The Rewatchables - ‘There Will Be Blood’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan get all liquored up and head over to the peach tree dance after revisiting Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 masterpiece ‘There Will Be Blood,’ starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's summertime. The weather is beautiful. What a perfect time to stay inside and look at our fantasy football rankings and sleepers at Fantasyfootball.com. And check out our pod with Danny Kelly, Danny Heifitz, and me, Craig Horlebeck at the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Adobe Firefly, the all-in-one creative studio with AI-powered image and video generation. Build for today's creative process.

Firefly helps you generate, edit, and experiment. Fast, because the asks aren't getting smaller, and the timelines? Ooh, yeah, still tight. With all the best creative AI models in one place, Firefly brings your ideas to life. Learn more at adobe.com slash Firefly. I sold my car on Carvana last night. Well, that's cool. No, you don't understand.

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Pick up fees may apply The rewatchables Is brought to you by the Ringer podcast network Where you won't be finding The Bill Simmons podcast for the next couple weeks Because I'm on a break from that one Not from here You can find the big picture with Sean Fentasy

You still crank it out the watch, Chris? Twice a week, man but thanks for asking. I'm glad you're doing it. I like to give a little boost, you know, bigger show, try to get the name out there, the watch. Say hi to Greenwald for us. This is a Sean Fantasy 40th birthday celebration podcast.

Sean, you're not my son. You're just a little piece of competition. Bastard from a basket! You're a bastard from a basket! Is this Sean's official employee review? Baster from a basket? Is this an HR violation? There will be blood is next.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for visiting with us this evening. I've traveled across half our state to be here and to see about this land. Now you have a great chance here. Bear in mind you can lose it all if you're not careful. I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that if we do find oil here, this community of yours will not only survive, it will flourish. The Holy Spirit has grown weary.

grown weary of drunkenness and lying in the world. Have you been doing any of these things? Right. Sean Fantasy. Bill Simmons. I said your 40th birthday week. I said, pick a movie. First of all, how long did it take to pick the movie? I think I took six days, and I thought about it a lot every day.

Don't tell us all the movies you thought about, but how many made the final cut, like about six to eight? Yeah, in my heart of hearts, it was always going to be the one that we're talking about today. But I did send you guys a longer list of like 12 movies that I was considering. I tried to work the refs a little bit too. I got in there. I tried to. Chris was nudging.

Chris was pushing. He was negotiating. Yeah. I was like, if it was me, not that he did. Sarah's like, Black Cat would be intriguing. Black Cat did not make my short list. Have you thought about the recilateral? I got excited about a couple of things, but I also wanted to leave a couple of things on the table for us long term.

For 50. You know? There's some boogie nights. There's some Pulp Fiction. Those are much requested. But those are as much Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan movies. Boogie Nights was the only one I took off the table with the birthday grant. It's like you can have any movie but Boogie Nights.

But that left a lot of big movies. It did. I thought about doing something that was older that we don't always think of doing like a dog day afternoon or an apocalypse now. Like movies that I hope we do in the future that are not necessarily in the 80s or 90s sweet spot of the show. But I mean, you got PTAs. That's my guy. That's my favorite film. Chris, you were not surprised about the pick.

I wasn't surprised about the pick. I was pleasantly surprised that you granted Sean this birthday wish, like the genie that you are. But I was wondering whether or not this means the gates are open and you're going to start every year. It's a birthday. Can I come up to you and be like, hey, it's the anniversary of the Phillies win in the World Series? Do you cruising? I've always always open to suggestions. That's right.

I was not surprised. You wrote about this for The Ring or what was that? 2017. Yeah, 10 year anniversary. And that was the first time because I had seen this movie a couple of. times but it was not a rewatchable to me but i remember when you wrote that i was like i got to watch this again and i think it's interesting because we talked to pta in 2017 yeah and he was talking about how the movie had evolved over the years and that it's way funnier than i think it got credit for when it

came out and he was saying how they would play it with an orchestra you know doing the music but then just hearing the audience laugh at these different parts of all this stuff dano d lewis is doing in it um that It is funnier the more you watch it, which is weird because this movie's psychotic. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think PTA movies, that's like the third or fourth wave of reaction. The PTA movies is like, you know,

it's actually really funny. It's like, well, first let's talk about how it's about the Bible. I try to get in that take on the opening night, though. I'm like, I thought it was hilarious, you know, just so I can be ahead of the curve on the narrative. But we're like walking out of the master and I'm like, Jesus Christ. He's like, what a crack up that guy is, you know? All right, so I always ask you a question that you're not prepared for that I'll give you heads up on.

I've been trying to anticipate this. Is this a more important Daniel Day-Lewis movie or a more important Paul Thomas Amos. PTA by a mile. It might be DDL's best performance and we should probably talk about that. But this is the one where he crossed over from exciting, virtuosic, really smart, nervy guy to is this guy the best living American filmmaker right now? Like that conversation really started in earnest, I think, after this movie. I think people saw Boogie Nights and they were like, wow, he's got it all. He's got all the moves.

He loves all the right people. But this is the one where he went up a level, but he was still able to retain the things that made him interesting and exciting in the first place. Also, you know, it's a big movie about America. Yeah. You know, and that's something that a lot of great filmmakers that he was inspired by, they made movies like this that were, you know, looking back on the century that came before us. So I think it's a much more important film for PTA. It's funny. I was watching the other night just doing research,

and Tarantino introduced this movie for like a Turner Classic showing of it or something, but he was doing the introduction. And he was like, this is one of the best films of the decade. This is sort of like the announcement, like what you're describing as like this turn in PTA's career. It's a masterpiece. And then he's like, I still kind of like Boogie Nights better.

You know, like, it's kind of like this weird thing where I think everybody understands There Will Be Blood is a singular masterwork, but then has their other favorite PTA that they actually would revisit. And it's probably kind of the same way you're describing, you didn't really rewatch There Will Be Blood until 10 years later, right? Like, it's not like the movie that you're like, I'm going to fire that up. That seems like a way to bounce my evening up a couple of notches. Yeah, I think even if you think the movie is funny, like we all do, it's not that fun.

it's not like a fun way to spend a night. First hour is probably once we get past the first hour I do feel like then Daniel Day Lewis just goes to seven other levels as it keeps going But it doesn't have that like literally that Coke snort energy of

boogie nights where you're just like whoa I'm in a Porsche right now flying down the road and so it doesn't have the same feeling but I like in movies as you guys know those really tense desperate screaming kind of movies. I really love horror movies.

I really love thrillers. And I think I wrote in the piece. You like slow builds, too. I do. And movies, I feel like they're, like, kind of choking you out a little bit. I really like that, too. Like, I really like Paul Schrader movies.

We both like Movies that dominate us. Yeah, exactly. And this movie is just so overwhelming. It's so overpowering. So it's just, I love it as much as the day I saw. The first time I saw it, I was like, this is it for me. This is exactly what I want from a movie.

I think it's pretty cool, too. You can watch this. movie and get really overwhelmed by the it's it has an essay about capitalism and religion as you know like a film with all these biblical overtones as this

thing that mirrors all these like images of like blood and oil and you know father and son or brother and brother and you can really get into the the subtextual reading it's also a pretty good corporate espionage thriller like I was kind of this time I watched it I was like the Tilford stuff

and his maneuvering of like buying up land so that standard oil couldn't buy up all of Little Boston and stuff like that. Like little bits here and there where you can kind of almost assemble the more straightforward version of this movie, which is about this guy building this empire. And it obviously has these like flourishes and these nearly dreamy sequences like the entire Henry part of the movie. But I kind of enjoyed it this time just watching it as almost like a kind of thriller. You know, like a kind of like, ooh, what's it going to have next? What's going to have next?

What's going to have next? Well, it's almost 15 years ago, right? Was it August, September? It's coming up. December of 2007. December, yeah. One of his movies has an anniversary, I think, it's September. I can't remember.

So he does Hard 8 and Boogie Nights, like basically back-to-back years or within two years of each other. Then he does Magnolia, which we covered in the rewatchables 99 feed. Then he does the Sandler movie. And then he's just gone for like five years. Five years he takes off, yeah. And I think at some point, I'd kind of, I don't want to say I gave up on him, but I just kind of forgot about him. Just was reliving him through boogie nights. Fell in love, had a kid.

I think there's an understanding that maybe he cleaned up his life a little bit, kind of changed some of his habits. Right. So he had this Fiona Apple stage from Magnolia, basically until about a year before the Sandler movie. But then he met Maya Rudolph. And he had his first kid who I think he brought as they were filming this. so he kind of settled down. But I would not have predicted this kind of like Citizen Kane type thing from him. It always seemed like he was going to be more of the kind of entertaining.

I hate to compare it to Tarantino, but just these movies that are super rewatchable and fun and big, but not a movie like this. They're like a hybrid of box office or popcorn movie with art movie. You know, like in that this feels like an art movie. But he never, he's never really made a big box office. a success. I think we just feel his two gods, right, are Scorsese and Robert Altman. Those are the two

people that he is pulling from the most. He loves big sprawling casts with big stories and big narratives. And he loves these really intense movies about relationships and violence, right? Those are the two kind of big things that are going back and forth. Those two guys, you know, Scorsese, we've talked about so many times, has had a bunch of big commercial successes

in the last 20 years. But in the 70s and 80s, that really wasn't his bag. It really always feels like PTA is really making movies for himself. And for like the history of movies. He's so conscious of the history of movies. And the other thing is that he always says that the treasure of the Sierra Madre is his favorite movie.

And that's such a huge part of this movie. John Houston, John Houston's voice, the moral dilemma, the story of like settling the West and searching for gold and all of these things. Well, you say John Houston's voices. D.DL is basically doing John Houston's voice in the movie. Yeah. And then there's that kind of John Houston's voice from Chinatown. Yeah.

But he's also, I mean, he was like, watching it every night as he was right in the script and like he became super obsessed with it. He reminds me of my son. My son will have these obsessions where he's just like my son like age six just love Michael Jackson and then he moved down and wrestling. And it seems like PTA almost does that with art. He's like I am obsessed with this and then all of a sudden his own art comes out of the obsession. Well, he was talking about treasure is like an anchor for him. Yeah. I think he called it a buoy in the interviews where he's just like I needed to know.

I needed to see because he think he's taught himself screenwriting by like writing out. out scenes for movies that he liked to kind of see how they worked. Yeah. Still using Microsoft Word, by the way, which we've talked to him about. Yeah, it's amazing. I respect it. He was like, I needed to see how to tell a straightforward story. You know, like a lot of his movies have like these incredible narrative gymnastics going on.

And he was like, what happens when you just watch a guy go insane for 90 minutes, which is what happens in Treasure of C.R. Madre with Humphrey-Bol. So he's just like, start here, go to B, and go to C. And that's how the movie goes. And I think for as much as, you know, there are parts of there will be blood that's like staring into the monolith of 2001, partially because of the music, it's still kind of a pretty straightforward story. You know? Like, it's a guy who's trying to take a piece of land and he does and it kills him. It's rise and rise and rise and maybe fall, depending on your interpretation.

Because Daniel really ultimately gets what he wants. Right. It feels like a fall. He's now an alcoholic fucking murderer who's by himself and has no family. But he was an alcoholic murderer basically, like, in the first 20 minutes of the movie. I mean, one thing I noticed in re-watching it again, I've seen this movie so many fucking times. But, I mean, he is just dead drinking brown liquor throughout the entire movie. It was the 1890s.

That's how we got down. You know, Chris does that sometimes. Did you get a few pores before this pot? Chris, you're an alcoholic murder. Look. I think it's, so his, I think the two movies, if you were going to say, he's, Is he my age now? He's like 50.

I think he's a little, maybe older than you. For two different reasons, I think Boogie Nights and Therobie Blood would be the first two that I think people mentioned. Now, some people would say the master too. But I think Boogie Nights, rewatchable, just incredibly entertaining, inventive. It just kind of exploded when it came. It was like, what is this movie? And it's just been exceptionally rewatchable.

And then this movie, I think, has grown in stature since it came out. It didn't even win best Oscar. It kind of got overshadowed. It was funny, I'd forgotten, like, going back and looking at the Oscar stuff, like No Country for Old Men and the Coen brothers outshadowed it a little bit, and DDL became the kind of story from this.

No question. There's people who are like, oh, no country's... Look at Reberts Review. Yeah, No Country's a great movie. I don't think that The Thore World Be Blood is a great movie. But I think 15 years later, it feels like it's flipped a little bit, even though I think we all love No Country for a man. You're all over my hot take.

I mean, this to me is the 21st century movie so far. this is the movie because it's the only movie that is trying to say something really, really big about our country and about basically like how we got here.

The 07 to 10 range is just such a great time for American movies. Like I was looking at the list and we've done these drafts before and stuff like that over those years. But man, that social network, no country,

there will be blood all the way and through like basically inception. And the comedies. Where it's just like it felt like the movies just felt very significant. Well, 07 alone.

Dark night. Yeah. You know, like you guys just, did knocked up. Obviously, Michael Clayton is that year. Assassination of Jesse James is that year. You've got this great dual race between no country and there will be blood.

07 is tops. There's very few years. It's like, it's with like 1975. You know what I mean? It's that good. There's that many good movies. It does feel like that. I would throw 06 and two.

So maybe the second half of that century of that decade is probably the last great runway fat before we moved into the superhero. It's a version of movies. It's the last time before franchise movies really just fully took over. Like event movies really took over. But we also had the whole his generation of directors. Yeah, because you're getting primed bastards in that badger. You had Fincher and Tarantino and PTA.

You had the Cullen brothers, the throne 98. Yeah. Who understood in Sophia Copla, yeah. I mean, it's like it's a lot of people making movies about the past to grapple with what's happening in the present, which I think, you know, there's readings of there will be blood that it's about the Iraq war or that it's, about, you know, what drove us to the Iraq War. It's interesting that there was a bunch of movies, whether it's Quentin and PTA going into the past

or some say inception, you know, dealing with like almost fantastical supernatural elements of, or sci-fi elements. Getting stuck in a nightmare. Yeah, that are kind of like, this is what it's like to be alive right now. Rather than like the 70s where it was just like, this is Jack Nicholson and he's like a guy you see down the street every day.

I think like a slightly more grounded way of looking at the movie, even though I think it's basically everything you said like 10 minutes ago, all the themes are there. We can talk about them if you want. It's a really interesting pocket history of California. Basically how California became one of the most powerful states in the United States and how it became industrialized later than the states on the East Coast and the way it industrialized with oil. And at first it was gold and then the gold and silver kind of leads to oil. And that made this like this fortress of power.

And it's really sprawling and it's different. You know, the states on the East Coast are so small. And so the cities seem like they're a bigger part of the state. But California is this massive, sprawling state that, like, I've lived here for 10 years, and I still don't really feel like I understand it or have seen even one-tenth of it. And that's what the movie gives you, too. The movie is just, like, out there is doom. There's so much unsettled land.

There's so much we don't know about this state that we're trying to figure out. And this guy, who arrives in this movie, is like, I will conquer it. I will take it over. Yeah. This time when I watched it, I hadn't probably seen it for three years. it was really hard not to think about Bezos and Zuckerberg and this whole generation of the new conquerors, right? That was like my big takeaway.

And I was thinking, my favorite Kendrick song is King Kunta and about the yams and just like the whole theme of, and there was a great dissect podcast about it where Cole broke that whole song down and just like everything you'd ever want to know about that song's in there. But I was thinking about the yams when I was watching this time and how people like Bezos and Zuckerberg

and the modern contrillionaires we have Elon Musk. Like Elon Musk is basically Daniel Plainview-esque. He really is. Yeah, I'm going to buy Twitter. I got a bully early on Twitter. Six or seven years ago,

we were like, there will be blood explains Trump. Yeah. Ten years ago, we were like, it explains George W. Bush. That's why this movie, I think, is going to outlast him and however long we have movies, Because whoever the current version of Daniel Plainview is,

we're going to remind, it would be reminded you of who the person is now. It's like a perfect metaphor, but also more or less a true story. You know, it's about, it's loosely based on Ned Doheny and the Doheny family that kind of established the city that kind of built Beverly Hills. You know, Doheny is a famous boulevard here in Los Angeles now. Great street, strong street, great uphill. I always get confused around Doheny and San Vicente. A lot of good stuff on Doheny.

Is this going north or west? But that's the thing is like, the cycle just repeats, right? People who just want to control everything and who want power, like, that's a human impulse. There are people who are just built that way. You guys have competitions in you. I don't feel like... I definitely do. I definitely do.

I, it's a little scary how I sometimes relate to not the murderous part and certainly not the oil part. But I, you're very competitive, Bill. You're even more competitive than I am. No, I totally relate to Daniel and I want to destroy everybody. I have no friends. That part's not true. Either on my team or against me. No, I mean, outside.

It's like, we have our team, and if you're against us, you're against us. From a DDL standpoint, he's in every scene but two. And one of the scenes is like a brief montage. So this is like an all-time, if this is a basketball situation, this is like the guy who's playing 48 minutes a game and has just crazy. It's like Janus in the 2020 finals multiplied by like, 17. It's his best movie ever. I think that's pretty inarguable, right?

I wanted to ask you guys. So you've done, you did last of the Mohicans. Well, the irony of him is I think everybody considers him to be the greatest actor of the last 25 years. Like, at worst case scenario, that would be the opinion. Yeah. But it's not exactly a rewatchables catalog kind of catalog. No, because you only really, with the exception of nine, right, has done pretty challenging movies, I think. And Lasso-Mahikins is pretty box office. You know, and I think you could call the boxer, like, a fairly traditional movie.

Less than Mohicans was the most commercially, that in Gangs of New York. But his performance in Last Than Mohicans is not, it's so committed. It's immersed, but it's not, like, expressive. Yeah, it's. Remember we had that research when he was trying to help them build the cabin and they had to tell him to get the fuck out? Yeah. Like, dude, you're screwing up the cabin.

Let us do it. I think his performance in Gangs of New York is not quite on the level of this, but he is far in a way the best part of that movie. And it's a very similar thing where he's like he's found a voice and kind of a posture and a stature. And he's just, he just dominates the movie.

Like every time he's on screen. He's in a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz at the height of their fame. And he's like, fuck y'all. Like, I'm taking over. But that script is a little bit complicated.

That production was really messy. That movie was a thing when it came out, though. It was. I had moved to L.A. that pretty, I think like a month before. And it was such a cool experience to be here when that was my first time

where I was like, oh my God, there's a Scorsese movie coming out. In L.A. you could kind of feel it. And a lot of it was because of him and Leo in the same movie with Scorsese. It was a big noisy Miramax movie, too. It was like 150 million dollar movie. It wasn't very good. He was good in it. He was good. It's like, I've tried to revisit it a couple

of times. It's not my friend. Diaz is like actively bad. She's just miscast. Yeah, it's tough. But he, I mean, he's like in my beautiful laundrette and my left foot and he made a lot of movies in the 80s and 90s. But he didn't make a lot of lightness He didn't make the firm.

No, no. There was no, like, he wasn't in Sleepless in Seattle. He never even really made, like, his version of a Merchant Ivory movie is Fantemthread. You know what I mean? Like, he didn't even do, like that. I mean, this guy's father's a poet. He married Arthur Miller's daughter. Like, he's just not that kind of person.

He's not, he was not a commercial artist. He just is literally doing something that he finds artistically meaningful. And that's it. Well, he was basically when these guys do the stage acting thing for a couple years, like Pacino in the 80s. and it's like, I really care about the craft. That was just his entire career. Yeah, that's how he treats movies.

Where he's just like, I'll do this, but it's going to take me three years to get this character. It was never like, my God, Dana Day Lewis is in the blindside? Like, he just was never going to do that ever. I feel like his reputation, which character is the blindside? His reputation, I feel like, is one of the only total eclipse of the suns, where it's so ridiculous everything he does to prepare.

And his method is so silly that, It's come all the way back around again to him like, that's fucking awesome. That's awesome that he's just like, I will live on my own next to a river for a year to prepare to be in the last of the Mohicans. That level of psychotic commitment at this stage of my life. I'm like, good for you, man. That's cool that you found something that gets you, jazz. Well, the number one is still my left foot. Where he's like, I insist on staying in the wheelchair and you're going to have to carry me around even when we're not filming.

And the crew's like, what the fuck, dude? You could walk, get up. People say that on the set of this, he was like, he would use the voice, but he would be like... You could talk to him. I mean, I don't know if you could talk to him about the Jets, but you could talk to him about like, hey, like, then happy to, nice to meet you. Daniel Plainview has some sports team owner energy as well. A little Daniel Snyder in there, you know? He sounds like it's the name of somebody.

JJ, first time caller. I want to play, so we had PTA on in December 2017. and I asked him, what are the three things that makes Daniel Day Lewis stand out? So we're just going to play it here. This is from like four and a half years ago. What are the three things you would say,

three traits that he has that you just haven't really seen? He, every word that comes out of his mouth feels like it just came out of his brain and to his lips and out into the air. It doesn't feel like a line that you've written. On the flip side of that, when he gets a good line, he can chew it up and serve it up as a fastball

with so much stink on it that you just you're like, it's theater, you know? And the other thing is the physicality that he has the way he can like hunch his shoulders or move into something or or chew on his lip or just seeing him walk down a hallway

a certain way. And you think of that Bill the Butcher stuff thinking him walking out and that gangs of New York and sort of planting his foot. And some piece of physicality that he does really like, nobody else. would have come up with that nobody and those kind of defining moments that you're like right this is a now you settle in you're like right i'm watching a movie now in the best way like turn the lights down this is a movie at the same time though that that that that can imply that it's the actual which is

good but there's that balance that he can do the small stuff really really well and make it seem simple later on that interview he talks about watching one actor go head to head against him i think the guy who played David Warshofsky. Yeah, the standard oil guy. The whole day he just had to go head to Ed with Daniel DeLewis and PTA said by the end of it, it was like watching somebody go 10 rounds with, you know, whoever. The great boxer. Yeah. The physicality is I think what makes him special. Like I was thinking, I was really watching it because I watched this movie twice in the span of a week and the second time I was thinking about the PTA thing. So I was really watching how he used his body. and I do think that's what's

if you're talking and you're comparing the greatest actors ever there's something about the way he locks into these specific sitting positions or the way he eyeballs people or the way he'll turn his face I've just never seen anybody else

do it like that so the physicality thing I thought was interesting by him he doesn't have a persona he doesn't you know Jack Nicholson is one of my favorite

games, yeah. Yeah, he's one of my, but, but even on screen, that the, like, the Rye kind of aggravated sense of humor that Jack Nicholson is well known for, that's like a signature thing, Merrill Streep even, who is similar to DDR and that she transforms a lot. But she has that like, oh, you know, she has like a tonality when you hear her talk. And she has kind of, and we know her in the real world. So we think things about her when we watch her in movies.

Most people don't really know anything about Daniel D. Louis. And every movie he does, he's like, I need a mustache and a weird hat. And I need to walk with this crooked posture. and he's always just turning into the character, like PTA is saying. And that really helps him. I mean, he's one of the few people who has basically just completely shunted all of this other stuff off to the side. Yeah, he brings no baggage from himself.

He doesn't do Gene Hackman an enemy of the state. Or you're just like, that was good. Right. You know, like it's either... Lincoln or nothing. Yeah. You know, it's Lincoln or he's working in a village somewhere. The thing that PTA just said is really cool because,

first of all, that's like, you know, the part about him taking something that's written and making it feel like it's coming out of somebody's brain is basically that happens like one out of 10,000 times. Yeah. You see something. I mean, most times you're watching something, even something you like,

you're like, this guy's doing a great job of performing the dialogue that was written for them. And in the big moments in this movie, like I always think about the, I've abandoned my boy scene, the baptism scene. And he's doing this thing. It's going to be in the trailer it's this incredibly volatile scene

and Paul Dano is incredible in it everybody's just fireworks are going off and the best part about it is right at the end when it's over he goes I got my pipeline or whatever that line is like I got there's a pipeline because it was all at act and yeah you can even see it

in the second part of when he's that there's this underlying I'm full of shit even as I'm doing this over with you know give me the blood lord what do I have to say but let me get out of here It's the modulation.

It's like he's doing, I've abandoned my boy! And then he's like, I got that fucking pipeline. How about that? I nailed my part. And I think they're both true, though. You know, like, I think he's really, really pained. It's my favorite part about the movie is that both things are true throughout it. Yeah.

It's an amazing, amazing, amazing performance. I don't think it's like sports where you can just say this was the number one performance I've earned. This was two, but whatever short list, it's got to be on it. And I don't know if that short list is five or ten. It's like, you see Bo Jackson, you're just like, well, that's the best athlete I've ever seen. But, like, because it's not, he didn't play over 12 years and play one sport and develop this legacy in one sport. It's kind of almost like you're like, well, that's the best thing I've ever seen. But I think about Emmett Smith and I think about these other guys because they won Super Bowls and because they were always in my life for like a decade.

Daniel Day Lewis comes along like a comet and he's just like, oh, that's the best actor I've ever seen. But it's almost hard to compare it like what he does to what Brad. Pitt does. But that's exactly. The comment point is really good. And it's not like sports specifically because you look at Brando. Brando changed movie acting, right? Everybody always says that. And Pacino and De Niro and all these people came in his wake.

And then those guys changed movie acting and they influenced a generation of people. Or you think about how Julia Roberts changed movie stardom in a very specific way and changed like the kinds of movies that could get made in Hollywood because she was such a big star. And she was inspired by Catherine Hepburn and all the people who came before her.

There's no precursor. You can't be like, oh, Lawrence Olivier is like Daniel DeLewis. They're not the same. Lawrence Olivier was a classical Shakespearean actor, and he was trained in a very specific way. Daniel DeLis is off on this weird, Miles Davis Jack. He came up with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth and like these guys in like the early 80s British movie scene.

You mean the Brit pack? Yeah, but like it's kind of like, think about their careers. And they have done a lot of movies and they've made a lot of movies where they're like the bad guy in the Hulk or like, you know, whatever. the butler or the commissioner Gordon in Dark Night, and he's made 10, 12 movies, and that's it, and they're all kind of singular achievements. And it's like, there's just two ways of being an actor.

There's working actor, and then there's like, I'm only going to do this X amount of time because every time I choose to do something, it takes me five years. It's rare, though, when the guy, when it almost feels like sports, because I feel like Pacino and Godfather, too, is whatever my short list is,

that has to be on there, too. the abortion scene, which we talked about when we did the rewatchables on that. But this one, like, Paul Dana, who I think is actually good. I watched it the second time. I'm like, I was actually too hard on him the first time I watched it. But the bowling alley scene is Drexler versus Jordan in the 92 finals. It's just like, you can't. There's just no way to combat what's going on on the Dana-D-Lewis side.

And it's, you know, we can talk about nip picks later. But I think one nitpick for me is I wish there was one other, like there was some Philip Seymour Hoffman possibilities, right? And at some point, and we'll get that later. But I just wish he was in this movie for like two scenes. But he does this specifically in the next movie, right? The first movie is fathers and sons. The next movie is like men who love each other, basically.

Like the true test of friendship and the weirdness of that. And putting Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix against each other, two guys who are like maybe right behind DDL in terms of the greatest actors of their generation. Yeah. He's, PTA is obsessed with this. He's obsessed with being like, I want the fucking hitters in my movie. I don't make movies unless I have the absolute best people in them, which is kind of why Lickrish Pizza was such an unusual bit of business

because it was like two people who've never really been in a movie before, surrounded by Cooper and Penn and all these people who are amazing at being in movies. It's actually kind of interesting because when you watch Lincoln, for instance, and you see D.E.L. with David Stratyrne, David Costable, and, you know, everybody's in that movie Frigin, you know, Tommy Lee Jones, all these people. It's like a lot of faces that you recognize and a lot of great actors.

And then he's doing Lincoln. It's almost like, these guys are trying to make the more traditional version of this movie and Daniel DeLewis is in the There Will Be Blood version of Lincoln, you know, where he's like fully committed. Yeah, they're in Amistad and he's in a fucking rock opera. It's better to have it almost be this

where it's like Daniel DeLewis, Karen Hines for the people who kind of know who he is, And then pretty much nobody else anybody recognizes. You know, you have to be a pretty big acting head to know who Kevin O'Connor is. Yeah. Well, it would have been interesting if Little Miss Sunshine had not come out before this, because you also wouldn't have had a relationship to Baldano. Because he only knew him because of Rebecca Miller's movie, right?

Yeah. Well, let's take a break, and I want to talk about how just completely insane details. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty, limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu, chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack.

That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. All right, so let's just do this quickly because I think to be a great actor, you also have to be a little bit bonkers. You're escaping into these different human beings. The stories on him, I think, are the most bonkers. I know Joaquin Phoenix, I know he has some, you know, he has some skin in the game.

If we're talking crazy actors, there's been a bunch of them. This is like, I mean, he disappeared for three years to make shoes in Italy during the prime of his career. It was like the Jordan playing baseball multiplied by eight. And nobody even really knows what happened or what part of Italy he was in. He disappeared completely and totally. Nobody seems to know what kind of drives him from a big picture. Does he want to be the greatest act? He doesn't really talk about it.

PTA loves him. Like PTA was, he talked pretty openly about being on the set with this guy during There will be blood was like the most amazing day-to-day thing I've ever seen in my life. and yet at the same time he did Hamlet in 1989 on stage he had a complete breakdown claimed he saw Hamlet's ghost

left the play during the play during like the night they were doing the play they had to bring in a replacement to finish that night's play and never appeared on stage ever again he's just kind of a crazy person

but in a good way but do you need to be crazy to be a great actor? I think you need to be crazy to be Daniel Day-Louis I think he need to be a artist with a level of of commitment like that. The idea of seeing Hamlet's father's ghost there on stage. That's one of the craziest

stories of the last 40 years. Every actor tries to play Hamlet and they do good or they do bad or they do great. And then like DDL of course is the guy who's like I can't do it because I can actually, I'm so enmeshed in this part that I see this guy's father's ghost. Like what would happen if he filmed the conjuring?

What would be is Patrick Wilson The Conjuring? It'd be an even better movie. That would have been cool if he was What was the black phone? Do you wish we had like Daniel Day Lewis and Moneyball? Yeah, I wish he had done one of those. Yes. Just once.

I think there's two requests, right? There's one is like, wouldn't it be cool if he just made a horror movie or something that we would enjoy and it would just elevate the horror movie? The other thing is, would he ever make a contemporary movie? Yeah. I mean, all of his movies are period pieces. He never makes a movie about a guy who like goes to Starbucks. Like, that's just not a thing that he knows how to do.

I had that in probably in answerable questions. we can do it now. Like, why doesn't he want to be in movies about things that are happening in this year? I don't really get the impression that he has a particularly contemporary life. Agree. Definitely agree. Like, what's the odds that Daniel DeLois has, like, a smartphone? He's holding a whittling tool right now.

Yeah. What's dinner with Daniel DeLuos? I mean, it's a fucking incredible experience. I'm sure he's like, I've taught myself how to cook meats in the dirt in the Argentinian style. And, like... Data DeLewis was like, I figured out. I've conquered all the computers. Very possible.

Very possible. Couldn't figure out that cabin on Last Mohican, so they had to get him out of there. That's the one thing. I know what he could do. He's the special guy. Whether he's like crazy or not, I mean, I think that he's just committed. He's very, very devoted to an art form. Like I was saying before, he's like, he really sees himself as a genuine artist.

He's not a person who's like, I want to star in movies. He's like, this is the work that I do, the craft that I care about. That's really pretentious. but it seems utterly sincere because if it wasn't sincere he would appear in the Conjuring too. Yeah, you know what's also awesome? Is that I'm like, oh, why did he do Michael Clayton?

Or not, I mean, moneyball? Well, Michael Clayton would have been cool. Same thing, that would be cool. Great lawyer. You know, his story is basically the reverse of there will be blood. He actually just doesn't do this for money. If you did it for money, he would just be an avatar. You know, I mean, like, if he did it for money,

he would have chosen one of these things to be in. He could have been, I'm sure, every single, for 10 years, people were like, can we get Daniel DeLewis for this? And probably now they don't even bother thinking about it. He is technically retired. But he obviously didn't do this for money. And I think even our greatest actors kind of do it for money or they eventually start doing it for money. And that's why like, it's like De Niro was arguably at a certain point as committed as

DeLuos was to preparing for a role. Yeah, but for those guys, it would last, what, six, seven, eight, nine years. And then they would move into this different phase of their career. Like Pacino all of a sudden he's in that sea of love and then he's just making movies. Yeah, now he's doing VOD thrillers. De Niro had the same thing where he was committed to the craft, but then around like mid-90s, all of a sudden he's making a couple movies a year. You think DDL's listening to this.

He's like, I'm going to fucking be in narcos. How about that? I think that both of those guys are weirdly the same Pacino and DDL, but they're, because the key question for them is, what is my time worth? and for Daniel DeLuis, his time is worth devoting to the thing he wants to learn to make his performance better.

For Al Pacino at the stage of his career, nothing against him, he's the fucking greatest. He's like, give me money. I would like some money. You know, I've only got so many years left and I'd like to make more money. I did an ESPN magazine piece once

where I tried to figure out was there some way to quantify like we do in sports acting, who was the best actor. So it was seven points for a best actor, actress, Oscar win, three points for a nomination. three points for best supporting actor actress win and one point for best supporting and

out of all the actors ever nicholson had 40 points by this weird scoring system i created spencer tracy 35 olivier 32 dana de lewis 30 marlin brando 30 lemon 30 denzel 29 hoffman 29 newman 29 what year was this this was i did this recently this was this is all updated scoring oh oh you just read you updated you i read Scoring, but he did the magazine. Okay. Yeah. Because he has three best actor wins.

That's the thing. So he won three who's the only one until Francis McDormann just did it. But he's the only actor who did it. He's never had a supporting actor thing because he doesn't do supporting actor roles. That's the other thing with him is he never, he's never like, cool, I'll be in terms of endearment. I'll just be in those five scenes. I'll be Creed's trainer. Creed's trainer would have been amazing.

You think he would have done that? Stallone would have been bummed. I'm pretty sure. Creed's trainer was Rocky Balboa. But that would have been really funny if he was like, no, I'm going to play Rocky. Yeah, I will play Slice the Load. Well, he did the boxer, and I was researching that,

and they were talking like he was so good at boxing that the guy who trained him was like, he could actually go in there and maybe... He looks like a boxer, too. He's built like a boxer. Well, there's... I mean, that goes back to the physicality thing when you can do whatever.

So anyway, Nicholson, Tracy, Olivier, DeLois, Brando, Lemon, Washington, Hoffman, Newman, Hanks. That's like pretty good glimpse of the greatest actors ever. I don't know who the greatest actor is, but he, like, three or four people have to be mentioned in the conversation, and he'll be the guy from this generation. I always liked him and Hoffman as, like, the Alpha and the Omega, the British, you know, Irish classicist versus the American who had consumed, like, all the great Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller stuff,

and then is filtering that out in American movie acting. Like, those two guys, for, for, for, you know, when I was coming of age, just a movie obsessive. I was like, they can do no wrong. They never hit a false note for me. Yeah,

and Philip Seymour Hoffman, when did he die? How many years ago was that? It's almost 10 at this point. You're right. I guess he's the American version of, but he would still be in like a long-came poly. Yeah.

But when he's in a long-campi and Polly or he's in Mission Impossible 3, he's the best thing about that movie. Yeah. Every time. And Philip Seymour Hoffman, also came from a pretty tight-knit theorator community and was like it's important for me to be in independent films

and be in the savages and get movies made and Daniel A. Louis doesn't really do that. That's not a criticism. It was just sort of like how they spent their time. I have a question for CR. Can you be the greatest actor ever if you never started a movie that broke into the cultural zeitgeist in a real way?

This did. This did. Not like Godfather and Godfather too. Yeah, but like what movie? I'm saying like big-ass movies, he doesn't have that one movie. Brando had Godfather, right? Where it's like, I mean, Brano had a street car and on the waterfront. But Vito Corleone became ultimately the first movie that I think for at least people under 50 that they know.

I think that there's something pretty admirable about the way the DDL has permeated the culture on his own terms. So it's like we go to like it's like the mountain comes to Monty. Hamid on him. You know, it's like, we go to him and we're like, people are still making there will be blood references. Yeah. And still saying, I drink your milkshake. And still saying, like, I've abandoned my boy. Well, so that leads to the second question.

And maybe I say people, I mean, it's just me and Sean. I mean, I don't know. Like, no, but that's the second question. Did this movie belatedly hit the cultural Zika? So this is, I think, really important. There's a movie like this every 20 to 30 years in America. Right? There's,

forgive me for this very pretentious stuff. No, I want to hear it's your birthday. Manola Dargis identified this in her view of this movie, so I'm lifting some of this from her. But Eric von Stroheim's greed and mid in the 20s is about this same exact thing. It's not that rewatchable, but it's a very important movie. Didn't have it on the list, I'll add it.

Citizen Kane is literally what you're talking about, which is a movie that when it came out, a lot of cinefiles and critics recognize it as an extraordinary work, but it was not a huge commercial success, and then eventually got forgotten pretty quickly until it was revived at a certain point. 30 years later, Chinatown comes out, another movie that is like basically

total masterpiece made by someone from outside of the United States, but written by someone who lived in California and it's telling a very similar story or similar structure. And then this movie comes along another 30 or so years later. And they're all about the same thing. They're about obsessed, crazy people

in pursuit of power who will do anything. They'll kill, they'll rob, they'll do anything to get to the top of their industry. Some of them are more vulnerable than others. But Kane becoming the most important American movie ever made took 30, 40, 50, 60 years. This is the movie of the 21st century

for me right now. I think that will increasingly be true as basically Hollywood just gets absolutely thinned out to an utterly awful state, which is really what's been happening for the last seven or eight years. So when this one, when we get to the, when we get to 2050

and we're like, what was the 21st century movies about? People are going to be like, this is like von Strohenskrege. They're not. Well, we mentioned DDL started with the voice. PTA started with Treasure of the Sierra Madre and they were just both obsessed

and threw themselves into it in all these different ways. Anderson said, I was inspired by the fact that Sierra Madre is, quote, about greed and ambition and paranoia and looking at the worst parts of yourself and just became obsessed with that. It worked. Eight Oscar nominations.

It won for Best Actor. best cinematography and nothing else best picture no country for old men best director the cohen brothers does that flip if we do that again

I think no country for old men is punished for winning in this case because it's like I think that movie's incredible I think it's incredible too and if there will be blood one there might be people who are like yeah but the thing is I watch no country for old men more

but it felt like no country for old men won the head to head which was funny because they were filmed pretty close to each other. Like literally close to each other territorially. Everything is circumstantial. The Coen Brothers did made way more movies

prior to this. They made a movie that was considered by many to be the best movie of the year that was nominated for Best Picture 10 years earlier in Fargo. Yeah.

Lost to the English patient. They adapted a best-selling book. They adapted a best-selling book. They did something that was a little bit different for them. Some would say a little bit more mature. It's not as winking

as a lot of their movies. It's not as funny as a lot of their movies. And I think that that was rewarded. You've also got to consider who was kind of pushing the narrative on that movie and who are the producers of those films and what is the awards engine. Well, also what they're

about. Just getting old, the mortality is always going to play better in the moment. I don't know. Especially for a body that's for old people. Yeah. That's a wistful movie. I think that movie had like the kind of perfect silence of the lambs.

It just satisfied so many different people in so many different ways. And it had the signature performance in BARTM. Yeah. Really good other performances from Jones and Harrelson and Brolin. Like, everything about it just kind of like worked. This is, this is like, we'll be watching this in film museums and in repertory theaters and things. Like, people will be going to this movie and thinking about this movie for as long as there are movies.

It's an interesting question. It's a little bit of the Hall of Fame statue or Hall of Fame plaque question. Yeah. But for the Coens, like, I wonder if No Country is the first movie that will be on their list. because it's obviously their only film that is one best picture. But it's like, is Lobowski the thing that people know

that most for? I would have said Fargo. Raising Arizona. Like all those movies are all kind of bigger, I think, in people's consciousness at this point.

So I don't know. Day Lewis beat Chris's guy, George Clooney and Michael Clayton, Tommy Lee Jones in the Valley of Ila. I don't understand why he wasn't

in the best actor category? Tommy Lee Jones? For no country? Yeah, for no country. Yeah, it's tough because him and Brolin kind of have split screen time. He's not nominated for in either category, but I certainly would have had him in there. Vigo Morton said in Eastern Promises.

That's good performance. And then Johnny Depp and Sweeney Todd. Bizarre. Just bizarre. It's unfortunate. I don't even understand that one. Best supporting actor, nothing from this movie. Part M. 1.

Yeah. And you got Casey Affleck for the assassination of Jesse James, a Chris Ryan favorite. Yeah. But yeah, Pitt also overlooked for Jesse James and Best Actor. I would have given him depth spot. That's a really good rapid performance. And then Best Adapted Screenplay, No Country Beat, There Will Be Blood.

So it beat them in three of the four categories, and then No Country Foreman sat out Best Actor. I think that one, director, it's to some extent a little bit more of a toss-up. I think that the adaptation of oil versus the adaptation of No Country is, it depends on what you're looking for. but this is so much more of an imaginative and immersive kind of adaptation whereas no country is essentially like

wow, Corvac McCarthy wrote a great screenplay. Close to shot for shot, yeah. That book is interesting. I mean, there are a lot of things in that book that are directly in the movie. And there are a lot of things in history. Mostly from the first to half of the book. From the first like 150 pages.

And it's like, it's a perfectly fine read, but it's cool that he used it as just like a trampoline. You know, he was like, there's a lot of stuff in here that I like that I'm just going to use to make the movie I want. Well, they was using congressional transcripts and... Oh, yeah. T-Pot film scandal, yeah. Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead, his score was nominated for a Grammy,

but was not eligible for the Oscars because he cribbed a couple other movies that he had done. Previously used music, yeah. But the score is like one of the stars in this movie. It announces him, I think, is also the... Him and Trent Reznor, I think, are the film composers of the last 15 years. They've made the most memorable stuff. $25 million budget made $76.2 million, which was more. than I thought.

I was surprised in the research. I would have guessed it made its money back and then maybe 10 more million, but that's pretty good. It's a little bit at the end of an era two of the indie shingles at the big studios. This was Paramount Advantage. This was like their mirror max.

And they didn't make a lot, a whole lot of movies after this. Our guy Raj, three and a half stars. It's just a tough beat. It's a really good review. And I really respect that he's like, I see what he's trying to do, but it's not quite it.

And I don't agree with that, but I like how it's written. And I like how he really has his finger on it pretty quickly in the same way that a lot of other critics who thought it wasn't a masterpiece right away also had their finger on it. But for him, he was just like, it's just not quite there for me. He said, There Will Be Blood is the kind of film that is easily called Great. I am not sure of its greatness. It was filmed in the same area of Texas used by no country or four old men. And that is a great film and a perfect one. But There Will Be Blood is not perfect.

And it's imperfections. It's unbending characters. It's lack of women. or in a reflection of ordinary society, it's ending its relentlessness. We may say its reach exceeding its grasp. That turned out not to be true. Yeah, like the women point is interesting.

Eileen, my wife has always given me shit about this movie because I've always been obsessed with it since it came out. And she's like, that's a boy movie. That's a movie about boys for boys. And that's true in some ways. Has he ever, has PT ever talked about that? Because it was funny, I was watching the Charlie Rose interview with him in DDL.

And like he's, Charlie Rose is like, casualty, like, no women in this movie? And they kind of just like brush by it. Well, in the screenplay, he's impotent, right? Yeah. Yeah. Which, I guess they hint at in the, in the brothel scene. I want to talk about this a lot.

It's a weird, like, why didn't they just put that in the movie moment? Also in the scene when he's baptized, then he's like, you lust it after women and DDL makes a face? You know, like, I didn't do that because I couldn't do that. Peter Travers, the Rolling Stone said it was the number one film of the decade in 2010, heading into 2010. Wasn't it in the Times? Did the Times do like a... I can't remember, probably. This is pretty good paragraph.

I'm convinced that Paul Thomas Anderson's profound portrait of an American primitive deserves pride of place among the decade's finest. Daniel DeLuis gave the best in balls his performance of the past 10 years. If I had to stake the future of film

in the next decade, on one filmmaker, I'd go with PTA. You would have agreed with that in 2009. But we were the... I mean, we were already there, right? Yeah. Like, we were already... I felt that way in 1997.

Yeah. As I watched Scotty Jay showed Dirk his car. I was like, I stake my future on this guy. There's stuff that he does as a director that even if you're not, like, studying the shots, you can feel yourself being like, oh, like I saw a movie last night,

and I felt myself turning my head and looking up because there were shots into the sky. And it's the Rosemary's baby thing, right? Where it's like looking around the door. Exactly. Like, the camera is moving. in a way that you don't even really realize it, but your body is moving with it.

This movie is the all-time version of that. It's all like very slow movements, long takes, and you're kind of like, you slip into the movie. The coolest thing is you read about the making this movie and they go to Marfa and him walking around and basically, like, was the production designer, the famous one, is it Jack. Jack Fisk.

And they're just like walking around and they just like, he just like builds the town and he like sees the movie. And like he also shot this movie in a way where it's like, certain scenes they would do in multiple locations. So they'd do a take and they would do a couple takes in one location and then he was like, well, we can

just move it over there. The way he tells the story is so unique that it allows him to sort of be outside of like linear time or linear storytelling. Like, well, they're inside and now they have to walk outside. It's like, well, he'll do it wherever he wants. But his eye is so amazing that you can look at a naked landscape

of a ranch and just be like, that's going to be the Derek, that's going to be the church. Here's the road. Here's where the explosion's going to happen. He just sees the movie. Well, it's a great idea because it's a movie about the construction of a town because of the money that the oil creates.

So if everything looks new and just built, that's good. All that fresh lumber that you see throughout the movie is like that makes sense because everything just went up. You're talking about the camera angles. The karate kids like that too, I think the All Valley Championships. They shoot it. It's looking up so you feel like you're in the crowd.

Same thing. That's a reminder. But then the great wide angle, you know, when he takes Johnny out. There's some great choices. It's like the hotel scene in Vision Quest. Totally. You see the chef? It's kind of rising higher. I come here, I turn 40 only to be mocked by you.

No, I'm... We're just trying to relate to you. You're trying to relate to your genius. Let's take a break and then we got a lot of categories go through. All right. Most rewatchable scene. Look, this movie's over two and a half hours. I tried to narrow it down.

Most of these came from kind of the second hour and a half of the movie. but so when he falls in the hole in the beginning I think you can do first 20 minutes yeah 14 and a half minutes of no dialogue it's so fucking cool just everything how they shoot that there's a lot of like how did they do this to it and how he's doing it

and how believable he seems and the broken leg and it's just pretty indelible start to a movie it's just when he breaks this leg and you're like 99 out of 100 movies you're like okay well some miracle he's going to get out of here And it's like when you watch him drag himself out of the well, you believe it.

Yeah, you don't even have to know how he got back to the compound. Because it's like if he got to have that hole. Yeah, he's fine. It's just really good like storytelling too because this guy will spend a week in a hole by himself because he just really wants silver. Yeah. That's the whole movie is about. The whole movie is about this guy who will do anything to just get a little bit of dough.

Next one is, um, I'm just skipping ahead. to when he's watching Eli dialing it up. You will be cast up and thrown in the dirt and thrust back to petition. I will bite you. And if I have no teeth, I will come you. And as long as I have faced, I will battle. Doing his whole sermon thing. Get out, ghost.

And he's just, he's got that small smile in his face. He's like, all right, this is the guy, have to pressure. And it cuts right to him kind of pressuring him to get the land. The explosion is an amazing seven minutes of filmmaking. It's weird because it's the big quote-unquote action sequence in this movie, but it really is a great action sequence. Yeah. What are you looking so miserable about?

There's a whole ocean of oil under our feet. No one can get at it except for me. It's just unbelievable. I don't know if there's a better 10 minutes of movie in the last 20 years. And it's so, so dramatically relevant because he's, he chooses the oil over the kid. Yeah. Well, and it's also the fire of hell, basically, coming to get them.

There's a lot of shit going out. Yeah, absolutely. It's so good, though. And it's another one of those, how did they film this scenes? We're like, how do they film this? This seems like an actual, like, legitimate fire. What's going on here? A lot of it is practical, for sure.

A lot of it, they really did do. It's just, it's really, really, really, really hard to choreograph this stuff. Like, there are some, some, some. some scenes that he gets, some sequences that he gets, where you're like, how did they nail the timing with, like, Karen Hines and Daniel D. Louis hugging each other in the shadow of this huge blaze. Like, there's just a couple things that are like...

It doesn't seem like there was CGI either. I think there is some with the oil coming out, but aside from that, I think it's all practical. Also, they're shooting it in West Texas in natural light. Like, they've got a certain amount of time to get this every day at the light, when the light makes sense continuity-wise. Like, it's just, it's old-school, like, movie making. totally.

That has to be one of those scenes that whoever his rivals are as directors, they were in the theater and they all had to be like, what the fuck? They're like, fuck. How is this guy? How am I going to one up this?

Jesus. Yeah. No one's like, I guess I got to flip a fucking truck. I don't know. Next one I have is Daniel slapping the shit out of Eli. It's short. Yeah.

But it reminded me of when Sean did that to you that time. That's right. Jump in. That time. How many times have I done it? When will I get my money, Sean? slap.

I'm going to bury you. That's another one of those. How did they do that scenes? Because it really seems like he's beating the shit out of Paul Dado. I think he kind of was. He's putting oil in his mouth. Yeah. And it's like, whoa.

Do you think Paul Dano was like, hey, PTA, I got an idea for another scene. I beat the shit out of my dad. You know, just so everybody knows Eli can throw for punches. Next one is Daniel and his fake brother. This is the I have a competition in me Are you an angry man, Henry? About what?

Are you envious? Do you get envious? I don't think so, no. Competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people. That part of me is gone. I want no one else to succeed.

I hate most people. It's great stuff. It's like the last day it says a movie. I've built up. my hatreds over the years, little by little. It's unbelievable stuff. I never thought of the MJ comp, but that is true. As he's doing it, you're like, oh, this guy's a complete sociopath.

That was personal for me. Yeah. It's pretty great. We could talk about Henry in a second. I'm not 100% in it on Henry. I have abandoned my child, you mentioned. Dale's baptism. I abandoned my child.

Say it louder. Say it louder. I've abandoned my child! I've abandoned my child! my child. I've abandoned my boy. Bake for the blood. I let me get out of here.

Give me the blood, Lord, and let me get away. Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Yes, I do. Get out of your devil. Out, devil. Out sin. Do you accept the church? I think the whole, the union proposal, where they cheers after they make the deal,

Henry's murder, bandy discovering Daniel, and then they go to the baptism. Like that stretch. It's amazing. Also, I really love Henry and Daniel on the beach

where he figures out he's lying. We can eat and get some women. Take him to the peach tree dams. I say get liquored up and take him to the peach tree dams. Oh yeah. And it's just like Henry's head

is in the sun, you know? And then waves shot. Yeah, I said, get liquored up, take him to the peach tree dance. I said the peach tree dance. Yeah, the Pacific Ocean, great character. Yeah. I just wrote that drunk lunch scene.

I'm very happy for you. I made a deal with union. My son is happy. Be safe. Congratulations. I'm taking care of him now. Excellent. You look like a fool, don't you, Telford?

No. Napkin over his face. So good. Just a casual drunk lunch with my deaf son. I can't hear one thing I'm saying. Two steaks. Whiskey water and goat's milk. Goat's milk.

I'll get my own drinks. I like when he gets mad when they get their drinks before him. And he's like, we ordered these before them. Some good posture with him, too, where he's kind of turned toward the table, but also to his son. And he could just lock into these physical. positions for like 90 seconds. Yeah. I wish J.D.L. would do

Sarat Live so we could do we could do Plainview goes to Sweet Green. Try to order two steaks at Sweet Green. Avocado bowl and greens? What is Naomi Osaka's bowl that she enjoys?

The basil bowl? I've done my four add-ons. Can I get a fifth? Money is no object. Next one I have is adult deaf son comes back to visit. Yeah.

Yeah. Bastard from a basket. I thank God. This makes you my competitor. I needed a sweet face to help me buy land. Tough beat for the

for HW. Yeah, just like, oh wait, that's not really my dad and this guy I thought was my dad that I'm always trying to excuse to myself like, well, it's my dad, you can't choose your parents. And it's like, turns out that's not even my dad. It was just a maniac. So, I'm curious about this. I thought about the movie a little differently, have a kid now. Yeah. The scene where the H.W. You know, explodes off to Derek. I was like, this is one of the

saddest things I've ever seen in my life. Is him, like, something bad happened to your kid and having to take care of your kid. Yeah. In the movie, I'm always torn about how much he cares for HW and how much he believes what he says at the end. Because there's that amazing scene when HW comes back from the school that he goes to and he goes back to the teacher and yeah and he takes him out into the field he shows him pipeline and then he hugs him you know daniel hugs him really tight and then hw pushes him away and he slaps him and he starts kicking him and fighting him and i'm always looking at what daniel day lewis is doing to try to figure out does he love his son who he spends all his time with is he a tool is it both like we were saying before about everything in the movie i

think it's in a lot of ways it's both i mean i think that they have in some ways a very codependent relationship of HW tries to burn down the house that Daniel and Henry are in. And Henry's bed specifically. So a lot of feelings going each way. But yeah, I think that, you know, I mean, it's also interesting to me when Daniel is kind of like trying to tear down HW at the end. And he's like, you're flapping your hands and, you know, like trying to get him to talk, like teasing him into talking.

And it's like, I think HW is kind of like already gone. You know what I mean? He doesn't seem to be devastated by that. He's trying to sort of have a good exit. But I think that it's a much more ambiguous relationship than just like this guy. It was my dad. And then he rejected me. It's like it's pretty complicated.

So my takeaway is he had two relationships that matter to him, right? The fake brother. And the fake son. And the fake son. And when he finds out the fake brother is a fake brother. He's never the same in this movie in any respect. Right. And then it just becomes about, I want to gain.

as much power and wealth and oil as I possibly can, and anyone who's in my way, they're out. So the son tries to burn down his bed. He's like, I can get this kid out of here. Go away. The brother, it's like, I'm not even going to try to work this out. I'm just going to murder him. And that's it.

He's just gone to the dark side. So I do think because they have that. But they have that flashback, which I think is intentional when he has this memory of him with his younger son. So I do think they had a real thing. Real thing was my takeaway. Adam Neiman, who does a lot of writing for the ring and wrote an amazing book about PTA that you should get.

He points out in that scene, even in that scene, Daniel leaves H.W. They're having this fun, like, teasing, like, teasing moment of love between them. And he still kind of shoves him away and walks off to the Derek in that scene. That's like, it's always, even at the best moments, HW is secondary to the oil. Right. I do think you're right, though, that there's a breaking point. Yeah, I think he loses his mind. He does have that scene

when takes him to the Lakers game and they sit courtside. Yeah, it's pretty nice. They met Kareem. Yeah. But that was cool. Yeah, and they sit next to future. Yeah.

Last one is the milkshake scene. That land has been had. Nothing you can do about is gone. Had. If you would just take this least, Daniel. Tray! If you have a milkshake and I have a straw, there it is. My straw reaches and starts to drink.

Drink. Your milkshake. I drink it up. Don't blame me, Daniel. Which I think it has to be in the running for one of the craziest endings in the history of movies. It's the last scene of the movie. It's, what, 12 minutes, 10 minutes? Eli comes out and offers a deal.

He offers Gordon Hayward and two firsts for Kevin Durant. And Sean Marks is like, all right, I'll play this out. Yeah, right. And then I'm going to flip this back. and then kill him with a bowling pin. I'll play this out. The milkshake, my straw reaches across the room, does the slurping. That's when, I mean, he's amazing in this movie, obviously, as we've discussed.

A whole other level happens in that scene, I feel like. I don't know if you guys feel the same. There's, whatever he's doing, it's like one of the craziest five minutes I've ever seen from an actor and anything. He's eating steak with his hands. He's just a maniac. It's great. he's also openly drunk, whereas he's not really that too much in the film.

Yeah. So all of the crazy line reader, the drainage, you know, like all that stuff that he does, it's not ridiculous because he's hammered. Like, he's just been drinking all night.

He fell asleep in his bowling alley. Yeah. So do you think D.D.O. would actually drink before the scenes? Oh, that's interesting. I don't know. Like, what is the method actor?

The second Telford scene is like some of the best drunk acting ever. But when when he's got, He's taking HW to get food, and he's, like, he's pounding shots, and he's just, like, look at it Tolford, and he's kind of like, his eyes are a little glassy, and his head's a little wobbly, and he's just like, I'm going to get into a fight now. Yep, yep. And then he kills Eli. Great team, right, because it's like, this is a movie about two people who are enemies, and they're fighting it out, and maybe they have some father-son vibes. Maybe there's some biblical stuff going on. Maybe it's a story about how capitalism destroys faith and how it's the 20th century bludgeoning the 19th century, all.

Or they're both equally vapid. Yeah. It's all that stuff is true and meaningful. And also it's just like there was no other way to end this movie. Like the person with the most power was always going to win. And he won. So it's... Well, you also have...

You have religion where Eli's the prophet. His whole thing's religion. Dana's all about the oil. And guess what? Oil defeats religion. Always. You just want to get... I think it supersedes it.

I mean, that's the whole... The great line in that. That scene is like, I am the third revelation. Yep. You know, he's like, I am God. I remember when you said that in 2012, I thought it was weird. Yeah. It turned out to be true.

I was like, C.R., what do you want to do about our soccer plan for 2013? He's like, I am the revelation. And then you were like, never mind. I don't think soccer's going to go anywhere. So what do we have for most rewatchable scene? I got to say, this is such like a lame... You want to say the Derek exploding? I just think it's an incredible 10 minutes.

It's breathtaking. Can I add one more scene? If I'm flipping channels, I know it's coming. If I'm flipping channels, I know it's come on, I'll always watch that. And then I'll jump out. I could add 10 more scenes, but I want to add one more scene, which I think is really, really good and underrated in this movie. Okay. Paul Sunday coming to visit, Daniel. Love it. I love that scene.

And him making the presentation about Little Boston and the Sunday ranch. I'd like it if you didn't treat me like I was stupid. Yeah. To a young actor very much toe to toe on an equal playing field. with one of the greatest actors of all time. Yeah. You know, Eli, and that performance as Eli, is so big and theatrical and ridiculous. I will gum you.

And as long as I have teeth, you know, all that stuff. And, like, a lot of actors can do that stuff. Yeah. But the composure and the mystery of that conversation, which unlocks the whole movie. I love that scene. It's not better than the oil, Derek. It's not better than the baptism. It's not better than, you know, Henry's murder and all that stuff.

But it really, really, really, really works for me. What do you have? I'm going to be boring and go with the oil Derek coming in with the Derek exploding. It's just one of the all-time how did they do that scenes. Yeah, I agree. What's age the best,

the overall theme of the movie, which we discussed, the humor of the movie that emerges. How they build the oil pit out in what, the first 14 minutes as it just kind of evolves into this real thing. I think it's just really cool

to watch the structure of that, like how meticulous that was. starting with just this hole in the ground and then boom and then all of a sudden and now there's things and there's more people and it's just very underrated. You start to understand something that I had never really thought about before.

Like how does oil come out of the ground? How does this work? Like I never really consider that. And that's the other thing is like great research move. You can feel that he's put all the time to it. But it's also just like, that's such an awesome question to ask

that PTA obviously asked. Yeah. He grew up, he was like, he's talked about how he's like, I grew up near Bakersfield. I always kind of was like, how did the hell they get this stuff out of the ground? And he showed us.

The score we mentioned, the religion oil thing, it is interesting. Like, I think religion was way not even close to being more important, or so much more important than oil. And then I do feel like in the 21st century, you could argue oil is more important than religion now. Yeah, any more. Yeah, way more. That's not a crazy opinion. No, I think, like I said, I think it's 19th century is faith giving structure to power. And 20th century is oil and industry giving money to power.

No, 21st century, it's not even argument anymore. You want to do some Robert Elswit? Oh, yeah. You want to go? This is his birthday. You don't think he gets to do Bobby Elswit? I want to go, Gordo. For Sean's birthday.

This is a gift to me. I mean, do you want to do a great shot Gordo? It's great shot Bob, and it's all. I mean, like, I mean, there's take, take your pick. I just mentioned the shot where he's decided to kill Henry, and he's in the ocean, and the wave takes the camera into, Daniel DeLuis It's fucking awesome

How the fuck did they shoot that? It's like it's like oh it's just sneaky Just one of the great water movies of all time Like I don't know Like all of this stuff There's some cool when he's on the railroad With the um With his with his uh

The young son I mean there's there's stuff there that Looks like they're just Yeah it's just It's like this in Days of Heaven In terms of like the way the West is photographed You know But that's Jack Fisk

Did the production design on Days of Heaven And he did the production design on this movie I think that there's like extraordinary beautiful vista stuff with like the Derek on fire. Yeah. It's really hard to do. And then there's also the intimate stuff of like Eli in his first church. And the camera is like on him and he turns to the old woman and the camera's moving back. And then he's pulling back and he's coming towards the camera.

Like all that stuff you don't read. You're not like, oh, what a cool wonder when you're watching that. You're just, you're locked in to the performance. There's also great cuts. Great cut Dylan, I'd say. You know, like the HW jumping off the porch and the cut right to. to Mary's hands at the wedding. Yeah, yeah.

Morwood's age the best. So he throws the first bowling ball and it just nails Paul Dan on the foot. Yeah. That would fucking hurt. I don't know how he dances away. I'm like, how did he not like break? D.D.L's like, I broke my fucking rib earlier. You're going to take him.

Staying in character. He's like, we're brothers. We're brothers, Daniel. It always always gets me watching that scene because there's just no way that didn't really hurt. There's no part of your foot that that wouldn't. You get the impression that Daniel Day-Lewis is not going to take his foot off the gas. No. I love movies with no opening credits.

Show me the title. Get me the fucking movie. Let's go. I don't need to... I'll see everything after at the end. You can tell me who's in it. Thor, Love, and Thunder did that. You know?

He's just giving me shit about movies that I don't think are good on. Thor, 11 Thunder, that wasn't good. Daniel, that shot of the wordless, Daniel leaving his son behind on the train is... I just liked how that's filmed. that how you take Ben to football practice? Yeah, just let him out. I'll be right back. He's the conductor's going to take you.

I'm just going to speak to the coach. How about Dylan Frazier as young HW, his only acting role? His IMDB is just one for one. He's pulling a mini-Cazil. There's an amazing outtake of, I mean, I think DDL really liked that kid. There's an amazing outtake of this.

It's the TILFUR, it's the second TILFOR confrontation in the restaurant. But, and D.DL, like, some extra fuck something up, and DDL actually breaks character and, like, chuckle, like, laughs a little bit. Yeah. And Dylan cracks up because DDL breaks character. And it's like, this really sweet moment where you can tell, like,

they were probably, like, him breaking characters and achievement of himself. Yeah, well, he's not like, can somebody get me a water model? But he's, you know, he definitely breaks a little bit. Then the last line I'm finished. I know, in the running for best last lines. Yeah. It's pretty. pretty

incredible script across the board we didn't even talk about his whole pitch to the towns you know and he said if I say I am an oil man

you will agree you know like all of those things are so pitch perfect supposedly he had lived at least one of those I don't know what does stand for

what stage the best I got a couple I mean we hit some we hit a lot already one of the great trailers oh yeah yeah one of the great trailers PTA one of our great

trailer makers but one of the great trailers I've ever seen I would also just say we've kind of alluded to it a couple of times, but just the ambiguity of the entire movie. Like, does Eli know he's full of shit or does he believe it? Does Daniel ever love H.W? Or is it just a sale pitch? Is Daniel actually taking the baptism or is he only doing it for the pipeline? Like, there's also, I mean, I'll save it for later. But like, there's just like a lot of stuff that's like every time you watch it, you could come away with a different impression of what's happening. Yeah.

And I also really like the fact that, like, I just noticed this this first time, I guess, weirdly, that most of the three quarters of the movie, you could relate back to him not letting Eli baptized the site, and it's basically the site's cursed. And, like, this guy is cursed for the entire movie, which is this element of, like, is Eli real? You know, like? Yeah, I mean, there were theories when the movie came out that Paul and Eli were the same person and that they're like this malevolent. force that is testing Daniel I never really bought into that it's kind of a fun way to think about the movie though you know that the way that like religion can really incur

upon the real world that's good it's not quite as good as Maverick dying in the beginning of Top Gun Maverick but that's good that they're the same person I love the Maverick theory too I what's age of the best is just like Paul Thomas Anderson just grabbing it just snatching the crown just being like every time I make a movie now you will

all pay the fuck attention like you This is, I am now at the center of American movie making. And it's crazy because these movies don't make any money. But Phantom Thread comes out and you're like, we must discuss this. I have the, I mean, we've mentioned a bunch of this stuff, but just one more, what'sage is the best, just that director run of, there was a, who knows, these guys all know each other, but it did feel like there was a little one-upsmanship. There's this Tarantino clip. Absolutely. Territino talks about this movie somewhere that's on YouTube that I saw.

he wasn't like incredibly kind to Paul Dano in this clip where he was talking about like this versus Boogie Nights which I think he loves Boogie Nights more but he was saying like after this came out it inspired him to be like I've got to step it up with my next movie and look at his unbelievable yeah that's like him totally in his bag doing all of it like I think that's him at his best at times and it's this it very clearly feels like a lot of those you know Wes Anderson very shortly thereafter is doing Grand Budapest Hotel like a lot of those people are clearly like, I'm 45. It's like CR with potting right now.

I'm 45. I got all the tools. I've learned all the tricks. I know where not to go. Every day I know where to go. Vision Quest was kind of my there will be blood. Next category. The Kid Cuddy Pursuit of Happiness Award for Best Needle Drop.

The score in the explosion scene is out of control. When did you change us to Kid Cuddy? What happened to slow ride? I changed it. After the Project X. Project X pod. Do you check out the Project X pod? I just, maybe I missed that.

Miss that part. Sometimes I call it slow ride, sometimes call it Kip Kuddy. The score during the explosion scenes out of control. It's so good. When it starts the clacking percussion, when he's carrying HW back to the shack, when it's like, it sounds like he's got like chopsticks and a plastic glass. And that's the whole score is like, click, click, click. And then it gets really big.

It just makes your heart race, which I think is so hard to do with the score. Anyway, do you guys aren't going to put. when slow ride drops on the closing credits? That is my new word. Can you imagine if he was like, I'm finished? It's like, dan it, dan it, dan it, dan, it. Slow ride. It should be like minute by minute, you know, by the doobies or something.

Like, what else? Can you always assemble that so it's like he says I'm finished and then slow ride starts? No, it would start in the background before I'll finish. Like the days of confused rides. I'll make it work. I'm finished Thanks, Greg.

We don't always have this one, but the Dracula of the musical award for Best Imitation of Real Art I think has to be the oil drilling. The oil drilling was so believable in this. I really feel like that's how they drill for oil. Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah. So, I don't know.

Cudos to them. Is oil drilling art? Maybe not. I don't know. I couldn't come up with. It's fun to work in the oil drilling. I didn't have an answer for this one the Big Gahuna Burger Award for Best Use of Food and Tray. I saw many good ones. Two steaks, whiskey water, and goat's milk is pretty great.

I was thinking, though, when he's eating the steak at the end in the final scene, trying to think of how much meat Daniel DeLuis ate as during the however many cuts they had of that scene. Because he's a method actor. He's going to eat every time, right? So did he have to, like, go throw up between scenes? I'll eat more steak. I just have to relieve myself. I'll be right back.

Hold on one second, Paul. I just have to retch again in the bathroom. I think he, I like all the whiskey stuff, but especially when he is pouring the whiskey in and giving it to the kid. And that's like, he's like path to the best thing. Yeah, the liquor for the baby bottle.

You don't see that too much these days. I've been doing it. Yeah, for Alice, I figure that's a good way to kind of get her started. Listen, micked her straight up. Late night, nobody judges. If you just want to go back to bed, nobody's going to judge you, Sean.

The Den and Thieves, Benny Hanna Award for Scene Stealing location. bowling alley so I have either the bowling alley or the Pacific Ocean oh that's good because the Pacific Ocean comes out of nowhere

in this movie you're just in the middle of nowhere and then all of a sudden it's like is that that's blue what is that it changes the color palette

yeah it's really cool is that pebble beach yeah I also with the silver mine in the beginning which is also like you can only really

be in one place here yeah right you're in hell I had the bowling alley's number one though because it reminded me of the shining and I think it was intentional. And supposedly he wanted to paint it all white,

but they couldn't mess with the house because they were trying to sell it. But that wide shot at the end really looks like the shining elevator when Shelley Duvall is looking in. When are you going to enter your stage of sitting in a hallway, just shooting furniture? Who says it already hasn't happened?

What do you think I'm doing on my vacation? What are we doing the re-shining? I can't wait. Well, there's all this footage now on the set. What's that YouTube channel? All the Right Movies or something? I followed the Twitter feed. And they had this two minutes of Kubrick just screaming at Shelley Duvall and the

DeVal talking about. I was like, whoa! And then they had this other thing of Jack Nicholson warming up for the axi. Just kind of stomping around with the fake axe. And Shelley DeVal kind of walks by him like, Jesus Christ, get me out of this movie. Yeah. Yeah. I'm ready for the reshining.

Reshining, yeah. Great Shot Gorder Award, most cinematic shot. You'd think the ocean? I think that the framing of the two of them sitting on the beach together and him looking at Henry. And Henry is almost entirely in shade. Yeah. And then his head is in the sunlight. And apparently, like, I mean, the mirrors like a famous painting.

Like, I just, I was really captivated by that shot this time. I also really like when they dynamite the well after it's exploded. And it's like him and he just points to this you guys. That's a great one. And it's like, he's on his knees. Yeah. I was going to add when he falls down the hole the first time, it's light, and then he falls kind of at the camera, but it's cool. It seems like he's falling into hell, basically.

There's a couple of cool ones when his HW's father is killed, and we see the pieces falling down the well. That's one of the shots. We're like, how the hell did they do that? But my favorite is the one I mentioned earlier, which is Fletcher and Daniel in shadow as the Derek is going up in flames. And they realize, like, we did it. Yeah, we won. basically like we're made for life now, even though what we're watching is total destruction.

CRPTA owns a vintage 1910 path camera which contains a special 43 millimeter lens. I take a lot of myself. It can be modified. Low resolution can shift colors at corners and they used it a couple times in the film

with that shot with Plain View sleeping on the train with this baby was one of them. So if you watch it, it just, that's why looks a little different. It's because of this weird crazy camera PTA has. There you go. It's my nerdiest note for you. I mean, you know, our old Grantline colleague, Liam Brown, has a piece up on Vulture today

about watching movies on this new, like the newer TVs and how like, it's weird how like home alone looks better than like a Marvel movie because it improves older films, but like the newer films almost look even shittier on these TVs. Yeah. I have to say,

watching this movie, and I can't wait to see it again in a theater at some point, but I was like, the bigger the screen, the better, and it just looks better and better as I've seen more movies in the intervening 15 years, because I'm like... It's no green screen at all

on the movie. Yeah. It's just, that's just Texas, yeah. Butch's girlfriend award for Weeklink of the film. You going after Kevin O'Connor here? I don't really have an answer for this one. This is kind of... I think this is kind of a leave-it-blank.

I mean... This isn't P-break. When are you going to the bathroom? I have answer for that. I don't have anybody written down for the Pitch's girlfriend award. Yeah, I don't, I don't, there's nothing where I'm like, man, why'd they do that? I like all the decisions they made. What's age or worst, I don't have a lot either.

I have the environmental damage from the fire. Sure. Is it what's age the worst? Yeah. I mean, there's no way that was good for any part of Texas. It was that great story about how when they were doing those sequences, the smoke was rising and moving over Marfa's, and it was getting in shots for no country for old time. Yeah, and then Columbril is at the same time.

I love that. And then Miramax, it's always kind of jarring to see Miramax in a movie. Only international distribution on this one. Oh. I don't really have any other what's age the worst either for this other than just Daniel's behavior, which I found kind of appalling. Yeah, the way that the oil industrial state

has absolutely destroyed our global lives. Yeah, that's not great. Ron Berger do flew to word for best time for a pee break. I do have an answer for this. So the other Paul Dano tells him about the oil field, right? Yeah, Paul. Yeah. There's about four minutes there where they're like, let's go check it out, and they're just kind of going there.

When they go quail hunting? Yeah, you can, I think you can relieve yourself during that one. I like that one. But a similar one to that to me is the bandy tract when Henry and Daniel go to the bandy ranch. They come to see the old man. He's not there. And the grandson is there. The grandson's there.

And then they leave and then they just start hammering in the spot so they can figure out where the pipeline's going to go. And it's just, it's beautiful. And it's incredibly shot. Great. The thing coming around to the window. That shot. That's cool. And the horse is really cool.

But then as soon as he leaves, there's about three minutes there where they're just kind of walking through the stretch of mountain. But that's where Henry finds the oil, right? Oh, no. No. Henry finds the oil in the scene that Bill is talking about. He finds the earthquake oil on top with HW. So that bandy scene is like, you get why they're doing it because he's like, this is how I will close the deal here is I know exactly where to put the pipeline.

But it's not, there's not no story. It's not once you've seen it once, you've seen it once. Let's take a break. The Mallory Rubin Award. Did this movie need a better sex scene? So the deleted scenes from the screenplay reveal that Daniel is impotent. He tells Henry, my cock doesn't work. And later when the two are consorting with prostitutes,

Daniel performs oral sex on a woman and then leaves. In the script. That's in the script. And then the baptism scene, the lusted after woman. That's why he makes the face. Did you want more from the brothel scene, Chris? I got just what I wanted from the brothels. Okay, good.

Mallory probably would have gone for more. I noticed he didn't ask me that question, Bill. Well, you get uncomfortable with this stuff. It's the best quote. I mean, the most famous quote is, I drink your milkshake. or I've abandoned my son. Or I have a competition in me. So I have that as the book of medals,

a book about medals award for Blatily Best Quarency. I have a competition in me. I have a different one that's kind of emerged for me, especially in our recent financial straits. Eli going, he's completely failed to alert me to the recent panic in our economy. What is talking about the Lord?

That's great. It's like a little Bitcoin guy. Sean, you're going with, I've built up my hatreds over the years little by little. Yeah. My favorite line reading is, Yes, I do. What is it?

I also have like all the stuff that Eli says during that first sermon where he's just like, And if I have no teeth, I will gum you. I will bash you. He's great. And he like throws him out the door. All right.

Stephen A. Smith, how does take word? What do you got, Chris? I'm not sure that Daniel's not in love with Henry or obsessed with Henry in a way that transcends like fraternal interest. in his possibly long-lost brother because there is a certain kind of betrayal that he feels not only in the moment

where he realizes he's not who he says he is, but I think also when Henry is in the brothel, there's like a lot of tension around that. I think there's a lot of like intimacy and sexual chemistry between the two of them and at the ocean. They're very, like even the way he kills him is almost like more of a tragic couple

than it is two brothers. And I just think that that's like, And interesting, it goes towards the ambiguity and the sort of mysteries of this film that I think make it rewatchable is because you can watch it and be like, what's up with that? What's up with this? What would that mean, you know, if this were the case? So you two-third committed to that take, but you're wondering, was Daniel secretly gay? Yeah, yes. During an era when you had to be secretly gay. Right. See, the second time I watched it and I watched it like twice in the span of six days, that was my takeaway. Because he's not interested in women at all at any point in the movie. He has no interactions with them.

We know from the screenplay that he was impotent, and maybe they cut that out. I think there's some intentional ambiguity with it. But more importantly, I just think he's too, I had this later for picking nits. I think he's too savvy to ever in a million years think that this was actually his brother. I think he would have been way more suspicious of it. He could have tried to track the guy way earlier. The Fondalak test where he's like, oh, you know, that house? He could have done that the first time he met him.

I think he was attracted to being with the guy, whether it was just as he needed a friend or whether there was something more. But the Pacific Ocean scene was weird. The fact that they're in the brothel and nothing happens for Daniel. And he seems kind of mad that his brother is even getting some. Now, he might have been mad about what had happened at the beach earlier. He might have been mad that he was like hitting him up for money. Yeah, like, whatever it is.

And then he ends in the end of the movie. Like, who is the guy that's with him? The close associate. Yeah, the close associate. We never see him with a woman in the entire movie. So I don't know what they're trying to say. It might just be like he chose power over sex. I don't know.

What do you think, Sean? I always just saw it as the surrogate arrival after HW is wounded in the accident and that he needs someone to trust in his life. And he feels like he can't really rely on anybody because it's become clear that he's very powerful and he has control over something that's very valuable. There's that really interesting moment where it's Hamilton, right? Is the guy?

Karen Hyne. Yeah, he asks him, are you taking Henry to meet standard? Or Union Oil. Like, he's like kind of hurt that he's no longer like the right-hand man. Yeah. What's your hottest take? I kind of insinuated this earlier, but I just think it's a

kind of a much better and more important movie than no country for old men. Yeah, I don't think, yeah. I think we all agree on that one. Well, but Chris always loved No Country. Chris turned me on a Cornyman McCarthy years ago. Yeah. And I think there was a real neck and neck feeling in 2007 where it was like, wow, we got the best movie from both of these filmmakers in the same year.

And now, well, I think No Country is great. And would be a worthy Best Picture Winner in like 87 out of 90 years. You know what I mean? It's really like among the best best picture winners we've ever had. I think this is like, I much, much, much prefer there will be blood. My hat is take is Daniel DeLewis, who I think is the most talented actor ever, cannot be considered the greatest actor ever because he never made the one movie that appealed to as many people as possible.

And if I had to do his career over again with the one, I could force him to do a movie. Along came Polly. I would have him be Frank Costello and the Departed. That's kind of interesting. I would have him be the Nicholson roll and just throw himself into it, the Boston accent. He's going toe to toe with Leo. He's in with Baldwin and Wahlberg, big commercial Scorsese movie. And he's just chewing up scenes, everything.

And I just, I wish he had one movie like that. We could be like, oh, at least we saw him in this big popcorn movie. Just give us one popcorn movie, Daniel DeLewis. Just one. Didn't he think nine was going to be a popcorn movie? Yeah, sort of. I mean, he's playing like a version of Philean. in a musical, right?

Sure. So even his version of, like, my commercial mainstream movie is a very strange musical. How about him as Starsborn with Lady Gaga? That would have been good. Hey!

Daniel Plainview as Jackson Main. Yeah. You know? Turn around! I just wanted to look at you. I do, I do want to see him in a big commercial. I was just what she had been. one casting what ifs this is the most one of the most famous ones one of the most famous casting

things i think of the last 25 years that paul dano who's in the movie as the brother had to play the other brother because they fired kelly o'neal three weeks in who was playing eli and you can read between the lines on a lot of this it just seems like not not a good actor day louis kind of chewed him up there was clear there was a problem and the experience experience was so traumatic for this guy that he never acted again. And that's what we know, Chris. Yeah, I mean, by all accounts, I mean, that he himself was like, I was not intimidated by Dail-Dal-Las.

It was like a PTA thing and it's fine. Like, I wasn't giving him what he needed. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, it's like potting with Bill Simmons. Would you rather have had... He's the greatest. We're in the room with the greatest. It seems like...

Stop. Making... Having Paul Dano play twins is the ultimate making lemonade. out of lemons, would you rather have had them not be twins and you get another young actor in that role? Yes, and we're going to be covering that in casting couch. Oh, that's interesting. I think I disagree with you, but I want to know

why you think that. We'll do it in casting couch. There was one other casting what if, though. We have a couple. So this is why I think you have to be little kids' gloves. Like, even when the first time I rewatch this and I was like, this, there's Drexler against MJ, I was doing

the whole thing. But Paul Dana, like, he didn't know he was going to play Eli until they're actually filming the movie. He's thrown into that. And you're also thrown in against the greatest actor of your generation. I'm going to call that a tough spot. I think he does quite well. Yeah, I think when you look, all things considered.

He's incredible in this movie. I'm a huge fan of his. In general, too, I think he's kind of gone on to prove that he's, like, real worthy of being in this movie. He's not a good career. I... But it's not if, like, 1998 Philip Seymour Hoffman had been in that spot. There's a whole other level that character could have gone to with, like, a all-time actor versus Paul Dana. It's a really tricky character because the character, I believe, knows how full of shit he is.

Especially, well, once you get to the end, you're like, oh, my God, this guy is what a... True huckster, you know, like, truly, like, the future is coming with the 700 Club with guys like this. And so I think you have to be kind of performative and unnatural in a way that Plain View is totally natural. Like you believe every second of Daniel D. Louis. So it's complicated. I really like Paul Dano in this. Philip C. Moffin was the original actor in mine for H.M. Telford for PTA. And then he decided he didn't want to have anyone from his old movies because he really wanted to make a statement.

It would have been amazing when Daniel D. Louis is like, when Plainview is like, I'm going to sneak into your house and cut your throat. If Philip C. Moravid would have been like, shut, shut, shut, shut up. Go fuck yourself He did write the movie with Dana DeLois of mine Hmm He found out Dana Day Lewis like Punch Drunk Love Showed him a half done script

And that was it that was on And then they found that Dylan Frazier They just found him In Texas Hang around Marfa What was your casting would have? It was PSH It was awesome

I didn't really hear about anybody else Like in the mix Right There's nothing really that many parts in this movie. Yeah. The Ruffalo Hannah Rubenac Partridge over acting board. They knew and they let it happen. Don't you call me, lady!

I come in here, I give these things to you. Give me all you got! Give it all you got! I treated you like a son! You fucking stab me in the heart! Fuck you! Fuck you! It's got to be, Get out of here, Ghost!

Get out of here, goes! That's what I say after every Doc Rivers post-game press conference. Dano really goes for... he really goes for it. Dana Day Lewis is ineligible for this category because he can't overact because of his choices.

But Dana, I do feel like that's it up a couple of times. I mean, Daniel Day Lewis, though, in the I drink your milkshake scene is... He's doing, like, a whole other version of, like, pantomime acting. Yeah. He's never, and he's also never done anything like that before. That's that guy award?

I like Jim Downey. So I had, that was who I had. I had Jim Downey with four exclamation points. Legendary S&L writer. Legendary. Head writer for years. Legendary turn in dirty work. Legendary turn in Billy Madison.

Yeah. I award you no points. Is the idea that basically Paul Thomas Anderson is like, I just love Sallner movies and he loves comedy. Yeah. So he's like, Paul F. Tomkins is in this movie too. He loves comedy. He always puts comedians in important roles.

Dan Waiter's got to be bandy, right? He's in like, what, two scenes? I love his scene. Bandy's scene is so good When he discovers him drunk on the ground Right, it's Bandy That guy's awesome

What's his name like Hans something? Who knows? Yeah All right Recasting Couch I'm going to give you two I'm going to give you Philips Seymour Hoffman

As Henry The Long Loss brother Who's not actually the brother We just get Philip Seymour Hoffman In that part Instead of Kevin O'Connor Not the ringers Kevin O'Connor

Although that would be amazing How about the ringers Kevin O'Connor as Henry Plainview. Only doing it with green screen, though. From, like, you know, like... From the void set. Yeah. All Daniel has to do to improve

is just work off ball. If he just works off ball more, let H.W drive the offense. That would be really funny if, like, Kevin's sitting on the beach with Daniel Plainvood. He's like, I really think Gobert is going to work in Minnesota.

I was thinking, like, for the people listening, Kevin O'Connor, are Kevin O'Connor, legendary, nice guy. So I was just thinking of him in the brothel with David Daylor. Thank you, Daniel. Here's a prostitute. Thank you, Daniel.

That's very nice. I appreciate that. It does open up. I mean, like, I love Verdo, but Plainview and O'Connor would be a great mismatch. The true mismatch. Yeah. Just Plainview, just getting furious at him and trying to hit Kevin. Rudy Gober gets played off the court in every postseason.

There will be mismatch. Oh, that'd be great. We should tell them to do that as a special theme one. So recasting Hoffman, Hoffman as Henry, I think, would have been really cool in a cool point of Hoffman's career. So just, let's just, can we just talk out the Dano part if he just stays as the one brother,

but they recast the other one? But is he saying as Paul or Eli? I'm keeping him as Paul. I'm recasting Eli. I'm just going to throw a couple names at you. Okay. I think 2007. Ryan Gosling.

So that's, is, when's drive? 2011, I think. So it's like, he's, he's pretty young. I think he is too much of a modern actor. Okay. Ryan Gosling doesn't really do period movies because he's too much like, I think he acts like he was raised on the streets in New York, but in fact, that's not where he's from.

Leonardo DiCaprio. Too much. Too old. Also, way too. Part of the genius of this movie is that you're never taken out of the movie because you're like, Oh, look who it is. You know? Keith Ledger.

Interesting. Between broke back and Dark Night. Maybe a little too beautiful. One of the things that's really good about Eli's character is, I think, in her review, it was either Ebert or Manola Dargis described him as pudding-faced, which I thought was really mean and perfect about how Eli looks in that movie. Because he can't be like a, Heath Ledger was a beautiful man, you know? Where's Casinar, casting couch, Michael Sarah.

as he like. It's pretty funny. Ghost, can you just kind of get out? I think he would have been better as Paul. Yeah. Ghost, can you kind of get out? Jonah Hill four years later would be intriguing.

This was probably the part Jonah Hill would kill somebody to actually play. Again, it's like, Jonah is so modern. Too much baggage with Jonah. He's so, like, such a contemporary person.

So I think we landed in the right spot with Paul Dana. I just want to talk it out. Is there anybody else? I think Ledger would have been amazing. I'm trying to think if there's anybody else from that general. I mean, like, it's weird.

It's like, I'm thinking about, like, Emil Hirsch was kind of coming up around that time. They were both in Girl Next Door, right? Like, who else was in? He's too little. Jesse Plemons? Ben Foster. Oh, Jesse Plemons. Yeah, too early for him.

Jesse Plemons might have been a little young at that time, but he's the right kind of actor for sure. Tim Riggins? Just anybody from Friday Lights? Yeah. Yeah. What about Adrian Grenier? That's that worst case scenario. He's just wearing a sweater.

All right. We're behind on pace. Half-Fast Center Research, we'll zoom through this. PTA said, I Drink Your Milshake, was paraphrased from Albert Fall, former Secretary of the Interior, U.S. Center from New Mexico. Congressional investigation of the 1920s teapot dome scandal,

and that was when he used the word milkshake, like in this, like, aggressive way. And that's how. The same metaphor. the same. He took that and blew it out into the DDL thing. We mentioned the fact that no country for old men was filming so close that they could find the smoke is just an amazing tidbit with this movie. Yeah.

These two movies that are about to go head to add in the Oscars really for the next 15 years and beyond town. They're right next to each other. Hard film to finance apparently. It took them two years to get financing. Ended up like tripling its money. We mentioned some of this that the end of day Lewis did. one of the things he did was he read letters from laborers

and studied photographs from the time period to prepare. What a fucking lunatic he is. It's like Chris's second spectrum. Looking at Embed post-ups. You mentioned Doheny? So they filmed that last part of the movie at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, which is pretty famous.

Is that on Redfin? That was Doheny. I'm always looking for it. Doheny owned that mansion. There's a lot of Doheny-Vers. is Daniel's stuff that the fact that it was filmed the Greystone Manor, they're both from Fondelac,

Wisconsin, they both worked in Kansas, they both did Manning for oil business. Did his dick work? Can't find that. He's famously believed to have been in maybe involved in the mysterious death of his son and maybe his son's friend slash lover.

There's a very, there's a great book called West of Eden about basically the development of power in Los Angeles in the in the 19th and 20th century by Gene Stein. It's an oral history. It's an oral history book length. Really good if you care about L.A. And he was in the

teapot dome scandal which is where they got the milkshake. So there's some stuff. He definitely inspired. Apex Mountain. Dino de Louis. Yep. I think so. This is the first one in a while that we've done where I think

that there's a couple of Hall of Fame plaque. And so it's Interesting. I think Apex Mountain, yes, for Paul Thomas Anderson. I think this sets up the next 20 years of his career. Well, that was what I wanted to ask you both is, is it the first movie in the first line of his obituary? Yes. Yeah, I think it is too. It's not for the obituary. I'll write about him, though. So it's not Boogie Knights. It is for me, but I think for in the obituary, it'll be there will be butt.

I get the impression that this movie is more wanted than Boogie Nights at this point. I think he has one more that might steal the spot. That's what I was going to say, has it not been made yet, the movie that will be his movie. Apex Mountain for oil? No. Okay. What is that? How about Apex Mountain for, what's the Apex Mountain for oil?

For oil? I don't know. Like oil in movies, maybe. I'm going to say the Dallas, the TV show. Oh, that's a good one. Is that Dynastair or Dallas? Truly have no idea. Syriana?

Apex... It's hard because Apex... It's like there are a lot of more notable... Like, the Exxon Valdez spill may have been Apex Mountain. Bill, what does Apex Mountain mean? So, I don't know. For your birthday, I'm gonna tell you.

Was this the Apex Mountain for the air of modern, sprawling, outdoor, middle of nowhere movies? Because you have this, you have no country for old men, you have the assassination... Of Jesse James. You have...

Brokeback Mountain. Uh-huh. So you just mean Westerns? Movies that are set outdoors? Modern outdoor sprawling movies. Yeah, that's all I got. Sure, yeah. Okay.

Paul Dano? I mean, I think being the Riddler. My guy was just a Riddler. Yeah, I think probably being the Batman is his Apex Mountain. I still like him in Little Miss Sunshine the most. I think he's amazing in that movie. He's good a lot. I think that movie's awesome.

Apex Mountain for Faces Covered in Oil? Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. How about just faces covered in some sort of, of concealing stuff. Still Predator? Where he runs his hand

down the spike and shows the oil on his hand, that's what I do every time I publish a blog. It's been a while since you I know. How about private bowling alleys? Apex Mountain?

Apex Mountain for bowling alleys? Private bowling alleys. Oh. I feel that we perhaps don't know the answer to that because who knows what really takes place in some of the private bowling alleys in this world.

I remember I was in Vegas once with my friend Will who's a guy who knows people. And at 4 in the morning, we went to somebody's house. Let's hear more about Will. Well, he's one of my most fascinating friends. Took me to this place, and it was this

Vegas, like, mega street. Did that where you guys went? They had a bowling alley. Get liquored up. There was this, like, three-lane bowling alley, and I'm like, what the fuck is going on? It was in, like, this penthouse part of one of the casinos there. It's like, just bowling alley?

Oh. It's pretty cool. I think there's a whole private bowling alley scene going on. a bowl? Should I get one? Yes, you should. Definitely. You like to, you a bowl. I like to bowl, but I do like to bowl. I get competitive. Oil well explosions, yes.

Feeding liquor to a baby in a movie. I'm trying to think of a better feeding liquor to a baby scene. This is probably the peak. No? I can't, I mean, like, there's a couple of kids that I think could have done, like, used a shot of whiskey here and there. Like, first, like, in the Exorcist. give Reagan a couple of poles

maybe she would have chilled out I don't think that's how exorcism works Is this Apex Mountain For the my wife died during childbirth excuse That can't be proven It's never been done better It's not his kid

Who's challenging that in 1908 That's so sad to hear about your wife I don't like to talk about those things I don't like to explain myself Any other apex mountains I'm ready to go to Hall of Fame plaque. Was this their Hall of Fame plaque movie? Dana-Daleis, yes.

Yep. For me, I think PTA, it's still Boogie Nights, but I think most people would say there will be blood. I agree. I think it's this. I really, really thought long and hard about basically forcing you to do the master and forcing you to listen to me Bloviate about what the master means on this podcast. We can do that at some point.

45s are around the quarter. I'm still not there with the master. I need to watch it a couple more times. Chris and I saw it at midnight at the arc light the night it came out. And we walked out. It was a packed house. 2.30 in the morning. Yeah.

And we were all converted. We were like, God is among us. And his name is Paul Thomas Anderson. So. Best racehorse name? I like Get Out Ghost. Get Out Ghost? Yeah.

That's a good one. I wrote a couple of them down. The bandy tracked. I think my son and my partner HW would be a really good horse name. I have milkshake, Plainview, plain view, good race first name.

Peach tree dance. And the third revelation. That's really good. That's awesome. Yeah. Third revelation wins. Picking Nits. How did he crawl back after he broke his leg in the well? It's not even a picking neck. American ingenuity. You're just supposed to credit that you know he would get out of that situation.

But I still, could we have used a wide shot of him crawling for two seconds? What do you think Daniel Plainview would have made at the Great Resignation? You know? Picking it, why didn't the orphan have a mom? I mean, she died in childbirth. Yeah. So she literally did die during childbirth. And it's him and his partner, basically.

Yeah. Mention the Wooden Daniels sniffed out the fake brother thing. This is my biggest one. Why didn't Eli age during the movie? We spent like 25 years, 22 years, something like that, and he looks exactly the same in 1927. I think we are introduced to him, though, in 1911. Okay, he's still 16 years.

Why does he look exactly the same? But change his hair, a little gray in the sides, anything? Mustache? I had a great experience where I had lunch with someone yesterday who I hadn't seen in four years, and they said, you look exactly the same. And I was like, oh, that makes me feel great. As I get older, I look exactly the same.

I miss 2015 beard. 2015 beard, Sean, was I think my favorite. I'm going full mustache now. That's where we're headed. We're going to plainview mustache. Yeah, why not. Plainview mustache. Much to my child chagrin.

Take Chris to a brothel and don't get a cross-be for yourself. I don't like to talk about those things. Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all blackcaster, untouchable. This is an untouchable, I think. I love the idea of a blackcaster. That would be fun. Kevin Hart's developing. Better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treo,

Catherine Hahn, Steve Buscemi, Sam Jackson, J.T. Walsh, or Philip Baker Hall. God damn, Daniel! Working with super oil, man. Fucking Derek. Obviously, the answer is Wayne Jenkins. Philip Baker Hall, I think, needed to be in this movie. And I'm sad he wasn't.

Burnthall, as the Cieran Hyne's part, would have been fucking incredible. You know? Are you going to meet Union Oil without me? I got these fucking crabs here. They were real expensive. I think Steve Bouchemey would have fit like a glove in this movie too.

I had Bouchemey as the fake brother. He would have been great. Yeah, that wasn't great. But could Philip Baker Hall have been the guy who he could have been bandy. He could have been, but he also could have been the guy who turns down the deal with Daniel

and then he's tormenting him. At the lunch. Oh, yeah. That guy. The standard oil guy. The standard oil guy. That could have been Philip Baker Hall. Why are you saying that?

He's like, Daniel, I'm a simple man. Daniel, I'm a simple man. I enjoy butter in my ass and just hot oil. Hot oil. Just one Oscar who gets it, Dana Day Lewis. Yeah. Probably in answerable questions. We covered a couple of the ones I want to do for this.

I do have this one, though. Is Dana-D-Lewis the best facial hair actor ever? Who's had more varied facial hair? I was thinking maybe Redford's had a couple different looks, but not. Daniel-D-Lewis, like, each one feels different. He's had mustaches. He's had like the gangs in New York one. They did the Lincoln with the no mustache, just the chin strap.

He's kind of done it all with facial hair. You should go Lincoln. That should be weird. Yeah, do the Lincoln, Sean. Do that for your 40th birthday. What is the link in? Just the chin jaw beard But no mustache

I see, okay I'll consider that That'd be cool Imagine if I just rocked that for five years It's a little Amish Any other in answerable questions We kind of hit everything Why does Daniel hate standard

I mean he immediately sells the $150,000 The Coyote Hills one right? Yeah But that one's not that valuable I guess he just gets mad because he's like You should take care of your son There's something else going on He's got the pipeline idea

early on in the movie, but he's got some sort of grudge with Standard. And we know he's like a, he's a rising figure in the space. There's that scene where the guy comes off the train and he's like, you guys are a real family business, you know,

and like, so he's becoming a person, did someone wrong him from Standard at a certain point? And he's like, you guys should go east. East is the play, you know? See that there's a backstory. It's something unexplained.

Because David Worshavsky is like, so confused as to why this guy's going to cut his throat. Best double-feature choice. with this movie. So I picked no country for old men. It's a good one. Put them together. Let's spend a lot of time in Marfa.

I was going to say citizen Cain. Although you could also, I think another good one would be Treasurer of Sierra Madre since that's what is the right answer. I think it's Chinatown. Good one. Interesting. Good one. I think that's the, those are the movies that are really in conversation with each other.

Carradicade Kid 3? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Terry Silva, the perilous for Terris Silva and Daniel. See the ponytail guy? Yeah. Yeah, I like him.

He's good. Top Gun Maverick. That should be the answer for this every time. Bernthal always wins that one category. The Top Gun Maverick wins double feature. The Andy and Red Zawantene Award for what happened the next day. I have the bowling tournament had to be resurgent. I was wondering like, what's the, chalk outline?

What is the Butler think when he walks into the bowling alley? Is he just like, this again? Or is he like, Jesus fucking Christ? What the fuck? That guy's dead! I like the idea of Daniel having done this to like 20 previous associates. You know what's an unremarked? We haven't really talked about it is the fact that in that scene he reveals that he's been talking to Paul the whole time.

He's like, Paul's doing quite well for himself. Paul's got Wells coming in and Paul was the one who told me about you. That is an unanswerable question, though, is like, did Paul do the right thing by destroying his family? I mean, his family seems like a bunch of losers, honestly. That's more of a nitpick. Why was Paul? You think Abel seemed cool? No, Mary.

Oh, yeah, she's... Why was Paul so willing to destroy his family as a good... I'm sure he had to fucking grow up with Eli. Right. Obviously, you'd like, let me narc this guy out. The Kane and Abel thing, and Abel being his father's name is very apparent. But... But why wouldn't he have wanted...

If he did feel like there was oil there, was there... There's a better way for him to get money out of it. Yeah, that ain't understand that. So he got five grand out of something that was worth... $20 million. I think the implication is that he learned the oil business in the process and then found his own. Not for Daniel. I think what Daniel doesn't like about Eli among a lot of things is that he just wants something for nothing.

And that Paul was actually like, I want to create my own thing. Right. Right. What piece of memorability would you want from this movie? I think I have the winner, but I'll let you guys go first. I like Daniel's flask. I was thinking flask hat would be good choices. That is a good one.

I initially was like, I wonder if the real Henry's diary would be interesting. Oh. Could read. Just to read it? Yeah, just to check it out. See what that guy was getting up to. Yeah. No, no peach tree dance for him.

No. How about Daniel's long pants, swim trunks? Those are great. I have the bowling pin. The actual bowling pin that he kills Eli with would be a good one. With the blood on the side of it. What about the cross that Eli's wearing when he comes to visit him at the end? is Jesus peace

Yeah That's a good one That's a good one too Coach Finstock Award for Best Life Lesson Uh Oil defeats religion I don't know

Yeah Stop worrying about dominating everybody I have to remind myself of this You guys are just taking overall messages from the film Not coming from like the text God forbid we interpret art here on the podcast

Oh you know I'm just curious So you say don't Do you guys are very competitive people Do you watch this movie And think am I poisoning myself and the earth because of this thing inside of me

It's cross my mind Definitely cross my mind Bill no Bill you're not in no self-reflection whatsoever on this one Just like keep steam rolling along Chris I've built my hatred up over the years A little bad little Having you here gives me a second breath of life

Um You get murdered Be careful Give me some money, Bill. I have a competition to me. I want no one else to succeed. Is it in the running for put it on my tombstone? I'm sure Carrie will love that.

The underrated... The end of the trailer that Chris referenced earlier is when he does the exhaust laugh or he's like... After he says the line, which just totally makes line. It's like, so he's completely crazy or he's just trying to get a reaction from Henry

or he thinks he's funny? Like, it's just unclear. Who won the movie? I have the same answer every time I'm on the show. Is it the director? It's the director of the film. The writer and director

and producer and person who conceived it and changed his career and maybe movies. Can I make the case? Of course. For Henry? For, yeah. Bandy?

I would just say that it just wouldn't be the same movie. and I don't know, I think it would have been important. I think of Russell Crow or any number of people had played Plainville. I like Russell Crow. I think it would have been a really great movie, a really important movie. I think it's a... What if it was Guy Pearce?

It could have been dozens of people, you know? It's, there's something very singular about this, you know? I would just go as far as to say it's like 50% of the responsibility or 50% of the accomplishment. What if it was Damon Wayans? In our all black, there will be blood remake? Yeah. I wish we'd done a rewatchable is after the last dance because we could have won the documentary and Shaughn't have been like Jerry Krauss. No, I would have said Jason.

That's the thing. It's like Jason and your group together. It's good. I get the PTA case, but I think it's Daniel Day Lewis. I wonder what PTA would say. Well, you know he would be magnanimous and say. Because I think this can't be a great movie. without the actor and the performance,

which is so singular and so unlike anything else. But can Philip Seymour Hoffman be in this movie and it still be one of the greatest movies ever made? I think that performance has to be the piece of it. I really do. It really is. I don't know because he's in every shot. I can't separate it.

Like he's in almost every shot of this movie, so it's like he is as much a part of the movie as the settings and the lighting and the music and everything else. We always compare movies to sports too much on this podcast, but I think in this case, the sports analogy is like, it's just like one of the great one-man shows. And I know there's like the writing, I get it.

But Paul Thomas Anderson is not the Phil Jackson to his MJ. He's more than that. He is five MJs to one Scotty Pippen because of all of the things that he does to make a movie like this. I get it. He's basically all the other Bulls at the same time. But it's not Bill Cartwright. I just don't think this is the same movie with any other actor.

I really don't. I think that's part of, like, I think even for the rewatchability of it. Mm-hmm. But I get your point because it announces PTA as like, I am the anointed one now. It's a good argument. I don't really know the answer. I just think of this as... Only you two plain views would think that there needs to be a definitive answer to this question.

Well, that's unfortunately, it's a category in the rewatchable. My flaw is that I play the game and I'm just playing the game. I'm staying between the lines. I'm going to go DDL, but it's not... Can I, oh, I have the Trump card for the argument. Okay. I think there are other directors who were PTA's contemporaries who probably watched this movie, and they were like, that were amazing.

But deep down, we're like, I can do that. I can do my version of this. I can beat this movie. If you give me Daniel Day Lewis? No, just like, I can do a movie as good as that. I don't think there's any actor alive who went to that movie and was like, I'm as good as that guy. Well, that's an interesting one because if you talk to, like, we've talked to a hater about this movie before.

Like, there are a handful of filmmakers who regard this movie as, like, the end-all and the all and the last 20 years. But Tarantino and Cohn brothers and Fincher and Christopher Nolan were not like, I can't do that. That's out of my grasp. You're telling me that John Bernthal watches this film and says to himself, I can't do that? Yes. I don't think so. I think he says, let's remake it today. I'll be Daniel.

That would be the Netflix eight episodes series. Yeah, that's right. Burnthal. Well, we're getting American jiggle up from him. This is my son of my partner, H.W. And we're a family business. I can't wait for him to talk to his pimp in American jiggleau, Bernthal. God damn!

Five assignments of one week, Jesus! I don't think there's the right answer. I think it's probably the single hardest who won the movie we've ever had. Oh, that's interesting. Because it is the most important movie for different reasons for two people who are also two of the most important people in movies in the last 30 years. I would love to see a statistical breakdown as to how often the director wins the movie versus the star. I think it's disproportionately the star, right? I think when I'm on the show, I push hard for the director.

And we're with you. Yeah, but this one in particular, I mean, you're talking about the handful of people, right, that are all like my favorite. favorite directors, right? They looked at this movie, Fincher and Quentin and, and West Anderson, all these people. But there's no movie without those people. Like, the amount of ideation, decision-making conception that happens at that level for these tour-driven movies, of which there are fewer and fewer, is so far beyond one guy who performs in the movie in terms of their importance.

I agree that Daniel D. Louis is basically like on another planet. He's like a spiritual being at this point as far as acting goes. We couldn't find one person to compare him to and feel good about it. But he's still just a player in the game. And like the director build the game. And he's a writer director. He's not just like a guy who comes in and gets hired. He went into the bookstore and looked at oil and was like, okay.

The flowering of the ideas that's taking place. It's possible Daniel Lerlois doesn't even act for five years if he doesn't get a call from PTA. He did win the Oscar out of the two of them. He did, but was that just? I'm not so sure. Might have just been bad timing for Paul Thomas Anderson. I think it's a really hard one. I will say, though, if we all agree,

this is the best movie Daniel DeLuess ever made and acted in, and he's one of the best actors ever that counts too. We'll never know. Let's call Daniel D. Craig, what do you think? Can we get him on the decision vote? I hate that. I'm always the deciding vote.

You're not deciding. because we already won. We're two to one. We beat Sean already. I think... Happy birthday. Happy birthday you lost. You both made great cases.

I think Sean makes the more compelling case, in my opinion. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I think it's the more compelling case. That's actually even better. I don't even care if I win. I just feel good about having made the best case. Sucking up to him on his birthday. Maybe it's who won the movie in the moment, but who wins the movie 50 years from now? PTA probably wins 25 50 years from now, right?

Well, you know, what's going to be really interesting is to see whether or not... he ever does, can neither get funded for or does another movie that's on this scale. Because I think his movies have been getting a little bit smaller and a little bit more intimate over the last three or so, right? Liquorish, Phantom and Inherent Vice are all, I don't know. I guess maybe because there's more comic elements to some of them too. This one feels self-consciously big. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a big statement. It's a big, they're big set pieces. It's a very expensive movie. It's $25 million. So, I don't know. I like the point you made, which is that most people who walked out of the movie, the first time we're like, wow, Daniel DeLewis,

holy cow, he's amazing. But then as time goes on, you see, this is Paul Thomas Anderson's achievement. Well, for my 50th birthday, we did Shawshank. For Sean's, we did, there will be blood. Yeah, Chris, you're turning 75 soon. Chris turns 60 in two weeks. I'm older than you now.

I wonder if, I wonder if Heat 2 will be coming out right around when you turned 50. I turned 45 this year, but that's not, I don't think that's an important birthday. It's a perfect time to do black hat. It's not unimportant. I don't want to choose. Let's start giving some thought. What did you do for your 45th birthday?

Do you remember? I don't remember 40 and 50. And I hope to remember 60. Do you think when you're 60, you'll remember 50? Probably not. I don't remember much about 50 because I was overserved. There will be blood. It was a pleasure.

Happy birthday, Sean. Thanks, Bill. I was at your 50th, actually. I don't know if you remember this, but you murdered him. I killed the guy. This podcast was produced by Craig Horacek, and we will see you next week on The We Watch.