The Watch - An Assortment of TV News, Plus an Interview With Actor Jamie Bell | The Watch (Ep. 329)

Episode Date: February 15, 2019

The ‘Breaking Bad’ spin-off movie about Jesse Pinkman will be coming to Netflix (5:27). The trailer for the second season of ‘Killing Eve’ dropped this week (15:30). The guys finish up 'Russian Doll' (18:16), and Jamie Bell joins the show to talk about his upcoming movie, 'Donnybrook' (36:49). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Jamie Bell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Call 1-888-842-6328 or download the Navy Federal Credit Union app today. Message and data rates may apply. Visit NavyFederal.org for more information. I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line.

Go back to those gold sounds. It's Andy Greenwald. We got to talk seriously, man. Like I haven't seen you in person in over a week. And now I hear you are, it's just, it's just drip season? You are little babying slices of fruit into ranch dressing in there. I am eating lunch on the run. This is not how I wanted to start this podcast,

but Kaya attacked me because I dipped an apple and ranch in the snack box, and I had a bite of it. And she looked at me like I had just emerged from a lagoon covered in toxic waste. I've never felt more judged. I've got to be honest with you. I've known you for 23 years, and I'm Team Kaya on this one. I understand that the great. Great profit Gunna recently said drip or drown, but there are other choices.

And I think that it's time to push back. Look, I'm not in the studio. I haven't even said that we're going to be talking about like pavement. And maybe we'll talk about the Oscars. Maybe we'll talk about Russian doll. Jesse Pinkman. Yeah, all this stuff. All about topics.

And I also am joined later in the show by Jamie Bell. That's exciting. Can I join you? You have to go back in time to do it. Oh, I hate when that happens. That's great. I mean, look, look, I'm getting distracted from the totally off-topic message I want to communicate on this podcast, which is it's time to stake out some ground against Big Ranch. Because I think Ranch as a concept, I just, I'm over it.

I'm over it. And the fact that you are, you are buying into this fallacy, that this is an all-purpose condiment is worrisome to me. And you're my friend, so I have to look out for you. So I'm not going to be shamed by you or Kyya, for that matter. okay like I've got a couple more miles on the odometer than kaya does and if I've arrived at the point of my life Chris yeah I don't mean to be rude but she lives like in Redondo beach so I think her odometer is flush I think in like in human years kaya feel free to go hot mic and weigh in here like let's not like let's not duck this fight let's have it out like let's get some resolution here fruit like

should be eaten with sweet stuff like peanut butter and nutella and And savory dressing should be saved for savory vegetables. So if you want to... Wait, okay. Now I'm against both. Because, wow, we just triangulated the takes here. And, you know, what is the correct condom? This is like Bill Clinton 98 triangulation of takes.

Which one of you is Ross Perrault? Listen, here is the correct topping for mango, a sweet fruit. It is salt, lime juice, and maybe chili. That is the correct topping for a sweet fruit. And that's savory. No, I mean, like, I'm talking about, like, hummus. I'm talking about, like, dressing. She said I wasn't allowed to dip an apple in hummus.

And I was like, what's gross about that? What? Yeah. That's fine. No. Guys, you misunderstand me. It wasn't the dipping of the apple. I just think ranch is gross.

Yeah, but that's what they put in the box. Like, if I had any self-respect, I wouldn't be eating food from Starbucks in the first place, but I'm, like, trying to jam a bunch of stuff in today. And so it's, like, all in this little plastic box, and the dipping condiment that I have in this box is ranch. Now, I'm not putting the chocolate raisins in the ranch. Like, I have some lines. I have some boundaries.

But I think that like, it's like... This is classic obfuscation. What you were leaving out is that there are baby carrots there. That's what the ranch is for. Yeah, I'm aware of that. Second, listen, look, I hope you're happy. I'm personally shocked that you're voting for Howard Schultz in this way. And we should probably go back to pop culture.

Like, this might be the last. last episode for the podcast. I mean, I basically, it's like, I basically ate this apple covered in ranch, and I might as well have been saying Klobuchar 2020. That's like, that's how Kyle looked at me. It's just wrong. It's just wrong. All right.

Okay. So now that we've gotten off this topic and that there's like an irreparable schism between me and producer Kaya, let's talk a little bit about some of the news this week. The one thing I wanted to kind of mention was, and this sort of actually, I, I, I feel feel like kind of went under the radar a little bit, but it was announced that the Breaking Bad Spinoff film that Vince Gilligan is doing that is going to be about Jesse Pinkman after the finale, I believe is what we've kind of come to this understanding, wouldn't be possible, is actually going to be on Netflix first. And they seem to, like, it's really interesting right now because

A, that reverses the stream of what the usual Breaking Bad kind of distribution, model is, which is these shows are on AMC, and then what happens is they kind of get like a second life on Netflix, and that's happened with Breaking Bad. That's happened with Better Call Saul, particularly over the last couple of years that people are catching up, catching up, and then the seasons on AMC kind of get a little bit of buzz going from their Netflix viewership. They're kind of reversing that now, and they're talking about going straight to Netflix with this Jesse Pinkman thing, and then taking it to AMC in which, it might be kind of shown as a miniseries.

I don't know. It's still unclear to me whether this is like a very long movie or a short limited series about Jesse or what it's going to be about. I kind of feel like Saul made these dudes, like they have my money. So like whatever they want to do here, even though they might be tampering with greatness,

I'm into. Do you have any reaction to either the distribution model or any of this other stuff? I'm just confused by the model. You know, I think we knew from the news that broke late last year that this was happening. This was likely a Jesse story that Vince Gilligan was doing it. And I feel now the way I felt then, and as you said, without the goodwill and the good quality of Saul, this would be entirely suspect.

But this is how these guys work. This works for them. It works for the audience. The other day, one of the executive producers of one of the co-epies of Breaking Bad posted the board, the writer's room board from Felina, the finale of Breaking Bad. Yeah. And a version of it before it was in its final form.

But seeing it again was just a reminder of how completely precise and unique these guys are in their process and how almost immaculate they are, how they, I guess, Vince Gillingis like this and he assembled a room full of people who are the same, that they just do best painting themselves out of corners. And that's a kind of logical mind that I truly respect and do not at all relate to. And it's the same sort of approach that they brought to solving the problems that they themselves created on their show that they're bringing to how to continue to play with this universe. It's like they keep daring themselves.

And that's how they work best. So content-wise, sure, I'm all in. Well, and that's the interesting, you bring up an interesting point with the finale of Breaking Bad because I think on the surface level, when you, watch that episode and finish it. And this is a spoiler for anybody who's not finished breaking bad, but Jesse gets away. And you're like,

finally this guy is free. And you kind of feel this cathartic moment that he's the survivor of all of this. And then very quickly, you come to the conclusion, as did Vince Gilligan when he spoke after the show is over, that they're going to find Jesse. Like, the cops, like Jesse's prints are everywhere.

And like, in reality, he probably has like a couple of days, a couple weeks on the road and gets caught. Now that's not necessarily what happens. That's not canon. It's just his, it was the way he was feeling whenever he gave that quote. But to me,

it's like, I don't actually think that they're screwing with like the thematic end or not tying of Breaking Bad because I think, like you're saying, Breaking Bad was always about kind of getting out of those corners. And what happens to a guy who thinks he's gotten away with it is a really cool question to try and answer. And it sounds like a Western. You know, it sounds like

the setup of a Western. It sounds like, you know, even something like Logan, you know, which is, which is our more modern version of a Western. And that's actually the version that I was going to pivot to comparing this project to, which is to say, look, I know I'm not alone in saying this. I didn't care if we ever saw Jesse again. The moment you're describing the sort of euphoric lift of escape, that was enough. That was an emotional color that was painted on the canvas of the show in this finale, and it was a perfect ending for me, and probably for a number of people in the audience. But a few years have passed since then, one of the things that I wonder about Vince Gilligan, if he's thought about it this way or if it's just worked out this way, is that if you look

at the landscape of things that get made and who will pay for things to get made and how to fast track things, obviously pre-existing IP, as we always say, is the way. But beyond that, you and I often have these conversations about how a movie like Logan is the type of the old Gunslinger Western movie that James Mangold would have wanted to make anyway. Right. But the fastest way to get it made was to make it an X-Men movie also. And how Spider-Man Homecoming, for example, was a great teen comedy that also happened have Spider-Man in it.

And that was sort of the promise of Rogue One was going to be this war films, you know, that you have to latch onto Star Wars. Yeah. A less successful example, but exactly the right same idea. And so what I'm wondering is if... Financially, I think that Rogue One did quite a bit better than the Breaking Bad universe. But yeah. Oh, it did. I mean, you and I like Rogue One, but I just mean in the scheme of things, well, that's a whole separate conversation. Yeah. No, I know. And not as much, not as interesting to our listeners as my opinions on ranch dressing. Because I have my finger on the pulse. But what I wanted to say about this was it could be the Vince Gilligan is, you know, looking at the success he's had and also the frustrations he's had with other projects like Battle Creek, which was sort of this through no fault of his own, misfire from on CBS a few years ago. It's the only non-breaking bad thing that I think has been produced. in the last few years, and saying, okay, I have an idea for a story. And maybe it's a story

about someone who thought he got away. It's a crime story. It's a Western. Well, he bends it into this box, and then he gets to make it. And that's fine. There's a version of it where you could say, I wish he left well enough alone. I wish he worked on original material. But honestly, it's kind of win-win. Yeah, I think I agree with you. Did you want to hit on the Oscars at all? But wait, the one thing we should mention, though, is this truly bizarre distribution model, which I can't make heads or tails of and I hope someone can, you know, and listen, long-time listeners of this podcast

know that we never, ever fail to attempt to explain business matters when we are not fully equipped or educated enough to do so. But it's a bizarre inversion, as you said, and like with many bizarre decisions, it has to come down to money, right? It has to be that Sony is the studio

behind Breaking Bad and what they're going to set up. That's what I was going to ask you to sort of explain because I think we sometimes blow past this stuff a little bit, but, you know, when, there's a difference between who shows a show and who makes a show. Increasingly less of a distinction, but the distinction can often still exist. In my case, you know, the show, Briar Patch is UCP is the studio, USA is the network, both are owned by NBC Comcast Universal, Shineheart wig company. So they are separate entities, but it's the same company. AMC, like many networks, now really only wants to either own shows outright, as they do

with, say, Lodge 49, or The Walking Dead, or do co-productions with other entities. And that's what they did with, like, Little Drummer Girl, for example. But so, but Breaking Bad is a relic of a time when AMC didn't have its own studio. And Mad Men, for example, was a Lionsgate show. And Breaking Bad and its attendant spinoffs are Sony controlled. So it could, just well be that Netflix outbid AMC for a show that is spiritually connected and historically connected to AMC, but they've worked something out. What I don't understand about it is it debuts on Netflix. Netflix things that don't tend to go away, right? So is AMC just having a secondary additional window? That's what I'm trying to figure out. It's almost like a reverse version of what they do with a lot

of indie films where it'll pop up in some cities, usually like New York and L.A. a couple other places. And then a week later, it's on iTunes. So, like, I think a lot of IFC stuff is sort of like that. But, man, I have never heard of this, nor do I, I guess, anecdotally know anyone who has Netflix and,

who has AMC and doesn't have Netflix. I mean, I just, I guess, like, I'm just kind of like, what happened here? Because you would think that AMC would be, and AMC has a lot of really interesting stuff in development. and they have that model where they do pre-rooms to kind of sketch out a little bit more of a body of work for a show before,

so that it's not so dependent on a pilot. But I'm kind of like, this is like one of your flagship properties outside of Walking Dead would beat it to have a Jesse Pinkman show with Aaron Paul on it. I mean, it just seems kind of weird. Well, or a movie, but I guess the movies also aren't their bread and butter. So what I don't understand, and maybe someone can give us some intel or we can just, continue to educate yourselves about it. Was this purely a face-saving move? You know, is it they're allowing it to go to AMC

to keep everyone feeling happy and good? I mean, one of the trades, I don't remember which one I read it on, whether it was Deadline or Variety or Hollywood Reporter, nodded to the fact that for many people, Breaking Bad was a Netflix show, meaning that's where many people caught up with it. Yeah, exactly.

But Breaking Bad is known as an AMC show, and it's not like you, which no one remembers eight months later as a lifetime show. It's interesting. and I don't know what we can glean from it because often when there are sort of sudden shifts like this, they speak to a broader trend in work in the industry and I don't know how many more deals like this we will see.

But we'll find out. Well, before we get to this Jesse Pinkman thing, miniseries, limited series, whatever it winds up being movie, before that, we were going to get the second season of Killing Eve, which is quickly approaching and they just put out the first trailer for it. It's coming on BBC America, I think in April. April 7th it says Yeah

And you know No longer show run by Phoebe Wallerbridge Which I think will be really interesting to see What specifically she did In the you know in the Trenches with that show and see how it's different But we still have Jody Comer and Sandra O And you know they don't give away much

They explain a little bit about where Characters wind up going But there's not a whole lot of depth here But it just It looks like they're going to try to sustain the same tension of the cat and mouse game, which I think is going to be the central sort of math problem that this show has to solve, which is like basically how can you keep these two apart?

How close can you bring them together and still maintain the buzz around the show? I got to say first and foremost, though, my reaction was just absolutely happy surprise because I am so conditioned now to think that shows that I really love will be, off the air for over a year, if not more. I was so surprised to see this trailer. I had not realized they had been filming the second season. I had no idea it was just two months away. It's so funny how far things have shifted that that is now a surprise, that a successful new show would come back in a timely manner. But what a nice surprise to see it. Two, the Phoebe Waller Bridge part of it is a big question. She was in the news a bunch today because Fleabag is coming back for a season

two. Another show that I don't know if it needed one. I don't know how it could have one, but let's extend her the same courtesy we extend Vince Gilligan, because I think she's a wizard. The underlying question that Killing You Season 2 is going to have to answer is on some level how involved was Phoebe Waller Bridge. And I know nothing about the background of that show, how it was made. It definitely felt like her fingerprints slid off of the show after around the third or fourth episode, just from the way it was written and the things that it was most interested in. But beyond that, the question is like, yeah, can they keep this up? But it's much more exciting to tune in to a show where the question is, can they keep this up,

rather than the question, can they get it back? And I'm all in on season two. I thought the trailer seemed to fully distill what was great about season one into 60 seconds. Yeah, and also like another great pitched-down, haunted cover version of an 80s song that's basically every trailer, but they do addicted to love by Robert Palmer. this. In this trailer, it's quite good. Let's hit... Can I hit Rush and All for a second? Oh, yeah, man. Let's do it. I know that you had the great Leslie Headland on the podcast already. I was so sad not to be

there with you for that. I went on a journey with the show and it was really, really, really happy with it by the end, really satisfied, really impressed. And it turns out one of the things, potentially cranky things that I said when I first was on the fence about it after an episode or two proved to be true, I think. You needed to watch the whole thing. You know, I am just sort of spiritually against the idea of like, oh, this is an eight-part movie or whatever, but this was. And, you know, it needed the second half of the season for me to, for me to fully understand it, to balance the first half. And once we got, once Alan shows up and once the show starts getting really surprising and dark and creative and the oranges start molding over, I was all in. And I was

really dazzled and hooked by the end. But I don't know if we have a word for that. But like, that you need to watch all of it, the movieness of it, the cinematic part of it, we should. The Germans probably do already. But I was super impressed by it. I like Killing Eve. I don't know if we need a second season, but I have a lot of faith that we're going to find out one way or another. Did Leslie tell you anything about that? About whether there's going to be a second season.

You know, I don't like to act. Every time I talk to somebody who's made a Netflix thing, I just let them off the hook with that because I feel like there's some weird, like, black box that stuff goes into where it's like very obvious. that there's going to be more seasons, but they're really not allowed to talk about it, even though it's like patently obvious that that's going to happen. I mean, this show has obviously captivated,

like, at least the pop culture conversation over the last few weeks, enough, way more than many Netflix shows that have multiple seasons. So I would have to imagine we're going to get to at least another one, and I know that they apparently, we didn't talk about this, but they apparently pitched it as a three-season arc.

It's funny that you should mention that about the idea of watching these things in a huge bundle, kind of, or at least maybe waiting to pass judgment until you've gotten to the end. Because as we've sort of chewed over over the last, I'd say, 18 months,

maybe two years, maybe once the Lanna really start to hit, that's, it's really hard to do that for these hour-long shows. I was just, I just went back and I was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to check out Patriot.

And so I turned on Patriot, and I realized that like the last time I tried Patriot, I got to like the 37 minute mark of the first episode. And so I was like rewatching it and I was like, man, this is actually, this is really good. Like I would love to like get into this show. But I was as we were, I was going through it and I was just kind of calculating it against other stuff I had to do over the last week or so. I was like, man, I don't know if I had the time. And I know that really sucks. It really sucks to say like Patriot by beat by like having its way of telling its story is somehow like missing out on maybe the shot one would give Russian doll

because it's half as long but kind of tells like an equally weighty story. And I wonder whether or not in the same way that, you know, all sorts of media have gone through these huge undulations about like the way in which stuff is packaged. If we really are approaching some sort of event horizon for one hour dramas and, you know, even somebody who's made it his last month and a half obsession to sort of dig into everything about True Detective, the bar is pretty high to, like, hold my attention for an hour in a TV setting. Let me just say, for our listeners who are wondering, and maybe who took the under in the office pool, I am up to date on True Detective Season 3. I have been watching it week to week.

And I look forward to talking to you about it more. I mean, I guess maybe we'll wait until it's done to find more time to talk about it. But you're not wrong. But I, I'm not wrong. But I I would actually take it a step further because I think our listeners know how we feel about like shorter running times. And I do think that our experience of feeling the need to watch things in a timely fashion in addition to keeping up with things we already like is relatively unique. Yeah, of course. But that said, do you know who the happiest people I've spoken to in the last month have been

pop culture was? And there's more than one of these people. It's the people who, in recognition of the anniversary of the soprano, premiere have started re-watching The Sopranos. Oh, yeah. There are at least three people that I've spoken to, and they're all so much happier, full stop, and they're so happy with their choices, and they're happy with their evenings, and they're happy knowing what they have to look forward to.

And what I'm saying is not to say that Sopranos is better than anything on TV right now, although it might be, and it often, it will almost always be in that conversation for me as, as good as anything, if not better than most of the stuff we have in any given moment. I think it's something to do with just stepping out of the scrum and the dependability of it. You know, it's like it's doing a drive you've done before so it doesn't feel as long to get there, certainly. But something I do think, and I'm curious from our listeners if they feel this way, it's not just media professional related. The relief you feel when you step off the ride for a minute and you don't need to watch eight hours of Russian doll quickly before killing Eve season two or whatever else starts up. that you can just be your own schedule and watch the thing that you know already makes you happy.

It's just a, you and I often try to analyze and diagnose the different cultural symptoms and maladies that are floating around the current moment. And I do think that crush, that pressure has added something to people that don't do this for a living. I would be fascinated to know also how, since the Sopranos aired, how many shows that we run into this problem with where we're like, oh, the time or like how it feels to be watching this show were originally written as

episodic television shows. And I don't know whether or not David Chase was ever like I'd rather do six episodes of The Sopranos this season, but didn't. But so many shows that we watch feel, especially like on Netflix, you know, Patriots on Amazon. And I should say

like, I'm going to try and keep watching it and it's right up my alley and I really dug the sense of humor and Steve Conrad seems like a super interesting writer. and director, and I know he's actually got, like, a really cool show coming up next. But I was just like, oh, you know, this is one of those things that's almost floating into the, was this a feature that got changed into a 10 episode show or was it written as a 10 episode show? And I feel that way about True Detective sometimes this season where I'm like, was this eight episodes

that should have been six. And it's just like a fascinating thing where, like, back when they were making the Sopranos, there was really like you either did it that way or you made it a feature. You know, there was no, like, we're kind of messing around. with what we got and we're expanding and contracting the material. Well, I think that's a conversation we can hopefully have with David Chase himself when his Sopranos movie comes out because it's all right there. Yeah, right.

He always wanted to be making movies. He's now making a movie, but he's making a movie from the Sopranos world. So it would be very interesting to see how that feels in comparison to the show. If it feels of a piece with the show or if it feels like something else, like something he always wanted to be doing. Before we go to that interview, two quick things. this Oscar debacle is just wild to me. Basically, Andy's referring to the fact that they will not be broadcasting the Oscar

awards for best cinematography, best editing, I believe, best makeup, and I can't remember the fourth one. It might be one of the shorts. I don't remember exactly. Oh, yeah. I think it's shorts, yeah. Editing and cinematography are just, it's so wildly offensive and dumb. And, you know, I don't want to be the one to say I told you so, but my one, the one joke that I always used was like, I don't understand why movies don't act like they've

been there before because they're movies and they're the Oscars. It's weird that again and again in the season, and our friend Sean Fennessee has been the one cataloging this wonderfully throughout this crazy roller coaster process, but they just seem to not understand what people want out of the show in such a profound way, and now it's just panic. And that's going back to the best popular film thing that was quickly nixed, but also the issue with having a host, not having a host, letting the musical performers perform. It kills me because, you know, I'm not the first person to say this either, but I learned the word cinematography and what a director of photography does

because the award was given out at the Oscars. Yeah. You know, you understand how important editing is. Let me tell you, it's the most important thing in some cases and in some projects. I learned it was as important as acting because of the Academy Awards. So it's just bizarre to me that the Academy that purports to represent movies would allow this to happen. Yeah, it's actually like, it's kind of like a stunning self-own. And I just, I'm kind of fascinated to see how this, this,

the show plays out in two Sundays because it kind of reminds me of how sometimes like when I, when you write something, you know, you'll get a edit back and it's like, yeah, well, nobody, nobody cares about this part of it. And it's like somewhere in the middle. And you're like, well, like, if the person's actually gotten this far into the piece, and you feel strongly about what you've written. Somebody's gotten that far into the piece. They probably would like, they've bought into the process here.

And it's like, yeah, like, if I'm watching the Oscars, just show me the Oscars. You know, like, it's actually not the awards part that bothers me. It's all the bullshit around it. Yeah. And it's like, I want to see Roger Deacons be celebrated. I want to know about Thelma Schumacher. I want to know about the great artisans and crafts people who work on these movies and see them celebrated. And you know what?

It means a lot, not just to those people, but to the people who are like, the actors who are we think that are the only, the price of admission that you have to pay is to see Amy Adams or something like that. Amy Adams gives a shit about this stuff too. So it's like, you're just robbing everybody of this experience. And it just seems needlessly self-flagellating. No, it's an own goal. And it's one that we see again and again in as people scramble in the face of the rapidly changing

media landscape. And the mistake across all these examples is always people thinking they can win over viewers. I've almost said voters. And this is actually probably, we could pass this take over to our friends of Pod Save America. It's probably the same thing. People thinking they can win over voters, they know, I said it, win over viewers that they were never going to get anyway, full stop. And in doing so, you alienate the people who actually do care and you end up with the worst of all worlds. Millions of people are going to watch the show, no matter or what. So service them. Service the people who are going to watch it and care about it. Before we go, it's Valentine's Day. And so we should just talk about this album that we love.

We should talk about our true love. Celebrating, it's 25th, 25th birthday. It is Pavement's Cricket Rain, Cricket Rain. Andy and I have had Stephen Malchmus on the watch before. Stephen Malchmus, the guitar player and singer from pavement. He's also joined us on the Hollywood Perspectus back in the Grantland days. I would say that there like four or five like not necessarily the things that are like the best but there are like four or five things that have happened in my life that kind of

changed the trajectory of my life and crooked rain, crooked rain is one of those things that I don't know that I can properly articulate which kind of speaks to its enduring mystery as an album what it's about and sort of what it means to people is often very hard to articulate

Rob Harvilla wrote a piece for the ringer that went up on Thursday today. That is one of my favorite pieces we've run this year, which kind of tries to get at that at the heart of the mystery inside this album. I just remember driving around Philadelphia, honestly, like listening to these songs over and over and over again. And these little throwaway lines at the end of verses or that were shoved into different references that are shoved into the end of lyrics. And just thinking that they were about me, even though they were about like, the farthest thing from me,

but just the way in which sometimes oblique or opaque art can speak to your experience in a way that much more direct communication can't has always been fascinating to me. And even listening to it today as I was driving into work, you just go right back to the first time you heard it. Well, what you're saying all rings true, but also the idea, when you're talking about obliqueness and art, it never speaks to you more than when you were 17 or 18.

so that might be unique to our experience with it, and I'm sure everyone has the records. Because you yourself are kind of struggling to kind of articulate it to yourself, you know? So when you hear... Yeah, you don't have a full grasp of emotions or what they mean or what you want out of the world because you don't have any reference points for them.

So when you hear yearning, it fits into that whole pretty well. And this is an album that is made by really cynical, ironic, detached 90s people, but they couldn't help themselves. It's like, it's the swollen-hearted, hearted mass masterpiece, right? And I remember my friend Lara got a, I think was her boyfriend. Someone she knew worked at repo records in Bryn Mare. And so she got the tape a few days early. And I remember this is

the most, this is very on brand for your boy here. We were driving to Villanova to borrow costumes from their costume department for a school play. And she popped it in the deck of what had to have been my parents Subaru. And look, regardless of whether you were a 17-year-old like we were when this record came out, not even 17 yet. So I must have only been on a learner's permit. Okay, my timeline might be a little sketchy here. But the point being, the first two songs in this album, maybe.

This is your true detective season three is trying to figure out. I can't remember. Chris, you should see all of the dudes in flannel shirts with their heads bowed surrounding me in my office right now. That is deep true detective season three reference. Just know this about this rock record, guys. There are not many albums that have this good of a one-two punch. And it still goes and it's still totally euphoric and uplifting. And it's exciting.

I can't wait to read this Rob Hart Villa piece. 25 years on, I know there have been plenty of pieces written, navel-gazing pieces written by navel-gazing dudes like us about what this band meant. But I saw something quite figured it out. So I'm excited to see a quarter-century take on what it might have meant. Yeah, so everybody should check out Rob's piece. We're going to go to my interview with Jamie Bell,

who has a new movie called Donnybrook in theaters on Friday. It's a really, really, really, really interesting movie. I'll talk a little bit about that as we get into the interview. Andy, thank you, as always, for joining the podcast that you co-host. What a pleasure to be sub-tweeted like that. Are you coming on a Monday? I don't know. I mean, are you going to have a snack box for me?

It's just ranch. I'll bring a spoon. I can't wait. Talk to you soon, man. Happy President's Day of Branskis. Bye. Coming up in just a second is my interview with the actor Jamie Bell

about his new movie, Donnybrook. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by ADT, Real Protection. When it comes to something as important as your family's safety,

you deserve real protection from ADT. Real protection means the nation's number one smart home security provider is standing by and there for you when you need them. Real protection means having a safe and smart home with everything from video doorbells, surveillance cameras, smart locks, lights, carbon monoxide and smoke detectors in a system that's custom designed to fit your lifestyle. And setting up custom automations to do things like locked doors and set the thermostat when you leave. Real protection means staying safe on the go, in the car, or when your kids are at school,

with the ADT Go app and SOS button. Real protection means 18,000 employees safeguarding you. Real protection means direct connections with first responders. No matter how you define safety for you, your family, or your business, ADT is there. ADT, real protection. Visit ADT.com slash podcast to learn more about how ADT can design and install a secure smart home just for you. Okay, guys, we are about to go into my interview with the actor Jamie Bell. Obviously, he's been basically a huge presence in the movies since his debut in Billy Elliott when he was just a kid. I gosh, probably almost like 20 years ago at least.

And I came across this movie Donnybrook kind of like randomly. It's coming out on Friday via IFC and it is a filmmaker that I'm really just getting to know named Tim Sutton. He did Dark Knight and Memphis. And this movie Donnybrook is based on a novel by a guy named Frank Bill. So it's an adaptation of this Frank Bill novel. And I guess the best way to describe it would be a Midwestern take on, on No Country for Old Men.

Jamie Bell plays a man named Jarhead, who's come back from the war overseas and is trying to kind of keep his families stitched together despite the ravages of drug addiction. He enters or is going to enter into something called the Donnybrook, which is essentially a huge cage fight, a brawl with other men. And the purse is $100,000.

And to buy into that, he's got to raise some money. So the movie is sort of a road movie that tracks his journey towards the Donnybrook. And in the wake of that journey, there's cops, there's drug dealers, there's just really like a devastation everywhere you look. It's not for everybody. Like I'm not going to lie. I kind of feel like this is like when I was talking about Soldado last year. It's just like a really violent, dark movie with a lot of fucked up stuff happens in it.

but it's really unlike any movie I've seen in a long time. It has hints of apocalypse now. It has hints obviously of no country for old men. But tonally, visually, sonically, it's really a distinctive work. And I was really excited to talk to Jamie about this movie because he had a hand in the production of the movie, really. He's obviously taken a very big role in this movie. And it's fascinating to see what he puts his body through and what the other actors put themselves through to make this movie. so I talked to him about the sacrifices that he made doing this and what that experience was like.

So here's my interview with Jamie Bell. All right, man, so let's start here with Donnybrook. Obviously, it's a beloved novel by Frank Bill. When you get this script, I mean, you do such a wide array of work. What's going through your mind when you get this particular script from Tim Sutton? I think just kind of how elegant read the novel before. How kind of time is. Yeah.

But then Tim's... I wanted to talk about what it's like to be a figure in this... sort of visual landscape when you go see the film now, because there's something about this movie that the violence feels incredibly authentic to the people in the place that it's talking about, but it's not really fetish-sized. Like, I didn't watch this movie. Like, maybe you watch Fight Club and you're like, oh, okay, like, I'm kind of fired up. You know, this is pretty bone-chilling violence, but it's also rendered in this almost like hauntingly beautiful way. You know, how did Tim describe what he was going for visually when he was first talking to him?

about doing the movie. Conversations, and we both kind of agreed upon what the film was about, but then I talked to David Lang, you know, for nothing, find that moment and then move off of them. Yeah, it's rare that you see a movie these days where the, and this is a little convoluted, but the story perfectly matches where it's set,

because this is a particularly, and in some ways it still isn't, but it's a beautiful part of the country that has this kind of like, almost like ruin running across it, whether you look at that as like the abandoned industrialization of that area or the drugs that are running through the area or the sort of economic depression that's running through the area. And that's so well reflected in the way the movie is made because it is a beautiful movie that has something broken inside of it, right? Yeah, I mean, it's very much set and opportunity to give them a bet. Yeah, I found the moment, especially the scene with you and your son with the heavy bag out in the field, like after they've stolen the cop car, it'd be like incredibly tender.

And obviously, in retrospect, incredibly heartbreaking. Yeah, I mean, it's the scenes like that, you know, these kids in this movie are totally, you know, and you know, you might not necessarily be dialogue. And then they're aware that they're, oh, we're doing it now and was, you know, require unknown territory. Yeah, that's that one moment where you're like, you're telling your son to throw his hip in. into the punch with his right and then you're like oh it hurts right and then you let him stop like it's just such like a perfect human thing that

like you have to kind of what only happen in real life sort of you know yeah it's true yeah and I'll quote it to Tim I mean like he was and Tim so obviously in a movie called Donnybrook I'm going to ask you about fights the first sort of confrontation in the movie happens

when you come across Frank Grillo in your house selling drugs to your wife and it's not really like most movie fights in the sense that, I mean, it's probably closer to what most real life fights are like, where it kind of happens on like a snap, right? And it's also like you don't really know what's going to happen.

How do you choreograph something like that? So you talk to the drill, but you've invented a scene before the fight even begin. Right. And I said, Tim, we have, you know. It's not a man who fight training, and I, so then another actor who was... Any bumps and bruises from it?

Oh, tons, yeah, absolutely. Like, I thought I broke my fingers, my knuckles, my, my, all the skin came off because I was, you know, in that bag, seeing that blood on the bag is my blood. Oh, God. You know, I really had it, actually. I hear feeling that kind of, that exhaustion

and knowing that you're going to have to do it, feeling... Is it because, like, you're trying to, like, combine performance, like, athletic performance with acting performance or something? I mean, well... I think, yeah, because it did, doing dual things. You're not just like going

for a job, or you're not just, you know, kids. Yeah. And for your wife, and all Frank in the cage, it's what it represents. You know, and then certainly for the last fight between me and Frank, when I know what he's done, and I know what the can I play a lawyer or what? Yeah, no, Suez. I'd love to just play a guy in a suit

who just sits behind a desk and has, like, a regular job. That's lovely. You have to you have to, like, slowly mature into when you can play, like, a police sergeant who's just like, give me your gun and your badge. Is that lunch? Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great.

It's interesting to hear you the way you're talking about this movie because I can hear the degree of sort of pride of authorship you have in it or at least like the sense of like equity you have in this movie. And I was wondering if that's something that's becoming increasingly important for you as you get older and have like a longer and longer career, that the things that you work on have your fingerprints on them in more ways than just your performance. very rare thing to have. I think that's what you're hearing relish.

And I'm saying, you know, here's the other thing. Is that Al very much as I'm saying. Yeah. One of the things I wanted to ask you about is so, you know, often on this podcast, my partner and I talk about what it's like as a audience member, essentially, to kind of try to wrap your arms around the amount of movies and television that's being made and the sort of dominance of, say, franchise films. And for probably most people who go to the theaters, they're engaging with movies through

Marvel movies and DC movies and Star Wars movies and stuff like that. But then you've got this whole world of long-form television and movies like Donnie Brooke that are still getting made and being put out via IFC and you got A24 in these places. For an actor, are you overwhelmed? Is it harder than ever to navigate things? Is it more exciting than ever to navigate things? Because you have all these different places you can put your work. What's it like right now for someone like you who's done so many different kinds of acting? Mm-hmm. It's very evident, I think. I think the change in them that could get made or certainly the wayside I don't think that would ever get green.

Yeah. This is really crazy. Like, you play it? Yeah. It's been honest. So, I mean, in terms of like films like, you know, I mean, you're offering that you're just being flushed out of the market. Yeah, Disney might have the two biggest movies of all time this year, you know, with Avengers and Star Wars. And who knows what they have next year.

Exactly. You know, they have number three of all of those things. Yeah, right. So, yeah, I mean, it is. I'm not saying that time. Well, I mean, that's one thing that you could say. I mean, people's tolerance levels for violence may vary, but I don't think Donnybrook's not like anything I've seen in a very long time.

You know, and I think that it's not about people that we often see on screen, which is really all you can ask for a movie is to be sort of challenged like that on a really elemental level. I think I want to always be taken to a world. Yeah. You know, I want to go. Yeah. I mean, I really do. You know, and it's something that, like, literally seen in a day

and been like, whoops, I maybe should have done that. You know, I'm not denying that the reach of these things are. Yeah, that's really interesting. Well, Jamie, thank you so much for calling in, man, and I really hope people check Donnybrook out because it really is a one-of-a-kind movie. Oh, thank you, man. I really appreciate your time, and thanks for having me.

Yeah, take care. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by ADT. Real Protection when it comes to something as important as your family's safety. You deserve real protection from ADT. Real protection means the nation's number one smart homes security provider is there for you when you need them. Real protection means 18,000 employees safeguarding you. No matter how you define safety, ADT is there. ADT Real Protection, visit ADT.com

slash podcast to learn more about how ADT can design and install a secure smart home just for you.