The Top 10 Underseen Movies of 2024. Plus: James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd on ‘The Terminator’ at 40!

Sean remarks on the release of the Oscars shortlists in below-the-line categories, international features, and documentary features, before discussing his five most underseen movies of 2024 (1:00). Then, he’s joined by a rotating cast of Ringer colleagues to discuss each of their favorite underseen movies of the year (40:00). Finally, he’s joined by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd to discuss the 40th anniversary of ‘Terminator’ (1:59:00). Among other things, the three talk about the challenge of getting it made before their careers had really taken off, the filmmaking style, shooting on location in L. A., and the prescience of the story. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Chris Ryan, Mallory Rubin, Charles Holmes, Yasi Salek, Joanna Robinson, Rob Mahoney, Amanda Dobbins, James Cameron, and Gale Anne Hurd Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 1:29Sean Fennessey?

  This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail-biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime.

• 2:00Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessy and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about so many movies. We're getting down to the end of the year and there's so many titles we haven't had a chance to talk about. We're gonna get into a whole bunch of them today, a whole bunch of Oscar stuff. But first and foremost, probably the best movie we'll talk about today is a little film called The Terminator, and that's because later in this episode, I'll have a conversation with James Cameron. That's right, Big Jim, and Gail Anne Hurd. That's right, the director and producer team that shepherded some damn good movies into the world, including Aliens and The Abyss, and of course, The Terminator, which is turning 40 years old this year in 2024. This is a movie that changed blockbusters, science fiction, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cameron and Hurd's career, so many other things. Had

• 2:42Sean Fennessey?

  an absolutely awesome conversation with these two. I highly encourage you to stick around if you care about this film. In the meantime, though, we have some other stuff to talk about. Gonna talk about some underseen movies with some Ringer All-Stars, including our producer Bobby Wagner here on the call right now. But there's some news. The Oscar shortlist has hit, and so this is an annual tradition in which the Academy whittles down some categories, 10 categories, down to 15 or 20 nominee potentials. This is most notable probably for the documentary and international feature submissions. But I'm just gonna run through some takeaways that I had from this Oscar shortlist, because some of the stuff is critical to what me and Joanna and Amanda, when she comes back, will be talking about

• 3:26Sean Fennessey?

  over the course of the next two months. Top headline, Amelia Perez is not dead, not even close to dead, is probably as powerful as it's ever been in this Academy Awards race, even though the film has not been hugely critically acclaimed, even though the fact that most people who see it don't seem to love it, the Academy really likes it. In fact, this movie showed up on five lists, six times overall, including international feature, best score, best sound, makeup and hairstyling, and twice in the dreaded best song category. We will circle back to that category shortly. Wicked also made the list four times, very notable, another film that is incredibly strong right now at the Oscars. The substance is alive. We have not yet done a Best Picture power rankings for the month of December, but the substance making it or not making it is a huge point

• 4:11Sean Fennessey?

  of discussion that Joanna and I will have. This film currently made the shortlist for makeup and hairstyling, not for visual effects, but it did make it for makeup and hairstyling. That's notable. That means that people in the Academy are watching the movie. They're aware of it, at least in that branch, and they're getting ready to potentially recognize it when the nominees come out in January. Civil War, CR's favorite film of 2024, recognized in visual effects, but not in sound, which I find genuinely unnerving because if there's certainly something to recognize a movie for, it's for its sound work. Speaking of interesting snubs, blankings, Bobby Wagner's beloved Furiosa, nothing here, nothing here.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Do you have anything to say for yourself as the president of Furiosa Hater Nation?

• 4:51Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not a hater.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  For what you've done to that film and the craftsp people who created it?

• 4:55Sean Fennessey?

  I've done nothing to them. I've merely cited that I think it's a seven out of 10, which is, there's nothing wrong with that. I don't think it's a masterpiece. I apologize to those who do, but it was not recognized, not in sound, not in visual effects, not in any of the major below the line categories here at the shortlist. Not a good sign for Furiosa's chances in any other category here.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  We take Mr. Miller for granted. We do. I mean, it's not Mad Max and people, I think particularly like when you have sci-fi, which the Oscars is not well-known for rewarding over its many, many decades, and they feel like they have already anointed a previous version of this film in this universe. I just don't feel like they felt the need to do that. And even if they do feel accused for not doing it, they'll just point to Dune 2, which is fair, because I think Dune 2 is a better film.

• 5:47Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I'm starting to-

• 5:48Speaker 03

  And it has more momentum.

• 5:48Sean Fennessey?

  I'm starting to have some concerns about the recognition for Dune Part 2, if I'm being honest with you. I think Wicked's below the line chances are growing by the day. But you're right, Fury Road was, I think, received 10 nominations and won six Academy Awards. And so, yeah, maybe there's a little bit of a too soon aspect to this where that film is only nine years old. But anyway, Furiosa's gone. I think this also means Saturday Night is gone because Jon Batiste's score for that film was also not shortlisted, one that I think at the beginning of Oscar season, many people felt had a chance. I think I might have included Saturday Night in one of my, maybe in my- Big bet? Is that possible? God, that was a long, long time ago when Amanda only had one child.

• 6:29Sean Fennessey?

  Other notable takeaways here, the international race, which I'll run through all the potential nominees out of the 15 that were selected, but Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cloud, which was the Japanese submission, was not recognized here, unfortunately. Kurosawa, someone you've heard Adam Namon talk about on the show quite a bit in the last 12 months. I'm a huge fan of his work as well. I still haven't had a chance to see Cloud. Actually, I've seen only Chime, his short film from earlier this year, but Cloud did not get in.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  I have, I have some news for you about your big Oscar bet and Saturday night. You included it in Best Picture.

• 7:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I thought I did. I thought it did. Amanda did not.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  She did not.

• 7:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. She's, I know for a fact that she's since seen the film.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah? Are you willing to share her take?

• 7:11Sean Fennessey?

  No, because I want her to be able to come back and do her whole, like, here's what I saw, and here's what's great, and here's what you're wrong about and all that. She had some strong takes about the Tracy Letts episode that are definitively wrong, but I'll let her explain some of those when she comes back.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Okay. You mean the most beloved podcast episode in the history of podcasting?

• 7:30Sean Fennessey?

  People, people enjoyed that. People, that was a very warm reception.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  Tracy was great.

• 7:35Sean Fennessey?

  Very nice. Some wonderful guests, arguably the greatest guest of all time, and that is a challenge to all of our recurring guests who we love on this show.

• 7:42Sean Fennessey?

  Good news, my three favorite film scores of the year were all shortlisted. That includes Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's Challenger score, Chris Bowers's score for The Wild Robot, and Daniel Blumberg's score for The Brutalist, which is now available to stream on Spotify. You may not want to stream it before you see the film, but once you start streaming it, you'll know why I keep going "ba na na na" on this podcast over and over again because it moves me to my core. Hans Zimmer's work in Dune Part II, speaking of Bob, deemed ineligible. Did you hear about that?

• 8:13Speaker 03

  No.

• 8:14Sean Fennessey?

  I think because there's too much previously used material.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Oh, from the, from Dune Part One.

• 8:19Sean Fennessey?

  Notably, though, Wicked eligible, despite the fact that it's from a Broadway show and should otherwise be ineligible. Hmm. A conspiracy? Perhaps.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  You should start doing wicked conspiracy theories. From what I've learned on the internet in the past few weeks, it does numbers.

• 8:38Sean Fennessey?

  It certainly does. Uh, I'm trying to not talk about Wicked too much if I'm being honest with you.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  Good idea.

• 8:43Sean Fennessey?

  Alien Romulus, three times on the list here. Pretty incredible. Also on the list, Wild Robot, three times, and Gladiator 2. So, shortlist is a weird thing. It does not indicate necessarily strong Oscar chances. You see Romulus?

• 8:59Speaker 03

  I did. I liked it a lot.

• 9:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's good.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  It was a very solid three and a half star movie. Was legitimately scared and legitimately impressed.

• 9:06Sean Fennessey?

  A furioso.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Computer-generated imaging in the film. It looked very good.

• 9:11Sean Fennessey?

  It did. Um, one other thing to cite here that is also related to your interest, Bob, is that Diane Warren was recognized for her original song for The Six Triple Eight, which is a forthcoming Tyler Perry feature on Netflix. Diane Warren, of course, has been nominated many, many times. I believe 16 times for an Academy Award and has never won. I haven't heard this song. Doesn't seem like a song she'd win for. And yet, the Oscars keeps dragging her to the dance and telling her that she has to go home empty-handed. Very sad. I saw the TV Glow, which had a number of original songs. It was not recognized in the shortlist. How do you feel about that?

• 9:47Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm pretty upset. Cause not only did it have a number of original songs, but it had a number of original songs targeted directly at guys like me. BB Bridges onstage singing a song and I saw the TV Glow? That's sick.

• 10:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, not according to the Academy voters. You're a little out of the demo, or they're out of your demo, is maybe more like it.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  And I'm okay with that. I am. Although I do like the Brutus score and I like it even more when you sing it here on this podcast.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Do you think that counts as a Spotify stream when you sing it on a Spotify original podcast?

• 10:19Sean Fennessey?

  Daniel Blumberg, do not hit me up for royalties, bro. I'm just praising your work, which is exceptional. International feature, let's just go through the list of films. I haven't even seen all of these films. This is the time of year when it becomes clear to me kind of what I have to knock off of my list so that I can hopefully competently discuss some of this stuff. I've seen quite a bit. I know you've seen a couple of these as well, Bobby, but so international feature. You know, the way that this works is that a nation has to submit a title and only one title from each country can be submitted for the international feature Oscar. I don't think it's going to be this way for too much longer. I think everyone realizes this is not a good way of doing this. One of your favorite films of the year, All We Imagine As Light, is an Indian film, but India did not select this film. And so the likelihood of that movie being recognized at the Oscars is significantly

• 11:03Sean Fennessey?

  lower, even though I think if it were eligible here, it would be here and maybe could have a chance to challenge Emilia Perez, which is by far the frontrunner. But this is a pretty, even though they've changed the name of this award from Foreign Language Feature to International Feature, I think there's still some evolution that's required, but nevertheless, I'll tell you the titles of the films. From Brazil, it's I'm Still Here. From Canada, Universal Language, a film I really liked and was happy to see here. From the Czech Republic, Waves, which I've not yet seen. From Denmark, I just saw The Girl With The Needle. That's added here. From France, Emilia Perez, of course. From Germany, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, we've talked about a few times on the show. From Iceland, Touch, which I believe is the Balthazar Kormaeker film that Focus put out earlier this year. From Ireland, Kneecap. C R and I discussed it very briefly.

• 11:47Sean Fennessey?

  I saw it back at Sundance, incredibly fun movie. From Italy, Vermiglio, which I'm about to watch tonight, so I'm looking forward to that. From Latvia, Flow, which you will hear about later on in this podcast, exceptional movie. From Norway, Armand, which stars Renata Renzvi. I have not yet had a chance to catch up with this one. From Palestine, From Ground Zero, I've also not had a chance to see this. From Senegal, Daume, Maddy Diop's new movie, which I just saw on Friday and is streaming on movie right now, and I highly encourage people to check out. From Thailand, How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, which I've heard great things about, but has not yet been put in front of me, so hopefully I'll see that one soon. And then, last but not least, from the United Kingdom, Santosh, which I've also not seen, but will probably see before the year is out. Anything jump out to you about this, Bob?

• 12:31Speaker 03

  I actually think I've only seen one of these. I've only seen Seed Of The Sacred Fig. Universal Language is high on my list of movies that I want to see and haven't seen, as well as Daume.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  But I have a lot of catching up to do here. I think what stands out to me is that- It just feels as Byzantine and silly as ever, the way that this category is structured. We didn't need like a second layer of political machinations to the Oscars. Like, that's what the Oscars already is. We didn't need like a pre Oscars, before the Oscars, where like people in rooms decide what even gets nominated. You know what I mean?

• 13:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's a, it's an interesting thing because when there's a country that controls its sort of arts councils that make these decisions, then invariably any film that is critical of the governing body of those countries is not likely to submit a film with those criticisms. And then you have these workarounds, like in the case of Seed of the Sacred Fig, which is from an Iranian filmmaker named Mohammad Rusolov. And, you know, the story of how he made the film, to me, is more remarkable than the movie, and I think has been helpful in campaigning for the movie. But this is a, it's the German submission. And there are some reasons why Germany is able to submit a film like this, even though the film is entirely about an Iranian family.

• 13:47Sean Fennessey?

  So, um, yeah, there's some shenanigans, I think, in the way that this is all strategized and worked against. It reminds me a little bit of when you would have, um, you know, oh, God, what were the, who were the two brothers? One of whom played for England and one of whom played for, I think, Cameroon in the World Cup, even though I think they were both English citizens. And you were like, well, how can one guy be on that team and another guy be on the other team? Or maybe, no, it was Ghana. It wasn't Cameroon. It was Ghana. God, I can't remember their names. Two really, really talented soccer players, I think, who both played in the Premier League. But, um, it's this sort of thing where you're like shifting what the home countries can and should be in a system that already has a lot of flaws.

• 14:30Sean Fennessey?

  So I, I really feel like this is ripe for an overhaul, given the way that world cinema has profoundly and positively influenced the Oscars in the last five or 10 years. Like, this is a shift that just, I feel like, has to be made.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, and those are the Boateng brothers.

• 14:44Sean Fennessey?

  Boateng, thank you.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Germany and Ghana.

• 14:46Sean Fennessey?

  Germany.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  And Kevin Prince played for Ghana, and Jerome Boateng, who was like a very famous, very important player for the German national team. I just think that it kind of like, if you... Reverse engineer it, it kind of encourages the wrong things because so many of these independent or international, smaller budget movies, like the Oscars boost for these movies helps them to get made in the future. The idea that it might get an Oscar nomination and get put on the shortlist. And so if the, the production companies, the financiers of these movies are already thinking in advance, no, we're not going to finance this because we know that it's too critical of the country or the governing body that it's being created in. It's just really, really, really narrowing the types of stories that get told and then get rewarded at the Oscars and then put on a much more international stage for more people to actually see, which I think ultimately maybe isn't the goal, but should be one of

• 15:31Speaker 03

  the goals at least, to get more people to be able to see these movies from, from younger filmmakers, from more experimental filmmakers.

• 15:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think it's, I think that the Academy has done an amazing job of widening the expectation for the first time really in about 35, 40 years. In the 1970s, if you look through the nominations, you can see all kinds of international. I was just reading about Fellini and I'm, I'm thinking of doing a Fellini rewatch in 2025. And Fellini was recognized in multiple categories, in screenplay, in director, in international film, all through the late 60s and all the way, maybe all the way up through the early 80s. And he was kind of a consistent presence, even though he didn't make any films in English. And then that kind of went away and went very quiet in the 80s and 90s and has had a bit of a comeback, especially as the Academy has widened and deepened its bench of voters. So this

• 16:21Sean Fennessey?

  is just a remnant of old administrations and old thinking that has got to be changed. Let's talk quickly about documentary feature. I've seen quite a few of these films, though not all of them as well. They include, they are The BB Files, Black Box Diaries, Daume, which is also an international, Daughters, Eno, Frida, Hollywood Gate, No Other Land, Porcelain War, Queendom, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, which I'll get into momentarily, Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, Sugarcane, Union, and Will and Harper. A number of these movies debuted at Sundance. In fact, more than half of them did. I wanted to point out two, well, two movies that I haven't seen, one of which I think

• 17:04Sean Fennessey?

  you have seen. I haven't seen Eno, which is a documentary about the famed British music producer Brian Eno, who has, you know, one of the most incredible discographies of any person alive, anybody in the history of pop music, and also someone who has a very distinct and fascinating working style. And that, that style is reflected in the way that you watch the movie, which it has a kind of generative component, where every time you watch it in a movie theater, it is a little bit different than the way it had been previously shown. It's a little hard for me to explain how that works because I have not yet seen it. But the film, you can't stream it at home. It only shows in movie theaters. And because of this generative component, which is correlated to Eno's philosophy as a, as a producer and musician, it, it needs to be like in a very closed

• 17:49Sean Fennessey?

  and controlled environment to experience it. They're working on ways to share it with the public so that the same generative experience can go on. But I find something like this fascinating because this is very different from a movie like Frida, which is a, you know, fairly standard but creative biopic about a famous artist, or Will and Harper, which you can just stream on Netflix, you know, and is about Will Harper and Harper Steele and their, or excuse me, Will Ferrell and Harper Steele and their longtime friendship. Or even a movie like Union, which is a fascinating story about the unionization efforts in warehouses in Amazon, but does not have distribution at the moment. And there are no company has taken on the, the distribution. So the filmmakers are distributing the movies sort of independently

• 18:33Sean Fennessey?

  and trying to put it in as many theaters and single screens as they possibly can. One of the reasons why I think is because it's just a very complicated issue politically and rhetorically for those filmmakers. And Amazon, of course, is a big player in Hollywood these days. But I think you, you did see No Other Land, right Bobby?

• 18:53Speaker 03

  I did. Yeah, I saw it at New York Film Festival. It's incredible. It's remarkable. It's stunningly of the moment. You know, it captures something that has been so at the forefront of political conversation in the entire world for the last two years. And yet, at the same time, it is that timeless style of documentary filmmaking where it just puts you right there, right in front of everything. And the person, the subject of the documentary is also like a social media documentarian himself. And so his contributions are kind of meta in a way, too. And I thought it was phenomenal.

• 19:32Sean Fennessey?

  I'm really looking forward to seeing that. That film, Just Like Union, still doesn't have a distributor, I think, because I think the perception is just that this is, one, a very hard film to market and sell to audiences. And two, you know, is a controversial subject matter that no one that is in the business of trying to make money wants to have to choose a perspective on. Obviously, part of the film, as I understand it, is that it's not that kind of proposition, that it is about trying to understand the war with a significant more amount of depth and complexity. Is that fair to say?

• 20:04Speaker 03

  In what sense?

• 20:05Sean Fennessey?

  In that it's not like, it's not a political film that is sort of like, you must choose a side in this conflict.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  It's not like that. It's more about the ramifications of the actual events themselves in the sense that it displays the lives of people who are being displaced by the conflict between Israel and Palestine. It tells the story of the IDF coming in and trying to move these Palestinian people out of their homes because they're trying to expand their military operations and turn this space, this land, into more of a military base. And that's why they claim that they have the justification to be doing that. And it tells the stories, like, literally from the inside of the homes, like, as they're being torn down.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  So, obviously, as you allude to, politically explosive subject matter in an elevator pitch, I think, the way that it plays out, I would challenge anybody to watch this film and not be able to... Find empathy with the people whose lives are being displayed, you know, but obviously corporations don't always think that way in terms of how they distribute these movies because it's hard to get people to watch movies that are hard to watch. And it is, it is hard to watch. I mean, I'm not going to say that it's not. But, but again, yeah, this is a movie that's in my top 10 of the year. I think it's, it's an incredible act of documentary filmmaking.

• 21:28Sean Fennessey?

  Both categories will be interesting tests of the new academy and the kinds of films that they're interested in and the kinds of stories that they want to tell. I would say, hard to say not having seen Eno, but essentially every other film that is on the documentary feature list could be perceived as a film with a strong political point of view, a strong ethical point of view even perhaps. So, uh, you know, that's not uncommon here, but one thing that has been noted is that the documentary branch in particular is very esoteric and very unpredictable. The fact that, you know, Will and Harper and even Daughters and even Frida and Sugarcane all made it, even though they were kind of presumed to be like a little more mainstream,

• 22:12Sean Fennessey?

  a little bit more frontrunner-y, is fascinating. Sugarcane is available to watch, I believe on Disney Plus right now. Daughters is available to watch on Netflix. I mentioned Daume is on Mubi at the moment. Will and Harper on Netflix as well. Remarkable Life of Ibelin on Netflix. Netflix is always a big contender in this category. They tend to acquire a lot out of festivals. They've, some of these are darn good films. I'll talk about one of them in a minute. That's more or less my thoughts on the shortlist. We'll see. We've got, I think, exactly one month until the nominations come out and we've still got a couple of more movies that are going to open wide over the next few weeks that are going to impact the conversations and the expectations. I don't know what the fuck's going to happen. I'm being, if I'm being perfectly honest with you, this is-

• 22:58Sean Fennessey?

  This is, in theory, very exciting. And when I talk to other people who spend time thinking about this and even creating content around it, they're like, isn't this great? But for me, ball knower, man for whom it is important to know things and get things correct.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:15Sean Fennessey?

  Not ideal. That's my, that's my frailty. That's my flaw. That's a sad truth about me. But it is a truth and it's important for me to express it here.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  Are you going emo boy mode on me?

• 23:27Sean Fennessey?

  I just, it's important to, to know where the weaknesses are, you know? Like I, I'm, I've been having some oblique issues physically. You know, I'm, I'm pursuing physical therapy. I have to, I have to solve these problems.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  So you gotta get in on the yoga game, bro. This is my new, I, I've come back to yoga. I was a big yoga person in college.

• 23:46Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  And then I got a job and I was like, what if I didn't do this? What if I didn't dedicate time to this? But you gotta get back in that.

• 23:52Sean Fennessey?

  Who are these people that just go out and do things at 1:30 PM on a Wednesday? That just for themselves, that are not part of the, the act of working? I don't know, I don't, who are these men and women?

• 24:04Speaker 03

  I want to be really real with you, like it's me a lot of the time because I work west coast hours, you know? So it's like 5:00 PM when we're doing our pods for me.

• 24:11Sean Fennessey?

  Sometimes you're on with me at 9:00 PM your time. So it's, it's a different scenario.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah. Can I, can I posit you a small theory about why the race feels so mysterious?

• 24:21Sean Fennessey?

  Please.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  There's just no frontrunner. Like so many movies that we thought might come out are either getting pushed back till next year or came out and didn't quite do what we expected them to do. And so the frontrunner, frontrunners are weird. The fact that Enora has been a frontrunner for as long as it has been is just like, by conventional Oscar wisdom, like kind of wrong. You know what I mean? Like kind of, it's unfamiliar to us and it almost feels like in a way, you know, when Parasite ended up winning, I think Parasite was kind of like, more like an Enora. A beloved film from a filmmaker that people have a big relationship to, but maybe is not super mainstream. And then it wins, it's this upset, we're all so happy, you know? But we don't really have something for it to upset necessarily. And so by default, we've been saying, okay, maybe Enora is gonna win best picture. That's kind of weird, right?

• 25:07Sean Fennessey?

  No, you're right.

• 25:08Speaker 03

  Talk about that for nine months.

• 25:09Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's a, it's a great point and a great point of comparison because in that year, I very vividly remember the weekend after Thanksgiving, going to see 1917. And 1917 having this huge surge over those six weeks towards the end of the year. Where, one, I still like that movie quite a bit. I was really impressed by the way that it was made. And I, when I saw it, I thought to myself, ooh, this could really displace all of the frontrunners. Which at the time, I guess, were sort of like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Parasite, Marriage Story, Ford Ferrari, whatever, you know, on down the line of films that came out that year, the best movie year in a while. And 1917 didn't quite get there, but it did the thing that you're talking about, which is it disrupted

• 25:51Sean Fennessey?

  the momentum of a movie that could have been seen as a frontrunner or one that could have risen to the top. I'm keeping a Nora in that place as far as I can tell, because nothing has really come along that has really displaced it. The brutalist, I, I think is too big and arthouse-y, but there is a world in which it's slow rollout over the next six weeks works in its favor. I am not discounting that. Joanna and I will get into all this at, at the end of this week and we'll talk about the different permutations and what's rising and what's falling, but it's been interesting so far.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  I just bought tickets to see Brutalist again. 9am on a Sunday morning. Let's get it.

• 26:27Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's a great way to do it, because then you can get out and you can get a giant sandwich afterwards.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  That's precisely my plan. That's life in the big city, baby.

• 26:35Sean Fennessey?

  Huge turkey sandwich right afterwards, like after see our, uh, beds down his wife.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  His wife hawk to a girl, you mean?

• 26:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, of course. Hawk to Orion. All right, let's talk about underseen and underappreciated. We're gonna go down the list with some Ringer staffers, including Bob, but I just, for the, for the record, I want to state I've seen, as of today, 307 new releases from this year. I'm still doing this thing where I'm trying to see as many of the new releases as I possibly can. Honestly, one, because I'm, I'm ill and everyone knows I'm ill, but two, because I'm trying to do a good job with the show. And like, to me, like, the purpose of the show is to present the contemporary cinema in a sincere way, celebrate what needs to be celebrated, set aside what maybe doesn't need to be celebrated, unless, of course, it's kind of unignorable. Um, I've already seen actually 11 2025 films as well, so I'm, I'm starting to make moves on next year, Bobby.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  Time traveling.

• 27:27Sean Fennessey?

  You, you are traveling? Oh, I'm time traveling.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  You're time traveling.

• 27:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Well, the studios now, I think, have figured out that It's good to show me earlier rather than later. So I don't know what to make of that.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  Is that because your brain turns into mush by the time you've seen about 200 of these movies? In the last 100, you just, you can't remember?

• 27:44Sean Fennessey?

  You know, as a man who sat through Mufasa at 11 a.m. yesterday, the answer to that question is yes.

• 27:51Sean Fennessey?

  I did want to spotlight a couple of movies that I didn't get a chance to talk about, or maybe didn't get a chance to explore in depth before we let some other folks do the same. So I'll just go through my list really quickly. My number one pick is Christmas Eve in Miller's Point, which is a movie by Tyler Terramina. You may have seen his first film, Ham on Rye, which was a bit of an indie sensation. I think IFC distributed it in 2019. This movie is fascinating. It stars Matilda Fleming, Maria Dizia, Ben Shankman, Francesca Scorsese. That's right, Martin Scorsese's daughter, Elsie Fisher.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  The goat TikToker.

• 28:24Sean Fennessey?

  She truly is. Sawyer Spielberg, Greg Turkington of On Cinema at the Cinema, Michael Sarah, a handful of other folks that you'll recognize. This movie, which is a kind of impressionistic, emotionally flashing series of micro events that take place all in one home on Long Island on Christmas Eve night, is the most Long Island thing that has ever happened in movies. I have never seen the experiences of my own life as a person with a huge extended family and a child of divorce with multiple extended new second families and stepfamilies.

• 29:06Sean Fennessey?

  I've never seen that experience rendered so deeply, profoundly, humorously, and oddly in the way that only Long Island can be odd, or though maybe New Jersey as well, as this movie does. Miller's Place is a place on Long Island. Miller's Point is not, but it is very clearly a stand-in. Tyler, the filmmaker, is from Long Island and you can fucking tell because he's got the beats down. He's got a very interesting kind of roving camera filmmaking style. You can see definitely some Robert Altman influence in the way that he sets up sequences. You can see like a very sincere, but also subtly sarcastic aspect to this.

• 29:43Sean Fennessey?

  This movie is streaming right now on AMC Plus. If you are a subscriber to that service, which I think is incredibly underrated because you get AMC and you get Shudder. And you get IFC all in a bundle. Not bad. It's also on VOD if you're not a subscriber to AMC Plus. It's just about one night at a family Christmas party on Christmas Eve. And that's the whole thing. Then like the teenagers who are hanging out there and maybe some of the things they do. Very simple, very straightforward. But a very beautiful and fun movie that I encourage people to check out. My next pick is a movie that I have used as a punchline for Amanda a few times, but that I am sincerely recommending here. It's called Hundreds of Beavers.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  It's a lot of beavers.

• 30:22Sean Fennessey?

  It's a lot. There are hundreds of them. You may have heard of this movie. It's finally available to stream on Tubi, the greatest streaming service, as we all know. It's directed by Mike Cheswick. It's written by Cheswick and Ryland, Bricks and Cole Toos. He is also the star of this movie. The the logline of this movie, I don't think does its service. The logline is a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero. And become North America's greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers. So that makes it sound like it's a prequel to The Revenant. And that's not at all what this movie is. This movie is like it's Buster Keaton meets Jackass meets a Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

• 31:03Sean Fennessey?

  Like it is pure slapstick, Marx Brothers, silent film. Ralph Bakshi animation, all kinds of crazy, wild, persistent, durational comedy gags. Like every time you think that they have topped the best possible gag they could pull off with these beavers in giant suits. They go to the next level. Extremely funny, extremely fun. I never got a chance to see this movie in a movie theater. I've been told this is the absolute best way to see it. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do so, but even at home, I really, really loved it and give it a try. It's like, maybe this is the product of having seen 300 new movies, but something that is this different and this creative, I think is worth recommending.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  I saw they did like a, I didn't see it yet, but I saw last week that they, I think they did like a physical release of it on Blu-ray via Vinegar Syndrome and it like blew it up, it blew it, sold out like in minutes, I think, which was kind of a cool thing to see.

• 32:02Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't, I didn't know that it sold out. That's very cool. I did see that Vinegar Syndrome distributed it and I'm not surprised. There's a cult around this movie. It's a very strong cult and, and a worthy cult in many ways. Um, my third film is the one I just saw last night that I had been recommended to me by a number of people that I don't want to say too much about because I think people should watch it for themselves, but um, the movie is called Fem. It's directed by Sam H. Freeman and Ng Chuen Ping and it's an adaptation of their short film of the same name, which is about a drag performer who is attacked after a performance in a convenience store and Jules,

• 32:43Sean Fennessey?

  the performer finds a way to make a connection with the man who attacked him and the movie becomes a kind of sustained thriller from that point forward. Really, really interesting movie about sex, power, abuse and a very modern movie, a very, a nice companion, I would say to Red Rooms, the, uh, the film that I think I talked with Chris about in October, but then Adam had it as his number one movie of the year. I know CR has since seen it and he's loved it too. And I think Red Rooms, we're going to look back in 10 years and be like Red Rooms is one of the most significant movies. This movie actually has a lot thematically and structurally in common. So

• 33:24Sean Fennessey?

  check out Fem, that's streaming on Hulu right now. I mentioned The Remarkable Life of Viborg, which is on Netflix. It's one of the shortlisted documentaries. It's directed by Benjamin Re, who made a movie in 2020 called The Painter and the Thief. I love this movie out of Sundance. I've now, my father-in-law, God bless him, he texted me two weeks ago. He has, I think he's texted me twice this year. He's not a big texter. He's, he's a little bit older, but he texted me out of nowhere and he just said, Very formally, "Sean, have you seen this film, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin? If so, I would love to just hear what you thought of it." Which was just a very generous text to receive. My father-in-law was a wonderful man. And I realized that I just hadn't spent any time talking about it since Sundance, but

• 34:09Sean Fennessey?

  it's about a kid named Matt Steen, who was born with muscular dystrophy. And near the end of his life, and he died very young, and I'm not spoiling anything to say that because it's revealed very early in the film, he started keeping a blog about his experiences in his life. And his experiences with World of Warcraft, the video game, which became a portal to a new kind of existence for him, not just to, you know, what you could describe in a cliche way, escaping whatever it was that he was enduring on a day-to-day basis, but more so to build a community for himself. And he made this incredible world of friends and connections, emotional, deep emotional connections to people inside of World of Warcraft.

• 34:52Sean Fennessey?

  And it's very common to make fun of gamers and to identify gaming as a toxic kind of lifestyle. We just saw in "Anora" that there's a gamer bro in that movie who does not have the best perspective on life or know how to treat women. But this is an amazing document about what art and the way in which you can kind of repel yourself deep into your own interests can sometimes help you find community and meaning in your life. And I think this is a really powerful and sincere and deep movie. And also tremendously creative when you see the way that the filmmakers use World of

• 35:33Sean Fennessey?

  Warcraft to tell Matt's story in the second half. So, you know, this movie won't be for everybody, but I, I think it deserves even more love than it's getting. And it's not the kind of movie that's going to top the Netflix charts, you know, it's, it's a smaller film, but um, it's really, really beautiful. So, check out The Remarkable Life of Ibelin if you haven't had a chance to see it. And then my fifth one is a little bit of a grungy recommendation, but I saw that it hit Hulu and I liked it a little bit. And so I want to give it a quick shout out. It's called What You Wish For. This is definitely the most genre focused movie I'm talking about here right now. It's written and directed by a guy named Nicholas Tomnay. It stars Nick Stahl,

• 36:15Sean Fennessey?

  who was a big star in the late 90s and 2000s. You may remember him from movies like In The Bedroom. He hasn't been in a lot of movies in the last 10 years. I know he's had some personal problems over that time, but he's always an actor who I was always drawn to. And this movie, which is really interesting, it's about a chef who's really down on his luck. And he goes to visit an old friend in an exotic locale who's working as a chef. And some things happen and this friend that Nick Stahl plays has to fill in for his friend in the role as a chef. And things kind of unravel from there in an intriguing way. This is just like a darn good episode of The Twilight Zone, stretched over 87 minutes.

• 36:58Sean Fennessey?

  So I would check out What You Wish For if you like a kind of grim and grimy crime what's it of some kind. A couple of honorable mentions for you. I did mention Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, which is on the documentary shortlist. And I talked about it on our top five movies of the year episode. I don't need to go into too much depth about this film anymore, but I want to underline it because in a just world, it would be seen by millions of people. And it is a fascinating evolution of documentary filmmaking and blending of music and text and storytelling. And I don't want to say conspiracy theorizing because that undermines the narrative that it's trying to share, but I think exploring alternative histories is maybe a safer way to describe it about the relationship between America and Africa in the 1960s.

• 37:45Sean Fennessey?

  I gotta give some more love to A Different Man, which I never had the chance to actually have a discussion about on the podcast, even though I interviewed Sebastian Stan, who's one of the stars in the movie. This is a movie that's actually doing a little bit better in the awards race than I was expecting it to. It's a very dark comedy about an aspiring actor who was born with a condition that makes his face appear as though it is disfigured, and he undergoes a radical surgery to look different and more like he wants to look. And he achieves some success in his life after that happens, but realizes that nothing has really changed inside of him. And he then encounters a man who resembles the man he used to resemble, and it throws him into a wild discombobulation

• 38:26Sean Fennessey?

  emotionally. Great, great, great movie. Stan Renata Renzvi and Adam Pearson. This is definitely gonna end up probably in my top 20 or so. We didn't talk about Janet Planet. I mentioned it coming out of Telluride in 2023. Very quickly, Annie Baker's new movie, or first film, I should say, The Playwright, whose work I've loved over the years, stars Julian Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler as a mother and a daughter living in Vermont, I think in the late 90s. And someone who's watched a mother and a daughter have like a profoundly complicated and deep connection, this movie gets that very, very, very, very right. And if you've ever been interested in that kind of relationship, perhaps this movie will speak to you. It is a very quiet and

• 39:09Sean Fennessey?

  slow-moving film. Be warned, I suppose. But it's on Max right now, if you're interested. And then, last but not least, is The Devil's Bath, which is extremely grim. There's no other way to say it. I think Tracy Letts mentioned this show, mentioned this on the show last week. It's directed by Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala. I finally got around to it. It's streaming on Shudder right now. It is based on a book called Suicide by Proxy in Early Germany: Crime, Sin, and Salvation. It's about communities in Germany and Austria in, you know, hundreds of years ago, who...

• 39:52Sean Fennessey?

  Could not be saved if they were to commit suicide. And so they found other ways to find salvation. This movie is not for the faint of heart. It is deeply, deeply upsetting. And not, it's not a horror movie per se, but it is a very piercing portrait of what happens when things come apart in your mind, especially from a female perspective. It's very much about women in these communities in Germany and Austria. It's reductive to say this movie's fucked up, but it is fucked up. And I enjoyed it. So please check it out. It's called The Devil's Bath. Okay, let's go to slightly lighter fare by chatting up our buddy Chris Ryan.

• 40:49Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not so great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that, bull spend. Instead, why not invest in what looks good to your CFO? LinkedIn Ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. Reach the right buyers with LinkedIn Ads. You can target by company, industry, job title and more. So cut the bull spend, advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture.

• 41:31Sean Fennessey?

  That's LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. There's nothing better than having friends who support whatever you're into, like rewatching a director's entire catalog in the lead up to their latest release. And like those friends, State Farm is there to help you feel supported by helping you choose the coverage you need. With so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you. So you can check coverage off the list and spend more time debating movie rankings. Go online at statefarm.com or use the easily accessible app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Okay, I'm here with Chris Ryan. We're talking about the first of the Ringer All-Stars' underseen,

• 42:12Sean Fennessey?

  underappreciated, misunderstood works of cinematic art this year. But we're talking about a more recent film. This may turn out to be one of the most watched movies of 2024, for all we know.

• 42:22Speaker 04

  Is this number one on Netflix already?

• 42:24Sean Fennessey?

  It is. It was number one within one day, which is pretty remarkable and tells you a lot about at least what the Netflix audience wants. What's the movie you picked?

• 42:32Speaker 04

  We're doing Carry On, Joam Colasera's new film. Did I pronounce that right?

• 42:38Sean Fennessey?

  So I know someone who's worked with him and he calls him Jauma.

• 42:41Speaker 04

  Oh, okay, Jauma.

• 42:41Sean Fennessey?

  Which is news to me because I once interviewed the man and I called him Yaum through the entire interview and he did not correct me.

• 42:46Speaker 04

  So we got three different pronunciations in 30 seconds. Can we call him JCS?

• 42:50Sean Fennessey?

  JCS is great.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay.

• 42:52Sean Fennessey?

  Who is JCS for the listeners who don't know and haven't been following our work together for the last seven or eight years?

• 42:57Speaker 04

  We've done a lot of pods about garbage genres. JCS is the prince of all of them. Like, if you had given him garbage sci-fi, garbage espionage, anything he could do it, he makes the best B-movies. He's the best B-movie director in the world right now, I think.

• 43:12Sean Fennessey?

  I fully agree with you, but he has been in a bit of a...

• 43:16Speaker 04

  He was in the wilderness.

• 43:17Sean Fennessey?

  A rock-shaped, The Rock-shaped oblivion for a couple of years there, where, you know, his last couple of films are Black Adam, the DC Universe film that nearly broke me on this show, and may have broken the superhero trend. And previous to that was Jungle Cruise, a Disney adaptation of a ride that appears in their parks.

• 43:36Speaker 04

  And that was The Rock and Emily Blunt.

• 43:38Sean Fennessey?

  The Rock and Emily Blunt.

• 43:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:39Sean Fennessey?

  Prior to that, though, he was on an incredible streak.

• 43:42Speaker 04

  Should we just go through some of the highlights?

• 43:44Sean Fennessey?

  Please.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  He goes pro in '05 with House of Wax, which is actually underrated.

• 43:48Sean Fennessey?

  Agreed.

• 43:48Speaker 04

  And is a pretty good... Is that Cuthbert? Is that Alicia Cuthbert in that one?

• 43:52Sean Fennessey?

  And Paris Hilton.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  Incredible performance. 2009, you see what many still consider his best film, which is Orphan. But I get really down when he gets into Liam Neeson.

• 44:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 44:03Speaker 04

  Unknown, nonstop, run all night, just some incredible, like, man with a gun thrillers. And The Shallows is a personal project of mine. It's just an incredible shark attack movie. Uh, that's with Blake Lively.

• 44:17Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 44:18Speaker 04

  And the bird in that movie is named Steven Seagal.

• 44:21Sean Fennessey?

  Intriguing.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  I've talked about this before. I've talked about Steven Seagal. Uh, more Liam Neeson with The Commuter than this wandering into the wilderness with The Rock, Jungle Cruise and Black Adam, and then he's back with Carry On.

• 44:32Sean Fennessey?

  So Carry On is a film set in an airport in Los Angeles, LAX.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 44:37Sean Fennessey?

  At Christmas time.

• 44:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 44:39Sean Fennessey?

  There are elements of the film Die Hard.

• 44:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 44:41Sean Fennessey?

  There are elements of the film Die Hard to Die Harder. There are elements of the film Phone Booth.

• 44:47Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 44:47Sean Fennessey?

  A movie I enjoy, a Joel Schumacher, Colin Farrell movie. Um, it is a little bit of speed.

• 44:52Speaker 04

  There are elements of the podcast Smartless.

• 44:54Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, yes, that's.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  It's about walking around an airport, listening to Jason Bateman in your AirPods.

• 45:00Sean Fennessey?

  That is absolutely true. There's a bunch of other movies that are like this. I thought of Nick of Time. Remember Nick of Time with Johnny Depp and Christopher Walken? He's sort of like the man with the all-seeing eye can see you and he needs you to do things. Otherwise, someone that you care about will become injured or killed.

• 45:14Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 45:15Sean Fennessey?

  And in this case, Taron Egerton plays a young TSA agent.

• 45:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, a little bit of like a slacker.

• 45:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 45:22Speaker 04

  Kind of a fail son.

• 45:23Sean Fennessey?

  Or late twenties, early thirties.

• 45:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. He's followed his girlfriend Nora out to California. They've both gotten jobs at the, uh, the airport. She's an operations manager for North Winds.

• 45:34Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  Thinking maybe that's like kind of like an Alaska kinda.

• 45:37Sean Fennessey?

  Sure. What's the salary there? She pushing six figures yet?

• 45:40Speaker 04

  I think she probably does like 85 with really good betties.

• 45:43Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think she picks up the check at dinner?

• 45:45Speaker 04

  Well, that's an issue for them.

• 45:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 04

  Cause she's preggo with his ego.

• 45:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 45:49Speaker 04

  And, and he's gotta get his shit together and really like apply himself. The problem is, is that what he really wants to be is a cop. But he failed the police academy entrance exam or whatever. He got rejected by the Los Angeles Police Department. They rejected Taron Egerton.

• 46:06Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. You make it sound like that is not a hallowed institution.

• 46:09Speaker 04

  I, I've just, I was just noting.

• 46:11Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 46:11Speaker 04

  That he failed.

• 46:12Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. Have you ever taken a cop test?

• 46:14Speaker 04

  No, I thought about it.

• 46:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 46:15Speaker 04

  Just to see, but I've, I think I have mentioned before that I would like to be jumped straight to homicide. Like, I would want to go straight to major crimes.

• 46:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, you have kind of a Kyle Seacor from Homicide vibe, actually. I think you'd fit right in.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, so the premise for this movie is essentially, this is like a kind of go nowhere TSA agent who's trying to like, make a New Year's kind of push to like, get his shit together. Gets himself put on like, a pretty prominent shift, analyzing bags as they go through the, the security check at, at LAX. And after one tray goes through, there's a leftover earpiece. He puts the earpiece in and who's talking to him but Jason Bateman.

• 46:52Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  Jason Bateman, who is like, if you don't do what I tell you to do, Nora, your girlfriend is gonna die. And so, most of the film is taken up of this kind of pantomime where Bateman is directing his actions. He's got a, you know, basically at one point, he's gonna have to let a bag go through that he shouldn't. And, you know, as a viewer, I was watching it. I was like, I'm sure this is gonna be like a twist with the bag where it can't be that dark, or maybe Jason Bateman will be like Alan Rickman where he's like, I'm not a terrorist. I just, I'm just a robber. But he's a terrorist. And it is turned out to be very dangerous Russian nerve gas that is being put on a plane with a congresswoman.

• 47:33Sean Fennessey?

  His end goals, though,

• 47:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:35Sean Fennessey?

  are, are still entirely financial in nature.

• 47:38Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, he's a facilitator.

• 47:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 04

  You know, he's apolitical.

• 47:42Sean Fennessey?

  And what do you think about his work? Is it something that would appeal to you as a potential third career?

• 47:46Speaker 04

  As a JCS movie goes, there was a lot about Aleppo in this film that I did not expect to be considering.

• 47:52Sean Fennessey?

  There was. Would you think of this as a, a work of political art?

• 47:55Speaker 04

  Uh, not really.

• 47:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 47:58Speaker 04

  Um, I thought it was like, very entertaining, but clearly almost shot in three discrete chunks. And there was like, the days they had Bateman VO and also on set. There was all the Terran stuff in the fake LAX. And then there is the investigation into what is happening, being led by one of our great actors, Danielle DeDwiler.

• 48:21Sean Fennessey?

  This is my favorite part of the movie.

• 48:22Speaker 04

  At one point in this movie, has to get out of a car and say, what do you got detective? And I'm like, that's Danielle DeDwiler.

• 48:29Sean Fennessey?

  It does feel like a active winking self parody, the same way that The Shallows felt like it was inhaling, ingesting the entire history of shark movies. And they're just kind of like burping it out a little bit, you know, just like, I know, like this is a little bit of a, a gentle nod, gastrointestinal nod to this thing. And, you know, these kinds of movies frankly powered Hollywood between 1987 and 1998. We don't really get very many movies like this anymore. I think it's very fun to have it, a little bit of a rickety script on this one, I would say.

• 48:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:58Sean Fennessey?

  The Colette Sarah filmmaking style is still just incredibly kinetic and fun and engaging.

• 49:04Speaker 04

  So can we talk about one of the best car crashes I've seen in the movies in like 10 years?

• 49:08Sean Fennessey?

  Best scene in the movie, actually, I know somebody who worked on it and I emailed them and it fit in it in the minute I finished watching it. And I was like, that fucking rocks.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  Was that Logan Marshall Green?

• 49:14Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it was not, I wish I knew that man for his work in Prometheus and now this.

• 49:18Speaker 04

  Uh, there is a car crash scene without giving anything really away about the movie that is breathtaking. And is like so fake, it's beyond fake to real, back to fake, but is the kind of kinetic thing that he's capable of, that he envisions. I wish there was like two more things like that in this movie.

• 49:35Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with you.

• 49:36Speaker 04

  The rest of it is kind of like, I'm running and now I'm gonna punch you and but I got shot, but I can run.

• 49:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's largely a chase movie.

• 49:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:43Sean Fennessey?

  I, the, the car crash though is incredible. How did you think it stacked up to the car crash in Smile 2? Because they're very similar and they're shot very similarly, which is it has this sort of like oscillating camera style on both people.

• 49:55Speaker 04

  I would, the Smile 2 gets, it gets points taken off for not also having a gunfight during the car crash.

• 50:02Sean Fennessey?

  Where are you at with Logan Marshall Green at this point? Have you held your stock?

• 50:04Speaker 04

  The stock is still there.

• 50:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 50:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:06Sean Fennessey?

  What's he been up to? Has he gone into television? Like, first of all, he has a totally different head of hair in this film.

• 50:11Speaker 04

  Well, he shaved his beard.

• 50:12Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  Uh, that's like his calling card is kind of his invitation beard. And I think he has facial hair in Prometheus before he gets deformed.

• 50:20Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, so in 2018, he appears in, he's the star of Lee Whannell's Upgrade.

• 50:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:24Sean Fennessey?

  I was like, this guy is, is Lance Henriksen 2.0. He's, he's Scott Glenn 2.0.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:29Sean Fennessey?

  He's like, gonna be awesome as like. The lead of many good genre movies, but never become like the super duper star that we just start comparing guys to like, that's Jean Paul Belmondo today. It's like, that's like, my face. It's honestly more often that we're like, that's Walt Clyde Frazier, but in a JCS movie. Since then, he's been in a film called Adopt a Highway.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  Which he directed, and I saw it South by Southwest, and it was good.

• 50:55Sean Fennessey?

  He was in How It Ends, Intrusion, Redeeming Love, The Listener, Lou, and Reverse the Curse. Which of those is your favorite in the last seven years for Logan Marshall Green?

• 51:05Speaker 04

  Those are seven movies that look like they're the in-development movies on someone's IMDb.

• 51:11Sean Fennessey?

  Tough.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  Like, I don't remember those coming out.

• 51:13Sean Fennessey?

  Are you up on the TV series Big Sky?

• 51:15Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 51:16Sean Fennessey?

  There was one season of this show created by David E. Kelly.

• 51:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's basically network TV into Yellowstone.

• 51:21Sean Fennessey?

  He is 14th on the list here of actors on this series.

• 51:26Speaker 04

  It's not about the call sheet, it's about your contribution.

• 51:28Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, um, I want better things for him, but he's great. Nice to see his face pop up in this movie. Pretty solid.

• 51:34Speaker 04

  I enjoyed myself.

• 51:35Sean Fennessey?

  For Netflix?

• 51:35Speaker 04

  Also, that, I gotta say, man, I was just talking about this with Greenwald on the 10 best episodes list of TV on The Watch about like, where TV is at as far as like, a thing that you'll reliably at a social occasion, people will be like, we've all watched the exact same show at the exact same time. Everybody at Saturday night holiday parties this weekend was like, I have already watched Carry On.

• 51:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yeah, well, this was a notably horrendous, uh, release weekend in theaters, obviously.

• 52:04Speaker 04

  Craven down bad.

• 52:04Sean Fennessey?

  Craven was horrible, the Lord of the Rings animated movie was a big nothing, and so there was, I think there was a hunger for something like this, and it's also, you know, people are shopping and they got parties and they're tired, they don't have time to make four hours of the movies. This is perfect, perfect. Between this and Rebel Ridge, did Netflix release the two best thrillers of 2024?

• 52:25Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 52:25Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, you know, it's like, this isn't Red Rooms, it's not like a psychological exploration of perversity.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  Darling's where I'm like, wow, we've been introduced to a new O2.

• 52:33Sean Fennessey?

  But this kind of movie, which we like, which we talk about on the Rewatchables all the time.

• 52:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:37Sean Fennessey?

  Good job by them.

• 52:38Speaker 04

  A dumbbuing movie in December.

• 52:40Sean Fennessey?

  Chris, where can we hear you?

• 52:41Speaker 04

  On The Watch.

• 52:42Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 52:42Speaker 04

  On The Big Picture. On, um, the Timothy Chalamet episode with Theo Von that just came out.

• 52:48Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting, what were you providing on that app?

• 52:51Speaker 04

  Political context.

• 52:53Sean Fennessey?

  Really appreciate that, that's CR.

• 53:01Sean Fennessey?

  Mallory Rubin is here, back on the show. You've been, you've been an avid participant in the big picture in the last four weeks. How are you feeling?

• 53:08Speaker 05

  Spoiled and like I'm gonna go through withdrawal when Dobbins comes back and you don't need me anymore.

• 53:12Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean need? I always need you. You're an essential part of my life. Don't say that.

• 53:18Speaker 05

  Thanks, buddy. That's really nice. It's been genuinely fun for me to have so many opportunities to talk to you about the movies and also the Mets.

• 53:27Sean Fennessey?

  The Mets are doing great. Yeah, the Mets are doing great. We have a very fun episode upcoming about the film A Complete Unknown, but as a, as a tease, I wanted you to come in and talk about cinema one more time. We're talking about underappreciated, underseen, under-whatever movies of the year. And speaking of things that are essential to your life, you, you are a cat person. You are the cat person.

• 53:49Speaker 05

  I love cats. I love my cat. I was hoping, given the subject matter of today's segment, that Halo, the most important person in my life, who is my cat, to be clear, would join me. He was in here four and a half minutes ago. And then he went and sat on a really warm pile of laundry that Adam took out of the dryer. And then I had to shut the door for sound buffering and so he is not here. But he's here with me in spirit, as always.

• 54:15Sean Fennessey?

  So the film that, I don't know, we have chosen, you have chosen, you were interested in seeing this movie and you, and you did the, the, the real work of going out to the cinema to see the film. What is the movie? What, what, what'd you pick?

• 54:28Speaker 05

  Flo.

• 54:29Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, what is Flo? Explain it.

• 54:30Speaker 05

  This is an 85 minute animated film about a cat and his animal companions who go on the adventure of a lifetime after a flood decimates their home. It is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my entire life. And I have still not recovered from seeing this movie, which I did last night in, because I know this is underseen slash underappreciated. And so I just want to, I want to, I want to note that I am, I am going to go on the underseen lane here because this is not an underappreciated movie. Everyone who has seen this movie, I think agrees that it is a masterpiece, right? An absolute classic. It's, it's amassing awards, amassing hardware.

• 55:15Speaker 05

  The lemur in the movie would then collect the hardware and play with it if he got the opportunity. But I, I, I think we, we both really were excited to just encourage anybody who loves movies to see this film if they got the, if they get the chance. It's on very few screens. Like when I looked for showtimes to see it, I had, I had, I was pretty limited in my options and we live in Los Angeles, right? So I don't know how easy it will be for people elsewhere to go see the movie, but definitely it was like playing at a few spots every day. And I went to see this last night.

• 55:47Speaker 05

  The theater was sold out. Every single seat was full. Yeah. And it was amazing. And let me tell you something. Every single person there was an adult. Every person. There was not one child. I'm sure children would love it. I will, I would probably not emotionally recover. If I saw this as a child, I'm not sure I will emotionally recover from having seen it as an adult. But um, yeah, you know, the trailers were all for like Sonic 3 and Dogman.

• 56:11Sean Fennessey?

  Dogman, yeah. Yeah, I just bought some Dogman gear for my nephew, Jack, actually for Christmas. Hope he's not listening to this episode. He's six, so he's definitely not listening, I hope.

• 56:19Speaker 05

  I'm not familiar with the Dogman IP, but after seeing the trailer once, I did have some thoughts on if you were going to create a mashup of a dog and a man. Is that the half of each you'd use? I don't know.

• 56:31Sean Fennessey?

  The head and the hands?

• 56:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, yeah, I think I'll just save my, my full commentary until I get to, to consume the entire experience.

• 56:37Sean Fennessey?

  Well, next time you come back on the show for the Dogman episode, of course.

• 56:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, okay.

• 56:41Sean Fennessey?

  Top five dogs.

• 56:42Speaker 05

  Flow was a masterpiece. I loved it. I thought it was honestly like just awe inspiring. What, what did you think of Flow?

• 56:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I saw it last week and as soon as I saw it, I was like, this is the most Mal movie that's ever existed. So I'm really happy to hear that you wanted to go see it and, and, and loved it so much. It comes from a filmmaker named Glint Zibalotus, who is a Latvian filmmaker. As you said, this movie has been hugely critically acclaimed. It's won a bunch of Best Animated Feature Critics Prizes in the last couple of months. It was just added to the shortlist for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. I'll be shocked if it's not nominated for Best Animated Feature. I think it's probably the stiffest competition for the Wild Robot for Best Animated Feature this year.

• 57:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:22Sean Fennessey?

  As you said, it's very brief, very beautiful. It uses a very interesting computer animation technology. The style of animation, there's an almost surreal quality where it feels like one part,

• 57:37Sean Fennessey?

  the flying toaster screensaver, you know, the sort of like false 3D and the sense that there is also like a human creating it. It doesn't feel like AI animation or anything like that. It's not, it has rough edges. It's not sanded down and smooth the way your classic Pixar computer generated animation might be. So it looks and feels different. And then the other thing is there's incredible attention paid to, and you can speak to this as a, as a cat lover and cat partner.

• 58:07Sean Fennessey?

  This is how animals move.

• 58:09Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 58:11Sean Fennessey?

  And it is like zoologically accurate in a way that is very immersive in the story, despite the fact that there is no dialogue in this movie whatsoever.

• 58:18Speaker 05

  Not a word. Yeah.

• 58:19Sean Fennessey?

  So that may be a challenge for some. I'm very curious to show this to my daughter and see if she will respond. A movie with no dialogue, this would be our, our entry point into silent cinema ultimately. But I really liked it. I think it's excellent and beautiful. And it's usually when a movie like this comes out, it's a little like overrated. And I think this one is properly rated. It's damn good.

• 58:38Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. So on the animation style front, I, I thought this was, I mean, even just watching the trailer, you get a pretty good feel for that blend of styles that you're highlighting. But I thought this was just absolutely sublime, like really, really, really exquisite. And that contrast between the way that the creatures, the critters are heroes or characters are rendered and the environments around them. When the northern lights kick in, I mean, it's astonishing, but like the water, this is, again, the flood is the impetus for the story, right? And the water is quite literally carrying

• 59:15Speaker 05

  Kat and his fellows through this, this journey of not only self-preservation, but discovery, like learning to rely on each other, learning to trust each other, learning to take new chances, try new things, gain comfort with things that previously felt threatening or unfamiliar. There are a lot of lessons to take from flow. Water is so famously, infamously hard to convey in animated films, in video games, right? Anything. And it was so beautiful. It was just so beautiful, the way the light played on the water, the way that the water serves as both

• 59:58Speaker 05

  a literal and a metaphorical source of reflection and consideration, the way that Kat routinely finds himself in the water, whether that is a moment of dire peril, or a moment of newfound confidence to fish. Like, if it doesn't look as good as it does, then it's just not going to be as immersive of a setting, primary setting for the film. But it is. The other primary setting, of course, is this boat, right? That our creatures are traveling along. And you said, no, you said, like, silent. But I would say this is not a silent movie. It's just a movie without words. Right. It is full of language. It's the language of how animals communicate with each other.

• 1:00:40Speaker 05

  And this is going to make me sound insane, but I think you invited me here to talk about the movie, knowing that things like this would happen. That was one of the things I genuinely found breathtaking about it. I have found myself more than once on Ringer pods when talking about Star Wars and the most successful droids, saying something like, "Well, it's not just a beep and a boop," right? It reminds me of the way that I feel like I can carry on complete, fully-realized conversations with my cat, Halo, that are frankly often more satisfying than conversations I can have with other people. Super normal thing to say out loud on a podcast. There are no human words uttered, but there don't need to be.

• 1:01:23Speaker 05

  Like, the way that we are able to understand what cat is contemplating and confronting, the way that we are able to watch the bonds develop between the characters, navigate threats and uncertainty, was incredible. And like, they have chasms between them that they need to learn to bridge. And so like, we, as the audience, come to learn how to communicate with them as they learn to communicate with each other in a way that really I thought was like exceptionally presented to us, which is very compelling to watch. And then the other thing, and like, so the filmmakers like used, I was just reading about this, actual animal sounds, right? Like, these aren't, again, computers.

• 1:02:06Speaker 05

  They have microphone recordings of cats meowing and like, you can really tell. But the sound beyond that was, I thought, so riveting in how it pulled you deep into the world. The rustling of the leaves that makes the hair stand up on the back of the animals and makes our hearts start to race. We know something terrible is about to happen. The pounding of the hooves, right? Oh, God, the threat is mounting. What is about to unfold? And like, even though you know, because you've seen the trailer and you know what the movie is about, your terror just spikes. The surge of the waves, like the sound the whale makes when he crests the edge of the water. My single favorite sound treatment in the entire film, without question,

• 1:02:48Speaker 05

  is the sound of cat's claws every time he's like scrabbling along the deck of the ship or climbing up the side. It's just like those little details that make it feel so fully, fully brought to life. It was, it was beautiful.

• 1:03:02Sean Fennessey?

  I'm so glad you enjoyed it. I'm not surprised that you did. To your point about the water.

• 1:03:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:06Sean Fennessey?

  I've just seen Mufasa, colon, The Lion King, the new film by Barry Jenkins. And these two movies, which are both about cats.

• 1:03:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Sean Fennessey?

  Would be an interesting double feature. Because, you know, Mufasa, I felt, was less successful than Flo, even though it is, you know, rendered computer animation that is attempting to put us in the psychological and emotional mind state of a cat in peril. And there are a couple of significant sequences in which a flood... threatens the characters in Mufasa, which is the same inciting incident in Flow. And the movies are so oddly similar. And there's a big conclusive, meaningful moment in the water, which is so hard to render, as you say, in Mufasa, just like in Flow. And one is one of the biggest and most important movies

• 1:04:01Sean Fennessey?

  at the most legendary movie studio that we have. The other is just from this guy in Latvia. And Flow is frankly, a bigger and better movie. And that's just fascinating. It's like an incredible example of the way that scope is not everything. You know, that subtle strategy and emotional insight and craft can elevate despite budget, despite where the film is being made or anything else. So I think it's a pretty special little movie.

• 1:04:34Speaker 05

  I have not seen Mufasa, so I can't comment on the particulars. But something that strikes me, listening to you make that comparison, is like, Mufasa is born out of a moment in time culturally, where like, everything is IP. Everything is, could this be a spin off or an origin story? Could we do a prequel? Could we make more? How can we mine this thing that people have loved for some time? When I was a kid, The Lion King was one of my favorite movies. It was very important to me. I went to bed with like a Simba, like stuffed animal that I held every night. Right?

• 1:05:03Speaker 05

  That is born out of, and again, I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on the quality. But that is born out of this need, of course, or desire to make money and make content, of course. But also this compulsion in the streaming era and the IP content machine era to explain everything. Right? What is the origin story of Scar and Mufasa? How did they come to be at odds, et cetera? Flow is the, that, the idea of explanation is anathema to the entire pursuit of flow. We never really get answers to any questions. We don't totally even know what the questions are. I won't go into too many details because I don't think we want to spoil it in these, in an episode like this.

• 1:05:46Speaker 05

  But just broadly, in terms of almost more of the premise than the eventual like elements of the plot that unfold, there are no people in the movie. We don't know why. Did they just evacuate because they knew that this flood was coming?

• 1:06:03Speaker 05

  Or has there been a prior extinction level?

• 1:06:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Speaker 05

  Is this post apocalyptic movie?

• 1:06:08Sean Fennessey?

  I know, I thought that too.

• 1:06:09Speaker 05

  We don't know, right? We go through not, we open in our, our setting with a home and Kat is on a bed and the window's broken and then we see these statues and you see the piece of paper and you're like, well, that seems pretty recent. How long would a piece of paper or drawing sit there? But then when Kat is scaling the statues, they're like covered in moss. So you have the ability to let your mind run free, wondering and you don't know. I will not explain specifically what this sequence is, but there is a moment about three quarters of the way through the film, maybe even a little further, where something that I can only describe as like supernatural and almost like religious happens, like a mystical event, right? But is it? There could be a, a different reading of that entirely and a different explanation

• 1:06:54Speaker 05

  of that entirely. And the movie is really not interested in trying to ensure that you leave it with one reading. It's there for you to take in and consider and think about the nature of like life and experience and connection. And that's pretty rare these days, actually, in the stories that we get. So I found that to be so, my compulsion is to like leave and think about lore and references and the coaching tree of pop culture connections that lead to a thing. And I was like, oh, well, what would I Google X, Y, and Z? And I'm like, I don't know. I just kind of want to like luxuriate in the feeling of thinking about how amazing that was. And so that was one of the things that I really loved most about it.

• 1:07:39Speaker 05

  It, it was also so stressful though. Like I thought it was beautiful and very actually uplifting and affirming and gave me a lot to think about, but I, my heart was racing the entire time and I was anxious, anxious and concerned to see these characters who I had fallen in love with so quickly, Kat most of all. In constant peril. Like, I was sitting next to a person I did not know, and I almost turned him and said, can I hold your hand? Now, I managed not to. And I was proud that I was able to exercise that level of restraint. But like, boy, when I got home after, I was still feeling the anxiety of what I had just witnessed. And so I think that's really like, it's a testament to the film's impact as well, that it made me feel so keenly in

• 1:08:24Speaker 05

  such a short span of time. Just genuinely impressive.

• 1:08:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great recommendation and a very eloquent emotional clarification on how it impacted you. I'm really not surprised, but I'm very happy that you dug it. And I'm glad it pulls you out of the mire of fandom for a brief moment before you had to return to the trenches.

• 1:08:43Speaker 05

  I love fandom as well. I just did a pod on Craven. Craven and Flow, back to back, you know, two of the great installments, the 2024 cinematic landscape.

• 1:08:50Sean Fennessey?

  Two great cats, right?

• 1:08:53Speaker 05

  There you go, yeah.

• 1:08:55Sean Fennessey?

  Mountain Rubin, thank you so much.

• 1:08:56Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 1:09:03Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, we're here with Charles Holmes.

• 1:09:04Speaker 06

  Yo, what's going on?

• 1:09:05Sean Fennessey?

  Midnight Boy, par excellence.

• 1:09:06Speaker 06

  Chibiu!

• 1:09:07Sean Fennessey?

  What else are you? How else do you define yourself these days? You're a cinephile? A cineist?

• 1:09:10Speaker 06

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. The LA, the LA film bros have fucking gotten to me.

• 1:09:16Sean Fennessey?

  They wrapped their arms around you. You're a brutal boy?

• 1:09:18Speaker 06

  Bro, I got my tickets. Seventy?

• 1:09:22Sean Fennessey?

  When are you going?

• 1:09:23Speaker 06

  Twenty first. I cannot wait.

• 1:09:24Sean Fennessey?

  I'm very happy for you. Where are you going? What theater? CityWalk? Where is it playing?

• 1:09:29Speaker 06

  I forget. It was, it was America, Ameritech. What?

• 1:09:33Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, American Cinematech.

• 1:09:34Speaker 06

  America Cinematech. I think I'm going there. That's gonna be my first time going there.

• 1:09:38Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, good for you.

• 1:09:38Speaker 06

  I'm very, very excited. I am, I'm getting into the rep screenings, you know what I'm saying? Chris Ryan is not gonna be happy to hear this, but my TV watching has plummeted this year.

• 1:09:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's garbage.

• 1:09:51Speaker 06

  I just throw like a movie on in the morning, at night. And I feel so just, the high I get from finishing just a movie and bathing in it is so rewarding. And then the feeling that I have after I watch, like, I spent eight hours on a TV show, I'm just like, I'm gonna die one day. And I would just finish the Penguin.

• 1:10:14Sean Fennessey?

  You're buttering me up like a toasted bagel right now. This is just incredible stuff.

• 1:10:19Speaker 03

  We got him.

• 1:10:22Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like Donald Rumsfeld right now, you know?

• 1:10:25Speaker 06

  But also, I will say, I'm 32 now, and I do think that this is the age where I'm just like, I had a summer being a slut out here, and I was like, I feel way better just parking my ass in a fucking movie theater, getting a popcorn, some peanut M&Ms, a beer.

• 1:10:41Sean Fennessey?

  Can I tell you something? I'm having a huge comeback with popcorn. I was out on popcorn for like, a decade, and I've now had popcorn three consecutive movie-going experiences. First of all, I'm really, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty much focusing on sweet popcorn now.

• 1:10:56Speaker 06

  Sweet.

• 1:10:57Sean Fennessey?

  So caramel popcorn, obviously you can find that in your local AMC. But I got, I got put onto churro popcorn at the Alamo, which is fire. For all of you out there, you know, Alamo, it's up and down, it's not always a great experience. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not. Churro popcorn is money, I'm just, I need to say that somewhere.

• 1:11:14Speaker 06

  But here's the thing, I, churro popcorn sounds amazing, but I think it robs of the experience where I like, I like the salty and then I like the sweet. If I'm getting all the sweet just in one package, I feel like I'm kinda robbing myself.

• 1:11:26Sean Fennessey?

  So you like to have a popcorn and a candy?

• 1:11:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I don't like to dump, everybody does the dump, I'm just like, I'm gonna have some popcorn, I'm gonna have, and I heard you talking, here's the thing, now that I'm going to these rep screenings, I'm a lot more conscientious, I'm like, well fuck, I'm finishing this popcorn before this shit starts.

• 1:11:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:42Speaker 06

  I don't want the chewing, we're all here.

• 1:11:44Sean Fennessey?

  It's like having a meal before the movie.

• 1:11:46Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:11:46Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it's like you went out to dinner, but it's just a bag of popcorn. Like, that's the move, we don't wanna disrupt everyone's movie-watching experience.

• 1:11:53Speaker 06

  I will say, HR does not need to care about this. My first Vidiot's experience was with my manager, my beloved Justin Sales. Can you guess what we saw with him and his partner?

• 1:12:03Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I don't even wanna guess, what was it?

• 1:12:05Speaker 06

  Itu, uh...

• 1:12:06Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, Itu Mama Tambien?

• 1:12:07Speaker 06

  Tambien, yes. Amazing experience, but I was just like, I'm like, I'm sick of Justin.

• 1:12:12Sean Fennessey?

  So two men and one woman watched Itu Mama Tambien together, interesting.

• 1:12:17Speaker 06

  Yes, it was, I, I had a great, we got, and then, my high was blown because we got vegan food next door, and we're like, oh, what are they playing on the TV? And it was the fucking Tyson. Paul fight and I was just like wow, I went from seeing one of the greatest masterpiece's ever to uh the end of uh something artistic.

• 1:12:36Sean Fennessey?

  That is, that is brutal. Well, okay, so I've asked you here to tell me about a movie. Now you, this is not a movie that you picked that came out in a movie theater. This is a streaming film for us in the United States. What movie did you pick?

• 1:12:46Speaker 06

  Shadow Strays.

• 1:12:48Sean Fennessey?

  Speak on it.

• 1:12:49Speaker 06

  All right, uh, directed by Timo, um.

• 1:12:52Sean Fennessey?

  Jijanto.

• 1:12:53Speaker 06

  Jijanto, sorry, I didn't want to butcher his name.

• 1:12:54Sean Fennessey?

  Indonesian filmmaker.

• 1:12:55Speaker 06

  Indonesian filmmaker and I think something that I grew up on weirdly was uh martial arts films. My uh my uncle is very, very into martial arts, Tai Chi, you know? There was a summer where it was like, when I say like into it, like his hands, like he could kill you with his hands. Like, yeah, one time I did this training where we would go out into the woods. I'm like, oh, why did you go out into the woods? He's like, we scratched tree bark. And I'm like, what do you mean you scratched tree bark? And he's just like, yeah, it's a training thing where you like, you just take the tree barks and like you look at his hands. So he was trying to teach me martial arts.

• 1:13:28Sean Fennessey?

  Uncle was Wolverine?

• 1:13:30Speaker 06

  Basically. And, and what he would do, like one of the treats we would have after he would like make us bike for like five miles and like sweep the boardwalk, like fucking Mr. Miyagi is we would go back to his like house and it would be like Shaw Brothers movies or it'd be like martial arts movies. Like, all right, now watch this. And the Shadow Strays like itched that for me. Like every couple like weeks or months, I'd just go to a martial arts movie. Just like feel like that warmth again. And this is not a perfect movie. I think um this filmmaker sometime tends to be a little bit bloated.

• 1:14:03Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:04Speaker 06

  But the action in this is fucking incredible.

• 1:14:10Sean Fennessey?

  So this movie came out um somewhat quietly in the fall.

• 1:14:14Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:14:15Sean Fennessey?

  I think if you're a martial arts head, a hardcore action head, you're aware of it. Timo has made. Several films in Indonesia and in Asia. He probably is best known in the US for his installments in the VHS series. There's one in particular in VHS 2 that is absolutely amazing and that I loved so much that I wrote about it as like a standalone piece for Granland, I want to say in 2014. It's really, really great. The name of it is escaping me right now, but it's in VHS 2. It's by far the best segment in that film. But he's this, he like really bridges the gap between horror and martial arts filmmaker, and he has like a very visceral filmmaking style and is very comfortably situated, I think, in like the John Wick era of action movie making. Would you agree with that?

• 1:14:59Speaker 06

  Well, I also think he is like that next generation of, because like a lot of the same actors, like for something, American audiences know The Raid, like he is the kind of the next generation of that.

• 1:15:11Sean Fennessey?

  He's worked with Eko UAS from those movies and his other films, yeah.

• 1:15:14Speaker 06

  And he said something kind of interesting in a lot of his interviews with the Shadow Strays, and this is why I like him so much as a director, is I think that so much of American action has kind of been neutered just by the superhero of it all, where Timo is like, "I want you to feel the violence in my movie." When someone gets stabbed in his, like, he's not doing that thing where the camera's panning away. It's like when someone is shot, if someone gets their arm cut off, it lingers and it's like, he has the type of movies where I'm like, sometimes I'm like, "Oh, I'm glad this movie's almost over," and then I check and we still have an hour left, just because I'm less like, the whole time, like, "What's gonna," because the action is just so heavy.

• 1:15:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's like, it is the theater of escalation throughout the whole movie. But like, in the first five minutes of this movie, there is like a raid on, I guess it's, it's almost like a, like a, like a Japanese community, and a guy gets his head cut off, he gets decapitated, and the head like hangs from the back of the neck, and he stays standing for like 30 seconds, and it, the camera lingers on the head wound and the open neck, and that's what I say when I say like, it's action and it's horror, because there's like a real interest in the bodily destruction that goes into action filmmaking. This is a really cool movie. It's way too long.

• 1:16:34Speaker 06

  Way too long.

• 1:16:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's two and a half hours, and it feels it when you're watching it. But the sequences are each crazier than the next and done really, really, like, if you like this kind of thing, it is excellent.

• 1:16:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, so this is- A perfect 3.5 movie for me. And that's not shade at like, this is like, actually, my favorite martial arts movies tend to kind of like, get into that zone where I'm like, this is a movie about the sequences. There is one, I think it's the best of the entire film, where our main character, uh, 13, she's an assassin, and they're on the second floor of a club.

• 1:17:11Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:12Speaker 06

  And she basically is like, beating up this jobber, and the camera follows them as they fall out of the window, and it, and I'm just like, I, it was that meme where I was, wait, what?

• 1:17:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you lean forward.

• 1:17:25Speaker 06

  I was like, what happened? And I think, even though this movie is, there's a lot of that, there, it's way too long. There are so many of those little moments, as like, a martial arts head, as an action fan, where I just want to see more from this filmmaker. I think this is his second Netflix film after, I think, the other one was, uh, The Night Comes.

• 1:17:47Sean Fennessey?

  I think It Comes at Night, is that what it's called?

• 1:17:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, one of those movies. That is amazing movie as well, and that was made before this. And you can even tell just how much he's grown just from that, in terms of just like, staging everything, that's another fantastic movie.

• 1:18:01Sean Fennessey?

  It was The Night Comes for Us.

• 1:18:02Speaker 06

  The Night Comes for Us. And I just, I want to, he's directing Nobody 2 with Odenkirk next. I want more American directors to have this feeling in their action movies, where it does not always have to be this intense, it doesn't have to be that bloody, but you don't need a bunch of fucking CGI bullshit. Sometimes it is just two or three people hand to hand, and just being like, what can I show them that is just gonna?

• 1:18:27Sean Fennessey?

  I think he has a really good handle on blending the digital and CGI filmmaking styles for the right set pieces.

• 1:18:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:34Sean Fennessey?

  Without an over-reliance on it, and doing a lot of practical stuff. But, the other thing that I think about when I watch his movies is, this is a guy who was raised on first-person shooters. Like, video games are an intrinsic part of his movie-making experience. I, I don't remember, are you a gamer? Do you play video games?

• 1:18:49Speaker 06

  I do play video games, but I'm not button mash level, you know?

• 1:18:52Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, because I feel like if you really, if you are real, if you were raised on first-person shooters. Not that every shot in his movies is first-person POV, but that sensation that you get, that sort of like rattle and shake and move when you get impact on a sequence, it really fits there. It's a great recommendation. I feel like this movie was completely unremarked upon on this show all year, so it's a great pick. You had a couple of others that were on your list.

• 1:19:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, I just wanted to do some like honorable mentions. I've, I've honestly talked about, I've written about it, just a blurb. I've talked about it on Ringerverse weirdly, but one of them was Rap World. Came out of nowhere. Most famous person in it, Connor O'Malley. How would you even describe this, this movie?

• 1:19:32Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it's like a found footage horror movie for white kids who are into rap in 2008. Like, you know, I.e. me.

• 1:19:42Sean Fennessey?

  It's like about a bu- like a bunch of suburban guys who are aspiring rappers in Tobyhanna in Pennsylvania.

• 1:19:47Speaker 06

  It's an hour long, it's free, you can go watch it.

• 1:19:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's on YouTube.

• 1:19:51Speaker 06

  On YouTube, and for the first five minutes, I'm like, what the fuck is this? I'm about to turn this shit off. And it weirdly does a thing. Both of us are recovering music journalists. I think most movies about music are honestly terrible. And I think this one weirdly felt so accurate to what it felt like to be in high school at this moment. This type of like, I knew the white boys who are way too into rap, who think that they are gonna be the next sensation. The jokes are incredible, and it's like, they, the bit at first is annoying. You're like, they can't sustain this bit for an hour. And then I don't know what happened, like 10 minutes, 15 minutes into the movie, I'm like, okay, this bit is incredible.

• 1:20:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's the same thing with every Connor O'Malley piece. Every YouTube short, every bit, every talk show appearance. There's an unbelievable talk show appearance on, uh, on Seth Meyers that he made earlier this year. This is so great because he used to work with Seth. This is true of Stand Up Solutions, the Stand Up Hour that he put out earlier this year that's also on YouTube. This movie that he co-directed with Danny Sharar is- In the first 10 minutes, you're like, God, this is like hilarious, but also deeply insufferable. And then when you get into the second 10 minutes, when it doubles down fully on the bit, you're like, this is the most fearless thing I've ever seen. These guys are so overcommitted to this insanely dumb idea and they never break stride.

• 1:21:16Sean Fennessey?

  They never, ever wink at the camera. They never turn to you and be like, isn't this so funny that we're doing this? They lock in on that very stupid idea and see it all the way through. It is like, there is a part of rap world that is eerily documentary. Like, it's like you're watching a fucking Maisel's movie about losers in high school trying to be rappers. It feels so close and yet it is also made by a bunch of guys who are in their 30s. But I'm with you. I loved this. I shouted this out, I think, at the halfway mark of the year or something I loved. And even did a screening of the movie at the American Cinematec in Los Feliz.

• 1:21:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, hell yeah.

• 1:21:48Sean Fennessey?

  With Connor and Danny and Harrison and a bunch of the other guys who worked on the movie. Great pick. Okay, what's your third one?

• 1:21:53Speaker 06

  And my third and last one, I don't think you've seen this one yet, but it is Miyazaki and the Heron. Basically, pretty much for most of Miyazaki's films, come with a documentary about how it was made. And I picked this one because I think I love process films. I like, if you look at my Letterboxd four, they're all process films. And this one to me was so special because you really never get to see this where you have a legendary director towards the end of his life and the entire documentary is essentially, you get to see the moments when like animation luminaries are just dying left and right.

• 1:22:33Speaker 06

  And we understand Miyazaki, the character, as a very like curmudgeon and just very, like he makes these sweet movies. And you're just like, you're always in a bad mood. And there are moments in this movie where you just kind of see him broken. You see the thing Bobby was talking about, like Scorsese's gotten to this point where you're a legend, but you're seeing the, you're outliving everyone. And it just touched me so profoundly and made me enjoy his last movie, The Boy and the Heron even more. Because you realize you're just like, oh, it's not that Miyazaki is a curmudgeon, or he is. Or it's not that he's super knight. It's like, he feels too much. Like, there's, the funniest part of the film is

• 1:23:14Speaker 06

  He bought, he, there's some land. This is how rich Miyazaki is. He looks outside and there's some land development free. He's like, I'm going to buy it to set up a soccer, like a soccer place where the local kids can play.

• 1:23:27Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:23:28Speaker 06

  And the whole thing going throughout the movie is, he buys it, he builds it, none of the kids want to play on it. And he's just, I'm just like, you're making a whole fucking movie. Why do you care about, and he keeps looking out the wind, be like, when are the kids going to, and you're just like, why do you care about this Miyazaki? You're a legend. And then there's a moment in the film where the first few kids start playing on it and you've just seen all these people die throughout the course of making this movie.

• 1:23:50Sean Fennessey?

  Oh my god.

• 1:23:51Speaker 06

  And just like the look on his face being like, it was worth it. And I was just like, oh, I wish I got this type of documentary for all of my favorite directors.

• 1:24:00Sean Fennessey?

  That's amazing. And also, I don't think this is spoiling anything by saying that, but that makes it an amazing companion with The Brutalist. When you see The Brutalist, you'll know exactly what I mean. I'm not, I'm not giving anything away, but that very idea of wanting to build something for people, but maybe it's also for yourself.

• 1:24:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:24:16Sean Fennessey?

  Ties that neatly in there. Three great recommendations. Charles, thank you so much.

• 1:24:19Speaker 06

  Yo, thank you for, thank you for having me. And you know, next year, hopefully, I can, I can be welcomed by your people.

• 1:24:25Sean Fennessey?

  You, you are already welcomed, but you will be even deeper in the club the more rep screenings you go to. Thanks, Charles.

• 1:24:32Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 1:24:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yasi Salek is here, making her triumphant return after a debut that will live in fummy? Infamy? How will it live?

• 1:24:47Speaker 07

  I mean, it's not up to me to decide how I was perceived, Sean. I mean, I, I heard some rumblings that were positive.

• 1:24:56Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. Rumblings where?

• 1:24:58Speaker 07

  On the internet, the interweb.

• 1:25:00Sean Fennessey?

  Checking it out, huh? Checking out, checking out the feedback?

• 1:25:02Speaker 07

  I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what. I saw one person say that I was the Aubrey Plaza of The Ringer, and all other comments died away into the background. And I don't care what anyone else says ever again, because that really put some wind in my sails.

• 1:25:15Sean Fennessey?

  Well, as you know.

• 1:25:16Speaker 07

  I had a nice time.

• 1:25:17Sean Fennessey?

  I, I love Aubrey Plaza, and I'm so happy to have you back. And if you, you are the Aubrey of this pod, that's very, very exciting to me. Um, today, I gave you really more of an assignment. Most people that came to this episode said, God, here's a movie I love that I feel like a lot of people didn't see, and I wanted to rep for it. You know, it's on a streaming service, or it got very minor distribution. But, you know, I know you pretty well and we're about the exact same age and our tastes converge in intriguing ways. And I saw this movie, Y2K, which is co-written and directed by Kyle Mooney. And the only person I can think of was you.

• 1:25:57Sean Fennessey?

  What, so can you, can you explain what Y2K is and maybe why you think I wanted you to see it?

• 1:26:03Speaker 07

  The film or like what happened in, in the turn of the new year of the year 2000?

• 1:26:09Sean Fennessey?

  Well, maybe you should explain the latter to explain the former.

• 1:26:12Speaker 07

  Okay, sure. Um, before the clock struck midnight on January 31st, 1999, there was a great panic that somehow, I mean, I might be misremembering this because again, we're around the same age. So I was like 17 or something, that all of the machines would go haywire and mass chaos would ensue in society. It didn't happen.

• 1:26:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's more or less what was suggested.

• 1:26:39Speaker 07

  Yeah. Um, and then the film, honestly clever premise that it is, it's like a high school, you know, can't hardly wait slash American Pie-esque sort of high school. It's, it's a New Year's Eve, we're gonna make the best of it. Let's go out here to kind of dorky best friends, you know, of course, in pursuit of a girl. And they go to the cool New Year's Eve party on the eve of Y2K. And then it turns into a horror film because the machines do go haywire.

• 1:27:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's what if Y2K actually happened? And not only happened, but happened in the most dramatic and violent fashion imaginable. But the movie is, comes from Kyle Mooney, who most people will recognize for his work on Saturday Night Live. Um, one of, in my opinion, one of the best cast members of Saturday Night Live of the last 15 years. Somebody who brought like the kind of oddball sensibility and the 10 to 1 style sketches that I always really appreciated. He got his start on YouTube, um, doing a lot of great sketch comedy.

• 1:27:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, he's so funny. He's very, he's giving, he's giving Jim Brewer almost like in that, that, that like pers- that part of the cast where like, oh, this guy's so weird.

• 1:27:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:53Speaker 07

  But in the coolest way.

• 1:27:55Sean Fennessey?

  And actually, his character Garrett, a video store clerk in this movie, is kind of giving a little bit of Jim Brewer in Half Baked.

• 1:28:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, totally. Maybe that's why I thought of it. I, in my opinion, he was the best part of the movie. His character.

• 1:28:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. So the movie is like a little rickety, right? Like it's, it's, there's some funny parts. There's some very violent horror parts. It feels like a very loving homage at times to more like eighties sci-fi, like explorers, boonies style team up movies. Plus, you know, you mentioned it's like, can't hardly wait. And it's, it's, it's, the cinematography is by Bill Pope, who shot The Matrix and Clueless and all the Edgar Wright movies. Like a legend in cinematography.

• 1:28:34Speaker 07

  Crazy.

• 1:28:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. So he's there for some of the cool like action set pieces. But you know, the movie is a little like, this is a first time director and you, you can tell. It's not bad. It's not great. It's very, very flawed.

• 1:28:46Speaker 07

  I feel, I feel like I really enjoyed the first 25%, whatever, like the greatest, where they really pound in the greatest hits of, to remind you what this era was like and they at first I was like, is this too much? And I was like, no, this is great. Do it all. Like ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. Like every song cue, every slang, like pointing out the raver, like everything. And again, we're the same age. So all of it was very familiar to me. I was like, that's, that's on point. And I guess Kyle Mooney must be around our age too.

• 1:29:18Sean Fennessey?

  I believe he's 41. And so this is specifically what I wanted to speak to you about. Because when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie came out last year called Mutant Mayhem, do you remember this? Are you familiar with this?

• 1:29:30Speaker 07

  That didn't happen in my universe. No.

• 1:29:32Sean Fennessey?

  In my universe, it did happen. It happened profoundly. It hit like a bomb. It was written and by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

• 1:29:40Speaker 07

  Oh man, I can't believe I missed this.

• 1:29:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's an animated movie and it very much is a movie for kids, but it's a movie for kids written by a couple of guys who grew up with TMNT, who were in their early 40s.

• 1:29:51Speaker 07

  As I, as did I, as did you?

• 1:29:53Sean Fennessey?

  We, we both did. And all of the references in that movie, all of the needle drops, all of the jokes, feel like they're made for people who are in their 40s. When that movie came out, I was like, this is so crazy to be living in the time where the people who are my age now have the power, or quote unquote, power, to get their own dumb dreams made in Hollywood. And those dreams are just full of references to what it was like to be nine, or in the case of Y2K, 17, in these very particular times. So watching Y2K, I mean, it is, there's a, you know, a, a long list of songs that are used in the movie, all of which I'm sure resonated with you in some way.

• 1:30:32Speaker 07

  What hit you the hardest? What hit you the hardest?

• 1:30:34Sean Fennessey?

  It's a really good question.

• 1:30:38Sean Fennessey?

  I'll say that Praise You by Fatboy Slim comes in very early in the film.

• 1:30:42Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:30:42Sean Fennessey?

  And I have to assume that Fatboy Slim is a, like, a really had to be there thing. Like, I don't know, if you're, if you're 16, I don't know what you make of Y2K, because some of the jokes are so specific.

• 1:30:54Speaker 07

  So specific.

• 1:30:55Sean Fennessey?

  But You've Come a Long Way, Baby, the Fatboy Slim album, was a legit phenomenon when it came out.

• 1:31:01Speaker 07

  The music videos alone. The, the L.A. Mall, Spike Jonze, uh, Flash Mob, Major.

• 1:31:09Sean Fennessey?

  So that one-

• 1:31:10Speaker 07

  Christopher Walken, right?

• 1:31:11Sean Fennessey?

  That was, yeah, that was, I think, the next album, right?

• 1:31:14Speaker 07

  The next album, okay.

• 1:31:15Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I don't know, what, what, what hit you hard?

• 1:31:18Speaker 07

  Randomly, Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger, even though that, it, that's a 1997 song, but it would have been, still been playing pretty regularly in 1999. That one, like, I felt, I was like, let's fucking go. Also, the, I did make some notes during the film, which was totally fine, because when you go see a 12:45 PM showing of Y2K on a Monday at the Americana, you know, in Glendale, not a lot of people there. Um, the Chumbawamba through line, maybe I'm overthinking, maybe I'm intellectualizing something that doesn't need to be intellectualized. But I was like, okay, like, I kind of, I don't know if it was intentional, but I was like, you know, Chumbawamba famously anarcho, I don't, well, maybe not famously, actually, sort of, not-

• 1:32:01Speaker 07

  Many people maybe know that, but are an anarcho punk band that like donated all the money from the sales of that massive song that everyone thought was just sort of like a one hit wonder. And then I was like, okay, internet was kind of at first like an anarchic type tool, right? Like a we'll become ungovernable, which then became very co-opted by capitalism and became evil. And I was like, I wonder if this is like on purpose. But again, perhaps I'm over intellectualizing the music choice of

• 1:32:30Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have a similar pointy headed theory about the usage of Mandy Moore's Candy in this film?

• 1:32:37Speaker 07

  No, I'm so sorry. I can't, I can't make that work here. I don't think.

• 1:32:41Sean Fennessey?

  One thing that the movie does really well is that it identifies the, at least in the 90s, inherently clickish nature of high school friendships.

• 1:32:48Speaker 07

  I was totally, yeah.

• 1:32:49Sean Fennessey?

  You know, movies like Can't Hardly Wait do a good job of this. The Breakfast Club is entirely oriented around plucking one individual from those groups out and putting them together.

• 1:32:59Speaker 07

  Clueless has the best montage of that. The stoners sit on that grassy knoll. Like, there's the Persians. They drive the BMW.

• 1:33:06Sean Fennessey?

  But this movie does a cool thing where it like picks people out almost based on their music taste. You know, there's like the burnouts who are really into Korn and the Family Values Tour. There's the underground hip hop kid. I will just say.

• 1:33:19Speaker 07

  So trick, so triggering for me, that person.

• 1:33:22Sean Fennessey?

  Deeply, deeply attacked by that character.

• 1:33:24Speaker 07

  Same. I was like, I knew that guy and he was so annoying. The prophets of intuition or whatever it was. That was actually so perfect that I was like, oh, Kyle Mooney, one of us. Kyle Mooney backpack rap. Kyle Mooney for sure has like freestyle fellowship on vinyl, like soul assassins. Like he was there.

• 1:33:42Sean Fennessey?

  I think he's from San Diego too. So it makes sense that he would be into that Bay Area stuff. And you know, the Swing Kids, I thought was a very funny joke with the Brian Setzer Orchestra Needle Drop. That was so funny.

• 1:33:52Speaker 07

  That one I love, especially because I did a little reveal. I can share. It's been long enough. The statute of limitations up. I did have a little dalliance with the swing dancing in high school. Can you believe? I know. That's right. Swingers was a really big movie. I think you know that here on the big picture and it, It changed a lot of people briefly. I thought after like, you know, two months, I was like, no, this is not for me. Thank you.

• 1:34:14Sean Fennessey?

  What would you do? Would you go to the Brown Derby? What would you do?

• 1:34:16Speaker 07

  Well, I was in Singapore, so.

• 1:34:18Sean Fennessey?

  You were swing dancing in Singapore?

• 1:34:21Speaker 07

  It's a global phenomenon, John.

• 1:34:22Sean Fennessey?

  You are a one of one, I must say.

• 1:34:25Speaker 07

  I've lived a lot of lives. But most more, I was the girl where they were like, she has holes in her brains now. That was more me. That was like, I didn't dress like that, but that was absolutely me. I was like, oh yeah, what's up, girl? That's me.

• 1:34:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, this is an important thing to discuss then, because a significant figure in this movie, not just metaphorically or spiritually, but literally is Fred Durst. Fred Durst appears in the film, I thought, pretty humorously, and this is.

• 1:34:52Speaker 07

  I thought he did a great job.

• 1:34:53Sean Fennessey?

  This is not the first A24 movie he's in this year. You know, he was also in I Saw the TV Glow. Did you see that movie?

• 1:34:58Speaker 07

  I didn't see it, but I remember like a big deal when he was announced that he was gonna be in it.

• 1:35:04Sean Fennessey?

  He's got a very small part in that movie. He's got a weirdly critical role in this movie.

• 1:35:09Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:11Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think Limp Bizkit should be reclaimed?

• 1:35:13Speaker 07

  By whom?

• 1:35:16Sean Fennessey?

  The masses, the youths, anyone.

• 1:35:21Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:35:23Sean Fennessey?

  What did you think of Limp Bizkit when you were 16?

• 1:35:25Speaker 07

  It wasn't my thing. I was a corn girl. I was a system of a down and corn, deft tones. But Limp Bizkit didn't totally speak to me. Limp Bizkit, I feel, in a way catered to like a slightly different market, because famously, Limp Bizkit is Midwestern, right? Aren't they?

• 1:35:43Sean Fennessey?

  I thought Florida.

• 1:35:45Speaker 07

  Oh, Florida, that checks out too. Whatever it was, it was not California. And I feel like I couldn't really connect with it. Speaking of, where is this film set? It's the East Coast, right?

• 1:35:54Sean Fennessey?

  That's an excellent question.

• 1:35:56Speaker 07

  It definitely is because there's Utz chips in the liquor store scene, and we don't have Utz chips on the West Coast, or I don't think in the Midwest. I'm a chip connoisseur.

• 1:36:06Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it was filmed in New Jersey.

• 1:36:08Speaker 07

  If it didn't it feel kind of, did it feel more like your hometown of growing up area?

• 1:36:13Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, part of the reason why I wanted to talk to somebody about this movie is even with its flaws, I'm like, God damn, they just got so much right. It's just so accurate to the experience. You know, not that there was like any one character who I related to, or any one group, or even any one song.

• 1:36:29Speaker 07

  The Prophet of Intuition was the one that you.

• 1:36:30Sean Fennessey?

  Which one?

• 1:36:31Speaker 07

  The Prophet of Intuition was the guy that you resonated with.

• 1:36:34Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, there is, there is a part of me that was like that guy, you know?

• 1:36:37Speaker 07

  What about the part where the popular, beautiful girl was like, and nobody said anything about this? This to me was the most horror part of the whole movie, was when she was like, I don't really like music.

• 1:36:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:50Speaker 07

  Nobody said anything. Nobody was like, okay, sociopath. I don't really like music.

• 1:36:56Sean Fennessey?

  That was, that was strange. That girl is played by Rachel Zegler.

• 1:37:00Speaker 07

  She's very famous now, right? She's Snow White. I saw her on the poster on my way out and I was like, oh, you had an interesting year.

• 1:37:05Sean Fennessey?

  She is going to be Snow White. She was one of the stars of Steven Spielberg's West Side Story. She's remarkable in that movie. She's a damn good actress. She's good, right?

• 1:37:13Speaker 07

  She was great. She was very cute.

• 1:37:15Sean Fennessey?

  She was like the only one who I was like, this person's the star and these other people are not. Did you get that feeling?

• 1:37:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, I thought that, shockingly, because you know how I feel about New Zealand. Um, but the, the Danny character was also had a lot of star power. I thought, I was shocked at the decision to kill him off so early. Cause he was such a fun thing to watch and provided so many jokes. And I was like, oh, you kept the Prophet of Intuition and like the angry Fred Durst girl? And you got rid of that guy? That's so weird.

• 1:37:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's the actor Julian Dennison, who people will probably recognize from Hunt for the Wilderpeople or Deadpool 2, where he had a big role.

• 1:37:58Speaker 07

  He was, he was phenomenal, I thought, personally.

• 1:38:00Sean Fennessey?

  The Prophet of Intuition guy, CJ, was played by Daniel Zolgardi, who's, oh, Zolgadri, actually, who's really, really good in, um, Did you see Funny Pages? Movie that came out a couple of years ago. Directed by Owen Klein, who's Kevin Klein's son. Actually, also an A24 movie. That's the thing is that this is like a collection of recurring A24 folks. But I don't know. What else? Any other, any other thoughts on Y2K?

• 1:38:25Speaker 07

  I just thought it was, again, I might be intellectualizing too much, but I, I did. I almost wanted it to be not, better is not the right word. And maybe there's no way to make this movie in a not sort of, you know, I'm not a horror movie person in general. And this is, this is like, what's, what would you call this genre of horror? Where it's like very funny and someone dies and everyone's over it in like a minute and a half, even though that's their like lifetime best friend.

• 1:38:49Sean Fennessey?

  Horror comedy?

• 1:38:50Speaker 07

  Horror comedy. But like, the timing is actually so interesting, right? Because AI is a almost bigger concern now than it was at Y2K. And I think, I think that's the parts of the movies. Anytime it tried to get sort of like serious about a messaging, I was like.

• 1:39:13Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Yasi, it's funny that you say that because on this very episode, I have an interview with James Cameron about the Terminator and the prescience of that movie.

• 1:39:20Speaker 07

  Me and James Cameron on one episode is gonna blow out of the water.

• 1:39:24Sean Fennessey?

  Hard to believe that the servers here at Spotify can even contain the levels of charisma that are flowing through this episode, thanks to you and the other guy.

• 1:39:33Speaker 07

  That's what I'm saying, Jimmy Kams.

• 1:39:36Sean Fennessey?

  Jimmy Kams?

• 1:39:37Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 1:39:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:39:39Speaker 07

  Try it out.

• 1:39:39Sean Fennessey?

  What, what's the 2024 movie you haven't seen yet that you're most fired up about?

• 1:39:43Speaker 07

  Um, probably Baby Girl. I'm really excited about.

• 1:39:49Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think happens if I put you on an episode of Amanda? You think it's gonna work?

• 1:39:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, you are gonna leave while me and Amanda do the new Bridget Jones.

• 1:39:57Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, right. Actually, honestly, I would love that. Could we do that? I mean, I really need some episodes off, like badly.

• 1:40:03Speaker 07

  A hundred percent. And you have to do it or you're a misogynist, so.

• 1:40:07Sean Fennessey?

  But no one can ever accuse me of that. That's honestly ridiculous. And how dare you?

• 1:40:12Speaker 07

  I said, if you don't.

• 1:40:13Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:40:14Speaker 07

  Now, I'm very excited about Baby Girl. I really do wanna see Nosferatu, cuz that's, while I don't, is that a, would you call that a horror movie?

• 1:40:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's a Gothic horror. Yeah.

• 1:40:22Speaker 07

  Okay, you know me, famously a Goth. I will, I'll see any, I'll see any vampire movie, but.

• 1:40:28Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:40:28Speaker 07

  Just generally.

• 1:40:29Sean Fennessey?

  So you have a.

• 1:40:30Speaker 07

  Othered by horror movies. Do you not notice they've gotten extremely popular in the last couple of years? It's like every other movie is a horror movie.

• 1:40:37Sean Fennessey?

  I have noticed that they're one of the most, they had been historically until this year, one of the most reliable things at the box office. I think that's why that's happened. Also, um, those people see me. They see me and they understand me.

• 1:40:49Speaker 07

  Okay. Can I tell you one note I made on my phone that I was kind of proud of?

• 1:40:54Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 1:40:55Speaker 07

  About Y2K and the la, well, two. One is no one says poser anymore. I need to bring that back. That's the click thing, though. They don't have clicks anymore. Again, to your point, if teens see this, I'm think they're gonna be a little confused.

• 1:41:08Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, that's, yeah, I agree. There's a lot of confusing words and ideas in this movie.

• 1:41:14Speaker 07

  And then Chekhov's condom.

• 1:41:16Sean Fennessey?

  That was funny.

• 1:41:17Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 1:41:18Sean Fennessey?

  It was a Durex, as I recall.

• 1:41:21Speaker 07

  I didn't, I didn't take in the, I didn't clock, I didn't clock the branding.

• 1:41:25Sean Fennessey?

  No free ads for Durex, by the way. I just noticed it from the film.

• 1:41:28Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:41:29Sean Fennessey?

  Well, thanks for, thanks for coming on the show. Really good insights there.

• 1:41:32Speaker 07

  Thanks for sending me to see Y2K on Monday at 12:55 PM. Can't wait, can't wait to see what you come up for me next.

• 1:41:40Sean Fennessey?

  I hope you enjoy the Nosferatu baby girl double feature on Christmas Day. You're gonna have a great time.

• 1:41:45Speaker 07

  I can't wait. That's gonna be a great day for me. Thanks, Sean, for having me. It's always really fun. And I, I do feel honored to share, share an episode with Jimmy Kams, my intellectual and creative peer.

• 1:41:58Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it's a wonderful having you and I can't wait to clear out for you and Amanda to make something magical in 2025. Thanks, Yasi.

• 1:42:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, we're talking about our favorite underseen and underappreciated movies of 2024. I'm here with two of the most hallowed prestige TV podcasters.

• 1:42:20Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 1:42:21Sean Fennessey?

  Here to talk about films. Um, you're also film podcasters. Uh, House of R, Trial by Content co-host Joanna Robinson, Group Chat. Yeah, a lot of film talk. Various and sundry film podcasting, Rob Mahoney. Uh, has this been a year for underrated and underappreciated movies?

• 1:42:41Speaker 05

  It's been a weird movie year.

• 1:42:43Sean Fennessey?

  Definitely.

• 1:42:43Speaker 05

  A very, very patchwork movie year. And I, going through with this prompt, what's underseen, underappreciated, I couldn't find a lot because I think. It was so thin across the board that like there weren't a lot of hidden gems because we were just digging for gems all year long. Would you, wouldn't you say, Sean?

• 1:43:01Sean Fennessey?

  Well, as

• 1:43:01Speaker 05

  As the host of the Big Pick.

• 1:43:02Sean Fennessey?

  Someone who talks about movies twice a week, every week, all year. Um, I, you know, I made a list of my own for this conversation and it wasn't hard to find a bunch of stuff I didn't get a chance to talk about, but some of the reasons I didn't get a chance to talk about them were strange release dates, or international concern, or how do I even get someone to go see a movie that's only playing in four screens in Los Angeles? Um, and Discovery is one of my favorite parts of the show, but I think you're right that the thin, gruel nature of the calendar left us with a lot of like, hey, maybe I can make an entire episode out of Venom 3. Let's give it a shot, you know?

• 1:43:36Speaker 05

  And you did.

• 1:43:37Sean Fennessey?

  And you did. We did do that, which was it a mistake perhaps? But we did do it and I had a very fun time with, with Charles and Mallory. Um, Rob, why don't I start with you? Like, is there a movie that you're really excited to recommend here?

• 1:43:49Speaker 04

  I mean, there are many movies I would be excited to recommend. One that I have tried to get people to see that I found myself being an advocate for is Deedee. The 125th highest grossing movie domestically this year. Like, nobody showed up but me to see Deedee. Uh, and I think we're a worst nation for it. I don't know if we'd be in our predicament if everyone had seen Deedee by this point. Uh, an amazing coming of age movie. And I will say, there may be a bit of a generational divide because this hits me like straight in the strike zone. There is a point at which the main character, Chris's phone goes off and it's playing Hello Goodbye's Touchdown Turnaround, uh, as his ringtone. And I'm like, this is locating me in such a precise emotional place, uh, that I was just locked in for the entire movie. I think it's such a beautiful portrayal of a lot of different things.

• 1:44:34Speaker 04

  I mean, if you're at all interested in skate culture, especially in the early 2000s, this is a great movie for you. If you're at all interested in mother-son relationships, uh, a very common subject on screen to say the least, but one that I think is articulated really, really beautifully. The Asian-American experience, California living more generally, like, I think it just hits a lot of really, really good sweet spots in that very like filmmaker makes a sort of autobiographical story way. And you just can't, you can't replicate and you can't fake that kind of authenticity.

• 1:45:03Sean Fennessey?

  I like this movie a lot. I had Sean Wong on to talk about it and he was, I think, the second time since I've started doing the show where I've thought to myself. Wow, I'm really old. And it's not that I couldn't relate to the framework. It's like roughly 2008, I want to say, is when the movie takes place. And so I was a little bit older at the advent of a lot of this, like the birth of YouTube and like high tension MySpace, social culture in high school and in middle school, as the character is in the film. But I think Emma Seligman was the other person that I talked to first for Shiva Baby. And I was like, whoa. I, uh, I can't believe how much old. It's like, it's like when you are watching an NBA game, Rob, you'll relate to this clearly. And you're like, everyone on the court is half my age.

• 1:45:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:49Sean Fennessey?

  And how chilling that feels. And now we're in an era where filmmakers can be 25, 26, 27 and making like profound, thoughtful, good films, winning Sundance Prizes, working with major movie stars. But I really like DeeDee. It's a great recommendation.

• 1:46:02Speaker 05

  I, can I ask a follow up question to you, Rob? You mentioned if one is interested in skate culture. Are you, Rob Mahoney, interested in skate culture?

• 1:46:11Speaker 04

  See, I am the perfect audience for this movie because I want to be interested in skate culture. You know, but much, much like DeeDee himself, like I, I could never skate. And like a lot of this movie is just about like faking it until, not really you make it, but you get found out.

• 1:46:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:25Speaker 04

  And what, what could possibly be more relatable than that as a guy chattering on a podcast?

• 1:46:29Sean Fennessey?

  Back in my day, we used to call you posers. You were a poser.

• 1:46:34Speaker 04

  Some people call us filmers.

• 1:46:37Speaker 04

  Some people call us filmmakers of a different kind.

• 1:46:39Sean Fennessey?

  Joanna, what's your pick?

• 1:46:40Speaker 05

  I am going with Between the Temples. And this is a, like as indie as they come indie film, starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane in a, um, a love story. And it's about a cantor who has sort of lost his, his faith, his joie de vivre, his everything.

• 1:47:03Sean Fennessey?

  His voice, yeah.

• 1:47:04Speaker 05

  And a woman who is interested in converting and the life that is expected for him and the excitement that she offers. And this, a beautiful performance by Carol Kane as this, you know,

• 1:47:21Speaker 05

  Manic pixie dream older woman in his life and it's a perfect role for her. I love Schwartzman. This is actually a really, really good Schwartzman performance as well. And there are some sequences in this film where I was like, is this good? I'm not sure. There's some like extended drug sequences that I have some questions about. But at the heart of it, um, it's, it's just an incredible connection between and chemistry between two, um, you know, unlikely folks. Um, and also an incredible Dolly De Leon performance.

• 1:47:58Sean Fennessey?

  As one of two mothers. Schwartzman's character.

• 1:48:00Speaker 05

  His stepmother, yeah. And she is just like out on this relationship. She is not having it. And, uh, if you love her being mean, as a lot of us do, uh, you will enjoy this movie.

• 1:48:12Sean Fennessey?

  What kind of Schwartzman are we getting here?

• 1:48:14Speaker 05

  Okay, give me your, give me your Schwartzman spectrum.

• 1:48:17Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's a, it's a pretty wide berth.

• 1:48:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:48:19Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he's got, he's got a lot of modes.

• 1:48:20Speaker 05

  We're not doing an Andersonian sort of quirky role. We're doing like sad, sad boy Schwartzman.

• 1:48:25Sean Fennessey?

  A little closer to the Alex Ross Perry, listen up Phillip, but less caustic, more sad.

• 1:48:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:48:31Sean Fennessey?

  Um, a deeply downtrodden man looking for, um,

• 1:48:36Speaker 05

  Meaning.

• 1:48:37Sean Fennessey?

  Looking to restore some sense of meaning in his life. Um, there's a sequence at the end of this movie across the dinner table that's incredible.

• 1:48:43Speaker 05

  So good.

• 1:48:44Sean Fennessey?

  If you like the movie, please listen to Nathan Silver and Schwartzman. When I interviewed them over the summer about it, Schwartzman, I'll never forget. He walked in to the studio and he was like, look at these cameras. And he was like marveling at the cameras that we have in our studios. And he was like, is that 4K? Wow. And I was like, sir, you are Jason Schwartzman.

• 1:49:02Speaker 05

  You're a Coppola.

• 1:49:02Sean Fennessey?

  You are a member of the Coppola clan and you are homies with Wes Anderson. I'm sure you've seen a camera before.

• 1:49:08Speaker 05

  Certainly.

• 1:49:08Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but honestly, he was incredibly kind guy and, uh, is, is on an extended streak right now of great performances. He's amazing in Asteroid City. He's so fun in the Spider verse movie, speaking of great vocal performances. Um, I really like both of your picks, guys. Those are great.

• 1:49:23Speaker 05

  Um, would you say that both like, do both of those? Movies feel overlooked, underseen?

• 1:49:28Sean Fennessey?

  I'm in the context of box office, without question.

• 1:49:31Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:49:31Sean Fennessey?

  Um, because you are arbiters of great taste. Of course, I have been all over these movies and have even spoken to the people who made them on the pod. But um, they're damn good movies and uh, I'm glad you wanted to bring that. Actually, they both were Sundance 2024 alumni. So um, maybe they had a little bit more visibility than your average uh indie movie, but not that much.

• 1:49:51Speaker 05

  I mean, I definitely didn't mean, have you heard of these movies?

• 1:49:53Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, I know.

• 1:49:53Speaker 05

  I knew you did, but I, I.

• 1:49:55Sean Fennessey?

  I think they are underappreciated for sure.

• 1:49:57Speaker 05

  And I think I accidentally called this film Between Two Temples when it's Between the Temples, obviously. Okay. Just wanted to.

• 1:50:02Sean Fennessey?

  We'll fix that in post with Jason Schwartzman's camera.

• 1:50:04Speaker 05

  Okay, great. Thanks so much.

• 1:50:06Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you, guys. Rob, Joanna, we appreciate it. Thanks, Sean.

• 1:50:14Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Wags is back. Bobby, the floor is yours. What's your underseen, underappreciated pick?

• 1:50:19Speaker 03

  This is a film that I literally have not had one single conversation out loud with, with anyone about. It's called Good One. It's uh, from writer-director India Donaldson. This is her feature debut. I believe it premiered at Sundance this year and, and to some acclaim, I believe, think it won some awards at Sundance. It's the story of a 17-year-old girl in the summer before she goes away for college, who's going on a hiking trip with her father. Her parents are divorced. Her, her father's friend and his son also traditionally come on this hiking trip with them. And the son doesn't want to because his parents have recently gotten divorced and he's upset about that. So she ends up on this hiking trip,

• 1:51:04Speaker 03

  this weekend hike, hiking trip to the Catskills, just with, with her father and her father's friend. And like, not really that much else happens, if I'm being honest. It's one of those movies where it, the beauty of it really is in the subtlety and the, the girl is portrayed by this actor who I, I believe this is her debut as well, Lily Collyas. The father is, is portrayed by uh, I, I think we could call him a that guy, James, James LaGrose.

• 1:51:31Sean Fennessey?

  Indie film icon, James LaGro, yeah.

• 1:51:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, a wonderful character actor, most, I think, for me, most well-known from certain women. Another film where it kind of not that much happens, but it's all in the beauty of the detail and they kind of reminded me of each other tonally. Um, but yeah, they, they go on this hike, this hiking trip over the weekend. And I think honestly, what really made it so appealing to me is like, I think it was such a great year at the movies for like generational tension. And when you're 17, you really like think you're the shit, you know, you really think you have it figured out and you're about to go and start this great life. And in some ways, you're right. You know what I mean? You, you really are

• 1:52:14Speaker 03

  kind of molding into yourself and you can see Lily Colias, her character's name is Sam, is like very expertly portraying that feeling of like having way more to say about this, but not thinking that it's worth it. And, and her and her dad kind of have this somewhat strained relationship because he is a little bit emotionally stunted. And there's a turn about two thirds of the way through the film that kind of changes the emotional dynamics of it. I don't want to give that away. But it's such an interesting, like, it's just a character piece. And it's refreshing to see those get made still and a new talent like announce itself both as a writer and director, but also as an actor in Lily Colias. And I don't know, I just really, I really liked this movie a lot. What did, what did you think of it?

• 1:52:57Sean Fennessey?

  I liked it a lot, too. I think I did mention it coming out of Sundance as a film that I really enjoyed. At the time when I saw it, I did not realize it was, uh, that India Donaldson is the director Roger Donaldson's daughter. Roger Donaldson, you may know as the director behind such films as No Way Out, Species, and Cocktail. So-

• 1:53:17Speaker 03

  Goddamn, No Way Out, let's go!

• 1:53:19Sean Fennessey?

  She comes from a fascinating Hollywood family. There was a great piece about her that I read in the LA Times, I can't recall who the journalist was, profiling her and they talked to Roger and a couple of other people. And, you know, this film has like nothing to do with the cinema Roger Donaldson whatsoever. It is a, um, very, also a very quiet, contemplative movie, as you said, Bob. Um, but very, very good, great performance. I also want to shout out Danny McCarthy, who gives the performances the friend-

• 1:53:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:53:44Sean Fennessey?

  -who is a critical figure in the story. And yeah, it's just a damn good debut. It's the kind of debut where like I, I'm, you know, as Bill would say, season tickets for India's next work.

• 1:53:55Speaker 03

  Like, I completely agree. And-

• 1:53:58Speaker 03

  I I love a movie where a lot is going on underneath the surface and and it's putting you in the pressure cooker of what you know is going on under the surface for the first hour. It's about a 90 minute film. And then at some point, you know, there has to be some kind of release valve. And even if it doesn't completely explode and devolve, you know, like Chernobyl or anything, it's like, because that's kind of what life is, you know, you leave stuff under the surface and at the risk of kind of like oversharing, like, the character in this movie felt so that the daughter character in this movie felt so well rendered, because it's like, when you're 17 and you're like, kind of smart and clever and stuff, like, adults just don't even think about you as a kid anymore. And they put shit on you that they shouldn't put on you. And it's cool to see like, an indie debut feature

• 1:54:41Speaker 03

  portray that. I found it really great. I liked it a lot.

• 1:54:44Sean Fennessey?

  I think in particular, having lived through this, parents who have gotten divorced, who think that they have grown their kids up by having that emotional experience, then start sharing things with their kids that they never would have within the sanctity of the nuclear family, that think, you know, the feelings become a little bit more stray, and you're more comfortable communicating things that maybe your kids just should never hear. I'm thinking about that exact kind of thing all the time now in a way that I never did before. So, yeah, I agree with you. It's a very good recommendation and a very serious and good movie. Good job, Bob.

• 1:55:19Speaker 03

  Available on VOD, by the way. You can go check it out.

• 1:55:21Sean Fennessey?

  It's that simple. Was it Metrograph? I think Metrograph distributed, right?

• 1:55:24Speaker 03

  It sure was. That's where I saw it.

• 1:55:26Sean Fennessey?

  Nice.

• 1:55:26Speaker 03

  I saw it at like 10am, and then I went home and I didn't talk about it again till right now.

• 1:55:31Sean Fennessey?

  Well, lovely to be chatting with you as always, Bobby. Okay, who's next?

• 1:55:34Speaker 03

  I believe now we have the one and only Amanda Dobbins via voice note.

• 1:55:39Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, Amanda Dobbins. She's back again, sort of. I still have not listened to this voice note, so.

• 1:55:44Speaker 03

  Neither have I.

• 1:55:45Sean Fennessey?

  Let's, uh, let's, let's see what she's into.

• 1:55:53Sean Fennessey?

  Hello, everyone. It is Amanda, and I am back briefly to talk about one of my favorite movies of the year that I forgot to include on the last voice note, and also, I think one of the most underseen movies of the year, despite it being available. On Netflix, it is Martha, the documentary about Martha Stewart, directed by RJ Cutler, who you might know from the Billie Eilish documentary or from the September issue, which is a great documentary about Vogue and Anna Winter. And RJ Cutler seems to be developing a niche as the documentarian

• 1:56:32Sean Fennessey?

  of difficult women of a certain age. So the Martha documentary, I have always been more of an Ina Garten fan than a Martha Stewart, or not even a fan, but it's just like, I can't be doing the level of detail that Martha Stewart brings her entertaining. I tried to make this like Tangerine Tower thing for the holidays this weekend and I like had to go to Michael's three times and then my friend Izzy, listen, we made it work, mostly thanks to my friend Izzy, but Martha's not, Martha's too perfectionist, even for me. But this documentary is a great examination of a perfectionist, of

• 1:57:14Sean Fennessey?

  a demanding individual. It spends a lot of time talking about Martha Stewart as the first self-made female billionaire in America. I think that is the distinction that they give her. It also charts how that money all goes away as her media empire falls apart. Kind of post-trial and also just because of the internet and the way things change. I would say to you that the last third of the documentary is not the most exciting part. The middle third is all about her trial for insider trading, which I remembered, sort of, but also didn't remember at all. As Sean pointed

• 1:57:56Sean Fennessey?

  out, when he saw it, Telluride, James Comey figures prominently in this trial, which I just didn't know at all. Uh, you know, and I do also wonder whether this movie came out on October 31st. So I wonder whether the timing and election related attention spans are part of the reason that people haven't seen it. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting examination of her trial and the media circus in the New York Post. Also, if you haven't read the New York Post's response to this documentary, please look that up, all time tabloid stuff. But for me, the reason to see it is, is Martha herself. She sits for a, at times very testy, uh, interview

• 1:58:40Sean Fennessey?

  that is amazing. And it also has some archival footage, including the scene of Martha Stewart. I, she's not yelling. I just rewatched it. She raises, she doesn't raise her voice, but she dresses down a, a caterer, someone working for her, over the woman's choice of knife that, um, to slice oranges. The knife that the woman chooses is not big enough for Martha Stewart's liking. And the way that the Martha, Martha gives the feedback and how frustrated she is and how clear she is that there is a right way to do things and that it's unacceptable

• 1:59:21Sean Fennessey?

  when someone doesn't do it her way. Uh, haunted me. Going to be quite honest, just have thought about it every day since. So, you know, maybe you, maybe you need to see that as an insight into someone in your life and, and maybe you just want to watch Martha talk about a puff pastry or whatever. It's a great documentary and it also, the way you know it's really good is because Martha's not thrilled about it. I'd like to read some choice quotes that Martha Stewart gave to Brooks Barnes at the New York Times in response to this documentary. Uh, she didn't like the music. I said to RJ, an essential part of the film is that you play rap music. Dr. Dre will probably score it or Snoop. Or Frederick. I said, I want that music.

• 2:00:04Sean Fennessey?

  And then he gets some lousy classical score in there. Perfect. She doesn't like the camera angles. She wanted her grandchildren featured, which seems valid. They're basically not in there at all. The voice of her daughter is there, but you know, even her relationship with her daughter is sort of interestingly portrayed in the documentary. Here's my favorite quote. My magazine, my Martha Stewart magazine, which you might say is traditional, was the most modern home magazine ever created. We had avant garde photography. Nobody ever showed puff pastry the way I showed it, or the glossaries of the apples and the chrysanthemums. And we prided ourselves so much on all of that modernism. And he didn't get any of that.

• 2:00:47Sean Fennessey?

  So I wish you great joy and entertainment watching Martha and avant garde photography and, and, and understanding puff pastry the way that it's meant to be shown by Martha Stewart. I will see you guys very soon. Happy holidays. You know, congrats on Juan Soto, everyone. Bye.

• 2:01:12Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's go to my conversation now with James Cameron and Gail Anne Hurd.

• 2:01:22Sean Fennessey?

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• 2:01:55Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely honored to be joined by James Cameron and Gail Anne Hurd to talk about the 40th anniversary of The Terminator, which is just simply extraordinary that it's been four decades. I thought we could start, guys, by hearing about where you both were in your careers as filmmakers before you embarked on making this movie. Jim, you want to start? Yeah, I can't speak for Gail, but I was pretty much nowhere. I had, I had tried directing a, um, a movie I won't mention the name of because everybody else is happy to talk about it all day long. I got fired after six days of shooting. I was broke and, uh, no prospects. I didn't think I'd ever get hired again. It turned

• 2:02:35Sean Fennessey?

  out that actually having even a crappy directing credit did help a little bit. Um, so, you know, I mean, I was nowhere. So I knew that I, I was no, nobody was going to offer me anything. So I had to write something. I had to attach myself to it firmly. It had to be good enough to get made and that seemed the only avenue. So, you know, writing the script was kind of a means to an end, if you will. I mean, I had my sights set on directing. Gail and I talked about it. We said, all right, this is a good project because it can be shot locally. It can be shot relatively low budget. It's got a few isolated effect

• 2:03:15Sean Fennessey?

  sequences in it and I had an effects, you know, kind of my only credential was in visual effects. So I figured, all right, that gives me a slight edge over another director. Um, Gail, you want to haul off for where you were at that point in your life? Well, at, at that point in my life, if this hadn't worked out, I don't think I would be in the film business now. E- e- essentially, I mean, I've been working for Roger Corman for a number of years. Uh, at a certain point, he basically said, there's nothing more I can teach you. I went, you mean you're firing me? And he said, not really firing you. I'm just sort of kicking you out. Um, and, and I begged to be able to return, uh, as his

• 2:03:56Sean Fennessey?

  assistant at New World Pictures. That wasn't in the cards. So I think both of us laid it all on the line for the Terminator. Did you come to know each other through Corman? How did you come, is that, what, what was your first meeting? I remember exactly when it was. I was, I was working in the model shop and Gail came in and, and, uh, I kind of, as I recall, Gail, I kind of gave you a tour around the model shop and, uh, but, you know, I was, I, I was working on Nell, which was the hero's spaceship, um, in my own kind of private space. And Gail, if I remember correctly, you were down the hall doing, uh, some pickup reshoots on Humanoids from the Deep?

• 2:04:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Yes. Humanoids from the Deep and Jim was working on Battle Beyond the Star.

• 2:04:45Speaker 05

  A script by John Sales.

• 2:04:50Sean Fennessey?

  We kind of hit it off anyway. I mean, the short version is we hit it off and we became friends and, you know, we talked about doing projects together. I mean, I think each of us recognized in the other the kind of the eye of the tiger, the ambition, the, you know, intelligence, creativity, whatever it is to potentially succeed. And I give the same advice to people now that I guess I was instinctively following then, which is, don't try to make pals with somebody above you in the food chain. Make good, strong, you know, network relationships with people at your level and then form a team or an

• 2:05:30Sean Fennessey?

  alliance or whatever, and then push forward from a position of some strength. And I think a lot of people sort of miss that point these days.

• 2:05:39Speaker 05

  Or they don't want to start at the bottom. And both of us really started at the bottom.

• 2:05:45Sean Fennessey?

  Gail, what did you make of Jim when you met him? Well, I was really impressed. I was looking for a reason to get out of the reshoots because they were essentially, this reshoot was for nudity reasons. So it was a girl getting out of a pup tent and running down, I think, the beach or something like that. And it was a sequence that the original director of Human Rights for the Deep, Barbara Peters, a woman, did not want to direct. So I believe they hired the first assistant director to film that. And that was not something I was really comfortable with. So I went into the model shop. Roger had also said, you know, stop by and see how the models are

• 2:06:28Sean Fennessey?

  coming along. Jim, which you can see in everything that he's done ever since, had a reason, had a character reason behind the spaceship models. And, you know, there was such insight there. It wasn't just, oh, this is really cool shit. And that really surprised me because you didn't find a lot of that back then. And then...

• 2:06:56Speaker 05

  He went from building spaceship models and this can only happen with Roger Corman. And he was very soon the art director for the entire film. And, and.

• 2:07:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the following week, I think.

• 2:07:13Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, you guys getting shotgunned into that kind of work, I assume, helped tremendously with The Terminator. Jim, you mentioned that it was sort of like a necessity to write this project, but that I wanted to ask you both. You know, it seems like you wrote with budget in mind and that you were very selective about what kind of effects work you were going to need. Maybe you both can talk about that, about knowing like how much money you could get and what that meant creatively with the restrictions. Well, look, Gail was already producing. I think you, you, you had already done another, another film, a car chase movie.

• 2:07:43Speaker 05

  Mowgli Bites the Dust, another one not worth seeing.

• 2:07:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but you know, it's all, it's all experience. So anyway, I looked to Gail as a more experienced producer. And, uh, you know, we talked about the type of project we would do. We had another one called Labyrinth that we were developing, but it seemed out of reach. It seemed too outlandish, a lot of sets and a lot of visual effects. And, uh, you know, we were in this little clique of people who were all jostling for some kind of a project. And, you know, said, all right, so what are the ground rules? You know, we got to be able to shoot it, you know, on the streets, available light. You know, present day locations would do it under the radar guerrilla filmmaking, non-union, blah, blah, blah. All the stuff that we were used to from Corman. And then, okay, well, what fits that?

• 2:08:31Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you know, I got this thing, you know, I'm calling The Terminator here. Why don't you read the treatment? And Gail's like, this is exactly what we should be doing. Let's do it. I mean, it was pretty much that simple, but it was definitely constrained by budget going in, right? You know, I mean, we knew we couldn't raise 20 million bucks at that, at that, that stage. That was like a, an amount beyond our imagination. But we thought, you know, maybe three, four million, something like that. I mean, we're thinking, we're thinking like a little bit above John Carpenter, Deborah Hill break in level, you know, with with Halloween, but not much beyond that. And it's like, okay, who's going to give,

• 2:09:10Sean Fennessey?

  um, you know, first time director and, you know, a producer who's working at the Quorman level, that kind of a budget. Well, it better be a damn compelling story. That was that was our thinking, and it better be makeable. It better appear to be makeable. And, you know, Gail, Gail had chops. She had credentials. My credential was I'd done visual effects on a couple of films. So I thought, all right, well, an effects film kind of makes sense because if it was just a a rom com or a straight horror film or whatever, I don't bring any added value. So we were very strategic about, you know, about our thought process going into, you know, pitching this this piece.

• 2:09:52Sean Fennessey?

  Gail, can you talk about hustling around and raising some of the money and looking for distributors at that time, too? Because people forget this is an independent movie, you know, this isn't, even though it's one of the most significant franchises of the last 40 years.

• 2:10:03Speaker 05

  It is 100% an independent film. Um, so the the first place I went was Roger Corman. Uh, because of course you go to the people you know. And and Roger basically said, you know, my my top end budget is $2 million. You can't make this for $2 million. And if you try, it will be, you know, it it it won't be the movie that you and Jim want to make. So God bless the late Roger Corman for that, but that was still painful. Uh, but luckily, the woman who had been, uh, I would think you would call her Chief Operating Officer

• 2:10:43Speaker 05

  of New World Pictures had moved on to Orion, Barbara Boyle, as had the story editor Frances Dole. And I sent the script to them. They read it and liked it. Um, and Mike Metevoy I had known because he had, uh, he had been a co financier with Roger on a number of films, a slate of films. Um, but interestingly enough, the domestic side of Orion didn't come in right away. It was the foreign side. The money that we got, and it wasn't all of the money, uh, was an Ifcom. We had To raise the rest of it.

• 2:11:25Speaker 05

  Um, and, uh, and Orion domestic would have first right of refusal on the US rights. Um, so the, the problem is that everyone wants guaranteed US distribution, not just an if come deal. But we were able to get half a million dollars advanced from HBO. They were the, so they were the, the first to come in, um, with an actual commitment. And that was for, for cable. And then, uh, and then literally, I mean, as Jim probably remembers, I mean, the number of doors slammed in our faces. The meetings we had were basically, people would say, um, yeah, I'm interested in this,

• 2:12:10Speaker 05

  but, um, sign this option agreement where all, where all control it forever, that is somebody else. And with no obligation to ever pay you a dime, ever, you know, get both of you on board to produce and direct. Um, those were the kinds of deals we were being offered. I mean, it literally, when you hear about the horrors of Hollywood, um, we, we went through, we went through many, many stages of Dante's hell. Um, but, uh, the, the strangest thing is the way we ended up with financing at Hemdale, uh, was that, uh, remember Chuck Simon?

• 2:12:51Speaker 05

  Jim, so, so some, a, a friend of mine basically said, I believe there's a company called Hemdale, and they have a three picture deal with Orion, they're looking for their third picture. The first two had been total financial disasters. Um, so I started calling. They wouldn't call me back. So then I found out from him that Barry Plumley, the head of production development, uh, was trying to sell a desk.

• 2:13:18Sean Fennessey?

  This is a great story.

• 2:13:21Speaker 05

  So, you know, you have to be, you have to be willing to do just about anything to get, to get your foot in the door. So I said I was interested in the desk. He called me back.

• 2:13:35Sean Fennessey?

  This is classic. This is a classic Gail story. I mean, I give Gail total credit for piecing this whole thing together from disparate sources. And, you know, I think between the two of us, we were, you know, cheeky enough or confident enough that we, that we were able to turn down some things. And I have to credit Gail with backing, backing me. There were people that wanted the script, and I think the highest offer was a million dollars from Paramount. A million dollars, I couldn't even imagine. I couldn't even visualize what that looked like in a pile, you know, couldn't even fathom it. And, and we turned it down because they didn't want me to direct it. They wanted, you know, an established director. And, you know, other people might have wanted an established producer. So Gail and I kind

• 2:14:20Sean Fennessey?

  of went in as a joined at the hip kind of team, and dared them to try to break us apart, which, you know, of course, they, almost everybody involved tried to at one point or another. And, you know, we emerged still as a team, still holding the rights, and, and with a budget that was borderline makeable. I mean, it was pretty, it got pretty skinny at times. A lot, big chunk of the money went to Arnold, obviously. And, you know, that cut into our below the line somewhat. And we did have some ambitious effects. Fortunately, we met Stan Winston, who neither one of us had known. And Stan just really loved the

• 2:15:01Sean Fennessey?

  piece, and he jumped in with both feet. And he hung on, you know, because we wound up with a big production delay of about six or eight months, something like that. And so Stan hung on. He worked on the film kind of quietly, worked on the effects and so on during that hiatus period. And then when we went, we hit the ground running with, I mean, it was just, we just got dropped into a combat zone. When we finally got access to Arnold, he had to go off and do another film. And so when we, in fact, I think, Gail, didn't we shoot for like eight or 10 days without Arnold? Like almost a quarter of the schedule?

• 2:15:38Speaker 05

  I think so. And not only that, but not that long before shooting. Linda Hamilton sprained her ankle or tore all the ligaments and we had to completely reschedule the film because initially we had, we were doing her sequences and it was a lot of the running and she couldn't do that. So that was another thing that impacted not only the schedule but the budget. Because there were locations that we had paid for that we couldn't use and I mean every time you, you shift something, there's a, there's a financial cost.

• 2:16:08Sean Fennessey?

  So what does that mean? You're just doing a lot of days with Rick Rossovich and Paul Winfield instead when your two stars are not available to you?

• 2:16:13Speaker 05

  No, she was available. She just couldn't, she just couldn't run.

• 2:16:17Sean Fennessey?

  She couldn't run. Okay. Um, yeah. She couldn't walk. She could barely walk. I mean, we, we got a like a football doctor to come in and give her a sports wrap every day so that she could hobble around. And the funny thing is, we knew, we already knew we weren't going to have Arnold for the first part of the shoot. It was like, hey, no problem. We'll shoot all of, shoot all of Linda's scenes first. Well, then that didn't work out. So it's like, okay, what do we do? I mean, I think if Gail and I had been through the Korman experience, which is just so scrappy and so chaotic and you never know from one day to the next what you're going to do and you got to shift gears in a split second and you know that it's a steamroller, you've got to shoot or you simply don't have the shots later in the cutting room. And we'd

• 2:17:01Sean Fennessey?

  been through that, you know, enough times. Um, we just knew that you got to, you got to solve it. Nobody's going to solve it for you. I was hoping you guys could talk a little bit about, because when you're shopping for, um, for the budget, I assume that Arnold and Michael and Linda are not attached at that point, right? You haven't cast the film? I think, yeah, we had Linda, we had Linda before the hiatus. So, so when we cast Arnold, we wound up with this kind of six or seven month wait. And I think we had already cast Linda and Michael at that point and everybody was just waiting. That's my memory of it. Um, and, and so I went off and wrote Aliens.

• 2:17:40Sean Fennessey?

  Rambo First Blood Part Two. And Rambo, so, you know, we were just kind of spinning our wheels and so, in a funny way, it's the best prepped movie I've ever done, at least in terms of storyboarding and pre-visualization and design work and all that, because I wound up with six months that I didn't expect to have. Now, we weren't getting paid. You know, my mom was sending me, she'd cut these clippings out of the newspaper where you could get two Big Macs for the price of one, you know, and I was kind of living on clippings, and I'd do, I'd do a couple of, I'd paint, you know, I was a painter, and I would paint some low-budget movie posters for like the cheapest releasing house that was even below Roger Corman, believe it or not, in LA, but they, you know, they'd

• 2:18:25Sean Fennessey?

  pay me fifteen hundred bucks for one painting. I could do it in a day and I could live on it for a month. So that's how I had the free time, I mean, I lived pretty cheaply, as you can, as you hear, and, you know, so I used the time to write. Gail, I think you were, you were kind of working in the background on the Terminator budget and various other things. And, and I, you know, and I was taking odd jobs on other films, like Alligator. Oh, right, yeah, another, was that, but that wasn't Corman, right? I think it was Charlie Band, but no, it was, yeah. Low, yeah, I mean, we're talking, still, we hadn't broken through from that low tier of scrappy guerrilla filmmaking, super-independent production companies.

• 2:19:09Sean Fennessey?

  And, and we didn't know that it was impossible, that, that what we were, you know, the ambitions we had to make this film were essentially impossibles, you know. It doesn't seem like six point four million dollars is a lot of money now, but back then, it actually was for, for two essentially neophyte filmmakers. I wanted to ask you both if you felt like at the time you were attempting to do something that the movie now clearly looks like, which is it looks like a hinge point from the Corman era of exploitation movies and independent genre pictures, towards this more technologically focused, star-driven franchise entertainment. And it might be the most significant example that comes in the aftermath of the new Hollywood. Did you, did

• 2:19:53Sean Fennessey?

  you guys have aspirations to that kind of thing? I know it's a little high-minded, but it felt like a very purposeful decision to try both at the same time. Well, you know, I mean... We had examples like, you know, obviously Carpenter and Deborah Hill breaking in and slowly incrementally driving their budgets up. And we had other examples like, you know, George Lucas, who hadn't done that much when he did Star Wars and made that film very, very cheaply. So he made that film for, I think, 9.8 million, which is almost unfathomable now. And we had just done Battle Beyond the Stars together, and that was Roger's most expensive film by a factor of two or three, I think.

• 2:20:35Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think he'd ever made a film above a million dollars, and that was made for close to $2 million. But we saw how we could emulate a Star Wars-level movie fairly credibly at, you know, a fifth of the budget. So we thought, all right, I think we were thinking we could make The Terminator for a couple million bucks. And then the realities hit in of, you know, all the prosthetic makeup and all of the laser, opticals and miniatures that we had to do. And, you know, so many nights of street car chase stuff, you know, out in the city. And it looked like it was going to be more like three and a half, and then it was four and four and a half.

• 2:21:16Sean Fennessey?

  But we managed to, you know, and Gale, tribute to Gale, managed to piece that money together. Look, there was no game plan about how that was going to sit in a Hollywood ecosystem looking back from 10 or 40 years later. I mean, we couldn't think at that level. We were just focused on the task. Here's the story we have to tell. We've got to cast it credibly in order to get some money. Hey, you know, Arnold's name came up. We kind of rejected it at first because he didn't fit the character. The character was written to be an undercover agent. That's the whole point. He's a cyborg so that he's a credible human that can pass as human, right, without a rubbery skin and glassy eyes, right? And...

• 2:21:59Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he's got to be able to fit in. That's the whole concept of an undercover kind of assassin. And Arnold doesn't fit in. I mean, you know, I mean, when we cast him, we knew that we were shifting the character, that it was a big change from the the concept or the premise we had been working under for, I don't know, a year of development. Right? And then all of a sudden, boom, it just changed. And all of a sudden, he's this iconic figure. He's going to be a Panzer tank. He's going to just push through a crowd, push anybody out of the way. Not very low key. It's like, okay, fine, let's lean into that, you know. People have asked me, you know, kind of what I'm proudest of,

• 2:22:41Sean Fennessey?

  which is a very hard question to answer. And I think what I'm proudest of is that we had the nimbleness or the agility of thought to be able to pivot the whole idea on a dime, literally in minutes, sitting there, you know, with Arnold and then and then back with John Daly of Emdale and talking about how he might be a part of this and saying, because he was not proposed to play the Terminator, he was proposed to play the hero. Because you cast the hero, and then you get the budget. That's how it works. Right? And so he was put up as the hero, you know, Reese, the good guy. And I said, that doesn't work. That's not going to work. But he would make a hell of a Terminator.

• 2:23:21Sean Fennessey?

  And Daly went and made the deal, you know, and then we were on. And the rest is history. But I think what I'm proudest of is that we were so used to that chaotic, do anything, make it work, make it happen kind of mentality from low budget, that it was like, okay, yeah, sure, we can, we can change our entire concept, spin on a dime, no problem. What's this? Gail, I was curious, I was curious how you felt about Arnold too, because on the one hand, he's a commodity in some ways at the box office. He's a rising star, but he is playing the heavy, which is really unusual. Like, how did you perceive the decision to go with Arnold?

• 2:23:57Speaker 05

  Got the movie made. And he, and he really understood the Terminator.

• 2:24:04Speaker 05

  I I I mean, I I have to say, I was blown away. He came in and he said, the Terminator is like a shark. He's not going to blink. He's going to move his head and look for his target like a shark does. It, nothing else matters. And it was a brilliant conception of of uh of the role. So he really did brings a lot to it. Uh, it it wasn't just, you know, it it wasn't just, okay, he's gonna walk through. You know, he's he he's going to be doing sort of a, you know, the same, the same part that he played in Conan, the Barbarian. Uh, it was a completely different so uh um approach and and it showed he was an actor.

• 2:24:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I don't think we realized how smart a move it was for us until we saw the dailies from Arnold's first day. Because he was already in the makeup and and hairstyle sort of post having gone through the fire. His eyebrows are gone, his hair is is singed back. He looks very kind of both synthetic and kind of punked out, right? And they had lightly glycer in his face and he had this pale and he was in this kind of greenish blue lights from the dashboard of the car from the from the environment. And he was just driving the cop car and looking around and scanning. And it was this long lens uh hood mount close up. And man, he was terrifying. He did not li- you didn't think of Conan for a split second.

• 2:25:32Sean Fennessey?

  He was a brand new guy, something you'd never seen before, something I'd never seen before. You know, my great aspiration was to do better than, you know, Yul Brynner in Westworld. You know, and we like, we overshot that mark by miles with with Arnold. You know, it was a smart move for him. It got him out of the kind of loincloth oiled up barbarian mode, which frankly, he would have been stuck in that and his career would have just ultimately tapered off. Um, but he just completely transformed himself into something nobody had ever seen before, didn't see coming, and applauded. Um, and it was a s- a smart move for us because, you know, he was who he was.

• 2:26:14Sean Fennessey?

  Now, you know, it's, I think it's important to point out that Arnold was not a star. It's easy to look back and say, okay, step ladder, you know, step one, he did Conan. He'd already done some stuff before that, but it was pretty rinky dink. And then, and then, you know, so his first step. Up was Conan, he would have gotten stuck at that level forever if he hadn't done the Terminator. Next step was, I shouldn't say that Arnold is a guy who bulldozes all obstacles. And if he wanted to be a movie star, he would have ultimately become one. But I think the Terminator definitely turbocharged or accelerated, you know, that process for him. One thing that really jumps out to me about this film and then becomes a trend in all your films for both of you guys is that,

• 2:26:58Sean Fennessey?

  you know, female, strong female characters are like a signature of Jim, a lot of your films and Gail, a lot of the work that you've done over the years too. And you told that story about working on Humanoids from the deep, Gail, and having a female filmmaker and then that person getting removed from the project and shooting the naked scenes. And then you've got Sarah Connor, whereas as critical as Arnold is to the story, Sarah is really the through line of everything in the whole franchise in many ways. And I was hoping you could talk a bit about that because that also is unorthodox in a genre movie at this time. You know, she's really the hero. Reese is sort of the hero, but she's really our hero by the time we get to the credits of the film. I don't know, Gail, I think that's one of the things you responded to. I mean, I wrote this story that was female centric and,

• 2:27:42Sean Fennessey?

  you know, in my mind, I was kind of doing another, you know, Last Girl horror film with a tech component to it. I don't think I had made some leap that it was some big, you know,

• 2:27:55Sean Fennessey?

  feminist statement. The thing is that Sarah Connor is every woman. Sarah Connor is someone who doesn't believe that she is going to be the savior of the future. And by the way, and she doesn't want the responsibility, and truthfully, who would? Uh, and, uh, and yet she finds the power within herself to, to succeed and then obviously come back in Terminator two completely transformed. But, um, but yeah, and, and there's nothing gratuitous about it. There is literally nothing gratuitous. She, she, you know, doesn't have the usual tropes, um, that you expect, uh, being a victim, being the girlfriend ornament.

• 2:28:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there was no shower scene. You know? No. There's never a shower scene when a guy's the hero. And the lovemaking scene is, is, and you know, is is not gratuitous. Uh, and since we had an R rated movie, I mean, it could have been more so. Um, so, you know, and and the other, the other thing is, um, you know, going back to an earlier question, which is that the name of the nightclub is tech noir. And that and that was was purposeful in the sense of, you know, this is a film about the dark side of technology. Um. Yeah, well, we like, we like noir films. We like, we like the stylized lighting and so on, the kind of the

• 2:29:24Sean Fennessey?

  uh, German expressionist kind of lighting that came into film noir. I mean, I don't think we ever thought of shooting it in black and white, but we did, we did go with a kind of a monochrome blue palette, which, you know, kind of worked for me. Um, I think there are things that you do instinctively that are innate. And then you intellectualize it after the fact. For me, it was instinctively obvious that a, that a, a strong female character would be interesting. At the time, I'm, I'm, I can say that that all came later when we got applauded for it, but that's not true. Because the one film I really wanted to make was Aliens. And it wasn't even called Aliens at that point, but I had already signed on to do that before I even started on, on the Terminator.

• 2:30:06Sean Fennessey?

  And I wrote that script before I started on Terminator and I was attracted to Ripley. I mean, you know, I mean, just the, the, the, the iconic Ripley who just, she, you know, she's, it's a, that's a last girl story. It's a very elevated version of a, of a last girl horror story, but done very, very well. And with an amazing actor, you know, Sigourney and I are friends. We've been friends for, you know, uh, what, thirty eight years, I guess. And, um, you know, so I think there are things you do instinctively and, you know, like I can do the whole Freudian thing and go back, you know, my mom was a great example of a strong but thwarted. You know, a female psyche, you know, somebody who wasn't applauded for the kind of independent

• 2:30:48Sean Fennessey?

  things that they did because that wasn't what the world was like at that point. And Gail, I don't, I don't know about your dynamics with, with your mom, but she was certainly a, you know, you know, pretty strong-willed character. Yeah, I wondered about that too. I mean, you know, your first, you know, not your first feature, but in many ways, your first feature in your mind, your producing partner is, is a woman too. I mean, this is notable to me. I, that didn't even occur to me as a thing. I mean, Ga- Gail and I just recognized each other. It had, it really didn't have much to do with gender, notwithstanding the fact that we ultimately got married. But, no, I mean, I think we just recognized each

• 2:31:31Sean Fennessey?

  other as the kind of, kind of science fiction nerd, you know, kind of mentality. We knew the films that we loved. We knew the films we wanted to make. We both had that aggressive can-do spirit, and I think we felt that each other had the chops to make things happen, you know?

• 2:31:50Speaker 05

  And that we could trust each other. I mean, this is a business where you can't always trust other people. And when we worked together on Battle Beyond the Stars, I was the assistant production manager. Jim did everything. I mean, and, you know, it was the art department. I mean, you know, and you remember, I'd be, I'd stay up all night, even though it wasn't my job, painting the sets, Mel Mori Green.

• 2:32:13Sean Fennessey?

  You got to see me at the worst. I mean, you got to see me after 75 hours straight with no sleep. And that was without drugs, just a lot of caffeine. I think there might have been some caffeine diet pills in there somewhere, but there was certainly nothing harder than that.

• 2:32:29Speaker 05

  So, so we, we knew we could work together. We knew we could trust each other. And, and I had his back and he had mine.

• 2:32:37Sean Fennessey?

  And honestly, that's what you need in any kind of partnership. Uh, because in this business, a lot of people will smile and, you know, tell you one thing and, uh, and essentially do whatever it is they want once they, they believe that you're on board. And, uh, you know, we, I've certainly experienced that, uh, because I assume that everyone would be as, you know, truthful and loyal as Jim. Yes, well. I wanted to ask you. Doesn't that happen? Yeah. I wanted to ask you both about shooting in LA. I re-watching the film last night. You just don't, there's no productions in LA anymore. You don't see this kind of thing and seeing it, especially at this time. And especially the night shoots and the motorcycle and car chase is just remarkable. Like,

• 2:33:22Sean Fennessey?

  could you just take me back to that period of when you were shooting the film in the city at that time and what it was like? Well, the interesting thing is we weren't supposed to shoot in LA. The original conception of the film was we were going to shoot in Toronto. And they were going to close down the, the major, some of the lanes, the major freeway there. Uh, what is it? The 401? Anyway, I'm not sure. 401, the Q E W. Yeah. And, and, uh, and then, uh, and then, uh, we were preempted because Arnold had to go do Conan the Destroyer for Dino de la Renta's, which meant we had to start filming in March. You can't film streets in Toronto when there's still ice and snow on the ground. And that is actually why we ended up shooting in LA. And it was the year, I think of the Olympics.

• 2:34:07Sean Fennessey?

  So it was actually a lot more deserted than usual. Yeah, I always wanted to do a car chase on ice. It, it whole takes place at about eight miles an hour. Everybody's wheels are spinning and you could see the other guys right there, but you can't get to them, you know? Uh, and look, it would have been a whole different show, very comedic. But, but they're iconic images. You know, since you just rewatched the film, I mean Griffith Park Observatory and the Second Street Tunnel and, and you know, and, and all of that in downtown L.A. is a character in this. Um, but it, it created a lot more issues. Um, you know, we, we, shooting in, in downtown L.A. at the time, I mean, we were what they call Skid Row on

• 2:34:51Sean Fennessey?

  the nickel was pretty dangerous. Yeah, it was dangerous. Uh, you know, the, the funny thing is Adam Greenberg, who shot it, he and I would drive around at night and he'd have his, his incident light meter out and he'd go, stop, stop, boy, stop, stop. He always called everybody, boy, stop, boy. He was, he was Polish. And, uh, you know, the driver would stop and he'd get out and he'd go, there is light. I can do exposure, you know? And there are times, there are times for Adam, there are times I said, this is the perfect place. We're going to shoot here. And he'd go, how I get exposure? How I get exposure? There's nothing. Cause we didn't, we couldn't afford big lights. We couldn't afford Musco. I don't even think they had the Musco back then, but they had Condors, you know, you could go up with a, with a

• 2:35:34Sean Fennessey?

  10K or something and light up the block. We didn't have any of that stuff. So we literally drove around until we found brightly lit places like next to, um, car lots were great because the car lots had a lot of light. Um, under, underneath, uh, Grand Avenue in downtown L.A. was a place called Lower Grand. I think it's called Lower Grand now, uh, called Thaddeus Koschusko Way where the whole thing was, was lined with fluorescent lights. It was only about a quarter of a mile long. But man, we used that street for sure. Cause once again, no light. You know, Adam was a genius at doing just a little bit of supplemental light on the actors' faces. Maybe sometime we'd have a, we'd have one light over on the curb

• 2:36:17Sean Fennessey?

  and kind of pan it, you know, as the car went through, you know, really cheesy stuff, but it gives it a very kind of. Edgy quality, you know? Yeah, hearing you talk about noir, that was the thing I noticed watching it is these very soft shafts of light across the actors faces in these dark environments and yeah, the the on on location shooting is just amazing. It is like a time and place so perfectly capturing that world. But you know, you mentioned this is a movie about the the present and the future. And like, it's just incredible how prescient it is. I know you've talked about it in the past. I'm sure you talked about it at the 30th anniversary, the 20th anniversary, the 10th anniversary. But man, we are really in an AI era right now. Yeah, well, it's look, it's more it's more timely than it's ever been. But you know, it's

• 2:36:59Sean Fennessey?

  we didn't invent those ideas. I mean, we're responding to stuff that came before us. Colossus, the Forbin Project, you know, Hal 9000 for 2001, Space Odyssey, Westworld, you know, there was there's pretty long history of robotics, humanoid robotics. I don't think it had ever been done right. You know, I mean, we we gave ourselves the ethos that if we're going to see a robot, it's not a man in a suit. We're going to figure out how it can be a, you know, a chrome skeleton because that's the image that I had in my mind. But the idea of, you know, a kind of super intelligence, a machine super intelligence, it had been around in the in the literature of science fiction since the 30s, long before Turing and all those guys said, this is going to really happen someday. You know, the science fiction community was was

• 2:37:44Sean Fennessey?

  writing about it. And, you know, these were not new ideas. I think the idea that that you've got a, you know, a computer that's plugged in that's paid for by by defense dollars that's plugged that, you know, that's plugged into weapon systems. That's the place where we are now. And, you know, people are people are going to give kill authority to a machine. And they're going to take humans out of the loop because the pace, the cadence of events in a battle theater in the years to come is going to be so fast. You're fighting drone swarms, you're fighting multiple missile attacks. And and they're and the other your opponent is using AI to control their weapon systems, you're going to have no choice. The second you connect

• 2:38:28Sean Fennessey?

  an AI to a weapon system, you're in Terminator world. And where that's imminent, you know, for like for real. A couple of years ago, I visited the Pentagon. Jim, I don't know if you've been there.

• 2:38:39Speaker 05

  And the remarkable thing, the number of people who have Terminator posters in their offices.

• 2:38:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, right. But like, you know, they like the Terminator. They like the bad version of the Terminator.

• 2:38:50Speaker 05

  Well, I, you know, I also think hopefully it is a reminder of the great responsibility they have.

• 2:38:55Sean Fennessey?

  Well, look, I mean, that's art's job, right? That's cinema's job. Any of the arts is to, uh, is to remind us who we are as human beings are. The right way and the wrong way to be, good versus evil. You know, the thing about AI is, the thing about, um, you know, not Gen AI. Gen, I know everybody in Hollywood's up in arms over Gen AI. That's a whole separate subject. But AGI, artificial general intelligence, you know, so-called, you know, uh, superintelligence, that's a whole separate problem. And the people working on that are bound and determined to create what they call personhood, an actual ego, an actual entity, that's an intelligent entity. And I always ask them, you know, how you gonna, how you gonna put guardrails on that? They say, oh, well, we'll do this thing called alignment, right?

• 2:39:38Sean Fennessey?

  And that's aligning with human purpose and with the greater human good. Well, whose version of that? You know, a Christian or a Muslim version of that, a Hindu version of that, a left-wing version of that, a right-wing version? I mean, we can't agree. We can't agree on what good and evil is, you know? So what makes us think we can, you know, spoon, you know, feed that to a little nascent, uh, superintelligence like, you know, feeding a baby bird, you know, with our morality and our sense of what, what's good and evil and best for human beings? Um, we can't. It's impossible. It's, it's almost definitionally impossible.

• 2:40:18Sean Fennessey?

  And yet they're still bound and determined to create this thing. So when it wakes up, whatever, you know, in whatever place, when it wakes up, it's gonna look around and go, well, you fools don't know what you're doing. And you're about to annihilate yourselves and this perfectly beautiful planet. Um, let me just take over for a little while, see if I can fix things up, you know? And that's like the best we can hope for. It might just be like, what do I need you guys for? Did, did either of you think of the film as a warning while you were making it? I'm asking about intention through the, the storytelling. Was this meant to be a warning?

• 2:40:49Speaker 05

  I think that at a subconscious level, yeah. I mean, but you know what? We, yeah. And, and, but you don't, you don't set out to make necessarily a message movie. The first and foremost thing is we wanted it to be entertaining. Uh, and our, our bar was essentially good enough that we could do it again.

• 2:41:08Sean Fennessey?

  That's, that's what I was just gonna say. Our entire goal set consisted of getting a foot in the door, making a film that allowed us to continue to be filmmakers. And at some point in the distant future beyond that, which we couldn't even imagine, we would do something good. You did something better than good. It's an absolutely amazing movie. Um, I really appreciate the time. I do end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen? Have you guys seen anything good? Jim, I know you're always working on something. Gail, you too. Have you guys seen anything?

• 2:41:41Speaker 05

  I, I, I've seen so many good things.

• 2:41:42Sean Fennessey?

  Tell me.

• 2:41:43Speaker 05

  Jim, have you seen the animated movie from Latvia called Flow?

• 2:41:47Sean Fennessey?

  No, but I hear it's fantastic. That's definitely on my, on my shortlist. What I saw that blew me away was Emilio Perez. I've seen it three times now.

• 2:41:55Speaker 05

  Yes, me too. I loved it.

• 2:41:56Sean Fennessey?

  What did you both like about that film? It was just not like any other film that's ever been made. You know, I mean, I think it's bold, it's daring, it's a vision. Um, it's beautifully executed. It's a beautiful piece of filmmaking. Zoe's, you know, fantastic in it. So this is her season, maybe to be, to be recognized as, as a, you know, at the stature that she should be recognized. You know, so there's a lot of things in it that, that I just find, you know, fascinating. Great recommendations. Thank you both so much for this and, and congrats on everything. I appreciate it. All right. Well, thanks for having us on.

• 2:42:31Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 2:42:39Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to James Cameron and Gail Anne Hurd. Holy shit, that happened. Thank you to the big picture all-stars on this podcast. Thanks to Jack Sanders. Thanks, of course, to our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on today's episode. Later this week, we are doing our best picture power rankings as promised, and I think we might be talking about Mufasa and Kraven the Hunter. Who is the real king of the jungle? Tune in to find out. See you then.

• 2:43:10Sean Fennessey?

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• 2:43:40Speaker 01

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