The Watch - Ep. 16: 'The Watch'

Episode Date: February 2, 2016

Andy and Chris discuss Rihanna's long-awaited 'ANTI' (6:00), Kanye's Twitter beef (14:00), Drake vs. Meek (21:00), and 'The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story' (31:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Channel 33 is brought to you by Seekkeek, our presenting sponsor, and our favorite way to buy and sell tickets to sporting events, concerts, and whatever else you want to go to. With the Seekek Mobile app, you can quickly and easily buy tickets with just two taps and have your tickets delivered straight to your phone as you enter the event. If you can't make the event, Seekek now lets you transfer your tickets to your friends, post them for sale online all from your phone. As a special offer to Channel 33 listeners, Seekek is giving $20 back off your first purchase

with the code BSPN. To get $20 back off your first seat, Seat Geek purchase, download the Seatkegook app today, and enter promo code BSPN. I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch on the Channel 33 podcast feed. My name is Chris Ryan, and on the other line, I am distracting him from his creative process. It's Andy Greenwald!

I feel like you're wearing a cool vest, but I don't see the cool pants. Yeah, you could screenshot my cool vest and send it to your creativity. creative team. That's right. That's right. I'm always on. I'm always watching. Chris, we have so much to talk about. It was a busy week during our fallow period last week. The last few days of the week, things really popped off. I'm personally excited to get back to where we really forged our friendship in the world of music, the jukebox of life. Yes, that is a very, very relevant reference. We are going to talk about new music from Rihanna, Kanye West. Well, not really music from

Kanye more just social media output from Kanye West. Drake, Meek Mill. Andy might talk about some old British people that he likes and then we are going to talk about a preview the People versus OJ Simpson, which is coming out on FX on Tuesday. We're recording this on a Monday.

As always, you can listen to us on Stitcher, iTunes, SoundCloud, look for Channel 33. Go search that. You can subscribe to Channel 33. They're great podcasts. Not only The Watch. I mean, you could call us great. or you could just say we're okay. But I really recommend checking out Jam Session with Juliet Lippman and Amanda Dobbins.

It's our latest podcast. They're going to be doing their own look at pop culture. I think they're going to be talking about Greece live. I'm pretty psyched for that. They named it? I didn't know what it was going to be called. Jam Session. What's their show called?

Jam Session. That's great. I was kind of into, I thought it was going to be the Lemon Tree Chronicles. That might have been a little obscure. Jam session is coming. It should be either later. or early tomorrow morning. I'm subscribing.

And you just go ahead and subscribe to Channel 33. You're going to get all those great pods plus sources. Say, Bachelor Party. I hear Bill Simmons has good podcast too. You can check those out. But Andy, let's get to the beats. Want to talk a little bit about this Rihanna record? Yeah, this was interesting.

I mean, I feel like everything you mentioned, other than the old British people, which we'll table for now, kind of all part of the same conversation. Because last week was a fast, case study in how we talk about music now, how musicians talk about each other in music now, how things are promoted, how things are released. And, you know, we're obviously we're going to talk about Kanye, but everything Kanye is doing can and should be looked at as part of the buildup to

his new album Waves, which is now coming out next week, right? Yeah. And I think we were fascinating to, we talked a little bit about this last year. It's fascinating to contrast that with what Rihanna's doing, which is accidentally whoopsing her record that she'd been working on. for three years right in the midst of this. Yes. And we talked a little bit about this last year when I think Tipa Butterfly and if you're reading this, it's too late.

And some of those other records were coming out and this sort of, was that like, I guess, when did Timpa Butterfly come out? January. Well, they were all early in the early part of the year. I mean, Drake was February March. But there was a lot of feeling like those records were speaking to one another or that those records,

the releases of those records were being influenced by one another. And I certainly think that that's the case now where you see, Kanye has got a record coming out in the 11th. We've got Rihanna puts her record out. She kind of slides it out. There's rumors of a Beyonce record coming off the back of her Super Bowl appearance that's going to happen. And then Drake just announced this weekend that he's putting out views from the 6th in April and accompanied that with a new single.

So a lot's going on. And Andy, you alluded to this with the whoopsie with Rihanna. This is something, this is a record. It's the first time, Auntie represents the first time that she has taken more than a year to release an album. Right? So for the first, what, eight years of her career, Rion released a record every year. Yeah, she put out a record every year, and every one of those records was preceded by an absolute banger, world-leading single. And then the last we heard of her, she took a number of journalists hostage on an airplane. I don't know if you guys remember that.

It was basically, it was like Argo, but, you know, with better hairdos. And then that was a wrap. And then it's just been a fascinating case study of what happens when an artist sort of, I think it's not a bad thing. idea to like remove yourself from your comfort zone, right? Shake up the rhythm a little bit, so to speak. Sure. Get out of that rat race of putting out an album every year. But then what are you if you are not your rhythms? And Rihanna released three singles in 2015, all of which came with the pomp and circumstance of being the next big world beating single that would herald the arrival of Antai, an album she'd been talking about since I think the single started last year.

fascinating to report none of those singles made the record and the ones I'm talking about are four or five seconds with Kanye and your third favorite Beatles for Paul McCartney then there was Bitch Better Have My Money

which was but without a doubt the best Rick Ross single of 2015 and then there was some like sub-hullsy nonsense It was American Oxygen which she performed it I think an All-Star game or an award show

I can't I mean for all I know she could have performed it the NHL All-Star game. I don't really remember American oxygen grasping the consciousness like that. She caught an L on that one. So, Auntie was supposed to come out exclusively on Title last week. After a lot of like, I know. Can we just have a little chuckle about that? We're going to have a lot of chuckle. So Rihanna had left Def Jam. She was sort of fully aligned with Rock Nation. She was going to put Auntie out, I guess, on title exclusively for a week. Title had kind of a banana peel slip and released it accidentally before it was ready, then Rihanna basically put up a link

that was like, you could just get it for free without having a title account? Can we talk about what's, what was last week like for Doug, the IT guy at title? You know what I mean? Like, like Doug, Doug had a pretty rough hump day last week, you know, where he accidentally hit the wrong keystroke. And the next thing you know, it's not like, like, we screw up at work, like, that's not great. Doug screws up at work and he has Jay-Z.

all those multi-millionaires from the podium when they announced title last year being like Doug. I just see Doug. Doug has got like, you know, maybe he's got a Chapulte-chipoleil like Ecoli headache going and he's playing Fallout 4 in his cubicle. He's like, I have nothing to do because I work a title. And he's just like playing. And they're like, Doug, just whatever you do, bro, I'm going to put a little masking tape over it

with a post-it. Don't touch this button. That puts ante out. Don't touch it, Doug. What if? What if Doug is actually like the Laura Poitris journalist figure from Homeland Season 5? And Doug is like, these rhythms want to be free. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like no boundaries. Rhythm Snowden. I'm just saying all that's possible. Sure. Let's just turn the great wheel of culture one more time and say this. You could look at this record and be like, this is an afterthought. It's confused.

There are all these tracks, some of which are like one minute long, too much. minutes long. The single work with Drake is very, very good, but it is very, very understated. So it's very possible to look at this and be like, this is not just a whoopsie of a release, this is kind of a whoopsie of an album for one of our biggest pop stars. However, Chris, I would argue the alternative. You would argue that this is excellent. I'm just going to drop something, and I'm going to step away and take my answer off

air. Okay. That's not true. That would be really weird if I just pieced out and let you monologue. Despite trying to finally have a solo show, but go ahead, yeah. Well, I didn't mean to pick at the scab there. Maybe you should work that out

on Jam Session. Look, I think this is Rihanna's best album. Now, what I mean is this does not have her best songs on it. Because we all know that whether it is 2016

or 2036, the greatest hits of Rihanna is going to be one of the most perfect albums ever made. Yeah, that's going to be up there with the Eagles. What I'm saying is,

rest and peace to the God Glenn, um, Rihanna hasn't made very many good albums. That's what I'm saying. I don't know how much time you or the rest of our listeners have spent just trolling the ocean for like dayboat scalloped deep cuts on Rihanna albums. It's super shallow. How much time did you spend doing it?

In the basement tapes of Rihanna. I would say I would say I've done some time. I've done some time in the deep Spotify trenches. And I definitely went back and revisited over the last few days. You can see like around track 10 or 11 of every Rihanna album dating back to 2005 or whenever, you know, music of the sun dropped. Like, track 10 or 11 is the one where the studio was, or JZ or the label was just like, you know who's really big this year is a reggae king Sean Paul?

Like, let's get him on a track. Right. Like, how can we work vibes cartel into this mix? Right. Who's hot this year? It was basically, you know, the sort of catch as catch can trying to chase whatever popularity is happening at that moment. This record is weirdly personal, weirdly imperfect.

in a way that's very, very appealing. And for all of Rihanna's talents, and I think there are many, although, you know, as anyone who saw Battleship would say, probably acting is not top five. But all of her other abilities and talents, her voice very, very, very rarely gets complimented.

Right? People talk about her skill at A&Ring her own career, basically. Sure. Or her charisma. Her voice is a really interesting instrument, and it sounds terrific on this record. And the first four tracks of Antai are, are close to flawless.

Yeah, I mean, that's what I gotta say. That's like consideration and desperado, which has that kind of future flow to it. There's, what's one of the other first five tracks? Kiss It Better. We've just got this kind of beautiful prince vibe to it.

You know, as far as fascinated as I am by the album that we got, I'm kind of also really interested in the album we didn't get. So I was doing a little bit of reading about, about the sort of product, the making of the album. We remember that there was an original, like Kanye West executive produced version of this album

that was sort of announced last year at some point when four or five seconds came out. And that's when he was sort of comparing her to Annie Lennox and it was going to be this hybrid pop soul record. Then there were reports of Sia songs. Calvin Harris and Tinnishay did a song. Grimes did a song. All these things got cut. NEO is supposedly what we're going on it. I would love to see the receipts on how much this record cost because it's just you don't really see acts of largesse like this very much in the music industry anymore.

There are only very, her, Adele, there are very few artists that would be worth $5 million in R&D to just come up with the 13 songs that you actually wind up putting out. But the reason she's able to do that is not only is she a global superstar, it's that Samsung already made the album platinum. They did a Magna Carta Holy Grail type deal where Samsung, when we say Samsung, quote, bought a million copies of the album, I mean, what are they selling it for? We don't know. but it's already recouped at least some of the money that it costs to make this thing.

But, you know, when you're talking about R&D albums, one of my favorite things about this current moment in pop music is that we get to see the R&D process in real time. Yeah. And I'm fascinated by this, I don't even want to call it sloppiness, but the imperfection and the humanity, basically, of trying shit out and seeing if it sticks. So trying those three singles last,

year, trying directions, seeing what's working, seeing what's not scrapping it. I'm a big, big fan of that. And it's, you know, and it makes me think about how Kanye, you know, announced the record two weeks ago, changed the title three days later. And then this weekend we're hearing reports about how Andre 3000 from Outcast is taking an Uber to the studio. This is a record that is coming out in 10 days. Yeah. Like work for as, exactly, for as infuriating as, you know, the social media era of

music of the music industry has been. Yeah. These are warts and sausage making that I do not mind seeing. I think it's interesting. And I think that that's led to an album that is definitely going to be more of a comma than an exclamation point in her career. But it's definitely going to be the one that many people will be pointing to as her most interesting or the Lost Classic.

I mean, this is, I'm not, okay, look, let's all ratchet it down. This is not Rihanna's tusk, okay? But it's fascinating to see a global icon who's famous. for being basically a chilly perfectionist. Let it rip a little bit. Yeah, and I think that one of the things that's been consistent in a lot of the things that have been written about Auntie is just about how much we project onto Rihanna, especially Rihanna's music because of what we think we know about her as a person

based on some of her other, you know, like based on her Instagram or based on the tabloid photos we see of her and Leonardo DiCaprio on a yacht. and the idea that she is just this sort of successful single woman who is having affairs and sort of like trying to realize her own joy in life and that this record is kind of the liner notes to that. It's interesting to think about the record as of a piece of a larger popular cultural life that we're all monitoring. I mean, this is sort of what's happening with Kanye too, where for as much as people are

probably now excited for waves after maybe being a little bit nervous about what was coming with all day and facts. Nothing propels interest in Kanye's records like non-musical Kanye, right? And that's what happened with the Twitter beef with quiz. Let me begin this part of our conversation by saying something. Let me make a blanket statement here. Are you okay with that? Sure.

I love it. Let's just assume that there are people out there. I'm sure no one who listens to our show, but there are people out there. there. Good, decent law-abiding Americans who hear about Kanye's antics or see that he's tweeting again and their only response is, ugh, to those people, I would really like to address this next question. What do you want from a pop star or an entertainer in 2016? I'm not even going to dive into the choppy, frigid waters of rockism. I don't want to make that argument right now, saying like, you know, if you'd rather be listening to the Eagles' greatest hits,

then go listen to the Eagles' greatest hits. That's fine. No disrespect. Shout out to the god, Glenn Frey. But what is, what, pop music should be fun. This should be exhilarating and crazy and showy and obnoxious. And the minute you start wanting your pop stars to behave like gentlemen or to be polite, you end up with the luminaires.

Like that is the punishment. You obviously don't know about that. The Lumineers beef of monsters and men is just savage. It's just deep, deep loot strings. Those dudes are just throwing mason jars at one another. The mason jars of sweet tea. Sweet, sweet tea. That was my main takeaway.

This is outrageous theater. And yes, is it partly calculated, yes. Is it partly gross? Yes. It is all of those things at once. And that does not take away from the music. It does not take away from any of our cultural engagement with it, but it is culture and it is worthy of paying attention to that. And so that is my number one starting place for this.

Right. And I think that it was funny to watch, watching that Twitter thing that happened. First of all, it was one of the great moments of recent Twitter. Just the fact that it was happening, Twitter has become so codified now. It's just to have somebody just kind of take the safety off was sort of amazing and be like, you stole your whole shit from Cuddy was just like I was like this is incredible he got really raw though he really like went after Amber and and and it was it was messed up and people rightfully called him out on that I don't think that I think every one of us even the ardent Kanye defenders

like the two of us we were all sitting around like the news team from Anchorman after a minute yeah that really escalated quickly Kanye I mean I killed a guy yeah yeah I mean, Brick had a Trident. You know what I mean? Like, that went from 0 to 100 real, real, real quick. Yeah. And then one of the best parts of it, before we even get into it, was that it was all a misunderstanding. Yeah.

Like, that's even better. That was the best. That he was just like, I've just been told that KK doesn't mean that. My bad. Do you think it was Doug from IT that told him that? Doug, Doug from title. Doug at Title.com. He just sent him a quick Snapchat message or a WhatsApp, you know, and he's just like,

hey, Mr. West. It's not really my purview. I'm more of a, my whole thing recently has just been ramping up to releasing this Rihanna record, which is what I'm 100% concentrating on. But I would just happen to be on like Urban Dictionary.com and I noticed. I'm familiar with the initials for certain weed strains. Which definitely won't come into play later in the week. for me. Right.

It, I mean, it is a, it was fraught. And yeah, it was super gross that he went after Amber and spoke about her that way and that he spoke about a child that way. It was completely inappropriate. But again, I don't think you can apply those filters to Kanye West because everything he does is performance, whether it's intentional or not. Yeah. And I think it goes back to what you're saying, which is basically that if you want to break the shackles of boredom, sometimes you're going to wander into the seas

of offensiveness. You know what I mean? It's hard to find something that's going to be improvisatory and alive like that and not always just total line of decorum, you know? I wish we lived in a world where that did happen, but that doesn't always, it's not always the case.

And, you know, I wish that it may be that it took something other than or something greater than a relatively minor weed rapper writing random initials on his Twitter feed to spark the dragon? You know, like, I feel like, but the truth is he was looking for something because he is fully on right now. Like, we had heard some stories from people who know Kanye that, like, the reason the record

was not coming out last year is because he was much more interested in, like, breaking into the Korean pop star market or marketing his clothing line. He's, he's on his stuff right now. He's got Kurt Franklin in the studio. He's got Diddy in the studio. French Montana is there. There are a couple founding myths that you and I really like. I think we like when Prometheus stole fire.

I think we think that was pretty dope. And we also like when Kanye recorded my beautiful dark twisted fantasy in 2009 and 2010. And he went to Hawaii and he put up a sign on the studio that said, what would Mob Deep do? And he invited everyone who was awesome to come eat breakfast with him and record. all night. Eat some bouquet and make all the lights. And make a masterpiece.

And so he does seem like he is doing the Snapchat version of that now. He's just been hold. He's been hold up in, I don't know, like Studio City for two and a half weeks. But he's doing it again. And it's interesting. And we are super excited. Yeah, I'm really interested. I want to know what, like, he announced the release date of the record when he changed

the name to waves. Like, Swiss was coming out February 11th. changed the name to waves, then everybody got mad at him because he was stealing from Max B, which is like, I find this is probably the funniest part about all this is just if you told me in like 2009 or 2008 that that Max B was going to have this kind of hold over the creative consciousness of rap, I would have been surprised. You would have been pretty excited. I would have been pretty excited. I mean, the Coke Wave was definitely the Coke Wave, but I didn't think that it would be a matter of like national debate. This is actually, okay, so we talked about how sort of

Doug from title screwed up anti and then Kanye is still tweeting about Wiz Khalifa and working on his record 11 days before it's supposed to come out while those things are all kind of being messy there is one person who is kind of just got it all figured out just knows how to tell people that a record is coming

and release a single and that's Drake he put out summer 16 during a OVO sound session which is his Apple radio show on Saturday I think didn't take much just Zane Lowe and Drake tweeting about how he's going to do a show on Saturday

Drake comes on, says what's up? Views from the 6 is coming to April. You're going to hear the first single. I'm going to play a Max B song first, which was hilarious. He wound up playing a really amazing NOS remix of March Madness

by Future. Did you hear that? I did hear that. That was very special to me. And then the guy just puts up his new single. And aside for whether or not the song is good or not, which we're going to get to in a second. It was just sort of a case study as like, man, Drake really has this all figured out.

This is going to be the third album. What did, uh, what did Zane Lowe say? Oh, Zane just tweeted. Like, I missed it. Like, Zane just tweeted like OVO sound. Like, get after it. Also, I don't know if Zane Lowe is like necessarily pulling people away from, you know, whatever like the Home Depot run they were making on Saturdays to be like, oh!

Zane Lowe tweeted, I got to get home! But isn't the whole point of it? of Zane Lowe, you know, human emoji, basically to get people home from Home Depot? I mean, I don't know if people realize that, like, when I was out there a couple weeks ago... We are living in a dystopian fantasy, but now the real is back. Drake, Saturday. You jumped in my rental car, grabbed the wire, shoved it with great alacrity into your phone, just so you could play me when Zane Lowe was talking about Adele. Because, yeah, Juliet had to cut that clip. It's pretty pretty amazing. What do you think of summer 16? I think it's good and I think it's, I think that

actually what you're saying dovetails with my opinion of it, which is that it is immaculately controlled. You know, even the title. Boy, that's clever. Boy, he really figured that out. That's very good. He's dropping 16 for the summer, but it's also his year and it's this year. And that's very good. And I enjoyed it. And again, as a fan of the culture around music, almost as much as the music itself at this point. Yeah. Firing up local New York rap radio this morning and hearing both Hot 97 and Power 105 just losing their minds over the existence of it. Right. And playing it and talking about it and talking about this sort of surprising weekend disc at the top of one of the verses. And just like, what does that mean? What's going on? What's going on in Toronto? Which if you

told me that's what people would be talking about in rap five years ago. I know. I would have also been confused. Here's the thing. Toronto is going to be the epicenter of rap and Max B is going to be the most important rap forever. I would have been like, what? Is Cardinal Official really big right now or what? But on the plus side, and chaos, but on the plus side, you and Chris have a podcast. I'd be like, what's a podcast? It would have been great. But I listened to that and it's a very enjoyable track, but I kind of wish he wasn't still on the Meek stuff. Yeah. Like the fact that then Meek released a track last night too, and they are both super excited that they were at the four seasons in Toronto on the same night and I'm like, guys, guys, I know you wanted to get your starward preferred points,

just get them on fleak for 16. But like, that's, that's pretty tickey tack, you know? Yeah, it is, it's sort of strange to hear it's, it's very much just like, hold me back, hold me back. You know, like when the guys are getting a fight, nobody's holding them back. They're, hold me back! I'm coming. It's like a little bit of that. Um, I, my, my feeling about the Drake song is that, well, more about this whole, my, like, slight read on this whole thing is that he has got in his head something that views from the six needs to be. And because I just have a feeling like it's not there yet, he keeps putting out these really cool things instead of views from the six.

So it's like, you know, it was like, use from the six was going to be the next album. And then out of nowhere he just puts, if you're reading this, it's too late up. And then views from the six was going to come last year.

And then out of nowhere, what a time to be alive comes out. And then it's like, okay, now views from the six is really coming and he's got a date and everything. But the first song he put out is, pretty much if you're reading this it's too late style song that's about a beef

that he won months ago let's let's talk about this though like it is not new to music for the biggest musicians and the most ambitious musicians to need or seem to need motivation

in a almost sports like way yeah very good point right in the same way that in the same way that one remembers how Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton often played off of one another or Eric Clapton and George Harrison swapped wives basically, right? Like, there was some stuff going on. Yeah.

What I'm saying is, you know, championship teams, even who are, like, even the Warriors this year will be like, nobody believed in us. Yeah, right. And everyone will be like, actually everyone on Earth pretty much believes in you. Yeah, this is the Jordan thing where it's like a guy looks at you wrong and you're like, well, now I have to score 60 on you and break one of your ribs. You constantly need the motivation, right? And I don't know what it says about the artists we're talking about or maybe the fractured nature of the music business, the music industry, music culture, that the manufactured grindstones here don't seem to be necessarily worthy of either the artists or the art. So, like, I want a world where Drake and Kanye are saying ridiculous world-beating things. And I want the same out of, I don't know who else is in the category, whether it's Rihanna or Adele.

or SIA, or I don't know, like, who else is at the very top? I want them all to be constantly challenged and inspired by each other. That was what was fun about music. Every decade, the popular music. It's really important to me that Sia feels challenged. You just put her in my head. By the way, our man, our man Jack Antonoff has a track that knocks on that Sia record, gotta say, House on Fire.

It's good. Make that sound again. I want to make a sound cloud out of your disdainful, snorting. Scoff. Make a full soundboard out of that. Anyway,

but you get what I'm talking about, right? Yeah, sure. You want the greats to challenge each other and push each other. Absolutely. And then what we're talking about here

is a random tweet about weed from the dude who, the dude who forever will now be known as the Furious seven downtrek guy.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. As Paul Walker's balladeer. And meanwhile, in Drake's world, Meek Mill's body isn't still warm. Meek Mills' body isn't still warm. body is colder than the tasty cake factory after they shut the lights down and the power out

for the holidays, okay? The last cricket has left the building. Yeah, I know. That's what I'm saying. So you don't need to like young Frankenstein him back. You don't need to do that. Yeah, but from the grave, Meek is still swinging. And let me tell you something.

Let me tell you something. And this is going to sound like I have Philly bias. And I do. Meek, one, war pain is better than Summer 16. Don't at me. Wow. War pain, is it really called war pain? It is. It's also just like, when you give me a beat like that and Meek starts screaming

about, about like, you know, stealing dudes OVO chains, it doesn't really matter, like, lyrically whether or not he scores debate points. I just really like the vibe. No, no, but here's the thing. Here's why Drake really won, though, and not just because he's, the most successful and popular artists in the world. And Meek Mill, you know, Meek Mill would appreciate our Tasty Cake Factory joke.

Can I just say shout-outs of Meek for bragging about going to, getting court-side seats to a Sixers game? That's what I'm saying. They give them away at the Tasty Cake Factory. And the dude who fills the butterscotch crimpits is like, nah, I'm good. And it's meek, Nikki Minaj, and Doug from Title, Courtside. It's Doug from title.

and Harvey in the morning from Magic 101. And they're just all in a line together, like the biggest stars of Philly. Look, what I'm saying is that that track warping, that beat is really exciting. But that beat was really exciting, would be really exciting if we were still 26 and just driving down Township Line Road and an old sob. You know what I mean? Right. Like now I listen to that first verse. I'm like, yeah, yeah.

And then I'm like, well, you know, I think my toast is done. I kind of want something a little more mellow for the next phase of my morning. That's just me. Let's take a quick break as we slip into the second half of the pod. We're going to be talking about people versus Oji Simpson. We'll be right back. I've been in myself for a week straight. Locked down, 24, no more for Leap State.

Damn. Shit so rare. Seen fake. Damn. Let me take them to the green gate. When we were selling white girl, Otomarch out of the driveway. Andy, and we're here to talk about American crime story.

The People versus OJ Simpson. I'm excited to talk about this. I am shocked, Chris. I am shocked. This show is great. Yeah. I was really not expecting that. We're recording this on a Monday.

The show debuts tomorrow night. We're going to talk a little bit. In a case like this, it's sort of hard to have spoilers. Yeah. This is all very much in the public record. So if you are going into this completely blind and have been saving all of your OJ intake for this miniseries, do you might want to skip this section.

But Andy and I watch a couple of episodes and we just want to talk, you know, generally about what an accomplishment this show is because it is hella entertaining. And the first thing I wanted to mention about it, if that's okay, is just that I realize when watching this how uninterertaining television can be sometimes and how we have been watching a lot of TV recently

that you look at the timer at the bottom of your screen and it's like 53 minutes and you're like, holy shit, this feels like it's 53 hours. I mean, I love London spy, but there is a lot of shots of like the river and like people walking. There is no rivers in OJ, man. They just get right into it. It is so propulsive. It is, the episode's fly by. It is a real accomplishment. Yeah. And I think that that's the best place to start, which is to say, I think this is going to be super popular for a number of reasons, but the number one reason that it will be popular, and probably the least reported reason why it will be popular.

Swimmer. Because people will be paying attention to the, it's all Schwimmer. People will be paying attention to the salacious nature of the case, to the relevance of today, to the anniversary of this thing that riveted the nation, to the cast, to Schwimmer. This is expertly made TV. Yeah. This is so fun to watch, and it really grabs you. So let's just, it's a big picture it. So this is a 10-part miniseries for FX. I, Imagine there will not be a season two of the people versus OJ Simpson, unless people want nine more episodes about the time he ran into Las Vegas hotel room

and busted up some people over baseball cards. Ryan Murphy, who is responsible for many things that I dislike in this world, the movie Eat, Pray, Love, American Horror Story, Scream Queens, all these things I have no time for is actually the guy in many ways behind this show. So this is going to be a new anthology series. American Crime Story is the name of it. they're going to do a different real-life case, a fictionalized version of it every year.

Next season is, the next season they're going to do is apparently Katrina. Yeah, which I was appalled by, and now I think, who knows? Because here's the thing to remember. This project originated with Scott Alexander and Larry Kishuski, who were guys who made, they wrote Ed Wood, they wrote The People v. Larry Flint.

Their thing is fictionalized versions of salacious, almost too crazy to be true, true stories. They were making the show anyway and then Ryan Murphy came aboard as the executive producer and basically rainmaker of the whole thing and then directed the first episode. This allows him to do the things that he does very, very well. Even though I'm allergic to him, I can admit the things that he does very well. He is very, very good at corraling spectacle. He's very, very good at attracting talent and using that talent in interesting ways. And he is an expert observer of the extremity of taste.

Now, in the case of American Horror Story, that might be Dill McDermott in a gimp suit, so hard pass. In the case of this show, it is the insane feng shui interiority of a Brentwood kitchen with just like too many islands and marble countertops that no one will ever use. There is something that is so distinctly Los Angeles and California about it in a very specific, not necessarily appealing way. So the thing just looks amazing. another thing that Murphy obviously brings to it is a real, real gift for casting. I found some of his direction in the first two episodes to be a little ham-fisted. Like there's pretty much no scene goes by without a rush close-up of like from across the room to a close-up on Chris Darden or Marcha Cross or Robert Shapiro, wherever, every scene has one of those. But he has got a real gift for casting.

I mean, the first time you see Connie Britton and Selma Blair playing Fay Resnick and Chris Jenner and the Selma Blair is admonishing Kim and Courtney to stop running around at Nicole Brown Simpson's funeral you are just like this is this guy is out of his mind there's so many great moments like that Malcolm Jamal Morner as Al Cowling like it's just it's insane who he got to be in this just doing these little parts all like Chris Bauer from the Wire season two playing uh you know a detective Stephen Pascuali as Mark Furman. Just all the people. What about Bruce Greenwood as Gilgar City?

Yeah, yeah. And then there's there are moments, right, when you're watching three actors that we recognize as themselves. They are that famous. So we're seeing Cuba Gooding Jr. who plays OJ. We're seeing John Travolta, who plays Robert Shapiro. And we're seeing David Schwimmer who plays Robert Kardashian. The three of them are having a very intense scene early on in the series. And it works on.

multiple levels. It works because all of them are giving terrific performances that are within their characters and not stepping beyond that. I'll come back to that in the case of Travolta, too. I want to say something else about it. But it also works because this is a show about the corrosive nature of celebrity and the salacious nature of our celebrity-obsessed culture. So it's working on two levels that we are seeing these people inhabiting other people. Back to Travolta, he's the one who's been singled out a lot for potentially not fully inhabiting his character. for being part-o-y-over-the-top. He's fully inhabiting something in there, yeah.

I think he's terrific. I think it's a really great performance and a really sneaky, interesting performance, too. Because one of the things about this, and this whole series was drawn from Jeffrey Toobin, the legal writer from the New Yorker's book, The Run of His Life. The book hits a pretty hard tone. You know, the book begins from a place of,

this dude murdered those people, and then let's see what this entire catastrophe, how it unfolded. the way that Travolta is playing a defense attorney, who is really only representing himself, how everyone is essentially looking out for themselves, how, you know, one of the main players in this is Cato Caelin, a guy who, why is he there again? Right. And yet he is somehow in the inner circle. The show does something that I think is really fascinating in the way that it takes a larger-than-life, real event and somehow brings us inside of it to a way that it almost begins to feel fascinatingly,

banal. Like when they shoot the inside of the Bronco, and OJ's in there with a gun and Malcolm Jamal Warner is driving, there's a moment when you can, it's not just that you can sort of feel the leather of like in like 90s cars. It's very, very specific. There's the moment when they use this crappy old car phone to call 911 to say clear the highway. And all this is apparently true. But Malcolm Jamal Warner is just like, the dispatcher's like, who is this? Where are you? And he's like, you know who this is. God damn it. Yeah, well, I remember that phone call. They played that. They were like, it's AC. Yeah. It's like, how. It's like, how, frustrating would it be to be having this very intense private breakdown, but on every channel

on television. Yeah. Cut into the NBA finals. The amazing collision between high and low, between private and public, this show does it in a way that is just staggeringly creative. It's also, it's a testament to how entertaining it is that even the silly stuff, you just blow right by and just enjoy. I mean, I think it really is, if you can enjoy something despite or because of its silliness,

then it means it's really working. And there's something about how, in the first episode especially, you know, Sarah Paulson does a really good job playing Marsha Clark, but Marshall Clark doesn't know anything about OJ. And what's great is like every single scene is like, OJ, the juice, 2,600 yards of USC. OJ, come on, you know, the juice man. That's 65-yard run against UCLA.

It's like nobody talks. He was in some naked gun movies. Yeah, but it was also like the way that people talk in like complete, like associated press gamers. It was a cold day in Pasadena when OJ rushed for 47 yards against a stout Oregon State defense. Also, shout out, let me just say shout out to, I didn't, I want to know whether this is actually accurate, but Marsha Cross was apparently the last person in Los Angeles to smoke indoors.

Marsha Clark, Marshall. Clark. Sorry, Marsha Cross is from Melrose Place or whatever. Um, Marsha Clark was apparently the last person to smoke in Los Angeles indoors. So she's just always like stubbing out a parliament on top of a cruller while all these other guys are just probably like, we all know that secondhand smoke kills. What are you doing? She, she's a G, man. Like, like if this, the show made, they made a lot of really smart choices. And making Sarah Paulson's Marsha Clark and Sterling Brown's Chris Darden sort of, the protagonist, not protagonists, but the most sympathetic, almost heroic figures, not only knowing

what happens to them, like what the culture and what the cameras did to them, makes it even more anguishing to watch. But it's very, very, it's really smart. And the smartest choice that they make by far, I think, well, one was casting Courtney B. Vance as Johnny Cocker, because this performance is my, it's going to be hard to top this is my favorite performance of the year. It's lit. It's really good. Courtney B. Vance is a dude. who is good in everything he's ever done. As soon as he's on the screen, you're like, that's the dude. He has rarely gotten to just, just stun on people like he does in this role.

Only in HUD for October, yeah. And it's been a little bit of a drought since then. But it's not just, but the point is, like, Johnny Cochran in the popular imagination is really Jackie Childs from Seinfeld, right? Which is sort of like a buffoon, like an opportunistic buffoon. And what the show immediately does, I thought that he wasn't even going to enter the show until like episode six or seven when he joined the defense team. He's there from episode one and he's watching and he is basically, he's the one who is articulating

what this case means in this particular moment in terms of Los Angeles, in terms of police brutality, in terms of race relations in America. Yeah, yeah. And he is able to express and embody the duality of the situation where he's like, this case is a loser. This dude murdered someone. But he's also like, this system is bullshit. This system is broken and rigged. The show is really good.

can be true at the same time. It's really good at setting up characters who are basically illuminating different parts of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles popular imagination, like whether it's Connie and Connie Burton and Selma Blair are kind of like these, the original real housewives. And Johnny Cochran is speaking from like an institutional knowledge of, of the racism that black people had faced in Los Angeles for 30 years. And, you know, just seeing like, they do a good job of, of, yes, it's exposition, but it's. It moves so quickly that it's not, it doesn't feel like you're being taught something. It feels like you're really getting to enjoy a procedural.

And it is very much a procedural in the literal sense. It's not like, it's just like, this is what they did. They approached the door like this. They went through the door like this. They found OJ's daughter sleeping and there was candles in the bathtub and all that stuff. It's so detailed. It's just fascinating to watch. These are also, you know, we are of a.

certain age. And I think a lot of people watching this maybe didn't live through these things, didn't watch the Bronco Chase on live TV like I'm sure we both did. There are also people watching the show probably who are older than us and were more aware of what the significance and the just the insanity of the situation was right from the beginning. And one thing that was really made clear to me in watching the first few episodes is as much as I paid attention to this at the time, which was like our senior year of high school basically for us. and that I remember the verdict came out the fall of freshman year of college. I don't, all I really remember now are talking points.

I was not a savvy enough thinker to understand the significance of the LA riots happening just two years before this. No. I was not paying attention to the details of the case and the legality of the case and all the little things that allowed this to snowball and become what it did, how it became something much, much larger than this ridiculous miscarriage of justice, you know. There's a line later in the series when the father of Goldman, you know, the other victim, is basically his rage and his fury and his sorrow, but for his son to, his son's murder

to be a footnote in something else. Sure. When someone actually died. These are the details that are lost in history. And this is what, these are the amazingly, this is the insight that. that a series like this can actually provide. And, you know, I wanted to bring it up also because, you know, a lot of people are talking about this Making a Murderer show.

Yes. You know, I think I like this sort of thing. I like something like the O.J. Simpson show more because it is so, it's scripted. And you can see the thumbprints of the person adapting it more clearly. Yeah. Because from what I gather, a lot of the issue with making a murderer is that, oh, it's this, you know, engaging, illuminating docu-series about truth. but of course all documentaries have a are subjective everything is subjective and it's not really

possible to have the objective truth and I would I almost like that to be more clear from the beginning and then we know whose version of the story we're seeing and we can engage and embrace it as such well anytime you can say to somebody you know the story but not the story behind the story I think that you wind up that that sparked something because also it it I have to say relieves a certain there's a there's a kind of relief in watching this where you just aren't as obsessed with endings. Do you know what I mean? We know how it ends.

That's right. That's right. And it's also, but also the celebrity behind it, and I mean not just the celebrities in it or the celebrities that it's about, but the celebrity of the case itself. Yeah. Makes it, lends it the kind of zeitgeisty spark that we have in the past lamented draining away from television. Yeah.

In the same way that like, we had so much fun talking about the end of Breaking Bad because everyone was watching it with us. And we always have so much fun talking about Game of Thrones, because it certainly feels like tens of millions of people are watching it with us. Togetherness, the Duplas Brothers show is coming back to HBO very soon. I'm psyched. I can't wait. I really love that show. But are we going to talk about it? Because that is a show that I feel like I'm going to enjoy watching, you know, at 10 p.m. on a Wednesday, maybe get something emotionally engaging out of it and then move on. And I, it almost feels silly to be like, you guys really need to watch this drama slash comedy about disaffected late 30s white people in the hip parts of LA.

Like it just, it's hard to grab people of that. I watch it every Monday at 1230 Pacific time, but brother. That's your thing. That's also, that's really your story though. Yeah. All right, man. Well, let's wrap it up there. We'll be back next week.

Don't forget to check out Jam session this week on the channel 33 podcast feed. Subscribe iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud. Search for us on the watch. or channel 33, right? And we might be a little bit late next week because I'm coming out there. I'm going to be with you again. In person.

In person. All right, everybody. Talk to you next week. And we can finally. Great job for Ansky.