This Had Oscar Buzz - 343 – White Noise (Festival Fever!)

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

Festival Fever comes to an end this week with a look at the last major film festival of the year, the New York Film Festival. In 2022, Noah Baumbach follow-up up his biggest Oscar success, Marriage Story, by tackling Don DeLillo’s unadaptable novel White Noise. The satire stars Adam Driver as the leading professor in … Continue reading "343 – White Noise (Festival Fever!)"

Oh, wrong house. No, the right house. We want to talk to Marilyn Hack, Millen Hacks, and friends. I'm from Canada water. Dick Poop. Guess what? I got a fever. And the only prescription is... The festival, the film festival.

Let's watch a sitcom or something. No. They're calling it the airborne toxic event. They won't come this way. Will we have to leave our home? Of course not. No. I just know.

Okay, what if it's dangerous? Evacuing all the president. Oh, this is the end or near to the end. Let's take a good, beautiful friend. All we have to do is stay out of the way. They're passing this day. Hello, and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that's a big old ago until we take off our glasses and dance.

Every week on this had Oscar buzz We'll be talking about a different movie That Once Upon a Time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations But for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died and we're here to perform the autopsy. I am your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here, as always, with my new Body Rumba Joe Reed. It was either that or calling me an airborne toxic event

And I'm glad that you chose this one. So, yes. Um, yeah, I just spent the last like 45 minutes just watching New Body Rumba like seven different times. I mean, I think you could probably watch two hours and 15 minutes worth of New Body Rumba and it would get at least a star and a half upgrade to what you might log this movie on Letterbox. Yes, although, surprise, surprise to everybody. I liked this movie a decent bit better this time around than I did. it the first time, which going back to my initial letterbox log, I kind of predicted might

happen. So I'm very interested to unpack all of that with you, because I, in my recollection, I did not really have time for this movie. And I still, in many ways, kind of don't. But there's a lot more about it, I think, that worked for me this time. And a lot more that I'm sort of interested to just sort of talk about, which is good for me, because I was sort of dreading that I was going to have to just be like, I didn't like it. I still don't like it. I still don't understand what's going on. Blah, Dondalillo. And I'll of course go into my whole fucking Dondalillo thing, I'm sure, at some point. Piss off all the fucking intellectual leftists among us. Um, but... Are they into Dondalillo? Or, like, Dondalillo feels like a decidedly Gen X.

Don Dillow feels like none of my business. Like, not boomer. God, no. Don Dondolillo is not for the boomers. No. Don DeLillow is very much none of my business and I feel like I shouldn't need to experience Don DeLillo unless there are three hours of school credit waiting for me at the end of the semester. But I do feel like, to me he feels like Jonathan Franzen for people who listen to like socialist podcasts. Yeah, but this won this won the National Book Award in the 80s, right? So, like, generationally...

It's Gen X. Like, it's not, like, but, like, it was... This is somebody who appeals to younger... Here's what I will also say. It may well appeal... You know what? There may well be boomers who are very into Dantelil. I will say the only people... NPR boomers.

The only people who have ever enthused about him to me have been, like, Ivy Leaguers, or... I don't know. Like, people I like. Like, there are people I like. are very into Don DeLillo, but like, it's also very, it's not just like, it's not just like I went, I was a lit major, it's like lit majors who like want to end capitalism. It's like that kind of, but just like, I mean like I get along with those people. But when I watch this movie, I, I never at any point, except for the closing credits, am I thinking to myself, I like this movie. but throughout most of it I do think to myself

I probably would like this book Oh you've never read it I thought for sure you would have read it No Maybe I tried to read it And I was like Maybe not Because of course

In the lead up to this movie It's COVID So like reading a book Is a little bit more intimate Than watching a movie sometimes Especially if you know It felt a lot less COVID to me now That's the other thing

We're gonna have to talk about The COVIDness of this movie because I think that's a key reason why this movie happened because you watch this and it's like so obviously a very expensive movie and you're like what what were they thinking like um this is that when filmmakers were like this was why you go to Netflix for this movie is the only reason you go to Netflix for this movie is you can get them to give you $100 million to make it nobody else was going to do that so yes good for Noah good for Noah Bomback for doing that, but also you sort of, you get what you pay for with that as well,

which is ultimately Netflix is not going to have the first thing to know what to do with the movie like this. And ultimately, this was my dominant thing when I saw this thing at New York Film Festival, which was I walked out of there at a very late screening that started very late. It started, it was a late start and then it started later because it was waiting for Noah and Greta and whomever to show up from whatever premiere party they were at, because it was the second screening. It was like, this was opening nights. It was the opening night screening. And then we were the one at like Walter Reed later that evening. So they were coming from the premier party to like dip in and be like, hey, thank you. And then like dipping out again. Greta was pregnant

without shoes. Like that was a whole fucking thing. But I remember walking out of that thing at like 1.30 in the morning. And being like, we were all very foolish to think like this had Oscar like ambitions because it just, even in its best form, I would have had a real hard time feeling like this is the kind of movie that's going to rally a critical mass of people to vote for it. I kind of disagree with that. I think what's fascinating about this movie to me, You do always kind of feel like you're observing something in a petri dish every second you're watching this movie. But what's so fascinating is the absolute certainty that they are pulling off what they are attempting to do and yet it's still not coming together. Like everybody, all of the elements are so aligned in this movie.

All of the performances are definitely of a piece. They feel very coherent together. The production design of this movie, what this movie thinks is funny in terms of tone. The tone is very consistent throughout this movie, even though there are like maybe genre shifts, for lack of a better word, throughout this movie. I think it is achieving something it is setting out to do

while not being good or entertaining or all that funny. I think it works in certain parts better than others. I think, and we'll certainly get into more of it as we, you know, talk about the plot and whatnot. I think the stuff that feels very sort of horror movie or like War of the Worlds or like an M. Night Shyamalan kind of a movie, I think all works very well. I think the stuff after the airborne toxic event does not work as well, but then I think there is a point where it clicks back in again. I really like the scene at the convent hospital. Barbers Takawa is hilarious in this movie.

She's the best performance in the movie to me. I also locked into Driver and Gerwig's performances as a unit better in this one than I did the last time, and I think that's pretty crucial. And I still think all of the stuff at the university feels very typical and kind of just like these very kind of like not particularly... I think the only part of this movie that I feel like feels overly impressed with itself is the Hitler lecture, which I believe I've heard comes from, like comes pretty faithfully from the book.

But, like, that's the only part where I feel like, okay, like, can we just, like, get past this? I think all the stuff that is sort of, like, you know, satirizing higher education, you know, the college on the hill, all this sort of stuff, and all the people there. That was Sam Gold, right? Yes, Sam Gold is in this cast. There were a couple of people I did not clock at all. I did not clock. Wait, I wrote this down. So much of this movie came together over, like, a pandemic.

park picnics or something. I did not clock Sam Goldf's like their friend. I didn't clock Kenneth Lonergan and I did not clock Andrew Barth Feldman as one of the college students, which is too bad. Yes, he is there too. Performer who I

normally really like that I don't like in this movie is Lars Ewinger. Oh, what would I know him from? He seemed familiar to me but then not. He's the guy in the motel room. A lot of European movies He's the, spoiler alert, he's the killer and personal shopper. I sometimes forget that there's a killer and personal shopper.

There is indeed a killer and personal shopper. Yeah. But anyway, I locked into more things this time than I did the last time around. I think also, again, being farther away from COVID and not having to look at this as quite so much a COVID allegory, because it very much isn't really helps. I think it is, weirdly, though, I was watching it now as an allegory for like the now times, which it also isn't, but I think it clicks into, I imagine whatever crisis of the moment you're going through, I imagine that this story would...

This is probably why, as a novel, it's stuck around in the consciousness, too, because there's... There's always something on the horizon that you are hoping is not as bad as you fear it is. And so all the stuff where, like, Adam Driver is rationalizing his way around having to worry about this, and then later is so, like, all these conversations about, like, I'm so afraid of dying, but I might be dying. But what if I didn't have to be, like, afraid of it, then is it not really, like, dying? And the whole, like, I am, I'm, you know, I don't want to be without you, but I'm more afraid of dying than I am of you dying before me. And, like, all this kind of stuff. stuff. I think it's very, I think it's, I think it is, uh, wise seems like such a dumb word. I think it is more intelligent about the ways in which we deal with disaster on any kind of a scale better than it is about anything else. And I mean, is it about, I struggle with how much this movie really has in terms of insight.

It's like, how do we handle disaster poorly and in a very self-involved way? Well, but I think it, I do think it goes beyond that a little. I do think it goes beyond, like, you know, is more information a way of being better prepared or is more information just a way of, like, you know, deluding ourselves? Is the whole Bill Camp sort of, you know, monologue in the thing of, like, you know, do we deserve attention for our suffering? Like, is, you know, I don't know. I feel like it's sort of, it's sporadic in fits and starts.

I sort of found myself writing down certain phrases and whatnot. I still don't think it is ultimately quite satisfying. But I was really glad to have felt like I feel like I'm impressed more often with what Noah Baumbach is doing than I thought the first time around. I mean, on a sequence to sequence basis, everything is so immaculately conceived, which is why I'm kind of this half in there is actually, they are actually doing what they're trying to do here. but then it just doesn't get there. Like, you mentioned the Hitler speech sequence, and then, of course, it's like we have the evacuation sequence and, like, that whole scene in the park where there's the panic.

And you have all of these individual sequences that are so well shot, composed, and edited. But, like, in the overall arc of this movie, it's so shapeless. It feels very arcless. So that it's like you can never really recognize, with what the hell it is that we're watching and what we're actually supposed to take away from this.

Yeah. Or at least that's my experience of it. I don't think you're wrong there. I think there definitely is a feeling of the whole being less than the sum of its parts, but certain parts, I think, are still really good. Again, I just feel like I think certain elements, you know, sort of felt, you know, better executed for me. It's, it is undoubtedly odd the way it just sort of, you know, fast forwards through the end of the airborne toxic event section of the movie and then

moves into the part about, you know, the drug and the marriage, almost as if you're dealing with concurrent short stories or concurrent novellas rather than, you know, Like it seems like the type of thing that's adapted from multiple short stories rather than one giant, quote unquote, unfilmable novel. It's odd that they say unfilmable too. So often, I feel like when you hear unfilmable, it's like unfilmable, you can't get the satisfaction out of, you know, making a movie out of it because so much of it is from the pros. Whereas, like, when I hear unfilmable, I mostly mean, I mostly assume that people are saying that, like, the stuff that happens in the book can't really be conveyed in a movie. Whereas, like, this feels decently plotty. You get a, it's a very plotty. I feel like whenever a book gets called that, it tends to be these things that are more about the pros or you spend most of the time.

inside a character's head, that type of thing. I feel like the unfilmable novel is not a thing. I mean, all it takes is someone with a vision who knows how to render that experience you get on the page into a movie. And I think it also goes back to this idea that this, like, very basic and often, to me, frustrating thing, that it's like everything that happens in the book has to happen on screen. And, like, it has to be in the same, in the same tone, and all of this, that, and the other. And I tend to just be... I think unfilmable is one of those words that sounds really cool when you're writing a preview of a movie. And you're just like, they said it was unfilmable, but director, Hassanfeffer Jumping Schlatt, like, told, you know, thought otherwise.

And, you know, it's just... Hossel Jumpin Shplat, the cousin of Florian Henkel von Stoner's Mark. Exactly. It's exactly right. It's exactly right. Yeah, so I'm kind of, I like talking about a movie where you and I don't entirely agree. This is nice. This is fun. This is a movie, though, that I ultimately come down on the negative with, just because I think I spend so much of the running time finding it lacking, even though I feel like everyone involved is working their ass off. and probably thought they had a home run. And I think it's probably safely my least favorite bomb back.

But this always feels like a movie that there's just the convincing argument I'm waiting to hear that makes it unlock for me or that makes me think that it's good. I don't think this would be the last time I would ever see this movie, even though I had basically identical experiences. because I came away from my rewatch still feeling that I could change my mind about this movie. Yeah, yeah. Again, knowing how much more I liked it this time than the last time, I'm almost eager to see it a third time, although I don't know when. It is still a pretty long movie. And it is, I don't know, it is still a little, it's not impenetrable, but it's a little daunting when you go into it.

It helps that I really like almost all of the actors. in quite a bit. It was fun seeing Sam Navola again, now that I know him from something else. As I texted you and Katie, I sort of went back and I made sure that I had clocked him in this. I was like, I thought he was really good the last time, right, too.

This isn't just me, like, sort of white lotus braining. And, like, no, the first time I saw it, I really quite liked him, too. So I think he's really good in this. He's right on the edge of that sort of, like, too quirky, teen. You know what I mean? Because his whole thing is like he's, you know, he's overprepared, right? He's, he knows somewhat almost magically knows every time he comes off screen and comes back from being off screen, he's learned like 20 new facts about what's going on. He knows exactly what's happening. He knows the very most up-to-date information about the, this is why I think the last third of the movie kind of struggles is he disappears. He's like, that character goes away. And I really thought that character, especially as a bouncing off point for driver's character,

is really good. I liked that sort of generational thing of like, you know, dad. My kid is smarter than me, or my kid is more tuned in than I am. But my kid is also sort of more willing to face what's happening than I am. You know what I mean? That I, with all of my kind of education and status and more invested in this being nothing because I would very much like it to be nothing because I'm very good with where I'm at now. I am the preeminent Hitler scholar in all of the world. Hitler Studies as if that to me felt, I don't know, I don't know how you felt about that. I feel like Hitler Studies is a very like obvious joke about academia, right? A very obvious like, oh, what are we like? It's so obvious that the obviousness is.

part of the point. It's part of the satire. It's, you know, three levels up its own ass, you know. And yet, I would watch another movie about his colleagues, about Andre 3000 and Jody Turner Smith and Sam Gold and Carlos Chacon. I'd watch another movie about them shopping for snacks. I was endlessly fascinated with everything going on in that A&P, from the colors to the old logos, to like the prices on the wall. I paused it so often. I know it's supposed to take place in the 80s, so it's not, like, surprising. But I still feel like the prices are, like, wildly just like... Oh, yeah.

It's like 1940s, 1950s. It's... Some of them, yes. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. But also, it's just, like, what brand names we decided to, you know, choose the fact that, like, the shelves are stocked so aggressively with, like, everything is so perfectly aligned. And there are just such large blocks of the most, you know, dominant...

product brands or whatever, I don't know. Again, that to me, like, the satire of that is not exactly subtle, right? The satire of that is very much on front street. But it is also very fun. I wonder what... Well, and it's so much that it, like, it goes past the point of like, all right, I get what you're doing. And then it's just like, okay, but like, this is now fun again. Because, like, it's so aggressive. Right. We're doing an okay go music video, even though it's... I wrote down, I'm like, this should have won the video music award. In a just and right culture, Noah Baumbach would have won best director at the video music awards just for that section, just for an LCD sound system music music.

I wonder what happens to this movie if that's an opening credit sequence and not a closing credit sequence? Like, do more people like this movie? Are they more set up to have a good time? Maybe. Are you supposed to be set up to have a good time in this movie, though? I don't know. I mean, like, you're... I think the dread of the first half is very, like, intentional, right?

I spend most of this movie thinking to myself, but why am I not laughing? Sure, sure. Yes. I think it's much more effective as a scary movie than a funny movie, if that makes sense. That is not my experience, but I can follow that. Okay. Like, it made me feel like what if Noah Baumbach made a thriller? You know what I mean? I mean, he has elements of that, too. There's that whole, the best, sequence in marriage story, the part with the knife.

It's so good. Yes. I'm very interested to see how ambitious Jay Kelly ends up being. Because just from the premise, it feels like it might be a step back to something a little bit more in his old wheelhouse. But I'm wondering, there's, you know, still the possibility that there could be other things at work. He does seem to be like somebody who is moving forward and pushing past the boundaries,

even with just like the script for Barbie and stuff like that. I know that they shot this in like multiple countries, so it's at least ambitious in terms of... J. Kelly, they did? Yes. Like, I believe part of it was shot in Italy or like Sicily something. That's interesting. I still stand by my absolutely no, no details whatsoever, but I feel firm in this. prediction that Adam Sandler is getting an

Oscar this year. That'd be fun. Who knows, but if he is in more than three seeds, he's getting an Oscar for this movie. It seems like he's second build, but I don't know what to base that on beyond just IMDB, which is always wrong about this kind of stuff. Right.

I just know Clooney's playing the title character. Yeah, we don't really know much about this movie. Even marriage story, which they kept a lid on for a long time, we knew it was a divorce. movie. Yes. Yes. Noah Bombach's divorce movie. I feel like it was like it was even like titled

like untitled Noah Bomback divorce movie at one point. I could be wrong, but I do feel like, oh, a full moon, Chris. I'm looking at my window. It is a full-ass moon. Sorry. I'm not a soprano. I would otherwise be breaking

into a great comment. Anytime someone talks about the moon, I hear Denae Benton in my ears. Joe, Yes. It's quite a momentous occasion. We are wrapping up the May miniseries this week.

We are. Almost as quickly as it began, it has ended. For us, it has. For us it has. We're recording these all in the span of like 11 days. As is our, as is our custom, we are cramming episodes in order so that we can go and have a life. We're days away from seeing each other. that we're going on vacation.

Very exciting. Very exciting. I'm thrilled. I can't wait to see you. But why don't you give the listeners a little recap of what we've been doing here in the month of May? Yeah. So we've been doing our annual May miniseries. This year, it's called This Had Oscar Bros Festival Fever.

We are visiting six different film festivals with a representative film from five of them. We did a turbulent brilliance patronate episode on the film American. and splendor to represent the Sundance Film Festival. That was our exception film for the month for the Patreon. Then we moved right into the main feed with Tatan, which was our Cannes Film Festival Palm Door winner. And then last week, no, two weeks ago, we did the Venice Golden Lion winner, Rosencranton, Stern, or Dead, the Tom Stoppard film. Then last week, we did the double dip, which was the Tell You Ride of Patreon episode, our excursion, where we juried it up with a full-on 2015 Telluride Film Festival Awards presentation, which is very fun. And then we did the Toronto Film Festival

People's Choice Award winner from 1992, Baz Luhrman's Strictly Ballroom, which was a very, very fun episode to do. And now we are here to close it out with the opening night film of the 2022, New York Film Festival, Noah Baumbach's White Noise, a movie that, as I mentioned, I was there that night. I was there on opening night, not for the official first screening, but for the one after. I've never been to an official opening night screening of New York Film Festival. I have screened the film with the press that morning a few times, but have never gone to the full-on opening night gala for... Pricy ticket. Well, and even, like, if you could get, like, you know, a publicist to give you, like, a ticket

whatever, which I believe is, you know, possible. I've never done that. It's a beautiful venue, though. If you've never been to Lincoln Center, to the Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, which is where they have the big premiere screenings for New York Film Festival, it's, you know, it's right there amid the hubbub of Lincoln Center, which is very fun. You sort of go down into this, you know, you go down some stairs from street level. And it's just this. That's where the, you know, the red carpet is and all the sort of like hobnobbing. And it's just a beautiful, I think everything about Lincoln Center is really pretty.

And I just think, you know, whatever. Like, I know I dip into New York speak a lot. And a lot of people are probably just like doing the jerk. off-motion or whatever. But especially now that I've been... Ooh to those people. Especially now that I've been gone for a few years, I get very romantic about all of this stuff. And so New York Film Festival, definitely annually one of my favorite, you know, parts of the year. However, I was able to sort of take it in. I was always, you know, very excited.

I remember the first time that... I remember the year that they did the season. secret screening of Lincoln. And I worked at the time right across the street from Lincoln Center at ABC. And so that was like the word sort of like got out that more. Yeah. This was the secret screen. New York doesn't do secret screenings anymore. But they don't. But there were a few years where they did. They did in 2011. They did Hugo. The unfinished Hugo, which. And it was like one shot had unfinished visual effects. Well, Lincoln was technically unfinished too. It was just like we haven't put the finishing touches on. whatever, whatever. As far as I could tell, I couldn't, you know, tell the difference. But the word was, like, fully out that this Lincoln screening was happening. That afternoon. And so I jotted across the street to the box office and grabbed a ticket. So that was super fun. That was when I can't remember. I think that might have been the night that I met Matt Patches for the first time. I definitely remember running into Katie in line for Lincoln. That was when I sat in front. of Scott Ruden

and watched the sort of parade of Famos sort of walk up to his seat to sort of like kiss the ring including what Whoopi Goldberg tried to not get screamed out later Right, exactly So a lot of really good memories That was like my little sister would come to visit me around that time often And so we went to a lot of New York Film Festival screenings together

there, because the festival would be going on while she was there. We saw Francis Ha there. We saw 20th century women. We saw Birdman. We saw this, white noise, actually, I saw with my sister. And of course, 2022 was my last sort of hurrah in New York. I would, by the end of this festival, I would be out of the city two months later. So it's nostalgic for me.

You know what I mean? There's a lot of nostalgia for the New York. film festival. So New York makes sense to have a sense of because like New York doesn't have a competition. They had a period where they were doing world premieres. They really don't do world premieres anymore. I think it's that it is a city festival. It's very much a festival for New Yorkers. It's very hard to do the New York Film Festival as an outside, like as somebody coming from another city. And Film Society of Lincoln Center has a very devoted, you know, following. Subscriber base. Yeah. New York, you know, really does play to its audience. I don't know if it has

much interest in really reaching audiences outside of people who, you know, see film in New York City. The festival runs for about a month, all told, which again, makes it very hard to be like, well, I'm going to cover the whole thing. If you want to come in and you get your, you know, press pass, you come in and you hope to catch the right weekend. You know what I mean? You catch opening weekend. You kept, you know, whatever. And of course, the press screenings start essentially like as soon as people are back from Toronto. So it's this like mid-September to mid-October sort of like run where it's just like it's chaos. And it's all-day occasions too, where it's like one right after the other in the same screening room. It's a great festival.

for a freelancer who lives in New York. If you're a freelancer who lives in New York and you can get a festival pass, you could basically just like, go every day, see everything, pitch your heart's content, and see who will get, you know, you to write for them. It's probably the one festival that sort of is built that way, where if you live in the city and you don't have a desk to be chained to, beautiful, absolutely beautiful. So, um, but I think what May, seem narrow about New York as a festival is also what allows for that sense of occasion. It's at Lincoln Center, so there's a sense of, like, beauty that you're talking about that can really make people form this, like, emotional attachment, for lack of a better word, towards this festival.

And they really invest in things like Q&As with the filmmakers. They have retrospectives. I remember that's where I saw the anniversary. screening of the Royal Tenen Bombs, where they had pretty much the whole cast there, except for Gene Hackman, because they did all tell their stories about how terrifying Gene Hackman was on the set of the Royal Tenin Bombs. So it's a lot of, you know, it's a lot of stuff like that. It is a, it's a great time in New York City every year to sort of be a fan of the movies. I think when we talk about the New York Film Festival as being a part of the award season calendar, it becomes a more sort of complicated question, in part because sometimes the New York Film Festival

cares about being a part of that more than they do at other times. And you can see that sort of through their history. I kind of... And the advent of this new spotlight section, which is not their main slate, which is room for movies that maybe allow movies that they would not program is what I would say. And now they have a section for it where not only can they sell tickets but they can be a part of that as well. Like last year's spotlight

included Amelia Perez, they've had Maestro in that section before where they can also get splashy premieres for some of these movies. Yeah. And so in lieu of having awards, what the sort of the places of prestige at New York Film Festival is, and these are the things that will be announced sort of over the summer to promote the festival. They have an opening night film. They have a centerpiece film that, you know, premieres in the middle weekend, and then they have a closing night film. Those are the three sort of points of, you know, real focus.

These are the movies that, you know, they're essentially headlining with. And one of the things that I thought was interesting was I sort of went through the last, you know, several decades of the New York Film Festival and tried to jot down the big world premieres. Because obviously, this is the last of the fall festivals. You get this, it comes after Venice, it comes after Telluride, it comes after Toronto. And so a lot of the big movies of the year will have already premiered somewhere, if not at Cannes, if not at Sundance. And so there was a while there, starting with the social network in 2010. Right. So the social network premieres, world premieres at the New York Film Festival in 2010.

And this was a coup. This was their opening night film. And it was a big deal. It was a really big deal for the New York Film Festival. It was a really big deal. And it launched that movie very well. That movie performed very, very well in award season. And it sort of made New York Film Festival viable as a launching point for award season.

And it kicked off about a 10-year run of the New York Film Festival being a platform to premiere Oscar Hopefuls. So 2011, they did My Week with Maryland. These are just movies that were from opening night. That was a closing night movie? I believe it was centerpiece, but give me a second. So that would have been, what, 2011? 2011 was the centerpiece film. Simon Curtis is My Week with Maryland.

2012, all three of their gala premieres were all world premieres. Flight, Robert Semeckis's Flight, Not Fade Away, which was the David Chase movie, and Angley's Life of Pie. I believe Life of Pie was the opening night. Yes. Then 2013, same deal. Captain Phillips is the opening night selection. Secret Life of Walter Middy is the centerpiece selection. And then Spike Jones as her is the closing night. So again, all three of those world premieres. 2014, Gone Girl is the opener. Yes. Yeah, David Fincher's Gone Girl is the opener. Inherent Vice is the centerpiece and the, what was the closing? The closing was not a world premiere. Oh, Birdman was the closing. because I was at that one, was not a premiere.

2015, Robert Semeckis says the Walk opens the festival. Zaywalk. Miles Ahead, which is the Don Cheadle movie, was closing night. And then centerpiece was not a world premiere. Miles Ahead was a world premiere. Steve Jobs was the centerpiece, which was not a World Premier. Telluride, yeah. 2016, again, all three of their big galaes were World Series.

premieres. Ava DuVernice 13th opened the festival. The first Netflix opener, which they have since then have established a reputation for Netflix openers, including this movie we're talking about today. Yes. 20th century women was the centerpiece. Lost City of Zed was the closer. 2017. This is the Amazon year where it's all Amazon movies and it goes well for none of them. None of them. Opening night was Richard Linklider's last flag flying. Todd Haynes' Wonderstruck, which was a Cannes premiere, played Centrepiece, and then Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel was the closing night gala amid a whirlwind of cancel culture, Michigas for Woody Allen. 2018 was a big fat none of them.

2018 were all previous premieres. The favorite was the opening night film that premiered at Venice. Roma, Centerpiece, also had premiered. at Venice and at Eternities Gate, the Julian Schnabel movie was also, they were all Venice premieres. These were all Venice premieres. The thing about New York Film Festival is I think they prefer, if they can't world premiere something, I think they prefer to take something from Venice or if not that perhaps can, but usually Venice, because it hasn't premiered maybe at, you know, at Toronto or tell you're right. So it maybe is like...

Typically not Toronto. I think the last time... They don't like to overlap with Toronto. An opener also played Tiff was Wild Grass in 2009, which I believe is a Renee film. Yeah, that makes sense. So since that year, that 2017 Amazon year, only the Irishman in 2019, French Exit and Lovers Rock in 2020, and then the tragedy of Macbeth in 2021 were world premieres. So we've kind of moved out of that very heady era of New York Film Festival being very, very concerned with world premiering. I do wonder if that 2017 year, where they tried so hard to book world premieres that they ended up booking fairly underwhelming movies, I mean, I like Wonderstruck, okay. I like Wonderstruck as well. But yeah.

It's also, I think, post-COVID to a lot of. these movies strategically are not necessarily looking to get for that type of exclusivity or if they do it's you know it's nickel boys which does tell your ride and then new york yeah and because like these movies need help so they'll go to as many festivals as they can or if there's a certain strategy involved it's not yeah so like new york is ultimately late for a lot of these movies that's the thing is If you are looking to do a festival premiere, New York is pretty late. If you are not looking to, you know, if you are looking to premiere late, New York is too early. New York is too early if you want to do the December game. You know, if you want to do the, what you call it, a complete unknown kind of a thing, where you want to wait till, you know, the end of the year. The Irishman's like the last coup for them in terms of booking something. But, like, the Irishman's definitely a movie that had that much anticipation.

They can sell a lot of top dollar tickets to their opening night. Those are expensive tickets. And the Irishman also, like, I mean, that's a movie that could have had its pick of festivals. And obviously, Scorsese is a New York guy, all that sort of stuff. They do show, not preference, but they do try to have a New York filmmaker somewhere in those Gala. lineups. That's how you see someone like Azazol Jacob showing up for a movie that's divisive.

Yes. The Irishman also, being a three and a half hour movie, has some logistical issues. That's, but New York Film Festival does feel like a festival that like you're not really, you don't really have your eye on your watch because not like Toronto where all of a sudden you're trying to like see two movies in the evening.

And their programming team is trying, to, you know, a movie of that, like, festivals have been programming movies of that length less and less because it creates scheduling issues for them. So since 2022, the White Noise year, they've essentially added a fourth gala, a major gala, to the lineup. That year was the 60th anniversary year, so they had a 60th anniversary screening, like, celebration screening, and that was James Gray's Armageddon time. In 2020, they've moved into just calling it the Spotlight Gala.

So that was Maestro that year. Last year, the Spotlight Gala was queer. Luca Gwada Nino's queer. Last year, it's interesting. Just sort of to get a sense of where the New York Film Festival is now. No world premieres, but your opening night film is Nickelboy. It's a movie that premiered at Telluride, but it does feel like New York Film Festival really introduced that movie

to the public. Santa Peace movie was Pedro Motevars is the room next door. Pedro Motevar has a long and very, you know, a very populated history with the New York Film Festival.

A lot of his movies were at one of the major gala selections for New York Film Festival. They had a long relationship with Pedro Moldivar. So that did feel a little bit more. He's had multiple opening night movies.

Yes. So that did feel like New York Film Festival really like, not exactly coming home because they never really left Pedro, but it did feel like New York Film Festival really playing to their loyalty. And then the closing night film was Steve McQueen's Blitz, which had premiered in London. But again, that was overseas. And Blitz at New York Film Festival did also feel like for all intents and purposes, sort of the, that's where it's, you know, awards season for such as it was, you know, kind of kicked off. So I think that's a pretty good assessment.

And then, like, in addition to that, they had Anora, they had the Brutalist, they had, you know, I'm still here. A lot of Maria, you know, a lot of, you know, the major sort of movies of A Real Pain, you know, was at the festival. These are all things that had, you know, premiered at other festivals. But I think in terms of what movies were their big gala spotlights, I think those were well chosen in that they did not feel like they were picking from, even though the room next door was Venice's golden lion winner. It didn't really feel like they were picking through the sort of remainder bin of award season with those movies. and yet it still felt very sort of to New York's character and it felt like they weren't trying to be another festival, you know? Well, yeah, this is why I think, well, this whole month we're talking about these festivals

and the way that they've evolved and, you know, where they're at in the certain ecosystem. I think New York, especially opening night, is the, like, I guess for lack of a better word, the like the champagne choice basically this is the high-minded choice for the season where they're definitely staking their claim

on a certain type of movie you know last year nickel boys I think is the exact example of this where it's you know something that is perhaps a little bit more artfully minded but you know they want to give a significant push to

also May, December, the year before that. Yeah. Was it actually, look at the lineup for a last year. It's a really well-programmed festival. It really hit a lot of the highlights. Even among the like non-Oscary stuff, it programmed, uh, hard truths and on becoming a guinea fowl and the friend, which we liked so much, and Paul Schrader's O Canada and

David Cronenberg's The Shrout's seat of the sacred fig was there. Um, if you were able to see even like a good handful, all we imagined is light was there. If you were able to see like a good handful of New York Film Festival. Offerings Last year, you had a really good sort of slice of festival season. And they can be choosy about their movies, too, what they want to put in their mainsplate, especially now as they've bulked up this whole spotlight section, which is very much feels like these are the movies we don't necessarily want to put a like endorsing stamp on,

but like they'll still draw an audience. Sure. What were the spotlight? Let me dip into, so spotlight section last year, you said Amelia Pera. as the friend Maria, I thought, with spotlight. Maria was spotlight. I'm still here. Laos Carraxes, it's not me.

Alex Ross Perry's pavements. Luca Guadenae's queer. A real pain. Guy Madden's rumors. Yeah. That's a really, you know, that's an interesting slate in and of itself. And, yeah, it's a good festival last year. I mean, again, I'm a homer for New York Film Festival, for sure.

but I do feel like there is sometimes a sense that people want to kind of bury it a little bit and maybe that's me feeling a little defensive but it does sometimes feel like, oh, New York Film Festival, it doesn't matter anymore. Well, there's a certain element that it goes on for a long time and it goes on past what is supposed to be the closing night film and that's just because they're still selling tickets to these movies.

If they can sell Tuesday matinee tickets for their festival for an additional week, they're going to do it. And again, it's because this is a festival for New Yorkers. It's not, you know, necessarily destination bound. Here's what I will say. If I'm going to show some tough love to my former hometown festival. The ticket prices are absurd. The ticket prices, particularly for the big movies, the big movies that screen at Alice Tully Hall, are absurd.

And I know that's the case for the gala at Toronto. I'm sure that's the case at the other major festivals too, but you have to make your films accessible to regular people. You know what I mean? It's just, it's the Broadway thing too. Would you say that's comparable to, like, you go to a movie in New York City, you're paying $20 just to see a regular, you know, Wednesday night movie? No, because A, there's no option to see the matinee. B, there's no AMC Stubs or whatever, or whatever, what's it now? What's the AMC Plus?

I don't know. You know what I mean? But also, I think it's more than that. I feel like the last time I tried to buy tickets to a gala or to a major sort of like evening premiere screening, there were like $40 a piece. Got it. Well, you're getting a Q&A because at least all of the premiere screenings in New York, you get a Q&A.

That is true. That is true. I'm just saying, I do feel like... Q&As are bad, though. Like, that's how they sell, I guess, the upsell on it. But, like, I don't stick around for Q&As anymore because they're always bad. I just feel like the sticker shock turns a lot of people away. And...

They sell out all their screenings, though. Sure. Well, but that's, but again, but it's why... But you want things to be accessible to... In New York City, you can rent apartments for $5,000 a month, too. Like, there are enough rich people that will pay for it. But I think sticker shock turns a lot of people who, you know, would go to see, like, just have a $15 screening and, you know, find a way to distribute

tickets that aren't, you know, whatever, you know, impossible to get or whatever. I just feel bad when I enthuse about a festival like this and everybody's like, I'd go, but the ticket, you know, two tickets are 100 bucks. And it's just like, yeah, I get it. So. Anyway, that's my thing. That's my spiel. I sort of went off on Blue Sky the other day, not one off, but I quote tweeted a Mark Harris tweet, which was not a bad Mark Harris tweet, and it was not in any way sort of like clapping back at Mark.

But he was talking about going to see, oh, John Proctor's the villain and another play that I can't remember the title of, and was sort of saying that, like, you know, try and go and see these things, and, you know, the tickets aren't as bad, are expensive, but are not as bad as, you know, Denzel and Jake Gyllenhaal. And also, you can, like, you can rush, rush seats or only whatever. And I'm just like, I wish the solution to Broadway being too expensive wasn't always, oh, you can just get rush seats. I don't want to get rush seats. Most people don't want to get rushed seats. It's an impediment. It's a extra. If they're bad seats, you can't choose your seat. And it's just another barrier to entry. And at some point, like,

I'm glad that they're there. I'm glad that they're there for people. For some people, it's the only way they can see Broadway. But, like, I do sometimes feel like I'm, like, scratching at the stage door to just be like, let me in,

please, may I please get into your show, or whatever? And so there's an element where it's just like, I'm 44 years old. I'm not standing for rush. I'm not standing in line for rush. All shows are digital rush now. It's all digital.

Well, then I'm 44 years old. I don't have time to figure out how digital rush works. I don't know. You just put your name in a Chris I'm making a point I'm making a point

God damn it But you know what I mean It's just No Broadway prices are too expensive I remember like I used to In college Being you know A broke college student

If I you know Scraped my pennies Throughout the year I could go to New York For a week and see You know as many shows as possible And I would pay like 45 bucks to sit in the last row

Of the theater Which in Broadway houses Is still a good seat Except for like maybe two of those theaters. And yeah, $50 Broadway tickets aren't real. I mean, you could get $50 rush tickets to things. Yeah. The way that I would, my favorite way of like seeing theater that wasn't too expensive. And again, this is still me like paying $65 for a ticket. But it would be waiting for a show to almost be closing and for like this show not to be selling very well.

and then buying a seat in like an empty row in the upper sort of balcony and then six times out of ten they'll just have they'll just tell you you can like move up if there's like nobody in the balcony or whatever so that's how I saw like the Heidi Chronicles that was when I was like free to like see a Wednesday matinee so I went on Wednesday matinee of the Heidi Chronicles and I was the only person in like an entire section and the other the only other people in the balcony was like a student group that was there for their like senior trip or whatever. Yeah. And they all sort of like rushed up to the first couple seats. So then I had like, they were like, you can move up to it. And I'm like, I'm good. And I sort of like, I stretched out. I had my face, whatever.

I watched Elizabeth Moss and fucking. He's Brandon Uranowitz, right? It was not. It was what's his face from gentleman's guide to love and murder. But one of those guys. Yes. What's his name? Who I love.

Fuck. Bryce Pinkham. Price Pinkham. Yes. I love him. The thing about, I mean, this is true of all festivals. And I'm, I'm not trying to be the capitalistic shill here. But I do think, it shouldn't be absurd.

I mean, some TIF prices are absurd. It's pushing like $90 Canadian to sit in the top balcony. That's crazy. Yeah. They should be more accessible to more people. part of that this is me mostly like looking askance at Tiff

means get off of Ticketmaster don't sell tickets through Ticketmaster because bots still buy stuff to film festival screenings you really saw that last year but like

I understand a little bit of a price increase than you would have for a normal ticket to a movie theater or your local AMC, just because you're not really seeing just anything at an AMC when it's in general. It's true. You're seeing things, you know, fresh off the presses.

Yeah. You're seeing it in a particular environment where, you know, there's volunteers and such. There's, you know, people whose jobs run their entire year around this, you know. I will say, if that is the case. The extra money is going towards something. And, like, you're seeing it, you're getting, you're paying to see it in an environment where you're surrounded by a ton of people who love movies. I mean, that's not everybody's everyday experience of going to their chain movie. You're right.

You're right about that. I still think there's a, there's a medium to be met. But, um, you're right about that. I will say, if that is the case and the ticket prices are premium, I, for as much as I love Alice, Tully Hall, the seats could be 20% more comfortable. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. Well, that's the other thing about seeing movies in these environments where it's like,

oh, they're putting them in these big, beautiful theaters that are not designed for theatrical exhibition. You're seeing them in concert halls. Yes. Although, if I'm seeing a concert there, I also, it's just, I don't know, this is a me being big problem. It's fine. It's fine. Let's turn the corner. should also be more comfortable and admitting to all bodies.

When I was back in New York and I saw O'Mary again, my first time in the Lyceum Theater, I was like, oh. Oh, Broadway seats are rough. This is the other, I mean, this is the other reason why. Broadway seats are rough, and then the Lyceum seats are R-O-U-G-H rough. And the cheaper seats are the ones with even less legroom. I was like, oh, these seats were built at a time when the average human body was just like

what today would be not even slimmer but shorter My height was very tall Shout out to the various ushers Throughout the years Who have helped me When available Find seats where I could

Actually put my knees in front of me Rather than fully out in the aisle So Whatever, we don't have to talk about this It's like you create a chaise for yourself a little bit even I have had that experience before in some of these places that's just like

Airplanes and Broadway theaters these are the two places where my size becomes an element of terror where it's just sort of like I enter the because it doesn't become just your problem I can put up with discomfort I'm Catholic enough to be able to be like

this discomfort is character building and I can you know whatever it is the way in which I then impugned upon other people's space that I cannot handle. Like that is where it's just like, no, this becomes damaging to my psyche to see how bad of a time other people are having. And I just... Well, fuck those people. Everybody should be gracious and accommodating. Everybody should be nice to their neighbor. And that includes the judgment that they don't even verbally express.

Keeping it to yourself is much appreciated by me, is all I will say. To close the button on New York before we get back to the movie. Yes. New York has such a place in the ecosystem. New York feels like the North American fancy festival, because I think Telluride has certainly lost some of its shine, and it always feels like this rarefied thing of people just like up in the mountains, you know, hanging out

with the millionaires. Sure, sure. And then Toronto, again, it's the people's festival. They need to cool it on those prices and make them more accessible, i.e. get-off Ticketmaster. Yeah. But like, again, New York feels like the champagne of the North American

film festivals, but... There's also the history of it, too, where like, if you look and, like, it was founded in the 1960s, which makes it a younger festival, but it also is sort of born into this time of great sort of experimentation with cinema. It's the very first opening night festival, or opening night movie was the Exterminating Angel. You know what I mean?

Like, it was the first people on the selection committee were Andrew Seris and Susan Sontag. It has that sort of... I mean, one of the probably most notorious New York Film Festival world premieres ever is Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. You know, you have Pauline Kale. talking about how everyone was changed by that movie. Yeah. That movie, you watch that movie now, aside from anything problematic you feel about that movie,

I think justifiably so. You watch it now, it's like, that's only a life-changing movie to deeply repressed people. Yeah, well, yeah. That movie is fine. And like, you can find all of this, you know, you know, a little sort of like, you know, New Yorkers with their heads up their own asshole.

or whatever. But it also feels like, to me, this kind of thing is, I see the names Pauline Kale and Susan Sontag and Andrew Saris. And I'm just like, you know, to have lived, to have lived among those cranky legends. You know what I mean? Pauline Kale, often homophobic, frequently wrong, but still like, you know, among the top tier of people to ever do it. Yeah. And like, okay, I know that this is frustrating for us who do not live in markets like this and still wish to go to the movies. And I know specifically I have L.A. friends who are going to yell at me for what I'm about to say. But the fact of the matter is New York City is the center of the solar system for moviegoing in America. It is... I'm glad you said it because... It is the center of movie-going gravity in this country. It's New York City. I understand L.A. is not going to like that I said that.

They make of the movie. We watch the movie. I mean, I will say, experiencing L.A., that is definitely a place that maybe even, you know, moviegoing is more holy to them than... I love. perhaps it is. But then again, they also have all of these powerful directors and producers

and cinematographers even in the backyard of these movie theaters. So, like, you can have a Jim Billion Dollar director. I'm not talking to Jim Cameron. I'm just throwing out a random name. Show up at these movie theaters. And if it's not pristine, somebody's getting their head chopped off, you know. And New York, that's just not the case. New York has always had shithole movie theaters, you know, but, like, yeah. New York has multiplexes as well, but I will say some of my favorite places to see movies in L.A. are both the Grove and Universal City Walk. So, like, and other places, too.

But I, like, there's, that feels there's nothing like that in New York, and that's fine. And that's fine. We love both of our major metropolituses. Metropolis is, is what I'm trying to. to say metropolisese metropoli um as far as oscar is concerned new york and the opening night i think it has some sway to get certain types of movies considered um i definitely think you know you look at something like 13th opening the festival and you never know what's going to happen with the documentary race and then that gets through in like documentary yeah um but they have a

had a best picture winner since Chariots of Fire opened that festival. They came so close with the social network. It really, almost, man. Almost. All right. Let's swerve into white noise talk and then we'll come back to New York Film Festival for the end. Before we do that, would you like to tell the listeners about our Patreon? Sure. I did a little bit when we were talking about the May miniseries. We've had two exceptional episodes of our main miniseries on the Patreon this month, our American Splendor episode about the Sundance Film Festival, and of course, our tell your ride jury extravaganza.

That's a good example of what we're offering for you on this head Oscar buzz, turbulent brilliance. That is the name of the podcast. For $5 a month, you are getting two, sorry, I'm going to say it again. For $5 a month, you're getting two bonus episodes every month. First episode every month is what we call an exception episode, and that is a movie that has all of the ingredients of a This Had Oscar Buzz movie, where the Oscar hopes were high and they got dashed on the rocks, except what survived a nomination, maybe two, who knows, who's to say. So this month, again, American Splendor, but we've done movies recently, like Inside Lewin Davis and Mary Queen of Scots, Mahal and Drive, Phantom of the Opera, which we talked about with our special guest. just award-winner, extraordinary, nominee all over the place.

Natalie Walker, my goodness gracious, too famous for us at this point. Far from heaven, Hitchcock, House of Gucci, Knives Out with our friend Horthay and Melina. And then second episode of every month on the third Friday, we are bringing you an excursion episode. These things go all over the place. We're not talking about movies specifically, but about things we love about the movies, things we love about the Oscar race, the culture that has created us. We're talking to EW fall movie previews and old award shows. I recently dug up an old award show that I want to do for a coming excursion that I am. Let's do it. Let's do it in June. Very excited for.

We have recently talked about the Carl Malden hosted Oscar's Greatest Moments VHS. We have talked about the movie line issue with Jennifer Lopez talking her shit. We did our little telluride jury thing. We just sort of, we explore the space is what we do. So all of this and our two years worth of accumulated episodes are there for you for again the low low price of $5 a month. The best deal to be had New York Film Festival wishes it was giving you the bang for the buck that we are giving you for $5 every month. To sign up for this had Oscar

Buzz turbulent brilliance. Go to our Patreon page at patreon.com slash this had Oscar Buzz. Joseph. Yes. White noise. Quite noise. I almost wanted to start this episode with like, but um,

but um, but um, but um, but um, can we do the, can we do the, uh, adaptation phone dial thing?

Yeah, I'm gonna, I'll, uh, can you do a like a, uh, uh, can you do a,

you know what's so funny? White. I 100% will probably, this will probably disappear in our post-production because it is absolutely tailored to get rid of exactly this kind of noise. So you're going to get straight up nothing. Well, then you're just going to do a sound drop of the adaptation scene. Directed and written by one Noah Bomback based on the novel by Don DeLillo, starring Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Rafi Cassidy, Sam Navola, May Navola,

Andre Benjamin, Jody Turner Smith, Lars Idinger, Bill Camp, Barbara Sukawa, Sikawa, I don't know how she pronounces her name, but I love her. Sikova, I maybe, is that W. Pachovina. Probably Sikova. Yeah. Always happy when she shows up. Chloe Feynman, Gideon, Glyck, Sam Gold, and Kenneth Lonerick. The woo-hoo, I shout when Gideon Glick shows up in this movie.

I've done it twice now, and I will do it every time I watch this movie. Love that. As previously mentioned, the movie world premiered at the opening night of the Venice film festival, then the opening night of the New York Film Festival, and then limited theatrical release, November 20th for Thanksgiving, and then dropping on Netflix December 30th. A New Year's Eve movie? Is this a movie that you watch to usher in the start of the new year?

Yeah, a movie that makes you optimistic about the future for sure. cut you know what this is a movie that ends with a family a family unit together despite all these bad things that happened and they're grocery shopping hand in hand with each other and they're dancing with squeeze bottles of mustard to LCD sound system to LCD sound system you could not ask for a better ending so you know what I do feel like it's an optimistic movie on that note then show are you ready to give a 60 second plot description of white noise sure all right your 60 second plot description of white noise starts now Adam drive driver plays Jack, a professor of Hitler Studies at the College on the Hill, which is purportedly in Ohio, so I guess Oberlin. Greta Gerwig is his wife, Babette with crazy permed 80s hair, and they have a more or less happy marriage with their blended family of four children, and they grocery shop at the AMP, where everything is huge and big and bright colors. One day, a train crashes with a tanker outside of the city, leading to a massive cloud

of black smoke, which is ultimately known as the airborne toxic event. After much debate, the family flees in their station wagon, making it to a shelter at a campsite, but not before which Jack exposes himself to the cloud while pumping gas. The terrifying brush with mass scale death is ultimately survived, and everyone goes back to their lives after a few days. But now Jack is terrified that his death is imminent. Meanwhile, Babette is also acting out of sorts. And oh, by the way, all this time, Jack and the eldest daughter, Denise, have been suspicious of this pill that Babette's been taken called Dialar. Jack finally confronts his wife, who admits she's been in a clinical trial for a pill that treats fear of death.

And after she got removed from a trial, she had started exchanging sex for pills from someone named Mr. Gray. Jack ends up tracking down Mr. Gray to a dingy old motel room. And after a few elliptical exchanges about death and terror, Jack shoots him twice. But when Babette shows up following Jack to the Motel, Mr. Gray shoots them both before passing out and losing memory of the event. And Jack and Babette drag him to a convent to heal all of their bullet wounds. And it turns out the nuns are all atheists, but faking belief for the good of everyone else. Everybody survives. And the family unit remains intact.

Now let's all head down to the AMP for some LCD sound system and dance the dance of consumers, freedom, the end. 15 seconds over. Hey, I'll take it. That, I think, for this movie in particular, is very impressive. Thank you. Well, I did not allow myself to go into any kind of Elvis detours. apologies to Don Cheadle No Bill Camp detours

Apologies to Bill Camp Yeah Don Cheadle probably best performance in this movie I don't know if I necessarily agree But he's fun He's like he's a fun good time I don't know Actually no

I already said Barbara Barbara is the funniest performance in this movie It's got to be Barbara But then I would say Don Cheadle And then third is Greta Gerwig Barbara Sakova realizing that Barbara Sukova was Gloria Bell's co-worker

from Gloria Bell. She sure was. Really opened up a lot for me. What is the thing she yells out? You never know when Barbara's going to show up. This lady's awesome. What does she yell? Respect her. It's so great.

Honestly, real. It's true. You should. Yeah. You know, we certainly did probably a whole three-hour Gloria Bell episode. I think we did that during the Pandy. That was one of our

anniversary episodes. We're going to have to figure out what we're doing for our anniversary episode coming up in two months. It just never stops. It just never stops. Sometimes we have movies that just come up in conversation. I'm like, oh, I would love to just sit and talk about that for like another three hours again. We should do another Gloria Bell or something. Honestly, I wouldn't object to it. Can I just throw at you some lines that I wrote down and have you respond to them in terms of how well the film does or does not explore them. First one, family is the cradle of the world's misinformation.

Some of these just sound like they were made to be, like, written down again in your little college-ruled notebook or whatever. Or, like, they were, you know, they get put on a picture of Taylor Swift and attributed to her. That's what Taylor Swift has been saying. Family is the cradle of the world's misinformation. I sort of get maybe. what they're going with there, which is this idea that, like, there is no misinformation than

the, like, the misinformation that you get from, like, your parents. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Every, all of the spread of misinformation that happens now, like, uh, coming out of, uh, the COVID vaccine and, uh, yeah. Like, yeah, definitely misinformation was one of those things that you heard in a movie in 2022 and you're like, oh, it's about COVID. Your most trusted source, uh, can be the, uh, you know, You know, the person who, because you love and trust them the most, you can just believe something out of their mouth, even if it's wildly wrong.

Yeah. Next line. California invented the concept of lifestyle. They deserve whatever's coming to them. I mean, that's so negative, but... I don't remember exactly if that's how they worded the last part. You got me at the first part. I wrote down California invented the concept of lifestyle, which I just, I like that as a quote.

That's fun. Again, I love you, California. I wrote down the phrase National Lampoon's-ass car scene because it did feel like when they were like driving through the woods and ended up in the creek.

A little bit, a little bit. The Bill Kamp line that I wrote down, don't we deserve attention for our suffering? Our terror isn't fear news. That last little button makes it too on the nose, right? Isn't fear news?

Because obviously this was, I mean, this was the thing in the 80s too, back when like they were doing like car chases on the news right like helicopter car chases on that's what fox news by the way that's what fox news used to be notorious for before they were notorious for the other stuff they were notorious for the fact that like they would like show full-on car chases from california um they ended up being known for other things um but i thought don't we deserve attention for our suffering felt like something i wanted to chew on for a little bit like how much of um how much of that is

through how much of the ways in which we decide what to care about during a disaster is wanting to have our suffering sort of, you know, acknowledged and on the news and in, you know, blasted out for everybody to see. Human interest stories and even just sort of like, you know, lining up for, you know, for that for ourselves. I don't know. I don't know. Sure, you're dying, but you won't. Oh, this wasn't a quote so much, but this idea of, like, when they're in the hotel room and Adam Driver thinks he's dying and the other guy was like, yeah, but if you take the pill, you won't care that you're dying. And isn't that, you know, essentially just as well? Um, an interesting thought. If you take away all fear of dying, is death, you know, what is, what is the ultimate, you know?

I don't know. I'm afraid of heights, and it's not because I'm afraid I'm going to fall to my death, but because heights are scary. Oh, I'm afraid that I'm going to fall to my death. I'm afraid if I ever went to like the top of a big building and even those ones with like guardrails, whatever, like the Empire State Building, whatever, or whatever. even those, like, things where, like, you're inside the room and you can, like, if you lean your forehead. Oh, those crazy skyscrapers where it's like you can look all the way down. You can step on the glass thing that it's just, like, all straight shot down.

I do have that fear, which is sort of the subway platform fear as well, of if I step too close to the edge, is there going to be some weird lizard brain part of me? Oh, that is just going to instinctively... What if you jumped? Like, you don't know what that's like. What if you did? And it's just like, and my conscious self wouldn't be able to stop it. Not one of your neighbors is going to be the person who snaps and shoves you for no reason.

Well, now I'm afraid of that. But also, on the top of a big tall building, I also am just not as confident in my coordination and balance that something might happen that would throw me off balance and then it would just be over and done with. I guess I'm, I think that there are certain things that are instinctive about fear that are not necessarily related to death. Like, us being that high is not natural. Well, yes, I imagine the gravitational pull. We were meant to, we were meant to stay down. The gravitational pull on your body is probably alerting your internal switches that like something is very wrong. Something is not as it should be.

The oxygen level in the environment around me is not what my lungs are used to working with. Even like your optic nerve or whatever, like seeing something from that height sends a panic message to... You said optic nerve and my brain went to you are several hundred feet in the air and like I could feel my stomach turning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, what else did I write down? Oh, the Barbara Socova line, if we didn't pretend to believe these things, when they're like, they're essentially yelling at her for being an atheist. They're yelling at her for not believing in God. And she said, if we didn't pretend to believe these things, the whole world would collapse, which to me is my feeling about democracy and like the American experiment, which is it's important to say we believe in it, even if it does seem to be crumbling around us. Because I would believe, I would go with. this track for something allegorical. If I watch that scene and think specifically about religion, it doesn't work for me. Because for me, I'm like, well, I don't believe that. And it makes me feel like I am better equipped, therefore, to handle something like that. Yes, but I do feel like for certain people, that belief is a grounding belief. Like, I remember, I feel like you've even

heard people talk more since this second Trump election, that they are. You know, finding themselves going back to church or sort of like going back into. This is a statistical thing that people are, yeah. And it's not necessarily that they're sort of receding or becoming reactionary in their politics. It's they are seeking out the sort of grounding of community that we've lost through lockdown and our political parties sort of abandoning us. And the fact that that like people don't have as much sort of public square as they used to. And so the church sort of does provide some kind of like community, like physical community space for people.

So I just find that, I find that interesting, but I do feel like I more took that statement on the allegorical level of like, that's how I feel about this country, that if we didn't pretend to believe in this country, everything would collapse. It's almost as if we got here by people wanting to support anti-establishment far-right people. Yes, yes, but also we cannot give up that ground to those people. Do you know what I mean? I think giving up the idea of America to those people means you've just, you've given up too much. I refuse to give up that much.

I wrote down, oh, Jody Turner Smith. I got this from somebody else. I can't remember who on Letterbox. I went and read my letterbox reviews from my friends. Jody Turner Smith, whose name I always struggles for, because that's like actress Mick acting. Yes. But Jody Turner Smith in the same year was in this and after Yang

and got to do the dance in this movie and the dance in the opening credits to After Yang. That's pretty rad. I also thought Greta Gerwig gets to do the dance in this movie and also the dance at the end of fucking damsels in distress. More dance breaks and movies, I say. I mean, and then after this she goes and makes Barbie. Exactly, exactly. Coincidence? I don't think so. Multiple dance breaks.

I wrote down a few prices from the A&P in the final section. $119 for eggs. A dollar for cola. $2.69 for Breyer's ice cream. A $1.49 for B. bacon, 59 cents for a can of tuna. The whole seven minute long new body rumba thing, first of all, I want to jump into at some point,

at some point, we're at hour 20 into this, I want to jump into the original song nominations for that year and shame everything that isn't this L7. I don't think this even made the short list. It was eligible too. Like, it was like fully eligible. But I did want to mention, while Jody Turner

Smith is sort of like shimmying and Andre 3000 is dancing with his box of cookies. The thing where they- Shoddy Turner Smith is like shimmying with a bag of potato chips and I'm like me going for a little treat. There isn't, it isn't not like the scene in the Charlie Brown Christmas special

where it's just the scene of them all on the stage and they're all doing the same like two moves, like back and forth where they're the one, you know. Sam Gold with his package of six pack of toilet paper where he's essentially just like moving them right to left for like a minute and a half. He's not a dancer. It's wonderful, though.

It's so wonderful. The thing that I love is it's not everybody in lockstep choreography, but enough people in certain sections are doing the same thing. There's, like, stations. There's stations of choreography. Over in the produce section, you have this, like, slow movements. But some people are doing their own thing all on their own, too, like a few people, like here and there. So it's, like, it's heterodox, but also, like, it's not quite, like, it's not fascist in that way that, like, everybody is moving the same way, like, pink flags the wall or something like that. but like it's i don't know it's very lovely what does this ultimately say about consumerism i could give a fuck

you know what i mean sure sure i kind of could give a fuck that i mean this is why i think it's the best stuff of the movie is because i don't know i don't think there's really anything interesting about consumerism in this movie we've seen it a million times we've heard it a million times but clearly it does seem to want to say something because they have a giant A&P as one of their main locations. You know what I mean? And paid to have all of these brand, you know, names in it. And the sequence, though, does at least make room for, well, sometimes consumerism is just fun.

Sometimes it is fun. Well, at the very, sometimes consumerism is part of the sort of fabric of, you know, for better and for worse, is sort of part of part of woven into the fabric of like family life you know what I mean what was your favorite brand that presented itself at the A&P was it Pringles Doritos or Brillo I think those are my three favorites well there's an N cap for high C there is an N cap for high C very 84 family coded but I I if you gave me a high C right now I would be like What is this poison? Yeah.

What are you trying to kill me? Like, were you a high sea juice box kid, or were you a labelless little barrel of colored water with the foil top? Do you remember those ones? Oh, the huggies. The huggies, that's what it was, yes. Because there's diapers and juice called huggies. That's right. And the blue huggies were the blue juice that they poured into the diaper in the ad.

show you how absorbent that they were. Not really. The blue ones were like schoolyard high currency. They would be bought, they were not, you could not buy

huggies in anything less than a 40 pack. Like you had to buy them in bulk, like the most bulk. Because they're meant for like cafeteria. Same thing with Freezy Pops, the little thin ice popsicles.

They're in like, they were in like, sheet. They're all connected in a sheet of like 70. like it's just all of that yes and those ones who whatever was like the mother in charge of snacks at like outdoor day at elementary school came out came with the like giant thing giant tray of a frozen sugar water with microplastics floating in it so weirdly like then there was high sea was a level above huggies and then the little capri sun the capri son kids the kids who had capris sons every day day in their lunch, in their lunchbox, they were going to Florida every Easter with their family.

Like that's, that Venn diagram is a fucking circle. Kids who went to Florida, went to Disney World every Easter versus, and also the Capri son in their lunchbox kids were the same kids. Also, the kids who would get the school pictures with the laser crisscross background. Did you have that? I don't know if I ever had the lasers. The laser background was like the thing. This is maybe how you are like five years older than me and it shows.

Maybe. You had the plane background, which is what we did. And then you had the arboreal background, which was like, you know, the old very old mills coded, right? Yes. And then, but the like the highest echelon that the fancy swells paid for was the laser background. There are many things Gen Z does not understand, but I think in the top three of things that they don't understand is Olin Mills. Yeah. Olin Mills is gone. Well, Sears is gone, so Olin Mills is gone. Gimbles is gone, Marge. Long gone. You're Gimbles. Yeah. I really wish that. Where do people go to get their family photos taken? Do they just, does everything done with an iPhone these days?

Probably. It's fucking stupid. It's for, it's Kaylee on Instagram does family photos. You will never know. the exquisite stress of having to stand on a riser with one hand on top of the other hand and have the photographer touch your chin and just like just sort of move it just like that and be so fucking nervous that you were going to like move you would have to like clasp hands with your brother in a way that is entirely unnatural for you to be like resting your clasped hands And then everybody you knew had that photo, that family photo, above the mantle above their real or fake fireplace in their living room, like the severs on growing pains. Because I remember that. They're just like, they have their family photo exactly where everybody else I know has their family photo.

Man, this is the thing. I will say that. This movie is really unlocking some shit for you. It is kind of unlocking some shit. Yeah. We're recording this on Mother's Day, which is part of that too. So, like, I had my whole family around today. So, like, we were doing a lot of, like, looking around, like, the living room and, like, spotting.

Like, all our, like, old high school photos are all framed in my parents' living room. And so we're, like, showing my nephew, like, what we all looked like when we were younger and all that sort of stuff. It was funny. And your nephew's like, that's me, because he looks exactly like you. Well, but I have no beard in my, of course, high school photo. And so, like, he's trying to look at my photo and look back at me and look back at my photo and look back at me. Anyway, anyway, anyway. What else do we want to say about white noise?

I feel like we talked a lot about. We got to talk about Noah Bomback because we got a new Noah Bomback coming this year. This movie is, it's just giving, I think, for me, you can understand why Noah Bomback would want to do this type of reach. And it's like he's made several movies for Netflix now, and he's happy to be at Netflix too because Jay Kelly is a Netflix movie coming this year.

I just feel like they're getting. Giving him budgets that nobody else is going to give him. I mean, look at this $100 million movie. Yeah. That, I mean, he would only get a fraction of that somewhere else. Like, no one's going to pay him to do Myrovitz stories. That's one thing. This movie looks incredible.

Shot by Low Crawley. Yes. The Bruteless Low Crawley. I mean, every frame of this movie is meticulous and looks beautiful. I just don't know if it really services much for me. And, like, the whole time I am asking, why am I not laughing? And I just want Noah Baumbach to do what he's most strong at, which is these kind of, like, high wire acts that are so meticulous in their human observation

that they seem breezy and easy. And this movie is anything but that. This movie is so labored, and you see the effort that's going into this movie without a lot of payoff. I think part of that probably comes from him doing an adaptation of something that has a lot of expectation to it. He's very used to making movies from his own scripts. I do feel like he's also trying to sort of connect to the material from his own stuff. I know that, like, a lot of the college stuff, the stuff that, you know, I, again, not my favorite stuff in the movie, but reminded me a little bit at least of the kinds of stuff he was doing in kicking and screaming, which is his debut movie, that that movie sort of feels like it's, he's trying to sort of do the Whit Stillman thing. And part of that is because he shares a lot of, you know, actors with Whit Stillman in that movie.

But I think there is, I think, you know, dealing with that kind of, you know, ridiculousness of the, you know, higher education sort of realm. And also Adam Driver playing this very overwhelmed male lead, you know what I mean? who has kind of, I think in certain movies like Meyerowitz stories or like Greenberg or like, I guess while we're young, I'm just doing all the Ben Stiller movies that he's made, where you have that sort of lead character who has surrendered to feeling overwhelmed by life. This is a little bit different in that like Jack sort of feigns control by refusing to sort of acknowledge what's going on. until he's forced to. I think first that happens with the airborne toxic event, then that happens with the Dialar thing, where he's sort of brushing off raffy Cassidy

for most of the movie about what's going on until all of a sudden he can't, you know, ignore it anymore. I don't know. I feel like I appreciate the places in which he's trying to connect with the source material. I think sometimes it's just sort of just out of his reach in this thing. And like there's a certain spark that's missing. And a spark that I think is kind of everywhere in marriage story,

even if I'm not as high on marriage story as a lot of people are, even though I really, really like that movie. There's something about marriage story too where he is pushing himself. There are like leaps in that movie. And there's, like, risk in that movie. There's the knife scene, there's the being alive scene, there's, like, these sequences of that movie are a, like, a vignette or, like, a conceptual idea that he's throwing into this, like, natural drama, this drama of, like, human naturalism. But I think a lot of those, like, leaps that it takes, you know, the way that the movie, like, has, like, has. some creative risk, all comes back to character motivation and what the character arcs are.

And in this movie, I mean, like, I'm normally an ideas movie type of person. It's just, it's so many ideas without a whole lot of shape. I agree with that. I do agree with that. But I also then look at for almost the entirety of his career, he's writing these stories where the behavior in the stories is, you know, moves towards the absurd or at the very least towards the antic, right? Like the things that people are doing inside Francis Ha or Margot at the wedding or

the squid and the whale or Meyerowitz stories are things that sort of, you know, people are pushing themselves to certain extremes or, you know, the way that they maybe talk is very much like movie talk, you know what I mean? But their environments are very much the world that we know, this very sort of like naturalistic environment. The Myrowitz story is this a story about this very sort of kooky family happening within these very sort of recognizable Brooklyn brownstones and whatnot. Whereas white noise is maybe the first Noah Baumbach movie that is happening completely in a heightened world where, you know, there's sci-fi shit. happening. There's sort of period stuff that is like, it's in the 80s, but it's in like no real

version of the 80s that have ever existed. The college on the hill is, you know, maybe based on a real college, but it's very much like college in quotes. You know what I mean? Like that kind of a thing. And I think that all, it's a different thing for him. And I wonder if the effort was made to make sure that he got that stuff right. And, you know, then the other side of that, the character stuff that he's usually really good at, gets a little bit less of a polish. Mm-hmm.

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I think it's asking us to think about human concerns, but never really humanizing its characters in a way that makes us think of them as characters and not concepts or, you know, characters in service of concept rather than being people. I think it's,

I think characters in service of concept makes sense because I feel like I imagine with lines of dialogue like, you know, uh, you know, like what is Babette, you know, what is Babette do? Babette tells, you know, Babette's completely honest and like all these sort of things. Like the ways in which they speak are very obviously self-consciously, you know, odd and strange. And so that's obviously in service of these ideas, more so maybe than necessarily characters. I don't think that's necessarily a thing that informs character as much as sort of maybe makes a point that you want to make. And I feel like, again, not having read the book, I imagine a lot of that's coming from the book. It just makes everything have such a remove

that might work in a book that might allow, you know, a reader to sit with its ideas, but in a pretty fast-paced, even at this movie's length movie, you know, there's nothing to really, like, anchor to in this movie. Yeah. What's your, how does your top five bomb back look like? Oh, I mean, Meyerowitz is number one, or Francis Haugh. Probably Francis Haas' number one. And then Meyerowitz.

Then I would maybe say squid in the whale, Margo, maybe interchange those two. And then I guess probably marriage story is five. I think I go Francis number one, obviously. That's like a very, very special movie for me. Mistress America, Meyerowitz, three. Oh, I forgot Mistress America. Mr. America's in the five for me.

Mr. America and Meyerwitz are very like two slash three. Marriage story four. and then I probably go Margo or Squid in the Whale at 5. However, you know, I'd like to see kicking and scream again. I should also say I've never seen Mr. Jealousy. And yeah, I guess that's the only major one of his that I've not seen. I haven't seen his short film or that movie Highball that had sort of resurfaced number that one. Did you see the De Palma Dock? No, I've never seen the De Palma Dock. I should.

I mean, all respect to that movie and its makers, it is a little bit like a feature-length DVD extra. I will say, a lot of times I see those criticisms levied at a movie about a director like that. People, I think, sort of said that about the Spielberg documentary. I quite liked that. So maybe like... No, the HBO Spielberg doc is bad. better than that. Okay. Okay. Are you a Greenberg fan? I feel like Greenberg has become like the lost Noah Baumbach movie.

Nobody really talks about it. In a way it has. It's just kind of forgotten, especially, which is very interesting considering him and Greta. Right. The very sort of pivotal nature of that movie. Yeah. Yeah. And then while we're young, it's not really forgotten so much as it's, I mean, I think it's flawed.

I think it's probably better than I remember it. I should watch it again. I'd probably like it better a second time. I think the first time I was just very annoyed by my very, very certainty that this was a movie that Noah Baumbach made. Because I feel like this one was not right. He wrote this one on his own. This was not a co-writer with Greta. And it felt like...

It was a cast change too, I thought. Yeah. And it felt like this was Noah sort of getting out all of. his, I hate my girlfriend's friends movie. Which, fair enough. But it just made him sound like a cranky old man,

I thought. Him being a cranky old man, though, is part of his appeal. I guess, but I feel like I am somebody who liked Noah Bomback. My like of Noah Bomback had a ceiling on it before he and Greta started writing movies together. I am a person who

really feels like when they started combining their talents, I think his sort of kermudgeonliness was given a nudge towards, um, you know, appreciating other people, appreciating the human sort of element beyond his old perspective. And I feel like it really, I think Francis and, and Mistress America are really, really something special. And then when he makes Myrowitz stories, which is again, just him writing that. I feel like you see him on the other side of making those two movies with Greta

where all of a sudden I think his writing feels a little more generous and a little more, I think in that and marriage story, I think you see a version of Noah Baumbach that is a little less embittered and a little less sort of beholden to

acidity. I still think that it's there though because I think for Meyer and marriage story in particular. It's not gone. Without the thorns, that movie's not going to work. But I feel like, I think the difference between Meyerowitz stories and marriage story and squid in the whale and Margot at the wedding and why I like the former, the newer ones,

more than I like the older ones, is that thing where I think squid in the whale and Margot at the wedding were so sort of mired on some level in. a kind of, not necessarily misanthropy, but a kind of sort of sourness that I think is a little more balanced in Marowitz's stories and marriage story.

And I think it allows Marowitz and Marriage story to be, I think, funnier. I mean, I think Mr. America is still pretty sour, but it just has a different comic sensibility to it. that makes the sourness go down maybe a little easier,

but I think that's still a pretty sour movie. I don't, I think there's a lot of weird optimism in Mistress America that I just absolutely love. I don't know. I can't believe I forgot that when listing his movies. Maybe this is also the problem that I've become the person that used to annoy me, that I was like, that Greta was exclusively the ethereal voice in those movies. Or people be like, yeah, but she directed this.

that, too. She didn't direct it, but I do feel like, I do, like, you cannot deny that, like, her voice is really, really, is really promise. Oh, yeah, they have an incredibly, you know, on top of being married and having children together. They have a very close creative relationship together. So also not a huge success. Well, how would you qualify this awards year for?

for Netflix, because a lot of the things moving into the season that were their big players didn't do well, and then All Quiet on the Western Front rises above to overperform. So we should say Netflix's 22 movies, their slate was included blonde, All Quiet on the Western Front, Wendell and Wilde, the Henry Selleck animated movie, The Wonder, the Sebastian Lelio movie, Lady Chatterley's Lover starring Emma Corrin Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Bardo, the

Alejandro Gonzalez-Niari-2 film and Glass Onion, the Ryan Johnson movie. So I think going into the season, I imagine that most people would have picked Bardo and White Noise as the two major contenders for Netflix based on talent involved, based on pedigree, all that sort of stuff.

Now, both of those movies kind of landed with a thud in some way or another. But particularly, this is where me running the- Bardo more so than this movie. This movie had people who appreciated it or people who were mixed on it. People in the festival sphere were very negative to Bardo. I know one person who really liked Bardo. You certainly do. Bardo apologists, right?

You're a good movie. But one of the interesting things, and this is part of this is having run the movie Fantasy League that year, is I know, obviously Alquiet on the Western Front was a big Oscar contender. And this was a very, to me, felt very kind of like, oh, we got to like change plans. And Netflix's ability, I think, to downshift into All Quiet on the Western Front is, much as I don't care for that movie, I think is pretty impressive. It's one of the more impressive award season feats that Netflix has ever pulled off. I also feel like being able to harness all of the controversy around blonde and turn it around into all of that being a feather in Anna da Armis's cap that she was able to essentially, like they really ran a like, hasn't she overcome so much kind of campaign for her? Well, we also, I think, diluted. We who like follow all this stuff, I think diluted our.

ourselves around the reception of that movie meant that she was out of the race. But the buzz was so toxic for that movie. It was, it was, but the way that people were talking about her in the industry in the lead-up to this movie, plus, you know, looking at recent Oscar history and some of the, like, you know, real-life famous people, nominations that have happened, especially in the past few years, that nomination was probably always locked and never was never in danger. I would not, I would not go that far. I would say always locked is kind of is, is, is maybe revisionist history. What major precursors did she miss? I don't know if she missed any. Hold on. Hold on. I feel like you're overstating this. Hold on. All right. She got the Golden Globe.

Do I not have a 2022 tab? My spreadsheet? I don't. I need to fix that. She got the SAG nomination. Critics choice? She got the BAFTA nomination. Um, how do they?

I don't think she got the critics' choice. How funny is that? Bafta, Sag, and Globes, we're always predicting somebody. Wait, okay. I understand that, but I think there's a world of difference between getting those three nominations and this was always going to happen. Like, there's a turnaround. Maybe it's me being cynical around. had to happen before, between, after that movie first started screening, and before those,

those awards were all voted on. I do not subscribe to the idea that, like, nobody had ever dropped her out of their, like, top five. I don't subscribe to that. And I get, I mean, the industry and, like, Academy voters, they vote late, though. Like, they're not, they're not even seeing these movies early. And I guarantee you, there were definitely people voting for her on their ballot that didn't see the movie. Well, that's probably true. All I'm saying, I think, again, I just, I think you're overstating it.

I think, I think there's a, I think, I think that completely undersells just how much that movie became, like, untouchable for a, for a short period of time, for a, for a period of time. Gun to your head, which one are you watching? You have to choose between blonde and bardo. Oh, God. You know what, though? I didn't hate Bardo.

I watched Bardo. I've talked about... I thought you were one of the haters on it. I was before I watched it. And then I was like, you know what, it's all right. It's a good movie. I just like to poke at you with that movie. I mean, I don't know about that.

But my Bardo screening was a very... I've talked about this before, that I did the thing that I never do. And it was mostly because I was in a very empty room at the Regal Times Square on a weeknight. seeing Bardo nobody was behind me and this was the night that we all thought that Twitter was ending

remember that one night where everybody was like really making their like goodbyes and like find me here if you can't like we all thought Twitter was like going dark that night

and so I kept checking my phone and so I ended up sort of just like texting people as I'm watching Bardo and whatnot how dare you in a theater it's a long movie No, but I ended up kind of liking portions of Bardo.

I thought Bardo was okay. I would definitely watch Bardo before Bardo before I would watch How Quiet on the Western Front. Yeah, that's probably true. But I will say, just in terms of like Netflix's, you know, turnout that year, I think Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio did so well, so well. Very well. And the fact that it pulled out the Adadarmus nomination and the fact that it pulled out the Adadarmus nomination, and the fact that it got Alquite on the Western front.

These would not have been, if I were to have picked three movies from the Netflix slate to have gotten nominations, I would have picked Glass Onion, Wendell and Wilde, and then, like, I guess Pinocchio, even though, like, I'm only kind of like,

eh, on Pinocchio. But it's certainly not my favorite weirdo Pinocchio of the last 10 years. I still go for that weird, like. The Benini? one? Yes. Yes. No, is that the Benini one? The one with the weird little, like, um, the Jiminy Cricket who looks like the... I think the problem is there are multiple.

There are multiple Benini ones. But you know what I mean? The one from like maybe six years ago. Yes. Benini's in that one. Yeah, he is. Yepto. Yes, he's Jepado. Right. But then there's also the one from... Where he's Pinocchio. No, it's the one where he's Jepetto that I kind of like, because it's so fucking freaky and weird. White Noise, rather, shows up in a couple of places. Certainly, we do forget that he had gotten a, that Adam Driver did pick up a Golden Globe nomination for this, which, so that's 2022. So he's losing to. Colin Farrell.

Colin Farrell. Banshees have been to Sharon. That's nice. I'm glad that he won that. I'm glad that Colin Farrell has two Golden Globes. Any other outliers in that category that year? The other nominees were Diego Calva for Babylon, Daniel Craig for Glass Onion, and Ray Fines for the Menu. You know what's a good movie?

Babylon. Babylon's a good movie. I like Babylon. What a good movie. I remember hauling out in a snowstorm to see that movie. New Year's Eve. New Year's Eve. Yeah. Empty theater.

It's the only way to watch it. No, I saw it on New Year's Eve with like a decently full theater. And I remember, obviously there were like a fair share of people at the end being like, what the fuck was that? But like I think a fair number of people like were enjoying themselves. Maybe not as much as I was enjoying myself. I was really. I was rock and rolling even, perhaps. That's a good category. Colin Farrow for Banschees, Diego Calva, Daniel Craig for Glass Onion, Adam Driver, White Noise, Ray finds the menu. I'm digging that. That's nice. I don't love the menu, so... I know you don't, but I like... It does feel like we're scraping for some options here. Well, you know, better than Hugh Jackman getting nominated for The Sun in the drama category. So there's that. All right, yeah. So who are our original song nominees in 2022?

2022 best original song well we have the winner Natu Natu Right I've kind of completely forgotten about that movie How could you ever forget about Give yourself some applause applause from Tell It Like a Woman

One of Diane's worst I'm sorry Diane Oh this is Top Gun Maverick I will say I'm the last person in the world Who Still Likes Hold My Hand I don't know This should not be a surprise because I do like the cheesiest of cheesy 80s power ballads,

and that's where this song belongs. I know so many, like, pop girlies hate that this song was, like, a big hit for her. Like, really, really hate this song, and I kind of have to. I have, in the past, called it her worst single. It's absolutely not her worst single. I don't like that song. I don't like that movie. I don't like that movie, but I like the song.

The love for that song. song was lost on me. I kind of love it. I like it. I've lifted me up from Wiconda Forever, the lullaby. Snews Town. I like that song. Oh, the David Byrne's song.

David Byrne and who? Mitzki, right, right, right. For everything everywhere. What was the conceit of that performance at the Oscars? It was weird, right? They did weird shit, right? I don't think they performed it. Oh, I thought they did.

I don't know. Did they perform it? I don't remember now. Hold on. Let's see. I thought this was one of the years they only performed like two of the songs. Hold on. Hold on. Performers, David Burns, Stephanie Shoe. Right, Stephanie Shoe.

And Sun Lux performed. This is a Life from Everything Everywhere all at once. Yeah, they performed all of them. Rihanna performed, Lift Me Up. Legitigga, of course, performed. Hold my hands. Natu Natu got performed. Sophia Carson with Diane Warren on piano, if you forget.

What was Sophia Carson in where I was like, who is this chick? And somebody was like, she sang the Diane Warren song. She was in something on television, I feel like, very recently. No, what was it? Oh, carry on, the Tarynxerton Airport movie. Not real. She's the girlfriend in that. That was fun.

That was a fun little movie. She's the girlfriend in it. And I was like, what is her problem? I kind of hate her in this. And they're like, oh, yeah, she's like a Disney Channel original movie girlie and an American Idol girlie. And has been like a name that people have known for like many years. And I was like, oh, okay. Well, sorry about it.

Did not like her. Anywho, so your song nominees, do not hold a candle any one of them to the, LCD sound system song from white noise. They could have performed something like this on the... They could have redone the closing credits, live on stage, at the Oscars. Imagine the, like, the grab bag of rando people in the Oscar audience, not to say to do like a flash mob, but to like, just a random selection of celebs in the audience who you like get to do a little choreograph dance

to this song while LCD sound system is performing it. It's just very fun. It's just a very fun idea. I think it's very fun. And then... For a lot of dour original song nominees, no surprise Natu Natu 1.

Yes. Even with more famous names in that lineup, because they're... Plus, people forget how much that movie was surging that award season. I'm still kind of surprised that it did not get a Best Picture nomination. Oh, I never really felt like that was... I thought it was... I was definitely a believer in that at some point.

Chris, you are blessed with perfect Oscar hindsight in that everything that happens was always going to happen, and everything that doesn't happen was never going to happen. That is not true. I don't feel like that's true of me. Just in the case of Anadarmus. RRR to me, as a Best Picture nominee, felt very, this is a thing on the internet. you know internet i don't i mean i could see it being like a thing like a you know a tempest in a teapot thing i don't know if it was necessarily a creature of the internet though because it had like those big huge sold out screenings and whatnot like that was the whole thing it was like it was

like packing them in at these you know whatever over the summer didn't it perform over the summer or something like that i believe that was a spring release yeah so even earlier um because i feel like that's where the story began. I thought some of the like early internet love to was laughing at the movie rather than enjoying with the movie in a way that I found smug and not fun. I never caught that. I don't know. I think eventually the like prevailing sentiment around that movie was having fun and having a good time. Well, and then there was the sort of political controversy that kind of seeped in later. I saw that movie pretty late, and I will say, by the time I saw it, I was like, this is a weird fucking movie. Like, I don't know. I was maybe the one doing a little bit of a laughing with it slash at it.

I don't know. I don't know. I think it really had gotten built up by the time that I saw it. And I saw it like at home on a screener or whatever, not even on screen. on Netflix. So, you know, I did not see it in the most ideal situation. Anyway, that's white noise. A movie that I'm glad I saw it again. I'm glad I liked it better this time. Not my favorite Noah Baumbach movie, but a movie that I'm glad that he made, and I would like to see him continue to take chances like this.

I'm curious for what Jay Kelly is going to be. I hope it's not an entirely sort of retreat back into the tried and true. That was the exact word I was going to use. Yeah, I want there to be the marriage story level of risk in something that he's making. Yeah. Even like Margo at the wedding has some risk, you know, especially in the third act of that movie that the way it kind of goes off the rails. Francis Ha has risk in it. Mr. Samarica has risk in it. Like there's a lot. There's a lot. yeah just like mistress america's interesting just like structurally basically this set piece in this house that's basically the set piece is just like words it's just the dialogue and the precision of the humor in that sequence feel makes it feel like a set piece well also just like the farcical nature of everybody running from room to room and like you know different characters sort of chiding you know what's her face Lola Kirk and whatnot. How much of a comeback do you think this is going to be treated for Clooney? Because I saw a little bit of something that was like, he's finally in a movie that's not directed by himself.

The coatingness of it was like, he's finally going to be in another good movie. Clooney, this is a Katie Rich observation more so than anything else, but now I can't stop thinking of it. Clooney dyeing his hair black for good night and good luck. A pure and true example that the devil is at work in our current moment. George Clooney dying his hair black for that show, truly where he's just trying to get a Tony Award

because I think it closes the night of the Tonys. I will say, I know you expressed... Darkseided. ...concern that Clooney would use his star power and snatch that the Tony Award from Colescola. I'm less worried about that. That's not going to happen. That's not how the Tonys have been operating as of late. Like, almost opposite, actually.

They've been really kind of pushing back against the sort of, you know, Hollywoodification. I'm kind of surprised that he got nominated. I mean, whatever. That show certainly has been, you know, seen in a better light than Othello, you know. Sure. But, alas, we are really going far afield. Let's bring it back to the New York Film Festival for. one last thing before we

move on. Yeah. I guess we didn't talk about our favorite New York Film Festival openers. What are your... Give us three favorite openers from the festival. Oh, gosh. I think I've got it narrowed down

to four. And they're all fairly recent. And I will say a lot of this comes down to the opening movie for the New York Film Festival, obviously, is a tone setter. And I think for a lot of these movies, if I can sort of remember being in that sort of like general environment, it gets something

a little bit, a little bit of a bonus point. I think the oldest one that was like definitely before my time that I still want to suggest is Angley's The Ice Storm. Really good movie, really, you know, interesting selection for New York Film Festival. Gone Girl is the movie that like, the most sort of feels to me like, oh, I can remember being in, like, that day of that, that premiere was buzzy. It was really, like, it was really buzzing. Like, we had to go, like, we had to go to an overflow screening in, um, at Lincoln Square. And I think everybody was just like deeply excited, but that press screening was fucking lit. Like, people were, um, they had it in the big room at, at Lincoln Square with, like, the balcony and whatnot.

And, like, people were, like, very super psyched to see that movie. And then I think my third one, I'm just going to give it up for May December. Todd Haynes is May December, a movie that still, I don't feel like, got the love that it should have. And I am going to, as a result, big up that movie every chance I get forever. Wow. It's almost as if you just mentioned two of the greatest comedies of our time. Gone Girl in May December. Yeah.

What are yours? What are your three? I mean, you kind of took some from me, so I may just be reiterating everything you just said. Also, I'm trying to avoid movies that I've mentioned on other episodes, like Secrets and Lies and Shortcuts. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I didn't say shortcuts for Venice. I did, so maybe you're thinking of that. Perhaps. So I will say Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.

You were going to do that. Yes, that's a perfect one for you. One of my favorite movies of all time. Yep, yep, yep. What a time that must have been to see that premiere at New York Film Festival in, you know, in the height of, what is that, 69? Yes. Yeah, fun. Fun.

Um, what, what am I going to lay claim on to my other two, thinking that I am just avoiding things that I might have previously said? I'll say all about my mother, the Amadovar. It's a good one. And I'll also say Gone Girl. Yeah. I think Gone Girl is a really... I had pegged you for a big of a social network stand to go with that one. Not quite. I wouldn't probably even put Social Network any day of the week in my top three Finchers.

No, you're probably a Gone Girl Zodiac seven? Some days, yeah. I mean, definitely Gone Girl and Zodiac. those are not leaving. Yeah. Benjamin Button, I feel like you really like. I feel like you're a Benjamin Button more than most people, and I think that's because people think that they're going in

and watching some epic romance, but that's a movie about death. Like, that's not the movie it was advertised to be. Yeah. I would, of course, make a case for Mank, because I love Mank, but I know you do not. I'm not a Manker. It's fine.

Should we move on to the IMDB game? Let's do that. Would you like to explain the IMDB game to our listeners? Let's do that. All right. Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game, in which we challenge each other with the name of an actor or actress, and we try and guess the four titles that IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television shows, voice-only performances, or perhaps non-acting credits. We mention that up front.

After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue. And if that is not enough, it just becomes a free-for-all of hints. All right. So, how's it going? Are you giving or guessing first today? I'll give first. All right. Who do you have for me?

So we talked a few times. By the way, we didn't mention that, like, co-writer on Jay Kelly is Emily Mortimer, who is. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Of course, mother to two of the stars of White Noise, Sam Navola and May Navola. May. I feel like I was mentioning this so much. like six months ago, and now I'm on the track of reminding people that Adam Sandler is a supporting actor, Oscar.

The cast of this movie is pretty incredible. You've mentioned Clooney, we've mentioned Adam Sandler, Laura Dern is in this movie, Riley Keough, Emily Mortimer, in addition to co-writing the movie, is in it, Patrick Wilson, Greta Gerwig, Eve Hewson, and the person who I have chosen for the IMDB game for you, who you somehow have never done before, Mr. Billy Crudeup. Oh, I am currently listening to the audiobook, Naomi Watts's audio book for her memoir about menopause and paramedopause. Lots of interesting Crudup anecdotes in that. I hope that he is using this occasion to atone for doing Mary Louise Parker dirty. And as somebody who has maintained an appreciation for Billy Crudeup through all the ugliness, it is the one thing where I'm like if I ever ran into him in person

I wouldn't say anything to him about it but I would be thinking it I would be thinking Billy I hope you've You'd be thinking of drama from 25 years ago I hope you've a stranger's life Anyway Billy crewed up known for no television

despite the fact that he's a two-time Emmy winner for the morning show I'm going to say almost famous. Almost famous, a movie I would have nominated him for the Oscar for. He's so fucking good in that movie. I mean, there's got to be

one of the two of these Indies. Is it Waking the Dead and Jesus' son? I feel like one of those is going to be there. I'm going to put a pin in that for now. No, but I don't remember Stage Beauty, but wasn't he Golden Globe nominated for Stage Beauty,

so I'll say Stage Beauty. Not Stage Beauty. beauty, even though you know the high regard I have for that performance. Right. Spotlight. No, not Spotlight. All right, that's too wrong. And before I give you the years, I do want to say that of his three upcoming projects in IMDB,

one of them is listed as a movie called The Auction that is written and directed by William Atticus Parker, and it stars Mary Louise Parker and Billy Crude Up in the same movie. If you think I am not fucking rabid for Mary Louise Parker and Billy Crude Up in the movie written and directed by their kid, you are absolutely out of your mind.

Number one most anticipated movie of whatever. Please get who weekly on this. All right. So you're missing movies, which are thrice. 2003, 2006, 2009. And since almost famous is 2000, you have a perfect

four movies each separated by three years. Isn't Sage Beauty also 03? 04? 04. Okay. So what's going on? So none of those indie movies where he headlines is... Jesus's Son is also 2000.

Waking the Dead is, I think, 2003, 98, something like that, somewhere in there. Okay, so what are these going to be? O3, 0609. Wow, those were all 2000. That's crazy. Sorry. Oh, 03's Big Fish. Yes, it is Big Fish, where he's essentially the lead of that movie, kind of. Right.

Closest thing it probably has to a lead. Yeah. I guess you and McGregor, sort of, too. Yeah. I mean, they're co-leads, probably. 06 and 09. What's even going on in 09? I'm graduating college.

O-9's not going to be something like, no, that's O-5. The O-6, again, I'm like what movies came on. Let me know if you want hints. Let me know. I do want hints. Okay. So, the O-6 is an actor-director. Clooney.

No. Oscar winner for acting. the filmmaker, not the movie. A very starry movie. A movie that I'm kind of intrigued to go revisit. We would have to do it as an exception. But I... An exception because it was an acting nominee?

No. But a very, very starry cast. A movie that I did not think I liked very much when I first saw it, but I wonder if I would maybe have a newfound appreciation for it. Now, I believe it's a very starry cast. Now, I believe it's a pretty long movie. It is a two-hour and 47-minute movie.

Wow. Yes. From 0-6. From 0-6. Billy Crudeup is probably... Actor-director. Is it Sean Penn directed it? No.

But there's a thing about Sean Penn in the Oscar realm that is true of this director as well. he won two Oscars Both for acting Because you mentioned they're an acting winner Okay so that limits Better known for his acting than directing Sure Is this the only movie they've ever directed

Hold on Is it De Niro? Is it the Good Shepherd? It is the Good Shepherd. Yeah. Yeah. He also directed a Bronx tale. That's right. So his one of two movies that he directed.

Yes, it is Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd. I would like to do that because of an exception. Yes. All right. So, 09. That's one of those movies that a year ahead people were all predicting as the best picture frontrunner just because of the pedigree. So that would be an interesting one to do. All right.

Oh, nine. He is a very big role in this movie. It is a movie that had a high degree of anticipation. Is it a franchise movie? No, but it comes in the skin of one, if that makes sense. It, by its own definition, couldn't be. Not by its own definition, but by its own nature. Like, by the thing that it is, it couldn't be.

It's too contained to be a franchise. It's just based on source material that does not continue. Oh, so it's like based on a novel? Uh-huh, a certain type of novel. A graphic novel. So it is a comic book movie. Yes, but like... Oh, it's watchman.

Yeah, it's watchman. It's watchman. It's watchman. He's got a very big role. Uh, he's, uh, uh, he's in a roll. He's in a roll. You started it. You started it. I sure didn't.

I sure didn't. All right. What do you have for me? Uh, I also went to the bomb back staple. However, I pulled from the very large, very, uh, wonderful cast of marriage story. Uh, one of my favorite one to three scene wonders in the film. film is Julie Haggerty. Oh, my God. She's so funny in that movie. It was so nice to see her in a movie. I was trying to think of, like,

when would have been the last time I'd seen her in a movie? And it might have been, like, U-turn? Like, Oliver Stone's U-turn? All right. She's in that? Yes. Wow. She's one of, like, the weird locals in that movie.

All right, Julie Haggerty, is marriage story one of them? Yes, marriage story is correct. I imagine airplane is one of them. Airplane is correct. Is airplane. Two, one of them. Full title, please.

Airplane 2, the sequel. Correct. Okay. So we've got three of three. You could get a perfect score. Is it a movie that I like? Is it what about Bob? I'm not giving clues.

Is it what about Bob? I can't give clues. You haven't even said a wrong answer. Is it what about Bob? What About Bob is incorrect. Ah, you fucker. Fucker. Okay.

Well. I wonder if what about Bob was, was in this. there before marriage story, perhaps. She's so funny and what about Bob. I would just say, because the only other one that's on the top of my, and the tip of my tongue right now is U-turn, and you played it off so successfully by being like, who is she in that, that I wonder if you were trying to be slick. So I'm going to say U-turn.

U-turn's incorrect. Your year is 2001. Okay. Julie Haggerty in 2001. I imagine it's a comedy. Okay. In some circles. Oh, no.

In some circles. Is it like one of those, like, it's bad so everybody laughs at it kind of a thing? This is a movie that has been fully reclaimed by a lot of people. I will just say this is maybe the wildest thing that's ever been on Criterion Channel. Fully reclaimed. Is it like glitter? Um, no. Uh-huh.

Glitter is 2001, though. I know, that's why I asked. The day glitter, um, the glitter comes on criterion channel on not leaving my house. Yeah. Um, all right, 2000, so not like, certainly like shallow hell hasn't been reclaimed. Um, on Criterion Channel, because it's directed by somebody who has a bit of a track record. No. Oh, no.

Okay. Absolutely not. Oh, no. somebody who's like famously a bad director particularly because of this film yes Freddie got fingered correct is it Freddy got fingered

Jesus Christ yeah that's been reclaimed you're totally right poor Julie Haggerty having to be in Freddy got fingered what an indiscuity I should watch it though to get what people are I mean like I am not one of those people who was ever I mean I was a teenager when this

movie came out, of course I enjoyed it at that time. I definitely probably watched it, but like, I do not remember liking it. I certainly was like, okay, calm down. Girl, take it easy. To some of those critics

who, you know, wanted to scorch the earth of Tom Green. Sure. I understand. Tom Green, the successful actress coded in that year, and that he was a target of the Razzies. all right

all right that's our episode if you want more this had Oscar buzz you can check out the Tumblr at this had oscarbust com

should also follow us on Instagram at this head Oscar buzz and on Patreon at patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz Joe I think it's another successful

I wanted to say books thank you to our listeners for the seventh straight year indulging us in our whims and sort of allowing us to,

much like Noah Baum back in 2022, be a little ambitious in scope and in tone. I don't know, we have a lot of fun sort of coming up with these ideas, and we hope that you are getting a little something extra out of them beyond just running time. Well, yes, because they tend to be long episodes this month, too. But I also think, you know,

especially with can happening, it feels like, you know, we have post-Oskers, we have a little bit of down time to be chill, and this is hopefully our way of getting people excited for the year ahead. Joe, we have a new Palm winner as of this dropping. Oh, fuck. Wow. Should we get on the record and try to be predictive of what we think it's going to be, especially now that your can pool? I was going to say, I actually am going to have to. send the kickoff email after we're done with this. Well, my first pick

in the can draft was the Jochim Trir. Joachim Trir, do we pronounce the J? Yomim Trir, yeah. Which is called sentimental value. Value. Which I'm basing mostly on the fact that like his trajectory seems to be moving in the

right direction. But I will say I also, what was the other one that I picked on like a wing and a prayer where I was just like, because the director had like won a prize at Critics Week and then won a prize it in certain regard. It is...

Give me a second. What's my second movie? It... Did you pick the Lozneza? I picked... Surat. Oh, yes, the Oliver Lacks. Yes. Yes. So we'll see...

The four movies, if you must know, dear listener. I picked sentimental value. I picked Richard Linklider's New Velvig. I picked Sarat. wrought, and I picked Fiori, Fiori, the What you call it?

Valeria Gallino, star. I got my ideal draft position. Yeah, you wanted to draft late, and you sure did. And I did, and my first pick was the Panahi. I think the Panahi's getting the palm. Do you feel like, because now we are saying this before anybody has actually seen it, that like the

politics around it are very conducive to it winning the palm plus the fact that Benah he's never won the palm. Yeah, he's never won the palm

is part of it. Benosh has, was, uh, when he was in home imprisonment, she was one of the people in the global film community that spoke up for him.

Uh, and like he just doesn't make bad movies. Yeah. And I mean, it's going to be a big story because I think it's one of those, like, I don't think he's going to be able to travel to can to support the movie. I don't know where he's living right now.

I feel like he had... I'm not sure if it's out on the record or not. Yeah. If he's stayed in Iran. Certainly his most recent film No Bears talks a lot about that of the should he say, should he go situation. But we shall see. It is not, it's starting this week as of recording.

Yeah, I got to get the email out. All right. We got the, we've had some festival fever this month, and we have a real-life festival fever going on in the world. Back to your regularly scheduled programming next week, and forward we go. Forward we go. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Meavis for technical guidance from time to time, and Taylor Cole for. our theme music. Please remember to rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you

get those podcasts. Five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcasts visibility, so please, let us be an airborne toxic, not-toxic event where we're spreading among the populace. That's all for this week. We hope you'll be back next week for more buzz. Thank you.