This Had Oscar Buzz - 275 – The Woman in the Window (Patreon Selects)

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

We’re wrapping up our run of Patreon Selects episode with a real doozy! Originally intended for 2019, The Woman in the Window was meant as a prestige adaptation of a popular thriller, packing quite the pedigree. With the attached talents of director Joe Wright, writer Tracy Letts, and star Amy Adams (along with a stellar supporting cast), … Continue reading "275 – The Woman in the Window (Patreon Selects)"

Oh, oh, wrong house. No, the right house. We want to talk to Melan Hack, Millen Hack and French. Dick Pooh 9-1-1 My neighbor, Jane, she's been stopped Detective Little, in my PD. Where's Jane?

Mr. Russell believes that you made a mistake. You have never met my wife. Ma'am, you all right? I know, Jane. Jane's been in my house. I'm Jane Russell. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that's suddenly your wife. Every week on This Head Oscar Buzz we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died and we're here to perform the autopsy.

I'm your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here, as always, with the real Jane Russell. And by that, obviously, I mean the classic star screen and radio, Jane Russell. Russell, Joe Reed. Vavavavam. What was Jane Russell's thing? Was she like... Jane Russell's thing was decultage. Jane Russell was the one who like...

Well, here. Her cleavage in, was it the outlaw? Was it the outlaw? Was like, do we need to, like... I think that was part of the thing of like the Legion of decency? I can't remember. Okay.

But she's also... the other half of the two-summing gentlemen prefer blondes. So I guess I did make this out of Maryland. One more reason that I need to watch gentlemen prefer blondes, which I have now at least acquired. So now it's just a matter of finding time. Oh, you're going to be so happy. It should maybe be the first movie you watch after the Oscars when you just have a treat.

Yeah. You know, and you're... There are so many movies, and now I'm just like, oh, once the Oscars are done, I'll be able to watch just a movie for pleasure. Won't that be nice? Won't that be fun? Not now. Now I got to watch, I've got to watch Eo Capitano and, uh, fucking 20 days in Mario. Golda.

So, oh, well, Golda I watched. So, uh, Golda, the, uh, the anti-nicotine ad of your, of your dreams and nightmares. That is, you have seen, you have been maybe one of two dozen people that I have seen, seeing this movie. And everybody's first takeaway for this movie is like, she just smokes the whole movie. It's the whole fucking movie, Chris. Like, I swear to God. It's just like, that's literally, it's, it has more commentary on the smoking than it does on Israel and Palestine. It's the crazy.

It was honestly my first note about Maestro, too. So I guess, you know, you need to do your year in movie smoking. Well, you know, I love to do a year in movie smoking. But, like, normally I'm like, oh, God, like, Andre Holland and Moonlight, like, you know, fan the flames. He's so hot in that. And this is just like gold is tar-stained thing. And, like, you know what I mean? It's just like, oh, no, this isn't glamorous at all.

This is horrible. Yeah, I'll watch Golda this year. Anyway. I think, I think. Now available on Paramount Plus. I, I think I'm going to try to do completism again this year. You're so close, Chris. You're closer than I am right now.

Yeah, but, and yet so far away. Don't. Because that means I'm going to have to watch the Indiana Jones movie. And I really don't. It's so. funny that that is your hill that you refuse to die. That's the one I'm complaining about and not Guardians of the Galaxy. Well, no, I really, no, because I actively love Guardians of the Galaxy three, which is the only Guardians of the Galaxy movie that I love. But I think you would probably

presume that that would be my barrier to entry this year. Well, or something like longer, maybe, the thing about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is it's not great, but it is like categorically not awful. Like, it's just, I don't, I don't know, I've seen some people say that it's like irredeemable and whatever i don't quite understand that it is at worst dumb but like okay all right it just seems like it's elder abuse you know like leave this man alone you've talked before about pretzel bites movies like this is a pretzel bites movie like for sure i don't know get yourself some pretzel bites mark your way of yourself up some some bagel bites or something ooh pretzel bites at home gross well that's why i switched to bagel bites because as soon as i said that

I was like, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bagle Bites are good. Something, like some toasty, not tos, Totino's, pizza rolls, like something like that. Something that you can gosh on while you're watching, it'll be fine. It can't hurt you.

Anyway, Joe, we're here talking about, I'm sure we're going to have an interesting conversation about the quality of this movie, but I think, regardless of what we think about the quality of the movie, or pieces of the movie. We're here talking about a somewhat unmitigated disaster. Well, so here's the thing. For several reasons. The thing about the woman in the window is like,

there are so many levels of disaster that you could talk about, whether it's the Joe Wright, Tony Gilroy thing. Was it Tony or Dan Gilroy? Which of the Gilroy has stepped in to finish? Tony Gilroy. Tony Gilroy. There's that level of it. There's the pandemicness of it where it was,

delayed and then delayed again by the pandemic and then it was released and it became this weird commentary on the pandemic. There's the whole fucking Dan Mallory thing, like plagiarist, fabulous, like, I've got quotes from that New Yorker expose on him that will like blow your mind. They're really funny. I was hoping you would go in on that portion of the story for this movie because I felt like out of the loop and I was like, oh, you need to tell me that. the author of one of these like shitty airport books that everybody is reading is maybe dubious i'm shocked well but that's i never really that's the other thing though is that like the levels of sort of what this by the way if i seem distracted it's because i'm looking at

a window like a window shade that is going to fall down because it's like just officers if he sounds distracted he is watching someone get murdered in okay building across the street literally as I look, like as I'm facing, the way I have myself aligned here, I'm literally facing the window so that I can get like light on my face so I don't look like shadowy and awful to Chris. But like I'm looking right into the window of my next door neighbor. So like literally this could happen. Weirdly, Julianne Moore is over there with a bloody hand pressed against the window and it's never Julianne Moore. Every time I look out and into that window, it's never Julianne Moore. I'm always so sad. I have faith that you'll see some famous over in Buffalo soon. You have an eclipse coming. Oh, yeah, like the world is being drawn to us. We have an eclipse coming in April. If it wasn't a Monday, I would totally come up there. Just like, I don't know. Make the eclipse day a holiday at your place of business.

Go agitate for that. And say that you are a moon, you worship the moon in some way or another. And so this is a religious holiday for you and you can come visit. Joe, you shouldn't be revealing details of my personal life on air. We talked about this. Um, but, well, but what I was going to say was another layer is the, the degree to which this book, the woman in the window is like a ransom, you know how in a ransom note they like cut out letters from magazine headlines or whatever to like, so you don't know. Like it's, it's just like chopped up pieces, like chopped up words from the girl on the train and, but also rear window. And it's just like, it's so obviously takes its cues from. from those particular sources that it's just like

to the point that the movie is like okay well this is homage and like this is all back in a you know popular lexicon this type of genre so the movie I think in a lot of ways that are very fun and interesting

does homage to rear window Brian De Palma etc etc we'll get into it. But my thing with the book controversy, which I'm hoping you'll be able to illuminate for me and the listeners this episode, is I'm like, you hear things of like plagiarism lobbed at the book. And I'm like, well, yeah, this genre just, everybody just rips each other off. To what degree is it actual plagiarism or is this guy a plagiarist?

In this particular case, I'll just say, The accusations of plagiarism are much less interesting than the accusations of just this author completely fabricating the story of his whole life to get jobs and opportunities and whatnot. And it's like that to me is what's, you know, really, really fascinating. Because, yes, this movie and thus the book is very obviously a product. of its influences. But, um, okay,

but all that said, so you sort of led with the fact that, like, this is sort of an unmitigated disaster. And it, like, it is on so many levels,

and yet, watching it, at some point, it becomes very watchable. It's not always very watchable. Sometimes it's kind of unbearably clunky and, and cliched.

Yes. Um, and then at some point, I'm just like, oh, this is just going for it in so many weird ways. By the time, the, like, the car in the snowy field or whatever is in the alcove of her brownstone, I'm like, okay, well, now we have just, like, absolutely tripped the wire. And it's where the, like, Joe Wrightism sneak in that they haven't, you know,

defanged whatever his vision was for this movie that, you know, got so watered down in reshoot. We'll probably get into it in whatever, but, like, I guess I can understand after the Disney Fox merger, where Disney's like, oh, this doesn't look like, you know, what we would want to do with a movie. And yet, like, it's the only thing that would save this movie from being, like, a bland glass of milk. You know what I mean? So, like, it was never going to be this, like, tight, tot thriller. Like, for as much as I love Tony Gilroy. But it was never going to be anything quite so sleek, right?

Because it's just so hoary. You know what I mean? It's just so, you know. I'll maybe save my Tony Gilroy thoughts for after the we get through the plot. Uh-oh. But we should say somewhat up the top that we are here doing another Patreon Selects episode. That's right. This is our last one for the time being, though we have one on deck that when our new Sugar Daddy Gary sent in that suggestion, I was like, oh, boy.

We were originally going to do all Patreon January, and then that bled into, and also half of February. Because we forgot Class of 2023 was a January episode. So you're getting extra. But here's the thing about these Patreon selects. They've been uniformly very interesting to talk about. And in a lot of cases, were movies that I don't think would have been on our, like, I would not have put eight women on our radar, nor would I have put Sister Act. And, like, those were so fun to talk about. This is definitely much more solidly in the wheelhouse of this movie definitely once upon a time had Oscar buzz.

This movie definitely crashed and burned. Like, this is, this is one we would have definitely done to. several times like fell through wily coyote style several layers of drywall and floor crashed through a skylight down the stairwell past wyatt russell's dead body um into the sewer system floated down river through a waterfall into an abyss of toxic waste only to reemerge as the joker i was going to say pass Past the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, past Oswald Cobblepot and his Penguin Army, yeah, yeah, down to where you become the Joker, yeah. Past a sea of purple slime from Ghostbusters, too. There are so many performances in this movie that I can't wait to just, like, be like, Chris, was this a good performance or a bad performance? Because I genuinely don't know. There is a genuinely great performance in this movie.

There is, and I wonder if we're thinking the same thing. I hope we are. But anyway, we'll get to it. And we also have a six-timers. Yeah, we do. I'm shocked we only have one in this movie because the cast is a lot of people that we have talked about a lot. Well, Amy Adams has blown, has, wait, no, Amy Adams hasn't. Amy Adams has it.

That's right. Amy Adams is the one where it's like, it's surprising we've done so few on Amy Adams, but it's because she gets fucking nominated for everything. Hold on. It's, yeah, it is only our third Amy Adams. Adams movie ever, ever, ever, ever on this podcast. Is that not insane? We've done Big Eyes and Dear Evan Hanson and The Woman in the Window. So truly, we only pick the most unwell of the Amy Adams filmography to do on this podcast. We're going to have a lot of Amy Adams to talk about. I want to, Peter is the Sugar Daddy who chose this for us.

That's right. Thank you Peter. Our sponsor tier. One of many, one of multiple Peters that we have at the sponsor tier. Peter did not send in an Oscar origin. That's okay. However, I just wanted to read off some of Peter's notes, and that is, I just want to say I really enjoy the podcast, and it's helped me immensely during difficult times, especially as a physician during the pandemic. It was so great to have an enjoyable weekly distraction. Everybody clang those pots and pans for Peter. We love you. We love you. support your service. I have been enjoying Patreon so much and I'm excited for more episodes.

I think the Oscar buzz status for Woman in the Window was likely completely gone by the time it came out, but it was a highly anticipated movie. Peter, correct and correct. I think also Amy Adams is always an interesting conversation and she was truly buzzed for

any movie. This was a bestseller even with a dubious author at the center. In addition, Joe Wright has turned unusual movies, unusual movies in Oscar movies in the past, and felt overdue for some recognition himself. Also, the troubled history of the movie would make for an interesting conversation, Peter, we agree, and we hope we deliver. Yes, thank you, Peter. That was, couldn't have said it better myself, why this is a perfect this had Oscar buzz movie, so yes.

Joe, before we get into it, why don't you tell our listeners about our Patreon? Why don't I? Listeners, if you are not already a member of this head Oscar Buzz, Turbulent Brilliance, which is what we are calling, our Patreon endeavor, you can join for only $5 a month. You will get so much stuff. We have two bonus episodes per month that we are delivering to you. Episodes that sort of fall under one of two umbrellas. On the first of the month, you will be getting an episode for a movie. that we are calling an exception, which is a movie that almost qualifies for this at Oscar buzz, except, oops, it got an Oscar nomination or two or sometimes three.

Such movies that we have covered have included Charlie Wilson's War, the Aaron Sorkin, Mike Nichols disaster, yeah, Charlie Wilson's War. Also, the Barbara Streisand film, The Mirror Has Two Faces, which is a deeply fascinating treatise on many things. Baz Luhrmann's Australia, which we talked about with our friend Katie Rich, Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, which was a patron selected movie that they selected from a poll. We have another movie coming soon that will also be a patron selected movie, so we are very excited for that as well. then on the 15th of every month, we're going to give you a sort of format-breaking episode that we're calling an excursion. So those are not talking about a specific movie, but we'll be talking about, oh, the Hollywood Reporter Actress Roundtable from a certain year, or an award show. We talked about the 1996 MTV Movie Awards, I think, to great acclaim. Coming this week, we are doing this at Oscar Buzz superlatives. So that would be our excuse for an award show that is cobbled together from the burnt ends of various awards from different awards. All the weird categories throughout the season. All the weird categories that are not replicated on the Oscars ballot will be doing,

including a Grosch People's Choice Award for Best Picture that is voted on by our patrons that Chris Fyle has been furiously tabulating via the Oscars preferential ballot system in a way that, as I mentioned this last time, The nerdy zeal in which you are diving into the tabulations of this, Chris, is making me very happy. It's Joe Reedcore, so it's also, like, it's something that we share. I think that impulse... Love an excuse to run a spreadsheet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm very, very excited to see. I'm letting Chris handle all of that. He is our Ernst & Young. He is our Pricewaterhouse Cooper. He has the ballots. He has the envelopes. He will not screw it up. And we're very excited to see how that.

So that's our, this head Oscar bus superlatives episode that you'll be able to listen to this week. If you are or will be signed up for this had Oscar buzz, turbulent brilliance. We also do, we have a hotline that you can partake of that you can ask us questions and we will, we will be producing answers to at various intervals. So there's polls, there's, you know, you can chat in the comments. We don't have a discord yet. That's sort of in long-term plans. We know people have been asking about it. We've got it on the brain.

We've just got to figure out how to do it because we don't know how to do it. But as of now, like, the Internet scares me. The comments on Patreon are really, like, already that's, like, decent good discussion. We love hearing from our patrons in that way. So sign up $5 a month. I think it's a value. I know in this crazy world of ours, who knows what $5 a month. month means. But, as they used to say, it's a cup of coffee, right? It's a, these days,

$5 is a decently inexpensive cup of coffee. So, um, uh, for, it's a pastry. It's a pastry. It's a good Danish. It's a nice, my solid Danish. So, um, a gas station Danish. Yeah. A bakery Danish. A good Danish. Yeah. All right. If you want to sign up, you can go to this had Oscar, or sorry, patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz. and yeah Joe Chris I'm hearing word

that there is a woman in a window wait wait wait wait wait wait wait there is a woman staring out the window at another woman has entered the window a second woman is in a window

no and that woman has a doppelganger crazy not a doppelganger what's the word for somebody else who's using their name A lot of, this movie is, this movie is just blonde core. It's, it's very, everyone in it is blonde to the point that I, it feels like a red herring that Fred Hetchinger looks like Wyatt Russell, free puberty, like.

My favorite thing about this movie is, Wyatt Russell acting menacing long past the point where we don't need him to be a red herring anymore, where literally he does like, the jump scare that a killer would do except like he's the victim. He's just the creep in her basement. God bless Wyatt Russell. He's giving you

glower power in this movie for sure. Is Wyatt Russell the one that I always confused for the pickle guy or is Wyatt Russell a pickle guy? Would love for you to tell me who pickle guy is. Maggie's plan. The Maggie's plan

pickle guy. Oh! Let's look up Maggie's plan real quickly. He saws Pickles. He's a Bickle Guy. It might be. There's also another movie that has a pickle guy. I think the Maggie's Plan pickle guy is not American, right? Ooh. I don't remember. It's been a minute since I've seen Maggie's plan. Let's see. Another movie where Julianne Moore is excellent. Oh, excellent. What was she? She was talking about that in some sort of either roundtable or one-on-one. Was it her one-on-one with Annette Benning? I think it was. It was. They were talking about her actors on actors with Matt Benning, where she was talking about, like, spent like long minutes talking about her preparation for Maggie's plan, her role in Maggie's plan. It was great. I loved it. I mean, I'm sure there was a lot of preparation. It took several hours to get her into those bizarre sweaters.

Okay. So the pickle guy was played by, oh, that's Travis Fimel, different guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Travis Femble, who's in the Vikings show and, yeah, yeah, yeah. Looks like Wyatt Russell. Yes, you're not wrong. You're not wrong, but not Wyatt Russell. White Russell, of course, the sion of one of the great Hollywood couples, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. What did you see?

I was, okay, so I don't, I don't do TikTok, like constitutionally. I can't handle TikTok. But in Instagram's efforts to TikTokify itself, I will end up getting caught in a reels loop every once in a while and because you watch a reel that you want to watch that maybe your friend did or somebody that you followed did and then it like loops you into a bunch of other reels.

So a reel that I saw was Wyatt Russell and Kurt Russell in some sort of like joint interview capacity and they just started cracking each other up about like, I can't even remember. it was it was about like literally just like do you watch your own movies or not and and they just started like laughing at each other and it was so delightfully like endearing that it's just like this is just a father and son who enjoy each other's company and like can laugh at each other and sort of make fun of each other a little bit but I found it really really and I can't

Lord knows how I like look up maybe like Kurt Russell Wyatt Russell laughing and maybe you'll find it um but it's is a good moment I love them Love that family Wild, that's the first actor that we really dove into with any depth in this episode is Wyatt Russell. I know, I know. Woman in the Window Yes. Directed by Mr. Joe Wright slash who probably ever did the reshoots if it was or was not Tony Gilroy.

Written by Tracy Letts and with uncredited rewrites by Tony Gilroy. We will obviously get into it based on the book by A. J. Finn, starring one Amy Adams, Gary Oldman. A mysteriously third-billed Anthony Mackey will talk about it. Crazy. Yeah. That's got to be reshoots Cassidy, right? Or Marvel contract type of deal? I don't know. That's Anthony Mackey, God bless him. God bless Falcon in the Marvel movies. I don't know if he was that, had that much juice. But, like, I don't know. We'll see. Brian Tyree Henry, Fred Hetchinger, Julianne Moore, Jennifer Jason Lee, Wyatt Russell, and in a voice-only performance, Mr. Tracy Lett.

No, he's in it. He is? Yeah, he shows up in a few scenes. He's there. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Anthony Mackey, who you think is going to be only voice-only, and then he's in the flashback. Right. But Anthony Mackey is just on the phone. And Tracy, yes, you're right. Tracy Letts does show up.

But, like, that was clearly, the scene, the only scenes in this movie, I think that you can guarantee we're not part of reshoots are any of the wild stuff that is very clearly Joe Wright and the scenes that have Tracy Letts in them. Because Tracy Letts is one of the people who's just fully disavowed this movie. And I mean, you can see the several reasons why, but, you know, he didn't show up to those reshutes. Yeah, yeah, totally. the movie at long last was released on Netflix The Long and Winding Road to Netflix May of 2021 In the flat circle that was

The first two years of COVID Yes Joe You are tasked with giving a 60 second plot description Of everything that happens in woman in the window Yes Are you ready for it Yeah but like fair warning

I'm not I don't have it written out. So it is going to go I don't think there's a lot of plot to this movie. There's more than you think because it's all like doubling back on itself and like what's really going on and what we think is going on. Sure, sure. I did text you

before watching it the other day that I was I somehow remembered this being an over two hour movie and was so surprised to find out it was a buck 40. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean some of that has to be a lot of the movie being trimmed down. Yes.

reshoots, et cetera. Yeah. But... Imagine trimming down a movie with reshoots just to release it on Netflix. I mean, we'll get into it, but it's just, it makes you wonder why they didn't just release the original... Maybe Joe Wright's version was authentically confusing. We'll get into it. Sure, but like, yeah, release the Joe Wright. Or maybe it wasn't.

Joe, your 60-second plot description for The Woman in the Window starts now. All right, Amy Adams plays Anna, who is an agoraphobic, uh, psychotic. child psychologist who lives on 121st Street and spies on her neighbors. The new neighbors across the street are the Russell's, including Julianne Moore, who shows up on, well, first the son Ethan shows up and he's sort of very damaged and reticent. And of course, it appeals to Amy Adams as a child psychologist. But then later on, Julianne Moore shows up and it's, you know, you must be Mrs. Russell. And she's kooky with a capital K. And they both sort of like bond over 30 seconds. Kind of messes. And then

the next day maybe, time is flat circle. Amy sees her screaming from across the street, and there's a stabbing, and Julianne Moore is stabbed, and she puts her hand down the window, and it's, ah, she calls the police, and someone's been stabbed. And then the next day, Gary Oldman comes over, and he's like, that was my wife. And my wife is alive, and my wife is adjourned for Jason Lee, and she says, I'm Jane Russell, and it's, so what did Amy see? And what did, and she's being sort of like, gaslit, and she's being terrorized. And the son is like, my mother is, alive and is whatever. And then

Wyatt Russell plays the tenant in the basement and he's perma suss at all times and Brian Terry Henry's the kindly cop and then his friend is like the mean cop and everything one thinks Amy is lying and she was lying sort of. She's going crazy because she's drinking on her medication and in reality

the husband and daughter who we thought were just like estranged from her actually died in a car accident because she was fumbling for her phone because people shouldn't do that. So she's really in grief and she plans to kill herself and makes videos just like don't blame Wyatt Russell and I'm just killing myself

and then Ethan the teenage boy shows up and turns out he's not this sort of simple damaged boy but he is in fact a murderer and he murdered Julian Moore who was his birth mother not his Jennifer Jason Lee mother and

then he murdered somebody in Boston who has worked for his father and now he's going to murder Amy Adams because it seems like he's murdering like mother figures or something and he's you know, cuckoo bananas, and they fight on the roof, and he, like, stabs her with a garden claw. I believe that's called a hoe, a garden hoe.

No, the hoe is the thing with the flat, whatever. It's the claw. It's the handheld claw, because it, like, broings into her cheek. Anyway, garden claw into her face, and then tries to drown her, and she gets the jump on him, and she puts him through the skylight, and he dies, and then Brian Tyree, Henry's like, are bad, you were telling the truth the whole time, and, The end. Ninety seconds over.

Part of that was you trying to gaslight me that a garden claw was a... I know a garden claw is probably the wrong name, but it's not a hoe. Yeah, you're right. The hoe is like the flat square. As Queen Latifah once told us in the 90s, it ain't a rake or a hoe. Here we go. Right.

First note, not his birth mother, his Jennifer Jason Lee mother, which I think we can all agree Jennifer Jason Lee, mother, correct. Jennifer Jason Lee, who it's easy to presume was part of the reshoots for this, I think because she was never really listed among the cast roundups as all the high-profile casting. And yet she is like the centerpiece of the trailer, because the trailer all leads up to her being like, I'm Jane Russell. And it's kind of like a

Like it's Remember how I said that I wished I'd seen the Megan trailer In theaters Because like And I saw the Megan trailer at home And I saw the Megan movie in theaters And I wished it had been the other way around Because like the Megan trailer feels like

The moment that you wanted to be in a crowded theater Full of homosexuals just falling all over themselves And it feels like the Jennifer Jason Lee moment In the trailer for Women in the Window was like that too It's just like Jennifer Jason Lee and like basically that's her almost entire screen performance she maybe says 10 words in this movie and still half of them are i'm jane russell she says i'm jane russell at least twice so like that's six words yeah right right it's a seven-word chorus girl doesn't know the word the words uh i'm doing

the shay culey and flap thing yeah um that was whoever jennifer jayette replaced at the last minute, some other blonde actress. Right. So, okay, Chris, give me the like long and winding production history of this. Because I want, when we, when we talk about reshoots and who we suspect was in the original version and the not version, we need a baseline. And I'm counting on you. So the movie, the book comes out in 2018, gets fast-tracked into a movie. It's a hit novel at that time. movie is done with production by the end of 2018. At the beginning of 2019 is when all the stuff comes out about the author. We'll look back to that show. You can talk about it. And the

movie is planned for release in the fall of 2019. Now, in the meantime of all of this going out is the Disney buying out 20th Century Fox. Which had been in the work since

like 2017. Yes. And meanwhile, in 2018, we're complaining about all of these movies like widows that are getting screwed that are in the Fox lineup that really like Disney's has no impetus to do anything much for them. And we know that woman in the window is in the docket. In the summer, they move it a year ahead and say that there will be reshoots all because of bad test scores for the movie. And the party line was that the movie.

was confusing, and they wanted to do reshoots to help clarify certain things. The party line... Not a conflict. Right. The party line is that you know, it's just a few pickups and

such, but meanwhile, we find out that Tony Gilroy is in charge of doing the writing of these reshoot which if you followed the Rogue One reshoot with any modicum of attention and you know that that

probably means the movie was majorly overhauled. Yeah. The end result of it is not really because unless they did some major divergence from the book and then the reshoots were just to basically do what the book does, you know, the plot follows the book. So it's hard to imagine that there was a major creative overhaul. What it more so seems like when you watch the movie is a lot of Joe Wright's stylistic flourishes and the flourishes that, you know, are referential to, you know,

staples of the genre. Because that's the other thing is she's watching movies throughout this, you know, throughout the movie. She's watching Rear Window. What's the Lauren Bacall? She's watching something with Lauren Bacall. A lot of these like noir movies. And clearly that are meant to be in conversation with the movie.

And in this version of it, it just seems, it seems a lot. flatter, right? It's just like, oh, you're showing me is still from rear window, I guess, to like get out ahead of the accusations of, oh, you're just ripping off rear window. But like, one imagines that Joe Wright had a more, and I could be, you know, talking about my ass, but like, one imagines that that stuff was there for a more stylistic purpose. It becomes more about a conversation about how these stories are told on screen, you know, like it's a, it's an homage to genre. Yeah. And like, you have the stuff. that's like the blood splatter across the screen that, you know, is really there for its own sake.

Yeah. And or like the multiple split diopeter shots, which are obviously, you know, the hallmark of De Palma. Right, right. Uh, throughout the movie. And so reshoots, we presume something happened. Either they dampened that down or they. maybe reshot it to

look exactly like what the story to play out as it does in the book maybe because I will say that finale freely looks like crap and various points of the movie Fred Hetchinger is definitely aging on screen

Tiny baby boy Fred Hetchinger and the movie is supposed to come out from Disney slash Fox in May of 2020. We all know what happens. Yeah. And by late summer, there's reports that Disney is looking to sell the movie because, you know,

this was also a time of the, we didn't really know where Disney was going to use Hulu in all of its strategy. They still don't know. They still don't know. They still don't know. They still don't know. because they just have never known what to do with it. Great, great job, by the way. Great, great, you know, general structure by the country

and allowing, you know, not pressing antitrust, you know, regulations to keep this merger from happening. Everything worked out well. It's only going to get worse, too. It is going to get worse. But they have things like, speaking of Tracy Letts, the Adrian Line, Darkwater movie, that they do push off onto Hulu.

Yeah. um that was also i believe a fox thing yeah so there was some thought that this is how the how the woman in the window would come out but we hear these reports that they're trying to sell the movie uh probably to netflix and this is also the time of netflix was buying up random uh you know any anything that was looking to get picked up during the pandemic like the malcolm and marie's were going to Netflix, but also there were other things that were sold to Netflix or talked about getting sold to Netflix because they were willing to pay for it and they had the infrastructure for it. Yeah. So that does get confirmed in late summer 2020 and then crickets until suddenly maybe was it like March or so of 2021. We hear that it's coming out in May on Netflix. it does well on Netflix, but with basically no promotion behind it.

Yes. I think maybe Amy Adams did like a Good Morning America type of thing. It did. There was such a sense of sweep it out the door, you know, kind of a thing. And yet, okay, but also, as I recall, this was, had been a laughing stock for kind of so long because the production had been delayed.

And because all these rumors, so everybody could sort of. smell the stench of failure around this movie between reshoots and all the AJ Finn stuff and also between the time that it was rescheduled and when it came out, Amy Adams had starred

in Hillbilly elegy. So like at this point, even like the Amy Adams thing is more detriment than, you know, advantage now anyway because Amy Adams starring in an adaptation of a bestseller that looks junky and has author problems. Like we feel like we've heard

this song before. So, Well, and Deer Evan Hanson hadn't been seen yet, but the trailer did. That she was cast in this role. That's like, why is Amy Adams playing that part? Yeah. So, like, it wasn't all on Amy Adams, but, like, but it was all this sort of, like, this swirling sense of failure around the movie. So, like, so the movie had already gone from years ago buzzed for awards to now this sort of, like, infamous movie. that's going to be coming out on Netflix, and then by the time people actually saw it, enough people were sort of bouncing from the floor of the backlash cycle, not even backlash cycle, but like negative hype cycle to, you know, this movie in all of its junkiness is actually kind of fun for being such a mess. And so it actually got a little bit of a, I remember this release as being less knives out, no pun intended.

I don't know why that would have been, you know. Garden Clause out. Garden Clause out. Right. For this movie, then you would have thought because I think people had gotten the negative stuff out of their system. And at this point, they were like, you know, this is a cuckoo-cunanas movie. And maybe I'm enjoying it more than I should. So not everybody thought that, but I think enough people did to keep the buzz middling.

I think it is unquestionably a disaster, but only in, like, not a bureaucratic way but in like a paperwork way not like the movie as you watch it it's I think it's less of a disaster and more of just like cliche at every single turn

and like what is what remains kind of special and interesting about it are these Joe Wright flourishes of like you know one of the first things you see in this movie is a dollhouse and it like then it's panning over this giant

not a brownstone but this house that she has like the set itself is going to be some type of dollhouse and you can you can see crumbs of visual ideas that clearly were watered down

for the final version that remain very interesting so you said a while ago that there's one sort of unquestionably great performance in the middle of all of this madness. I'm now thinking you and I have different ones,

but I don't think I disagree with yours either. So who's yours? Julianne Moore. Yeah, I don't disagree. She's incredible. Julianne Moore playing sort of the fraternal twin sister of Rose the hat, and then Rose went on her path and became violent and wore a top hat. And Julianne Moore was like, oh, I'm just going to be like,

like a wine mom. Yeah. Wine lady. Yeah. Wine lady, but I also do think that Julia, and maybe this is, I've just been May December pilled, but I do think Julianne Moore is giving a Jennifer Jason Lee performance. Oh, fascinating. And making like Jennifer Jason Lee choices in a way that it made me wish that, you know,

Jennifer Jason Lee was giving a Julian Moore performance to like blur this kind of. even further. Yeah. I just think she's so exactly embodies what Amy Adams's character needed in that evening to like break her out of whatever she was in and that like she's forward but she's also sort of like good-humored about being so forward and she's asking all these like really personal questions and then it's just sort of like oh, like, you know, aren't I nosy, yada, yad, yada.

And, um, and then talks about, you know, shows her son and the locket and whatever and like all this stuff that like when you get to the end of the movie, it's like, oh, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. Um, but it's a great. All the while being conceivable imaginary friend. Well, everybody in this movie is conceivable to not exist.

Like at some point in the movie, you really do think, oh, this entire thing is happening in her, her mind. and she's like dying in the snowbank and she has like imagined this like horror movie guilt trip for herself or whatever as she's dying or whatever because the cops seem like they're conceivably not real bry and henry's partner just absolutely seems like amy adams's guilty conscience made manifest right like gary oldman doesn't seem real jennifer jason lee definitely doesn't seem real um they all so like this is one of those movies because you know it's a rear window hitchcocking thing, you are looking for the twist. And even though

like Hitchcock was less about twists than like, whatever, this is a movie that trains you to look for a twist in it, right? To like figure out who's, who's behind it all. That's why it makes you suspect Wyatt Russell so hard, which is how you know that it's not Wyatt Russell. But it makes it so that you guess very early on, I think immediately, in my recollection, I think immediately, I was like, oh, the husband and daughter on the phone are not, like, they are dead. Right. Like that, I think you guess long before the movie gets you there. Well, this was my thing about the Anthony Mackey billing thing, because you only see him in the car wreck scene and you hear him on the phone.

But if it's true that the reshoots were to make things less confusing, I wonder if he was in the house. All of these phone conversations, he was actually in the house. That would make sense to me. That would make a lot of sense to me. Yeah. Because I do think maybe that would have confused people. Yeah. But would also explain why he's billed so high. Yes. But he like stops by often to check on her and yeah. Well, they're, they're, the phone conversations present them as like they're sharing custody while going through this separation. Yeah. They're estranged. Yeah. So maybe we saw him picking her up for the, visits, et cetera. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, in some way or another, like, that makes a lot of sense to me. My choice for best performance, and I, you may think I'm actually insane.

I think Fred Heshinger is great in this movie. I mean, Fred Heshinger is always good. The thing about him, by the end of this movie, all I'm thinking of is he would have been the absolute best scream villain of this latter scream, you know, Latter-day Scream, right? I know you hate those. And I generally don't love them. In fairness, I haven't seen six because I refused because I hated the fifth one so much.

Six isn't good. And with respect to Jack Wade, who is apparently high enough status to be announcing the Oscar nominations, which I didn't even think about at the time. I'm like, this is so weird that we've pivoted into, like, people that, like, your parents don't know who they are. Like, it's like, even say what you will about old school Oscar nominations. Like, I, I, they would have, my mom would have been like, oh, Sigourney Weaver. Oh, it's Salma Hayek. You know what I mean? And now it's like, Jack Quaid and Zazi Beats.

And it's just like, oh, okay. We're going for the younger generation. I know they've been moving in that direction. But anyway, Fred Heshinger gives a phenomenal performance as a scream villain in this movie. And so shocking that Fred Hetchinger is not a Oppenheimer, bro. I mean, anytime you see a white man who wasn't at Oppenheimer, it's kind of weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What happened there? What's going on?

Yeah, I think he's wonderful in this. I think he's good as the sort of like simple Ethan, you know what I mean? But like, once the turn happens, I'm like, this is a meal. This is delicious. I'm enjoying this. He's so, like, awful and... I do think that his scenes involve reshoots because he looks older. Yeah, probably.

But I think he's great in this. But you're right about Julianne Moore as well, so I like the two of them. We'll get into the Amy thing in a second. I want to do the AJ Finn thing for as much as I. And I did not get to do as much research as I wanted to do. to. The thing about AJ Finn, it's funny that it comes down to that one expose profile, right?

Well, yes, because the thing about the plagiarism accusations are, as I said, the plagiarism stuff is by far the least interesting. That stuff was there was a

oh, it was, I can't remember the title of the book now. I wonder if it's here. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-d-d-do-d- Sarah A. Denzel had a book called Saving April that was allegedly very similar.

Now, it's interesting. They say like plot similarities. It's like, oh, word? Like, okay, like there are plot similarities from women in the window to other things. Sound drop in Sandra Huller going, but the story is not the same. I cannot explain to a non-writer how else is a different thing,

but it is a different thing. But so the real story is this New Yorker profile that came out in... Let me find the date of it. Scroll up, scroll up, scroll up. New Yorker better have a date right on here. It's a long-ass profile,

by the way. I'm still scrolling. This was in February of 2019. And it essentially is like... So this guy, A.J. Finn, who wrote the woman in the window, it's a pseudonym. That's fine. His name is Dan Mallory. And here's what's

interesting about Dan Mallory is he's been telling people for years that he had cancer. You don't look so sick, Dad. Thank you. What have you got? I got a pretty bad case of cancer. And that he worked at a book publisher and he told all of his colleagues he had cancer. He had been, he got into Oxford with an admissions essay that talked about how his mom had cancer and he was like nursing her through cancer. That his brother had died also while he had like cystic fibrosis or something like that, and he was taking care of the brother. Stephen Glass coded. Yeah, except like weird or shit, where they were like, oh, while he worked at this book publisher, there were cups of urine kept like showing up near his boss's office,

and then after he left that company, it never happened again. And so they all assumed that he did that. Everybody who worked with him, the Stephen Glass thing was he snowed everybody who he worked with. Dan Mallory's thing is every person who this New Yorker talked to who he called up, there's this one. He recently called a senior editor at a New York publishing company to discuss the experience of working with Mallory. My God, the editor said with a laugh, I knew I'd get this call. I didn't know if it would be you or the FBI. That's one quote.

The other quote is, I was recently told about two former publishing colleagues of Mallory's who called him after he didn't show up for a meeting. Mallory said that he was at home taking care of someone's dog. The meeting continued as a conference call. Mallory now and then shouted, no, get down. After hanging up, the two colleagues looked at each other. There's no dog, right? No. So, like, clearly these people, like, had absolutely, he was the colleague that everybody sort of, like, side-eyed about, like, this guy is fucking weird. Um, there are things about, and also just, like, the way he, so, like, he talks when his mother said she had died of cancer, his mother's alive, said that his father had died long ago, his father's alive, described in the essay to Oxford that his mother rejected

the idea of suffering without complaint, Mallory often read aloud to her passages in little women in which Beth dies with meek, tidy stoicism, so that his mother could sneer at it, basically. So it's just like, just like absolutely fabulous sort of stuff. He worked as an intern at New Line Cinema and then claimed that he, like, put a final polish on the final destination movie. That was denied. He said he worked on a Tina Fey book. They denied that, like, all this sort of stuff. So he's essentially this, like, self-made sociopath.

And then that goes into, so then you add that onto the idea that this book is so much cobbled together from, as I said earlier, rear window. and the woman and the girl on the train specifically with other things. But, like, it's essentially, what if the girl on the train with, like, heavily hitchcocky and rear window influences? Right. So, because the girl on the train is also... What if a girl on a train, except she is not moving? The girl on the train is already a rear window, like, illusion, right? Like, that's, that's, so you're doing a copy of a copy of a copy.

And so, and it just makes him seem like an absolute looney tunes. So that then gets laid into the buzz for the movie. He's also, by the way, like, gay or queer or whatever, like, maybe that's also a lie. But it's also, like, textbook, like, handsome, right? You know what I mean? Where it's literally just like, you could have just been handsome. You know what I mean? Like, that gives you a lot of opportunities as well, buddy.

You know what I mean? It's like, Jesus Christ. Now you have to, like, add all this other shit on top of it. But anyway, that's the Dan Mallory of it all. Almost exactly my age. Almost. I remember it as, like, part of the age of the scammer, it felt like one of the grand finale. I mean, Elizabeth Holmes was like...

Elizabeth Holmes and Adelvie. It feels very Anadelvie coded. Yes, yes. You know, one of the lead-ups to, like, the grand finale of the age of the scammer. And you know what? Nice work if you can get it, because in the literary world, if you were going... If a scammer was going to succeed, it would be in one of these airport novel type of mysteries that are all indistinguishable from each other. Well, and it also sort of shows a little bit of like the brokenness of the publishing industry because like, as I said, the thing about Dan Mallory is most of the people who interacted with him knew he was phony on some level.

And even with that, so like when he's getting these book deals, everybody else in the industry is like, really? but, like, nothing is done about it. You know what I mean? It's just like, at some point, somebody is... And, of course, it was a hit book, so... Right. Well, that, but, you know, but that's, you know, also the thing. It's just like, it, what it takes to get a book published versus, like, talent or authenticity

are often very, very, very different things from each other. We don't really have a scammer Oscar story. I mean, I think in... Well, is the closest, alone yet not alone? I was going to say the closest is alone yet not alone. I think some listeners would say maybe Francis Fisher is the closest, but, like, no, this is legit. But alone yet not alone is kind of the scammer Oscar story in a way because it's like, it gets through because like the composer of the song was writing personal emails to people. You know, it could have been anything.

And it was this thing that doesn't exist. It is like, you know. So alone yet not alone, because I feel like it's long enough ago that people might not remember it exactly. But like, it's this movie that nobody had ever heard of that all of a sudden an Oscar nomination morning gets nominated for Best Original Song. And the original story was, oh my God, best original song is such a weird category. They're nominating songs for movies we've never heard of, which like has continued to this day. Shout out to Flamin Hot. But then it was pretty immediately, right?

It was in a week. It was in the first week. quickly rescinded because this is also at the age where they were really cracking down on, I mean, it's, a lot of this is all whisper stuff anyway that like people still vote this way, but there are certain like strictures that you cannot do that this nomination happened, that this guy who was, I forget if he was a former executive of the music branch or was a sitting executive of the music branch. And he was the nominee. Yeah. And he was a nominee. And he had sent, like, personal emails to known members of the branch saying, Yeah. By the way, vote for my song this year. Right, right.

And he got nominated that way. And, again, sort of similar to the A.J. Finn thing is that's so shady on its face. Like, somebody who is part of the branch, emailing other members of the branch and saying, vote for my song. People can't have thought that that was a good song. Or did they even listen to it? did they even listen to it? How many people, like, what was, what low threshold must it have taken to get just this guy's, like, personal friends and cronies to nominate him? Because if I'm a person in the song branch, and I'm like, don't know this guy very well, maybe, or just like, I'm not friends with him. I'm not going to get off of that phone call and be like, I'm going to vote for that guy because he asked me to. I'm going to be like, what a fucking creep. Like, you know what I mean? So, yeah. I'm going to, Instead, going to vote for Diane Warren. What was her nomination that year?

The Alone Yet, Not Alone Year? Yeah, was that 2013? Ooh. Hold on. Best Original song. Yeah, that was for the year 2013. So that would have been... She was not nominated.

That was Let It Go year. Oh. Ferell was nominated for Happy. Karen O. and Spike Jones for the song from her. Ladies and gentlemen, her. And then the U-2 song from Mandela Long Walk to Freedom, the song we all remember so well, Ordinary Love from Mandela Long Walk to Freedom.

So, Diane. Forget giving us the cut of her that has Samantha Morton playing Samantha. Give us the cut of her that has Adele playing Samantha. Was that the last year that, Diane wasn't nominated? No. Because she, what's her, what's her run been? It's been like seven straight years, right? Okay, so it's this year. It was last year for Tell It Like a Woman. It was four good days. Four good days, the Reba song. Tell us somehow you do. Then before that it was, you see the song from the Life of Head.

movie. We all remember the Sophia Loren movie The Life Ahead. So that's what? One, two, three, four. Then the year before that, uh, breakthrough, uh, breakthrough, the Christian, uh, movie with the girl from- That's the movie that made me say, I'm not doing this again. Yeah. Or no, maybe it was. Well, Free Guy is the one that made me not watch all nominees because I could, I could not watch Free Guy. Free Guy wasn't good. Uh, the year before that was RBG, so that's six in a row. The year before, that was Marshall, stand up for something. So that was the one she did with common. So that's seven in a row.

Right. And so it's seven in row because she was not nominated in the La La Land year, the La Land Moana troll year. That was a J. Ralph year. Sometimes J. Ralph and Diane overlapped, as they did in the year that Diane and Lady Gaga were nominated for the hunting ground, and J. Ralph was nominated for Manta Ray. from racing extinction.

Anyway. We need songwriters on songwriters. I want Diane Warren and Jay Ralph. Yes, one million billion percent. Absolutely. So she's seven in a row and like nine of the last ten years. Diane Warren. We salute.

We salute. All right. It's going to happen again next year. Let's talk about Amy. Let's talk about Amy Adams. Because I feel like Amy Adams is unfairly wrapped up in all of this. This is not a great moment. in Amy Adams's career.

She has her six Oscar nominations most recently for Vice and not any of us felt good about it. No, when was the last time she had a nomination we felt good about it? It would have been... I think she's great an American hustle. I do too, but not everybody does.

You and I are very both pro-Amy in that movie, but not everybody is. I think it's the master. I think she's incredible in the master. I don't even love the master And I think she's very good in the master But I mean I think

Her Oscar should be the fighter Me agree We are agreement on that We're at agreement here People also I think are a little mean To her doubt nomination I think people have gotten less mean Over the years but I agree with you

Vice did a lot to Put some respect on the doubt nomination Why Vice specifically Because I think it was It's no longer, doubt is no longer the one like, oh, she was nominated for that. And, you know, Vice takes that heat now. I think the majority of people would probably say they would have given her the Oscar for Junebug. That's such a great lineup, though.

It's such a great lineup. And I don't know if I give it to a right away, right away. You know what I mean? I mean, I understand people that say that, but like, I can't, I mean, that's probably I'm picking someone different on. any day of the week, you know, because it's such a good. I really love Rachel Weiss in The Constant Gardner, so I'm really glad she won that Oscar. I know people are just like, oh, this is, you know, Oscar voting for their own, but I love Catherine Keener and Capote.

Yeah, she's great enough. Capote doesn't get enough respect, and I, if I'm going to continue to feel this way about the Swans every episode, I hope that we can get some more respect on the Capote film. I do want to watch Capote again after having started the Swans. I definitely am not negative on Tom Hollander like you are on the Swans. I am, I've only watched the premiere. I think it's a very skin-deep Truman Capote. And it's just an affectation of the voice.

Keep watching, I would say. Okay. I've only seen the first two, but, you know. I'm willing to change my mind or have my mind changed. But so far, not feeling Tom Hollander as Truman Capote. What do you like about the swans? Well, the swans. All of them?

Like, who's most impressive to you among the swans? After episode one, I said Diane Lane. After episode two, I said Chloe Seveny. Was it you that I was talking to and you don't think Chloe Seventy fits into this milieu? Well, I like her so far. I think we've had the least of her. I'm very, very excited for where we're going to be going with Diane Lane, because I think Diane Lane, even though she doesn't come on strong until maybe the end of that premiere.

Yeah, but she comes on real strong at the end, though. It's setting the stage for some great stuff from Diane Lane in a way that I'm very excited for. And then Calista shows up in episode two in the most enigmatic way where it's like, you know we're going to be getting more from Calista, and I'm very excited about that, so. I'm going to keep watching. I just... Yeah. For me, if I still don't like what Tom Hollander is doing, it's going to be a barrier to end. I think it's going to be a detriment to my way of the show. You know how people can go and, like, get hypnotherapy to get themselves to quit smoking? I want to take you to hypnotherapy and to get you to forget that Ryan Murphy has anything to do with this series because he's not writing it. I wasn't really even thinking about that. And he's not directing it. He's only producing it. So, like,

I know you have a thing about Ryan Murphy, so like... But I wasn't thinking about that when I was watching the premiere. All right. I don't think even the Ryan Murphyness of the show, if it's there, is a detriment for the show. No, I think it's a... If anything, I want him telling these type of stories, not, you know, whatever the hell was going on in those clips from American Horror Story that I saw. Which one? Oh, this, the recent one?

The Kim Kardashian one, where it was just like, go to... Although that season also is like the least Ryan Murphy finger. Like, it's fully, what's your name from The Squid and the Whale is like writing that whole season. So... Oh, but it was the... Oh, yeah. No, you're not wrong. The crunch crunch of that satire was just like...

Very, very crunch crunch. Please have oxygen. Yeah. Somewhere. I don't know. Anyway. Yeah. Back to Amy Adams, though.

Well, we've had so little opportunity to talk about the whole career, but, I mean, I do think that the career is encompassed in those Oscar nominations. Yes. She's one of, she's one of, I don't know if it's a rare. It tells the whole story, kind of. And that's, that is kind of rare for an actor. Merrill's another one where, like, the Oscar nominations do sort of tell you the story. And it's easier when you get a lot of nominations so that it can tell a more sort of,

But there's a lot of people whose careers are very much not their Oscar nominations, right? Where the Oscar nominations are kind of exceptions to what they're actually doing. I'm trying to think of a specific example. I mean, there's two obvious gaps there in like the two major snubs of her career, and that's Enchanted and Arrival not being there. And Arrival, I just think because she, her performance was never really, the narrative in that year

that sunk through it very much I think kind of quickly became the narrative being Emma Stone versus Isabelouper you know

right to kind of but even with the snub for arrival sorry I'm saying snub arrival was still a best picture best director nominee

so it's not like I think you still had such good arrival representation at the Oscars that it feels like less of a complete like you it's really easy to see her finishing a very close sixth.

You know what I mean? Oh, absolutely. I mean, she probably was a very close sixth. Enchanted was nominated in songs, but Enchanted, you get the feeling that, like, oh, they were not ready to recognize a performance doing the things that she's doing in that movie because they don't always respect lightness as a... The movie itself wasn't respected on the level of like a Mary Poppins would have been in its day. Right.

And that's probably why. But I do think that that role is an, you know, an interesting wrinkle of who she is as a performer and, like, who she is in the zeitgeist that isn't reflected in her Oscar nominations. I think that's true. She's quite good in Enchanted. She's just, like, that's not easy. You know what I mean? It really, really isn't. And I think it's something that, like, remember how Anne Hathaway was just, like, not respected for a lot of her early stuff with, like, Princess Diaries and, and, you know, Ella Enchanted and even what she's doing in, like, her part of Devil Wears Prada.

And that seems to me the same sort of general umbrella that Amy's Enchanted performance was working in. You know what I mean? So. Whereas I feel like her arrival performance is, like, The biggest showcase of the type of nuance that she's doing in more idiosyncratic roles like the master, like her, where she's doing these great things, these incredibly internal type of nuanced character arcs that, you know, I mean, we can talk about ad nauseum, like, are not typically appreciated on the large-scale establishment of, like, the Academy. And so in that regard, it's almost not a surprise that the Academy didn't recognize her performance in Arrival because it's so, you know, written on her face and the character journey is an internal one that I think because of her gifts as an actor, we fully understand and we are fully invested in. Yeah. But it's not, I mean, arrival, it's huge in terms of like the survival of the species.

But in terms of the internal journey, it's a small thing that's nevertheless incredibly moving and, you know, incredibly layered throughout. But, yeah. All right, Chris, time for another update to the Vulture Movies Fantasy League. We are heading into the final month of the season. And we still have a seven-way tie at the top of the leaderboard. So we are waiting for a seven-way tie of no Oppenheimer movies. So we are seriously just sort of waiting for Oppenheimer to amass enough points to really sort of get into the mix at the top of the head standings. Another week of enjoying my frontrunner status among podcasters in the draft.

Katie Rich creeps ever closer to you because she's got Oppenheimer and Oppenheimer just picked up 30 points for winning the direct. Guild Award for Best Director. Did you watch any of Nolan's speech? I thought it was very good. No, I watched Greta Gerwig's speech. Well, Greta Gerwig's speech. As someone who drafted Barbie, I should be getting points for that speech. What a great speech. If you hadn't listened to it, go seek it out. She sort of goes around the room and takes a moment with each of her fellow nominees in Best Director to talk about a film of theirs that meant something that meant a lot to her. And she makes, first of all, she makes really good choices. Like, she talks about killing of a sacred deer with Yorgos. And she talks about...

The last thing's choice. I was like, I'm going to love Greta forever. Yeah. She's just... She talks about Memento with Nolan. She talks about Citizen Ruth with Alexander Paine. And then Scorsese, she's just like, you're, she, you know, it's a filmography. All of the above. But it's really lovely, and she's just wonderful, and I really love her. The other two movies that took home prizes film-wise at the DGA, 30 points apiece, 20 days in Mario Poll for documentary, which sort of takes the poll position now, I would think if it didn't already have it in the documentary race for the Oscars, even though what ones were not present, the Oscar nominees that weren't DGA nominated were Frigg. Now I'm going to have to look this up. Bobby Wine? No, Bobby Wine was a DGA nominee, isn't that interesting.

Got it. It's the 96th Academy Awards, right? For whatever reason, typing that in is a lot easier to get to where you want to go in Wikipedia, then... Documentary feature, it's four daughters, eternal memory, and then to kill a tiger. I, of course, and we talked about it, we don't have to talk about it again. We talked about it in our superlatives episode, how much I love four daughters, but, I don't know. Do you think any of those three movies that weren't in DGA

will be able to make a push at the Oscars to win documentary? It does seem like Four Daughters is getting a decent amount of conversation. Yeah. And that definitely matters for a documentary race that feels quieter than usual. Do you think a documentary with that much reenactment will have, will face pushback. I don't know if that's a thing among documentarians. Reenactment isn't even the right word for what that movie is doing. Right. The movie is doing a thing. By the way, listeners,

apparently Four Daughters is now on Canopy with your library card. Uh-huh. Watch Four Daughters and you should. Um, I do wonder, I think the sleeper in this category actually might be the Eternal Memory, which is from a documentarian who was previously nominated for the mole agent, which was dealing with similar themes. And I think the mole agent was a sleeper in that category, even though it didn't win. But it was a movie you saw a lot of people talking about. But I do still think this is probably 20 Days in Maripole winning. 20 Days in Maripole is available to watch where?

Is it VOD? It's rentable. It's rentable, yeah. I have not watched it yet. I only have six movies left to watch before. this whole completest race is done plus the shorts, but six features. I think I'm going to do it.

I think I'm going to suck it up. Yeah, you are. And I'm going to watch. Yeah, I watch Indiana Jones. You know, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. Get a snack. Get a nice little snack and you'll be fine.

It's that it's possible for me to do it because Robot Dreams is like the great unavailable one, especially because Neon is not putting it in general. Yeah. And we have the advantage of getting the screener from Neon. I would just feel like a jerk being this close and not. Yeah. The other feature film to win at DGA was Celine Song, who won a DGA for Best First Time Feature Film for Past Lives,

beating out Cord Jefferson for American Fiction, Manuela Martelli for Chile 76, Nura Niasari, apologies, for Sheda, the Australian film, and A.V. Rockwell for 1001. I know you've been sort of banging the drum about get different movies honored for Best First Time Feature this year. Get a range of movies. Get a range of movies.

Yeah. But admittedly, you are sort of cooler on past lives also, just sort of in general. True, that's true. But I do think what's interesting, I think a lot of people playing this game might see this as past lives last chance, to get points, but I actually don't think

that's true. I think that win is happening at a very crucial time for an original screenplay race that I think is relatively in flux, and I think this really increases Saline Song's chances of winning. Well, plus, if you are a past lives drafter, get ready for the

Independent Spirit Awards, because I think that is your sort of... Well, I forgot that. That's true. Yeah, but you're not wrong about original screenplay. I still think that, um, I still, I don't know why I still think the holdovers, but, um, You're right that it is a pretty wide open race, so. It's that, it's the holdovers, and it's anatomy of a fall.

I would still put money on anatomy of a fall, but this win definitely makes it a field of three potential winners. I think that's right. I think that's right. So, box office has sort of petered out to the place where it doesn't really matter as much anymore. and, you know, I don't know, play the in-memorium music for Box Office 2020. And I don't think there's any movies that are going to be getting the bonus points for hitting certain thresholds anymore at this point. Right. I talked a little bit about in the newsletter about how I want to, maybe for next season, put more box office threshold markers in there just because if a movie hits $150 or $200 million, like, that's rare enough that you should put. probably get points for picking up a movie like that. So, Chris, the next two weeks ahead of us are the BAFTAs and the SAG Awards.

We'll talk about the BAFTAs. Actually, we won't next weekend because the BAFTAs won't have happened by the time we're recording. So, but I think the big ones to come, BAFTA, SAG, Independent Spirit Awards, the PGA, and then the Academy Awards on March 10th. I wanted to sort of preview the SAG ensemble race a little bit, while we have a little bit of time here. Because that's the one... I have no idea where this is going to go.

So the nominees are American Fiction, Barbie, the color purple, killers of the flower moon, and Oppenheimer. And before you go ruling out the color purple, which I'm sort of tempted to do, SAG has, like, SAG ensemble can sometimes curveball. And so you can't really rule it out entirely, although I definitely think it's like the fifth most likely. You do have to also consider that SAG has been a more mainstream-leaning guild, and I would argue, well, I mean, it's only been a few years that AFRA has voted on these awards. and after it does include

insert grown noises here, TikTokers. Is the color purple big with TikTok? I have no idea. Oh, okay, okay. You know, you're talking about more mainstream space. Sure, sure. So that does throw a some wrinkle in predicting this award show.

I think it's interesting that, that, you know, while that is true, that just sort of like reinforces the fact that, like, oh, it's going to be Barbie or Oppenheimer, one of the two. Here's what I would say to that logic, though. It's, I think it's, it's so like those two against each other in a way that I think something in third place with this particular prize that has surprised before, something could, you know, if there's a vote split situation, this is where I could see

something else winning. I think in all three of, I think if we're both sort of looking at the same three front runners, which are Barbie Oppenheimer and then Killers of the Flower Moon, which I think is the one that could do that third place, sneakity do. I wouldn't rule out American fiction's chances as a vote splitter.

That's not a bad idea. Well, even in that, who in that? I'm looking more towards which movies left out a lot of people from their nominated ensemble. Oppenheimer is maybe the most egregious offender numbers wise, because that cast is

so huge, and there's only like 10 people nominated. And it's just interesting to see, like, Rami Mollick, who gets, like, two lines, but, like, not Alden Aaron Reich, who's, like, a weird shadow protagonist in that last 10 minutes. Right. But... Killers of the Flower Moon is the more probably... Yes, problematic.

Non-numerically egregious one, because you can't tell me that there isn't a dozen performers in that movie, and many of them native performers, that are more impactful to that movie and Brendan Fleet. I, yeah. Uh-huh. Nothing against John Lithgow, who is fine, and everything against Brendan Fraser, who is a nightmare in that movie. But yes, that's exactly, that's exactly right, that it's just like, and I understand, here's, I think when the news sort of leaked out several years ago, that when it became sort of known by enough people that the SAG ensemble is determined by who gets a solo title card credit, it's sort of a, um, it's sort of a, unleashed a monster in a little bit of way because now everybody knows that. And so you sort of point to

these, you know, cast nominations. They're like, look, it's, it's just who gets a solo title card. And yet it's like, yeah, but that's determined by things like agents and contracts and, you know, who's got the most pull. And so I wonder if there will come a point where, and maybe this is like, Because it's SAG, maybe this is like contractual in their like agreement and there's nothing to be done. But like I would love for the SAG nominating committee to have some, uh, free reign there to adjust these and to sort of make their own determinations. Because like, you can't ask the films to do it because the films are just going to nominate everybody because they're not who, you know, who are they going to want to kick out of their own cast? Do you know what I mean? Um, but I think you, you, you, you, you, select a committee. Maybe it's apart from the nominating committee. Maybe you come up with your nominees and then you hand them to another committee and you say, look, take this seriously, pour through these movies and say you can only do a certain, maybe you can only do a certain percentage of the cast. Although I don't know. That doesn't because what if it's a forehander

and you just want to nominate all four. So maybe put as few restrictions as possible on them and just say come up with a list of nominees that makes sense without like nominating the whole cast. Do you know what I mean? I don't know. It's just a bummer. But anyway, as to who wins? So a win for Best Ensemble will get you 50 points and then a win in any of the four major acting categories will get you 35 and then a win in any other category including stunts gets you 10 points. So ensemble will get you, that's a good hefty chunk of change with 50. So if something like Barbie or Killers of the Flower Moon wins, that kind of helps everybody in the standings who's trying to hold off the floodgates, the Oppenheimer floodgates for as long as possible. So

you're rooting, you're definitely rooting for anything but Oppenheimer if you don't have Oppenheimer on your roster. I, regardless of who's actually nominated, I have a feeling that like when voters are casting ballots, are casting votes, rather, they're not thinking of that. They're thinking of Oppenheimer's got 8 billion cast members and I like them all and I'm just going to cast my vote for that. Or same thing with Barbie. Barbie's got a million cast members and I like them all and I'm going to cast my vote for that.

I do think it's probably going to be one of the two. I think in the wake of the Oscar conversation, I have a feeling that like Barbie voters are maybe going to be less inclined to be like, I loved Barbie, but like, you gotta hand it to the cast of Killers of the Flower Moon. You know what I mean? I think there will be a more sort of fervent Barbie contingency. Plus, it's the number one movie of the year. It's the one that more people saw. You know what I mean? And ultimately, I do think if I'm going to make a bet on anything, I will bet on Barbie, particularly because it's not going to win any of the other for acting prizes, whereas Oppenheimer is at least probably going to win supporting actor.

And Killers of the Flower Moon is, you know, decently likely that Lily Glad. This will be the interesting one, though. Lily Gladstone, Emma Stone has become a little bit of, not a little bit, like a real race. A lot of people are, just like they did last year with Kate Blanchet are saying it's Emma Stone. at this particular moment, and I'm just saying, it is the same exact behavior that you saw everybody jumping ship and saying, well, no, Kate Blanchett is going to win. And with a lot of the same logic, like, well, that's the most like the place that this movie can win. It did show up in a lot of places that seemed on the bubble for it. I think there are a couple

key differences here. One of which is Michelle Yo was the lead actress of the big best picture frontrunner that was poised to, you know, win a bunch of awards. The other was there was a huge component of what a great career she's had, and this is our first chance to really honor her, where I think there's a way for a voter to say, to look at Lily Gladstone and be like, what a great performance. She's got a lot of them ahead of her. And I would caution those people that, like, look at the way this industry works. You know, we cannot. take for granted opportunities for, you know, native performers like Lily Gladstone, even though, God, I hope the industry is going to fight like hell to, you know, give her as many opportunities as possible. Let's not maybe take for granted that Lily Gladstone, you know, will automatically be back here again. Do you know what I mean? If there, I mean, like, I think it's safe to say nothing is stopping David and Joy Randall from winning every other prize that

stands for the rest of the season that she can win. Yeah. If there wasn't that breakthrough, you know, type of thing, I mean, not breakthrough because we've seen both of those performers before, but like a welcoming into the club of one performer, because it usually feels like there's room for one of those people every year. Yeah. Put more stock in it, but, you know, at the end of the day, it's still someone who's never been invited to this table before

up against someone who's already won and has, in all likelihood, in all rationality will have many chances to win another in the future. Yeah. Do you think that race could get close enough that, at the Oscars at least, because Sandra Heller's not nominated at the Sags, do you think there's a chance that that race gets close enough that Sondra Huller could Adrian Brody that category?

People keep saying this and I don't see it. Yeah. I don't see that. Yeah. I'm just curious. I don't know if I don't know if I have a very good handle on Best Actress right now. I did want to ask you one more question because you did bring up Divine Joy Randolph, Devine Joy Randolph, that nothing is going to stop her. Certainly not from winning the Oscar. I don't think so either. But like, the SAG Awards can get goofy. And I'm just going to ask you if on the off. Get goofy when they're forced to get goofy. Like just follow this thought experiment. If I'm going to tell you that there's a shock. upset and Dave and Joy Randolph does not win supporting actress, who is the most likely to do it? People say Emily Blunt, but I think it's Jody Foster.

I was exactly. I agree with you exactly right. If Emily Blunt didn't already have a sag for... She's already won a weirdo sag. Yes. She's already won one weirdo sag for a quiet place. I agree. No, I think if there's anybody who are you going to be like, really, it would be Jody

Foster in Niyadh. And I kind of hope that doesn't happen because Jody Foster is having a lot of, really good moment right now. And I think that would backlash severely, at least on... Well, I mean, everybody seems to hate her true detective season, which is obviously not her... I'm just finding out about this in this past week. I'm loving the season of true detective. Maybe I'm just like a dumb bitch, but like I'm really enjoying this season. And I think she's phenomenal in it. So like, I don't know what... I genuinely don't know what people's problem is, because I think it's great. So...

The only real, like, shift that I could see happening after... SAG is actually in the lead actor category because Are you back to doubting Giamatti again? Have you backslid? If DiMondi wins, that holds the line because you can also imagine Killian Murphy is winning BAFTA, so it's like still a two-horse race up until the Oscars that I think

in that circumstance, Giomadi would win. If Killian Murphy wins SAG, it's over. Like, that's what I would say. So you have backslid into doubting Paul Giamatti. This is very interesting. Um, I don't think it's necessarily the likely outcome that Killian Murphy wins SAG. I'm just saying if this is what happens, this is what it is. And that Killian Murphy has probably been the guy all season long.

It's just taken most of the season to reveal it if he wins SAG. But I think it's more likely that Giamatti wins. All right. Well, this is very interesting. Okay. So that's the only thing that I could really see shifting. Sure. sure sure sure sure sure sure um because even if emma stone wins sag and then obviously bafta because

lily gladstone is not nominated which is grace hey right uh i could still see lily gladstone winning the oscar i agree with that um well it should be interesting so um anyway so uh vulture movie fantasy league players keep on trucking with these last few weeks and if you've got oppenheimer on your roster there is still a really good chance that you can and move up, up, up, up, up that leaderboard. Right now, we are still with an oppressive seven-way tie that does not seem to be, well, certainly that tie's not going to get broken up because they all have the same roster, but they have been in power for a very long time.

And I, it's one of you, maybe I'm the stubborn one who looks at that and just like, that won't last. It's not going to last throughout the rest of the season. And yet, like, they remain, and yet they remain. So we'll see how it goes. And otherwise, get ready because we are in the home stretch, and here we go. This is the thing about Amy Adams is I think she was thrust into leading lady type of roles because of her stature and her level of Oscar nominations that have followed her. But I think she's much more interested in doing roles like her and.

roles like the master and I guess her rival. And that's why it's not maybe so odd that she would choose a role like dear Evan Hansen. Sure. She's not the lead, but she has, she plays this character that has their own confined emotional arc in this story. That is important to the big picture of it, but she doesn't have the spotlight. Not to bring up the Hollywood Reporter roundtables as text, but like, I think you see that a lot of her narrative throughout those Hollywood Reporter roundtables in like it really has been a journey to attain self-confidence. And I don't, I don't find it phony on her. I genuinely feel

like there is a sincerity to her journey towards believe, but she's, it's a weird dichotomy, right? Where she's been so. She's reticent for the spotlight. She's been so dogged to have this career. She's worked so hard to have this career. And it finally came to her a little bit later than she expected it to, but she got it. And yet, you're right, it's the spotlight. I think there's an imposter syndrome aspect to Amy that comes through. The whole thing where, like, she didn't feel like she had a stature enough to, like, maintain a personal relationship with Mike Nichols, and that's a thing that she regrets.

You know what I mean? That kind of a thing. And I think that probably plays into a lot of this. I think a lot of that also contributes to, like, this, like, few year bubble along with Hillbilly elegy, along with the Superman movies that she's in, that she's in in like this period leading up to this, that everybody, I feel like kind of dogpiled on her, uh, in like, kind of presenting it as a fallow period for her. It was the first time that people had turned on this idea, sort of in great numbers.

There's always outliers, right? first time that, like, a majority of people who with opinions on Amy Adams had negative opinions on her taking movies, quote, just to get an Oscar, right? I think the one-two punch of Vice followed by Hillbilly Ellogy, which are two movies that were seen as cynical. I think a lot of people viewed Vice as, even though it's Adam McKay, who like is stridently left wing, as a weird sort of like. um not necessarily an apology for for dick cheney but a weird like let's try and understand this figure and a lot of people at best a what are we doing here what is this for followed by hillbilliology which a lot of people did seem to know who it was for and it was not for anything um particularly good i think hibliology was very much a movie you know that was

seen as an attempt to normalize humanize specific the Trump voter demographic. And of course, that's all you know, J.D. Vance wrapped up in that in his political career, inextricable from that. And so there was a real sense of ill will following

vice and hillbilly elegy to the idea of Amy Adams being like chasing Oscar with these shitty projects. You know what I mean? And... And we have no idea what she's getting offered. We have no idea. On top of like she's said

many times that, you know, her focus is on being a parent. And, you know, so she's taking these high profile roles that maybe allow her to provide for her family a little bit more. Like, that should also be somewhat understood and not. And certainly that's the looked askance at. Like, there's some ill intent. But like, I think that's a reason why people mostly don't really hold the Lois Lane stuff against her because it's just like, yeah, go play Lois Lane. Who cares? You know what I mean? It's just like. But also people are like, why is she in these bad movies. And I think, like, it's, for someone like her, I see a little bit less of, like, why is she in a DC movie? Well, because she's playing Lois Lane. Like, Lois Lane is an iconic character

would have probably more appeal to Amy Adams than being in a superhero movie, period. Right. Yeah, I don't necessarily, I don't really hold that against her at all. Like, you know what I mean? It's just like, yes, for somebody at your stature, for the amount of money that they probably paid you for this role to play Lois Lane in the new Superman movies? Like, I would take that too if I were in that career position. You know what I mean? My, the, like, be in my bonnet about this whole period and how people, I think, were disingenuously viewing her and discussing her as a performer is her Sharp Objects performance, which I think is truly some of her best work. So overlooked. So incredibly overlooked. I mean, she won, like, critical

choice but critics choice TV prizes are not real they're not real they're they're the least they're they're less real than Golden Globes TV prizes guys like genuinely truly truly um I mean part of the reason why she was so overlooked for that was it was the TV seasons are so strange and it was like the first thing of that TV season so summer TV is always so easily to easily forgotten that's the thing it was so early in that season it ended up getting who did Patricia Clarkson. She lost a fucking Patricia Arquette, right, for the fucking Gypsy Rose Blanchard

movie or show? So stupid. Patricia Clarkson. Patty won the Globe, though. Right, because it was before that show, I think. Yeah. Had come out, maybe, or something. I don't know. But Amy loses to, you know what? I'm just going to bring up those Emmys. I'm going to. Give me a second. Because that was, yeah, I remember watching. Now, of course,

Sharp Objects was the the Gillian Flynn follow up to Gone Girl. We're going to forget that Charlie's there on movie, right? We've all decided to do that. The filmed adaptations are

in a different order than the books were public. Sharp Objects was published before Gone Girl. Chris, I don't recognize publishing order. I only recognize filming order. It is wild that Gillian Flynn has not published a book since Gone Girl, though. It is wild.

That is true. What's going on there? She's been doing screenwriting stuff, right? So, yeah. Gone Girl also casting a large shadow because, like, gone girl, a long shadow over things like woman in the window, because Gone Girl is, like, the good example. And I think there's always an optimism that, like, well, what if it's Gone Girl level? Sure, right.

Oh, no, no, no, no. Amy Adams loses to Michelle Williams for Fossy Verdon. Oh, see, but that's the danger in releasing this, like, great thing so early in the Emmys year is something is going to come along maybe. And yeah, yeah, you can't really. And we wrote about the Michelle Williams speech in our vulture list and what a great speech it was. But yes, Patricia Clarkson definitely lost, though, to Patty Arquette for the Act. to Petty Arquette for the act. I never watched the act, but I sort of, I was just listening to, before we started recording this, I was just listening to Stradio Lab with our friend George Severus talking about Gypsy Rose Blanchard and his belief that we were maybe treading on dangerous ground with making her a cultural icon. Not necessarily dangerous, maybe that's my more opinion. It's just like, it really bugs me that there was that like two-week period where everybody was like yassing, like crazy for Gypsy Rose Blanchard.

And I'm like, I get that it feels bold and like sort of sassy that we're like standing this like girl who killed her mother. But like, I don't know, guys, we don't have to like, and it was the same. And this is what George's point was too. It was just like, George Santos and Gypsy Rose Blanchard. Maybe we need to like take a step back a second. And it's like, do we have to like stand the absolute like worst elements of culture just because we expect that like John Waters would get a kick out of this?

Sometimes I don't think, I think it becomes, I mean, when people say they stand George Santos, like, I think it's, I think there is a lot of joking and like we're, we love the, we love the ethos around a George, this stand, George Santos, but we hate the actual person. And I feel like if we have to, if we have to separate hairs so much, maybe we should just not. do this. Here's my feeling is some people are not coming to that game with the proper equipment. Some people are not coming to that fight with the proper artillery, where I think you have to be, and again, I'm basically plagiarizing, this is appropriate for the AJ Finn episode here. I'm plagiarizing George. I'm plagiarizing George a little bit. This is my attempt to lure George back on to our podcast, is just stealing his points. is this idea that, like, not everybody is culturally intelligent enough to do something as sort of high wire as I'm going to ironically stand George Santos and Gypsy Rose Blanchard. And some people are just being, like, uncurious and un, like, they're not interrogating what this is.

They're just sort of just like, oh, my God, we love her. She killed her mom. Oh, my God. We love him. And it's just like, well, no, like, you really do have to be like almost like John Waters level for me to allow you to appreciate that and like allow you like without me being like, oh my God, you're so fucking stupid. You know what I mean? It's like. So you're saying we really should A.J. thin these people.

A little bit. Yes. Yes. I think, yes. I think it's very. Oh, no. I'm not going to make that sweeping statement. it's very easy

for gay men to stand a weird-looking little girl who kills her mom I mean I'm just saying interrogate that investigate that think about that in your life all right how did we get here

the act the Fisher Clark's in sharp objects we were talking about sharp objects and Amy Adams I think I think people were unfair critics, audiences alike, to Amy Adams in this period.

She's incredible and sharp objects, which, like, I think was a strong enough performance to, on its own feet, just completely dispel all of these things people were saying about her and her creative force at that time. But we also have optimism on the future. This is going to be the year of night bitch. This is our first episode. You have so much...

Where we're talking about the... Where we can talk about the season ahead. And... I know. I just... I don't... I don't want to overhype something for myself, but... You're already there with Nightbitch.

You are very, very... You're there with night. Everybody needs to realize that we are getting the Amy Adams-Marry-all-Heller collaboration this year, and those are two people that... Everyone wanted to see work together. And can I read you the IMDB plot nutshell of Nightbitch, the R-rated horror comedy from Mariel Heller, starring Amy Adams and Scoot McNary? We should just let it be whatever it is. We don't need to call it things like a horror comedy.

I'm looking at IMDB, I'm just saying. R-rated horror comedy. I'm reading the boilerplate here. I'm giving you what you what you would. All right. An artist who pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mom seeks a new chapter in her life and encounters just that when her nightly routine takes a surreal turn and her maternal instincts begin to manifest in canine form. So, American werewolf in the feminine mystique? Like, what's happening here? What's going on? American werewolf in the Upper West Side? Something like that. In Flatbush, I don't know, in Bedstuy, something.

This is going to be a Fox Searchlight slash Hulu production. It is apparently not Hulu anymore. Oh, is it going theatrical? That's everything that I've read. Good. Good, good, good, good. I want to see this in a theater. Remember, all of us strangers was supposed to originally be Hulu. I did not know that. Yes.

All right. Well, very good. I think the trend is away from that. I think they have finally at least seen enough of the light. most of the studios. Anyway. They also are putting no effort towards Hulus. Am I being... Only murders in the building is keeping the lights on over there. Am I being 2000 and late with the idea that I think Nightbitch is not in the taste level of Oscar voters?

I mean, for me and my excitement level, I don't need it to be. Well, I think enthusiasm for Amy Adams, and I'm not certainly not just talking about you, enthusiasm for Amy Adams these days takes a double-edged form, and one of which is, we're excited for a new Amy Adams performance, and the other side is, is this going to be the one? So, and that's where I want to sort of temper expectations. It's a lot of pressure to put on that movie. Yeah. And, like, I think we're also wondering, is this going to be the one for Mariel Heller? It's not.

I love Maryle Heller, but it's not. I don't know. And, like, I don't want to overhype the movie in those terms, other than to say, I, I, on my own terms, am as excited for this movie as I am for anything else this year. And I also, I say, you know, I'm flippant about it and I'm quick to say that it's not going to be in Oscars' taste. And yet, it does seem like more and more that the Oscars are going for things that you wouldn't think would be in their taste. Well, especially because it's a searchlight fall movie. I mean, so is poor things.

And, like, look at how well that movie is doing. I'm just, exactly, exactly. They know what they're doing over there. Yeah. She's also got a bunch of other things in the pipeline. She's got a TV miniseries with Adam McKay, which is that Walmart thing, Kings of America. That, I think, fell apart. Well, then IMDB's got to get their shit together, don't they?

Because Adam McKay, she had some project that she was going to be doing for Adam McKay that fell apart, that I forget what it is. It was some serial killer type of thing. All right. Then you're just going to be my correct. directions department here as I read through these things. And you tell me, you are definitely more, I should read more deadline, I guess. I should follow more deadline. One of my worst qualities is reading deadline.

Yeah, except you know way more shit than I do about what's going on. So, like, jokes on me. But deadline is also awful. Yeah. Deadline is part of the problem. Yes, but again, you get the information. And sometimes that's all you need. Anyway, is this Tycho Waititi, Kazuo Ishiguru movie still happening?

with her and Jenna Ortega? This is getting announced because the Berlin market is happening. It seems like the type of thing that could happen or could not, you know, just one of those projects that gets announced that never actually happens.

Yeah. I hope it doesn't because, I mean, it was kind of, Clara and the Sun was kind of a Ishiguro greatest hits book to me. Yeah. I understand why some people love it. I thought it was fine.

Yeah. Tycho Waititi does not need to be making that material whatsoever, and seeing Amy Adams' work with, potentially with Taika-Y-T-T-T-T sounds like a bummer. So the only other one that's on her IMDB upcoming is this Jonathan Dayton-V-Ferris comedy from the script from Rashida Jones and Will McCormick, which is an interesting quadrangle of people in terms of like, I think their vibes kind of vibe together with her and Paul Rudd um called the invite yeah i have not heard anything this sounds like a project i would like it's like it sounds like a couple swap type of thing yeah it's uh their neighbors are

hosting orgies and i feel like i heard about this a while ago yeah sounds like feels like everything that i'm that's on i mdb is like delayed information so right or just things like you know, we never hear when projects just don't happen, so I would hear more if I read more. But, I mean, Amy Adamson at Dayton Ferris joint

sounds like a good idea. Yes. All right. Anywho, we are now at the point where I'm going to bring up Jennifer Jason Lee. Talk to me a little bit about her performance in the movie. It's very strange. It's very intentionally stilted.

Yes. She's supposed to be enigmatic. She's supposed to be, is she, we're supposed to imagine, we're supposed to suspect that she's an actress who's being paid to impersonate Julianne Moore, right? That's sort of how, what we're sort of led to believe. But she's an actress or somebody who is being in some way coerced to portraying the world. Truly the only, truly the only reason why a name performer should be in this role. is because of that reveal of when she says, I am Jane

Russell. And you're supposed to be like, oh, this other famous person but then is a complete non-factor in the rest of the movie. And like, you hate to see it for Jennifer Jason Lee, but I mean, cash the check, I guess. She's coming off of her Oscar nomination a few years before this

with, um, especially as when this movie was supposed to come out in 2019, she would have only been four years removed from the hateful eight But it's not like she like career bumped from that, right? Where she's, you know, where did she go right from hateful eight? It was, hold on.

Annihilation? Well, annihilation's great. But that's only 2018. So like 2015 is the hateful eight. And then she like, she's the stuff that's already in the can, right? She's in that movie Morgan, the Anya Taylor Joy. Which I think was long delayed. Right.

she's playing Lady Bird Johnson in the Rob Reiner LBJ movie opposite Woody Harrelson, which one also imagines would have been taken care of. She's in good time. See, this is why, because she's in good time and I don't recognize good time. Equally thankless role. Who was she even in? She's his sex partner, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, having sex with Robert Patton's a nice work if you can get it. She's in this Amityville movie that I think was shelved for literal years. Yes. And then, right, Annihilation, which she's so good. I love her so much in that movie. I think she's fantastic. She's in White Boy Rick, which I was at Toronto the one year, and I did not see it. That was Matthew McConaughey. She's in Possessor. A great, like... Freaking it. Again, it's sort of the same role that she's playing in Annihilation. You could tell me that it's the same Dr. Ventress from Anilation. She's just in Possessor. It's like, all right, cool.

And then the woman in the window. So, like, she's picky. She's choosy. She's in Twin Peaks the Return, which, again, was a thing that people really liked that I didn't watch beyond the first couple episodes. So, like, you know, I... It's fun. I think people did a lot, but it's fun. I walk dangerous ground with Twin Peaks because I respect the people who liked it.

I also feel like some people did way too much with it. Everybody who put it on their best movie top 10 list at the end of that year, you are my enemy in some way or another um but like i like i love david lynch i respect every once in a while i think should i go back and try again with twin peaks to return because i admit that the problem is me i admit that like i'm i'm a i'm a dummy dumb dumb and did not uh latch on a good time with it i had a good time with it it's great see this is the that's like i don't didn't i don't doubt that but it's also so weird that everybody's like, this was fun, y'all. And I'm like, fun? I don't understand that. Like, it's just like, it just seemed like work to like figure out what the fuck was going on. And I know that like, you're not supposed to know what's going on. It's just, you know, go with the flow, man. And like, maybe I'm too neurotic for Twin Peaks. I don't know.

Not a whole lot of J.J.L. going on lately. She was in Lena Dunham's Sharp Stick in a role that I would very much believe was just written as Jennifer Jason Lee. she was in Pullman Which apparently will be seeing the light of day this year She was actually done a decent number of television She was in five episodes of Patrick Melrose She's in that awful Stephen King adaptation Lisey's story Where it's her and Julianne Moore

So together again And Clive Owen and Joan Allen Like Julianne Moore Jennifer Jason Lee Joan Allen play sisters said this eight billion times before. There is a thing where Julia and Moore, Jennifer, Jason, Lee, and Joan Allen play sisters, and it's awful. And it's directed by Pablo Lorraine, and it's based on a Stephen King novel, and it's awful. And I'm so sad about that. Cinematography by Darius Conji, awful. Not the cinematography, but like the whole project is bad.

Couldn't have better people associated for it to be so bad. It was really frustrating. She's also on that show, Hunters, for seven episodes, uh, the one with Al Pacino and, Logan Lerman, where they're hunting Nazis in a sort of... I'm good, love. I'm deeply good. It's not bad. I watched a few episodes of it. It's not bad. It's just like, it was a, there's too much television for me to invest in this kind of a show. And then also, though, she's been in the most recent season of Fargo. And like, you know my feelings on Fargo, but I had so many people be like, even still, this season of Fargo is really good. To the point

where, and like, Jennifer Jason Lee specifically is supposedly great in it. So I'm not, not curious to check it out, even though, like, catching up on a season of dramatic television that you've missed is, like, the most daunting thing in the universe. Like, they could be like, climb this mountain or watch an entire season of a dramatic TV show that you have missed and, like, catch up to it. And it's just like, I would rather try and climb the mountain. I'll die either way. So it's just so much work, Chris.

It's such a weird movie for us to be hitting a six-timers club for this performer who is comically a non-entity in it. Though I have to say, in the past, you know, year, two years, the real growing appreciation and critical reassessment of her career in the 90s, I think that's been somewhat spearheaded by the Criterion channel in doing like a Jennifer Jason Lee collection, has been wonderful. She's one of our finest. Love her. Okay, so this is our sixth Jennifer Jason Lee movie, as you have mentioned, comes after we did in the cut in our early days in our first miniseries. A thousand acres where she co-stars with Jessica Lang and Michelle Pfeiffer. as sisters. Another one where she plays part of an iconic trio of sisters.

She's iconically a sister. We've talked about this, right? Where she's like, her, a lot of, like, she's played, you know, Mary Louise Parker's sister on weeds and Nicole Kidman's sister. We need to, we need to put a death to the phrase, that's so mother, and we need to start saying that's so sister. Yeah. Yeah, that's Jennifer Jason Lee-coded.

Margo at the wedding, we've done Dolores Claybourne, where she started up as a Kathy Bates, as a daughter, not a sister. Mrs. Parker and the vicious circle, and now the woman in the window. So, as always, Chris, when we reach six times with an actor or actress, I come up with a little quiz to give to you about these six movies. The answers to these questions will be one or more of those movies.

Have you jotted them down or in some way can look at them to know what your pool of answers are? They're burned in my memory forever. All right. Are you ready for the Jennifer Jason Lee Six-Timer's quiz? Yes. All right, what was the longest movie of those six? Is it, um... Is it a thousand acres?

Not a thousand acres. Not a thousand acres. It's not Margot at the wedding. It's not woman in the window. Is it Mrs. Parker in the Viscite Circle? Nope. Damn. So it has to be...

What one am I already forgetting? If you had written them down, as I suggested you do, you might be... They're written in my brain. Hold on, I'm going to pull up the tab. Is it... Is it in the cut? Nope, but it's Dolores Claiborne. Delores Claiborne.

Why did I remember that as like being a buck 45? I could have written it down wrong. Let me write... Let me double check. because margot at the wedding is like a solid 8590 woman in the window is 100 yeah maybe these just aren't very long movies nope delors claiborne is 132 minute oh wow yeah flies right by it does fly right by i'm not even joking all right what's the shortest of the movies margot at the wedding 93 minutes, correct. Which one has the best Rotten Tomatoes score? Ooh. Um, gonna say Dolores Claiborne? Very good. Dolores Claiborne at 85%. Which has the worst Rotten Tomato score? In the cut. No, surprisingly no. Woman in the window. No, surprisingly no.

Wow. Okay. Uh, a thousand acres. A thousand acres, 24%. Women in the window was 25. Yeah. Yes. Isn't that mean? Isn't that awful and mean? That's crazy. Yep. That is misogyny. Critics will really, really mean to them. That is misogyny, period. Yep. Yep. All right. Best box office. A thousand acres. No. Dolores Claiborne.

Dolores Claiborne at a whopping 24.3 million. So, Dolores Claiborne sweeps the longest, best, rotten tomatoes, and biggest box office. I think that's the first time I'm We got to come up with a title for that. We do have to come up with it, but I think that might be the first time it's happened. So it's Doloresed it. What's the lowest box office? Other than Women in the Window, which is Netflix. Right.

That is zero dollars. Mrs. Parker in the Vister's Circle. You would think, but no. Margot at the wedding. Mrs. Parker is $2.1 million. Margo at the wedding is $1.9 million. There you go. Yeah.

Which are the only two movies in this list to not take place in New York State? Dolores Claybourne. Yep, Maine. And 1,000 acres. Yep, Iowa. All of the other ones are either in New York City or Long Island in some way, in some fashion or another. Which is the only one of these movies to not star an Oscar-winning actress? And they're all movies with all.

lot of women in them. It's Mrs. Parker, isn't it? No, that has Gwyneth. It does have Gwyneth. So, it's in the cut. It's in the cut. Unfortunately, Meg Ryan has never even been nominated for an Oscar we've talked about before. Yeah, Dolores Claiborne has, of course, Kathy Bates, Margot has Nicole Kidman, A Thousand Acres, has Jessica Lang, and a woman in the window has Julianne Moore. Right. which two were nominated for Independent Spirit Awards? Mrs. Parker in the Vicious Circle.

Correct. And Marco at the wedding. Correct. Very good. Which two... Both for Jennifer, Jason Lee. No. You're going to have to look that up because I did not make notation of it. No, I did not make notation of it. Let's see.

What do we say, Mrs. Parker? You can cut this out. Mrs. Parker, I think, was the best feature nominee. That sounds about right. Margot was at least nominated for one acting prize. I just don't remember if it's Jennifer, Jason Lee, or Jack Black. Give me half a second. I'll look it up. Mrs. Parker in the vicious circle was nominated for

Best feature, best director, best female lead, best male lead, and best screenplay. So really, every big one did not win any of them. And Margo at the wedding. She was nominated for Margo. She was, okay. She got a supporting female nominee for Anomalisa. I remember that. People seem to like Anomalisa more than I did.

Likewise. All right. Next question. Which two of these movies feature scores by Danny Elfman? Woman in the window. Yep. And in the cut? Nope.

Oh, okay. Dolores Claybourne. Yes, correct. Yeah. Which three were directed by people who have never been nominated for an Oscar. So they have never individually been nominated for an Oscar. A woman in the window. Yes.

Alas, Joe Wright. Not even a picture nomination for him. No. Uh, Mrs. Parker in the Vicious Circle. Correct. No, Alan Rudolph. And it's between Dolores Claiborne a thousand acres. I just forget who directed both of those movies. Uh, no, Dolores Claiborne is like Alan Parker. It's not Alan Parker.

But it, I do think it is someone who's nominated for an Oscar, so I'm going to say a thousand acres. You're correct. Jocelyn Morehouse directed a thousand acres. She's never been nominated. Taylor Hackford directed. Taylor Hacford. Dolores Claiborne. Which movie was released in Ares season? So, the spring. That is Dolores Claiborne?

Correct. Very good. Which two movies played the Toronto Film Festival? Margot at the wedding and in the cut. Yes, very good. And the cut was a gala. Which two movies feature stars of Shakespeare in love? Mrs. Parker in the vicious circle.

Quinneth. And... Is it Margot the wedding for Kieran Hines? It's not Margot at the wedding for Karen Hines. Okay. That means... Is someone and woman in the window in Shakespeare in love? No.

Is it a thousand acres? It is a thousand acres. You want to guess who? Four. Not one of the major actresses, but one of the husbands, I think. No. If you recall, one Colin Firth appears as a character. Yes, he is one of the husbands.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go. All right. Which two movies feature stars of all the money in the world? Dolores Claiborne for Christopher Plummer. Yep. and Michelle Williams for a thousand acres. Very good, very good. Which two movies feature stars of a map of the world?

Julianne Moore for a woman in the window. And Sigourney Weaver is in, no. No, Strathairn is in Dolores Claiborne. Very good. I totally forgotten that David Stratharne was in. Along with his booty hole. Jesus Christ. All right.

Which two movies feature stars of eternal sunshine of the spotless mind? Um, that's a lot of stars. In the cut has Ruffalo and, um... Yes. Is it... This one's very hard, but I, but because of who it is, I feel like I'm justified in giving you this very hard one. Is it Wilkinson?

No. Okay. Um... Not Winslet, not Jim Carrey, not Elijah Wood. Not Kirsten Dunst. Not Kirsten Dund. Which mean... This might depend on how recently you've seen Eternal Sunshine this policy.

It's been a while. Yeah, it's... Do you remember who played Jim Carrey's friends? No. Okay. But I know that they are people. Yeah. I'm going to just let out guess Mrs. Parker in the vicious circle.

You are correct. It's for Jane Adams. Jane Adams. Oh, Jane Adams, yes. Well, there's also a million people in Mrs. Parker. Well, guessed. Well guessed. All right.

This one is mostly for me, but I'm going to give it to you anyway. Which two movies feature stars of As the World Turns? Woman in the Window, Julian Moore. Yep. And, uh, well... Just guess. I'm just going to guess, Mrs. Parker. Nope.

In the cut, Meg Ryan is a former as the World Turn star. I don't think I ever knew that Meg Ryan was a soap star. She's, if you look at, look up a list of, like, famous soap star alums. She's always on it. Yep. Interesting. Of which movie did Rex Reed say, it is nasty, gruesome, pointlessly kinky, and gratuitous. Orgo at the Wedding?

No. In the cut. In the cut. Very good. Of which movie did David Edelstein say, See the movie if you like emotional car wrecks and people who can't hold their mud. A thousand acres? No.

Margot at the wedding? Margo at the wedding. Have you ever heard the phrase, can't hold their mud? I imagine it sounds... No. It's like can't hold their composure? Can't hold their liquor? I've never heard that phrase before, David Edelstein.

Of which movie did our friend and past and future guest Richard Lawson say, It's a boondoggle we probably should have seen coming, but maybe we can all be forgiven for some desperate, magical thinking during our long time of confinement, gazing outside and looking for something, anything that might make life a bit more exciting. The woman in the window. The woman in the window. I love that quote.

You know, obviously, Richard's our friend. Boondoggle. Richard. That, to me, sums up the pleasures of the women in the window. It's not good. It's, you know, but it's like, especially when it came out, which is May of 2021 is sort of when I was emerging. I was, like, I was in lockdown for a while.

I was very cautious. I was very reticent. And I just started emerging around May of 2021, after like, a lot of. long winter's nap. And it did feel like, you know, oh, my God, we've all been shut in for all this time. Here's this movie that's like dealing with some of those themes, but is also like, again, finding something, you know, lurid and exciting and interesting and weird sort of outside of our windows. And unsurprising that Richard would have put it best. But yeah, what else? We haven't talked about Gary Oldman at all, actually. Not much.

to say, I mean, that's the thing about some of these performances. The one that I would maybe talk about is Brian Tyree Henry, because he's just such a charming performer. Well, let's move down the list. Because, like, the thing about Oldman, I wanted to say just before we move on, is he's obviously cast in this because he's coming off of Darkest Hour. The Joe Wright Connection. The Joe Wright connection there.

So he wins the Oscar for Darkest Hour, which is a thing that, like, you know how certain Oscars feel like they have. happen, Oscar wins happen, feel like they happened for, like, a hundred years, and some of them feel like they happened in the course of, like, two days. It feels like the Gary Oldman thing, I guess it would have been overshadowed by things like the Three Billboard's discussion, or the James Franco thing happened that year, or, you know, Greta Gerwig and Jordan Peel were new on the scene, like all these other storylines really overshadowed Best Actor that year. And the only you really heard about Best Actor was this sort of, like, low-key discontent from people

who hated Gary Oldman. And there are legitimate, to be sure, there are legitimate good reasons for hating Gary Oldman in terms of, like, being an abusive, you know, alcoholic and all this sort of stuff. He, I mean, like, we, I forget what episode we might have talked about this on, but, like, he had a long reputation of not having a lot of friends from, you know, people he worked with and being a real fucking... It was probably Hannibal when we talked about it. Well, I remember when the movie The Contender came out, and

he was sort of buzzed for his supporting role in that, because he really is, he's the featured villain. He's sort of the... If you watch that movie in a vacuum, you would be like, oh, I bet you they campaigned hard for this role, because he's like, he's such a dastardly figure. He's got an accent. He's got a

thing, you know, whatever. And ultimately, it's like, oh, they nominated Jeff Bridges, these sort of affable oaf of a, of a president. I wonder why they did that. And it's like, well, one is the more likable performance, but it's also one is a much more likable person in Hollywood and had like, yes, that was when I first started hearing was like, oh, no, nobody in Hollywood likes Gary Oldman. So nobody's going to nominate him. And we've heard that kind of reputation crop up for people like Sylvester Stallone before and even people like, I definitely, I mean,

whatever, grain assaults, allegedly, all this sort of stuff, John Cusack, I've definitely heard that, like, that's why he's never been nominated because, like, nobody likes him. So there are definitely things. We've talked about that on previous episode. There are definitely things about Gary Oldman, and certainly, you know, I don't want this podcast to turn into, like, you know, digging into the timeline of when Gary Oldman was an abusive person versus when he was an alcoholic and when he's, you know, whatever. Um,

It's not really, I mean, like, there's not much to talk about him in relation to this movie, too. Not a great year for Brian Tyree Henry. This is also the year that Eternals drops. Oh, yeah. And then the next year, he gets the somewhat surprise nomination for Causeway. So happy that it happened. Sometimes it works out. Yeah, I think he's really, I mean, I don't think there's a ton of room for him to be great in this movie.

But, like, that last scene with him and Amy Adams, like, he's very. you know, warm, and he's very likable. I think he's just a very likable actor. And I'm always interested to see where he's going. I like that he got the nomination for Causeway. I hope it sort of greases the wheels

for next time somebody decides to give him a lead role and he can maybe get a nomination for that. I don't know. I really like him. So more good things for Brian Tyree Henry. Fred Hetchinger had a moment where you couldn't

you know, look askance at a movie without him being in it or in a project. So was this the same year? Was this right before White Lotus happened? He was on White Lotus in, yeah, 2021. Yeah. So this would have been later. I think White Lotus was a early fall premiere, late summer. No, July.

So it was only a couple months before. Yeah, it was a summer show. Excuse me. So, I just like him. I don't know. He's in this. He was also in, in 2021, those Fear Street movies, which I don't know if you saw or not on Netflix. I did not.

They were charming and likable, and I thought he was quite good in those as well. So, like, this was a real, I didn't really know who he was before this. I know he had been in Voxlux. I kind of want to go back and watch. He's in eighth grade, which I guess I kind of do remember him as one of the, like, you know, popular kids in eighth grade. Yeah, one of the eighth grade kids in eighth grade. He's in, okay, he's in a lot of movies that I saw, actually.

I saw Let Them All Talk. I saw Voxlux. I saw Alex Strangelove, weirdly. So, like, now I want to go back and see these movies again, maybe, because... News of the goddamn world. My friend Fred is in these, and I don't know why I call him my friend, Fred. I definitely not. I don't know him in real life.

But it just seems like, I don't know, he just seems like a good kid. Also did Underground Railroad and Pam and Tom. so it's like the COVID years were good to Fred. We're fruitful to Fred, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And now he's been on the shelf.

He's going to be in Gladiator 2. He's been on the shelf with Craven the Hunter for a good year now. Oh, God, Craven the Hunter. Yeah. He's also in, let's see, post-production. Gladiator 2. Gladiator 2 is coming. Gladiator 2, where he plays the emperor.

Whatever the hell Gladiator 2 is going to be. I don't think that there is a way. out of... Who was it that was cast to Gladiator... I don't think we can opt out of Gladiator 2, unfortunately. I'm kind of looking forward to Gladiator 2, I have to say, even though I did not like Gladiator 1, but like... Same. Who was it that had to drop out of Gladiator 2?

Was it Barry Keoghan? Yes. So do we think Fred replaced him? I think we know that. I think we know that that's who replaced him. Okay. So he's playing the like, Joaquin Stanman. Presumable villain.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Joaquin Phoenix. Yeah. Paul Meskell plays the grown-up Spencer Treat Clark, as we all knew he would. Denzel Washington is in it. Connie Nielsen is back. Derek Jacoby is back. Was he in the first one? Does it just seem like Derek Jacoby should have been in the first one? No, I think Derek Jacoby's in it. No, but I mean, was he also in the first Gladiator? Yes, no, I think he was.

Okay. Joseph Quinn. It's Jacoby and Alan Bates. Alan Bates is who died during the filming of the... Oliver Reed is who died during the movie. Oliver Reed. Oliver Reed. One of them that was, you know, wrestling naked. Is Pedro Pascal still in it, or is he just sort of, like, dream cast in it?

He's in the Wikipedia entry, but I don't know if I can trust that. He's not listed as a character. He's just listed in the, like, that seems to me like somebody, like, fantasy cast something, and they never got his name out of it. Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal, like, the boys will perish. That seems more like, to me, like, Pedro Pascal is dying in the prologue sequence of the movie. That's what that seems to me. Joseph Quinn is in it, who is also one of these, like, he's on every casting list now.

He was in the most recent season of, you're about to sneer Stranger Things, but I think he was really good in. Oh, he's the one that when you keep seeing these cast photos together, I'm like, who's this guy? Yeah, he was in Stranger Things. I thought it was really good. Anyway. I know. He's, uh, Freddy, my friend Fred, um, is in this, I think it's at post-production, so I think we're, we're safe that this is going to be a movie. Adaptation of Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys starring. This has been in post-production for a while.

We probably could anticipate this movie coming this year. I would imagine. It's Amazon MGM studios, so. Yep. And then he's in post-production on, uh, Kyle Mooney's movie Y2K with a real this cast is interesting so he's in this our friend Jaden Martel, Ney Lieber here

Rachel Zegler, Mason Gooding, The Kid LaRoy some of this, all right, Alicia Silverstone, Tim Heideker, like it's a I don't know what this thing is going to end up being, but this is an 824 movie.

824 comedy with weirdo Kyle Mooney from Saturday Night Live. So I imagine it will be strained. All right. And Fred, of course, has Thelma with June Squib in which he is lovely. Do we expect that to get a release and soon? Do we think that's going to prop up again in the fall festivals? What do we think is going to happen to this?

Let me see if that got distribution yet. Okay. It absolutely will. Oh, Magnolia. Magnolia bought it. So we'll get wide distribution. Sure. sure. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I've heard good things from you and others. All right. Um, what else do we want to talk about? Who else do we want to? Wyatt, we talked about Wyatt at the beginning, so maybe we don't have to revisit Wyatt. I think, actually, okay, I think a lot of people give kind of, like, I don't know if I would say, like, Wyatt Russell gives a great performance, but like, for what the movie needs him to be, which is, again, like, gives exactly the performance. Permas suspicious. Then, like, yes.

what would we say about Amy Adams's performance in this? I think he sort of, like, glided past this. I don't think she's bad. I don't think she's bad. She has to do so much. There are so many, like, very close up shots to her, like, absolutely distraught face. She's like... There is a shot of her screaming between stair spindles that I'm like, this is...

Oh, yes. That shot was for a trailer. Yes. Like... Um, it asks a lot of her. She's perma drunk all. the time. She's like, perma, like, paranoid and, like, and, and, and, and, and hysterical and none of it is her fault.

Kind of crying and kind of terrified. And it's a lot of emotion to have to perform. And I just, sometimes I just sort of was exhausted by her performance a little bit, was a little like, I need a break from you, you know, which I guess works for that character. And that, like, I feel like a lot of people in that movie were like, I need a break from you. So, I don't know. I don't know. It's not going to be on my list of favorite Amy Adams' performances. No, no.

But in the, like, you know, who was going to win? Who could win in this environment? And yet, she did okay. I think she did okay. I think she handles a lot of the cliche and hacky stuff that this movie is tasked. asking her to work with. I think that's right. And comes out dutifully.

Dutifully. Dutifully is a good way to put it. All right. Any last thoughts or diversions before we start to wrap her up? Um, I don't think so. This movie wants me to confuse all blonde people to be the same. Because I think casting Wyatt Russell as the red herring to actual killer Fred Hetchinger is not not intentional.

Sure, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, this movie thinks that blonde people are bad. For that, maybe they're right. Well, and to put iconic Redhead Julian Moore in blonde hair feels like, you know, intentional there. She only plays unhinged blondes when she is blonde. Wait, who else will be thinking of? May December, Freedom Land.

Freedom land. Wow. I guess my final thoughts are with Julianne Moore because I will 100% be doing a Julianne Moore rewatch this year. I've decided. Yeah. I'm just going to do it. I'm going to do it. I rewatch Boogie Nights the other day. We don't talk about her enough as an actor who does a voice. I feel like we talk about Julian. We talk about Merle. Courtman in that way. But like, Julianne likes to do a voice, and the way her characters sound are as important as the way her characters move, and... That's fair. I'm just very excited to do a big, deep dive into one of my favorite performers of all time. I should also say this movie was nominated for five Razzie Awards.

We don't want to give too much Oxen to the Razies, of course. It lost one of those five to Space Jam and New Legacy. in the category of worst remake, rip-off, or sequel. And then it lost the other four to the Netflix-distributed, recorded from the stage, Diana. Now, I am not one of those people who saw Diana on Broadway. I was already safely across the state when that happened. There has been a sort of cult of the Diana musical that has, like, cropped up. people who seem to genuinely

genuinely have found enjoyment in the Diana musical. And so I think those people would be up in arms over the Razzis. But I also feel like the people who love Diana, where would they be without the hatred that Diana got? Because there is no cachet to loving Diana unless it's infamously awful. So I guess you're welcome. I never watched it. I never watched the Netflix

pro-shot. Listen, we had to watch the Naomi Watts Diana. That was plenty enough, so... Maybe this is why I am averse to all Diana material. I have seen that. I also stopped watching the Crown before DeBickey showed up and Lord knows I love

Elizabeth DeBickey and support her always, so... I never watched the Crown. The worst picture... Filled with people I love, I didn't watch it. I think the Razis just were not trying in this year, because they're nominees for Worst Picture where Diana woman in the window, space jam a new legacy, this movie called Karen that feels like it was

like swiftly produced to... It was a TV movie, too. It was the Taryn Manning that day on Twitter during the pandemic when that trailer came out and like, then no one ever cared again. Cynically produced, we're going to capitalize on this moment of the movement against racist Karens. And then a movie called Infinite that was a Paramount Plus movie that starred Mark Wahlberg

and Shuatel I G4. Oh, it's an Antoine Fuqua movie. How did I never hear about this. Oh, I heard that this was a disaster. The pandemic was a weird time. There were movies that I fully, like, obsessed about, and then there were movies that happened, and I never paid him any attention. That's crazy.

And probably got a lot of eyeballs because people will literally just fire up anything that shows up on their app. And yet it's Paramount Plus. So, like, you would imagine that, like, fewer people were, like, hanging out on Paramount Plus. Right.

Whatever. All right. Joe, I think it's time for the IMDB game. Would you like to explain the IMGB game for our listeners? Sure. Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game, where we challenge each other with the name of an actor or actress. We try to guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for.

If any of those titles are television shows, voice-only performances, or other non-acting. credits. We mentioned that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue. And if that is not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hint. Fantastic. Are you in the position of wanting to give or to guess first? I'll give. So where did this go? Well, I think I lost it. Let me bring it up again. So we've talked about briefly, Joe Wright had directed Darkest Hour, which won an Oscar for Gary Oldman and co-starred the likes of Ben Mendelsohn and Kristen Scott Thomas, and also as Churchill's, you know, perky little secretary, Lily James, who was so hot right then. So why don't you give me the IMDB known for for Lily James? Lily James, I am going to guess Darkest Hour as a Best Picture nominee in her filmography.

Incorrect. No. Okay. Yeah. Well, Mamma Mia, here we go again. There you go. Back on track. Yes.

Cinderella. Very good. Title character. And... Here's where it gets top. You got the easy ones. than there are two that are tougher. Because there's definitely, like, a British ensemble in here.

That is not a me-a-mama. Not me-a-mama, honey. Not the other what's love got to do with it that never changed its title. No. That I saw at that Tiff and was like, well, I didn't need to see that. No, I forgot about that. That's right. I'm not going to guess that, though.

But that's coming to mind. See, this is the problem with Lily James, because pre-Mamama Mia, I kind of had Lily James face blindness. I think if you didn't watch Downton Abbey, it was hard to differentiate her from a lot of other actresses. All the Downton Abbey people look alike to me. See, she, for whatever reason, she's, I know it's a cliche that's sort of like they look too modern to be in this, but like she always was a little. too, to me, little too modern to be in Doughton Abbey. Yeah. But... But you said no TV, so Doughton Abbey's not in there.

I don't think she's been in the Doughton Abbey movie. Oh, yeah. Doughtnavy movie? No. I did... No, I lured you into that, so like, that doesn't count. Oh, it can count. She's also not in it, but I know, I lured you into that. She's not in the Downton Abbey movies at all, so she was already out of there. Or do you want the years? I'll give you yours. I'll give you the years. Okay.

I think that counts because I legitimately guess. Even though I've seen that movie, never watched the show. 2016-2017. Okay. So, before and same year as, no, these are both before Mamma Mia. Yes. But the same year as Darkest Hour. The second one is, yeah.

Which, what else would she have been doing at that time? That would be on her known for, but not Darkest Hour. You can see why she wouldn't have that on her known for, but being a best picture nominee. Yeah. Kind of a best picture nominee that people forget about, though. My guess is you've only seen one of these two. My guess is you didn't like the one that you saw. One of them's an action movie, right?

Yeah. And she's like the woman in an action movie. Yes. It's not a Terminator movie. That's Amelia Clark No, that's two Think lighter Think sort of lighter in tone

Silly comedy Not really silly But like It's tough to describe it Without giving it away Right More stylish than violent Even though there is violence in it

And it's not like Ryan Reynolds comedy It's like No But not Jason Statham No Ooh I know I feel like I have seen her in something

in whatever this is going to be. But, like, what are the staples of those sort of, like, stylish action movies? Guns. But also... Ammo. No. Knives. No.

Think less violence and more just, like, what kind of set-piece scenes do you see in those? Boom, explosions. Uh... Space? No. Um... Like, I... Fast in the Furious movie. That's going to give it away a little bit. Cars, vroom, boom.

Boom, boom, chase, chase. Um, oh, what car movie was she? Oh, it's, yeah, I hate this movie. Baby Driver. Yes, correct. I hate that movie. Okay, so the other one, 2016, I don't think you've seen, but you've definitely heard of. It's one of those movies that kind of exist as a title. It's based on a book. It's, um, not a costume drama. Is a costume drama. It's not a costume drama. It's not a costume drama, but it's like, it's not a costume drama, but it is a costume something thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But exists as a title, exists as a title as a punchline, or... Kind of.

It's one of those things where it's just like, that title is designed to catch your eye and be like, what are you talking about? And that's sort of how it existed as a book. Got it. Uh-uh. That's... Written interesting. directed by Burr Steers. I did not know that.

Interesting. Let's see. I think she's the lead of this. She is the lead of this. It's not like, based on a book, but it's like... Oh, this is amazing. I don't think this is going to give it to you, so I'm just going to give it to you. The title, the booking is, the billing is with Matt Smith, with Charles Dance, and Lena Hetty.

Oh, wow. Okay, so it's British. Yeah. And... Okay, so it's like... Is this like some Dragon Lancer shit? No, it's not that. Why would Lena had E. be in it if it's not?

It's like, it's fucking with genres. That's the whole... The whole point of it is like, let's fuck with genres. And Matt Smith is in it too. Yeah. But it's a British version of that. Burr Steers, wow. Yeah.

It's one of those, like, you definitely saw this paperback on, like, in displays at borders or whatnot for, like, a long time. Is it, like, a would-be franchise, like an Aragon? It's not necessarily that, but, like, this type of book, there are other types of books like it. You know what I mean? It's like, this is sort of, like, a little, like, me. Any genre Like a spider wick type of

It's like Okay You started with costume drama Like explore that space a little bit Like what could be What could be Remixed with costume drama Like the

The other Bolin girl type books Yeah but more like More grungy more Oh no no no no no no no I know what this is It is Pride and Pagitus versus is zombie. Pride and prejudice and zombies. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Do you know what I mean? We're like, you saw that paperback all the time everywhere. Am I right that you never saw this movie? I never saw the movie, no. Yeah. There you go. Okay. All right. Very good. Well done. Lily James.

Wow. Yeah. The first two human people to talk about pride and prejudice and zombies since 2016. Yeah, yeah. Wow. All right. So for you, I wet the Fred Hetchinger route. And I, uh, You know, thinking of Amy Adams and Julianne Moore being mothers together in Dear Evan Hansen, I was like, oh, well, Fred Hedgeinger's mom in White Lotus is Connie Britton. So for you, I have chosen Connie Britton. How have we never done Connie Britton before? I guess not. One television. Okay.

Now, this is interesting because... Exactly. Exactly. I'm going to guess Friday Night Lights. Incorrect. Nashville, cut. Darn it. Nashville is correct.

Okay. All right. I zigged. They zag. That's fine. All right. Three movies. Three movies.

Three movies. Um. Is it Friday Night Lights the movie? No. She's the only crossover. She's the only crossover actor between those two. Okay. This is where it gets real fun.

All right. Give me yours. 2012, 2014, and 2015. Oh. All right. 2012. One of these is a movie

that we've done an episode on. Uh-huh. Well, it's not Beatrice at the wedding. Or Beatrice at dinner. Beatrice is at the wedding. That's the sequel to Beatrice is at... Oh, would watch. No, because that's...

It was 2017, yeah. 2016? What is... 2014? 2014, 2012? 2014 is the one that we did an episode on. This is a huge cast. It's not surprising that she's not...

This is where I leave you. This is where I leave you. Yeah. Not surprising that her being in that movie doesn't immediately leave it. Right, right, right, right, right. Okay. All right, 2015 and 2012.

2012... What was she doing? 2012 is we have done two other movies by this. director. This is her first feature. This director's first feature. Yes. Okay. We have done episodes on her two features after that.

Okay. So, not Karen Kusama, not Sarah Polly. This movie I, you know, have maybe mixed feelings about it. out, but I think we unequivocally love her other two movies, and her third feature is very important to the lore of this podcast. Laurence Caffaria, I would say. Oh, this is seeking a friend at the end of the world. There you go. Wow, okay. Connie Britton, in that movie, and it's honor known for it.

The 2015 movie has been scrubbed from the face of people. I have no idea. I never saw this movie. It was apparently not very good. Comedy? Didn't know that Connie Britton was in it. She is third build for it. Comedy?

Yes. 2015 comedy. Like dumb comedy or like? Probably dumb. Okay. This is also kind of a blurring genres type of thing. The two headliners of this movie are two people. People who have done multiple movies together haven't been in something together in a while, but, like, you always see them, like, talking about working together.

All right. Or, like, their past of working together. They're like a famous duo. I wouldn't say a famous duo, but, like, you're at the end of this, you're going to be like, oh, yeah, they did work together. Is it like a Bill Murray thing? No, no, much younger stars. They both... Genan and Kel?

No. They both... I saw some headlines about them talking about each other or, like, giving each other's tributes at this year's Sundance. They were both there? They both had... They were both there with movies. Schwartzman? No.

Eisenberg. Yes. And... not Emma Stone Woody Harrelson This is an action comedy Um action comedy It's Eisenberg

And people who don't do action Is it like 30 minutes or less No Not 30 minutes or less This movie exists less than 30 minutes or less Wow okay Um Who did Eisenberg do a lot of like

movies at least this movie and another movie with eisenberg but no there's like they've done three movies together i think there's four i'm going to go back and actor fine an actor uh female actor emma stowe no she wasn't at sundance christin stewart correct oh right she was there with love lies bleeding okay Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, what year? 2015. They've done at least three movies together. Is she an Adventureland?

She is an Adventureland. That is older than 2015. No, I was thinking Connie Britton. I don't think Connie Britton. Oh, right, right. Right, yeah, Adventureland's way older than 2015. Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Connie Britton. Connie Britton.

K-Stu and Jesse Eisenberg were also in Woody Allen's Cafe Society, which this is not that. Right. This is the other movie. It's a comedy with Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, and Connie Britton. Why? Action comedy. Ugh. Okay.

And it's not 30 minutes or less. They definitely play Stoners. I believe that the title of this movie is a type, is a weed show. strain. But it is not Pineapple Express. Fuck! I maybe just like don't know this. Do I...

This movie definitely bombed. I think this was a spring release. When did they release this movie? No, this was an August movie. 15. 2015. 2015. Uh, you really, you really,

Recently quizzed, I think it was you, you quizzed Katie and I on Best Picture nominees with this word in the title. Woman? No. What did I just quiz you guys out? Oh, oh. American. American Ultra? American Ultra. Fucking Mani Britain has American Alps-Ass title. I do remember a movie existing called American.

American Ultra. I've never seen it. Um, what is it even about? I think that they, the two of them are confused for some type of drug activity and then, like, go on the run from the government. All right, man. Sounds like a movie that came out in August. That's so unnecessary IMDB. Like, genuinely, fucking fix it. That's also just one of those known for us that when I saw that, I was like, well, we're doing. We've definitely never done it before, because I remember fucking American Ultra for Connie Britton. Jesus Christ.

All right. All right, Joe, what an episode. Woman in the Window. Finally did it. Thank you to Peter for making us do this. Yes. And we will have future Patreon select episodes,

including one next month. But we'll space them out. as they come in. Indeed. But we hope all the listeners who selected episodes enjoyed this run and that our other listeners loved it as well. Yeah, we had a really good time. This was really fun.

Yeah, yeah. Some good meat and potatoes this had Oscar Buzz and also just, you know, talking about some of our faves and spending a lot of time in Europe. But for now, that's our episode. If you want more, this had Oscar Buzz, You can check out the Tumblr at this had oscarbuzz.com. You can also follow us on Twitter at had underscore Oscar

Buzz on Instagram at This Had Oscar Buzz. And also sign up for our Patreon. $5 a month at patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz. Joe, where can the listeners find more of you? Yeah, I'm on socials. Try me, I guess, at Joe Reed, read spelled R-E-I-D. And you can catch me at Twitter and Letterbox at Crispy File. That's F-E-I-L.

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