This Had Oscar Buzz - 235 – The Upside of Anger

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

Every prestige actress overdue for an Oscar deserves her showcase, and after three Oscar nominations in under a decade, Joan Allen got hers written and directed by her The Contender costar Mike Binder. The Upside of Anger cast Allen as a mother of four whose husband suddenly abandons her, and she finds boozy solace with … Continue reading "235 – The Upside of Anger"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Hacks. I'm from Canada, Water. What can I say? I have four girls. One that hates me, two or three, that are leaning that way.

You look perfect, and your face is big and plump. Oh, I could just eat you up. My face is plump? Oh, God. No. I didn't mean plump isn't plump. You're still looking for work? You're amazing.

Tell that to your mom, we're even. I got the job. What job? With Denny as a production assistant. Oh, God. My lord. I know that on some level, this is way too soon, and not right. What's the other level?

I dial your number 10 times a day and hang up. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast gaslighting with positivity. 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're here to perform the autopsy. I am your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here as always with my four disapproving daughters, Joe Reed. Do you have any idea what an idiot you sound like? Chris, meanest thing anybody said in that movie. Before we get into it, because we have multiple daughters and one overdue actress in particular to really dive into that.

I'm excited to talk about. We must talk about a problem in the community that I've been meaning to bring up to you. And it finally remembered. We're having a spat of little. listeners who can't tell us apart. We love all Gary's equally. I've noticed this. But I do have to pose this to the Gary's at large.

Are we that indiscernible from one another? Here's what I will say. And this is somebody coming from somebody who... This is no judgment to any listener who has confused either of us, but it is happening a lot. I often do this with twins, right? where it's like, it's not that I can't tell who from who. I can look at a set of twins and, like, I know how and in what ways you look different than each other. Please don't say that we're sugar and spice.

Please don't put that on. You're the one who brought that toxic into that community. You brought up twins. All right. You maybe need to investigate the fact that the word twins now Pavlovian, Pavlov-like, Pavlovian-ishly, whatever. Now who's sugar and spice? brings that mental image into your brain. Because you don't know how to say Pavlovian.

I think that makes you the sugar and me the spice? No, but Pavlovian as an adverb rather than an adjective. What's the adverbial form of Pavlovian? It's a bog we can't get into right now. Pavlovian-esque. Yes. But anyway, what I'm saying is I can tell that they are different twins, but I still can't remember which different twin is which one.

So I think people can probably tell that we are two distinct voices, but perhaps thinks that this voice that you are hearing right now is the Chris voice, and your voice when you start speaking is the Joe voice. So we need to, I don't know if there's beyond the fact of me being like, Chris, I'm talking to you, Chris, I am not Chris, you are Chris. Joe, hello, Joe. Right, exactly. I've had this problem with podcast before, but not once I, like, get on a long enough trajectory.

I think when I first started listening to, like, fighting in the war room, which was before I had met any of the principal people on that podcast, except for, I might have not even met Katie. Before there is a lot of people, though. Too. And for a while there, it took me a second to just be like, this is what a Dave Gonzalez sounds like. This is what a David Ehrlich sounds like, and this is what a Matt Patches sounds like. Do you know what I mean? And so... In fairness, we are two age-adjacent white gays.

Sure. As we look at each other on this Zoom, we're both wearing glasses. With rather similar interests, similar senses of humor. But you are sick and tired of getting the blame for the stuff that I haven't seen that I should have seen is basically the crux of this discussion. I have my own, my own faults to worry about it. I don't need your faults placed on me. Yeah. No, I get it.

I get it. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's, it happens and. No, no error on anyone's part, no judgment for anyone, you know, confusing us. But it's just interesting. Chris is the one who is usually, if there's a, if there's a, if you're wondering which of the two of us hasn't seen a thing, it's usually me. Like, that's, that's, that's a good sort of rule of them. I think, Chris, you have seen, um, in general, probably more things at a greater volume than I have. I feel like I have a lot more blind spots to catch up with. Mostly because you have

more of a life than I do. No, I think it's because I think for a lot of my job, a lot of my job has required me watching television throughout my career. Yes, I have the television blind spots that you don't. You have the luxury of being like, nope, don't care about a lot of TV that I don't have the luxury of being able to do because of my job. As far as like, you know, in my writing career goes like television, it's just like if you don't, if you're not already ahead of the, you know, wheel of cheese chasing you down the hill, it's just like you, you know, you're going to get squashed by the wheel of cheese. Even as somebody who, you have to be very ahead or you have to be very available to immediately cover things.

Even as somebody who writes about television for a living, there's no possible way I can be familiar with all of it. You know what I mean? Like, I have huge blind spots for stuff that's airing right now. And there's no way of getting around that because I am one person and there are only 24 hours in a day. But so I can't imagine somebody who doesn't have to follow this for a living. Like, I'd much rather probably watch movies too. So you also I'm currently down a K-hole of a Sex and the City watch, which is making me be behind on other things. I'm watching old drag-grace seasons. I've found myself watching old drag-grace seasons as a real true stereotype.

I'm interesting enough to catch your interest. I'm on season eight right now. I haven't been watching them chronologically. I'm sort of dipping into seasons as my fancy, you know, leads me. So I'm watching RuPaul's Drag Race Season 8 right now, which is a very fun season. I'm enjoying it. Very fun season. Bob, one of, like, top three of all time for me.

Even though I wasn't rooting for Bob at the time of that season. Who were you rooting for? Now I love Bob. Who were you rooting for? Were you at Kim? I was rooting for Kim. Yeah, I love Kimchi. I find myself being more sympathetic to Thorgy Thor than I thought I would be, at least in the early

going. I feel like Michelle Visage is a little hard on Thorgy's fashion choices early on. I think Thorgy's looks are all very good. Thorgy is drama grouchy in a way that you watch now and it's such a relief because like season eight is when the tide was kind of turning in the fans that it's like we don't want fighting we want positivity blah blah blah blah blah and now like this season mistress Isabel Brooks is an oasis is yes I will say season eight had acid Betty, whose brand of being a catty, bitchy queen was just

in a lot of ways unpleasant. Was in a lot of ways to, like, mean? Yes, but it's like so surfacy in a way that, like, you can't tell that she means it at all. Like, she got the reputation of being the bitchy one, but I'm like, she doesn't mean any of those mean things that she says. Maybe not all, but, uh, but anyway. I don't know if she ever, did she ever get in a legit, like, argument or

fight with someone? I think she and Chi-Chi-Devain had some words with each other. Acid Betty's worst moment came on that one untucked where she kept giving Kim Chi a hard time for being friends with Trixie Mattel and was like super like legitimately insulting about Trixie Mattel's makeup and was like, you look like a clown. Like, well, she wasn't even in the room. I was just like, what's going on here? But that's most of what I remember.

Anyway, we are far afield of the topic of... We're here to talk about a... different group of sisters. We are here. And a different mother. A movie about four sisters played by Evan Rachel Wood, Carrie Russell, Erica Christensen, Alicia Witt. Give us another example at a time that four daughters have all been mother.

Like, love all these actresses. I love all these actresses. Separately, I think I love them in this movie. Watching this movie again, I will say, and I'm wondering whether you had the same experience because we've both seen this movie before. I've seen this movie like multiple times. I haven't seen it in in years. But like HBO I think used to play this movie a lot because I remember watching this movie like multiple times. Like that's usually how I would watch something that many times as if like HBO had it on a lot. I didn't like the movie itself as much this time around. I feel like I picked out a lot more of the weaknesses in the film. I think one of the weaknesses that will definitely get into is I don't think this movie writes the relationship of these four daughters together consistently or all that well.

There's a lot of contrivance in this movie, but there's also a lot of, like, sloppiness where it's just like, what, have you, have you met sisters? Like, do you, like, do you have any familiarity with, like, how sisters operate? The movie's reaching for tone, not, you know, interesting character dynamic. I think that's right. I think it's also, and we'll get into the fact that, like, Mike Binder, for all that I find frustrating with him, wrote this movie to give Joan Allen a star vehicle. And for that, we at least have to give him, you know, some props. And we'll get into the sort of the origin story of this movie.

But I think what suffers in this movie is, like, there's a lot of moments where I'm like, what is happening with these four daughters? Everybody is from the planet Neptune. Yes, yes. We'll get into it for sure. behaves like a human being does. No. No. Well, I think the thing about the sisters in this movie is the movie is all about their

individual relationships with their mother. Yes. And you really, really want to see some dynamic, any dynamic between these sisters. We know that they're... Even if it's just more commiserating over, isn't mom a real piece of work. But, like, you may be get a very early seen of that. We know that they're close. We know that they're close. We know that.

They perform it as if they're close, right? They're very sort of affectionate with each other. There's always scenes with, like, two or three of them sort of, like, you know, huddling together and, you know, sort of, like, taking in their mother, but also, like, dropping off Evan Rachel Wood at school, like, two of the, you know what I mean? Like, that kind of a thing, where they clearly have a close bond. And yet there are certain moments where it's like, have you, have these characters not spoken to each other off, like, in between the scenes that we are watching? Like, there's a lot of moments where I'm just like, where, like, Carrie Russell will, like, come home from the hospital. And it's like none of the other sisters ever visited her there from the way that, like, this is seemingly the first time they're seeing her since she's been hospitalized. And I'm like, well, that doesn't track at all.

Right. Like, it's like that, those kinds of things where it just feels inauthentic. I think also when you have this many siblings, too, as someone who, like, was raised in a four pack. Um, yeah. It's very weird that they have all these blowups with their mom and there's never one other person there to, you know, play referee or play, you know, uh, debriefer to either the mom or the sister. I mean, there's maybe a few moments in it, but like, no one's the peacemaker. Yeah.

It's every blow up. There is someone else around. Right. Right. Um, it just doesn't. And like, my thing in. movies is you will, I'm the easiest sell in the world if you give me good sibling dynamics. And I love, we love it. All of these actresses and all I wanted to do was fall in love with their sisterly bond.

And it kept frustrating me on that level. And I did, this was the first time I'd ever watched it and compared it actively to mermaids. This is a movie that kind of scans with mermaids a little bit well and that it's only two sisters in mermaids. but it's also like spiky mother-daughter relationships and it's um you know that kind of this movie comes off this movie comes off worse if you compare it to mermaids that's the thing and i think that's that was um that wasn't the only thing on my mind watching it this time

but watching it again i definitely was like oh i definitely liked this movie a lot better a decade ago than i do now i like joan allen the same a way more mid-2000s type of movie too and what the movie thinks is funny and what the movie thinks is like the audience wants out of a movie like this it felt rather dated to me in a way that is all just the texture of the movie and not the

type of thing where you know people start breaking out razor threes and it feels dated right right like somebody breaks out a clamshell CD case you know right pop culturally dated or chotchky related dating, yes. Yeah, we'll get into all of that. I'm sure we will take turns taking pot shots at Mike Binder.

But the thing we're here to talk about, have we even said her name so far? I tried a second ago, but yes. Joan Allen. The great Joan Allen. Giving, this was sort of, this was a really, like, this was a big moment for her career. And in many ways, it also looks now, in retrospect, a little bit of a last gasp for her in terms of Joan Allen film actress, because she had been her, she's obviously so well known. Do we want to do the Joan Allen thing before or after the plot description?

We're going to do it after the plot description. But we'll just set, we'll set the stage. Set the stage. We'll set the stage. So Joan Allen, ahead of this movie, was coming off of of three, almost four, I would argue, Oscar nominations where she doesn't win. Some of those cases, there's like a real frontrunner ahead where she never really had a chance. We'll talk about like how close. Speaking of drag race, we'll talk about second place, third place. In this season of second place. Jesus, fucking Christ.

Yeah. The only time it's interesting to talk about, well, who's about in second place, even though only one person wins, is the Oscars? But there was a sense of inevitability to Joan Allen at the time, I remember being like, well, she may not win this year, but she's going to win an Oscar. She's so good. She gets nominated all the time. She's obviously, like, it's only a matter of time. And it is a little bit of a reminder of like the, you know, the sort of ephemeral nature of these careers sometimes, especially, unfortunately, for actresses who, you know, reach a certain age and the roles aren't there for them in Hollywood. which is a total shame. And Upside of Anger sort of represents the kind of tail end of Joan Allen as a major character in a movie.

It really is sort of shocking the way it falls off from Upside of Anger to, you know, born movies, which I think she's tremendous in the born movies that she's in. And then all of a sudden, 10 years have passed, and she's the mom, and she's Brie Larson's mom in room. And you're just like, you know, where did this all go? And it's not like she had done a ton of television in between. She had done some, of course, television in between. But it's not like she had picked up, like, the good wife.

You know what I mean? Where she's, like, starring in a series for 10 years, and that's what she's been doing. But we'll talk about the whole Joan Allen thing, the Steppenwolf of It All and the Oscar nominations and all of that. It's a really interesting career. And we love her. And we love her. She's great in this movie. We'll dig into her performance more, too, on the other side of the plot description.

But I do think that she is wonderful in this movie that asks her to be maybe an unwell person who does not behave like human beings behave. And I think she almost entirely on her shoulders makes this a very watchable movie. I agree. I agree. But yeah, we love Joan. We do. And this is maybe only the second time we've ever talked about Joan Allen, or is it even the first time we've talked about Joan Allen? Hold on a second time. No, it's the second time because we did the ice storm very early in our episodes. But yeah, it's only the second time. So we've talked about the ice storm a long time ago. That was in our first 50 episodes. So it's been a minute since we've had a chance to talk about Joan Allen. It's also the- This is a movie that's always been in our back pocket. And I feel like I've at least been pushing us towards like burning some of those off.

like this exotic. Yes. And I'm glad we're finally doing it. It's going to be a worthwhile conversation to have. But interesting, like I said, revisiting this movie after quite a long time of not watching it. And my feelings are different, but my feelings for Joan Allen are very much the same. Exactly. I love it.

We are on the same wavelength this episode. Yeah, I like that. Not always happens. Listeners, once again, we're here to talk about the upside of anger, written and directed by Mike Bindy. We'll get into it, starring Joan Allen, Kevin Costner. Kevin, it was neat, Costner. Evan Rachel Wood, Carrie Russell, Erica Christensen, Alicia Witt, Dane Christensen, will get into it, and Mike Binder himself. Wait, are they related? Did I miss that? Are they brother and sister?

Okay, let's just do this now. Okay. Is he the guy who plays Alicia Witt's fiancé slash husband? Evan Rachel's Evan Rachel Wood's friend Who crashes through their window And she really wants to fuck And he's just like, I'm gay That is Dane Christensen

Eric Christensen's brother Oh, I never realized that Interesting Yes, we'll talk about that That's an interesting That's an odd character This whole little story We'll get into it

The movie premiered at Sundance 2005 and then Opened Limited that March of 2005, very early in the year. Joseph, if you are ready, you are tasked with giving a 60-second plot description. Are you ready? I am ready. All right, then your 60-second plot description for the upside of anger starts now. All right, three years before Evan, Rachel Wood begins her little voiceover about the titular upside of anger, Terry Ann Wolfmeier, a middle-aged mother of four, assumes that her husband ran off with his Swedish secretary,

and so she begins a sabbatical from life that includes, mainlining gray goose and spending time quasi-dating Denny, the burnout former baseball player next door who now hosts a drive-time radio show where he doesn't talk about baseball. She has contentious relationships with all four of her daughters. Hadley is the oldest. She graduates from college. She gets engaged to and ultimately marries her college sweetheart and has anywhere from zero to two children. Emily is the second oldest and wants to be a ballet dancer, probably has an eating disorder

and is the most outwardly mean to her mother. Erica Christensen is Andy. She doesn't want to go to college, which Terry hates, but not as much Terry hates it when Andy starts sleeping with Denny's gross producer ship. Evan Rachel Wood plays Popeye, who likes. Denny is a match for her mom and otherwise spends all her time with a quietly reserved gay boy. Terry and Denny dance around having a relationship for a while, and then one day they discover that Terry's husband didn't run off to Sweden.

He fell down a water well in the woods behind their house and has been dead the whole time. And then the movie ends pretty shortly thereafter with Terry and Denny together. And her daughters is inconsistently written as they've ever been this whole time. Wow, with one second to spare. Joseph, well done. Not the Plotius movie? Not the Plotius movie. It's mostly just like, what is Joan Allen getting up to now?

Right. Why is she having a unpleasant conversation with this daughter or that daughter? Yes. What is the current sexual dynamic between her and Kevin Costner? Right. That is, I will say, a thing that held up for me, which is this sort of odds and ends chemistry that Joan Allen and Kevin Costner have in this movie, where as actors, they're very different actors. She is theater trained. She is, you know, very much inside her character. I can see Kevin Costner giving this sort of like lucy-goosey performance. But I think the conflict between that works, right? Where she's kind of, she's, you know, letting it all kind of hang out a little bit in this,

at this stage of her life where she's just like, I don't give a fuck, Denny, like, you know, you're around. Do I like that you're around? I don't know. I'm probably fine with somebody being around. I'm going to have this, you know, vodka tonic anyway, so might as well have you sort of be here in the room with me. I like the little quirk of they were drinking buddies watching TV coverage of the invasion of Iraq together, which was just sort of like that is a funny recurring bit. Yes. That may not be a bit, but it's at least funny.

And I think the only sort of formulaic or sort of like expected beat that that relationship hits is it ultimately gets to the point. where, again, reminding me of Mermaids, the point where Kevin Costner gets mad that she's been treating him like shit this whole time. It reminded me of that scene with, they actually hit the same beat of like, don't use my children to get closer to me thing that happens in Mermaids, where she's like, don't use Popeye. Popi as the Evan Rachel Wood character. Don't use her to, you know, send me messages essentially about maybe getting married or whatever. And he resents her sort of like constantly you know belittling him or sort of just like you know putting him down or whatever and that was the one which was just like of course this you know we're going to have that scene whatever

but otherwise i think that relationship has a satisfying shagginess to it where there's no sort of like big declaration of love even the scenes where they're there it sort of is there's the scene where they're like stopping traffic on this sort of suburban little street and they're having this conversation, but it isn't, you know, it doesn't feel cliched. And she certainly doesn't have these big sort of like moments where she's, you know, laying out her entire psyche to him sort of in an almost like a come to Jesus moment about just like, you know, I want to be with you or whatever. It's like it doesn't really do that. It's they dance at the wedding a little bit. And she's clearly, you clearly see why she's comfortable with

him. You clearly see why she wants to be with him through her actions and through her demeanor and through the, you know, the way she says things rather than these big sort of moments. And I liked that about that relationship. And I think Costner does give a good performance. His performance, I think, stands up for me. I was going to ask what your thoughts were. I liked it a lot back then. I still really like it. I think they work very well together. I think this is Costner on a level. I think he's playing a little bit into his, he's obviously playing into that sort of baseball Kevin era of his, where he had made Bull Durham and Field of Dreams and For Love of the Game. They actually use a shot for Love of the Game

on that one poster that he rolls up in that one scene. So I like, I like the fact that this does seem like plausibly like his character from Bull Durham 10 years later or whatever after. Yeah, I mean, it does seem a little bit like, wouldn't it be funny if we got Kevin Costner for this and they did. And they did. He ends up turning out maybe the best performance of his career. I do think he's really good and funny in this movie. I just maybe don't like the character as written. Sure. I can see that.

There is a little bit grading, and maybe this goes back to the datedness of it, that this movie definitely thinks that full-blown alcoholism is like a fun character quirk. Yes, it does. You know, not like, these are people who have a problem. But at least they find each other and, you know. But there is something I find, and maybe this is like problematic and bad of me. me, there is something that I find slightly comforting about that, that, like, we can have a movie where two people are probably problematic drinkers, and we don't have to turn it into a movie about problematic drinkers. It can just be, like, part of their character. They stop drinking throughout the movie. So, like, that's fine. But, like, there's a few jokes that I was like, I don't know. If I was their child, I wouldn't love being in that situation.

Sure, sure, sure, sure. The way that I'm so told that these kids are like, isn't it a little while that mom loves to. drink at two in the afternoon. Right. Right. But as written, like, he would probably be profoundly annoying to me as an audience member if Kevin Costner wasn't so charming. If he wasn't doing the good job that he's doing in this movie, yes, I think that character probably becomes a problem in the movie.

And I think it's both actors in finding their chemistry together are also leaning into what is incompatible about those characters in a way that does make it fun to watch. Yeah, yeah, I think so too. I think they are able to sort of patch over some of the screenplay flaws, of which I think this movie does have several. Starting right at the beginning, actually, there's that opening. The framing device sucks, man, because it's never a surprise. The framing device sucks because the first thing you see is they're at the funeral.

And they don't tell you who's funeral, but it, like, it doesn't take you very long to sort of, like, realize. I guess maybe you're supposed to think that, like, maybe it's one of the daughters, because you only see, it's the two of them and Evan Rachel Wood at the beginning, right? So you think plausibly it could be one of the other girls? You don't see Carrie Russell at the beginning. Right. I mean, when you see a mother with her daughter at a funeral in a movie, just the way cinematic language works, I think you ought to. automatically assume that the father is dead. And, like, that's normally what I thought any time that I've seen this movie.

And then you get this immediate pivot to be like, he left me. So you're thinking the whole time, oh, he's dead, but they don't realize it yet. And it really, it's like, it's plot holes you could drive a Mack truck through. The other thing, though, about that opening voiceover, beyond the fact that, like, the framing device is bad, is the thing where, like, She opens, this is Popeye doing the voiceover, because this is a book she's writing. What's the other one recently, where it turns out that the movie ends up being this, like, really cloying sort of book that the character is writing. I feel like there was something this year. All too well, 10-minute version, the short film.

No, but there was something, I'll think of it, hopefully. But anyway, where she says the thing about, like, my mother was the nicest person I'd ever met. My mother was the nicest person anybody had ever met. I don't buy that as a thing. I get where, like, she is now, like, particularly, you know, sour and jaded and into her gray goose and all of this stuff. But, like, she even has a line and I wrote it down, too. It would be different and also, like, really good foundationally for the character if you're like, my mother used to pretend she was the nicest person you ever. And so it's like, it's not like she used to be a nice person and now she's just angry all of the sudden.

But there's a moment. She used to put on a veneer, especially in the same. the type of neighborhood that they live in, where it's like, she used to put on a veneer of niceness, and this happened, and she was done with that. But there's a moment where one of the daughters, and I can't remember whether it's Alicia Witt or Carrie Russell, or maybe it's Erica Christensen, it doesn't matter. One of them says to her going into a situation, be nice, and she, and Joan Allen goes, it's not in my nature.

And I'm like, yeah, that I believe. Like, that feels true to the character more than my mother was the nicest person anybody had ever met before. I'm like, I don't buy that at all. And I don't need to buy that. I shouldn't need, like, that, that's not necessary for, for this movie to work. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I think it's supposed to sell the idea that, like, this thing happened. Her husband left her, supposedly, and she took a turn. Like, yeah, I admit that. But, like, you watch the relationships that she has with her daughters. And this is not, like, they are not reacting to her as, oh, my God, you used to be so nice, what happened to you? It was, like, this, like, for everything that I find dissatisfying about the daughters relationships to each other, I do feel like each one of them has an individual relationship to Terry in a way that feels, that does ring true. You know what I mean? Like, those distinct

relationships do you feel like the kinds of relationships that girls of that age would have with their mother, who is a little pitiless and a little, you know, sort of set in her ways. And so, like, just toss out that little, like, it's one of those. lines that sounds good at the beginning of the movie, it's the same sort of, it's white oleander, right? My mother was the most beautiful person anybody had ever met, right? Like, that's, and it works there. And it's just like, you don't need it here. It's just, it's superfluous and, and, and bad writing, and I don't like it. Go off, King.

No, like, I, I still really feel strongly, like, yes, the, the, the, the character is presented muddally in a way that you know, Joan Allen is so hyper-specific in everything that is just like, this is clearly a performer elevating the material. But the framing device just like makes you constantly question things all along. So it's like we're told throughout that the husband is presumed in Sweden with his mistress. And she's not going to call him. She's not going to go into divorce proceedings.

because that would mean she would have to contact him. We're supposed to believe that this man has... She's too proud. She's too angry. Yeah. Yeah. Not only, you know, abandoned his wife and his children, but apparently is not in communication with a single person that knows him, like, professionally, et cetera. It's real contrived, yeah.

That nobody would try to reach out to this man, including his children, who maybe don't have as much anger towards him as his wife did. And by the time that, you know, we find him in a poorly covered well that he fell into, John and the whole style, we're, it's just like, yeah, no shit. It also does not track in the slightest that none of these four very independent and willful daughters would have tried to contact him on their own. Right. Or that, you know, there wasn't a credit card that was shared that, you know, that, you know, that, you know, the way I could see there have been like this is pre-smartphone era so I get where like not everybody is tethered to a phone and like and the fact that somebody wouldn't be you know answering calls doesn't raise the same kind of alarm bells and people could have just like more easily maybe dropped off the map but but that three whole years pass yeah like if this movie was set in the period of a summer you know yeah this is this is what gets into my thing of just like there's not having conversations with each other that seem like the natural conversations that these

characters, as they are written and as they are presented, would naturally have. When Carrie Russell's in the hospital, you know, we see the moment where Terry makes an effort for a second to try and call the husband and she gets a little pushback from like directory assistants in Sweden or whatever, and then she's like, forget it. But like it's, it doesn't track to me at all that none of the other girls wouldn't have really pressed for her to find, like, to get the father to come home. Like, our sister is in trouble, and we're very close, you know what I mean? Like, that's the thing is if you draw these daughters as close, then you have to follow

through with that. Like, you have to stay true to these characters that you've drawn, and they would not just let their sister, like, languish in a hospital room without, like, mobilizing to do something. if there's that closeness too in these circumstances you would have them talk about their relationship with their father at some point you could really patch over you could find a way to patch over why they wouldn't be trying to contact it only it almost only makes sense if the daughters are a lot more devoted to their mother say these girls are like have are so close to their mom and are so blindly loyal to her that they're just like yeah fuck dad we're on your side But that's not how these relationships are drawn. You know what I mean? It doesn't track. And yet, I'm enjoying, you know what I mean?

I'm still enjoying the fact of watching these interactions. I think all of the little individual interactions that Joan Allen has with these actresses are all really good. I do wish her and Popeye's relationship were drawn a little bit more specifically. That's a pretty vague relationship in the movie, which is too bad. All of these daughters are like categorized very. like specifically like Carrie Russell is has is a dancer

has a really really bad eating disorder Alicia Witt is the one who maybe gives the most pushback and upsets her mother the most by not doing what she expects of her and then Erica Christensen is like having this affair and then all Evan Rachel Wood is getting to do besides being a horny teen

is narrate like she's just the one who sort of tells the story she's the one who's close The least drawn character of all the siblings. She's the closest with Denny, which I also think is, you know, good for the story and also, like, gives her a little bit of a character. But, yes, in general, she's the least well-conceived character, which is too bad. Even though, again, you get those scenes where, and I think this is on the actors, right? I think the actors really do a good job of selling the closeness of these girls.

They're all very fond of each other. are, you know, sort of rallying for each other. And I would like more of it. Oh, here's the other thing. And maybe this is a thing where I was not paying attention, super close attention. But so we find out at Hadley is the Alicia Witt character. Hadley's college graduation. We find out that she is pregnant and getting married to the guy.

To a boyfriend that the mother has never met. Right. I don't believe heard of. The next time we see them, it's the wedding scene. and she's worried that they need to get married before she starts to show. And she gets upset that the mother says that her face looks plump and yada, yada, yada. And then I think we don't see Hadley again until that barbecue in the backyard where Carrie Russell comes home from the hospital, at which point she delivers the news that

whatever her husband's name is and her are pregnant again. So I'm like, A, has enough time past that they have had this baby. B, did she have a miscarriage? In either one of those cases, it's wild that we have just papered over whatever happened, whatever major life event. Right, we don't see either event. I mean, time is vague in this. Like, it's, that's why I said the thing, this movie should happen over the course of a summer, not three years, because conceivably it could have. Yes, there's no real reason why it couldn't.

Yeah. I mean, you probably couldn't graduate, be pregnant, get married, have a baby, and be pregnant again. But is that super necessary for our enjoyment of the movie? I would argue that it's not. Yeah. Like, it was just, like, sloppy. It's just sloppiness. And it's, and it's from, it's, and I don't want to, like, stereotype Mike Binder to be the characters that he often plays in his movies, right?

I don't want to, like, graft that onto him. But it does maybe not help my conception of a writer-director who doesn't get female-to-female relationships and maybe doesn't think he needs to. It doesn't write, you know, gets these good, interesting actors together, gives a real platform to Joan Allen. But, like, clearly he has like five opportunities to write a female character well in this movie, and it's zero for five. And especially the dynamics are not great. But so let's talk about how this movie started because Joan Allen, her last of her three Oscar nominations, and we'll definitely get into the Joan Allen career, is for the contender. Which he has a either he produced? Yeah.

He didn't, I don't know if he has any role in it beyond just being an actor in it. So he's, I believe he's one of the president's staff. Don't quote me on that. It's been a while since I saw The Contender. I should probably watch it again, because it's a good movie. That's a good movie that should be on TV all the time. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's a good cable TV movie, I feel like.

Well, there's so much sexual innuendo in that movie that it would be a little weird on TV. But, like, why is that movie not on, like, peacock or steady rotation? Totally, totally. It should be one of those movies that, like, why is everybody talking about this? Oh, because it just got added to Netflix or something like that. You know what I mean? Did I just say, why is that movie? not on TikTok.

You said Peacock. No, you said Peacock. Don't worry. I would not want to watch that movie on TikTok. See, listeners, this is what happens with me. It's like, I speak too fast and then that's, you know, I'll say TikTok instead of Peacock. That's Chris Fyle talking, by the way. That's Chris Fyle and this is me.

I'm Joe Reed. It's just, I'm going to throw that in every once in a while. What would the TikTok kids gravitate towards on the contender? Jeff Bridges being intimidating with Sandwich. 10 times that Jeff Bridges was daddy with a late-night snack. Right? He was so daddy for that one. No, like, what's her name?

Lane Hanson, is that her character's name? Did I remember that after all these years? Conceivably, yes. Lane Billings Hanson. Yes. No, she would be so mother for all of that, absolutely. Oh, this has, like, literally the cast on Wikipedia says what everybody's character. he is her legal counsel.

Mike Binder played Lane Hanson's legal counsel in that movie. So making this movie, at one point, John Allen's like, you make movies, you write in direct movies, write me a movie. And he's like, okay, and he did. And so a few years later, he comes to her, he apparently wrote this role specifically with Joan Allen in mind. And, you know, she was the first person attached to it.

And, you know, I give him, I give him applause for that one. Like, we need more, you know, whatever, shitty male auteur is not to like, again, like, I use shitty as almost like a categorizer rather than an actual descriptor of Mike Binder as a person. But you know what I mean? We need more of these, you know, autores who get HBO money sort of thrown at them for no reason to write movies for, great actresses. And I'm glad that he did this one. He's an interesting character. I had totally forgotten that he wrote and directed that movie Indian Summer. Talk about a movie that, like, played on television all the time. Talk about a movie that I watched a shit ton in my childhood. Me too. Maybe none of. Blank Man. Oh. He directed Blank Man. I never saw Blank Man. But yes,

he directed. Back when I was a child, listeners, especially any young listeners, back when I was a child, We didn't really have that many superhero movies, so I had to, like, rest easy on Blank Man, Meteor Man. Who was Meteor Man? I remember that. Meteor Man was Robert Townsend. Meteor Man, another movie, I do at least remember one scene of Meteor Man, which I wonder if I watched it now if I'm like,

is this homophobic? I don't know. But, like, I remember me and my sister's laughing her asses off at it, that there's a scene where Meteor Man and the villain of Meteor Man, And they get, like, they turn into different people or something, or they, like, have different attitude. Something happens. And they do, like, a walk-off, vogue-off sort of thing.

Wow. Meteor Man. Okay. I think there's, yeah, it's... Was it to Bossbitch by... This is the type of superhero movies we had at the time. Was it to Bossbitch? Was that, was...

No. No. Robert Townsend does not do a flip over. We are speaking to you the morning after the world has been changed by... by Anitra and Marsha, Marsha's lip sync on Drag Race. That was the greatest thing I've seen in such a long time. It was so good. Anyway.

You were very right to say that it had a great start, great ending, and then was just a total... The episode. Yeah. The actual challenge in that episode was really bad, but it's book-ended by one of the best mini-challenges with the Vogue ball. And then that lip-sink, which blew my face off. It was so good. So, yes. Yeah.

But anyway, Indian Summer was on television every day. I watch that movie all the time. And that cast is really interesting in a very early 90s way. It's not one of those big chill castes where everybody goes on and has these like, but it's like, oh, remember when you watched movies and like Vincent Spano was just the main guy? Like, Elizabeth Perkins and Bill Paxton and Diane Lane and Alan Arkin, Kimberly Williams. Like this was the like heyday of Julie Warner. Remember when, like, I would watch, like, any old movie and Julie Warner was probably in it? Like, that's the sort of moment.

And I really enjoyed Indian War Ranger. Forgive me, I forget her name. Amy Jo Johnson? No, you're thinking of Kimberly Williams. Oh, okay. Who is the daughter and father of the bride. She wanted too young to be an idiotic. Yes.

Although, speaking of Amy Jo Johnson, Carrie Russell, which we'll get, our second Carrie Russell movie in, like, three weeks. As soon as I'm done with sex in the city, Felicity, it is on. There you go. on. I am re-watching Felicity. Um, but so I think the thing about Mike Binder is by this point, by the point of upside of anger, most people, if you had HBO, you knew him as the writer-director star of the two-season much maligned and rightfully so, uh, comedy, the mind of the married man, which in my memory, they had tried to pair with sex in the city on the same night, which was not true.

I went and looked this up, actually. I spent much of my morning trying to, There is no website, by the way, out there that just puts up all the grids of HBO Sunday Night programming through the years. I'm telling you, if somebody wants to do that and do that research and put that all up, you will be my favorite resource on the internet. I would click to you all the time. This is Joe Reed requesting the HBO grid, not Chris Filed. Joe Reed is the one requesting the HBO Sunday Night grid. But anyway, so it took me a while to figure it out. They paired it with, because it was usually the HBO would do.

a drama and two comedies on Sunday nights. Generally, that was the vibe. And so in its first season, Mind of the Married Man, both seasons, it was paired with Curb Your Enthusiasm. It was Mind of the Married Man and Curb, like back to back. And then in its first season, those both aired after Band of Brothers, which is interesting.

And in the second season, it was one of the Sopranos seasons. I think it was like Sopranos season four. Sex in the City was paired up, the show that I was thinking of, Was Arliss? Sex and the City and Arliss were a block for a while there before Entourage came along. Oh, right. Because didn't Sex and the City and Entourage overlap in its final season?

Or maybe not? That sounds about... Or did one follow the other? What year did Sex and the City end? 2002. Okay, so I think Entourage maybe was right after that. Anyway, regardless. No, not 2002.

Because season four hugs 9-11. Yeah, and it goes for like two more, three more seasons after that, right? Two more seasons after that, but season six was split. Yeah. I just forget when it is. So it would have been like, oh, four. And which is when entourage begins. So I think probably like one handed off to the other.

But anyway, my point being, mind of the Marion Man was like consistently one of the like worst reviewed HBO shows. Like all the critics who, you know, almost felt like after gushing about sopranos and sex in the city and band of brothers in six feet under, like how do we, balance off our street cred. We're just going to really dump on the Mind of the Married Man. And, like, rightfully so. It was kind of a, it was a show. When HBO shows are bad,

people really go in, though. This is what I'm saying. The audacity of you to even come here. I think it's, I think it's to balance off that sense of, like, am I just a shill for HBO? No, because I'm going to really hate this show. And sometimes it's deserved it. Sometimes it's not. The little

that I watched of Mind of the Married Man, I was like, not for me. It was a show about a sort of sexist guy who is married to Sonia Walger and he's got these friends and whatever. And it was sort of like positioned a little bit as the male sex in the city. And I don't want to watch the male. Entourage was too, but I don't want to watch the male sex in the city. So this show lasted for two years.

And I think after that, everybody was like, I don't want to maybe watch this guy's next movie. And he ends up making the upside of anger a few years after that. and I think maybe some people had forgotten by the point. And he has a minor character in this. So, like, I could see you making the decision to watch the upside of anger before even realizing that Mike Binder was part of this. Right. His character, I will say, has a little bit of that writer-director disease

where it's like, this side character maybe doesn't need to be as prominent as he is. Right. Because to, you know, basically, I don't know what the word would be, but to, like, run away with every scene, but not, like, in a way that's, Good. Right. I'm thinking of that line from Nope is like, what's a bad miracle? Like, what's a bad seed stealer?

You know what I mean? Like, that kind of thing. A scene robber. A scene robber. Right. Yeah. So he's Shep's, or his name is Shep. He's Denny's producer at the radio station.

There's a lot of business at this radio station. This movie really believes that we kind of care about whether Denny starts talking about baseball on his radio show because. Also, that is a podcast now. Oh, a million percent. Absolutely. Yes. You know, it's like, what, when Jerry Seinfeld talks about shit, that's not comedy.

Yeah. I will say, you can tell that this is an area where Mike Binder is writing from experience. You can tell that Mike Binder is somebody who listens to a lot of sports radio because there's that early scene where, like, Kevin Costner is being really combative with the callers. And I was like, yeah, that is the vibe that, like, a lot of these, like, sports talk radio who just, like, you know, kind of can't stand. the people who call in and, you know, yell at them about shit. And, like, this is a world that I can, I would believe that Mike Binder knows very well. But so he's Denny's producer. And then in this capacity, Erica Christensen asks, mentions to Denny that she wants to get a job because she doesn't want to go to college.

And she applies for a production assistant job at the radio station. And Mike Binder's character sees her and, like, Wolf Whistle. Uga eyes like whatever Hires her Raja Ratic character Hires her proceeds to like start like dating slash sleeping with her

which the movie to the movie's credit knows is gross and ultimately that causes quite a bit of strife with Terry there's the scene at Hadley's wedding where

he Shep the Mike Binder character walks up to Terry who has like been you know giving him cold shoulders and mean comments and all this sort of stuff and is essentially just like I don't care what you say I'm going to keep dating your daughter and she just like slaps the shit

out of them twice repeatedly and it's very fun and I'm trying to like gauge how much the movie is on her side because he follows that up with this sort of monologue about like here's why I date younger women because they're not bitches to me essentially like they're not like they appreciate me when I buy them wine and they're not you know embittered old bag or like you essentially. And I'm like, the movie knows that he's awful, right? Like, I just need to, like, make sure. And sometimes it's that, like, uh, disconnect where it's like, he is the writer, director of this, and he's playing this character. Right. It feel, I think what it is where this weird kind of disconnect, where you're constantly checking in with the movie, is that, yes, it does think that he's gross, but it feels like he wrote this gross character for himself to, like, have some fun with. in a way that it's like, you're having fun, we're not having it with you. She does take that moment to be a little bit, the way that Joan is playing it at least,

plays it a little bit chastened, right? Where she's given me something to think about a little bit. And she sort of takes a second to reflect on, have I become, you know, embittered and angry? Is that who I am? Is that sort of? And then there's that scene later in the supermarket where they're running to each other after Andy, the Arc of Christian character, has dumped him, where he, like, makes this, like, half-hearted, like,

we should have a drink sometime and, like, having a conversation. She correctly clocks him as, you know, making a pass at her through that. And I think she takes a little bit of her power back in that moment. And I don't know. I think ultimately the movie is decidedly on her side. And I just have to work through a little bit of that, like, You're right. It's that checking back in with the movie and just being like, very sure.

I think it's also that the movie doesn't really establish why Erica Christensen is with him. I mean, maybe it's good sex and she just wants to have good sex. It kind of takes it for a given that a woman, that a girl of her age who's sort of like, again, probably what, 20? Maybe. Yeah. Maybe like 20. She eventually is 20 because she is a recent high school grader. and specifically says she's not going to go to college.

So, yes, she is maybe 20. Also, that's another thing, by the way, Chris, not to interrupt you. This movie, again, going back into, like, what is time in this movie where it's just like, she, like, one day is just like, I'm not going to go to college. And it's like, have you graduated high school? Are you still in high school? Is this the summer between high school and college? Have you just decided this now?

Have you missed application season? What's going on? Is your mother just now finding out that you don't want to go to college? Did you start college and take a break? and now you've just decided you're not going back. What's the situation here? Also, you feel the same way about this relationship where it's like, okay, so what are you doing here? Are you just trying to have some wild sex with this gross guy because you might be into that and you're young and whatever?

Because eventually she dumps him and is like, yeah, thanks. And also the sex wasn't good and I'm done with this. Well, I mean, I guess that would be a reason to dump him if that's what you're not even getting good sex out of this guy. What is going on here? You've gotten like this movie also done. does take it as a given that she, like, got career advancement out of this relationship. And, like, he tells her he's like, you're too good for this job anyway. You are better than what we do here.

She's the star of her own little up close and personal movie. But, like, yeah, there are scenes in this movie that seem to take place. And it's like, is there anything that existed before or after this scene? Does this movie, the scene just sort of like accomplish, again, it goes to like contrivance, right? Where it's just like, nothing exists outside of, oh, I don't want to go to college. I want to take this job. And it's like, okay. Let's talk about Joan Island's nominations.

And we should say near nominations. Well, let's start with the Steppenwolf of Adol because I love her, I love a career of somebody who really established herself as a theater actress. Like, she had been in movies like Peggy Sue got married and some sort of stuff in the 80s. But, like, the 80s is when she is, like, pay-introduced. She joined the Steppenwolf Theater Company in 1977. John Malkovich is there. Lori Metcalfe is there. She, I believe that's where she met her husband, who is Peter Friedman, who is Frank on Succession.

I never get tired of finding out fun new things about Frank from Secession. succession, one of which is that he's Bridget Fonda's gay best friend and single white female, and now I find out that he was married to Joan Allen for 12 years of his life and starred with her in the Heidi Chronicles. The Heidi Chronicles is the one that really kind of

catapulted her on the stage, though, right? Was it that or was it Burn This? Burn This? Okay, so Burn This happens the year before the Heidi Chronicles. She wins the Tony Award for Burn This. She beats out... Which was played on Broadway by Carrie Russell. Yes. I'm trying to remember. I watched the Tony's clip earlier today.

One of the, she beats out Francis McDormon for streetcar. She beats out Glenda Jackson for something. She beats out Blythe Danner for, I can't remember the specific shows. But anyway. Was Blythe Danner also streetcar? Because I think that's the streetcar production that both the Stella and the Blanche were considered lead. Hold, please. Love when we can get into some Tony's history. I know. It's two weeks in a row. Okay. It's just like, we were definitely not seeing theater then. us know that we...

Okay, listen to this murderer's row of roles that Joan Allen defeats for Burn This when she wins the Tony. You were right. Blythe Danner played Blanche and Streetcar. Francis McDormand played Stella. They were both nominated as lead actress. Glenda Jackson was nominated for playing Lady

Macbeth and a production of Macbeth. Shit. Oh my God. So they all get beat by Joan Allen, who is this, I would imagine, sort of new and exciting talent out of Chicago, which sometimes they do. You know what I mean? Deanna Dunnigan. I guess Deanna Dunnigan wasn't new and, you know, fresh

or whatever, but she was like, sometimes the Tony sort of fall in love with, you know, what Chicago sort of sends them, which is very fun. She wins the Tony, but then the very next year she's in the Heidi Chronicles, which I imagine, if she hadn't won for Burn this, she wins for the Heidi Chronicles, because

that was like a huge thing. It had won the Pulitzer prize for Wendy Wasserstein, and that year, give me a second. She loses to Pauline Collins for Shirley Valentine, which was the same year. So that's 1989. Pauline Collins wins the Tony for Shirley Valentine. And like a month or two later, the movie version of Shirley Valentine opens or at least like plays festivals. And she ends up getting an Oscar nomination for that. The other nominees in that category were Madeline Khan and born yesterday and Kate Nelligan in spoils of work. And Madeline Khan, Jesus Christ, this, this, this Broadway history we're getting in this Glenda Jackson playing Lady Macbeth and Madeline Khan inborn yesterday. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where's our fucking time machine?

I can't, I'm, my head is exploding. But the Heidi Chronicles won the Tony for Best Play that year for Wendy Wasserstein, and it was a big, big deal. There ended up being a movie starring, I believe it was a TV movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis in the role as Heidi. But that was sort of, those two sort of back-to-back, Burn This and Heidi Chronicles, kind of launched Joan Allen as this, you know, formidable talent. And then, sorry, back to the Joan Allen of filmography. So then she starts getting roles. She's the wife in searching for Bobby Fisher.

She has a really good performance in that movie, actually. There's that scene that I always remember getting clipped where she says, oh, what's the line too where she's like he's talking about her son and she's like his good and if you beat that out of him he knows you disapprove of him he knows you think he's weak but he's not weak

he's decent and if you or Bruce or anyone else tries to beat that out of him I swear to God I'll take him away she's in Tucker the man in his dream which I believe she's also the wife of the main character in that as well.

She's Jeff Bridges' wife, I'm pretty sure. The big, and she's in Manhunter is the other sort of 80s role, which predates her Tony Award. But she's, I believe, so Manhunter... She's the blind character that starts dating the serial killer?

Yes, I think that's right, yes. I got to see Manhunter. I saw Manhunter on TV one time when I was way too young to sort of get it. like, I got to see it again because it's really... Have you seen Red Dragon? Yes, I've seen Red Dragon. You're going to know all the plot beats, but...

Yeah, well, and also I've seen Hannibal, the TV show, which also, like, dips into that story. Red Dragon, the only good Brett Ratner movie. Yes. It's like the popcorn version of that, and, like, Man Hunter is, like, unsettling. Yeah, I definitely want to go back and watch it because I was definitely... I was, like, legitimately probably, like, 10 years old watching it on TV when I did not, probably shouldn't have been able to. I had that business. Yeah.

Anyway, 1995 is Nixon. That's her big breakthrough. Her first Oscar nomination, she gets a bunch of critics awards. She wins the Los Angeles Film Critics Award, the National Society. She's a bunch of, like, Chicago film critics naturally love her, so they give her the first of at least several, because she also, do they give her best actress for Upside of Anger, or is she just nominated for them?

Let me look and see what she's won at Chicago while you keep talking about. Okay, so anyway, Nixon, she is kind of, in many ways, the critics' choice that year, not to coin a phrase, right, for supporting actress. That's the year that Mirro Sorvino ends up winning for Mighty Aphrodite, but that was a year that felt like it could have plausibly, like the narrative that year could have plausibly gone in a lot of ways. Merri Winningham is nominated for Georgia, Kathleen Quinlan is nominated for Apollo 13, and, the, oh, Kate Winslet is nominated for Sense and Sensibility. So, Kate Winslet wins SAG and I believe BAFTA, too. And Mirosurvino wins the Globe and ultimately the Oscar. And, but I could see a world in which Joan Allen wins for Nixon. That's a hugely acclaimed performance. That's another one where

anytime you saw a clip of Nixon, it was that scene of the two of them with her saying, you know, I love you, Dick. It's taking me a long time to love you. You want them to love you and they never will. And that's, that was the big sort of clip from Nixon whenever you saw. At that point, people are really sick of Oliver Stone. Sure. At least on an Oscar level, because he wins those two

director Oscars back to back. And at that point, it's like, oh, and then Nick, and then, uh, not Nick. JFCK. And then JFK happens. Right. And by the time Nixon comes around, it's like, okay, I think we're done here. Which is too bad because Nixon is a very good movie and, uh, She is in particular really tremendous. The following year is the Crucible, which is one of the movies that is really tipped for big Oscar success.

Everybody assumes that that's going to be the frontrunner going into the end of the year. It's, you know, this big literary adaptation. It's Daniel DeLewis. Who directed that movie? Nicholas Heitner, who directed the theater director. Theater director following up The madness of King George. I believe. Exactly. Exactly. And that felt like, you know, pedigree too, right? Because the Madness of King George got nominations for its actors. Winona Ryder is coming off of two Oscar

nominations in 93 and 94 for The Age of Innocence and Little Women. Joan Allen is coming off of her Oscar nomination for Nixon. Daniel Day Lewis is already by this point an Oscar winner. So it was tapped to be a big, big deal. The fact that it still ended up getting some Oscar nominations is a testament to how much those expectations, like people were sort of like hanging out of those expectations, because the movie itself really disappoints. It's part of that 1996 narrative where the Indies sort of took over, where English patient wins for Miramax, Secrets and Lies and Shine and Breaking the Waves and Slingblade or all the big nominees that year, and Fargo, of course.

And then the Crucible is, what was that studio? Give me a second. Fox. It was Fox. It was a Fox movie. Okay. And so she... It's still so surprising to me that Jerry McGuire didn't do better.

As the lone studio movie up against all these insurgents, yes. That movie also made a shit ton of money. It did. And it was well reviewed. It wasn't like this begrudging sort of handout to the studios as a Best Picture nominee. People really liked it. but I think it was viewed as I think it was probably viewed as a little light

and a little sort of like crowd-pleasy and the English patient Especially when you have it up against movies like Secrets and Lies. And then the English patient, which was this big sort of sweeping thing for as much as people sort of like, you know,

there was a contingent that didn't like that movie and made fun of it. There were so many more people who were really wrapped up in. That's a movie that looked like an Oscar winner. You know what I mean? For as much as it was a Miramax movie and it was technically an indie.

Like, that was a movie that had, you know, an Oscar-winning sweep to it. So anyway, Joan Allen ends up being, Joan Allen and the screenplay are the only real survivors of the Crucible when it comes to the Oscars. And she, again, is a runner-up for a lot of critics awards that year and ends up getting the Oscar nomination. She loses, of course, to Juliet Benoche, Count Chocula herself, as you have mentioned many times.

Um, everybody assumed that Lauren Bacall was going to win. It ends up being Beno. So, so that year, nobody really thought that Joan Allen was going to win. She was kind of, you know, happy to be nominated that year. And then we get into a couple, several years, actually, where it feels like she's missing out on nominations that she should have gotten, one of which is the ice storm. Um, we've talked about that movie ages ago on this podcast. Really, really good movies. She's very good in it. But also, there are a lot of very good performances in it. So it's a little unsurprising that she gets overshadowed by Sigourney Weaver, let's say, and, you know, Kevin Klein and the younger actors. And ultimately, the Ice Storm doesn't get anything from the Oscars. To loop back, she did indeed win for at the Chicago critics for Nixon and the Upside of Anger and then is nominated for both of her other Oscar nominations, Pleasantville, and the Ice Storm. Yeah, the Chicago film critics, they're there, she's the hometown. They know what's up. Yes. They know what's up.

She's also the wife of the, whatever, the hero in Face Off, the guy who starts off as John Travolta and ends up being played by Nicholas Cage. That was also 97. She is tremendous in that movie, too. Like, she sells the reality, the emotional reality of that silly action movie I love incredibly well. Yeah. She's really, like, there was a moment, part of the press tour for The Upside of Anger included

her talking about how she like, I don't want to play the wife anymore. And she had been, there was a lot of movies that does, that even her Oscar nominations, her first two, right? She's the wife in Nixon. She's the wife in the crucible. She's the wife in the ice storm. She's the wife in face-off. She's the wife in Bobby Fisher. And she was sick of it. Even though

she plays those roles so well and she makes those wife roles so memorable. But you can see why she wouldn't want to be. Sort of maybe the ultimate I'm sick of playing the wife almost comes in the storyline of Pleasantville, right? So Pleasantville happens in

1998. That's, was that, what was that? It has multiple nominations. The thing, I mean, like, I get the Gary Ross of it all. Doesn't really make people, I would probably argue. There have been worse directors who have gotten their movies nominated at the Oscars than Gary Ross, I would argue. I mean, it's way better than Seabiscuit. I mean, she, I think maybe Joan Allen especially really elevates that movie and like the

best parts of that movie are her stuff. I love Pleasantville. I'm a very, very big Pleasantville fan. She's incredible in Pleasantville. She's probably my winner for that year. And she gets major precursor attention. She wins Los Angeles film critics. She wins Boston Society of Film Critics.

She wins the Critics' choice that year for supporting actress. This is the year Judy Dench won, by the way. This is the year that Judy Dench wins for Shakespeare in Love, yes. So, like, Joan Allen ends up just getting shut out of the major precursor. She's not nominated for the Golden Globe. She's not nominated for SAG. She's not nominated for BAFTA. And so she, as a consequence, is not nominated for the Oscar.

And looking back, it just doesn't make practical sense to me. It is a hugely spotlight performance from an actress that you know the Oscars really love in a movie that Oscar voters were seeing enough to give what nominations did Pleasantville get. Can you look that up very quickly while I monologue about this movie? I think it at least got a costume nomination. Yeah. It was nominated for three Oscars, part direction, costume design, and a Randy Newman score. It's one of Randy Newman's best scores, I think. I think it's very evocative and very good.

I love Pleasantville. It baffles me that Joan Allen is nominated for Pleasantville. But so the counselor comes, or not the counselor, the contention, Joan Allen and the counselor would be fun, too. Joan Allen in Cameron Diaz's role in the counselor. No, no, no, no, no, no. Joan Allen and Javier Berdem's role in the councilor with the hair, with the costume, yes. The contender happens in 2000, and all of a sudden this is a lead performance.

This is the first real lead performance in a movie for Joan Allen. The critics love it. It comes out, I want to say, in the summer, when it, no, it came out of October. That movie was a TIF gala. It was, yes, you're right. It was a fall. But I feel like, now I'm trying to remember how that year laid out. It's a DreamWorks movie.

It's a DreamWorks movie in the year of Gladiator. It was not their priority. There was also Gary Oldman trauma. There was, but like, she gets nominated, Bridges gets nominated. I just, I'm trying to, in my memory, in the narrative of that Oscar season, her acclaim happened earlier in the season, maybe earlier in the fall. And there was a moment where it felt like, maybe Joan Allen takes this because this is her ascending to the level. This was before everybody realized, oh, we don't have to be snobs about Aaron Brockovich just because it's a spring movie that was like a crowd pleaser or whatever. Like, we can appreciate this.

There felt like there was a switch that was flipped at some point during the 2000 Oscar race where they're like, oh, we don't have to disqualify Aaron Brockovich and Gladiator just because they happened in the spring. like okay um but so that never happened for her chances in upside of anger too right but we'll get into but i think in another year i say this for a lot of the nominees and best actress in 2000 we've talked about the strength of that character i think in other years i could see joan allen winning for the contender ellen burson winning for requiem for a dream laura lini winning for you can count on me those are all performances that in a different situation had the stuff and had that little spark, right? There's an angle to it. And I think in another year, I could absolutely have seen Joan Allen winning for the contender. It's a very dynamic

performance. It's a very, like in the year 2000, in an election year, there was this almost like forward thinkingness of it. It's just like, you know, what if a woman was vice president and they tried to take her down for a sex scandal? It feels very sort of like proto-Hillary. Because wasn't Hillary running for the Senate that same year? Didn't she, like, immediately run for the Senate? Maybe. Now I'm going to take a pause. Hold on us.

We are covering. The whole conceit of the contender, though, is because this is also interesting, I think, politically at the time is that, like, she decides to take the tack of she will not justify these allegations with a response. She's just not going to acknowledge it. Right. And then, like, spoiler, the twist of the movie is that's not her in the photos that they're trotting out. The movie kind of like chickens out a little bit. The movie chickens out a little bit because her principled stand ends up being like, well, she's not really guilty of anything. But it's like, you know, what should she have to feel ashamed of? Anyway. Chickens out maybe, but like she, the line she has of saying that it's not

her is good in the way that it's like it's not actually sex shaming the woman that it is. Right. She's like she has, it's either like she has a birthmark that I don't have, but like, I think she maybe like compliments the woman's body or something, you know. Anyway, yes, Hillary Clinton was elected to the United States Senate in the year 2000, right as her husband was getting, was exiting the White House. So, yes, so there was a lot of obviously, and obviously a lot of the Clinton. and scandal mindset there too of like sex scandal shouldn't matter and you know this is privacy

and all this sort of stuff for a movie that at the time felt like it was overtly winking to something and you know feels like you know the politics of 20 years ago it holds up remarkably well i watched it during the pandemic and i could not tell you why yeah yeah uh and then she doesn't make, she's not in a feature film again until that Campbell Scott movie off the map in 2003. But I want to mention that during that time, she is in the 2001 TNT miniseries, the Mists of Avalon, which was that King Arthur sort of mythos. Is this when you talk about your experience at the library? Maybe.

I was already, by this point, I was in college. So I had not worked at the library for a couple of years by this point. But I was kind of obsessed with this TV movie. Angelica Houston, Juliana Margulies, and Joan Allen play the sort of like the three women of Arthurian legend, right? Where Angelica Houston is the Lady of the Lake. And Julianne Moore is essentially Morgan LaFay. She's Morgaine. She's Morgaine.

She's Arthur's sister. And Joan Allen is her sister Morgos, who is sort of the villain of the piece. And it's very sort of, you know, your Wiccan friend's favorite book kind of thing. Sway, love it. You know, whatever, like the mystical sort of like the power of the feminine, you know, whatever. I was a huge Tori Amos fan at the time and still am. And so, like, this was very much like connecting to my, like, Tori would have probably really gotten into the mists of Avalon.

But anyway, that was sort of what Joan was doing in between the contender and, you know, being back in movies like Off the Map and The Notebook. She's in The Born Supremacy, her first appearance as CIA director, Pamela Landy, one of my favorite sort of government functionary performances in a, you know, sort of political intrigue thriller. I think she's so incredibly dynamic in those movies. I look forward to seeing her every time she's in one of those movies. She ends up being in also ultimatum. And I think very briefly in the Jeremy Renner one, The Born Legacy, I think she's like...

She's credited with it. Yeah. She's in it for like, I think very briefly. But anyway. And then she's in that Sally Potter movie, yes, that I've never seen. I remember being in a theater. tell you what I was seeing, but we had the trailer for Sally Potter's yes.

Yeah. And it was just the end of the trailers. Like covering the screen, it was like just yes. And someone, as it goes dark from that trailer goes, no. Yeah. We're kind of asking for it there. That was the movie where the dialogue

was entirely an iambic pentameter. I remember reading about that. That it's obviously Sally Potter, the director of Orlando, who only since yes the only other movie of hers that I ever that I remember even hearing about is Ginger and Rosa

a movie that I really like quite a bit I never saw yes but that was supposedly this sort of Joan Allen is sort of off the hook sexually right where she's you know she's having a lot of very sort of she's experiencing

the feminine pleasure of sex kind of a thing and she should be allowed to do so right right exactly like I have sex and I enjoy it like what do you say about that senator and he's saying yes he's saying yes exactly

and then the upside of anger happens the year after that and that as I said before is kind of a little bit the end of the line which is a bummer after that she's in that movie Bonneville that sort of road trip

movie Bonneville with her and Kathy Bates and Jessica Lang that I never saw that only exists kind of as a poster to me that, like, barely got a release. Do you remember ever hearing about Bonneville? No, but it sounds like deeply my shit, so I should watch it. We should check it out at some point. Actresses of a certain age on a road trip.

I mean, come on. Yeah. But then it's like, she's in, again, she's in another born movie. She's in Death Race playing, again, this sort of like, she's the villain in that one. She's, you know, the functionary. She's the Prison Wharton in Death Race. And then again.

Even when she's in Room, which was a Best Picture nominee, and she has at least one great scene, the haircut scene, you know, she never, I mean, the movie never really spotlights her like you kind of want it to, so that Joan Allen can have a moment. Yeah. But she never showed up, I don't think, anywhere in the whole race for that movie. And it's like maybe she needs one more scene in the movie to get that type of recognition. Yeah. room is again a decade after the upside of anger what was she doing in between she was Emmy nominated for playing Georgia O'Keefe in the television movie Georgia O'Keefe that definitely happened I remember that that movie but I definitely didn't watch it um and then it's like

she'll like show up on a TV show that doesn't really get a ton of attention she was in luck Like Lacey's story. Well, right. But like, oh, God, Leesie's story was the Ndier. She was in luck for a few episodes before that movie killed some horses and, or that show killed some horses and got ended. She was in one of the later seasons. She was in the, I believe, the Netflix season of the killing that I watched for my job.

And she's good in it, but she's like, she's whatever, the headmistress of a military boarding school. She's a, she's a, she's a military colonel. I believe, in charge of this, like, military boarding school, and there's a murder. She's in that Shondaland show, the family that nobody paid attention to whatsoever, that it was, I believe, a mid-season replacement for ABC that, like, came and went. It was her and Allison Pill, and she's the matriarch of this family, and there's a murder, and nobody cared. And then, yeah, Lisi's story, the Stephen King adaptation, that I watched a couple episodes of... Pablo the Rain.

Pablo the Rain. The talent in this thing, again, Pablo Lorraine directing it, Julianne Moore, Jennifer Jason Lee, Joan Allen, all playing sisters. Clive Owen is also in this. It was bad. And I, and that was around the time where, what was that other, the outsider? Was that Stephen King adaptation on HBO that was kind of junkie that I really actually kind of loved? Is that the Cynthia Arevo one? Yeah, Cynthia Arievo, Jason Bateman. Really good, actually. I really, very watchable. And I watchable. And I watch it. And that was around the same time. And, like, Lacey's story was the one was just like, it was frustrating. It was very frustrating. Lissy's story came out probably a couple years after that because the outsider was definitely pre-pandemic. And Lacey's story was pandemic.

But, yeah, Joan Allen has kind of receded away a little bit. And it's surprising to think back on that golden age when it really did feel like it was only a matter of time before she wins an Oscar. and we are past that. And now maybe, you know, you never know what kind of role could come around and get somebody a later in life. Oscar opportunity. It's not like she's still working.

You know what I mean? She's still, she's what, in her 60s. So it's not like, you know, it's not time to put her out to pasture or anything like that. Just like somebody give her.

She's been back in place. She was in the Waverly Gallery in 2018. Elaine May is. the one who gets the Tony Award for the Waverly Gallery. But, you know, there's, there's, there's still time to give Joan Al on the role that will give her that Oscar that I believe she richly deserves. So, for upside of anger, though, she gets a Critics Choice nomination. She's nominated against all of the eventual Oscar nominees. So it's, you can kind of conceive it in that avenue there that, you know, she was an outlier for it. But like, the

Spring release thing definitely held this movie back. I do wonder if there is maybe a different story, especially for how shaky this best actress year was. It was considered week at the time. I think we still kind of consider it weak. Read out the nominees. Even to the point that, like, Kira Knightley, who I, who would be probably my vote, was somewhat of a surprise nominee for that movie.

I think a lot of people didn't think that she would make it to the finish line of that, that she had gotten all these precursor nominations, but she's young. And, you know, it's a costume drama that didn't really, like, you know, set the box office on fire or anything like that. Did she miss it SAG? She may have? I don't think she ran the whole season. Maybe she wasn't Globe on it? Something.

Hold on. I'll look that up. You know, Dame Judy is nominated for Mrs. Henderson Presents, which didn't necessarily. We don't want to take anything from Dame Judy, but, like, there wasn't a ton of enthusiasm around. that movie, except in my household because Mr. Hoskins is in it. It got

a costume nomination, too? I think that's right. That was a Weinstein co movie, though. It was. Yes. North Country was kind of very coldly received, but still gets those two Oscar nominations for actresses who had previously won. Yeah.

Sorry, I'm going through Kira Knightley's. She was Globe nominated. Let's see, SAG. Come on SAG. She was not nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award. So there you go. There you go. There you go.

Yeah. And Reese Witherspoon kind of essentially runs the season with Felicity Huffman considered the the Lucy LaDucah second place of, I guess, the season. That Felicity Huffman performance is obviously. obviously one we keep at arm's length at the closest, if possible. But it's interesting because I wonder what that movie's fate would have been if she wasn't exploding at the moment because of Desperate Housewives. I should say for the SAG Awards that year, it was Zhang Zee for memoirs of a geisha.

Who I think is the more probable sixth place than Joan, yeah. I would even, I would maybe say even Naomi Watts for King Kong. Yeah, I could see that. Is a conceivable sixth place? Yes. Yeah, probably true. Yeah, there just did not seem to be a whole lot of enthusiasm for Upside of Anger as a movie. And, you know, good on the critic's choice for giving that nomination, but sometimes the critic's choice will give a nomination to somebody.

And it's like, they also nominated Costner and supporting actor. Sometimes they'll have a nominee or two that will come out of the predictions discussion rather than the, I don't want to say rather than the evaluation of the movies themselves, because that makes it seem like, you know, nobody who saw the movies would have ever nominated this. But sometimes it feels like the Critics' Choice Awards are in dialogue with the predictions discussion more than they should be, I think. You know what I mean? where they are sort of responding to that rather than responding to, I don't know, I don't know, you know my problems with the critics' choice. Well, I mean, the other thing kind of keeping her in the race to, I mean, when a race is not considered as competitive, I think a lot of people who maybe have less of a shot are considered more thoroughly simply because there's just less competition. But she also wins a bunch of regional critics, like we mentioned Chicago. She won the San Francisco.

What else am I seeing here? Iowa. Sure. Not exactly the most influential on the Oscars. But it's the type of thing, especially I think we used to take regional critics wins more seriously in the mid-aughts than we do now. Yeah, you don't hear about them at all ever anymore, which is. No. Yeah, for better or for worse.

And that's partly because we had like print magazines like EW being like, here's all of the possible contenders for best actress. And these are, I remember there were certain years that they did like grids of who's won certain prizes and such. And it wasn't just New York, L.A. National Society that we talked about. Well, and at some point, all the regional awards sort of started giving their prizes to the same people that the national awards were. And it was just like, okay, at what point do we need to mention the fact that, like, Kate Blanchett won the San Diego Film Critics Awards for TAR? You know what I mean? Like, wait, now I want to see if I got that. At what point do we need to say that, you know, everything everywhere won in Branson?

Oh, sorry, I was, I slandered the San Diego film critics. They did give their award to Danielle Deadweiler for Till, so good on them for that. Good for them. Good for them. Okay. Sorry for that snide remark, San Diego critics. Listen, you understand the temperature of what we're saying. I do, yes.

The Upside of Anger was also a best grown-up love story nominee at the M4G's, lost to the family stone, also nominated to two chaos picks. One thing called The Thing About My Folks between a love story with apparently Olympia Tococcus and Peter Falk. Sure. We love them, so no... We support their love. Yes.

And two for the money between Renee Rousseau and Al Pacino. Sure. Who directed Two for the Money? Hold, please. This is a very hold, please, happy episode. I'm happy with that, yes. Two for the Money, directed by DJ Caruso written by Dan Gilroy. Rennie Russo's husband.

So there we go. That, uh, it all fits, yes. One of our other faves, uh, upside of anger was, uh, one of, uh, one of us. Of the National Board of Reviews, many films getting a special recognition for excellence in filmmaking, along with cracks, knuckles. This is the, wait, before you go into this, this is the pre, before they started giving top 10 indie. This is we have tables to sell at our event. But this was before they started handing out the, doing the list for best indie films, right? This was sort of a precursor to that a little bit.

Yes, I do not see that there. And these are all pretty much independent films. You could argue that, well, Hustle and Flow is included in here. Hustle and Flow was distributed by MTV and Paramount. I don't know if it was produced by that. Right. But largely, these are sort of the smaller, more under the radar movies that they are trying to, again, sell tables for it. Besides Hustle and Flow and the upside of anger, the also the additionally included films were breakfast on Pluto.

Neil Jordan. Something called Cape of Good Hope. Never heard of it. the Jonathan Saffron Fower adaptation Everything is Illuminated. Right. Directed by Lee F. Shriver. We have to do everything is illuminated at some point because what a...

That trailer. What a peculiar Oscar story where like it really did feel like the early, early predictions were all like, well, obviously everything's illuminated. It's going to be. It was such a popular book. And it just, it disappeared upon release. It disappeared because I think it was released like that September. It did some festivals and didn't go well at the festival.

Right. Other films, Junebug, the wonderful Junebug. Wonderful, yes. Layer cake, Lord of War, which I think might be something like Lionsgate or Sony, but that was another one that I was like, I don't know if that's... That's Andrew Nicol, right? Yes, the Gattaca guy. That was a Lionsgate movie.

Yep. Oh, there you go. Nine Lives and the Dying Gaul. The Dying Gaul, the Craig Lucas movie, the Dying Gaul, which I definitely watched and was... With Patty. and Peter Sarsgaard. Patty Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard, Campbell, Scott, Elizabeth Marvel.

Elizabeth Marvel and Bill Camp. Oh, it does the... Is that where they met? Well, let's see what year they were married. They were married in 2004, so they were already married. They were married probably the year that they made this movie.

So I would imagine they were already together by this. But anyway, that's a movie about somebody's... There's obviously gay shit in that, but it's like sinister. gay shit, right, a little bit? Maybe. Maybe. I don't know if I need to see that movie again, but maybe I need to read them.

I think it's bisexual shit, not gay shit. And at this point in the aughts, bisexuals were seen sinisterly. Probably true. Because we had not evolved to realize that, you know, this is a little, this, people can just simply be bisexual. And the aughts, people were like, it's already enough for us to accept you as gay. You can't be straddle in those two lines there. If you're bisexual.

you must be evil and deceptive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. God. Honestly, though, sometimes those things ended up being, like, sexy little provocations. Sometimes, were they like, I do enjoy a sinister queer every now and then. They, I do enjoy the energy that they bring to a movie. So, more, more, more. Please welcome to the sage, sinister queer.

Yeah, yeah, an interesting list of movies for the NBB. ER's Special Recognition for Excellence in Filmmaking, C. Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence, National Border. Here's my question, not to be like second place, third place. When do you think she was closest to winning? She has broken you, by the way. She has absolutely thoroughly broken you. I hate the second place discussion. It's not just her. She's been the worst of it, but it's not just her. It's been a thing in season 15 of Drag Race, and it's super annoying. Second place does not exist in a challenge. Who cares? Who cares? What second place is in that show? Like, second place isn't real. You are either win,

you go home, or maybe you lip-sink, but don't go home. But then everyone else is everyone else. There is no second place. This is the, I looked at Wikipedia progress charts too much when I was preparing to go on drag race

effect. Yeah, and like, anyone can make those. I could say that Selena's Titties was second place, every episode. Anyway, what were you going to say about the National Board? Drives me crazy. Drives me crazy. Second place.

Second place. Okay. What do you think she was the closest to actually winning an Oscar for, and would you have voted for her any of Joan Allen's three nominations? I will say she would be my winner for Pleasantville. Yes. Unless there is something that I am forgetting. Wait, I'll bring that up while we are talking about this. I do feel like she was probably the closest for Nixon. Probably, it was her or Winslet were probably in second place for 1995.

I would probably argue it was Winslet. Probably, but I think Allen got, probably got her share of votes that year. I certainly think she was closer that year than she was for the Crucible in 96. And I think for the contender, as good as that performance, was, I don't see her getting higher than I think third is the ceiling and I think she was probably fourth. Even

fifth, I could see her being fifth that year. I could see Benosh getting votes for Shockalot that got higher than Joan for the contender. I think we're of the same mind, but I don't think she was ever above third. I think that's probably

I could see that being the truth. Which is like I mean, she's like, great, and everything. But, you know, you want her at least to be that solid second place. All right. My 1998 Best Supporting Actress list. Oh, it's a barn burner. Oh, Christopher. You're going to love it. You're going to fucking love it. I need to go back and, like, make a real project this year of having lists like you do of what it would be. It's very fun to be able to go reference. I will say, like, my sixth place that year was Patricia Clarkson and High Art. That is how good this

list is. See, would I give it to Patty over? I might give it to Patty over Joan that year. In your first place. You think overall first place is Patty Clarkson and high art. She's great. Maybe we should do a high art. Okay.

Episode this year. Twist my arm. My top five supporting actresses for 1998, Joan Allen and Pleasantville, Kathy Bates in Primary Colors, the only Oscar nominee on this list. Lisa Kudrow in the opposite of sex. Great call.

Tony Colette in Velvet Gold Mine, one of my all-time favorite performances, and Kate Beckinsale in The Last Days of Disco. Supporting. Yeah. Interesting. I think ultimately, if you have a lead. I mean, it ultimately is Chloe Seven-Yees movie, but I don't know if I would go that far to say she's supporting. I think so. I think I'm in the right there.

But tremendously strong. Tremendously strong supporting actress here. I love that. 1998, stealth, great year for movies. Like, we don't talk about it enough. Well, because I think the greatness of, like, movies, even, like, something like Thin Red Line, which, like, it's kind of a miracle that Thin Red Line has,

the Oscar nominations that it does. Sure. Like, I think what's great about that movie year is not Oscar-friendly in any way. That's also what I felt about this past year. What I love, Thin Red Line is a movie that frustrates me as much as I enjoy it, But one of the things I love about it getting that best picture nomination and best director and the nominations that it got was there had been a sense that year that it was either or that it was either going to be saving Private Ryan or the thin red line and one of them had to go and it was probably going to be saving Private Ryan was going to be the victor there because it was the big box office hit in Spielberg and it's more of the Oscars taste and yada yada yada and I love that those nominations at the end of the day were like why not both.

You know what I mean? There is no reason why we cannot nominate both of these movies. They're both doing vastly different things. And I like that. I would probably be a down-ballot voter for Thin Red Line, to be honest. I would probably, I would have voted for it in score. That's probably the extent of it. I wouldn't have voted for it in adapted screenplay.

I will say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But a phenomenal Hans Zimmer score. Wait, what are my score nominees that year before I get out of 1998? um thin red line Pleasantville Randy Newman

that run low the run score for I would need to figure out how much of that was original but like all of that sort of like technical that's another Tom Tickver along with Johnny Klemick and Reinhold Heil who did the score for Cloud Atlas so

um that works for me the John Williams saving Private Ryan score is very good the out of sight score I think is very good that year. It's a solid year. All right. Should we move on to the IMDB game,

or do you have anything else to say about Joan Allen or the upside of it? Let me refer to my notes very briefly. I think we got onto everything. The part in the beginning where she grabs the third bottle of Grey Goose, I feel that. Bapa, blah, blah, blah, blah, stopping local traffic. Oh, I wrote this greasy-ass wedding band that was performing at Hadley's wedding

Which did sort of like I don't know They were performing Betty Lou's getting out tonight Which is one of my favorite Bob Seeger song So there is at least that The whole thing about Hadley being pregnant Yada yada yada yada Peter Friedman as Joan Allen's real life husband

Yeah I think I got it all I would kind of love it if Kevin Costner had gotten More credit for his performance in this movie even if I don't love how the character is written. Yeah, I think Costner's excellent in this movie. Yeah. It's kind of a weird moment for Kevin Costner.

This is also, we've talked about Rumor Has It, a movie that is kind of top-to-bottom awful. But, I mean, Kevin Costner is coming off of kind of licking a few wounds. This is not very far out from, like, the postman being horrible. Well, and he had made that. Range being a surprise, late summer hit. Yes. Open range was kind of a little, was a rebound for him in that way. And I think that sort of like set him down the path of like only Westerns.

I will only invest myself in Westerns. I mean, that's how we consider him, but it's not ultimately true. There's Molly's game. Oh, no, I just mean, I think, I think him, I think anytime you hear you talk, you hear him talk, I think those are the only things he really like and enjoys doing. at this point, our westerns, he'll be another thing, so he'll get cast in other things. But I think if you gave him a chance,

a choice between, like, you know, Yellowstone or or Molly's game, he would probably be like, yeah, I'll just like, sent me, set me out into the range and I will, you know, whatever. Madonna was mean to him and he fled. I like him in this mode so much of, like,

troubled isn't the right word, but like, and rascal isn't the right word. He's a burnout a little bit. He's sort of of, uh... I like him as a burnout. Yeah. Um, yeah. I feel like if he doesn't have the weight of, I have to be stoic, iconic male, or, you know, I have to be everyone's fault.

Can we also, though? I think he's a really loose and interesting actor. Was it last year that he presented Best Director and went on for like 10 minutes in that presentation monologue about like what, like... He presented to Jane Canyon. Yeah. He was, and it was, and a lot of people, Twitter were sort of like, you know,

shaving him for that and whatnot because, of course, like, you know, the gay children aren't going to get Kevin Costner, and that's fine. They shouldn't have to. But I was, I was... Though we should absolutely be circulating that's neat on Twitter at all times. But like, I enjoyed that best director thing

because it's just like, yeah, it's like Kevin Costner being a little bit pompous, but like, that's kind of what we have a Kevin Costner for. And he's, like, it's ultimately harmless. And I don't know. I very much enjoyed that. So, yeah. All right, IMDB game?

Yes, tell the listeners what the IMDB game is. All right, 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 are 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 is not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all-hance.

It's the IMDB game. How are we doing it this week? Are you going to guess first? I'm I going to guess first? I'll have you guess first. Okay, what do you have? So, Mike Binder, we have talked about his movies leading up to the upside of anger. The one we didn't really mention very much was...

We also didn't mention black or white that happened after this. That also starred Kevin Fossner that I saw at Tiff of my own volition. Yes, not a good movie. That is another movie that perhaps shouldn't be wielding the subject matter that it's wielding where it's just like maybe Mike Binder shouldn't be weighing in on racial family politics to the degree that he is. But anyway, he made that movie rain over me that I've never seen with Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle. And I did not realize, also in that movie, who we have not ever done a IMD game on, which is a little bit surprising, is Jada Pinkett Smith.

Four films, I will say none of them are GIG. Jane part two. So you are free to guess any of the others, yes. Set it off. No. Fuck off. Yep. You have got to be kidding me.

I know. You picked that intentionally because you knew I would guess that first. I maybe did. Girls trip. No. Oh, God, I hate you all. Two strikes. Okay, so your remaining years, I'm so sorry.

I thought I was going to come in here. The second you said Jada Pinkett-Smith, I was like, boom, another perfect score. Two weeks in a row. All right. Your years are 1997, 2003, 2003 again, and 2004. Wow. Scream 2. Scream 2 is your 1997, yes.

Two 2003 movies and a 2004 movie. These are all, like, back to back. What the hell are these going to be? I know that I know what they are. It's just, like, these are not the, this is not the jade I think of. Right. It's a wild known for. Wow.

Okay. It's a known for that ultimately makes some bit of sense once you will step back from it and see them, but, like, it's still surprising that, yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of these has to be, like, her supporting role in a blockbuster type of movie. I'm just mad. I am mad. I'm sorry to do that to you, but I knew I could walk down the path of where things were going to go.

This is the shit I do to you, so it's fine. Yes, it is. Okay. O3, 04. What's happening in an O3 and 04? We did a whole mini-series on 03. I doubt that it was any of the movies we would have talked about. It's too late for the Nutty Professor.

That was like 98-ish. Maybe it was 97. Which Nutty Professor? Is she the Aaliyah year? She's in the first one. Right, because Janet does the song for the one that Janet's in the year with, are you that somebody? Right.

that's Dr. Doolittle. I'm sorry, you're totally right. I was thinking of the wrong Eddie Murphy movie. You're totally right. Is Dr. Doolittle one of them? Is she the love interest in Dr. Dool? She's not. I don't think she is the love interest in Dr. Doolittle. He only loves the animals in Dr. Doolittle.

I need some more hints. Okay. You're on the right track about a smaller role in a blockbuster movie. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. It's Matrix Revolutions and Matrix, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, I am going to make you come up with the title. Me, the Revolutions Defender says Revolutions first.

It's reloaded. Yeah, both of your 2003 movies. Being a Revolution's Defender is psychotic. I know we've talked so much about drag race. Can we talk about in all winners the Jada in Matrix-inspired look that Jada, Essence Hall did? My God, incredible. It's great.

Love Jada. Yeah. Matrix Revolutions is. almost unwatchable. But yes, anyway, continue. Fuck you. Reloaded. Reloaded is underrated. Matrix Revolutions was correctly assessed at the time. I understand why people hate Revolutions because it has almost, it has so little to do with

the, like, headline characters, but Revolutions is a good movie. Anyway, 2004. 2004 was an Oscar nominee in acting, not for her, obviously. she has a small role in this. Like, she's probably fourth or fifth build. Oh, is... Um... It's not Ali, is it?

It's not. That was 2001. Okay. Oh, it's collateral. It is collateral. My co-man's collateral. She's great in collateral. Yeah. But, I mean...

Yeah. If you were to say, give me the four movies that you most think of, Jada Pinkett's mid-4. Collateral is not in the top 10, I'm sorry. No. This is, this is, this is, this is, this proves my point that the IMDB algorithm sometimes is led by dudes and bros and it sucks. Like, that is entirely why this is are known for. Scream 2. The only people I ever see, the only people I ever see talking about Scream 2 in 2023 are the homosexuals on my Twitter feed and good for them because it's a great movie. But it is a franchise. Yes. Oh, yes.

It is a franchise. Yes. I think in general, it is surprising that it's not set it off. She's not even in Ali, but she's in one of Will Smith's, like, prestige movies. I think she is in Ellie. I think she has a very small role on Ali. I'm pretty sure. No, she's in one of his prestige movies.

I just forget which one it is. It is, Ali. I'm literally looking at it on her. Jesus Christ. Justice for Set It Off. Justice for Girl's Trip. I know. She's also a voice in Madagascar.

Didn't realize that. Yeah, Magic Mike XL, come on, where is that in this whole situation? I mean, my God. I love Jada. Remember when she was in that, I believe, TNT series, Hawthorne,

where she's a registered nurse, and so the RN in Hawthorne got, like, stylized really big. Come on. Listeners, you can tell Joe and I apart because Joe watched the television program. I didn't watch Hawthorne. This is the thing.

I can be aware of. television shows that exist and have never watched a second of. That is, uh, wait. This is a safe space. You can confess that you watch Hawthorne. Wait, wait, I'm sharing my screen. Hold on a second, because I want you to see this. Oh, I know, I know the key art.

Okay, all right. Hawthorne. I am familiar. I love that. I tried to share screen, and it just said host has disabled screen sharing. That was you being like, oh, no, I'm good. I don't need to see that. I don't know the settings of our own.

How dare you accuse me of watching Hawthorne. What a horrible thing for you to say about me. There's worse things of me to accuse. You have definitely watched way worse TV than Hawthor. That's probably true. That's probably true. All right. Listeners get in our menchies if you watch the program, Hawthorne.

She's a registered nurse, everybody. So for you, I am pulling somebody who we have done before, but in a very early episode. I was going through, since this is a motion picture where Joan Allen has not one, not two, not three, but four daughters. I was going through the cinematic history of Joan Allen Daughters, and I pulled up for you none other than the iconic Christina Ricci. Oh, yes. Okay. My first celebrity crush.

Can I say that when I was a kid? Sure. I think a lot of people fit right into that age range. Okay. I do think the Adams family. Wait, is there any television? Is there any television? There's no television, I would have told you.

Okay. All right. So not the Adams family. I do feel like there is a non-zero chance that Adams family values exists on that list and not the Adams family at this point. But I'm going to, I'm going to play the long game there. The thing about Christine, oh, you know what I'm going to guess? Because I do feel like this has come up in other people's IMDB games is Sleepy Hollow. Incorrect. Damn. Okay. What are my ears? Good movie.

1995, 1998, 2006, and 2008. That's a lot of 2000s for Christina Ricci. All right. What was the first one? 1995.

Now and then. No. Really? Casper? Casper. Wild. Okay. So no Adams family values,

though. So no Wednesday Adams in general. That's, that's, nope. Wild. What was the next year in chronologically?

98. Opposite of sex. No. Okay, she was only in three movies that year that all had acclaim. So, it's either Pecker or Buffalo 66, and it's going to annoy me that it's Buffalo 66. It is Buffalo 66. I may pick this just to annoy you. Piece of shit movie Vincent Gallo can fuck himself. Okay, what are the other two? 2006 and 2008.

2006 and 2008. Is 2006 Black Snake Moan? It's Black Snake Moan. That's crazy. Black Snakebone, I don't even think that's streaming anywhere. Sometimes I'm like, these things just got on streaming, and they, like, took off on streaming. I don't think that movie has ever been, like, you know, taken off on Netflix. 2008's a challenge.

Is it, like, obscure? No. No, it's very much. Oh, it's Speed Racer. It is the very good, excellent Speed Racer. I believe you. Listen, I did not care for it the first time I watched it, but I'm willing to, to concede the fact that I

watched it wrong. A lot of Wachowski's in the IMTP game today. I rewatch Elvis yesterday, and I'm like, this really is the speed racer of biopics. It really is. It's anti-capitalist. It is, you know.

Sure. On drugs. Colorful and fast. Yes. Our Elvis. All right. A couple of challenges. MDB games, yeah.

Yeah. So everyone, that's our episode. If you want more, This Had Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at thisheadoscarbuzz.com. Please also follow us on Instagram at This Head Oscar Buzz. And you should also follow us on Twitter at Had underscore Oscar Buzz. Joe, where can the listeners find more of you?

I am on Twitter and letterboxed at Joe Reed. Read spelled R.E.I.D. I am also on Twitter and Letterboxed at Chris Vile. That's F.E.I.L. We'd like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and Dave Gonzalez and Kevin medias for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play Stitcher, wherever else you get podcasts.

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