This Had Oscar Buzz - 239 – Young Adult

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

After the Oscar winning success of Juno, 2011 gave us the reunited creative force of screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman, but in a different mode that that heartwarming crowdpleaser. Young Adult cast Charlize Theron, an author and former prom queen who returns to her hometown to win back her high school boyfriend, played … Continue reading "239 – Young Adult"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. No, I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Heck. Psychotic from Queen, bitch. Here's a deal. Buddy Slade and I are meant to be together, and I'm here to get him back. I'm pretty sure he's married with a kid on the way.

No, kids here. I'm cool with it. I mean, I've got baggage, too. I would keep all of this to yourself. I would find a therapist. That new baby is just darling. Have you seen it? Up close.

Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. the only podcast that does know how to love him. Every week on this had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we are here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host, Joe Reed.

I'm here, as always, with my shake-and-go clip in. Chris File, hello, Chris. And Joe, I got us a couple of hard jacks. I imagine hard jacks are an actual thing because everything else in this movie is a real thing. like all the other, you know, it's a Hampton Inn, and it's a Canaco Hut, and it's a Macy's, and like, everything else is a real place. So I imagine Hard Jacks are a Minnesota thing. Minnesota, Gary's get at us and let us know. Are Hard Jack's real? Listen, if I was ever interviewing Diablo Cody, aside from, you know, being a ball of stress leading up to it, I would have to ask her, are Hard Jacks real?

I would have eight billion questions. It seems like it would be a cider. You say hard in a beverage and you think that it is some type of malt disgusting. Well, and Jack sounds like Apple Jack, right? Which is sort of, uh, yeah. So yes, that was that, that's my sense. What if it's Apple Jack's flavored booze? But I like how they talked about it.

Like, like, what did Pat Nasswald's character, uh, calls them like a, uh, something, it makes it sound like they're like really, like, really will fuck you up. And I'm like, uh, hard cider. Like, I don't know about that. I've had some hard cider in my day. And, like, I've woken up fine the next morning. So I don't know about that. The four loco of the cassette generation.

Yeah. So what is the funny thing, speaking of, like, the location stuff? So this movie was mostly filmed in upstate New York. It had exteriors filmed in Minnesota on location, which I think is mostly the stuff in Minneapolis, I imagine, where you look out, like, her window and whatnot. mostly is filmed in sort of upstate New York, Westchester, kind of Hudson Valley towns or whatever. We're talking about Westchester and we don't have Christina Tucker.

I know. I hope we should message her after and be like, did you get like, did the arms, the hair on your arms start like, you know, raising up or something like that? Like, could you tell that we were talking about Westchester without you? But the scenes at the bar, the dive bar that she goes to and she meets Pat Nossomel to whatever are filmed in Massapequa Park. And my good friend, Dan, lives in Massapequa Park,

and we've hung out there a few times, and you take the LIRR out there. And you get off of the LIRR, and it sort of overlooks this little, like, strip of, like, pubs and bars and whatnot. And that place is, like, right there. It's, like, right off of. You can see it from the LIRR.

So all of a sudden, I've seen the exterior of that, and I'm like, holy shit. So it's fun when you can, like, spot an unusual location in a movie. like that so anyway um finally the day has come chris file we've saved this for a while and we really have in planning it we were like well let's just do it now you know we could have saved this for a more momentous we could have you should but it kind of just ended up happening maybe because i i've partly been like i need to rewatch this movie i'm holding out a rewatch for us to do it and yeah we're talking about one of my favorite movies i haven't seen this movie it turns out in

quite a while. And I think I reacted to it a little bit differently, maybe this time, than I did previously, or reacted to the Mavis character a little bit differently, just in the fact that, and maybe it's one of those things where, like, in your memory, the heart grows fonder and whatever. And, like, it's such a great performance that you may be in your memory are like, I love that character. And now I'm watching it and it's just like, oh, my God, she's like the most heinous person ever. There really is no. no redeeming qualities to this woman. And that's one of the charms of the movie.

See, I also feel like, because this movie is now approaching 15 years old. Fuck you. First of all, get the fuck out of here. Go away. No, it's just over a decade. It's 12 years old. As I am approaching Mavis' age slash maybe actually Mavis's age, I also have had an evolution with this character, too, where it's like I feel less removed from it because like I am the age of these characters now and like

it doesn't feel like you know a character study and more as like real life I realize Minnesota isn't exactly the Midwest what do we consider Minnesota Minnesota is the Midwest yeah sure sure sure yeah this movie is a part of like Midwestern despair cinema yeah in a way that I'm like yep, this is what it's like here. This is, this is, this is it. And it, I mean, I wouldn't say skewers, but like, it is a very mid-Western satire. And there are things that like, yeah, I, I mean,

I would say that this movie is so well observed that I think when people bristle at Mavis, especially in the first reaction to this movie in the way that people were so adamant that this is just such a mean, nasty movie. I think people that keep this movie at an arm's length see things in Mavis that they have in themselves that they don't like and they don't want to see. And they certainly don't want to see in anything other than this is a monster. And while Mavis is monstrous in this movie, I don't think that this movie views her as a

monster. And I think that allows the movie to be better, funnier, and smarter. I think this movie views Mavis a little bit as a tragedy. And, and, but I don't think this movie shies away from showing her monstrousness, like in the slightest. No, but I don't think she, it thinks she is a monster. It's interesting the way that, like, well, We'll get into, as we've gotten into before, the Jason Reitman Diablo Cody partnership throughout this episode. And I do think that there's a reason why his best movies are the ones that she's written. Yeah. And I think it's because he is very good at basically yes anding to, you know, use a common phrase.

Yeah. What she is already providing on the page. He has talked a lot about how when presenting. with this script, he was like, oh, this is a movie about an alcoholic, and I'm going to run with that. And I think because it takes that perspective on Mavis and the way she behaves, I think there is a note to this movie that it's like, but she can change. She can get it together. She's just on the past to her rock bottom, and she's not quite there yet. Yeah. As somebody also who, and I think like Mavis is the most extreme version of basically anything, any trait you can think of in a lot of ways, but as somebody who sort of moved away from my hometown and moved to New York City and had that experience of like coming back and being like, I feel foreign in this place now. And like Mavis is like all the way to like an

11 of like disdain for her hometown. And I don't think I've ever really felt that. But there are feelings of like, what is this place? Do I really, you know, do I like everything about this place? Do I feel I don't fit in here anymore and why don't I fit in here anymore? Am I, have I grown this place and all these sort of feelings? And you do see, like as you mentioned, like there is a reflection of these real emotions in there. And while also feeling at the same time, because she, right, she hates this place, but she also

is stuck in this sense of reliving her glory days, right? She is the classic, you know, proverbial peaked in high school girl, right? But she didn't necessarily peak in high school. She left and did have her own life. She certainly

is at a moment where she thinks she did. She thinks she was the hottest fucking shit in high school. And in many ways in which high school, you know, a currency is measured, she was, right? But now she comes back and all the people she was mean to hate her and all the sort of, you know, things that she thought was cool going back behind the high school and like drinking and behaving badly and being, you know, feeling up on her ex and whatnot. All of those things now from an adult perspective are seen as pathetic and also monstrous.

and she can't seem to realize that. Like, I don't think she ever quite, until, like, very end, realizes just how, like, it's one of those things that's, like, if you could just look at yourself, you would see this is, like, awful behavior. And she just... We can't talk about the ending of this movie until we're on the other side of the 60-second plot description. The Collette Wolfe scene. Like, that scene of the movie is part of the reason why this movie is as a... as good as it is. Yes.

But, I mean, I also think that the movie gives Mavis legitimate reasons to hate her hometown and hate that life. Like, that scene with her parent, the, like, kind of lunch table scene with her parents, like, really hit me kind of hard this time of, like, oh, her parents are kind of awful to her. Oh, you don't end up that way unless there's some sort of, yeah. Exactly. And, like, you probably not to, like, not to, like,

like armchair psychologist, but like you don't get some type of appeal to being a writer, you know, an observer, an observer through literature without having some interesting character dynamics surrounding you that you observe and affect you. What I find so fascinating, and it's not a plot hole, it's not a whatever, I sometimes struggle to connect the dot of how Mavis ended up becoming a right. Like, did she take English classes in college? Like, did she take, like, was she at all a serious student in college? She's so incredibly smart, though, and sensitive, I think.

But she's not particularly, she doesn't ever seem like somebody who would have wanted to be a creative, right? She probably, you know, a theater fag is just a term, right? Like, that's the line in the movie. Like, she, I wonder what was the thing that sort of actually made her put pen to paper and, like, write something fictional. Because that is a leap for a lot of people who don't want to put themselves out there because their vision of popularity is incumbent on being too cool for shit like that, right? Right. Well, I mean, I think that's something as you're getting older.

We don't really know much about Mavis in terms of like a college career. Right. It's hard to see. But I think it's part of the character. It's hard to see the life that existed between leaving Mercury and returning to Mercury. Curie. Right, right. I mean, maybe I can kind of draw the lines and maybe it's me, you know, extrapolating

onto her, but I can see that type of person. I think this person exists in the world that isn't initially drawn to creative things in their youth, but they, through whatever weird means as they, you know, enter actual young adulthood, you know, find things that work for them as a path. And I think that's something that's true for Mavis is like she did develop this life where she, you know, had this career, ghost writing these books and got married. And in the recent, you know, years of her life, this book series she writes for loses its popularity, her marriage ends. And, and, And she has to figure out something new.

And maybe she wouldn't have, you know. She's not resilient in that way. She doesn't know how to find the next thing. Maybe I am also psychoanalyzing myself. Maybe. Just maybe. There are invitations in this movie to find yourself in different, especially Mavis, but also in, like, Matthew and, like, different characters in this movie.

that will make your blood run momentarily cold. And... I mean, not just those... I mean, this is why Diablo Cody is such a good writer and why Jason Reitman is great at bringing those things to the screen. I see myself at a lot of those people. Yeah. Like, even Elizabeth Razor's friend who tries to pull the knife on Mavis

and is fully unequipped to, you know, deal with Mavis's knife back, when she's like, it's so interesting to see you hanging around here where it's like, okay, you're going to grab this low-hanging fruit, and Mavis just, like, bats off this similarly shady thing. That's so much easier for her to do. Well, and she cuts to the jugular, right? She's like, oh, it's so nice that a single mom is in a band. Well, and, like, I can see myself in that character that it's like,

I know how to handle this situation and being completely, you know, knee-capped immediately. The first time I saw this movie, I was fully on Mavis' aside. being like, fuck those bitches, you know, whatever. And then watching it this time, I'm like, I want to, like, fly on the wall for the rest of their evening and watch the three of those women just, like, tear the fuck out of Mavis and, like, run her up and down the wall. And just because, like, watching, I don't know, I'm much, much, much less sympathetic

to Mavis. And I don't think I'm supposed to be fully sympathetic for her. But, like, watching her in that bar, I'm like, this, bitch. like just every the way she like and this is why it's a great performance by Charlize Theron right where the scene in the bar

where the band starts playing and she's standing next to Buddy but her back she's leaning against the bar in the way that her back is to the stage and like she's sort of like over her shoulder looks when she's looking at the stage

and just like I am giving you the minimum amount of my attention because that is all you deserve and I'm mostly just going to like stare at your husband as you are you know, totally guilelessly. To talk about when she went down on him for the first time.

Right, exactly. And be like totally embarrassingly, like, obvious about what's going on. And one of the things I also like about this movie is that the obliviousness of Patrick Wilson and Elizabeth Reeser is infuriating. See, I don't think, see, this is also why I think Patrick Wilson is great in this movie. I don't think they're oblivious at all. Well, they're seeming obliviousness. Yeah.

Yes. The way I think Patrick Wilson is so good because I do think. He knows what's going on the whole time. And, of course, it eventually comes out that it's like, well, his wife was like, be nice to her. She probably needs someone to connect to, like, and it's so there in his performance, but he's never telling you that. And also because, like, Davis does some crazy shit in this movie. Yeah, no kidding. Overplay it because then it loses the movie, you know, for, like, there has to be a small, like,

iota of where we feel like she might have an inn with him, right? Because he can't overplay it and, like, play that he thinks she's being crazy. Right, right. Also, it's just, like, that breed of straight man, especially that breed of 40-year-old straight man, who never lets it show on their face that, like, I think you're crazy. Right. But they just, like, are very good at being stone-faced and nice. But he's also not a bad person.

Like, I think there's a way to draw that character to be like, oh, you know, what's going on, you're inviting this, you're, you know, testing the waters of whatever, and I don't... I think this movie thinks absolutely none of these people are bad people. If anything, like Mavis's, you know, swan dive into her high school mentality, I think the movie has some grace for it, because with all of these other ancillary characters, like, you know, Elizabeth Razor's friends, and, uh, you know, some, even some of the parents, it's just like, yeah, it's so easy. to fall into that trap. It's so easy to slip into that mentality when you're around those people in your life. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's trudge on forward then,

and we'll get into the 60-second plot description. There's a lot going on in this movie that is 97 minutes, and seemingly the plot is simple, but there's a lot of little things going on here. No filler in this movie. This movie is a buffet. It is a buffet. It is a steak dinner, it is. No, what it is. It's a, it's a, champagne. It's a tray with both with, it's a tray with fried chicken, a personal pan pizza, and a crunch wrap supreme, all on the same tray.

And it's a full, when I saw, I was like, the first time you see that. And caviar, caviar. It's very Chekhov, right? You see the Canaco Hut and you're like, well, at some point, somebody's going to need to have a meal with one food stuff from each of those different establishments on it. And she finally does, you see that the clerk loading up the tray. Let me tell you, there is nothing like having a chili cheese burrito with some Pizza Hut breadsticks. It's just like, you know, that's the order.

I have never experienced the glory of the Kintako Hut myself. I've literally never seen a full Kintako hut. It's two, never three. I've seen them. Oh, so it's like, that's like the Holy Grail. Like you can see two of them, but like the three of them, it's like the, it's like a four-leaf clover or something like that. An actual unicorn.

Okay, excellent. It's like you have to complete a side quest for that to be able to unlock in your life. Fantastic. All right, so we're going to be talking about the 2011 movie Young Adults today. Directed by Jason Reitman, written by the wonderful Diablo Cody, starring Charlie's Theron, Patrick Wilson, Patton, Oswald, Elizabeth Reeser, Colette Wolfe, Jill Eichenberry, Marybeth Hurt, Louisa Krause, The Two Seen Wonder, Louisa Krause, Hedian Park, the voice of J.K. Simmons, briefly.

And this movie skipped all the festivals in 2011 and premiered in limited release on December 9th, 2011. Ultimately, was not a barn burner of a hit. It made a little bit of money. I think it cleared it's budget, but at least it's production budget. But yeah, so Chris, if you are ready, I've got my stopwatch ready for a 60-second plot description for young adults. I'm ready. All right. Time starts now.

All right, so we're following Mavis Gary. She is a ghost writer for a teen series that is ending. She gets a, at the same time that this series is ending, she gets a birth announcement for her high school boyfriend, Buddy Slade's baby, and is kind of going to. going through a breakdown and she decides to go back home and win Buddy Slade back. That sounds insane because it is. Meanwhile, while she's back at home, she is constantly binge drinking and meets Matt Freehoff, her locker mate in high school, who in high school was brutally beaten in the assumption

that he is gay, but he was not. So he was hate crime for no essential reason. Meanwhile, she is meeting back up with Buddy Slade and trying to ingratiate herself to him. She meets his wife, Beth, who is in a band, and over several meetings across about a week or so, she and Matt get close, but he tells her that she's crazy, essentially. And then there's a giant blow-up at this baby naming party where Mavis reveals that part of her trauma was having a miscarriage with Buddy while they were very young. And she ends up sleeping with Matt and not changing and going back to Minneapolis. 13 seconds over, not too bad. When you get into a plot description, it sounds like absolutely nothing happens in this movie.

Right. But so much does happen in this movie. But it's like repeated meetings of her and Matt, repeated meetings of her and buddy that get more and more uncomfortable. Yeah. And she's, she has every night ending with binge drinking. Yeah. She's like pounding Maker's Mark throughout. Oh, the scene at the house, the naming ceremony, where she, Buddy finally sort of tells her off and she heads downstairs and she downs two, like, full drinks of Maker's Mark.

Just like, pours it in the cup, downs it, pours in the cup, downs it. And then, I think, has a drink in her hand when she's out on the lawn, right, when she gets the sangria spilled on her. And so, like, yeah, she goes full out in this movie in a way that is hard to watch. Well, there's also the scene in Matt's garage because Matt is distilling a homemade bourbon. Exactly this dude is making homemade bourbon. And she doesn't really know what it is. He's naming it after Mo Saisley. And she's downing a whole mason jar worth of it.

And she's like, I was supposed to sip this. Well, I'm like, that's part of the reason why she latches on to Matt, right? It's like the, he's an easy source of companionship for boozing, essentially. And eventually, also because of his kind of outsider status, he's somebody she can bitch about the other people in the town to. Even as he's, like, telling her, like, right off the bat, like, you shouldn't be doing this. He's functional to the plot. And the only scene that ever really makes it feel that way is the first scene where she is drunk with him and says, I'm here to win, buddy, back.

I am going to confess to you why I am here. This movie contrasts with my best friend's wedding so perfectly in a way that I never really realized. It's like if my best friend's wedding was in the real world. Like, it's dark-hearted my best friend's wedding, right? where it's the same thing, though, comes back to town with an agenda, she acquires not an actual gay person in this case, but somebody who was mistaken for a gay person. But it's the same thing where, like, you know, she's come with a mission, she is the bad guy, like, it is unambiguous, but because it's so, like, you know, absolutely vinegory about the whole thing, there is no,

but, like, it's the same thing where, like, audiences did not want Julia Roberts and my best friend's sweating to have a happy ending and young adults like okay like gotcha here you go um we're like we don't even get to see she's not having a happy present either she doesn't even have a last scene with matt we don't even get to see him feeling dejected by her when she leaves like it's the sister who has that scene um we'll get to that though um soon enough i feel like we should start though with the juno of it all right where uh diablo cody is this like comes out of nowhere screenwriter. She's this, you know, leopard print wearing at the Oscars, like, former stripper, and she's got a whole story to tell, and she's a name brand screenwriter from the jump.

And Juno is this indie sensation in 2007, in this year where the Oscar race came to be defined by these big sort of like finally breakthrough autors, and the Cohen brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson, and then that third sort of like kid's sister just sidling up next to them is Juno, which is, which gets into the best picture race because it is sort of the feel-good comedy, even though right from the jump, there were a lot of people who were like, this is nails on a chalkboard, this style of dialogue is too much, all of the honest to blogs and the hamburger phones, and the ego is prego and all of this, and I want to blow my brains out. record as being Juno is about way, way much more than the way that character speaks.

And yet, I watched the first 10, 15 minutes of Juno, and I'm like, well, yeah, I get it. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that first 15 minutes of Juno is an endurance test to make sure that you are, you know, you can get past that point and get to the rest of, you know, what is great about that movie. But it's a big Oscar success. It's, what, four or five nominations? Jason Reitman got the best director nomination for it, which was not expected at the time. Right.

That felt like it was the classic, it was right after Little Miss Sunshine, so everybody assumed it was the classic Fox Searchlight. It was Searchlight, right, do you know? It was Searchlight, yes. Fox Searchlight, Best Picture nominee, but it's not going to get a director nomination because it's not really a directory movie. But he does. Who was the lone director? Oh, Julian Schnabel was the lone director in 2007, boo. Yes.

Robbing Joe Wright for his atonement nomination that he should have gotten. Anyway, Diablo Cody wins Best Original Screenplay. Against heavy competition. Yeah, what was the competition in original that year? That was... Definitely Michael Clayton. Definitely. No, there will be blood was adapted.

Yes. No country was adapted. Lars, that was also the year, I believe, where there are multiple female nominated screenwriters. It's also Lars and the Real Girl. And the Savages. My beloved The Savages. Yeah. And then what would have been the fifth that year, if I can think of it?

You look it up and see if I can race you to it. Michael Clayton, Lars and the Real Girl, Juno, Savages, and. I'm struggling Away from her was a No away from her would have been interrupted No surprise We should have thought of this already Ratatouille

Of course Ratatoui, yes That is good conversation That's a banger original screenplay line But there was no question that Diablo Cody was going to win that She was the story And if Juno was going to win anything It was going to win that and it's just a really good launching pad.

Then she and Reitman sort of diverge from that point, not for any creative different reasons, but he goes and makes up in the air in 2009 and has again a big huge hit with Oscars, again gets nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. Clooney, I mean, Bridges was always going to win Best Actor that year. I think if, but if Clooney, that's one of those things where if Clooney had not already won an Oscar for Siriana,

I do think he probably wins the Oscar for up in the air. Yeah, because he probably wouldn't have. I mean, his acting Oscar should be for Michael Clayton, but he was never going to win for Michael Clayton. He was not going to be able to Louis. Right. And so. But also in that season, it really metastasizes that Jason Reitman is fucking annoying.

Yes. That was the season where it didn't. And it gets blamed for him losing that. There was controversy around that adapted screenplay nomination because it's reading between the lines. It sounds like Jason Reitman did not want the credited co-screenwriter credited for that movie because they apparently worked on it completely separately that adaptation. Yeah. And there was animosity there. And so precious sense up winning.

Right. Which was not expected to. That was a surprise win that night. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But 2009's an interesting sort of like two roads diverged in a wood, right? Where Jason Reitman makes up in the air and gets a lot of success off of it. And then Diablo Cody writes the script for Jennifer's Body, which is directed by Karen Kusama, which we both love that movie.

And like the culture has come around on that movie. But that movie was a big old flopperuni in 2009. And it was reviled. That was sort of the peak. Megan Fox Backlash isn't even the word Sort of like peak Megan Fox beat down Kind of in the culture

I mean it's also a movie that's like About the type of shit that caused That movie to get the critical beat down That it did and by critical beatdown We mean like this is also the rise of a lot of You know internet criticism so it's dudes on the internet Really trashing this movie Yeah

But it's once again That movie Yes you're right to position it as, you know, two roads diverging here. Yeah. But, like, the, the roads diverge again because now we've, we as a culture have come around on Jennifer's body and are correct about Jennifer's body. And the worm has turned on Jason Reitman in a serious way.

They've turned on Jason Reitman, but specifically with Up in the Air, it's a movie that nobody talks about now. I think it's a good movie. Me too. Yeah. With some really great performances. But, yeah, no one talks about that movie. But so, Jennifer's Body is once again Diablo Cody writing a teenage girl protagonist.

She's sort of in the high school realm once again. And one of the impetus, impotuses, impotuses. I am somebody who works with words for a living. For writing young adult was, she was like, I kept getting asked, like, why? Why do you keep writing about teenage girls in your, whatever, in your work? And she's like, I started to wonder, is like, is this a thing? Is this some sort of like arrested adolescence thing? And that sort of helped, I mean, one of the other inspirations for young adults is she wanted to make a essentially an anti-hero movie, a character study anti-hero movie, but about a woman.

So also in 2009, Diablo Cody creates the television series, United States of Tara, for Showtime, which, which eventually runs for three seasons, but it is a, I imagine it had to have been a fraught production just because there was a lot of, I think there were a lot of whispers behind the scenes. I think it started off as a Diablo Cody project. I think at some point, like Joey Salloway was a writer and at one point creative on that show, and that show sort of, I think, has a lot of, you know, sort of authorial voices between the two of them. Diablo Cody had talked about after the fact that she wasn't really a writer's room person. She much preferred to write things on her own. And whatever, yada, yada, yada. That is a show I really loved. I don't know. Did you ever watch United States of Terra? Were you a Tara person? I've never, I always never have access to showtime when I need to have access to showtime. I have the DVDs and I'm just going to like mail that I need to catch up to it.

It's a show that like, it's an again, you know, know, Diablo Cody does this a lot where it's like, you can see where some people would take one look at that and just be like, not my thing too much. It definitely bears her stamp in a lot of ways, but it's a show that I really, really loved. I ended up really falling in love with the characters. It was the first time I had seen Brie Larson in anything, and she was really good in that. And Rosemary DeWitt plays Tony Collette's sister, and she's really good in that. Patton Oswald is in it, I think, because of that connection. Well, no, that would have predated. So actually, Patton Oswalt and Young Adult comes after the fact. Anyway, whatever, whatever. That show runs from 2009 to 2011. And so when that show is ending, young adult is about getting ready to come into theaters. So Diablo Cody, and the United States of Terra, even though it ran three seasons, was sort of seen as a disappointment. Right? It was never, the audience for that show was never really enough. It kind of had to work to get to three seasons. So this project then, this

re-teaming with Jason Reitman, feels, felt like at the time, like, okay, let's get this train back on the track. You know, a couple of, if not flops, then disappointments for Diablo Cody. And now we're back to this teaming that did so well in 2007. And the trailer was great. The trailer had that, if you remember, that it used David Bowie's queen bitch really, really well. and just seemed incredibly exciting. And then it skipped the festivals, sort of strategically. Skip the festivals because I remember Jason Reitman kind of being like,

I don't want to happen to up in the air to happen to this movie, which I get it because festivals can be a lot, and maybe festivals wouldn't be the best environment for this movie, especially after, like, you know, maybe Diablo Cody might have felt that way too, because Jennifer's body debuted at Tiff. But there was a sense that up in the air peaked early. Right. Peaked in the early fall.

Still, it's like up in the air was a hit movie. That movie made money. Right. What are you talking about? Right. Oh, I agree. But yes, it was in that movie season, it was the early frontrunner. It probably peaked at Tell Your Ride.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what they do instead, they kind of make their own festival where it goes to a couple major cities ahead of the movie's regular release. Each city has, like, a local designer, design a poster for it. And, you know, they kind of get to make this kind of bespoke release for it that you do, you see versions of that today where it's like we're going to. like we're talking the day after the The Bo was afraid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which, sneak premiere. They said that it was a greeting where tickets were sold, but I'm not seeing any, you know, Normies attend that. I think everybody knew that that wasn't the midsummer screening. I talked to, I heard from at least one person who, that, who was genuine, that it was a surprise, genuine surprise pulled on people who thought they're going to go to see mid-summer. Oh, no, no, no, no.

The critics, I think, had seen it. I think they were embargoed on talking about it until yesterday. I saw critics that were at that screening and, like, taking pictures of the Q&A. That's interesting. Well, we'll see. I guess we'll, you are the cynic here, and I am the true believer, and we'll see who is right. we're not talking about that though because I don't want to know anything about that movie I'm excited to see it though I will say that sure sure I want to absolutely not participate in

any discourse around it especially before yeah sure sure sure sure sure real people sure real people uh fake America has seen Beau's afraid and now real America is going to see those afraid um let's pivot to sure we are fake America uh yeah I've always been a part of fake America. Sarah Palin called me fake America, and now I am not a real moviegoer. Okay, so Charlie's Theron. Let's pivot. Let's talk about Charlize. This is one of my favorite performances of hers. I mean, it's interesting. I would say, and I have said, the best performances of the decade we're talking about, both came in this same year. It's Charlize Theron and this, and it's Anna Pacquine and Margarine. I figured you would say that, yes.

And, you know, not entirely dissimilar, you know. Yeah. People who, they both are playing people who are, you know, on their own mission that is probably misguided, who can behave absolutely beastly, but within a movie that I still think views both of them empathically. Sure, sure. one is in a comedy and one is in an opera, so, you know, the tone is different. Right. The Charlie's there on career path at this point, though, I find deeply fascinating because she wins, obviously, her pre-monster career, which we're not going to get into too deeply, but, like, that part of the appeal of the monster performance and the sort of the Oscar trajectory for that was the fact that, like, a lot of people didn't think she had that performance in her.

right she was you know it's she wasn't it's not like she was this like arm candy actress right but she was mostly seen as a commercial actress in other people's projects right she's in the devil's advocate and she's in mighty joe young and she's you know uh what was the woody allen curse of the jade scorpion she's in one of those she's in a lot of movies where she plays the woman right right um and then monster is this like huge just like wall up out of nowhere. Nobody thought that she had that performance in her. She wins the Oscar, quite deservedly, I would say, that year.

And gets the, to me, I always think of this is the classic sort of Halo nomination. Two years later, she gets nomination for North Country, which is like, hey, Charlize, we're glad we gave you an Oscar. Good for you for following it up with a very good performance in an Oscar-friendly genre. You know, True Life Story. you're a minor who's fighting for union shit, whatever. We love it. North Country nomination in 2005.

And then the slump hit, right? Well, because the same season as North Country, speaking of the great mistreatment of Karin Kusama, Eon Flux happens. That's the thing. And Eon Flux is, yeah, you're right, that the Kusama comes back into the conversation. Eon Flux is a sort of big budget sci-fi. high-concept sci-fi based on the anime television program that MTV had aired

late at night. Eon Flux Flops. Big old, big old I'm here to say Eon Flux is fun. EonFox? Is that the Chris File? Eon Fux Fux. Yeah. I definitely have seen it, but it's been ages. Like genuinely, like back, like it's been since 2005. So I remember very little. She definitely had the dark hair in it. That was the thing, you know, famous blonde Charlie Stheron. That was going dark hair for Eon Flux. Was Francis McDormand also in that? Now that I forget, but I do think that there is some other like prestige actress maybe playing a

villain. Let me look up who else is in this. Yeah, look up who else. Yes, Francis McDormant is in this movie along with Sophia Okanato. Right. I knew Sophia Okinaido was in that. But yeah, so that was the year that Francis and Charlize were in two things together. So from there, she's in the Valley of Ella in 2007, which is an Oscar success for Tommy Lee Jones, but she's very much the sort of afterthought. She's the lead, but she's the afterthought of the lead, right? The Battle in Seattle, which I believe Stuart Townsend directed, her husband at the time, Stuart Townsend directed.

A movie called Sleepwalking in 2008, which was a Sundance movie that she had produced and also starred in. Hancock, the summer blockbuster. Will Smith movie that nobody really knew quite how to take. I think it made money, but not the kind of... Clearly intending to start a franchise. Remember when people would start franchises from

original material? Yeah. And partly because things like Hancock got roundly rejected by the American imagination, that they were like, no. That movie also tried to be like super pull a fast one on the audience

halfway through the movie because... She's the twist. Yeah. She's the twist that she is also a superhero. And his like ex. Like, yeah. You think she's the normie. You think she's like a regular person who encounters Hancock and they're going to have this sort of

Superman and Lois sort of a thing. And it's like, no, she's his like supervillain ex-wife. And they're like ancient creatures who have all the way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of stupid. It's a more it's kind of stupid, but it's sort of like it's I remember having fun with it. Yes. But

for a Will Smith action superhero movie, it disappointed. Then 2009, she's in the burning plane, which people most, that's a Guillermo Ariaga movie, which is mostly remembered as being like, oh, hey, Jennifer Lawrence was in this a year before she broke through in Winter's Bone. And then also in 2009, she's in the road, which she's, like, she's in flashback scenes in the road, right? She's his wife, who

is at this point in the narrative is dead and he flashes back to her. Like, that's sort of the thing that she's in the movie. She, I remember being the best thing about the movie, but she's not in the One of the things I was struck by when I was looking at her career stretch from this point on IMDB is the two most sort of recognizable things from that era are her season spent on Arrested Development playing Jason Bateman's love interest who ends up being mentally delayed and controversially so. And also her Dior ad is listed on her IMDB. Gold is cold Diamonds are dead The limousine is a car

Don't pretend Feel what's real That's it Jadour Chaud Chaud Dio The Jodore Dior

ad campaign And that was maybe like the most well-known Charlie's there on project. And which her character, scare quotes, is credited as diva. Oh, me. Honestly true. They're great ads.

They're really good ads. But so that's sort of this like six-year stretch between North Country and young adult where she's slumping. And I think even though young adult isn't a big hit, it is a career rejuvenator, I think, for her in terms of people. really seeing what she can do with a richly drawn and complicated and, you know, really juicy character. And she really tears into this role. And while she doesn't get the Oscar nomination, and I would argue that she doesn't, where do you think she finished in the voting?

Right. I don't think she finished. Very well. Right. Even though she's in a lot of the precursors, she's a Globe nominee. She's a Critics' Choice nominee. Those are the nominations I would expect her to get for a movie like this. Sure.

No SAG, no BAFTA. But so who's, so Golden Globe, she's nominated in musical or comedy. She loses to Michelle Williams for My Week with Marilyn, one of the great, fraudulent musical or comedy nominations. Because she sings one song at the beginning of the movie. But the other. nominees there, Jody Foster and Kate Winslet for Carnage, who are non-factors in

that best actress race. Kristen Wig for bridesmaids, which Kristen Wig's great in bridesmaids, and that's a perfect Golden Globe nomination, but I also don't think she was a factor. I might think that she got, that she placed higher than Charlie's

Theron. Like, the, while this movie got, what is this movie on Rotten Tomatoes in the 70s or something? 80. It's a baseline 80. Yeah. Yeah, but 80, 10 years ago is not 80 today. Sure. 80, 10 years ago would be like 65 today.

Or, you know, it... So, listen, there was a lot of... Hostility isn't even the right word, but this movie was very quickly pegged as... It was hard to warm up to. Nasty and mean-spirited. Right. And I think it gave voters who were, you know, trying to triage their screener choices, reason to maybe not watch it right away. Critics' choice.

she lost to Viola Davis for the help. Merrill for the Iron Lady and Michelle Williams were also nominated. They would get Oscar nominations. Elizabeth Olson is nominated for Martha Marcy May Marlene. And then Tilda Switten, who's the one who I think is sixth place this year, for We Need to Talk About Kevin is also nominated. So it's hard to argue again. I mean, I would believe that Tilda wasn't sixth place because it's like,

well, she didn't get that nomination because the Academy is never going to nominate that movie. I think she came close, though. But when she shows up everywhere else, it's like, yeah, she probably was. Do you have handy the SAG and BAFTAs that year? You have your little chart, right? Let me get into my Google drive. Because now I want to dig in. I want to know who I would place above Charlize in the voting for that year.

Okay, so SAG is the same as the Oscars with Rooney Mark swapped in for Tilda Swinton. Keep in mind that this whole season, I don't think critics saw the girl with a dragon tattoo until... Very late. Very, very late. Because I think there was a rush to finish that movie. They were filming that three-hour, multiple location...

Right. Behemoth of a movie in, like, February, March. And they still made a Christmas release date. Yeah. I think Rooney Morrow would have shown up for things like SAG if, you know, they're able to see it. Bafta nominated Bernice Bechot in lead. Which I think is correct. Yeah, I hate that nomination.

I just don't. That performance does nothing for me. And it's such a, I think it's barely, I don't think it's worthy of a supporting nomination, much less elite nomination. Like, that's. Right. Indy Spirit on top of Michelle Williams winning for my week with Marilyn and Elizabeth Olson. They nominate a few other performances that, you know, wouldn't have been Oscar contenders, except for Ataparo Oduya for Pariah. Love it, Pariah.

Sure. Who, you know, shows up in the Merrill speech. So, yes, but basically that's... Charlize does not, though, right? No. Well, no, because Charlize was nominated at that globes. And Merrill mostly, she rattles off the names of the women nominated in drama against her, and then goes into the unnominated women like Mia and Adapara.

So given that whole canvas then, and I'm not sure, I don't think there's anybody who we haven't mentioned who probably... Kirsten Dunst for Melancholia wins National Society, but I would have to imagine that I'm curious where she might have fallen. I would maybe by her showing up above Charlize Theron, but because Charlize Theron's already an Oscar nominee, an Oscar winner at this point. Yeah. So where would you think, where would you guess that Charlie has landed in the voting?

Maybe eighth. I was going to say eighth, right? Eighth seems right. It's Tilda ahead of her and one of the others, whether it's Elizabeth Olson or Kristen Wig. or Kirsten Dunst, like one of those three probably also ahead of Shirley's. But I'd say probably eighth. A very distant eighth.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's a six-person race that ended up shaking out to five, in my opinion. I think Tilda got closer than you do. But anyway, so back to Charlize. Yeah, she's nominated for the Globe, as we said. She's nominated for Critics' Choice. And I think after this, her career takes a definite upswing, right?

Like, young adults, like I said, it's not a blockbuster. But immediately after this, she's, you know, in Snowyde and the Huntsman, which is not, you know, setting the world on fire. But like, but it, like... I think we can blame the T.R. ads for that. But, like, but even that, it's like, she's, it's a different stature, I think, from that point, right? Like, she's, she's... Yes, yes, she is reclaiming her movie star status at this point. Even Prometheus, right?

She's the captain of that, or not, she's not the captain of the ship. She, her and Idriselba, one of them's a captain or one of them's, like, in charge of them. She's the capitalist of the ship. She sure is. The thing about Prometheus was people showed up to Prometheus and were like, oh, I thought Charlize Theron was going to have a bigger role in this movie. Sure. And then when do they start filming Mad Max Fury Road?

Ask Kyle, you can't. I know, I should. I should call Kyle up and just be like, Kyle, dial in and let us know. But I imagine, so the lag time between young adult releasing in late 2011 and Mad Max Fury Road ramping up into production, it's probably closer than it seems with the four years of release date between them, right? So, and obviously I don't think like, you know, it's not like Mavis Gary's driving that big rig in that next yeary road, but like I do feel like that movie, that young adult sort of like, it reintroduces in the world to what a great commanding screen presence she can be in a movie. And I think you see that reflected in the movie roles that happen immediately thereafter. And, yeah, her, the 2010s are good for sure, at least they're on after that. So, I mean, I think as, I mean, I do think she's one of our best living actresses.

Yeah, I just think she, Monster excluded, she's not going to be someone who's recognized for her best work, which is like, you know, her nominations are going to go to bombshell, which, ugh. Yeah, that, right. Which is like, you watch that, next, you watch that performance next to this performance, and it's like, they nominated that one. Right. Which, like, put bombshell next to Furiosa, right? We understand why that happened. Yes. But it's just like, that's just kind of a nothing burger performance.

It's all about the physical transformation, which was definitely aided by CGI. The quality, though, of her performance in young adult, where she, it's not even, it's, sometimes you boil performances down to, like, line readings or, you know, breakdown scenes or whatever. And it's beyond that, it's the way she weaponizes this, she smiles in this movie in a, in such a, like, it's sinister, but not overtly sinister. She, like, you can, she, like, re-captures this teenage look of satisfaction on her face or this teenage look of sort of coquettishness, right? Where it's, I'm amazed what she's able to do with her face, where it's just like, you can see. For private conversations with Buddy are this full regress. At first, you think it's this regression to teenage girl, but you realize that it's a performance for Buddy that she would have put. It's not that she is behaving like a teenager.

It's that she is putting on the same performance for him that she put on for him 20 years ago. Yeah. The level of detail in this performance is fucking unreal. And, like, you're right about things like the way that she can weaponize a smile. It's an incredibly physical performance. And it's, like, it's physical comedy, but not in the way we consider what physical comedy. It's the way she presents herself. It's the way that, like, she and Matthew, Pat Nasswald, have the argument.

when they're drinking behind the high school. And he, that's the one where he is like, you know, you, you know, you've grown up, but you're not an adult. You're still behaving like a teenager, this kind of thing. And what's the next thing we see is she's like back at the mall getting this like very adult outfit, right? That's the one where she does her hair and it's all pinned back. And she comes out looking very like executive secretary when she goes to Disney.

And it's like, it's the way that she. sort of physically presents herself in this very desperate to, you know, put on exactly the face that she needs to put on for that moment. And it's all very good. It's all very, very good. What do you... She... Oh, go ahead. No, no, no, no, you go ahead. I was just going to say, I think one of the things, at least at the time, that was so, such like, A blind siding effect of seeing this performance and, like, this is one of the few movies in my life that I've seen two days in a row. Oh, nice. Just to catch the detail of this performance, she hadn't really done comedy in this way before.

I mean, like, Mavis Gary is a very specific character and a real, like, challenge for whoever would have played them before. But it's like, we've never seen Charlize there and do this before this movie. And, like, now we can accept her as an actress who can be very funny. I mean, like, there's, there are moments of her monster performance that are just, like, so committed that they can be. Yes. You know, there's notes of humor in that performance, which is, like, something I don't think people really talk about. Yeah. But, like, we hadn't seen her.

I mean, I would even argue we haven't really seen her have to handle dialogue in the way that Mavis Gary has. to navigate that and where it's like there's constantly in every word that she said there there is subtext subconscious and then the text of what she's saying she has to play multiple levels with literally every word out of her mouth and yet it's also like the disdain coming out of her for everything is it's disdain it's sort of this very again sort of like arrested adolescence worldview of like nothing matters except for how it benefits or does not benefit her and her sort of, you know, standing the way she talks about being married and having a child as if it's a hostage situation that she needs to liberate buddy from. And her worldview is

obviously so warped and so fucked, and, I mean, that's all on the page, right? And she pulls that off of the page, and she gives you this terrifying character as a result. Talk about the relationship between Mavis and Matthew in this movie, because I think it's a, it's, that's another one that sort of, I think, in some ways, upends expectations about where you think it's going to go. I mean, I think in some ways they are a mirror of each other, and it's interesting because I love that you compared it to my best friend's wedding, because, like, this is a dynamic between men and women that we usually only see on screen when it's a woman and a gay man.

I'm going to tell you the truth about your situation. Right, and I'm going, we are the people that we can just be fully honest with each other. And he does He's so good He's so good But that character really It's takes on that outsider status Right

Where like Everybody Even like Buddy still thinks he's gay Like Buddy has not Does not remember that part of high school Where it turned out that Where people stopped paying attention To what happened to him

Because they're like Oh he's straight Right right exactly And then moved on to Mavis's cousin Who was the happy guy The positive guy in the wheelchair and he's the one that everybody liked.

But, yeah, Matthew also sort of is crystallized in high school via what happened to him. So we're much more sympathetic to that because this, like, awful monstrous thing happened to him. And, yeah, Pat and Oswald does a very good job of selling that while not, like, begging for our pity in a way. Well, and I think the movie ultimately gets there with Mavis, but gets there first with. Matt in that these are characters who are somewhat frozen by their trauma specifically and at least the other characters like Beth and Buddy we don't ever know I'm sure they've had things that were traumatic and you know formative for them but like yeah the movie presents them as it's so easy to be them because they are not frozen in time by some horrible thing that happened to them right because for like Matt it's like there's not he he became disabled because of what traumatic happened to him. Right. You know, there's nothing he can really do to combat that other than try to just live a life that makes him happy.

Yeah. And, you know, Mavis, you know, it takes a lot for us to get to the point where we get that information. Right. About the miscarriage is what you're talking about. Right. Yeah, yeah. But it's also, you know, this very funny, but, you know, I think a lot of. Lesser movie would come at it in a way

that is less interesting, but it shows that he especially and he says as much, he's always going to be drawn and have this type of relationship with that type of woman. Yeah. And I think

the surprising thing, the smart thing, is that she's going to have the same type of relationship with any man. You talked about how she just kind of leaves. Right. Which also, we see her on a where she brings this guy back home at the very beginning of the movie. We haven't even talked about this genius opening sequence of the movie.

And she leaves and goes back to her hometown while he's still there. She just leaves this guy in her apartment. Well, and the date's so funny. We never see his face. The camera's behind him. But he's talking about how he had done outreach work in Latin America and whatever. And she goes awful. And he's like, it's actually the most rewarding experience of my life.

And she's like, oh, yeah, like, all right. Well, first of all, the first thing. If she's that much of an asshole and he still goes home with her, sorry, he's still a dirt bag. Oh, yeah. Or if not a dirt bag, then just like certainly not as deep as he pertains to be, right? Yeah. Listen, you know, dating pools in mid-sized cities, I'm not going to knock it. You know what I mean?

You do what you got to do. No one has a harder time in this movie. Nobody has a harder go of it. No one gets the short end of the stick more than Dulce. Oh, the Pomeranian. That dog goes through it. That dog gets left in... Stuck in that Hampton Inn room with the P-pad, like, for days on end.

Yep. Yeah. One of the funniest bits in the opening sequence, which, like, Jason Reitman will tell you, he's very proud that he made a movie that opens with 10 minutes of silence or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But one of the funniest breaks of it is when she's... driving back and it's like, it's jamming to the, uh, what's the, is it? Teenage fan club.

Teenage fan club. I always want to say teenage dirtbag. We'll talk about the soundtrack later because, like, I want to. Listen, I've written about it. Yeah. Um, but it just breaks from like that bang and soundtrack to suddenly be like, Dolcego P. Dolce Cope.

Because this dog understands English, you know. The scene that's in the trailer, um, which is the first scene, she's checking in at the Hampton and Louisa Krause. is behind the Louisa Krause, two-scene barn burner. Louisa Krauss, who I saw, oh, shit, now I'm going to forget the name of the play. The Flick?

The Flick. Yes, who's so good in the flick. And is in a season of the girlfriend experience on Stars. She's a really good actress. But she's, like, classic. Tremendous performance. Deadpan, Hampton and Check-in clerk, where she's saying, you know, is that a dog in your mom?

person was it a teaser or do they just use so much of it in the trailer that it's just like basically that's whole scene because they use the whole part yes there's like 15 huge laughs yeah yeah um well you can see the purse sort of growling and and yipping or whatever and Mavis is like yeah no it's nothing and she's like because we do allow small pets with a deposit and it's a genius line where Mavis is like oh well I do have my dog in my car it looks out to the car and the purse just goes like, yep, yep, yep, it's great. And the best physical bit of comedy to me in the whole movie, my favorite moment in the movie, is in that scene where after Mavis is like, well, I do have a small dog in my vehicle,

and Louisa Krause just looks at her, and Charlize has not even a, it's like a fraction of a squint, and like, do not question me, I will end you. And it's so, so, it's... That scene pairs with me in the scene in Macy's, where she's looking for the outfit. She's shopping for the outfit. And the woman there is trying to help her shop. And she goes, this is also in the trailer, where she goes, I'm going with an X to a rock concert. First of all, the way she says I'm going to a rock concert.

She's like, I need an outfit for a rock concert. Like, they're going to see YouTube. Right. She's going to Chappie O'Malley's or whatever to see nipple confusion. for their second performance ever at the bar. Listen, if you can bank on anything in this world is that I would be cheering, hopping, and drunk front row at Nipple Confusion.

Great local band. Yeah, yes, exactly. Are you going to see the Nipple Confusion show Friday night? Yeah. But the way she says, you know, the woman's like, oh, well, we'll show him what he's been missing. And she goes, oh, he's seen me lately, but then she goes, but his wife hasn't seen me in a while.

and she, like, raises her, like, half-full diet Coke can. And, again, the smirk. And you're just like, this is some A-plus, A-plus shit. I think that's also an important scene because we never, though, like, I really bristle when people are like, oh, she's a monster. And it, like, drives me crazy. We do have to see someone react really negatively to Mavis in this movie. And we get it through that, you know, Macy's associate.

I related this time around I related to every single person who reacted to her negatively in this movie I really like sorry to say like I I was not on Mavis's side in this viewing of this movie I mean like I get it and it's also comedy and it's funny oh yeah I just think

I think when you're on the other side of this movie and you go through Mavis's journey if all you can say is she is so awful she is a monster oh she's an incredibly interesting monster but like I'm not going to deny I'm not going to deny her monstrousness I'm really not.

But, like, talking about the Macy's, though, the 2011-specific cultural ephemera of this movie, I thought was fascinating. The fact that it opens up, she's fallen asleep watching Kendra, whatever, the spin-off from the playmates show. She's watching Kendra, and then she's watching Kardashians later. The fact that, like, you look at, like, because part of the... The revamped Star Search, right, in the hotel, which, like, this is the part that I always feel bad for laughing when you have the... The punchline of this, like, teenage girl singing, we've only just begun. Yes. And it is deeply funny.

And I feel bad because I'm like, well, she's performing and she's doing her best. And I'm supposed to laugh at this moment. Well, you also get the scene where she's driving through Mercury and she's sort of aghast at how everything is just corporate, big box. It's a staples. It's a Chilies. It's a Chilies. It's a Staples. It's a Kintako Hut.

And then she goes to the Macy's later. And then I'm watching this from 2023 being like, genuinely the saddest Macy's. That Macy's is long gone by now. Like Macy's as like mall culture was seen as this sort of like blight of suburbia or blight of like, you know, middle America. And now it's like, yeah, all those stores are closed. And, but also the fact that she's in the little, the sports bar in the middle of the

afternoon, the saddest time ever to be in a sports bar waiting for buddy. With her Blackberry. With her Blackberry where it's like that pre-Iphone where you couldn't even browse your email to busy yourself to make sure that you did. didn't look sad and waiting. She's just typing gobbledygook into her BlackBerry or whatever. And I'm like, oh, we really have improved, at the very least, technology to make it look like you're busy when you just don't want to be embarrassingly, like, waiting for somebody.

When you're at a round table alone at a restaurant. Wait, so you wrote about the soundtrack to this movie. Yeah, back in my film experience days, I love, first of all, the teenage fan club. Song. Which I believe was a scripted song choice. Yeah. You couldn't pick something more specific. Oh,

but to... It sounds like the year that it came out, right? It just like... Exactly. Yeah. But it's also not like a standard. Like, no one's listening to it. Like, they are listening to Four Non Blonde's.

Right. Four Non Blonde's is the most like, hey, that's what I call 1993 or whatever, 1995, whatever year that song came out. But it's, it's so specific to a character in like, I think we all have those songs that when we hear them... Yeah. It's like, oh, I feel so much of... attachment to that song.

Like, for me, probably one of them is Jennifer Page's crush. Right. Of, like, that sounds like my childhood. That sounds like my childhood. But the people who Mavis and Buddy were, and you can get a sense, you get a sense immediately of what their

social circle listen to, where it's like teenage fan club, you get the Lemonhead song when they're in the bar, you get the Varuka Salt song. You get the candlebox song or Cracker or whatever the hell, it's Cracker, I think. But, like, this very sort of, like, early mid-90s alternative rock radio like I you're it's so transported it's such a well-chosen soundtrack in that

way but the teenage fan club song it is also while not being fully imprinted on the culture it is incredibly catchy it is the type of song that when you're on a road trip you could listen to a dozen times and sing at the top of your lungs to yeah and I think by the end of that sequence yeah you do fully like have that it's such an earworm you have that song stuck in your head for the rest of the movie and mavis has such a clear vision of that song it was their song and then was you know she has such an attachment but then when you have the scene in the you have the nipple confusion concert excuse me yes thank you um when you have that they take that song away from her yeah they don't take that song i mean yes they take that song away

from her but it's why she's so angry during it too because it's not just that beth is performing what she thinks is their song yeah there's this realization that it wasn't their song it's just buddy's song yeah maybe mavis yeah wasn't as much as she thought she was you know also i will say the sight of that maxel blank tape the the mix tape like i had those tapes right like i absolutely had those. The yellow with the purple with the shapes and the triangles and the squares and the circles and all it's all. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Can we talk about how the children have reappropriated cassette tapes now? Good. If they're going to reappropriate anything, do it with cassette tapes. No, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. It feels so funny. Do you know what the audio quality is on cassette? Sure. They don't like it because they like cassettes. They like it because it seems there's something. I'm not, I'm not going to rail against youth culture. No, do it. Please.

do it. My culture does this too. There just seems an embrace of tackiness because it's tacky. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like I, okay, okay. We're going to hopscotch past the thing that I'm about to say and we're not going to acknowledge it. When I was on the Adele store

when Ferdy came out, and I'm looking at Adele merch, we're going to skip past it, and I can see that you can buy an Adele cassette. It is not for her 50-year-old fans. It's for her 90s. No, nobody still has, like, who had a cassette player back in the day still has their old cassette player. Right. Right. I love it. Listen, if they're going to be annoying, at least be annoying in a way that I can relate to from my past. They're annoying in so many other ways that I hate. Wait, but one last thing about the soundtrack, though, and this will lead us into talking about the ending of the movie, the Diana Ross song that plays over the ending credits when we grow up.

Yes. Which is only there for the line where she says, we don't have to change. at all, which is like the gut punch of that ending, right, where Mavis is on the precipice of realizing that she has to make some changes. And then she is convinced by this like, you know, high school fame worshiping character that she is right and she is better than everybody and she doesn't have, she's not the one who has to change. And then it's almost like, what's the song that's at the end of Hereditary? Um, uh, that is Judy Collins doing both sides. now. It's that same kind of thing where it's just like this very beautiful sounding thing about like this awful place that we're lingering in at the end of this movie where it's like

the horror has not ceased and it's still going to happen and she's not going to change at least not yet. So let's talk about that Colette Wolfe scene. So Mavis and Matt have sex out of her despair and his sort of, you know, complicated longing, right? And she wakes up the next morning, and she goes to get herself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. And there is Colette Wolfe as his sister, who we've only seen, like, sort of sneering at him and being, like, confused by Mavis when she answers the door. But clearly she remembers, she remembers everything about what does she say? She's like, I baked you cookies when we were in high school.

Like, I baked you those Rice Krispy treats that were in your lock. There's something like that. Where it's like, oh, yeah, that one time 20 years ago. And Mavis doesn't remember, but because their own performance is so specific, we can also intimate that Mavis probably didn't notice or care when it happened. So they're in the kitchen, and Mavis is, again, just on the precipice of being like, you know, look at me. Look at how, look at where I've ended up at. I need to. She actually says the words I need to make some changes. And Colette Wolf, I cannot remember her character's name. Sandra? Something? I can't remember. Yes. You're good here,

Sandra. Um, yes, goes, you don't have to change. Everybody here sucks. Everybody in this town is just like going through their dumb little useless lives, uh, waiting to die. They have no purpose. nobody here and one of the great things about Mavis is that like she is absolutely at this like lowest possible level of quote fame and import she's not living in Los Angeles or New York or London or Paris she's living in the Minneapolis right but it's these like it's these levels of you know she's just enough of above everybody else and and Sandra's just like these people suck. And she's like not even separating herself necessarily from those people. She's just sort of like, everything here is bad. This town is dumb. You are right to leave it. You should

never look back. You are special and important and better than us. And you deserve to feel that way. And Mavis just looks at her and she's like, thank you. I really needed to hear that. an incredibly easily influenced person and you watch it wash over her face that she's like I don't need to change I was right about everything everybody else here is bad I just need to leave here and never ever look back and it's a horrifying scene in a way it's it's a ballsy piece of writing and I think it's

ultimately an honest piece of writing in that you know what has changed for Mavis Gary What is the positive, substantive change that we could see for her in her future after this movie is over? She could probably stop drinking. Is she fundamentally going to change as a person? No. Do people fundamentally change as people? No.

That is the way, that is the pessimistic way of looking at it for sure. Yeah. The way that this scene conveys that, the way that it's also, like, reveals that people are prone and sometimes looking for an excuse or a nudge to not change. Yes, that is so real. Yeah. Not only really smart, but also simultaneously, incredibly funny and incredibly sad. Like, the Colette Wolf is incredible. Yeah.

She was on my ballot that year. She would stay on my ballot. I was so hoping that she would have a breakout career. She was on, she ended up being a guest performer on Cougartown after this movie for a little bit. She played Dan Bird sort of. God, what a time. Cougar Town.

Oh, man, I was such a fan of Cougar Town. I still am. Like, I'll go back and, like, I love all of those performers. That was when I was really, that was when my fondness for Busy Phillips sort of, like, went into overdrive of just like, she's so fucking great. I was a very big Cougar town person at the time And she was so good on that show briefly And then It never really quite became

Like you felt like she was on the precipice Of like getting that one big TV starring role And it never quite happened for her Which is too bad But she's tremendous in this movie Classic one scene Barnburner Beatrice straight Kind of performance

And it like And it leaves you leave leave that movie, you know, with that, like, cold bucket of water dumped on you by the end. You're just like, whoa, boy. Well, and it's also, like, it feels like the movie's almost thesis statement of, like, why do people get so caught up, especially, you know, suburban people in their high school selves? And, you know, what is this whole peaked in high school idea? And she's this character who doesn't really have anything going on, even if she's,

happy you know like what's the difference of you living this life at 30 is living it at 60 like the suburbs are bad y'all um okay but also though and maybe this is just sort of like where i the complicated place that i've sort of arrived in my life i look at a character not necessarily buddy but i look at beth right and i'm like she seems happy she's gonna have a full life she's got a Baby she loves. She's got a career that seems fulfilling for her where she's working with special needs kids and she's got, she seems to be invested in that job. She's got this band with good friends of hers who are supportive of her and hate the people that are out to be mean to her. And she can play her drums on the weekend and she can pump and dump when she wants to go booze in for a night. And she seems like she's fine. And part of me, a big part of me, is looking at that and just being like, that's the fucking life. man, where she just seems contented. But that's not, that doesn't make everyone happy and not everybody can achieve that. Like that, that is a, but that's why she's so infuriating.

Overcome for like a Mavis Gary character. Like Mavis even says it at the end. It's like they, why does she make it, why do people like that make it look so easy? Yeah. not only to just like be fine with that but to be actually happy and like there's people that want like the rest of us want so much more or like are trying to fulfill something that we have to actually work for right but like not that she didn't work to have the light that she has but right right it's it's it's interesting it's like how much of mavis do i see and in well and that's like

the high school mindset thing, too, and that's why the suburbs are bad. It's like, it tells you, you know, Mavis is coming from a life where it's just like, this is the path to happiness. But, like, that's not the path that she necessarily wants or could even achieve for herself. The hell of it is. Who she naturally is. There are so many Mavis who actually, who are Mavis, but also never went to Minneapolis, right? They're Mavis, but they stayed in Mercury. Which is the Sandra character. And they sort of. Well, that, but it's also the ones who, like, you know, run the PTA, right? You know what I mean?

Like, that sort of kind of thing. Just, like, have these sort of, like, suburban fiefdoms. And it's just, like, it's looking at a, this is why, I mean, like, Mavis hates Beth not only because of the buddy thing, but Mavis hates Beth because she can look at Beth and just know, I could never obtain the happiness you have. in the way that you have like it's just it's not possible for me it's interesting

it's a good movie um I wanted to I'm going at Elizabeth Razor also fantastic in this movie she's very good because like just after Mavis has you know publicly embarrassing that whole the whole porch scene

is embarrassing for both of them yeah but just like the look on her face you can see you get this you get the full story in like a flash of her being a very empathic person understanding what Navis is going through and understanding where she's at

and trying to reach out to Buddy and just like showing up and maybe nobody else on that lawn gets that and she tried really hard and was like super gracious to her and was trying to do what she could to take care of somebody and it didn't work.

I wrote down a few lines of dialogue from the script because I really I wanted to recognize him obviously Diablo Cody I think is a tremendous writer. I mentioned before when Buddy is talking about how he still thinks Matt is gay and he goes, you called him

theater fag in high school and she goes theater fags and an expression buddy where it's just like that is a crystallization of a type of person for sure. I know plenty of straight theater fags. The part early, she's talking to

I think it's when she pulls Matt outside the bar and tells him her plan and she goes, Love conquers all. Haven't you seen the graduate? Which is tremendous. And then the scene where she's back at her parents' house and she's

asking them to take down the photos of her and her ex-husband, she's like, please take down those photos of my failed marriage. And her mom goes, well, the wedding wasn't a failure. Remember the tiramisu? That whole scene is painful, man. Just the way that her parents...

Jill, I Can Barry, who I only know from L.A. Law. Like, that's the only thing I know her from. She was, like, a major cast member on L.A. Law. You're too young for L.A. Law, I would imagine, right? L.A. Law was the show I would try and, like, stay up late to, like, watch with my parents when I was 11 or whatever for, like, just because it was the show that they watched at 10 o'clock on Thursday nights, and I had to go to bed. And so I have, like, a lot of memories. I watched a lot of L.A. Law, and that was obviously this, like, big show. The only sort of lasting, every once in a while, I'll go on YouTube and I'll watch the opening

credits to L.A. Law, because I love watching old show opening credits. And that is a show where you talk about, like, a time capsule where, like, those opening credits last three minutes, and the first minute and a half is just establishing. It's like, the credits don't kick in until

halfway through, and it's kind of amazing. But that's the only thing I really know Jill I can bury from. Like, she's sort of, she's like the mom from growing pains who will, every once in a while will pop up and, like, girl interrupted or whatever. And it's just like, oh, right, like, there you are. Have we gone? Marybeth hurt in one scene and just, like, conveying so much with, like, 30 seconds. How much she always?

You can tell that she fucking hates Mavis. And always did. Like, that's the thing. She never liked Mavis. She even says something shitty to Mavis, because this is another thing that I, I feel like I do have some empathy to Mavis because, like, people always are, like, getting in a dig with her that it's just like, well, we never really, they never really liked her. Or it's just, like, you know, that they've reduced her, that they haven't, you know, taken a minute to step back and look at her maybe the way that Beth does. And, like, yeah, like, I was just like, at this time watching it, that one, I even forget the kind of, like, half dig that she gets in.

at Mavis. And I'm like, why did you do that? You don't have to do that in that moment. But she's so fucking hated her. And I get it. I get it. Hated her ass. Diablo Cody was nominated for the WGA Award and the Critics Choice for Original Screenplay, both of which were won by Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris. And it's not just because Woody Allen's a bad person that I'm mad at this, but like, I hate the script for Midnight in Paris. Like, I'm so... We've talked about this before. We were never Midnight in Paris people. And like, this is... There are Woody Allen movies that I really like. And Midnight in Paris is not one of them.

Like, that's the... The absolute sensation of Midnight in Paris was entirely lost on me. I didn't understand why. There's small performances in that movie I really like, but, like, it's so off of the beaten path of the, like, the meat and potatoes of that movie. But you don't like it because those characters are written well. Well, and you don't like it because the story is a good story. That's, like, the main story of that movie is garbage.

But the other ancillary nominees, so at the WGA, it was... 50-50, the Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levett comedy, Win-Win, which was the Tom McCarthy movie with Paul Giamatti, and then Bridesmaids. And then at Critics' Choice, it was 50-50, win-win, and the artist. I think the WGA got it better than the critics' choice. It's interesting to see how close 50-50 and win-win probably got to being Oscar nominees, because they would have been the only nomination that either one of those movies had gotten.

We could do either one of those. love to do win-win at some point. I'd love to do either one. I liked both of those movies. Win-win is probably the better one, but I think there's stuff in 50-50 that's really good. Two good sort of mid-size, again, they don't make movies like this anymore, but

like they really don't, right? Mid-size indie comedies, right? I'm so glad that you brought up this conversation though because I wanted to have this conversation because even at the time it was like, well, maybe Charlie's there and can get in, and it was just around her performance, and I'm like, No, this, it's absolutely absurd that this movie didn't get more headway in the original screenplay race.

I mean, it was the same year as a female-led comedy and bridesmaids, and because... Can only have one, apparently. The way the things are, there can only be one. Which is so absurd because you look at the year that Diablo Cody won for. But it's also just like... Well, let's read off the nominees at the Oscars that year. So Midnight and Paris also won the Oscar. It would not be denied.

The artist got nominated. Michelle Hazanavisius got nominated for screenplay, which there are people who liked that movie. I'm not going to begrudge that, but I was not a big, huge artist fan. There's smart people that like that movie. Bridesmaids, like you said. A separation, Oscar Farhadi got nominated for a separation. And then J.C. Chandor for Marjan Call, which I wouldn't have nominated Margin'Call, but that's an interesting Oscar nomination.

And I like that I like when movies. that don't get nominated anywhere else get nominated in screenplay. But that could have been young adult, and it should have been young adult instead. If anybody thought that I was a grouch the previous Oscar season for any reason, no, there are just some seasons that I am a full grouch and I am just not on board with what's happening. And this season was one of them because of the, I don't, this, I don't like this best picture lineup, period. 2011, yeah, it's one of the worst. That, I mean... Yeah.

This is why I mean, when I say that Warhorse was the best of the nominated movies, I mean it, but it's also the best of... I can't keep behind that, but I appreciate you. What is yours? Tree of Life. I would either have voted for Moneyball or Tree of Life, yes. Warhorse is better than both of us. Anyway, sure, sure, sure, sure. Anything else you want to talk about young adult before we go into the IMDB game? I mean, love any movie that's St. Kye's.

a baby. It did remind me of that Seinfeld, right? Some night, huh? Yeah. I wish I had my telescope. Some dinner, huh? Yeah. Nothing like really fresh-caught lobster. Some house, huh? It was built by Mark Farbman. He built a lot of these homes here. Some ugly baby, huh? one of my favorites.

I mean, this is just such a movie that feels so packed that I came into this episode fully knowing that we're going to be on the other side of it and I'll be pissed that I forgot to talk about this or that or, um... Sure. Just because there's so much there. Yeah. The people who were on the right side of history about this movie, though, from the... Not the jump, I would say, because I felt very on an island.

Oh, did you? I'm loving this movie as much as I did. I felt like I had some company. I feel like there was from, I think from the break there was a core. I think in the follow of years, though, the people that did really appreciate this movie for what it is are gay people. Well, sure. Who I think. Gay people love pretty mean women.

Like, let's be honest. Like, that is a core. I mean, like, not to be like the screenwriter of Megan who was like, well, gay people like Megan because Megan is about found family. And it's like, no, we love her because she. she slays. We love her because she does a dance. Like, no, we love Megan because she's an asshole. We can be

very easily entertained and that is yeah. Yeah. But like there is, I do think that there is something about the way, you know, the suburbanites in this movie treat Mavis or like don't actually think about

how she feels or thinks or, you know, that don't really give her a chance They make it so easy to reduce her to what she is that I do think gay people can uniquely relate to. Okay. I understand. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm, I, I, I'm, I, I'm, I, I'm, I, that's what you are, and that's what you do. It's just like, she, that's just like.

You know, when you're in that room with that one suburban woman you haven't seen in 10 years, and she's just like, well, how is it being a fucking fagget? You know, like, that's, you know, with- Here's the difference, though. High school Mavis was likely the worst, right? And like, so it's like, some of these people have like, you know, I don't think any of Beth's friends are in any way in the wrong for calling her a psychotic prom queen bitch, Because she probably was. But weren't they also probably in their way the worst, too? They're teenagers. Sure.

Sure. But there's degrees of the worst. And there's a punching down structure in high school that happens. And Mavis was punching down on a lot of people. I don't know. I do not have the level of sympathy, I think, for Mavis that you do. And that is fine. I think she's a fascinating character that I will watch a movie about her as often as I can.

I have a long leash of sympathy simply because she is that. Sure, sure, sure. I think we had a similar thing maybe with Margo at the wedding, where, when we had Kyle on. And it was that same kind of thing. It was just sort of like, just like awful, beautiful women. It's just like, yeah, okay, I get it. We all, you know, on some level would want to have that level of power, but also, oh, the fucking worst. IMDB game. Tell us about it. Oh, boy. The IMDB game, listeners, we end all of our episodes. with the IMDB game where we challenge each other with an actor, actress, to try to 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 will mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue.

If that's not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints. Exactly, exactly. Just like the free-for-all of fast food items, you can find it at Can Taco Hut. Chris, would you like to give or guess first? One underrated moment that I just thought of. Where she wakes up and immediately grabs, I believe, an open two-liter of soda and chugs it. Yep. Wow, relatable queen.

And yet, a dynamite figure. Like, she eats horrendously and drinks constantly, and that woman could walk the runway at any point in this movie. movie. So, yes. Yeah. Justice for Dolce. We have to rescue Dolce. Yeah. To save Dolce. Did Dolce survive the ride back to Minneapolis? That is the open question at the end of this movie. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, also, also the genius, there is genius level costume design. You talked about the outfit at the baby naming ceremony. It is, it's genius level. It communicates everything we need to know about Mavis Gary that she is a grown woman.

in a Hello Kitty t-shirt. Mavis Gary in a Hello Kitty t-shirt made me entirely reassess my relationship with branded merchandise. And now that I'm like, I am approaching 40. This is no longer for me.

I can't wear this. I'm going to look like Mavis Gary. This movie weaponizes branding in a genius way. Like, genuinely does. Brilliant way. Branding and merchandise is for the suburbs. It's bad.

Get out of it. All right. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. The IMDV. Yes. Give her guess first. I want to guess first today. Okay. So I kept trying to find people related to Jason Reitman or even Karen Kusama and Charlize Theron. And it was all people we had done before. So instead I'm looking to the future for the Mad Max Fury Road spin-off slash flash back prequel movie Furiosa that is starring

Anya Taylor Joy, who we've never done before in the IMDB game, who has one television show and three movies on her IMDB. Wow. Yes. Okay, so, Queen's Gambit. Queen's Gambit is the television show. Yes. Three movies, though.

Is the witch on there? It is. Okay, cool. I wonder if it's too. soon for the menu but I feel like it could be on there there's definitely also things that she's been in that I'm like

I am not watching that shit like what? I don't know things that people like it's like the Netflix seriesification even though she's in a Netflix series I liked which was the Queen's Gambit of just like people just watch because it's there

and I don't know this is this is my Mavis Gary moment where I'm being an asshole I will say The Netflix shows that she has been on are the Queen's Gambit, 11 episodes of Peaky Blinders, and 10 episodes of Dark Crystal Age of Resistance as a voice. I watched that show, thank you. There you go.

Okay, so, hmm, what? Well, it's not going to be Amsterdam, which is like, if there's any reason to watch Amsterdam, it's for her who it's like, she's the closest. She achiees the closest to what that movie is going for. I'm not saying she achieves it wholeheartedly. Fine, I'll say the menu. No, not the menu.

Okay. One strike. Problem is, these are all, years are not going to help me because they're all going to be back to back to back to back to back. What was her other? She did, did she do another horror movie right after the witch? Because I feel like there was a small gap And now she's everywhere Okay

What do I want to guess Boy, now I'm in My brain is in the white space where I can't It is all just clear It is television static Of trying to remember The actual specific She's like

I vaguely know all of the things that she's is in but what is the specific oh shit i am maybe struggling to come up with something recent that she was in because i'm so this isn't recent is not where my brain is in this game ever i can start giving hints once you give one more wrong answer i know i know um fine i'll just say amsterdam i would have liked to have done better on this it's not amsterdam you're you know what you're going to not feel bad about doing bad on this when you find out what these other two are you're Years are 2016 and 2020. Okay, so the year that the witch was released in theaters,

and what other movie did you say? Or what year? 2020. Oh, God. So pandemic year. What was she in in the pandemic? Here's all I will say, as a hint, is there is a 2016 movie and a 2020 movie on her IMDB that she absolutely should be on her known for,

they are not the 2016 and 2020 movies that are on her known for. Interesting. Yeah. Oh, Emma. Emma's the one that should be on her own movie, and it is not that one. It is a different 2020 movie that I'm going to even look up and find out, because it's listed as 2020, but its real release date is lost to the ages, because honestly, it is the, like, in terms of recent history, it is the. movie that did not ever actually happen. No, it was released in the summer of 2020.

Summer of 2020. So, like, when things weren't being released at all, this thing got burned off. Well, theaters weren't open because theaters opened with Tenet, which was September, which was Labor Day weekend. This thing, I swear to God, probably got released in a movie theater that was not actually open to the public. A drive-in. Right. um like this thing got kicked out the back doggy door like this thing really got oh is it cursed no oh no the title is it with cursed people it's it's a cursed project it is like a majorly cursed

project interesting it is a majorly cursed as in like long delayed majorly cursed as in people kept trying to make it that's what i was thinking all of that Long delayed, kept trying to make it, it had sat on the shelf for a while, it was part of this, like, it was sort of an offshoot of this major franchise that was supposed to, like, do good things for this franchise. It had some, like, really buzzy cast members, including Anya Taylor Joy, but also another cast member who had just finished a, like, massively popular and big television show. Oh, so a Game of Thrones person Uh-huh, yes You've definitely heard of this There is no chance in the world that you've seen it

Oh, it's the new mutants It's the new mutants Yes, yes indeed I remember like a year before that movie was actually released I remember this one clip going semi-viral of her on a red carpet being interviewed for something else and someone's like, what about New Mutants? And, like, she cringes before she catches herself.

And she's like, ah, I don't really know what's going on there. All right. The 2016 movie. Wow, New Mutants. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Yes. The 2016 movie. Okay. So. I'm guessing it's going to be a smaller role.

No. I think she's like a co-lead. She's one of the top three... Oh, is it Thoroughbreds? No, it's not Thoroughbreds, although that's a pretty good guess. Thoroughbreds was later than 2016. Not a good movie. She is the title character.

Oh, it's a horror movie. It's like Morgan. It is Morgan, in fact. It is exactly Morgan, where she's a... She's a person created in a lab, right? She's... Yeah. Right?

It's Megan, but instead of a robot, it's... It's a, like, a test-to-child. Yeah. Wow. She has multiple movies that are not real. So the fact that it's new mutants in Morgan instead of Emma and Split is so fucking insane. Oh, God, she's in Split. I hate that movie.

But that was a hugely popular movie, and she's the second lead of that movie. Like, it's dumb that that's not on her known for. Thurrobreads, though, could also be on there. Glass, which is the sequel to Split could be on there. Like, there's so many things that could be out there instead of Morgan and New Mutants. Last Night in Soho, which is a bad movie, but, like, it's surprising to me that that's not on there. The Northman, like... I think at the end of the day, no one gives a fuck about last night in Soho is why it's not on there.

But it was a much bigger movie than either Morgan or New Mutants. Like, nobody gives a fuck about those movies either. You know what I mean? Well, I mean, New Mutants, people were searching for updates on that movie for years. I bet you it's like people clicking on that being, like, did that movie ever come out? Maybe we need to, maybe we need to issue the Gary's on this to keep up with Annie Taylor-Joy's known for, and we'll make an announcement when New Mutants is finally off. When the menu finally replaces New Mutants on there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

I bet it'll out last morning. All right. Yeah, Gary's keep an eye on that one for us. All right, who do you got for me? So for you, I also have someone who is going to be very condensed in the time. that you're probably going to be guessing titles for them or when you think of their career. I went through the Charlize Theron route for her co-stars. We talked briefly about Prometheus. The, I would say, breakout person, though the lead is Numi or Paz. I picked

for you Michael Fastbender. Oh, we've never done Michael Fastbender. That's why. Speaking of which, he has the Tycho Waititi movie, which is like the most. long delayed movie. Talk about cursed, too. From COVID, I can't, like, we think that, you know, it's over for all the movies that were delayed, that we're supposed to come out in 2020. No, there's still some. Nope.

We still got a Tyco Y TTIT movie. Next goal wins. Yep. Yeah. Tyco YTT filmed a whole other blockbuster movie, and it was released. Yep. After this movie was filmed. It takes a long.

And this movie also, you know, if you're looking in the back. or rumor mill. This movie's going to have some problems, gang. Yeah. It takes a long time to go through every frame of footage and excise out Army Hammer from your movie, so it's no wonder that this... They refilmed up for Army Hammer. Did they refilmed? Did they recast? Did they...

It's Will Forte now. They pulled a Christopher Plummer? Amazing. Yes. I mean, this is part of the reason why it was so delayed, but... Fantastic. I don't know, man. All right. Especially after... What an odd replacement casting.

Who would you normally, who would you naturally think of to replace Army Hammer, Will Forte? I believe the character that Army Hammer was playing originally is supposed to be some type of, like, bureaucrat sleaze ball, so Will Forte makes sense. Sure, sure, sure. All right. So you got Michael Fastbender for me. Okay. Yes. How many X-Men?

I'm going to say X-Men First Class. Correct. All right. X-Men First Class does very well in the IMTB. Yes. I'm not going to rule out. other X-Men's, although I'll see, 12 years of slave.

Incorrect, his Oscar nomination, not fair. I feel like that one shows up for people, too. Okay. Well, we're in an era of doing IMDB games where people's Oscar nominations aren't there. Is Prometheus one of them? Correct. Okay.

So X-Men First Class, Prometheus, Steve Jobs? Steve Jobs, correct. That is an Oscar nomination that does show. show it is um he's great in that movie okay good movie great movie love that movie um fix it steve fix it steve all right one more i'm gonna say x-men days of future past incorrect so your year if that even helps you is 2011 shame shame i was gonna guess shame and i'm like ah shame wasn't as popular with other people we could do and maybe should at some point but it is bummer town it is

but it's a good movie. It's a very good movie. We both love Steve McQueen. It's interesting that that's the Steve McQueen on his IMDB and not 12 years of slave. That's interesting. All right. I'm happy with how I did with that. All right. Good episode on a long-awaited topic, Chris. Good episode. We could have gone on for three more hours. It's not the last time we're ever going to talk about this movie. One of my favorites. Personal Canon.

Yes. Good movie. Partly because, like, I feel so attached to this movie, not only because I love it and I think there is genius in every minute of this movie, but I felt, I feel so vindicated every time I see someone they unabashedly love this movie and champion its brilliance, because at the time, people just reduce it to being a mean movie. Yeah, great movie. All right, that is our episode. If you want more of that's at Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this at oscarbuzz. tumbler.com. You should also follow our Twitter account at Hadd underscore Oscar Buzz and our Instagram at this had Oscar Buzz. Chris, where can the listeners find you and your stuff? You can find me on Twitter and Letterbox at Chris V File. That's F-E-I-L. I am on Twitter and

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That is all for this week, but we hope you'll be back next week for more buzz. Still she won't be forced against her will Since she don't do drugs But she does the girl Oh Oh yeah I didn't want to watch