The Watch - Netflix “Saves” ‘Manifest.’ Plus, ‘Stillwater’ and ‘100 Foot Wave’

Episode Date: August 31, 2021

Netflix is bringing back the NBC drama ‘Manifest’ for its fourth and final season after it found new life on the streaming service. Chris and Andy talk about why Netflix is putting in time and money to bring back the show (9:22). Plus, Matt Damon’s new movie ‘Stillwater’ (23:20) and love for ‘100 Foot Wave’ (45:37). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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vaccine. Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimphia. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimphia, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interests that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor

at the rigor.com and joining me on the other line live from Nazaree, Portugal. It's Andy Greenwald. tow me up put me in a big wave once you go big you can't go home man what's going on andy it's monday we are here to chat about popular culture we got a big show today uh we're going to be talking about the new matt damon film newish matt damon film stillwater which we both watch this weekend we're going to be talking oh yes about 100 foot wave which we kind of dabbled in uh last week and uh andy went on this journey with me you know it's been it's been surf city over in my house this summer. I just got done watching a Laird Hamilton documentary. It's a wild turn by you.

So we're going to talk a little surf and we'll also, we can do some news at the top. How are you doing? Oh, great, great. You know, I've reached the stage of my, I can't tell if it's my age, which is more or less our age or my physical regimen. But I am now officially like, wow, that really loud noise came from me as I stood up off the couch. years old. And I do wonder, I mean, I know that I don't really do a good stretching regimen or whatever,

but like with the amount that I'm going running in the world, and then also like doing other things like, like yesterday I came back from a seven mile run and my family was like, let's go bike riding. I was like, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, bro. Absolutely. Like that's what I was made for. But then I also wondered then the flip side of it is will I ever stop hurting again? So that's my. It's funny you should bring this up because, you know, I've, I've been trying to get dialed out on the course again. I've been doing some rain sessions. And I've been talking about golf. And I've been trying to find my shot shape. I've been trying to. And, you know, like, I hadn't played in a couple of months. So when I got back out on the range, like when I got home, because I didn't limber up, I heard my back really

bad. Like, it was just incredibly painful. And yesterday I was on the couch and watching the BMW championship's an incredible final round between matchup between Patrick Cantlay and Bryson DeCambo. And I don't know if you know this about Patrick Cantley or if you know who Patrick Can'tley is. Never heard that name before. He once fractured a vertebrae, a hairline fracture of his vertebrae. And now it takes him like five hours to like loosen up enough just to swing a golf club. Totally.

And yesterday he played, I think, what it must have been like 25 holes because they had like a six whole playoff. So he already needs to like warm up. up for five hours before he can play golf for five hours. And I'm just like, I can't hit 30 balls at the Griffith Park driving range without having to be in traction. So it really does put you, like, you have to understand to do things at our age, you now really have to want to because you're going to pay for it. Yes. I mean, this is, this is, you asked me how I was doing on Friday. And I was just like, well, Chris, just had a, had an hour long Pilate session. And I can't feel anything south of my neck or north of my knees.

Yeah. But I assume that there's a goal. You know what I mean? Like this is my version of, and this is going to come up again when we talk about big wave surfing, so buckle up. But I have to believe that there is a long-term purpose here. I just can't see it, right? So that's why we do the things we do.

Is it for televised greatness? Like the names of the golfers you mentioned, whom I don't remember? Yeah. Patty ice. and the big golfer, Bryce and DeChibeau? No. But it's, it is to keep us limber and loose for the pop culture takes. That's right. That's where I put in the work. That's where I lift. That's where I get, I get loose. You do reps. I mean, that's the other thing. Long-term fans of the podcast can probably tell days

when you've already been in the gym slash sitting in front of the microphone for hours before you sit down with me. You know what I mean? I wanted to talk a little bit. Obviously, we're going to do Stillwater. We're going to talk about 100-foot wave. But there's a couple of things I wanted to. to touch on today. First of all, you know, lost a television legend this weekend, Ed Asner, who also appeared in your show Breyer Patch. And I was just wondering if you'd like to share any

remembrances of this giant of TV with our listeners. There were a lot of people who listened during this time know. Like the entire experience was of making a TV show was totally surreal. But few things were more surreal than writing this part

for an incredibly cranky old actor. and our casting director, Susie Ferris, being like, well, what about Ed Asner? And I'm like, well, that's, when I say incredibly cranky old actor, like, that's obviously who I mean. But that's Lou Grant. Yeah, right. And God bless Ed Asner. Like, he was 89, I guess, at this point, or maybe 90.

And he wanted to work. He loved to work. So he agreed to do the show, which was mind-blowing to me, and to everyone else. I mean, like, the other thing about working with a total legend like that, is like Jay Ferguson was losing his mind. I get to have a scene with Luke Grant, which is he loved those shows in the Mary Tyler Moore show growing up.

Or you have younger actors who know him from Elf or from the voice in Up. And so he's just sort of this cross-generational legend. Or Rosario, who I think crossed paths with him once at some sort of political gathering because he was incredibly dedicated and committed that's a left-wing political causes his entire life and really like, you know,

walk the walked and just talk to talk. but he also was a total crank and a total character. He, early on when he agreed to do it, but before he arrived in Albuquerque, I got word that he wanted to, he wanted to talk to me. And I was like, oh boy, okay. So I was like, you know, I got ready.

And got on the phone with him. And it was pretty clear immediately that what he had probably conveyed is that he wanted to talk to the boss. And so someone put me on the phone. but he wanted Ishmael. He wanted Ishmael. And then I realized he wanted Sam because he wanted to pitch Sam on something

after he was done with Briar Patch. Oh, really? So I was like, oh, Mr. Asner, no problem. And Sam was super geeks because then Ed Astner wanted to talk to him and pitch him on something. But then when he showed up, you know, he just wanted to work and play.

And he was partnered with the great actor David Pamer and all their scenes. David Pamer was a great sport because they just, especially for their first scene in episode three, just kind of Statler and Waldorfed and improv. So almost every line he has in that episode is improv. Were you like Adam McKay just like throwing lines from behind the camera,

throwing jokes? You know, I couldn't tell how much he wanted me to exist, let alone like be present that day. It was also like 100 degrees in Albuquerque. But my favorite moment. So it was Albuquerque. It was Albuquerque. I wrote a really, really long speech for him in episode seven.

And he really wanted it. He was like, make it long. It's like, give me, give me something. Give me something good. And I was like, yeah. And then also you're going to be yelling at Kim Dickens, calling her a cow and eating cottage cheese with a spork that's brought to you under a silver cloche. And he was like, fine. That's normal.

That's fine. And this is the thing I shared online. It was my favorite memory of him was afterwards we took a picture. And I was his last day of shooting. He was only in, I think, three episodes. And he was like, how did we do? And I was like, oh, my God, Mr. Asner. Like, I can't believe you did that scene.

You were amazing. and I said some stuff and he just looked me in the face and he went, you always just good at lying out your ass. I mean, that's who that dude was. And I can't believe I got to work with him. And I, you know, 91 years old and he was still working. That was the other thing. If you go on IMDB, like, he just kept doing guest appearances and shows and he loved it.

He really missed and it was an honor to work with him. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty amazing that obviously you got to make a show. That's pretty amazing in and of itself. But the fact that you did get to cross paths with, you know, somebody of his stature and somebody with his sort of institutional gravity in terms of like what he accomplished over the course of his life and his career is pretty amazing and my favorite moment when he came in after the last time i saw me he had to come in to do some a d r because like to fix some audio on some lines so you know he his his assistant wheeled him in because he was he could walk

but he was mostly traveling by wheelchair and you know put the headphones on him and he's done this a thousand times and but that one time like can you can you redo the cough here and say this line here and he, you know, he nails it. And then when you do ADR, you're speaking into a microphone along with the footage. And then the footage continued to the next scene. And it was just my favorite moment. He was just like, yeah, cough. Get out of here, son, or whatever his line was.

And then it switches to a different scene and he just goes, look at the can on her. So you know what I mean? In old school, old school, Hollywood guy to the end. You know, I wanted to ask you a little bit about the most notable TV story that sort of has popped up over the last couple of days. because it's a show that you and I, I don't think either of us have watched, and we certainly haven't talked about, which is Bannifest.

It's an NBC show. Writers Room was next to the Breyer Patch Writers Room. Oh, okay. So clearly very connected to these guys. Right. And this is a show that's been on for three seasons on NBC. Yep. It was announced, I think, last year,

that it was going to be canceled, that it was not going to conclude. Earlier this year. Earlier this year, it seems like last year. And so they announced it it was going to not come back on NBC. There was a, as there was,

many shows, a brief save manifest, like run where it's like they're talking to other streamers, they're talking to other networks, they're going to try and save it. A classic kind of like modern day TV story where you've got it, it's being aired on NBC, which has its own streaming service, it's being made by Warner Brothers Television, and it is doing very well. Its reruns, or not reruns, but its second run is having a huge amount of success on Netflix, according to Netflix. So the natural sort of landing's place, if you will allow the pun for a show about a plane that goes up in the air and then lands five years later, was Netflix because it was doing so well for that. But there's all these complications. Netflix wants international rights. They had already sold the international

rights for Manifest. Netflix wants this. They'd already kind of done that. And that's what happens when you have all these different cooks in the kitchen with a television show. And against all odds, they've sort of figured out all the business side logistics of this deal and are going to in fact bring Manifest back for a fourth season. 20 episodes. So it'll likely be broken up, I would imagine, 10 and 10 knowing Netflix, but maybe there's some different order of the episodes

because I would imagine for a show like that, especially since the viewers are probably anticipating this new season, they want to create some kind of sense of anticipation, which is, I think Netflix's major issue with its original programming now is, you know, and what happens next week? And you can't get that. You can't get that because the diehards are just going to burn through it. And the conversation is going to kind of be all over the place.

But this is a show with a really big fan community. What do you make of all this? Is this something that is sort of like a curio? Or do you think it means something more than just like they've figured out a way to make the money work and this show found a landing spot? I think it is probably more that than anything else. And I think that's the specific piece of this that I can't really speak to because I don't really know what the money was or how it worked or what it means long term for the eventually four seasons. of the show internationally, which you were right to point out is what drives a lot of Netflix's decision-making. So in a way, I think this is kind of an old-fashioned event, an almost a

throwback. The idea of one studio making a successful show for a broadcast network that finds life on an unaffiliated to the other two companies' streaming service, those days are coming to a halt. So in that sense, this is a very old media story. All the stuff that we remember from like, I don't know, 2013 to 2018 when it was like, Netflix will give you another season. Netflix will save you. Right. That hasn't been happening much anymore, precisely because of those reasons. I mean, because the real value is owning something and having it locked up in your catalog forever.

And it's not just that Netflix wants to do it. It's that Warner Brothers wants to silo its content on HBO Max and NBC wants to silo its content on Peacock. So these worlds are becoming more and more separate. That said, I did think it was interesting and noteworthy because it's not a, is if Netflix is giving manifest a new lease on life. They're giving manifest a chance to finish the story. And I think that's the more interesting piece here. What they're doing is basically making a bet on having a absolutely established now in their own

algorithms, bingeable, compelling show that is also done. That's the piece of it that is more contemporary Netflix. That's very Netflix. You know what I mean? As we've talked about, one of the reasons why, well, one of the reasons, well, one of the reasons why I feel like we're not talking about Netflix as much as we were a few years ago other than in business stories is because the ongoing shows that they make that we like and support are coming to ends, either ceremoniously or unceremoniously in the case of Ozark and Glow respectively. And the other shows that they do make are much more closed circuit or international, right, like a miniseries or they, you know, now we like call your agent or, call my agent or whatever, seems to be doing very, very well for them.

Yeah. As someone who watched until he couldn't anymore in season four, I don't think it's not particularly like clickbaity. Like there's nothing for us to cover there other than it was delightful and it was a nice diversion. So, but I think that Manifest speaks to something that has clearly proven to have value, which is that they have all of something that people want to go crazy for over a short period of time. And generally we've thought of that as they had 30 Rock and people would just like go hands. on it. Or, you know, I think I've told the story before about how Lily Amherpour, who directed

the Briar Patch pilot, very avant-garde out there kind of visual mind, watched two episodes of friends every night no matter what on Netflix. Like that kind of completism. But the role of a show like Manifest is interesting to me and the deal makes sense for all involved. What it made me wonder is they must be behind the scenes. But I guess I was curious. Maybe I'm not thinking of something. Or maybe this is Cowboy Bebop, a show I don't really understand what it is yet. but why isn't Netflix more aggressively in the next lost business? Do you know what I mean? Like, if they could...

I would imagine that they would say... Dark was that. And I think Witcher, you know, is like kind of a next game of throne. So are you asking why they don't have like a water cooler show that's set in contemporary times or why they're doing such hard genre stuff? Specifically the lost thing. Yeah. The thing about Lost and Manifest and all those other shows over the last decade plus

that the broadcast networks have tried and failed to hit with, like the event. You know, there were always these like... light, not hard sci-fi, like soft sci-fi. There's a show I think NBC has one now called Debris that's about like, you know, remnants of a UFO that's are giving people powers or something like that. And that vibe has succeeded enormously in shows like Roswell, which I think is in its like 38th season on the CW right now. Though that space doesn't really work in broadcast television because broadcast television model is, you know, we want to maximize this. So we want it to run for either one or ten seasons depending on what gives us the best return. but it's very hard to tell a multi-layered complicated forking story that way.

Whereas if Netflix could say like, okay, you know, we're going to give you a five-year window to do it, then they would have that five-year content chip in their system. And that type of show has proven to be very successful. And I just, I don't even know. There probably is an internal industry name for a show like that. But I just feel like Netflix has been so smart and rapacious and being like, people sure do love watching makeover shows. We will make all of them.

They sure do love making baking shows. We control all of them. Yeah. That this is a sign that this is really, this type of shows still has the legs. Yeah, we have a huge footprint in the sports documentary world now. Right. You know, they've tried and then stopped seemingly making studio sitcoms, like basically multi-cam sitcoms on sets.

You know, I think that we talked about that a few months ago where it was interesting that they were seemingly getting out of that business, you know. I think that for something specifically like manifest, from what I understand of it, and I understand like watching recap videos to get ready for this podcast. But I would imagine something like that. That's your five hour of golf swings, by the way. That is impressive. That's right.

It's me getting limbered. Something like that must have a lot tied up in the week-to-week kind of conversation around an episode and where something is going out. It may have found its popularity because of binging and because people were like scrolling around on the main screen for, oh yeah, let me check this out. Oh my God, I'm hooked and there's three seasons of this to watch. But to do something new, I do think that, you know, we've had this conversation in 100,000 different ways, but like, does Mayor of East Town work on Netflix? If it's the same exact show and then you wind up having, oh, well, I watched it yesterday or we loved it. We crushed it in two days.

But some people are like, hey, I'm finding this Mayor of Easttown shows. That's pretty good. I think you've, I think you've nailed it on two fronts. One is the delivery system and how it's appreciated and absorbed. enjoyed. But the other thing is just simply the risk. Netflix as a, fundamentally as a tech company, is risk averse. They took big swings early to establish themselves, but now that they have success and algorithms and blah, blah, blah, they are risk averse. They're not going to take a, they're not going to make a reservation dogs, you know, and take a flyer on Sterling Harjo and and Taika's guidance and blah, blah, blah. It doesn't make sense for them to do that. The thing about manifest is, as I was just saying, you know, we have 10, 12, 12 years.

of people trying to do a lost knockoff, and very few of them have worked. Some have had some commercial acclaim or critical acclaim, but rarely both. And the thing about a show like that is it's a big bet. It's a big bet that you're going to have a show that has such a great question in this case. What happened to a plane for five years? And you don't know how long or how stretchable that concept is. So to your point, Netflix stepped in. Netflix would never have made that pilot, I guess is what I'm saying and what I'm realizing. What they want is, oh, it worked. and people want to watch it the way we can give it to them. So this works out for us.

We can lay in wait. Let someone else, in this case, Warner Brothers and NBC, take the big bet, and we ultimately end up winning. I think that's probably the strategic decision making behind it and why they don't, why they have an international division and a nonscripted division, but they don't have a soft sci-fi, crowd-pleasing, open-ended drama division. Yeah, and I wonder whether or not, because if you start to think algorithmically, which I imagine Netflix obviously does, and I think you could make the argument. to some extent Amazon does, although I sometimes feel like they have some of that older school

studio sensibility about the shows that they pick and the people that they want to be in business with. When you get into kind of atomizing their shows, if you think about loss, loss was a pretty diverse, relatively diverse cast. And it was made with mass appeal in mind. You know what I mean? Like there was even down to its genre influences, those things, like whether it was Flano-O-Briand, novels or, you know, the Bible or things that were baked into it, those things were so subterranean in its influences that really what you had was a ensemble drama with some, with a huge mystery. And when you look at something like, say, The Wilds, which is on Amazon and is about a group of teenage girls going on a, what they think is a retreat and then wind up being in a plane

crash and being stranded on an island seemingly in the South Pacific. that's like very specifically targeted to, if not Y.A, but especially like teenage girls and people who think about like the sort of issues of teenage girls. Like it's like almost a micro-targeted advertisement within the show of like we know exactly who we want to watch, who we want watching this show. And if we get other people great,

but this is going to have a baseline like a floor of the people who buy these kinds of angsty adventure YA novels. And that's not really what the networks have ever kind of done. They've never been like, we're going to make a play for this sliver of an audience. And we think that that sliver's big enough. But the reverse is true. Netflix doesn't do that. Netflix doesn't make kind of generic dramas.

And I think it's really, I think it's a good point that you made also about Amazon's role in this. What's fascinating to me is Amazon and Netflix, their scripted divisions are, I mean, the org chart is different. but they are both more or less led by women who are veterans of NBC Universal, where Bella Bajaria ran Universal TV for many years and is now at Netflix, and Jennifer Salky is at Amazon. She ran, or was the number two, and then very high up at NBC for many years. I thought it was interesting the other day at the upfronts,

you know, where the executives present their slate, I guess still virtually to the media, to journalists, that Jen Salky from Amazon was like, yeah, I regret missing out on Marevistown, meaning Amazon was bidding for that show. Yeah. Which I thought that in itself was kind of noteworthy and interesting. You know, feel free, Brad Ingallsby to call back into our show anytime, or Kate, because I assume she's still listening, and tell us I'm wrong.

But I bet Netflix didn't bid on it because I don't see what it does for them, right? But, and we very much know what it does for HBO. It's been huge. It's driven subscription to HBO Max. It's burnished its brand as the the place for week-to-week conversational TV. and like awards bait, et cetera, et cetera. Amazon, I guess, still, maybe it's because its business remains

all of the rest of what it does. Its TV department is still kind of being, well, I guess it's being run a little bit like both, right? It has the, we talked about this the other week. They're like half a billion dollars for all this sci-fi stuff. But here, we wish we could have given you this, you know, this prestige crime procedural. and also Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller Bridge,

like, this is your creative home. We're going to do another season of modern love. Yeah, exactly. Kind of caught between them. And I guess all of this is to say, our understanding of what Netflix is, in terms of a creative entity, still very much in flux.

Yeah, that's a good place to stop. Why don't we take a quick break and we'll come back. We'll talk about Stillwater and 100-foot wave. The opposite of Stillwater. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner.

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you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com. Act. may vary. Limited time offer. All right, man, we are back. Andy, it's been a long time, I feel like since we talked about a new movie that wasn't

like a Marvel thing or like, you know, kind of like a blockbuster genre thing. This is like a, in a lot of ways, a throwback to them kind of movies that you and I grew up watching in the 90s. It is a film from Tom McCarthy starring Matt Damon and call my agents Camille Coton. And it is a new film set in a film set in. both Oklahoma and Marseilles. I think people have probably pretty familiar with the setup by now,

mostly because this movie has not gotten what I would call great press in terms of both its relationship to the Amanda Knox story and also some of the reviews. And it was interesting to go into watching this film with that in mind. I've been thinking a lot about my own

sort of sense of expectations about things and once you get out of the window of this better be fucking good because movies are dying, you wind up actually maybe greeting things little bit on its own terms. I've been thinking about that with a couple of movies that I've been sort of just kind of going back to on cable when I'm just like sitting around while sports aren't on.

But for this one, I went into this and, you know, I was like, I expected to sort of be, I don't know, disappointed by this movie. And I'm having like a very, very, very strange reaction to it, which is essentially that I don't know. And we're going to talk about this film with spoilers. So if you haven't seen, if you haven't seen Stillwater, by all means, skip ahead to the 100-foot wave or go having a lovely Monday afternoon. Or go safely to a theater or rent it at home. Yes. You can watch it at home.

That's where both of us watched it. What do you do when you pretty much love something for two-thirds of it? Yeah. And the last third is so flawed that it makes you go back and revisit, like, basically reconsider everything that you saw up into the final 15 to 20 minutes of the movie, maybe third. Totally. Well, so let me, before answering that, just to people who aren't familiar, Matt Damon plays a Roughneck from Oklahoma who's traveling to Marseille because his college-age daughter has been imprisoned there for murdering her roommate. he becomes involved in a sort of quixotic, ill-advised potentially quest to free her name,

but the movie goes into some surprising directions from there. Very surprising. Before beginning, I don't know if I entirely agree with you, but I also completely understand what you're saying. And I don't know if this is, even, is this a paternalistic way to, like, view movie or culture? But I enjoyed this and the experience of watching it so much. And I think one of the reasons,

that I did is not just because I think Tom McCarthy is a really just excellent humanistic filmmaker. I, you know, Spotlight is his best no movie, but I love the station agent, and I especially love the movie he made called The Visitor with Richard Jenkins. I really think people should check it out. He made Win Win, too, right? And he made Win Win, another terrific sort of small, quote-unquote movie. What I really, there are two things that I deeply loved and admired about this movie before we even get into, like, I think Matt Damon just blacks out. I think he's so good in this. I think there's so many specific things we can talk about. But the way that I was appreciating the movie, just whole cloth, is I think that it tries to do something so, so, so hard. And it takes

something that I think most rational-minded, creative people almost want to run away from, which is, let's make a movie about talking to Red State America or Red Hat America. Let's make a movie about America's role in the world in the Trump era or after the Trump era. Let's try this. And let's also try to give it, you know, some stakes and, you know, stuff that make it a movie. And also keep it within the relatively reduced purview of what Tom McCarthy's interested in, which is human beings behaving like human beings. He doesn't do, this isn't taken, right?

Sure. And what struck me again and again in watching the movie is that it was such a good faith effort to do that. I don't mean to say that I'm grading the movie on a curve, but I felt that it admirably and honestly wrestled with who it wanted its characters to be, what they represented, what they portrayed, ways to upend that, and to try to get at something that is very uncomfortable to think about or talk about, I think, for a lot of us at the moment. And that is what, you know, not to sound super corny,

but I feel like that's what movies are supposed to do. And I found that very, I was very inspired by that. And the second piece of that, just from a purely structural level, listen, Chris, you know, nobody loves Letterbox more than me. You know what I mean? Like, I am a cinephile with a capital Cinnah. Sure. Like, that's just me.

Your username is Lord of the Skies, where you do most of your cinema watching. It is. It is, yeah. The smaller the screen, the better, baby. the higher the elevation and the higher the blood alcohol level, the more I will love feature films. But one thing that I have been enjoying over the last year, and we've talked about this a little bit,

is I've been doing a lot of like criterion channel crushing and enjoying movies, really loving movies that I've been seeing and looking backwards and exploring a lot of classic films, et cetera. And one of the things that I love about them is I just think that fundamentally they're so different than TV shows. And maybe this is the TV writing part of me that is taking refuge in movies is, you know, they have to be broader,

because you can't digress into this person's subplot or the character arc or the season that's about this. You have to choose the stakes for your story and then execute at such a high level because you're doing the beginning, middle, and end. And when I say that, it sounds like I'm saying I like movies because they're predictable, but not like in a Robert McKee screenwriting convention,

don't save the cat kind of thing. It's just that, well, we're running out of time, so now we have to do this turn and this twist and this is the movie we're going to say. So this is the movie we're trying to make. What I loved about Stillwater on top of everything else was, this movie did not go to the beat of any other drummer. This movie does not follow anything close to a linear path.

It zigs and zags and becomes three or four different movies in a way that I think is incredibly difficult to pull off. And I think it almost pulled off. Yeah. And I loved that it was a movie, not a TV show. That the moment when like the humanization of our lead where he sort of has this idol in France and becomes a different person and it's romantic and sweet

and family-centered and, fun. That wasn't a bottle episode. That was still in this relatively tight to our movie and I loved the I loved the looseness in something that is normally so tight. So you go into this movie and like what Andy is

describing is essentially like I think the middle act of this film turns into Damon's character Bill Baker falling in with and then falling in love with Camille Coton's character Virginie. So this is this single mother who's a theater actress with a daughter named Maya

and they live in an apartment in Marseille and through like happenstance like he kind of meets them then they then she helps him out with the sort of initial stages of the investigation or his his own investigation into who may have actually killed this this character Lena and then there's something that happens in the middle of the movie where he basically takes like a long break from interacting with his daughter and he pretty much just starts a surrogate family

with Virginia and Maya. And there is like a whole episode of this of this movie, which is just basically like his day to day. He has a construction job and like, this is what he does at his construction job. But then he goes home and he makes hamburgers and, uh, he's a babysitter.

Yeah, but he's, he's becoming a, he's found a family. And he's not only found a family. I think he's like, the thing that I loved about the movie was that there was no false transformation of a character.

Like it's not like he gets to the end of the movie and he's now all of a sudden like, reading Sartra or, you know, going to see Brecht plays or, you know, conversing with people in a cafe. He's still a roughneck. But I think he had a part of his heart, like, opened up because he got to experience a different kind of life than he had lived up until then. And it's a guy who's got addiction issues and rage issues. But essentially, like, I thought that that whole part of the movie was brilliant. And the reason why I think you're reacting to it being like, oh, this was so refreshingly a movie,

is because McCarthy is a very good writer, and so much of the exposition in this movie is so economically doled out. Like, there's a moment early in the film when they're still in Oklahoma, and Bill goes to an older woman named Sharon's house, and he just goes and has dinner, and they have, like, an exchange,

and you find out that Bill doesn't really talk to his own mother. You find out that Sharon, who's Allison's grandmother, it's his mother-in-law, and you just wind up learning, so much about this family in a really natural, very real feeling conversation between these two people without it ever being like, let's do a data dump, let's do a reading of resumes, let's do a reading of family history. I just thought that was remarkable and that gets repeated multiple times throughout the film where you find out all this stuff about Camille

Katon's family or her life and what her relationship to the father of her child is and what she thinks about theater. But it all feels very much like it's emanating from a very lived in natural place, no more so than the film's capturing of fucking Marseille, which is unbelievable. It is an unbelievably transporting movie. And you, I mean, obviously travel has been pretty limited, but like to be that immersed in a city which frankly does not get enough time on screen in cinema or in TV, because it's so evocative, it's so interesting to look at, so textural that I just found myself really, really fall. in love with the people and the place and the story and everything. And I was really, really

caught up in it. And then it has this third act that I think most people are having a hard time wrapping their minds around. I think, I love what you're saying about the way, I mean, Tom McCarthy, I think the thing that I find compelling about him is that he just really loves people and he loves people talking. And to listen to him, listen to him on some other interviews and other podcasts. And he does have a process. I mean, he does almost reportage. Like he does go, he wants to go to Oklahoma and talks to people. He didn't feel like he was capturing Marseille correctly, so he brought on some French collaborators to work on the screenplay, people who had worked with the director of Jacques Odiard, who we've talked about recently in his room of finishing the

bureau. I think that that's just an underrepresented style of filmmaking in general, and I always really get excited about it. I think that he and Matt Damon really committed to creating a whole person, which is challenging about someone who in many ways could be a walking stereotype, doubly so when walking around France in his jeans and his trucker cap. But to your point, someone who has depth and pain, you know, and also a way of being that it's easy to be, you know, sitting on the coast and be judgmental about, but also the performance and the writing and the filmmaking allows us a window, right? Which I think is what storytelling does at its best. I think ultimately the reason why, and even without, I know we're going to talk about the whole movie, we could talk about the specific choices at the end where Bill takes certain actions that result in what he thought he wanted happening, but maybe not to the way that he thought. It doesn't go the way he thought. The thing that I can't get over about the movie that I found really impactful was what it kind of had to say about American exceptionalism and not necessarily in the way that we normally see it. Because the one constant that you really Well, the one thing that you learn about Bill is that we see his existence and the pain that he's gone through and the sort of furrow he's worked himself into, just working the same sorts of jobs and then eating, you know, take out hot dogs or subway sandwiches and sleeping on his couch, watching TV and waking up again.

And the thing about living in the middle of a country like America is you can do that. It's not saying it's a choice. But the exceptional ability to just be barricaded in this place, basically. And then when he goes to Marseilles and has opened up to so many other things, and then there's the sort of extrajudicial aspect of it. It's not just the American cowboy thing, but that literally justice is changed, right? And it's ambiguous about how we should feel about that. But all of this stuff that can happen over there, it's undone in a very American way. And then at the end of it, he's back.

And, you know, what did he learn? What did he gain from it? What's still out there? that sense of being closed off here. Yeah. I mean, the way to put a bow on it would be to say

like he gets everything he thought he wanted and lost everything he actually needed. Life is brutal, as they say in the movie. Yeah, and it said twice, you know, once by Allison in the middle of the movie

when she's experiencing this one moment of freedom and is thinking she probably won't, you know, ever get, like really ever get back her life. And then again,

by Bill, the end of the movie after he has, you know, just avoided going to jail himself and has pulled some really questionable shit. He is almost saying life is brutal wistfully. He's saying that like, I think I'm opening myself up to the like possibility of happiness and the also attendant heartbreaker disappointment that goes along with losing something that made you happy. And, you know, I mean that that I thought that the very final scene of the movie was quite moving. Does this feel old-fashioned to you that we're talking about a movie that may or may not have, quote, unquote, stuck the landing that may not, that absolutely without question isn't a masterpiece? I mean, it's not, it's not perfect. It's not all good even. But that, you know, there's, there's, it's, it's rich enough to have a conversation like that. I think this idea that it needs to get it right or the needs to, you know, be correct about everything, whether it's, it's plotting or its view of Americans or et cetera, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it. It's such an exhausting, it's such an exhausting way to filter this stuff.

So I'm, I'm just relishing that we both watch this like a few weeks after. I mean, it wasn't really in the spotlight, but a few weeks after it came out and there's just a lot to unpack here. Yeah, I think that, I mean, should we talk about the sort of last act? I mean, because we kind of, yeah, I mean, we could just, I, maybe just think a lot about manipulation. So over the course of the movie, especially in the second act, Bill develops this very close relationship with this. kid Maya, Virginia's daughter Maya, they have like this really adorable relationship or she's teaching him French words and he's teaching her English words and picks her up every day after school and helps her with her homework. And it's just- She likes ketchup now. It's quite touching,

honestly. And the kind of movie turns when they go to a Marseille football match, incredible. They shot it at the velodrome. It's just fucking electric. And he sees this guy who he believes is the actual killer of this girl, Lina, who is his daughter is currently serving time for having murdered. And he endangers Maya quite a bit in his pursuit of this guy. Yeah. And goes on to kidnap him and keep him in a basement in the building where he lives with Virginia and and Maya. And I could just feel like the, the like temperature change in the room when I was watching that. Like both, I was watching with my wife, Phoebe. We were both just like, what the fuck? but not like what the fuck in a

this is so hitchcockian like this is so interesting and gripping full disclosure my wife got up and left at that point and did not finish the movie because she was like this is revolting or what it was the kid endangerment

sure you know and and I was very uncomfortable with that turn at the moment I then thought more about after watching the movie and I was like this movie isn't that movie but the fact that in retrospect this was not a movie that was about putting the child in

physical jeopardy was more about the emotional choices that he was making, et cetera, and the effect that would have later, blah, blah, blah. It's probably a flaw of the filmmaking that all of our minds went to that place. It had jumped the rails a little bit. It's a question about, you know,

when you're watching a movie character, I think you take your omniscient. You know, whenever that character is on screen, you get to see everything. So you think that you know this person by a certain point in the movie. I'm just speaking from its perspective of the audience. And then when you see them do something,

not only that is horrifying, but is also, like, really disorienting to your orientation towards the character. You know, you're like, I know that this guy isn't perfect, and I know that this guy probably has, like, some rugged shit from his past. But it seems strange that he would do this,

even if it meant, like, losing his sight of this guy. You know what I mean? Like, it seems like the extremity and the sort of almost pulpy nature of it, I guess in some ways, maybe Tom McCarthy would say it is pulpy. It is kind of a little bit of a crime thriller at the end there. That's the turn I wanted to make. I wanted to give it a kind of a jolt of electricity and uncertainty because otherwise it would be a fairy tale.

It would be like this, you know, it would be Beauty and the Beast in Marseilles and this guy finds like a second life. And, you know, I don't really know what the resolution would have been otherwise. But there was something about the nature of what he does and then the way that, It kind of is, you know, I know this guy just makes a lot of mistakes and he's always trying to sort of dig himself out of trouble throughout his life. But it's something about it really rang false to me. I think the thing that I kept coming back to was what the movie was suggesting about the bonds or the, yeah, I mean, like the bonds that can almost feel like chains that can drag us down, you know.

and his constant belief that he needed to atone for things and make up for things and be the father that he wasn't to Allison and thus have a relationship with Allison that he couldn't and thus fix something for her, right? Like that's baked into who the character is when he first shows up and gives the lawyer the letter and then they leave it alone. But he tells Allison that it's all going great. In that moment, it's this kind of awful thing where he kind of chooses nature over nurture, right? Like he chooses this quixotic quest to like fix his birth daughter's relationship and sacrifices his chance to get it right, you know, his happier relationship for it. The actual plot was supporting that emotional turn. But I agree with you that it's a leap. It's a leap. And, you know, and there are a number of them in the movie. I mean, you have to accept that he just fundamentally will never involve the police, even though time and time again, it seems like that would help Allison if you were to do that. You kind of have to do that. You kind of have to.

to believe that he's going to just see one person in a crowd of 70,000 at a soccer match, you know? I mean, there are a lot of things that do. It is one of those things where, and this is often the case, I think, where something is very ambitious thematically and wants to be about something, that once those dots are set in the firmament, like, sorry, in the firmament in the sky like stars, then connecting them becomes, it can stretch. Sure.

So the, the TikTok of the story does start to come apart. despite a lot of work on it. I agree with you. And there's no question that when that moment happens, I was like, I started to lean out instead of lean in. But then it gets to a place, like you were saying in the last moment. We're like, oh, okay, I see what this was for and what was worth. And I mean, Damon, man.

Damon's so good. Yeah, I mean, Sean and Amanda had a short chat about this movie on their pot on Thursday, on Friday. And I thought, you know, they didn't really get too into the details of it. But they talked about some of their difficulties. sort of just being like that's Jason Bourne like it's just really hard to get over it

and there is a fight scene where I was just like he's going to kill all these guys and he didn't have any magazines it was like him versus 11 dudes and I was like these dudes are in trouble but yeah like I think it's it's a remarkable performance and I think specifically it's remarkable

because they never give this guy a moment where all of a sudden like there's this flowering of intellect or this outpouring of emotion like he always keeps keeps it in. There's just a moment when like Virginia makes like a casserole with tomatoes and he eats that instead of a hamburger and you're like, oh my God, anything is possible. We can all change. This might be the only Venn diagram. The Venn diagram of this point observation might only be our podcast,

but it was a little trippy to watch Stillwater the same weekend I finished the Netflix series, the chair, both of which are about, you know, pill, either in the past or present, pill-popping troubled white men named Bill who developed very intense and beautiful babysitter relationships with single mom's daughters. That's true of both of those works. And those are probably the best parts of both of them. And that was a little, that was a little confusing at times. Oh, I thought you were going to say like the Chris Ryan, like the Ward movement is really moving, is like, is really happening. You see yourself in the bills. That's nice. You know, if you ever want to take my younger daughter out for hamburgers.

Like, you are welcome. It's a different direction than what we've been describing, which has really been more of like a, you know, like a Hoosiers type thing. That's not exactly what I'm offering you. But if you'd like to have something more similar to what we're talking about. Right.

Just as long as I stay away from any extrajudicial investigations. And circuit breakers. Like, I don't think that you should necessarily be redoing the electrical grid in my home. Sure. But otherwise, if you just want to like figure out different words for hammers and screwdrivers, yeah, sure. Let's talk about 100 foot wave.

Yes. So I got to talk a little bit about this, obviously, at length with you before. So I want you to lead this one. This has been like a real revelation for me, just like this late summer burst of interest in surfing. I've got barbarian days over here. I'm just like really jumping in with two feet. I'm so happy that you loved this show. Tell me, or show, series, tell me a little bit about what you were thinking as you were going through the rest of these episodes.

I'm so grateful to you for making this recommendation. Be grateful to Phoebe. She was the one who found it. I'm always grateful to Phoebe. I loved this so much, and it was exactly what I needed, and I loved it in ways that totally surprised me. I also think, when we can talk about this, you and I both seen the entirety of the series. It's actually now the entirety of the first season,

because they're going to bring the show back, which is worth discussing. In many ways, it's multiple shows in one, because in the first two episodes, you know, there's so much, it's recent history, but it's still history. Like, I did not understand the difference between paddle surfing and toe surfing

and the stakes that have been raised with big waves and who these cast of characters were and then sort of getting up almost to the present day, learning about this place, Nazare and Portugal and what it means and how the communities embrace it or not. And then there's the middle episodes, which are just about people getting fucking broken and crushed.

And then, in the end, it's kind of just like an almost cinema verita documentary because every second of these people's lives have been filmed. And it takes us right up to almost last month and it's like pandemic-y. And then we're like, oh, now I see that this is the bones of a series about these very interesting, again, broken in some sense as characters seeking this kind of spiritual and athletic redemption. So it's many things at once. But I want to start by saying I felt the most intense kinship isn't the word. because, well, I have recently made the change in my life that I am now someone who jumps into swimming pools and doesn't just sort of dick around on the steps for a while being like, ooh, that's cold. And I feel like in that sense, I am not unlike CJ his first time in Nazare, who's just like, sure, bro, tow me up.

Like, I do think that we have that in ourselves. Yes. I did text you like 45 minutes into the first episode with, you know, I don't usually like to make assertions without evidence. I mean, this is a very fact-based podcast, but I feel confident when I say... You also give things a fair shot. Like, you're always like, I'm going to wait until I get to the end of this. The whole thing. Yeah.

Who am I to jump in now? Unless it's a swimming pool, in which case I will jump in. I think there never has been, and there never will be a Jewish big wave surfer. I feel very confident in that. Just culturally, neurotically, everything in my body is screaming. That's just not possible. And that, I think, ultimately, is why I love this so much. Because, I mean, I don't even know how deep we're going to get in the ocean here.

But like, just purely on a spiritual slash emotional level for these people to be like, yep, take me into that red spot on the satellite map with a jet ski and I will let go of the rope. And I will do that. It really resonated with me. I found it really compelling. Obviously, it's beautiful to look at. but I found it really, really moving. Yeah, you know, so there's so many things that I loved about this. One of it was just, it's obviously filmed over the course of about 10 years.

I believe that they start, basically, the footage starts in 2011. So you get to see the characters age, and you get to see them go through some pretty significant life changes. Like we said before, Chris Smith, who made American movie and worked on Tiger King is the director of this. And, you know, I don't know the ins and outs of how they acquired all this footage or whether he shot all of it or some of it was self-produced

by the McNamara family, which is the sort of central... I think it's more likely that, yeah. Yeah, and they have footage of basically everything from the start of 2011 to through the pandemic in 2020, or 21.

And so you kind of see, not only this guy, Garrett, who even when the movie starts or the show starts, he's a, he's aging, he's an aging surfer, to now when you're like, this is a bad idea

for you to do this, man, like you have kids and you've, you've suffered some really, really, really scary injuries. And you're in your mid-50s. But you can tell that it's like there's all, like, existence is not as like technical or when he is not out on that wave. And you, they do a really good job of somehow communicating what that must be, that experience must be like, is if, if you are somebody who can tame the untameable or can survive the unsurvivable, that then like, barbecues.

in ball games to steal something from heat just don't really hit they hit different you know like you and over and over again you see this guy be like you know I really you know I've been told like if I screw this up again I won't be able to walk anymore or like my shoulder almost just got like shredded

I really have to think about life like I have kids now and me and Nicole and and then like 10 minutes later he's just like I saw it fucking wave and I'm just like I'm about to get out there it's again this might be this is probably on some level whether it was or not why we began our show today talking about how our aging bodies hurt.

But there's something that is very, very compelling about the fact that the protagonists of this are not the young bucks. Late in the series, you meet people who, I guess, if you're a surfing fan, you would know about it, and there would be household names, like the guy, Kai Lenny, you know, like these young kids who suddenly show up in Nazare, and they are literally doing video game things. Like, our understanding as a completely person who doesn't... flips and 360s. Yeah. On the waves that up to now, as someone who'd never heard about any of this, I see, you know, Garrett do this wave or Justine or some of the other people that we've met at this point. And it just seems like just getting on it and riding it to completion feels Herculian.

These younger guys get on it and they're just doing like sick 360s like they're playing cool borders on their PlayStation like it's nothing. And that is awesome to look at. But what's more fascinating and it just resonates on such a deeper level is just Garrett's lifelong quest to have this Zen communion with the impossible and Kottie

who becomes either the second or third most compelling character in the show depending on your power rankings which we should get into just seems like the most charming, lovable English guy who also has a family at home and we meet him when he's just like some young kid who's like I can't believe

Garrett McNamara wants me to drive a jet ski. him out until the middle of... And it's only because we were in Ireland and England and we were nearby to being a grizzled veteran himself who had broken his back there. And we feel the pathos of it. He's still getting something from this, but the effort and the training. And then just the... That whole portrait of Cadi is amazing because he basically starts as like Garrett's assistant.

Padawan, yeah. And then right when he would sort of naturally kind of ascend in that whole world, he gets a very badly injured and also be the entire world wakes up to the possibilities of nazare and so you start getting all these people coming in and there's obviously growing pains with that which is incredible like when when they're like you know like the safety precautions aren't right here or like guys are just like kind of doing it without the proper training but it's almost as if the surfing community passes khaddie by a little bit because you've got these guys like kai who are like I can just grind this out.

Like, I'm just like, he's basically like Tiger Woods of surfing. And Cotty's like, fuck, man. Like, I would love to get, I would love to get like some recognition, some accolades, some one time in the spotlight. And he's either either been in Garrett's shadow or the shadow of the guys who come after Gary. The one time he wanted anything, it was for the wipeout that broke his back. Right.

Which he has to carry around like an albatross because that's what people remember him for. They're like, oh yeah, you're the guy did this. Yeah, right. Right. And then, because I need to go here. My favorite television character of 2021 is CJ. So, you know, I think people know, but we'll just go over it briefly. Like, Garrett has already had a career as a surfer, retired, learned about toe surfing,

which in which he is, you know, you don't paddle out. You are towed via jet ski out to the really, really big waves behind the, what previously had been the big waves. And becomes this almost like, you know, monk kamikaze pilot of these waves. he also then falls in love with his second wife, starts a new family eventually. This is a woman named Nicole. You and I are big fans of Nicole.

Great arc throughout the series. And she's just with him in Portugal as they build this. And she's his manager, and they build this whole new identity around this whole new surf spot together. Early on, we also meet Nicole's brother. Yeah. CJ.

And I just like, again, I don't even know how to, like I have a cousin who I love very much. And she married a wonderful guy. who's a goy from Long Island. Okay. And my favorite family members are him and his family.

Okay. They could not be less like me. And that's why I love them so much. Like his dad, as a pipe fitter's whole life, has a framed picture in his kitchen, framed like etching and it says, it is what it is.

And I was like, oh my God. Was this before or after the Irishman? Years, years, decades. And I'm like, no Jewish family has ever said it is what it is. Because it never is. It's always more. So there is something I don't mean to be like,

I just find that very beautiful and inspiring and as alien as watching a science fiction movie to me. And so CJ, there's this moment where they're like, we're in Portugal. And so we called CJ. Okay, what was CJ doing? Her kid brother. Well, he was playing professional beach volleyball

elsewhere in Europe. And he came down to Nazare. In like Malaga, right? Yeah, exactly. In Spain. No one else is there at this point, but these are already to their eyes and the camera crews now our eyes,

the biggest waves that have ever been seen planet Earth. And CJ's not even yet brother-in-law, Garrett's like, bro, let me tow you out and you can rip some or whatever. C.J.'s like, sick, let's do it. And he does it. And then his whole arc later is like years later when it's time to like compete and Garrett, and I can't tell this is legit or not. And Garrett's like, CJ could be among the best in the world if you wanted to be. He doesn't want to be. No. Because he's trying to get his body and mind right. And so instead of going to to the Nazare Championship, he goes to Peru for two weeks in search of, quote, natural medicine, which means cramming into a tent and throwing up into a bucket.

This guy is my fucking Lord. I just love him. I love his beautiful spirit and energy. I will never, ever know what it's like to be him, but I wish I could just know a little bit. I just admire him and I love him. Yeah, CJ is really a great character. That's the thing is that this show just has like so many indelible characters. I mean, like Cadi, like Al Meni, who's the other sort of first surfer that goes out

with Garrett. He's from Ireland. It's just awesome. Yeah. So you think that there's going to be more, huh? Two hundred foot wave, baby. No, they are making a second series. I mean, again, I appreciate and respect the way this show is made because there's a section, and I think it's in the fifth episode where they talk about how professional surfing doesn't exist unless they're surf photographers and cameramen, right, to tell the story. And that's kind of the tension that I probably exist in the minds and the abnormally large necks of all these successful surfers, which is, am I doing this because I love this moment of communion and it's a very private moment? Like, as Garrett says multiple times, he wishes he could just go out and rip these sets, right? Like, he just wants to be doing it.

And there must be tons of times where he did, where they weren't being watched or competing. But none of that matters in terms of livelihood or sponsorships or the way they make their money are able to do this. So this collision between like what what they want to be doing and then what we see, all this is to say, every moment of their lives has been filmed for the last, you know, certainly three years and clearly for longer. So they must just have more footage. And so what's interesting to watch the show pivot almost from being a spiritual journey of one man versus one wave to here's the cast of characters of big wave surfing. Yes. Here we go. You know, I just want to end on one note that I had about, my favorite, one of my favorite parts about this.

series is the domestic snapshots we get of these people's lives. Totally. And, you know, at the end, they're kind of like, and then COVID hit. And you're like, well, that was tough for everybody, you know? And then it's like cut to incredible drone shot as we come in on Garrett's like dope Oahu estate. And like, Nicole is making like sweet potatoes. And it's just like, yeah, it's been real challenge being cooped up here.

And like, CJ is out greeting, greeting the day, like inhaling. the sea foam and like all these kids are like paddle boating around at like toddler age. And I'm like, you had a much different pandemic than I did. Chickens are running into their house. Yeah. Also, like, I just can't understand if you have that kind of a Wahoo pad, I like Portugal a lot when I went. Yeah.

I liked it. But like Nazare looks like a small Portuguese fishing village. And it also looks like it's winter 10 and a half months of the year there. It is like up in the North Atlantic. Yeah. So it's just sort of while when you were like, oh, yeah, you know, I could, I could just go out and catch these two or three footers in Oahu

and then come back and, like, eat Nicole's cooking and chill. Because the footage, and we should say this, I mean, it's a beautiful thing to look at. This whole series, it's what your new TVs were made for. It's such a well-done production. That said, it jumps up a level almost without doing anything different when they're in Oahu. I'm like, oh, this is what Technicolor must have felt like

when black and white movies cease to be a thing. Like, it is so vibrant and electric and beautiful and great. And yeah, like, I'd like that life. But maybe that's another piece of it that I think it makes the show so compelling, which is something keeps getting them out of there. Something keeps motivating them to leave paradise. I will say in the case of CJ, he brings some of that sweet, sweet paradise attitude with him wherever he goes. And I hope he could bless me one day.

I mean, I would sign up for that yoga class. There's just a moment in one episode where he's leading a laughter yoga class. Yeah. He's like, we have to laugh out all of our trauma. I mean, okay. Also, something Jewish people don't say. No, we laugh about it, but it doesn't come out.

It doesn't get anywhere. It stays within. The last question I have for you is people who know, who listen to this podcast for years, no, we don't generally dabble in nonfiction programs. that's not top chef. I think we talked about like The Jinks,

which was a big show a couple years ago and you watch Survivor. But I mean, in terms of like documentary docu-series, is this one particularly unique

because of the subject matter in that every single moment is filmed? I mean, my memory of watching documentaries or my experience watching documentaries, even expert ones like The Last Dance,

which I enjoyed earlier this year, there will be moments when someone narrates something because of course a camera wasn't turned on. Well, there's a couple of things that they don't have. Like, they don't have Al and Coddy's, like, falling out, right? That's right.

And I feel like there's some stuff that's, like, I don't know, there's some domestic stuff that I think gets skipped over a little bit, but. You mean like Garrett's first, first family that we never meet? To me, it's just like, they do a very effective job of being, they have something that, like, no other documentary seems to have, which is, like, we can always cut to these big waves and they're dope. You know, like, there are some shows that were just like, oh, I got to do a drone. like here's another flyover of Burbank where we're doing a true crime documentary and it's like

no nobody really gives a shit about watching that but like I will just watch those waves crashing against the cliff for hours they definitely last thing when we first go to Nazare and they're like the reason why this is the best and also the worst place on earth is because there are contrary to these other places there are 19 man crushing waves at any moment and they're gumming sideways at you and all pointing you into these rocks. And yet, and there's an underwater canyon. Right. Three miles deep.

And yet, being smashed into the rocks immediately is taken off the table as a problem, which I respect. I don't know how they did that. Chris, you, long-time listeners know you yourself were a lifeguard. You know, I saw you, I don't want to brag, but I saw you in a swimming pool this summer and you know your way around H2O. You are comfortable and confident. what is your level of like

okay I could do some of that to are you fucking kidding me zero zero percent zero percent I don't love deep ocean stuff like there was like a couple of times when I've been snorkeling and you get really far out there past a reef and you're like oh that is eternity

you know like I cannot contemplate like how deep and far that is the Pacific ocean and like I will die if I keep going out here and it's psychologically more than anything I just find it terrifying. Those waves would kill us, you know, immediately. Yes.

Yeah. Like there would not be like, oh, cool. Like, you saw people trying, they were trying to get back onto the beach. There's some harrowing footage in this show where someone's basically trying to get back on the beach. And the tide is just like yanking them back out. So like they'll go in on a wave and be 10 feet from the shore. And then the tide just yanks them back out by like 40 yards. Yeah.

And like even when people have, and that's the other thing. You're towed out there and your choices are you're either going to serve. the best thing you've ever deserved and somehow make it out, or you're going to wipe out. And wiping out doesn't necessarily mean you're going to do, you know, crazy triple backflip in the air and break your back. Even if you just slip off the board or the wave or the whitewater, the barrel overtakes you, then the next part of your journey begins. And like that's, even the people who survive it, like, there's a moment when Garrett is like, yeah, I saw the whitewater coming. So I was underwater for 40, 50 seconds. Like already, I'm like, this is, this doesn't.

seem I did. And he's also like, I get the fear back. That's my thing. It's like I want to feel like I'm drowning. It makes me feel alive. God bless these guys. I mean, I would, I think they should just start. Headspace does very well.

But I feel like I just need a motivational podcast from these three dudes in particular. CJ just being like laugh out the trauma, brother. Just keep laughing and Cotty. Like we talk about how they have the footage of everything. But there's a moment in the last episode where Cotty rides the wave of his life and no one saw it. Yeah, because they were filming like a like a terrible. accident. It's so existential. It's unreal. Bravo to all involved, including you

for getting me into this. I love it. Check it out. It's such a great watch. We'll wrap it up there. We were produced as always by Kyya McMullen. We'll be back on Thursday. Until then, take care. Of the three of us, I think Kyah could surf big waves. I really think that. I think you're right. Yeah. I've tried surfing many times of my life and it's

never gone well. It's because those were small waves, Kaye. Yeah, I know. You have to do Big waves. Fair.