This Had Oscar Buzz - 164 – American Pastoral

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

We’ve talked before about adaptations of Pulitzer Prize winners and films that had disastrous premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival, but perhaps none as disappointing as this week’s film. From one of the most lauded novels of the modern era, American Pastoral had the heaviest burden of expectations and stop-and-start production history. With a … Continue reading "164 – American Pastoral"

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. Police have whitened their search for the missing teenager Meredith Levald for her involvement in the bombing of a post office. Where is she?

I find it kind of funny. I find it kind of sad. The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had. Find it hard to tell you. I find it hard to take. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that's six degrees of H word for David Strathairn. Actually, that's probably a lie. I'm sure there's several podcasts out there that are, you know. That's true. We can't be, we can't make that claim.

Fellow Strathairn, you can't work the word Stan into Strathairn. Anyway, moving on 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 am your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here, as always, with the previously heard, my Shix-a-wife, Joe Reed. How do you feel about Strether-Horns? Streather-Horns.

Streather-Horns. Because we're air-horns are a thing, but also we're horny for David Strith-Horne. Streather-Horns. Sweatyreth-Horns. it's not sweaty. We'll put that on the list of potential options. Listeners. No bad ideas in a brainstorm.

We're all, you know, we're just going to bat some stuff around. We'll see what sticks. You know, let's take it to the team. Let's, you know, let's open this meeting up. I'm going to run it up the chain. I'm going to see what I'm going to see what I hear back. Yeah. All right.

Listeners, uh, get in our mentions. Uh, get in the menchies. Um, and, uh, tell us what the Strathfairn stands. Stan Thairn? I don't like that. That doesn't work. That sounds like someone whose name is Stan Thairn, Stanley Tharn. Wait, Drag King name extraordinaire.

Stan Therne. You just play very, like, mellow characters. It's like all Avet Brothers numbers. I would watch David Stratharne Drag King. Absolutely. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Wow, what an act. That would be.

What would your big... A drag queen comes on stage to do a number with him, and he breaks all of that drag queen's, like, family plates. Oh, no, not the plates. No, you've made me remember the plates in Nomadland. I'm going to be sad. The way that I gasped that first time I saw that scene. I know.

We can take this divergence into David Strathairn, who we talked about last week with the River Wild. but much to our surprise, we have double-booked Stratharne again this week. He is the narrator of this movie. We have not suddenly turned into a podcast that does a whole bunch of movies by the same artist in a row, although we've been on, we've come off of our accidental Susan Sarandon Marathon, and now we have quite accidentally done two David Stratharne movies in a row. I swear to you, I did not remember that he was an American pastoral, and yet here we are.

How many Strathans are we at? Only these two. So there's a lot. I'm sure we had this conversation last week. I don't know if we did. But yeah, we had been woefully negligent in including David Stratharne in our previous 162 episodes. So now we've really come on strong. We have.

Strathearn also not only narrates the movie, but he is the Philip Roth device of this movie novel where like there's essentially in all of Philip Roth or most of Philip Roth's books like a stand-in for the author himself or like this character that is associated with him right Nathan Zuckerman who David Stratharne plays in this is the sort of standard Philip Roth stand-in character who he writes into quite a few of his novels. So, yeah, so definitely, and from everything that I read, I read a bunch of the reviews

for this movie, because I've not read the novel, the very, very celebrated novel, American Pastoral, which will definitely talk about that. But all of the reviews, a lot of the reviews that I had read talked about how in this film's sort of deficits of adaptation from this, like, celebrated novel to this quite uncelebrated film, that that particular, character and having and sort of downplaying that character was actually quite a bit of the problem with the movie because that the nature of the sort of framing device in the novel is quite important to how it's perceived and what it's sort of doing and we'll definitely get into that it's also a problem and I would argue even less it's less of a problem for

this for the movie I'm going to mention than it is for the movie we're talking about today, but we've also done a Philip Roth adaptation when we did The Human Stain. Indeed. And in the Human Stain, that character is played by Gary Seneas. And that character is

not utilized enough. So it's like, it doesn't quite work, but, like, you see the type of, like, Philip Roth structure and, like, influence that this, like, somewhat passive observer narrator

effects on the actual narrative and how we as the audience receive certain parts of the story. Whereas Strathairn is basically a framing device in this movie. He's in the first five minutes and the last five minutes essentially. And because of that, as somebody who's not read the novel, I can look at this movie and be like, why is he even there at all? It makes

no sense. And yet, I think from people who read the novel, they're like, no, he needs to be in it much, much more, which I find very interesting. I also want to say while we're tallying up numbers of movies that we've covered by the different cast members in this film, this is, I believe, our first Dakota fanning movie. She's trying to catch up to L. We got, like, how many Ls? We got like four or five. I think it's four. I think we've done four L fanning movies. So like we really, really need to try and balance some of those scales with Dakota. The older fanning, she was there first, and I kind of feel bad that we've, you know, as an older sibling, I feel for her that the younger sibling has... There's less Dakota

fanning movies, though. There's less Dakota fanning movies, and there's certainly less Dakota fanning movies that made any impression. I think you look at a lot of her movies, and you're just like, that existed? Like, you know, I think, I feel like we've almost like run the thing about like this movie doesn't exist into the ground but like I'm bringing up here filmography right now and it is really striking so all right we're going to do this in order very quickly but yes so like obviously she comes on with I am Sam and gets a sag nomination gets a sag nomination man on fire she's essentially like co-lead with Denzel Washington or at least like very, very prominent in that movie, War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise, Charlotte's

Webb, like, all of this stuff where she's just like, she is your premier child actress, and she's so self-possessed, and she's so, you know, everybody's really struck by it. Secret Life of Bees is sort of that same thing. She's the voice of Caroline. And then as she sort of like starts to age up. The roles get fewer and they're sort of more particular where like she's in the twilight movie, some of them at least. She's playing Jane, who is this very sort of like stoic character who like can cause people to have just like unbearable pain. That's sort of her like power. And but it's very, very obviously different than what she'd been doing. But then she's makes this like just movie after movie once she's getting into her sort of like adolescence

and older that like people like you and I have probably heard of at least a lot of these but like nobody else has like very good girls her and uh is it elizabeth olson in that one sure night moves the least uh the least heralded kelly reichert movie the one the only kelly rickart movie i still haven't seen i mean you should see it it's not my favorite kelly rickart movie but you know it's it's not terrible and um she She's in a movie called Every Secret Thing that I talk about a little bit, just because it's on, I catch it on, like, late night showtime a lot, the one with her and, uh, and, um, Patty Cakes.

What's that actress's name? Daniel McDonnell. Oh, Patty Cake dollar sign, uh, not Kelly McDonald. That's a different actress. Danielle McDonald. Danielle McDonald. Yes. Um, and then, and, uh, and, uh, Diane Lane is in it.

And it's the one about, like, the two young girls who, uh, killed a young girl. child when they were little and they both went to jail for it. You watch this on the regular? No, it's just on television a lot. And so I will be flipping through the channels and I'll just sort of like notice it and I'll, you know, I'll stick with it for like 10 minutes just because it's a Dakota fanning movie and I like Dakota Fanning. I watched the last half of it one time and it's it's one of those sort of just like

it's it's not about them killing this kid. It's about the aftermath of it. they like, you know, you remember that notorious British real-life event were like the two tweens or whatever, killed like a six-year-old, and then they went to jail. The year that all of the Oscar-nominated shorts were about dead children, and that was one of them. And also, Andrew Garfield was in that movie, Boy A, that's basically based on that story, too. So, like, this is one of those sort of loosely based on that kind of story, except it's a mystery, and it's one of them's bad, and the other one is good, and it's not the one that you think.

Anyway, she's in a movie called Effie Gray that I always confused with Charlotte Gray, which is the... That's the Blanchet. That's the Blanchet movie. This one is Emma Thompson and Dakota Fanning, and it's some sort of... Emma Thompson wrote it. This was this very unheralded movie for, you know, starring and being written by Emma Thompson. Anyway, she was in that. She was in...

I mean, American Pastoral kind of is included in that as well. She's in a movie called The Benefactor, which is Richard Gere plays a philanthropist in that movie. It's just a lot of stuff that goes direct to cable. Like, in the video store era, it would be a lot of, like, direct-to-video kind of things. And then she just kind of resurfaces, and she's also doing. doing television. She's doing the alienist on the TNT. People like that show. People like that show. Oh yeah. Like I don't want to slate that at all. I think the big one that you're, I mean, not big because like if you want to talk about a movie that doesn't exist, this, this one has been

like scrubbed from the planet. I think, and people have like kind of forgotten about this controversy. It was the Sundance movie. I think it was called Hound Dog. Hound Dog. Where she plays a child who is like sexually abused and right that was at least notorious for them that it was like naval gazing but it turned out that it wasn't as much as people thought it was but that initial reaction to it kind of poisoned the well and nobody really wanted to see it and yeah it was sort of a notorious sundance movie and uh yeah and that was back in 2007 so that was the one that was like because a lot of that controversy was i hate that Hollywood tries to to transition child actresses to their adult stage by sexualizing them.

And that was sort of the reputation that was put on to Hound Dog. A movie I've not seen, so I shouldn't say anything about it qualitatively. How many of us have seen it, especially that weren't at that same. I was one of those people who was just like, after that initial thing, I was like, well, that's not a movie I really want to see. And so I didn't. Yeah. And it sort of went away, so I didn't really have to. Yeah.

And it was one of those things where the intention is, like, talking about, uh, abuse, but like some people took it as being this thing that it was sexualizing this child actor. Right, right. So when she sort of resurfaces in films a couple years ago, she's Squeaky Fromm and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,

which is not a major role, but she's sort of the focal point of a scene. And like, in that way that Quentin Tarantino can bring an actor who you've maybe forgotten about for a while, It's interesting that, like, she was probably off the map in major Hollywood films for as long or maybe even longer than Travolta was off the map before he did Pulp Fiction. You know what I mean?

It's probably that same kind of a timeline. And so, like, obviously Tarantino was famous for, obviously, John Travolta, Pam Greer, any number of the actors who he brought around in films like the Kill Bill movies or Hateful Eight or anything like. that. It seemed briefly that, like, oh, Dakota Fanning is maybe going to get the Tarantino treatment from that. But increasingly, obviously, he's working with, like, major Hollywood actors. So, like, the Dakota Fannings now get these sort of featured supporting roles rather than, you know, Vincent Vega or Jackie Brown. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, she just has the one scene, and I think she's really good in the one scene. She is really good in that one scene. She's very memorable in that movie.

It's a cameo, you know? Right, right. But, like, I think Margar Kuali and somewhat Julia Butters got the attention that we may be expected from a casting announcement of Dakota Fanning plays Squeaky From, you know? Yes, exactly. We didn't realize it was just a cameo. And we're still awaiting her and Elle together in. Melanie Laurent's, the Nightingale, which is about two sisters in France during World War II, based on a novel.

I know a lot of people that love that book, too, so I'll be very, very curious about that movie. I'm rooting for it, if only for the fanning sisters. And then she's been attached to a film version of the Bell Jar for a while, I feel like. And who knows if that's going to actually get made? Who knows if that's going to actually do anything for her? I'm always very skeptical of these kind of long in development adaptations of kind of literary canon books. I mean, American Pastoral sort of falls into that, it's later canon, but it falls into that problem of how do you, how are you impressive with this? How does a Beljar movie really wow you when the book is so ensconced in American culture?

Do you know what I mean? Well, and like its literary status is like so high. Yeah. What can you, truly what can you do with the material? Because like I think, and like we'll get into this with American pastoral, where it's just like, it's one of those things where something has such a high literary regard that it almost seems. like people are afraid to do anything but the most like basic one to one type of adaptation that's so boring like yes and uh this kind of uh unwillingness to understand that what works in prose and like style in terms of like a narrative flow character intrigue does not it's you can can't do a one-to-one transfer. There's very few options that we would maybe consider traditional straightforward adaptations that are very interesting. Well, and so American

Pastoral is published in 1997. It is, again, like, rapturously received as like one of Philip Roth's greatest novels. It wins the Pulitzer Prize, right? It wins the Pulitzer Prize. It wins the Pulitzer Prize. And is like, because it comes at the very end of the 1990s, its reputation is in full bloom when it comes time for best of the century lists, the sort of like the essential novels of the 20th century. So it ends up on a lot of those lists. Very high on a lot of, I feel like it was like second to beloved on one particularly prominence. Yeah, the two big ones that I at least remember around this time where we're doing these massive retrospective

lists. One of them was the New York Times book review. That's the one that it was a runner-up with like three other books, including Blood Meridian, to Tony Morrison's beloved. The other one, Time Magazine, did 100 Greatest English Language novels

on there that I don't think was ranked, but like that one got a lot of attention and it was on there because that, I believe, is the list where Watchman showed up and people were like see what a great list

because we are acknowledging different types of literature we are not snobs look at us come to the masses yes that's very interesting but I feel like it has definitely settled in as like

the Philip Roth novel this is a man whose novels and works of literature go back as far as the 60s obviously and his and has, like, continue to go. Like, the plot against America, which was just recently adapted into, I would say a pretty

great HBO miniseries, actually. And we'll talk about sort of successful versus unsuccessful adaptations of his work. That has to be the most successful adaptation of Philip Roth. That isn't the Matthew Reese episode of Girls. Right. Which is basically, like, a riff on Philip Roth. But, yeah, and so you've got stuff, like, obviously, like, Portnoy's Complaint, and And goodbye Columbus and things like that.

But I feel like when American Pastoral comes along, because it is this kind of summary, not summary, but just sort of like this is going to be like the novel where Philip Roth, one of the great novelists of the 20th century, comments on America in the American century, right? to go from, like, the end of the World War II generation through the turmoil of the 1960s and sort of what is it saying about America? So, like, very unsurprisingly then becomes the kind of signature Philip Roth novel. So, like, the expectations on this adaptation were really, really high. And people had been trying to make it for years. most specifically there was a there was a film attempted with

Philip Noyce attached to direct and this version of the film was almost Philip Noice. Philip Noyes dropped out like less than a year before filming and then it was announced that Ewan McGregor would also be directing to show like this cast was already attached to Philip Noyes and McGregor had wanted to play this role for a long time Although at one point it was going to be Paul Bettney opposite Jennifer Connolly and Evan Rachel Wood in the,

Evan Rachel Wood in the Dakota Fanning role makes so much sense because she would end up playing a lot of roles like this, this sort of like version of like, oh God, our daughter, where have we gone wrong kind of a thing? Obviously 13 is a much more modern version of that, but I'm also thinking of like her role in Mildred Pierce where she's just like so incredible. incredibly antagonistic to her mother in that movie. She's sensational in that. I mean, even like across the universe, which is a, like, another 60s type of thing. Yeah. And we'll definitely talk about how this movie handles the 60s.

I think that's probably the big thing about this movie where it attempts to succeed and where it does not. But yes, anyway, so McGregor sort of comes on. late in the game to sort of bring this one across the finish line essentially. And seemingly to be like, well, I want to play this role and if I want to play this role, I'm going

to have to direct it. So it's his directorial debut. And seemingly his last directorial effort as well. Yeah. We'll definitely get into it. Yeah. We should maybe get into the plot description

before we keep digging. We should. Too deep into this episode because the Ewan McGregor thing is definitely something we're going to have to unpack with what works. It doesn't work in this movie. But guys, we are here talking about American pastoral directed by none other than Ewan McGregor, written by John Romano based on the novel by Philip Roth. John Romano also, he's done a lot of television, but also the screenwriter of the Lincoln lawyer film. I mean, the two great American novels. Yes, absolutely. American pastoral and the Lincoln lawyer.

You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. Can't imagine anybody else who could, you know, adapt to this novel. Starring Ewan McGregor, Jennifer Connolly, Dakota Fanning, David Stratharne, Peter Riegert, Uzo Adduba, Samantha Mathis shows up. Valerie Curry as like Lil Kim in an Andrea McArdle wig. Oh, my God. I mean, seriously. Not the Andrew McArdle wig, you're so right.

She has a fucking Andrea McArdle wig while she's, like, talking about her genitalia. Walking Red Scare episode, Valerie Curry's character in this film, like, good golly, yeah. You could do a drag megamix to, like, how many licks to her monologue in the hotel room is. my god um and then of course the great molly parker i love molly park for a few scenes as maybe the worst therapist on film we'll talk about it because like this is very emblematic of the way a lot of i will say male writers write therapists especially in this sort of era where it's like they write about them as like this woman's trying to destroy my family by pointing out like all the things that i'm doing wrong like i wish my therapist wouldn't put these ideas

ideas in my wife's head and is like actively destructive in what she's like it's it's it's shade queen mollie parker in this movie like she reads jennifer connelly the house down and this thing it's uh it's a lot uh the movie world premiered at tiff um cratered we will talk about it and then uh theoretically opened october 21st 2016 the same weekend as moonlight the best picture winner. Schrodinger's opening, where it did it, did it open? Did it never open? Who could possibly know?

It played a max of 70 theaters. Yeah. Like reading the info on this movie, it's like, it opened wider. I was like, wider. Yeah. Err is doing a lot of work there. Yeah. Joseph, are you ready to give our lovely listeners a 60-second plot description of American

Pastoral? Absolutely. All right. Then your 60-second plot description starts now. All right, David Stratherin plays Philip Rothstandin, Nathan Zuckerman, who goes to his high school reunion, all excited to hear about the Swede, who was the great sort of golden boy of his high school, played by Ewan McGregor. The Swede is called that because although he is Jewish, he is very fair-haired and athletic and sort of the golden boy of his school. He marries the local beauty queen, Shiksa Beauty Queen, played by Jennifer. for Connolly. They have a daughter named Mary. Mary has a terrible stutter throughout her childhood and adolescence. She becomes radicalized by the Vietnam War. She ends up getting cut up with radicals, and she is accused of planting a bomb at a post office that kills a man. So she goes on the run. So Ewan McGregor spends the rest of the movie frantically and fruitlessly searching for his daughter and is disillusioned as he goes along by the disintegration of American society.

and he finally finds her, and she's in Skid Row, and she's doing terribly, and he ends up dying a sad and broken man. Yeah, and she, like, he sees her a few times, then never sees her again, but keeps, like, visiting this one. Showing up her, outside her hovel or whatever, standing out there, getting progressively older. Ramshackle building. Synecicki, New Yorking his way through the end of this movie. And then she shows up at his funeral. This movie really made me think about how much Charlie Kaufman was sort of leaning into a Philip Roth kind of a thing with Synecicki, New York, with the stuff with Philip Seymour Hoffman and his daughter and that one, and sort of how he sort of grows old and sad. I don't know.

This movie made me think about that a little bit. It makes sense, right, that Charlie Kaufman would have an affinity for these sort of Philip Roth protagonists. I feel like they truck in some of some of. of the same subject matter, obviously with Kaufman, sort of taking it in his own particular directions. But I feel like if I read more Philip Roth, I would probably see a lot more shades of Charlie Kaufman's stuff in there. Just a thought, just an assumption. I could be more. No, just a word experiment. Follow it down the trail. So the casting of Ewan McGregor is interesting in this movie, because obviously the thing about the Swede is that he's Jewish, but he looks like, again,

fair-haired American boy. And I think that's a big part of that character. So casting Ewan McGregor would seem on the surface to be smart because he does look so, I don't know, just like smiling golden boy. But I think my thing with Ewan McGregor often is I find those postures very empty. And I find that unless you are giving him, unless it's something like Moulin Rouge, where the whole idea is that he, like, believes in love and art and truth in a way that feels very corny,

like intentionally corny, like, that's part of, that's baked into the idea of it. I think that works. I think otherwise, I find his persona so often to feel very fake and phony. and I can't ever really connect to it. He's another one of these actors that has this, like, really tricky relationship with earnestness because, like, it's so integral to some of his best work like Moulin Rouge or down with love.

And I think when he's doing something that subverts it, where he's playing somebody who's maybe, you know, not the good person or who is a little on the dangerous side, like a velvet gold mine. Right. You know, it prevents that in his performance style. But when he is playing someone who maybe we're supposed to root for, who, even if they're a complicated character, you know, the screen persona is less complicated like this. He's bad.

Yeah. And I think that's kind of the case here. And a lot of it is that sort of error of ad. adaptation. I talked about it at the beginning about how, from reading the reviews, the sense was that in the novel, the Nathan Zuckerman character, is not only hearing about the Sweet story, because the thing is, he runs into the Swedes younger brother, who in the movie is played by, remind me, Rupert Evans. Rupert Evans, who is not so recognizable as a figure that, like, you couldn't have just cast an older actor to play him in the flash forward scenes. Like, I don't understand

why we need Rupert Evans with, like, really bad old age makeup. The old age makeup in this movie, we need to free Jennifer Connolly from the evil grips of old age makeup. It's true. Well, we need to free Jennifer Connolly from most of this movie. This movie is very, very bad for her. We'll definitely get into it. But the idea that Nathan Zuckerman runs into Jerry Lavov, the younger brother, at this reunion. He's been out of the country for like decades, so he doesn't really know what's happened to the Swede. And Jerry is like, my brother has just recently died, and I'm going to tell you what happened to him. And so the whole movie then is this sort of Zuckerman being told about what happened to the Swede. But in the novel, it's that Zuckerman is hearing the

story from the younger brother, but also sort of extrapolating the story from what he assumes, from what his assumptions are about the suite, from his sort of visions of this, again, all-American golden boy. And so the novel becomes about the kind of conflict between the American ideal that Zuckerman sort of has in his head for the Swede and the darker reality of it.

And it's, again, this is why a lot of people called the novel Unadaptable, because so much of it lies in the sort the cracks in between that and the gulfs in between that and the way that Roth's prose sort of has ideas that sort of flow through there and and speaks to sort of America and the American character through that and this movie doesn't engage in that at all this in this movie it is straight up a framing device and a really limp one at that and it becomes like I think even what people think are great about the novel in terms of, like, perception versus narrative of the American ideal.

Like, there are so many movies that unpack that specifically in, like, Vietnam era stories that it's just like, if you have this really paltry adaptation like this movie is, it's so boring and familiar and like. Yes. This movie really made me think about, is there a way to do a movie not only set in the 1960s, but about the sort of tumult of the 1960s? Is there a way to do it right? Because my usual complaints are that, like, this is just sort of like a travel log of the greatest hits of the 60s. And you have, you know, the contractually obligated Buffalo Springfield needle drop. All right, we're going to get into that in half a second because I have a game for you. But, like, yeah, right, the Buffalo Springfield, the newsreel footage, the, you know, the monk setting himself on fire outside the Capitol. And all of the, like, again, like the greatest hits sort of approach to that. And I always feel like, well, that's the wrong way to do it because it feels so impersonal. It feels like you're watching, like, a not really good CNN retrospective. you know what I mean?

And and yet I think something like this which does engage in some of that but also in digging into one particular story of just this Dakota fanning character

as one teen who is radicalized and sort of becomes a I guess I mean terrorist right? She's bomb in a post office so

In just drilling down so tightly to that, my feeling watching the movie is, like, I need more context. You know, I need more, I need more of a feeling of, like, where the country is at this time. Because otherwise, it's just her yelling at her father about every, or like, yelling at Lyndon Johnson on the television. And it becomes, like, really just didactic in that way. And, like, you don't get a sense of, like, the. madness. And it's funny that this movie comes up in 2016 just before Trump is elected. And we're now watching it now in 2021 after the Trump administration, but after sort of... And it feels like now is

the time that we should be... It feels like now, it's more... We would understand how to contextualize... I guess. It's not like... It doesn't make the movie any better. But I feel like it almost speaks to this moment more than it spoke to a moment in early fall of 2016. But even still, I'm like... It doesn't do it well, but yes. Right. But again, so like, I was just like, so are you too specific?

Are you too drilled down, or are you two wide lens? And I'm just like, is there a good way to do a film that is about the 60s? I mean, I think that this movie's approach is to contextualize it within the family, at least. And all of that just feels like, why am I watching this? like the kind of sexual awakening that the daughter goes through where it's like awkwardness

and she's like, it's like, why do we have to see? Oh, the part where younger Dakota Fanning makes a pass at her own father. Like, Philip Roth is nasty. Why? Why? That's when I texted you that when she like put,

pull down her little like strap at her dress and it's like, kiss me like you kiss mommy. And I'm like, Philip Roth, like you had to bring an electrocomplex. into this like you really had to do that like well but like also with Jennifer Connolly's character it does try to have these things that it's like transitional generations right where it feels like the two parent figures are a generation that's caught between how their family their parents you know taught them to Ray like

live their life through some type of a marriage ideal, but then a younger generation is going through protests and, uh, you know, free love and those type of things where it's like, I think it, there's something about that here, but like, the way that the movie does it is so flat-footed and like, we don't see enough of what Mary's doing outside of her yelling at her parents. You know what I mean? We don't see what her life is we don't see any of her... Right, she's such a construct. If it does, the other character is better,

it partly works that she's a construct. Like, maybe she should be to say the point of that is trying to make. But like, the whole thing about how Jennifer Connolly gets plastic surgery, it feels like it's taking us through like a diorama of like, like superficial concerns. By the way, she gets plastic surgery to her face and the movie's solution for that is not like doing something with makeup to her face. They literally give her like a sharp bob.

Yeah, right. That's plastic surgery. But the other thing that this movie does that I really can't stand is it externalizes its psychology to the point of having a psychologist character, the Molly Parker character, sort of like lay out the themes of the thing. Like, it's bad enough when the psychologist is talking to Ewan McGregor and Jennifer Connolly and being like, your daughter, her stutter is a reaction to the fact that she can't live up to the standards of having a beauty queen mother and an all-American father, and she

can't handle the American ideal that you two represent. And it's like, oh, so we're just sort of laying out the themes of. the novel via this psychologist character, that's bad enough. But then when the Dakota Fanning daughter also starts parroting the stuff, which I guess is supposed to be that she's sort of an indication that she's kind of parroting her own psychologist, because like we find out later that the psychologist was harboring her for a while and that kind of thing. But like, it's mostly just like, stop saying the themes of your novel out loud. Like, stop, stop this. Stop this right now. Like, let us internalize this. Let us internalize this. Let us

interpret this. Stop just like, because it feels so false and phony. What rebellious daughter is going to be like, it's going to be that hung up on like Mama's Beauty Queen, yada, yada, yada. Especially when you don't ever see Jennifer Connolly's character, like, particularly talking about that aspect of her life very much. You don't see enough, you don't see enough of their, of Connolly and McGregor's relationship as it develops as it is. There's one really actually good scene with her and Peter Regert, where they're, like, haggling over how they're going to raise their theoretical kid, Jewish versus, versus Catholic or whatever, and that's kind of an interesting scene, but you don't see any of the parts where, like, McGregor and Connolly get together, or, I don't

know, I don't know, it's just like... I love Peter Regert, I just have to say, iconic pickle guy from cinema, crossing to Lancy. We love movies with pickle guys. Wait, so before we get too far away, because I did put a pin in the Buffalo Springfield thing, and it was so surprising to me, I kind of gasped when it happened, because we've gotten to a point where that song is so universally accepted as cliched, that I was like, have we gone around the bend of it being such a cliche for so long that nobody would want to use? it, that now we can use it again? Absolutely not. It should be illegal at this point. You are not allowed to use that song to convey the 60s.

You just stop it. Stop it. So I wanted to play a short little round of alter egos because I love this game. And what I've done is I've done a game of alter egos where all of the films that are answers to this are films that have used Buffalo Springfields for what it's worth in their soundtrack. Yes. Yes. So it's a short one. It's only nine films. But are you in? Oh, God. I mean, they're all going to take place in the 60s. So I think this may not be as difficult as I'm afraid it is, but let's do it. Let's get into it. All right. So Alter Egos is the game where I will

name three movie characters. Chris then has to figure out what actors played all those characters. And then what film all of those actors are in together. So it's three characters from various movies, and Chris has to figure out who they're played by and what film they're all in together. All right. Starting off, Lumiere, Emma Darwin, and Cherie Curry.

Okay, Lumier, is that Stanley Tucci? It's not Stanley Tucci. Oh, okay. So it's, oh my God, it's right on the tip of my tongue. Who is the Lumiere in the animated one? It is, um, um, um, um, God, that's embarrassing. What? Give me the other characters.

I'll come back to it. All right. Um, sorry, I clicked away. Emma Darwin and Cherie Curry. Okay. Emma Darwin. Right. It's Sarah Gatton.

No. What are you thinking of? I was thinking of a dangerous method. No, that's not Darwin. No, Darwin. Yeah, like, is that, oh, this is, it's a, oh, that's right. Stanley Tucci is not Lumier. It's you and McGregor, we're talking about American Pastoral. We're talking about American Pastoral.

Because you're also talking about creation, which is a Jennifer Connolly, Paul Bettney joint, where he plays Darwin. Yes. And then, um, Sheree Curry is. Dakota family. In the runaways, yes. All right. Next one. Greg Focker,

Sherlock Holmes, and Dewey Finn. Sherlock Holmes is Robert Downey Jr. Greg Focker is Ben Stiller. This is Tropic Thunder. Who's Dewey Finn? Great question. It's Jack Black in School of Rock. Oh, okay.

All right. Next one. Joe Fox, Aunt May, and Nathan Zuckerman. Joe Fox is Tom Hanks, and you've got Male. Aunt May is Sally Field in The Amazing Spider-Man. This is Forrest Gump. Right. Who's Nathan Zuckerman?

You kind of already spoiled this a little bit. Gary Seneas in the Human Stain, as you have mentioned. All right. I thought that was interesting as I was going through. It was like, what am I going to do for Gary Sinease? Oh, oh, that fits. next one captain antonio carelli reverend ernst toller and the joker uh okay so uh captain carelli is famously nicholas cage the bella bombina himself yes the the most bella bombino right um and then the joker

is either Jack Nicholson, Jared Leto, or Heath Ledger, obviously, or Joaquin Phoenix. I'm going to take a wild leap. Is it Jared Leto? Is this Lord of War? It is Andrew Nichols Lord of War. Reverend Ernst Toller, want to take a stab? That is Ethan Hawk in First Reformed. Very good. Very good. I've never seen Lord of War. I was sort of I was worried that you were going to be adrift, but you are better at this than me. All right. Dr. Jonathan Crane, Zeus, and Mildred Loving.

Mildred Loving has to be Ruth Naga. Yep. Is Zeus Anthony Hopkins? No. What are you thinking of? Isn't he Zeus and Thor? No, he's Odin and Thor. different different cultural mythology isn't he Zeus and something else

I don't think so but our listeners can correct me if I'm wrong it's not Anthony Hopkins what was the first one Dr. Jonathan Crane oh this I know that character name that's not hmm I can say alias scarecrow oh uh that is Killian Murphy. Yes, from Batman Begins, and also, I believe, the Dark Night Rises. Okay, so who has played Zoot? You gave me Killian Murphy first. So Killian Murphy has to be, like, topped build.

Is this sunshine, which I still have to see? It's not sunshine. Oh, you should see sunshine. You should. But no, it's not. Is it Breakfast on Pluto? It is Breakfast on Pluto. his Golden Globe-nominated role.

Zeus, in this case, is Liam Neeson from the Clash-Sash-Rath of the Titans movies. All right, next one. Ray Barone, Motormouth Maybell, and Chi-Chi Rodriguez. Chichie Rodriguez is John Liguizamo. In Tuang Fu? Yes. Did you say Mama Morton? No, you said Motor Mouth Mabel, which is Queen Latifah in Hairspray.

Yes. What the hell movie are they in together? What was the first character? Ray Barone. I don't know if I know that one. Television. Ray Barone. Okay.

Is this some famous show that I've never seen? It was a very long-running show. The first name should help unlock it for you, even if you've never seen a show, which you probably have never. Ray. So is it, um... What's a longer form of that name? Ray, oh, everybody loves... Oh, uh, so, um... What's his goddamn name?

Uh... He is also named Ray. What is he the lead of? That Queen Latifah isn't... This isn't, like, taxi. No? what the hell um think ray romano yes think animated

oh I'll give it to you if you get the franchise I'm not going to make you get the specific movie Ice Age Ice Age the Meltdown I couldn't think of a good Dennis Leary name so I uh so I went to Queen Latifah instead

all right next one Madeline Martha McKenzie Malin Eatenton and Sherry Ann Cabot This is also a Sally Field movie Because Malin from Steel Magnolias Yes She wants to hit something and she wants to hit it hard

She sure does Okay I completely Forget what the other ones were Madeline Martha McKenzie And Sherry Ann Cabot Madeline, Martha McKenzie, I do know, and it's right there, and I'm going to get someone yelling at me, probably like my sister.

Imagine that I am Laura Dern, and I'm saying Madeline instead of Madeline. Oh, Reese, Rees Witherspoon. In? Big Little Lies. Big Little Lies, yes. Is this Legally Blonde 2? It is Legally Blonde 2. I'm going to make you give the subtitle, though.

Armed and Fabulous That is miscingeniality at you I know all second movies should be Should be called Armed and Fabulous Yes, they should Legally Blonde 2, Red, White, and Blonde That's a good game I should do Is movie subtitles

I'm going to drop that down for my next movie trivia Sherry and Cabot want to take a stab I don't know I never saw Legally Blonde 2 Red White and Blonde I just know that Sally Field is in it. Who else is in that movie? Sherry Ann Cabot, does the phrase bend and snap help you?

Oh, it's Jennifer Coolidge. Jennifer Coolidge invest in show is Sherry Ann Cabot. All right, last two. Lillian Hellman, Howard Cocell, and Tom Buchanan. Howard Cosell is John Voight. Yes. Tom Buchanan is either Bruce Dern or Joel Edgerton, I'm going to guess that it's Bruce Stern.

Correct. Is this coming home? It is. The first one is Jane Fonda. Yes, Leanne Hellman is Jane Fonda in... In Julia. Julia, very good. People talk shit about that movie, but I like it a lot.

It's a good movie. It's a good movie. All right. Last one. Billy Flynn, Dr. Otto Octavius, and Jeannie Schmidt. Dr. Otto Octavius is Alfred Molina Billy Flynn is Richard Gear

Yes, in respectively Spider-Man 2 and Chicago And also Spider-Man No Way Home Third one is Jeannie No A-Nol I said No Way Home

Isn't that what it's called? Yes, that is what the new Spider-Man is called Just to disobe- You have been waiting for it to become Spider-Man No-Homo Well, that's a sequel to Spider-Man Anal is just Spider-Man no-Anal

And it covers the game Genie Schmidt Oh, I think I know this Concentrate on the last name there Schmidt, right Oh, is this I can think of HeadV Schmidt from Hedwig and the Angry

Inch. But no. I don't think the mom is going to be someone you're giving me. No. Would it help if I said an alternate character name for this actress is French ticket agent? Okay. French ticket agent in perhaps

a movie that I am obsessed with around the holidays. Oh, Hope Davis. There we go from Home Alone. from home alone. Hope Davis, her French dialect in home alone should be taught in every public school educational program. I'm sorry, there is no way. I'm sorry, we can only, we can only offer you a tickets later on in the week. Please, don't drop her doing that. Who is Jeannie Schmidt then

if it's Hope Davis? Hope Davis, Jeannie Schmidt. Schmidt. About Schmidt. Yes. All right. Any idea who those three actors are in. What movie those three actors are in? Gear, Molina, Hope Davis. I've never seen this movie. It did have early Oscar buzz. Is this, because of Richard Gear, is it the hoax? It's the hoax.

I haven't seen this either. Right. Nobody does. Nobody has. Maybe we should do that movie to talk about Richard Gear. Yeah. There's a lot of Richard Gear movies we could do. That's definitely one of them. But yes. good job with alter egos for what it's worth edition.

All of those movies had Beaufort Springfield in them. Can we just talk about another huge thing that is a problem with this movie? And it is that... Speak on it. All due respect to Ewan McGregor, he is not a filmmaker. No. Part of the problem with this movie, and I realize, like, it's not always interesting to talk about aesthetics, but, like, aesthetics can make...

not to be too, you know, broad about it, but it can make a break of a movie. But, like, aesthetics are important. Like, he doesn't know where to place a camera. It's very, very visually boring. There's so little, like, interest in the way that scenes are cut and structured, the way we move from scene to scene. There's, like, no control over the narrative.

There's no, like, impact of this is what a, scene you know like what is what is the like story beats what's the structure it doesn't exist like there's certain scenes in the movie like especially the one that jumps out to me in the way that he directs actors um the scene where that this felt most true where they're like she's making burgers and then they start an argument in the kitchen about linden johnson it felt like you were watching a rehearsal and like a first rehearsal Yeah. And that's what so many of the very dialogue-heavy scenes felt like.

I, you know, just in terms of having a control over characterization, uh, tempo of scenes, like. There are so many characters in this movie that you walk out of this movie feeling like, well, I didn't know them at all. Like this, the Jennifer Connolly character is so adrift in this movie. And it's because you don't. there's no attempt made by the camera to bring you into her space. She's so much...

It's like a failure on both fronts in that you can't, like, he doesn't know how to frame, and he also doesn't know how to bring out, you know, character development, you know. Right. And then so when she has a scene where she's, like, stripped naked, but with her pageant sash in the glove factory, sort of gone crazy, It sounds like my Friday night By the time you get to that It has no impact

Beyond just you feeling like vaguely embarrassed for the actors Like I spent so much of this movie being like vaguely embarrassed for the actors But it's because There's no attempt to humanize her at all At all And I don't think that could That can't be the intention of the story Because

there's there's to what end to what i'm not to you know mya rudolph as dion warwick of it but like to what end would you keep that character at such an arm's length it makes no sense there's a real lack of understanding on a scene to scene basis of what information we in the audience are supposed to take out of that scene what we are supposed to uh you know interpret from a character yeah truly on a scene to scene basis. I don't think Ewan McGregor has any real understanding of what even like the emotion of a scene is. The only scene truly that I think worked in this movie for like, I got out of it what I am supposed to because of what is on the page is that like final father-daughter conversation scene, you know, the last time that he sees his daughter. which like is probably also the I mean it's complex because you know we in the audience are finally understanding all of the things that she's gone through and all of that but also it's like it's the most obvious on its face emotion you know like it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand or maybe a therapist to understand what we're supposed to learn from that scene and how we're supposed to feel about it.

Um, a thing that's not you and McGregor or Philip Roth's fault, but a thing that I wanted to ask you, in those scenes where we reconnect with Dakota Fanning, and she's wearing the mask over her face. Did it set you on edge as much as it did me that it wasn't covering her nose because now we live in COVID times? And I'm just like, just cover your nose with your mask. Um, I mean, uh, I didn't think of it. Did you not? It's all I could think of, Chris. It's all I could think of. I can't imagine. I mean, at this point, like, nothing was pulling me into the movie, except I will say, I do think in the back third of this movie, I think Dakota Fanning is pretty decent. I think if it was a better movie. Once they stopped shackling her with the stutter. Yeah. I think, I think the requirement to do the stutter and to stutter as harshly as she does in this movie, it really, it weighs her down. Again, it felt like watching a first rehearsal. Yes. And it's none of the actor's fault. I mean, like, Ewan McGregor is an actor in the movie, so it is his fault. Like, I don't think anybody's as bad as an actor in this movie as Ewan McGregor is, but like... Right. The thing that drove me crazy in the back half when we reconnect with Dakota Fanning's character is she's now become, she's sort of been broken by the counterculture, right? And she's now become this woman who sort of wanders around like a ghost in her life. And she wears a mask because she's adopted this sort of, of extreme. She says Indian philosophy where she walks, she treads lightly on the ground so as to not

harm any living thing there. She wears a mask so that she does not harm the molecules in the air with her breath, and she just doesn't bathe because she doesn't want to harm the molecules of water. And it's like, it's this very, to me, kind of sneering portrait of like 60s, hippie um consciousness do you know what I mean? It absolutely could have just

I think it's trying to be empathic or embracing of her because of the things she's gone through but I think it just as easily could have been a like you know look how crazy or as much of an idiot as she is like it's definitely doing some of that like I think the movie is trying to

it's making her a little bit of a freak yeah yeah and in a way that feels like it's like it's like It's the butt of a joke in a way. And this movie definitely doesn't let the U.N. McGregor character off either. It doesn't let the sort of greatest generation characters off of the hook either. There's definitely sort of wide sweeping critique, but like the way that it depicts the sort of the youthful radicals in this movie, like the Valerie Curry character is essentially just a Bond villain in, as you said, in Andrea McCartlewick. who is just like...

She's like a Bond villain from late-night Cinemax... Spouting Red Scare topics. Like, it's a whole... I swear to God, it's so... It's every... It's every bad thought you ever had about somebody who is like, you know, was anti-war in the 60s or whatever. And you have this, like, this younger generation

who essentially exist just to, like, say mean shit to their parents. You know what I mean? Yeah, like those scenes, this was one of the things that I was like, this is maybe a little bit more relevant five years after it was made because it felt very okay boomer. Yes, it felt it there, it felt very okay boomer. I mean, ironically, being said by characters who are of the boomer generation. You know what I mean? Right. Well, I mean, and maybe that's a more interesting story to tell now. It's to tell a story. But it was that type of annoying, okay boomer thing that it's just like, it's the perspective that just like, just like, hates and thinks that, like, you know, the younger generation are the demons and are just these, like, rhetoric spouting monsters and they're not actual people. Exactly. But maybe it's a more interesting story to tell now, this idea of the boomers when they were at that age, essentially OK boomering their parents who were from the generation before them.

You know what I mean? Like, that's at least something I think you could dig into. That would be a more interesting, like, a perspective or dialogue to have. Instead, it just turns these people into these gross characters in the way that, like, this dialogue mimics, you know. I would rather watch 110 minutes of Samantha Mathis just eviscerating U.N. McGregor and Jennifer Connolly, as she does for one whole scene. She's really good. She is... Our second Samantha Mathis.

Oh, wait. What was our other one? Wait, is Samantha Mathis not in How to Make an American Quilt? No, she is. right right yeah yeah yes yes our second Samantha Mathis I love Samantha Mathis she I mean I don't know I'm sure she has terrible politics or something I don't know I don't know I don't know I anybody who like I don't know I don't trust anybody who's gotten old um and then Uzo adubo in the most fucking thankless character in this thankless house movie Uzo Oduba as a dignified black woman. Like, it's so thin of a characterization. And I love her, and she imbues as much as she can into this woman who, you know,

gets one scene where she sort of dresses down a soldier. But that's it. That's it. It's not a great movie. It's not a great movie. I want to talk about the TIF reception of this movie. Yes. Because, like, we've talked about.

movies that like go to festivals don't do well or they bomb and then they like have a conceivably well they have a conceivable like noticed release. Yes. When we say this movie cratered at TIF like it ceased

to exist the vast majority of people who saw this movie saw it at that festival and like it's kind of the poster child to me of like movies that are like prominently placed at a festival

I looked it up. This movie debuted at the Primo slot on the first Friday night so it like couldn't have been more visible. Yeah. And immediately is scrubbed off the face of the earth. I also looked it up. The TIF

cut is about 20 minutes longer. So in the month before the movie was released they went and cut some stuff out. I'm curious what that would be. I know in like I was trying to pay attention to, like, where it felt like things were weirdly stitched together. Molly Parker's final scene has this weird fade to black that does not seem like it belongs there.

Yeah. Yes. So I wouldn't be surprised if this is the type of movie where they just cut stuff out of the end to wrap it up. Right. Did you see it at that festival? No. I think you mentioned, like, it didn't have one of those inauspicious, like, late in the festival premieres or whatever. It did premiere on the first

Friday night, but that first Friday night's pretty crowded. So I'm, you know what's funny is I can probably bring up what I saw. So the Friday night movies screen for press. It's conceivable that you, because it's a crowded night, you saw something else. And then by that night, you heard to run away screaming. Right. So the Friday premieres screen the morning of right if they don't screen the morning after or do they I don't remember I can't remember either well that Friday was

arrival nocturnal animals a monster calls that's what I watched that morning and then Saturday morning the day after I saw the Anne Hathaway movie colossal but that was also the day that I was running down to the hotel by the water to interview Sandra O. and Anne Hache. So that Saturday I was sort of all over. But I just remember that even by the time, even by that time, nobody was really super excited for American Pastoral. And I feel like the buzz was already not great. And I don't know where that was coming from. But there was not a whole ton of, I think people, you know, I definitely know people who saw it that night. But the fact that it wasn't good wasn't some like big surprise.

for whatever reason. So, yes, I did not see it. And then the movie goes on to make a half a million dollars in never more than 70 theaters. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the lowest grossing movies we've ever done. It's so fascinating to me that this opens the same, opens limited in the same weekend that the eventual best picture winner does. And it's also, this is a Lionsgate movie, and they had Hacksaw Ridge and La La La

So they definitely had the second place movie, too. So it's like this is a good year for Lions game. Yeah. Well, right? Yeah. Even though this is an entirely forgotten movie, it is like right there in the crosshairs of, you know, what the ultimate like best picture narrative would become. Yeah. Well, 2016, I feel like that year really, really got formed by those fall festivals in a way that like a lot of years do.

but like this one especially, where all of a sudden you emerged from Telluride Venice, Toronto, and like La La Land Frontrunner, Moonlight was already getting that like little engine that could buzz and things like a rival and lion and even like hidden figures by showing that little bit of footage at Toronto, like the buzz on that really kicked in. Yeah, because they had a reel and they did a concert, right, because the movie wasn't complete. Right. And that's how you knew that, like, oh, they mean business with this movie because, like, even though it's not finished, they are, they will be damned if they're not going to get in on the fall festival action. So the only really late breaking movies, Hacksaw Ridge didn't get seen at the festivals, I don't think. I don't think it did any festivals. And it didn't, I think it was just that that movie, like, became well-liked. I don't want to talk about Haxon Ridge.

No, I know. Fences was the other late, late arrival of that best picture cast. Fences, I feel like, was finished late. There was some talk where it might even be pushed to the next year, but ultimately it wasn't. But, like, Moonlight, Arrival, La La Land, Lion. And then even though Manchester by the Sea was a Sundance movie, it played the fall festivals as well. So that plus the little bit of hidden figures. And then hell or high water had already opened.

So that's your best picture lineup. 2016 is a great best picture lineup. Like, with the exception of Hacksaw Ridge, which I don't like, everything else is good. That's a good, that's a really good best picture lineup. I'm not high on Lion. Oh, I think. But like I understand why other people are. I liked it a lot.

I've only seen it the one time, but I liked it a lot. And I think there's, like, I think the great stuff there, Moonlight, Arrival is great. And I think I love Manchester by the sea. I really, really do like La La Land for as much as I have my criticisms of it. I really like, I know you don't like Heller Highwater, but I really do. And I really like fences. I think it's a good, I don't know, I think it's a very good best picture line of.

Yeah, that's a pretty good lineup. If only American Pastoral could have cracked it. absolutely not did it get anything I'm looking at its little awards have real no it's just like this played a festival yeah

you and McGregor got a best international actor award for train spotting to Beauty and the Beast and American pastoral that is a I don't know what kind of I don't know what kind of Santa Barbara film festival bullshit Germany was doing that year

but like yipes what like what like three witches called drinking ingredients of three movies could you possibly come up yeah that is a

that is a curse a more like vicious hex that is a curse of some of some extraction yeah um we talked about Molly Parker a little bit can we talk about the fact that like

she should have gotten to Oscar nominations in the last three or four years, and obviously they were never going to happen, but she's so... Madeline and... And pieces of a woman. I hate pieces of a woman. I do, too, but she's the good part of it in that movie. Yes, that's my thing.

I don't like that movie at all, and I don't not like Vanessa Kirby, but I think the best performance is Molly Parker. Yeah, I think Vanessa Kirby is fine. I don't think she's, you know, anywhere near an Oscar nomination to me, but, like, Molly Parker, in the little bit she has. to do in that movie is the best of course. It's wild. It's not wild to me that Ellen Burstyn was the one who got Buzz because like that's a very showy character and it's Ellen fucking Burstyn. So like I get it. But like Molly Parker is the supporting performance

there for sure. Like she's- Molly Parker is in Jockey this season and what is Jockey? Jockey's the Clifton Collins Jr. movie from Sundance. From Sundance I did not see that. Yeah, Sony Classics is pushing it. Is it good? I think it's fine. I think he's fine. I liked Molly Parker in it. I don't. I'm skeptical that it will go very far. There is another Peter Pan movie coming out that she is in. Oh, my God. Oh, wait. David Lowry is directing it, so now I have to, now I have to be open to it. Because it's going to be good. I'm mad. I do not want to see another Peter Pan narrative, but it's David Lowry, so I have to. It's going to be good. He's going to, he's going to kill that. It's going to be so good. But yes, I agree

with you. I am not looking forward to seeing she's playing Mrs. Darling in that opposite, Ellen Tudik is Mr. Darling. Wait, okay, this cast. Jude Law as Captain Hook. Jim Gaffigan is Smee. Molly

Parker, Alan Tudik, Yara Shahidi from Blackish as Tinkerbell. I'm going to like this movie. God damn it. David Lowry. He's so good. Why are you so good? You know what?

If doing another Disney movie, if he also, like, you know, does his own thing like he did with Beats Dragon, you know, I could, I'll be fine. But, like, if it keeps him making whatever the hell he wants to make, fine. Yes, I am with you. I am definitely with you.

We maybe have to do Old Man in the Guns soon. We really, really should. We've talked about David Thalry a bunch lately. I'll ask. Okay. She's also in a movie with Hallie Barry. called The Mother Ship That is a sci-fi adventure drama

Is this the one with the moon Smashing into Earth? I don't know But that's cool That's like the Roland Emmerich with Holly Berry coming soon It looks so stupid It's not Roland Emmerich

It's Matt Charman who I don't know what Matt Sharman I love that like we have these episodes And all of a sudden I'm just like tumbling down an IMDB rabbit hole This is his directorial debut Anyway, Hallie Berry, Molly Parker, I'm already kind of in.

It's going to be great. Yeah, it is going to be. We're into that. All right. What else? What else about American Pastoral? Can we even say, like, we talked about Peter Rieger. He's the fun one.

Oh, let's talk about indignation a little bit. Because, like, in the same year that, like, American Pastoral completely bombs out. The whole thing is the novel was unfilmable. why do people try with Philip Roth? He's just like, you can't get it off of the page. And yet, James Seamus, that same year was just like, do-to-do-do, going to have a really good Philip Roth adaptation. Indication is really solid.

Those scenes with Tracy Letts are incredible. Yes. Tracy Letts rules in that movie. I really like Logan Lerman. You mentioned Sarah Gatton in relation to something else, but that's Sarah Gatton in that movie, right? Yes. I always get her confused.

There's another blonde actress I always get her confused with, which sounds sexist, and I'm sorry, but it's true. Serragadden plays that character a lot. A lot. A lot. It's kind of what keeps me at a little bit of an arm's length with Sarah Gadden, where I'm just like, oh, oh, again. Oh, again, you're going to play that character. I think she is best playing that character when Cherninberg casts her. Sure.

Because, like, he is very keyed in to what is, I think, straight. or off about her as a performer in a way that I find her interesting in his... Well, we talked about a dangerous method, so yes. There is definitely something strange about her sort of comportment, and that kind of... It's very, like, icy, blonde peculiarity, and where it's, like, outwardly this sort of, like, Barbie doll persona, and yet, like, there's something... about her. So, yes, indignation doesn't get, it doesn't get awards attention at all. It's a Sundance movie. I think it's released maybe in the summer that year, but like,

it's, I don't remember it being released during the actual awards season. Well, that was part of why, probably. Well, and also, like, that's not, I mean, this, you know, a story of like a middle class, you know, Jewish man sort of like trying to make his way in academia is and sort of like, you know, encountering things about America. You know what I mean? Like this movie does all of that better. It's very good. But like, I'm not surprised that this didn't like sort of hook into the zeitgeist at all that year. And which is too bad. Again, Logan Lerman's great. And Tracy Letts is great. I definitely rescind my earlier comment. comments, indignation is the best Philip Roth adaptation I've ever seen.

It's only second to me to plot against America, but it's, it's almost, it's tough for me to compare apples and oranges of a miniseries versus a film. A miniseries is really able to explore the space. And you haven't seen that. That was, it was released before the pandemic. I'm trying to remember when it premiered. Before, yeah. But it also, it aired week to week. So I think its final episodes. Let me see. Yeah, its final episodes aired. It was March and April. Yeah. So it was like very, very early. Very early pandemic. I don't think I ended up watching it until a few months after that. So it was, I was a little farther into the pandemic. But like, so for me, this isn't so much a pandemic movie as it is a 2020 election movie. Because like the degree to which that miniseries scared the absolute shit out of me. Because it's all about. What if we elected a Nazi sympathizer who played the populist hero? This is why I didn't watch it. It's very stressful.

No. And it's literally just like, we've talked about how, like, the miniseries years and years on HBO from 2019. Also, why I was like, can't do this. Which was so stressful and ended up, like, being so prophetic of the ways that I would feel during the pandemic, especially the part of pandemic that happened before. election but like so much of the plot against america is literally just like if we if we just do the very american thing of electing an american hero as a president this is how it could go so terribly wrong to the point where we are like descending into fascist authoritarian regime and it's just like and it but it's so well done and it's so incredibly perceptive and it's so

I mean, the performances are great. Zoe Kazan rules in that. It's the best thing I've ever seen her do. And so that to me is the epitome of, and it's David Simon. I mean, come on. That's the epitome of Philip Roth on screen, but like indignation is up there.

Indignation is really, really good. It's certainly better than the humbling, which I did see at my very first TIF, one of the very first TIF movies that I saw, because I was sort of, seduced by Al Pacino and Greta Gerwig. Like, I think the Greta Gerwig of it more than anything. And I sort of talked myself into the, like, well, Barry Levinson made good movies at some

point in his career. And it's, it's offensively bad. Also, what's his name? Charles Groton is in it. And that was during a very sort of like, that was the late career last gasp resurgence for Charles Gruden where he was really good in, um, the Noah Bomback movie that I didn't like while we're young. But, yeah, I think the Greta Gerwig of it all really, like, brought me to the humbling,

and it's like, he's, Pacino's an aging actor, and she's the young woman who he ends up in a relationship with, but she ends up being a nightmare because she's a young woman, and it's like, oh, I hate it. Oh, I hate it so much. Oh, it was so bad, and it was literally like the second thing. So you're telling me there is a Philip Roth adaptation that hates. women more than American pastoral does. Oh, yeah. Yes.

It does. I think American pastoral, uh, its hatred expresses itself in negligence more so than anything else. And the humbling is because it's more modern. It's just like, uh, these women today.

They're so, you know, I don't know. It made me so mad. Yeah. Humbling. Humbling bad. Indignation.

Good. Do you want to move on to the IMDB game? Why don't we? Why don't you explain what the IMDB game is? Yeah. Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game where we challenge each other with an actor or actress and try and guess the top four titles that IMDB says they're most known for. If any of those titles are television, voice-only performances, or non-acting credits,

we mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue, and if that's not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints. I am DVD game right there. How do you feel about this, Joe? How are you feeling today, would you like, are you feeling you want to guess first? Are you feeling you would like to make me guess first?

I'll guess first. That sounds fun. All right, cool. Then for you, I have one of the potential original cast members in one of the many iterations of this movie that almost happened. Not Ms. Dakota Fanning, but Ms. Evan Rachel Wood. There is one television. Evan Rachel Wood, one television is probably true blood?

Incorrect. All right. Oh, Westworld. I'm dumb. Justice for Mildred Pierce, but it is Westworld. All right. All right. So one strike, and I... I have Westworld. So three other movies.

It's one of them 13. Thirteen. All right. Two other if films. All right. Evan Rachel Wood. Evan Rachel Wood, who I would often for a while get confused.

not get confused but like she and Jenham alone were getting a lot of the same roles for a while and Kristen Stewart kind of too I don't think this is it but I kind of want to get the years because this is going to give me some trouble

so I'm going to say the upside of anger incorrect your years are 2007 and 2009 all right she is one of the three daughters in the upside of anger along with Carrie Russell and Alicia Witt. Wait, are there four daughters?

Yes, because Erica Christensen. It's four daughters. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Another movie we eventually have to do. 2007, 2009. All right.

2007, 2009, Evan Rachel Wood. So, it's a few years after 13, 2007, 2009. Neither one of those are running with scissors. is one of these like glaringly obvious and I'm just forgetting I would say one of these is glaringly obvious All right All right Maybe because we mentioned it this episode

Oh god damn it Um So mad We were saying Evan Rachel Wood You know played a similar role It was conceivable that she would have played this role because she'd done a lot of movies like this. Perhaps movies set during adjacent eras. Wait, Mildred Pierce?

No. I was going to say, that's television, my friend. Similar time, like the Vietnam War. Oh, across the universe. Across the universe. Yeah. So that's 2007. 2009.

What's going on in 2009? What's happening? What's going on in her life? So this is less known than... This is before Mildred Pierce. Right. And before... Well, True Blood, it looks like she started in 2010 on the show.

Yeah, the show started before her, but she picked up in either of the, maybe the third season. It's the year after the wrestler. She is great in. Right. I always forget that she's in that. Is this a drama? No. Is it a comedy?

Theoretically, yes, but I remember people being like this one sucks. Okay. Like a broad comedy or sort of a thinky comedy? I mean, I guess you would say thinky because of whose comedy it is. Right. This movie makes Evan Rachel Wood one of those actors that gets yelled at for why did you work with this person? Oh, Woody Allen.

This is the one with Larry David. Yes. And Patricia Clarkson. I will give that to you. The title is Whatever Works? Yeah. Yes. Basically, people liked Patricia Clarkson in this and hated the movie.

Right. But again, both Patricia Clarkson and Evan Rachel Wood. That was that Woody Allen script that had been sitting on a shelf for like a decade and you could really tell because it really is like, even for Woody Allen, I'm like, these are some retrograde. retrograde thoughts about women. Anyway, God, that's a bummer that that's one of her known for. I know. Justice for almost anything else in her filmography.

I'm somebody who doesn't like across the universe, and I don't really know if that movie does much for her, except she does have an incredible voice. It does make sense that that's one of her known for, though. Yeah, it does. That movie has a huge fan base, but like... And she's the lead in it and all this sort of stuff. All right.

For you, Chris, we just a second ago talked about the Plot Against America, and it's fantastic cast, one of whom in that cast ends up marrying Winona Ryder's character, and he is played by Mr. John Turturo. I knew you were going to give me Totoro. As soon as you said Plot Against America. Okay. The thing is, how much Cohen Brothers is going to be on there? I am going to guess Lebowski. No, not Lubboski.

One strike. Barton Fink. Correct. There we go. Hmm. Do the right thing? Incorrect. So that's your second strike.

Your missing films are 1990, 2000, and 2013. So there's a Again, I'm still on this track of how many Coens are going to be there. 1990 is the year before Barton Fink is that Miller's Crossing. Miller's Crossing. Very good.

Okay. What were the other years? 2000 and 2013. Okay, 2000, 2013. 2000 2000 is oh brother where art though is oh brother where art thou

it is oh brother where art thou? Three damn coens. Three damn coens and no I'm going to spoil this no spike lees damn yeah fuck 2013 though isn't that

intolerable cruelty no intolerable cruelty is like oh four no yeah it's earlier than that okay so what co i just want it to his four to be four

coens yeah this point what movie did they do in 2013 uh uh that's no

no did they do one in 2013 I don't think it's it's not coins it's not give it to you. This one is tough. It was three co-ins, which I knew were going to be easier to get. This one is tough. I've never seen this. I would be willing to bet that you have never seen this. What are some of the things that helps goose a movie onto someone's

IMDB known for? Big box office. That's sure, but that's not the case in this. I'm guessing. search engine optimization awards wins lots of photos on iMdb where that person is tagged um you haven't hit it yet um um like how involved would you would you be in a movie to search to really have it show up have a have a lesser known movie show up on your iMdb what level of involvement? I mean, probably it's, is it like a movie that he directed or produced?

Yes. Or both. Yes. So it's like, it is, again, another search engine optimization thing. I could not tell you a movie that he directed that isn't romance and cigarettes. Right, I was going to say it's romance and cigarettes. All right. So it was a 2013 movie.

It's, again, I haven't seen it. I'm now certain that you've not seen it. Woody Allen is apparently in it. Oh, God. Sorry, listeners. We're pulling out double Woody Allen. Listen to the cast list on this thing. John Totoro, Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Sophia Vergara, Vanessa Paradis, Leav Schreiber, Michael Bataluko, Bob Balaban, Max Cassella.

I've absolutely not seen this. The description is, Fioravante, who is the John Totoro character, decides to become a professional Don Juan as a way of making money to help his cash-strapped friend Murray Murray, as Woody Allen as you would imagine. With Murray acting as his manager, the duo quickly finds themselves caught up in the cross-currents of love and money.

This sounds terrible. Absolutely terrible. It is called fading jigolo. The expression on my face. I'm going to describe the poster to you. I'm going to describe the poster to you.

spine right now. The poster is this kind of ombray of like shades of rose, right? And onto that is a literally just like pulled from the movie shot of Woody Allen and John Totoro sort of walking side by side in overcoats on one imagines the street of New York.

But they're like, they're just sort of, it's just the two of them on the poster. In the background is a silhouette of the Brooklyn Bridge and then a silhouette of the New York City skyline. And the title, Fating, Jigolo, is written in, like, it says, fading, and then it's Jigolo, and then slightly lighter font, Jigolo, Jigolo, Jigolo, Jigolo. So it's like, it's like whispering, jigolo, jigolo, jiclo, because the font is fading, fading, fading, fading.

It's so bad. It's so incredibly, incredibly bad. Nobody saw this movie. Big surprise. I'm pissed. I would be pissed, too. I would be pissed if I was any other John Titoro movie. including intolerable cruelty that you guessed that he's not even in.

I would be pissed if I was that movie. Well, I haven't seen it's tolerable cruelty, so it was easy for me to get. You're fine. That's my least favorite Cohen's movie. I know there's a lot of people who like stick up for that one. It's like, it's better than it. No, it's not good. Anyway.

That's it. I think that is our episode. If you guys want more, This Had Oscar Buzz, you can check us out on Tumblr at this had oscarbuzz. You should also follow us on Twitter. it had underscore Oscar underscore buzz. Joe, tell our lovely listeners where they can find

more of you whispering the word jiglo. Sure. You can find me on Twitter at Joe Reed, read spelled R-E-I-D. You can find me on letterboxed as Joe Reed

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