This Had Oscar Buzz - BONUS – We Like Her With The Bonnet

Episode Date: May 3, 2020

This May, we are kicking off our second ever miniseries by taking a month-long dive into the filmography and Oscar history of Naomi Watts. Coming this month: we’re talking Le Divorce, The Painted Veil, Diana, and St. Vincent. And to kick things off, we are bringing you a special mini episode to set the stage … Continue reading "BONUS – We Like Her With The Bonnet"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Hacks. I'm from Canada. I'm from Canada water. Oh, Chris, thank you. Next to me is Naomi Watts. Nominated for Best Actress for 21 grams.

Watts up. Look at these people. A lot of butterflies. You've waited quite a while for your big break. A lot of people thought you'd get nominated for Mulholl and Drive. How much more sweet is it right now for this nomination? It's really sweet. I have such faith in this film, and I'm proud of, you know,

have the experiences and the lessons learned and I'm just thrilled it's so honored all right you're the nominees for best actress in a motion picture drama Naomi Watts the impossible had Naomi Watts in 21 grand Naomi Watts the impossible Naomi Watts the impossible Naomi Watts st. Vincent Naomi Watts and 21 Browns. Naomi Watts, the Impossible. Oh my God, wow.

I kept for Naomi. Thank you to Fox Searchlight and the Screen Actors Guild. This was a wonderful experience, so collaborative. And Alejandro, you're a genius, and John Lesher, and come on. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that can deal with your infinite nature. I am your host, Joe Reed.

I am here with my co-host, Chris File. Hello, Chris. Hey, guys. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good wee hours, good insomnia time. Yeah, yes, good. Whenever you're listening to us. Can't sleep and need to listen to a podcast time, hopefully. Yeah, we are not here for a normal episode.

We are going to be very brief on this, for us it's a Saturday morning. Who knows when you are listening to this? But we are here to introduce what we will be doing here at the set Oscar Buzz for the month of May, which is talking about one particular actress and four of her movies. We are specifically mentioning Naomi Watts, the English Australian Shenthus. Perfector of American dialects. Truly, truly, one of her great assets. of her many great assets is she does a flawless American accent.

I wonder sometimes if the fact that she is both of both Australian and English extraction, whether that sort of, you know, I don't know. I don't know why that, scientifically why that would help with doing such a great American accent, but she really, truly is very good at it. Better than, I would say, better than her cinematic bestie, Nicole Kidman. Oh, yeah. And, like, Nicole's American accent isn't bad, but, like, listen to, like, her as, like, Chase Meridian in Batman Forever. And it's, like, it is a chewy American accent that, like, she's really kind of, you know, she's working it over. And in a movie like that, it really works because, like, everything about Chase Meridian is so dramatic. Like, but... Along with the rest of the movie. Of course. But, um, I'm trying to think of, like, a more naturalistic, Kidman American accent

that like Rabbit hole Yeah rabbit hole's a good one And yeah she's good She's good in Rabbit Hole But there's still a little bit of like You can always tell there's like Some Nicole behind there

It's just like there's a little bit of like Where did you come from those scenes with her And Diane Weist In Rabbit Hole And it's like And Diane Weist is of course like Salt to the Earth You know

And and there's a little bit of like Where did Nicole come from in this sort of genetic line but it's funny because Diane Weist had earlier played her aunt in Practical Magic and which is I think a more stylized movie and that one

you know there's you know Nicole's accent Hold on to your husband's girls Hold on to you that's such a great line God practical magic If only we could like totally just lie and pretend that Practical Magic had any kind of Oscar buzz whatsoever I know it did not

Sorry guys The thing about Naomi and like I think the dialect goes into this and like I want to be clear from the top we're not necessarily like digging on Naomi the way that the internet sometimes does. We want to be firm and saying that we think she is

great. She's interesting to talk about for our purposes because for somebody with two Oscar nominations she does kind of perpetually feel like she's on the outside of these type of conversations or like the unfulfilled promise. And I think

it starts from the beginning or at least, like, the beginning to, like, mainstream audiences, what she was introduced to. We are not considering Naomi Watts' direct-to-video Children of the Corn sequel that I had fully seen. Oh, really? Yeah, that was probably the first time I ever saw Naomi Watts, even before Mulholland Drive. Oh, that's so funny. Listen, I watched some garbage when I was young. How does it compare to the other children of the corn films?

Yes. I don't think I've even seen all of them, but it's all that one. That's our next year's mini-series is we're going to do all of the children of the corn movies. Malachi. But the thing about that is when she's introduced to American audiences with this, like, flawless American dialect and, like, the character that she's playing in Mulholland Drive and, like, the performance that she gives, it kind of, like, starts her off, her career off from this place of complete anonymity. right where we can't quite place her and like it sticks with her kind of right yeah i think the

thing about i mean if you want to just put the question out there like why why for our second miniseries our first miniseries we did on the films of 2003 and i think you can tell a pretty concise story there of well concise concise is sort of absurd when we talk about us there is there is nothing concise about our conversations about any of this um But you can tell a story about, you know, that year and the, you know, the hopefuls that crashed and that whole kind of thing. And I think why Naomi Watts is the actor when we chose to do a miniseries about a particular actor is you're right in the fact that like two Oscar nominations, she's been nominated in 2003 for 21 grams and then 2012 for The Impossible. And even with those ones, it still feels like we look to her upcoming performances as Oscar potential almost all the time. Like basically, like, once Mahal and Drive happened, and it was this, like, incredible for many of us, you know, debut performance.

We had never seen her before. It was such a, you know, announcement of this major acting talent. She was so good. And then she doesn't get nominated. And it was so much like. And, you know, there are many reasons for that. But for a lot of us, it was just like, God, like, how could that performance not be recognized by the Oscars that year? And so going forward then, there was this sense of, you know, how are you going to make it up to Naomi Watts?

And then that has, over time, evolved into Naomi Watts taking this series of projects that look really good on paper that seem really promising. and ultimately fall short for any number of reasons. She's always working with these, you know, major directors who have had major Oscar success. She'll work with Clint Eastwood on J. Edgar. She'll work with, I mean, John Mark Ville and Gus Van Sant and Dustin, Destin. And, like, all of these people who have just, like, have this really great reputation.

And it seems like, oh, well, this would be. a perfect opportunity for Naomi to sort of like knock one out of the park and get another Oscar nomination. Maybe she'll get her Oscar this time. And almost every time it's just like almost comedically, especially lately, especially once we get into later on in the miniseries, we're going to get into her work in the 2010s. And almost comedically, it's like clockwork. Every time she grabs a role in one of these movies by an acclaimed director, it's like, oh, what's their worst movie in, like, 10 years? Sea of Trees, for example.

Book of Henry ended Colin Trevoro's career. It's never, and it's never her fault. It's never, you never look at a movie and are just like, man, Naomi Watts is dragging that one down like an anchor. No, absolutely not. And it's like, even like, well, I guess Book of Henry is like a good example of that, too, where it's like she's always showing up to whatever movie that she's in. Like, she's not terrible in Book of Henry.

She's just asked to do absolutely ridiculous things. Yes, 100% true. And all of her choices are good on-paper decisions. You can, like, see why she would want to work with Gus Van Sand on the Suicide Forest movie. Right. Yeah. So it's not necessarily about rubbing, Naomi's nose in like no that is the failure that is not what we want to do we want to as with

a lot of things that we talk about here we want to sort of celebrate with a question mark you know what I mean just like just like what happened there like I think that's sort of one of our many like animated questions it's just like what happened there what was what was going on there even for things that aren't necessarily um poorly reviewed like we're going to be talking about the painted veil upcoming. That is not a movie that was poorly reviewed. And yet still, there was an impediment there. We've talked about I-Hard Huckabees several months ago on this show. And not only a movie we love, but a performance of hers that we love. She's fantastic in that movie. But there are reasons why it didn't happen. She's also a good performer to do, if we're going to do

miniseries about performers she's a good one because even though we have four movies and we've already done two if not more of her movies just j edgar and i heard hookabies right i guess that's right yeah um but we have these four movies we're doing we're doing la divorce the painted veil diana and st vincent yet there are still more options so many more have done so many more but like we wanted to focus on the ones that felt like we could focus more on her we've already recorded la divorce and it turns out you can't relate there's not a ton necessarily to say about her for that movie but like she has her face on the poster like it was advertised as a naomi wats movie like follow up to moleholl and drive but like something like the glass castle where

she's not in it all that much and we're going to spend more time like we would spend more time talking about like brie larson and sure um daniel credon yeah totally um you have seen fair game i have in fact I have not, and you've seen it fairly recently. Well, they did a re-edit of it for Netflix, maybe two years ago, maybe less than two years ago. Time has ceased to function. The re-edit everyone was clamoring for. I literally watched both of them together,

and I still can't quite tell what exactly was changed. The changes were so minimal, were so inconsequential to it. I didn't quite know what the point of it was. fair game remains a very middle of the road movie like there's there's and i love again great director doug lyman who has made some of um my favorite movies just in general directed go directed um edge of tomorrow and sorry live die repeat fuck off nothing makes me excuse me excuse me it is edge of tomorrow colon live period die period repeat is there a third period there might not be That would even make me angrier, because if you're going to do the first two, just, like, go the whole goddamn nine.

It should be live, period, die, period, repeat question, here we go again. All right, so I bring up fair game, though, because that feels like one of the options that we could have done, and I think we ended up choosing Diana over it, which feels like the right decision. But fair game is the one that was put her front and center. it, like, had a whole trajectory. It went to Cannes. Yeah. Then did, like, the Oscar gauntlet and fell down.

Yeah. It had the whole thing where there was the Kate Beckinsale movie from, I want to say, the year before. So it was like... Nothing but the truth. Nothing but the truth, which was actually pretty well reviewed, although nothing really happened for that one either. So, yeah, we wanted to take this time for a mini episode to sort of just, like, set the

table, because we do, in our La Divorce episode with Special Guest Bobby Finger. We kind of hit the ground running, and there's a lot of other topics besides Naomi. So we wanted to take this time to really kind of set the groundwork. She's an interesting, you know, sort of actress overall. As I, you know, as I mentioned, English and Australian heritage. She's Welsh on one side of her family, and Australian on the other, I think, is how it works out she was born in England, but she was, she basically spent her formative schooling years in Australia. That's where her acting career started. Her father was like a, a road manager for Pink Floyd, which is not a thing that I knew. Um, and he's on the money

track somewhere. Oh, one of the like, uh, I think I tangentially voices or whatever. Remember that from an interview with her. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. So she comes from a showbiz background. And he died in 1976 of a heroin overdose. So, like, that's a lot. That I did not know. Her older brother is a photographer. Anyway, so she moves to Australia.

She goes to school in Australia. That's where her career starts. She is famously very good friends with Nicole Kidman. They kind of come up together in Australia. They're in this movie that was released. I believe in 1991 in the States, called Flirting. It's sort of... Also starring Tandy Newton.

Right. Aussie boarding school, sort of like sex comedy with Noah Taylor, Tandy Newton, Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts. And it's funny because... Imagine that sex comedy with Noah Taylor. Yeah. It's funny. I'm...

Yeah. The sex comedy... But it's like, it does fit in that way because it's like all the boys in this movie are like pasty, skinny, sort of just like, you know, grody little cretons, these sort of like Anthony Michael Hall-esque in a oversized blazer. Yeah, yeah, basically, exactly. And so it's, it gets released in like 1990, 1991, but what's weird is, so this whole thing is like a boarding school comedy.

By that time, Nicole Kidman had already been in Deadcom playing like a fully adult woman who's like, she and Sam Neal go on this boat. The whole premise of Deadcom is that she and Sam Neal, who are married, go on this boat to, like, get their minds off the fact that they had a child who died in a car accident. So, like, she's playing... Deadcom kind of rules. Deadcom is fantastic. It's so good.

Billy Zane has never been hotter in anything than when he's playing a sweaty murderer. A sweaty rapist murderer. Oh, my God. It's, yeah, I guess I shouldn't, like... You'll feel so much conflict watching that movie, everyone. If you haven't watched Deadcom, you should totally watch Deadcom. But so now she's like, and she's back to playing this like, you know, teenager essentially in what to me looks like a ridiculous wig.

If it's not a ridiculous wig, then Nicole was wearing her hair very long during the flirty era, the flirting era. Anyway, that movie is sort of like a sort of curiosity. And her filmography, at this point before Naomi's filmography before we get to Mulholland Drive is really kind of fascinating so like as I said flirting in 1991 her next sort of like movie of any kind of note especially in the States she's in Tank Girl she's essentially the second lead in Tank Girl which is a movie that did not go over well but is very stylized it's very

Like Lori Petty, it's essentially Mad Max with a female protagonist and like, dumber. It's like Mad Max meets Super Mario Brothers kind of where she's, Lori Petty is this like post-apocalyptic, like whatever, crusader against Malcolm McDowell, who is the big bad guy. And there's water shortages, of course, because there's always water shortages. And Naomi Watts plays Jet Girl, who's like, you know, her second in command. and it's a really odd movie like Ice Tea plays this like man dog hybrid who like runs this gang of like man dog mutants or whatever it's very how have I never seen Tank Girl this sounds like exactly something I would love it definitely seems like something maybe we should watch together at some point soon because I either saw it back then or just saw a lot about it back then and I like

I weirdly retain a lot of information about that movie to the fact that, like, just watching a trailer of it, I was just like, oh, right, this is so fucked up and weird. Naomi's in, as you mentioned, Children of the Corn For The Gathering. She's the main character in that movie. It's like Magic, The Gathering. Yes, it is, and the magic is it went straight to DVD, or went straight to video, I guess, in 1996, it would have been video.

She's in that movie. Do you remember Dangerous Beauty? Do you remember seeing ads for Dangerous Beauty? I remember the poster for Dangerous Beauty. Right. A lot of like naked back imagery in Dangerous Beauty. And like a satin sheet. The whole thing.

So first of all, a couple of wild things about Dangerous Beauty. One of them is it's the story of a cortisan in the 9 or whatever, 1500s or whatever like inquisition times. Because essentially she becomes like so powerful and like influential as a cortisan that she gets tried for witchery from like the Inquisition and like essentially she's like encouraged to go into

the life of a cortisand by her mother played by Jacqueline Passett because she can't be with Rufus Sewell which how tragic that like your whole life goes down a certain path that leads to like you being executed by the Inquisition because you want Rufus Sewell. I mean tragic but also

if Jacqueline Bissette tells you to become a courtesie. do it. You listen to Jacqueline Bessette, even if she's drunk at the gloves. Right. Especially if she's drunk at the gloves. But so Rufus Sewell can't be with this woman, played by Catherine McCormick, because he's married, or at least like betrothed to Naomi Watts, who's like the noble, sort of like the boring noble woman, right? Anyway, Moira Kelly is in this movie. It's like totally wild, but the wildest thing is that it's directed by Marshall Herskowitz. It's one of the two movies that Marshall Herskowitz directed Marshall Herschvitz directed. of it's, of course, was the producing partner of Edward Zwick, who made, like, 30-something

together and my so-called life. And, like, they've done these, the whole, like, weird duality of Edwards-Wick is great television, really, like, kind of bad movies, right? So, we've talked about Edwards-Wick on the Love and Other Drugs episode. Is that the only Zwick we've done? It feels like we could do more. That is the only Zwick. He tends to get, only Zwick we can. He tends to get like one nomination in like weird categories. He's directed the last samurai. He directed defiance. All this starts off. Anyway. Okay. I'm so upset. I'm, I am so obsessed with this whole story you're telling me about dangerous beauty because now I guess I have to see dangerous beauty. But who is Naomi in

Dangerous Beauty? Is she of any consequence? She is the woman who Rufus Sewell is married to that, um, that he now cannot be with Catherine McCormick's character. So that's why she has to go become a cortisand. So like Naomi Watts is essentially the heavy in this movie. She's like the, you know, the good wife who probably, I haven't seen this movie either, but probably like rats her out to the Inquisition. You know what I mean? It's seemingly likely. She has an additional voice credit in Babe Pig in the City, which seems sort of like an Australian thing. And then... Speaking of Mad Max. Right. And then right before Mahal and Drive in 2001, she hit Sundance with a movie called

Ellie Parker, which also I've never seen. And I always assumed by the title that it was a costume drama because the title, Ellie Parker, just sounds like something that like a Jane Austen contemporary would have written or whatever. Oh no. It's like an extremely almost self-referential digital video indie about an actress who's like going on all these like ill-fated

auditions. And it seems sort of like a cross between walking and talking and slacker? Like, it seems very indie. It looks gross as hell in terms of, like, the digital video. Remember how we talked about the Tadthol episode? Yeah, Tadthol. Right, how, like, early digital video looked like absolute shit. It looks now like something that she filmed during quarantine.

Like, it has that sort of... She has better quarantine content than this, though. 100% true. Her Instagram quarantine content is. wonderful. Right. So it also makes me kind of curious, although I think I just from looking at the trailer of Ellie Parker, I think I'll hate it. But like

all of this early Naomi stuff really does make me want to go on a little bit of a rabbit hole dive down pre-Malholland Drive Naomi. Yeah, the Ellie Parker thing, I remember that because they like redid it or something.

They like remade it or made like a sequel. It was originally a short film. Yeah. And they, after she gets famous they like redo it in a different form and it's still it goes oh right right yeah then yes so it was the short film that was in 2001 that's right i have my i have it backwards it doesn't get released as a feature after moholan drive and then still went back to it like they must be like pals it's very possible it's very possible anyway it's look at it's look at it's It looks fully obnoxious, and I want to check it out. But then sort of, you know, the sea change happens.

Malhalla Drive, 2001. David Lynch cast both her and Laura Herring essentially from their headshots, which is very sort of like thematically appropriate to the movie. I'm sure that was not lost on him doing that. She talks about there's a... Well, what happened was I got called to go and meet with David Lynch. And his casting process is one that he looks at a stack of photographs and then he picks four or five that he likes.

Luckily, my brother took the photo and he liked that photo and I don't know, something honest must have come through. And if he meets, you know, if he picks up four photos and he's met girl number two and he loves her, goodbye number three and four. He's just very intuitive, David. talks in that funny voice. Okay, Naomi, now tell me about yourself. Yeah, oh, that was bad.

Okay. Gave her a chance to show off her fantastic David Lynch impersonation, which sounds like a cross between the actual David Lynch and like a Hollywood agent of the 1940s. Which is somewhat David Lynch. It is,

I've heard her do it elsewhere before. It's thoroughly unwell, but also shockingly. accurate and like this this goes back to her having like the perfect american dialect for someone who is not an american it's because she can do yes david lynch and i don't know who else could do david linch not even laura durn really does a good david lynch i've heard somebody else do david and and i've seen laura i also break that out but yes i think

naomi's naomi's lynch is top notch um oh one of the things before we dive into mohollan drive for a second. She was in an NBC series that lasted very short called Sleepwalkers with her and Bruce Greenwood and a couple of other sort of like, oh, that person from that thing, people, about a team of scientists who like enter into people's nightmares to like solve crimes or whatever. It premiered, as I said, 1997. It was part of a block of television shows that, NBC aired on I want to say Friday nights, Saturday nights. One of those nights that like don't get programmed anymore. It was there, yes, it was Saturday. It was their

Saturday trilogy. Where it was that and profiler, if you remember profiler and the pretender. So all these sort of like very high concepty shows that like network TV doesn't make anymore. Like network TV does not do sci-fi horror, supernatural or whatever. It was co-created by David S. Goyer who did the wrote some of the blade movies

Dark City some of the all of the Christopher Nolan's I can't remember Some of the Batman's yeah at least See when I saw this credit I thought that there was some odd chance do you remember Stephen King's sleepwalkers

The horror movie? I sure fucking do That looks like the Nightmare Jellicle Ball about to begin with all of the scary cats It, like, terrified me as a child. This is just an episode of me talking about trash horror movies that fully don't exist at all. No, I want to look up sleepwalkers for half a second. It was never a Stephen King book or short story.

I think it was, like, his first ever, like, exclusive screenplay. It stars the guy who played Holly Marie Combs' husband. on Charmed. Manchin Amick from Twin Peaks, you know, speaking of David Lynch, from Twin Peaks, among other things, currently Riverdale, where she's, last I watched

Riverdale, she was fucking amazing. And Alice Kriege, who was the Borg woman on Star Trek, among again, other things, where she's the like, she's the like scary mommy, right? So like Alice Crege and Brian Kraus, the main boy, are like, cat people.

Scary, sexy cat alien? people maybe and poor mention amic has to like is like dating this boy who seems like a perfect like blonde-haired corn fed like middle american boy and she's so terrified to discover that he's a cat monster and it's so bad but i have to imagine it got razzini nominations because it was one of those like it didn't that's funny it wasn't one of those like everybody agreed this is a terrible movie back then, but if you ever catch it on TV, it's wild as shit. So, like, not unrecommended, but that's not the Naomi Watts's Sleepwalkers. Naomi Watts' Sleepwalkers was different. Anyway, back to Mahal and Drive. Mahalo and Drive changed the game, though. She gets, National Society

of Film Critics' Kids Gives her best actress. Chicago Film Critics Association gives her best actress. She finishes runner-up at both New York and Los Angeles film critics. She finishes runner-up. She finishes runner-up to Sissy Spaceic in both of those. And if you're following the Critics Awards phase of the awards season, which is one of my favorite phases, because it feels like it's one of those like anything could happen. It's just before the Globe nominations, possibilities are wide open. And it seems like any single critics organization could tip the balance in one way or another or like throw somebody interesting into the mix and it doesn't always happen but

again hope springs eternal feels like especially lately it really doesn't happen the way that like it kind of used to that you could push someone like a Naomi Watts really close to a nomination right it it doesn't but i do think lately the major critics groups specifically new york and LA do seem to be taking it upon themselves to try to throw different names into the right they're doing their job and they're doing advocacy and trying to do what they can is just not as successful as it you see right Tiffany Haddish gets supporting actress from the new york critics regina hall for uh support the girls recently got a best actress citation they're they're doing their best to expand the season and that is you know appreciated so then

the Golden Globes happen. Golden Globe nominations come out. Mahalan gets Best Picture, Best Director, Screenplay, and Score nominations, but nothing for any of its actors, including Naomi. And that kind of snowballs down to ultimately, it only getting one Oscar nomination. Its sole Oscar nomination is Best Director, which I always find fascinating. And that's the second time that it happened to David Lynch. Right, because that was also the case with Blue Velvet. Yeah, yeah. That's why. That's a great. That's a stat up there with both Aangli and Alfonso Quaron having two best actor wins and no best picture wins. Yeah, what did I say?

I would love to see Angley win best actor. He deserves it. He truly does. He deserves all good things to come to him. Yeah. So, yeah, the Mulholland Drive thing with Naomi, obviously, Chris, you can speak to, there was category confusion for her. The campaign could have been more strong. it's one of those performances and like it feels kind of trivial to put it in terms like this but like it's I look back at her not getting nominated for it and it almost feels like complimentary to the performance because I think it is largely people didn't it took a while for people to realize even being told that she's playing two different characters like even when you're first watching it I don't think I think it might click into place with you at some point, but, like, there's not necessarily the explicit.

And, I mean, the movie, correct me if I'm wrong, but when it was advertised, you didn't know that there would be this whole other narrative in the back half of the movie, right? I mean, you can kind of expect that from David Lynch to an extent, but, like, right, the turn that happens after they go into the blue box, essentially, they put the key in the box and they sort of tumble into their, yeah, that whole thing was the big twist of the movie. That was the one that everybody tried to untangle and explain. And normally, I'm very resistant to, you know, explainers of big sort of complicated and intentionally confusing movies that sort of just want you to sit with it.

But I've read explainers for, there was a very, very famous one. I want to say Salon did for Mulholland Drive back in the day. And then I've also read explainers for Inland Empire. And Inland Empire, you're essentially just making your best guess as to what it's about. And that's fine. The movie is a lovely bunch of coconuts. It is insane. Uh-huh.

But I get a lot out of trying to untangle those plots, even though in many ways they're meant to be untangled. I feel like Mulholland Drive is pretty clear what it's about. Like when I read that explainer, I was like, yeah, that's what I thought. was just from seeing the movie. But I also kind of needed that. I needed somebody to just be like, yeah, that's what it is. That is what's happening. That is, that it is the fever, that the beginning of the film is this fever dream of this woman on the brink of suicide whose career in Hollywood has hit the skids, never became what it, what she wanted to be betrayed by, you know, lovers and friends and this kind of thing. And then she imagines this sort of idyllic life

for a young ingenue who gets into Hollywood, kills her audition, makes this friend who eventually, but then eventually sort of inexcerably it's led down a path

towards mystery and, you know, scariness. There's obviously all these like, because originally it was supposed to be a television series. Originally it was supposed to be

a television spinoff of Audrey Horn from Twin Peaks, like in its very, very initial conception. And then it was to become just a television series about the characters that we get in Mahal and Drive, ABC, at the last minute kind of balks at it. And it turns into this movie that has, as a television series would, you know, goes down a lot of these avenues that ultimately don't lead anywhere. And I think that's what one of the things that confused a lot of people was, why are we getting this thing with the PI? why is Robert Forster such a major character?

Why, why, oh, why, this creature behind the dumpster, even though it's one of the best scenes? One of the scariest things in all of cinema. See, I actually think David Lynch ties up a lot of those, like, hanging chads, if you will, by, like, making it part of her fantasy because Diane's, like, fantasy version of what she's creating in her head. A, the woman that basically, like, dumps her and, like, doesn't love her. back is incredibly reliant on her. So, like, that's the, like, fantasy vision she creates. She also creates this, like, vision where it's, like, maybe if it's not her, but, like,

whatever the casting situation that happens, it's not because of any lack of ability. It's that there's, like, this shady shadow organization going on that's calling shots that she has no control over and is obviously, like, a force for evil in this world. Michael J. Anderson, one of the great sort of mysterious figures in both Lynchian stuff, and also he was so good on that HBO series Carnival, if you ever watched that. I did not. Oh, so good. Anyway.

Anyway, she's amazing in the movie. And I just feel like if you watch that movie with the concept of, and like this goes back to the anonymity thing that I'm talking about, because if it's an actress that you don't know who she is, and like she's pulling off this American dialect and then showing up for interviews with an Australian dialect and it's like already creating confusion over a performance that like is so good

there is at least a period of time when you're watching the movie that you are not sure that it is the same actress. Well and there's it sort of paints the difference between a breakthrough performance from a star and a breakthrough performance from an actress.

And that's not to say that Naomi Watts isn't now a movie star but I think the Mulholland Drive performance is the kind of performance that announces the arrival of a great actress

whereas something like Jennifer, well Jennifer Lawrence is different because she had Winter's Bone but I always think of like Silver Linings Playbook it's not a surprise that Jennifer Lawrence won the Oscar for that because that is the arrival

of like this girl is a star and now I'm trying to think of a more appropriate sort of like debut performance that is but I think but I think what you're talking about is there are many ways for Naomi's performance to be so much in service to the movie that it doesn't um sort of give you this sense of it's it's Naomi she's here she's you know in bright lights and and above the title and all this kind of stuff. But it's also like that's a really interesting point to bring up that type of distinction because when you're talking about that

year's best actress race, it is stacked with especially Oscar's idea of a star that they want to annoy. Because the people she lost out to a nomination to, Hollyberry obviously wins. Nicole Kidman for Moulon Rouge, obviously.

Renée Zelleweger for Bridget. And Nicole had that year where she had the two great performances, Moulon Rouge and the others. Renée Zelleweger for Bridget Jones's diary. And then Sissy Spacek has like this huge comeback and in the bedroom and Judy Dench for Iris, which is like the one you could probably sub out. I remember almost nothing about that movie, but like this is the phase where they're

not going to nominate Judy Dench for anything because she is a star by like Oscar terms. Here's my question to you. Where do you think, if you were going to make a guess, where did Naomi Watts finish in the best actress voting that year. I would be willing to bet that she was not sixth place, because I feel like if Oscar really liked Mulholland Drive more, it would get more than a David Lynch nomination for Best Director and nothing else. Like, that could have been a score nominee. Lynch could have been nominated for the screenplay. I agree with you. Was she seventh, though? Because not only was there, there was, I remember the other women in contention that year, there was Tilda Swinton in the

deep end who... I can't imagine. for a while seemed maybe but like I remember her being like in that mix for a while and I can't remember whether she got a globe nomination for that or not but like she was definitely in the mix and then also there was all that talk of whether Kidman would split her own vote too much and not get nominated at all and I feel like I could see Nicole for the others showing up in six or seven places. Totally absolutely. And I would say maybe even Audrey Tootoo was above Naomi Watts. Oh, for Amelie that year.

I always forget about that. Because Amelie did so well. Which like that sounds crazy to vote for Audrey Totu over Naomi Watts. But I don't know. I just think there might have been more spread. There was also the talk of Jennifer Connolly possibly showing up in lead. Jennifer Connolly. Oh, right, because wasn't she SAG nominated in lead for a beautiful mind? SAG goes off of what you're submitted and like a clerical error, but like she is also a co-lead of that movie.

Yeah. Tilda Swinton, by the way, did get a Golden Globe nomination for the Deep End. She also got an Independent Spirit Award nomination for that movie. So she was definitely in the mix for sure. That's a really interesting year. But so not to like, you know, leave Mahal and Drive in the Dust. I do. love talking about that movie. But one more movie to sort of lead up to the door of La Divorce before we pass you on to our La Divorce episode is

The Ring, which is a movie that we talk a little bit about with Bobby on our La Divorce episode, but truly underrated as an acting achievement. I think people really love that movie for good reason. It's iconic for so many

of its images. But I just love her performance. We talk about it in the episode, you're right, because like, it is a performance that makes that movie work and a performance that makes that movie as scary as it is. But, like, I also, to, like, put the, like, finer button on the point, I think, like, that's one of the movies that she got most screwed for, because we talk about it in the episode about how, like, that movie made money.

She is the star of that movie. But, like, she was basically excluded from all marketing materials and, like, got no credit for that movie's success. It was Samara's movie. Yeah. Yeah, she's really fantastic. There's that scene that I always love to watch with her and Brian Cox, where she's yelling at him about, you know,

what did you do to your daughter and that whole thing? And it's ultimately, it's a Brian Cox scene because he gets to yell and holler and ultimately, like, electrocate himself in a bathtub full of TV monitors and extension cords and whatnot. It's, do you remember that scene? Yes, it's a fantastic scene. But, like, she keeps up with them in a way that, like,

I think we don't properly value how difficult it would be for an actress to keep up with and sort of go toe to toe to with him in that scene. I think she's really fantastic. I guess to, like, conclude the Mulholland Drive and her performance conversation before we get into the actual miniseries, the sad thing about the Mulholland Drive performance for me, because, like, with maybe the exception of Huckabees, it doesn't feel like, she's ever again placed with the director and she's worked with some of the best directors she's never placed with a director who can kind of use all of like the kind of gifts that she has

or like has a perspective on her performance and what she's doing that's ever really that interesting again until maybe loose just last year um did you see loose i did she's great Everyone's great in that movie. It's like Octavia Spencer's best performance. And not enough people saw that movie. So, yeah, like, it feels like she's always in these parts that, like, don't ever ask her to do as much as those movies do. We'll talk throughout our miniseries. We'll hopefully end up at a place where we sort of look ahead for Naomi and talk about what, you know, might be the kind of role.

that would do it for her. But, yeah, I think there's a temptation to sort of look at her career with a little bit of disappointment in that it really does feel like Mulholland Drive would have been the moment for her. And if that had come later in her career, that's maybe something that she could have won for. And yet, it's a performance that depends so much on it being early in her career. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It's a catch-22 in that way.

Prize. Yeah, yeah, totally. Anyway, we're very excited to be talking about an actress who, again, we both really love and we find her career fascinating. And this is not a month's worth of taken out a hit on Naomi Watts by any means. We could have chosen other people for that. Yeah, we could have, but it wouldn't be as fun. I wouldn't want to spend a month talking about an actress I don't like. Right, or I wouldn't want to spend a month like. ragging on Clint Eastwood who I don't like yeah totally exactly exactly

so anyway Joseph tell our lovely you will be with us where they can find more of you sure you can find me on Twitter at Joe Reed read is spelled

R EID you can find me on letterboxed under the same name Joe Reed R EID you can follow us also on Had underscore Oscar

underscore Buzz on Twitter and of course Chris personally they can follow you. At Crispy File, that's F-E-I-L, also on Letterbox under the same name. Yeah, so thanks. Thanks for

being with us. We're ready for a journey in the month of May. We hope everybody is staying safe and healthy and ready to go through a journey with Naomi with us. Yeah, we'll talk to this. To satisfy

It's no the Thank you.