The Watch - ‘The Bear’ Comes Roaring Back and ‘Secret Invasion’ Falls Flat. Plus Nicole Holofcener on Making ‘You Hurt My Feelings’

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Chris and Andy discuss the news that Warner Bros. is in talks to license HBO shows like ‘Insecure’ to Netflix (1:00). Then they talk about some of the highlights from the first three episodes of ���The Bear’ Season 2 (15:57) and why, like other recent Marvel shows, ‘Secret Invasion’ falls flat (48:13). Finally, Andy is joined by director Nicole Holofcener to talk about her new movie, ‘You Hurt My Feelings’ (1:08:34). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Nicole Holofcener Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons from The Ringer, and this is a podcast called The Rewatchables. We have been doing it. Really since 2017, it started with how much we love the movie Heat. We decided to structure a whole podcast with categories, most rewatchable scene. Who on the movie, Apex Mountain, what age the best? But here's the thing. If you want the full archive, you can hear them only on Spotify for free, by the way. So make sure do follow the rewatchables on Spotify.

Did you know about one and three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away. Trimphaya, guselcomab, taken by injection, is a prescription medicine for adults with moderate to severe plaques psoriasis, who may benefit from taking injections or pills or phototherapy, and for adults with active psoriotic arthritis. Serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections and liver problems may occur. Before a treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis.

Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or if you need a vaccine. Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimphaya. 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 interest 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 run. 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 listening to nothing but Bruce Hornsby's scenes from the south side. It's Andy Greenwald! What a big show. We're both so excited to podcast today. Oh, Andy, it's great to see your beautiful, positive, optimistic face as we embark on a second season of the bear today.

We're going to do the first three episodes. There's also recaps happening in the Prestige TV podcast. You can listen to those. we're also going to talk about the first episode of Secret Invasion, Marvel's Secret Invasion, and we've got a little news at the top, but I just want to say, man, nobody does it like you. It's the Andy Greenwald piece. That's what people don't talk about enough. Yes, thank you. The mental toughness that you bring to a team.

It's that and my expiring contract that make me really valuable this time of year. I feel like you're alluding to the fact that I played a little ISO ball at the end of this podcast. Yes, that's right. I did an interview with one of my favorite filmmakers, the great Nicole Hall of Center who has a new movie out with Julia Louis Dreyfus. It's called You Hurt My Feelings. It's in theaters now. I love this movie. It is my Spider-Verse. Yeah. In addition to Spider-Verse being my Spider-Ver. Movies are good, man. I saw Pass Lives last night. They're cranking them out right now. Past Lives is deeply moving. Yeah. And like,

you go to them, here's the thing about movies, Chris. Let me explain them to you a little bit. I don't know if you watch them ever or talk about them on podcasts. But what a great experience. You go out, you sit in a room with strangers, maybe some friends. Yeah. And it moves you, you know? Heartbreak feels good in places like that. That's right. To coin a phrase. But I dine to see past lives.

You hurt my feelings with such a delightful experience. It is emotional. It's humanist. It is funny as fuck. It's a great movie. And I was glad to talk Nicole about it. Do you think the fact that Gail Simmons, as far as I know, did not regram our podcast, means that she was really appalled by our idol discussion?

No, I think I thought about this. So I think the main issue was, certainly on Instagram. when you post from Spotify, our podcast just said, The Idol, episode three, and then it was like whatever else we talked about. And then it was like, Space Bar, Space Bar, Space Bar, Gail Simmons is here.

So there was nothing in the visual content. We should have had Gail Simmons on the idol. Right. And then that would have got... Food Idol, Gail Simmons. Yes, that's right. I, Gail DM'd a nice message. That's really nice.

To me alone. That must have gone to my spam. Yeah, no, no. I get it. But she was aware, and I was happy that we got to talk to her. You want to do some news at the top? I do. Are you at some house cleaning? Oh, just house cleaning that I feel like most people who listen to this podcast in

2023 are doing so because of the time we reviewed NBC's short-lived limited series, The Slap. Yeah. They're hanging on to a dream there. But if anybody was following your boys. Kind of like the scrolls dream of a new planet, right? I'm so excited to talk about that show with you. I just wanted to give a shout out for people Seriously, how hard is it to find a planet?

There's so many, and they're all just purple and green. What's so great about this one? Like 20 years deep, if any was in following us, knows that actually 20 years ago, I wrote a book about emo music called Nothing Feels Good. And now, it's just this month, June 2023, a really talented music writer named Chris Payne wrote a book that I think is really overdue.

It's an oral history of the emo scene, but also much after the time that I was able to cover. So it focuses on the sort of mainstream explosion and bands like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy. After you turned your back on it because it got too big, right? That's right. Couldn't stretch the scene around the whole country. Went straight back into basement shows at the church. This is a really cool oral history. It's called Where Are Your Boys Tonight?

It's out this month. Thrilled to be a part of it. I think people will really enjoy it if you like that kind of music or if you're just interested in a very bizarre moment of American culture when the stuff went mainstream. Also, Chris, I feel really excited about... You know how... I feel like people still talk about how

in our buddy Chuck Gloucsterman's book Killing Yourself to Live, you're described as like a crack pool player. Yeah. And like, that's a thing that people... That's probably first line of your obituary, isn't it? I hope so, yeah. That's maybe the whole obituary.

I haven't done anything since, so let's go with that. I'm really happy now that there are two hardcover books that breathlessly document the night I missed seeing Madonna at Mishapes. Is that in this other emo book, too? It's in, yeah, it's in, meet me in the bathroom. Uh-huh. And it's also in this book.

Because I was, I went, and then it was too early, and then I hung out with Mikey away from my chemical romance at another bar, and then I came back and I had missed Madonna. It's like, like, there was just like, this zealic moment. And now there are two hardcover books documenting it. Because you told this story twice. That's sort of a negative way. to interpret what I'm trying to say. I was just asking if you told the story

in the same of each book. I mean, yes. Okay. Is the answer yes? The answer is yes. I'm excited to check this book out. There's nothing I like more than reading your quotes. Andy?

Oh, you know what? Let me plug Tyler's book really quick. Yeah, do it. Tyler Parker, our buddy, a ringer staffer, and one of the most creative and talented guys I've ever had the pleasure of working with. He has his first novel is out. It's called A Little Blood and Dancing.

You can find it. at your favorite bookstores. If they don't have to ask for it, you can also use online retailers, if that is your jam. And I just made my way through it. It is so good. It reminds me a lot of the short story writer,

Barry Hanna. Wow. Comic, Southern Gothic, Lord of short fiction. But this is a great novel. I think if you like Elmore Leonard, if you like Larry McMurtry, if you like Tyler's work on The Ringer,

you will really love this book, so please check it out A Little Blood and Dancing by Tyler Park. Are there any anecdotes about club nights in New York City? There's a whole section of the night Andy missed Madonna at Mishapes, you know, just to get a third times of charm. I think that's best. I feel like there's, it's like that's like that film The Last Duel that Nicole Hollif Center was one of the writers of. That's right.

She also does a lot of episodes of Sex and the City, if I remember correctly. She does a lot of TV directing, Sex and City. My wife and I were just fired up and just like that S2. Did you? Yeah. Yeah, we'll talk about that on a future podcast. It's kind of a screener brag. You know what else Nicole says?

No, it's out. It's out? It's out today. I would record first, then I open up Max to see what's new. Nicole also, you know what went through her typewriter? The film Black Widow. Oh, yeah. I did not know that.

I was like, did you write the action scenes? And she said, no. Is that one word answer? Speaking of the Warner Brothers Discovery Company, I have a little bit of a news item for you. Thank you. You know, it's been quite a week in the media, so I can understand if people may have missed this.

Warner Brothers is looking to, this is per deadline, is looking to license some HBO shows to Netflix. And according to the report, they're just right now talking about licensing insecure, but possibly other shows to the streamer. And this is obviously part of a larger strategy

to develop more revenue streams for pre-existing library content that they have. They've taken a bunch of things off of the service to move to paid or fast channels So basically add-supported streaming channels. And you predicted something like this was going to happen, where HBO or any of the Warner Brothers sort of channels, but specifically HBO might be looking to, you know,

you might see this stuff on other streaming services. I was wondering what your reaction was to this. Well, not since that night in Manhattan in 2005, when I missed Madonna. I don't miss things anymore. You know what I mean? Like, that was really an inflection point. So I don't miss like going on in the industry. I think that broadly, the companies in question are trying to find a way to make television profitable again.

And also broadly, the answer to that seems to be... Sell stuff to one another. Putting some toothpaste back in the tube. Yeah. And winding things back. So that's why, you know, we're saying that we're likely to head back to some kind of bundle. But in terms of, you know, there's going to be... We're going to lose some of these services along the way, RIP.

but also they may be bundling in different ways, much like the way the cable bundle used to function. But one of the big ones is that these companies have extremely valuable assets that for reasons that seem to make sense at the time, they pulled back or bought back or bought for themselves to keep within their own corporate silos. And this is, for example, one of the most reliable moneymakers for Warner Brothers was Friends.

So Netflix was paying an enormous amount of money to stream friends for a while. But in the build-up to launching their own service, which was then HBO Max, they pulled it back and bought it back for themselves at a great price. Similarly, the office was doing gangbusters for Universal on Netflix,

and then they bought it back for Peacock. It simply doesn't make sense to keep everything within the silo. So I'm sure that there are those in the article you're talking about, it quoted, or didn't quote, it referenced unnamed or off-the-record HBO people who were against this,

basically feeling like one of the values of HBO within itself and for the larger company is that it is the jewel box with the best jewels. You can't get the jewels anywhere else. But six years ago or longer, almost 10 years ago, a bunch of HBO shows were on Amazon Prime. Remember the Wire was there. I think that was before Prime Video was a thing, right? Correct. So this is the first time in this we are competitors era that this has gone on.

But honestly. And they've and they've licensed shows to, you know, terrestrial cable networks or at least like basic cable networks to be as reruns like the wire and I think the sparranos have been. Sex and the City was edited and syndicated for brief time. So there's

a history of this and frankly it just makes sense that they're trying to make money. This isn't like a pearl clutching moment. Yeah, it's not, I don't know that I'm entirely against it or I'm not against it. It seems like a new audience might get to check out a really good show. Insecure's really good and maybe

had ceilinged out in its discoverability on max and the three different iterations of this service. I think you could look at it as an indictment of, and I'm going to say it. Say it. The U.S.

Wow. Yeah. What at 180 you've done? No, I don't know. I think you could look at it, though. I mean, like, what are we talking about, like, the discoverability,

the ability to find shows on this service and the ability for them to showcase it and merchandise it and have it be that kind of like, hey, it's 10.30 p.m. Don't you want to watch another episode in Skype? You know, like that kind of thing that I feel like Netflix always has the tile that you want or the tile that you're curious about right in front of you and that things just kind of bleed into one another. It is the thing that makes that service so easy to use. And I don't know whether it's a matter of there's just like way too much opposing material on Max, but there certainly is on Netflix.

I just think it's, honestly, it's probably good for insecure. It's a show that I think was wonderful and I hope more people get to see it. Also, one of the downsides of the entertainment industry becoming a tech industry is the adoption of the idea that everything needs to be new and next and we just move forward no matter what. And what I mean by that is there are millions of people within this country who have not really embraced streaming, who don't check streaming for shows and who are not being serviced with the high quality programming that you and I like to discuss on this podcast. And we're starting to see a grudging admission of that. Last week we talked about how FX is going to start showing reservation dogs on the cable channel FX, as opposed to the bizarre carve-out FX on Hulu where it's existed up to this point. Taylor Sheridan, who's been in the news this week, his Yellowstone prequels.

Only good things, though, right? Only good things. His Yellowstone prequels were really, in many ways, ordered to prop up Paramount Plus. Paramount Plus because of that great. And prop up his ranch. Well, yes. We should mention. I'd love to talk about that, actually.

But because of that great fauxpah where Paramount licensed Yellowstone, the mothership reruns to Peacock. So what that meant was 1883 was only available on Paramount Plus. I think last week or the week before, they started showing it on Paramount Network for Yellowstone. Yellowstone heirs. And it did gangbusters fucking numbers. Yes. It did Yellowstone numbers. It did.

We haven't seen this on cable in a decade numbers. Yes. people want to watch shows on TV guys like this is still he said from the picket lines a television business I'm just a simple guy but sometimes it's a lot easier

to flick through the movie channels on cable and have them tell me you've missed the first 15 minutes of the Peter Weller's sci-fi horror movie Leviathan but we you know it's right here if you want to start watching it and I'm like you know what I do I do I don't need to watch the first 15 minutes it's nice to be told what to watch sometimes

yeah it's not it's not It's not a hardship. It's not a hardship. We've spent a lot of the last... Do you want to type of Taylor-Sharrident thing, or do you want to punt that? Well, no, because it's not that I don't want to talk about it because I'm in the pocket of big four-sixes. I just don't have the article, like, at my fingertips. Essentially, he gave a variety or Hollywood reporter.

It's Hollywood reporter. With James Hibbard. And he gave a very long, in-depth interview about... And he was like, I'm going to piss off these PR people, which you love. And it was about everything. It was about the state of Yellowstone, whether Kevin Costner is going to be returning kind of got into that. All the shows that he is overseeing

and he has apparently taken the reins back from of his relationship to the idea of collaborative writing. That he took the overall deal from Paramount so that he could buy the legendary Four Sixes Ranch for $300 million. Yes, but now is in a almost, I wouldn't say unsustainable, but like in a very precarious place

where he is writing and overseeing upwards of five television shows. Right, but luckily for him, somehow he's writing shows. that are set on horse ranches, and he has one that he can rent to himself. It's nice work if you can get it. Exactly.

I think I'm on the record pretty surely about how I feel about Taylor Sheron's work, which is I am a fan. I did not finish Kingstown season two, but for the most part, I'm almost weirdly like something of a completest. Well, my favorite detail in the piece was that Mayor of Kingston was his first script.

Yeah. And when people wanted to buy it but take it away from him, he said, no, sir. And put it in a desk. I am the mayor of Kingsdown and saved it for himself. There's a lot of stuff in this article about... How great he is. Whether or not he wants to or should be sharing duties.

And it's a fascinating piece. People should check it out. Hollywood Reporter Taylor Sheridan. It'll come up in Google. Trust me. Anyway, let's talk about... So like last couple weeks, obviously. A little bit of a turn for the watch.

Oh, a heel turn. Yeah, I think, well, I mean, we've just been... It's been a little bit of a cold. War. And I think I feel something about to thaw out here. Okay. Because the bear's back. And it's, I've seen this

I found myself watching this second season. So how we're going to break this down is I think we're going to do the first three episodes today. So we're going to talk about the first three with spoilers. Yes, but we're going to stop at three. And I saw four, the whole season is up now. So, you know, obviously people, I think a lot of people are going to watch it over the weekend. But we're just going to try and do this over three episodes of the podcast. Okay. So three, three, and four. And, uh, you know, when this show started, I had to kind of like remind myself a little bit that

this was a TV show. Do you know what I mean? Like the, the sort of level of emotion that you kind of feel seeing these people in action again, I think is almost like weird me out a little bit. Do you know what I mean? Like, you felt a little tender. Well, because I think that this is a very old, school sensation that we've been, we've had kicked out of us because so much of the show, so many of the shows that we watch are limited. So many of the shows are either way too saccharine or way too fucking dark.

So you're not entirely, it's not like I get like the hairs on the back of my next stand up when Jason Bateman would walk across the Ozarks or something like that. I'd be like, I am. This guy's about to triple cross someone and someone's going to get their head blown off. Like, you know, and I think that some of the cartoonier aspects of, say, Ted Lassow in the last two Cs. I probably turn me off to like the like be curious parts of it.

Not so with the bear. As the as the opening piano keys. Unbelievable. From Bruce Hornsby, the show goes on kick in after Marcus is visiting his mother in the hospital. And we get all the overhead shots of Chicago. And the lingering shot of Anthony Bourdain's signed photograph in the old, the beef restaurant.

It just felt like kind of returning. I dare say home, but like it was a very like, oh man, this is why people have parisocial relationships with television shows. Yeah, these motherfuckers are shameless to shout out another Chicago set television show starring Jeremy Allen White. And I love it with the music. Like, we've talked about this time and time again that they do not shy away from the ones that are just going to reach into your heart and rip it out of your body.

And it's like algorithmically designed to fuck you up. This is my favorite show. It brings me nothing but joy to confirm what probably everybody already knows that there is nothing, at least in the first third of the season, to suggest that it's not going to continue being my favorite show. The degree of difficulty of what they've clearly done, I mean, I feel confident saying they've done, even though I'm restraining myself from binging the entire season. I don't think you can overstate it because the first season of this show, by all accounts, not just in the watching, but in the making, is kind of a miracle. for people who don't remember or who don't pay attention or care about this stuff. This was a feature script that Christopher Store had written and been developing for a long time. It was changed into a television show.

And FX green lit it with what I believe to be a passionate shrug emoji. Now, they got to make the show. I'm not trying to take shots at FX. They believed in the show and they made it. But they also were like, okay, here's your budget. Go make this show in Chicago in February. And we're going to put out the entire thing in four months. Yeah.

Not dissimilar to the stakes of season two, which is we're going to open a restaurant in a similar amount of time. I find that the parallels between making a TV show and making anything and doing this restaurant are very clear. Very clear. And it's working. You know, everyone, everybody, no matter what they say,

really only writes what they know. And when it's not a one-to-one, but it's close enough, you can feel the truth in it, even if Christopher Store has never opened a restaurant in this many weeks. or Joanna Callow, his co-show-showrunner. So to pull that off and to make a show that literally came out of nowhere and delighted everyone who came in contact with it,

and then to be told, do it again, which actually also is cooking, by the way. Yeah. What a good dish you made, now make it 20 times tonight. It's remarkable. And not only is it remarkable that they pulled it off, but that they chose to begin this season this way because this is one of the quietest returns

that I can remember. In terms of the first episode? In terms of the first five minutes of episode 201. You know, it's Bruce Hornsby. It's Chicago. It's Marcus in a situation we don't know, right? We didn't go home with him. I don't think.

We did see him eating with Sydney. We certainly did. I don't think we saw. Marcus comes to Sydney's house once, but I don't think that we ever saw him. And it's just indicating a lot of things to me. It's indicating all of the feelings we've had. for the show are going to be rewarded with a genuinely empathetic treatment of character and depth

and broadening the world, it's also got a quiet confidence. That we know that probably you're still, the hairs on your arm are still either singed from the stove or standing up from the bravora penultimate episode that was like, you know, there was a oneer, the intensity of the kitchen. A lot of the reviews talk about how intense this show is, doesn't always need to be. Yeah. Doesn't always need to be. And I love that.

I don't know that the visual style that they introduce. produced in the early first season was sustainable, and that peaks with the winner episode. You know, I don't know how many times you can go back to that well. And there are several episodes of the first season that are almost conventional. You know, Richie and Karm go to the suburbs and go to the birthday party. They're almost like your usual situational comedy episodes, honestly, where it's just like, here's like a challenge for these two. Let's have some comedy come out of it.

I find that the chaos in this episode or in this season to be much more auditory. so you're hearing the sounds of the construction going on and banging pots, ticking clocks. The pressure and the intensity of the restaurant opening seems to be much more audio rather than visual. I think the visual style has calmed down significantly. And I think that that's reflected in the interior lives of a lot of the characters.

I mean, the first season was like, can he save this and save himself? Right? This season is about how fucking, hard it is to love and trust people. And also how hard it is to make something and how hard it is to find time for yourself outside of making something. And I think that's a really interesting television.

It really is. I mean, I always think about Friday Night Lights with this show because I think that was the last show that I had like this kind of like, hey man, don't let anything happen to six kind of stuff. Yeah. And, you know, in some ways it didn't. It's you while you're watching it because you're like, I don't want anything bad to happen to these people. But something bad happening is usually what drama is.

But also there is a richness of life in every frame of this show that allows it to do something pretty rare. I agree with you completely. I want to protect these people. I want them all to succeed. And I want Ibrahim to become a great line cook and to go through this school. And I want everything for everyone. But I also understand the framing of the show so clearly and cleanly that I know that, guaranteed success is not in the cards for everyone at everything that they do.

I also know because of the very careful framing that they're not going to get eaten by dragons. Sure. That the worst thing that's going to happen, in many ways, the worst things have already happened to many of them. You know, with tragedy in their own lives or the inciting incident for the entire show or just Karmie's general walking around demeanor is not a calm place to be. I'm so happy to have a show like this that can, that has room to hold on. to the love between these people and the humor between these people and the idiosyncrasies of these people, but also the hardship, it is also part of their lives. You know, it's not an aberration. I don't think episode six is going to be a fire and then everything's ruined.

Sure. You know, it is a, it's a simmer because that's kind of what life experience is. This is kind of a low-grade simmer of potential bad news. Let's go through a couple of moments in each episode, shall we? The first one is, a total handshake episode. You know, like, and I wanted to ask you specifically about the moment

where we get Oliver Platt coming in. And essentially unwinds the, so you guys found all this money in cans. And Mikey knew you were going to find it. And what was that? I think that if there was any criticism of the first season,

it was like, what the fuck is up with this money? And like, now what? And they solve it by saying, like, it's going to cost basically a million dollars to open this place.

they're still not, you know, there's still a lot more to do. Yep. And then they basically get themselves a partner with, with Oliver Platt's character and Uncle Lee, right? Yeah. Who we've yet to meet. What did you think of the,

would you call it narrative surgery to kind of like make it so that like the last part of the first season is now kind of like, not swept on the rug, but taking care of it. It's amplified. So now it is just, it's collected and then placed forward, you know, in that, the threat of losing everything by not having enough money

is still very present. It's in many ways the same money but now it's been doubled down upon and it's all Carmies doing. He's like, you will get all of this if we don't pull this off. The main thing for me is

this is a fantastically written scene with the alarm going off and Richie yelling from upstairs and them giving their very like, you know, like I'm reading off of cue cards. They're very earnest, shark tank pitch, Oliver Platt, speaking of pitch,

pitch perfect. he is in this. He's having so much fun and he's totally in it. What is going on? We need to take a moment to talk about that with Succession Gone, is this the best cast show on television? I don't mean the best cast, although you could make that case too. I just mean everyone who is at it or brought in feels like they belong there. And no one is showboating. No one makes you do a double take. They all fit into this world, which feels so deeply lived in. So, no, I mean, I love that they were economical about it. I mean, again, these are short episodes. So it's like, okay, so what's the business going to be? And what do we have to clean up?

And I don't just mean the mold problem. What do we have to clean up to pitch it forward? I just thought it was clean. I loved it. One of the, not consequences, but one of the things that has happened in the second season is that I think that more people are getting more screen time than maybe they had in the first season. And in the first few episodes, the only person who kind of like, I don't know if suffers. Or like, Evan Moss Backrock doesn't have as much like.

like spotlight scenes, I don't know. But he does say that the Wi-Fi password or the alarm password is GoFast Boats Mojito, one word, which if you don't know, is essentially the seven stations of the cross for me from Miami Vice, the Michael Mann film. I can't believe it. I can't believe I live in a world where that happened. It's so funny. But also his whole thing.

I mean, again, really the first Ritchie scene. of the season might be the most vulnerable and emotional we get for the entire season. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have a purpose thing. Yeah. I don't have a purpose in karma. It's like, I don't have time for this. I have time for this. Um, that is a confident hand and an incredible performer. I mean, that it, he's, every must have rock so good. Ritchie's deep, like, letterbox life, like, where he's like, he's like, talking about Blade Runner. Listen, there, if you want to, if you want to do like deep Ritchie cuts, like, I don't, know the last time I felt so seen

in media as I did the moment when he says to his daughter you know daddy loves you and I love taking care of you and there's a pause and he says and daddy loves Taylor Swift too he just needed to break that is that's a deep deep dad cut that I really

really love any other first episode things like I basically I put a bookmark on Uncle Lee by the time people listen to this podcast they may already be like I know Uncle Lee is I have a guess but, you know, it's I thought they did a nice job setting up the stakes

and I think that the fact that this is a show without at least so far not like the adversary is life it's not like there's a big bad you know what I mean the adversary is like how hard is it to trust somebody

especially when you get business involved? Yeah. And how hard is it to do anything and how expensive everything is? I thought there were other a few like just smart chess piece rearranging like bringing Abby Elliott a sugar back like more closely in

I think it's a good addition and giving her a real purpose and reason for being there and connection to these characters was important. I think, correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, let me just say, on this podcast a week or two ago,

I was like, how dare FX put this entire season up? And then I sat down to watch maybe one and then I looked up and three were gone and I almost hit play on four because I love it so much. So I understand why they did that. Is episode one when...

I think they could have put up the first three and then taken a week can put up three more. Not only because that's how we're going to do it, but because I watched four and I was like, good, that's a chapter break. Is between three and four is a new chapter?

Is it the first episode when Sydney runs out to talk to Tina? That was... That was some coach-tailored, like, shit right there. I cried. This show makes me cry. That moment was so beautiful. Liza Colonsias as Tina is such a great,

great performer. She's an actor and playwright, and she's like from like the New York City theater world and work with Philip Seymour Hoffman and you cast someone like that who, who you, it's an incredible thing with casting, right? Like, first season, she's there.

That's a lefty out of the bullpen and it gets like three outs and then it's just like, I got you. But also the lefty has been in the league. Yes. You just didn't notice the lefty. I'm not saying you, many people, I'm sure, are familiar with her work,

but your eyes move past and you're looking at the stars and you're paying attention to something else. And it's all for this moment. And you realize what you've, the sort of character equity you've invested without realizing it and that this means so much to her and you deeply understand why and it's not even scripted.

I mean, it's scripted, but there are no words in that moment. You know, she hugs her. Friday Night Lights is a good comp because for me, like, that's a moment why what we're chasing. That's why narrative, serialized, television, storytelling fucking matters. Yeah. Honestly, I loved it. Episode two, mold is a buzzword. It's gone through the couple of things.

media cycles. Yeah, problems get worse with the new this iteration of the restaurant, the bear part two. And here's my big, here's my hot take. Yeah.

Do they have, I really don't believe this, but I just want for the sake of conversation, does the bear of the show have a, that thing you do problem with the menu? So my point,

this is a good question. Because, look, we watch a lot of food television, people eat a lot. Like, you start talking about what these meals are. In the first season, it was like Carmi and these people are elevating these traditional Chicago sandwiches and like, you know, comfort food fair. And then in this season, it's like Sydney and Carm going for a star doing their chaos menu. And when they start throwing around like words like radicchio and cherry vinegar.

And every time they taste something, they're like, ugh. But, like, you know, you're going through the process. You're going through the process. What are they like? Yeah. That's my cherry vinegar face. That's good. But if you start laying out the menu,

yeah. Maybe there's three people in the studio. Maybe two of us are like, yeah, it's not really my bag. I think the one, if you're going to plant one concern flag, it would be. Are we sure Karmie can cook? You're really not afraid, are you? No, Sam Levinson has just freed me up. That's right.

To be myself. Just to run towards controversy because that's where the real art lies. The show is now, I think, and I appreciate this, it is now flying close to the reality sun. And we see this in the third episode when Sydney goes on an eating tour

where she crosses paths with real people in Chicago, real restaurants. She also would have had complete real failure. She would have died. Given the amount of food sheets. It is absolutely the correct analogy. That thing you do problem is,

if everyone's talking about this being the greatest song ever, what if the song's not good enough? Right. The benefit here is we don't taste the food, A, which is good. B, what I... And the show is Stee, and Maddie Matheson, who plays Neil, who's phenomenal, is a really good cook and is there.

Chris Stor's sister, is Courtney Stor, who's the chef at John Vinnie's here in L.A. and is a great cook in her own right. They have plenty of people to lean on to advise on that part. I'm sure that it will eventually be fine, but I'm just... No, but I also think that one of the things that the show gets,

right is it strips away a lot of the preciousness and artistry that those of us who enjoy going to nice restaurants want there to be. You know, it is unglamorous. It is repetitive. It is work. Sometimes it's just too salty. Sometimes you're not hungry. And so the way that they, the attention being paid to the way they build dishes, I think is pretty rare in TV and kind of awesome. Yeah. Because we're used to, I mean, we're just coming off of a good season of top chef where these chefs have 30 minutes to come up with an entirely groundbreaking plated thing. And somehow it's always amazing. Maybe it's not.

Or maybe they're bad ideas and maybe it's a gentle edit. You know what I mean? Like this stuff is granular and it can be taxing. And I like that aspect of it. I also think that we're headed towards another thing in the show, which is that this real value of a restaurant isn't necessarily the ingredients in the chaos menu. it is the people you made along the way. It's the vibe. There's another thing to it where I think one of the themes

that keeps coming up through the dialogue is this idea of like you fail, you fail, you fail to get to this place where you are happy or satisfied or whatever. And I'm sure with food, just the way it is with writing, just the way it is with painting, there's the way it is with carpentry,

just the way it is with any pursuit. You're going to make a lot of fucking bad versions of that dish before you find something that you actually like. And we're just getting to see the like you marinated this too long and it's too salty or like this needs like acid or whatever it is.

And I think watching these two people who are not friends, you know, like they're not, they're not, they didn't come into this as Carmine and Sid not coming into this as hey, we're like lifelong pals who are going to try this out. They're like, we recognize a drive in one another.

But there's like a lot of feeling around in the dark for like how are we, who are we to one another? And I think that that's like one of the big things that kind of emerges, especially in three, as it starts to like maybe distrust Karmie a little bit. Yeah. And I think one of the things that you hear, this is not groundbreaking to observe. But when you talk to cooks and people who have been in that is that it attracts a certain type of person for a reason. The profession attracts people with addictive tendencies because it's so ephemeral and that every day you are thrown into the arena. And all you have is your knife.

and your inner strength and then you get your ass handed to you and then the next day you do it again because all the things you cooked are gone. You know, I think there are artistic parallels of, you know, artistry versus craft or repetition parallels to any field like writing. Yeah.

But if you bust your ass for however long you do to write a book and it's, you're lucky enough to have it published, it exists and other people can read it past the first sit down. Sure. And then you can move on to something else and it is damaging to people

who do this kind of intensity every night forever until they either burn out or move on to something else. And you start to see that because they hate this deadline but they also fucking love it. Yeah, right.

They have to come back to the restaurant and be like, I can't sleep. Like, we know we have to go harder. Otherwise, in episode two, I just thought I would mention the appearance of two wonderful additions to the cast. One is Molly Gordon, who people might have seen in Shiva baby.

As, I don't know, I'm not going to say, Karmie's love interest yet, because I don't know that. but it sure seemed like they were... You don't know that? They were exchanging some... Kayak Q's strange currencies.

Some vibes in the bodega. And Robert Fucking Townsend as Sid's dad. God, I love that scene. Hollywood Shuffle Robert Townsend. Very important figure for our generation. Of course. And, you know, this show's fucking casting. Yeah.

Again, like you write a really well... It's a really wonderful scene. And it's wonderful, like, so much about the bear. Maybe it's like so much of cooking. I'm going to keep working this analogy as long as I can. In that there are only so many ingredients to combine in so many ways. And so when you introduce a new character and they're talking about a third new character, Sid's mother who's not there, the trope of like have character tell a beautiful anecdote

about the person so you feel their presence. Like we've seen probably every time we sit down to watch something, there's a version of that. Yeah. So that's not new. But it's a fantastic story. And then you cast Robert Townsend who's telling the story. He knows this person. You know, it's just a simple, it's simple, it's simple, it's the simple act of really good acting.

Right. He knows the person he's talking about and he smiles because he's thinking of somebody. And then that person is in that moment, in the room, in that diner. I loved it. And the Molly Gordon thing, so I don't. The Molly Gordon piece? The Molly Gordon piece. Turn the TikTok camera on.

I don't remember. She was in Book Smart too, I think. Again, I just can't help but think about the process where they write this character. and I don't know whether it was Joanna Callow or Christor or the two of them or they had a great writer's room for season two, how the dialogue and the choices of how that scene played out worked. But someone cracked their knuckles and they were like, we're going to write a flirtation scene for the ages.

And then you still have to cast it. And you have to cast someone who is so many things right away. It has to have a history. Has to be confident. Has to be attractive to carmi, let alone to the audience. But also has to look like they live in fucking Chicago and curse like that and be and hang.

Right. And frankly, that crosses off, I would imagine, the first 15 people that a not paying close attention casting director in L.A. might have sent. Sure. Which is not to disparage the lovely Molly Gordon. I'm just saying like she just looks like someone I hadn't seen before who lives there. Right. And I feel like that level of care goes into every decision they make.

The sort of Friday Night Lights magical realism. And when I say magical realism, I obviously don't mean the 100 years of solitude version of it. Oh, you mean the love and the time of cholera version? Yeah, that version. But no, the heightened reality. Like water for chocolate. The heightened reality is the word I want to say,

which is that these are two people absolutely staring holes in the back of each other's heads. REM is playing. And, you know, like, the real-life version of that is some dude is like, I just need to get oatmeal. Can you guys move out of the way of the fridge here? The real-life version of it is that they lock eyes across Tedros's club. Because that prior to this episode of the bear And then Carmies like, have I ever told you the story

about how I almost saw Madonna at Mishapes? I thought you were going to say, this is the secret about Prince. I just feel like this really was revelatory to me because up to now I thought that the way people interacted on the idol was like the height of sexiness and attraction. And maybe I was wrong.

Maybe everything I know is a lie. He said as he quietly brushed his hair in the studio. Episode three. I thought that the group meeting and this guy who's like, I just don't know how to find any amusement or joy in my life. And because of that, I don't know how to provide that for other people was incredibly succinct and very effective and very well done. As someone. Go on. I know.

I mean, like, I'm fun-loving, but I get it. You know what I mean? I was very excited. I think I wrote down the note as the episode was beginning Karmie and Sid Date Night exclamation point because I was like,

oh, not a romantic date, but I was like, are these guys going to go eat together? This is going to be awesome. And instead it turns into this sort of solo odyssey for Sydney, not only an eating adventure,

but a kind of ghost of Christmas future talking to her about what can go wrong in a restaurant partnership and when you mix business into a kind of quasi-personal relationship. And every place she goes is real. Like they said, meet at Kasama,

and I Googled it, and it seems like an fucking awesome Filipino-American cafe and all these places are real. Avec, of course, is a very famous restaurant in Chicago. I just think that

I would have had a stroke about two restaurant stops in. Now, they don't... Okay, so one thing that I know for sure, having dined with chefs, is they really do order the fuck out of everything. They order every...

everything to try. Generally, though, you also then get food fucked. Like, you get extra courses. Yes. From people who both in the kitchen who both know you and then want to share their food, but also want to make you uncomfortable and want to cause you pain. I think the pros know you don't finish it. So Sidney didn't, we didn't see. Right. The one thing that I thought was there was some repeats too. Like they would show things more than once. And I did wonder if that was they didn't do enough pickup shots. No, I bet it's more just like the the kind of of the reason what I really wanted to say is that this is one of the great visualizations

of what creative inspiration feels like. Right when the dumplings come together in her mind. But it's the flickering. And it's like she sees the plate, she sees the splatter, the dumplings are starting to be there, the mint leaves or whatever she's putting on top. Are they ravioli? Are they dumplings? They're inspired by both.

The way that she's kind of starting to see it and the way that she finds the inspiration by being on the architectural cruise around Chicago. I actually love that building. That's the weird, I don't know, almost looks like a honeycomb. The Corn Cubs, the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot building. Yeah.

Damn, I feel real basic now, knowing that it's the Yankee Hotel Foxhraught building. Isn't it? Yeah, but I just feel basic as shit. Okay. Because I was like, yo, come on, you gotta be like, you're fucking other,

you gotta be like, no way, Chris, you're a flower. You're a nice guy. I mean, what do you want me to say? Dickhead. Maybe if you had seen Madonna in 2005, I'd be a little more impressed. I hope we have A-O-on-the-show so that we can ask her how much she had to eat that day. I also hope we have her on the show to be like, you're such a good actress.

Fucking Chris Farley. And also, like, who the fuck went to Duke on that staff? Oh, because of the Shoshchewski stuff? Yeah, I mean, you're kidding me. By the way, we should shout out also Joanna, who is the co-show runner, directed this episode. I don't know if she had directed episodes in the past. So it was interesting that if this was her first,

that it was a very visual, a lot of visual storytelling, a lot of those cutaways. Were you offended about the Duke stuff, or do you feel like? I think there's a lot of really great coaches out there. Who have written books. Yes. Yeah.

Which one would you recommend, Bob Huggins? No. I didn't register for a second. There's a long pause. The problem is that, you've always liked the bear cats. I think like 60% to 80% of the coaches you could have mentioned right there,

have also had some weird, fucked up, like, arrest or some, you know, some other thing? Didn't you used to like Cincinnati, like the basketball team? We'd have to get into that. I used to like... That's not basic. That's spicy now.

Yeah. You're just a guy who likes the idol. I was into Deshawn Stevenson. Okay. Yeah. I respect that. And they used to wear headbands and the uniforms were all black.

You were also an UNLV guy, too, right? No, I wasn't. I don't mean like you were a booster. No, I like you were... No, I like Stacey Ogman. Okay. I mean, you want to go back through the 1980s and 90s of college troops? What I'd like to do is...

I liked Billy Owens, too. It doesn't mean like Syracuse. I'd like to name the four to six college basketball programs I'm aware of and just interrogate you about whether you like them or not. I was a big Fab Five guy. That is true. Yeah. Whereas was I. We're talking about Sydney's food tour.

I just love... You know these little touches? Like when she gets... She orders everything in the menu at Kasama and sits down and is given all the food and then gets the message that Karmie's bailing on her. And she just looks at it and it communicates so much. And then she thumbs ups it. thumbs, thumb ups it.

And I thought it was cool that they stuck with her the entire episode rather than cutting back and forth between Karmie, like moving her refrigerator. Yeah, we didn't see any of it. Yeah. If I believe, if I'm, uh, it was also a very,

very, uh, lovely detail that she goes and cooks by herself after she has the, what she gets home, she gets back to the restaurant, finds out that they've like started knocking down everything without telling her. Yeah. And then I think she goes off to go and,

uh, recipe test by herself. And I thought that that was, those things where you have to like carve out, private time. You know what I mean? That's what I do a lot on Twitch is just to get away from you. He's just monologue on Twitch. While you're playing what?

FIFA? Top 100 college basketball coaches a while time. Okay, guys, it's Chris again. Yeah. Not a lot of people know this about Steve Fisher, but he was... Billy Donovan. You know, he gets a lot of shit for his work in the league, but he was... I can't believe we still have to talk about

Secret Wars. That's true. Oh, a secret invasion. We should pause on the bear because he has so many more to go. But like we haven't even, and I believe there's a lot of Marcus coming up in the next episode. That's been made clear to me. There's a location element involved that many people in my life have already felt free to spoil for me. I didn't spoil. I just said you're going to barf when you see this. You didn't. But other people did not, are not as good friends as you are. Well, you and I have a very aggressive. I think it's just like, antagonistic. I think you and I are both

like, like if you're ahead of me in a show. Uh-huh. I can tell that you are resisting telling me what I'm missing. I just fall silent. No, you do not. No, you do not. And then if I'm ahead of you in a show, I try to respect it. You know, what was a good example of this? The other night, I was like, L.O.L.

This is a text. L.O.L. The flash tanked, exclamation point. And you were like, would you like to know every cameo in the film per Wikipedia? And I wrote back? No. And I just didn't write back. No. And this is the first time we saw.

spoken system. And you can feel the tension. So we just did the first three episodes. We're going to do the next three episodes on Monday. And then we will finish the bear on Thursday. And hopefully we can get some special guests. I want everybody involved in the show. And I

just, I can't talk or listen to enough about this. So like I said, Van and Joe, I believe, are doing it on Prestige TV pod. Also, you know what's fun to do when watching the bear? You should not second screen it. But if you did have an app open, it should be Shazam in case you're not aware of just like You know you can just like look up what were the songs in that episode?

No, I don't trust Google. Okay. Not even for flash spoilers. I do that, but it's like my wife has Shazam. And so it's just like very like, can you come in here and Shazam this? Like, you know that it's a free app. Like, you could get it. I don't need any more apps.

You borrow Phoebe's phone to Shazam things. That's so cute. That's really sweet. I borrow her. I'm like, you come to me and Shazam this. When I shazam things, it's pretty urgent. You know what you mean? Like you're in a store.

and there's a song and you're like, oh, let me double check this. It's not like I have time to go grab someone. It's a, you're missing out. Well, we live in an on-demand world, you know. But not you. Slow horses over here. Secret invasion?

Okay, let me, can I just like stretch for a second? Do you want to take a break? No. Okay. I've been fired up to talk to you about this since the first five minutes. I didn't want to lead with this. I didn't want to lead in the dark. I wanted to lead in the light.

Yes. Secret invasion. The new Marvel series. I'm just going to keep saying the time. title of the show. Starting Samuel L. Jackson, Olivia Coleman, Amelia Clark, Kingsley Benedere, a bunch of people.

It's an insane cast. Martin Freeman. In a vacuum, boy, would I be fired up. It was created by Kyle Bradstreet who worked on Mr. Robot, and it's directed by Ali Saleem, who's done episodes of Condor and Looming Tower. I mentioned these credits because everything about this show suggests I should like it.

Everything about the resumes of the people involved suggested is something that should really get the butter going you know like let's get like shirt it I don't know I'm just trying to think of new ways to say like I should I was excited for this Ben Mendelsohn did you mention

Ben Mendelsohn getting Scooby-Dood a lot pulling off that mask it's about the internecine squabbles between the scrolls a refugee alien race living on earth and there's like a hardline version of the scrolls led by Kingsley

Gravick led by Kingsley Benadier who are trying to force humanity's hand I guess to get them their new planet that they promised and then there is the centrist Ben Mendelsohn who's like you know we live among these people we don't have to like

we don't have to fight he's Andrew Yang third party I gotta be completely honest I completely forgot that that Nick Fury had been in space for several years, which is the main character trait of Nick Fury in this show, is that he has returned from, sounds like setting up a missile defense system in outer space. Sabre.

To find out what's going on with this Skrall inter-Civil War. And aside from the fact that it is set in Moscow and it doesn't particularly feel like it, or that watching it both requires a familiarity with Captain Marvel, which I do not have, and the plate of the scrolls and the fact that nothing bothers me more than things that try to be like things I like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I just don't think they show has any juice, man. I just, and I think the problem is is that they have run out of runway with this tone. And the tone is not serving the material anymore. Even if it was kind of flat, which I think it is, and even if it was, which just whatever. I mean, like, I know what I'm getting involved in. You can't go into this show and be like,

Scrawls, this shit sucks. Like, just watch Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy, if that's what you want to watch. I know what I'm getting involved in. But this show is about dirty bombs and the possibility of a world war between Russia and America and terrorism

and espionage and all this stuff. Why the fuck are we still being so glib? Why is everybody still doing the same like diet, weeden banter from the last 20 years. I think that's where they may need to shift

this stuff up a little bit and have people talk differently. Like Andor. There is, no matter how successful comic book adaptations get, it seems like there is still increasingly not successful,

but there is still a little bit of shame, I think, involved. the people who make this. And they are a little bit embarrassed how fundamentally silly it is that there's a shape-shifting group of green aliens with scrotum chins running wild on Earth. And the world, you know, the intelligence agencies have to get involved.

Yeah. So they make it very serious. And so once again, we have essentially the same plot as Captain America and a Falcon and Winter Soldier where there's just a bunch of dissidents and a lot of refugees huddled into a place with absolutely no empathy, no interest,

no character, there's just refugees who want something and they blow stuff up. But again, this is PG-13. So they explode things, but no one... That's what happens in this. No one gets hurt. When the bomb goes off at the end of the episode of Secret Invasion, it's like...

Like, quit to Kobe Smolder's helping a child. Yeah. Nobody's actually hurt. There's a lot of stakes, but there's no stakes. This is for everyone. It's for no one. everyone has their own limit with this and I'm sure I've said things like this before

when talking about multiverse, Dr. Strange or whatever, but I think it's time to have... Is this your letter to the Players Tribune? It's time for a wellness check. Okay. I believe that in the state of California you can intervene someone's having some sort of a breakdown

or a psychotic episode and the police won't be involved, but like medical health professionals will come and just check. Uh-huh. Maybe give you a talk, maybe give you a chance to take a walk, express some things.

Because things are not okay. at Marvel Entertainment. It's not okay. This is, and I say this, I want to say this carefully, because you named at the top, there are so many talented people involved in the show who gave their all and gave their best and worked in difficult conditions

and tried to squeeze something through an almost impossible tube to get to where we are. I don't think that what I'm about to say is the result of any personal or creative failing of the people who worked on this show. But this is a mess, and it's bad. And I feel like people, And I feel like even at Marvel, they must kind of understand it unless they just want to be absolutely mid for the rest of their times in this job.

It's a mess that can't even have fun with its own concept. Like just fundamentally, the idea that we begin with a familiar character, in this case Martin Freeman's Agent Ross or whatever his name is. But not. But not. that's right. That's correct. You know what I mean? Like, you know, when you talk to like, when you hear draft experts and they're like, this pick was defensible. Like, this is how this, something like this should begin. And if you can get one of the movie people, but not one of the major ones, to do this cameo, because you're filming in London anyway, great. Make it Martin Freeman. But they kind of fumble even that

because there's so much baggage here. He has to show up. And then he has to do his light banter, as you were saying, that they always do, with, do you know, do you know, do you know, that was Barrick from Game of Thrones. I did not know that. Freaking out as a crazy conspiracy guy explaining scrolls. But then that guy gets shot somehow by who, I wasn't clear.

And then Martin Freeman runs. And then we have a classic MCU. It's way too dark to understand what's going on and it's time to look elsewhere until they're done chasing scene. And then at the end of the scene after we've introduced other characters and talked about stuff.

And then fucking Ben Mendelsohn is like with his weird Australian list being like, remember me? and everyone's like, nope. Ben Mendelso's being like, I'm not yet 40. It's okay, buddy. Come on, dog. You could choose any shape.

He's a good-looking guy, but come on. Yeah, but I wouldn't be like the 40-year-old Ben Mendelsohn. No. And then all of that to end with being like, oh, and by the way, this guy is one of them too. They step on their own reveal. It was a long way of saying

that that scene was too long and too confusing. You know, there is no there for any of this. Half of the scenes are Sam Jackson talking to people that he supposedly met before, and Olivia Coleman's having a good time. And then the other scenes are people he has met before in an absolutely C-minus movie from five years ago. What movie? Captain fucking Marvel. And they're like hugging each other. And then you just end up twisting yourself into knots where it's like the scrolls could be anybody, but we couldn't cast anybody from the movies.

so they're just going to be Russian art dealers because they're just going to be terrorists like a sort of broad bad guy in any other movie. And then you have it all hinging on... What was the whole thing of... What are the shells that they have? Like, they have dudes in... Oh, my God.

I'll talk about that. We can talk about that, but I just mean, already you're behind the eight ball when you're like, the evil scrolls have invaded the earth, but they're not really evil. Only some of them are evil. And one of the main ones isn't evil.

And that one's daughter, who, by the way, was played by a child in the Captain Marvel movie. So this is all continuity that Amelia Clark is now Gaia. He named her Earth. Anyway, many of them are bad. One of them is mostly good. What are we doing? What are the lines here?

The Secret Invasion comic book storyline was good, and it was a big classic Marvel thing, where it's like, guess what, Tony Stark's been a scroll for the last 10 years or whatever. Yeah. This is like, guess what? A guy we cast out. of Rada for day player role has been a scroll.

Who cares? So the thing was that you're talking about was that I guess they were having them not just impersonate people, but become people by wiping their minds, not just how they look. But this fucking MCU teaching me about refugee camps for the second straight, mediocre show, come on. Although I was thinking... Put some respect on Flagsmatchezer's name. Kingsley Beneder is pretty cool. Yeah, he's a...

So is Olivia Coleman. Him sitting there and putting the sugar cubes in his coffee. I was like, I wish this was. was in a regular spy show. Yeah, because you know what's not cool? The guy showing up to the scroll refugee camp and then being handed like a bright blue plastic fruit and being like, where did you get this space fruit?

She's like, we grow only scroll crops here. Fuck off. Oh, man. This is purple and blue nonsense, man. But do you think that part of this is like, should you, it's not should you know better, but it's not like you didn't know what secret invasion was going to be about.

So what is it about the execution that's different than the story? Or was, what are you never looking forward to this? Well, the idea, I mean, there are a couple ideas, more than a couple, a couple dozen storylines from Marvel, particularly from the last 20, 25 years,

that are just really good log lines, like really good ideas. And the secret worst thing that they're potentially building up to is one of those really good ideas. Miles Morales is another one of those really good ideas. And Ms. Marvel, like a lot of these things have been drawn,

not from the 60-year history of Marvel, but more recent history, when a lot of really good writers were empowered to come up with really big status quo-shaking ideas. But I knew they were never going to do that because this is a TV show. You know, and they couldn't...

I thought that this was a likely storyline for the next phase, honestly, with the movies. But they went in a different direction, and they also made this... They did the reveal in the Captain Marvel movie that the scrolls were good, actually, which isn't necessarily a thing that's ever been...

That's not canon. No, I mean, they were fantastic four villains when they were created. But it's not that. It's that this, like all of the last TV shows, I think, other than Loki, to me, have felt like absolute chores. They're just absolute homework. There is no lightness. There is no joy.

There is no fun. There is no tonal point of view. They can talk about Lakari all they want in interviews, and I'm sure they like him. And I'm sure that they like him. I'm sure that they did things. But it's like, it's set in Moscow. Why?

Because other spy shows have been set there? Why? You know what I mean? Because of the nuclear plants. Okay. Yeah. Well, you answered that one. Yeah.

Is Nick Fury a tad more get these snakes off my motherfucking plane than he used to be? Didn't. Was it the blip or was it his time on Sabre that brought the full Samuel Jackson experience to the show? I really like that you, when you texted, you said this, is. a little more Royale with cheesy, which I think. Look, I'll watch Samuel Jackson read the phone book, and Samuel Jackson will read the phone book. But I just am curious whether or not I missed a piece of continuity there.

I think it's more that Nick Fury has never been a character. He's just been like a seamstress stitching together things. Gotcha. And him being in the credits of Iron Man 15 years ago really was him saying, I want to be a superhero. And then we'll figure out the rest of it later. And then the comics raced to turn historically a white character with like a white beard into Sam Jackson by making a new Nick Fury Jr. who looks like Sam Jackson.

But anyway, yeah, he's, you can kind of feel the pulse, not just of the show, but of the creative hope for the show in those scenes. Because the people making it were like, we're writing a TV show with Sam fucking Jackson. You know what I mean? Like, let's give him some swagger. Let's give him something to play with. Let's give him a jewel scene in the art gallery that ends with an absolute nothing burger boring fight that all of these things end in.

I mean, I think, again, when you're failing on both sides of the ball, you're not excelling at anything. Like, the character work isn't as good as other TV shows. The special effects isn't as good as other TV shows at this point. And the action set pieces are certainly not lighting anything on fire. they're absolute like time to look away and do something else while people are fighting and punching and running or whatever they're doing. That is the biggest indictment.

And if there are three of those per show, then you're like basically like not paying attention to a third of the television show. And the other, I think the other issue is one that you were you were hinting at when you were talking about or suggesting when we were talking about the problem with multiversal storytelling is there's stakes fatigue. I don't understand anything that matters anymore

in any of these movies. And I think that's important for the casual fan, you know, not just because there's always going to be another Spider-Man or another multiverse to pull from. But in this case, it's like every one of the last six things that they've made has been a existential threat to Earth and life as we know it. But really? Are they? Are they all? And maybe at some point in the second episode, we'll have the throwaway line where it's like, well, why don't you call Carol Danvers? Sure. And he'll be like, they're busy. Don Cheadle is just getting cucked by President Dermit Mulroney.

Like, I don't know. You're right. It's less fun, actually, to be complaining about this than I was hoping it would be, only because I think it's just a fucking bummer. And it's another slog for me. It's just another slog. When you read people, and I don't mean like shills, I mean, there are people who are like, Marvel's got its mojo back with a spy thriller.

Who wrote that? Did somebody write that? Have you seen headlines that suggest that? Chat, GPT. No, but I have seen comments of people being like, I haven't loved the last few, but like this one's for me. I think that this has got more potential

than a couple of the other shows that have been on in the last few. I think I'm just like now we are getting to the point. It's like any relationship. And you know, if things start going wrong and then you wake up one day and you're like, we've been fighting for longer than we've been in love.

And I think that that might be getting to that point with Marvel. I think so. Surely just because also of how much stuff they've put out because of the Disney Plus expansion, I think now we're at like about two-thirds of the,

this I think is pretty mid, if not bad. And then there's one third of it that I'm pretty into or liked or did stuff. And, you know, maybe in 10 years, if we're still doing this, if we're still doing this, we'll look back and we're like, wasn't that a weird three-year, four-year run

before they got to Fantastic Four and X-Men? And they had to like pretend like Loki and, you know, Kang were a big deal. But I don't know. I'm not interested in that long of a tale. I just think that I don't have any faith in their ability to do Fantastic Four or X-Men right now. I think they are completely lost in their own sauce. And even the idea that I think we've gotten is that the Fantastic Four movie will be born out of the events of Secret Wars.

Well, you're fucked. Just make a good movie. Make a good movie. Try that. And maybe behind the scenes, that is what they're doing. Maybe they've siloed off and Matt Shackman is in their... just working blissfully unaware of what else is going on in the larger secret invasion scheme of things or secret anything. That's just not the point of what they do.

But it's not the point of what they do. The whole point is that you have to remember what happens in Captain Marvel. I mean, I think I should probably save some of this vitriol because honestly, look at the rest of the release late this year. Like the marvels, this is the, all of their projects just seem like answers to questions nobody was asking. Well, I'll be very curious to see how this is received both. Critically, it seems like it's been like a little bit more in like, hey, you know what, this isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be here. This is pretty good for a Marvel show.

I think I'll be curious to see how people respond to it fan-wise. And I think that you're right to say that if there are, and I, and I, it's too late for me to be like, I'm sorry if I was dismissive of people who just like this in their entertainment, they exist, and I'm happy that they're happy. I do think that the central. seem that happy that they're happy. I'm not that happy. I'm not ever happy when someone else is happy. Jealous and bitter. I hope that the larger drumbeat of what we're saying here, though, can be heard, which is that something is really rotten here. Something has curdled.

Yeah. And I don't know, I certainly don't know what the answer is. And I think that they're too ramped up in the production cycle and release dates to be able to address it. It just, you just feel that sort of slick, sick, sick, desperate feeling of things falling through your fingers because there was a release, this has been delayed quite a bit. And I have no doubt that this is the best version of what they were able to do and that people gave their all. But everybody involved deserves better. You want to set up Nicole a little bit here? Speaking of things that hurt my feelings. Yeah, this is nice when we have the ability to go from negative to positive, which is just to say that Nicole Hollif Center has been one of my favorite filmmakers since I saw walking and talking

at the Ritz in Philadelphia back in the 90s. And she's made, seven films, all of which are worthwhile, all of which mine very similar, really smart, really empathetic, really interesting, and often really funny terrain. Lovely and Amazing from 2001's, one of my favorite people should also check out friends with money and please give. And I feel like another one of her best films and her other collaboration with Julie Louis Dreyfus was Enough Said, which came out 10 years ago and was James Gandalfini's last movie, and he's incredible in it. You hurt my feeling. is we talk about it in the interview,

but it's about Julie Louis Dreyfus, who plays a novelist who is in a loving marriage with her husband Don, who's a therapist, who has some very, very funny patients, David Cross, Zach Cherry from Severance, and he's very supportive of her in all ways and of the manuscript she's been toiling over, and then one day she overhears him

speaking to their brother-in-law, played by our buddy, I think, I feel like he's our buddy. I've never met him, but Ari and Moed from Stewie on Succession, saying that he hates her book and he can't read another draft of it and the sends her into an emotional tailspin. It's really funny

but it's also just like really heartening that there are still great stories being told about small emotional moments that ring true. I really hope people check out the movie but also check out this podcast. We talk about movies versus TV. Oh, we should talk about that between you and me one of these times.

I feel like we have a podcast so we could talk about those things but it was a pleasure to talk to them. So Monday we'll be back. Kai McMullen with us who produced this episode and all of our episodes. And we'll talk about the idol. I think so. And we'll talk about the next episode's four through six of the bear.

Also, we ran out of time. We didn't talk Black Mirror. So we got to throw that on the docket because I've been watching some Black Mirror. Yeah. Does that affirmed your, reaffirmed your faith in humanity? I feel really good about where we're headed. Yeah. Especially families.

Yeah. Oh, a lot of strong, strong family stories. Bye, Andy. That's it? You say bye to me? Yeah. Let's get into my interview with Nicole Hall of Center.

This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same day delivery as you're back. Getting you exactly what you need,

fast and reliably, so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to find millions of items delivered fast. Available in select areas. Terms apply. 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. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Mark. Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant. 18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools.

This episode is brought to you by the Active Cash Credit Card from Wells Fargo. That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets at the game or grabbing a coffee, it earns unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases. Say it with me. The Active Cash Credit Card from Wells Fargo, be a two. percenter learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash terms apply. Overjoyed to be joined by one of my favorite filmmakers in the world, Nicole Hollif Center,

her seventh film as writer and director. You hurt my feelings as in theaters now. Nicole, welcome to the podcast. I'm so thrilled to talk to you. Thank you so much. That's so flattering. I'm happy to be here. I'm going to flatter you again. I hope by saying my daughters were out of school. I took them to see Spiderverse the other week, which we all loved. And then the next day I saw your film in the theaters, and they asked me how it was. And I said, it's kind of like my spiderverse. Like, the only thing missing was Catherine Keener swinging in after the credits to say that, you know, there was a super team she was putting together. That's right. That's good. Of smart women in New York City. Did you stay really to the end? Because there is something like that at the end. No, there's not. There is? No. Oh, my God. That was my bit. And then to think that I got burned.

Okay. Next time. So you hurt my feelings. is driven by a moment of unplanned candor, let's say. A wife overhears her husband confessing that he doesn't really love the book that she's been toiling over for a number of years. Was that an actual lived experience for you? Or was that just born from anxiety that many of us share? Mainly born from anxiety. No, I did hear in film school when I screen my big short film, my overly long short film, I did hear a friend of mine behind me say something like,

when is this going to end? Please make it end. And I thought I had a good film. And then I realized I didn't. That was horrible and 100 years ago. But you've forgotten it clearly. Yeah, I don't even know who said it. I'll give you his phone number.

Actually, we have him in the Zoom waiting room. This is a planned intervention. That would be so good. But yeah, more born out of anxiety and what is. The what ifs in life kind of inspire me more than things that have actually happened. Yeah. So from the moment of that seed or a what if, how do you nurture it and water it into the point where it becomes an actual screenplay? No, it's not easy.

Let me think. You know, I guess I start with that theme, that what if, and then how would she react? and I had many, many versions of how she might react and just landed on a more subtle one. And I start writing it. I set her up to be insecure to begin with, right? And, you know, her book's not getting bought by her agent or sold by her agent.

And then I just start writing and creating characters sometimes with the knowledge that their issues will be similar to the theme. And sometimes it just turns out that way. Like, it's kind of an unconscious thing, and luckily things pay off because of that. I don't know what I'm saying. But, yeah. Well, I think that, so in the film, so the characters are Beth as a writer played incredibly by Julie Louis Dreyfus, whom you worked with before and also brilliant enough said.

And Don, her husband, is played by Tobias Menzies, who I'd really only seen wearing armor and being sneaky in period pieces or Game of Thrones stuff. So this was nice to see him in Tivas. So she's an author and he's a therapist. And I love the fact that you pair to professions that both carry some sort of implicit authority, but those who have the jobs sometimes struggle with that authority or feeling like worthy of it. And they also have to deal with levels of honesty. Does that fit what you were saying about sort of finding your way into characters that might suit the theme? Or was that a more considered decision that these would be a perfect pairing of professions?

You know, no. So much of it is flying by the seat in my pants. Like I thought, oh, wouldn't it be fun if Don was a therapist? A bad therapist. Okay, he's a bad therapist. And then that just inspires so much, you know. And then later realize, okay, you know, maybe all of this comes together. Like Michaela Watkins' character is a, you know, interior designer and she gets rejected all the time. And then when she gets actually not rejected, and praised, she feels worse because it points out that her profession has no meaning for her. So it's funny because I don't outline my movies or make treatments or anything. So it's kind of messy and scary, but I prefer it that way. And I just keep telling myself as I go along, like, well, I've done this before. I hope this one will work out, you know, just kind of go page by page. I love that you said, or I'm interested that you said that Don's a bad therapist because he certainly begins to feel that way. And you have the real-life married couple, David Cross and Amber Tamplin, just tearing into each other and then tearing into him.

So he's not doing his best work there. But do you feel like is he bad or is he just like anyone good at some things and not good at everything and keeping up a facade? I couldn't quite tell because we see him have a more tender, long-term therapist relationship with an older man whose work wraps up. the course of the film. Exactly. Well, that was kind of to prove the point that, yes, he can be helpful and he was to this man and they had an intimate relationship as therapists. They're a host impatient. But I kind of feel like he's going through a bit of a midlife crisis, hence the vanity and staring off into space during therapy sessions. I mean, I've been in couples therapy where the therapist just watches us fight.

And I've literally said, we can do this at home. Like, we fight well at home. Stop us. Help us. I mean, I never behaved as stupidly as those two do on the couch. I'm definitely more involved than that. You also have the great Zach Cherry, who people may know from Severance, who gets very frustrated. And I have to say, you confess something.

I'll confess something as well that I had a therapist who I'd been seeing for some months who then called me by the wrong name, which just sort of shatters everything. You know, because you're kind of like... Oh, my God. Hey, Jonathan. How are you feeling today? It was worse. It was Danny, which is not, not Andy, but it's not Andy, you know. What did you do?

I saw him for another seven years. You know, what are you supposed to do? It would be awkward. You don't want to make it worse. No, and you just let him call you Danny. Yeah, and the truth is Danny's doing great now. I'm not, but he is. He's doing well.

This idea of sort of radical honesty or something, like it's such an interesting idea. One thing that I think we learn as we get older is that the idea of being truly transparent and honest is not necessarily a kindness, that it's often can be an act of selfishness. And I kind of love to, I love the way that played out in the movie, not just in the professional themes, but also in the personal ones with the parenting, where Beth, Julie Louis-Dreyfus's character, is caught between her mother, who's played brilliantly by Gene. Berlin, who is honest to an almost homicidal degree, saying that, you know, your book should have done better. You should have done these things, which hurt her. And almost you can see the way that

many of us parents, not in moderation, but in complete reaction. So she parents her son in the movie by showering him with kindness that actually begins to feel dishonest. Correct. You said it very well. I don't know if I have anything to add. I think, you know, I dealt with that theme yesterday. And it's, you know, I started it, I think, with lovely and amazing when Emily stands naked in front of Dermit Mulroney because she wants to finally hear it. And, you know, she's stunning and slim and perfect, but it doesn't matter. And I guess she was tired of hearing, you look fine, you look fine, you look fine, she wanted to have the truth. And yesterday, a friend of mine acted in a short. short film. And I saw some stills from the short film and she looked obese in the stills. And she's not even close to obese. The angle and, you know, I think everyone's initial reaction would be, no, you look good. No, you look good. And I was like, honey, you look so fat. This is, this is not you. And I think it made her feel better because I validated her reality, which was she doesn't look

anything like that. And a couple of people were looking at me like, shut up, shut up. And it's like, you're making her feel worse by saying she looks fine because she doesn't look. I don't know. Is that an interesting story? It is an interesting story. And I love and I'm a little bit salty that you brought up the lovely and amazing scene because I was thinking the same thing. That's one of my favorite movies. And I just feel like there's a constant theme in your movies, this collision of kinder and kindness. I was thinking of that scene. I was thinking of the extra guacamole and enough said. The entire premise. of friends with money to a degree. It seems like that friction of how we, what we think, how we feel,

and how we behave has kind of been a driver for you. Is that just something that you feel like you've always been noticing or vibrating to personally or professionally? Yeah, I guess clearly. I mean, I guess so. Maybe professionally it's taken me longer to be the outspoken person or the, I mean, on the set, yeah, but personally, I know I can be really gruff and people have told me that I can be scary because I guess I cut to the chase. I don't have patience for bullshit. And I'm trying to have more patience to let people, you know, lie to themselves if they have to. Or, you know, it's not my job to constantly be telling the truth about other people.

I tell the truth about myself. And I guess I like that in my dearest friends that they're honest. with themselves and with me to some degree. I mean, I'm sure I'm lied to all the time by people who love me and thank God for that. But, yeah, this kind of thing about like, yeah, being honest, you know, like, you know, the character in the movie, the mom is critical, but she loves her daughter so much, you know, and my mom can be critical, but I know she loves me so much. So it's a conundrum.

It's always a conundrum, I think. What's funny, too, because the mother character, the Jeannie Berlin's character, she can do the niceties too. When she's at the doctor and the doctor says, you're going to have to pay $800 for the concier's service to get the good care. She goes, oh, of course, of course I will, you know, for such a wonderful doctor. And as soon as they're at the diner, she's like,

I need to find a new doctor. No. Well, she had, I mean, she's so put on the spot. I would have done the same thing. Right. You know. But it's interesting to hear you talk about your own candor because I feel like for people who aren't familiar with your movies,

it almost would imply that there was some sort of like, you know, ripping the Band-Aid off aspect to them. And what I thought was just so, this is true for all of your films, but what I found just really rewarding in the new movie was there is this incredibly horrific, traumatic moment for Julia's character. And you use that to just continue to kind of explore deeper. And the movie goes to a place of, I think, kindness and honesty. And this catastrophic moment ends up being kind of a necessary shakeup for a relationship that at least, you know, when their son is watching them, share a single ice cream cone doesn't seem that it's particularly in need of a shakeup.

No, it's not. I mean, it's not really in need of a shakeup. But I think when you have a creative person in your life, it's always a decision how to respond to their work. or how to, you know, respond to, does my ass look fat in this? I mean, something as simple as that. But, yeah, it really, I guess I asked myself, you know, how am I my movies? And I'm not my movies. And I'm always battling with that because if someone, you know, doesn't like my movie,

you know, I completely flip out as if it's me. And I get so hurt. Even if they're lying and I can tell they're lying or I think they're lying. And, you know, there's people that I love dearly whose work in the past I haven't been crazy about. And it didn't matter to me. I still loved and respected them. But I wanted to explore that, especially in a romantic relationship. Like, could I do that?

And I, you know, I couldn't be in a relationship with someone who didn't like my films or get them. Because it would be so baffling to me since I am those characters. I'm all those characters. So I must either be really annoying to this person or they're pretending to get my sense of humor or whatever. Yeah, I don't think I could. My ego could not live there. I think, though, that Beth and Don,

I think that she can. And she's playing a part of me that can because his love for her is so sincere. And it's not about all her work. It's about one thing. And she understands that he met well. I think, I mean, all creative people are naturally sensitive by putting themselves out into the world. It's a brave act. I thought it was really interesting to that you added the great Aryan Moya's role as well.

People might know him as Stewie on Succession or, you know, Tony nominated for a doll's house on Broadway. And he plays an actor. And I remember just from a personal anecdote, this is really me, not Danny, who's, You know, who's moved on and doesn't have problems anymore. Okay, Frank. He, I remember, like, taking acting classes in college because I was in high school plays. And then suddenly that moment when you realize if you're, I mean, I wasn't good enough. I'm not even pretending that on the podcast.

But, I mean, you realize pretty quickly in a real class that, oh, there's no scrim between you and the judgment if you're acting. You are putting yourself there like Emily Mortimer in that amazing scene and you are just going to be picked apart. And I remember thinking actively years before therapy. that if I just write, there's at least some paper between us, you know, between me and the knives. That vulnerability is just, I mean, you have the, it's so, it was really exciting to see because you have different gradations of it within one relatively small ensemble. Yeah. Well, I, speaking of acting, I have the utmost respect for anybody who can do that.

I find it, you know, so humiliating and I've been humiliated on stage for getting my lines and doing badly and oh, just couldn't take it. And there's times, you know, and the actors that I work with are so willing to make fools of themselves. And I think, you know, that's part of being a director is letting people feel like they can try things and make fools of themselves. And so somehow, I guess, I mean, you know, the character of Mark being an actor plays into the whole thing, especially about like, what am I doing with my life?

And am I making a difference? And should I quit? should I retire? What gives me meaning? And I love the idea that he's so convinced he's going to give it up. And sure enough, there he isn't a play. Like we just, it's like the Woody Allen joke. His food is terrible in such small portions.

That too. No, my brother thinks he's a chicken. Well, why don't you tell him he's not? I can't because I need the eggs, something like that. Yes. It's so brilliantly ridiculous. And, yeah, so I think that's where he's at. And, yeah, we can't stop ourselves from wanting to get the approval, I think.

And that kind of plays out in all the stories a little bit. Speaking of actors, I did want to ask about Julia specifically, because I just think that, you know, one of the hallmarks of your characters throughout the films is many of them are, quote, unquote, comfortable in life, but they are in no way at peace. I mean, they have a roiling inner life like all of us do. And I just feel like very few actors can pull off that tension the way Julia can. And I wonder, is there, when working with her and directing her more specifically than writing for her,

is there a particular ability that she has or emotion that she can play that you consider to be a superpower, that you can rely on, that you go to, that you are awed by even when you're on set after two films together? Absolutely. she's always surprising me. You know, I write a line a certain way, and she'll say it in a way that I never imagined. And that's what's terrific about good actors in general, you know. But she's always surprising me and making things funnier. Her ad libs are priceless.

She should get paid extra for those, but she doesn't. And I don't know, the depth of her emotion, her face constantly surprises me. I mean, I look for actors whose faces, I know I'm going to want to look at for a really long time. While I'm working with the men in the editing room, and her face just has so many personalities. She's really collaborative and fun, really fun. And somehow, I don't know, we, I think, you know,

we can finish each other's sentences, and we have. And I think that's why I want to use her again and again. And also, you know, she's a really good version of me, really pretty one. I love also that you have the ability when you work with her that you can have a scene. I won't spoil the events of the movie, but there's a scene where she had to do some very broad physical work near the end of the movie, where she may or may not jump on top of someone. And it's not a broadly comic part, but she could still do that when necessary. Exactly. You got to use it.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, it was written in the script, but the way she did it was just, you know, whatever. Brilliant. I feel like over the course of your career in movies, the sort of like slice of life, quieter character-driven work has started to go away from movies and Cineflexes. That's not a blanket statement, but I think broadly that's true. I wonder what has, how have you always been able to be from, from, from, from, walking and talking, your first movie, first full-length movie from the 90s that I, that I love so much. Like, how has your compass stayed true to that sort of storytelling and avoided what, I mean, it's not necessarily saying that you could just write an action movie if you wanted to, but everything has gotten noisier, you know, and I'm curious about how you stay true to your compass and your voice in the midst of that.

I just stay true to my voice. Yeah. Exactly what you said. I don't think I'd be good at writing or directing an action movie. Not that anyone's asked me, although I did do some writing on Black Widow. And that was fun, just a little bit. Just the action scenes? No.

Or the action scenes in The Last Duel. No. No, those weren't you? Okay. No. And I don't know. I feel really lucky. And I'm not diminishing my own particular talents, but I,

I do feel really, really lucky that whatever I'm doing eventually gets made. And I guess I'm not sure. I mean, I direct TV shows that I really like, but I'm not in it the way I'm in, you know, directing my own script, which is so fulfilling. And so I know how much I love doing that. And I'm able to make a living, doing it and doing the, TV stuff and the writing stuff, I don't see any reason to try to fix something that's not broken. And if it is broken, which frankly before this movie, I thought it was broken.

I couldn't get this made for painfully long time, at least in my world. And I thought, okay, maybe it's time to throw in the towel. And I wasn't happy about it. But it's always there, you know. I'm sure with everybody who does something creative and actor, I don't know if they're getting their next job, whatever. But I don't want to do what I don't enjoy. And if I can't do that, I might figure something else out. And maybe that's a really spoiled thing to say,

because I am able to do what I enjoy, the TV jobs and my own films. So the answer is I don't really know. I just keep trying to do me. And eventually it happens. And so, you know, I hope this film gets a bigger audience, of course, than my other films. It's doing real well. I'd love to make money from it and be able to make my next film, which probably will be just as hard because it'll be a small personal story about I don't know what yet.

You mentioned the TV work, and I wanted to talk to. talk about that briefly because you've, you've had a long and varied career directing for TV, sex in the city, six feet under, parks and recreation, one Mississippi. I think you just worked on Lucky Hank for AMC. I was curious if you were ever tempted, though, to, and I say this, let me caveat this. I want you to make movies. I don't have the resources like an A24 or whatever to allow you to, but I hope that you continue to make movies. But I was curious if you were ever tempted to tell some of your stories in the TV format because there is this narrative. I don't know if it's accurate anymore or not, but that when smaller bore character stories

left cinemas, they went to TV. And selfishly, I love that your movies are considered, you write them, direct them, and finish them as movies. But I was curious if you were ever tempted to try the longer form storytelling of TV? I have a couple of times. Really long time ago. Sharon Horace. Morgan and I had a project that we couldn't get made. And then I had my own project a few years ago that was in line, very in line with my movies, like a long extended film. And I was paid to write three episodes.

Couldn't get that made. And then I was like, fuck this. Can I say that on your podcast? Yes. You could say it again if you want. Fuck this. Fuck this shit. It's a safe space.

It's so much work. I know writers or actors are trying to get paid for auditioning now. You know, we do so much work trying to get jobs between the pitching and the decks and the blah, blah. And, you know, I was happy that I was paid at least by a studio, you know, to write these, thank God. But, you know, it was just demoralizing, humiliating, sitting in that room over and over again. then I didn't have to do it. I was able to then just keep directing other people's TV shows, and that's fine with me. Like Mike White, I don't know how he does it.

I don't know how he writes every script, directs every movie, be the quality person that he is. It's amazing to me, yeah. But you're right, and you point out something that is different, that the climb for movies is incredibly hard in financing, et cetera, et cetera, but your movies are. you and you made them and you wrote and directed them and then the longer those meetings go or i don't know if you've ever had the indignity of a bake-off situation but like you're just you're taking parts of you and you're giving them to people who are like i like that part but not that one can you change that and at the end of this process what is it right right you mean in television in television yeah yeah yeah

awful i mean and every writer goes through it i mean all my friends you know the notes from the studio and the producers and the free work and it goes back and forth. And it is demoralizing. And I guess that's why I haven't really pursued that too much. I tried. Oh, and I did with Darren Starr. We had a, I had written a script with him like an upstairs downstairs. And it was called help and it was about the help in a rich family's house, which of course has been now done to death. But we can get that made. Darren Starr forgot. God's sakes. Yeah.

I mean, no, it doesn't matter like who you got in the room. It's crazy. It's weird hearing these things because I remember when Tar came out last year, which I just absolutely adored. And then I remember thinking, oh, I guess Todd Field is such a perfectionist. He worked on this movie for 16 years. But of course, then you hear in the interviews, he's like, well, Cape Blanchett and I and Joan Didian had a script and all these incredible things that could have happened over the

course of a decade and a half. But they don't. Yeah. It's kind of a miracle anything gets made. I know. And I've had, I've, stuff that I haven't written that I wanted to direct, like pilots. Yeah. With full-fledged movie stars and full-fledged TV stars that can't get made. So it's always shocking to me. So this question is, hopefully isn't too now, but I'm curious that like in this world of, that you're describing professionally when things can be frustrating and hard to get made and, you know, the larger cultural shift towards just noisier.

franchise-y stuff that doesn't necessarily feel like Black Widow aside, like a home. What has inspired you in the last year? Where do you find inspiration artistically, not necessarily that informs your movies, but just kind of like lights the fire or keeps the fire lit? I guess watching really good things, right? Yeah. Of course, I'll go blank now. Really great movies inspire me.

Great music inspires me. I listened to Amy Mann and I want to write a story immediately. If she can do that, I can do this. There's kind of that feeling. I mean, small things. Like someone suggested I watched this TV show called The End of the Fucking World. Yeah, it's great. Yeah.

And I just started watching it. It's like I would never turn this on. This is about two young, you know, fucked up kids. And it's so well made that it's inspiring, right? And the episodes are like 16 minutes long, right? I love that too. I think that's short. They're really, I may be over, that may not be that sure, but I remember being.

Probably 22. Yeah, something like that. I'm starting the second season. Yeah, they're not quibbys. They're like two quibbies. Yeah. That's why they survive. Yeah.

So that inspires me other than, you know, human behavior in my own life and my crazy family's life and my son's lives. my boyfriend's life and, yeah, I wish I could be more specific, but yeah, I'm drawing a blank. If you list a bunch of movies, I can say, yeah, that one. I should have sent you a list beforehand, and then we kind of just argued. Yeah, I apologize. But a movie that I love, and they're out there. That's really inspiring.

And old ones, too, yeah. And so you said that you hurt my feelings was finished and took some time to get the funding, to get it made. Are you the sort of person that always has a script percolating, something that you're adding to an open word document or final draft document? Or do you clear the decks and then just start sponging again on what's out there in the world? Yeah. It's sponging. I don't have an idea of what I'll write about next. I have a box in my office that says scripts in limbo. And a lot of them were starts and stops, starts and stops. And some of them ended up in this script. But I don't know if I want to go back into that box.

I want to first see if I can come up with something fresh, but I haven't yet. And I hope I will. But that's kind of how it works. That's why I make so few films. I don't have an idea that I like enough to live with and finish. So I don't know. I need ideas, but don't give me any. No, I don't have any.

And I don't want anyone else to. It's dangerous. It's dangerous to say, Oh, I don't know what I'm doing next because then people will tell me their story. Everyone's like, oh, I've got a great idea for a movie. Oh, yeah, no. Delete the email. It really isn't ever.

Don't even open that. No, but what you're saying is also why I think your movies are so special because you clearly, you had something that you really wanted to say and you clearly like it. And it's a complete thought. And it's unfortunately kind of a rare experience, I think, at the moment in the movie theaters. But it's one that I love. So thank you for taking the time to talk to me about it. I hope you'll come back for the next one.

And I'll give you a full list. We could do like the highs and lows of the year in culture, whatever you like. Please, I'll react strongly. I'm certain I'll have strong opinions. I want full dawn, not Beth. Okay. You'll get full dawn, Danny. Okay.

Thanks. Thanks so much. Is this perverse that that feels right? Yeah, you're really lovely. Thanks. Thank you so much, Nicole. Thank you. Bye.