The Watch - The State of Awards Season and ‘Copenhagen Cowboy’ With Sean Fennessey

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Chris and Andy are joined by Sean Fennessey to talk about the current state of awards season with the Golden Globes airing this week, and what cultural currency award shows hold today (1:00). Then, they talk about the new Nicolas Winding Refn series ‘Copenhagen Cowboy’ (41:03), and where it stands among other Refn projects (61:17). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Sean Fennessey Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need supports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other lines, my coping cowboys. It's Andy Greenwald and Sean Fennessey. Neither of us know how to respond to that.

We're thrilled. I'm just, I'm so blessed to be here on my favorite podcast. I've been saying for 10 consecutive years, this is my favorite podcast. And I'm just so honored to be invited back on after. I'm glad direct deposit still works. I think since I was last year with you guys. Yeah, it's been a while. That's terrible.

But that's also because Joe Rogan has. hasn't been on the air for 10 years, I think. Is that right? That's true. That's true. Once he crosses the 10-year mark, then my new number one rises. Give him time. We're so, so thrilled to have the big pictures, Sean Fennacy, my buddy, Sean Fennacy, our buddy, Sean Fennacy. Sean hasn't been on the watch since the beginning of the pandemic when we did a home and home with the big picture, Andy. So we really we're being truant. We're being really like undisciplined in terms of getting Sean on the pod regularly. you haven't done any podcast with him since then either, right? I haven't seen him.

I haven't spoken with him. I mean, I only listen to Merritt and Fresh Air, so I wouldn't know. But I assume that you're as pure as I am. Reunited and it feels so good. Sean, it's great to see you. I thought we could talk a little bit of general entertainment industry topics in the beginning. And then we're going to talk about Copenhagen Cowboy, which is the new series from Nicholas Wenning Raffin.

It's on Netflix. NWR, as he likes to refer to himself, is a bit of a pet project for me and Sean. We're very excited about this thing coming. We have a lot to say about it. I'm sure Andy has also watched three episodes of this. Sean and I both finished the series. So we'll have a rolling conversation

that kind of takes in the first half of the season and then the second. Am I wrong that you guys were angel investors in this? Because I'm trying to run the numbers and I know Netflix has been like, you know, just trying to, all companies really have been tightening their belts. So I figured that you guys maybe just kicked a couple

Kroner Nick's way to see this project through. because you also are passionate about human disposal and pigs. I'm just passionate about storytelling and empowering our great voices. And I was happy to provide several million euros to the Netflix Corporation to get this thing on the air. I think it would be really interesting if Netflix turned to a GoFundMe model. And it was like, if you guys want the second season of 1899, fucking stump it up. Let's go. What would Nick Refan offer?

on a sort of like Eurozone Kickstarter for this show. Oh, it would probably be like to like publicly humiliate you in front of your wife. You know what I mean? Like it would just be like for $10,000 he would call me a puny little man in front of Phoebe. He'd be like, yes, daddy, do it again. So Sean and I have just financially committed to this project. We're in. Fellow sharks, I think we're in.

Hey, so before we, oh, go ahead, Sean. Sorry. Well, I just want to know if that was a pretty much. rejection of any kind, Chris. The puny little man, there was a specificity to that that was impressive. Well, I mean, like, I think he and I are probably a, if I had to guess, I think he and I are about the same height. But there's something kind of, um, there's a little bit of maschism that goes along with either watching his movies, but also watching him talk to William Friedkin, one of my favorite pastimes and having him be like, my movie is a masterpiece and then Freakin being like you

Moron. So I like the idea that like somewhere inherent in the NWR fandom, there's a little bit of like self-flagellation. We have Sean on, Andy, so I don't think we could

pass up the opportunity to talk a little bit about it's award season. We're going on Monday. Sean is the big picture goes, are you going to go after the Golden Globe, Sean, or are?

Yeah. Man, just burning the midnight oil. The Hollywood Foreign Press, thanks you for your service. financially. This is all a slush fund. The foreign press pays Sean. Sean pays the Copenhagen film community. I see the big picture now. I'm happy to launder wherever possible. It's funny that this is, you know, like the globes when I was looking at the TV rankings. I can't, not TV rankings. It's the TV nominations. Andy and I can't remember if we even chatted about this when they happened or if we were just not really paying attention to the globes. But it's like a really rich. like a list of shows and performances that are that are up for being honored. And you know, you do get

that. I think there was so much of a glut of stuff that happened right before the Emmys, where it was everybody was releasing stuff in the spring to get under the wire for the Emmy. So this is more reflective of maybe the larger year of 2022. Sean, as you're going into the Globes, which traditionally is supposed to be more of a television product that it is a indicator of where things are going awards-wise. Are there any questions that you want to see answered tomorrow night? Does anyone still give a damn about televised award shows? I mean, especially with respect to movies, because I think it's a little different from the film side rather than the TV side, because on the film side, it's not necessarily a predictor of what's going to happen in the Academy Awards, but at a

minimum, it puts on primetime national television films that a lot of viewers may not have even heard of. You know, a movie like TAR, which I know you guys both love, didn't do great business at the box office and has been on VOD for a few weeks. But, you know, that might vault the film into a greater consciousness among the Academy voter. So there is some benefit there. I mean, the other thing, too, obviously, is, as you guys know, like this is airing on a Tuesday night instead of a Sunday night, which is a pretty significant shift from the history. And, you know, HFPA has been through all these changes over the last few years and ensconced in controversy. and I am curious to see if this is basically the end of this show as we know it, because there's the speculation that NBC won't be carrying the show next year,

and then does it go to a streamer, does it go somewhere else? It's kind of unclear. I don't know how you guys view it, though, as purveyors of TV. Like, it's not on the Emmy schedule in the same way. Well, I would even, sorry to deflect, but, Sean, I'd put it back to you also because the Golden Globes is such a weird media creation, because, as we all know, and people probably even casual listeners of this podcast or casual observers of entertainment know, it's always kind of been nonsense and was elevated into prominence due to its scheduling in the middle

of the award season and the slow drumbeat towards the Oscars, but also because it was, as Chris alluded to, a purely television product. Live award shows used to be like live sports, like a reliable getter of ratings for networks. And NBC really leaned into this idea that it was a party and some stars would be there and they would be drinking. And Ricky Jervais might say some wink, wink, wink, mean things about them. And then, and here we go. So then the game was called and it was like, oh, this actually has always been kind of fraudulent and is deeply out of step with the times culturally, even as a kind of, I don't know, what you even call like a purely PR exercise enterprise. So then they took a year off, basically. And then they came back. And the thing that I don't really understand is what are they now?

you would think, again, with an organization as esteemed and nimble as the HFPA, I can't believe they didn't take this opportunity, there was a chance to be like, okay, what would it mean to be an award show or a TV party or whatever we want to be in 2023 and going forward? It seems they came back with a different mindset, which is like, look who we're nominating and including now. Can we come back? Can we just have our seat at the table still? So maybe it's just a loser's game. Maybe there is no right answer to this, especially as the award season has changed, especially as the release of film entertainment has changed.

But, Sean, like, did they miss an opportunity here? And what could they have done? I'm asking specifically from the film side, right? Does it even matter? I think that there needs to be a show before the Academy Awards. I think that there needs to be something that primes the pump. And so there's been speculation that maybe the Critics' Choice Awards could elevate in the face of all of this Globes' controversy.

I don't, I'm not sure if that's, feasible. I guess what happens Tuesday night will help dictate some of that. To me, it's more just the question of can this be a good fun show. I mean, this was a, it was a frivolous venture and it was a way to kill time on a Sunday on that, you know, on a kind of idle NFL weekend. And now that Sunday in this part of the NFL schedule is occupied by NFL games. And so because it's an 18 week long season. Not by the number one CD Eagles. We have next weekend off. This is not what you This is not what Sean signed up for. I'm so happy to be here.

Go on. I don't know what they could have done and I don't know what they can do. I mean, the truth is that this stuff just means a lot less to people than it used to. Paradoxically, this is a year in which Avatar the Way of Water and Top Gun Maverick are nominated for huge awards. Those are two of not just the biggest movies of 2022, but two of the biggest movies ever released in the history of movies. Avatar of the Way of Water just unseeded Jurassic Park as the seventh highest-grossing movie of all time. It's been out for three weeks. So, you know, there is opportunity here to kind of spotlight something that people know about as well, which is I've long held as part of the gambit of award shows.

You do have to show people things that they have an emotional relationship to in order to get them excited about these pageants that we put on every year. So I think that there's a chance to kind of spotlight underseen films and underseen narratives and also celebrate famous people and also make fun of them simultaneously. Gerard Carmichael hosting, I think that's actually quite fun. And I know you guys are fans of his. I'm a huge fan of his as well. as far as like what the globes are and what they can be long term, if I'm being honest, I don't really give a shit. Like, it's just not really like a show that has any emotional or cultural valence to me. So I'm not thinking about it in those terms. I am thinking about it selfishly from a big picture perspective,

like what does this just mean for what I'm going to be doing with the show for the next six to eight weeks. You know, it's got... I'm just flummox though, Sean. You're saying this. I'm sorry, Chris, that why we can't give the same attention to Lydia Tar the way of Bernstein, which absolutely is how they should re-release this film. It's not too late. Yeah. There's this interesting sort of sub-narrative that's going through both the TV and the movie

stuff this year, Sean, where it's like, I think the, and maybe this is just podcaster brain where we talk about this stuff for such a long time. And then we start to get a little bit of, we start to lose our confidence about, like, are the things that we're caring about, the things that we're caring about, the things that we're talking about all the time, the things that people are actually watching. And there is that, I think that the nominees in both film and TV

kind of reflect that tension where you've got some of the specialty releases, the O'Tour movies, the movies that would traditionally, like your Babylon's, that would be like, this is awards catnip. Movie stars making a movie about the power of movies,

Fableman's is the same kind of situation. And in TV, you can see that there are some critical darlings like the bear or what have you. and then very heavily represented our shows like House of the Dragon, Ozark, big kind of splashy, more genre, but like, you know, the kind of things that, like, you get the impression people who are actually watching over the course of the year. Let's say like Austin Butler walks away with Best Actor, you know, and let's say something like Top Gun walks away with, so is Top Gun in Best Picture Drama? Drama, yeah. Right. Let's say Top Gun wins best picture and let's say Austin Butler wins best actor instead of, say, Colin Farrell or something like that. Would you take that at all as a signal? I know that the voting block of the HFPA is in no way like a democracy or even a voting block that you can sort of demographically study. But I'm wondering if you have that same awareness, like you said, like people want to watch award shows about movies that they have emotional connections to, not movies that they don't even know if like what streaming service they're supposed to subscribe to to see. whether or not like these kinds of early harbinger, like could be harbingers of an Academy Awards that's like, you know what, this year, we need people to watch.

So we're basically pushing this more towards Tom Cruise, Austin Butler, and shit people care about. Well, one thing that hasn't changed about the show that has always made it a kind of intriguing precursor is that in the example that you cited Chris, in fact, Austin Butler and Colin Farrell can both win. Because Austin Butler is competing in Best Actor for Drama and Colin Farrell is competing in Best.

actor for musical or comedy in that delightful romp the banshees of Innes Sharon, perhaps the most depressing film of the year, which I loved, but like, you know, there's a farcical element to the way that they nominate in the show. I, I, the HFPA, despite some of the changes that they've made

in the last couple of years, is still a very small group, and it's always been unclear to me how much kind of collusion and conversation behind the scenes in which they're sort of like throwing themselves behind a particular film or actor or actress or, you know, what kind of statement they're trying to make. It has always felt a little more haphazard than that to me personally. It was just kind of felt like a hundred people throw a name in a hat and then they figure out what's going to happen next.

I guess I would ask you guys, like, is it exciting if Diego Luna wins for Andor to you? Like, is it like, fuck yeah, that's so fun that our guy burst through in this, you know, I think that's Andor's only nomination. Or is it, do you not care? Like, is it like, well, Kevin Costner will win and that's all that matters. I think that a large, to the degree that I care about awards show, it is almost entirely from a

all press is good press for things that need the press. Now, obviously, if you listen to this podcast, you'd think there nothing else happened in fiscal 2-2 except for Andor, but that is not the case, I think, in the culture at large, certainly in the perception of whether that show was quote-unquote successful or not. So I'm cheering for our guys and gals

and, like, the things that I think, can I quantify if Diego Luna winning or the bear winning or whatever? ever means something in the larger culture? I know, but it doesn't hurt. So I do still feel that kind of proprietary support for, I mean, again, all these people are rich and successful and on TV shows, so it's hard to say underdogs. But yeah, I think it does matter in a different way. Also, because they're ongoing concerns, whereas I do hope one day we will see TAR to. I don't think that's exactly how Todd Field's going to spend his next 17 years.

Todd Field needs to be getting back in those friends and tapes, you know. Todd Field is just going to be sharpening his hat collection. Do you see him on the cover of THR? Jesus. Wait, I had a question, though, for you, Sean. It's interesting. You said that in some ways, an aspect of the film community might be getting what they want this year,

or what they've claimed to want, in that the two biggest films of the year, box office-wise, mass culture-wise, are likely to be nominated for Oscars. they're on a glide path towards that, you know, or at least to be recognized in some way. That feels significant. And it also feels different than in past years, where it did seem like, and again, you've clearly been covering this a hundred times more closely than I have for the past seasons. But it did feel like there was a sort of populist art house pick, if you will, and then a more, you know, whether it's Lala Land versus Moonlight or whether it's shape of water versus whatever, whatever, yeah.

Yeah, and none of those were the giant box office successes. Then there was a separate argument, which was Endgame should have been nominated too. This year, my perception of it is the favorites are the favorites, right, in terms of what everyone is talking about. And then on the margins, you know, I love Tar, but I don't have any illusions about its cultural footprint. And I don't know if the Fablemans or Babylon have any real momentum other than among the people who think the Oscar should always be. TAR seems to be racking up, like, a lot of... Well, no, I think it'll be nominated, but I guess I mean, I don't...

No, I mean awards. Like, it's doing quite well. Like, didn't TAR just win, like, another film critic circle, Sean? Yeah, Marty's for a day. Won the New York Film Critic Circle. Yeah. Best film.

I think kind of everything that you just said is true. Like, there is an understanding now... Kaya, turn the camera on for that, retroactive way. Feel free to cut that out and market the show with that comment. I think that it's likely... that Avatar 2 and Top Gun Maverick will be nominated and are probably

in that kind of like top five, top six of the Best Picture nominees, I think it's also very unlikely that either of those films are going to win. And so they're going to be able to market the show off the strength of those films which is something that, you know, in the strange days of, you know, phase two of the pandemic, you could find me

on podcasts crying into my microphone about why Spider-Man No Way Home was not nominated for Best Picture. Like I'm so glad we're past that time. You know, I had a lot of fun at Spider-Man No Way Home. think you guys did too. To me, that was more of a, like, a shameless cry for the Academy Awards to still have any kind of emotional resonance with the audience, which it really clearly has not in the last

three years. This is a different story. Top Gun Maverick and Avatar the Way of Water, I think regardless of how you feel about them, it's hard to look at them and say there were a lot of movies that were better than them this year because there weren't. Those were both really, really, really engaging, really, really well-made action entertainments. And so the idea that the Academy is getting on board with that is exciting. the idea that they're being spotlit.

There's a secondary tier, though, like, to me, ultimately this comes down to kind of everything everywhere all at once, bansches have been a Sharon, and the Fablemans. Those are the three films that I think are kind of like most aggressively competing for Best Picture.

But at the Globes, to win or to be nominated? To win. I think all three of those films be nominated. I think that's probably the trio that is fighting right now, maybe with Tar and Top Gun

kind of on the outskirts. But I think what Chris was saying earlier about the kind of mainstreamification of the TV nominations, you find that at the Globes, too. Like, at the Globes, you'll see a couple of interesting nominees. Glass Onion

has been nominated for a bunch of awards in part because they split those acting awards. That's a movie that just a lot of people have seen. I think we can imagine that maybe like it's the third or fourth most watched movie on the long list of Best Picture Contenders. Just by dint of it being a hit on Netflix.

And then even like a movie like the menu, having two acting nominees, that kind of feels to me like, you know, Kevin Kossner getting nominated for Yellowstone or something because the menu is one of those movies that did well. This is something people actually watched. Exactly. And if you look, like, if you go to my beloved letterbox right now, you will see the most logged movie for the last 10 days has been the menu because it's been available on HBO Max. And that's the other wrinkle is these shows now being more like the shows that these films now being more like the shows that you guys talk about every week where it's like it's all just kind of streaming entertainment. Like nobody knew when the menu came out. It did solid business. But now it's just as available to you as Andor or the bear. And it kind of fits in the same bucket. Yeah. My mother called me. during the third quarter of Titans' Jacks and was like, I was like, oh, my God, something

terrible has happened on the East Coast. And she's like, I just watched the banshees of Ineheran. What a tremendous movie. I was like, Tom, Trevor Lawrence is dealing. But that's such a good point in one that I feel like isn't, I was going to say isn't made enough. I'm sure you make it constantly. I just feel like it hasn't really sunk into my brain, which is that the history, or at least the recent history of the Oscar campaign has been to spend money now to push smaller movies forward to get the notice, to get the acclaim, so that then people might spend money to see them. We have now reached a place where the majority of these movies, if not, I believe, all of them, are readily available. Right?

We're not really doing this small release into, I mean, I guess Fableman's, but that was not a small release. No, but I mean, like, that's not streaming yet. Babylon would be a perfect example of a movie that comes out late in the year. Were it to have been more warmly received, received and maybe if it was a little bit more digestible, I guess, but I loved it, but Sean loved it, but that's a movie that I could see on the awards circuit slingshotting into, and Babylon is passing the 60 million box office mark, you know, and that's obviously not going to happen. There's only one movie this year that is using the old school playbook, and it's using it

very, very well, and that's the whale, which is a movie that I was not a fan of, but that has had a very strong festival appearance, where even if you're not a very strong festival appearance, where even if it was not critically beloved, there was a huge moment for Brendan Fraser's return to the screen as a star. And that movie, very slowly but surely, over its month since its release, has been performing well at the box office

and expanding a little bit more and expanding a little bit more. And Brendan Fraser's definitely going to be nominated for Best Actor. He's probably not likely to win at the HFPA. In fact, because he has this sorted history in which, you know, an accusation was made of, you know, sexual misconduct and he has the, you know, he won't be appearing at the show.

But in a way that kind of keeps the story going in this perverse way. But that's the only movie, Andy, that unlike say, gosh, I'm trying to think of what's a really good example of a film in the last 10 years that, you know, played through the Oscar season and then actually made more

money in the aftermath, because it's obviously something that's happened many times. I wonder if Moonlight was that. I don't know for a fact, but it's... It wasn't Moonlight, like the summer, yeah. Yeah, that was a summer release. And it wasn't... And Parasite was summer? Like, I'm thinking of like the... We've kind of broken the wheel a little

bit when it comes to how these things get released. One other topic that kind of tangentially goes into some other stuff that I wanted to talk about with Andy, but also with you today, Sean, because I think there's a trickle-down effect as everything becomes all the same, you know, media tech corporation releasing stuff in a streaming fashion is over the last few years, especially since Trump got elected, but, you know, even as these award shows sort of resurrected themselves or kept going on through the pandemic, award shows sometimes to a cringy level are reflections of whatever the national moment is. And you have people like kind of, you know, like the Soderberg Oscars were obviously this attempt to have an award show in a very limited fashion.

But over the course of the last few years, you've got a lot of like these sort of like, hey, here's a mirror to what's going on and here's how Hollywood feels about it. It's often a very contentious moment where you get a lot of like sort of more conservative people being like, shut the fuck up and just make movies and stop telling me how to feel. this year, I have to admit I'm actually, one of the reasons why I'm most curious to tune into the Globes is to see whether or not it's touched on at all about Bolsonaro. No, I'm just kidding. No, to see whether or not it's touched on at all about the state of the industry. And, you know, so like Andy and I were talking about what we might chat about is like news this episode.

And AMC, the network, is essentially doing like fire sale, cost cutting. canceling several shows that were in production or had already received like multiple season reorders. So like 61st Street, Pantheon, Damascus, invitation to a bonfire shows that have either started airing like 61st Street or haven't started airing yet getting canceled. We obviously have talked about like some of the Netflix cancellations. There was even like a weird story a week or two ago about whether or not Wednesday was going to be back on Netflix or whether like because of its corporate ownership, it might get put over on Amazon and like just, a lot of stuff like that.

I don't necessarily expect Gerard Carmichael to get up and start doing David Zazlov jokes. But I would be really curious to hear either of you say, like, do you think anybody's going to be up and be like, there's a strike coming and it's raining? And this industry is in a lot of trouble. First of all, I'd like to answer that question in my native Portuguese. But I, I, um... Andy's in Orlando right now, by the way. I love it here.

I think Zazlav isn't one man. He is a movement. Yeah. I mean, I think you were correct to mention that. Like, we have been collectively and corporately talking about David Zazlov, the head of the essentially newly formed Warner Brothers Discovery Network as being a savage and cutting down shows and, you know, turning fully finished movies into tax write off. that's an industry trend. That's not just one guy.

And that's what is happening at AMC. And so if there are AMC projects or like the Anne Rice shows or Walking Dead stuff that you are a fan of, that's not going anywhere. Like it is not, they're not shutting down operations, but they are cost cutting tremendously. And that's the reality of where we are fiscally and culturally at this moment when these, we've been saying this for years, they can't compete. Yeah. AMC cannot compete with Apple. I don't know who can. And so this is going to be the norm, unfortunately, I think, for a lot of the less rich services going forward.

I don't, to answer your question directly, I don't think there's going to be a lot of talk about this because the public, I mean, Gerard Carmichael might joke about it. That would be cool. But I think broadly, these shows are to put a happy face on the industry, right? Yeah. They exist to be like, we're the smile factory and business is booming. You may have heard about some shipping delays, some supply chain issues when it came to smiles, but we fixed that, and they're on the way. So I generally think the answer, the quick answer is no, but there's going to be unease in the ballroom.

You know, this is a very, very strange moment that everyone that I talk to is giving the same answer to, which is, God, it's going to be gnarly, but it'll be fine. And I can't tell if it'll be fine is because these are like sage old hands who have been, through the sort of thing before, or, you know, if it's just like Adam Driver and White Noise. You know. No, no, no. It's a plume. The plume goes out.

They're monitoring the smoke. Smokes, it never blows into town. It always blows to Canada. Well, it raises two really interesting strands of discussion that I feel like has been a theme of your show for the last year and is increasingly on my mind. On the one hand. Electoral security in Arizona. And. I mean, that's related to this too, candidly, Andy,

which is that a lot of the things that you're describing are things that online entertainment industry watchers are aware of, but that most people in the culture don't know. They only know about it if their own, if their favorite show in the universe is affected and it's been canceled, or, you know, they've been desperately awaiting the Batgirl release, and for some reason they've discovered that it's no longer happening, and then they end up reading about the strategy of a debt-riddle, you know,

entertainment conglomerate. For the most part, I think that that stuff, it almost never appears on award shows. And it's not just that, you know, the Globes is famously acidic. You alluded to Ricky Jervais, kind of annihilating the people in the past. Tina and Amy doing the same thing.

I'm sure Carmichael will do something similar, but it will be, that is a star party in that room. It's not a business show. The Oscars is actually closer to a business show, but it's notable that very rarely do you have people who work in the business hosting the show. You know, Jimmy Kimmel is hosting. the Academy Awards.

He's a late-night talk show host. The other thing that it collides with that is so fascinating to me is for film, we have this moment now where it's quite clear that the streaming movie gambit failed.

That this strategy to try to move the audience to build subscriber base with movies in particular did not work. The calarification. Yes. Jason Kailar's decision-making.

Also just like the shorter windows for NBC Universal, I continue to think is a bizarre decision. Because actually, the more films that go into theaters, the more we're seeing, the viewing audience is basically still there. It's just that there's less product. Like this weekend, fucking Megan,

yeah, made $30 million. Now, Blumhouse is incredible at marketing. They're so good at this, and they consistently do this in months like January when it seems like nobody's going to show up. But if they're able to ramp up film production and put more theatrical releases out in the world, That's notable.

And secondarily, when you look at the best picture race this year, it's unlikely that a streamer is going to have a film nominated. And that's amazing. I mean, as recently as nine months ago, when Coda won, you would have thought, well, this is it now. Now it's going to be all streamers. It's going to be all Netflix, Amazon, Apple movies that are going to be nominated. And they may not have won this year.

So that's also interesting. That's a really good point. I would say, just as a counter, Jason Collar, who were referring to, who was in charge of Warner Brothers before it became Warner Brothers Discovery, at least on the business end of it, he made the very controversial decision to just dump the entire Warner Bros. Slate onto HBO Max,

pissing off filmmakers and sending a ripple effect to the industry. Couldn't you make the case that he was right short term? I think there was a lot of talk that that helped HBO Max's subscriber base, or at least HBO Max's curating,

in the shortest of possible short terms, which is really all he was operating in because, A, we were globally in a pandemic and nobody knew what was going to happen. And B, he probably, knew as well as anyone else that there was probably a sale coming and he wouldn't necessarily be in the job. So it's interesting that the short term may have worked, but obviously in terms of the industry writ large, it might not make any sense. And I guess the question that comes out of that

for me is, are we just overthinking everything? Because you said the most important thing, which is people want to go see the movies. People want to go to the movies. Right? Like that just, I mean, even me. But they didn't go see Fableman's and they didn't go see Tarr and they, you know, they never saw those. They never would have seen Tarr. And Fableman's, I mean, don't get me started. Let's have that conversation at a different time. But like, I love both of those movies, but both of those movies, even in 1996, there's no guarantee that they were going to make $100 million. They might have made $35 million instead of nine, you know?

And so there is, it's a matter of degree. But there is still the element of, I go back to the menu because the menu is such an interesting example to me. It's like, that's just an enjoyable thriller for most of the people that are going to check it out. And that's something that has been missing from movies for a long time. And they put one out. and it was well marketed and it did pretty good business. I bet you if they put that movie out again this year, it would do twice the business it did in 2022

because the user habit is coming back. So I think it's the awards has a chance to kind of celebrate that this year in particular on the backs of Avatar and Top Gun. But does that really matter? I mean, your point about Jason Killar is so interesting. Like, I don't really care what Jason Killar's goals were. I think it's so interesting that Warner Bros.

blew the chance to have Christopher Nolan's films for the rest of their life. I was just going to talk about Tenet too. I was just going to say if you see Maverick and you see what happened with Maverick and Tenet is not Maverick and I don't know that it would have had like I think that there was something to Tenet and I don't know what like how popular it winds up being

but like being able to rewatch Tenet immediately and be like, wait a second, what? And go back and do it again. Now would I have done that in the theater? Probably. But if they had held Tenet for 12 months or something similar to what Paramount did with Maverick where they were just like, we're just not going to, Tom Cruise is not going to let us put this on streaming. I, that's probably at least a hundred million dollar movie and probably like a fucking, I mean, it would probably be in my top 10 at least for me personally if it had come out

this year. And I wonder whether or not, yeah, and to say nothing, the fact that it essentially ruined their relationship with Christopher Nolan going forward. What's interesting to me about that and what is very, very relevant to all of the contours of this conversation is the very uncomfortable, if not a necessary conversion of this from an entertainment business into an internet tech business, which immediately demolishes the idea of there being valued to relationships. And we've talked about this in other contexts, you know, in terms of which streaming services slash networks seem to be healthy going into 2023. And without, you know, we're not, we're not Charles Groden, by the way, in Dave.

going through the budget. That was a huge mistake that we made. I said David Pamer. Sean, your co-host and our friend Amanda Dobbins, the umbuds woman of this podcast corrected me. But we're, which I'm grateful for. We're not Charles Groton like seeing what's actually going on,

but it does seem like the companies that still value those relationships with their creative people and let them make mistakes and let them flourish HBO and FX specifically seem. I mean, again, we don't know the numbers, seem to be doing the best. at this, right? And that there is value to that. And it may have been an incredible galaxy brain stroke of genius to just take the whole slate and put it online, but the long-term damage, yeah, is likely irreparable. Now, it's not making Oppenheimer irreparable? You could probably

come back from that. But that was only the most, that was only the noisiest one, right? We don't actually know what else happened behind the scenes. The most interesting movie of 20, 23 to me, in this context, is Dune. to. Yes. A movie that everyone saw at home and is now

going to have to go to a theater to go see to complete the story. Right. Yeah, but that's why they added

Tim Blake Nelson to the cast. Right? I'll be there for Flo Pew. Yeah. Oh my God. I'm going there

for walking. You kidding me? Great. Yeah. But Sean, like, last thing. Like,

Sean, do you consider from the big picture picture, was Dune part one? Is that a success? I mean, I loved it.

I think it's a success, but do you think it was a success as an entertainment product put into the world at a challenging time? Unquestionably. It was something that people desperately wanted.

They wanted an event film at a time when it felt like they didn't have enough event films because of what was happening in the world. And even though most people saw it, I saw it at the Ross Theater on the Warner Brothers lot, which is like one of the sickest movie

going experiences I've ever had. I was there. It was like me and one other guy. Sickest because that was the Omicron Waves beginning. I was physically here. No, it was just, it was amazing on the big screen, but I think people desperately wanted it at home

and watched it over and over and over again. Chris and I have talked about this many times about how that's one of the most rewarding things about streaming movies, after we've shit on streaming movies for the last 20 minutes, is you could just go back and watch it again. I watched Ballad of Buster Scruggs three times in a week because I was like, oh, wow, this is just here for me now.

I have a feeling that Dune 2 is going to be a huge movie. I agree. for one specific reason. Dune is on every single day on HBO. Every time I turn cable on and I like flip up to see like what's on the movie channels, Dune is playing three times a day on HBO every day. And it may not seem like it matters, but I have seen Dune like six times because of that pretty much.

Like between like watching it in chopped up rewatchables fashion, the way rewatchables was sort of started was like the movies that you kind of always stick around for when you channel surf to them. I have, I just stick around. I'm like, oh, Moa is about to go here. Like, it's all, I've actually developed a relationship with a movie that I was kind of agnostic about.

I was, like, excited for a Villanuf movie and whatever, but it wasn't like I was like, I need the sandworms back in my life. That movie ruled. I'm like, yo, man, we got to figure out this spice production situation. Greenwald, do you channel surf? No. Oh, my God. Any, when's the last time you held your remote?

I know. Your daughters let you have your remote. Well, that's the, that's the more valid question. But no, I don't use cable at all, at all. I'm purely Apple TV interface. I never stumble on things anymore, and I kind of miss it. Yeah, I'm the same except for sports. I like it.

I find myself watching TV. I know, Chris, you still surf. Well, I just really, basically, like, I'll turn the TV on, especially for sports. But then, like, before and after sports, I kind of just will be like, I'm going to put on whatever the best movie is on one of the 25 channels that Time Warner or Spectrum forces me to have. And I've rarely disappointed. There's usually something on where I'm like, Oh, cool. Like, I haven't seen this in a while.

Or I never watched Moonfall. Let's see what Halloween fairies got called. But, Sean, before we move to my adopted home city of Copenhagen, I do want to ask you this because not only as an industry watcher and our friend, but also someone who I think of as a voice of reason in times of turmoil. That's true. A steadying voice. I have found our conversations on this podcast increasingly getting kind of lost in the uncanny valley

between a viewer problem and an industry problem. And you alluded to this before, like, how much does this even matter? And I guess I'm curious broadly or specifically, you answer it as you'd like, what is the right balance of that? Because I do think that coming into January, we're in January 2023, and inside of the TV industry, people are losing their fucking minds and saying this is the worst time in the history of television to try and sell something. Things are not being bought.

you know, promising projects are floundering and everyone's freaking out about the strike and nobody knows anything, like which of these channels are going to exist. Green lights no longer mean green. You can get canceled after producing a whole season, as we just saw with minks. So that is stressy if you're working in TV. And it also affects our coverage to a degree because, you know, maybe we just all want to be like, you know, Paul Revere warning everybody about what's coming. And I don't mean the British in terms of co-pros, because those are still proceeding of pace, apparently quite cheap and affordable. So AMC will continue to make those. Anyway, Sean, what do you think is the right balance of coverage at this moment?

That's a question for my other job, you know? Like, that's a head of content question and not like a podcaster question. I don't, I couldn't say for sure scientifically. I'll say what I try to do for the most part is what you guys do, which is I try to put as much energy behind the things that I actually care about. And oftentimes it is oddly predictable. I had a pretty good feeling when I heard about TAR a couple of years ago that Todd Field was going to make a really good film. It's actually exceeded my expectations, but I was ready to kind of put some emotional energy into that

because I liked his first two films so much. And it turned out that that was worth it. And Amanda and I devoted an entire episode to that film after it had made less than $5 million at the box office because we were like, you know what? This is that rare Van Diagram moment for the two of us where we both are so intellectually and emotionally connected to a movie that we want to celebrate it.

And you know what? If it doesn't do gangbuster numbers at first, it probably will down the road when it gets discovered because we believe in our own taste and our own passion. I think you guys have consistently had deeper conversations in part,

Andy, because of your personal experience professionally, that alters how you spend your time. I think people who listen to the show want to know what's going on in the industry. What they don't want is only industry. Like they don't, because they trust you guys, they want you guys to say, what do I like and why do I like it?

And they also occasionally want you to dump on something that needs to be dumped on and that's, that to me is where I always struggle. It's like, when is it time to be like, put a bullet in this thing's head because it's bad for our cold. So it's something that Andy really struggles with as well. Totally. Oh my God. And also, speaking of, you know, the fastest gun in the West. We're about to talk about Copenhagen Cowboy. But I guess I would just say that from a someone who doesn't really cover movies but

pretends to every few times a couple times a year, it is, hard for me to articulate any kind of worry about the theatrical model when tar and Top Gun came out in the same year. If you just took those two movies, which are going to be nominated for Best Picture, almost definitely, it's hard to argue health, right? Because those two movies are fucking incredible. And in totally different ways. Totally different ways. Yes. And what they have in common is Stanley Kubrick, because he brought Todd Fier and Tom Cruise together in a magnificent way. The Fidelio universe. You just, can we do another podcast on that?

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Okay, we're back. We're in Copenhagen. We're talking about... Do you want me to show you guys around? So, Nicholas Winning Reffen makes a six-episode Scandine noir

in terms of its designation on on Netflix. It was supposed to be part of the burgeoning Scandin War movement that Netflix

is done very well with where you've got all these Danish and Norwegian and Swedish shows that are murder mysteries that are coming

out of that region and that Netflix pumps out. This is, I'm going to go through just sort of like some basics here.

So in the last 11 years, I guess so this has been reference decade. Drive only God forgives neon demon demon.

the 13-hour tool to die young that was on Amazon Prime, which was released and then promptly swept under a throw rug and Andy Jassy's house and really you could only find it if you seriously like search for it on Amazon Prime. And then several years later, coming out of the pandemic, he has Copenhagen Cowboy for Netflix, which with all due respect to the Netflix corporation was similarly dismissed. It is not in the top 10 of T-Eas. It is not in the top 10 of TV charts. I don't know if it is where it is globally, but in the U.S. it is not or it wasn't as a Saturday night. And I don't even know that I saw it on the front page. I know once you start watching something, like your algorithm changes like how it's displayed to you, but I don't

think I saw it on like the front page of like new releases. Anecdotally, I've now watched half of the season over not just one viewing. And it still is just telling me that the sting is now available. Now the sting, I cannot wait to watch the sting again. Thank you, Netflix Corporation, a masterpiece, one of the best films of all time. But it is not trying to get me to finish this series. I still get emails trying to get me to finish 1899, but so far, crickets. Okay, so we can, basically I want to get like a temp check from you two. Andy's watched half the series.

Sean and I finished it just to see sort of how you're feeling about it. And then I have some ref and stuff I want to talk about and then we can get into the show in a more detailed way. Oh, wait. I should also say, before we get fully into it, that speaking of my children, of the remotes. They did get access to the Netflix and they changed everyone in the family's name and avatar on the subscription, which is great. They gave me like a mean dragon face, but they also changed my name, so it doesn't have my name anymore. So what happens now is I get emails from Netflix that say, Daddy, you have three episodes of Copenhagen Cowboy to watch.

That's what it said to me too, and I logged in. Exactly. And you didn't change anything. It just knew. And I feel like finally it's appropriate. They just addressed me as Mr. Chang. So I appreciate that that sort of specialization. What do you think, Greenwald? I'm so interested. Well, like,

this is not your guy. Well, I loved it. I mean, you guys treat me like, like bubble wrap. You guys were so afraid. You know what it is?

Is that like you, you have now turned your TV watching habits into a state secret. So when I'm texting you over the course of the weekend. And I'm like, yo, I'm like, I'm deep in,

in this day, Underworld, you'll be like, here's a funny link I got served on Facebook. You know, like, you don't say it was funny. You just did the movie phone voice again, CR. I know, and then, last night, I was like, you know, how many Copenhagen's are you down? And you were like, firing it up. So I was, because you got, I, okay, first of all, let's make this a referendum on daddy and his, is, his view of habits, clearly. I'm, it's just, I'm embarrassed, Chris, because you watch the shit out of things and you do it in a timely and

responsible fashion. And Sean just said he watched Buster Scruggs three times in a week so we don't even need. I was not a daddy at that time in my life. So that might be the reason for that. So what I tell you I'm going to watch something, Chris, by God, I will do it. I'm so impressed. I'm so glad you liked it. Will I begin before 9.36 p.m. on the Sunday

before? No. And so I'm a little embarrassed. So the silence is not judgment. The silence is shame, which puts me firmly into the NWR universe, I think, in a very, very strong way. Yeah, everything is about debt and what you owe. I mean, I think that this is fascinating. And again, in the same spirit with which we just said, like, how bad can the industry be if it makes tar and top gun? Like, we can wring our hands about nothing is getting made anymore. But like, Irma VEP got made last year.

The English got made somehow. This got made. These things exist. These are super bizarre, super idiosyncratic filmmaking at a very high level. And that in and of itself is really exciting to see. I would defer to you guys, not just because you finish the series, but because you are NWR completists. I mean, it is a vibe.

It is a mood. It is a world. I don't know if this is significantly a departure for him in recent years. I actually, I know you guys are always checking for this with me. Aesthetically, I have never taken issue with him. because if you told me like, oh, there's a guy from my hometown of Copenhagen who just basically cut lines of Michael Mann and David Lynch in equal measure and then snorted them.

And then just this is what came out of his brain. Like, yeah, I'm in. I would like to live in a world that just has neon bars artfully placed in the background of every room I walk into. It's fucking awesome. I found this so far through three episodes compelling on a, yes, I'm going to say it. More compelling morally than I have felt about his past work.

I don't know what that says about me, where I am, where daddy is at this particular moment with the Netflix Corporation. I don't know what this is just where I am so far in this series, but I found this to be super compelling, super disturbing, weird, but kind of human in a way that I didn't necessarily expect. And I found that very, very compelling. It wasn't just aesthetically beautiful and spiritually empty, which is something that I think maybe you guys thought I would say coming into that. No, I didn't. I do think you hit the lottery in that you're the only human being who's ever described this show as human. Sean, what did you think? Well, I don't think they behave like humans, but there's something that is,

like there's a, there's a trench of sorrow inside of this show that I found really compelling, even through its idiosyncrasies, even through its slowness, even through its complete lack of recognizable human behavior, which I probably should have said at the top. Well, I have a split mind on this. One, I'll just say, I categorize it amongst this class of pandemic projects from our great filmmakers, the fablemen's, Bardo, Armageddon Time, these sort of like inward-looking, deeply self-referential and perversely autobiographical stories that. that in some respects are fascinating to view,

and in other respects are these, like, terribly narcissistic and sometimes kind of failing creative projects. And what happens to people when they spend a lot of time isolated and away from the communities that help them feel most creative? I, as Chris knows, like, adore Nicholas Winning Reffin's work. I think the drive Only God forgives duo, duet, is like that speaks to me on a primal level. I love those movies.

I loved my theater-going experiences with those movies. I think he's like a true artist. I also think he's really circling the drain right now of his own interests. And as interest, as kind of beautifully composed as this is, and as what a fascinating rejoinder it is to 10 years of superhero movies,

I did feel at the end, and I was like, okay, it's, you have to, he has to start anew. Like, the one thing I did after I finished watching it was I watched Pusher again for the first time. or for the first time in many years. And Pusher, which is one of his first, I think it's his first official film,

is this kind of like handheld on the streets of Denmark drug dealer film that had two subsequent sequels. And two is quite good. Two is very good. Three is okay, but they star Mads-Micholson and they are really gritty and they feel like, not unlike

some of those William Friedkin 70s crime movies. And he's, like, he has lost something that he isn't a world of pure artificiality at this point and I think it served him really well to a point and there were times on this show where I felt

like he was quote tweeting himself and it kind of lost my interest in a weird way. So part of that is because like the glacial pace is now self-parodic like he is taking so

long to get to his point in the story, even though this series is half the runtime, or third of the runtime of Too Old to Die Young? This series actually, like, frankly, feels like the West Wing compared to Too Old to Die Young. So in the last, like, four or five years, he has done 20 hours,

more or less, of long-form storytelling that exists kind of on this blurred line between cinema and television. You know, I would not be surprised if he does not watch a single television show in his personal life. There is nothing about these two works that

are cut for TV. I would say that one of the interesting little tidbits about Copenhagen Cowboy is the vignette style of the storytelling. So even within the 55 minutes, blissfully 55 minutes compared to the often like hour and 15, hour and 20 minute episodes of To Die Young, the scenes or like the little sort of chapters are really only about five or six minutes long. And I agree with you, Sean, that for me, this series sort of peaks with episode four. and while I had a lot to like about,

there was a lot to like about the sort of last few episodes, I felt like it was essentially just like, only God forgives, but with a woman. Completely agree. But wait, see, this is really interesting to me. So again, I have not seen the potential high-pointed series. And we also, I feel like I neglected to say, like, so far there's neither a glimpse of Copenhagen or Cowboys

thus far through three episodes. No. So the name is a... Copenhagen Pigboy. That was the name. That was right there for the taking. called vampires versus aliens and more people would have watched it.

Is that what it is? Yeah. Wow, I didn't know that. In some ways, yeah. I mean, it's Cal L versus Dracula. That's what the story is. Well, so spoilers, but at least through three episodes. Did you think the main character Mew was just like a gal who would love

to help other people out? Yeah, but here's... The answer to this actually is the point that I was going to make. So it is about a mysterious young woman named Mu, who we meet and she's being bandied about as a good luck totem by Albanian pimps, essentially, in the Danish countryside. She frees herself, and then she gets involved with the, I guess, the Chinese crime syndicate,

and there are a lot of pigs throughout. There's a bad guy that seems kind of supernatural, blah, blah, blah. My point is, I was not watching this as the next chapter in the NWR Cinematic Legacy Project, because I loved, I did love drive. I did not make it through, what was the movie? Only God forgives. And I did not engage with, was the Miles Teller one? Yeah, too old to die out.

So for me, I was enjoying this as a respite from normal TV. Now, normal TV is kind of a strange term to use when we have such a variety of the things on the air at any given moment. But I was just delighted to be in a different pace, to see a camera moving differently. to see different attention to light and aesthetic detail. And I was very pleased. There's nothing here plot-wise that I'm particularly fired up about yet. When you just casually said, oh, well, it's heading towards X or Y thing.

Okay, fine. You know, I'm more interested in how, like, Mew accessorizes her track suit for winter suddenly with that explanation in episode three, which is like a zip-up muff on top of it. you know, I think that it's more indicative of where we are culturally that for as much as we complain about how things are getting bad in the kitchen, the sizzler buffet of options is still so rich and stacked that this is here for us to graze on. And it's high-level filmmaking, but more important than that, it is completely specific individual filmmaking, the kind of which I think is, to your point, John, whether it's champion,

anything championing tar or something else. Like, it is important to draw a right line around and be like, I'm so glad someone threw croners at this guy. They are not getting that money back. But this is, this is cool. It's a compelling project to me. I mean, Chris, this is your dude. Like, what did you think?

Here's the thing that was really funny about watching this. So, first of all, my wife's out of town. So Friday, I just like, I watched like four of them, you know, and just like kind of let it ride. And it's such an amazing show to just, let wash over you. Turn your TV up real loud. Let the Cliff Martinez bang.

If it's night and just the neon is coming out of your flat screen, it's kind of an awesome experience to just vibe out to this show. You have to watch it in the darkness. Oh my God. If you've tried to watch this on your laptop during the day or something, it's just like you're barely even getting it. I was haunted by this question as I was watching this thing. When Drive comes out in 2011, it's like this is a major filmmaker.

not only is a major filmmaker, but is going to exist in that sweet spot like the mans and the lynches and like a bunch of our favorite filmmakers that can do both Art House and Blockbuster or Popcorn movies and put them together. They can make thief. They can make Twin Peaks.

They can make... Arthouse genre. Yeah, Mulholl and Drive and movies that were just like, oh my God, like not only am I completely immersed in the story you're telling, but you are essentially the coolest person I've ever seen behind a camera doing this.

And as NWR has kind of, have disappeared frankly up his own ass, I've joined him. You know, like I, I, I, I am there for the neon. Like, I am there for the, the experience. But I have this, like, weird sinking feeling that he is the most talented and accomplished filmmaker that if he had never been born, cinema history would be exactly the same. Yeah. It's like, Sean, like, is like, can you think of another, like, another, director like this who's got like an adoring cult following, but at the same time seems to have no ripple effect outside of his own work? Well, I'm not entirely ready to say that because I do think

that Drive made a very big impact on the generation just beneath us. And so like we were just, we did a rewatchable's last week. We were talking to Craig Horleback about how we were in the middle of this show. And Craig is like Drive rules, you know, and there will be people. The same way that what Lynch was doing was certainly these manifestations of his dream state, but also just deeply iterative of with the Wizard of Oz being the primary text, you know, that there is so much in his work that is directly commenting or abstractly commenting on the Wizard of Oz. And so the great thing about movies and especially filmmakers who are obsessed with other movies is that they're constantly refracting them and using their own imagination to rechannel them

onto the big screen. And he's one of those people. Now, I think it feels that way, Chris, because of what you said, which is that it doesn't really feel like he's taking a step forward in a long time. Yeah. He's taken a lot of sideways steps in his work. And that, I'm finally starting to lose a little bit of patience with that. Well, here's my question then. I mean, and I want to just, I want to lift you up, Sean, because I agree as, you know, just by default, the person who really can channel the voice of the younger generation

on this podcast, drive is significant. But drive was also culturally impactful, I think, because it just felt like one of those moments when someone was just surfing the zeitgeist and got it. And I remember one of the first pieces

I wrote for Granlin was interviewing the costume designer who built the jacket. You know, the soundtrack is still very, very important to people's lives, but also in terms of what things can sound like or should sound like that movie put it all together. It's still the thing that I hear in my head when I drive around Los Angeles at night. Yeah, it's incredibly, it's cool.

It was an incredibly cool and good movie. The question that I have, though, and one of the reasons why I'm interested in this piece is because it was written by a collaborator, right? Clearly, a close collaborator. It's not like this just, it's not like this was just a spec script that came across his desk. But I'm always interested in the distinction in an autour-driven industry between people who are autours but maybe don't have anything to say. He makes the prettiest pictures. His taste and aesthetics are unimpeachable and specific, which is what you need.

But that hasn't really always seemed to line up with a compelling story to tell. Now, the next piece of that question, which so far isn't a question, but I trust Sean as a pro can find one in here. is that he's operating in a global system where every so often, or at least up until now, an Amazon or Netflix would be like, yeah, do the thing you do. Do the thing you do. Not anymore, I don't think. I think that is over. But I wonder what his career looks like if after Neon demon, he's like, oh, now I want to do another thing that might be two hours or it might be nine and as someone wandering around. And the people, and this is me taking on the role of big business here. And big business is like, nah, that's not a movie. That sounds like a project you

would do on your own time. Well, so crucially, I think that this was... It's worth noting that... So the Amazon thing happens, the Too Old to Die Young, that was written by Ed Brubaker, and I think that there is a version of that show that, while still brutal, is like essentially

an L.A. crime saga. And it's about this, like, renegade cop who is in his off hours, murdering pedophiles. And then Nicholas Wending Refing comes along and whether or not this is part of... Ed Brue Baker's, like, original conception of it, um,

it's, it's turned into, like, about witches. Like, the, the end of that show is about witches. Um, there,

there's lots of other things going on in there, but it is like a very surreal, magical realist show by the end of it. Copenhagen Cowboy was pitched to Netflix to kind of capture this moment where a lot of crime shows coming out of this region are, um, are catching on globally. and as he has talked about,

he sort of pitched it to them as a continuation of the pusher world. Now, not maybe specifically the characters from the pusher world or maybe in the course of development, it changed, or in the course of the pandemic, it changed.

But I think it's kind of a fascinating, like, I don't know how many times he can get away with it, but it seems like twice he is now, you know, with Prime, he was like, I'm going to make an LA crime show

with Miles Teller. And they're like, cool, here's some money. and it's like William Baldwin masturbating in a movie theater is like what you get and in this it's like

oh I'm gonna make a gritty Danish Sean was that your screening of Dune Is that what made a memorable me and Billy? Yeah and this is going to be like a gritty Danish

underworld show in the vein of Pusher and it's not that now it's it's incredible but it is definitely not that well I'll say the one thing it has in common with Pusher

is that the great Lottko Burich is in this TV series that he shows up in the final couple of episodes and he's having quite a year who's also in Triangle of Sadness, amazing actor. I think he's got like a, he's got two options from my viewpoint.

It's either become a little bit more like his countryman Thomas Winterberg and balance Danish projects that he gets funded in country with the occasional US gig or UK gig. and then eventually maybe he makes his own version of another round and, you know, is honored by the academy

and stays largely like a kind of art house, widely celebrated international film figure. Or he does what I have always thought he should do, which is just become David Fincher, just become his version of David Fincher. Yeah, yeah, right. All of his work, with the exception of Drive, I think he has a co-writing credit on.

And he does not have a co-writing credit on Drive. It's adapted from a James Salas novel, and it's written by Hosina Meini. And that's his best script, and it's his best movie, it's probably the best thing he's ever done. It's the thing that most people have emotionally connected to,

and it's because he does what Fincher does. He brings his perspective, his point of view, his writing mind, his sort of constructive mind to someone else's work. And he can evolve it, and he doesn't need to take

the kind of total authorship of it. I want him to do that so badly for a future film, but what I don't want is, candidly, for him to get caught up in what he gets caught up in, which is like this phantasmagora vision of our own desiccated bodies and this bizarre edible fascination that he has right now where every story is about how he wants to fuck his mom.

And killer. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's so iterative now that I just think he needs a compatriot, someone who gets his aesthetic, but who can write from a different perspective. I think that's a very important observation broadly. I mean, there are very, very, very few filmmakers who can write and direct their own stuff in a compelling and consistent way.

It's just, I know it's everyone's goal. Everyone wants to be in charge and to tell the pure storytelling, get the pure storytelling clay, you know, and just shape it and show you what exists inside of them. But often it's better when you don't. Often it's better when it's collaborative, especially when your aesthetic vision is so loud, you know, I know that that doesn't track as a sentence, but you know what I mean. It is a very, it's an incredible lens to push a story through. And it would be exciting if he was more open, yeah, it would be more excited.

I mean, you don't want to ever tell someone what to do. I mean, this is clearly he's motivated by his own interests. And God bless. I mean, if he, if he's able to continue sort of Trojan horsing super weird shit into these larger platforms, fine. But I agree with you. I mean, and this is a very, very old and basic observation. But, you know, Fincher and Sorkin, what, they hate each other, right? But, like, they made the best movie either of them might make when they'd work together.

Can I just raise one quick thing, too, kind of like in the ecosystem of streaming? A couple of years ago, there was another series that premiered in early January that felt like a lark from a different time. It was called Pretend It's a City. You remember this? The Martin Scorsese, Fran Leibovitz, kind of mini-series. And that seemed to be like a kind of a rider, you know, M&M's kind of, ledger item in the Irishman deal where he got to make a couple of things like this

Rolling Thunder Review, I think was another example of that. And they dumped it on January 8th, 2021 instead of at the end of the year because they just felt like this is kind of for the hardcore heads and it's not a part of like our official 2020 release plan. It's like it's something that we're tossing off and we're not really promoting that hard. But if you found it, you found it.

For me personally, I was like, I love Friendly Woods and Martin Scorsese. I was in heaven watching that. I wasn't quite in heaven watching Copenhagen Cowboy. boy, but I was like, this is basically just for the heads. And I don't know how many more for the heads things, not just NWR is going to get, but the Netflix is going to do. Like, it just doesn't really feel like it's a part of their long-term plan. I don't know.

I think that there was a little bit of a Trojan horse thing here. I do really think that he was like, I invented this shit and I'm coming back with my own vision of the Copenhagen underworld. And, you know, Miles Surrey in his piece on the ringer was talking about whether or not this show was basically an example of not even style over substance, but style divorced from substance. So when I was watching the show, I was trying to be like, what is this show about? Not like, what is this show about where it's like, you? And is she an alien or a superhero? And, you know, what's going on with Nicholas, this blonde Aryan guy? And so I tried to, like,

kind of derive some, some thematic ideas out of my experience with this. And Andy, I don't think that there's any spoilers in this in case we have already kind of given away since that. that you monsters. So I did think it was, you know, obviously, Refen starts his career with, not only with the Pusher trilogy and Drive, but with Valhalla and with Bronson and these sort of incredibly violent, masculine archetypes

in his films. And now is sort of starting since Neon Demon to move towards these female protagonists, these female hero types, whether it's, was L. Fanning in Neon? and honestly Jenna Malone and Toll to Die Young

is sort of like this kind of like avenging angel and the avenging angel thing comes into play in Copenhagen Cowboy where you've got this sort of female superhero at the center of this

of this story for a lack of a better term. Some other stuff that I saw coming out of this was honestly like the hell that awaits immigrants as they arrive in the West almost all the characters

in this show are from somewhere else. They're not from Denmark. They're either from the Balkans. They're from Africa. They're from like all the China. And the corrupting, honestly, slaughterhouse that is the West is kind of, I think I'll display here, even though it, I guess that is a little bit of a leap.

But to me, it's no accident that every single person in this show is not, I'm from Denmark. And like, there, there's definitely something being said about this. And I do think that he thinks that the old world, that Europe or the Denmark is essentially run by incestuous Aryan vampires. Pedophiles. This is like the emergent theme is as one, this is one of the first things he's done co-written with a woman, as you said, Andy Sarah, Sarah Isabella Yontson. And the thing that has been happening in the last 10 years with his work is this fear as the father of a daughter that he has put his daughter, his young children. in this vulnerable position and a world that is increasingly harsh to them

or at least he's having a consciousness about that. Ironically, or maybe in a tongue-in-cheek way, he has cast his daughter in this amazing role that I don't want to spoil for anybody who hasn't finished the show, but his wife has made a documentary about him. His conception of the male-female gender dynamic is super interesting if you really want to drill down into it.

And I think everything you're saying is right, Chris, that the whole primary metaphor is like a big fight between a man and a woman and a pigsty. Yeah. That's it. Like, that's what you need to know about how he sees the world right now.

And crucially, Reffin casts himself in this show as a man, a designer or an architect or something who can reconstruct someone's destroyed fallus. So that's definitely like the world he sees. I mean, that's his vision.

Andy, did you see any like this show is about, like, billboards on your drive down the road? And Andy, if you could have your fallacy for a fee, would you do that? Well, that suggests a deconstruction at some point. Did that not happen?

Yeah. I mean, I usually don't talk about it on this podcast, but do you tune in. I, yeah, I think, but this is what I like about the show. Not the falli, is that the plural, so much as the fallacies. but that this is someone's distinctly personal vision of the world. You know, and I think I was, for whatever reason, maybe as a father of daughters, receiving that transmission more acutely, right? But like, in the spirit of everything we've been saying,

if you do put aside the industry talk and the concern trolling for the state of streaming, like, all I want from this stuff is someone to have a very personal, very individual point of view about the state of the world that I can at least recognize on some level, whether it's emotionally or in terms of the very bespoke dramatic lighting. And this did that for me. You know, it's, it's horrifying. It's horrifying. But I do think that the camera, at least through three, lingers on, like our point of view character. I mean, Mew, I should say the name of the actress, because I think she's kind of awesome. Angela Bundalovich. Yeah. Yes, a young Danish Apparently somebody, they did street casting, they'd been looking for Mew, and then he just saw her.

And he was like, that's it. That's her. And she is our window into this world, right? And she's just looking at everything with almost like a passive ferocity that makes everyone uncomfortable because you can't hide anything from her. And I think that the show is completely different if that's not your protagonist. I mean, she's essentially like Clint Eastwood meets Gene Seaburg. You know, it's just an unfucking real, like, idea is to have like a doll-like. woman in a track suit who's also the man with no name. I just think that also we are at a weird moment in culture where we don't really get the perfect distillation of style and substance anymore. We get a lot of stuff. Yeah. And the ratios are off and off. And we kind of have to, I think we do have to grab on to the ones that that have some meaning, even if they're not 100% all the way there. You know, I think in a perfect world, Sean, yeah, yeah, like this is everything that NWR poured into this.

he's brought to bear on a script or a tighter story or something that is just sharper and deserving of this kind of aesthetic um lavishment you know um i don't know if it's that but it is it's it i i don't know i i was so interested because the way you guys were talking about it i was like i'm taking one for the team and instead i was like i'm really enjoying i kind of kind of feeling it isn't the word but i'm really appreciating this you like to the i mean it's you you you're the twin peaks the return is like one of your favorite things that ever got made. You're definitely somebody who will every once in a while be like, I'm here for the ride.

I think Sean, one of the things that was interesting and cool about this is that obviously he makes shows and movies that are very much in our wheelhouse. But there is no shot here that isn't drenched in neon. There is hardly any editing. A lot of it is 360-degree pans when like he's doing a conversation scene.

The camera movement is wild. Yeah, it just turns. and I, but again, like, I know that's his thing, but at the same time, like, he's using, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's a new touch, yeah, yeah. But that's his thing in this, I mean, and he does it repeatedly, but it, but it's, it does make me think that he's using the, the, the screen as if we're reading a comic book, right? He's scrolling across it and he's telling stories in an almost cartoony, not cartoony in the sense of Looney Tunes, but like, we are moving across panels and seeing different things on full in front of us. fun about that. See, I thought of it as video game and or kind of like TikTok what's on your screen while holding

your camera kind of ID concept of like constantly, like everything happening all around you, but not in the traditional like first person shooter way, more like in an open world video game where you're sort of like constantly looking around at what surrounds you. Have you guys seen, I don't know if either of you have ever

used the Marvel Unlimited app to read comic books, but basically like, you know, if you've ever read a comic book, which probably most people at this point have, it's weirdly non-intuitive. If you haven't done it before, I was watching my daughters learn to do it. It's like, well, why is this box here with his face here? This thing is happening in a moment, but if you go across a horizontal panel, four people are reacting to it. So who do I look at first? And why are the words there? And that was, but on Marvel Unlimited, you can do something kind of interesting where you can

zoom and scroll through box by box. Like it pulls out each box of like Dr. Strange making a face. and then you see what he's doing to Dreaddormammu or whatever. And it's almost narrativeizing something that's uniqueness is that it's an explosion of images and ideas and story on a page. And that was my takeaway from those camera thing. It's just like all, when we start on someone sitting in a chair and pan to me watching the person in a chair and then pan to the door and someone enters, that's one panel in a comic. I mean, it's an interesting variation on something Spielberg's amazing at, which is camera

movement instead of cutting. So like he'll do, you know, if it's a two person, in conversation, he can do something in three camera moves that most people would take five cuts to kind of broadcasts. Two shot pan, two shot pan going back and forth. Exactly. And so ref it's a variation on that. The thing I liked about this is that it was kind of like it gets back to sign and signifier where you're like, at a certain point, you're asking yourself, why do I think neon is cool? If neon is in every frame of this show, does neon lose its sort of the narrative quality of neon?

You know, like, you start to get, you push past. It's like when you say a word a lot and it starts to move on. Exactly. Exactly. But like when the camera moves as slowly and glacially as the camera does in Copenhagen Cowboy,

you start to ask yourself, well, camera movement usually denotes a significant dramatic moment. You know, like they'll do a push in because it's something somebody's thinking about or there's usually like it's trying to create a sense of like urgency in this in the story. And it doesn't do that in this show. The camera will follow her as she walks through the woods

and nothing is of consequence in the woods. She's just walking through the woods. And so I kind of, in the very, like, I think specific context of just let this go for four hours on a Friday night. And sometimes I would look at my phone, but for the most part, I was pretty transfixed by this.

The shit started making me think about was really interesting. He will never get to do this again. He is out of fucking tech companies to take $20 million from. to make this. But, Andy, I mean, there's a couple of things from the end of the series

that I kind of wanted to ask about. If you want to stay on, I'm going to leave because I'm going to watch the series. Amazing. And I love talking to you guys. Just don't have too much fun without me. Okay.

Andy, it's so nice to see you. I love the watch. Thanks, buddy. It's great to have fans on, you know, to really give us the straight scoop. All right. Bye, Eddie. All right.

It's just me and Sean now, just the two of us. I'm not going to keep you keep you much longer. The fallacy of the fallacy of the fallacy would have been a fitting subtitle for the series. Maybe we could always call this episode of the pod that. Hideo Kojima shows up. You know, he...

Speaking of the video game perspective. Exactly. He, in a cameo, towards the end of this series, alluding to a whole world of seemingly supernatural characters that could be involved in this show. The end of this season, I guess, because it ends more or less on a cliffhanger,

shows the resurrected vampire sister of this guy, Nicholas, who has brought his sister back to life by, I think, sacrificing his mother or at least using her blood. Using her blood. I'm not sure if she lived or not. That all takes place in like a weird dreamscape where Nicholas is nude

and also reconstructed from his really terrible pig accident. He just got an ass whooping. Yeah, he really took one. He got curbs stumped. And so this Raquel, is that, I think is the name of... Raquel, yes. That's Lolochorfixin, which is Reffin's daughter.

Shoots lasers out of her eyes at Mew and a bunch of possibly ghost and or alien women who are all the victims of Nicholas's rampaging violence. And Mew seems upset by this, but we don't know whether or not Raquel is killed Mew, is just starting fighting Mew, like what's happening? There is a suggestion that there is a race of people called the Giants, or maybe they're just a gang, I don't know.

There's a lot of open questions at the end of this series, which I thought was shocking. So one, I really admire your ability to recreate all of those data points. Thanks. Because I will say in the final 30 minutes of the series, I was quite confused. Yes. Which is one of the reasons why I think I walked away from it not as positive as I expected to be after the fourth episode, like you said.

Totally. Her walking through the woods, though, at like Magic Hour with all these people appearing wearing her track suit is pretty amazing. It was beautiful. Here's what I can't decide, and this is how I feel about almost everything that NWR does. Was he parodying the serialization of our superhero interconnected culture?

Or was he like, I have thought through the next several decades of Mew storytelling and I'm teasing out where I could go with this. I mean, you could just be a traveling samurai.

You could do the continuing stories of this. Zadauchi or, yeah, where she just shows up somewhere and solves a criminal underworld dispute by like morally judging

the heart of the people involved, which is essentially, what the second half of this show is about where she's working for this, on behalf of this Chinese restaurant owner, Mother Hilda, and she's, this, this woman is trying to get her child back from an evil MMA fighter gangster named Chang. But is he going to do that for like me and you and 79 other synophilic incels? Like, I don't, I mean, it's at four. But this is, this is, this is like the torturous thing of like, we got what we wanted. And now we're like, Totally. That's exactly what it is.

That's why I used the free circling the drain earlier because I'm like, okay, so you just went as deep into your soul as you could possibly go. And what you showed me is what I thought was already there. Yeah. And that's okay. I was trying to, this is pathetic,

but I was like, I'm going to either tease this episode of the pod or like when I put this pot up on Instagram, I'm going to like share a bunch of images from this show. And I was like, I wonder which one I should do. Tragically,

fucking Netflix and all these streamers now have made it so you can't screenshot anymore. I know. I hate that. They're such fucking,

that's just, give me a break. What do you think I'm doing? You know, like I'm not putting together a flip book of your show you know, and pirating.

But I was even going through like the Google image search of this show, I was like, I can't choose. Every fucking frame of this thing is outrageously composed and lit.

It's so gorgeous. the shot of the fucking lasers coming out of Raquel's eyes. It's like out of the keep. It's so cool. I would love for him to keep making stuff, but I do think I eventually wind up where you are, where it's like, I would love for this dude to get a 125-page script

and just knock it out of the park. Totally. It doesn't have to not have those elements. I would be okay with it having those elements. I just think that there is like diminishing returns on dialogue and story structure that he is just a, little bit short.

He's disinterested. Yeah. He's just disinterested. And having something, because the thing that he's good at, too, is stripping away. So if you give him something that he, but he needs to hold on to certain story beats, I think that that would be very helpful because this show shifts quite a bit. And it actually is basically like three chapters. Yeah, it's like, you know, it's six episodes, but it's three stories.

It's the stuff in the brothel in the beginning. And then it's like this, there's a sort of interim period where she's working for the Chinese restaurant owner. but the cool thing is in four she goes into what I guess is Copenhagen and starts working as a street level drug dealer to pay off this debt to Chang and she works at this guy named Danny

who's trying to move up in the world of the of Copenhagen gangs and there's like a Copenhagen gang war happening and that's actually pretty sick it feels closest to what you were saying which is the sort of like the post-pusher story that he's trying to tell it's closest to that while having this kind of like elevated

visual palette that Puscher doesn't have. I like it, and anybody who is listening this far to a conversation about this, I would highly recommend it if you haven't already checked it out. I do think it is a complete curio in the history of, you know, streaming television. And, I mean, it looks like a hundred million dollars. And part of that is just because he's so economical with the way that he frames. But I don't know.

It's weird. I don't know if it's commercially weird in the way that you want. I know. The best of him or David Lynch or, you know, the figures that we're talking about here. You know, there was a time when Denis Villeneuve was making very odd work. Yeah. Enemy is, this is, this is, kind of, you know, a little in conversation with a story like this. And he, he shifted out of that to make significantly more commercial enterprise.

Nick needs his arrival. He does. He needs, he needs his, like, sweeter story. Yes. Will he go there? I kind of doesn't feel that way. Kind of feels like he's going to keep digging with shovel. I just hope I see him again at Fat Dragon

chilling out and a pair of Tom's eaten by himself. You know, I've interviewed him twice. He's a nice guy. He seems, I mean, I honestly, I wish he did more shit talking to promote these shows. Because both of these shows,

I feel like he kind of was like, in his, like, yes, well, I pitched it and I did it and the show is, it's open door of interpretation. It's like, man, get your quitting on. Like, go.

He seems more polite now than he used to. I know. Maybe it's fatherhood has chilled him out. Not you, though. You're just more full of tics. ever. I'm all lit up. Thanks to Sean. Thanks to Andy. Thanks to Kaya. Thanks to the listeners. Hope you enjoy Copenhagen Cowboy and the Golden Globes and we'll be back with you on Thursday. Sean, thanks so much, man. Thanks, bud.