The Watch - The Hello Sunshine Sale and What It Means to Have a TV Brand. Plus, ‘The Suicide Squad’ and ‘The White Lotus’

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

Reese Witherspoon’s media company, Hello Sunshine, sold to a Blackstone-backed media company for around $900 million last week. Chris and Andy talk about what the sale can tell us about the state of the TV industry right now (1:00). Plus, the newly released ‘The Suicide Squad’ adds another notch in the DC vs. Marvel war (25:50), and the penultimate episode of ‘The White Lotus’ (41:20). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimfaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimfaya, 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 Rigger.com and joining me on the other line.

He keeps avoiding our group scuba diving lesson. It's Andy Greenwald. Chris, you're sweet to make it about the White Lotus, but you miss the obvious one, which is that you are stuck in the White Lotus right now. I am. Hotel mishaps worthy of a Mike White production. So we didn't have a show last Thursday.

We apologized to the dozens of listeners who were alarmed by that. It wasn't anything deep. No, I got to take the L on that. I told Kaya that we would have the exclusive Donda listening session, and Kanye interview, and I went down to the Mercedes Ben Stadium, and I brought a snugly, I brought my sleepover clothes, and then the record didn't come out. I can't believe I got burned. But at least you're still podcasting with a stocking over your head. That's true. That's true. I think the audio fidelity really helps. I apologize. To all of our

listeners, and especially to the one guy who was like shouts to Chris and Andy for getting paid without doing work, wish I could do that. And I was like, my guy, there's a vacation policy at your work. you should look into it. So yeah, I'm still on the East Coast. I was supposed to fly back yesterday. Flight got canceled. That's rough. There are worst places in the world

to be stuck than New York City, baby. So I was just out and about on the streets again, went to the Met, checked out that Medici exhibit at the Met. Those guys, they were really in the cut, man. They had a lot of stuff going on back in Florence in the 16th century. How many, just can I test your knowledge,

general knowledge right now? Of Renaissance Italian patronage culture, yes. Was Rome sacked? Do you know? Did you say Romo? Tony Romo was sacked by Jeremiah Trotter, at least this many times. How many times was Rome sacked like in its early days? Like how many times?

Historically, what counts as a sack? Like, is it like you have to, is it like when Michael Strayhan, like, got a last sack over Fav because Farf took a knee? Or is it the Visigoths have to fully overrun your streets? Yeah, we're talking sieging. We're talking ransoming other human beings. Wow. It's tough. Yeah.

Kyi, what do you think? Super producer Kai McMullen is back with us. I'm taking the under. Kyi, we woke you up early in Los Angeles. How many times has Rome been sacked? And now you're asking the historical trivia. Yeah. Two? Seven. Seven times.

Jesus. Seven times. Yeah. Kaya was closest to the number. What was great was that when we, you know, we apologized to Kaya, we were like we couldn't get the show together last week due to travel things. And Kaya was like, I'm sure your loyal fans will forgive you. I don't think she knew that we would make our return talking about Renaissance war gaming. So one of the things that we need to.

Yeah. As a duo and maybe as a trio, if we, if we. try to LLC it up here at the watch and think about is that this kind of inconsistency on our parts is going to make it difficult for Blackstone to invest $900 million in our IP. I know. So that's the first thing I wanted to talk about today was the buyer's market, or I guess the seller's market that is the entertainment industry right now. Like last week, there was a couple of really cool, really cool.

There was a couple of very notable stories. Big cheerleader for capitalism over here. You've been living on Wall Street too long. On o'clock, running out of vocab. There was a couple of very notable stories that came out of Hollywood last week that I wanted to hit with Andy before we talked about White Lotus and stuff like that. And I think he also sounds a plain movie to talk about. But Hello Sunshine, the production company that is owned and operated by Reese Witherspoon

and produced Big Little Eyes, produced Little Fires Everywhere, has a hand in producing the morning show. Obviously, it has a really definable brand. sold itself to Kevin Mayer and another gentleman who used to work at Disney. I can't remember his name right off the top of my head. And with financial backing from Blackstone, which is a very, very, very wealthy private equity firm, Hellas and Sean was purchased for $900 million.

This is one of several really notable acquisitions that were made or announcements that were made over the course of last week that suggests these guys need to pull over because they've had a couple too many. We've got Paramount re-upping Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the South Park creators, for a very long deal

that involves making 14 movies for Paramount Plus and doing South Park on Comedy Central well into this decade. And I believe that was also for $900 million. There's a great interview with them, with Lucas Shaw and Bloomberg,

the people should check out. And then just as a kind of side note, it was announced that Blumhouse, NBCU, and Peacock were going in on a new Exorcist trilogy that would cost $400 million. It's a film trilogy. Film trilogy. And that one is not so dissimilar from the announcement that there would be two more Nives Out movies made by Netflix for $300 million.

I guess I'm looking for a couple of answers from you. O-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W. What's going on? And are these numbers like really inflated? Is this because of an infusion of private equity money in the case of Hello Sunshine? And I understand the South Park one because those guys make things and own them and then sell them to Viacom, CBS, presumably, right? But Hello Sunshine is just a producer of stuff. They don't actually own big little lies or Little Fires Everywhere or own morning show, right?

They make things for other companies. I mean, first of all, I'm relieved. I'm relieved that your first question wasn't about the paperwork I gave you when you asked to see where we were with the After the Thrones IPO. I admit now that that paperwork was about as legitimate as the business card with the general manager's phone number that Armand gave to Jake Lacey on White Lotus. Yes, I think your distinction is right. And when you get into numbers of this size, it is often opaque, at least opaque, to lay people like us, what the money is paying for. And the implication, I think, with the South Park deal with Parker and Stone was that some

of this was to fund the production of things, right? It's not like Trey Parker, Matt Stone, are each pocketing $450 million, although I'm sure they basically have at this point over time prior to this deal, that this is in some way an infusion of cash just to their company in exchange for all the stuff they're going to make for them. I think that the Hello Sunshine one, well, I guess, I mean, the thing that connects both of them, right? And I don't want to be glib with the world of corporate raiders. But these are in some ways very expensive hedges, not just hedge funds, against uncertainty, right? Hello Sunshine has, and I think you said this right when you began introducing the idea,

a fairly definable brand, which is impressive and hard to do in a short amount of time, right? I think that even just a regular TV fan could probably tell the different, like if you held up two different productions, you could probably pick the one that was Hello Sunshine, right? I mean, generally coming, Reese Witherspoon's company likes to snap up books, particularly books by female authors, as showcases for star talent and, you know, owning, owning the miniseries space and basically helping to carve out an entirely new lane in what prestige television is delivering on Sunday nights. But then also, I think it's worth noting that they have followed a late teens, early 20s hyper-capitalist playbook, which is to, become, it's less that you make things yourself. It's that you become the interlocutor between and sort of tough to define vibe and idea and the consumers. This might sound like a weird jump to make, but I'm not sure if anyone read another business story recently about a cookware

company called Great Jones. The internet loved this for about a day or two. Yeah, because it sounds like that that was not the greatest place to work. Separate and apart from the workplace, which is what the story was about. I thought one of the more interesting details about it was that, you know, like cool, online, extremely online,

young, fashionable tastemaker, influencer types were like, you need this cookware. They took something that people generally need, like a Dutch oven or a cookie pan, and we're like, you need this and you need our version of it,

because ours come in cool colors and will look good on your shelf and you've seen it on Instagram and, you know, these Bon Appetit, video stars use them or whatever. And then the other thing that people assumed they were buying was some sort of virtuousness, right? Like there's some sort of whatever. And then you find out, oh, this is just stuff that's made in China. But it was, and they don't actually make anything. They just sort of sell you the idea of the thing. All of that sounds a little disparaging

towards Reese Witherspoon's company. It's her company, it means, it's kind of incredible that she pulled this off. But it is a large scale investment in her team's ability to taste make and translate and do the stuff that everyone in finance, when they look at Hollywood, they don't understand, make it look easy and doable. Because outside of Disney Marvel saying in August 23, untitled Marvel movie will drop, and the shareholders are like, great, we'll see a nice return in that month. There is no sure thing, right? But this is close to it. And I think the thing that was really remarkable about this is that there have been celebrity shingles for as long as there have been celebrities in Hollywood.

Exactly. And by that, I mean, you know, you're a star of a TV show. As part of your deal, you get a, your rich overall deal that will help you. And some of those celebrity shingles have been incredibly successful, like Plan B, which is Brad Pitt's. Oh, absolutely. And it, you know, they all, it depends on how engaged. Point Grey, Seth Rogen's, like, there's, there's some that I have done, have made

dozens of very popular films and shows, for sure. And there are others that are just like a celebrity, you know, they slap them on it when they get an executive producer credit on the show that they've been on. And that's fine. That's just where their interest lies and what they want to do with their career. What sets this apart isn't just something I think we've talked about in the podcast before, which is Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, I think, you know, identifying a major market inefficiency for great talented actresses over the age of 40 and being like, we're going to take over TV and we're going to have a piece of it this time. I think the other thing that's really remarkable about it was they built this to sell it.

I mean, and there's no shame in that. Like, that's just what capitalism has been doing. That's what, you know, disruptor culture and tech culture has been doing. But, like, this was built up and scaled. And, you know, they took on a podcast department and they're in this space and in that space. I think some of the scuttlebutt was that they were basically doing it to be bought by Apple. And Apple, I think, kicked the tires and then Blackstone Group stepped in. But it's a really remarkable hustle.

So credit Teresa Witherspoon, first of all, longtime favorite of this podcast. But I do think that. the value, all of this was a long way with a, I'm sorry, this is a long journey, not as long as Chris's journey back to the West Coast, but long. To sort of say that this is, this is a very 21st century media story. The valuation of this stuff is shrug emoji. Sure. Yeah. I mean, also like at this point is, but like I, I, if, if my understanding of finances is it, you know, at a remedial level, like, money is cheap right now. Like, you can borrow. a lot of money at very low interest rates

and you probably will be able to do that until 2023. So I think that that might have something to do. Hold on. Let me call my money guy. I think that... Jerome Powell said that, right? On the rewatchables? What are you talking about? Jerome Powell is on Superbad and right after we got done talking about

the Coke party scene where Michael Sarah sings, Jerome Powell was like, by the way, guys, feel free to buy a house until 2023. But the that's incredible. The, the, the Tray Parker or Matt Stone thing, I think, is worth putting in a slightly different context. Let me, let me talk about Reese for a second. Because I just want to say the difference I see between Hello Sunshine and say Plan B or Point Gray or even something like Imagine, which is Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's long running production company that's been involved in tons of different things is, um, Hello Sunshine seems like a brand.

And Hello Sunshine seems like something that. is only in its infancy of determining what it could be. And when you kind of kick, when you look underneath the hood at some of these articles about the Hello Sunshine sale, it's not necessarily that they're spending $900 million for Reese Witherspoon's taste in books and movies. They're also like, this is an e-commerce business waiting to happen.

You know what I mean? Like every single, when Reese Witherspoon does her like, welcome to my house tour on in Vogue or whatever, and you see a basket and it's like, buy this basket. at hello sunshine. dot store.com or whatever. Like the ways in which she has kind of

taken her identity and her taste and made it not something that she's like, I'm picking out projects for myself as an actress or I'm picking out projects that I think would be good for other people.

It's like, no, this is an entire like from what you wear to what you read to the beauty products you use to the house, the interior design of your house, you could be part of like this sort of Hello Sunshine

ecosystem, that very well may be worth $900 million. And if the Blackstone folks are like, I can borrow $300 million on whatever interest, basic point I need, like, TFW watches industry once. Because we heard Jerome Powell on sports card nonsense. Because Jerome Powell was on sports card nonsense. That is a great point that you're making about the commerce stuff because, you know. Because Plan B is not like, yo, like get these cool World War Z sunglasses. signed by Brad Pitt for $9.99.

You know what I mean? But I could see a big, big little lies like ceramics wear. Yes. And I think that, you know, Molly Shannon's character on White Lotus is right. That actually, you know,

we like to talk about things here in terms of like creative enterprise and taste and all that sort of ephemeral stuff, but it is ultimately about money and the way that celebrities leverage their fame into generational wealth is rarely through a successful film.

You know, just last week also, Rihanna, they're like, Forbes says Rihanna's a billionaire, and she hasn't put out a record in five years. It's because of her fashion line. And that's why, you know, on a much, much, much smaller scale, staying in the world of food blogs, which is really the only other thing I know about. Amanda Hester later than New York Times launched a website a decade ago, I think, called Food 52. It was a big deal at the time. Like, you're leaving the Times to do the Internet.

and it was part of like a glut of like, oh, food blogs, basically, with recipes and like lifestyle stuff, like serious eats and eater all was around the same time. And the valuation of that company, which I think they just leveraged a little bit, was ultimately because people wanted to buy the cookware. And they became a hub for commerce. I mean, that used to be the dirty secret, but that is actually what undergirds a lot of this. And that's a great point. I think what's a little bit more old-fashioned Hollywood is the Parker and Stone.

deal despite the eye-popping numbers. And I think the thing that really stood out to me to buttress that point was in the Lucashaw interview that you mentioned, it was in Bloomberg, right? That we're basically they're like, you know, we've been making very, very successful content for Viacom consistently for many, many, many, many years, you know, over 25 years, I think at this point. And the strangest thing to them, Parker and Stone, was during the years when Viacom was sort of at war with CBS.

And the company was fighting. Philippe Domans Rien. Yeah. Yes. Like, why are we an afterthought? Why are we not considered, like, why don't they just hook us? Why don't they hook the company up to the pump that we're providing here? And why do our shows then end up on HBO Max?

Like, it's very bizarre. We are in an era when all of these major corporations are trying to find steady, consistent pipelines. And here they had one, you know, that may not be as generationally, shiny as Star Trek, but I would argue is both cheaper and they've had a bigger return on reward over the last 25 years. Also, like if you want to be real about it,

there's probably a not insignificant amount of the population who find South Park to be more resonant with them than Star Trek. Yes, but they're not always the people who are being interviewed. That's right. You know, in Forbes. When they're also asked about Rihanna's lingerie collection.

Yeah. I thought Jerome Powell was really insightful about Savage X-Fentie, by the way. The thing that's cool about Powell is like he can just go in so many different directions. No, no, I know. On the Ringer NBA show on Draft Night, he was just like Moses Moody is a great value pick for the Warriors here. Yeah, but on Ringer Dish, I just want to say again, like his thoughts on, you know, Goop Fall 21. Yeah. The Exorcist thing I wanted to mention just because I'm a huge Exorcist fan.

In fact, I'm an Exorcist One fan, but I'm also a fan of the third Exorcist film, which is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. So, interesting to see Blumhouse, who are also shepherding the sort of the Halloween revival movies. They did one with David Gordon Green

a year or two ago, and then they have another one coming out this year. Getting into this another classic horror reboot. This one will star Leslie Odom Jr., and then also Ellen Burstom will make an appearance reprising her role from the original Exorcist. The reason I wanted to ask about this is, A, interesting to see studios say,

we're in for the trilogy, or we're in for, like, the series of films off-jump. Let's not even, like, worry about it yet. Which makes sense, but is also, like, that's a lot of money to spend on, you know, a franchise that you don't know if it still, like, resonates with people as much. The Exorcist rewatchables was a popular episode.

I'm certainly not saying that people don't watch The Exorcist. anymore. But, you know, there are and have been a lot of possession horror movies since then. And then I was just curious about the number because I was wondering whether or not this number is supposed to reflect the value of having original owned and operated content for a streaming service, like where Netflix is like, we want these next two Knives Out movies because we think that they will draw X amount of subscribers or keep people on platform for X

amount of time and it's worth it to us to spend $300 million. That takes care of everything, I assume. You know, the fees for all the performers, the script, the production, Ryan Johnson's fees. Is that just like if you actually looked at what

what a movie, a big Hollywood movie costs, it would actually like work out to about that anyway? Or is there a premium being paid to a media keep this inside the gates of the service? It's a great question. One, I'm not fully qualified to answer it,

but I do get a lot of financial advice from podcasts, so I think that I can begin to speak to it. I think number one, these fees, I think they finally figured out, and maybe this also just works for the way these companies are organized, that a locked-in concrete number today is always lower than if you let it go.

And by let it go, I mean, you green like the first movie, you control everyone through first movie, they have options, et cetera, et cetera, there's drift, there's entropy. And by the time you gather everyone around again or you develop the ideas or you get the writers back,

it's going to cost more. It just is. If you announce what it's going to be and you build it into the schedule early, that helps control the costs. You know, it's like why, it's the other reason why over the last decade,

many networks have quietly started the writer's rooms for future seasons of shows that haven't debuted yet, because, you know, it's cheaper for them to have the scripts ready, even if the show gets canceled. Because the money they would have spent gathering it together, like they've seen that happen so many times in the loss, you know, whatever. So they figured that's an investment that is worth making. So I think the one number all in, I said this at the beginning, but I think certainty is uncertainty, especially in a COVID era, is the variable that people just throw money at and are competing and building their entire. business to combat and the more things that you can control, at least as line items for your

shareholders report or whatever at the end of a given year, even if the future movies are in the future, I think that really, really, really matters. I think the other thing that's worth noting is we're starting to sniff around a different understanding of what the value of a movie is or a franchise is, right? There was just a movie announced. I should have had, I wish I had this to the tip of my tongue, but there was a hot project or whatever that was coming together, like they were going to make it. It hasn't even been filmed yet, but I think Apple was already locked in on buying it for $200 million. And I, what's funny, Chris, is we just pause. We stepped down recording for a second just so I could try and figure out what movie I was talking about.

And in the short time I looked, I couldn't find the movie I'm talking about, but I found two others. Sure. Of Apple just being like, yes, we're going to buy this Florence Pugh film Dolly with Vanessa Taylor and Drew Pierce writing the script. No director yet, no script, but they were like, here's $100 million plus for this package of a film. Right. And today, Jennifer Lawrence and the great Italian director, Paola Sorrentino are trying to put together something. And they're like, yeah, we'll give you $80 to $100 million for that. Right.

And I think that the floor ceiling was set with projects from the last year, like The Tomorrow War, which was supposed to be a summer blockbuster movie and instead became an important part of Amazon's play to dominate at home with Prime Video, what didn't happen with a Bond movie, but definitely set a price floor and ceiling and potentially even ultimately led to MGM sale to Amazon. So we're starting to have a different sense of what these things actually mean and cost and the absorbed value, even if it's a one-time thing. And I think that that brings us to the last piece of it when Knives Out or Exorcist Trilogy, if you buy a franchise, it's not a one-time thing. Sure. You can make the big splash, by saying we have Knives Out too, and then you can have, I mean, it's funny.

Like, remember it when it was a big deal when Marvel movies had, had, you know, post-credit scenes and being like, oh, stay tuned for the next one. We're like, whoa, movies have never been this organized when TV has been doing that in the form of cliffhangers for decades. Yeah. How much more valuable is the stinger at the end of Knives Out, too, if it says coming on Netflix next year. You know, I think that that not only gets you excited about the movie and about Netflix, it keeps you from canceling your purpose. subscription potentially. So all these stories, well, to some degree are boring financial stories, they also do speak to the relative state of the industry. Yeah. And they'll also have like a trickle-down effect to the kind of stuff that gets made. You know, in the 1980s and in the 90s, I think that there was

basically, this is not this, what's happening now is not dissimilar to what was happening in the 80s in the 90s when a lot of the major talent agencies would bundle together director star script to be like, And now we're going to make this action movie. Do you know what I mean? This idea of like assembling a project and then going to market with it is not that, you know, it's not that uncommon. But I do think it's interesting to see this amount of money being thrown around and the role of Wall Street in this. I would also add, this is sort of a sideways point to tack on, but one I wanted to make anyway, all of this is still very much in flux. And you can see this if you looked at the headlines coming out of this weekend.

and we're recording early Monday morning in L.A. Some of us are in L.A. Two-thirds of us, so officially this is an L.A.-based podcast. James Guns, the Suicide Squad, no one knows how to interpret this data. Right. It made $26.5 million at the domestic box office this weekend, which was a little bit under projections, but they are like, it's the best, it's like the best R-rated action movie of the pandemic era, which is like, sure, I'm the best 5'7-43-year-old point cards.

sitting in my hotel room right now. We're not sure about that, by the way. I know. There could be a guy under the bed who played AAU. I have no idea. Where's Jemir Nelson right now? And is he enjoying a room service breakfast somewhere? That's right. I think there's just, I find this fascinating.

Warner's like, okay, I don't know what they think because they did put it on HBO Max and that may have had an effect. It also, you know, it's Delta season baby. So maybe people are not, hopefully not congregating in big groups. There's also, it's like, this is a confusing franchise. It's a franchise that was originally no one had ever heard of in the first place. I mean, real talk. Like, I know dorks have heard of it, but like nobody, like my mom doesn't know what suicide squalmers.

That's the New York and you popping off. And then, and then they're like, new cast, same movie title. It's just like. There's, there's a participle in this. And if you watch this movie, which I did and did enjoy, it's, it is a hard R. Like, they got a shark eating a man, like, and lots of profanity. They also really struggled on two things. This movie was marketed as a James Gunn passion project.

Yeah. James Gunn isn't that famous. I'm sorry. Like, I know he's super Twitter famous, and I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to be well-known. But the guy, you know, chirping and taking shots at Martin Scorsese on social media, like isn't alone going to open a $200, $200 million blockbuster film. That was an odd choice. Second thing is, I do wonder if there's any conversation about this in the C-sweets over at Warner.

Maybe people don't want this. This is now the third movie in the Harley Quinn expanded universe. Sure. that has politely tanked politely right like everyone loves The first suicide squad made like almost a billion dollars though right I say politely tanked

Yeah It didn't do as well as they wanted it to Neither did the Harley Quinn solo movie Which they once again didn't call a Harley Quinn movie They called it you know birds of prey Featuring the fantastical emancipator or whatever This one she's in this one But again it's not her movie

It's James Gunn and a Sharks movie it's a little odd. The thing that I find interesting is we have recently been saying that Marvel's turn towards multiversal storytelling might signify that Warner DC, though they stumbled into this strategy, they didn't necessarily choose it, but their strategy of being like, sure, six jokers, no problem, is the only successful way to do this in a flood the zone in multiple mediums era. I now begin,

I just want to put a little pause here and say that might not be true. I would like to revise my statement. No, I just want to make this observation. And again, we'll see how it all works out. But in keeping with the previous conversation we were having about some certainty, about building things from a position

of at least we know we'll have that. That is what fuels the Warner Brothers decisions that we've been discussing in recent weeks to greenlight the Dune spinoff for a movie that hasn't come out yet. Or the John Cena spin-off from Suicide Squad is well into production. It may have even wrapped.

That whole series was made with the confidence that the movie was going to resonate, not just succeed, but resonate on a level where people would want more of that tone or that character. That's still maybe so. It could be, the show could be great. And I am going to see this movie. But I don't know if you like it.

I set away from my wife and kids to be not just out of town but out of the state. I mean, you definitely can't let your children see this movie. No. But the thing that is in Marvel's favor right now is that, and it's so tenuous and hard to keep up, but there is this really rare and almost ineffable. thread running through all of it, which is that it all matters. Somehow they've managed to keep that going. And that does affect people's decision making because if they're invested a little bit in endgame, they get it. And I know, I'm sorry this is like the Thomas Friedman and the

cab in Dubai, but the people in the pool in Rojobe Beach. I feel like you've brought up Thomas Friedman multiple times this month. Well, for this, this is my one, this is in the same context. eavesdropping on some perfectly kind Delawareans. What's happening? We used to talk about like push a tea and all this like cool shit. And now we're like Jerome Powell,

Thomas Friedman, the Medici's. Because you're a 43-year-old in a hotel room. I mean, I'm sorry. Do you want me to say it or do you want our listeners to say it? Right? We keep it really real. And sometimes that involves talking about retirement plans on our podcast.

I got a hard copy of New York Times right here. If you want to talk about it. It is crisp. I got to get Annie Carney on this Obama party. I need it in print, baby. I am fired up about it. But you get what I mean, that there are people who are not listening to our podcast. God bless them.

And I think they probably tried to tune in for the first time on Thursday and we weren't there. That's right. Whiff. But they somehow have picked up on something without being extremely online, which is, oh, if I liked that, I better watch Falcon and Winter Soldier because it's going to matter. It's going to be connected to it. And that is something that you can't buy, no matter how many spin-offs you pre-Greenleight on properties that haven't debuted yet. So I think that that's once again why Disney Marvel has the upper hand, at least going into this next phase. I will say this about James Gunn. He does

know how to play the game because, you know, he obviously got like canceled for like eight minutes, lost guardians, got suicide squad, got guardians back. He's been doing a very good job of promoting suicide squad. He did that weird drive-by on Martin Scorsese, making it sound like Martin Scorsese had been trying to market the Irishman on the back of Marvel, where I was like, fam, really? Like, do you really think that was what that was? You got to ask a question about like Marvel movies and was honest,

as an 80-year-old man was like, it's not for me, man. I'm invited into it. And then, of course, like, James Gunn gets like a lot of burn off of dissing Martin Scorsese to sell his own movie, which I think will be charitably, I can say, not as warmly received as the Irishman. So here we are full circle. And then I don't know if this interview took place before or after the actual box office number came out, but there's another interview with Gunn that just came out.

it's in variety. And, you know, he talks a little bit about, um, basically like, well, what will you do? You know, like, how do you feel about this being on HBO Max? Is it an HBO Max thing? Is it a movie theater thing? And Jim's guns, like, I don't care. He's like, all the movies that I love, a lot of them, they're, they're memorable or they've lived on because of television. That's where people see these movies. The reason movies last forever is not because you go to repertory theater screenings of them. It's because Jaws is on television every day in America somewhere. And so that's why Jaws is a classic. It's not because Jaws. Yes, Jaws was obviously very successful in the box office and you can still go see Jaws every once in a while in a theater.

But to him, cutting out the middleman and immediately becoming a staple of a streaming service is not a bad thing. So very savvy on his part. Very savvy. It's also, that's a great point, by the way, because during Quentin Tarantino's recent media tour, which included Stops on Ringer podcasts, weirdly not as many his fed chief Jerome Powell, but they can settle that beef out of court. He talks lovingly and quite honestly, this is on Marin, you know,

in a lot of his interviews too. When he fell in love with movies as a kid, yes, the movie theaters around L.A. that don't really exist anymore except for the ones that he now owns. But watching with his stepfather, the Saturday night picture, right?

Like, he watched these movies on TV too. Yeah. And by the way, Marty, the single stickiest television show in my lifetime is Goodfellas. Doesn't matter what channel it's on or what time it is. You're going to watch it when it's on TV. Yeah. So I think it's a great point.

And I think the thing about James Gunn, again, like, he's so good at the thing that he does. And he's joyful about it. And that seems wonderful. Like, I mean that truthfully. Like, I love The Guardian's movies. I will see this movie. it's very rare to see, especially in this era, to see movies that are fully,

full-voiced celebrations of what the people making it want to make. And I think those are the ones that actually work best in this comic book space too, because comic books are similar and that people are just like, I want to see sharks eating people. And like, great, this is perfect for that.

So do you have a relationship to the Suicide Squad characters at all? No, no, I'm not a DC guy, so I didn't even know anything about it. Neither do I. But it is, it's an interesting experience to watch a movie like this. And I have to admit,

I don't think I ever actually finished Suicide Squad, like the first one I may have watched. I think I've watched big chunks of it on TV, but I don't think I ever, like, sat down and was like, time to watch Suicide Squad. Watching this one, I have no idea who any of these people are with the exception of Harley Quinn.

And the movie is relatively free of being like, you've been waiting to see Bloodsport like this or you know whoever Pocodot man like this and I think that there is almost like a self-reflexive joke about like nobody knows who these characters are

and they are in without it giving anything away somewhat more disposable than the Marvel characters because of that but watching a comic book movie with no emotional connection to the legacy of the characters

is it does make you kind of look the mirror and say, what am I doing with my life? Well, because you're like, why, why am I watching this? But Guardians was like that too. Absolutely. I certainly for the majority of people. But he made it kind of emotional in a way that it was such a huge success that they wound up being a major part of all of those other movies.

They matter. Yeah. It's that same thing. That's Thanos's daughter, you know. That's that man's daughter, you insulted. He's a girl dad. He's just a classic girl dad. Can you imagine the meme as a father of daughters?

I want to get to White Lotus, and I do have to catch a plane, but I would be remiss if I didn't ask. It's a long treasured running bit on this show where Andy talks about his plane movies. So you flew last week. I did. And I just wanted to know what was cinema to you, so many thousand feet above America? Well, I feel like this is both going to disappoint and enchant. Because I did, you know, this was rare.

That is actually the perfect tagline for this podcast. I think the ratio shifts week to week or depending what's actually on HBO on Sunday nights. But I think those are our two poles that we oscillate between. My children are at an age now where they can just entertain themselves during planes by watching nine hours of Paw Patrol or whatever. I thought you're playing blackjack We did do that on the flight east We did my older daughter and I did find blackjack And that was kind of fun on the plane

Not against Tignitaro who is sitting nearby I have promised But in the sense that I did have a window And I was like I could use this time To watch a beloved film that I didn't watch So we could have some like sweet sweet five months later content But a all movies are streaming now.

So I don't really have that excuse. Like I saw the Denzel Washington movie you were talking about last week, but I also could have watched that on HBO Mac. So I'm like, let's not get ourselves. I'm not going to do that. So what I did find was one of those movies and there aren't that many of them

or at least I can't keep track of them. Where you hear about it, maybe Sean Fantasy tweets about it once or something. And I'm like, yeah, that's one for me. And then it just vanishes into the great, you know, sandstorm or whatever of content. And so as a movie, I don't know if you know if you saw this movie,

but it was a movie from last year called French Exit. Did you see this movie? No. This is Michelle Pfeiffer. Oh, yeah, I didn't see it. And Lucas Hedges. Yeah. And a...

Did you just watch it because it had the word French in it? And a cat. That was part of it. But also, because I, you know, listen, Chris, there's one thing listeners know about me. It's that I cannot say no to an incandescent Michelle Pfeiffer performance. I, you know, I wish, I grew up wishing, I always wanted to be a fabulous baker boy. You know what I mean? Like, that's, that's what I dreamed about. So, this is, this is too much buildup just to say that I had a wonderful time watching this movie. It is absolutely a gentleman's bee. It is not for everyone. It is a movie very highly stylized based on a Patrick DeWitt novel and directed by Azazel Jacobs. And it's basically, it's about a very, very, very, very rich. eccentric woman, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, and her grown-up son, Lucas Hedges, who is in her thrall,

and she finds out she's losing all of her money. So she takes her son and her cat and they go on a boat to Paris, where they meet up with a multi-ta-cats. She brings a cat on the boat? Yes, the cat matters in ways that are surprising. And the whole vibe is very like with Stillman, Wes Anderson-y. So again, not for everyone, but her performance is so good. And the movie was very surprising and weird at times, and it was a delightful, delightful single-screen experience for me. Great. Great. Andy's movie Cobra for you. I really, really enjoyed it. And it did make me think, like, it's, you know, not to be, this is kind of, I was about to say, you know, actresses of a certain age don't get the chances they used to. But it's true. Like, you think about Michelle Pfeiffer,

showing up to be Janet Van Dine in Ant Man 2, and I'm like, that's nice. That's fun. It seems like her and Michael Douglas are having fun, but also she's fucking awesome and she's Michelle Pfeiffer, and when you just give her a full course dinner like this, it's still great to watch. We're going to take a quick break,

and then we'll come back and do White Lotus. 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,

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this is a who done it, that there is like a mystery at the core of White Lotus, which I don't disagree with. They obviously open the show to provoke you to ask those questions of who is the dead body being loaded under the plane and like, you know, what is going on at this resort

that ends with a death? But nothing about what we have, seen since that first scene is at all concerned with that, right? So I guess I wanted to ask you, we can get into colonialism and the botched robbery of the Mossbockers and all this other stuff that happens in this episode. But I guess I wanted to ask you whether or not that first scene feels like a tremendous fake out or an unnecessary kind of, stay tuned for next week where you might find out what happened. Or do you care about that? that at all? I think it's the right question to be asking right now. I think that this episode,

episode five, had enough action stakes and consequence that it came back into my mind for the first time, whether it was, is there something, this botched robbery, is it going to result in a body, or is one of the Mossbocker men, because they were hung over and not paying attention in scuba, not going to survive the trip, it started to play in my mind in a way that kept me animated and connected. So I think it was effective. I also think for people who haven't already, it's worth checking out the LA Times had a feature on White Lotus over the weekend. I had an interview with a lot of the cast and an interview with Mike White. And it helped put my understanding of the show into more precise context. Because we've talked about how this was COVID-friendly, et cetera, et cetera.

but the specifics of it, I don't think I fully grasp, which is last summer HBO head and the watch podcast super fan, Casey Blois, called Mike White basically and was like, Mike, you know I'm a fan, I know you're a very fast writer, my schedule's totally Fed, do you have anything that we can shoot in one location right away? And he was like, no, but I've always wanted to do a hotel thing, and they were filming by October. And he said, Mike White says,

everything you're seeing is essentially a first draft. And so there's something that is entertaining about the show, but also kind of fascinating about the purity of the process that we rarely get to see. No notes, you know, no second thoughts. And keeping with that spirit in the same piece, I think he basically says, like, most shows start with a dead body. So I was like, okay, here's your dead body.

Now I've got your attention. I mean, there's nothing more to it. He was like, this might get more people to watch and be invested in the type of show that I want to make. can I have this unique opportunity to make in this moment in time. So I kind of respect it. You know, it's not really bothering me. I think he's right.

I think if you just started that show with the guests arriving on the boat, I don't think that people would know why they were watching. I think there is a certain kind of television viewer who would be like, what's going on here? Like, are I just going to watch these people go through a volcanic emotional breakdown while they're on vacation? And they might have more people asking the question I'm asking, which is why did they take a boat when they could just drive there from the airport? Because we saw the valet last night.

Like, I don't understand why they were on a boat. Where were they coming from? An aircraft carrier? That was just a note they didn't get because they didn't have the draft upon draft of scripts. Yes. Are they the suicide squad? Like, are they being dropped into this? And that's what's happening.

It's all WarnerMedia. Right. I think that that's true. I also think that whether it's Mike White himself as a smart person, TV creator and viewer, or this is, you know, maybe when we do finally arrange for Casey to come on the show, it's something I want to ask him. Like, I think that they must be attuned to the HBO syndrome, which is now being used. I think they're using it cannily.

I don't think this is cynical at all, which is if the show is on in the sweet spot on Sunday nights on HBO, it is going to get covered a certain way. By us, included, we are part of the problem here. The White Lotus Recap is the number one story on Vulture this morning. So it's like it is being consumed in that way. It's working. I don't know if every show, as you said, deserves that. You know, not every show is, I mean, Mayor of East Town, as we said last week,

was almost designed, I think organically, but designed to fuel conversation like that. The undoing would never have worked if it was a bin show. You know, it just was in that slot, and that's how we talk about it. But not every HBO show deserves it, but it's smart to realize that every HBO show is going to at least get the chance to be considered that way. And so we have here as something that has worked on both ends of the creative process, the let's just make this really worked out for HBO, but also the then let's have it ready to go in the doggiest dog days of summer when there isn't that much else to obsess over, at least in terms of prestige television, I think that really worked. As a episode of TV, though, where are you with this? Where am I with it?

Yeah. I like this show a lot. I think that to hear your story about them doing it the first, is this like basically a first draft? I'm a little bit taken aback by it because now I'm like, oh yeah, right. Like I can see maybe the Kai Paula storyline might have been. been developed more over the course of maybe a few more drafts or a little bit more time of writing production time, pre-production time. That's the thing that I think this series

sort of hinges when that robbery happens. You can tell that there is, it's obviously playing towards its endgame a little bit, but there's also a kind of feeling of like just the same way that there was a dead body in the first episode, there is like this action set piece in this episode that obviously galvanizes a lot of the characters in a way that I don't necessarily feel is particularly natural. Like it is pretty quick where to go from this guy being like, I'm an angel and just a sweet, sweet boy who works at this hotel to I'm going to pull off an armed robbery of a hotel room for these family jewels. Right, without even getting into the fact that like Paula had a lot more access to the safe. Sure, she could have just taken them

and just been like I've no idea. Yeah. Right. So I don't know. I think I'm kind of like, I'm very mid on this show. Like I'm just kind of like, yeah, it's good. And I think that I'm struggling to articulate it,

like what it is that isn't doing it for me. But maybe it's just because, maybe it's just because I'm not used to watching a quote unquote limited series that feels like it doesn't need to have been limited or doesn't need to have been six percent. already last week that they might bring it back. And I think they should. There's no reason not to honestly.

Yeah, it's a great idea. And not only is it a great idea, I think that one of the things we're struggling with is because it is not, it's a type of show that we don't often see, which is any show, this is super reductive and I'm kind of making it up on the fly. But there's two things you're considering, right? There's the vessel that it's being held in, the construction of the vessel.

and then there's what you put into it. And I think that White Lotus is confounding some of our critical faculties because the vessel, even though its first draft and was thrown together, is incredibly sturdy, you know? And by vessel, I mean not just the way that it's scripted and the way that it's directed and cast, but obviously the production design, the music. Everything about it is very confident and assured

and is clearly the hand of someone who knows how to make TV walking us through this story. What goes into the vessel has been, I think, from week to week varying. I think there have been some incredibly powerful and rewarding and funny moments. And I also think there are moments like last night when Mark just suddenly goes on a spiel about giving up his privilege, where it feels like that's also something that Mike White wanted to put into the Mossbocker storyline. Sure. And that was the place to put it. You know, similarly, finally giving Connie Britton one of the great, not just TV actresses, great actresses of this generation.

literally something to do. I mean, there was, she's always great, happy to see her, great with the Zinger, but the character was relatively thin until this episode when finally she cracked a little bit. And I thought had some very genuine and compelling pathos about her role and being perfect for everyone all the time. And then, and maybe this is the point of it, we'll see in the last episode, for it to be kind of washed away with this, you know, performance of masculinity of her husband chasing after her and just getting decked three times to defend her honor slash $75,000 bracelets.

And then that gets him what he's been wanting this whole time. That's kind of interesting. But it also, you know, that will know at the end what the ratio inside the vessel was. But all this is to say, well-made TV works in a way that well-intentioned TV doesn't always. A well-intentioned TV that doesn't quite, isn't quite made flawlessly is more. common and sometimes more interesting for us to kind of dig into. But I think that that's what is both compelling and confounding about covering White Lotus week to week. I could have said it better to myself. We have to, well, I have to check out in my hotel room, so we should probably wrap it up.

Thank you so much for listening. Sorry for last Thursday. We'll be back this Thursday. A couple of fun guests coming up. I want to get back to Northwater. We're going to be talking about Underground Railroad real soon. And also, yeah, a couple of really good shows coming out over the course of the rest of August, like the chair that we'll be discussing. Chris, before you sign off, I can't see behind you. Do you have the plunge pool in that room? It's the pineapple sweet baby. Yes.

I talk to you on Thursday. Great job, for you.