The Watch - The Wave of “Inspired by True Events” Television

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Chris and Andy talk about the decision to cut several awards from the Oscars' live broadcast, including Best Film Editing and Best Original Score (1:00). Then they talk about the recent spate of ripped-from-the-headlines TV shows like ‘Inventing Anna’ and ‘Super Pumped’ (23:39) and why this is becoming a trend in television (34:57). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me on the other line, inspired by true events, it's Andy Greenwald. God, it would make such a boring TV show. It would make the worst TV show ever. Like, I, do you think, do you know anyone who goes through life being like, if only they knew? If only they knew, if only there were cameras. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I don't have that. Whether, I think that there have been points. where I was like, this would, like, in when I've been working at Grantland or the Ringer, where I would be like, this would make a cool, like, newsroom type show. Not that we ever made any, like, massive, like, we didn't, like, break the death of bin Laden or something like that. But you know what I mean? Like, it would have been kind of amusing to have captured some of that stuff on camera.

But, no, I don't think that my life is at all interesting. Like, the most interesting thing about me is that, is that I, and I say this humbly, I use a different word every day for wordal depending on my mood. Like as a reflection of me. And I think that's fascinating. Like today I use tired because that's how I was feeling. But I again, I think maybe you get six episodes out of that, like probably Hulu. But beyond that, I wouldn't be so bold as to assume, you know. So, Andy, the reason why we're even making this joke is because part of what we're talking about today is the inspired by true events mania gripping television, the television industry right now.

We're in the midst of what's going to look like. I think it's going to be more than half a dozen shows by by summer maybe of shows that feel ripped from the headlines because they are literally ripped from the headlines whether they're adapted

from long form magazine articles from podcasts from just sensational documentaries what have you and a couple weeks ago inventing Anna came out on Netflix it was Shonda Rimes show

starring Julia Garner and Anna Chumski about the Anna Delvey slash Sork and controversy that was documented by Jessica Pressler in New York Magazine. We have this weekend, I believe, is the premiere of Super Pump,

which is the new show from Brian Coppulman and David Levine about the rise and fall of Travis Kalanick at Uber. And in coming weeks, we have We crashed, which is a show about WeWorks, star in Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway. We have Joe versus Carol, which is the Peacock adaptation or riff on characters from Tiger King. we have, I try to wrap my, oh, the dropout, Amanda Saffreides, starring as Lizzie Holmes.

I almost said Lizzie Holmes, like, we're just like buds. Hey, Chris, it's Elizabeth Holmes. No, you like my Elizabeth Holmes voice? I am, I got to watch it in real time. I actually don't have a response. So we have a lot of these shows coming out. I think that you and I have discussed this, like talked around this topic a little bit.

But I thought we could get into that today. Before we do, Andy, is there anything you wanted to just get off your chest culturally? Well, culturally, no. I do think this is ripped from the headlines. I just want to use our podcast real estate to just put a couple flyers down or a couple, you know, those like real estate stakes signs in the yard to say that you've been, you've been spreading the seed far and wide on the podcast front recently. Well, I feel like people should know. You just did a long interview on the dude from Tusha Amores. podcast? Jeremy, yeah, Jeremy Bollum's podcast. A great band that you and I both like.

It's called First Ever Podcasts. And you're the guest talking about your hardcore history, which I love. Yeah. Well, it was like it's a very, it's like a wide ranging conversation, but I did talk a little bit about like growing up in Philly and living in Boston and moving to New York and music and stuff like that. It was awesome to do it. I think fans should check that out. I also need to ask you on the mic about this five-hour podcast you did about pavement. which is amazing because I think in many ways our life together has been leading to this moment. I think that across the bars, saloons,

and taverns of Lower Manhattan, you and I did many five-hour podcasts about pavement, even if they weren't about pavement. So how did this happen that you actually had a professional opportunity to do so? I was asked to appear on Bansplained by Yasi to talk about pavement. She does these really extensive, exhaustive surveys of these I always say off-discussed bands,

but basically it's like, you know, these deep dives into, whether it's Weiser or Fagasy, you should just put one up with Jeff Weiss about Sublime, but they are really like long-form discussions about the entire history of a band. And then, you know, they interpolate the songs that you're talking about.

So like when we were talking about pavement, you can go through. And it is a very long conversation, but a chunk of that runtime is dedicated to about 10 to 15 to 20, pavement songs throughout the podcast. That's amazing. I love this. I support it.

Last thing from the transom wire, Chris, I want to give you the opportunity on the watch podcast to Zag when others have zigged. I was wondering if you want to take the opportunity to just, you know, stake out a unique position in the Oscar blogosphere and be like, fuck short form documents. No, why don't you do that? I want no editors on television. me to do what you're bidding. I know that I can see the twinkle in your eye.

No, I disagree. The animated short will no longer be clogging up your Oscar broadcast. Animated short, words to be used to describe you in New York in the early 2000s as well. I no, I mean, so this is just

referring to the latest news that in its increasing increasing, it's never ending efforts to fix the wrong problems. The Oscars announced that host Wanda Sykes,

Amy Schumer, and Regina Hall will not have to navigate the choppy waters of giving awards to film artisans who aren't famous

and they will not give certain, I don't know, I mean, I'm not even going to say less than big ticket awards. They are all going to be shunted to the

pre-ceremony or whatever, which is with the Grammy I think there will also be some that are given away during commercial breaks and it's going to be like, just so you know, like this guy just won.

His dream came true. Like, It's pretty wild. I mean, I actually don't have anything new to add to it. I'm just unsecurious if you did. Is the point of this to shorten the broadcast or, I mean, what is the, are they trying to optimize it? I don't know.

And I should say, like, our pal, Sean Fennacy is always very smart and very eloquent about these things in various media, whether it's his podcast, Bill's podcast or on Twitter. Bill Gilberry from Vulture, New York Magazine, wrote a really smart piece today that I thought really just distilled it, which is just like stop. fucking up. Like, the person, there is no human alive who's like, well, the Oscars are only two hours and 59 minutes. I will watch.

You know what I mean? Like, there's no one, you're not going to make people happy if you take things away from like editors and drive my car and let Twitter say Spider-Man was good. Like they're rearranging deck chairs on popular Best Picture winner Titanic. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't make any, any sense instead of just owning the reality of it that the Oscars are a popular show, slightly less popular in contemporary times. But no, but I just feel, I genuinely do feel bummed out about it because part of the fun of

the Oscars is seeing people who are truly happy and not used to performing happiness in public. Yeah, you get those kind of charming moments of folks that are like, I get to, you know, maybe that's not what they're thinking, but they're like, you know, I'm standing here, I look out, I see Merrill Streep and Brad Pitt and Denzel Washington. This is a pretty amazing moment. I made this short film. And I think that a lot of Academy voters take their responsibilities pretty seriously

and consider a lot of this stuff. So it's sort of strange to just kind of... Look, I get it. Like, I think that I've just gotten out on the other side of a lot of NBA concern trolling about like, what's wrong with All-Star weekend? Like, what could we... Like, what happened to Saturday Night, All-Star, like, and everything?

And just basically, like, you know, a lot of like, how could we make this more efficient? how can we make it more popular? The NBA All-Star game, I think, have like 6 million viewers. It's down from, I don't know, like 20 or 30 million people watching it at the height of Jordan, you know, in the 90s. I don't know how to like, there's no magic words to say to make these things more important than they are in society or in culture right now. Yeah, well, I also don't know. Has the question, how do we make this more popular ever had a good or satisfying answer, let alone a successful answer?

Yeah, but I, you know, it's funny because like we'll do rewatchables or we'll do episodes of the big picture. where we go back and we're talking about movies from 1994 or something like that. And you go through the Oscars from that year. And I think in my mind, I'm just like every single year, it was just like Tom Hanks and Kevin Costner and, you know, like Steven Spielberg and Jack Nicholson was there. And in my mind, I think, but then when you look at the actual movies that were nominated, there were small movies. There were movies that have never been thought of again since that night.

There were performances that were like, how did the hell did this person get nominated over X, Y, or Z? there were plenty of moments about it. I just think we had less to do and watch back then. And people just have way more choice now. And the Oscars is increasingly becoming something that, like, I just don't know if it matters to a large swath of the general public. I don't know how taking away these genuinely, like, moving moments of, like,

people getting an opportunity to be celebrated by their industry is really the answer to get what, like a million more people to tune in? Yeah, I also think that we live, it's just not really reading the temperature of the culture, which absolutely is saying one thing loud and clear, which is that major adult-themed motion pictures are no longer at the center of the culture or the national conversation. And that's raging against the dying of the light, man, but that light is dim. That happened. Just ask my homies in string quartets, you know?

Like, once that switches, it doesn't come back. Is it the string quartet that was on the Titanic that you're referring to, or is this just in general, like... RIP, Sebastian, Gustav, you guys played your hearts out. Yeah. But the other thing, the cross-current that I just think is worth mentioning is that while, you know, the unifying monocultural juggernaut of a film, such as the ones that Tom Hanks was in in the 90s, that may have diminished, one thing that has absolutely unquestionably increased, I think, is the casual audiences' interest in how things get made and what people's jobs are and all of the stories behind the scenes.

I mean, I've been seeing the absolute media blitz this week of Kyle Buchanan's book about the making of Mad Max Fury Road, which is a worthwhile film with a lot of good stories and was a popular film. But also, it's a book about the fourth Mad Max movie. You know what I mean? Like, my first thought was like, this isn't going to rock the world, but people are fascinated to hear this stuff. And I think that, you know, 20 plus years of internet culture has also taught us that, like, people want to talk about the minutia of things. And so, and, you know, even with a much more somber and serious note, like the passing of Helena Hutchinson on the set of Rust, like, people are aware of the jobs that crews do and the circumstances in which they do them. And so removing them from the conversation just to focus on, you know, hoping against hope that Will Smith wins best actor and, like, gives a good speech.

That's just bizarre to me. there's always been this thing. I think I actually feel this way a lot about movie trailers to it. I'm kind of trying to articulate this as I go along. So people have to forgive me if this sounds a little bit muddled. Kai F8's muddle,

just put pavement songs in. You know how like when you see when you watch a trailer for a blockbuster? And then when you see the movie, you're like, oh, you know, a lot of what, the trailer just basically told the story of the movie. There are not that many extra dramatic beats

that weren't covered in the trailer. In fact, it gave away some of the most exciting, thrilling moments that would have been so much more overwhelming had I not known they were coming. And because this movie is named Blockbuster X, Y, or Z, I was going to see it anyway. Yeah. Like, the only thing that would have deterred me from seeing it is if people were like, this is unmitigated garbage. But for the most part, like, as somebody who likes going to the movies and as somebody who wants to sort of see the biggest movies in the theaters, I'll probably go see it. whether it's the Batman, whether it's whatever. And so what I always wonder is when you're making these trailers is who are you selling

this to? Like who needs, who needs, like, haven't you already gotten this person's money? Aren't you just diminishing the experience? So my point about this connected to the Oscars is like, if I'm watching the Oscars, I'm watching the Oscars. You know, like you don't need to make the Oscars shorter or less focused on celebrating movie making, you know? like it's it's fine like you've got my money i maybe i understand like there would the word of mouth

be worse if like the oscars was three hours and 20 minutes long and there was some weird speech in the middle of it for uh you know best documentary short and people like tuned out or whatever no that's not what happens like what happens is it gets lost in kind of like these weird tributes or there's musical numbers that nobody likes or people just get like realized that that's a really long time to be sitting in front of your television, eating chips and drinking beer, and you sort of get tired. And then once you finally get to Best Picture, sometimes it can feel anticlimactic. But you don't need to like tweak the Oscars in that way because people are already here for the Oscars. Yeah, I don't understand why the Oscars is addicted to making

itself smaller. Like, I don't get it. Like, not just in terms of length, because yeah, as people have listened to me for a long time, no, like, I am all for the removal of movie montages about how we like movies when you're watching a show that is literally about movies. Like that, we get that message. I'm good with that. But I think the last two years, I mean, when the story of this era is written, potentially in Cyrillic, like, people will look back on these last two years. Holy shit.

And, you know, there are many reasons why ratings of big events took a dive, right? Whether it's the pandemic was affecting audiences or affecting the ability to put on the show or people's willingness to go to the show without question. But last year, I get the intention of Stephen Soderberg being like, we're going to throw a clubby, chummy, Oceans 11 type Hollywood vibe in the train station. And it's going to be kind of a show for the industry for the people who have been either like vetted, tested, and screened to be in the room. But it felt very claustrophobic and closed off. You know, it did not feel welcoming. It did not feel like any kind of party that anyone would want to be invited to.

And then again this year, and I mean no disrespect to the three very talented women who are hosting the show. But the Oscars aren't necessarily going to live or die on the most famous person in the world winning an award or the most famous person in a world hosting. You need smart, funny, engaged stars in the room. And you need it to be a big room. You know what I mean? And it needs to fill the room. And I get that, like, whether it don't look up should have been nominated or not is not what I'm arguing right now. But you nominated it.

And so, like, DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are going to be there. Yeah. They're big stars. They're going to be there. So I think you just have to build outward from that. You know, it's very strange, this sort of weird like all shucks humility. Like, we're just going to keep trying to, you know, pivot to TikTok or whatever. It's all very poochy, and I don't understand it.

I just don't understand it. Because the people from it, you're alienating the people to whom it matters. And once you lose them, what's, what do you got left? There was one other bit of entertainment news that I wanted to hit before we get into the meat of the show. And that was the story that came out. I believe in the Hollywood Reporter. I think maybe people may have seen 10 days ago about or two weeks ago. It was announced that Paramount would be making a fourth Star Wars film with the Chris

Pye and Zachary Quinto axis of characters or cast members. And long and rumor that maybe they would bring Chris Hemsworth back and it would be like kind of a time travel story or there was also this much bandied about Quentin Tarantino's story idea that Mark L. Smith, who did The Revenant, was writing. and Noah Hawley. Yeah, Noah Hawley also had something going. But that doesn't sound like what they arrived at. I don't know who's writing it,

but Matt Shackman, who directed Mondavision, would be directing this new film. And then this week, it was announced that, or it was reported, that the cast of Star Trek was not aware of this development. Like, that, I think it was more that, like, the paperwork was not dry yet, but the way it was reported made it basically,

sound like this came as a shock to them. I don't necessarily want to debate whether or not Star Trek should or shouldn't come back or whether these people did or didn't know. But what do you think would be the worst news to find out that you were in a new sequel? Like, what do you think would be like,

oh no, they're bringing me back for this? Because this has to happen sometimes when people sign up for like nine movie deals. Right. Oh, oh, because the idea, the assumption right is that like they're already under contract for it, they just didn't know. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they had like, options that needed to be exercised? I have no idea. But like I was I was really just thinking about

like what would it feel like while Adam Driver's on the set of Noah Bombach's white noise and he gets the Kylo Red call? I feel like the worst scenario here would be Terry Kaiser at age 83 being told they're making weekend at Bernie's 3. You know what I mean? It's just like. Is Terry Kaiser still with us? He is still with us. He's 80, 82, 83 years young. You know, I just feel like that might be pushing it a little bit. Silverman and McCarthy. There's a lot. still, they're still cracking. It's, the Star Trek thing remains one of the weirdest cultural stories for me. I mean, you, you, I know, Chris, you love to, to call out your guy Bob Backish, the head of Paramount. Like, he, he was always your dark horse Bob in Hollywood's Bob Wars. I feel like

you were always, I love bullish. Yeah. You're bullish on Backish. And, you know, when you pull back from a macro level, he's done very well in the position that he's been in, particularly in terms of redefining a what had once been a, you know, almost like Hydra-like media company, Viacom, CBS, and Paramount into, now it's all Paramount. They're rebranding everything. And to do so, really attempting to double or triple or quadruple down on franchises and stars, right? Like even those Paramount plus ads where it's just like famous people and football players on a mountain. It's like, Bryson DeShambo, Gail King, and Christine Bransky.

and two of the six members of Paul Patrol. Yeah. That's been smart for them. And when I was, I was actually having this conversation with someone the other day. It was like, well, wait, what is Paramount Plus? And I was like, well, it's mostly an assortment of Taylor Sheridan shows and Star Trek shows and Paul Patrol. Like, and it's successful.

Like, you can define it. And that's not necessarily the case with Peacock, for example. Yet, you know, I don't, my show's on there and there are other good shows on there, but it's not as easily defined. all this is to say being like Star Trek is something we control so we're just going to flood the zone with it

because they're Star Trek fans all that makes sense but then when that very smart business theory meets the crew that the smart business rubber meets the creative road of like now someone has to call Zoe Saldania and be like you better

you know better suit up this is Matt Jackman nice to meet you you start you're doing makeup in three like that's when it starts to get a little odd because those movies were pretty good Chris Pine and Quinto are really good. But I don't have my finger on the pulse of the national mood.

But are people just like, I need to know what all universe Kirk and Spock are up to? I need to know. I really don't know. I think Star Trek obviously has like a really, really strong base of fans. And I think that it's never actually exactly been my jam. But I do respect the fact that there are certain like tenets. of belief about the way the galaxy that Star Trek occupies should operate and what the sort of value system of these stories should be, which I've always kind of appreciated.

You know, it's like a lot of the times these stories are dictated by very rigid like plot lines, like whether it's like the sanctity of Skywalker's or like how the king's landing or, you know, how the seven kingdoms need to operate given like the quote unquote history of the land or whatever, and it turns out, like, adhering to that stuff actually is pretty smart because it makes a good show. And when you break away from it, it's tough. But I've always kind of, like, kind of appreciated Star Trek's kind of like, it's more about, we love to explore, you know? Chris, here's the weird moment we're in. Star Trek is a TV show, Star Wars or Movies. That was always the thing. And that was both that helped them and it hindered them. And the struggle that

Star Trek went through over the, you know, the 20 years from like 95 to 2015 was as everything moved towards blockbusters, but particularly blockbuster films, continuing Star Trek into a place where the stakes were movie sized. And it was all one story in the way everything was becoming, you know, in terms of comic book entertainment, was a struggle. And ultimately the, the brilliant thing that J.J. Abrams did. And this is up there, I think, with his like top five most, you know, clever slash devious Hollywood proclamations was we're just going to reboot the original ones

because that's what people like but we'll give them different stakes this time and that was really, really smart. But now in 2022, everything is TV. So you have a leg up. You actually can just have people explore and wander around.

And they are doing that on their, you know, varying suite of shows, some of which are more successful or more beloved than others. And you have Star Wars on the back foot, not necessarily in terms of the money put behind it or the fandom, but struggling to adjust

to a different kind of storytelling structure. And yet, that's the thing that kind of flummoxes me about Star Trek's moment, because now they're trying to continue the future franchise when it doesn't really make that much sense. But even their TV offerings like Picard, which I was on board to watch because I would watch Patrick Stewart wandering around space slash also maybe a vineyard sometimes because those were low-key the best episodes. But the episodes I saw were too stakesy. It was just like one last chance to save data who is a robot, but it now clearly looks 70 years old. It's also a sommelier, yeah.

But let's also move on. Just make the show about that wandering around and having adventures, but that's not the culture. It's weird. It's like it keeps kind of missing its moment. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something?

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Limited time offer. Okay, so let's talk about what is the culture right now, whether we like it or not, which is these rashes shows that are, for lack of a better term, inspired by true events. Like we were talking about earlier. I want to shout out Sean Fennacy, who texted me the other night

and was just like, this would be a good topic for you and Andy to discuss this sort of of inspired by true, true events. Wow, look at him, the Jerry Jones of the podcast telling us who to play and what offense to run. Wow. Yeah. Sean has been paying Kaya not to take a job with the Miami Dolphins so that she can at any point step in here.

If one of us falters, I, it was, we had a funny conversation last night because we were kind of going through all these series. And Andy and I will probably talk a little bit more in depth about inventing Anna than others, although I will say I've seen episodes of Super Pumped. And I personally enjoy it quite a bit because I really enjoy the Coppulman-Lavine Rata-tat-tat dialogue. But I think some of the things that we'll say

about these shows apply to Super Pumpt as well. And Sean basically asked me the question, is there been a good one of these shows since OJ, since the Ryan Murphy OJ series that maybe kick-started this entire wave in the first place. And that doesn't have 100% of it. approval rate. Not even on this podcast.

So yeah, I would say that that's a good point. And we kind of went back and forth about it. And I just wanted sort of out my own biases right now. Sure. Because I said to him like, you know, we were going back and forth about these shows.

And then I was like, this, however, is extremely my shit. And I sent him the trailer for Under the Banner of Heaven, which is coming out shortly pretty soon on FX and stars Andrew Garfield. And it's an adaptation of the John Crackauer, true crime book. And that the first thing you see in that trailer is inspired by, you know,

true events and John Crackauer's true crime bestseller. And I was like, maybe I'm a hypocrite. You know what I mean? Maybe it's just like, I like, I don't care whether it's, uh, ripped from the headlines. I just want the headlines to be the kinds of stories I want to see told over and over again. Well, I think there's a couple different, under the, under the larger banner of your thesis in addition to heaven. I think there's a couple smaller threads to unpack. Um, One is the story industry has never been more optimized or weaponized, which is to say that Hollywood has always been in the business of scouring obsessively every article published in every magazine and every book as grist for the content mill. That is nothing new. But the degree to which it is all optimized now is different.

And again, I want to be clear, I'm not ascribing any bad motives or saying any of this is cynical. It's actually very smart that companies like Gimlet, which is now I believe also owned by Spotify or. Wondery, who have made successful podcasts, have now gotten to the business of being producers themselves, right? And controlling, or at least attempting to be more involved in and control their properties all the way through, which is just smart business. Because if you are a struggling public radio station or magazine or journal or whatever, you don't want to get the one-time option payout to give your thing away that could actually make you enough money to continue to publish or exist. You want to be a part of it all the way through. So, but there are also

other, you know, there are other entities like Epic Magazine, which public really good journalism and then also sells them to Hollywood and they turn into shows like Little America or things like that. The pipeline is fast moving and constant. A lot of that also plays into the fearfulness of Hollywood at the moment, right, which is that if it's, if any aspect of something is familiar, they're more comfortable greenlighting it because people are worried about their jobs and used to be if the star is familiar or if the genre is familiar. But now it's like, did someone hear it once? Did it ever exist in another format? Okay, great. okay good I would put under the banner of heaven which looks like this sumptuous

pretty cool yeah it's a Dustin Lance Black wrote it and it's directed by David McKenzie and Isabel Sandoval but like it's you know and it stars Garfield and Sam Worthington and Wyatt Russell so yeah I'm I'm pretty excited about this it looks like true detective honestly yeah it's true detective in Mormon in the in the world of the Mormon church and in Utah and like I'm on board we just like that type of show And that also doesn't feel particularly I think it's true story,

but I don't think you're a hypocrite because I don't think it's what we're speaking of in terms of like ripped from the headlines slash rip from the podcast because the frenzy with which things are being ripped from the headlines and podcast is such that

I think next week, Peacock is debuting a show they spent a lot of time and money on Joe versus Carol, which is a scripted version of the Tiger King Joe Exotic story, which was a podcast and then a Netflix phenomenon. And then for a while

there were competing projects, right? It looked as if there would be two full television shows, one starring Nicholas Cage about this before that project blinked, and this is the one. So that's a good, but one thing I wanted to mention, and this is something I wanted to ask you about, because, and I think that this, what happens is sometimes when you have a feeling or a thought about one show that seems to be part of a movement of shows, that you then apply it to every show. So I don't necessarily want to tar every one of these with the same brush. I haven't seen

every one of these yet, whether by screeners or whatever, but I've seen a few. And, one thing that kind of, I can't shake is the feeling of these shows being rushed. Now, that may not be entirely accurate, factually, in terms of, you know, oh, they sped through the production process and the development process and just rushed to get this to screens. Sometimes it's because they're based on, you know, stories that have just recently happened that it feels like, wow, you really turn this around very quickly. sometimes I think it does have to do with the competition within Hollywood for these stories where you've got multiple Elizabeth Holmes stories in production or in development.

You've got multiple Tiger King stories in development. And that's exactly the point I wanted to make that as recently is like a year or two ago, the market sort of self-corrected and someone blinked and was like, we don't need two of these. That is over. There are two we work shows, right? Like coming. One is coming sooner than the other one. there are right now in production

two just completely distinct shows about the same true crime murder story. One is called Candy and is filming in Atlanta with Jessica Beale and a bunch of Mad Men Associated people involved

like Michael Uppendall and Robin Weith, I believe, writing. And then HBO's doing that story also with Elizabeth Olson and David Kelly under the assumption that like people just love this stuff and if it's HBO if they get...

I feel like HBO's with their swagger is just like, it doesn't matter if we get to market first. We're the HBO version. Right. But that's wild. Like that used to be significant, right? Like two pre-Fontaine biopics, oh my goodness, which, by the way,

is such a cute story now in retrospect. I know. Two movies about our long-distance runner. But now we're just going to flood the zone with as many of them as we can because that does seem to be the growth industry, and I'm not sure if it's the right call. And it's like the...

I don't want to view everything through this lens, but I can't help it feel like it's almost like extremely online, like, news savvy adults, it's their IP. You know, it's like for somebody who spends a lot of time reading the Atlantic or the New Yorker or New York Times Magazine or whatever, this is your version of like the MCU where you can fantasize about who should play Elizabeth Holmes or Travis Kalanick or Carol Baskin or whatever. And there's like almost like a fantasy football element of like, this person, would be perfect for this role. I can't wait to see the seven episode series about this.

Or Jessica Pressler, who's now been played by Julius Stiles in the film Hustler and Anna Kloomsky in Inventing Anna. It's pretty wild. I want to talk about inventing Anna specifically, but the question I had for you about this topic, which, you know, to your point, like this is, we're just kind of, we're working with it here. This is a developing story. We have not seen all these shows. So we don't want to jump to any particular, you know, grandiose conclusions, but this is a podcast, and that is what the format is best at. So I was watching the trailer, another trailer that came out this week for the Apple TV Plus show, Pachinko, which is a apparently sumptuous adaptation of the best-selling novel.

Yeah. And first of all, it looks amazing. You've seen some of it, right? I saw it. Yeah, I just, I cannot wait for people to see this show. I think it's wonderful. Great cast, great, just great creative up and down the board. Very excited about that.

I was watching it and I was thinking, this is interesting because a bestseller like Bichinko, which is about a Korean family's immigration from Korea to Japan over the course of the 20th century, you know, 20 years ago a bestseller would get optioned. And anytime between 20 and 40, 50 years ago. But it would either die in the vine or they would have to put more Americans in it. Or they would film it in English, right? or they would do all the things that Hollywood felt it needed to do for years. But thankfully, we're at a point now where a large book can be adapted into a large format miniseries, and also the book can be told in a manner that is respectful of and has fidelity to the source material. So it appears, and again, I haven't seen it, but the series is in Korean to a great extent, you know,

with actors, whether they're Korean-born or Korean-American who speak the language. And that's kind of thrilling. And I was like, this is actually a positive reflection on something larger that was concerning me, which is our cultures, not just obsession with verisimilitude, but what I was starting to wonder, and this is my big concern troll thought for the week, which is that I'm starting to worry that as a culture, we are becoming increasingly afraid of fiction and what that means. And the reason I say this, and there are a bunch of threads I'm going to throw at you, So we didn't prep for this. This is just an idea that occurred to me. But at the beginning of the show, we were talking about the Oscars and talking about people were more comfortable with like deep diving into things. What lost and Reddit did to the television show, right, which is just like real time fact checking everything has become kind of a default internet pose that keeps us from actually engaging often, keeps many of us or some of us are straw men anyway, from engaging in what's being said creatively or emotionally and keeps us.

one step removed, being like, well, that's not how police investigations work. Right. You know, or I don't, I don't believe that or whatever. When, that, that never used to be the barrier for entry, right? Like, when you go to see a play, you're not like, that's not how police investigations work. You're like, that man's standing in front of me, pretending to be a policeman. Right. Right.

You buy in to the fiction, and then you're there in present and living with a fiction. But we live in a moment, and I don't know how wide we cast this net where, like, truth has been brought into question, like objective truth. and, you know, nothing is sourced and everything is destabilizing. But all of this is leading me to this place where I'm just like, I don't know if we're trusting audiences to buy make believe anymore.

We are either doing full make believe, like Wheel of Time and Lord of the Rings, or we are doing fully sourced, you know, maybe fanciful, but sourced, like, you know, Wikipedia stuff like Pam and Tommy or We crashed or whatever it might be. Yeah, you know, I think each one of those shows

deserves to be evaluated on its own narrative. So I'm nervous to like paint with a broad brush. But I would tweak your concern troll with maybe not fiction, but storytelling. You know, and if I read a magazine article about Uber or about Elizabeth Holmes or WeWork, some of those things I'm more interested in than others, I think generally speaking, I'm a little burned out on, and this seems stupid because it's like, most stories are this, but I'm a little burned out on the torrid rise and precipitous fall of

you know, new tech, the new tech economy. But I think the most important part, it's like when you watch, say, social network, which I think is, if not the best, one of the best films of the century, um, I really could care less about whether or not that's the real story of how Facebook started, right? Like, what I care about is that it feels true and that the things that it's saying about greed and about our capacity to kind of cannibalize

ourselves for the sake of power or you know the things that we do to uh to see our visions executed that's what's important to me also it's a david fincher movie and it looks really good and it's an erin sorkin written script so it sounds really good and the music's cool and like all the elements of filmic storytelling are in full flight there. And so when it's just simply, hey, like, here's this show based on widely understood information about whether it's a con artist or a CEO. And we're pretty much going to shoot it like a kind of a glorified reality show or a glorified documentary, but the joy of Joseph Gordon Levitt is Travis Kalanick or Amanda C. Freed is

as Elizabeth Holmes is about as deep as this pebble goes into the water. I don't know. I think that's the issue that I'm having more than it being whether or not like we're too over-reliant on like fiction or nonfiction. I just think reality gives the creators and the audience banisters, safety guardrails, to not let things get too out of hand or get too uncomfortable or too surprising. And I think it can work out really well. I mean, we're going to be talking about the new winning time,

the Lakers show on HBO soon. And, you know, that's telling a true story. It's, you know, embellishing and having some very Adam McKay-like fun with it. And it's super entertaining. Like, I've only seen one, but I'm into it. But I'm going to continue to beat the drum for the idea that I would rather watch Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master than a 10-hour miniseries about El Ron Hubbard. You know what I mean?

Like, I want an artist to be inspired by something and tell us a story that has its own meaning and stakes. I mean, like Chinatown, for example, like Jake Gettys doesn't exist. He didn't exist, but he could have. And that world kind of did. And it had something to say about history, but also about the moment in American history when the movie was actually made. Right. And I feel like that that ability to let artists play in a sandbox kind of sort of inspired by something.

I think we're losing that because I think people, whether it's the, and I don't. And again, hopefully we're trying to, you know, not not make too. broad, not paint with too broad a brush, because I think that there is reticence and fear on the part of Hollywood and executives, which is also legitimate because people don't want to lose their jobs. But I also think there's reticence and fear on the part of audiences, too. And I think both people are assuming, both groups are assuming kind of the worst about the other, and we're inching forward with their hands covering our eyes a little bit into this era, which doesn't, it makes me worried about the art we're going to be seeing, or at least the opportunity for

the really challenging or inspiring art or surprising art to get made. Now, I say, all this stuff about, I don't care about reality. I just wanted to feel true or I don't care about whether it's accurate. I just wanted to feel true. But I think that that was probably not the case for inventing Anna for me, which I didn't like in general from what I've seen of it. And, you know, like part of the reason why I didn't like it was, I think maybe the best way to say is just like the tone of it was just like at a pitch that I wasn't really into. But another reason why I didn't like it is that I felt like a lot of the stuff that felt grafted onto it to make it more TV felt like completely unnecessary from what would have been just a compelling

story. What did you make of the episodes that you saw? I am of two minds. So I've seen two episodes and I have been told that, you know, boy, it gets better when they get to Morocco, but we're always told that there's a Morocco episode, even if it's not literally the case, right? With these, with these, especially these streaming shows that drop all their episodes, like maybe, maybe it does get better, but there are a lot of episodes and they're long. And so I don't think I'm going to make it to Morocco, sadly. I'm of two minds about it. One is that I want to begin by saying, Shonda Rhymes is the best there is at what she does. And it's actually kind of notable and respectable, more than respectable, just it's noteworthy, I think. that this potentially hot property to be optioned, reality, actual thing, like from an article, as we mentioned in New York magazine about a kind of a grifter who penetrated the halls of the upper echelon of New York society and money, was given to someone who made a very specific version of it in their metier.

You know what I mean? Like, kind of like giving Star Trek to Quentin Tarantino, what comes out is going to end up being a lot more Tarantino than Star Trek, probably, which is like Paramount Blinked. This ends up being a Shonda Rhyme show. which is a very successful formula, you know, and there aren't that many autores who, when they take something, make it their own. All of that said, I can't get over this show because, to me, and I do not know better than Chonda Rhymes.

I am not worthy of being said in the same sentence as Chandra Rhymes in terms of what I know about TV, let alone making TV. But a kind of sexy New York socialite grifter in the Instagram age seems pretty fun and poppy to me. And for it to become what is essentially a Shonda Rhyme show in that it is a very soapy, earnest dromedy about work and process boggles my mind. Right. You have this super cuckoo banana's Julia Gardner performance at the heart of the show as the person that makes everything go. And you begin with her already arrested and then kind of make the show about Anna Klombski's dogged reporter who, you know,

is also an avatar for Strident Me Too era feminism in the workplace. And then also Aryan Moyette, whom we love on succession and want to see succeed everywhere, is a defense attorney. And then he just gets like a six-minute ISO play called for him where he's just like, I grew up poor. Yeah. Like it's wild. But this is what she makes.

But this is not the show that I would have wanted personally, which is not to say, I'm right because it's top 10 Netflix around the world. So it worked. But I'm just like incredulous about the way the show plays out. Yeah, I was thinking about this a lot because I super enjoyed newsroom set dramas and comedies. I think it's in a really right place to tell a story. You know, I know a little bit about New York Magazine and Jessica Pressler has been really open about the changes that they made to it. And it has honestly a fantastic attitude about, you know, she's just like, there's just stuff that they do for TV that's not going to be like exactly what it was like at Varick Street.

also like not painting her baby's nursery instead putting up like clues and facts for her story. But exactly what you're saying. Telling the story from the perspective of telling the story rather than the story happening is a really interesting storytelling choice that I just didn't love. I also just thought like for me Anna Cholmsky's performance was just kind of like dialed in like a really like weird, vibe. You know, like, I, I guess, like, your mileage may vary on that, but for that to be essentially the lead. And I like her a lot generally, like, she's just incredible on VEP. I just would say, like, that, that threw me off and grade it a little bit. I like her in this because she strikes me, the way she takes to this material just feels like, you know, someone being handed a power bar

after a marathon, like, she just seems like hungry for this, right, you know, and is going to act the shit out of it, even when the scenes are, frankly, like, jaw-dropping when, like, her character confront someone who like knew in the service industry who knew Anna and she's just like then gets a monologue about the way people behave in New York like it's just the telling the story about the story is just so odd to me because there's a moment in the end of the second near the end of the second episode and I imagine there's more of this going forward as we we learn more about Anna's life in flashback where kind of her bluff gets called right and she doesn't have another credit card and it's an increasingly tense situation and maybe the bottom's going

to fall out and she's going to be discovered. And Garner, who is, accent aside, is just, you know, I think is a great, great, great actor is doing it. And you're getting that kind of like queasy sick feeling, you know, that even though you're not, you are not hopefully yourself a grifter, but like you're having some common humanity in that moment. And I'm like, isn't that the story? Instead of then flashing back to Anna Klombski interviewing her that Anna Delvin's, you know, that Anna Delvin's his then fashionista friend with him being like, it was tough to see that. Okay. But like put us in there with it.

Like, why is it about process? It's really interesting. But maybe, but that's why I kind of started this by saying, I don't know if I can credibly be like we're losing the personalized aesthetic touch of filmmakers in this era of straight to screen. And then being like, this powerful autore who put her unmistakable stamp on a story, chose the wrong stamp. Yeah.

That feels a little. I also don't need every show to be like gorgeous magic hour shots of people touching wheat. You know, like I've got 1883 for that. It doesn't need to be that in every series. I think I just found- Is touching wheat what you call drinking your non-alcoholic beers that you were talking about the other week? I feel like we should have the podcast.

I don't think it's going to get even out of that. 5 p.m. Time to touch wheat. Not going to get a buzz. I wanted to ask you though, do you think you will watch super pumped or is, is, is that kind of story because it's, I would not call

a super pumped depiction of Calenic empathetic. I mean, I guess empathetic in the sense that it's like finding humanity and all the characters, but I wouldn't necessarily call it, you know,

it's not like they're trying to say that Travis was this great guy who just like collapsed under pressure. It's, but it is an interesting rendering of this story because at least in the episodes that I've seen so far,

it's, you don't find out why he becomes Batman really? Like there were some suggestions like oh I got a problem with his brother or whatever but like there's not like an origin story. He's just like I'm trying to fucking take over the world and then you know we know what happens to him. He didn't work. I mean for Uber it worked but not for him. It's like he did right. Is that the end of the story? Yeah. I'll say I don't and I'm curious how much of our audience I speak for in this. I kind of want TV shows. I will check out Super Pump because like you said like Cobbillman Levine are like worthwhile smart interesting

guys and they have something to say and they're making another season of this. Like, this is something that they want to work. This is a lane they want to work in, you know. So I think that's interesting. Like these guys who have really, you know, are, are masters of the kind of of the brocode, basically, like looking at the toxicity of the way that's played out in the tech space or in our economy. Like, okay, that's cool. That's a project. That's worthwhile. I am not diminishing that. But personally, I kind of want to watch TV shows again on TV. I don't really want eight-hour events at the moment about things that happened in the news or, you know, dramatic recreations of magazine articles. I don't want that. If I wanted something limited that's

investigating a feeling or an idea or a crime, I'll watch a movie right now. That's where I'm at. Like, I think that, you know, John Landgraf 10 years ago, identified this area, this six to 10-hour spot as like a really sweet one in an underutilized asset. But I feel like we've gone the other direction. Like I was looking at our list of stuff that we're looking forward to in the watch, like shows coming back and, or not shows coming back, just shows premiering. And I'm desperately looking. There are a lot of cool things, but I'm looking for the ones that are shows coming back. You know, I want to see my pals again. I can't wait to get back to Atlanta. Like I wish Succession would come back sooner. Saul. Yeah. I can't wait for Saul for that reason. Thank you. That was on the

tip of my tongue. That's the show that I want to come back. The rhythmic experience of being like, okay, firing this one up. Yeah. I'm personally growing weary of that too. And so that alone, not that I am representative of the average TV viewer necessarily, but I think that that feeling makes me think that we might actually be closer to the end of this era of like 3D printer versions of reality than it seems. This was a moment in Hollywood grabbing this stuff up.

And now as they come out. And it just so happens that it's all coming out at the same three months stretch. Potentially because of COVID or whatever. but I have a feeling that the people who are making the decisions have, I mean, obviously, podcasts are still getting gobbled up and bought, but I think that, I think we may be moving off of this. Just in time for us to sell our podcast as a straight rip from the headlines story. About me doing word old in the mornings?

Andy, we will be back on Monday. We have a very special guest on Monday. It is a Righteous Gems pod. I will say that. So get caught up on the second season of Righteous Gemstones if you haven't. Andy did. We will be back on Monday and fun stuff coming up. As Andy mentioned, there's a lot of good shows coming up, plus Top Chefs coming back next week. So I don't know that we're going to be dedicating like our entire second episode of the weeks to Top Chef, but we'll definitely be talking about it and talking about most episodes. So stay tuned for that. I will be dedicating my second episode to it, but at a certain point, they might cut my mic. On the Patreon. Thanks to Kai McMuller for producing us. We'll be back next week. On the substack.

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