The Watch - Ep. 41: 'GoT,' 'Preacher,' and Marvel + 'The Nice Guys' With Robert Mays

Episode Date: May 24, 2016

The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss 'Game of Thrones’ and 'Preacher' (26:00). Then Chris talks about 'The Nice Guys' with Robert Mays (45:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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with the code BSPN on Rhone.com slash BSPN. Once again, that's R-H-O-N-E dot com and the code is BSPN. Rohn, it's made for men, it's fit for kings. guys, thanks for listening to The Watch, and I wanted to tell you a little bit more about some of the other Ringer podcasts because they're all great. Check out Keeping at 1600. It's the only thing that's going to keep you sane during this political season during this campaign summer. So keeping 1600 with John Favro and Dan Pfeiffer. That's one of my favorites. We've also got the NFL podcast. Mays and Kevin Clark did an incredible episode last week about the best quarterbacks where Kevin Clark proved himself to be criminally insane. So that's nice. We also have the Ringer NBA feed. Me and Juliet are on there, along with you. with Jonathan Sharks and Danny Chow. Bill Simmons makes cameos from time to time. You got to listen to us if you want to keep up on all the NBA playoff stuff. You got to go down to the back to the homies at Channel 33.

Jam session, Bachelor Party, so many great pods. Just load up your feed. You can get it on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play music, wherever you get podcasts. Get those ringer pots. Hey, everybody, just a little table of contents for this episode of the watch. Andy and I talked about Game of Thrones last night's episode. We also talked about the new show Preacher. on AMC and a little bit about Captain America's Civil War.

And at the end of the podcast, stay tuned because Robert Mays from the NFL podcast and The Ringer jumps on. And he and I talk a little bit about nice guys, the nice guys starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crow. It was an awesome movie. So check it out. Here comes the episode. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch.

My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at The Ringer.com. And joining me on the other line. He lost all his money in the dire wolf pool betting on summer. It's Andy Greenwald! Ooh, too soon for the dog lovers out there. Too soon. Dyer wolves aren't real dogs.

I know, but people take them very seriously. I mean, we don't need to say we're talking about Game of Thrones a little bit here. We're talking about Mallory. What's up, Andy? We're talking about Mallory. Is Mallory okay? Like, I was with her after she'd seen the episode, but now that America has seen the episode, I worry that it's just sort of been like post-traumatic traumatic, traumatic stress.

Mallory is one of the few people in the world, I think, who was more traumatized by the death of the CGI wolf than she was by of Hodor. Andy, obviously we're talking about Sunday night's incredible Game of Thrones episode. After the Thrones, if people want to check it out, is up on HBO Go and now, and you can see us discussing that episode at length. But, you know, I wanted to get a little bit of a second day reaction from you after kind of watching it again. again and getting everybody else's, everybody else hitting us up with the hold of the door. Has anybody screamed hold the door are you yet today? In person? No, but I've been keeping a pretty low profile. Yeah.

I have on my, I have on my working contacts so no one can actually see my eyes. People actually think that's just your method man, all I need to get by contacts, though. Oh, God, if I was just on the subway just bobbing my head like that, that's sideways 90s head bob. That's how we do it still in New York, Chris. That reminds me. I do want to talk to you about the, the bad, boy concerts that were in New York City this weekend. But let's talk about Thrones.

And we're also going to talk about Preacher, a little bit about Civil War, which Andy caught up on it. I know if you guys want to hear a very long podcast about Civil War. You can hear me and Sean Fennessee and Jason Concepcion and talk about that in the Watch archives. By the way, if you're listening to The Watch, you probably already know this. But we have our own podcast. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play Music, Stitcher.

Anywhere you get podcasts, you can get the watch. Just search for the watch. Chris, um, there actually is one other person in the world who cares more about the CGI dire wolves than, you know, supporting characters. And that person happens to be Carrie who directs after the throne. Shout to Carrie. I don't know if you remember what happened on set when I was making a couple, just a couple light CGI Michael Vic jokes, you know. She didn't like that.

She didn't like that. So I appreciate her professionalism in not, you know, zooming in on where my hair was sticking up or something. But people care about these wolves. And I feel like we're going to talk about the big stuff at the episode, but I do think that we are sensing a trend here because you and I are basically like, what's the big deal? These dogs are O for Four in crucial situations. And also, you and I, we sometimes look at the show in pragmatic ways where we're like, you know, it's a CGI thing. So anytime they're on screen, it costs money. So I understand perhaps some of the reasoning as to why they don't play such a big role.

But people who read the books and people who subscribe to Pita, they don't like what's happening to these wolves. People who have subscriptions to Dyer Wolf Fancy. Yes, they definitely are catching feelings about this. But, you know, that would be, so obviously RIP Summer, like long odds to go up against all those White Walkers. But the sort of takeaway from last night, obviously, is the very lostian moment of both the past and present existing on an almost similar plane. Hodor being condemned to his fate by Brand in a flashback. And, you know, I think I came out of that episode when I first saw it, very confident that I understood the mechanics of what was happening.

And I do have to admit that most of my friends, all two of them, who hit me up afterwards, were like, what the fuck was that? Yo, can I be real with you? Having a Twitter handle turns everyone into H.G. Wells. Because there are dudes on my timeline right now being like, you fool, you don't understand how causality works. I'm like, yo, real talk, you don't either. Okay?

Like, I haven't seen Yel deGrasse Tyson weigh in on this particular scientific debacle. But look, my takeaway was this. In the oral history of the Andy Greenwald story, it would just be like, and that was when Andy started arguing with dudes on Twitter about the mechanics of time travel, and we never saw him again. Look, the story always ends that way. If it begins, that's when Andy Greenwald started arguing with dudes on Twitter. No, Joe Balls.

64, I will explain time travel to you, sir. Look, if we're going to base our whole theory on the Marty McFly paradigm, then clearly, Chris, my takeaway was this, and I feel like maybe we were in exact with our wording because we had just had our minds fucking blown by this episode. But when we were talking about, we were just like, what's going on here? Can Brand change the past? I think that actually, that's probably not the right way to phrase it, because I think our takeaway from this episode is that time is essentially a, what kind of circle would it be?

Would it be a ridge? Flat? Sort of a flat circle. Like a kind of a pringle. Yeah. Yeah. That's ridged, man. There's that curve in the middle.

But I take your point. But basically that time has happened. And so when we see him, quote, unquote, affecting the past, he's making things happen that had always happened. And that's why Hodor was the way he was. There wasn't some alternate universe here. So we're basically seeing that events that are. in quote unquote, our fictional present affected the fictional past, right?

We're not saying that he could now jump back and just have Ned's head reattached to his body. It's basically that he has responsibility for things he never could have realized he was responsible for. Yes, and that there is this world of prophecy and destiny that we are, this story is taking place in this mythological world of prophecy and destiny and these things, to some extent, the past is written, the ink is dry, but who wrote the past, who held the pen that had the ink. These are the questions that this show is going to grapple with. at least insofar as Brand's story.

I think that there's a lot of the same incest and political gamesmanship that we've come to know and love from the show from a lot of the other settings. But Brand's storyline introduces this thing. And you brought up Lost when we were talking on After the Thrones. And I thought that was a really apt comparison because Lost is another show that several seasons in introduced these new ideas, the others specifically.

That really changed the axis that the show had been sitting on, right? Yes. I think the thing that Lost did so well that is a blueprint for this kind of widescreen storytelling, wide screen serialized storytelling, so specifically this sort of storytelling on television is that what's really, really fun and really, really possible on television is that you can change the aperture. You know, you can start with what appears to be a story of survivors in the present. Then you realize that they're being driven by events in their past so we can expand the palette with their past. And then, oh, they're just fighting over this tiny little scrap of beach when there's a bigger war that's just happening in the woods and then a bigger war that's happening

between, you know, these two immortal gods whose mom was Alice and Janney. So it just pulls back, back, back, back. Now, Game of Thrones is a very, very different beast in a lot of ways, but that is essentially what we've been watching in an even more grandiose fashion, because every time we watch Brand literally wrestling with the fate of the entire, of this entire fictional universe, we are also seeing characters down in King's Landing scrabbling over what is essentially a giant hunk of rusted metal. Yeah.

So that's, that makes the story particularly, um, compelling, I think because it can do, it can do big as well as it does small. And I think that all great TV shows do this and this is doing it on a scale that we

haven't quite ever understood. There's another element to this, though. And this, I'm obviously basing this on my anecdotal evidence of, of a few text messages. But they are, uh,

go on. Raising the degree of difficulty for this show exponentially by introducing all this stuff because you can fuck this up, right? Like time travel and this kind of stuff that they're introducing of basically a Luke Skywalker-esque, you know, magical force that that, that brand seems to be able to sort of control. He's got his learner's permit, not quite license. There's a lot of stuff that could go wrong here, storytelling-wise. I have, like, a lot of confidence that these guys can figure it out.

Or even if that stuff starts to feel too much that there's so much else happening in the show. that they can balance it out. But it is kind of fascinating to think about the new elements that they're playing with in their chemistry set. I think it's a great point, but I think my counter would have two points to counter that with just in terms of why I remain pretty confident about it.

I am confident, too. Yeah, but it's fun to play devil's not confident. I mean, I think that's worth doing, because time travel screws things up, and I don't just mean that if you're actually Marty McFly. The reason why I think it's going to be okay here is one, because I think that the time travel, such as it is, and it's not literally time travel, but certainly bringing these elements into the show, I really think it's clever because this show has always been a time traveling show. For those of us who don't read the books who are only moving in this linear space forward, there are these other people like our friends Jason and Mallory and millions of others who are basically time travelers themselves

and are hopping along in their library tardis being like, oh, no, no, everything that you're seeing is related to something that happened 10,000 years ago that's not even going to be mentioned on TV. So all of this weight of the past has always existed concurrently with the present. So bringing it into the show this way is kind of a almost meta recognition of the fact that it is all one story, even though it can't be. contained by one timeline. The other thing that makes me confident about it going forward is that this was the ultimate lost move because what it did was take something very, very ambitious and intellectually challenging with a high degree of difficulty, and then yoke it to something absolutely heartbreaking and emotional and relatable and pure. That is what the best moments of lost did. I wrote this back on Granland, but you were interested in the polar bears, but you

loved the Star Cross Koreans. Like, it was able to go high and low and hit you in the brain and the gut at the same time. So to make the most thematically ambitious episode based on the loss of the most kind-hearted, sweetest character, that was just a, I mean, that was an amazing movie. Well, that's another testament to how good that episode was, was that I was not overly enamored. I was not overly, it wasn't keeping me up at night wondering why Hodor kept saying

Hodor. That wasn't like one of the central, it wasn't one of the central mysteries of the show to me. I just thought it was like, that's what happens, you know? Any other takeaways from last night? I thought it was still like, it's that, that, all the action that happens in there, and we've gotten a lot of good feedback about, you know, the various blades that were in there, in that tree fort that they have, obsidian dragonstone. Yeah, we didn't, we actually, we should mention that.

We didn't, we talked about it with Jason and Mallory, but then it didn't make it onto the actual show that Mira manages to kill one of the white walkers with the obsidian blade, the dragonglass blade that Sam gave her during that moment when they crossed paths at one of the Knights Watch forts a few years ago when Brand was hiding. And it seems like dragon glass is like a single use thing, right? Yeah, I think it's hard to pick up the pieces after that. But that's why there's also Valerian Steel, which works on them pretty well. And, you know, John still has his sword after he killed one of them with it. So that might be a better way to go, that might be a better way to go moving forward, even though there are only like seven of those swords.

words. Here's, and I, here's, here's my suggestion. Just use dragons. Oh, please. Just use dragons. Can you, wait, can you use your Hollywood fixer voice when you make the suggestion? Here's what I'm thinking. Kid, you got the ice all taken care of. Let's get some dragons. I think that's a, I think that's a really good move. You know, I think that that is not too outside the box. That's not really my fixer voice. That's more of like a, no, I wasn't going to, I didn't want to call you on it because you seemed to really committed and I love accent work from you. You know, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, you're, you're, you're, you're, your, your, your, you're, you're, here, here's, here's, here's, here's, here's, here's, here's, here, here's, what if, what if, what if, what if they were unusual suspects. And then, you just walk out, like that, that, that's, uh, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, love your work, great work. What if they were eight.

That's what I'm saying. What if we don't know what's in the box? Because you're really cutting, you're cutting off the sequels here by telling me what's in the box. The hunt for Goop's Head. Sorry, spoiler alert on 20-year-old movie. Yeah, more bad. And, you know, heart-healthy newsletter.

Chris, you made a point on After the Thrones and when we were discussing it that I also think is really worth repeating, which is that, We are not unfamiliar with death on Game of Thrones or shocking death or death of a beloved character or coming out of an episode feeling just run over, just bulldozed. But as you said on the show, like the majority of those deaths were shocking and they were savage and they were brutal and they were just evil. You know, they left you feeling just shock and numbness. This was heartbreaking in a way because it gave, in a different way, because it gave Hodor this nobility. You know, it was this heroic sacrifice that was also tinged with deep sadness.

And that was a different kind of play for the show. And it's funny because, well, people are obviously having very emotional reactions to this episode. I think that if once we get past today's shock and tomorrow and we start to get into the next episode, I wonder if that sadness will start to turn into something else, which is kind of like excitement. Because this was mass market storytelling. You know, that sort of tragic noble death. isn't the kind of thing that leads you to say

or leads people like myself to say in recabs. Oh, the show is just nihilist. Like there's nothing to. It's just, you know, it's just killing things. Right. And I think that there was a period around Red Wedding and culminating with John's death where I wonder whether or not there was almost that nihilism was pervasive where you were almost like, ah, you know what?

I mean, just seems like, I can't possibly imagine this show ending with Jamie just being like, I win. But it does. Like he's a mortal combat character? Yeah, like finish him! But I just, it just felt like every good person on this show was getting executed. And it's not like it's completely turned around or anything like that. But at least the good person who died this week got a very emotional and fitting sendoff.

It wasn't just like this immediate, like, White Walker jumped out and nowhere and bit his face off and then we had to run away. No. It was a very popularly. It was a drawn-out version of that. Yeah. And I assume after the camera stopped rolling, while they kept feasting on his now, you know, decimated corpse, someone probably did gobble up his face. So, to be fair, that was not a reach. Just going to leave that to the imagination.

And just finally, that just everything we're saying circles back to the point that I've been trying to keep on the front burner for this whole season, which is just trying to appreciate the size of the story that we're being told, that, you know, snap judgments or what we could have called snap judgments were not because they were formed over three, four, or five seasons. this is the sort of show that can actually have a back end that can start to justify some of the things we were questioning. I'm not saying it will. I'm hopeful that it does. But moments like other moments in last night's episode, like when Sansa confronts Littlefinger, just was interesting because it reminded us that the creators are paying attention. And there was some emotional weight and something earned to the horrible things that were done to her last year. Now, I'm not necessarily defending the scene itself from last year because I wrote about that at length.

but I thought it was very interesting and worthwhile that there was some, I don't want to call it closure, but it was addressed. It seems like it's going to be essential to the development of her character, not necessarily something that we wanted to, you know, nobody wanted that to happen. That was just an awful thing to have happened to a young character. But it does seem like it is an inflection point in her development, and she is becoming more and more, not cold, but assertive in the world. Because I think she sees the way. The bigger point is the story isn't finished. So that's worth keeping in mind for some of the other things that we still feel might be dangling or might be not satisfying. Yeah, absolutely.

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So Andy, you know, it's coming out of talking about Game of Thrones. It really does tie into the feeling. I had after watching last night's pilot episode of Preacher, which debuted at AMC on Sunday. And that was that. And we obviously were in a somewhat specific position, but I think that a lot of people, you know, it's not that specific. I think we're good test cases. So watching Game of Thrones, there's a lot of comic book superhero movies out there right now. There are a lot of universes that are being explored.

and it was just a little tough to start at the beginning and have another 10 characters thrown at me. This was one of the most sort of enjoyable, confident, swagger-filled pilots I've seen in a very long time. Yes. It has a great sense of humor and a good... It just, like, they nailed the tone immediately. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are running the show

with Sam Catlin who worked on Breaking Bad. and Dominic Cooper starring as the titular preacher, Ruth Nega is amazing as a tulip for people who are fans of Garth Ennis and Steve Dylan, am I right, Steve Dylan? Listen, you're just getting every name right. I'm loving this. Nailing it.

That's the comic book, the graphic novel this is based on, but, and I hope that this doesn't sound like we're being, we're unappreciative because I'm very appreciative of what they pulled off. it's just like there's just a lot of friggin people out there to keep track of right now that's interesting i mean and i also wonder in other times when we've expressed comments like that or reservations about shows i definitely would have thought that it might be have been a problem just because of we

you know because of the nature of our jobs we watch a lot of tv i i wonder if this was specifically a sunday night problem because we are entering an era where as much as amc really, really, really wants you to watch Preacher on Sunday nights, they're pretty okay if you don't, if you watch it on another night if you're choosing, as long as you watch it. So what makes you say that? Well, I didn't watch the pilot. I watched it, I didn't watch it last night. We're recording Monday. I didn't watch it on Sunday when it was intended to be watched. I had early access to it, but in the future I might watch it on Mondays. I don't even know I might watch it on Tuesdays.

And I found it very, very, very enjoyable because of all the positive things you said because of the tone and the swagger and the performances. I wasn't really bothered about it didn't strike me the same feeling of obligation that a bunch of new shows have struck me with. Like when we talked about the path on Hulu. And, you know, I was out on it early, but one of the reasons ultimately I was probably out on it is a version of what you're describing, which was, I don't want to be at the beginning of this roller coaster. You know, I just, I don't like where I'm, I don't like the way it looks. I don't like the setting. I don't like the people enough to go through this because, you know, it may well be true, as many people have said, like Jim Ponyahuazik at the time

said this, I think, that by the end of the first season of the path, like, he was grateful for having made the journey and he'd be ready to go for season two. But that's still, you know, I don't even remember, nine, ten, eleven hours. I was really impressed with Preacher, and I really didn't think I was going to be. I was a big, I read every issue of the comic in the 90s. Were you a reader of this comic? I wasn't, no. Do you feel like so, today in Vulture, there's an Abraham Reisman article A piece about Rogan and Goldberg and their

adaption of the film and what they brought along and what they lost from the comic and part of what they brought along or what they lost rather being trying to make it not as you know 90s which was basically like there's

stuff in there that that could be perceived as homophobic or racist at least in terms of its language and that it was a sort of more the safety is off time period in terms of that kind of stuff and that they wanted to not hamper or hinder the adaption of it by introducing all that stuff just for the sake of being true to the original text.

That's great. I want to read this piece. I think that guy Abrams comics coverage at Vulture is really great, really worth reading generally. I didn't see that, you know, but I completely agree with it. So I was thinking about the comic. I read every issue of it in the 90s. I remember very, very, very little of it. Which isn't to say it wasn't good. I mean, I love Steve Dillon's art.

I really like a lot of what Garth Ennis writes. The characters were obviously memorable. I remembered them. But, you know, there was a era of bad boy British or British or Irish comic creators who basically were like, fuck this, we're going to burn this house down from the inside.

And there was a race to sort of see who could go further. And Ennis, Garthana's loves shocking people and shocking things. You know, and so an outsider of writing a story about a renegade whiskey priest in Texas, he's working some stuff out that probably doesn't have that much concern for whiskey priests in Texas. I don't want to put worse his mouth of thoughts in his head. But he was going for something else.

And, you know, for all of the enjoyment I got out of it and the sort of gallows humor or more extreme humor, it didn't affect me on any emotional level. And I was so impressed with what they chose to do here because just in one, you know, it was an hour plus, but I guess without commercials is about an hour. One hour-long episode of television, they found something in this material that I don't really know if it was ever in the comic, or at least it wasn't overtly on the surface. They found an origin story and a emotional grounding for it that felt earned. I mean, it was there. But in that, but that wasn't prominent. It reminded me, I don't want to sound too high-minded because this is one episode that I really really.

enjoyed, but it reminded me of the best kinds of adaptations, which, you know, are not too married to the source material in the way that, like, you can take, you can take any Shakespeare play and you can, you know, say, oh, well, this is set in, you know, 1960s, Hayd Asbury, or this is set during World War I, or you can change it, it's malleable. And what was interesting to Goldberg and Rogan, who were no strangers to shock value, and they brought some of that to this, certainly like the last scene of the pilot. But they found something kind of interesting to say about

being in a dead end town and believing in something and still having fun with it. I was really impressed. Yeah, and I was impressed with the visual sensibility. Obviously, and they've spoken about this, but it owes a lot to early Sam Ramey in terms of its reverence

and its almost embracing of limited resources. There's a scene, and I think Seppin-wall wrote about this too, but there's the scene where Tulip hides the kids in the storm shelter and then it has the homemade bazooka fight yeah and it's just you don't see it it's just happening outside of the doors which obviously saved them some money but is also really cool for the imagination i thought so as somebody who harps on and on about sometimes a flat nature to the way television looks this was incredible

to watch and i'm i'm definitely excited to watch more of it i just thought that it was an interesting thing to happen and i know you watched civil war um this week this past week and if you take the Marvel Universe, if you take the DC Universe, which is expanding in front of our eyes, it's got Suicide Squad coming in the summer. You've got, say, any number of shows on television from Game of Thrones to Walking Dead or Fear of the Walking Dead to, and then any other dramas that you might be watching, like the Americans or Night Manager or Last Panthers, even if they're limited, if you start to add up all of those characters, and I think you're getting to triple digits pretty easily. And you're talking about three

dozen storylines that you're sort of trying to keep straight. And I appreciate what you're saying. It's like, yeah, you could just save, you could save Preacher to watch whenever. You could save any of the Netflix Marvel shows to watch whenever. But it's a certain kind of storytelling when you're trying to do nine different things at once in an episode and introduce interstellar supernatural elements and, you know, people, different powers for different people and different origin stories for different characters. And sometimes it does it does make me

long for something as I guess it's impossible for television to be simple anymore because you have to wow people to keep them watching. But it does make me wish that there could be like a medium gear that these shows could hit that weren't so

met so much to keep track of at once. I agree. And you know that's an interesting point to make heading into you know the fall network season, the broadcast network, because we've talked about this in different ways, but I think what you're suggesting is that we're having, we're sort of in an era of extremity in both directions, because I would say that an antidote to too much TV, and I don't mean too many shows like John Langraff from FX means, but I mean just too much muchness, too many characters, too many plots,

too much energy, too much loudness would be to watch something like Rectify on Sundance, but Rectify is, you know, is the quietest television. imaginable and it's almost too quiet. So this, that is sort of a sweet spot where if you could find something that was, you know, if broadcast networks could just relax and make 12 or 15 episode seasons and make something that is, you know, smarter than the blacklist, less procedural than Chicago DMV or whatever, there's an audience for that, right? Like, I wouldn't mind watching TV stars having some fun and doing some stuff.

Like, I guess within the same sort of, within the same snackable. bite-sized 10, 12 episode season that we're used to. That seems like that would be a lane for them to get into, but as usual, they can't really get out of their own way. They're rebooting McGiver. I think what I'm responding to is a consequence of, you know, and there's another vulture piece that came out. I think it was last week, or maybe it was just after we recorded the last episode, so I don't remember when it was. But it was just basically a state of peak TV.

Oh, yeah, Joe Adelian and I'm forgetting his co-writer's name, but that piece was tremendous. People should check this piece out. And it talked a lot about the impact it was having on production in various parts of the country in Vancouver and North Carolina and Georgia, but also just about writers' rooms and the impact it's having. It's a fascinating piece. But from the audience perspective, maybe what I'm lamenting isn't the fact that it's impossible to keep track of all this stuff. But I am lamenting the fact that it's impossible to be a completist because I talked about all this and I barely even mentioned all the CWDC shows. and I barely even mentioned anything that, you know, we haven't mentioned any of the Shonda shows.

So it's almost, this is the sort of result of if you're going to put 150 shows on the air, you're going to have people who are interested in a small pocket of them, and they'll bore down deep into that. And then you might have some people who are just like, yeah, turn Game of Thrones on and I wait for the Dragons to pop up and it looks good. But if you want to be a full commitment fan, you really do have to pick and choose your spots. That's certainly true, and we're seeing that more than ever.

By the way, the vulture piece cover story you're crediting was Joa Dahlian and Maria Elena Fernandez. I don't want to miss that because they did an amazing job. I think that for me, and I don't know how many other people watch TV this way, though I imagine some might, the verve and the spark and the tone of preacher immediately made me want to pay attention to it. It kept it above water in terms of my feeling like it's an obligation to watch more. The Sam Ramey comparison is exactly right. You know, one of the last pieces, no, the last piece that I wrote for Grantland was about horror TV and I was based around, I don't know, what's the show called on Stars? Ash versus Evil Dead or basically the Evil Dead show that I'm already blanking on what it was called.

But I really enjoyed it for those reasons, right? Because Ramey knows how to do that and he knows what it is and it just goes, you know, it goes chin first into that, that fun universe. and it was funny to see Rogan and Goldberg, who were so obviously very, very smart and have done really good things, but they seemed actually kind of mellowed by television in a way that I didn't expect because they're movies,

they're so expected that they're going to go absolutely bonkers, gross out, or just go as hard R as possible in any circumstance. Like, we didn't even talk about this, but one of the plain movies I watched a couple weeks ago was the night before that they were involved in and, you know, Rogan starred in. And I watched it thinking like, man, if they could just calm down and make the $10 million version of this movie, it could have actually been a really good movie, like an actually gripping emotionally interesting but also funny movie.

But it wasn't. It was the hard R we need to, you know, 25 to 30 million version that needs to make 100 million to break even. So to see them come to TV, and obviously there was some extremity in this, but they were having a lot of fun, but they never really lost the spine of what the show they wanted to make was. And I think that's really, really hard to do. Whether they can be that in episode 24. The show has had such a fascinating trajectory to get to television. It was initially, I mean, it's been in, it's been in development for almost 20 years now.

But I remember Kevin Smith got pretty far along the way. And there was a HBO adaption that had gotten pretty close and they had gotten to at least the series Bible point. I think James Marsden was going to play Jesse at some point. And it's been just been bad. hanging around since then. I don't know. It was no knock against the show. It was more about when the show is being released.

The time period the show is being released into. And if you put this show out five or six years ago, I think it would have been mind-blowing. People would have just been like stop all the presses about it. I agree. I think it's also worth thinking about it, though, in terms of another part of where our culture is right now, which is you don't have to make everything.

You know, like I was tweeting out jokes about how some Chinese investors secured the film rights to Tetris are going to make a trilogy out of a 30-year-old video game about

falling blocks. And today there was the story about how another financial concern has acquired the rights to Garfield and get ready they're going to make a fully CG version of Garfield.

It's like, I have an idea, here's my Hollywood fixer voice. What if you fucking didn't? Like, that's probably a better idea at this point, you know? Just relax.

And the thing about Preacher, and this is even back when I was closer to having read the comic and was super into it, I still never understood why you needed to make it. You know, comic books are very, very good for certain stories, and this was one of them. And I couldn't, for the life of me, see why you had to make it other than this feeling that everything has to be made and every piece of IP has to be something.

But whether it's a fact of waiting 20 years to do it or the TV moment you're talking about or the particular vision of those three guys who actually steered it onto the screen, they found a reason to do it. And that's kind of, both as a critic and a fan, that's kind of the story. sweet spot. It's fun to encounter that when you do. Do you want to do a very quick wrap-up of your Civil War feelings? Yeah, so can I say though, can I confess? I know you talked to Sean and Jason about it, but I didn't

listen to it because I hadn't seen the movies, so I don't want to step on them. I thought it was great. Is that a cool take? Maybe this good. This take hasn't marinated as long. That is the take. I guess this film suffered a little bit from the same thing that Winter Soldier suffered from, which was that Marvel has a really good. They tell the story of their movies very well, and they messaged to, they messaged out about

Winter Soldier that it was like a political paranoia thriller from the 70s, and it wasn't, but it was good. And they message that Civil War was basically the Empire Strikes Back of their Marvel universe, and it's good. It's really good. They made, they did, the thing that they fixed was that they could never come up with a villain equal to Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evan. is star power. So they just had those two be the villains against each other. And they're not even villains. They just took it out. And Daniel Brule is completely great as this McGuffin of a character, you know? But McGuffins work really well in the Marvel universe. That my favorite thing, and maybe all of them, was the Iron Man 3 reveal with Ben Kingsley. I thought that was just hilarious.

But this one landed more because Brul is such a good performer. And it really tied into what the movie was trying to do on an emotional level, which seems a surprising thing to say about a movie in which, a character in a suit punches a shield into a man in a robot suit at the end of it. But it had some emotional depth and it was earned

because it was built on the back of everything that had come before in the other movies. So I really appreciated that this was just this guy trying to do a human thing in the face of these super humans.

But my biggest take away and first of all, it was really long and it was really enjoyable and it was really enjoyable to sit in the theater and watch that movie maybe because I hadn't been

in a theater since 2012. But the other thing about it is You know, the Joss Whedon star has probably dimmed a little bit here. And I don't even mean that to take shots at him because he's a very talented guy. No, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. But these four dudes.

It's weird that this franchise like has now had three separate rabbis aside from Kevin Feig, but that Favreau started this vibe and that then Whedon was like the otor of it. And now the Rousseau's are like, it's almost like they are getting, they are like stripping away the things they don't need from directors and getting to the essential what, you know, stewardship that they want from these people. But I agree. And I think that not just the Rousseau's, but Christopher Marcus and Stephen McPhile are those four. And it's telling, again, for something this enormous that it takes two directors and two writers to make it work. But these guys figured it out. And when I say I enjoyed the

movie, I enjoyed it because I was just along for the ride. But there were moments where I was like, not to be all Robert McKee, but I was like, boy, they really made that track just from a, you know, building a script point of view in terms of what each character's motivation was, not losing track of someone, you know, and making it circle back in an interesting way, and steering into the bigness so that, you know, when we see Tony Stark in the beginning of this movie, when he's doing the sort of, you know, he's walking people through his memories about his parents. Yeah. When you watch any movie, we are all smart enough viewers now to know that there's, you know,

everything is a Chekhov's gun. Like that was relevant in some way. But one of the smart things that the movie did was it's so big and noisy, anyone would have forgotten about it. So then when it circled back, I was like, oh, oh, yeah, that's good. That's well done. But even just smaller things, like in the very beginning battle scene, the Nigerian battle scene, when Captain America is running across the screen, they figured out how to shoot these people and choreographed them. So it was like, he wasn't running.

I was like, that's not a human, but it's also not a cartoon. There's this sweet spot where it is like watching superheroes to, sorry. Yeah, I know what you mean. But the physicality of it and tracking the punches and giving them some, sense of ballet and grace without turning into like slow-mo bullet time kung fu stuff um and then the final thing about it was that they just know these they know their own characters and they love their characters and clearly all these bros who go to Atlanta once a year kind of love hanging out together i know that's super corny to say it but you see you hear about all the problems with

notice i changed c to hear but you hear about all the problems with the dc movies and you know they're constantly seemed just embarrassed they're like yeah he's he's a he's a water god but it'll be jason Mamoa. He won't be talking to fish, you know, or like the fact that Zach Snyder so clearly loaths Superman and yet was entrusted to make two movies about him. But these dudes get what makes these characters tick, and they're so good at it.

They're just doing donuts at this point, where it's like, yeah, everyone else needed five movies to introduce Spider-Man. We need six minutes in one set, and we do it better than they did in a sort of essential way. It was fun. I was really impressed. Did you guys, I got to ask, did you guys go deep on Chadwick Bosman, Future Megastar of the World?

The whole Black Panther film is great. We talked a little bit about that. It's also, I don't know that I've ever seen a movie have the goodwill that this Black Panther film is going to have. I mean, just the fact that Michael B. Jordan, Ryan Googler, and Chadwick Bosom are making a movie together about this? Are you familiar with the Black Panther comic story? Like, is it cool? Like, I've never read it. The thing is about it that's really cool is that the people who invented the Marvel Universe in the 60s with some extreme outliers.

were basically very, very liberal, socially liberal people like Stanley and Jack Kirby. And, you know, one of the reasons why Marvel Comics were so, felt so alive even then, is because the characters engaged with things like the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War and other issues of the day. The interesting thing about the character of Black Panther is that in the midst of the civil rights movement, and I think our friend Sean Howe would be able to track this more specifically, but I think people were saying to Stanley, like, why isn't there an African-American hero or a black superhero for you to put on the covers here? comics with everyone else. And the interesting thing is that they chose to make an African hero, not an African-American hero. And not just in a vision of Africa that did not dominate news headlines

or coverage of Africa, because Wakanda is as much of an invented place as Latvaria where Dr. Doom is from. But it's this scientific marvel of the world. It's this way, way, way advanced society that also has this deep spiritual aspect of its life, but it's also the place that invented the material that made Captain America's shield. So he's completely this other. He's a king and a superhero and from a totally different paradigm. He doesn't even enter into the... I mean, that's why they used him so well. They'd get these things.

He was the third heat in the Captain America Iron Man fight, right? He didn't even have a stake in it. He just had his own business. So I think it's interesting, but it was interesting to see him walk into a franchise that already has two established African American heroes and, you know, hopefully more on the way. It's a pretty interesting character that...

I haven't read the Tanahasi Coates comic version that he's doing now, but the character has been restored to prominence, recently and it's it's going to be interesting. Yeah, it does feel like the the controls are a little bit loosened like I saw kugler talking about how black panther is going to be his most personal film yet. It's going to be interesting to see. I wonder if marvel is taking their hands off the the wheel a little bit for kugler and black panther because they're at the point where they know that the spine of all of their movies are so strong that they can let outliers exist in the way that ant man was essentially just a cute comic heist film or do they realize that they need this they need this they need this for both for goodwill as well, you know, that they need to really empower Googler to make the movie he wants to make so that they don't have this reputation

as being these meddlers to the degree that they are. It'll be very interesting to see, but it's clear that he's basically ripped up whatever script they handed him and he's starting over. I'm sure, yeah, for sure. That sounds as good as a place to any to wrap up, Andy. We'll talk again next week. We've got After the Thrones Up on HBO Now and Go.

We've got a preview episode of the watch, a re-up that I did with Mallory. That's about 20 minutes of a preview for next week. Game of Thrones. I'll be up later in the week. Nice. And do you have an Andy Greenwald show this week? My show will just be getting on a plane tomorrow and just spending some quality time with you in a locked studio and hopefully not offending Carrie and saying only nice things about pets. That's all right. All right, man, I'll see you soon. Great job, Brandsky. Now to join me talk

about the nice guys, one of my favorite moves of the year. My ringer co-worker, Robert Mays. What's up, buddy? Hey, bud. How you doing? Good man. Mays, you and I talked about doing like a a special Shane Black podcast, but between the NFL pod that you're doing with Kevin Clark right now, where you are standing by idly as the America burns him to the ground for his Aaron Rogers' opinions. Between that and between everything else we got going on, we just wanted to make sure we got this out there to the world because we both saw the nice guys this weekend, and it means a lot to us. Yeah, I just, Shane Black has met a lot to me for a very long time on a few different levels.

I mean, one, just establishing action movie tropes as we currently understand. stand them with the lethal weapon situation. And then when he came back to my world with Kiss Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang in like 2005, it is one of my favorite movies. I'm not sure where I'd rank it all time for me, but if I laid them out, I wouldn't be surprised if it snuck in the top five. So when the first time I saw this trailer, I was awaiting May 20th with Bated Breath for like six months. Yeah. And so there's a bunch of threads I want to hit here. But the first thing is I think you kind of mentioned right there is, you said Kiss Kiss Kiss Kiss. bang bang but in a lot of ways shame black has been making the same movie since the 80s and uh he is

probably our foremost um chronicler of tough guy buddies um you know and and within that within that format he pokes a lot of holes at the uh the archetypes that we're talking about like they're not exactly as tough as they look on the outside and that's what's so great about kiss kiss bang bang it's what's so great about lethal weapon um and and it's what's so amazing about the nice guys but you know with the nice guys the thing that i think really really ups even though kiss kiss kiss bang bang is very comic um is just the just the the laughs in this movie it's another los angeles set detective story it's another los angeles set buddy movie this one's set in 77 gas shortage smog choking the city the porn industry is exploding the mafia is in town and russell

Russell Westbrook, Ryan Gosling and Russell Crow and Russell Westbrook. Why is he in this movie? You might as well be. They're investigating a labyrinth plot of a labyrinth of a plot involving a dead porn star, a disappeared girl, and a sea of corruption and hit men. And maze, man, like, what did you, what were some of the things that stood out to you about the way that black infused this story? with comedy because that's what I think is sort of the thing that jumped out of me. I mean, it's one of the funniest movies I've seen. I don't know how long.

I mean, I was almost rolling on the floor at some of this stuff. And it was a few different ways. I mean, one, just the dialogue and how it stands. And I remember when Alex Papademus wrote about Shane Black when he did Iron Man 3, and he mentioned that scene in the bar with Michelle Moynihan and Robert Downey Jr., where they discuss Native American Joe Pesci. I mean, there are lines from these movies that are just unstoppably quotable, but with this movie, it was that combined,

which some of the looks that Gosling can give you. And a few people can do that like he can right now. Yeah. There's a scene that I don't feel like he's giving anything away, but he likes to have a drink. You know, he likes to imbi every once in a while. And at one point at a party, he realizes that the drinks are free, and the look he gives to the bartender,

you can't teach that to anybody. You can either do that or you can. It's not even the huge one-liners that he gets away with, too. It's like when he goes into that bar looking for Amelia, who's played by Margaret Quali from the leftovers, and the guy's like, yeah, she was drinking bourbon martinis. And he's like, that's disgusting. And he just like nails the line.

Gosling is on an insane run right now with this comic. I was re-watching the Jenga speech from Big Short. Yeah. And it's like, he's just, he's just like in the zone right now with these, these comic characters. But the thing I like the most about Holland March, who's the character he plays in The Nice Guys, is the way that he is part of the Schmo detective tradition of like Elliot Gould and the Long Goodbye and these kind of downtrodden, lived in, haunted, usually vaguely, you know, probably alcoholic, but incredibly witty detective protagonists.

And I never thought that anybody would be able to do Shane Black better than Downey, but I really hope that Gosling makes more stuff with Shane Black. And with him, I feel like when he has that character with a little bit of weirdness to him, that's when he's best. But it can be one step over the line. Like that totally forgettable gangster movie that I can't even remember right now where Sean Fantasy describes him as a cartoon cat. Oh, is that Mob Squad?

Yeah, something like that. Gangster Squad. God, it was terrible. But with stuff like the Big Short and with this, there's a cartoonish element to him, but I think it's restrained just enough where you can take it seriously and actually relate to it in a way.

So that's where I think his really good sweet spot is. I don't need him being brooding and big on the screen and everything else like he is in drive. I think he's hilarious, and I want him to have the chance to be more often. Yeah, you know, and this is interesting, but this has a great supporting cast. it's got really cool performances from Kim Basinger and Matt Bomer

and a ton of people are in the movie but this is one of those movie star movies where when Gosling is on screen if he's not in a shot you're like god damn it where's Gosling because it's like having Kevin Durant and you're starting five you just want him to get the ball every time down the court and he is

really really like I think that you could make the argument that there's been a ton of Ryan Gosling movies where he kind of hits his ceiling and there's other people in the film to take it, take it on. But in these last few years, I really feel like he has been settling into himself

a little bit and it really works for this character. What were some of the other things that stood out for you about the film? When I watch a Shane Black movie and this is the way with Lethal Weapon and it was with Kiss Kiss Kiss Bang, Bang too. To me, it's not necessarily a meditation on Los Angeles, but they're very

Los Angeles movies in my opinion. And when I'm watching this, one of the things to ask you, when you're watching a Shane Black movie, this one or any of them, do you think that he loves or hates L.A.? I think that he's someone who probably hates Los Angeles, but recognizes that it is the only place he can be and also thinks that he is the smartest person in Los Angeles.

Yeah, that's probably true. But he's not like the smartest person in Los Angeles who's just going to stay at home all the time. He definitely has been to a porn party. You know what I mean? Yes. He is definitely. like I'm gonna be born and

probably an interesting time for him. Yeah, I'm gonna be born and deliver myself from the slime and and the underworld of this city but I'm definitely gonna engage it. I'm gonna be engaged with it and he may hate it but he is very much a part of it. Do you and one of the

things that it really struck me first of all you mentioned this at the beginning just the smog and everything else. I really like I just enjoyed how definitively they put us in a time yeah. I mean there's that the Killer B's kind of situation where that turns into one of the funniest parts in the whole movie. Oh my God.

But I mean, I lost it. That is the hardest I've laughed in a movie theater in a long time. I just really like the signposts, like the time frame, time period signposts. Sometimes people do that poorly and kind of schlocky, but I feel like he did it in a really natural way. And I think that was impressive. And I almost just like the idea that he could take us to 1977 or if he wants to do it 10 years earlier, 10 years later, I feel like that's a lane that he might be able to do really well. Yeah, you know, one of the things about this film that I enjoyed was, this is obviously

somebody who really knows the hills of Los Angeles. I thought that the Hollywood Hills had like their own identity. It's always cool when you have a city, a city-based movie that within that city, they have decided that certain territory is theirs, you know, whether it's like really embracing the, you know, in French Connection, just like the subway tracks, the elevated subway tracks that French Connection is the major car chase is set under. Here it felt like he was looking at this weird world that slightly above Los Angeles in the hills. And even if it's people like Ryan Gosling's character being able to, like living in a house that he can't really afford because it's a rental and treating it like the world's largest ashtray. In that house, Ryan

Gonsling lives with his daughter who is in an absurd amount of scenes considering he she could have very easily just been dispatched early in the film by him turning and saying you know what like it's really quite a chaotic time right now so why don't you just go stay with your friend for the rest of the movie but I like that this movie is just kind of like fuck it and like makes the daughter come to every action scene and is also like two thirds of you know two thirds into the film we're gonna we're gonna twist the searching for the girl narrative on its head. So are you at a point now where I went back and watched a lot of these in succession?

So maybe it's because I've done it so recently and in such a confined space. But the beats of a Shane Black movie are just very clear right now. I mean, there is one plot that we think is happening. And it starts with lethal weapon. I mean, she jumps off the building in the first scene. And then we realize that it's actually a mercenary-led drug ring. Yeah, right. So, I mean, and that hits how it is in every single movie.

The Iron Man 3 has that twist. You know, and even in this movie, they make a very winking allusion to it. At one point, Ryan Gosling says, so you lead me on this epic fucking journey. And the point is there's two ways to look at something. Why wouldn't you just say that? And that's just every Shane Black movie. And I enjoy that he's able to have fun with that idea. But in your opinion, does it kind of take away the fact that we've kind of reached this paint-by-numbers thing?

Or is it such a cool finished product that you don't mind how we get them? No, I think that this film actually has so many, you know, just like the big sleep does, just like any great noir film, the plot machinations are so complex that if you actually take a step out and look at it, none of the movie really makes sense. So you just have to do it. You're just doing it for vibe. You're only there for feeling, for dialogue, for performance, for setting, for tone, for atmosphere. And if you embrace those elements of it, it doesn't really matter whether or not, like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know. way that these things like the fact that the Detroit this movie is about the fact that the big three automakers are like involved in the pornography industry in Los Angeles I mean it's just barely

makes any sense you just are there for how cool Gosling is and it's it's been actually quite some time since we have had a just purely very cool performance like this because they're mostly done now Wesley Morris had a really good piece in the Sunday times about all the movie stars are superheroes now. It's been a while since we've had like, oh, what an iconic, cool movie star performance with a guy not wearing a mask. So, and that's kind of what I was looking at the box office returns. And the way this movie ends, which you know Shane Black has learned how to play this game. He directed an Iron Man movie. And it ends so open-ended about the idea that we could definitely have five more of these. If it does well enough, when I saw that it only made $11

million, I was kind of like, okay, maybe we'll be okay. Like maybe it's not going to be huge enough where they try Gosling out and make him do 17 of these. I wish they would though. I mean, I wish this is. That argument is totally fair. I get that as well. They used to do that with the thin man. And they would just be like, here's the mystery of the week with William Powell, the coolest guy in the whole world.

Gosling has got too much going on to do that. But I hope that he is really hitting a sweet spot right now where he can do just pretty much anything you ask him to do. So I guess this is podcast has turned into this part. the podcast has turned into just Ryan Gosling worship. Was there any other performance, any other element of the movie you wanted to shout out before we wrap up? What did you think about Russell Crow? I thought he was good. I think that he fits this well.

This is kind of a more slumpy, a more messy version of the other kind of troubled cops or troubled enforcer figures he's tried to play in the past. And I think that the fact that it was imbued with the humor that a Shane Black movie is and kind of with some of the ineptitude that the characters in Shane Black movies have, it somehow made him more human and I appreciated it. It's really, it's strange to be at this place in the history of movie making where Russell Crow is second banana now. Yeah.

It's hard to remember that this is a guy who basically had his choice of any dramatic or action-oriented role. And pretty much since, like, Body of Lies has been the second guy. You know, and watch him do this and know that he's going to be in like the second lead in tom cruises mummy movie that's coming out like i don't know it just feels like the world is upside down this guy was maximus you know i don't mind it though i don't that upside down the world is one i can get on board with yeah russell crow character actor is

pretty great it's okay and i think it has to be done the right way but i think in this movie especially it really is all right well two thumbs up from me and maize for the nice guys you guys should way up definitely go check it out uh mays great talking to you we'll talk to you soon sounds good but Thanks. So just want to say thank you to our sponsor, Uber. We all have those times when we need a little extra money, and I've got a really easy way for you to do it to get that money. Drive with Uber.

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