The Watch - Anticipating ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and the ‘Sicario’ sequel. Plus, Musician Lucy Dacus and Finishing 'Collateral' | The Watch (Ep. 237)

Episode Date: March 22, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss their excitement for the upcoming Marvel blockbuster ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ (4:00) and ‘Sicario: Day of the Soldado’ (10:00) before finishing their series review of Netflix’s 'Collateral' (18:00). Later Andy sits down with musician Lucy Dacus to discuss her music and recent album ‘Historian’ (31:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, everybody. On today's episode of The Watch, Andy and I talk about Avengers Infinity Wars and our hype level for that and some suspicious quotes coming out from the creative team behind that movie. We also talk about, speaking of suspicious, Sicario, the Day of the Soldado.

I don't think it's possible to quantify our hype level for that. We also talk about the last episode collateral on Netflix, and then Andy spoke with singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus, all on the watch. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the wringer.com and joining me in the studio.

He's in the Land of Wolves again. It's Andy Greenwald. It's the watch Reupt Day of the Soldados. I can't wait to talk about this. There's a new Sicario trailer that I want to discuss in detail. We're also going to talk about episode four of collateral. Thanks for bearing with us with this. What a divisive show.

It's interesting. We'll talk about that too. It's like the talk of our Facebook group. Here's my thing. All in on Facebook. I noticed. You've picked the time. I'm going to start more accounts for myself.

You are that guy that stands a stride history and just says, eh, Jeremy Corbyn was actually, I will not be deleting my Facebook. page. Jeremy Corbyn said that. He came out and said that. Very relevant to collateral. He is actually. It's basically the old version of the MP in that show. It's all connected, man.

We're also going to have a guest today, Andy. What you tell us a little about Lucy Dacchus? Chris, three days ago, I was like, here's an album that I love. Lucy Dacchus' second album, Historian. It said it was probably my favorite record of the year. Guess who's dropping by today? Lucy. That's incredible.

I'm very excited. And usually when we do these intros, they're a little bit, a little bit phony because we've done the interview already. No, we have no idea. I wonder if Lucy is into Facebook. This could be a wild, wild interview. We don't know. Yeah.

So a little of a Sicario talk, a little bit of collateral talk, and then Andy's interview with Lucy Dacus. But first, let's talk a little bit about Avengers Infinity War. I love Avengers as almost as much as I love Facebook. This is just a small note, but it is so relevant to our interest, not necessarily our interest in superhero movies, but we have repeatedly talked about how, A lot of these big budget tent poles have kind of got, not a critical pass, but a little bit of one by name checking movies.

There's so many of them that we can't quite judge them anymore, right? Like they're now their own genre judged against one another. No, no, no. My point is that the people who, the filmmakers compare them to actually good movies. Oh. Remember we were just saying this the other day. You talk director bullshit, aren't you? Yes, I'm on that director bullshit.

And our favorite example of that recently. Shout out to Sam Donski. I think Sam was the first one to sort of. of set up the sort of the rules and regulations of director bullshit but explain it for people

who don't know well no just that Captain America Winter Soldier a fine comic book movie somehow was allowed to be slipped

into our collective cultural bloodstream as more or less a vamp on the parallax view to which we say nah and then

just when I was ready to and you know the one last year that was just out of control was Kong Skull Island as a as a riff

as a sort of A meditation, if you will. Using platoon and apocalypse now as the sort of the bass chords that they were going to work from. Right. And so the stems in the remix of life that we were all part of.

Yeah. Just a few short days ago, you blew my wig back by saying that Infinity War was based on heist movies and two days in the valley. Joe and Anthony Russo are seriously just paging

through the Leonard Maltin film guide in these interviews and they're just like, oh, let me just mention two days in the valley. Right. So I hope you saw what today's reference was. And I don't know who to source this to, but it is...

It was their screenwriters, actually. The screenwriters. Yeah, the screenwriters. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt because, look, these screenwriters have a tough job for which they are paid an enormous amount of money. But they said that Marvel's Infinity War, Avengers, colon, infinity war, starring a cast of 79 people in major speaking roles, is kind of like Robert Altman's Nashville. No.

I guess they're saying... saying this because there were a lot of speaking parts to juggle. So we talk, this is from Stephen McPhile, one of the co-writers of Avengers Affinity War, and the quote is another thing to think about, one of the challengers we've had, how do you make sure this is not 25 people moving from one scene to one scene to one scene? So we talk being a little facetious about it, but we talk about how it's like Nashville. So. Okay, so this is not director bullshit.

It's screenwriter bullshit. And shout out to Stephen McPhilely, because if it's, if you want to make a, Avengers like Nashville, I'm here for it. One thousand percent. But this is just like what, like, the kid who buys the happy meal that comes with Captain America is not also copying the Criterium Blu-ray of Nashville. Maybe one day you see this. Maybe the long goodbye.

So are we saying that this is a California split? Yeah, right. I'm saying, look, once you said it was the writer, I got a lot softer about the whole thing. But I also feel like, look, whatever gets you through the day? Like this morning when I woke up was I like, do I have a lot of takes to share in a podcast? And I was like, not really. Do you ever think that when you wake up in the morning? You know what I did?

I said, it's kind of like a vamp on this American life talking to Chris. So I just imagine myself in a classier circumstance. That's right. And then here I am. And you get through it. You get through it. But this idea that the bar could be set so low, or it's like there are more plus or minus, you know,

they're more than 12 or 15 characters. So it's Nashville? So it's Altman-esque. I mean, look, no matter what this dude is saying facetious or not, they've already compared this to two days in the valley and out of sight. So as far as I'm concerned, my head is spinning. I will let me get a one to ten Where's your sort of anticipation level for Avengers Infinity War?

Because I feel like Black Panther actually Gave this movie a little kick in the pants Where not only does it have something to really live up to now But the idea of getting a sort of backdoor Black Panther sequel Yes which seems like we're getting So short of a time after Black Panther hits screens And they are starting to Like seed the idea that this will be the last

run for a couple of these actors. You know who's seating that? Christopher Evans. There are two headlines going around right now, as far as I can tell, and I'll summarize them for you. One, some people die in Avengers. The other headline, Chris Evans grew a mustache and is on Broadway now. I'm not connecting any dots here.

I'm just saying. Yeah, I think his quote in The Times today was, you want to jump off the train before they push you? Yeah, you know what happens when you either jump or get pushed off a train? You die. So, look, sorry, guys. The weird snowpiercer analogy. Shout to the white wolf, though.

No, here's where I am on it. Yeah. Little, not going to lie, two hours 36 minutes is a very, very long hang. But I have a lot of time for these movies, maybe not two hours, 30 minutes. And at this point, my appreciation or anticipation for it really rests on, I'm just curious what they're going to do, because they've been talking about this movie conceptually for as long as they have been making the movies, right? it is hyperbole to say that it's Altmanesque. It is not hyperbole to say this is what they were building to.

In Kevin Feigey's wildest dreams, where he also is seven feet tall and has a purple ridge chin, this is what he was imagining. So I'm curious when you actually have to do the thing, what it looks like, that's a lot of actors, man. And I also think they are stealing,

they are steering the overall Marvel franchise towards not only the actors that they potentially can control under contract for longer, but towards the ones that really are popping on the screen relative prominence in the comic books. They did it. I mean, like, they might be able to pull off a group hang movie in two years with Brie Larson, Chadwick Boseman. Latisha, right?

Yeah, all the, you know, like all the, maybe some, maybe Dr. Strange, maybe Benedict, I don't know. I think it is interesting to see them break free from the source material so fully in that, and there's no reason why this always shouldn't have been the case, but it historically wasn't, that Shuri, the character of Black Panther's sister, was on the same level of fame and prominence in the Marvel universe as Black Widow or Thor. Yeah. But why not? Yeah.

The performance is great. It reminds me more the poster and just the sheer volume of people in this movie remind me of it's a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world where you've got just a cast of thousands. I think that there's a heist element to this movie. Jules. They're stealing jewels. I know, but like off of Thanos's hand or what did he do it? He gets them.

He doesn't have them. Chris, come on. Look, the biggest question mark is the biggest question mark, which is the biggest question mark, which is Thanos, right? Like that... Yeah, can they pull it off? You have famously said many times when we have these conversations

that these movies depend on their villains. I don't... Marvel movies have historically had very bad villains and somehow managed to be okay despite that. I don't see how that character matters other than as a plot engineering McGuffin to let the other people have fun. So we'll see.

We'll go, right? You're going to go. I'm going to go to that. I'm also going to go to Sakharia. too. Starring Thanos. He's in that too, man. So the first trailer for this movie dropped a little while ago, and I saw it in multiple movie theaters with different groups of people watching different movies, and almost

to a person, everybody turned usually to me because they consider me to be the Sarah could be Sanders of the Sicario federal government, and they were like, you know, I don't know that this needed to happen. Yeah. Strong, yeah. They don't know about the Soul Dogger, though. Look, so what's cool about this is that I just do not give a shit about what anybody thinks. I'm just really excited for this movie.

But I am fascinated to see that somebody at a studio, like, obviously also had the same feeling late in the game as what some of my movie going friends thought, which is, huh, maybe we didn't need to do this. Or maybe we need to put a little bit more English on this fastball, you know? So, so your boys at Columbia Pictures Real late in the game Real late. Real late. We're like, Sicario Soldado. Hmm. Maybe people aren't getting that.

First, it was just Soldado. No, Solado, right? Yeah. And then they were like, you know what it will fix this? You know what will fix this whole thing? Is if we call this movie, Sicario, colon, Dave, the Soldado!

And they just have this movie with no blunt. It's just Brolin and Benetian. And a young girl and your girl, Catherine Keener looking like she's wearing Yeezy season 19 What about what about Modine who is transported directly from the deep freeze? They put him in at the end of Stranger Thing season one and they woke him up on set with like Narcan tablets and he said what am I doing? And they said, the same and they're like okay, they have the Salado. What does that mean? What does that mean?

I don't know if that really sells. So you know what we need in a visual aspect. Benicio and Josh Brolin, that's not enough. We need a visual aspect. So somebody go make me a fucking Von Dutch sons of our anarchy. dip set volume 4 hybrid poster of a fucking skeleton draped in an American flag with a gold-plated semi-automatic in its belt

and gold chains on and bullets all over it. It's subtle. Yeah. It's tasteful. Yeah. Yeah. So this is the new watch art, by the way. Yeah, 1,000% we're working on it back here. Get the fuck out with this stuff. Let's put a skeleton up with an American flag draped over it. We are now sponsored by Affliction. Yes. We are now also sponsored by Ice.

It's a good look for us. Yeah, so they changed some things. Enormous changes at the last minute rarely bode well for a film release. But this film does have some stuff going for it, okay? I'm just going to say, Stefanosolima is not Denis Villanou, but he's really good. And he did Gomorrah, he did Subura, which you were really excited about, the book. That is a raw book, my friend. And so he obviously knows it.

is way around. I think that they're going to really up the ante on the set pieces, obviously, if the trailer is anything to be believed. And obviously the second trailer does another thing that I always get very suspicious about, although it's pretty common now, is essentially gives away the entire movie. It's so long. It's so long. It gives away so

many twists. If there are more twists, I can't understand what they could be. Let me back up the armored truck. The Soldado truck. The Ford Soldado? We loved Sicario, obviously. Yeah. I don't know if anyone involved in the sequel knows why Sicario was good.

I'm not sure if that matters, but I don't know if they know. Why do you think Sicario was good? Well, one of the reasons, Sakaria was good because the POV character was Emily Blunt's character. Yeah. Sinking into this morass of violence and savagery and backbiting and intergovernmental just foobar, right? This movie is just like, that shit was cool when they shot the dudes. Like, that seems to be the studio note here. Well, yeah.

Fair enough. Like, it's worked for many franchises before. But it's also, there is an element where it's like, not only are they just like, let's just let Benicio just go ham with the hand pistols. They also have to say that it's not just the cartels. There seems to be Middle Eastern terrorism at play here too. Yeah. Because there can't be enough villains for him to just. blow away.

Yeah. And all of that sort of, we're not really sure what we're doing, but it's going to look cool, is definitely in evidence with their complete panic about the title of this movie.

Because it makes no sense. You're suggesting that there was someone in marketing who put a flag, ran up the flag pole, and it's like, I'm not sure people know. Soldado means soldier. And they were like,

okay, well, what about Sicario 2? And then someone up on the eighth floor was like, friends, guys, amigos if I know. I love we're working with you. I love. I love seeing people get shot in the face on the street.

But Sicario wasn't that popular, guys. So you're not going to fix it. It was okay popular. But if you put Sicario Solado, no one's checking for it. But then the person on the 13th floor... This is what I'm saying. I'm just saying it went up the flagpole and just kept passing the buck or the peso, as the case may be. Because when you got to the 13th floor and you get this word salad where it's Sicario day of the Solado.

What day in this franchise? Pat's back there. We could ask Pat. Do you think that somebody at Columbia was like, you know, if we call it Day of the Soldado, maybe we can get National Soldado Day going on Twitter. This is what I'm saying because just maybe I'm misremembering, maybe I'm misremembering the film, which I believe crescendos with Benito del Toro shooting a family in the face in front of the dad at the dinner table. But in the Sicario expanded universe, has there been a day that's dawned that wasn't primarily for Soldadoes? No, it's really like Soldado's seven days a week, twice on Sundays. And the end of Sicario 1, I guess, infamously pivots away from Emily Blunt's POV.

Yeah. Remember when Benichio has that incredibly complimented way of getting into the cartel leader's house? Dinner. Yeah. So, man, I'm still excited. It's coming out on June, June 29th. It's just like, what would be really radical and really more ultimate? if we're being honest here.

What if there was just Sicario, like, day of the abogato? And it's just a day of, like, due process, you know? It's just like... Josh Berlin eating peanuts and listening to a widespread panic. Well, a new character, played by Paul Dano, does doc review. He's like, we're going to get the cartels eventually, sir. And it's like, I believe in you. Paul Dano opening a Facebook account, opting in.

Are we just, are we doing bits? Are we just pitching stuff here? All right, let's quickly get through the last bit of collateral before Lucy comes by. Am I in? Are you fucking high? Yeah, I'm in. Yeah, I got it. I'm into Sicario. Welcome to the watch. One last bit. I'm a long time. I'm a new listener. One last bit. We want to hit collateral one last time, the fourth episode of the four episode run on Netflix.

We alluded to this earlier in the episode, but I really have been enjoying all jokes aside, the conversation about the show on the Facebook group. It's been fascinating. Can I also just say? Thank you for all the data that I mind from all of the users. I already know that they're all in on the Sicario. universe due to their browsing habits. But please, continue. I would like to see what Sicario-type browsing habits reveal. Nothing good. What was interesting was a lot of the conversation on our Facebook group surrounding collateral was also a conversation about the normal, what's normative in television storytelling. So Alan Seppin-Wall had a really cool piece on Uprocks. That was largely, I thought, fairly praising of the show, but ultimately had a lot of lot of issues with some of the, what he saw is unnecessary biographical flourishes around some of the characters and maybe some of the dead end plot points for such a compressed series. So if it's only

to be four episodes, why do we need to know so much about Billy Piper's character, Karen? If it's only going to be four episodes, you know, why do we need to know about Kip Glasby's pole vaulting past if it's not, if she's never going to pull vault into a detention center or something? I was waiting for that. But that gives me to a larger point, which is that, and I think we've talked about this a couple of times over the last few weeks is that there was a degree of promise when television got good, you know, that TV could break a couple of rules and that TV could do a lot of different things. And I think what collateral does that I love so much is it moves quickly enough and is witty enough and is smart enough that it does do things that, yes,

if you stand over on this side of the painting, you could see it as sloppiness or a loose end that they don't tie up. But to me, from where I'm standing, I actually think it's more like life. I think it's more like life where you find out something about somebody that's interesting, but is not necessarily a Chekhov's gun type of biographical information. And I don't really mind that it has these weird cul-de-sacs that it goes down. I don't mind that it paints a picture of a world that, yeah, it's too convenient, but is ultimately a kind of storytelling that used to be very popular in the 30s in theater of Clifford Odette's and the idea of bringing up issues

and using characters really more as... Stand-ins, avatars for issues and debates. And I actually found it refreshing. And I think the bottom line is that I found the dialogue so relentlessly entertaining and well-delivered that I didn't care about a lot of that other stuff. I don't disagree with you.

I think that I welcome digression. Twin Peaks to Return is my favorite TV show over the last few years. That was primarily digression. Anything related to Kip Glasby, I'm four, because one of my favorite of television characters of the last few years. I think that it just ended up,

and I think this also might be a product of the entire show coming from the mind of one guy I'm David Hare. Yeah. It ended up a little bit of a tweener between those impulses. Was this going to be a rigorous procedural about bureaucracy and how things actually work la David Simon show with a wire? Was it going to be a little bit baggier and chattier? Like I'm not even sure the example.

Fargo is not a good example, but a prestige cop show. The killing, yeah. Something like that, right. Or is it going to be something new entirely and break the mold? It's not going to be that. It's just we live in this sort of formless space now where David Herrick can say, I've got an idea. Okay, well, what is the, what's the box that you want to put this idea in because you choose?

You want to make it six, you want to make a 10, you want to get 12. Who knows if that's what they asked him? But he could have pitched, maybe he decided, but he could have pitched anything. And it's essentially bespoke television to his desires and the type of story he wants. wants to tell. I found overall the series to be satisfying as a watch. Good performances, good ideas. I really appreciated the aspects of it that actually weren't trying to pull Volt over convention and were just happy to be there. I think it was a little bit disappointing because I think it had a lot more promise at the beginning and ended up being rather polemical. But I think

it would have been nothing without those specific types of character beats and digressions that you're speaking of. I think my complaint overall is similar to what I said when we talked about the third episode, which is give me the Kip Glasby show. Yeah. And I think that that's been like probably the one thing that I agree with is that, and I don't know whether or not that's a Carrie Mulligan scheduling thing or if it was part of the, part of the, like, the production or the, the conception of the show. I think it's just this idea that what if we just took, what if you made a detective show, but took the detective out of 50% of it and showed what happened when she left the room or before she got to the room? Or what if we took a crime and we talked about the damage that happened

outside of the crime? Absolutely. Almost the, what's the word I'm looking for? Collateral. No, that's not it. Exactly. It's there. It's there in what he wanted to do. But there were these little beats where maybe this is the American TV officinado in me talking, but sometimes just like, no, that's just, I wish he had made a different choice and I wish that he'd been pushed. For example, the biggest one that I'm thinking of is in the finale, which, definitely was my favorite episode since the premiere, and maybe my favorite overall, not because of what it resolved, but because it was just Carrie Mulligan dunking on people for 56 minutes,

and her performance is so good. Yeah, her last scene outside the door with Sandrine and getting in there and then leave, you know, like her resolution. She fucked that up. Like, she's like, for real, though, like that was real, real bad hostage negotiated. But that happens. That happens. It's not all... It happens, like, on the day of the Soldado. It doesn't happen necessarily on a Tuesday in the home country, home countries, wherever the hell are. I guess so. Look, there was one moment specifically that I wanted to mention, which is when they get, she pulled the images off the cell phone video. They will lead them to the bad guys. And they have the one image of the woman who turned out to be an agent, Berna.

Berna, who's working for our man, Sam Spence, standing in front of a cafe. And she says, find this cafe, and you'll find her to the other female detective. And she says, how? And she says, you're good at that sort of thing. Five minutes later, they find her. Why did you yada yada, like a hugely important piece of detective work? Right. I guess the answer is because that's not the story he's interested in telling.

Like, Herr wants to go talk about Sandry, and she wants to talk about David Sims or, you know what I mean? But it's interesting when a show happens, and this is why a longer running show is always going to be interesting to us in a way, because you can correct it. You can course correct and follow what's actually interesting in subsequent seasons. But every time another member was added to the police force, whether it was the strangely handsome captain, Or Nathan, yeah. Or Nathan. Or the guy who led all the raids, the sort of sad-sac-sac-up who gives her a weird look at one point? You're like, ooh, is that look going to come in?

Yes, but it's not. I'm like, I want, don't drive past that. I want to spend time with them. Well, I can't believe we're sitting here and you're like advocating for this show being longer. It's weird. Or just different allocation of resources. Sure. You know, there was a part of me that felt after watching the entire series that all he really wanted out of the series was David, the MP's speech.

about what we're doing here. We're becoming a nasty little country. Yeah. And then the confrontation with the shadow prime minister, the woman who's in charge of the labor party. Yes. And you feel like he had to sell a detective show to get there? Or almost that's what interested him the most.

Because there's so many other issues at play here from workplace sexual harassment to the role, to women in the military, to the role of the military, to this, you know, all the things that he started playing with at the beginning, I don't think he really had, for example, I don't necessarily disagree with him politically,

but I don't think he has a lot of time for the notion that the security services should have a say in this, right? Sam Spence was such a mustache twirling villain that his POV didn't really add up to much and it wasn't helped that when he's finally defeated. He said, I'd take a dead Iraqi boy at any time if it helped defend our homeland. I'm like, well, this doesn't seem like a compelling argument to me

because it's not based on anything, it's just him ranting. Yeah, I don't know. I think that, You know, I definitely think that this show comes up short when you compare it to something like state of play. So I don't know if you saw the original BBC version of that. I can't remember it's BBC or Channel 4. But Johnson, who plays David Mars in collateral, actually plays a reporter in state of play. I think was later played by Ben Affleck in the movie version of state of play.

And it's an excellent version of this, which is basically a domestic, it's like a domestic story about like love affairs, but it's also a political story about an MP, but it's also a murder mystery. and they brought together these sort of different types of storytelling modes and mesh them better together and that's a show if anybody was like I liked collateral, I'd like to have something like this I would definitely recommend you go back and watch state of play.

Ultimately, I think I had a lot more I enjoyed Sam Spence as a character and I didn't think he was so flatly the mustache twirling villain you did. Great, great, great, great reactions and nasal exhalations from your man during the scene with Carrie Mulligan. Yes.

At the tape. At the tape. That was great. That was great. I am being critical of the show. Because you want more from it. Because I want more from it. But in the scheme of things, I actually want more like this.

First of all, because we'll say one more time, digestible. Four episodes, we thought about some stuff, we saw some stuff, we can move on. And they tried to do something. It felt more nimble because it was a take on something. And not just a take on anything, there was no genre element here. There was no preexisting IP. this was a esteemed playwright and screenwriter who wanted to take a swing at something

and, you know, succeeded or failed and your mileage may vary on that. But I would love to see Netflix and these other streaming giants fund more projects like this, particularly about cities, particularly about issues that matter to us. These things are always going to end up. From television writers or screenwriters

who maybe have these projects that don't quite fit into a feature and don't quite fit into a multi-season television show. In some ways, it's the same thing we said Godless, which is where's the market for Westerns? Well, I don't know, but they're going to try to make a good one. And Scott Frank made three within Godless, you know, and the same, I think the same is happening with the Cohen Brothers Western that's coming on Netflix later, which sounds like an anthology series, which is like, well, we have a bunch of ideas for Westerns. We'll just make them as a show. We kind of have a baggy movie, so now it's a TV show. But I think it's very, very hard to

tackle hot button issues. And I say that knowing what a kind of cliche that is, without becoming polemical. Yeah. Considering how much of the show managed to entertain and move along, and he did a good job. It reminds me just how remarkable the wire is and was, and all the David Simon, not all the David Simon works, but I would say the deuce as well. Yeah. In its period setting,

that's so hard to do. But despite my criticism and despite me saying how hard it is to do, I would love to see more people try. And so and while they're trying, cast Carrie Mulligan more. Yes. Dude, she's so good in this show. I don't. She's incredible. And I think She has a lower usage rate than I think she needed, but I think she could have done more in it.

But she's amazing every moment she's on the screen. Think about that performance. What she does, she's ahead of everyone throughout. You know, she's smarter than everyone, and she's doing that thing that would be so annoying if you actually worked with that person. So I have a lot of respect for Nathan's ability to hold it together. Right. That relationship had a nice moment at the end, too. But she has that Rye smile throughout that really, maybe it's more of a test.

Yeah, she has a great line described. by her own character where she was like, I take things seriously. I just looks different when I, you know, I love that. The way I take things seriously looks different than the way everybody else does. I think it's a triumphant, muscular, awesome, hopefully career redefining performance from her, although she's been good in everything. And I really wonder if maybe why we want more of her in the show is a testament to her performance rather than the way it was written.

Maybe on the page, everything felt balanced, and then she just so dominated that it wasn't that way. Okay, we're going to wrap it up there. Andy's got an interview with Lucy Dachas coming up next. but first a quick word from our sponsors. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Wolverine, the Long Night. Marvel is unveiling their first scripted podcast ever,

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Microsoft Teams in Office 365, visit office.com slash teams to learn more. Okay, now as promised, I'm so thrilled to be joined by my guest who made my favorite album of 2018 So Far Historian and who so politely just corrected me on the pronunciation of her name. I'm thrilled to prove my ability at saying it correctly, Lucy Dekeis. Yes. Welcome. Hi. Could you recreate for me the pronunciation advice that you just gave?

I tell people it's like daytime and kiss kiss, like day kiss. That's so classy. Yeah. But it also speaks to having had to do that many times. Yeah. It also has hand motions. You can do like a rising sun and like blowing a kiss. Oh, it's perfect.

So, yeah. I would like to now apologize for every time I've mentioned your name on this podcast over the last two weeks. Especially on Monday when I told the listeners that historian was my favorite record of the year and now like that book The Secret, I put that into the world and then you just happen to be here today. I feel like the compliment cancels out the wrong pronunciation. So we're at zero or the compliment wins? Maybe like three, like a little veering towards positive. Okay, good. We'll see if we can ratchet it up more.

I should say we're recording this on Thursday in Los Angeles. You're playing tonight. So this might be posted in time for people to rush if it's not. Is it sold out? Not yet. It may be, but, tarragam ballroom? Yes. Tonight you're playing.

And then we'll say at the end, the other places you're playing. But, okay, so I have to say something, this is terrible. This is something I've said on Twitter, but I need to say it to your face and to listeners. It struck me that I fell in love with historian. the way F. Scott Fitzgerald said men go bankrupt, which is very slowly and then all at once. I love that. It's a record that I enjoyed at first lesson

and it kind of sunk its way into my life and into my head to the point where I felt as if I was listening to it even when I wasn't. As a music fan, I love that. As a music creator, obviously you can't intend for something like that to happen, but can you relate to that experience? Yeah, I mean, it's happened to me so many times.

And I've had a lot of moments like this where people have told me that the music means something to them that reminds me of music that has touched me. Right. And it's this moment of like the tables have turned and now like somehow I've made something that can be meaningful in that same way, which is like I can't even fully grasp that, you know, being on the other side of a equation that has meant so much to me in my life. So yeah, I don't, I'm not used to that. I feel like you should get used to it because you're just the beginning. beginning of your career, this is your second album. The thing that struck me most about it, and I should say from your very first single, which I also love dearly, I don't want to be funny anymore, is you have a very particular and specific, I'd like to say, matter-of-fact

delivery. There is very little, at least appears to be very little artifice, it's declarative. I don't want to be funny anymore. There it is. I'm wondering where that aspect of your songwriting comes from. Is that who you are as a person when we only just met, so I can't tell? Is that who you were as a writer of other things, or did this develop? I think it's the person that I want to be. And so when it comes out in songwriting, like, I'm declaring something to myself, you know, usually when I'm writing a song, it's to put words to things that I don't really know how to say yet. And so it's the moment when I finally know what to say and how to say it. And that's why it comes out, you know, really

concisely because it's taken a long time to get there. To winnow it down. Yeah. So I value that in other writing as well. You know, I like fruity, you know, flowery language like anyone else. But I really appreciate like really communicative, concise writing too. Well, there's something that reminds me of like Raymond Carver where there's just, you could have adjectives, but why do you need them?

Yeah, you don't need them. Maybe you don't need them. Is songwriting for you a process of editing? Do you often take things away from where you originally started out? It's funny. I'm, like, paranoid about putting too much there in the first place, because I feel like once you emit something, whether it's like a word or a melody or an instrument part,

you get attached to it. And so I just wait a while before I make anything because as soon as it's there, I'm going to love it or at least care about it. You don't want to kill your darlings, as they say? Yeah, yeah. And there's a little bit of, backtracking, like in the recording process, um, will put something on. And it's usually me in the room saying, like, don't need that. Even if it's cool, we don't need it. Especially working with

Jacob Blizzard, our guitarist and Colin Pestor, our producer. They're friends of mine from like middle school and high school. Oh, wow. Yeah. And they're both kind of like geniuses. I don't know. That's lucky because I had many dear friends in middle school and high school, but it's probably good that we don't collaborate on things. Yeah, I have other friends I do not speak to anymore. But they're, they're ones I've kept for sure. They're very creative and so they'll come up with something super cool. They both went to, like Colin went to Berkeley, Jacob went to Oberlin, so they're like trained in cool music and I'm not trained at all. And so they'll come up with something that's definitely awesome. And I just have to say that is so awesome and I'm not even awesome enough for that idea. Like it doesn't

belong there. It's complicating things. I feel like I was just disrespectful to the kid in eighth grade who made a bong out of an apple. Like that was creative and awesome. You know, like, That was really good at the time, but there really wasn't like advanced studies in that that we could then collaborate on later. I love the idea of what you're saying that it's the person you wish you would be or you could be because so much of rock and roll and rock and roll that I love a lot is about artifice and becoming a character, even the people who claim they're not doing it. There's still a lot of putting on an act.

But your choice of character, if you'll allow it, goes in such an opposite direction from what many people expect. This is not a David Bowie chameleonic thing. It's someone who maybe has the exact right thing to say in the exact meter that you wish to say it. Do you have role models for that type of performance and that type of projection? Were there cool musicians in that way

that they were able to speak? I'm making it sound bloodless because it's certainly not, but I really admire the sparseness of the language in your songs. I think I really admire people who are clearly themselves And I get an idea that maybe they're themselves at all times Like Marina July is a creative person And everything she does there's so much of her

And it's all pointing back to the same truth That she seems compelled to express And like Ennis Varda is a filmmaker that I really respect The oldest Academy Award nominee in history, I believe Really? I think or Christopher Plummer was they were old, fighting. Okay.

She's like a huge inspiration, mostly her autobiographical film. And same for Felini, his movie Amercord. They're both like autobiographical films. And so they're making these creative things that are like pointing back at themselves, like trying to uncover something like deeper within. Like even though there's acting involved and like in any form of media, you choose what to make. So there's artifice and like editing at all. but they are artifice list when it comes to,

like they're going in the other direction. Yes. I would like to do things like that, and I think I'm starting to figure out how, like this album is really personal, and it is pointed inward, and my friend Julian said something to me once about, like, all art is selfish art.

Like, the best art, it has to be really selfish for it to mean anything to anyone else. I think that's true, because the one thing that we, we can all tell as fans and critics as if it's phony. Even if we don't understand, you can tell if the emotions behind it are real and that's what opens up our minds

and makes us sympathetic towards each other and towards artists, right? But communicating that is awfully hard. And people are more willing to hear you say, like, this is how I am. And then they can choose to relate to it if they want instead of, this is how you are. There's a lot of, like, condemning art

or, like, preacherly art that I think people just don't want to interact. react with because nobody wants to be told what they are. Everyone knows what they are to some respect. So if you make art that's about you and other people can relate to it and find words through you, that's a better avenue than, you know, giving a lecture through music. Speaking of giving a lecture, the album title is historian, which I love because it is so not rock and roll. It goes all the way around. It becomes rock and roll again. But it really communicates this really, this powerful idea that runs through the record that we are all historians

of subjective truth of our own experience, and what does truth even mean if it is so personal? Obviously, there's a lot of it, there's a lot of songs and lyrics dealing with mortality and what we lose when people, I was going to say blink out of our lives, but actually more disintegrate out of our lives. How did you come upon that idea as a,

I mean, it's such a unified album. So how did, if you had these songs and these emotions, how did you, with this cool calculating gaze that I think that you have, How did you put your arms around it into this concept? Well, the title of the album came later. So all the songs were there, and I kind of noticed what you were noticing later. It's like it's part of who I am so deeply that it came out that way before I could even really look at it from a distance.

But it is largely about my personal history. And whenever I read history, I always try to think of like who's writing it, who's history. is it, when was it written? What do people know? What do people not know? What's being omitted? And so history isn't real. You know, like, it shouldn't be trusted as fact, but it's still worthwhile because you can't, you know,

ignore the lesson that's waiting in the past. And so I guess for this album, it's like I'm trying to learn lessons from my life so far and really be intentional about finding them because I think lessons are constantly coming at you and like you could be synthesizing a bunch of wisdom all the time but if you don't like take a moment to look for it or put the dots together you could miss out on a lot I'm really fascinated also anytime I encounter a work of art made by a young person a relatively young person about mortality. Often works of art by younger people are sort of in defiance of death.

Like we're going to live forever, a bright lights big city kind of mentality, where the lesson learned at the end of it is, you know, maybe there are walls here after all. When I'm asking the question, I don't mean specifically who did you lose in your life, but what gave you the point of view and the perspective to tackle such a weighty topic at a relatively younger age. I think it sticks with people at different times of your life, but like death is always there. That's why people get pets. I mean, maybe not the only reason why, but I think it's really great for kids to have pets around because it's like a, you love something and then you lose it.

It's a death instruction machine. Yeah, yeah. And that sounds morbid to some people, but I think it's like really beautiful, like as a test run. And so some kids, like, that weighs on them. way more than other people. And so I guess from an early age, I just extrapolated that. And, like, what I was taught in church about, like, death and, like, not death. You know, it was just this really confusing concept in Christianity because, like, Jesus didn't die. Right. There's, like, the zombie apocalypse vibe sometimes in the Bible.

And the rapture, right? Yeah, I was so sure I was going to be taken up in the rapture before middle school. Like, fifth grade, I was like, well, I did what I did and I'm not going to make it to the next school. Oh, so you were feeling pretty good because if you get taken, you nailed it.

Yeah, yeah, that's what I was stoked. I was like, this is great. I'm going to like go live with God. I'm like talking about it kind of like funnily now, but that was like the lesson I was taught. And when your kid, you aren't going to think, if people are telling you, that's how it is.

So you were told it was going to happen before high school? Well, no, I just felt it was. I just felt that. way. I just, I felt like it had to because how could I get older? You know, I couldn't conceptualize aging. It's very strange. Yeah, even now. It's still weird. I definitely thought I wasn't going to make it to high school, but that's because I thought the kids who were already there were going to be mean to me. So I definitely would have considered your religion had it been available to me if I knew there was a right alternative. Yeah. It's like a delaying of anxieties. Yeah, because it's just going to

happen anyway. So were you, have you lived in a perpetual state of amusement and shock since the first day of ninth grade? I guess. Yeah, I wake up a little more amused than most, I think. And that comes from like a funny place and kind of a dark place too. You know, I'm just really, I'm constantly aware of impermanence. And that sometimes takes the form of anxiety. Sometimes it's gratefulness. Actually, most of the time it's gratefulness. And I'm grateful for that gratefulness. I don't know. That's kind of a cyclical statement. Snake eating its tail of, but it's true. and there's a there's real the tone you're using to describe it is present

in the record as well we're making it sound like for people who haven't heard it there are weighty topics discussed but I find it quite uplifting and funny at times as well which I hope is intentional but the title track

is the last track on the record is not a beat but there's the line about if one member of a couple were to pass away first the other person would at least have a lot of stuff to read maybe I'm reading it differently

but as someone who has a stack of New Yorkers and books that I've bought next to my bed that due to family concerns I may never get to. Yeah. I love that idea. Or maybe people feel that way about their Netflix queue. I mean, there's a lot of stuff to do. Yeah, there's so much. And I get freaked out that I will never read all the books that I own or like all the books that will come out. But then I remember I will interact with a bunch of books and art before I go. And it's a, it's a, It's helpful to prioritize, like, you know, what you're going to spend your time doing. And actually, that specific line is partially inspired by a Twilight Zone episode.

I think it's like time at last, like time enough at last is what it's called. And it's about the, yeah, the librarian who hates people and he makes this wish. I haven't seen it in a while, but he wishes that he could just be alone with his books and never talk to anyone ever again for eternity. And he gets that, but then his glasses break. and he can't read anything. So, yeah, the glass is breaking part isn't in the song, but that visual of just being alone with all these books, like, what does that mean if you're taking in all these fake lives?

Like, for me, it doesn't mean much unless I can apply it to my real life. Like, I want to use media to connect to people. You know, it's a solitary activity, but it's supposed to push me closer to other people. Well, that's exactly where I wanted to lead the next question, which is just from speaking to you and listening to the record, it seems like you've spent a lot of time considering the songs and you work on them and you work on them with a group of old friends. What is bridging that gap for you like? How much do you enjoy the introspective part of it? You said this was an inward-looking record to what you're doing now, which is bringing it out into the world, playing these songs in the world, seeing that connection that it's made to other people.

I love it I think you're identifying where the magic is to create something that is looking backward and then seeing that it's applicable to looking forward and

contained in my body and my band and my van there's this like present like we contain it you know and so touring is like we're the only ones that can do it and so

it's um you know no one else can do this job i have job security i guess because no one can be lucy dacus yeah they can be lucidacus which is how i mispronced your name totally lucidacus up for grabs lucid dorcas lucy drakis wow yeah well lucy drakis would that be the mashup between you and drake and it's just all god's plan i mean i'm down if she's down i'm just saying there are a lot of possibilities here i was thinking you should get litigious but maybe you should just get creative what's sad is people look at festival lineups. We're playing a bunch of festivals, and people say, ludicrous.

Oh, wait. I have people on Twitter just like, Ludacris is playing, and then correction, like, I just was reading too quickly, and now Lucy Dakis is full of disappointment. Have you considered a slow core cover of area codes or something of that nature?

Not until today. This is turning into a marketing meeting, but I got pitches. I think this is very possible. I also think the world would be a great place if Ludicrous fans went to a Lucy Dacus show and vice versa. I feel like maybe this is what these festivals.

This is what they're supposed to be about. Well, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to talk to me. This record is so sneakily powerful and beautiful and thrilling, really. It was such a great thing to start the year off with. And I hope all of listeners check it out. And thank you for taking the time to talk to me about it. Thank you. Yeah, this has been really nice.

My guy. Why are you texting me? I'm sitting right here. Are you texting me? It's him. Why are you texting? I'm not texting. Who's texting?

I just got a bunch of texts. Oh, Zach and I are texting. Oh, did we CC you on you? We're just talking about how we're going to replace you. Like when we're going to tell you. Today's episode of the watch was brought to you by Green Chef. Feel like the star of your own cooking show with the Green Chef meal kits. Green Chef is a meal kit company that delivers everything you need to cook gourmet meals at home,

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