This Had Oscar Buzz - 314 – Unbreakable

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

After the smash box office success and surprise Oscar nominations of The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan delivered a follow-up in short order. With a mysterious trailer, Unbreakable reunited Shyamalan with Bruce Willis for another genre exercise, this time involving a man who survives a train crash without any injuries. Samuel L. Jackson co-headlines as a frail man … Continue reading "314 – Unbreakable"

Joe, we're back with an update for the Ultra Fantasy League. Do you see what I did? Every single update we've had so far, you started with saying my name, so I started it with saying your name. Whoa, subliminal advertisement for us. We're saying, I'm going to say Chris as often as possible so that we don't get confused for each other anymore. It's perfect.

Pavlovian. I was going to do a venom voice, but I can't do a venom voice. It's too early. I can't just, er, Eddie, I don't know. Venoms in first place. I don't know. How does Venom talk? My Venom voice would probably also be my Jody Comer in bike writer's voice that I sent to you.

Guys, you can't, you can't, this is what being friends with Chris Fyle is like you get aggressed with voicemails of him singing lyrics to songs in Jody Comer's voice from the bike riders. I did poor unfortunate souls in Jody Comer's bike writer's voice. We should be talking more about the bike riders. We should be talking more about the bike riders. Good movie. How much of a buy was the bike writer? $3?

I think every time you say something like that, I think of Lucille Bluth going. I mean, it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10? How much could a bike writer cost, Michael? $1. I did make it a $3. You're right.

I did make it a $3. You know, I was just looking for something to make for a $3 buy, and I said, why not the bike raters? You go to hell. All right. So, anyway, the point being, Venom the Last Dance, finished number one at the box office. So if you did purchase Venom the Last Dance in the fantasy movie game, it's probably not great for you, but you are getting the $50 million bonus. You're getting the number one at the box office bonus.

So you're doing okay. You're not doing great. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to blow smoke up your ass and say it was a great pick or anything like that because I don't think it was a great pick. But you've got the 10 point bonus for 20 million, 25 million, the 15 point bonus for 50 million. So that's 25 right there. You get 20 more points for it being number one at the box office. So that's 45 points plus the 50.

So like you're at 95 points on the weekend. It's not a bad weekend. It's not a bad weekend for you. It's just not going to last you very long is all I'm going to say. It's not, it's not, you know, it's not going to get you a lot of points. This is, this is my way. But it is the last dance. So if you showed up to the other dance, I mean, what are you going to do?

You got to show up to the last dance. Sending you to jail. The bigger box office story is that Conclave. Wow. Conclave is just fighting for dear life in that accent. Open to almost as much as Tar made in its whole box office run. You got to hit Conclave, the Conclave. Anyway, yeah, Conclave hitting 6.5 mil in its opening weekend doesn't on the surface sound that impressive, but like for the movie that it is, for a, you know, Vatican political drama, that's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's also like the crowd pleaser of the month so far. It's everybody I've talked to like it. A B plus cinema score. B plus cinema score. Word of mouth from everybody.

people who I would have expected to be like really cynical about this movie were kind of raving about it. I think it has a chance to be one of those sort of like Normcore quasi-ironic things where people sort of like act like they're ironically liking Conclave, but they really just sort of like Conclave, which is not a bad place to be in. Everybody seems to be accepting that it's a little dumb and that's fine. And that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anora, as you mentioned to me off mic, Enora continues to move steadily and confidently up the charts.

It is now cleared a million. It's playing the long game, I think. I think we can sort of, you know, I'll understand that. This is a movie that has Oscar ambitions in mind. So I think right now, Anora and Conclave are two pretty good bets to end up on the best picture list, but I don't want to... Like, we're still in October as we're recording this. I'm not, like, setting anything in stone in October.

But good news for both of those movies, I would say. And good news for you if you have those movies on your roster. So anything else you want to say about the box office before we move into the leaderboard. Nothing specific about the box office. We haven't really started in earnest yet. Still just warming the tires. greasing the tires, whatever the thing. Whatever you do to tires, that's what we're doing.

I wouldn't know. I don't. I'm just a version who can't drive. So one thing I wanted to notice, so by the time you're going to listen to this, we'll have updated the leaderboard for the following weekend. So this is a little bit of outdated info, but I did want to shout this out, because as of last week's update, there were two rosters and two alone in first place, which is kind of surprising, considering we don't have a ton of.

of data points to go on so far, but here we are. Callahan and Oldman are both in first place as of October 22nd with 162 points. Is Callahan, Tommy Callahan, the character Chris Farley played in Tommy Boy? I don't know. Is Oldman the real life Gary Oldman? Who's to say? But they're both in first place as of last week. Are you going to root for break pads or slow horses? I'm trying to compare. They've both got Joker. They both got Saturday night. They've both got piece by piece.

They've both got... Enjoy your time at the top now. I know. They both got... They both have we live in time. They both have Smile 2. They both have Venom the Last Dance, so they will be getting more points for this week.

They don't both have Conclave. So Oldman has then Conclave and Blitz, and Callahan has Wicked and Anora. So... Callahan's going to be here for a while, maybe. Callahan might be around for a while. We'll see. Well, especially if Wicked is the wine mom's success that we've been sort of fearing it might be.

I saw tracking that it's might open to over $100 million. Bye, my, my. My goodness. Now you got me doing it, God damn it. It's contagious. All right. So, good for you, Callahan. Good for you, Oldman.

I wanted to make sure that we shouted you both out. Chris, what's coming up for the Fantasy League? We've got some awards. This week. We got Gotham noms coming. You know what? If the Gotham's are going to be this thirsty, at least we're going to get some good out of it,

and that's early awards points. So there we have it. Very good. Expecting a good day for the ANORA drafters. And good news, you're a Patreon subscriber for this had Oscar buzz. Tell them why. Yes, because we are going to be giving brief mini episodes over on the Patreon for happenings throughout the season. So when we get those Gotham nominations coming in, we're going to be dropping a little bonus over on the Patreon feed. So be sure to check that out.

It's all incredibly exciting. Head on over to vulture.com slash movies dash league. And you can see leaderboards. You can see what the prizes are, what the scoring categories are, what the various award shows on the calendar are. And then you'll also be able to subscribe if you're not already getting it. I think everybody who's in the game has already subscribed to the newsletter. So I will be sending out a newsletter every week from Vulture. And it's all good. It's all great. It's all going to be very fun. We are headed. We're finally at award season, Chris. We can we can, we can, we can, exhale now, Simon. Maybe in a couple weeks we can exhale now, but I hear you. All right, all right. Best of luck, and we'll see you in the fantasy league.

I'm from Canada water. Dick Pooh. Dick Pooh. Your train derailed took a curve too fast. A second train collided with yours after it derailed. The debris spread over one mile. Where are you looking at me like that? There are two reasons why I'm looking at you like this.

One, because it seems you weren't the only survivor of this train wreck. And two, you don't have a scratch on you. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. The only podcast giving you less than you desire, but more than you deserve. Every week on the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, 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 exact opposite and best friend at the same time.

Chris File, hello, Chris. They call me Mr. Sass. Perfect. Me after doing squats, they call me Mr. Ass. Yeah, there you go. I kept trying to make a they call me Mr. Ass joke, but like around the same time, there was a pro wrestler who went by the term Mr. Ass, so I couldn't quite thread that needle without infringing upon. Me doing yard work, they call me Mr. Grass. Shut the fuck up.

Okay, here's the thing with Unbreaking. Me on a piano. They call me Philip Glass. I hate you. I hate you so much. You are my arch enemy. It's true. Okay. So you would have thought that I would have rewatched Unbreakable before I saw glass when that came out a few years ago. And yet, last night was the first time I had watched this movie since I had seen it way, way, way back from the day. And way, way, way back in the day, I joined, I would say probably the majority of people who saw that movie, which was I walked out of that movie somewhat nonplussed as to what I had just seen. I knew the end twist was pretty cool, but I wasn't quite sure whether what the rest of the movie was really on about. and I have all these years sort of carried with me the idea that, like, I'm not really an unbreakable person. You know, there are people who really evangelize from this movie.

And then watching it last night, it all clicked for me. And I wonder if it's just that I'm finally watching it as like somebody who, you know, knows more about movies and has, you know, maybe developed my, you know, a taste in movies a little bit more. or maybe it was just that I was unburdened by expectation. Unbreakable comes so close after the Sixth Sense. I mean, we'll talk about it. It's shockingly close.

And then, like, the marketing campaign is like... We'll talk about that, too. You know. But I was very, very happy... The Sixth Sense is topping the Blockbuster charts. I was very, very happy to discover that, like, oh, I really, really like this movie. Like, one of my favorite Shamaun. Like, I...

Same. Maybe, well, I haven't seen the Sixth Sense in a while, but other, with that little caveat, I would maybe say favorite Shyamalan. It's so basic. No, I like the village. I like the village. It's so basic to be like my favorite Shaamalan movies are his first three ones, but like, it is true. Like, it's, and I don't, and I'm, I'm not a hater. I am not somebody who feels like, you know, this lady, you know, I sort of, I go up and down with Hemnay Shamalan.

Right. To the point where, like, I'm not entirely sure. one where I came out on Trap, honestly. The great thing about Trap is that, you know, while all of this Shaman discourse was going on, and all of this snobbery and reverse snobbery was going on around Sharmalon. The great thing about Trap is that it proved everyone right.

Everyone who's like, no, there's a reason that he has all of this audience condescending, super, like, blunt, nobody speaks this way, dialogue there's a reason for it and it's smart and then everyone being like yeah but his movies is so stupid and like both can be true both can be true in trap um i will say you know there's definitely shaman movies i outright hate slash split and glass um and then i'll talk about split and glass certainly in this episode and but also i can't say by any by any stretch of the definition that I am a

hater for M. Night Shyamalan when I can stand here and defend Lady in the Water. You wear that like a badge of honor, the fact that you like Lady in the Water. I like to think of it as a badge of correctness, a badge of everybody get over yourself. A badge of courage. No, I hate Lady in the Water. You and I, that's another one where you and I are exact opposites and arch enemies. I can't stand Lady in the Water. I think it's so

smug. So I'm the Narf and you are the scrunt. Yeah. I also wonder if maybe now that I have some distance I could rewatch the village and like it more, because that was a movie that I really, that was when, and we're going to talk about like the whole, the ecosystem of the M. Night Shyamalan twist. But like, that was the movie where I was like, all right, too far, too much. You're taking us all for fools now.

Like, this is too stupid, and I cannot sanction this buffoonery where we have, you know, we've been larping all along. You know what I mean? Like, I can't. I cannot. But certainly in the sort of like the post-renaissance of M. Knight-Channel, I've definitely liked more than I haven't liked. Even when you talk about like split and glass, I don't.

take the two of those as like a unit. Like I like split quite a bit and I think glass is quite a bit disappointing. I really loved old like legitimately more than just sort of like making dumb memes. I really thought old was very good. And I was somewhat betwixt in between on Cabin in the Woods and still trying to figure out how I feel about trap. So it's it's a whole lot of stuff. It's a whole lot of stuff. I think I really like trap, even though I'm like, there are some things. There's some things. But I do think I ultimately like trap quite a bit and what it's going for. See, I was one of those people who for the longest time wanted the Unbreakable sequel. And then when Split comes along and it's the surprise

unbreakable sequel and then Glass comes along and it's very intentionally so. And like, you could get into the problems of that movie and what does and doesn't work and just the kind of unfortunate timing of it in relation to Bruce Willis which just makes me so very sad. I know, we'll talk about that too, yeah. But now, especially rewatching Unbreakable,

it's really revealing at how unnecessary, I think, a sequel for this is because it's kind of a perfect object And, you know, in a very, like, mainstream way ahead of its time because, you know, this is released the same year as X-Men. It's released a year before or, no, two years before Spider-Man. Yeah. So, like, this, you know, what this movie's kind of going for at its time was relatively still pretty niche.

And I think that's why audiences kind of rejected it. But also in a way that, okay, audiences might not reject it today, but, you know, if this movie came out today, it would be kind of old news in what it's trying to do. It's so notable that this movie begins with, you know, a text on screen about what comic books, how, what comic books are, how popular they are, and how many people actually read them, because you would not need any of that context, obviously. No, and it works twofold because it sets this movie in kind of a time machine. To the point that, like, comic book stuff now, we don't really talk about comic books when we talk about comic book IP.

It's so mainstream that nobody, like, most of the audience for comic book movies don't even think about comic books when they think about these things. Right. I am emblematic of that. I'm somebody who loves, you know, the MCU, but I have never read a comic book besides the sandban in my life. So it puts you in the time that this was released so abruptly, but then it also, in a way, like, I think for a contemporary audience, you know, this movie 25 years later,

because none of that is really dialogue, it really puts you in as an audience member in the mindset of, this like anthropological thing that is comic books and like true nerdy geekery like comic books as like what they are at their essence what they're an extension of Greek mythology and what it means to our psyche and right first there were hieroglyphic paintings on caves and now there's Mr. Fantastic you know on the cover of a of a comic book yeah yeah um of interesting things to go into. There's casting stuff. Julianne Moore was

initially supposed to be in this movie and dropped out to go be Clary Starling and Hannibal. Double digits. This had Oscar Buzz movie. Hannibal. Yeah. That's like episode 20 or something. Was it our first

spooky season? It might have been. It could be like episode 10 or something. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot that goes into it. Obviously the Bruce Willis story is, you know, sad, but it's also, you look back at this and, like, this, you know, Quentin Tarantino, I just watched a video where Quentin Tarantino was talking about this movie, was one of his favorite movies, and says it's, you know, Bruce Willis's best performance on screen, and you watch it,

and it's tough to, you know, refute that. And it plays in so interestingly into Chamelon's filmography. We'll talk about the splice. and the glass thing. I want to get into the 2000 Oscars, even though Unbreakable never really showed up in the precursor season beyond things like the Blockbuster Awards and stuff like that, the Saturn Awards. And even then, it was sort of like even those properties didn't really know what to do with it. Like there was a lot of, I think that's the, that was the dominant reaction as far as I remember to Unbreakable is it wasn't even vitrial. It wasn't like hatred. It was like a pretty bad cinema score from audiences and like some of that I think is content and we can

get into that later but people didn't really like this movie on top of not really knowing what to do with it but I think it wasn't a kind of I think there are there are there ways to dislike a movie and I think there are certain movies that people hate and sort of like you know spend spend months and weeks and years shitting on and that wasn't unbreakable on Unbreakable wasn't mocked. Unbreakable wasn't, you know, the butt of a joke. I think it was, I think it was in general. A lot of people were like, okay.

Like, you know. People were put off by it. And I guess to like hint at the, some of the reason for that. Like, you talked to the average movie goer, and I remember distinctly, you know, the basically, uh, David's or whatever. Does he get a superhero name in this movie? No. No, he doesn't. David's, like, first night of heroism was too much for, you know, the average audience who didn't know that they would be seeing a dead person chained to a radiator in this PG-13 movie that they're taking their family to see on Thanksgiving.

So, like, this movie, this is probably about as dark as Shyamalan movies get, aside from Knock at the Cabin, which pass. I'm not watching that. It's also visually murky, right? It's visually, like, very intentionally. So I think the look of this movie's incredible. We'll get into how much I really love all of the craft aspects of this movie. Whereas, like, Sixth Sense, while is an overt horror movie and has darkness to it, and, like, you know, trauma in there as well. You know, there's a poisoned child in the movie.

Yeah. There is this sense of uplift for audiences and, kind of. and kind of pseudo-religiousness to it as well that is not present in Unbreakable. Unbreakable is a pretty dark and grim movie. Yeah. Well, and it also ends somewhat abruptly, right? The big twist happens, and that's it.

That's just sort of like, it's like credits. It's a really interesting structure. What's that? Post-script credits. Yes, yeah. But by nature of, you know, a huge part of the success and the popularity of the sixth sense was related to its twist ending. And Unbreakable has one in people didn't think that it measured up like the one-to-one was not there in terms of a successful twist. And I kind of can't parse if it was people.

guessed it or it's just that it wasn't so satisfying but like I want to talk more about how this story functions in relation to both comic book movies and how it was marketed on the other side of the plot description yeah okay well then I have a lot to say let's get into that then as quickly as possible so before we get into the plot description why don't you um tell our listeners why they should be subscribed and uh why they should sign up for our Patreon. Hey, listener, we have a Patreon. We call it this head Oscar buzz turbulent brilliance.

For $5 a month, you're going to get a few bonus episodes, the first of which is what we call an exception. These are episodes that fit that this had Oscar buzz rubric, but managed to score a nomination or two. We've over the years had many, many requests for this, And as soon as we launched the Patreon, we were so happy to kind of dive into some of these titles. What kind of movies have we covered on previous exceptions? We've done most recently House of Gucci, Father, Son, and House of Gucci.

We know you were all waiting for that one. I've done movies like Vanilla Sky, the Lovely Bones, Pleasantville, the Mirror Has Two Faces, Madonna's Double Me, Children of Men, Knives Out. We've got a whole, more than a year's worth of episodes banked for you to go check some of those out. But also what we have banked is what we call an excursion. This is your second bonus episode you get every month. These are deep dives into Oscar ephemera we love to obsess about on this show. Things like recapping old award shows like the indie spirits and the MTV Movie Awards, EW Fall Movie Previews, Actress Roundtables.

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Come play with us. All right. So this week, On the main feed, we are talking about Unbreakable, the 2000 film directed and written by M. Night Shyamalan starring Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright, Spencer Treat Clark, Carlane Woodard. It was released by Touchdown Pictures on September, or sorry, on November 22nd, 2000, opposite 102 Dalmatians and Quills. Those were your choices for new movies at the multiplex that weekend. Meanwhile, Ron Howard's Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas was racking up. Running roughshod.

Yeah, yep, sure was. All right, Chris, I've got my stop, watch out. If you are ready to do a 60-second plot description of Unbreakable, ready? Yeah. And begin. All right, so we follow David Dunn. He is on a train back home. He is in the middle of probably getting a divorce, but the train derails, and it's a massive destruction.

He's the only survivor, but not only that, he does not have a scratch on him, and there is no explanation. He starts getting notes from a man who runs a comic art gallery named Elijah Price, played by Samuel L. Jackson. Elijah Price has a disorder that makes his bones very, very frail, and he is constantly on the left. lamb and he is trying to tell David that he is part of some type of mystical order basically superhero even though we never say that word over the course of time David discovers oh I've never been sick oh I have super strength and I can't explain any of it and then basically David goes into a house because he like people can touch him and he can see these flashes of things and he goes and he finds a family that's been kidnapped and tied bound

and he rescues them. Then we discover that Elijah, or Elijah, basically, by touching David, reveals that, oh, he is orchestrated all of this. He is a domestic terrorist who blew up the train. And by the way, dun-dun-da, Mr. Glass, his arch nemesis. And through PostScript, we discover that Mr. Glass gets institutionalized. The end.

The end. 30 seconds over. Okay. Um, as you're sort of going through the plot there, I think one of the interesting things and maybe one of the things that audiences didn't quite, you know, get on board with is the way that this movie is paced, which is. And the flashbacks to Elijah's childhood where his mom is like initiating him into comic books because that's her way of getting him outside. And even, but even stuff, I'm thinking about stuff like, how long does that scene where he's lifting weights go on? And how sort of deliberately is that paste? It's just, it's very, you know, every, every addition of weight on it is, you know, given this very sort of like slow and deliberate, you know, a treatment. and then to have the final 20 minutes of the movie be David Dunn, you know,

springs into action and saves a family. And then we find out about Mr. Glass and then boom, it's over. And it's just sort of, it feels I can understand where an audience is like, oh my God, it took us so long to get there. And then we didn't really spend any time in the part where, you know, all of a sudden the twist has changed everything. And Sharmelon, when he was developing the script, kind of had the full arc of a superhero story.

And then basically what Unbreakable is, is just the, like, origin story, the first, like, chunk of that story. And I kind of, like, as someone who gets really, really impatient with origin stories, I kind of appreciate the way that Shomelon is stretching out. this origin story for like a lot of it for dramatic effect it's like basically

David and his son are going to put a car on that bench press you know eventually like just keep adding stuff like we could have turned this into some type of meme if we'd had those in the day I kind of appreciate that especially because it's like

this whole thing is an anthropological you know bird's eye view of how these stories work on top of being one of those stories. So I, like, I kind of appreciate that it's, you know, more removed in that way. So he's very methodical about the story. And, like, this is not, this isn't some two hour plus droning movie. I feel like, while it is a very, it's very deliberately paced and, you know, moody and it feels kind of slow.

and chilly. But maybe I just have a lot of patience for that. The scenes play out slowly, which is, you know, that's the intent. But I do feel like it, you know, there's intention behind it. There's an idea behind it. The other thing that I walked away from this viewing really appreciating is the subtly strange way that this family operates. We've seen movies where, you know, a family is, you know, maybe about to break up. And we've seen, and this doesn't exactly play out white like that. It takes a second to sort of get your bearings as to like what the equilibrium of this family is, why they're breaking up. They're not breaking up because they fight. They're not breaking up because one of them cheated. They're breaking up because the light has gone out. You know what I mean? There's just no feeling anymore and you feel like it's, you know, that, you know, David, who was this once sort of like gleaming golden high school athlete or whatever has just slowly but surely let the light go out of his, you know,

life to the point where- Lost a sense of purpose. You get the sense where, like, what's his relationship with his son. You sort of realize throughout the movie that, like, up until this point, he's kind of kept his kid at an arm's length. And, you know, Audrey is the one who does the parenting. He's, you know, when he gets called into school, they're like, we've never seen you before. And he's like, yeah, Audrey usually does this stuff. And they're like, what stuff? And he's like, anything to do with uh what's his name joseph um and and then this you know this manifests itself in weird ass things like the kid like pulling a gun and being like no i'm going to shoot you to prove to you that you're that you're um invincible and it's just a lot to ask of a suburban audience for this

I really, there's a few things that I was disappointed by on this rewatch that made me like the movie less, though I still really like this movie. And that scene was one of them, you know, because it's, it's too much. It's too much. You know, a kid pulling a gun on his own parent in what this is. I kind of liked that it was too much. I kind of liked that because, again, I think it just sort of throws you off balance and it makes you sort of realize that, like, this is not a typical family. This is not, you know,

this family, you know, does not even, it's not even disintegrating in a typical way. And these people are in some ways, like, that's the scene where all of a sudden, David gets out of it by being like, if you do that, you're right, I will survive, but then I will leave you. I will leave to New York and I will never come back. And it's, It's just like, that's, he's not threatening the kid, I, he's not, you know, he's not like, you know, I'm going to, you know, beat the shit out of you or whatever. Like, he's not being physically intimidating. He's, like, using the threat of taking his love away from his kid. And like, it's just, it's, it's those things that I find that's going to make me lean in a little bit more. Do you know what I mean? To these, like, you know, family dynamics. I get what you're saying in that, like, the actual, like, it's, it's, it's extreme to do, to go so far as to, to, It's a dream for a movie that is like so much of the conception of this movie is presenting this in a realistic circumstance. And like that scene just feels like something that only happens in a movie, you know, and so much of what Chalmala is doing is, okay, let's put the idea of a vigilante superhero with superpowers, you know, Superman, basically, in a real. like grounded real world setting you know how would somebody deal with that psychologically how would

they come to accept that about themselves how how would they interact with those powers within a family you know and then that scene just feels soapy I guess for lack of a better word but I I didn't like it or like the type of thing you would see in a bad Lars von Trier imitation you know Like someone who's trying to be gritty and real, so a kid pulls a gun on his parents. Sure, sure, sure. I think, yeah, I mean, that's, I'll take that. I'll take that criticism. I think some of the other things you talk about placing this story within a very sort of real world context.

I think this is, Shaman films a lot of his movies and, you know, the Great Philadelphia area. I think this is the movie that does best. With that, this really, really shows off its location shooting very well. You know, you think of all those scenes with like, you know, the staircase, the stone stairs up to, you know, various terraces in the city. The way that they use the stadium, the football stadium, the one at the University of Pennsylvania, even though I think as like a bat cave. It's like a fictional, I think it's a fictional university in this, but that's the, It's the football stadium at University of Pennsylvania. And it's just like, it's a, this like stone, it's this very old looking stadium.

It's this, you know, sort of like stone, um, monument, essentially. And those shots all look very interesting. It's so much more interesting. Um, it's interesting, it's be interesting to sort of like juxtapose those scenes in the ones in trap, which are, you know, in a very sort of like modern arena and, and, and whatnot. Shot by the great Eduardo Serra. It looks... That camera...

That camera is moving all the time, too, which I think is very interesting. That is a very sort of like curious camera, and it's always sort of like pushing in and moving around. I think that's really incredible. The score is something I sort of had to sit with for a second because I literally wrote down... Oh, I think it's great. What is this like trip hop? beat into this thing. But I think it ultimately really does work. And it really sort of like it creates a, you know, an atmosphere that is not quite your typical sort of like rousing strings. You know what I mean? That you might have for a superhero. So I really like that. I also think we don't talk enough about how good Sam. Samuel L. Jackson is in this movie.

Yeah. He's fantastic in this movie. I think it's maybe because we have him within a similar vein in a lot of movies to come after it. And I don't just mean Nick Fury, but like these kind of. Oh, I think this is so different than something like Nick Fury. I think he's so, there's such an edge that lies below the surface. There's such a, you know, a frightened vulnerability between, behind this character. He's so desperate. But also an obsession that I think would be, would come across very differently if it was a different performer. And he wrote this for Samuel L. Jackson and like talk about an insight into a performer. Because I also think Samuel L. Jackson is the perfect performer to play all of the notes he has to play. Play that obsession and like you mentioned, that kind of fear and such, but without giving away what the twist is, but then, of course, you go back and you watch it. And it's all there in the fabric of the movie right there in front of you. Oh, it's incredible the way that that twist sort of hides in plain sight. Not the stuff about, you know, him performing the terrorist actions. But just like this guy is presented.

As a comic book villain, from the second you see him, from the way that he's costumed, from the way that he's sort of like the silhouette that he strikes. The wrapping paper of the first comic book is like the same exact purple and texture that he will eventually evolve into. But I credit the performance with, you know, walking that line and not overstepping to reveal it. Like, whereas, like, I don't know. That's one of my questions about this movie is how... I guess maybe I need to pull some people to be like, did you guess that this was the twist? Is that what is like people's reticence with accepting this twist is about because...

Is there reticence in accepting the twist? That's interesting. I never considered that. Or they just don't think it's interesting. Like they... I think for a lot of people, it's just because it just sort of like hung there in the air and it maybe comes too late, you know, in the movie or that they're you know they were

dissatisfied that nothing comes after it you know what I mean that is just sort of like and then the post script is like now you're meant to feel sympathy for this person who is a domestic terrorist before the time that we were really having discussion about

comic book villains of how the villains are the more sympathetic and more interesting characters traditionally yes I think the way that this movie, you talked about the way that this movie was marketed is really interesting. I remember it's one of those. One of the great teasers. One of the great teaser. And it's one of those, it's probably one of the last teasers that I saw for the first time, not one of the last, but like,

maybe one of the last that like most people saw for the first time in a theater. I think we're just on the edge of a not, the critical mass of people being online that people are watching, you know, trailers, I guess that's maybe not necessarily true. It's maybe one of the last that I remember being so blown away by in theaters first. I remember I had heard nothing of this movie until I had seen the trailer. And it's essentially what it is, is the scene with him and Michael Kelly, who plays the doctor post train crash where, and it unfolds slowly. Again, it's, you know, preparing you for the movie. It unfolds very slowly. It, you know, sort of shows these shots in between, like, you know, the new movie by M. Knight Shyamalan, but it's, it's Willis getting

explained to him that he's the only survivor of this train crash and he doesn't have a scratch on him. And like, that's all you need to sell you on this movie. And then it's called Unbreakable and that it stars Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. And it's the new I'm Night Shyamalan movie, you know, a year after the Sixth Sense blew your mind. And that's all people need it. And I don't think there was much more in the full trailer than that. Like the full trailer was still largely that sequence. And some of this has to be, you know, they're compiling marketing materials.

And this movie finishes filming the July before it opens that November. You know, so it's also like, we just live in a different time now that a movie that is largely shot in public spaces and is that quickly turned around to get to audiences that this isn't ultimately spoiled for us, that we don't know. And like, we didn't even know really that it's a superhero movie or a comic book movie. And granted, that's it's still out of it. time where that is a bit of a dirty word, even though the X-Men movie was released that summer and did well. And there was like a budding of heads between Disney and Shyamalan over that marketing approach, which he wanted it on Front Street of this is a movie about comic books, etc. And then, you know, they basically promoted it as a mystery movie. You know, they knew they would get people in theaters

if they were expecting another Shyamalan twist of some kind. Yeah. But also I think at the same time, any time you set up a movie in marketing with like, we're not giving you any details, I think it largely sets people up to not enjoy what they're getting. Sure, sure. Because they're just going to make up in their mind what they're getting.

And then, oh, it wasn't that, you know, bad cinema score right there. But I kind of question. shamalan's thought there because I do think that this movie benefits from having a sense of discovery and a sense of not entirely knowing where it's going and I do think if if an audience goes into this movie knowing that it's about comic books and deconstructing the comic book approach I don't think that this is ultimately a twist ending and I think it's ultimately less satisfying because I think you're going to know right from the beginning that he's a villain and maybe like I was saying a certain portion of that audience figured it out very quickly that you know Elijah is the villain of this movie so what do you what do you what do you think of that because I was kind I spent a lot of my mental energy

while watching this being like this movie definitely plays differently if you you know what it's about going into it. And I think it maybe also doesn't hold up as well as it would have because other movies would come along and try to, you know, psychoanalyze the comic book storytelling structure. And of course, Alan Moore's Watchman had already been published at this point, though the movie was not that. Is it Alan Moore?

Yeah, watchman. We all know Watchmen. Yeah. And it's almost more. impressive that this movie feels not particularly influenced by Watchman and that Watchman would be the major reference point for things to come that would be about analyzing, you know, comic books as a storytelling vessel. Yeah. I don't think this movie is necessarily interested in deconstructing anything like that or to, I think this movie is interested in comic books as a

vessel of sort of myth-making, not to like No Zach Snyder or anything like that. But you know what I mean? Like, I do feel like M. Knight-Chamelon's interest in that as a concept in this is essentially just like, what if there was a Superman who didn't know that they were Superman? And they, and, you know, all of a sudden, this thing happens to them and somebody raises that possibility. And then they sort of start looking back through their life and sort of taking stock of the life. You mentioned when you did your letterbox review yesterday about like, this is the only good movie about a man self-actualizing. And like, you're not.

Yes, 100%. You're not wrong. And it's self-actualizing into what if Superman had to self-actualize, you know, himself into being Superman at some point. And, and there's- I mean, and Shyamalan is also very much a family guy, so the unbreakable of the title is not just about, you know, his physical body as a superhero, but it's also about the bond of this family, you know, that this family can, it ultimately stays together and isn't broken, though you kind of wish for just a little bit more of Sappy Shyamalan in this movie, just to kind of sell that theme a little bit more. Maybe. I think one of the things that's interesting, though, about this as an origin story is, is that ultimately, Shaman is very, very comfortable and wants to keep a general air of mystery in terms of, like, he's not really interested in being like, well, why, how did this happen? Was he, you know, was he bit by a spider? Did he get hit by a moon rock? You know, something like that. And it's not, he exists as an impervious beast. because there is somebody who exists as the most breakable person.

You know what I mean? Yeah, they both exist as who they are through maybe genetic chance. They have to exist as the opposite ends. If there is a spectrum, there has got to be one person at the extreme one end and the extreme other end of a spectrum. And they're, you know, and that makes them extraordinary in two very, very different ways. And I think the one thing that Samuel L. Jackson does best in this movie is he expresses this sort of aching, awful, desperate need to explain himself. That's what's so great about that final scene is he, you know,

he needed to find David Dunn because he needed to know that all this suffering that he's gone through and continues to go through in his life has some kind of meaning. Finding David at least gives his existence, his sort of awful, painful, you know, tortured existence meaning. And that's an incredible counter, you know, point to what could ultimately be a family man discovers that he has superpowers and it helps him be a better family man. Do you know what I mean? That it needs to have this sort of this dark undercurrent of, you know, of Mr. Glass. And I think it works so well. I think it works so incredibly well. Yeah. Do you think that the story works better if our entry point is one of mystery than knowing, you know, the toolbox that Shamelon is working with, like I'm

saying, you know, I much prefer the mystery. I prefer the mystery, I think. Yeah. I think, and I, you know, that's part of what ends up maybe sort of like biting Shamelon in the butt a few years, few movies down the line and that like it becomes a requirement then that, you know, what's the big twist? What's the M. Knight Shamelon twist in this thing? But if his approach wasn't to present this to an audience as mystery, you know, and in terms of how it was marketed, because I remember like a big entertainment weekly, maybe it was the fall movie preview for it,

but I think it was like a cover story where even there, they were like, we can't really talk to you about what the movie is about, but we'll say there's some comic book stuff. It wasn't the fall movie preview because the 2000 fall movie preview, I believe, was cast away. But it still probably had like... Oh, totally. No, I was trying... No, but you sent me down the road of trying to remember what the fall movie preview would have been.

But I remember a pig interview where they're like, well, we can't really talk about what we're doing here. And, you know, I also just think if there's not this sense of mystery of what this movie is about and you know going into it that, there's comic book themes and you're dealing with not a man who just mysteriously survived a train crash but you are dealing with

Superman. Right. A superhero. I think the movie kind of just hangs there a little bit. Maybe. Like you're,

like you, then you as the audience member are waiting for David to catch up to the information you already know. Agreed. Agreed.

And then this movie that only really has him engaging in like one, you know, super, you know, one heroic set piece then becomes all the more disappointing. I will say, for our purposes, for, you know, the mission statement of this podcast, obviously we have to sort of talk about the letdown of this movie in the moment. But I also feel like, in general, for M. Night Chamelon and for fans of him who, you know, The slow burn of Unbreakable to becoming a movie that is, you know, more widely appreciated is totally to the benefit of both, you know, Knight's career mystique as a whole. And also, like, I think the people who love Unbreakable much, much more prefer being, you know, the fans of this misunderstood movie.

Who doesn't love being, you know, the people who loved a movie that the masses didn't get, that they didn't understand it. You know what I mean? Um, so I think that is all to the benefit of the movie that it was, you know, a little inscrutable that people weren't quite sure what, you know, how to take it, how to handle it. And, um, but for our purposes, obviously, we want to sort of go into the particulars of what was definitely, on Oscar buzzed movie. Like, certainly, when you have a debut, and I know that Sixth Sense isn't at Shemlan's debut, but it's his breakthrough. When you have a breakthrough film like that, six Oscar nominations is a complete sensation, you know, everybody's talking about this movie, everybody's saying you got to go see it. I remember I saw the movie and had heard that there was something that happens that you're not going to believe.

And so I think I was a little. It allowed me to cheat a little bit. Oh, are you about to brag and be one of those people who uses it like a constant brag, even 30 years later of like, well, I guess the end. I did, but I can't. Are you about to do that? I can't feel that good about it because I did. It was cheating. It's a little bit cheating when you know that you're going in and you're looking for a twist.

But I did catch on at some point to, you know, the fact that Bruce Willis' character is dead. It's not a brag. I would love to be able to brag. I'll brag that I guessed, what did I say? Like, I guessed the Thanksgiving killer, like, right at the beginning. Whatever. I still brag that I guess the killer of Urban Legend right at the beginning of that movie. So, Sixth Sense, it's a little bit more of an asterisk on there. But anyway. I mean, to compliment Shyamalan, I think, on an intellectual, on a, like, storytelling, filmmaking level. Yeah. way that he uses twists is not some like gotcha like the killer is not who you expected to be type of twist it's i don't think twist is a dirty word honestly i think some people sort of take it either especially for like his best ones because his best ones are all about like really understanding how movie storytelling works and how audiences receive

stories and how we're willing to go with something because of visual language Because of storytelling structure, we assume certain things that aren't necessarily true, simply because of how we are presented them. I think sometimes, I think Shemelon is better with certain twists than others. I think sometimes they feel very integrated into the story, and I feel sometimes they feel like an exercise in flourish, in sort of like. Like, how can I, an exercise in audience manipulation that doesn't feel like it has as much to do with the movie, which is me being in a roundabout way and explaining why I really, really hate the twist of the village. Okay, we're going to do this. Listener, if you don't want spoilers of 20-year-old movies, skip ahead. Here's what I'm saying, because the village, I think, is a great example.

in terms of cinematic language how the audience receives information and how that can be turned against us we watch the village we see period costumes

period settings we assume that we are looking at a period and of course the whole movie the twist is no this is modern times this is basically a cult who has chosen to live off the grid

like they live in old-timey times. But because of the information we're receiving as we're watching this story, it presents a reality where we might not question that aspect about what we're seeing. Do you not feel like the movie has a responsibility

to have that twist exist within the context of a movie rather than as an effort to fool the audience. And what I'm saying is there are certain things in the village that only happen as an effort to fool the audience, as an effort to, you know, there are conversations that happen between, you know, people who are putting on this ruse that are. still in colonial Williamsburg drag or whatever and I get where like people just decide to live the gimmick or whatever but well yeah I think it's exactly that it's people choosing what they believe and I well I mean the village is also a very interesting movie if you look at it through a

post 9-11 lens I think it is a fairly political movie okay I I probably do owe that movie a rewatch and maybe I'll be a little kinder to it. But I can understand your frustration in like, well, that line of dialogue or that little plot wrinkle exists only to try to direct me away from the truth. And I maybe don't see that as something existing in Unbreakable, unbreakable, like, stupid. It's just, it makes me feel stupid for watching that entire movie and being like, it was colonial Williamsburg all along.

Like, it genuinely made me feel like a moron. Like, I get to the end of the movie, and it's just like, well, okay, none of this, all of this was just one big elaborate, you know, ruse to make me feel stupid. Well, I mean, the village was even more poorly received than unbreakable, even though it made more money. It made more money, yeah. Got an Oscar nomination. Yeah, yes, it did.

It did. Maybe we'll do that for the Patriot. And maybe I'll watch the Village again and be like, oh, I actually don't like the movie. But, no, I mean, I don't, I don't mind that. I think that's just, you know, storytelling doing its job. And I think while some of that, the thing about the village is some of those things that you're saying, where it's like, hello, ye old townsperson. They're so arch that I think in the opposite, they're queuing you into, well, like, people didn't actually talk about like that in Colonial Williamsburg. So this has to be someone's version of Colonial Williamsburg that's fake. If you decided to become a separatist community, there's no reason to then also on top of all of that to go out of your way, at what I imagine would be probably great expense, to costume yourself. in, you know, 18th century regalia or whatever, when it's just like, what's, what's the point of

that beyond fooling the audience? What's the point of, you know, why wouldn't you just be dressed in whatever clothes you have? Why wouldn't you, why are you fucking, you know, do you know what I mean? Just like, it's, why wouldn't you make Colonial Williamsburg have like, like, a relaxed fit denim? Why aren't you just a regular fucking cult? You've, fucking like I don't know you're you're just saying they should have fucked off off the grid and you know become a sex cult like normal people if that's the point if the point is even if the point is to like to be a more like innocent time or whatever like the idea that they had to like costume up is so fucking stupid to me yeah but people do shit like that joseph

do they do they like I don't think so I don't I don't know Like, they wear robes, I guess, but they don't, like... I don't know. I don't know. I'm getting fired up again. I can't. All right. Oh, I want to talk about Bruce Willis.

Okay, so... So good in this movie. So good in this movie. He's so very, very good in this movie. The thing about Bruce Willis is... And I think this... Maybe this is a thing where the walls are sort of coming down about this more and more recently. But I feel like...

There was a time in the, like, 80s and 90s when you had your populist actors and you had your prestige actors, and there was a sort of a wall between them, right? Where, like, you look at Bruce Willis's awards tab in IMDB, and it tells the whole story where it's like, you know, a two-time Emmy winner because he was on moonlighting and that his second Emmy is so funny, it was a guest appearance on Friends. um four golden globe nominations five blockbuster award nominations three m tv movie award nominations six people's choice award nominations we'll get into the razzies of it all in a second but it just like in general like this is the profile of a populist actor like the Oscars sort of kept people like him like Schwarzenegger like you know well Stallone's an interesting case and that like Stallone started as this sort of rags to riches story um They've always had a very sort of peculiar relationship with Tom Cruise. Mel Gibson was only ever nominated as a director, like that kind of thing. All of these people who were, Kurt Russell's never been nominated for an Oscar, this kind of thing. And so then Willis starts to sort of, he'll show up in a Tarantino movie, you know what I mean? And all of a sudden now, M. Knight Shemelon has attached himself to him for two movies.

he's giving all of a sudden these performances where it's like, oh, that's kind of amazing. And weirdly, Tom Cruise was an actor who was able to, whenever he sort of stepped out of that movie star milieu and did something very performancy, born on the 4th of July, for example, he would get nominated and he would, you know, come close to winning. And it's interesting that Willis, I wonder if it's that the fact that like the sixth sense and unbreakable are not. not as flashily against type as born on the 4th of July and magnolia were for Tom Cruise. Does that make sense? I think there's also an element, too, of, like, Bruce Willis's movies were very macho movies. And, you know, the Chamalons are a subversion of that. But, like, you mentioned Pulp Fiction. And it's, like, Bruce Willis maybe gets, like, cool points for being in Pulp Fiction, but, like, he's never a part of the awards conversation for that movie.

Right. Right. Sixth Sense comes along is a massive success. Its awards trajectory happens very organically, not in the type of, you know, way that awards movies are usually, like, put out into the world, you know, with the intention of being promoted for that way. But he's also never included in that conversation, you know. Right. Did he even get a Golden Globe nomination for that movie? I don't think so. No, his only globe nomination for a movie was for a Norman Jewison movie called In Country in 1989, and it was the only nomination that that movie got at all was him getting one Golden Globe nomination for him. But he is so great in both Sixth Sense, and especially this movie, because I think, you know, it feels so intentional. Having him in this movie, being in the type of movies that he's in, and what David Dunn's, you know emotional arc is in this movie it's you know it's a very different type of masculinity and it's i think you know the subtlety of this performance makes it so much more interesting yeah totally totally but like you kind of also have to draw on him and jackson in a movie together because they're

people who have starred in multiple movies together and i think that sets the audience for an expectation that they that is not going to be rewarded in this movie you know like if joe action movie fan showed up to the new bruce willis samuel l jackson movie and it's unbreakable of course they're not going to be satisfied with this movie but i think both of those lead actors are giving like these very nuanced sensitive performances that are yeah fantastic they're so good in this movie yeah no it's it's it's it's really true And normally, I'm again, glad I saw this, you know, another time because normally I would find that opinion of like, oh, Bruce Willis should have been Oscar nominated for Unbreakable. And I'm just like, all right, fanboy. Like, shut up. But I mean, this is a really kind of stacked best actor year. Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. You know, he at least should have been in some type of conversation. I think so. Like, listen, Samuel L. Jackson, who only has one Oscar nomination.

It's crazy. It's crazy. We're currently in the midst of a year where he was got a lot of early season buzz for the piano lesson, and now that people are seeing the movie, no one's really talking about him. And I'm like, it's wild to me that this, you know. I do kind of feel about him the same way I feel about Amy Adams this early in the season that I still wouldn't rule them out just based on narrative alone. I agree with you. You know, let's wait and see until we say that they're out of the race. Well, it's, I remember. But at the same time, it's like, we want Samuel L. Jackson to win an Oscar, and at this point, it doesn't sound like the type of thing someone wins an Oscar. No, but you know me. I'm always much, much more. I value the nomination much more than the award anyway. The thing about Bruce Willis and the Razies, I just want to mention, he's been nominated for 15 Razies. Only seven of them are like, whatever. I'm not going to say legit razzie nominations, but we've said it before. We'll say it again. And fuck the rassies. Sure. Well, if you want to hear fuck the razzies, continue on listening. So he's got 15 Razzie nomination. Seven of them happened for various projects. And then eight of them happened all in the same year because they created a worst performance by Bruce Willis in a

2021 movie category and then nominated all eight movies that he made that year. And then after it was revealed that Bruce Willis was suffering from ephasia and from, you know, cognitive decline and whatever, the razis had to put their tail between their legs and rescind the award with an official statement that said, if someone's medical condition is a factor in their decision-making and or their performance, we acknowledge that is not appropriate to give them a razzie. Like, don't do me any fucking favors, man. Like, you know what I mean? Well, and it's like you can quash, you can be like, well, what's going on here?

But to be so shitty like that. And like, Bruce Willis is not a bad actor, so it's like, what are you talking about? Because I remember seeing glass and I'm like, something's going on here. This is not. He was very, it seemed like the problem with Bruce Willis and whatever, not the problem with Bruce Willis, the problem with assessing these Bruce Willis performances is before we really knew what was going on, it did come across as low effort, right? It looked like he was kind of just sleepwalking through glass.

We had heard those stories about him needing to have his lines fed to him when he was on Broadway and misery. And so then this, you know, this news comes out where, you know, he was in this cognitive decline. We find out that he had been exhibiting signs of this while he was, while he was churning out these direct-to-d-d-d-d-d-D-D-D-D garbage movies, these Randall Emmett monstrosities. Do you know the whole Randall Emmett thing? Because you're not a Bravo person. So the only reason I sort of like latch onto that name, he's like this like real sleazy producer who does a lot of these like junk ass, you know, directed DVD. But I also think he was a producer on The Irishman. But anyway, he, one of the Vanderpump rules cast members was his girlfriend for like several seasons.

And he had, she had been married when they got together. So she was started off as his mistress. And she had a baby, and she had this, like, very—and she would sort of, like, keep him off of, you know, the discussion plate for a long time because he didn't want to talk about it. And he then, when he did show up on the show, seemed very thirsty to, like, hang out with, like, the guys on that show who are all pieces of shit anyway. So he just seemed like a really, like, sleazy, smarmy, you know, dude. And then after we find out this thing about Bruce Willis, he was the producer of so many of those movies. And so you would hear, you know, these reports from people being like, yeah, like, it was an open secret onset that, like, Bruce was in decline, that he, you know, had to have his lines fed to him and whatever. And it just all feels like a, you know, plausibly predatory situation that I find to be, like, really, really distaste for him.

Yeah, yeah. So, you feel bad about it. It's an unfortunate, I mean, you know, whatever, a cognitive decline in this way is always unfortunate. But in this in particular, it just feels like a very sad end to, you know, to a career. And I wouldn't say Sharmulon's being predatory here because it's like he brought back the Unbreakable movies and these sequels in a surprise way. In a way, the twist of split is kind of the ultimate Chamelon twist because, you know, the cult of this movie had been asking for a sequel for forever. And it's like when that dies out, he gives us ultimately what is a sequel to the movie in a way that has been hiding in plain sight all along. And then from the success of that, they make Glass, which is, I think, one of his worst movies.

And it's certainly not Bruce Willis's fault, but like if he, you know, it's maybe just one of those things creatively that you let go if you can't really do it. Because Glass also, and again, this has, I think, nothing to do with Bruce Willis's decline. But like, it's a sequel in name only. Well, what is it a sequel to? It's more of a sequel to split than it is a sequel to. Yeah, because tonally, you know, the perspective it has on King, characters like this, it has nothing to do with Unbreakable beyond these characters. I think that's a big part of the problem is it's sort of it's trying to be two movies at once.

And it's ultimately the thing. So I can't imagine that you, well, maybe you did. Did you see Split before you knew about the twist at the end of Split? Or no? Yes. You did. And then when I saw it, I was like, fuck. Ah. Did you, did you catch the, I know a lot of people caught the score for Unbreakable before. You said, you. saw Bruce Willis in that scene. And I, being a dumb dumb, did not catch that because they start playing the score once they're in that diner. There's also hints that he is the kid from Unbreakable. He brushes up against the kid and his mother. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's supposed to be the James McAvoy character. I like Split quite a bit. I think there's a, you know, there's a junkiness to it, but I think it's quite a bit of fun. I think McAvoy's incredible in it.

I think he's so good. The Betty Buckley character is exactly the character I have problems with so much in Sharmelon movies, where it's just like explaining everything like it's a greeting card. And, you know, I'm not a Shammelan hater, but the Shammelan haters who complain about how people talk in some of these movies, I get it. I've just sort of, I've acclimated to it. It's like, you know, it's getting used to water when you're in a particularly chilly. Cool. I watched Split at a critic screening, and I remember, so it's like a perfect environment for people to, you know, appreciate that twist ending. Because I think even people who were skeptical about Split, all of a sudden they get to that. And it's just like, oh my God, I can't believe they're doing, you know, they're doing unbreakable. And then glass just does not make good on that promise. It's just a deflating.

It's just a deflating thing, and I think ultimately it's so interesting that he had all of this time to sort of prepare for it. And yet it seems like a movie that was made on a rush job. It seems like the story was kind of like, you know, hustled out there. And well, we now know they definitely had a smaller budget because one walking Phoenix backed out of the movie. Well, he backed out of split. Yeah. He had backed out of, that was another one where he backed out of it at the last time. minute. And they had to, you know, and good for James McAvoy because it's one of his best, you know, it's one of his career highlights. I can't agree. But see, this is also why I was frustrated with the Unbreakable Twist in Split was I was already out on the movie. What is your big problem with that movie? I don't think it's good. I think. Okay, but like why don't, like, explain a little bit. Well, I mean, it's the Betty Buckley thing, right? Of like, everybody is too hard. explaining things the audience already understands as if they don't, you know, it does feel like someone talking down to you.

And I, sorry, don't like the McAvoy book performance. I appreciate someone going for it, but I think it's a bit silly. Well, of course it's a bit silly. I think the movie is a bit silly. And I think just like the story mechanics as like a horror, thriller. didn't move the dial for me. Interesting, interesting. I mostly, I more mean a career

highlight in the fact that it was a big of success. Oh yeah, people do like that performance and it did really, it did very good things for his career. So, beyond the fact that I think it's a very good performance. I want to do a deep dive into an Oscar category from this year? I feel like this

is a thing I want to kind of start to do more and more is take a category that we feel like this movie that we're talking about could have fit into and really sort of, you know, dig into the mechanics of it. And I want to talk about the best original screenplay category at the 2000 Oscars, which was famously won by Cameron Crow for Almost Famous. The other Oscar nominees that year were Billy Elliott, Lee Hall for Billy Elliott, Susanna Grant for Aaron Brockovich, the team of David Franzoni, John Logan,

and William Nicholson for Gladiator, and Kenneth Launergan, for You Can Count on Me. I remember this being sort of a two-horse race. I remember both of the screenplay races in 2000 as being like two horse races. It was almost famous and you can count on me in original, and then it was Traffic and Wonderboys. I remember being like the two who were talked up as the big contenders and adapted. did. And then I think once Michael Douglas didn't get nominated for Best Actor for Wonder Boys, I think everybody just sort of like, you know, assumed traffic was going to walk to it, and they did. If Wonder Boys hadn't won that Oscar, we should have done that as an exception,

but as an Oscar winner, we can't. Oh, for the song. Yes, it did. It did win for song. I remember almost famous and you can count on me for screenplay being like an open question up until Oscar night. I think there was a lot of, you know, up in the air, both of those movies were sort of, you know, established themselves very differently. I think you can count on me was a Sundance movie, I'm pretty sure. Almost famous was this, you know, this big DreamWorks project that had a lot of hope and ambition behind it and it didn't do as well at the boxoff. as they wanted it to. Had a patina of failure on it throughout the season

that it kept trying to rise above. Which is crazy because, I mean, it's not crazy, but it's like, it's interesting now because it's such, it's, it has endured so well. And it's become so, you know, such a, you know, a favorite of so many people. That was easily my favorite movie of that year. I was, I was a freak for Almost Famous.

I loved it so much. It's still so surprising that Susanna Grant's screenplay for Aaron Brockovich didn't, you know, ever really emerge as a frontrunner in that race because it's so good. The storytelling structure of that movie is perfect. I think that movie was pretty well slotted as being a star vehicle, though.

And I think Julia winning was going to be the place that Aaron Brockovich did. win. I think it's, I think you're right though. I think in retrospect, this is a pretty banger category in that like almost famous Aaron Brockovich and you can count on me are three of maybe my favorite movies of all time. And they're all in this same category. I think Billy Elliott is a really, really good movie. And I think it's somewhat laughable that Gladiator even as a best picture winner shows up as a screenplay nominee. Because Gladiator was like not fully expected or anticipated to get its screenplay nomination.

It was not. People were very clear that that was perceived as the weakest aspect of that movie. And then, you know, I think, you know, it getting through that screenplay race definitely was an indicator that, yes, this is a best picture frontrunner. You know, this is going to be the winner above these other movies. Yeah. Though I still would be very curious to know what the vote split was of this best picture lineup. But this is coming from after.

like Titanic is this giant you know Oscar behemoth and doesn't get a screenplay nomination like it is you're this is there was an era where you could be the best movie of the year and have people be like yeah but like it's not written well you know what I mean like it's a spectacle it's fine it's just you know which I think is so funny what did we what were we talking about oh I think when we were talking about the menu and some of screenplay category that it was nominated in that like was won by avatar the weight of water i think it was uh um the saturn awards or something like that and i'm just like really avatar the way of water is winning a screenplay award like check yourselves people like good lord i see you son i see yeah award that makes award winning line of that line works on me joe all right all right um you look elsewhere in the 2000 race Writers Guild nominated Best in Show

Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy I still feel like I don't quite know how to process an improv heavy movie like the Christopher Guest movies in terms of like... Yeah because this is still the era of people are like well then is it really writing as if you don't

have to you know craft a story and character and sure but I just because like screenwriting is not just the words that people that come out of people's mouth. I agree, but with something like Best in Show, it is the words that come out of people's mouths that is the, you know, I like Best in show as a structure. I like Best in Show as a setup. But I feel like the thing that people would be voting for would just be, oh my God, I'm laughing so much. I think, you know, the dialogue

is so funny. So I still don't quite know where to you, but like, fucking Bestin Show's a banger. I of it. The BAFTA's nominated, Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? The Cohen Brothers film, which there was a lot of discussion as to how much we should credit that as an adaptation

of The Odyssey. Oscar ultimately says it is adapted. It is adapted from Homer's The Odyssey, so it was booted out of original there. And then I just wrote down, I went through the year and I sort of wrote down a bunch of other movies that either from that year's perspective or from our perspective now might be considered contenders for

best original screenplay. So Jessica Bendinger for Bring It On, William Broils Jr. for Castaway. Mike White for Chuck and Buck, which I believe was an Independent Spirit Award nominee. Lars von Trier for Dancer in the Dark. Rod Lurie for the Contender. Gina Prince Bythwood for Love and Basketball. John C. Richards and James Flamberg for Nurse Betty. Stephen Katz for Shadow of The Vampire, David Mamet for State and Maine, Ross Clavin, and Michael McGruther for Tigerland, Josh Goldsmith, Kathy Uspa, and Diane Drake for What Women Want. I was very surprised to find out that Nancy Myers didn't write what women want.

And then James Gray and Matt Reeves for The Yards. I would also add in Uritu for Moris Peros. That was a very, very well-regarded movie. He does get the foreign language nomination, and, you know, in the 2000s you were seeing non-English language films not only getting nominated for, but winning Oscars. Yep, yep, yep, good point, good point.

Of the movies that didn't get nominated, what were, what are your observations of this as a class, as a year, where do you come down on some of these? Well, we know I like the contender more than most people. I like the contender. That's a meat and potatoes, good political thriller.

I mean, you're, want to talk about some like succession level digs and uh nastiness it's it's right there you know it's maybe not it's maybe not the cool pick but no i agree with you yeah uh i like that as a replacement for gladiator uh billy elli elliott i think is a fine i think bill elliott can stay this is this is just a good enough lineup that i don't even really begrudge gladiator's presence there because we can do better. I don't like Gladiator, but like, yeah, like you mentioned, you're talking about three really, really great screenplays. Almost Famous would not be my winner, but it's still a win that I begrudge nothing. From my perspective now, I probably would vote for you can count on me

because I love that screenplay so, so much. But again, like, it's just that almost famous Aaron Brockovich, like, it's just, it's a banger trio right there. I mean, in 2000, I'm probably voting for you can count on me, but because Susanna Grant never got enough credit for that script, I'm more inclined to maybe lean that way, but we'll save our Aaron. What about a woman? Chris Fyle said, why not a woman in this category? Not and her brother, just the woman.

There's some really good scripts this year. I'm surprised that castaway never got any kind of traction, you know, whatsoever. It got so reduced to Tom Hanks. We've had this conversation before that it's like the chance for it to be best picture material just kind of sailed away in a way that I don't understand. I think people didn't love the off island parts of that movie and sort of felt like they were weak enough to sort of deep six. No pun intended, I suppose. um that movie how do you feel about dancer in the dark i felt i figured you'd you jump to jump to that one i mean as a screenplay yeah i'm not so inclined to jump for that movie i mean obviously

there's a lot of complex feelings you can have about that movie when i was 13 years old and saw that movie in a theater multiple times yeah i would have been like up and down the ballot Now, I'm like, I appreciate those who really still stumped for this movie, but it's not one of the Von Trier's that I really think about all that much. Yeah. And maybe it's also just because we've had many other movies since then that are trying to do what that movie does in their own way. Yeah. But, you know, just as a genre exercise. Yeah.

It's just, when I think of Von Trier, I think my tastes for his movies have changed a lot, but I'm also someone who loves Antichrist, so, you know, there's that. The Vontrier for me is Dogfiel. It's Dogville. I love Dogville. I think Dogfell's incredible. You look at so many of these movies, though, and you look at how many of, you know, kinds of movies either aren't made today or made very differently. I think about the, the tone of the comedy of things like Nurse Betty and State and Maine, two movies that I, you know, appreciate to very different degrees. I very much like Nurse Betty and I did not care for State and Maine. But I think both of those movies share a kind of sense of humor that you don't really, it's this kind of arch, you know, not sarcasm is not quite the word, but, you know, there's a, there's an archness towards the way that. that people behave when they're sort of thrown into these sort of circumstances together. I feel like comedy sort of moved away from that after the, you know. It went from a smug place to a schmuck place. A little bit, yes, yes. And I also feel like the Apatau era kind of pulled together dumb comedies and comedies

with a little bit of like behavioral observations and sort of like melded them. them into one a little bit, and, you know, we definitely have... And now we just have Marvel schmuck humor, like... Well, sure, but... We don't have comedies anymore because we have Marvel movies, and all of the comedic tone of those movies is exactly the same, and it's just a bunch of schmucks. Okay, all right, all right.

Like Chris Pratt saying the same line. Okay. Well, once again, I am pushed into the corner of defending Marvel, even though I don't like Chris Pratt or... fucking Deadpool. Do you like the comedic sensibility of those movies? Some of them, yes. Some of them, I think, are very fun. And I don't, you know, caught into as much of other ones. I don't know.

What else do we want to talk about in these movies? I mentioned, if we're bringing it back to Unbreakable, I mentioned that the village is a very post-9-11 movie. I think Unbreakable, as I was watching it, I was like, this is like the up to the minute pre-9-11 movie because this movie comes out a year later and you just access the like plot mechanics of this very differently because none of this could happen in a post-9-11 world. Talk about like the high level of security at public events and stuff like that? Yes, yes. But also like we would see Elijah as of first.

very, very different character because he is a domestic terror. They show the one shot that they have of him at the gate to the one airplane right before the air disaster. Yeah, yeah. This is a movie where you can still go up to the gate to pick someone up from a flight. Right. It's a good point. This is just a movie that changes entirely in a year of like what people can do and how they can navigate public spaces. Yeah. We mentioned Eduardo Serra, but I just want to go in on like some of of the shots, the shots in this movie can be incredibly breathtaking. There's the one shot of Willis in front of the curtains, the billowing sort of curtains at the house of the kidnapper

guy. That is beautiful, but also like really suspenseful. And this thing where like you can't quite, you don't quite know what you're seeing because the curtains are moving. And it's, it's just really the look of this movie is just incredible and the color palette of this movie and the way that it sort of plays with

gray tones and sort of it's this perpetually overcast kind of movie which is interesting because you're talking about a movie

where this he discovers that his one weakness is water which is so funny coming right before signs is that you have these

back-to-back movies where it's like Like, what's the great weakness? It's water. I don't know what happened to M. Night Shyamalan in his youth, but clearly, a wariness of water has been... Lady in the water. Oh, my God. It's all making sense to me.

It's all coming together. All connected. It's all connected. All right. Anything else we want to say before we delve into the IMDB game? I love this movie Oh On top of the gun scene

One of the things that made me like it less on this watch Because it had been a while since I've seen this movie Robin Wright's character We should talk about Robin Wright's character for a second Yeah Is kind of a non-character I think it's one of It's definitely the weakest aspect of the movie

Because like she is purely a plot functionary in every single scene, and you just kind of feel bad for the actress who is a better actress than the role that she's assigned. It's certainly not a surprise that Julianne Moore saw the Clary Starling role come along and was like, because she did jump ship from a good movie to a bad movie,

but she jumped ship from a non-interesting role to an interesting role at the very least. So it's tough to, you know, you certainly can't blame her for that. I agree with you. I think there are certain scenes that are performed very well by Robin Wright, Even if they're, you know, just there to move the plot along,

I think the scene with her and Samuel L. Jackson in the physical therapy room is really good. That's, like, the bad screenwriting tactic. Like, it's too, it's too perfect. He just randomly gets assigned her as a physical therapist. Sure, sure. But I think. It's way too convenient. But I think the two of them play off of each other very well in that scene in terms of just a performance.

There is a unique character dynamic between the. to as performed. That's what I appreciate. That's what I appreciate. Um, I also feel like there's just, some of the details of their relationship feel carried over from the sixth sense a little bit in that, you know, this is sort of this dead and dying relationship and, and trying to rekindle it. And obviously, the circumstances of this one, you know, are quite different in terms of who's alive and who's not but in terms of just like

the tenor of the marriage, it does feel somewhat similar. There's something I was going to say. Oh, what do we feel about the obligatory Abnight Chamelon cameo in this movie? This one is fine. You know, it's not as bad as like the one in the village

or in the one in the one and Lady in the Water is the one part where I'm like, okay, I get it. Cast anybody who think that that movie is a vulnerable. And it's better off. It's not quite good, but it's still, you're better off. He plays somebody at the football stadium

who David Dunn gets a premonition that is that he's hiding something in his pockets or whatever, and he searches him and there's nothing. I wasn't quite sure what to make of that. I would do what what why why was why did that happen you know one of the movie strong points is not how David's abilities are defined oh that's fine what is magical powers right that's fine with me and all of a sudden where it's like wow have you always been able to just touch people and see like

they do at least introduce the idea of developing his powers Elijah at one point mentions you know you know have you ever thought of developing your powers and so there's the sense that like He wouldn't have always been this attuned to people because he wouldn't have always been open to. He's not like kissing his wife and discovering what she got him for Christmas. Right. Well, I think he can only see bad things, right? He can only see, like, the villainous actions. Well, he'll find out if she gets him a shitty gift, I guess.

Yeah, well, there you go. All right. Why don't you tell the listeners how the IMDB game works? All right. Every episode, we end 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 there are any, if any of those credits are television, voice-only performances, or non-acting credits, we'll mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue.

That's not enough. It just becomes a free-for-all of hints, and that is the IMDB game. That's how we do it. That's how the IMDB game goes. All right, Chris, would you like to give first or guess first? I think I gave first last time, so you give to me first. All right, so I went into the M. Night Chamelan filmography. I went way, way, way, way back to his first movie, Wide Awake, which co-starred one Rosie O'Donnell,

who's known for has no television but one voice performance. The voice performance is Tarzan. It is Tarzan, very good. A League of Their Own. Yes. The Flintstones. Yes, three for three. Oh, give me that perfect Rosie score.

No television. So another movie, I mean, exit to Eden came into mind, but I don't think it's going to be exit to Eden. It's not going to be, well, no. What other Rosie movie? You know what Rosie's great on? I know I'm the only person who watched this. I know this much is true Which is just like

Misery City She got raves She got raves for that Yeah She's so good There's not a ton of her in the show But like everyone's great on that really great show One of the best things Derek Cian France has ever done

But it's bummer sandwich Okay Rosie Was in the motion picture Fuck it I'll say exit to Eden It's not exit to Eden I know Unfortunately, unfortunately.

I just, I give up too easy with getting the perfect score. I mean, I bet the year. Oh, is it Harriet the Spy? It's not Harriet the Spy. That's not a bad guy. The year is 1993. Okay, so right after League of Their Own, League of Their Own, I believe, is 92. It is.

Is it sleepless in Seattle? It is sleepless in Seattle. Damn it. Yeah. Yep. Nora got you. Sleepless in Seattle. All right.

Very good, though. Good, good show. Maybe she's higher build in sleepless in Seattle than I remember. But, like, if I was just going to guess, I would say she's, like, eighth build in that movie. According to IMDB, which isn't always, you know, a good bellwether, she is, well, it's, after they get to talk. And Meg, I think it's just a, it might be a free-for-all. Yeah, in a way that does not comport to, I don't know how she's billed. I'll take a look at the credits on YouTube at some point.

I'll let you know. You know, this episode, we have made no reference to the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, probably because we have absolutely memory-holded that show. That was very funny for most of it. Except for Maya Rudolph is Dionne Warwick, which I think of constantly. constantly So with that show I went into the cast

And we have never done Miss Carol Cain Oh, okay How much television The Great, the legend, the icon, The Star, the one and only Sure Carol Cain

Any television No television, no voices Okay The Adams Fam Wait Which Adam's family She's in Adams Family Values Adam's family values is correct.

Because she's not the grandma and the first Adam's family. Yeah. Um, okay. Scrooged? Scrooge is correct. Okay. Her Oscar nomination came in the 70s, and one of her early notable movies is also, I believe,

70s. And I'm always very wary to guess things from the 70s. But I'm not sure what more modern things to guess. So I'm going to guess when a stranger calls. When a stranger calls is incorrect. Damn it. And then I'll find, I'll just guess Hester Street. Hester Street is also incorrect. Your years are 1987 and 2005. So no 1970s. No, Annie Paul, no. Right. 87. 87, what would she have been in?

Why are you laughing? Don't laugh at me. Because if I don't laugh, I'm just going to... Oh, it's the princess bride. It's the... Liar! Liar! I'm not a witch. I'm your wife. And after what you just said, I don't sure...

I'm not sure I want to be that anymore. Yeah, I had to laugh. Otherwise, I was going to say liar. Yeah, yeah. 2005. Okay. Is it a horror movie? It is not.

Though to me, the concept of seeing this movie would be like, ah, no, scary. Is it because of the stars of this movie? Sure. I mean, I don't have anything necessarily against this star, though I might have confused it for another star. I just, this movie's none of my business. None of my business.

Uh-oh. Uh-oh. I am not the target demo for this movie. Comedy? Theoretically, yes. Okay. A comedy that Chris does not find funny. A comedy that Chris would not watch if you paid me.

Is it about boys? And girls. Is it called boys and girls? No. Okay. Is it about adult boys and girls or teenage boys and girls? Yes, and. Oh, my God.

Okay, if you're an adult, there's also teenagers and there's... There's teenagers and kids? Yes. Kids? Kids? No, that was 95. A movie that conceivably Carol Cain would be in. Yeah.

Kids in 05, the kids... This movie made, I believe, a lot of money. It's a domestic box office for this movie. Is it like... Oh, U.S. gross, $113 million. Is it like cheaper by the dozen? Oh, warmer. Warmer.

Okay. Is it yours, mine, and ours? Just as warm Just as warm It's about a blended family No I don't think so But it's about a big family It's about a family

I don't know how big they are Judging by the poster There are four children in this family Okay Is the word kids in the title No The title is something that kids might need Very young kids might need.

Oh, is it like, um, um, um, um, like unaccompanied minors or something like that? No. Um, uh, kids, little kids might need babysitters.

Um, little kids might need. Babies might need. Cradles. Um, formula. what if you needed your baby to shut up oh the pacifier the pacifier jesus christ the pacifier is in carol canes known for not of my business you're totally none of my business i don't want to watch that no no no no really right vin diesel in the pacifier not on your life did you say i was closer by cheaper by the dozen and that you could

probably get a dozen pacifiers for cheap is that why is that no i was saying like you know you were going from types of movies and then you got like oh these are movies with a bunch of kids in them yeah uh yeah absolutely not in my business carroll carol's got an oscar nomination i and dvd jesus christ all right that is our episode if you would like more this head oscar buzz you can check out the tumbler at this head oscarbuzz dot tumbler.com you should also follow our twitter account at had underscore oscar underscore buzz and you should follow our instagram at this head oscar buzz on instagram and you should follow our patreon or should join our Patreon, and you can do that at patreon.com slash this head Oscar buzz. Chris, where can the listeners find more of you? On Twitter and letterboxed at Chris V. File. That's F-E-I-L. I am also on Twitter and letterboxed at Joe Reed, read spelled R-E-I-D, but I'm also hosting a podcast called Demi, myself, and I, where I'm going film by film through the career of Demi Moore. The podcast is available exclusively on Patreon, so you can and should go subscribe at patreon.com slash Demi-Pod.

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