The Watch - 2018’s Great Wall of Culture | The Watch (Ep. 316)

Episode Date: December 20, 2018

Chris and Andy add six people to their Great Wall of Culture whose performances and contributions they feel defined 2018. Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio, it's the most wonderful time of the year. It's Andy Greenwald! Let's make podcast magic. Every year, Andy and I essentially do our people of the year. It's called The Wall. We do this because we, the two of us, is shoe lists.

Well, this is also a bit the Greenwald committed to. years ago. I did. Yeah, this is, the wall is definitely your thing. I love it. I love your vision. I love your imagination. You have like a kind of childlike imagination.

But it is, it is not an elevator pitch kind of thing. I'm the boy at the end of St. Elsewhere being like it was all in my snow globe. So the idea is basically... I just spoiled a 30-year-old medical drama. If one could imagine a wall... If one could imagine a wall.

It's your concept. Why don't you explain it? We didn't want to do a top 10 list. on this podcast. Which we do anyway. No, we don't. Oh, then we started doing one with Sam because he's our ombudsman.

Right. So, but we didn't want to do a, we didn't want to do a series of top ten list. We do a TV top ten list. But we thought because we sort of are far ranging in our cultural conversation

on this podcast, that conversation ranges from Star Wars trailers to Marvel trailers. That's pretty much about as far as we range. Mandalarians to Skrull and Cree. There's occasionally a couple of couple other things we cover. So we created this concept of the wall, like the Wall of Fame, like

just people who were on the wall. And by the way, I didn't just come up with it because I was trying to combat chartical fatigue. It was because early on when people or ideas or characters that we cared about came up, whether I think early candidates were, obviously Christine Bransky was among them, but the Jason Bourne films. Joan Allen was someone I remember constantly saying, like she's up, she's on our wall. Like she's, these are the people who we look to. Yeah. So this is that time of year. And we have each gone off to our meditation chambers and come back with three, I believe they're all individuals this year who made 2018 better for us, culturally speaking, people who we, whose performances we enjoyed or whose contributions we appreciated, who on some level maybe, if you squint, their triumphs were say something about the year in culture or about the year in two days.

dudes. Yeah. I mean, I think that whenever we do these, I look for, and I think you do too to some extent, people who have been particularly active this year. Now, that's a fallacy because lots of times things are released this year that may have been shot or recorded years ago. But I like when it feels like someone is a constant presence in the year. And I think that that govern...

Right from beginning to end. Yeah, and maybe did different things and tried different stuff. You know, and I think that that's always... It's such an exciting time to be making shit right now. that when you see somebody who's working with interesting people, trying to say interesting things about the world, doing that kind of thing. That's always the person that I respond to.

Otherwise, it's just like I'm just going to put Vince Staples on every year. Oh, is he on this year? No, but he could be. But he's on the wall. He doesn't need to be back on the wall. From a year before. Yeah. So we're going to get into it.

We each pick three people. I'm going to start this off in a non-traditional way. The person I'm going to put up on the wall. Chris is pointing to him. himself. No. No. I put you on the screen door. I'm not committed. Maybe, I'm just going to say this and this might be my, he gave might be my favorite performance of 2018 in what probably is my favorite movie of 2018. Of the four movies you saw. By the time this airs, I'll probably will see six. Hugh Grant.

What? Hugh Grant's performance. Because he's so anti-Brexit, too? Is he? Good for him. You guys do little research. He's got an incredible Twitter feed. Amanda Dobbins turned me on to it. I don't follow his Twitter feed.

Yeah. He's just all pure, like, vitriol about Brexit. Great. So he's even better. Okay. This is purely off of Paddington, too, which is... Jesus Christ. Probably the greatest movie of 2018.

His performance in it is sublime. Anyone out there, whether you are blessed with children or not. Is this Paddington? Is it like... A radical reimagining of Paddington is about like the people around Paddington or is it just like this is the bear? Chris, what's your what's your Paddington? Every generation has there. I get Paddington and Winnie the Pooh confused.

I don't remember. Like what's the difference between the two of them? Winnie. I'm so disappointed in you. Winnie the Pooh. Uh-huh. Is a whimsical series of stories that A.A. Milne told to his son, Christopher Robin. And that guy is a fucking honey thief as well.

Yeah. Like Chris Ryan when he's making recipes, always adding a little too much honey. That's a callback to a couple weeks ago. Winnie the Pooh and his friends are stuffed animals that are alive and have very gentle adventures together. That's right, Tigger and Eeyore, right? That's among them. Yeah. Kanga, Roo.

Piglet. Oh, yeah, piglet. You want to have this conversation with me? And then what's up with Paddington? Paddington is a bear that was lost in a train station and brought home by an English family. Okay. Listen, I'm not going to pretend I'm some Paddington. truther. I don't

care about this bear prior to these movies, but Paul King took this and ran with it and made a delightful, now two movies, I hope there's another one. And look, here's what I want to say about it. It's great. I'm not the only person who has said that Paddington

too is legitimately a fantastic and entertaining movie. It has Sally Hawkins in it. It has Ben Wishaw doing the voice of Paddington. But Hugh Grant in this second movie is on one. It is maybe the performance of his career. Brendan Gleason gives a career

topping performance in this as well, by the way. I got to say, I doubt that. I don't know. He plays... He plays... He plays...

He's better in Battington, too. He plays an ordinary prison cook named Knuckles. Are you with me? What I want to say, and I'm speaking for all the Daddingtons who listen to this show,

maybe some Mommingtons as well, it is a fucking desert out there for children's entertainment. Yeah. There is a lot of... Moise bullshit, and it's trash. Or it's Pixar movies, where people who don't have kids are like, oh, how charming, it's for families.

Fuck off. That shit gives you mental epilepsy, even if you don't have epilepsy. Like Incredibles, too. If you're making a movie that begins with a strobe seizure warning, it's not for kids. Right. That's not for kids. Okay? This movie is gentle and clever and presents a beautiful,

multiracial vision of London, which I imagine is the case. Maybe you were there more recently. Maybe it... For sure. Hughes to your vision of it. It's truly sweet and worthy of a full family entertainment.

But Hugh Grant in this, he's so devious and fucking funny. Is he the villain? He's the villain. Okay. And what I'll say is, tell me if I'm right about this or if I'm wrong about this,

but do you remember when Hugh Grant popped four weddings and a funeral, huge deal, stammering, stuttering, charming. Just watched Notting Hill on a plane the other day. And Notting Hill. He was sweet and charming and very British in this rom-com lead.

And then, like, a year later, he gets arrested for soliciting a prostitute. Everyone's like, that's weird. That's discordant. How could this proper English chap be doing such gully business in Hollywood? Years pass. I think it's pretty much out there that Hugh Grant's a pretty gully dude in his real life. I think he has many, many children by many women. and just likes to have a bit of a laugh.

You know what I mean? And it's kind of wonderful when people who are typecast as one thing are suddenly allowed to flower to be what they kind of always were. And the closest version of that, American version of it, not in terms of scale of ability or length of career,

but like Tofer Grace being like, well, I could continue to be a milk toast sitcom lead or I could be a fucking Klansman. Right. Because there's something about me that goes one way or it super goes the other way. And he's doing that. And Hugh Grant is really embracing that.

He's in this show of very British scandal, too, where he also delivers just a really oily performance. And he is a treat. That's a great pick. I'm going to match your 90s icon with my 90s icon and talk a little bit about the big homie Ethan Hawk. Great. Just like, I feel like I've grown up with this guy. You know, obviously ever since Reality Bites and Dead Poets Society and even going all the way back to the explorers, like I've been seeing Ethan Hawk on screen since I can remember. You guys had your twins around the same time, too, right?

Right? What a year for Ethan Hawk, man. He may get nominated for Best Actor for First Reformed, which is really quite something else. It's such an incredible performance. It's a throwback to, obviously, these Robert Brassonne movies, but it's also a very contemporary, very modern movie about a man who is allowing his environment

and the digital world to slowly drive him mad. He plays a priest who's sort of at the end of his rope, who's keeping a journal for a year. And I don't actually like talking too much about what happens in first reform because it's really one of these movies you have to see to be believed. But that's not the only thing he did this year. He also directed a movie called Blaze, which was really cool. Oh, right. So you saw that.

Yeah, yeah. And he also did, he's like one of my favorite examples of making the one for them, one for me stuff work. So, you know, he'll be in the purge, but then he'll go do a bunch of other stuff off the purge, which is the only, like, which you could only do if you were appearing in the purge to make happen. And so often we see really cool actors go off and do Marvel movies and they'll be like well what I really want to do is this, this and this.

But then they just get sucked up into that stuff and they never really like there really isn't any other iron non-iron man Robert Downey performances. Or even Mark Ruffalo. Yeah or even like Ruffalo's in spotlight but like I mean like he doesn't do a lot outside of just doing green screen stuff. What?

They knew Robbie! And so Hawk is just a super industrious very curious artist in the modern world. So not only is he direct his own film with Blaze, he appears in first performed, where he might get nominated for an Oscar for that, but he also just does like a really delightful movie

called Juliet Naked. I've heard great things about this too. This is a trifecta of movies I haven't seen but would like to. Where he essentially plays a variation on himself. Chris O'Dowd plays a guy who's like obsessed with this sort of lost rocker played by Ethan Hawk. And one night, Rose Byrne emails this guy, this rocker out of nowhere.

Roseburn's character is married to Chris O'Dow's character. And she reaches that to this guy, kind of on a lark. And they wind up striking up this relationship and falling in love. And it's actually this Nick Hornby book. And it's just really, really delightful, sort of somber, but still very funny romantic comedy. And so what a year for him? These three projects, also just like a great New Yorker, really good sense of humor about himself, an incredible Bill Simmons podcast guest.

an incredible big picture podcast guest. So I just feel like I've had a lot of Ethan Hawk in my life this year. He goes on the wall. So you know what Ethan Hawk has graduated to this year in the culture in a way that I didn't appreciate? A friend of ours recommended Juliet Naked as a movie to my wife that you'd watch and we could watch together and enjoy. And we haven't gotten to it yet. It's on our cue.

And when she brought it up the other day, she said, why don't we watch that movie the Gina recommended? I said, oh, why do you want to watch it? And she said, I like Ethan Hawk. It's just like that level of like, yeah, yeah. If he's in it, I'm going to enjoy my stuff. People are into them. It's funny.

It's the long career where you end up something like that. That's right. And yet, he's still a young man, isn't he? He's older than us, I think. Oh, damn it. All right. Who's your second person? My second person is a young singer-songwriter named Phoebe Bridgers who released an incredible album.

For me, I found it the talent of last year called Stranger in the Alps. It was re-released this year with an absolutely soul-shattering cover of a Tom Petty song called It'll All Work Out. this is a year when I just feel like not just her talent, but her personality sort of blossomed in a big way because she was on tour a lot. She also was one third of a supergroup called Boy Genius, which made one of my favorite, and it's not really an album, it's an EP,

with other brilliant young singer-songwriter's Lucy Dacus, friend of the pod, and Julian Baker. I love Julian Baker. I love all of these women. I love all their music. I love what they've done together. I love the way they melded their voices. I love the way they put, by going on this tour, making this record and doing these great.

They were on Seth Myers. They were on Tiny Desk Concert. Just like different styles, different personalities, merging their talents in a way that seems totally amicable, totally creative, totally fun and positive. And then she's also on the margins doing all these interesting things. She headlined a political rally this fall in Los Angeles with Connor Oberst. She dropped a single with Jackson Brown. Oh, yeah. She lives out here, right?

She lives out here. And I just feel like there's something, it's funny to talk about her right after we're talking about Ethan Hawk. But there's a plateau you can reach with a career when you've just been creative and dependable for so long. The people are like, I like that person. And I'm just psyched to check them out. And there's the other part. There's the other, there's a flip side of that where someone is young and has that kind of intensely burning creative energy where anything they do is worth checking out, where the next

song that they write might be the song, where the next collaboration might elevate both themselves and the person they're collaborating with. And there's just a volume of content, you know, that feels, you could listen to her music, which can be somber, can be introspective, it can be confessional, and you could think, well, of course, a 41-year-old podcast host is digging this. But there's something about, the way she engages with social media, the way she engages with her peers and her influences like Jackson Brown or Tom Petty, and just with content in general by just releasing stuff that makes me feel excited. It's fun when people are just hitting their groove. Yeah, it's always,

especially good with a musician when they're prolific like that, because I think that when we were growing up, it was more common for there to be these very strict album cycles, and then musicians would kind of go away for nine, 10, 15 months and then come back. But now I feel like it's more expected that our favorite musicians are kind of like this constant presence is in our life. Would you say the reason we're not doing a year in music podcast

dedicated this year is because here are your choices. A, we just didn't feel like it was a strong year for music and we don't have full lists to share. B, neither of us want to be in front of a microphone and have to talk about Kanye again. or C, the podcast would begin it and we would both say, Sicko mode, and the rest of the country would nod their head.

I just don't think it would be a very robust podcast for me. For new music, yeah. And I think that that might have something to do with just my age, where it's like... Thank you for using an eye statement. Well, I think you listen to more new music than I do at this point. Like Gunna and Baby. Like Gunna and Baby.

That's right. But I just think it wouldn't be a very, like, complete podcast if we did that. I'm going to post another 50-song playlist. So I want to talk a little. little bit about Emma Stone now. Listen, I'm always ready to talk about Emma Stone. Go long,

whatever you need to do. We talked about Maniac for a couple of episodes when it came out a couple of months ago and we had Patrick Somerville come on. In some ways, Emma Stone was in two notable things this year, Maniac and the favorite, but in some ways she was in like 10 because in each episode of Maniac,

she pretty much played a different character. Although the character, to the extent that you can identify something like this, kind of had a soul, a transferable soul that in each episode, that was like the same. So even if she was playing like an 80s frizzy perm hair accomplice to, in a caper to Jonah Hill in Maniac, or if she was playing an elf, or if she was playing the main character who is

sort of going through this drug trial with Jonah Hill's character, she always had like a certain quality. And I think that there is a certain Emma Stone quality. No matter who she's playing, she has a certain, I don't know, like, uh, real, you know, to me that I really, really appreciate. And she's also, as she's gotten older, I think really started to recognize the physical aspects of her performances.

Like, she's able to, there's a scene in the favor, especially, where Rachel Weiss asks her, are you, you know, she wants a job, basically, at this palace. And Rachel Vace, like, what would you do? Would you just play, like, a monster to scare the kids? And Emma Stone, like, pretends to be a monster for a second. And it's just, like, this moment of real, like,

hilarious physical comedy in this movie. And I feel like she does stuff like that more and more. And I think you know, I've seen it happen with other actors and actresses where when they're a part of something that maybe experiences a bit of a backlash like La La Land does, that they kind of lick their wounds a little bit or play it safe. An experience that won her an Oscar

for Best Actress? Yeah, obviously, but also like when people see... I think that now La La La Land kind of has like LOL like Moonlight Moment. She just keeps ticking. And I really, really like how voracious she seems to be about her work. And I really have a lot of time for Maniac. I thought it was a really interesting show.

And so Emma Stone goes on the wall. There are different kinds of prodigies. And there are prodigies where they can accomplish anything, but you can see them working. They're prodigies where they go out on the court or in front of a movie's camera, and they're like a kid out there just playing. And then there are people like Emma Stone where it's, seems to be effortless for her, and she seems to be enjoying her power. And not in a way that is obnoxious or off-putting or, like, I could dunk on everybody, but it's just, it reminds me of like,

I mean, I only watch The Sixers, so it's a bad for an analogy, but like someone like Embed, just being like, oh, I can do this too. I can step back and take a three. Or I could end your life by dunking on you. Or I can just be dominant in ways that you're not even paying attention to. and it's thrilling. You know, there was a Sean Penn TV show this year. Did you watch it? No, I didn't even watch it. Maybe we should.

The first. Sometimes I think about Sean Penn because when we were younger and we were like, I remember in the 90s both together and before we even met, probably both like coming into our own about paying attention to culture and how people were considered. I remember starting to read articles in like movie line or premiere and they would refer to Sean Penn as like the best talent of his generation. I'd be like, oh, really? I was news to me.

And like, oh, but if only he could tame his demons, you know, and then, like, he gets Dead Man walking and he starts winning Oscars or whatever. The thing about Sean Penn, which I don't even understand why I'm talking about him, honestly, but here's the thing about Sean Penn is he's always working, right? Mm-hmm. He works real hard on these performances and you see them. Emma Stone is light as air, even when she's delivering something that emotionally is heavier than an anvil. You know, it's really crazy.

And yes, she's always good in everything and it's always great to see her. But there was something about the favorite that really stands out to me. I mean, to talk about Maniac, she shares the screen on Maniac with Julia Garner, who's a young actor, we both really admire a lot.

And I think Julia Garner is great in many things and has a lot of great things ahead of her. You watch that, and it feels like she's a little bit intimidated by Emma Stone in some scenes. Which works for the character. It works for the character, but that is tangibly the feeling

I got from watching some of those scenes. So we can say Emma Stone's great, and then you see her have to hold her own with Olivia Coleman and Rachel Vise, who are Titanic-level talents. Sure. It's not even a drop of sweat.

Yeah. And respect all around. I mean, that's pretty thrilling. And really only makes me wonder more why her next performance on screen will be young. So that's what I need to end this with. Punk. Right.

So my favorite piece of news of 2018, because it is the most 2018 piece of news, is your favorite. Is that Emma Stone is going to be starring in a Cruella Duville origin story, yet the origin story will be set in the punkish world of the 1980s. And it's going to be directed by

the guy directed I-Tanya, Craig Gillespie, I think his name is. This is just so fucking funny to me, man. Tell me, tell me, make me feel something other than just like Anhedonia about this. Because it's like you can't get through the door without saying I have a radical new take on Cruella Deville. But you obviously have, like,

I want to just do this coming of age story or this woman living in the 80s New York punk rock world. Who hates dogs? I guess. Does she hate dogs? I've never seen 101 Domations. I feel like that's bedrocked for character. I mean, the dogs are the...

I thought she had all the dogs, and they were mad at her. Now, I also have no knowledge of what that movie is about. I believe there's a large quantity of dogs. I just, I didn't know there was, I also for a while thought that this, that 101 Dalmatians was where they eat the spaghetti, but that's a lady in the tramp. Neither of you have seen 101 Dalmatians. Uh-uh. Now, Kaya's chiming in here. Kaya, when you ask you about that, are you asking about the cartoon?

Are you asking about the Glenn Close movies? Both. Yeah, I don't know the story. Kyle, what's the story? All right, it's been a while, but basically there is 101 Dalmatians. Mm-hmm. And Crowell is the villain in it. And I believe there's a couple children.

And I believe they're trying to rescue the dogs. She owns them and she's like not treating them great? No, I don't think she owns them. Okay. What's she trying to do with the dogs? Like skin them for coats? Yes. Yes.

That's right. That was a guess. Wow. So she's, Emma Stone is going to play like Betsy Johnson but like wants to make tights out of dog skins. Because that's the next thing in radical. But it's an origin story. So maybe she's. pretty cool before this happens.

Do you think that someone will be cast as Jean-Michel Basquiat? Is that going to happen in this? Is there going to be like a tortured romance with Julian Schnoble? Somebody just wanted to make an early 80s art punk scene movie with Emma Stone and they were like, what do we have to do to get this made? Let's fix it, fit it into Cruella DeVille Cannon. It is the most 2018 news story and especially for us because there's a version of this where I stand over here and I'm like, that's pretty clever.

And there's a version of it where I stand over here and I'm like, this is cultural holocaust. Right. This is the end of everything. Right. Nothing truly matters. Because I bet you what will happen is this movie will be whatever it is. And then there will be like a bunch of like nods to 101 Dalmatians canon.

Not that I know that canon. I'll just be like it seems like this, this woman hates dogs. Do the real Dalmatian heads call it 101? Like is that, is that the parlance? On the boards, on the message boards. Yeah, I mean, sure. It's just, I just want to know, you know, maybe Emma Stone come on desktop. Maybe we can find out the answer to this.

But like, I would be super into it if in an interview there like, and now you're returning to the Dalmatian verse with this bold reimagining. Like, why? Why now? And she's like, I wanted money. You know what I mean? Like, Yorgos is not exactly cutting checks in drachmas. Yeah. So maybe that's why.

I don't know. I just wonder why. But... This is just what we have to do now, though. You can't sell an original idea unless it's part of something. Even if the thing that it's part of is not actually something

that anyone has any real affection for. So it could just be, well, I want to make an adventure movie. Well, what board game can you base it off? What video game can you base it off? What could it be playing in the universe of? I was on a call. marketing call the other day

when someone was talking about like the advantages of like then we'll have a page in the in the leave behind where it's like playing up the legacy of the league behind is like a pitch dog yeah like the legacy of Ross Thomas is like role in the

literary marketplace and his like mastery of the forum and those like dog seven people know Ross Thompson's I would definitely respond to that but you got me on board for this project you know but the pre-existing nature of it just calms people's nerves. It's like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

professional Zoloft or something. Yeah. I was like, okay, well, someone at some point green lit this before we did. So there was, there was, like, a, I think, we've told the story before, but there's, like, a sort of infamous, uh, Max Landis interview where he was talking about, like, nowadays, if you want to pitch, like, a Raiders type adventure story, you have to walk in there and be like, I have a radical way of exploring the IP of the character Jack Daniels of the whiskey you know or something you know what I mean like you basically have to take a product or a pre-existing idea

and then you bring your story and just sort of like plop it on top of it and I'll watch Emma Stone in the 80s well that's how they get us though I mean you know there was we didn't cover it until now but a couple weeks ago everyone was like boy this Pokemon live action movie trailer is the shit and I'm like look what they've done to us You know what I mean?

Yeah. Like, really? Yeah. We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and when we come back, Andy and I'll do our last... Look what they've done to us! Our last additions to the wall for 2018. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by the big homies at Sonos.

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So go to Sonos.com to learn more and order your Sonos Beam to start your smart home sound system. That's Sonos, S-O-N-O-S-com. Support for today's episode of The Watch comes from the new film, If Beale Street Could Talk. If Beale Street could talk is above all else a love story. It's from Barry Jenkins, the super talented writer and director of the Oscar-winning Moonlight. It's a soulful drama about the power of love. Based on James Baldwin's acclaimed novel of the same name,

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you can work how you want to, for as long as you want to, wherever work takes you. All right, we're back. We're talking about The Wall. Our People of the Year for 2018, so far I have picked Emma Stone and Ethan Hawke. and Andy has picked Phoebe Bridgers and Hugh Grant. Andy, who's your number three? We've got to go all about that paper boy. We've got to talk about Brian Tyree Henry. All Brian Tyree Henry does is write award speeches now, man.

This guy is... Not for the Golden Globes, but still. A magical actor. A truly magical actor. If he had only been in Atlanta this year, Atlanta Season 2, which was the best television show of... Atlanta Robin season, we should say, which was the best television show of 2018.

If he had only done that and just spent the rest of the year just relaxing, maybe reading that new Murakami novel, I don't know, however he wants to spend his free time, he would still probably be on this list. Because his performance on that show is transcendent. It is revelatory. It is operating on so many levels at once. So much so that when I just casually tried to segue and said something about Paperboy, I almost swallowed my words because he's created a,

someone who has a name. The whole point of that character is that it's Alfred and that Paperboy is just a mask he wears sometimes. Just even if he was only in the episode, The Woods, he'd probably be up on here. Yeah. The level of emotion and nuance and delicacy that he is able to access is astonishing

and that he does it on this show where he is just part and parcel of the world. It is not a showy performance by any means, but the show could not exist. I don't believe, I mean, obviously the show comes from the mind of Donald Glover and his brother Stephen Glover. I don't see how the show could exist without him.

Yeah. But that's just one part of it. Because then he also found time, well, he was in Broadway at the beginning of the year and lobby hero. I did not see that. But by all accounts, was quite good in it. But he was also in, should we list them?

He was in White Boy Rick. He was in Widows, which we should talk more about. He was in if Beal Street could talk, which I have not seen. Yeah, he has. He basically has like an incredible almost like, I think 10 minute sequence in Beal Street that's just like with the movie is revolved around him. Any other things that I'm forgetting from his incredible 2018? I think that's it. He.

To watch Widows, which we've talked about recently. Oh, he was also really good on Busy Phillips's talk show. That's right, reunited with the dog. Yeah. And, you know, we got the chance to meet him as well when we did for your consideration panel. And the thing about this guy, it doesn't make me worried about him. it just makes me care about him more. To be able to access emotion like he does in his performances,

it's close to the surface. We did this panel with him, and he shed tears just from questions that we asked him and talking about his experience. Yeah, asking him specifically about the episode of The Woods. About the Woods, about losing his mother, about Stephanie Robinson, who wrote the episode, channeling grief that she knew existed in the actor

and putting into the character, basically as emotionally available and naked as he was with Zach Barron, our friend, in the GQ profile, I recommend people. If you listen to him on Terry Gross, on fresh air, similarly, it makes me worried only because many people who exist publicly in the world tamp that shit down. Yeah, he's very emotionally vulnerable.

But it's what makes a character like his character in Widows so absolutely compelling and fascinating and unique, because on the page, this character could be pretty boilerplate, could be slightly villainous, slightly near-do-well. Brian Tyree Henry is always a human being first, which forces you to consider the choices or the circumstances of the context that made these people behave the way they do to small white dogs or Viola Davis or other beloved living beings on planet Earth.

Yeah, you know, he's part of three really impressive ensembles this year, and in each one of them, he doesn't do the look at me thing. He's playing within the part and he's playing within the story. But in each case, you're just sort of like, I need to know more about this guy. I want to follow this guy. I'd watch his movie. I would watch The Widows movie that's about his campaign. You know what I mean?

And I would watch the version of Atlanta that's about him. And I would watch the Beale Street that's about him. So, yeah, I mean, his ability to sort of be part of things and be part of the tapestry of what he's talking of what's being told, the story that's being told, but also just be the absolute outstanding shining moment in each of these things is just remarkable. And as we talk about this when we're recording it a little bit before you guys are going to be hearing this, it looks like the Ringer, a website, just posted a piece called how Brian Tyree Henry gave the three best performances of 2018.

And the poll quote, the headline is there's no way to half-ass this at all. While people are making Cruella DeVille movies, all respect to him, that's kind of half-assing it. Wait, what if he's like, Brian Tyree Henry joins Emma Stod. Cruelity. No, dude is making Child's Play reboot right now. So I'm not saying

when I say being in that movie I don't mean is half-assing it. Just culturally, like, and then accepting it, I don't know. I just feel like

it's exciting and unfortunately feels a little bit rare to see someone so fully committing to everything that he's giving us and we're grateful for it.

My last person on the wall is Adam McKay. Interesting choice. So, you know, Adam McKay is somebody interesting to me because he has gone through kind of an artistic, if not also a political transformation over the last couple of years,

which I think is probably fair to say a lot of us have gone through sort of, if not a political transformation in terms of changing our ideas, at least an awakening of the importance and the urgency of those ideas. And I feel like he obviously is somebody who made like stepbrothers and anchorman and has made some... Masterpieces, by the way. Funniest things that I've ever seen in my life. And he could have probably kept going with his life making things.

like Talley Dagan Nights and the other guys and, you know, solid variations on a theme with Will Ferrell. And he, you know, he was a huge part in Funnier Die, which is kind of this, even though now what they do is kind of found on any website, like even the Ringer, when those first kind of viral Funny or Die videos came out, it obviously tapped into not only the viewing habits of people who were sitting bored at work of their computers, but also a kind of comedy that could be derived out of the sort of inaneity of real life and the absurdity of real life.

In any case, the reason why he's on this list is because he directed Vice, which is coming out at the end of the year, and he played a huge part in succession, which even though Jesse Armstrong is sort of the showrunner on there, he obviously had a lot to do with it, and it reflects some of his concerns right now. It has a lot of the same visual style that he employed in the big short, and that he employs in Weiss,

which is this kind of... He directed the pilot, right? And he directed the pilot. And it is not... It's kind of, to me, it's like a variation on what Pete Berg was doing with Friday Night Lights where it's like you get a bunch of really good actors and you don't overwhelm them with blocking

because you basically have cameras going in various spots and it feels very much alive. It feels very much like you're being led into this secret world. And I think Succession is a masterpiece of writing more than anything else. But McKay... his sensibility shaped that show. And even his willingness and encouragement to improv, I think, shaped some of the sort of more tertiary characters in that show like Roman or Greg and those kinds of guys. Yeah, I think what's interesting also is that he's continuing to evolve. I think the big short

was a good movie and an interesting movie. I don't think it was necessarily a great movie. And I think one of the things that didn't quite work for me was a conceit that a lot of people seemed to really enjoy, which was, you know, non-experts or explaining things. that are hard to understand. Margot Robbie and Anthony Bourdain. Sexy talking about something that is unsexy but important. And for me, that smacked a little bit of a problem

that I actually was just thinking about because I was listening to the playwright and writer-director Kenneth Lonergan on Mark Maren's podcast, and they were talking about when funny people do dramatic roles and they think what they have to do is suck all the life out of themselves

to not be funny anymore. When, in fact, if they were fully alive as they are in comedy, the drama would play. You can't have one without the other. And what's interesting to me, and I think really exciting about succession, and then from what I gather about Vice, which I've not seen yet, have you seen it? I have, yeah. So tell me if I'm wrong about this, but it seems to embrace the same gonzo sensibilities.

Sam Rockwell playing George Bush. That McKay got infamous for when he was just doing sketch comedy in Chicago. He was the guy who was so radical at that time. Like he would do sketch shows where people marched out of the, made the audience leave the, he would march them out onto the street, he would do all sorts of crazy things, you know, which led to the practice, which is now overused of, you know, just throwing limitless alts, creating scripts and stories by having Will Ferrell Improv or throwing lines of Paul Rudd or whatever. The sort of madcap chaos that he brings to his projects

actually is a better way to communicate the gravity of some of the topics that he's wrestling with, right? I think that Succession, because It's, you know, Jesse Armstrong, who had worked on with Yanucci on the think of it, and then it was also serious. For me, the show found its groove once it sort of seemed to make peace with its comedy drama divide. And the absurdity was never far away, which is what made it land for me. Yeah. Nothing is worse, and this is coming from an avowed left-wing person, nothing is worse than sanctimony on either side. Yes.

And to do a solemn retelling of the Bush years and be like, it feels like a cinematic finger is being wagged at us. Like, what is the point of that? But to be like, this shit was fucking crazy and it's still happening today, that's the way to do it. I think you can make the argument that he seems more fascinated with the people who perpetrated these essentially crimes, you know, whether it's the media moguls,

financial cowboys, or these politicians, than he is with the people that they impacted. and I guess that's Hollywood. I mean, they're always going to be a little bit more interested than the Joker than the Batman somewhat. I think that's well said.

But I think that over the course of the last few years, he's proven to be the most successful political filmmaker alive. Yes, and in a moment that is just increasingly Gonzo and Gaga and bizarre,

weirdly well suited to the times. Yeah. Is Vice one of your best favorite movies of the year? It's not one of my favorite movies of the year, but it's not unlike Big Short, I think it's going to be seen, I think it's going to be seen multiple times.

I think it's going to have some pretty huge scenes in it. And Christian Bail is definitely going to get nominated. He might even win. Good year? Of movies? Culturally. Weird year. That was my Charlie Rose question.

No, because I've been thinking about this a ton. Because I've been trying to consider, I'm trying to be more mindful of how I might spend my day. You know, so I've started... Mostly just recipe testing. But yeah, doing a lot of just cooking of chicken. You got a towel off your birds. Humidities.

No, I've been trying to get a little bit more like centered or whatever. And I've been trying to like use a legal pad when I don't need my computer just to like write down notes and stuff like that. And the thing that's hard is that whenever you turn your computer on and whenever you sort of allow yourself engagement with all the facets of the world rather than just like, I'm just going to take this record and listen to it. This sort of the problem of like the dissolving of physical media is that you can have music and TV and news going all at once on this little box you have on your lap. But I think that my allowing myself to... Is that a Zoom? What's the box? Yeah, it's a zoo.

Can you spell that? I've just felt a little subsumed by the Boy World Events. And I think it's inevitably impacted my appreciation of culture. I still feel incredibly passionately about it. But it's different, obviously, than it was 10 years ago or five years ago even. where I feel like culture is a respite from the real world, and I feel like it's still trying to wrestle with what it's going to say about the real world. And I don't know.

Sometimes it's just reality is so much more perverse and dramatic than whatever you would see on screen or listen to in music, that it's been a little bit difficult for me to negotiate that divide. I think it's had an overall impact on whether or not it would consider this a good cultural year. What do you think? Well, I agree with everything you said. I think you said it really well. I just feel like, and I'm not happy about this,

and it's led me to seek out more mindful poultry recipes as well. But my attention span is not in a healthy place, I think. And I wonder if part of that is, I don't know if that's because we do a podcast or I used to write about culture or whatever, but there is a net negative effect, I think, when everything that we engage with is a part of a larger whole, whether that is a movie that is essentially just a chapter in a larger running story

or more intimately like starting a new TV show knowing that there are nine more, not just waiting for you in the abstract, but waiting for you right now and that you can't talk about it, whether you're talking about it on a podcast or you just want to chat with friends about it until you get there.

And I'm curious if other people feel this way because I used to try to avoid talk like this because it felt like extremely first world problems as a cultural critic, being like, I'm obligated to watch television for the good of others. But I wonder if the only reason

I'm bringing it up now is because I just feel anecdotally and also the way that I'm experiencing it now slightly removed from, I don't have to write about stuff anymore anyway. Obligation creep is a thing. And if my enjoyment of things is being diminished by that,

whereas some of my favorite moments of the year were either a song that, you know, that Spotify suggested for me that took my mind out of it or a book that I finally got around to reading when I found the time to do it. I'm not sure, but all of that is to say if we're going to wrap,

it's the holiday season, I can wrap this up with a very sincere bow. I actually have come full circle and I appreciate our inspired attempt at a listicle here if only because we're talking about things that we love in a macro sense. We're talking about the way they impacted us,

but also what it might mean about what we enjoy about stuff. and instead of thinking about succession as something we enjoyed a few months ago and boy, we're eager for it to come back because that's more content and it's also entertaining, we can think about Adam McKay as someone who has a project

that is a longer term project that has something to say about what we're doing. Or, and I think this is more important, the debt we all owe Hugh Grant for his villainous turn in Paddington 2, a movie about a bear who is framed for robbery

and goes to prison. We spent so much time talking about animal movies on this podcast. Well, I famously love animals. Okay. Thank you guys for listening. This has been our annual wall podcast. This is a great addition of the wall. I wish, I'll say this for the third or fourth or fifth or sixth straight year. I wish we had a physical version of it that we carried with us from studio to studio and just know that if we did at the top of the wall would be the smiling visage of the eternally beautiful Christine Branson. I thought you were going to say that. I was just going to be like, dude, come on.

I don't need to force it. Happy New Year, Branskis. Today's episode of the watch was brought to you by the big homies at Sonos. Meet Sonos Beam, the smart compact soundbar for your TV. Beam lets you fill the room with the rich sounds of everything you love, from music and radio to movies, TV, podcasts, and more. I'm going to use the Sonos Beam this holiday season to listen to the Charlie Brown Christmas album nonstop, and also catch up on all the movie screeners that I got so I can finally keep up with Chris

and pretend that I went to the movies in 2018. Go to Sonos.com to learn more and order your Sonos Beam to start your smart home sound system today. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You could get in a crash. People could get hurt or killed, but that still doesn't stop everyone. You could get arrested. You could incur huge legal expenses, and you could possibly even lose your job. We all know the consequences of driving drunk, but one thing's for sure. You're wrong if you think it's no big deal. Drive sober

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