The Watch - Is the X-Men Franchise Relevant Anymore? Plus, the Creators of ‘High Maintenance’ | The Watch

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

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Today I was joined by my good buddy, Sean Fennacy, filling in for Andy, and Sean dropped by to talk about that. forgotten of blockbuster superhero franchises, the X-Men. X-Men, Dark Phoenix is coming out in June. I kind of didn't even really think about that or remember it. We've talked so much about what we're anticipating in 2019 over the last few episodes. And somehow X-Men kind of flew under the radar,

but a trailer came out this week. So I had Sean come by to talk about the kind of story of this franchise, which spans decades, numerous movie stars, numerous directors, and is now at this crossroads where Disney is going to, to come into ownership, essentially, of the X-Men IP. And we'll see what happens with that, and whether this is the end of something or the beginning of something.

Who knows? We just got to talk about Jennifer Lawrence. Continuing to be mystique. What happened there, J-Law? I was also joined in the second half of this episode by the creators of high-maintenance, Ben Sinclair, and Katia Blickfeld. And they were really awesome.

We talked about just where this show has come from since when it was like a Vimeo web series to now, which it's completing its third series on HBO in just a couple weeks. And it's been a great season, season three. So stick around for that. We'll be back on Monday with another episode of The Watch. Thanks for listening. 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. And joining me in the studio, it's the real age of apocalypse. It's Sean Fantasy. Whoa, what's up, what's up, Chris? How are you doing?

I've just been thinking a lot about the X-Men, as I do. I wanted to bring Sean on, I mean, I wanted to just see how he was doing after what was a marathon award season push. Yes. And I thought we could just go Green Book Shot for Shot here. Is that cool? Sure, yeah. Well, I've been studying it closely. I do three rewatches every night since August, since last August.

So I've seen it about 3,000 times. You're doing like a Tofer Grace recut? Yeah. I'm doing like the Francois Truffo Hitchcock book on Green Book, so I'm excited about that. Fantasy Fairly, I like it. Thank you. Sean is actually here because I was kind of trying to think of something to talk about today, and luckily, an X-Men trailer came out.

Luckily? Not even luckily. That's the thing, is X-Men Dark Phoenix trailer came out directed by Simon Kinberg, who's been sort of the kind of behind-the-scenes creative showrunner, almost, of this saga in the last, say, 10 years, ever since they kind of started rebooting things with Michael Fastbender and James McAvoy, everybody else from Days of Future Past and everything.

And I forgot that this movie was coming out. Well, I think it's been delayed once now. Uh-huh. And the next X-Men movie after that, New Mutants, has been delayed twice now. Yes. So... To the extent we're not even totally certain

if that's actually coming. That was a... I think it will come out, but there's not a lot of fanfare about it. Right. And this is sort of strange, though, because Andy and I talk so much about franchise wars and like... Wait, who's Andy.

Andy's this guy who sometimes appears on the podcast and often will talk to me about my cooking regimen. No, but like Andy and I often talk about the major franchises and the ways in which DC or Marvel or Star Wars are kind of angling around. But we've kind of like, X-Men's sort of the forgotten blockbuster franchise. Even though, even at its worse, Apocalypse still did 500 million. at the box office. Yeah, those movies are still hugely successful.

It's just, I just don't think they're very good. Yeah. And that's tricky because I know for you and I particularly, we grew up as sincere X-Men fans, and we think that there's a lot of meaningfulness in those characters. Yes. So it's unfortunate that now as like what we think of as comic book movies are starting to really mature and starting to find new ways to tell their stories.

You know, there's been a lot of talk specifically about Thorragna Rock and Black Panther, but I would argue even movies like Aquaman and Deadpool are doing things that are way more sophisticated and interesting and just weird. Yes. And the X-Men movies feel like a relic from the past. They're like the Oakland A's. It's like everybody caught up. Like they had such like, they had a lead because the source material,

I think if I had to describe what makes the X-Men so appealing to me is that there's lots of comic books that are complete fantasies. And then there are lots of comic books that are keep you grounded kind of in your younger self, like say Spider-Man. But the X-Men when I was reading it in high school was the, first comic that made me, they introduced me to like adult themes. That made me feel like, oh, like I don't really know

what life is like because of what these people are going through. And you, you know, I would go on to learn that more through literature, but I always thought they were a great on-ramp to allegory. Yeah. You know, to like, to looking at understanding what the text is and then what the meaning is. You know, at least recently listened to you and Bill and Chuck talk about

reality bites. Yeah, yeah. And Bill's resistance to the guy who over-analyzes things. But I always thought comic books were this interesting way to think about society. Now that's like a pat way of thinking about this stuff now. We talk about comic book movies so much of what these characters represent. But X-Men more than anything was the thing that made me think about the idea of the outcast,

the person who doesn't fit in. It's so on the surface with those stories. And they seem so primed for this moment. And yet, I don't know, there's something like base line about it. These movies are also a really interesting lens through, which to think about the movie industry in terms of movie stars and also the movie business in terms of the way in which these properties kind of get moved around in real. run by different people. It was something that was a huge success for Brian Singer earlier in his

career and then is going to be one of the final chapters of his sort of career obituary where his stewardship of apocalypse kind of, I think somewhat goes hand in hand with the Bohemian Rhapsody story of just kind of, it sounded like Apocalypse was a troubled production, and then obviously Bohemian Rhapsody was an incredibly troubled production. Fox kept it a little bit more under lock and key during apocalypse. Yes. But some of the issues of him just not showing up on shoot days, there were. were a lot of rumors and reports about what may or may not have happened on those sets.

Right. And then there's also the really interesting thing. I mean, we joke a lot about Chris Evans' nine picture deal or different people in the MCU having like these huge contracts that they have to fulfill over the years. Like Kobe Smallers is probably going to, she's got the Bryce Harper deal. Yep. But I think Jennifer Lawrence does too. Well, that's what I was getting to. It's like the legitimately like just shocking. I can't think of an analog, but it's like how shocking it is to see. Jennifer Lawrence be the fifth name on the call sheet in an X-Men movie.

And obviously, I think, without spoiling anything, I mean, it's spoiled in the trailer. The indication is that she is released from her duties. She may be sacrificed. Yeah. But it's, if you kind of think about it, it's like basically like, what if after pretty woman, Julia Roberts was like the fifth person, she dies in like the first scene of Mission Impossible? I can't even explain like how weird it is to see. Somebody who's supposed to be the biggest female movie star in the world among them.

And it's just like, I stand next to Michael Fastbender for 50% of this movie. It's not just that she signed a bad deal. It's the terms under which she signed it. So I was so struck watching the Dark Phoenix trailer to see her and her ex-boyfriend Nicholas Holt both unrecognizable and blue face paint. I was like, this is absurd. They've chosen to cast these beautiful people. And they have buried them underneath these characters who, candidly, like, are not top five or even top 10 X-Men.

characters? Like, Beast is important. Mystique is not that important. No, it was like a, I don't know what that was. Like, was that a pre-Hunger Games deal that she signed? I think so. Wound up being bad and that they just couldn't get her out of. Or maybe there was a point where she was like, maybe I'll do a Mystique movie.

But there's almost something about the blue face paint that makes me think, like, she was like, what can we do so that this is not searchable on Google image? So that when people are looking for pictures of me, they're not like, oh, yeah, she was in that fucking X-Men movie. Yeah, yeah. It's possible. I just, the funny thing about these movies is I think that the MCU has a very effectively, and to a lesser extent, the DCEU, I guess you'd call it, has made stars of people who are sort of mid-tier hopefuls. And the X-Men movies has worked with a lot of true blue stars. You know, Michael Fastbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, this is even in the second generation of people. Oscar Isaac, you know, Jessica Chastain is in Dark Phoenix. There are a lot of people who are recognizable names who have been big. stars kind of wasted and buried under what seemed like schlocky, circa 90s affectations of what movie making is, there's just nothing modern or there doesn't appear to be anything modern about Dark Phoenix.

And, you know, I think that my first reaction essentially was like, this is probably the last one of these movies we're really going to see because Disney, of course, bought Fox. Right. I think that that was the other thing I wanted to talk about a little bit was, you know, they did this initial, Brian Singer, Brett Ratner series of films with Patrick Stewart. And then there was some inter-period movies where you had the good and bad Wolverine movies. And then you've got the more recent ones that were started by Matthew Vaughn and then taken over by Brian Singer and now replaced by Kinberg that kind of cover this McAvoy Fastbender, Jennifer Lawrence, period. And Kinberg has talked about how, you know, what he wanted was basically to cap this X-Men iteration while also making some suggestions about what could happen in the future.

and Kimberg works on Star Wars and is like a Disney homie so I'm sure we're Disney to take over X-Men I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Kinberg was executive producing or running that. But it does seem like they are wrapping this up right at the time when MCU could use incredible arms out of the bullpen.

I agree. I think that it'll be interesting to see how much they pull from the new bench because casting somebody like Sophie Turner to play Gene Gray, I thought was pretty savvy and seemed like an on-ramp to the next generation. So that's not necessarily a bad idea. But if this movie is not successful, will they want to just scrap the entire cast and start over again, even if Kinberg is still involved, and bring in all new actors and then

integrate them into Wakanda and into the Thor universe, and to all the figures and, you know, Spider-Man and all the things that are actively working for MCU. I don't know. I think you're right that there may be a full-stop rebrand of the Avengers that includes like Wolverine and includes Deadpool and includes people that we didn't expect. There have been so many iterations of those superhero teams over the years and the comic books that there's more flexibility than you might think. I'm not really sure if they're going to keep them separate or apart or together.

That's also the thing that I think interests me as much as anything else about the about the prevalence of comic books in movie culture now because the rules of comic books are so much more loose than the rules of movies or at least the ones that we're used to. We're used to, you cast this person

and then I'm going to watch this person beat Batman for three movies. And now that's starting to break down a lot. That's starting to, you know, we're starting to see, like, the Warner Brothers guys are obviously like, nobody gives a shit

about our five-year plan if we can come with like a cool movie and Will Smith's just not going to be in suicide squad and James Gunn's just going to have a new suicide squad. I don't think anyone's going to care. They're taking a page out of the MCU though

insofar as they're going director first. They're saying, I want to work with James Gunn. I want to work with James Juan. I want to work with Todd Phillips. I want their vision of what these movies should be. Not our vision, but their vision of our characters. I think that's smart. I think also the X-Men could really use, you know, like a Tycho Waititi. They could use some experimentation. It's a Dower series. It's like a very like we're outsiders and we're ostracized and the world is ending. You know, I'm probably the biggest supporter of Deadpool, too, at this company. That's fair to say.

Deadpool 2, I thought was, and I acknowledge that it's like, it's not that important or that good. But I thought it was, frankly, like, the best X-Men movie I've seen since X-2. And it really was kind of an X-Men movie. It brought in a lot of characters. It was very clever about positioning itself inside of that universe. And that felt to me like a way forward for them. A little bit more self-referential, a little bit more carefree. Dark Phoenix does not seem to be that at all.

No, it seems very much up. It actually, like, if you watch the apocalypse trailer and then the Dark Phoenix trailer, they pretty much seem of a piece. Yeah, and the other thing that we haven't said is we've seen this movie already. Yeah. I mean, Brett Radner made this movie the last stand and it was bad, but he made it. And the idea that they're going back to something they've already done so soon, but not reinventing it in any meaningful way tonally or with characters,

they've just kind of recast some of the figures. I don't know. It just feels like a, it feels unnecessary, you know, for lack of a better word. Yeah, I mean, it's an aspect. asset. And you kind of have to get what you can out of the asset while you still have Jennifer Lawrence and Sophie Turner under contract. And I don't know how those contracts turn over when they go to, if they go to Disney and how Disney will use it. X-Men also, I think in its fans' conception of it is a little bit edgier than most of what Disney likes to put out. And

Bob Eager's talked about that where he's like, there's just simply things that we cannot do in a Disney movie. Like, you can't smoke in Disney movies. You can't do it. Alan Horn just talked about this. Yeah, Alan Horn said that. Yeah. That's a long-standing thing. I just think that those movies, they're going to have to figure out what the branding is for a Fox movie, what the branding is for a Disney movie,

whether they'll relaunch like a Buena Vista-style company where they'll put more adult fare. It's unclear how Disney is going to handle this mega-merger. What is your... Do you have a favorite X-Men movie? Logan. Yeah. Do you think that that was the closest they got to greatness?

I think I've watched... one and three, the first and third X-Men movies, more than I'll ever watch Logan. But I think that's about as, that is like up right beneath the Dark Knight tier for me in terms of how good a superhero movie can be. It's interesting. I feel like my mind has changed a lot on that.

I used to say that all the time, and I find those movies tough to watch now. Now some of it is just the general Brian Singer. Like Logan or the first ones? I love Logan. I love Logan. The early X-Men movies, I remember when X-2 came out, I was like, wow, they did it.

They made a comic book movie that I think is good. Yeah. And I saw it again recently and I was like, yeah. I can imagine those early comic book movies having like a really like bad replayability. They're very expository. Uh-huh. You know, they're very like, my name is Charles Xavier and I am a man who looks at Newton's and says, I see the future of the world. But the funny thing about that was like, that was back when they were like, nobody's going to know what these fucking people are.

That's true. It's understandable. We have to explain who the bald guy is. You're right. It's all contextual. And that helped make those movies successful. It helped bring in people who didn't care about the comic book. the way that we did.

Yeah. Okay, so that's coming out in June. And Andy and I have been talking a lot recently about things that we're anticipating. At this period, so it's at the end of February for you and you're only a week out of Oscars. People talk to me about the Oscars, like, I've just given birth or something.

Well, but if you see you, but like your, so Sean obviously has the Big Picture podcast. He does an awards, he did an awards pod with Amanda within the Big Picture feed and then would do an interview show and also do one-offs here and there about top five movies from different directors or, whatever. And so there was an incredible amount of labor going on. You're also

incredibly invested in a world in which only seven movies exist. Yeah, yeah. So what's it like when you get to the other side and you're like the world is your oyster, but also now there's like all this stuff. You mean, you're going to festivals coming up. You too. Yeah. I mean, you want to go behind the curtain on

this a little bit? I just kind of like, I have felt, I always feel relief at this time of year. Do you feel, is there like any kind of like postpartum depression here for you? You know, I genuinely like birth to the Green Book. You never premiered your character Johnny Green Book, unfortunately.

I feel like that guy was someone I was happy to break out in front of you and Amanda, but like just after Big Nick's tweets got canceled. Yeah, I felt like Johnny Greenbook was a guy that I was like, the guy in New Jersey was like, Green Book is a great movie.

It's essentially Mike Francesa too. Mike Francesa came along and did Johnny Greenbook? Mahershala? Mahershala. Look, this movie is a good movie. To answer your question, I like event movies, and I like when movies are events. And so I'm very excited to see Captain Marvel.

I don't know how good Captain Marvel will be. That's next week. It comes out next week. You and I just saw Triple Frontier. That's a Netflix movie, but I was like, this is an event to me. Yes. I'm very excited to see us at South by Southwest. I like the idea of sort of the weekly churn of movies.

I still feel like it is the most digestible and enjoyable and easy to eventize thing that we have in popular culture. I've been such a sincere fan of this podcast for so long. But it's so much harder for me now to have a tactile relationship to the things you guys are talking about not just because I'm seeing so many movies, but because there's so many shows. Yeah, of course. I mean, I have the folks from high maintenance on afterwards and not to go behind the curtain on that either, but even when I was talking to them about what the watch is, and I was like, yeah, it's changed a lot in the last two years

where I think, you know, three or four years ago, Andy would just pick a show and we would do pretty much every episode of that show for the season. And now it's like every week we're talking about whatever the new show is. And even in the next six weeks, between Killing Eve and everything else that's coming out in the next couple weeks, I think we'll probably wind up talking a lot about Killing Eve, but not in the way that we used to be like, let's just do Homeland Episode 4. Yeah. From the Hollywood perspective.

Yeah, yeah. And it's just changed a lot because the volume. The other thing that I like about the new movie stuff, too, and honestly, there are good movies coming out in January and February. Like, it's, the calendar stuff has changed so much the same way that it has in television. But, you know, just this morning, I talked to Sebastian Lelio, who made this movie called Gloria Bell, which is a remake of his own movie called Gloria. Okay.

He's a Chilean filmmaker. He won the Oscar for a fantastic woman a couple of years ago. Oh, yeah. And Gloria Bell stars Julian Moore. It's an 824 movie. It's a really nice, really well-made, thoughtful piece of work. And it's just arriving with, like, not a huge amount of fanfare, but it's just a very

good movie. And I'm excited to talk to people who did that stuff. You know, I've been talking about Black Klansmen for like nine months. That's what I'm saying. So I am ready to move on for the most part from that stuff. The Green Book thing I would actually would make the case that I could probably have a conversation about why Green Book won every week for another two months. Yeah, and I bet, honestly, the further we get from the radius of that night, that people will, because right now it seems like the dialogue is almost like, it all seems fake.

It's like, were there really guys out there who are like, don't tell me what to like? I'm going to vote for Green Book. It's impossible for us to know. I mean, there's just no way to essentially report on how this happened. On the show that Amanda and I do yesterday, I just said, I just won't release the votes. Just release the votes. I just don't know what the downside of that is other than essentially giving up some power to the public. But I think releasing the votes would be such an incredible scientific and cultural experience. for people to understand how this shit really works. And I think that that brings people closer to the Oscars. Even if they don't like Green Book.

And also, a lot of people do like Green Book. Yeah. And it's not even like release the ballots. It's just like release people, the numbers. You don't have to like expose people and be like, this guy who pretends to be woke actually voted for Bohemian Rhapsody or something. It's like just like to let's see the numbers, be curious. And I think everybody, the hardest thing for people to understand is the preferential ballot.

And you and Amanda did such a good job of explaining that over the couple weeks. But like it's the hard. hardest thing that someone like my mom, who's watched every Oscars for like 50 years, and still was like, oh, okay, didn't seem like anybody liked that movie, but I guess it won, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything else smaller, aside from the Captain Marvel, the endgame, us, the stuff that's coming out in the next couple of weeks that you're, if not already seen and want to recommend or that you're especially fired up about? I was entertained by the inventor out for Blood in Silicon Valley, which is our friends at HBO is putting out Alex Kee's.

putting out Alex Gibney's documentary. I believe that's March 16th. That's the story of Elizabeth Holmes and her fraudulent company, Theranos. So that's like not her real voice. No, that is her real voice. The baritone. That's like she didn't, she hasn't like changed that to like seem different. I don't believe so. I mean, there's no way for us to know. She's interviewed at length in the film. Okay. And she sticks to it. And that is the voice that she uses. What does she think of Green Book? Should I do Johnny Green Book, but as Elizabeth Holmes? Johnny Green Book Holmes. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good character work for you, I think. I would recommend that.

I think if you've read a lot about it or read John Kerry's bad blood, you maybe don't need to watch that movie. But, you know, I was at dinner last night talking to some people about it, and they were not familiar with the story at all. And if you're not, it'll blow your head off. It's just a crazy act of high-level fraud and scamming, and we're in this scamming moment. And it's Alex Gibney, who is just one of the steadiest hands in documentary.

So I would recommend that. Okay. That's a good one. Fantasy, thank you so much for coming by, man. Chris, I love to be on this show, and send my love to Andy Greenwald. We'll do. I'm so happy to be joined by Ben and Katya from High Maintenance. Guys, thanks so much for joining me today.

I'm so glad you guys came by because it's just been this weird thing where high maintenance has been in my life for the better part of a decade. And I was thinking a lot about how it must have been changing for you guys over the course of this since 2012, I guess is when the Vimeo shows started airing. And I wanted to sort of open up with this sort of very broad question. I don't, do either of you guys watch billions? No, I haven't had a chance Yeah.

So the guy who does billions, which is also like a New York show, I guess, in some ways. He talked a lot recently about how billions is kind of like the show where it's just the repository for everything that he's interested in. And it's sort of not necessarily as much, like we're trying to make sure we tell this one story as much as it's just become this canvas that I can just put everything that I'm like food and art and music and whatever I'm interested in can go into this show somehow. And this is kind of weird, but like that kind of sounds also like what. high maintenance could be too for you guys, right? It very much is.

Definitely. I think I went into this season specifically saying, I want to see what lights me up personally. So, yeah, that's really closely aligns with that. Our budget is quite different than billions. So I think a lot of our interests are more maybe... Scaled back. Yeah, scaled back.

And it's more like, oh, this type of person that I observed when I was grocery shopping, like, who are they? And then trying to sort of dig into that, you know. Yeah. But it also feels like that's specifically like a New York thing where like you get to see all these different kinds of people doing regular everyday shit all the time. And you can stay in touch with that kind of thing. I guess we take that for granted because we don't live out here in L.A.

But like, yeah, I still ride the subway quite regularly. And it's actually, I feel like I'm at work when I'm doing it. Yeah, the subway. Yeah. It's a good spot to people watch. But, I mean, I do it everywhere. I've done it the last couple of days that we've been here. I go to, like, a Starbucks at 8 a.m.

And sit there for a couple of hours and, like, watch who comes through. And you guys have good people watching in L.A. too. It's just different. Yeah, yeah. Just do it from car windows more than. Yeah. Yeah. I think the main difference I've come to, because I'm from Southern California, one of the biggest differences is just you can, like, really control what kind of interactions you have with people in L.

You can really, you're not, you don't have to, like, interact with too many people that you don't want to interact with. You can just roll up your window. And I think in New York, I think that's just not an option as often. It's part of the appeal. Yeah, it's part of the appeal for some of us. And then others, probably, it's their nightmare that you can't, you're not going to be able to control what kind of interactions you have when you walk down the street. It's true. The room for chaos is greater in New York.

But I will say because of our social media. of bubbles and like our blogs and our go here and go there. I feel like I'm retreading the same paths as another community of like-minded individuals in both cities. Sure. I feel a little bubbled and, you know, there's a better word for it. Well, especially if you like go to the east side, I think, and you're hanging out at those spots.

Like we're staying in Beverly Hills right now just because of the hotel that HBO put us up in. And that is not the same crowd. Yeah. That is a different group of people. Yeah, that's like, I mean, one of the sort of beautiful things about high maintenance is the way in which every episode starts and you're just kind of like, I have no idea where we're going to go next. Not in a like the lost sort of way. Like, are they going to get off the island? But I have no idea who I'm going to meet and I don't know who this person's going to meet.

And that's kind of the promise of New York City. Right? It's like you will step out of your apartment and you're like, oh, anything could happen. And it might actually be awful, you know, like, but that kind of, you're right. you can control that in LA a lot more because you can just get in a Honda and listen to a podcast and go right back to your house

that's like a little bit off the street. Yeah, and watch programming tailored for you. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And do you feel like as you guys have gotten older and as high maintenance has become so much of your lives,

not that it wasn't before, but does it change your relationship to the show where it goes, there's like a switch that's flipped from this is this personal expression and maybe this thing that we were really like pushing for early on to, this thing now that has its life of its own and that other people feel like such a personal investment in?

It's really such a complicated question. It's like the way that this show has kind of transformed our experience of living in New York, experience of like really belief in credo. And when we look at people who live outside of New York, like what a division sometimes it feels like and how my experience of New York is couldn't be more different from when I arrived there 10 years ago just because I have an awareness that I am like contributing to the story of New York and I'm visible because I have a beard and I'm balding and like an easy to pick out of a crowd so New York feels like high school, a high school to me now.

I feel like when I like walk around my neighborhood, it's like junior year of high school. And it's like, hey, hey. And then, I don't know, I think I'm a little less in it because I'm looking at everything with a journalistic eye. So I feel a little, not detached is not the right word, but a little opportunistic in terms of most of my New York interactions and observations. Yeah, I think things that maybe would have gotten me down, you know, five, ten years ago in New York now has a totally different color to it because even if it is something that's annoying or getting me down a situation, I can now, I have a place to put it, so to speak, like what you were just saying. Can you think of something? Oh my God. Yeah, like even right now,

like, okay, my dishwasher hasn't worked properly, maybe the whole time I've lived in the apartment. It's terrible. And, you know, all it would take would be to just talk to my landlord about it and probably we could get that figured out. But because of like an interaction that I had with them at the top of my lease, I've like been not wanting to. And it's just really turned into like a real saga. I mean, this is stupid. But it's like this annoying thing.

And I find myself being stressed about it. But then I'm like, well, this is also like a, this could be part of a character trait for somebody. And it's actually not that unique. I mean, I know other people who suffer weird things in their space because they don't want to. interface with their landlord. But you know what I mean? Like just like things that are inconveniences in life or you have like a bad day because of this show it's become like it's that whole Nora Ephron like everything is copy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it becomes it's a nice copy mechanism too. It helps. Yeah. So much. I think even Ben and I like when we were together and

having any sort of relationship difficulty like it there I can't tell you have any conversations ended with well we can write about it. But I'm I've been doing that a lot of my life. I honestly have been. Like, I have, what forces, not forces, the thing I tell myself when I'm about to take a risk is like, well, if nothing else, you'll have something to talk about and a good story. And a good story to tell when you're decrepit and your legs don't work or whatever. So I definitely, it's interesting because you want to be involved in what's going on. You don't want to look at everything objectively and be like, this is going to be.

benefit me somehow or something like that. You just want to kind of be in it. So there is part of me that would like to have better control over when I'm being opportunistic about storytelling and when I'm just enjoying it and really reveling in the feeling of being a part of a community of New York and not just reporting on what life is like there. Sure. One of the things I've always wanted to ask you guys is that when I first started watching the show, it felt very much like an extension of the independent movies that I really loved when I was growing up and when I was like in high school and early college, like Richard Linklater and Jim Jarmish and Hal Hartley

and it really had this secret world that you kind of knew was always out there but never got to live in until you saw the show and then you would have moments that you were like, this is like a high man's moment or this is like a Jim Jarmish moment. But did you ever think that it would be like a TV show? No. Like did you grow up being like, I can't wait one day. I really want to make a TV show.

No. TV probably means a lot different thing to people of our generation that it means to like a 25-year-old who's like TV is just the best thing possibly to be doing. But we grew up with like LA law and it was like, that's cool.

Sure. Yeah, I didn't really see myself as part of that equation. Not in that way. I mean, I think I always wanted and Ben, you can answer for yourself, but I think we both kind of always want it in in some fashion.

But I never thought it would be in this capacity. And I did casting before I made high maintenance, and I think that was sort of my safe, or I perceived that as like a lower stakes way of being involved, you know. Yeah. I mean, you and I were both raised on TV. I don't know about raised on TV for you. No, I've seen them all.

I've seen every show that was made in my. It's not surprising that it's peak TV right now because all the people who were raised on TV are now the age at which they make the decisions for the culture. Sure. Yeah, no wonder TV is going right now. And in 20 years, it's going to be, like, Instagram, like, you know, short, like, branded content or whatever that people are going to, it's going to be peak branded content. So, you know, that was for us, like, there were so many shared television experiences that

we turned into inside jokes, which was ultimately a bonding process for us. Like when you guys were, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We still say to this day, like, like, cousin Larry Appleton. Yeah. That's definitely one.

Trevor Strangers has not had its, like, friends' life yet. I know. Will it ever? I don't know. I don't know. There's a bunch of, like, those sitcoms that I'm like, they feel, like, lost. But then it's so funny, like, the margin of friends catching on. I guess it's kind of obvious their friends would catch on.

But, like, you know, mad about you doesn't, like, have, like, this huge second life. And, you know. Oh, it was. Yeah, the mad about you, Renaissance is coming. Yeah. Was there anything, like when you, you know, 2012 kind of dovetails with this era of television, kind of taking over, I think, an area of storytelling that we had left to movies and that, that sort of middle ground of movie that was like, you know, a relationship drama or like a

kind of exploration of a walk of life that you didn't ordinarily see? Was there a show that you saw before that time, around that time, we were like, oh, maybe. this is, maybe this is like a way forward for us? I mean, we mentioned a lot of times that we watched six feet under right before we made this, but I'm not even sure that that's the thing that really influenced us. I feel like Party Down really influenced us. Really? Yeah, because it was clear that they were making that show on a really low budget,

but that wasn't impacting their storytelling and that they kind of seemed like they used it to their advantage. Like we liked how every episode they were in a different, yeah, it was a reset and a different space and kind of that procedural. kind of quality. But the tone and the realistic relationships that in six feet under that felt like the most true to life show that you and I had seen. And also they went on

dream sequence. They had a... Yeah, there's like some surreal moments in that show that they kind of seamlessly weave together with reality. That seemed cool. And there was that feeling like, oh, I know that person. Oh, I've had that relationship dynamic. Yeah, this fight feels really real. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a lot of the

neat stuff with, yeah. So I wanted to ask a little bit As a TV show, the experience of watching it is so distinctive that sometimes the stitches don't show So I can't, you know, and I watch like a mystery show I'm like, okay, I can see this is the A plot and this is the B plot And here's the red herring and here's the Chekhov's gun But what are some of the structures behind the scenes of High Mainance

When you're writing an episode And sort of plotting out a season Is it the way that I would probably Like most listeners for the watch would say, You can have a whiteboard and like there are these beats you're going to hit but is it different for Hymenans or is it actually, are you guys more traditional than we might think? I don't know how traditional we are.

All we've done is this show. Yeah, we only know what this show feels like to produce or to write. The writers have told us it's not like another writer's room who have come into our writers. I've had a lot of writers that worked with us say, wow, it was so cool to be part of that room because it taught me that there's another way to do it. Like that makes me want to go have my own rights.

writer's room now that I know you can do it like this. I don't know what like this means. Do you guys have like golden rolls when people are walking in and bring it outside people and you're like, okay, think about it like this? Every year we get better at trying to get people in on this kind of customized to us writing schedule and process. You know, we have like what works on our show. Typically what doesn't work on our show. There is like a rubric of like an intro, character, development, situation, development, call for weed, then the B story where the weed is happening,

then the weed deal, then it's a climax, and then it's a button. So it's like eight, we have like every episode with like eight cards to match that rubric, and always it breaks the rubric. Yeah.

But the rubric is often a place to start. Yeah, so it's like a, it's like some notes to deviate and improv from. But I would imagine, given the fact you referenced the budget limitations, like, The show feels very easygoing, but I would imagine, like, you're pretty close to, like, you guys are running on a pretty tight schedule.

You're like, oh, it's not easy to make at all. It's not. And what I was surprised by when we switched over to television after doing it for web and not being union and all that sort of a thing, it is so hard and expensive to recreate reality. like to be to just you know have 10 people run out you know run and gun on the street and like grab stuff and and get like real life and and all of that versus like trying to you know shutting down a street and rolling up with a bunch of trucks and having extras portray people on the street and all like to do that and also have it seem as real as what you would see in real life like that is crazy like that is like it costs so much money and has it.

and take so much time and resources. It's like it really must be an annoying paradox because you're like I'm spending so much money to make something look like we're not spending any money at all. It makes me crazy. We'll go for Location Scout, and I'm like, do we have to do anything to this place? Like, can we just like roll up and shoot? Like that's what we used to do.

And, you know, to an extent we can sort of do that a little bit. But no, like people want to put their stuff away a lot of times and like all those kinds of things. It's interesting. It is cost so much money because in the history of this industry that we're in, so many people had been abused and the costs are to protect people from being abused by other people, which I couldn't be happier about. But it is really, really conflated like what we're

doing here, which is taking a box that takes 24 pictures a second and a sound and a light, and we're focusing it on a subject and they talk. Yeah, you need somebody now. You need somebody who's sanctioned to make sandwiches. Yeah, yeah. Honestly, all that stuff of like who can touch what, who can do this and that is just like that has been very educational slash annoying at times. I was watching, I don't know if you had a chance to see High Flying Bird, that Steven Soderberg movie, and it is on Netflix. And so he shot it on iPhone.

Yeah. And it's like, it's about an NBA, a basketball agent who's working while there's a strike in the NBA. It doesn't say NBA, but it's supposed to be the NBA. But, you know, he shot it on iPhone and he shot it with like a micro budget. it. So they're walking, it's Andre Holland and he's like walking through Battery Park. And you're like, wait a second. And you realize like they didn't have to shut anything down. It's just Steven Silver walking behind him with a phone. Yeah. So you're and I was like, oh, like God, like that's why you never see like people walking across the street in New York City because you'd have to shut down like major arteries of traffic for the most busy city in the world. Yeah, if you're really committed to getting a certain kind of shot with, you know, with things, you know, moving in the choreogram. way, like, there are definitely workaround to be able to get the, quote-unquote, real thing. I mean, we definitely do a sort of hybridization model, it feels like, I don't know, our producers are always telling us, like, we're...

This is impossible. Well, no, I think they've been really good at delivering for us, and they, but they do always say, like, no, when they are talking to people that they're hiring for, like, department heads and, you know, making the deals with the unions and all that stuff, like, they do have to explain a little bit, like, hey, we're a bit of, like, an anomaly. Like we're like we use a lot of indie film tactics, but we're like above board. Sure. Like legit show.

But like there's these sort of little elements that seep in that feel like no budget film, you know, indie filmmaking. Just to touch quickly on the writing part about it, I was also curious about when you're due, you know, there's so many sort of indelible characters. But ironically, those characters then disappear from the show a lot of the times. And I was specifically, you know, wondering about like, in, in, in. mash, like Corey, how much of a backstory Corey has for you guys versus what we see. And also, how much the guy knows versus what Ben knows and, like, the sort of magic trick that has to happen there from writing to performance to what we see in screen. I think it's different every time. Like with Corey, that's a good example. That, that story underwent a few different iterations

before we sort of landed on, you know, what you see on television. So that person for me had a huge backstory a lot more than we see on screen, and then we had to sort of find small ways to insinuate things without, you know, devoting a whole scene to exposition and stuff, you know. That's my favorite part of the show, though. Mine too. It feels cool. Someone mentions something that is about their life, but isn't like, you know,

when I graduated from DePaul and moved back from Chicago. My least favorite when people do that. And became an assistant district attorney. This is the kind of case I wanted to, yeah. Yeah, boo. I do not like that. And nor do you. Like, we're just, we're always looking for ways that we can condense.

And, but you do have to start sort of on a bigger scale sometimes and then keep stripping away, stripping away, stripping away. You write a whole scene. And then you're like, actually, maybe they can just get a text message and look upset. Yeah. It's just that one. And then they're just going to say these like five words and you're going to understand all of those other things. Yeah. We try to do that.

But, I mean, sometimes we don't have as much of a backstory. And I think that our stories suffer when we don't know as much about the characters. Like, if it's a, maybe not if it's like a super, like, plot action-y-driven story, but definitely on the ones that are more character-driven, if we don't have our stuff straight, like, if we don't really know these people, those are not the best episodes, like, at all. Very true. And a lot of times in order to create that depth, I mean, we do grab.

from situations or personal situations or kind of transpose, much like a journal entry unto that, and really trust that the audience can fill in the rest. Yeah. Which is nice. That's the best feeling. So there was something of an exploration of the outside of the New York metropolitan area. And I guess by way of asking about the future,

do you ever see, I mean, it's kind of like heading out west or lighting out of the territory. That was supposed to be last season. Yeah. Yeah, we really wanted to come here. Yeah, that was supposed to be last season. And then I, I mean, I bought that RV before we shot the last episode on a whim. And I don't want it anymore if anyone wants to take it from me. But I definitely had illusions of dropping into a farmer's life in Kansas.

The guy drives through town or like a poker deal. dealer in Las Vegas or something like that. But, you know, the producers came up to me and they're like, we can go out of town for one day in New York State. So, let's do that. And then that lake that you saw me paddleboarding

on was in Staten Island. Yeah. No land of lakes. Yeah, right? Who knew? Yeah. And butter. And then we went to Poughkeepsie for one day and then Stroudsburg or something like that.

Slotsburgh. Slotsberg for a day. And that's it? Okay. But for maybe the future? I hope so. Yeah? I feel like that is the way that if we were to keep doing this would be a way to, you know, keep it interesting.

But on the other hand, I say that. And then I'm like, it is logistically so hard. And also I think people are tuning in because they want to see New York life. I mean, I think that's such a part of it. And we know New York life. I mean, that's all I really know. Yeah. With authority.

But it's like, you know, after. a while, the New York of the show becomes like, it's the universe. It's like the Pacific Northwest of Twin Peaks. It's just like what it is, but, you know, like it just becomes its own huge playground like that. Sure, I mean, I have

great... But you guys would like to like hang out in a different place probably. I mean, sometimes, yeah. I have great ambitions to see this show take place in other cities. Okay, cool. Yeah. All right, I'm going to let you guys go. Thank you so much for coming by and doing the podcast, and I love the show. I love you. I can't believe we're done. That would just start.

Yeah.