This Had Oscar Buzz - 163 – The River Wild

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

How do you get a studio action movie some Oscar buzz? You cast Meryl Streep in the lead role. Starring the beloved actress as a woman whose family is taken captive on a white water rafting vacation, The River Wild was a modest fall hit for director Curtis Hansen and earned Globe nominations for Streep … Continue reading "163 – The River Wild"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Hacks. I'm from Canada. I'm from Canada water. Listen, I ran the gauntlet once when I was 18 and completely insane. But I was with two other guides, experienced guides, and we were just lucky.

There were two other people that summer who did not get so lucky. One guy got killed, and the other is paralyzed for life. But don't worry, we're going to hit some threes and four pluses. You're going to scream your guts out. You'll look it. We are going to risk death a number of times on this trip. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that lost money for Pixar. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong.

The Oscar hopes died, and we are here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host, Joe Reed. I am here, as always, with my lucky Lollapalooza hat, Chris File. Hello, hello, Chris. Lucky Lollapalooza hat from the head of Kevin Bacon. That's true. It's true. He is...

What a weird way to ingratiate yourself as a murderer. Yes. What a way to show that you're cool with the kids? Well, I mean, it was 1994. I feel like that sort of explains a lot of that vibe. But you can have a like, whatever, 13-year-old kid or however old Joseph is always supposed to be in movie who's like, I wish I could have seen Jane's Addiction. He says in his little like pip squeaky voice. Thank you. Because I was like, what band does this kid care about?

That's at Lollapalooza? He said, he mentioned Jane's Addiction. He said, I wish I could have seen Jane's Addiction. And I was just like, and like, and like, that sounds absurd now, but like back in 94, I could almost see it. You know what I mean? Back in 94, I was 14 years old and I had like very definite opinions on things like Trent Rezner and, you know, like guns and roses and stuff like that. So, like, yeah, I was, like, very, very tuned into, like, the artists who were playing Woodstock 94. So, like, I get it. I do get that. The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Exactly. Exactly. So, like, that fully did actually track for me, even though Joseph Mazzello is always and will forever be, uh, annoying little Tim from, uh, from Jurassic Park. And he's annoying in

this movie as well. I, I just want it known that we will have said Joseph Mazzello four times on this episode probably before we've said the words, Meryl Streep. Yeah, that's weird, huh? We might have to pivot to becoming a Joseph Mazzello podcast. Well, and now that you said it a fifth time, by Candyman rules, Joseph Mazzello will now appear in one of our rooms with a little care. And explain all of the thematics to me of the movie, you know. Yeah, as the new Candyman does.

Yes, neither one of us was all super fond. People will have forgotten about that movie by the time that this episode airs. Unfortunately. We are not talking about a horror movie, but we are talking about the rare action movie today on this podcast. The rare action movie that had Oscar Buzz, which is what happens when you cast Merrill Streep as your action heroine. Yeah, we're talking about the River Wild. A movie I love and a movie I will always catch sort of in midstream, no pun intended, on cable and watch straight through the end every time. But as I texted you last night, this is the first time I've seen the beginning half of

this movie in a very long time, which is like it's the not as good half of the movie. Right. Well, it's the phenomenon of these movies, whereas I always talk about contact, how contact is a very perfect cable TV movie, because if you catch it in the middle, you haven't missed any of the good parts. And so long as you catch it before she hears the signal from Vega, which, like, spoiler is like almost an hour into the movie because that movie takes its time. Contact is like two and a half hours long. Yeah, and, like, happy it is because, again, by the time, you know, you hit that 45-minute mark and you've shown up, like, there's still plenty of good movie there. This is a movie that sort of happens in stages and takes a while to get there, but, like,

that last, like, half-hour to 45 minutes or so is top-notch 90s action thriller, as far as I'm concerned. It's so much fun. It's so good. The fact that this got awards attention for its acting, I think it is a big, you know, a big part of that is Streep. A big part of that is where Kevin Bacon actually was at this point in his career. But I think a big part of that was like, people who saw this movie and were like, why was I so captivated by this action movie? Oh, it must be like these, you know, great performances. And they are great performances. Like, these are definitely the kind of performances where if they were in a movie today, you would get to the end of the year and people like us would be like, you know what was one of the best performances of the year?

Meryl Streep and the River Wild. It felt very, like, not the same thing... Right, not the same thing as, like, Tony Colette's giving the best performance of the year in Hereditary, not to keep bringing up Ariostar movies, but it felt like that. It was just like, you know, something happening in a genre that is not always, that is very rarely going to get you

awards attention. I actually think Meryl is super underrated in this movie. Yeah. And, like, what I... found interesting about her performance that maybe in ways that we can, like, go into deeper on the other side of the conversation, but, like, she felt to me very much like she was kind of actively working against this, like, action hero, badass type of screen persona in this movie. And maybe that's just, like, who she is as an actor and the type of choices

that she makes with a character. Yeah. But, like, it never felt like she was mugging to the camera she was a way more like complicated hero in that like she allows us to see that she is both confident in what she's doing and also like the machinations play on her face on how she's going to get her family out of this scenario at all times right and we'll talk about curtis hanson as well who directed this movie this is their second curtis hanson movie after i love curtis hanson uh in her shoes but this is and this is sort of his last movie of his, like, kind of junky workaday era, which is not to, you know, disparage the movies that he made.

This movie he made right after the Hand That Rocks Cradle, which I think is an incredibly effective and creepy horror movie. And it was a hit, right? Hand That Rocks the Cradle, yeah, as far as I remember, yes. But, like, a schlocky hit. So, like, it's a little surprising that, like, Merrill does a movie with him after, like, But, like, you would never imagine Merrill going to a hand that rocks the cradle.

We'll talk about Merrill's early 90s era, too, once we get on the other side of the plot description. It's a really interesting time for her. She's trying some stuff. This movie really fits into the, and not all Curtis Hanson movies are like this, but like Curtis Hansen will give a very interesting take on his leading actress. And I think in her shoes in many way becomes more unexpected and and this movie becomes sort of like not quite what you expect of its lead character and like with something like in her shoes like yes, there's a source novel to talk about.

And so, you know, it's not like Hansen like, you know, conjured up that characterization, but he is, or was, I should say, because he has unfortunately passed, a really underrated director of actresses. Absolutely. I love this movie. Also, okay, is this the hottest Merrill Street performance?

I mean, like, she, well, no, but, I mean, like, it's top three at worst. Oh, yeah, at worst.

At worst. Like, she's super hot in this movie. I feel the pressure to come up with something definitive. I mean, like, it may also, like, reveal, who you are. I think there's certain people who, like, are looking for a dom top and might say

the devil wears Prada is the hottest that she has ever been. I mean, if you're looking for dom top, Merrill, like, this movie is also giving that to you. Like, she's literally throwing Kevin Bacon and John C. Riley around that raft and being like, you do this, you do, she's literally giving orders in this movie. Like, what more do you want? I suppose that's true. But there's also, like, Death Becomes Her, which is, like, all about image in a way. That's very glam. That's very glam, Merrill. You get glam Merrill and something like she-devil. But, like, I think...

She's never not glam. I would maybe say, like, if we're talking, like, her most, like, a visually, like, a stunning performance where I think she looks the most beautiful. It's probably Bridges of Madison County. Oh, that's so funny. I thought you were going to say Mary Poppins returns, because... Famously, I... Also, you know, ride hard for Topsy. Top three hottest Merrill.

Right. If you're talking about top Merrill, like, you can't get more top than Topsy. So, truly, I love that we have now pivoted into the taxonomy of which Merrill performances are tops. Somebody, like, literally, I'm handing Vulture an article topic right now. Just like Merrill Street performances along the top and bottom dynamic, and we think some of these will surprise you. Anyway, I don't think, I definitely. think, like, Clarissa Vaughn is a bottom. Yes, but her character in prime

is a top. Yes. Prairie Home Companion verse? Verse? Top. Top. Yes, sure. Iconic verse in Prairie Home Companion. All right, honestly, now I'm going to, like, take an hour break and, like, and sketch this out, and I'll come back.

No. Describe the sexual identity of all of Merrill's characters. We are going to get in. to it, not that, but the rest of the River Wild on the other side of this plot description. But before we do a little, I'll give you the basics of this movie. It was 1994s, the River Wild, directed by, as we mentioned, our beloved and late lamented Curtis Hanson, written by Dennis O'Neill

starring Merrill Streep, Kevin Bacon, David Stratharne, John C. Riley, and one of, this is probably the first John C. Riley performance I remember ever seeing. I don't remember he's in movies before this, but I don't really remember him very much in movies before. You know, who else is kind of hot in this movie? John C. Riley. Stop it. John C. Riley is a sack of potatoes holding another sack of potatoes in this movie. Like, John C. Riley is classic. You say that as if I have a fucking problem with that. I do not. Also starring Joseph Mazzello, as we mentioned, that is now the sixth time we've mentioned him, Candyman, Candyman. And Benjamin Bratt, of course, which was probably only a few years before he joined the cast of Law & Order

and really kind of broke out into wide recognition. When did he start dating Julia Roberts, I wonder? Around the time, well, he went to the Oscars with her. Yes, but they had been together for a good bit, I feel like, by Ben. Interesting. Give me a second now, because now I can't mentally move on until I figured this out. While you look that up, I just have to talk about how a plot point in this movie

is that Meryl Streep knows Benjamin Bratt because she babysat him. Yes. I mean, it tracks. It definitely tracks. All right, joins the cast of Law and Order in 1995. So this was really just before that. Starts dating Julia Roberts in 1998, and that lasts about three-ish years before she ends up with um what's her boyfriend danny motor danny masterson cody lafoon what is his name

danny motor danny motor right i always forget that name all right anyway respect the motors sir do i must i should i okay of course this movie opened in wide release on september 30th nineteen hundred and ninety four christopher i'm going to fetch my little stopwatch i'm going to ask you, if you are ready, for a 60-second plot description on the River Wild. Sure. All right. Ready and go. All right, we follow Merrill Streep as Gail, who is a teacher of the deaf, but she is also a, like, hobbyist Whitewater Rafter, apparently.

She's incredibly adept at this, but she's basically on the verge of her, of divorce with her husband, Tom. They decide to take their whole family out into Montana. so that they can, like, visit her family, but then also do some whitewater rafting with their son. He isn't originally going to, the husband isn't originally going to goes, but he ends up going because he's trying to save their marriage. Whatever.

Anyway, they quickly meet and are ingratiated upon to by some bank robbers played by Kevin Bacon and John C. Riley. They have another guy who is, like, taking them on a raft, but he gets lost. We know that they kill him. Anyway, they descend upon the family, disperse them and their dog so that they make Meryl take them across

the river and then she eventually shoots Kevin Bacon in the chest and they win. She does. That's one of, I will say time is up. All right. Love that ending. Love the shot of her sort of cocking the bullet into place and saying there

was a way that felt very but not today. That one acceptance future she's just like some days even I think I'm overrated. But not today. Not today, Wade. Wade, the character played by Kevin Bacon, whose name I could

not remember, could probably not remember John C. Riley's character name if I was tasked to, with that one, with Merrill Street holding a gun to my head. I feel like he's Dale, right? It feels like iconically a Dale. No, Terry.

Why isn't there a Dale on this movie? I guess Wade, iconic name for a character in a movie about water. So there is that. Um, also, uh, another iconic movie about a woman named Gail charged with taking one person from one destination to another. Wait, where are you leading me to? Hi, I'm Gail. Oh, fuck off. Fuck right off. I swear to Christ.

Where does Gail rank in the list of, like, fitting Meryl Streep character names? Like, does Meryl seem like a Gail to you? Not in this movie. Though. However, I do think she is, like, top three cinematic gales. Along with your stupidest stars born Gale and... Along with the stars born Gail and obviously Gail Wethers. Yeah. Spells differently, Gail Weathers, but yes. Doesn't matter.

So... Matters not. We love Gail Weathers, iconic Muckraker and... We also love Gail. Vinglorious authores. Okay, so... Meryl at this point had already established her reputation throughout the 80s as like accent queen can play any nationality. She's Dutch.

She's Polish. She's, you know, whatever. Here she is tasked to be a woman who was born and raised in Montana among sort of like hardy ranchers. Her mom is played by Elizabeth Hoffman, who I only know of as... Dante's Pete, Grandma. Oh, see, okay, that's your... Wait, there's something else besides us because we have to take five minutes

to talk about this actress. Well, yes, so you can talk about Dante speak in a second. I'm just going to mention that she was iconically the mom on sisters. And I know you like when I bring up the fact that Suzy Kurtz and Seal Award starred in an NBC television drama called Sisters that aired on Saturday nights

back when they aired TV shows on Saturday nights. She was the mom. That's mostly what I know her for. Talk about her other role in Dante Peak that I always misremember as being played by Betty White, because Betty White was that role in Lake Placin. There are times where I have mistakenly remembered as it played by Francis Sternhagen, so it's fine. This actress is in Dante's Peak, who is, like, most famous in Dante's Peak, she is

the husband of, is Linda Hamilton's husband dead, or was there a divorce, did he run off? What is it? I think he's dead. Aren't they just estranged? Isn't her husband, Pierce Brosnan, in that? Or is that, are they just, no, I don't think so. Okay. Anyway, he's not there.

She is like the very bitter grandmother, but like they go, like to escape the volcano to her place. But anyway, the important part, she dies iconically because they're in a boat trying to get across a mass of water that the lava has gotten into and it's starting to, like, sink their boat. Right. So to get everyone to safety, she jumps into the lava water and carries the boat, and they pull her out, and she's, you know. So another hearty mountain woman character for Elizabeth Hoffman. Good for her. I will say, I always need to preface this by saying no shade at all to Dante's Peak, but it is the inferior 1997 movie about volcanoes. Dante's Peak belongs in a double DVD set with the River Wild.

That's fair. The River's Wild. Okay, thanks, Mom. The River apostrophe's Wild. Do you know what movie I love? The River's Wild. Have you ever seen that one? Merrill's there, and there's a river, and that river, it's wild, man.

Yeah, so iconic Elizabeth Hoffman double DVD set for Dante's Peak and the River Wild, but, yeah, Volcano is better. Okay, so Merrill is playing, like I said, a woman, a sort of born and raised in Montana. Her parents are hearty ranchers. Her father is deaf, a thing that this this movie is very 90s in the way

that it uses. And I don't want to like demonize the movie because like there was a way that like you could be like well meaningly like blithely fake inclusive in things back in the 90s. Whereas like her dad is deaf and that's why Marrivali all know sign language, and that's why they can use sign language at the end to foil the

criminals. And it feels like... To draw sign language. Everything in this movie that has to do with sort of diversity and inclusion in a way that like, at the beginning of the movie, I was just like, oh, this is so cool that this, you know, this movie is just sort of like very like chill and casually, like, inclusive in a way that just like, why not? Why not have, you know, her father be deaf and have this family sort of all know sign language? And then by the end of the movie, I'm like, serve a plot device. Oh, right, it's a plot thing. And I think the same thing with the way they sort of include all this discussion about like the Native American community around this river and Benjamin Bratt. Benjamin Bratt is playing a Native American character in this. And I'm just like,

oh, right, that is also because this movie has like a plot. And it feels again, like it's not malignant. But it does feel like the kind of thing that you would see in, I always talk about like celluloid closet homophobia, where you'll watch an old movie and you'll see something be like very homophobic but very of the time. And I'm just like, oh, I bet this was mentioned in the cellular closet. Including some of the interviews. Right. But like I always think about just like, oh, this was probably in a montage in the celluloid closet. We're talking about just sort of like, oh, this was indicative of the homophobia of the era. Like the River Wild is not a culturally insensitive movie

but it is a movie that reflects the kind of blasé way that like movies did diversity often there's a lot there's a few there's some moments of yikes that if you put it in a montage it would seem you know yeah

yes um but also the way that like it uses Kevin Bacon's character Wade being actively terrible and racist to really, like, hammer home what an irredeemable villain this guy is, beyond the fact that he's already, like, you know, threatening to kill them and whatever, but that he can be so sort of, like, overtly nasty, casually so.

I feel like it's sort of added characterization for him, that moment where he sort of, you know, talks about, talks to Benjamin Bratt in that very just like they say that, like, it's worse for, you know, Native Americans than it's worse to be a Native American that is to be like a black or Latino or something like that. It's just like, oh, this guy's some bad, bad news. But I feel like that felt very sort of like of a piece of, you know, mainstream filmmaking in the 90s. Yeah. There's also this like tameness that feels kind of 90s. And maybe it's because like our action movies now aren't as tame as this movie is. But, like, Like, it's weird for how it kind of plays out for that character, where it's like, he's never really all that threatening to the kid, but it also kind of hinges around, like, the threat around this child.

There's implicit threat that's used very effectively in this movie. You also talk about the part where she's sort of skinny dipping late at night in the river and thinks she's having this moment alone, and then she sees Kevin Bacon sort of staring at her from up on the cliff. And it's like, he doesn't... That's the final straw. He doesn't need to attack her in order for her to feel the threat from him. And I feel like he doesn't need to, like, he doesn't end up actually, like, striking the kid until... Yeah, he slaps the kid at one. He does slap the kid, but, like, that's after he's revealed himself to be, you know...

Yeah, all the cards are on the table. Right, cards are on the table. But he's implicitly threatening to them and to the kid in the way that he, like, takes the kid out on the raft without, you know, their permission. or just the way that he's like talking. I think this movie does a really good job of reflecting the ways in which you can feel threatened by somebody without having them threaten you, if that makes sense. Without having them like actively like verbalize a threat. My like reservation about like this character development is that it does feel like very slow to get this movie going. It does. It is.

Well, and I mean it takes them a while to even like get on the. river. And I do, part of me really appreciates that kind of storytelling that lets something develop. Part of, part of me. I do feel, I do feel the itch to like, let's get on the river, let's get going, let's get moving, especially because the last, like I said, 30 to 40 minutes of this movie are so great and do such a good job of being like, you know, action oriented. But I like that we get this time where we really get to feel the family dynamics here. So that ultimately, David Stratharine's actions at the end of the movie have more of an impact. I like the fact that we get the scenes of her and her family, her and her parents, her mother especially,

where it gives you a sense of what her character is, that she grew up, she was sort of an adventurer, she lived on the land, she was very, like, close to the land. She doesn't live there anymore. She sort of doesn't, she doubts her abilities to be. able to do this and like the movie doesn't press on this too hard once the movie gets going this idea that like she really doesn't think she's going to be able to get them down the river she does not think she's going to be able to raft this you know category five gauntlet or whatever because she doesn't think like she's the she's the person she was when she was 18 and

reckless and you know more attuned to her ability the movie doesn't really like harp on that too much but it's an undercurrent that I think makes what happens happens in the last half hour of the movie that much more effective. Well, and I think the cumulative, cumulative effect of this kind of, I don't even want to call it a slow burn, but like a slow start to this movie, the effect is it really does kind of allow the type of like subtle character arc that Merrill is trying to play versus these like big, broad action movie strokes. Right. It allows that to really pay off, and it keeps it interesting. A lot happens in this movie without it ever being, without it ever actually happening, if that makes sense. Like, there's, like, Gail is flirting with Wade through the early part of this movie, and she denies it when she's called out on it.

And the movie never capitalizes on it, but you know that it's happening. on a very sort of, like, low-key level. And it contributes to what your understanding of her relationship with David Stratherin at that point, that their marriage is really, really, like, so far gone that, like, she's now getting a little bit of a jolt by being able to sort of low-key flirt with Kevin Bacon. And that dynamic, and it charges the dynamic between those two, where all of a sudden by the end, the fact that they're sort of trying to outmatch each other has that much more of a charge to it. It's not like they are, you know, sexual dynamos going after each other. This isn't like a psychosexual war of wills or anything like that.

But it's an undercurrent, again, no pun intended, that I think makes this movie just like adds a little bit of a spice to this movie. Well, they have this kind of unexpected physical chemistry together in a lot of those interactions. yeah that's like not you know full i don't want to say not conventional because they're too attractive white people whatever right but like it doesn't feel like a flirtation between two actors that you would see like you wouldn't see those two performers you know playing a flirtatious scene right i think um i guess it kind the first maybe half hour 45 minutes is very confusing to me in terms of what their getaway is what his character arc is like I absolutely understand that he would just flirt with

Merrill Street but like he he does ingratiate himself to this family and probably partly like as we see the way that he tries to present a front face whenever like anybody else happens upon them when he's already basically kidnapped them right um but you get the sense that that's just how he is right but it yeah i guess i maybe this is where i could have used some broad strokes to just like yeah it and i maybe the movie's also trying to pull like a surprise where you don't yeah if that's what they're trying they're that they definitely don't do a great job in that like you suspect them from the break also like you've seen a commercial for this movie supposedly you know

what the you know what the movie's about um but yeah i think because it you don't really need it to be a surprise. You're right that if we had seen, even if we had seen a scene of them sort of like, you know, running away from the robbery or something like that, something about their dynamics before they run into the family or something like that. I don't know. I'm not one of those people that hangs out with strangers on vacation and this is why. This is why. Again, yes, I've seen the River Wild and know what happens. I want to sort of like step back for a second and talk about where Meryl Streep is in this movie. We don't have to harp on the fact that this is our eighth Meryl movie,

but it makes sense that we've done more Meryl Street movies than anything else by this point. Is Meryl the top? Has she fully surpassed Clare Dane's at this point? Oh, she had been ahead of Clare Dane. She has extended her lead. She was, yeah, she had been ahead by, wait, now I want to make sure that it's not her. I mean, we certainly haven't done Nileged.

Claire Dane's movies. No, we've done seven. Right. Okay, so yeah, so they were tied, and now Merrill has, uh... She's still ahead on the river. No, this is our ninth Meryl Street movie. Okay. She had, yeah, she was ahead.

She was ahead eight to seven, and now she's ahead nine to seven. So, uh, yeah, Merrill extends her leave. Guess we're due for another Claire Dane soon. Oh my God, yeah, we got to, even the scales. So one of my favorite tidbits about Meryl, awards trivia is that the longest stretch she's ever gone with not getting an Oscar nomination since she got her first one for the Deer Hunter in 1978, was this stretch that she is in 1994, where she gets nominated for Postcards from the Edge for 1990, then nothing in

91, 92, 93, or 94, and then 1995 she has her big Oscar comeback. She gets nominated. for the bridges of Madison County. So four whole years without Merrill, and she has never gone that long without a nomination. She's coming up on that now, where her last nomination was for the Post in 2017. So 2018, 2019, 2020, 2020, 2021, if we assume that she doesn't get nominated for playing the President of the United States in the Adam McKay movie, which I would be surprised if that happened. I think that that's maybe a silly assumption to think that she wouldn't. All right. I'll throw in another bet there. I need to get even. I need to make some of my money back somehow. If you want to throw in another bet, that I would say Merrill is not getting nominated for Don't Lookup. You know, my hesitation would say to wait until we know how large her part is, but you know what? I'm feeling frisky today. Yes, I will see you on that bet. How much are we betting?

What did we bet for the Michelle Williams, Amy Adams? 50 bucks all right another 50 bucks all right 50 bucks i say merrill's getting nominated this year i say she is not okay so if i turn it turns out that i am right it will equal her longest oscar drought of her entire career at four whole years which is incredible um the difference is this current oscar drought of merriels we don't really we're not really chalking it up to a a deficit on her part whereas in this era of the early 90s there was a sense

and we've talked about it before that like has Merrill lost it? Has she lost her edge? Has she now tried too much to do things like comedies? Death Becomes Her was seen at the time as a proof that Merrill Streep cannot do comedy

which is insane. Insane. I mean like... An insane notion. What a fantastic movie but also she's so good in that movie. She's so good in that movie. She's so funny. Also, like, it's also carryover, too, from She-Devil.

Which was also seen as a proof that Merrill Streep can't do comedy, which is also insane because she's great in that movie. And then the next year, she gets nominated for a comedy. Yes. But, no, I do think, like, some of the disdain for Death Becomes Her is carried over from She-Devil, which is also great, and she's also funny, Ian. She's also during this span in defending your life, which is great.

And she also, during this span, is a voice on The Simpsons playing Jessica Lovejoy, which is one of the all-time, most underrated one-episode voice performances on The Simpsons ever. Like, it is so fucking, she's so good in that. You would, like, it doesn't just sound like Merrill Streep showed up and did her Merrill Voice. She's doing a full character. You could tell, like, she put the work in. to create just this, like, little, you know, up to no good reverend's daughter in this. So, like, it's wild to me that this was the reputation that Merrill had been sort of had

been foist upon Merrill in this era when, like, it's the only real, like, flop and failure of that stretch of movies is the one that we talked about several months ago, the House of the spirits, which is a drama. Like, it's wild. I don't know. It's fully wild. So it's the river. Right.

So 1994 comes along. And she's not going to do... House of the Spirits is opening in the States. Right. And no one is paying attention. Absolutely no one. And so instead of a comedy, she signs on to do this action movie, which is the first time she's ever done that.

I'm sort of taking a quick scan to make sure I'm not skipping anything. But like, she had never done an action movie before. And it's Merrill Streep. You know, it's Sophie's choice. the French lieutenant's woman. All of a sudden, she is playing an action heroine. All of a sudden, she's going to try and be Sigourney Weaver or Linda Hamilton. And, like, what's going on here? And the movie, it's not like the movie was received rapturously by critics. It was a 50, high 50s on Rotten Tomatoes, which, you know, whatever, like, Rotten Tomatoes, as imperfect as it is for

judging movies now, as gets even more imperfect when you go back into movies from before the Rotten Tomatoes era, but the reviews were like good, not great. You know what I mean? People liked it. Either people thought it was sort of like standard cliche action movie, whatever, blah. I think that was mostly Roger Ebert's take on it, except that he thought the performances were very good. Or people sort of like, you know, it's good for an action movie, that kind of thing.

There was a lot of sort of like genre snobbery at the time around with critics. and its reputation got a little bit better year after year as people would sort of like catch it on VHS or again watch it when it was on television but like at the time it was mostly like look at this odd little creature an action movie with great performances in it and clearly what was it studio universal clearly universal saw something in it because you don't get Golden Globe nominations unless your studio is you know whining and dining, the Hollywood Foreign Press, as we have seen play out in recent history. So clearly Universal saw something in this movie.

They're like, well, we didn't cast Meryl Streep for nothing. So let's see what we can do with this with an awards campaign. And lo and behold, both Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon get Golden Globe nominations for this. And Meryl also gets nominated at the first ever Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actress. we, you know, and we'll talk about it in this episode, the notoriously odd and kind of wide open, even though it was swept by Jessica Lane. Treat it very sparsely. Yeah, 1994 best actress race. Merrill ends up getting both Globe and Sag nominations. And again, it is rare when you are Globe nominated and SAG nominated and don't get an Oscar nomination, especially Globe

nominated in a drama, which, you know, obviously Merrill was. It would have been tough to sell this movie as a comedy, much as anything that is not a... I mean, some of that has to still be with an asterix, though, because the, like, the uphill climb for an action movie to get an acting nomination, especially for a woman. Yes. Right. Exactly. So... It's a drama with an asterisk to the academy. Yes. And I think that's the... Well, that's why I mentioned that, like, you know, if they could have found a way to get it nominated in comedy, they would have. Because as far as Hollywood goes, and especially at this time, although I think this bias still remains, if you are not a straight up, you know, a Tony drama, you know, you are, you're, you might as well be a comedy as far as Hollywood. You might as well just be an unsurious, you know, we'll campaign you for a comedy Golden Globe because what are you doing here?

So yes, you're right. I think we saw this with Golden Globe nominations for like Uma Thurman or whatever. We're just like, yes, she was nominated in drama, but she was not seen as much of a serious contender as anybody else who was nominated in drama because she repped an action movie. So, yeah, so Merrill's nominated. I think the nomination for Kevin Bacon shows even more how much, how sort of respected those performances in this movie were that Bacon,

gets nominated for best supporting actor in, I would say, a fairly strong best supporting actor field. Yeah, against a lot tougher competition to get through, or at least like the way that the narrative has been said about this best actress race. Yeah. That's a pretty stacked supporting actor lineup. We'll get to Kevin Bacon in half a second. I do want to close the loop on Merrill a little bit in this. So obviously she doesn't get the Oscar nomination for the River Wild of So she's nominated for the Globe. She loses to Jessica Lang for Blue Sky, who pretty much sweeps that year, even though nobody saw that movie. And Jody Foster wins the SAG, which is the first SAG.

So it's like you can't really say we can't give her a third one in a row for a brand new prize. Right. It's the only, it's the only one in a row, but third one in short order. It's the only of those major precursors that Jody Foster didn't have the, well, she's won, you know, multiple times before. So why are we going to give her another one? So that really goes to show you, and that's what I always cite when I talk about, like, alternate history. What happened? Like, if Jody Foster was not already a two-time Oscar winner going into that Oscars, she almost certainly wins for now, I feel like. And so any, but anyway, Jessica Lang sweeps that year almost by default. The other Globe nominees are Miranda Richardson, Globe nominees for drama, Miranda Richardson, who is the only one who survived and Jody Foster. are the only ones who survive to the Oscars. Meryl is nominated for the River Wild,

and then Jennifer Jason Lee for Mrs. Parker in The Vicious Circle, which... A movie I really want to talk about sometime because I want to see it. We should. It's an Alan Parker, or no, am I saying that just because it's about Dorothy Parker? No, Alan Rudolph. Yes, Alan Rudolph. My brain is broken. So, yeah, Jennifer Jason Lee, not getting nominated for Mrs. Parker in 94, and then Georgia in 95 is...

it's worth talking a lot about because that was a real, real curiosity with the Oscars. So the actual Oscar lineup is Lang Foster Miranda Richardson adds Winona Ryder for little women

who also wasn't nominated at the SAG. Wow, she came... She shows up basically nowhere. I wonder if this is a late... Because it's a Christmas movie. I wonder if it's a late arrival that like Oscar was the only you know, a ward's body to be able to see it in time of their voting?

It's very possible. She's also riding on a she's over... Almost winning. She almost wins for the Age of Innocence and there's a sense of, oh, she really got nipped at the end of the race there by Anna Pac-Win. We kind of owe her. And I don't think she was ever really in line to win the Oscar for Little Women, but... She's who I'd vote for.

Me too, actually. And then it's so funny that I remember Susan Sarandon as being the surprise. nominee at the Oscars, but she was a nominee at SAG, as well as Meg Ryan, who we talked about when we did when a man loves a woman. We've talked about this 94 Oscar race a lot, actually. But I think with good reason, because it is a fascinating one. And so it's also this, like, this category is also so fascinating because it's like, it feels like this whole fringe concern that no one cared about at the time, because at most, Mostly everywhere else, but, like, the Oscars at large is all about Forrest Gump versus Pulp Fiction.

Mm-hmm. And, like, none of these contenders could be even more far removed from, like, what the main conversation is. Right. It's almost like, you know, people kind of sneered their nose at that nomination for the client, but it feels like, you know, if they hadn't, maybe it could have finally been her year before dead man walking happens. Yeah. I don't know. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. And you're right. In that this era and this year especially, it felt like the best actress conversation was happening parallel to or adjacent to the Oscars in a way because Best Picture was so very much dominated by male movies. You also had like the Shosh and Redemption in there and quiz show. And movies were like the top, the top build female character is like sixth build or something like that. And Lange is bad in that bad movie that was shelved for years. And, like, it does feel like it's partly she won an Oscar but for the wrong movie. Yes.

And it is that thing of supporting versus lead where it's like they treat some performers, like they don't, like their Oscar isn't real if their Oscar is a supporting one. Agreed. So it's like it's, it was honoring her. and like the downfall of Orion but like she's legitimately one of the worst winners I've ever seen. It's one of the great for lack of a better option

where like everybody else was like, no, we didn't not, we can't give it to Jody Foster because we're not going to give her a third. We can't give it to Susan Sarandon because this is not the type of movie that wins Oscars. We can't give it to Winona Ryder

because we've already made up our mind by now. We haven't seen this movie until late and by that point, We've already decided that it's going to be Jessica Lang. And we can't give it to Tom and Viv because probably even fewer people saw Tom and Viv than saw... I think Tom and Viv was also around for a long time because I'm pretty sure, unless I'm misremembering this, it was nominated at BAFTA the year before. That would make sense. Maybe it's the year after.

So I could be wrong. In America, that was just like, it was, there wasn't really enough of a narrative to build around Miranda Richardson there, even though that was like, That was the Miranda Richardson era, 1992 through 1994. Like, that was the moment. Now, come on now. So, right. So Merrill's awards journey ends with the Globe and the SAG for the River Wild. And the fact that she got as close as she did, I think, speaks incredibly well of her.

And the fact that the very next year, they jumped at the chance to nominate her for something that felt more like a Merrill Streep performance. Right. It's a drama. She's doing an accent. She looks, you know, sort of. of wind-swept on the prairies, you know, kind of a thing. I mean, the drama of the movie hinges on the expressions on her face. It's, I've said it, I will stand by it.

It is my favorite Merrill performance. I think it's her best performance. It is, it's the kind of performance that Debbie Reynolds would have a field day making fun of, right? Which is no slight against Merrill at all in that movie. But that's like, it's the... Debbie is very right in that impersonation. but Debbie is also wrong. Right.

That's the thing. Right. It's a very good impression, but it's also like... Catherine Hepburn also said the same thing about Merrill. I would say no shade to Merrill. And I think Debbie intends much, much shade for Merrill in that... Absolutely. Her daughter's friend...

Yes. Her daughter's friend who helped her daughter make a spectacle of her in Postcards from the Edge. Yeah, Debbie Reynolds might not feel too great about postcards from the end. I can understand why. So here's one question I will post to you because it's probably reasonable to say that maybe Jennifer Jason Lee was sixth because she showed up a bunch. I think she won Indy Spirits. She was at least nominated.

Yeah, I could see that. Maybe Merrill was seventh. If the River Wild had made more money and cemented this thing of Merrill is a movie star. And Merrill can on top of all the things that she does, she can also be an action star. can't she do? If the movie makes, it didn't do poorly, but like if it was like a hundred million dollar movie, would she have been nominated? I think she would.

It's very possible because if you look at, so only eight years before this, Sigourne Weaver is nominated for aliens, which is, you know, it has a lot going for it, especially because by that point, the respect for Ridley Scott and for Alien had, you know, grown by that point. And then in 1991, Terminator 2 is a blockbuster and is like an Oscar winner for its visual stuff, for its like technical achievements. But like it was at least on the Oscar radar. And Linda Hamilton was not an actress of like Linda Hamilton didn't have like a bunch of great dramatic performances like Sigourney Weaver did to like show that like this is, you know, one of our great actresses. She's basically only known for two things at that point, the Terminator

franchise and then Beauty and the Beast on television, neither of which scream like Oscar Prestige. There's no snob factor to Linda Hamilton. But she's hugely... I personally think Ron Perlman is like a fine cheese. She did too in that show, in that character, at least. Yes, she did, honey. Listen, he lived in the sewers of New York City and she fell in love with him. Who wouldn't? Okay. So, but I think if Linda Hamilton is an actress of Sigourney Weaver's stature or somebody like that if linda hamilton is gina davis you know what i mean in terminator two there's a good chance that maybe she also gets a gets a nomination for an action performance because that movie was so you know so big enough that the oscars couldn't ignore it right

um right and so i think you look at some like if if the river wild even approaches the kind of success or sort of cultural crossover that terminator two has had without, you know, and it wouldn't even have had to have been a franchise. Do you know what I mean? Like, it would have been, yeah, I think you probably would have seen Merrill getting a nomination for that. And like, would have been one of her, you know, best nominations as far as I'm concerned. So, yeah. I mean, this performance is better than a good handful of her nominations, I will say, please say. Absolutely. She's so, so good in this movie. The part towards the end where she's taking him down the gauntlet

and is very action heavy and she has to like I think it's maybe after they have to pull Kevin Bacon back into the boat and he looks so rattled and she looks at him and just laughs right in his face. I'm just it fucking thrills me every single time. I love it so much. And you

could feel the exhilaration on her character and she's in her element and she knows that she's got the upper hand on this guy for even a moment and she's like she's fucking loving it. It's so good. I just wonder if this was a financial success on the level of similar action movies. Yeah.

If she maybe would have also gotten more credit for like, it's a pretty general basic thriller. Right. But she is doing something that isn't that, that doesn't play by those rules. She elevates. More of like interesting Eric or interesting character. She elevates that movie. I think from the 2021 perspective, I have a lot more, uh, I get a lot

more enthusiastic about a movie that does the generic 90s thriller thing, right? Because, like, we don't get movies that do that anymore. But, yes, she's definitely elevating. I was very comforted by not the low stakes, but, like, the low dramatic stakes of this. How it's not really pulling any punches or pushing anything too hard. It is a perfect 90s action thriller. It's, that's why, you know, it's comfort food for me, really. But, yes, she definitely is elevating this movie.

I want to pivot to Kevin Bacon for a second, though, and I want to do not a deep dive into Kevin Bacon, but just sort of like where he is in his career at this moment. He breaks through, well, he's obviously, he's an animal house, right? He's in Friday the 13th. He breaks through in Diner in 82, the Barry Levinson movie Diner, part of this like ensemble cast of sort of young male actors at the time, Gutenberg and Daniel Stern and Mickey Rourke,

and Paul Reiser, I guess, is also in that movie. And then follows that in 84 with Footloose, which is not like, you know, seen as a great American, you know, filmmaking triumph at the time, but it is absolutely a movie from the 80s that has stuck around a very long time in the cultural consciousness. And while it doesn't elevate him to the ranks of, like, great actors, it is like, it's a piece of, you know, pop culture from the 80s that has stood the test of time.

time. And then he's in, you know, a lot of sort of ensembley movies where he's in the big picture, which has, you know, kind of a big cast of notable names in that movie. And he's in, of course, flatliners, which is like, you know, the Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, William Baldwin's in that movie. And then he's in JFK in 90s. with everybody and he's in a few good men in 92 with everybody and so this is what gives rise to the six degrees of Kevin Bacon thing which is it's not I remember at the time I was so by the way unsurprisingly catch me at 15 years old being the dork who like fucking rules at six degrees of Kevin Bacon where like I was like because of a few good men there would be we you know how like

you're in class and you sit at the back of your chemistry class and you don't want to do chemistry. And so I would have people like throwing names at me of actors and I would just be doing like 60s at Kevin Bacon in the back of chemistry class, like issuing one nerdy pursuit for very much another. And so I was like that sort of like set my reputation as like movie dork in in high school for sure that I was like I fucking ruled at six years of Kevin Bacon, which was like a lot harder back then when you didn't have IMDB to look up or like anything like that, you had to keep all of these all of these movie casts in your little brain and push out any kind of knowledge that might help you in other pursuits. So, but the thing about when I would talk to people at the

Kevin Bacon game and try to explain it to people who didn't know about it. And the question is always, why Kevin Bacon? And I would have to be like, yeah, that's the point. Why Kevin Bacon? Why is this actor who was like very much, especially at that time, middle of the road. He's not great. He's not terrible. He's not the most popular. He's not the least popular. He is like magnetic center. He is like the geographic center of the United States of acting, right? Of male acting. And that was the point that you had this actor who was very much five out of 10 of on every scale of like fame and success and whatever but he's connected to everybody mostly because he's in a lot of movies with a lot of people and so that was kind of his claim to

fame at this point but he was never like a critic's darling right like he's you know people love tremors and we'll watch that on cable a whole bunch but he's not like he's even when he's in big oscarry movies like jfk and a few good men he's way down the list of people your mentioning at that and he certainly doesn't have big enough roles in either to be even thought of along the lines of like best supporting actor so well and also that's why correct me if I'm well this is not our first Kevin Bacon but like it's one of our first times like talking about him because he's in in the cut yep but has he in anything else that we've done I don't think so as I'm sort of like now skimming my way down his filmography.

I don't believe so. Wild. And there's a bunch that we could do, especially when we talk about now entering this era. So him getting a supporting actor nomination at the Globes for the River Wilde is a breakthrough for him in this sort of respect. And then the next year, he's in another classic Kevin Bacon, classic Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon movie, which is Apollo 13, where, again, part of an

ensemble of actors who you can spider out into all these other. things and he's not the supporting actor contender there the supporting actor contender there is at harris and um but he's slowly but surely getting like more and more respect for being in movies like this and then also in 1995 he's in a movie called murder in the first where he plays a uh is he the one on death row in murder in the first I think it is. I don't know that movie. I'm trying to position him on the poster.

Because he's like SAG nominated for this movie, right? I'm pretty sure yes, and I'll double check that in a second. No, he won Critics' Choice. Interesting. I thought he also may have gotten a SAG nomination, but maybe I'm wrong. No, I guess not. But, oh, is supporting. Yes, he got a SAG nomination and Supporting Actor.

Because the lead in Murder the First is actually. Christian Slater, if you believe it, because Christian Slater is the attorney who's sort of fighting for his freedom, I believe. And he's sort of like unjustly accused of something. And he's stuck in prison, and I believe

Gary Oldman is like the authority figure who's looking to keep him locked up. And that was the movie that, though the SAG nomination doesn't translate to an Oscar nomination, critics were really, really in his corner for that one. And that was the big, like,

Kevin Bacon is, you know, making the leap and is giving a, you know, top-notch performance. And I think that there was a sense that this is only the beginning for him. And he's going to, you know, it's going to happen for him at some point. And actually, that was kind of the end of the Kevin Bacon era in terms of being an awards play, with the lone, I would say, exception of a movie he made in. in 2004 called the Woodsman, which... We could do, but... But I kind of don't want to, because he plays...

I don't ever want to see that movie. He's a convicted child molester, and the movie is... I believe the movie is sort of a redemption story for him, right? Or it's like one of those observational things where it's like, you're watching a man deal with this, but the undercurrent really is, but will he do it again? and like, I just, I don't want to do that. It's a dark drama.

It got, it got some critical acclaim. It was, he got an indie spirit nomination. He got an indie spirit nomination, but New Market, which was the studio, was really pushing it. It also comes from Lee Daniels Entertainment, which I think is interesting. Co-stars his wife, Kira Sedgwick, also co-stars to Benjamin Bratt. So if I ever spring a trivia question on you where I ask you, what's the other Kevin Bacon Benjamin Bratt movie, you'll remember that it's the Woodsman. But I think that's the only other movie where he's really pushed for acting awards.

He doesn't stop being in movies. He's in a lot of movies, but like... He's in Oscar nominees, Best Picture nominees, Oscar winners. Oh, he was in Crazy Stupid Love. That's another Kevin Bacon movie that we've done. Ah, yes. Again, another movie that, like, you will name six other actors before. That sort of becomes the thing.

He's in Frost Nixon, but, like, you don't name him at all in the movies. Mystic River, he's probably what, I would say, like, fifth lead, maybe, and that's probably the most prominent role. I think going into Mystic River, I think if you hadn't read, I think his character's also more prominent in the book. So I think if you'd read the novel of Mystic River, you could have talked yourself into the idea that Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon would maybe both be pushed for supporting actor. But obviously, when the movie comes out, it's much, much more a feature for Tim Robbins, even though I think Robbins plays that character all wrong, especially if you've read the book, because I think he, he flattens out a lot of that character from where that character

is a bad performance, too. It's a bad performance. I don't like that performance. I will stand by the Sean Penn performance, even though it is very big, but, like, I get it, and I think it largely works. I think the Tim Robbins performance does not work. But I think that was probably, that Kevin Bacon, Mystic River performance is probably one of the last times that he's in these big ensembles, and you look at that and you go,

oh, Kevin Bacon could maybe get a supporting push from that, but obviously not. And so he sort of has become, he's, you know, faded into the, oddly, he's sort of gone back to that kind of six degrees of Kevin Bacon thing, right? Where he's like, he's not gone away. He's not, you know, he hasn't stopped working. He's still in movies. But he's, he's, just like, he's mostly just, like, in these big ensemble casts with a lot of other people. Crazy Stupid Love, X-Men First Class, Black Mass, things like that, Patriots Day. God, he's in Black Mass. I couldn't have told you that unless I was looking at the, unless I was looking at his

filmography here, but yes, he's in that movie. Yes. So, it's an interesting career. I think few people would have thought at the time that 94-95 was going to be like the high watermark for Oscar ability for him. And yet it definitely was. And this turns out to be, the River Wild turns out to be one of the few movies that he gets a major precursor nomination for. It's this and murder and the first, and that's basically it.

Well, and it's not surprising to me that it does happen for this because, I mean, everything that his career went through in the 80s and then he's in JFK and a few good men to. best picture nominees where he's not a major supporting player but like a featured person you, a featured player that you do remember. He has a very memorable scene in JFK. They visit him in prison in Louisiana. He makes a pass

at Kevin Costner. We all sort of he's also part of that horribly homophobic Oliver Stone scene where he gives you these very sinister flashes of a sex party with Kevin Bacon, Joe Pesci, and

to Tommy Lee Jones, a Madlib's sentence, if ever I said one. But it's this very typically Oliver Stone's sort of like nightmarish vision of homosexuality as something like deeply scary. And again, try watching that one when you're 12 years old. So try not having that fuck you up like totally entirely. And yet when, you know, when Kevin Bacon, you know, propositions to come see Kevin Costner when he gets out of prison and, you know, offers to suck his dick or whatever.

Like, there is a little bit of thrill, again, when you're 12 years old watching JFK. And he's great and a few good men. He's the prosecuting attorney. He's the one who's going up against Kevin Bacon, or Tom Cruise. And he holds up, you know, in that role. It's a really good performance by him.

And then this is like the big showy one, aside from also the air. up there, the Disney live action basketball movie that comes out this year. Remember when Disney did that? They would just do these, like, weird, like, you know, movies for families to go to that are not based on ID. Angels in the Outfield, I'm pretty sure it was Disney. That's a remake, right? It is a remake.

But again, but that's sort of, that's pitched in the same way. And The Mighty Ducks was definitely that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They used to be really great. Too, the Mighty Ducks. Indeed.

Took it to franchise terrain. Yeah, yeah. You add Kenan Thompson and you got a franchise there, kids. Yes. True of all movies. True of all movies. So, yeah, Kevin Bacon is really good in this movie, in the River Wild, I would say. He plays a really good villain.

I mean, I think that the best mode for Kevin Bacon is as a villain. Like, the examples I'm about to bring up are trashy, but, like, he gives exactly what those movies need. I'm thinking of wild things and Hollow Man. I was like he's going to say Hollow Man. You couldn't not say Hollow Man. I mean, I had to rewatch all the Verhoven stuff this year. Benedetta is still coming.

Had to. As if that was a twist of your arm. Hollow Man doesn't work, but like I don't think any problem with that movie is Kevin Bacon's at all. I think he's doing, he's, he's really, he's really sinister. He's really, yeah, he's a good villain in that. And yeah, he is, I think people mostly remember him in Wild Things because he shows full hog in that movie. But the full side of bacon is visible.

Let me tell you, honey, it wasn't even a side of bacon. It was the full hog. It was, you know. Only thing that makes Wild Things better is if Kevin Bacon and Matt Dillon's characters actually have sex in that movie, which is. I mean, it is kind of homoerotic. Yes, of course it is. Absolutely it is.

And intentionally so, I would say. But, yeah, I think he gives that element of danger in Wade that gives that element of sort of flirty sexiness with the interactions with Streep. He's, you know, the ways he ingratiates himself to the sun are very untrustworthy. and in a way that, but like keeps it always on the side of plausible deniability where, like, you would see where the David Stratherin character is never going to trust him. But you can also see where Meryl's character doesn't find him to be threatening until, again, he's sort of leering at her from the cliff. And it doesn't make her seem like a sap for not seeing it right away, right? He plays it so that, like, he's not so overtly villainous that we lose. patience with her because she doesn't, you know, see it right away, which I think is a danger

with some of these movies. Some of these movies, I end up really losing my patience with the main character because I'm just like, oh, come on. Like, how do you not see that this person is like sharpening his teeth with a machete blade? You know what I mean? Like, no, I totally agree with you on this character point. And it's like my only hesitation, like, in the story side of it is like my general confusion of why he's, if it's like intentional to rope the them in early or not because like it would appear not but then it's just awfully kind of convenient but like that's nothing to do with the performance yeah i could i i think i think a legitimate criticism to give this movie is that it is awfully convenient because i don't think like he was

scouting her out from the beginning i think it is a good coincidence that he does run into an expert you know river rafter uh who he can rope into his scheme after his original plan goes awry yes but you know I'm not going to linger on it too much I don't think talk to me about

how much you want to have sex with David Stratherin in this movie thank you so much I was about to say can we please stop talking about anything else but David Stratharne

David Stratharne it would take another decade for him to finally get a nomination yes we need another one the well is dry I need my well

to be full David Stratharne good Lord Lord Jesus, one of the hottest men David Stratharne You know my David Stratharine problem You know my issue with David Stratharine, right? If I'm going to be mad, I will...

No. You will disappoint our listeners because I will leave this podcast. It's not that I don't love David Stratharine because I do as an actor. It took me a very long while to get past the fact that one of the very first movies I ever saw him in was Dolores Claiborne. And it took a while for me not to knee-jerk, like, recoil from him because he plays such a

creepy scumbag in that movie. And he played it so well. I was going to bring up Dolores Claiborne because, like, that's what, the year after this. Yes. I think, like, his ability to just, like, us believe him as all of these type of average, everyday men some of who, like, are very good, some of whom are very bad, some of whom are, like, procedural bureaucratic people who are not actually that interesting of roles of him. He is never less than believable in a movie, and he's just one of our best actors in the way that, like, people, you know, they're not flashy, so they don't get the credit. Here's what Dolores Claiborne did to my brain.

I love a league of their own like few other people love a league of their own and that is a very lovable movie and a lot of people like it but that movie exists in my heart he plays one of the most purely lovable characters in that movie

all he does is try to keep this women's baseball league going and he you know and he argues with Gary Marshall about it and he you know he really wants to support these women and I see Dolores Claiborne

clearly after a League of the Rhone. Like, it's three years later, and I had certainly, you know, I didn't see a League of the Rone in theaters, but I had certainly seen it on VHS long before I had seen Dolores Claiborne. And yet, he's such a creep in Dolores Claiborne that my brain, like, schismed, and I stopped thinking of his character in the League of the Rone as a David Stratharine character

and just, like, made my brain think like he was being played by somebody else because I couldn't handle that this absolute, gross, creepy, molester character could have been in any way associated with my beloved, a league of their own. So, like, it was literally years before I was like, that was David Stratharine, Aligh of the Roan

that I've seen a dozen times by now, wasn't it? It took eight years and Edward R. Murrow to finally break my brain free from the prison of, what's his character in Dolores? Something Claiborne. The father. Right.

I used to know his name, but now I can't think of it. great movie, great book, Dolores Claiborne. Great adaptation, because the adaptation, that movie is nothing, is structured in no way like that book. The plot is the same, but like the structure is absolutely different in a way that makes the movie. It's very much its own thing. Because the book's, the book is first person, but isn't it also like stream of consciousness, too? Yes, it is. Yeah.

Yes. There is no, there is, you know, there is no objective older Selena in that. like Selena the daughter is not in any way P-O-V in a way that like you get a lot more sort of like third person omniscient in the movie and um oh it's so good anyway anyway strathran's great in this movie tough character to play the sort of um yeah uh proto cuck almost you know what i mean where it's just like it's not even that it's also that like he's the asshole yeah you know and we're rooting for Meryl We're rooting for mayoral. And, like, it's so easy to just really not like this guy. And, like, he's all about his work. He ignores his family.

He's not being very attentive to his son. They're on the brink of divorce. He's, you know, yeah. Well, and it's also, like, in a way, the finale of the movie, they, like, getting ahead of these guys. and, like, you know, beating the bad guys. Yes. Is something that they do together. Right.

It's their family bonding. You know, like, he's not the hero of the movie, but they do actually beat the bad guys through a collective effort and through, like, even though they're not together, through communicating to each other. Exactly. And, like, it's also, I think it's also really easy for the audience, especially because it's Merrill and because, like, she's playing. such a like competent and interesting character that like we don't even care what this guy is doing right right we like well he's off you know separated from the group like we could just as easily not care and like it's very plotting what he's doing checking in with david stratharne's part of the movie after he gets separated from the family is very sort of like making sure that you're

still keeping up with what the plot mechanics are doing um the character stuff is all on that raft um It's always bothered me a little bit that the movie ends with Joseph Mazzello's character saying, oh, my dad, he saved our lives. And, like, end of the movie. Yeah, I don't like that. And, but it only bothers me to a point because it's not like the movie is under any illusions that Meryl isn't the action heroine of this movie, right? Like, Merrill is in charge of this movie.

I think it's sort of like a little, like, grace note to go on, but it's weird. Like, if there's just, like, give me half a scene after that line, don't let it be the last thing that happens in the movie, and I'm totally fine. with it actually um but it's just an odd little like and that's the end of that chapter kind of thing um i will always cheer for david strathairn when i looked up the poster to this movie and saw that he got above the title billing i about fist pumped in the air what does he have coming up actually let me look see if it's anything um oh he's in nightmare alley oh iconically filmed in Buffalo Nightmare Alley.

Nightmare Alley. Very curious to see what that will be like, how it will be received. I am willing to bet, though I could be saying something like this before, like a month before this episode is airing. I could always put egg on my face, but I wouldn't

be surprised if that movie because it's still in post-production moves to the next year? Yes. I was just about to say, are we really getting that movie this year? It's obviously not going to any festivals. We've heard very, very little advance buzz about it. I would be, yeah, not at all surprised if it gets moved.

He's also, I mean, he was in Nomadland last year. I would have liked to have seen more of a supporting actor push for him for Nomad Land last year. I thought he was very good in that. He was once again, very sexy. Yes. I love that this is where it's all coming down for you. I'm simple man. Simple man of simple tastes.

I don't like to reduce things down just to looks, attractiveness. But David Strathairn, if I haven't gushed enough about how he is one of our finest living actors, he's also one of our finest living actors. Okay. Yeah, more good things for David Stratharine. I feel like we are overdue for his second Oscar nomination. The fact that it was now 18, no, 16 years ago. it's been too long. This is like a facile observation, but it's also like, he's one of those actors that's surprising, hasn't been scooped up by TV and has like 15 Emmys now?

I literally looked up. I was just like, well, he did get, he won an Emmy for Temple Grandin. He did win an Emmy for that. But that, of course, was a miniseries. HBO movie, though. Yeah. Oh, it was just a movie. It wasn't even a miniseries.

It was a movie. Yes. I believe it's just a movie. Yes, right, because it was going to be theatrically released for a movie. while. That was a... He is also on the expanse, but as we know, that is a show about showreg Dashlew and Showreg Dashlu's Annunciation of Swear Words. True. And also, again, a two-year-old spoiler, but he was on the expanse. Oh, he's dead. Yeah, but he was great. I really loved him. He had, by the way, speaking of accents, oh, did he have, he had like space patois in that show,

and that was crazy. Oh, no. Not in a like... This is not the Strathairn, I asked for. Well, not in a way that was, like, offensive because, like, in that, I mean, I don't know. Is it like Cloud Atlas where it's like, this is just how language evolves? Well, sort of. And so not to like get too into the plot of the expanse, but in the expanse, civilization has expanded to the solar system and has colonized Mars and has also colonized the asteroid belt, but it's very hard to live on the asteroid belt, as you would imagine.

So the people who do are these. very sort of like hardy working class, no one single race of people, but they are a race unto themselves. They are people under themselves, the belters. And they are characterized by this very sort of like thick patois kind of, not in any specific like they're doing like Jamaican exactly, but like it's like it's some kind of amalgamation of a bunch of like, it's not any one thing. They could also be like you know, pseudo-Celtic or something like that. But it's

a very thick accent. And he does it very well, actually. And he ends up being a very likable character. I need to loop back to watch some of this because I feel like this is just a show that my spouse watches. And then I like instantaneously peeked my head around the corner

when I see, when I hear show reg Ashley talking. I started watching in season two and had no trouble jumping to it. I think season one, from my understanding, is very Thomas Jane heavy, which is not my thing. So jumping ahead into season two, when it becomes more about everybody else was a happy thing that I did. But yes, loved David Stratharne and The Expans. So that, yes. Anything else? We're now, we've really, time has flown. Anything else about the River Wild we want to talk about in terms of. I mean, ephemera. I don't always love, like, even, obviously now, like, referring to things as COVID movies or, like, COVID comfort movies. Right. But, like, it did feel, like, a week or so period that I was like, why is everybody watching the River Wild?

Oh, did they? Did this movie have one of those revivals? I think it was just, like, one of those movies that's been sitting on HBO Max. Yeah. And, like, as people got HBO Max. Well, if anybody had asked me for a recommendation, I would have given it to them for this, because it's one of my most recommended movies. If you haven't seen it, I will, you know, badger you to see it. I want to talk about...

Joe will watch it with you right now. Yeah. I want to talk about Curtis Hanson for a little bit. We've talked... Oh, yes, of course. We did in her shoes several months ago, maybe even over, maybe a year or so ago. It was a bit, anyway. Like a year and a half ago, I think that was before the pandemic.

I think it was. Obviously, we love that movie. He has other movies that were sort of Oscar adjacent, but he only ever really hit that big time once with LA Confidential, which happens three years. It's the next movie after The River Wild. So he was about to take a big old leap for Best Picture nomination, best director nominations, kind of across the board for him.

The movie is generally thought of to be the runner-up to Titanic, in as much as Titanic left any room for anything else. to be a runner-up. It was sort of the critical snob choice back when Titanic was seen as this sort of crassly commercial, the masses like it, and we're not allowed to like Titanic if we're good critical snobs. LA Confidential was the alternate of choice that year, which is interesting because Curtis Hansen is not a snobby director.

He is like very, very, like, his two movies previous to that were the hand that rocks the cradle and the River Wild. had been making movies before that, too. He had done bad influence, which is a very sort of, you know, kitchen sink psychological thriller. And why kitchen sink, I just mean, you know, he's throwing every lurid detail but the kitchen sink at you in that. Or perhaps that it is a movie that is notoriously not braced, much like kitchen sinks can be.

Rob Lowe, James Spader, in 1990, kind of tells you everything you need to know about the kinds of characters you're dealing with. I feel like they both played very specific types at that point in their career. Interesting that they would both become, like, very TV-type actors in, I would say, the next decade after that. He also notoriously directed Luzonit, which is that teen sex comedy starring Tom Cruise and Shelley Long in the 1980s. He's an interesting director. His filmography is always very fascinating. he doesn't really pigeonhole himself in any one genre.

It's always wild to me that you had a director whose back-to-back movies were 8 Mile and then in her shoes. It delights me, even though I don't really love 8 Mile. I love that he went L.A. Confidential Wonder Boys 8 Mile in her shoes. That's a fantastic four movie stretch. I want to watch Lucky You. I do too. I've never seen it. Drew Barrymore.

It was supposed to be a bomb. Right. And it like bombed the weekend of Spider-Man 3rd. and how much worse than Spider-Man 3 could it be? I kind of wanted to make you watch the bedroom window, which is on Criterion now, but it's been available on, like, Prime and stuff. I have not seen that either. Because it has Isabella Pair having a good time.

And, like, I looked up interviews with her about that movie. She's like, I had a good time. I should watch that. Also, I mean, it's a fun movie. It's part of Criterion Channel's noir stuff right now. At this point, it could be off the channel. um by the time the episode airs but like it's Steve Gutenberg in a way that Steve Gutenberg never really got to be as like a movie star he's shirtless in uh a good chunk of it

um but it's it's like a nice uh schlocky but not to like uh perverse that sounds cool i like that his very first uh his directorial debut he kind of he was the one of those directors who came out from under the Roger Corman wing as directorial debut was produced by Roger Corman. It's a movie called Sweet Kill that I love in Wikipedia's thing where it talks about other titles, also known as A Kiss from Eddie and The Arousers.

I want a movie now called The Arousers. Like that's my challenge. Is somebody make this movie? This is obviously... It sounds like a Meg Wollitzer book. It does. It's obviously a beautiful. movie. It stars Tab Hunter, which, again, talk about things. It's just like, I bet that had a part

in the celluloid closet. Anything Tab Hunter related, I'm always just like, oh, there's some sort of, you know, obviously queer connection there. It's a lurid Roger Corman produced B movie, and I'm interested to see if it's available anywhere, because I am, I should go on like an early Curtis Hansen kick and just sort of become a, her, Curtis Hansen complete us, because His early movies and his last movies are the ones that nobody ever talks about with him. With good reason, I think, with the last ones, his last two movies were he produced the big year. He didn't direct the big year. And then he directed Chasing Mavericks, which was his finale.

Surfing movie, right? Yeah, and he must have gotten sick during that because it's a co-director credit with Michael Apted. And because Curtis Hansen ended up dying of a... degenerative neurological disease that isn't Alzheimer's, but isn't totally dissimilar from Alzheimer's. He died in 2016. God, that's horrible. It is. It's incredibly sad. Um, and I mean, we, it feels like, I feel like we lost Curtis Hansen and Jonathan Demi and Mike Nichols all within a few years of each other. Um, I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. I think it's probably within your pain is just linked across that time yes um i think probably within a

maybe three year span let's see hanson died in 2016 demi died in 2017 and mike nichols died while i was working at decider because i remember having to write about it and he died in 2014 so yeah all within a three year span and those three directors i was like oh this hurts this hurts to lose three directors of that kind of intuitive humanity all within the span of each other who made these very uh who made a lot of different kinds of movies you know what i mean they didn't have their one niche that they were really tied into and they were great they all you know had great relationships with actors and they made each of them made at least to or three movies that I hold very, very close

to my heart. And so I love... This is one of them. I love the River Wilde anyway, but I love it especially because it's a Curtis Hansen movie. So, yeah. Anything else before we hop into the IMDB game? One precursor slash whatever you want to call it that we did not mention

an incomplete profile on IMTP, as this will sometimes happen. Merrill was nominated at the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards for favorite actress in suspense also nominated against Susan Sondon for the client I say it's incomplete because it doesn't say who won this category who the hell could have possibly beaten the two of them it has to be Jamie Lee Curtis but Jamie Lee Curtis is nominated in action adventure oh thank you And loses to Sandra Bullock and speed. What 1994 actress was in a suspense movie that would beat the two of them?

Suspense. Was this the year of Wolf? Could it have been Michelle Pfeiffer and Wolf? I will look that up, but I feel like that would just go to horror. Yeah, if they had a horror category. Yeah. Wolf I recently watched on Criterion. channel that movie is nuts i've been meaning to watch wolf for probably the last 10 years of my

life it's always been on this like my long list of uh of you know movies i want to see obviously i want to be a mike nichols completest so i do want to see um wolf it's so shocking that that's not one of the movies that mike nichols made while he was on drugs or waiting to make another movie as was like robert zemeckis making what lies beneath No, like he had a vision for that movie. Yeah. That's crazy. Wolf is 1994, so maybe it's Michelle Fifer.

I mean, I feel like it would still surprise me because it felt like the River Wild and the client were both more popular. Maybe one of those two did win, and IMDB is just not fully updated in that respect that they don't even know who won. Get on it, Blockbuster Entertainment Award. I know. I want a full moderator, whatever you do for this page. Somebody apply for a MacArthur Genius Grant. And the project is just to compile a complete archive of the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards. We need it.

We need it for history. This civilization is about to die. We need something that people will remember us by, and it needs to be the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards. Explain the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards to the aliens when they arrive. Chris, explain the IMDB game to the aliens for when they arrive and they listen to this. All right, 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 those titles are television voiceover performance, uh, not my voiceover performance, but if any of them are television voiceover performances or non-acting credits will mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we'll get the remaining titles release years as a clue. If that's not enough, it's just a free-for-all of hints as we go off of those, like, little mini whitewater rafting cliffs.

Hell yeah. That's the IMDB game. Chris. Not hell yeah. Hell no. I am not whitewater rafting ever. No, that is never appealed to me. That has never appealed to me.

What is wrong with these people? I believe my brother's gone rafting on some sort of white water course before. And my brother's done a lot more adventurous things than I have. But no, thank you. I do not have the inkling to have a near-death experience. willingly. My fucking at-home life with anxiety is harrowing enough. I don't need to be throwing myself into death-defying situations. Anyway, Chris, do you want to guess first or give first? I want to give first because I have a demented option. And it's a nice segue, because I brought

up the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards last thing, because for you, I have from that year a Blockbuster Entertainment Award winner, that is at least on the IMDP page. Did the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards only award film? Apparently not. The 1994 winner of favorite pop

female, I have for you won Miss Mariah Carrie. Oh, I was going to say Janet Jackson, but yeah, Mariah Carey. Janet Jackson won favorite female artist. There we go. Wait, so artist and performer were two very different things. That's kind of subtle shade at Mariah.

Yes. well pop female sure but just like yeah you know you're you may be a pop female but you're no artist right the shade at emotions the absolute shade no what would have been her 94 was 94 emotions what was her album that year no nine well 94 is after music box music box and because there were still some singles for music box that year i did look this up i'm i am a lamb but I'm not, you know, I don't have all my years straight. But also the Christmas album comes out in 94. Sure, of course.

Okay, so Mariah Carey IMDB game. Are they all movies? There is one voiceover performance. Oh, God. I don't know the voiceover performance. Is she in Sing? No. Damn it.

That's a strike against me. All right, well, precious. Yes, precious. why can't I think of any other I'm going to make another stab in the dark at a movie that we've definitely covered so I'm going to look doubly stupid no if Mariah was in Cadillac records

we'd never stop talking about the fact that Mariah and Beyonce were both in a movie together we have covered a Mariah Carey movie before though oh shit whether it is on her known for is for you to decide it. Oh you are cruel and unusual

You've said precious. I mean, like, you've got to say that. You cannot get your years before you say this. Of course, right. Okay, thank you for that accidental hint. Lee Daniels, the butler. No, no. You didn't get the one.

Is that the one you were trying to hint me towards? No, no. The one Mariah Carey movie. Like, you didn't say it. The one Mariah Carey movie is precious. Not that we've done. Like, I'm saying canonically, the Mariah Carey movie

Oh, well. Glitter, of course. Yes. Yes. Your year for that would have been 2001. Yeah. Ironic 2001 slash 9-11 cinema glitter. Yes. But the one you were hinting me towards was Lee Daniels the Butler.

Yes, and we did not. It's not on her known for. She doesn't say a word in that movie. She sure doesn't. Okay. So I have two strikes and two correct. Yes. Your years are 1999. And the one

with the voiceover performance is 2017. 2017. I totally forgot about this, and that's why I fault this. She's not a voice in Zootopia, is she? She's not. I believe you are thinking of one, Shakira. Well, I'm always thinking of Shakira when it comes to Zootopia. Justice for Try Everything, the true, the deserving song, best original song winner that year.

Okay, 1999 is the other one. you said? Yes. Huh. 1999. Is it like a is it a musical type of a movie? No. I believe she only has

like a scene or two in this movie, but I absolutely being... Is she playing a character, or is she playing herself? she is billed as Ilana she is definitely playing like um hmm how do i say it without overtly she is playing an ex of the lead titular character oh who is like has a lot of many exes of this character well it's too early for alfi um oh is it the one where chris odon Keeps having fiancés? Yes. What is it called?

Who is the lead actress of that movie? Renee Zellweger. René Zellwiger. But what's that movie called? The Bachelor. Thank you. Yes. Wow.

Honestly, good on me for remembering that there was a movie... That she's in The Bachelor. Where Chris O'Donnell has a lot of exes. All right. The Bachelor. Wild. Who directed the Bachelor? Okay, so your 2017 movie, where she has a voice performance.

She is playing She is billed as a character Wait, no, I know what it is I know what it is It's a Lego Batman It's the mayor She's the mayor of Gotham I remember that

Yes It's so good I love the Lego Batman movie Lego Batman's fun Yes Oh I'm glad I remembered that Oh very good Okay

Lego Batman also doesn't shit the bed The way the Lego movie does That's true I like the Lego movie a lot But yeah Lego Batman movie is a more satisfying Top to bottom I would say okay

Mariah Carey, well done I'm going to apologize in advance because this particular IMDB game is a little unhinged but I had a hard time finding a Curtis Hansen performer that we haven't done before because we've done a lot of them

anyway I went into the ensemble of LA Confidential to get this one I was like we haven't done Kim Basinger oh no we did Kim Basinger literally like three weeks ago or whatever a month and a half ago for a thousand acres or a thousand acres episode.

But anyway, instead, I will give you the old salty police dog of that movie, Mr. James Cromwell. I had a feeling this was happening. Are you sure we haven't done James Cromwell? I looked. I'll look again, my friend.

Because looking at this, I was like, no, I would remember if we've done. The thing about James Cromwell is great actor, a lot of the same fucking roles. Babe, obviously. Babe is on there. One would think.

Are you kidding me? Not Babe. This is why I've pre-apologized for this, because it is wild that James Cromwell's IMDP game does not include Babe. He was nominated for a whole Oscar for that movie. He sure was. He was in two Babe movies, and I'm going to already give you the free hint that it's not Pig in the City.

Oh, my God. Even though he's not in much of Pig in the City. But, yeah. Hmm. I mean, it's a question of how high build is he in L.A. Confidential. I'm positive he wasn't on the poster, though maybe he was, because this was only shortly after Babe. I'll just guess L.A. Confidential is correct. Now I'm going to look at the poster. The poster, oh, this is wild. First build Kevin Spacey, then Russell Crow, then Guy Pearce, then Kim Basinger, then Danny DeVito, who, It doesn't say it on the billing, on the above the title part, but I think Danny DeVito is the and in this. Yeah, it's with Kim Basinger and Danny DeVito. But James Cromwell. Yeah, because they like made it seem like it was Kevin Spacey's movie and like the whole season and everything.

America didn't know either Russell Crow or Guy Pearce. That's a big reason why neither one of them were nominated. If we knew who Russell Crow was at that time, there's no way he doesn't. get an Oscar nomination for that movie. Right. But yeah, the credit block says Spacey, Crow, Pierce, then James Cromwell, then David Stratharne, speaking of your fuck crush, with Kim Basinger... My friend and lover, David Strip.

Right, with Kim Basinger and Danny DeVito. Anyway, yes, LA Confidential, you got one. Okay. See, it's a lot of the same roles, so I feel like... This is where we enter Madness Territory. Not in the fact that, like, it's crazy that he was in these movies, but just, like, to ask you to pick these movies out of your memories of James Cromwell is, uh, is something. I'm just going to stick with Oscar and say the queen. Is he in the queen?

Yeah, he's Prince Philip. Oh, is he Prince Philip? You're right. He is. Well, it's not the queen. All right. Two strikes. So your answers are one film from 1996.

two films from 1999. So after his Oscar nomination. All of them are after his Oscar nomination. So no, what's the movie that he has early where he plays some kind of like, I know, I think it's in like All in the Family or something, where he plays like a mugger or something like that. Oh, that's weird. Yes.

I'm pretty sure that's the show. Okay, so now I'm just thinking. of what the hell these movies are. All right, so... Isn't he in Deep Impact? Deep Impact. Not Deep Impact. Now I'm going to look and see if he actually was.

He was in Deep Impact, but no, not that. Okay, so the two from 1999, each one of them, actually, the posters are weirdly similar. They both feature an A-list actor's face sort of like totally central to the poster. They're the only name. the title. They're both wearing sort of authoritarian hats.

Like, they, hats that indicate their... Green Mile. Yes. Green Mile. I remember him in Green Mile. He plays the warden. The other one. So who's another, like, big A-list star of, let's say, the late 90s in America? Bruce Willis.

Nope. Tom Cruise Nope Who else is in movies in 1999 This is in like The career Sort of the parabola of this person's career Was like at a real real top of the arc at this point

And he's no longer An A-list movie star of this stature Even though he's still incredibly notable But has like a resurgence in the mid-90s that lasted probably a few more years after 99. Travolta.

Yes. Civil action is like 98. Yes. This is... Oh, but he's wearing a hat. Yes. What was he wearing a hat in? The needle in the haystack is finding

Travolta in a hat. Based on a night. novel that is not a Tom Clancy novel, but you could be fooled into thinking it was. Oh, I know what this is. It's a military movie. I forget the name because it's generic as hell. Aren't they investigating, like, sexual assault? I believe it, I believe, yes, that when the daughter of a well-known and well-respected base commander is murdered, an undercover detective is summoned to look into the matter and finds a slew of cover-ups at West Point.

So, yeah, clearly this is sort of a post-tail-hook era kind of a movie. It's based on a novel by, it wasn't Tom Clancy, but I remember when I worked at the public library, Nelson DeMille was very, very popular. And, like, every Nelson-Dimil novel, like, was flying off the shelves. My mom read all of them. It's called The General's Daughter. Sure.

Which I believe was a pretty big hit. I know the poster, though. It's his face in a military hat, and it's, like blue. Yes. All right. So your 1996 movie is part of a franchise that has sort of gone across many different eras and iterations.

It's sort of like it's defined, I think, by this point as being, as sort of having gone through several different eras. This was the middle era of it. Wow. A long-spanning franchise, but in 96. Yes. Because, like, I would have thought, I don't know what I would have thought Star Wars, but... No.

Based on a TV show. Star Trek. Right. Which Star Trek is in 96. It's obviously one of the Patrick Stewart. It's obviously next-gen. Yes. Is this insurrection?

No. I think insurrection is the one after this. Generations. I think that's the one before this. Nemesis is the last one. First contact. First contact. Star Wars or Star Trek, sorry.

First contact. First contact. Last answer. Yes, exactly. A very truly odd. I don't know if I could necessarily... Deeply odd. Besides, babe.

though. I'm not sure which ones I'm like got to have Cromwell. I kind of surprised that nothing from television showed up in there because he was on American Horror Story for a while. He was on Boardwalk Empire but only I guess for a few episodes. He was on

24 as Jack Bauer's father but again only I think for a short stretch. He played George H.W. Bush in W. Is it Cromwell on Succession? He should be. Oh yeah. He's Brian Cox's brother. He's Brian Cox's disapproving brother. He's also, he was also on

six feet under for like several seasons. That I'm actually really surprised. Wasn't there because that was that was pretty prominent for him. All right. This is a fun one. This is a fun episode. I love talking about it was a wild one. The river was wild. It was. That though is our episode. If you want more, This Had Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this had oscarbuzz.com. You should all God, we're really stumbling. We can't talk today. We can't. You should also follow our Twitter account at Had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz.

Chris, where can our listeners find more of you? You will find me on Twitter and Letterbox at Chris V-File. That is F-E-I-L. Yeah. Yeah. I'm on Twitter at Joe Reed, read spelled R-E-I-D. I'm on letterboxed also as Joe Reed spelled the same way.

We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and Dave Gonzalez. My God, we really, like tongue-tied. If you can't tell, tell me this is our fourth episode in eight days without telling me this is our fourth episode in eight days. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mavius for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate, like, and review us on, ah, God damn it, one more time. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and Dave Gonzalez and

Gavin Mievous for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever else you get podcasts. A five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcasts visibility. So take a break from your... Oh, wait, that's the last one. No, it's not. Oh, my God.

What the fuck is wrong with me? I'm keeping all of this in because it really tracks my mental degradation to a point where I need to have it documented. It's jerking us around, like whitewater rafting. Indeed. All right. A five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcast's visibility. So take a break from your dumb drawings, Dad, and write us something nice, won't you?

That's all for this week, but we hope you be back next week for more buzz. Joseph Bezello is ungrateful for being given the opportunity to call David Strathia. Oh, my God. Daddy. No, I'm bailing. I'm bailing on this podcast right now. Thank you, Daddy. All right, Noah Galvin

in episode two of the second season No. Ha ha ha! Thank you.