This Had Oscar Buzz - 377 – The Iron Claw (w/ Roxana Hadadi!)

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

After our Class of 2025 episode last week, we’re doing one of the most requested from the Class of 2023! After his COVID-stunted release (and beloved THOB title) The Nest, Sean Durkin’s next film would be the true and tragic story of the Von Erich wrestling family. With Zac Efron headlining the film as Kevin Von … Continue reading "377 – The Iron Claw (w/ Roxana Hadadi!)"

No, the right house. I didn't get that! I'm from Canada water. Dick poop. We can do anything. Restore justice to the wrestling federation that our father built with his own two hands. The hands that were passed down to us, the hands that will deliver the iron clock to you. So what do you do?

Love your family, Kevin. Don't we, uncle? Yes, sir. Oh man, that makes me so happy. I talk to you about something long. It's too tough on us. You gotta say something. Maybe that's what your brother's for.

You feel that? Ah! You feel that? That's a question. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that's no closer to understanding that original song nomination for Viva Verdi. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we are here to perform the autopsy.

I'm your host, Joe Reed. I'm here, as always, with my favorite. son for the moment. Chris file. Hello, Chris. The ranking of your favorite sons. How often towards the top and how often an anima towards the bottom? The rankings are constantly shifting. You can always work your way up. I love the way that he says you can always work your way up or down. Like you can raise yourself or you can ruin your dances. It's a heterosexual dance

mom's pyramid. You know, Abby Lee Miller is like, Zach Ephron. in your routine as, I don't know, something horribly inappropriate like Abby Lee Miller always does. I don't know, where he's like, I don't have a joke prepared for this. Abby Lee Miller doing the ranking of all of the sons in this movie. I'm going to bring in our guest right now to ask if they have ever watched Dance Moms because I have not. We have a returning guest, one of our faves. Roxanna Hadati is back.

My vulture colleague, my wonderful vulture colleague, ahead, daddy. Did you ever watch dance moms? I know we're all familiar with Abby Lee Miller. My number one, Abby Lee Miller, somebody says Abby Lee Miller, the thing I first think of now is the thing where she's on the little jazzy at the whatever recital. And the woman just goes, also, first of all, all of those women are so tit for tat. They're just like, you know, you always yell at us for talking. Well, now you're being rude or whatever. And she's just backs the jazzy up up the aisle.

No, Abby Lee Miller, the thing you need to know about dance moms is that there are if you think Hollywood has bad attempts at timeliness, Hollywood has nothing on Abby Lee Miller. There will be like Anne Frank tribute

dances for these children. It's things like that. Dance moms. What a moment. Is dance mom still on? Like, what is her life? I think she's in jail? Oh, good for her.

I love the I think she's in jail. Yeah. Yeah. For like tax stuff. I was going to say like embezzlement. It is always tax stuff. Yeah. That's true.

Gary's get out of us. It's happily Miller in jail. I do feel like there was a solid wave of reality TV stars who were either in jail or canceled. And it's like her, the. Chris Lee's Paula Dean. Like, it's just... Jen Shaw. Jen Shaw,

yeah. Jen Shaw becoming friends with, um... Well, what's your name? This is the second time, the second podcast I've recorded in like two weeks that I've forgotten her name, Theranos, lady. Oh, Elizabeth Holmes. Elizabeth Holmes. So no one has to lose a loved one.

Joe, do you know how funny it is that you remember Jen Shaw? Well, this is not surprising. This is not surprising. Although you love Amanda Safe Reed so much. Oh, I loved that whole show. I thought that show was fantastic. The show was very good. And if they still want to make that feature film with Jennifer Lawrence, I would be here for it.

Oh, please. Yeah. But you got to bring Neveen back. Oh, yeah. No, Neveen was very good. Is Elizabeth Holmes also supposed to be getting out of prison soon? Because Jen Shaw is now free among the population. I don't know.

Maybe. Imagine Elizabeth Holmes and Abby Lee Miller. I was just about to say maybe they'd become friends in prison. That's the full circle. That is the full circle. Do you feel like J-Law would find a way to play Abby Lee? Like, I feel like that's probably one of her weird, like. Interesting.

Yeah, someone needs to ask her about dance moms yesterday. Like a weird reality TV fascination that she would have, I think. Yes. Well, because we know she loves Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm surprised because of her own on cultural. or whatever. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Remember when she did that interview with Brian Tyree Henry? Yes, they both talked about housewives, one of my faiths. Yes, I do. Where Brian Tyree Henry involuntarily came out of the closet in that interview. I'm just... We can neither confirm nor deny. We can neither confirm nor deny.

I'm just saying. I don't think I knew that. That was, at the time that that came out, people were just like, oh, wow. Like, this is like a girl in her gay, like, you know, queering out over the real housewives. And then people were like, oh, and everybody sort of like made a face and just like, oh, okay. So like, I guess that's a thing. Does it feel like an open secret? It does.

At this point, I think it does. I think there's enough of like, I don't know. The Eternals of it all. Yeah, he played the gay eternal. And then there was all this sort of like chatter, but it is the same kind of chatter. Well, I mean. Like the Velvet Rage, the Gay Eternal. The Velvet Rage, the Gay Eternal.

The Pink O'Pake. The Pink O'Pake sequel is the Gay Eternal. No, but there was a, it's like, remember when there was all that talk of, like, Taylor Swift is going to come out next week. Yeah, of course. Like, it was, so, but that, that was a thing that was, like, swirling around media, like, one specific time. Yeah, people were, like, her and Carly Clause were going to, and it was going to be a thing,

and it was going to happen, like, Thursday. Tomorrow. Right, yeah. And then that never happened. And so every time I hear one of these things about, like, such and such is going to come out in the press cycle for this thing. I've gotten to be a little bit more like grain of salt with that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I also think it's interesting. I mean, because we have, well, this is going to become a whole other conversation. But there was like the whole heated rivalry cycle, right? Oh, still. It's still happening. Are you gay? Are you gay?

Like it was just. Oh, right. And like demanding like, yes, particularly Conner story. Yeah. Yeah. The last couple days where they've been. like he's been photographed with Luca Guadino in like a cafe in Paris or whatever and like the alarm bells went up and everything like that it's yeah the one guy who plays the other gay hockey

player the like older one the one the one was on the bourges Francois Francois who is who is like publicly at the very least bisexual yes correct and I say at the very least like it's a like whatever stupid way to put it, publicly bisexual, full stop. But is the one who has been most on Front Street about like, these people are crazy. Like, this is concerning. He's like, I'm kind of like stepping. I'm like removing myself from the situation.

And by the way, they all want him to die. Like, of course they do. Do they really? Yes, there is a subset of psycho-heated rivalry fans who really, really hate him. specifically. Like in real life? Yes. Because they, well, part of it is they think he's dating Connor story in real life. Like that's been a thing. Right. I've seen that. Right. And can we confirm these men are like 40 and 25? They're both like adults. Yes, but the 40 and 25 is also, has become unsurprisingly, as you might imagine, a problem for these particular people because age gap

relationships are the worst thing that can ever happen. So when you're both adults? When you're both fully adults. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yeah, cool. I'm kind of like who is 15 years older than me That I would just say like fuck it You know? A lot of people for me Yeah, 53

That's a lot of people There's a lot of 55 year olds I'd be like, okay, that's fine Yeah John Hamm is John Hamm around that age? I'm sure All these, all the hotties of my youth Are in their 60s now

So like Jesus Christ Because I think his wife I think his wife is like my age And I told Adam and Adam was like Could have been you so rude he was like I don't know why he didn't call you

Listen, of the three of us Only one of us have been flirted with in Farsi by Holt McAllenay So I'm just going to say Oh my God We're going to talk about Roxanne's two interviews with Holt McAllenny And this episode

We're going to get there You know starting with reality TV And like junk television Not that I'm saying he did River-Roy is junk television It's sports television It's also topical. But if you're listening and you think it's junk television, let us know.

Just tell us. You know what? If you are enjoying heated rivalry on the level of junk television, great. If you think that it is elevated above that, great too. I honestly, that is a show that should be enjoyed on whatever level people want to enjoy it on as far as that. And you know what level I'm going to enjoy it on when I do catch up to it and enjoy it? I'm going to enjoy it on the level of six episodes is a perfect amount of episodes. It really is.

Like you can't, you can't get me on board faster than six episodes. No, it's true. It's true. Are they an hour long? They are an hour long, yes. Okay. But that's still, I think that's still fine. This is how I got on board so quickly, well, many, many years later, but so quickly

with fucking peeky blinders is when I found out that they were six episode seasons. I was like, shit. I'm like a six, because it's like six or seven seasons and I'm like, oh my God, I'm never going to catch up with that. That's crazy. And then it's like, oh, but they're only six episodes apiece. Like, I can, like, blaze my way through that. Chris, who do you think was texting me when they were watching peekie blinders?

This guy right here. This guy right here. It's just texting me things like, everyone's really hot on this show. Well, the thing that made me text you initially was like, I can't, I can't fathom that a person could be on both peeky blinders and animal kingdom at the same time. It feels like we are violating time space rules. Because. That was very good. you also sent me a hilarious text.

Do you remember about pouty lips? Oh, it is true. That's Joe's bread and butter. Are you kidding me? All these like super, super tough like gangsters that you don't want to cross, but it's just like, but the softest poutiest lips, that's crazy. It's like, mm-hmm. I wonder what their chapstick tastes like, ooh-hmm.

And then we also agreed that the women on the show are mostly terrible. Except for Helen McCrory, the late great Helen McCrory, who fucking ruled. RIPP to a real one. She was making that. show and oh, oh, the showtime horror show, Penny Dreadful. Penny Dreadful at the same time.

That's fucking crazy. I need to catch up to Penny Dreadful. Yeah, you do. You would love that. That is some goofiness that I will enjoy. I feel like Penny Dreadful and True Blood. Like, I don't understand why they have been forgotten culturally.

Because they were both so much fun. They were both. Yeah. Once everybody going to get on a true blood rewatch, you know? I don't understand. Is it because the kids don't like sex? Like, what is the reason? I honestly think it's part of it, probably that the kids don't like sex.

I think part of it also is like almost none of those actors ended up doing anything after that. Like, except for Alexander Scarsgaard, who like blew up. But like the main guy, Vampire Bill. Excuse me. He's on an art detective's show on Britbox. How dare you? He investigates. art crime.

Stop it. And his name is Stephen Moyer. And he's married to Anna Pac-Wan. And he was in The Sound of Music Live on NBC. Good for him. He was Captain Von Trapp. He and Carrie Underwood, as you can imagine, of course. Well, I don't acknowledge her existence.

Well, of course, we can. No, ignore I. No. Isn't there also something that when you fire up your HBO Macs app, like, I never get HBO trying to serve me true blood, you know? No. No. So true.

So true. Whereas, like, I've even had it trying to get me to watch Boardwalk Empire. Well, this feeds into my long ago Netflix theory. My Netflix theory of things they will serve to you, which is once the algorithm has your number, Hussie, they will withhold from you the stuff that they know you would seek out anyway and try and, like, you know. you know, put in front of your face stuff that you might not. Like, they know that, like, you like certain things enough that you will search for them and you will find it no matter what. But, like, maybe not apple cider vinegar.

So here we go. Like, we're putting that up for you. It is very annoying when you have a Netflix column to write and you have to hunt for literally anything. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Justice for true blood. Justice for true blood. Justice for Penny Dreadful. Justice for Helen McCroar. Here's what I was going to say about the reality TV thing, to pull it into the movie that we're... Thank you. Please do. Thank you.

One icon. Because I thought about it on this rewatch because it feels like even in the short time since this movie got in theaters, the exponential rate of true crime, these like rubbernecking, like, docu-series about, things like this story, like the family of the Iron Claw, are just like even more everywhere than they were in 2023. And I am so happy that this, you know, family got a treatment that's as thoughtful and accurate as what Sean Durkin gives it. And I'm happy that there seemingly doesn't exist a, you know, like, whatever, like, today's murder Yeah. I think if there were any kind of hints in this whole story of Sinisterness or Foul Play, I think there probably would have been.

I think there is a level to which people don't quite know how to process stories that are just like seemingly random tragedies sort of repeatedly be falling. I agree. this family. And I think the thing is, sorry, Joe. No, no, no. Continue, please. I feel like it is a perfect like 30 for 30 structure.

Yes. But I think we're not making 30 for 30 anymore because I mean, I don't think, I don't think Disney has the money, you know? Like, I think they follow in time. But it is, that's a joke. But it is like, I do feel like a 30 for 30 structure would exist. I also think to Chris's point, there is definitely also the point. there is definitely also the possibility

of one of those like three episode Netflix miniseries that's like here's a mystery we don't know the answer but we're going to give you all of these nefarious tidbits and I'm glad to Chris's point that like seemingly that treatment

has not happened because maybe there's just like a little bit of decorum left like a tiny tiny bit and how we treat this kind of story. Some background as you mentioned that. So there was, slash maybe still is. There's a documentary series that began on Vice TV, and I don't know exactly where it is now called Dark Side of the Ring. That is just like 30 for 30,

but for wrestling stuff. And so the Von Erick family, that was an episode in like that very first season back in 2019. Because this is one of the sort of like oft-told sort of, you know, stories of about wrestling. On a long enough timeline, if you get people talking about, like, the big sort of stories in wrestling, you'll get to the Von Erick's. There's also, though, Netflix does have a sports docu-series called, I'm going to forget the title of it now, but it's the one that did the Christy Martin documentary that I had watched before seeing the Sidney-Sweeney version of Christy, which is how I knew sort of all that. and outs of that. And that one is pretty good. I remember they had a good episode on

a Manteo very early on, that whole thing. And they had an episode on Marty Fish, who was this American tennis player who sort of lived in the shadow of Andy Rodic as like, you know, the great American, like, tennis player. And like, and he went through a lot of like bouts of like depression. And it was really good. I'll think of the name of the series anyway. But, I am a sucker for like a good sports documentary that is not, you know, does not fall into the pitfalls of the many, many, many bad sports documentaries. Right. So. Anyway, we're talking about the Iron Claw this week.

The 2023 film from one of my favorite directors, Sean Durkin, who works sporadically. That's a good way to put it. In a way that I somewhat appreciate because you know that like when he, when you get a Sean Durkin feature, it's going to be something really well considered and really, really well done. But part of me is also just like, man, I would just like some more. You know what I mean? Yeah. So he's not thrown out schlock in between his movies, but it's also like, it's also, I imagine very, very hard for him to get any kind of budget. at all to make his movies.

And he also does a lot of producing, too. He's part of, like, the Antonio Campos crew as well. Like, a lot of those filmmakers just, like, worked together and, like, worked on each other's movies, you know. I was going to say, is he sort of like a Jeff Nichols figure at this point? Or is even Nichols working more? A classic, uh, Roxanna comes on to this had Oscar buzz to talk about the motif. I'm like, I have to talk about my little boys. Little boys who could work some more.

Yeah. Well, Joe, lucky for you, it does seem like this movie Deep Cuts is going to get made, if not with the same cast it was announced with, because currently it's still Kaylee Spaney and Drew Starkey. Oh, interesting. Oh, Drew Starkey. That's a person I forgot existed. Yeah.

Yeah, well, Drew Starkey made the error to have a career and look like he does at a moment where he is like a solid, like, 14th on the... the roster of folks. Of guys that look like that. That are like killed in Hollywood right now and who are taking all of the roles. Yeah. Iron Claw was a movie that as soon as it got announced because of the fact that I have a background in watching wrestling from when I was a little kid, I was like, oh, I'm so

in. Like the perfect combination of like this director that I loved and this story that I really knew really well. And then when you got the cast, it was. was so interesting, this idea of Zach Afron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, who are technically all hovering around the same kind of bucket, but in like different little corners of the bucket. You know what I mean?

Like, Zach Efron, by this point, had kind of run through an entire career's worth of, like, life cycle. He was like elder statesman within this crew. Very much so. Very much so. And it was kind of like working on like a comeback almost. Yeah. Yes. And then Jeremy Allen White had still basically only ever done, like he had made movies, but like not on any kind of, you know, the notoriety scale or anything like that. And then Harris Dickinson was kind of in the sweet spot of just like emerging right at the right time. A triangle of sadness had been the year before this. And, just the tree Sorry, go ahead

Was this around the same time As murder at the end of the world? Sure was. Murder at the end of the world, I think, was also a December show. So I think it was like the exact same time. Speaking of TV shows I have texted you about as I was watching. Yes. I love that show.

So yeah, yeah, definitely. I think this was a, he was definitely like the one in the sweet spot for that. But man, like, I was so, so, so psyched for this movie. And I remember as we were sort of like preparing for like what's going to be at TIF this year, like what's going to be at Venice, what's going to be at New York Film Festival. And it kept like not showing up. And I kept and I think 824 was like adamant that like, no, this movie's coming out this year. And because they didn't take it to any festivals.

I think the release date, like we didn't know it would be a Christmas movie until rather late. Yeah. And so I sort of assumed that they were just going to like bump it to the next year or something. like that and maybe, you know, throw it to Sundance, throw it to Southby or something like that. It's one of those things where I complained a lot about Ironcloth being dumped into late December because it completely bypassed the awards conversation. But as people did keep reminding me, like, it became the fifth highest grossing at that time, A-24 movie of all time. You know what I mean? Like, it made a good chunk of money, certainly by.

like this year's standards, if you sort of like fast forward to this year, um, 35 million domestic is on a real high end of like what that kind of movie is making this year. When you think like, smashing machine made 11. You know what I mean? What did Roofman make like 20? We just talked about this in the last episode, right?

Yeah, something like that. 20. Yeah, low 20s. Roofman was low 20s. Okay. And like Roofman is a fun movie. Iron Claw, released at Christmas. It does speak somewhat to the power of what it

happens, what, you know, movies can make in that window, but like, it's a stone cold bummer at Christmas time. Oh, yeah. And it still makes a lot of money. Yeah. It's made, like, that's Song Song Blue money right now, and you look at the different tones. You could not

imagine. Very different audience. You could not pick two movies that are more different from each other, that besides the fact that they're based on true stories. Based on true stories full of, like, random tragedy. actually when you think about it. Yeah, truly. You know what?

There is more to compare those two movies to than you think. Well, I mean, Harris Dickinson does a whole Sweet Caroline number. Well, yes, of course. And he keeps saying, everybody asks me to do Sweet Caroline and I really just don't want to. The other thing that I think is interesting as well, and this is, I don't know, I could be wrong in this, is that these don't feel like movies that are catering to, like, the coasts. No. It feels like these are like very familiar, like, inner America, middle America stories, which is interesting, too. But, like, this was an A-24 thing because I feel like they've moved further and further away from that.

Yes. Yeah. Well, I think it's interesting that that is true about this movie, but it also doesn't feel like Sean Durkin is really sacrificing any of his, you know, particular fascinations. or that, you know, he's sanding the edges to, like, what his normal approach is to, you know, family stories, basically. Mm-hmm. So I was trying to sort of, like, thread the needle from Martha Marcy May Marlene to the nest, to Iron Claw, and just sort of, obviously, there are stylistic sort of familiarity. all three of these movies hold with them a little bit of the uncanny, whether it's the thing at the end of Martha Marcy May Marlene, where you never quite know whether you're being paranoid or whether, you know, she is being followed. Obviously, The Nest has all sorts of little feints towards ghost stories and, like, you know, there is no actual, like, supernatural, but it's filmed in a way that is so, um,

plausibly spooky because of sort of what it's trying to say about commerce. Plausibly spooky. That's my new bio on Vulture. And then this movie, obviously. That's the Patreon for our Patreon, no longer turbulent, brilliant. Right. Spooky. Right. And then Iron Claw, you know, obviously this notion of the curse, the Von Erich curse sort of like hangs over the family in a way that does not feel like any kind of supernatural, but then towards the end of the movie, you get that scene

with Carrie sort of crossing the river to see his brothers, a scene that some people did not work for everybody, but I think it worked for more people than I kind of expected it to. And I think it's because I think by that time in the movie, you are so willing to, sort of give yourself over to some kind of, you know, if not higher power, just sort of like some kind of notion of divine mercy for this family. And, and the fact that you get it in a way that is so matter of fact. Like, it's not really particularly like hazy or, you know. It doesn't really announce itself as it's happening. You know, it's just kind of happening. and it's this, you know, otherworldly thing that can't be real what we're seeing.

And, you know, Sean Durkin just has, like, the trust that we'll understand what we're seeing. Yeah. But it's definitely the thing about Durkan that I find to be the most special about his filmmaking style is his way of sort of weaving in this little sense, this subtle, I'm going to say again, like uncanniness to it that feels like you just don't get that with. your average filmmaker. Yeah. I mean, I think he's very good at attempting to like, let me rephrase this or see how I want to phrase this. I feel like he's very good at exploring a character who wants to find meaning in their actions, if that makes sense.

Because I feel like Martha Marcy Marlene is exactly about that where it's like, I was in this cult, like, what was the purpose of that? Like, what does it do now for me? How has it changed me? why did I do that? All of the paranoia comes from that. Yeah. And then so much of this movie is like, are they doing it because they love it?

Are they doing it because their father? Are they doing it because it's faded for them to do this? Like all these questions of like destiny and the curse and fate and all of these like intertwined big, almost like metaphysical ideas. Yeah. That I think exactly like you said, Chris, are handled like very matter-of-factly somehow. in the movie. It's like a very bizarre, delicate balance that he pulls off well. Yeah, I think that's right. And there's so many moments in Ironclaw where you kind of expect one or more of the boys to sort of openly rebel against Fritz, against their father. And it happens

in like sort of subtleties. Like you see Kevin go to their mom sort of, you know, side channel to her and just be like, dad's too hard on Mike. Like, you got to talk to him about that. And she says, you know, that's none of her business. And then you get a little bit of, you know, when Kevin gets passed over, there's a little bit of friction. But there's this sense of like these boys sort of like fall into line very easily. And I suppose you could read the movie as this sort of like long tale of like emotional abuse or whatever. but I also feel like that's not really the read that Durkan has on this.

And I think it's, it is their sort of loyalty to each other. It's their bond as brothers. It's their, you know, this is their, you know, this is their family purpose. This is their shared, you know, dream. And ultimately, they are going to push forward and support each other. And the tragedies that befall all of them are,

in a lot of ways, you know, the moments where that kind of purpose, that's kind of sense of shared purpose finally sort of falls away, right? That they can't, at least with, particularly with the suicides, with the two suicides in the movie, I guess with David's, you know, dying of the ruptured intestine or whatever. That's more of a freak incident, although that's a, a function of him, you know, doing drugs and all that sort of stuff. But I think the two suicides sort of come from that moment where that thing that held their, you know, their life, their sense of, you know, sort of shared purpose together finally couldn't hold them anymore.

I don't know. I'm only, no, I don't think that's wrong. I think that all feels correct in terms of what the movie is doing. All I was going to do is be exactly who I am, which is to say that as you were talking about that, it reminded me of the moment in Ferrari when he's talking about racing. And he says, we all know it's our deadly passion, our terrible joy. Like, it's a lot like that. Yeah. Yeah. Like, something they're doing that they love doing because they're doing it together, but also on some intrinsic level, they're very aware that it's killing them. Yeah. Whether that is like emotionally or physically. Yeah.

And whether that's because of Fritz or because of like the nature of the sport, whatever it is, there is such a like just a hanging sense of doom. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, we're going to get into the specifics of all of this and how it pertains to these characters, these actors and whatnot.

but before that happens, Roxanna, we're going to have you deliver the 60-second plot description, but before that happens, Chris is going to explain to our listeners why, if they're not already signed up for a Patreon, they really should be. Listener, we have a Patreon. We call it turbulent brilliance in honor of a short quote in Shirley MacLean's Oscar speech, because we are who we are. For only $5 a month, you're going to get more of the show you already love. That's going to come in the form of two bonus episodes, the first of which we call exceptions. These are movies that fit that this had Oscar Buzz rubric but managed to score a nomination or two. Those come out on the first Friday of every month. What does that mean, Joe?

That means there's one coming just this Friday. And what is it? For Valentine's Day, we had to do when Harry met Sally. You know, one of everyone's face, it's coming. What other exception episodes are just waiting for you there? Well, we've got... Genuinely so many. Genuinely so many.

Two and a half years worth at this point. We've got great movies like Mulholland Drive, Steven Spielberg's AI. We've got some not-so-great movies like Madonna's WE. And then everything in between, like House of Gucci, Pleasantville, contact, interview with the vampire. These are the type of movies you're going to get on the exceptions.

The second bonus episode comes on the third Friday of every month. We call this an excursion. These are deep dives into Oscar nerdery that we love to obsess about. We've recapped old award shows like MTV Movie Awards and Independent Spirit Awards. We've talked EW Fall Movie Preview Issues. We've done actress roundtables. But this month, it is the best month to sign up because we are doing our third annual superlatives award ceremony.

It's, you know, our ballots of all of the weird awards categories that come up throughout the season and various precursors like the AARP movies for grown-up awards. We've got categories that we've pulled from MTV Movie Awards, things like that, and it's all going to culminate with the Gary's

picking their People's Choice Award winner. And we're instituting our own best director category of sorts called Queen of the Night this year. You know you're going to get some crazy over there, having a good time. Yes. Patreon.com slash this had Oscar Buzz. Go sign up for turbulent brilliance now. You will not be disappointed. All right.

Roxanna, while you limber up for the 60-second plot description, I'm just going to lay out the basics. We're talking about 2003 is the Iron Club. written and directed by Sean Durkin, starring, Zach Ephron, Harris Dickinson, Jeremy Allen White, Moratierney, Stanley Simons, Michael J. Harney, Aaron Dean Eisenberg, with Holt McElheny, and Lily James. premiered on December 22nd, 2023 from E-24. It opened number six at the box office that weekend with $4.8 million. Behind the first weekend of Aquaman, The Lost Kingdom, the second weekend of Wonka, the first weekend of the animated film Migration. I think we all remember where we were when migration hit the theaters. The first weekend of the much derided but also made a good bit of money, anyone but you,

which started with a humble $6 million and I guess just kept going for a while. And then the number five movie was a film called Silar that made $5.6 million that weekend. And I don't remember what that was. Is that one of the Bollywood movies? I would imagine so. Those things can, like, clean up. They sure can. They can move tickets, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Roxanna, I have my stopwatch right in front of me. Am I that I mean? It's so stressful. The app on my phone that has a stopwatch. It would be cool if I had, like, a legitimate, like, little, you know, stopwatch. Yeah, that I would have put on a chain in my pocket. Yes, yes, absolutely.

But if you are ready, I can give you the starting bell. Yes, let's do it. All right, and begin. Okay, Iron Claw. It is a biopic about this famed wrestling family, the Von Erics. Basically, there is a dad, Fritz, played by all of our husband, Holt. He's somehow our husband, all three of us, but it works. It's fine.

It works. And he is, like, pressuring his sons into all being wrestlers to, like, pick up his mantle. It goes badly, which is to say that he is, like, not a great dad. He pushes them very far. They're very successful. They're also all broken inside. And then we see how all of their being broken inside plays out. It's sad.

You'll be sad. But it's beautiful, but it's sad. The end. The end. 20 seconds to spare. Oh, thank God. I'm going to add that to my next plot description. So I will have a minute 20 to go before.

Yes. All right. I'll need it. We should say up at the top that there is a brother who is not included in the movie. Yes. And Sean Durkin basically absorbed two brothers into one, and his justification for this is it would be too sad. Yeah. The audience would say enough.

The audience wouldn't, yeah, that they wouldn't buy that like this many, you know, awful things would happen to a family. And I guess that sort of my question is like, do we feel like, so I knew nothing about this family. I don't watch wrestling. Like, it's not my thing. I went because of who's in it. Yeah. Did we feel like it was largely wrestling fans who saw it and knew it and understood that decision? Like, I guess I'm curious about, like, why you would make that decision.

Maybe it's just easier to streamline the screenplay that way. I don't know. I remember it got mentioned in almost all of the reviews that they had made this decision to condense it. And in a lot of them just sort of in this very kind of value. you neutral, just sort of like, you know, statement. I think a couple of the reviews kind of thought it was symptomatic of a thing, you know, a sort of general, because this was a movie that was generally well reviewed, but also kind of tepidly so, I think. This is one of those, like, real rotten tomatoes things where it's like, it's an 89% rotten

tomatoes, but a lot of those reviews were just sort of a little complicated, a little muddled. There wasn't a ton of like red hot enthusiasm for this movie. It took a minute for people to like sit with this movie. And I think one of the things about this movie is when you think of who this movie's audience is, because obviously wrestling has had sort of several boom moments in the culture throughout my lifetime, one of them being these sort of like mid-80s, dawn of WrestleMania, Hulk Hogan, Cindy Lopper and Captain Lou Elbano,

kind of cultural crossover moment. Then there was the Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, you know, Monday Night Raw, that kind of a thing in the late 90s, early 2000s. And then I think somewhat recently, you've seen another, I definitely have noticed in the last maybe like five to eight years, a big enthusiasm for wrestling, particularly among, I would say, women and like the rise of actual real female wrestling rather than just sort of like sideshow brawn panty match kind of a thing,

has been a real boon for wrestling and has really, I think, think, and also now that there is an alternative to WWE, you have AEW, which allows people to sort of enjoy wrestling without having to deal with the Vince McMahon of it all. Right. Which, so, sexual predator. Right, right. And so the whole, the story of the Von Erics largely bypasses a lot of that. They, they were in the sort of, without getting into, you know, deep into it, like,

while the WWF, as it was at the time, was sort of consolidating, because Vince McMahon essentially consolidated all of the territories. Wrestling used to be very territorial. You would have a different wrestling organization in every state or region, and they would promote that region, and you would have sort of local stars, which you see in this movie, that Fritz sort of owned this particular wrestling fiefdom that wrestled out of. I think it's generally the greater Dallas kind of area. Yeah. It's sort of a small business story in like an interesting way. Definitely. Definitely.

There are like a lot of labor questions in this, which I don't think really got talked about in the first wave of reviews. No, I think that's definitely true. Well, you get the thing late in the movie where Kevin says, you know, I've looked through the bookstead and like the numbers don't add up. Like he's like I didn't see any of this money. like, you know, and now he's, you know, and it kept him and his brothers, I think, sort of dependent on, you know, the family, the homestead kind of thing. But so in the South particularly, the NWA, which is the, that's the title that Fritz wants so much. He wants the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, which is the, this is the sort of overarching, like, a greater Southern wrestling kingdom within all these,

like territory sort of operated under. NWA's National Wrestling Alliance. It's not one particular company. It's an alliance of all of these smaller things. And what Vince McMahon did coming out of Connecticut and the northern territories is sort of bit by bit sort of acquired these regional companies until it was essentially the WWF and then this other company, WCW, which operative, which was what the NWA sort of grew up into. And then eventually in 2001, Vince McMahon bought WCW and sort of then owned the entire wrestling kingdom.

Right. Monopalized everything. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Classic American story.

Yeah. That biopic will be coming at some point, I imagine. Yeah. From the depths of hell. Directed by Brett Rattner. Oh, God. Jesus Christ. But so the Von Erics were very much like local.

in the South. And you would hear about them if you would watch sort of some of these. Because, like, as you saw, like, some of the stuff would end up on ESPN in sort of the early days of ESPN or, you know, like local syndicated, you know, TV or whatever. But in terms of what crossed over into, like, big wrestling crossover popularity, which would be like the stuff that I would have noticed, carry von Eric. So there's the scene where Zach Afron and Holt are watching on television. They're watching Carrie win the Intercontinental Championship at like a WWF pay-per-view event at SummerSlam. That would have been the time that I was watching. That was 1990.

That was like Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior. And so they brought in this new guy, Carrie Von Erick, who they called the Texas Tornado. And one of his moves was the Iron Claw that he would use. but they actually, his finishing move was a, like this discus punch, they call it, where he would like twirl around and like just nail someone with hit. But like that was the only really, like, that was basically the extent of my familiarity with Carrie Von Erick. And then he died within a few years of that, of that winning that championship.

And then that's when I sort of first started to hear about, oh, this like he's, you know, part of this wrestling family and this is the latest sort of tragedy. to befall this family. But what I'm, this is the long way around of saying, I don't think the Von Erick story ever really crossed over with these moments of mainstream wrestling popularity. So you kind of have to be a real dyed in the wool sort of like long time wrestling fan to know why this is such a sort of important story and to seek out this movie

for that particular story. And I think some people probably saw it because they were curious to see, you know, they were wrestling fans in general, so they were curious to see, you know, Zach Efron play this wrestler. But I think more than not, this probably just got sold as an A24 movie. You know what I mean? Like an A24 movie with this talent. And these hotties, right. And like the wrestling. Zach Efron is so popular.

Yeah, he is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's probably why this was never going to be, you know, anything on the level of something like, I wonder even how much like fighting with my family made. You know what I mean? Because I don't think it made this much. I don't think it made this much either. Watch it have made like $60 million. Was that just, was that just prior to COVID that movie? I think so. It was like 2018, 2019, something like that? Okay. I thought so. Yeah. I thought so. Yeah. I thought. I thought it was before Florence felt like really big. I think that's true. I think that's probably true.

Fighting with my family, just shy of $23 million. It made Roof Man money. There you go. Okay. That's interesting. I mean, bad title. Can we be honest? Yes.

Oh, yeah. Terrible title. Totally. Terrible title. But that was another, like, based on a true story kind of a thing. Yeah. Yeah. But.

Well, you can't make a sports movie if it's not based on a true story. That is interesting. This is the arithmetic. Is the Mighty Ducks. the only purely fictional sports movie that we can think of. Rocky? Well, but Rocky even is like, nominally, it's, like, it's fictional.

Sort of based on the some, I can't remember the guy's name now. But, and I'm mostly joking, because obviously, the Air Bud is not based on a true story. You're so true. No, but,

Space Jam, so true. Space Buddies is based on a true story. The Air Budd's, Airbud cinematic universe. It is all based on a true story except for the original. No, it's true. But to that point, wasn't the top Google search, like, Marty Supreme real? Like, everybody is...

Oh, yeah. It's our... To think this way. Well, yes. I think nowadays we're in a real crisis of people not understanding the concept of pure fiction. Yeah. Challenges? Does challengers count?

Challenges definitely counts. Challenges does not even have, like, a particular antecedent in tennis. Yeah. Unless we learn about all of these secret three-way relationships. Well, did you see the thing where Gus Kenworthy is now out in the press being like, you know, I had a heated rival relationship. And it's just like, yes. Yes.

Yes, Gus. Thank you. I have heard that IRL Gus Kenworthy is very nice. So I don't want to like, I always feel bad when I, you know. Joe is saying, Gus, if you want to call into the show. Gus, you're welcome. We'll update the technology. We'll figure it out. Come into my fur.

Gus Conner, where they come into my fur. Anyway. So that's all interesting. I mean, that's helpful context because I definitely feel like, yes, it was sold very much as this, like, beautiful prestige. All your favorite young hotties are here in this movie that's going to make you cry. All of those things, I think, work for like a Christmas-y sort of release. Yeah. It hit like all of those different.

Those who didn't want to go see Aquaman for their Christmas. What an odd collection of Christmas weekend premieres. Truly. So strange. Indicative of a different time. Every year, it's like, that was a different time just a year ago. Yeah. Yeah.

That's true. You know what, that domino meme that I always love, the one where it's like the little tiny domino. And then like, the big domino is Timothy Shalamee wins an Oscar. The littlest domino is somebody. approaches Timothy Shalameh's manager with like Wonka question mark. It's just like, because that I genuinely still believe

that like Timmy becoming like a December money making gauntlet definitely plays into him now being the Oscar frontrunner. I'm just gonna stick by that. I also just, we don't have to make this a Timmy,

a Timmy pod. But when I think about Zach Efron's work in this movie, I'm like, do I like this? more than any Timmy performance. Okay. Let's start with... Let's go on.

Let's... Yeah, but let's start with Ephron, though, because I... Like, that's... It's not the very beginning of the movie, but it's early enough on in the movie. You get essentially this, like, tour of his body, right? Where he's, like, he's getting out of bed. He's just got the tidy whitties on. And it's not necessarily leering.

What I think is interesting is there's so much flesh in this movie and not None of it is sexual. Like, even his relationship with Lily James does not capitalize on his physique in any way or like, but this movie really like gazes a long time at these bodies. And not in, not necessarily in horror either, I want to say, but it's in this kind of incredulous fascination where you're just like. Fascination is exactly right. Look at what you know who Zach Efron is. you've seen Zach Ephron before. He had sort of kind of bulked up for other things before.

There was the Baywatch movie and whatnot. He got really ripped for other things before. Yes. I don't know if he bulked up for other things. And I do feel like there's a difference. Yes. Yes. And I think it also, probably not intentionally to this degree,

but I think the work that had happened to his face also by this point, Whether it's fillers, whether it's, like, who knows? But, like... I thought he had an accident, too. Yeah, we know what the story is. I actually don't know the story, so tell me the story. Oh, Chris, please. I don't think I know the full details, too, but there was...

I don't think it was to the extent of what happened to Dylan O'Brien, where Dylan O'Brien had to have, like, full, complete facial reconstruction because of that accident. But... I thought that it was, like, was the story like he felt? fell through a door. Oh, God. Something like that. Yeah, it was awful. Yeah.

But yes, it was very similar to Dylan O'Brien, Chris. You're right. And that I think it was like he needed to get his entire jaw reconstructed from like the upper or lower half of his face. It was like some significant portion of his face. And yes, I do think, again, if we were to be very cynical, we could say, did you get some work that didn't work out? And this was like the lie and the cover. Oh, yeah. I suppose that's a possibility.

It's always like a possibility, but it genuinely seemed like something happened. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was not good. His jaw is definitely one of the things that sort of strikes you when you look at him. I think he also has just sort of that general sort of nose and surrounding area sort of look of most celebrities these days who get filler or who get some sort of, you know, wrestling or whatever the hell. I'll be bold, Joe. Yeah.

I'll call it John Malaney face. Oh, well, you want to talk about a jaw. You want to talk about a jaw that was not there before. It's these comedians who are like, I want to be fit. And then their faces change. Bless them. But yes. Zach Ephron, the story was he fell in his home.

He nearly died. His jaw was wired shut. And he basically had to have, like, facial instruction. Got it. Yeah. However, however it came to be, I think it all sort of works of a piece with, again, you sort of are looking at this person who has constructed himself into something on. I'm just going to put a quarter in the uncanny jar because I'm going to say uncanny again. But like something on so not of like the normal run of the mill, right?

Like if you ever see, and it's true of pro wrestling. If you ever see pro wrestlers and you're like, they're more muscular than even they look on TV. They're oftentimes shorter, as most famous people are. But I remember the late Eddie Guerrero, I saw him in a restaurant one time, and I was struck by how short he was, how incredibly muscular he was, and how big his head was. Big heads are also another thing with just famous people. Like, famous people are short with big heads. That's just who gets famous. They're bobblehead bodies.

It's particularly exacerbated for Ephron. in this movie for some of the periods of the hair that they give him, they give him this tight. Oh, the hair styles are incredibly horrifying slash wonderful in this movie. Oh, my God. No, but yeah, it's definitely, it's like, it is a body that is crafted for a purpose. Yes. And the purpose is not really to be a body anymore.

It is to be a tool. Yes. And so when we get this sort of, as you were saying, Joe, this introduction, where it's like they're introducing him in pieces, right? Like he's in bed. We see like the thighs. We see torso. We see arms.

I think we see neck at one point. It's like we're just seeing these like disparate parts. Yep. And then they do add up to a real boy. But there is a real like Pinocchio almost like Peter Pan. Yes. Boy quality to the performance that is very affecting. Well, and so much of the movie, obviously, you know, the wrestling.

scenes, you know, people essentially wrestle in just sort of like, you know, the briefs and like trunks that are briefs and like knee pads and boots and whatnot. Yeah, it goes with the territory for the sport that they. But you even get stuff like at the breakfast table or whatever, and it's just like Harris Dickinson shows up with no pants on or whatever, like just my going to wear. And she's like, pants next time maybe, like more a tier. Well, that's one interesting thing. They're like, yes, it's fascinating.

by bodies, but it also, there is a passivity to the way sometimes bodies occur in this movie because it's all just like a house of boys and like often don't have pants on. Yes. You know. Yeah. But I think it also just sort of invites you to exactly like what you said, Roxanna, those sort of view themselves and view these bodies that they've built for themselves

as functional as sort of as tools towards, you know, this particular. shared, again, this kind of shared goal, this mission that Fritz sort of set them all on, which is you have to, once this family obtains the NWA championship, nothing will ever be able to hurt us again, which, of course, even as you hear him say that, you know that, like, that's a fallacy, even beyond, you know, knowing what will befall this family. Just, like, winning a wrestling championship is no guarantee of anything. Like, the list of, of, you know, people who were wrestling champions and, and, you know, crashed out in their lives is long.

Any kind of chance, any celebrity, any kind of champion, any, anything. Like, you rise and you fall. There is no rise and continued rise. Right. Right. Right. Maybe Michael Jordan, but, like, that feels like it. Yeah.

Well, and like even, yeah. And, like, even Michael Jordan had that horrible period where his father was murdered. He played for the Washington Wizards. Well, but it's like. Because his father was murdered. He left basketball. He did that, interlude, replayed baseball. And, like, and of course, that tends to get papered over because then he returned and

like won three more championships and sort of cemented his legacy and whatnot. But you're right that there was like this very emotionally devastated period. Yeah. Which is covered at length in the last dance where it's like he did not know what he wanted to and he did not think he could continue playing basketball without his father. Right. Right. Which is, yeah.

Yeah. Very real and very sad. Speaking of fathers, and I'm going to use that as a segue, and thank you. Speaking of Papas. Holt McElagney in this movie is, this is the third time I've seen this movie, and every time I see it, I feel like his is the performance that kind of jumps out at me the most. It's a perfectly him. It's a perfectly Holt character, obviously, because it's every, you know, you think of him,

and it's this, you know, insane, you know, strong-jawed, square head. You know what I mean? Like, this guy is effortlessly tough and not to be defied, essentially. And he's an actor who sort of uses that to various degrees in his different roles. But I think this is such a perfect role for him. What I like about his performance in this movie so much is he wields a kind of, that kind of, that kind of, of dad, like, authority, and there's a degree to which his sons all respect and fear him in this very sort of like old school athletic dad way. But I think what Holt does is he

very sparingly plays into that. And he waits to do that. He waits to actually become threatening or, like, physically intimidating for very specific. moments. He's, he's, you know, you can tell he's the bad kind of competitive in the way he talks about, like, raking his sons. And he talks about, you know, talks to Michael who, you know, is very clearly not cut out for this wrestling life and talks about how he's got to get him into a gym and he's got to get him bulked up and whatever. Achievement is part of the family dynamic. It's their identity. But he's also like, he's very free with compliments too. He's not like, He's not intentionally withholding for as much as you would think he might be.

And I think it makes those moments where he does, especially later on in the movie, become sort of, you know, this gnarled version of himself and, you know, threatens, you know, Kevin with, you know, you can never come back to the house again if you sell, you know, the company and whatnot. And I think it's really effective. I think he's really, really effective in this movie. I think some of what's effective too is, you know, he's not some, he's not just scary dad. Maybe this just goes down to casting and like the type of actor Holt McAllenny is. Is that like the version of him where he's the dad who can say the right thing when he needs to, when he needs to be the supportive emotional presence for his sons, you can see it in your mind. Yeah.

But he withholds it every time. But like we kind of, you know, if he's just going to be a monster, we can't really have the actor who is just conceivably a monster, you know? Right, right. Well, and this is where I want to bring in, Roxanna. You've interviewed him twice for Vulture, once for this movie and once for, what was the... Oh, about Fight Club. Right.

Fight Club, yeah. So I want to sort of get your impression of your impression of your... you know, what you think of this performance and through talking to him about this, you know, this role. Well, what I think that he does really well, and he's sort of like settled into this mode between like this and Mind Hunter is I think he's very good at being challenging without being antagonistic. Yes.

And I think he stays in that mode in Ironcloth for a really long time. Exactly as you said, like he praises his sons, but he's, He's always sort of like asking them like, can't you do a little bit better? Like impress me a little bit more. Outdo your brother a little bit higher. And so I think that he's very subtle in delivering this dialogue that conveys this emotion without tipping into, as Chris said, just like jokey caricature villain territory. Like he feels incredibly grounded, I think, in. mid-century. He's just found that niche. Like if this man were on Mad Men, we would have all been

like, oh, of course he's on Mad Men. Like, of course. He just has this sort of like elder era American. It's not, I'm trying to find like a synonym for challenging, but it's like, it's almost a little bit like anti-authoritarian because he's the authoritarian, but he's almost like questioning whether anybody else can take that role as well. It's just it's a very delicate balance, I think, that he walks really well. In talking to him, I will say the superficial stuff first, which is that he is like incredibly charming. I bet.

I bet. Yeah. Just incredibly charming. Just like, who, Lord God, help me. But I think, you know, and you know this from like talking to actors. it is always sort of that question of like, I'm finding the character's humanity. And I took him very seriously when he talked about Fritz being, frankly, really awful in a lot of ways. We haven't talked about the fact that, like, he did some, like, Nazi performative things with his, like, wrestling identity.

Right. His original character for Fritz von Erick was a heel, of course, was a bad guy. And what's the easiest way to get, you know, the audience? to boo him. Well, he's going to play a German, but not just a German, a Nazi German with like Nazi affectations that'll really get everybody to boo him. And the one thing that I had read, that I, maybe I read it in your article, actually, was that that that was reportedly or anecdotally the origin of what Fritz thought this curse on his family was, that he, because he had sort of made his fame via, you know, portraying a Nazi, right,

that this was sort of being revisited upon him and his lineage or whatever. Yeah, so I think it was really interesting talking to him because it seemed like more than anything he clued in on the character's personal ambition and on the sense of, and we see this in the film, which is that like one of their sons dies very, very, very. early on as like a toddler and he really wanted to carry and convey like how that guilt sort of warps into this like how can I push my sons. How can I make sure they can defend themselves and like nothing like this would ever happen again? And all of that of course becomes very like twisted also in this version of American masculinity that they're doing by like look at my beautiful four boys. They all wrestle. Look at how great they all are. Look at how tough they are. Yeah. Nobody can beat them. Nobody can challenge them. So it seemed very much like he clued into that. Which again, I think is like what he does so well across a range of performances. He always has this little bit of like defensive menace that I think is really palpable at all times.

Yeah. I think he also, he talked about like some stuff that either they filmed that didn't make it in or maybe they just but that we would potentially be seeing more of Fritz's, like, illness later in life. Right. And I think it made sense to sort of end the film without too much sympathy for him. Right. A more effective film. Yes.

When you end it with his loneliness. Yes. Rather than with an attempt to sympathize. Because I think the performance lets you understand him. Yes. without tipping into, don't you feel bad? Because I think the film works more when you realize what he has done to his sons rather than what he has done to himself. The movie gives you a lot of leeway for how harshly you want to judge Fritz.

And I like that about it. You can see, I can imagine somebody watching this movie and being like unambiguously, this guy is a monster, right? for the way he has raised his children, for, you know, that everything that sort of befell these kids is a product of the way that he, you know, that he raised them. And I think I can also see somebody who sees in him a very kind of, you know, almost tragic, you know, figure who through these accumulated losses,

just lost more and more of, you know, the particular kind of humanity. He would always, he had always been this particular kind of, like, you know, you know, masculinity, this version of masculinity, this version of, you know, toughness and formidability. But you can see where that, you know, that person that he becomes is a, is a tragic story. And you can imagine seeing any sort of combination of it in between, any place on, any point on the line in between those two poles, I could imagine coming out of this movie

with too. I think there's also something about this movie that is about the American mythologizing of the father. Oh, sure. Especially the way the movie opens. It's like the imagery is both glorious and terrifying. And it's like Holt McAllenny's face with the like juxtapose with the actual rings. So it's like it's the legend of...

It's black and white, yeah. The glory days of the father, et cetera. And then it's just like the... And of course I don't want to be glib about real people who lived, but I think what Durkan's kind of after in the idea of a cursed family, the curse is the father who behaves this way. The curse is the father who, you know, damages all of his children

in a way that allows these things to happen to them. And like convinces them also that this is like the only way to live. This is what they want. Yeah. Something that's interesting. Each sort of son discovers that maybe that's not the case for what they want for themselves. And so there is this sort of like recurring sense of discovery throughout the film as each son either like meeting.

his limitations. Yes. Or to your point, Joe, realizes the father's limitations that were there all along. Yeah. And so I do think it's like a very clever way that like chips away at Fritz. And there's this inverse relationship that like Holt's performance gets like harder and colder and more curt and like more beleaguered as the son pull away. So I think like all of the acting relationships make a lot of sense.

I'm curious how you guys feel about the depiction of the mom. Sure. She's the one who is most, like she's so hands off. Yes. With the boys. And every time I watch it, I can't determine if that is her own self-defense or like what the dynamic was with the mom. It's just, it's tricky to me. That is one of those characters you kind of wish you had another 40 minutes with almost.

Yeah. Right. Part of it is because Morritian is so fantastic and really gives you a lot. And you don't get enough of her. But it's also like there's a lot to this woman as a religious woman. You know what I mean? And you get that from the very beginning when she's sort of like, you know, she gets frustrated with Fritz. And so she sort of like quietly like says a prayer.

And, you know, and there's this obviously just this unimaginable grief that she goes through, that scene where, you know, she'd doesn't want to put the black dress on again for the second funeral because everybody will have seen it and they'll know. And there is, that's where you sort of get clued in. It's like, oh, this is also shame. This is also that there's, there's a shame element to her to have to go in front of, you know, this community and say, you know, we lost another, I lost another son. But I think also that scene, one of the things that think is very interesting is because Lily James is an interesting character in this movie that ultimately I'm glad they don't focus on her too much because I think I would have gotten very annoyed with a story that focused

too much on the just like, you know, Kevin, you're never home, like that kind of a thing. Yeah. It would have felt very... But all told, like this is a very, like, positive, successful relationship that is definitive for Kevin. Yes. So like that's what purpose it serves

there. And there is kind of like a ray of hope there. But that scene with the dress where Lily James you know sort of is there for her in that moment and even very briefly they sort of

they cry together and she embraces her and he sort of gives her kiss on the cheek. And then you cut to I think it's either right before that or right after that where Fritz is telling the boys, you know, no sunglasses no you know, no tears

We're going to... I need to see you. Everybody's going to see you. You need to put on a good show of it and whatever. And then, of course, you round back again to that scene at the end with Kevin and his boys, and he starts crying and he says, you know, you shouldn't see me like this. You know, a man's not supposed to cry like this, which is the most, like, plain spoken, you know, statement of thesis about, like, toxic masculinity, of course, this whole idea that, like,

men can't cry. And they are very, matter of fact, about it. just like, of course guys, of course boys can cry. Like, we cry all the time. Well, that's also the scene where you get the, I used to be a brother and they say, well, we'll be your brother. Oh, my God. I can't talk about it. I mean, it's so good.

I mean, like, it's just like taking a brick to the thing. It just like hits you so hard. But I think the reason why that's so emotionally effective, because I think many other movies would try to have that same exact scene scripted word for word. and it wouldn't work. And it's because the movie withholds a lot of that very direct sentiment throughout the whole movie. And it earns it that way. Should we talk about Zach? I feel like we have to, I mean, that's a good point, I think, to talk about Zach.

I think he's, yeah, I think he's really fantastic in this movie. I really do. In my ideal world, Holt and Zach would have both gotten Oscar nominations, which of course did not occur. No. But, yeah, I mean, like, the Afronisance, narrative was so good because it was who has given Zach Efron another role like this? Well, it's a really, it's for a career, now we're in 2026. So right now we're at 20 years of Zach Ephron.

We're celebrating this year, 20 years of Zach Ephron because high school musical was 2006. We should do that instead of whatever tall ship nonsense we're going to do for the 200, 150th birthday of America where you should just do 20 years of that front. Joe just talked us into a vulture pitch package. Oh, next features meeting, Roxanna. Back me up on this. 20 years of that front.

I'll say, Joe and I actually came up with this idea together. Chris would also be all for there. We should all probably give in on this. We should all probably interview Zach at once. I don't know. It's just an idea. It's just a notion. But the effronissance.

has been somewhat of a thing too because I think when Neighbors came out I was gonna say it's kind of been a rolling thing. We saw a lot of people being like Zach Ephron really great in this movie. He is though. He's so good. Neighbors is one of my all time like No, you don't understand. This is like one of the best

comedies of like my lifetime. It's so funny. And everybody in it is so on point. Like Rogan's great. Rose Byrne is great in that movie. Ephron's great. DeFranco is great. Yeah. I love that movie.

Yeah. But so, right, Neighbors is 2014, and the Paperboy was 2012, which felt like the Paperboy was kind of maybe that first moment of like, we're going to do something a little. Also, Zach Efron, tidy, witty cinema, which we should probably like build. That's a letterbox list somebody could make. It's just like Zach Afron makes an impression in tidy whitey. But don't you feel like at any price is the first one? I need to see.

Wait, which one is at any price? That's the Ramin Barreux. I have never seen it. Yeah. God damn it. Sorry. I'm sorry, Roxanna. We failed you.

We don't care about Iran or Iranian filmmakers. They pronounced it Iran. It was like really offensive. And I can't go on their podcast again. Oh, no. No, no. But I do think we've done a Ramin Barani movie before. We have.

I love you both so much. It's hard to find. But yeah, it's the one where he is, um, it's a race car movie, right? Yeah, it's like race car movie. It's about like, do you want to go into sales or do you want to like pursue your passion? Right. It's talking about like all of this stuff again, which is sort of like Ironclaw in that it's like small businesses attempting to compete with like larger competitors. What is the value of like your body and how it can adapt to like sports? I think there's like a lot there which is sort of interesting. But I'm just saying I like if I'm remembering. incorrectly. It felt like that was one of the first, like, is Zach Ephron going to do an adult movie? Like, it felt like there was that. And then it was paper boy. And then it was like, oh my God, he's so funny. It feels like every time we're discovering something new when it's like,

no, he's just been good for like a very long time. Did we know that at any price was the first movie from Black Bear Pictures? I don't think we knew that. They produced it. The first movie, at least on, according to Wikipedia, the first movie produced by Black Bear Pictures. Well, there you go. Interesting. Crazy. Yeah, there you go. I mean, look at this cast.

You're going to love this cast. Kim Dickens. Come on. Kim Dickens? Clancy Brown? Chef's Kiss. Early Micah Monroe? I mean... Gotta be very early, I would say.

Yeah. Yes. I think right before this, it was not a great time for Ephron, though. Probably, I mean, greatest showman made money. before Iron Claw. Yeah. Greatest Showman, I also will stick up for him. I think he's very good in the greatest showman. He's very good in that. But he had that Ted Bundy movie. He had the Fire Starter remake that bomb. The Beach Bomb. He was in Peter Farreley's Green Book follow-up.

Yeah. And he's now worked with Farrelly a couple of times. Like he's become like a go-to Farrelly guy. Yeah. Oh God, the greatest beer run ever. I kept forgetting that name. That's right. That was it that Tiff. And I'm like, should I? I don't want to. But should I? It was like absolutely not. Yeah. All right. So the thing about Ephron being, again, this sort of like slowly unfolding kind of comeback narrative is it sort of keeps happening.

But you're right, Chris, that like immediately prior to Ironcloth, he was definitely like at a lull, right? If the greatest showman was a peak, he was definitely in the like subsequent valley of that. But you would think that that wouldn't hurt him because plenty of people win their Oscars right after a lull and they bounce back, right? Oh, yes. Like, that definitely happens a ton. And then his aftermath of this then, of Iron Claw, he, well, first of all, he was in one episode of the studio last year, which I thought he was really good in.

That sort of caper kind of thing, where the real from the, it's the like mystery. you know, whatever episode. I really, I mean, I really like the studio in general, but, um, and that's another Nick Stoller thing. So really, Zach, stick with Nick Stoller. Um, he is. Is he doing something else with him? Yeah, he's doing judgment day.

It's him and Will Ferrell. Oh, yes. That's right. That's right. Oh, a reality TV judge is taken hostage on air by a disgruntled man who blames him for his life spiraling into incarceration. So it's money monster, but with reality TV. It's Zach Ephron as Jack O'Connell. As Jack O'Connell. It's perfect.

All my beautiful boys. It's all my beautiful short kings coming together. I love it. I love it. Yeah, so that'll work. And because I was going to say, Ricky Stenicki is a movie that exists as a title and I refuse to investigate further. That's a Peter Farrelly thing. It was what? It was Zach and John Cena speaking of wrestlers? Yeah. Prime Video only, I think. Is that what it was? Okay. Yeah.

Pretty sure. And it was a thing, right, that, like, this group of friends would, like, invoke this person, Ricky Stinicki any time they wanted to, like, lie about something. And then all of a sudden it turns out there is a real person named Ricky Stenickey, and it's Zach Efron. I mean, it's very much like the episode of Parks and Rec where April schedules all of Ron's appointments for the day that she doesn't think is real. It's like March 31st.

March 31st and it turns out. Okay, okay. Right. Afron doesn't play Ricky Stiniki. He plays one of the people, one of the main guys. Who plays Ricky Stiniki? Let's see. Also, let's stop saying Ricky Stiniki. Please, as soon as humanly possible. Oh, Sina. Okay. So Sina is the... Okay. Okay. Okay.

It sounds like tag, where you're like... It does kind of sound like tag. Yes. I feel like tag made like $70 million. Like, I feel like that was like... That's that sweet, sweet pre-COVID money, I'm telling you. and people would actually just like... I thought tag was a disappointment. I don't know. Tag, $54 million.

Jesus Christ. It's not really disappointing money. How much did it cost? It's a game of tag, Michael. How much could it cost? $10? But then he... Tag.

Oh, yeah. You look that up. I'm going to broach the subject of a family affair, which... Tag costs 28. million dollars. Wow. That's too much. That's too much money. Yeah. Oof. Yes, please talk about family fair. A family fair, a movie that I should have liked, and ultimately, I liked it, I weirdly kind of liked it on the level of like a movie about a beleaguered Hollywood assistant. I did not like it on the level of a romance between Zach Efron and Nicole Kidman,

and I really should have. You were like, I saw the paper boy, and this does not live up to the table. No, it really didn't. She doesn't even pee on him. Not once. Not once. I was really bummed about that. Like Richard Lugravonais, who was sort of like, kind of like a, you know, a work-a-day director, but like has done good stuff before, right? It's wonderful stuff, yeah.

Especially relationship-based. I mean, behind the candelabre is good, I think. Exactly. Exactly. No, I agree with you. Listen, I am one of the small, small handful of people who will still shout out. Beautiful Creatures, the Aldenarine Reich, Alice Englert, Southern Gothic, which is movie.

Beautifully styled. Wonderful production. Wonderful hats and fascinators. There's a wonderful hats and fascinating. The cast, though, was absolutely insane, where it's just like, it's those two, and it's Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis, Emma Thompson, Margo Martindale, Eileen Atkins. Yes. It's, when I watch AMCs and Rice's The Mayfair Witches, I'm like,

Why can't you be beautiful creatures? Yeah. Yeah. It just wants to be beautiful creatures. It's not working. I couldn't. Everyone's trying to be true blood, you know? I had to watch like half of a season of Mayfair witches and I was very, very impatient with that show.

Yeah. It's not great. But yeah, I mean, like, Ephron's career is just, I mean, I know we usually ask this question, but like, do we just not know what to do with Ephron? Like, he's funny. Is it because comedies are dead? Like, why isn't he getting more. dramatic stuff, he was so effective in this movie.

And he was so effective at like weaponizing his own like sincerity and melancholy. Like I feel like it actually spoke to a lot of like, again, I don't want to generalize. But like, Ephron has been sort of like, I don't want to say troubled. I don't like saying a troubled person. But he's been open about like substance abuse stuff. Yeah, yeah. Like mental health stuff. Yes.

Like all of the stuff that I think is unfortunately part of surviving, being part of the Disney grind. Like, he genuinely seems like there is depth and, like, earnestness there. Yes. And I just, I sort of don't know why it feels now like we can't figure out what to do with him. I don't know. I wonder if there's a kind of nostalgic, uncanny valley there with people where, where they can't make that leap between, like if, for, you know, the better that he is as an actor, the weirder it seems because he's still just like the high school musical guy who you had a crush on

when you were 15 or something like that. But like other people are able to make that leap. You know what I mean? But there's also, you know, I don't want to be like, there's a bias against street guys. But there is this thing of like people not wanting to take a beefcakey actor serious. No, that's so true. And he's not alone in this regard. I do think that the solution is probably for him to be working with more interesting filmmakers like Sean Durkin, that he could do different things like he does here. Not to saddle him to another director who takes 8 billion years to make his next project, but like Derek C and France can make a good Zec-Effron movie.

Oh, my God. Why are you saying these things, Joe? That was Roxanna Bates of the highest order. Oh, my God. I understand. I knew it. Is Derek going to be able to make another movie? Like, is Derek going to get the money to make another movie?

Like, I don't know. I'm just going to start yelling Roofman Good to people. And hopefully... It is good. It is good in it. Yes, he is. He's great in it. Like, I don't...

It's, like, maybe the problem is that we don't know how to market movies. Because everybody thought this was going to be, like, a fun comedy. And it's, like, so fucking sad. You know what's going to drive me crazy is, like, in three years... Well, whatever. assuming that in three years things still function. In three years, Roofman's going to be, like, weirdly, like, in the Netflix top five or whatever. Yeah.

And people are going to be like, what is this movie? Have you seen this movie? Roofman? It's this new movie on Netflix. And I'm going to just, like, throw something through a wall. No, you and I are both. We're all three of us just going to spontaneously combust. We're going to be the beauty, but without taking the movie.

We're just not going to explode into anger. Oh, my God. But that's actually a very good analog. I'm sorry, Chris. All I was going to say is I feel Channing is a good comparison. Yeah. That's sort of an interesting comparison. Yeah.

Of an actor who people are almost like pathologically seemingly unwilling to take seriously on this level. And I don't know how many times Shannon Tatum is going to have to prove to people that he's that great. Mm-hmm. I mean, he has to do it again right now at Sundance, right? Like every Josephian review I read is like, Channing's great. And it's like, yeah. Yeah, no kidding. Channing's good.

Except for Bill. I live here. Bilga's review was like Channing is good. Good. Because Billga is a real one. But yeah, I mean, I think that's a good point. Like maybe he just needs to be doing smaller, more indie go back to that. But then that gets into the question of like, who is making those movies?

It's hard to even get those movies made. Yeah. Where's the Sack-Effron horror movie? That's a good question I guess he did the Ted Bundy thing that was like But not really a horror movie Because it was mostly like a legal drama Right

Right Wasn't like a courthouse drama But like he should be doing It did not sound like it was for me It didn't sound like it was for me But And the way that it seemed to upset people I feel like it was just

It would just upset me too But like where is him being menacing. Where's him trying that? I would be really interested to see what that looks like. Yeah. Yeah, agreed. I would be interested in that. I would be interested in that outside of a Ryan Murphy context. Please and thank you. Yeah, you brought up the beauty and I was just like, right, yes, please don't do. Don't do. And this is one of the good things maybe about Ryan Murphy having his little Kim Kardashian moment. It feels like that's like it's a cat. It's a cat. with a toy and it's just like, Ryan, go play with your Kim Kardashian like... Well, he got his hot blonde. He's got Hunnam now.

So Hunnam was in Monster. I do like Hunnam. The Ed Gein season. He's going to be in the Lizzie Borden season. Right, right. Ryan's got that guy for now. I am historically softer on Ryan Murphy than most.

I will, you know, even I'm two episodes into the beauty and I'm not unintrigued. So we'll see how it comes. I mean, my review of the beauty was like, I've thought more about this show than I have about a Ryan Murphy show in a long time. Yeah. I think he has very interesting ideas. I don't think he ever knows what to do with them.

Yeah. Past a certain point. Past a certain point. Yes, exactly. But Chris, what were you going to say? Where are you on the Ryan Murphy? Oh, I was just going to say all of this, you know, the idea of the Ryan Murphy, Ryan Murphy getting his hooks in the people that we like, like the Charlie Hunums. I became the Demi Lovato meme, stay away from her, get a job.

when he got his hooks in Rebecca Hall. Oh, well. So depressing. So depressing. Yes. Don't you understand that Rebecca Hall has to play a character who morphs into a young haughty because there is apparently a hotter version of Rebecca Hall that is possible, which, like, that's the fundamental flaw at the heart of the beauty. The defining characteristic of Rebecca Hall's character is that she's been plagued by her small breasts for whole.

life. And it's ruined her life, Chris. I don't understand what you're not grasping. She... But like, it's ruined her life, but also it's like, she's a, she's a detective. Like, she's a police detective. Like, she's an FBI agent. She's an FBI agent. She's a fluent in French and Italian. But it's not like she had ambitions to become like... On the regular. Right. She didn't have ambitions to become like the greatest actress in the world or anything like that.

No. It's really funny. I can't watch this show. It's really funny that they're like... Her life is so hard because all the stuff you just said, Joe, but also, I'm going to spoil. No, you watched episode two. I watched episode two. Yeah. She's just, she's just having sex with, like, whomever. Hotties.

We don't ever see a man, like, turned her down. She opens, she opens the show having, like, incredibly satisfying sex with Evan Peters. Like, she's doing fine. He's very hot. Like, he... I know you don't like Evan Peters, but you know what? We're just going to have to deal with it. Wait, I want to explore this.

Just for 30 seconds. Chris, make your anti-Empetters. Evan Peters is. is the exact physical antithesis of what Chris Fyle is looking for. It's not even a physical. Okay. What I will say for Evan Peters, Mayor of East Town, unimpedish. It's great.

Great. I think it's just like too much adjacency to Ryan Murphy. I understand. That, you know. Yeah. And it's like I've watched some Ryan Murphy things. I watched the swans. It wasn't good, but I watched it.

I think I may not have made it to them. the end of the swans, even though I liked... Who could blame you? I liked... I liked ancillary parts of the swans. I really hated everything to do with the depiction of Truman Capote and Spole. The more that it had to do with the swans was when it got better. When it was just Truman Capote, it was not good.

All right, swinging it back around to... I don't think we need to go too deep on Harris Dickinson. I think Harris Dickinson is the exact sort of like he's the... the Goldilocks sort of of this movie and that like he's on the exact right sort of middle level.

He's not he's not getting too much shine out of this movie but he's not overshadowed. He gives a very good performance that ultimately leaves the movie halfway through but he gets talked about Lease

because of that too. Right. Like he, you know, his character dies. But I think this movie ultimately is good for his career for what it's worth. You know what I mean? It pushes him

sort of along. I think Harris is a really interesting person. Did either one of you, I can't remember who has seen Urchin of the three of us? I have not seen Urchin. I was decently impressed as a directorial debut.

And I also really like Frank Delaine in that movie. Harris Dickinson does, oh, go ahead. Well, I was going to say that I think I am disliked by Harris Dickinson. Oh, no. Why?

What did you say about murder at the end of the world? I interviewed him for murder at the end of the world. He was very nice. And then I wrote that piece that was like, Be Our Father Figure Harris about baby girl. And then when Vulture profiled him, they link to it, the writer links to it as like the kind of discourse Harris doesn't like.

Oh, no. I don't know if they were literally like, Harris, we wrote this piece. What do you think? And he was like, I don't like it. Or if it was just an example. But part of me is like, I guess Harris doesn't like to be sexualized. Maybe he just takes himself too seriously.

It doesn't get the, you know, the joy out of that. You shouldn't have gotten a tattoo of a cherub wearing a ball of clava holding an AK-47 if you didn't want to be sexualized Harris. Also, Roxanna, this is one of my favorite sort of niches of yours, which is objectifying small accessories of hotties. because the Jacob Allurity Saltburn piece was iconic, but then this year, I'm very proud of having pushed you in the direction of doing the Josh O'Connor tattooed peeking out thing. Because that was very important. I mean. It was very important. Yeah.

And I'm excited to find out what the next one, what the next accessory will be to demand discussion. I agree. Harris Dickinson has is in my favorite scene in the movie, though. The scene during the wedding in the bathroom. Yeah. Yeah. Which starts with him being sick and then it ends up the brothers talking about their lives. It's just this beautiful trajectory of a scene that starts with blood in a toilet, you know.

Well, and it's an awful foreshadow of ultimately what ends up happening to him. But yeah, the look on Harris's face on David's face when, Kevin tells him that they're expecting a baby. And it's just, it's, it seems like that. And I understand this was in some of the reviews that didn't quite get it, that like, that there wasn't enough of a sense of these boys as, you know, how they felt about each other. You would hear them talk about family, but you wouldn't really, like, see it depicted. And I do feel like...

I really don't agree with it. I think it happens in, you know, not even I would say sparingly, but almost like surgically. Like it's sort of like it doesn't happen all of the time. It's not this sort of like overwhelmingly sort of like gushy, goopy kind of a thing. But it seems like that that you're talking about that in the stall. And it's the thing, if I have one, One sort of major drawback to the movie is I think the Carrie character is underutilized in the movie. Or like, we get the least out of him as a person.

You essentially just sort of like see what happens to him. We see what befalls him. He sort of enters the movie later than everybody else. We see him in scenes like with the other brothers. But like I think I maybe could have done with. one or two scenes like that bathroom scene, where it's just him, before things start going wrong, that we can sort of see what is Carrie want? Because ultimately, he's, I understand it's Kevin's story and it's Kevin's story of sort of getting passed over a lot, but like, Carrie ultimately

becomes like the person who comes closest to that brass ring that Fritz wants, right? He gets the family name the most shine it ever gets. And then you ultimately, as soon as that happens, then you see that scene where he comes back home for Christmas and he's clearly like on drugs and fucking agro about and buys his dad a gun and all this sort of stuff. Yeah. I think like to Chris's point, and I think you touched on this too, Joe, like I think the scenes where Carrie, excuse me, where Kevin and David are like cutting. promos. Yes. You learn a lot about them in that. You learn a lot about them in that. You see how much more natural David is at it. Yes. But also that he's not like taking it super seriously. Yes. And you understand like Kevin's like eldest of these boys. Yeah. Pressures like you really get that.

Yeah. I don't know if we get any sort of similar brother dynamic or even like. Yes. That's sort of what I'm getting at. This doing to me. Yeah, for Carrie aside from just being like he has the the motorcycle accident. But then his character just becomes the injury rather than anything. And I do think Jeremy Allen White has the capability to really like sell that too. Like I know, like he's, Chris and I talked about this a little bit in our class of 2025 episode. I mean we talked about the Springsteen movie. I think he's in a really, I don't want to say precarious position, but like we really are in a sort of like the culture is not digging Jeremy Allen White right now. You know what I mean we're like it feels like everybody is turned on the bear the springsteen thing didn't happen super

forgettable yeah yeah and um so i i i would i i do feel like he has the talent though and the the presence to particularly with this kind of a character to have you know made that impression had the movie made that space for him yeah because we don't even really learn much about Carrie from other characters to that we could, you know, graft that information on these more brooding scenes that we see where he's alone. And his death is ultimately the final straw, right? So that really, and it's not that it doesn't hit in the movie, but I imagine had we been more invested in Carrie as a person,

that would hit even more powerfully, I think, by the end. And would be especially devastating. Yeah, like him not being in the Olympics asks so much of us to like sympathize with him. Yes. But I don't think you get a sense of who he is before the Olympics news. So it's just sort of like,

he honestly is probably the most passive character written in the film. Yes. And that doesn't really do him any favors. It almost feels like something where if the movie was much, much more just Kevin's story, that would, that version of Kerry would make more sense because he, that all of a sudden it is, it's, you know, David's the brother who doesn't take it as seriously, but he, he leapfrogs Kevin.

And then Carrie's the person whose ambitions are in Olympic athletics or whatever or other stuff, but like then he gets the spot over Kevin. And I feel like this movie isn't just the Kevin story. And I think it pulls its, the fact that, one of the big emotional wallops at the end of the movie is Kevin in that afterlife scene, or is Carrie in that afterlife scene, means that we just probably did need a little bit more out of that character before. I think that scene still works, obviously, but it does sort of underline the fact that there's meat on the bone left, I think, with the Carrie character. Yeah, I'm very curious, again, because, like, Holt.

had talked about stuff that was written or not filmed or filmed but didn't make it in. I'm curious what there might have been, because Carrie definitely feels like the character that is most. Yeah. And I mean, it's some of the structural stuff in this movie does kind of seem like there is probably a much longer version of this movie that existed at one point. Yeah. At 132 minutes, I imagine that 824 would not have been keen to have it come in any longer than that. And that's understandable. A season before they release a movie almost twice as long as this?

What? Wait, what are you talking about? The Brutalist. Oh, right. Yes. I mean, they didn't produce that movie. They produced this movie. Yes, no, that's true.

Listen, this could have had an intermission. We could have had a breather. Right. I would have needed to go out and have a cigarette. They show a dark match in between the way where it's just sort of, you know, scrubs from their little wrestling organization. Can I tell you the scene, the shot that really still gets me so amped up is the tracking shot from the parking lot into the arena that first time. And it's like, I always feel a little bit like a, you know, like a Normie that I get so impressed by tracking shots. He loves Wanner's folks.

But like, man, it's so, it's so good. And I think the way that the music is incorporated and all that sort of stuff, is that Don't Fear the Reaper? Is that the scene where it's Don't Fear the Reaper? I'm pretty sure. And then the Rush song comes in at a different point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is also so well to use. It's too good. It's so well used. I love. The shot I think about when I think about this movie is the locker room scene, the very like Sean Durkney, observational. but growing in intensity where it zooms it slowly zooms in on Kevin while his brothers are excited

and not seeing that he's going through it that's the shot I think of. Yeah. I also like the scene the other locker room scene after the Rick Flair match where Kevin kind of flips out and and I don't

it's interesting because this movie does not have as clear a delineation as maybe it could have in terms of like in wrestling where the lines are between scripted. And there's that great scene where they're like mapping out the match with like Bruiser Brody and the other characters where they're like very quickly being like, throw me into the corner, but then I'm going to come right out of that. And then I'll do the, you know, the crossbody and all that sort of stuff. And I thought that was great sort of like processy stuff.

you don't really quite know exactly how much he was going off script with that, because obviously after the match, Fritz is like, what got into you out there? And yet, Flair comes back and he was just like, that was great. You know what I mean? And, you know, I was really kind of enthused about Kevin. And, you know, we'll have to like, you know, you and I'll have some matches on the road. and but after that scene where you again push in on Kevin's face and he starts to sort of laugh at it and that's the moment where it feels like the veil ultimately sort of like comes down with him and he's just like oh none of this matters you know what I mean like this this is I you know just essentially like disassociated for myself there in the ring there and

you know, this lunatic Rick Flair is like whooping it up about it or whatever. And he's just like, you know, this whole dream of my father's is in many ways just like, what are we talking about? What are we doing here? I think, and I think that is really well done. Yeah. Which is that I think it's very clear at a certain point that Fritz raised them to believe that like all of this was real and like you're punishing your body and there are all these things that you have to do. And then. At a certain point, like, the sport changes around them, right? Like, it becomes this sort of more, far more performative. Like, even though Fritz was the heel, and so he knew the importance of, like, identity building, it gets to this place where it's, like, all of this on a certain level, it's BS, but your body is still going through it and feels it. And I do think this movie does a very good job, like, as we talked about earlier,

being like, this is the physical toll. Yeah. Like, you're still, like, tearing your body apart to do these things. Yes. And I think that's my favorite. There's a montage where, like, Efron is just training, like, insane amounts. Where he keeps taking the back bumps and the ring is... Because it's the empty arena and there's no, like, no sound buffering anywhere.

Like, the sound is really loud and clangy when he's taken the backbumps. And it's intercut with Fritz, like, yelling at him and telling him to do more. and go harder, and it's clearly his memory that's, like, inspiring to do this. Yeah. I remember loving that. And that just being so haunting in letting you in to, like, Kevin's mentality. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. So much of that stuff to put you in his mind was really good. Well, the other thing that sort of strikes me in this is the importance that Fritz put on attaining this championship, which there is, you know, when you talk about, like, wrestling and being scripted or whatever, obviously. the champion is whoever, you know, the bookers decide is going to be the champion, right? This is not like a strictly speaking like athletic contest. But there is a level to which, and the movie kind of touches on this a little bit,

when they talk about sending David to Japan because you have to, you know, if you can't win the championship, if you can't play in Japan. And it's essentially about getting the crowds to sort of cheer for or against you as a champion and to essentially like accept you as a champion. And part of that is athletic ability, part of that is personality and sort of the way you sort of work a match. And all of that kind of goes into what is the actual like athletic achievement of being a pro wrestler. It's like obviously this stuff is scripted. But there's so much, you know, athletic ability, but also performative ability that is intertwined in there. And that, to me, sometimes you get, you know, the sense that Fritz

sort of lost sight of that a little bit and was just like, we have to fight our way to winning this championship. And essentially, like, if they're not going to give it to us, we will take it. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. Super militaristic. Yes. Yes. And it sort of, and it felt like there was that blurred line between them. And you wonder how sort of widespread this sense is, but this idea that we are in this combative, you know, pageantry or whatever. But if we can be just tougher than everybody else, they're going to have to give us the belt because they won't be able to deny us, like that kind of a thing. Joe, I think you just described American foreign policy. I mean, a lot of that charts onto the film.

And I think Colt McAlley is like the right guy to do that because he is so representative of. of like a certain era of what America was supposed to stand for and what America was supposed to look like, sound like, and act like. Like, it's perfect casting, truly, for that kind of narrative. Yep, yep. All right, while we are rounding onto the two-hour mark, so does anybody else have anything we haven't talked about that we want to... Were we not going to talk for the exact length of the movie? That's what I assume.

This movie made the National Border Review top 10, which I think I often forget about because mostly I think of this movie as being completely ignored by the awards season. And it mostly was, but it did get, it won NBR's Best Ensemble Award. It was also nominated by the Casting Society. And in this year of like the first casting, you know, Oscar, I still can't imagine that the Ironclaw would have ended up getting, you know, into that conversation had that award existed back then, particularly because as you look at the casting nominees for this year, it is very tied to who the best picture nominees are. They're really not stepping outside of that.

There's so much overlap with categories this year. Yes. But you look at the casting society nominees that year, which were past lives, which was the best picture nominee, but then May December, Priscilla, Rustin. Like, I don't even know if I necessarily agree with all of those, but like I like that they went out of the sort of Oppenheimer's and Barbies of that year, which is nice. Yeah, in general, I always sort of think like, I think I'm almost more impressed with something like this where it's like you're finding very different people to play a family. I feel like that's a very difficult connective tissue to sort of do. And I respect that a little bit more than here's like a. zany collection of people we gathered.

Right, right, right, exactly. NBR Top Ten that year, Killers of the Flower Moon won Best Picture, than the other films in the Top Ten, Barbie, the Boy and the Harren, Ferrari, the holdovers, Maestro, Oppenheimer, past lives poor things.

So when I look at these NBR lists, I always sort of zoom in on the ones that were like, okay, which ones didn't go on to get Best Picture nominations? And it's Iron Claw, Ferrari, and Boy in the Heron in this particular case. Yeah, it's literally like the anti-Roxana Haddadi list. But you got your Michael Man, you got your Zech Ephron, so that's good. Were you big on Boy in the Heron that year?

I thought it was fine. I didn't dislike it. I liked it. I liked good enough. I respected it. I don't think. I think I ultimately, after several weeks, of me trying to find reasons that I loved it.

I was like, I maybe just don't. I maybe just like... Yeah, like you just sort of are like, okay. At some point, I have this desire in me to just be like, but if all the smart people I know think it's brilliant, and I didn't not like it, like, I must have loved it then, right? And it's just like, maybe not. Maybe I just respect it and ultimately didn't connect to it on a deeper level.

And that's fine. I mean, I respected the imagination and visuals of it. I probably could not tell you any of the story beats of Boy and the Heron. Yeah. Yeah. There's a boy and there's a heron. There's a stepmother? That's about it.

That's what I got. There's a fantasy land. Yeah, always. Yeah. Robert Pattinson is there, squawking. So much squawking. I'm looking at 2024, which had Gladiator 2 and juror number 2. Yep.

Sure did. Boy. Sure number two, baby. Amazing. Wow. Okay. Interesting. All right.

I think I got through everything on my list of notes that I made. I would add that Richard Reed Perry's score whips ass. It's so good. Yeah. it's one of those things that kind of like blends into the soundscape and also you can't tell what is like pre-existing corny wrestling music. Yeah. But it's all like of a piece and great. We talked about how this movie doesn't sexualize these athletic bodies or anything.

I'll tell you the sexiest scene in the movie is that breakfast table, just the spread, the breakfast spread. The biscuits, the bacon, the scrambled eggs, the bounty of it all, the fact that she just like kept piling that food on that table. This poor mom. Like that's why they're not seeing any money from the wrestling. They have to feed them all. Just buying pounds and pounds of slab bacon. Yeah.

You know that like every morning they're going through a dozen eggs. Oh, 100%. Oh, yeah. It's just the Gaston scene. Yeah, exactly. I know that room spells crazy. No, it smells like delicious bacon. What are you talking?

Yeah, farts fine, yes. The house is nonstop. First delicious bacon. Then the rest of the day farts. But between the hours of 9 and 10 a.m., it smells like delicious bacon. Yeah, those are my notes. Okay. I want to know why we think that it didn't get Oscar nominations.

That's what I want to know. I think this is a movie you would have really needed to, I think there was probably a lot of people who, did not watch this movie just on spec. I think there is a degree to which Oscar success often depends on finding, coming up with reasons why people should watch your movie. And it is a competitive, the more and more I hear from people, the more and more, I just

imagine these people with like three dozen movies in their little inbox, you know, their screener, whatever, their Oscar screen. greener portal, and they are going to decide which five of them they're going to watch over Christmas week, and that's going to be it. And that's it. Yeah, that's it. And I try not to think about that too much, because then it bums me out that, like, what

am I putting all of my, you know, mental energy into is this enterprise where people can't be ours to watch more than, like, five movies, but, like, it does feel that way, so. This movie also didn't get in front of people until really late, and a season where, you know, you have three hot and heavy movies fairly early out of the gate in Oppenheimer, Barbie, and Killers of the Flower Moon. Yeah. What else was A-24 putting out that year besides past lives?

Because it feels like this was not even a priority for A-24 in that regard. I also think the problem, too, in terms of, like, how they sold this is I feel like we very much see this as a movie, about America. And I think that that comes through very clear in the film. But I do think you probably had the uphill battle

of like, it's just a story of one family. And I do wonder, especially compared with like Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon, which also were these like huge sweeping stories. Of course,

I'm not saying that like Iron Claw is telling a story on the same scale. But I do think it is telling like larger thematic concerns. And I'm not sure how present those were in like the marketing or the understanding of the movie as well. There can also be a problem with the audience, like some of the dismissive reviews. It's like, have you ever met a man like these guys? Right. Right. Having a different

expectation, but also like people being reductive about what it's about or writing it off so easily because it's about, you know, men and how they handle their bodies, their emotions. Yeah. That people are like, oh, well, it's just, you know, it's something less significant than it is. We've talked about this in terms of Michael Mann, I think, which is that I think that we live, okay, I'm just going to be on my soapbox. I think we live in a time where like everything is like very binary, right? Like everything is very black and white.

Yeah. Like a man is either good or bad. And I think it's very difficult for us or let me put it this way. I think it's very difficult for certain people to like take in a story about men like facing their own limitations and not knowing what to do about it. Yeah. And I feel like that is sometimes where like a Michael Man movie, like, struggles to get, like, awards acclaim. Sure. Because I think he is fascinated with, like, fucked up men who know they're fucked up and are trying to be better.

Yeah. But I agree with you, Chris, that I think it was very easy to look at this movie and just be like, who are these dumb guys who decided to wrestle? Right. It's a meathead movie. Yeah. Well, I'm just imagining this, like, hypothetical person being like, I'm not really. into the whole wrestling thing and somebody being like, no, you don't understand

they all die of like random chance happenstance and tragedy. And it's like, don't you want to see it now? And it's like, I just don't think it was that easy of a sell. Yeah. The other A24, by the way, this year

that you were, uh, was zone of interest. Zone of interest. So yeah. A24 had their hands full. Yeah. Yeah. I mean like all of those are like very worthy deserving films. Yeah. It is frustrating to think that there certainly, absolutely, were significant amounts of voters who were just like,

oh, it's not for me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. It's all right. Sean Durkin can be our little guy for a while.

Mm-hmm. Our treasured little boy. Our favorite son. Our favorite son out of all of these sons. I mean, if nothing else, we could be happy that Sean Durkin, a Sean Durkin movie made this much money because, like, he is, you know. Of course, something like the nest, even. it was released during COVID, was never going to set the world on fire because it's his own unique fascinations.

But this might help him get the next few movies made. I'm still going to say the thing that I always say, which is if Sean Durkin ever decided to just make a straight up horror movie, it would be so fucking good. Like, the way he incorporates horror elements into his stuff anyway. Or if he ever makes that Janice Joplin movie? Or turn that into it. probably be way better than what you think of Janice Chaplin movie. I'm going to once again, as always, a shout out the Dead Ringer, Dead Ringers TV series that Durkin did a lot of, directed a lot of those episodes. And the ones that he did especially were really fucking good.

And again, like, creepy and spooky and, you know, transgressive and awesome. Talk about a show that was just ignored in its time. Totally ignored. Such a, if that show had been on HBO, like, we would have had such a different conversation. We need to have a long, long reckoning with Amazon Prime as an entity. Yes, 100%. The things, like, the Netflix sort of disappearing machine is real, but like the Amazon Prime disappearing machine is maybe worse. I mean, Underground Railroad.

Particularly for their good shows. Yeah. Yeah. Underground Railroad, Dead Ringers. Like we have a long list of shows that they just never promoted in any significant way. Yeah. And like what the hell happened with Fleabag for them? That Fleabag did so well.

Well, Fleabag almost like fell ass backwards into like notoriety too because it was almost like a like, because it happened so late that first season was like several years before that second season. And like the first season was totally ignored and all of a sudden the second season comes along. or flea bag person, right? Same, yeah. Like, was, was, maybe that ground floor, but I definitely remember, like, watching the first season before the second season existed.

And, like, and that, that Emmy thing felt like, okay, like, this is great and deserved, but also, how did this happen? Like, it's still, it's much stranger for me than the Schitt's Creek thing. Like, honestly, the Schitt's Creek thing, sometimes you look back and you're like,

what a weird moment in time that, like, for, like, six months, this was, like, the only TV show that mattered to some people. And, like, that still makes more sense to me. What's that? Yeah, Schitts Creek is just, like, people were looking for parks and a wreck. Like, that makes it.

At a time when things were really grim. Like, you know what I mean? So, yeah. That makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, we're going. As a point of comparison,

yes. What do you both have to say about the smashing machine? Because I thought about the smashing machine a lot. Did you? On this rewatch of this movie. And I don't want to be the person that's like, Here's the really good movie and here's the shitty movie. But this movie, I think the Smashing Machine is after a lot of similar things with this movie about masculinity as representative of the American psyche, of the degradation of the soul along with the body.

But for me, the key difference is Sean Durkan does love all. of these people and cares deeply about their inner lives. And I really felt that the smashing machine was just a very hateful movie that hated its characters to like a bone-teap level. Sure hated at least one of them. And wanted me to not like them either. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I mean, here's the thing.

I, too, hate women. So I get it. But that movie, I mean, I think the problem for me with that movie is I think that it actually does not know what it's. about. I agree with you. Whether it's about, is it about fighting? Is it about, to your point, Chris, like, where are we as a culture that this sort of sport that like MMA has become so popular? Like, what does that reflect about us? Is it about the relationship and like the difficulty of having a romantic relationship with someone who is putting their body on the line like that? is it difficult to have a relationship with someone who wants you to put your body on the line like that?

Like, it is very muddled. Whereas I think, like, the structure of the curse in not the curse, Benny Safdi's show, but the structure of the curse. Another Benny Safty, yeah, exactly. Yeah. The structure of the curse in Ironclog gives it, like, an organizing principle in terms of how the boys see themselves, how Fritz sees himself. I think it's a much clearer

movie in terms of like whose perspective is it providing primacy to. And I don't know if the Smashing Machine quite knows that. Joe, what did you think? I think you're, I definitely think you're onto something because there is, there's,

even with everything that I find to be sort of ugly about the Smashing Machine and its characterizations and stuff like that, and the Emily Blunt character, who I feel is just sort of relentlessly held up to be like the worst person who's ever existed. And even still, there's a world in which I could see myself getting invested into something like that,

but I think you're right. There is just ultimately something there where you're just like, what am I supposed to be caring about here? Like, what exactly is my, investment in this movie. And I think at one point, I think I realize it like, oh, I think I'm supposed to be really moved by the idea that this guy can like learn to lose or something like that. And I'm like, that's not enough for me. It's just not, it doesn't hold it for me. Well, learn to lose in a sport

that's in its infancy. So it's like he doesn't even get to be famous. Yeah. But that's not as interesting as it sounds, whereas I think the whole like learn to lose thing and the elements that it does come into play in the Iron Claw, it is much more interesting, and you do feel the gravity of that. You do feel the, like, sacrifice of that. Yeah, yeah. I definitely think if you were going to tell an MMA story,

unfortunately, the sport is full of people who were very major for a number of years, and then disappeared because of, like, CTE, the sport paying so little exactly what happened in this film where it's like the UFC was buying all these smaller

organizations and consolidating them and then making conditions worse for the fighters like if your fascination is this sport I think there are a lot more interesting stories

to tell about it so it's also like capturing the sport at a weird time whereas I think again like Iron Claw is doing a good job as you said Joe, like integrating the McMahon of it all. McMahon is a specter of what to come. Right.

They never even mention him, but yeah, like, you definitely feel that sort of like things are they actually do mention it when Kerry goes into WWF, but like very briefly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just, sorry, I was distracted for a second. I was like, who is it that owns UFC? It's somebody and it's fucking Ari Emanuel.

I'm like, right, right, right. Yeah, and then Dana White is like CEO. Right, right, yes. Just like a whole team of Trump guys. Yep, that's also that. Yeah. Definitely the sport we want to be devoting our time to. I mean, wrestling's not much better.

I used to be a big MMA guy. I mean, I think athletically, it's wild. Like, I think it is one of those things where it is shocking to me, again, the amount of, like, insane training and work that goes into. it, but it is also, as so many sports in this country are, tied to this image of like, what are men supposed to be like? And they're like female MMA fighters for sure, but it is, again, very much a sport where identities are sold entirely on racist packaging. Like, Connor McGregor has not fought in years, but people still see him as the face of the

UFC because he made a massive fan base by being a racist asshole. So it's just, it's all very ugly and unfortunate. I know this sounds weird coming from me who is so devoted to pro football, but like, you have, MMA was too brutal for me, I think ultimately. Like, I couldn't deal with the brutality of it. It just was not something that appealed to me. Whereas, like, wrestling, there's that, like, you know, dissonance a little bit there. And obviously, there's the pageantry. And, like, people definitely get legit hurt in wrestling. But, like, that is not the stated purpose to, like, injure someone. thing with the UFC is like genuinely someone could die. Yeah. Right?

Like if something goes wrong. So with a pro football game like as Bill's fans are all too aware of. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. But I do think the one on one nature of MMA is so much worse than when you're watching football. Definitely. Definitely.

Like there's safety and numbers watching football. Well, and even in football, like the thing, again, you know, someone almost died in a game that I watched. And yet that was not like the purpose of, of that was. you know, not to hit him so hard that you would harm him. You know what I mean? So... Yeah. I mean, it is, but it isn't. It's not the outright, explicit goal. It's the implicit goal. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it allows us to pretend to have some distance from it. Yeah. I think all of these sports are evil, Joe. I just think it's how much we rationalize. Hey, speaking my language. I truly, I mean, all of them are to a certain degree, corrosive.

As a spectator, I can get down with baseball, though, because base, I mean, like, not in certain teams, stadiums, but baseball largely, you can have a chill experience. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's also boring, though, Chris. I feel very at peace watching baseball live, not on television. See, that's soccer for me.

I'm like, they're just running. They're just running back in. I do find World Cup soccer to be very zen in that way, though. And you can just, like, have it on and you can have conversations. And, like, the watching, God, we're really going far afield. Watching that one year where the U.S. was, like, making it pretty far in the World Cup and there were, like, games with stakes. And watching that and being, like, locked in on every second of a soccer match was a real experience where I was just like, oh, this is crazy. This is, like, all of my senses.

Like, this is like, everything is so important. And yet it's still, it's just like guys running across this giant expanse. My husband is a big soccer fan. There's a chess element to it, though, because it really is like, oh, this thing that they're doing right now in like three more maneuvers is where they're going to set up to like, we'll have a scoring chance. Don't worry. It's going to get ready to get. Right. It's just like, but he's got to do this thing right this way, right now or else they won't be able to get that chance.

So, like, he's got to like make this cross. passing pass or whatever and it's just like you get really loved it. At a half seconds impulse. Yeah. Yeah. Chris, what were you going to say? Are you forced to do. Oh, no. I was, I've made the joke to my husband before when he talks about his various soccer players who he cares very deeply about. And he'll be like, it's the great. He like, you know, saying something significant about them. And I'm like, yes, their job is to run for 90 minutes straight. That's so nice, honey. I love that for you. Yeah, I mean, my, my primary sport is tennis. I do become

like an insane maniac watching tennis. Roxanne, I got to get you into my tennis pool. We got to make this happen. Yeah, that would be fine. But yes, it was very much like when we were in an apartment, Adam had to numerous times be like, people are going to call the cops. You're saying horrible things to the tell.

You're wishing death upon Novak Djokovic. Somebody might call them. Understandable. Wait, who's your all-time tennis player? I mean, it's Federer. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

That makes sense. It's just so beautiful and graceful. It's beautiful and graceful. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. But I love that Rafa's routine included always picking his wedgy. Uh-huh.

That was so endearing. It was very endearing. You know? Yeah. But yeah, I grew up on the Sampras-Agasy rivalry. Yeah. And I was an Agassie. Yeah.

He kind of had to do. I mean, Agassie was a mess. He was a mess. He was also half Iranian, so I had to do the nationalism aspect. I didn't realize that. That's cool. He has, like, a very fraught relationship with his Iranian father. Oh.

Yeah. I remember him having the front relationship with his father. I don't think I ever really connected those dots. I grew up watching tennis. What demanding parent? Where would, what country would they hail from? I grew up watching tennis with my grandmother, who was very sort of, she knew what she would accept and what she would not accept.

And so there were certain players who met her standards and some who were just, like it's not how people behave and Andre Agassi was not one of the people who she liked and so Oh no

he was such a brat I mean he did things worse than McEnroe right like Certainly early on Yeah Buddy calm down Yeah yeah

McEnroe though insufferable Anyway we got to move on to IMDB game So Chris why don't you explain how that works

Yeah every week we end our episodes With the IMDB game Where we challenge each other with an actor or actress to try to guess the top four titles that the IMDB says they are most known for. If any of those titles are television, voice only performances, or non-acting credits, will mention that up front.

After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue. That's not enough. It just becomes a free-for-all of hints. Yes. That's the IMDB game. That is the IMDB game. Roxanna, you are our guest, so we are going to give you the option to either start off by guessing or start off by giving a clue and then decide who you want to either give to

or guess from. I will start off by guessing. Okay. From me or from Chris? It does not matter. Whoever would like to go first. Okay. I'll go.

I like this. I like mine that I've selected for you. So I am going to give this one to you. So I aforementioned the Dead Ringers TV series. with Rachel Weiss that Sean Durkin worked on. One of the actors who showed up for one episode was the great Michael McKeon. So I am going to give you Michael McKeon as for a known for, he has one television series and three films. Oh, my God.

I genuinely could not tell you anything. No, okay. So hard. All right, then I'll give this one to Chris. And then Chris. Yeah, I'll give you mine. Yes. We talked about the smashing machine.

Someone we have never done, apparently, on the IMDB game, is Dwayne quotes the rock, end quote, Johnson. This is what I need. I need a basic. I need a man whose movies. I have mostly seen. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. All right.

Okay. So we're going with his four best known. Yes. Oh, this is hard because I feel like it's like, A, he's in a lot of garbage. Uh-huh. B, I am like, hmm, which of the fast and furious movies could it potentially be? This is the weirdest known for. I'm just going to say it.

That's my only spoiler. What an odd. known for. Do you feel like they're all in the same phase of his career? Not necessarily, but there could be more phases of his career represented

in this for sure. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Okay. Okay, well, the thing that I want to say, and maybe it's not in there, but I want to say pain and game? Pain and gain is incorrect.

Oh, my God. Yeah. All right. So no pain and gains. We've decided to not acknowledge that Michael Bay made one good movie. That's not true. Sorry, Michael. Okay. Not that. Okay. What about Fast and Furious presents Hobbs and Shaw? That is incorrect. So you're going to get your years. Your years. Your years are 2012, two from 2017 and one from 2020. One from 2022. Oh yeah. It's the first movie on is known for.

Are you serious? I think The Rock might be one of those people who like phoned one into IMDB and said, you must put this on them. Even if that's true, though, why these are. four. I can understand maybe one or two of them, but I can't imagine why all four of these. I mean, I definitely feel like are we, I mean, one of them cannot be, I mean, it cannot be, no, because that was a COVID, okay, I'm talking myself into it. Is one of them Black Adam? 2020 is Black Adam. Oh my God. It's first on its known four. Yeah. Wow. Okay, so you still have two from

2017 and one from 2012. 2020, 2012, is so, I mean, I'm like... The one from 2012 and one of the 2017s are definitely in a vein for him. Yes. They're similar. Yeah.

Similar is. Is one of them a Jumanji reboot? Mm-hmm. Is one of them Jumangi welcome? To the jungle? That is one of your 2017. Oh my God. The other 2017, I will also say we have mentioned it on this episode for a very specific reason.

We've been talking for 87 hours. I don't know what we mentioned previously in this episode. It pertains to one of the people we did a deep dive on in this episode. Yes. Is it? No. It's not Baywatch. It's Baywatch.

What? Yeah. The growing concern that you have in your voice and on your face over this known for does not get better from here. You're going to be stunned at the 2012 movie then. Okay, so we had, okay, so we had Black Adam, which again, I thought flop, so wow, the Jumonges, okay, they were very popular, fine. Is Welcome to the Jungle the sequel? Or is that the first one? I think it's the first one, because I think the sequel is like the next level, right?

Yes. Yeah, that sounds right. Joe, I'm so sorry that you know that. What a frightening level of detail exists in your brain. Okay, and then we have Baywatch. So we're left with 2012. Which I would say is in the same vein as Jumachi. In the same vein as Jumanji.

I mean Kind of explicitly so Oh I mean I was going to say like There's San Andreas There's Rampage And co-star somebody Who has a

Very Close connection To that same person We did a deep time on Okay So a very close connection With Zach Ephron But a movie in 2012 I have no

I mean, it's not like Southland Tales. I have, wait, a very close connection to Zach Ephron. I was going to say, could it be Vanessa Hudgens, but I don't think. Could it be Vanessa Hutchins? What movie was The Rock Inn with Vanessa Hudgens in in 2012? So there are many ties that I would put this to Chimanchi. This is a sequel. Okay.

This is a sequel that he is the headliner of, but was not the headliner of the original. Oh my God. I'm not going to say it's like Scorpion King or something. It's not Scorpion King. They also traverse the same terrain, the same type of grammatical terrain. Well, but also like physical terrain, like the settings of those two movies are very similar. A jungle movie. In 2012 with Vanessa, I have no clue.

I have no clue. What is it? You throw him in the towel? I'm throwing in the towel. Okay. Journey to the Mysterious Island. Wow. Never in a thousand.

Right? Is that the Josh Hutcherson one? It is the Josh Hutcherson one. It is very much that. It's a sequel to what? Journey to the Center of the Earth, which was Brendan Fraser? Brendan Fraser. Got it.

Got it. Okay. So no Fast in the Furious movies in his top one. Is that not crazy? Is that not crazy? I mean, do you guys seriously think he called IMDB? And it was like, get those movies out of my... I would not be associated with Vin Diesel.

Like... Wow. He might have. That is... Yeah. Astonishing. But no, like, San Andreas type of movie. Right.

No. He headlined all those. Like, he did San Andreas. He did Rampage, which was like the big skyscraper. Gorilla movie. How could we forget? Scraper. Yeah.

He did other kids movies. Sure. Do they do like walking tall or walking tall? He did walking tall. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Right.

What's the one that he did where he's like the f-like a tooth fairy? The tooth fairy. Oh my God. He's the tooth fairy and then Vin Diesel is the pacifier. Is that right? Because I know they both have like very similar like kids movie stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. That is honestly a shocking four. Yeah. Like, concerning, I think. Yeah. Like genuinely concerning. Yes. I don't really think he's a great actor, but I think he's a better actor than that top four.

Agreed. Agreed. He deserves better. He does. Yikes. All right. So, Roxanna, you then. Thank you, Chris.

That was at least achievable. Thank you. Thank you. Unlike some of us. Sorry. Roxanna, you will then quiz me. Okay. Okay. So I tell you who it is.

Yes. And then you are guessing. And then I make it the guesses. Yeah. Okay. So I was thinking this person whom I love and has a movie coming out soon-ish as we are recording this. So I am going with, and you know what? As we were talking about the MTV Movie Awards, I was like, she is responsible for what might be to me the most iconic MTV Movie Awards moment.

We were talking about Rachel McAdams, of course. You two were concerned about Darfur in 2005 and... I was like, you know what? I really am moved by Ryan Gosling's shirt. I was, too. What else can I say? All right, Rachel McAdams. Yeah.

One of them has to be mean girls. Of course. Okay. You're going to breeze through this, of course. Is one of them spotlight? No. Okay. All right.

So not her Oscar nomination. Okay. No. That's fine. Well, one of them probably. the notebook. Of course. Of course. Okay. Not having spotlight

makes me feel like this has got to be all leads. Nothing where she's not the lead. So no family stones. No. I don't even know what other ones. Okay. So morning glory? No. You get too cute with it. Yeah. I did get too cute. Harrison Ford. Surely he'll be on there.

Yeah. No. Yeah. No. All right. So what are my years of the ones that I'm missing. You have a 05, my senior year of high school, and a 2012. Okay. Is O5 wedding crashers? It is not.

Okay. Is O5 Red Eye? It is Red Eye. Hell yeah. Red Eye being on her known for is awesome. That's good. Yeah, it's a hell yeah. That's good.

It's probably because of Killian's presence, but that's fine. Still, that's fine. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so 2012, Rachel McAdams. Yeah, yeah. Okay, what was going on in 2012? We were younger, I'll say that. It was a...

Sure were. We're fending off the Romney family. I was in grad school. I was writing professionally about movies for the first time. Beautiful. Wasn't that nice? I got into press screening of Zero Dark 30. I felt like I was such hot shit.

Okay. That movie also hot shit. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. There we go. Rachel McAdams in 2012. This is like post-time traveler's wife. Yeah, I was shocked that this is the fourth.

I'll say that. I think there is a very clear reason that I just verified. Okay. Oh, interesting. Rachel in 2012. Oh, is it The Vow? Unfortunately, yes, it is the Vow. The vow made so much money.

It did. Is that why, Chris? Is that why it's on here? $125 million domestic. You get a nice good shot of Channing Tatum's patoot in that movie. I mean, again, it was like a real Nicholas Sparks time to be alive. That's the fake Nicholas Sparks. It's not Nicholas Sparks, even though everybody assumed that it was.

Yep. Who is it? Someone. Just some guy? I think it's just some guy. Yeah. Wow. Trademark.

Just some guy. We used to have movies like this. I know. I am genuinely shocked by that, though, because, yeah, I would have thought time traveler's wife. I would have even thought, like, Sherlock Holmes, you know. I think wedding crashes used to be there. About time, wedding crashers. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Remember Southpaw? Remember that? I don't, and you won't make me. You can't make me remember Southpaw. Sorry. All right, Chris. Shocking to me.

Wow, okay. My internet's starting to get wonky, so let's, let's wrap this up. Chris, Michael McKeon, can you do it? Yes. Did you say there was a voice? There's a TV show. There's one television show. Okay.

This is Spinal Tap. Yes. Best in show. No. You said that with a tone in your voice. A Mighty Wind. Yes. Okay.

For your consideration, it's not going to show up on any of these. Oh, Clue. Clue, yep. Not the television show. I'm glad I got through all the movies because at that point, Michael McKean could be anything. You definitely did not watch this show. If you did, you would definitely guess this.

Do you feel like giving him another clue? Yeah, I know I shouldn't be giving him clues. No, I said, do you feel like giving him another clue? I'm telling you to give him more clues. Oh, more clues. Yeah. Though, I mean, I've only gotten one wrong answer. I should get the show wrong.

So you said I didn't watch this show. Definitely not. Meaning it has run semi-recently, given the tense in which you're saying this. So, good deduction. He's on one of the Vince Gilligan shows, right? Mm-hmm. Is it Better Call Saul?

It is Better Call Saul. There you. In fact, we played Chuck McGill on Better Call Saul. Well done. All right. This was very fun. Roxanna, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for coming back.

Seeing your beautiful faces. Oh, we love it. Beautiful boys. Love it. Thank you. Our prominent jaw lines and... They're just... We're so sculpted. It's like, people see our bodies and they're like, wow, you know? It's crazy.

It's crazy. You guys don't even understand how much we have to eat for breakfast to make things. Twelve eggs each. Just buckets of biscuits just being plopped in front of us. A mat of sausage gravy. Roxanna, where can we send our listeners to... read more from you or hear more from you, where would you like to direct them? Sure. You can find my work at Vulture.com.

Every so often, I am on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. You can listen there. Excellent. And, you know, that's about it. All right. I'm elsewhere, but that's about it. But that's about it. All right, Chris, what about you? You can find me on Letterbox and Blue Sky. I'll post any of my work on Blue Sky.

Krispy File, that's F-E-I-L. I am on Letterboxed and Blue Sky at Joe Reed, R-E-I-D. I am also, as is Roxanna, on Vulture, doing my thing there, movie fantasy league, Cinematrix, various awards-y stuff. I also am going to be

restarting my podcast on the films of Demi-Mor called Demi Myself and I, which is at patreon.com slash Demi-Pod. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings. Oh, you should also find this had Oscar Buzz on Instagram. at this head Oscar buzz and on Tumblr at thishead Oscarbuzz.com. We also like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mevious

for their technical guidance. Please remember you can rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get podcasts. A five-star review in particular really helps us up with Apple Podcast visibility. So hit that high crossbody, lock in the iron claw, and write something nice about us. That is all for this week, but we hope you'll be back next week for more buzz. Bye.