This Had Oscar Buzz - 109 – The Way Way Back

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

We decided to end the summer with another Listeners’ Choice episode and your triumphant film was 2013′s Sundance title The Way Way Back. The film was another massive Sundance buy for Fox Searchlight, who sold it to audiences very much in the mold of its successful Little Miss Sunshine. But even with two of Sunshine’s Toni Collette and … Continue reading "109 – The Way Way Back"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Hacks. I'm from Canada. I'm from Canada water. Duncan, on a scale of 1 to 10, what do you think you are? A 6?

I think you're a 3. Since I've been dating your mom, I don't see you're putting yourself out there, bud. You can try to get that score up at my beach house a summer. Who de who is this in all his awkward glory? This is my son, Duncan. I was going to name my youngest Duncan, but we went with Peter. Finally, fix his lazy eye, now it's even worse. Boop, boom.

To stare at the bridge of his nose, that's what I do. You're the worst parent. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. The only podcast getting regularly spanked for pleasure by Michael Fastbender. Every week on this had Oscar Buzz. We'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we are here to perform the autopsy.

I'm your host, Joe Reed. I'm here, as always, with my boozy, flusy neighbor next door. Chris File. Hello, Chris. Good morning, Joseph. I really do wish you were my boozy, flusy neighbor next door. I feel like we'd have a time. Alice and Janney in this movie plays a human margarita.

She does, but like she's so much fun, I feel like, in this movie. Yeah, she's good at this movie. That could use more fun. Like, she's, to me, the highlight. And we can talk about stuff from this movie that we didn't like as much, for sure. I wanted to lead with one question for you, though. So have you ever had the experience of riding in a rear-face seat in a station wagon.

Absolutely not. It was stressing me out so much in this whole movie. I was like, they're going to slam on the brakes. He is going to jettison out of that back window. I said that to my husband. He was like, actually, if they slammed on the brakes, he would just lean back in the seat. I was like, I don't understand physics.

Shut up. It's true. You'd be the safest person in the whole car. My cousins growing up had a station wagon, like classic station wagon, wood paneling, the whole nine, right? and they had the seat in the back and we didn't really ride in their car a lot because that was sort of their dad's car and their dad was sort of never really around but the few times we got to ride in the station wagon it would be like a jostling fight to see who could sit in the

back seat because it was just the two-seater back there and we had to like whatever like take turns slash like whatever bargain to see who could sit in the back seat because it was this like you know it was whatever it was like the one different thing it wasn't necessarily better but it was like different than what everybody else was doing so you wanted to do it and I get the sort of nostalgic pull that I'd seen this movie before um this week before we had chosen to do the podcast I saw the movie the year it came out and so I already knew I was like middling on this movie I'm like it's not a great movie but watching it at the beginning of this to start it hooked me with the rear seat station wagon thing and then there's just

this one very incidental moment where you see them the car sort of pulling like riding down the street in this in this beach community and then pulling into the driveway of the vacation house and I was like oh sense memory and it's just like especially this summer where I haven't really been able to do anything and I was just like oh my god I want to go to the beach for a week somewhere I don't even like the beach I just wanted to like sit in a house by the water and like be able to like hear the ocean and whatever and just it's my family we weren't like in every summer go to the beach family first of all we couldn't afford a house like we weren't like this family who has like a regular place that we go every summer whatever but we went often enough that we would sort

of like, you know, pull it together to get a vacation home somewhere on like Cape Cod or somewhere maybe closer by here on Lake Erie or something like that. And like a house, a week in a house close enough to the ocean or maybe a lake or whatever is so, to me, incredibly relaxing. And for that like one little scene as they were just like pulling the car through this like very clearly beach community, I was like, oh, that's the stuff. And I wish the rest of houses piled on top of houses that is not relaxing you would think not and yet it's so easy to just sort of like like this movie talk like there's more of like a sense of like community in this movie where like everybody knows each other and everybody socializes together and everybody kind of hates each other though too right like that was never my experience because we were never like regulars we never like came to the same place every summer but like ensconced in your little sort of like cottage or whatever with you and whoever you're traveling with and I don't know like yes like it's close quarters and as we got older like the friction between like the siblings got more pronounced and whatnot but there's just something so relaxing about being in that atmosphere it's so idyllic to me so I had that for a moment and then the rest of the movie happened and I was just like oh right like that's why I didn't like but here's the thing you kept saying a week at a house a week at a house how long are they planning on staying at this house in this movie because time

time is an abstract construct in this movie yeah very well to the point where you're not sure what era this movie is taking place in yeah it's it's like it's like contemporary but it's really going for 80s vibes forever stuck in 1985 right that's true like that I guess that's like the positive way of looking at this. Of, like, not renovation, but, like, peak of expansion in that era and, like, is forever frozen there, right? Because, like, the idea of a water park is, like, 1985, right? But also, it just felt like, it truly felt like they end up leaving what they say is

early, but I'm like, you maybe have spent three weeks here already. Were they planning on spending the whole summer at this house and, My second follow-up question is, how rich are these people? Right. Well, so clearly this seems to be like his place. And whether it's... Right. It doesn't seem like it's a timeshare situation either.

It feels like it's just like his place. And sometimes I will say... He's a car salesman. So it's like if he owns his own car dealership, that makes sense. Yes. Okay, so here's what I will say from my like limited life experience. growing up decidedly like middle middle class is I knew people who had like a house at the lake and it's less it's you don't have to be as rich as you think to be able to do it at certain places

like certain like really like nice fancy places yeah you got to be like loaded but like there were definitely people who were like not too much higher up than our family on the ladder who had like vacation homes either like you went in on with like you and a couple other families or maybe this was something that like your has been in your family for maybe like from maybe like from when your parents had it whatever and they bought it you know in the 50s when shit was cheap or whatever and they're just sort of these like because the houses are pretty modest or whatever and as you said everything's sort of like close quarters together so it's not like you have a lot of land or whatever it's just basically like the location.

So, like, there were those families who in the summer would just, like, go to Lake Erie, and, like, that's where they would sort of, like, be for the summer. And, like, the parents would, like, the dad would, like, commute to work from there and whatever sometimes. That was obviously not the case in this thing. But, like, it did seem like they were just going to, like, oh, we're going to spend the summer at the lake. Like, that felt very much, like, the vibe in this movie. So when they were leaving early, it's like, yeah, you only spent three weeks out of whatever, like, eight weeks. you were going to spend there. But it also feeds into this idea of just like this kid who's like, oh my God, I'm sentenced

to my entire summer spent with this like asshole guy who hates me. That I thought this movie, that was one of the things. I think there are certain things that this movie does very well. Not very well. Does well. And one of them was. Or at least establishes well and doesn't really feel of them. It establishes Carrel's character.

and the threat he poses to Duncan, the kid, pretty well. Corell is not likable in this movie by design. I think he's... That's one of the things I think the movie does well, is that, like, it understands the, like, undercurrent of sinisterness or the, like, genuine asshole vibe that Steve Carell puts out that, like, no other movie,

not even Foxcatcher really gets right. Right, right. he's a very believable because it also it's like he's not this like sneering villain he's not like physically abusive he's not whatever but like he's a bad guy who still has these moments of trying to do what he feels like is the right thing he probably had like a really domineering father and he feels like he's got to like whip this kid into shape because his own father like doesn't want to be a parent and whatnot and but like not being a child of divorce myself, I still got this weird sense memory of like, my aunt was married to this guy

for a while who we all kind of hated. And the one, I just, I literally clearly remember the one time at a family picnic where he was like, we were, we were getting ready to leave. And he was like, go say goodbye to your grandfather before you leave. And I was like, I remember having this whole reaction of just like, first of all, you are not my dad and you are not even my uncle. So like, get the fuck out of here and I felt that reaction when I was watching a lot of what Karell was doing in this movie so like I can imagine if you were a child of divorce and had experiences with like mom's got a boyfriend and I hate him like I think it delivers that vibe pretty well I definitely had the like horrible stepfather but like I also had a father who was

good and present so right right like there's certain things that I think I can understand from experience that I can't necessarily I don't think the movie does well specifically with this character like the whole opening conversation that happens in this movie where he calls the kid a three out of ten you know whatever and it like affects the kid and I'm like the mother would probably speak up about some of the like assholeisms that he projects on to Duncan right especially if the mother is like Tony Gallant you know well she's sleeping in the car when he says that right yes but there's other things that are said throughout and there's other like domineering isms that i'm like okay maybe i understand how that doesn't happen but like the movie doesn't

explain the logic like and it makes you really not get on the side of tony colette's character to the point where it feels so underdeveloped and unestablished that like she has no response to this guy being an asshole to her kid? Yes, a couple of things about that. One of them is they do at some point late in the movie, probably too late in the movie, have her make the case that she's essentially having to make the hard choice for herself, which is have no security,

have no either emotional or financial or whatever security in her life, or settle for this guy who is, you know, not nice and maybe doesn't treat her son well, but is also, again, like, not physically abusive, not whatever. Like, she's, like, definitely settling and making these sort of, like, mental, emotional tradeoffs, and she knows that, and she acknowledges that by the end. The other thing is, and I think you're right that it makes it harder to be on Tony Collette's side as much as you want to because it's Tony Collette. Or to at least just hear her perspective on this or think that she has a perspective.

I think she's the most underwritten character in the movie. They really needed to have one scene with her and Alice and Janney in the middle of the movie, A, that would set up that, like, warm goodbye that they have at the end of the movie. Yeah. Which, like, is lovely, but it's not fully supported by the text in the movie. But, like, something where she, like, explains her position fully to appear. Mm-hmm. Because I do think there's something to the fact that you need to be able to be on the kid's side

when the kid blows up her spot in the middle of the or in the middle of party. Or like be enough on his side that you don't think he's totally irredeemable. So you have to at least get his frustrations with his mother and feel those frustrations. So I do feel like keeping her full perspective maybe a little bit in arm's length probably is something that could work for the movie just because you need to be on the kid's side a little bit at that moment. But like you're absolutely right where like we needed to have. more from her to understand her spot. Like, that's a thing that Little Miss Sunshine actually

does really well, and in really small moments, is it gives the Tony Collette character in that movie these moments where you're just like, oh, I understand the position she's in. I understand the spot she's in with her husband and her kid and whatnot. Just in, like, movie terms and, like, I don't want to say

movie rules, but just like, as you're sitting down to watch this movie, regardless of what your personal experience is, it's like you have to understand what this dynamic is and it has to make sense and like it's just off enough that it doesn't make sense like it's maybe that he's too much of an asshole or maybe like she's doesn't have enough of her something like the dynamic just is like and it's one of the problems of the movie because it's so off that you know exactly what the end point of this relationship will be the whole movie so yeah everything is

about where it goes. Though, like, I guess to the point of she never has any perspective of how this guy talks to her son. Like, she has a fight with him and, like, stands up to him for herself first. Because he's cheating on her.

Yes. Yeah. And they have this, like, petty fight over literal candy land. Yeah, that scene I enjoyed too. When, like, we've had so many scenes beforehand where it's like, maybe she should have been, Like, hey, you're going too far with my son.

Yeah. Yeah, it's true. So we'll get into that once we get on the other side of the plot description. But before we did that, we should mention that this was the movie that our Twitter followers voted for when we put up the poll a few weeks ago. We wanted to, because we tend to do sort of, we pick our movies a month at a time for at a clip. and we try and have you guys guests on Twitter and you can only put up four images but August is a five Monday movie

or five Monday month so we wanted to have our fifth movie in the month be a little bit of something special so we put up a poll and we wanted it to be Oscar Buzz movies that were released in summer which is a little bit of a rare bird not an entirely rare bird

kind of a floating nebulous creature but we also hadn't done a listener's choice in a long time. Right. Nice to give it back to the listeners a little bit. It is. If you don't follow us on Twitter, do so, and you can vote in the next listener's choice. Absolutely.

Had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz. All right. So this poll we had, we found four movies that had opened in summer that ultimately had Oscar Buzz. We had the way way back, DeLovely, the 2004, Kevin Klein, Ashley Judd,

Cole Porter, musical. Allison Moore. Or not Allison. Alonis Morse-Morzette. Allison Wilmore singing fantastically in the Lovelry. Alison Williams singing what I am. We had something to talk about, the Julia Roberts, Jenna Rowland's Kira Sedgwick film, Romantic Comedy.

And we had the legendary and still unseen by me, Goya's Ghosts, which Milos Foreman directed Natalie Portman to what's the quote, Chris? You say it better. She said, I believe it was an actress roundtable. She didn't name the movie by title, if I remember correctly, but she said she did a movie with Milo Shformin one time. It's the only movie she did with Milo Shorman, so it's obviously Goya's Ghost. And he told her that she was acting like she was in a bad movie, and this is a good movie.

And he was wrong. That's a great quote. I would have been excited to see it, I will say. I will just say that. So anyway, by a pretty emphatic margin, our listeners chose the way, way back. I feel like, I mean, never to cast dispersions on why something wins in the poll. But it was definitely the most recent of all of those movies, the most fresh in people's minds. It's definitely the one we've mentioned in previous episodes the most, probably.

Yeah. And it definitely has a clear Oscar narrative. It was such a Sundance thing that year, which will definitely. get into but like a huge sundance acquisition for searchlight which is such an oscarry studio the oscar narrative was there for it from a pretty you know early stage absolutely i also think it's probably just one of those things where it's on twitter too and it's you know people who maybe don't know who we are like the algorithm puts us in their feed and they see a poll and they pick one and it's the only title they might know um so next time maybe we pick all rarities or all

well-known movies. Rarities and B-sides, that's when we will really get the listenership. Absolutely. Because I feel like that happened a little bit with Cloud Atlas for us, too. Oh, that's a good point. All right, so we are rolling on up on the 20-minute mark, which means it's time for us to do our 60-second plot description of the film, The Way, Way, Back. We, just to set the table for The Way Way Back, it is written and directed by the team of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, who are Oscar winners, for the script for The Descendants. The film stars Liam James, Tony Colette, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Alison Janney, Maya Rudolph, Anna Sophia Rob, Amanda Pete, and Rob Cordry.

It premiered on January 21st, 2013 at the Sundance Film Festival, and then opened in limited release in July, July 5th, 2013, went wide a couple weeks after that, and a little bit of money. Not, you know, didn't break the box office. But, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, the way, way back. Chris, are you prepared for a 60-second plot description?

You know what? Sure. Sure. All right. Why not? The clock is set, ready when you are. All right. Let's do this.

Go. Okay, so Liam James plays a sad loser who, a sad virgin who can't drive named Duncan. He is going on vacation with his mom and her boyfriend and his daughter to some like seaside, side town. We're guessing in in like New England. His mom's boyfriend is an asshole and he is trying to avoid him the whole time. Meanwhile, his mom is like kind of avoiding him at the same time and just like he gets mad at his mom because like they go and smoke pot or something. Like she's not allowed to do that. 30 seconds. Anyway, he ends up at a fucking water park where Sam Rockwell who stars as Owen who's kind of this like, you know, like bad boy who runs a water park for

whatever reason he ends up getting a job there and Owen teaches him how to like have confidence or something like that and then eventually Duncan's mom and his boyfriend have a fight so they leave early and then I guess his mom decides to focus on him because she gets in the backseat of the car. Yeah. What is this movie?

Okay, so a lot of this movie is predicated on reminding you of other movies. I was going to say it reminds you of a lot of movies because it's one of my least favorite genres of movies, which is probable alcoholic teaches teenage loser how to bag chicks. Like, I hate these kind of movies to begin with. But it's adjacent to a lot of genres that I do like. I do like one transformative summer movies, when done well. I do like, um, like, so, in general the stuff with the family at the house worked for me and all the stuff at the water

park didn't work for me pretty much like or the stuff at the house mostly worked for me but like I hated almost everything that wasn't Maya Rudolph at the water park at like I do like Sam Rockwell I have to say in this movie oh I thought he was I it's a little too much but like he's up like 14 he is at a 14 but I think because it's Sam Rockwell before Sam Rockwell played exclusively racists, he, like, still has, like, remember, we'll get into it, obviously, but, like, when it was cool to be, like, Sam Rockwell's an underrated actor and he needs an Oscar nomination, it's very much still of that era. We'll get into it later. But, like, you can imagine the version of it where he's played by, like, Will Farrell, Zach Gallifanakis, and it is

unwatchable. Unbearable. No, that's true. But, like, it's, it's, and I mean, as you said, like, probable alcoholic who shouldn't be you know telling anybody anything like there's so much of him that is so overbearing from the start and as speaking as a kid i'm doing a lot of like personal reminiscing i'm very sorry um speaking as a kid who was like quiet and like i wasn't like this like sullen goth kid or whatever but like i was quiet and and didn't always like to be like have the center of attention or anything like that so like the idea that there would be this like stranger adult who was like not only like paying all of this attention but just like prodding me to like be an extrovert I'm just like absolutely not it doesn't

make sense because it would have repulsed a character like Duncan I would have never come back I would have left and never come back absolutely like that I completely agree with I would have read a book in my room for that entire summer yeah but at the same time I do think Sam Rockwell well, is like a likable version of it. And when he does have to be, like, the good person who is supportive to this kid, it is believable. He makes it believable in a way that I don't think the script does. For me, everything in that water park made me want to watch Adventureland.

See, I don't like Adventureland. Oh, I love Adventureland. Adventureland is, to me, the good version of everything happening in the water park and the way way back. Yeah. It's so, it does, it's actual nostalgia, which I think works. It's, um, it has a lot more like characters, even the like Bill Hader and Kristen Wake characters who are more like the people in the way, way back, and that they're like more cartoony and sort of caricatures.

They're funnier to me. And the character stuff, the interaction stuff all seems, in that movie seems a lot more real, like more real, more well observed, more well performed. in a lot of ways. Like, I don't want to get on Liam James's case, but, like, I don't think he's super good in this movie. No, I think he's terrible. He got a ton of, like, younger actor nominations at a bunch of award places.

Sorry, just, where is Katie Rich when we need her? This kid is not good. I know. I feel bad. I'm sure he's a lovely person. Absolutely. He's probably better in other things. Perhaps miscast here.

You're right about Maya Rudolph, though. Like, every time she shows up, it's like, oh, thank God. Shows up, by the way, wildly, obviously, pregnant, and it's not, her character is not. And it's just like, they just took zero pains to try and hide the fact that she is, like, midterm, at least pregnant. Yeah. Poor actress had to be pregnant at a water park every scene of her movie in the summer heat. I know. But it's also, like, in comparison, you were mentioning the, like, theme park workers in Adventureland.

everybody except her is a creep at this park? Like, you have the writer-directors of the movie as different people, one of which is like ogling teenage girls on water slides. First of all, that scene goes on for a million years. And expects us to be laughing the entire time. It fully, like, accepts the premise that its entire audience would naturally be on the side of this guy who's like using his position of authority to a ogle this girl at the water slide and be get other people to also be able to ogle underage girls at the water slide like

it's so fucking gross and it's like this movie was seven years ago it is not does not have an excuse of like oh we didn't know it was 1987 like no fuck off like it's it oh it made me so mad and that they they return to it at the end of the movie to show like how much duncan has like grown into himself and become like a more confident kid that now like he's going to be the one doing this and it's just like fuck off movie this is so annoying i hate it yeah yeah but yeah you're right everybody at the water park those like those cretan kids who are like not his friends or like picking on him or whatever but you're supposed to be like oh that's you know kids the ones who get stuck in the water slide they're all like i never

want to see them at any point ever again. The stepsister and her friends. Yes. Everybody's a bad child except for Anna Sophia Robb who is like wonderful and sweet but also it's like she's barely a character. She's you know. Yeah, I liked Anna Sophia Rob and I just wanted her to have more to do

because I always like Anna Sophia Robb. I genuinely think she's really good. I loved the Carrie Diaries so much. Yeah, but this is also another dude movie where it's like, aren't hot girls all shallow and mean? Like, and I was just like the way that, like, it gives you Anna Sophia Rob to be like, ooh, but she's different.

But like all of her friends who she hates, it's like, they're all awful. And it's just, yeah, I hate those teen boy movies where it's like hot girls are mean. Yeah. No, I agree. I agree with that. It's hard to figure out, like, where to navigate the conversation of this movie because it's all, like, mashed in this Mishigas where, like, all of the. like talking points kind of go in and out of each other because you mentioned this is like a whole lot of the movie's designed to make you think of a whole lot of other movies and it's like a whole lot

of those are sundance movies um specifically little miss sunshine which is a whole like part of the oscar conversation for this movie so i don't really know where to direct the conversation the description for the movie when i fired it up on amazon literally said from the studio behind Little Miss Sunshine and Juno. Like, it was so much a part of the marketing. This is truly from the studio that brought you the movie. Like, this is the poster child for that. But to me, it's a detriment.

Like, I think they thought it was a positive, which was, you liked Little Miss Sunshine. Look, it's this movie with A, the vibe, trying to go for the vibe of Little Miss Sunshine, and B, with two of the stars in Little Miss Sunshine, who are playing siblings in that movie, and now are, like, a romantic couple with zero chemistry, by the way,

which, like, to me, it was only more of a testament to Little Miss Sunshine and how great Tony Colette and Steve Carell are in that movie, that they have no sexual chemistry in this movie. It's like, yeah, they're siblings. They're always going to be siblings. Like, that's fine. It made me, once again, and I already really, really like Little Miss Sunshine. I'm sure that's not a movie that you like either. I haven't watched it in a long time.

I can't really speak to it. At the time, I was really disappointed by it. I love and continue to love and stick up for the Little Miss Sunshine. I would re-watch it. But it's to the point where they tried to carbon copy the entire trajectory of Little Miss Sunshine. And, like, Little Miss Sunshine was big at that Sundance. I don't think this movie was as big at its Sundance. However, they...

It was in certain ways. I think it because it was the most expensive acquisition at that time in Sundance history, Fox Searchlight buys it for $10 million. dollars that's what made it a story it wasn't like this organic you know everyone's talking about way way back because they loved it it was it i think it was before the premiere the deal went down so now all of a sudden everybody's like all right what's this ten million dollar movie everybody's talking about and uh but like they release it at the same time in the summer whoa yeah yeah little miss sunshine though like had a better critical response out of sundance though

than this did. Hugely. Yeah. Little Miss Sunshine was a more organic hit. I think it's interesting because a lot of the criticism that Little Miss Sunshine got was that it was the sort of like manipulative, prefabricated, you know, engineered whimsy kind of a thing, which I do take issue with. But if that's, if, you know, if that's what the low-key criticism of Little Miss Sunshine was,

that exists in spades in the way, way back. It's so prefabricated. I think part of it, I do kind of feel bad because this is a script that had been bouncing around forever. They had been trying to make this movie happen for a very long time. This movie was on the blacklist of unproduced screenplays in 2007. So, like, six years before this movie got made and already, so, like, who knows when the script was actually written

I think maybe that does play into the weird out of time nature of the movie where like you don't know what era this is supposed to be taking place in. I read, I think it might have been in TV. Yeah, like, why doesn't Duncan have a cell phone? Right, right. And it's just like it feels like this is an 80s movie that I think Katie, when she wrote it up for Cinema Land at Sundance that year, said like for budget, maybe for budget reasons, they had to like make it contemporary because they didn't have.

the budget to um make a period actually but but like it does feel like a memory like a you know a memoir of someone's summer and those movies almost always take place in either the 80s now of course everybody's older so these movies are maybe taking place in the 90s um i always get freaked out of sense as a more of a 90s movie to me than an 80s movie um just because like it just doesn't make a ton of sense at all as a contemporary movie. Yeah. You mentioned the water park thing, too. It's so funny because I just the other day watched a screener for the upcoming. By the time, I think this podcast is out, it'll already be out on HBO Max, this documentary called Class Action Park, which was about the Action Park

Water Park in New Jersey that was like notorious for it's incredibly unsafe rides and all these people like got injured and there were deaths of the park and whatnot. I want to watch this immediately. It's, you'll really like it. I hate true crime, but like this is exactly what I want to watch. One of the talking heads is Chris Getherd because he was like,

he grew up in that area and he went. And he is so incredibly funny in his like recollections of the park. You kind of want the whole movie to just be like an hour of him riffing on Action Park because it's so good. He's really funny about it. You want a Herzog documentary,

but instead of Herzog, it's Chris Getherd. Yeah, basically. um it's really really good so like go to hbomax go and watch it it's wonderful but so that so watching the way way back now i'm already very steeped in this idea of like water parks as 1980s canon so there are definitely like still water parks today but they always do seem like their relics of a bygone era oh totally you enter a time machine when you go into one right i think i i say that now but i don't think I've been to one at least in a solid decade because even before COVID, I am not, you know, relishing the opportunity to walk myself into a petri dish.

I appreciate a pool, but like I don't like strangers enough that like water parks have never appealed. My favorite water ride was not at a water park, but was at just a regular amusement park. We went to Derry and Lake in the summer. And they had a ride called the Grizzly run where it was you and like whatever like six to eight people in a giant sort of like floating it's not like an inner tube it's like an apparatus but floats on like a giant inflated tire kind of thing or whatever and you go down this like rapids and you're all like you're buckled in it was like it was very much like not like action park whatever it was just like you did feel like you were safe and secure but you were going down these like rapids and it was

super fun, but, like, that's the extent of, I don't need to go down, like, a giant water slide on a flimsy little mat or something. My eyes are bugged out hearing you describe this. It sounds like an ear infection. You only get, like, you don't get wet from, like, being submerged in water. It's just, like, it's, like, running water that, like, cascades over you. So it's fine. You're fine. I do, I do, like, a lazy river, especially if I can have some type of cocktail I think you're just describing floating on a raft in a pool in your backyard. I think that's what basically you want to do, which is what I want to do. I don't have a yard, but I would happily have one if I could float in it drunk.

Once again, we return to my longing to go on vacation. This whole episode is just us talking about vacation rather than this movie. Okay, but I mentioned, sorry, no, go ahead. No, go ahead, go ahead. Well, I was going to say I didn't want to get too far away from my mention. of the 2007 blacklist, because, uh, A, if you go and check out that year's blacklist, it is a incredibly, like, fruitful list of movies that ended up getting made. Like, like, stuff that you would think of and, like, stuff that you wouldn't, like, even have expected would be

on something like the blacklist. Like, Jack Ryan Shadow recruit is on there. Oh, my God, why? Weirdly, like, Justice League is on there. But then it's also, like, stuff like Orphan. And, um, salt and the wrestler and zombie land and um burnt aka adam jones and um oh happy thank you more please that uh uh josh radnor movie so it's like this weird mixture of like future like blockbuster types like clash of the titans is on there and also future um sundancy kinds of things but so this incredibly like fertile and rich field of movies i decided of course i wanted to a game because I love giving you tests and quizzes. If this episode is itself a water park, we're taking a trip to one of those booths

where you can win a large teddy bear that you have to carry around. Oh, my God. Chris, and much like those booths, it is rigged to make you fail, but also in a very fun way. So that's fine. All right. I see how this game goes. You can tell me what I win after. Exactly.

All right. So I thought we would return to one of my favorite game types here, which is, you know, is the movie character mashup game where I will name three movie characters and you will name for me the film that all of those actors are in together. All of the answers to this will be films from the 2007 blacklist. Now in the past, listeners, you may know, that Chris has been able to, I'm not going to say cheat, but let's say enhance his odds by knowing, having intimate knowledge of the closed set of answers. So, like, when we did this for Warner Independent movies,

Chris knows what all the Warner Independent movies are. So he was able to sometimes just sort of guess without working through the game as intended, let's say. I rigged the game. I did not cheat, sir. It was... I worked backwards from the way you wanted me to, but I got the answer. Yes, yes.

I was Chris Evans, Scarlet-Jahanson vehicle, the perfect score. You're always the perfect score. No, but my guess is you don't have as comprehensive and knowledge of the 2007 blacklist. So it'll be interesting to see how it's a good educated guess. Okay, are these characters the character names they play in that movie or these actors have played that character before and they're all in other movies. Okay. These are characters from other movies, but the actors who played those people are all in the same movie and that movie exists on the 2007 blacklist. So just to give you like a parameter, the film.

The films on this blacklist were produced and released in years ranging from 2008 to 2018, roughly. So in that 10-year span. Okay. Okay. So, starting off, your three characters are Mark Zuckerberg, Snow White, and The Herald. Okay, so that's Jesse Eisenberg. Snow White, I am guessing, is Kristen Stewart. is this adventure land it is do you want to take a guess as to who the herald is the herald oh my god

is um oh no it's a christin wig in mother yes thank you okay i'm glad you got that that was just for you thank you um if we ever play this with any of our other friends you brought some life into this house okay next one lois lane blowfeld and gideon graves uh this is big eyes because lois lane is Amy Adams. Blofeld is Christoph Waltz and I don't know who the third one was. Gideon Graves is Jason Schwartzman in Scott Pilgrim versus the world.

We're going to eventually have to do big eyes and it will be a sad burger for me. It will be a most pressing salad. I'm going to find a way to quiz you on actresses with big eyes from Tim Burton movies. I'm going to find a way to do that. Too bad it's not a visual podcast or else we could do just like screenshots of just eyes,

and you have to guess the Tim Burton actress by her eyes. Oh, I would do that easy. We could do that on the Twitter maybe. All right, we'll see. Okay, next one. Romeo Montague, Max Rockatansky, and Bill Weasley. Romeo Montague is Leo DiCaprio. Bill Weasley is Donald Gleason.

Is this the Revenant? Yes, Max Racketansky. of course, being Tom Hardy in Mad Max Fury Road. I do not know Mad Max's last name. Yes. Ew, the Revenant for its screenplay. Yes. What's a blacklist script?

You know, sure. All right, next one. April O'Neill, Cosette, and Seth Cohen. Okay. April O'Neill, I know, is something that I need to know what that is. Cosette is. is, I'm guessing Amanda Seifred. It could also be Claire Daines.

What was the third name? Seth Cohen. Oh, I should say a couple of these are television. Oh, okay. Seth Cohen. That sounds like a name I should know. Amy what? April O'Neill.

April O'Neill. You intentionally do this game to me because you know I don't know character names. Um, this one is a tough one. I will say, April O'Neill, either you, like, really know the franchise that she's from or you don't. And even if you do, this is sort of the, uh, like, second or third iteration of this franchise in a film. And I had forgotten that she was the one who played April O'Neill in this movie. So, like, this is tough. But also, it's the only character in her filmography that has any name value whatsoever.

Okay. So it's, it's a sequel of a, you know, known character in whatever this franchise is. She doesn't show up until, like, the second or third. No, she's like, she's an integral character to this franchise. She's like, she's like the, all right, she's the human woman sort of, um, conduit for this team of, like, humanoid, uh, oh, it's an X-Men movie? No, but that's a good, it's a good.

Guess. No, it's a little bit campier than that and a little bit more, not niche necessarily, but it's very early. Oh, it's, um, is April O'Neill, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Yes. Yes. Um, so that is Megan Fox. See, I didn't even remember that she was, uh, she was in that later one. Yes, but yes, it's Megan Fox. Megan Fox and Cyfrid. Oh, it's a Jennifer's body. Duh. I even almost just said I would have known her if you said her name was Jennifer. Jennifer's body rules.

Jennifer's body rules. I said that many times. Seth Cohen, by the way, I think that's another one where either you watched the OC or you didn't. And if you watched the O.C. You would know that that's Adam Brody. All right. I think there's only one more television one in here. Adam Brody, who when I put in the DVD that I got from the library of the way, way back,

Adam Brody showed up in the trailer for baggage claim, which was a Fox Searchlight movie. We need more movies like baggage claim. That's all I have to say. I missed the days of pre-programmed trailers before movies on home video. It is a lost, I think I mentioned this before on the podcast, but it is truly a lost moment. moment of shared culture where we all would come together and know certain movies because they were trailers before popular videos. Anyway, whatever. I just miss romantic comedies that are just absolutely silly like baggage claim. Wait, what is the plot of baggage claim? Genuinely

couldn't tell you just from the trailer. It's like, she has to fly around to find this guy she wants to date. Okay, I was thinking that baggage claim was unaccompanied minors. Okay. All right. It's not that. Okay. Who's the woman in it? Paupad. Sure. Okay. No idea.

Okay. Wait, no, I do think I know what you're talking about now. Jill Scott's in this movie. That's wonderful. All right. Next one. Joanna Kramer, Julie Powell, and Lester Bangs. Lester Bangs is Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Julie Powell. Did you say Julie Powell? I did. Is that? why did I No you said Julie Kramer No I said Joanna Joanna Kramer

That is this movie is doubt Joanna Kramer is Merrill from Kramer versus Kramer Yes Julie Powell is Amy Adams And Julie I almost said Julie versus Julie Julie versus Julia

At a moment in that movie It is Julie versus Julia So you're absolutely right When she's making aspects It is definitely Well also when she finds out That Julia Child hates her by proxy, yes. All right.

Anyway, Sir Walter Raleigh, Darby Shaw, and Lyndon Johnson. Oh, boy. Who's played Lyndon Johnson, besides Leav Schreiber? Shout out to our episode on The Butler. Hmm. Well, no, because Tom Wilkinson is, Lyndon Johnson and Selma. But what could this movie be? What are the other, the first two

character names? Sir Walter, Sir Walter Raleigh and Darby Shaw. Darby Shaw sounds familiar. Sir Walter Raleigh, so it's somebody who is conceivably British or conceivable as British. I will say Darby Shaw is very, very adjacent to a movie you saw

within the last like two days maybe three days so it's very adjacent to the way way back no what else have you seen that you were texting me about that i was texting you about do i need to pull up my letterbox damn um oh the uh the firm right so adjacent what would be adjacent to the firm Another Grisham movie Uh-huh The client Uh-uh

Uh-huh or uh-uh No, not the client No, I've already tortured you with the name of the lead character and the client before Yes, you have It's something like Wednesday smokes a lot It was Reggie Love but don't get sidetracked No, not the client

What is directly adjacent to the firm? The one that... Oh, it's a... Is it a time to kill? Nope. Okay, Pelican Brief? Yes. Julia Roberts?

Yes. Okay, so Julia Roberts with Leah F. Schreiber or Tom Wilkinson. The first character name is... Sir, I can't believe... Oh, is this duplicity? Is that Clive Owen? Yes, from... Okay.

No idea. From Elizabeth the Golden Age. How dare you not know intimately the name of the characters in Elizabeth the Golden I too can control the wind, sir, but I don't know the character names from that movie. Okay. Next one, the characters are

Driver, Bruce Wayne, and Harvey Peacar. Well, Ryan Gosling is Driver. Harvey Peacar is Paul Giamatti, which makes Bruce Wayne one of a bunch of people, but what movie is Ryan Gosling?

Oh, is this the aides of March? Yes, who's our Bruce Wayne? Then that would make it George Clooney. Yes. Driver, by the way, from the film Drive. Yeah. Okay. Next one, Jay Gatsby, Palmer Joss, and Queen Elizabeth the First.

Gatsby could be either Robert Redford or Leonardo DiCaprio. Queen Elizabeth the first is probably Kate Winslet could be Judy Dinch Not Kate Winslet, hon Oh, sorry, Kate Blanchett Jeez, send me to

the Goulogs Um Okay, so Blanchett or Dench Who did I say the first one was? Jay Gatsby Jay Gatsby Oh, is this Jay Edgar?

It is not Jay Edgar But that is well-deduced But no, it is not Jay-Edgar All right, what has Decaprio been? It's less likely that it's Decaprio in Blanchett And more likely to be Redford and Blanchet But what is that movie? All right, I'm going to tell you

It can't be truth. It's not. That is a Blanchett-Redford movie, but it's not truth. You are, I will say, wrong on both of those. performers. Okay, so it is DiCaprio and Dench, and it is not Jay Edgar. You are right on one of those performers. Oh, so it's a different Queen Elizabeth. Think recent. Ooh. I'm going to be missing, like, a 2019 movie, aren't I? Um, Decaprio with someone who has played Queen Elizabeth.

to some acclaim and limited awards attention I mean it's not Helen Mirren who played her on TV It's not Think of her in tandem With someone Queen Elizabeth I

Right In tandem with let's say Oh, Jesus Christ, it's Margot Robbie. How dare you? Acclaim scare quotes. So this is the Wolf of Wall Street. Yes, Jay Gatsby, Leonardo DiCaprio, Queen Elizabeth I first, is Margot Robbie in Mary Queen of Scots. And I included Palmer Joss because I just wanted to point out that the character that Matthew McConaughey plays in contact is named Palmer Joss, which is the worst name of a character.

and a film I have ever seen. Yeah. All right, next one. All right, this one is kind of evil, but I think you'll get it. Detective Loki, Daphne Kluger, and Olaf. Daphne Kluger is Anne Hathaway and Ocean's Eight. Olaf is unfortunately Josh Gad in Frozen. And what was the first name?

It was familiar. Detective Loki. which is not Not so much a first name but a title It is not Tom Hiddleston That would be an amazing spin-off of Thor though Detective Loki I would watch the fuck out of that

Well you can watch whatever the hell his own show is going to be It would be him and what's her name Who plays Darcy in the Thor movies Why Can I think of her name now Natalie Portman's sidekick In the film's I almost said Caitlin Dever. It's not her.

It's Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist. Why can't I think of her name? Yeah, that's going to drive me insane. Anyway. It's not difficult. All right, I'll look. It's so bad that I can't think of her name. Okay.

Who are the people that I was saying? Kent Dennings. For God's sake, Kat Dennings. All right. Sorry, Kat Dennings. We love. I just block out everything that Josh Gad is in. from my brain, from my consciousness.

You've definitely seen this movie, I know for a fact, because we talked about it on this podcast. Oh, is it an episode we've done? Yep. Oh, it's love and other drugs. Yes, it is. Detective Loki is Jake Gyllenhaal's character in Prisoners because that character is so much weirder than you remember.

Prisoners is a good movie. It's just long. It's, you know, three hours about child abuse. It's junk, but it's fun junk at times. All right. Sometimes it's not fun, but also worth watching. Okay, anyway, Bruce Wayne, Hawkeye, and Adeline Bowman. Not another Bruce Wayne, honey. Hawkeye is Jeremy Renner. I'm guessing that the Bruce Wayne is Ben Affleck, and this is the town. Yes, guesses on who Adeline Bowman is. Is it Rebecca Hall? Or is it? No, it's Adeline, Age of Adeline, Blake Lively. It is. It is. Well done.

well-guessed the town all right next one is kitty pride casey becker and lee krasner you have done casey becker to me before have i has stumped me embarrassingly and i forget what it is um okay lee crap who's played on krasner uh uh Casey Becker is, oh my God, this is like a 90s movie. It is. It's a very 90s movie. Yeah. Maybe it was that I thought it was embarrassing because it was familiar and it was a movie I never actually saw.

No, you've almost certainly seen this movie. Unless you, like, reject an entire genre of movies you've seen this movie. Sure. Kitty Pride sounds like a superhero character but isn't, and that's why that's, stripping me up. I know that one, too. Well, you're half right. Okay, so it is a superhero character? Yes.

Is it Ellen Page? Yes, from... Okay. X-Men. From the X-Men movies. I hate the X-Men movies, the ones I've seen. I like First Class. X-Men 2 is great.

Okay, Ellen Page. Casey Becker. and Lee Krasner There is a three-word phrase No, Lee Krasner is Marcia Gay In Pollock, this is There's a three-word clue I can give you To get Lee Krasner

And that is what a thrill That is Marsha Gay Harden from Pollock And what did you say? It's Whippet. Yeah, because Casey Becker is whomst Drew Barrymore in something And Scream Scream, God, yes, I absolutely

should know that Because I adore Scream Yeah, thought so. Okay. All right, next one. Jack Twist, Norma Bates, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Well, Jack Twist, Jack Nasty is Jake Gyllenhaal from Bro. Thank you. Thank you for giving me his full Christian name. Yeah, his government name. Yes. What was the second one you said? Because I feel like it's Anne Hes. Norma Bates. Norma Bates. Oh, Norma Bates.

Yes. Ooh. Yes. Oh, that's Vera Farmiga from Bates Motel. Indeed it is. Tried to get one over on me, didn't you? Jake Gyllenha. I told you there was another television one.

Sure, sure, sure, sure. I know what this is. It's just not immediately jumping to me with Vera Farminga and Jake Gyllenha. What was the third name? Jean-Michel Basquiat. Jeffrey Wright. This is source code. Yes.

Well done. Source code. Indeed. All right. Last one for all the marbles. Pass or fail based on this one. Methuselah, Queen Elizabeth II, and Mary Boleyn. Cool. Well, Queen Elizabeth II could be Helen Mirren. It could be Olivia Coleman. It could be Claire Foy. Mary Bolin.

I can't imagine that the other Boleyn girl has someone playing a mother. Though maybe I'm crazy. Wait, walk me down the logic of what you just said there. The other Bolein girl, I don't think there's the mother of the Boleyn, unless is Scarlet Johansson marry Boleyn? Yeah, why do you? think that Mary Boleyn has to be a mother? Because I don't know

monarch history. Okay. Also, I will say there is a mother to the Boleyn girls and the other Boleyn girl and it is Kristen Scott Thomas. Ah, fantastic. But you're right about Scarlet-Johansen. I want to say that. So it's Scarlet Johansson. Scarlet Johansson and either Helen Mirren, Olivia Coleman, it's

not going to be Olivia Coleman. It's not going to be Claire Foy, so I'm just going to lean into it being Helen Mirren. and Scarlett Johansson and someone who's played Methuselah. Uh,

this is a film that has come up twice in the IMDB game and given us fits both of those times. Really? Yes. Is it red? No. That's shown up before.

Oh, is it Hitchcock? Yes. Why? It is Hitchcock. What movie does Anthony Hopkins play Methusel? Oh, my God. Is it Alexander? No?

No, it is Darren Nirovsky's Noah. Fuck off. Fuck off. Congratulations, Chris. You have endured another. Congratulations, you have discovered. I don't really know the Bible that well. Okay.

Yeah. Hey, I did okay on that game. You did. okay on that one. Considering I played it the way that you backed me into a corner to play it. Oh, I like, okay, for the record, Chris Fyle refers to playing by the rules of the game

as established as being backed into a corner. And if you can't hear me making quote marks when I say that, I reiterate that I never cheated in that game. I got the answer fair and square. You did. You just took an end run around the game. And this time you played it

as intended, and I respect you for that. Listen, even Clue has secret passage ways when you play it, and that's still in the rules. Do not bring Clue into this. Not in a movie that featured Candyland, it's board game rival. Wouldn't that be an amazing movie? I want to write a script about a movie that is like total, like, historical fiction about the person who invented Clue and the person who invented Candyland being like

rivals who were once partners. I've watched a hell out of that. They had a disagreement over like the nature of board game. like very much Freud and Young from a dangerous method last year or last week. But it's about Candyland and Clue. And it's like the woman who invented Scatterories likes to be spanked a lot. Wait, are those both Milton Bradley games? Because they could literally be just like the schism between Milton and Bradley.

We should write a screenplay about Milton and Bradley. We should. Anybody listening to this? That's our idea. That's our idea. This audio counts as a copyright. That's right. this is a binding contract

podcast or binding contracts Okay, all right Anyway, back to the way way back And like the whole Oscar buzziness of it I feel like Oscar and Sundance has cooled Has like people have chilled a little bit Because

The Way Way Back is of the era Where it was like trying to find the Oscar movie At Sundance And now it's like this year It's like maybe the Oscar movie maybe the Oscar movie of Sundance, and if you can think of anything else, throw it out there, Joe.

But, like, it's Anthony Hopkins and the father. Yes, I was just about to say. Like, people are, you know, turning it into this big best picture thing. It's just Anthony Hopkins is amazing. That movie was already poised to go that trajectory when they took it to Sundance. It already had a distributor, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I think we've talked about this before when we've talked about other movies that have premiered at Sundance, that the Sundance best picture mystique feels like it's very much the story of Precious, which was comes out of nowhere,

makes a huge splash at Sundance, and eventually like that buzz rolls all the way along to a Best Picture nomination. I think usually what that story usually is is what you just described, which is a performance,

a Jennifer Lawrence in Wintersbone, a Sir Sharon in Brooklyn. What's that? Best picture. Both of those. those best picture nominees that like it eventually gets there but like oh yeah winter's bone was that's right a very contentious picture nominee um yes still like i guess like to describe precious as the peak

is really true because like it would have it needed that long birth of people seeing it across several festivals and doing well at several festivals to like really get kind of the weight behind it in the way that like you want to champion a Sundance hit for Oscar in that way where it does feel organic and earned right whereas like something like the way way back or certain other like this era of Sundance movies it feels so pre-packaged and it's like well I think it's with anything because also we've you know we've talked about Little Miss Sunshine and Little Miss Sunshine was also a like an organic Sundance hit like that was something that began at Sundance and rolled on.

I think it's those things, I think you look at it at all these film festivals where as the machine learns, it, you know, the spontaneity sort of goes away. And as these film festivals learn the rules of the game, it is going to feel harder and harder

to find, like, a true rags to riches, a true, like, picked it out out of nowhere, and you have to start going further and further afield to find it. I think that's definitely true. I also feel like we're at this point with Sundance where I think the instinctive pushback against it is in equal measure, if not maybe even more so, to the benefits of it.

Like, I think that the buzz that can be created positively by Sundance, by critics seeing a movie early, by buzz sort of going around, I think that is in equal parts counterbalanced by this sense of Sundance, type, all these movies that were big Sundance Byes that crashed and burned, your happy texas and whatnot. And also, I think more and more, and especially as movie criticism and movie dialogue on, you know, things like Twitter and whatnot is getting more insider literate, the sense of quote unquote, festival fever is becoming more of a thing that people talk about. And so I think that is a way, and that is a term. I always sort of instinctively bristle at whenever something gets a good review out of Sundance

and people immediately are like, it's the altitude, it's festival fever, it's not a real thing, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because it's such a, it's such a shutdown of any kind of qualitative discussion where it's just sort of just like, and it assumes that anybody who sees that movie at Sundance can't be trusted because they're seeing it at Sundance. so it's this weird like closed loop of um you can't you can't argue your way out of it it's a way for people to sort of like shut down all discussion and that really annoys me but i do feel like that's a thing and i feel like when a movie like the way way back it's a thing at every festival especially where the talent involved is showing up where it's like the energy in the room like there's an

enthusiasm for the product that like nobody else has seen sometimes you haven't even seen a trailer for certain things and you can really um you can see things fresh and maybe with a little bit more enthusiasm especially for like sundance where it's like some of these movies don't have distribution and like you want to actually champion these movies so that like they can have a future success um yeah so like some of it's true but not all of that is bad um right you know like i definitely feel that on the ground when we're at tiff you know where it's like the enthusiasm in the room is not how something is going to actually be greeted, but it still can be a good thing for a movie.

Right. And also, I feel like if the alternative to that is to approach something super cynically and with your arms crossed and sort of just like prove yourself to me, that's not how I want to be experiencing movies anyway. The issue with Sundance, though, is that it feels like over the years there has been more burnouts than successes sometimes. or it's been like a very specific kind of success.

I also think Sundance is doing perhaps a better job with their programming in that like you, they can be a source to champion rather than these like eventual Oscar players or like a movie like the way, way back, doesn't need to go to Sundance anymore probably. Right. And like you can champion things from this year like, I mean, first cow had gone to other places,

but they have the movie that Netflix picked up, the 40-year-old version that I'm really excited for, that it won something. Yeah, I mean, a part of this is that the economics of Hollywood are still fairly opaque to somebody like me. Like, I feel like I think I know certain things, but like, I don't know. I'm not in these rooms.

I'm not in these discussions, whatever. But you would think, you would imagine that the next film by a pair of Oscar-winning screenwriters isn't the kind of thing that, like, needs a film festival to get any attention. Like, I get that, like, it's not, it's still like a small, low-budget indie movie, right? But it's not like computer chess, which was also another movie that was at Sundance that same year, which does feel like a festival movie in that nobody really knew who Andrew Bajalski was at this point. It's a very incredibly low-budget, kind of experimental.

like odd movie that does need to be championed and I think that's where I think you get a lot of this sort of bristle at Sundance which is the fact that both of those things are existing within the same space you know what I mean well and like maybe we've also gotten smarter of when you have a movie like the way way back or a similar scenario like you saw this year with Palm Springs, which has the new record for the biggest buy ever at Sundance. Right. Like, nobody immediately is like, oh, it's an Oscar movie, you know, it's just... Right, which I think is probably...

...paid what they paid for it, you know? I think that's probably better. I think the fact that we had gotten to this point we were expecting every Sundance hit to be an Oscar contender was misjudging, A, the, like, the Hollywood economy, but B, it was sort of taking out any kind of... middle area for where movies can exist. And part of that is the marketplace, whereas you either have blockbuster movies or Oscar movies or nothing.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And because that middle ground has sort of like dried up, that maybe is why you look at something like Sundance and just like, well, if you're a hit, are you an Oscar movie? Because that's the only way that anybody's going to see you. Yeah. And maybe the fact that there is a Hulu now for a movie.

movie like Palm Springs to go to, then there may be now is a middle ground. I don't ever want to talk about like streaming platforms as a savior because like I think that's such a weird narrative to get into. It's a real double-edged sword too. It is. It sure is. But people treat it still like street Netflix still like a savior. We'll get into it.

I want to sort of go through the 2013 Sundance movies though, sort of briefly. Just just give you a sense of like what that ecosystem was. So the big winner at Sundance that year was Fruitvale Station, which was called just Fruitvale, I believe, at that Sundance Film Festival, which was a Weinstein Company acquisition, and definitely was at that moment being lined up for Oscar. And it still puzzles me that the Weinstein company couldn't pull that through. They didn't campaigned it that well. I know, no, they didn't. And it was a real failure. because, like, Octavia Spencer started that award season getting, like, critical prizes.

And just, like, and it's Octavia Spencer, who we have now learned is an awards, like, magnet. Like, she just, like, she doesn't not get nominations. Like, that's just not in Octavia Spencer's life plan at this point. But, like, the fact that they couldn't get her a nomination for that is wild. The fact that they still, that nobody has still figured out how to get Michael B. Jordan an Oscar nomination by this point is insane. like it's truly truly one of the wild things so like that was the big um that won the audience award and the jury prize i think right wasn't that the thing it was one of the that hasn't happened that many times that was the year that this time so like that was a big deal that that was the year that

both the narrative and or both both the dramatic and documentary winners won both the jury prize and the audience award because Blood Brother was that documentary that won both of those awards on that side of things. But the other big acquisitions at Sundance that year, The Spectacular Now, which went to A-24, which was the James Ponsult movie

with Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller that actually like became a decent bit of a thing. People liked it. People saw it. Blackfish, the documentary about the orcas and

SeaWorld and whatnot, which genuinely, I do feel like, played a role in the downfall of whatever, marine parks in the United States to the degree that we've got to that point. Anyway, what else? Is that Mother of George, the Denai Guerrera performance in that really, really, really fantastic shot by Bradford Young. Yes, one of the... 2013 was like the big Bradford Young year, right? Like that was, I feel like the year where everybody started talking about him as like this emerging talent, for sure.

Before Midnight was that year. The third and the before trilogy, Kill Your Darling's was that year. I feel like you and I have talked about that movie recently for whatever reason. Our favorite concussion, tell the truth. Oh, no, wait, this is the other concussion. Different concussion, you're right. Yes. Robin Weigert.

That's a double feature that should be programmed. Concussion and concussion? Yes, that repertory theaters across the country is the Robin Weiger concussion followed by the Will Smith concussion. Loveless, the biopic of Linda Loveless starring our friend Cassette, Amanda Seifred, 20 feet from stardom, my beloved documentary, 20 feet from stardom. Oh, Kings of Summer was that year, which I loved.

I never saw that movie. Nobody talks about it anymore. That was the first thing ever saw Nick Robinson. I think it was expected to be a hit, and it just wasn't. It wasn't. It's true. Yeah. It was an interesting Sundance.

Stoker was there at that Sundance that became a thing. Prince Avalanche, the David Gordon Green movie that nobody saw that I actually think is really kind of good and cute with Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch and some really good music. That was an Explodents in the Sky movie. anyway interesting sundance the thing about like to this is the only thing

that fox searchlight got from this sun it's the only thing they picked up from this sundance but like there's a certain level of it too like from you mentioning a lot of these movies it also kind of depend whatever distributor

picks it up kind of says what the Oscar intentions are for a movie and like Fox Searchlight picking this movie up certainly spelled that out. And I guess it's interesting for them as a studio in that like this feels like such a cynical attempt to replicate the success of Little Miss Sunshine all the way to Oscar. And it was a lesson they didn't actually learn from Sundance to the point that this year that we're talking about in 2013 is the year they have 12 years of slave and they eventually try to replicate that

with birth of a nation and that goes so horribly um yeah i think that they have a history of trying to replicate their own success cynically um yeah not going well um just to just also i wanted to i'm looking now i was only looking at the acquisitions for that sundance but looking at the award winners there's also stuff like afternoon delight which was the katherine han movie that got uh really good reviews in a world the lake bell movie that i really enjoyed Cutie in the Boxer, which was an Oscar nominee for foreign language film, I'm pretty sure. And Crystal Ferry, which is sort of a, you know, not for everybody kind of movie. It's the Sebastian Silva movie with Michael Sarah and Gabby Hoffman.

But that was like very much definitely part of that Gabby Hoffman renaissance that happened in the mid-2010s, where all of a sudden it was just like, remember Gabby Hoffman because she's back and she's in everything. It's just like literally everything. That would have been a cool Sundance to go to, though, I feel like. like, oh, ain't them body saints, which I don't love, but, like, is worth seeing. Started David Lowry's career. Yeah, Upstream Color, which now is a weird one to think about, because, like, Shane Carruth has lost his mind or whatever. And that whole, him and Amy Simets had that ugly fallout and whatever.

Bad guy, bad man. Yeah, but Upstream Color is an interesting movie still. Anywho. Annie Who's it? Oh, you know what we should talk about? about. I mean, all right, I want to talk. All right, let's talk about the performances in this movie before we get too far away from everything. We got options to talk about. Allison Janie is probably my favorite. Playing a character who is incredibly similar to the character she plays in a way we go, a movie that I love, but I don't love that segment of the movie.

That is a movie that exists in segments. And you can, like, that is a movie that is built to rank the segments of those movies. and hers is always near the bottom. The movie gets better as it goes along, and she just plays a similar character to this, and she's sort of like, you know, boozy, blousey, whatever, overly familiar with people she's never met before and mean to her kids. A walking Long Island Ice Tea.

Right, right, exactly. A Walking Long Island Ice T and mean to her kids. And it's just like, wow, they've really, like, copied that template exactly. But she's Alice and Chaney, so she, like, walks the line where it's like, she is mean and very gruff to her kids, but you can tell that she absolutely. loves her kids. The thing about her character in this movie, or at least the way that she plays her, that I wish the movie had more of elsewhere is that she does actually kind of

surprise you and make you rethink who she is as the movie goes along. Yes. Because you're introduced to her and you're like, this woman is a nightmare. I'm going to hate her. She's going to be an asshole too. But it, it, like, the more you see of her and like she's just like on the fringes of the whole thing anyway, but like with her relationship with Tony Colette's character, you see that she's actually a good person who's just like going through a hard time and this is why I really wanted them to get one more scene together in that movie

because maybe we could have gotten it from Tony Collette's character too right? Yep. Yeah, I think Tony Collette's character you've mentioned this early in the podcast but like it's, hers is definitely the least served

by the script at least from what we see on the screen. I don't know what might have been cut or whatever. But what did you think of Amanda Pete in this movie? Amanda Pete is an actress who I'm pretty sure we both really like a lot. I know I do. I do too. And she shows up in the first scene and you're like, hell yeah, Amanda Pete is going to be weird in this movie.

That's great. And she shows up for maybe another minute and a half of screen time. The promise of her showing up and getting the lyrics to Kiri Eliezeron wrong is really good. Again, so 80s. Again, everybody's listening to exclusively 80s music, which I normally 80s music. which I normally 80s music and like alt rock sad boy songs from the mid aughts that you've never heard of yeah it's an odd mix normally I am the one to stick up for people listening to older music than is the setting of the movie because that's how people listen to music like not everybody is listening to the ultra current hit of the day I forget what was the movie that everybody got on its case for um oh like the you know people like that music is from like x number of years ago and i'm like

yeah people listen to music from x number of years ago like it's that music doesn't just go away but in this it felt so it just like there was something anachronistic of having this like kid singing a rio speedwagon to his headphones i was like if this is a contemporary movie just like gotta bump that up a little bit or something or else make him like a weird kid who's into 80s music like one or the other or just like exclusively into ario speedwagon and he talks about it later right like that's his little like sundancey quirk or whatever fine i love sundance quirks i'm fine with it but amanda p get sort of like shunted into this like jesabel character kind of where she's just like

yeah whereas you think she's going to be like the weird boozy person she thinks that kiri a lason is carry a laser which absolutely nobody has made that mistake before that That joke is stupid, but, like, Amanda Pete is fun, so it's fine. Yeah. And, yeah, that's, like, that's it. Then she, like, makes out with Steve Carell behind a house, and that's it. There is, once again, I feel like that the movie does certain good, vibey things, which is, I think it sells the idea of how unsettling it is for a young person to observe the behavior of adults,

especially when they think you're not looking, where they're sort of like their complicated, messy adult lives seem repulsive to you. Right, where it's like your parents were drunk around you when you were eight years old, but you didn't know what drunk was. So it's like when you are old enough to realize

what drunk is, it's like, wait, what, what are you doing? This is horrifying. I hate this so much. Get me anywhere with here. Though I do really hate the scene where Duncan is pissed at his mom for smoking pot. She can absolutely smoke pot if she wants to get over your stuff. you sad virgin at that point i was just like i get it because like he's mad about everything

so this is like one more thing but yeah yeah i agree let them smoke pot let tony colette smoke pot for god's sake she's earned it let tony colette smoke pot in every movie in every movie in absolutely every movie she needs some pot and um uh i'm thinking of edictics i enjoyed the little moment where uh alice and janey and tony colette have this sort of like conspiratorial mean little joke at Amanda Pete's expense where they make fun of her ordering takeout for the backyard barbecue or whatever and I was like oh that is how people bond like that is how strangers bond which is they find a third person who they don't like as much and they like bitch about them and our caddy about them in a corner I'm like yes that's very well observed

and good yes I wonder how how we became friends that way I know I know we're angels who only love each other. We like everyone. Yes. This movie was an AARP Movies for Grownups Award winner. Which is how I feel like we constantly have brought this movie up in the past. Maybe. So now I want it, as I always do with AARP Movies for Grownups Awards winners that we talk about,

I don't click onto this tab in their IMD until we are recording because I like having the freshness of discovering the fellow nominees along with you. So this won the Best Comedy Award at the 2013 AARP Movies for Grownups Awards. Have you looked and seen what the other movies were that it be? I'm looking at them now. We've definitely talked about this lineup because the Secret Life of Walter Middy is there, and we did that previous episode on that very, very funny movie definitely deserves to be nominated in Best Comedy. Tony Collette's up against herself in this category, by the way.

She is for a movie. The PJ Hogan movie Mental that I've never seen is one of the nominees for Best Comedy. I would absolutely watch what is definitely a complete whiff of a movie. She's with Anthony LaPalleia and Leah of Schreiber. The poster looks like The Pacifier with Tony Collette as Ville. in Diesel and it's like a fuchsia background. The poster is

don't tell mom the babysitter's dead, but the babysitter survives. And so... Maybe she is reanimated. She just, she can't keep a good girl down and she is a bad girl in this movie. She is wearing...

Yeah, it's like bad babysitter, is what I'm guessing this movie is. It's leopard tight, leopard leggings, Cowboy boots, a kind of baby doll tool kind of like mini-dress thing with a fur coat, with leather spiked wrist bracelets, with headphones. Is she tilting her headphones down? Sunglasses, not headphones.

Is she tilting her sunglasses down to look over the top of them in the poster? Yes, absolutely she is. And the, like, tell-tale... No fewer than, like, nine children surround her. The tell-tale sort of messy top ponytail that always indicates that somebody has their life absolutely together. She is the lost banger sister on this poster.

She is giving you everything, and these children all look awful that she is apparently in charge of. It's probably a horror movie, and she kills those children. Mental. P.J. Hogan's mental. I like you, P.J. Hogan, but... We're going to watch this movie.

The other two nominees, besides Mental and The Secret Life of Walter Middy, are the incredibly successful and worth everyone's time, Las Vegas, or Last Vegas, the John Turtle Tubbs, Last Vegas. Okay, but Last Vegas being nominated for Best Comedy at the AARP emperties is very good. If it couldn't get AARP, it wasn't going to get anything. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, that fits. And then the opposite of that is, I don't understand why retirees would be into Don John, but apparently they were. The porn addiction movie. Like, maybe they were really into Tony Danza or something, but, okay. I feel like if I watch Don John now, I would hate every minute of it, but all of the women in that movie are great.

Scarlett Johansson is great. Julianne Moore is great. Bree Larson is even great. Anne Hathaway's fantastic. As herself, yeah. I kind of want to watch Don John again. We've talked about it a few times in the last, say, four or five episodes, and now I kind of want to watch. Maybe we'll do Don John before the end of the year. Maybe. It was also nominated our friend the way, way back, in, sorry, Best Supporting Actor, Steve Carell, was nominated and did not win.

He lost two. Are you looking at this now, or can I quiz you? Yes, I am. Okay. Lost to Chris Cooper in August Osage County, a good performance in that movie, I thought. a very AARP choice. Right? They did love Don John for Tony Danza

because they nominated Tony Danza, so I was right about that. Oh, my God. They also nominated Julianne Moore for Don John, though. Yeah. The more I look at those nominations, I'm like, okay, I get why you liked Don John now. Other supporting actor nominees

were John Goodman for his absolutely unrestrained inside Lew and Davis' performance, which is just like, he just like John Goodman just like sit in the back of a car and be awful just be absolutely like we gotta get John Goodman an Oscar nomination man we do we really do it's long past time and of course my beloved Bill Nye for about time a performance that continues to make me cry every time I see it's so wonderful and that and then Alison Janney gets a supporting actress

nomination which I think is very well deserved and she doesn't win she gets beat by our old friend, Oprah, in Lee Daniels, the butler. We definitely everything the AARP movies for grownups have in their life, they owe to that butler. That's true. Nominated alongside very, very, very AARP selections, June Squib in Nebraska, who was an Oscar nominee that year, Margo Martindale in August Osage County, who was very much early buzz candidate for August Osage County because the woman who played that role on Broadway won? the Tony.

Roddy Reed, yes. Yes. And then, as you mentioned, Julianne Moore and Don John. Three-time nominee, AARP Movies for Grownups Awards. Good for the way, way back. Fantastic.

Also, three-time nominee at Critics' Choice, including, as we mentioned, Liam James for the Young Performer category. They got a best comedy nomination. And Sam Rockwell got a best actor in a comedy nomination. Here's the thing. If they had tried to

replicate the Little Miss Sunshine success. By the time Oscar came around, like, the movie didn't make enough money for them to justify it. Plus, like, they were putting everything they had in 12 years of slave, and that paid all they got best picture. But Sam Rockwell, it's so easy to forget that because of the lack of goodwill towards Sam Rockwell at this point, after playing an Oscar for playing in 2020 as we speak. Yes. Yes. by the way he's playing Merle Haggard next apparently he's signed on to play Merle Haggard so he's not done playing racists but this was still the time when the way way back came out that it was like Sam Rockwell was always one of those actors you would see critics talk about like he's actually really great and should be somebody who should get an Oscar nomination and like if they were trying to replicate the acting nominations at least that they were able to get for Little Miss Sunshine

It's the sentimental people, right? They got Abigail Breslin and they got the win for Ellen Arkin. Well, yeah, you mentioned the fact that, like, Sam Rockwell was very much in this, he's overdue, the Oscars should pay attention kind of thing. Too cool to be dominated for Oscar. Way, way back is kind of packed with Oscars, with actors like this because, like, Steve Corell was at that point with this where he had been in enough movies by this point and he had been good in enough movies by this point that people were like. like, oh, he's a serious actor. He deserves real recognition. Allison Janney is, of course, a huge, like, Emmy favorite, like incredible television work. And this was a movie where people were like, oh, she's really good in movies, too.

And all of these performers, two of them, Alison Janney and Sam Rockwell, have already now, by this point, won Oscars. And Steve Carell got nominated for Foxcatcher and something else or just Foxcatcher. Does he just have the one nomination? did he get also nominated for the big short or no he did not um i think it's just foxcatcher yeah it's just foxcatcher he got nominated for sag for um battle of the sexes and he got nominated for something for the big short whether it was a golden globe or sag i can't remember but yeah so yeah they definitely had actors who like at some point soon oscar was going to smile upon it just wasn't there at this point and yet they have yet to smile upon tony colette again and they need to

oh absolutely but she needs to get you know offered more and better movie roles things that oscar will go for yeah absolutely sorry to break it to gay twitter she they are not going to go for her this year wait what is this year i'm thinking of ending things oh at this point the embargo is lifted I think she's incredible in the movie it's absolutely not happening Yeah I mean The fact She was absolutely 100 million percent worthy

Of a nomination for hereditary It was just such That's a tough sell for Oscar voters Like who are so resistant to horror anyway Especially horror that doesn't have A very obvious social component to it Or isn't I guess cozy in a mainstream way

because she is an actor who has an Oscar nomination for a horror movie. But, like, I don't want to say that the Sixth Sense is sentimental, but, like, it is palatable because of a certain emotionality, right? Yeah, there is definitely... There's a whole thing about the choice with that movie, but, like... Yes. There are things in the Sixth Sense

that remind you of things like family dramas. Like, I'm with you sort of trying to avoid saying the word sentimental. But like, like, because Hereditary is a family drama too, but like a real mean one. Just like a really nasty family drama. So, yeah. I thought about, I actually did think about Hereditary a lot when Tony Colette was on screen in this movie. Because I remember when she was doing interviews for Hereditary, she talked a lot. And it's like, the way, way back is certainly not the only example of this.

with her career, but she talked a lot about she took on the challenge of that movie because like she is used to just like these are doing a lot of work where she is just part of the background and she doesn't get a chance to stand out and I remember

when she was saying that I was like oh you mean like roles in the way way back and like Tony Collette has done a lot of movies where she's played characters that like don't earn someone like Tony Colette playing them that don't allow her to do anything.

I always love that she got the Golden Globe nomination for Little Miss Sunshine because it was really, I know mostly it's the fact that like it's the Golden Globes and they will recognize stars and she was enough of a star. But it's a really well done, easily overshadowed performance in that movie. Yeah, she's the thing that makes me want to rewatch the movie to try to see how I feel about it now. There's such a small moment in that movie where she's very stressed early on in the movie about whether they can go to the pageant and whatnot and if she can get everybody in the family to agree to go on this road trip. And she starts eating a popsicle. And she starts like just like

chomping down on this thing out of stress. She's like stress eating this popsicle, which you wouldn't think would be a thing. But it's so funny to watch. And it's just such a small little moment of like physical comedy. But it's so good. I think she has so many little like tiny moments in There's that moment when they're in the restaurant, and Greg Kinnear tries to shame Abigail Breslin out of ordering the scoop of ice cream with her waffle or whatever. And the way that Tony Collette, like, bristles at that silently and then, like, takes this, like, verbal tack to, like, take an end run around Conier's character to, like, get Abigail Breslin to, like, feel good about herself is so incredibly well done.

And it's the kind of thing that's missing from a movie. be like the way way back. Mm-hmm. And I think that's your difference. Those little things are your difference between why Little Miss Sunshine was a success and the way way back wasn't. I really hated what they did with her character

in the final scene where like they go to the water park and she sees, oh, my son has had a summer job this whole time, whatever in determinate time that he's, you know, been there. And like she doesn't really even speak. Right. But she's asked to like convey this sense of, oh I know who my son is now and he's a good kid and I need to devote attention to him and it's like I don't know like she's I finally see my son yes she has to silently convey all of this because

the script hasn't given her a person who can express herself like but I love that the moment is I finally see my son for who he is a good water slide slider like you know what I mean People like him. I don't know. I hated that water park. I really did. It does suck that Tony Colette has had such, like, crap roles like this so much. I know.

I know. It's true. More and better for Tony Colette is maybe a wrap-up. More and better for Tony Colette, less racist for Sam Rockwell. Yeah. We want good things for everybody. That's what we want. Listen.

All right. Do you want to play the IMD? game. Heck yeah, why not? All right. Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game, where we challenge each other with an actor or actress to try and guess the top four titles that IMDB says they're most known for.

If any of those titles are television or voiceover work, we mentioned that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue, and if that's not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all-of-hince. Chris, how we doing this? I stole my responsibility, sir. Oh, is that? That's right. It's your week to do that.

I'm sorry. Would you like to do it instead? Do you want to double that? It's fine. It's fine. I'm sorry. You are the Allison Janie to my cross-side sun. I bound it in.

Man, I was very Alice and Janie at that point. Would you like a cocktail? Yeah, sure. All right. Why not? More about Allison Janie's gay husband in that movie, by the way. I wanted a little, I wanted some deets. Anyway.

I kind of liked that. Yeah. All right. It was believable. I've picked out someone for you. Have you picked out someone for me? Indeed, I have. All right.

Would you like to go first? Sure, I can give to you first. Okay. I went the Little Miss Sunshine route. One of their other co-stars in that film, who I think could have maybe been as, I don't know. He would have made sense seeing him in this movie for also a Little Miss Sunshine reunion is Mr. Greg Kinnear.

Oh, have we never done Greg Kinney? before that's interesting i don't think we have okay all right all right as good as it gets as good as it gets his oscar nomination is there all right all right i hope it's not the windshield wiper movie because i forgot what that's called windshield oh i know what you're talking about you know what i mean windshield wiper the movie um and none of this is television so uh Steak Face, whatever that movie, that TV show was, where he had the Shiner and the steak on his Shiner. By the way, Winchie Wiper movie is Flash of Genius. Of course, it's not on there.

Flash of Genius, which would be a movie that we would talk about and people would be like, huh? Yeah, exactly. Yes, it absolutely had Oscar buzz. It sure did. Is Little Miss Sunshine one of them? Yes, it is. Okay. All right.

Gregory Kinir. All right. So he's been like the past over guy in a lot of movies, Sabrina and other things. But I don't think it's Sabrina. And I don't think it's something like Baby Mama, where he is the guy that she chooses. But I don't think he's prominent enough in that role. And I don't think Baby Mama is a big enough movie. I'm going to guess crap we've also done several Greg Kinnear movies yeah

Gregory Kenir is autofocus one of them no okay all right we could do an autofocus episode we definitely could

might be interesting to talk about Paul Schrader and his sometimes problematic Facebook posts And just sometimes problematic in a lot of ways. Yeah. Okay. I feel like there's like a big like blockbustery thing that he was maybe in that's. He's in a lot of movies.

He's in a lot of movies that make money. Yeah, he is. I feel like I'm like missing a big old blind spot. He's done a couple Jesus movies. Wait, really? Yeah. I can't tell you what they are because. goes, what if they're on here?

Oh, God. Well, this is just crazy. A couple of Jesus movies. None of those movies are on here. Like, in the times of Jesus, like, literal, like, biblical epics? No, but, like, uh, like faith dramas. Like, one of them is, uh, same kind of different as me, which stars Renee Zellwigger. Right.

He was in heaven as for real, the kid who dies and comes back from heaven movie. Right, right. You threw me. made me think, like, he was in, like, um, Jesus of Nazareth or something like that. Oh, he was Methuselah. He was. Oh, he was. Oh, good. Um, we've done Nurse Betty. Oh, is, you've got mail one of them? Yes, you have got some, uh, some mail. Email, you, sir, electronic, you sir have got electronic mail. The, uh, European title of that film. Yes. Can I talk about one of the things that makes me miss my sister the most who I haven't seen during all of this.

My sister does about the funniest impersonation of Meg Ryan's coffee walk in that movie. Watch you've got mail and watch how Megan Ryan, Meg Ryan, watch how Megan Ryan walks while getting her, while getting and after getting her coffee. Oh, I love it. It's a little deranged. I'm going to have, that's an, I'm now, I'm going right from this, because they I think it's still on HBO Max for like a few more weeks. I definitely want to watch it.

Okay. All right. Back to the task at hand. You have one title left to guess and you have only one wrong answer. I have only one wrong answer. I'm going to want the year. So I'm going to just throw it away and say Nurse Betty. It is not Nurse Betty.

Your year is 1995. Sabrina. It is Sabrina. Fuck. I threw it away so early. God. That's so silly. I can't talk this episode. Megan Ryan. Megan Ryan. No, I love that. That's her rebrand. She's going to be very serious.

Megan Ryan is here. Megan Ryan is here and she is the president of the PTA and she is ready to get some stuff done. No, she's on the school board. Megan Ryan's on the school board. She's not even PTA. That's what John Cougar. calls her. Now I'm looking at Greg Kinnear's IMDB list. There are some things I would have put on there

instead. Obviously, you know I love Little Men. He's so good in that movie. That's a role. That's a great movie. He also is in Iris Axis Frankie, which I fully was the only person laughing at this moment. Again, he plays another cuck

in that movie. But he's like talking to Isabel Uperre about like Star Wars. He's like an art director for a Star Wars movie or something. And she just is like, hmm. It was so funny. It's like, it's Isabel Hubert no Giff like in real time. No, it's not even like that.

It's like she can't even muster that much to say about Star Wars. More people should have seen that movie. Ghost Town is the one I was thinking of where. I like Ghost Town. Hate Ricky Jervais. I like Ghost Town. Is he the ghost or is Ricky Jervase the ghost? No, Greg Kinnear is the ghost.

there's the ghost. Right. Oh, God, he was also in that Miley Cyrus movie, The Last Song. Do you remember anything about that? Sure. Sure. Where I think he dies. He's like her dad, and I think he dies. I don't know. I haven't seen it. It's also like Ghost Town. Miley Cyrus plays a dentist who's in love with Taya Leone. The last song dies and then the sequel to that is Ghost Town where he is a ghost. God, remember the Matador that Pierce Brosnan got a Golden Globe nomination for? I both do and do not remember the mat at all right. That's correct. That's the right reaction to that.

All right. I have chosen for you, sir. So I plumbed through the Sundance 2013 list because I wanted to find something related to that that I could quiz you with. I saw the most unlikely thing that I could see there, which was one of the acquisitions at Sundance that year was Jobs, the Steve Jobs biopic that is not my beloved Steve Jobs, but actually. the other one starring none other than Mr. Ashton Coucher, I would like you to give me the known for for Ashton Coocher, one of which is television. Right. It's not the jobs we want it to be, which is Steve Jobs, so you're asking me to fix it, Steve, or you quit. That's right, I am.

Fix it, Steve. Fix it, Chris. Okay, so Ashton Coucher played Steve Jobs in this terrible Steve Jobs. is there any television yes as i said one television oh okay i didn't hear you say that so it's gotta be that 70 show and not one of the other terrible shows it is in fact that 70s show and not punked or uh or the ranch for shit's sake right or two and a half men but oh right um dude where's my car yes sir the seminal 2000 comedy dude wears my car The Jennifer Garner vehicle, dude, where's my car?

The butterfly effect? No, and it should be. You are right, IMDB is wrong. He doesn't, I mean, maybe unless I'm forgetting a lot of them, but things that I would know that he's in, there's not a ton of movies. Yeah, you've definitely reached the weeds of this known for now. You are in for something.

No strings attached. No, not no strings attached. Do you remember when Jennifer Garner won her Golden Globe for alias that first year and her acceptance speech, she just said, I don't know what it was that you saw in me and dude, where's my car? But thank you for casting me in this role. It's so good. All right.

Anyway, no, not no strings attached. Is that your second strike already? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So your missing years are 2005 and 2010. I know. I'm going to be giving you some hints on these,

but I'm going to give you a second to try and take some stabs. Is one of them the movie with Bernie Mac, guess who? No, again, probably should be. Definitely more known than at least one of these two movies. What's the movie he did with Cameron Diaz? No, that was no strings attached. Who's in No Strings Attached was the Cameron Diaz? Who's the woman?

No Strings Attached is the Natalie Portman one. The Natalie Portman, which I actually really do like. Okay. Yes. You're thinking of what happens in Vegas with Cameron Diaz, and that is not one of them. Okay. All right. You are definitely, like, removing the, like, you're knocking off options, so you're narrowing it down.

I mean, he's in Bobby, which we've done, but, like, he's one of a million people in Bobby. I don't think Bobby's going to show up on anyone's. What the hell else was he in? I mean, he was in a movie with Amanda Pete Forget what it's called Is that one of them? Is that the, what are my years again? 2005 and 2010.

Is it the 2005 one? Maybe. I don't know the name of the movie. I've seen this movie and I don't know the name of this movie because I like Amanda Pea. Wait, have you really seen it? Is it good? I mean, It's probably exactly what you think it is.

The tagline to this movie is there's nothing better than a great romance to ruin a perfectly good friendship. And the poster... So he's done that movie several times. The poster is a four quad series of photo booth. Yeah, like a photo booth because like this is when photo booth still exists. I've seen this movie. It is truly the most generically titled film. I will say he does look cute on the poster.

I'm sorry. Ashton Coocher is one of those people who I know. He's a bastard. I should be repulsed by, but he is. He did not take good care of Demi Moore. Listen, a lot of people haven't taken good care of Demi more. Including us as the general population more for Demi Moore. All right, that movie is called A Lot Like Love. So how dare you for not remembering that incredibly specific and sticky title.

All right, one more. one more with a more evocative title. I'm going to need some hints at this point. The poster for this movie is him and a lady, a blonde lady. And it's one of those things where, so they're like very kind of like plausibly, she's very carefree on the poster, right? She's like kicking up a heel and she's got her hand on. like any Ashton Coucher movie.

His chest, but he's in like a suit and he's looking over his shoulder because like he's not you know, he's got to look over his shoulder and I won't, he has a prop that it will give it away. It's definitely a blonde lady, a fairly notorious blonde lady.

You said it's a blonde lady. Notorious blonde lady as in famous or as in like has a bad reputation or has like, I don't know, Did he make a movie with a porn star or something? No, but I'm going to say you were right about both of those other things that you said. Oh, she's famous and has a bad reputation.

Blonde lady that Ashton Coochard has made a movie with. Not necessarily a fully deserved bad reputation, but definitely a bad reputation. It's, oh my God, it's Catherine Heigle. It's a one-word title. It's like spies or something. It's definitely a one-word title. It's killers. It's killers.

2010's... Stupid. Killers. God, who even directed killers? Robert Luketic, of course. Of course. Sure. Robert Lukatic's killers.

Yeah, I was about to describe the thing on the poster, which is it's one of those posters where at the bottom, it looks like somebody is lifting up the poster. Do you know what I mean? We're like, all of a sudden the poster has like layers and it's a guy. It's just like an unseen person holding a gun. So it's like this guy, and that's why Ashton Coucher's, looking over his shoulder because Ashton Cuscher is also holding a gun in the poster for killers. Definitely one of the four best known Ashton Coocher properties according to the internet movie database.

I'm genuinely surprised that no strings attached isn't on there. No strings attached should be on there. People like that movie. And the butterfly effect should both be on there. Come on. Interesting. Yes, indeed. Ashton Coucher. All right. That's it. That's it. everything? Have we got it all out of our system? All right. I think we did. Well done, Chris. That is our episode. If you want more, ThisHad Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this hadoscorbuzz.com.

You should also follow our Twitter account at Had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz. Chris, where can the listeners find you and your stuff? On Twitter and Letterbox at Chris V-File. That's F-E-I-L. I am on Twitter and letterboxed as Joe Reed, read spelled R-E-I-D. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Muvius for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever else you get podcasts. A five-star review in particular really helps us out

with Apple Podcasts visibility. So please, oh, and here's where I reference a thing that we never talked about in our discussion. I brought it up. I brought it up. Of the way, way back. Oh, you did. Okay. Please get that lazy eye under control and type up something nice for us, won't you? Yeah, because Allison Chaney makes fun of her,

mainly makes fun of her son it's not cool it's not cool as i and probably then i just made fun of it well would be cool is a five-star review for us on apple pocket yes yes thank you thank you for christ bringing it back around to business that is we love you guys thank you for picking this episode for us for those of us who love this movie and joe and i do not we apologize but uh thanks for listening and following and picking this episode we had a very worthwhile discussion and truly that is the greatest thing of all right that's all for that's all for this week. We hope we'll be back next week for more bugs. Thank you.