This Had Oscar Buzz - 325 – We Don’t Live Here Anymore

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

And we’ve made our way to “movies that exist only as a title” royalty, We Don’t Live Here Anymore. In 2004, this marital drama arrived at Sundance boasting several indie aughts heatseekers: a post-You Can Count On Me Mark Ruffalo, a post-Oscar nom Naomi Watts, Six Feet Under‘s Peter Krause, and the always buzzy Laura Dern, all wrapped … Continue reading "325 – We Don’t Live Here Anymore"

So we are waning, the waning days of box office points here at the Fantasy League, Chris, now that we are past the new year, nothing that opens new, will count for the movie Fantasy League, obviously, but we still have lots of carryover movies from the end of the year, still making really good money. I think it's offensive that you don't seem to think that Pedro Almodovar is the room next door is going to break box office. records when it expands this week that's right what are the like carryover movies that like really did the quali release and are opening for real in january i think this coming weekend is the big expansion weekend so everybody go out see movies before the bad thing happens uh go enjoy yourselves uh as much as you can yes um in terms of box office number so what can still happen is your movies can still get those bonus point milestones for cumulative box office. So, like, for example, Sonic 3 is at $195 million right now.

Once it hits $200 million, it'll get that last bonus. Mufasa is at $178. If that can get to $200 million, that can also get the bonus. I said $200 million for Sonic, if I didn't. Yes. Obviously, $200 million for the room next door. Obviously, yes. But in like the first day.

Like it'll get the 200 million. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's going to be pulling in game numbers. Single day, single day record. Yes. Nosferatu is over the $75 million hump. It is seemingly dedicated to hitting that $100 million, at which point I think it will become.

Biggest focus features movie of all time. Is it biggest of all time? I'm pretty sure they have not hit 100 ever. Not counting the Coraline re-release that bumped Coraline. Right. Past that, yes. So that's pretty awesome. A complete unknown is nearing the $50 million mark.

Right now it's at 47. Moana, 2 and Wicked have blown past the point of, you don't get any more bonus points past 200. So they're just, you know, dancing in the end zone at this point. Or flying. We're sailing. Or whatever. And then Baby Girl is at. at 19 million right now, which is good, which puts it at like in the, or close to the top 10

824 movies of all time. So good for baby girl. I'm glad that that has rebounded, even though we are speaking at the, uh, one of the lower points of the Nicole Kidman Oscar discourse right now. This brings us to the sag points this week. Right. We got sag points this week. We sort of, if you, if you're a member of our Patreon, you've, you heard us sort of go in depth. on the SAG nominations, but in general, the best actress category has been thrown into complete turmoil between the Golden Globes and the SAG nominations. Pamela Anderson and the last showgirl in general are resurgent. I'm willing to bet that the last showgirl is going to show up at the end of this year's game as one of the best, like, point per by, yeah.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, good value by, absolutely. In terms of other surprises to speak, Speaking of last showgirl, Jamie Lee Curtis showed up in supporting actress. So you got a good number of points. If you finally, your ship is coming in as a last showgirl purchaser. If you had faith in The Apprentice, that is panning out for you at the moment. Currently, Wicked is so far ahead of everything else in terms of movies that have earned the most points in the fantasy league. It is not quite lapping second place, but it's like. it's up there. So Wicked continues to perform well in the nominations, although it did not get a

Directors Guild nomination. So we should note that the DGA points also came in. I believe that was 15 points if you got nominated in any of their three categories, which include feature film, documentaries, or first-time feature. So I like how there is a prestigious guild nomination where my old ass and the brutalist get the exact same number of points for the Fantasy League for their performance. So good for that, good for that. Anything else to say about points

before we give a little check-in on the leaderboard? No, because you mentioned Wicked. Wicked was the top nomination getter at SAG, so yeah. In terms of the leaderboard, our first place roster is an entry for Cy Nicropheliac.

So I hope you're proud of yourself. Nicrophiliac, you're going to have to make me say that. Nicrophiliac, I'm guessing you have no spheratoo on your... Actually, no. Necrophiliac's roster includes Anora, Wicked, Sonic the Hedgehog 3,

Smile 2, The Brutalist, Heretic, Venom, the Last Dance, and a real pain. Really makes you wonder what they're getting up to in Sonic 3. No, no weak... portions of that roster. Everybody on that roster is performing on some level or another, or has performed in the case of Venom and Smile 2. Second place, by a whole, one point,

is the roster going by the name Cam McGee, who has Moana 2, Wicked, D.D., the brutalist, a different man, the apprentice, a real pain, and the substance. So this is a roster that went for like big, big box office with Moana 2 and Wicked, and then, so, supplemented that with a lot of indie movies and picked pretty much the right indie movies for this year. So, well done there. And then only, what, eight points out of first place in third is Day for Nightbitch, good team name, who has a roster that has Anora, Wicked, The Brutelist, Baby Girl, A Real Pain, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, The Substance, and Thelma. That is a roster that is going right for my heart right now.

It's Reedcore. Yes, very much so. Down in the Gary's League, first place in the Gary's League is a real wicked conclave with 3,038 points, so not too far off of the top of the leaderboard going very well. That roster includes Anora Conclave, Wicked, A Real Pain. I saw the TV glow. The Brutalist, I'm still here, and all we imagine is light. So this is a roster that's really pull in for that Fernando Torres surprise nomination at the Oscars.

second place in the Gary's League is a roster called yeah by 10 by 10 I think is how I'm going to choose to pronounce that that's the that's the track in the Challenger's soundtrack

yeah yeah yeah yeah right yeah yeah yeah you got it you got it now I got it all right I knew you had helped me figure that out thank you honor Amelia Perez the substance Thelma wicked a real pain Will and Harper

and smile too on that roster so yeah With everything that's going on out in Los Angeles, and it goes without saying, but we'll say it anyway, our hearts and thoughts and best wishes for everybody's safety, emotionally and otherwise, out in L.A. could not be more devastated for everything that's going on out there. Clearly, that's going to end up affecting the Oscar schedule, which seems like such small potatoes. But we will sort of roll with those punches and figure out points will come when they come. These events will come when they come. And obviously, all of that is secondary to people's lives and belongings. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. See, you say it better than I do. I ramble. I ramble. And you just sort of

cut right in there. I appreciate it. All right. So, yeah, we will be back with further updates as they come. And best of luck to you. Points, points, points, points, points, points, points, points, points. Oh, oh, wrong house. No, the right house. We want to talk to Mel and Hack, Millen Heck, and French. Dick Poop Lie to me

So confront him Your husband making passes at my wife How do you feel about that? I think she's fantastic She is fantastic She just shouldn't be married to me giving her a lift home. I'm on other things.

Everybody deserves to be happy, right? Come over. Maybe you and I should sit down and talk about how long this is going to last. Let's talk about you and eat it. The little trips you take. I want to know what you did. Do you want details? Oh my God, you like this.

Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast solving crimes from the comfort of an exquisitely fitted A shirt. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award. aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we're here to perform the autopsy. I am your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here, as always, with my spouse driven to vigorous cleaning due to my infidelity, Joe Reed. Are we calling those A shirts now? I love that there's an actual term for it.

I thought that's what an A shirt is. I love it. Let's just say it off the top of the bat. I at least feel very discombobulated today because. this has been a month. I think at least two or three weeks

since we've recorded a main feed episode. Yes. I don't know how we do these anymore. I don't know how we do these anymore. We've recovered. We've recorded. We've recorded.

What our last episode was and then find a joke for it. Then at the very last second, I was like, oh, I'm not prepared for the IMDB game. I'm still not prepared for the IMDB game. I'm going to have to think of it on the fly. We had two quizzes to come up with.

we've in the meantime since recording our devil in the blue dress episode we've recorded like 20 minis plus a mailbag episode plus i've recorded like multiple to me myself and dies i don't know whether i'm coming or going here you guys plus christmas plus my sister got married it's just been like butabum butabum butabum butabum and so finally we've both had a lot going on oh you've had plenty going on like i can't even all of those all of those episodes leading up to this, we're just piled on top of each other. Listener, hello. Hi.

We are still coming to you from the year 2024, the very tail end of it. As we record this episode, we know as this is dropping, things are going on. Scare quotes in the world. We hope you're all taking care of yourselves. Do what you need to do to disconnect, and that's what we are here to help you do. Joe, you mentioned we have two quizzes today. We have two quizzes in the spirit of not allowing ourselves to lapse on anything like we did with poor Kira nightly. We'll get back to you in a second, Kira.

We will get back to you, Kira, soon enough. We have a Laura Dern six-timers quiz, and we have a Mark Ruffalo 10-timers quiz. Now, we have a set format for the six-timers quiz. We are still trying to land on a format. I have something completely new for the format for the 10-timers quiz this time. Great. Great. Love this.

It's very free form. It's very, you know, catch-as-catch-can. We're going to just sort of explore the space. We're going to explore the area. We're going to hold space for Mark Ruffalo. This movie holds so much space for Mark Ruffalo's. hairy chest Oh my God

I was grateful We're going to talk about the absolute apex of Mark of like boyish Mark Ruffalo

because I feel like at some point between this and Zodiac which is like only span of like three years by the time he hit

Zodiac he's no longer boyish Mark Ruffalo he's sort of you know 30 something

Mark Ruffalo right I feel like not and maybe I'm mixing up when these two movies came out but he's almost not it by kids are all right like kids are all right shows up oh okay yeah the we're firmly in a different space in that movie I even think there's a there's a there's a lot of ground to cover in between we don't live here anymore in 04 and rumor has it in 05 because I feel like even by rumor has it and And part of it is that he's playing the very sort of, like, buttoned up, straight-laced, whatever guy, and rumor has it.

But I feel like there's something he's got going on, and we don't live here anymore. And, I mean, so in the cut is the year before we don't live here anymore, and he's doing a whole other thing. So maybe there's just like, maybe what I'm seeing in we don't live here anymore is just like ghosts. ghosts of a remnant of the you can count on me ideal or whatever it's like because you watch you can count on me

and it's like he's adorable but he's also such a fuck up that you can't like I at least my my I could save him I could change him meter

doesn't really extend doesn't really extend to that character I just want him to sort of be happy I just want him to be happy whereas in this movie, because I think he's not only hopeless, but also, like, a huge fucking asshole. Yeah, yeah, it's rolling up my sleeves here. And I'm just like, let's get into it. Let's, like, let's break this man and then, and then reform him, uh, to something better. I can make him something better. Um, but God, is he hot in this movie? He's good. Awful in this movie. I mean, not, the character he's playing is an awful. man and not that compelling of a character.

He's just kind of this shitty guy. It's, when we get into this discussion of it, I want to sort of get into this sort of early aughtsness. I'm probably going to mention with like very little foundation, Jonathan Franzen, and I'm just going to, I'm going to, I'm going to be invoking literary things that I will have no business invoking because I was going to say you're invoking Franzen here. this isn't really franzin well there's there's a there's a there's a vibe here that i'll get into i'll try and make it make sense but like i said when we talk about d'bou it makes more sense for andre d'boub well yes because that's the actual author that's the actual author of this yes but there is a literary vibe in american independent cinema in the early aughts that is this vibe yes and i think Franzen does get caught up in it, especially because anything where, like, there are multiple college professor characters in this movie.

Sure. You know what I mean? But, well, I don't want to do any of that too soon. I don't want to get into any of that too soon. Okay. We'll talk about that then. But lots to discuss here. I had a hard time taking this movie seriously.

Had you ever, you had seen it before, right? Saw it in the theater with my father. Great movie to see as a teenager. We're going to get into all of that. We're going to get into all of that for sure. I definitely saw this in the theater alone by my damn self. This was, of course, the glory days, the Halcyon era of Warner Independent Pictures, a brief flash of time that will never get back again.

summer of Warner Independent Pictures at that. Yeah, yeah. I'm looking at the poster right now on Wikipedia, and this is a poster that kind of, it says a lot while also at the same time saying a lot about, you know, not only just about the movie, but about like the era. So it's one of those quad box posters, right? Four main characters. each of them in their own box, each of them, you know, from different scenes in the movie.

Very low-res. Like you can tell, someone made this in early Adobe. Yes. Yeah. Everybody's a little fuzzy. Everybody's either a little fuzzy or like airbrushed. Before we had filters, we had airbrushing. And like, it's a whole different vibe.

It's a whole different thing than your filters. I'm glad you brought this poster up. Because when I was preparing to watch the movie and I saw this poster and I was like, oh, shit, did I make us watch another early odds digital video movie? It's not. Because it looks like they're frames from like. It's actually very good. It's Maurice Alberti. So it's a very good cinematography. I know. I want to talk about Maurice Alberti in this because like the movie actually looks pretty great. So, but the poster, it's airbrushed in a way where it's like, remember that, that. that sort of ridiculous news item that went around about a decade ago about the woman in Spain

who was hired to restore the painting of Jesus. Oh, monkey Jesus. And turned it into, yes, turned it into this sort of ape-looking owl man. The cast is on their way to monkey Jesus on this post. It's very early stages, but like their facial features are sort of being airbrushed out of existence. in the very early stages of this. So you got the quad box. There is not a capital letter in sight, by the way.

All of the names are in lowercase. The tagline, why do we want what we can't have is in lowercase? So is the title of the movie. Naomi Watts gets the and credit. So this is other crucial information on the title. But I also, if there are, you know, this sort of quad box structure was definitely big, but it also sort of goes to why I was so in the tank for this movie before I even saw it, which was especially at that time.

And I am still somebody who I will fall for, if I'm at TIF and I see a movie with a bunch of actors that I like, with an unproven director and no buzz, which is like a total warning sign, I'm like, maybe I'll like it. Like, I don't know. I love actors. I love seeing a movie. just to see an actor. I am very, very much. And so four, four actors who I'm really into, three of them movie actors I really love and one of them on a TV show that I am currently

loving. Like, yes, please. Two Oscar nominated actresses. Right at that point. And Ruffalo had still not been nominated. So he was still, but like I, of course, was in the tank for him because of, you can count on me. This is also the same year as closer. And I think this movie and closer exist in a dyad in a really kind of interesting way. Put a pin in that. We'll talk about this later because I also want to have this conversation. Okay, good, good, good. But I think I just wanted to say just this poster communicates quite a bit, quite a bit,

not even getting into the fact that you can only see one of Naomi Watts's eyes because one of them is very cleverly covered up by her bangs. It's just, it's a lot. It's a lot happening. It is in many ways an essential piece of talking about this movie because I think the poster tells you exactly the moment in time that this American independent movie came out into the ether because it is, I think, very emblematic of a certain vein of American independent cinema that has not aged well. to the point that I question how it was even received at the time. I was really surprised to see this is positive on Metacritic, positive on Rotten Tomatoes. They're both in the 60s on both of those.

So it's not super positive. Ebert was right on the movie, too. Ebert did not like this movie. I really liked this movie back in the day. I will tell you that much. I liked it less this time around, but like I still bet you, I like it better than you do. So we'll see.

We'll see how it goes. It just feels very of a time, especially like the type of author poll that it's coming from. Dubu had had a very successful adaptation in the bedroom a few years prior to this. And I didn't realize that the Andre Debute, Dubu who does this in the bedroom and the Andre DeBue who does House of Sand and Fog are different people, our father and son. His son. Yes, which is wilds me. But look at, okay, I want to just very briefly sort of dip into the, who were the big indie spirit nominees this year? Because I think this also sort of like communicates where things were going to and going from.

We don't live here anymore. Only gets one nomination. It gets best cinematography. The winner that year is sideways. Other big nominees that year, Kinsey, Primer. Maria full of grace, badass. The door and the floor was big that year. Coffee and Cigarettes.

Kate Blanchett is nominated for Jim Jarmish's Coffee and Cigarettes. Garden State, we did an episode fairly recently before Sunset is that year. I think there's like the indie sort of landscape at that moment was very, was kind of varied at that minute. You know what I mean? Like, there's lots of different kinds of things going on, whereas, like, we don't live here anymore feels like it's kind of going for low-hanging indie fruit, you know, even in this era, which I thought was an interesting, you know, note. I'm glad you brought up those Indy Spirit Awards because we're talking about the year 2004. These are the Indy Spirit Awards where Redemption, the Stan Tuckie Williams story, gets a couple nominations.

For Jamie Fox. That's how in the tank for Jamie Fox we were. Yes, yep. Because Redemption, correct me if I'm wrong, was a made-for-TV movie. Yeah, it was nominated, I believe, at the Globes in the television category. I'm pretty sure. Yes, yes, totally. I do want to go back to 2004.

I know we re-elected Bush. that year. But you know what? Other things were very good. There were a lot of bad movies in 2004, but there are things I would like to be an adult and experience for the first time in 2004, like Dogville, like the Steppford Wives. But I think, see, part of me is like I can always go back in time and experience the great things. But, like, part of my desire to sort of like go back in time is to also experience the middle brow and the sort of, you know, Not like seek out the crap, but like go out and experience, like, what was like, what was the soup?

You know what I mean? What was the soup that we were all kind of like marinating in around that? The soup was Laws of Attraction starring Julianne Moore and Pierce. Would one billion percent step out of that time machine and into a line to see that movie because you wouldn't have been able to buy your ticket ahead of time you had to line up at the box office like a regular person? 100 million percent would go right to a theater. to go see that movie without question. You mentioned what was the middle brow. I think one of the problems with we don't live here anymore is that this is pretty middle brow but thinks it's very highbrow.

Yes. You know, it's clearly being made out of reverence for the source material. It comes from two different. Short stories. Which I don't know where one halves and the other, you know. I really hope this wasn't like characters that crossed over from one. one to the other. I hope Andre sort of like left them behind. And this is like an amalgam of two different sets of characters. That to me is better than two indistinguishable

stories of adultery. One of the stories is literally called adultery. Yeah. And I say that liking the Dubu that I've read. So I'm not dogging on him and he faced a lot of tragedy in his life. Anyway. Anyway. Very early aught sundancey You mentioned Warner Independent. Should we maybe get into it so that we can really dive? Sure. I feel like we're setting the stage. Before we do that, Joe, why don't you tell our listeners about our Patreon?

Oh, that's a really good idea. Why don't I do that? This Had Oscar Buzz has a Patreon. It is called This Had Oscar Buzz Turbulent Brilliance. We have been doing it for a year and a half now. Yeah. Yeah. It's called Turbulent Brilliants.

It's $5 a month, and with that $5, you get two full-length bonus episodes every month. One of those episodes is what we have been calling an exception episode, which is essentially a regular this had Oscar buzz movie, but something we couldn't do on the made feed because our rule with the main feed is it can't have gotten any Oscar nominations at all. So if something did still have great Oscar expectations, but disappointing results, but still got a nomination or two, that's something we can do on the Patreon. on. We just dropped our episode on Mulholland Drive, perfect example of this. Lots of expectations, lots of precursor attention. Only one nomination, even if it was a pretty big one for

Best Director. We have done episodes on everything from far from heaven to House of Gucci to Madonna's WE, Molly's game with Jessica Chastain. We've done, The Mirror Has Two Faces. We got into the Barbara of it all. We had our friends. Jorge Molina on to guest on our Knives Out episode. We had our friend Katie Rich on to talk about Australia. Just tons of really good episodes. And we've got a ton of them now banked there. So if you join for $5 a month, you're really getting a lot of bang for your buck. Second bonus episode of every month is what we call an excursion, which is not about a single movie, but instead about a piece of Oscars or filmmaking ephemera that we love. We will talk about, we'll watch old

award shows that are available on YouTube and talk about those. We did the Golden Globes from 2003. We did the Independent Spirit Awards from 1999. We'll talk about entertainment weekly fall movie previews. Hollywood Reporter Roundtables. We've done

a game night. We've got our thob superlatives coming up in the new year. That is going... I was going to say we are already in the new year as you are listening to this. So we're living in the future. Coming soon for our superlatives, we are going to be covering the infamous movie line edition from what year,

98, probably? Sure. Sure. Whenever. The one where Jennifer Lopez got in a lot of trouble for talking shit about everybody. And I went immediately to eBay, and I got us some copies of that, and it's going to be super great. So in addition to all of that, all through award season,

we've been popping in with short little episodes about every little thing that happens during award season. And already you're getting a ton of that with our Golden Globe updates and our SAG nominations update. And every advancement in award season, we're going to pop in. We're going to talk about it. What does it mean? How do we feel about it? Who's, you know, been rightly recognized and who has been egregiously affronted. All of it. Basically, you are getting kind of wall-to-wall coverage of award season, and that's not even costing you any extra.

It's still only the $5 a month. So honestly, not to pat ourselves on the back here, Chris, but, like, we are a hell of a value. We are giving y'all. We are feeding the children. We are giving y'all a hell of a value. And we truly appreciate all of our patrons. and we want you to be among them.

You can also chat in the comments. We haven't gotten around to doing a Discord yet, but that is ever in the future. A bit in the future. Social media gives us tummy aches. We'll figure it out. Anyway, to sign up for This Had Oscar Buzz, Turbulent Brilliance, go to our Patreon page at patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz.

don't live here anymore. What? Directed by John Curran. John Curran secretly vary this had Oscar Buzzy director. So he was the painted veil? Painted veil, which we liked. Yes. Or at least I remember liking. I thought it was good. I don't think I like fell out of my shoes about it, but I think it was, I think I liked it. Even more recently than then, we've talked Chappaquittic. Oh, right. I forgot that was. also John Curran. Gee, John Curran.

Tracks, Stone, the movie where Edward Norton has corn rows. Right. Gosh. Well,

lots happening. Lots going on. John Curran, directed to this movie written by Larry Gross based on two short stories.

That's gross. That's gross. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Laura Dern, Peter Krause, And, and, getting the and credit, Naomi Watts. And Naomi Watts.

And Naomi Watts. Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition and then opened in limited release August 13th, 2004. Indeed. Joe, as someone who had previously seen this movie before. Yes. As well as me, did you have a pause about halfway through the movie and think to yourself, oh, Naomi gets the and credit. Is this the movie about infidelity where the other woman

dies tragically? Because I spent the back half of this movie being like, I'm pretty sure Naomi Watts dies. What movie were you thinking of? I have no idea. That's so funny. That's so fun. This tells you how specific or not this movie is about being a movie about infidelity. But I also feel like, and this is maybe something we can hop into right after, is there were a lot of movies around this time that had, like, and we'll talk about it when we talk about closer, but like it's not the only one that had just like these four kind of evenly matched leads. I feel like Reservation Road was that, even though that wasn't about infidelity. Was there a fourth spoke in the little children thing, or was that just a triangle of Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Connolly?

Is it Mark Heddleman who plays her husband? It plays Winslet's husband. I don't know. It's been a theater actor. He has like two scenes. Most of which he has underwear in his face. Little children, good movie. Good movie.

Anyway. But a few years after this movie. Yes. Joe. Yes. Are you ready to give a 60-second plot description for we don't live here anymore? Absolutely not. All right.

Too bad. Your time starts now. So you have two married couples. You have Jack and. Terry, played by Mark Ruffalo and Laura Dern. We have Hank and Edith, played by Peter Krause and Naomi Watts. They hang out a lot. They drink wine.

Every once in a while, they run out of booze. And Jack and Edith, the Ruffalo and Watts characters, go out to go get more booze and then make out and sometimes have sex in the car, because they are carrying on an affair. The question to how well Terry or Hank do or don't know that this is going on is sort of an open question. Terry seems to suspect, but you don't really

know if she has evidence of it. Hank seems to not suspect, even though it really defies credulity that he wouldn't. Do Jack and Edith want to get found out? Who knows? Jack is super awful to Terry, his wife, by the way, about any number of things, including how she keeps the house, how she takes care of the children. She just wants him to want to have sex with her, and she's also kind of on the edge of... I passed 10 seconds, five seconds. Whatever, nervous breakdown. Hank is aloof and a college professor. He and Jack are both college professors. He has affairs

with basically whoever he wants to. Edith kind of hates him. Kind of loves Jack or just sort of wants to keep having sex with Jack until Hank catches them. Eventually, they come clean about the affair and it just very vaguely falls apart as soon as that happens. All of a sudden, it's in the open. Jack and Edith

break up. Jack goes back to Terry. Terry kind of takes him back, but you don't really know if they're going to stay together. Edith ends up leaving Hank with her daughter. He's kind of cool with it. And then there's that final shot, and I'm going to ask, whatever, whatever. There's a final shot in front of a train

tracks to get, boom. Eight minutes over, or whatever the fuck I was. Mark Ruffalo biking into he's just biking. Are we meant to think? Whatever. Tell me how over I was. Forty seconds. Yeah, whatever. Are we meant to think that Naomi Watts drives her car onto the train tracks and gets hit by the train at the end of that movie?

I don't think so. I don't think so either, but it's a weird choice, I think. There's no ending or, you know, it's not like they got studio noted, but maybe they took a note from somebody that they showed a cut of the movie. It's a very abrupt ending. It also, am I wrong in that, like, I literally rewound when we hit the credits to be like, to get to the point where, like, I remember there being like a more concretely. set of like why Jack and Edith aren't staying together, why Jack is going back to he sort of like comes back to Terry and he's in tears. And clearly like Edith doesn't have any interest in being with him when they're not sneaking around or something. Like I don't

quite know what happens in this. And as the person in charge of relaying the plot, I was somewhat troubled by the fact that I couldn't quite figure out what exactly does it. It's kind of this pointless affair. It's the type of thing that probably makes more sense and can be more satisfying through the lyricism of language on the page. But as a movie, it feels a little bit like you either don't know how to end your movie or you're trying to end your movie with this kind of fuck you bummer. Or just like elliptical open-endedness. yeah it's the other thing largely a movie about three pretty terrible but ill like defined characters and then laura durn in a rough spot i was gonna say laura durn's not exactly like saint teresa out there

but like there's um she she's at least a little more blameless but she also she also seems to get, she kind of accuses Ruffalo of sort of enjoying the watching her squirm after he catches her. Oh, the thing I forgot to mention in the plot description is Terry and Hank also end up having sex as a kind of revenge. If that actually, do we have it confirmed that it's happened or is she telling some elaborate story because she thinks he wants to hear about it or she wants to punish him? I think it actually does because I think I don't think she quite relishes because she's disgusted by how much Jack does relish it. Ruffalo does sort of relish having her have to confess this because now all of a sudden she's got something, she's done something wrong. He seems to want to just sort of like it continually keeps score with her, right? And it's keeping this tally of all the things.

She, you know, she didn't change the bed when their kid wet the bed. And she didn't do this and she didn't do that. And every once in a while, to your point about the, you know, comes across better on the page, we get this inner monologue from Ruffalo's character, which feels like it's like filling in some gaps, but isn't present enough to be like a full-on content. seat and just sort of keeps reminding me that like, oh, this is based on some short stories, which are likely presented in a first-person narrative. And in those stories, we probably do get into Jack's head a little bit more and maybe we don't like him any better, but maybe we sort

of understand a little bit more. Because as we're watching here, it just seems like he's being needlessly cruel to Terry to as a sort of acting out of his own guilt like he's sort of like sublimating his own guilt and it's being twisted as a child might do right he's incredibly childish and she calls that out like a few times in it a few times in the movie this is what I mean about like boyish Ruffalo like he's so and I think it's a credit

honestly to his performance in this that he really he he gets the child wildishness of Jack while also being, you can also get why, like, Naomi Watts wants to fucking jump on him in the woods or whatever the fuck. She is, I think, the most embarrassing character, Edith, because I do feel like the movie, especially by the end, is meant to have us feel a little empowered on her behalf. And I just think she's wildly pathetic in this movie, and the story. Edith is kind of, I don't blame, I don't really blame any of the actors, because like

you mentioned with Ruffalo, Ruffalo is actually committing to the character as the character is, but Edith is so kind of all, you mentioned that she's a little pathetic, and also that we're supposed to kind of feel rallied around her at the end, like she's gotten her shit together somewhere, somehow, like, but she's probably, you know, her and Hank are not the protagonist. Jack and Terry are the protagonist, so we're not invested in her coming to her senses

in this whole situation. Though I suppose she's ultimately doing what we want all of these people to do, which is to get out of their awful marriage. Yeah. But she's not the character that we are invested in in any type of way. I have a feeling we're probably going to disagree about this,

but I think When it comes to Hank and Edith, I think the movie kind of assumes that we hate Hank so much that we will go-girl, Edith, leaving that relationship, no matter what she's done at this point. And my thing with Hank is, like, yes, he's awful as, you know, almost all of these other people are. But I'm literally watching this, and I'm like, listen, at least the man has an ethos. You know what I mean? Like, at least, because his whole thing is this, like, sort of quasi, like, listen, love everybody, love your wife, love your whatever. Every once in a while, just fuck someone to feel good and whatever. And it's like, he's not noble about it.

And I don't even know if he's, like, self-delusional about it. But I do feel like, listen, at least he's sort of like living up to this whole thing where he's just sort of like. He's definitely putting himself in a persona of, you know, literary professor. author. We can all probably agree that whatever Hank is writing is awful. Awful. Well, this is what brings the Franzen into it for me. And this would bring Oh, you think that Hank is Jonathan Branson. Got it. Not Jonathan Franzen specifically, but just sort of like there was, and part of this is that this is probably the closest, in terms of like the time in my life, that I came the closest to sort of becoming a really

good and active reader and sort of reading things that were new and sort of keeping up. I think one of the things that sort of allowed me to sort of space out with reading is it really frustrated me when I couldn't keep up with what was new, because I think with movies I'd so gotten used to, and even with television, I'd so gotten used to being sort of like up on the conversation, right? And with books, I just, there was no sort of central hub for it. And so it was so easy to just sort of be like, I spent half my year reading five books. You know what I mean? And it's just like, well, what, you know, that's a drop in the bucket of sort of like everything that's out there, unless I read like the perfect five books,

like the exact right five books. It just felt like you're constantly swimming upstream. This is beside the point. But this is. around the point we're like, I'm reading some, you know, friends in and I'm reading some Tom Wolfe and I'm reading some Philip Roth. And the, there was a sense of kind of being enamored with this type of college professor, can't keep it in his pants, the sort of the romanticism. of infidelity, the romanticism of this kind of...

You get to the point where, like, we don't live here anymore. In a slightly different tweak becomes a sort of partner-swapping a dromedy where... It's by your own Ted and Alice for people who suck. They're not so miserable. Right. There's a version of it where they're not so hateful and miserable. And but I feel like there was...

And maybe it's not just tied to... that era, but it was just, it feels tied to that era for me because that's when I did the most reading. But so many, so much literary fiction involves the sort of the romanticism of infidelity, the romanticism of, you know, being in this situation where you are transgressing the bonds of commitment in various ways. Does that make sense or do I sound like an asshole? No, I know exactly the vibe that you're talking about, the, you know, the cultural element. And it's all very, very, this is where break out the swear jar. It's all very heterosexual in a way that's not me saying, well, gay people just sleep around.

No, it is a very uniquely, like the hand-wringing, the intensity, the, intensity, the, uh intellectualizing on of it is just very and it all comes back to a lot of to me gendered baggage like not not you know i'm not i'm not writing a dissertation here but like yeah jack is very much a guy who sucks in like yeah i ways he's like upset with his wife for not keeping the house clean enough and not taking care of the kids in the way that he would like her to do. And beyond that, it's just like... I take that point, but I also feel like it seems to me fairly obvious that that's not what he's actually mad about,

that he's just sort of like using that to wound. And I think he's just, I think he is somebody who wants, seems to think he wants out of his marriage and is trying to sort of take the coward's way out as much as possible by like trying to wound her. By starting it, basically. By just, by just being so incredibly awful to her. And she then frustrates him by being unwilling. Like, she's holding on to him for as much as she hates him and she's angry at him and she's whatever.

She also refuses to let this be the end of them for whatever reason. that she has and you don't always sort of understand it, but I think Dern's so good. I wish we understood those reasons because otherwise it's, but she's so good that you believe, but you believe it that she wants to stay with him because I think her performance is so strong. Yeah, it's Laura Dern. She doesn't phone it in. But I think like with, I think Rufflow sort of like uses these sort of gendered expectations that you have of a marriage as a short, like a shortcut to getting out of it as a, as a as a boy would because, you know, this is your childish conception of marriage, which is, you know, woman stays home and takes care of the kids and cleans the house, yada, yada, yeah, yeah. Right, and he goes and he creates art and shapes minds and la, la, blah, blah.

But the problem is you end up with a very basic, unnuanced, cliche movie. Of course, yes. Yeah, I was disappointed by watching it again this time. I remember even at the time, I remember thinking it's a Laura Dern performance in the package of an indie movie. Like, I even remember at the time thinking, like, Dern's performance sort of was like head and shoulders above everything else. But I don't remember being as kind of like, God, like, what's, what is this story? Why are we spinning our wheels? Why aren't we, you know, delving any deeper into any of these people?

Why aren't we giving any of these people a little bit more of a dimension to them? First of all, we have no sense of what Ruffalo's character does. Like, we know that he's a college professor. We know that he's trying to write a book, but isn't. So it's just sort of like, what do we have to hold on to him besides the fact that he's having this affair with Edith, which, okay, let's talk about the affair with Edith and what we are supposed to think about this. Are we meant to think, please leave your spouses and be together because you are happier with each other than you are with them? I don't think that's what we think because it's all just this fantasy that cannot hold water in the real world.

Yeah. It is, you know, it's an escape by design for both of them. Yeah. You know, that's, and that's what they're doing, which is also, again, kind of the cliche of the affair on screen. Yeah. But the, you know, we don't really have dimension to either of them. So it's like, obviously we know their marriages, their parenthood is at stake in this situation. But beyond that, there's not dimension to the character enough.

to. Like, Jack gets voiceover narration, and we don't understand who he really is as a person outside of, yes, this episode, you know? Yeah, and the movie gets bailed out by its cast for the most part. I think Ruffalo and Dern are a lot stronger than Watts and Krausa are. But I don't think, like, Watson Krausa are, like, fucking it up or anything like that. No, no. I just think there's a lot to be done to sort of transcend how kind of punishing and droning

this is. It's wild to me that this won the Waldo Salt Screenplay Award at Sundance because like this is very much a movie that is carried by its acting. There's some, I feel like there's been or at least maybe we've put it

this way that like winning the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance it's a boobie prize a little bit. Red flag. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then again, you know, there's other good movies too that have done it you know a real pain is the most recent winner as of recording

we're about to have a Sundance too so we'll see what wins Winter's Bone is a Waldo Salt winner Inger Goes West Skeleton Twins Squid in the Whale Station Agent Memento

Station Agent is such a boon for that you know for that category yeah big night won high art yeah Yeah, yeah. There have been some interesting calls and, like, movies that just don't manage to register.

But I think it's got more hits than misses. If you've got Memento and you can count on me and the station agent, you know, I don't know. There have been some good calls. This is, this is not one of them. It's not. I mean, we've just kind of listed out all of our complaints, you know, from the emotional arc of the. story, but you kind of mentioned all of these kind of repetitive arguments that Jack and Terry have. And it doesn't really amount to much other than these like very, very traditional

perspectives on what women and men are and it doesn't feel, and what their roles are within a marriage or within a household. Yeah. And it doesn't present itself as in the idea of, well, those things don't work because it's clear it's not working but it's not you never really get a perspective that's trying to comment on those things other than it's frustrating these characters and ultimately it feels like aside from it getting very repetitive all of these arguments between these two actors who are good in the movie it ultimately amounts to durn being asked to flagellate herself repeatedly in this movie in a way way that he almost i mean it's laura durn she's one of the great ones listen two two gay guys

on the record as liking laura durn yeah who knew so i want before we move away from that sundax very quickly though because i want to sort of give a sense of what else there was because i do feel like i have a decent idea of what were probably the runners up to this waldo salt award and i don't know if if they would have aged any better so in competition that year I think the other two Waldo Salt contenders were probably Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite. Those were two movies in competition that year. Primer won the Dramatic Competition Award that year. I probably were I the one to sort of like shake things out.

I'd have given Primer the screenplay award, given Maria Full of Grace, the dramatic award, and then, you know, let the rest of the show. to the chips sort of fall where they may. Listen, something else could have won that prize. We all saw how many prizes the jury gave Coda in its year, like every prize for... That's true. That's fair. No good reason.

I mean, it could have been something like the Woodsman. The Woodsman was in competition that year. That movie Brother to Brother was in competition that year. I'm a fan of Brother to Brother was going to mention... Down to the Bone. Deborah Granix, Down to the Bone, which I've never seen, but that's the big... And both of those were movies that won other prizes. The big Vera Farmiga

Breakthrough movie Down to the Bone. Yeah. It's an, it's, I hate the term sun-dancy. I hate that as a pejorative. I hate that, you know, I think it kind of unfairly flattens a lot of things.

You look at even in that lineup. I don't know how you can paint a handful of movies that are primer and down-to-the-bone and Napoleon Dynamite and Garden State and Maria Full of Grace. It'd just be like Sundancy. You know what I mean? Well, but some of those movies, I think, transcend that pejorative, you know,

like Maria Full of Grace certainly does. Brother to Brother certainly does. That's, but I just, to me, though, if there are regular movies that, like, every year, you have so many movies that transcend the term, then, like, maybe the term. It's sort of like, Sundancy feels to me like Oscar Bate, where it's just sort of like it allows a person to sort of stop thinking about the particulars of a thing and just be like, you know. I understand where you're coming from. I do also think that it's a thing because if there's a movie to fit the pejorative of Sundancey, I do think we don't live here anymore is kind of it. But I also feel like that takes away the possibility. That takes away the sense that there are good ways to do.

do a movie like this and bad ways to do a movie like this. It's true because I think this movie does take the avenues of all the bad ways to do this movie. Yeah. With the exception of the actors and Maurice Alberti. Yeah, so Marisa Alberti

is a kind of really incredible and prolific cinematographer and who... Never nominated though we know the cinematography branch has only very, very recently started nominated. Started recognizing it. started recognizing the fact that women exist. Yeah, that's kind of crazy.

Yes. Before we get into Marie Sleberti, actually, because she kind of comes up in this for a second, let's do the Laura Dern Six-Timer's quiz. Okay. I don't have anything more to say about her performance, so yeah, let's do that now. I have a couple of things, actually. One of which is the hair is so intense. It's just, it's this giant lion's mane of all. sort of like reddish brown hair, and it's, uh, it's, it's something to work with. I don't

know. She just, I think part of it is that she's, um, this is why I wish the movie would have gone deeper a little bit because I feel like there are like little flicks and flints of who this character is that exist inside there. I, my sort of, I hate the term head canon also, but like head cannon is that she's just this sort of like she was a little more of a kind of artsy

sort of like, you know, college town. Yeah, a little bit. She also, you also get the sense that the house came from her, that like he kind of married into the house a little bit, that the house was hers. It's a tremendous house. Just looking at it

from the outside with that big stone sort of like enclosed porch on the front. Yeah, very shot in Vancouver. Well, that also comes up in the quiz, so hold on to that. Great. No, no, no, that's fine. I had a feeling that that would be an easy one for you anybody, but yes. It looks very college town.

It looks very wonderful. But, like, you get the sense of that there was this kind of vibrant woman who married this guy for love and now has, through the years, become frustrated. in her marriage, and she's got these two kids, and there's a little bit of sort of a sad story of, you know, where she ends up. But maybe that's me sort of like writing my own tale. Anyway, this is our sixth Laura Dern movie. Somehow only six. I feel like there's so many. Yeah, this feels delayed. It does feel delayed that we got to episode 325 before we got to our sixth Laura Dern. Again, Chris, I encourage you to write down these six movies so that you can refer to them. Episode 106 was Dr. T. and the Women, the Altman movie that was an F-cinema score disaster. The prize winner of Defiance, Ohio, came next, then, October Sky, downsizing, which she has a very small role in, but she's sure there. A perfect world, and now we don't live here anymore. So, number six, as we always do when we hit the sixth movie by an actor or actress, I give Chris a little quick. based on the six movies where the answers to all of these questions are one or more of those six movies. Chris, are you ready?

I very much am ready. Okay. Of those six movies, which one is the longest? Downsizing. It's not. It's only by a few minutes, but it's not. Perfect world? Perfect world.

138. I think downsizing is like 135. Downsizing just feels like it's 307. Sure does. Shortest. Um... Is it we don't live here anymore? It's not.

Prize winner of Defiance, Ohio. Defiance, Ohio, 99 minutes. It's the only one that's sub 100 minutes. Best Rotten Tomatoes score. Ooh, is it October sky? It is. 91% October sky. Worst Rotten Tomato score. Dr. T. and the women?

No, surprisingly. Oh, I'm going to double check to make sure. Yeah, no, it's not. Is it downsizing? It's downsizing. with 47%. Dr. T is 57%. Wild to me.

Wild to me. Wow. Yeah. This, I feel like these are the, you know, we talk about the faults of rotten tomatoes, I think, even going back only so far as 2000, they're just not, you know. There are Dr. T and the women fans among us. I've heard from many friends who are like, actually, I kind of. I don't understand your ways, but I respect your iconoclasts, iconocism.

Biggest box office totals. Spoiler, it's not much. A perfect world. Not a perfect world. October sky. October sky. 32.5 million is as much as it went with Laura. Lowest box office total.

It's in the hundreds of thousands. Dr. T. and the women. No, it's prize winner defiance. Ohio, $628,000. All right. Good movie. Which movie has the same writer as Flamen Hop? October.

October Sky? October Sky. Lewis Collick Uh, uh, uh, it's a lot of, I think ladder 49 is one of his movies. There's just, there's a lot of good ones there. Which movie has the same cinematographer as Hillbilly Elegie and Velvet Gold Mine? Maurice Alberti, it's we don't live here anymore.

Yeah, yeah. And it's not even just like, check out the, the wide, wide variety and quality of the types of movies that Maurice Albrety has, uh, done cinematography. if you before. Which is the only film whose writer has directed a best actress winning performance? Whose writer? Yes. One second. Okay. I feel like a perfect world. Oh, a perfect world is John Lee Hancock. It's a perfect world. John Lee Hancock who directed The Blind Side for Sandra Bullock. Yes. Which movie has the same cinematographer as a complete unknown? Fade and Papa Michael, so that's downside.

Yes, very good. Well done. Which movie opened during Pisces season? Was it October Sky? October Sky. February 19th, 1999. Which three of these movies were filmed in states that Trump carried in 2024. Oh, God, I hate you.

Sorry. So much. Dr. T. and the Women. Yep, Texas. Prize winner of Defiance, Ohio? No. I didn't figure it was shot in Ohio. Yeah.

October Sky. October Sky, Tennessee. Okay, and a perfect world. Texas and other states in the South, yes. Which two movies were filmed in Canada. We don't live here anymore. Vancouver. And downsizing.

No. Prize winner of Defiance, Ohio. Ontario. Yes, very good. There you go. Which movie was filmed in. Europe. Downsizing. It was filmed in Norway, yes. All right. Which movie was directed by a man who has lost the best director Oscar twice? Dr. T. and the Women. No. Only twice. Oh, downsizing. No. Damn. A perfect world. Perfect world. Clint Eastwood has lost. Oh, so someone who's been nominated multiple times, but has only lost it. Yes, has only lost it twice. He lost for Mystic River and.

Letters from Iwo Jima. Which movie was directed by a man who has lost the best director Oscar three times? Downsizing. Yes. Alexander Payne lost four sideways and the descendants and Nebraska. Nebraska. Which movie was directed by a man who has lost the best director Oscar five times? Dr. T. and the Women. Fun fact, Alexander Payne and Robert Altman have both lost the best director Oscar to Clint Eastwood.

Um... Altman for the player, lost to Unforgiven, pain for Sideways, lost to a million dollar baby. All right, which of these movies was in the NBR top 10 of its year? Downsizing. Downsizing was, yes. Which of these movies has three teen choice nominations? October Sky. October Sky.

And I want to read them to you. They are choice drama film, breakout performance for Jake Dillon Hall, and then Choice Sleasbag for Chris Cooper. he's just like a jerk dad he's just a mean dad guys he's not a sleaze bag god these teens are awful all right um which movie was an art director's guild nominee down sizing yes downsizing um oh i forgot to change the answer but okay uh which movie has i mdb keywords that include freaking out woman wears eyeglasses and marriage

We don't live here anymore Not we don't live here anymore Prize winner of Defiance Ohio Friking out Women's Wears Eyeglasses and Marriage Which movie has IMDB keywords That include Jehovah's Witness The 1960s and Sexism

Perfect World That is Yes, a perfect world. Sorry, that was another one where I forgot to put in the right answer. Yes. Which two movies feature stars of La D'Divorce? Well, Naomi Waps us in, we don't live here anymore. Yep.

And Kate Hudson is in Dr. T. in the West. Very good. Which two movies feature stars of Zodiac? We don't live here anymore. Has Mark Ruffalo, October Sky, has Jake Chil. Very good. Which two movies feature stars of Cookie's Fortune? Um,

Julianne's in Cookie's Fortune. I believe Glenn Close is in Cookie's Fortune. Charles Dutton is in Cookie's Fortune. I've maybe not seen Cookie's Fortune more than the one time when it came out. Ooh. Cookies Fortune. I'm just going to guess the movies and say Dr. T and the Women and October Sky. Dr. T and the Women, yes.

The other one is one you literally said the woman's name. You just didn't connect it to one of these movies. Glenn Close. No. Before that. Oh, Julianne Moore. She's in Price Winner. Prize in order to find so how.

Yeah. Dr. T. and the Women counts for Liv Tyler. I think there are maybe other people in smaller roles, but Liv Tyler is definitely in both. Oh. Yes. Which movie opened the same weekend as Office Space? Office Space is 99.

So that's October Sky? Yes. That's like 98? No. Which movie opened the same weekend as the Athens Summer Olympics? So it would have to be, is it a perfect world? Not a perfect world. We don't live here anymore.

Yes, we don't live here anymore. 2004. And that's where the quiz ends because I had to cut it short because I had to do another quiz, which we'll get into. But not right now. Maurice Alberti. Yes, thank you. I think the movie does look very good. Yeah, especially for what it is and what movies of this scale kind of look like now.

Yeah. This movie looks much better than you probably expect. Yes. So I want to go, the item in the quiz where I, you know, gave the examples of Maris Alberti's work included, what did I say? I said, Velvet Gold Mine and Hillbilly Elogy. but like there's a lot of like high low culture low culture it's like creed is up there as is jerry and marge go large um she's done a sport she knows her way around a sports movie the wrestler which i think is like the wrestler is incredible the wrestler is i think is where she came the closest to getting a nomination she was kind of snubbed like actively snubbed for that which kind of sucks i mean also having to shoot around the fact that marissa tommay and uh mickey rourke are not in the same shot together Sure. There's that one scene where you'll see them in frame together, not with someone who's clearly a body double.

I wonder what happened there. Maybe Mickey Work is a monster. Who knows? Has worked with Todd Haynes a couple of times, Velvet Gold Mine and also Poison. Cinematographer on Happiness for Totsalans. Thank you. I was like the other Todd. Joe Gould's Secret, which is a movie I've never seen, but I know has always sort of showed up. Did the cinematography for Twilight, Los Angeles, which is the Anna Devere Smith, one-woman show that was filmed in 2000. What else is on there? Oh, Stone, John Curran legend, Stone, free-held, collateral beauty. Okay, so wait, how many The Kitchen? Um, is Maurice Alberti's six-timer?

Chappaquiddick, collateral beauty. This. This. That's three. All right. We're on three. She might be when we get to, if I can ever make you do a happiness episode. Fine, but then we're also going to do the kitchen.

So that's four and five right there. We'll do the burial at some point. So, listen, the kitchen is, uh, for, not being a good movie she shoots that movie to be the movie that it should have been oh wait she did The Visit Amnight Shabant's The Visit

She's worked with a lot of major filmmakers And like she's also worked on low budgets And made those movies look like Fucking incredible So she's a legend She's been nominated three times For the Independent Spirit Award Velvet Gold Mine

We don't live her anymore And The Wrestler won the Cinematography Award at Sundance twice for Crum in 1995 and before that for a documentary called H2 Worker, which is about... She's worked in documentaries quite a bit as well. Exploitation of workers in the Florida sugar cane industry. Has never been nominated by the Cinematographers Guild, which I think probably tells you why she hasn't been nominated for the Oscar.

but that fucking sucks. I mean, the wrestler and creed not getting a nomination for cinematography are wild to me. Well, the fact that Creed was boiled just down to Sylvester Stallone sucks. Like, Michael B. Jordan should have been in the mix for Best Actor that year. There are craft nominations that that movie should have been up for. It's just there's a I'm puzzled I'm puzzled Chris by a lot of that

All right I agree Back to Back to the film We've talked about Warner Independent before But I think part of the reason why It holds such a place in our hearts Is

This particular era of the studio-dependent indie shingle is really did create, I hate, now that I can't say the term create space. And that, there is some non-bullshitty creation of space that happens in this world. And now I feel like a goddamn asshole every time I say it. gave a lot of opportunity for a sort of middle class of movies that were not shoestring budget, you know, finance it on your credit card, slam dance film festival, you know, whatever, Cassavetti's Award nominee, that were, you know, had a little bit of money, certainly had, had a lot of talent, both behind. the camera and in front of the camera. That was the other thing, is you could afford to have a cast. And it kind of created this like middle class of actor, you know, of actors too,

who like Naomi Watts, Mark Ruffalo, uh, in this movie specifically did so many of these movies and have so many movies out there that we were able to not only sort of like get a sense of who they are as an actor, but they were also able to sort of like, you know, work and get better and get more interesting and get more, you know what I mean? Like before Mark Ruffalo went and made like 12 Marvel movies, you know what I mean? He was able to do like so much interesting work. And it was on a lot of these, you know, focus features and and Warner Independent and Paramount Vantage and Paramount Classics and Sony Pictures classics. And like only a couple of those still made Fox Searchlight. Only a couple of those remain. Well, and like the

the originators of this are Sony Classics and sorry, it's Miramax, of course, yes. With Disney acquiring Miramax and, you know, they had Disney money behind them to run like they were an independent when they never really were. Yeah, Miramax was its own sort of beast. But then the rest of the, like, studio housed independent brands

did function much more like an independent brand. Well, they would also sort of go shopping at the festivals, right? You know what I mean? and they would acquire things, and then they would sort of push them for awards. But it meant that, like, there was, like, I feel like, it's not like that level of indie has gone away, but it does feel like they, it's a little bit harder for those movies to find a foothold. And it's not like we don't live here anymore, did find a foothold, but, like, before Sunset sure did. And, you know what I mean?

Garden State sure did. and Sideways sure did. Like, I'm looking at all the movies from, like, this year. I mean, I got to say, I'm even worried about the whole studio, the existence of the studio funded indie label. Because, like, look at what just happened to Night Bitch. Yes. Sony Classics doesn't, can't get a movie to make money. Searchlight, you mean.

Searchlight. No, I mean, Sony Classics. Sony Classics look up their box office. They've, they're having a tough time. Yes, but I mean for Nightbitch specifically. Like, look what... Nightbitch specifically is Searchlight, yes. Look what has happened to Searchlight now that they are no longer Fox Searchlight.

You know what I mean? Like, while they're having one of their biggest opening weekends of all time with a complete unknown, but what are these companies trying to function as? What are the corporation that they're a subsidiary of what do they want those companies to function? Well, and we've had this question with the Disney-specific service. stuff forever. What do they what? What do you want searchlight to be? What do you want Hulu to be? What do you want? You have you have these giant parent corporations now who acquire, acquire, acquire. And a lot of that Disney acquisition was about acquiring IP, right? They wanted to acquire Marvel. They wanted to acquire Star Wars. And you can tell what you can tell

what were the important things that they wanted to acquire because those are the things that they have now subsequently immediately went and cranked out new content, new content, new content, new content with all this stuff. And meanwhile, Searchlight has sort of been allowed to somewhat be up to its own devices, but also then with this, like every once in a while, something will get sort of flicked to Hulu or something will get, you know, deprioritized or something like that, like, like Nightbitch was. And you remember, like, right, they're not calling their own shots. They're not doing their own thing. And ultimately, you can, can't convince me that Disney, on a sort of high up level, gives one single shit about

Fox Searchlight pictures. And even, like, to, you know, to the end of getting them, because it's not like, they're like making a run at the Oscar, you know, with Searchlight, although I guess a real pain is Searchlight, right? Yes. So, like, they're going to... They acquired that out of Sundance. Right. And, like, so they're making a run with. that, for the Oscars with that, and for a complete unknown. Um, but it just still feels like they have more toys than they know what to play with. You know what I mean? Like at some point, you need to give that toy to somebody who will actually play with it. And, um, I mean, whatever. This is where I make my giant, I'm not going to, but like my giant antitrust

speech, where it's just like, you know. But you look at like kinds of kindness and like that movie probably only exists because it was some type of contractual obligation connected to poor things somehow because it's like they're not interested in movies like that. They're not even interested in releasing movies in the summer like they released that before. It's meant to be an award shingle. But this is sort of, we've talked a little bit when we've talked about David Zazlef before

about how in the old day. days, the maniacs who pulled the strings were egomaniacs who fancied themselves to be great artists, right? They wanted to be a mogul. They wanted to be a studio mogul because they wanted ultimately the glory of making great movies because it fed their ego. Now the egomaniacs in charge want to fund some dumb new thing with venture capital. You know what I mean? Like they're, it's just, It's a whole other beast. And now who, there's, there's no sort of maverick studio heads that are holding the line here. And because the other thing is the other maverick studio heads were fucking creep assholes who had to get like drummed out of the business for the good of everybody. So now who is left to really hold the line. It is the artists, you know, in this way.

It's Denisville, like, you know, or it's Nolan. telling Warner Bros. Fuck you. You're not going to put my movie directly to HBO Max. I'm walking. And I'm going to go and make Oppenheimer at Universal. It's these, you know, you get more and more of these stories. And only he really is the one getting the things that they want right now, making movies they want to make. Because even Scorsese has to go to streaming to makes his movies. But, but, but you are hearing a little bit more and a little bit more about how these new deals, uh, where actors and directors and the talent who have the actual leverage are saying, we want to guarantee studio distribution in this deal. That is more important than money. We will give up some of this money to go back to, you know what I mean, to guarantee, you know, theatrical distribution with like more of a traditional back end.

And yes, it's only like the, you know, the most powerful people. who can demand it, but you can hope that this kind of thing sort of like catches on. And it does feel like the only people who have any ability to hold the line now are at least coming around to the idea that, like, yes, there's more freedom with Netflix because they don't have notes because they're not creative people and they don't have a creative impulse and they'll just let you do whatever you want. But the thing that you trade away from doing that means that, like, your movie sort of dissolves like candy floss. Yeah, exactly, yeah.

They have no skin in the game with how well your movie gets seen or does or has a place in the zeitgeist whatsoever. And maybe the trade-off for these studios that were maybe a little bit too meddlesome when you were making your movie was at the very least they gave a shit about distributing your movie. And so I don't know how. we sort of like moved. Oh, I guess it was the Warner Independent discussion. The studio independent situation of everything. It's a snowball. We get very innovated very quickly. We figure it out. Warner Independent only lasts about five years though. Warner Independent, like, they're basically swan song, if you want to call it that, is Slumdog Millionaire because they were shuddering and it's like it. It was the financial collapse that sort of led to this, right?

They would have had Slumdog Millionaire. Yeah. And Paramount Vantage, I think, followed soon after. Paramount Vantage had their big moment in 2007. And that was kind of as good as it got from that. Paramount Vantage had like three Best Picture nominations in 2007, no. There will be blood and no country. They shared no country.

Right. Previous year they had Babel. Right. I still love, we've talked about it before. I love that studio logo with a little label printer. What was I going to say? So Focus has survived. Focus, we're recording this right after the Christmas weekend box office

where Focus like slam dunked with Nosferatu, like $40 million over the Christmas holiday weekend. They're, you know, one of their best opening weekends ever. And then Searchlight, as you mentioned, had a very good opening weekend. and certainly their best since the Disney merger with a complete unknown. Baby Girl for A-24 doesn't do as well.

And Fire Inside for... Who did Fire Inside? Amazon. Amazon, MGM, didn't do as well. But another good weekend in general for, like, movie theater watching. So we can at least say that. You can also imagine Baby Girl, people aren't seeing that on Christmas. where they could see it with a family member, you know? Sure.

I think there's still time for baby girl. I, I, I'm also the person that was like, there is an audience for night bitch, et cetera. That movie could make money. Maybe it could have if they actually put it in theaters and advertise that it was in those theaters, you know? Maybe. Also, like, I mean, there was.

They give it whatever release, don't report its box office numbers. Yeah. Because they're dumping it. Yeah. It's a bummer. It's a real bummer. Do you want to do the Ruffalo quiz? Let's talk a little bit about Ruffalo.

Well, we did. We talked about how hot he was. I'm so stammery. My goodness. That's how hot. That's how hot. And I do think he's quite good in this. Where is he in his career?

Well, let's do the Ruffalo quiz before we talk about where he has in his career. When was just like heaven? I think because I remember they made a big deal that he graduated scare quotes in like the press cycle terms of he went from character actor to now he's a leading romantic man. So, O-4, he's in four movies. Don't, you know, thank God Jude Law was taking all that heat in O-4 for doing six movies. Ruffalo's in, we don't live here. Shout out to your excellent piece in Volcker about how we were all mean to Jude Law.

I really had a good time writing that, so thank you. I'm glad that you enjoyed it. His O-4 is, We Don't Live Here Anymore. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 13 going on 30 and collateral. So he's only really the lead and we don't live here anymore. And then 05, he's in Just Like Heaven, where he's the romantic love object for Reese Witherspoon, and then rumor has it where he's the fallback guy for Jennifer Aniston in that movie.

So this was sort of around the time where there was, he had been going through some health issues and he kind of had didn't he have brain surgery? He had, give me a second, hold on. Can I read you the subheaders in his Wikipedia? Yes, please. So it's like career, whatever, career, early roles, establish actor and Marvel films, personal life,

and that it's activism and political views, which really like, so politics, environmentalism, anti-war activism, civil rights, historic preservation, conspiracy theories. Okay All right So

Oh god Oh I forgot about all this stuff So after he did the last castle Which was in 2001 He was diagnosed We should do a last castle episode We should He was diagnosed with a vestibular

Schwannoma Which is a Which is a brain tumor A benign brain tumor I thought he had a brain tumor An acoustic neuroma is the more common term. Apologies for reading from Wikipedia was found to be benign, but the surgery to remove it resulted in partial facial paralysis that also affected his hearing.

The paralysis subsided after a year, but he does remain deaf in his left ear. Shout out to my mom, who is also deaf in one year. So she and Mark Ruffalo can have something they can talk to about each other, provided they're sitting on the right sides of each other so they can hear each other. On December, in December 2008, Ruffalo's younger brother was found outside his home in Beverly Hills with an execution-style bullet wound to his head. Oh, my God. Case remains unsolved as of 2020. Awful, yes.

So he had a rough, to say the least, a rough go of it in the odds. And sort of these were the movies that were, you know, part of that phase of his career. And I know he sort of has understandably sort of mixed feelings about this phase of his career. But I feel like Zodiac to me represents a, it's not exactly like Zodiac happened and things got better because then he still has like blindness and, you know, whatever. But Zodiac in 07, I love the Brothers Bloom. I think he's great in the Brothers Blue. I like, I think that movie, that's a Ryan Johnson movie that, like, nobody talks about. And then the kids are right happens in 2010. He gets his first Oscar nomination. And that's sort of when I feel like the phase two, Ruffalo sort of, like, clicks in, right? He's in Shutter Island.

He's in Margaret. He's in, and then 2012, it's his first Marvel movie. And he, you know, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching next decade. And honestly, fucking good for him, because he's doing all that stuff. he's like making infinitely polar bear and he's in begin again and he's in foxcatcher and he's in spotlight you know what i mean he's doing a good job of the sort of like high low thing um and good for him so i want you to click out of whatever filmography of his that you're looking at right now because i'm going to give you i'm not looking at anything okay uh mark ruffalo

ten timers quiz is upon us as we said before when we hit 10 movies by the same actor we also do a quiz, but we have never settled on a consistent format to it. I've never settled on something that I really like. What we're going to do today is we're going to do a variation on the game 20 questions. You're familiar with 20 questions. There's a thing you have to guess. You have 20 questions that you can use at your disposal to arrive at the thing. What you are going to be guessing is not merely one answer, though. It is 12 answers, total? Okay, so Mark Ruffalo, not counting any of the Marvel movies, we're going to leave the

Marvel movies out of it. There are nine movies where Mark Ruffalo has co-starred with Best Actress Winners. There are three movies in which Mark Ruffalo has acted that were directed by Best Director, Oscar winners. You have 20 questions to a arrive at these 12 movies, the guesses for the movies don't count. So you have 20 questions aside of, you know, the actual guess to arrive at these 20, or what did I say 12? 12 movies begin when you are ready. Okay. I do have immediately one director came in mind, and that's Jane Campion. Yes, in the cut. So you have one. Yes. You still have 20 questions

Can I say eternal sunshine of the spotless mind? You can't? That is correct. Kate Winslet, you still have 20 questions. Okay, the other two directors. Is one of the directors, did they win in the, the past 20 years. So from 04 until now, they both have.

They both has. Okay. So I guess actually all three of them have. Yes. So it's, I guess that could include Eastwood. Oh, Martin Scorsese, Shutter Island. Yep. So you have 19 questions remaining.

And you've guessed three of the 12. Uh-huh. Could still be Eastwood. I cannot remember an Eastwood movie. Not Fincher. So who won? Has he been in an Eniorritu movie? He has not...

How interesting. Has the other best director win happened in the past 10 years? So from 2014 until now. Yeah. No. Okay, so it's between 04 and 14. Who else would that be? O'F. Five is only Tom Hooper, Hazanovicious. It's got to be Eastwood. I just can't remember what it is. Is he in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil? Not Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Okay.

Is it Clint Eastwood? It's not, it's not Clint Eastwood. Okay. So you're down to 17 questions. That makes it... Hooper... Bigelow, it's not Bigelow. Um

Who am I forgetting Already Scorsese Maybe it's another Scorsese movie No Do you want that to be a question? Is it another Scorsese movie? It's not. No, it's not.

Sixteen questions for me. Maybe I should move on to actress But it's literally only one director left. Um Oh, that's going to drive me. Danny Boyle, it's not Danny Boyle. Oh, nine. You don't remember Mark Ruffalo as the rock face in 127 hours?

As zombie number 17 and 28 days later. Can we talk about the 28 years? later trailer and how good that looked. Can we talk about how everybody miscredited a zombie as Killian Murphy and it's some guy. And it's just like awful, emaciated about to die

zombie and they're like, Killian Murphy! Dicks. Oh, the Cohen. Oh, is it the Coens? What Coens is he in? Is that a question? No, that's not a question. I do think it's the Coens. I just can't name the movie.

Is it the Coens? I don't think it's the Coens. I just watched No Country, too. Oh, man. I don't think it's the Coins. This is hard. I'm going to move on to Best Actress. There's too many actresses that I haven't.

Affirmation just like Heaven Reese Witherspoon. Correct. Affirmation rumor has it, Shirley McLean. Correct. So now you have five of the 12 correctly guessed. Three actresses and two directors. Sixteen questions still remain. So I have three questions for each title.

I like those odds. Hmm. The... Oh, poor things. Emma Stone, correct. Okay, because, yeah, my next question was going to be, has it been someone who's won in the past five years? Besides Emma Stone, has one of these actresses won in the past 10 years? So, 2014 till now.

Yes. Julianne Moore and after. Oh, Julianne Moore, the kids are all right. Yes. Has another one been in the past 10 years? Yes. Okay. So Renee Zellweger sounds right, but I don't think that's true. Chastain? No. Michelle Yo, I don't think so. Has he been with Jennifer Lawrence in a movie? Maybe.

All right. I have four actresses and one director. Um, is one of these actresses? Did they win pre-2000? Uh, yes. Okay. Did they win in the 90s? Yes. I feel like that means it's Susan. Susan, what movie is he in with Gwynneth? It's not Hillary Swank.

Gwyneth would make... Oh, isn't Gwyneth in the Sex Addict movie? Yes. Want to take a stab at the title? Pink's theatrical debut. That's the movie. I never saw this movie. I'm going to count it.

Thank you for asking. Thanks for sharing. You came very close. Thank you for sharing. Yes. Okay. Yes. So we have one, two, three movies for actresses.

For actress. And one movie for director. You have 13 questions remaining. Are they romantically involved? Is Mark Ruffalo and Gwyneth Paltrow. romantically involved in this movie. I'm going to have to go look it up to make sure, but hold on one second. Yes.

Okay. It's got to be some type of large ensemble thing, because why would you have to look it up otherwise? It's not going to be like the anniversary party. a movie that is 50% about ecstasy so what ensemble is this I'd watch your assumptions

okay so it's not an ensemble movie but it's a movie where they are romantically involved I mean she stops making movies at a certain point This has got to be some independent thing that I can't think of. Maybe should ask a different question. Is there another actress winner that I have not guessed before the 1990s? No. Okay.

Nine questions for me. Mark Ruffalo is one of those people that it's like, it's wild. They're not an Oppenheimer. Yes. It's very true. Um Don't think he was with Roberts Don't think he was with Helen Mirren

I will give you one for free Every All three of your actress movies remaining are actresses who are You've already correctly guessed They're all doubles Okay So Shirley McLean Reese Witherspoon, which you already said it's not her.

Right. Emma Stone. And... It's literally like the other two. Who you correctly guessed. Who was the first one that you guessed? Oh, Julianne Moore. Yeah.

Julianne Moore. It's... I said kids are all right. It's blindness. There you go. All right. Two more actress. One more.

director. Is the director also a repeat? No. Okay. So I think it might be Cohen's then. So it could be Gwyneth again. It could be, you said it's not reads. Yeah, one is, we've confirmed that one is Gwyneth again. Oh, one is Gwyneth again. And the other one, who else did I say? Oh, Kate Winslet, it's all the Kingsmen. There you go, all the Kingsmen. So you're only waiting for the Gwyneth 1, which admittedly is probably the hardest of all of them. And then one director who we have, we have confirmed that it's not from the most recent 10 years, but from the most recent 20 years. So, yeah, it's somewhere between 2004 and 2014. Right. I mean, it's probably Eastwood. It's reasonable. No, we said no Eastwood. You got that confirmed. You got

confirmed it was no Eastwood. Bigelow. 2010 is not as Hanavishis. He's 11. Huh? Hooper. Hooper. It's not Tom Hooper.

Mark Ruffalo is a jellical cat. You never heard. Okay. Next year is Aung Lee. 2013 is 13 and 14 so it's going to have to be 13 or 14 It's earlier

2012 2011 2012 is Argo Ang Lee It's Angli Is he in like Ride of the Devil? Ride with the Devil There we go

This is Christ I do not sound very smart. No, no. Remember that Mark Ruffalo is in Ride With the Devil is very hard. It's the only possible movie. It is true. All right, so you're down to your Gwyneth Paltrow. He's of romantic interest. This is one of those movies.

I had to look it up because I hadn't seen it. So it's one of those movies that's a title that everybody kind of knows for her, but I don't know if everybody's seen it. Is it a view from the top? It's a view from the top. Okay, it is. I definitely blew past those 20 questions. Probably, yes, at some point. I'm going to tweak this format for the next time.

20 questions was maybe not the format we need to find a way to... I'm sure that was not the most interesting. Narrow these down. For people to listen to me, just get mad at myself for being stupid. We'll figure it. Well, maybe do another ruffle of quiz for a bonus on the... Patreon or something like that instead. It's okay. Thank you for making me sweat. This is fun. All right. Let's talk about something else. Let's talk about supporting actress a little bit.

Yes. We mentioned Closer and the adjacencies of this movie to Closer. Yes. Closer. Okay. So Closer is a movie that is just kind of explicitly about infidelity these things. But it also, I think, you know, there's problems with Closer. I do think that like Closer can have its own cliches. A lot of people really hate Closer. And I always get kind of twigged by that because I love Closer. And I always feel... Closer's a lot of fun. I think that, you know, it's just kind of a dated thing. Here's the thing. But there's a certain deliciousness to what's going on. It's fun. Yes. I mean, I don't want to shit on John Curran because, like, I've liked other John Curran movies. Sure. But like, There is a voice there. There's, you know, Mike Nichols is Mike Nichols. Mike Nichols directing the actors certainly helps, but I think even just on a script level, the thing about closer is it's, there's panash there. There's a, there's a flare to the writing. The writing is showboaty in a way, right?

It calls attention to itself. So much of Natalie Portman's dialogue, especially. the stripping scene with Clive Owen, even the meat cute with Jude Law. It's all a little over, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's very written, but in a way that I think really works. Because what, because kind of we don't live here anymore is sort of what happens when you strip a lot of these sort of very showboaty writing away from closer is you just end up with this dingy, ugly story about four people. Who are like being awful to each other. Repetitive. Because the thing about closer is all famously sort of like structurally, Patrick Marber's play, all of the scenes are breakup scenes. It gives you the story of these four people through a succession of the moments in their lives when they are ending relationships with each other. And that gives you a very specific vision of all of them.

And it makes you, you know, conclude that they're all sort of broken. hateful, you know, pathetic in certain ways, people. But I think because the writing really puts on a show, it allows the actors to get into a little bit more of, you get to see, like, Julia Roberts play the frustration of her character, that she can't seem to find a partner who isn't going to, like, have this, like, awful fatal flaw that's going to, you know, fuck up her life. And also, she's frustrated with herself that she can't leave well enough alone, that she can't, you know, accept the fact that she's got this imperfect guy in Clive Owen, that she's got to go and chase after, you know, Jude Law as well. Jude Law is like the sort of weakest person in the world who then uses that weakness to try and like childishly again we're at the childishly thing sort of snipe at clive owen

um but he's gorgeous and he's jude law so of course he's going to be able to at least some point get julia roberts to sleep with him and to sort of but there is character dimension and all of those characters and there's character mystery and there's you know contradictions and they actually feel like unique distinct characters whereas they don't don't, and we don't live here anymore. And also, like, I think the thing about closer that makes it work is the rhythm of it. And that's directing. That's Mike Nichols, knowing how to structure this story and make the scenes move at a clip.

You keep feeling, and we don't live here anymore, like, you're stuck in the mud, even though the story is technically moving. But there is not a ton of, like, kinetic motion to the thing where, like, closer, that's all it is, is just sort of like. Closer is all cyclical. Like, it could feel very repetitive. And in a certain way, Mike Nichols is drawing your attention to the things that are repetitive in a way that's commenting on the repeating, you know? Yes. Well, and even the stuff that isn't repetitive, because, like, in each scene, you get sort of a new vision of Alice, the Portman character, right?

She's got red hair in one thing. She's sort of more posh looking in the other. she's got the stripper wig and the one. And she's this sort of free radical that's kind of moving through these other three people's lives. And that's when you get to the end and she sort of, you know, is, it's interesting that in her sort of like in the year where she helped define the manic pixie dream girl, that she's sort of the like dark, dramatic version of that a little bit. And sort of she like pops into these people's lives and fucks everything up. And and yet, There's that scene where she and Jude Law are breaking up in their apartment where she's as, like, she's so devastatingly heartbroken in that scene. I find she's so good. I love, it's still one of my favorite Natalie performances. I think she's so good in that. What's interesting is she's probably not one of the staples of the season because she misses out with SAG, which probably throws a wrench in her.

potential as a, you know, winner that season. But she won the globe. She wins the globe, misses out at SAG, shows up at BAFTA, where the other people that I think are like the steadies throughout the season, which are Cape Blanchett, who wins for the Aviator, Laura Linney for Kinsey, and Virginia Madsen, who, for sideways. And she wins the lion's share of the critics' prizes, too. And it tasted so fucking good. That's also Julia Roberts' line in Closer, but just slightly different.

You dirty old man. Were I in the habit of making super cuts back then or making little videos, I probably would have found a way to mash up. Julia Roberts saying it tastes like you, but sweeter, a line that was quoted by Fall Out Boy in a Fall Out Boy song. That's my favorite thing about Closer is that these pop punk bands like Follow Boy and Panic at the disco have like copious quotes from that movie. their song titles and lyrics and stuff like that. Emo, baby. Closer. Of course you love Closer. You are emo. I am in almost in everything, but sort of like subculture. Yeah, probably. Sophia Okanato's the fifth nominee. She was also nominated at SAG, but was kind of seen as the

surprise nominee. That movie came on, Hotel Rwanda came on Strong towards the end. There's not really, the thing is, the people you would expect to come through for Laura Dern or the Spirit Awards and they don't nominate her. Yes, which is sort of like, I am kind of surprised by that. Those nominees were Virginia Madsen wins for Sideways. Kate Blanchett is nominated

for coffee and cigarettes. The spirits do do that sometimes throughout their history. They take somebody like Who's winning for something else and nominate them when they can. Some studio movie that they can't nominate. They nominate Loretta Divine for Women Thou Art Luce that I

thought was a teller. television movie, but maybe not. No, no, no, no. That was like a Lionsgate release. Robin Simmons from a movie called Robbing Peter, and then Yeni Paola Vega from Maria Full of Grace, who I think is her

in that movie? Who is that? But anyway, God, Maria Full of Grace is so good. Joshua Marston, what happened? Where have you been? I guess he must have gone to television or something. Such a good director. Anyway, yeah, so my 04 supporting actress, I think I maybe have gone through this when we did our Huckabees episode and talking about Naomi Watts, but it's been a while.

Yeah, Naomi Watts would be on there for Huckabees. Naomi Watts for Huckabees, Portman for Closer, Darrell Hanna for Kill Bill 2, Virginia Madsen for Sideways. I have Laura Dern and Kate Blanchett for The Aviator, sort of like fighting it out for fifth, although would I change that now? Dunst in Eternal Sunshine I might throw in Patty Clarkson for Dogville, honestly. Not a bad call. Not a bad call.

Rachel McAdams for Mean Girls, Maggie Chung for Hero. What are some others? Lily Tomlin for Huckabees that year. Do we do Eileen Adkins for Vanity Fair just for the boldness and the bravery for the rump shaker shot? Of her nude scene.

And H for birth, baby. Hache for birth. Oh my God, sure. Anne Hache for birth, absolutely. I would also throw in Regina King for Ray. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Um, she was definitely, uh, in the conversations at the time. Um, sorry, I'm just sort of like going through some of these movies to see if anything else jumps out. I know Cloris Leachman got a SAG nomination, I believe, for Spain. She sure did. Um, that year. She was SAG nominated. The BAFTA nominations. We haven't mentioned are Merrill for the Manchurian candidate, Julie Christie for Finding Neverland, and Heather Craney for Virot Drake. Julie Christie and Kate Winslet were both in the conversation for Finding Neverland.

Winslet was Critics' choice. Did Merrill also get a Golden Globe nomination for the Manchurian candidate? No. Oh, yes, she did. She did. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I thought so. Who else do we have? Anybody from bad education? In supporting actress, no. Yeah, it's odd that an El Mottivar wouldn't. But anyway, yeah, I had Laura Dern pretty close to the precipice of my nominations at the time. And I probably would still have her in my top ten. I probably don't think I'd have her in that five.

I probably would bump up Patty Clarkson for Dogville because I think she's so terrifying in that movie. My God. Who are your... The Doctrine of Stoicism. Who are your... God, this is going to be so far going off a field. We'll cut it if it takes it. Who are your favorite performances in Dogville, besides Kidman, obviously?

Oh, I mean, John Hurt has the narrator. I think he's such a good, okay, on a list of, like, narrators that actually sort of, like, elevate themselves to characters in that way. Hertz's definitely on there, up there with, like, Baldwin and Royal Ten of Bums for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, my winner is Anne Hache. Yeah. Kind of no question.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, she's tremendous in that movie, and Lord knows I love her. Um, at the time, see, on my list here that I have here at the time, I have Portman as my winner. I don't know how I shake that up now and do that now. I maybe have Watts for Huckabees. I maybe have Madsen for, for, Sideways.

It feels like Virginia Madsen for Sideways was sort of like the the Critics' choice, not the Critics' choice, but like the Critics' choice that year for supporting actress. Blanchett winning for The Aviator felt like a more sort of populist or like she was not ill-regarded, but I feel like there were a lot of people being like, Isn't she just, like, doing a bad Catherine impressionation? It is, it is a controversial, uh, Catherine Hepburn. I think she's great in that movie.

I think she's super fun. I think she's great regardless of how good of an impersonation you think she is doing. Yeah, listen, the thing about doing a Catherine Hepburn impersonation is, even the bad ones are fun. You know what I mean? Like, it's just sort of, it's a fun impersonation. But at the end of, I mean, like, maybe I'm being too obtuse here, But, like, the performance is also the performance.

A performance is, like, yes. Are we understanding who this person is? Is this an interesting person to watch? Is this idiot? Like, I don't know. I think there's qualities to talk about in that performance that have nothing to do with how good of a of a burn impersonation is that. But you do get the sense that she won the Oscar because she's a kick doing a, you know, doing it.

And I think that's as much Scorsese as anybody else. and the screenwriters, actually, for sort of, like, giving that character such a place of prominence in that movie. I think you also sort of found in the supporting actor race that year that, like, clearly Freeman was getting this, like, career award, even though I think he's good in Million Dollar Baby, but there's not really much about that character that sort of, like, jumps out as, like... He has, like, he provides buttons to certain scenes. provides buttons. He's like he's a stalwart steady presence. His character is a sort of, as all these sort of like tragic things are happening, he's a sort of steady hand. Certainly you can think of 10 performances that Freeman's given throughout his career that you would easily give him an Oscar for instead. And I think that year, I think Owen winning the Globe and like Thomas Hayden Church, I'm sure won a few of the critics prizes that year. and but like there was no urgency to give Thomas Hayden Church who had just sort of graduated from wings a few years before you know what I mean like you didn't really need to give him an Oscar um and as we've talked about before in our Children of Men episode on

the Patreon um Hollywood has some weird thing about clive Owen where they want to punish him forever and ever and ever for something or other so uh Freeman you know got it pretty easily. All right, we're going to get you out of here, Chris, because... Let's do it. You're coughing up a story. Before we go, I just want to note that the 2004 Warner's Independent films were also before sunset, a home at the end of the world. Check out that episode.

I loved doing that episode. Yes. Criminal, which was a remake of a foreign language film, around the bend, the Josh Lucas, Christopher Walker. movie. They tried to push Christopher Walken with until no one saw that movie. And a very long engagement. Which I've never seen. Um, I saw it in the theater. I don't have an impetus to watch it again. Okay. It's interesting to watch Jody Foster, uh, act in French. Okay. That's fun. Um, so there's that. What did we just, we just saw her doing something French on, and, I sent you that, I love sending you that video where it's multiple Jody Posters.

What was that even from? It's so odd. Girl. But yeah, I think the two, I've seen all of those movies from Warner Independent in 2004, and I think the two that got Oscar nominated are unsurprising. Yes, okay. All right. All right.

Listen, we're getting our sea legs back for after, three weeks of not doing main feed episodes. After rushing through a million episodes and then having some time. And now we just want to have a day off for New Year's Eve. And so we're going. Should we move into the IMDB game? Yeah. Why don't we? All right. Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game where we challenge each other with the name of an actor or actress and we try and guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television shows, 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, and if that is not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints. Sir. Yes. Would you like to give or guess first? I'll give first. All right. So we talked about Maurice Alberti, the cinematographeress.

What a horribly ugly word. No, I'm not going to do that. do that. That was only for comedic effect. For this film, the just tons and tons and tons of credits, but the one I zeroed

in on was Velvet Gold Mine, unsurprisingly, my favorite Todd Haynes movie. And the thing I sometimes forget about that is that Janet McTeer does a voice over narration for that movie. And we've never done Janet McTeer. So

have at it. Four films no voice work and no television too no television it's got to be albert nobs yep her uh well one of her usker nominations and the other one is tumbleweeds which i would normally have hesitation to be like tumbleweeds is on there but yeah i'll say tumbleweeds tumbleweeds there we go uh what else is janet up Now you're into the fun ones of, I don't know, I don't know where this is going to go, but all right. You know, we don't see a lot of her. There was something, she's blonde and tumbleweeds, but I feel like she's like an evil politician in something, and I can't place it. It's television, though.

Oh, what was that? It was a few things. Hold up. I'll look it up. Um, she was definitely in the Honorable Woman with Maggie Gyllenhaal, but I don't know if she was evil in that. Um, although the Kristen Scott Thomas role in slow horses is very Janet McTeer-coated. I'm just going to tell you that. Um, not that Kristen Scott Thomas doesn't have her own, you know, panash as well. Um, she was in, she was in the white queen, which she never saw. She was an, uh, honorable woman. She was in Jessica Jones, as Jessica Jones's mother, who was sort of like a, Uh-huh. She was in Ozark, but you never watched Ozark. She was in The Old Man.

I can't imagine you watched The Old Man. Oh, Damages. No. She was on Damages. I'm sure that's what it was. Oh, yes. I should watch Damages. Damages seems like something I would enjoy.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a time. What was her, like, see, Janet McTeer does theater. I could probably name multiple theater things that I associate her to. You remember when she was nominated for Mary Stewart and she and Harriet Walter

and they showed when they read the nominees they showed Harriet Walter when they said Janet McTeer and then they moved to Janet McTeer and they said Harriet McTeer and the two of them were like pointing at the camera

and then whoever was presenting the award and that was that was when Marsha Gay Harden won for Oh and she mentioned I think she was the one Yes, she gets up and she says, those are, of course, our wonderful actresses, Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter, and she, like, corrects the mistake. It's so lovely.

It's so wonderful. We love Marsha. Yes. The only other thing that's immediately coming to my mind is Carrington, which is a period movie from the 90s. It might have been the same, like, year as Tumbleweeds. No, Carrington is 95. Okay. She plays Vanessa Bell.

Wait, she plays Vanessa Bell. Carrington, aka Miranda Richardson as Virginia Virginia Wolf's sister. Oh, well, duh. Yeah, who's Virginia Wolf in that movie? In Carrington? Yes, isn't it I don't see her character. I don't know if she's in this. Interesting. Yeah. Okay, so I think I'm just going to throw something away. just to get my years and hints and...

Okay. I'll just say Jessica... Oh, no, no, no, no. Wait. We did a movie with... We did a movie with Janet McTeer recently. What was it? Oh, I'll tell you right now it's the menu and it's not the menu.

I don't want to have you... Okay, well, I just guessed the menu. Okay, the menu. I don't... You've agonized enough for this episode. I'm not going to put you through anymore. No! No, no, no, no, no, no.

I want to play the game. Your years for both of these are 2016. Okay. I'm going to put a guess that you've seen neither of these movies, but you've definitely heard of both of them. Hmm. One of which we kind of joke about a lot. I would imagine. Multiple movies in one year, for someone like Janet McTeer, one of them has to be a franchise.

Is she in, like, Maze Runner movies? Oh, you're so close. Oh, you're so close. It's not Maze Runner, but you're so close. What was Maze Runner trying... Too late for Hunger Games. What was Maze Runner trying to be? What a great question.

I have not seen those. No, but like, what success was it trying to sort of drift, draft onto? Hunger Games. Right. What was the big, what was the first thing that tried to draft off of the Hunger Games? Oh, is this like the divergent movie? But which one? What bullshit.

Didn't you have a recent, didn't you recently test me on, oh, because Naomi's in the Divergent movies? I'm going to guess that this is insurgent. It's not insurgent. And the title, full title. Allegiant? It's Allegiant. The full title of Insurgent is the Divergent series, colon, insurgent. The full title of Allegiant is just Allegiant.

Like, we're getting out of here as quickly as possible. No extra words. We've got a train to catch. So, yeah. All right. Last one. I never saw Allegiant. I saw the ones before it.

And I was like, I think it's a wrap. I also never saw it. Remember, Allegiant was originally supposed to be two parts? And they were like, uh-uh. Not anymore. It's not. Like, I thought they never released the second part. Like, I don't think they filmed it.

Didn't they just? Like, I think it's an incomplete series. Well, now I want to see Allegiant to see if that's true. Maybe we should watch Allegiant next time we see each other. Okay. That'd be fun. That's going to last for five minutes and we're going to be like, I don't think. Can we watch Trixie and Katia clips now?

Make them watch Allegiant. Let's watch Trixie. Let's watch Elegent with Trixie and Katia. Trixie and Katia. Somebody knows them. Make that happen. Okay. What's my last movie?

It's not a franchise, but it's from 2016. You probably haven't seen it. Is it British? Okay. She's third build. Is it a period movie? Much better at asking questions during... It's not a period movie.

Unless it's like from the like, you know, from the late 90s. I've never seen this movie either. But like... Is it like political intrigue? No. From the names of the characters. she is the mother of one of the two leads. Is this a comedy?

No. There's a movie. Yes, there's a movie from this year that it kind of reminds me of in concept. A romance from this year. Yeah, a little. We live in time? Yeah, a little bit. Because it's a British romance.

Where someone dies. I think so. Again, have never seen it. Okay. 2016, British Romance, Someone's Dying. Hmm. Oh, interestingly enough. It is not a franchise movie, but both of its stars were involved,

have had their most best known roles from other franchises. Oh, okay. Divergent franchises or real franchises? Not diversion, no. Okay. Well, one is not necessarily a franchise because it's television. Oh. Although it is technically a franchise, but like it's not a movie franchise.

Harry Potter. No. One of them is Harry. Oh, British and no Harry Potter, but two franchises. Oh, wait. Okay, television. Franchise television. Yeah.

Game of Thrones. Yes. Didn't watch. No. I think you're on the precipice. I think you're almost there. Oh, this movie actually has two people from Game of Thrones in it. I bet it has more than that.

Oh, it does have somebody from Harry Potter. It's like a gobbledy good title. It's Amelia Clark. I have seen this movie. I don't think he dies. I don't think he dies. I don't think he dies. This movie's awful.

There's a person from Harry Potter in it. There's a two people from Game of Thropego. It's based off of a Jojo Moez book. Wow. So it's like franchise. literature, basically. What? The first genre term for it on IMDB is feel-good romance, so maybe nobody dies.

I felt like garbage after seeing a terrible movie. Oh, you have seen it. Oh, okay. I have seen this movie. It's awful. Okay. It's her and Sam Claflin. The title is like bullshit words strung together.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It's pronoun. Uh-huh. position, pronoun. Me before you. Yay, you got it. I was like, I think it's after.

There's after in there. You got it. No, yes, this is, this was the thing. When I saw this movie, I was like, what the fuck does me before you mean? Isn't the whole thing? It's like, I want to die before you die, me before you.

Isn't that the thing? Okay, that maybe I don't remember. Okay. I know that he's disabled. Yes. and I think was maybe going to kill himself. Yes. It's awful.

I've never seen it. It maybe has... Genetic tears in it. It maybe has a song in the trailer that I like because I remember watching the trailer multiple times. Can you give me a second to play the trailer while... Nelia Clark. Hold on.

You could get something. What? Charles Dance is the other person from Game of Thrones in a bit. Oh, Charles Dance. They're dancing. This movie was like too early to be on Netflix, but if it had waited like two years, it would have been on Netflix. No, I don't like this song.

I don't know why I watched this trailer. You know what? No, here's what it is. It reminds me of the other movie from a movie. around that time, where Chloe Grace Moretz plays the person who gets in the accident and is a spirit watching her dying body. If I fall, that was a good movie. And that had an M83 trailer drop. That's before I fall. That's the Zoe Deutsch movie. That's the one I like. Oh, yeah, I can't imagine you like the Chloe Grace Maritz one, which is called...

The Chloe Moretz one is, if I stay. If I stay, there it is. Yep, yep, yep. Proposition, pronoun, verb. A verb in a title? What a concept. All right. Who do you have for me? We're going to stare crazy here. You know, I was like, Laura Dern, playing a wife who gets cheated on, that's certainly

something that's happened before. And I picked out a movie that I'm not even sure that she is the romantic partner of this person, but there is infidelity of some kind happening in this movie. Novocaine. Oh, shit. Who directed that? It was literally, we were talking about this director recently, or I was. Uh, hold on.

Don't remember, but the actor is Steve Martin. For you, I have chosen, Steve Martin. Hold on, I just want to see. It's not that Novocaine. There's a Novakane coming next year with Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder. My goodness. Um, Novocaine. I promise I won't cheat.

No. Why was I thinking, David Atkins? I don't know what the fuck is going on. All right, anyway, Steve Martin, you say. Steve Martin. No television. No television, and I'm going to be fair here and say that all of his credits in his known for, he is credited as a writer. Okay.

Um, well. Dirty rotten scoundrels? Incorrect. I don't think he's a writer on the father of the bride movies. I don't think he's a writer on planes, trains, and automobiles. Shop Girl? Incorrect. You're going to get those years. Your years are 1979, 1987, 1999, and 2006, Steve Martin is one of the rare ones to have a different decade.

in each one of his known for a slot. 79 is the jerk. Sure is. 87 is planes, trains, and automobiles. Incorrect. Pretty sure that's written by John Hughes. Yeah, that's why I didn't guess it. Okay, what's his other 87?

Because parenthood is 89. And I'm pretty sure all of me is like 84. You're forgetting a really good movie. Is it Little Shop? It is not Little Shop. Okay. Is that 86? I think it's 87, but he's not a writer on Little Shop.

Well, I mean, it's an adaptation. He could have gotten, you know, who knows what writing credits do? We could do an All of Me episode, but we could also definitely do this movie. I thought it had a nomination somewhere. It did not. 87, a good, well, it's not three amigos. Is this a movie that I like? I would bet you like this movie.

It's not House Sitter, of course. That's 92. This is like one of the Champagne Steve Martin movies, like the ones that critics like. Unless I'm completely misremembering it. It's not Grant Canyon. He was winning like major critics prizes for that movie. Oh, is it Roxanne?

Sure is Roxanne. I remember not liking Roxanne. but I think I saw Roxanne when I was like 12. So I will probably give Roxanne another shot. Darryl Hannah? Daryl Hannah. Who directed Roxanne? Fred Chappisi.

Sure. Who directed six degrees of separation? I'm pretty sure. I think. I think. All right. 99.06. Is 99, oh, no.

Is 99 Father of the Bride Part 2? Oh, no. that's way too... Yeah. Is it the out-of-towners? It's not the out-of-towners. Oh, oh, I'm so stupid. Bowfinger.

Bofinger. A movie that I like, but not as much as a lot of people like Bofinger. A lot of people like fucking love Bofinger. 2006. You're laughing too much of this. Did he quote... Did he write Bringing Down the House?

No. Bringing Down the House is... closer to Queen Latifah's Oscar nomination. I think that's like 0.4. Oh, literally when you said that, it sounded like you were saying that bringing down the house came close to getting Queen Latifah and Oscar nomination. No, no, no, no. That's a January movie, my friend.

No, that's like February, but that was a, that movie made so much money. 06, Steve Martin, and he wrote it, but it's not Shop Girl. Shop Girl was 05. Yeah. So he did two years in a row where he was writing movies. Oh, six. Is he a star in it as well?

Sure does. Huh. Do I like this movie? I don't think you've seen this movie. I don't think you would see this movie. Is this like... Though maybe I should watch this movie. Have you never seen this movie?

I have not. Is it like the Spanish prisoner or whatever the fuck? No. He's in something like that, but it's not that, maybe. It might be a the blank blank, but it's not the Spanish prisoner. The... Is it a comedy? Yes, theoretically.

Oh, a dark comedy. No. A comedy of possibly questionable taste. Oh. It's also a movie that has a, we will, I, to not completely give it away, a very famous person who is not in a lot of movies, but is a starring role in this movie. Share? No. Less movies than Cher, but makes sense.

But a singer, someone who's best known for a singer. Yes. Female. Yes. um oh it's the pink panther it's the pink panther would you like to tell our listeners who the singer is oh biance do people not know that biance is in the pink panther uh didn't she have a song from it that like sampled the like i'm sure the famous theme the cast is crazy i might have to actually watch this pink panther steve martin obviously yeah Kevin Klein, Beyonce, Jean-Renaud, Henry Scherney, Emily Mortimer, and Kristen Chenoweth. All right, what's the name of the song? Hold on, I just got to get into. Soundtracks.

It's probably The Pink Panther, just like her song from Gold Member, is Hey Gold Member. Listen, Hey Gold Member is a really good song, and it's very underrated, and she probably never performs it at her shows, and she probably should. Hey, Gold Member, being your favorite Beyonce song. Eric, he's got the mightest touch, but he touched it too much. Hegel, member, is, is, it's beautiful. It's gold, it's gold, it's gold, it's gold, baby. He's got the mightest touch, but he touched it too much. He'll remember, he's got a golden pad.

All right, that's our episode. If you want more ThisHad Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at thisheadoscarbuzz, on Instagram at ThisHad Oscar Buzz, and on Patreon at patreon.com slash this had Oscar Buzz. Joe, where can the listeners find more of you? Well, I... Sorry, it's distracted. You can find me on... It's a rough one tonight. You can find me on the socials, either Letterbox or Blue Sky at Joe Reed, read spelled R-E-I-D.

You can find me talking about to me more on my... Patreon podcast series called Demi Myself and I that you can find on Patreon.com slash DemiPod that's D-E-M-I-P-O-D. And you can also find me on Letterbox and Blue Sky, that's a Chris V-File, that's F-E-I-L.

We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mievious for their technical guidance when needed, and Taylor Cole for our theme music. Please remember to rate like and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get those podcasts. Five-star review in particular,

really helps us out with Apple podcast visibility. So turn the porch light on. We do live here. That's all for this week. We hope you'll be back for next week for more buzz and us being more gathered. Let's say that. Let's say that. All right.

Bye. Bye. You know what I'm going to be.