This Had Oscar Buzz - 386 – Contagion

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

With The Christophers finally arriving in theatres, we are returning to the ever-evolving filmography of director Steven Soderbergh. In the period of his one-for-you-one-for-me jostling between micro budgets and mainstream fare, 2011 offered his paranoid eco-thriller Contagion about a virus that overtakes the world. Though the film was an early fall box office success with major Oscar winners as … Continue reading "386 – Contagion"

No, the right house. I didn't get that! I'm from Canada water. Dick poop. Three to five times every waking minute. In between, we're touching doorknobs, water thumbs, and each other. Beth? No, no, no, uh, go up to your room, honey.

So we have a virus with no treatment protocol and no vaccine at this time. You had a seizure this morning, Beth? She had a history of seizures, no, no, no. No, no. As of last night, there are 32 cases. Unfortunately, she did die. Right. I says, can I go talk to her?

Mr. Amoff, your wife is dead. What are you talking about? What happened to her? What happened to her? Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that's inviting Bruce Willis over after the Golden Globes to shoot a quick movie. 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 pathogenically suspectable of bat soup. Chris Fial, hello, Chris. Teaming with novel viruses and whatnot. Bat soup. It wasn't even bat soup. I'm misrepresenting the contagion cause. This was a It's bat poop. No, it's a bat who ate a banana who... And then poops on the pig lot. Did it poop into the pig or did it drop the banana into the pig slop? Both, conceivably.

And then the pig gets on the guy's hands and he doesn't wash his hands and then he touches Gwyneth Paltrow and she does it. And the chef touched the pig and the pig touched the banana, the banana touched the bat and the bat touched the tree and the tree touched the bulldozer. and the bog down in the valio. Like, that's, uh, uh, it is, in fact, in the end, deforestation's fault. So, um, contagion. Contagion, after six long years, we are finally. It's finally safe to go back in the water. Exactly.

The, the filthy, filthy bat dung infested water. We are not the type of people who could watch this during the pain. pandemic, but as I found out by a letterbox, all of my friends did except like you? So many people did. I don't understand it. Is it like picking a scab for you guys? Was it like, you know? I don't know. I'm glad. Watching it now, I'm like, I bet it'll seem like overblown or whatever. And I'm watching it, I'm like, I made the right decision not to watch this back then, because that would have really messed me up, I feel like. It's also, it, it, you know, It's impossible to not view this movie through the lens of COVID now.

And I think that this is a great movie that it's like, it's almost kind of a shame, but it does also back up a lot of the movie as well. I'm going to, I'm going to blanket statement right now. I'm not going to apologize for talking about my COVID story. Like, we're just like, sorry, like, this is the movie that we're going to, like, talk about what was. happening back then. We're not going to be able to avoid it. Well, no, because a lot of people wanted us to do this episode during then, and this is one of the times where we just blanket said, absolutely not. We're not doing that. No, I may have at that time said I'm never going to watch that movie again. So things are better than then, which is good. Just to like kind of get it

out of the way from the top, it is impossible not to view this movie through the lens of two things. One, all of the things that it got right about the COVID experience and the COVID time. But then all of the things it got way, way off, you know? Yes. Yes. In ways that are really, I think, interesting in telling. We should also, while we're in giving out caveats that, like, obviously there are, like,

you know, politically charged, like, hot topics and, like, conspiracy theories and whatnot. And we are not here to, like, argue about the cause of the real-life COVID-19 pandemic, except to say that it was created in the goop lab. And we have no further comment on that. The COVID was caused by the candle that smells like a vagina. Right. Yes. Well, it wasn't that so much as the effort to, like, the research that went into creating that candle, like, went far and wide.

And you don't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, then you can't make a vagina-scented candle without starting at least one pandemic across the globe. It's why the goop-lap didn't get a second season. It's why Goop-Lab didn't get a second season, because they ultimately caused the pandemic. Yeah. Yeah. Allegedly, allegedly, Gwyneth don't sue us. I'm just saying this is what I believe, and you can't sue me for my honestly held beliefs. Listen, we fact, check this all on the app that we recently joined. It's a vibrant community called Shmue a Shmahn.

Shmoo a shmahn. I don't even know what, I don't even know. All there are facts. Oh, I see. Shmue a shmong. Got it. You know what Sean. Right. Right.

It's all led by someone who looks remarkably like Jude Law with a snagletooth. Bro, the snaggle tooth. I got to say it. They got to give us one way to be like, you know, this guy is actually pretty dirty. Let's give Jude Law one fucked up tooth. Yeah. Just, but like make it so fucked up. It's like.

It's sideways. It's like. Remember? In Goldmember, when Fred Savage shows up with the giant mole, and Dr. Evil is just like, abo, and then it's just like, he can't stop saying mole. That would be me every time I, like, if I had to clandestinely meet, like, Jude law, I'd just be like, tooth, tooth, and just sort of start poking at it. It's way, way worse than I remember it.

Jude law's contagion snagletooth. It had been hiding behind the tooth the whole time, and then finally, like, the pandemic Mike jumped out out of his mouth, out of his, it had just been brewing there. I mean, it is maybe the, the shrewdest, the most foresight thing that this movie predicts, is that this movie predicts Ivermectin. Yes, yes. You know what it gets wrong, though. It gets wrong that people were actually prosecuted for spreading around Ivermectin bullshit. It also, I think the thing it gets most wrong is that, like, they assumed that in a pandemic situation, that people would be prone to going to violent ends to get the vaccine instead of being prone to being the most annoying people in the world about not getting the vaccine.

Like, I feel like there's, there was a fundamental misread of the fighter flight. response. And instead of fight, it wasn't even so much flight as just like, you can't make me. You cannot make me, you know, protect myself. I think the other unfortunate thing that the movie gets wrong is that people would actually basically shelter in place, that there wouldn't just be, I mean, maybe you can say this is just one of the things on the Soderberg cutting room floor. this movie is a like solid hour 45 you know like so that's long for sodaberg sodeburg soderberg is like i can get any movie that's at three hours down to 90 minutes just unless you're about chegovara then then it's you know all bets are off so it's like maybe

maybe that stuff was in there at some point but you're saying this sodaberg cut the scene where the flight to Porta Viarda is grounded on the tarmac and all the gays inside Revolt, is that what you're saying? That we didn't get that scene? I'm just saying maybe this movie's sunnier outlook is that people would actually, you know, respect the health and safety of their neighbors and, you know, do what they're supposed to do,

right? Not fucking around. The girl's boyfriend is constantly knocking on her door being like, she come out, And Matt Damon has to, like, be vigilant or whatever. Yeah, but they're not, like, having house parties that we see. That's true. Like, yes, the fact that the actual truth of a global pandemic hitting ended up being more banal and baseline irritating than we ever could have imagined is about right for our world. You know what I mean?

It's just like, even look at our descent into fascism. Our descent into fascism is so annoying. It's so just like minute by minute irritating. It's just, you know, like that's, this is the way the world ends by like a thousand little like poca, poca, poca, poca, poca, poca, until you can't finally like take it anymore. Like that's what it's like. And that's what contagion gets wrong. We are not storming a like military convoy full of MREs. we are being intransigent about masking in line at 7-Eleven.

You know what I mean? Like, that's... Maybe I haven't gotten over all of this. Maybe it's still rare. Maybe this is just when we purge it all out. We, you know... COVID still exists. People still get COVID.

People still die of COVID. But, you know, our government would like... Whatever, whatever. We honestly, who's just... We can't know. nobody's tracking it anymore. Nobody's, you know. This is when we yell.

Um, yeah. Another thing the movie, effectively gets wrong is the degree to which food shortages happened, where there's like armed guard rationings happening in the suburbs, you know?

Like, the shortage supplies are like, no one's brawling for toilet paper in this. I was going to say, they, they didn't, they failed to predict that it would be localized just on toilet paper, that the, that you wouldn't be able to find, you wouldn't have a square despair to paraphrase the Seinfeld episode, but like, but everything else was mostly available. Soderberg's also probably going to eye roll most of the, like, annoying shit, like that

we're saying of like also going through like one of the worst times for the modern world is also deeply fundamentally annoying and banal like you're saying sooderberg's not really going to go into those details sodaberg's not going to show like sona lathan bored at home going live to make sourdough like you know well right i think and i think part of that is just like it was a few years too early to realize how much, like, video networking technology was going to be available to, like, really everybody. Like, Jude Law and his tooth are broadcasting on, like, real player. Right, right.

Although they do mention Twitter. They, which I was like, that was interesting because I was like, wow, Twitter was kind of in its infancy still in 2011. Like, it wasn't that, it wasn't brand spanking new, but it was still like, you know, new enough. Yeah, it is, it's interesting to unpack in that way. It's also impossible not to unpack in that way. And to a point where I was like, I got to make sure to like take time and actually like

talk about it being a movie as a movie and like how it succeeds and fails at that. because I do think stripping out that kind of context like this is a good solid procedural movie that I have like a handful of like quibbles with

that like pull me back from like being like four or five star masterpiece or whatever but yeah I think it's good it's really good gas after the hour mark I think I want there are things your letterbox review mentioned

Lauren's Fishp Burn and Jennifer Ely doing procedural science shit. I needed like 15 to 20% more of that and maybe a little bit less of Matt Damon's daughter and the little like making sure that we all

knew that like everybody had a personal, you know what I mean? Like, you know, real people and whatever. It does take maybe 25 minutes to end this movie. And like... The fact that at the end, there are a few little flourishes that they save for the end, that I'm like, well, now you're just like messing with my suspension of disbelief. The fact that at the end, Matt Damon, like, thinks to page through his wife's digital camera and look at the photos, I'm like, as if that thing would not have been confiscated months ago and, like, poured over, like, I'm sorry, you're in.

entire home would have been nationalized, sir. Like, every single thing your wife ever touched would have been government property. That also feels to me like a choice made in the editing room, not made on the page, that it's like, we need a punchy ending. Let's show how the virus happened at the end. And that might have been something. That montage might have been originally earlier in the movie. And yet, as I say that, the way he films the stuff in the casino in Macau, I really like how every Everything in the rest of the movie is cold and, you know, terrifying.

And the casino stuff is filmed very warm. The colors are very saturated. The grain on the, I don't know whether it was like digital graining or whatever, but just like there, or whether it was, you know, film. I can't imagine that stuff was shot on film. But whatever it was, it was like. It is Soderberg's digital. era. Right. But whatever it was, the actual, like, quality of the presentation made it almost look like you could, like, feel particulates in the air. You know what I mean? Like, that stuff,

I really, really, really loved how that stuff was filmed. Um, so like... Let's say, I saw this movie opening night in IMAX. Wow. Can't imagine having to sit through this movie at this time in... Oh, my God. Gwynet's face. Gwynet's skull in larger-than-life format with her skin flap being pulled down. That's crazy. What's the thing about... What's the Mandela effect thing with that?

Which is that, like, people wrongly imagine that there was, like, a... That her head gets removed in the movie, right? That's the Mandela effect. Hold on. I mean, Mantella effect is when, like, a large group of people, leave something that's untrue. Right. Right.

Like, she, they, they look into her brain. Yes, but you never see. The only thing you see of her face, of her, like, of the dummy head that they made. The only thing you see of the dummy head that they made of her is when they pull down the skin from her skull. Okay. Contagion. I'll just cut the stuff out.

Fake. head. You are now on some type of CDC watch list. Um, oh, oh no,

it's from seven. Okay, here we go. Oh, right. The Mandela effect that people think you see Gwen is in box in that movie.

That's what it is. That's what it is. The Mandela effect is people remember seeing, Gwenith's head in the box in seven. And that never happens. You never look and see what's inside the box. Yeah, and you see her head in the box, and it won't stop coughing.

Right. And I start talking and says, I'm having an affair. I have that conflated with the dummy head that they made of Gwyneth for contagion. Okay, sorry. That's my bad. That's my bad. That's my bad. incredible in her very little limited short time in this movie.

Her little seizure scene in the hospital, like guest stars on the pit, take note. Why did you ever stop acting, couldn't it? It's just like the most terrifying and realistic on-screen seizing and death should have been Oscar-companied. I don't even know if it's necessarily realistic as much as it is like terrifying. You know what I mean? Like, I, it seems a little over the top to me, but like in a way that is very effective. Like, it's just so unsettling. And then Damon's scene after that is really good where he's, you know, they tell her that his wife is dead and he's just like not hearing it.

He's just like, so can I see her? And that's really good. I think in general, I think Winslet's really good. I think Fishburn's really good in this movie. The stuff with Marion Cotillard is absolutely. bonkers and probably could have been like siphoned off of this movie and it would have been totally fine.

Like I don't know if I necessarily need the scene where the W.H.O. representative is kidnapped to a small village. Okay, the Cotillard stuff. Let's just get the Cotillard out of the way, which is what it feels like Soderberg was saying in the editing room. Because I think one of the things that's so unsatisfying about that Cotillard storyline is that like, it's at the beginning of the movie and at the very end

the movie. And I feel like the only reason that storyline is there is for where that storyline ends. And what that is supposed to do for this like global political, like, conspiracy type of movie and like what that's trying to say. Well, and to maybe head off, it's had off complaints about like, you know, for a global pandemic, you're only paying attention to the United States and whatever. And he's like, oh, no, like, here's also what's happening in China. They're kidnapping But then it's also that the Western world, too, still, you know, deceives, you know, her kidnappers, basically. And again, though, you look at how that was different in real life, too. We're like, in real life, all these other countries, because the United States had elected a bowl of pudding as president, like, all these other countries essentially just like, fine, we'll handle this on our own.

And, like, South Korea is like, we are closing shop for a little while. and Italy had its own shit to deal with and China dealt with it their own way and all this sort of stuff. Whereas, like, I think Contagion gives a portrait of a world that is much more interconnected by necessity and the way that it actually shook out

was like much more siloed. You know what I mean? Much, much more were like people sort of... And in a way, Contagion kind of underestimates China's ability to like deal with it on their own. Like that China ultimately didn't need us to like deal with it. I mean that's probably what you get from a Hollywood movie in some senses. But I also just think that that ultimately becomes the most unsatisfying thread of this movie.

Just to kind of make this statement that it could have maybe made in a more satisfying way. Also, and again, like to make a little logical quibble, and I will try not to do that too much in this, you know, fully fictional situation. But the fact that she doesn't immediately, as soon as she, like, gets rescued by the guy, ask the guy if the vaccine that they gave them was real or not. That she's so easily deceived herself. That she's so duped to the fact that, like, she has to wait until they're in the airport and the guy, like, volunteers the information. Like, why was that not her first question. Or that she wasn't hung out to dry.

Like, they, like, you know. She took a dosage up her nose. Like, that's the first thing I would have been asked. We'd been like, what did I just inhale up my, you know, up my schnaz? But, um, okay. I don't know. But yeah, that's, that's the, that is the storyline that the movie, I think, is the least invested in. Oh, by, by a mile.

By a mile. Um, so it's in, in the, like, you know, I don't want to say soda. Scissorhands, but in the way that, like, Sotaberg very economically approaches his movies and the narratives, it's like, you could have maybe just cut Cotterham from them. Does he have a pseudonym for editing, or is he, I know he's got a, um, I know he does his own cinematography sometimes, but. I don't know of any. Does he have a Roderick Jains of his own? I think so. I just couldn't tell you what it is. and it might have changed over time.

But I know a lot of filmmakers, and like some of them are his friends, and some of them are just like people who approach him. Go to him for help when they're struggling to shorten their... When they're trying to get their movies down to a reasonable length or a contractually obligated length. And he'll be like, okay, here's your movie at 90 minutes, and then they go back and they add stuff in. Sorry, I'm just looking up his...

pseudonyms. Soderberg, who we should say before we get into things like the plot description, has a new movie out that we both love. The Christophers, yes. Very, very good movie. Mary Ann Bernard, by the way. Marianne Bernard is the pseudonym he uses for film editing. Peter Andrews is the pseudonym he uses for cinematography.

And you know what? Never seen Peter Andrews and Marianne Bernard. in the same room coincidence. Yeah. Well, they both look exactly like Julia Roberts is weirdly how it goes and then... It's just Elliot Gould and various, like, plastic glasses and, like, a nose and top hat or something. Do you think Elliot Gould's character in Contagion is, like, related to Rubin in the Ocean's 11 movies? And, like, they just, like, they're, like, cousins whose branches of the family went in very different directions?

I think their boyfriend twins. Well, that's another way of looking at it. Of course, you would go immediately to sexualizing Elliot Gould. I understand it. And that's just the way it goes. Okay, so. The Christopher's. In theaters, very soon, go see it in a just world.

Ian McCullen will be in the best actor, race, and conversations all year long. Do you think it could happen? Uh, no. He's good enough. He's quite good in that movie. The way that people are too quickly for getting late Soderberg movies, even when they're really, really great. Black Bag doesn't have me optimistic, but I just hope everybody goes and sees this really wonderful movie.

Black Bag was in your top five, top ten? Where did Black Bag figure for you? It might have been in my top five. It was definitely my top ten. Love Blackback. Even Presence, which I think was really super forgotten because it had for me. a whole year before it eventually hit theaters. I think that's a really interesting ghost story.

I think it's a really like modern interpretation of a gothic haunted house story. I like it less than you, but I agree that like it is at baseline of interest to see it. It's not worthless, is what I will say. Let's jump into the plot sooner than later because I want to sort of get into breaking down the plot of this movie. There's less of an awardsy conversation for this one as we might have hoped just because it didn't get a ton of precursors and they didn't really ever care to isolate any of the actors for particular. started their campaign way too late. It was like Warner Brothers knew nothing was really happening. And then when, like, the season was wrapping up, they're like, let's throw some events for contagion. Well, and also it had that, like, just graveyard opening weekend of Labor Day 2011. Like, nothing was doing. So, um, yeah, but Chris, before I make you give a plot description, why don't you let our listeners know why they should join our Patreon? Uh, listen. listeners, Gary's one and all, we have a Patreon. We call it this had Oscar Buzz turbulent brilliance.

So for $5 a month, you're going to get more of the show you already love. What are you going to get? You're going to get two bonus episodes every month, first of which arrives on the first Friday. These are our exception episodes. These are movies that fit that this had Oscar Buzz rubric of great expectations and disappointing results. But these are movies that manage to score an Oscar. nomination or two or sometimes four. Four is like

kind of the ceiling. Four is the ceiling. I don't know what I don't want to hit four too often. No, no, no, no, no. We typically stick around the one nomination. But, you know, this is a type of episode we'd always had listeners asking for from the beginning of the show.

We hosted over on the Patreon. What are you going to get? This month, we're talking about the Black Dahlia. Brian De Palma's final studio, movie that kind of put him in director jail. It's a really fun episode, but all of our exception episodes are really fun. What other movies are we

going to talk about? We're going to be talking about movies like Drive when Harry met Sally. Those are some recent episodes. We've talked about great movies like AI Artificial Intelligence, Mulholland Drive. We've talked about not so great movies like Hitchcock or House of Gucci. We've had guest episodes. You keep throwing House of Gucci in the not good pile and I keep blanching at that when I'm just like it's oh there's good things in

well then how about something much worse like the lovely bones yeah there we go uh something that kind of checks all boxes of good and bad like nine uh there you go there you go uh exceptions episodes we got going on three years of those lots of episodes for you but that's not it on the third Friday of every month, you're going to get an excursion episodes. These are journeys into Oscar ephemero we love to obsess about on this show, like EW Fall Movie Previews, Hollywood Reporter Roundtables. This month, we're going to be doing something a little different, and we're going to be looking at a single category in a decade.

We're going to be talking about best original song in the 1990s, Joe. I am so excited to do this episode. Me too. Me too. When you said that's not it before I was vocal-stemmed to What a Man. That's not it. Well, not an original song nominee, but maybe we'll do an excursion on things like that. What other excursions are you going to get? You're going to get old awards show recaps.

We've recap things like Independent Spirit Awards, MTV Movie Awards, Golden Globes, things such as that. We always have a good time doing an excursion and, you know, going further off of base of what we usually do here on this show. So go on over to patreon.com slash this had Oscar buzz and sign up now. $5 a month. You'll have a good time. $5 a month. It's so affordable. You should do it. All right. We are talking about the 2011 film Contagian, directed by Stevie Soderberg, written by Scott Z. Burns. starring Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Lawrence Fishburn, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Ely, Brian Cranston, Elliot Gould, Chin Hahn, John Hawks, Demetri Martin, and Sinhala. The most 2011 thing about this movie.

Very, very true. The presence of Dimitri Martin. Yes, and Sanaleithen as, wife on phone, premiered out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on September 3, 2011. and then opened wide across the country on September 9th, 2011, distributed by Warner Brothers pictures. It opened number one on that desolate weekend with $22.4 million on route to 70-something domestic and 130-something worldwide.

It beat out the fifth week of the help, the first week of Warrior, the second week of the debt. Did you ever see the debt? Yes. I never saw the date. And the third week of Columbiana. You ever see Columbiana? No. Neither have I. All right. Chris, we've wasted enough time. I've given you enough runway. Would you like 60 seconds on the clock to describe the plot of the Steven Soderberg viral epic contagion? Yeah.

Begin. We open on Gwyneth Patro coughing in Hong Kong while on business and returning home to Minneapolis. This possible patient zero passes the virus onto her young son. They both die, leaving her husband, Matt Damon, and teenage daughter behind. Lawrence Fishburn at the CDC gets wind of this and sends epidemic specialist Kate Winslet to Minneapolis to back trap Patro's footsteps, revealing she was having an affair with a man who flew back to Chicago. Uh-oh. While setting up a response action in the city against a pretty big opposition,

Winslet contracts the virus and dies. All, meanwhile, the World Health Organization sends official Marion Cotiar to Hong Kong to investigate the origins of the virus while Paltrow was abroad. She gets kidnapped and helped for ransom for the eventual vaccine. Also concurrently, Jude Law is basically Q&on blogging about conspiracy theories and trademarks of bull. What they're not telling you? Sturing up mass information and a cure-all he calls for Scythia. He eventually posts taking this fake, definitely not ivermectin potion, and plays off like he was cured. causing hysteria for the medication.

He's eventually prosecuted for all of this. L-O-Fucking L. Fischburn gets in hot water for telling his partner to get out of Chicago, but can't be fired because everyone is dying. Meanwhile, Jennifer Ely is developing the vaccine, eventually breaking protocol to give herself that vaccine, making herself a humid subject to risk visiting her sick father on Christmas. It all works, and voila, we have a vaccine. Vaccine ends up getting distributed by lottery.

Kotiard is rescued, but her captors are given placebos, because imperialism. Matt Damon lets his teenage daughter have a quasi-prong, and the virus is shown to be caused by bat poop, fepta pigs, to Gwyneth Paltrow, because capitalism. Somehow, A natural order is restored, and by that, I mean, Jennifer Ely is the hero, she was always born to be the end. 46 seconds over, the lesson here, folks,

is wash your fucking hands. If you're preparing food, wash your hands. If you are in a casino, wash your hands. If you are anywhere, wash your damn hands. Yes.

So, all of that stuff happened. What? Where do we want to start? Where do we want to start? We want to start. Okay. So setting the stage a little bit, if you want to sort of map this onto

how things happened with COVID Jude Law is Joe Rogan by way of Alex Jones Lawrence Fishburn is essentially Dr. Fauci Kate Winslet is Terrence McNally I'm trying to think of somebody who like died of COVID in early COVID. Oh God, don't say... Oh, that's so sad.

It's so sad. That's the first person I ever think of when I think of of like who died in COVID. I would watch Kate Winslet in a Terrence McNally biopic. I know. And then Matt Damon is, um, us all. Like, honestly. Like, Matt Damon, if Soderberg stops just short of Damon washing his groceries. Like, that would have been the real, like, what did you know and when did you know it?

If they had a scene in contagion of Matt Damon washing his groceries. That was one thing I thought of watching this movie was, I want to give us all grace for the ways in which, you know, we look back and sort of cringe at like the overreactions, this sort of like the odd reactions, the ways in which we all went, you know, a little mad or whatever. because watching a movie like this really does push you towards like remembering where you were back then, how little we all knew and how, like, genuinely scary it was, particularly because,

and it's interesting that contagion, like, the White House is completely absent, right? the president has gone into this like underground bunker. The closest we get to like a political POV comes via intermediaries like Enrico Colatoni and Brian Cranston and stuff like that. It is one of, I think, the signatures of a Soderberg movie versus this movie being some other like major directors movie is we don't need to see the major political figures in the Soderberg version of this story. Right.

And that is, it makes it both applicable and less applicable to the experience of COVID. Because on one hand, obviously Trump influenced so much of how that pandemic played out, particularly in the United States. Like so much of how stupid everything got was because it was. Yeah, this was closer to our American COVID experience. The Contagent precedent would be like giving a Purple Heart to Jude Law in this movie. Well, right. And just sort of like and politicizing every action. Like there's a big part of Contagion talks about how hard it is for characters like Lawrence Fishburn and Marion Cotillard and Kate Winslet who work for either the CDC or the WHO to have to work towards good public health policy. when politics sort of rears its ugly head.

And yet Contagion really underestimates just how much politicizing could be done in a situation like that. We're like literally every single way in which individuals, people on an individual or collective level responded to COVID was completely determined by whether you were pro-Trump or anti-Trump. You know what I mean? If you were pro-Trump, you didn't listen to any medical advice. And if you were anti-Trump, you didn't listen to anything Trump said. You know what I mean? And everything was just so, you know, every little thing, every little decision somebody made

became a political act. And you wonder why we all went crazy. You know what I mean? I mean, I don't want to make a kind of empty blanket statement of like, COVID is a product of the before times. But like truly it kind of is. It is when you watch this movie and you don't see really anything like that. I feel like you couldn't have contagion as it is today as a movie because the culture

has shifted so much. Like this is almost like kind of the last moment that this movie is. could be made in that way and seem realistic because we're in a very different place, just as like a social conscious, you know? Yes, yes. And I think, and it's, so it's interesting, it's almost like a period piece watching contagion, because it really is just like. It is like what if COVID happened in 2010?

Yeah. Instead of 2020. Yes. But what I think is interesting in Contagion is you're right that like Soderberg takes the president completely off the board. He goes into some like underground bunker and we essentially, we never see him in the movie. But like even when we like hear directives and stuff like that, they are directives from a kind of like generalized governmental. And you don't see like we hear a little bit about like Congress is looking into ways to like to do their jobs remotely. And the way they say it sounds so exotic, and it's just like, bro, like, may I introduce you to the way we live now?

It could be so much worse than Zooms, all of the Zooms we had to do. It could be so much worse. It could have been all through emails, making it all less efficient and more annoying. Less efficient, certainly, but also, like, perhaps less farcical. I don't know. there's something about the way that like the Zoom aesthetic also because everything had to be also a performance. You know what I mean? Sorry.

I'm just going to, I'm not, I'm not going to be able to talk about this movie without like constantly just going, like, dimming into. Sorry. Like, I just, I can't. It's, this is why we didn't want to talk about this movie back then. Because back then I literally would have just been screaming into the microphone. Like, I just would have been absolutely, it's not just that I would have been terrified watching that movie. It's that that movie would have absolutely made me run around my house just screaming into the ether. You also would have been like, I have a bead of sweat on my brow.

I'm dying. Constantly. Oh, as you probably heard every time I had a bead of sweat on my brow is I would text you guys and be like, I'm dying. You know, Soderberg does cut out of this movie. No one's drunk all the time in this movie. See, that was not my COVID experience. I literally did not drink during COVID, almost entirely, because I was alone for most of my time during COVID. So I don't, like, if drinking alone is your thing, more power to you.

I don't. It's a waste of time for me. It's a waste of money for me. I'm just like, why am I going to spend money on liquor to get drunk by myself? To what? Like, to what end? I don't know. So, but also I eat.

So that's the trade off. Yeah. Soderberg also cuts out the part where we were doing like Netflix parties. Joe's Zoom trivia is not a part of the food. Certainly all of the banana bread making and sourdough starters. All you can really do is go for a walk. All you could really do was go for a walk. I should have done that.

I remember, man, I did go on, like, my fair share of stress walks, though, didn't I? I sure did. I remember fucking Election Day 2020, I went on the mother of stress walks. I think I went on two of them. I just kept being like, nope, I have to not watch my television right now. I have to leave. I have to go walking around. At least by that point, I had gotten to a point where I knew I'd know.

didn't have to, like, mask up to walk outdoors. So that was nice. I'm like, I'm not going to run into anybody. I can just, like, you know, walk, feel free for a minute. I mean, I remember having to be like, okay, I need to be physically active in some way. And I would go for, like, a few miles running with a mask on. I always think it's gross to complain about masks. I don't want to run in a mask again.

that's the truth of it. It is the truth of it. But this was, but this was the problem is you couldn't make an incredibly human observation, which is that running with a mask is a pain in the ass without other people being like, exactly, that's why we shouldn't listen to the doctors. And you have to be like, and you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yeah, exactly. So it wasn't worth making those complaints. I am just someone who. really can't, I can't see without my glasses. Oh, the fog issue is so real. I bought anti-fogging spray because of the fucking masks and glasses. I want everybody to be safe and healthy. Yes. It would be nice to not. That's what I'm saying, you know.

We no longer have to make those caveats, Chris. I was the person who was like, I will never complain about anything about wearing a mask. So let's hop into the Soderberg of it all, because I think this hits at an interesting point for Soderberg, because we're getting close to the fake retirement point, right? Behind the candelabra's only a few years away. But leading up to this, the interim between winning the Oscar for traffic and 2011, where Contagion and Haywire both come out in the same year, it's a real fascinating decade of, like, him. trying to maintain a balance between popular movies and creative indulgences. And sometimes those streams feel like they are less straight line than, you know, maybe they could be.

Obviously, two thousand, like, doing Oceans 11 followed by full frontal feels like the most microcosmmy of that, which is that like he's won the, you know, the best director trophy. traffic in Aaron Brockovich are such like the perfect like double you know double bill in a year and then he goes and makes an incredibly popular like crowd pleaser full of movie stars you know why don't we just all like have a good time and like you know give the audience what they what they want Ocean's 11 followed by the most alienating like I'm I'm just going to do this one because it's like ugly, you know. I'm going to put Julia Roberts in a fuck-ass bob. In a real fuck-ass bob. That's full frontal. One of the few Soderberg movies that I just do not fuck with.

I do need to. I always say this is one of those movies that I'm always like, I should rewatch that. Should you? Well, yeah, because I only ever saw it once in theaters, and I feel like as much as I love Soderberg. Yeah. I do need to revisit that just to, you know, just. Just to check in on how I feel about it. And then that same year he does Solaris, which is both alienating but great.

You know what I mean? Like it is... Masterpiece. Yeah, fantastic. But like, for the real ones. Like, that's for real ones only, right? And then, see, it's not even one for me. It's like one for you, like four for me.

Because then his Ocean's sequel, which should be the next. next one for them. He does as a one for me. He does essentially just like, how French can I make this movie? Like how absolutely like, it's a provocation from like start to finish that movie. And it's incredibly self-indulgent.

And I don't even mean that as a negative. Because like you're Steven Soderberg. You know, if you want to do that, more power to you, buddy. Like a lot of people- If you're going to make a franchise, get. as weird with it as you want to. Sure. I don't love that movie. A lot of people really do

and that's fine. 2005, he makes Bubble a tiny little indie that I remember liking, but I could not tell you a single thing about that movie now. What did you think of Bubble? I need to see Bubble, I think.

Maybe I also have forgotten everything about bubble. And then 2006, it's another one of those like seemingly on paper this is like an Oscar bait sort of like end of the year Clooney and Blanchett and Toby Maguire and we're doing you know black and white and we're going to make the good German and it's going to be my next sort of Oscar play and in reality it is another one for me another one for me another one for me another Stoderberg's just like nope psych another one for me.

Nobody, that's one that I really, I have not met a single person in my life who will go to bat for the good German. Nobody, even if they don't like, even if they don't hate it, they're just sort of like, eh, the good German. But then next is Ocean's 13, which is like full, like nothing but crowd-pleasing

satisfying. It is straight down the middle oceans movie. It is. And people don't like. it and I don't understand why they don't. It's fun. It's so fun. Should be funer.

Should be more fun. It's not fun enough. It's fine. It's, it's, it's not as, I, uh, turned it off halfway through the first time I watched it. And, um, just because I was like, what am I doing here? I don't know. I'm not enjoying myself. And I went back to it and I liked it better.

But yeah. I mean, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, does feel a tiny bit, just a tiny bit, as much as he's probably even capable of. Soderberg with his tail between his legs a little bit, and he's just going to, like, play it straight down the middle. But, like, you miss kind of the, like, spunky thorniness of, like, a fun Sotaberg movie. But I still think that movie is really, really fun. It takes, like, no risks. No, and there's, like, no weird fact to it.

You've got Al Pacino, and you really don't do it. much with him. Like, you got Andy Garcia on the side of the oceans, folks, and you really don't do a whole lot with it, and it's just like, eh, I don't know. Ellen Barkin, though. Ellen Barkin's fun in that movie. She is. They give that day a nose. 2008, it's the Che Guevara movie, parts one and two,

whether you saw it together or separately. it was, in many ways, a movie that futs with its release so much that when it ultimately did get released, it, like, the moment had passed, I almost feel like. It was, it loomed like, oh, his next big, great one. And then when it finally arrived, I think ultimately they just didn't know how to release a movie that sort of, you know, big. I think ideally, if you look at that on paper, you're like, Oh, that's Del Toro's second Oscar. You know what I mean?

And I mean, he's great in those movies. And I think they're really good. But they do really, I think if they were like two movies really in sync that it felt like two halves to the same whole, people would have understood those movies more at the time. But then you watch them now. And it's like, these are two, they're intentionally. for a reason, very, very different movies. And I think that kind of contributed to people not getting it. Plus, I think also it's just a movie that does not have a ton of commercial appeal.

Like, in terms of, like, you are not going to be able to sell, even in 2008, to, you know, the average American, come see this time-intensive epic about, this communist gorilla icon. I don't care how many college student, freshman dorm room posters, you know, existed in the movie. Those movies are almost the least satisfying to the college dorm room poster set. Like, they really are. So then 2009, it's The Girlfriend Experience,

which is, again, very, very much a purposefully low-fi, low-budget, you know, low-impact, ultimately. um movie 2009 also though is the informant which i love i fucking love that movie i love damon in that movie i need to rewatch it i feel like i would be kinder to it now when i first saw it in theaters i was like that movie thinks i'm fucking stupid oh i don't think that's the case at all yeah i might not feel that way today but and then that's the movie that that's the previous one to Contagion, and you're sort of in this, like, now, Scott Z. Burns sort of, or no, wait, that was,

who was the informant? The informant was Scott Z. Burns. Yes. So you're in this, like, Scott Z. Burns, like, mini series, essentially, where it's, like, the informant followed by Contagion, and then later on, you'd get side effects and the laundromat. I sort of, like, mapped out all of the screenwriters who have written multiple Soderberg. movies, and I think it's an interesting little taxonomy. Like Soderberg wrote and directed, it's weird that he only wrote three of his own movies. It feels like it's more, right? But it's sex lies and videotape, King of the Hill, Solaris.

He might have written some of the much more earlier ones, but the major ones, sex lies, King of the Hill, Solaris. Those Scott Z. Burns, as I said, were informant, contagion, side effects, laundromat. Coleman Huff did full frontal and bubble, which sounds about right that the same screenwriter those two. Lem Dobs did the Limey and Haywire. Richard Lugravinez is interesting, did the behind the candelabra screenplay, and then was uncredited,

did some form of rewrite in some way or another, on Aaron Brockovich. Ed Solomon wrote No Sudmove in the Christophers, David Kep did Kimmy, Presence, and BlackBag. and then of course read Carolyn on Magic Mike and Magic Mike's last dance. Burns, I think, is maybe the most interesting in terms of, like, you can see that this is a little, like, Sodaberg's in a particular mode, maybe with the Burns screenplays. Does it feel that way to you as well?

That there are these kind of, maybe like 70s style or like... I was going to say, you know, they're, they're kind of a throwback to a certain type of movie. And the type of movie that used to be, like, standard studio fair, right? Like, Contagion is a conspiracy thriller, you know, more so than it is, like, a horror movie or, you know, a science horror movie. It's in the vein of more like a China syndrome type of movie. Right, right. And the informant is obviously. this kind of

I saw fun with Dick and Jane the original in L.A. last year. And it's not quite that, but there's obviously like a heightened sort of ludicrousness to the

informant that I feel like if you combine the informant and contagion, you get the tone of the laundromat actually. And then side effects. Side effects is this sort of like throwback to it's not quite erotic thriller, but there's a lot of like, you know,

double crosses and, you know, you know, this character is in cahoots with this other character and you didn't know it. They're not all my favorites, but I think it's an interesting mode for Soderberg to be in when he's in that mode. I don't know. obviously one of our best directors, obviously somebody who works a lot, even when he's supposedly retired.

So, yeah. I think he's in this really interesting point in his career, where I feel like the type of things that he's making, I struggle to find a through line to them beyond And he has a particular, like, vantage point into all of these stories, things like presents, like Black Bag, like the Christophers, where it's just like, I maybe can't fully explain it, but it is just better because he made it. Like, I don't want to just sound like a fanboy, but there's something about his perspective, what he thinks is necessary information, and what doesn't have to be there. and the kind of like direct, unassuming approach that he has to like any different type of material

because like his three last movies are three incredibly different movies again. But, you know, his leanness of approach just makes the movies fucking better. That's when I describe some of those movies that I mentioned as indulgent. what's interesting is I don't ever mean lazy and I don't ever mean um flabby you know what I mean like they are as you say like they are really you know lean and focused they are just sort of him following some stylistic or narrative you know idea down its own little rabbit hole oh maybe I'll make this one you know fully like handheld digital video.

Oh, maybe I will make this one in black and white. Oh, maybe I will make this one with non-professional actors. Oh, maybe in this one I'll cast all comedians as, you know, serious government bureaucrat types or whatever. Oh, you know what I mean? It's just like it's, there's, you know...

I mean, there's a lot of stuff. There's also something just like satisfyingly precise, you know? It's like, again, I hate comparing movies to food, but it's like when you hear a chef say that like, to make something great you only need like four ingredients. That's like the Soderberg approach. Uh-huh.

I do think that there is something interesting about the Christopher's. That, like, you'd have to get into, like, spoiler territory for the movie. But I do think that there is something self-referential about it and his, like, supposed retirement period and especially the Magic Mike franchise where it's like, everyone's like, yeah, well, he made that movie, uh, maybe including two hosts of this podcast. And his points of the movie is maybe like, does it matter?

Who cares? Right. Yeah. Right. And I think the Christopher's is just really interesting in that way when you think about it as like what Sotomirk might be saying about himself. Yeah. Why don't we do the Gwyneth ten timers now?

And then we'll hop into a little bit more with the rest of the cast. I did a bunch of I jotted down a bunch of Matt Damon movies but I don't feel like we need to go deep into Matt Damon it's just that like he works a fucking lot and so his like interim between winning the Oscar for Goodwill Hunting screenplay and then 2011 it's just a lot of fucking movies

but I want to do Paltrow first because this is our 10th Gwyneth Paltrow movie and she's somebody who we kind of got in on early because you almost couldn't help it. Because post-Shakespeare and Love Oscar, there was a lot of Oscar bait sort of like follow-up, right? So, and we, you know, we hopped on to a lot of that, whether it's Sylvia or infamous, or running with scissors or, you know, and then, but also older stuff too, where, because she was kind of, she was on a star trajectory pretty early. So to sort of rattle off the 10 that we have done for Paltrow, thus far, we started with Sylvia, the Sylvia Plath biopic, then Bounce, where she starred as Jane Bounce, a,

secret agent at a trampoline park. Private investigator. Yes, private investigator, a trampoline park. Proof, our 99th episode, proof about a CEO at a liquor company, running with scissors, a fraught lesbian romance. Possession. Wow. How dare you. Possession, which was about, well, exorcism. infamous, which, you know, was just about a regular person. Yeah, who's just not famous. Not famous.

Mrs. Parker and the vicious circle, which is, of course, about the inventor of the Hulu Hoop. Sliding Doors, which is about the surviving members of the doors after Jim Morrison's death and their slide into anonymity. She plays Jim Morrison. They go to a playground. Yes. Yes. They go to a playground. They go to, no, what it is is she plays Jim Morrison on the week before he died where he went to a, like, a water park.

And they just, like, slid down the water slides all the week. Great Expectations, which was about me. it was about my birth and how when I was born I had great expectations and she plays my mother and now

10th film Contagin which is about Elizabeth Contagin who is the first woman ever to fly to South America. What?

Yeah. People don't know. Contagin. J-E-N. It's about a lady named Jen who has a contagion, but it's a fun, you see. Yeah, not so easy to make up a fake name, fake movie about contagion, is it? So has... But hey, she also goes to South America.

But she also flies to South America. That's great. Okay, so, as we have been doing for 10-timers, I have a two-tiered quiz for you that will start with you naming all of the Oscar winners in those 10 movies. And I will give you some time to do so. I am doing this now as we speak. Obviously, she does not count because she is in all of these movies and is an Oscar winner. That's correct.

Wow. Obviously, Isabella Rossellini, Oscar winner for making copies. There's nine billion people in Mrs. Parker in the vicious circle. I'm not going to remember all of them. This is, can I get a number? How many do we have? Nine. Oh, wow.

This is not going well. Two of whom are non-acting winners. Sure. but we know which of those two they are. Okay. Yeah. A good number of these people are in contagion. And that's where I think it's pulling a lot of...

Yes. The numbers. Okay, so I'm at six. Let me go through again. Yeah, go through... I'm basically just filling time while we... That's fine. We can...

There's definitely. people that we forgot in some of these movies. Oh no, I'm at seven, so I'm just missing two. Do you have the two non-acting winners? Yes, I do have the two non-acting winners. Okay. Who from Sylvia? No one.

Okay, who from Bouts? Ben Affleck, non-acting winner, twice. Who from proof? Proof has Anthony Hopkins. Mm-hmm. Who from running with scissors? no one in possession No one in infamous

No one in Mrs. Parker That's probably wrong Back it up Back it up Back it up To possession Nope To running the scissors

Nope forward it up Go forward Possession No Infamous Yeah Toby Jones doesn't have an Oscar Isabella Rossellini

doesn't have an Oscar Daniel Craig doesn't have an Oscar Oh, Sandra Bullock. Sandra Bullock. There you go. Wow. Almost like she's unfamous because I forgot her.

Okay, so now you're at eight. No one in Mrs. Parker. That's got to be wrong. Nope, it's correct. Wow, with that huge of cast. Sliding doors, no one. Right. Great expectation has

De Niro and Bancroft. And Chris Cooper. There you go. And Chris Cooper is in that movie. There you go. And then we got a one, two, three in Contagion of Damon, non-acting winner, Winslet, and Cotillard. That is correct. All right.

So nine. Wow, that's a whole, like, is that three best actress winners in a row in this movie? Or no that she's worked with, because counting Bullock. Because she's worked with Cotillard, Winslet, and then Bullock. Yes, yes. But yes, it is rare. I think I almost, I did not have time to look this up, but I wanted to see how many movies star consecutive best actress winners. It can't be very many.

Yeah. Winslet and Cotillard, though, in Contagent. All right. So you have those nine names. Now, part two of the quiz, I'm going to have you rank them one to nine by, by height Well, who's short here? I don't know who's going to be short.

This is the question. One being the tallest. One being the tallest, nine being the shortest. Okay. I will throw in some, you know, think in music or whatever. Listeners, you can't see it, but I'm wearing my brand new cat's hoodie, and I love it.

And I have my phantom shirt. We got to get Katie like A, I don't know, Aspects of Love T-shirt, something Andrew Lloyd Lydde. No, we'll get her a nice Evita um, uh, Vita shirt.

Okay, I, um, do you think I have a, I think I have a rank. All right, who's your, I'm going to like, let me, Tallest. Wait, I'm going to score this, so hold on a second. Let me pull out my paper. All right, so your number one tallest is

Ben Affleck. All right, who's your number two? Matt Damon. Damon, who's your number three? Robert De Niro. De Niro, who's your number four? Chris Cooper. Cooper, who's your number five?

Sandy Bullock. Bullock. All right, who's your number six? Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins. Shorty Hopkins. Number seven. Kate Winslet.

Winslet. Number eight. Anne Bancroft. Bancroft, may she rest. And number nine. Mary and Cotillard. All right. So, let's see.

All right. Out of nine, you got six correct. I finally did well at this game. You did very well. Okay, so there were, of course, ties. But Ben Affleck by quite a bit. Ben Affleck is reported to be six foot three. By Rosson Yard.

He is five inches. taller than the three folks tied for, okay, so there are three folks tied for second. So I, but they are the exact same three you listed as two, three, and four. So you got them all. Chris Cooper, Robert De Niro, Matt Damon, all report as 510. This to me says there's some lying happening. This to me says that 510 is some kind of like, like benchmark ideal that actors just sort of like fudge to, you know, fudge it to to make themselves 5-9, or 5-10 rather.

Anthony Hopkins, truth-telling icon, is 5-9. So Anthony Hopkins is in fifth, so he's taller than Sandy. Bullock is, in fact, in 6th. So you essentially just, like, swapped them. Or no, wait, sorry, sorry, sorry. Bankroft is 5-8. Bankroft is the tallest of the women. So Bankcroft was in 6th.

then tied for seventh, Bullock and Kate Winslet at 5'7. So you got Bullock wrong, you got Bancroft wrong, but you got Winslet right. And then you were correct that Marion Cotillard is the shortest at 5.5. So what about Marion Cotillard was giving off Shorty energy to you? French. You know the French. They are all short, and they all have wild opinions that you never want to hear. hear them speak aloud.

Except for who? Guilty on being short, but Isabella Pear? I was going to say, Isabella Pear has got to be real short. She's like 5'2. Gwyneth Paltrow is apparently 5'9, which tracks.

So she would have been as tall as Sir Anthony Hopkins. So she would have been the tallest of these women. So there you go. All right. So, back to Contagion.

Who is your favorite performance? She is. She's genuinely great in this movie. Is she your favorite performance in the movie? I mean, I think she's doing something that imagining any other actor do. You can't imagine her doing what she's doing in this movie. Like, dying on screen. Better than anybody else has ever done. Better than some of the co-stars in this very movie have ever done. I'm not speaking of Marion Cotillard in The Dark Night Rises at all.

Wow. You have recently watched that movie. It's not like Chris has been holding onto a grudge about the way Marion Cotillard dies and The Dark Night Rises. She really is just like Tye, and taking a nap. She's slumped against a vehicle of some sort, right? Like, she's, I don't know. She had a lot to do a lot going on.

She's me on the sofa. She's just like, whoa. All respect to Marion Cotiar and her weird conspiracy theories. No, who is my favorite performance in this movie? Ty, Lawrence Fishburne, and Jennifer Ely. I mean... I mean, Ely's so good. She's so, like, talk about, like, the exhilaration of watching a capable professional in health care just absolutely, is absolutely thrilling.

Well, and it's just what she's so absolutely perfect at, that she is this type of performer who can, just throw out like jargon, legalese, science, data, and make it so compelling to listen to, but also you see the human being behind like entirely unemotional dialogue so that when you think,

so that when you have the scene where she goes and visits her sick father, it's like the one moment of emotional catharsis in the whole movie. And I think it's also because it kind of catches you by surprise, too. It's the one such moment in the movie that I don't resent. I'm like, you know, this is well earned and, you know, I think a lot of the other... And that just goes back to like Soderberg's understanding of like when to deploy something like that and how much is too much. He just has really good taste with that type of thing. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. I think that's true. I think in general, the baseline of performances in this movie are really good. I think Winslet's really good for however long she's in the movie. I think Jude Law is. is over the top, but I think he's not wrong in that, like, the movie is kind of asking for that of him a little bit. It's a little, it's a little, little at times, right? Like, it's a little too. I mean, he's playing the biggest character for sure. Right. Like,

that's the thing. Um, but I think Fishburn is great. I think Damon has his moments where he's really great. Um, that scene you mentioned where he gets the news that his wife has died and just that it doesn't register, you know, the traumatic event doesn't sink in, and then it all channels through this rage where he starts just like yelling at the doctor. And then there's also the scene where Winslet's asking him questions essentially just like asking, trying to like paint around the corner of the idea that his wife may have been seeing another man in Chicago while she was on her layover. And his reaction to that's really interesting. And again, the stuff with him being overprotective for his daughter, I think may have

played more broad before we all saw what happened to everybody in 2020. And all of a sudden, now I'm just like, oh, no, yeah, like, facts. Like, that's how it was. So, what did you think of the John Hawks subplot with Fishburn. John Hawks is the janitor in the building where Fishburn works. They have a you know, they have a little bit of a bond and then Hawks overhears Fishburn telling his wife, telling Senali and wife on phone, to get out of whatever city she's in Atlanta. She's in Atlanta. She's in Chicago. He's in Atlanta. Right. She's in Chicago. He says get out of

Chicago and come to Atlanta. That's what it is. And he, you know, is resentful and, you know, of Fishburn abusing his, you know, whatever. This is the crux of the Fishburn storyline here is that he is ultimately, and I think the movie thinks it's a little unfair that he's being sort of politically punished for. telling his wife to get to safety. But I think also the movie is of the opinion that, like, somebody in his position really should be, like, above reproach. And I feel like now, looking back at that, I'm like, the only thing he did was tell his wife outside of protocols to get to, you know, to get to safety. Like, given all the other shit. that was going on, all the people who were like cashing in, you know, stocks and whatnot.

Like that person, you know, sign him up for sainthood. And the same thing kind of with like Elliot Gould, you know, there's a lot of like defying bureaucracy here. Elliot Gould defies the order to shut down his research and ends up like discovering something important about the virus. And Jennifer Ely, you know, against protocols, injects herself with the, you know, the vaccine in order to leapfrog these bureaucratic, you know, blockades to getting the, you know, the vaccine proven or whatever, tested. Which all feels very like, I want to say Hollywoody, but not in a super pejorative way. It is sort of, the Hollywood version of this is going to be individuals sort of triumphing over bureaucracy in order to get the job done.

Yeah, a lot of that is a lot more floral and emphasized if a different director is making this movie. I think you're right. The Soderberg approach kind of tempers that to the point where I'm not really bothered by what you're saying in the movie. I think his approach is more. I'm not either, to be clear. I'm just sort of, you know. I think his approach is like, on a character level, what the movie is going for is that, like, we as human beings would probably break protocol like Lawrence Fishburn breaks to be, like, get your spouse out of where they need to be, you know. She fucks up by sharing.

Here's what the human behavior would be. She fucks up by calling her friends. and you know, blabby blabs it or whatever. Yeah. Which I think the movie also treats as like probably a natural human response. Yes. Yes.

Totally. Yes. But then at the end of the movie, Fishburn in an act of selfishness slash privilege guilt, gives up his dose of the vaccine to give to John Hawks' kid. Because in this universe, as I mean, I guess as with ours, there are like tears for, they, they do it as like a military draft style, like everybody with a certain birthday gets the vaccine on a certain day. It was a lot less organized on, I remember signing up for my vaccine appointment just by like going to a like different website than the, you know what I mean?

It's like it wasn't necessarily like going out of the bounds of. whatever, but it was just like, oh, you know, you can, like, go sign up directly at the, like, at this website or whatever. And I was just like, there isn't some, there, there was not a kind of, like, very strictly monitored, like, now you, now you, now you, now you. Because so many people were needing to be convinced and cajoled and, you know, whatever into getting the vaccine. But I still had to, like, travel halfway across the state and, you know, stand in. And, you know, line in a, you know, in the state fairgrounds in Syracuse for like hours as we were sort of like, you know, waiting. But then that was for the first dose. And then the second dose I remember

went a lot quicker. And I was like either this thing is getting- They just basically throw it at you like a break or something. Basically. And either like, here you go. It got more, it got more efficient or what I suspect was people were like, oh, well, I feel fine. You know what I mean? just sort of like as the months went along, people got like less serious about things or whatever. I don't know.

I don't know what it was. I think the movie, though, shows that there is like a class issue there because it's like you see the home that John Hawks lives in. It's not as nice of a neighborhood. So it's like Lawrence Fishburn as somebody who is in the role he's in in the CDC is guaranteed to get it.

Whereas everybody's kind of left up to chance. That's, of course, not the way that it. worked out largely because we had so many ignorant people who refused to get it, etc. But did you find that a little bit of a like condescending? Hollywood-y type of thing. Yeah, a little bit. Not to the degree that I like, you know, don't like the movie. But I just felt it felt a little.

Again, I think, I think the kind of the offhand. I mean, it's, I think that is in the movie and Soderberg cuts it out. of the movie elsewhere that a Hollywood movie would have put it. Sure. Like, we get one, but that's it. I imagine you've seen... I don't think it's pressed too hard. No, I imagine you've seen the movie outbreak,

the Dustin Hoffman movie outbreak. Not in a long time, but yes. Okay, but like, check it out sometime. It is, it's the sort of the more mainstream, more Hollywood schlocky. I think it's still, it's a, you know, it's a fine cable television. you know, Saturday afternoon

watch. It is definitely hokey and over the top and whatever and you can tell that like Contagion is the more sort of disciplined, serious-minded you know, version of the two.

I can see the appeal of something like outbreak where it just feels more like it's pitched to a broader audience. It is pitched to a maybe less discerning audience. An audience looking for comfort. Sure. But also because in that one, like, you know, ultimately it turns into this standoff between Dustin Hoffman, the good CDC doctor, and Donald Sutherland, the evil

military, industrial complex general, who wants to keep the vaccines instead as a bio weapon. So it becomes this like, you know, battle between good and evil. And obviously Soderberg is a little. a lot more. The comfort of the binary. Exactly. Soderberg presents something a little bit more, a lot, a good deal more nuanced than that. I also like the fact that in the movie, there's never really, like there is, I guess, a ticking clock, but you never see it. Like, you never feel it. It's never like this thing, like, we've got to get this virus vaccine synthesized by 0,700 hours or else we're going to miss our window or something like that.

And it's, it's less, there's less of a false imposition of, you know, drama, suspense, that kind of a thing. And it allows a more natural sense of suspense, a more natural, like, I mean, the ironic thing is, is the appeal of something like contagion and 20, Contagion in 2011 would have been, imagine what you would do in this situation. And now you can't watch it that way now because you know. Because you already know. You know. So, right. So, but that's interesting, I think, a little bit. You mentioned a couple of times this idea that, like, Jude Law faces consequences and is going to, is going to jail.

Wouldn't that be so lovely? But, or is he? So lovely if people who are, like, telling you to drink Ivermectin were prosecuted for, you know, telling people to do that. But the last note we leave off on with him is that he's been, his fans have chipped in to make bail for him. Right. So clearly he remains popular. He remains this sort of like malign figure and will continue to, and they do mention, they don't really, like, it's not the crux of his storyline, but they do mention that one of the things he's threatening at the end is to tell people to not take the vaccine. And so, like, that definitely, because obviously, like, anti-vaccine.

people were already a thing in 2011. They were just like very, very fringe. And I think the thing that surprised people was how many people sort of fell for that sort of, you know, and continue to fall for it. If, you know, whatever, Bobby Kennedy croaking out advice is any, any bellwether. Things are great. Things are, you know what? Things are fine. It's been. six years that didn't like absolutely affect us. We have nothing to be angry about. There's that one really, really sort of clanging line of dialogue

in this about the daughter being like, I wish I had a vaccine for the passage of time or whatever. Because she's complaining about how she's losing she's on day 144 whatever of the vaccine or whatever.

And she's going to, she's like, and I'm going to miss an entire spring and an entire summer. And it's like, girl, yeah. Like, yeah, that is how it's going to happen. But it also definitely, it does make you think about, and I've talked about this before, this like, are we in 20 years going to be talking about the like the COVID generation, the lost generation of anybody who was between the ages of whatever and whatever during COVID, who just like never learned how to socialize and are just lost forever.

And absolutely, we're just never getting those kids back. They are just absolutely to the wins. And I don't know what you do about that. And we're just going to have to deal with them being weird and poorly socialized for fucking ever. All blessings to you if you went through that and turned out normal. Good for you and your parents. Anything else? I mean

This was a weird Awards race For this movie It went to the can't It premiered out of competition at Venice In that really like Kind of underwhelming Venice In 2011

Where like That Russian movie Faust Won the Golden Lion That like I have Never heard about Ever It's also a weird one for Warner Brothers, and it felt like when they finally started campaigning this movie, it felt like some weird contractual obligation.

Also, this fall from Warner Brothers, Jay Edgar, previous episode. Extremely loud and incredibly close. Late Breaking, much maligned, Best Picture nominee. And then the very kind of buried release of Dreamhouse. Did you ever see Dreamhouse? With Daniel Craig and Rachel Weiss. Yes. Sure did.

Sure saw that movie. It's not a good movie. I remember finding that movie's twist to be figure outable very early on, and then it takes for fucking ever to get to the point where they just, like, get you to that. And it's just like, all right, we get it. And I can't even remember what it was now. And then it's also, like, in the trailer, kind of. And people are like, they're just giving away the twist to this movie in the trailer. And they were like, no, it's not the twist.

It's not the twist. And the movie kind of yes and what is in the trailer, but it's like you still gave away the movie. Sure, sure, sure, sure, yes. Some of the out-of-competition movies, though, at this Venice, you had Madonna's WE, previous Patreon episode, you had Al Pacino's Wild Salome, which was... Not released in American theaters until years later. But there was a, there was, it was like two movies, right? That it was, that, um, Jessica Chastain did where she played Salome. It was, am I not, am I making that up that there was like a movie and then a movie about the movie?

Or something? I think it, maybe, but I thought that this movie was the one that's like, mostly documentary and then footage at the stage show. Oh, this is, okay, that's what it is. Okay, so it's a stage show and then a movie about a documentary about the stage show. Well, I mean, Salome is a play, but... Well, right, but I mean, like, that particular production. The film is a in portion just filming of the production. Right, right, okay.

Witt Stillman's Damsles in Distress, a movie I remember quite liking very, very much. Mary Heron's The Moth Diaries, which is not the same thing as the Moth Man prophecies. And I feel like that's important. to know. When you buy it online, when it arrives. But it's a vampire movie. Gothic psychological horror. Vampire movie. Interesting. Starring Lily Cole, Sarah Gatton, Sarah Boulger, and Judy Parfit. Okay. Sold. Yeah, I don't know. It's an odd Venice that year, but here we are. Other previous episodes from this Venice, Carnage. Roman Polanski's not good. A Dangerous Method.

A Dangerous Method. David Kronenberg's Very Good. A dangerous method. This Venice jury is also fascinating to me. Aronovsky, Todd Haynes,

David Byrne, Alba Rohracher, various other folks. Those are the four that I've caught my eye here. I don't know. Lantimos's Alps is in competition. An interesting movie.

One that I keep wanting to revisit in the wake of like Yorgos going mainstream. I linked also to an NPR article that was written that was published on February 16th, 2020, which is

real early. And it was already being like facts checking contagion in the wake of coronavirus, the 2011 movie is trending. So like, people could not wait to throw on contagion. Be like, what's that I hear? The faint whispers of a pandemic? Let me throw on contagion.

just to, like, fucking freak myself out. So I just thought that was interesting. You can Google that if you want to. The author of that is Fran Crits. But it's eerie. It just is. It's eerie. It also is one of those movies where at the end of it,

they show the whole, like, how the thing, you know, the virus began. How the sausage was made. the sausage was made, so it's quite perhaps literally. And you're like, well, fuck if I'm going to, like, what am I going to do? Can't do anything about that. Can't do anything about a bat shitting in front of a pig. You know what I mean?

And like, Ely has that great line about how like the wrong pig met up with the wrong bat, the wrong part of the country or in the world or whatever. And you're just like, okay, well, fuck me then. And fuck all. You know, you're just like, great. that's just going to be how it is. That's possibility exists in the world. It's like, did you,

I had tweeted out a link to my colleague Herschel did a Q&A with Daniel Radcliffe for our vultures Maria Bamford questionnaire. And one of the questions is like, what's a like, essentially like what's an intrusive thought that you, you know, can't stop thinking about when you try to go asleep? And he's like the Yellowstone volcano. or whatever. The one that's like dormant and like if it ever erupts, like half the country is just going to like become a crater. And he's just like, don't go looking that up because like

you will not be able to stop thinking about that. And it's just like, it's completely out of your control. What's your intrusive thought that keeps you awake at night? I mean, I do have that, the thing, it doesn't keep me awake at night. But if I ever go on enough, do you ever do that thing where you like, you think enough about infinity and like the vastness of like the universe. And then it's just like your brain kind of pickles and you're just like that there is nothing outside of everything. You know what I mean? That there are no, there's no end to it all. Like that freaks me out.

And the other thing was, and I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but I wrote, I read an article on the theory that were in the simulation. one time, and it made momentarily perfect sense to me. And I'm like, fuck, I don't like that. I don't like, because it was one of the things that was just like, shit. Now I'm not going to be able to put that out of my mind that like it makes perfect sense. Because before you read into it, you're just like, oh, yeah, we're all living in a simulation, you know, cuckoo, whatever. And then you read it and you're just like, oh, this is like, this is about probability.

And this is about like on a long enough timeline with enough. technology. Like, it's just like, fuck, god damn it. Like, now I believe this. Shit. Um, I don't know if I actually believe it, but like in that moment, I did, and I did not like that moment. That was bad. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

What about you? What's your interest of thought that keeps you up at night? Oh, mine is much more simple, um, and non-science base. Don't say like world hunger, because I will punch you. No, I think it's just the general concern that I will always have to be proving my own competence.

That I will never be liberated from feeling or having to prove incompetence or competence. Like, am I a competent person? Am I a functioning adult? So that thing where every once in a while... Is life all about having to constantly prove? that you are capable hands of being able to handle the gift of life. Wow. You know, am I a competent person is basically the simple.

So that thing where every once in a while I text you and just say like, nobody believes you can do anything is bad. Like, that's not good. And I'm like, I know. You're like, yeah, that's it. You got it. I'm like, diva pull up a chair. That's heavy.

So true. So true, diva. That's heavy. But, like, also relatable. No, I also, the other thing was, I mean, speaking of, like, you're, I think this is another thing I may have mentioned on this podcast. I talk too much about, like, real shit on this podcast. I reveal too much about myself, maybe. Oh, no, I'm fully guarded.

I feel like that's my most vulnerable moment I've ever had off. No, that's good. You're better for it. But remember that Lily Tomlin? Am I? Am I? Here we go. Back to the intrus of thought. of like, am I humaning wrong?

I don't want to be, like, millennial-speak adulting, but, like, am I humaning well? Sure. My thing is, we talked about, we saw that Lily Tomlin Jane Fonda movie at Tiff the one year, the one where they try and kill Malcolm McDowell. No, but part of that movie is Lily Tomlin is, like, living in an old folks' home and essentially, like, has no support system. And I literally spent so much of that movie being, like, I'm not going to have kids to, like, because that was her whole thing.

She didn't have kids to support her in her, like, old age. And I'm like, I'm not wealthy enough to, like, create a, like, messag for, like, when I'm old. Like, this could get fucked bad. Like, I need people. This is where I chime in and I say, everywhere. donate to sage. Excellent organization, Sage. Help your old gay,

you're gay elderly, because they're going to need a place to live, y'all. And this economy is not friendly to the idea of growing old with dignity. So, yeah, man.

So what you're saying is that while everyone else is in high school, you are in Brooklyn trying to survive. Trying to survive in this economy. Jesus Christ, thank you. Thank you for getting it. All right. What else?

This movie was a Saturn Award nominee for Best Horror Slash Thriller. I'm going to read you the nominees, and I'm just going to say the Saturn Awards. Telling this movie a horror movie is not wrong. This is, well, all right, I'm just going to read the nominees, and then I'll make my case. Best Horror slash Thriller. The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo wins it. Legitimate Thriller. The Devil's Double, which is a movie that everybody remembers, definitely.

I suppose is a thriller. The Gray is a thriller. Take Shelter is a psychological drama that is not a thriller. And The Thing remake is legitimate horror. Here's what I'm just going to say. Yes. The Thing remake slash prequel. Is that what it was?

I never saw it. Should not be in the place of best, though. No. It's the most legitimate horror movie. It's the most legitimate horror movie of all of that. But this is my thing. If you're the Saturn Awards and your whole thing is genre, I would like you to be better at a signing genre.

Because, yes, you can look at Contagion and be like, it is about a horrifying thing. And it is a thing that scares you. But I would have a hard time calling Contagion, even a thriller. Like, it is a procedural drama. about a disease outbreak. Like, it does not function to me as a thriller. The thing that I was saying that I liked about it was that it wasn't so, like,

artificial ticking clocky or whatever. And I just feel like sometimes when you have these genre awards, they still do that Golden Globes thing of, like, how prestige can we get away with something and that, and we can call it like nominally a comedy? and we're going to nominate that for Best Comedy. Like how much of a like just regular drama can we stretch this definition

so that we don't have to nominate because I wrote down some of the other legitimate horror movies that were from 2011. And they were movies like Insidious and Scream 4 and Priest and Final Destination 5 and Fright Night and Paranormal Activity 3. And I included something like we need to talk about Kevin, which is an example of...

If you're including Take Shelter, I guess you have to include... we need to talk about Kevin. Neither of those are horror movies or thrillers. They're psychological dramas, right? But I mean, just like, but we need to talk about Kevin is more horror than take shelter in the fact that it ultimately is about the aftermath of a mass murder. You know what I mean? But I just, I don't know.

This is maybe me looking for a fight with the Saturn Awards where I don't necessarily need to. But like, they, I don't know. Not so, read picking a fight. Not me picking a fight. No, I would never. Rue never. Speaking of Rune ever, the fucking track record queens took it on the chin this week. Did they not?

Did they not in drag race? Okay, so, well, I mean, this is coming out eventually. People have their chance. There'll be another episode, I guess. I think, I don't mind the track record thing. I mind people talking. Talking like the Wikipedia grid is a thing when it's not a thing. But what?

There's no such thing as high low. I think they exist hand in hand. This idea that like, I don't know, that like, you can't get rid of Jane because Jane never finished below low safe. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. Low safe is not a thing. No, it's not a thing. But this is what I mean.

If this is like, it's technically a thing that someone can be low. It's a profoundly destabilizing thing to do to the season to get rid of. that queen. But if it means the death of track record as the be all and end all of who should win drag race, then I'm fine with it, is what I will say. Okay. What was your reaction? You were like, what is this bullshit?

I can't get heated about it the way that it appears some people have gotten heated about. I love being online less is what is my reaction. this because like I can just enjoy a program. I can just enjoy a program. This is true. This is true. But like, I don't know. I think it's good for the order that if you do, if you legit don't win a lip sync and you haven't done good in a challenge, then it can happen to anybody.

But. Yeah. That said, I genuinely thought that juicy was the worst in that challenge. And the fact that Rue really liked her was mystifying to me. I disagree with that. That's fine. I disagree. I mean, like,

I think it's, it was a fairly level playing field. It's just one of those things where it's like they could do whatever they wanted to do. It was more so that like, it was a bad challenge. Nobody really did horrible

enough to be like, well, obviously, they're going home. That's true. So it's just like you feel like given the history when someone like Plain Jane doesn't do as well. Not plain Jane.

like pattern of behavior is that the show would mask that and the show would be like no we've already decided oh not plain jade sorry jane don't i know who i'm talking about i know plain jane don't obviously plain jane did as it were cross across uh yeah you know households all right do people get mad when we talk about drag race like this surprising thing that the show uh that the show didn't like cover for her because they've definitely that was my first for other people in the past. Like, they clearly could have. They clearly could have fudged her into safe territory and not, you know, nobody would have added a-in-I. This is why the makeover challenge exists so that they can say whatever bullshit they want on the

judge's panel and then just get rid of whoever they don't want still in the competition. My secret theory, my secret theory, after thinking about it yesterday was, Rue was so pissed off at how bad everybody was at the puppet challenge. and in particular, somebody like Jane, who should have been good at the Puppet Challenge, was really bad, that she was just like, fuck this queen. Like, why am I keeping around for? I was so happy that they brought back the puppets, and then that happened. Oh, boy, they were all. And you could tell that, like, Roo was, like, legitimately pissed off about how bad that they were.

So that's my new theory. I do also feel like you're like, oh, you don't really have an opinion on this. No, I feel like my opinions are all completely subsumed by Survivor 50. And I just finished UK4 of Traders. So I got so much to say. I got so much to say about both of those things. And the drag race, I'm like, I'm just watching my little program at the end of the week. I wrote a thing about the brouhaha this week about how the edit has been mistreating the female characters.

And Angelina and Chrissy both publicly calling out the show for that for the editing discrepancies. and certainly, when you have a season where Zach Brown gets an entire third of an episode. Yeah, that was some bullshit. Like, you kind of can't also have a screen time discrepancy against so many of your female characters. I think it's pretty egregious with Tiffany, because I think that there is some interesting gameplay going on there that I would like to hear more about. I mostly am always in favor of hearing more about gameplay. I think ultimately if Tiffany ends up not being a factor in the long run of the game, then maybe that'll be more understandable.

The other thing is, it's a 24-person season. We've never had a 24-person season. There's just going to be less screen time to go around. It's also a season where the same tribe essentially has gone to tribal for the first five weeks. Like Christian, Ozzie, and Emily have been to every single tribal for the first five weeks. And the other thing was that I mentioned in my article was, in an all-star season, you are dealing with an entire cast full of people who, by and large, like, monopolized the edits in their season. And now they are dealing with the fact that not

everybody gets a lot of screen time. And I think that was a little bit of what happened with Angelina. Like, I don't, like, you went out in episode five. Like, I don't know if Angelina, I certainly would have liked to have seen more about her. But I think the person who goes out in episode five doesn't really have a ton of, like, leg to stand on in terms of, like, they should have featured me more. Particularly when there's not a whole lot of gameplay, at least enough to affect what's actually happening in the game. So it's like, and respectfully, like, I like Angelina, loved her on her season, but like,

I don't know what she was bringing to the team. I mean, I guess the point is that we wouldn't know because we didn't get a chance to see it. And so, like, yes, I understand that. Whatever was going on there clearly didn't affect the game. game. I think the fact that there are... Someone like Tiffany, I'm like, wait, let's go back there. What's going on?

Tell me more about that. I do think the fact that like the second they went back to bringing pre-COVID All-Stars back and all of a sudden you're getting like pre-COVID survivor tendencies like an alliance between Coach and Colby and Joe about honor and integrity. Like that that's a, you know, it's going to. twigs some people and it's going to flip some switches. And I... Well, but it's also just like such an obvious dog whistle.

But I do also think that like pre-COVID gameplay, not just pre-COVID, but like early survivor gameplay is the reason that like someone like Jenna goes home first. Yes. From what we saw of Jenna and I saw people upset that she went home first, I'm like, look at how she's playing. Yeah, but she went home first. But she played a very like post-COVID game. She was aggressive out of the jump, and she tried to make the biggest move possible.

And, like, I think if she was only playing with people, if it was, like, her and Surrey and a bunch of people from season 40 onward, I think she would have been fine. I think the fact that Christian and Emily and Devons were a little less, like, willing to just sort of, like, make the flashiest move possible is the reason why she went home. Like, if she was, you know what I mean? But I think that's at least interesting. I also feel like we're on episode five. If, like, Coach and Colby and Joe are, like, three of the final six, I'm going to be pissed. If that alliance... Yeah, because they're not interesting.

If that alliance gets, like, Kelly Wentworth at the Merge Tribal or something like that, it's going to be fucking great. And so I'm holding out. I'm holding out. We'll see. I'm also... I think Christians my number one at this point, because he's the most interesting player in the game right now. And I'm waiting for that fake idol that's at Tribal to come into play because they wouldn't have shown us that if that doesn't. I agree.

Come in. I agree. I also think Surrey's going to make the merge. The fact that they're merging at 17 is ludicrous, of course. But like, they let Surrey make the merge. They are going to regret that. Like, that's... I mean, I thought that, like, what Jenna thought at the beginning was the way every...

everybody was going to play in my perception of this season the whole time that I was like, well, everybody's just going to think that and try to get rid of her. But I, and I'm not patting myself on the back here, I, the before the season, the thing I said to you, that

like her path forward in the season is exactly what she's doing. Certainly the Rizzo thing played very much into that. Like, Rizzo essentially was like, I'm such a fan. Let's be in an alliance together. Well, and that's the most annoying thing about the new seasons, is that everyone's like,

Survivor is my life. I'm the biggest fan of this show. I've seen every episode since I was a child, since I was a baby watching the television. Blu-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-it's annoying. But, like, Ceri is the only one who, like, gets that that's what's happening and that it's so exploitable. I would be more excited for her if I could imagine the scenario that gets her from making it to final 7-8-9. to making it to in front of the jury.

Like, I just don't understand how she gets from there to there without, like, the show, like, dropping idol after idol, after idol in front of her like they did with Ben Dreamberg in that one year. And, like, maybe they will. I think we're seeing the beginning of that.

Like, I'm rooting for Christian now, because so far, I think he's been pretty smart and has been very interesting to watch. And, like, I didn't expect to be at this point and be like, I want Christian to win. Same. So, like, that is, like, fun. And, like, I always, like, kind of rooting for a surprise person, if I can.

Yes. Or I, like, being surprised is the way I should phrase that. But, like, Surrey, if that does really pay off, I think that's incredibly smart strategy. Well, like, clearly nobody else thought of. She's about to hit the merge where Emily and Christian, who were aligned with her before the shakeup, are still there. Aubrey, who was her best pal in Game Changers, is still there. Ozzie, who is her newfound best friend, is there. She's got a ton of fucking allies all of a sudden.

She might have just burned Devons, though, with the last vote. They didn't vote together. They didn't, but I don't think that was essentially a vote against him. I could be proven wrong, but I don't think, because he was also, voting independent of her as far as we know. You know what I mean? I think they were, you know, I think I think they will be back together after that vote. I think ultimately getting rid of Charlie doesn't harm Devin's too much that he'll hold that against her. I don't think. Anyway, that's a lot of reality. We can cut this all out if you want. No, I don't know. This is mostly us

unpacking it. I don't know. Listeners, if you hate us talking about this to the point where it like makes it less fun for you to listen to don't tell us don't tell us this episode I tell me the ass yeah

no that's true I don't yes okay all right so um tell us what you love tell us what you love all right wait

going through my like a notebook here to see if I missed anything um Jude law conspiracy blogger blogging is blogging is not writing

it's graffiti with punctuation I wrote down that line as well very 2011 kind of thought. Nowadays, his website is called truth serum now.

The wrong pigment. We didn't talk about how this movie was post H1N1. Yes, I wrote that down to. And I feel like that's something we maybe lose as a perceived overreaction to H1N1. Yes.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, nobody will ever talk about that again because that has been completely subsumed by COVID. Forciphi as I've ever talked about eating Taco Bell. Listen, I get it, honey. I do get it. I just want to watch her order and eat like a caeserito.

I want to know what Kate Winslet's go-to Taco Bell order is. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Like, does she know that chili cheese burritos exist? That's the type of information I need. Also, in that Daniel Radcliffe interview that I mentioned, that he mentions going to to my favorite impanata place in New York City and getting the cheeseburger empanata, which is such a...

Wow. Seemingly, like... Like, I don't know, low-class thing to get, and yet it's my absolute favorite empanada from that place, so... There is a certain thing about this movie that the bulk of it is, like, before anything gets, like, publicly bad. Like, the bulk of this movie

is at least for the United States, not in, you know, China. But like, it's like February 2020. The bullshit of this movie. Like, it takes an hour for there to be, like, a run on toilet paper. Well, it's also a much more severe. We should also say that.

Like, this is a movie where, like, it killed 25% of the people infected. Whereas, like, COVID was not nearly, that lethal. So, you know, if that's the difference with maybe that's what made everybody go crazy in this universe, then fine. I still think ultimately, even if COVID were even more lethal than it was, you still would have seen the reaction to it being ill-informed intransigence rather than, you know, violent action. This is also the Soderberg, like, mitigating the warm, fuzzy emotions of the hard cut from Kate Winslet trying to give the guy her coat

to her corpse in the ditch. Plastic bag, body bag, in a mask grave. That is harsh. It's like the darkest moment. It's so harsh. It's genuinely like Soderberg, like cutting, like stabbing you in the gut. It really is tough. Because, like, yes, you've already seen Gwyneth Paltrow die, and you're like, oh, okay, like, you know, Janet Lee at the beginning of Psycho, Drew Barrymore, at the beginning of scream, whatever.

I do feel like you hadn't quite internalized that like, oh no, Kate Winslet's definitely going to die. And then all of a sudden she's dead. So, yeah. Jude Law's little stupid-ass suit that he's walking around in. He's so infuriating. He's just, like, it's such an infuriating character in general. But yet also, right, he's doing, like, he's the conspiracy blogger, but he's also, like, oh, overdoing it with PPO.

You know what I mean? So it's just like it's mixed. It doesn't quite accurately nail what that type of person, you know. It's not quite getting the no mask ethos. It's not getting the Novax ethos, like that kind of a thing. Anyway, anyway, anyway. Good movie. Glad I finally saw it.

Glad I kind of like got that monkey off my back. So that's nice. Finally saw it post-COVID, you mean. Oh, yeah. Like, I had seen it pre-COVID, yes. We're going to do the reverse IMDB game this week instead of the IMDB game. Chris, do you want to let our listeners know how we do that? Every week we end our episodes with the IMD game, but this week we're bringing back the reverse IMD game.

How this game works is that instead of getting a name of an actor or actress to try to guess their IMDB known for, we will one at a time. and in order of the clue givers choosing, named the four films of an unnamed actor is known for. After each film, the guester can try to guess who that actor is. If they get it right, after one movie is named, they get four points. After two movies, it's three points. After three movies, it's two points. And finally, with all four movies are revealed,

a correct guess is one point. We've played this before. We keep a running score. I'm currently in the lead with 11 points. Joe has nine points. Chris, would you like to give first or guess first? You know, I just got to be rude and give first. Do it. Go for it. Not rude at all.

So, uh, wait a minute. So the person I've chosen for you for reasons that will become clear eventually. The first film on they're known for that I'm going to give you is a film called Big Nothing. Big nothing. Big Nothing. Have you heard of or seen the film? Big Nothing.

No, I haven't. Which sucks. Big Nothing is from 2006. It is rated R and 86 minutes long. The person I've chosen for you is fourth build in the film. You know how when you look on IMDB and you have the little thing where it tells you where a movie is streaming and then sometimes a movie is not streaming.

And then sometimes a movie is not streaming. anywhere. We've had this in movies we've tried to do before. And then you just have the little button that says search Amazon, meaning like you can search for, like, DVDs of that. This movie doesn't even have that. I will tell you, the first build performer is David Schwimmer. All right, I'm going to try and like reverse psychology, you know, and like where from contagion would you have, if you even did it all, if you weren't just like totally random. Okay. Would you have gone down the Gwyneth Path?

Would you've gone down the Soderberg Path? The path I took led me to Big Nothing. Okay, there's two people I'm sort of toying with. The one I'm going to say is Cody Horn. Cody Horn is incorrect. Okay. What's your second one? My second movie.

I'm sure you've heard of this movie. I don't know if you've seen this movie. Uh-huh. Your second movie is Ronan. I've not seen Ronan. But I know... John Frankenheimer film, Ronan. De Niro's in it?

It's on that poster, holding that gun. Sean Renaud, I think, is in it. I think. That's about as far as I've got. right, Ronan and Big Nothing from 06. See what I mean. You see what I mean. I do. I do. I don't like it. I'm not happy with this. My chances of getting a three-pointer are floating away.

Ronan, Big Nothing. I do feel like your tendency is to pick an actress. But Ronan feels very masculine to me. So, okay, Gwyneth Paltrow. Who knows? There could be a lady

in Ronan. There could be a lady in Ronan. I'm going to guess that it's... I think you did... Oh, what's her face? I'm going to guess it is, Oh, oh, no.

This is so fucking hard, Chris. I hate this. I already have a backup for how I'm going to throw out a chance for you to get a bonus point. No, no, I don't need pity, but thank you. No, it's not pity. I'm backing up my being an asshole with not being an asshole. I just feel like if those are your two movie, if those are two of you're known for, you can't have been in too many really well-known movies, which makes me think this is somebody who, like, maybe doesn't act very much.

But I don't think you would be, like, a person to, like, pick Gina Carano because, like, she sucks and you wouldn't pick somebody. I feel like you wouldn't be quite so mercenary. Right. That's the thing. Or 1998, which is Ronan. Oh, Ronin's that far back. Ronan is 1990. Right.

So, like, I can't pick, like, Odette. Bessa a Zion or whatever, because, like, this is just, like, too far back. She wasn't born. She wasn't born. Right. Exactly. God, I can't even think of a good one to just, like, throw it out there and just, like, toss something off.

I'm going to say that it is, um, oh, my God. Why can't even, I think, like, a random person? Just, like, a random, like, Jean-Renaud. Fine. I'm just going to say Jean-R-R-N-R-N-O, even though it's not. It's not Sean Rineau. Okay. Your third movie is, you know,

Solaris. Okay. So there's your Soderberg. I would, well, Jeremy Davies is so well known for TV and TV is like notoriously underrepresented

on this to the point where you could see Jeremy Davies having an all movies known for and it being like, oh my God, so none of the TV shows these known for are going to actually be on there and it's just going to be movies. and he's not in a ton of movies.

Who else is in Solaris? It's not violas. This is not... Natasha McAlone's not going to have... Well, this and Truman Show, and then two... Okay. Natasha McAlone, Jeremy Davies. I can't remember anybody else in Solaris.

Oh, my God. Okay, okay, okay. I'm going to say that it's Natasha McAlone. Natasha McElan is correct. Oh my God. Okay, good. All right. Would you like an opportunity to get an extra point because that was extra evil of me?

Sure. Her other movie and her known for, as you might imagine, is the Truman Show. So you have, in this order, Ronan, Solaris, the Truman Show, Big Nothing. Which of those four movies has the lowest IMDB star rating? You wouldn't be asking me this if it was Big Nothing. Maybe I would. Maybe I wouldn't. It's like, it's right here as I'm staring at the known for.

This is just a way to offer you an extra point because this was so hard. Did they really hate Solaris that much that they would make it a lower rating with Big Nothing? No, you're trying to give me a point, so I'm going to say Big Nothing. Big Nothing is incorrect. The answer is Solaris. You know what? I honestly didn't want a bonus point. So this is good.

Two points is good with me. Okay. Big Nothing has not a Big Nothing has not a big. Nothing. It has a medium something. It has a 6-7 and Solaris has a 6-2. Big nothing. The three people build above Natasha McAlone are David Schwimmer, Simon Pegg, and Alice Heath.

Sure, sure, sure. All right. Okay. Please also, when you have a free moment, check out the outfit on Natasha McAlone and her IMDP profile photo. It's awesome. On my way. Hold on. She looks like a great woman of country. Love her. A great woman of country.

Let's see. Oh, wow. She's got a little bit of the, like, the Farrell hat happening, but it's also a, well, it's got like... Unceivable bathrobe that's belted? No, she's definitely on a retreat in, like, Sedona, right? Like, they caught her, um, or it also doesn't... She's auditioning for a Taylor Sheridan show. Or she's auditioning for a Taylor Sheridan show where she's, like, a Confederate general.

And she's just like, is that a chain rope around that silk bathrobe? That's a whole look. It's a whole look. Natasha, you better work. You look gorgeous. Tasha, you better work indeed. Okay. Big nothing.

Good God. Okay. For you, your first film of the four, I'm giving you as Rock of Ages. Oh, there's a number of people in Rock of Ages. Julianne Huff is in that. Tom Cruise, Catherine Zeta Jones. Who would have it on their known? I think Paul Giamati is in that movie.

We should do a Rock of Ages movie. People will be like, and we'll be like, no, go with us. Who's going to have it on their known for, though? I think I'm just going to start with Julianne Huff. It is not Julianne Huss. Your next film, is, oh, I got to play this correctly.

Oh, see, you sometimes know about movies, even if you haven't seen them. I'm going to go with 27 dresses. Okay, so 27 dresses and Rock of Ages. Is it, it can't be James Marston. Is he in Rock of Ages? That would feel so rude to James Marsden to put Rock of Ages on is known for. I don't remember if he's in it, but I would believe that he's in it because he had that run of it. It was just like, oh, he's a hot guy who can sing.

Put him in the musicals. I don't think I can remember that many people from 27 dresses, because I really don't think Heigel is in Rock of Ages. and Judy Greer, I don't think is either. And I think we've done her known for before. So I'll say James Marston. It is not James Marston. Your third film is The Final Girls.

Oh, it's Malin Ackerman. There we go. Okay, yes. All right, I made the right decision then. If I would have done Final Girl second, you would have got it there. All right. So two points. So we tied in this one.

Hey, we did it, fam. Look at us. Final Girls, a movie I saw at Tiff, and really, really enjoyed. I really thought it was quite good. Very clever little horror comedy riff. Her other, her fourth film was, of course, Watchman, which is another movie with a lot of people in it, but I feel like she's more memorable being in that. I picked Malin Ackerman because the comeback is back, and I think she's going to show up at some point during the season. I'm just so happy. I'm so happy. I'm so... I mean, first of all, like, listeners, if you haven't watched the season, it opens with the joke that Valerie Cherish is on Broadway in Chicago, and then one ups its own joke that it's because of the strikes. And then I think the single visual in the premiere that got me to be like,

No, it's a great thing that the show is back. Is the site of a Writers Guild strike happening under a giant poster for the idol? They know what they're doing. They know what they're doing. I thought Fran Dresher was so funny in that scene, too, trying to take the picture with Valerie. Her little Gen Z, whatever, TikTok camera girl is Ben Stiller's daughter? I don't approve of that, but so it goes. All right, we've been doing this long enough.

I've got to get going. We're going to have to cut some of this. We are. All right, that is our episode, folks. If you want more ThisHad Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this had oscarbuzz.com. Chris, where can the listeners find you? Letterboxed and Sort of Blue Sky at Chris V File. That's F-E-I-O.

You should also check us out at Instagram, by the way, at This Head Oscar Buzz. I am on Blue Sky and Letterbox at Joe Reed. You can also go to Vulture, find me each and every day doing Cinematrix and Emmy Awards stuff. Now that we are in Emmy season, I'm watching all the TV shows. There are some pretty good ones. I'm enjoying the new jury duty. We can't get into it. I've been going too long, but I've enjoyed the new jury duty.

I should maybe try jury duty. You saw the first season, right? No. Oh, I think you would like it. All right. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork, Dave Gonzalez, and Gavin Meevis 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 out with Apple Podcasts visibility, so wash your hands and then dry them the way that like Zoe Cravitz does in Kimmy, where she just sort of like does that. Like, pats an invisible balloon. She pats an invisible balloon. And when you're done with all that and when they're nice and dry, you can write us something nice, won't you? That is all for this week, but you hope we'll be back next week for more buzz.

Bye. Thank you.