The Watch - ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral,’ ‘The Boys,’ and a Conversation With ‘Mindhunter’ Season 2 Director Carl Franklin | The Watch

Episode Date: August 16, 2019

‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ misses the mark tonally, but still has redeeming moments (1:00). A conversation with Sean Fennessey about the surprisingly gritty superhero show, ‘The Boys’ (10:13), and an interview with Carl Franklin, one of the directors for ‘Mindhunter’ Season 2 (26:09). Host: Chris Ryan Guests: Sean Fennessey and Carl Franklin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer podcast network. Season 2 of HBO Succession is back, and The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Jason Concepcion are here to give you the latest in Roy family drama. Every Sunday night, they'll be breaking down what we just saw on our new show called Number One Boys, A Succession After Show. You can tune in live on the ringers Twitter every Sunday night right after the episode ends. I ain't 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. Today on the podcast, we may or may not get an

Andy Greenwald cameo, but I believe that Andy's news that he teased on Monday was going to be the announcement that Briar Patch will be showing at the Toronto International Film Festival. I could not be prouder of Andy. You know, as a guy we all know in love and who watches most of his movies on airplanes, I know that it was his dream in life to be seen at the Toronto International Film Festival. But sincerely, it's really, really cool. that Breyer Patch is going to be at Toronto. There's always so much good stuff there. So to see his work getting recognized there is incredible.

Maybe he'll be able to call in and chat a little bit about it. Today, you know, for these Thursday shows, what I wanted to do was talk a little bit about, like, kind of run through, you know, TV and review. What's on right now? What are we checking out? I have Sean coming on. Sean Fantasy is going to join me in a few minutes.

And we're going to talk a little bit about the boys, which is on Amazon, which a lot of people have been hitting me up on social media to check out and I finally did and it was a so far it's been a very satisfying experience. I wanted to chat a little bit. I have nobody to talk about it with so I'm just going to stare at Kyle while I do it, which I'm sure is super cool for her. Is Four Weddings and a Funeral on Hulu which is one of those weird things. You know, because like I think that I'm always kind of tempted to put these shows into like buy or sell or you know check it out or just completely eject it. I would say that I have like

a low-grade addiction to this show, partially driven by my wife, who seems more engaged with it than I am. But for those who guys who don't know, this is Mindy Kaling's adaptation of a very beloved, gosh, I guess it's like a 90s film, 90s British movie. The television adaptation is on Hulu.

It's set in London. It stars Natalie Emanuel, who many people know from Game of Thrones. And it's essentially about a group of friends who are living, in London, some are American, some are British. And the sort of structure is supposed to be four weddings and a funeral.

And there are those things. But for the most part, it is your typical group of people in their late 20s, early 30s, living in a city together, falling in and out of love, coupling up. I think this show is trying to do a lot. And it's fine, because, like, I'm obviously, like, I'm pot committed.

You know, I think the first batch of episodes have gone up on Hulu. They might have actually, I think what they did was release a section, and then they're going to do some more weekly releases going forward. It's obviously something that I feel like has been through kind of like a process developmentally, like in terms of like what it was supposed to be

because there's some tonal shifts. Sometimes there's a competition to decide within the show who is important and who we're paying attention to. It's interesting. I think that as these streaming shows go forward, you're going to see a lot of scripts that might have been meant for weekly releases as a 22-minute show that now get expanded to 45-minute episodes

that are released all at once. And the way in which we watch these shows can really change how we feel about them. Now, I think that there are some inherent structural problems to fordings in a funeral. And of course, some of it might just be that it's not always my jam, but I actually am a pretty big rom-com fan.

I don't know if you guys know that about me, but I'm kind of a sap. So I'm definitely game for a 10-episode romantic comedy from Mindy Kaling set in London. I'm all for that. And there are some really nice comedic turns here and there in the show. Natalie Emanuel, who I believe is British, is playing an American in this show, which I don't know if she shows the accent fine,

but has kind of a thankless role. It has to live a lot of this show doing things in secret. So a lot of her character is basically try to hide things from people. I think that people will be surprised when they come across this show because it has a little bit more melodrama than I. I think most people would expect from it. Not that Four Wings in a funeral wasn't melodramatic

and it's an original inception, but I think the way that people have kind of approached Mindy's stuff in the past is that it's kind of a riff on comedic tropes that she loved growing up as is like in 2019, a lot of things do wind up being pastiche. I don't really find this to be too pastichey.

I think that it just feels like a show that we should, by the time you get to like mid-first season, you're almost like, this feels like something that should be happening. in the third season of a television show. And it's kind of hard to explain what I mean by that without giving away major plot points. And to this show's credit,

there are actually things happen, like characters get married, characters die, what have you. But tonally, it's kind of hard. And comedy is hard, anyway. But it's kind of interesting to see sometimes it's very broad satire of pop culture and sometimes it's supposed to be very heartfelt.

And I find it interesting to watch them grapple with that and to watch them grapple with what kind of show it wants to be. By all accounts, it's supposed to be a limited series. So I don't know that they'll ever get a chance to take another swing of the pinata. But it is an interesting, like, if you like rom-coms, I can see it being the kind of thing that you're like, I've watched four episodes and now I have to finish it to find out what happens. In a lot of ways, tone is the front and center of the conversation I want to have with Sean about the boys, which is something that has been in development for a really a long time. As a feature, it's a

Garth Ennis comic, and it had been I think since the mid-2000s people have been talking about making this. Columbia was talking about making it as a feature. And obviously, the world of content has changed enough so that you can have something like The Boys, which is run by

Eric Kripke, but has also input from Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg and Dan Tractenberg, who made 10 Cloverfield Lane. And it essentially looks like a movie. I mean, it basically feels like a, like they spent a ton of money on this. There are some cheesy special effects, but for the most part, it's kind of like Hollywood grade superhero filmmaking, but really

raunchy, very cynical. And I'm going to talk to Sean a lot about the tone that this show strikes. So coming up, my conversation with Sean about the boys. And then the back half of this podcast will be my conversation with the great filmmaker Carl Franklin. Carl Franklin made one of my favorite movies of all time called One False Move with Bill Paxton and Michael Beach and Billy Bob Thornton. That was back in like 92, I think. And since then, he also made Devil in a Blue Dress, which is a adaptation of a Walter Mosley novel starring Denzel Washington, which is fantastic. And he's gone out to become one of the sort of most dependable, reliable, and ever-present television directors of the last 10 years. You can find his work on Homeland and the Newsroom and leftovers

and tons of other stuff. And Carl Franklin is one of the directors. working on Mindhunter's season two. It is Mind Hunter's season. It's back. It's back on Friday. You may not know that because it's been a pretty quiet buildup. In fact, there has not really been any buildup.

I have gotten a chance to see a couple of episodes. It comes out on Friday, so by the time you're probably listening to this, you'll have access to Mind Hunter. I talk to Carl Franklin about working with David Fincher, about coming on to a program that's already kind of established its visual language and how he learns that language

and what he does with that. And it was a really fascinating conversation with a veteran, veteran filmmaker, and it gives you a taste of what's coming on Mind Hunter in the second season. There are no spoilers in the conversation with Carl Franklin. So enjoy that.

Check it out once you've watched a few episodes. Check it out before you watch a few episodes. I'm pretty into this second season from what I've seen. I think it's pretty, it's different than the first season. It feels, I know this is going to sound like a weird way to describe a show that was already pretty detail-obsessed, but it feels very granular. A lot of the drama is submerged under people doing their work

in a very, very specific way and in a very procedural way. I don't mean that like a CSI way. I mean, you're literally almost feeling like the script sometimes feels like it's transcripts of people talking about their work. So it takes a little bit of getting used to in terms of like how the dialogue is happening because it's very, very, very matter of fact. But I think just like the first. time where people had to get used to watching

the first few episodes of Mind Hunter before it really took flight in mid-season. I think that's happening again, and I think that they reckon with some of the stuff that people thought was kind of glossed over in the first season, it's almost less atmospheric and more straight on, head-on,

dealing with what causes this violence, what this violence does to its victims, and what it does to the people whose job it is to investigate it and to explain it. It's kind of a fascinating investigation. It's not sensationalistic.

It's not particularly funny. I mean, it's not particularly like, it's very, very, very direct. And I'll be really curious to see how people feel about it, especially since Netflix hasn't done a lot of promo around it. There's like a teaser trailer. Episodes were not really sent out wide. And, you know, I think it's going to be a fascinating response.

So I'm curious to see. what people think of Mindhunter's season two. We'll be talking about that next week. Jason C. and I are going to be talking about it. We'll also obviously have more succession stuff next week. So let's get into my conversation with Fennacy about the boys. And then later with Carl Franklin about the next season of Mind Hunter. And I will talk to you guys on Monday.

So now I'm joined by Fennacy. Sean, I was just in my opening statement, my monologue. You went Jim Rome. I did. I just got into the jungle. I was talking a little bit about Four Weddings and a Funeral, the Hulu adaptation. I hear that's not great. It's not great.

And I think a lot of it is like, it's got an uncertainty about what the tone of the show is supposed to be. Okay. And shows don't necessarily have to have a monochromatic tone. But I think that the boys is an example of something that whether you like it or not, it definitely, definitely, definitely knows what it is. Certainly. Yeah. And this is obviously, it's nasty, it's cynical. So let's talk a little bit about this. This is obviously a graphic novel from Garth Ennis. It's gone through a relatively long development period where I think since 2008 people have been. been trying to like get into this to make this. Goldberg and Rogan made this with Dan Tractonberg, who has made one of my favorite Black Mirror episodes, Playtest, and also directed 10 Clover Field Lane,

which I think personal favorite of mine. It's still really rock solid watch. Really great thriller. And this is like a super gritty story. So like the basic premise, if you don't already know, is this is on Amazon, hour long episodes, and it is a world in which there has essentially been an corporatization of superheroes, that there are super-abled people,

about 250 at least known in the first few episodes at least. We're going to be talking about the first two episodes. And there is a corporation, Vought, Voight. Is it Voight? I think it's Vaught. There's a corporation called Vought that sort of runs the world's superheroes. They are almost like a fully integrated, you know,

mega-corp that handles their personal appearances, their licensing deals, their actual crime fighting up down to the analytics that they provide for the heroes. But as we are quickly made aware of, these heroes are pieces of shit. Yeah. Vaughn is kind of like Google. Yeah. Or a Bezos kind of empire, a kind of one-stop shop for all the things that you may need. And I was, I think you and I both kind of waited a little while to watch this show.

I don't know why, even though it's kind of in my wheelhouse. Yeah, I think I have probably coming out of the song. and all of the conversations that we've had about superhero content over the last the first seven months of this year I was like I'm good for superheroes for just as long as I can nab a break right and also I think at this point I've kind of like got my my fill of like even the hey but this is like the cynical anti-superhero take or what if superheroes were bad or what if superheroes were human like us and so I was just kind of like I'm all good I don't need to kind of like interrogate this idea anymore.

So, I mean, this is how you know that we're in stage three of superheroes as the most important cultural force in the world right now. Stage one was, oh, wow, Spider-Man. Right. This is a huge movie and it looks good and it feels cool. Stage two is Marvel runs everything. Stage three is we can try anything and it just might work. So stage three is Todd Phillips is Joker.

stage three is the boys. Stage three is Deadpool. Stage three is iterative. Did stage three start with Suicide Squad? I think it's Deadpool is really the signal change, where things can be a little bit nastier, a little bit darker. We can continue to include the concepts of prestige and even problematic storytelling into something that otherwise was meant to be very idealistic.

And then we've seen this before. We've seen this with Westerns before, where you got, you have your, your classic sort of Roy Rogers, like there's the shiny, like perfect hero, then you start to get slowly and slowly until you get like full-blown anti-hero with peck and paw. This is the peck and pop period. And that's what they're doing here. So this, so while you have, um, you know what that means, though, right? What's coming next? It means this is almost over. Well, that is what that, usually that's what that means. Or are we just going to start again? Are we going to keep having

superheroes, but we're just going to have to be like, what we need is a really idealistic, believable, like, superhero that we can all, like, invest in. Possibly. There'll probably be something about the political climate of the world that dictates some of that stuff, too. I do think traditionally with various genre types, the more corrosive they get, the closer they are to expiration in terms of being at the forefront of the American imagination. Are you predicting a sunset for the superhero era?

I've been talking and writing about that for a while. I think that's not... I thought you were kind of more like get used to it. This is not going anywhere. It's not going anywhere because they're still making westerns. Right. It just means it's not going to be the most pervasive thing forever. It can't be.

I talked on the big picture a little bit about how the Lion King feels actually much more important for the future of movies or the way that we're going to tell stories and the fact that Avatar is going to be the franchise of the next 10 years, theoretically, if those movies are any good and people care. Because the way that those movies are literally created is what movies might become. Not dependent on whether or not Donald Glover is that. there or not. No star system whatsoever. So that isn't a judgment on the boys.

Okay. Which I thought was pretty cool. Yeah. So here's my relationship so far with some of the stuff. I would say a lot of the stuff that Evan Goldberg and Seth Rowan do, which I would count myself as a fan of. Preacher lost me a little bit. But I would say that initially what happens is in Preacher and the boys, I'm like, man, 15-year-old me would really like this.

Totally. And I'm just like, my relationship to the movie, or the show that I'm watching is, what is my relationship to my 15-year-old self at any given moment? Well, that's a very good question. I actually did read Preacher when I was a teenager, so it was easy to make that connection.

I think actually some of the straying from the preacher text is what made me lose Preacher. They took a lot of chances with that show, which I appreciate and admire, but for whatever reason I couldn't connect with it. This one, I think, is much more relevant to the moment. It seems to be responding specifically to the last phase that we just talked about

that we just experienced. Right. And it also makes sense because it's a great treatise on celebrity, you know, and what we think our celebrities are and what they really are. Yeah, and they have, there is definitely a, we were just talking on the big picture, actually,

about whether or not movies can keep up with societal change and whether or not they can be truly reflective of a moment in society. Television, I think, theoretically, should be able to be a little bit more nimble. The boys feels kind of like accurate, but a little bit like older guys trying to understand social media

and some of its portrayals of celebrity. I think this show ultimately for me is working because I really like the performances in it. Jack Quaid plays this guy Huey who's just like a poor schnuck working in an AV store and like a radio shack, which is kind of funny because like it suggests a little bit of the 2008 nature of this

that there even is like, job at a radio shack anymore. And he, because of a tragedy, kind of finds himself at loose ends and gets hooked up with a sort of mysterious possible law enforcement agent played by Carl Urban. The character's name is Billy Butcher. Very subtle. What does he call him? Like, you look like a porn version of The Matrix or something?

Yeah, a porn version of Neo. Yeah. And I really enjoy their repartee and their relationship. And then on the other side, the superhero side, we're all. Our sort of access point is through this character played by Aaron Moriarty, who I think it's just kind of like really charming and really interesting. Great actor, yeah. And she's playing a character named Starlight.

That's her superhero name. And she comes from Iowa to join this collection of superheroes, like this kind of Justice League and quickly finds out that they're just fucking dirtbags. And it's a really smart, interesting way of doing this. And so far I've just been really engaged with the characters, the plot lines you're kind of like I get it, I see where this is going. Also, Elizabeth Shue plays

sort of the head of the corporation and doing it. Nice job there, yeah. The Aaron Moriarty character is definitely the best part. At least from what I've seen, you and I are only very early into the show. You know, as you know at this point, the first two really matter

because they dictate whether we keep going and I'm going to keep going. Yes. And I think that they have a chance to take a lot of risks with what they do with her. I mean, they basically put her in a kind of sexual misconduct plotline very early in the show. Yeah.

And there's something interesting about that. It's putting those, putting a superhero context on a very tricky story to tell in the real world is fascinating. That's not something that you saw in Shazam or an Aquaman or in Ant Man in the Lasp. You know, superhero stories are not yet at a place where they feel like they can approach those things. They can curse in Deadpool, but they can't actually try to apply real, life stakes to their stories. Well, because they also are like, Ryan Reynolds is like a viable property that we have to like keep.

There are rules that you have to play with movie stars that you don't have to worry about with Carl Urban at this point. Exactly. And that's why there is kind of a, there is kind of a C grade of fame here that I think actually works well for the show. Like Chase Crawford plays one of the superheroes. This character is called The Deep. You may recall Chase Crawford as the least good actor on Gossip Girl.

Wow. Shots. And he's... Do you buy that? Yeah. Oh, man. There you go. Thank you, Kaya.

He's good in the show, though. It's not, that's nothing against him. He is playing kind of a smarmy and inappropriate figure and not at all what he presents in public. We see him presenting in public. And then very quickly we see what he's like behind closed doors. And it's interesting that they're letting Starlight be an avatar for the downsides of fame in a lot of ways. And the downsides of like ascendant fame, you know, there's. It's not such a far leap to draw a parallel to like a Harvey Weinstein kind of a storyline and what she goes through.

Yeah. Which is interesting. You know, whether that's going to like make people as excited as they are about the next Spider-Man movie, I don't know. But I thought it was compelling. So one thing that when I say like the 15-year-old boy thing, I just think that like when you're like a hormonal teenager and you're reading comics, like your imagination of the action is like the comic frame kind of inspires you to think about like, what would that be like? if he was like running through a building. And I think that is the primary motivating, that is the sort of touchstone

that Rogan and Goldberg and Tractenberg kind of use it, especially in the first episode where it's just like shit explodes. Like people's bodies explode and like they're like, wouldn't it be sick if this? And then they actually show it. And that is, I think not stomach turning, but it can be probably off-putting for some people.

But I would say production value-wise is pretty high. It looks good. Yeah. Yeah, the show looks good. I liked that aspect that you're describing. The idea that if a Flash-esque character existed, like Atrain, yeah. Like Atrain in this show,

and he was running at the speed of light all the time through the streets of New York City, he might accidentally hit somebody and explode them. Yes. Yes. Now that's a very like late-stage, like late capitalism version of comic book writing, you know, where you're like,

what if we actually fucking took this apart and thought about what's really going on under the seams of superheroes, But it's pretty clever. That's exactly what you're, that is phase three. That is like thinking about like what would happen if translucent, the invisible man, was just like a sexual deviant who was just hanging out in bathrooms. And that's what Sam Peckinpa is doing in the Wildbunch.

He's like, if there was actually a bunch of vigilante bandits who went to Mexico, they would fucking kill everybody. They wouldn't be heroes, they would be murderers. And we're probably at that stage now with superheroes. and I for one welcome our new evil superhero overlords. So we'll keep our eye on the boys. I think we both kind of recommend it to people who are looking for like a different take

on the superhero genre. Yeah. Do you have a dead soul? You might enjoy this show. Well, it's like, it's also interesting too because like I was, I kept thinking of Hancock while I was watching this, which was this Pete Berg movie from about 10 years ago with Will Smith and Jason Bateman and Charlie's Throne,

which was, I think, in their mind, supposed to launch a franchise I don't know. I can't remember, but I feel like that was like and then we could do a sequel that's about the Charlize character. You know who wrote that, right? Who? Vince Gilligan.

Oh, I did not know that. And it was rewritten, and apparently the Vince Gilligan version is a lot closer to The Boys. Okay. Which is that it was a much more hard-edged superhero story. Okay. Well, if you're really craving it,

you can go dig that one out of the library. So, yeah, the Boys on Amazon. Thank you so much to Sean for dropping by. My pleasure. Coming up next is my conversation with Mind Hunter director, Carl Franklin. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Luminary. A new podcast subscription service with some of the best content around.

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That's Luminary.com slash watch for two months of free access, Luminary. dot link slash watch. Cancel any time. Terms applied. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by The Righteous Gemstones. What happens when the creators of Eastbound and Down and Vice Principles turn their attention to the world of televangelist preachers? Find out in The Righteous Gemstones coming to HBO this Sunday.

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The righteous gemstones is a hilarious and irreverent look at high living holy rollers whose world of mansions, jets, greed, and corruption belies their virtuous, godly mission. The half-hour comedy premieres this Sunday at 10 p.m. only on HBO. I'm so honored to be joined today by Carl Franklin, filmmaker, who's directed a couple of my favorite movies, actually. One False Move and Devil in a Blue Dress. well as a ton of television that Andy and I have talked about over the years, episodes of the newsroom, homeland, leftovers, bloodline, the dearly departed vinyl, 13 reasons why, on and on and on. And he joins a, if you'll forgive the pun, murderers row of directors this year on the second season of

Mindhunter. Carl, thank you so much for joining the watch. Hey, pleasure, pleasure. So tell me a little bit about how this, how joining the ranks of directors on Mindhunter starts. So you get a phone call from David Fincher? Is it something that you... Did you guys have a relationship before this happened? Well, we'd worked on House of Cards together.

Right. That's where I met David. A guy named John Melfy with... I guess he alerted David to me, and I did a couple of... Right. Yeah. And so when you're getting involved in a show with somebody like David and a show that has such a distinctive visual look like Mine Hunter,

can you tell me a little bit about the process of sort of, sort of matriculating into the creative and actual hands-on production of the show. Like, what happens for a director when you join something that's sort of midstream like this and you're saying, okay, I'm working in a language that's kind of already been established, a visual language that's already been established, but I'm bringing my own sensibility to it. How does that process work out? You kind of just actually describe. Yeah, I mean, he's sort of legendary for his meticulous and multiple takes and, you know,

getting everything exactly right in a frame, but I imagine television is a somewhat accelerated production schedule. For you, are you, you know, kind of like the Eastwood, let's get it in before lunch kind of guy? Do you like to do lots of takes? What kind of sensibility do you bring on the day of shooting? I kind of, you know, I think whatever it is necessary. I used to do a like on Steven Soda. He views himself as a graffiti artist. So in some ways, you know, I kind of feel a little like that. For me, when I gained by doing more, David, a lot of the things that he's developed, we were

using the plate van to get down. He and his DP, but his two DPs actually developed that technique. So this is a guy who basically, very detail-oriented. And you feel that. And you kind of time that even though

it's a technique to be operating, that... Yeah, it feels almost immersive, right? Especially in the second season, just watching the few episodes so far. the level of attention to set design, to costume design, to the seats on an airplane, or everything like that. Like, you just wind up kind of forgetting it's there, but knowing that it's having a deep impact on what you're watching.

Absolutely. No, no. I mean, I think that's pretty evident from what I've been watching is that it's really about the psychological toll of being mired in this, right? Yeah, and somehow it actually, I think is more true to the feeling. Very, when you read this thing about human beings, yeah, there's that, there's...

I thought it was fascinating the way that they handle the different processes that Tench and Ford kind of go through to grapple with that kind of trauma. Holt's character tends to like kind of hold stuff at bay and kind of try to keep the darkness from the edge. And then Holden is kind of allowing himself to be vulnerable to all that. And you get, you really get a feel for the different ways that people

process this kind of stuff in the world. It's a, but in the same way that you're talking about where there's a lot of like, there's a lot of space and, and quiet around these characters so that you're really able to live in it. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about, you know, growing up, did you have much of, uh, understanding or, or knowledge of, of, of, of, of, of, of BTK, of the Atlanta child murders of Son of Sam, like as you were growing up? No, I did not. BTK until I was...

I think was it 77? Yeah, I think so. I guess, 77. So I was aware of that because for some reason, that seemed to have gotten a lot more coverage than a BTK, as I remember. Yeah, I mean, that was the New York Post and everything, you know, because it had the whole engine of New York media behind it, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. Remembered anything. And so in terms of like the historical accuracy to the times and just sort of following along in that way, what are the kind of things that the writing staff and the production staff do to kind of maintain sort of historical integrity when making the show?

You know, I think in wardrobe, of course, you know, they're very meticulous about, you know, making sure that there's accuracy there. Not being an overly aggressive camera that that allows 70. Sure. You know, the camera. camera wasn't as musket piece. Sure.

Because David is going to get past. So I think one thing our listeners would be really interested in is understanding the flow of how a season of TV like this is kind of coming together. So when you're shooting your episodes, obviously, maybe some will be blocked by location and maybe, you know, there's posts going on on different episodes while you're shooting yours and vice versa. Can you tell us a little bit about the journey, not necessarily the narrative plot points of what you were working on, but like you come in, are David and Andrew editing, or is David on set?

Do you have kind of meetings with those guys to talk about what you're working on and making it all coherent throughout? Well, what's that process like? And we, you know, I had actually seen, had read all, I read all the scripts for anything that I can see that's been seeing anything before I came on this time. Okay. You know, David would cut up and then he's gone. He was not, you know, he was, you know, I'm not sure what.

But at any rate, he was, he's typically not on set a whole lot, you know, on your set, shooting. Think again, taking it in a direction. Remember us ever... You know, you've worked so much in television over the last few years, and I was just wondering, as somebody who's such a veteran of acting and of directing for features and directing on TV, one of the things we talk about on this podcast so much is this sort of ever-changing landscape of where really interesting filmmaking is happening.

And I was curious if you had any thoughts about the sort of abundance of opportunity, but the impossibility of knowing whether or not what you're making is necessarily going to be found or seen because there's so much stuff out there right now. And, you know, you came from making something small and very special to a lot of people, like one false move and have had such a long and story career. I was curious how you read the sort of landscape now. Well, you know, it's kind of like a goal rush, isn't it? Yeah.

And I kind of knew this was going to happen on the entire season. And I actually was concerned. I thought, you know, people were wedded to their, and their nights, when they got a bit of a needle, you know, the needles still in their arm. Yeah.

And they still basically are looking, you know, hard to keep up with, with, you have to just, you know, comes in your radius because it's just so don't get a chance to see everything anyway. Yeah.

Because there's just, know that it, that it's, yeah, it certainly seems like, Even if it's harder to concentrate and find stuff, it's the amount of stuff and the specialness of the stuff is just getting more and more defined. It is. Yeah, it's really interesting to go from, like you were saying, the idea of building your Wednesday night around watching Lost to building your Wednesday night around watching three or four episodes of something.

Yeah. Yeah. Carl, thank you so much for calling in Mindhunter's Season 2 is streaming now on Netflix. I couldn't think of a more perfect fit for this show, and I really appreciate you calling into the pot. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by The Righteous Gemstones. Do not miss the righteous gemstones this Sunday night on HBO. From the team behind Eastbound and Down and Vice Principles comes the story of a popular megachurch slash money-making enterprise, starring Danny McBride as a bad boy preacher, Jesse Gemstone, John Goodman as the family patriarch, Eli,

and Adam Devine and Edie Patterson as the younger gemstone siblings. The Righteous Gemstones premieres Sunday at 10 p.m. only on HBO.