This Had Oscar Buzz - 276 – Spanglish

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

This week, we are talking about one of the biggest THOB titles that we haven’t yet discussed: 2004’s Spanglish. James L. Brooks returned nearly a decade after his Oscar success with As Good As It Gets with this story of two disparate families thrust together: an immigrant single mother and the rich Los Angeles family … Continue reading "276 – Spanglish"

Oh, oh, wrong house. No, the right house. We want to talk to Melan Hack, Millen Hack and French. I'm from Canada water. Dick Pooh. May I say just one thing? Yes, Mother, one thing. Go ahead.

Thank you. Deborah, you're going to lose your husband. And you will never find someone as good. That's it. Oh, drive carefully. Well, you've done it again, Mother. Made me hate myself. Lately, your low self-esteem is just good common.

since. From James L. Brooks, the Academy Award-winning director of Terms of Endearment. Broadcast News and as good as it gets. Good morning. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that is also surprised Tracy Letts' character was real. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all

went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we are here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host, Joe Reed. I'm here, as always, with my perfect three and a quarter star review, Chris File. Hello, Chris. Just imagining, what was it, Vince McMahon, is it, whatever, the star search guys. Three and a quarter stars. Ad McMahon.

Very big difference between Ed McMahon and Vince McMahon right now. You don't want to confuse it. The young, the young singer, Brittany Spears, the judges say, three and three quarter stars. Yeah, yeah. The three and a quarter stars, little aside, is. this movie. One of the few things that I feel like was fully successful in this movie. And that, like, it's a good observation. It's made with, you know, some humor to it. It informs the character's worldview. You're in and you're out and you're whatever. I think it's a small little oasis in a

movie that where not a lot goes right, I would say, and we'll get into it. I mostly just wanted to sit James L. Brooks down and be like, okay, so which review of as good as it gets hurt you? Which review, who was the critic that informed this whole film for you? I wonder if it even goes back further than that and is more like a Mary Tyler Moore show thing, because it's the kind of thing that the way he talks about it is the way that you would talk about a TV show getting reviewed, an ongoing thing where like, now that this has gotten a four-star review, everyone's going to be expecting a lot of it. your, you know, your audience is going to get more mainstream and, you know, dumped down maybe

and, but, um, but also Mary Tyler Moore was a mainstream show. It wasn't this sort of like fine dining, you know, kind of thing. Well, at that time, there wasn't exactly niche television. Right. Exactly. Exactly right. Um, well, talk about the- James L. Brooks has also never really made niche movies, you know, they, they were attempted monoculture. That's the, that's the, that's the beauty of it. It was like, it was high-quality monoculture. Like, that's the, you know, that's, you know, even like, you know, the Simpsons, you know what I mean, that he produces. Like, it's high-quality monoculture in a way that we just, it's so rare to have. It's basically we're down to, that's literally like HBO Sunday nights.

You know what I mean? That's the only really high-quality monoculture we have anymore. But anyway, welcome back to this head, Oscar Buzz. We are out of our Patreon. month and a half of Patreon selected movies. We had a really, really great time. I will say, though, I'm glad to be back making our own decisions again, even though we certainly can't be trusted to make decisions if we're going by this week's movie.

But I'm excited to talk about it. This movie, I was like, we need to do a big title that feels like, why haven't we done that yet? And Spanglish was the first one that came to mind. Yep. No, it's a perfect, it's, this is one of these movies that absolutely perfectly encapsulates the idea for this podcast, which is it made all the sense in the world that this movie was, had, you know, everybody looking at it and saying Oscar movie, because James L. Brooks's track record, which we will absolutely get into, was pretty much pristine. Adam Sandler was exactly at the point in his career where you could see him getting an Oscar. nomination. You had factors like, you know, Cloris Leachman, former winner, and she's never been nominated again. You had the, you know, the ability to sort of like discover a new star in Pazvega. And so there's so many possibilities, so much possibility in this movie.

And then it really spectacularly crashes and burns. There were critics who liked this movie. I was sort of going through the reviews. Ebert gave it three stars. Wesley Morris really liked it. I went back, whenever you try and click on in Rotten Tomatoes, like a Wesley Morris review, and it says, go to here for a review. And every time I do it, I'm like fucking Charlie Brown with the football, you click on it and it's a 404. You know what I mean? So it's just like, then you got to track it down. And what I managed to track down instead of the review was he was on the Slate Movie Club that year. The 2004 lineup for the Slate Movie Club was kind of off the hook. So David Edelstein was running it for Slate at this moment. A.O. Scott. Stephanie Zaharic. Scott Foundus. Wesley Morris, Charles Taylor, I want to say, and then Armand White. So the... There you go. The fireworks were fireworksing at this late movie club that year. But anyway...

This was also a December release, and this is in that notorious Best Picture-winning run of movies that all premiered in December, you know, not at a festival, etc. Right. This was the million dollar baby year, which was like the latest of latecomers. But this was one of the movies. If you look at like the, the Aviator was obviously the big movie that everybody looked at as being an Oscar contender for Scorsese because it was coming right after Gangs of New York. And just to the point where everybody was like, got to get Scorsese an Oscar. But I think behind that, I think the one of, I don't think Spanglish is too far down the list in terms of if you had to name 10 movies that spring, in 2004 that are going to contend for Oscars. I think Spanglish would have been very, very close to the top of that list. Oh, absolutely. So, interesting to see how that all shook out. And we'll definitely talk about that Oscar race. But, Chris, before we get too far into it, do you want to let our listeners know why they should be subscribing to our Patreon?

Because we have a great time over on our Patreon. We're calling it this had Oscar Buzz Turbulent Brilliance. for $5 a month, you're going to get at least two bonus episodes, the first of which comes the first of the month. We call those exceptions. This is an episode devoted to movies that fit that this had Oscar Buzz rubric, but managed to score a few nominations or two. Most recently, we will have done, gosh, I can't even...

Barney's version, where we are in the calendar anymore. Yeah, the most recent... exceptions will be Barney's version. Oh, Barney, right, Barney's version. We're also packing up a bunch of recording right in a week, so I'm like, wait, have we recorded that or not?

What's going on? What's real? What's happening? Barney's version, the Paul Giamati starring, Golden Globe winning, makeup nominated Forgotten awards bait film from Canada. We've also talked about movies like nine, Pleasantville, Australia,

the Lovely Bones. We're going to going to be having a listener's choice coming up soon, which our listener is given a lot of previous options that they almost picked, and then again, almost picked them. Instead, they have chosen Molly's game. So in a few weeks, if you want to hear us talk about Molly's game, you can sign up. Also, on the 15th of every month, we have what we call excursions. These are deep dives into awards bait ephemera that we obsess about on this show. Hollywood Reporter Roundtables, just most recently, we did our own award show of sorts. I think we're going to be over on the Patreon.

It'll be like our class of episodes here that are like our big shebang at this stretch of the awards race. And we did our own little award ceremony where we doled out nominees for all of the weird categories you see throughout the season, like that's grown-up love story over at the movies for grownups. Best Kiss that you see at the MTV Movie Awards, rest in peace. We had a lot of honorary awards. We borrowed liberally from the Governor's Awards, I will say, this year.

So if you want to know who we would pick for the Gene Herschalt Humanitarian Award, please sign up for this head Oscar bust turbulent brilliance and go listen to our superlatives episode. I think our most unhinged episode ever, I would have to say. It was so much fun. I had such a good time, honestly. It was great. We hope you loved it too, or if you're new to the Patreon, which you can be. If you go over to patreon.com slash this had Oscar Buzz.

We hope you enjoy that episode and all episodes. Indeed. All right. So we are going to be talking about Spanglish this week. I see no need to beat around the bush anymore unless we want to. Is there any more table setting we want to do before we get into what's going on here? I kind of don't think so. We're going to talk about the James.

Brooks of it all. We're going to talk about the cast. This was a what Columbia Pictures movie? Sure was. Which it's hard to talk about Columbia. Columbia does is a, is a studio that has produced a lot of awards contenders and yet is not a studio that has

an awards identity I think in our modern sort of. It's not like Focus or Miramax or even something like a, you know, 20th century Fox or something like that, which had a string of really big

We should do an exceptions episode Figuring out the distinctions between Columbia pictures and Tri-Star pictures Like what makes a Columbia movie? What makes a Tri-Star movie? Anything under that like Sony umbrella too I find so anytime that I'm trying to do

I'm currently trying to make my spreadsheet My Year Ahead spreadsheet that I put all the 20-24 movies into And anytime something says just like Production Company Sony and it's like You're going to have to be more specific, sir, because, like, I'm, you know, I don't know whether that means, you know, Columbia. I don't know whether that means, like, Sony pictures releasing. I don't know. Aren't there just, like, big Sony movies now that are neither Columbia? There are. There are.

A secret third option. The secret third option we're not expecting. Yes. I remember her, for whatever reason, that TriStar logo was so imprinted on me. And the one that I remember specifically is the tri-star logo, because that's the one with the Pegasus horse that comes jumping through the triangle and then they like freeze frame. Yeah, in the 80s and 90s, it was coming around a corner. I remember this because when I was a really young child, it scared me. Yes. And I always associate that opening to look who's talking, which maybe that's not even correct in my brain.

This is what I was just about to say. This is exactly what I was just about to say. is I watched Look Who's Talking 8 billion times. And in the Luke Who's Talking TriStar logo, you hear the horse, the horse is in her monologue. Where it's literally just like, yeah, here I go and I'm going to go. And it's just like, and it's because it's Luke's talking because you can hear the baby talking. We got to, I know Look Who's Talking was not an Oscar buzzed movie. We need to find a way to talk about it anyway because like that movie was weirdly like,

talk about a movie that imprinted on you as a kid. Like, there's so many things that I, like, learned about for the first time watching, look, who's talking? The whole insemination sequence, I had no idea what I was watching. And it's not even just that. And now it's kind of disturbing that we as children watch, not like I'm some prude here, but that we as children were watching an insemination sequence. We watched getting fertilized on screen, but also, like, it's even beyond that, it's like, you learn about artificial insemination, and you learned about, like, epidurals. and you learn about diaphrams. You learn about women's breasts getting bigger after they give birth because they're nursing.

You learn about bulimia. Remember that like George Siegel's unseen wife in that movie is a bulimic? And I remember being like, what's a bulimic? Because I'm watching this when I'm 11. You know what I mean? So like there's so, so many things. And I have no outlet to talk about it. And that era of Columbia, where it's, you know, what is it that like 80s and 90s

Columbia TriStar, it was a dark background, like it's the middle of the night or at dusk. Yes, yes. And at some point, Pegasus started running through heavenly cloud. Right. And then the 90s, it's the sun is out. It's a cloudy day, but it's still beautiful. Beautiful white, cumulous clouds. 100%. And now the Pegasus looks like something from A. have you seen the latest tristar logo i haven't should i bring it up right now and give you a live

a live reaction it it genuinely looks like ai horse like yeah it is sort of like everything's very dark and this sort of like light is piercing through the clouds is that what you're talking about no just the horse looks so bad it just looks so bad yes the horse definitely does look so bad. Yeah. Oh, TriStar. What have you done? TryStar, fix it.

What have you done with my TriStar? Anyway, Justice Rulik's talking. Okay, so remember how I said 17 minutes ago that we shouldn't... That we'll just get right into the movie, and then we immediately derail into Columbia TriStar logos. We lie. We are liars. We are going to be talking about Spanglish, though, the 2004 film directed by James L. Brooks,

also written by James L. Brooks, starring Pazvi. Adam Sandler Taye Leone Chloris Leachman Sarah Steele others Multiple children Multiple children Lots of children

premiered December 17th I actually should say Who played the Pasvaga's daughter Because she was actually very good Her name was Shelby Bruce Yeah

Good for her She was great Thomas Hayden Church cameo Thomas Hayden Church That's true as the infidelity bait premiered December 17th, 2004, no festivals, no nothing. It's James L. Brooks. He's coming at you with the slow verse.

And I don't know. That's all it. Chris, you have 60 seconds. Are you ready, as soon as I pull up my stopwatch, to do the 60-second plot description of Spanglish? as ready as I'll ever be for Spanglish. All right. And you can begin now. All right. So we meet a mother, daughter, Flore, and Christina.

They come to America and Flora gets set up with a local friend who sets her up with the Claskies. They are a home that, God, how do I even get into this? Deborah is the mother. She is very eccentric and neurons. and kind of a mess because she was raised by her very alcoholic mother and John is a very, very fancy chef, basically, who is getting the career-changing review, et cetera, and he goes into a whole existential crisis about it. Meanwhile, Deborah really ingratiates herself onto Flore and forces Flore to basically spend the summer in Malibu with them and she has to bring her daughter Christina. Christina gets, you know, ingrained with the family as well because they had children of the similar age. And Deborah oversteps her bounds quite a bit in that she, well, both of them too,

because Deborah sets her up with a scholarship at this private school against, you know, without even asking floor, basically. And then John does this whole thing with sea glass and says that he'll pay all the kids for it. And then, you know, Christina goes and gets a bunch of sea glass. And this all creates strife. Meanwhile, Deborah is having an affair and going through an existential crisis about that, and John and Flore have a flirtation, basically, and, you know, Deborah reveals that she's had this affair, and then John's like, well, I'm going to show you, and he goes and takes Florida

to his restaurant and makes asparagus for her, and she thinks that it's amazing, etc. They decide that they basically can't be together, and then the next day, Flore quits her job and brings Christina with her, and the whole time, Christina has been narrating this as a Princeton essay, and she, you know, says, I am my mother's daughter. Do you want to guess how many seconds you went over a minute? Too many. Do you want to guess? Imagine.

90, because you were like 90 less. 53 seconds over. There we go. Full minutes. Almost two full minutes. And there was so, there's more plot that you could get into. There is. There is.

A James L. Brooks movie being unnecessarily. Plotty. Plotty. Here's the thing, though, is if you think about a movie like broadcast news, so the... Broadcast news, I would argue, is not. Does not have that problem. But broadcast news still has a lot of characters.

Yeah. You know what I mean? And it knows exactly what to do with them. It knows exactly how to use them and how much to use them and sort of where... As good as it gets really only has four characters. Like the kid, maybe. But like, it's... Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, Shirley Knight.

Like, Cuba Gooding Jr. is sort of like, you know, not really a character. All of those other characters, it kind of drops them after the first hour. Yeah. And like, you know what I mean? It's just like most people are there to like fill a plot function, Skidall Rich and Jamie Kennedy and whatnot. Spanglish is convoluted on a character level because it's narrated by Christina, which makes you think that she's, she is telling her mother's story throughout and it like preps it for her to tell her mother's story. But in the end, it really becomes, well, maybe not in the end. Throughout most of the movie, the good chunk of the movie is about the Claskies. And you don't really ever get into Floor's Head all that well until maybe that last three minutes of movie where the entire like recontextualization of the whole movie is this question she

poses to her daughter of basically is all you want to make of yourself the opposite of me. And essentially do you want a life I can't give you? Or do you want to make of yourself the opposite

of life as it's presented to you? And that's like the existential question of the movie. And it seems to be a very sort of like common common You know, it's a question for people who emigrate to a new country, which is you bring your young child to this new country for a reason, right? You want them to have a better life, however you want to define that. And yet, when they do sort of start moving towards this better life, there's anxiety that comes with that. There's, you know, rejection that comes with that. Certainly, that's the story that we're getting here. And it's not a, an unengaging story. It's not an uncompelling story. It just ends up, as you said,

sort of like, convoluted. The other thing is, it's, I can forgive a movie for being nonsensical in a way that doesn't matter, which is to say the fact that, like, Christina in this movie is narrating this. And yet, like, so you imagine, like, we're getting the story from her. And yet, how does she know who Talyone's fucking on the side? You know what I mean? Like, how does she know, like, all this stuff that's happening? Well, because Taleyone is not quiet about anything that happened to her in this movie. Perhaps. But you know what I mean? It's just like, she's, why is Christina telling the story about, you know, the inner workings of the marriage of this, you know, couple that employed her mother at this very crucial time, but certainly. Well, and it's also the,

like, the cringy optics of this movie that come on. up throughout in on a scene by scene basis it also turns like the overarching theme of the movie into this like you know it's told from christina's perspective but it's really about it's like it's all serving these white characters like i wouldn't say all but it's certainly like serving the white characters a lot for a movie that doesn't seem to be for a story that doesn't seem to be about them if you're if you're taking the point that the story that the story is what Christina's writing in her college essay. That, like, you know, obviously no sane person would write their college essay and, like, diverge this much into, like, you know, the mother-daughter relationship.

Inseparable Los Angeles people. Deborah and her and her, um, and her mom. But like, so I think it's tough to say what, because I don't even know if the stuff between Floor and Christina works. all that well there are parts that does but like I think the girl who plays Christine is really good I think Paus Vega is sort of spotty in this movie you know what I mean I think she has her moments I think there are times when I would like more from it I think this movie asks a lot of the the chemistry between Adam Sandler and

Paus Vega which is like there it's it's it's it's there on paper you know what i mean it's like a very like on paper kind of a thing yeah as like a math thing like it's supposed to work on a structural level for the script so it's like it's you know the barrier to entries low i guess is i think if this is a story about adam sandler as a person with a family and he doesn't really know where that's going and also has this like culinary career that he both is proud of and is afraid of. You know what I mean? Maybe that's an interesting movie, but like, adding this other element to it doesn't really work. It does feel sometimes that it's just two movies that

sort of got shoved together. But I think the thing that most kills this movie for me is it is asking for far more than Taya Leone is able to deliver from that character. That is an impossible character and I could see where there are certain actresses who could have pulled it off. I don't think it's saying anything terribly bad about Taya Leone to say that she can't. She really does go for it. I don't think

it's her fault. Just like I don't think it's Posvega's fault when Floor is not very interesting because like everybody is committing to what they're given to do, even Sandler and I think pretty much everyone's miscast.

few people have chemistry and then you have Taleyone who's like being a very committed performer She's going for too much though She's doing too much I think But like how much of that is on the page?

I don't know Like there's a lot of it is on the page I think a lot of it's on the page It's asking a lot of her But she's also bad You know what I mean? Like I think both things can be true I think it is one of the most

loathsome characters I've ever seen in a movie in a while, certainly in a comedy, in a light, you know, a movie that's supposed to be sort of like lighthearted ha-ha-ha. She's so incredibly. On this watch, I felt very, very, not uncomfortable. Like, this type of thing doesn't make me feel uncomfortable, but it felt very strange that I was asked to laugh at this woman, who I found very, very sad.

Like, sad, yes. but also like she's not she doesn't have bad intentions but she also like absolutely refuses to learn from anything she absolutely refuses to take in what people are like often explicitly telling her when like floor is like stop fucking messing with my kid and she's like okay except for the part where I'm going to enroll her in private school it's just like it's not like she's not picking up signals. There's a little bit at the beginning where it's just like, oh my God, she does not know how to read a room. She does not know how to pick up signals.

But like eventually she just starts like openly defying everybody in her life. She starts, you know, between buying the size too small for her daughter between, you know, just defying floor at all times. and it's all so, and it's being sold to us a little bit as isn't this frazzled woman just, you know, isn't she, I feel like it's asking us to relate to her and just being like, well, wouldn't you be frazzled if you had to live in this crazy world where, you know, you can't communicate with your housekeeper and you, you know, it's not a lot of recognizable human behavior or recognizable human impulse. And like, I just, for, especially coming from James L. Brooks, who, like, finds relatable, you know, recognizably human, bad behavior in a lot of his characters. Yeah. It feels like one of his, you know, biggest failures on a character level. Do we know what she does for a living? Uh, they say at the beginning, when Floor's being interviewed, that she,

worked for some company, I think, that went under, and now she is a homekeeper and clearly is not very good at it. Well, she's so type A, right? And it's like, but you would think that they would make her sort of focused on her business. So I guess the idea is she's this incredibly type A person who has nowhere to put that energy. So now she has to put it into her home with disastrous results. But like, the movie doesn't really do a great job of explaining that or like, or, or, or, you know, show. you that specifically. So she just sort of comes off as this in all directions, just fireworks display of terrible personality, you know, quirks where she's, Flores trying to tell her how to pronounce her name. And she's just like doubling down on just saying it louder, which is a thing that like, obviously, like, this is telegraphing, this like out of touch white woman. I get it. But also everybody at that table cheers. for her when she does get it right.

So she is a, she is a character who, on top of being loudly wrong a lot of the time and making a show of herself also gets congratulated regularly for doing the least, you know? Sure. But also, but like, yes, that is true. But it's also like, her daughter is like openly cringing at her at all times. And her mother eventually is like,

that line she has, that very James L. Brooksie line where she's like, lately your low self-esteem is just good common sense, which is kind of devastating. But like, nobody seems to be doing, be working very hard to hide their displeasure with her. And for good reason, I would say, I think if the idea at the end of the movie is that she and Sandler are getting back together, I would say reconsider. Yeah. This is one of the same. of the, this is one of these situations where, like, he now, finding out that she's been cheating on him has the, uh, he has the out that I think he's, he maybe needs to take whether, you know, I think it's good that he and Floor don't get together by the end of this because like, that's not a good idea. But like, he should get divorced. Like, this is, they're, I mean, they're both a mess. Like, this is, it's not just Deborah's character that makes me feel like this movie thinks this whole scenario is fun. year than it actually is, and it's actually a very, like, sad kind of depressing movie. You get it with a lot with him, because we could talk about the mother-daughter relationship

between Taley and Cloris Leachman, too, and how the movies, like, I think one of its biggest failures is it can't successfully mirror them to Flore and Christina as it so evidently wants to and wants to be a lot of the foundation for that final scene. Yes. The stuff with Sandler's character also has this idea of running away from the cards you've been dealt or running away from the life you actually have because he gets this incredibly successful review and can only think of how that's a horrible thing. Right.

And there's a way to do that that is relatable. But I think as James L. Brooks presents it in this movie, it's just pathetic in a way that's never really funny, never really quirky or idiosyncratic. And it's just this sad guy whose life is falling apart. I just think it's a movie that fails to calibrate itself constantly, where you get to the stuff early on with Deborah buys the, as I said, the clothing. for Bernie, her daughter, Sarah Steele, and they're a size too small and they're intentionally a size too small because she wants them to inspire her

to lose that weight and to get down a size. It's awful, and it happens in front of both Adam Sandler and Posvega. Like, Posvega does not leave the room, which I think that's one thing where it's just like, she's not perfect because, like, any sensible person would realize this is like,

this family moment and just like just fucking leave the room like you know what I mean but anyway um and then Sarah Steele sort of locks herself in the bathroom and while she does Taylione and Adam Sandler have this argument or so she carries on her half of the argument which is you have to be with me on this we have to be a united front and the scene before that where like you almost understood where she's like you're the good guy I'm the bad guy and um of course she says it while she's like sobbing and it's supposed to be like ha ha ha you know holly hunter breaking down in tears and broadcast news but like it's not anytime taylorne starts crying in this movie it's like the most repellent thing ever but anyway i i hear you on saying that i give me a second um

because the the argument that they have about like you have let's we have to be a united front is the point where i'm like in my perspective with adam sandler i'm I'm like, no, you need to protect your daughter from this woman who is harming her. And I don't care if she's your wife. I don't care if she's her mother. Like, you have to, like, job one is not being on the same page with your wife. Job one is protecting your daughter from this person who is like fucking her up right now. And I think the movie doesn't quite understand the urgency of that.

The movie just sort of sees this as bad mothership that can be sort of, you know, you can have a laugh with, you can have sort of a, a rueful, you know, serial comic laugh with. And it's too much, it's too much. It's too awful. It's too mean. And she's not likable enough to, to give you that scene in a way where you're like, it's awful, but like, oh, Deborah doesn't know what she's doing, where it's like, she kind of, she seemingly does know what she's doing. She unconsciously made specifically that choice. Yeah. Well, but yes, I can agree that Taya Leone is bad while I don't fully think that it's her fault. She's doing what she's supposed to do.

She's committing to this role, and it's a horribly written role because, like, I don't, that scene specifically makes you almost wish that this character was just meant to be a monster and not someone that we're supposed to, you know, understand. just because, like, it's almost a bridge too far for the movie, and it's in, you know, the first real. It's in, like, the first half hour of this movie. Yeah. This movie that has no business being over two hours long. Mm-hmm. Correct. But, well, and I suppose it kind of goes back to this really weakly defined relationship between Deborah and her mother, played by Chloris Leachman, who it's just like, you were such a drunk and it ruined me. And there's, that relationship never really feels to find other than Chloris Leachman is

Kooky Drunk. Well, here's the thing. So Talyoni breaks out that line very late in the movie. You were, you were an alcoholic and wildly promiscuous, and that is why I'm in the state that I'm in right now. And that comes across, to me, like, we're told that she's an alcoholic, that Evelyn, Chloris Lechman character, is an alcoholic. And yet...

We meet her with a martini glass in her hand at 11 a.m., you know. She's an alcoholic. who isn't mean, she's not harming herself. She's not harming others. She's not falling down. She's not driving drunk. She's not like, she's a weirdly like high functioning alcoholic. And also like presents as a very loving character.

She's very kind and loving to Flore and Christina. She's very kind and loving to Sandler and Sarah Steele. And so it's like, they even mention it later on in the movie where she's like, I haven't been drinking for a month, which kind of shows you how, you know, how well I'd been doing it, you know, beforehand. It's like, she's so high functioning as an alcoholic that when Taya Lione's like, this ruined my life, I'm like, this woman who's like nice and kind ruined your life. Like, I don't buy it. I'm sorry. Well, and like people change, but like there's nothing in the script that says that, you know, she was doing things like Taya Lione is doing to her daughter.

You almost just like Evelyn a little bit for not being the one to step up to her daughter and saying, Sure. The way you're treating my granddaughter is not okay. I love Cloris Leachman in this movie. I think she's so, she's the one person in this movie that I would like watch on purpose. You know what I mean? If you don't have those cutaways to Cloris Leachman giving a funny face or saying three words that are could be. But she's not mugging is the other thing.

She's not doing like rap and granny mugging. You know what I mean? she's not being, like, one-liner machine. She has these good sort of asides, but she's delivering them in a way that, like, doesn't feel sweaty and doesn't feel desperate, and she's just kind of delightful. But as Taleyone is giving the sweatiest performance. Like, literally and figuratively, yes, for real. And so when in the last, you know, at this moment where you need.

this mother-daughter relationship to sort of bring this character back home, bring Deborah back home. It doesn't work because ultimately we are asked to be like, well, didn't Evelyn fuck her up? And it's like you, you, there's nothing for you to hold on to to buy that. And so you're right. Any attempt to then like compare that storyline to Flore and Christina is useless. Fruitless. And all of this coming from the man who made maybe the greatest complicated mother-daughter movie ever, and, you know, it's like it can't even hold water. Yeah. Chris put down that sea glass, that bucket of sea glass that you have and stop scouring the beaches. I'm invoicing you for $650.00.

No, we're going to talk about the. Vulture Movie Fantasy League. Once again, we are coming at you. As we speak, the BAFTAs are about to get underway. So we do not have BAFTA results. By the time you listen to this, you will have BAFTA results. We do not know who did the thing this year. We don't know, you know, who's, who represents all of us this year. We're going to find out who's hosting the BAFTAs. It's, I guess, Ariana DeBose didn't host them last year. That's my, oh, it's David Tennant who's hosting him. She wasn't, I assume she was the host.

She was, uh, did she just do that number? They just brought her on to do a number. Oh, isn't that crazy? No. Who was the host last year? That makes me feel worse. The hosts last year were Richard E. Grant and Alison Hammond. So, uh, yeah, they just brought her on to like, do a, do a, do a little dance.

Do a thing? do a thing, in fact. Ariana DeBose really did the thing. But anyway, I imagine they'll reference it in some way or another. I don't know if that happened. Maybe the show. I don't know. The internet is doing lots of one year ago, blah, blah, blah right now.

And it's truly wonderful. We should celebrate it. Though all of the ones that I have seen, they have done the good thing in that they put the full version. That's the thing. I think we are at the point now. a year later, we can put Angela Bassett did the thing in its proper place in history, while also mentioning Carrie and Carrie with a C, which is like, that's your next level. Your, you know, your other, all the other stuff.

Georgia and the Georgia Oakley shout out. Dolly D.D., which I still am not sure, whether it's Dolly, D initial or D.E as in Dali D. Leon. So we'll live in the mystery of that. Anyway, so we can't talk to you about BAFTA results. A quick, quick prediction, one prediction about the BAFTAs before we start. Oppenheimer Best Picture. This is when Oppenheimer points are going to start showing on the board.

Who's winning best actress with Lily Gladstone on the sidelines? Is it going to be Emma Stone or is it going to be Sandra Hewler? I might have egg on my face very, very soon when this airs literally tomorrow, but I think it will be Sandra Hewler. I'm leaning that way. Because I also think poor things will probably pick up some BAFTAs elsewhere, that it might not pick up at the Oscars. Yeah.

I'm holding out hope that all of us strangers wins something because the BAFTAs liked all of us strangers quite a bit more than anybody else did you don't think it's taking best british film uh which what are the nominees for best british film hold on hold on i've got it in front of me all of a stranger's how to have sex napoleon the old oak ken loach is the old oak poor things rye lane saltburn scrapper wanka and the zone of interest i think it's i think poor things in the zone of interest are both uh big contenders there. I think all of it, I think that's probably maybe your best shot at it

besides what's, it could win its screenplay category. You know what I mean? I could see it winning. Best adapted screenplay. I will, I will admit to maybe there's just a hint of optimism for Sontra Huler to win, my call to win

BAFTA in that A. I think it would be good news for us on the Lily Gladstone train, who have Yeah, on the Lily Gladstone train. But also, it would be nice to see her win some major prize this season because it's a tremendous performance. She's had an incredible year. And she's so glad she's had this launch plan. She's also double nominated at BAFTA because she's also in supporting for Zone of Interest.

So that might also give her a little bit of a boost. I don't think that's a bad pick at all. So we'll, you know, maybe we'll talk about BAFTA results next week, although by the time it's next week, you know, a whole. other weeks worth of stuff has happened. Box office, I did want to, we're definitely into the fastly diminishing box office. We're like really few, few things are happening. I will say, we talked several weeks ago about how poor things was having a

disappointing start to its box office. It has definitely righted that ship. It is now north of 30. That's no longer the case. It is now north of 30 million domestic. It's going to probably hit 100 million worldwide. These are all very good things for poor things, good things for Yorgas Lanthamos, good job by Searchlight. I think we can take away a lot of good things about that.

American fiction is going to top 20 million, which is also a really good thing. I think for a type of movie that doesn't really get theatrically released anymore, that is the kind of thing that almost certainly goes strictly art house or television these days. So that's really good I think the zone of interest You know Give that thing a little bit of an Oscar boost And you can see that going to 10 million Which is kind of amazing

Considering the substance of the movie Yeah Yeah Because it feels like you know You've seen so many critics call it like an art house piece Not you know They think that it's a Very audacious best picture nominee

Right And I'm just going to say it again Because I can't say it enough The Boys in the Boat is a $50 million movie. Like, absolutely incredible. A $50 million movie that nobody talked about. There was like a week there where I saw people being like, you know what's pretty good actually is the boy in the boat. And that was it.

Like, that was the extent of it. Nobody ever talked about it before or since. That and anyone but you were the surprise Christmas box office. But anyone but you got a lot of chatter, right? There was a lot of chatter about anyone but you. It's bringing the rom-com back. People didn't like it. You know, Glenn Powell talk, Sydney Sweeney talk.

You, by the way, I can't, first of all, I can't believe that I've seen Madam Webb before you did. After all that talk that I had. Listen, I'm doing my best. I'm very busy. No, no, no, no. I'm saying it more as just like, I'm amazed at the, like, how quickly those bad reviews may be like, well, I got to see it. I will be seeing Madame Webb. I want to talk to you when you do about Sidney-Sweeney because I don't understand her as an actress or movie.

movie star. You're just going to find me on the same level as you, too, unfortunately. Probably. Probably. All right. Um, well, anyway, so, uh, back to the game. We are in the home stretch for this. We only have a few more weeks to go. Bafta's going to be a big sort of point getter. Um, where are we with our, how many Oscar movies that we need to see before we get to the ceremony? I have now started broaching the shorts. I am going to go see the live action and animated ones in a couple of days.

Seeing live action as soon as we're off the call. I've started watching the docks, which are all available to watch on various platforms on streaming, which is good. So I have five features remaining. So I have

As do I. Well, yeah, you go for, give me your five. I still have two visual effects nominee, one of them, a sound nominee. I have The Creator. I have Guardians 3. I have El Conde, which I still, I never dropped to. Oh, I didn't realize you hadn't seen Alconde yet. Okay. It dropped on Netflix while we're at TIF, which is just like, there's, if there's going to be a time where I missed on Netflix? Huh? Is that, has been on Netflix that long? When we were at TIF. Wow, I didn't realize that. So that's just like the most likely time that something will completely miss me.

Sure. Sure. Sure. Then I have two of the docks. I have Bobby Wine and To Kill a Tiger, which usually I am ahead with docs because I, in addition to my other freelance work, I do some freelance work for festivals. That's how I saw 20 Days in Mario Poll last year. But like usually, this gets me ahead on the docs. Not on international features, but I had a piece this year that got me. When the international feature shortlist, all 15 I had seen. For that piece, I was jumping for joy for multiple.

You were doing the Miley Cyrus Grammy Awards, Flowers, Skippity-Doo dance that she was doing, shaking your hair. But also, not trying to, like, humble brag at that, I guess. I don't know. No. So, yes, I have the five, and then the live action shorts and the animated shorts. Hopefully I will be crossing both of those off today. Yeah. I have.

We should also say, you have reason to see everything. Right. I'm, yes, I'm doing my ranking for Vulture, as I always do. How long have you been doing the annual ranking? In some way or another, in a written form, since 2015, I want to say. I think that was the first time I'd ever gotten paid to write it up. I've been like, I've been like completest since 2012. I've watched all the nominees since 2012, but I think the first time I've ever actually, I actually did a ranking was in 2015.

And I've been full completest. off and on, I refused to see Free Guy, and that made me fall off for, I think, two or three years, but I'm going to do it this year. You're back, baby. I have to see still, I owe Capitano and To Kill a Tiger. I have to reach out and get access to those two. Society of the Snow, which is on Netflix. Eternal Memory, which is on Paramount Plus, and Napoleon, which is still. on premium VOD, I'm pretty sure. I'm not sure whether it's going to drop to regular-priced VOD before I need to see it. I think they announced an Apple date for that, but I think you are still going to have to rent it. Yeah, I'm going to have to bite that bullet. It's fine. Napoleon is my longest one that I have remaining. And it's, so actually, for $20, it probably like per minute is not a bad investment. I should also say this week, this weekend, in fact, I watched 20 Days in Mario Poll, which is the frontrunner for Best Documentary. Last week on the Vulture Update, I phrased and used a really crappy tone in talking about the movies that I still had yet to see, and I used 20 Days in Mario Poll as an example of, you know, the weariness that comes at the end of, you know, the weariness that comes at the end of, of Oscar season and it's like, oh, time to make the donuts. I got to go watch these movies.

20 Days in Mario Paul was a terrible example to use for that. On its face, I think if I had thought about it for half a second, I certainly wouldn't have wanted to make light about a movie about the war in Ukraine. And having seen the movie now, I feel even worse about it because like it really is some harrowing filmmaking. And, like, just beyond the actual filmmaking, like, the, the act of making that movie is an act of, like, genuine bravery and, like, you know, lives at risk. And getting the footage out of the country as well. And getting the footage out of the country both while it's happening and then at the end after the fact, like, The movie, one of the things the movie is really good at is sort of as all these things are happening, it'll then pepper in the news reports that are happening as they're like uploading some of this information to various editors. And so these things are making news reports. And it's, you know, it's not allowing the Russian government to, it's sort of thwarting the disinformation campaign from the Russian government, which is trying to say these things aren't happening. These are actors. These are.

you know, yada yada. So it's an incredibly brave and important piece of filmmaking. And I was wrong. I was just at like there's there's no getting around it. I was wrong to be so flippant about it. And if I had again taken five seconds to think about it, I certainly wouldn't have been. So it's hard. And as someone who had seen the movie, I could have maybe chimed in and be like, you're actually more mad that you have to watch Napoleon, a movie that A hundred percent. A hundred percent. You know what I mean? So it's like this lesson for me to like think before you speak and maybe, you know, be a little less blasé with movies, especially movies, you know, that are documentary. We don't talk about documentaries very much. And it's just, it's a different beast when you're talking about it. These are things that are happening. These are urgent current events. And these are really brave journalists in this case. This is. this is a work of journalism, even more so than a work of filmmaking. And it's incredibly powerful. I would recommend to see it. It's, there's a point in it where, um, the filmmaker who's doing the narrating, um, talks about how uploading some of this footage and sending it to his editors back in, uh, the West and saying, you know, um, basically essentially saying like, this is, you know, warning graphic content, right? This is, this is, this is, this is, this is, you know, be prepared. This is graphic content. And he said that it's painful to watch. And then he says it has to be painful to watch. And I think that's one of those things. It's like you're, it's, it's a hard watch. You really see death and destruction up close. And it's really hard to watch. It's hard to watch the medical professionals.

you know, go through it and all this, but it's important to do so. So, uh, recommend to watch 20 Days in Maripole. And, you know, once again, my sincere apologies for being flippant and dumb. What else do we want to talk about before we sign off for this Vulture update? Uh, well, uh, as far as the points on the board go, we keep saying, you know, Oppenheimer points are coming. Oppenheimer points are coming. But I'm I'm going down the top list, you know, I'm going through the top ranked teams, and I'm not seeing Oppenheimer any, in any of these teams that it's like they could just creep ahead. Like I'm going through the first 20 as it's not, you've got to go, you've got to go down pretty far. You've got to go down pretty pretty. So I wonder if even if Oppenheimer has a few really good days at Bafta and Oscar, if Oppenheimer will not be. in the winning team's draft at this point. I think it's going to be close.

I will say, once you get to like Oscars, it's a lot of points. Those are a lot, like the point value, it's not just the number of awards that it could win, but like those point values get bigger. And so, I, again, I can't really math it from this far out if I was probably more of a probabilities person. I would probably be able to, you know, map out. where I think this is going to go, but I think it's going to be close. And I think that's kind of thrilling. I think you could have, you could be in for a photo finish with Oppenheimer rosters and non-Openheimer rosters. And that's exciting. It'll be interesting to see

once the dust settles what movies that aren't Oppenheimer maybe made the biggest difference. You know what I mean? Where, something like poor things, everybody has it. So it's not really a difference maker, but like, what are going to be those, you know, is it, is it a matter of that you drafted anatomy of a fall and got a screenplay point? You know what I mean? If is it a matter, you know, so there's, there's some interesting aspects to it, I will say. So I'm also thinking about it in terms of put me on the traitors, because I'm thinking long game here. I'm thinking of, okay, so certainly needing everything everywhere all at once last year affected a lot of people's drafting decisions in this year's game. What is this going to

mean for next year's game for whatever? I'm not going to ignore box office next year like I did this year, I think, because you look at had I just done the smarter thing and drafted Taylor Swift the eras tour, I would be in a better position than I am now. If I had just, you know, Lord knows, I didn't see five nights at Freddy's coming, and that was never on my radar, but like, had it been, you know, that would have been a pretty, you know, decent move on my part. But anyway, I'm almost more excited to do post-mortem on the season, which last year, we had a bunch of sort of graphs and charts and analyses after the fact, and I'm hoping we can do that again because that was very exciting. One of the things that I did on the last, a newsletter was I calculated least valuable, least valuable draft fix, which was... All respect to pain hustlers and foe. Both negative points. Negative two movies that were negative points earners, which honestly... Did that happen any last year? I don't remember. I should go back and look and see. It might have, but like, so funny, honestly. Like, my apology. And also,

Also, did you, we, are, my, uh, a colleague, uh, Anusha looked up for me in the, in the rosters. Nine rosters had both of those movies. Nine poor souls. My, my, my sympathies go out to all of those teams. Sympathies, not apologies. You said apologies leading into that stat on those nine peoples. This is a game. Yeah, this is a game. No. This is the way of the game. Yes. I, I mean, listen. You drafted poorly. Yes. Yes. The only thing I will. apologize for is I was on something when I valued next goal wins as pricey as they did. You know, I think it was, I think somebody at some point was like, next goal wins could be like a sneaky, like maybe a TIF people's choice movie or something like that.

This was before the, was it was, was it was. Was next goal wins at Tiff? Was that even a possibility? It was. Okay. And I think people were sort of like thinking about like, you know, cynical green book, you know, style. whatever um so i was like man if next goal wins becomes the like you know bohemian rhapsody of this season of the movie that like everybody hates but it's doing well i'm gonna you did the opposite too of what movies were the most value yes a couple of the draft points what was the uh there were swift wasn't it uh robot dreams was the number one because it was a dollar that and you got uh oh uh in it addition to like because we mentioned earlier all the doc movies are available the doc features are available in some form for listeners to go say a kind listener on our patreon pointed out which I didn't

even know this that there will be limited screenings of robot dreams on March 6th so if anybody else is a completest and wants to see every single Oscar nominee March 6th will be your one chance to go see robot dreams. Highly recommended. It gets released in the summer. Yeah. Yeah. Highly recommended. We both would pick that movie for animated winner. I'm 100%. So, yeah,

what are the other... Sorry, I'm just going to very quickly know that I've actually found the newsletter here. Leastewable movies. The faux and pain hustlers got you negative points. Rebel Moon, Part 1, zero points. It got you nothing.

So that was kind of funny. next goal wins 0.4 points per dollar Fingernails Master Gardner The Little Mermaid which I up until maybe a few weeks before the nominations came out I was no it was the short lists

that killed my illusions I was like the Little Mermaid's going to get nominated for something All the Disney movies do and it didn't And when you said that to me I was like Okay buddy Genuinely though As bad as those Disney remakes all got They all got something.

You know what I mean? So, like, I still feel like my thought processes were sound, but it didn't happen. So anyway, fun with numbers with the Vulture Movie Fantasy League. As always, we will be back next week with another update. And we'll be talking about BAFTA winners and looking forward to SAG. Exactly. Exactly. All of a strangers.

Do I get a bonus 1,000 points because Barbara Streisand is giving a... Lifetime Achievement Award at SAG? Is being given or is giving? She's receiving, sorry. You know I can't speak. No, I'm taking away those points because they go to Barbara. Everybody has to give, everybody has to tithe points. Go through all players in the movie fantasy league, find which one is Barbara's.

Yeah. What would Barbara's roster be? I want to hear conspiracy theories about what player in the league is Barbara. After sort of reading or listening to as much of the memoir as I have, I still have so much more to go and I'm so excited for it. I'm portioning it out. One of the main takeaways besides what foods she likes and what colors she doesn't like, her taste in men is very specific. And it's essentially like James Burlin really is the epitome. Oh, yes, yes.

That's like she's been building up to that man in her whole life. Also the men that have hit on her. There's a passage where like, finds, shoots his shot to end all shots, like he acts hard on Barbara. So you've read the whole thing, or listened to the

whole thing. Of course. I'm going to do it again. I promise you I'm going to do it again. Does she talk about the Andre Agassi relationship at all? Yes. Good. Yes. Good. I'm excited to hear about it. Do I just need to buy this for you so you can have it? No, I have the audiobook. I've bought the audiobook.

Don't worry. I've got it. Um, although I couldn't use a, like, a companion on, I'm literally looking right now at, you can see, Chris, I'm not looking at you. I'm looking at my bookshelf, which says Barbara Streisand, my passion for design. So like, it might need a, a companion, a hardcover companion. I think so. Any last points on the Fantasy League? We're already. You're the one who brought up Barbara Streisand. Like, you know that that wasn't. I can't help it. I can't help it. No, that's it for the movie Fantasy League update for this week. Back to your regularly scheduled cocktail hour with Cloris Leachman and enjoy. I think a more effective, maybe, I don't know, well, yes, more effective, certainly, maybe not, like, actually effective, argument is the one where Sandler makes this deal with the kids that he's going to give them 50 cents for every piece of sea glass that they find. And of course, Christina, the industrious daughter of an immigrant that she is, sort of takes to the beach with her bucket and, you know, finds as much sea glass as she can find the scene where she's... Several hundred dollars worth of sea glass. Ultimately ends up with $650 worth of sea glass that Sandler has to go to the bank to, like, get the money. Because, of course, this is, you know, before they would both have Venmo on their phones, that he'd be able to just do it.

And that would have solved everything because Floor would have never seen a Venmo transaction. You know what I mean? You mean to tell me that she's going to give her daughter a phone and not have access to what she's doing with a memo. No, you're right. You're right. You're right. That's too far. But anyway.

And then Floor gets like just to not even justifiably, like very understandably upset. You know what I mean? That like everything we know about this character, she had just gotten on Deborah's case for essentially abducting Christina for an. afternoon and going and dyeing their hair and, God, fucking Debra. So she just got mad at that. And so, like, clearly she was going to get mad also at, like, her employer handing her 12-year-old daughter an envelope full of cash. So she gets super mad.

And then the scene where, like, they're having this argument through Christina, because Christina's got to be the translator. Shelby Bruce is really, really good in that scene, you know, sort of like mirroring her mother's emotions and whatnot. And then at the end of it, after sort of like John gets the talking to of a lifetime, he does come back and is like, you're being a complete hypocrite because you like butted in and, you know, so, you know, whatever, like fixed the outfit that my wife bought my daughter to give her, you know, sort of essentially to like to one up my wife, which she did. that was, you know, she did it out of kindness for Bernie, but it was very actively, like, one-uping Deborah. And at the end of that argument, Floor is like, yes, you're right, like, I am a hypocrite. And there at least is some, that at least is a scene in the movie that I think

gets at maybe some of the ideas of the movie. The relationship between John and Flore is not romantically successful, but they do a good job of comparing them as parents that I think is at least more successful than trying to compare the mother-daughter relationships in this movie to one another. Does that make sense? 100%. But it's still just incredibly, just an incredibly irritating movie. On a lot of levels, I think John is almost as irritating as Deborah as well.

And like, saying this as someone who. can get very internal about any degree of their own success and warp their brain into thinking that it is equation to failure. That whole thread as a character is not well. Like he basically, unless he's projecting onto it, which I don't think the movie defines it as, his, you know, getting this review is so disastrous for him and his identity. and it's just, it's more frustrating than it is relatable, even as someone who should be able to relate to that. I was going to say, like, you who, you know, I've seen you react to very good news being like, oh, I got to enter Winna's protection. Yeah, yes, yes, yes, that exact reaction.

So, like, you should be able to relate to that a little bit. I think it's just like, I think it's way too over the top. and I get what James L. Brooks sees in Sandler as, I mean, he gives him the Albert Brooks haircut and the smoothie. Do you know what I mean? I get what he sees in Sandler as a main character, as a protagonist. And many other directors have seen it, too, as him as a dramatic leading man. I think this is one of the least successful of it because I don't buy Sandler in this character. I don't buy him relationally. with the other people he's cast opposite. Him and Teleone being, I mean, they're not a relationship we're maybe supposed to root for, so I guess it's fine. Except that it leaves the door open for them at the end of the movie. No, they really don't make any sense to it.

Oh, this is another thing. This is sort of ties back to my Teleone problem, and we can sort of leave it there. But the person, the example I wanted to give in terms of, like, a character who is, like, loathsome on paper, and yet, like, you cast it right. and that character really sings, is Nicholson and as good as it gets? Right. He was like a textbook, racist, sexist, horrible piece of shit can't help himself. Who learns to be a little bit less horrible.

But because Jack Nicholson knows how to play a character like that, we're like, in spite of every, you know, better, you know, angel on your shoulder being like, don't give this guy another chance, you want to because he's giving, like, he's giving a person. performance that finds those little corners in that character to make him, if not immediately likable, at least like you sort of, you get a window into why he's like this. You get a window into that like he's maybe not as awful as his behavior seems. And I think that's what would have been required. And I can't, I don't know if I can think of off the top of my head, an actress who could have pulled it off better, but like, I just don't think Taylor was up to the job. right. I mean, maybe like a Catherine Keener

that was someone who I was thinking about watching this performance. I think the comparison to Nicholson, too, is like there's a nuance to the way he physically plays that character that it's like he doesn't really know the power of the

awful things that come out of his mouth so it's like he's dissociated from them in a way that's what he gains awareness of. He's able to play that character's vulnerability in a way that feels um there's a there's there's a backbone to that vulnerability a little bit if that makes any sense where he's like he's vulnerable but not in this sort of like pathetic wo is me way where he's like begging for your sympathy whereas i think

with debor every few seconds she's just like oh i'm the worst oh and whatever and it's like even that's bad. Even that's annoying. That's maybe worse. That's maybe the worst thing of it is just sort of this sort of self-effacing like, oh my God, I just like, I'm terrible. Aren't I terrible? The thing where like she's bracing for Christina to say something really mean to her when they're in the car driving back from getting their hair colored. And it's like, A, you're insane for thinking. Like just read her body language for God's sake. She's not about to say something mean to you. But it's also that she's just like, oh, give it to me. I can take it. I can, you know, say what you will. And it's just like, get off the fucking cross lady, first of all. And second of all, just like, calm the fuck down. She's the most stressful person. She's, I don't understand how anybody's in the room with her. I hate her so much.

I hate this character so much. I cannot stand there. I ultimately think it's a perspective issue because, like, we are two people who love insufferable, awful, actual bad people characters. Like, how many hours have we devoted on this podcast? to adoring Becky something. Yes, right, right. The problem is this movie doesn't have a foothold on a perspective of this character

and what purpose she's supposed to serve in the story and what how she's supposed to be humanized. Because, you know, you can have someone be that awful as this person is and as annoying. but because of the way that they interact to the story, there is value. And I don't think that her character has any value to this story whatsoever. I think you need one scene where she sticks up for herself. However, she sees it, you know what I mean? Where she makes the case for why she is the way she is and why that, like, why she still deserves dignity. You know what I mean?

This is not a dignified performance. This is an incredibly undignified performance. And you need to have a character who in even some small colonel is standing up for herself, you know what I mean? Or else, like, what am I doing? You're just sort of, it's that line in Angels in America where it's like, it's, you know, it's no fun picking on you. You're like throwing darts at a blob of jello, you know what I mean? Just blopping and vanish. Or, I think that is very astute, very true.

Or maybe also she has a scene where it actually registers with her, how damaging she is to other people. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because that doesn't exist either in this movie. Well, and I think part of that is, is that after the scene where Flora gives her, gives Bernie the coat that now fits, they drop Bernie almost entirely. Like, that storyline goes away. She's still around to, like, support her dad, and she has a couple scenes where it's like, you know, I'm glad you came home and whatever, and it's sweet, you know, father-daughter stuff. But, like, that character ceases to matter as a storyline.

And that relationship between her and her mother, which you have every reason to expect that you'll get some resolution to, is dropped, fully and completely dropped. And Sarah Steele, who's such a good actor. She's so good, I love her. Never not happy to see Sarah Steele. you're not a good you're not a good wife good fight person are you i'm not i'm not i know she was so good on those shows i got to say like she especially good fight she was tremendous um but bernie is actually an interesting one of the more interesting characters in the movie i would argue yeah yeah it's bernie and christina you want more interesting things between bernie and christina in this movie like yes i wanted to relate i wanted to see what that relationship is at the end when floor comes and she's like we're leaving forever And, like, Bernie gets out of the pool, and she's like, I don't want to get you wet. And she's in positive. He's just, like, get me wet.

And she hugs her. And it's like, there's a little bit of sadness, but she's also mostly just sort of like, you're getting out of here at a good time, lady. Like, she's sort of like joking about it. It's like, are you devastated? Are you sad that this is like the one female, you know, well, I guess Evelyn, too. But like, this is, you know, a mother figure who's been nice to you. What's your relationship here?

Do you have a sisterly relationship with Christina? Do you have a little bit of a rival relationship? We get, like, little peaks at it. But, like... I think if you have more scenes that are just the two of them, we actually get that perspective that the movie is lacking. Like, what do they collectively think about everything that's going on around them? You also...

Not that I think the movie needed it, but, like, it's funny that there's, like, a full character in this show, in this movie, The Sun, who has no personality traits whatsoever. Like, they don't... In any other movie. Just kooky younger brother, man, what more do you need? They give him something. I kept waiting and be like, you remember how in stepmom the kid's like, he's into magic and he like hides in the cupboards and whatnot. It's like usually a kid like this will have like one thing about him.

And it's like he dresses up as the hamburger. You know what I mean? Who the fuck knows? I don't know. It's like something dumb. But like there's no aspect to this kid. There's nothing like, that's why he stays in the pool because there's like, what would you even do with him in the rest of that scene? because there's nothing to him.

At one point he's like, I had a nightmare. Is like, is that going to be his thing? Does he have nightmares? But like, that gets dropped. I mean, with those parents, I would imagine you would. Well, you wake up to a nightmare is what happens. Yeah. I want to take it back to Sandler a little bit because I don't want to let this character

off the hook either. Yeah, you, you, this is a character who is made to. Parents can't have their own things and their own stories, etc. But this man is so far up his ass that, like, even in the movie if we could see more of him like being a good dad or like sticking up for his daughter

you know I would maybe be willing to let this guy off the hook but he's I don't know and maybe maybe it's that Sandler is also miscast like everyone else in this movie

but I found him annoying too in a way that like because Deborah is it more that like is it more that like because everybody's so hates Debra, including me, that, like, you find it in balance there?

I do find it somewhat in balance. I mean, like, justifiably, because there, I mean, Taye Leone has more screen time than Sandler does in this movie. She's the bigger character than him. Yeah. But also, I don't think that character is without his flaws. And I don't mean flaws like, flawed interesting character. I mean, like, annoying and a problem to ask the audience to sit and watch this guy.

Oh, I think I disagree. I would have no problem sort of, like, you know, hopping on board with this character to sort of, like, follow his. He at least has, I mean, it's not just like he has good qualities, but, like, he has, he does stick up for himself. He does sort of, like, talk about, like, how you have to. You know, he relates to Flore on the level of wanting to be there and sort of, like, do the right thing by his kid. He's frustrated by sort of being stuck between Deborah and Bernie. He has this very sort of, like, peculiar outlook on his career, but also clearly loves—I think it's telling the thing where when he gets this awful news about his career. wife cheating on him, that he goes to the restaurant. You know what I mean? It's not just

that he's with floor. It's that he's at the restaurant and he's cooking and he's sort of like, you can tell that like this is a world in which he feels comfortable and he feels calmed. He's good in the kitchen. And it's drawn inconsistently. I don't, I don't quite understand. I was going to say, don't you think that's part of this movie's disjointedness problem? Because it does feel like James L. Brooks, and like, you hate to just blithely prescribe, you know, autobiography to a character in a movie just because we know about, you know, the creator behind it. But it, when I was, I was only like half joking about what good, as good as it gets review hurt you, James L. Brooks, because it feels like this character is in a different movie about creative process and, you know, uh, career journeys, et cetera, that the rest of the movie is just not about that. The thing where he has to, like, give up 20% of the business to the sous chef so that the sous chef doesn't leave. And it's just like, that's maybe, we need to maybe investigate that a

little more because it's like, you love this job. And yet, like, you would give up so much of it in order to spend more time with your family when, like, spending time with your family includes your horrible, awful wife. So it's like, why do you want to spend so much time? But your kids that probably also need more of you because of said wife? I don't know. But it seems like he already spends a good bit of time with his family. I don't know.

It's just like, not that I'm wishing characters to be more workaholics, but it just feels like that seemed to me like a character flaw, this idea that, like, you would cave so heavily to this sous chef because you can't do the job without him. It just... You know what I mean? I don't know. In real life, I guess I would like that because it's like, yeah, work-life balance is important. And, you know.

Here's a detail. I can't believe it's taking us an hour into this episode to get to. But did you catch that one of the chefs in his kitchen is the Les Encompeton from Home Alone? I wrote down in big capital letters. I just would have expected you to bring it up. Angela Guffles, a legend that you are. Yes, of course. She gets a reaction shot.

And I was like, I know that face. Speak French to me. Wait, what else do I have? Oh, this, going back to, I'm just going to talk about how awful Deborah is for a while. This is, I wrote down very early on, I said, this is like giving a whole movie to the V. Anne Cox character from Aaron Brockovich. We're like, it's a character who would work really well in one scene and yet expanded to the length of a movie. You're like, this is not sustainable.

Like, this is really, it's, it's, I think this character as like a one. seen person who's like a mom at the school or whatever who like possega has to encounter that would maybe work or like she's just like she's a supporting character even but like well you don't really understand what character traits what persona james l brooks is so enamored with here like what type of person is are the claskeys that he is he just trying to make awful la people right but it doesn't necessarily feel distinctive to the place that they live. Like, it, it just makes me very confused who these people are that James Sellebrooks

thought he was, because, like, his movies are so character-based, and it is, like, about understanding a character or a character type. Yeah. And I just don't think this movie does that successfully on any level. It feels imprecise in a lot of ways in terms of, like, they, They have this house in the hills, seemingly. They're wealthy enough to be able to just, like, blithely go and just, like, get a beach house in Malibu. First of all, detour very quickly.

That shot of the houses, the beach houses in Malibu right alongside the highway? No, thank you. No, ma'am. Absolutely not. That does not seem... If I want a vacation house, it's all about relaxation. I'm not going to feel relaxed when, like, the back of my house is literally up against the highway? No, no, absolutely not.

100% no. I don't care if it's Malibu. Like, fucking give me a less glitzy, less, you know, I don't care how nice the ocean view is. No, 100% no. But anyway, I don't think this movie has a great sense on the socioeconomic status of the Klaskis. I think it's weird to me. is this the first housekeeper they've ever had? Because, like, Debra is sort of certainly acting that way.

That, you know, and that they would hire, if communication is such a boundary here, it's weird that they would hire somebody who speaks no English. Do you know what I mean? It's like there's, you know. They seemingly don't know. It feels like they just fell up the turn-up truck right now. And it's like, they don't know how to be rich white people. And it's like, be, be more practiced at this.

You didn't just get this money. Like, what's going on? Especially with the age that their kids are and Debra was just coming off of a career. Did she not have a nanny? It seems like unrealistic that she wouldn't have had a nanny. Yes, exactly. But that's what we're being presented. Yes.

Yeah. Like, give me a little, like, this, what this movie needed was when Flore, is it her friend or her sister who she, it's not her sister. Because she came just with her daughter. with her friend who's interpreting for her. They needed to be, like, crossing the threshold into this house and, like, going the other way is the previous housekeeper being, like, I washed my hands of this woman. Like, she's impossible.

That would make so much more sense because it's conceivable that Deborah just presents herself on first meeting to everyone like that. Like, she seems to have no friends, which tracks. She has no sort of, like, social circle. She has no, she's got to be a nightmare at that fucking school, I got to say. Like, all the other parents must just sort of see her coming and run the other way. Maybe that's what this character needs. We need a scene where, you know, ancillary characters are just running away from her.

Like, the buildings on fire. It's just sort of... It's Deborah! No! Aside from the scenarios that we see her in, we need some admission from the outside world that this woman is insufferable. Yeah, yeah. We need independent confirmation. for sure.

Perusing my notes, it blew me away that we got a needle drop for let's get it started. Like, what are the Black IPs? It just seems impossible that they were around that early, but I guess so. They must have been.

I mean, I was in high school, and yeah, they were there. Fuck. They seem very late aughts to me. Black IPs is 9-11 culture, because remember the, like, where is the love? song that was like that's true that's true you're not wrong there i don't know it just feels

yeah no you're right because like like london bridge london bridge is mid aughts culture and like that was already she's like already breaking uh breaking off from them i guess you're right i guess i just associate them so much with like the years after i moved to new york like the first few years after like um oh right black eyed peas just sounds like santa con to me like it sounds like it it's like their music is like st patty's day culture yeah yeah it's what was the song culture i'm not gonna remember it um well and of course like let's get it started isn't the real title of that song everybody so which is also So, you know.

Problems. Problems. Oh, one thing I liked when Pazvega and the friend are there trying to negotiate the salary. Oh, this is why, this is an early clue as to that Deborah's the worst person who I've ever seen in a movie. She literally externalizes the insidiousness of asking a applicant to name their salary, where she literally is like, no, I want to. want you to do this because it's it's a character moment and you are if you ask for too little you don't value yourself and if you ask for too much you're taking advantage and you're like oh so you're just literalizing the anxiety that everybody feels when they have to like give a salary request

like that's the problem with salary request like right there and you are acknowledging it and yet like proudly even 20 years ago what they end up paying her is alarming what's what $650 a week. $650 a week. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing I liked about that. But the one thing I liked about that scene is the way Chloris Leachman mimes 650, where she like 600 and then she like does the little like, I don't know, 50 like chop, chop something in half. I thought that was good. I love Chlorislechman. I mean, I guess that's maybe the one like correct thing about this socioeconomic status is that that's, they pay her a ridiculously low rate but can i say also a friend uh friend of the podcast and former guest uh bobby finger i just texted him the quote uh last night i texted him i love you i love everybody that's what's killed me and then this morning i get a text from him and he's like wait is that spanglish and i'm like you're the only person who would have gotten you would have gotten that quote so um god bless the stupid line um

Let's talk a little bit about Pazvega before we move into the awardsiness of it and any career stuff for anybody. Because I ultimately, especially because this was presented as, you know, an American breakthrough for this performer, for this really, I don't want to say nondescript, but I would say the, maybe it's not even cliche portraiture that James L. Brooks gives this character because in a story, certain way she reacts the way you would to these characters and anyone would react to these characters which is ultimately like throwing up her arms and being done with them and being upset when they cross the line you know i would have like one scene where she has fun doing something i mean well they have the restaurant scene she and christina go out to dinner when she gets the job that is true but even that is like intruded on by those like guys at the bar and whatnot.

Right, right. I want a scene of, like, her and Clarice Leachman play in, like, canaster or something like that, you know what I mean? Just like... But the movie thinks that this is... Or her with her friend, like, going out. Yeah.

...than it ultimately is. She's like... She's the most passive character to all of it, because in the end, it's Christina telling her story. She never tells her... We never are from her perspective or understand her point of view...

Yeah. first, you know. But Flore is such an anxious character that never sort of like gets to put that down. You know what I mean? Ever. In the scenes with Sandler, in the scenes even in the restaurant. We're like, there's just like...

But her neuroses are understandable, though, whereas everyone else is like, you are your own enemy. But again, I think to be able to really connect, not to bring it up with like as good as it gets, but like Helen Hunt's character who has a lot of neuroses too, but like we're able to to get a couple of windows into her where you see the person, the like sort of fully dimensional person that would exist if she did not have these neuroses. And that's what I want to see out of floor a little bit. It's like, who is the like ideal version of floor in there? Like, who's the floor that can actually like, just like gossip with her friend about something? You know what I mean? Or, or anything. Like, we need to have like 12 scenes minimum

of her and her friend just talking about how awful Deborah is in a, like, very sort of like, almost like a key-key kind of a way, right? Where there's just, you know, as you would, talking about an annoying person in your life. Where she gets to just be a person outside of the context. Just be a person. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Um, all right. Let's sort of, uh, oh, okay. Here's a lull on the conversation. So here's where I'm going to break out my game. Um, well, I want to talk about just sort of like James L. Brooks, uh,

the awards, the awards sort of mystique of James L. Brooks at the time. We talked at the top of the show about, like, this is, like, the case for why this had Oscar buzz is one of the easiest cases to make. It's like, open and shut, Your Honor, here's what it is. James L. Brooks, by the point that Spanglish came out, had directed four feature films. Three of them were nominated for Best Picture. One of them won Best Picture. Among those three movies, he had gotten 10 acting nominations for various cast members. Two of, or four of those. are wins, Shirley MacLean, Jack Nicholson, Jack Nicholson again, and Helen Hunt. Terms of Endearment is 1983, 11 nominations. His first movie. He had been, he had sort of come up through like CBS News. He had made the jump to Hollywood. He creates the Mary Tyler Moore show, which like would be enough for most people to just like hang their hat on in his entire, their entire career. But he becomes this, like, great TV mogul.

I mentioned The Simpsons, which, like, comes later, but still. Terms of Endearment, his directorial debut, 11 nominations, wins five, including Best Picture, best director, best screenplay. Shirley MacLean for Best Actress, she deserved that, and Jack Nicholson gets his second Oscar

for Best Supporting Actor. Then in 1987, broadcast news, also a Best Picture nominee, seven nominations total. This one doesn't get a, any wins, and Brooks gets snubbed from Best Director. As good as it gets is a decade later, 1997, another seven nominations. I thought it was interesting.

As good as it gets in broadcast news have almost the exact same nominations. It's picture, director, screenplay. Supporting actor. Supporting actor, lead actress, lead actor. Broadcast News gets a cinematography nomination. Oh, they both get editing. They both get editing. Broadcast News gets a cinematography.

nomination. As good as it gets, gets a score nomination. But that's the only difference. But as good as it gets also wins, too. They win actor and actress in tandem, Nicholson and Hunt. But Brooks is once again snubbed from Best Director. So already it's a little bit of like, oh, it's like he's making these like talky actory movies, right? Where it's like, he's already won Best Director and yet there's still this like degree of a little bit of disrespect. But in general, there was this sense of James L. Brooks, no. how to do a romantic comedy. Like, this guy has the touch.

He knows how to do a romantic comedy that feels hefty and feels satisfying enough that Oscar voters will go for it. So Spanglish seems to have a lot of the same ingredients. Again, he gives Sandler the adult Albert Brooks haircut. Taya Leone is crying all the time, which feels very Holly Hunter in broadcast news. And, you know... Not all the time. She schedules that every day.

That's right. it's there's you know cloris leachman is this sort of you know uh older character she's an actress who had won an academy award uh very early on and then has never um had never been nominated since then and so there's a lot of just ingredients that feel perfect and he was even with i'll do anything as a sort of like as a blip in the road it felt like the exception that proved the rule for the rest of it, that he came back so strong with as good as it gets. And so there's every reason for people to think this is going to happen again. Now, I want to linger on James L. Brooks for a second.

Sort of iconic first name, middle initial last name, which is a great Hollywood thing. And so I got to thinking of, like, most people don't really know what the L in James L. stands for. Most people don't really know what the middle initials for a lot of... stands for levity. Well, you make the joke all the time about, like, Richard Entertainment Grant and whatnot. So I thought, you know, I want to see if you can guess, accurately guess, what the middle initials stand for in various Hollywood celebrities. Obviously, if you can get it right on the first try, that's, like, amazing and fantastic.

But otherwise, we're going to see if I can get you there. If I can, like, direct you there within, like, five moves or less. And then we'll just, we'll reveal, all right? Okay. This is, when I texted you this morning, and I said I have a dumb bitch game for us. This is exactly what I meant. This is the dumbest bitch game you've ever given. 100%.

All right. I love it. What do you think the L. and James L. Brooks stands for? Leonard. No. Here's what I'm going to do is I'm going to say alphabetically higher or lower. So I'm going to say, I'll be like price is right. Higher.

Okay. Lewis Higher Hmm Loo'd with a just a U Like Haley Lou? No, higher L Y

No, no, higher Like alphabetically first Earlier, oh, okay That's what you mean by higher Yeah, look at, imagine A is the peak of the mountain A at the top, Z at the bottom So higher or lower.

Yes, yes, yes. If we're Price is writing this, the scale that Bob Barker is standing next to you is a vertical line of letters, A at the top, Z is the lowest. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So that means it's probably L.A. Just Larry, not Leonard, but Larry. Well, yeah, but what does Larry stand for?

What is Larry short for? Leonard. No. Larry is not short from Leonard. Lenny is short for Leonard. Larry is also. Lawrence James Lawrence

Larry is short for Lawrence Um Vanessa L Williams What's the L Oh Um Um Um

Louise Lower Um Louan Louan Lower Lennette Shorter

Lynn Lynn Vanessa Lynn Williams Very good Mary J. Blige What's the Wait you were about to register a complaint

I was about to complain That I like I'm the person who can't just get Lynn I have to make it complicated and say Lynette Mary J. Blige What's the J and Mary J. Um Jane

It is Jane Mary Jane Well done. Did you know that or? No Yeah very good Mary Jane Blyge John C. Riley

Christopher Christopher Christopher, man, all right, you're on streak now. George C. Scott. And I'm going to say, think about this one for a second. Clyde. No, higher. Think about what we know about George C. Scott.

Things we know about George C. Scott. Conceivable Republican. That's what the C stands for, conceivable Republican. George Conservative, Scott. No, what do we know about him familiarly? Oh, oh, who is he related to? Someone was his... Oh, Campbell, Campbell. George Campbell Scott, just like his son, Campbell Scott.

He's his dad. Yes. Paul W.S. Anderson. What's the W. and what's the S? Wesley Snipes. No. Not Wesley and not Snipe. Paul Wesley Snipes, Anders. He had to get into movies. He just knew he had to. Um, no, uh, uh, lower than Wesley. Uh, Winston. Higher.

Higher than Winston, lower than Wesley. So, He, um, Witton. You're missing a very obvious, you that you went to Winston and not this name. is very funny. Woo?

Not W-I-N. Wilfred. Not Wilfred, but William. William. William. I don't know basic names. I would be a monster parent. What do you think he...

Paul William Smith Anderson. Higher. William Scott Anderson. Yes. Paul William Scott Anderson. Very good. The L. and Samuel L. Jackson. Lewis.

A little higher. Just a little. Oh, how were you spelling Lewis? L-O-U-I-S. Further, higher, higher. I thought you were saying L-E-W-S. It's a little higher than L-E-W. It is L-Roy, Samuel L-Roy Jackson.

David O. Russell. Um, Oren? Uh, lower. Owen. Owen, yes, very good. Charles S. Dutton. Stephen. Higher.

Uh, Samuel. Uh, lower. No, you had the first two letters correct in Stephen, just a little higher. Stefan. No, a little higher than that. Stuyvesant. No. That's lower. That is lower.

Steve? No, higher. Give me a different vowel. S-E-S-T-A? Yeah. Stanford? You've almost got it. You've got the first letter.

Stanley. Charles Stanley. Okay, these ones are just weird. So I'm just going to, Michael J. Fox. I'm going to give you. You one guess and then tell you what it is. Jedediah. Andrew.

Michael J. Fox's middle name is Andrew. He just put the J. in there. Great. Isn't that wild? I'm glad you didn't ask me that. That would not have been fair. Well, no, that would not have been fair. Lee J. Cobb.

Jedediah. His real name is Leo Jacoby. Ah. Isn't that interesting? And finally, Richard E. Grant. Entertainment. Actually, I would have loved it if it was. His middle name is actually Grant.

It's Richard Grant, Esther Heisen. Oh. He was also born in Swaziland. So there we go. All right, thank you for playing my dumb little game about middle names. I think we all learned something, and that's what's really important. We did. We learned what the L stands for in James L. Brooks.

Yes, which is Lawrence, James Lawrence Brooks. All right. It's also worth talking about Sandler in terms of of an awards trajectory Sandler who still does not have an Oscar nomination. This made a lot of sense as a predictive nomination. Yes, because it's coming off of punch drunk love,

which most people thought would have been too strange for Oscar and they were correct. But this felt like, okay, so he got some street cred for that movie. Now, this is the one where people could actually embrace it in a true mainstream Oscar type of way.

I'll successful. this, though, is Oscar voters have proved to be surprisingly resilient to that type of cynicism. Well, no, not that type of cynicism, but to elevating the comedy stars of the 90s. We're like, Jim Carrey never got that nomination for the Truman show, nor for Man on the Moon, nor for Eternal Sunshine.

Mike Myers has a few times tried to go for the serious route and never you know found oscar success there sandler hasn't um i'm trying to think of like who the other sort of like big comedy box office guys will feral remember when like the producers came out and stranger than fiction baby stranger than fiction we did an episode on so i just think it's interesting that while it does definitely happen um and i think we even gets stuff like Melissa McCarthy who like gets nominated for the comedy and you know what I mean like actually like gets nominated for for one of her comedic performances. But I feel like this is the thing that we maybe overrate as Oscar watchers and that like oh yeah, once the comedian goes serious, that's when they're going to nominate them. It's like sometimes they just don't nominate them. Sometimes, you know, so I don't know. That's interesting. I do think Sandler will eventually be nominated. Mary Tyler is actually an example of that. happening, right? That is very true.

Does the serious role in ordinary people gets the nomination. Is incredible in that movie, too. Jackie Gleason got, didn't he get nominated for The Hustler? Wasn't that? I think so. I don't know. I think so. Anyway, continue.

Sailor, I think, will eventually happen. He just seems to actually well respected and loved by the people who have worked with him. And he's worked with a lot of people. That Jennifer Aniston shout out at the same. SAG Awards that one time really kind of says a lot. Adam Sandler, I love you, man. Buddy, she says, I love you. Your magic is real and I love you, buddy.

It's so cute. It's very nice. But it does speak well of him, right? It really, you know, makes you think like he's somebody who people really like on sound. I think the issue is, and maybe less so for Spanglish because like Spanglish as a vehicle as a whole felt like it was, you know, because of the. the James L. Brooks of it all, you know, gunning for more than just Sandler, I think it's going,

he's going to be one of those people that it's going to take, you know, the movie actually doing well, too. It can't just be all about Adam Sandler, which like, maybe you could argue the closest for that is uncut gems, but uncut gems didn't really ever do well enough of like making that movie, a best picture contender, beyond it was a best actor contender for Adam Sandler, as far as how that campaign ran. But I remember that year thinking, oh, this would be a good spot for them to nominate Sandler. It's a real, it's a, it's a different kind of a movie, it's, but it's also him playing a real character, you know what I mean?

It's not just sort of like, because Punch Drunk Love and Spanglish to a degree kind of utilized portions of the Sandler that we already knew. Uncut Gems is actually having him do something like very different. And putting him in a certain context that also recontextualizes what we think of him as a performer, I would argue. Yeah. I just think that movie not unlike maybe a May December, but it's like the heterosexual version of like people who have May December. In that, like, that's a movie that's always going to do better for critics than it is going to for the industry establishment.

I think that's right. But I also think the push there for that movie was Sandler. It wasn't the movie. And that's what it would take for Sandler to get nominated. I think that's right. But I do think he eventually will be. That, that I would tend to agree with that. Yes.

He also has that movie dropping on Netflix where he's an astronaut that apparently is just a. straight drama that has been like they shot it during the pandemic I think like this people have been wondering when this was going to come out and it's finally coming out on Netflix I think the thing about making an awards push if they're opening it in March or April or whatever the thing about Adam Sandler in Netflix is I feel like he got off on such a weird note with what was the Western that he did on Netflix at the beginning of

those comedies he's done for Netflix at this point. He was the Ridiculous Six, right? That was him? Or was that, Seth MacFarlane, hold on. Seth MacFarlane did a Western. But that was theatrical. With Charlize Theron, right? Yes, but that was theatrical.

But The Ridiculous Six was, in fact, Adam Sandler. And I feel like that was right at the beginning of his Netflix deal. Remember, he made that, like, eight-picture deal with Netflix or whatever. And then that was the one where it was like, it was a zero percent on rotten tomatoes. Like, it was so bad. From what I understand, I've never seen it. They all are like, shodily made.

And then he made, like, Sandy Wexler, who a lot of, like, that got a lot of, like, no, but he's, like, really good. And it's like, I'll never know. Um, but then he started, like, actually making, like, good movies on Netflix, like the Meyerowitz stories and stuff like hustle that I've never seen, but I am told that Sandler is good in. Actually, Sandler and another Noah Bomback movie is the, type of vehicle, I would believe, could be...

I mean, his Meyerowitz performance is my favorite performance of his. I would have nominated him for Meyerowitz. That's the one that I would have nominated for. But anyway, it just feels like the Netflix things, anytime he makes a thing for Netflix now, I think it sort of gets chocked up to like, oh, another Sandler Netflix movie, and people just sort of like walk on by. The Talioni thing, so Talioni,

at this point in 2004, she is primarily known as the TV star, or whatever that's worth. She had been in, of course, movies like flirting with disaster and deep impact. She's in the family man with Nicholas Cage, but she's sort of mostly known for that short-lived NBC show The Naked Truth that I think was on must-see TV for a little bit. It was one of those post-friends time slot movies or shows, I want to say. And it feels like, once again, Brooks trying to do the Helen Hunt thing again. because Helen Hunt was pretty much primarily known as a TV actor. She was still on Mad About You when she got cast in as good as it gets. And I don't, again, I don't think Taleyoni works in this movie. We sort of just differ a little bit in terms of who gets that blame. But I do feel bad for her because I think she's really trying.

Looking into the TV comedian, I hate that term. comedic actress talent at that time. Who do we think, do we, let's do a little thought experiment of like who may have fit better. So my immediate thought was, and I don't know if this is good,

I don't think this would work, Deborah Messing. I'm like, what does this movie work better if Deborah Messing? I think too young. And also. I don't believe her as the mother of a teenager at that point.

Right. I'll say, I'll give you, I'm going to give you a name of somebody who's the exact same age as Taleyone, although it does seem, we've never seen her in a mothering context, so it might seem weird, but Sarah Jessica Parker. Yeah, I don't see her taking that role, but I think she gives, I think she would have made it work better. I think she has something in her that, like, again, I'm not the first person to talk about that Carrie Brad, Shaw is a monster of a person. And yet, like, she makes, she's not as bad as Debra in this movie, but she's spent her entire, she's made her money as making this character who has so many sort of, like, objectionable quirks to her work in a way that, you know, that's, that show really succeeds.

I do think the character, I do think the comparison of Bless This Messing is an apt one, because today she would do I think she would do much better at this role than Taya Leone ultimately did or be more right for it. Yeah. What about and maybe not the

version in 2004, what about like a Jennifer Aniston in this role? I don't see it. I don't really see it. I like the idea for She would believe her with Sandler more because they have work together.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We haven't even talked about the awful sex scene that they have in this movie. Categorically one of the worst sex scenes in movies. And I know it's supposed to be

it's supposed to be somewhat comedic. I don't like laughing at a character in that way. Like look at this weird way they have sex. It's it makes me be like, well then don't show me that. You know? It's, it's,

I don't like it. I don't like it. It really feels like it's mocking her in a way. that is not, like, and then for the movie to want me to be on her side at some point, and it feels like just a scene from, I don't know, a Judd Apatow movie. James L. Brooks has done so well in creating these movies and these characters and these scenes and moments and lines of dialogue that all, in some way, you see the truth and you see a little bit of recognition, you're like, oh, yes, that's, he's described that emotion so perfectly. I think he does it in this movie with the three and a quarter star thing. I totally relate to the three and a quarter star, like, wanting that instead of a four star. I get it. Um, there's nothing about this scene that you're like, oh, we've all been there. You know what I mean? Like, we've all had an epileptic seizure while atop our, uh, you know, semi-willing husband. And then that leading us into sobbing,

you know, I just don't want to see any sex scene. Yeah. That's supposed to comedically end with someone sobbing. I just don't want to watch that. That feels like a joke from 1973. That is never been funny. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. The other thing that I feel bad for Taleyone is like, there weren't a lot of movie roles after this. No. There really weren't. And was fun with Dick and Jane before or after this? The year after. The year after. That did not very well. Which also was a bomb. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, those two back to back don't really super work. Jennifer Garner in a role like this, what do we think?

Type A, a little off-putting because of it. She would have been a little too young still. Right, but I mean, like, a version, a version of Jennifer Garner, you know. I mean, I guess in like five years we would see her, or not even five years, just a few years, we would see her in Juneau. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Where she's great. Well, it's also the thing where we, our mental image of who's old enough to be a mother of a high schooler has gotten a lot older now, right?

Where it's like before, you could be in your late 30s and be a mother of a high schooler, and that would be like, yeah, well, that's correct. In these circumstances, too, where they're, like, affluent. Right. Whereas right now, a mother of a. teenager of a wealthy couple, you're like, oh, you're 60, right? Like, that's just sort of, you know, you had your eggs frozen, and you had a baby at 48 years old. And, and, you know, so there's a degree to which, yeah, you have to sort of cast that role older than sort of, you know. Is there some detail in this, too, where they say they got married young?

I don't think so. Am I misremembering that? I don't think so. But, again, I may have missed. it because it was cringing too bad. It's also us, like, optimistically casting it, too, because it's like, what is Hollywood's version of what that is, you know? It's like, you can have a teenager at, I don't know, 25? Why not? Like, yeah.

I just want to- Worst examples. Before, we're sort of getting into the witching hour here. So, Cloris Leachman, 1971, best supporting actress winner for the last picture show, a movie I've never seen. Have you ever, I imagine you've seen the last picture. Oh, she's incredible, incredible. What, her character is lonely.

That's a movie where someone has, where cries after having sex, but that's not, uh, lonely wife who's cheating on her husband with a young buck. Is that the character? Am I getting that wrong? Yeah. Yeah. Not bad.

Nice work if you can get it. Um, she also is, though, is like a huge TV star. Obviously, she was on the Mary Tyler Moore show. Her character gets a spin-off. So, like, clearly that's, you know, the history she has with James L. Brooks, she's an eight-time Emmy winner across, like, a bunch of different shows, including, like, I think two for Malcolm in the middle as a guest star. So she is the,

by the time she gets the SAG nomination, Spanglish has been dealt with. Spanglish has been set aside. This is a quintessential SAG nomination of when the nomination happens. It's like, oh, you're basing off of like buzz from a month ago. Yeah. I will say, I don't think she's, she's not in my, like, top five on my own ballot. I support this nomination. I do think she's really, really good. She's like the one thing that really works in this movie. I really think she's great.

She's, again, she's got that line delivery thing where she's, the thing where she's at the, T'a Leonie's in the car about to drive away, and she's like, before you go, I just want to tell you that you're going to lose your marriage, if you keep doing the things you're doing, and you're totally screwing up your life. And then she, like, hits the side of the car, and she's like, all right, see you later. And she's just like, it's, it's just perfectly timed, perfectly calibrated. I really love her. She loses, of course, to Cape Blanchette, who did not win the Golden Globe, but this was when, like, this, I remember this SAG Awards being like, okay, right. Clivo and Natalie Portman won the Globes for closer. But, like, that's not how it's going to go with the Oscars, right?

We all sort of think it's going to be Morgan Freeman and Cape Blanchet. And then, like, that's exactly what happened at the SAG. So we were like, all right, okay, things are back in the saddle again. That was a SAG snub that did actually mean something when, though, I mean, it's always possible that because Closer was a late enough movie that it didn't screen for SAG or something. But, like, when everybody freaks out that, I don't know, Regina King doesn't get a SAG nomination, it's like, well, but that doesn't mean anything. Right. Natalie and Clive were both back. Natalie Fordman not getting nominated did mean something.

Yes. Natalie and Clive both got back into the Oscar race thereafter, but yes. So obviously, Cloris, you know, that was the end of kind of the run for Cloris. She got Best Actress nomination at the Movies for Grownups Awards. That was her other big one. I liked that, first of all, I like that the M4Gs at this point were just nominating all performances in Lee, an actor or actress. I also like, you know, I don't, I hate that I've gotten to the point where I'm, like, complaining about the M4Gs, but the M4Gs have kind of lost

the plot a little bit. They've lost the magic. They've lost their identity, you know what I mean? They really have. And it's a shame because this particular category, so Leachman's nominated for best actress, she loses to Anne Reed for the mother. Again, one of those on a long list of 12 possibilities for Best Actress that year, Anne Reid would have been on it. But, like, nobody really thought that she had a chance. This is the movie where she fucks Daniel Craig, right? Yes, yes. Again, nice work if you can get it.

But like... This was an abbreviated title, too. In the UK, it was released as The Mother Was Mothering. I sent you that clip. Joe looks so upset, listeners. He's so mad at me. I'm so mad. I knew you were.

you were working on something about mother and I knew I sent you the clip from the, from the fucking, what was the concert that I sent you the clip from? Shit. Oh, the Mitzky concert. Listeners, it's really hard to be a Mitzky fan these days because I just want it to be known that I am not associated with these people yelling things and meowing her at her at concert. It's this misky, it's this clip from a Mitzky show. I don't really know Mitzky, but I guess I'm giving. to understand that like she is she's a moody she has insane fans singers but like her vibe at a concert this this part of the show at least she was doing something quiet and slow with a sustained

silence and into that sustained silence there are a couple like meeps and meow and hoot and holler and then because people can't stand silence and they fucking you know will die if they're not the center of attention for one second and then some fucking moron asshole goes mother is mothering and then from the side of whoever's recording this immediately goes, shut the fuck up and go perfect. It's so great. Like, it's not,

Mother is mothering. Shut the fuck up. It's so fantastic. It's so funny. One of the greatest musical artists of our current moment and you're going to behave like a fucking idiot. Oh, my gosh. The fuck out.

Idiot child. Go. way. Stop it forever. No, no, no, no, no. It's very hard to be, uh, uh, to be in the fan position of being like, well, I'm not like that. It doesn't, I don't think it reflects on Mitzki fans. I think, I think you could see that happening. No, no, no, no, it's very true. Is it? It's, it's, it's true of the Mitsky fandom. It is. Oh, that's so dumb and gross. But I could also imagine that happening at like Alana del Raysha or whatever, somebody being like, mother. It's just like, shut up you fucking idiot um anyway anne reid wins for the mother uh at the m for g's also nominated

jena roland's for the notebook lily tomlin for i heart hookabees fucking love that nomination yeah merrill for the muncherian candidate susan surrendered for shall we dance this is an m for g's category this is ladies of a certain age who are not maybe in the oscar race and we're going to give them they're due, and this is what the M4G should be. Don't go chasing your, the, just photocopying the Oscar nominations, guys. That's not what you're here for. You know, you've already, you're already not televising your award show anyway. Like, who's, who is this for?

Who is this pantomime for? Ain't you tired, Miss Hilly? Ain't you tired AARP M4G's? Just go back to doing what you do best, which is nominating Lily Tomlin for whatever movie she was in this year because she was undoubtedly great. What I love is this is probably when it was also just in the magazine, not

like, you know, voted on by anyone. So it's like no one who received AARP magazine knew what the mother was. But maybe a few of them went and sought it out, Chris. Maybe they went to their Lincoln Plaza cinemas that used to exist. A Daniel Craig fan

is born. Listen, the AARP demographic is the demographic for, I'm going to go see the mother at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, and I'm going to be around nothing but retirees. And, like, that is, that's the vibe. That's my ideal theater going crowd. I told you that was my theater going crowd when I saw the Taylor Swift movie. Yeah. It was, I hadn't had, like, it was the ideal way to see that movie, truly.

There is nothing that feels more true to my New York experience than seeing. just the most sexually explicit independent film with a crowd of entirely retired ladies. Did you see like Antichrist with a bunch of one million billion percent, Chris. That's exactly what it was. And it was, God bless, those cultured ladies in the city that never sleeps. I love it.

The other sort of only other major nomination that Spanglish got, it was a one-time nominee at the Golden Globes for an original score by Hans Zimmer, a score that I'm going to admit didn't really make much of an impression on me. No, but Hans Zimmer's as good as a gets score is very memorable. Oh, very

memorable. So, yeah, this is sort of a little bit of a Halo nomination. These are odd Golden Globe nominations for score. Sometimes the Globes just go on a totally different tangent with their music nominees, and I think that's great. The Oscar nominee

were Howard Shore, the Oscar crossovers, at least, Howard Shore for The Aviator, I'm pretty sure was an Oscar nominee that year, and Jan AP Cosmeric for Finding Leverland, who wins the Oscar, right? Wins the Oscar. Also nominated at the Globes, though, are Rolf Kent for Sideways. Great nomination. Yeah, like, that's, people always talk about, like, well, you can't expect these small little talkie movies to get a ton of nominations. There are so many ways you can get a movie that's, you know, not as big, bombastic, you know, feet of directorial, you know.

We like those nominations, too. Love it when a small little talking movie gets an editing nomination or a score nomination. Lord knows they're never going to get costume or production design, but we can dream. And then, of course, the Golden Globes love, love to nominate Clint Eastwood in the music category. They will nominate an Eastwood score. It's a grand tour. They will nominate an Eastwood song. Ooh, I have real good Clint Eastwood voice today.

Listeners, I am coming off of, whenever my voices like this on an episode, just know that I was at a drag show last night and I was screaming for three hours. Listen, we just came off like four different episodes where I am losing my voice halfway through and I'm like croaking. Actively losing voice during the class of 2020. I'm finally back at least. Oh, we forgot to. And now I'm in a Clint East. Eastwood register to do my Grand Turino. Grand Terino.

It's a granderino. I was listening to Blank Check the other day. They had Bobby and Lindsay on to talk about The Mirror Has Two Faces. And they got into talking about the upcoming Clint Eastwood movie that sounds awesome. Have you kept track? Tony Colette's in it, right? Tony Colette's and it's called the juror. And it's about a guy who committed a murder and then ends up.

up on the jury for, I guess they're prosecuting somebody else for the crime, but the juror... Oh, this sounds like some Clint Eastwood bullshit. But it also sounds like some 90s-ass, like courtroom fantastic, like, oh, my God, I'm so excited for this movie. Wait, now I want to look it up because I don't, I don't relish hating on Clean Eastwood just because he's made... Well, I mean, some of the stuff that he's made, it's like, all right. Oh, it's called jury.

Grand Torino is, like, actively bad. Juror number two is the name of the movie. Nicholas Holt is the main guy. A juror serving on a murder trial realizes he may be at fault for the victim's death. Oh, this is interesting. So he's not like, this is maybe what, a hit and run or something? Interesting. Tony Collette, Zoe Deutsch, Kiefer Sutherland, Leslie Bibb, Chris Messina, J.K.

Simmons, Amy Aquino. I love Amy Aquino. The thing about Clint Eastwood. is the tie was cut with Warner Brothers because of David Zazlov being like, well, his newest movie didn't make any money, so we're not going to work with him anymore. Was it David Zaslov or one of the other WB execs? And it's like, forget the like tons of money that he's made for decades for you. This one movie, you know, doesn't make you money.

So there's that like decade-long relationship. It says this is a Warner Brothers movie, though. Interesting. Maybe he produced it independently or that's incorrect, but like that was said on like an investor's call and made headlines when that happened. Maybe it's like going forward. Maybe this is like the last vestigial god. Independently produced and then. Please don't let them like shelve this thing forever like with that poor fucking coyote movie.

Don't make us root for a coyote movie. It's true. Um, like, listen, but I am. be so diabolical that like we are all up in arms over an IP movie that it is insane to me that the buying price that they demanded for that movie if they were going to sell it versus shelving it because it's the same price that Disney paid for the Taylor Swift movie and I think they got global rights for it. You think you're going to get that for your coyote movie? I know, but it's the principle of a thing, Chris. It is the principle of the thing. Like, you know, don't

Don't throw movies in a box and burn it. But it just speaks to the delusion of these people that are running the studios into the ground right now. Yeah. All right. It's like it's not even just that they don't care about the art form that they're creating and putting out into the world. It's that they exist in this delusional level of how much money they can make off of things or like what their profit interest, how dominant their profit in. interest is. It's delusional. It's, it is delusional. Um, two other M for G's nominations, though, for Spanglish. They got, um, best intergenerational film nomination, which, yeah, Chloris,

I guess, intergenerationals with mothers and daughters. Mothers and daughters, sure. It loses to miracle, which I think is so funny because, yeah, I guess every sports movie that has a coach. It is intergenerational because of the concept of a coach. Yeah, a coach. Yeah, a coach and some players is intergenerational. Unless you're Nyad. Except Nyad. Except Nyad. Dork.

I love that we both had that same. He's like, nope. Jody Foster. Coach slash peer. Well, in fairness, Nyad was nominated for best buddy comedy. And well, and it should have been. It's the best buddy comedy. It wasn't because they got rid of that category because they're losing their identity.

Badass, the Melvin Van Peebles or Mario Van Peebles movie about. his father was nominated for intergenerational film Monsieur Ibrahim which I'd never seen was nominated Also what if someone was a coach

because it's like a choir movie Oh What if someone was a coach? And choral directors And then the five obstructions is nominated AARP movies for grown-ups and once again

Agnes reading the magazine is like I guess I'm going to go see the five obstruction this weekend Harold their their dogma Harold the Dutch Herald their Dutch That's a dog

It's obviously a dogma 95 thing I thought that movie came out a lot sooner than that Anyway Spanglish also nominated for James L. Brooks

's screenplay loses to Spider-Man 2 Alvin Sargent Honestly for a superhero movie that's not a bad one to spotlight Like Spider-Man 2's You know

However I know The AARP nominated Almodovar for bad education, which is, like... That's, like, one of the, the, like, heavy... Like, not heavy... But, like, it's the end...

It's one of his NC-17 movies. It's... Again, it's like... Go there. Guess who was in the audience with me when I saw a bad education. A bunch of blue hair ladies? Um, the, the, the gin club at the local, uh, church group.

Yes. Um, so... Paul Haggis is nominated for the screenplay for a million-dollar baby, along with co-writer FXTool. Now, that just sounds like an Alan Smithy name to me, right? Somebody is just like, I don't want my contributions on this movie to be on the record. Isn't that the author of the original short story, though? Yes, it is. But let me have my little fancy. It just sounds like, you know, fuck you.

I'm out of here. It's like, what do we credit you as? I don't know, FX tool, like, whatever. The only FX tool in this establishment is Ryan Murphy. I thought you were going to go a different way and say, like, the only FX tool is the Apple computer that allowed, you know, whatever, like an FX tool. Noah Hawley, a real FX tool. Thank you, Ava DuFernay.

All right, anything else we want to say about Spanglish Before we move on to our game portion of the evening Uh, no, I think we got it all out there I do too Uh, not a good movie, somewhat baffling Um, I still There was talk of James L. Brooks directing another movie recently, right?

Oh, yes, yes, I'm glad you bring this up. And who, somebody got the Lee, that was semi-exciting, but I'm going to figure out with this. Oh, oh, no, that's not that exciting. It's an upcoming comedy written and directed by James L. Brooks.

A young politician tries to balance work and family life while she takes over as governor of her state. I want to make sure that this is on IMDB, because sometimes Wikipedia has a thing, and you're like, I don't know about that. Oh, Jack

Lowell. is cast in this, which is why I was like... Jack Loudon, I love him. Mr. Sersha Ronan. Yeah, Mr. of my dreams. Yes, Ella McKay. So, Emma Mackey, Jack Loudon.

He's playing, presumably, Ella McKay, which just shouldn't be allowed to have. To me, that's just lazy. Would you talk about best cast? Best casting, Oscar? This has got a, this is low effort casting. Who do we get to play Ella McKay? I don't know.

Emma McKay? Like, whatever. it gives us a shit. Jamie Lee Curtis, Woody Harrelson, Iowa Debray, who is like the hottest thing going in Hollywood right now. Albert Brooks, of course, fantastic. Kumal Nanchiani. My husband, Jack Loudon, Sersha and I share.

We're very good friends. Wow, I didn't realize the three of you were in a triad. Well, we're giving it a shot. You know what I mean? It's not easy. And it's work, but it's the best kind of work. Modern romance. Modern romance, man. What can I say? Yeah. So I'm glad I'm glad that James L. Brooks is making another movie, even though his last movie was, how do you know? And that didn't work out very well either. So he's gone, you know, a losing streak dating back to 2004. But hopes brings eternal. And the man who gave us terms of endearment and broadcast news and as good as it gets gets to do whatever he wants for the rest of his life as far as I'm concerned. So.

I agree. All right. Chris, do you want to explain to our listeners what the IMDB game is? Of course. Every week, we end our episodes with the IMDB game where we challenge each other with an actor or actress to try to guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television, voice only performances or non-acting credits, we'll mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue. That's not enough. It just becomes a free-for-all of hints. We love a free-for-all of hints. Chris, would you like to give or guess first? I think I'll give first. I've been guessing first lately, if I remember correctly.

So I went into the James L. Brooks filmography of his stars. And surprisingly, we have not done Miss Turbulently Brilliant herself, however I wanted to put that. Deborah Winger. Deborah Winger. All right. Ms. Turbulent, Browiat's herself. I think it's going to be both terms of endearment and an officer under gentleman. Both of her Oscar nominations, correct.

All right. Now. Well, no, she also has another Oscar. I shouldn't say both. Two of her three Oscar nominations. Was she nominated for Urban Cowboy? That's a different question. Are you guessing Urban Cowboy?

Well, no, because you already, I'm going to guess Urban Cowboy. Urban Cowboy is correct. She was not nominated for it. What was the third thing? A secret third thing. A secret third thing. Okay, so I'm three for three? Yes, you're three for three.

The secret third thing, her other Oscar nomination, we'll talk about. Okay. All right. Oh, I remember it. I've seen it. But I don't think it's on her known for her. It's not. No, because it's not.

Shadowlands is not. It truly is a secret third thing. Shadowlands is a secret third. No, but, no, yeah, no one's seen that movie. I actually did for... Is T.S. Louis or T. Elliot. C.S. Louis.

C.S. Louis. Yes. T.S. Madison in Shadowland. Yes. Anthony Hopkins is T.S. No. No, no, no, no, no. Queen. I would watch T.S. Madison and Deborah Winger be lovers in a movie. T.S. Madison watching Anthony Hopkins on the dailies and just says the F slur. Okay. All right. Deborah Winger, three for three. I mean...

No wrong guess is so far. Everything in me is screaming. to say Rachel getting married but I want to make sure that I'm not like skipping something screaming obvious from the like

oh, oh, oh, you know what I'm going to say a movie I love Forget Paris. I also love Forget Paris, but that's not correct. Is it Rachel getting married? It's Rachel getting married. It's Rachel getting. Fuck! God damn it. I know. It's been so long since

someone's got a perfect sport. She's the lead in Forget Paris. I thought that might have trumped it. Only weirdos like us know Forget Paris. I love that movie. That should be on TV every Saturday. Every Saturday, it should be on in the afternoon somewhere that I should be able to just sit down and veg out and watch Forget Paris. TikTok teens need to discover the scene where a bird gets stuck to her head. Because if there's any scene in like a 90s romantic comedy that's clippable. It's Debra Winger with a bird stuck to her head. Every time I'm in a car and I start naming things that I see out the window,

I always think about William Hickey and that... I always think about it as just like, oh, is my mind going? Like, am I just turning into William Hickey and forget Paris? Laundry World. Edge Tropical Aquarium. Matrois City. Donuts Donuts

Donuts Don't Mr. Sidge Tuxedo Six guys from Greece Authentic

Greek food What a great movie Oh my God That has James L Brooks energy It's not a James L Brooks movie It's not a

Nora Ephron movie I'm pretty sure Billy Crystal Directed it He didn't direct it God who did Direct forget Paris Maybe he did

Hold on Was that his follow-up to city slickers? Don't have a hammy friend. No, he didn't direct city-sickers. He directed... Very quotable movie. Incredibly quotable movie. Look how much a line ways.

He did direct it. You're totally right. And he wrote it with Lowell Gans and Bob Blue Mandel, who are like the screenwriting tandem for all. If you have an early 90s movie that you like and watch a ton and you're like, I wonder who wrote that movie. It's Lowell Gans and Bobbleum Mandel. All right.

Highly recommended it. Who do you have for me? Oh, oh, right. So I also went down the road of James L. Brooks' leading performers, and the movie we all decide not to talk about is I'll do anything. And the lead of that movie is Nick Nolte, and we've never done Nick Nolty. So... Mr. Nick Nolty. Give it a go. Three Oscar nominations. I can't imagine all of them are there. But Prince of Tides surely has to be. Prince of Tides. Can you picture the poster for the Prince of Tides the same way I can? Noltee and with an arm over Barbara as they're lying in bed together, but like superimposed over a golden lake. Carolina skyline. No, it's a golden lake. It's like a lake at like sunset with a dock.

Oh, right, right, right. Okay, so affliction and Warrior. Listen, a lot of people really like Warrior. So I'm going to guess Warrior. Yes. Warrior. It's there. Okay, good.

Yeah. You know, maybe I'm just emboldened by doing, by getting the first two correct, but I'm going to say affliction. Affliction, you are three for three. Now it comes down to this. So maybe a perfect score. Nick Nolte and Rachel getting married, or is Nick Nolte and forget Paris? Who knows?

Who is he going to get? I'm almost inclined to say Blue Chips, but I don't think people will remember that Blue Chips exists. Blue Chips, a movie directed by William Friedkin, starring Shaquille O'Neill. And no one talks about it. No one talks about it. It could also just be something more recent.

I feel like it probably is going to be something recent. It's not going to be something like three fugitives. Can I tell you how many times I rented Three Fugitives from the video store When I was a little bit Us too! Us too! Yeah, a lot. We were very big Martin Short fans back then,

like Three Amigos, Three Fugitives, Interspace, Pure Luck. Do you remember Pure Luck? A terrible movie. I do remember Pure Luck. Captain Ron. We got all the Martin Shorts. We loved Captain Ron. Yeah, Captain Ron's great. Um, okay.

Okay. Nick Nulte. Yes. Is it, do I think Blue Chips is there? Do I just want to seem cool that I would guess Blue Chips? It's a pertinent question. What was his other, like, romantic role? Former People's Sexiest Man of the Year, Nick Nulte.

Sexiest man alive. All of the alive people, all in the world. And he was the sexiest. Listen, I mean, you'll watch Prince of Tides once, and you'll agree he's pretty hot in that movie yeah um I don't think it's them but like maybe I'll get the hints I'll say blue chips not blue chips not blue chips I know um

then fine I'll say three fugitives why not not three fugitives I just want my year all right your year is 1998 okay so this is after the affliction nomination. No, it's the same year as Affliction. Affliction's 90s. No, it's 98.

It's listed as 97 here on IMDB because it was, I imagine. A festival movie. But he was the frontrunner before Benini. Him and McKellen were the frontrunners, and then Benign came and ruined everything. Nick Nalti was enough of a frontrunner that basically he got James Coburn nominated and then won. One, yes. Because, like, Coburn came out of nowhere to win. People realized, oh, we've never given this guy one, sure.

Meanwhile, that was Ed Harris's last best chance to win, and Ed Harris now maybe we'll never win an Oscar. Was he in, like, a Woody Allen movie, the year of Affliction? God. Nick Nolte and a Woody Allen movie would be really something. Weird, yeah. Well, especially in Woody Allen's 1998 movie, because his 98 movie, I'm pretty sure, was celebrity. Oh, no, no, no, it's the thin red line. It is the thin red line. It's the, that's, I should have known.

He's very good in the thin red line. I think I would have put him on my supporting actor ballot. I think he's on a supporting actor ballot. Everyone's good in the, that's an incredible movie. Well, I would have nominated Nolte and I would have nominated Zimmer, and those are probably the two nominations I would give for the thin red line. We're not going to fight at the end of an episode. No, and also, I haven't seen the thin red line since I was 20 years old, so like I don't have a sophisticated opinion on that. movie, except for the first time I saw it. I was like, oh, I hate this. I fucking hate this so

much. Um, I should probably see it again. Although I, you should watch it again. I have watched Malik movies as a, as a fully formed adult with, with brain cells. And he's maybe just not. I get why people like the tree of life, but I am not. He makes wavelength movies. You got to get on the wavelength. If you can't, you can't. Yeah. Anyway, we both went a quick three for three and then it all fell apart. Here's the one I'm surprised. isn't on Nultes is 48 hours, because, like, people still talk about that movie. That's, like, a franchise super successful movie that we just don't talk about at all as a culture, and I think it's probably because...

I think people talk about 48 hours a good bit, honestly. Like... I don't ever see it, and I wonder if it's because... Straight people talk about it, though. ...was so successful because of Eddie Murphy, and when you talk about Eddie Murphy, you talk about a bunch of other movies. Yeah. Um, the other romantic movie you're thinking of is Afterglow, which he was not nominated for, but Julie Christie was. Um, I'm trying to think of other, uh, like Lorenzozozo. I, you know, you know my high opinion of Lorenzo's Oil, Cape Fear. Um, oh, duh. I could have. I could have said you guessed three fugitives, 1989. Why not? Who directed, is that like a Frank Oz movie? Who directed three fugitives?

Francis Viver. Billy Crystal. that's a poster i remember do you remember that poster yeah the purple is nultie uh holding martin short in his arms and then martin short with the kid so it's like a like a triple stack of of uh holding people three few times lets you know that's a kooky movie it is a kooky movie um all right let's get out of here let's get out of here that is our episode if you want more of this head oscar buzz you can check out the tumbler at this head oscarbuzz dot tumbler.com You should also follow our Twitter account at had underscore Oscar underscore buzz, our Instagram at This Had Oscar Buzz, and our Patreon at patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz. Chris, where can the listeners find you? You can find me on Twitter and Letterbox at Chris V-File. That's F-E-I-L.

I'm on your socials, your various socials, including Blue Sky, Letterboxed, what have you, at Joe Reed, read-spelled, R-E-I-D. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his. his fantastic artwork, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mavius for their technical guidance. Taylor Cole for our theme music. Please remember, you can rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple

Podcasts, Google Play, wherever else you get podcasts. A five-star review in particular really helps us out with everything. Why didn't I take out that? What did I usually say there? A five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcasts? Visibility. With visibility.

I took out that whole part of the sentence. That's crazy. Anyway, rescue me from this little cul-de-sac of failure that I'm on and take a break from trying to buy the affections of your housekeeper's kid and write something nice about us. That is all for this week, but we hope you'll be back next week for more.