This Had Oscar Buzz - 149 – The Prize Winner of Defiance, OH

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

Can you believe it’s only our third episode discussing Julianne Moore? This episode we’re diving into the mid-00s period between nominations for Moore with 2005′s The Prize Winner of Defiance, OH. Starring the eventual Oscar winner in the true story of Evelyn Ryan, a mother of ten who supported her family through sweepstakes contests and … Continue reading "149 – The Prize Winner of Defiance, OH"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. No, I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Hacks. I'm from Canada water. I'm from Canada water. Come on, Mom. in a house for 20 years, cooking and cleaning.

We're out of milk. You could be having an interesting life. I do have an interesting life. Well, all right! Frisk the frigidere, clean the cupboards bear sandwich. Good one, Mom. You get that stay-home writing in your stupid notebooks. Those stupid notebooks are the only reason this family isn't living on the street.

Mrs. Ryan, you are our first prize winner. Frisk the frigidaire, clean the covers bear sandwich. Oh, baby. Oh, my gosh, Daddy. shopping free. Seven minutes to go, Mom. What are we looking for? Exotic things. Anything growing in a foreign country?

Just Hawaii count? Yes. You know what your problem is? I don't. You're too damn happy. Hello and welcome to the This Head Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that tells the truth every single time except that one lie that we snuck in that one time to see if you'd notice. Every week on This Head 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 Clean the Cubboards Bear sandwich. Chris Fyle. Hello, Chris. Hi, Joe. Okay, so first question, what was the lie that we snuck in one time? I'm just going to let people try and figure it out. Oh, okay. I feel like this was a joke that we did. Was it? And it wasn't like, no, I think we made a joke one time that was like a bald face lie. that we were clearly joking. Well, maybe I've outsmarted myself then, and we are sending our listeners on a wild goose chase

to find the one great lie that we've told in our podcast. We'll see. We'll see. I also am, my second point is I am a Clean the Coverage Bear sandwich, but my question for you was going to be, what's your deli order? What's my deli order? Like, what sandwich?

I'm big on a tuna salad sandwich. I know I'm a trash person. I don't trust things like tuna salad from a deli. I'm very, for whatever reason, I'm very particular about mayonnaisey things that I have to make them myself. I'm not a trusting person generally. They'll sneak in a miracle whip on you and you, like, and you won't be prepared for it. Or it'll just be like some gross sledge substance that you're putting on bread and calling it a sandwich. I am probably way too trusting with a tuna salad among the general populace.

way untrusting with anything else. So I am usually either a turkey, cheddar, lettuce, mayo, on a roll person, or a, what's that? It's so boring. Yeah, I know. Sorry. Or I'm a chicken cutlet and Swiss with lettuce and mayo on a roll person. That's it. I don't go for, like, I don't need the deli to, like, you know, fancy up my life.

Life. Every once in a while, maybe like a roast beef and melted mozzarella kind of a person, but like rarely. Rarely. If I'm going to go to a jelly, I'm going to go very basic. Tuna loaded up with a shit ton of pickles and then like jalapinos. Oh, see, jalapinos on a sandwich doesn't do it for me. Oh, I love a crunch. I love a crunch. Give me a crunch. Just don't like burn out my mouth. Like, I don't need it. The most of the crunch, a sandwich with munch, jalapinas. That's my jingle. third place third place I won five dollars and a gift card to Grater's ice cream or something There is a lot of I feel like growing up

for me I caught the sort of like the echoes of this version of like brand dominated sort of America I feel like I caught the tail end of times when you would like

send in a self-addressed stamped envelope for something or like um send in like box tops from a serial thing or uh those those sort of commercials that would end with like the one 800 number that you would call and allow like six to eight weeks for delivery and they would have for commemorative coins right all of that kind of stuff was still being advertised when i was younger but it was like the like the echoes of this particular era of like 1950s early 1960s, like, sponsored by Calgon kind of stuff, right? Where it's an interesting, it's a very interesting era. There are certain things in this movie that we're going to be talking about today,

the prize winner of Defiance, Ohio, that felt reminiscent of things. Like, we'll talk more at length, I think, I hope, about the supermarket shopping spree that she does, which is one of my favorite scenes in the movie, that reminded me so much that, like when I was a kid growing up, Toys R Us would do, and I believe it was through Nickelodeon. They would do a contest where the main prize was a timed shopping spree through Toys R Us. And I will tell you, there was nothing in my entire life that I wanted more than to win that Toys R Us shopping spree. I absolutely entered in to win that shopping spree. Right? The idea of like running through Toys R Us and just like, just, and they would show it then after

the kid who would win it and they would like televise the actual shopping spree and just like literally like running down the aisles and just like scooping everything you could into this like giant shopping cart I never hated another child

more in my life than seeing those kids that actually won the shopping spree I was like that little ungrateful bastard right they're not going to love those thunder cats toys the way I would love those Thundercats toys exactly well and you would see the kids going through like the sports items

aisle toys around It's just nerf footballs as far as the I can see. Yeah. Did you have a strategy planned? I had a strategy plan. Much like I'm sure I did, but I can't remember it now. But yes, that's what. My strategy was very simple.

I was like, I'm just going to go to the VHS aisle and the action figures aisle. And that's all I need. Yeah, I was like, send me to the video game section, which would have been complicated. Maybe I would have stopped by the games. Because the video game section of Toys R Us was always stuff that was behind lock and key. And I would always wonder whether they would open that up for you or, or, whether you would just need to, like, waste time, you know, whatever, dealing with whatever work around you had to do to buy video games at Toys R Us. But yeah, action figures would have

been a big, big, big thing. Like, I would have, like, literally just, like, gone to the G.I. Joe's Isle and just, like, cleared them all out. Like, absolutely just, like, housed that entire, you know, local Toys R Us branch of every G.I. Joe's action figure they could possibly have. And Transformers and whatever. All of those cartoons from the 80s that were designed to products that absolutely worked because they sold products to me. Yeah, totally, totally. I loved how she made, like, but she does the thing in prize winner that you should do, which is she strategized based on rarity, things that, like, oh, we'd never be able to buy,

you know, on a normal way, and, like, strategize to, like, build up the, like, structural integrity of the cart with, like, ribs. and sides of bacon as like the rim. Honest to God. So, so brilliant, so fantastic. And a great, like, just a really funny scene. The two sort of local ladies who help her out are kind of a delight. And so, okay, we'll get into that, you know, at length of.

We'll loop back to that scene because it's wonderful. It's wonderful. I had never seen this movie before. Had you seen this movie before? I had in college. I, because like, we'll talk about it. This movie had such a limited release. I drove to another city to see this movie.

You would have had to. I did. I drove like 90 minutes to see this movie. I wouldn't have been able to see it in Buffalo. Absolutely not. It never played on more than 41 screens at a time ever. It made less than $650 or less than $700,000 at the box office. It is easily one of the lowest grossest.

films we've covered on this podcast. I should make that list. I should sort of go through sometime and make the list of the lowest grossing. Maybe that's one of those things where if an enterprising listener wants to help us out. I forget what the lowest grossing one is. I think we did a movie that made like $100,000.

Yeah. No, but this is like clearly like got to be among them. There are reasons for that. I'd be Ask the Dust? Maybe. Let me look that. That makes sense. Was Asked the Dust also this year?

Was that 06? I think that was 06. I think it was originally supposed to be 05 and got pushed to 06. Yeah. There are definitely reasons for the incredibly low profile release and low box office number. We'll definitely get into that. But this was a movie that I've wanted to see, because of course I love Julianne more very much. But I think because it sort of came and went so quietly, it never became essential.

Like at 2005, you could get out of the year 2005 and sort of feel like you had watched the major movies of that year without having watched Prize winner of Defiance Ohio, even though from a year ahead perspective, Julian Moore in this movie was one of those contenders you'd put on a long list because, for no other reason,

that it's Julianne Moore, she's doing her repressed 50s housewife thing. This is the last of those roles for her. Like from here on out, she'd start to sort of run counter to that, interestingly enough, with her career, where she's playing a lot more sort of troubled characters or women who are like a lot less, you know, together. I think so many of her 50s housewives were that she was sort of like desperately trying to hold things together. And then, like, subsequently to this, she would be in movies like Freedom Land or, Or a single man, right? Where it's just like, you know, completely sort of messier, more less admirable.

I think, you know, movies like Savage Grace is one of those. Absolutely. Even when going back to something like the kids are all right, where Annette Benning is playing the sort of, if not repressed, than sort of like quietly unhappy of the two of them. Whereas, like, Julianne Moore's character is a lot more sort of actively struggling, flailing to, like, do the right thing, right? Messy, yeah. She's definitely the messier of the two of them. So, and something like Crazy Stupid Love, which is an episode that we've done before.

Whereas, like, she is, you know, it's a thankless role she gets it. She's the wife. But she's the one sort of, like, acting out towards the beginning of that movie, sort of setting that plot into motion. So this is really kind of the end of an era for Julianne Moore, an era that, you know, basically is summed up by far from heaven, the hours, and then this is sort of the third in the trilogy. So I was pleasantly surprised by this movie.

I started off very, very dubious of what this movie was doing. There's a lot of sort of cheeky, structural stuff. She's narrating her own story, but she's also, like, appearing in these little, like, vignettes about... I wouldn't go so far as to say the movie is, like, camp, but there is a certain tonal quality to it where it's, like, it's trying to play off of the kind of vibrancy of these jingles and, like, incorporated into this, like, true story narrative. We'll talk about writer-director Jane Anderson later on too, and I feel like she, there was a lot of ambition in her. She had done a bunch of TV movies for mostly HBO, some of them for Showtime. And I felt like there was an ambitious attempt to be very cinematic in this and be very sort of like, you know, quirky and sort of meet the subject matter.

of the film at a very, on a very kind of impressionistic level, right? And it still feels like there's a hesitancy there where it doesn't really go full boat. And I'm not sure if it's a better movie, even if it does sort of go fully there. Because I don't know if, I don't know how successful those little interludes are. They're cute. I think there's a lot of this movie that's like, it's cute. It's like, I think ultimately it is... Yeah, it's a very sweet and tender movie and...

Yeah. There's moments of it, especially with the group of women that she becomes involved with, that are also jingle writers and contesters. Yeah. That feels like it's kind of, I don't want to say cutting, but like maybe a little bit more on the campy side or a little bit more cheeky with... The woman in the iron lung. Yeah, yes. But also just, like, the kind of dynamic between those women is a lot of fun in a way that feels like it's taking...

I don't want to say, it's obviously not, like, to John Waters' extent, but... No. Or to, like, even a Tim Burton effect, but there is this kind of archness to those scenes. Tim Burton's not a bad comparison, actually. Like, Tim Burton would have, like, zeroed in on, you know, what was sort of phony and false. about a lot of this, whereas this movie... I mean, Big Eyes kind of wants to be what this movie is. You're not wrong.

You're actually... You're actually... That's a really interesting, really interesting note on this subject. I mean, maybe this Big Eyes is more ambitious or, like, really wants to, like, hammer the things that this movie does more subtly. Yeah. But, like, that's maybe the comparison I would make. Yeah.

So anyway, we'll get into all of that. I also want to talk about how the Woody Harrelson character, I sort of started off thinking, well, this is fairly broad. You know, this is fairly unsubtle. And yet, the way that the film deals with his character and has the other characters deal with his character ends up becoming, I think for me, very effective by the end of the movie and seeing where it goes and seeing what relationships this movie really values and that kind of a thing.

And it kind of avoids a lot of the, like, broad. I mean, like, this movie is fairly broad. Like, in a way that movies like this tend to play characters like his, it tends to, you know, not really allow for the type of nuances that this movie is maybe more interested in. And, like, in terms of his dynamic with his children. It's up to more. Yeah. It's up to more interesting things that I sort of initially gave it credit for in its first half hour. So I ended up, you know, liking this movie.

I would recommend this movie to people, especially if you really love to me. Yeah, I like it a lot. I enjoy this movie. Um, so why don't we hop into a fairly early for us, 16 minutes, are you kidding me? My God. Um, plot description for, uh, the prize winner of Defiance, Ohio. And then we can get into sort of the basics about what we're talking about. It's an interesting story. It is based on a, uh, a true story. Um, and, uh, yeah, we'll, uh, we'll hit the ground running. So, we're talking about, the 2005 film, the prize winner of Defiance, Ohio, directed by Jane Anderson, also written by Jane Anderson based on the memoir by Terry Tuff Ryan, one of the characters, one of the children in this film, starring Julianne, Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern, Ellery, Porterfield, Trevor Morgan, Simon Reynolds. It opened in limited release on September 30th, 2005, and Steve. stayed there, stayed very, very limited throughout its entire run. And, yeah, that's it. The cast is very big, but it's not really full of names beyond, you know, Julianne and Woody.

I think the number is there's over 20 child actors in this movie, because you see their 10 children across multiple ages. Yep. Yeah, there's, there's, again, it's a big cast. And even, like, a lot of, like, her neighbors. and stuff like that. Like, not a whole lot of, like, normally I'm somebody who, like, will feast on a character actor buffet. And it's not really populated with a lot of character actors that I really recognized, even the

level, like, what was the name of her little, uh, I kept a quilting bee, but with words. You know what I mean? It felt very quilting bee-esque. The, I forget the name of the group. Shit, I'm going to have to just watched it this morning. I'll get it. I'll get it. It's, uh, are they not going to give it to me in the plot description on Wikipedia? You fucks.

Um, that's so annoying. They forgot it too. Whoever wrote that. Yeah. Jesus. Anyway, something with an A, I feel like. Anyway, um, loved them. But like, I was surprised that like beyond Laura Dern, she was the only really familiar face that I saw there as well.

Anyway, are you ready for one minute to talk about the plot of the prize winner of Defiance Ohio? I am. All right, Chris, if you are ready, we will begin now. All right, we follow Evelyn Ryan, who is a real woman who lived with her husband, Kelly, who was an alcoholic, and they had 10 children in Defiance, Ohio. She helped support their family while their husband was a machinist and spending a lot of their money on booze by entering jingle contests and various contests, promotional prizes from various corporations and companies. She would be winning things like freezers, shopping sprees, and a lot of money that helped pay for things like milk and larger expenses like their home. And anyway, eventually Kelly secretly puts their house up for a second mortgage, doesn't tell her.

And she only finds out when they need like $4,000 to pay off the second mortgage within like 30 days. Eventually she ends into what is seen as like the last big contest because these corporations are moving away from them from Dr. Pepper. and she wins the contest, luckily, pays off their mortgage, sends their kids away to various places, two of them become baseball players, once a nurse. Tough is the character that we call the most because she writes the book and she becomes a writer. All right, very good job, Chris, A. Also, while you were doing that, I looked up the answer to the little, the name of Laura Dern's little group because it was going to bother me. Otherwise, they're called the affidazis, which...

Don't they have a second name? I thought they had a name starting with C. No, it's like there were, it was a con, there were, there were, there were a contester club. They were contestors that was sort of like, yeah, which I sort of also loved, and that was a term that Julianne Moore's character sort of introduces in the beginning about like, you know, this was, this was definitely, uh, totally by the rules in the world of contesting. She talks about like the contesting world a lot, which, right, because she enters in multiple entries under her children's names to, right, right, which, and again,

A lot of the things that I love the best about this movie are when it gets into this sort of this subculture of contesting, right? This idea of there is money to be had and, you know, advantage to be claimed from the corporate culture, the sort of consumerist culture of the 1950s that was advertising to, you know, housewives and, you know, sort of, recognizing that they were the purchasing power in their families and sort of by pitching to them and sort of trying to engage them on this level of contesting and that if you really like took this seriously and really you know tried for it that you could in a non-scammy way that's what I also love is that all of this is above board she's not scamming she's not like Adam Sandler punched drunk love trying to like you know get one over on the pudding company

kind of a thing. Right. She hasn't found a loophole in the system. She's playing by the rules. She's just incredibly talented and driven to do this because this is her option. She has 10 kids. She's got a shitty fucking husband. And they never have enough money.

And this idea... She wins by gumption and wit. And it's sort of this idea that like, because of this, these like pennies from heaven just sort of keep arriving for them at their most opportune times. But it's not by accident, and it's not by, you know, provenance or whatever. It's because she works hard. And she, you know, she has found the avenue that she can best contribute to as a mother of 10.

Well, and, like, you see in, like, the origins of her character that she has this kind of writing and, like, marketing prowess to. Right. That, like, it's clearly a passion of hers, too. So you do get to see this woman who's a real woman as this character in this movie, who has, like, a life of her own that is a passion of her own. That, like, that also includes her children, but, like, she is her own fully invested character. So it is very rewarding in the way that we often think this type of, finger-quotes, housewife role is unsatisfying in so many other ways. but like it that still kind of pops up throughout the movie and I think it's a subtle movie so it's not hammering you over the head with this where it's like she's still entering poetry contest but like those prizes are like three dollars five dollars and like that doesn't necessarily she even has a line at some point that she kind of like writes off those type of contests because they're doing less to support her family right like I think we as naive audience members are our

like, well, but why isn't she being a poet? And it's like, she, you get to see her. She's just being a poet for, you know, Dr. Pepper. Right, exactly. She's writing these little jingles. Where she probably have a bigger audience and, like, she gets bigger prize money and she gets even more joy out of that. Well, and what are the great things about the scene where later in the movie, and the

movie really does make us wait for it? On one level, part of me feels like I want to gripe and be like we should have gotten to the affidavis sooner because it's such a great, it really opens up the movie for Evelyn, for the Julianne Moore character. And yet, I think the movie

making us wait for it really makes us feel how desperately Julianne more needed that kind of fellowship and camaraderie, and the fact that they all can sit in a living room and critique each other's jingles and talk about little like tips and tricks

in order to do well, and they all support each other success. I was very worried when they introduced the Laura Dern character, that she was going to turn out to be sort of sweet on the outside, but sinister on the inside. And she was going to end up... Because we've seen that movie so many times. We've seen that movie so many times that she was going to end up making her, making Julianne Moore feel more alienated than ever, that these other women... Or like steal one of her jingles. Exactly. Exactly right. And I think I was so relieved and also kind of delighted that the movie made the other choice, which is We are going to show you what actually being supported by her peers would do for her.

What sort of, you know, what an oasis that was because she had this terrible husband who. And I think a lesser movie, too, could have just as easily not included that chapter of her alive. Right. Right. Exactly. And I was really glad that it. And it also, again, the journey getting there wasn't easy. like in very literal terms

like she and Tuff are driving out there and the car breaks down because the fan belt was worn because shitty Woody Harrelson didn't have it replaced or whatever and it gives... After years of canceled plans to meet them in other terms

and like it takes years for her to make these other women who are 90 miles away. Right, exactly. And so, but it also gives you know, Evelyn and Tuff to have this really, you know, wonderful little scene

together and again sort of opens up another avenue of just like, oh, this is a major theme of this movie, this sort of legacy she's handing off to her daughter. I didn't realize that this movie was based on Tuft's memoir, the real life Tuft's

memoir, until the end of the movie. It made sense once I realized it, but I was sort of glad that I didn't because I think the emergence of Tuff as the child that's the sort of the most important narratively to the film is kind of a lovely revelation that this girl who clearly

I texted you last night I was like I love Julian Moore's lesbian daughter in this movie and it's because she's like she's very sort of like she's you know she's quirky she's got like you know she's got glasses and short hair and she's you know she's not sure if Terry Ryan is queer but at least in terms of the movie is very queer coded in the movie exactly Exactly. And I mean, goes beyond, I think, even, like, I think I was maybe making, you know, glib little joke. But also, it's just like, she is this, like, capable, like, incredibly capable girl who's, like, obviously very independent and obviously has very definite ideas about her father. And, like, you know, she comes of age as, like, as the story hits a certain narrative point to. so she does take, in terms of all the other children, she takes the most weight. It's not just the type of thing where it's like, well, this is the child. And maybe they fudge some of the, like, timeline of it.

Right. But, like, it's not like, well, this is the child who wrote the book, so they're the most important. But it is, like, she's able to have certain conversations with her mother that are narratively important when they have. And the fact that she's not the one narrating the story, I think, is a real benefit to the story because it, doesn't become this, like, my mother, you know what I mean? I can hear Alison Lohmann from White O'Leander just talk about, like, my mother. My mother said we were Viking. Yeah, exactly, right?

Well, I think also having Evelyn as the narrator of this story or giving this very, like, fourth wall breaking kind of, like, almost like, I felt a little bit like the type of device that Mariel Heller uses in, like, a beautiful day in the neighborhood. It allows like Evelyn's kind of perspective and her tone with how she dealt with all this adversity to kind of control the tone of the movie too. Yeah. It never becomes

too like harrowing or you know the like grimest version of this movie that you can imagine. But it's also like it's not too sickly sweet either. Right. It's just very like go ahead. One of the big through lines in the movie is how

sort of unfailingly positive, cheerful, like, whatever word you want to use. For somebody who has the situation that she's in, 10 kids scraping by constantly, humiliated

by this asshole milkman once a week, and like a emotionally abusive, if not, like I think the fact that Woody Harrelson's character is not physically abusive is attributable probably to the fact that it is a true story and you don't want to make somebody into a physically abusive person when he wasn't. But also, it allows that character to not go beyond a certain point of, you know, at a certain

point, it would have been too much, I think, if he's hitting her or hitting the kids. to sort of justify a narrative that keeps him around that long without a becoming tragic, a tragedy. Well, and again, I feel like with his character, the movie itself is trying to adopt Evelyn's perspective, right? Because it's very clear of like, just in how she handles him to, with like, notes of forgiveness while also still holding him accountable. it makes a very clear point of like he used to be a singer and then had an accident that he could no longer sing and she says in the movie quite literally he lost his voice while I got to keep mine yeah and it's like it's a dynamic that like is probably truthful but at the same time I don't think the movie necessarily forgives him for any of his bad behavior I don't think it does either but it but it at least opens the door to keeping him around without you getting too frustrated with the movie you really do you understand why. And she articulates herself very well in that scene at the gas station when the car brakes breaks down with Tuff.

It was a scene that reminded me a lot of, speaking of Laura Dern, that scene in Wild where Reese Witherspoon is just like, how can you possibly remain optimistic about any of this stuff? Don't you understand? Don't you see what's going on? And Tuff essentially says the same things to her mother. she's just like this man ruined your life like he abs like he's you know deep six to this family time and again and you had this you know promise when you were young and now you got saddled with 10 shitty kids like she

says that about like herself and her siblings and julian moore's answer is very similar to what laura durn's answer is in wild which is it's not that i don't see it it's that wallowing in that doesn't do me any good And ultimately, if I can be thankful that I have my children and be in the moment where I get to have, even though, you know, our shitty car broke down, now I get to have this moment with my very sort of independent-minded and wonderful daughter. And both of those scenes sort of like hit me in the same way, where I love when a character can articulate their circumstances. that you as an outsider might see as sad or weak or pathetic or whatever and come at them from a position of emotional strength is really like that hits me in a good spot well and it's also like characters that i think we as people like whether we're watching a movie or it's just people in life that you're like why would they just like you feel like they're rolling over and just taking the lot that they're given, but characters that actually revealed, no, I'm making a conscious choice and I have, from the options, this is something that I actually choose.

Yeah. And for as much as we talk about how the movie does, I think, a good job, especially as it goes along, of humanizing, rounding out, sort of explaining the Woody Harrelson character better. That does not mean that he is a likable character. I don't think he's supposed to be. I have rarely hated a character on just the level of, you know, being invested in the movie, hated a character as much as I've hated this Woody

Harrelson character. I, every time he did something or said something rotten or wasn't properly appreciative about something or, like, stood in the corner, eaten his fucking whore Mel, while the rest of the family gets to enjoy their hearts of palm from the, you, you know, shopping spree or whatever. Because of his naked resentment. Just naked, toxic masculinity, like, emasculation perspective. Like, who fucking needs it?

I was, I literally wrote down, and this was halfway through the movie, I said, I want this army of children to rise up and murder this man. And that's absolutely... I mean, they kind of do. They kind of do. That's the thing. It does reach a certain point in the movie where it's like even the younger children are just highly aware and,

articulate to the way that, you know, seven-year-olds can be what his failings are and they're very aware. They are not shy about expressing how much they don't like this man and I kind of love that. And I will say, I do think it's too, because like you're just kind of talking about your naked disdain for this character. I think it's to the credit of Woody Harrelson's performance that it doesn't seem like this type of cliche character that we usually see in these type. of, you know, failing father roles, that it just feels like the same note over and over again. I do think Woody Harrelson gets into the psychology of this man in a way that feels

like interesting to watch and not like, again, not the cliche, but like is actually trying to get at the psychology of what makes him constantly make these failing decisions. Well, and there are moments where he'll be. you know, sort of going on a role about something and he's throwing, you know, perfectly good stakes out into the backyard and he's acting out and he's being just an emotionally abusive monster, right? And then somebody will say something or like the part where he's like, you know what your problem is, you're just too damn happy.

And literally the children and Julian Moore laugh in his face about it. And you were just like, oh, this could go so wrong. Then he, like, relents and sort of, and plays it off almost as if he intended to say something funny the whole time. And, like, there are moments where he, his facade will break or his resolve to be the world's worst person will, like, break down for a second. And he just, like, takes a break from being the absolute worst. And it's interesting. It's, it makes for a more complicated character, again, not necessarily a more likable one. one, but a more complicated one, and one where, again, we can sort of then be on this journey

with Julianne Moore without constantly just being like, she's got to get away or else she's going to die. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. There's a moment after the one, the one moment that it gets the most sort of physically perilous, where he is haranguing her about the milk delivery, and she, he, she either, like, tries to. like he grabs her arm and she tries to yank away from him or one of those things or whatever. And she goes spilling into the, onto the living room floor and the milk bottles shatter and her arms, her hands get all cut up. And she comes home from the hospital.

And that's the one where like it's the most tense. The children are the closest at that point, I think, to taking little knives out and stabbing him to death and justifiably so. She goes to the hospital. She has to like get out of her wet girdle, which is just the saddest phrase. the entire world. Like, I have to get out of this wet girdle. Somebody, and she needs him to help her because he's the only one who can. Yeah, she says that she's leaving for the hospital.

The thing I'm most mad about is I'm probably carrying a cord of milk in my girl. I sucked up a cord of milk into this girdle, which is such a phrase. Like, what a turn of phrase. But then, so she gets home and he's helping her out. And they're, like, sort of talking over what has happened and what, you know, this dynamic between them. And he's talking about how he feels emasculated by the boys at the factory, because whenever she wins a thing, they make fun of him for not being the real breadwinner in the family and yada, yada, toxic masculinity is a prison. And then she just says, it's a fantastic line. She says, I don't need you to make me happy.

I just need you to leave me alone when I am, which is so, I don't know, I was really struck by that phrase. because that's the thing. It's just like she didn't need him to make her happy. She didn't, you know, she was doing okay. She's doing okay. She's helping this family get by. She is not, you know, she's not complaining that they don't have, you know, that they can never do anything, that they can never go out to eat or go on vacation or

whatever. She just needs him to let her continue. to find her own happiness in this world and to not fuck it up for her. And I don't know. It was really good. I mean, I think if there's people in the audience still wondering why she accepts or stays with this man through all of this turmoil and like constantly, you know, cleans his figurative diaper when he, you know, continues to ruin the situation for them, I think that scene and that line definitely clean. clarifies it for the audience, what the dynamic is, what her perspective is on her marriage and life. In a way that, like, I think on the surface, the way people probably approach this movie, wouldn't expect that type of nuance.

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. And again, I just want to talk about how, what an interesting little slice of American life we sort of like peek into. here, which is this kind of consumerist, you know, consumerist angle on getting by as a housewife, right? Where, like, everything. And, like, it's not like she's winning these, like, cash prizes either all the time. Sometimes she does. But sometimes she wins, again, like this, like... A pony that they sell for money. The pony that they sell, the car, the, like...

A palm tree that... Hogo sticks. is not going to grow in Ohio. Right, exactly. Like, all of these things, it's just like, and she just like, she will enter whatever contest because even if it's, you know, not much, it's something. It's a year's supply of, you know, whatever, some inessential, like, toothbrushes or

something like that. It's not that, but, like, there's another thing where it's just like, or no, birdseed. That's what it was. We got a lifetime supply of bird seed. And it's like, that's not really, like, that's not really. an essential need that you had. But it's just, you know, it's these, you know, little bits and sometimes she can sell things. And sometimes it's just, you know, like these little luxuries, like the shopping spree, which was, again, they have this like feast essentially. She's such a good

mom. God, she's such a good mom. She's such a good mom. But, like, it's also like, you talk about like bird seed and it's things that are not essential to their life. And maybe they can find use for it. They can find financial gain from it. But it's also just like these constant signs of her abilities and her mind and her like artistry basically. But some of it too is things that like she's entering these contests out of necessity, things like the freezer. She enters a contest because one of the kids breaks a window and she wins a free window. So it's like there were these, I mean like I hesitate to say resources but for this like contesting culture yeah you know there were ways to find uh or there were avenues to find to provide for your family um i kept thinking of that she

you know made the best of i kept thinking of the phrase pennies from heaven in this which again like the opening credits are even this sort of like animated like coins falling from the sky and I grew up decidedly middle class. Not like this level where like you're sort of, you know, struggling to make ends meet at the end of every month kind of a thing. But like we never really had money. You know what I mean? We would be able to like scrape together enough to like take a family trip somewhere.

Or, and not to any place like we never were able to do like the Disney World thing that a lot of, you know, people I grew up doing. And we were never, like, we were never in peril, but we were never flush, let's say that way. And my parents would always sort of mention every once in a while, something would come along and whether it's, you know, a, you know, a second job that, you know, my mom or my dad would be able to get, or a, you know, my dad would won like a, you know, a raffle prize somewhere that was like a thousand dollars or something like that. And just these little moments and they would always talk about, you know, like pennies from heaven kind of thing. It was just like whenever, you know,

we, you know, maybe seem to have, you know, had this need, there was always a way to make something work. And it really, watching this movie really made me think about that kind of thing. And just the perseverance of that and the, I don't know, and again, just this sort of,

just like this unfailingly positive attitude from Julianne Moore's character, which is, like, even like the, you know, again,

the scene after the shopping spree where they're having this little feast and Woody Harrelson is throwing a little temper tantrum in the corner. And she, while trying to like, manage him,

at the same time is trying to like get her kids to try capers and caviar and you know what I mean and just sort of like in talking about how you know there's a link there's a link between uh intelligence and um and an openness to trying new foods and sort of just like trying to like impart these little lessons on our kids and trying to raise kids who will then sort of go out into the world and I think one of the things about the postscript to this movie we would find out all of these kids, they didn't, like, go to, like, Paris or India or Hong Kong or whatever, but, like, they sort of settled across all the sort of far corners of the continental United States in incredibly different jobs. That was the other thing that I was sort of, like, struck by is, and a lot of times you would get a postscript where, like, this person was a cop, and now they teach grade school. This person, you know, did this job for a while, and now. now they are living here doing this.

And it's always just like these people with, you know, an ability to sort of, seeming ability to sort of like nimbly sort of go with the flow. Well, an ingrained sense of prevailing adventure and curiosity, I guess, that, like, is clearly imparted in terms of how Evelyn is presented in the film. Yeah. So let's, unless you have anything more about the story itself to talk about. obviously, you know, throw that in, we can throw that in wherever, but maybe we want to pivot to the sort of meta story of the prize winner of Defiance, Ohio, as a film that

barely got released. And as DreamWorks is dying and this is the thing. This was, this movie got caught in the death rattle of DreamWorks, uh, DreamWorks films, DreamWorks, uh, pictures. 2005 was a rough one for DreamWorks. But the thing is, if you look at 2005 on paper, you could see

Oscar success, financial success, but at this point in DreamWorks' history, they were kind of hemorrhaging money to the point where it's like all these movies that they had, like even Matchpoint, I don't think it lists it online, but Matchpoint was also distributed

by Weinstein Co. Right. All of their successes at this point were co-productions. Or the Worlds was with Paramount. They partnered up with Universal on a ton of things. Including Munich this year, which was like the DreamWorks, Finger Quotes, Oscar success this year. Right. And so the interesting corner that prize winner of Defiance Ohio occupies is, and I had never, I had no familiarity with Gofish pictures until I was sort of looking up the stuff about this movie and essentially go fish pictures was intended to be dream works's um art house dependent shingle right it was going to be their focus of dream the focus their fox search light their warner and this was obviously the time where all of the studios were trying to establish their independent shingle this was the time of warner independent and paramount vantage paramount

classics, they all needed to have one. And I think DreamWorks, wanting to play with those big contenders, wanted to have their own little shingle as well. So in 2000, they founded GoFish Pictures and didn't really release anything until 2003. So they have their first initial successes are these two animated films from Japan. I believe they are both Japanese films. They're both anime. Yeah, both anime films. Millennium Actress, which I do remember hearing about, and Ghost in the Shell 2, Innocence,

which I also remember getting like a theatrical release, which I was like surprised by. And they had like on these sort of like modest level, both of them were successes. The kinds of successes, a sort of indie shingle like this would have in its early going, right? kinds of things that can, you know, spur on greater success. And then their next film that they release in summer of 2005, so only a month or two before Prize winner of Defiance, Ohio, is the chum scrubber, which I always use as shorthand for mid-aughts indie independent cinema that is not real. Right. Well, but I remember I saw this movie. I was also, I remember that the Chum Scrubber and Thumb Sucker were movies in the same year, both starring Lou Taylor Poochee. Actually, he's a supporting player in the Chum Scrubber.

Chum Scrubber falls into the abyss with like Dear Wendy and the United States of Leland. United States of Leland for sure. Where it's like interchangeable movies. So the Chum Scrubber is the absolute epitome. of mid-aughts what these sort of like indie filmmakers had to say about

the world that like added up to so little in the end. So it's a Sundance movie in 2005. It's directed by Ari Posen and Jamie Bell is in the lead of it

and of course I love Jamie Bell. The cast is like kind of amazing. Ray finds his in it, and closes in it, Alison Janney, William Fickner. This, I think, was the first movie that sort of introduced Camilla Bell. Remember that sort of small little era where they were trying to make Camilla Bell happen? Oh, boy.

I think she was also in the Ballad of Jack and Rose, right? Which was the same year. Anyway, this is like California, like Southern California suburbs, and everybody's parents, like, don't get it. And all of the kids are on prescription drugs. and it's just like, oh, look at, are you, are you scandalized? All the kids that you know are hooked on Ritalin or whatever, and they're taken, you know. Is this the teen suicide one or is United States of Leland the teen suicide one? I mean, they're both.

This one starts with the suicide of the drug dealer, of the high school drug dealer, and sort of this is the fallout of all of that. And, but I think United States of Leland is also about Ryan Gosling's character. who tries to commit suicide. And also, wrist-cutter is a love story is about, like, it was a, like, big one.

Big, big theme. So, anyway, I remember very, very little about the actual plot of the movie beyond the fact that the drug dealer commits suicide at the beginning of the movie. It is a disaster

for GoFish. It has a production budget of $10 million, which is hysterical, makes even less than what Prize winner of Defiance, Ohio made. Prize winner of Defiance Ohio was like... Probably in less theaters. Very possible.

Let me follow that little rabbit hold down for box office mojo. You useless piece of shit where it's giving me a requested page not found. Fine. Fine box office. The hellacious abyss of box office mojo. Anyway. The shambling corpse of box office mojo. It makes $350,000, which is, again, a little more than half of what

Prize winner of Defiance, Ohio ends up making, and it essentially kills GoFish Studios. Now, the fact that... As DreamWorks, its home studio is already hemorrhaging money. This is the thing. Is a studio that was on better, like, less shaky ground, wouldn't have been able to get murdered by one Sundance acquisition that doesn't make any money. Like, you know, a healthy studio doesn't get killed by that. But because DreamWorks was also So, you know, on the ropes at this point. And GoFish had never really, in the five years that it had actually existed, really done much of anything, you know, with the exception of, you know, these two anime films.

They were just like, well, then you're done. And whatever other independent movies were in the works at the time, no pun intended, sort of reverted to Dreamworks and Prize winner of Defiance, Ohio was one of them. And I'm trying to, let's see what else was going on around this time that might have also

had that same fate in terms of Indies for DreamWorks. I mean, possibly the last kiss, which is the last non-paramount, before Paramount fully took over DreamWorks. Right. The last like

DreamWorks itself movie. But, like, at this point, they're getting producing partners for, like, memoirs of a Geisha, Munich. I think they sold all of the foreign rights to the island, which, of course, still lost them. The island was another disaster. That's the other thing, is the island had just cratered. A lot of this stems from them losing more than $100 million on that Sinbad animated movie. No one ever talks about anymore. Yes, exactly.

They lost over $100 million on that movie, and it's just kind of all spiral. rolled from there. Yes. So not long after this, DreamWorks essentially gets bought by Viacom and sort of gets pulled in under the wing of Paramount Pictures. And I honestly, if you asked me in what, like, how DreamWorks exists today, I don't know if I'd be able to tell you. Do you know what I mean?

It's basically been rolled into Amblin. Like, you know how you've seen way more movies with the Amblin title now? They've basically been rolled up into that, but you're probably not going to see unless it's like DreamWorks Animation. Right. DreamWorks Animation was fully, at some point, fully became its own thing to get it out, to disconnect from the anchor that was DreamWorks Pictures. DreamWorks animation was the only one that was really doing anything successful and so to sort of let it live it disconnected from the rest of DreamWorks

but yeah like DreamWorks is a production company on the trial of the Chicago 7 and 1917 and Green Book and First Man and the Post but like those are not DreamWorks films those are mostly universal movies. You'll see the name

the title credits, but I don't think you see the logo anymore. You might see the Amblin logo. Right. I think that's right. I think that's right. So, yeah, one of these days, I want to, like, just fully, like, read all the available articles and literature on what happened to DreamWorks. The collapse of DreamWorks. Yeah, because it's a really kind of fascinating story. I do think I have a book about it, but I'm not sure how far into the future or whatever, the present, I guess, it goes.

But, yeah, so. But, like, this, I mean, like, this is why this movie didn't get a release. It's maybe a more boring answer for this, and why, like, obviously, it's an Oscar failure, is because it was the most afterthought product that the dying DreamWorks had at the time. time and they just put no effort into it probably because they didn't they couldn't right it's interesting to me still that there wasn't that much effort because this is like a notoriously like the best actress year that a lot of people talk about it as being one of the worst or one of the least competitive um this is the year that reese witherspoon wins for walk the line she beats

felicity huffman for trans america charlie's thereon for north country kira knightly for Pride and Prejudice, and Judy Dench for Mrs. Henderson presents. Yes. Yeah, and I think ultimately, I don't know if there's a world where Julianne Moore for the prize winner of Defiance, Ohio, gets an Oscar nomination for this, but like... I kind of disagree. Okay. I mean, like, I understand the logic that says she probably wouldn't have been nominated

for it, because this is a very, like, heartwarming, low-key movie. But I think if it's, if there's an actual push of this movie to get it into theaters and audiences and an actual, like, campaign, and it's not just, like, we awards watchers who've been knowing that this movie was coming for a while, and then it just kind of gets a non-release by its studio. Yeah. I think if it's, if it has a completely. different release pattern. And at this point in Julianne Moore's career, where she is already seen as

an overdue actress, I think she is just, like, locked into the season from the beginning. And like, isn't a threat to win, but is nominated because she has that status, right? Against things like, you know, Judy Dench and Mrs. Henderson presents, which, like, Judy Dench is absolutely an Oscar favorite during this era, but, like... See, I think Judy Dench, though, that's the same logic, which is she's Judy Dech. And so I think that that's the logic you would use for Prize winner to Finds Ohio, where it's just like she's Julianne Moore. Like, you know what I mean? Like she would sort of ride in on the strength of her reputation. But like where someone like Kira Knightley, I think, came ahead with that nomination where it's like originally she wasn't

fully predicted for the season. Right. Like gets in through the strength of like passion for that performance in a less competitive year. Right. Although ultimately, I think Kira Knightley's performance and Pride and Prejudice in general are both better than prize winner defines Ohio. So I'm glad. No, I mean, I agree with that. I just think there's room for somebody who has a status of like overdue in what is

seen in a season like this because the other two performances, if like we think that Kira Knightley gets based in on strength and like, obviously the heat was Reese Witherspoon and Felicity Huffman, unfortunately, that season, like, Charlize Theron already has her Oscar, Judy Densh already has her Oscar. Right. And I think it also, it's just instructive as to how an independent film like this without any kind of sort of undergirding of support by the studio is lost. like there's just there's just no way and so and again what you end up with is a film that barely ever gets even released into theaters and and you wonder because jane anderson the writer and director her success her sort of reputation at this point in her career was in the realm of tv movies for hbo and showtime where she had done the alleged the was is the positively true

adventures of the alleged Texas cheerleader murdering mom. If I'm getting that entire title right, I'm very proud of myself. The Holly Hunter, the Holly Hunter TV movie about the woman who arranged to have her daughter's cheerleading competition

killed, right? That was the story. She had done Eat Your Hard Out Operation Varsity Blues. Right, exactly. She had done a film for Showtime called The Baby Dance that I think was based on her play that stars I only know of it because I've watched old Golden Globes clips and Emmy's clips,

and it was a nominee. Stocker Channing and Laura Dern were both in that. Stocker Channing, I believe, got Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for the Baby Dance. She did a film for HBO called Normal, where Jessica Lang and Tom Wilkinson are married, and Tom Wilkinson comes out as transgender, and I can't imagine watching it again. and today and sort of dealing with

the landmines. I mean, maybe it was ahead of its time. I don't know. But I remember... She also did that if these walls could talk two segment with Vanessa Redgrave. That got Vanessa Redgrave, an Emmy. Yes, the 1961 segment of

these walls could talk to, where Vanessa Redgrave and Marion Seldees are a long time couple, and Marion Selde's has a stroke and is hospitalized, and Vanessa Redgrave isn't allowed to see her, and then she dies, and she ends up, like, losing the house that they shared because the house was not in her name, and the Paul Giamatti and Elizabeth Perkins play the,

like, relatives who, like, don't know that they were a couple and are also, like, very, very sort of, you know, unsympathetic people. Actually, Vanessa Redgrave's character in that was, I believe, named Ellie, because Jane Anderson's aunt real-life aunt, who was a artist, I believe, and a lesbian, was named Ellie.

So that was a nice little touch. Yeah, she had also done when Billy beat Bobby, another Holly Hunter television film where she played Billy Jean King. So Jane Anderson's career by this point was, in doing sort of these TV movies, and I do wonder if, I mean, if the Prize winner of Defiance, Ohio had been an HBO movie, at least people would have seen it. And, you know, maybe that leads to, you know, Emmy nominations or whatever for Julianne Moore. Who had or would have her? No, not yet, I guess, because. Game change wouldn't be till later.

Yeah. She gets her Emmy for playing Sarah Palin in game change. But Jane Anderson's incredibly prolific in terms of her television career of directing and writing. Oh, yeah. She wrote a Mad Men episode. She did, well, she wrote The Wife, most recently, your beloved, the wife. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, she wrote for The Wonder Years. She wrote for, and also after Prize winner Defiance, Ohio, after, actually. She did the mini-series, Olive Kittred. She wrote...

Has an Emmy for it. That and has an Emmy for that. So, a mini-series that I always meant to watch and never did. It's good. I know. I hear... It's real good. I absolutely believe it. She wrote for the Facts of Life also, which is amazing. She wrote several episodes

for the Facts of Life. So yeah, Jane Anderson's a really interesting character, and it's sort of a bummer that her one big sort of writer-director effort in future filmmaking was never given a release, essentially. And it's a very cute movie. I really did enjoy myself watching this movie. I mean, it's a good, I mean, I wish more people had seen it.

Like, I can't, I can't say it's one of the greatest, like, the greatest movies we've even done on this podcast, but it's like, it's a good movie. And especially for the amount of people who have probably seen it. Oh, yeah. I also feel like I wonder if, because all of DreamWorks' other properties, you know, we're done in part, we're released in partnership at this point with other distributors or studios. And you wonder if this one could have had like a partnership with even, you know, one of the independence like Focus or something. Yeah.

Or like you even mentioned HBO. If at the bare minimum more people could have seen this. Yeah. So this movie gets two award nominations. total. One of which is a Golden Satellites nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture. They characterized it as drama, which is interesting, because I could have seen the world in which the Golden Globes had called it a comedy. She gets, so she's one of six nominees. Have you looked at this? Can I make you guess? I haven't. It's the satellite,

so I imagine it's her and the other people that are also in the season. Is there anything else that So, all right, here's what I'll do. I'll say two of them. were Oscar nominees. Okay. So, um, well, I mean, how was how was Reese categorized?

Was that a musical? Yeah, that was a musical, but maybe they called it a drama. Nope. Reese is in musical comedy. Felicity Hoffman and Charlie's Theron, probably. Felicity Hoffman and Charlie's Theron.

We're both, uh, your, your Oscar nominees were also satellite nominees in this category. Felicity Huffman won. Okay. One of them was a Golden Globe nominee for drama, but not an Oscar nominee. Even though her movie... Sorry, guess.

Her movie was an Oscar success. Is it Zijon? It is Ziazong for Memoirs of a Geisha. Yes, exactly. I guess I didn't need to give you that second part of the hint. Very good. Okay, one of them is in a film that we have covered on this podcast that we love. Oh, from 05.

That was a Golden Globe nominee, but not for her. Huh. That we love. Yes, we both love this movie. It can't be the Family Stone. I don't think we both love that movie. It's not the Family Stone, although I do love the Family Stone. Oh, is it in her shoes?

Yes. Cameron Diaz. No. Shirley McLean. No. They said Tony Collette? Yeah, Tony Colette. Oh, that's cool.

Tony Colette was the one who was getting the best actress push whatever. Well, Shirley McLean, I thought, was like, didn't somebody give her an actress nomination? I don't know. She definitely got a supporting actress nomination at the Globes. All right. And so the sixth one is someone who has never been nominated for an Oscar, although it's kind of puzzling that it's never happened. for a film that stars a shit ton of people.

Like the poster is just a list of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 17, 18, 19... In 05. 20 names. 20 names. In 05. It's maybe an anthology. Hold on. So it's not crash then.

It's not crash. No. Is this Paris I love you? no it's not that kind of uh no it's not that um let me look up this movie really quickly i've definitely heard of it um it's from a writer-director who had done um indie films but he also found success with uh with tv stuff but like his indie films are all these kinds of things where it's just like this giant ensemble interlinked. Interlinked.

Interlinked. Sells. SELES. Interlinked. Uh, stories. It's got to be like Walter Sias, right? It's not. Or Rodrigo Garcia.

It is. Is it like Casa de Los Babies? No, that was John Sales. Okay. But it's like that. It's a movie like that. It's not. It's interrelated stories.

Sorry, I almost gave it away. It is a number of interrelated stories. I'm trying to think of who are the actresses in Rodrigo Garcia movies. It's like Edie Falco. I will give you the cast list. So Holly Hunter, Amy Brennaman, Sissy Spac, Glenn Close, Kathy Baker, Amanda Seyker. Things you can tell just by looking at her.

Nope, but it's like literally, it's his other movie that's just like that. It's his other movie that's exactly like that. Lisa Gay Hamilton, Molly Parker, Jason Isaacs, Ian McShane, Mary K. Place, Aidan Quinn. Who from the poster am I missing? I said Kathy Baker.

It's like, it's a two word. I can see the poster. Dakota Fanning. A list of names and it's like gold. Yes. Yes. It's two words are in the title. It is one of the words is a number.

number nine lives nine lives rodrigo garcia's nine lives so who's the nominee from it any guess did you well i can't even know it's not one of the ones that i named i left is it kathy baker nope she's in it but it is not kathy baker she's done movies of his it is somebody who at the time was using her married name and now she's lopped off the uh robin right robin right The former Robin Wright-Pen, exactly. Yes, Robin Wright-Pen for Nine Lives is a Golden Satellite nominee that year, yes. My memory always says that she was double-nominated with Sally Field for Forrest Gump, and I am always wrong. Because they were at the SAG Awards that year, I'm pretty sure.

And then neither one of them got an Oscar nomination. I thought Sally Field was not. No, no, she wasn't. She was not. Her only Oscar loss has come for Lincoln. Like before Lincoln, she was two for two at the Oscars. So the other award that that was a mere nomination for Julianne Moore. It also won an award at the Women Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Movie by a Woman.

So best film made by a woman. It doesn't list the other nominees. And I remember being like kind of, and I say I remember, I mean an hour ago when I heard this fact. um sort of raised an eyebrow at the idea of just like this was the best movie made by a woman and then i went and looked at the list of uh american films released in 2005 and it is like this in north country it's staggering how no movies made by women were this year and just like and and the few that were were like kind of low watermarks were like there was a nora effron movie in 2005 but it was bewitched there was a karen kusama movie in two thousand five but it was bewitched there was a karen kusama

movie in 2005, but it was Eon Flux. Susan Stroman's The Producers, which like, you know, got Golden Globe nominations but, like, was essentially not very well received relative to the stage production. I mean, this movie's

better than any of those movies. Exactly. So, right, so your only other competition, really, Nikki Caro's North Country, which I'm kind of surprised didn't win because it was a thing in award season. Catherine Hardwick directed Lords of Dogtown that year, which I remember some people liked, which I saw, but I don't remember very

much of. I just remember Heath Ledger being in it. And then Angela Robinson directed two films that were released in 2005, one of which is, yes, Herbie fully loaded. But the other one is Debs, which I've never seen before. Oh, there's a stands for Debs on. There's a cult of Debs, right? I looked up and it was like very poorly reviewed at the time. It's like a 40% Rotten Tomatoes. This movie is Rotten on Rotten Tomatoes. It's stupid. Yeah. But I know that there is a cult of Debs,

and every time I read about what Debs is, I want to watch it. And Angela Robinson, I of course really like because she directed Professor Marston and The Wonder Woman a few years ago, which I saw at Toronto and really enjoyed. So, yeah, honestly, maybe Justice for Debs, or maybe, like, Jane Anderson got the prize that she deserved for Best Movie Made by a Woman in 2005. but like it's shocking that it's literally you could if you had a couple extra fingers on one hand

you could count them on one hand how many films in 2005 were directed by women and released in the United States it's just galling I don't know I mean I to be surprised that that was a thing is probably disingenuous of me but just like it's it's a reminder that like we've you know for as long as far as we still have to go we've come a long way in terms of you know, films directed by women right now. Because 2005 was not that long ago. No. And it was a wasteland.

So, yeah, so those are the only, the only prizes that prize winner of Defiance, Ohio came in with. It's too bad. They couldn't have won, you know, a frigidaire or something for any of these things. It would have been thematically appropriate. A trip to New York City. Okay. She never takes that trip to New York City with her son, right? because the one kid is just like, Mommy, please don't go, leave us with...

That's apparently one of the things that's inaccurate about the movie is they did actually go on that trip. Which, like, I kind of wish we could have seen that in the movie because, like, you get it mostly with tough, but you do also get it with the sense of some of the other children, too, or the movie at least tries to, you know, establish that she had a personal connection to each of her children because, like, it's different when you're watching it in a movie and it's like a little overnight. 90 minutes long where it's like most of these scenes are all of these kids together right but it does seem to like take the chance when it can to let you know that she did actually

have a like one on one connection with each of her child and it wasn't just like she has the scene with the one in the car the one gets busted maybe it's the same one who gets busted for stealing the other one who was going to be the one who was going to take the trip

to New York with her has that scene where he's like arguing with his father over who sent in the entry that won that won them like two free or a free tank of gas it's literally like the stakes are that low um and the one is always crying barb barb seems to be always crying the two get signed by the detroit tigers to play baseball that was the other thing that i thought of is just like wow like baseball in the 1950s before they allowed black players in major league baseball. It was just like, you could just be like a pretty good, you know, white baseball player from Defiance, Ohio. And like, you and your brother could just get signed on to play because, like, they needed baseball players, I guess.

That was, and then the oldest one leaves to go become a nurse. Mm-hmm. Goes to nursing school. Right. So, yeah, I think you're right. I think for a film that could have easily just sort of allowed those children to be, like, a fairer. faceless horde, does a good job individualizing them in some ways. Well, and not just a faceless horde to us in the audience, but for what our perception of Evelyn is, it's like, she's never just like, my children all the time. Right. She does, she does have a relationship with each of them individually. That one little kid who steals all the flower buds and drops them at her feet, and that's why they can't go to.

Oh, that's the first time she gets thwarted going to see the aphadaisies is she has to make amends with the neighborhood ladies for her kid, like, stealing everybody's priceless tulip bulbs. Once again, the tulip trade becomes important in this had Oscar buzz movie, I'm just saying. Yes, the tulip trade. He is the natural extension of tulip fever. Yes, he had, that's why he did that. He was struck with a serious bout of tulip fever. That kid arrives to, like, give these flowers. to his mother, and it is a pile of tulips

more, like, that are, like, more density than he is. There are, it is a bigger pile of flowers than this child is. And it's not just tulips. You can't tell me that neighbor lady didn't see this happening. What was she so busy doing? I don't know. Maybe he's, maybe he's, the great cat burglar of tulip buds that he just sort of,

like, snatched and ran. They weren't all from her. Like, they were from, he said he got him from, like, he rattled off like three or four different, neighbor ladies. She's the only one that's upset about it. Well, apparently they were $40 worth. I was very angry about this neighbor. I don't

know. I'm trying, looking at it from the neighbor lady's perspective, he is a nice little boy, and it's not like she like smacked the kid or anything, but like, I would have been... She's so fraught, and it's like, it's not a big deal. I don't know. I could see that. Listen, $40 for two-ups back then was very expensive. I understand.

I understand, but like, it's an innocent child doing it. Not like, you know... one of the grown children or the drunken father destroying this woman's flowers. Okay, but if you're the neighbors to this family, and we all, of course, love Julianne Moore. And it's the same one who, like, took Julianne Moore to the hospital that one time. So, like, clearly, like, she's sympathetic to Julianne Moore. But, like, if there's this family of 10 kids on the block and their father is a drunken lout

who, like, is getting the cops called on him on occasion, I have a feeling that you, Your sympathies towards this horde of children when they act out are probably not going to be high. I don't care. I am team neighbor lady. Don't get away from my fucking flowers. I am team. They're flowers. He didn't crap on your lawn.

Like, he probably also crapped on her lawn, though. Maybe. He should have. Give her something to be upset about. We don't talk, weirdly, we don't talk a lot about Julianne Moore enough on this podcast. No, it's only, I think, our third or fourth Julianne Moore movie. Hannibal, Crazy Stupid Love. Hannibal, Crazy Stoop, and...

And we just... No, we almost did map to the world, map of the world when it was on the listeners. Oh, no, wait, this is our fifth. No, it's our fourth. It's our fourth. I maybe got out of ourselves. Yeah, Hannibal, Crazy Stupid Love, and then Suburicon. How could we forget Suburicon?

And then those were all done. Those were all in our first 40 episodes. And we haven't done any since Suburbancon, which was a long time ago. So we have had a drought, a positive drought of Julianne Moore movies. And, I mean, she's one of our favorites. I feel like we make up for it by talking about still Alice. a lot, but, like, truly at this point in her career, she was considered overdue, started with the nomination for Boogie Nights, but she'd already been, like, working up in the indie scene

until then. She has this massive 1999, where she gets nominated for end of the affair, of all things, maybe, like, with the exception of Cookie's Fortune, the one we talk about the least. But it's the one that had the lead role, so I think that's why. Right. It was probably close to getting double nominated that year because of Magnet. Nolia, does get the double domination in O2 for far from heaven in the hours, probably canceled each other out. Yeah. But then also, like, the Chicago of that year, we've talked about that year before. Yes.

And then, like, this is the first. She's in an interesting era at this point in 2005, where she had, she was sort of riding high in esteem by the end of 2002. by that sort of double nomination. And then she makes a film called The Laws of Attraction with her and Pierce Brosnan. That is this kind of romantic comedy, they're sort of their rival attorneys, but, you know, they love each other and blah, blah. And it's, and it never, it doesn't do what it needs to do. And then she's also in, wait, when does, oh, no, Evelyn. Evolution was before this. Evolution was 2001. Right. The Forgotten is also in 2004, which I had such high hopes for The Forgotten. I was so hyped for this movie. I was so hyped for this movie. And the twist of what's happening in this movie gets delivered in such a ridiculous way. I'm almost tempted to tell everybody I know to go and watch The Forgotten and like let's have a discussion about it. Because like it's one of those things that I think,

it's a device that a lot of movies end up using nowadays especially where what's happening ends up being like this whole other like thing where like they're they're essentially in this like alien bell jar and getting like it's sort of what dark city ends up being kind of right um but it gets it gets revealed with some really wild fucking visuals like At one point, Alphrey Woodard just gets sucked up into the sky. Like, there was, like, remember in spaceballs when they have the, the spaceship turns into the maid with the vacuum cleaner, and it sucks all the air out of the planet. It literally is Alphrey Woodard getting sucked into an invisible vacuum cleaner. It is, that should honestly be a gif, a reaction gif.

Oh, I've seen it use as a reaction gif, and I don't think people even know what it's from. Yeah, like me running away from the discourse. or whatever. And it's just like Alphrey Woodard being like, just gone. Absolutely. When there's discourse on the T.L. Bananas. Yeah. Make that happen more. Chris, I'm counting on you.

All right. We will use it. We will use it. And then her other 2005 movie besides Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, and I'm not counting her cameo in the Naked Brothers Band of the movie. Although, I do have to say, now that I've watched Shiva Baby,

um, Polly Draper. Polly Draper, who essentially, like, created the Naked Brothers Band as, like, a vehicle for two children. Nat Wolf and Alex Wolf, who now are both actors, and Alex Wolf is about to become old in old, so I'm super psyched for that. But Polly Draper fucking rules in Chivababy, and, like, anything that she has ever been in contact with, I now officially am in approval of, because she's so fucking funny in that movie. you were going to say the other 2005 movie, which I don't think was actually... Oh, I was going to give you a chance

to just talk about Shiva Baby for a second because I haven't talked to you. Oh, no, Shiva Baby rules. You guys can rent it on VOD. It's great. I saw it in a theater. It was playing at the quad here. I was so happy that I was able to see it in the theater.

It was so great. Yeah, the other... Did you have a crowd? Because I would love to see that wild movie with a crowd. I did. I saw it with a crowd. And then I saw it with my friend Robert, who was dying. My friend Robert, who is Jewish,

and I am not Jewish, but I was very glad that I was able to see it. Oh, that's the perfect person to see that movie with... Yeah, see it with one of your best Jewish friends, because, like, they will appreciate it on a level of you. And someone who's attuned to what the humor of that movie is. Yeah. It's still super fucking funny. Every single, like, every 10 seconds, there's another moment where you're just, like,

dying. It's so good. Anyway. But her husband Bart Friendlick's movie, Trust the Man, which I've seen, and it's It's not the greatest rom-com, but I enjoyed my time with it. Oh, I despised it. I was, that was a movie. There's so much talent in that movie.

It's Julianne Moore, and it's Billy Crudeup, and it's Maggie Gyllenhaal, and it's, like, also Ellen Barkin's in that movie. Like, there's so much talent. Like, how- Julianne Moore's best friend? I thought they were really, really close friends. Who? Ellen Barkin and Julian Moore. Wait, is that true?

That's amazing. Yeah, they're friends. This is, like, how I found out that Marissa Tomei and Lerner, and Lerner, and, you know, Lisa Bonnet were such good friends when they did a different world that Marissa Tomei is Zoe Kravitz's godmother. Amazing.

Right? I love that shit. I fucking love that shit. I love now knowing that Juliannele and Ellen Barkin are best friends. This brings us to another small point that I wanted to make. And like, I think there was some, like, expectation of, like, prize winner to affiance Ohio when it finally arrives is like a non-entity, but Freedom Land was supposed to come out in this season.

Yes, and it gets pushed to February. It wasn't pushed until the very last minute. And I think, don't quote me on this because I couldn't find it in the Wayback Machine, but I'm positive it was either rumored for AFI or actually slated for AFI and taken off. And if you've seen Freedom Land, you know why. Yeah, Freedom Land isn't good. That movie is abhorrent. Aborant, it is offensive.

and maybe her worst performance. I still think E.D. Falco is good in that movie, but yes, Freedom Land is a bad film, and that's why I got pushed to February. Yeah, so this is sort of, it's a rough patch in her career, I would say. And she doesn't really, like, she's in Children of Men, which is a masterpiece, but her role in that movie is truncated. and I think it allows the things like when she's in the Nicholas Cage movie next or when she's, you know, in a movie like blindness that doesn't go anywhere or savage grace

that doesn't go anywhere. No, none of those things are her fault. But what I'm saying is it all sort of adds up to this sense that when she gets that role in 2009 in a single man, that sort of supporting role, it felt like. like, even though it wasn't a comeback necessarily, it had that feel to it because it was just like, oh, we're nominating Julianne Moore for things again now. Like, she didn't get an Oscar nomination, but she came incredibly close. She got a Golden Globe nomination for that. And it felt like Julianne Moore had sort of come back to us in a way. Am I wrong? No, totally. That was

the one that kind of brought it back. And like, during this time, yes, she's doing movies that, like, she's just getting paid. We've had the conversation, and it sucks about, like, what happens to actresses of a certain age, but she's also focusing on being a mom, too. Like, at this point, she was only taking jobs that could either be in the city or would be in, like, the summertime when, you know, her kids weren't in school. So, like, that was also a focus. So what you're saying is that her deciding to do, to be a voice in Eagle Eye is essentially her entering a 25-word jingle contest for Dr. Pepper. Like, that's sort of the- Can we talk about how I saw Eagle Eye because I recognized her voice from the trailer?

I was like, Julianne Moore, I will be seeing that movie. I don't remember hearing that voice in the trailer, but when I saw Eagle Eye, I pegged her voice immediately and was so proud of myself. Because you know how I can sometimes be plagued by knowing I know who a voice is, but not really being able to put my finger on it. I was thrilled with myself that I called Julianne Moore's voice right away in Eagle Eye. But then she never, but then you sort of expect, like, oh, it's Julianne Moore's voice. Obviously she's going to, like, show up by the end of this movie. Nah, bitch. Never. Like, absolutely never.

Anyway. Yeah. But yeah. So that's sort of what she was doing to, you know, make ends meet while she was raising her kids. We love Julianne Moore. And we were very happy to get a chance to talk about her again. Yeah. She might be my favorite actress, too.

I haven't really sat down. as the greatest living, but, like, I have a long-standing relationship with putting myself in the Julianne Moore camp, and I can't be wavering. She's on that list of people who I would just love to have a 45-minute chat over coffee with. You know what I mean? Just like, just to have a long, I feel like she would have a ton of really interesting things to say.

And, yeah, so she's fantastic. Any other odds and ends about the prize winner of Defiance? Ohio, before we wanted to move on to the IMDB game. I don't know. I can't imagine that I would come up with a good jingle. Good enough jingle. So I am very impressed by Evelyn Ryan. If you had won, one of the notes that I have, by the way, before I get to if you had

one, I wrote down to have Julianne Moore and Laura Linney in the same movie and not have either one of them ever really cry is... You mean Laura Dern? Well, Laura Dern doesn't. Julian Moore, if she cries, she cries very sort of, like, briefly, right? She doesn't have, like, a big Julianne Moore cry in this movie. And I feel like... I think she starts crying and leaves the room.

Right. But, like, those two women are, like, two of the most demonstrative cryers in cinema, I feel like. They really put their whole ass into it when they put. when they decide to cry. And so to have a movie where neither one of them does that is the upset of the century as far as I'm concerned. But my other question to you, so I want to return to our favorite scene, the shopping spree.

What would your grocery store strategy? We talked about your strategy as a Toys R Us shopping spree. What would your supermarket sweep 10 minutes in just your regular neighborhood supermarket? What would your strategy? So just like a croaker, a giant? Not like, you know, fancy. Not whole foods, not Trader Joe's.

No, no, no, no, no. No. At TJ's, it would be like I would just get all of the artisanal crackers. Well, T.J's, like, Trader Joe's shopping spree, Trader Joe's almost feels like it was created for that purpose, right? Because everything in Trader Joe's, my whole thing about Trader Joe's is that it's functionally useless to go shopping there for, like, any kind of, like, needs. Trader Joe's is only there for like, I want something weird to snack on. I want something sort of indulgent to snack on. That's the only stuff that I feel like I get good use of out of Trader Joe's is just like, oh, what is this like fancy bagel chips or like what is this just some sort of like caramel corn

that is like taken to the next level, like that kind of a thing. You can't get like butter. Exactly. I'm not going to go for a loaf of bread to Trader Joe's. I don't even know where that is at Trader Joe's. regular fruit. It's all grown out of like a water nymphs hole or something. It's...

Yes, a water nymphs hole. Thank you for that imagery, Christopher. Yes, it's all of that. The water nymph comes out of and like... It's all that. It's just like, it's fancy breadsticks. It's, uh, baby... It's like little tiny kishes. It's all that sort of stuff. Like, like, I remember the one

time my sister came to town. And I just like, I'm like, oh, this is what I'm doing. I'm going to Trader Joe's and I'm just like snacking it up. And it's just like, Like, I came home with just, like, two bags. You come home with nothing. With nothing, you need. And they amount to nothing.

Nothing that you need, but everything that you want in just terms of just like snack shit. But anyway, no, you're at a Kroger. You're at a, you know, a regular little supermarket. What are your priorities for a shopping spree? I'm just going to say it. I'm going to the liquor store or the wine store inside the grocery store. You're very smart. And then I think I'm just filling it up with the meat counter because I'm not going to get like, I'm a practical person.

So, like, I'm not going to get like box stuff that already costs, you know, a buck 50, 250, whatever. I'm getting expensive meat. Right. And especially if you had a big, huge, spacious freezer. Especially if I won a giant freezer in a jingle contest. Right, exactly. The smart money there was right. A lot of stuff from the meat counter that you could then freeze.

I love the lady who decided to just go for like the Belgian chocolates I was like yes lady Like you have actually a really good idea That might be my last stop or something Also but like things that are like more expensive than you Like I would get a bunch of jars of macadamia nuts Because they're so expensive

And I love to put them in cookies and whatnot But like they are fucking pricey So like things like that Like expensive nuts or like Expensive cereal, that's like $6 a box. Yes, the really indulgent sort of like expensive cereal, that kind of stuff. Totally. Yeah.

I think we're on the same page with that. Also, also expensive cheeses. One of those like, I just, like, I don't think I would be getting things that I've never tried before. And maybe that's foolish of me, but I would just be like, no, but like a big hunk of like aged Gouda that is like, like $17 or whatever, that's what's going in my cart for a shopping spree. One of those things, those things that you always sort of like are gravitated to at the grocery store and then you pick it up and you look at the price tag and you're like, that's why I never get this because it's so expensive, that kind of a thing.

Yeah. All right. I like your strategy. Want to do the IMDB game? Yeah, guys, 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 these titles are television, voiceover performances, or non-acting credits, 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, just like a shopping spree. Exactly. A shopping spree of hints is coming your way. Chris, would you like to guess first or give first? I'll give first this week. All right, go for it. That's how I'm feeling. So I went into the 05 best actress race and I chose one of the you know shall we say less competitive less remembered nominations can't believe we haven't done this actress before in IMDB game

it's Judy Dench old dentheronomy it's so funny I've gone back to doing old juderonomy because it does sound like we're saying Jew but denturonomy also sounds like we're making fun of her for having dentures so I go back and I now I now prefer old juderonomy but yeah Either way, it's problematic, but I've picked my poison here.

We've never done Judy Dench, huh? We haven't. She's one of those people. You've now, I feel like you're into a run of giving me the classics, and the challenge isn't remembering what movies they were in, but trying to prioritize which of her many roles. Because you gave me Streep recently. I really don't think that Judy Dench is, I mean, I'm not, I'm just saying, not looking at these answers I'm saying it's difficult. I'm just saying

on its face, Judy Dench is difficult because there's a billion movies. Right. She's in so many movies. She works so often. All right. I think the no-brainer here is Shakespeare in Love. Shakespeare and Love, her Oscar win.

All right. Now it gets difficult. Okay. Like, is she in this for any of the Bond movies that she's in. She's in so many Bond movies. But trying to pick out which one is tough. Does it matter that her role in Skyfall is like the most substantive of all of her appearances in James Bond movies? Like, does that matter for IMDB algorithm purposes? Maybe not. Like, it doesn't really, she probably doesn't go any higher on the cast list because of

that. So I'm going to put a pin in that. What else? Like, shock a lot? Probably not. Oh, honestly, Philomena. No. Damn it.

That movie was momentarily popular. All right, Judy. That's the movie that I always feel weirdly defensive of, because I feel like everybody kind of. of looks down their nose at it, like it's some boring whatever movie. But I think on like the terms that movie's trying to do, I think it's a good movie. It's okay. I don't hate it. I don't not like Philomena.

Don't come at me, the real Philomena Lee. I don't need that kind of heat. Okay, Judy. Future guest on an episode, The Real Filomena Lee. But not about Filomena, obviously. No, it would have to be. What would we talk to the real Philomina? Like the Magdalene Sisters? Whatever the real Philomena Lee wants to do, we'll do.

That's true. That's true. Maybe she wants to, you know. She could come on and want to do an episode on burnt for all we do. The real Philomena Lee can't get enough of burnt. Okay. I'm just going to say, I'm going to say Skyfall. Skyfall is correct. Skyfall, I feel like, is probably, you were like the obvious answer, Shakespeare and Love.

I thought you were going to say Skyfall. Like, Skyfall, she maybe has like an answer. credit. I feel like Ray Fines might have an end credit in that movie. But if she doesn't, I would believe her to be maybe not second build because of Javier Breddem, but third build. Third build at worst. Yeah. And she had like

major awards nominations for that movie. But she's also probably third build in like Tomorrow Never Dies. You know what I mean? She's probably the and credit for those movies. Yeah, that's the yeah. There you go. Okay, anyway. I'm hoping

that it's not just two other James Bond movies. I feel like, I feel like you wouldn't have, you wouldn't have chosen it if it was that rote. Okay, I'm trying to go through her other Oscar nominations. And if that, notes on a scandal. Her best performance notes on a scandal. Yeah, good for you, IMDB. Okay, one more. One more. I think we can blame that entirely on gay people. Gay people get that movie. When you, like, I saw some straight critics on Twitter. shitting on notes on a scandal lately, I'm like, okay, you don't get with that.

I, I won't say. But, like, it was like, oh, that, like, boring old, like, stuffy movie. And I'm like, have you seen notes on a scandal? Do I need to play the here I am seen for you once again? Do I need to play the part where Kate Blanchett calls Judy Vention, Miserable Lergin? Anyway. Yeah, that's right.

Blanchett does call her a sad virgin. She does call her a sad version. She sure does. Okay. One more Judy Dench movie. It's not going to be ladies in lavender, unfortunately. You only have one wrong answer. Oh, the best exotic marigold hotel. Best exotic marigold hotel. Another movie

to use for our theory that everyone on the poster has it in there known for. Yep. Yep. So, yeah, there's a lot of ways you could have gone with Judy. I probably, what was my wrong answer, Philomena? Honestly, I stand by my wrong answer, but no. That's, that's the, I think that's the correct for.

Good job. All right, thank you. All right. For you, I obviously could not resist the siren pull of the chum scrubber to pick a, uh... Not the chums scrubber. And we've already done Jamie Bell, and we can't do Glenn Close because she still only has one film in her known for, which is astounding. is one of the great weird things

in our entertainment culture. Our friends over at Who Weekly recently talked about the known for of Diana Agrin. I need them to get on the case. Diana Agrin, also good in Shiva Baby, I should say. It's perfectly cast

and gives a good performance. But I need the Who Weekly team to get behind the known for Bryce Dallas Howard. Hers is just Two, right? Three, including gold. Three is almost worse than one.

One, you feel like something's going on. Someone made that choice. They just lost interest after they were. They got through three of them. All right. So whom's in the chum scrubber have you chosen from me? So the chum scrubber has like every sort of young white male from that era where it was like Jamie Bell, Lou Taylor Poochee, Justin Chatwin, and the one that I'm going to give you,

who is the third in a line of acting brothers. I'm going to give you Rory Culkin. Ah, yes, yes. The youngest Culkin. The youngest Culkin. I'm going to take the wild leap that the Chum Scrubber is not there. You can count on me. has to be there.

You can count on me, which I re-watched recently. And he, I mean, he's just, you know, he's just a little kid. But he's so, like, everything in that movie is wonderful. Most of these are going to be when he's a little kid. And his scenes with Ruffalo in that movie are so just wonderful. Just really, really wonderful. Anyway, yes. And not precious for it being.

Right. He's not cutting it up. Yeah, exactly. Signs has to be there. is the asthmatic little brother no wait he's the older brother of abigail brezlin and signs yes yes signs uh i'm guessing scream four is in that indeed scream four very good uh spoiler alert one of the killers in scream four spoiler alert they're not the important killer no um now i'm stuck uh because i'm thinking of things that he was even in I can't remember another movie that he's in. So this missing movie was... It's not one where he plays like a younger version of one of his brothers, right?

I think that happens in Igby goes down. It does. He's the 10-year-old Igby and Igby goes down. No, it is not that. It's also not... He's also the young Richie Rich in Richie Rich. So he plays both of his brother's younger versions. Did that only happen twice? That had to have happened more.

I'll go through and I'll see if that happens again. But maybe only those two times. They should cast him on succession, but not as a relative, just as, like, a friend of Romans. Someone's stealing Roman's identity. Yes! Do it! Yeah, I think We don't need any more guest stars on that show The casting announcements have already

You know Nope, more the merrier, I'm in Vagely less excited about season three Shut up, you shut up Just give us the Roy's killing each other I cannot wait until they all go down in flames All right, you're still missing So the one that you're missing

Is an indie movie That Got a little bit of attention and probably got the same amount of attention, honestly, that the chum scrubber got. But I think was better received, was definitely better received. It won a Independent Spirit Award for...

It won the... You know how they'll just do an ensemble award? Yeah, they do the Altman Prize now. Yeah, it wasn't called the Altman Prize then. But it won the ensemble prize, and it also won the Cassavetes Award, which I believe is the best. film made for under $500,000

$500,000. Well, before you give me any more hints, I will just sacrifice another answer and say the chum scrubber so that I get too wrong answer. Sorry, I was free-for-a-a-a-a-a-alling too early. No, I mean, like, I'm going to take some hints for me to get this, I think.

It played the Cannes Film Festival, but I don't believe in competition. Like on certain regard or what? Was it director's warning? Yeah, it wasn't main competition, but it was in, hold on. Was it a Sundance movie? Hold, please. I don't believe it was.

Yes, sorry, it was. Okay. Sundance can. What other film festivals? Those are the only major film festivals. Obviously, the Iceland International Film Festival. Obviously, the Stockholm International Film Festival. Okay, so it's Sundance-Can ensemble movie because it won an ensemble prize.

He's definitely the most recognizable, sort of, he's the most enduring cast legacy from this ensemble, although one of the other ones was a sort of Nickelodeon star who was breaking out of his Nickelodeon mold at that point who would then go on a few years after this movie to star in another sort of indie Sundance

Flash in the Pan that ended up being pretty well derided, I feel like. It definitely... A former Nickelodeon star who made this movie and another movie that people hated. Yeah. Except at Sundance, it felt like there was a pocket of enthusiasm for this movie. That movie, the, you know, the one that I'm talking about there, is written and directed by a guy who went on to do a few pretty well-received movies after that.

Anyway, I'm leading you far afield from the Rory Culkin film. Rory Calkin film with a Nickelodeon star. Yeah. Who are Nickelodeon stars around the time that they would have made a movie. Well, obviously not the Naked Brothers band stars Nat and Alex Wolf because I... Right, and not like Zakafron or any of the... Zechafron was Disney. It was Disney.

Oh, I just pissed a ton of... people off um okay so the theme of this film was there was a lot of sort of aughts movies about teens we talk about how the chum scrubber was like the epitome of aughts movies about teens where everybody's doing drugs and this one it's like teen suicide movie it's not suicide but it's like what if what if bullying but like we flip the script what if like oh oh oh Oh, they kill the bully. Yeah. Or they try to kill the bully.

I don't know if they actually succeed. No, I've seen this movie. It's Mean Creek, isn't it? It's Mean Creek. Yes. I forgot that Rory Culkin was in it. But no, there's a bully and they accidentally kill the bully. Yes.

Okay. Josh Peck is the Nickelodeon guy. Yes. They do kill them because, right, because then they got to cover it up. Yeah, they accidentally kill him. by like drowning. They don't know he can't swim or something or they accidentally like drown something.

Yes. Yes. It's one of those. I remember it as being intense, though I don't know if it's a movie that would hold up. I remember it being pretty intense back then too. And I agree with you. I'm equally, where did it play? It played directors Fortnite at the Cannes Film Festival.

Yeah. Written and directed by Jacob Aaron Estes, who then went on to do a film called The Detail in 2011 with Toby McGuire and Laura Linnie that I like vaguely remember that was sort of this like dark comedy

and then in 2019 directed a film called Don't Let Go with David a Yellow-O and Storm Reed that I don't fully remember. That movie I know has some fans. Yeah?

That also played Sundance. But yeah, this director didn't really end up capitalizing on Mean Creek the way you would have thought for it being the kind of success that it was for it, you know, playing directors Fortnite and winning, you know, Sundance or Independent Spirit Award prizes and stuff like that. But yeah, I remember Mean Creek being like a little bit of a thing

back then. Anyway, well done. Rory Culkin. Rory Culkin. Good job. Well done. And I think that's all. I think I think we've closed the book on the Prize winner of Defiance, Ohio. Go check it out, I would say. My recommendation is you go check it out.

Watch this movie. It's nice. Yeah, exactly. All right. You liked it. That is our episode. If you want more of This Had Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this had oscarbuzz.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 more of me on Twitter and Letterboxed at Chris V File. That is F-E-I-L. Yes, I am on Twitter at Joe Reed, read-spelled, R-E-I-D. I'm also on letterboxed. Joe Reed spelled the exact same way. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Medius for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher,

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