The Watch - The Han Solo 'Star Wars' Movie Situation, Fargo’s Finale, and What Good Bad Movies Would Get Made in 2017 (Ep. 161)
Episode Date: June 22, 2017The Ringer’s Chris Ryan, Andy Greenwald, and Sean Fennessey discuss the recent shakeup with the directors of the upcoming Han Solo 'Star Wars' film (1:30), the season finale of 'Fargo' (14:00), and ...the best films of the century (27:20). Then, Andrew Gruttadaro and Chris Ryan discuss which classically Good Bad Movies, like 'Speed 2' and 'Road House,' would still get made in 2017 (42:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Hello, and welcome to The Watch.
My name is Chris Ryan.
I'm editor at the rigor.com.
And joining me in the studio, Luke, we're going to have company.
It's Andy Greenwald and Sean Menacee.
Hey man.
Hey, what's going on?
Nobody else is in the studio with us.
No, no, it does not take my daughter to work day.
I promise you.
Just the three of us here sitting quietly.
Guys, welcome to the watch, the re-up, the Thursday edition of America's favorite non-binge mode podcast.
My name is Chris Ryan.
I'm joined by two of my favorite people in the whole wide world.
I like that you did the loud intro.
Now you're doing the NPR intro.
I'm just excited to see you guys.
I wanted to get Sean on because initially we were going to have Sean just talk about his 25.
best movies of the millennium. Let me be clear. When we did that as a lark. In the words of Richard Ford,
let me be frank. We did that as a lark on Monday. It was, first of all, very fun. And it's been great
seeing people respond with their list. Thanks so much for your responses. Thanks for the people who
reminded me of Master and Commander, Far Side of the World. Great film. Did someone put that on their
list? Yeah, shame on them. I respect that. People were really catering to Greenwald, but what about
short term 12? What about it? Thank God. Someone mentioned it. But let me also just say, when I did that,
I knew there would be a little knock, knock, knockin on our podcast door from Editor-in-Chief Sean Fennessee.
This is not the case. I asked Sean. Chris asked me. But that said, in my mind, as I was listening to the podcast, I was like, I want in. I want to be a part of this. I want to be inside the mainframe. As the two of the best out.
As the hives erupted on your body due to our terrible cinematic choices.
No, I thought it was interesting. But we can get to that later.
Yeah, we're going to get to the 25 best, Sean's 25 best movies, and we'll talk a little bit about that list. But first we wanted to talk about
the news coming out of a Lucasfilm this week,
which is that with only a few more weeks
until the completion of principal photography,
right?
The folks over at Lucasfilm, namely Kathleen Kennedy,
have gotten rid of the Han Solo standalone film directors.
You don't remember their names, do you?
No, I don't.
The problem is, is that I...
Their names are Star-Lord.
You know what it is?
They are named Phil Lord and Chris Miller.
Yeah.
And I got confused there because,
you guys have gotten into my head about whether it's Phil Miller and Chris Lord.
This is, this is really big news.
This wasn't like we hired somebody, had three meetings with them, and we mutually decided to go our own way.
This isn't Josh Trank, 2.0.
No.
This is not we hired an over his head lunatic.
On Ant Man, this is not Ava Duvornay on Black Panther.
This is not like we had a few meetings.
Maybe there was some preliminary paperwork or whatever.
These are guys who have a distinct point of view and also have an enormously successful track record at the box office, whether you like it or dislikes.
Then we can talk about that in a second.
It is both sort of, it is shocking because directors don't get fired very often this far into production.
They may be, quote unquote, removed later like Gareth Edwards was on Rogue One.
Well, he wasn't removed.
They just brought Tony Gilroy in to do some rewrites and to reportedly do some interior reissues.
Semantics.
But he still had his name on the movie as the director.
This doesn't happen that often, but this does feel to me, and I think this is one of the topics we should get into, as an inevitable...
This is where this was headed, the way franchises are.
being stewarded, right? And before I cede the floor to a cinephial and someone with the hottest
take this side of the lava planet where Anakin became Darth Vader, shouts the prequel
trilogy, I just want to say that this strikes me more than a bad business decision as an
extremely Los Angeles decision. What I mean is people in this town, like, go to burger places
and order sushi. You know what I mean? There's a restaurant in West Hollywood called Hugos where there's a
40-page menu, and then at the end of it, it's literally Kramer on Seinfeld doing movie phone.
Why don't you just tell me what you'd like to eat?
And my feeling is, if you hired Starlord and Chris Miller to make a Han Solo movie, he bought it.
You know what I mean?
Let them make their movie.
It's not like you're buying a calm tactician or someone who's just going to execute the plays on the field.
You're not hiring Colin Trevereaux, who just seems to, by the way, who shouldn't be left to his own devices, apparently, judging by what was the name of this movie?
the Book of Henry.
You hired guys because people like what they do and they know how to do it.
And then you change your mind midstream.
And that just seems absurd to me.
Now I'll see the floor.
It actually feels like a very old-fashioned decision.
You know, this is something that happened a lot more frequently in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.
You know, yesterday I was just talking about like Tombstone, for example,
shot principal photography for six weeks with a filmmaker.
They realized that person was completely wrong for the project.
And then sort of under cloak and dagger, Kurt Russell took over the directing of the film.
You know, I mentioned the island of Dr. Moreau, too, where that filmmaker was removed, and then John Frankenheimer was brought in, kind of halfway through, and that was a quagmire.
This doesn't happen as frequently, but we know that in the Star Wars universe, this isn't the first time that they've had some issues.
You guys mentioned Gilroy coming in for Gareth Edwards.
Also, as we know, like, JJ Abrams really kind of found the Force Awakens in the editing room.
And he shot a ton of footage.
He should have put it back.
Yeah.
Well, that was a story where Michael Arndt, who wrote Little Miss Sunshine,
Toy Story had been working on Force Awakens for a while.
The reports were that the main character of Force Awakens was still Luke.
You know, the infamous never released or even shot.
I don't know if it was shot.
But the opening shot of Force Awakens was supposed to be Luke's hand with a lightsaber
and it falling out of the sky out of space.
Yeah.
That one had issues.
You have the Gareth Edwards, Tony Gilroy issues.
You've got Trank being fired off of whatever the movie he was.
initially sort of talked about on.
I think it was Boba Fett.
Boba Fett.
I mean, there's a couple things here.
And I made a snide comment about J.J. Abrams and Force Awakens.
What I meant was, I think we do have a collective amnesia about that movie.
I think it succeeded from a corporate standpoint.
And I think a lot of us had a good time in it.
And the young stars were really good.
As a movie, the way we used to talk about movies, I think it's mostly a failure.
It was a great movie in 1977.
Right.
But, you know, this is basically, we have.
to switch hats. If we're talking from a corporate perspective, Star Wars is one of the most
valuable brands in this galaxy as well as many other galaxies far, far away. Probably the most.
They need to be reasonable managers of this, the same way you'd want, like someone at Merrill Lynch
being a reasonable manager of your income. And I guess they flirt with wanting to be creative
with it, but at heart they don't want to be creative with it. They just want to make the
original trilogy again and again and again and give people the same hit of the same stuff, right?
Well, it's possible. I think that this series probably needs to.
It's David Yates.
So, David Yates, initially when Harry Potter, the series started, it started by Chris Columbus,
which you could say is the JJ Abrams analog, right?
And then they went through a series of, I'm going to have Quaron Direct.
We're going to maybe use edgy directors who bring their own sensibility to the source material.
And then they settled on David Yates, who was a safe pair of hands who made incredibly entertaining,
clear, comprehensible movies one after another and deliver them relatively close to what they want.
In a way, that was, Sean, I don't know if you'd agree with this,
but that was one of the first examples of them saying,
like, you know what, this is a TV show.
Let's make a TV show.
Let's get one guy to direct it,
who knows what he's doing,
who's going to hit his marks, hit his budget,
and people will be fine with it.
And we're not going to get too high,
but we know we're not going to get too low.
There's a big difference between those two things, though,
which is just that Harry Potter was an established universe
with an endpoint that people knew about
from the books that were clear from the world.
I've heard you guys talk a lot over the last couple of years
about the promise of the Star Wars universe
and doing these stories,
doing a Boba Fett movie,
doing a Han Solo origin movie.
which is really interesting, and it should theoretically be able to be done by filmmakers who have different tones, who have different looks, different styles, but that's not what we're getting.
Yeah, I mean, I think the initial idea, at least the way Chris and I understood it, and maybe audiences in general date, is that they were going to make this new trilogy to be the spine of the universe, but then they were going to branch off of it, and there were going to be chances taken.
And to be fair, whatever Rogue One was potentially going to be, whatever it could have been.
It's supposed to be a war movie.
But the last 30 minutes of it were different.
They were, you know, they did.
did have a different spirit and tone and it was worthy.
I think if there's one thing that's sort of dogging this,
and they've brought Ron Howard into finish Han Solo,
but if there's one thing that's dogging these movies right now,
it's a comprehensibility problem.
It's that there seems to be, you've got Lawrence Kasden,
you've got these good screenwriters,
Michael, aren't Tony Gilroy working on these movies,
and then you have a little bit of a feeling like
that they are being Benihanaed into something that's ready for a release date.
So you have a lot of like third acts that barely make sense and, you know, people going from planet to planet really quickly in ways that you're just like, wait, was that planet next to that planet?
There's just very basic storytelling things here that feels like there might be a little too many cooks in the kitchen.
Although apparently, Kathleen Kennedy is the only chef that matters.
Now, I guess here's my question.
So if this is a franchise that has a comprehensibility problem in the first place, I guess my question is why hire Phil Lord and Chris Miller?
Because these are guys who they've produced a lot of stuff, they've been rumored to be a part of Spider-Man movies or Flash.
I mean, they obviously are considered mainstream blockbuster filmmakers, even though I would say most of their stuff feels like you're trapped in an elevator with somebody on Adderall.
Yeah, I think the fact that they were able to translate the Lego movie in 21 Jump Street into saleable properties makes them appealing to a big company like Disney to Lucasfilm to whoever is shepherding the project on.
along, but their movies are really strange, and they take a lot of risks.
Their TV shows are really strange, they take a lot of risks.
I think this movie might have made a little bit more sense with a Lord and Miller script
directed by Ron Howard.
That might have been a more seamless execution of this, but, you know, Kathleen Kennedy
has a reputation as a very focused, controlled, specific old school Hollywood producer.
It tends to work with veteran filmmakers.
Yes, and so when you take these risks, as we've seen it, and this is a story that started
you know, five years ago, and Marvel made a lot of inroads and sort of plucking people from
very small, independent backgrounds, and voicing them in. Lord and Miller are a little bit different
from that. They're not quite Colin Trevereaux taking on Jurassic World, but there's something like it,
and this is different for mass market IP.
And also the idea that they were going to find this movie in the editing room and that they
were reportedly shooting lots of different kinds of takes and that there was a kind of manic
comedy element to this character, and that that was turning off people like Kazden who were
Like, this is not supposed to be slapstick.
By the way, Casden is kind of low-key the one who's either saving this or messing it all up for other people, right?
Well, reportedly his script for Hans-Zullo was, you know, according to anonymous sources, the best Star Wars script ever written.
That's what that was up.
Oh, so Lord Miller jumped on and started doing donuts on it and commenting on the commenting.
We'll never know.
Here's, I think, also why people are upset about it.
Here's the only reason why I think people are upset about this, not just because it feels like their favorite toys are breaking, literally.
It's not necessarily an allegiance to the sensibilities of 21 Jump Street,
which, by the way, is a really strong, very good movie.
It's really funny.
But that's like six jokes.
It's not a movie.
No, I think that one is a movie.
But my point is this.
The photo was released with all of them having a wonderful time
on the Millennium Falcon with Alden Aaron Reich and Woody Harrelson
just seemed like what we wanted to feel.
And this event seems to have ripped that photo in half like Shnade O'Connor on Saturday Night Live.
Yeah, we do have a tendency to get very upset prematurely about things that we didn't get,
like the Edgar Wright Ant Man, like, you know, we'll never know what it was like before this got taken away by the corporate overlords.
Yeah, personally, I was anticipating this movie, but I wouldn't say I was over the moon for it.
I think people like Donald Glover are getting cast for it amplified our anticipation.
I think that there's only so much that Ron Howard's going to be able to change at this point anyway,
so we're probably still going to get a lot of that feeling, even if you're not going to get a lot of the zaniness.
This is just the cost of doing business.
Star Wars is more valuable to Disney than almost anything they have in their entire portfolio.
So we find ourselves with the director of Cinderella Man working with Donald Glover.
It's an amazing thing.
I would like to say, more valuable than anything in their portfolio since they shut down Grandland.
Well, that's a whole other story.
That's a whole other podcast.
Oh, everyone thinks that's too funny to laugh on air?
Oh, okay.
Should we talk TV for a minute before we go back?
Fargo.
Yeah, man.
Fargo ended its third season.
Yeah.
This was very interesting.
I think that I actually haven't read that much critical opinion about it, but the vibe I got was that people were worried about the show early on and then came back hard and got really into it.
Chris, we last talked about it after the eighth episode, which remains, I think, having seen them all now, the best episode of the season.
Yeah, it had the high point of action.
It had the best Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who was probably the best performer of the season.
and certainly the most memorable character,
and then it also had the trippiness with the bowling alley scene.
That was Fargo at its best all across the board.
Performance, cinematic action, and cinematic strangeness.
I thought the rest of the season was kind of a miss.
And I was thinking about why, and we talked about why,
to some degree before in terms of, like,
I just didn't feel for any of these characters,
I didn't buy into the world.
I was thinking about the argument that I wanted to make,
and what I realized was I think you can not only defend
every creative choice made this season
and make it sound very worthwhile,
but I think some of the creative decisions in a vacuum
sound incredibly inspired,
and are in a vacuum sound like the correct responses
and the correct choices to make
in light of what TV has been doing,
in light of what the previous two seasons did.
Unfortunately, I think the season was a collection
of inspired creative decision,
without the emotional connective tissue
to make them feel meaningful
or resonant on a TV level.
I didn't love these people.
I didn't want to be in this world.
David Thuleus is one of our great actors.
He's genius.
That character was a monstrous, brilliant creation,
but I didn't want 10 hours of him.
It was a tough hang for 10 hours.
It was a cinematic performance stretched.
And I've heard actors say this before.
Like, actors who say, you know, I love actually movies because I have two hours to give it my all.
And I'd have to modulate that if I was playing this character for 10 hours or 40 hours.
Sure.
For God forgive them 100 hours.
Everyone was bringing it to a degree, but it didn't hang together.
Yeah, I thought it was a season that really only found itself at the very last moment.
So I felt like he was almost writing into that last scene between Phyllis and, between Vargo and Gloria.
and this discussion about what's real and what do we, you know, and she's like, well, here's a photograph, this is real.
And he's like, is it?
You know, and they start to talk about the nature of this based on a true story idea that this show is about.
But I didn't feel like the rest of the season was necessarily, I felt like that should have been the first scene of the entire season.
You know what I mean?
There was something about thematically where it wound up that I felt felt like it didn't actually reflect that over the course of the season.
Well, I felt like that conversation at the end, and I love the ambiguity at the end, but I think that conversation was, it's a great idea.
They were well-voiced.
All the speeches were well-considered, you know, but I didn't buy them in that moment.
I didn't feel they were earned.
I felt that the character or the concept of Varga as this representative of this corporate nothingness that is going to devour all of us, this wolf, it's well-considered.
It's a great idea for a villain.
I'm not sure I got why he was in Minnesota for five months.
You know, just these little niggling kind of TV things that I feel like with a little buffing or polishing or softening it would have made more sense.
I don't know if Carrie Coon's performance and as written, Gloria Bergel, was the avatar for American values and decency that she was presented as in the end.
Yeah.
There wasn't enough of her or there wasn't enough angles or layers to her to buy that.
She just was a figurehead for that, delivered the speeches of that persona.
and then we could just sort of take it,
but it never penetrated to me.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of what you guys said early on in the season two,
which was that she was somewhat miscast,
and her sort of general tone as an actor
wasn't totally right for that universe.
But the moment when it started to work for me was in the ninth episode,
and I actually thought the eighth episode was kind of a mess,
and Chris and I talked about it afterwards,
and I was like, this just feels like a really effortful reach towards meaning
in a show that really does not have a lot of meaning this season.
Did you do an after show?
for our podcast.
Yes, we did.
We did a little post game.
It might have been a pregame.
I think I was just like, Fargo was great.
I think he was like, no.
I was like, no.
But in nine, I think Mary Elizabeth Winstead, what she did and what Thulis did together on the show was the most interesting thing because that was also the one time Thulis was really on his heels throughout the show was in that show down in the hotel room or in the hotel hotel lobby.
That was a great scene, yeah.
And that made it click a little bit more for me.
It made me believe in her character.
It made me believe in his vulnerability as a character.
And it made me believe the show.
It created stakes in the show.
It became a show in which a sniper rifle was as meaningful as a conversation about a bagful of money.
And I think that that's kind of the middle ground of Fargo is like it's a little bit of theory.
It's a little bit weird.
It's a little bit bound in the real world.
It's a little bit true crime.
You know, this season was less effective than the first two to me.
But still, you know, you don't get a lot of Vargas on television these days.
So I appreciate it even if it's a little over the top.
So the one thing that's interesting by saying you don't get a lot of Vargas on television.
television is this idea that we did in Fargo, right?
That we had Lorne in the first season, that there were elements of this in the second season,
of this sort of evil that goes beyond just organized crime,
that there is something about greed and corruption and violence that exists inside of men
and that there's a figure that can come across this onerly landscape and trigger that in people.
And it was interesting to read a few things with Noah after this episode,
some of which were kind of
codas for the series because he's like, I don't know
if I'm ever going to go back to this.
But he seemed almost
beholden not only to
still the Cohen Brothers, which I thought was
really interesting. He was still talking a lot
about the Coens in the
interviews, but
also the mythology
of Fargo, the television show
where he was like, you know, I might
do another one, but I'd have to come
up with another crime, and it would
have to have the
archetypes in the show that to sort of be Fargo and I thought I was I was actually kind of
disappointed to read that because I was like you did this incredible thing where you took this
beloved story and sliced off just the surface feel of it where people were like okay
well it's set here and it's kind of about this thing but there was never any
constitution that said he has to have a devil figure you know a truly
good-hearted law enforcement agent
and a bunch of people who are
kind of caught in between those two forces.
It could have been about anything.
And it could continue to be about it now.
By all means, make something else, do something else.
You don't have to make him FAPA Fargo.
But it was almost interesting to find him
imprisoned by, oh, I cracked Fargo
and now I can't get out of it.
Well, I would agree with it, but I also think
that TV has to be about something.
You have to have a log line. You have to have a set of it
some expectations, even if it's changing
season to season. And I do think that
Noah, and I say this as a critical
who covered him and having worked with him.
The way his brain works,
it actually is one of those brains that I think that it's helpful to have a framework.
Like he's a problem solver.
Well, not just a problem solver, but his ideas go to Mars and back.
And it's good to have a little bit of a structure around that.
Some buckets to fill.
Yeah, exactly.
But also, I want to be clear, though, as well, I'm criticizing this season,
one thing that I feel like I'm coming up against
when I talk to people who are much bigger, higher on the season than I was,
I'm glad we have it.
There is nothing else like it.
I mean, even in the finale, which I wasn't feeling,
some of the shots on that road, the paper in the beginning, the way it was overlaid.
These are creative flights of fancy that some you could call them indulgences, but I'm just
grateful we have them because other shows don't look like that.
Other shows don't take those chances.
It feels a little bit heavier to have this conversation because it's not like we know
there's a fourth season coming back and he gets another run at the gold ring.
It's strange to have a close to perfect second season and then a tough third season.
I think that, you know, to use the album analogy that we use sometimes, think pieces will be written that third season was best.
And I will disagree.
Absolutely.
It'll be a cool thing.
And I think that's part of a larger conversation just about in this sort of interregnum period before Thrones comes back.
And just in this idea of like a macro level, like, who's watching what show, that Fargo and Saul kind of existed in the same way of really respected but somewhat cordoned off dramas.
You know, I don't feel like either really penetrated into this.
Everybody, I got to, whatever you're doing, stop and go watch this.
I think part of that is because they were iterative, right?
They were based essentially on something that it had come before.
And Fargo season three is now the fourth version of a story that we know.
So that's a lot to ask for.
Fifth, if you ever get your hands on the original network pilot, broadcast pilot,
starring Edie Falco as Marge Gunderson.
Was no involvement?
I forgot that.
Oh, yeah.
Who did that?
I don't even remember.
It's on IMDB, but they did try once before.
Yeah, MGM was hot to do this, but it took them quite some time.
Yeah, that's fascinating.
Yeah, that's fascinating.
I think it was right before the support.
What else can we get at?
Was it 2005?
Maybe it was even in, maybe it was earlier.
Maybe it was right after the movie because I think it was a pre-Sopranos Edy Falca.
Yeah, Allison I thought wrote about this pretty well on the ringer yesterday about Fargo
and this notion of kind of filling in the gaps that Andy is talking about too where there's just a noble woman and there's a great villain and there's a wildcard figure and there's an aspect of crime.
and then there is this execution of, you know, sincere intent overcoming this demonic force.
And doing that three times in a row, I think inevitably there's going to be some fatigue.
I just think also, you know, the most compelling character was Nikki Swango,
and everything that she did was predicated on the idea that she was truly, madly,
and existentially in love with Ray.
Yeah.
I didn't buy it.
Right.
I didn't buy it from the beginning.
And the show asked us to believe that and go on this journey with it.
them and you're either in or you're out you know you either buy your ticket for the ride or you
don't you're either or you watch the car either get on the roller coaster with them and you feel it
in your guts or you watch the roller coaster go around and you're impressed to people who can do it sure
and that was kind of my feeling for much of the season I was impressed by it but I couldn't feel it
and I and I do think that for me that that was that was that was that was I couldn't get over that
yeah all right we're going to talk to Sean about his list of the best 25 movies in the millennium
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Okay, we're back, Sean, Andy. Before we know a little bit,
I'm going to talk to Andrew Goodadarro about good, bad movies,
and whether or not these a few good-bad movie titles could be made in 2017.
But Sean wants to talk about what he feels are good-good movies.
That's right.
Good to great movies.
Yeah.
Great to exemplary movies.
Solid movies.
I'm interested in solid film.
First question I have for you is, and I don't mean this in a self-reflective way,
but because there's been a lot of variance on, like, what do we mean when we say the best movies of the 20?
This is where I wanted to start, too.
Yeah.
Let's talk about this.
When you heard that we did this, where you're like, these guys are going to
have these jimokes yeah are they going to have a bunch of a bunch of awards fodder on
on their on their lists yeah what was when you say it was is there a movie that immediately
jumps to mind like I guy this is obviously number one crash yes this is this not a crash
podcast you know there was a movie that jumped to my mind right away but even in looking at what
manola dargis and tony scott did and then especially listening to you guys and given how
well i know you both and how idiosyncratic but also like
respectable and thoughtful your lists were, it kind of raised the question of what this pursuit is.
As you guys know, I like to make a lot of movie lists. That's something that is fun for me.
But also, you talked a little bit about the notion of rewatchability. I think there is also a fine
line between best and favorite. Yeah, absolutely. And what is the sort of critical scale of justice
here? Like, are we identifying, like, what was an achievement versus what is something that
just makes me feel alive? And the way that you guys talked about movies, it was movies that made you
feel alive. I want to say also I'm really looking forward to your list because I am a big fan of
your annual movie list that you make for your personal weblog. It's a Tumblr, Andy. Which is a
crazy thing. Well, blog, is that how we're saying it? Which is an incredible, passionate personal
project that you do every year. But it also made me excited because that means you remember.
And I don't remember anything. One of the reasons I can't do that is... That's so untrue.
Well, I remember many things. So many of your movies.
were like these, like, you were picking out, like, these film forum adventures that you went on?
Well, I had to go on a, I had to go on a by-myself meeting an adventure with the Google machine to
remember the movies of the year or certain.
I mean, some of them, I never forgot, but there were certain things that I just, and even
when we got these great, this great feedback, people were mentioning movies that I had,
would have liked to have considered.
So, anyway, that's all, that's all prelude.
I'm curious where you're at with this.
Well, it's funny because obviously, anytime I see what the New York Times list looks like,
what your list looks like, what, say, Lindsay's old at, she put her,
list on Twitter last night and I looked at hers and I was like, how can I make this different?
Yeah.
Which is the wrong impulse when you're trying to be sincere about what you really feel.
But I did look back at some of the lists I'd made in the past and the truth is that I just don't feel the same way as I did then.
Like the movies that I made number one at the time were reflective of the moment and they don't really mean anything.
The only movie that I think holds the same power in my mind as when I first saw it as the movie that's my number one, which is there will be blood, which is probably not the most interesting movie to sort of unpack even that it was also.
So Manolo and Tony's number one.
I think 50 years from now we'll probably look back and say this is a top five movie of the century, if not the number one movie, because of what it represents because of the story that it tells and the way that it's executed.
I think also cinema history loves a great man.
And Paul Thomas Anderson is like this suitable great man telling a story about a great man.
So that one is, you know, it's 10 years old this year.
I think it's just as resonant for people.
I think they can look back on it and they can put Trump on that movie.
You know, they can put Barack Obama on that movie if they want to.
They can put the story of commerce in America.
They can put religion in America.
There's all these different ways to, these prisms to shoot it through.
The story of milkshakes in America.
Milkshakes, bowling.
Imagine all these hallmarks.
Paul Dano elite fans.
So you, do you only do one director per one director?
Directors only got one entry here?
I put two PTA movies on it.
Because that was an arbitrary rule, but I followed.
it. I really like Lindsay and her list had two linklators, I believe, linked, which I really liked.
And basically gave us like a don't add me about that on her list, which was funny.
But yeah, I tried to mostly follow that with the exception of PTA and I just put the master near the bottom of my top 25.
Did you find yourself when you were drawing from whatever databases you were doing from your own personal lists from the internet?
Was there a balance between genre? Was there a balance between like things you just adored like, say?
and almost famous, which is just a movie you can live with,
versus say, how often do you watch it's such a beautiful day?
So it's such a beautiful day I watch all the time,
and the reason I watch it all the time is because it's probably the movie on this list
that has taught me how to feel the best.
And it's different.
It was originally three short films that Don Hertzfeld shot over the course of the 2000s
that he combined in 2012, and it's very idiosyncratic.
It's essentially a lot of line drawings that are narrated,
actions of a guy named Bill
by Don himself.
Really strange, really beautiful, really interesting movie
that I recommend everybody check out.
Everything else on here, I think, is a little bit less
idiosyncratic, a little bit more classical.
There's a Cohen Brothers movie. It's a serious
man. For some people,
the Cohen Brothers movie should be no country for old men.
For some people, it should be the men who wasn't there.
Shemaker had O'Brother.
O'Brother War Art thou. I think that's kind of
it's a little bit of a personality test
to which Cohen Brothers movie you pick.
I don't even want to start to impact what a serious man says about you.
There's a storm coming.
That's what it says.
And speaking of storms, The Fog of War is number four for me.
That's Errol Morris's documentary about Robert McNamara.
I was surprised to not see that movie on more lists.
Yeah, me too.
I was surprised to not see.
There are certainly not a lot of documentaries on these lists,
given that this has been very much a century of documentaries.
But also, I don't know.
I just think that that's a fascinating movie that tells the story of the previous century.
And do you have an Errol Morris take?
I didn't have any docs in my list, not out of anything other than I don't really frequently watch them.
But Fog of War is obviously something that almost feels now like a time that you can understand better,
even though it is about obfuscation and so many modern warfare techniques.
I did notice that you had Mulholland Drive up very high on your list, which was something that I, you know, was probably the movie that I was like, I can't believe I forgot to put Mahal and Drive on mine.
We're in a lynch moment, you know.
Yeah, and it's such a lynch moment. Naomi Watts has been, you know, around a lot recently.
Do you know, some of the other ones you had up in here, was it hard for you to pick social network over Zodiac?
It wasn't. I had a conversation with Bill Simmons about this yesterday.
He said what Chris Ryan said about Zodiac is not true.
The David Fincher movie is the social network.
It's my truth.
So I'm very sorry.
But that was interesting.
The social network, I think, is just fits in more into the category of the things you were describing to me, which is like, if it's on TV, if it's on TNT and it's 20 minutes in, I'm just, I'm in and I'm there to the end.
I also just want to jump in on the documentary point.
I just didn't consider any.
It's the same way when I had to make top 10 lists for TV as a critic.
I just didn't consider animated shows or reality shows because there are only so many spots.
Yeah.
That makes me a poor cinematophile.
I don't think so.
I think the Fog of War is the only documentary, as far as I know, in my top 25.
And the reason it's there is because Errol Morris's movies are very filmic.
Yeah.
You know, he's doing something very specific.
He invented a technology for interviewing.
But I also think understanding that and watching documentaries in part, you know,
considering them in the same way you would consider a narrative feature, I think, is a hallmark of a good film critic
because you're seeing the world through a lens any particular year.
I choose not to do that.
But I'm glad that you did.
There's one question.
I've had this since, I really need to talk to you,
because I had stepbrothers, and he had Anchorman.
Sean, you have two incredible comedies.
Actually, one is almost a tragedy in some ways,
but you have Jackass Number 2 and Borat on your list.
Yeah, did you guys see those movies?
Borat should have been on more lists.
Jackass number two is the hardest I've ever laughed in my life.
That is exactly why it's on my list.
I saw Jackass Number 2 in a movie theater,
and I felt like I was going to die.
And movies do not do that.
And when you see 300 movies a year, you never feel that way.
You never feel like I have been overtaken by this thing on a screen.
You know, you can feel sad and you can feel moved and it can, you know, light up your mind with ideas,
but it can't physically take it over.
Yeah.
And Jack S2 took it over.
There's a really good video.
I saw.
I can't remember what serious show, it might have been like Jim Norton or something like that.
But Louis C.K.
is on with Knoxville
and Louis is just talking about
how Jackass is like the best movie ever made
or like the funniest comedy he had seen that decade or something
and it's so great because Johnny Knoxville is like I can't believe this
but he's Louis C.K. is just like yeah I mean it's just like it shouldn't work
and it's the most ingenious thing I've ever seen.
But let's link them both because a minute ago we're talking about Lucasfilm
and their struggle to basically repackage something that we already love
and make it feel kind of new or new enough to gross a billion dollars worldwide
Borat and Jackass when they came out felt radically new
and we could not believe they were happening
we can't believe they got away with it
and we couldn't believe how much we laughed
and I feel like and the whiplash from Borat to Bruno
which did not feel the same way just a few years later
and then whatever's happened in Sasha Baron Cohen's career
because he can't get away with it again
Borat should be on more list
it's exactly right both movies came out in 2006
they both feel impossible right now
Grinard and I do a whole segment at the second half of this podcast
where we just talk about, like, could you make Roadhouse in 2017?
It's wild to think there's just no way you could make either of those movies now.
It's an interesting thing because the concept of comedy,
this has been a very weird century for comedy.
I would say a lot of people went to what is my favorite Will Ferrell movie.
I think he's probably the iconic comic performer this time.
You know, some people will have bridesmaids,
will have Apatow movies.
But I think these kind of stunt-laden idea-driven movies
are more representative of where the culture is at.
They're more representative of YouTube culture.
They're more representative of Twitter.
They're more representative of the way people joke.
They presaged memes and all that other stuff.
Jackass number two is like a blueprint for how to laugh.
You can look at movies in the 21st century as either a cheapening of cinema or a democratization of cinema.
And I would say these movies make a strong argument for the latter.
Yeah, I agree.
Two more things I want to talk about before we wrap this up.
One is the surprising absence in the top 25, not until 40 for you, of a movie by Noah Baumbach.
Did you make a top 40?
I made a top 50, and I also added all the other movies that I left off.
I'll share this on the internet at some point.
And I'm sure I'll feel really bad about this list a minute I've published it.
And I'm not trying to make you feel bad about it, but I was stunned by that.
Because I feel like whether it was Francis Ha or whether it would be squid in the whale, that you would have.
Mistress America, also worthy.
All of those movies are in my top 100 of the century.
I think the thing is, for someone like him, I think of this, I thought of this very similar.
with Quentin Tarantino.
Taken together, I would just, if you said you have to sit down and watch all their movies consecutively right now,
I would do it in a heartbeat and I would be thrilled to do it.
I think about those movies plenty.
But individuated, somehow they don't quite add up to a massive experience.
That's how I felt about 21st Century Soderberg.
Interesting.
I loved every one of them, but I couldn't think of one to put on.
I felt very similar.
I felt very similarly even about Wes Anderson, who I think established a world and a universe that was completely singular.
But bit by bit doesn't feel as right to me.
is Grand Budapest Hotel
significantly better
than the Royal Tenenbaum?
Does it matter?
Those are the two best.
Was there much debate for you
about which Tarantino,
you have bastards in here?
And that's my second best.
Yeah, it was Kill Bill Whole Bloody Affair before
and I took it out
and then I put it back and then I took it out.
I think Inglorious Bastards
seems like his most historical movie
so people lean towards that.
The one we can wrap up on
and Andy and I talked about this briefly
on Monday, but all of us
at 25th hour
in our top 10
20th hour
unimpeachable movie
but really says a lot
about us being how old they are
I didn't have it
it's not in New York in the early 2000s?
I didn't have that in your top 10?
No.
Oh I thought that was like number five for you.
No.
Oh.
So you hate it.
It was a four hour
Taiwanese film
that you made fun of me for probably.
No, not at all.
That's the, let's just,
we should probably end on this
because this has been so fun
and I hope more people
keep sending in their list
and doing this
and maybe we should consider doing it for music or something like that because it's been fun.
People have said that they want to hear your TV lists for sure.
We should do it.
But all I was going to say is if it didn't make our 25 lists, it is not safe to assume it's because we hated it.
It is because we're doing this absurd thing.
But I will say the reason we were inspired to do this in the first place is because the New York Times did something that should have pissed everyone off and pissed some people off.
But in general, it's made people feel very joyful and optimistic and generous about movies.
And I feel like it said people to watching a lot of movies, which is really cool.
I saw a lot of reaction to their list that was like, I got to check that out.
And to be clear, I still won't go see movies, but I used to.
You're the best.
And it was a great time.
It's like, you have to.
You're the guy.
Everybody now knows the reason I don't go out to see the movies because they could hear one of them in the background of this podcast.
Thank you for your tolerating that everyone.
Okay, we're going to take a break there.
I'll be right back.
I'm talking to Andrew Goodenar.
Please stick around for this half of the podcast because Andrew really is very, very funny about Battleship, Speed 2, roadhouse.
house. She's all that.
Did you guys talk about Michael Hanukas, the white ribbon?
No, we did. Would that
get made in 2017?
Silent Light, is that the other one? Like five hours
in Mennonite, Mexico?
All right. Andy and I will be back on Monday, probably,
with some Twin Peaks talk. You never know with us.
We'll maybe try to hit that Thrones trailer, although
if you need to know about the Thrones trailer,
boy, do I have two people who can tell you about that.
Jason and Mallory have an incredible director's commentary.
12 minutes long, breaking down every frame of the
the Game of Thrones season 7 second trailer.
That's on the ringer's YouTube page.
It's on our ringer Twitter account
probably on the Facebook page.
Andy now will be back Monday.
Thanks as always to our good buddy, Sean Fennessee.
Thank you so much, guys.
Peace.
Great job, Branskies.
Okay, now I am joined by the ringers
Andrew Goododaro, who has also become
the high priest of good bad movies.
Did you get to a seminary for that?
Or is that just like, do you mind earn that?
No, it was six weekends.
And I couldn't talk and I just had to watch Roadhouse and Conair on Loop.
I wonder what that's an interesting clockwork orange.
Like what would happen to a person if they just watched Roadhouse?
Yeah, no, they pried our eyes open.
I'll tell you what would have a pretty good sense of right and wrong in this world.
Exactly.
Andrew's been writing about and editing pieces about good bad movies all week on the ringer.
He's got a monumental list, the top 50 good bad movies, which are,
is on the ringer.com.
He has overseen
the production of pieces, which I think
are inevitably leading to several greenlit
films. It sounds like con air with
Gina Rodriguez. Yeah, Gina Rodriguez is in.
Is it go picture? Yeah.
It's basically like the
Rihanna Lupita Nyango thing that happened
a couple weeks ago. Yeah. I think everyone's
getting in on this. So,
Andrew, I wanted to ask
of the top 50 that you did,
was there, I imagine
that the response is a list like this,
is different than if you're just like,
these are the best movies of the 25,
these are 25 best movies of the millennium or whatever,
because people are arguing for a very specific criteria, right?
They're like, this is, I've seen some people be like,
your first mistake is to say that Conair is a bad movie in the first place.
Or what's the difference in the feedback to this list
to other lists that you've been a part of?
So, I mean, usually lists and, you know, I've done my fair share of rankings,
usually the most popular complaint is you missed blank.
Yeah.
This, yeah, it's a little more varied because some people are a little offended that we're calling certain movies bad to even begin with.
Right.
Even though we're calling them good in a way.
For example, Shea Serrano has not been bothering me all week about the fact that Bad Boys 2 is on our top 50 list.
He has not been?
He has bothered me all week.
Oh, he has been, yeah.
He is slandering me.
I'm surprised he's still work here, honestly, after you put just one of the guys on there,
which is like Bill thinks is better than Godfather, too.
Hey, that's straight from Sean Fenticke's mouth.
I know, I know.
Yeah, but so people are more so being like,
how dare you call Conair a bad movie?
which is it's a hard thing to argue with on the first note just because it's like I can't argue with
your personal passion but you know I think we did our best in coming up with some strict rules
for a pretty vague concept yeah absolutely is there anyone that public opinion is convinced
you should have been included on the list that wasn't um Armageddon which
is very fair, I think.
I think to me, Armageddon didn't make the list because it, to me, it's considered,
I consider it an actually good action movie.
Yeah.
But, you know, some people.
And super plausible.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, why wouldn't you send a bunch of oil guys up onto an asteroid?
Right.
But yeah, so it's that one.
I heard the most, and there was a lot of John Claude Van Dam stands out there who came out of the
woodwork and were like, how could you only have one John Claude movie on this list? They wanted like
15. So Andrew and I are going to play a game right now, which is sort of to go through a couple of films
that are on his list and figure out whether they would get made in 2017. Because part of the
charm of this list, I think, is like, it feels like a real bygone era of when Hollywood,
Hollywood still wastes money unlike any industry, but it's, it almost, it seems like a kinder
gentler time when they used to just throw money away on these things that they knew must be
bad, but figured, hey, it'll find some kind of audience. Right. And that just doesn't seem to
happen anymore because they're too busy spending like half a billion dollars on Han Solo and firing
the director with two weeks left, you know. Yeah, like the, the,
Hollywood right now is just minimizing risk to the point where, you know, nothing gets made.
Right.
Yeah.
Which is, it kind of sucks because there's like there used to be such a sort of multiplicity of experiences you could have with movies.
And now it's like there's either Blockbuster or Awards Fair or like horror movies.
So let's go through a couple of these movies and let's figure out whether they would be made right now.
I wanted to start with Speed 2, which I have to come forward and say,
say, I deeply care about speed canon and the speed cinematic universe.
Okay.
And this was a cute.
Because I think speed is, the first speed is incredible.
And I think that Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock's characters in the first speed had something.
Like they had something real.
And it really, really, this was one of the first times where I realized, like, the world isn't fair is when Jason Patrick took over the lead role in speed for speed too.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
It's not speed without Jack Traven.
Yeah. Yeah, it really isn't.
And, you know, I do applaud their idea to, like, change vehicles, though.
Literal vehicles.
Yeah.
I would have liked to have seen Speed 3 because what, where would they have gone next?
Would have been a plane?
The world was their oyster.
I just wonder whether or not it would have been Officer Alex Shaw, played by Jason Patrick, who was joining Annie,
or whether it would have been,
they would bring back Jack Treven.
Yeah, I think, I think Jack,
I think he had too much stress on that bus.
He was like, you know what,
I'm not going on cruises.
The bus was rough.
I can't remember,
do they explain in the beginning of Speed 2
where Jack is?
They just break up?
I couldn't tell you.
I don't think so, though.
Because I like to imagine
that the relationship didn't work out
because if you take away,
if you take away the adrenaline
of, like, being on a bus
that can't go below 55.
Right, they just went to dinner
Yeah, if you're just going to coffee
And every time you are like at like a window at a restaurant
You look up and you see a bus go by
It's kind of like
It must be like drugs or something
It's like oh it turns out we were just heroin lovers
Exactly
Okay, so what do you think are the main roadblocks
The Speed 2 being made in 2017
So, well I guess
First of all, are we going to talk about this in a vacuum
as it.
I mean, however you want to do it, you're the, you're the master here.
All right.
So, I mean, I think the, uh, maybe the biggest roadblock is one, you don't, you don't,
you don't, like you said, you don't have Keanu signed on.
Right.
And that, that's a tough thing.
Right.
And I guess you do have a villain, though.
Okay.
And I, I think the Willem Defoe signing on to this kind of ups.
The speed, the attractiveness of a sequel to speed.
Right.
Yeah, Willem Defoe, who, like, around this time, so this is 97,
is about 11 years on from the glories of platoon.
But it's just, like, obviously, a really highly respected actor, you know, now and then.
And I think he had a lot of, a lot of big boots to fill with Dennis Hopper,
who's mangled hand bomb crazy, you know, like, villain was really like,
some of the secret sauce along with Jeff Daniels in the first speed.
I do love how there was a time in the mid-90s,
you know,
coming off of,
I remember this really started with Diehardt,
because Die Hard was such an easy,
you can explain Die Hard in five seconds.
It was such a good elevator pitch.
That they were just like,
just put Die Hard on a boat,
or just put Die Hard on a bus,
or just put Die Hard on a submarine.
And there were movies like that.
I do kind of long for a simpler time like that.
Yeah.
So I think speed, if we're saying that speed is a literal sequel and we're acting as if Speed 1 exists,
and let's say Speed 1 came out in like 2012.
Sure.
So now it's a couple of years later.
Speed 1 made like $350 million on a $30 million budget.
Yeah.
So I think Speed 2 is probably getting made.
Yes.
Yeah.
For that reason alone.
Yeah.
And also, like, they probably would have done whatever it took to keep, to keep Kiyanu.
You know what I mean?
Like, that would have just been...
Kianu and Sandra Bullock at this point would be the equivalent of Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt,
which we found out is not always a good thing.
Yeah.
But that's, like, what we're talking about in terms of their popularity.
Yeah.
So I think Speed 2 is getting made.
Okay.
This is also an interesting note just I want to throw out there is that we don't talk
enough about how Jason Patrick
stole Julia Roberts
from Kiefer Sutherland at the altar?
No, we don't talk
about that. I want
this to actually just turn into a
podcast about that. He was, and
in Speed 2, he was, I think, coming
off of Rush, which was sort of his big
shot at an Oscar where he plays
an undercover
cop who's also kind of messes
around with drugs, and everybody thought
he was kind of going to be the next
the next big kind of like
the next big
best actor
in the world
he made Geronimo
and then he made
Sleepers
and then he made Speed 2
and it was kind of like
he was like yeah
I can do the dramatic parts
but I can also do action roles
and it just was not a good look
and he doesn't really ever come back from that
Did Speed 2 ruin multiple careers?
Well Defoe is fine
Wes Anderson made sure of that
and Sandy Bullock
you can't keep Sandy Bullock down
Jason Patrick did do
which was very well respected, but since then has pretty much been a character actor, although
a very good one since Speed 2. Yeah. I'm mainly talking about director Jan DeBant.
The thing is, is that DeBant's in the Hall of Fame, man, because DeBant made Twister,
he made Speed 2 and he shot Die Hard. Yeah, he shot Die Hard. But like, after Speed, or going
into Speed 2 is Jan DeBant, like, okay, this guy's.
going to be working for the next 20 years making action movies.
Oh, I mean, it's absurd that he's not.
Let's just take a quick DeBondt.
A quick DeBond filmography look here.
It's sick.
Gosh, he directed Lara Croft in 2003,
and he has not directed a movie since then.
Yeah.
He starts out and goes Speed Twister.
He's arguably the most successful director in the world in 1996
after Twister comes out.
He does Speed 2 right after that.
Then he does The Haunting, then he does Lara Croft,
and then he hasn't done anything since then.
and as, let's see what he did.
Do you keep shooting stuff?
Eh, he's been a little bit, no, not really.
He hasn't even been director of photography since then.
But what a run for him?
Like in the mid-90s, late 80s, he did diehard and flatliners and basic instincts.
Basic instinct, yeah.
Yeah, he's unassailable in the 90s, but it's a little sad to see what happens post-speed too.
So what's the next one we're going to say?
see if we get made in 2017.
The next one, it's a pretty recent movie
goes by the name of Battleship.
Yeah, so this is an important film to me.
Do you want to give your little breakdown of Battleship?
Yeah, so Battleship was
they, this is the sort of,
I don't know if you would say Peak
because I've never surprised by like
what they will find to make a movie adaption of.
But Battleship is obviously
an adaptation of a board game
in which two people sit across
a divider and put
pegs into holes so it doesn't necessarily feel rich with story uh that being said peter berg said
challenge accepted and cast taylor kitch alexander scars guard riana jesse plemmins it's basically
like friday night lights riana and true blood on a boat somehow matt sarison didn't make the cast
i can't believe it i couldn't believe that and um gosh who's the sort of uh the old grizzle who's who's
Scarsguard's dad.
Are we talking about
Liam Neeson? Yes, that's right.
So you got a lot of
great actors working in this.
But the thing that's crazy
is that I could definitely see
this getting made tomorrow.
Yes. 100%.
It is sort of like
you would just say to somebody like,
okay, here's the reason why not.
Here's the reason why not to make this.
But I kind of enjoy battleship.
Yeah, you know,
It's not that bad.
I mean, it's fun.
And I think the cast itself, just the ensemble, is part of it.
You just have these people that you're so attached to because of Friday Night Lights.
And then you throw in Liam Neeson and Rihanna.
And it's like, okay.
A lot of ACDC on the soundtrack, you get Jerry Ferreira being very like overwhelmed by the situation.
as one of the Navy
guys in it.
And the conflict
is just so absurd
and they're like
at a Pearl Harbor
little inauguration
celebration thing
and all the sudden
aliens come out of nowhere.
Rihanna as Petty Officer
Coro Weps Rakes
has like some of the best lines.
She mostly just says like boom
a bunch of times.
Yeah, she goes like
yeah, duck, you know, like
She gets quick cuts.
This was also what a run
for Kitch. I think he lost a billion dollars
in this time period.
Yeah. So he did, it comes out of
Friday Night Lights and in 2012
made Savage's battleship and John Carter.
And I can't even, I don't know if they could
compute the amount of money that got lost
on those things. Yeah.
They really tried to make Kitch happen
and I wanted him to happen.
I still have Kitch stock.
Yeah.
How did you feel about true detective
Kitch? He was fine. I thought he was
underused. I thought if you were going to introduce
all those parts of his character, he needed to
work it out a little bit more.
So they should have chosen to make it about
Farrell or Kitch.
One of those guys should have died early in the season
to sort of spin things along.
I felt like you spent too much time with both of them
over the course of the season. He was fine in Loon Survivor.
I think he's going to have
a comeback, whether it's like Granite Mountain
Hot Shots or something. Yeah, we kind of need to forget.
He's playing David Koresh.
That could be a big one for him.
That would be cool.
Yeah.
Okay, so we definitely think battleship would get made
despite the fact that it lost like half a billion dollars.
Yeah, I mean, like, there's a movie about emojis, so.
Sure, that's right.
There's no limit here.
Okay, so what's the next one?
The next one, let's do Roadhouse.
Yes.
Probably my favorite good, bad movie.
You're right.
You are right.
It shouldn't be favorite.
It's just the best.
Now, I know that it didn't win, right?
It didn't win for mathematical reasons.
Okay.
But I think in terms of personal preferences.
I would say it's almost like a March Madness
where like the best team loses and the semis.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like, you know, like sometimes that happens,
but it still has everything you want from a champion.
Yeah.
So Patrick Swayze as kind of John Taffer.
from Bar Rescue.
I mean, basically, right?
Yeah, that's actually a good way of looking at it.
He's just cleaning up bars, which he's extremely well known for,
although he doesn't have a reality show like John Taffer does.
Right.
Like people are just like, oh, that's Dalton.
Yeah, even Blind Blues guitarist Jeff Healy is like, that's Dalton.
Knows him immediately.
Yeah, he knows him by his scent.
Yeah, so he goes to a bar.
in Missouri to clean up
and the town is
extremely small to the point that
they don't seem to have a police department
and the
town seems to be run by the
wealthiest man in town
who kind of just
does whatever he wants and takes collection
as if he's Don Corleon.
Yeah.
It is, and in that sense,
Roadhouse is basically the 80s godfather.
Yeah. Oh, totally.
Yeah. I want to bring up a couple
things about Roadhouse.
Okay.
One of the reasons it would not get made in 2017 is that we have lost something over the years
about just what an R-rated movie can be.
And the levels of nudity, sex, and really, really disturbing, gratuitous, drawn out, nauseating,
but also exhilarating violence in this movie.
It's like, I don't even think that they, I don't know.
can't think of an action movie that I've seen other than the raid in the last few years.
The violence in Roadhouse is closer to Green Room than it is any other like blockbuster movie.
And it's so violent.
It also, there's not like a real style to it either.
No, it's just guys who are like oiled up having 10 minute karate fights by the banks of a lake.
Yeah.
And just throat rips.
Yeah, throat rips.
A lot of like just kicking dudes in the knees.
long like Sam Elliott puts his hair up in a man bun and just blows out a bunch of guys as ACLs.
I, you know, do you think on its story alone, forget like the rating, forget the violence,
story, a notorious bouncer takes back of small Missouri town.
What level of star would you need to have attached to get this greenlit?
So you'd probably need like Tom Cruise.
I was going to say the rock, but yeah.
The problem was if the rock did it,
I would be worried about it being like PG-13.
And it's just not as good.
Yeah, I don't,
I think you're right that they would have a hard time
duplicating the gratuitousness of this movie.
Yeah.
I was also thinking earlier today
that Channing Tatum might work.
Oh my God, dude.
I can't believe you just said that.
Why?
Because that's really smart.
Right?
Like, he could do it.
But would you want like a,
straight roadhouse or would you want
Channing Tatum doing like 21
Jump Street Roadhouse?
Yeah.
See, my thing
with all of these is that
I don't think you can
like wink at the camera while doing them.
Just because
it's kind of the same thing with
the new Baywatch where
I think they tried to be
a little too smart about what they were doing.
Right. And you can like feel
it, feel it being made rather than
if they had just literally made an episode of 1990 Baywatch,
it would have been a better movie.
Now, our producer, Zach Mack, does chime in to say that the Rock essentially did do
Roadhouse with Walking Tall, but I would submit to Zach, you need to watch Roadhouse again.
Because Walking Tall is about, like, saving a family, right?
Like, it's got, like, moral fiber.
Roadhouse is essentially about, like, killing dudes.
He's a mercenary.
Yeah.
And, like, he has a code, but that code is, like, flexible.
It's a malleable code.
Yeah, his thing is, his thing is be nice until it's time to not be nice.
That's actually exactly what his code is.
That's exactly his code.
And there is a lot of wiggle room in between those things.
Lordhouse is also, like, an underrated bad news bears type sports story because he kind of,
he has, like, a group of, like, shaggy dog bouncers that he trains.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, he teaches them.
Yeah.
Roadhouse.
So what's our verdict?
I don't think that this is not high concept enough, but I just feel like if you got a big
enough star, and I just would worry that it would ultimately be like too nice.
Yeah.
I don't think Roadhouse is getting made in 2017.
Okay.
All right.
What's our next one?
The next one is She's All That.
Okay.
classic rom-com
from the very late 90s
So we did a little she's all that
For the director's commentary videos that we made
And you can find those on the ringers YouTube channel
On our Twitter account and on our site
Where a bunch of us sat around
Watched Roadhouse fight scene
Watched a scene from Anaconda
We watched a scene from She's All That
And this is gonna be weird
Because you'd think it's like based on Shakespeare
Right? Or no it's it's based
not Shakespeare? It's based on my fair lady.
My fair lady, right?
Yeah. I forgot. Which is the one that's
like a Shakespeare one?
Now I can't think of it. Is that 10 things I hate about
you? Yes, that's 10 things I hate about it.
Okay, so it's based on my fair later. You think it's a
classic story. But
I do kind of think that
you would have to do something
like gender switch this
to make it work in 2017.
We have to be a woman who's like, I
want to, I'll pick the dorkiest
dude and make him into prom king.
This movie is
Like I rewatched it
And it is way crasser
Yeah, and I remember it.
It is like the height of
90s
Like masculinity kind of
And just like
Before, before wokeness
Ever set in.
Yeah, and it's the characters in it
When you see them
them physically are like, oh, it's like Paul Walker and Freddie Prince and they seem pretty
unassuming and they're like pretty chill, you know, like they are like there is like an
insidious kind of like, yeah, her ass isn't nice enough to like, you know, like warrant my attention.
It's pretty tough.
Yeah, it's like the scene, which I think is the one you guys watched where they're going around
being like, okay, well, who's the girl who's a train wreck enough that this bet,
for you to turn them into prom queen
is going to be so hard.
And they go around just like
ripping apart girls
as they walk by.
I know. It's hard to watch kind of.
This was a movie that birthed like, I mean
the depth of bench here is
Warriors'esque. Freddie Prince Jr.,
Rachel Lee Cook, Matthew Lillard, Paul Walker,
Kevin Pollock, coming off
usual suspects at the time, and a Pac-Wan
Kieran Culkin,
Usher, Little Kim, Gabrielle Union, DeLay Hill, and Cleo Duval, plus Tim Matheson.
That's quite a cast.
Yeah, no, the cast is incredible.
So what do you think would have to happen to make this today?
So one, I'm extremely hesitant to say that this would get remade no matter what,
just because I feel like Hollywood doesn't touch rom-coms anymore.
Right.
Right.
Or it has to be like much higher concept than this.
Yeah, yeah, it's just, I don't think it's going to happen on that level.
I think you're right that a gender swap is probably the only way.
Yeah.
And so who are like two early 20s?
Like, will we get Selena Gomez to be in this?
Another thing is I feel like the whole construct of like jocks versus nerds doesn't really exist anymore.
like the lines between the archetypes and blurred.
So that's, on that, it's not as much of a universal thing as it was in the late 90s.
Right, absolutely.
Yeah.
Which is, it's, it's almost so hard to imagine, because the biggest possible, like, return from a movie like this would just not warrant the stress of how.
to figure out all these characters that you're talking about, I kind of just can't imagine it
getting made today.
Yeah.
Another factor, would it be better as a Netflix series?
Well, it would be...
I think it would be actually quite popular as a Netflix series.
I think one of these 90s romantic comedies set at high school should get that treatment.
what do you do when the
wallflower becomes the prom king or queen though
what's season two
yeah that's true
or do you just make it like a limited series
that just happens to be six hours long or something
yeah the idea of like
a high school version of big little eyes
is kind of funny to me
that is pretty funny
and then it's just over
it was really
yeah so
I could see it
like that, that would actually be
really fun for me. Okay. Maybe
like a Riverdale type situation.
Okay. So,
we're definitely remaking.
We can get Battleship going.
Oh yeah, that's instant.
We could get Speed 2 going if Speed
1 had come out in like 2013
or something. Yeah.
It's got a lot of money behind it, so.
Roadhouse?
No. It's really hard. Like maybe Blumhouse
would do it for like $5 million and let you do what you
wanted, but it would just be, it would be
Unless you had it, like, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are making it or the Rock.
Sign me up.
Or the Rock would be in it.
And he could, but that would probably be a little bit nicer.
Yeah.
I do want to throw out.
You said Channing Tatum, I wouldn't, wouldn't mind seeing Swole Jillon Hall do a Roadhouse remake.
Ooh.
Yes.
I'm into that.
Yeah.
Maybe get refined or direct it.
Oh, no.
Only Roadhouse forgives.
Was there one more movie that you thought we could get greenlit?
No, because the other movie I was going to bring up is white chicks, and that's just a hard no.
I feel like we've established some parameters with our she's all that conversation.
Okay, you know what?
We have a pretty high batting average here.
Andrew, this has been awesome.
You can read everything that Andrew has written and edited about the good bad movies week on the ringer right now.
We'll tweet it out.
This has been really cool.
Andrew, we'll have to have you on again soon.
But thanks for joining me, man.
Thanks, Chris.
Okay, thanks for listening.
We'll be back on Monday.
We'll be talking Twin Peaks and more.
Please check out Good Bad Movies Week on The Ringer.com.
You can check out me, Andy, and Sean's lists of the best 25 movies of the millennium on our various Twitter pages.
We'll also share that through at the WatchPod.
And please check out binge mode to get caught up in Game of Thrones.
We've got the Game of Thrones live show at the Largo, July 11th.
You can buy tickets through Sea Geek.
And we have a Twitter show after every episode of Game of Thrones debut.
July 16th. Bye.
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