This Had Oscar Buzz - 316 – Liberty Heights

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

After Diner earned an Oscar nomination for its screenplay and the hearts of dads everywhere, writer/director Barry Levinson’s star quickly rose in Hollywood, culminating in Rain Man sweeping the Oscars. In the 1990s, Levinson had his share of hits and misses, but ended the decade with the final entry of his Baltimore films, Liberty Heights. The film tackles antisemitism and … Continue reading "316 – Liberty Heights"

Oh, oh, wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that. We want to talk to Marilyn Hack, Maryland Hack and French. Dick Pooh. This boy, he's a lunatic. Have you completely lost your mind? You're talking about. It's Halloween.

You are not leaving this house dressed as Adolf Hitler. What do you guys think? Might be a tad too much. I thought he would have said that his friend. family had money. Look at these rocks. I couldn't get Walt to wall. What do you think would happen if I gave you a kiss right now?

I think our parents would die. Yeah. Definitely. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that is bringing a fucked witch to the apartment to communicate with our dead husband. 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

at 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 Gentile Dream Girl, Chris File. Hello, Chris. It's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about me. Though I have so, so many

thoughts on the state of the heterosexual male in regards to this movie. Watching this movie, I was like, oh, this is, none of this is for Chris Fyle. Like, this is, this is a, this is a not for Chris movie. This is, this movie was made for. And yet, and yet, I still think I am net positive.

Oh, good. I'm glad. I am net positive on this movie as well. You know, the, the, the, uh, the slight scales are, are, are leaning net. I know you're not a Robinson person. The election is broken my brain. Yeah. Listener, we are recording this before the election. Uh, we hope, um, uh, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we.

We hope you're all taking care of yourselves, regardless of what happened. We hope this podcast finds you in celebratory spirits. Yes. If you're in our demographic, we imagine celebratory spirits for you. Yes, we hope it's only celebratory if you're in our demographic. Though if you're not in our demographic, bear what are you doing? I was going to say, if you're not in our demographic, you're not going to enjoy this. Oh, sorry.

Yeah. Fuck yourself. Many thoughts on the heterosexual male in relation to. to the film Liberty Heights, but before we get into the film Liberty Heights, it's always us to get distracted right off the top. But I think Joe, listener, this is a moment for us, Joe, this is not for you, very, very dad, this is more for mom. I do think Joe sometimes does try to, not gaslight, but like just set me off because he'll

send something to the group chat right before we record. This is true. That, like, immediately sends my brain into a tunnel. And, Joe, I would like you to describe because this is sense memory for you, but not for me. And we'll talk about why it's not sense memory for me. Describe for the listener what you. What I did to you this morning? To the group chat right before we recorded, like a madman.

Minutes before. So I recently found a tin full of my old movie stubs from before I moved to New York City. So this was when I was in, some in high school, but mostly it's during my college years and shortly after my college years. The earliest one I found was a deeply, deeply faded 12 monkeys stub from January of 1996. So that was the oldest one. Of course, because I'm a cuckoo bird, I'm like, what is he doing going to see Garden State at 140 in the afternoon on a... All of these were matinees because this was because I did not have a traditional 9 to 5 when I worked at the college. library. I worked night shift at the college library. So what I would do is I would go and see a movie

in the afternoon and then go right to work, which started at like four. So, anyway, so I put a random sampling of those on my Instagram this morning, and I sort of got to reminiscing in the group chat about general cinemas, which was a theater chain that I went to a lot in Buffalo. they ran both of... A different kind of G.C. Yes, exactly. They ran... We dropped the G.C. into the G.C.

They ran both of the multiplexes at both of the malls, the expensive mall, and the second mall. You know how I love a second mall. And so they eventually got subsumed by AMC and like the early aughts, but they were like the formative theater chain of... of my growing up. And so reminiscing about that, I was like, oh, I love nothing more than going on YouTube and finding old pre-roll because they're all available there if you go and look for it. So I looked up General Cinema's pre-roll from the 1990s, and it was a time capsule of just there's they, first of all, I love any kind of pre-roll ad that thanks you for not smoking.

I also there's a focus features-esque sort of soothing to the like the leisurely way this pre-roll will just like end very slowly and taper off into this sort of like you know humming orchestral whatever sound as the general cinema logo sort of emblazance the next guy and then I found the candy band video which is like my definitive candy. band video, the General Cinema's Candy Band. So I put all that in the group chat. Tired. Tired Chuckie Cheese Band. Wired General Cinema's candy band.

Inspired California raisins. What's it? What did you say? Fitch. What is that? Actual bands. Like actual weirdo band. Sure, sure, sure.

Much respect to Elizabeth Olson in his three daughters. And you go follow the Grateful Dead. Who's our fish head, Jordan Hoffman? Jordan Hoffman, come talk to us about fish, not really. RIP Phil Lesh, though. We love you, but now.

Elizabeth Olson's character from his three daughters probably spent the week reminiscing about seeing the dead after Phil died. Anyway, you started to type out all sorts of general cinema's thoughts, and then you were like, wait, no, I'm saving it for Mike. Okay, so General Cinemas was not my childhood chain that was on the other side of the

town, literally, like you said, the other mall. Our chain was AMC, so like my formative pre-roll ad is the AMC, like, film strip man, you know, the Silences Golden mascot that I did go back and watch some of those ads semi-recently, and I was like, wow, we used to just be so pure as a cinema-going society. The best thing about moving, when I moved to Brooklyn, the closest movie theater, the one within walking distance, was the Cable Hill Cinemas. And the Cable Hill Cinemas, maybe they even still do, but like for the longest time, they had this, like, ancient old pre-roll that included things like,

please turn off your cell phones and pagers, and thank you for not smoking. And it was like six Pepsi logos ago. And it was incredible. It was absolutely incredible. One of my favorite pre-rolls in the city. Second only maybe to IFC Center, which is my favorite pre-roll. Do yourself a favor sometime. I never seen a motion picture at the IFC Center.

Go look at the pre-roll, though, because it's like, it's fun. It's nice. It's very nice. All of this is like file core because it makes me think of my favorite hobby, which is killing time on cinematresors.com. Remember during the pandemic when I was so depressed, about, like, we can't go to movie theaters. What if we never go to movie theaters again?

And I would just, like, lose hours on cinema treasures. I'm just like, this is what movie theaters used to be. I just, I, it's maybe my most gen X. I think it's another, like, elder millennials have the same quality of just being, like, so intensely nostalgic for, um, ephemera of things. Like, I love just a photo. Anytime there's a movie scene. where people walk past a marquee, a movie marquee, I will pause it. Oh, yeah, you got to scan it.

I will pause it. I will look at every single movie that is listed on there. I will triangulate, this is how I figured out remember me, let's be forget. This is how I figured out that remember me was a secret 9-11 movie before it happened was because of the marquee that said it was American Pie 2. And I was like, well, that doesn't make any sense. Why is it, why is it 2001? Oh, oh, no. What a great experience that was. Also, I remember the THX pre-roll. Sure, the audience is listening. Yeah.

Did you ever have the robot that had the little mooing thing? Like, it flipped this little toy. Oh, the one that goes, me. And then the moo would be in THX. No, no. I never, I'm going to look up that one. That was very fun. What else does this make me think of?

The regal roller poster. What was your chain of choice? The Regal Roller Coaster has been maintained and updated, but like there was a version of the Regal Roller Coaster that was like the definitive one and everything else has been sort of derivative of that. But yes, the Regal Roller Coaster. They've kept that music mostly, which is good. Did you ever have a Lowe's cinema? Like you see all this stuff about Lowe's. Not till I moved into the city.

Did I get a Lowe's experience? Is it actually pronounced Lowe's because Barbara in the audio book pronounces it like. Lowe's or something crazy. So I went from Seinfeld. Seinfeld always pronounced at Lowe's, so that's how I learned how certain things in New York were pronounced, except for the fact that they never, as far as I can remember, mentioned Houston Street on Seinfeld. So I moved to New York and called it Houston Street for a loser.

Looser. Looser. I know. Listen, how was I? Literally, how was I to know? No jury in the world can give it. convict me it's i've like the first time i went to new york it was like you get off the plane

uh not at lax but at lGA and they're like by the way it's house they hand you a pamphlet and you're just like number one it's pronounced house did not houston you fucking room yeah if you pronounce it houston you automatically get your wallet stolen that's like the rules the police come up to you and just like i'm sorry like it's the rules uh you must now get your wallet stolen to finally pull us back to liberty Heights. Speaking of the AMC chains, I remember, because I'm crazy, I remember, like, when films of this era had, like, exclusive runs at the big AMC before the even bigger AMC opened here and down. And I remember Liberty Heights getting like, ooh, the exclusive run. I didn't see it

until home video days. Also, speaking of things that, like, the kids. kids just don't know. It's all a movie theater culture, but like, truly, there are no more second run movie theaters. Like, there are, like, I don't know if you remember. Second run movie theaters are Apple movies. I don't know if you remember what your second run movie theater was, but ours was the, I can't remember what chain ran it, but it was at the Apple Tree Mall. And it was a dollar 50. You got, you got to see whatever for $1.50. So it was like the perfect place to see two movies. back to back because you paid, you know, fucking $3 to see two movies and then and then whatever. And we used to go there constantly, absolutely all the time. And it was because you would see whatever you would see at the, you know, the McKinley Mall first run. And then whatever you missed, you would go and you'd see it at the Apple Tree. It was great. Honey, you want to talk about second mall.

Our dollar theater was at like fifth mall. You know. Well, that's what the Appletree Mall was. It was fifth. had like no stores and a bar. And yes, you paid your $1.50. You went into the little, like, you, first of all, you showed up. It's all laser lights.

I will absolutely send you the cinema treasurer's theater posting for this theater. You go in and it's like laser lights everywhere. Everything's in gold chrome. Like, truly movie theaters used to be beautiful because they used to be tacky. And then you go into like the hallway where all the screening rooms are. And it's all like back to the. future lights. It's like you're in Star Wars with like green disco lights leading you down the hall into this shitty movie theater. I've told you that our that our second mall still has

a movie theater in it and everything about it is the same except for the fact that they put in recliner seats in the in the rooms. So like everything like like the carpeting, I guarantee you dates back to the 1990s. There are still arcade games that haven't been swapped out. I'm sure it's like Mortal Kombat 2 or whatever. Claw machine. Claw machine, air hockey table, all that. The concessions are exactly the same. The little signs above the doorway to each cinema

are the exact same there. Like the ceiling hasn't been replaced. Like it's ratty. And then you go in and you're just like, oh, but like the seats can recline. So it's like, it's kind of, you get all the nostalgia of like what it used to be, but like you're not sitting in these ancient seats. So like, that's

nice. But they're also they're just showing the same four movies on six screens that everybody else is, you know what I mean? Because there is no second run anymore. Though I do think this theater figured it out because you want the viewing experience to not be dog shit. You kind of want to go see a movie at a dog shit theater anymore. Like, I want to go in and see tacky disco lights in the lobby of a theater and then, you know, have a perfectly comfortable well, well lit screen. Infamously, that was the theater where I saw Avatar the Way of Water, which is probably not what James Cameron had in mind when he put his, like, giant visual spectacle into theaters that I would see it at, you know, this small screen, tiny little ratty, formerly, even in its glory days, it was still the second best movie theater in the city. You know what I mean? So I miss it. You mentioned the malls. Like, there's, that.

second run movie theater was at our fifth mall and like back of the day we're like we there were five malls we had a you know there was the boulevard mall and the three way mall and all this sort of stuff there was the seneca street mall which is the one that would have been closer to me growing up and that was gone by the time i was like 10 um but that had a movie theater i remember seeing beauty and the beast there with uh my siblings and my mom when we were little that was also where did you have ground round as a as a chain of restaurants growing up that was a chain of restaurants a burger restaurants. Is that not what you call ground beef at the grocery store? Sometimes. It's a different, there's certain some is ground chuck, some is ground round. It's like it's a different type of whatever. But yeah, so ground naming your business establishment ground

round is very gay. That's like the type of thing that you would call like ground beef at a grocery store sounds like a gay bar. Sure. That's sort of like calling something the anvil or something like that. I understand.

The meat grinder. But so that restaurant, ground, round, you got, first of all, they had a popcorn machine there and you could go up and refill your popcorn wherever you wanted. So, like, we loved that. They would play, speaking of movies, they would have a video screen just sort of there that was playing clips from old black and white movies all the time. And they were like, you know, Laurel and Hardy and Mark's brothers and stuff that was like, you know, family, family friendly stuff. Objectively awesome. And they also did their dessert, especially on the kids' menu. was an ice cream sunday in a baseball helmet, a little plastic baseball helmet that had the logo of one of the baseball teams, and then you would just collect them.

So we had at home just these like this stack of little plastic baseball helmets because we would go to the ground round. Our family did all the time, all the time. God. So this is all appropriate to this Liberty Heights. If you were saying Chris and Joe. Because this is a movie basically through the lens of nostalgia. but, like, leave it to a 1999 movie for us to start getting nostalgic. There it is.

Also, like, a 1999 movie that is so far outside of the conversation of when we constantly talk about 1999. Every once in a while, though, here's the thing, that 1999 is one of those years, in part because of the major ones, right? The Matrix and the talented Mr. Ripley and the six. sense and the insider and all the eyes wide shut. Even within the Oscar conversation, like American Beauty, while not a movie that we really watch anymore, because, uh, but, you know, looms large as a talking point. Totally. It's very easily accessible for a lot of, like, cinephile to just simply talk about.

But the underrated thing about 1999 is that sort of like second and third tier movies that people remember, but are less sort of widespread. We've done an episode on A Walk on the Moon as a 1990 movie. Go, one of my favorite movies is from, you know, 99. I'm sort of going through the list. Existens. David Cronenberg's Existence is like, you know, one of my faves. We did Tea with Mussolini on this, which, again, you know,

it doesn't really contribute to like the 1999 Conversexon. But when you talk about why this was such a rich year, it's like, you know, Cookie's Fortune was this year. And Summer of Sam was this year. And Drop Dead Gorgeous and 10 Things I Hate About You. And Dick, you know what I mean? I mentioned Dick earlier. Oh, sorry, yes.

I would also say, you know, you're naming all. all of these titles that have also had, you know, whether they were appreciated at the time or not, like Rose Above and were part of the conversation with all of these movies. Liberty Heights is a movie that absolutely makes sense that it got kind of buried, that, you know, it kind of is something that's a few years past its due date in terms of something that would have gotten attention as a movie. and it ultimately, you know, comes out at the end of the year, gets this slow platform release that never really does poorly at the scale that it's released.

But because it's not, it doesn't get arrested in terms of probably even the awards conversation, the movie just kind of goes nowhere and dies. Yeah. It doesn't get any, like, it's awards tab. Even, you know, there are movies that are a lot more middling than this. I think it's something. It's got an American Cinema Foundation nomination for their E. Pluribus Unum Award. And then a black real nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Rebecca Johnson. And that's it. Like, that's the entirety of it. Even though this was a movie that was lovely and wonderful in this movie. You know, she wrote Kelly Clarkson's beautiful disaster? Sure did. Sure did. Did you know that before watching this? Because I did. Yes, I did. Okay, very good. Well, yeah, because when she came on screen, I was like, oh, yeah, she started as an actress, but, like, basically her career is as a musician.

Interesting. I have no familiarity with her whatsoever, unsurprisingly. But, like, Roger Ebert championed this movie. Like, there were critics that really championed this movie. Makes a ton of sense, because here's the thing. We'll get into the Barry Levinson thing and not to, like, paint with too broad a brush. but I feel like Barry Levinson is very much a filmmaker for boomers. And I am not, I'm the last person who's going to do the, you know, okay, boomer, you know, sort of dismissiveness or whatever.

I, you know, I find that kind of thing fairly reductive. But like boomers and like older, older Gen X people, and I am very much a young Gen X person are the people who hold a movie like, Diner close to their hearts, right? Who, you know. Diner, a very, very dad movie. All of your dad's listening. Tin men. If you've never heard your dad talk about diner, listener.

Check, check in. Check in with, yeah, check in with your dad's about diner. He will have an opinion. Right, exactly, exactly what I mean. And so this Liberty Heights being the fourth and thus far final of Barry Levinson's Baltimore movies, which were Diner, Tin Men, Avalon and this. And Avalon was very, very, like, diner is nostalgic experientially. It was sort of just like, oh, remember what it was like to have friends. You know, you'd all go to like

the, you know, I'll go and like eat at the diner together. Tin men isn't really nostalgic, but it's very Baltimore. And then Avalon was explicitly, like, it's this sort of family saga, this saga of an immigrant Jewish family moving to Baltimore. It's his follow up to Rain Man too, so it's also his follow up to his Oscar success, which doesn't bottom out at the Oscars, but, you know, it doesn't stand up to Rain Man's success. Right. We'll talk about, I think we'll get into the sort of Levinson filmography after we do the plot description, but all of which is to say that, like, Liberty Heights sort of slots into, in as much as Barry Levinson is anuteur versus. a filmmaker, and we'll maybe get into that discussion, too. These are his Autour movies, his Baltimore movies, the ones that are very sort of like semi-autobiographical. And, you know,

Liberty Heights, much like Avalon, is about sort of growing up in this Jewish-American family in Baltimore, you know, the otherness of that, how that intersects with the otherness of other people in the city. There's sort of a lot going on. You wonder if, you wonder if, if it, you know, was released in an environment where, like, today with, like, there's a lot more awards thing, you know, there are a lot more awards. For personal, directors using personal nostalgia. And just, there's just, like, on a numbers-wise, there's just more awards to be thrown about, you know what I mean? So, like, that it might show up some other places. But it's a very, it's very much, like, if you saw this movie in 99 and you really liked it, I imagine, like, you're nostalgia for,

movie like this would make a lot of sense. I think, I mean, we'll get into the performances, obviously, and the Levinson of it. But before we do... Levinson is fascinating. I can't believe this is the first time we've ever done a Levinson, and we've never talked about him. Well, one of the reasons why we'll get into after the break is his movies, for a good long stretch, all got at least some kind of Oscar attention. So, anyway, before we do the plot description,

before you do the plot description, I'm going to ask you to tell our listeners why they should sign up for our Patreon. Listeners, you know it, unless you're new and you're learning about it, but we have a Patreon. Over at this had Oscar Buzz turbulent brilliance. For $5 a month, you're going to get at least two bonus episodes every month. Something new we're doing over on the Patreon.

If you haven't subscribed yet, you've been holding out. We're going to be doing break. news segments as little mini bonus episodes talking about all of the goings on in the race. So far, we did one on the Gotham Award nominations. So keep looking out for things like that when nominations drop or wins drop or, you know, we get some critics prizes, et cetera. We're going to be doing that. But your two major bonus episodes on the first Friday of the month, you're going to be getting what we call exceptions. These are movies that fit are this had Oscar buzz rubric. But, but managed to score a nomination or two. Most recently, we've had an episode on the film Hitchcock. Remember Hitchcock? Once there was a Hitchcock.

We've also done things like House of Gucci, Vanilla Sky, knives out, Pleasantville, the lovely bones, films like this. The second bonus episode you're going to get is the excursion that comes on the third Friday of the month

These are deep dives into Oscar ephemeral. We love to obsess about things like EW fall movie previews. We've done mailbags. We've talked about Hollywood Reporter roundtables. And this month, we're going to be giving you another award show recap. We're going to be going back and watching the 2003 Golden Globe Awards, the Year of Return of the King. That's right. Old Mountain Lost in Translation.

we're going to be recapping that Globes. So go on over to patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz and sign up for turbulent, brilliant. You won't regret it. That's what I say. You will not regret it. All right. Liberty Heights is the film we are talking about today.

It is a film from 1999. It is written and directed by Academy Award winner Barry Levinson, starring Ben Foster, Adrian Brody, Joe Montenia, Rebecca Johnson, B.B. Newerth, David Krumholtz, Justin Chambers, Shane West, James Pickens, Jr., very... So much Grace Anatomy in this. So much Grace Anatomy! That's very true. I didn't even think about that until you mentioned that. That's crazy that you thought about that, and I didn't. Alex Karev and the Chief together first. Tons of younger actors who looked familiar to me, but I couldn't really place them after the fact. So... It's a very Vanity Fair Young Hollywood cover. Oh, sure, sure, absolutely. The poster literally looks like the cover of a Vanity Fair.

It feels very inventing the Abbots, a Jewish inventing the Abbots kind of a thing. Yeah. Which, inventing the Abbots was essentially a Vanity Fair, Young Hollywood cover come to life, where it's just like, Billy Crude Up, Joaquin Phoenix, Liv Tyler, Jennifer Connelly, you know. all shoved into the backseat of a car. Yes, but wearing, like, um, like on theme costumes, like everybody's costume is sort of, you know, rhymes with each other. And, uh, yes, uh, this was a Warner Brothers movie premiered in limited release on November

17th, 1999, uh, that weekend, the number one film in the United States was James Bond in The World is Not Enough, uh, number two, also debuting that weekend, was Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow to sort of orient you as to what was going on that weekend. Sleepy Hallow. Good movie. Good movie. Yes, 100%. Honestly, the world is not enough. Not a good movie. No, but kind of a fun Bond movie. You know, I don't have quite a reverence for Bond. The Bond Girl is named Christmas. Her name is Dr. Christmas. Dr. Christmas Jones, played by Denise Richards. That's my name. I had it first. I am Dr. Christmas. Dr. Christmas, that's your... Ooh. Yeah, I'm saying.

It's a good drag name. Christmas. All right. It's like the Swiss Miss. You're the cousin to the Swiss Miss. You are the Christmas. Okay. On the runway, your holiday couture was a Christmas.

But in the acting challenge, you gave us plenty of silent nights. I don't know. But in the acting challenge, Santa Slade. But in... Fuck off. Our brains are broken. We have to find joy where we can get it. 100%.

We're still on the soon side of the election. Anyway, all right, Chris, I'm going to put my stopwatch to good use and give you 60 seconds on the clock. We'll see how it goes. Are you ready to give a plot description for the film, Liberty Heights? Liberty Heights. Let's go. Start. All right, so we're following the Kurtzman family. They have two teenage to, like, younger 20s sons.

The father, played by Joe Montania, runs a burlesque theater, which eventually he has to get wrapped up in the drug trade because one of the dancers shows her boobs. Anyway, meanwhile, the older son played by Adrian Brody, his name is Van. He is basically spending the movie chasing this, like, blonde woman, who is his dream girl, because he, I don't know. 30 seconds.

Likes her because she's not Jewish. Ben Foster plays the younger son who is a high school senior. His name is Ben. His school has recently integrated and he develops a relationship with a young black girl named Sylvia. They have a flirtation throughout, but like don't really necessarily date, date because they know their parents wouldn't like it. Anyway, she convinces him and a friend to go to a James Brown concert.

gets kidnapped by the, like, drug dealer that's working with his dad. They, you know, eventually everything is fine, but the dad goes to jail. And Ben and Sylvia kiss after their high school graduation and piss off their parents. The end? 15 seconds over. Not too bad. Not too bad. It's kind of just, like, not a whole ton happens in this movie.

It's a lot of repetitive stuff of van chasing this girl. both of them kind of experiencing anti-Semitism in different ways Ben dresses up as Hitler for Halloween Yes, which was all over the trailers and you know, because it's the most sort of eye-catchy, absurdly comedic thing that happens. B.B. Newworth is very big in that scene.

She is. She's also big in the scene where he says that he thinks Sylvia is pretty and she just says, just kill me now. Just kill me. now. Yeah, we're supposed to think it's funny that he dresses up as Hitler in front of his

grandmother for Halloween, his traumatized grandmother, and then we're also supposed to think it's funny that BB Newark as the Jewish mother is a flagrant racist. Well, I mean, this is a movie that I think

it finds the kind of, yes, you know, sort of it's boomer humor. Light humor in the idea that, you know, there's these two sort of innocent kids who, you know, are innocent to the ways of the sort of, you know, the larger ways that the world is racist, who both of their parents oppose, you know, their possible romance for the same reasons from, you know, opposite ends. And yes, like, you know, a generation's worth of people had parents who would have plots if their kids had dated somebody outside of their race. And it's, yeah, boomer humor is probably the right word for it. I don't know how much we've necessarily advanced by the idea that we can sort of like clutch our pearls at something like that now. I think, you know, it is what it is in a lot of these situations.

I do think most of the movie kind of hinges on, or is like the A plotline of this movie. Yeah. Because there's a lot of strands going on in this movie. And it's all very like, the appeal of this movie, I think, is largely its energy. This is a very kind of chill movie for what it's about. Yes. And that I found appealing. But like the A plot line is Ben and Sylvia's relationship.

And, you know, for like. Nominally, yes. I think effectively It's borderline teen drama-esque. I kind of was really fine with the way that their relationship was presented. Me too. You know, I think, you know, they're well-written teen characters. It's not like pressing hard on like trying to have a comment or, you know, do the boomer thing that like Green Book is where it's like, you know, presenting it.

itself so adamantly. They don't have any scenes where they sort of yell at their parents that, like, you, you, they're not solving racism. Exactly. They're not. I also like the fact that, like, like many a high school relationship, they're mostly friends who you imagine would, you know, like to kiss at some point. But, like, it's mostly just that they're, their friends, they hang out, you know, they all go to James Brown as a group, you know what I mean, as a group date. There's an innocence about it. that feels right? Like they're, they, once they would be adults, they would be more likely to be

friends than lovers. But because they're teenagers, because of hormones. Right. There is a sexual element to it that still feels rather innocent. I don't know if you had a similar sort of high school experience. And I went to a rather small, um, all boys high school that had a rather small all girls high school right by it. So that was sort of the social circle. But like, the number of actual relationships that felt as fraught as many sort of teen relationships do in film and television, you can't have had like one. They sort of was like, you had the one relationship that was like high drama. You know what I mean? Whether it was, there was, you know, a triangle, like somebody was sort of like, you know, torn between two suitors, I guess, or that like, you know, they got caught fingering in the, you know, whatever and just like, just sort of like anything that was sort of like high drama in any kind of way, you know, a pregnancy or something like that.

No higher drama than a public fingering. Kind of, yeah, like if anybody had gotten. Or a fingering in a public place. If anybody had gotten pregnant in high school, it would have been, like, the biggest scandal. And, like, and you watch a teen drama, and that happens, like, twice per season. And it's just like, and of course, like, that's entertainment. But I do think it's kind of warped our idea of, like, what dating in high school is. And dating in high school is mostly being in the same friend group and then you occasionally pair off to go kiss.

You know what I mean? Or, like, you go to a dance and, like, that's the person you dance with. You know what I mean? And in general, there's, and again, I'm speaking from an outsider perspective, because Lord knows I didn't date in high school. But, like, that just sort of felt like, on a social level, how it kind of worked. It's like, oh, yeah, they're like, that's their boyfriend and girlfriend. What does that mean?

Well, when we all go out together, they, like, pair off at some point. You know what I mean? And it's like, okay, you know, this felt very true to that, I thought, with the Ben Foster character and Sylvia. And then it's contrasted with Van, the Adrian Brody character, who, like, he and his male friends are kind of just, you know, chasing women who are not Jewish, you know, like, and I don't know if the movie really has much perspective on that behavior beyond, isn't this something young men do? Well, I think the Brody character is decently well drawn as somebody who is sort of torn. between the life he was brought up in and has that kind of very recognizable sort of young man yearning to like, you know, break into the circles that he, you know, was it because it's not just the relationship with dubby. The girl's name is dubby, which it's so funny in the Wikipedia cast list. It's in quotes. It's just like, nobody really knows what her actual name is. Only in the 1950s could you have a nickname like Dubby and not be treated like that's basically Dunez?

Kind of, yes. You know? Also, no shit? We used to just call people things. Like, you know, people just used to have nicknames that sound like, you know, got a case of the dubsies, you know, like sound like a mild skin disease that can be quickly cured with a steroid, you know? No shade to the model actress who plays dubby. But, like, I did write down at some point. I said, real her energy to this, Adrian Brody's pursuit of this girl, where it's just, like, her?

Like, all of this for this fairly unremarkable kind of charisma void, I don't, you don't quite sense the sparkle in this person that would lead Adrian Brody to, like, you know, center his entire life on following and, like, getting this girl's number. we find out later she's the girlfriend of the um the the uh the karev Alex Karev's character right um who but like but that I and she's also a fucking asshole and is like playing him along and is she's messed up she has her own sort of hang up she sucks basically dubby sucks imagine someone named the thing about the Justin Chambers character though the thing about is that ultimately Adrian Brody becomes friends with this guy you sort of expect that he's going to be this sort of like nasty, preppy racist who's going to, like, torment Adrian Brody for the rest of the movie.

And that's not really what happens. He sort of, like, takes a shine to Adrian Brody. He's like, he seems like a cool guy. I should set him up with somebody who's not my girlfriend. And then eventually he sets him up with his girlfriend. And Adrian Brody, rather than sort of like, bristling against the sort of like low-key condescension that comes from this Goyam rich kid or whatever who can crash his car into things and then get. get out of it and because his, you know, dad can hire an expensive lawyer and whatever. Instead of sort of bristling against this guy, Adrian Brody sort of seeks out this guy and appreciates this guy's friendship because, again, I think Van is Adrian Brody's character.

I'm just going to keep calling him, Adrian Brody, you guys know. I think he wants, he, you know, yearns to see what it's like traveling in those circles. What is it like to have friends whose dads can pull strings for you? What's it like to have, you know, these guys who are, you know, a little bit like Masters of the Universe coded. And I like that the movie does not make Adrian Brody's character into a sucker for that. I don't think you can, I think you can watch this movie and feel like, oh, yeah, Justin Chambers. kind of a dick, but in a way that, like, you know, you can be friends with a dick, you know what I mean? That kind of a thing. He seems like an okay, you know, preppy rich kid. And I think the movie does a good job of sort of like milding out a way that like lesser movies would have really leaned into the archetype of preppy rich kid or striver Jewish kid. or, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah, the movie doesn't press too hard on these types. And I appreciate it for that chill energy. But that chill energy also kind of results in, like, not having any conclusive thoughts about the characters that it's presenting, specifically its protagonists, because it's just kind of like, look, I think what's good about it is, like, even Adrian Brody's character is kind of presented as an innocent. It is the innocence of youth.

but like ultimately the movie just kind of shrugs for its characters and being like, yeah, well, that's what it's like to be young and doesn't really have any bigger perspective on like the societal things that the movie is ultimately trying to be about. The movie never takes time to address the most pressing issue, which is the fact that Adrian Brody has a horrible haircut throughout this entire movie, which is a shame. Maybe disagree. Maybe disagree. Really? That's sort of like grown out brush cut thing. I don't, I don't love. He's got a good head of hair. Why not? There's bad hair in the 50s.

And my bigger issue, especially this part of the movie, you know, this probably B-E plot for the movie is the Adrian Brody stuff, is that like, there's just so much of like, obviously, yes, it's about young men, but it's like just treating women like their acquisition. you know, and not really about growing up as a girl in this era. This is a movie about growing up as a boy in this era. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like that, you know, while some of that can be true and honest, but it's like it doesn't really have a perspective on it. Like, it just

is presented as something that is, which makes much of this movie, not for me. Sure, but I understand we're like at the same time, a movie like now and then is a movie that, you know, centers the female perspective on. coming of age and growing up. And, like, there's just like, you know, you sort of, you pick your, your perspectives and kind of go with it.

I don't, I understand what you're saying, because I also feel like this movie could have given B.B. New Earth's character a couple more beats to really, uh, land. I think she has this great scene where she talks about Joe Montania, um, essentially standing up to a bunch of, you know, threatening, uh, you know, violent bullies in his past. And he, you know, he got strong and he kicked the shit out of these, these, the anti-Semites. And it's a good monologue. It's a good monologue. It's ultimately not about her.

It's about a different character. Yeah. Yeah. She's talking about someone who is not on screen and she, like, never talks about herself. We never really get any interior review for them. And it's also wild to me that in the span of a few years, Bibi Newworth goes from, from doing the Chicago Revival, doing all those Fossey dances,

being for a good period, the definitive film of Kelly. Sure. Dancing her heart out, winning a Tony, and then she's just like playing mom. Sure. Well, I think she's somebody who found a lot of success on television

and on Broadway, and the movies never found a spot for her to fit. in, which is too bad. I think that happens to a lot of people who were, you know, theater and television actors. And it's... Though I suppose, you know, give it a few years and tadpole happens. Remember when we did an episode on tadpole? That was like episode four. And like she's very much not doing that. That's true. I will say, though, you mentioned the Ben Foster plot as the A plot. And I think

sort of like, I guess they said nominally true. But I think experientially, like watching the movie, like the Joe Montenia stuff does become the A plot. If a whole, I think sort of like, I guess they said, only because it's the most sort of plotty element of it. It has to do with the numbers racket and a burlesque house and having to do machinations to, you know, how you're going to get out from under. Orlando Jones plays this guy named Little Melvin who hits, who hits the lucky number and the bonus number, and he bet $50 on it. So now they owe him $100,000 and they do not have $100,000.

So they have to find ways to, like, give him a piece of the business. to placate him to sort of elide the fact that they don't have the money to cover the bet. Orlando Jones plays Little Melvin as a real sort of sleazy, I would say stereotype, right? Yeah, not a great performance, not the movie's best element. All respect to Orlando Jones. Tell me a movie is made in the period between 1998 and 2005, without putting Orlando Jones in a role.

I think that's the movie's weakest element. I think for a movie that takes such pains to sort of paint Joe Montania as like, well, yes, he's a criminal, but he's not like a mobster who's going to break legs and, you know, murder people. And I think the movie is a little too comfortable sort of blithely painting its biggest black character. as, you know, devoid of morality, willing to kidnap children, a drug dealer. Mustache twirling villain. Gold tooth, you know, smiling, and just sort of like all of these. And again, there's ways to make that character work

if you sort of tell that story, you know, a little bit differently, or, like, have Montenia's character be, you know, have flashes of real villainy as his own. But the movie, I think because it is so sort of nostalgic for Levinson, the movie's not really willing

to, it's only willing to villainize Montania's character up to a point. Ultimately, he's a good man, a good father. He has a moral code, which again, I think that's a strength of the movie. I like the fact that the father here has a

moral code because it shows you the limitations of working outside of the law while still having a moral code, you know what I mean? It's the portion of the movie that is, you know, the stuff we see inside the burlesque theater, is the movie that is the furthest outside the movie that you expect from, you know, this premise. And it kind of makes you want to, like, watch that movie. A little bit. Just about that, you know, or is just about, you know, this man running this business while also trying to raise two kids in the mid-century at a time of great anti-Semitism. This is a movie that is clever enough to center its big burlesque stripping scene to a Tom Waits song in a way that works perfectly.

The way that they use the Tom Waits song in this movie is great. Also, can I mention that Kirsten Warren, who plays the stripper, who strips in her little sweater set because her costume hasn't arrived, and they figure out that that's, like, actually it works. Yeah. Is the girl in Independence Day in Los Angeles, when the aliens come, who looks straight up at the spaceship and says, It's so pretty. And then gets, like, blasted all the hell. Who was also on, say, by the Belbin, the college years is. Playing the worst person on your Twitter feed.

Playing recommended tweet the person in Independence Day of the movie. I'm going to go and stay at and welcome the aliens to Los Angeles, yes. A lot of little like little here's how the presence of the aliens is good for climate change, the person. A lot of Blinkin, you'll miss them appearances in this movie, Katie Finneran, Broadway's own Tony winning Katie Finneran shows up. as essentially white lady or whatever, Goyam, the person. She's what happens when you go to a non-Jewish house and they give you Gentile food.

No spices in her pantry, the person. Everything's white. Shane West is the jerk who picks a fight with David Crumholz. Shane West would be in a bunch of teen movies. Anthony Anderson is Orlando Jones' sort of right-hand man. Misha Collins, who, if you, you watched Supernatural at all, nobody is normal about this guy whatsoever, is very briefly in the party scene. Stacey Keebler, if you remember, Stacey Keebler famously dated George

Clooney for a while, but she was a WWE sort of manager, a pretty lady. For a while, she's one of the friends of Dubby, I think, at the party. So just a lot of very, very quick appearances by familiar faces, which I thought was cool. Krumholtz in this movie is very funny. I should also say. Krumholt's playing... When is Krumholtz not? Adrian Brody's friend who gets into a fight at the preppy party

gets so fired up about the blonde-haired Tab Hunter type who picked on him, Shane West, who then dyes his own hair blonde the next time he goes out to a party, which looks so funny. The visual gag of that is really good. And then maybe my favorite scene in the movie is when they go to, I think it's Justin Chambers' house, and it's him and Adrian Brody is sort of like poking through the rooms or whatever.

And he looks at like these hardwood floors with these like oriental rugs or whatever. And he's like, what, they couldn't afford wall to wall? And he keeps like dragging like the antique furniture and stuff like that. It's just like, how old is this stuff? Couldn't they afford anything new? And it's 100% cope, of course. Like, it's 100% him sort of just being, like, trying to find ways to, you know, find, like, oh, this, this, this, you know, this furniture is great if you live in 1894, you know what I mean?

And I just think it's, it's, it's deeply, deeply funny. We used to simply have movies that Joe Montagnia would be in. What a comforting presence in film, at least for me and the generation I grew up in. And now we've lost him to the CBS whole. I assume that show's on CBS, right? Yeah, well, forever he was on criminal minds. I know that. It was one of those typical situations where I think that show ended and then came back.

So yes, I think he's back now on it. That was one of those shows, as many shows were, that began as a Mandy Patinkin starring vehicle. And then after a year, Mandy Patinkin's like, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore. And so Chicago Hope was sort of like that too. And so then he needed to get somebody. else. I want us take a peruse through Joe Montagnia's awards tab, because I feel like it's

got to be pretty eclectic, because he's somebody who just sort of plays a lot of different roles. He's a three-time Emmy Award nominee for all for the same category, supporting actor in a mini-series or movie. They are for The Last Dawn. Do you remember the last Don, the Mario Puso adaptation that CBS did with Danny I.Ello? as the kingpin

or whatever, The Godfather. For playing Dean Martin in The Rat Pack, HBO's The Rat Pack. Who was the rest of the cast? I know Don Cheadle was Sammy. Joe Montenio was Dean. Ray Leota as Frank Sinatra. Angus McFagin as Peter Lafford.

William Peterson as JFK. Jalco Ivonic as Bobby Kennedy. Damn. Deborah Kara Unger as Ava Gardner. Veronica Cartwright is Rocky Cooper. This is a really, this is a wildcast. John Deal is Joe DiMaggio.

Damn. Who directed this? Rob Cohen. Rob Cohen's the Rat Pack. So Montania's nominated for that, and then nominated for a character called Lou Manahan in The Starter Wife. Remember Deborah Messing and the Starter Wife? What if there was a starter wife?

He's also nominated for a Globe for the Rat Pack. he was nominated for a Gotham Award for a movie we did very recently called Nine Lives We didn't do Nine Lives We did a different Rodrigo Garcia We did things you can tell Yes, I'm sorry, you're totally right

How could I forget? Okay, fine, then for Nine Lives Let's see He got the Moxie Tribute Award at the 2000 Santa Monica Film Festival Hell yeah He got an outstanding performance in acting award at the Newport Beach Film Festival for something called Elvis and Annabelle.

News to me, fantastic. Great. Won the Vulpe Cup at the Venice Film Festival in 1988, shared it with Don Amici for a movie called Things Change, a David Mamet movie that was written and directed by David Mamet, where he and Don Amici play mobsters, if you believe it. If you could believe that David Mamet made a movie about Tough Talk and Momsters, yeah, wow. Butch and Sundance, Bonnie and Clyde, Gino and Jerry, that's the poster. Two of the world's greatest criminal minds, they're not. Okay, so it's a comedy. I think part of the reason Joe Montagnia is such a comforting presence to me as an actor is he is one of the friends in Forget Paris, a movie I love very much.

Yes. Very formative in my childhood. Yes. But he gets to tell, because, like, Forget Paris is all told from the vantage of one. Talk me about Forget Paris. I'm just going to bliss out for a while. Yeah, okay. So Forget Paris is a romantic comedy for listeners who haven't seen it.

You have nothing better to do right now, I promise you. Put down this podcast. Can you put down a podcast? I don't know. Spend the 399. Go to whatever your streaming device of choice is. Find where you can watch Forget Paris and do that. Yes.

It's a romantic comedy starring Deborah Winger and Billy Crystal directed by Billy Crystal. And it's like this kind of, it's this relationship that they're pulled together, pull apart, pulled together, pull apart. And it's all told through the vantage point of their friends like recounting their whole relationship.

And Joe Montania gets like the best part to tell. He gets like the best chapter of the movie that is the funniest story that I won't spoil but it involves a bird. I think one of the funniest things in movies. It's one of those.

things where they tell you at the beginning that, like, we're going to tell you the story. This is Julie Kavanaugh's line, I think. She's like, I'm going to tell you the story. Look how much a line weighs. And at the end, you're going to tell me that I'm lying. But it's an absolutely true story. And they like they. Oh, right, because he's, he and Julie Kavner are much like we do on this podcast, talking over each other to tell this story. Right. Right. But so it sets it up where it's just like, it really like creates, lifts a high bar for this story to clear. And it absolutely does. So the pairs are, it's Joe Montenna and Cynthia Stevenson, I believe, are a pair. Oh, Cynthia Stevenson's so good in this. Julie Kavanaugh and

Richard Mazer. And then John Spencer and Kathy Moriarty. I think it's just those three pairs. I think it's just those three. And they're waiting for Deborah Winger and or Billy Crystal to show up. I think it's just those six. I could be wrong. wrong if there are other people. And then the waiter keeps showing up and they keep saying that their friends are still coming. Tremendous movie. Tremendous movie. Sort of takes on... I'm literally looking right now. It is not available on Blu-ray. What the hell? What the fuck? It takes up something of a Roshaman style to it in the fact that like different characters tell different stories. And it's not like you're getting different facts. It's just

sort of like sometimes one of them is telling the story from the Billy Crystal's character's side of things. And sometimes somebody's telling the story from, you know, is a little bit more sympathetic to Deborah Winger's character, Julie Kavanaugh's character is sort of friends with Deborah Winger. And... What do you mean there is no Blu-ray of Forget Paris, but I can still buy it on VHS? What is this? I don't have a VCR, but I would buy that on VHS just to own it. Just like I have a screener. I have a VHS screener of the Royal Tenen bombs that I own just for the Terrific. Just because, okay, so it's Montania Kavanaugh, Moriarty, Cynthia Stevenson, Richard Mazer, John Spencer.

Yeah, that's the group. That's the, that's the, um... When my happiness criterion arrived, I've come down hard on Cynthia Stevenson is the best performance in that movie that is filled with incredible performances. Sure. And I kind of want to do a Cynthia Stevenson dive. Well, forget Paris should be at the center of it because... What an incredible performer. that never got her too.

One of the things about Joe Montenia's awards tab that surprises me is I sort of expected there to be several nominations for voice performance for his work on The Simpsons, voicing Fat Tony on the Simpsons, and nothing, literally nothing. I don't understand it. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? The thing about Joe Montenia is he gets such a plumb role.

He's one of Mamet's guys, right? You know what I mean? Like he did Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross on the stage. He did Speed the Plow on the stage. He was in the David Mamet movie. I thought he was in House of Games. Maybe not. Wait, that's television.

Yes, 1987. Yeah, he's in House of Games opposite Lindsay Krause, which is a mammoth movie. He was in the one I just mentioned, the Don Amiti movie. things change. But he's got this plum role in the Godfather Part 3 where he's the antagonist, right? There's so much intrigue in the Godfather Part 3 with weirdly Godfather Part 3 secret prequel to Conclave, because there's a ton of Vatican intrigue happening in the Godfather Part 3. Let the success of Conclave. Don't you mean Conclave is a sequel to Godfather by 3? Kind of, yes.

If you've become conclave-pilled, go and watch The Godfather Part 3. It's not great, it's fun. But Joe Montagnas, Joey Zaza, he's the bad guy in that movie, and he engineers an ambush of the Corleone family and organization that involves inviting them to a dinner and a high-rise and then, like, getting helicopters with machine guns to sort of, like, shoot up the place. It's part and parcel of the fact that, like, Godfather Part 3 is a little, is unclassy to a degree. But I think the expectation was, oh, this is going to be like Montenia's big thing. This is going to be, you know, the Lee Strasberg Oscar nomination for Godfather Part 2 is for being the antagonist in a Godfather movie. You know, that kind of thing. Doesn't happen.

Unfortunately, people do not like the Godfather Part 3, even though it got a shitload of Oscar nomination. And it's supporting actor attention. went to Andy Garcia, who is the other sort of ascendance, ascendant one. So instead of sort of, you know, ascending to the next level, he's doing within two years body of evidence, right? He's the prosecutor and body of evidence. Isn't he the lawyer friend in Thine? It is, yes, he is. I guess you, Thine.

Finer. Michael Constantine, a line reading. I will never forget in my entire life. Ozempic, the person. Stupid. You're so stupid. He's GLP-1s, the person. I guess you, thin.

Oh, my God. Simaglitude's own, Michael Constantine. Montenia's also quite good, I would say, as the dad in searching for Bobby Fisher. he's the one who's really sort of pressing his kid to be this chess champion. He plays a character named Bucky Terra Nova in Up Close and Personal, which I only really remember because that was the one that script was written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunn, which was based on the story of Jessica Savage, who was an NBC news anchor who sort of had a breakdown. But so John Gregory Dunn wrote a book called Monster, living off of the big screen.

Incredible read. Everyone should read that. Incredible read about the difficulties of working within the Hollywood system to make this fairly like middle brow, like decidedly middle brow, a Hollywood movie. And obviously, like the literary pedigree of John Gregory Dunn and Joan Didion was such that they wanted to make this thing. I think a little more rarefied, a little bit more, you know, high end, and the way that the Hollywood system kind of beat them down. And I remember there being, like, tons of arguments over whether they should get rid of the Bucky Taranova character entirely.

And they wanted to make a movie about journalism and journalists. Yes. And the studio is like, we want to make a Michelle Fife for Robert Redford. Romantic tragedy. Yes, exactly, exactly. ultimately ends up as an Oscar nominee for the Celine Dionne song, the Diane Warren song that should have won the Oscar. We should do that as an exception, actually, up close and personal. I think that would be a really interesting exception.

Maybe for Valentin's D. He's in Thinner. He's in Woody Allen's Celebrity. What are the other, like, that's up to Liberty Heights. That's sort of where he's going. At that same time, he's on television in... sorry. Well, obviously, as I said, The Simpsons, 44 episodes of The Simpsons as Fat Tony. Good for you, man.

Should we talk about Barry Levinson? Yes, yes. Just so much to say, though, about Joe Montagnia, that, like, he is somebody who always was sort of on the cusp of becoming, you know, sort of a major actor and has kind of remained on the margins, but in a way where, like, you've seen at least one or two movies or TV shows where Joe Montagnia has made an impression on you. You know what I mean? Like, that is a satisfying career for somebody who's never made, like, the A-list.

Anyway, yes. Let's rescue him from indistinguishable CBS dog shit and get him a plum character role. Yes. So, yeah, let's talk about Barry Levinson, who, as I said, is boomer culture, non- un-derogatory, I will say. Complementary, often. He wrote... There's waves to it.

Barry Levinson, I think, now is someone who... People see his name attached to something, and they run for the hills, because there's been a lot of bad things. Like, Liberty Heights isn't exactly the beginning of the end. That's probably Sphia. Did you say Sphere? Spia. Spia.

Did you put... Sphere? Like Barbara would say it? Yeah. I was off at the fun way to talk about the motion which is sphere. I didn't take it because you had to be underwater. This weekend, we're going to go see sphere. I didn't know how my hair would share under water.

It's about an underwater sphere. Wait, so before we get to that, I want to sort of like, before we get to sphere. Yes, let's go from the very beginning. He starts off as a comedy writer. He's working on these like variety shows in the 70s. He's working on the Tim Conway show and the Marty Films. Feldman show and the Carol Burnett show and the Rich Little show and eventually writes these movie scripts. He writes the script for one of the writers on the script for Mel Brooks's high

anxiety. He's one of the writers on a silent movie. So he's sort of within that Mel Brooks sphere. And then he and Valerie Curtin, who is his wife at the time, I think, must have been, yeah, they were married from 75 to 82. Valerie Curtin, cousin to Jane Curtin, I'm just now realizing. Anyway, wrote the script for, and Justice for All, the Al Pacino, the Norman Jewison movie, the one where Pacino says, you're out of order, you're, the whole trial's out of order, they're out of order, a movie that is a very, very silly movie, but watchable. at the same time.

Puccino has a great head of hair in that movie, as I mentioned when we were doing our 70s series. And then ultimately gets his first chance, writes Richard Donner's night moves, also with Valerie Carton. And then makes Diner, which is this sort of breakthrough

semi-autobiographical, Baltimore, movie about friends, Steve Gutenberg, Daniel Stern, Kevin Bacon, Mickey Rourke, And people love it. Like, it's a huge, you know... It's definitional for a lot of people. To the point that it's like, you know, Liberty Heights was probably compared negatively to Diner.

Like, it's standing in the shadow of Diner in a lot of ways. Roger Ebert loved it. Paul and Kale loved it. It got an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for 1982. it loses to one second Gandhi, sure listen. Diner, E.T.

an officer and a gentleman and Tutsi all lost the screenplay Oscar to Gandhi. I'm going to say that does not hold up to scrutiny. The fact that Melissa Matheson's script for E.T. And the Larry

Galbart script for Tutsi did not win the Oscar and Gandhi did, much less diner. People also like diner. Like, that's a bad one, y'all. That's not great. So, yeah, so the critics awards all had that up in their, like, supporting actor conversation for Mickey Rourke, screenplay conversation. It was a Golden Globe nominee for Best Musical or Comedy, where it lost to, hold on. Tutsi. Tutsi. Hey, not too bad. That's an interesting set of nominees. Tutsi. wins, Diner, Best Little Horehouse in Texas, Victor Victoria, and my favorite year.

This is why we don't give up on the Golden Globes people, because they're corrupt and they're awful, but sometimes they will recognize five good comedies in a year and good for them. All right. After Diner, he's uncredited, by the way, also on the Tutsi script, which is another feather in his gap. 1982, a good year for Barry Levinson. Also, he and Valerie Curtin wrote the script for, in that same year, another Norman Jewison movie,

Best Friends, Bert Reynolds and Goldie Hawn in a movie called Best Friends. What if there were Best Friends? Actually, oh, the tagline on the poster is, what a present for Christmas as Goldie Hawn nibbles on Bert Reynolds's ear in the poster for Best Friends. Go check it out.

people um all right you pick up the ball i'm going to drink my water well next comes the natural a movie that i remember falling asleep too many times as a child and i don't know if i've ever finished it filmed partially in buffalo new york clink clink coins in the bucket um natural's good natural i believe that's going closest first acting nomination is it the natural it would be second because i think it comes out after the big chill oh okay so the big chill was that doesn't or was it garp first wait it was it It was Garp, then the big chill, then the natural boom, boom, boom, boom, one, two, three. Boom, boom, three supporting. Three supportings in a row in three years, yes. She was not the one who was expected to get the nomination, because I think the Golden Globe nomination went to Kim Basinger. And then Glenn Close, sort of they swapped in Glenn for the natural. Glenn Close gets nominated for the natural for standing up and looking beautiful. She's not bad in the natural. She just doesn't have a ton to do. She's essentially like the idealized good woman.

for Roy Hobbs who has to deal with a lot of treacherous women like Kim Basinger and Barbara Hershey in that movie. So, um, Barbara Hershey does. I'm glad you remember the natural more than that. I've seen it a bunch. My dad, it's one of my dad's movies. My dad really likes baseball movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's. Great score. Randy Newman. The young Sherlock Holmes, famous for early digital CGI.I. Oh, is that true? That's interesting. I believe it. They took the real Sherlock Holmes and digitally deaged him for this movie. is that what they're going? No, it's like the guy who comes out of the stained glass,

and then he is like stained glass, like, person. I've never seen this movie. He has to fight. It only is nominated for visual effects. It's, I don't believe what's financially successful was part of the movie's problem because the CGI was very expensive. But, like, it is formative in the field of visual effects. Right.

Tin Men is next. He's back to Baltimore with Tim Men. which is Richard Dreyfus. Thing back to Baltimore. Richard Dreyfus and Danny Davito play an aluminum siding salesman in the 1960s in Tin Men, which is not nominated for anything, even though I feel like its reputation has stood the test of time. I think people think back on this movie fondly.

I've never seen it. Have you ever seen Tin Men? I haven't seen it. People seem to like it. Next up is one solitary Oscar nomination, but I think a pretty well-remembered one because it was the first for Robin Williams. Good morning, Vietnam.

Good morning, Vietnam. Big movie of its time. I remember a lot of people talk about it, the sort of the, good morning, Vietnam, became like a sort of like a, whatever memes were back in the day. I don't know how people would meme it today.

I'm sure gay people would find a way to make it sexual. Good movie, never one of my favorite movies, I think. But like, it's, I remember bits and pieces of it. Forrest Whitaker's in this movie. Bruno Kirby, your boyfriend is in this movie. Robert Wool's in this movie. Um, yeah, yeah. Uh, well received. Kind of surprising that it only got one Oscar nomination because I feel like it was probably on the cusp of more. It was a big hit. I imagine, let's see, did it kick Golden Globe? No, just the, just the Robin Williams nomination for the globe as well. Although he wins. He wins. He wins. he wins that one because it's musical or for comedy or did they put him in drama because that's like one of those things that definitely has dramatic elements it does but they nominated him in musical or comedy he wins over nicholas cage and moonstruck dany de vito and throw mama from the train william hurt in broadcast news steve martin and roxan and patrick suasy in dirty dancing which is not a comedy be a fucking country dirty dancing i guess they counted as a musical which is interesting because there's no actual singing in it there's just soundtrack needle drops, but they do a lot of dancing, obviously. So dubious, but I'll allow it, I suppose. That's one of those where, like, they're not going to nominate dirty dancing and drama.

So just, like, nominated musical comedy, I guess. A movie that is a comedy because it is light. Like, you know, just like, that's the lot. Sort of like what they're doing with challengers. It's a movie about tennis and sex. Dirty Dancing is a movie about dancing and sex. It's a comedy. It is a comedy.

Anyway, next for Barry Levenson. The big one. Rain Man. Rain Man. So many Oscars for that movie. Eight nominations, four wins, including... Highest grossing movie of the year. The only best picture winner to win the Golden Bear, which is Kuku Kuchoo Kuchoo.

That's a hell of a stat. I love that stat, though. That's amazing. Especially in the era of, like, Berlin, they used to have... you know Oscar movies that were just like late year releases like the hours played Berlin right because you know that movie was kind of down to the wire anyway did you hear what I said did you heard I said but Berlin they used to take your breath away oh they did they did because see the song top come well done sir I applaud you thank um rain man a best

picture winner I would be afraid to go back and watch and also I remember not a whole lot happens in that movie. That was a my aunt owned it on VHS movie, and it was rated R, but we were allowed to watch it, even though I think you might see Valeria Galino's breast in it at some point, but maybe not. Maybe I'm misremembering. I imagine you would not age well as of today, if only because Dustin Hoffman, who already nobody likes, is a monster. is playing a, um, a developmentally disabled character, vaguely, um, autistic, but I don't know if they ever say, they might actually say autistic. Um, the best, the best way to describe Rain Man, I will steal from Pauline Kale, who said

that it was Dustin Hoffman, humping the same note of a piano for like two hours. That's, it's something, I'm parapasing the quote, and it's just like, correct. Talk about what memes were back in the day, like five minutes to Wapner and counting all the toothpicks and, you know, there was a lot of, that movie really sort of had a resonance, had a real resonance. The popular line on Rain Man now from a today perspective where if you listen to this movie, anytime it's brought up on a podcast or among film critics, is Dustin Hoffman wins the Oscar, but you know who has the best performance in that movie is Tom Cruise. which I don't necessarily think it's wrong, but I do feel like it's funny that like everybody jumped on that exact same opinion as has stuck.

Like, that's the new orthodoxy now is that Tom Cruise should have been nominated instead of Dustin Hoffman for Raymond. Well, and it's also just this thing about Tom Cruise that, you know, I think it's what people's desire to see from Tom Cruise that he is good at, that he ultimately has no interest in doing. And it's like, sometimes,

Tom Cruise is just really good at playing a guy. It's also... He's good at just being a person in a movie that is just a drama. And he does not give a shit about doing that anymore. It's also the fact that Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise, who is like, obscenely wealthy, incredibly powerful, can do anything he wants is essentially, you know, has the golden ticket in Hollywood. But people want to find ways to whatever avenue they can to be like, Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise, underappreciated, and this is one way where you can point to and say, you know what, people didn't appreciate how good he was in Rain Man. And if people want to do that, then go. But he's probably instrumental in how successful that movie was, especially at the box office. Because like, can you imagine a movie like Rain Man being the number one movie at the box office? He shoulders a lot of that movie. I'm not saying that those people are wrong. I'm just saying that they all. You're saying they're being try-hards. I think they're being a little tryhard about it, is all I'm saying.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Yes. Follow-up. Avalon is next. Yes. We mentioned Avalon. Four nominations, I will say.

Not only just screenplay gets nominated for cinematography, costume design, and score. I think that score shows up in the Liberty Heights trailer. It's pretty familiar. I think that's a Randy Newman, I think. I watched it when we did our best picture follow-up screen draft. Oh, I haven't seen it in a while. while. I didn't watch it during that. And I didn't have much to say about it then, and I still kind of don't.

Teeny, tiny little Elijah Wood. It's a teeny tiny little baby. It's like if Liberty Heights had 10 times its budget, basically. Who are the actors in that? Who are the, um... Is it Armin? Who's the dad? Armand Mueller Stall, but who plays his kids? It's Aidan Quinn? Aidan Quinn. Classic Jewish Aidan Quinn, of course. You know, the... Joan Plowler.

Right, great dame. Back when Joan Plow writes, eyesight wasn't so bad when she, it's her eyesight. She mentions it was going bad, and that's why she couldn't get roles, but she also couldn't hear in that scene because her hearing it had fallen out, right? Back in the days before her agents in America would say, where don't you do something that Judy Dench has turned down? We'll get you a little cameo that Judy Dench hasn't got her paws on. The way she says that is so, it's like she did a line reading. She's like that Judith Hed didn't get her pause on. It's so great.

I love it so much. God bless. R. AP, R.A.P. Meggy Smith. It's all coming out now. I love her. Anyway, CT with the dames. After Avalon comes Chris's favorite movie. Bugsie.

The most Oscar nominations. Bugsie is good if you turn the sound off. The most Oscar nominations that a Barry Levinson movie would ever get is Bugsy, which is so funny, because everybody would assume that it's a Warren Bady movie. That movie was credited to Warren Bady. He was the one who got it made. He was the one who started it. It was his kind of passion project. And Levinson sort of gets like brought on to direct, I believe, is how it went.

I think my beef with Bugsy is Warren Bady because I've kind of slowly realized I'm also listening to the audio book. Are you anti-Badie just in general? I'm listening to the audio book of Easy Writers Raging Bulls, and it's coming together that I'm like, I maybe don't give a shit about Warren Bady. He certainly gave a shit about himself enough for everybody. But also, I mean, I, I, maybe I haven't read enough about it or whatever. I don't like Bugsy.

I don't like Heaven Can Wait, like. Heaven Can Wait, it's okay. What do you think of shampoo? That was the one I thought I was a little, I thought it was a little overrated. I'm just like, yeah, I get it, but shampoo at least has like a lot of women in it. And Heaven Can Wait, at least has Diane Cannon. What did I see recently where I was like, oh, this is just Bullworth. Shit.

It was something. I should watch Bullworth. Let me pull up my, quickly, I won't take too long on this, but my letterbox log and see if it'll charm my memory. Of something that I saw where I was like, oh, God, this is just doing Bullworth. not the seventh sign, not unbreakable, not cure. I don't know, man. It was something. I'll say that. It was definitely something. Where I was like, oh, they're doing... It does have a net-bending, but that movie is not about a net-bending.

They're doing the thing where it's just like, oh, no, you know what it was. It was heaven can wait. It was the thing where he's in the boardroom meeting and he's the reincarnated businessman. He's reincarnated into the body of businessman and he's just like pointing out all the obvious things that no one will say in a boardroom where he's like oh we like you know we polluted that that uh land we should really we should you know pay money for that and it's the same thing of like what if a businessman told the truth what if a politician were totally honest it's just like babies got got you know i hang up about that anyway um next movie the reviled toys i watched that movie So much as a kid.

Two Oscar nominations, Toys. Toys is one of those movies where I watched the trailer for it. And I watched the, like, that's the one with a very memorable teaser trailer that was in theaters where it's just like Robin Williams in a giant field. And he's like, we're making this movie now. We're in the middle of making toys. Toys will be coming to you soon. And I was like, oh, that looks like a movie that I'm really going to love. And I kept trying to watch it and I never made it through that whole movie.

It just like, it did not appeal to me whatsoever. It was repulsive in a way, in a way that, like, I don't quite know what it was, but I was just like, oh, that's not what I want. In our dream scenario, repertory theater, I am programming double features of toys and speed racer. Stuff that seemed like it would be something that I would like and that I ultimately did not. No, as in, like, here I am, this is the great double feature of, of anti-capitalist consumerism. Sure. Sort of a forgotten movie

that kind of hastened Levinson's downward turn is Jimmy Hollywood, a movie that I never saw, but I remember, ads for. Joe Pesci, Christian Slater. So interesting that Pesci does this kind of nothing movie when he's like not, at this point even,

basically done with acting. Kind of, yeah. I am excited for the fact that you are going to have to soon, because of Demi, myself, and I. I know. Rewatch the hot piping deuce that is Disclosure. Hot piping deuce that made

$214 million. Disclosure made an insane amount of money. Men really hated women that much. Also, the fact that Disclosure has a significant virtual reality element, to its plot? Yes. Disclosure and Freddy's Dead have the same ending.

I can't wait. I cannot wait. I know I've seen Disclosure, but I remember nothing about where it goes and where it ends up. And I'm going to have to say, Freddy's Dead does it better. Disclosure is wildly 1994. It is, we'll talk about it when you watch it, and then I can't wait for that episode. The next three movies in Levinson's career are all ones that I have, much probably brighter memories of than some of his more significant 1980s movies. I remember being very excited for sleepers before it came out because more so then, but like still kind of now, I am such a sucker for movies with big starry casts. And this one was Brad Pitt, Jason Patrick, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert De Niro in this economy.

Kevin Bacon, Billy Crude Up is in that movie, although I don't really think I knew who he was at the time. Minnie Driver was in that movie. Again, your boyfriend, Bruno Kirby, Ada Turturro, Dash Mahawk, my goodness, John Slattery, James Pickens, Jr. Once again, guess who loves James Pickens Jr., Barry Levinson? Would make a good exception episode. This was about the aftermath of, this is sort of kind of, you know, in tandem with a mystic river kind of a thing, except this was New York City Health's Kitchen,

kids who were sent to a reform school, who were abused by the guards there, by Kevin Bacon specifically. Then after the fact, one of them kills Kevin Bacon and gets put on trial, and they have to defend each other. And, like, the local priest agrees, De Niro's the priest. De Niro's the priest, Hoffman's the lawyer.

The priest agrees to lie. on the stand to protect these kids, which is an interesting wrinkle in the fact that the clergy is helping the sexually abused kids from the cops. Usually it's the other way around. Wag the Dog, 1997. Good movie that I really would like to revisit, and hopefully it does stand up.

But I remember really loving it at the time. I think for whatever we say about Dustin Hoffman, He's so funny in that movie, and he's so kind of, like, also, like, legitimately good in a, in a pathos kind of a way as well. Also, a 97 movie that I think was expected to do even better with Oscar, and I... It releases very late. It's a Christmas Day release in 1997. One of the, like, what-if scenarios I would love to see you do... You've done one on Titanic before, right? I don't think I've ever gotten it to fruition,

but one of the ones I have in The Hopper is Titanic-based, yes. Yeah, like, what happens if Titanic is a summer release or what does that Oscar race end up becoming if Titanic is not in it for various reasons? Yes, yes. Well, I will hopefully get on the ball with that. I have another Mirror Universe thing. I'll cook in for this year, so we'll see.

Can't win. Can't we. Next is Svea. A movie. The less set about Svea, the better. Okay, here's the thing. Critics hated Sphere. I kind of love Sphere.

I know Sphere is junk, but it's so much fun. I also really loved that book. That's another one, like Disclosure, based on a Michael Crichton book. Screenplay by Paul Atenacio and Stephen Houser. Dustin Hoffman, once again, Ben Levinson and Hoffman were quite the tandem. Sharon Stone with a very takes-no-fucks haircut. as a biologist, a marine biologist, Dr. Beth Halpern. Samuel L. Jackson plays a mathematician.

Leav Schreiber is there. Queen Latifah is there. Peter Coyote is there. A bunch of jellyfish are also there. And then there's this giant sphere that makes all your dreams and nightmares into reality. And it's junky, but it's so watchable. Elliot Goldenthal on the score. I would that we had more bad movies like Sphere.

in 2024 is all I will say about that. So Justice for Sphere, kind of. Sphere. And what's the other 1998 movie that is junky but good? The Siege. Edwards Wicks, the Siege. Another movie that's like, technically

not good, but deeply watchable. And those movies belong. We used to have very cinematic, well-made trash. Yes. Like, Yes.

So after Liberty Heights in 99, then comes a very, like, the definition of Barry Levinson is like very hit and miss. And there are ones that I have memories and thoughts on, and there are ones that I just have nothing. One of the nothings. Movie that exists entirely as a poster and everlasting piece. It's about a toupee. It takes place in Northern Ireland. It stars, among other people, Brianna Foeburn and Billy Connolly. Anna Friel, and good for all of those people.

I've never seen it. I don't know about it. It's about a toupee. I have seen... I constantly try to push for us to do bandits. We should do bandits, in fact, because it was nominated for a couple of Golden Globes. Cape Blanchet chops vegetables to the tune of Bonnie Tyler.

Those things alone should qualify. Cape Blanchet in... Did I say Blanchet or Winslet? I said Blanchet, I hope. I meant Blanchet, certainly. It's Blanchet. She had a big, she had one of those, like, she was in a bunch of movies in 2001, and she got some of those, like, best supporting actress.

All of these things. Even though she's only good in some of these things. See our shipping news episode for that. Petal? Maybe the only time she's been back. Her name was Petal? Petal Coil. Jesus Christ.

A real name. Name for a real person. The violence you have sowed. If I saw envy, I don't remember it. I probably did see envy because it's a Ben Stiller Blackjack movie. Blackjack? Jesus Christ. A Ben Stiller Jack Black movie from 2004, I would absolutely have been in the pocket for that movie then.

I just don't remember it. Rachel Weiss is in this movie? Wow. Rachel Weiss playing Ben Stiller's wife, Debbie Dingman. Cinematrix Corps. remember and Rachel Weiss as Debbie Dingman is a is a is a is a incantation that will open up just the darkest possible world. I don't like that at all and then you go to the Amityville horror house in the basement which is a gateway to hell is just a character poster of Rachel Weiss in and you go Debbie Dingman and then it opens and there's the um he's an inventor someone's an inventor maybe they both are man of the year is one of those late Robin Williams movies where he plays either mentally unhinged or just bad people.

I can't remember. He's like a politician, right? Right, but like, I've never seen this movie. So here I am just sort of like talking out of my ass about this movie. Laura Linney's in this movie? Is she also a dingman in this character? No. This is when things start to really get bad because the next movie is what just happened.

What Just Happened, which does not exist, even though Robert De Niro and a bunch of... This is one of those movies that shows up on a lot of Cinematrix research. It was just like, oh, this person's in it. Most of them are cameoing as themselves. Sean Penn, Bruce Willis. Kristen Stewart's in this

movie. John Totoro, Michael Wincott, Robin Wright, Stanley Toch, Lily Raib. It's about a Hollywood producer, question mark. I certainly haven't seen it, absolutely haven't seen it. Oh, boy. But it's a, yeah, it's like a, it's a Hollywood producer behind the scenes kind of a thing.

He directed something called Polywood, a documentary. Oh, here's the synopsis. The Democratic and Republican National Conventions held in 2008 during the United States presidential election that year are examined in depth in Hollywood, which features interviews with well-known Hollywood celebrities like Susan Sarandon and Anne Hathaway. No, thank you. Can I give you the lineup for the... No.

I am not a person who's like stick to movies or whatever. Like, people are citizens. People can say whatever they want to. Right. I'm subjected to the worst, dumbest opinions by people on Twitter. People in Hollywood. The last thing I want to see is a documentary about the DNC and RNC through the lens. of famous people. I'm trying to think who was the motley crew of the RNC in 2008, because

McCain wins. But like, I want to say, oh, here, I can just click on that Schwarzenegger. Hold on. Well, the speakers were, among others, George W. Bush, Laura Bush, Joe Lieberman, Fred Thompson, John Boehner, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin, of course, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, various McCains. I'm Carly Fiorina. Oh, boy, just wait.

So who was the... Sorry, it's just going to take a second, but I am going to... It's going to bother me if I can't... As much as this is barf soup, it would get so much worse. Well, really. Like, honestly, 2008 presidential election

Republican candidates. Here we go. candidates in 2008 were John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Alan Keyes, Fred Thompson, Sam Brownback, Tommy Thompson, just a motley, motley crew. The ones who got votes at the convention were McCain, Huckabee, Romney, and Ron Paul. So, yikes on bikes with that one. But then remember when, like, Fred Thompson was, like, a legitimate candidate?

Legitimate, air quotes, candidate for president? Like, that's, that's, uh, Gibbs. While he was on law and order, basically. Um, so anyway, this movie, uh, has interviews with Stephen Baldwin and at Benning, Alan Burson, Rachel Lee Cook, Bradley Cooper. Bradley Cooper in 2008 was known for what exactly, alien, or alias, rather. Wedding Crashers. Yes. No, yes, true. David Crosby,

Alan Cumming, Tim Daly, Charlie Daniels, of the Charlie Daniels band, Robert Davy, Dana Delaney, Giancarlo Aspizito, Tom Fontana, Danny Glover, Anne Hathaway, Spike Lee, Josh Lucas, Matthew Modine, Tom Morello, Lawrence O'Donnell, of course, David Patterson, Gloria Rubin, Susan Sarandon,

Richard Schiff, of course, Ron Silver, Aralinspector, Sting, Lynn Whitfield, Will I Am, and Zoe Dishinell. I'm going to pass. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, if you can believe it. From hell.

If you can believe it. One movie I did not remember as being a Barry Levinson movie that I watched and kind of liked is the Bay, which is a first-person horror movie about like an outbreak of like flesh eating something or other

in the water supply in Chesapeake Bay. It's pretty good. It's decently effective. I don't know if I could do a horror. I mean, like, I'm not a scaredy cat, but I don't know if I could do a horror movie about the water supply. Yeah.

I think I'm out. I feel you. I'm out. That's too, that's too. One movie that I have a unfortunate connection to is the humbling, which is his next movie, which. It's like your first TIF movie, right? It was my first TIF.

I was operating without a press pass, so I was just sort of grabbing tickets where I could, and I hadn't yet. figured out that just because a movie features actors that I want to see doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a movie I'm going to want to see. So this movie starred Al Pacino, Greta Gerwig, Kira Sedgwick, Dan Hadea, Diane Weist, Charles Groden. This is when Charles Groden was making his sort of like mini comeback because this

and while we're young was sort of around the same time. Grotin's actually quite good in this movie. Nina Arianda is in this movie. I loved her, Billy Porter, Mary Louise Wilson. But the whole idea is like, Pacino is an actor who is aging and he's maybe succumbing to dementia. And Greta Gerwig is his girlfriend, who's obviously significantly younger. And she sort of represents, like, kids today. They're all bisexual and they have weird opinions, whatever.

And it's very, like, old man doesn't understand where the culture is going. and it was the same tiff, I believe, that Pacino was in that David Gordon Green movie. Mangalhorn, the humbling and manglehorn were the same tiff for Al Pacino, so not great. The one that kind of feels like publicly kind of kicked dirt onto Levinson as a film director was Rock the Casbah, which was Bill Murray, is sent to Afghanistan to do U.S.O. stuff. Kate Hudson's in this movie, Zoe Dishonel, Danny McBride, Scott Kahn, Bruce Willis, Arian Moyad. Ripped to Shreds in and out of theaters within a week.

It was bad, yeah. Open road. Open road. Open and closed that road very quickly for Rock the Casbah. And then he's got another movie coming out based on or written. by Nick Pellegi, the Nora Ephron's widower, who wrote Goodfellas and Casino, the novels, at least. This is about competing Italian-American mob bosses, one who orders a hit on the other, and then the one survives the hit. But then decides to retire. It's fucking Robert De Niro and I don't know who plays the other one. What's that?

Bless the Smezzling. Well, yes, but I'm trying to see who plays the other mob boss, and I don't know if they've cast, but this is a Warner Brothers picture. Warner Brothers, not allowing anybody to see Clean Eastwood's movie, but apparently they're going to greenlight a Barry Levinson film in 2025. I'm not optimistic. It does co-star Cosmo Jarvis, who was so good on Shogun. But, listen. And also simultaneously with a lot of the... these last movies, he's also doing

HBO things. Like, you don't know Jack, the Wizard of Lies, the paterno movie. Right. The Survivor with Ben Foster was a movie that was made independently and then HBO picked up out of

Pandemic Tiff. Yeah. Yes. You're right about that. I forgot about all the HBO movies. And doapsick, too. He did a couple dopesick. That's probably where he saw his most

success. I think people like. Things like You Don't Know Jack and The Wizard of Lies, I think by the time we got to Paterno, I think the bloom was a little bit off the rose there. But yes, he's producing television to various degrees of success. He also, during his heyday, like, helped invent Oz and Homicide Life on the Street, which are two of the more underrated, important movies of the late 90s, early aughts that really were... big, huge stepping stones in the, what would become the like golden age of television with the Sopranos and whatnot. I think everybody sort of assumes that the Sopranos kind of happened without any kind of preamble. And I think that's forgetting that there were shows

like Homicide and Oz that definitely did sort of seed the ground for that kind of show succeeding. So the credit to Barry Levinson and folks like Tom Fontana, for that, Tom Fontana, Buffalo Excellence. I'm just going to, every time I get a chance to say that, I'm going to. The Survivor reunited him with Ben Foster. Let's do a little bit of Ben Foster. Ben Foster is so charming in this movie. And in a character that could very easily have been grating.

Very annoying, yes. I think he really, really lands this character. I think he does not over, over, the pudding, as a Brit might say. Have you ever heard that phrase? I always find it so charming. Yes, yes. It would have been very easy to push this character in a way where he's a little shit,

a little sort of a little too much of a glint in his eye, a little too much like winking at the camera, Ferris Bueller, kind of a, you know, and I think all of that combined with the dressing up as Hitler thing would have been a little too much. I think you get the sense here that he's, defiant, but in a sort of like, well, yeah, obviously, like this would, obviously I'm dressed as Hitler. It's Halloween. We're supposed to dress as like the scariest thing possible. What's your problem? He knows he's being insusient, right? He knows he's being a little bit of a little stinker, but he's not really leaning into it so much that you just want to sort of ring his neck. You're just like, oh, he must be a handful. He seems like a goodhearted kid. And you don't sort of begrudge him. his, you know, little moments, right?

Right. No, I agree. I mean, Ben Foster, the thing about this performance that I found very interesting, especially watching it in hindsight, is all of the, like, watchability and the charisma of a Ben Foster performance is there, but without the scumbomeness that I think became his... Where are you with Ben Foster at this point in his career? I think I've always been pro Ben Foster. I mean, I think he, was he the one I liked in Hell or Highwater, that movie that I really don't like?

Everybody seems to really have liked Chris Pine in that movie. I liked, I always like Ben Foster. He's often the thing I like the best in a thing. I was a very, Ben Foster should be nominated for 310 to Yuma person. I was very. That's when the like, Ben Foster is playing a guy with dirty teeth thing became. Well, it was that in 30 days of night in. the same movie, or in the same year. So that really kind of did it for you. I thought the fact that

Woody Harrelson got all the awards attention for the messenger, I was always a little bit like, you know, Ben Foster's doing just as good work, but he's a lead. So it's the competition's a little bit more. I really liked him. And, well, he's in Anthem Body Saints. I think he's pretty good in Anthem Body Saints. I don't remember him very much from Kill Your Darling's, even though that's a movie I remember being like very excited for because I'm a big Radcliffe fan. I like Dane DeHan. I like Michael C. Hall. And I think, I love Lizzie Olson, of course. I think I sort of walked away from that movie being a little bit crestfallen that I didn't love it more. He's in the most anonymous Oscar buzzed Tiff movie to the point where I don't think we can even do it on this podcast because people would literally be like, what are you talking about? Which is the program. from 2015, where he plays Lance Armstrong. And, like, Katie Rich and I saw that movie together at Tiff. And I don't know a single other person.

Stephen Frears directed this movie. I don't know a single other person. It was like Ben Foster will be an Oscar nominee for this movie. And then I don't think it even got distribution until well into the season. It's just sort of like not special or particularly interesting or illuminating in any way. He's not bad as Lance Armstrong. The movie is not this like embarrassing thing. It's just sort of very flat.

Heller Highwater is one of those things where he probably came closer to getting that movie's second supporting actor nomination than we really probably realize. I think he was sort of like poking around the edges of it. I think he got a Critics Choice nomination that year. But like obviously Jeff Bridges was going to be. The one, recent years, he's so heartbreakingly good in Leave No Trace. Deborah Granix, Leave No Trace. Yeah, he should have been nominated for that. I think that's the one I really want to, like, point people towards because he's...

People have forgotten about that movie that was surprisingly close to very many Oscar, or way more an Oscar nominations than. It ultimately didn't get any, right? Leave No Trace. It didn't get any, no. Yeah. Yeah, that movie was probably like sixth place in like four categories. Recently, he's been in a lot of movies with like notable talent that I just haven't seen the Melanie Laurent movie, Galveston, the Adam Sandler film Hustle, the Will Smith. And he's going to be in this Long Day's Journey into Night adaptation that we keep getting threatened with.

With Jessica Lang and Ed Harris, yeah. Yeah, that has been just like kicking around waiting to get released. He's also supposedly attached to the biopic of Christy Martin, the boxer, who Sidney Sweeney is supposed to, this is a David Mishaud movie, Sydney Sweeney is cast as Christy Martin, Ben Foster is her abusive husband, Merit Weaver, Katie O'Brien, Ethan Embry, oh, Ethan Embry, I love Ethan Embry, are in this movie. But, like, he was in that movie Finest Kind, the Brian Helgeland movie last year that I think was initially supposed. to be a movie movie and then it sort of became it's one of these movies that like became a TV movie as a consolation prize and I think it was like in the conversation for Emmy. I remember it being like

in the Emmy conversation for a bunch of things but I don't know if it got anything. He's also an emancipation that Antoine Fouca Will Smith movie that happened right after the slap that people were like let's maybe just not for for this probably for that movie's

benefit was an Apple Plus movie and, you know, those barely exist. He also had a significant stint on Six Feet Under, which I think was sort of a very, it was a very transitional kind of role. I think that moved him from his sort of teen stuff because he was in a bunch of teen movies.

He was in Get Over it. And I remember him being in the Laramie Project. Did you ever watch the Laramie Project? He was no effective in that. He has a really, really good scene in that movie. He plays the person who found Matthew Shepard's body tied to the fence. But he's in a pretty significant arc in Six Feet Under, where he plays Claire Fisher's boyfriend, who also turns out to be bisexual, but she ends up pregnant and she has to get an abortion, the whole thing. He's quite good on that show.

I've always liked Ben Foster. I've always been a Ben Foster guy. I think he's quite, quite good in Liberty Heights. I really think he's really – it does not surprise me that his career. sort of like went up, up, up after this movie. Same thing with Adrian Brody. I think Adrian Brody is incredibly charming in this movie. Yeah, yeah.

And I believe them as brothers, too. I believe the older brother, younger brother dynamic in this movie. Adrian Brody gets top billing in this movie, which this is the same year as Summer of Sam. And I guess it's just surprising that the top billing, you know, for movies about teens, you know, the parents are usually still first billed. It's surprising that Montana is not the first billed person in the

this movie. And like Ben Foster, though granted Ben Foster had had less movies at this point than Adrian Brody had. Like it's the bigger part. Like neither of them are first on the call sheet. It makes sense that Ben Foster would be first built. You know what movie I've never seen that I would like to because for many reasons, but also Adrian Brody's in this. I've never seen Soderberg's King of the Hill. And that movie has a really interesting cast because obviously Jesse Bradford's the lead. but Brody's in that movie Amber Benson from Buffy is in that movie Catherine Hegel is in that movie

Lauren Hill is in that movie Karen Allen and Spalden Gray and Elizabeth McGovern What an interesting cast It's a good movie Soderberg Post Sex Lies and Videotape is so fascinating

He'd Had this like on the slate to make this He made the deal with Redford To like produce this movie I think Redford ultimately envisions something different for this movie and has his name taken off of it, maybe? Interesting.

That's a movie we could do for this podcast because it played Cannes. And obviously, Sex Lives and Videotape gave Soderberg a lot of expectation. We should put that on the list. Let's make a good child performances. Yeah, King of the Hillsco. But yeah, it's Liberty Heights and Summer of Sam

are good ones to sort of pair with each other. They were the same year, obviously, but also they both lean on nostalgia in very specific ways. Brody's character in Summer of Sam is very, he gets very into the punk scene and sort of alienates the, you know, the people he grew up with and gets kind of bullied and called a faggot and whatnot, and it's, it's, he's quite good in that movie. That's one I've been meaning to revisit for a while, because I feel like that's an, I want to say it's an underrated Spike Lee movie, but I want to see it again to sort of like, um, underline that and make sure that I know what I'm talking about when I say that. Um, is he, is Brody the one who ends up not being in the thin red line when he went and saw the movie? That was going to be my question for you, because I always forget who it was of the 700 people. Didn't know he got cut out until he saw the movie. And I don't think it's, I don't think whoever it was is. completely cut out.

But it's also just like to certain degrees anyone in that movie could have believed that they were the protagonist at some point. Right, right. Is it Chaplin? Or is it Cavitzel? I feel like, no, I feel like

Chaplin and Cavizal are like major, like the two kind of major focal points of that movie. So it must be Adrian Brody. Hold on. See if there's anything. in the Wikipedia about it. Great movie, one of the best movies of the 90s, and I can't remember.

Well, that's the thing. It's like, you watch that movie, and it is absolutely not about the actors whatsoever. So I suppose it's not the thing to remember about the movie, even though, like, uniformly, everybody is good. Okay, here's, this is from Wikipedia. The editing resulted in many of the well-known cast members being on-screen for only a brief period. John Travolta and George Clooney's appearances are little more than cameos, like, yet Clooney's name appears prominently in the marketing of the movie. go figure. Yeah, Clooney's at the, like, very, very end.

The unfinished film was screened for the New York press in December of 1998, and Adrian Brody attended a screening to find that his originally significant role, quote, unquote, to carry the movie, had been reduced to two lines and approximately five minutes of screen time. So that's, it is Adrian Brody that we're talking. I mean, this is the Malik thing. This has happened to many prominent people in movies that are completely removed of it. Like, Vice was into The Wonder? Yeah.

and did not show up in the movie? Which was the one that had Rachel Weiss? I don't know, but we should do one of those. This is the movie where I'm just jotting down movies that we should do. But we should do... We definitely should do. One of those mallacks, either to the wonder or song to song or... Night of Cups.

Song to Cong is the one I want to revisit because that's the one that I was like, nope. And everybody says is one of the really good ones of that era. And I actually like Night of Cups. Adrian Brody would also believe Adrian Brody to be the person that's like, yes, I am the protagonist of this movie and he was never the intended protagonist, so I do kind of raise an eyebrow. I've gone on a roller coaster of how I feel about Adrian Brody, I think, as the culture has. I think the brutalist is happening right at a time where I think we're all ready to like Adrian Brody again.

And I think it's good timing. That's why I think he could win the Oscar. I think he could end up being a two-time Oscar winner. I think he could also win because it's so like no one knows what's going on and best actor. So it's like he's just kind of always going to be two steps ahead of everybody because of that. Who knows? I could be wrong in the span of two weeks. Sure.

Something could stir the best actor race. But I think that's part of why he is so ahead. even though he's won before. This movie did well with critics. Again, we don't use Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic as a Bible, but, like, 86 Rotten Tomatoes, 75 Metacritic is pretty good. It just didn't make any money. Especially for 1990.

Yeah. Because it's not a bunch of random influencers putting... Five stars. Yeah. Positive stuff. Yes. Yeah. 3.7 million.

It really was not very well seen. But I know that, like, certain critics really did championing it. Champion it. I will say, being a Warner Brothers movie in 99, put you kind of down. the priority list in general. It's an interesting set of what I imagine were Oscar priorities for this movie. I think by the time you got to the fall, eyes wide shut had such bad buzz around it that they knew they were probably not going to be able to get an awards campaign out of it.

But they were very high on Three Kings, David O. Russell's Three Kings. I remember that getting a ton of buzz. Did that get any Oscar nomination, speaking of movies we should do? I don't think it did because I think that's been on our long. list for a while. I would love to do that in the upcoming year. Three Kings, no Oscar nomination. Yeah, that had a lot of buzz. Obviously, there's a lot of, like, behind the scene stuff

with Clooney and David O. Russell getting into a fight. But there's, that was another one that, like, critics really liked that movie. Any Given Sunday was an Oliver Stone movie about a pro football franchise starring Al Pacino, so that had ungodly amounts of hype.

I remember, I think that was one of the splash page entertainment weekly fall preview movie movies, where it got like the two-page spread. Cameron Diaz and Jamie Fox and Dennis Quaid are all in that movie. That was a movie that I think its intended audience

was like, what's this? It doesn't quite feel... It's a little uncanny valley. It doesn't quite feel like football. You know what I mean? It doesn't quite feel realistic. I remember Suburbanites also being scandalized

that you see a dick. You do see Jamie Fox's big swang and thing in that movie. Not Jamie Fox. Is it not Jamie Fox? It's not Jamie Fox. Okay. somebody in that locker room.

I don't know why my mind Mandela affected it. Because he's like the breakout of that movie? He is the breakout of that movie. Or not the breakout, but the... Yes. He is kind of, yeah. He's the showcase supporting player. That was during the time when Jamie Fox

was sort of transitioning from like, oh, he's on a WB sitcom, oh, he was on in Living Color to like, oh, he can be, you know, a real actor. I think... The real tale. I think Ali sort of cemented that at that point. So what then is left is Frank Deribon's adaptation of yet another Stephen King property, this time The Green Mile, which everybody, including probably me, although I haven't seen it in forever, everybody gets on that movie for being like so schmaltzy and so, you know, hokey. And yet it does not surprise me that that movie was an Oscar favorite. I think it plays the hits, you know, in that way. I think that's maybe even for 1999, not an Oscar movie, if it's not released in December.

Sure. Oh, absolutely. Like, if that had been a summer movie, I don't think. I think it gets a special attention because the whole 1999 thing, Bally Hood Year, and then the Oscar nominees are all, you know, mostly middling to divisive, I think, you know, between Cider House Rules. Yeah, it definitely gets dunked on more than I would even argue Cider House Rules does. I think so. Because Cider House, people are at least like, well, I guess it's Miramax, so it makes sense that it's there, even if it's bad. I stick up for Cider House rules. Again, haven't seen it since 99, but in my memory, I stick up for Cider House rules.

So, yeah, so lots going on at Warner Brothers that year, and Liberty Heights was never, I imagine, was never much of a priority. So it would have had to have had an even better critical reaction. It would have had to have had Golden Globe nomination. Yeah. Here's the thing, though, I think for Barry Levinson, in terms of like a career thing, I don't think any of that matters. I think it's probably maybe even better for Liberty Heights that it is the sort of like small little gem that people can seek out and that people, I think these Baltimore movies for Levinson are not your bugsies or not your rainmans or even something like toys. It's, you know, these are his sort of smaller personal movies. And I think the people who discover them, you know, that's kind of their own reward for that. in my opinion I think this is a good movie Let me go through my notes really quickly I did write down Fableman's without a camera

at one point which I don't know if it's entirely that but there's not not Fableman's aspects to this They would have absolutely gone harder on the autobiographical elements or perceived autobiographical elements of this movie in the marketing if it was released today

Yeah, it's true I think we covered everything David Cromholt's blonde hair criticizing the old furniture in the house fucking Dubby I don't know about that girl I don't know We didn't talk about the James Brown

that looks and moves and acts nothing like James Brown No for a second I was like Is that Hannibal Burris Like I couldn't quite like Tell who he reminded me of It's not even like theme part James Brown It's all respect to that actor

But it's just like I did enjoy that scene though of just sort of like these two kids going to see James Brown with the girls from school. I like that. Again, I said it before, I'll say it again, that I'm going to look up the title of the Tom Waits song because

a tremendous use of it to score a burlesque routine to it. It's over. Tom Waits is, it's over. In a soundtrack that was very sort of heavy with somewhat on the edge of overused 1960s cuts you got your life could be a dream and you've got your

what's the Sinatra what did you think of the affectation of the like we can't oh you don't walk out on Sanatra I thought that was cute I mean it is one of the more fun boomerisms in this movie I think so young at heart is the song that they're listening to and the car, which I have a soft spot for because the one Christmas, my, uh, my aunt and my dad's and his siblings all, uh, paid for my, uh, chipped in and my aunt put together a video scrapbook of photos from, um, our family. And that was one of the songs that got used was young at heart. So it always makes me think of my grandparents. Um, yeah, it's like, that's, you know, some, some pretty good ones. So, obviously,

You got your, you know, your James Browns, obviously, your Perry Comos, your Elvis songs. But props to Tom Waits for sort of standing out from the din there. And I will always think of bare bottoms now, and when I hear that Tom Waits song. Should we move on to the IMB? She really did say, let me show you how I burlesque in that scene. We should move on to that. At that, how dare you? Okay, why don't you tell our listeners how we do the IMDB game?

Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game where we challenge each other with an actor or actress to try to guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television, voice-only performances, or non-acting credits, we mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue. If that's not enough, it just becomes a first. free for all of hints, and that is the IMDB game.

Sure is. Chris, would you like to give first or guess first? Why don't I guess first? Because I forgot. I accidentally closed the tab with my IMDB person. So give to me while I pulled this person up. All right. So I, as I often do, followed the director's rabbit hole. So we talked about Barry Levinson's extensive filmography. I said the as yet, to date last film feature film he directed that kind of spelled the end for him was Rock the Casbah that starred among other people one Zoe

Dishanelle. Now Zoe Dishanelle's known for has one TV show and one voice role. The TV show is New Girl. It is. 500 Days of Summer. Yes. Almost famous.

No. Not almost famous. Strike one. Too many people in that movie. The voice performance is interesting because, New Girl, a show, I always feel like I want to start rewatching, just sort of like start from the beginning and rewatch New Girl. I feel like that would be a fun sort of like low stakes, chill out, enjoy myself show. The voice performance, I know it's going to bite me in the ass. It's because it is like, it's not like Nomio and Juliet.

It is a real animated movie that, like, we as adult people have seen. So it's, like, something real unless it's like, no, because, like, the woman in Monsters and Aliens is Rees Witherspoon, but it might be, like, a Monsters and Aliens. Is it a Pixar? I don't think she's done a Pixar. Maybe she's done a Pixar. Did she do, like, a C-tier Pixar? I will say she is in at least two. separate animated realms.

It's not going to be like the emoji movie. Nobody knows who the voices are in those things. Is she a mom in something? I'm, okay. Okay, so what's the era of animated movie that Zoe de Chanel would be a voice in? And it's like 2009, 2010. that would probably be um oh no i'm gonna i'm gonna throw out a guess for the a non-animated one

because i feel like it's this is going to be here all the real girls not although i would have guessed that as well damn it damn it why was i so sure i don't know but david gordon green has come back to bite you that's karma isn't all the real girls on um paul schneider's it's very possible Probably on Paul Schneider's, but I think it's on Paddies. Really? That's the price. Okay, anyway. So now you get years. Your years are 2008 and 2016.

Okay. I guess the 2016 has to be the animated one, right? It is. Okay. 2016, what was animated in 2016? Is it like Toy Story 4? No. Is it Finding Dory?

No. Is it Pixar? It is neither Pixar. nor a sequel in 2016 so that rules out the how to train your dragons what was 2016 i may have to come back to that so 2008 that is is that the year of 500 days of summer uh that was oh nine Okay, so this is So all the real girls Wasn't, oh, is it Elf?

No, Elf is even earlier than that. Elf is earlier, yep. O'3, I want to say. Yeah, because I was in high school when Elf came out And you forget about Elf Because she has that awful blonde eye job in it. Yeah, as she did in the Good Girl, right? No.

No, maybe not. She had eyeliner things in the Good Girl. Is O.A. It a horror movie? Didn't she do a horror movie? Mm-hmm. It is the horror movie. It's the horror movie. Is it like the Prom Night remake? No. It's not as junky as that. It's...

Which is not to speak on quality just in terms of like a... Yeah, but it's... She was in like a known director's horror movie. Yes. It's not like I'ma del Toro, but it's... You're in the right ballpark, though. Mm-hmm.

It's not Burton. Nope, but you're in the right ballpark. Oh, my God, what is this movie? It was like a fall... It's like a prestige horror movie. Mm-hmm. not fall it was a summer movie from

someone who is a famous director who tends to release their horror movies in the summer more often than not em night shaw malon it's the happening there you go yeah yeah it's a shit movie she's not good in it i was just talking about this

with somebody not her fault i don't think it's her fault either and much as i am uh... eager to place the blame on Mark Wahlberg for lots of things. I don't think it's his fault either. I do feel like, just from watching this, I don't think Shyamalan directed them very well in that movie. I would also say, or at all, perhaps. Walberg, though, has had similarly bad performances that what is bad about those performances

is what's bad in that performance. So I would put some on Walberg. Well, the thing about Mark Wahlberg, and I know I've talked to you about this before, is he is not a great actor. who when a great director really puts their shoulder into it can get a great performance out of him. See Paul Thomas Anderson. He's going to play stupid people.

Paul Thomas Anderson in Boogie Nights, David O. Russell in Iheart Huckabees. A lot of people really like what Scorsese got out of him in The Departed. I'm a little less high on that performance, but I am an outlier. So, yes, I think you can get something great out of Wahlberg. I think Chamalon either did not know how to do that in the happening or did not think he needed to attempt to do that in the happening. And I think what you see in that movie is two lead actors completely adrift as to what they're supposed to be doing in that movie. And it shows. And it's too bad.

Okay. The 2016 animated movie is, I'm trying to even remember, like, what the Oscar nominees were that year for animated. Because at this point We're not doing five animated nominees 2016, I think probably by that point we were Let's see, 2016 That's not like Big Hero 6 Big Hero 6 was 2014

Yeah Because I would believe that she could be like A Mom in that movie This movie was an Oscar nominee And you're not like pulling a fast one where it's a jibbley movie? It's not a jibli, no. It's an Oscar nominee, but not for animated feature.

Oh, so it's a, is it a Lego movie? It's not a Lego movie. The Lego movie was, I think, also 2014. So an animated movie that is not nominated, but is probably a song nominee or a score nominee. Do I'm going to tell you what the animated feature movie is? nominees were that year? Maybe it'll help you Yes. Yes. That was the year that Zootopia won. The other nominees were Moana, Kubo and the

Two Strings, My Life as a Zucchini, and the Red Tertial. So it was five nominated. Yes. I think the last time there were only three nominees in this category was The Year of Brave? The year of Toy Story 3. It was 2010. Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon, the

illusionist. So Zootopia and Moana Year. Zootopia, not original song nominee Moana was with two La La Land nominees and I think R.B.G.

No, but you're right that it's a documentary. It's a J. Ralph and Sting Oh, yes. The Empty Chair from the James Foley story. Okay. So what was that? And see, like, I want to be like Nomeo and Juliet, which I started by saying it's not one of those. It's not one of those.

You are right to say it that, but it's not as far from one of those as you would think. Is it like, because it's probably not Disney. No, who is it? It's definitely not Disney. DreamWorks. Why not? It could be DreamWorks, actually, because animated doesn't not,

the animated category doesn't nominate a lot of DreamWorks movies. Very true. Oh, man, why can't I remember? You would think that I could get it from this song. This song was, it's not one of those, like, obscure, like, oh, that movie had a song nominee. Like, the song was kind of everywhere.

Oh, is it? It's not. happy. No, but you're in a real ballpark situation with the type of... Oh, my God. It's trolls. It's trolls. You let me get this worked up over trolls. I hate you. I was about to say they opened the Oscar ceremony with it and then you would have got it. You mean to tell me that trolls has Anna Kendrick and Zoe Dessianel? Yes, it absolutely does. Do you want to hear the whole cast list for trolls? From the 12 pit of hell? Wait, what's, wait. Time out. Neither Anna Kendrick nor Zoe Dishanel deserves your score.

I don't understand why you decided to drag the both of them. No, they don't. I'm being a, I'm being a jerk. Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberley, Christopher Minceploss, Zoe Dishenelle, Christine Baranski, Russell, Russell Brad, James Corden, Jeffrey Tambor, John Cleese, Gwen Stefani, Ron Funchis, I love Ron Funccius, iconopopopop, Kovangenay Wallace, um, uh, uh, is that far as it's, that's as far as it goes. Anyway, all over the place there. Just all over the place. But like, how many canceled men can you put in the movie?

I know listeners have been screaming trolls at me this whole time. And I understand. Icona pop is a person. No, Icona pop is two people. Okay. They're Icona and pop. If that's true, I hope don't tell me if it's not. I want to believe that it's true.

Are you Icona or are you pop? Wait. Listeners, get at us in the mentions. Is Joe Icana or am I? The characters they play, the characters they voice in trolls are named satin and Shanil. That's so drag-coded. That's incredibly drag-coded.

I guess good for iconopop. They had a moment there for like a year and a half iconopop. That one episode of girls and I think they were probably ellipsing for your life at some point. I think they were guest judges at one point. Yes. I think that's true. Also, I feel like there's a currently like a cell phone commercial where

it must be an iconopop. It's the one where it's like, I don't want to go to school. I just want to break the rules. And it's like buy a whatever, like Verizon cell phone plan or something like that. I'm 90% sure that's an iconopopop song. If it's not,

don't ever correct me. If it's fucking Schapel Rowan like everything is Shappel Rowan of course. Like, who knows? We're recording this the day. Chappel Rowan music is too horny to sell backpacks too. like you can't sell you can't sell school supplies to her music i i dispute that i dispute that

entire uh thesis but anyway for you i also went into the barry levinson filmography except i went into the future you mentioned alto nights the headliner of alto nights is robert de nero we have not done robert de nero since double digit so i figured enough time has passed that maybe something has changed okay All right. I forget what it used to be, but we're here to talk about what it is now. So, no television, no voice, I imagine. I can't imagine what that way.

Could you imagine if Robert De Niro was also in trolls? Honestly. Robert De Niro wasn't in trolls, but he's in trolls world tour. Honestly, yes. Doing iconopop songs. Raging Bull has to be. Raging Bull is correct. Godfather Part 2?

Correct. Okay. Good fellas? Incorrect. Fuck! Well, now I'm just going to get the years and I'm going to moat it down, but okay, go for it. 1976, 1978, 1991. 76, 78, 81? Yes. 78's the deer hunter. 78 is the deer hunter. 91 is Cape Fear.

Cape Fear. 76 is taxi driver, which I should have guessed before I guessed before I guessed. Goodfellas, but yes. All Oscar-nominated performances, obviously won for Raging Bull, but The Godfather Part 2, his other win. Yeah. Surprising that that didn't have the Deer Hunter slot,

although I am famously pro-deer hunter. He's the headliner of the deer hunter. He's probably tagged on a lot of the photos for the deer hunter. Sure, sure, sure, sure. All right, anything else we want to say, I think this was a good episode. I was sort of worried we weren't going to have enough to talk about, but I think we had that.

We hope this was a joyful distraction for you all talking about. I love when we talk. I know that it doesn't pull. When we cast into the future? Sure. I know that like our episodes for like fully forgotten movies don't do like the same numbers. And like total cringe to be on a podcast and talk about numbers. We like try to never do that.

But like I do think, you know, that's what we do here. I love talking about the movies that very few of our listeners. It's the conundrum of. of a podcast whose mission statement is sort of excavating forgotten movies a little bit, where it's just like, oh, well, you've forgotten this movie, but maybe, like, we'll hold your hand and we'll walk you through it. But, yeah, I'm glad we talked about this one. If you can hear, I don't know what kind of volunteer fire horn is going off somewhere.

I hope that's not getting checked out of my time. They're sounding the chapelrone sign, a siren for, for S&L tonight. All right. Anyway, thank you, Chris File, for everything, as always. Thank you, listeners. That is our episode. If you want more of this had Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this had oscarbuzz.com. Our Twitter account at had underscore Oscar underscore buzz, our Instagram at Thishead Oscar Buzz, and our Patreon at patreon.com slash this had Oscar Buzz. Chris, where can the listeners find more of you? Twitter and letterboxed at Chris V File. That's F-E-I-L. I'm also on Twitter and letterboxed at Joe Reed,

read spelled R-E-I-D. I am also at Vulture, doing Cinematrix and Movie Fantasy League and award stuff. I am also on Patreon doing the films of Demi Moore in the podcast called Demi, myself, and I. Please consider checking that out. I think you will have a very good time. We are really hitting the sweet spot of Demi's career right about now. We're hitting the ghost and post.

ghost era of Demi. Disclosure, not so far away. So we'll see. That is at patreon.com slash demipod. That is Patreon.com slash DEMIPOD. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork, Dave Gonzalez, and Gavin Muvius for their technical guidance, and Taylor Cole for our theme music. Please remember to rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever Or, please remember to rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get podcasts. A five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcasts visibility. So give us five stars, and we will give you some wonderful boomer nostalgia to keep you warm and fuzzy. I don't know.

We'll give you different kinds of nostalgia. We'll give you nostalgia. Listen, you will get from me the not. The contempt that you will get from other people, boomers. Boomers, you have a safe space for me. Boomers are all right with me. Anyway, anyway, bring it home. That is all this week.

We hope you'll be back next week for more buds.