This Had Oscar Buzz - 302 – Sliding Doors (with Bobby Finger)

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

We’re talking about Gwyneth Paltrow’s red hot 1998 this week and who better to join us than author and Who? Weekly co-host Bobby Finger?! With a slew of movies to aid her ascendancy, Gwyneth Paltrow wasn’t having a moment in 1998, she was the moment. It all kicked off with the Sundance debut of romcom … Continue reading "302 – Sliding Doors (with Bobby Finger)"

Greetings. This had Oscar Buzz listeners. This is the brunette mirror universe version of Joe coming at you with a post-script pre-podcast disclaimer. We had some technical difficulties on this episode, much, much more so than we've ever really, maybe had. We had a file become unavailable to us. And normally, when there is a problem with a file, we're able to fall back on the Zoom backup track, which has served us well in the past. However, this particular Zoom conversation was fraught with glitchy, spotty, choppy audio, which is probably the fault of my Wi-Fi network. Let's just say that. And as a result, our backup is glitchy and squinky and choppy and may not, it certainly is not up to our normal standards, even our normal DIY standards of podcasting. But it was a really great conversation. We had a tremendous guest in Bobby Finger, and we certainly don't want to let that conversation go to waste.

I did my level best to get rid of everything that sounds too too bad and keep all the good stuff in there. So if you hear, you know, a chime at any point, it just sort of, that's your indication that I had to cut some stuff out for only audio reasons. Nothing nefarious was said. We weren't telling, you know, gossip stories that can't be told. or whatever. It is that I couldn't find a more elegant way of chopping out the audio. So apologies. If this is annoying to your ears to listen to, again, I think the conversation is really good. And we had a lovely chat with Bobby about sliding doors. And so in the interest of holding on to that for this week and hopefully this week only, you'll have to put up with

some annoying sounding audio. So my apologies, again, this is almost certainly my Wi-Fi's fault, and hopefully our attempts to salvage this audio were sufficient. So without further to do, uh, on with the show. And once again, we thank you for your patience and your continued listenership. Thank you. Uh-oh. Wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that. We want to talk to Mel and Hack. Melon Hatch and French. I'm from Canada water. Dick Poop.

Cool, that train. I've been home ages ago. I don't want to go wondering about things like that. Now, Helen's life is about to go down two different tracks. Gwyneth Paltrow and Gwyneth Paltrow in the story of a woman about to choose between a life with a man she's always loved. Terry, I asked a simple question. I mean, there's no need to become Woody Allen.

And a life with a man she's just met. I kissed you. Yeah, I spotted that too. Hello and welcome to the This Head Oscar Buzz podcast. The only podcast with our nose so high in the air, we could drown in a rainstorm. 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 trendy blonde haircut. Chris File, hello, Chris. Trendy blonde haircut of the late 90s, early aughts. This episode is basically sponsored by Garnier Fructice.

It's very much true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This movie... Herbalescence is something. I didn't think a movie could be... so 1998, and then you watch this movie, and you're like, oh, my God, this is the most 1998. It's, I've got some, it's some interesting revelations as I was watching this movie.

So I want to obviously get into that. We, I get nervous if we wait more than 30 seconds to introduce our guests. We're going to introduce our guest right away. We have, we've, we managed to book back-to-back Texans, which was like completely accidental. Previous episode, we had our friend Kevin O'Keefe on to talk about Texas. cinema. Bernie, now we have another Texas native to talk about a very non-Texist movie.

Back again after episodes on Meet Joe Black and La Divorce, yes, if I'm not ashamed of the And The Pelican Brief, our very good friend from the Who Weekly podcast and author of the excellent new novel Four Squares. Our friend Bobby Finger, welcome back. to this head Oscar was.

I'm so happy to be back to talk about the movie that I saw for the first time last night somehow. Ah, okay, this is, all right, this is a good segue into it. Obviously, we'll do, you know, welcome back to Chin in a second, but I just want to, like, jump in

with this, which is, I reached out to Bobby. I, first of all, I think I pitched this idea to Chris. I was like, hey, Chris, why don't we do sliding doors? Why don't we ask Bobby do these sliding doors? And it was like, absolutely perfect. Boom, boom, boom. And so I reached out to Bobby and I was like, hey, you wanted to do sliding doors and you were like, book it.

I was like, okay. And I reached out to you, of course, because I know this is not a Richard Curtis movie, but it felt Richard Curtis core in its conception. I had also never seen this movie before. But I assumed that I knew the general gist of it. Obviously, the concept of it is so incredibly well known. We'll talk about the like breakout meme ability before online memes were a thing of the idea of a sliding doors moment. But this always felt very like Crypto Richard Curtis. It comes after four weddings and a funeral, but before Notting Hill.

And then I always just assumed, too, that like, well, this was like peak Gwyneth Paltrow. And this was a movie that got a lot of us attention. And she was obviously very, very big in sort of celebrity news or whatever. And then later on this year, she would have Shakespeare in Love and win the Oscar. And so in my mind, I'm like, well, of course this movie had Oscar buzz. And normally, like, nine times out of ten, I will defend the notion of like, why did you select this movie? And now I'm watching this movie. And I'm like, oh, I don't think this movie is very good.

And then I'm looking it up. And I'm, but clearly, like, the critics liked it at the time. No, sure, they didn't. Well, clearly, like, this was a populist hit and it made some money. Not really. Well, clearly she won some, like, precursor was nominated for a golden globe or something. It's like, nope. I honestly, mea culpa, I don't think this movie has.

Oscar buzz. I'm excited to talk about it. I think to a certain degree it did, though. I don't think this one had Oscar buzz at all. Probably for lack of a better non, you know, very today word, vibesy. It's just like... It is. Gwyneth was a little bit of an industry plant at this point. You could tell that they were trying it with Gwyneth wherever they could, but

Shakespeare and love was not yet the thing. So it's like, we're here to talk about Gwyneth. Yes, this is, that's the... That's the entire point of this. We'll talk about, and especially mid-90s, Gwyneth, which is a tremendously fun and interesting. Talk about, like, you wish something could just sort of transport you back into the time that it was around. Like, the era of mid-90s, Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt are the most important celebrities you ever need to know about. And just absolutely perfect.

When she gets her haircut in this, and I'm like, oh, her perfect murder hair. Like, she gets, she got her perfect murder hand. So, of course, I thought about that movie, which is another movie that makes me think of Bobby. But anyway, all of this is to say, I thought of you immediately, Bobby, because I'm like, well, surely we've seen this movie several times. When you said that you would never seen it, I was relieved.

And also when you said, you thought you understood the concept of the sliding doors moment, I was relieved, because that's why I never watched it. And I know that I'd taught bits and pieces of it on television growing up, like, the beginning, the middle, never the end. We got to talk about the ending. It was never sustained viewing. If I would like see it and be like, I don't need to watch this.

As much as I like, Beneth Paltrow, as much as I like, you know, to an extent, Shakespeare and love, I think she's great Shakespeare in love. I love a perfect murder.

I've seen that a million times. I love her Saturday Night Live episode from 1999 more than anything in the world. So I was like, you know, this round drum is not for me. I don't need it. And I should have watched this 20 years ago.

It's fascinating. And it's, The sliding doors moment is a thing that makes sense. Like, I understand my people use it. But it goes places I never, ever, ever expect it to go. You know, I was expecting the Richard Curtis sort of ending. Yeah. Because of Richard Curtis happened, I think I know exactly how it would have ended.

And it's not this. No. Also, if it was a Richard Curtis movie. The most deranged Grace Anatomy episode of all time. Kind of, yeah. Especially that ending. If it's a Richard Curtis movie, she has three times as many friends as she has. and they're all very specific types

including like the one sort of quirky little sister type and what else there's a lot more pop songs like the soundtrack of this movie with the exception of the closing credit song which is Dido's thank you several years before anybody had really heard it there's an Amy man needle drop

the movie opens with the show Miracly's song sure but there isn't enough I feel like if this is a Richard Curtis movie that's like amped up to like a huge degree There's just not enough Not enough pop music in this There's not enough Wimsy in this

Yeah, it's whimsical And it also ends with In the way that I expected it to end Which was that Oh, whatever door you choose You get the same ending, right? Yes, our famous written in the stars And in the sense that's true

But Richard Curtis would not have let her die And Richard Curtis would not have included A Numbour baby ever You know, like two wild left terms And also, Gene Chipplehorn would have been way more hilarious and not just like a ruthless asshole. So my thing, I had seen this movie, but like, let's take it back a little bit. My, I remember, you know, when you're at that precocious, like, age, I remember, like, obviously I was a movie kid and I would like, you know, I loved adults, you know. And, like, one of my favorite teachers said that this was.

her favorite movie so like naturally i go and see the movie and so i my memory of basically anything that happened in this movie was non-existent so it was like i was watching it for the first time because all of the things that do actually happen not only just the absolutely unwell third act of this movie but it's also and it feels very late 90s in this way too it's way less of gwyneth's movie than you think it is it's kind of an ensemble thing. You spend so much time with her shitty boyfriend, Jerry. We'll talk about Jerry.

But, like, you get a lot more of everybody else in the way that it's like, it's trying to be an ensemble movie. It doesn't really do the Richard Curtis ensemble movie thing. And then... Especially in the way that you expected to in

Notting Hill, like, one year later. Right. Moments of... Because you always see Gwyneth with Jerry's friends, or sorry, James's friend. But you never hear what they talk about. You just hear James do his like Monty Python thing over and over

and over and over and over again. And you're right, it's like for as much, but there are two Gwynet's in this, two different like blonde and Brunette Gwynet's, but we spend so much time in the non-Gwyneth universe, you know, and I was surprised by every single

thing about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you want to spend more time in the Gwyneth universe and maybe the better version of this movie is more explicitly about her because when you get to this fully deranged ending where we'll get through it all in the 60 second plot description but like this idea that it suddenly becomes this very harrowing drama but we're not really all that invested in Helen

it becomes way too much if it you know to mention the music it's like if this was a decade later maybe it would be original song nominee for like the fray because that's very much the vibe of the final third of this movie the gray's anatomy of it all like humor's thing and also i saw when i was looking it up on i don't know if it was wikipedia i guess it must have been wikipedia because they they explain or sorry they um categorize genres like this like in the the opening paragraphs but they called it a romantic comedy drama film which i don't see often and i guess that's almost true here but it's

not really that funny. Like, I really expected more of a split down the middle. I expected more humor, but it's incredibly dark, and it's kind of sad. And it's just sort of, in many ways, it's kind of miserable. But I did, I never found myself wanting to turn off. I never found it boring. I was just surprised by the tone. It's going to be so much lighter and airier than it actually is. Right, especially because it's like you have the Garnier-Fructice poster that we all know of the two Gwyneths. Even, I also found a movie kind of strangely confusing at the beginning. I mean, the two Gwyneths have dark hair to begin with and then one has a bandage and still you kind of couldn't follow the two different storylines because you're seeing all of these other characters

you care way less about still quite a bit. So it just made it so confusing. And they work in, there was something that kind of bothered me, but it definitely felt like a studio note, a very weird sparkly flourish that occurs not every time, but most times you switch between timelines or like multi-bursts. That I

found a little irritating after maybe the third time it happened. It's the sound drop I use when we need to like transition past like something that like we need to like abruptly go from what second time. Audio issues, connection issues. Yeah, yeah. But then sometimes they would do very interesting

flourish it is like minimally where you kind of the camera pans and then Gwyneth, blonde Gwyneth is leaving and Brunette Gwyneth is coming in and it's like sometimes the camera has fun with what's happening and other times it doesn't. There wasn't a

consistency to like a lot of the transitional moments even though it was apart from the opening when there are two Brunette ones and sometimes she has a vantage on and sometimes she doesn't it was pretty easy to follow and I was kind of impressed by how well it was edited

I was like, okay, I thought this would be tougher to kind of like manage. There's a lot of stuff to juggle in this movie. There are two versions of every character. And I was impressed by the structure, even though I was like, the tone is all wrong. There are two versions of every character. And yet are there? Because, like, Jerry is the same kind of like spineless weasel in both of them. Gene Triplehorn is the same kind of like demanding, you know, whatever, harlot in both of them.

her friend is exactly the same you know what I mean it's just like it's I needed a little bit more of that like small differences I guess I needed more butterfly effect in its sliding doors because like those two concepts do have like similar that's another concept that sort of like leaped off of like you don't have to have seen the movie the butterfly effect to know what people are saying when they mentioned that right so but I needed to have something a little bit more of just like oh like this small little difference made things sort of you know these two lives spiral in like very different directions. And, and I think, you think about this movie happening in like 1998. We all, I mean, we've been talking for years about how they don't do it like

they did it in the 90s anymore. Oh my God, I want movies back to like what we got in the 90s. And there were so many directors back then who could have done, I think, really interesting work. I just got done doing a Joel Schumacher thing for screen drafts. I'm like, Joel Schumacher would have been, like, brought some zaz to this movie, you know what I mean? Like, I, you know, obviously, Richard Curtis we were just talking about, but even somebody like a

like a Nick Cassavetes or something like that, you know what I mean? Like, there were was, was go Doug Blimeon's first movie? I kept thinking, like Swingers was before go. Swingers was before go. So yeah. You're right, I needed flare. There was something like a Doug Lyman would have had fun with this, too.

Totally. Like, young, all, like, sort of like straggling tones but you need some sort of like visual flourish some visual flair some like intrigue that this movie doesn't have even though you sort of like I find myself graving any movie released between like 1990 back 1989 and 1999 on a curve because it's like you start at two and a half to three stars out of five totally because of the way that these movies look and feel and the way that like they are much more kind of competent in their audiences than movies are now. Like, this movie just sort of lets things happen

without too much explaining, without too much, like, act story, without, like, too much unnecessary baggage. And I find that very comforting, just like the way movies used to be written and the way movies used to be, like, produced. So I'm already inclined to like this. If I first saw your trailer in a theater

before I ever saw it anywhere else, or, like, maybe if I first saw your trailer on E's coming attraction, that like automatically bumps you up in my mind to like that's that's a real movie that's a real movie that's a real one right there um before we get into the plot description yeah i kind of want to just like put it out there to anyone listening have you also not seen this movie but thought you saw this movie are you like me where you've seen this movie and you've forgotten all the shit if there's anyone out there that says they love

this movie and can accurately tell us everything that happens in it, please make yourself known because this just feels like a type of movie. And there's probably many of them of this late 90s early aughts where we all think we've kind of seen it, but none of us maybe really have or we have. We forgot all the deranged shit that's in it. Right. It really does feel like it Berenstain bears itself into our memory where it's just like, I just, like, remember it differently.

First of all, knock me over with a feather that Gene Triplehorn was in this movie, because I did not remember that part at all. Before I sat down to watch it last night, I get the text from Bobby, who made a very acute observation, I thought, which is that Gene Triplehorn in this movie looks exactly like Amber Tamblin. Correct. 100%. She does.

There's one particular scene where she's sort of, like, like, reclining on a white couch, holding wine and I was like, this is Amber Tamblin. How have I never put this together before? How do they have never done like their own anywhere but here movie or something like that? Like we really just let that pass us by. That's too bad. Anyway, I want to

get into the specifics to this movie. So we'll do that. What? No, I'm ready to do my 60 second. Oh, okay. Well, we'll give you a second to prepare because before that, Chris is going to tell all the listeners, why they should sign up for our Patreon, this had Oscar Buzz, turbulent

brilliance. Listen, much in the way that sliding doors gives you two Gwyneths. If you go over to our Patreon, we're giving you two bonus episodes every month. $5 a month over on our Patreon. First Friday of the month, we're going to give you what

we call exceptions. These are movies that fit that this at Oscar Buzz rubric, but managed to score a nomination or two. We've recently talked about movies like my best friend's wedding, my Madonna's W.E. Vanilla Sky. We do listeners' choice over there and coming in a few days. Our most recent listeners' choice winner, we will be doing Ryan Johnson's Knives Out. Yes. Want to check that out. The second Gwyneth that we give you every month is what we call an excursion. These are deep dives into Oscar ephemera. We love obsessing about like EW. Fall Movie previews. Recapping old award shows like the MTV Movie Awards and Indy Spirit. awards. We just recently did a basically state of the race as it is before the fall season starts

looking back on the year that's been so far and what we might have to come. So go sign up for This Had Oscar Buzz, Turbulent Brilliance, over at Patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz. So you could say that, Gwyneth, who comes home just too late to find her, husband in bed with Jean Triplehorn is the exceptions, Winneth, because she narrowly averted disaster, and yet her life isn't better for it, right? There's a finite result.

Right. It only improves her life superficially and that it saves her from acute heartache, but then there is a longer tale disappointment to come, whereas Winnith, who comes home and catches him in the act, is an excursions, Gwyneth because she goes, her life goes completely off format and she, like, is able to explore interesting, different sides of herself.

She gets a haircut, which I guess is like an independent spirit award. She gets quasi-mugged. She does get quasi-mugged. What is, all right, in terms of career, in the one where she stays brunette, she just works for a restaurant delivering sandwiches. And a restaurant.

And waitresses. Yes. And then in the other one, she and her friend are opening what seems to be Ariana and Katie's sandwich restaurant from Vanderpump Rules. Like, essentially, are they just doing something about her in 98 London? we never really meet the other person she opens the PR firm with oh it's a PR firm it's not a sandwich shop okay that was that was where I was crossing the streams okay she paints it a beautiful color you might like to see in a sandwich shop yes that's what I was thinking okay see this is like of the era and like

this is maybe the one thing this movie has of like that movie's era where it's just like aspirational careers where you have no idea what the job actually entailed we're gonna to give us a small business loan. We're going to get a cute storefront. Yeah. We're going to get a cute storefront. And what are we going to do with that cute storefront? We're going to hang a little like shingle or whatever.

And what are we selling? Public relations, of course. Like, public relations. She's amazing at public relations. Everyone's heard of, you know. Okay. The beginning also, it's so bizarre. The scene where she gets fired, where she walks in.

She gets fired for work theft. Stealing. Well, okay, but it also seems to be setting up that she has a drinking problem, but that's not where it goes at all. And that's totally where I thought it was going, where it was just like, oh, she like is bringing home bottles of booze from work because she's, you know, I don't know, getting schnappard on the weekends or whatever. Anyone who says I'm borrowing this bottle of vodka, I, well, yeah.

But also, everybody at her job hates her. And we never quite find out why. It's not like, we never find out that she's like mean or bad at her job or whatever, but they all can't wait to get rid of her and they're here because she's a woman she there's a oh that's right she's a woman there's a sniff about i would say boys club right i i told you she was a lesbian yeah that's right yeah which is very 1998 very yeah the the thing about that scene which is the introductory scene when she like shows up and then instantly gets tired or

sacked as she says over and over and over again um is that it just suddenly happens, I was like, yes, this is 99 minutes long, she gets fired and it really doesn't matter why, but it has something to do with stealing vodka. Like, I love that this movie just gets right into it. We want to see her miss that train. And it's just like, I love that it just really starts off, you know, at 60 miles an hour. Like, there's something about that that was instantly thrilling to me. Well, speaking of 60 miles an hour, Bobby, you are going to be tasked with a very rapid plot description of, the movie Sliding Doors, both

realities. You don't get double the time just because there are two separate storylines here. Okay, so let me bring up my stuff. I wrote it out. I'm ready. I think I can do this in under 60. All right. I believe in you. All right. So, we are talking about the 1998 film Sliding Doors, written and directed by Peter Howitt, his feature film debut, I believe, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, John Hanna, John Lynch, Gene Triplehorn, Zara Turner, Douglas McFerrin. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival

on January 26, 1998, and then it was a limited release premiere on April 24th of that same year. Bobby Finger, your 60 seconds to describe the plot of sliding doors starts now. Helen is a British brunette who gets fired from her job in PR for stealing butt. In timeline one, she misses the train on her way home. In timeline two, she makes the train. Here's timeline one. She makes the train come some early and catches her boyfriend Jerry and Bev with his horrendous American ex-girlfriend Lydia.

She links him immediately and moves in with her best friend Anna, starts stating a friendly Scottish man named James, starts a PR company of Rome, finds out she's pregnant with Jerry's baby but doesn't tell anyone. He tries to reconcile, but she rejects them, but then she finds out James is married

only for him to reveal that he's really separated from his wife and they pretend to be together for the sake of his mother with cognitive issues. After he tells us the truth, it seems to sting great between them. She gets set by car and dies. Here's timeline too.

She misses the train and fails to catch her boyfriend, Jerry, and Beth, Lydia, starts working two part-time jobs, making food and delivering sandwich just to pay the right roll Jerry pretends to write a novel and actually fucks Lydia. She gets head-hunted by an America beer company,

finds that she's pregnant while suspecting Jerry of cheating. And just before she tells them she discovers the American Peer woman who wants to hire her as Lydia and she's pregnant with James and baby too, Jerry's. And then she falls down the sterile

quality of a little bit of a little bit of the hospital and meets Jane. Q Dino. The magic. 59.2 seconds. Incredible. Only Bobby Finger could bring an actual 60-second plot description

to bring her some order to our chaos. So, you know how when you're watching the Olympics and they can show you like the time splits where they're like halfway through the race? They are like a few tenths of a second behind the pace or ahead of the pace or something. And when we hit the 30 second mark and you were just a few seconds short of being done with timeline one, I got very nervous. I was like, oh my God. It's going to be such a nail biter. And you got it though. I'm very, very proud.

It's funny that you mention that because it's when I was writing it all out. you kind of, it becomes abundantly clear that so much less happens plotwise in Brunette Gwynethland and then belong to Gwetland. Yes. And looking back on the movie, which I only watched 12 hours ago, and I was like,

I wonder if you split the scenes up, how would they be weighted? You know, because it seems like it was just about even, even though nothing really happened. Well, it's because in Thurneck Gwinnett's life, John Hanna doesn't really have anything to do. whereas in blonde Gwyneth's life,

she still is interacting with Jerry kind of quite a bit. So she has like extra story. Like blonde Gwyneth has extra story, which makes sense because if you're like making a movie and if I'm Miramax, I'm like, yeah, I want like this to be mostly blonde Gwyneth.

I don't want to have any more brunette, Gwyneth and it's like absolutely necessary. It made me think of, you remember, I don't know if either of you watched the show, but remember Ryan Murphy's very first TV show called Popular, which was this very, very, like,

campy, gay high school set show with, like, Leslie Bibb and Leslie Grossman and Tammy Lynn Michaels and whatever. Am I the only one? I never watched it. Okay. I never watched it. You brought it up before, so I love that show. I didn't go back and watch it. I didn't watch it until just after the fact, but, like, I was obsessed with that show.

But one of the big sort of over-the-top things about, like, the popular girls were so obsessed with Gwyneth Paul. Trot. Like, that was, she was like the absolute icon. And every single thing was like, this is so Gwyneth. Like, this is something that Gwyneth would do. And it was because it was right in this era. Like, I believe that it premiered probably right around 1998. And this was the peak of she was Hollywood's It Girl. She had been Hollywood's It Girl for about two, two to three years by this point. Somewhere around the time that she's in seven, she and Brad are both in seven. They're

dating. They become the like red carpet couple. They date for a little bit. They break up, which also then perpetuates the, you know, the tabloid, whatever. She makes Emma, which is very well received, I think at least. Now I'm wondering if I've like misremember Emma as well, but I remember like Emma being a crowd pleaser and it got a couple Oscar nominations and people really liked her. And then she gets cast in everything because cut to 1998 and she's in five movies.

She's in sliding doors. She's in the Alfonso Quaron, great expectations, which by the way, listeners, if you have not seen this, check it out. It's fully fucking insane. It's absolutely I need to revisit. Bug nuts crazy. It's supposed to come out in

fall of 97 too. Yeah. And speak And Joe, yes. The Great Expectations, the Quarong Great Expectations, as an iconic little Tori Amos flourish. It sure does. Patrick Doyle's score, which I know you love. It sure does.

One of my favorite Tory non-album songs, Siren is in that movie, and it comes on at a really interesting time, where I think it's like, I think Ethan Hawk is like working on a boat or something like that when the needle drop happens. Um, speaking of absolutely insane, the 1998 movie Hush, where she's dating Jonathan Sheck and Jessica Lang plays his off her rocker, recessive and jealous mother. Um, absolute, can't be

brilliance. Like, absolutely is going for, like, very unsubtally going for the like, whatever happened to baby Jane sort of extraness of it all. Um, worth checking out. 1998's a perfect murder. Bobby, you talk about this movie all the time. I feel like you carry the torch for this movie, and I love that. It's perfect. It's perfect. Every time I watch it, every time I watch it, I'm thrilled by its tightness. It's so, it's just so, like, sexy, even though they have no chemistry.

You know, like, it's, it's so nice, and I love that the setup for this movie is perfect. Like, every time I watch it, I like, this movie should be remade every 10 years, light clock work. Yep, with a new set of stars. Yep. And you just make it again because it works so well. It is, the stakes are perfect. Like, the audience just roots for this woman. Like, they've never rooted for anyone in the past.

Like, her husband is the ultimate evil spouse month. Yes. And I just, I can watch the movie once a week for the rest of my life. There is a scene in that movie where Michael Douglas gets the jump on, I'm pretty sure it's Vigo. after hiding in an Amtrak, like not even a room, a rheumat, one of the smaller rooms. As somebody who has traveled on Amtrak and has been in a room at a few times, that is physically not possible to hide in one of those places.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, Michael Douglas, and the roommates. Like, unless he's Ant Man and can turn into like a tiny little bug, like it is not possible to hide anywhere in that. Joe, is what you're describing. a closet? Is this a closet? Is this pantry? There are no closets in Amtrak Rubettes. Like, there's no

nowhere to hide. There's nowhere to go. Everything is right there in front of you. Like, there's... And you know what else he did in that room? He changed into his little, like... He was in, like, murdering suit so he doesn't get blood all over himself. He was in that tiny little room.

Put on his little murder and plastic poncho. And then he jumped out. That's right. His murdering poncho. From what I've remembered, of a perfect murder, it is just like very much in the organism, in the

like, genome or whatever you would call the biology of the late studio thriller, that it's just like such the perfect thing that it's like if we just had one of those and it was just okay right now, people would lose their fucking minds

for it. Just like they're losing their minds for long legs because we don't have serial killer movies anymore. I know. Everybody's calling it seven, but guys, it's not seven. It is The Bone Collector. The Bone Collector, not a good movie, but you have fun with it.

So watchable. Just because it's watchable and serial killer movies are fun. Long Legs is the Bone Collector. But the thing is, we have that studio movie, that studio thriller. It just went to Apple, so no one watched it. That's why I love Sharper so much. Sharper is exactly

I got to see Sharper. I know, I know. I know you love Sharper, and I keep meaning to catch up to it because that's quite the endorsement. And it's shot on film, and it's like rich people and like beautiful high writers

in Manhattan and like doing desperately things with just enough twists to make it amazing, like a really good, very silly. It's a movie. It's not an eight episode series

is the other thing, where it's like, just let me watch Jake Gyllenhaal remake Presumed Innocent as a fucking movie. And I'll watch it. Like, don't make me have to, like, sit through eight episodes to get to the thing. When I saw it was getting a...

I'm sorry, I interrupted you. No, go ahead, please. I was going to say, what I saw that was getting a second season, I was like, well, no, I'm never fucking watching. Of course not. Of course not. I was just not ready a stretch. I know you didn't. I know both neither one of you watched this, but I just need to say for, like, the 50th time, the fatal attraction remake that Paramount Plus did with Pacey and fucking Lizzie Kaplan is so...

infuriating for a bigillion reasons, but primary among them is that it ends on a continuation cliffhanger in the dumbest possible way. It ends on the continuation cliffhanger of his daughter, um, it has become a fatal attraction. And she learned it because like, she essentially like spent an afternoon with, um, Lizzie Kaplan when she was younger. Because the whole thing takes place on two timelines. of course, because all TV shows have to take place on two timelines now. And it was like the timeline where all the events from the movie

happened, and then the timeline after he gets out of prison, because he goes to prison for trying to kill Alex. And so then he has to like try and exonerate himself. So by that point, in that timeline, his daughter is like in college. And so in college daughter,

you find out at the end of the first season, has been fatal attractioning her professor because we find out in flashback that when she was a kid that she had a conversation with Lizzie Kaplan and she like, by osmosis, like

whatever, like, infected her with fatal attraction. All I have to say is gay people are not groomers. Mistresses are groomers apparently. What the hell? It's the stupidest fucking thing. It's absolutely insane. Um, yeah.

Anyway, end of 1998. After all of those movies, Gwyneth at the very, very tail end of the year, like, to the point where I remember following that Oscar season, and, like, I didn't know that this movie was coming. Like, I think it was one of those things where it's like, if I had been, like, a little bit more immersed. But, like, there wasn't really as much of an Oscar, you know, ecosystem to follow it as much. So all of a sudden, it's just like, oh, there's this movie at the end of the year that Miramax is doing. It's about Shakespeare. And, like, oh, by the way, it's getting eight bagillion nominations.

and Gwyneth is probably going to win the Oscar. I forget, but I think Shakespeare and Love didn't really have a big festival run. It might have played, like, Venice, and that was it. I think that's probably right. So then all of a sudden, it's this coronation that comes at the tail end of about three and a half years of quickly rising fame and ubiquity in movies. And then, as we have mentioned before, she wins the Oscar. and like from the podium the entire audience and seemingly

half of Hollywood like turns on her and decides they're sick of her and decides that they're just, they're over her, they're over the pretty princess thing, they're over the fact that she was like Miramax's designated like, you know, superstar which that's... And we should say

Sliding Dors is a Miramax movie which like, if anything qualifies it for this show, it's like basically any Miram. Right. But of course, obviously, the Miramax of it all is tainted by, you know, all of the stuff we would find out later about her and Harvey Weinstein and how he had assaulted her and all of, you know, the awful things that we find out about him. But it was kind of, it wasn't the end. Obviously, her career goes on after 1998. But this was a complete era. 95 to 98, Gwyneth was like a complete career. And it kind of. It kind of. had a beginning, middle, and end. And that's somewhat fascinating to me. Bobby, you have behind you on your Zoom. You have one of, I believe, the touchstones of Gwyneth's fame in this era,

which is the Saturday Night Live episode that she hosted, which, first of all, the thing you don't have is her monologue where she speaks in her British accent. That was very much directly addressing sliding doors. Also, obviously, Shakespeare in Love. Where one of the things was, sorry, go ahead. Well, the episode was like February 90, like, it was, February 99, did Shakespeare and love come out? And so I guess it was before Shakespeare in.

I think it platform, but she might have been, like, just nominated because, like, everything was a little bit later then. But that was the thing where, like, Ben Affleck comes out from the audience and is like, Gwyneth, what are you doing? You don't, this isn't how you talk. And she's like, oh, Benjamin, of course I talk. like this, like that kind of thing. But then the

sketch you have behind you is the impeachment proceedings, right? It's red carpet at the impeachment. Okay. Yeah. Explain it. It's e-news at the red carpet for the Clinton impeachment hearings.

Jimmy Fallon is Todd Newton. If I, like, I've forgotten so many facts, but I remember Todd fucking Newton from E. Yeah. And Sherry of Surrey, is Melissa River, and I believe. Because everything she says is,

Mom, Mom, we've got such and such here. And like, she's, it's, because that was Melissa's whole deal. And Sharon Stone is played by Gwlett Paltrow. And it is, I guess that makes sense because Gloria was a flop. And Gloria definitely came out at the beginning of 1999, January and February.

So she's there to, as she says, promote my new movie, Gloria and no one of flaws. and that has always been one of my favorite things but she does because she does the single hand clap slow it's very funny it is it will go down as like

the reason because this is before I saw Shake Fear and Love this is before I saw sliding doors obviously and it was the thing that endeared me to Quinn of Peltre watching it with my sister and then she figured out a way in 1999 1999 to Paul

NBC and you could order Oh shit Tape? Order VHS copies of Saturday 11 episodes by mail or over the phone And she did that and we had a like official NBC VHS I don't know how much she spent on it probably like

I would assume it was like 2999 or something like that We had that episode on VHS And I was absolutely upset that every single I wish I could like guess what sketches were on that one Like, I bet she was in the mango, and I bet she was in a cheerleaders? Like, it was around that era. It was Molly Shannon. It was sister, sorry, it was.

Mary Catherine Gallagher. I was a sister, Mary Clarence. I was just saying to her. So they were on page, or no, it was a main feat. But she is in the Black Angels in that sketch. Yes. She's a bad girl in the best, smoking in the bathroom. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And at the end of. that they reluctantly agreed to let Mary Catherine Gallagher into the Black Angels. She also says newsflash queer to Mary Cap and Gallagher in a way that hasn't aged well, but I still find it like regrettably quite iconic. So I love saying news flash queer. I mean, it's weird that how all of our text exchanges begin. Is Bobby texting me newsflash queer? Flash queer.

It's just a formative text. And I think it's funny when you, when you were running down for a career at that time, The only thing I had seen by that point is, oh, I don't know. I definitely hadn't seen a perfect murder. I definitely hadn't seen seven. Maybe I literally hadn't seen a Gwinnett Pelt for a movie when I saw Saturday. You might have seen Hook. Oh, yeah, I saw, she was Wendy Pinta.

That probably is it. But, like, it's just like when I look back on that era, I think that my obsession with that episode is totally reflected with what you were saying about how that was such a specific, like three to four year period, you know? The best line in the Sharon Stone sketch, though, is when she introduces Todd Newton, Jimmy Founders, Todd Newton's like, hey, you here with your husband? And she's like, this is my husband.

What was his name? Shit, I can't, uh, Caboto Dragon guy. Oh, God. I don't remember, uh, David? Bron, Brant, something, Bronzky? I don't know. Bronstein. Yeah, so many creepy?

And then she goes, this is my husband, isn't he creepy? And it's, isn't he creepy, delivered so perfectly. And Sharon Stone got legitimately pissed about it and, like, said something in the media where she's just like, I don't think she's getting enough oxygen to her brain. Oh, what a good. Just low-grade, low-grade celebrity feuds, nothing like him. So, yeah, that's kind of the extent of this got a BAFTA nomination. for Best British Film, which lost to Elizabeth, which was like an actual Oscar movie.

But that's kind of it. I think the fact that like the idea of a sliding doors moment was the long legacy of this movie. And I guess this movie explores that okay. Okay, at best. Okay, but also in a way that might be evil. Watching this after we've done a collateral beauty episode. I was like, oh, well, this is in the collateral beauty universe in a way because, yes, the movie's

ultimate point is you can have a sliding doors moment where your life departs in different ways and you have a different experience. You can become a different person. An innocuous little thing could have gone differently and your entire life becomes different. Exactly that. But then you're destined to still wind up in the same place or, you know, have the same grander experience. Which the ending suggestion of the movie is, well, yes, she's going to go and be with Rachel Vice's brother from the mummy, and they are meant to be together. But the real thing that's like, it's always going to happen to her is a miscarriage, and that's just so icky. It's the point of your movie. The one constant in her life is a miscarriage.

You are destined to experience X. The constant in her life is this horrible traumatic event that happens. to her. And it's just, it doesn't escape, like I said, a really traumatic race anatomy feeling. The other thing about this movie, it obviously comes after four weddings in a funeral, which I think was probably a big part of the reason why this movie that Miramax would have wanted to make this movie. Because four weddings in a funeral sort of kicks off this resurgence in British rom-coms. a lot of that was Hugh Grant focused. He's in The Englishman who went up a hill, they came down a mountain right after that,

and then sense and sensibility. And then, so obviously the sense and sensibility thing kicks off this sort of like mini Jane Austen thing. But one of the things that I think is so interesting about sliding doors is beyond the fact that it, like the John Hannah of it all is this sort of connection to four weddings and a funeral because he's in that and he is such a one of the best scenes,

actually, his eulogy in that movie. Anna, good actor. But this movie seems, sliding doors seems pre-derivative of movies that haven't happened yet. I think, I look at this movie, and I'm like, this seems really derivative of both Notting Hill and Bridget Jones's diary, to the point where the scene at the end where she, like, tells Jerry finally to, like, walk out that door and never come back, you almost expect the Aretha Franklin needle drop to hit the way it does in Bridget Jones's diary. And it's just odd to me that like, oh, this can't, obviously can't be derivative of those movies that hadn't happened yet. And yet, like, there was something in the air where it was like sliding doors didn't quite do what these other movies ended up doing. Well, we have this fetishism here in America for, like, Britishness within movies. And it's somehow both more lighthearted than America, but also more important, has more gravitas by the nature.

of it being British. This movie has an interesting relationship with that because I very much felt like Jean Triplehorn was a monster but her Americanness was part of her monstrosity

in a way. She also gets one very good... Gwyneth as the lead. Yeah. Gene Triplehorn's character gets one very good scene where she gets to sort of articulate what her angle on this would have been

if she was the protagonist of this movie, which is she's the woman who's dating the man in a relationship, and she knows that she shouldn't, and she ultimately gets, like, hurt by this guy again, even though she said she wasn't going to, and blah, blah, blah, and, like, her frustrations bubble over. You mentioning that, though, the sort of the fetishization of the Britishness of it made me momentarily think of what a, like, double miracle those Nora Ephron movies were, Because they established that same thing in a very American, sort of, you know, a very American place.

Obviously, they were inspired by movies from, you know, earlier in the century that were also American. But there was this kind of, you know, the romance of the Upper West Side, right? The romance of the bookstores in You've Got Mail, the romance of the Matt in when Harryman said. or the like the changing sort of fall colors. I think when you have these movies set in England, you have these wonderful sort of like stone alleys and, you know, older buildings and there's a sense of romance that comes with those.

And I think with someone like Nora, she had to sort of work to get that same. She had to get romance out of Seattle. You know what I mean? Like, no shade against Seattle. But like Seattle's not one of these like preternaturally romantic cities. right so um i and when i say like the fetishization of it it is like this element of these movies brought to american audiences that's kind of capitalizing on this american sentiment

or i think especially like among women of wouldn't it be great to be british wouldn't it be so much nicer wouldn't my life feel like it has more fancy or more i don't i feel like people think they have more of a permission to imagine a romantic life if they're not their own, if they're not dreaming in their own, you know, backyard, you know? They, they,

there's, there's something exotic about it, which is odd to think. And I, it's funny that you mention, like, how it seems to be ripping off movies that hadn't come out yet. Because something that, and I know the timelines don't quite make sense,

like there's no way Notting Hill could have been influenced by this movie at all, probably. But it's like, Notting Hill, and like you said, the Nora Ephron movies have such a thrilling sense of place and it's the New York of it it's the London of it. It's not necessarily

the Britishness of it. It's just like a place you don't live where you want to live in Notting Hill and you want to live in the Upper West Side and when I watch this you really get no sense of the city to the point where I was like, where is this guy from? For a second I thought that it was written

and directed by an American person and like halfway they're watching the movie It's the Wikipedia, and I was like, who is this person? Peter Howard. I didn't, I never heard of him. And I think I've maybe seen like one other of his movies. Like, I've seen Johnny. Oh, I've seen Johnny English and I've seen weirdly antitrust, which he is in as homeless man.

Oh. I love his. His last directorial credit, we should say, is a Gina Carano movie. Golly. Boo. But it's like, I just didn't. I just, there's just no. no, you get no connection to this place.

And it could really be anywhere. It could be like, it could be, you know, Singapore shot in Vancouver for all. Yeah. Because there's nothing really that londony about it apart from the bridge. And the bridge is sort of like,

what's that bridge? I don't know that bridge. Right, right, right. So this is interesting because you're giving me the opportunity to do a thing. I never get to do on this podcast. And I always feel like real podcasters do this kind of thing, which is, I'm going to ask you a question about your current project in a way that dovetails with what you were just saying.

Because your book, Four Squares, is one of the things that jumps out to me, of course, as somebody who lived in New York for 15 years and is the fact that you mention a very real gay bar, which is Julius, and sort of of center a lot of the romanticism and sentimentality, but also just sort of the sense of place in this around that bar. And as, you know, sort of pursuant to what you were just talking about with these movies that are very much giving you this sense of place. Like, talk about that. Talk about how you like, was that a conscious thing that you were just like, oh, these movies that I love, these stories that I love are so have given me these

these sort of great sense of place and I want to, you know, do that. I mean, I just love that. I've never lived in the West Village. God, no, you'd have to be to be a million. To live in a lot to do that. Yeah. I, but I like going to the West Village.

I haven't really like going to Julius. I don't even go to Julius as much as I like because they don't live. You know, like, not necessarily going to take two or three trains. to just sit at a bar that I love. Right. If I'm in the neighborhood, I love stopping by. I liked the act of, you know,

celebrating the neighborhood and learning more about a neighborhood that I just really enjoy being when I was writing the book and just walking down the streets and like figuring out makes the streets different. It's also, you're right, it's a reflection of like,

I love movies about cities and places that really seem to be secretly ads for that place as tourism board. You know, like I'm okay with them laying on thick about how beautiful a city is because that's what makes it special to me. You know, like, I want to see a place I don't really know much about.

And it's very weird to me that at no point during the making of this movie, which must have been perceived by Dahl by at least someone who was watching it as it was coming together, like, why didn't they include the city a little bit more? You know, like, why

didn't they try to, if you want to make this an international thing, as a hit with when it's people in the United States, why not make London look a little more interesting than it looks in this? You know, it's almost like Notting Hill is deliberately, of course, correct for that, even though I know that, like, intellectually, that couldn't really be the case. Right. And so did Bridget Jones, honestly.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Before we started this, Chris texted me and was like, all this fucking bullshit over Jerry, which is... Jerry sucks, man. Jerry fucking sucks, man. Jerry is not a character we want to spend any time with.

In either timeline. And like I said, he's the same guy in both timelines. It's not like in either one of them. It would have been more interesting if the one where she, you know, breaks up with him, he sort of learns a lesson and becomes a little bit better of a person or something, but like something. He's also, like, no offense to John Lynch, who is, you know, probably a wonderful person who is, you know, he's not making babies cry with his face or anything like that, but I don't think he's handsome enough to justify being able to juggle Gwyneth Paltrow and Gene Triplehorn.

Again, I'll respect to him. I think it's a charisma thing because you have, just mentioned Bridget Jones, take the example of Hugh Grant, who is an even more, like, monstrous does bad things character, but you enjoy spending time with him because that's a charismatic actor. who, you know. He does have the Hugh Grant flopsie bangs or flopsie. He has butt hair. He has James Vanderbeek butt hair. The flopsie middle part, Hugh Grant haircut, which was like as much, people talk about the Rachel all the time.

They don't talk enough about Hugh Grant's haircut being a, well, Dawson was came later, but yes, Dawson was copying it off of Hugh. I don't think anybody was doing it before Hugh, but he had all those Spielberg posters in his room and a poster for four weddings and a funeral. even Hugh's hair is an upgrade of Jerry's hair in this like everything has been turned up a little bit and again a friend group

and Jerry is I mean but Chris is right it's the charisma there's a moment I should have taken a note but there's a woman pretty early on when you're kind of screaming at the screen at Brunette Gwyneth like how can you not tell that this guy is cheating on you

how can you not eventually blonde Gwyneth and she is asking No, maybe it is, it's fully brunette Gwyneth because she's sort of wondering about the glasses. She's wondering about this and that. Boy, she keeps talking about those glasses for three or four months out of her life.

And he charms the, he charms the socks off of her, and she instantly changes the subject. And it's like, okay, we've established what it is about this, like, walking red flag that forces her to overlook that and it's that he's kind of charming. She's the world's slowest detective in that

she, like, she twigs to the, the glasses, like, the next day. And yet, like, months later, she's like, you know, Anna gets sick when she drinks bourbon. So it couldn't have been Anna who was drinking it or whatever. And it's just like, you, have you, all right, Sherlock Holmes? Like, Jesus Christ, like, you're taken for goddamn ever to get to the bottom of this, like, fairly obvious thing.

I understand that she didn't want to know, but, like, oh, yeah, yay. There's an element to specifically Jerry, but also. this friend group that I could not tell you one thing about that we spend so much time with them that I actually felt like this movie was kind of a bridge between Richard Curtis and like Edward Burns

like I thought about like the Brothers McMullen watching this movie and I don't want to think about that movie. That was more of the vibe than like Brothers McMullen I will say characters we want to have fun with you know. I dare not

revisit the Brothers McMullen but I definitely fell for whatever. Like, you talk about movies that have a sense of, if not place, but a sense of kind of whimsy, even, you know, in that, in that whole, you know, sort of Irish Catholic, you know, their mother's dead and they're, they're competitive with one another, and the dad doesn't know how to tell him, he loves them, and it's this very sort of East Coast, you know, going down to the pub kind of a thing. And it was just like there's something

there's something to grab onto with something like the Brothers McMullen in a way where the only thing you have to grab onto in sliding doors is this very ephemeral conceit, an idea. It's not a character, it's not a place, it's not a feeling, it's just an idea.

This is a movie with one idea and nothing to really back it up. and it doesn't really want to leave you with anything either. You know, like, it doesn't really have much to say about the idea. It really is just, it's just a gimmick. That's all it is. Yeah. Because it never really wants to unpack, like,

what it means when you take a train and don't take it, or what it means, like, vice versa. Like, it just says, oh, this could happen, and it did. And look, she's happy, maybe. because even the elevator sort of neat cute leaves you on a bit of a high but in the back of my mind

I was still sort of wondering like maybe she'll say shut the fuck up I don't want to talk to you like she just got out of a coma like it's right it's right it's sort of it steps it steps quite softly into that happy ending

in a way that is like marginally unconvincing even though I would assume the intention was to have a happy ending but it's like it's not it doesn't seem confident in anything that it's doing yes you know yes i agree um i wrote down in our outline this uh as i was sort of poking around

around the sort of awards uh angle of this that this movie comes out in the midst of uh or towards the end i guess of a three year run of best picture uh winners that had if if not primarily a romance, then we're like very romance forward. Even Titanic, which is a movie about a giant ship sinking, is very intentionally romance forward in that movie, right? That's what sort of like makes that movie special. The English patient is very much this idea of it's World War II, it's all this stuff, but it's like it was especially sold on this kind of timeless romance between Kristen Scott Thomas and Ray Fines. And then Shakespeare in Love, it's right there in the title. You know what I mean? It's not Shakespeare

write in his books. It's you know, so you have this three year run of best picture winners that are highly romance. And then I went through and I'm like, yeah, I guess it doesn't really happen as much. And I went through him like, surely you know, it's cyclical and these things come around. But like in the 25

years since, we've only had five movies that you could even say technically were romance. And I think this is like being pretty lenient, right? Like, A Beautiful Mind has a romance in that, but, like, that's not really what a beautiful... I guess it's sort of what a beautiful mind is. Like, it ends on the whole, like, Alicia Nash of it all, but, like...

Yeah, that's fully a lie, anyway. Right. Slumdog Millionaire has a romantic subplot, but I think it's very much a subplot. The artist is a romance, but that's almost like secondary to the movie's gimmick. Moonlight definitely ends on a romantic note, but there's so many other things going on in Moonlight that the romance is only part of it. And then the shape of water is legitimately

a romance-first movie. With everything else that's going on, the fish is... It definitely says something about the state of movies that maybe our most swooningly romantic movie. That isn't Carol. Is about a woman and a fish. Like, we just don't have romance.

Well, that was my line about the shape of water back then because it was coming out right amid the... me too thing. I'm like, it's the only way we can do a romance that anybody's going to get behind is if it's between a human woman and a fish. And we like cut the like, you know, we cut people out of it. So, um, but I just think that's really interesting. And I guess it doesn't shock me that best picture would sort of disrespect the idea of romance. But like in the long history of the Oscars, you look at any of those like Oscar supercuts. You get stuff like it happened one night and Casablanca and these sort of like these great old Hollywood romances.

But you don't really get that as much anymore. And it makes you appreciate that late 90s run even more of we're going to give you these big spectacles, but we're going to make sure that like at the center of these big spectacles is a very like intensely focused on romantic story. And at the time, people thought that was the weak spot of those movies, where people were like, people would, like, complain about Titanic being, like, too much about the goopy romance. And, like, it seems insane to think of now because why, like, we get so few of those as it is. I think what you're doing to me is you're doing, like, the tired wired thing. Like, tired is we need more romance, we need more rom-coms.

But I think the wired version is, like, we need more sweeping gorgeous romance. Yeah. You know, like, I-ROMD-ROM. Recently, too. And I was like, where are these? Like, I don't want another set it up on Netflix. I don't want anywhere, anyone but you. Like, I want, like, two beautiful people trapped in a desert and ruining each other's lives.

Like, I want, like, gorgeous cinematography. Like, there's, there's that that I feel like. I know this was not. This was not a well-examination. This was not a well- received movie at the time, but like, give me a hope floats, man. Like, give me, sure. You know? Well, even you could argue that maybe the romance is secondary to that because the hope floats is nothing if not about a woman self-actualizing. But with Jenna Rollins prodding

her every step of the way to get it out there and get back into the world. Some of the problem now with romances is also one of the problems that sliding doors has and that no one has chemistry together. Because, I mean, Gwyneth and John Hannah, I like them separately, but I don't know if they have chemistry together. Fair enough, yeah.

I also think, you know, maybe we need to appreciate them a little bit more when they do happen. I caught myself being like, yeah, but is this all that there is when I was watching the We Live in Time trailer? And I'm like, no, this should be great. It's just a romance,

and it can just be a romance, and that should be satisfying enough. I forgot about that trailer. I'm excited for that. I am too. I'm trying to grease the wheel to get excited for it. If it's just like a romance that works, I think that's all we needed to be, and that will be great.

Well, I just recently watched back to back almost the idea of you and a family affair, which are obviously not like, it's not great cinema. But they are at least two movies where, well, actually, that's not entirely. true. The idea of you very much is a romance first movie. It is more a romance than it is a comedy to the point where it's almost like, you know,

it's not, yeah, I think it maybe is maybe more romantic drama than it is romantic comedy. I do think and maybe you can disagree with me, I think the chemistry between Anne Hathaway and red, white, and royal blue was really good. Galatine.

Galatine? Galizine. And then what's funny is a family affair, which has two actors who had proven chemistry in the paper boy, Nicole Kidman and Zach Ephron, is a movie where I could not have been less interested in the romance angle of that movie, but I think it's a decent comedy about a girl being the assistant to like a Hollywood Chris. You know what I mean? Like, I think it's a pretty good comedy married to a disappointing, unsatisfying romance. And I don't know where I'm going connecting this to sliding doors. Maybe that's my sliding doors. They all star a woman that you could not get me to stop caring about if you paid me. I always want to talk about Nicole.

I always want to talk about Anne. Watch that movie, though. Like, I sort of dare you to watch that movie and be interested in that, in the outcome of that. both of them. Yeah. I liked, I haven't seen a family affair, but I liked the idea of you way more than I ever expected to. Yeah. And it comes, it comes extremely close to what I wanted from it or like what my, what my grand aspirations were that I never thought for a second it would actually reach. Like, it gets, it gets the chemistry right. It gets a lot of like the beats of their romance, right? Now that we're talking about all these other great, like, 90s and early 2000s rom-droms or like rom-droms partly comms that have worked it's like the things that it's

missing are like are the texture are like are the city or the friends like are these are these sort of like beautiful moments where a camera sort of like panning around a table as like people get to know each other like it's it's missing like the

details because I was I was actually really impressed that like at Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galatine had palpable chemistry and I was sorry for spoiling this Chris but I was happy when they ended up together like I thought it was

cute the way they did a little time jump and we got to see them in the future I was moved by it. It has a great if a little obvious needle drop because that Maggie Rogers song will get me going all the time. Oh man. Oh which Maggie Rogers song do they use? I love Maggie and they play light on twice. It's great

there you go there you go I know it's more than this but not we've been talking about it, it's like, you, you miss all that other stuff from their lives. And I don't know, but it's also like when movies do throw in the other stuff in their lives, I'm sorry it's top of mind, anyone but you, when you throw in all of these, like, lunatic friends and family, sometimes it doesn't, you know, like. This is, this is what I, this is my theory is at some point, movies stopped being able to do friends of well. and I don't quite know

whether it's just like whether it was very much just like Richard Curtis was doing it in a way nobody else was because you look at something like the idea I know when

no strings attached 40-year-old virgin I think John Epitz home made like ruined friends and movies yeah sorry no that's a good point but you think of like

the idea of you a movie where I mean as with many romantic comedies and romantic dramas the the stumbling block in the relationship is very hard to do in a way that doesn't seem perfunctory, and it does seem perfunctory in that movie as well. Like, we got to get to the point where something happens

that puts the wedge between them. This is what I've heard about the idea of you. There are no stakes. In this case, it is that she meets his friends and they all make her feel old and uncool. And it's like, that is inevitable. But I think if you had done that scene where like his friends seem like more interesting people and not just sort of caricatures of vapid young people, then it's a more interesting, she can still, like, she can still, like, feel ostracized by them. Like, you can still get to that point, but it just feels so perfunctory of just like, oh, right, here are the young groupies who are going to make her feel ugly in her giant denim calf tan that I need to own

in some possible way. Just an iconic piece of clothing. But yeah, I think an underrated aspect of romantic comedies. Like, you got to write, this is why sliding doors just having one friend apiece, it's not enough. You need

to have a gallery. For as much as people rightfully hate on the friends in Devil Wars Prada, Devil Wars Prada, Devil Wars Prada, might have been the moment, too. Where, like, the friends in that movie are so awful. Yeah. like, it kind of ruined it for everything going forward. All the friends in Delaware are bad.

I'm glad you said that because it's not just the boyfriend. They're all bad. No, no. They have no business being in her life. The boyfriend being bad is almost less, it's almost not as terrible because you kind of expect, you always sort of expect the boyfriend to be. It's like, you know, when somebody turns up dead and you suspect the boyfriend, like you always suspect that the boyfriend is going to turn out to be bad.

You don't expect that the friends are going to turn out to be just monster. just absolutely jerks um the thing about the rom-coms and the rom-drams to get the full picture where you don't have like what bobby's describing with the idea of you is like everything has to be aspirational and maybe we've somewhat lost touch of it because of like the instagram of it all that like the fabric of life now has to be aspirational but it's like you live in the fabulous city you have the fabulous friends. You have the fabulous home. Even Bridget Jones, who, like, makes fun of how a horrible her apartment is. Her apartment is amazing. Like, you have the fabulous job. All of it has to be kind of, you're stepping into a scenario where you are invited to think, what if I had a

fabulous life? And then what the romantic circumstances are. It's my lottery ticket theory, which is I don't buy a lottery ticket because I think I'm going to win. I buy a lottery ticket for the day and a half that I get to imagine what I would do if I won the lottery. And that's sort of what you do with these movies, right? Is I don't need it to be realistic necessarily. I just need the like, that little fleeting, like, aspirational thing of like, oh, let me imagine what my life would be like if I were in this. And that's why movies with big groups of friends are good, because you don't even have to imagine that you're Bridget Jones. You can just be Bridget Jones's friends. And that's all so fine. You know what I mean? Like, that's nice. I wrote down a couple

of things. Oh, sorry, Bobby, go ahead. Oh, I, I was going to say one thing about it. We mentioned Anna. Yeah. Anna. Yes. Hannah's best friend, Anna. Helen. No, her name is Helen. Helen, sorry. Helen's best friend, Anna. Thank you. Yes. Anna is good. I was like, do I recognize this woman? I didn't because I haven't seen anything else you've been in. No. And I thought that her friendship made sense. I kept wondering, I was like, is Gwenith paying rent. I really hope Guineeth is paying rent because it's entirely unclear how much time Oh, this movie does not handle time very well. I have no idea how much time is.

But I was like, you never got your own place even after you started a successful PR company. But I also kind of found, she was sort of a stock character, even though I think it was well performed and like did what it needed to do. There really wasn't anything there. I thought was his name Russell? Jerry, friend Russell or. Yeah, Douglas McFerrin.

He was so funny and delightful because. I kind of, there was actually a little sort of thought put into, like, who would this guy's best friend be? And his best friend's kind of a dirtbag, too. Yeah. It was also sort of like, why am I friends with this person? Step right out of the Fulmonte. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, oh, that's where he, is he for the being the Fulmonte. I don't think he is, but, like, he seems like he could be. He's plausibly Fulmonte. For a second, I was like, oh, it's Billy Elliott's dad, but I was way off. Fulmonte is what? It's Wilkins. it's Robert Carlyle

It's the guy from Game of Thrones Mark Addy Mark Addy Who else is in that? Sorry, I got a so-wop topic No, that's totally fine I just to answer my notes And I kind of, I like that friend character

But not enough was done with him And even though I thought like the idea of this friend Being correct and accurate to the character Like it still didn't It didn't save those scenes because I was like, what am I doing here? Like, what's happening with Blonde Gwynette? I know.

There are two interesting nuggets of this movie that I think are worth mentioning. One of which is this movie does take place within the Barbie cinematic universe and that a Barbie is the catalyst to the sliding doors moment. This movie could be called Girl with a Barbie doll instead of sliding doors because truly that is what changes. This is another occasion where the mysterious sparkle tone on the soundtrack just sort of like we don't see again I don't like I don't need to direct this movie. It doesn't have to be exactly right.

But like have something happen to detain this girl beyond just like sparkle, sparkle and then the mother like pulled her out of the way. Let her like see something on the ground and go pick it up or like let her, you know, be distracted by something or you know what I mean? Just like something. Yeah. A little bit of extra. Also, like, now that I'm saying it again or hearing you say sparkle again, it's like sparkle connotes magic. Right. This movie is not magic.

It's not about magic. There's no grand design behind what happens to her. It's sort of, it's kind of about, like, what if I wrote this movie two ways, you know? Like, I mean, and I sort of stitched it together because, again, it's not really saying anything about anything. And it offers no explanation. It offers no rationale. out, it's just there. And so the sparkle is almost like insincere. It doesn't offer an explanation, but it also doesn't offer like an emotional, like it doesn't

make emotional sense either. Like, I would be fine with it. Like, I would be fine with a great mystery of it all. You know, they mean like, who cares? If it felt like it tracked emotionally or spiritually even of just like why this is happening this way, why, like, what, what's the, What's the purpose of it? And I don't know if the movie does that. The other thing is that this movie is a prime example of Star 69 cinema, which is, again, the landline cinema. The 1998 of it all, like, I want some, like, Museum of the Moving Image or something to have an exhibit or the Academy Museum of of movies from that very small sliver of time

where the act of pulling a star 69 changes the plot in some way, like, you know, moves things along. To the point where they have a whole conversation afterwards between Jerry and his friend, where they're like, man, technology is really a fucking snitch. So I thought that was interesting. there's a lot of

I do miss landlines. I miss the ways that you can get into Trump by not being reachable. And at the same time, a lot of these solutions had problems that were easy to solve with technology the way it was in 1998 and the characters just refused to solve those problems.

What did you think of... One more question before you leave this person's house. Ask one more question before you hang up on them. You know, like, they just chose not to. what did you think of the Gambit with John Hanna, whose character I promise does have a name, but I'm

not going to mention it because I don't know. I don't remember it. James, his name is James. Has a wife and a mother in the hospital, and the wife, he and the wife are pretending they're still together for the mother's sake, and that's why he didn't want to mention

it. And it's just like, again, these things that are like, this movie has to have a stumbling block, It has to have an obstacle. And so we're just going to, like, make it as ham-fisted as possible. And yet, even still, it's overcome in the span of, like, a 10-minute conversation on that bridge before she dies. Like, dies. Yeah.

She's the one who dies. It feels like this modern attempt to be, like, me, the smarter movie would be, like, the rom-com vision in your mind is not reality. because it feels like trying to be this modern way of like he is getting a divorce and is separated with his wife and it's not some dark thing. It seems like a mutual decision and that can be normal and grown up and that's what real life can be and you can still fall in love with this person and everything is above board.

But it's like maybe a little too grounded in reality. You want the movie version of that. Well, it's that scene and adaptation. where he's at the seminar with Brian Cox and he's like, well, I don't want my movie to be like cliched or like have like obstacles that people have to overcome or like big thing like bad things that happened or whatever. If you have a movie without conflict,

you're going to bore your audience to tears. What a great scene. But it does sort of, I do sometimes feel like that where I watch a movie and like, oh my God, this is such a cliche. Oh my God. why do movies if they would just you know like say what they're thinking whatever and then it's like

oh right like that doesn't happen in movies partially because we ultimately somewhere deep down don't want it to happen in movies because otherwise then it would be over the annoying cliche is not the thing that happens

the annoying cliche the thing that will annoy us in the audience is the sentiment behind it because it's like you can have the very typical thing happen, but how are we supposed to feel about it? If it's something that we haven't seen a million times before, or we're not meant

to feel the thing we felt a million times before, then it works. Yeah. It was a, it was a believable character detail, even though I don't believe that that character wouldn't have told her earlier than he did. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. But I did have the moment

where I thought it was a misunderstanding. I thought maybe the first time you saw this woman was actually a it's fair once it's revealed that she is in fact his wife. I was like, hold the phone. I almost wanted to pause the movie because I was like, there has to be a reasonable explanation for this, which

there was, sort of. If he is still with this woman, none of those things with the friends make sense. One was almost like, maybe there isn't even any suspense here because the movie has spent the last 45 minutes establishing that she's entered his inner circle.

You know, like, she's friends with his friends and they haven't said anything. thing about there being another woman which is also sort of strange even if it is group. Or even referring to it like it's a thing that's already happened in the past, you know, like that relationship was over.

So like I kind of appreciate that it followed its rules in a way. Like the movie, when I look back on the things that bothered me, none of them really had to do with like stuff I found totally unbelievable.

Like it didn't have any glaring plot rules that a movie like this, I think, could be reasonably presumed to have. You know, like, but I just felt none of it was interesting enough. Yeah, I think that's ultimately it. Do you want me to tell you what other movies opened, the weekend that this movie opened? Go off. Take a trip back into 1998. So it opened on, like, one screen, you know, to, sorry, not one, but like, very, very few screens.

And then it expanded into over thousands. screens for the second weekend. Or no, sorry, 500 screens in the second weekend. So that's what we're going to talk about. Finished in 10th place, two, behind Spike Lee's, he got game, which is number one. City of Angels, speaking of rom-droms, at number two. Speaking of needle drops, baby. Speaking of needle drops.

Yes, very much so. A movie called The Big Hit, which had been number one the week before, which was Mark Wahlberg. I believe I remember an early episode for, like, Lou Diamond Phillips or something in the IMTP game having the big hit show up there and you getting really mad

that it was a movie I knew about and you didn't know what I was talking about. The drama version of Le Miserables opens in fourth place. Which is, can everybody remember the cast? Can anybody... Liam Mason, Jeffrey Rush,

Uma, Claire Danez. And who was Marius, I wonder? No, I want to look this up. because, yes, that was the, those were the big poster. Oh, I recognize this poster for the big, yeah. Okay. Okay.

All right. Let's see. Marius was the, God, I don't even know. Everybody's names are different. They're like, oh, we're, oh, Kathleen Byron's in this one? That's crazy. That's wild. Amazing.

We got to do that one, Chris. We got to do that one at some point. We get on it. We'll get on it. And then, wait, sorry, the rest of the top 10. Titanic in its 20th week is at number six. Polly, which I believe is a movie about a talking parrot. Or wait, they're all talking parrots. But I guess this one was especially interesting in talking parrott.

The object of my affection, another romantic comedy drama. What if you were in a rom-com with your gay bestie? Well, this might be another sliding doors thing where I've either seen this movie. or I think I've seen this movie and... Or you're confusing it with the other one. The Madonna one. Wait, what's the other one?

Oh, the Madonna one? The next best thing. The next best thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Number nine is lost in space and then number 10 is sliding doors. Again, this isn't even like a particularly great top 10 in the 90s.

And yet even still, I'm like, oh, I could go to the movies and see he got game, City of Angels, object of my affection, like, okay, like, I'll enjoy that. That's fine. Maybe go see Titanic for the fifth time. Okay, I'll do that. Um, oh, whatever. That's gonna just put it on my tombstone, just like, I wish it was still the 90s. Like, that's all, that's all I want. That's all I want. Um, what else? Any other notes on this movie? I'm almost looking through, um, Oh, I wanted to... A friend texted me about this after I said I was watching sliding doors for the first time. First of all, he got really upset with me for having never seen sliding doors before. I was like, I thought I knew you.

I was like, I thought I was fool or I thought I was aware of it been enough to not see it. Ron, both counts. But he turned it on after I told him I was watching it. I told him it was on Peacock. And instant, I mean, within five minutes of him turning it on, he was like, wait, is... When did this accent bad in this? I guess, it is bad, right? Yes.

Which is wild that the whole thing was, she's the best at British accents. It's like, I don't understand it. She's definitely better in Shakespeare in love. The first scene she walks in, the scene she gets fired and is talking about how she borrowed vodka, it, I can't. What's the words I want to say about the specific note of badness of it? It's kind of, it's a little bit like RuPaul's Drag Race British accent. Like, it's, there's no noticeable quality about it that is actively bad or wrong.

It just hits the ear in a way that is, for lack of a better word, unstudied. It's like she put on her resume special skills British dialect and was just like, I can just do it. British diet. I imagine I can. Yeah, I've seen enough movies. I've had tea before and crumpets. Mummy brought Vanessa Redgrave around one time. I remember. Yeah.

And thank God her love interest is Scottish because at least you have the sort of like wild accent that's like so authentic and could only be authentic compared to sort of like the most generic American pretending to be British accent

possible and it almost makes you forget that what Gwyneth's doing isn't quite great. You know, every time she's talking to Anna, I'm like, there's a real discrepancy here. She also, she keeps using the word shagging to mean fucking, but not

like the action of fucking, but like this fucking guy. She'd be like, or like, I've had the most annoying shagging day and it's just like, I'm, listen, I don't know, maybe that is how people use it, but like, British people say fucking. to be like this fucking day of mine.

You know what I mean? But she has like this monologue where she uses these specific British slang like PG-13 words all in quick, angry secession and never once says bloody, I believe. Yeah. Maybe that's a status thing.

Maybe that's like a class thing. I don't know. I don't know. I imagine she like studied up on this. I felt like she, I feel like she was... She didn't become, like, non-serious about things until she started making Marvel movies. Like, um...

I love her so much. I wish she would have had more opportunities to do bad accents in movies because I think she would have been a connoisseur of the form. Yeah. We also planned this episode before we lived in a world where we knew that someone shit in her bed. Okay. I've only been, like, I've only been paying attention to this. That is a true sliding door

when it's living in a world where someone did and didn't shit in her gas bed. I listened to you and Lindsay talk about it, Bobby, on your podcast, but in the, like, after the fact kind of a way. So I still don't, like, where you were talking about, like, the third or fourth sort of level of it. Like, what, who is this person?

Is this somebody I should know about before he shit in her about? Okay. He's a, he became famous with a writer, like a journalist. He worked for Condé Nast and through those connections, he became friends with a lot of famous people. And then he just, like, utilized those friendships to further his career and prominence. And then his connection with the celebrities was so extreme that Condé Nast got rid of him

because he could not have this, like, conflict of interest. Not he was, it was inherently there was conflict in his relationship with these celebrities. So then he got other jobs, but he maintained his friendship with these people. And one of his best friends was with McPaltrow. he's also a really good friend of Carly Clause, but he's just kind of not to, he's just kind of a hanger on. You know, he found a way

to really make the normal friend a famous person lucrative for him. Which makes it especially funny that it happened to this guy. Yeah. The best thing is that he lied and said it was about Ozympic. That Ozympic made him shit to bed.

No, but he said it wasn't. But it was like, I think it was the inverse. I think he said, no, was an ozepic, it was something else. And everybody's like, no, it was those epic? Well, I think that's sort of like, the original rumor was that it was ozumic, but then he's like, no, it didn't happen.

It sounds like something that would happen on cocaine. Well, it's just allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. And I don't think he's actually released like a Instagram statement, like, about it. I think it's just sort of he hasn't corrected the record in certain ways. But, like, you think about, you think about like 90s, Gwyneth almost my idea of 90s Gwyneth is that he would find that pretty hilarious

and then like 2024, Gwyneth is exactly like the type person who would not find that hilarious and would in fact be like absolutely villainous after, you know, that has done to her guestroom. And it's I don't know, I think it's almost in a way, like a good way to

like put these landmarks in like the Gwyneth of the 90s that we loved and the Gwyneth that we have today, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The different ways they would approach Derek Blasber taking a shit in her bed. Well, it also dovetails to the whole like goop of it all and not only onomatopoetically, but also like

the whole like supplements and like You rotted, rodent man. I mean, but also the fact that like every, like her, so much part of her identity

now is just like, you know, weird nutritional stuff or, you know, all this wellness weirdness and half of those things that are in wellness stuff and half of the weird fad diets or whatever all I can think of is like you must be shitting like an insane person

like absolutely either not shitting or like always shitting you know what I mean it must absolutely wreak havoc on your colon and so that also makes it funny that there is that the whole scandal surrounding Gwyneth is that somebody shit in her bed because it's like oh like were you on her whatever like all wheat root diet or whatever it's just like okay well then

you know it's gonna happen so I don't know anyway yeah I'm just thinking about this about Gwyneth and this movie and it's like now that we've talked about this movie for a while now and I've sat with it for a day I like it still feels like this nebulous and I'm chalking it up to maybe sort of too simply, but I'm really chocking it up to the 1998 event, like the 90s of it. Because it's like, what's what I like about this movie that I can kind of point out all the things that I didn't think

quite worked or that I would have done differently or maybe needed to be changed. It's like none of those mistakes or errors to me at least add up to something that is wholly unvaliable. You know, like,

I had a very pretty pleasant time watching this movie, even though I was like, hmm, you know. Here's what I like about this movie the best is that I can imagine myself at home watching like friends on a Thursday night or party of five on, you know, Wednesday or whatever, Melrose Place. And at a commercial break, I'm going to see a 30 second spot for a movie where Gwyneth Paltrow misses the tube. She doesn't say tube enough and she should because like, really like let that accent go um misses the tube and because of that her life

bifurcates into two separate things and I can in that 30 seconds know that like the most famous it girl of our moment is doing a high concept romance in theaters this Friday and I miss that and I like 90% of that sentence has nothing to do with the actual quality of sliding doors and it's and it's just the the surrounding

the surroundings of it. It's the type of movie where I can imagine myself walking into a movie gallery or a blockbuster and heading to the back wall with the new releases and not getting the full wall but getting you like two solid rows. Two rows. This is a two row movie.

What a great way to put it. Two row movie and two weekends in a row both of those rows are completely rented out. So you have to three weeks to watch this movie. Absolutely. And I find that like, and it's sort of like this,

the more I watch movies specifically for this reason, which is I think one of the reasons I will watch this again at some point in the future just because I like the sort of tone that it has on the vibe that puts me. Yeah. It's because of that exact effect. Like, and I think for all of its failures,

it's a pretty, it's a pretty, pretty, like, authentically lived in movie. Like, It's a nicely made movie, like all of these, even though nothing's quite turned up to the levels I would like them to be like, it looks nice. It's their believable locations. Like, it's a level of production value that is kind of like effortless and simple in a way that it's no longer done. And it's sort of like saturated and flat looking. But again, I like that.

You go to the blockbuster. The two rows of sliding doors are coming. completely, uh, rented out. What do you rent instead and why is it gross point blank? Like, because you see it on the table behind the cashier when you're asking it for a sliding door. It just got returned. It's just been returned.

Because otherwise you're going to have to get like if Lucy fell or something like that. And like that's wholly unsatisfying. She's the one. He's the one. 100%. Yes, exactly. Exactly. When you were talking about the brothers, Big Bull and I was like, I have, I haven't seen their brother's McMullen, but I have seen She's the One.

Because Comedy Central had She's the one on once a week. Like, they had it on all the time. People, like, that is the underrated. People talk about, like, oh, it's a movie I watched on HBO or like TNT or whatever. Comedy Central used to show movies all the time. Comedy Central is the first place I saw a lot of movies I would call my favorite movies. First time I saw Heather's was on Comedy Central on a Saturday afternoon. The H-H-1 also would show movies a lot.

I watched Serial Mom a couple of nights ago and I was like, I don't know that I've ever seen this. And I used to watch that movie every time it was on Comedy Central. Yeah. But as I was watching it, I was like, I've never seen this movie on Edited because I've only seen it on Comedy Central. Yes. It was wild. And like, remember when you just pop into serial.

All those obscene phone calls that you never got the entirety of because you're watching it on TV? I put the pieces together because they just, they, if I remember correctly, they didn't even replace them with like, No, they muted the sound, but you could just mute it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So wonder we didn't all become expert lip readers because of dubbing in movies like that. All right. All right. We're going to move into the IMDB game if nobody else has anything else to say about sliding doors. Chris, why don't you explain to our listeners what that is? 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, will mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue. That's not enough. It just becomes a free-for-all of hints. That is the IMDB game. We are well past now.

We have rounded the Ben past our 300th episode, and at long last, I figured out a way that I'm going to streamline the part where we ask our guest. whether they want to go first. It's only taken us six years and three hundred episodes. I'm just going to ask it as two questions. Bobby, would you like to go first or last? Wow. Get first or get first? Like, where did that go?

First or last? I want to go first. I'm going to get out of the way. You're going to give first. Are you going to guess? Oh. See, I've already fucked this up. All right, you're going to guess first.

I want to guess first because I'm nervous and I just want to. Yeah. Now, would you like to guess from? me or from Chris. I'm from Chris. Okay. Then we got it. We figured it out.

Okay. So you will guess from Chris. I will guess from you and Chris will guess from me. We talked a little bit about director Peter Howitt and his very, we'll say disparate directing filmography. He directed the film Johnny English starring none other than Rowan Atkinson. For Bobby Finger, I am challenging with Rowan Atkinson. There is one voice role.

Oh. There's one. Is there any TV? There's no TV and only one voice. Okay. So is one of the movies. I'm going to guess Johnny English. Johnny English is correct. I guess.

I'm going to guess. See, I'm not sure if I should guess. I'm going to guess being in the movie. Bean is correct voice role voice role is not coming to me and I'm annoyed which of the Richard Curtis would it be not counting Bean

which is also Richard Curtis Oh there's no way I'm going to get I don't even know why I'm trying for four before But I'm just going to say love actually Love actually is incorrect I would have that too I would have guessed that as well.

He's on the poster for Love, actually. Love actually is a movie that everyone on the poster should have it and they're known for, but it's... Like hairspray, yeah. Yeah, like hairspray, like August Osage County. Except August Osage County should not be that movie for anybody. Oh, my God. Is it for weddings and a funeral?

Not for weddings and a funeral. I'll give you your years. Your years are 1994 and 2011. 1994 is before Bean. Bean came out in 97. This is a very famous animated movie, but maybe you didn't realize that he voices this role. Oh, right. I totally forgot that. 1994.

See, I always forget if Lion King is 93 or 94. I think Lion King is 94. because polkaontas is 95 Is it Lion King? It's the Lion King. I'm going to guess who he voices. Wait, let me think. So he's not Iago.

He's not, I'm own. Yago's Aladdin. Yago is Aladdin. Oh, right. Who's the, who's the bird and? Who indeed? Who indeed is the bird? The bird.

He's got a lovely bunch of coconuts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Okay. Okay. So the last one is 2011. Think back to the movies That you've already mentioned

So it's more Richard Curtis No Oh, oh Is it like Johnny English too? It's Johnny English Reborn Yeah Okay Those were popular movies

That's not as sort as I thought Yeah, okay I've never seen them I've never seen them I've never seen them Yeah I always forget that he's Zazoo And in the Lion King It's awesome.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Bobby, you are quizzing me. Oh, I'm quizzing you. Okay. I put my here. So I, and forgive me, if you've done her before, I have a backup, so I can go there.

And have you done? So I went to, with Powell, Joe, went to my favorite episode of Saturday Live, went to my favorite, well, one of my favorite sketches are my favorite episodes tonight live. Have you done Sherry O. Terry? No, we haven't. Okay. That's amazing. Any television? And the only reason I was like this full work is because it's, it's, I think, just easy enough and there's no television. There's no television. There's no television. And all of the movies are studio movies you have heard of. They're not like some random, you know, direct TV sometimes. Sure. Okay. Is one of them like Night at

the Roxbury? No. I would have guessed I'd do it. I think that's a small. Shannon in that movie. I think there are a lot of people from SNL, though, in that movie. I will confess I've never seen. One scene in the M. Sherry-O-Terry Terry, unfortunately, never got to do

a Saturday Night Live character movie of her own, even though Mrs. Delvecchio would have been a great movie to have made at some point. I do want to say there's known for as Wild. Is Southland Hills? Is Southland Hills? One of them?

Wild. Yes. Yes. I do remember. her being in Southland Tales. Okay. I imagine there's got to be at least one S&L movie in there. Is she in like The Ladies, man? I'm not sure, but it's not in her known form.

Okay. Okay. So two wrong. You get years, right? Yes. Two wrong. Ninety-seven, 1999, and 2000. Okay. So right in the wheelhouse. 1997 1999 and 2000

Can I give you one more hit? I think the only one that may be tough is 1999 So I think 97 and 2000 are the easier ones They're both like popular comedies Big popular comedies Big popular comedies 97 big popular comedy

She's not in Romey and Michelle's high school reunion And I'm pretty sure you can get the trailer line. I think it's a trailer line in both of these movies do. Really? Yeah. Okay. 97. What's the big popular comedy of 97?

She's not in the first Austin Powers, I don't think, right? No. No. Is it a Sandler? No. Is one of the other ones a Sandler? No. No.

No. Okay. But, like, I'm on the right track. I'm sorry. Okay, no, it's good. Your mind's on the right path, though, for 97. Is it like the star of it as an SNL person? No.

Oh, right. He was the other one. Sorry. I gave it away. Yeah. He was the other one. Well, the other variety show. Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay.

One of them. Wait, who were the guys on that show? I think you're thinking of Maddie. TV. I'm sorry. I'm giving you. I don't mean Mad TV by the way. It's not Matt TV. It's in living color. No, I miss it. No. Yes. It's in living color. Liar liar. Yes, it's liar. What's her line in the trailer of Liar or liar? He's the receptionist and he like compliments her hair or something. Okay. Makes fun of her hair. Okay. She has like one little funny little line in the trailer. Okay. Okay. I'm so sorry. No, that's okay. 99 and 2009. Okay. Is 99? also a comedy or is it that like that much out of her wheelhouse that's not even a family comedy. Ninety-nine is a family comedy in 2000 as a comedy.

All right. 99 is the only one on here that I'm like, maybe Joe hasn't seen this movie, but is it like the family man or something like that? Or the weatherman? Which one of those Nicholas Cage, the blank man movies? Think even more for kids,

skewing four kids in the family zone. Hmm. but live action four kids in the family live action you could say a live action adaptation of a cartoon

and I would say a forgotten one so this is too late for the Flintstones this is not um uh Josie and the Pussycats

has an iconic theme song Not Gem and the Holograms This movie is at one hour and 18 minutes long I did not know that Not Thundercats There were so many iconic theme songs It's covering someone who was getting very peculiar

opportunities in 1998 and 1999. Surprising and varying degrees of success. Like an action star getting to be in comedies? An 80

star who is getting a wide variety of adult roles in like specifically 1998 and 1999. So like a teen star from the 80s or whatever? Yeah. Matthew Broderick Yes

Matthew Broderick 1999 family So he's in election in 99 But he's also in Objectively hilarious that he's Yes Inpector gadget Objectively hilarious

He's in election And Inspector Gadget And then right after Godzilla Which is like I just watched it for the first time And I was like What are you doing? And then what year does he win the Tony

for the producers? Like not long after that 2002 or something, right? Right. Like, isn't the producers on Broadway during 9-11? Like, wasn't that one of the shows that, like... Oh, yeah, I think so. Yeah. All right.

So that's your 99. Okay. And you have 2011. I'm so sorry. No, this is good. I'll say this. Instead of a comedy, it's a genre comedy. Okay, like a horror comedy? Yeah. Is it one of the scary movies?

This is this? Is it scary movie? Yes, it is. I do kind of remember her in that. She's Gail Hale-Hale Storm, which is one of their laziest names. I'll say it's one of their laziest. Okay. All right.

And I shouldn't say that like every movie from this era is going to be appealing to me because I saw that. Suggested to me on HBO Macs recently and I like turned it on and I did an Aid Simpson just like in and out. In the door off the door. like, no, this is going to work. This is going to do. Sherry O'Terry's known for scary movie,

Southland Tales, Liar, Liar, and Inspector Gadget. She's really making the case for some time we should try doing the backwards IMDB game. Like, I give you the movies. Who is? You have to guess who the person is? That's a great idea, actually. We're going to test this out in Toronto, Joe.

We're going to find people to quiz each other at that. One million percent. That'll be our game for the when we're waiting a line. We'll give it a test. When we're waiting in line at the movie. this is great. Excellent. Do it on Patreon first. Make it an exclusive. Yes. Yes. Weirdo experiment. I love it.

All right. Chris, for you, I went into the Gwyneth filmography as well and I came up with an actress who we have not done since the early days and I can't remember whether it's the same known for

as before, which is like just as well. So I'm going to give you Imelda Staunton. Oh, you knew what you were doing, didn't you? Did. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Very good. Beer a Drake.

You're a Drake. Two for two. I wonder if another year is there because she has like two scenes in that movie and they just knock me sideways both times, or every time I watch it, both of her scenes. Sure. another year? Not another year. Strike one. What other?

I'm gonna probably assume that her other two movies are post Vera Drake unless there's like I feel like ages ago much ado about nothing was on there but I don't think she's still there. That's one of the few movies of hers

we talked about. I'll just say it to get my years Much to do about nothing Not much to do about nothing Your years are 1998 and 2014 So no they are not after One of them is

What did you say 20 what 2014 2014 It could be another Harry Potter 2014 No I think those movies were done by then I'm awful at knowing what year They ended

Um Yeah, no, they were done They were done by that. But I don't remember what year. 1998 is interesting. That it is. It's not a Mike Lee. So

would it be like Um, um So British immediately after, it would be the same year as, oh, wait, it's another Gwyneth movie probably. It's Shakespeare in love.

It's Shakespeare in love. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that was the hint you were getting in there. I was watching your face and I was like, he's at the 40, he's at the 30, he's at the 20. All right, so 2014. Yes. She doesn't really show up in American movies

is the other thing. What the hell in 2014? See, I'm trying to also place 2014 what's going on. There's a hint that I can give you that I think will get you 90% of the way there, so I want to see if you can get there myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it a best, could she be in a best picture nominee?

Because also, like, a lot of those roles that you might expect her to be in, like it's Julie Walters. Like Brooklyn is Julie Walters, not a Meldon. Exactly. Brooklyn, good movie. I should re-watch it. I might need another hint. Okay, we've done an episode.

No, a thing 2014 is coming. We've done an episode on this movie. Oh. Oh, is it the Best Exotic Miracle Hotel? No, that's 2013. And you're thinking of Stelia Emery, not the Maldesont. Yeah, yeah. I was like, I didn't think she was in that movie.

Bobby, you've seen this one. that we're talking about, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. I love this movie. Yeah. My hint as a listener of the show is that you two bring, like, this movie, the name of this movie pops out of your mouth, like, not infrequently. Yeah, we talk about this movie all the time.

Like, every time this movie comes up, I'm like, oh. Yeah. One particular line is like that we all like this movie. Like, it's just a very easy movie to love. Yes. Oh, man. You say a line from this movie all the time, but it's not a meldistan. Oh, it's pride.

It's pride. It's such a good movie. It's such a good movie. Yes, very good. Where are my lesbians? Indeed. That's right. She's excellent in that movie.

She's like maybe I could probably think of 10 other people in that movie before I think of her, which is maybe not fair, but it's also maybe an assessment of how great the performances are. He has two of the best. she's a big she's she's a big loud character in that because like her character is so funny because she's such a like bulldozer in her town but she has two of the best quiet scenes which is one of them with Andrew Scott when everybody got all up with Andrew Scott this year and I was like you're not a real fan you're not a real fan you're not a real fan because none of y'all have seen him in pride and he's so good in pride um but then somebody published like a hundred greatest lesbian films list today I forget where it was published but I even said

that line today because I saw that list of my feet and I was like, better on a lesbians. But it's the Andrew Scott scene and then it's the scene where she and Bill Nye are making sandwiches together. Oh, the sandwiches thing. And he says, well, I'm gay.

I know. There's something like that. It was great. Okay. That's our episode. Bobby Finger, a triumphant return to our podcast. Thank you for coming, Bobby. Listeners, if you haven't already

picked up a copy of four squares, it gets a high endorsement from us listen bobby finger is very good about very good at writing books that make me cry in public that's true that was the first text that i got from chris from the airport as like well i'm in the airport and i'm reading bobby's book and i'm already crying and uh a high endorsement so yeah if the new york times isn't good enough for you um my tears let me off tears of approval so very good um anywhere that uh our listeners should go obviously they should be listening to your podcast weekly um podcast you follow me on instagram if you want too i don't post much but i post enough i guess yeah um and yeah that's it read the books listen to podcast

bobby's been the only good person on social media for the entire time that i've known him so 100% absolutely very true all right Listeners, that's our episode. If you want more at ThisHad Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at ThisHadoscowbuzz.com. You should also follow our Twitter account at Had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz. Our Instagram at This Head Oscar Buzz and our Patreon at Patreon.com slash This Had Oscar Buzz. Chris, tell the people where they can find you. Twitter for now and Letterbox at Chris Bifax.

Remember when we were like, Twitter for now. But like, I know. I think we need to be back. there again. Twitter and Letterbox at Krispy File. That's F-E-I-L. I am also on Twitter for now

and Letterbox for always at Joe Reed. We'd spelled R-E-I-D. We would like to thank, let's also follow Bobby on Letterboxed. He's got good and smart things. Oh, yeah, Letterbox.

I forgot. I love Letterbox. That's my favorite social media. Duh, I should have said Letterbox. Everybody's saying it's their favorite now, and it's like it kind of really is the only good one left. It's the only one right now.

When I understand when people are like, oh my God, I hate my letterbox. And it's like, then you haven't done enough work of like curating who you see. Put in the work. You don't have to see anything annoying if you don't want to on letterbox. Like, truly. There are there are crazies on letterbox, but it's very easy to figure it out. Letterbox is the only place I've ever received a death threat. Well, even so, it's still the only good one.

It was for what? For calling someone, calling them for calling in Canto a little gay? Oh my gosh He's not wrong It's a little gay All right We would like to thank Kyle Cummings For his fantastic artwork

And Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mievous For their technical guidance Please remember Oh and Taylor Cole For our theme music Which I somehow The great Taylor Cole Wrote out of the copy

That I have here I'm sorry Taylor Please remember to rate Like and review us On Spotify, Apple Podcast Wherever else you get podcast A five-star review in particular Really helps us out

With Apple Podcast visibility So careful not to loudly stub your toe in the bathroom. Well, we didn't talk about this. Gene Triple Horn stubs her toe in this movie. Like, no one's ever stubbed her toe in anything ever. In a movie where a woman gets hit by a car and mugged. That's true. It's been 90 minutes.

And that scene almost suggests that she's doing it to be annoying explicitly. And I was like, oh, that explains the stub. She's trying to piss him off. She's trying to get him caught. And then I was like, wait, no, you really just stopped your toe. and just being ridiculous about it. It's amazing. No wonder she ended up smoking her vape,

her vape weed in Gloria Bell because she had to calm down from stubbing her toe so hard and sliding doors. Anyway, don't stub your toe. Write us up something nice on Apple Podcasts, won't you? That is all for this week,

but we hope you'll be back next week for more buzz. Thank you.