The Watch - ‘The Undoing’ Finale, Mallory Rubin on a Turning Point for ‘The Mandalorian,’ and Melissa Maerz on the History of ‘Dazed and Confused’

Episode Date: December 1, 2020

Chris and Andy break down the ultimately disappointing finale of ‘The Undoing’ (8:31). Then, they are joined by Mallory Rubin to talk about the significance of Ahsoka Tano’s appearance in ‘The Mandalorian’ (28:08) and what it means for the ‘Star Wars’ universe going forward (47:40). Finally, they talk with Melissa Maerz about her new book, ‘Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused’ (1:10:24). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guests: Mallory Rubin and Melissa Maerz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the wringer.com and joining me on the other line. He's got Sylvie Steinitz on speed dial. It's Andy Greenwald. Hi.

Happy Thanksgiving, buddy. What's up, man? Great to see you today. A stacked show. We've got the reaction to the finale of the undoing from you and I. We've got Mallory Rubin. us to talk about the latest episode of The Mandalorian. And then we have our interview with Melissa Mares, our old buddy, talking about her book, about Dazed and Confused. It's really exciting.

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What's up, brother? How are you? Is this the show? Yeah, of course it is. It's always the show. Are we recording? It's all one show, man. I just listened to the beginning of our friend,

not really our friend, Mark Maren talking to Mike Campbell from the Heartbreakers. Yeah. And those dudes just talk fucking gear for like seven minutes about like the magic of Fenders versus Rickenbockers and what do you got to get in the headspace for Les Paul. And then like seven. minutes in, Mike Campbell

sip some coffee and he's like, so are we going to do this? Yeah. That's us. We're just talking about our lives. Chris, I hope you had a decent holiday. I hope all our listeners that had a decent holiday

hopefully didn't travel or venture too far from their personal pods. I'm a little self-conscious because I'm a little heady as we were discussing. I'm a little congested. That's something that still happens,

apparently. How many different board certified doctors had to tell you that today to get you in the right head space. Is there, I wonder if we have any listeners like this.

Is there any more annoying role to play than being the doctor in someone's family? Do you know what I mean? Because my cousin is a pediatrician. And I texted her because we usually spend Thanksgiving with her and her family. And obviously we didn't this year. But I was communicating with her on Thanksgiving.

And I realized by scrolling through our texts that basically our texts are, What time is Thanksgiving? What time should we be over? That was fun. Here's a picture of all of our kids together. And then 11 months of photos of bug bites or rashes on my children's body being like, this okay? Yeah.

Has this look to you? Yeah. You know what I mean? No, I don't have any doctors in my immediate family. So I usually just, I just solicit opinions where I can, you know? What you used to do, which I always admired was you would just like crush episodes of house. Yes. And then just deductive reasoning.

I was sort of like an amateur position myself. I think you certainly felt that way. Chris, obviously, this is a really stacked show, as I said to you on text yesterday, and you responded with, yep, so I feel like we're on the same page. Yeah, absolutely. Should we just get into the undoing? No. Okay.

That was the beginning of a caveat. Because I wanted to bring up something else with you. Okay. Before we got into it. which was, you know, obviously a lot of political news still in the country. And you know us. We don't like to put our thumb on the scales. We're just, we report you guys decide.

I want to let Brian Kemp do his job. That is a civic leader that we can all admire in these difficult times. But I did notice that a very accomplished and deserving person named Jennifer Saki was named as President-elect Biden's incoming press secretary. And she's familiar to people who listen. the Pod Save America or paying any attention to the Obama White House, et cetera, et cetera. But it did remind me that I feel like the statute of limitations on this has worn off. Chris, do you remember we had a phone call with Jen Saki?

Oh, yeah. When they were like, do you want Obama to come on? Yeah. I feel like we should talk about this because it's so crazy. It sent me on a deep dive into my email, and I found the emails from Jen Saki at her whitehouse.gov account. and I can't believe this was real. Like, I truly...

Well, it turns out it was it because he didn't go on the podcast. So for people wondering what we're talking about, which is probably 90% of our audience at most times during our podcast, flashback to those golden years of early spring 2016. Yeah. A young Kenyan socialist was still in the White House

and your boys were still just podding away on opposite coasts at the time. And we had the opportunity to do the HBO after show for Game of Thrones. By the way, Casey Blois, that's some content. You can still just plug on to Max any time. It's a veil. Sliding right next to the flight attendant.

No problem. It'll be great. And so we're feeling pretty good. We were excited. This is a lot of opportunities. And that was also at the time when our friend, Dan Pfeiffer, had left the White House, but I think was one of the people responsible for spearheading a kind of alternative media strategy.

He went to go to go work at Dominion, correct? Well, first he did a study abroad, which was weird because he was 39 in Venezuela. But he's been, he's passionate about the culture. He's passionate about it. He thinks the cops on the undoing was perfect casting. And he was sort of doing the strategy. I mean, that was around the time when Obama went on like between two ferns and they were, and went on Marin.

And they were getting the word out and putting him in front of different audiences, right? Getting the word out about the leader of the free world. Being America president, American president. So somehow it reaches us that Obama is a huge Game of Thrones fan, huge. His bit, and everybody's got a bit at the dinner table, his bit was, you know, House of Cards, that's not what D.C. is like. Game of Thrones, that's what D.C. is like, right? That was his bit, apparently.

And he's a big fan. And so someone was like, he would want to come on your Game of Thrones after show just to chop it up, much like subsequent guests, Haley Joel Osman and T. Payne, you know, basically same diff. And this escalated to the way. Same level of secret service detail, for sure, yeah. Haley Joel runs deep. We had a planning call with the White House

that I had to take pacing on my cell phone on Skirmerhorn Street in Brooklyn because I had to pick up my kid from daycare. And we were like, yeah, you know, whatever the president would like, like to do, you know, we're amenable. We could come to D.C. We could do whatever. And we thought this was a possibility. They were very polite to the point where I found an email and maybe I should share some of this on Instagram where I was like, hey, Jen, great talking. As you can tell, Chris and I are really excited about the possibility, are you ready for this, of POTUS's involvement

in the show? Who are we? And I laid out like six bullet point strategy. Like, does he just want to come and talk about the episode. Does he have a point of view? Does he want to talk politics? Does he want to just like deep dive on Littlefinger? Like basically your guy here wrote an email being like, you know, whatever Barack's comfortable doing, we can really be amenable to him. I mean, you never wrote back, right?

Could you, you're a master of voices and sound effects. You're kind of the Frank Welker of your era. Could you? Is that the guy from Police Academy? I can't believe how long we're going to be talking about this. I'm done. I just want to say, could you? you do the crickets that we got in response?

Oh, I mean, it was like a, it was, it was like the chorus of the entire, of all of the world's remaining forests. Yes. Screaming into the void with cricket noises. That's how hard we got dropped. And all, like, we should not have even been offered this podcast opportunity in the first place. But yes.

Yes. It is one of the most treasured, full on rejections of my life. What I want to say is, nothing recommends Jen Saki for this job more. more than this experience. Yeah. At least as far as working. She knows how to weed out. Yeah, for sure.

She saw the chaff coming a mile away, and she just tossed it. So congratulations, Jen Saki. Thank you for taking our call. Thank you, listeners, for taking this time down presidential memory lane with us. I'm sure Joe Biden has reached out about a Ted Lasso pod, but unfortunately, I'm not interested. So let's talk undoing. Let's do it. So this show became a little bit of a phenomenon, at least on the timeline.

I don't know what the actual numbers are, but it was definitely like, I got the feeling like a lot of people watched it yesterday at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific or whatever. And it got to the end. And then it just was a really, like, fun 30 minutes on Twitter when, especially I want to shout out Ben Dietrich, the author of the Brian Colangelo's story for The Ringer, who had a, has a very funny, like, running bit about Hugh Grant's innocence on this show. And how they framed him. I'd like to read that. I'd like to shout out Taffy Ackner, the brilliant profile writer and author, who just, I believe, at 10 p.m. Eastern just tweeted, Christ. I knew. I knew what she was talking about. So I think that we had had a lot of fun for a lot of reasons with this show. One was some of the ridiculous behavior. Obviously, we got to talk to you, Grant. That was awesome. We were very amused by the international house of Thespians that they had on the show and they're varying levels commitment to accent work. But one of the reasons why I was into it was just a little bit of the theorizing that

went into, well, this is one of the rare mysteries that I feel like has not been cracked by the audience before the finale, you know, that there is not, that there is still a lot of stuff up in the air that we're not really sure who killed Elena and could it be Jonathan, that seems too easy, could it be grace, they haven't really explained how that would work. It really seems like it had been Henry. That was the watch clubhouse favorite. I obviously was all in on that little guy. And the red herring of all the red herrings

was that there were any red herrings at all. The person who was originally charged with the crime, committed the crime, he was a bad guy, and he gets hunted down by two easily accessible helicopters who spot his range rover among the millions of cars breaking north out of New York City on what seems like a glorious spring day in the Cats Hills.

And, you know, he gets caught. A couple things. I believe it was the great Raymond Chandler who coined the phrase herring. It's just a regular herring of no particular color or hue, except in this case, Hugh Grant. Two, Chris, you haven't lived in New York for eight years, but there are readily accessible helicopters available to all the elites. I know. I'm apparently you can get Uber Blades, right? Uber Blades. You can pick one up at the, what was that the century?

was that like clothing store that had like discount bargains as like century 21 right anyway there's a helipad right down by Zara

on on Prince Street you can just take it wherever you like you don't even have to return it I'm not sure where to begin here because

I have a couple of things I want to hit on I want to hit on the legal system and where we're at with that I want to hit on Sylvie Steinitz

and the Ehrer of her from the story I seriously do want to talk about Elena and the sort of grand treatment of that character in the totality of the show, where do you want to start? I guess what I want to start just on a very macro level is I want to just contextualize my own reactions to the show because one thing that I've definitely picked up on from talking to

people and people have really wanted to talk about this show. You know, and I've joked about it in the past, that there are, we're lucky to have many listeners and there's also a subsector of like a half a dozen women in my life, some in my family, some just friends or colleagues who feel they have the fast track toll booth thing for our relationship and the podcast where they don't have to listen to us. They can just text me and ask for the opinion I gave on the podcast. Right. And all of them have checked in to talk about this show.

And I think that there is a major fork in the road here because I think that the majority of people who watch the show, and I don't mean to sound this. and your binders full of women? Well, just friends of mine and people in my family, but then also looking at Twitter, and I think that you're going to agree with me on this. People really had fun with the show, and it delivered the kind of, you know,

classy who done it that they wanted to have during a difficult time in America on Sunday nights. Yes. And if that's what people wanted out of the show, I think people were generally satisfied, and we can obviously quibble about the specifics of the end. Your boy here, I think definitely, in the minority, but I remained pretty frustrated that the show never wanted to be anything

more than that. And I was particularly frustrated at the end because I think that the no-twist twist-twist that it was Jonathan all along is pretty interesting and compelling. And I think beyond that, once Grace decided to become a Harvard-educated psychologist again after sitting a couple episodes out. That idea. That degree that was dusty. But suddenly, front-centered, doctor,

that seemed baked into a show, this idea that an incredibly successful, let's just call it what it is, this incredibly successful Karen could be so blinkered about her own life that something like this could

happen. And so inoculated from trouble, both by her standing and her degrees, degrees, but also very much her financial privilege, that this would undo everything. And ultimately, the show either didn't have interest in pursuing that

or didn't have the time. It wanted to be kind of a salacious courtroom thriller. And fine. But that was my personal calibration of disappointment with the show because I thought that other stuff was kind of interesting and I may have been in the minority. I thought it was super fun. I thought the show was really

a great distraction over the last couple of weeks. I really enjoyed it. I looked forward to to each Sunday. I watched it linear. I watched it week to week. I never really skipped ahead except for when we had to for Hugh. And I enjoyed the hell out of it. The last episode is not good. Because the last episode is not good for a very specific reason. It's not fun. And it's not actually the show that it was before that. I enjoyed the fact that it was not any kind of satire or analysis of upper-class New York society. But I do think think that it betrayed whatever like light character work it had done going into that final episode by just making everything bend around a twist. Now, that happens all the time. Like twists

are probably a little bit too, they have a little too much gravity in our contemporary storytelling. Like, you know, sort of solving this mystery and what would twist be? But I was kind of taken out of the entire experience when Nicole Kimman's testimony happens. It would have been actually interesting if they had kept Jonathan's public defender. If they had kept the sort of raggedy guy who's eating steak and fries with Grace and is sort of just trying to make a name for himself, but does not have the muscle to kind of try a case like this. They make a huge deal about them paying for Haley Fitzgerald. And I actually really enjoyed that character throughout the season. I thought she was like a welcome, like hard edge, cynical, funny voice, even though she claimed

she's not funny throughout the season. But she gets dunked on in such an embarrassing and public way, both in that last testimony, but the entire like hide the hammer bit, which be, whether that's ever happened in the history of jurisprudence or not, like maybe, maybe not.

But I don't know, I don't know, you have to tell me, because I know you're closer to lawyers than I am. Like, I think that she would get disbarred immediately for that, right? Like that is, you make it sound like on big meat or something.

something. Patient Jack over here. Yeah, I got some lawyers. I know you got lawyers who will eat the case. There's just so many

like guys, this wouldn't, this wouldn't happen. And I actually thought, like, most of what the prosecutor does in Greece's testimony when she does

her cross-examination, isn't it inadmissible? Isn't she basically saying, like, I heard that you had a talk with this person on Skype? Wouldn't they just be like what Skype call?

Well, yes. that's what they said. But that's what they said. And the judge suddenly woke up from his torpor. And was like, you called her. Like, this is your witness, so anything goes, right? You brought this down on yourself. Yeah, I mean, you're asking me to, you know, you're sending me back to my 1L days,

you know, which didn't exist. So I know nothing about whether that was accurate or not. I think generally, the opinion of lawyers, and I am married to one, like, once you enter the courtroom on a TV show, they're just like, that's cute. That's fine. Yeah, right. You know what I mean? Like, let's just let it.

let's let it be what it would be. Yeah, I felt like, first of all, replacing one lawyer with the other was interesting because it changed up the speed, right? But I don't think it was, my initial suspicion was that maybe it was like an 01 visa thing, but in fact, both those actors are British. So HBO was just paying for all those that paperwork regardless, so it didn't really matter. I do wonder if the finale of the undoing will have. an effect on some of the Trump campaign's court cases going forward because I do think it seems possible that they might be more successful if they mirror Haley Fitzgerald and just stand up and sit down in the sassiest manner possible. I really appreciate that actress being like,

how many more pages left? Okay, I'm going to take three of them to sit down because I'm not liking this. I really appreciated that. Okay, so there's the lawyer thing too. But this speaks to my point again, which was the fortune that is just available to them. And you'd think that Nicole Kidman saying, Daddy, can you can you buy me justice, essentially, for however many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars he's all in for at this point between bailing out Jonathan and then paying for this months of the best defense that money can buy. And then he's like, I'm so proud of you for shanking your own husband in this court case. Yes, I love you so much. And then let's, by the way, the helicopter's gas and ready. Like, there is no.

consequence to any of this. And again, like there starts to, occasionally when the show seemed to want a little edge to bleed in, like when they call Miguel to the stand, right? And they once again cast dispersions on the kind of hot, blooded, angry Latino family. And he storms in on them. How dare you do this? Your ghouls. And then the takeaway is, yeah, they're ghouls. But mostly we're just still impressed with Nicole Kidman's poise in her hair and we move on. So I just found it sort of frictionless. It was sort of hard to find a way in on that. I guess we did find the answer to the question, why is Lily Rape hanging around here, which was so that she could sort of surreptitiously tank the case with her old classmate. By doing the Ferris Bueller, like, I saw this person at

Baskin Robbins last night. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, you know, I would just say about the Eleanor character is that I found the sort of like the fatal attraction twist at the end. sort of to be, not twist, but it was sort of this idea that she, that she sort of attacked Jonathan to be unnecessary. I don't know. I, I guess, like, that part, like, rub me the wrong way. I saw some folks on Twitter talking about how, like, Ellen never really gets any kind of agency in this show. She never gets seen by anybody, but these, like, the white eyes of the characters, you know, and it's talked about in that way. And even the way that she shot with her husband is, like, in a different way than like all of the other scenes in the show.

Oh, it's, they use the Chino filter that they used to use on Ryan in the O.C. Yeah. Whenever they would go to his rough and tumble, rough and tumble neighborhood. Yeah. So I thought that that was a little ridiculous. It's right. I mean, the show, that's the thing. And let's just say it again, no one was tuning into the show for its, um, nuanced view on classism in New York City. Like, that's just not what this show was. And it probably was more successful all across the board, because it was laser focused on being

this kind of high-class salacious soap opera. That's what it wanted to be, and it more or less succeeded along those lines. But you're a million percent right that the show kept, in order to make the red herringy show that Kelly wanted to make. And it's worth noting,

you and I have not read the novel this is based on, but one of the things I learned, I think I picked this up from Mark Harris's interview with Hugh Grant that ran this morning. I think on Vulture, people should check that out, is that the book makes it clear from the beginning that Jonathan did it, and it's really more about this character,

the scales falling from her eyes or whatever and slowly realizing this. But to make it a TV show, Kelly wanted to muddy the waters and do this kind of, you know, maybe it's him, maybe it's her thing. And as part of that, they really amped up this,

well, Elena was crazy. She's passionate and crazy, and her husband is angry and hot-blooded, but they weren't characters. I mean, they didn't matter. They only mattered in as much as they kind of briefly, temporarily messed up Nicole Kidman's life

before she could helicopter off to a brighter future. I just, I love the idea also that, like, Nicole Kidman has gone along with this entire thing the whole time. And then Grace gets put on the stand and it's just like, well, I'm under oath. So, you know, it's just like, she's like, if the prosecutor had been like, did Jose Altuvae steal signs, she would just be like, yes, yes, he did. Yes, I have to admit it now. And my years of astrofandom were for naught. One thing I do want to note, though, I hope people listen to our talk with you, Grant,

week. It was great, fun. I thought he was great in this episode. He obviously had a blast in this. Yeah. Great throughout. I mean, he, for as much as the show tried to muddy the waters and chop things up and show flashbacks and sideways and, oh, is it grace, whatever, he was pretty focused on the part he wanted to play. And this comes, this comes across from the Mark Harris interview, too, that he knew from jump that this guy was a narcissistic sociopath and played the hell out of it. And I think his performance throughout is phenomenal. I hope he's recognized with the words for it. I do want to say, He kind of spoiled it for us because when we spoke to him last week, we were saying that we were like, it's Henry, you know.

Well, but not just that. We were like, can you tell us, you know, I know all actors hate doing this because you pretend to be a publicist and like give us something racy or like give us a sizzle for the finale? And he was basically like, oh, well, I do things I've never done before, whatever. And it's just like, well, he's pretty much done everything except club a woman to death. with a hammer. I was holding out hope that what he was referring to was when they get to the bridge, he squirrel jumps off of it and lands on a, like a wave rider being driven by Kenny Towers.

Yes. Goes off to Canada via river travel, river boat travel. I mean, he did seem to know that people could track him by cell phone early in the series because he left his phone in the apartment. So clearly he didn't have real plans to escape because he's driving a car that is presumably like low jacked or whatever with two cell phones beeping away inside of it. And, you know, for people who don't know the region, it's not like you cross the George Washington Bridge and you're at Lake Erie.

You know what I mean? Like, that is a six, seven hour drive. Yes. Until you sniff Niagara Falls. That's a long time of just singing road songs with Hank, you know? Last question for you, for you, Chris. You know, I think long-time listeners know that you were a pretty exceptional lifeguard back in the day. That bridge didn't seem that high. Is that going to take him out?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, here's my thing is what I really want is undoing to Jonathan Frazier runs the yard. I want prison John. And you know that he great would do it. You know he wants to be challenged. Just get him start up. He's the shot caller now. Oh, I love it. Yeah, he's big dog. Nobody messes with it. So that would be the redoing. And then you could do a Nicole Kidman spin-off called the updoing, which is about when she gets a ponytail and tries to make that work.

Look, it's funny. I guess I just want to point out, like, I am falling victim to something that I think that we've been talking about, which is like we are at this moment when TV, particularly prestige TV, like that's a pretty overused term. And HBO, it's found a nice little pocket

here for these very, you know, sort of saucy soap operas, basically, HBO version of them. And I keep getting distracted and being like, well, this is supposed to be better than this. And I don't know if it needed to be better than this. It executed, right? So I think that it's probably going to be considered a success, even though neither of us like the finale. It's a stripped down version of it because the big little lies version of this story is like a B plot about Lily Raib and a C plot about Donald's Island and a D plot about the cops or or about somebody else. You know, it's got a certain sustainability to it,

and it would probably feel a little bit less like light in the foot the way undoing to me. I never dreaded watching it. I always felt like it was going to be propulsive and pretty, you know, edge of your seat viewing, even if it was like empty headed at times. But it definitely, this is an example of like the sort of the downside of that kind of storytelling, because that's all you got at the end. and if you screw it up at all, then nobody really cares about what happens to Grace.

She's not an identifiable character in any human being kind of way. I mean, and you're not helping yourself when your last image of your relatable heroin is safely ensconced back on her private helicopter. No. And that was the end. Was there anyone when it ended?

Also, just like, now what? Just takes Henry from a crime scene. It's just like, we're out. They don't need a statement or anything. We are extrading. I mean, that's the thing. Sorry to keep harping on this, but like, that's more interesting to me that these guys, that Donald Sutherland is a nation state unto himself, right? Like, he clearly has all access past to the Met. As people have been obsessing over Twitter, like, he has an apartment that overlooks three major landmarks in Manhattan that in other, like, unless you're in Doctor Who's Tardis, don't abut each other. Like, his version of reality, their version of reality is kind of interesting, but instead it's a cocoon the show retreats back to. So it is what it was.

We're going to get into our conversation with Mal about the Mandalorian. Then we have Melissa coming to talk about all right, all right, her oral history of days confused. I just want to say a little bit of housekeeping. If you have not checked out, please do check out a teacher because we've got Hannah Fidel coming on Thursday to talk about that.

We are also going to be going heavy on industry on Thursday. And then we have some special guests coming on the following Monday to talk about industry. Also, I'm very excited to fire up small acts and we'll talk about those movies. These are the director Steve McQueen's series of five. He's calling them films.

Some are shorter, some are longer, all about the Black British and immigrant experience throughout the last few decades and hearing rave reviews about them and looking forward to checking those out. All right, let's get into our conversation with Mao. All right, Andy and I are so, so happy to be joined by Mallory Rubin, our old running buddy from the Thrones After shows,

and our pal in real life to talk about the Mandalorian. Mal, what's up? Just an honor and a privilege and an actual delight to be here with you today. Thank you both for having me. I wanted Mal to come on. We wanted to talk to her about the Jedi, the most recent episode of The Mandalorian,

which featured Rosario Dawson, playing a beloved Star Wars canon character. And when I asked her, you know, she said she was a little rusty with her cannon. And I was like, you know... Didn't want to let you down. Well, I mean, with Andy and I... I do have six people.

pages of notes prepared for what that's worth. I knew it. How much time do we have? Well, before we get to your notes, I want to just do a little bit of big picture stuff and also just sort of general impressions because I think that this show... By big picture stuff, do you mean a movie draft for like 2008? Because Mallory and I are... Mallory and I are uninterested.

Little cynical there. Uninterested. Count me in, honestly. I want to talk a little bit because I was... thinking about how this show has now entered the throne zone, where you can watch the show and you can just enjoy the hell out of what you've just seen, the 30 to 45 minute episode you just watched and the story you're watching on screen. And you can take it and you can go and you can go about your life,

go to the other room you're allowed to go to in your house. Or you can watch the show and then spend hours afterwards reading about it and reading about the characters and reading about what this might lead to characters we might see down the line. And this is when I remember when we were kind of like a season or two into Game of Thrones and it started to become this huge pop culture phenomenon outside of just something that was like kind of like for the very specific fans of the story, people started reading Jason's column.

People started listening to you guys on binge mode so much. You know, people really were interested in having this sort of extracurricular study of the story. And it feels like that's where we've kind of arrived with the Mandalorian, although still with the format of this adventure of the week, episodic, almost like 50s TV Western-style storytelling. For you, Mal, I mean, is it, is it, is it a, it must be a pleasure to have another thing that's like that. Well, as you know, Chris, I don't have much else going on.

So it's a great gift, really, to be able to, uh, immerse myself fully in a world that I love and be surrounded by characters that I love. It's funny that you, you ask that and open with that because I think that was the thing I was most interested to hear from you guys about, actually. Like Ben Limburg wrote about this in his column for The Ringer, recapping this episode, which is outstanding. I would encourage everyone to read it and to read Ben every week. This idea of the two lenses through which you can watch the show,

and whether it is as satisfying for the viewers who maybe don't have that history with the characters, for people who didn't stand up and shout when Osoka mentioned Thrawn's name in this episode, for example, or who don't have history with Asoka. who aren't speculating about whether Ezra Bridger might be poised to enter the story, all three of which are things we should return to and discuss in more detail later in this episode. But to me, that's like one of the great master strokes of what's happening right now, is that it can kind of be anything you want it to be. And, you know, each individual person can only have their own experience, obviously,

in their own, you know, history and their own desire to explore the world, whatever the extent they choose. But I thought that this episode in particular, which was my favorite episode of The Mandalorian, and genuinely and truly one of my favorite episodes of TV ever, full stop. I thought it was incredible. Is that if you're coming to it and you're interested in Baskar and what is going on with Dinn under that helmet and you've just been waiting, I know you do, you're like, when am I going to get a Baskar Spear? When? You've just been waiting. waiting, waiting, to learn baby Yoda's name, to understand more about his history with the force, all of that, meaning the story that is unfolding anew in front of us, the story that

is specific to this show and this creation. What an episode. And if you haven't quite had that ember of hope that Star Wars can properly unify canon snuffed out, which I had not, this was like a transcendent experience. Because I think that, and I'll stop talking soon, I promise. Nope. I got excited once I started. I'm sorry. One of the pitfalls, and we don't need to turn this into a rise of Skywalker dunk fest or anything, but I think pretty objectively. Greenwald per dump.

I have six pages of notes about that. I'm sure. One of the pitfalls of Star Wars period in recent years has come when any games. given iteration has attempted to connect back maybe too fully to the origin, to the original trilogy to the roots. I think that when Star Wars does that well, though, it's still one of the most satisfying things in storytelling. And I think that this episode was canon unification at a level that I wasn't quite sure it was possible anymore. The threads that have been brought into this story, the Clone Wars animated television series, which I adore, the Rebels television series,

which I adore, both of which are Dave Filoni's babies, basically, and he was the director and writer of this episode. You're talking about novelizations, original novels, the prequels, Anakin's story, which is, of course, the Skywalker saga. There's some Snoke Palpatine we could get into here, which I'm less excited about. All of it works. All of it works. And this just feels like it's setting up not only to position the Mandalorian for these really rich installments that simultaneously

give us that adventure of the week episodic experience, that's just kind of like poppy and fun, but also for all this richer, connected text, not only for this show, but for the wider universe and galaxy. That's one of the things that's the most exciting about Star Wars, thinking about how big the galaxy

can be. This kind of like with Thrones, I think that Mallory and I are good examples of the different types of fans that a show can engender. And I am 100% the casual fan of this show. In fact, more casual than Mallory's straw casual fan that she suggested that even uses the Mandalorian's name, which I had forgotten. And frankly, had no interest in remembering. And yet I still feel very connected to the adventures of the show and enjoy it. And I think that what's really amazing, and we talked a little bit about this last week, when we were we

we were praising the previous episode, which is not nearly as good as this one, is how just profoundly easy they make this look when, in fact, it's incredibly complicated what they're doing. Yes. They are tightrope walking something that I thought, not just in the realm of Star Wars, I thought was kind of impossible with contemporary giant IP shared universe storytelling. And that's the problem of every plank of the, what I don't know, now I'm going to losing my metaphor, but every plank of the Besscar armor, do you want to do that? Every paldron.

Has to both be on its own, has to be a story in and of itself, and also advance the cause of the larger narrative and please everyone. And that's how you end up with, you know, manic nothing burgers like the Rise of Skywalker that try to do everything to everyone all at the same time and end up doing nothing. And what this is doing is giving us characters we care about and set up. that we understand that are very palatable and entertaining and enjoyable, well, simultaneously skitching on the back of the giant Star Destroyer of Canon to the exact right degree. This show would be a very different beast, and I think it would kind of be a disappointment.

If it was the, we are going to tell explicitly, this is what happened after the, after Return of the Jedi, setting up whatever the hell happened in the subsequent. Quint trilogy. This is the show that will finally spackle in that hole. That actually seems to be part of its project, but that's not its explicitly stated project. It's not just going to be about the Dark Sabre and Assoc and all of this. It's about these two people as they kind of hopscotch around and dance between the raindrops. And I wonder if this might be overly simplistic, but I kind of wonder if it just comes down to the right hiring decisions. And they seem to have given the show over to a what seems to be a healthy working partnership between

John Favro, who is a big tent, big picture kind of mass market filmmaker who clearly likes Star Wars, Chris, in the way that you and I did. We liked action figures and we liked seeing the movies when we were kids. And Dave Faloni, whose work I was ignorant of, but has spent the bulk of his professional, his lauded professional career worrying in the little crevices of this larger story. And they seem to have a very balanced working relationship that allows a show like this to be both all the time. And it's very pleasurable for it. Yeah, I think one of the coolest things that's happened between season one of Mandalorian and season two of Mandalorian is the importance of Mandalorian in the world of Star Wars. Because when this show first came on, it was kind of like,

this is on streaming. We're going to do this episodically. we can take our time maybe connecting it to canon but what it is is like it's not a curio but it was definitely like a little bit on the margins and I don't think it's an overstatement

to say that with Friday's episode it took center stage in the entire franchise you know it's it's hard for me to even imagine them doing a post-ray Star Wars story at this point because they've clearly found

a place where the chronology of this galaxy makes a ton of sense right now. And they can kind of play within these years in between these movies. They can overlap with the movies. They can tell different sides of different stories.

So there's all of that. And I feel like there was something about this episode that felt very momentous. The running time was longer than most Mandalorian episodes. It felt more significant. There were obviously these big reveals. I'll say another thing.

Mal, you were asking about, like, Ben's point about who watches this or why do you watch this? If this show, to pick a random TV show, a TV show honestly random, a TV show that I adore, if this show looked like justified, if it just looked like a TV show,

I don't think it would hit with me as hard. We did literally get Raylan Givens this season, right? I know, I know. You'll never hear me say a bad word about any justified at all. I'm just saying that if it looked a little bit more like a traditional television, vision show, I don't think that I would be as engaged with it. Now, that being said, I'm not necessarily like, well, this is just obviously an homage to throne of blood. You know, it's like, I think that there

are some very obvious hat tips going on here. But it's the way that they've internalized those hat tips. It's the way that they're like, the cool way to show Asoka showing up is just to see the lightsaber in this foggy, fucked up forest, you know, and to shoot it from the perspective of the people on top of this battleman in this fort who are just like doom is coming, you know? And that's actually tricks that George Lucas was using. That's how Vader gets introduced when they're in the hallway and they're just shaking. You don't see Vader. You see people's reaction to what they think is coming. That's just good storytelling. You associate that first moment with the sound of the breathing and the reaction of the people that he's about to. In many ways,

Chris, the Mandalorian is an homage to fighting in hallways because even when they're in a town, it's somehow more fighting in hallways. And I'm not complaining. That's important to the franchise. I think, Chris, at that point you just made is, feels really fundamental to what set this episode apart from even as you're saying, prior installations of this actual show. Like, take another Faloni episode, actually, from season one, episode five, the Gunslinger, the Tatooine episode, right? Now, of course, we have since been back to Tatooine and it's really fun. And I think if you revisit that, episode actually, there's a lot there to enjoy. But that episode, which again, I still liked. I mean,

I've had fun every week of the Mandalorian, elicited a little bit more of a almost like Force Awakens response from the fan base of do I need to kind of keep having this same experience or like Easter eggs and an homage for the sake of saying, hey, you know this thing. Like you will recognize this creature or this dune, right? And the distinct. ultimately between facsimiles and attempts to replicate or approximate something and between love letters that actually tap into why people

care about the thing in the first place. And I think that's what this episode nailed. And I think that that gets back to the point that you guys were making before, too, about the Favreau-Falloni partnership. Like, that's what I associate most with Favro right now. And I think probably just because we're doing Benjamin Marvel. And I've been thinking a lot about like, do we talk enough about what an amazing thing it was to make Ironman and launch the MCU that way? And the heart of that, you know, of course, you could talk about all the focus groups where even the people who were

doing it were surprised about the kids basically saying, I want to play with this toy and how much of everything that followed came from that. But that ultimately the seed of it that flowered into this amazing thing that is like to find cinema for a decade was, what if we had like the people who really love the stories make them. And I just think that, like, that's been the thing that has stood out to me the most about getting more familiar over the last few years with Dave Faloni's work, like this idea that he was kind of knighted by George Lucas himself to inherit the aspects of the story that I think are most precious to people, which is, and I don't want to, like, introduce a bunch of straw man or generalize and imply that my experience with Star Wars is the

same as anybody else's. But when I watched the Clone Wars and when I watched, rebels. I was really like, this is what Star Wars is about. And of course, if I sit down to watch a New Hope or Empire Strikes Back, it's still going to be one of the most awe-inspiring experiences that you could possibly have as somebody consuming pop culture, like, no matter how many times you've seen it, right? But the Clone Wars takes place in the same general time frame as Attack the Clones and Sith. In other words, the prequels, the derided prequels. Now, I ride for Sith, but that's a separate podcast. Wow. And that was when people fell in love with Asoka. And it was this amazing ability to simultaneously

establish this character who meant so much to so many people on her own for her own choices and her own distinction and the things that she stood for and represented, but also because of what she unlocked about a story that we already had an attachment to, her relationship with Anakin, I mean, we should just say, she is Anakin Skywalker's Padawan. She's Darth Vader's Padawan before he became Darth Vader. That relationship is, I think, as foundational to how I think about Star Wars is any in the in the canon, which is kind of an amazing thing to say out loud, but it's true. And so seeing her enter live action at last, it's one of the things that I think a lot of people who have grown so attached to her character have just been waiting on and waiting on this, this, this. figure who is elemental to the universe. Finally there. So let me, before we get into the specifics

of who she is, because, you know, I think this would come as no surprise to anyone. I didn't know that, have not seen those shows, had no idea other than like, oh, that's, she's a meme or a gift, like people really like this character. So let me start over, sorry at the very beginning, and by saying with Grogu's birth? Well, I have some notes on the name. Um, uh, I am first and foremost, as everybody knows, a Rosario Dawson fan. And I can neither confirm nor deny that I knew about this. But I will say that my reaction to this was, yeah. Well, the second flexes was when I was texting with her after watching the episode

and asking her to come on the watch. She confirmed and did not deny that Lucasfilm would not like her doing press outside of what they agreed to. So she sends her regrets and is unable to answer all. of our questions about her at this point. Just to say how fucking cool this is. Because I think, you know, I worked with her.

I spent like a whole year with her. And I think that there are three things that really, really, really, really animate her. One is geek culture. New Jersey politics. Well, I'll add, I'll get to that. Geek culture, Star Wars, Star Trek, comic books. Two, being an action star and being a boss.

and three, getting more voters registered and involved in our electoral process, and the election is over. So to see her get to do these things, because I think I've said this in other contexts on the show, like we would have a scene in Breyer Patch and her character would have to like run across a parking lot, and they would bring in a stunt double, and the stunt double would be fine. And then she would do it in heels without breaking a sweat. She was born to play this part, and what was so exciting is that apparently, and Mallory, you can speak to this, The fandom cast her as this part quite some time ago. Yep.

And we've spent this season of the Mandalorian talking about just like one of the things that makes it feel so handmade in the best possible way is that the casting decisions are not coming from central casting or else Amy Sedaris wouldn't be a recurring character on the show, you know, or Horatio Sands with Gil's. It's cast with love and with affection or probably friendship in a lot of these cases. and that when it comes time to deliver, you know, to the fandom and deliver to our friends like Mallory, they didn't fuck it up. They didn't overthink it, right? They were like, here's a person who is born to do this and everybody wants to do it.

Guess what? We're going to do it and we're going to deliver. And even as someone who had never encountered this character or even knew this factoid until you just dropped it on us, I felt it. I felt the force when she appears because it was beautifully framed and it commuted. to us that this mattered.

And so I know I'm beating the same drum over and over again, or in the spirit of this episode, the giant novelty gong, but they don't overthink it and they don't screw it up. And it's really hard to overstate how important that is. So now tell us why she matters. Got to take a deep breath here. Maybe do some stretches. All right.

I'll try to keep. I will actually try to keep this quick. Okay. Why does Asoka matter? First of all, I just will quickly shout out Ashley Eckstein, who voiced the character in both Clone Wars and Rebels. It was awesome. Osoka. Anakin Skywalker's Badwan.

You can read some very funny interviews with Dave Filoni over the years where he talks about what it was like when George Lucas told the people who were helping to make the Clone Wars that Anakin had a bad one. And they were all like, no, he doesn't. What are you talking about? And George's like, no, he does. Classic George Lucas Star Wars. Anyway, she is a main character in Clone Wars. She has her own novel, 2016, E.K. Johnson novel called Osoka. That's really good, really fun to read.

She's in Rebels as well and connects to that cast and that story in a really interesting way. Why does she matter? Top-level summation here. First of all, she's a woman in Star Wars. And that means a lot to a lot of people. She is obviously introduced into the canon long after Leia. But I think in a lot of ways really paved the way for Ray. And I say that from the perspective of everyone trying to get back into the headspace

where we all really remembered and appreciated how meaningful Ray's creation was and not just the post-rise of Skywalker malaise that everybody is in, right? her relationship again to Anakin, really a defining thing in the show. The way that you understood his character and his arc, not only the evolution, the fall to become Darth Vader,

but the humanity inside that allowed him to then become Anakin again, obviously on the original trilogy, she's fundamental to that. In part because, and this is the, This is a huge thing. She leaves the Jedi order.

So I don't know if you guys feel this way too, but one of the things that I'm always like slamming my head into my hand about when I watch Star Wars is like, Yoda, Mace Windew, can we just have a chat about like a better way to handle this maybe? And then would we have Darth Vader? Would Palpatine have won and the rigidity of the Jedi strictures and how many bad things happened because of that? And I think the really interesting thematic exploration

that opens up about what happens when there's no room for subtlety or nuance in a person's life or how they choose to live that life, right? Osoka, a lot of people discover all of the plot points on their own, but spoiler was falsely accused of something and left the Jedi order in protest. She leaves very close to when Anakin eventually has his fall. And so you understand his fall totally anew based on what the loss of that relationship did to him. We get some very cool stuff. in season seven of Clone Wars, which was just on recently that gave us a couple more entries into their relationship together. One of the most, and I mean this sincerely, this is not hyperbolic.

One of the most exceptional duels, lightsaber duels in Star Wars history comes between Osoka and Vader and Rebels. It is animated, of course, and just the action of it, the pop of it, the flare, the color. It's thrilling to watch. And there's just like a gut-wrenching moment. I almost sent it you guys, texted it to you earlier and then I knew you wouldn't watch. When she breaks Vader's helmet and she can see, because she like can't accept that this has happened to her master and her friend, that this is really him, that this is what he's become. And when she sees his face and she hears him say her name and then she's like, I won't leave you, it's just devastating.

It's so sad and so beautiful. The white lightsabers. So she has originally, she fights with two blades, as you saw, a regular lightsaber, and then a Shodob Blade. She's this really distinctive fighting style. And that's obviously part of it, too. She's, she's elite. She's a badass. There's a, there's a, there's a, a Faloni interview from a couple years ago where he basically was like the, the only people who we could have put against her would have been Vader and the emperor. Like, that's the caliber of fighter that we're talking about. And after she put aside the blades, the exact canon differs in her novel and in what we

on season seven of Clone Wars, but basically she has to go into hiding, right, after Order 66. As we see in this episode, when we learn so much more about little baby Yoda Grogu, we should never lose sight of the fact that anybody with force abilities

was in grave peril after the empire's rise. And she ends up forging these blades anew by purifying the previously bled cyber crystals. So like when, I remember when I said, keep this short.

When when we see a red blade, it's because a chiber crystal has been bled, like impurified. And so she purified them anew and she has these iconic white saber blades that not only just look really cool

and are fun to watch pop on your screen, but again, they represent that she is unique in the vast constellation of Star Wars. She has made different choices than people. And the ability to simultaneously forge these lasting and essential bonds with characters like Obi-Wan and Anakin, Ezra, Sabine,

but also to choose her own path, to be an independent thinker, to not just accept what other people have told her has made her very special to me, and I think to a lot of people. So a huge part of her story has been untold, and I think we're finally going to get it. It's not just her story being untold.

What I am continually shocked and amazed by when I speak to you or, you know, or other super fans like Chris Ryan, And it's truly stunning Star Wars 20-year commitment into not putting the good parts in the movies. Like that's really, really, really wild. And Chris and I are people who have long championed, not necessarily for clicks, although maybe for like reads in the old magazine days. Like, you know, the most popular album by an artist isn't the best or like the deep cuts or we like the weird books that didn't quite work. Like that's a thing.

I get that. Maybe, you know, you order off menu at In and Out or whatever. but like at least the in and out main menu is good because it's cheeseburgers. You know what I mean? Like everything you're saying minus some nouns and adjectives I didn't understand sounded very complicated and compelling

and worthwhile. And it's in a cartoon. I like cartoons. Chris doesn't. He's the bad guy here. But it's in shows that the vast majority of people who even, you know, casually say they're Star Wars fans

haven't engaged with. That's so bizarre. So maybe the reason why Mandalorian is good, I'm just spitballing here, is because Lucasville made the decision to put the good parts in the show? Yeah. Is that far-fetched?

Like, that's weird, because it's not just, they didn't talk about bleeding crystals, no offense. They just gave us this badass heroin who now we like. So this is the crucial question that I'm kind of curious to hear Mal's take on.

And you can't possibly answer this because, who knows? But one of the interesting things that they have been doing with Mandalorian is introducing people, in recent characters, be they beloved ones from the canon

or just kind of like, oh, interesting. And then kind of leaving the planet that they're on and going somewhere else and doing something else. And for as much as we've now talked about Asoka and everybody else

in this episode, this is the same episode as every Mandalorian episode. Mandalorian shows up with the child. He needs something. The person who has that thing is like, I will give it to you,

but you have to do something for me. Mandelurian does that. And then we find out at the end, in this case, she gives him just like another kind of breadcrumb trail to follow. So they're still telling the story in the way that works for them in this very small box

that the Mandalorian operates in narrative-wise. I'm curious whether or not this will be an inflection point for the series, whether or not these storylines that are obviously bubbling right under the surface will start to be a little bit more prevalent. or whether there's... So this was episode six, right?

Five. Five? So there's three more, right? There's three more episodes this season. Will the last three episodes be... He goes and fights a cave monster here, and then he goes to an ice planet there, and then he goes to a swamp planet here.

Or are we going to start to see some of this stuff converge where Thrawn is obviously mentioned in this episode. That's who she's asking Elspeth about in the kill-bibus. homage that was just fucking sick? Or will Moff Gideon come back? Like, are we going to start to get a little bit more continuity and serialization or is it going to remain episodic? And this is a five, six year plan for Lucasville. So my guess, my prediction founded, I'll be honest,

more on my personal desire. than on anything else, is that it's going to be both. And I think if we pan back to two episodes ago, the heiress, when Katie Sackoff shouts to all my Starbuck, Battlestar Galactica heads out there,

came in as Bogdan, another key figure from the animated shows in the Philoniverse. She voiced the character in those shows as well. I think that a character like Bo, A couple points here. A character like Bo, I think, is more likely than Osoka and Thron and Ezra, who I'll get to in a minute, to play a role in the Mandalorian moving forward. Because Bo has direct deep ties to key figures in the main cast of this show. Mof Gideon, the Dark Sabre. Bo wielded the Dark Saber.

So what happened there during the Great Purge and the fall of Mandelor? What exactly are we going to learn about Dyn's history, that child of the watch line that we got from Bo in that episode? How does that connect to what fans like you guys already understood about Death Watch and the role that Death Watch had played in Mandalorian culture? There's a lot to mind there. And I suspect, given what has unfolded so far in the two seasons of the show about Mandelor, about the way we will see the attempt to revive Mandelor happen on this show, I think. I think that the Asoka Thrawn stuff is, I think this was a pilot set up. So that's, that was what I was going to ask you, Andy, is that, you know, I mentioned earlier that it feels like they're pushing Mandalorian more to the center of. of Lucasfilm, frankly.

Like that I don't even know where we're at with the development of the various movies that, you know, we're being talked about. And there's a Kevin Feige movie, Ryan Johnson movies. There are a variety of different projects going in any one time. Currently what we know is that Rogue One,

there's a Rogue one prequel. There's an Obi-Wan show. The Cash in Andor show. Yeah. Right. And that there is a, and that there's an Obi-Wan show. And then a couple of times of the course of the season,

It's been kicked around that this is, there are other spinoffs coming from the Mandalorian, whether it's with Gina Krona's character, whether it's Bo Katana or whether it's Asoka. Like, this is the engine now, is what I'm saying. And it's, it's the smart play. It's just so much smarter to build these from the ground up

as opposed to start on the highest possible, loudest, noisiest level, and then tamp these stories down onto television. I mean, the ceiling for the show was always so high because I think, even if it had remained the way you had, the way you just described to Chris, the way it began,

right, as like kind of marginal but entertaining and family friendly and a nice way to start a streaming service. Mallory, I know you're with me on this, Dainu. Like, that is enough for Disney Blues for everyone,

because after years of kind of bumpy management, that was a nice middle of the road success that could be pointed to for future growth. It's better than that. It's richer than that. It's deeper than that. And every planet they go to, there's a spinoff there. I'm not saying many people would want the ice fishing spinoff on the Kalamari planet that I personally want.

But I'm saying that there's opportunity on each of these places with each of these guest stars and the way that they're being handled is seems now. What's brilliant about all of this is that we've been saying, oh, this is old fashion, it's gentle. but if you just put on your Bob Chappellatech capitalist hat, it's also savagely brilliant, right? Because we're getting just enough of each of these characters to want a little bit more. And then they can say, well, is this character trending well in which quadrant of fandom

and what can we do with them? And this guy's the limit for the streaming service, especially now that people are getting used to, oh, there's a movie event or there's a rentable thing or whatever. So, and I'm sure Mallory can speak to this and probably will again as these stories come up, you know, when we talk to you more about it. if they want to have more Asoka,

does that mean there's an Asoka show? What does the show even mean? Maybe it's a four-episode mini event where she finds the person that she's talking about and does the thing. Isn't that exciting? It might not be worthy of a feature film that has to open around the world

and make a billion dollars. And it's more than a one episode spin-off. But here you go. One size doesn't have to fit all when you're building from this is the template. So I... I agree with all that, and I would just, I would draw one distinction, which is, I think that what you're observing about kind of like the very organic, almost constant test balloons of

hated you like this planet, hated you like this character, would you like to spend more time there, has been consistent across almost every episode. What we got in this episode was different, because this opened up again the question of what happened to the rest of these characters lives. People have been wondering about this. So the last, and guys, stop me if you've heard this before,

I'll try to keep this quick. The spoiler, epilogue of rebels, which concluded is Asoka. At that point, in a white robe carrying a white staff, a very clear,

and Faloni has acknowledged, this, he often compares Osoka to Gandalf. She's his Gandalf figure and she had graduated from being Asoka the gray to Asoka the white. We see her in gray robes in this episode. What does that mean about what we thought we understood about the timeline? I'll come back to that in a moment. Asoka and Sabine ran another key character in the Mandalore verse, setting off to find Ezra Bridger, the protagonist of rebels. One of the Jedi who is out there where we do not know. And we still do not know.

And I think and I hope that the put Grogu on the seeing stone, have him reach out through the force and see if anyone reaches back is how Ezra is going to come back into the story. Malli, I have to ask, Ezra, does he get the Dainu reference? Is he one of us? Ezra. Ezra doesn't roll on Shepard. Thomas. Is this return of the Judi? Like, is this going to happen for us?

Listen, if that can get you to check out rebels, then let's, let's roll with it, man. Let's see what happens. I feel like our people aren't always the rebels, you know? Please go, go on. So again, spoiler, Thron and Ezra. And Thron is, as quick as possible version of this I can give is that he is a iconic Star Wars villain from the EU, from what is now Legends canon, who was brought back into the main canon by Philoni in Rebels. He was the bad guy in the books that came out in the 80s, right? Right, exactly. So you can read The Timothy's On books and get a better feel for a Thron.

Blue skin, red eyes, this like master tactician loves art as a great art collection. A little bit like Donald Sutherland in the undoing. Ezra and Thrawn disappear together. Ezra basically sacrifices himself to. take Thron off the map, shouts to the pergels, the space whales who can jump into hyperspace.

No, you guys, I've lost to the space whales. So, to me, Osoka trying to find Thron is Asoka trying to find Ezra. And that's how this is all going to come back together. Whether we get an Asoka movie

and Asoka show, or whether we basically get the continuation of rebels and live action, I don't know, but I feel like it's heading that way. Of course, there's a less pleasant alternative,

which I think we have to mention given the grogoo of it all, which is that the person who's going to hear him is Palpatine, right? Because... Oh, no. They wouldn't. They wouldn't do it. I hope not. But I don't want to totally ignore the fact that last episode, Dr. Pershing comes back into

it, the idea of the Strandcast, what they're mining. Well, Baby Yoda's high midaclory and count blood for the cases with the... snokey-looking clones. I just, again, give me Ezra, please, but... One of the reasons why the Mandalorian is so pure still, even 13 episodes in, is because it is still in those beautiful early days when it can be what any of us thinks it should be. It hasn't yet had to commit to being the thing that it ultimately will be.

Right. It doesn't have an endgame yet. And because of that, I can watch it this way. I think Chris, to some degree, watches it this way, too. I think of it, and I consider it through the lens of a low-key, occasionally high-key repudiation of 7, 8, and 9, and how they mismanage things for the last few years. That opinion really works for you. It really works for me, and I don't think I'm speaking out of school when I say I think it works for people who are happily employed at Lucasville.

Sure. I'm not saying that, like, in and of itself, there's like a rebel alliance within the company. I mean, the company is a company. They make choices, and some are good and some are bad. but I do think that even from my tangential knowledge of people who work there, they are not blind to mistakes that were made, you know? And I think that everyone is thrilled with the success of this. And part of the success of it, repudiation is a big word.

But paving a new path, let's say, I think feels to me baked into it. And so as soon as you start saying unpleasant words like Snoke, or even in the other direction, like Wato or whatever, like it's not pure. anymore. And I think Favro has the weight. I mean, they hired him to do this and he did the damn thing. And I don't think it's, I don't think we're just

grasping at straws and we say, I think that his love of the series ends with the Ewak singing Jub Jub. I don't think he wants to go there. So I think we're safe. Mal, thank you so much for joining me and Andy today. You really, honestly, you expanded our universe.

You are, yes, you are. Everybody should be listening to binge mode. It's one of the best podcasts out there. They're doing Marvel right now. And Mal, we'll have to have you back on to talk about Mandalorian as we wrap it up. I would love to. I'm eternally yours and Grogu. Thanks for having me.

Thanks, Mal. We'll take a quick break and get to Melissa Bears right after this. The playoffs are here and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses. predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant.

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Book your spring break now. Okay, we're back, and Chris, even though we spoke to Mallory, at great length, we didn't even get into Baby Yoda's name, which I'm cool with never saying. You could stay over Thursday, but it was a real record scratch moment. bit. I was like, grogo. I also was sure that they had like spent two or three years like loosely market testing it. You know what I mean? Right. The best theory I heard was that they gave both the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda super dumb names so that no one would use them and just keep calling them Baby Yoda and the Mandalorian. Yeah. So I support that theory. Okay. Moving on quickly,

Chris and I are so happy anytime we get to have friends in the podcast. And we, here comes another one. One of our oldest and dearest, who we used to work with back at Spin Magazine back in the day, is Melissa Mayers. And Melissa has spent the last few years working on an oral history of the beloved 1993 Richard Linklater movie, Dazed and Confused. And the book is now out in stores. It's called All Right, All Right, All Right. And we were so happy to have Melissa on the show to talk to us about the book, the movie, her relationship with Richard Linklater, her conversations with the cast, what Nikki Kat is up to these days, all of it. I think we say this in our conversation with Melissa, but I just think it's worth saying now again before we get into it. Even if you

don't have a strong opinion about this movie, even if you haven't seen it in a while, this book is still worth checking out. Yeah, it is definitely, it feels like it tells the story of movies in the 90s in a lot of ways. And it's a hell of an entertaining read. And because this is the holiday time, let us also say, if and when you buy this book, and you should, don't buy it from a big box store. Don't do Amazon. Go to your local bookstore. They have it or they'll order it for you. You have a couple weeks till the big holidays. You can get it in time. Support your local businesses and your local bookstores. That's what Randall Pink Floyd would want you to do. Definitely. So that guy, that guy cared about the little guy. He did actually. Right.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's get into our chat with Melissa. Chris and I are so thrilled and pleased to be joined by an old and dear friend of us, Melissa Mayors, who is a brilliant writer, critic, journalist, thinker, and now the author of a fantastic book, All Right, All Right, All Right, All Right, The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Days and Confused. Out now in Bookstores everywhere. Melissa, thank you for coming on the watch. Oh, this is the best. It's so good to be on with you guys. Melissa, I also, wait, Chris, I got the title of the book wrong. She may notice it. I bet Melissa, as a stick with her details. I called it the oral history of Days and Confused, but you, being the generous person you are, called it an oral history, leaving the door open for future oral histories. You know, I believe it's actually the oral history, but you must have

the galley, which says... I do. Oh, wow. You were being too modest. I just had published on my e-book oral history of days and confused. Oh, good. Okay. Because I saw that little window of daylight there. I know. I have much of the stuff that's on the cover has not a lot to do with me, except for the title. And your name, which is rightfully there. And hasn't changed. So we are thrilled to have you here. Dase and Confused is obviously a very important movie to many people, and people have very strong opinions of it. More people than I even realized.

And I know this is where all conversations about this book for you began, including the one we had last week for the Austin Film Society. But I feel like for our listeners, it's worth getting into it this way too, because there are many movies that are beloved and there are many movies that have become cult films. Why this movie and why you and why devote this many years of your life to this project? Well, I knew there'd be good stories behind the scenes for lots of obvious reasons. Like, it's kind of a hinge point in a lot of people's lives for Richard Linklater, obviously. It's this first studio film and it was a lot of people's first movies like, you know,

obviously Matthew McConaughey. But I think personally what made me interested is that I read an interview with Richard Linklater saying that he wanted dazed and confused to be an anti-nistalgia movie. And it just felt funny to me that this anti-nistalgia movie has become the biggest nostalgia movie for so many people that I know that makes them nostalgic about the 70s or about high school. And now I think it makes a lot of people nostalgic for the 90s.

So that was the first question was like, how did this anti-nistalgia movie become the biggest nostalgia movie of all time? Was Days like a big movie for you when it first came out? Or was it something that you eventually came to a little later? Yeah, I mean, it definitely was. I saw it in the theater my first year of high school.

So I feel like it was kind of, I was the prime audience for this movie. And it's funny, you know, it didn't really feel like the 70s to me. It felt like this is your future. Like, this is what the next four years of your high school life are going to be like. We're just kind of exciting and terrifying. Were you still wiping the ketchup and mustard off your face in the movie theater as you were seeing it? I mean, you were not freshmanized, though, of course.

I was not freshmanized. Oh, good. But I think, you know, like, I'd never smoked weed before when I saw that movie. I'm like, oh, that's what smoking weed is like. And, like, I'd never, like, been to a real high school party. I mean, like, I was a real, you know, all of this just felt like this is what's going to happen in your life, you know? Yeah, yeah.

It's such an interesting point to make because I think that there is a, even across the eras, there's a common language of high school movies that have kind of taught us almost in a strange direction what high school should be like. I mean, this is, because we're all essentially the same age. We were all in high school when this movie came out. And this, coupled with the John Hughes movies of the previous generation, and what have you, like, oh, there's a certain way of being and a certain set of expectations of the types of fun

or frustrations you might have. Can you talk a little bit about why this movie got those things right? Yeah, so, I mean, I grew up with the John Hughes movies, and none of them felt even slightly relatable to me. Like, I like some of them for different reasons. But they all seem to be about kids wanting to be rich. And, you know, there's always like some kids' mansion that the kids are partying into

or someone's jumping into a pool or like, you know, something, it was just this world that I just could not relate to. And everyone kind of seemed like they were 45 years old. What's funny about dazed is it felt so much more real to me.

Like, nothing really happens in this movie. It's all just these kids hanging out, doing nothing, really being bored. And just kind of, most of the movie is them waiting for something cool to happen. Like, I think Andy, you mentioned, you're like, the hinge point of this movie is like someone going to a party

that's not actually happening anymore, like a party that's canceled. Yeah. And that's like the pinnacle of drama in this movie. But it just felt real to me and really relatable. Like you look at those John Hughes movies and by comparison, Dase and Dase to Confuse kind of looks like a documentary almost. Yeah, there's something I think you touched on it just a second ago, but the way in which the performers almost uniformly have this very modern quality

in which they, like the way they're interacting and relating to each other has really contributed to the timelessness. of it. The only thing I can kind of compare it to is more madman than anything like a John Hughes movie where you're getting this sort of period piece and there are hallmarks of the time, but they're behaving in a way that is just universally recognizable as, oh, that's how people in high school act. And that thing you're saying about, like, Hughes movies were often a fantasy and this was much more of a reality. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you look at that party, like the big party that they've been waiting to go to out in the woods. And everyone's kind of greasy and everyone's

kind of bored and like nothing's really happening beyond people just kind of being like, hey man, what's going on? And I felt like, ah, that's my people. Yeah. People who are just kind of uncool, but like trying so hard to like sit in at this party. And the genius of it is that there are people who are cool and people who are uncool and people like the main, nominally the main character, Jason London's character Pink, who just traverse all the world seamlessly. But they all know each other because ultimately they're in a small town and they're in high school. And so they aren't in a different cast.

They aren't in a different level of society. They're just in geography class together. And there's something about that that both lowers the stakes and opens up the honesty, I think, that makes it really essential viewing. Yeah, it's so true. I think the days was the first time I remembered seeing high school types who blurred into other types. Like, you know, like Pink being the jock who's also the stoner and also kind of a smart kid who plays poker with the geeks. Like, nobody is really like the jock or the nerd or the popular

girl in the way that they are in the 80s movies. It was kind of fun to see that because I think a lot of people relate to being a little bit part of different groups. Well, it's a funny thing where it's like Ferris Bueller is supposedly friends with everybody, but we never actually see him interact with anybody but Cameron and Sloan. You know, like we don't ever see Ferris. hang out with jocks and weirdos and dweaves and whatever the line is in the principal's office. But you do see Pink kind of hang out with everybody. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think part of that, I mean, to be honest, is that it's Richard Linklater, right? It's like it's him making a movie about himself at that age. Although I do think that's true, too. Like, I went back and talked to his high school friends in Huntsville. And I do remember him being a guy who floated between different groups. Yeah, I love that part of the book. So you mentioned Richard Linklater. I can call him Rick now because I asked him,

last week. And he let me call him Rick before Sean Fantasy did. I wanted to make that clear on this podcast just in case Sean had any doubt about that. And you talked about the amazing research and interviews you did, including going to his hometown, talking to these people who knew him. There are a lot of stories, incredible stories in the book about filming, about the actors, and I'm sure we'll touch on some of that while we're talking to you. But I do think that since this podcast

is, I mean, it's nominally about Chris's bad chicken recipes. But beyond that, I think we'd like to do a little bit of process talk for people who were interested in looking under the hood. And I wanted to get you talking a little bit about what it means to do in oral history. Because as you brilliantly say in the introduction, that a good oral history is kind of seamless. It just feels like you're listening to these people talk to each other. But the reality couldn't be further from the truth. You're doing over 100, maybe even 150 distinct interviews.

And then you have to build it like a Lego puzzle or something. Brick. Legos aren't puzzles. I do them wrong. But like a Lego something, brick by brick. Can you talk us through kind of the nuts and bolts of that? You wrote an email to Richard Link later, and then you just kind of have to shoe leather it, right? Yeah, well, you know, it's funny. I added that author's note later, and a lot of people have mentioned it.

And the reason why I added it is because the lawyer was literally asking me, so were these two people on the same room when you were asking them love about this? And I was like, oh, no. Like, I just assumed that people know the process. So I wrote, so I was like, I better make it clear in this intro that, like, that's not the way it works. Yeah. So, yeah, it's just kind of tracking down all these people. and then every single person I interviewed,

I asked who are the two people who you think have the most interesting perspective who I should talk to next. And the same people's names kept coming up over and over again. And I'm not just talking about cast. I'm talking about people in the crew. You know, Linklater's editor, Sandra Adair,

who has been with him since the very beginning or almost the very beginning. People who really know him and also people who had documents that I could look through. So people opened up their archives to me and I was able to see, you know, linklators,

angry memos that he wrote to executives at Universal. There's an amazing letter about Robert Plant. The stuff about Robert Plant is my favorite from Led Zeppelin because he's mad about not being able to use rock and roll in the movie. Yeah, the fights between Link Leader and Robert Plant are great. And that's too. Link Leader, the angry way that he wrote about Robert Plant at the time. I think for a little while I wasn't sure whether that belonged in an oral history to have

quotes from the primary source. But after a while, I was like, it's such a contrast between who he was at age 31 and who he is now. It's impossible to have him restate that and really capture it the same way that using his actual words from the time would. That's the amazing thing about it is that he, and this was borne out by the conversation we had, including him last week, he is such a generous person, you know, and I think that, and you can speak to this, he's anti-nistalgia, he didn't necessarily want to do this. And yet, he opened himself up to it. And so for people listening who maybe are, you know, maybe they're interested in some of the things we're saying, but they're not sure they love this movie. The book is about so much more in this movie, including an incredible portrait of one of

our great directors. And it begins with his childhood through his first movie, Slacker, into this movie and beyond. And he seems like he, I mean, he's not a co-conspirator, but he was with you through a lot of this process. Yeah. In the beginning, I definitely think he did not want to do this. I mean, he even said he was sick of talking about Dazed and Confused when I first wrote him and said that he didn't think it was his best movie.

He only wanted to talk about Fast Food Nation the whole time, and you kept having to steer him back. You know, it's always interesting to hear what are the favorite movies of people who, I don't know, like, he still really loves Newton boys. I don't know if he thinks that's his favorite. Oh, wow. Right.

That's a movie that I think he thinks is underrated. It's just interesting to hear those things. But when I, you know, when he first agreed to do this book, I thought I might just have one interview with him, and that's it. Right. So I had that interview, and then a while later, I had a very long interview, maybe like, I don't know, I was out in Austin and spent the day with him. Then after that, he was like, you know, if you have questions, you can just call me. And then it kind of opened up from there and we got more and more conversations.

Like he would call me, you know, at night when he was going home from shooting something and we'd just talk for a really long time during that drive. I didn't know it would be that way. No, yeah. And like one of the most amazing things about the book is is the wealth of like you mentioned the primary sources, some of the documentation, the original shooting script. I have to say that that whole section where you're kind of breaking down and the voices are breaking down what the movie could have been, you know, and there's the scene with the Vietnamese girls in town. There's the scene where the girls are talking about kind of like mortality at the moon tower party and stuff that doesn't necessarily make it into the film. The film is a little bit more light. hearted, I think. Did you come across stuff like that that changed your mind, not necessarily about how you saw what we know as dazed and confused, but what dazed and confused maybe could have been? Yeah. I mean, it's hard to talk about this scene without actually reading it to you to convey what it's like, but there's a rape scene in an early, very, very early version of this movie that still bothers me

to this day. I mean, it bothers me because he did such a good job writing it and conveying, you know, know, how something like that might have gone down in high school. But it really does tell you there are much darker scenes that could have been in this movie that didn't end up, like you said, that didn't end up in this movie. And I think it makes sense. I mean, I think that he thought it was hard to go from these highs of this like breezy high school movie to go in these really serious and really tough scenes in between. And ultimately he decided not to go there.

But it's just, it does make you think that even now what looks like a party movie, are some pretty dark moments in the dazed and confused that we now, too. Yeah. I mean, we were mentioning it, the freshmanizing plays very differently. This was something that, and for people who haven't seen the movie in a while, like the rising seniors are terrorizing the rising freshman boys with paddles, and the rising senior girls are squirting ketchup and mustard and raw eggs on the girls and humiliating them sometimes with sexual talk in front of the boys. And this was true to Linklater's high school experience and has, I guess, challenged or amused or both audiences ever since. Some people think of that as funny. Some people

think of it as horrifying. And it's all sort of folded into this. And it kind of, the fact that it's in there and works speaks to something that I think is really amazing that your book illuminates, which was Linklater's. I mean, he was older than his cast. He was in his early 30s. But he let the movie be what it wanted to be, which is, feels like something. That's like some Jedi, you know, 60-year-old director stuff, you know? And it's weird that he can be as petulant to enough to pick a fight with literally every studio executive with Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, but also be zen enough to allow this movie to become what has become a beloved masterpiece. Totally. You know, it's so funny with a lot of people who were in the editing room,

a lot of them are like, oh, there's this other movie that, you know, was darker and, like, more layered. Like, they see it in a different way of these scenes that got cut out. And Linklater was always like, no, it is what it needed to be. And also, despite the fact that I've chronicled this crazy intense fight between him and the executives of the studio. He got the movie that he always wanted to make. And so did they in some ways. Even though Universal wasn't with him, the whole step, every step of the way,

they got a movie that's now a major cult classic. So I think both sides kind of won, despite the fact that they hated each other along the way. Yeah, he's such a fascinating character in the last 30 years of movie history because if you start with Slacker, you think, well, this guy's just going to be on the outer edges of pop culture.

you know, this incredibly maverick, independent voice. And over and over again, he has made like pretty mainstream movies. And he makes him in his way, but where'd you go Bernadette and Newton boys? Like you mentioned the School of Rock. Like, he is like a pretty dependable director for hire at times. And I thought that like this sort of, even in this incredibly personal story that I think you look back on, you're like, oh, that must have been Richard Linklater, like top to bottom directors cut. Everything that's in there is, is in there because he wanted it to be or it's exactly the way you wanted it. In some ways, for as personal as days and confused is, it was about, like, making a independent film on a studio system, right? Yeah, exactly. And you think about that

at the time, like, so many directors might have said, I'm not going to work with a studio. Like, this is in the 90s when it's like, oh, you're not going to sell out, you know, but he knew. He was like, I just want someone to fund the film and so I can make it the way that I want to make it. And exactly like you said, Chris, like so many of his movies, even something like, you know, bad news bears, you can see where. it's personal for him. Like baseball is super personal for him or even this series that he just made about animal rescue.

You know, he's a really hardcore vegetarian and has been for a very long time. And you can tell how those projects are personal for him. So he's still, even when it's big budget or low budget, he's always making very personal things. One thing that all three of us know well from our time as music journalists is that the work that is most beloved by fans is often not the most beloved by those who created it. And, you know, like, I guess a broader example of that is, like, interviewing Tom York from Radiohead and wanting to talk to him about creep. Like, nobody, there's this disconnect where people

are like, no, no, no, that was. I thought you were acting like, we as music critics had fans that often come up to us and are like knowing. Yeah. Do me a favor. Will you just read that review of Fugazi's end hits for me, man? My review of Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant, Skillfully Line Edited by John Dolan in 2000. Yes, it was a little bit about Scottish people in the rain. But, No, so, but what really struck me about this book is that, well, Linklater's, you know, reaction and relationship to the movie is a little more complicated. By and large, the cast feel as precious about this time in their life and this moment and what this movie meant to them as the fans do. Can you speak a little bit to that in your reaction when you got these actors on the phone?

And actors from people who immediately retired from the business and went on to different lives and careers to Matthew McConaughey, who continues to delight in performing. basically cosplaying as himself when he's not playing it to other part in movies. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think people kind of see it as the last, I think because it was a lot of people's first movie or breakthrough movie, doing this movie was such a creative process. You know, they're improvising lines in some senses. Some of them are writing their own scenes. They're really being encouraged to bring themselves to this role.

And I think a lot of them thought, like, oh, this is just what making. movies is like. And then fast forward to a lot of them going to L.A. or going back to L.A. and being like, oh, no, wait, movies are not like this. Like, directors are not always going to let you contribute creatively on this level. So I think that contributes to part of it. And then also, I think it's like, think about the job you loved most in your 20s and how, you know, it has shaped probably a lot of the rest of your career. So I think they can't help but be nostalgic. We mentioned that Bell and Sebastian Review. That was my favorite job of the 2000. But also we should say

That is your days to confuse. That is. Where's the oral history? Where's an oral history about that, Melissa? But there have been great excerpts, I think the Ringer published one as well, just detailing how much of the lifestyle of the movie was being reenacted by the cast, who were having really intense love affairs and smoked all of the weed in central Texas while making the movie.

But can you talk a little bit about the enthusiasm, specifically of the cast? getting them on the phone, like the differing reactions, right? Because you mentioned some people like Parker Posey, who, along with Joey Lauren Adams, seem to have invented their characters and made themselves very significant on the screen. Could you give us a couple examples of some reactions from the cast, for example,

that were positive full of memories and others who had a little bit more conflicted relationship to the film? Yeah, I mean, I think it really mirrors high school, right? Like, you ask people, what was high school like for you? And there's the people who were like, oh, it was amazing. And, like, I dominated. And there are other people who like, it sucked. and people were mean to me. And the people who think the others were mean to them,

those people might not even remember that person or might not see it that way. So I think there's a lot of that kind of blurring of the lines between a movie, the experience of making a movie about high school and the way you might actually remember high school or your early 20s or however old they were. So I think a lot of people, like you said, were so caught up in the romance of this creative environment and hooking up with each other and creating real chemistry that you could see on screen. I think McConaughey's part of that. You know, his role expanded

because people really loved hanging out with them. And then you get people like Michelle Burke Thomas who played Jody, who was Mitch's older sister in the movie, who had a more complicated time, who, you know, loved it in terms of an acting experience, but really felt like she didn't fit in with the rest of the girls, felt like some of the other girls were mean to her. You know, still almost 30 years later feels kind of hurt

by the things people said in the book, I think. about her. So I think people have had very mixed memories, most of which are really rosy, but some of which are kind of hard. One of the things that often happens, especially like when we're talking about movies on like rewatchables or something like that, is we talk about an actor or actress's filmography as if it's like these series of chain reactions and that there are all these like very like, choose your own adventure moments where, and then obviously they were catapulted to superstardom based on this. But the funny thing about who days and confused is because there's this lag between its release and then its cult phenomenon status.

I almost feel like they sometimes, like, it's false to say that Daze like makes McConaughey or makes Affleck because in a lot of ways, like I think McConaug probably would have happened maybe either way, or maybe Affleck would have happened either way, or that these are almost like, do you feel like Dazed happens in a vacuum for a lot of these performers, or do you think that it's the thing that changes their careers,

you know, one way or another, going forward. Well, to me, it's like, like, exactly what you said. People think it's like this launch pad, and then you look at what happened immediately after that movie. It's like, you know, Anthony Rapp went to work at Starbucks right after this, you know? And it's like, Ben Affleck was still auditioning for like teen dramas and stuff. So it didn't really happen that way.

And I think it really shows you, I think everyone in that movie is so talented and so much of it is luck. And so much of it also is who goes to bat for you. Like McConaughey is obviously incredibly talented. But, you know, he met this guy, Don Phillips, who was a casting director, and Don Phillips, for whatever reason, decided out of all the people on this movie, McConaughey is going to be the one who I really go to bat for, to the extent of, you know, he had McConaughey move in with him in L.A. for a little while. He got him an agent. He told him how the industry worked, basically, behind the scenes and just kind of set him up to be as successful as he is today. And he didn't do that for everyone in that movie. So I think that's part of it, too. I mean, there are amazing details of the post-day's life captured in the book. I won't give all of them away. I think probably the greatest one, though, is Jason London getting a new laptop and calling

AppleCare to get advice on it and Wiley Wiggins answers the phone because that's his job at the moment. I know. It's not real. That can't be real, but it's real. Or, you know, the fact that Kristen, you know, Hoso plays Sabrina so beautifully and then decided this isn't for me and has had a great career as an activist. but that she basically, and I know there's details to this, and Rick, my pal, clarified this when we talk that Claire Dane's also auditioned for that part. And though she was too young, I still think choosing the unknown was the right move.

All that to say, I think that when we think of things as canonical and we love them, you know, we think of them as just celebratory. And there's a version of this book that could just be like a championship parade of like, you made this great thing. And the detail that I just love so much, and this speaks to your amazing skill in bringing it to life is, We get a window into just being young in a deeply uncertain profession that I think is universal. And so we see these people, these actors from the vantage point of 25 years or longer 25 years, 28 years now, they've just had some stuff. And so, you know, you hear about Adam Goldberg's like in Nikki Kat running into each other at auditions, thinking they were better than this.

And also this incredible chapter at the end that I'd love you to expand on a little bit, but I'd love for you to expand on it in general, but expound on it in this podcast, where it's just like Hollywood in the 90s and Affleck and Damon and John Favreau and Vince Vaughn and all these guys are just kind of young and hungry and they have no idea what's going to happen and we're reading about them and we know what happened and it's very powerful to read it that way. It really is. And also like the minute things that cause people to go off in one direction versus another direction. Like it's maybe not some minute, but it's interesting to me that one of the reasons Afleck said that he wrote Goodwill Hunting was that he was tired of people thinking he was an asshole and dazed.

And then, you know, he did mall rats. And then he heard that Quentin Tarantino was like, who's that guy in days confused? What an asshole. And then, you know, he was like, I don't think people are realizing the craft I'm putting in into the performance of an asshole. And what's amazing is that after Goodwill Hunting, no one ever thought ill of him again. Like, it worked. Yeah.

It totally worked. slam dunk. I was curious, have you thought about when you were talking to these people, because like you mentioned, like there are some people who have sort of like issues with their memories or other person's memories of the experience. Do you think it would have been much different to have done this book 10 years ago? Like I wonder how much age has kind of given people perspective, but also leveled them out about like their kind of relationship to the project. 100%. And I feel so lucky about that. I mean, Linkleader even told me that he was at a time in his life when he was ready for this and that he

might not have been ready for this at a different time. A lot of people told me that. There's a set deck on the movie. He was really great to talk to. And she actually was a long time indie rock manager for bands like pavement. And she had just moved across the country and was like opening up all these boxes from her previous life. And she was like, this is the right exact moment to talk to me. So I think that was true. I think it might have been a little too pain. for some people, and with the time passing, they were kind of ready to revisit it again. And what's incredible is all these people, over 100 people, are forever connected because of this movie. But the movie is a static thing that exists in the world, and separate and apart from

reunions, and there have been some, and there was a really fascinating reunion live read that happened just last month that I recommend people check out on YouTube. You now, Melissa, you are the glue that has connected these people in a really fascinating way. You are in all of their lives. And I was wondering what that has been like for you. Is it in, because I think we all know that the relationship between interviewer and interviewee can extend beyond the tape recording sometimes. And what has that been like for you over the last year after you did the initial interviews or the substantive interviews? Have people continued to be in touch with you? Have they checked in with you after they've read the quotes?

Like, what's your life been like after the final draft was sent in? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I want to hear from everybody. good or bad. If they hate the book or love the book, I would love to hear. But some people I sent the book to and have not heard back from it at all. Some people have been in touch with me to try and get in touch with other cast members. Some people have reconnected because of the book. Wow. And some people still text me. You know, like, after there was a dazed and confused live read recently to raise money for, you know, getting out the vote in Texas. And after that, a bunch of people texted me to be like, what did you think of this and what do you think of that? It was kind of like a little bit of gossip. And Nikki Kat still texts me songs he likes sometimes. We talk about music. Could you give him our numbers? Because Chris and I have long time.

We are longtime Nikki Kat aficionados. Yeah, I just want to talk to you of the gun. I love to talk to you guys. He is definitely a question mark. Where most of the live read questions about Rory Cochran, like was he? Because, you know, many people like Ben Affleck insist they are not their characters. Ben Affleck is not a bully who paddles people. But Rory Cochran played Slater, the stoner.

the most, I mean, that's saying something in this movie, but the most extreme stoner, his performance in the live read may have been method, unclear. Yeah, you know, I don't know the answer to that. I wish I did. What's interesting about Roy Cochran is to me, he seems very different in real life

than he comes across in that movie. Like, he's kind of a very intense, kind of soft-spoken, kind of sensitive guy is the way he strikes me, not at all like Slater in the movie. So I'm not, I'm just as baffled as everybody else. I don't, I don't really know. I think that's like across the board.

Like, if you look at, when you actually take a step back and look at who's in that movie, like, I think that you can look at McConaughey and be like, oh, well, he's just, he's just doing Matthew McConaughey. But like, Parker Posey is like a lower east side art chick. Like, she's super, like a super cool New York City character who's just transplanted into Texas and is doing this, this Texas high school mean girl thing that's really amazing. I mean, the performances are actually pretty fantastic like that. Definitely.

You forget how much goes into these performances. Like the weird thing about McConaughey is everybody says, that's just McConaughey. But that's not what they were saying when he came in there. Like everybody said he came in there with like khakis and like a golf club. And they were like this guy. Like he seems like he's way too clean cut for this sleazy character. So it's interesting that even McConaughey was really like doing a performance.

I love one of the details you mentioned it earlier, alluded to it that, you know, his performance was just so compelling and he was so magnetic that he just ended up in more and more of the movie. But I love the way Linklater does this and the way you captured it, that he kind of approaches it, even though he is fastidious and he's a technician, like all directors are, but it's kind of like he has a mixing board in front of him. And he's not sure what the movie's going to be. And, you know, when I watched the movie again recently after reading your book, it did strike me, as you say in the book, why is Wooderson in the final scene? He's not even in high school. It was supposed to be Pickford, but McConaughey's just great.

And so he's there. And that was such a smart, intuitive way of making a movie towards what the movie wanted to be, right? And he did kind of ascend at the expense of the other actor who probably suffers the most in your book. We should probably touch on that just briefly, the actor Sean Andrews, who plays Pickford. Yes. Yeah, I mean, I think that the mixing board is the perfect analogy. Like, I think he just wanted real chemistry and he just wanted to see. I mean, even in the audition, sometimes they would just have people go up and interact with each other,

like watched to see how people ate pizza together at an audition. Like, who does that now? But you know what I mean? Like they just spent a lot of time just observing and seeing how people interacted with each other. So I think that really behooved McConaughey that he got along well with a lot of people in the cast. I basically have one more final question for you.

Yeah. When do you think you will next watch days to confuse? Oh, that's such a good question. Is the over or is it eight years? No, I mean, like, you know, I think I have done a lot of research for this book. And yet still, people tell me all the time that they have watched this movie more than I have or they'll have some, like, you know, tiny thing that I didn't notice. So I think it might be sooner than I think.

I mean, I love it when people write me and tell me things that I didn't notice or, you know, a little bit deep background of someone in Texas that they knew who was in this film. I'm still not sick of it yet. That's me again next year. I would also just throw in here. Melissa has heard me say this, and I challenge our listeners to see if the same applies to you. More than almost any movie that I remember lovingly from my youth,

this movie feels like a sieve. It's almost entirely subjective. Every time I see it, I've remembered it wrong, you know, because as it's grown and as we've grown in age, like the parts I thought were important, aren't important, and vice versa. And it's kind of slippery. You find yourself identifying with different characters.

Yeah, now I'm more like the hard-ass coach, I think, ultimately. I think that's how most people see me. But like in the spirit of the mixing board thing, like, it's just kind of, it's hard to, and this is what makes also the book so special, it's hard to hold this movie in your hand because it's just kind of oozing and sliding all over the place, you know, and it means a lot to different people for very different reasons. Yeah, I mean, I think all my favorite movies, you watch them differently at different stages in your life and you remember different parts of them differently.

It's like with Slacker, you know, like there's certain mallows and Slacker that might seem silly at first, that seem more profound now, or like people always say that things change. change, you know, as you get older and the things that seem important might be not the same things that seemed important when we're younger. And you know how we know that is true is because Chris has actually pulled a reverse McConaughey where he actually used to be more like Wooderson and now he wears golf khakis. That's right. That's how most people age.

That is true. That is actually true. Melissa, thank you so much for coming on the watch and talking to us about the book. It's the oral history of Jason confused. We will not make that mistake again. history. Yeah. Well, it's it for now when Chris's competing volume, which is just interviews with Sean Andrews and Bill of Jovovich comes out. I agree with that. It's called scores settled. All right, all right, all right. Is in bookstores now. Please go buy it at independent bookstores,

which need your support more than ever. Melissa, it's great to talk to you. Melissa, thank you so much. Thank you so much, you guys. This is fun.