This Had Oscar Buzz - 330 – In Good Company (with Emily St. James!)

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

Oh, the quaint economic anxieties of 20 years ago! We’re tackling 2004’s seriocomic tale of “what if your much younger boss slept with your newly adult daughter” and Paul Weitz film In Good Company, and writer Emily St. James returns to the show to help us unpack it. Modest lighthearted fare, the movie pits dad-mode Dennis … Continue reading "330 – In Good Company (with Emily St. James!)"

Oh, oh, wrong house. No, the right house. We want to talk to Melon Hack, Melon Hack and French. I'm from Canada water. Dick Pooh You want to grab some dinner tonight I have to go home and have dinner with my family You want to have dinner with my family

Oh yeah, are you? Yes, Abbs, let me just grab my shop Wait Thank you so much for having me in your home He's really young He's a lot younger than you Thank you for that. What are you doing here? I kind of reached on to your dad and invited myself over for dinner.

Why, you're sort of a bizarrely honest guy. I'm not, just around you. You kids ready to come in for dinner? Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that's Sarch of like a handsome person? Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we are here to perform the

autopsy. I'm your host, Joe Reed. I'm here, as always, with my creative writing major at $30,000 a year. Chris File. Hello, Chris. Don't go to NYU and be a creative writing major. Just write shit on your own and save so much money. You may end up being a creative writing teacher with that degree. Who knows? We don't know that. We don't know that. She could be the next Faulkner. We don't know that. She could be the next all be. She could be the next Joan Didion. She's just going to end up dating a bunch of people who will be on sketch teams in New York City for decades on end.

Chris, we have a guest, and we do not like to keep our guests waiting because it freaks us out. No, I can never remember which shows I should just start talking on and which then, like, David Sims will, like, nod approvingly to me. The thing about blank check is that they will have you on. on, they will not introduce you for a minute, for a while, but they will be absolutely indignant about you starting talking. And so it's just like, all right, it's all on me then, and that's fine. I get desperately, desperately panicky when we have somebody in the room and we have not introduced them and they don't know whether they can speak or not. So let's just... Yeah, I get it. I get it. I've been... We are coming... We are pro just jump in.

Exactly. We have a returning guest for this episode back from our Moby Dick episode, our episode that reached back the furthest into cinema history to talk about a movie, screenwriter extraordinaire, co-host of the podcast Like It series. Emily St. James, welcome back to this head off close. Hello, thank you so much. And you know what? I was reading some article about like when they founded the academy and they were pointing to like, here are some movies we could have awarded. And those all technically had Oscar buzz. So, like, we're going to do that. We're going to do like a movie from Blacks, Knuckles. Like, let's go. Year one. Fantastic.

Yeah. A record not to be broken. The movie that opened opposite wings at the local theaters. Emily, you, I can't remember where we were or what was happening, whether this, whether you expressed this on the Mobbidic episode or perhaps in a podcast. like its episode. But it's somewhere along the line, you had declared your intention to talk about in good company on this podcast. And I was immediately intrigued. I think it's when we all did Aaron Brockovich on. Yes, that is what it was. Very good memory, Chris. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just, I don't, I had this memory of feeling fondly towards this movie. I never in the back of my brain was like,

oh, I love this movie. You know, it wasn't like a secret. Russian project for me. But both my wife and I would be occasionally just like, oh, in good company. That was kind of a nice little movie. And rewatching it for this, I saw where those fond feelings came from. And they were, let's say, complicated in many ways. In general, the core of this, just like, I read this thing about, you know, on Wikipedia, it says that they were going to turn it into a TV show and that never happened.

But yeah, this is like a great setup for like a long running mid-2000s. It makes all the sense in the world for this to have been a TV show. Yeah, absolutely. Tofer Grace has Jim Parsons vibes. Yeah, yeah. Well, and it's also just sort of like, you know, corporate culture in the odds or whatever. It's just like, okay, like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but something about this was just like, it would, it felt to me when I saw it in theaters, when it was released, it felt to me like what adulthood should, like, should, like, should, like, you know.

like what adulthood was. This is what it means to be an adult human being. And I am going to go out there and I'm going to be a Marg Helgenberger and have a baby at 48 or whatever age she's supposed to be. I swear to God. And not, you know, and not just like some weird dilettante. And here I am a weird dilettante, but I'm on this podcast. And that's what matters.

So I'm so happy to be here. This is a workplace with a lot of characters. You know, characters welcome. at in good company between Pamer and Ty Borel with his center part to spot the 2004-ist moment in this movie. And it's like, oh, God, Ty Borel in a character role with the center part. Amy Aquino, Colleen Camp is just sort of just there as the kind of like weepy receptionist at the company. We do have a character actor, six-timers quiz this episode. I'm so bummed. It's not Amy Aquino. I know. I imagine we've had our share of Amy

Aquino movies. We'll eventually get to you, Romanoffia. Yes. And we're very close. This is not our David Pamer six-timer, but we're getting closer to a David Pamer six-timer as well. So. Yeah. Amy Aquino is the first character actor I loved. Like, I was, I was obsessed with this TV show Brooklyn Bridge when I was like, My mom loved that show. Yeah. I don't know why I watched it. I related heavily to the Jenny Lewis character for some reason.

Phenomenal. Like, I don't know why I was like, I'm like a Catholic school girl in the 1950s who falls in love with a Jewish boy. I don't know why I felt that. Like, I grew up in the middle of nowhere. But like, and Amy Akeena was brilliant on that. And she was like one of the, just giving an amazing performance. And so I've always loved her. And I'm like, oh, it's because of that, you know.

What was Brooklyn Bridge? I do not have a memory of Brooklyn Bridge. Well, I'm so glad you asked, Chris. Brooklyn Bridge was a two-season series created by Gary David Goldberg, the creator of Family Ties. He sort of famously was like, I made my money. Now I'm going to tell a personal story. It was hugely critically beloved. It won like TCA Awards and viewers for quality. I imagine a Peabody was there somewhere. Yeah. Yeah, and basically it was about a family of Jewish kids growing up in 1950s, Brooklyn, in the immediate shadow of World War II, the Holocaust and all of that, and just sort of how they're trying to have a normal childhood, care about the Brooklyn Dodgers, and like the older generations are like having these like real moments of like, are we safe? Can we ever be safe? And then Jenny Lewis was there as a Catholic school girl. And like it was, it was a really great show. I've caught up with it. a couple times. Some of the episodes are on YouTube. It does hold up to the extent that it can. But yeah, it ran one season and was almost canceled. Then they renewed it for critical buzz reasons. And then it ran a second season and was canceled after that. Got a bunch of Emmy nominations. It's like a hidden little gem, I would say. Amy Aquino and Peter Friedman

played the Central. Oh, now we're talking. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Marion Ross was the grandmother of the series that's the yeah yeah and marian ross received Emmy nominations I think for both seasons she was like the she was like the kind of the

the tune in reason she was in all the ads because it was like her first TV role in a while yeah it's uh yeah I think it's worth checking out if you're feeling like watching something that takes you back to a more innocent time for yeah the sixth episode of

of the first season is titled What I Did for Love, and it is written by Teresa Rebex, so I'm just saying if we all want to go and dig out this show. I'm guessing somebody kisses today, goodbye. You cannot say that

Brooklyn Bridge is not a smash prequel. You don't know that. Now you don't. Now you absolutely can't say it. It's totally true. Amy Aquino, as sort of my first character actress, makes a lot of sense because I remember seeing a lot

of her on ER. She had this sort of recurring role on ER, not a main cast member, but like definitely she was around a lot. I definitely remember her as Felicity's guidance counselor, I believe, Felicity. And then she was in one episode of the West Wing where she played this Congresswoman who was going to attach an amendment to a bill that would have caused a lot of problems for the, for the Bartlett administration. And Stocker Channing had, had to shut it down. And shut it down, she did. So. And listen, Amy Aquino got all that TV work off Brooklyn Bridge. So I, like, really, when I saw her pop up on ER, I was like, I was there. I was there for the birth. Yep. Incredible character actress. Absolutely

love her. So, yeah, there is that kind of TV energy. And plus then you've got, like, the main character with, like, the wife and girls at home. right and if you extended this to a TV show then you'd also have a baby at home so they'd have you know so much to deal with whatever that makes a ton of sense Chris had you seen in good company before we assigned

this? Yes I saw it in theaters and I don't think I have seen it since I saw it in theaters but I really liked it in theaters probably because at the time I thought Kofor Grace was cute, was very much in my reverse Cuomo green album era I

you would not be A jury could not convict you for finding Tofer Grace Kute. That is... Definitely ripped all of the needle drops in this movie off of Kazaa. This was a movie I remember watching the trailer for a bunch in 2004. I remember when I eventually did see it, I remember being a little disappointed by it, but I remember having like, I saw this trailer a bunch. The music in this movie is very liberal, dad.

music, you know, you've got David Byrne, you've got Peter Gabriel, Salisbury Hill is definitely the trailer song. Salisbury Hill is 100% the trailer song. Damien Rice, Iron and Wine is in this movie. I was trying to figure out why they gave this a qualifying run, because they did. Yes, opened very late. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I was like, I don't, maybe they thought Dennis Quaid, you know, maybe they were

like some of the, Charlotte Johansson, obviously very hot, so maybe they sort of thought It would be her. But, like, I do think their most realistic category was original song. I mean, Trapeze Swinger is, you know, I think that's why I love this movie, honestly. Oh, was that original to this movie? Yes, that's original to this film. Okay. And then, but then you think they could have gotten one of the David Byrne songs in, because those are also original to this film. Like, they could have gotten. And, like, that was a week year for that category, which you talked about on your Oscar Snubs episode, but, like, we're going to talk about again, because I hate that year for that. category. There's so many of better options. But yeah, that's what they should have gone for. They should have done a qualifying run just to get a song nomination. I also feel like they probably thought they could have gotten Golden Globe nominations out of it because this is a comedy. But it is kind of a strong Globes musical comedy. Yes, yes, especially when they're including things like, and we've had this argument, we don't need to have the Ray argument again,

but they're including things like Ray as musicals rather than as dramas. So, like, they're kind of stacking the deck with musical comedy stuff that year. David Burns, for somebody who was very recently nominated for an Oscar for everything everyone at once, and then has an Oscar for writing the original score for The Last Emperor, it is somewhat surprising that his career isn't just sort of, like, dotted with Oscar nominations, the way that somebody like A. Randy Newman has. You know what I mean?

Where I feel like writing songs for movies feels like a thing that David Byrne would be very good at. It's weird. David Byrne isn't an egot. Also that. At this point.

Yeah. It's that flavor of talent that he has. So, yeah, definitely. He should, like, it feels like he did this random song score for like a Pixar movie. It, like, just, like, won him six off. You know, like, he's singing, like, weird songs about existential malaise as, like,

Buzz Light Ear is staring out the window at the rain or something. Yeah. If you ever had, you know how, like, they used to have game shows, like, to tell the truth or whatever, where you had people, you just sort of their, the task was to convince you of, you know, something that isn't true, but sort of tell it as if it's true. That would be, first of all, it would be an incredible show for the current era of post-Fex existence. But I feel like that would be a good story to tell. It would just be like David Byrne has David Byrne eGotted on a movie where he wrote all of the songs and was nominated for multiple awards. Yeah, that would make a ton of sense.

Chris, I don't want to waste any time with not talking about in good company. So why don't we blow through the part where we tell our listeners that if they have not already subscribed, to the Patreon. They really should. Listen, listeners, you hear about it every week, but we have a Patreon called This Had Oscar Buzz Turbulent Brilliance. For $5 a month, you are going to have a really good time over there. Not only do we have going on two years of back episodes for you to go catch up on, but we've had a really good month over on the Patreon. What are you going to get for that $5 a month? You're going to get two bonus episodes, the first of which,

comes on the first Friday of the month, we call this exceptions. The exceptions episodes are movies that really fit that this had Oscar Buzz rubric, but managed to score a nomination or two. This month, we have done none other than Joel Schumacher's, Andrew Lloyd Webbers, the Phantom of the Opera, and we had none other than our friend Natalie Walker on to talk about that. Other recent exceptions episodes, we've done House of Gucci, Knives Out, Pleasantville, nine, Molly's game, other guest episodes, including Knives Out with Jorge Molina, Australia, with Katie Rich. It's a good time over there on the exceptions episode.

Then on the third Friday of the month, you're going to get an excursion episode. These are deep dives into Oscar ephemeral we love obsessing about on the show. And this month, we have done our second annual superlatives awards. This is basically our way of doing a This Had Oscar Buzz award show. The Best Picture lineup is picked from our listeners, including the winner. And then Joe and I go back and forth with random categories we love to joke about throughout the Oscar season. Other excursions we've done recently, we do things like EW Fall Movie previews. We recap old award shows like the Independent Spirit Awards and Old Golden Globe,

uh previously we just did the 1998 sex issue of movie line that had the notorious issue of jennifer lopez talking shit about a lot of her fellow actresses um and also a really banger madeline stow interview that was the that was the surprise gift in that issue was that madeline stow interview oh my god madeline stow screaming expletives out of the window of her car um so sign up for This Had Oscar Buzz Turbulent Brilliance over at patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz. Exactly. Exactly what Chris said. Do what Chris said. We're going to be talking about the 2004 film In Good Company in this episode, written and directed by Paul Weitz of the famous American Pie White's brothers. We'll certainly get into that. Starring, among many others, Dennis Quaid, Tofer Grace, Scarlet

Johansson, Marg Helgenberger, David Pamer, Clark Gregg. there was, as we said, Amy Aquino, Selma Blair shows up, John Cho shows up, Malcolm McDowell as an uncredited demon CEO, Frankie Faison, as a cool, cool older black guy who doesn't get into the young hip music that Tofer Grace is posturing for. tremendous role, tremendous boomer, tremendous boomer representation, Frankie Faison on this movie. Tributed by Universal at the very, very end of 2004, premiered on December 29, 2004, opened in limited release. So it was far behind the likes of the second week of Meet the Fockers, the third week of lemony Snicket's, a series of unfortunate events, a movie that won an Oscar that was presented in the aisles, the back of the auditorium because that was the thing they decided to do that year and the aviator was in its third week fat albert was in its second week we all remember where we were when fat albert uh uh hit the hit the multiplexes um the Milwaukee wisconsin yes

I do imagine rolling up to the theater and be like my choices are Martin Scorsese is The Aviator, the fourth week of Oceans 12, which was our number five movie, or Fad Albert, or Meet the Fokkers, or a series of unfortunate events. We talk about how, like, the 90s, we were sort of spoiled for choice. There's a different flavor of spoiled for choice here in 2004, I feel like. You still have a, you still have a variety, but it is, it's a variety full of interesting sequels and TV shows turned into it. It does feel a little like an AI, just sort of like slowly taking aim at IP that will work and just like kind of trying stuff. So you're still getting like variety, but it's very much, yeah, it's within a

narrow range of what's going to like work. And like in that world, like even then in good company felt like an anomaly to me. Yes. Like certainly there were other movies like it coming out at that time. But it was like, like watching it now, I was like, I would kind of like, obviously I would kill to have something like this right now, but I would have killed to have it in like 2009. Absolutely. It felt like it was the last of this dying breed. This is a movie that reminds me of a lot of other types of movies, and we'll get into that on the other side of the plot description, because I feel like White's was, in a way that

he doesn't feel like he does in other movies, Fizz, is really sort of seemingly going for a specific vibe. But we'll get into that after Emily, I'm going to ask you. to deliver a 60-second plot description for in-good company whenever you are ready. All right. Set the clock. Stopwatch is ready and begin. As with the AV Club, I'm just going to say actor names.

Dennis Quaid is playing an aging boomer whose job is making him feel more and more like he's not in touch because his company gets bought out by this giant conglomerate that's sort of a tech conglomerate and sort of not. his new boss is Tofer Grace as a just out of grad school Wonderkind and Dennis Quaid also has a family with Mark Helgenberger Scarlett Johansson and Zena Gray someone we all love and remember

and his wife is pregnant his job's in danger and he and Tofer sort of have a weird like mentor relationship where he's trying to help Tofer even though Tofer's technically his boss they go through a bunch of foibles Tofer starts dating his daughter Scarlett Johansson

and eventually Tofer loses his job Dennis Quaid keeps his job, and the world of the boomer supremacy can continue unabated. With eight seconds to spare, incredibly efficient plot description right there. Excellent job. Not a lot of plot. Not a lot of meat on this bone. Not a lot of—exactly, exactly. It feels like this is one of those very elevator pitch kind of movies.

It's like, what if the nightmare—you know, the I-Mobile. dating, if you look at this from the Tofer Grace character's perspective, because this is definitely a dual perspective movie. It's not just Dennis Quaid, like Tofer Grace is also a protagonist, and it's, what if I'm dating the daughter of my mentor, except I am my mentor's boss? You know what I mean? Like, that's the modern twist. I am now the hot shot business brat who is the boss of my older and more experienced underling now. So that's the twist. Welcome to 2004.

And it is like, this is a way we can talk about the world today where like the boomers are giving way to Gen X. And like now in 2025 we know that just didn't happen. No. From their cold dead hands with the boomers relinquish anything. Yeah. I think the like as an elevator pitch movie,

The dynamics are pretty clear, right? And the movie does not, kind of doesn't waste time getting to them, right? Where it's just like we get to this new business situation. Immediately, Tofer is installed ahead of Dennis Quaid. And Dennis Quaid, for somebody who has just found out that his wife, Mark Helgenberger, is pregnant, which I had remembered that that was like a secret. longer in the movie. I feel like when I first went. But like they clear that up right away because

he sees the pregnancy test in the trash and he immediately thinks it's Scarleth Johansson. But anyway, secretly a very product placement movie. Because it's the first response pregnancy test. They order Domino's pizza. And they like

mentioned it in the dialogue. That's right. That's right. Yeah, this movie was getting its financing by hook or by crook. Good job, Universal. It's absolutely, it's again, it feels like the last of an era because that's increasingly these movies had to have everything be product placement. And like what happens is then they become indies and the budget shrink. But like you then they're like Oscar nominations because they're right out of Sundance or something. Right. Exactly. But Quaid for somebody who has his wife is pregnant, he's going to need this job. He's awfully cavalier with his toad in the office with this like new this new regime where he does not hide his disdain for a. Tofer Grace or any of the newfangled corporate, whatever, directives that are coming into his job right now. He works at essentially at Sports Illustrated, a generic version of Sports Illustrated.

He is playing a Hollywood director. You know, he's playing a guy who can go into a meeting. He's playing a Hollywood director who's had a recent amount of success. Right. And he's very much playing Paul White's. He can, like, go into a meeting and be like, I just did about a boy. I got an Oscar nomination for it. Therefore, you have to listen to me.

And, like, it is, it is like that fantasy of I can say what I want and people are going to respect me for saying it that I think a lot of, like, boomer white guys have clung to because it held true for them for a long time, you know. But this movie is certainly about, like, this early era of like, oh, this isn't going to be true forever, you know, if nothing else I'm going to die. Right, right. Well, and he's also, he's, I think it's important. too is he is like head of the sales department right so he's his whole thing is i can convince

philip baker hall to advertise in our movie he's ad i guess it's ad sales right um i can convince philip baker hall to advertise in our magazine by making doing the really soft sell doing the really casual i'm just going to leave you with this magazine i'm going to send you a copy every week and we're going to talk again in three weeks, and I have the quiet confidence or whatever. And he's not, which again feels like a boomer fantasy of just like, we didn't have to be, you know, we didn't have to be so obnoxious about everything. We didn't have to be so in your face with our, with our, you know, new ideas and our new, you know, whatever.

We can just have the quiet confidence to be like, Philip Baker Hall is going to come advertise for us because he knows that we're the best. And like some of this is a perspective. of this movie being 20 years old and certain things that would happen to, oh, I don't know, magazines in that 20 years of time. And then also the coming financial crisis, a few years after this movie. Yeah. But it's like they convince Philip Baker Hall to do this huge ad buy with the magazine. And he very specifically says, no, we're not doing that fancy new thing you're doing.

We're just doing advertising in the magazine. And they convince him to do it because it's essentially a fuck you to his young. son-in-law, which is just like, oh, okay, so Philip Baker Hall is definitely running his dying business into the ground. He is one of those magazine people that, like, just dies, you know. Well, this movie is situated kind of at the mathematical midpoint of the dot-com bubble bursting and the financial crisis that would happen at the end of the decade. And it's just like, right in the middle, we found this little oasis of, like, low-key anxiety, but where we can kind of stick it to these young pups with their, you know, dumb little corporate speak.

And their dumb little cell phones. And their dumb little cell phones, which, by the way, oh, I wrote down all of the ways in which this movie made fun of things that then became, like, actually true. Like, cell phones for kids, like, what you're going to give a toddler, a cell phone? And it's just like, I literally just got done. babysitting, my, you know, nephew who has this, like, toddler version of a cell phone or whatever that, like, he can play games on or... And it's a dinosaur cell phone. And when Tofer Grace was, like, wiggling that around, I was like, yeah, that's an otterbox case. I was going to say...

Yes. Yes. I have seen that cell phone. The big climactic thing where Terrence, or whatever, not Terence Stampe, Malcolm McDowell comes to speak at the thing. First of all, Malcolm McDowell's character, who was, I imagine style, after like a Rupert Murdoch. But it comes across in this case way more like a Elon Zuckerberg, Bezos, sort of just like a guy with like fans. A guy with like sick, you know what I mean? Who's just like Teddy Kay, like he's on the cover of magazines. He's revolutionizing the way, you know, we do business and whatever. That feels very much.

Everybody talk about Teddy Kay, Teddy Kay, Teddy Kay. And the whole movie, it sounds like a euphemism for drugs. It sounds like they're just doing ketamine. in this office. I really felt like he was kind of a Richard Branson riff. When I was like around this time, in the 90s,

Richard Branson would just come up and people would be like, well, he's the multi-billionaire CEO of Virgin. I would be like, what's Virgin? Let's just start there. Like I never had any clear idea why he was rich or what he did, but like he was everywhere and I had to care about him. Well, Virgin was

the sort of the example of while a company when you first learn this it does kind of blow your mind the fact that like when you find out that like one of the most profitable companies in the entire world is Seagrams and you're like the club soda and you're like

yeah except it's everything like when you find out that like Nabisco is this like multi, you know armed global conglomerate when you find out that Virgin is both airplanes and record stores

That was like, oh, wow, like, that's weird. Why is it both of those things? They're not related in any way, modern day business. And but so in that scene where Malcolm McDowell comes and he gives the speech to the company and Dennis Quaid bravely, much like the meme of the man standing up in the town council meeting, stands up and defies Malcolm McDowell. And he says, your ideas, Mr. Emperor, are stupid. And he's like, who would want to read in their sports magazine about computers? And it's just like, oh, like every single now site that is about like sports and media or about, you know, it's like has a combined.

It's just like this stuff actually happened. And meanwhile, this movie is like har, har, har, har, dumb business. It's just, it's funny. It's, I do feel like Malcolm McDowell, they would have gotten a lot more juice on him. don't see his image early in the film and they're talking about Teddy Kay and you see like a picture of him and you're like, oh, that's Malcolm McDowell. If it had been like this mysterious figure and Malcolm McDowell steps in, then I'm more a little bit more inclined to be like, oh my God, they got Malcolm McDowell. Even though I'm kidding Malcolm McDowell is like not, you know,

not on the level of like, oh my God, they got Bill Murray, you know. Right, right. What if you keep hearing about Teddy Kay, Teddy Kay, Teddy Kay, and then when you're at the meeting, out walks in a power suit, Emma Thompson, because it's Teddy with an IK, and it's a woman CEO, and everybody's minds are blown. Your audience would not know what to do. Dennis Quaid would have just, like, blown a gasket, and we all would have celebrated him, standing up for men in a sports magazine. You will not take our sports magazine from us.

This is a very, very, very, this is what men are movie, even though it's about, ad sales? Sure. Yeah. You know, because it's like, well, what, what naturally would happen to the emasculating, the emasculating process of having a younger male boss as an older male employee? Well, naturally, you're going to become his father. You're going to become a surrogate father. And in that way, like, this is where I feel like the legacy of this movie, well, first of all, I do want to, you mentioned the ad sales thing, which I think is so funny, is that we have. have a movie that is literally like arguing for the the primacy of ad sales that like listen we used to do ad sales the right way you know what I mean we that ad sales were the part of this sort

of like great Americana but the you know the he's you know the new boss and he's dating your daughter feels very throwbacky feels very sort of you know Spencer Tracy and someone but it also So this movie, I wrote down immediately within the first 20 minutes of this movie, I wrote down James L. Brooks and Cameron Crowe. Because like these seem to be the two people who Paul White's really wants to make his James L. Brooks movie. And if he can't make his James L. Brooks movie, he'll make his Cameron Crowe movie. And by God, he'll make his Cameron Crowe movie. And this movie comes out right around the time of Elizabeth Town. And part of me is like if Cameron Crow and Paul White's could have gotten in the same room and just sort of collabowed on what. one good movie that, you know, took some of, you know, the In Good Company stuff and some of the Elizabeth Town stuff and let Cameron Crow go ham on the soundtrack and, you know, whatever, maybe they'd have some, or maybe it would just be like the monster Olyssesu of just like the worst example of both of these things possible. But either way, I'd be entertained. Who's the Sue to Cameron Crow's Elizabeth Sparkle? I think there's a couple problems with the movie

with all you just described because all you just described, I think, is very true. First and foremost, Dennis Quaid is not Spencer Tracy. Wow, yeah. Second of all, the, like, Cameron Crowiness

that this movie is reaching for, it really never gets us on board with the romance. We're not emotionally involved in this romance. We're not really rooting for this romance to succeed against the odds that are stacked against it. And I think that I think that's true even beyond the creepy factor of this romance, which we'll get into.

And then I guess maybe it's closest to the James L. Brooksiness of it, but it also just feels a little bit lacking depth, you know, like, yeah, you could do a double feature of this in Spanglish, James L. Brooks's 2004. It's also, yeah, came out that month, that same month, yeah. this this movie very much feels in conversation to me with american beauty which is sort of obviously that you can see why this movie got greenlit kind of like well it maybe it'll be american beauty in a way and like but what's interesting about this is it is very much a movie about the anxieties of knowing tectonic plates are shifting beneath you but not being entirely sure in which direction and for now you're stable whereas american beauty was like we can do no wrong I have seen God

and I'm going to fuck a teenager Right That's what that movie's And this movie's like The teenager's my daughter And I'm not going to have sex with her I'm going to watch as my boss does So it's like all it does feel like in that ring

Well there's just like a decided turn against Decisions are made To not make this into a dark movie In any way We've sort of like we turn away from the darkness It all turns It is also the rare movie That ends with happy regression

to the mean, where, like, it ends with things back where they started for Dennis Quaid for the most part. I guess he has gained a biological daughter and a surrogate son by the end of this movie. I guess that's sort of how Dennis Quaid has changed by the end of this movie. But, like, he gets his job back. He gets David Pamer back in the fold, you know, his right-hand man or whatever. I guess maybe the other guy who was mean to Dennis Quaid when he got fired didn't get asked back. And fair enough. I don't remember whether he or Pamer was the one who Tofor Grace was like, he's in trouble in HR because he called such and such sugar tits.

I'm like, I hope that person didn't get brought back. Although maybe that was David Pamer. For the way that David Pamer talks about, pulls out the like the real Don Rickles, my wife, material or whatever. Anyway, where was I at? Oh, Dennis Quaid ends up like this, it's a triumph that he's back at his old job. Like, you never see that in a movie.

It's really odd to see that. I want to see. I want to see in better company. Like, I think, I spent this whole movie being like, I mean, obviously Quaid would just be playing Ronald Reagan. Like, it would be, but, but like, I do want to, like, this, I want to see a movie about this boomer who still has his cushy job somehow, even though, like, the entire media industry

has, like, shifted underneath him. He's clung to it. Now his, his youngest daughter's 21, you know, and, like, she's really challenging the way he thinks about things. And then I think, like, Tofer and Scarlett did get married. Yeah. Many years later. And now they have kids, and she's, like, a high-powered, like, works in Hollywood somewhere, like, took that creative writing degree into the C-suite of, like, some studio. And, like, Tofer, Grace stays home with their kids, and Dennis Quaid has a lot of problems with that. So the actual... You're just describing the in-better company that is Meet the Fockers, kind of.

Yeah. In-Better Company made in 2024, though, is the story there is, Dennis Quaid has remained in his position in the ensuing 20 years, refuses to give up, refuses to retire, refuses to allow Scarlett Johansson to take over the business. and, you know, makes moves against... It is essentially more succession than anything else where it's just sort of like now in 2024, the anxiety is not that the boomer is being replaced. The anxiety now has been passed on to his millennial daughter and her generation of just like,

we can't get my dad out of this position. He's consolidated power and he won't leave. And it's making everything worse. It's killing the business. business. To go back to the James L. Brooks, Cameron Crowe comparison, I think that what keeps this movie from succeeding is Alex, the Scarlet's Johansson character, is kind of not a character. A real, real empty space. Yeah. Cameron Crow, I think, is not as good at writing women as, like, sort of his reputation, but he's very good at writing male fantasies of women. 100%. And that's kind of where

Alex is supposed to live. And, like, she just doesn't. She's just kind of like, she's not, Simultaneously idealized daughter and idealized lover And the movie can't figure out what to do with that Because if you think about it too long, it's kind of creepy. Well, if you showed me... Especially because I think the Tofer Grace character is written into this corner where it's like, all he needs is just a woman to speak to him.

Yeah. Like, she does not need to have characteristic. She does not need to have anything to impart. She must simply speak. Yep, yep. They put a tennis racket in her hand for one scene. They put her in a coffee in a little outdoor coffee shop table in another

scene and those are her characteristics. If you had showed me this movie and Lost in Translation and been like which one happened first, there is no possible way I would have said that in good company happens a year after Lost in Translation because it really does look like an actress who hasn't sort of figured out how to command the screen. And I don't think

it's she does not defeat the inadequacies of the character but she I don't think it's her fault that she does not she's not in any way dynamic in this movie is surprising to me

when I went back and I read Ebert's review and he has like two full sentences about like Scarlett O'Hanson just sort of like jumps off the screen and I'm like in this movie though like in general yes But, like, not in this one, I don't think. Is this the last time she played a role like this, a, like, teenager into young adult?

Because I feel like the next year's match point where suddenly she's like, this woman is in her early 30s and we're all lusting after them. Yes. Yeah. Yes. I think that's right. Is that I think this movie probably got, in good company, probably got cast before lost in translation happened. So I think match point is probably when you start getting the post lost in translation. casting era where all of a sudden it's just like, yes, we are not interested in her as someone's

daughter. We are interested in her as somebody who will fuck up your life if you allow her to. I mean, not that this movie really exists, even though we love gaslighting listeners into thinking that it's a real movie. A love song for Bobby Long happens when? Same year, right? 04. No, I think it's 0.4. Yeah. She's nominated for a love song. for Bobby Long and not this movie. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, match point is 05, and then it's like the island, the Black Dahlia, the prestige, the other Berlin girl, where she was the other Berlin girl, Vicki Christina Barcelona,

where she was Christina. Oh, I could do a Scarlet-Johansson name and title for Cinematrix, well. Putting a pin in that. I will be playing a love song for Bob Long. Yeah. Totally. Totally. Totally. She like, is she is someone who I've always loved her. She's in so many great movies. Yeah. She's one of those, like, I remember one of the things I loved about Asteroid City was the degree to which she and Jason Swartzman were playing me. You know, the fact that like I've grown up alongside these people. Now they're playing parents, like that thing of like how it felt like they were like they were speaking generationally to me through actors like know my whole life. But it does feel to me like after Lost in Translation. she cannot find the lane just because like she's so preternaturally attractive.

Yeah. And so like nobody knows what to do with that until kind of she's in her late 20s, early 30s. When she's preternaturally attractive in a way that Hollywood's like, we can put you right here. And like, then she's just great throughout. Yeah, yeah. No, I've always been a big fan of Scarlett Johansson. I think, I think this movie. does not know, it has such a, it has a strong handle on what it wants the Quaid Tofer Grace relationship to be.

And I feel like the reasons why I like in good company to the extent that I do are very much sort of on the Tofer Grace side of the ledger where I think he's better than he needs to be. I think he's genuinely pretty funny in this movie. I think as a sort of, you know, as a sort of, you know, as a. James L. Brooks character as a Cameron Crow character as somebody who is sort of, you know, completely, he's not, I think in a lesser, in lesser hands, he would just be awkward or he would be like a disaster. And in this movie, because White's sort of puts half of the movie in his perspective, he's failing, but he doesn't want to be. He wants to, he sort of has this half-assed vision of what he wants his like. to be. And then as it's happening, he's sort of realizing that it's just, it's not suited to him in any kind of real way. And the scene where he comes over for dinner, first of all, where he invites himself over for dinner in this very sort of just like, Dennis Quaid's like, I've got to have dinner with my family. I don't have to have. And Tofer's like, oh, yes, I accept your non-invitation. And then he hugs Mark Helgenberger right in the door. And then

she says we're having baked ziti and he goes on for a solid minute about how much he likes baked ziti oh baked ziti that's the best i love a good bake ziti blah blah blah i'm just like you're so charming you're really selling this you know this guy who's just grabbing onto whatever is floating past him just sort of just like guidance guidance give me guidance i need something um this i like him a lot in this i do this movie's kind of about the specific anxiety of being Tofer Grace, specifically, the person, you can imagine, like, there's not a lot of, weirdly, there's not all of information about casting on this movie on the internet. Strangely, yeah. But you can imagine they went into it being like, we'll get Hanks, we'll get Tofer Grace.

And, like, those will be our two guys, and it's going to be with this sort of generational handoff of solid American, but also like how these younger guys maybe feel a lot of intimidation at being in our shoes, the lions of the cinema. And, like, it, but yeah, with Quaid, like, it loses some of that metatextual quality that I think might have propped it up a little bit more. And to be clear, like, I think a lot of the failings of this film just sort of lie on the script, never quite taking off in the way you want it to. But, like, I think that casting the Quaid role with, like, a Hanxian figure, someone who we have this long relationship with would have, like, boosted this movie just a little bit more. I think one of the other things that happened. with this movie and is, I think Paul White's is aware enough to know that you don't want to have this movie that is about sort of generational handoffs to also include the fact that, like, I, as my, you know, package, as my, you know, gift package to you, Tofer Grace, you have my

guidance, you have my, you know, fatherly instincts. I will also give you my daughter. You know what I I mean, it does not, the movie knows enough to know that you don't want to end up with this thing where, like, Dennis Quaid is giving his daughter away at the wedding to Tofer Grace or whatever. So they have to end the romantic relationship between Tofer Grace and Scarlett Johansen on this sort of very open-ended way. They have this sort of, you know, winsome goodbye at the elevator bank. And then the last thing you see of him, Tofer Grace, he's on a beach in California. He's figuring out who he wants to be on his own. without any kind of whatever, which is good for the messaging of the movie

because I think if this was a movie about how Dennis Quaid hands over the generational reigns with Titova Grace with his daughter as like the bonus throw in. That would have been gross. But it doesn't replace that with anything positive for the daughter here. I'm also not so sure that there is actually a baton tossed

for that reason that we mentioned earlier that it's like the movie ends back where it started. But it is like because of the way history has gone, we know Tofer's going to go like found Twitter or something. Right.

We know that. Like he's going to go burn the earth down. Absurdly rich and destroy the planet and like install global fascism. And he's going to be like, well, I'm really great at video games, guys.

That's the thing I'm best at. But like. James Wade, Woo, you give me another hug. But like the smartest idea this movie has, I think, is that in the Scarlet Johansson reign, a circle of things, is that this is a seismic thing for Tofer Grace. He's, like, fallen in love with someone else who's not his wife.

And it's like, now he's going to, like, take her and get married. And for her, it's just fun. She's just having a nice fun time. And so she breaks up with him when she realizes their expectations are mismatched. Yeah. And, like, again, I think a version of this that is that doesn't feel like they broke up because Dennis Quaid told them to. which this movie sort of feels like, where, like, he wins over. And, like, I'm dating your daughter.

And also his daughter's, like, 24 instead of 19. That's the, yes, that, yeah. He's like. She couldn't just be applying to grad school from the jump. She has to be applying to undergrad when he meets her. Yeah, totally. And, like, he's a, it's, it is like if he had been won over and finally been like, I hate you dating my daughter.

I'm just like, you know what? I think you're really good for her. And then she's like, I don't actually want this. I have different things I want. and they break up, I think that's like a more solid, like, sort of story for those three. But, like, I try not to, like, I have a bad habit of doing these things now through screenwriter brain, where I'm like, well, here's what I would have done. But, like, what they have, more or less works, but you do get the feeling that, like,

oh, this breakup happened because Dennis Quait said it had to. And, like, I don't love that. It's almost impossible to imagine her character doing anything once the scenes in this movie are done. You know, she just does not seem like a person who exists. outside of the boundaries of this movie. And I always find that to be a red flag for things. This movie also has Selma Blair in the most thankless role, which is surprising that there's a more thankless role than the Alex Foreman.

Alex Foreman, who was thinking about taking up tennis professionally but decided to be a creative writing major instead. I'm like, that's not a decision that any real person, has made when they're 19 years old or whatever. You can't just decide to be a professional tennis player at 19, Scarlet, like, jeepers. Excuse me, Joseph Reed. I don't know if your name's Joseph. It is. Yes.

When I was that age, I went to school being like, I am going to be concert pianist. And I got there and was like, I was South Dakota State University, not known for its piano performance majors. Sure. But there was one guy who was better than me there. and I was like, oh, this guy's going to get all the jobs, and I'm not going to, I'm not good enough. It's the one piano player that will be getting all the piano player jobs. It was because he'd been drilling himself since he was like eight, and I just hadn't been doing that.

And so I, you know, I told my parents that and they were like, but you're so good at piano. And I was like, I think I'm better at writing. So I like became like, I just funneled everything I had into writing. And, you know, still, you know, they were. would long into my 30s, they would be like, oh, but you were so good at the piano. And I'd be like, look at this career I've made as a writer. I'd be like, yeah, but the piano was your real gift. So, so what you're saying is, you're seeing, you're seeing a real, oh, oh, it's me up there on screen there, Alex Foreman. I wonder if, like, I remembered really liking Scarlett in this movie,

and I knew it wasn't because I thought she was hot, even though she's a very beautiful woman. I knew it was like I felt like a connection to her character in a way I did, uh, lost in translation, it's because they accidentally replicated my real life. In Better Company is going to feature Scarlet Johansson running a production company. She is a production executive

and she's going to go back to play tennis and she's going to become a world champion by the end of the I think in better company needs to also, I emailed you this but the timeline is not quite right, but you can imagine Alex Foreman and Tashi Duncan being at the same

tennis event. That's a master stroke. In different, like, age brackets, but I think that... Tashi could not stand Alex former at Stanford, just really, really ate. This dilettante. Wade and Tofer Grace are going to have a really erotic son-us. Emily, you mentioned South Dakota State. Jackrabbits? You were a Jackrabbits?

I was a Jackrabbit. They went Division I while I was there. I worked at the college newspaper, and that was like a lot of our time was spent covering this move to Division one, and basically just reprinting university propaganda on it instead of questioning it in any way. That's that. I was great. I was a great journalist at the time.

But yeah, I think in Better Company also needs to be challengers, too. I think that's how we get these things made. Yeah. Yeah. We're making it out. Challenger's semi-colon in Better Company. Yeah. Perfect.

So one of the character actors in this movie who we haven't mentioned yet is Clark Greg's character. who is playing corporate asshole, like, with capital letters. Teddy K. Hype Man. Tofer Grace bad mentor. He's like, what Tofer Grace needs a good mentor because his current mentor, Clark Gregg, is a bad, bad human being who speaks in nothing but sort of corporate hype talk and is a Teddy Kay fanboy and uses words like Crispity Crum.

non-ironically and is just awful. This is not what you would call a typical role for Clark Gregg, I would say. He's never like this. He's never a jerk like this. He is not good at it. Like, I love Clark Gregg, but he is not good at playing. And you can sort of see that, like, okay, this Clark Gray character has. a similar relationship to Malcolm McDowell that we think Quaid and, like, Grace are going

to have. And so it is like this, like, father figure, like, battle. But, like, Clark Gregg just doesn't have the presence to be like, yeah, I would want to, like, maybe I would want to throw in with this guy, because even if I find him odious, he's got, like, some good ideas or, like, he's personally charming. He's got a lot of charisma, you know, and like, but it is, Clark Greg is just not, it is, it's a role that Kevin Spacey would have played in 1994. And, like, If Clark Greg is not, 1994 Kevin Spacey, you know, he's totally right. He just doesn't have that oiliness to him. Clark Craig isn't full dirtbag.

He can play someone who has not flawless qualities, you know, but not the full dirtbag. Well, so Clark Craig's had an interesting career and that, like, we can say his name and enough people will know, will recognize it because of the Marvel movies, where he plays Phil Colson and the Marvel movies. he is like the death that means something in the Avengers, which at the time was, you know, just the biggest movie ever, and then gets spun off into Agents of Shield, a show that I and Only I watched faithfully, at least for the first three seasons. Oh, I, I'm, I'm, I'm friends with the co-creator showrunners, some, uh, Jed Whedon and Marissa. Oh, I'm friendly with one of the people who was the showrunner, or was a writer on it later on. But yes. But yeah, and they're just, uh, Clark Gregg just sounds like the nicest guy. It just sounds like a good guy. Yeah. Which is why he should not be playing this party. Well, and then, so you look back and it's just like, Clark Gregg is one of those people who, again, like Amy Aquino, sort of feels like he's always been there. And so you go through and it's just like, oh, right, he was in, um, uh, he was, obviously he, he was. Obviously, he's, he, he was. Obviously, he. had a recurring role on the West Wing, which is how I remember everything. But he was an episode of Sex and the City. He was on an episode of the practice. So I'm sure I saw because, again, I watched all of the practice. He's had a main role on the New Adventures

of Old Christine, which is surprisingly a sitcom that I did not watch, which looking back feels like a mistake to me. Like, I should have been... You should watch that today. You think so? Yeah, it's a fun show. I think you'd have a good time. It uses Blair Underwood well, which is all you can ask. I mean, yeah, that's everything I hear about that show, I'm like, I would have really like that show. He's, you go back, he's in, I think he plays like one of the corporate types in 500 days of summer, I think. He's one of the people at the like greeting card company with Joseph Gordon Levitt in that movie. He also, like, direct some stuff.

that movie Choke, the Chuck Pallanick movie, choke with Sam Rockwell. He was an screenwriter on what lies beneath? Like, just, you know, stuff that you would not, you would not quite imagine that he had done. So anyway, and like these days, I thought he was so good in Thelma this year. I thought everybody in Thelma was really good this year, but I thought he was very funny.

So, I don't know, I really like Clark Gregg, but yeah, he is normally a person who, you know, you like, you like him. You don't want to, you don't want to have to despise his character, as you do in In Good Company. But this is also the sixth Clark Gregg movie that we have done on this podcast. So as we often do, always do, no, often do. I can't say always because we have forgot a couple of times. I give Chris a quiz, and since Emily, you are here on this day that I'm giving Chris a quiz. You can also participate in this quiz. I have to say, I don't have an encyclopedic memory of this show in the way that you probably do.

That's fine. These six-timers quizzes are mostly just trying to see how many cracks at the answer Chris needs before arriving at the right one. because a lot of these are just, like, no normal person would know the answer to this. So you're just sort of, like, guessing at this point. This quiz is really the function it serves is to show how much useless knowledge is just, it's just up there. My brain is a hoarder house, so, you know, I might need this someday. This is true. So the answers to these questions will be any of, one or more of the six Clark Gregg movies that we have done on this podcast.

Those movies are The Human Stain, which is our episode 46, one-hour photo, which was our episode 78, Live by Night, the Ben Affleck directed Live by Night, episode 137, State and Maine, episode 280, another Clark Gregg David Pamer joint, State and Maine. They have appeared together in a lot of things. Like, if you go back, they seem like they are close.

Clark Gregg is also married to. somebody famous, right? Jennifer Gray, I want to say? Yes, he's married to Jennifer Gray. That's cool. I like character, actor marriages. He'll probably be at the sag. No, wait, did a Real Pain get nominated for the SAG Awards ensemble?

It didn't. It shouldn't have. That was a good ensemble. Anyway, Labor Day was our episode 312, and then Edgum Company, episode 330. So the answers to these questions will be one or more of those. this is deeply informal so just shout it out

if you think you know the answer we'll start with the sort of basic ones which of these six movies was the longest live by night by night by a decent margin 129 minutes

it's still playing you know we had to we had to call it on a certain point for our episode that movie is weeks long it's still on a television somewhere in my house

yes which of those six movies is the shortest one hour of One-hour photo. One-hour photos in, like, the upper 80s, I think? 96, which is longer than I would have thought, because one-hour photo is a brief one. Which of these six movies had the best Rotten Tomatoes percentage?

State and Maine? State and Maine, 85%. Wow. Yep. Which had the worst Rotten Tomatoes percentage? Labor Day. Labor Day, definitely. 34%.

Which had the biggest box office, domestic box. office hall. Ooh. One hour photo? Not one hour photo, although one hour photo made more money than you think. One hour photo made $31.5 million, which probably in 2002 people were like nothing. And now I'm like, a movie as strange as one hour photo made $31.5 million at domestic box office. Like that's pretty good.

It's got to be in good company then. It is in good company. In good company made 45. $5.8 million at the domestic box office. Again, you release a movie at Christmas and it mysteriously makes money. Yeah. A hit. Although it didn't go wide until mid-January.

It was like, it was like an MLK weekend movie. Perfect MLK weekend viewing is in good company, a movie where Tofer Grace's character says 50 cent. I did have to write that down. That is a good character beat. That guy would say 50 cents, absolutely. Which of those six movies was written by somebody who wasn't also the director?

Again, your movies are The Human Stain One Hour Photo, Live by Night, State and Maine, Labor Day, and Good Company. One hour photo. No, Mark Romantic did write the screenplay for one hour photo. Wow. Okay, The Human Stain. It is The Human Stain. Nicholas Meyer did the adaptation of the Philip Roth novel, Robert Benner. him directed. You know how, like, in a playbill, they'll say, you know, just like, or they'll,

where you'll be like, here's an actor, here's the role they're best known for. For a while there, it was like Clark Gregg, the Human Stain, which is just not. It's not something you want to just want to. I would never describe him as a human scene. I wouldn't either. To be clear. The Human Stain is one of those titles where you have to just sort of keep repeating it until you realize that the double meaning of it, which I had seen that movie multiple

times. I'm like, oh, the human stain. The stain is being human. Um, very clever. Anyway, um, which movie has the same writer as the nutty professor to the clumps? Uh, in good company? It is in good company. Paul White's was one of the creative writers on the nutty professor to the clumps. What if it was like Ben Affleck? Uh, the nutty professor to the clumps parodied to perfection in, Topic Thunder as the fatties fart, too. I will always remember that day.

All right. Which movie has the same cinematographer as Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2? Live by Night, Robert Richards. Yes, very good. Which two of these movies were written by Oscar-winning screenwriters? Live by Night, Ben Affleck,

and Oscar winning? They won Oscars for their screenwriting. David Mamet doesn't have an Oscar Jason Reitman doesn't have an Oscar I don't think I guess the human stain Nicholas Meyer Oh shit I wrote that question wrong

I shouldn't yes sorry I wrote it wrong You're totally right Robert Benton was the other person I was thinking of But of course as I established in the previous question He did not write that movie So that is a dumb question by me Sorry Wow

So anyway And only one of these movies was written by an Oscar-winning screenwriter. Which three movies were written by Oscar-nominated screenwriters? In Good Company, Labor Day, and State and Maine. Yes. In Good Company, Paul White's was nominated for About a Boy. Jason Reitman, multiple Oscar nominee, Roe Labor Day, David Mamet, wrote State and Maine. which movie has the same composer as Shukala. Rachel Portman, I think that's Labor Day?

Not Labor Day. Is it Rachel Portman, though? It is Rachel Portman, did the Shukala. Is it the human stain? It is the human stain. Rachel Portman is the human stain. Rachel Portman, comma. The human state.

Which movie has the same composers as Cloud Atlas? Oh, okay. So I'm guessing not Tickfer. No, not Tickfer. But I don't remember who the other composers are. Tom Tickford did write the music for Staten Main. Like, we got to just remember that. He would not shut up until David Mamet let him write the music for State and Maine.

I'm just going to guess one-hour photo. It is one-hour photo. It's Ron Hothiel and Johnny Climack. Oh, there you go. The other two. Yes. Which movie, only one of these six movies, to play the Venice Film Festival? Venice would have been the human stain.

It is the human stain. Venice, the Human State. The Human State. Which was the only of these six movies to play the Telluride Film Festival? Chris's nemesis, the Telluride Film Festival. That's got to be Labor Day. Labor Day. Yeah.

It is Labor Day. Yes, Labor Day played telluride. That fits, that fits in a lot of ways. Which movie, only one of these movies, to open during Scorpio season? So October into early November, that's the Human Stain. Human Stain was a Halloween movie, opened on October 31st, 2003. In many ways, Halloween costumes represent the Human Stain on all that. Neither a trick nor a cheat, the Human Stain.

Which movie opened on my birthday? So August, that would be one-hour photo. One-hour photo opened on my 22nd birthday. I did not go to see it, unfortunately, probably because it was not playing in my city. But what a birthday that would have been. Happy birthday, you could go see one-hour photo. Which of these movies is almost an anagram for, damn it, Satan? The Human Stain?

No. State and Maine. State and Maine. You have a E leftover, but it's almost an anagram for damn it, Satan. Which of these movies is almost an anagram for bra load? Live by night? No. Labor Day.

Labor Day. Labor Day. Yes, you have a Y leftover. Which only two of these movies were not filmed in Massachusetts in some way. Live by night. Nope, live by... Ben Affleck's going to make a movie that doesn't have any scenes

over his cold dead body. In Good Company has no Massachusetts, right? In Good Company has no Massachusetts, correct. That's one of them. Labor Day? Because isn't that Pennsylvania? But there's significant Massachusetts representation. Then I guess the human stain.

Nope. Human stain was filmed in... In addition to other places, Williams College, I believe, was a location Oh, one-hour photo? One-hour photo, filmed entirely in California. Which movie was filmed partially in Canada? The Human Stain.

Human Stain. McGill University in Montreal was one of the locations in the Human Stain. Which of these movies won the National Border of Review Award for Best Ensemble? State and Maine. State and Maine. Yep. Which of these movies had three teen choice nomination? Isn't it Labor Day?

One hour photo. Not one hour photo. Damn. Live by night. Uh, no. Wow. So is it in good company? Um, yes.

It's in good company, right? Wait. Teen choice, no. It's not in good company. I think I wrote that down wrong too. Oh. Um, yes. Yes.

Sorry. It's only one teen choice. man, I will tell you what, I made this quiz at two in the morning after a Buffalo Bill's victory, so I was maybe not at the top of my game when I made this quiz. Which movie was an Art Directors Guild nominee? Live by Night? No. Although there was a lot of art direction in that movie, but no.

Oh. None of these are really jumping out, so I'll say Labor Day, because That's a period movie? Not Labor Day. The Human Stain? Because it has some period scenes? Wow. Nope.

I think you're missing a very designy movie. A low-key designy movie. Satan Main? Nope. Think of the directors. Yeah, it's got to be one-hour photo then. It is one-hour photo. Think of the drugstore that he worked,

all the supermarket stuff. stuff, the rose full of cereals and whatnot. It's a, yeah, that's a contemporary production design nominee, for sure. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a good nominee. Which movie was a makeup guild nominee? Human stain. Human stain.

Got to make Nicole Kidman look plain and Anthony Hopkins look plausibly black. So, the human stain, what a movie. Which movie has IMDB keywords that include salsa dancing, kicked in the testicles, and social commentary. Which would have salsa dancing? Is it Live By Night? It is Live by Night. Live by Night includes salsa dancing, someone getting kicked in the testicles, and social commentary.

All three could be in the same scene, for all I know, I don't remember. It's really all that in good company was missing, those three things. Exactly right. Which movie has IMDB keywords that include Neo-Screwball Comedy, character repeats someone else's dialogue, and anti-Semitic slur? State and Maine. State and Maine. It all sounds like David Mamet to me.

Um, which two of these movies feature stars of Mona Lisa Smile? Um, well, that's Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Jennifer Goodwin, Maggie Gyllenhaal. Um, who's the guy? Is that Dominic West? Is the love interest in that movie? Okay. Brooks Smith isn't in that movie. No, she's not.

Hmm. Trying to think of who the other guys are in that movie. Just because the cast is huge, I'm going to guess State and Maine. It is State and Maine. You stopped listing the women in that movie just before you got to Julia Stiles. Oh, right, Julia Stiles, yes. And Julius, oh, Julia Stiles isn't in this. She's in Devils.

Oh, in the last movie, we just did. Yes, yes. It's Tofer Grace in it? There you go. One of the boys in Mona Lisa Smile. Which two of these movies feature stars of the Silence of the Lambs? Labor Day with Brooke Smith. There you go.

Yep, yeah. And Anthony Hopkins, the human stain. Anthony Hopkins, the human stain. Which movie opened the same weekend as Simone? S1M-0-N-E, Simone. Swan Moan. Swan Moan. Yeah.

Buccino's and Simone. Yes. Oh, boy. I'm going to just guess for the time period. I'm going to say one hour phone. One hour photo. So again, for my birthday, I could have gone to the theater and seen a double feature of one hour photo and Simone, had I gone to New York City or L.A. for my birthday, which I should have. Which movie opened the same weekend as The Wolf of Wall Street?

Oh, that's Christmas release. Live by Night. No. Oh. Labor Day. Labor Day. Yes. Final question. Which movie opened?

This was a harder question. before we had our conversation earlier in the episode. Which movie opened the same weekend as a love song for Bobby Wong? In good company. In good company. You could have had your Scarjo double feature on the same day. In good company and a love song for Bobby Long. Emily, have you ever seen a love song for Bobby Wong?

I have not. I perpetually forget it exists. For some reason, it and the legend of Bagger Vance are sorted into the same slot in my brain. I don't know why. A love song for Bagger Vance and the legend of Bobby Long would also have been interesting. I do think the Travolta performance is something that kind of has to be seen, even though the movie's kind of a nothing burger. I, yeah, I will check it out. That's the thing that people say about a love song for Bobby Long often that they're going to check it out. I promise. I'll watch it at some point. Realizing, they'd ever do. Yeah, realizing that Labor Day came out in 2013 feels wrong to me. That movie feels like it came out in like 2001. It's so. So, yeah, it just, I cannot.

2001, but also 2019. Like, it also, it has that, like, feeling of just, like, it's always existed. And yet. Which is a sign of a classic when it feels a little timeless, you know, so. Yeah, exactly. The timeless classic. I have one last question about Clark, Rick. Of these six movies, if he was on the show right now, which do you think he would say was his favorite?

Oh, an excellent question. Based on his role in it. this is the biggest role he has so I would imagine it he might mention it no he's sort of like a weird he's weirdly the prominent in state and Maine I feel like

yeah right I think it's that or I think it's that or one hour photo like knowing that Clark I think those are probably the two he'd mentioned knowing that Clark Greg is a bit of a cinephil and like stuff that is like kind of like challenging like I think that one hour photo would appeal to him on that level

even if his part in it is not great but then like state and Maine is you know he got to do Mammett. Like, that's the thing. He got to do Mammett. He was there with his best trend of the world, David Pamer. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's right. I think the outside, the, if you want to bet a long shot that might pay off, he might say the human stain. He might say, I've always wanted to do a Philip Roth adaptation. I'm a huge fan of Kramer versus Kramer, so I got to work with Robert Benton. Yeah. I don't remember what his role is in that movie at all, at all, at all. We did that movie on this podcast.

many years ago, many, many years ago. That's definitely a double-digits episode. It's our first May miniseries, right? That was part of our 2003 miniseries, I'm pretty sure, was... Yes, yes, the human stane. So maybe it wasn't double digits, but... It was 46th, our 46th episode, which is pretty amazing. I think that Clark, Greg, I remember in the later seasons of Agents of Shield,

he was playing the human stain. He was like, I am now the human stane. Because Phil Colson was not a real person. He was an undead fabrication, something. They remember there was a whole thing. Yeah. Phil Colson really alive. They had to like, yeah, it was so complicated and unnecessarily.

And that first season, they had to negotiate around the Marvel universe. And then they were eventually like. The Winter Soldier release. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they were like, oh, we're on an island and could just do whatever we want. That's when the show got better when they were just like, you will. never cross over with the movies ever. So stop worrying about it. And they're like, okay, we'll just tell her own story. Weirdly, I had not thought about the human stain in a long time

until right now when I thought about it a lot. But I went and looked it up on Wikipedia. And like, Philip Roth really had it figured out because he would be like, here's a guy based on me. And he's just going to move somewhere and meet a person. And that person's going to be a novel. But always it's going to be about this guy who's based on me. Right. Yeah. Right. I kind of miss that in novels. This person who's always going to, their own traveling Nick Carraway or whatever.

I feel like Elizabeth Strout is a little bit of that. Somebody else pointed out to me when I was mentioning that I was doing this quiz or whatever. And they mentioned to me that like the human stain is an intentional

double entendre to do with the Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton, dress the dress with the uh the the human stain of bill clinton on it because that movie was very much a look how you've all persecuted bill clinton movie or book rather that came out yeah yeah you don't know i mean yes i mean i think that's true but i don't love that um back to in good company one interesting thing about in good company i think that no longer exists but but it's these movies that arrive so late in the award season

that they could play the Berlin Film Festival. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they would only been seen in the U.S. at that point, basically. So this is a competition, Berlin movie. Yeah. Tofer Grace was actually the movie's best sort of precursor performer. He wins the Breakthrough Performance Award at the National Board of Review. You know, we've talked about the NBR before and how they do like to spread the wealth.

So this year, they, of course, love that IMDB just absolutely never puts things in order. But their best movie of the year was Finding Neverland that year. As we all remember, must have been Finding Neverland. How could you pick any other movie from a year that Finding Neverland was released? Their top 10 was Finding Neverland, The Aviator, closer. Million Dollar Baby, Sideways, Kinsey, Vera Drake, Ray, collateral, Hotel Rwanda. Not a bad top ten, actually. Finding Everlands The Bougar in that list.

I remember this year, I was really into the Oscars at this point. You know, just, I remember this year being a year when I struggled with the Oscars a lot. And it felt like that award season, I found a lot of the movies really dull. And now I probably have a higher opinion of Ray than I did at the time. Like, I think Ray's really. solid at what it does but yeah at that year i remember really struggling and i wonder if i liked in good company because it felt like something it felt so different from all of those movies you know yeah to its benefit and detriment yes yes and i i have to imagine that you weren't alone

in that feeling because the way that million dollar baby can just kind of arrive late and storm the season away yes well there was such a narrative that year by places like the former Oscar Watch and by certain peoples who have become right-wing nutbags. Really riding hard for the Scorsese has is owed an Oscar for that. So there was very much the Scorsese versus Clint Eastwood of it all. And then there was this really irksome narrative that I remember where sideways began as this like underdog indie movie and then was so successful

as an awards player then it became the fake you know fake indie hogging all the awards from the real indie is the eternal sunshine to the spotless mind people were livid with Sideways because Sideways was hogging all of the you know all the space in the awards

and the comedy space at that and the comedy space at that Um, it was a fraught. It was a frot year. I was definitely very much in the, in the Oscar following community as it was. That was probably the closest I ever got to being like a forum poster. Oh, you should have posted on the forums show. We could have known each other like two years before we actually did.

Oh, right. You were on the, you were on the Oscar West Forums. I was a forum lurker. I was never a forum poster. Were you, did you lurk on awards daily? Or what would have been Oscar Watch at the time? I definitely lurked on Gold Derby. I didn't really post on Gold Derby. So I'm not going to say my username because a lot of posts by me are still out. Are still out there.

Yeah. But Sims was on there too, right? On the Oscar Watch forums? Yeah. It was Sims. Sims was there. I made like weirdly a lot of really like great like entertainment journalists and screenwriting and stuff came out of that.

that forum. Nice. So, yeah. That's, where's the 30 for 30 on that? My God, give me that. Bill Simmons, call me. I know you have nothing to do with 30 for 30 anymore, but just let's get it done. Ringer's doing documentaries.

Ringer did the, the Yacht Rock documentary that I can't shut up about. This is the fourth episode in a row, I think, that I've mentioned the Yacht Rock documentary. Let's see how far I can take this baby. Let's see. But I think the fact that I've always said that 2004 is a secret sort of man. or year for movies. It's not quite at the levels of like 99 or 07. But I think because the Oscars sort of settled on things like Finding Neverland or Ray or if you were not in a million dollar baby fan, if you thought that the aviator was a little underwhelming, you don't

really get that. But you look at, that's where something like the NBR can really kind of come in handy and their willingness to spread the wealth. Because before they would do top 10, because now they do top ten movies, top ten indie movies, and then top ten foreign films or whatever. But they used to do special recognition for excellence in filmmaking, which was essentially their, you know, indies. So in that list in 2004, they nominated, or whatever, they awarded Undertow, which was the David Gordon Green movie with Jamie Bell, stage beauty, which we've done on this podcast before, that I think is really underrated. Imaginary Heroes, have either of you, did you ever, either of you have watched them?

Gorney Weaver, imaginary heroes. Imaginary heroes where Emile Hirsch kisses a boy, and I was like, tell me more. I've never seen. I thought you were talking about the one that's like a stealth Calvin and Hobbs movie, where like Robert Duval has a lion. I don't remember. Secondhand lion. Secondhand lion.

Yes. Yes. The assassination of Richard Nixon, which was one of those movies that, like, barely opened. Enduring Love, my Roger Michel movie with, the balloon, the hot air balloon I will watch that. I promise you I will eventually watch that movie. A Home at the End of the World, which we've done on this podcast before,

which I really like. Before Sunset. A little movie called Before Sunset. I think some people like that movie. Door and the Floor, another one we've done on this podcast that I think is secretly very good. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Something called Facing Windows, which is actually a movie I've never heard of before. But that is a Oh, Giovanna Metssojourno movie.

This is an Italian movie. Anyway, what else? There was Garden State, The Woodsman, and then another foreign language film that's... Oh, since O-Tar left. They were giving me the foreign language pronunciation. Since O-Tar left, which was a movie that I think... got nominated for some things that year. Anyway, I think it's just, it gives you a little bit of sense,

and that doesn't even get into things like the born supremacy was 04, and Maria Full of Grace was 04. And there was just some, like, there was a lot of really interesting movies, I think, in that year. So it's not always just the Oscars. Look Beyond the Oscars. Bad education was that year. Anyway, I loved Maria Full of Grace. I've never watched it again. I did it, yeah. I'm a big Joshua Marston fan in general, I think, a very underrated director who I wish had sort of been able to, you know, hit that next level. But Maria Full of Grace's incredibly really great tense movie. But also nominated among top foreign films at the NBR was The Motorcycle Diaries. So here is where I transition, Emily, into the discussion of the best original song category at the Oscars that year. Which was won by the Motorcycle Diaries, even though they would not allow Jorge Drexler to perform the song himself. I really like This is when the Oscars were so focused on

We got to get this thing in a tight two hours And you're like, you're never going to get it in a tight two hours They handed out awards in the aisles It was obscene, obscene I say I was thinking about like what are the categories This movie realistically could have gotten into that I do think it would have had a shot at original screenplay If the screenplay was slightly better, let's say

But this movie came out this year Tougher Grace would be pushed as a supporting actor as well This is true. Yeah But I do think its best shot was original song. They had David Byr, they had trapeze Swinger, they could have gotten one of those in. That is possibly the worst year.

Not the worst year for the category overall. It's had a lot of bad years, but it's the worst year for songs that could have been nominated versus like what was nominated, like the quality gap, you know? Go into it because you know this was one of the worst years because this is the year they were like, Beyonce, Save Us. Can you sing three of these at the Oscars for us?

Yeah. They let the Counting Crows play. They let the Counting Crows perform accidentally in love from Shrek 2. And they allowed Antonio Banderas to sing Al-O-Trolato del Rio instead of Jorge Drexler. And you could tell Jorge Drexler was mad about it because when he won, he's like, they didn't allow me to sing my song. I'm going to do a little of it right now. And then Beyonce performed, Look to Your Path from the chorus, which was, was that, I don't even remember what the deal was with the chorus, but it was a French movie. It was about, it was like a small school drama. It was basically like kind of like Friday Night Lights. But the last two seasons of Friday Night Lights, but in France and with a chorus. With the chorus. Perfect. And then the Josh Grobin song, Believe, from the Polar Express, a movie that is deeply normal. Speaking of things that are just deeply normal and not at all strange from the Polar Express.

and then learn to be lonely. We're going to write a new song for the new musical so we can get an Oscar nomination, and it worked in this case, song from The Phantom of the Opera. We'll have already talked about this on Patreon by the time this episode comes out. So, Chris, maybe we should hold our opinions. But, Emily, how do you feel about the Phantom of the Opera?

The Joel Schumacher directed adaptation. I saw it once in 2004, right when it came out. I was a huge, I grew up a huge Andrew Lloyd-Weber fan. I grew up listening to Christian music, and he was like my weird segue from Christian to pop, like he was the bridge between those two things. So I saw that movie opening weekend. I had never seen the stage musical. I still haven't because I assumed it was going to run.

That was my first musical that I ever saw, was the Phantom of the other. I assumed it was going to run in New York forever. And I was like, some trip, I'll just go take it in for 35 bucks or whatever. And then it closed. But I saw it opening weekend I really hated it And now, but like I'm always kind of Have that weird itch to revisit it

I'm friends with Lindsay Ellis The YouTuber and a novelist And all around Phantom Appreciator And I'm always like she doesn't like the movie But I'm always like I should just watch it with her So yeah I remember not liking it

I remember thinking Emmy Rossum Was was what I wanted to look like And that was kind of the extent of it Sure Yeah I understand that. Making the decision with a couple of my friends to get cheap tickets to Phantom of the Opera and go see it one night. And I think we, I think, I don't think we got drunk, but I think we definitely took edibles.

And you know what? We behaved ourselves, which is the thing apparently that Broadway audiences are not doing, that are not doing these days. If you're hearing these stories coming out of cabaret where people are just getting drunk and misbehaving. That production. I can't. Cursed. But seeing that, like making the decision to get the cheap seats to Phantom of the Opera and see it, even though, again, when you live in New York City, there is no urgency to see Phantom or the Lion King or Wicked or, you know, all these shows, Chicago, you know, there's no urgency to see them because they're always there. But we saw Phantom. We saw that chandelier ease its way down to the stage at the end of Act 1, like an old man easing into a bath. It's just sort of, there's no. There is no suddenness to that chandelier crash.

It is just sort of just like whines its way down. But you know what? That's part of the charm of the whole thing. We will definitely, I can't believe I didn't save that anecdote for our Patreon. We're recording from the future. It's fine. It's fine. Now there's no reason to sign up for your Patreon.

I'm sorry. It's just true. I think there was some sense that this was a bad category for Best Original Song. because the next year, they're like, we're going to nominate Dolly Parton, we're going to give an award to 3-6 Mafia, and we're going to set a car on fire for our third nominee, right here on the state. And that's going to be what we're going to do. You're only getting three nominees, but we're just doing the most with all three of them. Yeah. So. But like, you've talked about this in your snubs miniseries, but like, vindicated from Spider-Man 2. A movie that they- Oh, you're speaking my life. A movie that they liked, they nominated, they gave it a win and they dominated it for a few things, that right there could have thrown that in there. I think either any of the songs from this film would have been a marked improvement on most of the nominees. And then, like, that's just, just take either of those, replace any of the nominees that's, I think L.Oterolato de Rio is a pretty nice song.

And I think, obviously accidentally in love is one of the signature achievements of our century. but like just replace something replace the fucking chorus song who cares about the chorus anymore i am sorry to france but you have given you've given us both the substance and amelia Perez this year and i have just like weird feelings about gender around you so well there's also like this is the era of french movie nobody really knows what it is gets a song nomination because what was the other one like paris some paris 72 or yeah right Right. I love the triplets of Belleville song nomination.

I know Joe and I are divided on triplets of Belleville. I don't not like, we're not as divided as you think. I think the triplets of Belleville is a, is a fun and deeply weird movie. I just thought that watching, I liked, I even liked Belleville rendezvous, but I remember the exact experience of watching the Oscars. And I think I watched it. I definitely watched that one with other people because I remember they come, they, it comes time to perform the song from Triplets of Belleville

and it's literally just a bunch of people clanging on pipes. Like the whole thing is just like clang clang. Yeah, it's awesome. And I'm literally watching this and just being like, nobody's going to understand what's going on here. Like I felt very self-conscious about just like, how am I supposed to

explain what's happening here? Is it the only person in the room who had seen the triplets of Belleville? Here's a question I'm going to posit to the room. Did the Golden Globes do better that year? They nominated accidentally in love and believe and learn to be lonely

but instead of the other two a million voices the Wyclef song from Hotel Rwanda and then the winner was Mick Jagger's Old Habits Die Hard from Alfie from the Jude Law disaster Alfie

which I remember It's interesting Yeah I remember the Wycliffe song being good I remember liking that I saw Hotel A lot of these movies I saw

one time. I saw Hotel Rwanda once and liked it, and I could not tell anything about it now. But, like, I remember liking that song. That, you know what, sure, put that in there. Why not? Why not? Why not is a good answer for all of these things. Why not let McJaggar in here when you're giving Oscars to Bob Dylan and nominations to Paul

McCartney? Yeah. This is also an era of original song, having weird qualifications that movies would become ineligible for, so. Yeah. And they kept kind of tweaking the rules every year and being like this year you have to have been in the movie within 10 seconds of the opening credits but also have never been a thought in your composer's

brain before the instant that financing was approved for this movie and it has to like you have to stand on one foot while you record it and um by the time alone yet not alone happens i think the Academy is like, guys, get your shit together. Can you be normal, please? And we haven't really had much incident since. This explains, I found this weird. I went on a real vindicated deep dive. Like last year, I just listened to it over and over.

Because it was, for some reason, it was like making me better at writing. But I went on like a YouTube deep dive and I found a promo reel that was like dashboard confession, Mr. Confessional himself, like being like, you know how I wrote this. Mr. Confessionals, my father, please. Call me, call me dashboard. Call me Chris. Yeah. So he wrote, it's this thing where he's like, I saw, they showed me a workprint of Spider-Man 2, and I was so inspired by it.

I sat down and wrote this song immediately. And you're like, that was an original song. Like, they were like aiming for that because they were like, oh, they're saying, yeah, this happened. Absolutely. The only reason he ever wrote this song is he saw Spider-Man 2, and he'd never had any thoughts like it in the past. I remember when we did that Oscar snubs thing and I remember you were

when we were trying to plan for it you're like are we sure that this was original to that movie and I literally was like says it right here he saw Spider-Man too and then he wrote the song I just really because that was the day of like

dashboard confessional like just like the emo kids like leaning on the stage and not like I just wanted to see Nicholson leaning on the Academy Award stage with his dark glasses on Going through some of these other movies, I'm kind of glad we did not get an original song nomination from Team America

World Police. I will thank God for small favors there. There was probably, John Bryan probably wrote an original song for I Heart Huckabies in there somewhere. I would have enjoyed that. All the music in that movie was really good. Clearly, there was an original song out of Dogville that they could have just like brought Bjork back to like sing uh something for that song or for that before sunset baby before so well this is and then also you're getting into like you know there were no original songs and

mean girls and yet like the 30 seconds of past that Dutch that happens in that movie is probably worthy of an academy award at some point um uh i love that other uh Scotty doesn't know from euro trip i feel like everybody would uh would be in favor of that is there Isn't there a song from Eternal Sunshine? I think there is. Is that Beck song original? Oh, maybe. That movie's so good.

The Beck song's a cover. That, that I know. Oh, right. I do feel like there's another one buried in there. It's, uh, but yeah, I really like, you know what? If you put Trapeze Swinger and vindicated in that category this year, I think it is immediately so much better. And then there's a ton better.

Yeah. Plus, obviously, nominate whatever bullshit song Michael Moore wrote for Fahrenheit 9-11, which I'm sure he did. I'm sure he wrote something. Interesting year. Sorry, I'm just literally just like looking at all the movies of this year and like, what had an original song? Why couldn't you have had an original song, Alexander?

There is a great. There is a great song from I heard Huckabees. I'm trying to find. I'm trying to remind myself. There is, right? It's like, yeah. Yeah, like, that score, too, is incredible. Like, John Bryan had a year to do the I Heart Huckabee's soundtrack and Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind in that same year and has still never been nominated for an Oscar, just infuriating, absolutely infuriating.

I love when I can work myself into a lather about something that happened 20 years ago. You know what? I can't. Knock yourself out. That was the name of it. Yes, that was in the trailer. Yes, you're totally right. You can no longer play it on Spotify.

But, yeah. Well, I guess go on YouTube or something. I use YouTube for music way more often than I probably should. This movie had three nominations at the AARP Movies for Grownups Awards that year. Shocking. Including Best Movie for Grownups, like their Best Picture Award, which good for, well, also, it was nominated for Best Grownup Love Story for the Marg Helgenberger and Dennis Quaid relationship, which, I maybe throw a little bit of side eye in the fact that Mark Helgenberger

disappears for the latter two-thirds of the movie. 75% of this movie. This movie, that award was won by Jenna Rollins and James Garner for the Notebook. Also nominated Susan Sarandon and Richard Gear for Shelby Dance, and Helen Mirren and Robert Redford for The Clearing,

a movie I've never seen, but I think is a Taylor... No, Taylor Hackford had other movie, had Ray that year, so who did the clearing? Peter Jan Bruges. directed the clearing which is a movie about an executive held captive by a former employee and is up to his wife to deliver the ransom.

Another movie about corporate anxiety, The Clearing. Show that in tandem with In Good Company. Mass movie for grownups. In Good Company was nominated along with The Notebook, Kinsey, Sideways, and the Aviator, and the category was won by Ray. Best Movie for Grownups for Ray.

Honestly. A good musical biopic, Ray. Yeah. I, uh, I don't hate that category. I remember, like, I don't hate that category either. I remember loving Kinsey. I remember just, same. I love that scene.

Yeah. Kinsey's a good movie. Yeah. Kinsey's a good movie. In fact, speaking of Kinsey, uh, Liam Neeson won best actor at the movies for grownups that year for Kinsey, beating Dennis Quaid for In Good Company, also nominated were Omar Sharif for Monsieur Ibrahim, Jeff Bridges for The Door and the Floor, Richard Gere for We Dance, and Kurt Russell for Miracle, the hockey movie, the Miracle and Ice movie. Miracle, Miracle would be like an interesting this had Oscar buzz, because I remember that being, there were people like, oh, this might do it, then didn't.

I'm trying to think of like the sports movie that has convinced people that future sports movies will be Oscar nominees, because I feel like we have so many examples to the contrary of it. And I wonder if it was just like, well, the natural did it back in like 80. I too. Well, it's also that all of the sports movies that do go all the way with Oscar are like underdog movies. If not the narrative of the movie, but the movies themselves. So it's like obviously Rocky, but then Chariots of Fire. Yeah, Rocky, of course. Yeah, that came out of nowhere.

Like, it does feel like, yeah, they're all being like Rocky and Chariots of Fire. Right. So like, yeah. And it does sort of feel like. like you can imagine a world where miracle like is a nominee because it's about this like big it has that added element of important world event you know right right but also doesn't it's an important world event but it doesn't have like social significance in the way that like invictus gets nominated and it's like it's a sports movie but it is also about like

important geopolitics or um oh what was that movie? Remember the Titans, which is a sports movie, but is also about, like, black people and white people getting along in the South or whatever. I think also if you're a cinephile, you watch Miracle and you know that actually the Cold War ended a few years later because of Rocky Four. So you're like, well, this didn't do anything, actually. That's right. That's right. So that's just alone and Brigitte Nielsen were able to combine their talents to win the Cold War. to compromise on the Cold War.

Scarlett Johansson's nominated for a teen choice award, even though I screwed that up in the game. She is a teen, and she makes a choice in this movie, and that choice is to go to NYU. And they mentioned they're going to, like, take out a second mortgage on the home as they are expecting a child to pay for her to go to NYU. And I literally almost jumped into the screen to stop them.

I was like, no, don't take out a second mortgage on your home. We're so close to the financial collapse. Like, you can't do this. You can't, not for NYU. It's not worth it. You can't do it. What a mistake. What a terrible, terrible mistake.

Actually, you know what, though? She's at exactly the right time to be able to sell, like, one novel for a lot of money and then transition into a successful career as a screenwriter. So if she's any good, she might be okay. But maybe she should go back to tennis. You know, maybe she should go back and give herself a shot at tennis. All right, where did Scarlett get nominated at Teen Choice Ward? She got nominated in Choice Movie Actress, Drama.

So the fellow nominees were both Alexis Bledell and Amber Tamblin from the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Carrie Washington for Ray, Brittany Murphy for Little Black Book, a movie I did not see, but maybe I should because I do love Britney Murphy, Natalie Portman for both Garden State and closer, Kate Winslet for Finding Neverland, and they all get beat by, of course, Rachel McAdams for the notebook. They should bring the pants back. They should bring the travel pants back. Isn't the whole idea that they are indomitable?

You can't defeat those pants? I feel like. Those pants won World War II? Right now America needs those sisters in their pants. Like that. I think that's true. Just bring them all back and now they all have daughters who can also wear the pants. Oh, yes.

Perfect. Oh, my God, two generations of pants. A pants, like the pants and then the pants. Hygienically, this is how COVID happens again. Like, eight people sharing the same pants. Like, the whole thing about how COVID was spread through farts, you know, that theory. It's the daughter. It's happening again with two generations in the traveling pants.

They took a swatch from the original pair of pants and they made another pair of pants. And it's like, it's the daughter of the traveling pants. Daughterhood of the sisterhood of the traveling pants. Daughterhood of the traveling pants. Can I also read to you all the nominees for Choice Male Hottie that year? And I want to have you guess who won. In alphabetical order, and they just give names, no projects attached to any of these people. Orlando Bloom, I'm going to be very, I'm going to do my Cheryl Boone Isaacs.

Orlando Bloom. Adam Brody. Ashton Coucher. Jesse McCartney. Jesse Metcalf. Chad Michael Murray. Omarion and Usher. Who won? Spoiler, it two people tied. Oh, wow. I, uh... Did you say Jesse Bradford was nominated? Jesse McCartney. Not just Brad. I do think one of the

people that won was Chad Michael Murray. Yes, you are totally right. Chad Malcolm Murray, one of the two winners is... Read them again, because there was somebody who really jumped out to me. It's like that probably... Orlando Bloom, Adam Brody, Ashton Coochardt. It's Ashton. It's Ashton Coochardney. Was it Ashton? You would think I would absolutely have guessed ashted Ashton Cusher. Was it Orlando Bloom? Not Orlando Bloom. No. Orlando Bloom, Adam Brody, Ashton Coucher, Jesse McCartney, Jesse Metcalf, O'Maryon, Usher.

It is Usher. Usher and Chad Michael Murray had to share. Is Teen Choice Award the one with the surfboard? It is, right? Yes. Yes. So Chad Michael Murray and Usher had to share the surfboard for Choice Hotty Mail that year. The indignity.

As the Democratic Party goes through its. wilderness era that it's kind of in right now. They should nominate Chad Michael Murray and Usher in 2028. I think that's a great ticket. I thought you were going to say that they should give a surfboard to whoever wins the D.N's, the Democratic primary. They should also do that, but Chad Michael

Murray and Usher is a winning ticket. And I just It is a winning ticket. You're totally right. With either one of them as the, you could do it at any order. Any one of them as the Prez versus VP, I think it works. Dennis Quaid was coming off of

we got to we're getting we're hitting the two hour mark soon okay Dennis Quaid coming off of the far from heaven snub do we think Dennis Quaid is just one of those actors that like first of all Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan both seem to have the like Oscar juj the bad Oscar juju on them is he just one of those people that people don't like in Hollywood do we think well now like well yes now I'm sure like that was there then yeah I know we don't want to get too into politics but like he's even bad at being like an emblem of republicanism because when Donald Trump was like, here's my three Hollywood ambassadors, Dennis Quaid wasn't one of them. That's true. What has this gotten you, Dennis? What have you won here? What is your victory here? Yeah. Dennis Quaid is

like not obviously reactionary enough. Like, which just, so yeah, he's like, I think that the far from heaven thing would have happened in a less crowded year for that category. Yeah, I think that's probably true. But yeah, I, I just what's the other, you know, people love

him in the rookie, but, like, that was never going to get him a nomination. Like, this is probably, yeah, this is probably his best shot, um, which is weird to say. Like, but, you know, I like him more than like in this movie than like I like Johnny Depp and finding Neverland, so.

Yeah. Who actually got nominated. Yeah, that's totally true. Um, going through my list, I think we've gotten Carter really likes that baked Ziti. Boy, when they drop the glass, uh, pan of baked Ziti, I hate when that happens in movies.

Yeah. When food gets... Food mess. Food. Well, and also just like, they really wanted to eat that baked ziti. And I know that Domino's pizza did not hit the way a good baked ziti would have. And I felt for a tofer in that scene.

Good God, don't take out a second mortgage to send her to NYU. Yes, he absolutely would say 50 cent. I think that was an excellent... John Cho showing up for a season as corporate pro. Was he John Cho by this point? Was Harold and Kumar that same year? It might have been. Roughly.

I mean, it's post-American pie, so. Yeah, it's 2004. 2004 for... Why did we get a scene of Dennis Quain mooning his surprise party guests? Out of a sense of defiance at the concept of having a surprise party? He's just a kooky guy. He doesn't play by the rules, and that's served him well. He's a man who is unashamed.

shamed of his body. Thoughts on Peter Gabriel Salisbury Hill and its use in this movie. Dirty Pool, is this, are you eating off of Cameron Crow's plate with something like that? Like, what's happening? You know how there are some songs that become so defined by something that you cannot use them for anything else? Salisbury Hill is like the opposite of that. It's just like, it's been used so many times that I'll like, listen to it in a movie where I first heard it or whatever. and I'll be like, no, that's, that's from seven other movies, you know, like, yeah, there's a ubiquity to it that I think you can kind of just use it wherever.

When they used it in the Halt and Catch Fire finale, I was like, of course, it's got to be salt. And they use it well. Oh, I totally forgot that they did that. You're totally right. And it was not, it was not the song I was free because I covered that. But, like, they use Salisbury Hill for, like, pharmaceutical ads now, you know, it's. Yes. Yeah.

It's, and these pills, too, have come to take you home. And 100%, yeah. Wait, I wanted to look up and see how, where, what was the most recent Salisbury Hill in a soundtrack? The Challenge All Stars. Perfect. The Challenge All Stars in 2024 used Salisbury Hill. God bless it. What in a movie?

Movie, it was in spirit? No. Oh, wait, sorry. No, this is just Peter Gabriel. So it was big time by Peter Gabriel was on a channel. Challenge All-Stars. Sorry. Salisbury Hill has not been used since 9-1-1, used it in an episode in, I think, 2021. In a movie, Salisbury Hill was most recently used in, let's see, In Your Eyes was in Spirited, In Your Eyes was in Deadpool 2, Big Time was in Postman Pat, the movie. I don't recognize that at all. Salisbury Hill Saldry Hill

Sledgehammer was used in a movie called Snow Angels in 2007 Wow, Salisbury Hill The most recent on IMDB use of Salisbury Hill is in good company in 2004 So they closed the door It's someone, you've had 20 years of letting the fields grow fertile

It is now your time to write a movie That ends with Salisbury Hill It's possible again All right, let's do it Emily, any lingering thoughts on a good company? You know, I just was looking up Salisbury Hill on TuneFind, which doesn't always work in this case, didn't help me. But they showed me Exo Kitty. Should I watch XO Kitty?

Does that feel like a thing I should watch? It feels to me like that should watch. Is that the spinoff to all the boys I love before? Yeah, that's the TV spin-off. Can I tell you, I've never felt meaner than when I watched that first movie and hated that little sister so much for being a narc. Well, now she has a show, so. Yeah, so it's like, we don't want to watch this show about this gnar? Like, no thanks.

She just totally blew the whistle on her sister for no good reason. Yeah, my last thought on In Good Company. Like, it is kind of weird that he has a second daughter who just doesn't function at all in the plot, you know? Absolutely. She pops on. Yeah. For the one of the great last gasp before cell phone scenes where she's on the phone with her boyfriend and he picks up the extension downstairs to, like, horn in on their conversation and threaten, as all

great boomer dads do, must threaten the boy with physical harm. Yeah. I, it does feel like if you were going to make a TV version of this, the home life stuff is where you could obviously beef it up. Mark Helgenberger's really thankless role, the Scarlet Jones. But she would probably play the TV version of that same. She would be your, she'd be your Connie Britton, who is in both the movie of Friday Night Lights and the TV of Friday Night Lights.

Like, she'd be that. There is like this, this weird zone of early 2000s movies that I, as a working screenwriter, would love to turn into a television show. And, like, this is one. I think there's stuff to be mind here, especially in our current media era. Yeah. But, yeah, not as much as I want to turn Family Man, the Nicholas Cage film, into a... I've never seen that.

Is that the Gore-Varbinski movie? No, it's Brett Ratner. Oh, okay. The Gore-Vubinsky one is The Weatherman. I get those two movies confused all the times I'm missing. Yeah, the Family Man is a movie I'm obsessed with because it, like, I find the ending of it incredibly powerful, but the rest of it is a mess. So, like, it's a, it's a, I'm obsessed with it because I'm always like, how can you make this ending really hit the way it wants to? It's the premise of that movie that he wakes up in like an alternate version of his life.

Yeah, it's, it's a wonderful life where sort of the concept is he's an asshole and now he's like in the life where he's George Bailey and he's married to Taylor. And, yeah, it's a very, very, very pre-9-11 movie. Like, you could not, if you were going to pick a movie to show and be like, this is what it was like right before 9-11, you would pick Family Man, you know. Oh, my God. Well, I don't think that movie got any Oscar nominations. So that will be your next appearance on this at Oscar Buzz. We'll do The Family Man.

Great. Absolutely. At Christmas time, maybe, because it's a Christmas movie, right? We were worried we had exhausted the well on Christmas movies after doing Love Actually this year, but yes, that'll be our Christmas movie if you want to come back. I was, yes, I do want to come back and I was thinking about do I need to go, do I need to like pick a movie from 1923 from that initial press release that was like, here are some films we could have or I kind of want to go like hyper specific into like a category that like an animated feature that had buzz or or and I know you've. shot this down before, but I'm just going to keep suggesting it, all too well, the short film is absolutely. I would do it. I'm in favor of that. We'll go watch all of the shortlisted short films. I will, I am in favor of that. No, when, when Emily's back and we are doing the Broadway

melody of 1923 or whatever, we'll all be wishing we were talking about Taylor Swift. If we did all too well, they would come for us. They would take all three of us down systematically. Oh, No, I'm, I am, I am something of a Swifty, so they would, I could serve as your shield. You know that thing of like a soldier? Oh, my God, an ambassador. Yeah. With the, the hell of bullets from the Swiftie. They can't drag me too much.

I saw that thing. I saw that short film projected on 35 millimeter at Tiff for an assignment. And you've referred to it as that thing, though. So they're not kind of like that. I've referred to many films. Get this thing back to Baltimore, is what you said after watching the movie. The thing is, I would be so glad to say that she has matured as a director, but that is not her best. Like the video for anti-hero, genuinely a well-directed music video.

Good for her. But like the video for all too well to short film is, yeah, it's, I don't think it was wrong to miss the nomination. But I am sort of entertained by Taylor Swift. Like, this is the one thing she can never get is an Oscar nomination. and she's clearly furious about it. I didn't realize that Taylor Swift just directs all her music videos until I went. We did a recent, I can't remember what got me on this in a recent episode, but I looked up all the winners of the MTV.

Oh, it was for a quiz, right? I was giving you about Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Ferris. Because we used to have Dayton Ferris. We used to have music video directors. But now I, yeah, now I know that Taylor Swift is the most, is the winningest. director of music videos in the MTV Video Music Awards for Best Director. Like, she's won more than anybody else. And blows my mind.

Absolutely blows my mind. Poor David Fincher. Can he have anything? Can David Fincher have anything in this life? There was a behind-the-scenes video of one of her music videos where there was, like, an image on her phone lock screen of her and Joe Alwin cuddled very happily on the beach. And then some fans noticed it, and it became blurred out, like someone went in and blurred that out. So she, oh, wow. Yeah, it's, uh, uh, that's what awaits us when we do our all too well episode, Chris and I blurred out for all eternity.

I love, I love the Brutelist. I, that movie, I think, is wonderful. It's probably going to win several Oscars. Uh, I will always remember the first time I ever heard of it was people thought that Joe Alwin cheated on Taylor Swift on the set of the Brutalist. On the set of, I did not know that. That's incredible. The woman who plays, um, Alessandra and a.

Vola's wife, Emma Laird. Is the one that Joe Allen? Everyone was, she turned up in like a photo reel he did on Instagram, which was clearly just like, look at the great time I had shooting this movie, this future, you know, Oscar dominating force in Budapest. And people were like, he slept with her. This woman is, you know, it's so funny. I've literally been wondering, like, what is this odd undercurrent of resentment towards the

brutalists that seems to be exist out there? It's swifties. Yeah. It's swifties out there. being like, this is the movie. But this is why I'm here. I can speak to them. Wow.

The brutalist. I do think it's that it's three and a half hours long and people don't understand there's an intermission. Every time I say there's an intermission, people are like, there's an intermission. And like, yeah, they got it. That's what they got to do. Like, you remember that when they did that other side of the mountain movie where like Kate Winslet and Idraselva are like trying to get around a mountain, there's a dog.

And the ad, the ad was like, the dog lives. They got to do that with the Bruce. Brutalist. There's an intermission. Tired, the Brutalist is Zionist. Wired. The Brutalist is anti-Zionist. Inspired, the Brutalist is anti-Swifty. That is the, that's where I'm going. That's where I need discourse to move to in these coming awful years. Just dumb shit. I need it. Chris, do you have any last thoughts about in good company? Um, uh, do you guys got any Teddy Kay? No, no, no for real. Do you, I'm going out tonight. Do you have any Teddy Kay?

I think they did a lot of Teddy Kay at that concert at Madison Square Garden they went to where John show showed up with a lot of Teddy Kay for everybody. And that, and that's why Dennis Quaid and Frankie Faison had to get out of there. They were like, except Dennis Quaid's like, why don't they call it Teddy Grams? In my day, we did Teddy Grams. and it was, we liked it. All right. IMDB game.

Chris, why don't you tell the listeners how we do it with the IMD game? All right. Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game where we challenge each other with an actor or actors to title us the top four titles

that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television, voice only performances, or non-acting credits, we'll mention that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue.

If that's not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints. That is the IMDB game. I am now realizing that I closed the tab on the one that I was going to do, and now I have completely forgotten what it is. So give me half a second, and I will jog my memory. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Was it Ty Borel?

We did not talk enough about how Ty Borel is playing. We sure did. Like a Latino, like it's sort of implied. With a middle part. Yeah. Oh, with such a middle part. The worst hair. All right.

The middle part is coming back in a real way that doesn't feel Gen Z, but it isn't appealing in a way that I'm like, do I need to try the middle part? I think it's, I think it's Gen Alpha. I think it's their weird influence bubbling up from the seventh grade undercurrents of this country. Just like, here it comes. The middle part. Seventh grade boys are dominant again, which they really are. This is a good era to be a seventh grade boy. If you're a seventh grade boy, you're eating.

Okay. I remembered it. Okay. Emily, as our guest, you get a choice of whether you want to give your clue first or guess first, and to which of us you want to give or guess from. I would like to guess first. Okay. And Joseph, I'll guess from you.

Since I just scrambled to remember. Remember which one? Okay. So I went through the filmography of one Mr. Paul White's, who, along with Dennis Quaid, after, yes, after in good company, reunited with Dennis Quaid for a little movie about American Idol that was called American Dreams. Oh, boy. And one of the people in that movie was Mr. Chris Klein. And that is who I am quizzing you with. Chris Klein. Chris Klein. All films, no TV, no voice work. Chris Klein rhymes with Chris Pine, but it's not Chris Pine. But it's not Chris Pine, yes. Oh, boy. Okay.

Chris Klein. One of them's got to be American Pie. Yes, correct. It's just, yeah, that's a gimmie. Is Roller Ball in there? No, unfortunately, not Roller Ball. Are there American Pie sequels in there? Uh, no. I will say that. There are no American Pie sequels. Disrespect to the American Pie franchise. I know. Um, God, what else did he do? He was in so many bad comedies. Uh, um, give me, give me some release years. I'll. Okay. Your release years are 1999, 2002 and 2005. Genuinely forgot that he broke through an election because like every, the second I said release years, I was like, he was in election, right? Yeah, he's election. Yeah. He's genuinely so far.

funny an election. Yeah. I think he's great. And then 2002 and 2005? Yeah. Um, one of which is a comedy, one of which is a drama. Oh, God, a drama. Um, yeah. Must be 2005, because that was when they were, that was the drama, because that's when they were like, maybe this guy's a movie star, which didn't. He's definitely not first build in either. He's, I think, fourth build in the comedy and fifth build in the drama. Okay. Um, so ensemble pieces. he's not one of the random people in crash, right? I've forgotten crash entirely. I would believe that he is a cop in that movie, but I think we're thinking of Ryan Phillies.

That's Ryan Phillips. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, give me a hint for one of them. I've forgotten Chris. 05 is a holiday movie. Oh. Yeah.

It's one of those movies that seemed like it was going to be awful, but I think it's not quite a cult. comedy, but, like, people came around on that movie. People really like this movie. There's a sort of inspired comedic performance by the second-billed actress in this that, like, I think, kind of rules. The second-billed actress is also not the love interest, too. Right. Is he in Christmas with the Cranks?

It's not Christmas with the Cranks. I was hoping that was not it because I hate that movie, but. It's not really an obviously Christmas movie, although it definitely, like, it is a, someone comes home. for Christmas movie. It is unfortunately a movie where a very obnoxious actor wears a fat suit in the flashbacks. Oh my God, I was going to guess Just Friends. And then I was like, it's just, he's just like.

The only acceptable Ryan Reynolds movie for me. Yeah, it's, I was like, is he in, that is the thing about Chris Klein is I have very specific face blindness around that man. Because he's, yeah, he just, he falls into this weird crack. Okay, all right, great. So your 2002 drama movie, specifically a war movie

Yeah, well I was I was sort of avoiding that Because I feel that that definitely narrows it A lot down Not a notable director He's you know One of the one of the platoon in this It is not platoon Is this a movie that got a big boost from just being a military movie

That came out like really close to September 11th. Obviously, 2002's Yes. Definitely. Is it, I think it was called We Were Soldiers? It is We Were Soldiers. Mel Gibson in We Were Soldiers. The original title We Were Soldiers Once and Young is very good.

And We Were Soldiers. Oh, is that true? Is that the book that it's based on? Yeah. Yes. Look at that. Yeah, that was a much better title. Randall Wallace wrote and directed it. Randall Wallace, who I think did the screenplay for Braveheart, because I remember it's odd that the character and the Braveheart is William Wallace

and he's Randall Wallace. I have never seen We Were Soldiers, as I have also never seen many other Mel Gibson movies because I don't want to. Yeah. Well done. Thank you. Well guest.

Thank you. All right. So you then will quiz Chris. Okay. Let's see here. This might, okay, I'm wondering, can I do, David Byrne? Oh, yeah.

Is that too far outside of the balance? You are a guest. Guest can do anything. Let's do David Byrne, because this is an interesting. This is an interesting one. I'll just say on the top, there are three I've heard of and one I have not. Great. I mean, stop making sense has to be there.

It is not. I'm going to go jump out a window. Yeah, it's terrible. What? What? that's crazy that's the craziest omission i have ever heard it's absurd yeah um okay uh the last emperor yes that is one of them yes for which he won his oscar yes everything everywhere all at once no not at all okay these are movies that he specifically

wrote the score for i'll say that for all but yeah it's it but like also and it's using a very broad sense of score. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, what are my years? I know one of those has to be true stories. True stories is correct. Yes, yes. That would have been the one I would have never gotten, so good job.

So the other two years are 2011 and 2020. Okay. Is the 2020 American Utopia? It is. American Utopia. Okay. So now we're down to the one that I never would have guessed in a million years. American Utopia being here, but not stop making sense.

It's so weird, yeah. The 2011 movie is a movie that once you guess it, it's obvious, but also it's one of those movies from an autore director who I'm always like, oh, right, they also did that. I, um, yeah, because it was before I sort of knew of them as anuteur director. This may be going too far and giving it away, but, like, when you hear the title of this movie, you'll be like, oh, David Burns, sure. Yeah. Right. And he did the score, or this is a song credit? He's listed as composer, but yeah, it looks like he also wrote.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. 2011 sounds very David Bernie, an autour, but before they were on Joe's radar. Yeah. An American Autour? No. No. Okay.

But it's an American film. Movie. Yeah. It's so American. Judd Hirsch is in it. Yes. Okay. Oh, also the enigmatic older woman from the Watchers.

Did any of you see the Dakota Fanning movie The Watchers this year? Yes, yes. I know the older Irish lady. Is in this movie. The Watchers, bad movie, bad movie. Yeah, disappointing, I thought. Um, okay, so, I was almost going to say Jarmish, but Jarmish is American.

Not Jarmish. Um, right, Jim Jarmish is an American. He's like a New Yorker. He's like the most American. Oh, yeah. No, it's a, it's not, yeah, yeah, it's just not changed. Um, yeah, he's the most American, you know, stars and stripes and country music, yeah.

Um, this is definitely not an American and has sort of as he's gone along has sort of indulged. Is it like Abel Ferrara? No. As has really indulged in his countryness. Like, his fill-in-the-blank country, like, has really, like, gone in that direction. He has, he won, a movie directed by him won, one foreign language film at the Oscars within since 2010. Yeah.

Okay. I find him to be slightly ridiculous. Yeah. Oh, Sorrentino. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there you go. What's the Sorrentino from 11? So it's before the Grand Beauty.

Is it Ildivo? No. It does not sound. But it is Sorrentino. Yeah, it is very much not foreign. I'll just, this is going too far, but I'll just say, the title is a very famous David Byrne lyric. Oh, okay. David Byrne's song title.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And the star of the movie. Oh, this must be the place. I was going to say, it's stylized very much like another rock star altogether. Yeah, all the Sorrentino, I have no placement in time for it, but yes, that makes total.

I've never seen this must be the place. I've always sort of intended to. Movie that exists only as a production still to me. Sean Penn made up to look like Robert Smith from The Cure. I don't know how to square that with anything in my life. If I liked Sorrentino movies basically at all. all I would Or if I like at this point in his career Was in any way fond of Sean Penn

And I just was over the Sean Penn thing by that point Great Beauty is good But I don't think I've liked another Sorrentino movie I think the Great Beauty is so So overindulgent I don't know Paulo's got to get back to directing movies

With Talking Head's titles Like he should do like And she was He should do You Road to Now Psycho Killer Yeah psycho killer perfect What does he

have going on. Let's see. Palo Sorentino. He's got Parthenopy opening, I believe, the week this episode drops theoretically. That's 100% going to be an A-24 movie that they put in two theaters and then pretend never existed. Are we sure I can't just continue calling it Parthenope? I'm pretty sure it's Parthenope. But I want to call it Parthenope. Because it's like Parthenon, but nope. He's got to make another Pope show. It feels like it's time. Okay, I will take this back because I am... He needs to do another Pope's show. That is for sure.

Strike while the iron is hot with popes. Like, take this conclave wave and just, you know, capitalize upon it. Yeah. I take that back. I do... I am kind of interested in Parthenope because it sounds just so overboard Sorrentino ridiculous. Because apparently the plot of the movie is, what if a hot woman had ideas? Like...

The logline on IMD... Self-parity at this point. The log line on IMDB is Parthenope is a woman who bears the name of her city. Is she a siren or a myth? And that's the whole long line right there. Definitely sounds like some Paola Sorrentino bullshit. Some bullshit by Paolo Sorrentino. That's the, you know what?

It says like a Spike Lee joint. It says like Parthenope, some bullshit by Paulus Serentine. More Sorrentino bullshit. Like, yeah. All right. This was a, wait, have we, no, you have to quiz me. Sorry. Oh, okay, okay.

One more spoke to the INDV wheel. Listen, I went into some wordplay with this one after watching this movie. In Good Company, I was thinking of the Company Men, a movie I don't think of a bad company with Chris Rock and... What if I did? No, I went to the cast of the Company Men, and who did I choose for you, none other than Mr. Kevin Costner? There is no television. Okay. Are they all acting credits or are some of the directing credits?

I will say on the known for, it is the character name for all of these. For all four. For all four. Is one of them dances with wolves? Correct. Is one of them field of dreams? Incorrect. No field of dreams. I'm going to call.

You built it and no one came. I'm going to call the manager. Um, okay. JFK? JFK is also incorrect. I'm calling the manager. All right. What do we have? Your years are 1991, 1991, 1992, and 1997, all 90s movies for Mr. Is the postman on this?

The fucking postman is the first movie in his known for. That's Hayton. That's people are hating. People want to just look up the postman. Is the postman even available? I thought that was scrubbed from the earth. You can rent the postman. Listen, the U.S. Postal Service is once again in danger, and the only thing that can save us is Kevin Costner as the postman. All right, 91, 92. 91, if it's not going to be JFK, it's got to be Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Yes, as Robin of Locksley.

My favorite movie when I was like 13. It's so fun. Even, I've watched that movie as an adult. It is not good, as I do scare quotes, like Fantastic Mr. Fox. different. That's my favorite joke in Fantastic Mr. Fox is the way they do air quotes

like this. But it's not good, but it's great. You know what I mean? It's one of those. It's nacho cheese. Sometimes you just want that plastic orange goo

that is nacho cheese. Everybody talks about how great Alan Rickman is in that movie and he is. Nobody remembers the fact that Christian Slater is in that movie just doing a regular California accent.

Like, no, wait. With a single modest hoop earring. Christian Slater is attempting an accent. He does have the earring. That's totally true. Which is just like, yes, we were doing that there. Who doesn't bother doing the accent. Christian Slater tries to do an accent and probably shouldn't.

Christian Slater is kind of Robin Hood's Mr. Robot in that movie just a little bit. Like, yes. Joe, it's settled. We're doing this exception episode this year. One million percent we are. We're doing that. We can also talk about Robin Hood men and tights, which is a funnier movie than people give it credit for. 92.

The bodyguard? The bodyguard. I literally thought initially, I was like, I should just guess Robin Hood and the bodyguard, and I didn't. And I paid the price. What are you going to do? All right. Excellent, excellent IMDB game all around. Emily St. James, thank you so much for coming back and talking about a movie from the current century.

and I sometimes, sometimes I live in the present, by which I mean 20 years ago, but let the listeners know where they should go to listen to more of you, to see things that you have written come to life on a screen of some sort or anything else. Yeah, so you can find me on most social media platforms, but especially blue sky and letterbox just Emily St. James. Those are the two platforms I take. tend to post on. Is that your DJ?

Yeah, I'm Emily St. James. It's actually my like 90s basketball game name. Like that's... Excellent. You can... I have a novel coming out on March 4th.

It's called Woodworking. It has starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, but more importantly, it has people who really like it on Goodreads. And I'm not paying attention to that, but my wife is. It is a book about trans, women in this current era so hopefully it's still on sale on March 4th but I'm told it will be

I'm told that free speech is alive and so yeah you can look for woodworking on March 4th and I wrote on the currently airing season of Yellow Jackets so you can go watch that. That'll be airing when this premiere yes when this premieres good timing us I know when this premieres we will be just about we will have just aired our third episode, which is a great one. I didn't write it, but I or get credited, but it's a, I think it's a really great season. I think

if you are a person who loves Yellowjackets or just likes when TV's a little bit weird, you're going to like this season. As a form of TV critic, that's my feeling, but maybe you'll watch it and totally disagree. But yeah. Can I ask you a Yellow Jackets question before we go? Sure, sure. As a writer,

to what degree, can you just like right in your needle drop that you want in your in your movie you cannot you can't like you can like absolutely there are a couple times this season when in the room there was like a song suggested that kind of ended up having to be

in the episode itself I haven't seen any final cuts so I don't know if all of them made it but like yeah you can't just they do that so far along in the post production process that you can't just do it although like I'm sure that if I like texted one of my bosses and was like, we absolutely have to use Believe from the Polar Express.

They would like read that text and ignore. If that happens in a Yellow Jackets episode, I'm going to be like, that's us. That's us. That's a certain inspiration. Whoever made the decision to put in Torrey's bells for her in that one episode is a person I want to shake their hair. Excellent. Thank you for answering my question. Absolutely.

Chris, where can the listeners find more of you? A letterboxed and blue sky. Chris V-File, that's F-E-I-L. I think I blew past the part where I said you should check out the Tumblr at this at oscarbuzz.com and follow our Instagram at this head Oscar buzz. I am on Blue Sky and Letterboxed at Joe Reed, read spelled R-E-I-D. You can and should also subscribe to my Patreon exclusive podcast on the films of Demi Moore called Demi Myself and I at Patreon.com slash Demi-M-P-O-D.

Demi's having a pretty good year and not only because of my podcast, but among other things a couple of things. Especially because. Listen, me or Dennis Quaid, who has done more for Demi Moore this career this year? I'm going to say it's a pretty close

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