The Watch - Ep. 35: 'The Watch'

Episode Date: April 25, 2016

Chris and Andy recap a busy weekend in culture by breaking down the 'Game of Thrones' season premiere, Beyoncé's 'Lemonade' (8:00), Prince's passing and everlasting impact (18:00), and the return of 'Jason Bourne' (32:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Seat Geek, our presenting sponsor and the only fan-friendly app for buying and selling sports and music tickets. Other sites have gone back to the same old tactic of showing you a lower price and then charging you huge fees at checkout. But at Seatgeek, the price you see is always the price you pay. With Seatgeek, there's no guesswork. You'll know exactly how much you're paying, where you're sitting and whether or not you're getting a good deal, all from your phone. So drop your old site and experience buying and selling tickets the way it should be. To start using Seatgeek, download the free Seatgeek app or go to Seatgeek. Today's episode is also brought to you by After the Thrones.

Remember to check out After the Thrones hosted by myself and Andy Greenwald. It's available after every episode of Game of Thrones on HBO now, go, and even HBO proper. Winter is here. And me and Andy have all the answers and analysis. So check it out. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch on the Channel 33 podcast feed.

My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor for the radio. and joining me on the other line. He never takes his powerful necklace off. It's Andy Greenwald! Dude, I never take off any of my accessories. You never know what's going to happen. Always be jeweled decked out

and nothing but the finest watches and things. I just feel like, obviously we're talking about Melisandra on Game of Thrones last night. I thought we're talking about designer. It's a powerful argument against just like cosmetic surgery or basically any kind of anti-aging trickery because you're just going to get found out. The Game of Thrones is agest.

What's that? It's not an ageist show. They really got like some old people in positions of power on that piece. They have old people in positions of extreme nudity on this show. That's certainly true. Andy, we're talking about Game of Thrones. I don't know if everybody knows this, but you and I are doing a Game of Thrones after show on the HBO network. You know, I find out about that.

And I'd like to commend us for being pretty chill about it on social media and not really promoting ourselves. We are hosting After the Thrones. We had some guests this week, Mallory Rubin and Jason Kuteman. you and both of whom work at The Ringer. You can check out Jason's ratings about Game of Thrones via the various non-website platforms that the Ringer has. He's going to be doing his Ask the Master column tomorrow is a special newsletter. He'll also be doing a Facebook live event for the Ringer.

Mallory, obviously, we hope to have them on as frequently as possible. Jason wrote a little something for the Ringer newsletter today. You can go to the Ringer.com and sign up for that. After the Thrones, this is Monday, is on tonight on HBO. at 10 p.m. or 10.05 p.m. Pacific 10.05 a.m. Eastern. You can get it now on HBO. You're bearing the lead, man, because it exists. It's already there. It's always. Yeah. It's on. And in this 21st, you know, this instant gratification culture, you can just get it on demand. You can get it on HBO now and HBO Go now. Like, you can just do it now. I don't mean that's like, I'm not

renaming the platforms. Uh, you should watch. We really had a great time doing it. Um, can't wait to do more of them. Yeah, can I say that was really fun. I can't wait to do more for the rest of the season. I hate it working with you. You're awful. No, you dragged it down every second you were on set. But the times I spent with Terry, the makeup person, and with Jason and Mallory, and just being on the set full of toys, like that was such a high for me that just, you know, anytime you were brought on.

Which, by the way, I appreciate the way everyone respected my policy of never making eye contact with me. Yeah, you were like Nathan Phileon on the set of Castle. You just won't talk to it. Yo, I was like Rivers Cuomo on tour with Weezer. Like that time I was on tour with that band with profiling another band. And like the rumor was that he was being transported to set in one of those like giant PA boxes. I thought it was a coffin. Well, I think he, I think he had a coffin, but like it was a little gauche to go from the dressing room to the stage in a coffin.

So he just wheeled him out like that's the ghost part. Yeah. That's the gosh part. I think if you're going to be a dickhead, just go ahead and be in a coffin. Look, there's a reason why. my audio sounds like this to you because this is this is where I am I come out to L.A. to record the TV show with you and when I'm home I am just full sarcophagi living and I'm not making a like one-bedroom apartment in New York joke either Chris

a couple thoughts a couple thoughts just before we move on yeah I think people obviously expect this and we can't wait to do it we are going to be talking about Game of Thrones of course on the watch we're not going to talk too much about it this week because we obviously had a lot to say in after the Thrones and we hope hope people check that out. But we will be having more conversations about the show on this podcast going forward. That's one. And two, I kind of would like to say that I feel bad about the Borat joke.

Like, I don't want to, I feel like we say it. You know, we're kind of like one take wonders up there. We just, we put it all out there. It's on the screens. We're so grateful to have this opportunity. But can I could, like, can I walk it back a little bit? You should say that it was the my wife joke because people might think that you made a Jewish claw joke.

something. Chris, some people might think I make that every time I'm on TV just by being there. But my, my, my, the thing I was saying is that people don't realize that you and I, like, you brought that back. Like, you brought back that early Borac callback. I've been doing my wife jokes for a solid three months. Yeah. And, and, and so kind of I forgot, because we did three days of shows and test shows, I kind of forgot that they were running cam. You know what I mean? I thought it was just us boys hanging out in a essentially a sealed studio crypt. So I, I apologize. But this is the kind of like Blu-ray extras that you can expect if you watch our show and then listen to this podcast.

When they release the director's cut. Andy, today we are going to talk a little bit about what was an incredibly busy week and weekend in terrible ways and in great ways. So we're going to talk a little bit about Prince. We're going to talk a little bit about that born trailer that we haven't gotten a chance to chat about. But first, we wanted to talk a little bit about Beyonce's lemonade release. Yeah. Did you see this coming? Here's the thing.

This thing was announced essentially via HBO. You and I, you know, we're in those boardroom meetings now. Like, we're part of it. Like, we, you know, my nickname for you is time and you call me Warner. So I kind of felt like I shouldn't have been caught flat-footed by this, but I had no idea this was coming. Yeah, I didn't know that it was coming either, although you have to guess that if you're going to go through the trouble of putting something, like, if you're going to go through the trouble of having a, a televised music video like television like filmic event

you should have something to sell afterwards aside from just a single so it wasn't surprising that it happened I think it was I you know for me and we can get a little bit into the music if you want but but we've now like gone I feel like that the album release has been smashed

we've been talking about this for a while it is not like an original thought but just the idea that not only was this happening on Saturday night it would have been hilarious like I'm trying to think of like who's going to think of like who's going to drop an album on Thanksgiving night because on one half that would be so

rude but on the other hand everybody's home like so maybe they would just download it no that's why making a murderer took off over Thanksgiving weekend that's why I'm waiting for someone who's like album comes out Christmas morning but you know can I give you some anecdotal

evidence to back you up sure when the attendees of the Seder I was attending in Lancaster PA over the weekend found out that there was a new Beyonce record that dropped like people were thrilled and I don't just mean the children I mean like the great aunts and uncles to be fair you had given done the entire uh haggata as borat so I think people were just looking for an excuse to get out of it first of all let me say the bitter tears see I knew it I knew you couldn't

resist doing it um I know maybe we are finally learning and adjusting to this new cultural cycle or maybe we are just thrilled that, you know, we aren't, we aren't the watchers on the wall for this particular beat anymore because I feel totally confident and fine admitting that I have no opinion on this music yet, other than it sounds very cool and I'm excited to spend more time with it. Primarily, my reason for not knowing it is because I feel like I've been very transparent with people. I 1,000% quit title the day the life of Pablo became available on other platforms.

Like, until you tell me that the afterlife of Pablo is... available on title. I'm not going back there, right? Like, that's, I'm okay with that. I can wait. But in general, this feels fine to me. Like, the, the swirling beehive of conversation, you know, of course focused on the, you know, the apparent, uh, thematic content of the record, which is that Jay-Z is a dog. And that's not a conversation about the music. And so I'm fine about both conversations existing. And I kind of want to say that my main takeaway from this is not, This is not a hot take at all that I do think Beyonce is a genius. And I mean it both in a calculating way and in a creative way.

Because everything I've heard from the album, I mean, it sounds very, very forward thinking, very interesting, just musically rich and exciting. But she absolutely knows better than anyone else how to work the room and control the conversation. And whether or not the supposed or inferred content of any of this is true, it almost doesn't matter because she wins by making that the conversation. It reveals humanity. It reveals tension. It reveals soap opera. You know, she's letting, she's giving out little bits of, like, one link at a time on this bracelet, and everyone's just grabbing for it.

And I think that's just, that's just brilliant. That's how you get attention in a monoculture, post-monoculture world. Here's what I'm workshopping. Here's my idea. Because the thing is, this is 36 hours old. I haven't, I mean, I've listened to it. I haven't had, I love hold up. I love, uh, you know what the biggest asshole take would be is if you were like,

I'm really into the James Blake song. because it's just James Blake Yeah, that's not my take though My take is that I think that this is In some ways like Peek Post-Rocism Like we finally have moved

Entirely out of the binary of singles versus albums Or You know Pop versus Meaningful art or anything like that And that she is sort of occupying a new space where I don't think that Beyonce is these like I don't know whether I don't talk about her in the sense of like Beyonce is a great album artist or Beyonce is a great singles artist because formation

is as dense as any album I mean it has it packs so many ideas into the visual representation and the the sonics of that record and the lyrics obviously um but it's like chopped up into these little parts that it doesn't feel like I mean I have you heard formation a lot on the radio I I guess, I mean, I don't know if you listen to the radio. I do, and I have not. I don't remember ever hearing it once on Hot 97 here. It's sort of one of the songs of the year. And I think that one of the most interesting things about her, aside, you know, beyond the

music and beyond what she means to people and beyond, obviously, her carving out this huge space for perspectives that have just been routinely shunned throughout the history of pop music is this idea that she's just kind of creating her own rules. And I think that there's lots of room to criticize some of the things she's done or just like appropriately critique certain parts of the music or maybe even not even be that into it or find it like find it. Find yourself like a little wanting. But what she's doing right now with tools available to a modern pop artist is just fascinating. The things that she's building haven't been built before in a lot of ways. I mean, she's taking lessons from things like Michael Jackson premiering bad, you know, as this 17 however long minute Scorsesee movie.

that was when bad came out. It's reminiscent of that. And she's obviously using everything from that to, you know, lemonade reference Julie Dash and Daughters of the Dust and all these other, like, directors. But it's just so interesting to see what she pitches. But let's consider also, I mean, and you can throw the Juliet-Litman filter on this on your personal hot-take Instagram and be like, you know,

because Juliet is a great Beyonce baby truther and believes that she did not give birth to her daughter and is a big fan of pointing to a certain video clip that suggests some shenanigans when she was pregnant. So you can be cynical and calculated about her decision to do just about anything she does, and that's fine. But let's set that filter aside for a second. Because I think that conversation is actually pretty interesting too.

But with this album, again, this is why she wins, because we're not even talking about the music yet. We will talk about the music in the weeks and months to come. Like I remember when she surprised dropped the last. record in 2013, the Beyonce record, no one knew what the hits from that album were. Like, partition was sort of lurking there and was not, you know, it took a repeated listens to realize just how sort of radical and exciting that song was. So we're not even talking about that, but what we're saying is with this album out, like the dominant paradigm for a quote unquote

diva, right, is to be bulletproof and untouchable and lording over everything. You know, whatever bits of humanity in emotion you let slip is very tightly controlled, right? Like like drips and drops, but otherwise you are, you are bulletproof. It's sort of, you know, it's what Rihanna is sort of projecting all the time these days and other people in that, in that sphere. But more importantly, for someone like Jay-Z to be a, you know, to be a dominant male rapper, the whole point of your existence is that you have sex with everyone all the time. And that's just what you do. And so for her to make this record, which is basically like, yes, I am me, but I am totally destroyed internally, and this guy is a fucking asshole. That is pretty radical, I think, for both of their roles,

both in terms of their roles as individual celebrities who they are, but in terms of the roles they play in pop culture. And I don't know how that's going to shake out. And it's very, very interesting Jay Z's involvement in all of this. And, you know, because I guess he shows up in the special at the end. And his own desire to maintain his family life, separate and apart from this and not to be, you know, not to be pummeled by his sister along the elevator again. But what does this say about his, I mean, is he just incredibly comfortable with transparency now in his role in his wife's career? Is he aware that she is a lot more popular than he is in many ways and certainly making a lot more interesting music at the moment? Yeah.

What does that say about him going for it? And I say this, apologizing for the fact that I'm making a strong female statement into what's up with the dude, which is not the conversation to be having today necessarily. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little bit unavoidable, given the content of the record. And I think that you touched on the transparency angle there. And with Beyonce, I think it's a very curated transparency. I think that it is, she doesn't tweet. She, her Instagrams, I mean, are lovely, but are not particularly revealing about who she is

or what she's doing at any given day. And she has sort of taken the aesthetics of lifecasting and being, like, transparently with people and vulnerable with people, but stripped away all the mundanity of it. So there is no, like, check out this new coral lipstick. I mean, she sells stuff, but it's all part of, like, the larger message that she's trying to send. And in that sense, you feel like you know her and you don't know anything about her at all.

I mean, if she came out tomorrow and did an interview and said, this album is an act of creative fiction. I mean, I think that would be in some ways fascinating, but it would also be very disappointing to some people who have so much invested in this being, like these albums being diary entries. Yes. Well, let's think about, and I assume if you had 15 minutes as the over or under in terms of when I would bring this back to Kanye, I hope you won your office pool. But, you know, I think one of the things that's so exciting about both of them is the way that they've shattered the radio artist paradigm and that they're using their platforms to make pretty interesting art. And I would love it if it was just all creative fiction. That's pretty cool. That's a

very rare and cool thing for an artist of her stature to do once they have the bully pulpit. But they're interesting counterpoints because Kanye sort of floods the zone with oversharing so you don't know what's real and what isn't. And that of itself is interesting. She does the opposite. Her control is immaculate. And so it would it would ruin everything if she came out and said it's creative fiction or if she came out and said it wasn't. You know, you make the art and you let other people interpret it. And that's, that's, that's a, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's the boss move. Yeah, it's, it's, it's almost this weird science experiment that she's trying to pull off knowingly or not where I think that when you engage with your public in any meaningful way, there is a reciprocity that is expected. So for as much as you're going to put out into the world, they're going to put it back onto you and they're going to ask certain questions, um, the things that you make have real world repercussions to some extent. And, does you know what will be interesting is to see how over the course of the next few months with how the record is received what songs sort of rise up out of it and um whether or not she talks much about it's about and whether or not she talks much about what it's about and whether jz

or whether they're just like we're putting our art out into the world and then we're going to go about our lives which is sort of the more pre-internet way of doing things but i think that's probably i think that's already been answered to some degree because if you think about this hour-long special, I mean, that was essentially telling you the story of the record, right? It was divided into acts, and I guess the final act is redemption or forgiveness or something like that. And so I hope that what that meant was that this is the final statement on it. This is what it is and, you know, and take it or leave it. And my feelings, many, many, many people will take it, especially now that it's not locked behind Doug's vicious firewall and title. You know, and one thing I thought was interesting

about the film, accompanying the album, Beyonce being this enigmatic, elusive presence, who is at once, you know, like you feel like she's ubiquitous, but at the same time, not all there, you know, it's very reminiscent of Prince, and I'm sure, you know, I would have loved to have drawn that comparison

under better circumstances, but Prince passed away last week, and there was something, not quite mantle passing, and I don't want, you know, they're completely separate events, but there was something interesting in the way that there are a lot of similarities

between the two artists and the way that they are constructing a career. Yeah, I would say you know, we're talking about this video and the stuff that the Beyonce is putting out and just we are at the point in our lives and just where we are as cultural, you know, as devourers of culture

that we can receive this and then immediately pivot to talking about what it means. and what might the intent behind it be. But I'm thinking about the stuff that she's playing with, and you mentioned, you know, she's talking about a feminist poet. She's talking about carrying hot sauce in her bag. She's collaborating with artists ranging from James Blake to Jack White. And, you know, a song is inspired by a tweet, tweeted by Ezra Kahnig from Vampire Weekend.

There's so many different spices in this, in this bullion, so to speak. And Somali British poets, and she's drawing influences from people like we mentioned, Julie Dash. So what if you, if you are young and you get those things, and they overwhelm you. And being overwhelmed by reference points and collisions is sort of the way all fandom begins, you know, or all investment in art begins. And in the connection that I would make with that to Prince is thinking about,

and this is obviously we were all forced to think about this last week in different ways. But my awareness of Prince is very much tied into MTV. And getting MTV when I was like six years old and basically watching it, never not watching it, essentially, until I left for college. And the thing about Prince is that he was, it's impossible for people who weren't there. It's impossible to really communicate just how omnipresent he was, how every time he put out an album or a video, it was an event and it was everywhere. And how different those songs and videos and albums were. And, you know, when I think back on being, becoming aware of certain key artists, particularly from that era, like Michael Jackson or Bruce Springsteen or Madonna or, or, uh,

or flock of seagulls, you know, all the greats. Prince freaked me out. Yeah. That is my, that is my main memory. I'm 100% there with you, where it's like, I remember, obviously, like, I had, like, a surface relationship with his music growing up, but was usually, you know, I was very young, obviously when, when Purple Rain came out. And then when, like, I think some of his, like, post-P Purple Ring classic stuff came out, you know, that stuff is all just essential to own. But my real, real introduction to him was in the mid-90s when I actually started reading music criticism and people were like writing these pieces about like in the spin alternative guide

and you read about the sign of the times. And I remember buying sign of the times and just being like, this is the monolith. I can't get into this. This is so weird. I mean, he had a song called If I was your girlfriend and he sang it and it's fucking crazy. But this is. And that way, I mean, it's crazy. It was crazy to hear that in 96, like in the way that.

I was like, where you're like, this is the most popular music in the world and like this guy was doing this stuff with us? No, I completely agree. And I, you know, I think we've often, because of our backgrounds and our interests, framed the idea of this sort of pre-digital music discovery in very, sorry to say, at raucous terms. Yeah. The analogy I always use is about, you know, how you discover punk rock for the internet. Maybe you see a flyer or a friend's older brother and you go to a show and you basically have

to be, it's not real bravery in a certain way, but culturally brave enough to go to the unknown place and experience it. And the truth is, that's what Prince's music was on a very, very large scale. Because from seeing the When Doves Cry video constantly at the age of seven and being like, oh, that's what sex is, I don't know if I'm ready for that yet to, and frankly, I still don't think I'm ready for that. I mean, you, you, like, with When Doves Cry and I've seen, you know, you have to, like, when you listen to like the things that he is saying and you imagine that the number, like,

the most popular song that year was this. song where he was just singing about maybe I'm just like my like you know like I'm yeah I didn't even know what that meant nobody knows what it means to be just like your father back then or just like your mother like you don't have an idea of what that is when you're 12 like that you're taking on the trance of your parents of repeating their mistakes or something like that and then the trojan horses that he would throw up were just mind-blowing I agree and then you mentioned the sort of the monolith like yeah when sign of the times came out I remember very clearly I think I had a Rolling Stone subscription at that point, and I was like 12 or 13, and I think it was a four and a half or five-star review.

And it basically, the review was, I don't know, I don't remember who wrote it. It was thoughtful. It was detailed. It was a rave. But it was basically, to me, it could have just been like two cross strips of police tape being like, you can't handle this. You know, because it was basically saying this is an enormous album. It is dense. You know, it is rock.

It is funk. It is R&B. It is everything. And the truth is, it is everything. And that album is still amazing, as is his entire catalog. But I think, you know, one of the reasons why my favorite remembrance of Prince, and we could have a whole separate conversation about, you know, the grief machine that just, you know, that fires up whenever a celebrity dies these days, but might have been Rob Sheffield's piece in Rolling Stone

because, you know, we know Rob, he's a friend of ours and he's for a long time been one of our favorite music writers. But he really contextualized Prince's art, not in the personal, through the personal prism that so much of, you know, quick Twitter reaction is about, but basically saying, here is exactly how this guy owned and defined the 80s. When you talked about how in 1984, arguably the greatest year for pop radio ever, every artist from Van Halen to, I don't even remember who else these sites, they were trying to make print songs. And then Prince made the best Prince songs that year. Yeah, and there's not a lot of artists. I mean, there's the Beatles, there's the Stones, there's Prince, where they have a bunch of songs that created like basically

a rhythm, like where they were like, this is a template. So people will do house quake style songs or songs that like try to be kiss. But yeah, or let's go crazy or Raspberry Beret. And then when Prince decided to do someone like a different subgenre of music, like he would play karaoke or whatever, would do, I could never take the place of your man and just be better than all late period replacements, you know? Or it would just be like the best pop rock song that you could make. Or when he let other people do it. Like Manic Monday for the Bengals, nothing compares to you for Shnade O'Connor.

And then, and let me just say, here's my personal anecdote, in 1989 when the Batman soundtrack came out, I didn't have a CD player, but I insisted on buying it on CD because I thought this was such a monumental. Oh, it was like investing in a baseball card? Exactly. Well, I was just also like, this deserves the highest fidelity possible. So I can hear him do a Jack Nicholson impression on Bat Dance. But, and let me also say, I still, in the midst of this, very few people were verbally

riding for what I think is a very underrated period of Prince, which was post-bat dance, basically the diamonds and pearls and the love symbol record, which that was high school for us. he dominated and that is a period that I think most people think of as you know he was unhappy with Warner brothers and he was itching to get out of his contract but like like seven is that the cross and seven when's the cross I mean seven just owned oh yeah was that 92 or 93 that's still a great song um what's your do you have like uh some other like underrated prince bangers or gems just the ones you like I I go back to sign of the times I mean it this week when you know when when when the When critics like us sort of lift their bleary heads from their desk to talk about it,

I still think the ballad of Dorothy Parker, which, by the way, Rob Sheffield in that Rolling Stone piece, just almost casually analyzes better than I've ever seen the song analyzed. The thing that he could do is to pull a song like that out of his back pocket in the midst of a double album that is not necessarily like anything he'd ever done before and not necessarily like anything you'd ever done since. I always point to that as my favorite for that reason. Yeah, I, you know, I didn't get a chance.

I saw Prince once when I was like much younger. I didn't get a chance to see him on this piano tour that he was doing but two of my favorite sort of lesser known tracks are sometimes it snows in April and how come you don't call me anymore and he was just like... Oh, good.

Two, just like completely perfect piano ballads, completely note perfect. And how come you don't call me anymore? I remember I didn't, I'd never heard of that song. And it was in Girl 6, that Spike Lee song movie where the phones are falling from the sky which is a little bit of an almost. the nose imagery from Spike Lee, but, you know, it was a very, very effective use of that song.

I, you know, at least he left us with so much music. It's a real tragedy, and it's, you know, he was so young, but he did, people are going to be able to explore his music for a really long time. That's the thing that almost, and I do, I do feel like we have to say his Super Bowl performance was the greatest of all time. Oh, yeah, that was like, that thing was when he just goes into Food Fighters Best of You, and now it's like Food Fighters probably shouldn't play that song anymore. No, I mean, he just almost in the best possible way, contemptuously, dismissively better than anybody else, even at their own stuff.

And, you know, that clip that's been going around of him soloing it on while my guitar gently weeps. Tom Petty's just like laughing because he's just like, I might as well have two left hands. Look at that Hall of Fame clip and it's basically a dividing line on that screen between what music is thought of as being and what it could be. because it's Jeff Lynn and Tom Petty, and no one rides harder for Tom Petty than the two of us. But, you know, they are doing essentially a respectful, traditional interpolation of a Beatles member's song.

And then Prince comes in and is like, okay, you could do that. But what about this? It's literally the Marvin Berry phone call from Back to the Future moment. And that was so interesting to see because he was so deeply rock and roll in a way, in a way that is very not awkward and very not, you know, it sort of, I wish I could cite this, but one of the smarter things I read in the last week was basically saying that one of the reasons Prince disappeared in many ways from the mainstream

musical stage, not literally because he was always touring and always performing, you know, three, four, or five-hour sets, but from, certainly from the radio or from the national conversation was that he represented the perfect nexus of R&B and rock and roll, and he could never really account for the fact that pop and hip-hop took over. Like those weren't the fields that he was as interested in pursuing. So you could say that maybe, you know, he fell off a little bit in terms of the consensus imagination because he didn't want to play the record company games anymore. But I think he was stymied by that in a way.

But who could even care about that? Because those 15, 17 years at the beginning of his career are completely flawless. And as you said, this is the thing why the grief is as legitimate. But people are in many ways mourning their childhood and when they fell in love with these songs. Because these songs are forever songs. Yeah, and I think that there was a sense that he still had a lot of music to play. Do you know what I mean? And that he still had a lot of tours to go on and that he still had a lot of parties to throw

and a lot of places to explore. And a lot of low-key humanitarianism to do. These stories that are coming out about him, you know, and you forget, you forget how funny he was, but you also forget like he was at the Grammys talking about how Black Lives Matter just when, you know, in the room full of billioners who did not want to listen to anything he had to say. Yeah. Like, fascinating, totally sweet, generis figure that we will, I mean, I, we should be so lucky to see someone like that again.

Yeah. Let's take a quick break and we'll be back to talk about Jason Bourne. I want to tell you about our sponsors, Uber. We all have those times when we need a little bit of extra money. Well, I've got a really easy way for you to do it. Drive with Uber. Uber's a smartphone map that connects riders with drivers. So as a driver, it helps you make extra money while driving your own car.

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podcast the one of this podcast yeah of this podcast at least is the bourne series uh we talked a little bit about the first trailer for jason bourne that came out a couple months ago but a more fully fought out more well-rounded trailer dropped last week so we wanted to talk about it um i'm gonna play a little bit of devil's advocate here with you Okay. Okay, because I just feel like if we're just like, do I took the Maltov cocktail. It's just where are we going with that? So here's one thing.

I don't think I ever noticed how formulaic the BORN movies were until I watched this trailer. Oh, yeah. Because I think I thought, okay, Greengrass is coming back and Damon is coming back. So they must really have something new to say. You know, because that was really what they had been sort of stressing over the years is that, well, we won't come back unless the story writes. You don't want to come back and ruin what we've established unless we have like, something else to say. And I don't doubt that they think and that there will be a lot of like a lot. It will be very cool. And it, I'm happy for them that it's going to be about a post-Snowden world.

Yeah. I'm not so sure if Snowden is like the story crack that people seem to think it is. Yeah, no one's quite cracked that story crack. Yeah, it's like I got it. Everybody's listening. But you know, I never noticed how the movies are basically, he's on the run with a phone, getting into fights while there is on the other side a control room of people monitoring him and stressing about what he's doing. And that is essentially each one of these movies. You're not mentioning the crucial role of the Queen Julius Stiles and all of them. No, I mean, I didn't know that Nikki was going to be the main character of this movie. Look, that's great.

I completely agree with you and I hear you. And, you know, if you're sitting trying to crack like what makes this, what's the next story to tell here for a story that is essentially finished, while pretending that this isn't just the best American bond that we, you know, that we'll ever get. And maybe that's where you got to go. You got to be like it's American bond. Now, I can just as well easily jump and just tell you all the cool things about this, but you go ahead. But no, but I'm saying that, but I think that we need to embrace that as fans. Because just if you're trying to crack the story here, I don't know who I am, I don't know who I am, him saying, now I know everything is really the only thing left.

Because that's the thing is he's like, I remember everything. And she's like, but you don't know everything. And so it's essentially like you don't know anything. That's a good point. Here's what I want, though. And you mentioned Bond before we got to Bond before I intended to because what I wanted to say was as much as, you know, every year when the Oscars come around and there's a lot of discussion like who's going to get the hammer slot in the in memoriam segment, like who will be the person who gets to fill that crucial role. Similarly, like every time there's a Bond movie, it's like, well, who is going to be the quote unquote Bond girl this iteration? I feel like just as valuable in terms of Hollywood jobs or real estate

should be the position of the person who gets to stand in a room full of monitors and screens wearing a disheveled shirt and say, oh, my God, that's Jason Bourne. Now, this time, Vinyl's own AtoEssendo gets to do it. And I definitely said his name wrong, and he deserves better. But thrilled to see him in that role, a role previously filled by such luminaries as David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox. Like, this is Ed Norton, although he didn't really say it, but that was the role. Like, that is, to be a tech in the, it's a stepping stone, right?

The god Corey Stoll was an anonymous tech in Bourne legacy, and look at him now, Frenching Andrew Rannells on the season finale of girls. Like, anything is possible for this role. But it doesn't matter that it's expected. I just hope in my life to one day either just be in the same room for the creation of something as emotionally electric as a dude who is stressed out with pit-stain saying, oh my God, that's Jason Bourne. So here's also the other thing that we haven't really thought about is the possibility

that Jason Bourne is actually part of the Ocean's 12 side universe, and that this film is actually just Linus versus the Night Fox. Because Vincent Cassell plays the Clive Owen character in this movie. I mean, don't you think that they're steering into those things by having Tommy Lee Jones hunting a fugitive? I know. I think they know. And we also didn't mention this is a movie with two queens. Yeah.

Do you think that you're going to talk about Alicia Vicander? To be clear, I've been talking about Alicia Vicander for the last three weeks. You just haven't been able to differentiate it from the other things. Is Vakander wearing a Bluetooth headset the ultimate heat check? Like, what if she had a fanny pack? on too. Can you think, yeah, seriously, could she have like a beer helmet? Like, what could Vakander do?

I like you're saying. So what if she showed up in this movie wearing a Bluetooth headset, a flip phone, a fanny pack, a Make America Great Again baseball cap? And she was like, Jason, I can get you out of Tangier. And she was chewing tobacco like 91 Lenny Dykstra? Yes. Yes, and she was like, the only, I could take you some more safe. This is only making it more attractive to me.

What am I doing? I could take you to, I could take you to Lenny Dykstra's brokerage office. I have a safe house there. No one's been paying attention to it since the financial collapse. Yeah, now she's just even hotter. Thanks a lot. I don't even know if I can continue with this podcast anymore. Well, what else you got?

We want to talk about any TV stuff before we go. Yeah, I wanted to like a little. know with the re-ups, we're going to, we're going to try. Like, we're going to try and do some stuff. Yeah. Like, Thrones preview stuff and just check TV check-ins, but it's all scheduled permitting. Yeah, because we're filming the show in L.A. But I did want to, you know, we missed it last week. I did want to jump on the night manager for a second, which is the AMC mini series based on the John LaCaree novel. It premiered last week. It stars Tom Hittleston and Hugh Lorry. And I think we're both in on this. I think we're both excited to watch it. Mainly because as soon as they said

John La Carae adaptation or even before I saw his name on it, they were like, oh, European spy thriller with a good cast, obviously you and I are all in on it. The interesting thing about it so far, to me, and I don't think we've even talked about this offline, so I'm curious what you think. I've only watched two, but in the cast is great. It's really great to see Loki as a leading man. I think Hittleston is a really good, interesting actor, and I think it's so funny to see. It's so funny to see Hugh Lory B use his actual speaking voice after after seeing him diagnose not lupus for nine years and then also he's on VEP currently it almost feels like a dare but these guys are terrific and the show looks really good but the vibe I'm getting from it um which doesn't take

away from my enjoyment is that it definitely feels like a an attempt to spin a legacy forward and what I mean is Le Carre is very much still alive in writing but he's like a a little bit older. And the dynamic, the main dynamic of his work that we love is a certain chilly precision, you know, that especially worked with the Cold War books. But I think it's come out best when filmmakers or adapters have embraced that, like with both versions of Tinker Taylor, Soldier Spy. This is the first project that his children have embarked on, basically, to keep his stuff moving, keep that IP moving, right? So in a way, there's a lot of writing. And A archa trader is coming out pretty much now anyway.

It's not just, oh, here's another great La Cari book. Let's just, let's prestige it up. It's like, how can we pay, how can we spin this forward and get a place at the table of, of television movies going forward? And because of that, this movie feels like a, I feel like I'm like busted podcast Marshall McLuhan here. But like, it's like a hot adaptation. Yeah. I mean, you are so right because Tinker Taylor, which is his sort of masterpiece and that the whole. smiley Carla saga, which makes up a lot of his

reputation. I mean, he is probably he's probably one of my three favorite writers, but most people know him for that. And the protagonist of those books and in the BBC adaption and even in the the more recent Thomas Alfredson adaption of those books is the most nebish person in the world. Yeah. So to see it be like Hiddleston and Ewan McGregor and our kind of traitor and just all the hot

people, it is a little bit jarring because even in Night Manager, you know, which is set in this very luxurious, like upper, upper echelon of wealth. And so is our kind of traitor, which is set in the, you know, with the Russian mafia. It's just strained to see everybody so tanned and fit, you know? Right. It's a great point. Like the star of Tinker Taylor, the most recent version is Gary Oldman. Like even Constant Gardner, which is a film I really, really like a lot, you know, Ray Fines is sort of the perfect star because, you know, in certain light, and especially when he was younger, he looked very much like a dashing leading man, but he kind of is a character actor who played falling apart. This is his main choice in that movie. It's like, it's interesting because, you know, when we would talk about House of Cards and I mentioned Veep, but House of Cards, but House of Cards is the version of Washington that it likes to believe that it is where they're like dashing gladiators, but Veep is the truth where it's just like pleaded pants and lanyards and stale pizza and despair. Nobody wants to watch a House of Cards that actually. looks like Mitch McConnell. Exactly.

And the thing about that makes LaCarray so devastating is that he shows just the bureaucracy and the mundanity that defines these spy games, right? Like people looking for kicks and thrills in a world that is essentially value neutral on heroism. Yeah. My favorite part of night manager so far I've seen the two is definitely Tom Hollander, who is also the most British, like normal looking British person in the show in the show so far. and he plays corky and he's a great British character actor who's been in tons and tons of stuff. But it's like he's the, he is the kind of actual real look-Haree, and Hiddleston and Hugh Lorry and Elizabeth DeBecke, who's incredible.

I was going to say, she's really good. I really like her. So yeah. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. I think one last thing I wanted to jump on here because, you know, our podcast is nothing, if not of the moment, especially our, in general, you know, that's usually reserved for our film coverage. when I'd like to review movies that are anywhere from 12 to 27 months old. But, you know, a song that really got us through the taping last week of After the Thrones, designers panda just hit number one in America.

And I just want your, I just want to know. I just want to like open the tap and just tell me what you have to, what you have to say about that. About what? Panda is the number one song in America. Wait, isn't it, isn't that, isn't that weird? Panda? No, no. I'm talking about Panda.

Uh, that's fucking crazy. I like this song, but that is one of the weirder number ones in a minute. Like, I was like, Tate, is Panda for real? Like, you like that song, Tate shaking his head. Tate just doesn't want any part of it. Like, but there have been some smart things written about this song where it's just like, what a life cycle. Well, of course, but he's past that now. Like, this is the thing about this song.

Has any song, has this, has this life cycle ever existed before where something is released? Everyone's like, ha, ha, ha. This is a novelty rip-off single because this 18-year-old... Do you listen to it? Always. Yeah, all the way through? Or do you wait for... I got broads in Atlanta and then you move on?

No, I can... I'll never give it up. Because the thing about the song, obviously I like it best when it's interpolated into Father Stretch My Hands Part 2 on The Life of Pablo. But the thing about this song, we were talking about like creative fiction and performance art. Like, maybe this guy is a genius.

Because when an 18-year-old from Brooklyn, who just was playing video games and bought a beat from some dude over YouTube. And then the first thing he says is, I've got broads in Atlanta, when both are demonstrably false. Like, hip hop, Rick Ross's side, and that was an issue,

usually doesn't embrace fabulous, you know? What if this is just a genius long con? And he, what if this dude is just like a collage artist, you know? Like, what if designer, what if he is? Oh, he's like mystique in X-Men? And if he touches you, he just turns into you?

I'm not, I'm not going that far. what if he's Marcel Duchamp? That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Okay. Like, what if? Let's just, I mean, if not, then this is his greatest trick he's pulled. Can we, following up on this, can I just put a little, little, little bee in your bonnet for future podcasts?

I think it's well established now that you cannot have a viral hit, let alone a real hit, without having a corresponding emoji to your project. This guy's a genius. Panda is the most brilliant one, but obviously lemonade has one. And it's why Kanye, honestly, why. he probably should have called the album waves. But so we should take some time and just try and guess like what are the undiscovered emojis? You know what I mean? Like what are the ones that are going to be the, in like third Q, third Q, 2016.

I mean, if GZ came out today and he had the snowman emoji, it would have been a fucking rap. It would have been a rap. Right. That's what I'm saying. But, you know, I don't know what the next move is. Like obviously, rest in peace, Prince is not around to take advantage of the purple egg Somebody can do a dope penguin one. Yeah, I'm just saying.

You don't actually want to interrogate this. You just want to put it out there. No, I want to interrogate. I just didn't think you want to do it now. The future already has the purple rain one. Shout out to Josh Gordon having that as his Twitter bio. Yeah, no, that's genius. But like, what about the monkey covering his ears?

Like, when's that guy getting gets some shine? You know what I mean? Is this like coconut shrimp joint going to happen? Who's going to... That's new? Oh, I've seen it. Who's going to differentiate the two dragons? Because there's the big dragon,

and then there's like the Komodo Dragonhead and which one are we using? Like there are a lot of things out there and we need to, we should be able to do something predictive about this, I think. There's a lot more emojis than I thought there were. Oh my God on page 20.

Are you seriously sitting there with Tate scrolling through your phones right now? Tate's not helping. He's just listening. The truth is, Tate's listening to Panda. Chris, when we record remotely, when we record remotely, I assume you're just scrolling through your phone,

but now could I have confirmation? Oh, you have my undivided attention. Andy, after the thrones tonight, 10.05 p.m. Pacific, 10.05 a.m. Eastern on the HBO network. But please, just don't even wait. Go to HBO now. Go to HBO on Demand. You can watch it there. Chris, people need to know that HBO now is just HBO Go for people who don't have cable. Like, it's all out there, man. Share it. Are you licensed to give that advice? Not in written form. Did you get that at the last board meeting? They were like, go ahead and be the... be the ambassador for the brand they they they yeah they they they they they chirped me on my next tell about that's the same one that vicander has in the born trailer make vicander great again all right man see you later great job richie want to say thank you to our sponsor uber we all have those times

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Start enjoying the flexibility of working when you want and earning money on your schedule. Sign up with Uber today. Go to drive with Uber.com. That's drive with Uber. Uber.com. Drive with UBER.com. Also want to let you know that after the Thrones is your only Game of Thrones post show that you need. So just check that at HBO now, HBO Go, HBO on demand, regular HBO on Monday nights. It should be available after midnight on Pacific every Sunday, Monday morning. While you're here, please check out the NFL draft podcast. Mallory Rubin and Robert Mays. We've got two coming this week, NFL draft this weekend. I'm sure I will be happy with whoever the Eagles pick.

Thanks for listening.