Best Picture Power Rankings and the Winners and Losers of Movies in 2024. Plus: ‘Superman’ Is Here.

Sean starts the episode with a monologue about the up-and-down state of the movie release calendar after a handful of extremely disappointing movies like ‘Kraven the Hunter,’ ‘Mufasa: The Lion King,’ and ‘Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim’ hit theaters recently, before they give way to stronger films like ‘The Brutalist,’ ‘Nosferatu,’ ‘A Complete Unknown,’ ‘Babygirl,’ and more (1:00). Then, he’s joined by Joanna Robinson to talk about the winners and losers, broadly, of the year in movies (6:00). They then share their latest Best Picture power rankings (1:08:00). Finally, Sean is joined by ‘Nickel Boys’ director RaMell Ross to discuss the revolutionary style and vision of the film, adapting Colson Whitehead’s novel, his path to becoming an artist, and more (1:25:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Joanna Robinson and RaMell Ross 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

  If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellini, I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight, which streamer is on the brink of collapse, and which executive is on the hot seat. Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again. Follow The Town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:40Sean 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 the 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.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 2:11Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the waning days of the movie year. Later in this episode, I have a conversation with RaMell Ross. His new film is Nickel Boys. Listeners of the show know that the movie came in at number two on my best movies of the year list. It's a staggering and bold work of art. Simply put, this was my favorite director interview of the year. RaMell is easygoing and funny, but tremendously insightful and sincere. See this movie, listen to this conversation. Nickel Boys is expanding over the holidays and next week, we have a few more major releases, including Nosferatu, The Brutalist, The Complete Unknown, and Baby Girl among them, making their way into theaters. The very end of this sometimes dicey movie year is ending on kind of a strange note. It's high, but it's awkward. The last couple of weeks have been rocky. My original

• 2:54Sean Fennessey?

  plan on today's episode was to get into Craven the Hunter, Mufasa, The Lion King, and maybe even Lord of the Rings, The War of the Rohirrim, the new animated Tolkien movie. And while I pride myself on spending time on major releases from the studios, especially when legitimate filmmakers whose work I have loved in the past, like J.C. Shandor or Barry Jenkins are involved, I'm not going to devote too much time to these movies today. I didn't really connect with these movies, and in the case of Craven, I couldn't even really feel Shandor's point of view at all in the movie. Mufasa is more of an assignment for Jenkins, and while I was fascinated watching him integrate his deep focus closeups and panoramic visual style applied to digitally created lions, the movie is another in a long line of genuinely mystifying live action Disney movies. I've seen almost all of them now, given my daughter's

• 3:36Sean Fennessey?

  growing interest, and as a huge fan of classic Disney animation, it's diminishing returns on almost everyone. I've seen 16 of the 21, and really, none of them are good at all? As for Craven, well, there's a hilarious episode of The Ringerverse with both the House of R and Midnight Boys crew weighing in on the movie, and the end of Sony's extended Spider-Man universe, so tap into that if you want to hear a little bit more about it. Instead of exploring these IP extensions, let's talk about the winners and losers of the year in movies. Has 2024 been a good movie year? We've been debating it a lot in the past couple of months on the show. Every year has good films. You already know what my favorites are if you've been listening. A couple even transcend the typically entertaining or distracting variety. This hasn't been my favorite year, but there's been some special

• 4:19Sean Fennessey?

  work. But in addition to whether or not this has been a good movie year, has it been a good year for movies is the big question I want to talk about right now. The case for yes. 2025 is nearly here and we survived, maybe even thrived considering the circumstance. In the aftermath of the dual strikes, the box office has dipped just 10% year over year and could get closer to 5% or even 3% when it's all said and done this holiday season. Given the panic that set in back in May after Furios and the Fall Guy underperformed and the unusual number of empty opening weekends at the movies this year, things could have gotten really bad, but then they didn't. Long Legs surprised, Wicked soared, Inside Out 2 exploded, Civil War made money, The

• 5:00Sean Fennessey?

  Beekeeper made money, movies are back, they're back. Well, maybe they're not back or they are, I'm not sure. The case for no is this, the movies that performed well up and down the box office are a little dispiriting for cinephiles. Of the top 20 highest grossing US movies of 2024, only three are non sequels or prequels. Those are It Ends With Us, The Wild Robot, and If. Compare that to seven of those originals in 2023, including The Barbenheimer Behemoth. This year, seven of the highest grosses are at least the fourth installment in a franchise. And so while the box office performance has been surprisingly sturdy, there's something insidious in the stew. Movie franchises seem to be tanking on TV, but they're hanging in there at the movies at the expense of other kinds of movies, leaving streamers to pick up the slack with

• 5:45Sean Fennessey?

  stuff like Rebel Ridge, Carry On, and it's What's Inside on Netflix, rock solid genre movies that we like to celebrate here, but they're not playing in theaters. So yeah, as always, I'm back, movies are back, but at any minute it could be so over. We'll see what happens. That does take us to 2025, though, and arguably the most important movie of that year, which is Superman. We just saw the first trailer for Superman, and I will say I am excited. I am a James Gunn fan, as listeners of the show know, and I like what I saw from the trailer. I liked the color grading, I liked how bright and beautiful and visibly and smartly lit the movie seems to be. Obviously Gunn has a very spongy and visceral quality to his filmmaking. It's not a mistake that the first image you see of Superman in this teaser trailer is

• 6:30Sean Fennessey?

  a bloodied Superman. James Gunn likes blood and guts. This is something that is featured in all of his movies. So while there is a kind of classic feeling and The interpolation of the John Williams theme from the Richard Donner Superman film. I get the feeling like this is going to be a very gun type project aside from those obvious nods to the past. Also, David Corn sweat looks great. He is not hyper muscle bound like Henry Cavill was in the Zack Snyder films. Rachel Brosnahan looks like a perfect Lois Lane. I'm excited. I'm I choose to believe. I believed in gun in the past and it has paid off for me. In the meantime, let's go back to 2024. Let's bring in Joanna Robinson. She's going to help me talk about the winners and losers of the movie year.

• 7:12Sean Fennessey?

  And also talk about some best picture contenders and how they stack up as we head towards 2025.

• 7:23Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Joanna Robinson is here. Joe, thank you for being here. Um, we have a lot to get to.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, Mr. Monologue, but I'm glad to be here for the rest.

• 7:31Sean Fennessey?

  Don't mock my monologue. All right. I need you to support me.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  I know I support you. I'm so supportive of you and your art.

• 7:40Sean Fennessey?

  My art, huh? Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:41Sean Fennessey?

  As I lasloth my way through movie podcasting, one brutal episode at a time.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  You're a misunderstood genius in your time and eventually we will celebrate you.

• 7:52Sean Fennessey?

  I know that's not true. Uh, I wanted to ask you very quickly. I'm sure you're making all manner of content about it, but I just shared a couple of thoughts about the Superman trailer. Um, as we look forward before looking back at 2024, what was your vibe?

• 8:05Speaker 03

  Are you? Well, first let me ask you, are you all in on this?

• 8:08Sean Fennessey?

  I am. I am. I think, I think if I didn't know anything about James Gunn's work, I would have some concerns, but.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  That's so interesting. I feel the opposite.

• 8:17Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting. Why?

• 8:18Speaker 03

  Um, well, here's, here's what I'll say. Uh, it was a great trailer, like a great, you know, vibes trailer. As you know, given many conversations we've had over the past few weeks, I'm a big Nick Holt fan, so seeing Nick Holt as Lex Luthor was wonderful. I thought he was like, kind of stole the trailer for me. Um, but I have some questions, comments, concerns about James Gunn as the right match for Superman, uh, tonally. So I am reserving. I am, I'm more skeptical than my fellow Ringer verse, uh, family and they're all in and they're very excited. And there was a thing with the dog and that really thrilled them.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  And they love that. I will say, and I, and I said this to, to Mal, uh, we talked about it briefly on House of R and I said, The shot of Superman in the snow, beaten and bloody and sort of like unable to catch his breath, I thought was very effective in a way that the sort of brooding, gritty, Zack Snyder Superman stuff never was effective for me. This was like a wounded hero, but it didn't feel like it was trying to be grim dark at the same time. And then the bit with the kid and the flag, the Superman flag with the Superman logo on it, I thought that was really, really good as well. That's where I am.

• 9:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think deep down, James Gunn is kind of a sap, so I think that this is going to work out fine personally, but.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  Maybe. He's just the, you know, his whole brand is, is snark and.

• 9:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but it's also, if we work together, we can be a family. And if we are decent to each other, we can survive the struggle. Like that's, the Guardians movies are all about that. Even the Suicide Squad movie is kind of about that. So I agree with you on the, on the bloodied part. I mean, that's the other thing is that he's just such a visceral filmmaker and he has roots in exploitation and horror. And so a bloodied Superman is an important issue. Yeah, it's an important, important vision for that character.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  The stuff with hot girl, Nathan Fillion in a wig. I have some questions about all of that. Rachel Brosnahan in a vest, I have no questions. No notes. Looks great.

• 10:24Sean Fennessey?

  It was an inspired casting and she looks like a perfect Lois Lane.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  She's perfect.

• 10:28Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Well, thank you for sharing a few morsels there. I'm sure you're.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  You're welcome.

• 10:32Sean Fennessey?

  Getting into it even deeper in other spaces.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  I'm guessing, I'm guessing you didn't expect that I would be the more cynical between the two of us about a Superman trailer, but you know.

• 10:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think, I think you're, I think where you're coming from is reasonable and it's possible that that's the case. I think I want to believe, you know, I think I want to believe in a little bit more of a standalone, optimistic superhero story that feels outside of where we've been for the last 10 years.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think there's a lot about Gunn's plans at, like. The plan that he laid out for the films that he want to make, wants to make, and the, the way they are not all necessarily like burdensome leading towards a team up is very exciting to me. I was just, as he was sort of assigning films, I was like, oh, you gave yourself Superman? I would give, I would have given you a different one. And that's the question I have. But I'm, I'm happy to have proven the wrong in 2025. I'm often wrong, so we shall see. Not about anything I'm going to predict today. Everything I predict today is going to be bang on correct.

• 11:33Sean Fennessey?

  We'll see about that. The one last thing, you know, I was never a DC guy growing up. I was always more of a Marvel kid, but there were a handful of characters that I was found interesting. In particular, I always thought Clayface was really cool, especially in Batman the Animated Series. So the idea of like James Gunn doing a Clayface movie written by Mike Flanagan and a Sergeant Rock movie directed by Luca Guadagnino, written by Justin Kouritskas. I'm like, that's what I want superhero executives to be doing? Like, that's super cool. Those movies might not work, but at least try that and try to, try to expand beyond what we've understood for the last 20 years.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  I think their Batman pitch is really good. The, the prospect of a swamp thing property is really exciting to me. Yeah, there's like a lot that's coming out of there that is very exciting. This was like my one question mark, but you know, everyone else seems really high on it and really excited. So I'm probably wrong about it.

• 12:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Well, we can't be wrong about the winners and losers of the year in movies. So let's, let's go through some. I kind of threw this at you last minute, but it feels appropriate because it felt like such a tense movie year coming out of the strikes. There was a lot of concern, a lot of, you know, trolling about the box office, a lot of, I would say a lot of trade reporters, I think in, in an attempt to bring some drama to this, this entertainment year suggested that the sky was falling. When I did my little riff in May, my intention of that was actually not to not be doing Skies Falling. My intention was to say like, just let's put our head down and keep going to the movies and this is going to work out. Do you think that it did work out? Like, are you, set aside whether or not the movies were good or not. In general, the state of the business, you think it's healthy, in bad shape, somewhere in between?

• 13:09Speaker 03

  Before we started recording, we were talking about like, just turn your brain off, go to the movies, have a great time.

• 13:14Sean Fennessey?

  Check out the brutalist in Emilio Perez. Don't think about the themes or the ideas.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Conclave, what a sick movie. Um, I think this was.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  Actually, like, looking at what feels like it rose above in terms of stickiness and cultural conversation, this is a pretty tough year, I think, at the end of the day. Like, there's some things at the top that are, that I'm excited are there. Like, Dune 2, I think, is a really worthy, you know, exciting film that captivated people and made a lot of money. Definitely, there were some huge box office hits that existed this year. You can't say that nobody went to the cinema. They certainly went. But they went for stuff like Deadpool and Wolverine, which I don't think either of us would say is like a cinematic classic. So, looking at the offerings at the end of this year, I think it was like a pretty tough year. You said to not talk about the quality of the movies, but I think

• 14:08Speaker 03

  quality-wise, I think it was a tough year. But I don't think we can say, let's close, let's, you know, board up all the movie theaters, it's over, we did it. You know, I think that's still alive and well. And I think as we rebound from the long ripple of COVID and the writer's strike and all of that, I think 2025, we were, you know, Chris and I were having a similar conversation about television this year. I just really think we're in a lag year because of a lot of, a lot of circumstances. And I think what's on the slate for 2025 is quite exciting.

• 14:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I tend to agree. I think it, there are a handful of movies that I was genuinely awestruck by, but not very many. And the franchise stuff seemed very weak. Obviously, a lot of the big franchises are also in a bit of a reset, reset phase. Marvel and Jurassic Park and the Fast movies and a lot of stuff that is kind of consistently there is, took a pause to, to reset. You know, obviously, the, I think it's safe to say that the biggest winner of the movie year is Ryan Reynolds. And that, that win is twofold. One, at a time when the superhero industrial complex seemed to be at a pretty significant downturn.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:23Sean Fennessey?

  He engineered, starred in, produced a billion-dollar movie. That movie is basically a Mad TV sketch, but it's a pretty funny Mad TV sketch. And, you know, between that and his wife, Blake Lively, starring in producing It Ends With Us, which is arguably the biggest box office surprise of the year, though, maybe for non Colleen Hoover knowers, that's true. I don't know.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  I thought that movie didn't do nearly what they wanted it to.

• 15:53Sean Fennessey?

  Is that true?

• 15:54Speaker 03

  Not necessarily in terms of like box office, but in terms of like, um, impact. I just, I thought like, well, first of all, you know, just to get my sort of like celebrity gossip angle in, I will say that was a disastrous press tour for that film. Um, it made money certainly, but I, my, my belief was that Blake Lively thought this was going to be like Golden Globe winner, like, you know, uh, just, just a sort of glossier thing than it wound up being at the end of the day. And I think they really whiffed the marketing on it, the, the quality of the movie aside. They whiffed the marketing on it. They whiffed that whole launch in a way that like, was interesting because I think it actually underlines your point about what Ryan Reynolds did with Deadpool is like,

• 16:38Speaker 03

  he did that, they, they kind of tried to half Barbenheimer it because Deadpool and Wolverine came out and then it ends with us came out a week or two later. And, you know, Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds were showing up to the various premieres of it ends with us to sort of say, let's keep the party going. But the content of that film, which is about domestic violence was just really not, not the match made in heaven, uh, that Barbenheimer, uh, proved to be. And so it felt like that was a failure to replicate what worked so well with Deadpool and Wolverine. But maybe not a financial failure. So maybe I'm, I'm sort of overstating.

• 17:14Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's clear that one, the movie, I, I just thought found the movie to be not very good. Um, and it feel, it feels a very ham handed in its storytelling about a sensitive issue. My, my, my big concerns were, I think I was expecting a completely different kind of movies. When I sat down, I was quite flummoxed by what it turned out to be. But most people who sat down had read the book or were interested in the story and had some sense of what it was going to be. And I think people liked it well enough, but not even close to being what you're describing, which is like a potential awards contender or springboard for some sort of elevation of Blake Lively's status as a movie star.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:47Sean Fennessey?

  But. The movie made $350 million internationally and it's a literary adaptation. I mean, that's in these times, that is very rare.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  And it is. Colleen Hoover is like a juggernaut in publishing right now. She is unstoppable. And so that that sort of like IP that comes with her was a massive boost. It's, you know, it's similar to launching the Fifty Shades franchise or something like that. It's not just like a literary adaptation. It is a genuine phenomenon brought to the screen. And I think you're right that like, of course, I can't argue against 350 million dollars. But looking at sort of, I don't know if this is fair, letterbox scores or other things like that. It's getting really panned. And so I don't think it's, I don't think it's something that began something. It was successful, but not something that when you take it around to people to say, here's what we do next. They're going to say, yes, yes, more of that necessarily.

• 18:40Sean Fennessey?

  That's, I wonder, I'm not sure. I mean, I think, I think it may have accomplished what Blake Lively needed it to, even though the gossip around the movie was very not good. And I would argue not good for Blake Lively in particular.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 18:54Sean Fennessey?

  I, but I'm, I'm not sure. I'm, I'm, we'll have to basically wait until she, either she makes another one of these films in this, the Hoover series, or does something else new. I guess she's doing a simple, simple favor. Is that what it's called? Simple Favor Two?

• 19:07Speaker 03

  Two, yeah. More menswear. We can only hope.

• 19:10Sean Fennessey?

  Which, you know, that in and of itself was kind of a hit.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:13Sean Fennessey?

  The original.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  I mean, I anticipate we will get more Colleen Hoover. Whether or not that means we'll get more Blake Lively plus Colleen Hoover, I don't know.

• 19:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  So I think it was a win for Colleen Hoover film adaptation or TV adaptation more than anything else. And I personally, this is like, this is my personal nemesis is the Hoover verse. I'm just like really out on it. So we'll see.

• 19:37Sean Fennessey?

  I only put that It Ends With Us in that conversation because it's been reported that Ryan Reynolds did a bit, bit of a ghost write on the It Ends With Us script. And so he really had his fingers in two of the genuine box office successes of 2024.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  That was such a weird moment where she's just started saying that on red carpet. And Justin Baldoni, who's the writer, director, was sort of like, okay. You know, she was just basically like trying to give Ryan credit for, I don't know, ghostwriting the film. Anyway, bizarre moment in, in celebrity culture, but definitely, we, inarguably, the, uh, the Reynolds touch this year was, was very important. And I'm, I'm sure that Marvel is saying, whatever you want, sir, you can do with us, which is just a wild power imbalance. I mean, like Downey obviously had a, had a, a strong grip over the Marvel apparatus, but I, but they were never as desperate as they

• 20:31Speaker 03

  are right now. They were never such a weak moment as they are right now. So, yeah.

• 20:36Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, I'm not sure if that's going to pay off long-term. We shall see. The people do love them, some Ryan Reynolds. I don't know. I don't really, I, I don't even know what to say anymore.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Pay off in what way?

• 20:45Sean Fennessey?

  What's that? Well, meaning like-

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Pay off in what way?

• 20:48Sean Fennessey?

  Deadpool will obviously find his way into whatever the secret war stories they tell are.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:53Sean Fennessey?

  That is, is smart. Whether like a Deadpool four movie could ever do what Deadpool and Wolverine does, I don't know. But then again, why would I bet against him? And I should just stop talking about it. Cause like this, people loved this movie. They fucking loved it.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  They did. They did.

• 21:06Sean Fennessey?

  Did you have a backup for a power couple? If it's not Reynolds and Blake Lively?

• 21:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I would say Ariana Grande and Cynthia Revo, like, you know, similarly, the whole wicked phenomenon is what it is because the, the movie, as much as you and I both agree on it visually, um, is better than I expected it was going to be. Um, I was really dreading this film and I think they did a lot of things, um, that I didn't expect them to do. But the power of the Ariana Grande Cynthia Revo's story, maybe more Ariana Grande's story, because Ariana Grande is like, here I am, I'm an actress, take me, cast me in things. Um, Cynthia Revo's, here I am a stage actress,

• 21:51Speaker 03

  cast me in more of your films. That would be great. Um, but their press tour, again, you know, this is a film podcast. I don't mean to make it all about the celebrity stuff, but their press tour as, as ridiculed as it was, was then turned around to become this great triumphant story. It was like in an odd moment. Everyone was mocking it. Then they saw the movie and then they said, wow, look at what these women did and look how important their friendship is and look how strong their brand is.

• 22:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's definitely what I said. Absolutely.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  Oh, well, yeah, you're, you're known for that.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  You love to talk about people as brands, so, you know.

• 22:27Sean Fennessey?

  Uh.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  I know that about you.

• 22:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, look, obviously, they have just been tremendously successful with selling this movie to the world. And really, the, the, the only review that matters in my life will be coming in this weekend because I have obtained a screener to, to Wicked and will be watching it in my home with my three-year-old. And this morning, she demanded to see the trailer and said, I need to see the trailer for the movie where Elphaba is good. So I'll let you know next week.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  Do you think it's gonna, so you guys have been listening to the soundtrack in your home, right?

• 22:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  Did you say that?

• 22:58Sean Fennessey?

  And we've pivoted to the movie soundtrack now, too.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  Okay, do you feel like if your daughter loves this movie, will it change your opinion of the movie?

• 23:07Sean Fennessey?

  Um, yes.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm just a complete, like, I'm just in the bag for my kid, you know, I'm just like, you know, I love the movie Wish because she loved it and Wish is widely considered one of the worst Disney animated features of all time. And I was like, pretty good, like the songs?

• 23:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:22Sean Fennessey?

  Interested? I saw Moana 2 and I didn't like it. And then I went to go see it with her and I was just bumping the soundtrack, driving her to school this morning. And then on the way home, I was like, I'm gonna keep that song going in the car after I left school. Like, it's a disease what happens when you get interested in stuff with your kids, it's great.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Okay, so Universal Pictures, if you want Sean to be pushing Wicked in the Best Picture category, send a box of goodies to his house, you know, you know where to find his child, the most influential presence in the awards race this year.

• 23:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, apologies to all the pundits out there, but Alice is the strongest voice.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  She is.

• 23:57Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I guess that does dovetail with the Studio of the Year conversation. You suggested when we first started talking about this that Universal has a really strong case. I think Disney also has a really strong case for which is the biggest. You know, the hierarchy has been pretty consistent over the last five years. It's more or less been Universal and Disney going back and forth with WB, Sony and Paramount, picking up the slack.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:21Sean Fennessey?

  There was obviously the Barbie phenomenon boosted Warner Brothers last year, but these are really the two major theatrical movie studios. It also feels like while Universal has been persistently very- Theatrical forward. Disney is now fully back to being theatrical forward. Moana two being the clearest sign yet that there's just, there's so much money in those hills, those, those exhibition hills for them. And, you know, for, for, for us, for the purposes of this show, I think that's wonderful. I do think that Universal probably had a slightly bigger challenge with getting Wicked right. And along with a handful of other films, you know, like, The Wild Robot is a good example of a movie that they just like, they got that right. And it did pretty good business and will probably-

• 25:04Speaker 03

  The Substance?

• 25:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Well, yeah, but they don't, do they really get to benefit from that? Cause they, they like, pawned it off on movie, you know, like they backed it, but then they don't really get to claim it.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  They do get to claim it though. It's still in their stable, you know, along with Twisters and Nosferatu and Bike Riders and my fave, The Fall Guy, you know, like there's like, this was a really good year for them. Uh, and, and, and, and targeting different demographics too.

• 25:32Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  In a way that I don't think Disney as, is as expansive in their-

• 25:37Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with you. I mean, the, you know, Universal already, I think generally has the best reputation of the major studios for being simultaneously very filmmaker friendly and very audience friendly, right? Like this is the studio that signed up Christopher Nolan after WB Fallout. They signed up Jordan Peele. They signed up Daniels after everything ever all at once, you know, they're trying to bring in as many people into the fold. Um, that are creative and interesting. And they're also making Wicked and they're also making Twisters, you know, so, um, they have a claim. That being said, Disney has Deadpool and Wolverine and Inside Out two, and now Moana two. And those are gonna end up being the three biggest movies of the year. So, you know, how can you compete with that?

• 26:18Speaker 03

  Well, what do you, what do you, okay, when you say biggest, are you just talking about box office?

• 26:23Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting question. I don't know. What do you, how do you think we should measure it?

• 26:25Speaker 03

  Okay. So I will say that over on this other Ringer podcast, I do trial by content. We've been tinkering over the years with this sort of like algorithm to try to capture what is the biggest, like this cue score for the biggest movie here, because it can't just be box office, because terrible movies make tons of money and no one ever talks about them again. And that happens all the time.

• 26:45Sean Fennessey?

  Very true.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  So it's like, so what is your Top Gun Maverick? What is your Barbenheimer? What is your like, the movie of the year? And it has like, you know, there's- Again, Letter, like Letterboxd is its own thing because that's a different audience, uh, you know, that, that is making their voice known.

• 27:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, my brutal boys and girls. God bless all of them.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  There you go. The Babylon hive continues, right? And then like, there's, uh, box office, uh, budget multiplier is one that we've been adding to the algorithm, just sort of like, how profitable was this at the end of the day? Um, there's not just like the Letterboxd score, but there's like, how many people logged it on Letterboxd is a metrics that were, is a, is a metric that we're tracking, Metacritic score. Um, just trying to, and I really think we got it right this year. I think we've got, we, it was a little janky last year. The Eras Tour movie came in at the end of the year like a wrecking ball and really destroyed everything, but I think this year we really got it. Do you want to hear our top 10?

• 27:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  That is box office in addition to other things.

• 27:47Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  So number, number one, Doom Part Two.

• 27:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 27:50Speaker 03

  Number two, Inside Out Two. Number three, The Wild Robot. Number four, Wicked. Number five, Deadpool and Wolverine. Number six, Challengers. Number seven, stay with me. Number seven, Long Legs. Number eight, The Substance. Number nine, Furiosa. Number 10, Alien Romulus. For stuff like Challengers and Long Legs and The Substance, I feel like these are films that are just going to stay alive in the conversation for years and years and years to come. Because when you talk to people who like, love cinema, they're going to say, have you seen The Substance this year? Did you watch Challengers? Whether or not those performed at the, you know, the box office multiplier obviously helps something

• 28:33Speaker 03

  like Long Legs, but like, um, I think there's just like an interesting maelstrom that we need to consider that goes beyond what the box office can tell us these days because the box office is so different. That is, that is just like, I saw, there, there was something so big in this movie. I felt like I had to see it on the screen. And I don't know that people feel that way about the sexy tennis that is Challengers. I had to go to the cinema to see it. But if they see it at home. It's gonna linger with them. You know, that's my argument.

• 29:05Sean Fennessey?

  I love that you've put so much thought into the methodology. That's exactly the kind of dumb shit that I'm interested in.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:11Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, I don't know that I, I haven't looked at the numbers that you've collated, but I'm not sure if I fully agree with where you landed. In part because I think Deadpool and Wolverine being the second highest grossing movie of the year, and also being a movie that essentially kept the seat warm for an entire wing of Hollywood, is not measurable, but incredibly important. And I think really like undermined a lot of my suspicions about where culture was. It's, it's incredible success. Well, because on the episode that we did with the Midnight Boys about it, I was like, is this what people want? I remember asking that question because like, as I sat in the movie theater, I laughed. I got all the references. I was happy to have been on the journey with 20th Century Fox's superhero stories and all of the unmade movies.

• 29:54Sean Fennessey?

  And it was great to see Gambit and, you know, against my own sincere will, I laughed at Ryan Reynolds. But I couldn't, I was like, God, this is so up its own ass. I can't believe it. And it still was like monumentally big. I mean, it was, it's basically an old school box office success. You know, it's a movie, it's a remnant of 2018 and not of 2024. So I, I see a movie like that as being pretty significant in this measurement that we're having here.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  It was always going to be though, like when people were sort of spinning their webs about,

• 30:30Speaker 03

  this is the end of Marvel last year. You know, those of us who might've been on a, a Marvel based book tour were saying, they have one movie coming out next year, one movie, and it's Deadpool and Wolverine, and it's gonna make an obscene amount of money. And it's gonna give them the space they need to lick their wounds and figure out where to go from there. I think the writing on the wall for this has been happening since No Way, Spider-Man: No Way Home. That was a, that was a similar sort of nostalgia play that worked way more than I even expected it would.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  And so there's, there's this in the, I don't know, um, pause, superhero pause, or dying gasp, however you prefer to call it, um, there is this clutching at nostalgia straws, which is why Downey and Chris Evans are coming back to the MCU. That is the space we're in, at least in that avenue of storytelling.

• 31:29Sean Fennessey?

  I was just on a text chain with friends last night about the Chris Evans coming back thing, and we discussed it when you and I talked about Red One, but what a disappointment that he just has done absolutely nothing with his Marvel capital and is now just going back after making three horrible streaming movies. It's just, it's a real drag, especially relative to what Sebastian Stan is doing, where he's just like, absolutely, I'll go work with a Romanian auteur and try to elevate his work internationally. It's like, it's just such a, it sucks.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  We talked about exactly this, and I, and I, as much as I hate that for Chris Evans, and what's, what's even more disappointing is that he can do, we saw knives out, he can do it. There's, there are things that he can do. He just doesn't have the taste or the advice that Sebastian Stan is getting.

• 32:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but he does have the taste. He made Snowpiercer. He made Sunshine. He made Scott Pilgrim versus the world. Like, he knows who good filmmakers are. He, he proved to us the, so I'm, I'm a little, it's more like he doesn't care, which is obviously his right as a person, but.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  That's depressing.

• 32:28Sean Fennessey?

  That's depressing. Anyway, we don't have to spend any more time on Chris Evans. I, I tell you what, I love your case for Universal, the fact that they spoke to a lot of different kinds of audiences in an effective way. So let's go with Universal as the studio. Um, let's talk about the movie star. Now, I was chatting with our friend Craig Horbeck this morning about this, and he had a, a great comp that may be completely baffling to you, but I'm gonna make an attempt to explain it. Um, there's a famous football clip from the last couple of years in which DK, or excuse me, in which Buddha Baker intercepts a pass. He's a safety for the Arizona Cardinals, and he's running to, uh, bring that interception

• 33:09Sean Fennessey?

  into the end zone for a touchdown. And while he's running, he doesn't realize that the wide receiver DK Metcalf is on his tail and is about to knock the ball out, forcing a fumble and halting that interception touchdown.

• 33:25Sean Fennessey?

  That is what Timothy Chalamet is doing in Glenn Powell in the movie Star of the Year Race, where Glenn Powell, up until about three weeks ago, I was like, well, this is the story. Huge streaming hit in Hitman. It's gonna get him a Golden Globe nomination. Plus, Twisters Cherry on top. This is a box office star. This is a guy who can carry a franchise. Everything that we've been saying on the show for the last five years, but everything that's been kind of in the ether of Hollywood for the last five years with Glenn, it happened. Anyone but you carried over from last year. He's the guy. He's our pick. And then Chalamet showed up on game day, college game day. And I was like, holy shit, A Complete Unknown is gonna be a big hit. On top of that Dune Part Two, you know, phenomenon that you were citing earlier.

• 34:06Sean Fennessey?

  And so my gut is like, wow, you know, he just, he DK Metcalf the button on Glenn, you know, that's, right? Does it feel that way?

• 34:14Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I mean, like, you put, you, you, you put a bunch of these sort of like ideas in the doc, and I was trying to find alts for you just to keep like the conversation interesting. And I could not make a good case for anyone else other than Timmy as the movie star of the year. The bookend of Dune Part Two and A Complete Unknown, again, the slightly different demographics they're serving in terms of, Dune Part Two obviously is in the Oscar conversation, but not the way in which A Complete Unknown has put him in the best actor conversation.

• 34:46Sean Fennessey?

  He could totally win, Joe.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  He could absolutely win. And I think he might. And so, and we liked the movie. And we liked him, and more than anything else, we liked him in the movie. So there's all of that. And then there's like the lingering fumes of one of our favorite conversations from last year, which is like, somehow Wonka worked. You know? And so, Timmy at this point feels undeniable, which is exciting because, you know, in the age of is the movie star dead, this young crop coming up of like, your Zendaya's, your Timothy Chalamet's, your Florence Pugh's, your entire cast of Dune Part Two, let's say.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  Like, that they can actually have movie stardom, not sort of the faint echo of movie stardom past, is exciting. And it's only good for, you know, the conversation about the impact of movies in general.

• 35:47Sean Fennessey?

  I would argue too, that he is doing it in a way that- Perhaps no one has ever done it before because he's got a big challenge, right? You can't become a movie star now just on the back of exciting action or drama features, the way that Paul Newman did, or Harrison Ford did, or Tom Cruise did, or Denzel Washington did, you know, obviously Hollywood is in a significantly different state. You need to use franchises to elevate. And so he has very deftly chosen franchises. He's aligned himself with a couple of filmmakers. And he's also taken traditional risks in terms of, you know, relatively big budget dramas. So if you look at like the full scale of his career, two movies with Greta Gerwig, you've got,

• 36:31Sean Fennessey?

  obviously, the two Dune films with Villeneuve, you've got a Bob Dylan portrayal with James Mangold, all celebrated directors. You've got Wonka with another celebrated director in Paul King, but a much like playing to kids, not playing to adults, totally different. You've also got like even this, you're obviously Luca Guadagnino and Call Me By Your Name getting an Academy Award nomination at incredibly young age. Even the stuff that doesn't work, like Beautiful Boy, I thought was like the right try, the right attempt. Bones in All is like the right thing to try, to have a well-rounded CV as a young actor. And so-

• 37:06Speaker 03

  Being someone that Wes Anderson calls, you know?

• 37:08Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly. Yes. And, and, and, you know, now is obviously working with Josh Safdie, who he's wanted to work with for a long time. He's known those guys forever. That's a cool A24 period piece. That's also a different, it's a different card in the deck. And so now it's like, you look at the arc of his career and it's like, he's not Leo, he's not Brad Pitt, he's not George Clooney, he's not like, there's no 90s or 2000s archetype that he is really following. He's doing a little Daniel Day Lewis, he's doing a little, a little like, I don't know, who's a young heartthrob, like he's doing a little Christian Bale, he's doing, he's kind of moving all over the place in terms of the role picks?

• 37:47Speaker 03

  How is he not, it's interesting because- I've heard him talk about the fact that like he wanted to do, he wanted to be Leo. But then he realized that that wasn't really exactly what he wanted or exactly what was available to him. But there is some Leo in there, in the mix, for sure.

• 38:05Sean Fennessey?

  There absolutely is, but Leo would never go on College Game Day. He wouldn't do that. So he wouldn't go on Theo Von's podcast and hang out and talk about Bernie Sanders. I mean, this is-

• 38:14Speaker 03

  He wouldn't, he wouldn't talk to Brittany Broski and like know all the inside jokes.

• 38:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, exactly. That is-

• 38:19Speaker 03

  He might date a Kardashian. Um, but you know.

• 38:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. But even that is like, Leo hasn't had a very famous girlfriend in a long time. Maybe younger Leo, the same way Shalhoub is young.

• 38:33Speaker 03

  He prefers to be the star of that relationship. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, and, and I think what, what goes along with all of it. Genuine talent, obviously, that's in, in the mix. That's in the mix for plenty of people, but it's in the mix for him. But then also the narrative around a complete unknown, the amount of sweat equity that went into that project. The, the, you know, the musical training, the footage of him, you know, rehearsing on the set of Dune. Nothing, nothing, I think, can match watching him rehearse to be Bob Dylan while dressed as Paul Atreides. That's just undeniable.

• 39:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's pretty cool. It's, it's just really a huge relief to actually have someone like this. So I'm like, wow, definitely we'll be thinking about this guy in 20 years. Like there's just, unless he's, he's felled by some terrible scandal, um, I think he's, he's here to stay.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  Clip this and save it for the future, but let's hope we don't have to use it.

• 39:30Sean Fennessey?

  How many things can you clip for me at this point? You know, how many times can I be dragged through the mud for my bad takes? Joanna, please don't draw attention to those things.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  I'm not, I'm not, I'm not the, I'm not the one dragging you.

• 39:40Sean Fennessey?

  You had another great idea for a winner of the year, which is a genre winner. And it's, it's pretty clearly musicals, right? This seems to be in the absence of huge action franchises, in the absence of studio comedies, in the absence of romance movies. Musicals, when you look down the list, obviously Wicked springs to mind immediately. But let's not forget that we've got three potentially big music musician biopics. Of course, One Love, the Bob Marley movie, which did come out at the beginning of this year and was a big hit, especially when you look at the list of movies that came out in The Box Office Returns, like it did quite well. And then A Complete Unknown, which we were just discussing. And I just had a chance to see Better Man last night, the Robbie Williams movie, which I don't know if it's gonna do business, but it is certainly a unique thing.

• 40:25Sean Fennessey?

  You liked it?

• 40:26Speaker 03

  I liked it. Did you like it?

• 40:27Sean Fennessey?

  Parts of it. Um, you know, obviously, if anybody doesn't know, Robbie Williams is a huge British pop star, was a member of the group Take That, and tried to break through in America in the 2000s. It didn't quite take, but he remained a massive star in the UK. This new biopic, which is directed by Michael Gracie, who made The Greatest Showman, features your kind of standard issue musician biopic story, except that Robbie Williams is portrayed by a CGI monkey, which is a very thinly veiled, not even a metaphor, it's a literalization of the fact that all entertainers are like dancing monkeys.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:05Sean Fennessey?

  And half of it is very stupid and boring, and half of it is exhilarating. So kind of like The Greatest Showman?

• 41:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would say, I would say, uh, this is better, I think, than The Greatest Showman, uh, was for me personally, for my taste. Um, is it, is it cinema? Is it wonderful? No, but as a piece of pop art, I really enjoyed it.

• 41:27Sean Fennessey?

  The take of that sequence when they burst out of the store and dance in the street? I was like, this, this rocks. This is so fun.

• 41:34Speaker 03

  It was so good. Um, the, you've listed all these films, there's also Emilio Perez, Perez.

• 41:41Sean Fennessey?

  I completely forgot about Emilio Perez. Yeah. And, and Moana 2, and Mean Girls, which also did very well this year, the musical remake of Mean Girls.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:49Sean Fennessey?

  Um, yeah, it seems like, it seems like musicals are doing well. What, what's, what's your alt for this?

• 41:56Speaker 03

  The only alt I could come up with.

• 41:57Sean Fennessey?

  This is a good one.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  And it's an unserious one.

• 42:01Speaker 03

  Is in the vein of Better Man, Digital Monkeys, Better Man, Wicked, The Flying Monkeys of Wicked, The Strange Abominations in Gladiator 2, Mufasa's got plenty.

• 42:13Sean Fennessey?

  Rafiki, yeah.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there was a Planet of the Apes movie this year, lest we forget. So Digital Monkeys.

• 42:21Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great pick. It's honestly legitimate. This is the one part of Wicked 2, Wicked that we'll have to fast forward through in my house, by the way. The monkeys is gonna be a lot.

• 42:31Speaker 03

  Someone was asking me if they could take their kid, like a small kid, to Wicked. I was like, those monkeys are, they startled me.

• 42:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, me too. It's actually quite upsetting.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:40Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so you know, I think that there's another nice confirmation that is on the back of the Shalhane thing, which is that Zendaya now, I think similarly as a movie figure, is not just Mary Jane anymore, between Challengers, which you mentioned earlier, and the success that that movie had. And then the fact that Chani was so central to Dune Part 2, which was not promised necessarily, I guess if you've read the novel, the fact that Villeneuve made that decision, that great bit of press when Spielberg interviewed Villeneuve and said, like, out of all the people in your cast, who do you think will be directing movies in 20 years? And he was like, oh, easily Zendaya, easily.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  She was on the set with her camera.

• 43:19Sean Fennessey?

  I love that.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  All of herself. Yeah, it was great. And I think that, especially after like the hue and cry after the first installment, when she's sort of barely in it, having her as the, and then like, just storytelling wise, having her as the POV-ish character was a massive adaptation improvement, I think, actually, on a novel that I love. Zendaya, it's funny, because when I was looking at your power couple category, I was really trying to convince myself that I could put Zendaya and Tom Holland in there, and I simply can't, because Tom Holland has not yet been anything other than Peter Parker, or, you know, Zendaya's biggest hype guy. And so as much as I like, love and support them, I

• 44:03Speaker 03

  can't call them, you know, the power couple that one might call Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool. But Zendaya as a minted movie star, especially off the back of Challengers, a non-franchise, real powerhouse turn, I think, is exciting.

• 44:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And the good news is, is that she gets to now make Euphoria for the next 18 months.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  And I mean, one can only hope The Greatest Showman 2.

• 44:29Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I have heard a little bit about the film that she's making with Robert Pattinson for 824 with Chris Bourgley, who made Dream Scenario. That movie sounds really good. I don't, I can't, I'm not at liberty to share too much about it, but what I heard about it sounded great. So I'm excited about that.

• 44:47Speaker 03

  Wow, what a tease.

• 44:48Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's called The Drama?

• 44:51Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. Don't quote me on that. Um, okay. My riser of the year, obviously, was Glenn, because Glenn got bumped for movie star of the year, sadly. But he's, he's, he's our riser. Who's your alt for riser?

• 45:01Speaker 03

  Friend of the pond. Um, I was looking at it and I was, um, I think Glenn, the Glenn story is undeniable. But Caley Spanney being in both Alien Romulus, though not the best part of Alien Romulus, and Civil War, um, I think is a worthy narrative. I mean, she was already sort of on the rise because of Priscilla and all of that. But I think this is a really good year for her. Again, in terms of like, she's in a franchise film and a film from a filmmaker that we both find very exciting, um, at the same time. And so that was, I think it's a strong year for her. And then I think Margaret Qualley, even though she was very much in the conversation, there's something about the way that people have reacted to the substance that I think

• 45:42Speaker 03

  has locked her into a, a level of celebrity. She, even as like Andy McDowell's kid, or, uh, after a really good performance in, in Made, or, um, you know, having a celebrity relationship, or this, that, and the other thing, being in a Tarantino film. I think this really pushed her into a different level.

• 46:02Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's a great call. I hadn't thought of that, but it does feel like she got famous, for lack of a better phrase, this year. Um, so that's a good pick, too. Uh, indie story of the year to me is an absolute no brainer. It's Damien Leoni and Terrifier 3. And the fact that that movie opened at number one in America and has made an extraordinary amount of money relative to the investment and the fact that Damien has been working on this project for over 10 years. And Cineverse, you know, doubled down on expanding the movie onto thousands of screens. And honestly, has got people in studio horror shook. Because now, that movie feels like a real pivot point, a real hinge moment. Now where everyone's looking for their Terrifier 3, and the truth is, it's not replicable.

• 46:47Sean Fennessey?

  But it's got executives and producers looking all over the place. For potential talents in a way that is so, so good for horror and that horror desperately needs. So, for me, it's exciting. Terrifier 3 I thought was okay. I think Terrifier 2 is the superior of those movies, not that it really matters.

• 47:02Speaker 03

  Of the Terrifier?

• 47:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 47:04Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but its success is very, very exciting. Um, what's your alt?

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Well, what else would you put under the indie horror umbrella this year?

• 47:13Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think In a Violent Nature and Late Night with the Devil, which were both IFC shudder films. Both had theatrical runs that did significantly better than I ever would have expected. Late Night with the Devil especially, kind of minting David Desmalchin as like a proper leading man. It was very cool.

• 47:30Speaker 03

  Exciting.

• 47:31Sean Fennessey?

  And then Long Legs, obviously, I mean, there's very rarely been anything like that. From a, from a kind of a micro major, like Neon, to, to drive that much interest in a movie. That I think actually ultimately, most people were kind of mixed on. Um, but that they just marketed the fuck out of it and it did so well. I liked it. So, you know, up and down year for horror in general. The majors, the major studios, I think, had, did not have a good year for horror. But I also think they'll be back next year too.

• 47:58Speaker 03

  Your Abigail's? Okay.

• 47:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  I, I, I have an alt here, but I actually, I need, I need your feedback on this. Because, um, I thought maybe Sundance as a whole, and the only reason I, obviously Sundance often lingers across the year. But I feel like in recent years, it's felt like diminishing, its power has been diminishing. And I just know that in the conversations you and I have had ever the past couple of weeks, I felt like I kept hearing you say, and obviously that was a movie at Sundance earlier this year. I felt like I heard that more than I usually do, and I couldn't tell if that was just my imagination. But some titles, A Real Pain, Different Man, My Old Ass, Dee Dee, Will and Harper, I Saw the TV Glow, Kneecap Between the Temples. Like, that's-

• 48:44Speaker 03

  Seems to me, and especially as we're in the middle of an awards conversation, and A Real Pain is here, and Dee Dee is still like hanging around, Different Man is hanging around. I Saw the TV Glow is sort of burbling around a bit in some awards circles. And Will and Harper just got shortlisted in the docs. Like, it's, it just seems like a more impactful Sundance year than usual.

• 49:03Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's actually a whole slate of documentaries, too. I mean, most of the documentaries that are on the shortlist premiered at Sundance. I think over half of them, including, Sugar Cane was there, Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat was there, a number of other films, like, were all really good films. You know, I've done Sundance virtually the last two years, and I'm doing it again this year virtually. And it's candidly better for me because I feel like I need to see roughly 30 movies so that I can be prepared for what you're describing. But I think it's a great insight because it was, the studios did not have the ability to either be in production or do the reshoots that they needed to do during the strikes. So there were tons of empty weekends over the years. And that created opportunity for movies like the ones you just listed

• 49:44Sean Fennessey?

  to have a little bit more breathing room to get into the conversation this year. And you're right, they made the most of it for the most part. None of these movies did really as well commercially as you would want. Even a movie like A Real Pain, which I think 10 or 20 years ago would have been playing at the Angelica for like three months.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 50:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's not quite doing that, but they are in the conversation for sure.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Right. You, I mean, like, Kieran Culkin's about to win an Oscar for it, right? And I Saw the TV Glow keeps coming up as like your favorite filmmaker's favorite filmmaker. You know what I mean? Like, a lot of filmmakers are talking about I Saw the TV Glow as something that felt really impactful to them this year.

• 50:21Sean Fennessey?

  So that movie, to me, is the one that probably will be the most influential on people who are in their early 20s who will go out and make movies. Because what Jane did in that film, the hallmarks are so obvious for what they were after, but there had never really been that kind of synthesis before. And so I expect that movie to be a big calling card if I'm interviewing directors in 10 years who are 30 years younger than me. They'll be citing something like that.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:50Sean Fennessey?

  Hopefully. That's a wonderful movie, so I see that as a good thing. Okay, comeback of the year. To me, this was an easy one. I like your alt as well. But Demi Moore in The Substance, and the fact that she has not headlined a studio movie in almost 20 years, and delivers, I think, a brilliant and deeply committed performance. And-

• 51:11Sean Fennessey?

  Did it in an incredibly strange movie. There's not, even though Demi Moore is known for taking chances, there's not a lot in her career that suggests she would be a part of a movie like this. So I was blown away.

• 51:24Speaker 03

  Not Charlie's Angels 2? No?

• 51:25Sean Fennessey?

  No. But even, you know, even movies like G.I. Jane or Striptease where she like kind of transformed herself, um, never anything this kind of genre bound. So I think, I think it's really cool and great and it's been great to see her through the award circuit the last few months.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  And I think also, I mean, I don't, I don't want to like throw a parade for the beautiful people of the world when they decide to get unglamorous for a role because like, okay, listen, great, uh, good for you. But like, her brand has, and her personal brand has been so tied up in her beauty for so long, that there's something incredibly profound and sticky about what she did with the substance. And I remember that, you know, I know you do too, just the conversations about it coming out of Cannes. And it was like, sometimes these conversations happen, it was at Cannes, right? It was not Venice, it was Cannes. Anyway, like, yeah, it was Cannes. The, some of these festival conversations, you hear it from afar and you're like, that's everyone just trying to make a story or, or, you know, and,

• 52:27Speaker 03

  and this one sounded so improbable that I was like, all right, you know, my, my pals at Vanity Fair or whatever it is, like, I, I don't believe that this is going to be what you're saying it's going to be. And then low and behold, it absolutely was. And actually even more than I think a lot of people even, um, in the various profiles on Demi that was coming out of the festivals, this was just even bigger than that. My alt, um, is Adrian Brody as a bona fide leading man. And this is for you, my fatal, my favorite Brutalist fan. Um, so I was talking to someone about The Brutalist, um, and I was like, yeah, and Adrian Brody's like really, really good in it. You know, I'm not as high on the movie

• 53:09Speaker 03

  as you are, Sean, but I was like, Adrian Brody's really, really good in it. Um, and in, you know, 95% of the movie. And she was like, well, when has he ever not been good? I was like, I don't have an argument for you about that, but I will just say that. Yes, we get excited when he shows up in Succession, or yes, he's been a great part of the Wes Anderson players. But, you know, he won the Best Actor Oscar, and then his career as a leading man did not really continue from there the way that we thought it would, with love and respect to King Kong. And so the fact that he did this is so good in it, will, I hope, encourage people to cast him as, as like the real leading man that he

• 53:54Speaker 03

  definitely can be. He's, he's so captivating in The Brutalist, and something that, you know, Brady Corbe and his lens knew how to do was just like, there were just shot, like just the way his like body was just sort of like arced around in this, it was like its own piece of architecture in this movie. It was just like, a really, really, this is a star, remember? He won an Oscar for a reason, sort of moment for him. So, yeah.

• 54:21Sean Fennessey?

  I think one of the reasons why he resonated so deeply in the early 2000s is because he reminded a lot of Academy voters in The Pianist of a certain kind of 70s star, of a Pacino, a Cazale, a Gene Hackman, you know, a sort, like beautiful in his own way, but unconventionally appealing. And his choices as a leading man in the aftermath, I always thought were pretty interesting. You know, he made The Village, he made The Jacket, he made King Kong, he made The Darjeeling Limited, The Brothers Bloom, and Cadillac Records. That was, those were like, that was his run. And

• 54:59Speaker 03

  I, I love those. I love

• 55:01Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of those movies are really interesting. Unfortunately for him, they're all like the fifth or sixth best movie from a lot of good filmmakers. So he kind of got some bad luck in there, too. You know, it's like, he got the one Ryan Johnson movie that didn't totally hit, you know? He got the fifth best M. Night Shyamalan movie, you know, like it just didn't really totally happen. And

• 55:22Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, of course, I agree. I think he obviously the movie rests on his shoulders in The Brutalist. We are with him almost the entire film and he it's hard to look away from him. I've always liked him as an actor and it is a good story. It's a good story. It's so interesting to me that he is competing against Chalamet in Best Actor because he once upon a time was Chalamet. Maybe not as much of a heartthrob or didn't have quite the CV that Chalamet has at this point. But he was the youngest ever winner and if Chalamet wins this year, he will be the youngest ever winner for Best Actor. So it's an interesting race and it's a great, great pick. Let's try to do the losers as quickly as we can. You know, I know that you just recorded an episode of The House of Midnight about Craven.

• 56:05Sean Fennessey?

  And Craven ends now, I believe, this experiment in Sony Spider-Man Extended Universe. Even though we'll still get the, you know, the next animated Spider-verse movie and

• 56:16Speaker 03

  And Spider-Man Noir.

• 56:17Sean Fennessey?

  And Spider-Man Noir, the Amazon series, which I guess Nick Cage is gonna star in.

• 56:21Speaker 03

  Live action, Nick Cage, Spider-Man Noir.

• 56:24Sean Fennessey?

  Cool.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  Lot of questions.

• 56:25Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. And we'll get another Tom Holland appearance in a Spider-Man movie. I think, is it, uh, Dustin Daniel Cretton is making that, right?

• 56:34Sean Fennessey?

  But this world, isn't there gonna be a Venom 4 too? I mean Venom just made like $400 million.

• 56:40Speaker 03

  I don't know how exaggerated the reported death of this universe is. But this year we had Craven, the Hunter, Venom 3, and Madame Web. Three of my worst times at the movie theater personally.

• 56:58Sean Fennessey?

  Craven really stinks, Joe.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  It's real bad.

• 57:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 57:01Speaker 03

  And Madame Web is perhaps even worse and I would say Dr. Michael Morbius is perhaps even worse than all of those combined. And so Venom 3, I had a good time because we were all together. That was like fun. But I, but I did feel like a moment of sanity with you when like some of our pals were like, that was so fun. I had a great time. And you were like laughing and you were like, yeah, that was a disaster. And I agree with you. I think that film is a disaster.

• 57:25Sean Fennessey?

  It's pretty bad.

• 57:27Speaker 03

  Narratively a disaster.

• 57:30Sean Fennessey?

  And you know me, I love to love a Venom movie.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  I think this might be a pause more than a

• 57:36Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 57:37Speaker 03

  An obituary moment, but a, but a pause they really need to take and figure it out.

• 57:43Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I don't think it necessarily signals too much about the comic book movie industrial complex. We're obviously gonna keep getting those. We've spent some time talking about Superman. We're talking about Downey and Evans coming back. I do think that, I wanted to make an observation.

• 58:01Speaker 03

  Please.

• 58:02Sean Fennessey?

  You've been covering a lot of these shows, mostly on House of R, sometimes on Prestige, but I didn't watch a ton of new shows this year that in theory are right in my sweet spot. I didn't really watch Agatha. I watched a couple of episodes and gave up on it. I only watched two episodes of The Acolyte. I watched one episode of Dune Prophecy. I watched, I haven't watched Creature Commandos. Like, there's a couple more that were like bigger. What are some other big franchise TV titles that?

• 58:31Speaker 03

  House of the Dragon.

• 58:32Sean Fennessey?

  I did watch House of the Dragon.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  Rings of Power.

• 58:34Sean Fennessey?

  I did not watch Rings of Power.

• 58:36Speaker 03

  Skeleton Crew.

• 58:37Sean Fennessey?

  I did not watch Skeleton Crew.

• 58:38Speaker 03

  Right now. Yeah.

• 58:39Sean Fennessey?

  You know, these are all things that are deeply important to my childhood and that in the movies I have kept up with very closely. And I used to do this for the TV shows when the streaming boom happened, and I just don't have the energy, time, or interest at all for this stuff anymore. And I think what it means is a retrenchment into the movies because I think a lot of these studios and streamers understand that like TV is not necessarily the best place for all of these things. Some of them it is. Oh, The Penguin is another one, which in theory, I think I would like.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  I love The Penguin. I think you will like The Penguin.

• 59:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but like for whatever reason, I never was compelled. Maybe I will now that I have some time over the break to watch it. But it's so interesting to me that with the exception probably of The Penguin, that all of those other properties are like either critically a little middling, or audience wise were a little middling, or some combination of both. You know, I know you had a lot of affection for Agatha, but I wouldn't say it was like a breakout smash.

• 59:34Speaker 03

  That was more personal affection. I'm clear enough to say that that was personal affection. And though it was, I think, a bigger hit than a lot of people thought it was going to be, I'm not saying it was like, it didn't do what One Division did.

• 59:43Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  And like sort of cross outside of the Marvel faithful or anything like that. I think that it was a tough year in terms of like Acolyte was tough. I think Dune Prophecy is rough, that sort of stuff. I really liked Rings of Power personally. And Rings of Power... Is a sneakily hugely popular show, a show that I skipped that people love is Fallout.

• 1:00:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  Um, and I need to catch up on it, but that is, that was a massive hit.

• 1:00:12Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's their biggest show ever, right? Amazon?

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, massive, massive hit. And then next year, we're having, we're gonna have stuff like The Last of Us, Season Two. Um, there is gonna be a, a, a Game of Thrones universe show, Nine of Seven Kingdoms, that I actually think has a possibility of being better than House of, possibly better than House of the Dragon.

• 1:00:30Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  Um, just because of the source material. Um, I think that, you know, like Severance, if you're asking about, you were asking more about a franchise more than genre, but like, but I think, I think what everyone is doing is retrenching and just sort of try to figure things out. And so like for Marvel Television, for example, like you're gonna watch Daredevil. Like that's, that's.

• 1:00:52Sean Fennessey?

  Am I?

• 1:00:52Speaker 03

  You're, yeah, you are. You are.

• 1:00:54Sean Fennessey?

  I'm getting old. I, I.

• 1:00:56Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no. You are not that old, Sean, but also what's true is that while Marvel has definitely tarnished their own brand by putting out very middling to bad TV shows, like Secret Invasion, one of the worst things I've ever seen, right? And so you're like, how can I trust again? How can I love again?

• 1:01:14Sean Fennessey?

  That is how I feel.

• 1:01:14Speaker 03

  You burnt me. You burnt me so badly.

• 1:01:16Sean Fennessey?

  I was the guy yelling on the, the Movie Bro Podcast about how Endgame is a meaningful work of art. You know, like I was one of those people.

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  And it is. And I think Daredevil is gonna be genuinely great. I genuinely do. I really do. I'm not, I'm not just saying that, uh, so that people will listen to House of R. I think, I think they have pressed pause, retrenched this year and are really trying to make sure, because I actually think the most critical time, Lucasfilm is a mess right now, so I don't even wanna talk about how we can fix Star Wars, because I actually don't know. But in terms of Marvel, next year is gonna be so pitiful for them, because if they do Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four and Daredevil and land all of those with the breathing room that Deadpool and Wolverine gave them financially. Then you can't say that Marvel's in trouble anymore, right?

• 1:02:06Sean Fennessey?

  I noticed you did not include Captain America IV in that.

• 1:02:09Speaker 03

  We don't need to talk about, we don't need to talk about.

• 1:02:12Sean Fennessey?

  We need to talk about Red Hulk.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  We don't need to talk about the Red Hulk at all.

• 1:02:16Sean Fennessey?

  Should I do a solo video about Red Hulk, breaking it down when the film comes out?

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Sean Fennessey?

  Into, into, into camera.

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:23Sean Fennessey?

  Why Red Hulk, uh, how Red Hulk taught me to be weird.

• 1:02:26Speaker 03

  Get the teleprompter out and, uh, and just really do it for the, for the, the real sickos out there. Okay. What else, what else do you want to talk about on the losers list?

• 1:02:34Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, Apple had a bad year, you know? They did have a lot of TV shows that I think people liked, and I think a lot of those shows are actually underseen relative to the quality. And I like, I really admire the swings that they take on the TV side and being able to grow shows like Silo, which is not a show I watch, but the handful of episodes I watched, I was like, okay, this is kind of like hard sci-fi and well-made. And I appreciate that. I appreciate that they're, they're making stuff like Bad Monkey and, um, I didn't get sugar at all, but I think it's cool that they tried. Uh, that's all on the TV side. On the movie side, they're, they're a mess. It's just, it was just a mess of a year. It's Argyle, Fly Me to the Moon and Wolf's. That's not, that's not good.

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  Three of the biggest sort of like punchline movies of the year, unfortunately, so.

• 1:03:20Sean Fennessey?

  I think Fly Me to the Moon is not an embarrassing movie by any means. It's just a perfectly fine movie that got rolled out in the middle of July.

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  It's a perfectly fine movie with like two genuine movie stars in it who should together have, have produced something a bit splashier than that. I remember when you guys recorded your Wolf's episode and you were essentially like angry, what are we, not just what are we doing here, but like, why are we wasting talented people's time with this? That, that was real tough.

• 1:03:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's true though.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  Argyle is one of the most baffling. Things I've ever encountered, so.

• 1:03:58Sean Fennessey?

  It's a fiasco. I mean, Apple original films, let's see what they, I mean, I know for a fact that they have The Gorge coming early next year, which is the new film from Scott Derrickson starring Miles Teller and Anya Teller-Joy. Um, let's see what else they have cooking up in 2025, because they do need a bit of a bounce back. Oh, F1, of course, which is, in theory, a very big deal, the Brad Pitt film, but we shall see. Beyond that, there's a few things that have been announced. The thing that they have going that I'm most interested in is the studio, the Seth Rogen series.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  I am very curious. I have been told, at least on the TV front, that again, we're in a bit of a retrans, because Apple was just throwing anything at the wall, right? Uh, like, was throwing buckets of money at anyone who will take it to make a TV show. And, um, the, the, the tap is drying up a bit there. But it is wild, because there, there will be all these shows on Apple TV that have incredibly famous people in them, and nobody knows they exist. And that is a wild thing that Apple, uh, has done in an understandable effort to catch people's attention, but they just don't know how to market their own material, for the most part. It's, it's baffling.

• 1:05:11Sean Fennessey?

  It feels that way. Let's do one more loser. And I think it's an interesting discussion point, which is the legacy sequel.

• 1:05:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Sean Fennessey?

  Now, we've got a bunch of these.

• 1:05:21Speaker 03

  I'm not sure. I'm not sure about this, and I wanted to talk to you about it.

• 1:05:25Sean Fennessey?

  Well, okay, so you've made the list of, of legacy sequels from this year. Twisters, obviously, which is more or less a shadow remake of the original Twister.

• 1:05:35Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 1:05:36Sean Fennessey?

  Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Furiosa, and Bad Boys Ride or Die, which is, I think, a debatable legacy sequel. I think the third film is probably more of a legacy sequel than this one, but there, we're in that kind of, that lineage.

• 1:05:49Speaker 03

  It's the same with, same with Furiosa. Like, those are sort of, like, drafting off.

• 1:05:53Sean Fennessey?

  Nine years is a good gap.

• 1:05:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, and then, uh, and Gladiator 2, of course.

• 1:05:57Sean Fennessey?

  And Gladiator 2.

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  But, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:59Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it's tough, because I would say. With the exception of Furiosa, all of these movies were financially successful. Gladiator 2 is kind of kind of chug its way, I think, to profitability over the holidays. And so Twisters, Beetlejuice, Bad Boys Ride or Die, and Gladiator 2 made good money.

• 1:06:22Sean Fennessey?

  I think all of these movies are disappointing creatively, with the exception of Furiosa, which you and I are both like, it's good. We agree it's good. We're not going to fight with anybody about it. I know people disagree with us. That's okay. There's nothing negative really to say about the movie, but it wildly underperformed at the box office. So-

• 1:06:40Speaker 03

  I think we were, I think, weren't we like, I think good is higher than we landed. I think we said like mixed, like that there were parts of it that were really, really good.

• 1:06:49Sean Fennessey?

  I said this week on the show, it's a seven out of 10 for me. That's like, I can't-

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's good. That's not a bad movie by any stretch, but it is a movie that I thought was flawed. Nevertheless, like all of these movies, they're all kind of different, you know? Like Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, I got kind of hyped up on at CinemaCon.

• 1:07:08Speaker 03

  Did you?

• 1:07:08Sean Fennessey?

  And the hype was right, which is that it was going to be a big hit, and it was a big hit. But I thought it was a pretty mediocre movie, even though I'm glad, I was glad to see Tim Burton back with Practical Effects and in that world and kind of being weird Tim. The script is real bad and-

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  I would just say, not like this, Tim. I've also been asking for that, but not like this, Tim.

• 1:07:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And Twisters, I think, is a lot of fun and a good blockbuster, but deeply iterative, you know?

• 1:07:37Speaker 03

  I just, I just don't want to fill in for Amanda and speak ill of Twisters, but I did not have a good time with this movie.

• 1:07:45Sean Fennessey?

  That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I've heard some people say the same. I think Amanda and I had a lot of fun with it, but it's not-

• 1:07:49Speaker 03

  I really wanted to. It was like, I was really excited for this movie, really, really excited for it. I was like a true believer. Love Daisy, love Glenn. I think it was just, it was just too, it was similar to what we were, yeah, what we were saying about Gladiator 2, and you just said iterative. Like, it upset me that a filmmaker that I admire so much, uh, in Lee Isaac Chung, was just like uninterested in making something that didn't feel like- Beat for Beat in a way. I was disappointed by that, even more so than I would be in Ridley Scott because Ridley is so up and down over the years. Who's to say, but like, I was excited for this, you know, this exciting,

• 1:08:30Speaker 03

  innovative filmmaker gets a franchise that we, we wasn't, it was a, was a massive blockbuster in the nineties that we loved. And put really interesting people in it. And I was like, this is going to be amazing. And then I just thought it was aggressively fine, you know, at the end of the day.

• 1:08:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I hear, I hear, I hear that. And I've heard many other people say it. I don't know if it's like, I don't know if you can call the legacy sequel as loser. It's more of like a hold, you know, like these movies made enough money that it's going to mean, it means there's going to be a lot more of them over the next 10 years. But I'm not sure that I look forward to them.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  Nobody Fury wrote it this year is the thing. No one took a property and did something really exciting with these years. And I would even, I mean, I would put Alien Romulus in here too, though you can't really call that a legacy sequel, but like, that that was one that, that has some really exciting sequences to it and then some baffling choices as well.

• 1:09:21Sean Fennessey?

  It is, it is kind of a legacy tweener, right? Cause I think it happens between one and two. Isn't that the timeline? Another movie that I think, I feel very similarly about Romulus as I do to Twisters, which is like in the theater, had a great time. The more I thought about it, the more I felt I could pick it apart, but the in theaters, and I probably won't watch it again. You know, whereas I usually like to re-watch movies. I really, really enjoy a second time in the same calendar year. And I won't be doing that for either of those, but um, yeah, I think you're right. I think that's a good call. Should we, should we, any other losers you want to hit? Should we pivot out of losers?

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  Enough with the negativity. Let's give people the highest honor that Hollywood has to offer, shall we? We're giving out Oscars on this podcast.

• 1:10:01Sean Fennessey?

  What honor is that?

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  Did you know that we're reporting best picture right now?

• 1:10:07Sean Fennessey?

  Best picture, um, me and you and Katie Rich did this, right? Did we do the last one?

• 1:10:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:13Sean Fennessey?

  And we did, this was the top 10 best picture power rankings. The Substance, Sing Sing, Blitz, A Real Pain, Dune Part Two, Wicked Part One, Emilia Perez, The Brutalist, Conclave and Enora.

• 1:10:27Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think this has changed a lot, but it has changed a little. What do you think?

• 1:10:33Speaker 03

  I don't think we should be embarrassed by it, which is good news.

• 1:10:35Sean Fennessey?

  Agreed.

• 1:10:35Speaker 03

  I think it's 80% right in the films that should be on here.

• 1:10:39Sean Fennessey?

  Me as well.

• 1:10:40Speaker 03

  And, uh, you know, and then we just need to shuffle the order a bit.

• 1:10:44Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think anything has unseated Enora at number one?

• 1:10:47Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 1:10:50Sean Fennessey?

  There's not a case for Wicked here?

• 1:10:52Speaker 03

  I mean, that would flatter my ego since I'm the one who argued Wicked onto the list last time. And your big pick listeners were like, she's wrong.

• 1:10:59Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you were right. You were a hundred percent right at that time.

• 1:11:02Speaker 03

  Um, I would definitely put it way higher than it is currently, but I don't know that I would put it as the front runner, mostly because of the John Chu, uh, situation.

• 1:11:11Sean Fennessey?

  Just me and you don't think he'll be recognized, so it's unlikely that it's likely it's gonna win.

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  There's, there's also the screen, the screenplay question. Do you think it's getting nominated for screenplay? Cause if it's not getting nominated for screenplay, I think it's been like over 20 years since we've had a best picture winner that didn't get nominated for screenplay.

• 1:11:28Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you what, if it gets nominated for screenplay, you can watch me put it at number one in January.

• 1:11:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:11:33Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I, I, I don't think it's as strong as number one. I.

• 1:11:39Speaker 03

  I think it's like two or three, maybe three, but I don't think it's one yet, but I think it could definitely get there.

• 1:11:45Sean Fennessey?

  The box office being a little soft internationally is interesting to me. It's done very well. It's obviously not done super well with the critics groups. Most of the critics groups, with the exception of NBR, are not really recognizing it. It's done very, it did very well with Critics' Choice Awards.

• 1:12:01Speaker 03

  My, my voting body, yeah.

• 1:12:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's probably gonna do well with SAG.

• 1:12:05Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I guess that's probably it, right?

• 1:12:08Speaker 03

  Globes.

• 1:12:09Sean Fennessey?

  And Globes, of course, right?

• 1:12:10Speaker 03

  It's on, it's on the AFI list and the AFI list is the strongest predictor we currently have in the awards conversation.

• 1:12:16Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's definitely getting nominated for Best Picture. To me, it's more about the strength.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Like where?

• 1:12:20Sean Fennessey?

  The totality. And I don't, I don't know. I mean, I, I think three is a good place to put it. What comes in at number two behind Enora is a good conversation for us to have, though. So let's do Wicked at three and Enora at one.

• 1:12:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:33Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's about right. Now, tell me what you think should be cut and let's see if we agree.

• 1:12:38Speaker 03

  Oh, with love and respect to Katie Rich, it's Blitz and The Substance.

• 1:12:45Sean Fennessey?

  I'll definitely give you Blitz. Blitz, I think, is gone.

• 1:12:48Speaker 03

  Blitz is definitely gone. Substance, I'm willing to have a conversation about, uh, but Blitz is definitely gone.

• 1:12:53Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think is going in where Blitz was?

• 1:12:56Speaker 03

  Um, A Complete Unknown, which hadn't come out yet when we made this list, so wasn't in the conversation. And, um.

• 1:13:06Sean Fennessey?

  I would suggest that A Complete Unknown is currently at number nine.

• 1:13:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe higher, just because of, A, it's such a traditional, I know we're talking about the new Academy and not the old Academy, but it is such a traditional Best Picture winner type of thing. And B, Timmy being like leaping to the front of the Best Actor race, I think is really pushing it up the list.

• 1:13:31Sean Fennessey?

  The challenge for it is, is possible it only has two nominations.

• 1:13:36Speaker 03

  For Timmy and for Norton? Oh, for Picture.

• 1:13:40Sean Fennessey?

  Now Norton could get in, obviously.

• 1:13:42Speaker 03

  Norton could get in.

• 1:13:44Sean Fennessey?

  But I don't think it has a chance at any below the line?

• 1:13:49Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:13:50Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's been shortlisted for Sound. Musicals usually do well there.

• 1:13:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:55Sean Fennessey?

  But it's also competing against Emilio Perez and Wicked in that respect. Plus, you've got kind of bigger tent movies like Dune Part Two. You got Joker fully adieu competing there as well, another musical like.

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

  Okay, um, let's leave it at, let's leave it at nine, but I, I feel like it's gonna go higher, but I, I'm happy to put it at nine right now. That's fine. It's on the list.

• 1:14:18Sean Fennessey?

  The Substance, let's table that for a minute. Is Conclave still at two? Conclave has not been the streaming icon that I thought it was gonna be.

• 1:14:27Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's either Conclave or The Brutalist.

• 1:14:30Sean Fennessey?

  I, I don't think The Brutalist is that strong, that as strong at the moment. I think The Brutalist is still, I will say, just scoped out the Vista screenings. It starts screening tonight, Thursday night, and I think has like a two or three week run in 70 at the Vista here in Los Angeles. And many of those screenings are already sold out, which is very exciting. Obviously, that's a, that's a honey trap for, for the boys, you know? That's, there's gonna be a lot of the boys are showing, showing out and the girls, of course, so the boys is a, a non-gendered associated phrase.

• 1:14:58Speaker 03

  I, I was sure that you meant it in a non-gendered sense. Do you think it's gonna be the intermission that breaks them or?

• 1:15:05Sean Fennessey?

  No, nothing will break anyone. We're, we're, we're thriving. I think they can only really run it twice a day because it's three hours and 40 minutes of hang time. But, um, I don't, I just don't, it's missed in a couple of spots. You know, like at the spirits, like it almost blanked. I think it only got one nomination at the Spirit Awards, which is just weird because it's the, like, the definition of an independent film. Like, it was financed by a multiple, multiple number of organizations over a number of years and scooped up by A24. And that group was just like, no, which is so interesting. So, you know, it's divisive.

• 1:15:37Speaker 03

  It's divisive, but isn't it like, especially as we talk about the international voting body at the Academy? Isn't it the sort of exactly, uh, we, we've been talking about this, like, what does this? What statement do we send when we call The Brutalist the best picture of the year? We send a, a statement of, um, art is the most important thing. Capitalism is crushing art. America is a disease is sort of some of the big takeaways.

• 1:16:07Sean Fennessey?

  I got news for you. We don't do that anymore. That's not what Coda is. That's not what Everything Everywhere All at Once is. That's not even what Oppenheimer is.

• 1:16:14Speaker 03

  It's a bit what Oppenheimer is.

• 1:16:16Sean Fennessey?

  Oppenheimer is like, look at all these movie stars. Look at this master craftsman who made superhero movies who he didn't recognize when he was working in genre. You know, like, is it really the core messaging of Oppenheimer that got it best picture? Or is it the craft and the scale?

• 1:16:28Speaker 03

  I think it's the, the story of a capital G, great, capital M man, uh, that, that, and, and I mean that kind of in an ungendered sense. This great figure sort of story. And I kind of see that the, the brutalist stands in for that.

• 1:16:43Sean Fennessey?

  That's a fair point. That's, that, that's, you're right in that respect. I do think that they get to that place in different ways.

• 1:16:50Speaker 03

  As our most cherished and most brutal of boys, where would you put the brutalist on the list?

• 1:16:58Sean Fennessey?

  God, if I could just have that on like a nameplate.

• 1:17:03Speaker 03

  The most brutal of boys.

• 1:17:04Sean Fennessey?

  The most brutal of boys, right here on a copper nameplate. And I could record in that fashion for the rest of my life. I'd be so excited. I think it's at four. And I think it's in a kind of a battle with Emilio Perez in the sort of divisive knife fight.

• 1:17:19Speaker 03

  We're putting Conclave at two then?

• 1:17:20Sean Fennessey?

  I think Conclave at two and then maybe brutalist at four and Emilio Perez. Emilio Perez might be even stronger than that. I don't know if you saw the shortlist, but like six, six times on the shortlist is a big deal.

• 1:17:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:30Sean Fennessey?

  That movie's gonna get 11 Oscar nominations.

• 1:17:32Speaker 03

  Though, wasn't two of it for, two of them were for song, right?

• 1:17:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:38Speaker 03

  Yes, the shortlist was quite telling. I think, um, Conclave, people keep bringing up as this sort of like, in terms of second place here, second place in a lot of people's, the consensus second place on the ranked ballot in, in that, you know what I mean? That it, that it's gonna be mid-high on everyone's ballot. And that could just push it higher than you, than if we did do ranked voting.

• 1:18:08Speaker 03

  What else do you, what do you want to put next?

• 1:18:10Sean Fennessey?

  We've got four slots left now. 10, 8, 7, and 6.

• 1:18:14Speaker 03

  I think Sing Sing is way higher than it used to be, especially as we're talking about Clarence and Coleman and screenplay, all in conversation.

• 1:18:25Sean Fennessey?

  I think you're right. I think Sing Sing is at six. We'll see what that January reissue does for it. But, you know, news of the Academy screenings has been very warm.

• 1:18:35Speaker 03

  We know, we know that I'm in the tank for Sing Sing, but I, I feel like I'm being clear-eyed here.

• 1:18:39Sean Fennessey?

  Did you see that the Sing Sing account used your commentary to bolster it? Our commentary, yeah.

• 1:18:45Speaker 03

  Our commentary, yes, I did see that.

• 1:18:48Sean Fennessey?

  So great, great to make marketing materials with you as always, Joanna.

• 1:18:51Speaker 03

  Love to do unpaid promo.

• 1:18:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's my whole fucking life at this point.

• 1:18:56Speaker 03

  For the studios.

• 1:18:57Sean Fennessey?

  Gosh, so I don't, so that leaves us with potential contenders. I'll, I'll give you all the contenders right now. Last time around, The Substance Blitz and A Real Pain and Dune Part Two filled out our list. I believe Dune Two is still competing. I believe. I believe A Real Pain is still competing. I have my doubts about The Substance. I'm a little, a little iffy on A Real Pain at this point, just a little bit.

• 1:19:22Speaker 03

  Well, that's why I think it should go, I think that's, I think that's why you need to bump A Complete Unknown up and put A Real Pain lower on the list.

• 1:19:29Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, okay, so you think A Complete Unknown is at eight, A Real Pain is at nine?

• 1:19:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:33Sean Fennessey?

  And then we have to figure out what 10 is?

• 1:19:35Speaker 03

  Yes. And Dune Part Two at seven.

• 1:19:38Sean Fennessey?

  And you would put Dune Part Two at seven, I think that's right. Dune Part Two is a little bit shaky as well right now.

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:19:46Sean Fennessey?

  Dene, I don't think is getting into director at the moment.

• 1:19:48Speaker 03

  I agree with you.

• 1:19:50Sean Fennessey?

  That's fucked up.

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  It is fucked up, but I guess we're all just believing the narrative that we're saving it for Dune Messiah. Just keep your powder dry for Dune Messiah, I guess, is what's happening.

• 1:20:03Sean Fennessey?

  Just really sucks. Okay, so let's, let's talk about number 10, the coveted number 10 slot. This is very challenging, there's quite a few films that could make it here. We had The Substance last time, but also contending, I suppose Gladiator 2, September 5, Nickel Boys, The Room Next Door, The Wild Robot, The Seat of the Sacred Fig, All We Imagine as Light, Challengers, and Nosferatu. Now, as an elegant throw to my conversation with Rommel Ross, I will make the case for Nickel Boys.

• 1:20:34Speaker 03

  I was gonna, you don't have to make the case, I was gonna agree with you, and I was not intending to pander to your guest, but I, I genuinely think it's Nickel Boys. But, but make the case.

• 1:20:43Sean Fennessey?

  It is a movie that I think for folks who work in craft and in writing will be incredibly impressed by the decisions that are made. I think Rommel has a chance in director because of the decisions he's made. That being said, for the body at large, I think it's going to be a very challenging watch. I moderated a conversation with Rommel and Anjanu Ellis Taylor over the weekend at the Arrow Theatre in Santa Monica, and people were locked in, locked in. I will also say Anjanu and Rommel are great advocates for the movie. So smart, so charming. The Rommel interview is my favorite of the year, so. I, I think on the strength of that, plus that this is the movie that MGM, Amazon is pushing hardest.

• 1:21:27Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like it's gonna get there. If you told me it was September 5, or you told me it was at the seat of the sacred fig, I wouldn't be shocked. I wouldn't be shocked, but it feels like Nickel Boys to me right now.

• 1:21:38Speaker 03

  But it's probably not gonna be Challengers, and I just wanna, I just wanna say it a couple of times. These people were so bummed that we didn't even like talk about it last time, and I agree. I think it, I think Challengers belongs on this list. What I would bump for it, I couldn't tell you, but like, I do believe in terms of long lasting impact, Challengers is a really important and wonderful film that came out this year. I think people have just forgotten, and I don't, I couldn't tell you why.

• 1:22:06Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's just a little too pop, to be candid. A little, it seems a little too airy and like.

• 1:22:11Speaker 03

  I think, I think.

• 1:22:13Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not calling it that. I think that's how people perceive it.

• 1:22:15Speaker 03

  I feel like queer sort of split the focus, you know what I mean? Like I just, anyway. But I think that Nickel Boys as the focus of the Amazon campaign, and as like a, a, a formal, an exercise in form, has really excited a lot of people. You know, in terms of the, the big swings that Rommel took in, in the construction of the story. So I think, I think people really wanna reward it as an attempt, and, and attempt makes it sound unsuccessful, but what I just mean is like, yeah, we tried something. We really tried something with this movie. And has a great performances in it. And yeah, I definitely think it's on the list.

• 1:23:00Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:23:00Speaker 03

  And this list, like, I don't wanna be unimaginative, but this is the AFI list. But the AFI list is, is. Our best bellwether, so I'm not mad that we're in lockstep with it.

• 1:23:13Sean Fennessey?

  Many pundits, myself included, when I saw the AFI list were like, this is it.

• 1:23:18Speaker 03

  That's it.

• 1:23:19Sean Fennessey?

  This is best picture.

• 1:23:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20Sean Fennessey?

  And that's, that's where I stand at the moment, too, especially because now we've seen everything. There isn't anything I haven't seen that has been competing here. So let's run it down quickly and then we'll, we'll, we'll exit this chat, Joe. At number 10, Nickel Boys, at number nine, A Real Pain, at number eight, A Complete Unknown, at number seven, Dune Part Two, at number six, Sing Sing, at number five, Emilio Perez, at number four, The Brutalist, at number three, Wicked, at number two, Conclave, and still holding at number one, can it go?

• 1:23:51Speaker 03

  Until Wicked gets that, until Wicked gets that screenplay nomination.

• 1:23:55Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Nora is sitting at number one, until, until, until. Joanna, thank you. You're just the best.

• 1:24:00Speaker 03

  Oh, you're just the best. Thanks for having me.

• 1:24:02Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, great chatting with you. Let's now go to my conversation with Romel Ross.

• 1:24:17Sean Fennessey?

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• 1:24:57Sean Fennessey?

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• 1:25:36Sean Fennessey?

  Three, two, one. So happy to have Ramel Ross here. Your second feature film, your first scripted feature. I've read quite a bit about you, but I also feel like there's a lot I don't know because I feel like you had a full life before you became a filmmaker. I know you were a college basketball player at Georgetown. And then what happened? What led you to filmmaking?

• 1:25:55Speaker 04

  Am I allowed to talk while you're talking? Like, could you say that? And I'm like, yeah, cool.

• 1:26:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:00Speaker 04

  So the overlap. I don't want to, I don't, obviously, I respect you way too much.

• 1:26:03Sean Fennessey?

  This is a conversation.

• 1:26:05Speaker 04

  But like stealing the mic is not cool when like the mic is your thing.

• 1:26:08Sean Fennessey?

  I want you to feel like we're chatting, not like I'm drilling you with questions.

• 1:26:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So we're not, it's not a volley. We're like tugging for the ball productively for people to watch.

• 1:26:17Sean Fennessey?

  No, this is more of the triangle offense, yeah.

• 1:26:19Speaker 04

  Cool, cool, cool. I like a good Phil Jackson reference. I, um, yeah, I don't know. When I started to make photos and, and become interested in film around my senior year, my fifth year at Georgetown. And then when I started to pursue it as a, as a true desire, vocation, maybe. It was funny, I look back at my life and I'm like, oh, maybe I've always been this person that I am now, but maybe it's latent or maybe it was transferred through sports. But to me, it was quite a natural transition, given the way that the camera deals with space and time and predictability and the future and the way in which you deal with those same things as a basketball player, specifically a point guard, in which you're

• 1:27:03Speaker 04

  dealing with space and time and relativity.

• 1:27:05Sean Fennessey?

  So when you use the word vocation, so were you thinking when you were taking photographs? This is gonna be my job? Like, this is a way I'm gonna make money in my career? Or was it just, this is something that helps me better understand myself? Something I feel natural doing? And so I'm just gonna pursue it as like a creative act? Like, do you see those two things as connected?

• 1:27:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I see them as separate, completely separate. And I tried to keep them separate after, I think, recognizing some of the pitfalls of having work and creative pursuits too tightly aligned with all the industries, which are necessary to, one could say, to support them. And maybe I'm using vocation wrong. I was trying to use vocation in terms of a sort of calling. But I think vocation has more to do with career than, obviously. So is it avocation? Is that the one that's?

• 1:27:54Sean Fennessey?

  That sounds right, but you went to Georgetown and I didn't.

• 1:27:58Speaker 04

  Well, I didn't read much in high school. I was a scholarship basketball player and found the language quite, quite late in life, let's say.

• 1:28:04Sean Fennessey?

  I think, I think avocation sounds right.

• 1:28:08Sean Fennessey?

  And yet, like, it did become your career eventually.

• 1:28:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:28:11Sean Fennessey?

  So how did that evolve?

• 1:28:13Speaker 04

  Because it's a career in the sense that I do make money from it. And I do have the opportunity to support my life. But I teach full-time at a university. And that's my, one could say, bread and butter. I don't have to make art and make films. I do that separately, intentionally not tied to money, so that I can experiment or, you know, follow, follow my own sensibility without being too much guided too much by the powers that be.

• 1:28:40Sean Fennessey?

  What, so what led to that? What led to you deciding that you wanted to teach? You teach college. So what went into that decision-making?

• 1:28:48Speaker 04

  Well, I think I've, I've always taught. I coached basketball.

• 1:28:53Speaker 04

  And I immediately, you know, worked for the State Department and taught kind of American values in nutritional health around the world while using basketball as a sort of connection point for those abroad. I think, you know, the secret aim of this Culture Connect program through the State Department was to like, sort of outsource American values and to like, you know, boost America's image. But simultaneously-

• 1:29:19Sean Fennessey?

  You were a propagandist.

• 1:29:20Speaker 04

  Oh, I was. And I, I'm gonna be honest, I enjoyed it, you know? Just kidding.

• 1:29:26Speaker 04

  I, um, but then I started to, I worked in Northern Ireland. Um, and I played professional basketball there, which is cool, but I also worked for an organization that was using basketball to bridge social divides and conflict in regions. So we would go into a Catholic school and a Protestant school, bring the kids together with sports. And I really enjoyed that, that tie to, to youth. So I went to Alabama and was teaching there. And so it just kind of became natural to be involved with those who are learning, you know? And so I had an opportunity when I graduated from RISD's MFA program in photography to teach at Brown. And I had so much teaching across so many different places that I think they were attracted

• 1:30:07Speaker 04

  to, uh, a non-academic, traditionally academic way of communicating information.

• 1:30:14Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. So that time you spent in Alabama, is that directly what led to Hill County?

• 1:30:18Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. I went there randomly with a friend and, um, for a week to teach a photography course. Job opened up in a youth bill program, Department of Labor-funded program. And was already hitting the point where I was getting a bit, a bit frustrated with my pursuits as a photojournalist, with my pursuits as a sort of fashion photographer, with my pursuits as a, a photo illustrator photographer, like sort of all of the individual genres of photography, like each one kind of wasn't doing it for me.

• 1:30:50Sean Fennessey?

  How, in what way?

• 1:30:51Speaker 04

  They...

• 1:30:52Sean Fennessey?

  Like creatively?

• 1:30:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like, I don't want to say they became, they didn't become easy, but they just, they became dead ends. Like they, they had ceilings of communication to me and then you were just saying the same thing in different ways. And then I was kind of understanding myself as, I think, under, understanding myself as a person in, as a reflection of society and being in the historic South, for people of color, I'd argue there's no better place to be in dialogue with, with whatever the black diaspora is, um, in the US. And so... Conceptual photography and like drawing from all of these other genres just like sort of collapsed into me photographing there. I don't know. It's never, I guess there is

• 1:31:35Speaker 04

  like a lightbulb moment. I love the cartoon lightbulb. It's like, it's probably the most accurate illustration of human experience. We're just like, wait, there's something new illuminated. I had one of those moments when I'm photographing and I think I understand something about black visuality as, as general as that is, which is something that was something along the lines of almost all images I've seen of people of color seem to be utilitarian. They have like a very strict purpose and they seem to be in conversation with historical

• 1:32:17Speaker 04

  dialogue and requires an analysis that is not multifaceted. And while that's general, to me, I was like, I don't, I haven't seen images of people of color in which there's three distinct modes of narrative analysis in which none of them are true, but all of them are true. And to me, that's like a way of sort of liberating black people from the tyranny of the camera. And so with that sort of like photographic revelation that I, that I had, I also wondered in terms of film, like, what does that look like? And is there a version of that that is more time-based?

• 1:32:58Sean Fennessey?

  So as you're making Hail County, which goes on to be like incredibly acclaimed and probably much more widely seen than you would have expected as you were

• 1:33:06Speaker 04

  My god, yes.

• 1:33:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And so it's this fascinating, I guess, serendipitous and hard-earned achievement. Is there any part of you that is thinking like, I'm gonna make scripted feature films very soon? Like, is that, was that on the roadmap for you in any way?

• 1:33:22Speaker 04

  No, it wasn't, though I've always wanted to make films. And I was always interested in film. You know, I grew up in like a sort of Fight Club and a Sawshank Redemption and just like hardcore classics that are astounding or very commercial. And then, as mentioned, like, once I start to like, look into myself, my relationship to it, I start to sort of develop ideas that are a little bit more on the periphery of, of what's mainstream. And so I think my desire to actually participate in that economy Just became impractical, given the way I wanted to experiment with things. And, you know, the, the stuff that I made become, became very self-satisfactory.

• 1:34:03Speaker 04

  And if you're working at that scale, self-satisfactory is not necessarily the right path. So, never really thought about it. Um, after Hail County, I just knew that I had things I was interested in and was trying to put myself in a position through teaching and other means, through grants, to be able to like pursue these really individual interests.

• 1:34:21Sean Fennessey?

  So then what happens? Like, what happens to your life and, and work after Hail County? Obviously, many more people know about you. Are you doing like the water bottle tour in Hollywood? Like, what, like, what actually happened to your life?

• 1:34:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, my life for a short period of time was like very fast-paced in terms of, you know, promoting the film and sharing the ideas. The film lends itself to, to film studies and lends itself to the history of documentary and the history of documentary photography. And so, a lot of speaking at universities and, and talking with students, um, who are interested a lot in research, but are also just interested in ethnography and anthropology and how to, uh, ethically engage with the community. But I think the true turning point was, um, halfway through the process of Hail County, I met, um, a woman named Jocelyn Barnes, who was also a co-writer on Nickel Boys and a producer.

• 1:35:13Speaker 04

  And she was one of the only people, and there were a couple of people, but like really kind of understood and was interested in, in my ideas. And we kind of, you know, continued, we started to collaborate on Hail County. But she opened my world up, honestly, to kind of independent film. I knew of independent film in quotation marks as a thing because I kind of got my film education through, um, the RISD library. I would just go and like look at titles I liked and then watch, try to watch two films a day. And then you come across random things. They're not collecting the most box office things. It's a lot of like really, um, solid idiosyncratic stuff.

• 1:35:52Speaker 04

  And she, you know, works, Jocelyn, that is, works with like Lucretia Martel and a Peter Ponger Seth Cole, butchering his name. Um, and there are people who have really specific means of making, but yet they found ways to garner the support to make really big things. And so, that actually kind of shifted. The space and also the reception of Hill County because, you know, really small team. It was like, you know, myself, Robert, Rob Moss, Maya Krensky, Jocelyn, and a woman named Sue Kim. We finished the film in obscurity. You know, we had a couple of grants, but not many people knew about us. And we were like, we really like this. We're unsure if anyone

• 1:36:35Speaker 04

  will, like legitimately unsure. I'm submitting to Sundance. I'm asking Rob Moss. He's a brilliant filmmaker himself. He teaches at Harvard. He was like, RaMell, I don't want you to get your hopes up. You know, like, the film's good. Like, I like it, but like, these films don't, they don't get into these festivals because the festivals are beholden to the audience and all these other things. And the programmers may like it, but can that fill the seats, you know? And he's saying this as an independent filmmaker. He's not making commercial films, but he's just trying to manage my expectations. And so, we genuinely thought that the film would be something that was like on the library shelf, inside the RISD library, that in 10 years, someone comes across and it gives them something

• 1:37:17Speaker 04

  to work with inspiration wise or visual wise and affects them. And then maybe someone will know about it later in life.

• 1:37:23Sean Fennessey?

  So then, why do you think that didn't happen? Why do you think it did get programmed at those festivals? It did get, you know, awards attention? Like, why, from your perspective, obviously, you're deep inside of it. You made it. But why did it click?

• 1:37:35Speaker 04

  Well, I'd say there's a couple reasons. The, I think the practical reason, the traceable reason is that Sundance program camera person, KJ's, Kirsten Johnson's camera person, the year before in New Frontier. Now, that film was radical in its consolidation of documentary footage, edited by Nels Bangeter, amazing editor. They wanted to put that in the main competition, but they didn't think that people were ready for it. So they put it in New Frontier, and it kills. Amazing film. So then my film comes along, and then they're like, Well, maybe this is the film that we can put into the competition.

• 1:38:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:15Speaker 04

  And so, and I'm kind of unsure. I mean, I know like the Ross Brothers made a film, like a zip code film that is similar, only because there's not many examples of like the sort of longitudinal collage of moments to make a sort of singular piece. And I don't know if, I think it made in, I'm unsure if it made into Sundance, but that's almost a predecessor to Camera Person.

• 1:38:36Sean Fennessey?

  Was it Chupitalis or was it?

• 1:38:38Speaker 04

  No, no, it was like 34679.

• 1:38:40Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

• 1:38:41Speaker 04

  It was the nine.

• 1:38:42Sean Fennessey?

  I got you, okay.

• 1:38:43Speaker 04

  And so if, if like those who are interested, you can kind of trace the lineage, the lineage of how films get to places and how they're accepted. Like Hell County seems to be an anomaly, but it's on the back of like many other films that like chipped away at people's expectations of a film to do a certain thing and then chipped away again. And then, and I'm sure that there are films that are in places because of Hell County was able to break through and now people are able to take more risk on these sort of poetic views of the world.

• 1:39:12Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's really right. I think everything is operating on this kind of continuum and sometimes it's invisible.

• 1:39:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:16Sean Fennessey?

  But yeah, totally, that there were some people who were kind of kicking in doors very slowly so that certain things can come through. It's interesting, too, that you cite that Jocelyn was, you know, had worked with A Pitchapong and Lucretia Martel because I feel like Nickel Boys is really in the tradition of those kinds of films. These kind of durational, deep, kind of probing stories, but that don't follow the conventional rhythms of certainly American movie storytelling. So I'm fascinated by this movie. I really like Nickel Boys a lot. What led to making the decision then to try to adapt a work of fiction after making a documentary?

• 1:39:53Speaker 04

  Well, the idea to do it wasn't mine. I don't typically, like I don't read a book and I'm like, that'd make a great film. Maybe, maybe I should adapt it. Like, I don't think that way, you know? We got a call, Jocelyn got a call from DeeDee Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner from Plan B that they wanted to chat with me. We both go, have a long conversation, goes away over time. They ask if I, if I read Nickel Boys, ask if I was interested in adapting it. I wasn't so much interested. I took the meeting because DeeDee, and I, once Hell County came out, I've gotten asked to make tons of films.

• 1:40:35Speaker 04

  And I'm not, I don't see my, I'm like, I'm not a filmmaker in that sense, you know? So. This was along those lines, but DeeDee made Tree of Life. And Tree of Life is, I think, just, it's one of my lod- lodestar or whatever.

• 1:40:50Sean Fennessey?

  You can tell watching Nickel Boys. There's a couple of moments where I was like, oh, man, okay. I know that exact perspective from that character's eyes is yes, okay, that's crazy.

• 1:40:58Speaker 04

  Seen it so many times and it's, it's inexhaustible to me. It's like everything, the ambition, the aesthetic, the, the risk, the payoffs, the non-payoffs, all of it works to me. And so I, I told Josh that I definitely didn't want to make a film unless I had creative control, obviously. And because DeeDee had made that film, I was like, maybe. No one makes that film, you know, like you realize, talking to Jomo, who's the, the DP, who's made many films and made many commercials. He, he says a thing, he's like, most people can't make the decisions to make the films that they love.

• 1:41:41Speaker 04

  Because all of those decisions are antithetical to the way in which we're taught to participate in the industry, you know, which is pretty eye-opening. It's hard to take those risks because you're putting your career on the line in some, to some degree. So the fact that DeeDee had made Tree of Life was, you know, worthy of the conversation. And then just meeting those two, they seem to just be open to something fresh. They loved Hell County and it, it appeared to be a match made in heaven. And then from there, started to develop.

• 1:42:08Sean Fennessey?

  Because you're not pursuing your career the way that other young filmmakers are, do you feel then that you are more able to take those risks that you were told most filmmakers can't take? Cause you're like, I have a teaching job. I just keep making documentaries. I can shoot photos. Like, is that, so do you feel safer in that way?

• 1:42:26Speaker 04

  I think that's my cheat code.

• 1:42:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:27Speaker 04

  But it doesn't work for everyone. And I feel bad, like genuinely, almost like I'm misleading people. You know, like the rich person that's like, you can make money, all you gotta do is, it's easy to say that when you're rich.

• 1:42:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, take a chance, why not?

• 1:42:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, it worked for you, bro. But like, I don't have the same circumstances as you.

• 1:42:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:44Speaker 04

  Like, I think because. My, my logic or my reasoning as to how I got to where I am is basketball was so important to me. I, you know, I was supposed to go to the league. I was on track, like all the stuff, so many injuries. I've always felt like photography, art and filmmaking and writing are like a second life. And, and I know the mistakes that I've made, though injuries set me back in basketball. I know the, the sort of intellectual mistakes I made. And I take photography and art as something that's way more spiritual and way more. Uh, I just have a different relationship to it. Like there's no, I don't really compromise.

• 1:43:26Speaker 04

  I'm not in it for, I don't want to go to the NBA for, in terms of film. That's not my interest. Like I'm trying, I'm like trying to fill the void that was produced when I failed at basketball. Wasn't my fault. And like my mom died around the same time. So it was like a double, huge gaping hole in me.

• 1:43:44Speaker 04

  And I don't know if it's fillable, but that's what the, that's what the craft, or that's what the art is doing for me. So I'm just not interested, genuinely not interested in anything that isn't working on that, in, in that space.

• 1:43:56Sean Fennessey?

  You're very evolved, I gotta say. Like, most people don't have that, like willing, willing to accept um, their own definition of success and not others, I think is something that is super complicated. And, and I think the same goes for this movie, which I saw in a festival setting. And I would say half the people I talked to were like, I've never seen anything like it. It blew me away. And then the other half were like, I've never seen anything like it. I didn't get it.

• 1:44:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:17Sean Fennessey?

  And so you really have this very rigorous approach to telling this story in a way that despite even being inspired by something like Tree of Life, like I'm not really ever seen a movie like this. I've not seen a movie that uses first person in this particular way, that has like a kind of fungibility with it, but also sticks to its own rules. Can you just talk about developing the idea of shooting the movie this way? And then maybe also some of the practical consequences and upsides of shooting this way?

• 1:44:44Speaker 04

  Well, we're gonna go conceptual first.

• 1:44:45Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:44:45Speaker 04

  And I'm gonna forget your question.

• 1:44:47Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I'll come back to it.

• 1:44:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've, I've wanted, I thought about this one in particular as to why I make images in the way I do. And the, the whatever voice that people say that I have with art and with language as it relates to the art that I make is that I think, and this is a huge general statement, like the history of. Of people making work is so deeply tied to their identity that it's invisible. And so the easiest comparison is just music. You think about when people get instruments and they're learning how to play and they're from

• 1:45:30Speaker 04

  an Anglo background, they're doing classical stuff, they're doing whatever. You give it to a black person who has had a completely different experience in the same culture, and then you have something like jazz, which is mind blowing, right? Like, how can you use that same thing that we've been using for hundreds of years and just do something so wild? Because like the way that that person has been forced to relate to the world, channeled through their instrument, produces different use. And so coming, looking at film and photography, I like, I don't believe in the way in which the camera's been used historically. It just doesn't work for me. I just don't, I don't understand why people use it that way. It's confusing to me.

• 1:46:11Sean Fennessey?

  But when you were watching Fight Club or Shawshank, two movies that you cited, did you also feel that way? Did you feel like this isn't right? Like, this should be different?

• 1:46:18Speaker 04

  No, but I wasn't, I wasn't self-interested spiritually. I wasn't, I wasn't trying to find myself. There was no, there was no internal gaze at all. It was all external. I was, I was, I was programmed. I was working in American culture, which is how we are. And some could argue how we, we need to be to have this, this experiment go on. That's another conversation, but I'd never looked back at myself. And the loss, the two losses in my life just forced reflection. And that kind of opens up a sort of like, a sort of, just you're, you're more disappointed with what you took for granted, you know?

• 1:46:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:58Speaker 04

  And so coming to use the camera for this film in POV, which is, which I say, and what, which we say for people to understand it, but we actually called it on set sentient perspective. Because POV is not what we're doing. POV is action cam, it's GoPro, it's Lady in the Lake, it's Enter the Void. Sentient perspective is using the camera as an organ. It's using the camera as a way to align the audience's perceptual encounter with the film world, with the characters. Which is one. That is not the same as the objectivity that is used in POV or the traditional objectivity of the camera while having subjective moments

• 1:47:43Speaker 04

  in many different ways, across many different films, in many different genres.

• 1:47:46Sean Fennessey?

  So when you use the word organ, like, what do you specifically mean by that?

• 1:47:50Speaker 04

  Meaning like, I like to call it observational logic. And it's kind of taken from observational footage or using a camera observationally in documentary space. But observational logic is, to me, an issue with shooting a 20, like, at 24, I'm sorry, at 24 millimeters or 17 millimeters and like having the whole thing be clear and in focus as a person's eye gets to wander the frame, right? But that's a good thing because human beings can see at that scale. But the thing is, is that without trying to be one to one with human vision, human beings, our attention is always focused within there. And having everything clear and allowing the audience to look around undermines our sensorial perceptive attention moment.

• 1:48:35Speaker 04

  So if you get a narrow lens and you shoot really shallow and you use the camera in a way that mimics the attention of consciousness, then, to me, that's observational logic. You're not observing, but you're using the logic of observation in a human.

• 1:48:51Speaker 04

  And that's a different way of using a camera. And I do that in Hill County, which was the, I use as a proof of concept when like talking to the producers and those about the film.

• 1:49:00Sean Fennessey?

  It is, it's stupid to say stuff like revolutionary, but as I was watching the film, I think I had a similar experience to some other people I saw it with, where, which is in the first act of the movie, it takes a moment to adjust. It takes a moment to like, understand, and I think even more so, accept that you have like, broken a rule, an expectation for how you tell a story. But if you accept it, then it kind of rewires your brain for what all movies should be.

• 1:49:26Speaker 04

  You gotta accept it, though.

• 1:49:27Sean Fennessey?

  You have to.

• 1:49:28Speaker 04

  That's the thing, yeah. It's hard for people to accept because if you accept this, you have to look at yourself differently, I think, because you're, you're not looking from you anymore.

• 1:49:37Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:49:38Speaker 04

  But the camera, what the camera always does is it allows you to maintain a distance. But, and it's not even that. What we're doing in Nickel Boys is also not a distance. It's just one less level of abstraction and adjacent. So it's just a little bit different.

• 1:49:52Sean Fennessey?

  So, so, I mean, that was my exact experience was I found that it was literally distancing at first and then the opposite afterward. It was, it was like the, the portal to empathy as soon as you accept it.

• 1:50:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:50:03Sean Fennessey?

  But that's a really, um, it's a, it's a heady and bold choice. Like, did you find, was anybody like pushing back on this? Were they like, don't do this? It's never gonna work. Like, what, what are, what are the conversations like? Cause you're, obviously you're working with, um, you know, Plan B is very accepting of creative people.

• 1:50:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:50:19Sean Fennessey?

  Support creative people historically, but still.

• 1:50:22Speaker 04

  But this is the thing, no one could make the film but them. I didn't know that until we're in the process.

• 1:50:28Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:50:28Speaker 04

  And then I see them calling on others to trust them. Don't worry about it.

• 1:50:35Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:50:35Speaker 04

  We got it. You know what I mean? Like, I was talking to, um, Muncher, who was about the sort of powerhouse of folks that we had. We had Alana Mayo at Orion, Jeremy, Dee Dee and Jocelyn and, and David Levine, um, from Anonymous Content. And like, it's gonna be hard to

• 1:50:55Sean Fennessey?

  You were protected, yeah.

• 1:50:56Speaker 04

  Another collection of people. If they're behind the same idea, who's gonna say no to all of them?

• 1:51:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:02Speaker 04

  You know?

• 1:51:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:02Speaker 04

  And they like, you know, they, they fought for the film at, at all. And they didn't have to do much fighting. Like, they're the ones that are in control. And so they, yeah, I don't think the film could have been ushered into, into pre-production to production and through production with all the conversations we had with anyone else. Because I don't know if they'd be willing to, like I said, make the decisions to make the thing possible.

• 1:51:26Sean Fennessey?

  What about the actual physical production? Because, you know, actors are not necessarily trained to perform in this way. I don't know what your, if your crew had worked on things that had, you know, similarly been done this way. But it, I imagine like the performance style's gotta be different. You know, if you're performing to the camera in that specific way, like, were there hiccups? Was it hard to get people to kind of get on board with this strategy?

• 1:51:47Speaker 04

  Um, it wasn't hard to have people get on board. I think in general, just the language of the production was different. Um, and the language of Yeah, the language of the film is so specific to itself that everyone just had to come in and learn at the same time. I'd never directed actors in this sense before. I directed in other ways. I had really experienced

• 1:52:13Speaker 04

  production heads, though. I had like the best A D in the game, James Rock. You know, we had Nora in production, design, Hidjomo, amazing D P. And I can name every single person, but they're experienced in getting the job done. And I know what the images should look like. I know what it should, around what it should feel like. And then the rest is kind of everyone always being honest with if something isn't working or isn't working. And trying to, honestly, trying to pick out like a lot of the small ways that can undermine the performance like, like, we had like a very specific point in the camera in which we wanted the actors to look.

• 1:52:55Speaker 04

  Sometimes they would forget and look three inches to the right or left because they've never been asked to do this before. That destroys the shot. Yeah. Because the person is looking past the person. And those subtle things are easy to miss because we're worried about so many other things. Like, we, you know, we had a manifesto that myself, Jomo and Sam, Sam was the other operator, would read. And one of the lines on it was something along the lines of,

• 1:53:28Speaker 04

  the camera has, there are no scenes. There's no direction for the camera to face. There are no, essentially that it's a single point perspective in which no action is oriented in any direction. The camera, as the character, finds what the world will be, and the world exists before. And so that's really hard to design. That's really hard to, you know, most of the actors in the scenes are not even on camera because the, the character's eyes never get to them. But they're vital for the scene to feel alive so that you just sense that off screen something is happening.

• 1:54:09Speaker 04

  Like, those types of things were the difficult, because we didn't get to rehearse, you don't get to rehearse that. We don't get to rehearse telling the, the extras. You know, when Elwood gets called to be off of the labor duty.

• 1:54:23Speaker 04

  I want you to look into the camera as if you're looking at Elwood, who now you're pissed off that he doesn't have to work as hard as you anymore. Like, they've all been trained never to look into the camera, but now we need them to look into the camera as if they're looking at the character, so that the camera, if people glance around a little bit, they actually feel like they're still that center.

• 1:54:43Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:54:43Speaker 04

  You know?

• 1:54:44Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:54:44Speaker 04

  And those things, we learn that on set. Oh yeah, we actually need people to be looking. We need more movement over here because it actually feels empty. And that's the kind of learning process that everyone was open to.

• 1:54:54Sean Fennessey?

  I want to ask you about the moments when you're not using that strategy. Um, there's one that is so sort of a version of that, which is that the film goes out of its way to not shy away from the violence that is incurred upon the characters in the story, but it's not explicit about showing that violence. It's like, it feels like a very purposeful choice, but it's unmistakable that something awful is happening while you're doing that. But that, in a way, seems to almost be like a comment on the comment that you're making by seeing the world through these characters' eyes. Like, I was wondering if you could talk about that decision a little bit?

• 1:55:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, it, I think it emerges from, you know, like, Hell County is a responsive film. I, I, I kind of pseudo think that almost all films that are, for lack of a better word, don't even know why I'm saying this, black films are responsive films. They're responding to the history of cinema and the history of photography, right? The problem that it has been, the technology of racism, I say. Um, and so, looking, like, watching people suffer is something that has been happening in cinema over time. I'd say it's been a predominant, a dominant narrative for people of color, um, specifically American film history.

• 1:56:05Speaker 04

  And so, one has to wonder how that produces a, a, our version of a person? How that changes our, or ignores, or desensitize our relationship to seeing, um, those people suffer? But also, to me, it, it doesn't seem right or real, and not that cinema is right or real. I think people think that it is right or, and real, when in fact, this sort of mana, monocular consolidation of space is...

• 1:56:38Speaker 04

  Probably the, one of the most dangerous things that's happened to our brains as it relates to images, human beings, consciousness, time, space.

• 1:56:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'm very guilty of this, of believing that this is how things are.

• 1:56:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:56:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I watch a lot of movies, yeah, it's true.

• 1:56:51Speaker 04

  It's so dangerous, like, um, what is it doing to our brains? Like, to look at the world photographically, to say, whoa, that's photographic, or that's cinematic, that's not good. That's not a good way to see the world.

• 1:57:03Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it depends on what you're looking at or what you're trying to portray.

• 1:57:06Speaker 04

  True, true.

• 1:57:07Sean Fennessey?

  So, depending on the subject matter, in this case, I completely, I understa-, I think I felt like I understood.

• 1:57:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:57:11Sean Fennessey?

  Your intention.

• 1:57:12Speaker 04

  But like, we were walking down the street and something happens and we're like, whoa, that was photographic. That means we see the world as photographs.

• 1:57:19Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:57:19Speaker 04

  What else does that mean? I don't know, I'm not smart enough, but I don't think that it's talked about enough.

• 1:57:23Sean Fennessey?

  This is worse than it's ever been, though.

• 1:57:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:57:25Sean Fennessey?

  Because we have phones in our pocket that allow us to all feel like we can make cinema magic.

• 1:57:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:57:30Sean Fennessey?

  It's complicated.

• 1:57:31Speaker 04

  It's so true.

• 1:57:31Sean Fennessey?

  But what about, so then there's a related matter, which is-

• 1:57:35Speaker 04

  Oh, but wait, but wait, but wait, let me, sorry, no, no.

• 1:57:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, continue.

• 1:57:37Speaker 04

  I remembered what you, what you asked.

• 1:57:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:38Speaker 04

  And I wanted to, to finish because when we're thinking about trauma in its variety of forms, one has to wonder, having gone through traumatic moments ourselves, what one looks at during those moments? We're used to watching people go through it, we see the big picture, but I don't know, when I broke my bones and had my shoulders sticking out and all these things, I'm not looking at my shoulder like, damn, that's traumatic. I'm like, looking up at the ceiling like, oh god, I don't want to look to my left. And like, I'm looking like, at the, at, like, the wind on the thing being like, don't think about your shoulder, don't think about your shoulder. And so, taking that into, into a film in which like, a moment in which someone's being,

• 1:58:22Speaker 04

  um, violence is being enacted on them, like, what's their experience of it? We, I believe that we focus, from my experience, we focus in on details which become the sort of icon of the moment, um, and then we go back into the world. And so, just trying to, one, respond to being overly, it being overly visualized in the past, but also just try to be more realistic.

• 1:58:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's interesting. So I feel like the film's style is operating on this slipstream of using both maybe inspirations from directors like Malek, but then also taking like the tools that you have learned as a documentarian and filtering them into narrative feature filmmaking. So there are moments where we see found documents or we hear something or there's like abstractions. There's this idea of the the the sky and the stars. There we see alligators, you know, like, and it's very metaphorical choices at times. These are really also really bold strokes in an adaptation of a novel.

• 1:59:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:59:24Sean Fennessey?

  You don't have to like address every single one of them, but the documentary elements in particular I found interesting in the way that you included them in the telling of the story. So what goes into making those decisions? When do you think this is the right time to show us this headline from this story or this image, this historical image that is referencing something that truly happened as opposed to the narrative world that we're living inside of?

• 1:59:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think I love the question. It was it was an intuitive process for Justin and myself because as you're mentioning, we have our ties in nonfiction. But I think in particular, the the film in its first form was an edit of the film in images and camera movement.

• 2:00:09Speaker 04

  The final film, if you compare those two, they're not far apart. Eighty percent overlap, you know, like in the edit, you have to use what works. And just because you said archival image goes here doesn't mean that it would go there if it's not functioning. But the idea was always specifically for Colson's narrative. It's so tied to the real world and the way in which dramatic narratives traditionally exist in this rarefied space of cinema makes it feel.

• 2:00:42Speaker 04

  In the cinematic, otherworldly sense where we leave and it was something we experienced in the theater and it's not something that we would encounter in the world. And when I look at the Nickel Boy story as it ties to the Dozier School for Boys, the reason why the Dozier School for Boys existed in Florida, North Florida, boys being murdered, and the reason why Colson's novel existed is partly because of the visual language, America's visual constitution. They're inextricable. You can't treat black boys the way that they did at the Dozier School for Boys without the language of photography pushing forth a stereotypical idea of black folks in the late 1800s, in the early 1900s, in the history of the Southern documentary photography.

• 2:01:27Speaker 04

  They're inextricable. And so, how do you not allow, how do you remind people that Colson's narrative is not only based on an actual school, but that actual school is part of a system of visualization that still exists today and should not be separated from the production aesthetics of like high-quality film?

• 2:01:48Sean Fennessey?

  Do you see making the movie as breaking and reconstituting that visual history? Or just representing it? Or somewhere in between?

• 2:01:56Speaker 04

  I hope it's doing, I hope it's doing five versions of that. You know, I think, I think, I think that it is because I think that that reminder isn't often done. I think that it's not useful for the industry always to have people have to reflect on the complicity of this story and the way in which their community's been redlined, you know? Or have to think about the documentary images, the nonfiction images from the black family archives of the 70s and 80s and that these joyful boys under a Christmas tree or jumping outside could be a Dozier boy or might be their neighbor who had a, like, I don't think

• 2:02:39Speaker 04

  that those, those direct ties, making someone emotionally, not intellectually, because you can read this in, in like a short story or in a New York Times piece, but to have it happen through images is just a different relationship to the brain. I don't think that that's- Normal.

• 2:02:59Sean Fennessey?

  I want to ask you about one scene. There's a scene that takes place in the future in a bar. It's amazing, incredible.

• 2:03:06Speaker 04

  Unbelievable, right?

• 2:03:07Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, you made it like I just.

• 2:03:09Speaker 04

  I mean, I made it with a whole bunch of people. But also, watching this shit unfold in real life, everyone, everyone. See, the actors are like doing their thing. There is not no one that's in that bar that is not like, oh, my God. This is, isn't this unbelievable? It's not just me.

• 2:03:25Sean Fennessey?

  You know, when you're watching a movie and you're like, this movie is having a moment.

• 2:03:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:29Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it's obviously, it's incredibly a pained sequence and it is very revelatory about what's in the story and what the story has been about and who these characters are.

• 2:03:38Sean Fennessey?

  But I haven't read the novel, so I don't know even how to compare what Colson wrote and maybe how some of these things are revealed in the storytelling. But I was just hoping you could maybe talk to me a little bit about staging that sequence and like why it's in the place that it is for how you want it to tell the story.

• 2:03:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, that was a centerpiece, although it's not in the middle centerpiece scene. There are a couple. And as you know, the film is very rhythmic and very musical in its use of images. And so it like ebbs and flows and it doesn't, doesn't sit very often. Though, though, though it does sit maybe more than I'm, I'm giving it credit to in this moment, that.

• 2:04:16Sean Fennessey?

  But that sequence is almost stationary.

• 2:04:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, true. True, that's true. It probably is the longest one as well.

• 2:04:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, what to say? That was the one that there are, there are a couple of things where we're like, if we can, things that we knew we had to nail if, or had to do 80%. If we can do, if we can nail this, we're like, if we can get ingenue, ingenue is our first, if we can get ingenue to be Hattie, if we can nail the Chickie Pete bar scene, if we can integrate the archival as imagined so that it, it's abrupt, but it's not, it's, you don't question it in the way in which you would when things have a little bit of a seam in between them, then we think that the movie can work. This one in particular, because.

• 2:05:07Speaker 04

  It's, it does the thing that everyone experiences in life, which is running into someone that you knew from the past and having to reconcile the gap of information between them, them remembering their face as they are younger. And they're not being, they're being like a sort of distance between who you are, who you want to be, and what you think, each of you think of each other. Just that really complicated. And then in the context of the Dodger School for Boys is really profound because there's so much trauma that is spoken but never really experienced or seen in the film.

• 2:05:51Speaker 04

  We just knew it just had so much power, so much power. And we had to, we had to do it right. And Craig Tate is, I mean, David's in that scene. And I don't want to give it away for people who haven't seen it to know how it's shot and whatnot, but what a blessing, if that's the right word, a secular blessing to, for Craig Tate to have been. He was actually cast very late.

• 2:06:20Speaker 04

  And blew everybody.

• 2:06:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of shattering.

• 2:06:23Speaker 04

  Out of the water. I've never, I've never experienced anything in cinema. This is a wonder. The entire film is conceived as wonders. This is like a 15 minute, 20 minute take. And just, I don't know, there's nothing realer. There was nothing, he was that.

• 2:06:39Sean Fennessey?

  I, as I was watching it, I was like, okay, we are, we are truly having a moment.

• 2:06:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:06:44Sean Fennessey?

  So, congrats on that. It's really great. One last question. I love that Ethiopian jazz record at the end of the song. And I was wondering why you chose that song?

• 2:06:52Speaker 04

  Because of what you felt.

• 2:06:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, there, the film is very, very, very, very, very conceived, you know? Similar, I say it's similar to Hell County because people look at Hell County and I remember some of the early comments like, whoa. It was just like so random, the way that this thing, like you put this here, then that was there. And I was like, yeah, random. That's, I just, I, this is just, it's a collage. That's all that it is. It's a big, long montage. There's nothing strategic about any of it. And I almost think that I would like mockingly say that and hope that they knew I was joking, but also like, come on, man.

• 2:07:28Sean Fennessey?

  If you were concerned about those comments, you will also get them about Nickel Boys. Yeah. You gotta brace yourself for some of that.

• 2:07:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. The montage, I made a proof of concept of that montage before we wrote the script. Because Joss and I were trying to figure out if the, like, how to, how to build this thing out. We needed something to get to, you know? And I heard, I heard that song and it just, you know, logged itself as an earworm. As some people say, it lodged itself in my head and just never forgot it. And then once I read the Nickel Boy script, I was like, if I make this movie, I know how it ends. It ends with this wild, you know, flood of psychic images

• 2:08:15Speaker 04

  from one of these characters. And this is the song. And so many conversations about, well, what about this song? What about this song? From all the people who are rightfully stress testing the idea, right? It's not a song that you would normally put at the end of a film that's dealing with this content or a film that even looks like this because it's just not, it's just not it.

• 2:08:40Sean Fennessey?

  But the dissonance works so well.

• 2:08:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:08:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It's a great choice.

• 2:08:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:08:45Sean Fennessey?

  Romell, this has been great. We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? Have you seen anything good lately?

• 2:08:52Speaker 04

  Wow, I've seen so many good things. Uh, I'm gonna say the thing that I watch the most and I've seen the most, which people are gonna be like, oh, I can't believe you said that. La Jete, Chris Markers' La Jete.

• 2:09:06Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that seems to be an inspiration on your work.

• 2:09:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's thirty, it's only thirty minutes long or so, but you know, I probably watch it once a month.

• 2:09:14Sean Fennessey?

  Do you remember when you first saw, this is Chris Markers documentary, sort of?

• 2:09:18Speaker 04

  Exactly, whatever it is.

• 2:09:19Sean Fennessey?

  Whatever it is, yeah.

• 2:09:20Speaker 04

  Uh, when did I see that first? I think it was probably grad school. I was like thirty-two, thirty-three. Yeah, it just like. One of the pieces where you watch it and you're like, oh, I understand something different about the world. And this, I don't know how he does it, but this form and all of its concentrated pieces is a proxy for whatever it is. It like gives you access to something else. And so I'm sorry, I couldn't say anything more contemporary, but I have like my go-tos and that's just one of them.

• 2:09:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great recommendation. Thank you so much for doing the show, RaMell.

• 2:09:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you.

• 2:10:00Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to RaMell Ross. Thank you to Joanna Robinson. Thanks to Jack Sanders. Thanks to our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on today's episode. Next week, it is time for Bob Dylan. It's time for Timothy Chalamet. It's time for a complete unknown. Is it time for a meltdown from yours truly? Tune in and find out. We'll see you then.