The Watch - Ep. 100: ‘Westworld’ Theories and Casey Affleck’s New Film, ‘Manchester by the Sea’

Episode Date: November 21, 2016

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald unpack the latest episode of ‘Westworld’ (1:05) and discuss the wild theories about the show floating around the internet. They also chat about the new... heart-wrenching Casey Affleck film, ‘Manchester by the Sea’ (24:44). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 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 for the ringer.com and joining me on the other line. He thinks that Wyatt guys got some good points. Danny Greenwald! Yo, this is like old school podcasting.
Starting point is 00:00:22 I am in a freezing hovel in New York City on a phone. And I can only imagine your... on a beach with a mock sale somewhere. Yeah, it's like a tiki bar meets point break. It's really just something else here right now. Andy, welcome to the podcast, the world's fourth or fifth best Casey Affleck podcast, at least. Today we'll be talking about last night's episode of Westworld. Andy and I also wanted to talk about Manchester by the Sea, the new film from Kenneth
Starting point is 00:00:53 Lonergan, it opened on Friday in certain theaters. We will not be spoiling, spoiling that film, really, but we will be talking about our our love for it. And we will wrap things up with talking a little bit of music. But first, Andy, let's get to, let's get to Westworld. Let's get to the timelines, baby.
Starting point is 00:01:11 Yeah. So, I guess the consensus seems to be, and I say this, you know, I'm just a guy soaking up culture. I'm just walking the streets again. You know, I'm really like getting back in touch with people.
Starting point is 00:01:22 The common man. Yeah, yeah. The hot nut vendor on the street corner, you know what I mean? Like the guy who aggressively elbows you is you try to walk down to the six train. Can I ask you a quick sidebar question? Sure.
Starting point is 00:01:34 Have you ever actually enjoyed a bag of like hot roasted, you know, I don't want to, I'm not trying to make the joke, but hot roasted nuts? You're not trying to ask me if I've ever enjoyed hot nuts on the street. No, I just mean, I mean it because it's like one of the things in my life where it is like the smell to actual taste divide is so huge that it, it's still one of a, my like it's it's one of the lasting uh visceral memories of my of my of my time in new york city yeah no i never never order them never even definitely not but it's it's always nice to get a hot blast to that especially when your other options are um fresh urine or um garbage
Starting point is 00:02:18 you know so it's very nice for that regard but my point being the hot nut vendor chris as well as all the other colorful characters that make up this great city of gotham all of them seem to communicate to me through their sullen body language that this was an episode that featured kind of an info dump I think people like
Starting point is 00:02:38 the takeaway of information because it did seem to be quote unquote answering things I have a much like I like hot nuts and I have a big butt here because that sort of commentary
Starting point is 00:02:58 to me strikes at the the problematic heart of Westworld which is, once again, it is delivering things in a functional manner without really much art to it. I found this, I mean, this isn't going to be surprised people who listen to this podcast. It may be frustrating. I thought this was a pretty lousy hour of television, although some of the revelations it gave were probably, I will give you, were kind of interesting. But just in terms of the construction of the hour and the artless way that it was delivered, it was disappointing to me. But before I get into that kind of nitpicking, I want to hear what you thought.
Starting point is 00:03:28 Um, I think that what I, I think it's important sometimes to distinguish that it's not necessarily that. I don't agree with you that it's artless because I think that it has, there is some artistry involved or that they know what they are doing. I think what they are doing might happen to be the exact thing that you are completely uninterested in in television, which is almost a, uh, and it, and it's ironic or perhaps in, on purpose, it is ironic that a show about robots is post-human. It doesn't really have any relationship to real human emotions. I mean, everything in this show is a construct. Everything in this show is a story. That was what some people talked about. Characters repeatedly talked about being stuck in a story, writing their own story, how emotional reactions to things are simply just written in.
Starting point is 00:04:26 Pain is controlled by the brain. it's not real. Everything about it is sort of moved on past, you know, the typical things that we go to narratives for, which is sort of to find some kind of resonance in our own emotional experiences and our own biographical kind of experiences with the world. And I don't know necessarily that you're obviously not watching this show and you're like, ah, it's like John Barth or Robert Cooper. It's postmodern.
Starting point is 00:04:55 I mean, you obviously think this is a bag of bullshit. And I don't blame you because I think that it's not being necessarily posited as this construct or this commentary on popular culture or the myths that we tell each other. But this is a sort of macro way of saying, I get what you're saying. I feel like every episode of this show right now is this tightrope walk of just basically not making any sense. And then having the internet explain it to me the next day. And when the internet explains it to me, I'm like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. but during the episode, I'm just like, what is happening?
Starting point is 00:05:29 What is Tessa Thompson doing? Look, the one thing you and I and everyone else on earth can agree on is what is Tessa Thompson doing. I think that is our state point, that is our lifeline. I'm going to agree with one major thing you said, which is that they know,
Starting point is 00:05:48 they're smart and they know what they're doing. I agree with that. You don't have a character, in this case, say to another character, show don't tell, isn't that what you, show don't tell, isn't that what you're say, and then have an episode that just viciously violates that. You can't have that without some self-knowledge or at least some awareness of what you're doing. The example I want to use is the man in black's big exposition speech,
Starting point is 00:06:17 which was, I believe you coined the phrase, a total bag of bullshit. in that in that it was to me the worst kind of dramatic writing because a character who has been silent up to now invents a backstory for us and then takes it away
Starting point is 00:06:36 as if that is going to be some sort of currency equivalent of emotional connection what I mean is he says I had a wife by the way and I had a family and I did these things and now I don't and basically what television or you know film entertainment usually do is they give us a
Starting point is 00:06:52 sense of the things that were taken. I promise will be the only time we compare these two things. I promise. Yeah. But he, to Ed Harris, creates it and then takes it away, which is completely pointless in terms of making us feel anything. It's really just a narrative download, you know, or an upload as the, you know, as the QA people often give us. Now, what I fear is going to happen is that the show is actually trying to once again outsmart us and be too clever. for my observation.
Starting point is 00:07:26 And we will find out later that we actually do know the wife in question because the time issues that I'm sure we're going to get to. Either we know her or when it's revealed that he is Jimmy Simpson, then we've at least seen him when he was excited to be married, and then we realize what's happened to him. So the emotional residence comes later. To that I say, you know, Bravo, you are very clever. You have one debate club this year, Max Fisher, but that is not make for a particularly entertaining TV show for me while you're watching it.
Starting point is 00:07:54 So the fact that the exact scenario that you're talking about, which is that this character puts forward the chess piece of, here's my backstory, here's why you should care about me, and then topples that. He, the man in black, topples that backstory over. Does it all change your feeling about it? And I already know the answer to this, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask you.
Starting point is 00:08:16 Does it all change your feeling about that, that that is literally something that Ford did for Teddy and Bernard? where he gave them quasi-tragic backstories to enrich their character and give them motivation. I mean, isn't all of this basically about the fallacy of the storytelling that we so often champion? I think that you are making accurate and correct observations. I just think that if the show really just wants the planet's flag, not in the sort of emotional storytelling that generally, tracks audiences, but instead, like, hovering 10 feet above it, stroking its chin and musing,
Starting point is 00:09:01 I think that's a very, very weird place and ultimately not a very fulfilling one. Now, the ratings are high. People are enjoying the mysteries in the puzzle, so it's very possible that I don't know what I'm talking about. But, you know, I'm starting to feel about the show the way I felt in the late 90s when people would tell me why Tortus and Juno 44 were really good because they were post-rock and they knew about like, you know, how to play at like, not nowhere near the amount of people listened to Tortoise and Judah 44 are watching this. I mean, obviously, I understand what you're saying, but. I totally agree.
Starting point is 00:09:39 So that's why I may be totally wrong about this, but, you know, it's tough for me to get exercise about something that I meant only to admire in that way. You know, I don't want to, I want to, but it's important to, to basically put a parentheses around my criticism because they definitely are aware of what they're doing. I think, you know, the whispers we've heard about, you know, reshoots or, you know, troubled production, you can see those aspects if you look for them, maybe in other ways with some of the scenes are a little baggy or some weird fades between stuff. But in terms of the big picture stuff, that they're trying to make a point, and narratives and what we relate to and why we're fine. but if you also want to be a weekly television show that I enjoy,
Starting point is 00:10:30 then you're not hit the spot. To sort of spin things forward here, I thought I would mention that. Do you want my report from Theory Island? I want your report from Sylvester Archipelago. Can I ask you a question? So one of the things that is almost charming about this show is that no character seems to know what any other characters.
Starting point is 00:10:55 on the show is doing almost in a way that would make sense in real life. So my experience of this moment right now is completely different than yours and I'm behaving in a different way. You and I wouldn't make sure that tonally we are experiencing this or representing this moment in the right way to like, in real life, we wouldn't like coordinate our like outfits and our state of minds and like how fast we were talking or how we were feeling. And that's definitely the case for Westworld because like how did Sylvester get past HR to get this job.
Starting point is 00:11:27 You know what I mean? Like, everybody here seems like, I'm wearing a sweater and I know what I'm doing. But then there are like these two Yahoo's, Sylvester and whatever the British writer guy is. What's his name, Lee? He just, like, how do those guys get past the second interview? Like, without swearing and urinating all over each other. And then, like, I was really impressed with HBO's commitment to slicing people's jugulars, though. That's really been a core part of their programming this year.
Starting point is 00:11:55 shout out to Michael K. Williams on the night of. But isn't it kind of exciting to know that while many aspects of society may crumble and certain moral standards that we like to hold ourselves to in this era may not survive into the 29th century, at least the one-time guaranteed fatality
Starting point is 00:12:14 of splitting someone's jugular on television can now be fixed with some sort of future stapler destruction guns. Yeah, that's dope. Future stapler. That's pretty cool. If future stapler wants to spot it, sponsor the watch. I'm happy to use it on Andy in any given
Starting point is 00:12:29 moment just as like a kind of branded content video. Yeah. Speaking of HR, do you think they had some like powdered sugar donuts for Sylvester to just get his energy back up after losing basically all of his arterial where did those guys get the cool overcoats? Is that that stuff's just hanging like at a
Starting point is 00:12:44 max and mara that they have there? I don't want to harp on this. I just mean that like if you're making the show as arch and meta as as you are arguing that they are, and it's very possible that they are, could they just throw those of us, you know, who just want to live in Sweetwater a bone here and, like,
Starting point is 00:13:05 just think about the characters you're writing. Just take a, take five minutes out of your day for those tech characters and just make them make sense on some level, because it's just instead of like wide-eyed bird whisperer and raging asshole, like it just fundamentally doesn't make sense. It's just one is way too broad. One is the opposite of broad. And they just spend their days on set with naked Tandy Newton.
Starting point is 00:13:33 Now, there are worse ways to spend your days on set, but it's just super weird to me. It's as disconcerting as many of the other details in the show. But now, please send me a telegram from Theory Island. Yeah, just talking about things going forward, and if you don't want speculation to ruin your enjoyment of the show, which I think is totally understandable, I would just hit the 15 second button a few times here. We'll wrap it up after this. Yes, because my enjoyment of the show has been paramount in this conversation so far. I just want to shout out Joanna Robinson's write-ups about this on Vanity Fair.
Starting point is 00:14:02 They're very good. Rob Harville also had a very hilarious and smart, more on the Andy side of looking at this show on The Ringer. But Joanna does a really nice job of like kind of just laying like the theories that get talked about in her own theories over the show and uses like really handy gifts to just kind of illustrate what she's talking about. So now the big thing is a drum roll that Dolores is Wyatt. Wow. Was that forced? Did you mean that?
Starting point is 00:14:34 Wow. I mean, that'll do your head in, you know? I mean, that's some heavy stuff. I don't. Okay, Ron Burgundy. No, I'm just trying to find the vocal emoji I can use to express how little I would care about that. like you know what I mean like that's that that's just what would that even mean you know what I well I think that what they try to do is like what's what I think what this fits into is the
Starting point is 00:15:04 larger part about the show which is the if if Jimmy Simpson is starts out as a white hat and winds up as a black hat and as a black hat still thinks that he's the good guy and we're perceiving Ford as this controlling vengeful God but at the same time like may have also done things in the past to control his experiments which got out of hand, which is what I don't know. I think that there was an idea that Dolores was going to be this, like, Christ figure that led this revolution of the robots that were trying to. And now it looks like maybe she is more of a pagan kind of, like, you know,
Starting point is 00:15:44 leader of an uprising. Can I ask you a side question? What's up with Ford? Like, Hopkins is great. His ability to know everything and do stuff. Yeah. Super cool. He's got a great phone.
Starting point is 00:16:01 But what does he want? What are his motivations other than protecting the intellectual property built into his massive robots and playing God? What does he actually want? Oh, like, is he working towards something? Like, when does he get to retire? Like, I mean, he's, why would you need something else if you controlled your own world? But what motivates him? Is it purely protecting the world? Because I can't tell if it's even that. Andy, he had a mean Scottish dad.
Starting point is 00:16:31 Well, that does. Fiction has taught us that that can really lead to a lot of things. Seriously. But, yeah, all right. I'll take that, I'll take that for now. Okay. I mean, before we even talk about Dolores being Wyatt, should we just go through some of the timeline stuff? Yeah, there's basically the three versions of. I think her name is, is it armistice or what's the woman who showed up now, the host
Starting point is 00:16:59 for William when he first arrives on the train and now they're new Clementine but also the double agent for Wyatt. So we have now seen the same actress play three different characters or three different hosts.
Starting point is 00:17:15 It's the woman who meets William when he first arrives in the train. There's a woman in the dance sequence in the original version of the town that we are shown where like the hosts are learning how to waltz with each other and then it's the same actress playing the the woman who is supposedly rescued from Wyatt but turns out to lead them back to Wyatt or or get them Get them caught by her and it's I believe like her characters named Angela in one of those characters
Starting point is 00:17:45 She's played by Tulula Riley who is Elon Musk's ex Did you know a little damn damn that would suggest that there are three timelines being shown that there is a sort of pre-park timeline that's about 35 years there is man there's williams arrival at the park and his first trip through the park which is 30 years ago then that is something that is the last time that they had some problems with the host which is 30 years ago 30 years later i don't know how many times he's been to the park since then the man in black shows up to get to the center of the maze and end the game, basically.
Starting point is 00:18:23 And at some point in there, there's a lot of speculation that there is a war in the park between Arnold and Ford, and then there's obviously a lot of speculation about who Bernard could be based on. Some people think it's Arnold. So that's it, that there are three timelines, basically. Right, and we can sort of assume or extrapolate that all the above-ground business with Bernard and Teresa,
Starting point is 00:18:48 that's all concurrent with Ed Harris's man in black stuff because the scene with Ed Harris and and, um, and Lawrence. Teddy. Yeah. He, he is old. He is his current age. Yes.
Starting point is 00:19:02 So, and then even I, even, even doubting skeptical hot nut guy over here could figure out the timeline stuff because of the church steeple, which the camera lovingly lingered on. Yes, which is at various stages of being raised and buried. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:17 Right. And now it's being dug up again. Excavating. new storyline. Right. Which seems to be bringing Wyatt back. I think Wyatt was there before and now they were bringing him back. That was my other question. I think. I think so. Yeah. But we don't know. So what, just tell me before we move on, because, you know, obviously we have two episodes left in the season. We are going to learn more things. The show is, for all its
Starting point is 00:19:42 fault that I love to talk about, it doesn't seem shy about giving us the answers to them. I don't think they're going to be coy about the timeline stuff, and the Ed Harris stuff past the season. What are you currently pure, positive part of your brain excited about going forward? What does Mae find out about the world when she gets outside the door? You think she's going to make it out? That's where she's going. I think that she will get to the precipice,
Starting point is 00:20:09 but I think she might not like what she sees when she gets out there. Right. And then I guess the other side of that is the Dolores character, basically an angel of mercy or an angel of death. What is her sort of role in this? Why is she glitching out in a specific way? Why does she, she seems to be existing in multiple timelines?
Starting point is 00:20:32 She has at least two people who are dedicated, like in a way three characters, but two characters, but three actors who are all sort of dedicated to finding her, whether it's Man in Black, William, or Teddy. And we still haven't seen I don't think we've really seen there's a there's an actor or a character
Starting point is 00:20:52 in that first massacre that we see that Dolores keeps putting the gun to her head during that I think is implied that that was Wyatt but there's a lot of theory out there right now that Dolores is actually the Wyatt character that she goes mad and like leads and that Arnold kind of drives her crazy and that she starts this weird group of outcasts
Starting point is 00:21:14 in the hills so I kind of want to see what happens to that Also, just like, you know, what dope Bon Mott does Tessa Thompson have next to fire at people? Can I ask you a question, or am I going, am I too far ahead of things here? But is it possible that Tessa Thompson is Ed Harris's daughter? That she's the daughter that he's talking about? But you think that Ed Harris would be in the dark as to why Tessa Thompson finds him odious if she was also the executive director of Delos? I guess that...
Starting point is 00:21:55 Well, maybe she'll... That could make sense. Maybe she only recently became the executive director when he basically gave it up when his wife died, just go play cowboy for the rest of his life. Sure. Did I mean, I didn't have a theory? There's also, like, is Tessa Thompson somehow, like, related to the, to the Maeve character? I have no idea.
Starting point is 00:22:13 Like, there's... The Tessa Thompson character... seems so specific, but I don't understand what you, like I don't understand what she's doing that Teresa couldn't have done. Do you know what I mean? Well, I'll just stop you there. I don't understand a lot of things, but I look forward to finding them out. Right. Okay. I can't wait either. Let's talk about Manchester by the C, but first let's take a quick break from our sponsor. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Sonos. Sonos is the smart speaker system that streams all your favorite music.
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Starting point is 00:24:52 Okay, Andy, we want to talk about this new movie, Manchester by the Sea. It's the new film from Kenneth Lonergan, director of You Can Count on Me and Margaret and the writer of such hits as Analyze This, you know, like a classic of American American cinema. But
Starting point is 00:25:07 in all seriousness, this is a weird movie to talk about, because it's got element, it's obviously, it's really well per theater, but it's not everywhere yet and it is definitely something that I would say that it would be better to go into it knowing as little as possible so I I would hope that we could just talk a little bit about it artistically and not so much specific plot points
Starting point is 00:25:34 the broad strokes are basically Casey Affleck plays a janitor living in Boston who seems pretty down and out about life and he is called back to a town up north from it from where he is I think on the water, you know, is it supposed to be the Cape or is it just like the sort of North Shore? I mean, you spend more time up there than I did. I think it's just north of Boston, right? Yeah, and so about an hour north of Boston. The town of Manchester by the sea. Yeah, so it's a, it's a seaside town where he is called back to a family emergency and he is forced to sort of unpack some stuff that has happened to him in his life that led him to the sort of dark place he's at. He's
Starting point is 00:26:20 to take care of his nephew played by Lucas Hedges, who you might remember some West Sanderson movies recently. And that's about the... Chris. Yeah. Listeners of the watch will remember Lucas Hedges from his or return on the television program, The Slap. Oh, shit.
Starting point is 00:26:39 That's right. The photographer did. You were probably wondering why you felt so you're drawn to him. Hedges High. That's right. That's right. That's incredible. That show was a murderer's row of talent, and we're only just beginning to see a flower.
Starting point is 00:26:57 But go on. Yeah. So he plays CaseyF, like, nephew. Yeah. And look, I think that what I would say is that when you hear people bemoan the lack of filmmaking for, like, films for adults or films that grapple with just human emotion and films that paint like a, complex portrait of life. The problem is sometimes that when you do get things like that, whether it's something in prestige television or a movie,
Starting point is 00:27:31 they don't always live up to like the thing that you think. I mean, it's like we often be like, oh, what happened to the sort of middle-brow thriller from the 90s? And sometimes when you get middle-brow thrillers that feel like they're from the 90s, they're actually not that good. This is like a towering achievement, man. Like this is, I don't even know a lot of the story of this movie almost inoculates it from criticism, I think, in some ways, because it's like, how do you even get into something like that?
Starting point is 00:28:00 But that would betray the fact, or that would, that would mislead people into thinking that it wasn't like an incredibly funny movie and an incredibly warm film, ultimately. Yeah, I think that it's an exceptional film. I think I am extremely grateful that I saw it in a movie theater because I don't know if I could have sat through. Well, it is incredibly entertaining and incredibly funny at time. It is also emotionally excruciating in ways that I struggled with, honestly. And it can be difficult to watch, but it is ultimately it earns everything that it tries to do. I think that, you know, you're talking about this in the tradition of adult movie. The five easy pieces.
Starting point is 00:28:51 One of the reasons why I'm glad we're talking about this and encouraging people to see it, I hope, in kind of vague terms, is because for as much as we bemoan the lack of a certain type of movie aimed at adults without superheroes in it, even before those movies were completely squeezed out of the multiplex, there definitely was already a tendency for those movies to basically become movies would be, oh, that's the devastating drug addiction story. or that's the movie about the haunted guy who maybe. Sure. And even before we see those movies, I mean, do you remember a couple years ago there was a movie called Things We Lost in the Fire? Yes. Like Benito del Toro. And I remember that movie being the talk of the trades before it came out because it was just apparently wrenching and brutal.
Starting point is 00:29:43 But wrenching and brutal aren't really, those don't make a movie. Those don't make an entertaining movie. And the reception of that movie proved it. The reason why I'm really glad we're talking about Manchester by the sea in this vague way, without spoiling anything is because I don't want people to think this is some sort of trauma movie or event movie.
Starting point is 00:30:01 This is a movie that creates these people, you know, 360-degree human beings and lets them be people and then also puts them through the kind of rigor that I can't even believe. The thing about Kenneth Laudan
Starting point is 00:30:12 as a writer that just blows my mind is that, you know, that he wrote, Analyze this, I had no idea. No,
Starting point is 00:30:20 he's also a playwright, but his tendency seems to be You know, when people scream fire and they run from the fire, his tendency seems to be, oh, that fire looks interesting and warm. I think I'll walk right into it. And that is scary and impressive as a writer. And the fact that he comes out of it mostly unburned is even more remarkable. Yeah, he has an ability to look at trauma and grief and regret and failure with the kind of focus that somebody like Aaron Sorkin would look at expertise. Or, you know, like that kind of, or Tony Gilroy would look at the inner workings of a company.
Starting point is 00:31:05 You know, like, the Lonergan doesn't flinch from any of it. And because he's not flinching, he gets to see things, like the funny moment before this tragic moment. And the funny moment is so important. And I don't mean funny, like, what a gag. I mean, just like people being people because you never know when something's coming, really, you know. Right. Like the Lucas Hedges character, who has suffered a major loss, also really wants to get laid because he's a teenage boy. And one doesn't necessarily cancel out the other.
Starting point is 00:31:36 One just complicates the other. And the movie never loses sight of that. And it's often very funny about it. Before we get into the performances, which we need to talk about, I just want to say, more than anything else, this movie made me feel one thing, which is that I really wish I was Matt Damon's friend. Seriously. Matt Damon does some favors. Matt Damon is a good friend. not just because he stood by Ben Affleck during G. Lee, but because this dude is friends of Kenneth
Starting point is 00:32:02 Lonergan. He supports, he's his personal friend, but he's also obviously a huge fan of his writing and his art. And, you know, we talked on the pod years ago when it finally came out about Lonnergan's second film, which I think is pronounced Marguerette, but I don't want to call it that. That's wild. What a world. But that's a movie that he was working on for, I think, five years. He eventually had the movie taken away from him, and he got it back to edit it, and he kept running out of money. was going to be this three-hour masterpiece, and it really was a worthwhile movie. But, you know, Damon was one of his friends.
Starting point is 00:32:30 I think Matthew Broderick is another who just sort of kept giving him loans and saying, make the movie, make the movie. And then basically got this movie set up for him to get him out of this catastrophic existential funk he was in because of the process of making the last movie. Yeah. And then the party, so he gave him the money for it. Executive produced it. And then he also said, though, the last straw was, though, that he, Damon would get final cut,
Starting point is 00:32:51 so it wouldn't happen again. Yeah. This is a good friend. If I was ever bottomed out, I would give Matt Damon the car keys. And it's not just Lonergan that he helped out. So Damon was like, I was going to play the Casey Affleck role. And then it was going to get held up for two years because of the Martian and Jason Bourne. So he was like, I guess I won't, you know, I don't want to hold this up and make it go into another existential limbo.
Starting point is 00:33:15 So I'm only going to give this part up to Casey Affleck, though. So Casey Affleck gets this friggin' role of a lifetime dumped in his lap. And let's say Casey Affleck is a really good after, and this is a career-defining performance. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of times where, you know, I think if you look back at performances where people are obviously grappling with the ability to, like, they are incapable of articulating what is going on inside of them. This is a movie where someone has to articulate the fact that nothing is going on inside of them. And that is an incredibly, I know that sounds cryptic, but that is an incredibly difficult thing to imagine is to say, I've been through things and now there's nothing there. I've been like, I've been washed out.
Starting point is 00:34:07 And he is confronted with it over and over and over again in this movie. And every time you think he's going to do the goodwill hunting scene and say it's not your fault, it's not your fault, you know, he doesn't. And it's pretty, it's pretty amazing to watch him have to do. that because I'm sure as a person and as an actor, the thing you need you're building towards is this cathartic moment. And he really does give some kind of remarkable performance in this movie. But I think there's a scene in particular that you're mentioning, that you're referring to, we won't, or at least, you know, you're sort of talking around it and we won't get into it,
Starting point is 00:34:43 but Shell William plays an important part in the movie. And there's a scene when these two characters finally run into each other once again. And it's, I can't think of a, on the screen, you're talking, one character trying to get out of it. Yes. It is just absolutely mind melting and explosive. Yeah, it's like nobody, at this, there's no two characters ever want to have the same conversation at the same time.
Starting point is 00:35:12 There's always one character in this movie that's trying to get out of having to have the hard talk. Or even just, you know, one person might be like, let's bond. And the other person's just like, I don't want to bond. I want to find my car. One person might be, like, let's have like a familial. connection. The other person might be like, I'm at hockey practice. I don't want to do that. So it's just like this fascinating thing about how life never really sinks
Starting point is 00:35:32 up. It's like there's three timelines. Right. Well, I'll do one other West World comparison, just because I said I wouldn't. Which is just to say that it's wonderful that we have both things, and I always want high and low entertainment, but one thing that I particularly appreciate about
Starting point is 00:35:48 Manchester by the sea right now is that it's tough. And by tough, I mean, I don't mean it's tough to figure out the timelines. It's not tough like a Rubik's Cube or a puzzle. It's sort of tough like life is and you have to grapple with it. Yeah. It doesn't, it's not just that the characters don't get the catharsis. We don't either. And you walk out of that movie feeling a little bit bruised, but you sort of, it's okay because it has to be okay. And it puts you in a place that is a little uncomfortable and a little rare for movies to get you to.
Starting point is 00:36:19 And I think that's worth noting. I definitely had one of those beers where you drink a beer and you're like, I really needed that? Where you need to have the first beer before you're willing to understand the first to accept the taste of the second beer. Like I just need to get through this beer so I can have my first beer, which is actually my second beer. Right.
Starting point is 00:36:40 This beer is just to calm my nerves. The second beer is for beer. All right. Andy, we should actually wrap it up. But we will be taking off Thursday, which is obviously Thanksgiving. So we just want to wish all of our listeners are really happy Thanksgiving. and then we'll be back the following Monday to discuss Westworld and everything else. Yeah, and do you think maybe in lieu of a show this week, maybe we'll throw some tracks up on my name or on Spotify.
Starting point is 00:37:11 We'll hopefully throw some, just throw some songs that we've been digging that we haven't gotten a chance to talk about. I'll tweet it out for you. Yeah, because I'm off Twitter, man, and it feels great. Okay. I just sitting here to be eating hot macadamia nuns in the cold. I'll talk to you soon, man. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, Bradski.
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