who are you? What am I doing? What is my job? What is my occupation?

To what extent am I defined by my occupation? That keeps coming up. And this idea that, you know, there's no accidents in this movie. For as, for as loose as this movie feels, for as organic this movie feels, I don't think that any of the stuff in it, there's not a line wasted. And, you know, can you guys talk a little bit about what you think Michael Clayton, his occupation means to this overall film? I mean, to me, he just seems like a morally unmoored figure, right?

Like, the only sense in which Clooney, who's otherwise kind of a, he's not a dirtbag, but he's dirtbag adjacent, can we go with that, right? If there's anything relatable about him, it's just this core sense in which he doesn't feel like a bad, unscrupulous guy, but he doesn't feel like a hero. He sort of, that's what I mean by it feels,

Michael Clayton feels like this very, very aughts movie, is that it feels like he's moving through, he's a Yossarian, right? Moving through a very, like, morally precarious world. That's not just defined by like the fact that he, you know, this one client of this one law firm is twisted, but also just like everything about everyone he interacts with just seems so treacherous.

And it just seems like this movie about New York, treacherous and he just seems like he seems like a guy seeking some sort of moral bearing right and I think that's largely what his journey in the movie is is him not trying to be a hero even by the end of it it's just he's trying to he's trying to latch on to some sort of value and some sort of attachment to like oh right this is what humanity is and this is sort of what I'm supposed to

value human life and how I'm supposed to value my agency in the world and Lindsay you were saying that this film feels particularly relevant to this time period, you've got this thing that's right outside of touching distance that you can't describe and you can't necessarily see that is breaking these people.

So many in this, so many characters in this film break, whether it's Arthur Edens, whether it's Karen, who's... Yeah, Karen especially. Karen is like biting her... That is a beautiful performance.

She's biting her nails. She's like refusing to look people in the eye. She's so sweaty. All the time. Like, she really is the embodiment of just somebody who, it's not just that she's broken, like, by the end of the movie, she's broken. But it's just everything about her, it's like, even in the scenes where you don't look at her as, like, the bad guy, she's just so on the edge of the black hole. Yeah. You know?

I love the scene where she's rehearsing her speech in the mirror for the video interview she's going to give and how Gilroy's intercutting between her rehearsing it in the mirror and then just how. she delivers it. There's something so creepy about the way Tulsauton plays this character and just a kind of blankness even about her face that is very effective. No, I was just more saying like this idea that these people all arrive at this moment in midlife, but it doesn't really matter. I don't think their age really matters. That, you know, the way Karen slides from competent right-hand woman to Don Jeffreys into someone orchestrating, you know, multiple hits.

Or almost, almost out of just kind of like a tacit giving in rather than directing Mr. Verne to do it. She's just kind of, and it's not even like Mr. Vern's twisting our army. He's like, well, you know, we could do a couple different things here. And she's just like, well, contain it. She's like, I want to contain this, this chaos that's happening. And that's why she's splashing water on herself. But she's trying to get away from this chaos that's like creeping all over her life.

That's, to me, that is one of the best scenes in the movie is when she is on the sidewalk at night in New York negotiating. It's sort of like the hitman or one of the hitman is basically talking to her about like potentially killing Arthur. Like it's a difference in plans for buying a U-Ha or renting a U-Haul, right? It's like, well, you can do it this way or you do this other way. And it's just the way she moves to that scene. she's sort of clamoring for this sort of like moral distance right because she knows what she's doing but she insists in the same way i think that michael clayton does right she karen insists on thinking that there's some sort of remove like even the very act of like having a hitman

means that she's not you know she has no blood in her hands it's just people who every one of this movie is negotiating what it even means to posit layers of remove from immorality for sure and there's even that great line where she can't even bring herself to say, yes, I want you to kill him. She has to say, I think, okay. And then the hitman is like, is that it okay, do it or just like, okay? And then the scene cuts. And so she can't even, you know, you're talking about the moral bearing of these characters. She can't even fully embody her evil. And there's something really tragic about that character. And I do think, Chris, you said, it doesn't matter the age of the characters. I do think, I disagree with that. I think this is such a middle-aged midlife crisis movie.

Yeah. For both Karen and Michael Clayton, I think there are parallels with them that they would rather not want to see in each other. But I think that for Michael Clayton in particular, he's getting, he's reached the age. I think he mentions he's 45. He seems to have reached the age where this, he could glide on not having any sort of moral compass until now and could probably glide on a certain kind of Clooney-esque charm. And hyper-confident. Yeah.

And it somehow seems like this age that he has hit, he's having some sort of reckoning with what have I done the past 15 years of my career? What am I going to do the next? And how, yeah, so much of this movie is about how it's easy to just slide and glide into being complicit and all of these awful things without. It's so much harder to question the larger scope of, what am I making happen in the world? And is that a net good or a net bad? And I think those are questions you ask when you're really young and when you're a lot older when it's often too late. So

I think there's something, and it also feels like this movie to me feels like the beginning of Middle Age Clooney. Yeah, for sure. And like Descendants era Clooney and him kind of aging into that particular type of role. Because this is what, after all, I think this is after Ocean's 13. So he'd like done three of those movies at that point. Like it just, it feels to me like a turning point in his career too. And then as Marty Bach would say to Michael Clayton,

when did you become so fucking delicate? You know, there are characters in here like guys like Marty, guys like Don Jeffries, who I think have crossed over to the other side of the river sticks. And they actually have this clarity because they know what it takes to be where they are. I wanted to ask you guys about two of the more I guess the words would be

I would say poetic but I guess maybe opaque elements of this story because this is obviously a very it's a story rooted in realism it's an incredible New York story it has all this verisimilitude but then you have these two parts one is Michael's son Henry

is obsessed with this game Realm and Conquer and it seems like a throwaway it seems like just chit-chat between the two of them but it not only comes up as a kind of McGuffin at the end with the red book, but it's repeatedly brought up the themes of Realm and Conquer come up multiple times. And then I also wanted to ask you about the opening monologue and this idea of being

reborn and what sounds like a manic episode, what we can draw from those two things thematically or practically and how it informs like what you think of the movie. So Lindsay, why don't you start? Okay, I love Henry the Sun. Welcome to Disseman. disagreements, but I thought, the scene where Michael Clayton gives him that speech in the car is one of my favorite moments. The drug one they see Tee. Yeah. Yeah.

And he's like, you're stronger than Timmy on his best day. And I can just tell you're one of the good ones. And it's one, and it's this kind of like dad speaking to the young child, like an adult monologue. And you can just tell the connection they have. and he says bullshit a bunch of times. And like the kid is at that age where that's really cool that the dad would like be seeing him as an equal enough to say bullshit in front of him.

And I just find that scene really poignant because I think it also is Michael just saying, I'm not good like you. You still have a chance to be this pure person who does the right thing. But I got so stuck in this morass of doing the wrong thing for so long. So it feels hopeful but sad at the same time

because I think it's filled with a lot of regret. Also, Michael, kind of a bad dad. He says to him, he goes, you're not going to be one of those people who goes through life wondering why shit keeps falling out of the sky around them. And that could be as much about him as it is about his brother.

And there's something I think where he's almost trying to speak that into existence because ultimately that's what happens to people as they get older, is they wonder why shit keeps falling around falling around them. Justin, what did you think about when you watched it again

and also just in general, what do you think of the patina of shit that Tom Wilkinson talks about in the opening monologue? What an incredible sequence that is anyway. Well, I will say, like, so the first time I watched Michael, so I should say that like, in so much as I deemed this rewatchful movie,

I watched Michael Clayton for the first time, like, two weekends ago. It's okay. Recency bias is fine in this one. And then I rewatched it this past weekend. And it's weird. The first time I watched the movie, I actually found, here's the thing. I really liked how the opening sequence is shot, especially because, like, in the opening sequence, what you were saying before about, like, skyscraper culture, like, what's happening in the skyscrapers? And it's, like, the shot, and it's nearing midnight. And it's all of these lawyers with, like, all this takeout

and contracts and they're negotiating the settlement at the last minute and a Wall Street journal reporters calling them. And, like, I used to work in a... like crisis communications, and that, that shit is real as hell, like from a visual perspective. But the fact that that Arthur's speech is overlaid throughout the opening sequence, I actually found it off-putting, because I found it like a little hard to focus. I found it kind of jarring. And it obviously that speech makes more sense and it sort of ingratiates itself with you as the movie goes on.

But yeah, I actually found it kind of off-putting the first time I watched the movie. But in a way that totally makes sense in the broad- scope of the movie. Did I find it? The way that Gilroy starts with that montage of shots including and especially the it's 2 a.m. but the

phone lines are lit up like a Christmas tree and this idea that there is this like monster kind of uncoiling inside of this skyscraper and that this is the voice of that monster is Arthur kind of trying to articulate this insanity that's going on

inside of this building and the almost the moral, you know, adjustments that all the people in that room must have had to make, even though they may not be aware of the U-North crime. But I found that fascinating. Lindsay, I wanted to ask you, do you have a take on what the horses mean? I know that I saw last night, and this is, we can get into this in a bit with the half-ass internet research, but the horses appear in Realm and Conquer. And I was wondering if, like, that, you know, that is an incredibly breathtaking moment,

especially one to start a film that you think is going to be this, you know, law and order movie and you're out in the middle of Westchester staring into the eyes of these horses. I mean,

that's like asking me what does the green light mean in Great Gatsby? Yeah. Play it out here. No, I, one thought that I had, so did you guys all see

three billboards? Yes. I'm sorry. But I, I feel like the scene in that movie with, where like the deer

appears to her was like low rent Michael Clayton. Like they were, they were trying to to get at what I think Gilroy absolutely achieves here. I don't know if it's like a direct reference, but I remember just being

like, oh, they're trying to Michael Clayton, and it's just not working. But I love that scene, even though it is, we can talk about the plausibility or lack thereof. But the plausibility of horses, horses are great. What are you talking about? No, like, if it just, it hits at the perfect moment. You know, there's a There's a, there's siren horses. They're siren horses.

They're sirens. They have no saddles. They're free, just like Michael wants to be. Just buddy is not. Yeah. I think that's one of the iconic scenes and just the shot. I found a really good gif on a, I highly recommend just Michael Clayton Tumblr in general.

Yeah. Like searching the Michael Clayton hashtag, but I found a really good gif of that amazing shot where the car just blows up in the background and you have the horses in the foreground of the frame. And you're just like tag yourself in this? Absolutely. I'm the horses. I'm the car. Yeah. All right. We're going to get into the awards. We'll keep talking, obviously, about themes

throughout the conversation with Michael Clayton. But before we get to that, here's a word from our sponsors. Today's episode of The Rwatchables is also brought to you by Google Assistant. With the Google Assistant, you can complete over a million actions on your phone, in your car, and around the house. For example, Hey, Google, add chips and salsa to my shopping list. Okay. I've added chips and salsa to your. shopping list. Download the Google Assistant. All right, guys, we are back. We're going to do awards for Michael Clayton. And the first award is the ZipRecruiter Casting What Ifs. ZipRecruiter Casting What Ifs is brought to you by

ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. And Michael Clayton has one really, really interesting casting, What If? And it's the fact that the role was originally offered to Denzel Washington. In a GQ interview a while back, Denzel talked about some of the roles that he had turned down over the course of his career and the two. two that he mostly regretted. One was seven, and the other was Michael Clayton. And he said that he was scared off by Tony Gilroy being a first-time director. And interestingly enough, Denzel Washington would go and play a lawyer for a Gilroy brother,

but it happened to be Dan Gilroy in Roman J. Israel. Last year's Roman J. Israel, which, you know, he was very good at it. I think it was kind of an underrated movie or a misunderstood movie, but it wound up being pretty much forgotten other than for Denzel's best actor nomination. Justin, what do you think about the idea of Denzel as Michael Clayton? Yeah, it's, it's, Denzel is really, really good in my mind at playing exasperated. Yes.

I just think it would have been a different take than Clooney's to, because Clooney's not so much exasperated. He's just conflicted in this very repressed way. Whereas, yeah, I just can't, I imagine Denzel in this being a lot more like, what do you want me to do? I don't know. It's just like, I think, can we get at least? one Michael Clayton line in your Denzel.

Absolutely. We're clearing out for charity. I'm not the guy you kill. I'm the guy you kill. I'm the guy you buy. See, that's incredible. Now, the thing is, is that Denzel, I think, is better in movies like Crimson Tide or Malcolm X where he is able to lean into his charisma. But I know that from some of his choices, he really likes playing people who are downtrodden,

who are beaten down by the world, who are morally compromised. You know, the inside man. Inside man around the same time, which is the movie I watched before I watched Michael Clayton for the first time. Classic Denzel. You're living your best life. Lindsay, off the top of your head, can you think of anyone else you would have rather seen as Michael Clayton or you can imagine as Michael Clayton?

This is such a hard one to recast. I don't know. Like, everybody seems really well cast to me. God. Yeah, I just. Mark Wahlberg as Michael Clayton? I don't know if he has been. But I think, you know, I think what's wrong with that is.

like he would try to play the hero too much. I think what is so great about Clooney's performance is that even in the final moments of the movie, it's not triumphant. He can't, he's dejected even at the end after he's done this really remarkable thing. He's not smiling in that cab. He's not like feeling good about himself. He's just tired. And I feel like Wahlberg is going to try to find, you know, the firefighter element. Yeah.

So there's something doble about it. Yeah. And I, so I don't, I feel like this is Clooney through and through. I feel like I'm the, okay, so I should confess that I'm the author of the Mark Wahlberg as my whole Clayton suggestion. And I meant it as like comedy a little bit. Like, oh, what do we do? You know what I mean?

He has that weird, confused tone that Mark Wahlberg sort of owns. And that could have been a funny alternative take on the movie. You had another one though. What do we do? Justin, which was Chris Cooper as Marty Bach. Yes. Okay, here's a thing. This is, I have a running list of thing. I don't have it on hand. It just seems like there's a lot of aughts cinema that either has Chris Cooper in it or are movies that are defined by the fact that they probably should have had Chris Cooper in them. And this is, you know, this is a very like people in suits like yelling at each other and racing to, you know, do the thing. They're trying to do the thing. It's corruption everywhere and greed. It just seems like that's a classic like Chris Cooper movie. I would allow Chris Cooper as Barry, but I can't, I can't give you Marty. That's just too perfectly Sidney Pollock.

Yeah. He has a classic look. Sidney Pollock in that role, it is a classic. It's a look. That was the ZipRecruiter casting. What If brought to you by ZipRecruiter, 80% of employers. Post a job on ZipRecruiter, get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash rewatch. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash rewatch.

ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. All right, guys, let's continue on with the awards. That was casting what ifs, but let's get right into the meat of it. Let's do most rewatchable scene. So it's not necessarily best scene, but it is the thing that when, if you're just saying, okay, you're on YouTube, empty search bar, and you start typing in Michael Clayton, what is the thing that you type in next? Is it final Michael Karen confrontation?

Is it Westchester hit and run consultation? Is it Arthur Eden's baguettes meeting? Arthur Eden's in Milwaukee jail Karen Crowder contracting the hitman or Michael's speech to his son in his car Lindsay let's start with you I gotta go the Michael Karen confrontation

I think the ending of this movie is perfect at the last 10 minutes and especially the shot I don't know when they first cut but there's a long shot of just walking away from the scene and then you finally get the cop brother in the frame

who's been making it And she's collapsed. Yeah, she just collapses in the background. And they're like, we need medical attention. Like, it's shot is so good. And then just the seamless shift to him in the cab with maybe my favorite line in the movie, which is the last line of here's $50. Just drive.

Give me $50 worth. Give me $50 worth. Yes. This is why Tony Gilroy is Tony Gilroy is Tony. You can't really do that with an Uber. You can't just be like, give me $50. $50 worth of listening to trance music and driving around in circles. I mean, one way that New York has changed since 2007 is I don't think $50 gets you a mind-clearing cab ride anymore.

I think you've got to go at least 100. Because they're in financial district, right? So you get to what? You get to one-e-easy for like, you know, the first 30 minutes of that ride. So I, yeah, I just feel like that scene at the end. It's just, and it's a showdown between Switzerland. and Clooney, which, what more can you ask for out of... But not even a, like, not even a show in a classic sense.

It's pathetic in this weird, captivating way where it's the moment where... The moment where they're arguing and you think Clooney is trying to, you know, I mean, he's avenging Arthur, who Karen has had killed at this point. Yeah. Well, first of all, any good confrontation begins with, like, someone that you thought was dead. Right. Disappear. It begins, you know.

Beautifully. I know you killed. It's a cut and dry case of attorney-client. See, now that's just not the way to go here, Karen. For such a smart person, you really are lost, aren't you? This conversation is over. I'm not the guy that you kill. I'm the guy that you buy. Are you so fucking blind you don't even see what I am?

I'm the easiest part of your whole goddamn problem, and you're going to kill me? Don't you know who I am? I'm a fixer. I'm a bag man. I do everything from shoplifting housewives to bent congressman, and you're going to kill me? Justin, for you, what's the most rewatchable scene? Man, I mean, there are scenes that I really, really like that are, I think, more interesting than the baguette scene. But just on its face.

Come on. Yeah. Come on, the baguette. Especially because there's a weird whiplash to that scene. Because think about it. Scene begins with George Clooney running up on Tom Wilkinson. Leaving his kid in the car. Right.

He leaves his kid in the car. He's been looking for Tom Wilkinson who's sort of just wandering the earth at this. point, right, and is going through a montage where there are these long shots of Times Square. And you just encounter Tom Wilkinson with the bag of baguettes. They have a conversation where Clooney seems to have the upper hand. And Clooney's like, look, your judgment is clearly really bad right now. You've had this mental breakdown. Like, I'm going to, I'm going to assert my dominance and I'm going to be this really

persuasive talker and sort of Tom Wilkinson stammering through the conversation. And it's just funny because the whole time he's holding the baguettes. And then at the end, he just like he grabs into this different. Yeah. He's just like. He digs deep and finds the fastball. He's just like, you can't put me away for shit. They're putting everything on the table.

You need to stop and think this through. I will help you think this through. I'll find somebody to help you think this through. Don't do this. You're making it easy for them. Michael, I have great affection for you, and you lead a very rich and interesting life, but you're a bag man, not an attorney.

If your intention was to have me committed, you should have kept me in Wisconsin, where the arrest report, the videotape and eyewitness accounts of my inappropriate behavior would have had jurisdictional relevance. I have no criminal record in the state of New York. And the single determining criterion for involuntary incarceration is danger. Is the defendant a danger to himself or others? You think you got the horses for that?

Well, good luck and God bless. But I tell you this. The last place you want to see me is in court. Yeah, it's like, you hear the ways you fucked up. And you think my judgment's bad. I'm going to, in this very calm way, like, tell you all the ways that you fucked up and got to this point in the first place. And, like, don't worry about me. I'm smart enough to at least know what you did wrong.

Bye. Yeah, there's so much. 15 baguettes in that baguette. So many great interactions of lawyers outlawyering each other. And that's maybe my favorite one. The baguette scene is a close runner up for me. And I think it's a dozen baguettes. I paused and count it.

I think there's 12, which does he get through all that before he has to freeze them? I don't know because he dies in the next year. There's also. But yeah, but then also there's the shot. He didn't eat any of them. If you look at the shot in the apartment, the baguettes are by, they're on the counter. You were on baguette.

Watch on the steering of Michael. That is actually a, you know, Lindsay, you were talking about cabs. And this is not a personal anecdote, despite what it might sound like. But there is a really uniquely New York thing of like, you know, I know that Michael's been looking for Arthur, but like you guys ever bump into somebody after they've been out all night. And you're like, hey, man, did you get some bread? You got a lot of bread.

You're like, yeah, man, I got some bread. I'm going home. I got all this bread. And it's just like, if you ever bump into somebody who was like kind of like you're getting coffee but they're coming home thing? I think I've been the bread guy. Everybody's been the bread guy. Everybody's been Michael Clayton. It's all, it's, there's no judgment in this space. They really, they nail that embodiment though, of like there's a sense of like, oh man, I didn't really want to have this encounter right now. And it felt like he's going to run away. But it's just like, two people who've run each other. He's like, oh, hey, Michael, how's it going? Like, as if they, like, see each other all the time on the street. Um, okay, so when I dial up Michael Clayton on

YouTube, and I think this might be in the top 10 overall of my YouTube searches is the, I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor scene. There's no play here. There's no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor. The math on this is simple. The smaller, the mess, the easier it is for me to clean up. That's the police. There's no. No. They don't call.

It is such an effective piece of screenwriting, and I kind of wanted to talk about this a little bit with Gilroy in general, but we can talk about it now, is that for as loose and fun as this, not fun, but as loose and kind of organic as this movie feels, I feel like it is basically constructed with, like it's a little model boat inside of a glass bottle. Like there is not a single piece of this movie

that doesn't build towards something else. And this is such an, entertaining and hilarious scene that is also just tells you everything you need to know about Michael. The fact is that he doesn't even actually really speak in that scene until the very end, because you've got Greer being like, he was running in the street. That's Walter on the phone. 20 minutes ago. Direct quote, okay?

Hang tight. I'm sending you a miracle worker. He misspoke. About what? About the fact that you're the firmest fixer? I don't you're any good at it. Elliot. The guy was running in the street.

You take that. You had the fog. You had the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the angle. What the fuck is he doing running in the middle of the street of midnight, huh? You answer me that. And he's just like freaking out about the grade and that second when he's just like, okay, well, what if it was stolen? Huh?

Does that play? Like, he's like trying all these different ways. And the fact that his wife, like, dramatically throws the glass, the cocktail glass at the wall. I love that part. And he's just like, you know what I'm saying? Dell and Dell just like hurls the highball glass at the wall. I just love everything about their kitchen. The fact that you just, nobody ever says how rich that guy is.

It's just that you see he has a bunch of cars. And just how defeated Michael sounds. And like you expect him, that's his moment to say like, here's what we're going to do. I know a guy at the state troopers. And then we're going to say that your car was stolen and all this stuff. And he's just like, I know a criminal lawyer up here. I guess I can get him here in 15 minutes. That's basically, I'm the middleman here.

I think I've watched that scene like a thousand times in my life. It's by far my favorite, my favorite most rewatchable scene. So it's hard to choose just one from this. So we can talk more about what age the best. And first, as much as this movie is rooted in the mid-aughts technology that I think, I think the three of us probably nostalgically look back on the fact that once we were only accessible by flip phone. What do you guys think is age of the best? Is it Clooney's stubble?

Is it the unadulterated footage of Clooney chilling in cabs or in his Mercedes? Is it flip phones? Or the Trump-era vibe of complicity within a corrupted system? Obviously, I put that. That's the thing, though. I so strongly associate this kind of movie or this sort of, this, again, this capsule of movies with the Bush era. Like my sense of cynicism during the Bush era, right? And you're right, the fact that that ports.

Tell me a little bit about what that means. Just in the, again, it's like, it's total Chris Cooper vibes, man. It was like Chris Cooper was the man after. But just a second turn. Yeah, I don't know. It was sort of, that's like the first time in my life where I started really watching these dad movies, right? That are just that really are about talkers, right?

These movies about talkers, these movies about players. Like that, I mean, sort of harkening back to your point about the janitor sequence, Like the great thing about it is that it's it's cluny, you know, it's Michael Clayton shrugging off the magic of lawyerdom, right? It's like, I don't, I'm over this. Like, lawyers aren't magical. Like, what do you want? And it's sort of, yeah, I don't know. It's like that is, that to me is a sort of timeless cynicism at least, again, like post-9-11.

It feels like a sort of timeless cynicism about how soul-crushing systems are and how they're not magic and how you don't move through them because you're like a magic hyper-competent individual. you move through them because there's a lot of money propelling you, right? And so much of that, so much of the movie is just really good at making sure that you understand by the end that Clooney isn't like the best to have ever done anything. It's just that like he's put himself in the service of the right people all of his life. And it only really starts to fall apart. And he only starts to sound ineffectual when he's decided that like he doesn't represent these interests anymore. He got his $80,000. And beyond that, all he has is his dead friend, Arthur.

Lindsay, what do you think is that age the best? I'm going to say all of the above. Yeah. First of all, re the stubble. Shout out to the script supervisor of this movie, because the continuity of different levels of stubble, I really was just marveling at. Like, you got like 5 o'clock shadow Clooney

and then several days unshaven Clooney. And just there's really, you know, flesh hoarding between the four days ago and four days after, it just, there's levels to this double, is what I'm trying to say. So I love that. I think it's an all-time great flip phone movie, and it more than any sort of internet op-ed made me want to check my smartphone and go back to the Motorola, because it just seemed very, like, Clooney was able to do stuff without his iPhone, if they didn't exist yet. I was like, well, if he can take down you north, then I don't have to tweet.

Yeah, right. And I love the, just the, I think one of my favorite shots in the, or one of my favorite elements of the confrontation at the end is just like, when he whips out the flip phone and takes this grainy ass photo of her. He's like, I got you. Yeah. Like, nobody is going to know who that's a photo off because it's on your, you know. Yeah, other characters, other characters in Aat Cinema,

they would have a blackberry to do that. Not George's good. Yeah, well, he does have a blackberry, but he has to charge it all the time, which is like, Very relatable. Yeah, I think this is maybe one of the last great American thrillers pre-Iphone, too, which I was just found myself thinking, like, how different some of the scenes would be plotted out if Michael Clayton had an iPhone. There's a lot of, like, having to go see people, which, you know, is something that I think is probably, like, increasingly falling out of American working life is the need to, I got to go, even if I have to, you know, I am waiting for, for Arcepherson's.

to come to a meeting. I'm trying to get a meeting. It's like just text Arthur and be like, I really need $80,000. Exactly. But Arthur could have been found a lot easier, but also Arthur, if he was really hiding, shouldn't have been walking around with a bouquet of baguettes.

Exactly. A dozen baguettes, like pretty conspicuous on the street. Yeah. But yeah, I do think just like we were saying, it feels to me like a very post-enron but pre-financial crisis mood to pinpoint. point like the Bush era stuff, like it just the whole whistleblower vibe. But I also think, unfortunately, all of those themes are, uh, are current again. And it, and it does feel,

I was impressed with how well this movie has aged, especially looking at some of the other movies like this of the Bush era. I think, I think it holds up. I think that the, the, I wonder whether or not if we do this podcast again together in 2008, assuming we're, We're all still rocking if we would feel this way. But I think the thing that's aged the best is actually the dialogue and the jargon, which is surprising because it's so rooted in an industry that is subject to change. But somehow the overall law firm, Mayu, like, is just, I still believe that if they were going to have a wake for Arthur, that they would do it in the bar that they went to at the end

of the movie where Barry and Marty are all, like, you know, giving each other a home. hugs at like Jack Dempsey's or wherever they are. And I know those bars are slowly closing wherever they are on the upper west side or in Midtown. But there's something about every one of those elements of like, I think that Marty Bach today would still be in his Long Island home with his dress shirt untucked going through all those files. And when Michael comes upon him, there's something about the law firm environment that I think is still, still means something today that I find it incredible. But I am going to go, I'm going to, to give the award, I think I'll go with the use of, the use of like that, that specific time that's like sort of post-Enron pre-financial crisis where there was just like a lot of money out there, but there was also a lot of paranoia.

What do you guys think is age the worst? I'm thinking. I don't think anyone dies in car bombs anymore. I'm sorry. I think the, I really just don't. Like the car bomb sequence is the one thing I was I just I do look at it and think You know there are a lot of ways you can kill somebody Especially because the way they really try to kill him with the car bomb after a point

It seems like they've totally lost Well and they're like there's such a good job on Arthur where they're like Yeah They're picking up and they're like and lifting and we're moving and we're moving That scene is chilling They're so precise and tactile But then the car bomb is the opposite of that I just like I don't know he's parked on the lower east side Let's put a car bomb in there

Yeah, and then they have to be a certain distance away from him to activate it, but it happens to be the exact moment that he's outlooking at the horses. I think that that's like the one plotting thing. And just like we know that he doesn't die in that bomb because we've already seen the scene in the beginning. And I just think that way too much time is spent on the like car chase thing. I think they needed to add in like, yeah. Two people trying to avoid chasing each other. One person who doesn't know he's being chased and is kind of,

Like, I love the Clooney driving at night, like Matthew McConaughey Lincoln commercial. Oh, yeah. But the damn GPS won't work because there's a bomb in it. Yeah, I think they could have, I agree. They killed the other guys so well. I have a somewhat controversial opinion about what age is the worst. And I say this, you know, when I say what age is the worst of Michael Clayton, I mean, this would still be the best version, best thing in like 90% of other movies.

But I do kind of feel like the third, fourth, fifth time you see this film. the actual like Unorth stuff in the middle is like a little like okay you know like I've seen Aaron Brockovich like I get it like I that that's the most kind of a civil action pop

legal thriller of it's a little thin yeah and it's just like okay insecticides yeah the fake commercial and the for whatever reason when Tom Wilkinson is like you know makes the remix the Un North song

there's like yeah that I can do without that scene. And it's like, I think as soon as you see Tilda and Don Jeffries, you're not, there's not any, like, ambiguity as to whether or not they're going to be the villains. So it doesn't come as any surprise as you start seeing these memorandums that, that U. North has perpetrated these crimes. I'd like to give you guys some, take a break here to do a little half-assed internet research. So just here's some factoids for you guys.

Both George Clooney, who plays Michael Clayton, obviously, and Michael O'Keefe, who plays Barry, played boyfriends of Lori Metcalf on Roseanne. How about that? This is Catherine Waterston. It's her first feature film. She is in the Milwaukee hotel room when Michael Clayton walks in and he's like, who is taking the deposition?

Where's his briefcase? She's the one who's answering his questions. My favorite, favorite, favorite, I didn't need the internet to see this. This is just an incredible moment in the opening scenes when Michael is playing poker in Chinatown. The guy roasting Michael Clayton,

at the table is rounders and billions writer and friend of the ringer Brian Copleman. Wow. Who subjects himself to a joke about hair plugs. I thought that was very funny. He was just like, you bought yourself some new hair. And he's like, yeah, with your money. I thought that was very good. You know, and that those are just, this is not a film that has spawned a lot of controversy.

There's not a lot of behind the scenes of drama. There wasn't a lot of like it almost didn't come out. Tony Gilroy tried to make this movie for a couple of years, you know, George Clooney passed on it once or twice. But ultimately, it's a pretty smooth ship. I mean, it didn't do that well at the box office, but has since become this sort of touchstone where people say, like,

oh, I wish they made more movies like Michael Clayton. Wait, can we talk about that for a second? Because I will say that the reason, even though I was, like, in the pocket of this kind of movie in the mid-aughts, I very decidedly avoided this. And I think because the marketing, I think you said this earlier in the podcast, Chris,

but the marketing suggested this is sort of like, I don't know, is it's George Clinton making like a Law and Order movie? Like, what is this? It was like the rainmaker. It was a time to kill. I think it was like George Clooney versus this evil corporation.

The marketing didn't do it any favors. And also I think I felt so betrayed by Siriana, which is a movie I'm obsessed with despite the fact that I very much dislike it. And I think I was just like, I don't want to see George Clooney in a movie that feels too

Siriana adjacent. I'm skipping Michael Crayan. Not rewatchable. Not rewatchable. We're not going to be convening. But that's a lot of a trailer. not a rewatchable movie. Okay.

All the, literally the best five lines of the movie are just in the trailer. If you ever just want to be like, oh, it's the best part of Siriana, it's the trailer. The best line is at the very end, though. You're the Canadian. All right, let's do best heat check performance by our role player,

aka the Dion Waders Award. This is the award we give to someone who has very little screen time but makes the most of it. And to me, this is like a unanimous election, like win here for Sidney Pollock. But I'm willing to hear arguments otherwise. Cindy Pollack, you know, acclaimed director in his own right.

I feel like it was born to play Marty Bach. I can't believe how good he is in this movie. Marty? You know what he's doing? He's making their case. I'm going through his files here. I'm reading this. He's building the case against you, North.

Nobody's going to let him do that. Let him. Who the hell's going to stop him? You know what I just heard? He's calling these plaintiffs. This woman from the deposition, he's calling these people. He's got these discovery documents. It's a fucking nightmare.

Were there anybody else who you thought maybe you deserved a shout here, whether it's Michael O'Keefe, Dennis O'Hare, Merritt Weaver? Like, who, did you guys think anybody can compete with Sydney here? I'm leaving this to you guys. I'm sold on Pollock, even though I know I tried to de-throat with Chris Cooper, but that's just not of purely out of loyalty to Chris Cooper. That's fair. Cooper's a mood.

I have to go Sydney Pollock, too. And I think it feels in retrospect, like such an elegiacic role because he died probably, I think, six months after it came out. And even though I always thought this was his final film that he acted in, but IMD-B tells me that he was unfortunately in the 2008 rom-com, Maid of Honor. Oh, wow. M-A-D-E, one of the great title puns of all time,

which I have to say, I saw a maid of honor in the theater, but not Michael Clayton. So I have my own personal shame to work out of on that. But I think it's just such a fitting. homage to the films that he directed and also like his presence as an actor it just feels like a really good I'm going to count this as his final performance

and it feels like a nice tribute and honor to him yeah he's so good in this movie he feels it's such he makes the character so lived in and so kind of like that sunken eyes and just the whole vibe that he has makes that I think it offsets it almost seem to have like a trickle-down effect

on the performances that everybody else gives in some weird way, even if they didn't share screen time with him. Dennis O'Hare, I think I'm going to give a different award to, but he deserves, I mean, in the truest sense of the Dionne Waiters Award, Dennis O'Hare as the guy who does the hit and run in his Jaguar in the first opening scenes is probably the winner, but Sidney Pollock does the most with the time he has on the screen. Let's talk about Apex Mountain, whether or not this person was performing

at their absolute peak in this movie. Is this Apex Mountain for Tony Gilroy? Do you guys have any other Gilroy that you would put over it? Hmm. Does this would basically be the Bourne movies? I'm just going to say, I'm only really a fan of the first Bourne movie. I am a big, big fan of the born movie that Gilroy actually directed, the Born Legacy. Right, right.

I haven't seen that one. Well, it's been a long time as I've seen the Born Legacy. There's a lot of interesting homoeroticism between Jeremy Renner and Oscar Isaac in that movie. Is it interesting is the homoeroticism between, uh, in Skyfall between. It's a little less explicit. It's not... But they do spend a night in a cabin together. There's also just...

It is one of the great Edward Norton performances, like the unsung Edward Norton performance in Born Legacy. It's basically 55 to 60 minutes of like a perfect movie and then it turns into an hour-long car chase through Manila, which is still pretty cool, but is like really exhausting. But that being said, I think that this is easily Tony Gilroy's Apex Mountain. Do you guys think that this is Apex Mountain for George Clooney? I do. And the thing is, they're not a ton of Clooney performances. I'm saying this through clinched teeth. It's not that the mic is messed up.

They're not a ton of Clooney performances that I love. He's really, there's a precision to Clooney as Michael Clayton. There's the, I don't know, that's the magic, man. He's really doing the razzle, Bazzle, Michael Clayton, without overdoing anything. That's the thing. Because he's not leaning on a hero trope or he's not really playing a dirtbag, it's like the fact that he is sort of, he's really. riding a line that seems like it should make that role defined by ambivalence, but I don't know. He's just, he nails it. He just nails it in this hard to articulate way for me. LZ, what do you think? I also, I think this is like peak phase two Clooney. Okay. I think this is my favorite performance of like the second half of his career.

Like I feel like out of sight is phase one. Yes. And then we, this is kind of just kicks off him playing a sad sack. And also just him playing a character that no woman is attracted to in this movie. I thought that was an interesting, you know, Clooney look. Not sure it's realistic, but who can say? I also think this is the beginning of Peak Tilda Swinton in America. Let's talk about that.

Yeah. And also I just rewatched her Oscar speech for this movie, and I highly recommend it because she makes fun of George Clooney and Batman. And it's really, she says that he wore his. his Batman costume with the nipples under his Michael Clayton suit. And Clooney's like in the first row of the after. That's amazing. Ceremony, like, laughing.

That was a good Oscars era. I feel like she, like that was like a, we got good crowds. The vibes were pretty good. The movies being rewarded were pretty good. 07, you know, the 08 Oscars had like a really great crop of films to talk about. Yeah, I mean, I think that's one thing I wanted to bring up about this movie, too, is I do think, I still think it's underrated in a strange way. I think it got lost in the shuffle of a really good award season.

And just, you know, so Clooney was up for the Oscar. He lost inevitably to Daniel Day Lewis for There Will Be Blood, like one of the most inevitable best actor Oscars ever given, which is kind of a bummer because I think any other year almost, this would, that would be like the Clooney performance that he finally gets his best actor for. And maybe it's just never going to happen for him, Michael Clayton style. just never fully lives up to it. Yeah, but this was, this movie came out the same sort of season as there will be blood and no country for old men. And those movies kind of stole its award thunder. I think Tilda Swinton was the only person to win an Oscar for this. Yeah, it got nominated for director, picture, actor, supporting actor, but Tilda's the only one who won.

Yeah, which feels like in a weaker year, this movie may have cleaned up a little bit more. even the Tom Wilkinson nomination like Javier Bardem one supporting actor and you can't really argue with that but I think this movie was like runner up to those two in so many ways and I wonder if that's kind of diminished its reputation over the long term. I don't know, what do you guys think about that? Yeah, I think it's 2007, we've wrote about this last year

when we did a series of essays about the 2007 movies but I think that it's so great that there are two films from 2007 that were very widely recognized at the time. There will be blood and no country. And then there were two that were sort of not necessarily forgotten at the time, but maybe not as lauded. And that was Zodiac and Michael Clayton. And all four of them have kind of gone on to have their own lives.

And if anything, I think no country seems to be the one that people talk about the least. You know, there will be blood comes up in pretty casual conversation, especially since. Listen, man, relax. We not go drag, no. All right. Let's go a little easy now. counselor. I still, that movie is perfect.

That movie is just the book and the movie. It's the, they just did it. It's, there's no complaints about it. I think because it was, it was given best picture. They just have like,

that's the, that's the pinnacle of that movie. And they had its moment in the sun. And since then, largely due to my own Cambridge Analytica push, Zodiac has kind of gotten some, some plotted since then. And,

and so is, and so is Michael, Clayton. You know, we haven't... All I can tell you, Chris, is that the coin don't got no say. I don't know what to tell you. But question, so taking Zodiac out of it for a second, because we did a rewatchable on that.

But are, do you feel like Michael Clayton is more rewatchable than no country and or there will be blood? Yes. I agree. Yes. And I, I think, because those other two, like, Michael Clayton is a mood, but those other two are like capital M moods. And I, I've had...

I was talking with some friends this weekend about we've had like standing plans to rewatch there will be blood for like the past six months. And I keep like, oh, we got to like get together and I'll like get my projector and we can just like watch it and all its glory. But it's such a like, you got to plan that in advance. You got to really be in the mood. And whereas this, I watched this movie twice in the last 24 hours. And I didn't even intend to watch it the second time.

I just kind of like had it on. And I think it being on Netflix again now is just. It is one of those movies that I am almost never not in the mood. It's a put it on a loop movie. If you had this movie on that was just, and it was just on for nine hours in the background and you were kind of like walking back and forth, like doing stuff in your apartment.

My wife did this last day when I was watching it. She just would come out every 23 minutes. And they're like, oh, I love the scene. And then she would go back and doing what she was doing. And you can, this is a very rare movie like that. Like, you can't do that with Earlby Blah. And you can't even really do that with Zodiac, because Zodiac is such like an atmosphere.

spheric film. But with this, it's just so dialogue-driven. It's like a few good men. You can kind of just be like, oh, I love it when he says this. All right, I'm out. Let me know when this comes up.

Let's talk about some unintentional comedy. I think that... Oh, my God. Everything till the Switten does. Everything till the Switten does is right on the edge of comedy, and that's why this performance is so brilliant. I mean, just even the armpit washing

in the first scene, I was just like, what the fuck is happening the first time I saw that? It's such a perfect, introduction to that character. The baguettes is very unintentionally funny. There's like a line with, you know, the Tom Wilkins and stuff because he's playing a person

who's having a manic episode and is going off his meds. But he chooses to the choices that they make to illustrate, like what he's doing. Like the baguettes like we talked about are so amazing. I don't even know if I would call them unintentional comedy. Do you guys have any moments that you wanted to shout out? I mean, are the horses unintentional comedy or does that, just work. I think they really

tow the line, especially now that I've brought off the parallel with three billboards, but I don't know, I think there's like, the horses are definitely memeable, like if you're going to meme Michael Clayton, which clearly my deep dive on the Michael Clayton Tumblr community.

But yeah, I mean, the baguettes, I also, I want to know where he got them because I could, I definitely was like, it's one of those New York movies where you're like, oh, they're in Chinatown now. They're on this street, they're on... How far has he been walking

with this bag of bread? Right. Well, I just want to know where the bread's from so I can get some because he said it, you know, he had a lot of good things to save that.

But I was even leading up to that. I just feel like all of the montage stuff with Arthur where it's sort of... It's when Michael Clayton feels the most, frankly,

like a Satoshi Khan movie where it's, where there's the long shot of him just in Times Square where it's just like, he's a man who's been freed. And he's almost on like, he's on this very surreal,

like, purifying bender. It's funny in this way because it feels cartoonish in a format that I was just not expecting. It just feels so wonderful. But I did, I distinctly laugh through those bits of the movie. Not because it's ridiculous, but because it feels so, again, all these characters are so repressed and hyper

professionalized and just like, like, animated by anxiety. and it's just this really pure, wonderful stretch of the movie. I don't think that this is an unintentional... I don't know if this is unintentionally funny, but I found it amusing. I think maybe because there's so much, you know, evil done in this film in the anyway

that, like, how kind and reasonable the loan shark is, how Gabe is just like, well, if you pay me now, if you only pay $12,000 now, they're going to get worried because they're going to think, why can't you come up with more? It's almost better to not do,

And he's such like, I wish I had like, I wish the guy at like my Honda dealership was that like reasonable, you know, instead of just being like, he's like, by the way, I lied to you about what the least rate was. You know, it's like, he's just like really, really works with you. One other small thing was just one of the hitmen, not in every scene, but just at certain angles looks so much like Gordon Ramsey. Yes. That I was like, and I knew what else with me on this. And I kept like, that took me out of it a little bit, but also made me feel like, very powerful. awesome way to be. Yeah. As Gordon Ramsey would be

if he was just killing a rival chef. Like you wouldn't even hear him leave. Okay. We've hit a lot of the unanswerable questions, the unanswerable question award. But I do want to just let charity kind of riff on this for a second because I feel like this is ultimately the thing that keeps you up at night is why was this movie allowed to be made? And I just want you to kind of explain like your mystification at this.

Because again, it is not just at the, at the, poster level, at the trailer level, it just seems like, okay, okay, solid and off ground, movie about greed, somebody, you know, there's a shady corporation, a shady law firm, like a guy has to make tough decisions, he's capable, but also there are other people involved that he has to protect. Like, all of it seems so straightforward. But then you watch the movie, and it's so tonally, it's just, it's so, you know, by the time you get to Arthur,

forget the speech at the very beginning of the movie. The first conversation between Michael Clayton and Arthur is just so loopy and heightened and deranged and colorful. And then the movie after that, it becomes so, its tone becomes so

ambitiously all over the place. And it does not feel like you're watching a, you know, a hyper-conventional corporate greed movie. It feels like you're watching something that's way more whimsical than any promotion for the movie really gave it credit for. And even the casting at face value seems to give it credit for, right?

If you look at it and you're like, okay, George Clooney, George Clooney vehicle, George Clooney is doing like a serious role. Like, if you just take that statement, George Clooney is doing a serious role at face value, it is not doing justice to how loopy and insane this movie is. It never, you can't get to I Am Shiva, the God of Death. through Michael Clayton's face being like he's going to bring them all down

one by one or whatever the tagline was. Let's talk a little bit about some nitpicks. Do you guys have any? This is a very tightly constructed movie. I don't really have any personally. I don't have any nitpicks. Did you guys have any? I just think there's something generally creepy

about Arthur's obsession with Anna, the Merit Weaver character. And there's kind of like sexual undertones that feel a little gross there, and I'm glad that they're not explored more explicitly. No, they save the exploring of sexual undertones for the Lithuanian women who are servicing him

in a Chelsea brothel that that anecdote he tells is like, it kind of takes a little bit. Yeah, right. Old New York, baby. Yeah, that the Anna and Arthur relationship is interesting because it gets used eventually at the end as like a plot device when she's still in New York.

Are you telling me she's in the city and like that's that's this whole thing but i thought that the scene between michael and anna where she's just she's like he really was crazy wasn't he it was like a really nice kind of like capstone on the entire arthur experience and they're like what he meant to those two people do you guys have um any other nitpicks that you want to bring up i mean we really should talk through the car bomb because i mean i really like walk me through it like i i need to know how the hitman think a car bomb works because the idea that they drive all the way to upstate New York,

and then they wait for him to have the cathartic meeting with the guy who did the hit and run. And then after that, you know what I mean? It's, I, even if they didn't just blow up the car

on the lower east side, it seems like by the time he's leaving the state. Yeah, why didn't they just blow it up? And Westchester. Well, this is also another one,

another thing that came up in our discussion beforehand and our doc that we're looking at is that like, it seems that the most valuable thing. Because like, by the time he goes, wait, now so remind me, when he goes out to the country,

doesn't he already have the memo? So when he goes out, so like, there's that whole thing where he's just like, keep to the, to the Kinko's guy, keep my memos for 50 bucks, which they very quickly get, like, so like, aren't we supposed to believe that they then

went and stole and or procured all the other memos? And why did they need that many memos in the first place? Yeah, that's the secondary nitpick to the original car bomb nitpick as wide. Right, exactly. Because it's not, it's not, I mean, look, there's a flip phone in this movie, but there's also email. Yeah. Somewhere there's PDF baby.

I don't think they got all the memos that. I think they said they said a couple. But he said there were like 25 boxes of them. Yeah. I think those are still just at the Kinkos. You think they put a car bomb in the Kinkos instead of a regular bomb? They're just like, well, I guess we got another car bomb. The latest Kame starts up his BMX to go home. He's going to have a real surprise. All right, guys, let's do, this is a really, fun one for this movie. Let's do Best Quote. I'm not the guy you kill. I'm the guy

you buy. Are you so fucking blind that you don't even see what I am? I sold out Arthur for 80 grand. I am your easiest problem and you're going to try and kill me. That's Michael Clayton. Michael, I have great affection for you and you live a very rich and interesting life, but you're a

bag man, not an attorney. That's Arthur. There is no play here. There is no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor. I'm a janitor. The math on this is simple. The smaller the mess, the easier it is for me to clean up. That's Michael.

Give me $50 just worth just drive. We mentioned that before. And I am Sheva the God of Death. Arthur. What do you guys think is the best quote? I mean, you live a very rich and interesting life, but it's just either.

Especially the way he says it, because at that point he's slipping from the like, I'm a man with baguettes. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah. Michael, I have great affection for you. And you live a very,

you know what I mean? The way he says it. Yeah. I picture Nikki Minaj saying that to Peter Rosenberg. That's the tone. I love that. Yeah. I think the last line, though, is just perfect. Yeah. I mean, Charity, can we get that one in your, if Duns-Zell played? Absolutely not. You can put Denzel. Listen, democratized Denzel. We can all do Denzel on this podcast. I still think the killer line is I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor. That is a real, like, you come to that moment. everybody comes to that moment

at some point in their lives. That scene with Greer is also what I'm going to give the Mark Ruffalo from Spotlight. They knew, Robbie! Overacting Award to Dennis O'Hare who just comes through

with just like the incredible like just all the lines about the guy jogging in the middle of the street at midnight. I just love how he goes, let's wrap things up with who won the movie.

really it's between three people. I think we've given a lot of Hosanna's to Tony Gilroy, but I want to keep this to the actors themselves. It's Clooney, it's Wilkinson, or Swinton, Lindsay, who do you think? That's tough. I mean, I want to say Clooney, but I think kind of the appeal is that he kind of lost it, too.

You know, like there's something underrated, both about this movie and about this Clooney performance that kind of is baked into the movie itself. Like he kind of embodies the Michael Clayton sense of disappointment and loserdom in the afterlife of this movie. So I think it's him. I think it's maybe Wilkinson.

I think the movie should be called Tom Wilkinson. That's my answer to the question. Not even the characters. Not even Arthur, no. The movie should be called Tom Wilkinson. Tom Wilkinson should be on the posters. Maybe that's a franchise. Tom Wilkinson, too.

The thing is, this is hard because I do think Swinton too, is that performance is so potent. But it's Wilkinson for me, but it's very preposterously tight between those three. I think Swinton is the curveball in this movie, though. I don't know if she wins it, but I don't know if it's as good a movie if anyone, if a net Benning is playing Karen. No. You know, I don't know if it works unless it has that almost otherworldly factor that she brings to movies.

Yeah. And the fact that she just is such a disorienting force in this film, Justin, all the stuff about that whimsy, the weirdness that you're talking about. I think she keeps that going. You don't want the money? You don't want the money? When she says that, like, that line delivery is the best line delivery in the movies. Which, well, you don't want the money.

It's so great. There's something about the way she's styled and lit in this movie, too, that she just looks like a wax figure of a businesswoman. Like, I think in some ways this is the most quote-unquote, like normal person that Dilda Sutton has played in a movie in a very long time. but it somehow is creepier for that. Like you're saying, because she brings this otherworldly quality

and this really unsettling vibe to Karen that is just, I can't picture anyone else. Well, I can picture other people playing it, but not stealing the scene and not being the one that wins the Oscar for this movie unless it's Tilda Swinton. Yeah, yeah. All right, guys, thank you so much for joining me

for The Rewatchables, Michael Clayton. It's currently on Netflix. We encourage you to check it out for Justin and Lindsay. Take care. Today's episode of The Rwatchables was brought to you by Hotel Tonight. Again, I cannot tell you how much I have been loving

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