The Watch - Ep. 52: 'Preacher' Re-up

Episode Date: July 1, 2016

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss the trailers for 'Sully' (8:24) and 'Bleed for This' (11:16), and dissect AMC’s 'Preacher' (12:20). Later, they intro their new book club (34:55) and offer their opinions on Don DeLillo (37:58). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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My name is Chris Ryan, and I am an editor at The Ringer.com, and joining me on the other line, the devil and God are raging inside of him. It's Andy Greenwald! Re-up! Feels good. Yeah, what's going on, man? I love the way you combined our past love of emo

slash emotional hardcore music and the television show Preacher that we're going to talk about today. Yeah, that was a brand new record that I did not listen to as much as the brand new record that had come out previous to that. I didn't like it as much as the one that came out previously, but still... So it's a really solid reference to start the day

You're killing it, man. Andy, it's the re-up. We're going to talk about Preacher today, but first, I know that we had some business to take care of. First of all, we wanted to say, now that you're home, now that you're East Coast bound for a little while, just want to play a little bit of Danny Boy over airplane movies. Yeah, I just want to say, first of all, Chris, you know how much I care about you, how much fun I have being in the office with the whole ringer crew, all the kids. I'm so glad I'm not on an airplane right now.

this is only the second Thursday since early April I think I've not been flying over the country and that feels good especially because I probably just watched the sully trailer right well just a hundred times in a row of course I gotta say though I kind of wanted to go out big like I wanted to to end this amazing three months of me watching movies on airplanes which really thanks everyone for flying along right there with me you guys were the wind beneath the wings we didn't need the wind because we had jet engines powering me but I still appreciated it On my last flight, Chris, last week, last Sunday, my monitor was broken.

Yeah. I was unable to watch any films. Like, talk about ending with a whimper. Isn't that? It's like the gods knew. It was a super tragedy. The gods knew. It was time to bring this great podcast to make segment to an end.

Can I just talk about things that happened 18 months ago? What? Where you talk about things that happened 18 months ago, they were like, go now in peace. Go now, brother. You were too bright and beautiful for this world. Just a little bit of knife twisting, though, which is your favorite kind of twisting. You know, my family came with me on this last trip to L.A., as you know, and during these many, many, many cross-country flights, I held back. This is me trying to be a good guy.

I didn't watch Academy Award nominee Carol the entire time because it's some point in like early January my wife was like you were saving the best for last well a that but b my wife was like maybe i'd like to see that and i was like i heard you noted i got you okay so at no point during any of these flights i want to watch carroll and you were like the best place to do that is on an airplane no i was like absolutely i will refrain from watching it because i would be a respectful spouse so i did not watch it despite it beckoning to me even during those slow weeks in june early June, Chris, when Delta hadn't updated its movies. I stayed strong.

Anyway, my wife and I were not sitting together on this last flight, went back to check on her how her flight was doing. Guess what movie? She was just wrapping up on the airplane. What a savage move? Todd Haynes, instant classic Carol. You got Carol stabbed. I was like, you had 65 plus options on here. You have seen as few movies as I have during the three years that we have been parents.

The one movie, she wasn't lying when she said she wanted to see it. In fact, she didn't want to see any other movie released between 2013 and 2016 other than Carol. And I said, how was it? And she said, it was pretty good. You should have just like, I would have been awesome if she had just come up to you. It was like, have you heard about Carol? This movie's great. Her nails are amazing in this.

You know that the worst part She said this to you She actually mocked me And then you by extension For constantly recommending the intern And saying, you know, it's really not that bad So in a way This is your fault is what I'm saying

Because with your tireless advocacy For the Nancy Myers masterpiece We turned her on it And so now I will never see Carol Because I'm never going to be in an airplane again And I'll never see another movie It's an appropriate ending

It's a fair but appropriate ending It was kind of a a surprise twist at the end. It's a little bittersweet. I'm sorry to you and I'm sorry to Delta and I'm sorry to Todd Haynes and I just want to apologize to Rooney Mara. I mean it's disrespectful. Andy, my opening bit here that I want to talk to you and endo our listeners about, you know, we sometimes do this thing called in or out. It's a recurring franchise that we visit and I just don't know if in quite captures what I'm trying to say about this actor that I'm going to talk about now. In like the last 10 years, people who know me know that I have strong, sometimes I'll have strong premonitions.

I wouldn't necessarily think that I am not like a, I don't know that I have the third eye that I'm gift with the second sight. Do you have the gift? Do you have the shining? I might because I called Obama in 2008. You did? And I. Who can't let that go? Is it Chuck that can't let that go?

No, I just want to ever be in, I didn't call it like I called it when he was up 10 points. I was going to say, it's, it's pretty amazing, Chris, that you were able to guess that a Democratic candidate would win in a year when the incumbent Republican had a 20% approval rating and the economy's nosedive. Yeah, but I called him over Hillary the year. Like, I think I called that like 07, actually, you know? Yeah. And that's a big one for me. Another big one recently was that I suggested that Harrison Barnes might join the Sixers only to stoke a, media firestorm, which I was ungr credited for entirely.

But you're not speculating. What's that? I'm not bitter. It's okay. This is fair use. It's open source. Here's another tip. Buy all the Aaron Eckhart stock.

What? All the Aaron Eckhart stock, you can find, you buy that. You say you give an order to your financial planner, to your broker, and you say, put all the yen on Eckhart, all the Deutsche marks. Can I ask something? Because this is, this is much more bold than calling a freshman senator as the next Democratic nominee for president a year before it happened. I would say that Aaron Eckhart in 2016 is the walking definition of a distressed asset. Isabel is definitely looking at Aaron Eckhart's IMDB page to be like, who the fuck is

Aaron Eckhart? Let me tell you something. Aaron Eckhart is going to win supporting actor at the Oscars next year, and you know what his top competition is going to be? Aaron Eckhart. Because he's going twice on that piece. Once for Bleed for this, the new Miles Teller boxing film that's coming out, where Eckhart has gotten a haircut that looks like his hairline is receding, which is really such a boss move for a guy with a good hair like that. That's the Pete Campbell, right?

That's what we call that. And then in Sully, the upcoming Clint Eastwood film about the plane landing in the river, he is the co-pilot to Sully and he looks great in that and he's got a solid mustache in that so I'm feeling the tremors in the tracks and I'm telling you

go long on Eckhart it's interesting because in all of the reaction pieces and think pieces spawned this week by the news that the Motion Picture Academy of Art and Sciences was drastically expanding its votership especially in terms of diversity and gender

about the ramifications of Eckhart. That's what I'm saying. No one could have predicted that bringing in, you know, great, great numbers of new young voters and women voters and African-American voters would result in the coronation of Hollywood's new king, Aaron Eckhart. That is really a surprise result. You may remember Aaron Eckhart. Here's some of his great roles.

Let's be clear. Before you say that, you may not remember Aaron Eckhart as Isabella's demonstrating in the background right now. Aaron Eckhart went pro playing offensive coordinator Nick Crozier in any given Sunday. Went pro. He solidified his credentials as one of our greatest actors originating the Bradley Cooper burnt role in the Catherine Zeta Jones Romody. Romita, Romana, romantic drama, no reservations. Rama? Keep going.

Just keep digging. I love this. And then he actually secretly was the best thing of the entire Dark Night trilogy as Harvey Dent. Wow. This is really, this is at a left field. This is a big one for you. Can I just ask one more follow up before we move on? Yeah, sure.

Do you like Aaron Eckhart? I never really had an opinion on him before we started this podcast. This is my point. I don't know. Are you doing this as like a wealth management consultant? Are you like, look, this really sucks to be English right now, but buy low on the pound? Or are you like, I am an Anglophile. I'm literally wearing a kilt right now, but by low on the pound.

No, I'm new to him. I'm new to his stuff. I've always, I've always appreciated him, and I've appreciated the way he's eschewed. He's sort of, he's shunned fame. You know, he's in it for the work. Gosh, well, you know, it's hard. Isn't, wait, wasn't, didn't, didn't Miles Teller throw him under numerous buses, like an entire bus depot? Yeah, do you want to hear the quote?

Yeah, I was hoping we could circle back. to this. Let's find this. Hold on one second. Because this all sounded very familiar. Teller was in rabbit hole with Aaron Eckhart.

Shout out to Shuby, Sam Shuby, for putting this in front of me again. You know, and Teller, when he was talking, I don't know who was talking to about this,

but he said, recently he worked with Eckhart again in the boxing movie Bleed for this. Quote, now in bleed for this, he, Eckhart, is my trainer, the overweight kind of

supporting character actor. Eckhart idolizes the likes of Sean Penn and Jack Nicholson, but he's just very anti-poparazzi teller says. It's hard to get the right position to be somebody who is commercially successful and critically acclaimed. That's the sweet spot. Wow. What a dick. That's amazing. Well, all right, you guys, you heard it here first. You guys are all going to get very, very pretend rich of Chris's Hollywood stock tips. Let's start talking about. This is definitely, this is definitely a new bit. Chris's Hollywood stock tips. We're going to revisit this.

Let's talk a little bit about Preacher because this is, you know, we were really immersed in Game of Thrones for a while, obviously. And I think to the, probably the detriment of following television on mass, you know? Mm-hmm. Which is something that we love to do is to follow television entirely. Yeah, we're big, I don't know quite how to say this. Yeah, we're big into television, Chris. It's something that we're big fans of. Preacher newest show on AMC brought to us by Seth Rogan, Evan Goldberg, and Sam Catlin.

It stars Dominic Cooper. It is based on the Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon comic from the 90s. Where were you a big reader of the comic? I was. I read every issue in the 90s. Did you? In the 90s? I read them as they were coming out, man.

I would go down to Fat Jack's Comic Crypt on Haverford Avenue and pick up a issue of filthy blasphemy. So let me ask you this. That's just who I was. Because my computers wrote a cool thing for The Ringer this week about the sensation of watching this show. and I would say that this is probably the most delightfully confusing TV show that I have watched in a really long time. Like I'm all in. I love almost every second of it while I'm watching it. And I really couldn't tell you what's happening.

Was that what it was like to read the comics in the 90s? No. What I would say is, and again, the 90s were a minute ago. And I was surprised how little I remembered of the comic book. But my takeaway from a two-decade vantage point is that what actually was happening in it overall didn't really matter so much. It was really – the whole thing felt like basically as if D.C. had given Garth Ennis enough money to buy a very cool monster truck and allowed him to just joyride it all over the American South and West. It was very little – in my memory, it had very little to do with what we might call, you know, play. plot or building up to any one particular thing, it was a lot of detours and a lot of shock

and a lot of very, very, very, very intentionally blasphemous humor. And so when this was announced, and this is the project that had been in development ever since the comic was out. And I think we probably at some point in the last four years talked about it and maybe even held it up as an example of this idea that you don't have to make everything because they're just simply, I just could not see a reason why you would make this because especially And a lot of people have said, or how you could make it if you were going to be completely faithful to it. Exactly.

Either, also because being truly faithful to it would involve basically taking the piss in a way that just doesn't really work in a serialized television show. Which isn't to say that the work wasn't often very funny and often very good and Steve Dillon is a tremendous artist. But its goals were very different. And the landscape that birthed it was very different culturally than I think we are now. And so what's truly, I think, amazing and really impressive about. the show is that it is almost totally reconceived on a character level, on a structural level, on a thematic level. But somehow they found a way to maintain the, I mean, I don't even know what to call it, the insouciance, I guess, of the comic. And it's much better spirited,

if that makes sense. Garthanas is hilarious. But he was working out some things in that comic that I think came from a place of anger that turned into comedy about the church and other Yeah, didn't it? It kind of writing about America from a distance. I've been flipping through some of the pages and some of it has like a new York fucking city, St. Mark's Place T-shirt vibe. You know what I mean?

Like I'm kind of being purposely confrontational with the humor and with the content. So let's talk about the show a little bit. So that's a comic. Yeah. I want to jump off from this point because, you know, TV shows teach you how to watch them. You know, I think that that's something we've talked about before. And we've talked about the, we've talked about the night of pilot or the first episode of the night of the HBO limited series that's on now that you can watch the first episode now on HBO Go. And I was thinking a lot about the visual language of that show and the way that it creates an atmosphere, an atmosphere and a vibe.

And Preacher does the same thing. Preacher is about as understandable as Deadwood in some ways. And Deadwood was written in sort of profane Shakespearean Old West language. Preacher, through combination of its visuals and the dialogue, is just as dense and in some ways impenetrable. But I have to say, the trio of lead actors in this show, Dominic Cooper, Ruth Negga, and Joseph Gilgun, who play Cassidy, Tulip and Jesse, are so charming and so watchable. Can you remember a collection of stars of a show, like new stars that are so immediately watchable? I mean, maybe Clive Owen and Andre Holland on the Nick? No, I think you're making a great point because it's not just that they're instantly stars and instantly watchable,

is that they instantly have the chemistry both with each other and now with the audience that it usually takes shows multiple seasons to develop. When Mad Men was ending last year, we just couldn't stop talking about how much we will miss these people and these interactions, these fictional characters and these specific performances. But the beauty of TV is often that these performances can, you know, they, they sink in over time. And we steep, the actor steeps into the performance and the performance steeps into us. And we've just become more and more excited to watch them get better at it. These three are immediately terrific. Yeah.

They are life rafts in a sea of, you know, very, very crazy action and sometimes impenetrable plotting. And they're just such a delight to watch. Did you know that Dominic Cooper and Ruth Nega are a couple IRL? No way. They are. Are you kidding me? No, they are. Wow.

And they were before this, which is kind of the dream because, you know, if they were living in London and Dominic Cooper's like, okay, well, I finally took the TV role that they've been trying to get me to take for six years, but I'm fucking off to Texas for the next seven years. Not bad to bring the girlfriend along, and she's outshining him. He was with Amanda Sefried for a while, wasn't he? look you know we we got to bring we got to bring juliet in here I don't know the I don't know the TikTok of it but that's this that's what the internet told me and the internet doesn't lie well but but that that is a great point because if any you know above above and beyond anything else that's what recommends the show these three these three actors and their performances yeah because I think that if I actually was thinking about this with the end of the south

not that Southville rise again was a sort of a different animal but the episode previous to that So not this past Sunday, but the Sunday before that. As Jesse Custer and Jackie Earl Haley, we have to talk about in a second. But his character, Quinn Cannon, are talking about God and the devil. A lot of this stuff that are, am I a good man? What does a good man do? And things that we've joked about, like how every character on a television show seems to turn to another and say, what's a good man if he's a bad man?

And is a bad man, could he be good? You know, like just the rust coal conversation. And sometimes they say it while staring into a streaked mirror. Yeah, exactly. That happens on this show, but I just don't care. And it's great because it is so visually alive in a way. You know, these shows will start that they'll start, you'll be like, oh, this guy's a show's got an interesting look. But those, that look itself will become codified really quickly.

And you know, you saw that a little bit with True Detective Season 2, where some of the Fuganaga moves that happened in True Detective Season 1 became. basically the language of the episode. I still can't even catch the tail of these episodes. I have no idea what's going to happen next. Are they going to spend 20 minutes in the Old West? Is it going to be a crazy chainsaw fight? Is there going to be a car chase through a cornfield? Is it going to be about a guy who tried to blow his own head off and lived?

I mean, it's all the stuff that they're throwing at you and the energy of the filmmaking inside of it is really, really refreshing. It's really refreshing not to have our hands held. four or five episodes into a season. There is a feeling of, you know, it would be very possible to be watching a show and be, you know, 50-50 secure in what's actually going on and think, well, the people who are making it don't know what's going on either. I don't get that sense, primarily because of what you're talking about,

the visual language and the tone and the energy and the, in the good spiritedness that somehow goes through the show, a show that involves people having their arms taken off of chainsaws. that that, you know, that alone carries it. But I think that what they've found here, and I would love to know the conversations that Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen, and Sam Catlin, Sam Catlin late of Breaking Bad, had together. And Michael Slovis, Breaking Bad's been directing a couple of these episodes, right? Exactly that.

Yeah, Michael Slovis was the longtime DP of Breaking Bad, who really, really, people credit him a lot with the visual look of that show. The conversations that they all had about, about what they could do and what they could get away with. But more importantly, the kind of conversations that new shows have to have inside of themselves and with networks these days about how to break out, how to differentiate themselves from the pack. And you look at a lot of shows, and we can pick a recent show from AMC as a reference. The other drama they debuted recently, which is Feed the Beast.

And shows put themselves in straightjackets so quickly. You know, it's unforced errors and self-tied knots that really could be avoided. which is to say that like because the language, the storytelling language, not the visual language, but storytelling language of the prestige drama is so codified now of what it's going to be, what's going to happen in episode eight, the stakes, that when something like Feed the Beast starts with the best of intentions, and, you know, I think Schwimmer's good in it. I think that I think everybody there is, it's not a bad faith show. But 30 minutes into the pilot, you're like, okay, well, he's got the sick kid and he's sad and there's

the crime element and we see where it's going. You know what's happening? You got it. I was watching you, you were talking with some people on Twitter today about Halt and Catch Fire and you were like, they announced the third season and people were like, do I have to watch the first season to get, you know, and you're like, you were kind of like, just do what you want. But with shows like Feed the Beast, and I don't mean this in a callous way, like you're saying, I'm sure people worked really hard on that, I would say you don't have to watch any of it. You could just watch the most recent episode and probably have exactly what you're saying. You'll know exactly where you are. With Preacher,

I don't even know what to tell people because I almost think you should. probably save Preacher in blocks and watch it that way. Because it's so difficult to draw the line from episode to episode week to week. It feels like it should be almost the way that they put a series of comics into collections. It should be that way for this show. Well, I think one thing they're doing intentionally, which is something that Noah Hawley does intentionally on Fargo, too, which is treating every opportunity to reintroduce your show. yourself to the audience on a weekly basis as an adventure, you know, destabilizing the audience

by putting them in a place they've never been before, making them double check, hitting info on the remote control to make sure they're watching the right show or the right episode of the show. That's not a bad idea, you know, because especially in an era of binging, the way things can just effortlessly slide from one to the other can sort of lead to a deadening of your attention span. So when one episode of Preacher begins in 1870s and then another episode begins with women running half naked through the woods being chased by men with guns. It turned out to be paintball guns. But that sort of disorientation is pretty powerful.

But I want to be clear that the other thing that impresses me about it isn't just this sort of aggressive shock or destabilization or whatever we want to call it. Because there are moments there that are very Sam Ramey-esque and they're over-the-top sort of shock comic horror. It's got a lot of early Coen Brothers vibes too. Absolutely. And that's a pretty spicy and strong cocktail to mix. and I think they're doing a pretty good job with it.

But what I'm really impressed with is how liberal they were with their changes from the comic book, because they immediately recognized what was possible and what wasn't. There was a line, I think, in last week's episode where I think Cassidy and Jesse, one of them says, well, you know, you know all this is headed towards a road trip, don't you? And they're joking. And they're talking specifically about one thing that they're going through. But I think that was a wink to the fans because the comic book begins basically as a road trip. and the three characters are just going across Texas.

There is no there there. But a very smart thing, both in terms of making a deeper story, but also making a more affordable production, is they've rooted the show in this town for at least one season. And that's given us a whole lot more to play with and a whole lot more to sink our teeth into, but also a whole lot more to care about. One of the things that this show does that I really like

is it inverts how I think we've been dealing with characters on TV in a lot of ways for several years. Um, there's a model where you meet Don Draper or Daredevil or, or whoever, and they are normal until you find out the surprising part about their character, you know, that they have a secret, that they are a vigilante or they used to be Dick Whitman or whatever. Preacher seems to start characters with the surprise and work them into, and I'm talking about more of the second. secondary characters like Donnie, where it's like, it starts with him slamming a guy's face into a car wheel and slowly makes him more and more nuanced as it goes on and more and more, not normal, but do you understand what I'm saying where it's like they, they flip the surprise so that the surprise slaps you in the face and while you're stunned, you meet a real human being? I think that's exactly right. I also think what the show has done very well. And they've been doing that with Cassidy and Tulip too. But the other thing that helps that point is that there is no, you know, you were, you were talking about how there are a lot of character, there's, there has been the conversation about what's good and what's evil. The show hasn't helped us.

There is no, there is no infrastructure of, or a character that's representing, uh, all good or all bad. Right. You know, there is no rebellion against anything because everyone is a little bit wobbly, a little bit nuts, more than a little bit violent. And so in that world, we have to be, we are in. intentionally disoriented because we don't know which way is up. And for as much as Dominic Cooper's character, as much as the preacher, seems to be coming from a place of good faith and wanting to do good works, he's not that good.

And he's not, he doesn't seem that concerned with the enormous power he's suddenly wielding as we, as we learn at the end of this most recent episode. No, if anything, he seems aroused by it. Yeah. Yeah. And we got to say, I mean, Dominic Cooper is, is a, he's a great big shining star. I mean, he is so charismatic in this part.

and just his, and they, it's funny because I don't imagine, like many actors, he doesn't strike me as an enormous physical presence, but he's very, very, very intense presence on camera. And he sort of menaces and looms in a way that is pretty interesting for a, you know, for a guy wearing a collar. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. So I wanted to end it on just kind of a larger note, which is that the last time I checked, and I don't, I don't want to say this erroneously, but I was talking. I was just looking at the numbers before I came in. It does seem like the ratings, at least the more traditional ratings, have started somewhere in the one and a half million range and then have kind of steadily gone down.

And almost in response to that, it seems like AMC announced that there will be a 13 episode second season. Where is your head at in terms of where this show is as a business proposition? is this an example of what FX does, which is when they find something that people are talking about, even if it's just a small amount of people, but are talking about it passionately, and you get to maintain a relationship with people like Seth Rogen

and Evan Goldberg and Sam Cattlin. Do you just double down and say, you know what? We will wait for people to find this show and catch up on it and get the Breaking Bad slingshot out of the second season. I think all the points you're making are the right ones. I think the first thing to say is in 2016, this is a pretty decent debut season in terms of ratings. I think they're probably pretty happy with it. I mean, you made a reference before to the announcement of Halden Catch Fires third season,

and I am so excited about that show coming back in August. First run episodes of that show's brilliant second season were getting like 400,000 viewers, and that got a third season. So the numbers game is certainly not what it used to be. I think the other thing that AMC would look at would be who makes up those one 1.5 million viewers. And I'm sure they are overwhelmingly young in exactly the type of demographic that they want to have and the kind of demographic that they want to carry over from the Walking Dead demo. Like they can they can pretty easily cross-pollinate and cross-advertise those shows

on their Sunday night and have a nice little ecosystem that viewers will will gravitate to. But you cannot discount this other point that you're making, which I think is really the key one, which is they want to be in business with these three guys. I mean, they want to have these three stars on their air too because they can promote them. and I think they're also betting on the fact that all of them, maybe more than anyone else, Ruth Nega is about to be a bigger star. Yeah.

But we made that comment about Rizama last week or earlier this week with Knight of where it's like, enjoy him now before he is in blockbusters or top lining a very big show soon. Same thing for Ruth Naga. And also just look at Joseph, Joseph Gilgan on this show.

He is so charming, effortlessly charming. His line readings, I mean, I can't imagine they're more. than one take he's so good um you know when you see something popping off the screen like that you want to invest in it but but your point about the people who make the show i think is he used to be on misfits in england uh this is england 90 he was on the last witch witch hunter he has a thing in but he was on miss fits wasn't that with uh with ramsie bolton yeah it's uh it's quite a quite a

jv squad they had on he was on coronation street and emmerdale so he's got that going for him shouts, so you are an Anglophile while you're making the, or you're investing in the British pound. But when I, so when I was, I talked to, to Joel Stillerman, who's the head of AMC a couple months ago, and he was very enthusiastic about the preacher pilot. And then when I spoke to him, what would really got him excited, what he was most excited about was the fact that he'd just seen the rough cuts of

episode two. And for him, and I think for most people in TV, you know, anybody, not anybody, but many people can make a, make a pilot. He was really impressed that Rogan and Goldberg were able to rein in what they wanted to do and direct a second episode with, you know, in a faster schedule with a lower budget. So I think they're very high on them as creators. And I mean, and Catlin learned from the best. You know, the fact that he's involved in it makes it very clear that it's not just a vanity project from Hollywood types or movie types who are going to be too busy doing other things. So I'm just excited there's a show that is fun to watch like this.

And, you know, you notice we've been having this conversation and we've talked about how we're confused by stuff, but we don't care. Right? Like that's sort of a weird place to be, but it's fun. I don't mind going on this ride every week. It's very enjoyable. It's not the same thing as Thrones where you know that you need to know who everybody is and what everything means and what it, you know, family ties there are. This is just, it feels a little bit more like the, it feels more like, you know, you're driving with the top down and the seatbelt's off. Not that I recommend doing that, which is not, you don't do that.

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by visiting www.counter.com slash BSPN and using offer code BSPN terms and conditions apply. Hey guys, Andy here to talk to you about one of our sponsors, Indochino. You guys, Indochino is reinventing men's fashion. They will give you a made-to-measure suit. Do you know what that is? I feel like that's what the word bespoke means. That's the word I've been using for years, but I never actually got to experience it until I went down to the Indochino showroom here in New York City.

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I don't have mine yet, but I've been watching it be made, and that's sort of fun to do. You can't go wrong with a well-crafted 100% Reno Wool suit. There's a money-back guarantee, so here's the thing, guys. All of the listeners of the watch can get any premium suit for just $39.9. That's up to 50% off at Indochino.com when you enter the promo code, watch at checkout. Plus, shipping is free. There's no reason not to try it with a deal this good. A classic suit from the premium collection will look good, feel good,

And last, plus, as I said before, it's super fun to do. That's Indochino.com promo code watch for any premium suit, just $399 in free shipping. Indochino is your look, your way. Be spoke! Okay, so we wanted to talk a little bit because we've been getting questions about book recommendations and the Double Down Book Club, which is something that dozens of people know about. It's me and Andy's crime fiction book club. I think sometimes we venture into more literary pursuits, but we like to keep it. keep it pretty pretty street pretty i don't know what i'm saying that that's accurate across the board

we like to keep it pretty street no we like to keep we like to keep a genre based but uh we we're trying to figure out like the best way to talk about it this summer because summer is the time of reading i don't know if you know that summer reads and we didn't really know so we pick a book that we all read together and talk about should we recommend a bunch we could do both yeah we and we have this tumbler that we haven't updated in years, which is snitchbutlers.tumbler.com where we were sort of throwing up little pieces or little links to some of our favorite writers. But I got to say this week was so flattering to me because we were getting these images from people's bookshelves that people had actually listened to us and bought Marlon James, brief history of seven killings, Ryan Gaddis is all

involved, novels by Ross Thomas, my favorite writer of all time. Just, you know, anything that we even mentioned passing, Jean-Claude Izzo in his Marseille novels. This was so cool. Yeah, total chaos. we would like to continue this somehow, I guess. And so we are crowdsourcing because we always want to talk about books, but we aren't sure the best way to do it going forward. And yes, we do know that we have promised like two years ago that we would pick up the last book in Justin Cronin series, which just came out, City of Mirrors.

I think Chris and I were both a little burned by the second book Justin Cronin's vampire trilogy. So we were a little dubious. We've gotten a somewhat shaky review from our buddy, Zach Barron, who described a 50-page passage about gardening that it's making me a little hesitant. But the bigger picture is we want to be servicing here. We want to keep talking about books, but unlike TV shows, books are, you know, books are sometimes a bigger commitment. And sometimes people don't want to hear about them until they've read them also.

So how much in depth should we get about them? We're throwing open the doors inside the process. We're welcoming you all into the tent. So maybe tweeted us and let us know the best way to do it. and we'll take it from there, right? What are you reading right now? You're stuck in a rereading hole, right? No, no, no.

I'm rereading this novel about Vietnam War called Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien, which is something I wrote when I was in college. But for the most part, I've been reading, I know, I did a little bit of the Jeffrey Van Damir trilogy, authority, and... Oh, annihilation, the Southern Reach trilogy. I was thinking we should do that together, but I got bogged down on the third one. Yeah, maybe we should rock that. Then there's a couple of things, but we'll put together a list.

Maybe take some suggestions from the peeps and until Monday. But before we jump off, Chris, I have to ask you something. Oh, this is just two pals talking. I was curious because you said you're rereading something. Is this Eckhart related? It could be, but it would be a stretch. I wanted to ask you something because you just said that you are rereading a Tim O'Brien book that you read in college.

Now, prior to that, I know you were back on a Don DeLillo jag and you were rereading a bunch of DeLillo novels. I am a little scared to revisit Don DeLillow because, all these, I went through this period in college where I was like, I'm going to read only contemporary American writers. And I was reading Don DeLillo and Madison Smart Bell and Paul Oster. And I was getting super into them and I loved them. And then I haven't read any of them since. And I have no idea what I really think of them because I think I may have been pretty dumb back then.

So I don't know what I read or didn't read. So I'm almost scared to go back. It turns out Don DeLillo is still pretty good. Oh, word? Yes. That is that our hot take of the week? Yeah, he's still good. I'm not selling his stock.

The one that I would actually recommend if people are like, oh, I would read a Delillo book, which one, Running Dog is his Ross Thomas novel. It is his crime espionage novel that he wrote in the 70s. It's set in New York. It's fantastic. Maybe I'll go back to that. I have not read that since I was 20. So maybe that's something we could all. We could all do together, gang.

I don't know. But anyway, tweet at us. We'll think about it. It's the summer of DeLillo. Don't everybody get in line at once. Just pink wines in the novels of Dondolillo, American Master. Andy, I don't know what we're talking about Monday, but I can't wait. Oh, no, we're not, because it's Monday is July 4th.

So July 4th, there's a special episode of the watch that I recorded with Joe House going up about D.C. Punk Rock, of all things. Very cool. I'm not joking. I'm excited about that. So we'll do a re-up next week. But we'll do a re-up next week, right? Yeah. Okay, great.

Until then. Happy Independence Day, Branskies. Have a good one.