This Had Oscar Buzz - 280 – State and Main

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Forgotten cinema, you ask? This week, we’re coming to you with 2000’s State and Main, a Hollywood satire and ensemble comedy from lauded playwright David Mamet. A farce about a film production wreaking havoc on small town America, the film featured a very Mametian cast of Alec Baldwin and William H. Macy along with of-the-moment stars … Continue reading "280 – State and Main"

Oh, oh, wrong house. No, the right house. We want to talk to Marilyn Hack, Maryland Hacks and French. I'm from Canada water. Dick Pooh. In the year 2000, the town of Waterford, Vermont, is about to come under siege by Hollywood. This is your movie. This is small town America. They want to close down Main Street.

The question is, who owns the street? What's it about? It's about the quest for purity. I don't want to take my shirt off. You told me they had a... an old myth. It burnt down. How do I do a film called The Old Mill when I don't have an old myth? Well, first you've got to change the title. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that is determined to get the Oprah shot. 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 associate producer credit wielding dynamo. Chris, file. Hello, Chris. Hi. How many people did you give associate producer credits to today? Just between the time that you woke up and you got here. Just flying them around, giving him his tips at the coffee shop. We'll give associate producer credits on this podcast to any guests who come on. That's true. It feels like guests should get an EP credit. They're giving in more than just associate producer credits. Listen, now you're thinking, you're overthinking it.

You're thinking too much. We just associate producer credit. Remember that one Kathy Griffin bit about her hosting the Red Carpet on the VH1 VH1 Fashion Awards? And anytime an interview got dicey, she would just hand him a box of nads and send them to nads the hair removal system or whatever. And she's just like, here's your nads. Go about your business. That's how I feel like about associate producer credits here. It's like, take your nads, go.

Anyway. Anyway. excited to talk about this movie. This movie has been a, we talk about, like, the red meat sort of, you know, absolutely classic depiction of

a This Had Oscar Buzz movie, where it's from that, like, sweet spot of the, like, late 90s to late aughts, and, um, you know, sort of hung around on predictions lists

for a while. Uh, cast full of actors who you could see getting a supporting nomination maybe with some real pedigree behind it, and it ultimately gets released on Christmas week, and it does not do anything. And this is a particularly interesting one, State and Maine, is because in general, unlike movies like All the Pretty Horses or The Legend of Bagger Vance or The Last Samurai, even though that got a nomination or two. State and Maine has sort of maintained, no pun intended,

a pretty good reputation through the years, even as like certain members, you know, certain people associated with and have not maintained as stellar a reputation through the years. But like people seem- People think of this as like the fun mammet. Uh-huh. That's like, yeah.

Also, you know. But- Thoughts about that? Positive. Yeah. I'm going to say this reputation that this movie still maybe has is because people have not watched this movie. Is this your first time watching? Was this your first time watching it since theaters?

Yeah. Yeah. This is mine. I didn't watch it in theaters, but I watched it like as soon as it came out on DVD. So like right around 2000, 2001, probably later 2001 that I watch it. So this is my first time in 20 years, 20 plus years watching it. And I think I came out of it with the exact same feeling. The first time I watched it, I was like, huh, I thought I was going to like that more than I did.

And it's kind of like, you know, unpleasant. And I know that like that's sort of a baby's way of like criticizing a movie, is saying it's unpleasant. But then I watched it again this time thinking, was like fairly certain. I'm like, I'll like this better. I loved Wag the Dog. You know what I mean? And then I watched this.

And I'm like, nope, I feel the exact same way that I remember feeling back then. Objectively unpleasant. Yeah. Yes. And in a way that it's like, some of it is just this is a movie that has not aged well generally. But then, you know, you look into, you even like scratch the surface of the sexual politics of this movie in the first five minutes. And it's like your skin is crawling. I mean, like, this is a movie that thinks that a pedophile is funny. To place this movie, I think so the pedophile is very funny. To place this movie in context, though, because it's like, yes, we did sort of like, we had a different sense of humor, you know, back then, you know, the generalized back then.

But like to place this movie in context, this movie comes out in December of 2000. So the end, the very end of the Bill Clinton presidency. And one of the things that people maybe gloss over when we think about. the Bill Clinton presidency, is that, like, by the end, everybody was ready to move on. Like, everybody, like, Al Gore didn't want Clinton to, and this is a thing that a lot of people have, like, in retrospect, sort of like revisionist history. At the time, Al Gore did not want Bill Clinton campaigning for him because of all the scandals, because of Lewinsky and Paula Jones and all that. Everybody was really ready to be done with the sort of the, the, even supporters of Clinton, a lot of supporters of Clinton, not all of them, there were diehards, of course, but a lot of people who voted for Clinton twice were ready to sort of like wash that sort of like thin veneer of slees off of them. And Gore, you know, of course, like the Republicans were very much campaigning on a like return, returning, you know, respect and honor to the White House. And Gore wasn't really counteracting that. Gore was just like, I'll be fine, guys. Like, don't worry about, I love my wife. Did you see me kiss my wife? at the convention. I, you know what I mean? Like, I'm definitely not cheating on my wife. Like, that was when it was like boring Al Gore was the, and of course, in retrospect, everybody was like,

Clinton, you know, you know, Clinton's a two-term outgoing president. You should have had him campaigning for you. Because in retrospect, Gore lost and I'm using scare quotes there by such a thin margin. Whatever. I'm taking us far afield. The point is, at the end of the Clinton's presidency, people ready to move on. The thing about like... People wanted to move on, but also people wanted to feel free to make fun of these type of things, you know? Yes. Yes.

I always say the thing about the West Wing that people don't remember is that like the West Wing wasn't made as a corrective to the George W. Bush presidency. It was made as a corrective to the Bill Clinton presidency. Like it was, what if we had a liberal president who wasn't a creeping slime ball? And, excuse me. So that's why I feel like in 2000, State and Maine is maybe like miscalculating its moment a little bit because it is sort of trying to be like, isn't this guy charming?

He's having sex with a teenager. Isn't this guy charming? He's, you know, making these like horribly crude comments about Sarah Jessica Parker. You know what I mean? And like, isn't this just sort of like the snappy David Mamet dialogue we come for? And while a lot of people did like this movie,

I think it didn't go over well as an Oscar movie because Oscar movies need to sort of be at least somewhat zeitgeisty. And this movie felt about five years past the zeitgeist in terms of like what we find fun about womanizers, what we find fun about misogynists. And like, and we find fun about this like idea that, you know,

small town people are all pure and good-hearted and scrupulous and everyone from the film industry. is a monster horrible. The Simpsons did that episode like five years before this minimum. Like the whole, remember that one? The Radioactive Man episode where they're like, at the end,

Mickey Rooney's like, they were just a bunch of innocent film people and you took advantage of them. I hope you're all satisfied. You've bankrupted a bunch of naive movie folks. Folks from a Hollywood where values are different. They weren't thinking about the money. They just wanted to tell a story,

a story about a radioactive man. and you slick small towners took them for all they were worth. You would give them some of their money back? No. I mean, I also think that this is also why the movie doesn't age that well because I think we have come across movies that talk about like the toxicity and the sexual toxicity within the film industry. Sure.

That, you know, we're talking about it long before the Harvey Wine scene, thing, and it makes the movies feel more ahead of the curb. This is a movie that also, you know, is talking about it openly, but in a way that feels like it, the satire of it makes it feel like, well, it's not that big of a deal. Like, it's not that toxic. It's funny. It's from the comedic perspective of the producers, right? It's from the comedic perspective of the director.

Like, I feel like, at best, we're supposed to be looking at this movie through. Philip Seymour Hoffman's eyes, who is like the good one, but like, to a point. Who goes to this moral journey of like, I don't know, should I report this man for being a pedophile, you know, and he is supposed to somewhat be an audience surrogate while also being a neurotic artist as well. So it, I mean, like, it, of course is all filtered through, you know, the mammoth lens of everyone is stupid. and everyone has bad and everyone has toxicity within them and everything there are no heroes in this movie right so broadly everything is so broad and you know no one's actually a real person um you know that's the gross uh extreme that i think mammott sometimes goes to but like you know you had things like glen glare glen ross that it's like yes it's that but there's also humanity there this movie was kind of repulsive to me um on it did keep it I don't disagree with you. It did keep making me think of Wag the Dog, and I wonder if maybe I should re-watch Wag the Dog.

But as I remember, Wag the Dog, that's not like a, you know, a weightlessly silly movie. There's darkness in that movie. There's, like, real, you know, despicableness in that movie. That's another movie where there really aren't any heroes. But that movie is also...

But there's also, like, global consequences in that movie. Well, but it also... Stakes. This is about the making... of a shitty movie. But Wag the Dog also has some affection for its characters. I think that is a movie that, like, kind of savages a Robert Evans type in the Dustin Hoffman character, but by the end, has real affection for the way that he sort of believes

in the value of making a picture, you know what I mean? and I think that's one of my favorite Dustin Hoffman performances. I think it's really, really good. That's a really good movie. I should watch it again soon. While also being incredibly cynical and incredibly cynical about politics. And that's another movie that does not, like, you watch these movies and you're like, yeah, I don't think David Mamet was probably a big huge fan of Bill Clinton. And then like, obviously, like his political journey through the years probably backs that up also. You don't say. Um, we'll get into that a little bit, maybe.

The assemblage of people in this movie feels like they are all there purely for the, you know, to be involved in something that has Mamet's name attached to it because this also feels like the end of Mamet's stature in a way, you know, I feel like Mamet... Somewhat, yeah. Somewhat. Like, I think there's kind of a slow death. Like, Mamet has more movies after this. but a lot of them kind of come and go without fanfare. I'm sure they still have their fans. But Mammitt's moving towards this...

Heist in particular, and Heist is the next year, and a lot of people really liked Heist, including me. That's the one where everybody's always sort of like quoting that Danny DeVito line that kind of doesn't make sense, but in a fun way, about everybody wants money. That's why they call it money. But like after that, then you're right. It's like Spartan really lands with a thud. Red belts in 2008 also like doesn't make any impact.

And does he end up doing much television after that? I guess he, like, directs an episode of The Shield. He does that TV show. Oh, right, that TV show The Unit. Remember that on CBS that ran for like an inexplicable three seasons, four seasons, four seasons. See, as a gay man, you tell me there's a show called The Unit. I know, I know. I know. Everybody made everybody made the requisite jokes back then, too.

No, it was Dennis Haysbert was like post-24. They gave him a four-season television show about like, it's a CBS drama. So like, what do you assume it's about? Yes, it is about a special ops unit in the United States military. Like, of course it is. Like all of the shows at 10 p.m. on CBS these days, it's about a special ops unit. Anyway, that was his big sort of television series. And then he directed, wrote and directed the Phil Spector movie on HBO that one time, even though everybody sort of would probably be within their rights to assume that that was yet another Barry Levinson movie because it was like. Right, because of Pacino, HBO, real-life figure, disgraced, you know what I mean? Jack Kovorki and Joe Paterno, Phil Spector.

It feels like a continuum. Yes, yes, yes. Which I didn't see. Did you see Phil Specter? Sure didn't. I don't think I've seen any of those HBO. Nor did I, although I remember watching the Penn State documentary, the Happy Valley documentary, which I thought was quite good. Right, because he has a paterno one, too.

Yeah. Anyway. Is there a Robert Durst one? Or someone else who Durst? Well, there was the television show, but I don't know if they did a... Oh, of course. Yeah. And then the movie predated the Durst...

They're bringing the jinx back this season. Right. The jinx was after. The jinx was after the Ryan Gosling movie. Boy, did they, boy did that guy luck out with in terms of like, I love that. Like, Phil Spector, where it's like, we're going to give you Al Pacino, like, in the most horrible freight wig and, like, scary crone makeup possible. Robert Durst, we're going to give you Ryan Gosling in his prime. Like, jumping out of a lake where.

wearing only tidy whitties. Like, we should do that movie soon. Anyway, we're going to get into a lot. We'll talk about Mamet. We'll talk about the cast of this movie, which is actually a really good cast. Sarah Jessica Parker, what a moment. Sarah Jessica Parker was having her moment. We will talk about it.

Patty Lepone wearing tartan print. Patty Lepone in Rosie the Riveter drag. Patty Lepone singing a closing credit song that was written by David Mammett. There's a lot going on. with Patty in this movie. Patty's the best thing about this movie. She's in like four scenes and she's like, she's barnstorms. She knocked every single one of them out of the park.

If anything is funny in this movie, it's Patty. I think there are some funny lines in this movie, of course, because like they're just like they're throwing so many at you. Like, at least some of them are going to hit. But anyway, we'll talk about it all. Before we do, Chris, do you want to inform our wonderful listeners why they should, if they are not already, be a Patreon member? Listen, we have a Patreon.

We call it in honor of Shirley MacLean's excellent Oscar speech. It's This Had Oscar Buzz Turbulent Brilliance. For $5 a month, you're going to get at least two bonus episodes every month. What is our state in Maine? Our state in Maine is exceptions and excursions. In the exception episodes, we talk about movies that fit that this had Oscar Buzz rubric but manage to score a nomination or two. We've talked about movies like most recently, Molly's Game, The Mirror Has Two Faces, Australia, Pleasantville, Nine.

We're going to keep them coming over there. We have fun with the exceptions. Also, we do excursions, which are like deep dives into Oscar ephemera and adjacencies. We have talked about an entire MTV movie awards over there. We have done Hollywood Reporter Roundtables. We do a lot of other fun things. This month, I believe this month,

or coming this month, or maybe it's already happened, we're going to be doing a deep dive into the 97 EW Fall Movie preview. That'll be next month. This month was we responded to the Oscars. We did our Oscar reaction episode. We're heavy in planning for this year's May mini-year.

I know, you guys. It's very exciting. And it's kind of breaking my brain. It's taking over all things. I don't know any time schedules except for May. More on that later. As we record this, we're about to lose an hour to daylight savings. And it's an hour we can't afford to spare at this point.

We can't. We can't between planning, between research, between all of the above. All of it. All of it. Everything. I mean, maybe we can just get this small little spoiler detail. the May mini-series is going to bleed over into the Patreon as well. So you want to be a completionist for what we've got in store for May and we've got a lot in store for May.

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It's true. It's worth it. Wouldn't you like to give me a cheesy gordita crunch? Wouldn't you like to give Chris a cheesy gordita crunch? You know, it doesn't even have to be a cheesy gordita crunch. Give Joe the cheesy gordita crunch. Get me a Baja Blast. Is Baja Blast with Mountain Dew?

We've had this conversation. I'm just asking. I'm just innocently asking if it has Mountain Dew. Baja Blast was originally the Taco Bell exclusive Mountain Dew that's, like, berry flavored. It is so delicious. I mean, it is the most delicious soda. Every few weeks, Chris will DM me or message me or text me and, like, innocently ask if I like Mountain Dew in some context or another. And I do feel like it's something of a mind control experiment where, like, if you ask me enough time,

I will finally be like, I should try Mountain Dew, but I won't try Mountain Dew. It's not the same as Mountain Dew. Baja Blast is like crisper. It is, you know, less heavy. Regular Mountain Dew feels heavy. When I was in New York... Baja Blast is refreshing. It's light. It's beautiful. When I was in New York last week, I discovered that there is a sonic in the sort of Clinton Hill, Bedstuy, South Williamsburg area. close enough to have it delivered to where I was staying in my hotel. When I tell you, I had two cherry lymades in the span of a five-day trip. Absolutely.

Absolutely no regrets. The crispness, the refreshingness of a sonic lymade of various varieties. Sure. That's what you're getting with a Baja Blast. Sure. All right. You can buy them elsewhere now. Have you not seen the Aubrey Plaza commercials?

I kind of probably just glaze over it. But I will promise to pay more attention next time. All right. Listener, this is also Joe just trying to drag me because I posed to the group chat with Joe and Katie that Madam Webb made me want to have a Code Red, which was also a delicious soda, but not as good as Baja Blast. And they both dragged me into the town square and publicly flogged me. Code Red, delicious. Loved that easy. Oh, what is the flogged?

Flop, uh, jester flop in the clown square. We kind of did give Chris the jester flop in the clown square. They tried to say I was that for liking code red. Listen, listen, do you remember Ruby Red Squirt? I was a huge fan of Ruby Red Squirt. So I probably have no leg to standout. I do love a squirt. Remember Surge?

The rotted soda soda. They were really trying to make Surge happen when I was in college. And so we felt the effects of that. Um, I had one night, I think it was the last night before Chris, break at school the one time. And we filled a two-liter of Ruby Red Squirt. We took, we like poured half of it out, filled the other half of it with vodka. So it was half of Ruby Red Squirt and half vodka. Did you say you were in high school? College. Sorry. Did I say high school? College. I was like, you're a bad kid. Well, we were bad kids in high school. But no,

college, last night before winter break. Half, a two-liter bottle, half Ruby Red, red squirt and half vodka, that so the legend goes, I just, like, started walking around with, like, it was, like, in my hand the entire night. And then the next morning, woke up to, um, red splash stains, like, on the walls, on my computer, on, like, everywhere. And I was just, like, I didn't, like, throw up, but I, like, was very sloshy with the, uh, Ruby Red Squirt. Messy Queen. Messy Queen.

For real, messy queen. Anyway, we are here to talk about not my college exploits, but State and Maine, the 2000 film, written and directed by David Mamet. We'll get into it. There's a lot to get into.

Starring William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sarah Jessica Parker, so many triple names, my goodness. Alec Baldwin, Julius Stiles, Clark, Gregg, Rebecca Pigeon,

Charles Durning, a very underutilized Charles Durning, as far as I'm concerned. David Pamer, Paddy Lepone, the great Ricky Jay, premiered on September 8, 2000 at the Toronto International Film Festival

before being released in limited release on December 22, 2000. Chris, I'm going to pull out my stopwatch if you are ready with a 60-second plot description. Sure.

All right. Your time starts now. All right, we're following the production of an independent feature called The Old Mill. It is being filmed on location in New England, in Vermont, actually, after already being kicked out of another town because the star of the movie is a gross pedophile. And anyway, they immediately ingratiate themselves to the town, and there's like a whole dichotomy of like, look at these small town people with these awful Hollywood people. They are having production issues because the town they chose to film in does not have an old mill in it.

So they have to do a rewrite on the script. Also, the star played by Sarah Jessica Parker doesn't want to do her contractually obligated nude scene. So there's a lot of conflict between that. The writer of the playwright who wrote the script is now played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. He has to find a way to write around not having an old mill and rewriting around her nude scene. Also, Alec Baldwin, the pedophile star is moving in on Julia Stiles, a local barista, basically. She works in a diner. And they get in a car wreck together, which the writer witnesses, and then he has to have this whole conflict of like, am I going to report this pedophile?

And anyway, the movie gets made, no nude scene, no old mill. Nine seconds over, not bad. I'm going to plot in this movie. I mean, sometimes when, sometimes considering the movies we talk about, when we get a good, like, hour 45 or a hundred minute movie, I'm like, thank God. Oh, yes. The thing about the plot of State and Maine is there's a lot of it that really appeals to me. The idea that they go to this small town to film their movie The Old Mill because they've heard that this town has an old mill. And then they find out that the Old Mill burned down like decades ago.

It's very, again, not to bring up The Simpsons, but it's very going to Knoxville for the World's Fair and finding out that the World's Fair was decades ago. and now it's just a tower full of wigs. Anyway, there's a lot that appeals to me about that, about, like, Philip Seymour Hoffman having to write around these, like, production issues that they don't have enough money for X and Y, and they have to, and he's sort of trying to, it's a very kind of, like, a more comedic, more sort of lightly comedic Barton Fink thing,

where it's he's trying to maintain this sense of, you know, great purpose to the script. It's about purity. It's about, you know, whatever. And that's why she won't show her breasts because it's about purity and that kind of thing. I think the movie, there's a lot of faux edginess to this movie, which is like maybe my biggest problem with this movie. And because by this point, Mamet-Mammett-style edginess where it's like Bill Macy is like saying F-slurs. There was a point in which the David Mamet,

style became an adjective, and then at some point, Mamet himself doing the Mamet style became kind of like, if not self-parody, like this very effortful need to meet his own reputation. And so, yeah, there's a lot of, right, there's a lot of kind of gratuitous throwing in of... Very writerly dialogue that I would argue maybe Sorkin took up his mantle, at least on screen, in terms of, like, well, that became the style that other people would emulate and, like, audiences would eventually somewhat tire of.

I think certain characters, it really works well in, with, with certain characters, that style works really well in this movie. I think David Pamer carries it off very well as the, like, completely amoral producer who, you know, will get, will, like, sort of, like, gleefully make. the most, you know, hateful choice possible in order to get the movie done and on time and whatever. And I think on completely the opposite end of that coin, I think Rebecca Pigeon

as the sort of small town, you know, has these sort of aspirations. She falls for the writer. She's incredibly sort of enthusiastic. We'll get into it maybe in a little bit. Rebecca Pigeon is an actress who I've only ever seen in David Mammett movies. Of course, she's David Mammett's partner. I believe she still is. She's the theater actress, too. I've never seen her in any other movies, though, and she sort of had a mass reputation of being like, oh, she's a bad actress who's only in David Mamet movies because they're together. I've liked her in every single David Mamet movie. I've ever seen her in

I think she's pretty good in the movie. I think she's one of my favorite parts of this movie. I think she's really funny. I think this character is, like, so precious as written. Like, look at this wonderful woman who like does local theater and falls in love with this playwright, this like master playwright who comes to town. Yeah. And she's the one who like sets him on the right path, yada, yada, yada, yada. But it doesn't feel that way and the way that she performs it. I agree. I agree. Cutsie in the way that it could have been as. It's not cloying. It's not no, I agree. I think it's a really well-done performance. Her chemistry with Philip Seymour Hoffman is very believable.

Whereas I don't think many relationships in this movie come off as believable. I think Pamer Pigeon and, well, like, Ricky Jay doesn't get a ton to do, but like whatever he gets to do, he's great at. Who cares? When Ricky Jay shows up, it's like, just let the man talk. He's my favorite. I love him so much. But anyway, so I think that mammoth dialogue starts to become perfunctory and sort of the mammoth edge, this idea that like everybody has to be. the most sort of verbosely amoral and and you know venal and dumb and

you know what I mean like the comedy here it's like I don't know there's just something that feels overdetermined about all of it and it feels like a lot of the punchlines in this movie aren't organic to the story it feels very much like these are just like

lines that Mamet had sitting around that he wanted to throw into a script at some time. I, it's not even, like, I think a lot of people watching this movie today would probably come, come away from it, being sort of amazed

at how, sort of, how much, how much it hasn't aged well in terms of the, you know, making light of the, you know, the sexual transgressions,

and pedophilia of the Baldwin character of the, you know, terrible ways in which the... And this movie is aware that, like, the way that Sarah Jessica Parker's character is treated is not good. You know what I mean? Like, this is... It's not a lot of humor... It's not like blithely, you know,

being part of the problem, but it's also, like, kind of part of the problem. It's still having a laugh at her getting demeaned. And so... But that kind of thing, to me, is not my biggest problem with this movie. I think in a movie that is more... cleverly, elegantly, you know, better written, I would probably find ways to accept those elements a lot better than this, which is taking those elements, those ugly elements, and placing it into a movie that is trying so very hard to be edgy, that it comes across as just being stilted and stunted. Yeah, yeah. I think there's a-

None of those ideas are really all of that surprising or fresh, you know. A lot of these characters are playing basically archetypes. It's 2000. We cannot be scandalized by, like, Hollywood types being slick or liars or flatterers. You know what I mean? Like, you're right. Like, it's old tropes by this point. And I would say that the, with the exception of...

The player was eight years before this. Right. Right. Right. With the exception of Rebecca Pigeon's character, Annie, you know, Mamet is someone whose work, especially back to Oliana, is often, you know, called sexist and such. And this, I mean, you know, Oliana is kind of this, like, object that is, you know, not real people. It's just like this object that's just like this object that's designed to piss everybody off. And in that way, like, it just, like, it just. has no chance of pissing me off because it's so clear that that's what its intentions are. Yeah. State and Maine, I felt, was actually kind of really sexist

because with the Sarah Jessica Parker character, on top of the way that everybody treats her, her, you know, her behavior around this idea of a nude scene is all essentially she's portrayed as a manipulator because she wants to get more money, which it's just like, well, yeah, give her more money. That's not, to me, that's not manipulative. Then, of course, it's just like she's sexually degraded throughout the whole thing

because it's like, the whole country has seen her breasts. Why wouldn't she show her breasts? And it's just like, that's the repeated line throughout. And it's like, I think we got it the first time you said that. There's a sense in Hollywood, the more you sort of like hear these stories from people and read these things, is that for actresses, they will experience bad male behavior again and again and again and again. And then decades later, write a book about it or sort of tell some stories about it and sort of unload. And on the flip side, a male actor-writer-producer will experience one actress who behaves selfishly,

or irrationally or, you know, whatever, and then we'll spend the rest of their career writing movies where actresses are flighty, you know, overly emotional nightmares. And it's like, it's, it's an interesting, you know, way that, like, this kind of battle of the sexes has been played out in Hollywood, where, like, I have no doubt that, like, there are actresses who are absolutely irrational in this way. Like, we've, like... There's also directors, writer directors, playwrights, who are also themselves irrational. Right.

You know. Yeah. It's about, I guess, a position of power. I would also take umbrage with the fact that this also feels like such a late 90s, You know, male perspective like people like Mamet, where the Julia Stiles character, who is supposed, how old is she supposed to be in this? I was going to ask you, they never say, and she's like plausibly anywhere from 15 to 17 and a half. You know what I mean? She is a child in this movie. And she is portrayed as being the manipulator. She's the pursuer. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, she is trying. She only points the finger when she feels spurned. Yeah, a teenager might have a sexual impulse, but like the movie doesn't have the perspective of an adult in that situation can exit that situation and the adult can have responsibility in this. The movie's POV is like Alec Baldwin is a sleaze, but like you got to hand it to him. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. Right. Right. Like, and, you know, I don't, I don't necessarily fault Baldwin's performance.

No, I think he's good actually. the character as it's written, but it's just so... Alec Baldwin is one of those people who at the very same... You know, talk about like you can hold two thoughts in your head at once. At the very same time, always, I think, God, Alec Baldwin is good, and we maybe are too hard on Alec Baldwin, and maybe he's mostly just a kook and kind of a, you know, a crank and a kook, and, you know, we maybe put up with it because we get really good comments. out of him

and then the other side of me is we let Alec Baldwin get away with far too much and he's just like you know what I mean at the same time

I think we it's both he's so good at playing a monster maybe because he's a monster I'm not telling him about but like he plays monsters

very well I don't think he's like I don't get that sense of him either it's just that like he's just the most like over and overindulged

somebody at some point told him he was smart, and he's like, you know what I am. And then he's, like, writing op-eds and, you know, doing a podcast and whatever. I will say... We don't think we're... All that to say, we don't think we're that smart here. Underrated podcaster was Alec Baldwin. He asked, like, direct...

I mean, like, he's still full of shit, but he asked the, like, non-bullshitty questions. I would say. People like that, though. I give people a lot of rope once I can be like, well, yeah, you're full of shit. I know that going in. So I can like filter everything you're saying through my filter of, all right, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not going to like take everything that you say is gospel. But then within that context, I'm sure going to let you have a 60-minute conversation with Paduropon about something. I'm sure going to like listen to you interview Elaine Stritch and have her call you Alex for the entire interview. And it's the greatest thing I've ever heard.

Tremendous. All this to say that, like, this felt so of a piece with 90s male perspective, or especially late 90s, late 90s faux liberalism of like, yeah, but aren't all these women also awful and manipulative too? Yes. And it's like, isn't Paula Jones just a bitch? Like, can't we like... Right.

Yeah, Bill Clinton probably did all of those things. But also, like, isn't Paula Jones just like a real piece of work? Like, we don't like her, right? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, I, like, who was a voting age for the 2000 election, absolutely was part of the problem for that. Because I was also that was just like, can't I just like vote for Clinton again? because, like, yeah, he probably, like, you know, did all of those things, but, like, you got to hand it to him. You know what I mean?

Like, I was, like, you know, media race. Yeah. There you go. Chris, the Vulture Movie Fantasy League is in the books for another year. We are here closing the doors on the movies Fantasy League. It'll be back before you know it. But, you know, for right now, we're going to take a little time to post-mortem. We had quite the thrilling finish, I should say, in the main league.

Oppenheimer points. I have been waiting for it all season long. And finally, when we got to the point where I'm like, maybe it won't actually happen, maybe it won't be enough. And it turned out that it was. Ben Chung, who is a team name and a person name all at once, like just names. Like, just named the team after himself. He tweeted at me after he won, came back from, you know, behind to take victory.

And he tweeted, he didn't tweet at me, but he, like, added me in his tweet about, like, he's like, I just sort of decided to enter this on a whim. He's like a cardiologist and just decided to like. Cardiac surgeon, I thought. Cardiac surgeon, that's right. Very emotional. Well, yes, yes. And then so then in my mentions. It's like all of Ben Chung's cardiac surgeon friends being like, looks pretty cool.

Congratulations. That was pretty impressive. Like all this sort of stuff, which is like, it's just, it's not one of these like, you know, movie freaks or whatever. It's just not all of us rotted, awful, cynical movie lovers and game players. Just, you know, nice, good people doing good things. Took a flyer on robot dreams and it paid off. No, his roster was very strong. Oppenheimer and Barbie.

is he took both of them, which was the route that I took. Let's see what I can fill out my roster with if I take Oppenheimer and Barbie. And he filled it out very smartly. He took poor things in American fiction, as literally everybody did. There was a stat that we have in the newsletter going out this week that something like the top 500-something teams took poor things. Like you had to go down the standings to like the 500. before you got to a team that didn't have poor things on their roster. And American Fiction was similarly, like, well represented.

Like, those two movies, everybody who did well had those movies, which makes sense, because they were the best values of the Best Picture Nominies. He also had 20 Days in Mario Poll, which really helps. So, like, a lot, all that, all those points racked up on Oscar night and ended up with a victory. So congratulations to Ben. on a game well played, bumped the the gang of seven as I had come to know them as the people who had been in the lead.

The seven teams, four of them, I think, were Gary's that had been in the lead from, for like the past two months at the last possible minute were bumped out of the top 12, which means out of any prizes whatsoever, which is a tough break, but was kind of always lurking in the wings. waiting to happen and tried to warn them as best as I could. And then over in the podcast league,

my friend Katie Rich took in the win for the podcast key. Katie had pulled it out ahead in the last couple weeks with her Oppenheimer points, and they kept her in the lead. I was in second. Chris, you were third? I was. It looks like I was six. You were six.

Okay, where, okay, perhaps. So here's the thing. is there was a tabulation error that we discovered in when I audited the scores. It was the literal last column, last cell in the last column that I was checking in the audit. And it discovered that I had undercounted Zone of Interest's Oscar points. So once I did that, things sort of shuffled around. Hold on a second and let me see. Because I feel like-

Cass, our friend, Richard Lawson, Richard, you can, that's dirt in your eye. Yeah, I think it was. I think you had passed Richard. What was the final standings? It was Katie. Then it was me. David Sims took third. Justin Koo from Cows in the field.

And then you, Chris, were in fifth. The highest ranked podcaster to not draft Oppenheimer. Regardless. Very well done. Very good. And then over in the Vulture Staff League, God. Rebecca Alter had been in first place in the Vulture Staff League from bell to bell, from the very beginning, from the very first week, all the way up until the end, when me and my dumb Oppenheimer points took first place and I beat Rebecca by one point. to which I say

if Rebecca wants to like punch me in the face next time she sees me which would be the first time we haven't met ever face to face Rebecca you have my permission that's a bad beat and I would be livid and also the fuck am I playing for but I like I don't know I like to play anyway

Anyway Gary's we hope that you had fun with the game this year I like doing these inserts not just because you know we love games here on this show but also I feel like it gives us a really strict avenue to discuss the season as it is happening. That's right. That's right.

Which is nice. It will be nice when we jump back in it again next fall. And until then, if you want to sign up for our Patreon, we could be doing a few Oscar race check-ins in the spring and summer, which I think will be very fun to sort of like get the lay of the land pretty early. So plug, plug, plug for our Patreon. Otherwise, we will send you back to your regularly scheduled. What is this week's episode?

State and Maine. State and Maine. Back to the old mill. You go. Happy season. Thank you all for participating. And we'll see you next time. Anyway, I think to place this all in context,

we should probably lead with the mammoth of it all, who is a sort of like one of the great 20th century American playwrights, no matter how you slice it, it's just he's one of the giants. And like, I haven't seen most of his stuff. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know if I've ever seen a mammoth show on stage, which is kind of crazy. It's because whenever they do a mammoth play, they fucking sell out immediately. You know what I mean? Like, everybody, All the Normies go to see the mammoth play. Because, like, so it's like, no, I never saw Speed the Plow. Well, I didn't see Speed the Plow because, like, Jeremy Piven went on Mercury Poison. The Jeremy Piven of it all. Jeremy Piven and his mercury poisoning from eating too much sushi, so he says. What a great story that was.

Jeremy Piven was supposed to be in the Speed the Plow revival in the late aughts, I believe. I just moved to New York around that time. Did he go through previews? I don't think he, did he, no, he opened the show. He opened the show. Yeah, I think he did. Because that was the thing. He opened the show, and it's like, Lizzie Moss and Rala Sparza get all of the rave review.

Right. It was Rala Sparza and Lizzie Moss. And he's like, oh, I can't do this anymore. I've eaten too much sushi and got mercury poisoning. Speed the Plow was also famously the play that Madonna performed in, and its original incarnation, which was her, Joe Montenia, and Frick, who was the third one? I can't remember now, but anyway. Sort of, like, hugely, like, that was such a big deal when, like, you know, Madonna's on Broadway kind of a thing.

But he's also done, like, American Buffalo, which is, like, another, like, you know, hugely influential play, even though I could not tell you what it's about. Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, of course, I've seen the movie, but, like, that's the one. he won the Pulitzer Prize for in 1984. He makes the jump to screenwriting in the 1980s. He ultimately directs

well before that even he had done the screen he'd been a screenplay writer even before that. And so it's the verdict in 1982 he gets an Oscar nomination for doing that adaptation. He then

does the adaptation for or does the screenplay, I should say, for the Untouchables. Of course, the Untouchables is a big popular hit. Sean Connery wins the Academy Award. And then that same year, he adapts his own play House of Games into a movie that is directed by him, starring his, at that time, wife, Lindsay Krause. We watched this movie in a film class that I took. I took very, I took three, I think, total film classes, maybe four across. My school did not. have a film program, but it had one film class per semester that they offered via the communication studies program. And so I took as, you know, anything that I could to take a film class, so one of them, which I think was in my film criticism class, House of Games we watched, which is why, like, I'm the only person I know who's seen House of Games, because

it's criterion. Is it a criterion? It's a question I want to catch up to you. It's very typically, you know, it's about con artists and, you know, fast talkers, and I think Montenia is also in that one. This was, you know, State and Main is one of the very few movies of, yeah, it's Lindsay Krause, Joe Montagna, Ricky J. J.T. Walsh. Like, you could not ask for a more like stereotypically meat and potatoes, David Mammock cast without having actually William H. Macy in it. Then he does the script for We're No Angels, which is the Neil Jordan movie that starred

Robert De Niro and Sean Penn. Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross gets adapted into a film in 1992, which he does not direct, but he does do the screenplay adaptation of his own play for. He does the script for Hoffa in 92. He then directs the adaptation of his play, Olianna, which is a play I Only Know by Reputation, which was essentially, what if you were a college professor and your student threatened to cry rape on you to get a better grade, right? That's sort of what it was, was to... manipulate you. And so, you know, sexual politics and whatever. And it's like, again, very 90s edgy. What if the woman was the villain? American Buffalo, there's a film version of it, although nobody ever talks about the film. Nobody ever talks.

It's weird because Glenclare or Glen Ross, which I think is a great movie, like, is so good. And it draws such star attention that you would think. think it would still, I mean, like, I'm almost curious to see both of those movies, because maybe they're just very pedestrianly made. But you would think there would be more heat around Oliana and American Buffalo as adaptations, and there just isn't. There isn't. Yeah. I guess, I guess Bill Macy wasn't necessarily that big of a star by then, because this would have also been pre-Fargo for the Lleana movie. But American Buffalo has like, Dennis Franz and Dustin Hoffman. Dennis France and Prime NYPD Blue, like, mode.

You know what I mean? Like, yeah, and then Dustin Hoffman. And the movie's like a non-entity. The Spanish prisoner got more attention, although I didn't see that at the time. I'd like to go back and visit that now. That's the one with, among other people, Steve Martin. Ben Gazara, Felicity Huffman, Ricky J., Steve Martin, Rebecca Pigeon. Campbell Scott, right?

Campbell Scott. What's that? Yeah, Campbell Scott. Campbell Scott. Um... It's interesting that they, oh, they must do the poster in alphabetical order. I was like, why did they order things like that? It's alphabetical order.

That same year as the Spanish prisoner is both The Edge and Wag the Dogg the Dog, which he does screenplay for both of them. Lee Tomahorri directed The Edge and Barry Levinson directed Wag the Dog. Two of my favorite Mamet connected movies, The Edge and Wag the Dog. Both of those are the exact kind of fun I wanted, not the kind of fun, but like the exact level of fun I wanted out of State and Maine. The Edge is a fucking hoot and a half of a movie with like, that's a movie where the very sort of like writerly David Mamet stuff works really well because it's like everybody's emotions are on 10 and there's a fucking bear at some point. and that's Alec Baldwin. Again, Baldwin's in Glengarry, Glenn Ross, and The Edge, and Staten Main.

I just love The Edge. I think it's so fun. And then Wag the Dog is, I mean, I talked about it before, I think it's a tremendously good and funny, and everything that State and Maine wants to do, I think Wag the Dog is doing. Wage the script for Ronan under a pen name, which I think is interesting. adapts his own... Is the Winslow Boy his own player? Is he adapting somebody else's...

No, it's the Terrence Radigan play. Yeah. The Winslow Boy. That maybe kind of doesn't happen. Yeah. Nigel Hawthorne, Jeremy Northam, Rebecca Pigeons and that. At this point, Rebecca Pigeons and everything.

And then it's State and Maine in 2000. And then 2001, it's... He does one of, like... He does a polish on Hannibal. Yeah, 20 writers. one of 20 writers who does a polish on Hannibal, he eventually gets half of the writing credit along with Steven Zalian, even though I imagine those two never sat in the same room together.

And then heist, which again is a fun heist movie. It's a good time. Hackman's in it, Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo, Sam Rockwell, and then of course Rebecca Pigeon and Ricky Jay, as are always. So, like, Mamet's got this sort of, you know, the rotating cast of characters who, like, follow it's, you know, Joe Montagnia, like we said, William H. Macy is in almost all of the Mamet movies. Ricky Jay, Rebecca Pigeon, who sort of, it's, you see this with a lot of playwrights

who end up doing a lot of movies where they know the rhythms of this. guy's dialogue. They know how to... There's not a lot of, like, learning curve with it, right? So, um, they can, they can get up to speed with it fairly quickly. And it eventually, I think, wears out its welcome along the better part of two decades, right? We're like, by the end, I think everybody's like, oh, okay, like, we sort of, we know what we're getting with a mammoth movie. Well, and I think there's a certain degree that it goes out of fast. And, you know, sometimes that just happens with writers, like, they produce so much work because, like, we're not even getting, we're not really even skimming the surface of his plays. And because there's so fucking many of them that, you know, the really lauded and celebrated ones like Glenn Glary Gunn Ross, it's just like that eventually just floats to the top. And like, yeah, Mamet, I think has, like, publicly said some things that have, like, well, scotten him in hot water.

And you wonder what the chicken or the egg of that is, too, is does his career take a downturn and then he gets a little embittered and maybe his tongue gets a little loosened and he goes on Joe Rogan and talks about how, you know, whatever, like Barack Obama's going to ruin this country or whatever and, you know, Donald Trump will be a great president, yada, yada, yada, yada. Or does he sort of go off on those tangents and then everybody's like, you know what, I don't need to. to pretend I like David Mamet movies anymore. I don't like David Mamet plays anymore, you know? So, um, I think the, I think the, you know, overwhelming perception of Mamet and his work has become empty provocation. Yeah. You know, and so we're just not interested.

We have less patience for it and we're just not as interested. State and Maine, however, it's interesting because it is just basically comedy. It's not necessarily. I would even say, you know, the Hollywood satire of it when, you know, conversations around some of this behavior was not even as open. Or maybe it was so open and it, the nature of making it satire made it feel like it wasn't. But there's not really provocation here. There's not really, even the, you know, as you said, it feels old-color humor.

It doesn't feel like it's button pushing in this movie. No, not by 2000. Like, we'd seen too much at this point. We'd gone through the entire 90s sort of, after the entire 90s indie wave had like come through, there was no way we were going to be scandalized or sort of even titillated by this kind of stuff. And I think you're right, the Hollywood, the observations about Hollywood feel very warmed over. And there is a great William H. Macy performance hidden in this movie. And it doesn't really get on earthed. But like, there's, there's potentially really great.

William H. Macy stuff happening here. There's, I mean, like, there's just a delight. And, like, we used to just have this in movies. Yeah. You know, movies used to just give us Bill Macy saying words. Yeah. And that's all we need. Yep.

But you're right to say that there's, like, a great Bill Macy performance, you know, buried in this movie. Yeah. If he was maybe the protagonist, and I would argue if there's a protagonist. He should be. Seymour Hoffman in this movie. Yeah, but it should be Macy. Right, because if it wants to be the comedy that it wants to be, why isn't Bill Macy the protagonist of the movie?

Yeah. Because even lines that I'm like, okay, David Mamet, are funny coming from Bill Macy, like the Edith Head puking and the puk made the costumes or something and like... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's baggy, but it's not homosexual. Right, right. Even some of the off-color stuff, like the whole thing about, like, the whole thing about, like, like, you know, she goes topless for voiceover. Right.

It's like a nasty comment, but it's very funny. Well, I mean, like, I felt like watching it. I was like, I should be laughing, but it is pleasurable hearing, you know, the ratatat come out of Bill Macy's mouth. He's somebody. I mean, I would also say this movie is a little bit more of a missed opportunity to me when I was watching it, especially when you get the sequence at the end of the movie where you watch them filming the old mill or whatever they take title to. I loved that. I thought that was so

funny. I thought it, I thought that I was like, well, this is what the movie should have been. Not a satire of these Hollywood types, but a satire of these not very good, but self-serious middle-brow movies of the moment of 2000. It's the one timely joke that they get is the way that they have to shoehorn in the dot com sponsorship into the sign at the end that's the one good like um actually like of the time joke that that uh they get in there but like you think about the movies of this type of era and like i wouldn't maybe even lump state in main with them but like the movies we talk about of this era that it's just like faux serious middle middle brow Brackett's derogatory, even though, like, we normally like middlebrow.

I love middlebrow, yeah. That I'm like, I would watch the movie where David Mamet, like, rakes those movies and that style of storytelling and filmmaking over the coals. Or, you would watch that any day over Mamet talking about Hollywood types. It's a little self-referential, but I would even, like, take Mamet, like, taking his imitators to task. You know what I mean? Sure, sure. Well, because the only one he goes soft on is the playwrights. right in this movie, which feels like

Mamet daring us to say that, you know, empty provocation. Yeah. But like, or maybe it's just that the character doesn't seem as stupid when Philip Seymour Hoffman plays it, because... But even still,

like, Philip Seymour Hoffman radiates intelligence at this point in his career, even though, well, yeah, it's not like he always plays intelligence. Instant credibility, you know, he's not really Even in something like Boogie Nights, he's not showing up on screen and, well, maybe Boogie Nights is the exception, but like... Right.

Boogie Nights is the exception. Yeah, he's not playing failures yet. But he doesn't radiate sincerity either. I think up until this point, his only truly sincere role had been Magnolia. Right. But he plays that role so well that, like, it kind of rolls over a little bit into... This is also the one where, like, he looks as so... So, like, his physical appearance in this is most like his Magnolia character, right?

That's sort of the, like, and it makes sense because they did these sort of back-to-back. But, like, Ripley, in Ripley, he's not sincere. Incentive a woman, he's not sincere. He's not sincere, but he's credible. Oh, well, fair. Facts. But, like, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't radiate sincerity up until this point. So, like, it's interesting to see him played as the sort of moral center.

But I think also that's one of the things that Mamet actually plays with that's sort of, you know, interesting in this is like, Hoffman's supposed to be our moral center. And yet I fully think he was going, he was on the road to lying on that witness stand until Pamer bails him out with paying off Clark Gregg's character. Such a weird role for Philip Seymour Hoffman. I can understand Philip Seymour Hoffman in a mammoth movie, but in this role, it's not what I don't love the role for him. And he was doing so much. This is the same year that he does Almost Famous, which every year that goes by, you know Almost Famous is one of my like very, very favorite movies of all time. Every year that goes by for whatever reason, I did not start at a 10 with Hoffman in that movie. And I don't know why.

I think it's maybe because I'm much more, I was much swoonier over the sort of more glamorous, you know, Kate Hudson and Billy Crudeup. And I still love those performances a lot, a lot, a lot. But every year that goes by, I am much more attuned to Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance as Lester Bangs in that movie, perhaps unsurprisingly. That is a movie that is destined to grow old with you in a way that feels like a constant companion. You feel his cynicism a lot more. You feel the triumph of his love for this art form overcoming that cynicism. criticism even more. It is a, it's truly a performance that gets more complex and more dazzling

the more I sit with it over the years. And it is truly a shame. Philips Seymour Hoffman's performances. Probably too, but it gets truly ashamed that that was not nominated, even though like that movie was obviously on Oscars radar, gets two supporting actress nominations, wins the screenplay award for Cameron Crow, should have been a best picture nominee. The reception around that movie was such bullshit, like, and maybe because it was kind of set up for failure by nature. If that movie makes $20 million more dollars at the box office, it is hailed in its time as a masterpiece. Like, that's one of the things where, like, you really kind of feel bitter about the economic imperative about Hollywood, and that, like,

economic failure makes people connote creative failure. And it's, it's a real fucking Bummer. Meanwhile, it's a movie that probably makes money in perpetuity as much as any other camera movie. One billion. I feel like, yeah, through all revenue streams, I guarantee you that movie has made money handover fist. Um, one of the greats. One of the greats. One of the great. The director's cut of that movie. Oh, I own it. I own both of them. I own both of them. I want to see the director. It's, it's mostly just more of it, but like more of that movie is so, you know, entertaining and wonderful. You get the scene. You can lose an afternoon to the movie rather than two hours right right exactly um there's a lot more of uh russell and penny as a sort of like road

couple in that movie where like you you get their relationship a little bit more in the movie which is nice um just a tremendous tremendous tremendous tremendous movie everybody in that movie is good fruza balk in that movie fruze a bulk man hell yeah my friend john and i will also bring up our favorite line of hers from that movie when the end and when she she's sort of, uh, the tour is wrapping up and she sits down and she's going to tell Russell, uh, what's what. And she goes, Can you believe these new girls? None of them use birth control. And they eat all the steak. It's such a good fucking line. It's so good.

Anyway, um, that's a better 2000 movie than State and Maine. Um, for sure. Better Philip Seymour Hoffman movie. So William H. Macy thing is interesting. He gets his Oscar nomination a few years before this for Fargo, but he's like, he's a Mamet guy. He comes up with Mamet. They're like Atlantic Theatre Company founders, I'm pretty sure. I think that's where he met Felicity Huffman, that's, you know, marriage that ended in felony for one of them. so he's like a dyed-in-the-wull mammat guy and of course like his career breaks out in you know untold ways from there but he's so like the fact that like now he's getting to be well I guess he had already starred in Oliana but this feels like a more sort of widely pitched movie even though it's what is the production company it's fine line fine line which we haven't really talked to about before. Fine line did a lot of all the movies in the 90s. It,

yeah, it was basically underneath New Line and I think there's some question with a lot of the rights to their movies. That's why I think Criterion has a lot of Fine Line movies. Gotcha. Like Hedwig and the Engage. Right.

So yeah. But like Fine Line basically died out around the time that Warner Independent was also starting to. But it wasn't like, well, Fine Line just folded into Warner Independent. Well, was New Line ever independent of Warner Brothers? Or was New Line always connected to? Yes, because, like, New Line is basically the house that Freddie Krueger made.

Right, right, that's right. But I think for a while, it was situated underneath Warner Brothers, because he was always see that, like, a Time Warner Company. In the same way. Eventually, I believe they were absorbed. But now, I mean, they still, new lines still obviously exists under the Warner Brothers banner. Right, but feels much, much more of a dependent than even that used to in the older days when it felt like it was doing its own thing a little bit more. Bill Macy, though, this kind of led to an era of a lot of independent movies led by Bill Macy, like The Cooler, which eventually just gets a nomination.

Macy and Baldwin would both do the cooler together, yeah. Baldwin's lone Oscar nomination. Baldwin's lone Oscar nomination. We maybe don't talk about the fact that Bill Macy only has a nomination for Fargo, and it feels like such a missed opportunity that they didn't give it to him for Fargo. Should have been a lead also nomination. Right, because he spends the season being awarded or mentioned as a lead and then gets a supporting nomination. In terms of stature of who he was, it makes sense as a supporting, but, like, that's a lead performance.

He's in so much more of the movie even than McDormand is, even though I, her, you know, she's the sort of rebuke I have for the people who, like, bust out screen time stats when they talk about lead versus supporting. It's like, it's like, it's her and Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. We're both of them. It's like, yeah, both of them are, like, if you go by screen time, they're supporting, but, like, come on, watch a movie and, like, tell me who's, who's. you know, who's a lead and who's not come up. Well, and William H. Macy was doing shameless for so long, too. Or is that show still going? No, it's done.

Let him do. Because that was Jeremy Allen White. Jeremy Allen White was on that show. That was the thing that I, like, knew him from before The Bear. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was great on that show. But it does feel like the time, I mean, he's the type of performer that, like, the time has never passed.

He could be getting Oscar nomination. into the last of his days. But, I mean, it's been basically 30 years since he's been nominated for something. But maybe now that he doesn't have shameless, we can see him in more movies. Because it doesn't really feel like I've seen him in a movie in a long time. Right. He's in room, but he's in like two scenes in room. He's in like two scenes in room.

What has he got coming up? I wonder, hold on a second. Let me see. Bill Macy. I remember. when SNL was doing coffee talk

and they had they were talking about the Oscar nominations that year and Linda Richmond was talking about Bill Macy you know that I didn't know

that nice the husband from Maud got an Oscar nomination Anyway, he's in John Malkovich He's in the new planet of the apes movie unsure whether he's

a human or an ape in that movie I don't know if there are humans in that movie. There are humans in that movie. Okay. If he's a human, he's not in the trailer. He's definitely not in the trailer. Safe to say he's not getting an Oscar movie. I've seen that trailer eight billion

times. Um, he's in the new Peter Farrelly movie with Zach Efron and Jermaine Fowler. Um, he's in a movie called On Fire as, oh, he's

playing Jack Buck. That's interesting. The, um, Uh, hold on. Give me a second. Like the, like, baseball announcer, guy, Jackbook? I think. Interesting. Yeah, interesting.

Okay. Um, we'll learn more about this movie, apparently, and find out. Um, but anyway, love William H. Macy. Love that guy. Um. I want to talk about Sarah Jessica Parker. Of course you do. What a moment for Sarah Jessica Parker.

Parker, too, because season three of Sex and the City had just ended at this point. No. Season two, I think, had just ended, right? No, the show started in 98. Oh, because this is late 2000. You're right. You're right. Yes.

Yes. So at this point, I think she is about to earn her second Golden Globe for the show. Yeah, she had won her first in January of 2000. Yeah. And the show wins. I thought it won the comedy Emmy. in the third season? I think that's maybe right, yes.

Which is wild, because season four is so good. She doesn't win the Emmy until the final final season, but she had like the Globes loved her. She won the Emmy the final season, and so did Cynthia Nixon, or did Cynthia Nixon win for the show before she did? No, Cynthia Nixon and Sarah Jessica Parker both won in the final year.

What a time. Sarah Jessica Parker won the Golden Globe for the second season of Sex and the City. And it is one of the most, and like, no one has been happier to win a golden globe. Well, yes, but also, and like, this is not, I don't mean to be overly mean to Sarah Jessica Parker, but it's one of the least sincere speeches I've ever seen in my entire life where, like, the Taylor Swift, me, I can't believe you. I never win anything. Oh, I'm so flabbergasted. It's like, it's a lot. It's a lot, a lot, a lot. There's one point where it cuts to the audience, and Rob Lowe's wife is fully like, oh, my God, like, gives her a full eye roll because, like, it's just a lot of production.

It's just like she goes on for so long. Thank you. Um, you can imagine, well, I'm very unaccustomed to, I've never won anything in my life. It's just, it's, well, it's great. Um, I, uh, I had money on all the nominees in my category because they're all so good and funny and beautiful and talented. And, um, I can't believe it. I never, I'm not a winner. It's just, um, I understand, but also consider the type of roles that she was playing pre-sex in the city. She wasn't even playing leads. I mean, she'd had a Broadway lead before, but I don't think she got like Tony nominated for it. So it's like, I mean, like, yes, you're right. But I I also get it. The child star was jumping out, I think, at that point with that. She was performing the role of shocked to be winning a Golden Globe, rather than being

genuinely shocked to win a Golden Globe, I think. Staten Man is interesting for her, though, because, like, she doesn't make movies during the Sex and the City period. No. There's Deadly Dew, right, which was clearly produced, like, before Sex and the City hit. TV or like right at the same time. And then does Family Stone come out fully after or is she just in the late stages?

Fully after. Wow. Because the show ended in 04. And St. Maine is the only real movie that comes out during that time. That's interesting. Am I right about that one? Yeah, she had a direct-to-d-d-d-D movie at that time, but that

does not care. I wonder if it's because she and she and Matthew Broderick are very much New York celebrities. Like, I love that, like, even as sort of, like, you know, Hollywood-y as she was, they were very much a New York couple. Still are. And I think a lot of it was because Matthew had theater work all that time. And so she, they met in the theater.

Right. But I think he was much, much more, like, she became a TV. star and he, you know, maintain the Broadway thing. She wasn't a theater draw until Sex and the City. Right. But it's so interesting that it is a such a

star making thing for her and that she didn't do movies at the same time, but I mean she was having a family. She was having a family and she was doing a TV show. She was, you know, I think she's, I don't, I imagine she doesn't regret, you know, making those decisions.

No, no, no, no. But the stark contrast between supporting roles and leading roles on opposite sides of the TV show was more defined than I even maybe realized. Yeah. But you also wonder if that's maybe why she does state and Maine is because she was such a theater, you know, connected person. And she's like, well, I got it. If I have a chance to do a David Mamet movie, I've got to take it. Um, and she's good in this. She's like, this is not a, um, this is not a plum role, you know what I mean? The role sucks. I hate the way that this character is written, but like, there's no performance I for, I fault for any of the stuff I don't like about this movie. She eats matzah crackers in a really appealing way in this movie. I don't know how else to explain it.

Um, I don't know. I like her. And also, I'm mad that we did this before I got a chance to do a trivia round, a picture round for trivia about like nuns in movies and put a Sarah Jessica Parker still in this because like, now I can't do it because like it's a slam dunk for you. And that's one of the challenges of doing this podcast with you is trying to come up with trivia. When we have trivia nights, I always feel like I'm cheating just by now. Well, and I have to, and I have to try and, like, I can't do any questions that are too closely related to movies that we've just done on the podcast because, like, it's, it's too easy for Chris, so, I just need, I mean, like, as much as I love playing, I should just be, I mean, playing. We haven't done it in. We're going to do it. No, now I've got some time, so we're going to do it.

But, uh, uh, I feel like I should just be co-score leader. No, you need to play because you're also one of the people. who, when I go fully demented, you can get it. And I need as many of those people playing as possible. Because, like, otherwise, then it's just like 20 people coming back from the end of the connections round and being like, I fucking hate you. I need to be given, like, a handicap in golf or something, though, because, like, if nothing else, it's not cheating, but I have access into your brain that no one else has. You do have that.

I got to change my password for my brain. Get you out of there. All right. Listener Joe's passwords for his brain. Stop it. I don't know. One, two, three, four, five. It's, yeah.

Wait, we had sort of, we, we, we jumped to, to SJP, but I want to talk about, we talked about Philip Seymour Hoffman and that movie being, this movie being the same year is almost famous. But it's also right after two, like, big breakthrough years for him. him as a supporting performer, where 1998, it's the Big Lebowski and Happiness. He gets this Indie Spirit nomination for happiness.

He's very funny in the Big What a performance. What a movie. Happiness? Go off about happiness. I know you love happiness. I fucking weird. I love Todd Talance's work. Doesn't he have something coming out soon? I thought it changed, like, the cast. Like, I

I thought Rachel Weiss was going to, and I was like, Rachel Weiss in a Todd Salon's movie. Oh, my God. I don't know if that's happening or not. Okay. Happiness, though, which is like, it was highly controversial because you have... People who love happiness love to tell you that they love happiness because they are waiting for the look on your face when the look of shock and awe on your face when they tell you they love happiness. I mean, happiness is certainly a very 90s movie in that it's like it's all an ensemble and it's all of like basically a large satire of how we live our lives then. And Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a pervert who calls and leaves... Dirty messages. He doesn't just leave dirty messages.

He calls and like says dirty things to Lara Flynn Boyle while he's jerking off. Right, right. And, or I think he's calling multiple, I've been, I haven't seen it in like two years, but like, eventually he calls Lara Flynn Boyle and she, like, talks dirty back to him. Right. All this, like, that sounds way less funny. The thesis of happiness, as far as I understand it. And, like, I am a person who has, like, ambivalent feelings about that movie. But, like, my sense of happiness, the movie is everybody around you.

is concealing some horrible, depraved secret, and you're no better, and this is the world you live in, and the end. I think there's a delicacy that makes the smugness of that movie's vantage work. Like, I think, you know, it's not... I find the smugness. Even though there's a lot of extremity in that movie,

I don't think it's very heavy-handed, in a way. Like, it just feels like... It's real life, but it's also alien life at the same time. I just, I like Todd Ceylon's generally as an artist. But, yeah, it's not going to be everybody's cup of tea. This movie was basically ran out of town, and they tried to give it an NC17 just for, like, the dialogue of the movie. Yeah, just for the concepts.

But anyway, so he gets the Indus Spirit nominee for that, and then 1999 he's in, flawless, which we've talked about on this podcast before. He gets a SAG nomination for that. He's in The Talented Mr. Ripley, tremendous performance. And he's in Magnolia, which is his second Paul Thomas Anderson movie in a row after Boogie Nights. He gets the NBR Best Supporting Actor Award for his performances in both Magnolia and Talented Mr. Ripley. And in general, it felt like that was the year where everybody was like, Philip Seymour Hoffman, the best supporting actor in the world.

And that's when the countdown to Oscar clock sort of got turned on. And it was like, when is Philip Seymour Hoffman going to win an Oscar? And so even going into State and Maine, I know that, like, of all the talk about the cast members, they were like, this could be a nomination for Philip Seymour Hoffman. He's going to end up getting nominated at some point. If it's not for Almost Famous, then it could be for this. and that would be the case for like every Philip Seymour Hoffman movie for the next five years until Capote comes along. And then they nominated him all the time until, unfortunately, died far too young.

Alec Baldwin, I want to talk about too briefly, because this is his third Mamet collaboration in the span of eight years. he was obviously like a movie guy and a bunch of stuff throughout the 90s. His career through the 90s that sort of leads up to him having this leading man's stature from like, you know, married to the mob to Hound for Red October, you know, to whatever. He's also doing theater work at this time. He gets a Tony nomination in 1992 for playing. Stanley Kowalski in a streetcar name Desire. None of the other cast, none of his other cast members got nominated that year,

which is always strange that, like, anybody who plays Blanche Dubois doesn't get Tony nominated, but especially Jessica Lang was Blanche in that production. And like, Jessica Lang gets nominated for everything. I think that production has a fairly bad reputation. It must. I can, that's, I am, my context clues tell me that, because. Jessica Lange Blanche, Amy Madigan was Stella, James Gandalfini was in this production,

Ada Tatura was in this production. So, like, I must conclude that it was not well received, and yet for Alec Baldwin to get nominated anyway, then, is, like, especially interesting. He loses to Judd Hirsch for conversations with my father that year. But that's interesting. Can I interject with something that's going to make you mad? Yes.

This actually should have been our, six-timers for Alec Baldwin. No. Hold on. In the spreadsheet, we don't have his Notting Hill cameo. So listeners, next time we do Alec Baldwin, we will do seven-timers club. We did this. It's so funny that we did this also for Nicole? Julia Roberts, because of also Notting Hill. What the fuck was my problem with Notting Hill? I'm going to have to like...

We need to go through the spreadsheet and make sure that Notting Hill is everywhere. Oh, my Reese Ephon's numbers are just going to be completely off. Oh, I'm so fucking pissed that you did that. Or not that you did that, but that you pointed that out. I had to tell you, because I'm sure listeners will be like, there's just a six time. Yeah, listeners, that's on me. Don't blame Chris for that.

That's on me. We will have a seven timers for Alec Baldwin the next time we do, Alex. So, um, God, I'm mad. I'm mad. All right. Anyway. The Alec Baldwin nomination, though. is fucking weird.

Like, and Alec Baldwin showed up everywhere all season long. That nomination was going to happen. We're talking about the cooler. The cooler. Yeah, a movie that fundamentally

does not exist on the planet Earth. It is not a movie. It was a fairly well-received indie, though, that year. I remember it being like... Macy got mentions for it. Maria Bella was close to a nomination. Very close. If Maria Bello didn't have, I don't know, that was the history of violence.

She had category confusion for that. Maria Bello did come close to getting a nomination for the cooler, though, you're right. Alec Baldwin's Oscar nomination should be for the Royal Tenet bombs. 100%. Wait, before I get off of the theater thing, though, 1998, he does a, he does a Macbeth at the public, where he plays Macbeth, and Angela Bassett played Lady Macbeth. Angela Bassett who's like

What a way to lose me and get me right back. I'm saying like that's my favorite YouTube video. I literally watched it the other day where she like spot transitions into Are thou a fear to be the same in thine own act and valor as thou art and desire?

Wouldst thou have that which thou exteamst the ornament of life and live a coward in thine own esteem letting I dare not wait upon I would like the poor cat in the adage. the screw your courage to the sticking place monologue and just does it right there for a junket interview, which is tremendous. I just can't imagine the intensity of Angela Bassett and Alec Baldwin opposite each other in, you know, I can't imagine, look, I mean, I don't, I've already praised

Alec Baldwin as a performer earlier in this episode, but as McBeth. Yeah, I'm not feeling it. play. I'm not feeling it. Not into it. We don't have to say the Scottish play. We're not in a theater. We're fine. I live theatrically. Everything is a theater for me. Fucker. You fucker. But yeah, don't want to see him in that role. Absolutely want to go back to it in a time machine to see Angela Bassett in the role. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, what else? We should go to the National Border Review for that year, because this movie, State and Maine, wins the Best Acting Ensemble Award and does not show up anywhere else on this. This was the year that famously, Best Picture at the National Border Review, went to Quills.

Of all the great movies in 2000, Philip Kaufman's Quills, which was a play adaptation. I kind of like the motion picture quills. I thought it was all right. I thought it was okay. Jeffrey Wright playing the Marquis de Sade. Kate Winslet playing... The worst thing that ever happened to that movie is winning that Best Picture win because it doesn't need Best Picture Prizes

but it made people be like this piece of shit for years and... Literally. The movie's fine. Literally that piece of shit. It's fun. It's a fun movie. Kate Winslet playing a chambermaid with like comedically prominent heaving bosoms in that movie.

It's heaving bosoms the movie though. It is kind of heaping bosombs. You write that literal piece of shit. Yeah, this is what I'm saying. The top ten for NBR that year, Quills made it ahead of, Traffic, Crupier, You Can Count on Me, Billy Elliott, Before Night Falls, Gladiator, Wonder Boys, Sunshine, this is the Itzvon Zabo's Sunshine. And then, of course, we always talk about Liz Taylor saying, Gladiator, as they should, the Golden Globes. But the way that she says sunshine, sunshine, underrated. We did the Cinematrix grid yesterday, and one of the categories was Annette Benning in a movie directed by an Oscar winner. And one of our eagle-eyed, I will say, we have gotten, every time we get an email from somebody being like, I think I got it right and you said I got it wrong, I'm like, I am very impressed by some of these.

And one person was like, Annette Benning is in Being Julia, directed by Yitz van Zabo, who is a Academy Award winner for Oscar for Mofisto. For Best Foreign Language Film. And I had to be the pet aunt and say, if you win for Best Foreign Language Film, you did not win your country won. So technically, Yitzvon Zabo is not a Oscar. Spiritually, that person that wrote in is correct because it is bullshit that the filmmaker doesn't win that. Oscar. I don't make those rules, man. Anyway, what else won at the NBR that year?

Javier Bardem won Best Actor for Before Night Falls, the Julian Schnabel film. Julia Roberts, won for Aaron Brockovich on her way to winning an Oscar. Joaquin Phoenix won for Gladiator and supporting actor and in supporting actress the great Lupe Ante Antevers for Chuck

and Buck. For Chuck and Buck. Maybe we should do Chuck and Buck at some point. Chuck and Buck is I mean, to talk, what do we do that we talked about Mike White? Well, what would it have been? We did, oh, Beatrice's a dinner. Oh, of course, of course.

The great Beatrice's the dinner. We should also do Brad's status at some point because, boy, did I love Brad's status. Brad status, good move. Some other real interesting, Michelle Rodriguez wins best breakthrough performance female for Girl Fight. Billy Elliott's Jamie Bell wins breakthrough male. Ted Talley's screenplay for All the Pretty Horses wins best screenplay. Oh, boy.

Former This Had Oscar Buzz stalwart All the Pretty Horses. Chicken Run wins animated feature. People loved their chicken run. I love chicken run. I love that they gave Best Screenplay to Ted Talley for all the Pretty Horses. So instead, they're just like, we're just going to say special filmmaking achievement and give it to Kenneth Launergan for You Can Count on Me.

It's like, yeah, in other words, the movie that should have won best screenplay. So, yeah, anyway, anyway, anyway. Yeah, that ensemble win really carried this movie throughout the season, which is interesting because I pulled up those golden globes. You would think that this movie would have some type of comedy globes nomination at some point. Yeah, hit me with the comedy globes. Okay, their best picture lineup, which I can't fault, even though there's a movie that I really, really don't like on here. Though I should maybe rewatch it. Shock a lot. Wait, can I guess? Can I guess? Not looking at it?

You can guess it is not Chacolot. A movie I've defended on this podcast. But it's not nominated for the Golden Globe. That's interesting. Oh, Chocolat is nominated. It's not the movie that I think. No, no, no. I'm trying to guess the five that were nominated.

Shockalot, almost famous. Correct. The winner. Oh, brother, where art thou? The movie I hate. Oh, really? We'll talk about it. Toy Story 2, which I think is the winner.

Incorrect. Toy Story 2 was a different year. Right, it was. Toy Story 2 was 99. Go down that path, though. 2000 animated Yes Pixar

No 2000 Disney No animated It's the year before Shrek You literally

just mentioned it I did not just in guessing but we talked about it within the past three minutes was it an NBR movie oh chicken run really chicken run was nominated wild critics loved chicken run rightfully so I guess chicken run rule and then what's the fifth I can't remember the fifth um how am I going to get you there this meet the parents no meet the parents no meet the parents was this year

Um, this, we definitely could do an episode on it. It was maybe closest to Oscar in original screenplay and supporting actor. Highbrow or lowbrough? You know, buh. Okay. Uh, supporting actor? Yeah. Not Shadow of the Vampire.

That was definitely nominated. Um. Love that you think Shadow of Vampire is a kind of. comedy, which that's a pretty funny. Shadow of a Vampire is a comedy. Oh, I mean, not overtly. It's just funny. That's a movie that I... Everything that Willem Defoe does in that movie is intentionally comedic. Very funny. And John Malkovich doing drama is always half comedic anyway. So, let's be real. Wait, give me an actor in it who's not, who's like... If I give you a single actor in this movie,

it will give the movie away. So I feel like that's going on. Well, then we're already... It's another very large on. ensemble. Oh, small time crooks. No. Really? That was this year as well. Think of our intro

for this show. No. Dick Poop. No, that's quills. Oh, no. Oh, it's best in show, of course. It's best in show. Yeah.

Yeah. Good nomination. Wait, what's your problem with O'Brother War Arthur? That's a movie that does not waste Charles Durning in 2000. Oh, God. God bless. Durning's so fun in that movie. I love him.

I love Charles Durning in every movie. Yeah. Oh, the Brother Where Art thou, and I haven't seen it in... Excuse me. I haven't seen it in years, but the comedic sensibility of that movie at the time, I was like, I hate this. I want to run in the opposite direction. And it's like, I love Coen's stuff.

No, because I love Hail Caesar. Okay. It's not that different of a sensibility for Clooney and the Coens. Like, I feel like Clooney's always that sort of like... Maybe I really should prioritize rewatching it. I remember it just being this, like, extreme yokel humor. Right. That drove me up a wall.

Okay. I enjoy it. I'll re-watch it. I'll re-watch it. It's very episodic. It's very sort of like, I mean, you know, based on the Odyssey. Everybody has the different least favorite Coens. Oh, what's your least favorite Coens? At the top of my head, maybe, because I love so many of the movies, you know, it doesn't feel. Watching? And I haven't seen Intolerable Cruelty.

Oh. The Lady Killers is not good. Intolerable cruelty is the one I most often cite as my least favorite. having watched drive-away dolls recently, it made me think that Lady Killers is the worst, because there's a lot of drive-away dolls that reminds me of the Lady Killers. I still have to see Drive-Away dolls. You do. You won't like it, but you do need to see it.

How bad could it be? It's very short. It's not good. Margaret Qualley gives one of the most confounding performances I've seen quite a while. And I know I said that mere weeks after saying that Sidney Sweeney gives one of the most confounding performances I've seen quite a while in Madam Webb

Well, the thing about Madam Webb and Sydney Sweeney in Madam Webb is that Madam Webb is the first feature link

RuPaul's Drag Race Acting Challenge and And Sydney Sweeney would have been in the bottom two.

Sydney Sweeney. Oh, Tahrahahim. Both of them. You got to have a bottom two. It's got to be two. No one's worse. No one's worse.

I feel like Sidney Sweeney is like... Adam Scott is better. Emma Roberts is better. Zasha Mammett is better. Speaking of Mammets. Oh, Zosha Mamet wins that challenge. Like, Zosha Mamet just...

Zosha Mamet just got $5,000 sponsored by Alan Chuktaught Travel. Like, in that movie, she 100% does. Dakota Johnson just doesn't show up for the runway in that one. She's just like, all right, bye. I got to go. No, she's bottom, but she evades a lip sink. And by that, I'm saying justice for this queen because I love Dakota Johnson.

And I think she knows that the, it's so fast, her performance is fascinating. It's like watching someone be like, well, I'm going to do my own thing while the ship is sinking. I think being completely at sea and a performance is a little bit different than knowing it's bad and sort of fighting against it. I think we're maybe giving her a little bit of too much credit. Actually, I think the lip sync is Tahr Rahim versus Emma Roberts. Emma Roberts doesn't have enough responsibility in that movie. to deserve that. I don't know.

That's one of those like, Oh, just because Thorgy picked Stevie Nix, you're going to put her in the bottom. All right. Like, that's unfair. No,

I famously, dumb, that I am, didn't figure out the Spider-Man, Peter Parker, Ben Parker, Aunt May stuff until... And Katie and I had to be like Joseph.

What is the character? First of all, that was Katie. Don't go on to that. Like, you, hadn't seen it. I was like, I'm just going to sit there and watch this happen is what I was doing. But in my mind, I was like, Joe. I literally texted Katie, because I knew you hadn't seen it yet. So I texted Katie. I'm like, I don't understand why Adam Scott and Emma Roberts had to be brother and sister-in-law. It seemed like they were leading up to a thing where he was the father of her baby when she wasn't. Like, what was going on there? And she's like, you know the thing about Adam Scott's character, right? And I'm like, no. And then immediately I'm like, his name is Ben. Jesus fucking Christ, I got so mad.

No, the crunchier thing about the whole Peter Parker in Madam Webness of it is, after you see the shot of Emma Roberts, like, cradling a baby in the hospital, it, like, it's, like, you see an overhead shot, and it's the, like, netting of the hospital. No. And it's supposed to be a web. And I was like, this visual language is fucking stupid. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Do not try to give me a hospital curtain and be like, it's a web. Anyway, I think, it's like, no. I think people trying to proclaim Madam Webb as a camp classic are up a tree. I think this is just a movie that was fatally, like, fucked with in post-production. And it plays like a movie that's had giant chunks of it taken out. And, like, that's, I don't think it's particularly fun to, I don't think there's a fun time to have with Madam Webb. I think people walked in...

The first 45 minutes of the movie, the first like 45 minutes to an hour, I was like, this is just bad, but once you hit that hour mark, it becomes fun bad. I disagree. I think a lot of people walked into that movie determined to turn it into the next cats

and then talked about it as if it were, and I don't jive with that. The people comparing it to Catwoman, I maybe have, harder time with, because I do think, like, Catwoman, for all that it's doing, it's at least like functioning on a story level, you know, like, it has a plot arc to it. Madam Webb has, like, that plot is like cottage cheese. It has chunks missing from the story that we are being told. Right. And. But it doesn't make it more fun. It just makes it more

like incomprehensible. I don't know. Speaking of Alanchuck.com travel, she fully goes to Peru at a moments notice. That's my favorite thing in the movie. In the years after 9-11, while she's wanted for kid. She's in Peru for seven hours, including travel time, like to the airport and from the airport. She takes literally just a, like, a backpack. I understand that getting to an airport from Queens is easier than getting to an airport from the other boroughs, but still, like, it's so fucked up. It's fucking easier for her to get to Peru than to get to Brooklyn in that movie. honestly maybe facts maybe true um this isn't coming out for weeks and we're just you know having a we're the last people to have the madam web conversation um no but just in time for pride um

the madam web discourse almost broke me i will say i will i was in the i was in the throes of finishing my oscar projects and i was like i can't deal with overly determined madam web podcast episodes i do think that to loop this back to the globes, which is somehow how we got to Madam Webb. Right. Her web disconnected at all. It's a decent globes comedy year because the actor lineup, Clooney wins for Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? Also nominated with John Cusack for High Fidelity, Robert De Niro for Meet the parents, Mel Gibson for what women want, and Jim Carrey for The Grinch, which... That started out as a good lineup, and then it devolved pretty quickly. I like that John Cusack nomination. Cusack's good in high fidelity.

Jack's the like Hail Mary nomination of like, oh, thank goodness that showed up here because the other ones were probably always going to get a globe nomination. Would you have supported a lead nomination from Best and Show for Eugene Levy in that movie? Oh, sure, absolutely. I'm trying to think of like who I could justify as a lead from that movie. Because he's the one who like ends up walking Winky at the end. He's the one who's triumphant. the one who got awards attention

for the movie. Oh, Willard's Willard is a scream in that movie. It's so funny. I genuinely think he didn't get nominated because people were like he didn't move. Like, he just sat at a table the whole movie. How hard is that? But like, he's so fucking funny.

Like, it's incredible. Everybody, that's my favorite of the guests. I really agree. I hate to be typical. But if I'm throwing one nomination to anyone in the cast, I'm throwing it to Coolidge. I mean, yes. The thing about Coolidge is she's riding the line of bit part versus supporting. You know what I mean? It's such a small supporting performance. Whereas, like, if I'm going to throw supporting, like, I think Jane Lynch in that movie is absolutely incredible

playing the sort of maniacal, uh, and also like yearningly, like quasi-romantic Christy Cummings, where she's like, the part where she comes in and she's, She's like, I finally let Sherry style my hair. And it's like, she's got the like, spiky dyke cut. It's fantastic. It's so good. Jane Lynch is maybe one is like a top three performance and a mighty wind for me. Because it doesn't feel like Jane Lynch is ever telling jokes in that movie.

She's just talking, but it's still so funny. Which is in nature's colors, W-I-N-C. We are weak. So good. All right. We should, let me clear out my... My notes for State and Maine before. Oh, we haven't talked about go you huskies at all, which is like...

Go you huskies. I love the through line of go you huskies because it's one of those, like, small town. We haven't really talked about how well this movie does the small town thing, which, like, this movie does... The center of, like, discourse in the town is the diner. I love the scene of the two old grizzled men reading variety in the diner and talking about grosses versus per-screen averages. I think this movie, do you think... Do you think this movie condescends to small town people? I mean, I don't know if it's condescending.

It's just, it's very cliche. It has no original ideas about small town life, you know. I think that's true. I think that's definitely true. If Mamet was a better visual stylist, he could be like, oh, I'm riffing off of the type of, like, William Weiler, etc. I think the go-you-husky's thing. It's not an interesting movie to look at it. I think the go-you-husky's thing is the most endearing thing about the way this movie

seems to think about small town life where it's like it's never really overly explained but clearly it's a thing that like unites everybody in the town um all right question to you okay first of all those opening credits were so Y2K they made my teeth hurt why is state in Maine getting these like scratchy like title card like I don't know it was just the culture at the time that was just what we did. Would you order a tuna BLT? I did ask myself watching this question. As someone who loves a tuna sandwich loves a tuna melt.

I do love a tuna melt. How do you do your tuna melt? What goes into it? Tuna salad and provolone. Oh, provolone is interesting. I usually do shredded cheddar or straight up American cheese, which I think is like the melty asbest cheese. But some people do like

capers and stuff like that, and I don't mess with that kind of thing, which is why I asked. Tuna salad is, you know, better, just fewer ingredients. I agree. You know, if you're going to put in a lot of ingredients in a tuna salad, you're putting in spices. You're not putting in extraneousness. I mean, would I have a tuna BLT? No, because I hate raw tomato. I do, too.

So, like, I would just be putting bacon on a tuna milk. Every once, every few months, I feel like I rediscover the fact that we both hate raw tomato, and it makes me feel all the more bonded to you. Lugger vegetable. You got to cook it. Would you order a bourbon and milk? This is, this was my last thing I wanted to talk about on the list. That looked revolting.

It looked like you-hoo with water in it. You know, I hate U-Hoo, right? No, this is new information. I've maybe had U-Hu once in my entire life. If I'm going to do that, I'm just going to get chocolate milk. Thank you. The viscosity and, And the texture of you-hoo, it looks like dirty water.

It's disgusting. And this bourbon and milk, the bourbon and milk that Julia Stiles drinks in this movie, first of all. I know people do bourbon and ice cream, but milk is not ice cream. Well, but people also do... The idea of bourbon and milk sounds gross. People also do white Russians, and I do love a white Russian. Different. That's not straight milk.

That's like creamer, right? No, I've made... I usually make a white Russian with milk. I'm not going to go messing with, like, going to get creamer or whatever, like... But that's also more milk than bourbon. This looked like... Lobowski and the big Lobowski makes a white Russian with powdered milk. I don't do that.

That's... It's Kaluah, it's milk, it's vodka, it's ice. You shake it up. It's a white Russian. Yeah, you're putting in other shit, too, but, like, straight milk and bourbon. You know what I mean? It's the other thing. Like, yeah.

What else? What else? What else? Um... I wrote down Faggy without being homosexual. Those are our words. You don't get to use our words. Did you see the grossest for Gandhi, too? Which is, like, said in such, like...

That was funny. I laughed at that. It's tossed off so perfectly. Did you see the grossest for Gandhi, too? Paddy Lepone and Rosie the Riveter drag. Paddylipone and Tartan drag. Hicks and the Dryden... I do think that Anne Hathaway has seen this Patty Lepone performance and has been emulating it for the past... 100%. Okay. This is my last thing. Is this the first...

Did David Mamet invent, so that happened as a punchline? Maybe, because it gets such prominent placement in that trailer to... It's after Baldwin comes to the accident, and, like, he comes out of the accident, and Julius, he sends Julius Stiles away, and he just looks at Phillips Seymour Hoffman, and he goes, so that happened. And I'm like, I don't remember that being a thing as early as 2000. Well, it could, I mean, it's maybe just abbreviating the Caddyshack joke, right? What's the Caddyshack joke?

This is Bill Murray tells the whole, like, story. Oh, so I've got that going for me? So I got that going, which is nice. Which is nice. That's a little different than, first of all, how dare you quote the regal quotes ad in front of me now that we've... I never saw that because we don't have regals. Oh, that was a big, that quote was a big part of it. I still have PTSD.

Although, I will say for as much as I hated that ad, I lost all respect for Regal by the fact that they pulled it just because it got made fun of and put it. on blast. Stand by your bad advertising campaign, Regal. Bring back the roller coaster pre- Oh, well, of course. That exploding popcorn right as you're about to take the dip, it's fantastic. Yes, especially for like 3D movies. I need to be watching

that in IMAX before Avatar 3. Anyway, Gary's, this is our challenge to you. You need to help us out. If you find an example of some of a movie or TV show using So That Happened as a Punchline, maybe Friends. Friends might be, if you can find an episode of like friends where like Chandler says so that happened before the year 2000 that would

have aired before the 2000 let us know because right now I'm thinking David Mamet might have invented so that happened because I don't know if he would have used it if he knew that like that was a well-worn at the very least had not become a cliche by that point it feels like 90s it feels like otherwise it would feel like David Mamet doing like he's standing right behind me isn't he? You know what I mean? I would never imagine David Mamet would do that because he would sneer at that. I was just like, I kind of freaked out. I did the

Leo pointing at the screen kind of a thing. But that's your assignment, Gary's. Find us pre-2000, so that happened. And we will reward you with the IMDB game. Shout out. Yes, let's play OMDB game. Say how it works. All right, 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. If that's not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints that are faggy, but not homosexuals. No promises. Chris, would you like to give or guess first? Why don't I guess first this week? Okay, so we normally

kind of stray away from choosing actors from the movies that we're talking about. We haven't talked about this person in this episode. So I'm going to stick by it. I chose Julius Stiles for you. All right. Julia Stiles. This is like our third Julius Stiles or our second? Well, now I can't trust myself now that I've omitted Alec Baldwin from Notting Hill. Wow, Julia Stiles was in Notting Hill. Who knew? Julia Stiles, of course, was in our very first episode, which was Mona Lisa Smile. She's in Hustlers and then State and Maine. So this is our third. Okay, there we go. I'm going to say Julia Stiles, 10 things I hate about Correct.

Save the last dance. Correct. Okay. So from here... Ten things I hate about you and save the last dance bookend state and Maine in her career. Ten things I hate about you is 99. Save the last dance is 2001.

2001 in like January, iconic January cinema. This is interesting because... It is. There could be something like Mona Lisa's smile, but she, I think, was like fourth bill. for that movie. Hustlers, she's not billed very... She got a with in Hustlers? I think maybe that's right.

I think maybe that's right. She could have got the end. Well, Mercedes Rule got the and, I think, right? That's right. Is it with, with, with, and? Is there with with and? Oh, no, I'm going to... Or did Julius Siles get, like, the last one before the width?

Hold on. Now I got to look this up. Hustlers is... is Cardi B is one of them. I think it might just be with Cardi B and Mercedes Rule. Oh, God. Movies have never been the same since. Cardi B gets the and.

I thought for sure Mercedes Rule got a with, but I'm just seeing just... Wait, is she not an upside of anger, daughter? Erica Christensen, Evan Rachel Wood. No? No. Yeah, I'm... Just Cardi B and Cardi B, but now I thought for sure she was Mercedes Rule was one of those.

But anyway. I'm going to, I'm just going to go for it and say hustlers. Uh, not hustlers. Okay. Mona Lisa Smile. Not Mona Lisa Smile. Okay. So you're missing years are 2004 and 2012.

Okay. Wow. 2012. Oh, 2012 is, um, no, she's not an orphan. She's the orphan sequel. Right. Where the gag is, she's the villain. Yeah.

Is 2012 a horror movie? No. Okay. So what was she doing around then? It wouldn't have been like a Nicholas Sparks movie. Was it an action movie? No. Oh, no, no, no.

It's one of the borns. It's born ultimatum? No. I'm going to get. give you this, none of the Borns are in her number. Oh, shit. So what was she making

around? Well, no, this would have, that would have been like Born Legacy when they tried to give it to Jeremy Renner. Right. Um, what the heck was she in around that time?

I think I'm going to get 04 before I'm going to get this. So 04 would have been after Mona Lisa's smile, and... Let me know when you want me to start hinting it up. I want hints. I want some hints. Okay, so the 04 is a romantic comedy, but I think probably leans more towards the romance. Julia Stiles, the type of actress she was in the 2000s especially... A lot of the actresses of that stature got this type of movie, this particular flavor of rom-com.

It was very popular with your, let's see, Anne Hathaway's and Hillary Duff's and... Oh, no, it's the prince and me. It's the prince and me. All those girls had to get their princess movie. Really? 2004. I thought that was closer to her, like, 2001. moment. I guess it's only three years away, but I was like lumping it at the same time as though.

The 2012 movie, she is pretty low build, but it was kind of a gag that she was in it. I remember when people saw her, they're like, oh, Julia Stiles. She doesn't get the end in this, but like somebody else gets the end in this that has the same sort of effect on the movie. It's like, oh, they're in this movie. so she plays the lead actress's sister oh it's um it's not the wedding date date but it is is it like the wedding date no you're going you're shooting too low too low okay so this was a big big movie that year yeah is the lead actress first build in the movie or is she second build to a man. I would be saying it's almost certainly the latter. Yep.

But, like, it's a two-lead. It's a two-lead. Sure. A romance. Yep. Romantic comedy. Yep. Oh, it's a Silver Lining's Playbook.

It is Silver Lining's Playbook. I'm surprised it took you that long. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Very good. Very good.

Odd that no born movies. If I had remembered her being in that movie initially, I would have guessed that right away because it's the Best Picture Nomination. Yeah, exactly, exactly. All right, what you got for me? All right, so for you, I went into the Mamet filmography

and who was nominated for an Oscar for a mammoth script? Multiple people, but for you, I chose Mr. Dustin Hoffman. Oh, right. Again, love Dustin Hoffman and Wag the Dog. All right, Dustin Hoffman, Rain Man.

Rain Man, correct. Kramer versus Kramer? Correct. We haven't had a perfect score in a while. If you can get a perfect score, I'll be so happy. I'm trying to wonder if, like, how modern I should go with him. The graduate? Incorrect, not the graduate. I'm sorry.

Okay. All right. I'm trying to wonder, like, what age range dominates this, and if it's millennials, I'm going to guess hook. Also incorrect. All right, okay. So your years are 1969 and 1982. Okay. 82 is Tutsi. 82 is Tutsi.

69 for Hoffman is postgraduate. it. Pre-Lenny. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, it's Midnight Cowboy. It is Midnight Cowboy. He has three best picture winners in his own cover. That's phenomenal. That's really fascinating.

I wonder if there's anybody that has four. That would be amazing. That'd be real amazing. This is a good episode, Chris. We did it. We did it. we finally talked about State and Maine. Reach out to us about

so that happened. I really want to know. Okay, anyway, that is our episode, everyone. If you want more, This Had Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at Thisheadoscarbuzz.tumlr.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-Vee-File. That's F-E-I-L. I am on The Socials at Joe Reed. Read-spelled R-E-I-D, particularly letterboxed. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork, Dave Gonzalez, and

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