This Had Oscar Buzz - 119 – Solaris

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

After following up his 2000 Oscar triumph with audience favorite Ocean’s 11, Steven Soderbergh pivoted into a different mode in 2002, doubling up with the low-fi Full Frontal and the subject of this week’s episode: Solaris. A revisit of Stanislaw Lem’s novel (previously canonized by Andrei Tarkovsky), the film follows George Clooney as a therapist called … Continue reading "119 – Solaris"

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. How did you get here? I love you so much.

What's wrong? That's not your wife. You're dreaming her. She's alive. You found me. I came for you. This is my chance. You don't know what you're in for.

Go back. Go back to Earth. You'll die here. deleted. We are not taking her with us. Are you going to stop me from taking her back? Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast stealing your precious, precious spoons. 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 the ghost of my dead wife, Chris File. Hello, Chris. Good morning. I'm coming to you from... I'm coming from the far reaches of space. Yeah. You're an emissary from a very vaporous planet. I thought the design on the planet Solaris is very good because it looks so... The fanciest Windows 95 screensweber.

It knew exactly what we wanted, and what we wanted was soothing visuals. That would, like, swirl around. Yes. Is that on steroids, but fancier? Where was that? I've never seen that kind of elistical on like a, you know, BuzzFeed or medium. Like Windows 95 screen savers ranked.

Listen, I'm extremely hireable. If anybody wants me to write that for them, I will do it. Please hire Chris. He is the expertise that I want. Because, like, it started off so simple where it was like you were either in a star field or it was Windows logos rushing at your face. the bouncing ball that would turn into a cube that would turn into a spike also there was the rudimentary ones where you could like write your own message and it would just scroll across the screen

in different colors like everybody got to be very clever and very like yes and when you were living in like say a dorm situation with multiple roommates everybody got very clever with that but like the bouncing ball that turned into the like spiky thing that turned into the whatever um i had for so long like You said that, and I literally, like, a rush ran over me of, like, weird nostalgia. It's really soothing, too. And, like, I feel like that's what, as we are locked to our technology and all of our, like, devices, what we need, again, is screensavers to soothe us. Screensavers, that's what I want. By 2021, I want us all back on screensavers. Yes. The spiky ball and then the one where it was like the laser trapezoid that kept changing shapes

And it was one of those, like, what you call it, Mobius strips where you could never tell where it would begin and where it would end. I was like a cat, basically, at the age where I was just, like, staring at a screen, like, forever and just, like, hypnotized by those things. Like, you wonder whether, like, productivity went down because people were just, like, mesmerized by their screensavers the whole time. Do you remember the 3D pipe one where it was, like, different colors of pipe that would be built? Yes. Yes. Of course. Again, somebody hire Chris to do this. only because I need to read this list.

Like, I need this list to exist somewhere. I don't know. Like, medium somewhere. Like, just make it happen. There's nostalgia is king right now. Okay. So I was somewhat, I think I say this often. I was somewhat reluctant to talk about this episode on this podcast or to talk about this

movie on this podcast. And I was trying to sort of, like, as I was watching in the movie, I was trying to figure out why. Because one of the things is, I have it in my mind that this movie is, like 80 hours long, and it's really not. It's like 95 minutes long, and it flies. It does. That's the thing. Well, that's, we'll get into this later on.

But, like, there was definitely the reputation of this movie that it was slow and ponderous. And it's just like, A, it's not that long. And B, it kind of zips. Like, it's not, like, action-packed or whatever. Like, I guess that's the problem. And, like, something had to contribute to that F-Cinum score. And part of it is the ending. And part of it is...

We'll talk about how this movie was marketed. Right, exactly. But, like, this isn't a long movie, and this is not even a particularly ponderous movie. But, like, there's also the sense that I hate delving into my psyche, but here we go. I don't like movies that make me feel dumb. And I don't think this movie in and of itself makes me feel dumb, but, like, the appreciation that it has were, like, it's the, like, it's the, like, Like, it's the smarty smarts choice for, like, the best Soderberg movie or whatever, and it's, um, you know, people really love it. And people, there's a lot of just like, this movie never got their appreciation.

Like, we are quickly walking into the situation where I reveal myself as a smarty smart. You are a smarty smart. You're very, like, you are. But like, but this is the thing. And it's like, so my like inferiority complex kicks in. And I'm just like, I'm just like Aaron Brockavish. I'm not going to say that it's better than Aaron Rockovich, but I am... But I never quite got this movie, and I had seen it twice before, and I liked it better the second time I saw it, but the first time I saw it, I was left really sort of cold and nonplussed, and like, I didn't...

I was frustrated by it. I think it was a movie that frustrated me, and I think the fact that it got an F-cinema score was probably not the... that's surprising to me because I was just like, yeah, like, I, it really stymied me. And the second time I saw it, I was like, better, but like, it's still not like my favorite thing. And so it's always sort of been this thing out there to me. It was just like, I don't get Solaris. Am I secretly a dumb dumb? And so I was really reluctant to talk about it for this one. But you were very enthusiastic about it. So I, yeah. I mean, I, granted, I had only seen it for the first time this year, and I re-watched it for this episode. And, like, the first time I watched it, I was like, yeah, great, masterpiece or

New Year Masterpiece, all the people, all the smarty smarts that love this movie, you're right. Yeah, I think that this movie's really incredible. Like, I knew, I remembered it being marketed really poorly and, like, sold on being something that it's not and I didn't actually go back and watch the trailer until right before we got on Mike and holy shit oh I wanted to do that and I didn't tell me about it tell me all about it okay so it's fully I mean you just watched the movie right there's lots of like wide shots that are like beautiful you can see the spaceship and stuff it's pretty much a trailer only in

close-ups it is very much selling it as like a romantic angle like city of Angels. It's, there's, like, there's a subtitle from the creator of Titanic. Oh, because it's a James Cameron produced movie. Right. And he was originally going to direct it. That was the whole original plan for it. And it's like, you almost expect a Dido song to start playing.

Oh, no. Oh, God. It's truly that. Like, it sells it on this, like, the idea of Solaris being, like, a place to go for a second chance with the love you lost. And, like, it is, I can't imagine, especially because this was a Thanksgiving movie. Yeah. I can't imagine a way to lie to an audience more in a way that would piss them off.

And probably also, like, the, like, smarty, smart, smart, smarts who are into the Tarkovsky movie that would have been curious about what Soderberg was going to do. Right. You can imagine them being immediately put off by this trailer. Yeah. Well, and not only did it open over Thanksgiving, it opened on 2,500 screens. Like, it was a massive, wide opening. So the thing that I noticed, as I was sort of preparing for this episode, and I will get back into it later, because I sort of made a minigame, but we'll discuss that later.

But one of the things that I noticed about Soderberg's career is he does this thing a lot where he does two movies in a year. He's done two movies in a year eight times in his career, which is truly wild and like not the usual way of things, right? It's wild to me that they started filming this movie in May and it released in November. Yes, yes, it was, and they filmed it on essentially like the Ocean's 11 soundstages, too, is from what I read. And, or at least a lot of it. And, yeah, it was a very, very quick film. Started in May, was released in November. And this was the same year that he did full frontal.

So the thing about Soderberg's two-movie a year thing when he does these is it almost always sort of reverts to big movie experimental movie and we're like Aaron Brockovich traffic wasn't quite that but like Aaron Brockovich was commercial movie and traffic even though it ended up making a ton of money because it was a best picture nominee that's sort of the more

indie experimental whatever Solaris was the big movie this year it was the 20th century Fox production November Thanksgiving release wide release and then full frontal was the digital video experiment just going to, like, gather my friends together. It looks like garbage.

I hate that movie. But you see it going on where, like, 2006, he makes the Good German, which is his, you know, Oscar buzzy, which we can't do because it's a freaking nominee. And then Bubble, which is, like, truly like this, like, tiny little experimental movie that nobody saw. 2009, the sort of bigger movie is the informant, and then the experimental movie is the girlfriend experience. 2013 his big movie is actually on television it's behind the candelabra and the experimental movie is side effects although that one ends up being like way more popular than I even remember it being like I was sort of surprised by that 2012 it's the closest to sort of level where he does haywire and Magic Mike and like both of those movies have both their mainstream and experimental angles to it like haywire is essentially just like a mainstream action thriller but the experimental part of it is just like why don't I cast Gina Carrano in the lead role and Magic

Mike is like a regular sort of like mainstreamy movie except it's just like the experiment is what if I make a male stripper movie like what if you know what if that happened and then 2019 it's also tough for me to parse like between high flying bird and the laundromat like I guess high flying bird is so good more risky pick it's really good. But, like, it's only risky because... Am I crazy, or is High Flying Bird shot on iPhones?

I think that's correct. So I guess, yeah, I guess that would fit that dichotomy. But, like, to bring it back to Solaris, like, the fact that in the 2002 double bill that Soderberg did, the fact that this isn't the experimental movie is wild. The fact that this is supposed to be his big commercial, like, uh, mass. audience play is it tells you all you need to know about why it flopped and why it was an F-cinema score and all of these things. Very good movie, but like this is not your late November Oscar buzzy crowd pleaser. Like 20th Century Fox. Like I'm really, I really hope. It's certainly not a wide release for Thanksgiving. No, absolutely not. It's a studio movie and studio movies don't

really platform. Right. But, like, it would have been a smarter way to do that. But, like, you can also get the sense, if you just watch that trailer, it's like, oh, this was made for a studio that had absolutely no idea how to market this movie. Whereas, like, I feel like maybe the more honest way to market this and tell people what they're in for is, like, because this is ultimately, like, a psychological drama set in space. And maybe it's not even science fiction.

but like you could make it seem like it's a ghost story you could make it seem like it's uh is something along those lines well it sets itself up like a horror movie like the actual setup for this movie where it's literally like George Clooney gets an invitation to come to a place where something has gone wrong but we're not going to tell you like that is absolutely the setup for a horror movie and it's in the far reaches of space right right and then he shows up like we've seen this thing where like you board a ship and something's happened that was literally the premise for dead calm that was the premise for um isn't that the premise for event horizon i just do what to say yes yeah yeah yeah so or it's like deep rising

one of those shitty alien on a boat movies and it's the premise for the part of sunshine where it becomes a horror movie like once sunshine becomes a horror movie it's that thing where it's just like, we're going to, and there's, of all the movies that this, um, reminded me of sunshine is definitely one, inception was definitely another one. I don't know whether you thought of inception in this at all in terms of, the way that the movie is structured and like the editing to the movie that it goes like back and forth in time, back and forth in fantasy and reality definitely. Well, and the fact that, I didn't think of inception, but that makes sense. But the fact that, like, so much of the movie is about his sort of the way his wife

exists in his memory, and that becomes a sort of tangible entity. Like, I can't imagine that as Christopher Nolan is writing and making Inception, that he wasn't thinking of Solaris in some way, because, like, these similarities are really, really strong, or at least they were for me. Before we get to the plot description, I just wanted to ask, have you seen the Tarkovsky original, because I have not. I have. I also watched that this year. That is also the, the, I was going to mention this earlier when you said that this movie people

feel like is long, slow, and boring. That's the long one. That movie is truly so long slow and boring. It's twice as long as this one. Like, this is half the left. And like, that movie is a masterpiece. And it's like, but like, it has this weird metaphysical

aura around it where I truly think it does stop time when you watch that movie because when you watch it you cannot convince me it is only like two hours and 45 minutes long it is several days worth of movie it's brilliant but it is um it's also very different from what sotrberg is going after i think it is more closely um tied to science fiction whereas i don't really know that the sotaburg one is i think it's more of a psychological movie yeah than like dealing with these like themes of you know well the the funniest thing about the in terms of like how science fictiony it is is you get to that part at the end where jeremy davy is literally in the last 15 minutes of the movie decides to lay out all the sci-fi stuff where he's just like this planet has been expanding and you haven't enough fuel and you know all this sort of stuff and like all these things that would be the crux of the plot for it would be a set of piece for, you know, the average movie.

Like, the fact that, like, Solaris, the planet has been expanding ever since they, you know, shot those Higgs bosun particles or whatever. And, like, that would be the crux of a different kind of movie that wasn't up to what this movie is up to. So, I, reading, I only have not seen the Tarkovsky movie, but I read the plot description. And it essentially seems like the same things happen. So, like, what accounts for is it like, because, but what I'm saying, but what I'm saying is it's not like there was a whole other plot that Soderberg cut out to make his movie

half as long. Is it just that like everything just like takes more time to unfold in that movie? Like what accounts for the time difference? It takes about a half hour to 45 minutes for him to leave Earth. Uh-huh. Okay. Um, because it's like kind of developing its themes throughout like the opening like meditation, the first act of the movie. And then all of the things that happen once he is in space, they do take longer to unfold, but they, like, that's because it's making you think about, like, what Tarkovsky is, like, trying to embody what the schematic of the movie is, whereas this just kind of, like, flies, right? It's all just about Chris Kelvin's psychological state. It's about grief. It's about, you know. Yeah. All right. Well,

before we get too far into it then, why don't we do the 60-second plot description and then we can talk about the movie for real. I've got a minute on the clock if you're ready. Cool. All right. So the plot of Solaris. Oh, wait, I should actually go through the boilerplate for this movie, shouldn't I? We're talking about the 2002 film Solaris, written and directed by Steven Soderberg based on the novel by Stanislav Lem and Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 movie. of the same name. And apparently there was another movie before the Tarkovsky movie. Dang. Quite a story. Okay. Star is well-mined material. George Clooney, Natasha McElhone, Viola Davis, and Jeremy Davies.

Also very briefly, John Cho, at the very beginning, if you notice, premiered November 29th, 2002 on, as I said, a shit ton of movie screens and made no money. Chris, are you ready for the plot description? I am already All right 60 seconds on the plot and go All right Chris Kelvin is a psychologist He gets a call from his friend who is in space orbiting Solaris

saying hey some weird shit's going on We need you here Can't tell you what it is till you get here Because of that I guess He decides that it's okay Meanwhile Kelvin is grieving Over the death of his wife We eventually find out that she killed herself

After they had an altercation because she had an abortion She did not tell him about Anyway, he gets to the station Only two remaining surviving members There is Viola Davis as Dr. Gordon And then there's Jeremy Davies As the other guy. Anyway, his wife, Rea eventually shows up

And they're like, surprise, that's what the thing is. Dead people seem to manifest on this planet. By the way, you can't kill them. They'll come back to life. Rea does try to kill herself in the spaceship And guess what? She comes back to life. Turns out that Jeremy Davies had actually

manifested himself on there and killed the real Jeremy Davies. Surprise the whole time it's been... That's time. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Yeah, and then Viola Davis leaves. You think George Clooney leaves, but he ends up staying with his ghost wife. And you don't know if he is dead or alive. And she tells him it's no longer important. It doesn't matter. Yeah. This is the kind of thing that really messes with my head.

like we talked about the inception thing and like the ending of inception which is you'll never really know if you're dreaming or not and that kind of thing but like this kind of thing even more where it's just like because it makes me it starts you know how you start to think of certain really like whenever you try and think of just exactly like how small like the vastness of the universe like when you try to actually like conceptualize the vastness of the universe and it starts to feel like your brain might actually break because you can't quite conceive of it. And this is the same kind

of thing and it just like makes me spiral where it's just like, how can you ever know if what you're experiencing is real or a very realistic facsimile of, you know, whatever? What if your existence is just

an elaborate XYZ? Ruse. Science thing, alien thing, dream thing, whatever. What if we are in a VR simulator. Right. And there are like full like schools of thought in terms of philosophy that like deal with that thing as like a legitimate like you know, a thing. Do you ever see Richard Link Ladder's Waking Life? Yes. Love that movie. I know that's sort of a divisive movie, but there's a part in

that movie where it's Ethan Hawkins Julie Delpe who are repriezing there before sunrise characters. And they're like just in bed and chatting. Because all of that movie is just like chat, chat, chat, chat, which I fucking love. And they start talking about how dream, like, essentially like dream life, this sort of like, that's basically this is the part where they take the movie, the title of the movie sort of. And this sort of liminal space between like where time in a dream expands, and people have experienced this, where like you dream and it's, you're only asleep for like, say, an hour. And in the dream, it was a day or something like that, right?

Where, like, time expands in a dream. And it's always been my, because I'm like, I'm not a religious person and, like, you know, afterlife, whatever. Like, it's not really a thing that I feel like I believe in. But I've always clung to this sense of, well, perhaps when you die, you do sort of in the, oh, that's the thing that they talk about. It's just like, in the moment of time between when you die and when your brain, actually like ceases to function, there's a small sliver of time where you could essentially exist in a dream space forever, right? That your concept, your consciousness is alive for just long enough that it could

theoretically exist in that space. And then so that would be what the afterlife would present as is just sort of like a essentially whatever like minute-long dream scape that lasts forever. Anyway, that's what you're saying the conclusion of the movie is doing. Yes, where what it's saying is actual truth of, you know, are you alive, are you dead, whatever, that doesn't matter. What matters is you are in this space right now, you and me, we are together in this. Whether it's real or not. Whether it's real or not, it's fully immaterial.

How long it will last is immaterial? Yes. And it really depends on the Clooney character. Like, I almost want to, I don't want to see a sequel to Solaris. But I almost, I imagined a sequel to Solaris where, because either the Clooney character is going to be like, excellent. I'm with you. Nothing else matters.

I'm just going to fully accept whatever this is and whatever. But the flip side of that is, is he neurotic enough to be like, I don't accept this. I've got to know for sure. And then just, like, drives himself crazy and essentially like ruins. I realize we've just set up this scenario where time is a fluid construct, but I don't think he's going to have enough time to do that because he is rapidly going to the center of Solaris's screensaver orbit. I'm pretty sure he's going to burst into flames. But yes, right.

And that sort of goes back to what I'm saying. Unless you think that he's dead and it's some type of afterlife. See, my interpretation of like what I do think all of those things you're saying, I think the movie kind of walks up to the door of them and is, okay or comfortable with you wanting to interpret more in that way, whereas I kind of think that this movie is more so profoundly saying simple generalized things about grief, where it's like he willfully is putting himself in this situation. Like you can, because of the way that like that final scene plays out, like you can take it

in a really rosy way, whereas I think it's actually like ultimately kind of tragic and because he's making this conscious choice based off of his grief to live in something that is not real. He's bricked himself up in a tomb. He's essentially, like, buried himself with his dead wife forever. Right. So she's like, she's saying those things don't matter anymore or, like, it doesn't exist anymore because he is choosing to not have a life. And I guess that's, like, the trite way of saying it, but the movie does. does do it in a really profound, like, emotional way that I think is great.

But I think if you, if you walked up to somebody and were like, where they were like whatever, like a barker on the street and just like, you want to see a movie and they're like, yeah, what is it? And you're like, it's a meditation on grief. And like, everybody runs away from you, right? Like nobody wants to do it. Not me. I'm like, which one is it?

I've seen them all. But I think that phrase, like, such and such is a meditation on grief has almost like lost all meaning because like so many things are that. But, like, I don't think this movie is quite even quite so simple as that. Like, it is that. It's definitely a meditation on grief. But it's also, like, it's got a lot of ideas running through it in terms of the most fascinating for me is our, does the version of somebody that exists in your head, in your memory, in your perceptions or whatever, how real is that? how, and the fact that the Raya that we see in the movie in the spaceship time frame, not in the flashbacks, but even in the flashbacks, because they're his flashbacks, they're his memories. That's the whole point. But like the Raya that we see becomes aware of herself and the fact that she's not real and the fact that she only exists because of what's been extrapolated from his memories by whatever entity is on Solaris. And or is Solaris. Like that's like I think we're supposed to.

to get the sense that Solaris is an entity, not has entities on it, right? Whatever. Anyway. I guess similarly, like, two steps away from that, like, as someone who is pathologically incapable of living in the moment, I think it is kind of also about, you know, not just how much of your experience of someone is real, but also how much of, like, your own life, you living to the fullest in the moment because all of these flashbacks you see of them are these like very intimate like we'll we'll talk about cluny's butt don't worry we're going to talk about cluny's butt okay i made a note of it whether it's them fighting or it's them in bed together it's these intimate flashbacks that it's like when they come out of that ray is saying

basically expressing that like they've been implanted in her brain but she has no emotional affected them because she didn't actually live them. And there's a certain sense that, like, Kelvin's regret is because he wasn't really living in the moment of those moments, right? Right. Well, but, and also that he starts to really question whether he had sort of allowed his brain, his mind to narrow her in his perception while she was alive. Like the fact that she killed herself is in part because he got, I mean, and this is to simplify, but whatever, like she got pregnant, she had an abortion, he flipped out on her.

She is like, don't leave me, I won't survive without you. And he is very sort of like callous to that in the moment. And then he leaves. And then the next thing we see, he comes back and she's killed herself. And he's now going through his mind of just like, did I ever really see? see her for what she was rather than what my, you know, perceptions of her were in that moment was, is now the fact that she troubled before then. Right, right. And like, how much do you ever, like, step outside of yourself to see somebody or do you essentially, does your experience of

somebody else narrow them within your own head, which all sounds very like cerebral and fru-frew, but Soderberg does a very good job of making it very immediate and visceral with their relationship in this movie. The other thing, I thought of... And for a movie that people like to say is boring or tedious, I think it's actually really emotional throughout the whole movie, too.

Yeah, yes. I think... We'll talk about Clooney's performance, but I think it's a pretty raw performance. Her function in this movie also almost feels like a flip mirror version of the character she plays in the Truman Show,

where in the Truman Show, she's essentially the only real thing in his artificial life. And in this, she's the only, she's the one artificial element in what we assume, well, the Jeremy Davies reveal comes later and we realize not, but we assume is everything else is real that he's sort of experiencing. And then she becomes this like inserted agent of, you know, not fakeness, but whatever, like artificiality. And it's interesting the inversion of that, I thought. Because in both of them, she's both sort of like symbol and savior, which is interesting. And this movie really grapples with that. Like, that's what I really

like about this. But you wanted to, like, all right, so let's talk about Clooney now, because then we can, we can branch off and talk about the other characters. I think this is my favorite George Clooney performance. It's a real performance. Like, it is. He's amazing. There's a lot of Like anything else he has done? No, it's not like anything else has done. There's a lot of Clooney performances that rely on his natural charisma, which I think is incredibly legitimate. You know, I'm a very big fan of, like, a movie star performance.

But this is very different than that. This is really calling on him to be an actor and sort of that, like, classic sense of it, right? Well, the Clooney charisma is so specific, too, to the point where it's like, even in some of his best performances, like Michael Clayton. he has like his bag of tricks that he does and relies on and none of those he can't use any of those in this movie or at least doesn't or is directed to not um but it feels very atypical especially of early 2000s george cluny right well this is a very so this is i i wanted to talk about this um and i did want to talk about this in the context of like the nudity but like we'll we'll get to that from another angle but So the thing with Clooney's career at this point is it's still an incredibly young career, especially as a movie star, right? We're like, the thing about Clooney's career is he was this like journeyman TV guy forever, right?

Where he was on Roseanne and he was on, um, not only was he at like before even ER, like he was on another show called ER, like another medical show called ER, but he would show up on like the facts of life for a bit and he would show up for a stint on, Roseanne, there's an episode of Golden Girls where he, like, just as there, there's an episode of murder she wrote, where all of a sudden it's just like, hey, it's George Clooney. I remember him first from

the NBC Saturday Night Soap Sisters, starring Seal Award and Suzy Kurtz and other people. Ashley Judd was also on that show, but he was Seal Awards boyfriend. He was a cop. He was Seal Awards boyfriend, and he was very charming. And it was

the Clooney thing, right? Where he was just like, it was that same Danny Ocean sort of like Winky Charmy You could absolutely see why she like fell for him very quickly And he's a cop And he gets killed in a car bomb by some mobster He was going after or whatever

And it was very sad and tragic And you felt awful for Seal Award And that might have been the year that she won the Emmy And then like the next year Because you know how sometimes like a network Will take a guest star from another show of it That it has and then make them the star Of one of their new shows because it was almost like a test run

So, like, the next year was ER. And then ER obviously blows up huge. It's just, like, the biggest show on television. That and Friends both premiered in the same year, and it was, like, this tandem explosion. And it was, like, Clooney Mania, where the haircut was a thing. He was, like, the hottest guy on television. He was everybody's sort of, like, pretend boyfriend, the whole thing. And so from that point, everybody was almost immediately just like, well, now he's got to become a movie star.

Like, this is the, he's too handsome. Like, they had the Carrie Grant comparisons were like, through the roof. Everybody was just like, well, now he has to become a movie star. But that happened in sort of like fits and starts, where he's like, he's in from dusk till dawn, playing a very atypical, like, very different than the Clooney image. But I think he's really good in that, and I think that's a really good movie. But, like, One Fine Day is really the first movie that tries to do the Carrie Grantness. do the Carrie Grantness, right? Where it's him and Michelle Pfeiffer, and they're actually really good. I think that's a really underrated romantic comedy. Nobody really talks about it anymore. But I think they're both really good. And he's sort of, he's the cad and he's going to, is he going to be tamed and whatever. Then Batman happens, a setback. The same summer as the peacemaker. Right. And the peacemaker is one of these sort of, you know, we're going to, so now it's like, well, he's a handsome leading man in Hollywood. Of course, he's going to be an action movie star where he's in a superhero. movie and then he's also in this like action thriller whatever him and kidman and that's again a

movie that has been you know totally forgotten and then he starts doing from there i whether this is like an active career choice on his part how much you know choice he had in his roles at the state of his career is uncertain but like he makes out of sight with sotaburg he makes three kings with David O. Russell famously punches him on the set of Three Kings, good and fun backstage story. But he's within this context of him sort of getting these movie star roles. Because those, again, he's still the lead in all of those and whatever. But they're quirky, auteur-driven, interesting, well-reviewed movies.

So, like, his career's on the way up. He still does stuff like The Perfect Storm, which is very mainstream summer blockbuster. But, like, that's a really well-reviewed movie, and people really liked him in it. Small bits in things like Spy Kids and the Thin Red Line. Right. Right. And then, but then he's still making, like, he's, you know, the Cohen's, oh, brother, where art there? Where art thou?

Where it's like, it's not only a Cohen's movie, but it's like maybe the most stylized Cohen's movie of that era, certainly. He wins the globe for that and then, uh, um, he, like, starts the, his Oscar narrative because he was considered one of the big snubs on nomination morning because he wasn't nominated even though he won the globe. Right. And then immediately after Soderberg's big Oscar two nominations and then he wins best director and like in Julia Roberts's acceptance speech, she literally says like tomorrow I'm going to start work on my new movie with Soderberg and it's Ocean's 11. And so Oceans 11 really to me crystallizes the George Clooney cinematic persona.

right? We're like, no matter what else he does, it's in comparison to how alike or unlike Danny Ocean it is, right? And for good reason. He's phenomenal in that movie. That is an incredible, like, I think it's, you can't call Ocean's 11 underrated now, but at the time, I think it was because at the time, it was like, oh, this is Soderberg making a play for a purely commercial movie after getting two Oscar nominations or whatever.

And it was sort of seen as like. Yeah, I mean, it was definitely reduced to like, fun. prestige, but not really taken as seriously for the craftsmanship of that movie. And it's such a perfect movie. I love it so much. And then, you're right, you mentioned he shows up in Spy Kids also in 2001. And then 2002, it's like, we talk about those level-up years where he makes his directorial debut with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. So all of it, like, that old cliche of what I really want to direct. So, like, really he does, like, step into the classic A-list leading man thing of like, now I'm going to be acting and directing.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind doesn't really do too much, even though I think it's a really good movie, and I think Sam Rockwell is excellent in it. Well, I think it's a Charlie Kaufman script, which is like... Exactly. That's it. It's that people forget that George Clooney directed that movie. At the time, it felt more attached to Charlie Kaufman. And I think that's a Charlie Kaufman script that had sat around for a while.

For a very long time, yes, yes. Because by this point, Kaufman had already had then gone. on to make, to write being John Malcovic. And then in 2002, that same year, adaptation was coming out. So, like, yeah, this was an old script that was. But, like, knowing what we know now of the Clooney directorial career, which I have said before, I think is a big disappointment. And I don't, I can't remember the last time I've really liked a George Clooney directed movie. But doesn't it seem from a 2020 perspective, wild, the idea of George Clooney directing a Charlie Kaufman script? I mean, that will never happen again.

No, absolutely not. Even though like it worked so well back then. I kind of wonder, because that was a late Miramax product, I almost wonder if it was George Clooney wanted to direct. Harvey Weinstein had that script sitting around and somehow got George Clooney attached. I don't know. It's very possible. It's very curious.

Like there's a story there that we don't know about how George Clooney came to direct that very atypical for the rest of his filmography movie. Right. But I think so in 2002, not only does he have this, you know, directorial debut of his, but now he's set to star in the next Soderberg movie, releasing in November from a major studio, Solaris. And this was the first time, you know, he won the globe for Oh, Brother Where Art, though, but I don't know if a year ahead of that, that people would have been, like, George Clooney, best actor contender, like, in the long view, right? Whereas, like, Solaris is the first time where a project gets put on the schedule and announced, and everybody is like, oh, we're looking at that now as a George Clooney Oscar prospect, like, let's say a year ahead of time, right? And so this is the first time where, like, Oscar Buzzy expectations are on him.

And what's wild is, as you said, like, it's maybe his best performance. I might put Michael Clayton ahead of it. I think he's such a huge Michael Clayton person. I mean, everything about Michael Clayton is on fire. It's at least one of his best performances. And so the fact that it's not like he disappointed in this movie, it's that the movie was so thoroughly not what people wanted slash expected. So absolutely mishandled.

But we should all, we should, maybe this is a good pivot point because like their, their ascension is so tied. like it's as much of a Soderberg thing as it was a Clooney thing. Oh, absolutely. Right? Yes. Because like, yes, at this point and up until the, maybe I mean, O'Brother kind of cemented it rather than it was already happening for him. Like, Clooney was an A-list actor that is absolutely the type of person that you're going to be looking to for their first Oscar role, right, at that time.

But like, and we just talked about this on the little. Gold Men podcast, go back and listen to that episode, with the 2000 Oscar race, the ascension of Steven Soderberg with his two Oscar movies, both nominated for director, both nominated for Best Picture, that it's like, Ocean's Eleven was the next movie that, and it was like, treated as fluff, right? So like, yeah, the expectation of a major director returning to the Oscar race was also on this movie. Yeah, right.

Not just the Clooney thing. Right. And the sort of dichotomy of that is, is Soderberg already had his Oscar, had his Oscar year, his Oscar moment, and then he won. And Clooney was still sort of ascending to that. Like, he hadn't gotten to that part yet. And so it's interesting to see, right, these expectations heaped on these guys from to, like, really sort of opposite angles. And it's kind of a bummer to think of. all of that hype and that it was judged to be empty hype, right?

It was judged to be lacking and it like totally bottomed out where at the same time it's one of his best performances and it's one of Soderberg's most like critically respected and beloved movies. Like it's just it's not a failure in any respect. If the only way that it was a failure is, well, audience reception and, uh, just like the way it was sold to audiences absolutely killed the movie and like we can talk about the F-cinema score

we've done F-cinema scores when we did mother and did we have another F-cinema score? Maybe but it was definitely mother-oh, it was Dr. T and the women. Oh yeah, well that's a deserving F-cinema score but like we've talked about how when that happens it's all about

marketing and people's expectations of what the movie is supposed to be and I think if you watch the trailer and then watch this movie that makes absolute sense to me. It does. It does make sense. To pivot to the butt for a second. Let's, please.

My notes, my very first note in this movie is just cluny butt with an exclamation point. And not only because you see it a couple of times. And the first time, where it's one of those things where it's like it's long shot, it starts off in shadow. they're sort of like, you know, they're standing up and making out and whatever, and they're naked. And you know that they're naked, but it's one of those things where it's like, he's an A-list movie star. We're going to see this in shadow and it's going to be a long shot and we're going to like see the side of him maybe or whatever. But like, no, they fully pivot around and it's a whole butt and it like lingers on it. And it's like lit so where you like can clearly see it. And it's, it was so, and again, I've seen this movie before. But still, it's such a surprise. because, and then you'd see his butt again later when they're, like, lying face down on the bed or whatever. And it comes as such a surprise, not only because it's like, you know, A-list movie star butt, which is rarer than you would think. But also, the kind of sex symbol that George Clooney has always been from, like, ER on forward, right, has been this, we mentioned the Carrie Grant thing. But, like, I always feel like George Clooney has been, like, the sex symbol in clothes.

Like, the sex symbol in a tuxedo. George Clooney doesn't really take off a shirt even. Right. Like, there are different kinds of, like, hot movie stars where it's just like, you're, you know, your current, like, Chris Evans' is Chris Hemsworth or whatever. Like, these are hot, buff, shirtless, like, celebrities. Like, nudity on them is not fully, like, out of the realm of, like, what. what their image is, right? Brad Pitt gets famous through Thelman Louise, where he's not, you don't see all of him, but like, you see enough of him where it's just like, you know,

the nakedness is sort of like part of that whole package, whereas like, that was never the Clooney thing. Clooney was always the one who they were, you know, you imagine like George Clooney hotness and it's just like, oh, he's wearing a tux, right? He's like, he's my, you know, date to a gala, like that kind of a thing. And this movie. movie is really fleshy with him, which I think is really effective in terms of what we're portraying in the movie. Yeah, the level of vulnerability. Yes, the vulnerability and the sort of like the connection that he and Rea have. But it's shocking. It's like absolutely shocking. Is this the only movie we've ever seen Clooney Butt in? Uh, Siriana. Well,

that's why I won the Oscar. There we go. Right. He got tortured. The bravery. Well, the bravery of... You brought up the, um, you brought up, uh,

like Christopher Nolan in comparison. And like, I do think that like the level of horniness in this movie and like the level of like crying in this movie is like kind of what transcends the like perception of the Nolanisms of these type of movies where it's like they're crotchless. They have no real human emotion. Oh right. All right.

It's not true of that movie. Okay. I'm not going to detour into bashing Christopher Nolan. Neither am I, but his movies are not very horny. No, he's not a horny director. He doesn't make horny movies, for sure. Those movies are a deal with a little bit. And to just sort of clarify, I don't think Solaris is a Christopher Nolan-esque movie.

But just in terms of where this plot goes, like the sort of the parts of Solaris that are cerebral and that are, you know, sort of setting up this dynamic. It's a conceivable prototype for the kind of like storytelling machinations that Christopher Nolan has done. Yeah, totally, totally. I was surprised how much I bought into the chemistry between Clooney and McElhulham this time, because I recall not thinking that before. And maybe I just whatever, like this viewing really sort of like sold me on it. You do kind of have to, like, wrap your head around how much of a real person and a construct she is.

So, like, I think that's something that's rewarded by multiple viewings. Well, not only that, but the movie never plays a gotcha with that, right? Like, he knows she's artificial from the first moment that she shows up, right? he knows that she's, you know, she's obviously, she's dead, and the audience knows, like, right away that she's not real, right? So we're all on the same page, and we're all seeing through this facade. And what this does, this is almost like an inversion of, you know, stories where the gotcha would be that she's dead, that she's not alive. This movie does have a gotcha again with Jeremy Davies, but we'll get into that. But the fact that we're sort of playing this

dynamic backwards, right, where he knows that she's fake from the outset, and the journey of the movie is him slowly, like, giving into the fact that, like, maybe that doesn't matter so much to him. And that's really cool. Like, that's just, like, just in terms of, like, oh, this is a thing you don't really see very often in a movie. I thought that was really cool. Yeah. Let's talk about the other characters on this spaceship. So he arrives. Davis is so good in this movie. She's so fucking good

in this movie. This was the same year as far from heaven. She's also in that film. And it was a and is this also the Antoine Fisher year? This was like a big breakthrough year for Violet. This was

the first year I remember hearing the name Viola Davis. Because I wasn't really attuned to Broadway as much at this time. She had already won a Tony Award in the late 90s for King Hadley. Thank you. And so, like, she was definitely, like,

a known entity on Broadway, but not the case here in the film realm. And this was definitely a year where all of a sudden she's, like, the character actress to watch because she's in these three movies and she shows up really well. This is the best of the three of them. This is the performance. This time around watching this movie,

I was like, oh, well, like, she's absolutely a supporting actress nominee for me. Maybe one of the, like, uh, biggest bummers of this movie doing so horribly is, like, her, like, real, like, major breakthrough could have come sooner after this movie. It could have come a lot sooner. We could have had so many more Viola Davis movies if we had just, uh, accepted this. Right, right. Um, well, I mean, doubt is the one that really, like, that did the trick. yes. This could have been, again, this is six years before this. We could have been on such an

accelerated Viola Davis timeline by this point. But like, she's absolutely, for me, the audience surrogate, because she's the one in this movie being like, are you out of your mind? She's not real. She's clearly not real. Can you please get on the level with me about this and help me figure this out? She's so practical. She's so, and yet while being the practical one, the sort of the the scientist, the serious one, who's like, let's all cut the shit. I know that she, I love the part where she's just like, you wouldn't be feeling this way if she was ugly, so they didn't make her ugly. You wouldn't have been feeling this way, XYZ. Like, I love that she like cuts absolutely through to the center of all of this stuff, right? Where it's just like, you are falling for

this planet's machinations towards you and you are doing so willingly. Can you please cut this shit out? And yet, while she's all doing that, while she's all doing that, she's being the rational one, you see the hauntedness in her eyes totally, where you know that she's also been confronted with something. We never find out what it is, what showed up to her, right? Only that she was able to kill it with this Higgs boson particle beam thing. But we know that whatever it was, it has haunted her, and it's there in her eyes. Like, it does not ever leave her face what she's been through in this. The first time we see her, She's, like, locked in her room, and she won't open the door because she's so, like, distrusting of everything.

And she manages to keep, like, both of those balls in the air the entire time. And it's so impressive. Yes. I agree. I don't know. I wanted to give you space to talk about. I didn't want to filibuster on violin. I mean, I don't know what else I could say on top of everything you have said, other than, yeah, it's a, she's so good in this movie in a role that doesn't feel like the type of thing.

we get to see her do today, and, like, mostly that's because she's doing lead roles, you know. But, um, yeah, I was kind of bummed out, especially watching it this time, where I was like, you know, this could have really led to something if people hadn't trashed this movie so much, or it could have, uh, she could have had something before, you know, it's not the same, it's not the same role exactly, but it reminded me of, the role of hers that it most reminded me of was, What was the Michael Man movie that nobody saw that made like $2? Black Hat. Yes. She's, again, great in Black Hat. And it's, again, she's sort of like she's the functionary in that, right? Where she's like a federal agent, right?

That's the thing. Yeah. But again, but it's one of those things where it's just like she brings so much to that role, much more than even that it deserves in that movie. And this sort of reminded me of that. was just like, in a lesser movie, she's just like the sounding board. She's, you know, the scold in this movie. And she's really not that at all.

To me, in my viewing of it, she's the hero of the movie because she's the one. You could absolutely see a different version of this movie where she's like the final girl, right? The horror movie version of this, she's the final girl. And she's now having to deal with this new arrival on the ship who has now gone off the deep end and will not accept the fact that this woman here is not his real wife. And, oh, she's just so good. And then we have Jeremy Davies, who by this point... Playing Jeremy Davies.

Well, this is... Okay, so this was the note that I wrote down. I said, what is the chicken or the egg of every Jeremy Davies character? Like, does Jeremy Davies get cast because the character on the page is squirrely and speaks in these sort of like haltingly like he has that very appears squirrelly

slight a Jeremy Davies type This is what I'm saying Like does that like go out to the casting And just be like we need to get Jeremy Davies Or we can't make this movie Because he talks like Jeremy Davies Like it's There I am

Somehow there I am And I couldn't tell you Couldn't tell you how I'm there or who I am or what's going on. But before I can get to that, what's this over here? Come in there. What are you trying to do?

Oh, I see you. Trying to kill me. Yeah, confusing. I'll tell you about some confusing. How about bingo? There you are. And there's my welcoming committee. He dropped your knife, and it's a good night.

And, oh, by the way, after all that, I find out this whoever just get my first good look at it and it happens to be I survived the first 30 seconds of this life whatever you want to call it by killing someone

and oh ah by killing someone who happens to be me there's that when they find out it's almost it is funny and I think it's intentionally funny when they find out that he's not a real person that he's a manifestation from Solaris 2 and he had killed the real person

version of him they come to confront him and he's like the most Jeremy Davies has he's ever been in the entire movie where he's just like talking in these stops starting things that way he talks where he's just like and I was like and it's like wow you know and the thing the particle physics I am now understanding where I get my speech patterns me too kind of right like if you've ever been annoyed at the way I can't get a fucking sentence out it's this and it's every character in my so-called life.

Like, it was, did you watch my soul-called life when you were younger? Yes. There's the part where, there was

that episode where it was like, focused on Brian, and there was this, like, weird little, like, thread there were, like, Brian and Ricky were,

like, each other's confidence for, like, that one episode. And Brian's trying to say something to Ricky, and he's doing that thing where it's just like, Hey, Ricky.

Oh, hi. Is, um, is Rayan? I mean, did she, like, is Angela, like, I mean, the thing is, Hey, Brian.

Could you like, a sentence and go with it? And it's just like, oh my God, that's been the, that's been the bane of my existence. Anyway, Jeremy Davies. So is, is it that that role exists on the page and you can only get Jeremy Davies for it? Or does Jeremy Davies get cast in a role and then completely remake the entire dialogue patterns to match his very specific delivery? Which I could see people getting really annoyed by, and because it's so specifically stylized and also intentionally a little off-putting, especially in this, I think it's intentionally off-putting, I find myself more often than not delighted by it.

There's something about his squirreliness that I find so appealing where other actors, I wouldn't. There's something about him in this movie, in this role, where it's like, no, not this Jeremy Davies, the other Jeremy Davies, where it's like, it feels very much like, the movie's about, like, your concept of reality is a person real or not, where it's like Jeremy Davies just exists on his own plane of existence, manifested by the environment around us. He's always this, I almost feel like, because he was like this on Lost 2, but it was a more

sort of focused version of it a little bit, like whatever, it was. It was Jeremy Davies on whatever dosage of Ritalin gets him to something close to a baseline. But it's that too. But like, I'm just always so happy to see him show up. And I'm always just like kind of rooting for him, even in this where it's like, you know, you know he's the bad guy. Like it's even in the beginning of the movie, you don't know he's the bad guy. And he's not like, he's not the bad guy. That's really not where this works.

Again, the horror movie version of this movie, he is the bad guy. But he's the subterfuge in this movie. And it made me think of a movie like, did you think of Sphere at all this while you were watching this movie? No, but Sphere is wild. Sphere is another movie where an alien entity shows up and begins to alter the consciousness of everybody. who comes into contact with it, right? Where if you come into contact with the sphere, you start seeing things that aren't there,

you start behaving in a way that is sort of destructive to your mission and all of this stuff. And I don't know. Like, Sphere obviously is like the inferior version of this, but also Sphere is absolutely a fun, bad movie. And it should be, it's one of those movies

that should be on television all the time because, I don't know, it's very, it's a good time. I enjoy watching it. Svia Svia What else did we want to talk about? What else is on your mind for Solaris? Mostly just the 2002 Oscar year.

This is the year I was radicalized. I too was radicalized by the hours. It's such a great Oscar year. Again, the famous thing about the 2002 Oscars is that it all, it's all December. Like, all the best picture nominees, everything. All December. like all the week of Christmas.

Yes. Yeah. We're like, the hours was the like early movie because it opened in early December. But like everything else was Gangs of New York, Chicago,

and Lord of the Rings of the Pianist. Lord of the Rings. Yes, right. All like like very late December. And so I'm just trying to think of like where Solaris might have fit with this. Because I feel like if Solaris is appreciated in the way that we maybe feel like it should have been.

It's a picture contender, director contender, actor contender, and supporting actress contender. That's in terms of just like me. Like that's my big ones. Aside from like below the line things like Cliff Martinez's score is incredible and has absolutely been, if not ripped off, reused for like other trailers, television. Has Cliff Martinez ever been nominated for an Oscar because he's incredibly underreacted? rated in that regard. I actually don't think so, but I will look that up. Cliff Martinez was that when Drive came out and Drive had that incredible hybrid soundtrack where it was his score and also all those...

Pretty sure it was deemed ineligible because of it. Right. And it was one of those things where I remember I wrote, I think it was for NPR at the time, I wrote about how the Oscars needed to evolve and have some kind of like hybrid adaptation score they used to category right but in a different way back then adaptation score had a lot to do with musicals yes

whereas I feel like the modern version of this is like a score that manages to incorporate pre-existing songs which is what Drive did but I thought no movie that year had as great a musical impact to me at least as Drive And I think that's Cliff Martinez.

And his career... Clif Martinez, like, can single-handedly make the neon demon, like, very compelling. Oh, yeah. Like, sorry, I want to bring up his filmography, though, because if our listeners aren't super familiar with him, I want to familiarize. Because... He's done the Nicholas Winding Refund movies. Right. He has Spring Breakers, Contagent.

So he's worked with Soderberg. He also did traffic. what's a super underrated Cliff Martinez score that you wouldn't expect to be like a score forward movie his score, go listen to his score for Game Night the Jason Bateman,

Rachel McAdams movie Game Night, is fucking amazing. And it's again, it's like a light comedy so you wouldn't expect that to be like a score kind of a movie, but like go out and listen to it. It's super, super freaking fantastic. Like I absolutely loved it. There's also a certain

level of like space movies got more appreciated for their craft in the years to come. So it's like you could imagine, like, an art direction nomination for this movie. And isn't it like Malena Kenanaro did the costumes for this? I mean, the space suits are kind of cool looking. Good spacesuits, beautiful spacesuits, yes. So, like, I feel like you could easily see Clooney sort of wedging his way into this best actor field. Because it's one of those ones where it's very top-heavy and then the bottom gets a little squishy,

where this was the one where famously Adrian Brody won on what we all sort of assume is a three-way split vote between Daniel Day-Lewis for gangs of New York, Jack Nicholson for About Schmidt, and Adrian Brody then for the pianist. Because it was that Nicholson won the Globe and Daniel Day-Lewis won the SAG, right? And they both tied Critics' Choice. And they both tied Critics' choice. So, like, clearly this was an incredibly close. vote. I think if we ever saw the vote totals on this, I think we would see that borne out.

And then the other two nominees were Nicholas Cage for adaptation, who he's freaking fantastic. Nicholas Cage should have two Oscars. One of my, one of my favorite performances of his, maybe my favorite performance of his. He plays both Charlie and Donald Kaufman, and he's fantastic.

And then the one that I still have never seen, which is the Philip Noyce movie, The Quiet American, which starred Michael Kane, Noise. And Kane had won the Oscar only a few years before for Cider House rules. We were in a very sort of like Michael Kane forward place. But like every time I think of a best actor contender in 2002 that I would put into that category,

it's always very easy to sort of like slot out Michael Kane. And part of it is that I haven't seen the movie. And if I had, maybe I would have a harder time sort of excising him from that. But I'm trying to, I'm looking at my own, because I brought up my two, 2002 ballot, like nerd list that I have. My nominees that year, Daniel Day Lewis for Gangs of New York, for as much as I was annoyed by that movie, I think he's really great. I love Jack Nicholson and About Schmidt.

I love Nicholas Cage adaptation. I'd put Clooney in there, and then I'd also put Hugh Grant for About a Boy in there, one of my favorite performances of his. And that one got a Globe nomination and was sort of on the outskirts of that. Oscar conversation that year. I think Gangs of New York didn't really help that. Weirdly enough, like, it obviously,

Catch Me If You Can is the one that you would rally around, and he's not that good in Gangs of New York. So it's like, it should have helped, like, bolster the Catch Me If You Can performance, but it didn't. Oh, you're talking about DiCaprio. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Yeah, DiCaprio's not on my list, although he should be because he's great and Catch Me if you can. He's on my list. I can give you my list. Yeah, give me your list. All right, Nicholas Cage for Adaptation, George Clooney for Solaris, DiCaprio for Catch Me if you can, Hugh Grant for About a Boy, and Jack Nicholson for About Schmidt. Yeah, I think other contenders that year I would have floated around.

I think Sam Rockwell is great in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. He's a lot of fun. Yes. That was the year of Roger Dodger, where I thought Campbell Scott was quite good. Didn't he win, like, NBR or something like that? Yeah, he won, he might have won National Board of Review. think you're right. I think that's right. That was the big Ryan Gosling breakthrough performance in The Believer that year. That was also, yeah, the Believer is unsettling. Like, it's sort of similar to American History X in the sort of look at this clean-cut American boy and now he's a skinhead Nazi. Although the thing about the believer was that he was Jewish, right? He was Jewish and then he became a skinhead? Yes. I think that's the hook of that movie.

Director that year, I was trying to figure out where I would slot Soderberg in in terms of best director. That is an intimidating, to me, best director field, right? Where the nominees that year... It should be 10 wide. You have to kind of kill your darlings on this one for me personally. Right. The actual Oscar category was notorious because this was the year that Roman Polanski won in absentia for the pianist, but that was, I think the first time that I remember

everybody being like, we got to get Martin Scorsese an Oscar, let's make this happen. And it didn't happen because Gangs of New York was not received. It was received enough for 10 nominations, but it was not well received enough for the win. Right. Doldry's nominated for the hour

is my personal heart and soul. Pedro Moldivar gets the lone director nomination that year for Talk to her. It wins the Screenplay Award because he became kind of this rallying point because Spain didn't submit talk to her for their foreign language contender, yeah. That's right.

That's right. What did win foreign? Oh, that was the year that nowhere in Africa won. Yeah, that would have been a really interesting foreign language film field if Talk to Her had managed to make it. And also, that was the year that, like, the crime of Father Amaro was Mexico's nomination and not Etou Mamma Tambien, although I'm not

Was that it? I'm pretty sure Itumama Tambien was the submission the year before. Oh, and then it got released in American theaters in 2000. Yeah, so it got its nomination because it was technically a U.S. 2002 release. Right, because that also got a screenplay nomination, Etou Mametambia. One of my favorite little tidbits, because it's definitely not what you would imagine an Oscar movie would be, even though it is excellent. So what's your best director list for 2002? My best director lineup, again, I'm going off of 2002 U.S. release dates. Pedro Moldovar for Talk to Her.

Yes. Ophonseo Coran for Itumama Tambien. Very good. Michael Hanukkah for The Piano Teacher. Oh, a movie I've still never seen. Todd Haynes for Far from Heaven and Spike Jones for adaptation. Oh, that's a fantastic one. I should have Spike Jones on my long list, even though I don't.

And he's fantastic. Okay, so mine is in, I don't know what order might, so I'll just do alphabetical order. Quaron for Itchumama Tambien, Stephen Daldry for the hours, Todd Haynes for far from heaven, Peter Jackson for Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers, and Spike Lee for 25th hour. Which I still need to see. Oh, it's so good. Yeah, I know I'm going to love it when I see it. You look at the runners up that year, and it's like, Spielberg for Catch Me if you can, and Minority Report in the same year.

Like, that is just a supremely underrated double, like, you talk about, you know, two movies in a year. That's fantastic. So to Burke for Solaris. Minority Report doesn't work for me as much as it does for everybody else. I don't know why I can never get to loving that movie. It's so, oh, I think the action in it is so good. I think the world building is so good. I really loved Road to Perdition.

I know that was a very divisive movie that year. It was not a movie that worked for everybody. I remember liking it a lot, but I can't remember anything about the movie whatsoever, so it's, like, not on my current ballot. One of my very favorite Thomas Newman scores, and I like a lot of Thomas Newman scores, it is great. So Sam Mandis directed that. Paul Thomas Anderson was Punch Drunk Love that year, which I remember respecting,

if not loving. But, like, it's a really fantastic year. So there's that. And then... supporting actress, which is a great category at the Oscars that year, if one that really sort of hopscotches around the lead-slash-supporting designations, that was the year that Catherine Zeta Jones gets presented the Oscar by the now-late Sean Connery. Catherine.

Catherine beats out her Chicago co-star, Queen Latifah, who's awesome. Julianne Moore, in The Hours, who is a lead. That is a movie with three leads. I think, you know, we've all learned to accept that. Meryl Streep in Adaptation, who was nominated or campaigned as lead for the SAG, and that's why she didn't get the SAG nomination. Is that how that went? That I don't know.

Something was weird with her and the lead designation. I do think she's supporting an adaptation, but a lot of that movie is kind of hers. Like, it's a little surprising. But then when it's not, like, she doesn't exist. Right, right, exactly. And then the nomination that I always forget about, even though I do think she's quite good, is Kathy Bates for About Schmidt, which sort of disappointingly got narrowed down at the time to while she does a nude scene in a hot tub. And isn't that brave? And I hate that line of, like, I hate that line of almost more than I hate the, isn't it brave for a straight man to play a gay man in a movie. I almost hate the, isn't it brave for a non-skiny actress to be naked in a movie. Like it really... Makes me that. Anyway, my supporting actresses that year, and again, I could probably do with, you know, combing the films a little more.

But I have Streep for Adaptation, Catherine Zeta-Jones for Chicago, Michelle Pfeiffer for White Oleander, a movie we should do at some point, because that's a great one. Viola for Solaris, who's so good. And then I'm on the fence whether I want it to be Tony Collette for a... About a Boy slash the Hours, or Samantha Morton for a Minority Report, who did get a surprising amount of buzz for that performance, I remember. I don't know how close she got, but she definitely was, like, mentioned a lot. It definitely helped her. The Minority Report definitely helped her towards that in America nomination the next year.

I think that's right. No, I think you're right. So what were yours? My ballot would be Tony Colette for About a Boy, Viola Davis for Solaris, Lupe on Tiveros for Real Women Have Curves. Very good. Merrill Streep for adaptation, Captain Zeta-Jones, for Chicago. My sixth place, purely because it is one of the funniest scenes in cinema,

would be Andrea Martin for my Big Fat Greek Wedding. Yes. The biopsy scene. The biopsy monologue is genuinely one of the... the finest moments in all of cinema. Okay. All my life, I had a lump at the back of my neck right here. Always a lump.

Then I start the menopause, and the lump got bigger from the hormones. It started to grow. So I go to the doctor, and he did the biop, the, the, the bobbopsy. And inside the lump, he found teeth. and a spinal column Yes, inside the lump Was my twin Spani Coppida

And like that alone is nomination worthy So my big fat Greek wedding Which is sort of like a A movie geek Slash movie critic sort of like punching bag Nobody could understand why that movie was such a success And I'm not here to tell you it's a great movie, but I will tell you it's, A, a watchable movie, and B, I know this because my family was obsessed with it. Now, there is no Greek anywhere near my family.

Like, that can't explain it. But, like, my parents adored that movie, and my little sister, my heart and soul, my little sister, who was at the time, like, 10, 10 or 11 years old, would watch it. with my parents and loved it. And she would, she memorized the, the Andrew Martin biopsy scene, the monologue, and would like recite it on command. You know how sometimes parents are just like, do that thing you do. Do that funny, do that funny monologue. And so she would like, we would have like people over it. Be would be like, do the thing. Do the, you know, do the whatever. And and she would. And it would be like word perfect every single time. And she is a reality. of having a 10-year-old do that monologue.

So I always think, right, exactly, talking about, like, you know, when I had the, it was my tweet. So, like, every time I think of that A-plus Andrew Martin monologue from my big, fat, Greek wedding, I do think of that. There's a lot of other options that you could do. I almost put Annie Girardot from the piano teacher on there.

You could do Patricia Clarkson from far from heaven. Queen Latifah is absolutely a worthy nominee. Oh, yeah. I remember Edie Falco getting critics award attention for Sunshine State, the John Sales movie Sunshine State, if you recall. Which was like, this was in the thick of like Sopranos mania. So like it was very much the, you know, oh, is this Edie Falco, you know, sort of crossing over and it's now going to get movie attention. I also really liked Drew Barrymore in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind that year.

It's 2002 is a like just wildly rich. in terms of that also is the year of lovely and amazing and the Nicole Hoffs in her movie Lovely and Amazing and that whole cast is fantastic Is it? I thought it was in two Let me look at it because if it was 2002 It would be all over my ballot

Oh no it was a 2001 Festival movie and it was released In theaters in 2002 I will need to revise my list Yeah adjust because Emily Mortimer's great in that movie Catherine Keener's great in that movie Brenda Bleffen is great in that movie

I love Nicole Hall of her movies. Should we do, we still have our 2002 top tens if we want to do them, and we didn't do Best Actress or Supporting Actor. All right, let's do it. Let's do it. All right. So, um, supporting actor always the sketchiest for me. So this is very sketchy for me because this is not an exciting supporting actor year for me. And I will say I have a wild choice or two. Okay, so as I'm looking at this list, and you've noticed it earlier, like, I was very much in the vein of I'm going to be, I'm going to allow myself to nominate actors for multiple performances, like the National Border Review would always do. So, which is why Brian Cox is on my list, because this was the, like, insanely good Brian Cox year where it was. Okay, maybe you're not going to call me crazy then.

Okay, because it's him, because this is the year he was in adaptation where he has that one great fantastic scene. where he, like, screams at Nicholas Cage. He's in 25th hour where he plays Edward Norton's father, and he's so incredibly good in that. And he's in the ring where we've talked about how much I love him saying, my wife wasn't supposed to have a child at Naomi Watts. In that, okay, so he's one of them.

Chris Cooper for Adaptation, who wins it that year, and he's great. Paul Newman was nominated for Roach-Bredition. I think he's fantastic. Christopher Walken was nominated for Catch Me If You Can. I think he's fantastic. and my beloved, who did not get the attention that I thought he deserved, Stephen Delane from The Hours playing Leonard Wolfe. So, so, so good.

That train scene should have absolutely gotten him a nomination. Our ballots are very, very similar. I have Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Stephen Delane, Alfred Molina for Frida, and Christopher Walken. Did Molina get like a SAG nomination or something? He got like, I was very, very close. it might have been nominated for the globe too i forget i don't think it was the globe but because i think the globe was um all right well now i'm going to look that up give me half a second because i'm gonna bug me um golden globe awards golden globe nominations that year were chris cooper ed harris paul

Newman, John C. Riley, who were all Oscar nominated. And then it wasn't Christopher Walkin, who did get the Oscar nomination. It was Dennis Quaid, who was the big Oscar nomination snub for Far From Heaven. Like that was... In the times of rewatching that movie recently, I think Dennis Quaid is terrible in that movie. I think you've mentioned this before. I think you've mentioned this before. I haven't seen Far From Heaven in quite a long time. I owe myself a rewatch of that. But that's interesting. But regardless, people thought he was a shoe-in for that movie. And it was, I remember, being incredibly shocked.

And so then SAG that year must have been, oh, 2, SAG, was Cooper, Harris, Quaid, all were holdovers from the Globes. Molina does get the nomination, and then Walkin actually wins it that year at the SAG for Catch Me If You Can. That's wild they didn't go for Chris Cooper, because I just remember him, I do too and he did kind of like his win wasn't ever really in doubt even after Walkin won that that SAG award. I think part of it was the SAG Awards didn't exist when Walkin won his Oscar for Deer Hunter. So I think that sort of played into it. What do you have Brian Cox nominated for? Well, adaptation's the only well I'm not nominating him for the ring. Fair. But I haven't seen 20th hour. Yeah. He's well,

the year of LIE? No, LIE was the year before. Which I haven't seen. Yeah, LIE was 2001. But other contenders this year, I really loved Jim Broadbent in Gangs of New York. I really loved Jude Law and Roachian perdition. I really loved Robin Williams in Insomnia. I thought that performance was fantastic.

Year of Robin Williams being crazy. This was also the year that there was a lot of conversation about do we nominate Andy Circus for Lord of the Rings the Two Towers because the motion capture performance of Gollum was so not only well received but felt like a new frontier like a real like breakthrough

in terms of what was possible on screen so that was definitely like part of the conversation one of my favorite best actor fields ever the actual Oscars gave it to obviously Nicole Kidman

as Virginia Woolf in the Hours. Also nominated were Julianne Moore and Far From Heaven, Diane Lane for unfaithful, Salma Hayek for Frida, and the SAG winner, actually, that year was Renee Zellweger for Chicago. And I remember people really thinking like she was going to nip that one

at the last minute. And like her performance, I don't hate her performance in that movie the way a lot of people I think kind of do, but I was glad that Kidman did win. A freak for the hours, am I? So what were your nominee this best actress year. I mean, again, this best actress year is truly like killing your darlings.

This could be a 10 wide field and you would still be leaving out incredible performances. The top of my ballot, performance of the century, Isabelle Uppere and the piano teacher. Right. Followed by Nicole Kidman in the hours, Julianne Morrow and Far from Heaven, Meryl Streep in the Hours, and Maribel Vardieu from Itamama Timbion. that's a good one verdu's on my long list um i hewed a lot closer to the oscars than i thought i remember doing but um it's one of their best best actress lineups of my lifetime and with the caveat that i that i have not seen the piano teacher so i uh don't yell at me um julian more for far from heaven i have kidman and streep from the hours i think honestly the fact that streep

didn't get nominated for the hours is understandable, given the circumstances of that year, but it still annoys me because she is, it's one of my favorite performance of hers, if not maybe my favorite performance of hers. She's so great. I would have nominated Diane Lane for Unfaithful, and I think I would have nominated, my fifth slot sort of like flips and flops, but I think I would have nominated Catherine Keener for Lovely and Amazing. She might be close to my list. She might overtake Kidman on this list, had I not misremembered it as a 2001 movie.

It's one of those things where it's like, she's very good specifically in that movie, but also like she just, her Hall of Siener partnership is so wonderful to me and feels so right. It's just like, I always feel like, I mean, I'm doing the right thing with my life when I'm watching a Hollif Sinter movie

with Catherine Keener in it. It's great. All right, what's your top 10 for that year? All right, my top 10, let's go from 10 to 1, shall we? Okay. My number 10, about a boy. What a lovely movie. What's a great movie.

Great movie. Number 9, Chicago. Number 8, Solaris. Number 7, punch drunk love. Number 6, far from heaven. My top 5, Pedro Almodovars, talk to her. Number four, the hours. Number three, adaptation.

Number two, I too, Mataambien. and number one, the piano teacher. That's a fantastic list. Like, what a great... O2 is a great year. It's a fantastic year. All right. Let me bring mine up in a second.

Okay. So, I've got some good runners up, too. My runners up that year, among others about a boy, wrote to perdition, signs I really loved for as much as, like, it's amazing to me how much I can love a movie that stars Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix. Catch me on the right day, and I will say that Science is

Shyamalan's best movie. Catch me on the right day, I would probably say the same, although I do love the sixth sense. All right, so my top 10, and I will say I moved Solaris into this top 10 after this viewing. Like, I really,

my esteem for that movie has really, really gone up. So mine is number 10, Itu Mametambia, number nine, Solaris, number eight, far from heaven. Number seven, spirited away, which we haven't talked about because obviously no acting content. Talk about someone in trouble for not seeing something.

I still haven't seen Spirited Away. Oh, I think you would love it. I genuinely feel like, that feels like a crisp file kind of movie. Number six, Chicago, number five adaptation. Number four, minority report. Number three, 25th hour. Number two, Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers. I am the one who thinks it's really good.

I know a lot of people thought that trilogy sagged in the middle. I did not. as you can tell for my ballot, I am the one who could give a shit. Yeah, you hate the Lord of the Rings movies. Obviously, my number one is the hours. It's my favorite movie at all time. It's a good year.

It's a really, really good year. And also has some, like, that's one of those years where I always feel like I judge how good a movie year is on, like, two criteria. One is, like, how good it is at the top. But, like, another one is how interesting it is at the bottom or, like, in the middle. Whereas, like, Panic Room is this year.

And... Panic Room is the underrated David Fincher movie. Panic Room rules. Yep. Secretary is this year. I mentioned signs. We should talk about Moonlight Mile one of these times. I feel like I find that movie really underrated.

Igby Goes Down is this year. What else is I'm sort of, like, pluring through? The Born Identity is this year, which, like, really sort of sets a... you know, a standard with that series. People forget that the making of that movie was a complete and utter disaster. Oh, yeah. And it was like a box office disappointment until it was popular from rentals on VHS. And that popularity in rentals essentially like saved Matt Damon's career, which was really flailing at that point.

Fralty is that year, one of my favorite underrated, creepy-ass movies. it's so good. Bowling for Columbine is that year. One hour photo we've talked about on this podcast before. The Good Girl is that year. The Moth Man Prophecies, which is maybe not like a capital G great movie, but I always think about it as something real creepy. It's a good year. It's a real good year. All right. Do you have any other final notes on Solaris? Oh, I don't believe I do. Clooney, but Truman Shure. horror movie beginning, Jeremy Davies, Inception. Yeah, those are my big ones. Yeah. I guess the only last note is Clooney is returning to space, sort of, with his Netflix movie coming out, The Midnight Sky.

Right, right, right. So it's a space trilogy. It's Solaris and Gravity and now this. Yeah. Let's move on to the IMDB game. Yeah, do you want to talk about what the IMD game is? Yeah. Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game where we challenge each other with an actor or actress to try to guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television or voiceover work, we'll mention 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 hints. Very good. We love our IMDB game. Would you, Christopher, like to give or guess first?

I think I want to give first. Let's get it. Let's hear it. So you just mentioned Gravity, Clooney's other space movie, which he does not have a dead wife. He eventually becomes the dead wife because he dies. But his co-star in that one, his space lady is not Natasha McLone. It is Sandy Bullock. And we've never done Sandy Bullock.

Sandra Bullock. Okay. Well. See, this is the thing is, obviously, to me, the big early Sandra Bullock movie is speed, but I don't think I can trust that IMD has that there. So I'm going to put a pin in that. I'm going to say, honestly, I think the biggest slam dunk is miscingeniality. Miss Congeniality.

Okay. All right. Spectacular movie. I think Gravity will be one of them. Gravity, yes. Hugely popular. Best actress nomination. I think probably the blindside?

No. Oh, good. Good for IMDB. Okay. Yeah. One straight. Fantastic. We love that.

Okay. We love to not see the blind side. All right. Big popular Sandy B movies. Is it Speed? Yes. Oh, good. Good.

Good for them. Okay. And is it while you were sleeping? No. Unfortunately not. One of my favorite Christmas films while you were sleeping. So you get your year.

Your year is 2009. 2009? Oh, is it the proposal? It's the proposal. The proposal is on there over the blind side, which is right. I like the proposal. I like the proposal, too, but I think there was a little strain that year of, like, you know, her better movie is the proposal, and it's like, let's not go crazy here.

Well, people forget that the proposal is part of the reason that her narrative built because before the blind side, the proposal was her highest grossing movie. Right, it was this big, kind of... And then the blind side went and beat that. Yeah, it was this big kind of, like, comeback narrative for her, where, like, it wasn't like her career was dead, but it was this, like, there was a little bit of, like, uptick in the, uh, in the Sandy B narrative. All right.

Indeed. Who do you have for me? All right. So, Stephen Soderberg's first big movie, we didn't really talk about it this time, was sex lies and videotape, which was like hugely influential indie cinema, put him on the map, all that sort of good stuff. We've already done Andy McDowell, and I think Laura San Jacomo is probably a little too obscure, although now I'm curious to see what hers would be, but the one I am going to give you

is Mr. Peter Gallagher. Peter Gallagher. One television, no voiceover. Hmm, one television, it's got to be the O.C. It is indeed the O.C. Sandy Cohen on the O.C. And a voiceover. No, no voiceover. Oh, I thought you said a voiceover. Okay, okay, okay.

I'm going to guess that sex lies and videotape is not on there because I definitely think of both of those actors and James Spader before I would think of Peter Gallagher in that movie. Agreed. While you were sleeping. While you were sleeping. Very much. The aforementioned. I adore it so much. So Peter Gallagher's in a lot of movies, including movies that we have covered, like to Jillian.

Don't think anybody remembers to Jillian enough to put it there. Hmm. What are, like, popular movies? Well, wait. He's like 12th build of American Beauty, but, like, American Beauty is its own thing. So I'm going to say American Beauty. American Beauty. Very good. Ah, there we go.

Center stage. It's a very good guess, but it's wrong. What action movie is he in? It's not like Independence Day, but I feel like he's in an Independence Day rip-off that I can't remember. Maybe I'm crazy. Hmm.

Okay. Maybe I need to go with something older. It can't be like shortcuts, which he's in, because, like, shortcuts never shows up for anybody. Um, maybe it's another, like, he's played a bunch of dads trying to just, like, think of a movie.

I may just throw this out there to get the year. he's in Palm Springs this year Palm Springs A fine guess, but no So that is two strikes So your year is 2010 Okay, 2010 I guess that kind of helps

This is post OC Yep Um I'm trying to think of what it could be. Is this like a Sundance movie? Oh, no. No, it's not. Oh, so it's a big movie.

Well, yes. I mean, I don't think it was like a blockbuster, but yes. I will say... It's a studio movie. Yes, it's a studio movie. What were you going to say? say what? Now I want to look up what

studio it was because it might be a sorry one second USA theatrical yes it is a studio movie okay we've done this on our podcast before oh oh is it burlesque

it's burlesque sure is burlesque plays shares ex-husbands Barely in the movie. He is, but you know what? It's such a good movie that it doesn't matter. Yeah. Hey, we both did pretty well this week.

Yeah. I'm trying to think of some other Peter Gallagher ones that I might have put on there. He just glars together. It's just like he's a floating set of eyebrows. I think Center Stage would have been a good one. He's in one of the later step-up movies where they're in Miami and he owns businesses of some sort. He's in the House on Haunted Hill

remake. Oh, yeah. Where I meant to watch that this spooky season. I did not. Right. Is he the Vincent Price? No, Jeffrey Rush is the Vincent Price. Jeffrey Rush is the Vincent Price. Right. He's like the millionaire. He's also the lawyer who interrogates Alec Baldwin and Malice in that big I Am God scene that I tend to clip all the time. I got it. I've talked about it enough where I really need to just like

watch it when I have some free time. I might go watch an oceans movie today, who knows. Joseph, before we go, we have one more exciting thing to remind our listeners about, guys, keep submitting your one choice for your listeners' choice submission. Again, all November, you can either email or tweet at us your choice that you want to hear on the Christmas Listeners' Choice episode. I'm compiling all of the tallies at the beginning of the month. The top four options will be on our Twitter poll. Once again, you can email us at had oscarbuzz at gmail.com or tweeted us at had underscore Oscar underscore buzz.

Very excited to hear what I'm so excited. At this point, like, we're still ahead of the curve on that. So like we haven't gotten submissions, but I'm so excited to see what everybody's asking us to cover. Me too. Me too. That is our episode, though. If you want more of this head oscarbuzz, you can check out the Tumblr at thisheadoscarbuzz.tum.com. You should also follow our Twitter account at had underscore Oscar.

underscore buzz. Chris, where can the listeners find you and your stuff? You can find me floating with space ghosts on Twitter.com at Chris V-File. That's F-E-I-L, also on letterbox, under the same name. I am on Twitter at Joe Reed. Read is spelled R-E-I-D, and I am also on letterboxed as Joe Reed spelled the same way. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mavius for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever else you get podcast, which now, yes,

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