The Watch - Ep. 124: Guide to the Oscars

Episode Date: February 23, 2017

The Oscars are upon us, and The Ringer’s Chris Ryan, Andy Greenwald, and Sean Fennessey engage in a discussion that covers everything from front-runners 'La La Land' and 'Moonlight' (5:45) to Sean��s Oscar ballot (16:45). They wrap up by answering Oscar-related mailbag questions from listeners (30:07). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by the enhanced editions of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones books, which are currently available exclusively on iBooks, including the just released A Feast for Crows, enhanced edition. It contains interactive character maps, hundreds of author notes, beautiful illustrations, a sigil guide, and much more. All these extras bring the thrilling adventure to life and help you stay on top of the epic storylines. Get a feast for crows enhanced edition exclusively on iBooks at apple.co slash game of Thrones. Not available in all countries. I ain't sports to have to clear the room Stand up and walk now Hello and welcome to The Watch My name is Chris Ryan I am an editor at theringer.com And joining me in the studio

is Andy Greenwald And envelope please And Sean Fantasy Wow Oh my goodness That was a very political act Why? Shocking

It's gonna be a political Oscars Andy I appreciate that You got top billing but I got the hammer Yeah you did I feel like Manchester by the sea now. People love me for a minute, and then they saw me. Then they don't anymore. Andy, what's up?

It's the Watch. Thank you for joining us. We're here with Sean Fentasy. Sean's here to talk to us about the Oscars. This is going to be an Oscars preview show. Speaking of the Oscars, Andy and I will be going live video, Facebook and Twitter.

You can catch us at the Ringers Twitter account, the Winger Facebook account. Sunday night after the Oscars, we'll be doing a couple jump-ins beforehand or maybe during the show, but we're wearing our best different. Can't wait. Yeah.

Hopefully we'll get some of our best dinner. Can we expect, Sean, can we expense that to the ringer? You're here. The answer is no. That's fair. So that's happening. You still have time to vote for our new, the belt holder. We've taken ourselves out of this decision-making process.

Yeah, our hands are too, too bloody in this one, right? Too dirty. So it's at the watchpot on Twitter, you know, share the pod with a friend. Vote for the belt. And we also have on Monday, so you'll be able to hear the podcast version of our live video from Sunday on Monday. There's also going to be a special snippet of an interview that Andy did with Lena Dunham.

TV's Lena Dunham. She was here. She did some, she talked about the episode that's airing Sunday night. This Sunday night's episode are girls. It might be the best episode they've ever done. Lina came in. We talked a lot about that. You'll get to hear some of that interview on Monday and then you'll hear the whole interview midway through the week. Yeah. And then we'll do, we'll have the whole interview during the week and then we have a re-up next Thursday. So we're all in good shape here.

So, but today's all movies, all the time, which means I am wildly unqualified to be here because I'm sitting here with two handsome gentlemen who see all the movies. If only we were on a plane right now. I know. You guys, in six months, I'm going to have the fire takes on

hell or high water. But before we begin, I did want to ask this. We have some questions from Twitter, from listeners. We're going to handicap things. Sean has a piece up today on the ringer with his expert pro picks on who's going to win on Sunday. And if he's wrong about any of them, just at him forever.

Please, at Chris Ryan 77. That's my handle. At Arm Brabary. But before we get into it, Sean, you know I'm Movie Challenge these days. But one thing I know about you is that you love cinema. You love cinema. Ever since you were a little boy in Italy, going to that one theater, I believe it was called Paradise or something. That was you.

What I want to know, and I should also say, some of my favorite writing of the year is what you write on your personal Tumblr site, where you rank all of the movies. And again, let me be clear, all of the movies. That's split infinitives.com for people who want to check up on this. Please don't. Sean, where does this come from? Not like, why don't you? Because we all love movies at a certain point.

Your interest in seeing everything and then taking the time to reflect on them and rank them and consider them in such an area-day way. You have a day job. What a flattering question. First of all, let me just say. I'm very honored to be here. Long-time listener of this podcast. I feel like I'm in the studio with the Eagles in 1975.

This is really something to see you in front of microphones. You're actually in the locker room with the Eagles in 1989. Well, allow me to be Reggie White in this situation. Please. So, you know, the truth is that movies are amazing for two reasons for me. One is just a purely emotional aesthetic reason. And two is the analytical corporate maneuvering and the collision of those two things. And I think that's why, as much as I love to just go to the movies and escape the way

that most people do and have fun and think about not thinking about the rest of my life. There's also an entire sort of industry apparatus. There's a lot of political action. There's a whole entire world that's built around the movie industry that is just as interesting to me as just kind of enjoying myself at Ant Man. So the Oscars really is sort of like the pinnacle of that. You know, it's the height of looking at what box office means, what visibility means, what gerrymandering means, what relationships mean inside the industry. and, you know, that seems sort of cynical, but it is something that genuinely intrigues me and keeps me going. And, you know, I'm always going to see 145, 165 movies a year.

That's just part of my biological clock. But this is a time when you get to kind of take stock of all that stuff and try to make sense of what it means. We were talking to Chuck a couple weeks ago, Chuck Losterman in a pod right before the Grammys. And he was kind of talking about award shows, and specifically Grammys, but just this idea that as award show as award show, is not interesting to him, but one of the reasons why these kinds of celebrations are relatively important is that they basically set up something to rebel against, that there's like a canon, and then you can have like an alternative version of that canon. The Oscars are a little bit different because the bar to entry to make a movie is higher than it is to just make an album.

I mean, at this point, we could make an album right here with garage band. But, you know, to make a movie and then to make the kinds of movies that we're all interested in, It actually is becoming more and more important in some ways to get Oscar recognition, to be part of this awards conversation. And La La Land's box office success is an indication of that. If that movie isn't being talked about five times a day on every website on the Internet, I don't think it becomes what it is, right? Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I wrote about it in the piece today. This weekend, it crossed the barrier for the highest-grossing live-action original movie in the world in 2016.

I mean, that's astonishing, given that it's a musical. Where is it right now? $345 million. La La Land? Around the world, yeah. Yeah. $345 million for that? Yeah.

Against the budget of like $30 million. I'm going to be your crazy old uncle on this show and say, that's ridiculous. It's crazy. That's three national end up for the arts. Do you know what that? Like that's, that means that Damon Shazel's next movie that he makes, the Neal Armstrong movie with Gosling. Yeah.

He might get a bigger budget for that, right? Oh, he definitely will get a bigger budget. I think the question is, can he live up to the expectation? La La La Land, you're right that the increased access to it because of the awards conversation has definitely driven a lot of the box office to it. It's just been in the conversation for five months instead of just one and a half like most movies. But this is setting a very tricky bar for a movie like this. Making a Neil Armstrong movie make $400 million. It's going to be very difficult unless it's gravity and he dies in flight, which that's not really what happens to Neil Armstrong.

Spoiler alert. That's not what happened. One more La La Land question. Obviously, we're all going to have a lot of la la la questions and takes because it is going to win all of the Oscars in a couple days. But generally when movies reach this level, live action movies reach this level of success, there is a phenomenon tag associated with it. Generally driven by younger people because younger people are the ones who often pay to go to movies not just once but more than once. Are people in love with this movie? Because I'm saying this, I'm not asking this to be snarky because I didn't love it.

I'm saying it because I am not as plugged into tween culture as you guys are. And I'm really curious. Like, are people buying the soundtrack? Are people obsessing over it the way they did Titanic or Hamilton, which was not a movie? But in a similar way, it became a phenomenon driven by young people's affection for songs and love stories. I think yes and no. I think that there is a conversation that is happening on film Twitter that is just full-blown backlash against the movie. I wouldn't lose sight of the fact that making $345 million is extraordinarily difficult.

And while there are a lot of young people who I think have watched it, one of the reasons that it's done very well is it's really kind of cross-generations. It's definitely resonated with older generations. Yeah, my mom loves this movie. My sister loves this movie. It's not just, if it were only 18-year-olds, I think it's probably fewer 18-year-olds than it is 48-year-olds, honestly. And it's like, it can't be stressed hard enough, like Twitter is not real life.

And just like the, to this debate specifically where it seems as if there's this, there has actually been Venom for La La Land for pretty much. the second week after it came out that's just been like, you know what, fuck this movie. But in reality, I think it's just been increasing in popularity. That's for sure as it rolled out. But I guess separate apart from Twitter,

the vibe that I've gotten from a lot of people, cross-generations, parents' response to it as well as friends and colleagues, I don't know many people who have said, I am in love with this movie. This is the greatest movie. This is a work of art. People have said, and not in a pejorative way, boy, that was a good time.

Boy, that was well done. Boy, I enjoyed that. And so I think a lot of the venom is also just people begrudging that because it is, I don't know many people saying, and tell me if I'm wrong, I don't know many people saying this is an A plus. I think people are saying this is a B this is a B succeeding. I agree with you. I think the thing that we can't lose sight of is that really has very little to do with the Oscars. Very rarely does the movie that people say this is an A plus win best picture. The artist. I mean, even look back at last year's example of Spotlight, which is a very solid movie that. that many of us really like. I think it's not going to stand the test of time with Casablanca and with Citizen Kane. And, you know, it's not going to be

in the historical record of the greatest movies ever made. And it's very likely that La Land is the same thing. Right. But, you know, among the Academy, the old saw, I think holds true in this case, which is this is a movie about young people who live in Los Angeles who are trying to make it in show business.

I mean, what could be better catnip for Academy voters than a story like that? I'm going to throw something out of you. It could be about young people living in Los Angeles learning about the Holocaust. then that would win. I think that the thing you can take away from La La Land, whether you enjoy the movie or dislike the movie

or thought it was vanilla or whatever, is that it was a risk. You know what I mean? Making a movie like this, even if it has incredibly attractive stars and, you know, pretty, like, pretty, like, widely appreciated music in terms of like, hey, it's jazz.

Everybody has a John Gouldreown. And if they don't, Ryan Gosling will teach you about why you should. Is that it does, suggest that there is an opportunity that some people, what we get is like five bad musicals, but you'd hope that what we get is five people being like, yeah, here's $30 million to make the movie of your dreams. And that's ultimately like the best part of the Oscars,

is that you hope that it mince people, you hope that it sets up people to make five, six more movies that pursue like a very specific vision. And to Sean's point, being a fan of movies in this day and age, it means more than just liking a certain movie. It means being invested artistically and politically in Damien Chazel not making Jurassic Planet next. If he chooses to make a Neil Armstrong movie,

that's a win for people who like movies, even if we don't like his movies. Yeah, and you've been talking to these to a lot of directors on your podcast on Channel 33 where you've been talking with some of the directors that are up from awards and some just guys who are people who are making films right now. And you talk to Barry Jenkins.

I mean, you must have seen from talking to him, this is a career maker for him. That's totally transformative. I mean, Barry Jenkins, three years ago, had written five scripts that he could, didn't get off the ground after making a micro movie in 2008 called Medicine for Melancholy. And now he is arguably the most in-demand young filmmaker, save for Damien Chazelle. He's in a slightly different situation from Chazelle, who was a very old school kind of boy wonder filmmaker.

He's very Spielbergian in terms of the scope, the kinds of stories he wants to tell. Now they call them Trevor Oesque. Jenkins, you know, Moonlight is a $5 million movie. It was the first movie that A-24 fully funded. it's still a very much an independent cinema pursuit. You know, his influences are like Wongar Why. They're not Steven Spielberg. And so he finds himself in this interesting position.

It seems like he's doing some things with Netflix. He's adapting the Underground Railroad, the Colson Whitehead novel as a series. And then after that, he's going to kind of get his pick to do whatever he wants on the big screen. It'll be interesting to see which direction he goes. And I don't see him taking on Black Panther, too. Because you can make a career doing that now. And I think that we're looking at this. I think people, I think we've generally looked at the career transitions through a very old school lens,

but just certainly the way the studios do it, which is, okay, you make your little one, and now we're immediately putting you on the biggest stage possible where you can crash and burn. If you have a certain sense about you and a certain sense of your own taste and talent, you can just make stuff. You can do, I mean, I hate to say it, you could do the Fukunaga. You can, you know, you can shepherd something on television. You could direct a 10-hour movie and call it a TV show, and then you can pick your spot and make your movie. You don't need to immediately jump into the biggest possible pool, right?

No one's judging you. I mean, that schisms, I mean, that binary is the idea that I, you know, with seeing Scorsese's next movie, the Irishman get snapped up by Netflix for something like $100 million and it's the De Niro Hitman movie. I mean, that's a huge deal because that means that like, there might, there is no country for old men. You know what I mean? Like, there is no space after silence.

Like, Scorsese's not going to wait five years to get the movie he wants to get made. He's going to make it for Netflix now. And hopefully they'll show it in some theaters. And if they don't, everybody's going to have access to it. Well, the other thing that this might challenge people to, and we're getting a little bit off Oscars, so we should probably swing it back. But there are filmmakers who just want to make movies.

And one of the biggest impediments to making movies has always been, it's impossible to make movies. No different now than 10 and 20 years ago, it may be slightly, maybe slower. But basically, to get all the pieces of line from budget to script to studio OK to stars. I mean, people can spend decades on a pass. fashion project and then lose all the mojo and all the momentum, now you can make stuff. People want to make stuff, right? People will pay you to make stuff and maybe that can be good for some people.

Maybe Scorsese just wants to film, but maybe some other people want to take their time. Well, one thing that's interesting, I wrote about this a little bit in discussing the best documentary feature. You know, I'm almost certain that Ezra Edelman's OJ Made in America is going to win, but there's a very strong push for 13th, which is Ava DuVernay's movie. And, you know, you guys talk a lot about the Emmys and the Golden Globes and a lot of the ground work that Netflix has laid over the last five years there, winning awards and sort of pushing heavily in the campaign season, they haven't had as much success in the movie side of things. They don't have an Oscar.

And I think that you're going to see in the next two to three years a really sincere effort. If you look at Brad Pitt's next movie is a Netflix movie, you know, picking up a Martin Scorsese movie, the fact that they double their documentary output every year is a clear sign that that's really, you know, disruption is such an overused word, but they really are trying to bust up some of the conventions of who gets to make and see movies. Okay, we want to take a quick break, but we're throwing to some ringer staffers. We had recorded voicemails, and they talked about the best picture that wasn't nominated for best picture, according to them. And when we come back, we'll talk more with Sean about Sunday

nights Oscars. Hey, this is Amanda. This is Donny Kwok. Yo, it's Jason Gallagher. This is Allison Herman. Zach Mack. This is Christian. It's Micah Peters.

Guys, it's Mallory. You know a movie was dope? Captain Fantastic. The nice guys. I'm telling you, it's Ryan Gosling at its best. It's better than La La La Land. And my vote for Best Movie of the Year that was not nominated for Best Picture

is Fantastic Beasts and where to find them. There is a creature called Swooping Evil. What more do you want? The witch. It's the most accurate movie about puritanical witchcraft in the 1700s you'll ever see. Weiner, the documentary,

and The Handmaiden, a Korean film. I'm not saying that Deadpool deserved to win like picture of the year or anything like that, but it was clever and probably the most fun I've had of the movies this year. The Lobster. Why the lobster, you ask? Well, because lobsters live for over 100 years

are blue-blooded like aristocrats and stay fertile all their lives. Sully, it's really just like an exceptional, well-edited film that is only 90 minutes long. Best of all, it was just something that I still, to this day, kind of chew on and think about some of the concepts presented in it, and I think it's been overlooked. So let's get into this actual show, Sean.

You wrote a really good piece today about kind of going through your own ballot, talking about the nominees and who you expect to win. And, you know, your intro is largely about we've been taught over and over and over again over the last 12 months not to trust the data. That the Cavs can come back from 3-1 down, that Trump can win the election, that the – What? That, you know, the Cubs can win the World Series, all these things. But at the end of the day, and I know that you're a very rational person, you arrived at pretty much a chalk ballot, right?

I don't know if that's a sub-tweet or not. Not at all. I mean, like, I think that you probably were like, I, even as a rational person, you probably had this like all these precedents over the last 12 months make it sound like, you know, we're going to be seeing Mel Gibson up there, but you just can't possibly like imagine that, right? It's not. It's not. It doesn't seem like it to me. There's one, there are a couple of small factors in play here. One, you know, Academy president, Cheryl Boone Isaac has made a huge effort in the last 12 months to add 600 more Academy members as a response to the Oscar. So white controversy from last year. So you do have a lot more people of color, more women, more young people in the academy. You know, you can see that reflected somewhat in the nominations this year, I think. I think a movie like Moonlight Garnering Eight Nominations, even with all the critical acclaim, is a pretty big victory for that movie in and of itself. It's possible that the addition of all those new people and maybe some of the overexposure of La La Land backfires, I find that highly dubious. There's a chance that it actually goes the other way and that it's the most decorated movie of all time. If it wins, it's been nominated for 17 Oscars, and it could win 12.

One of the questions we had from a Twitter user from Joshua was, other than Moonlight, is there any other film you think could topp a la-la land? I want to tack a question of my own onto it, which is if hidden figures had been released earlier in 2016, if it had been a summer sensation as opposed to a, oh my goodness, we have a hit here at the end of the year, do you think that would have been better set up to be potential? I think the opposite is true. Was it Christmas? It was released on Christmas.

Yeah. I think the opposite is true. I think it likely would have been as big of a hit, and I'm not even totally sure it would have been nominated. But there is a sort of post-election feeling of uplift that that movie gives people. It's a really old fat, even much more so than La La Land, which is borderline meta relative to the way and figures plays out. That movie just makes people feel good. You know, the performances are great. It looks clean.

It's a story that people can easily comprehend and walk out feeling satisfied. That is probably a bigger dark horse than Moonlight to me. I don't think Moonlight has a very strong chance at best picture at all. I think it has a better chance in best director, best adapted screenplay categories like that. La La Land is still, if it doesn't win, I will be stunned. Another question here from C3PO, who should be busy on set right now, I imagine. But it's fluent in many languages. Many languages.

Can probably multitask. I thought they wrapped episode eight. Well, they're always filming something over there. Kathleen Kennedy makes moves. which of these the questions which of these nominees will actually

be remembered in 25 years and I'm going to attack a question on two I just like piggybacking I'm a question barnacle sorry Twitter

but when you were talking about last year in Spotlight winning I was remembering that Spotlight beat the Revenant which was

so that felt like a victory because I think Spotlight to my taste was a better movie and the Revenant was so thirsty to be this great movie I found it

exhausting but wrapped up and in this question is the essential thing which is not every year has an all-time movie, right? And certainly not every list of nominations has an all-time movie in it.

And then you get weird years like 2007 where you have multiple all-time movies crammed in together. Do you think any of these are going to be put on some sort of film crit canon? Is this a year that has all-timers? You know, I wrote in the piece that I think La La La Land may turn out to be Chazelle's like fourth or fifth best movie. To me, it's just not...

It's a very good movie. It's extremely well. made. You can see a lot of the craft in it, but it's not a classic. I think Moonlight is immediately an independent film classic, you know, and that seems like some sort of a downgrade, but there's just a very specific mode of operation when you're making a movie at that budget and with that pursuit. And it fits into a category of movies that we don't see as much anymore that's sort of like come out of Sundance or very, you know, very small and shepherded along very carefully and are sort of expertly delivered to the audience that they deserve.

Beyond that, you know, I stand by OJ Made in America, which I just think is an incredible achievement and basically has no precedent. It reminds me more of like Shoah, a 10-hour documentary about the Holocaust, than it does anything that came in that category or any other. I really think it should have been nominated for Best Picture. But beyond that, I don't think so. Chris, is there any, is there an iconic movie in the bunch for you? No, I thought that this was a really weird in-between year. There was a lot of really, really good genre stuff that came out in 2000. But that was never really going to rise to the level of getting nominated for Best Picture.

It was a pretty slow in terms of the award season fair. I thought it was pretty like, you know, like long two-pointer. Like pretty good, not particularly efficient, nothing really blazing. I actually wound up strangely. I think if you asked me what movie I thought about the most coming out of award season, it was probably silence. But that was more because I were the only one. Well, I just felt like I was being tested. I felt like that film was made by a real artist.

Not that these other people aren't, but I was like, this is like a real, he shot his shot. And I was like very, I thought a lot about it. I thought a lot about the performances. I thought a lot about like the messages in the movie and the symbolism in the movie. But that was never going to be in the best picture. And I don't even know if it's that good of a film. You know what I mean? It's just, but it is a very compelling movie.

But it does seem like a transition year in a lot of ways because we're seeing talent working things out, right? Like whatever Chazelle does next is going to be noteworthy. Whatever Barry Jenkins does next is going to be noteworthy. Arrival, both for the talent on screen, behind the screen, but then also as we discussed Chris on the show, what it signifies because this was a non-franchise, grown-up kind of genre movie that succeeded. It had stars, it made money, it was worthwhile.

And actually, I thought you were going to say that as the movie you thought about the most because even when I don't think I loved it, but it really resonated. So there's a lot of themes in this year that I think will carry over and bear fruit further down the line. Yeah, I think the thing about arrival is for Denisville and Newfans, it's probably their second or third favorite of his films. Right. And for people who are just sort of coming to him, I think there is something still a little bit opaque about the kinds of movies that he makes. And some of it is very moving and spiritual. I just heard him talking on a podcast recently with the Directors Guild about the part of the movie that frustrates me most,

which is the part of the movie that you most need, which is the Jeremy Renner sort of voiceover. And him explaining how they were in the editing bay for months trying to figure out how to stitch this movie together. Because, you know, he went out and shot an art film about heptopods, and then he realized this movie didn't really make sense. And, you know, there's not a lot of precedent for a movie like that getting this much Oscars recognition, which I think is very cool and interesting,

but very similar to Chazelle, I think he has four or five movies. And his films walk the line like that. There was a lot of stuff off of Sicario where Brolam was like, Josh Brolin was like, I had no idea what we were filming. Like, I just didn't know that this movie was going to be good or not. Yeah. And he would come in and have me shoot this, like standing against this sunset or staring at this wall.

And untuck this shirt? Yeah. And unbutton that button that button. I think that that's what you guys are talking about is a really good point, though, that there's going to be, this will be looked at as the year like, oh, that was the movie David McKenzie made before this movie. That was the movie Jeremy Solia made before this movie. I think that there's going to be a lot of, like, the people who we were introduced to, who directed The Witch?

Robert Eggers. Yeah, like we're going to get like the next movies are going to be really cool for these people. Should we talk a little bit about what happened with Manchester by the Sea? Because that in some ways followed a more traditional festival arc. I mean, that debuted over a year ago. Was it at Sundance or was it at? It was at Sundance, yeah. It was at Sundance.

So people came out of that movie, much like I did. Maybe you guys did too, just felt we'd been run over by a truck. It is in its own way kind of a masterpiece, even though, you know, I had issues with that. aspects of it. It survived the long year. It got the nominations. But it's in a way, it almost feels, I feel like people have stopped talking about it, I've stopped seeing it. I think that movie will be remembered for performances. And certainly because Lonnigan is just one of our great writers. And so it's in his, in his canon now. So I guess it's a two-part question. The role of the arc that that movie, of that movie's journey to now and where it stands. And then also, of course, Casey L. Because the biggest surprise to me in your piece on the ringer is that you think Denzel is going to win, which I think I agree with you. But I'm curious about how you landed there.

Well, as for the first part, I spoke to Chris Moore, who was one of the producers on the movie last fall for a story. And he sort of talked about what we were talking about earlier, which is the reason that they decided to go to Amazon to do this movie, the reason they wanted to work with Ted Hope. Chris was saying that he ultimately just wanted to sort of understand the state of the business now by using a streaming service to, you know, ship a traditional kind of Oscars prestige film through that system. I think they had a lot of success. I mean, that movie made almost $40 million, which is really good for a small character piece. I can't imagine they could have dreamed of more. I mean, the movie was released, it was heralded, it cleaned up at film festivals,

it made money, and it got the nominations. They actually also, not to get too inside baseball about it, but a movie that's almost unsellable became kind of like this weird feel-good movie. I mean, the way that they were able to invert the actual content of that movie to be like, it's actually like this life-affirming film. But without misrepresenting it. Well, that's Lonnigan too, though. Lonnigan makes the funniest movies about horror.

Yeah. It's true. All three of his movies, though, have also gone through interesting sort of marketing stages where they all are pitched as more life-affirming stories and they actually are. You know, if you look at the posters from You Can Count on Me. You get the sense that this is like a Nancy Myers movie about a brother and a sister, You're figuring stuff out. In fact, it's just this body cavity destroying exercise and destruction.

But I think Manchester by the Sea is just a huge success story in a lot of ways. It was never going to win Best Picture. I think that there's a chance that Lonergan wins Best Original Screenplay. The backstory of that movie is really interesting that John Krasinski and Matt Damon over some beers came up with this story and decided it would be a great project for Damon. That must have been an interesting set of beers. Yeah. It was much like the scene in the movie where they're all drinking and having fun. Michelle Williams comes and yells at them. It was basically that night.

My happy ending. Okay, we're going to take a quick break from our sponsor. When we come back, we're going to talk about the best actor race. We'll talk a little bit more about Sean's ballot. Go through a couple other Oscar predictions and superlatives. And then we obviously have questions from Twitter and Facebook. Hey, guys, just want to take a quick second to talk to you about driving for Uber. We've all taken some jobs to earn extra cash back in the day.

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one award that no one could make, no one's really sure what's going to happen here. I think that there was obviously Casey Affleck had the, it's his time, it's a lot, it's the best performance, it's going to happen. Obviously, a lot of off-court issues to say the least for Casey Affleck over the last few months that have kind of come to light. There's a really good piece in the New Yorker this week, I believe, or last week, Michael Shulman's article about the ethics of award season, how these things kind of get adjudicated in public and in private behind the scenes in the sort of Oscar industry. But leaving that aside somewhat, not entirely, because it's obviously going to have,

it's going to play into this a little bit. We have seen over the last couple of weeks and months, and I think of a real sort of surge in momentum for Denzel Washington and his performance in fences. If I had to ask you right now, Sean, who do you think is going to win Best Actor? I think it's Denzel, and it's, you know, none of this stuff is merit-based, really. But a big part of it is just looking at the fact that he won the SAG Award for Best Actor, and that's usually a strong indicator of the direction this is going to go. Now, Casey Affleck won virtually every other award and Critics Prize in the run-up to that.

I think that a lot of things have happened in recent months. Some of it is the off-court issues that you talked about, sort of some revelations for certain people about two sexual harassment cases that he settled in the past. But some of it is also just the fact that people realize that they love Denzel Washington. And then people just really want to see and be around Denzel Washington. I mean, just as a movie fan, I watch every Denzel Washington movie, and he makes a lot of bad movies. He's one of the greatest movie stars we have, if not the greatest. This is his passion project.

He's, you know, Titanic in it. He directed it. It is, I mean, it's, it's, I mean, it's, it's, merit-based in the sense that any of these things are merit-based, right? I mean, it's hard to argue against Denzel Washington winning almost for whatever party's in because of what he brings to it. And as you said, people love him, and people love having him around at these shows. And he's sort of weirdly morphing into one of those old lions that you want in the front rows, right?

They cut to him for reactions now. And even in this award season, like, he's a notoriously sort of, yeah, it's like, sometimes you get good Denzel, sometimes you get bad Denzel. He's kind of a private guy. And he, I think he, often like somebody will ask. him a question. He's like, why ask me that question? You know, like, it's like he'll go, you know, he'll go after you. But he's seemed quite charming over this. You can tell this is something he probably wants. He's been, I saw him on Kimmel, you know, he's doing it. He doesn't always do it. He doesn't always do it. It's, it's cool to see it happen. But you kind of

feel like he knows it's in touching distance in a way. It's a very interesting old school movie star character study. In Schulman's piece that you referenced, he in a passing notice says that there are movie stars who still know how to turn on the charms when they're out campaigning, and he cites Denzel and Tom Hanks. And those guys are obviously contemporaries. They're both two-time Oscar winners. They have very similar careers in a lot of ways. And those guys, people like that, there are very few people who have won more than two Oscars

in the acting categories. I think it's only six people. And they tend to be those sorts of people. They're Catherine Hepburn. They're Jack Nicholson. They're people who people just want to be around. Could be, depending on Tarantino's next film. But Denzel crosses the board.

bar to win a third award. Now, I will say, just as a fan of movies and of Oscar history, I don't really like the idea of Denzel having a third Oscar in the same way that I don't like the idea of Jack Nicholson having a third Oscar or Merrill Streep or anybody else. Just because I think it tends to distort our perception of what great film is, because people still do use this as sort of a Ouija board for what the movie's, the movie history is. Not necessarily because I think, like, Andrew Garfield deserves it this year, but I do prefer

to see it kind of spread around. And I think there would be something interesting about Affleck winning and what that would mean for sort of the dispersal of awards in this season. Also, that performance is Titanic. It's amazing. That's an incredible performance. The other thing that tends to happen for these kinds of movies, it's like I was thinking about how if and when Robert Downey decides to make a real movie again,

like he will be, he should have. I mean, he was probably thinking this for the judge, but he will be the first person because a huge movie star, super charming. Everybody wants to talk to him. He's a great interview. He'll be great at an award show. but he hasn't done anything to merit an award. But the fact is that he makes so much bad,

so much mainstream bad blockbuster popcorn stuff that you have to catch that while it's there, right? But also, Denzel, you'd say that about, and you might be like, oh, isn't you going to just do Magnificent 8 next year or whatever? But like, Denzel Washington might be up for an Oscar next year for Inner City. It's very true. Like, it's, the funny thing about this specific one is it's not a, we've got to get this last one to Denzel.

Right. He could still be up for one to three more best actor. basically he's that good and he works that much. Sean, I wanted to ask you a little bit about your ballot. We'll share that on Twitter from the watchpot and from the ringer. But was there anything in this year's lineup of awards? I kind of want to help people out if they're doing like a pool at home. Is there anything that they should keep their eye out for on some of the technical awards?

And is there anything that you saw where you're just like, you know, if this happens, then expect a law of land sweep. Yeah, it's an interesting question. Generally speaking, I think in almost every technical capacity, category in which La Al-Land is nominated is going to win. That includes costume design, and I think the costume design in La Land is bad, is actively bad. And I don't think it matters. I think people, there's just such a wave happening here. I think if someone like Mahershala Ali, who's up for best supporting actor, if someone like him

loses, then weirdly, even though there's no one nominated for La Lala Land in that category. It just means nothing. Moonlight's not going to win anything. It means moonlights in a lot of trouble in general, and it means, I think, in many ways that LaLan could have been 14 Oscars. So there's a few things to look out for in that respect. Likewise, if La La La Land wins Best Original Screenplay Over Manchester by the Sea, which is one of the more intense races, I think.

Because one movie is well written and one movie isn't? Well, you know, it's all very debatable. Like there are a few locks that are best original song, best original score. La La La La Land will just win those things outright. If La La La Land wins best sound editing, you know, we know that we're in for a very, very long night of La La La La La Land. Question for both of you guys.

Throw out probability, throw out reality, what is one award that you would just personal passion thing that you would just love to see win? Marshall. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, I thought he was just incredible. That's a really good question. I don't know if I've really given that a lot of thought.

I loved Elle, and I think Isabel Hubert winning would be an interesting thing. I mean, there is some precedent for an actress from a foreign country or an actress who has, you know, been considered iconic in some respects, but is very undervalued in the even. American Hollywood Award system. Elle is just a very, very difficult, transgressive, not Oscar-friendly film. So I think it would be interesting to see that rewarded. Yeah, for sure. It would reveal maybe something about the state of the voting body now, but I don't think that's going on. I want to see Yorgie Swin for The Lobster.

That would be pretty cool. We had a piece up about that today that Adam Nehmer wrote about it as the most original, best original screenplay. I just think it's even when it doesn't work. God, it's awesome. Do you have some questions you want to ask? Why don't we do a quick fire for Sean? Let's do a lightning round here for some of these questions. This is actually for both you guys, I think, would want to weigh it on this.

Chris, potentially Chris Ryan, if we're being honest, asks, what does Ray Fines have to do to get nominated here? He has been nominated. So in the later half of his career, the fucking balls out awesome half of his career. I think he just needs to keep doing what he's doing. He's making such good choices in terms of the movies he's being in. one of them will hit. Would that it was so simple? Sean, which of the late, can I put you on the spot?

Like, which late period rave would you most like to see just covered in gold? I mean, I said a bigger splash was my favorite movie of last year. It was my number one. And he is on one and two and three in that movie. So it's one of those things where in a similar fashion, Isabel Huper, it's just a little bit too over the top. Yeah, it was a little bit too small and obtuse as a film. but almost anything he does now is interesting.

He should have been nominated for being Voldemort. I mean, there are things that he's done that we take for granted. I mean, he is always interesting. He's good in the James Bond movies, and he literally has nothing to do. This is a question from Andy. Did we write these questions? Another Andy. Shouldn't Best Director and Best Picture be consolidated into one award?

Does it make sense for them to differ? No, and I wrote about this. On The Ringer? On The Ringer.com, which is a website. Look at this. The thing about it is, filmmakers want to acknowledge achievements in filmmaking without acknowledging the totality of a movie.

So if you look back at Angley's Two Wins in 2003 for Brokeback Mountain and in 2014 for Life of Pie, you can see that these are basically an acknowledgement of an achievement that only one filmmaker could pull off. And it's not necessarily that the Academy loves those movies because neither of those movies won best picture. It's that they love the filmmaker and the way that he approaches the work.

And I actually think that that makes a lot of sense. I don't think that Best Picture and Best Director and mean the same thing because Best Director is somebody who certainly is in charge and is sort of leading the charge and making a lot of choices. But the way that a movie exists in full is not only up to a director.

You know, producers are a huge part of movie making. Writers are a huge part of movie making. Actors, of course, like, taking a lot of things into account. In some ways, the Best Director award, I think, also acts as an extension of some of the logic that goes into Best Actor and Actress, where there's a lot of, like, deserve, There's a lot of it's their time.

You've seen that with Spielberg where it's like It doesn't always wind up being the best picture Because maybe the movie that they made It's not that movie's year, but it's their year. And so it's always, I mean like to the extent that any of this stuff Makes any sense, I do understand the split there. A question that I am not qualified to answer. Absolutely.

And you wouldn't want to hear me anyway. James's question, better Amy Adams performance in 2016, A rival or Nocturnal Animals? I really did not like nocturnal animals. I'm going to go with arrival because she, pretty much just reads in nocturnal manuals anyway. A woman reads a book,

the motion picture. Did you, the question from Christian is when will the Oscars go back to nominating 10 films sincerely loving Deadpool, silence, etc. I was not a fan of, I mean, I guess maybe,

Sean, you can talk us through it. It's still possible they could have done 10, right? That rule hasn't changed. Yeah, it's up to 10. So what's your opinion? Can you restate that rule? And then also, what's your opinion on more nominees versus less?

Yeah, there's just a voting threshold that a film needs to get to, there could have been as few as seven this year, but there were nine. I think that there just wasn't enough enthusiasm for Deadpool or loving or any other movie that we really liked that we hoped had crossed that threshold. Last month I wrote about my desire to see Deadpool in the mix in the top 10. Not because I even like Deadpool. I think it's perfectly fine.

By the way, most popular movie on every flight I took. I believe that. Literally every screen. Probably the most pirated too. But the thing is, it's just The Oscars needs to Pierce its own bubble a little bit And I think it actually would be a good thing

It doesn't just have to be Deadpool I think it could be the Hunger Games It could be any number of things That should find its way into that conversation Because it just brings a new audience to the show It brings a new audience to this podcast, you know? I think it's going to come into play next year Because I could see

Logan getting nominated What? And I could see... Have you guys seen it? No. I've just done to some yet. Is it good? The answer is yes.

Wow. And I could see episode eight getting nominated. Yeah, I think that if any one of these, one of these franchises is going to have to, as you said, pierce the bubble, I think it would almost have to be Star Wars just by the global scale of it. I think if one would come out earlier, it might have. I think episode nine. I think they tend to, they love finale. I mean, Fellowship of the Rings. Is that what it's called?

Damn. You're part of the Trevor O'Hive. Look, I want the Ryan Johnson one to be the best one because I think he's the good filmmaker. but I think the last one will probably get it. Yeah, there is precedent for it. I think the thing about Deadpool is it is actually not like the Fellowship of the Ring or the Two Towers or any of the Lord of the Rings movies. It's not, that's still about prestige in a lot of ways. It's sort of, it's based on IP that is slightly more Tony.

You know, Deadpool is like a dumb shit fanboy movie. And there's like, there's no history of movies like that being acknowledged by the Academy. So it would be interesting. Even Logan has this, you know, deep, gritty, hard-won, a tourist vision of a superhero. Like, it would be fun to me if something stupid got nominated. Yeah. Because a lot of stupid prestige stuff gets nominated all the time.

And there is this weird variance where we're allowed to talk about, you know, we're allowed to talk about lion like it really matters. But we have to say Deadpool is stupid. Right. That was, I think, the sweet spot that Fury Road hit for a lot of people where it was essentially like this insane car chase, but it was such an insane car chase and it was so well done. and everything about it was so no perfect, that in retrospect, it's kind of like, how did that not win?

Even then, George Miller was a hugely lauded filmmaker who had directed Babe and had built this entire Bad Max universe. You know, there's no precedent for a first-time director making a comic book movie that has cursing and fart jokes. The really interesting thing will be, as we're entering this phase, where you have Mangled trying really hard with Legion, and Fox is being more mutable about this and more flexible about this.

Mutable is a bad pun. But I would even say, with all the caveats, like what Noah Hawley was trying to do with Legion, like, can someone who is trying to be more artistic play in this sandbox and get it to a certain place? I mean, I think, honestly, it would be more interesting to see a non-IP, non-franchise take on this kind of genre stuff. Because genre's always been a challenge, right? For Westerns were the superhero movies of their day, and they weren't nominated until they become a little bit more prestigious. And then you end up with, like, you know, what do you call? call it.

Unforgiven. You know, many, many, many years later. True great. That's what you're saying. That's what I was trying to say. But in terms of superhero movies, to your point about Lion, what's the superhero movie that actually won an Oscar and it's Birdman, which is a high, you know, a chin-scratching

Tony commentary on the banality of superhero movies. That's completely true. We'll see what happens. I think that superhero movies are in for an interesting run in the next 10 years. They're going to change a lot because once they close this event. cycle and once DC figures out what it wants to be, which will happen in the next two years, there actually probably will be more Logans.

There probably will be more stories that have more modest ambitions and smaller scale approaches and there are only $75 million budgets instead of $180 million budget. And that changes everything. And those movies are going to do well. And so that is going to change everything. Any more quick questions? One more of Sean?

This is from this, Andy. What speech are you most looking forward to? Now, the last, because this is a question purely about the Oscars as televised television show? I think that the most anticipated speech is likely Viola Davis because there's going to be, and we haven't really talked about Viola Davis, who's nominated for best supporting actress for fences.

Apparently elite performance, but people played the game right, right? Yeah, there was some, what's described as category fraud, which is not a phrase that I like very much. But I think that she is in line to give a speech that is both highly personal and highly political and will be about opportunity and, you know, the chance to do great work while also being yourself. I didn't I hopefully Mahershala Ali wins

his speech at SAG was amazing and I just I wrote in the piece today that I I just think he has an amazing career head of him he's 43 years old there's really no precedent for a guy like this becoming a big movie star but he might be he's wonderful he the interesting thing about him is

when he came on I'd never seen him I don't think before House of Cards he comes on the screen in House of Cards you're like who is that totally who is this incredible charismatic movie star guy I mean Danton and then By the way, he just works Congress, just like a speedbag. And then he shows up in, like, is the second villain or in Luke Cage, you know, which is fine. That show is fine.

But, like, talk about biting your time. Why isn't he getting these parts? And maybe now he will be. He's going to get a lot of opportunity. Yeah, I don't know. Let's wrap up there. We got a lot planning for the watch after the Oscars in regards to interviews, book clubs, mailbags, discussing tons of television on HBO and otherwise.

If there's something you feel like we're neglecting, show-wise, feel free to tweet us. at the watchpod. If there's something you feel like we're neglecting, feel free to tweet us at the watch pod and we'll try to accommodate you. At the heptopod. Yeah. And big things to come, stay tuned. Thank you all for your feedback and questions and see you Sunday night for the Oscars. I'd like to thank the Academy

Branski. Hey guys, just want to say thanks to Uber. Get your side hustle on, sign up to drive with Uber and earn extra cash whenever you want. It's totally flexible. You're your own boss and you can cash out up to five times a day with no minimum amount required. Sign up today at uber.com slash drive now. that's ub-e-r.com slash drive now.

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