The Watch - Ep. 36: 'The Watch'

Episode Date: May 2, 2016

Chris and Andy discuss 'Game of Thrones,' the two poles of TV drama viewership (18:00), the challenges of modern filmmaking vs. TV-making (27:10), Drake’s ‘Views,’ and the impact of event listening on record releases (41:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode is brought to you by Merge Records, the label that over the last 25 years has been home to many great bands including Superchunk, Arcade Fire, Spoon, and Neutral Mochote. Merge recently released records by Bob Mould, M. Ward, Benji U's, Eric Bachman, Mount Moriah, and the Mountain Goats. And look for new albums from Little Scream and a Giant Dog in stores this month. Visit Merger Records.com to learn about, listen to, and shop for music by these artists, and more. Listeners to this podcast get 20% off any order using the coupon code BSPN at checkout. As always, domestic shipping is free. Again, go to merge records.com and enter BSPN at checkout to get 20% off your first purchase. Merge Records, home of independent music since 1989.

Go buy. Here's where the strings come in by Superjunk. Today's episode of The Watch is also brought to you by Seatgeek, 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 Seatheek, the price you see is always the price you pay. With Seatgeek, there's no guesswork.

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Also, before we get started, just want to tell you about our two new podcasts, The Ringers NFL show and the Ringers NBA show. They're all on iTunes SoundCloud and Google Play Music. Just search for Ringer NFL, Ringer MBA. I'll be on that Ringer MBA. You know what talking sources to say with Julia Littman. Also, you guys, please watch After the Thrones. It's on Sunday nights,

basically really late Monday morning. It's hosted by me and Andy Greenwald, and it's available after every episode of Game of Thrones on HBO Now, go, even HBO proper, where it's on tonight, Monday night. Winter is here, and me and Andy are here to break it down. 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'm an editor at the Rigger.com and joining me on the other line mixing vodka and emotions it's Andy Greenwald Whoa hey buddy what's up views from the six views from the six came out you know we're just

we're recording this on Monday so it's only been a few hours since america saw both of us take the plaid and uh and air our second episode of after the thrones a lot going on yeah you can catch after the thrones now on hbo now go and HBO on demand and then you can watch us tonight late night 10 p.m. Pacific 1 a.m. Eastern. And if you are watching us or if you are recording us on DVR,

add a little time. At about 10 more minutes because we went over. The last verse just went on and on. You need that bonus content. By the way, can we on episode 10 of After the Thrones? Can we do like Kanye's last call where they just like run the theme music

and we just shout out everyone who's been a part of our journey thus far? or just like a classic cannabis freestyle? I think, listen, if we can end the show with a classic... We just start talking about how the moon landing wasn't real. Chris, let me be clear with you. If we end our show with a classic cannabis freestyle, we are definitely ending our show.

I mean that in a very literal sense. Just by choosing to do that. That would be quite a way to go. Yeah, so we're going to talk about Drake, right? We're going to talk about... I got some airplane movies to unpack. I know people are excited about that because hashtag it's a thing. but we got to talk about,

we got to talk a little bit more about Thrones, right? All of our, like our big ticket thoughts. Let's repackage airplane movies to what we're really going to talk about. I think airplane movies is great, but we're also going to talk about the creeping television application of movies and the back and forth dialogue

between the two mediums. Okay, but I think hashtag, it's a thing, is a far set. Like, I just feel like as a branding expert. There's like three people who have done that. As a branding expert, I just feel like it's zippier. You know what I mean?

Like, I think people wanted to know. I'm on a lot of planes these days. And so I'm seeing a lot of movies and I'm having some big cultural thoughts. And it's probably worth noting that any other cultural opinions I share in this podcast for the next eight weeks are probably a little chardonnay soggy from. I'm trying to think of what the Drake line about you taking lots of plans would be. Taking a flight like Denzel Washington in flight. Oh, I think that would definitely be like his bars about it. But I thought you meant like the creeping the creeping undertone of just sadness and self-pity underneath.

it would be the Drake version of it. But that's how I fly. Listen, I was flying like Drake before Drake was flying like Drake. We should talk. Can we talk a little bit about this, Thrones? I mean, I know our big-ticket thoughts are on the TV, but there's more. There's more out there, man.

This is a big one. Yeah, I mean, I think that, so there's like sort of the more meta-conversation that we didn't talk about on After the Thrones, which is just the mechanics of having a character be, quote-unquote, dead for an entire offseason and one and seven-eighths of a episode and then kind of being like psych and you know Alice and Herman who wrote something in our newsletter today for the ringer she made a really good point where she was just like usually the big moments on thrones are

quite the opposite of what happened with John Snow you know it's like usually losing someone not getting someone back that's what we thought that was a really good point you know and I think it was a very cathartic, you know, a very nice episode to watch in so much as there can be a nice episode of television in which a woman and a baby get eaten by dogs. But yeah, it is an interesting. There is like a secondary storyline here about the way that Kit Harrington was like out on these streets just being like, I'm out. Side note, if I had pulled you aside just like five, just four short weeks ago and I was like, Chris, a prestigious. prestige HBO Sunday night show is going to show, for the first time, show explicit horse fucking. Like, you would have thought it was Game of Thrones, right?

Like, at no point would you have been like, oh man, Silicon Valley is really kicking it up a notch. No, I would have been like, did you get the sixth episode of luck? Can I get it? That's right. That's actually, you actually just outdid my joke because the bigger joke is that it's really pickum when it comes to which prestige HBO show. What if that, except ours, I guess. At least our budget doesn't allow like full horse penetration yet, right? What do you think the reaction was at HBO when my judge was like, so exterior, we open on two horses and they're like, wait, no, wait, just don't go any further.

I just did it. Or whose job was it? And we could ask because we know people now, the company. Like, were you able to secure the services of the horse, the same horse you lit on fire in Belfast last year and been like, like, look. Look, Mr. Ed. I know you had a rough go over the last time, but can we make it right with you? Because we'd like to put you to stud on a popular comedy this season. Yeah.

The bigger thing is, like, when Stephen Tobolowski, like, got his notes for the season, like, how did they describe the character? Yeah. Like, or was that green screen? Or did they just tell him, like, Stephen, like, you're in front of something astonishing, like, something beautiful and majestic. And he's like, oh, like, the wall on Game of Thrones. and they're like, sure. Definitely, Stephen, that's what it is. I couldn't help to think about his Groundhog Day character when I was watching that scene in Silicon Valley last night. If you haven't seen it, this exchange is probably grotesque and probably sexually troubling to you.

But last night's Silicon Valley, Stephen Tobolowski's character while talking with another character on the show, they watched two horses mate. I think it's worth noting that I realize now the error of my ways. People probably maybe thought I was. being metaphorical when in fact it was explicit equine intercourse like on on the TV and so soon to Kentucky Derby Day well right but like you know you just think about the theatrical tradition of horse love you know and you think about great plays like equis and war horse and and these plays have really always sort of been more figurative right like they've sort of built a paper or wooden horse and let the let the mind do what it wants to do this you know that we live in a different era now That's all I'm saying.

No, there wasn't a lot of suspension of disbelief. This is definitely the weirdest thing we've ever talked about for five minutes. Oh, buckle up. Right. Okay. So, all the way back to Allison's point, which I agree with. And I think you and I were both a little bit thrown by this, too, which is that this episode, this second episode of season six, home, is essentially a heroic episode, which is very much not in keeping, as she said, with the show.

I mean, other than the Ramsey stuff, which, you know, in many ways was almost there as a counterweight to everything. else. It was a lot of uplifting scenes and to end on a note like that suggested, we talked about this on the show, but are we being lulled into a sense of comfort before the real hammer drops or has the show turned a corner and having knocked everything down, it's now about to start building things up again? Yeah, I think that the thing about that cliffhanger, because it is sort of more of a cliffhanger than I think we're really allowing it to be because, you know, he took that breath, but we don't really know what's going to happen next with him. There's really, we're in somewhat uncharted territory, obviously on After the Thrones, we talk a lot about the resurrection of Barrett Dundarian in this third season.

But let me, I guess let's look at it this way. Do you think that they could have played, was there a way in which this could have been played differently that would have built up suspense? Right. Do you think that this was treated as if it was like a miracle? Because that's what Davos calls it. But outside of the world of the show, is this a miracle? or is this something that was a little bit, could have been drawn out a little bit more?

Well, I think that's the question a lot of people have today. You know, and I said this on the show, but I think that I was surprised by how much I was okay with him staying dead. Like, not permanently, but for a few more weeks because I really liked the way the spotlight was then shared among the other characters up in Castle Black, and we just had Tormond arrive. And, you know, there was an almost surprising bit of kindness demonstrated,

by the show this week because there were so many characters spread out over the world map referring to John and Sansa's going to see him and everyone knows where he is and talking about him up there. And it would be very much within keeping of the character of the show for them all at that moment to receive a raven, you know, just being like newsflash, your boy's dead. So a lot of characters didn't experience that tragic arc. But here's the thing. You have to think about it.

The show is very much not being made in a vacuum. And I think that given the real world demands placed on this production and the real world scrutiny placed on this show, two episodes, or as you put it, one in seven-eighths is about as far as you could stretch this thing. And I've been finding that reaction fascinating, because I'm fine with the storytelling of it. Because, you know, it seems quite clear that John Snow's story within this television show is one of death and rebirth, that this had to happen for the next thing to happen. But, you know, we are very much in a world where the TV show part of it, and we're part of it, we perpetuate this by having a TV show to talk about it and a podcast.

The TV show is one hour of the week, but the phenomenon stretches, you know, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year. They just simply couldn't keep up a ruse. And I said, and, you know, we said this on the watch a few weeks ago, actually now was a few months ago when the first promotional images came out, that I thought having that first poster be a picture of John Snow was about as classy as you can get in terms of winking but not winking being like we know you're waiting we all know this is coming but we're letting the story play out you know I don't know how else there is to do it in this world because

you can't live in a world where you it's hard to imagine a version of fandom where you want 24 hour access to the imagination and to the characters and the actors and the creators and then be upset when you sort of see the the way that the strings are being pulled behind the scenes you know. I don't think that it was as, you know, I understand if some people were just like, I went through this traumatic loss of a character and I found out that it wasn't, that that wasn't real. But I don't think that there was as much of a bait and switchier, and I guess it sounds like I'm carrying water, but I don't think there was as much of a bait and switchier because they never did anything with the body. I mean, they washed it and they gave them my haircut, but they kept

that body around. They didn't bury him. He didn't leave the show. He never went away. And I think that there was something almost earned in terms of storytelling by keeping him present on the show. If he had gone away and then shown up at the end like Dr. Doug Ross or something, I think that that would have been a little bit more chinty and you would have probably been like, oh, this is, you can kind of see the contracts being ripped up and re-signed here. But this was this is a storytelling. device. And this was about pushing the boundaries of what is possible in this world. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting to see, I mean, we're obviously very involved with

this season and thinking about it a lot. And you and I are talking about it a lot on and off camera and on and off microphone. But I'm very curious. And we'll talk to Jason and Jason Concepcion and Mallory Rubin about this on a podcast soon. But I'm curious if the book readers share the feeling of momentum that I think you and I are feeling and that other people, other fans of the show might be feeling. Like, is this, is there a new sense of momentum

because we're finally turning the corner or we're finally, quote unquote, off book? Or is it just where we are in the story that that sort of feeling is inevitable? You know, like I get from, you know, it's been made clear to me from people and from fans that some characters who have been viciously stabbed to death

by close family members over the last two weeks are still living in the books. And so, but I'm curious. one thing that has been made clear to me is is their fate does their fate feel like where it was headed in the books you know or are these or is this basically the tv show asserting itself and clearing the decks for you know this end game of the of how many seasons of which we don't know specifically but we could imagine you know there's at least one more that it's been renewed for and

potentially one after that um i was kind of curious about how you felt because i i meant i've been when i watched these episodes on sunday nights i think i had no i noticed more more than on my first viewing about how, um, how these first two episodes have had so much work to do in terms of story that we haven't had a scene where a character like leaves the room that they're in. Right. You know what I mean?

Davos being in two rooms at Castle Black where he was first, he's in the room where John is and then he goes and sees Melisandra and then he goes back to, that the amount of action that happened at Castle Black this week was the most sustained animation and action that we've had in an episode so far, which is, I know it's a small sample size. But it, as is just another conversation topic with the show, the storytelling that they have to pull off right now and the way that they have to structure these episodes, because we were talking a little bit before about the idea of doing bottle episodes or having

something like Blackwater or Hard Home that has huge set pieces, which I know are very hard to pull off and expensive and everything like that. But give that, you're talking about momentum that we're feeling and I do feel that momentum and I almost wonder whether we're not even ready for the momentum we're really going to feel once this show gets into like third or fourth gear. No, I think it's true. I mean, one thing that we've talked about a bunch is the unprecedented scope and it's it's interesting. I think that we've mostly had been lulled into a sense of expansion.

You know, I probably chafed against it at some points in my re-I know I did in my recaps over the last few years that, you know, everyone wants DeNaris to like start moving west and she keeps going further east or she gets bogged down as Quagmire. But basically we've come to expect this from Game of Thrones. So there's going to be dramatic changes and shifts and and reversals and reveals. But the breadth of the show essentially stays unchanged, right? But the fact that it actually does feel we're contracting. See, I don't know if I would have felt that way about DeNaris and that idea that there is an end game going on if we if if there wasn't this if we were if you weren't writing a recap about Game of Thrones would you necessarily have this sort of

ticking clock on when is this going to get to its it's sort of fever pitch I think what you're getting at is a really good question which is if you're watching a normal TV show I mean this is very much a not normal TV show characters go on journeys and stuff happens because the whole point of the show is to spread out and stay on for as long as you can until suddenly you know until the bell's rung basically um you know i i don't watch the good wife but people seem to have a lot of opinions about alicia running for office i was just going to bring that up in season five i was just going to bring that up season six right but i think one of the reasons why people have become you know so attached to game of thrones is okay dragons but one of the other reasons why

they've become so emmissioned and we're able to fell in love with it so intensely um is this feeling of one story is being told. Yes, there are a million little stories, but there is a bigger story here and we can trust it. It goes all the way back to the things that people felt about the resentment that some people in my mind ridiculously feel about loss, where they were like, I trusted you and you didn't pay it off my investment, right? But the reason people felt okay about not getting burned when they went all in on Game of Thrones is they were like, well, there's a roadmap and there's a book. And this is one story, even though a lot of this might feel um uh digressive right but but but but but otherwise you know for 50 years of tv drama

watching yeah it's just like of course um alicia has a side quest this season because what's her business going to be in season five otherwise she has to have something even as you know the good wife sort of is winding down now i'm we don't really talk about it that much on this on this show to be clear we never talk about it except for you may except for two seconds at the end when i shout into the microphone. But this has been, and I know that they did this season without a total amount of clarity about whether it would be the final season and that they wrote, they sort of wrote the finale of this season as if this would be the end because the kings who do the show were leaving

and there was a possibility they were going to do a sort of John Wells West Wing thing where someone else running the show. But they didn't. And I wouldn't go so as far as to say it's anticlimactic as much as. because it's totally in hand with the rest of what the good wife is, which is so not what so many cable dramas are, in terms of the way that their plot works, that there's really not a whole lot at stake here.

I mean, there's a degree to which whether or not Alicia stands by Peter through what will maybe be his worst defeat ever is in play, and if she does or doesn't, what that means for the rest of the show. but it's not exactly like Russian nesting dolls. It's really more a group of people who have been on the air for seven years and have come to an ending point of sorts. I'm going to, you mentioned one show I don't watch.

I'm going to one-up you with the show you don't watch, which is the Americans, which is just, sorry, it's just incredible this year. This is absolutely the best season of the show. I've watched this week's coming, this week's episode and next week's, and it's just astonishing. But what I wanted to say about it was, as I've been watching this season unfold, I've been feeling the sort of two poles of TV drama watching, the old traditional one and the modern one in conflict.

Because the traditional mode of TV drama watching was the illusion of change with the reassurance of stability. In the same way, we watch tears because we wanted to hang out with our friends and everyone knew each other's names. like dramas like you know I don't know what I'm reaching here but like LA law or saying elsewhere like things happen friends is a yeah friends is even a good example because it's like the will there won't they but with the actual bedrock of these six will never change and the reason why shows like I mentioned LA law but if you think about ER the star of the show is the hospital so the characters changed but the the rhythms of it and you know the uplift when people were cured that was always the same and so when I mean I actually read a really interesting interview with the Kings and in the times this weekend The Kings who make the good ways. Yes, the Michelle and Robert King. Not the Five Kings of Westeros who went to war. No. I was really reading a great interview with the Drown God in Ironborn Weekly.

That would be an omni, I think, but please go ahead. I will cut off your tongue. No, and so they were talking about why networks always love hospital shows is because you can always end an episode with blood on the floor. Right. And how tough that is for any other show is like if you kill someone, that doesn't happen a lot, you know, in real life. Yeah, so it's difficult to work that in.

Yeah, it's cops and doctors. And you can have the stakes are so much higher. And so when I'm watching the Americans this year, it's playing out for me because the show is pretty aggressively moving things forward, you know, not necessarily towards the finale because there's going to be at least one more season, or at least that's what the showrunners told me when I had them on the podcast. There's definitely going to be a fifth season. There might even be a sixth and final season.

It's unclear. But they are moving things forward, and I'm starting to realize that as much as I'm eager and excited to see how they play out these things, because the show is just excruciatingly tense and always has been, I miss the status quo. You know, I start to have a feeling of regret that I'm not spending time with these characters in these familiar places anymore, which is an interesting way to be interacting with a show in this modern era when the whole point of it often seems to be, let's just get to the end, let's tell one story and move it, move it, move it along, right? I mean, we've spent, we spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about the, the value of mini-series, because that's what, or limited series, or event series, because that's what they can do. This came up so much with Saul. Right. Exactly.

Exactly. And that's, and here I am maybe contradicting myself, because that show certainly dug its heels in to a very specific place this season, and I found it a little frustrating. I think potentially because that place still feels like so many steps behind. And I mean that, in all senses, um, I think there's also a degree of which we perceive it. as that show having, trying to have his cake and eat it too with the Mike B-plot. And that it's just so intoxicating to watch Mike and know where that is going and know who he is about to be associated with. Whereas the saw, the Jimmy Saul stuff while having its good parts anyway is just much more, it just seems much more obtuse. Or not obtuse.

It seems so distant from something. It seems so distant from its end point, which is weird that I would be like on a second season of a show be like demanding to know where you're going. Well, I also just don't know, and I'm sure that this is a conversation that Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould had and they had with Joel Stillerman at AMC and others involved in the show. Like, is someone becoming Saul Goodman that interesting? And I'm not saying it's not. I just don't always know if it is. And I think they're certainly aware of that. And that's why they're doing their best to ground it in real emotional stakes with Ken.

which is a character who I think is a total success. And then with his brother Chuck, a character that I think I could sort of take or leave. Like, I think the way the pieces fit together in the season two finale were just very telegraphed and ultimately not that meaningful. I didn't, they were designed to give you the same like emotional wallop. Like, oh, wow. Look how twisted this has become. Look how he's got him over the barrel. Look what this is pointing towards.

It had the same sort of ticking clock mechanism that worked on Breaking Bad, but the same. stakes were just so, so, so much lower that I found it disappointing. But so we're having a broad conversation about TV, and I think we should probably note that unclear if we're going to be able to do to travel schedules and stuff started up this week or next week, but we are going to start doing some forward-looking Game of Thrones re-ups, right? So we will keep talking about Game of Thrones on the podcast. We'll do some preview stuff going forward. It's just today is not the day for that. Andy, let's take a quick break and come back, and then we can talk a little bit about

Airplane movies. I think we should talk about movies next. Yes. Yeah. Hashtag it's a thing. We'll be right back. Just want to take a second to talk a little bit about one of our sponsors, Draft Kings.

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That's code BSPN to play for free and a shot at the 100,000 top prize. Only at draftkings.com. That's draftkings.com. So as longtime listeners, I'm sure no. Andy does not get to the theater as much as he would like to. I mean, the movie theater as much as he would like to. But in the advent of doing this after the throne show has just been inundated with some recent classics. Yeah.

By the way. Thank you for carrying the water on this bit. I know you're fighting against it. but I really appreciate it. And also, I would like to say for people who are curious, I get to the actual theater just enough. You know, in case people are confused, like not the movie theater,

but like the great white way, I'm good. I'm fine. Okay. Good, but please. No, but Andy, we just use this as a jumping off point to talk a little bit about the movies. Yeah, I don't really feel like we... It actually isn't a ton in the theaters right now.

I mean, I talked a lot about Green Room, and I didn't get a chance to see Keanu yet, but... And we don't need to... Looking forward to louder than bombs. Yeah, I'd like to see that. You don't, people don't necessarily need to know how I felt about the night before or sisters or some of the other great choices I've made on recent cross-country jaunts. You know, I could go on about how ultimately I just keep wanting to watch Hannah and her sisters. And I did again.

And it might be his best film, really a masterpiece. Nice to see the three-eyed, three-eyed raven, you know, on two legs, not in a tree. And feuding domestically with Barbara Hershey. But on a separate point. This trip, well, on the way out, I watched Black Mass, which is the Whitey Bulger biopic that Johnny Depp was in. And it seemed like a real, like, prestige ocean liner, right? Like the cast, if you are a strong-jawed white dude between 35 and 45, and you weren't cast in this movie, then you probably should get a new agent. Because the cast list was...

Yeah, Kevin Bacon, Joel Edgerton, Donald at Cumberbatch. Adam Scott, the boy Jesse Plemons. really and then it was written by Jess Butterworth who wrote Jerusalem which is like this huge play in England

which did a lot to sort of popularize Mark Rylance to the larger world Butterworth's caking up in Hollywood he did Spector too also yeah he wrote Skyfall

he's in Inspector yeah because I watched some of Spector on this recent flight and woof yousa anyway the thing about Black Mass it was interesting

my favorite thing about Andy's airplane movies is that the initial take is so Rex Reed. It's like, hey now, I do not know about that one. Well, I got to say, there is something to watching these movies just completely devoid of context like a year later. And just, you know, there's an element. The reason all of us love going to the movie theater is because it's an experience and there's a spectacle and seeing things, you know, when you're having

some nice popcorn, maybe you're reclining a little bit. If you're in my neighborhood, you're just feeling like the rhythmic nibble of bedbugs on your back. No, but like the big screen, like seeing a movie is a fun experience for the most part, and it can excuse a lot of things, like, you know, maybe some clunkers in the script or whatever. But if you're at, you know, 30,000 feet or whatever, it's maybe not as forgiving. So anyway, so I watch Black Mask. This is what I want to say. And it's really, really bad because it cannot decide what it wants to be in a fascinating way. Like all the pieces are there for this to be good.

And not even even in a world in which Boston, the movie, Unfunny or Die exists, right? Like, there's still a way for this to be something. Like, when the movie begins, it begins with a close-up of Jesse Plemons. And it seems to be like, oh, so this movie is going to be like Goodfellas with Jesse Plumns as the Ray Leota character coming up with the wady bulger gang and then finding out about the betrayal with the feds. And then it immediately forgets about him and we don't see him again until the end. And then we meet Johnny Depp playing Willy Wonka, playing a gangster. And it's a very bizarre choice, of course, because he likes doing bizarre choices. But this was his movie where he was like, despite wearing, you know, ghostly making.

up in weird blue context, he was acting in this one. He wasn't performing, you know, like he wasn't doing a Michael Jackson impression. And he's very charismatic and he's very compelling. But this was the wrong movie. The thing about the movie and the thing that clearly maybe Butterworth or the other credited screenwriters or someone at some point in this was like looked at the Whitey Bulger thing and was like, well, we already made the departed exists. What is the story here? And the story here is not just that Whitey Bulger, Boston Crime Lord, was an FBI informant. The story is that the guy who was tasked with investigating him and the FBI grew up in Southie worshipped the Bulger brothers

and basically made him an informant to protect him and take down the Italian mob. So it's this really interesting story about misplaced affection and loyalty and neighborhoods, and that's the Joel Edgerton part. And my feeling is, and I hope someone who knows can call in and tell me this, someone wrote a script about the Joel Edgerton character in relation to the Bulger Brothers, but to get the movie made, they offered it to Johnny Depp, and he was like, great, the movie's about me now. And so they made this weird, lumpy biopic that's also supposed to be a psychological drama.

They made 100 movies and none of them are good. And that's my review. But what I wanted to ask you, because you go to all the theaters all the time. You love experimental black box theater. You love movie theaters. Don't love bedbugs, which is why you moved away from Brooklyn. We talked, and I apologize for the monologue, but we've talked many times about how TV thinking has invaded the multiplex, especially in relation to blockbusters and shared universe. and how the Marvel movies are essentially each year

that's just a new season of the Marvel movie TV show. And, you know, movie, there's a great piece in New York Magazine about how the Russo Brothers TV directors are the perfect people to be directing these movies because they can manage budgets and keep things moving on time. All of that. Watching this movie made me wonder. Our boy Jim Mickle, who does Happen Leonard

and has directed a couple of really good, small independent films, said, and I'm paraphrasing, Hollywood deserves to be kicked in the dick for this one. for black mass no for the like the Russo brothers are like the platonic ideal of Hollywood directors

like if this is what you want that's pretty interesting and I think that but I feel like that sort of stuff is getting all the ink and the spotlight like that's how movies are becoming TV but I watch Black Mass and and I'm gonna take my answer off there I'm gonna step back I promise

but I feel like you're a better equipped to say this like movies this is like watching Joe Johnson dribble for five minutes listening to do I'm walking away. I promise. I'm leaving the arena. That's what Joe Johnson says every day. And that's why he's a proven winner.

Movies have to be about a specific moment. You pick your story beginning, middle end, and you get out of there, and you do the best you can. It's the opposite of TV, which can spread out the story. Black Mask felt like they were worried about if they were telling the right story. A star was involved, so they decided we'll just tell all the stories. And they tried to cram five seasons of a TV show about the Boston mob into a two-hour movie, which is absolutely the wrong thing you do. And I wonder if you're seeing that sort of,

it has to be everything all the time thinking in movies separate and apart from summer blockbusters. I'm done. I'm done. I'm dropping this mic. I'm going to take a lap around the block on this one and get warmed up. Yeah.

And I do so by starting a little bit earlier in your point, which is just I want to pipe in and say, Johnny Depp doesn't make good movies. So Johnny Depp has made Ed Wood That was pretty good So good I like public enemies But he is not a very good part of it

And some people really like Lone Ranger And I defy you Who name someone? Who likes Lone Ranger? Sean Fennessee and Quentin Tarantino Both like Lone Ranger Listen to me Chris When you when you invoke the name of the troll

You have to say the name of the troll It's like Beetlejuice You know what I mean You can't just be like There's a dude under the bridge Who likes Lone Ranger have to say Sean's name. This guy by the 101.

Other than that, he has not made a good film. And in fact, seems to excel at making utter piles of shit, a.k.a. Transcendence, Mordecai, you know, dark shadows, basically anything with Tim Burton other than Ed would. I liked the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but come on, Charlie and Chaka Factory, get out of here. From hell, I thought it was okay, so it was blow, but that was like a weird run. What about?

Sleepy Hollow. astronaut's wife, Ninth Gate was kind of whatever. Donnie Brascoe, I know people like. Yeah, Brasco's good. What about what's eating Gilbert Grape? Like early stuff. Nope. No, you don't, you don't mess with Benny in June?

Hard pass. You don't feel Benny in June? I liked Fear and Loathing. I liked to miss that in that. Did you really, though, dog? Did you really like it? Or did you just like the fact that it got made? Have I thought about it since I did this scroll

through the Wikipedia page as you're talking? Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's a pretty good. point. All right. Yeah, okay. So I'll accept it. He also might, I mean, we, we, people mock Adam Sandler. I would be interested to know whether or not, uh, Johnny Depp has the highest, like, box office receipts to the lowest rotten tomatoes. Well, there's a, I mean, we could do, and maybe we will at this point. Like, there's definitely a Johnny Depp podcast to be done because to go from someone who had all the talent and, you know, had this like, maddenay looks to. to someone who basically clearly like just wanted to hide and play dress up

and be a weirdo? I mean, I would straight up kill Tate right now if I could look like Johnny Depp. His looks are not what's in question. I would get it. I would shave that fucking D'Artagnan, but I would be happy to look like him. He's got a great wig,

great hair, set of hair. Set of hair? Great head of hair. That's like the basketball ring. You like to dunk on it? He liked to just run a comb through. That was my Ted Cruz moment. Run a comb through your set of hair.

Good. Did you know that Johnny Depp is in London Fields? I was about to tell you that and see how you felt about it. How do you feel about it? London Fields is your shit. London Fields by Martin Amos was a very important book for 21-year-old Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan. They probably, you know, I feel about it like one feels about a lot of one's favorite books, which is they probably can't make a movie of it.

So it's cute that they're trying, and I don't have very high hopes for it. Okay, I know you have a hard out. So let me get back to your original question, which is about, focusing movies and making them about this 90 to 130 minute sort of series of events and just really like telling a single story as well as possible. And I think obviously there are things like Lawrence of Arabia and all these, the ways that films can just jump back and forth across time is, you know, a sort of singular experience you can have in a movie theater.

But I do think that the more that I read about, especially modern filmmaking, and the Rousseau's is a really good example in Marvel and everything like that. I've been thinking about this a lot because the Captain America's Civil War press has been so good. And I am pretty resigned to the idea that I am going to go into Captain America's Civil War, much like I went into Winter Soldier, which is expecting some sort of comic book version of all the president's men and coming out with a pretty good Marvel movie, you know? Because I think that more and more, but the more corporations and venture capitalists and money

that's involved with movies, it's just kind of a miracle when a movie is good. And even when a movie gets made with the best of intentions, like, say, Midnight Special, which has got a lot going for it. And I really, really like Jeff Nichols. And I think he makes really cool movies. The ending that movie is nonsensical. And you could say, oh, you don't get it or the endings of movies don't matter or something like that.

But I think that end of that movie is not good. And Jeff Nichols has everything going for him as a filmmaker. and that movie had everything going for it as a story. And so I think that when you talk about something like Black Mask, which I know that there were competing Whitey Bulger films in production or at least in development, you have to wonder about every single thing that went wrong along the way.

And it was interesting to tie this into what we're talking about earlier. Listening to the Kings, Robert, Michelle King, and Julianna Margulies talk about how there's basically no amount of money you could pay us, well, this is Marguerleys who said it, to do a 22 episode season of television, if you're a person who has a pretty good idea for a story, aside from the thrill of seeing it on a big screen and just participating in the cultural legacy

of having your movie distributed, it's increasingly hard for me to understand why you would want to put your story through that process. Yeah. Because the chances are much higher that it will wind up getting compromised or whatever along the way, then if somebody lets you make

you look at what like this this Richard Price miniseries that's coming out on HBO it's like that couldn't be made into a movie you know they wouldn't let was the night before no it's the stuff of the night of the Steven's Alien thing night of which I've heard is yeah

people are telling you it's amazing I'm excited to see it yeah because it's Steve Zalian and Richard Price finally get to do something where nobody's messing with it yeah I mean you've really hit on something which is that in what this is something that I think any any piece of whatever that it seeks to cover the entertainment industry, there should always just be a little caveat, a little footnote, just to always say really loudly, it is an impossible crazy miracle that anything good ever gets made. Honestly, in any field, but I think you're especially right in movies.

You know, where it's just there's there's just a thousand demands and a thousand cooks and you're just really trying to steer away from disaster. Yeah. So Black Mask was directed by Scott Cooper. who got great reviews for a movie he made with Jeff Bridges called Crazy Heart. And I don't know him. I don't mean to cast any aspersions on his character or anything, but you see people who make very well-regarded indie movies get tapped to do simpatico movies that they might bring some perspective to,

but they are hired specifically because they are pliable, right? Because they can't win in the end against the other forces of play, whether it's Johnny Depp's agents or the studio. And so their vision gets just, you know, they're basically there to be Russo Brothers. others, even though they have something more to stay. They're there to be stewards of the brand. Yeah.

Now, I know we got to move on another topic, but the flip side of that, and if I could just bring it back to the airplane movies one more time, is that on another flight recently, I fired up two Oscar contenders from the past year and... Carol! I keep threatening, Chris. Every time I sit down in my seat, I just tell him I'm going to do the Carol Brooklyn double feature and just blow his mind and shatter all the future. I saw both those movies and enjoyed both of them.

What? I'm actually a Brooklyn apologist, and I, you know, you can always talk Rooney Mera with me. You're a Carol Stan? All right, I'll watch it. But listen. I'm not like, I thought the movie had issues, but I was very into Rune Mera's performance. The issue being that Kate Mera should have been in it. I fired up two other Oscar contenders.

Fucking podcast is over. And I made it like full stop. Chris, I made it 10 minutes into both of these movies. Audibly said, get the fuck out of here and turned it off. Well, see, this is why you need to go to the theater because sometimes you need to challenge yourself and not just drink chardonnay and watch house hunters i think i had a gin and tonic that day but look it was uh it was that was the revenant and joy and i both of them i just thought were so ridiculous immediately and just phony nonsense but the reason the phony nonsense thing about them

was the strength of the directorial vision right so i i probably was premature because you know is is in yardu is just like letting the bullets whizz through the peltz you know up in and Tom Hardy, I don't know what. You had the surround sound on that flight? I literally don't know what he was doing in this one. Yeah. Like, I don't want to see this. This is, I don't want this, but he is, he's flexing because he's one of the few people allowed to flex.

And so is David O. Russell being like, you know, oh, it's a magical camera spinning fable about little girls and mops. And I'm like, just come on. Relax, relax. Let Scott Cooper make his crime movie. Hollywood. That's my, that's, that's my airplane comment. That's, that's, that's my airplane coming in for. This is up.

We should keep talking. about this. I like, I like, your major idea about TV, the effect of TV on movies, how these things talk to each other. I also think it's just really fascinating to watch Carrie Fukunaga's career coming out of TV or at least getting that TV boost. And he hasn't been able to really, like, you know, obviously the Beast of No Nation was a very powerful film, but off of it, you know, like, I feel like he's had a lot of stuff that's

almost been popping off and hasn't really rocked anything yet. And let's mention that Beasts of No Nation. was made due to the largesse of TV because Netflix was basically like we want to start making movies and the way we're going to get noticed is we're going to throw a lot of money at a attention getting prestige project

that real talk no one else is going to make and that's why I got made. Thanks TV. Thanks TV. You're the best. You want to talk about Drake? Do you want to climb the old CN tower or whatever that tower is called and dangle your tims off the side of it? That image now has so much more resonance

after listening to that record so we're talking about views and just your boy on just sitting on the top of a tower all alone high as can be so alone higher than his expectations um and now you look at that picture and it's like oh look at a lonely motherfucker on the top of a building

this um this didn't go the way he thought it was going to go I don't think this album is not being well received I don't think that this record was first of all built for event listening. No. It didn't come with a movie.

It didn't come with a Madison Square Garden collective celebration that Pablo did. It doesn't have the force of will that Butterfly did. Not that you could only be one of those records. In fact, that's what this record really is. It's a throwback to like these 20 song expansive skits. I don't know, man, but it's to be like putting so much, this. record is, you know, people have been following Drake's career. Views has had a lot of weight on it, man. Like, he's been talking about views for a few years now. He put out, what a time to be alive,

and if you're reading this, it's too late, as sort of stopgaps. And now you're just like, did you, first of all, no shots, but shots, there's definitely been a brain drain in Drake's ghost writing camp. Yeah. Yeah. So this one has some effing clunkers on it. And it also feels very like improvisatory or like he's just making it up as he's going along for as sculpted and beautiful as the beats feel to have so many things were so like somebody could just tap him on the shoulder and been like hey man that line sucked like like no one no one calls you chaining no one did that yeah one called you changing tatum my gee no one no one does that um no one calls you that to to to to offer a a slight counterpoint you are correct that this album was not made for

the event era, though it had all that expectations. We're in that, right? We're in the event era. Got radio head out here, erasing the internet, part of the event era. And we're going to do a radiohead pod soon,

and I'm excited for it. But it was not made for the event era. However, I would argue that it was made precisely for draining the fourth glass of shard while flying over Omaha, because I had a moment with this album flying home the other day. It is, there is something.

remarkable about the the weirdly shiny like thousand thread count sonic precision and beauty of the music here that 40 his dude has made and there are times listening to this record which is way too long absolutely but where you suddenly you can you can sort of chemically bring yourself to the point that maybe they were trying to communicate and it's so specific it's like oh I I I I I I I I We're in sync now, and I get it. And there are the moments when, particularly when he engages with dance hall and Caribbean music, which he did work really well for him on Hotline, Bling, and moments on like the Rihanna song, Too Good. And definitely the single One Dance, which is low-key, amazing and Controla. And it's like he's communicating something here that is pretty unique and pretty special, just musically, purely musically, in terms of rhythm and melody, and it's really intoxicating.

But, yeah, 40 is. 40 is. But Drake is able to To articulate it. Drake can have all the authorship he wants over the musical contours of this record. But this record definitely definitely suffers from Father Stretch My Hands disease. Meaning you only want to listen

to Father Stretch My Hands? No. Meaning it's got like incredible like these moments of musical beauty that are followed up with now I fuck this model type lyrics. But not even imbued with the sense of humor

or self like self-parity that sometimes I think Kanye has. Drake, I would love to think that there is some self-parody in here, but... There is not. He's getting weirdly humorless as he disappears up his own ass completely up in the top of a tower all by himself. And I think Ryan Domble mentioned this in his pitchfork review where he was talking about, like, Drake's no new, his no new friend's attitude is sort of like isolated him.

And I think that that's true because, you know, people have talked about how this is just such like a... It's got this. It's obviously about his relationships to women and his inability to sustain things but I actually think there's a lot of stuff in here about his inability to have like meaningful male friendships well he you know there's a lot of stuff in here where he's just like I did this all by myself and like this push pull between wanting to rep Toronto and you know keep it with his friends and just be like but then there's a lot of like but then you fucking ask me for money or like

you don't you didn't do this I did this or like now you you need to take a pill to feel something he also exed out he also exed out j and conier from the record in a weird way because they were on pop Well, I would too. Those guys sounded like they had flip-flops on while they were recorded that beat, that verse. Jay didn't take his coat off. Shouts to that Simpson's gift, the funniest thing on the internet all year. Look, there's, after I listened to this, you know, three or four times, I put on Take Care. And that album, which I loved at the time, is even better than I remembered. It's just amazing. And that's not the Charter Day talking. But the thing I wanted to say about Take Care is it is such a quintessentially 21. one-year-old person's album in the most exciting way because it is the sound of someone

like feeling their limits when they still feel limitless and discover and there's a joy of discovery and acceptance in it that is really really special and it's kind of universal right because like one of the best songs on there is underground kings and maybe that's my favorite Drake song period it's intentionally named after UGK and there's a whole part on that track where he talks about he and his friends discovering Little Wayne mixtapes and just going crazy to them. And it's not about going on tour of Little Wayne or being co-signed by Little Wayne or being more successful than Little Wayne like his records probably, you know, subtext are now. It's about being like, oh my God, this, I'm from, I'm here in Toronto. I'm on top of this, not even on top of this

building yet. I'm in Toronto, which is not known, you know, no shots to chaos or cardinal official is not known as the hotbed of this stuff. And I am, I can be made to feel alive through music from the South, which I can't even imagine. It's like a foreign planet. And you and I talked, we talked about this on the 96th pod. Like, that's how we engage with hip hop too in a lot of ways. And that's how we engage with a lot of music at that age when you are most excited to engage with music. And that was, there was an openness to that feeling that allowed his kind of, you know, hermetic emotional state to at least recede from, recede from view a little bit. That was there, but it was also about being excited by things. And I guess, whether,

whether it's fame or his own issues with women, which are no jokes serious as evidence on this record, there's no more, there's still discovery, but as you correctly said, it's all in the music that's being brought to him to drape his chaining Tatum over. We can wrap this up, but I want to say that I'm very interested

to see what Drake does next, because he has sort of mastered the modern content pipeline, whether it's showing up at the right shit and being funny while he doing it, like the stuff this weekend with him at the Raptors game was actually semi-tragic to me where he was, there was one play where, like, I think Kyle Lowry scored in game seven against the Pacers. And Drake, like, got up and started clapping and getting hype, which obviously, he's a big Raptors fan. But it was like, he had definitely, like, made it so that he couldn't sit back down.

And as he was freaking out and happy for Kyle Lowry, Paul George came down and drilled a three. And Drake was just kind of, like, standing there while everybody was like, damn Paul George is a killer. and it was sort of very like emblematic of this week where it was like you should be really happy but then you get caught out there kind of and he's put out this very confessional record and I think people are sort of, you know, to some extent rejecting it.

Drake is very good at course correction and he's very good at giving people variety of stuff to chew over, to chew on and I would be very curious to see how long it takes before he puts out something. I mean, I know he talked a little bit about this mythical Kanye mixtape. but something, I wonder what Drake's,

if Drake comes back with some Y-F-R stuff pretty soon. It's pretty telling that Hotline Bling is on this record as Track 20 bonus track because they looked at, someone looked at this and because he's a very smart dude, someone was like, you need a hit song on this record. Like you need, even if it's, you know,

your biggest hit ever from a few months ago because clearly the intention was for that not to be here. And the other thing about it that I'm interested in is as we've tracked that, you know, the event, the event era for albums, but also the basically the kind of, when we were talking about Sign of the Times and Prince the other week, we were talking about like how everyone in a very raucous era was waiting for the album, like, oh, what's Prince's next album?

With this next artist, the next artist's up is going to have to wow us with something. Like after the bends, we were like, Radiohead better deliver with OK computer because that's their next statement. And we are now way out of that era in a place where, you know, artists like Drake can just own a year without ever releasing an official album. and he can make one album that is specifically these kinds of rap songs, like if you're reading this or collaboration with future, both of which in many ways are going to end up being more popular than views,

whereas an album of the best tracks of all three, in a different era might have been one of the greatest albums of all time. And we've also talked about it in relation to Kendrick Lamar, right, who will jump on a Taylor Swift single or an ASEP Rocky song, but be resolutely anti-commercial with his own music and the album is the place where he retreats to do what he wants to do. it's weird to see Drake basically still subscribe to this very raucous sensibility that like he'll jump on other people's tracks and you know and dance with

Rihanna in the video but when it comes time to craft his masterpiece he has to go in his lab which is located on the you know 50th floor of this tower or whatever and he has to create something that is challenging and personal but you can just disappear up there I mean it's almost like the Prague rock understanding of an album at this point right like this is an artist who is nimble and fun being like oh no no no you know smiles like off now because this is my album. And that is kind of not, that's not really a way I like to enjoy music, even though I am enjoying this record.

Okay, well, that sounds like a goodest place to any to stop. We will be back next week. You can subscribe to the watch through the Channel 33 podcast feed. And Andy, it's always a pleasure. Yeah, and we'll be back with a podcast next week, of course. Maybe a re-up this week. Definitely a re-up next week. And after the Thrones, episode three will be live on all HBO platforms beginning midnight

Pacific Sunday night, Monday morning. And that's always fun. And I like to say on behalf of myself, Chris Ryan, the Kings and the Queen Juliana Margulies. Great job, Beretsky! Peace! This episode of The Watch was brought to you by draftkings.com where amazing prizes are up for grabs whenever you play one week fantasy golf.

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