The Robert Altman Hall of Fame

Sean and Amanda celebrate legendary filmmaker Robert Altman, who would have turned 100 this year, by breaking down his illustrious career. But first, they cover the awards distributed at the Venice Film Festival and recap Amanda’s legendary weekend, which included seeing Oasis perform live and watching Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, ‘One Battle After Another’ (1:20). Then, they construct Altman’s shrine and build his Hall of Fame (14:39). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jack Sanders Use code "TheBigPicture20" for a 20 percent discount on an annual Criterion Channel subscription. This episode is sponsored by State Farm®️. A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.®️ 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.

• 0:00Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is presented by State Farm. Life's full of decisions, big and small, and sometimes you make movie ones you can really stand behind. For example, I was wise enough to stick around through the mid-credits during Ryan Coogler's Sinners. And unlike my co-host Amanda, I got to see a very special sequence with the great Buddy Guy, among other things. State Farm gets it. Making confident choices can make all the difference. That's why with the State Farm Personal Price Plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage to help create an affordable price for you. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

• 0:46Speaker 01

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• 1:12Sean Fennessey?

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• 2:27Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 2:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 2:28Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Picture at Conversation Show about Robert Altman. Today on the show, Amanda and I will build a shrine to one of the greatest American filmmakers of all time. Altman would have been 100 years old this year. He died in 2006 at 81, and he left behind one of the most influential and fascinating careers in the history of movies. So we will talk about that entire career. But first, you got home from Venice roughly three years ago.

• 2:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:53Sean Fennessey?

  But they've just given out the prizes to the film festival.

• 2:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 2:56Sean Fennessey?

  And some interesting results.

• 2:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 2:58Sean Fennessey?

  Some somewhat controversial results.

• 3:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I've seen one of four. So, I spent literally my entire life, all summer in Venice. I saw all of the movies except for the ones that they gave awards to. I messed up. I don't know.

• 3:11Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it happens. You know, it happens. At these long European festivals, you just can't see everything. And so, we can talk about what were the big winners here. Probably, most notably, the top three. The Silver Lion for Best Director went to Benny Safdie for The Smashing Machine.

• 3:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 3:26Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a film that you did see.

• 3:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. I was at the Ramira, and I'm very happy for Benny.

• 3:30Sean Fennessey?

  Benny was in tears.

• 3:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, overcome with emotion. And it was very fun. And I said, you know, I don't think I totally connected to the sports of it, or the sports stakes of the movie, but it was incredibly well-made. Like, once again, the images of Dwayne The Rock Johnson just absolutely beaten down on people in a cinematic, beautiful, lush score. So I'm into it. There's also a cactus scene I've been thinking a lot about.

• 3:57Sean Fennessey?

  Really enjoyed that scene.

• 3:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I've thought about it every time now that I'm back in L.A. I see a cactus. So, really, really happy for Benny.

• 4:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, me too. Benny, we will talk to you on this show as we get closer to the release of The Smashing Machine. He can talk about that honor. The Silver Lion for Grand Jury Prize is a film that emerged, I would say roughly halfway through the festival.

• 4:15Amanda Dobbins?

  No, far later, because it premiered after I left.

• 4:18Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I started hearing about it, I would say.

• 4:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yes. And it was definitely the talk, but it premiered very late in the festival.

• 4:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's The Voice of Hindra Job, which is a Kather Ben-Hani's scripted film that is about Gaza, that is a... And kind of a tragedy and has been getting a lot of people's attention.

• 4:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 4:35Sean Fennessey?

  And many people have been speculating for the last week or so that this was the Clear Golden Line winner.

• 4:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 4:40Sean Fennessey?

  In part because of the work that Honey had done in the past, but also because this is the very contemporary story.

• 4:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 4:47Sean Fennessey?

  About what's happening in the world right now. And it took second prize. And first prize went to Jim Jarmusch. And Jim Jarmusch has a new movie, Father, Mother, Sister, Brother.

• 4:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 4:56Sean Fennessey?

  Jim Jarmusch, one of my favorite filmmakers, been a guest on this show in the past. This film was reportedly passed over at Cannes.

• 5:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:04Sean Fennessey?

  And you didn't get a chance to see it?

• 5:06Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I didn't. And, and that was a little bit of a cellphone. I, if I had rearranged some things, I probably could have gotten there, but I knew that, you know, respect to Jim Jarmusch.

• 5:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I knew it had been passed over at Cannes and I also know that it's not being released here in the US until December. And I was like, well, maybe I can see something else and I'll have another opportunity to catch that. Joke's on me.

• 5:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 5:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Or, you know, is it?

• 5:34Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's, it's hard to say. Obviously Jarmusch is a legend. Spike Lee was just on the show last week talking about how Jarmusch was two years ahead of him at NYU. And this is one of the most notable independent American filmmakers of all time. Has never really been truly honored at a fest in quite this way. And so this is a nice thing. If you go back a year. Pedro Almodovar was honored for his film.

• 5:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 5:58Sean Fennessey?

  At Venice with the Golden Line. And, you know, not many people thought that that was his best work, The Room Next Door. So is this a little bit of a like, a legacy prize? I don't know. I haven't seen this movie. I'm very, I'm very much looking forward to it. I mean, it's Adam Driver and Cate Blanchett and Vicky Crepes and a great cast. And it seems like a very, you know, expected Jarmuschian drama.

• 6:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I will see it.

• 6:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 6:20Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, it just, it didn't feel like this was the urgent, you know, out of all of the things I was trying to get to.

• 6:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 6:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And low and behold.

• 6:29Sean Fennessey?

  The thing that's notable about this is that the two films that you love the most at the festival, who many people speculated would be in these prizes, which was Catherine Miggal's House of Dynamite and Park Chan Wook's No Other Choice.

• 6:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Nada.

• 6:41Sean Fennessey?

  Nothing. Not, not recognized.

• 6:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, listen, the, the jurors spend a lot of time in Venice seeing movies. So they get to do what they want, I suppose. It is. An interesting, you know, comment on the structure of the festival, right? Because even The Voice of Hinrajab was given, I believe it was the Wednesday night premiere, which is a full weekend to the festival.

• 7:07Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 7:09Amanda Dobbins?

  After all of the big Hollywood premieres, after, you know, after Jarmusch, after everything that was like sort of shiny. And, um, you know, you could, you could read some political maneuvering into that and kind of what the festival values and wants to promote from its movies versus what the critics are responding to versus what the jurors are responding to. Um, you know, it's a big festival. It's doing a lot and that's part of its intent, I suppose. And we're still here talking about it. But yeah, I, I, I can't stay in Venice for two weeks. Next time, I really can't.

• 7:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I mean, it was bold the amount of time you stayed there this time.

• 7:48Amanda Dobbins?

  It was insane.

• 7:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 7:49Amanda Dobbins?

  And it was the only way to do it. But, and I, again, I, I had a great time. Thank you, Yasi, for, you know, keeping me out of jail. No one should spend eight days in Venice unless you live there.

• 7:59Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's why you shouldn't go to this festival. These festivals are difficult to conquer and in some ways, you know, they're not designed for the American press. And if they are, it's like, there's multiple.

• 8:10Amanda Dobbins?

  They are definitely not.

• 8:12Sean Fennessey?

  And there's multiple correspondents for most outlets that are going. You know, you and I are trying to do the, like, if you're Variety, you've got multiple people that are covering the festival over time. Anyway, both of these films are going to come to the United States. I believe, I'm almost certain, yeah, Father, Mother, Sister, Brother is one of the key films at New York Film Festival. The Voice of Hinrajab, I'm sure we'll see stateside very soon. I look forward to seeing that. And then, you know, a couple of other titles were honored. Below the Clouds, the Jen Franco Rossi movie, Tony Servio's work in La Grazia was honored.

• 8:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, I did see, yeah, I saw that.

• 8:42Sean Fennessey?

  Which I thought was fine.

• 8:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It's fine.

• 8:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, whatever.

• 8:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very quiet performance from Tony Servio and not necessarily something you haven't seen him do before. But anyway, um, the Italians, you know?

• 8:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Sean Fennessey?

  They've got their own ideas.

• 8:55Amanda Dobbins?

  They do. They sure, they are a quixotic bunch.

• 8:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And, and, and Alexander Payne also has his own ideas. He was the jury president this year, got himself into a little bit of a kerfluffle in the opening press conference.

• 9:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't really get himself out of it with these prizes, which people are questioning, but we don't know. We don't know.

• 9:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:13Sean Fennessey?

  We're just, just two folks seeing movies, talking about them.

• 9:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Doing our best.

• 9:17Sean Fennessey?

  Doing our best. Any other news that has struck you before we get into all of them?

• 9:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Can we just talk about our weekend?

• 9:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Because I just, I witnessed the great works, you know?

• 9:25Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah. You had a big Saturday.

• 9:26Amanda Dobbins?

  That was Italy.

• 9:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 9:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And then I came home, um, it was truly an unprecedented run of me time. Uh, on Saturday night, I saw Oasis at the Rose Bowl and on Sunday night, you and I both saw, are we allowed to say?

• 9:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Well, the, the, the embargo is up on Tuesday.

• 9:41Amanda Dobbins?

  You and I both saw one battle after another.

• 9:43Sean Fennessey?

  We did. We did.

• 9:44Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 9:44Sean Fennessey?

  Well, how was Oasis?

• 9:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Take that, Italy.

• 9:49Sean Fennessey?

  I thought you loved Italy.

• 9:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Eat it, Alexander. No, I really do. I do. I just, um, you know, it is funny that I spent all of that time and then came home and just the, the best of what America and Manchester have to offer.

• 10:03Sean Fennessey?

  Was, give me the vibe on Oasis.

• 10:04Amanda Dobbins?

  It was really fun. It was like Disneyland.

• 10:06Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 10:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, you know, like grown up Disney. Then I say that and I have not been to Disneyland since I was seven, but.

• 10:13Sean Fennessey?

  I've been there twice this year.

• 10:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I know that. Um, but a lot of people our age, like in their merch, in their gear.

• 10:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is cute. And I didn't go to Eras Tour. I haven't ever been, I haven't seen Beyonce. No, I have never seen Beyonce in concert either. So this, it had what I imagined to be that vibe.

• 10:33Sean Fennessey?

  Let's not conflate Taylor Swift and Beyonce with Oasis. Okay? These are different energies.

• 10:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Successful, but it was, but that a lot of people were like dressed up and it was, you know, their event.

• 10:47Sean Fennessey?

  There was some lad behavior.

• 10:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Like a lot of bucket hats.

• 10:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 10:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Right? And.

• 10:52Sean Fennessey?

  Never worn one in my life.

• 10:53Amanda Dobbins?

  It was.

• 10:53Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think I could pull it off.

• 10:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I actually, I have one that I, I look pretty good in.

• 10:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 10:57Amanda Dobbins?

  And I match with my sons.

• 10:58Sean Fennessey?

  You should wear it to the next episode.

• 11:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, didn't get any merch though, because the lines were just absolutely. Yeah. People were, people really needed their stuff. I, it was a lot of fun. There is like a 15 minute Noel so, solo set in the middle. And which like, I get it, but also.

• 11:14Sean Fennessey?

  Talk Tonight. That's one of the all time great Oasis songs.

• 11:18Amanda Dobbins?

  He did it. He did Talk Tonight, but you know, Liam was like nowhere to be seen. And it is, it's a study in aging.

• 11:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 11:25Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 11:25Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's just a nice echo of their unplugged kerfluffle.

• 11:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 11:29Sean Fennessey?

  Like, I love that.

• 11:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, it is, it is part of the text. It is, you're seeing it live, but like the third, he, he started Talk Tonight and then there were two more. I don't even remember. I was like, that's when, by the way, that's when you sent me the outline for today's episode and I checked it live because Noah was just like,

• 11:46Sean Fennessey?

  So rude.

• 11:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Noah was still singing, like respectfully, I'm there for Liam. We all know, I'm there for them together, but I need, you know, I need Liam.

• 11:53Sean Fennessey?

  I just, Noel disrespect is outrageous right now.

• 11:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's, this is.

• 11:59Sean Fennessey?

  Literally a genius.

• 12:01Amanda Dobbins?

  He is a genius, but he also needs Liam, you know?

• 12:03Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, I don't disagree. I, they're, they're, they're better together.

• 12:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Playing it out in real time.

• 12:07Sean Fennessey?

  They're better together, but just opening, you're opening the document during Noel's performance. Dear God.

• 12:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, I just like kept going and I was like, sir, you do somewhat resemble a potato. Anyway, then, you know, they, they opened with like, you know, they opened with hello. They do the hits. Everyone can see the setlist, but like the last three songs are in order. Don't Look Back at Anger, Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova. And during Champagne Supernova, I could see the suburban waiting in the tunnel to take them home. And I was like, okay, like I get it.

• 12:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 12:43Amanda Dobbins?

  And I'm having a great time.

• 12:44Sean Fennessey?

  How, start to finish when they got on stage? How long was the set?

• 12:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Two fifteen or like two oh five. Yeah, they started right at eight forty-five and then.

• 12:54Sean Fennessey?

  That's money's worth.

• 12:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think that, um, the Rose Bowl has like 11 PM curfew. So they were done at like 10:55 or something.

• 13:01Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 13:02Amanda Dobbins?

  And then.

• 13:02Sean Fennessey?

  I'm glad you had a great time.

• 13:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you. Yeah.

• 13:04Sean Fennessey?

  Was it hell getting out of there?

• 13:05Amanda Dobbins?

  We, we walked a while, but you know, I've, I've recently been in Europe, so my, I've, I'm used to a lot of steps.

• 13:11Sean Fennessey?

  Your core strength is high.

• 13:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 13:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Thanks.

• 13:14Sean Fennessey?

  I'm jealous. I wanted to go and then, um.

• 13:17Amanda Dobbins?

  It was okay.

• 13:17Sean Fennessey?

  I've made some choices that. You know, let's well, let's just transition. One, we saw one battle after another. It was a very special screening. It was at the Directors Guild of America. We were lucky to go. We had a listener who invited us to go.

• 13:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I just, may I just shout out Matthew in particular? Matthew and Griffin, but who, who really, really held me down and got me like the best seat I've ever seen and, and did the work. So, thank you to them.

• 13:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, my buddy Marielle also helped me and she got me in. And, and the reason that I was gonna, I, I, I gave you the opportunity to go on Sunday because I was gonna go tonight at the premiere. I'm still gonna go to the premiere. I'm gonna see it a second time as soon as possible, which should tell you something about how I feel about it. But I wanted to go in part because Steven Spielberg conducted the Q and A.

• 13:58Amanda Dobbins?

  He did.

• 13:59Sean Fennessey?

  And it was, we're not gonna ruin anything about the movie, but Steven Spielberg basically did the Chris Farley Show at Paul. Where he just sort of like recapped the movie and told him how much he loved.

• 14:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:13Sean Fennessey?

  And didn't ask very many questions and that was okay.

• 14:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:16Sean Fennessey?

  We did learn a, a good amount about the making of this movie and what PCA was thinking about, but um, it's a very special movie. That's what I've been saying to people who've been asking me what I thought.

• 14:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I completely agree. I was, it was, I, I saw the great works this weekend, but Sunday night was far and away the, you know, the experience.

• 14:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, very, it, it'll be a fun month on this show. I'm, I'm so relieved.

• 14:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, can I ask you something about, uh, like your aesthetic choices? So, uh, PTA came out with like a beard as well that, and you know, you're, you're veering that way and I was just wondering whether it's intentional or whether you're just like...

• 14:53Sean Fennessey?

  I had no idea what, what Paul's facial hair situation was.

• 14:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Whether you are just achieving, you're, you're headed towards your true.

• 14:59Sean Fennessey?

  I try to grow a beard during vacation.

• 15:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:03Sean Fennessey?

  As often as I can and I've just decided to keep it for now. We'll see how long I keep it.

• 15:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I was thinking this about Paul, who is one of the great filmmakers and was so delightful during the Q and A. Why do men think beards are attractive?

• 15:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I say this to you, I say this like, why? I, it's because the men clearly love it. And I think we're all really excited when you shave.

• 15:27Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, look, I-

• 15:28Amanda Dobbins?

  That's not true, you know, to, for everyone, but broadly speaking.

• 15:32Sean Fennessey?

  I think that men like to hide.

• 15:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 15:38Sean Fennessey?

  That's my, that's my answer to that question.

• 15:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I know that you do.

• 15:41Sean Fennessey?

  I, I do. And then there's nowhere for me to hide anymore. So I'm, I'm doing my best to do that. I don't know for him, I mean, he's, he's waxed and waned with facial hair over the years.

• 15:50Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 15:50Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Steven Spielberg has always had facial hair.

• 15:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Also incredible scarf work from, from-

• 15:54Sean Fennessey?

  He looked great, he was wearing a delightful cardigan.

• 15:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it was, it was a, it was a very fun night. We're very lucky to have gotten to see that. And, and I'm going to the premiere tonight and I'm, it's at the Chinese theater on a big ass motherfucking screen.

• 16:05Amanda Dobbins?

  That's exciting.

• 16:06Sean Fennessey?

  So I'm fired up. Uh, more to come on one battle after another. Now, I will say, one of the reasons why I wanted to do the Robert Altman episode this month is because Robert Altman is one of the most critical, maybe the most critical influences on Paul Thomas Anderson, whose movies I fell in love with in the late 90s. And him and Tarantino and Fincher were the three people who really, and Spike and Soderbergh and a handful of other people. But those are the people who really got me into the game the way that I am now and got me thinking and loving movies the way that I do. And I thought it would be a nice-

• 16:45Amanda Dobbins?

  It, yeah.

• 16:45Sean Fennessey?

  Bit of matching.

• 16:46Amanda Dobbins?

  There, there are a few movies that, um, re-watching them, knowing that it's, it's PTA season and, and honestly prepping for the other episodes that we have coming. And I was like, oh, great. And I see this and I see this and it is, yeah, there, it's well matched.

• 17:02Sean Fennessey?

  There's harmony between them.

• 17:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Good programming.

• 17:04Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you. Um, speaking of good programming, the wonderful people-

• 17:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow, we're so back.

• 17:09Sean Fennessey?

  We are so back. The wonderful people at the Criterion Channel were nice enough to- To program this with us, I told them some time ago that I really wanted to do an Altman episode. I've been planning on it, thinking on it for years for the show. And they said, that's great. Let's do it. Let's do a program together. So on the Criterion Channel right now, you can watch a great many of his films, not all of his films, but a lot of his very best films.

• 17:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And with an introduction from Sean.

• 17:31Sean Fennessey?

  There's an introduction for me.

• 17:33Amanda Dobbins?

  When I opened Criterion, there, there your face was.

• 17:35Sean Fennessey?

  My face is on the Criterion Channel, which is an honor and was a little nerve wracking, but I think turned out okay. So there's a special offer for listeners of the show right now. So if you're listening, special offer. We created a custom code for you, which is the Big Picture 20. It's essentially 20% off an annual Criterion Channel subscription, which is something that you should already have, honestly, if you are a listener of this show or just a movie lover. But we hope you will check it out. This will be linked in the episode description as well. You can watch all the great works there, most of the great works. There's a handful of missing titles that are key and there's, you know, it's hard to license these titles. That's one thing people don't realize when they look at streaming services, like it's actually hard work to acquire the rights. One of the biggest reasons why is music rights are a real mother of effort.

• 18:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is a major part of a lot of Altman.

• 18:23Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of these works. Yes, music is a huge part of his storytelling. So let's, let's dive into it. I think maybe we'll talk through his life and how he came to filmmaking. But before we do that, I kind of wanted to get a gloss from you on Altman, because we haven't spent a ton of time talking about him.

• 18:37Amanda Dobbins?

  We've talked about individual films that are very important to us and obviously to the rest of the world and Hollywood and movie making, but we've never talked about him. I realized, prepping for this episode and rewatching and also seeing some things that I hadn't seen, that my understanding of the 70s as a decade, or at least what it was like in the United States, is just a Robert Altman movie for, you know, because despite my age, I was not there. And so when I think of what was going on politically, emotionally, aesthetically, vibes wise, it is, you know, kind of a bunch of.

• 19:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Weirdos or stoners or people who are a little on the outside, who are rightfully angry about how everything else in the world is going. But and dialed in, but also just kind of doing their own thing. And nobody's wearing a bra and How nice. And you could have sex at any time with Elliot Gould or anyone else. And so I guess that is an ultimately an aesthetic. But maybe also not a political description, but like a a state of the world of vibe description. A social thesis. Yeah, exactly. That is, is what an Altman movie and thus like Altman as a person.

• 20:05Amanda Dobbins?

  And he is a filmmaker whose name has become an adjective to describe not just other films, but other, you know, phases of life or situations in the world. So that's the first thing that I think of. It was funny, I, you know, I had seen most of the seventies and some of the nineties and not really very many eighties. I think this is true for most fans. And so I, I picked up as many of the eighties movies as I could. And some of them feel a bit out of time, you know, because of my expectations or some of them feel like, oh, okay, you're trying this now.

• 20:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And that's a testament to, despite Altman being so located in a specific time, a specific time in Hollywood, a specific style, the people talking over each other, the, the, the camera moving the, you know, very slowly, everything taking a long time. And I mean that in the best possible way. Altman does force me to reckon with my own patients. He's an ambler. Especially when watching, you know, in, in batches as we did for this episode.

• 21:13Amanda Dobbins?

  But he did a lot, you know, he actually did, he worked for decades and tried a lot of things beyond the long goodbye.

• 21:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, I think it's tricky when you've got, he's probably got six or seven movies that are just absolute forever movies, right? That will always be a part of the American canon, that will be seen as kind of critical to shaping how we see certain aspects of life.

• 21:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:36Sean Fennessey?

  And because of that, you become defined by those movies. And the eighties in particular, there are some good movies that he made in the eighties and some interesting films, but he's obviously working with more restrictions because he doesn't have as much money, he doesn't have as much kind of power and acclaim. He's in a really a low moment. And some of those movies are not good. And he's got plenty of duds, you know, it's not, it's not like with, um, like somebody like PTA where he's very deliberate, he only makes one movie every three, four, five years. And every time he makes a movie, it's a big event. And your opinion may differ on certain PTA movies, but most people would say like his body of work is sterling. With Altman, it's kind of all over the place.

• 22:14Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, I mean, it's a volume play at some point, both in the individual films, some of which just, you know, they, they ramble and they, and they run for long periods of time, but also the amount of work.

• 22:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. So let's walk through his life.

• 22:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. This is kind of your book report section.

• 22:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And feel free to, to pay back on, on, on anything that I say.

• 22:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I maybe I'll ask questions.

• 22:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 22:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause I learned a lot of this, you know, I'm cribbing from your research and your prep for the criteria and episode. You read books.

• 22:44Sean Fennessey?

  I've read multiple books about Altman's life. I reread a bunch of books for this. I mean, the thing that is always interesting to me about these kinds of characters, and we did an episode like this about Sidney Lumet. And Sidney Lumet thankfully had this beautiful kind of memoir how to guide about the process of making movies. And that's one of the most readable movies about making movies ever made. And it's called Making Movies. And it's 200 pages and you read it and you're like, God, I know exactly who this guy is. I know exactly how he sees the world and how he sees his art. Altman is way more all over the place and his background is is really interesting and somewhat unusual. I mean, he comes from a, you know, upper middle class family in Kansas City, Missouri.

• 23:26Sean Fennessey?

  His father's an insurance salesman. His mother is descended from the Mayflower family in the United States. So he comes from some, you know, hardy American stock. He's not, you know, he's not like Sidney Lumet who grew up in the tenements in on the Lower East Side of New York. But his family was clearly like a creative family who could never really get their expression across. And Altman is raised to appreciate art and music and all of these things. He's also seemingly a bit of a rapscallion.

• 23:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Sean Fennessey?

  You know, prankster.

• 23:57Amanda Dobbins?

  He's also older, which I think is like an important thing. Like this is the 20s.

• 24:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he was born in 25.

• 24:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, which because of when he was so celebrated, you associate him with a younger class of filmmaker. But I think that's an important.

• 24:10Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's really relevant when you start talking about the movies he's making and how he's making them specifically because born in 25, that means he went to military school for high school, graduates in 43 and goes right into the air force. And that's in the middle of World War II. And he flies 50 missions in World War II, mostly over sort of Borneo and in the Pacific. And, you know, lives like a pretty dramatic life, but he doesn't talk about that period of time from a place of trauma or.

• 24:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's not how that generation works.

• 24:39Sean Fennessey?

  Emotionally shaping. But but he's also not like repressed and he's not like, I need to make a movie like Saving Private Ryan. He doesn't have that attitude towards the war. He gets out of the, I mean, at least in terms of what he has shared in in these various books over the years. But after he finishes his service, he moves to California and he's like, I want to make movies. I want to make movies and I want to meet girls. These are the things that he wants to do.

• 25:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Cool among us, you know?

• 25:02Sean Fennessey?

  Very relatable content.

• 25:06Sean Fennessey?

  He makes friends with a guy and they think they're gonna be writers and they start coming up with ideas for movies. This is in the mid to late 40s.

• 25:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Same.

• 25:15Sean Fennessey?

  And they're like, sure, yeah.

• 25:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Eat me.

• 25:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's very, it's, it's.

• 25:19Amanda Dobbins?

  That's not true. I never thought I would be a writer.

• 25:21Sean Fennessey?

  But it is a very common thing that you see where people are like, I can do it. I have good ideas. And they do actually sell a couple of treatments. There's a movie in particular called Bodyguard starring Lawrence Tierney, who um many people will know as Joe from Reservoir Dogs, but some 40 years before that, he was a star of many gangster movies in Hollywood. And this movie Bodyguard, he thought was gonna be his big ticket. The problem is, is that he was not allowed um on set and he was not allowed to write the screenplay. He was only allowed to come up with the ideas. And he did this one or two times and then got very frustrated and was like, why am I not, why can't I crack through the glass ceiling of Hollywood? The same thing that so many other people have encountered.

• 26:01Sean Fennessey?

  And this kind of seems like one of the origins of his outsider anxiety and one of the reasons why he's always interested in people who are outside, even though he's like, kind of a rich kid, you know, he's not really some downtrodden young man.

• 26:16Sean Fennessey?

  So he decides he's gonna be a playwright. He's like, I'm gonna move to New York. I really wanna be a filmmaker, but they won't let me be a filmmaker, so I'm gonna move to New York. And he's driving to New York in his car with his friend.

• 26:26Sean Fennessey?

  And on the way, he stops in Kansas City where he's from and he runs into a friend in a bar. And the friend in the bar is like, what have you been up to? He's like, I've been in Hollywood making movies. And he's kind of talking himself up and the guy's like, oh, interesting. I make movies too. I work for this company called The Calvin Company and we make industrial instructional videos. Not videos, they weren't video, they were film at the time. And Altman's eyes grow wide because he doesn't really wanna be a playwright. He wants to be a movie maker. And he goes to work for this company and he stays in Kansas City and he makes like 50 plus industrial videos about like, you know, 40 minute films about how to play football.

• 27:06Sean Fennessey?

  Or, you know, how to change your carbureator, you know, these like very straightforward things, but he has like a real knack for visualizing and executing. You know, he gets noticed pretty quickly. He gets hired in 1957, so you've got like basically 10 years of doing this.

• 27:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 27:23Sean Fennessey?

  Gets hired in 57 to make an independent film in Kansas City called The Delinquents, about crazy teenagers, which is all the rage, right? In the 50s, the rise of rock and roll and the crazy teenagers. And he makes like a very serviceable 80 minute teen panic movie, set in the suburbs of Missouri. And there's a young actor named Tom Loughlin, who he did not really like very much, but who went on to become kind of a star in the 70s. He was the star of the Billy Jack movies. And he just so happened to get this guy in this movie. This movie gets noticed. He then gets hired very quickly thereafter to make a documentary about James Dean, who's just died in a car crash. And he doesn't seem very fond of this documentary, but it gets a little bit of notice.

• 28:05Sean Fennessey?

  And then he gets a call from Alfred Hitchcock's production company. He was like, I saw The Delinquents. I heard about this James Dean documentary. I'm starting a new show called Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Why don't you come out and work on my show?

• 28:17Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty good phone call to get.

• 28:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:19Sean Fennessey?

  If you've been trying to make movies. Now, he's already in his late 20s. He's already been married once. He's already had a kid. He's.

• 28:25Amanda Dobbins?

  No, he's like 30s. If it's left in the 50s and he's born in 1925.

• 28:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, by 57, he's 32.

• 28:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just, I mean, not to age shame anyone, but I do.

• 28:36Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 28:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that the.

• 28:37Sean Fennessey?

  He took his time.

• 28:38Amanda Dobbins?

  The age is interesting.

• 28:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he's not a wonderkin. And the point that you're making is that in the new Hollywood, which he would eventually become a part of, most of the people who are making movies then are these like 25 year old whippersnappers. You know, who haven't done anything, you know, wet behind the ears. Steven Spielberg, who's like also roaming the sets of shows like Night Gallery and learning how to figure out how to make movies. But he comes over and in 57, he gets hired to work on TV. And he spends 10 years making TV shows. And he makes Worldly Birds, Peter Gunn, Route 66, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He's well known for directing over a dozen episodes of Bonanza, which was the biggest show on television in the 60s. And he's just like a hired hand and he's very good on set. He's very good with actors. He's very good at improvising in tight situations.

• 29:24Sean Fennessey?

  And then he finally gets a chance to make a movie. And that movie is called Countdown.

• 29:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:31Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we can talk about it a little bit more when we start going through the actual Hall of Fame.

• 29:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Included in the Criterion streaming.

• 29:38Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 29:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Collection currently.

• 29:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's a Warner Brothers film that has real stars.

• 29:42Amanda Dobbins?

  In September 2025, if you're listening, I can't guarantee for the future.

• 29:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, who knows how long it will hang on, but you're right that he's an older guy and he's not. He's more like, I, I think of him like John Frankenheimer or Sam Peckinpah or Peter Yates. Like these guys who made movies about like when men were men, but during the new Hollywood. So they're like a little bit different than that. They're a little bit more transgressive and weird. Um, but he's doing the same thing that those guys are doing. He makes a lot of genre movies. He bounces around, no, and no, actually Steven Spielberg said this last night. He said, I think of you, Paul, the way I think of someone like David Lean in that he never made the same movie twice.

• 30:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 30:21Sean Fennessey?

  And Robert Altman, even though there are a lot of recurring ideas and recurring stylistic choices, he never makes the same movie twice. He's always like, okay, now my Western.

• 30:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 30:31Sean Fennessey?

  Now my gambling movie, now my old time gangster movie, now my love story.

• 30:35Amanda Dobbins?

  A ballet movie.

• 30:35Sean Fennessey?

  A ballet.

• 30:36Amanda Dobbins?

  A fashion movie.

• 30:37Sean Fennessey?

  Hollywood, you know, this is a movie about broken down people in the West. This is a movie about, uh, you know, friendship among women. This is like, he, he's always kind of like cycling through all this stuff. And I, even though he's like, seems like kind of a sarcastic cynical prankster, arguably one of the great humanists in movie history, at least in the second half of the 20th century, where he like, really likes his weirdos, I would say.

• 31:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, yes, or he doesn't judge them.

• 31:08Sean Fennessey?

  Doesn't judge them. Yes.

• 31:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. And has, and, and understands that they're interesting. That doesn't mean that he protects them, which is, which is very different. Um, but yeah, I like a, he, a, a deep understanding and curiosity about how strange people can get.

• 31:27Sean Fennessey?

  He clearly is influenced by what's happening in European cinema in the 50s and 60s, but maybe not in the same way that like Dennis Hopper was, you know, like it takes a little while for him to kind of metastasize a lot of that stuff into his system. But.

• 31:43Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, his, all right, let's talk about his hallmarks, like the things that you know you're watching a Robert Altman movie if. So what I talked about in the introduction on the Criterion Channel is like, subversion at all costs.

• 31:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 31:54Sean Fennessey?

  There's no like, regular war movie. There's not, this is not a normal detective story. This is not, if it's a Western, there's not going to be like, big gunfights and shootouts. People will die, they'll get shot, but it will not be in the way that you expect. You mentioned stylistically, the overlapping dialogue.

• 32:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:13Sean Fennessey?

  Which you also know is a hallmark of 40's screwball comedies. But he takes it and applies it to drama and to satire?

• 32:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and, and also amps it up. I mean, at, at some point, the, people are overlapping and speaking of each over, over each other in a way where you're like, I don't actually understand what anyone's saying, or I need to like, ISO this track in order to follow it, which is again, the point. And to your point about subversion, he is really trying to get your attention that way. But yeah, that, I mean, I think if there is one, if you had to pick one thing to define Altman-esque, it's, it's a lot going on at once, defined by the overlapping sound.

• 32:55Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's cacophonous, but, and also the idea of accepting that you don't have to understand and hear everything clearly.

• 33:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 33:03Sean Fennessey?

  Because that is how life works.

• 33:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 33:05Sean Fennessey?

  When you're in a noisy room, not in a room like this, where we speak very quietly to each other, but it, in real life, at Oasis, you couldn't hear.

• 33:14Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 33:14Sean Fennessey?

  All, how many thousand?

• 33:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I could hear Noel.

• 33:17Sean Fennessey?

  Twenty, yeah, you could hear, thankfully, thankfully, he had a microphone. And that, there's an, there's, it's not, it's a heightened realism in his movies. It's not, it's not the real world, but people do seem normal and they seem often, they're grounded in realities that are fantastical. That's probably the best way to describe the world that he creates.

• 33:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And, but they are also incredibly fantastical, bordering on surreal a lot of time, and he has a real zest for that, you know? And so there is a- There is a weird Altman set piece that is really often involves like a lot of people marching around in a marching band.

• 33:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 33:59Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, but the various marching bands of life, he sees them everywhere.

• 34:03Sean Fennessey?

  He does.

• 34:03Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and, and really wants to, to, to make it real.

• 34:08Sean Fennessey?

  Well, one of the like key reasons for this choice, I think, I don't know if I've ever even heard him say this, but the, that cacophony of, of sound from music and people talking over each other is that one of the problems of the world is that no one is listening to each other.

• 34:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 34:25Sean Fennessey?

  They're just trying to say what they want to say. They're just trying to get their point across.

• 34:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 34:30Sean Fennessey?

  And even, not all of his movies are about the social problem in the country, but a lot of them are.

• 34:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:36Sean Fennessey?

  And period pieces are about contemporary times and contemporary pieces are about the, the past and the way that they're like lies and dishonesty and aversion are kind of what is rooted in the American experience. And if you, if people don't listen to each other, you can't get anything done.

• 34:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Something related to that, that is also a through line is he's very, he's interested in a show and in a performance and how to some extent, everything is a performance and what someone is putting out in the world or what someone is trying to be versus who they really are.

• 35:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 35:11Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, and there are literal versions of that. The, the Paul Newman Buffalo Bill movie, there are Hollywood versions of that, you know, that is in a lot of ways, player, the player is about how fake Hollywood is, but it's, it's a through line and, and, and you do always, you often see like the structure of someone putting on some sort of performance.

• 35:35Sean Fennessey?

  Totally. You can see it in Nashville.

• 35:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:36Sean Fennessey?

  Like one of the through lines of that movie that is, I think a through line of a lot of his movies, it's true of California split, it's true of the company, it's true of a lot of the movies where people are forward facing is like, also if people do hear me, if they do, I, I will be like redeemed as a person. I will be more special and more important if I have a voice in the world, which is a very, like a very powerful idea that is very contemporary. That's the thing is I think if you start to pull these movies apart and think about what their themes and ideas and what's interesting to him about them. Most of them still really just work right now. Some will feel more, like the player will feel more contemporary than something like Images. But

• 36:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Hey, don't.

• 36:18Sean Fennessey?

  I like it. I'm not criticizing it. But that is a movie that feels very much inside the 1970s. And that's another thing, too, is like, I've mentioned this on the Criterion intro. Not a lot of male filmmakers making films about women at this time. You know, a lot of the best movies of the 70s are like two guys in a bank trying to do something terrible. Or dirty cops, or someone trying to exorcise a demon out of a young child. And over and over again, he makes movies about women. I'm very curious for your opinion of if you think he understands women. I've often wondered if he understands women. But he has this unique male perspective on women, which is like, they're kind of crazy, but they're so interesting. You know, like, that's kind of like, his female-focused stories are always seem to be about that.

• 37:02Sean Fennessey?

  And he has empathy for them, obviously.

• 37:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, maybe he's in pursuit of understanding them. And I think in some ways, he's also in pursuit of understanding his male characters. It's maybe less controversial for him to be like, these people are kind of crazy. But I like, you know, we've bought into that by watching these movie stars in this period of time. But yeah, I think he's at least trying. And I, and aren't we all, every day?

• 37:30Sean Fennessey?

  Certainly I am, yeah. I'm trying to understand women every day and getting further and further from the truth. You know, you mentioned also, stylistically, he would not be described as the most rigorously formalist filmmaker. That's not really his thing. His films are, can be shambolic, they really, they can move slowly. They kind of take their time. And that is metastasized in the way that the camera moves in his movies, which is, he's very like, slow zooming, roving movements, where it almost feels like the camera operator is trying to figure out where to go.

• 38:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, to me, it feels like when I am a Like doing the airplane spoon, you know, before I'm trying to get it. And I'm like, no, this way. Here it comes. Slower, slower.

• 38:18Sean Fennessey?

  But then exactly the boop is when he does a slow zoom and then holds on someone's face. And when he finds someone's face who he likes, or who he's interested in, or who is in crisis. You can learn a lot about what he thinks about them and what the movie thinks about them and how they're feeling just with the movement of a camera. To me, this is super sophisticated. It's not like original, but it is. It is like a tool that he goes back to over and over again, where he lets the camera sit quietly on a person thinking about something.

• 38:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 38:52Sean Fennessey?

  And

• 38:54Sean Fennessey?

  who among us would not like to be understood in our weakest times?

• 38:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you want to be understood?

• 38:59Sean Fennessey?

  A hundred percent. Why do you think I talk for a living about how I feel?

• 39:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know if I do, but maybe, you know, that's another.

• 39:05Sean Fennessey?

  You're trying to protect yourself. I'm hiding, but I'm speaking, you know, you are, you're withholding, you're protecting.

• 39:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Yeah.

• 39:12Sean Fennessey?

  What does that mean?

• 39:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe. And maybe that's why some of the Altman movies make me, if not uncomfortable, a little.

• 39:18Sean Fennessey?

  Total McCabe and Mrs. Miller energy. Yeah, you know, I am McCabe and you're Mrs. Miller. That is literally how those characters define themselves.

• 39:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Tough break for us.

• 39:24Sean Fennessey?

  They are like outwardly, she's outwardly strong and, and needs to be known that she's not one to be fucked with. However, the vulnerability, it's a little harder to come by. McCabe is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Here's why I'm great. Here's why I'm great. Here's why I'm great. And he's a sad, weak boy, you know? So these movies are very powerful. Any other like thematic things that, I mean, obviously he's like the king of the ensemble. He's like, he's amazing at making movies with 15 characters. MASH is his big breakout. Nashville is like this. The Player is like this. A number of his movies have huge casts and they're hard to keep up with all the characters. And the movies don't flow

• 40:06Sean Fennessey?

  in the same linear narrative expectation that you might have for a movie. And that's okay. And when we talk about PTA and you look at a movie like Boogie Nights.

• 40:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 40:15Sean Fennessey?

  Lot of Nashville in Boogie Nights.

• 40:16Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 40:17Sean Fennessey?

  There's a lot of Scorsese, but there's also a lot of Nashville. It's like, this is a world, I'm gonna plunge you into the world. You're gonna understand all these little peccadilloes about the people in this world. And you'll get a snapshot, you won't get the whole story.

• 40:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 40:29Sean Fennessey?

  But you'll get a sense of like, what it means to be this character in this part of time.

• 40:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, there's a tremendous amount of shortcuts in Magnolia.

• 40:37Sean Fennessey?

  Very much.

• 40:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Sean Fennessey?

  Very much.

• 40:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And like, Magnolia seems like the closest of this is what I'm gonna do as a, in a great way.

• 40:44Sean Fennessey?

  Undeniably.

• 40:46Sean Fennessey?

  Shortcuts sadly not a part of the Criterion grouping. It is, it is the best movie that is not in that, in that collection right now. We'll get into it when we start talking about it. But that's a movie that obviously had a massive impact on a lot of our favorite filmmakers. And is rarely seen. So we'll get into that soon. Here, just a shortlist of other filmmakers who have cited Altman. In part because I think certainly this empathy, there's like a, there's a bitterness

• 41:17Sean Fennessey?

  to a certain kind of a movie that I think you and I historically connect on. We just talked about J. Kelly and the kind of lack of bitterness.

• 41:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I was about to say, except, and that's true, that that is kind of my hurdle. But J. Kelly has like a direct Altman, like tribute, basically, to kick off the movie.

• 41:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and I mean, the studio Seth and Evan's show literally has a character named Griffin Mill, who is the character from The Player in that show. So you've got, those guys are obviously influenced by it. Wes Anderson has said time and again how much he loves Altman, which is interesting because Altman's very messy and Wes is very neat.

• 41:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but the ensemble and the specific,

• 41:55Amanda Dobbins?

  the interest in weirdos and also getting the people

• 42:00Amanda Dobbins?

  where he wants them to get emotionally, you know, like you, you really can feel it even as he is like dioraming to a, within an inch of his life.

• 42:08Sean Fennessey?

  And I think also using stories in the past to talk about the present is something that they both do really well. Inaritu, you know, we're not the biggest Inaritu fans on the show, but he obviously always looking at ensemble stories, looking at stories where time is, is kind of fractured and you're not totally sure linearly where you're going with everything. I mean, the Safdis, especially in the use of kind of like, normal people or people you don't expect to see on screen. They both have an incredible eye for just grabbing the unlikely star and plugging them into a movie. That's something that Altman. He didn't necessarily invent it, but it was pretty rare in Hollywood movies to take first time performers or people who are not very seasoned. I mean, Shelley Duvall's career is entirely indebted, I think, to Altman, just kind of grabbing her and plugging

• 42:52Sean Fennessey?

  her in the five consecutive movies. And then, and then PTA. And PTA is notable in part because he became friends with Altman, not just in influence, but he sat beside him during the production of Altman's last movie, A Prairie Home Companion. Some say he co-directed the movie. They're obviously out of respect. They're not saying that, but Altman was very sick during the making of that movie. It was the last film he made before he passed away. So I thought it would be helpful to talk about entry point. There's probably some people listening to this show who've never seen a single Robert Altman movie. Our producer, Jack Sanders.

• 43:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Jack, what did you start with?

• 43:26Speaker 05

  What did I start with? Oh, Secret Honor. Oh, wow.

• 43:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, weird.

• 43:30Sean Fennessey?

  That's an interesting one.

• 43:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Weird choice. Yeah.

• 43:32Sean Fennessey?

  What led to that?

• 43:34Speaker 05

  Truthfully, I had to make a dinner reservation and it was 90 something minutes.

• 43:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Great. I love the honesty.

• 43:39Sean Fennessey?

  So honesty.

• 43:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And that is, listen, that's how it works sometimes.

• 43:42Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Secret Honor, of course, is one of Paul Thomas Anderson's favorite movies. It stars Philip Baker Hall as Richard Nixon.

• 43:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:48Sean Fennessey?

  And Philip Baker Hall, of course, was the star of Hard Eight, PTA's first movie. So nice synchronicity there.

• 43:53Amanda Dobbins?

  How was dinner?

• 43:54Sean Fennessey?

  Secret Honor is a great movie.

• 43:55Speaker 05

  Fucking amazing.

• 43:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Great. Okay.

• 43:58Sean Fennessey?

  My entry point was The Long Goodbye.

• 44:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:01Sean Fennessey?

  Which I think will be most familiar to movie fans because it's a detective movie, but it's not really a detective movie like you've ever seen before.

• 44:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 44:08Sean Fennessey?

  But it does capture both the like slack, laconic sense of the 70s and Elliot Cool's star persona, but also is like really kind of a bitter and hard hearted movie with a really tough ending. So what, for you, what do you think would be the best place for someone to start?

• 44:22Amanda Dobbins?

  The Player.

• 44:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 44:24Amanda Dobbins?

  And The Player is 90s rather than 70s, but it will give you a sense of the rhythm, the style, the perspective, the bitterness.

• 44:37Sean Fennessey?

  It is one of his also more, most formerly accomplished movies.

• 44:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:40Sean Fennessey?

  You know, has that amazing tracking shot at the beginning. The sound technology is better than it was in the 70s. Like, it's a little bit more slick and very watchable and funny.

• 44:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:50Sean Fennessey?

  So that's a good call.

• 44:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Especially if, if you're starting now in 2025, I feel like 90s can then be a bridge to the 70s. It's not contemporary, but it's maybe more contemporary.

• 45:01Sean Fennessey?

  Agree. Did you get to The Player yet, Jack? I did.

• 45:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Did you do Long Goodbye?

• 45:06Sean Fennessey?

  I did.

• 45:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, yeah. I mean-

• 45:08Sean Fennessey?

  What's your biggest hole right now?

• 45:11Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe images? Okay.

• 45:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, that's not that big of a hole.

• 45:15Sean Fennessey?

  I've done, I've done pretty all the very, very beloved ones.

• 45:19Amanda Dobbins?

  You did the hits.

• 45:19Sean Fennessey?

  The mega hits, okay. Yeah. Altman's a funny one, because like so many of our favorite directors, has been hugely honored, but never like got over the hump at Best Director, so-

• 45:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, that's, that's a them problem, you know?

• 45:33Sean Fennessey?

  It really is.

• 45:34Amanda Dobbins?

  That's a, that's an Academy issue.

• 45:35Sean Fennessey?

  He does have this very cool honor of being one of four filmmakers, and it just became four filmmakers, who have won the Golden Bear at Berlin, the Golden Lion at Venice, and the Palme d'Or at Cannes. And the other three are Henri Georges Clouseau, Michelangelo Antonioni, and then just this year, Jafar Panahi achieved this, because he won the Palme d'Or with It Was Just An Accident. He won an Emmy for directing, Altman. He was nominated for five directing Oscars.

• 46:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 46:05Sean Fennessey?

  He was given an honorary Academy Award in 2006. Great speech, if people haven't heard it, they should listen to it. He had a heart transplant, and he talked about how he would, thought he would make 20 more films, because he had 20 more years left. Sadly, he did not. He was nominated for MASH Nashville, The Player, Shortcuts, and Gosford Park. Two of those movies are nominated for Best Picture, Nashville and Gosford Park. Hard to believe, only two of his movies are nominated for Best Picture. And, that's it.

• 46:34Amanda Dobbins?

  A legend. I mean, I, now I'm just like, oh, should I have said Gosford Park instead? But no, I think The Player is the right one.

• 46:40Sean Fennessey?

  Gosford Park's an interesting one, because it obviously sets up an entire cultural industrial complex. You know, there's like the Julian Fellow's-

• 46:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's true.

• 46:49Sean Fennessey?

  -world of content.

• 46:50Amanda Dobbins?

  That we're still living in?

• 46:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 46:51Amanda Dobbins?

  You up on Gilded Age?

• 46:53Sean Fennessey?

  I started watching the first season on vacation, and I was enjoying myself, yeah. And I, I promised both my wife and Tracy Letts that I would watch it, so-

• 46:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I also promised Tracy, but then I fell asleep on the plane, so I'm gonna get through season three.

• 47:03Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 47:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Once, I was prepping for this, you know?

• 47:06Sean Fennessey?

  It was, it was fun.

• 47:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:07Sean Fennessey?

  It was fun. It's not as good as Gosford Park, is my take. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. There's nothing better than having friends who support whatever you're into, like rewatching a director's entire catalog in the lead up to their latest release. And like those friends, State Farm is there to help you feel supported by helping you choose the coverage you need. With so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you. So you can check coverage off the list and spend more time debating movie rankings. Go online at statefarm.com or use the easily accessible app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

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• 48:26Sean Fennessey?

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

• 49:08Sean Fennessey?

  That's linkedin.com/thebigpicture. Terms and conditions apply. So the Hall of Fame.

• 49:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 49:17Sean Fennessey?

  Now, he's made a lot of movies.

• 49:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I haven't, I haven't seen all of them.

• 49:21Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I've seen every single one.

• 49:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's great.

• 49:24Sean Fennessey?

  They're not all great.

• 49:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I did my best.

• 49:25Sean Fennessey?

  They're not all great.

• 49:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I did my best.

• 49:27Sean Fennessey?

  Well, here's the tricky thing.

• 49:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 49:29Sean Fennessey?

  Some of these movies like do not exist anymore.

• 49:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 49:32Sean Fennessey?

  There's a movie from 1980 called Health, which is a, like a health industry spa satire that bombed very badly and was part of his kind of like epic fall in 1979, 1980, which was coincided with basically the fall of the new Hollywood and the rise of 1980s Hollywood.

• 49:57Sean Fennessey?

  And for whatever reason, this movie is just not available. It's not available on Blu-ray, it's not available on DVD, it's not available. It's, I'm sure there's a VHS, I don't own it, and it's not streaming and you just can't really watch it.

• 50:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 50:11Sean Fennessey?

  I'm sure it's available on like Internet Archive or YouTube or something like that. And I have seen it in the past in one of those formats, but there's going to be a couple of titles that are like that, you know, like A Wedding has never been issued in America on Blu-ray.

• 50:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 50:23Sean Fennessey?

  That's one of his better movies, I think, of the 70s, but it doesn't have the same legacy because it hasn't been restored by a collection, they haven't acquired the rights. And it may feel a little more slight compared to some of this other stuff. So I'm just flagging that for people, you know, you may have a little bit more trouble tracking down stuff, but the wonderful rise of physical media has brought a lot of these movies back.

• 50:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, though I have to, I borrowed one from the library and I have to tell you, I ran into region difficulties.

• 50:49Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, you did?

• 50:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was Italian.

• 50:51Sean Fennessey?

  That's why.

• 50:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Italy strikes again.

• 50:53Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it was Spanish, is it Italian?

• 50:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought it was Italian.

• 50:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, that's another movie, Freda Porte is not, is not available on Blu-ray. I don't know, is, I mean, it's a Miramax movie, that might be why. But Freda Porte was his first movie after The Player, it was a big noisy movie and didn't do that well at the box office and then just kind of vanished. And this happens over and over again to his movies. You want, you want to do the hall?

• 51:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I do.

• 51:17Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. We'll start in 57 since, or yeah, we'll start in 57 since that's officially his first movie.

• 51:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you like to do it.

• 51:25Sean Fennessey?

  This is, it's almost like he made a Roger Corman movie without Roger Corman. And you can definitely see signs that he's going to be able to do something cool, but it's very modest and is definitely not.

• 51:39Amanda Dobbins?

  So this is the James Dean story or the Delinquents?

• 51:41Sean Fennessey?

  No, the Delinquents. James Dean story technically comes out after the Delinquents. But the James Dean story is.

• 51:45Amanda Dobbins?

  You made the spreadsheet, not me.

• 51:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I know. That's Wikipedia's wrong. I just copy and paste it from Wikipedia. Both the James Dean story and the Delinquents are critical because they get the attention of Hollywood that gets him out to Hollywood to make TV shows.

• 51:58Amanda Dobbins?

  But you're not going to make an argument for like, this should be like the, we have to start where it started?

• 52:04Sean Fennessey?

  He just made too much stuff. He doesn't have that tidy like.

• 52:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree with you, but you know, this is a recurring theme on Hall of Fame's.

• 52:12Sean Fennessey?

  Did Duel make, would Duel make, Duel would make the Spielberg Hall of Fame? We never did a Spielberg Hall of Fame.

• 52:18Amanda Dobbins?

  We did rankings, but yeah.

• 52:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. He's got a new movie coming out next year.

• 52:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 52:22Sean Fennessey?

  I guess he was able to take some time off from that to, to laud Paul Thomas Anderson.

• 52:27Amanda Dobbins?

  He's seen it three times, he said.

• 52:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's great. I gotta catch up to Stephen. So the James Dean story, which is kind of a straight ahead, like news bulletin style documentary about the late great actor and the delinquents are not in Countdown.

• 52:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:40Sean Fennessey?

  Did you watch this one?

• 52:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. It's, it is included in the collection. My review is that James Caan looks extremely hot as an astronaut.

• 52:49Sean Fennessey?

  I knew you were gonna say this. I knew you were gonna say this.

• 52:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, this is interesting because it's, it's about the space race. It's a sci-fi space race movie, but it's 67, so it is before the US landed on the moon. And the, this script is, the premise of the movie is like a sort of crazy plan to get a man on the moon before the Russians. And it's not actually how we did it ultimately. The, the plans were revised. But.

• 53:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of an interesting script.

• 53:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's, it's a cool story. It is like kind of an unsuccessful movie, in my opinion.

• 53:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, but you know, it's all of your favorite new Hollywood actors, like with crew cuts and in the tight astronaut shirts. And I, as we know, I like this period of space history, so I was interested.

• 53:34Sean Fennessey?

  You enjoyed it?

• 53:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's not bad. Um, Altman was fired off this movie in post by Jack Warner.

• 53:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, well.

• 53:41Sean Fennessey?

  Jack Warner, I think like went on a vacation after Altman got hired and he was like, don't let this guy pull his, this shit he tries to pull on television. And then he pulled his shit.

• 53:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:50Sean Fennessey?

  And then got booted off of it because he introduced the overlapping dialogue. He introduced, you know, the unsteady camera. And you can see like the early makings of the things, but it still is kind of like a tight studio drama.

• 54:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:03Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it still feels like from another time. Countdown is not going in.

• 54:07Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 54:08Sean Fennessey?

  That Cold Day in the Park, did you see this?

• 54:10Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 54:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, this is, um, the movie that is probably most neatly matched to images. It is.

• 54:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, now I'm mad.

• 54:18Sean Fennessey?

  A psychological exploration of a woman who is very lonely and thinks she has found love, but in order to hold that love, does very strange things. This was a, as a Canadian financed independent movie that he made very quickly after Countdown. He kind of got pushed off of Countdown, just so he could make something again very quickly. Sandy Dennis is the star. It's, it's very European, is what I would say. And so like these are, this is the polarity of Altman as a Hollywood filmmaker in two movies. You've got one thing that's like a studio job that he's trying to do while also trying to secret in some of his stuff. And then you've got a very odd character study that is not commercial at all.

• 55:03Sean Fennessey?

  But if you like art house cinema, there's a lot that you will take away from, uh, that Cold Day in the Park. It's also definitely not going in.

• 55:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, all right.

• 55:12Sean Fennessey?

  1970 Mash.

• 55:14Amanda Dobbins?

  This will be going in.

• 55:15Sean Fennessey?

  So this is definitely going in.

• 55:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:17Sean Fennessey?

  This is, if you have not heard of the movie Mash, which was one of the biggest hits of 1970, one of the biggest hits of the 1970s, one of the, obviously, the launch point for one of the biggest television shows in the history of the medium.

• 55:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 55:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's a movie set during the Korean War, about surgeons working essentially in the battlefield. And it's a wildly irreverent comedy that helped to launch the careers of Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland. It's a quote unquote outrageous movie. Now, I will say, never one of my favorites. Not a movie to me that I would like hoist up and say to me, this is cinema.

• 55:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:55Sean Fennessey?

  I do understand why it was a smash, why it kind of cemented him.

• 56:02Sean Fennessey?

  The story that I told on the Criterion intro was that this movie was being made concurrent to Patton.

• 56:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 56:08Sean Fennessey?

  By the same studio. 20th Century Fox had all their chips on Patton, George C. Scott in this big biopic, written by Francis Ford Coppola, who would go on to win an Academy Award for that script. And they spent a lot more money on that movie. And Altman makes Mash, and he gets it in under budget and on time. And they're just, he's just like, please, don't pay attention to me, leave me alone.

• 56:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Just put it out, yeah.

• 56:30Sean Fennessey?

  Just let's get this movie out. And it took off, because it's got nudity, it's got cursing, it's got blood, it's got all things that you just don't see in movies in 1970. And it blew up.

• 56:41Sean Fennessey?

  And he kind of gets to do whatever he wants for a very long period of time because of the success of this movie. But for me personally, it feels like a movie that my parents love. Do you know what I mean?

• 56:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree. I think also, like, my parents actually did love Mash. And I think, you know, this was maybe not as early as Diner, but one of the ones where they tried to show it to me fairly early, especially because the TV show becomes such a part of, like, pop culture, stretching throughout the 70s, almost to when we were born. I, I wonder, I feel the same way, where it's like, obviously going in, and, you know, Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould are very hot and like, doing their charisma thing that Altman isolates and kind of propels both of them through the 70s. But-

• 57:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I wonder if it's because of the order in which we saw it and also that we didn't see it in 1970, like during Vietnam. And it sets up a lot of the other things, not just his career, but stylistically, the types of movies that he would make. And, you know, we respond more to the gambling movie or the Hollywood movie than the Vietnam movie. So it's just a little bit about like when we receive it.

• 57:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's right. And but he does do something in this movie that you mentioned before, which is that he's, he's putting on a show in this movie.

• 58:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:04Sean Fennessey?

  In the, in the surgery room, on the football field during the game. There's this sense of like, the circus is, has come to town in a lot of his movies. And this one is definitely one of them. He also does something cool, which is that his son, Michael, writes the lyrics to Suicide is Painless, which is the sort of the, the theme of the film and would become the theme of the TV show and become one of the most heard songs of the 1970s. And Altman works with his kids and his family on all of his movies and builds this kind of like clubhouse mentality on all of his work. And when you see Gould, you see somebody joining the troupe who will recur over many movies. And there's a number of other actors who are in mash, who you'll see over and over and over again. I mean, let me just see

• 58:46Sean Fennessey?

  who in this one in particular. I mean, this is Robert Duvall's second movie with him at this point. Sally Kellerman appears over and over again. Rene Aubert Genoah appears over and over again. John Shuck, a lot of these actors, Bud Court, like you just keep seeing them because he kind of falls in love with kind of like beautiful, weird looking people.

• 59:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:08Sean Fennessey?

  That's kind of his thing. Like he, he's a very, Ellie Gould is like very tall and handsome, but also not.

• 59:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 59:15Sean Fennessey?

  And that, that liminal quality of, of beauty, he kind of redefines with a lot of other filmmakers, like how you're allowed to look on screen. And I found that to be very appealing. And actually, the people like Michael Murphy, who's like a more standard handsome guy, he often relegates.

• 59:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:34Sean Fennessey?

  To like bureaucrat or bad guy.

• 59:38Amanda Dobbins?

  They look square. They look, they're, they're not interesting.

• 59:40Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly. Exactly. So that's a cool feat. Now, you mentioned the 70s and how it's a pretty crazy time. One of the cult favorites of his is the next movie that he makes, which he makes immediately afterwards, Burst from a Cloud.

• 59:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:54Sean Fennessey?

  One of the weirdest movies. This movie. The takes on this movie veer from the wildly negative, from Quentin Tarantino, who calls this like one of the most incompetent movies ever made, to like our friend Griffin Newman, who it's like one of his favorite films ever.

• 1:00:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:00:10Sean Fennessey?

  And I'll say I just sit somewhere in the middle.

• 1:00:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's feels at times irreverent for irreverence sake, but has some great scenes, some great music.

• 1:00:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:00:21Sean Fennessey?

  Again, it is putting on a movie of putting on a show.

• 1:00:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, then the literal marching bands.

• 1:00:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yep, marching bands and gospel choirs.

• 1:00:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's right, yeah.

• 1:00:29Sean Fennessey?

  There's all this music and sound and there's a weird serial killer plot.

• 1:00:32Amanda Dobbins?

  A lot of birds.

• 1:00:33Sean Fennessey?

  And birds.

• 1:00:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Birds, you know, that's my one word review of this.

• 1:00:37Sean Fennessey?

  But I think this movie agrees with you about birds.

• 1:00:39Amanda Dobbins?

  It does, it knows that something's up and that you can't trust it. So if like, if all of his other films are exploring how we can't trust the American government, this is like, we can't trust the birds, and I would agree.

• 1:00:53Sean Fennessey?

  This is a movie about a kid who lives in a nuclear fallout shelter who wants to fly. He wants to build wings and fly. He's he's met by an angel who will help imbue him with the power to fly, played by Sally Kellerman. And there's also a murderer.

• 1:01:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Sean Fennessey?

  In Houston, and he may or may not be the murderer.

• 1:01:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:01:16Sean Fennessey?

  Very odd movie. I like it. I would say it's yellow, tilting red.

• 1:01:21Amanda Dobbins?

  We, I don't think it's gonna wind up going in, but I'm fine with a yellow.

• 1:01:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. He made this real quick.

• 1:01:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Sean Fennessey?

  It bombed, it bombed very badly.

• 1:01:32Amanda Dobbins?

  It's so like memorable, all of the the Astrodome stuff and the final sequence is very memorable.

• 1:01:41Sean Fennessey?

  I believe that this is also Shelley Duvall's first movie.

• 1:01:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:01:46Sean Fennessey?

  And for that reason, it is important.

• 1:01:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:01:50Sean Fennessey?

  Because she'll she'll come up a few more times in a rebel, we'll say Bruce MacLeod, yellow.

• 1:01:54Speaker 05

  Also, looking at the PTA connection, it's not quite the same age gap, but a little bit of licorice pizza in this.

• 1:02:00Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:02:00Speaker 05

  With Frank Court's character and the angel.

• 1:02:02Sean Fennessey?

  The older gal and the younger boy.

• 1:02:03Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:02:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:02:04Sean Fennessey?

  That's a very good point. Where did you fall in that age gap discourse?

• 1:02:08Speaker 05

  No comment.

• 1:02:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:02:10Sean Fennessey?

  1971 McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

• 1:02:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, this is another green.

• 1:02:14Sean Fennessey?

  This is definitely going in.

• 1:02:15Amanda Dobbins?

  This is pretty famous.

• 1:02:16Sean Fennessey?

  This is a famous one. This is a famous one.

• 1:02:19Amanda Dobbins?

  He did good.

• 1:02:20Sean Fennessey?

  Warren Beatty, at the height of his fame, as one of the handsomest, most bankable stars in Hollywood.

• 1:02:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Sean Fennessey?

  Opposite Julie Christie, with whom he had a romantic relationship. He plays, a man comes to town, who's got big dreams for developing a western town. And he falls in love with a madam, who's working in the town running a brothel. And we learn very quickly that

• 1:02:49Sean Fennessey?

  all capitalists are vulnerable sad boys. I think is one of the takeaways from the film. You know, it's his riff on a western, it's based on a novel. And it's the, it's an anti-western, you know? It's like, it's pretty simple. Like, it's not, it doesn't flow in the same way. There is a kind of, there is an enemy force that is pursuing the McCabe character, but it takes a really circuitous route to get to its conclusion. It has this unbelievable four-song score from Leonard Cohen that powers it. Some of his best cinematography, I think it's Vilma Sigmund, who shot this movie. And it looks like it's in like a haze of the West.

• 1:03:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Built the entire town and it's a beautiful part of the Pacific.

• 1:03:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:03:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it the, is it?

• 1:03:31Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it was like Montana.

• 1:03:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that seems right.

• 1:03:34Sean Fennessey?

  And yeah, if you've liked the movie Horizon, really built the town, you know?

• 1:03:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:03:39Sean Fennessey?

  Just think about McCabe.

• 1:03:40Amanda Dobbins?

  We've talked a lot about how he picks unusual stars or not, like traditional.

• 1:03:45Sean Fennessey?

  No, you're right, it is Pacific Northwest, Washington.

• 1:03:47Amanda Dobbins?

  But, you know, this is, it's Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. But there is something funny and Altman-esque in a good way about how he isolates. Just the absolute bullshit in Warren Beatty, which is an essential part of Warren Beatty's, both, you know, onscreen and offscreen persona, and what we understand about him. But to use someone as traditionally handsome and charmed and, and, and make him this kind of fast talking loser is-

• 1:04:20Sean Fennessey?

  With a beard and a bowler hat and hiding, hiding, the same way that we were describing earlier. Just a, just a very shrewd and beautiful movie. Personal favorite of mine. I have three posters of this movie.

• 1:04:34Amanda Dobbins?

  What are the three origin? Yeah, tell me the breakdown of the three posters.

• 1:04:37Sean Fennessey?

  Two are the same poster at the same size and one is just a different image. I think one of them is the Japanese version of the poster.

• 1:04:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, but there it's the same image. It's the same.

• 1:04:48Sean Fennessey?

  No, the Japanese poster is a different image.

• 1:04:50Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 1:04:50Sean Fennessey?

  I'll pull them up later.

• 1:04:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Why do you have two?

• 1:04:52Sean Fennessey?

  One was gifted to me.

• 1:04:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's nice.

• 1:04:54Sean Fennessey?

  Because this is a, this is a real me movie in college.

• 1:04:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:04:58Sean Fennessey?

  Where you're kind of like, you're discovering stuff you like. And you're like, yeah, this is not like High Noon at all.

• 1:05:04Amanda Dobbins?

  This one over Long Goodbye in college?

• 1:05:08Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I probably saw them around the same time.

• 1:05:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I mean, I feel like, you know,

• 1:05:13Sean Fennessey?

  In college-

• 1:05:13Amanda Dobbins?

  All the boys I dated, including my husband, are the Long Goodbye college boys.

• 1:05:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'm, yeah, it's okay with me. I, I, I, um, I just think all of these movies in the seventies, we'll get into them.

• 1:05:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Sean Fennessey?

  With a couple of exceptions are wonderful. So Images.

• 1:05:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I had never seen this, watched it, fucking loved it.

• 1:05:33Sean Fennessey?

  You did? So tell me about it, okay.

• 1:05:35Amanda Dobbins?

  So this is, it's about another woman losing her mind. Um, in this case, played by Susanna York and-

• 1:05:41Sean Fennessey?

  Co-writer of the movie.

• 1:05:43Amanda Dobbins?

  She has a beautiful country home in, I believe, Ireland, where a lot of this is happening. And so it's, it, it, she is, she's in this country home and she's having delusions that are presented as real things happening. And so it's her husband and a friend slash lover who kind of keep being switched in and out. And it's filmed-

• 1:06:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess like, you know, realistically, so there's no indication of like, oh, this is a dream and this is a real. And so she doesn't always know who she's talking to, or she thinks she knows who she's talking to. And then they're also being duplicitous, but is it she who's being duplicitous? And then, and, you know, ultimately, bad things happen, but in an awesome house, and they make a lot of spaghetti and have a lot of wine. And I liked it a lot.

• 1:06:42Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very, it's a very confounding kind of movie because the narrative is very, it's very loose.

• 1:06:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. But, but it's one where you ultimately want, you don't need to know which one it is. And at some point, the narrative is that you don't really know what's going on. And it is filmed beautifully and also in such a, the story is confusing, but it's sort of like a straightforward filming. So you're like, okay, I'm just gonna go with this. And I guess we're all just gonna hallucinate together.

• 1:07:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a callback to that cold day in the park. And that he does kind of toggle between these big epic ensemble stories like McCabe in Nashville. And this is as tight a character study as you can do, right? I mean, there's really like three people in the, in the whole cast of the movie. And it is intentionally kind of confounding. And like, the same way.

• 1:07:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but it's not like, it's not an M. Night Shyamalan movie, you know?

• 1:07:40Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, no, it's not twisty.

• 1:07:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And you're not, so I don't need to figure out that, hey, did you ever watch The Sixth Sense, Jack?

• 1:07:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I did.

• 1:07:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Did you? And it wasn't spoiled for you?

• 1:07:50Sean Fennessey?

  It wasn't spoiled for me.

• 1:07:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So, but you're not waiting for I see dead.

• 1:07:53Sean Fennessey?

  You don't want to get a verdict from?

• 1:07:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 1:07:56Sean Fennessey?

  Did you like the movie?

• 1:07:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Thumbs up, thumbs down.

• 1:07:58Sean Fennessey?

  Thumbs up.

• 1:07:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Thumbs up. Okay, great. Yeah.

• 1:07:59Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, great. Glad we got that on the record. Um, you know, I don't mean to mischaracterize it. It's more just that it is, it is like a Bergman movie. There's another movie that is just like a Bergman movie. It's clear, it's clear he watched Persona and was like, that's so cool how Bergman will just swap a character mid movie and not explain himself. And you'll understand that we are in the dream state and that identity is this. This thing that can, there's transference.

• 1:08:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:08:25Sean Fennessey?

  In our understanding of who human beings are and what our relationship is to them and what our own psyche is versus someone else's, you know, it's very heady.

• 1:08:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:32Sean Fennessey?

  Like I smoke a lot of pot, too. Like, a lot of his movies are like, I smoke a lot of pot.

• 1:08:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:36Sean Fennessey?

  And what if this happened? That would be fucking crazy, which I enjoy, if not taken too seriously.

• 1:08:42Amanda Dobbins?

  This is my flavor of I smoked a lot of pot, then what if this happened?

• 1:08:46Sean Fennessey?

  But interestingly, this is basically a psychological horror movie.

• 1:08:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but it's, you know, that's psychological being the key word.

• 1:08:51Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Would you put images in?

• 1:08:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's yell at it.

• 1:08:55Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, we will yell at it. Definitely a fan favorite. If you're like, big Altman fans, admire the audacity and the oddity of this movie. 1973, The Long Goodbye.

• 1:09:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Green.

• 1:09:07Sean Fennessey?

  It's going in.

• 1:09:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Green, green, green. Great movie.

• 1:09:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great movie. It's a very, it's a very fun movie and a very sad movie. It's a very beautiful snapshot of Los Angeles at this time.

• 1:09:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:16Sean Fennessey?

  And that amazing elevated apartment complex that he lives in with the hippie girls who are always topless.

• 1:09:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:23Sean Fennessey?

  And just kind of ambling through convenience stores and police stations and residences. Watching it again this time, Mark Riedel is so fucking menacing as the gangster who's threatening him, who smashes the bottle on his girlfriend's face. All that stuff is so fucking raw. And that's the other thing is that we, I'm joking about him being a stoner, but like, he could make a movie with a little bit of menace sometimes, you know, there's, there's like some real danger in this movie as well. So.

• 1:09:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I think when we moved to Los Angeles, I thought it was gonna be like Clueless and my husband thought it was gonna be like The Long Goodbye.

• 1:09:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yep. And it turned out it's like To Live and Die in L.A.

• 1:10:03Sean Fennessey?

  So that's going in quite obviously.

• 1:10:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think this is my second most, or maybe it's my most seen.

• 1:10:07Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:10:08Amanda Dobbins?

  But yeah, just.

• 1:10:09Sean Fennessey?

  Because you have a partner who's also really into it.

• 1:10:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:12Sean Fennessey?

  1974, Thieves Like Us. Did you end up watching this one?

• 1:10:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't.

• 1:10:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's never been one of my favorites. This is a period piece gangster movie starring Shelley Duvall and Keith Carradine as, he's an escaped convict and he's on the run with his buddies, John Shuck and Burt Remsen, and they're robbing banks and they're making trouble. And.

• 1:10:37Sean Fennessey?

  It's funny, I do feel like a lot of filmmakers like to get a movie like this off their chest. Richard Linklater made one called The Newton Boys, this kind of somewhat similar. I don't, it's never been a personal favorite of mine. It did fine. There's a lovely addition from Vinegar Syndrome of this movie. So if you like it, I would recommend checking it out. But to me, it is, it is red. It is not, it is not in the hall.

• 1:10:59Amanda Dobbins?

  That's fine with me.

• 1:11:00Sean Fennessey?

  1974 California split.

• 1:11:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Green. Speak on it.

• 1:11:04Sean Fennessey?

  This is my favorite Robert Altman movie.

• 1:11:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's the best gambling movie ever made.

• 1:11:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:09Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Ellie Gould returns.

• 1:11:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Is that just, is that from a communicating like the spirit and the, or of gambling? Or is it that they are playing poker correctly?

• 1:11:22Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it's both. I mean, I think that there is certainly like technical aspects that are very accurate.

• 1:11:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:11:27Sean Fennessey?

  Because Joseph Walsh, who wrote the movie, and Altman were gamblers. And you get the impression that Gould and George Segal, his co-star in the movie, got into gambling. Because they have a real facility with the language and the energy that gambling, so there's like, there's accuracy to it. But to me, it's more like there is a, there's a vibe, like a kind of comic chaos.

• 1:11:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:46Sean Fennessey?

  That if you're having a crazy night in a casino, and I'm not saying I do this all the time, but I've had nights in casinos where I'm like, I've been in this side of this space for seven hours.

• 1:11:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:55Sean Fennessey?

  And I've lost a lot of money and gained a lot of money in a short period of time. I don't play the same games that all these characters play, but there's the, the middle ground of gambling, even if you're very calm, is, is like chaos inside your body.

• 1:12:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Sean Fennessey?

  Like, anything can happen.

• 1:12:14Amanda Dobbins?

  You've, you've seen me at the table the one time. I hated it.

• 1:12:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Amanda Dobbins?

  But I don't, it's funny, when I am watching this movie, I don't totally feel stressed out in the way that I felt stressed out sitting next to you.

• 1:12:27Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's because it's not like, there's $10 million on the table.

• 1:12:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Sean Fennessey?

  But the, the thing that I really like about it is, is that it's a movie about regular people. It's not a movie about high rollers. And so George Segal's character is literally a magazine editor and, and kind of just abandons his life

• 1:12:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:44Sean Fennessey?

  to go throw himself at gambling. And he makes great friends with Gould, who you can tell is trouble right away.

• 1:12:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but so charming. So I just, it's like, Eli Gould sitting at the table with all the old ladies being like, come on, let's.

• 1:12:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And this is a movie where like, the way that the dialogue is recorded and then dubbed in, and this movie is so entertaining. Cause like, again, when you're at a poker table, everybody's talking and they're all talking over each other. And at the person, one person's talking at the person over there and the other person's talking to you over here. And it just feels like what it feels like to be hanging out. Obviously I didn't live in 1974 and I wish I could have for some reasons. But this movie really nails something very true and very funny. And also I think Anne Prentice and Gwen Wells are very good in this movie as the two gals who sort of like, kind of fall in love with them, but also know that they're trouble and.

• 1:13:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Just kind of floating around.

• 1:13:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And again, like you can see Brett Remsen again in this movie, Walsh makes an appearance. Jeff Goldblum pops up in a very early performance in this movie. So it's green. It's a huge personal favorite.

• 1:13:49Amanda Dobbins?

  All right. One more green.

• 1:13:51Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. One more green for sure.

• 1:13:52Amanda Dobbins?

  We were just like, you know what? Everyone knows about Nashville, so we're not putting it in.

• 1:13:57Sean Fennessey?

  There's so many movies to go. Uh.

• 1:14:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Nashville? This is, yeah, this is the one. Well, it's his calling card. It is his most celebrated.

• 1:14:07Sean Fennessey?

  Big statement movie. It's his big statement about America and how it works and electoral politics, stardom, the act of creation, intimacy in relationships between people, what the country stands for. You know, it's made in the, in the shadow of the bicentennial and the 200th anniversary of the country. And it's like a hundred character pieces all strung together about all of these people descending upon Nashville for this celebration concert during an election year, during this celebration.

• 1:14:38Sean Fennessey?

  And it's a very long, beautiful, very shambolic movie.

• 1:14:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:43Sean Fennessey?

  Not like a tightly knit masterpiece in that way. It doesn't feel, you know, it feels like you can feel him discovering the movie as it's going along. He really favored improvisation. The smartest thing that he did, the coolest thing that he did with this movie is that he had all of his actors write the songs that they perform in the movie. David Carradine especially, who wrote I'm Easy and won an Academy Award for it, who plays this kind of like heartthrob singer songwriter, ne'er do well, who keeps entrapping women in relationships that he has no intention of committing to, is utterly amazing. But yeah, this is a hard one. It's a little bit like talking about the Mona Lisa.

• 1:15:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:15:25Sean Fennessey?

  You know, where you're like, yeah.

• 1:15:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, and it does.

• 1:15:27Sean Fennessey?

  It is critical to the history of art.

• 1:15:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It does also verge on the Mona Lisa where you're like, like, yeah, I know. You know, it's like, how many times do you wanna look at the Mona Lisa? Even though it is the foundation for everything that came after it.

• 1:15:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47Amanda Dobbins?

  So, you know, Nashville, and it is a little bit because it is three hours long and he's finding it. Sometimes I'm like, uh huh, okay. Like, like, I get it.

• 1:15:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You have to try to open yourself up to every single character.

• 1:15:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:15:59Sean Fennessey?

  Which not, not, not everybody will.

• 1:16:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Also a lot of singing, you know?

• 1:16:04Sean Fennessey?

  I love that.

• 1:16:05Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's amazing in this, but sometimes I'm just like, oh, and another performance.

• 1:16:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It's a, it's a very long movie that is really hopscotching from character to character. And you, it takes a long time to realize what the connections are in the film. But I think it's beautiful. I've always liked it.

• 1:16:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not like.

• 1:16:22Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's a real, like, it's better to see this on a big screen movie. This is not a movie that works well on streaming, in my opinion. No offense to our wonderful friends at Criterion, but like, if you get a chance, in, in, when I first moved to LA, I saw a triple feature of Long Goodbye, California Split and Nashville at the UCLA Film Archives. And it was a crazy day, you know, that's like nine hours of movie.

• 1:16:41Amanda Dobbins?

  When did it start, like?

• 1:16:42Sean Fennessey?

  It was probably noon and then went all the way through the day. But it was really, really special. And, you know, Nashville, after seeing Long Goodbye and California Split is a lot to ask. But it just, it felt bigger and deeper in that environment.

• 1:16:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and it's a movie that like, I think if you want to understand a lot of your favorite directors.

• 1:17:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 1:17:03Sean Fennessey?

  There's a really good segment on the Criterion Channel of Steve James, the documentarian, talking about Nashville and with the impact that it had on him. And the way that he used some of the methodology that Altman developed for this movie to make documentaries. And, um, it's beautiful. And yeah, it is an auto green. And it's a movie that like, it did well and was a big deal at the time and was, you know, Pauline Kael raved about it and it kind of, it got its flowers.

• 1:17:27Amanda Dobbins?

  It isn't, it's funny to imagine Nashville just premiering, you know, and it hadn't existed before. And then it now it exists because it's literally 50 years ago. And we live in a post Nashville world and it has influenced so many of the filmmakers. But I, you know, if you were just seeing it for the first time.

• 1:17:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think it's like watching Mean Streets a little bit where Mean Streets, you're like, oh, I see. Where all of this is like source text.

• 1:17:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:56Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and sometimes source text is maybe not as powerful. Once you've like gotten Goodfellas or you've gotten, you know, if you're Boogie Nights or something that you just have like a deeper personal connection to. And, but it, it was both a big deal at the time. And I think kind of like it hangs in there for him canonically.

• 1:18:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course.

• 1:18:12Sean Fennessey?

  In a way that it always will. Um, okay. So Nashville's in.

• 1:18:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. So how many do we have? One, two, three, four, five. Okay.

• 1:18:20Sean Fennessey?

  We're getting to the back end of the glory period. Now Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull's history lesson is the Paul Newman film that you had referred to. This is a film that had stymied me over the years, but that I really clicked into when we did our Paul Newman episode. And it was because I think I read a lot more about the movie at that time and the way that it was made. And Paul Newman had been wanting to work at Newman for a while or Paul Newman worked with Altman for a while.

• 1:18:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And it is also a movie about Paul Newman.

• 1:18:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:43Amanda Dobbins?

  In a lot of ways. And so when you're watching it in the context of trying to understand his career and his stardom, it, it does really click in.

• 1:18:51Sean Fennessey?

  It does. So it's like, it's a story of Buffalo Bill Cody at a kind of later stage of his showman, um, persona. And Newman obviously relates to this because he feels like kind of a charlatan, you know, and he's like this beautiful. Person with all this mythology around him, but he feels very kind of like sad inside and unresolved. And he relates to the way that this movie kind of pitches Buffalo Bill and all of the people around him in his world. It's a very cool movie about the lie of the American myth. That's kind of what the whole thing is about. It looks good. It sounds good. A lot of the older school Hollywood stars didn't like working with Altman that much. Beatty famously did not like working on McCabe.

• 1:19:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure.

• 1:19:33Sean Fennessey?

  Burt Lancaster did not like working on this movie. He thought it was going to be absolutely terrible. Turned out to be pretty good, but I would recommend it. It is read, I think, in the in the canon of Altman, but I'm a fan of this movie.

• 1:19:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Agree. It's not going in, but it is very cool. And it and I do think if you're doing a Newman project also, that's the the way to seek it out.

• 1:19:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good one to click through, for sure. Seventy seven three women.

• 1:19:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Green.

• 1:19:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, this will probably be the last auto green for a while.

• 1:20:02Sean Fennessey?

  We already mentioned Bergman, but this is this is the one that most people point to for Persona, Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall. As two people who swap their their psyches in real time. One of the great dream state movies ever made, very beautiful production.

• 1:20:22Sean Fennessey?

  His first spa movie, not his last.

• 1:20:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Would we call it a spa? I mean, I have.

• 1:20:27Sean Fennessey?

  Elder care spa?

• 1:20:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I have thought about the, I mean, that's some of the tension, is it right? Is like, how much spa or care are are those sad people getting? I've thought about the elder care a lot.

• 1:20:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Obviously, you know, Shelley Duvall is like one of the Altman players, but the Sissy Spacek performance here is is lights out.

• 1:20:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she's amazing in this. I think in the immediate aftermath of Carrie as well, which is just an amazing stretch of time.

• 1:20:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I hadn't seen this until we did the nineteen seventy seven draft.

• 1:20:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:20:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And you rightfully told me, no, this is the one that you want. This is one where maybe he doesn't. He doesn't understand women, but understands the dynamic between, or at least lets them find it on screen?

• 1:21:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I feel like there's two ways to think about it. I'm curious what you think about this.

• 1:21:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:18Sean Fennessey?

  That sometimes in female friendships, that there's, you know, there's like power dynamic.

• 1:21:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:22Sean Fennessey?

  And that like the power dynamic can swap, but also within a, within a woman, there is like a power dynamic, like within one person. And that some days you are like this and some days you are like this. And the movie seems to be kind of-

• 1:21:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Is that specific to women? Are you not some days like this and some days like this?

• 1:21:39Sean Fennessey?

  There's not, historically, I don't find that there are power dynamics among male friends.

• 1:21:42Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:21:43Sean Fennessey?

  As a single person-

• 1:21:46Amanda Dobbins?

  There are, there are not.

• 1:21:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's so funny because Alex Russell was on the show talking about Lurker and he was like, there are power dynamics among friends. And I was like, sure, man.

• 1:21:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, friendship is sort of the, the Tim Robinson-

• 1:21:57Sean Fennessey?

  It is, it is.

• 1:21:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Is about that. And I, and I liked that because you guys historically don't get that treatment. Also, you do have some power dynamics, but you are just hiding from them and you don't want it. But we can like offline that.

• 1:22:07Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. The beard strikes again.

• 1:22:11Sean Fennessey?

  I think within myself, I don't know. It's hard to say.

• 1:22:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:13Sean Fennessey?

  I think, I think I'm pretty vulnerable most of the time. I think there are things I'm protecting myself from, of course.

• 1:22:23Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, I'm, I'm here.

• 1:22:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that's nice. I think it's nice that you want to be vulnerable. That's good. That's them that you think that you are.

• 1:22:29Sean Fennessey?

  What am I not revealing? What, what, what pain am I keeping from you?

• 1:22:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, maybe it's just so we don't talk about it. You know what I mean?

• 1:22:36Sean Fennessey?

  We don't talk about it?

• 1:22:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Or we just, it's-

• 1:22:39Sean Fennessey?

  You're very mean.

• 1:22:41Sean Fennessey?

  It's hard to be vulnerable to someone who's mean.

• 1:22:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm direct.

• 1:22:45Sean Fennessey?

  Sure. That is a word for it.

• 1:22:46Amanda Dobbins?

  That's it. We just, we-

• 1:22:47Sean Fennessey?

  You can be tough.

• 1:22:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:22:49Sean Fennessey?

  You know, but to those who will accept my foibles?

• 1:22:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I, but I also accept your foibles.

• 1:22:54Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:22:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And we just don't have to talk about them. Yeah, of course I do. Well, I'm like here every damn day.

• 1:22:58Sean Fennessey?

  We should make a movie-

• 1:22:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I've been watching Robert Altman movies for three months while on leave. So we can do this for you. I accept you and who you are.

• 1:23:06Sean Fennessey?

  What, what, should we make a movie called Three Men? They're all about me?

• 1:23:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:11Sean Fennessey?

  That'll be good. Three Women is a fabulous movie.

• 1:23:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:16Sean Fennessey?

  Like, it is clearly, he'd made a couple of movies that were sort of leading up to this, but I think it's his best movie of this kind that he ever makes. And it's definitely going in. And that gives us six in 1977.

• 1:23:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:25Sean Fennessey?

  And we have 30 more years of films to go.

• 1:23:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I think we expected that.

• 1:23:29Sean Fennessey?

  I am not as expert on a lot of these movies. Many of these movies I've only seen one time.

• 1:23:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:23:34Sean Fennessey?

  But 1978, I already mentioned, is a hard film to track down.

• 1:23:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I wasn't able to.

• 1:23:38Sean Fennessey?

  I would highly recommend it. It is all about two families coming together for a wedding. It is an observational comedy that like, you could see Rob Reiner or Nora Ephron making this movie. It would be, feel a little different. It would not feel as kind of frantic. It would feel a little bit more kind of staged, but.

• 1:23:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Does it follow your wedding rules? Your movie wedding rules?

• 1:23:59Sean Fennessey?

  It does.

• 1:24:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Do you want to restate that for people?

• 1:24:02Sean Fennessey?

  Movies that open with weddings are, no, it doesn't.

• 1:24:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 1:24:08Sean Fennessey?

  No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

• 1:24:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Movies that close with weddings are a problem.

• 1:24:12Sean Fennessey?

  Are not to be trusted.

• 1:24:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:13Sean Fennessey?

  But movies that open with weddings are.

• 1:24:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Clueless closes with a wedding?

• 1:24:17Sean Fennessey?

  Well, there are exceptions to rules.

• 1:24:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:24:18Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm willing to note that Clueless is a wonderful masterpiece. A wedding is not going in.

• 1:24:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Thirty years this summer, we did nothing.

• 1:24:25Sean Fennessey?

  It was 30 years this summer?

• 1:24:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:24:27Sean Fennessey?

  I felt like Blank Check was doing their Amy Heckerling thing and I was like, I don't want to stomp on that.

• 1:24:31Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's true, but you know, that was essential to me.

• 1:24:34Sean Fennessey?

  Thing next year.

• 1:24:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:24:35Sean Fennessey?

  Thirty-one.

• 1:24:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Thirty-one.

• 1:24:36Sean Fennessey?

  Thirty-one and shining.

• 1:24:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Thirty, but 30th observed, just like me.

• 1:24:40Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. That's right. A Perfect Couple. I'd only just seen this movie for the first time this year.

• 1:24:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:24:47Sean Fennessey?

  And it's a weird one. It's a little confusing because there is a new show on Netflix called A Perfect Couple. Starring Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber.

• 1:24:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, sure. The Ellen Hildenbrand adaptation. I watched all of it.

• 1:24:58Sean Fennessey?

  Whatever you say.

• 1:24:59Amanda Dobbins?

  It wasn't that good. It was also not filmed on Nantucket, but they're making another Ellen Hildenbrand adaptation. And they were doing a casting call while I was on Nantucket with my in-laws.

• 1:25:09Sean Fennessey?

  Three Women?

• 1:25:09Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:25:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:25:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That would be good.

• 1:25:12Sean Fennessey?

  A Perfect Couple you should check out. It's a rom-com.

• 1:25:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:25:15Sean Fennessey?

  Paul Dooley and Marta Heflin, and they play an unlikely pair of people who are matched via a dating service.

• 1:25:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 1:25:21Sean Fennessey?

  And they don't have a lot in common. Marta Heflin's character is in a band and kind of like a. Post punk new wave band?

• 1:25:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:25:30Sean Fennessey?

  And Paul Dooley is like a real square type guy.

• 1:25:35Sean Fennessey?

  And

• 1:25:36Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's this is a wish fulfillment?

• 1:25:38Sean Fennessey?

  A little bit and they find ways to be connected. And he kind of tries to become a part of her life as a musician, as this like bohemian type.

• 1:25:51Sean Fennessey?

  Lots of music, you know, as with a lot of his films, a lot of live performances of music where you're like, okay, this movie for the next four minutes is just gonna be this band doing a song. It's, it's, it's nice. It's not, it's a little underrated or under seen, but it is not special in my opinion. So not going in the Hall of Fame. Health.

• 1:26:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:26:11Sean Fennessey?

  I already mentioned this.

• 1:26:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I haven't seen it.

• 1:26:13Sean Fennessey?

  It is, it's satire is that it is effectively like a, um, yet another political satire about like a, almost like a presidential campaign, but it is in the context of these two kind of warring older women. In this battle for the right to this health club. I'm trying to remember who the two women are. One is Lauren Bacall.

• 1:26:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:26:38Sean Fennessey?

  And the other is, I think is Glenda Jackson. Carol Burnett's in this movie. James Garner's in this movie. It's got a really cool cast, you know, Paul Dooley and Henry Gibson from his troupe. There's a very funny moment where Dick Cavett appears in the movie and he sits in a hot tub between the two candidates and interviews.

• 1:26:58Sean Fennessey?

  But I've only seen the movie once. I would like to see it again and not like in a shitty VHS. And I don't know when that's gonna happen.

• 1:27:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:27:05Sean Fennessey?

  But maybe by making this episode, people will find, you know, a Brazilian Blu-ray that they can share with me so that I can observe these movies all over again.

• 1:27:13Amanda Dobbins?

  You think that, are there a lot of niche Brazilian?

• 1:27:18Sean Fennessey?

  There are a lot of foreign Blu-ray companies.

• 1:27:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. And they're, um, they're really getting into the Altman deep cuts?

• 1:27:25Sean Fennessey?

  You never know.

• 1:27:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:27:26Sean Fennessey?

  You never know. The best foreign stuff is probably from Australia at this point.

• 1:27:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, setting aside England. Um, Australia is making imprint. They're doing some crazy stuff.

• 1:27:37Amanda Dobbins?

  When can we go to Australia?

• 1:27:39Sean Fennessey?

  I know, we were talking to Elizabeth about live shows and where we're going next year.

• 1:27:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I did almost say Australia.

• 1:27:45Sean Fennessey?

  We have some Australian listeners.

• 1:27:47Amanda Dobbins?

  The thing is, is that I would want to go, we would like have to finish Oscars and then get on a plane. You know, because I want to be there in Australian summer.

• 1:27:58Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's not the worst idea I've ever heard.

• 1:27:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:28:00Sean Fennessey?

  But you, so you want to do Australia and then Cannes?

• 1:28:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, it's a lot.

• 1:28:07Sean Fennessey?

  I think that would be a little challenging.

• 1:28:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well, we'll mark it. Health is getting a red.

• 1:28:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:28:12Sean Fennessey?

  1980 Popeye.

• 1:28:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, this is an interesting one.

• 1:28:15Sean Fennessey?

  This is an interesting one.

• 1:28:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:17Sean Fennessey?

  Not, not a movie I've ever loved personally, but I did see it at a very young age. Maybe this is the first time I saw.

• 1:28:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Oh.

• 1:28:23Sean Fennessey?

  On Criterion, I said it was The Player, but maybe it was this movie on television as a kid.

• 1:28:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:28Sean Fennessey?

  That's very possible. It's very possible this is the first time I ever saw Robin Williams.

• 1:28:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 1:28:33Sean Fennessey?

  So Robin Williams plays the legendary cartoon character Popeye, the sailor man who loves spinach. And, and Shelley Duvall plays Olive Oil, the role she was born to play. And this is one of the, one of the biggest fiascos in movie production history. Went way over budget. They shot in Malta.

• 1:28:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Barry Diller recently gave an interview where he said this is the most coked out film experience he's ever been a part of.

• 1:28:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Williams, of course, he had his struggles.

• 1:29:01Amanda Dobbins?

  They were like shipping them and shipping the cocaine in film canisters.

• 1:29:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:29:07Amanda Dobbins?

  To Malta?

• 1:29:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's weird because this is actually not, Altman was not like a crazy, we're going way over budget kind of a filmmaker. But this movie starts to epitomize, it's not quite Heaven's Gate, but it's approximates the like, the out of control nature of the Hollywood auteur and the way that things can get away from them. He was hired by Dino De Laurentiis to make this movie, Altman, which is kind of an odd hire for a Popeye movie.

• 1:29:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, didn't, isn't Altman at this point?

• 1:29:36Amanda Dobbins?

  We, oh, did we, we skipped Quintet completely.

• 1:29:38Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, my gosh, we did.

• 1:29:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but we're not.

• 1:29:40Sean Fennessey?

  We'll have to go back to it, yeah.

• 1:29:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's another one we talked about in the Paul Newman movie, Paul Newman episode.

• 1:29:46Sean Fennessey?

  He's had a few bombs in a row.

• 1:29:47Amanda Dobbins?

  It doesn't go well, and it's not going in.

• 1:29:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:49Amanda Dobbins?

  So, is in Altman like a little bit like looking for cash?

• 1:29:53Sean Fennessey?

  He's looking, yes, he's looking for cash. He's got his own movie studio, Lionsgate, that he eventually sells, not the Lionsgate that we know now. It's Lionsgate, two words. And he's been trying to use that, that production company to support movies by Alan Rudolph and other filmmakers. And he's struggling. He's pulling a Coppola where he's trying to expand, you know, the purview of his work, and it's hard. Quintet, the 79 movie starring Paul Newman, which I think we talked about very briefly, but it's about a post-apocalyptic world in which a game called Quintet will define the power in society. And it's kind of like Megalopolis in that it's like a really audacious and interesting idea with not the best execution. It's a very slow movie, features like some extremely hallowed European film actors and Newman in this

• 1:30:39Sean Fennessey?

  very quiet, reserved performance. But that bombs, A Perfect Couple doesn't do well, Health bombs, he takes the Popeye job.

• 1:30:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Things get a little, he gets out of his keys.

• 1:30:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but it doesn't do like that badly.

• 1:30:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:30:53Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, it's kind of a success. Another reason I love this movie is that Harry Nilsson wrote the songs for it, my favorite singer-songwriter. And He Needs Me, which, which Olive Oil sings, will eventually become basically the theme to Punch Strong Love.

• 1:31:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:08Sean Fennessey?

  And so who did I, who was I just speaking with who told me that He Needs Me was their song that they got married to?

• 1:31:16Amanda Dobbins?

  That's cute.

• 1:31:17Sean Fennessey?

  That was their wedding, their first dance at their wedding. Shit. Oh, it's my friend Mike, of course. My friend Mike emailed me and he was telling me about that. Well, this was like 15 years ago, but it was very nice. So that's, the score is really nice, the production design's really good. It is a movie about Popeye. You know, you kind of need to get on board with that.

• 1:31:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:36Sean Fennessey?

  And it's a nice matching with Eraserhead and how hard it is to take care of children. That's also.

• 1:31:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:31:41Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:31:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:42Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna yellow it.

• 1:31:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think that's fine.

• 1:31:45Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. It's definitely one of the most well-known Altman movies.

• 1:31:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:31:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's no Nashville.

• 1:31:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that's because it's IP.

• 1:31:51Sean Fennessey?

  It is IP. Respectfully. You're right.

• 1:31:53Amanda Dobbins?

  It's IP.

• 1:31:53Sean Fennessey?

  This is his Barbie.

• 1:31:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, okay, relax. I mean, the set is not, you know, it is visually.

• 1:32:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Pretty interesting.

• 1:32:02Sean Fennessey?

  The costume design and the production design is cool.

• 1:32:04Amanda Dobbins?

  But it has that sort of like surrealist, but you know, like actually made.

• 1:32:08Sean Fennessey?

  I totally agree. 1982, come back to the five and dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean.

• 1:32:14Amanda Dobbins?

  So this starts the I'm just adapting plays era.

• 1:32:17Sean Fennessey?

  So in the late, early 80s, he basically leaves movies to go make, to go direct plays.

• 1:32:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:32:24Sean Fennessey?

  And he spends roughly 18 months directing plays, and this is one of the plays that he directs, and he likes it a lot. So he decides to make, you know, I would, I guess this got a theatrical release, but a lot of the next few movies are more or less TV movies.

• 1:32:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:32:39Sean Fennessey?

  They're not necessarily premiering on ABC, but they are much smaller productions from much smaller companies. This was distributed by Cinecom, Cinecom International Films. I don't know what that is. But it's based on the play by Ed Gratchick, stars Sandy Dennis, who he worked with in that The Cold Day in the Park all those years ago, Cher, Karen Black. It's about a number of women who gather in a Woolworth's five and dime and worship James Dean.

• 1:33:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:13Sean Fennessey?

  And have friendship and relationships and emotional.

• 1:33:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:33:17Sean Fennessey?

  Explosions. I think this movie is just okay. Some people really love this movie.

• 1:33:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I, it's a good adaptation of a play, and I think it's an interesting play, but you know, it is, it is that, it is one set. I mean, there are, there are a number of flashbacks that I guess are handled well and not, but yeah, it's, it's nice. I was, I was like, hey, it's Cher.

• 1:33:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a good Cher performance.

• 1:33:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I just, you know.

• 1:33:44Sean Fennessey?

  In the middle of like a really good period of, of Cher movies, right? That's like right around Moonstruck and Mask and everything that she's doing then.

• 1:33:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's a little before, but.

• 1:33:53Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna say red for Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean.

• 1:33:55Amanda Dobbins?

  That's fine.

• 1:33:56Sean Fennessey?

  Streamers, I just saw.

• 1:33:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:33:58Sean Fennessey?

  I have a DVD of this movie that I had never watched before. It stars Matthew Modine.

• 1:34:05Sean Fennessey?

  As a soldier. And basically, same thing, it's a play written by David Rabe in the barracks. In the army. And there's a, there's a queer guy in the company. And he's kind of having a hard time deciding whether to come out and what, how to exist inside this company. And then there are all these kind of fractious experiences amongst all these guys.

• 1:34:32Sean Fennessey?

  Very like minor work to me, like not really very good. And you can kind of feel him. Figuring out how to shoot enclosed spaces in these last two movies that we're talking about.

• 1:34:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:44Sean Fennessey?

  And I'll say, so Streamers is red and then Secret Honors, I think where he like. Figures out how to do that. And he's helped a lot by this Phil Baker Hall performance, which is just bravura. But the blocking in the movie is really cool.

• 1:34:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and the, and the design and the use of like other screens, there is visual interest and depth. And I mean, it helps also that it's a movie, an imagined.

• 1:35:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Portrayal of Richard Nixon. And so you also like, you've got tapes, you have, you have like a lot of media embedded into the text just because of who it's about.

• 1:35:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:35:18Amanda Dobbins?

  That helps texturize it a little.

• 1:35:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it is like a 90 minute one man rant. But visually, it is actually one of the most dynamic and plotted movies that he's ever had. So this is like Yellow verging on green for me.

• 1:35:32Amanda Dobbins?

  That's fine.

• 1:35:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's definitely one of his better movies from this period. Maybe it probably his best 80s movie, I would say.

• 1:35:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:35:39Sean Fennessey?

  I like Fool for Love as well.

• 1:35:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, Sam Shepard.

• 1:35:42Sean Fennessey?

  Your boy Sam, I know. Sam Shepard looking very handsome and Kim Basinger looking very striking.

• 1:35:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Using a lasso.

• 1:35:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, two lost people living in the desert.

• 1:35:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:50Sean Fennessey?

  Harry Dean Stanton is in this film as well. This is a very, this is a good adaptation, I would say, and it's good to get him out of a space and into the open world.

• 1:35:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's like, it's three spaces, you know, but they use, you know, like a little compound.

• 1:36:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:36:03Amanda Dobbins?

  But he gets to move around. Some horses.

• 1:36:06Sean Fennessey?

  Shepard, you know. He's got incredible presence.

• 1:36:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:10Sean Fennessey?

  And this is a really good use of him, and this is his play. And he knows the material really well. And Kim Basinger is a little over the top, I would say, in the movie, just a little bit.

• 1:36:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, the, yes, she is. The, the material is also a little over the top.

• 1:36:28Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 1:36:28Amanda Dobbins?

  There by the time.

• 1:36:29Sean Fennessey?

  All Sam Shepard plays her.

• 1:36:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:31Sean Fennessey?

  They've got a high dramaturgical.

• 1:36:33Amanda Dobbins?

  What's the other?

• 1:36:33Sean Fennessey?

  Power.

• 1:36:34Amanda Dobbins?

  What's the woman? The, you know, with the big hair who shows up in the car? What's her name? The Countess? Is that what, like, does she have a name? Anyway, that's a lot in a very 80s way.

• 1:36:49Sean Fennessey?

  Her mother, you mean? Oh, the Countess, yeah. Deborah McNaughton.

• 1:36:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't have to go in, but it's, this, this is also available on Criterion.

• 1:36:58Sean Fennessey?

  It is. Let's yellow it. I would recommend watching this movie if you like his movies. If you're starting to scrape into.

• 1:37:02Amanda Dobbins?

  If you like Sam Shepard, yeah.

• 1:37:03Sean Fennessey?

  If you like Sam Shepard. 1987, Beyond Therapy, is an antique comedy that I don't think is very successful. It's funny, when we did the 87 movie draft, Roger Avery was saying that he liked this movie, or at least that he was very familiar with it.

• 1:37:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:37:20Sean Fennessey?

  And I don't think anyone ended up drafting it, but I thought it was pretty dated and didn't work that well. And the same is true, I think, of the next movie, 1987's O.C. and Stig's, which is based on a National Lampoon cartoon.

• 1:37:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:37:35Sean Fennessey?

  About these two high school kids who get into trouble. This movie was actually made in like 1982 and sat on the shelf for a number of years.

• 1:37:42Amanda Dobbins?

  That's never a good sign.

• 1:37:43Sean Fennessey?

  And it's not great. It has some admirers. It's, it feels like him either trying to do or portending the like Porky's, John Hughes 80s teen com.

• 1:38:00Sean Fennessey?

  But he doesn't have like, he doesn't have the ear for the youngins, you know?

• 1:38:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, or for, I mean, comedy relies so much on timing and pacing and.

• 1:38:12Amanda Dobbins?

  He is on his own time?

• 1:38:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he is. This movie is also not tight, and a movie like this needs to be tight.

• 1:38:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:18Sean Fennessey?

  So I'll say no on O.C. and Steggs. Vincent Theo, I rewatched for the first time in a long time, the first like hour of it last night. And I was like, how is this even made by Robert Altman? It's not good. It's so turgid.

• 1:38:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't get to it.

• 1:38:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's ostensibly a portrait of Vincent Van Gogh and his brother. And Tim Roth plays Van Gogh as the pained artist. And it's, the one formal trick is that it cuts between a kind of Christie's, like a real life Christie's auction that is auctioning off Van Gogh's and using that as a contrast point between the actual drama of Van Gogh's life and the like, kind of agony with which he created under. But I thought it was very unsuccessful going back to it. And then that is an important movie because that's the last movie he makes before he comes back.

• 1:39:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:39:08Sean Fennessey?

  And he comes back in such a big way in 1992 with The Player.

• 1:39:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so we have six right now, six greens, three yellows. And The Player will be our seventh green.

• 1:39:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. The Player, based on the Michael Tolkien novel, a satire, like a satire of a satire, really.

• 1:39:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:22Sean Fennessey?

  One of the most inside baseball movies ever made that also appealed to audiences was a hit. It's extremely funny, really acid burn sense of humor. Great Tim Robbins performance at the center of it as a duplicitous studio executive who accidentally does something very bad and then needs to

• 1:39:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:39:40Sean Fennessey?

  maneuver his way through the travails of Hollywood. A good match for the long goodbye in terms of the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles.

• 1:39:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:48Sean Fennessey?

  And what you think you know and what you really don't know.

• 1:39:52Sean Fennessey?

  And it's a great movie for movie dorks like us.

• 1:39:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. It's a primer. It's, you know, it's funny, like a very dark satire in many ways feels like the best explanation of Hollywood as it still operates. And there are individual scenes that I think of every time I'm reading, one of the trades, whether it's, you know, the Any of the maneuvering to of the schedules and trying to get the scripts? Or the very last Julia Roberts performance, which we, you know, I don't want to spoil if you haven't somehow seen The Player, but it's, it's all really good.

• 1:40:31Sean Fennessey?

  It is automatically going in. It is a personal favorite. Both of ours did a very fun episode of the Rewatchables about it some years ago. So if you check it out, look for that. The next movie is, you were, you were foiled in your attempt to see this movie.

• 1:40:43Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:40:44Sean Fennessey?

  You've seen it. You did see it?

• 1:40:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I've seen it. Yeah.

• 1:40:46Sean Fennessey?

  Did you rent it?

• 1:40:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Internet Archive. Thank you so much.

• 1:40:48Sean Fennessey?

  Good job. That movie is preta portae.

• 1:40:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, no, no, no. Oh, you're, you're going to skip.

• 1:40:53Sean Fennessey?

  Did I skip something?

• 1:40:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I skipped shortcuts. Oh, my God.

• 1:40:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:56Sean Fennessey?

  I apologize.

• 1:40:58Amanda Dobbins?

  But I have, whatever. Shortcuts. Green.

• 1:41:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's do it.

• 1:41:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's an automatic green. This is, you mentioned Magnolia. This is a similar, it's similar to Nashville in that it features many characters and it is about one city and the crazy happenings in that city all across one day. In this case, it's Los Angeles.

• 1:41:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's based on a series of Raymond Carver novels.

• 1:41:23Sean Fennessey?

  And it is similarly fractured and a little confusing as to how these figures relate to each other. And they don't, they don't necessarily fully converge, but they do make sense to one another.

• 1:41:34Amanda Dobbins?

  They pop up. Yeah.

• 1:41:34Sean Fennessey?

  They start crossing over in exciting ways.

• 1:41:40Sean Fennessey?

  Just cooked my noodle the first time I saw it. I absolutely loved it. It is very long and it's very hard to find, but it is, I think maybe his most beautifully written movie.

• 1:41:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, very, very emotionally involving and upsetting, I think. It screened recently here in LA. Yasi went. I didn't get to go. Where was it?

• 1:41:58Sean Fennessey?

  It was, I believe it was at The Arrow.

• 1:42:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, sick.

• 1:42:01Sean Fennessey?

  And it does not screen very often.

• 1:42:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:03Sean Fennessey?

  There's not a lot of prints left of this movie, as far as I know. And it is, there's a case to be made that it's his masterpiece, I think.

• 1:42:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I, in doing my rewatches this time, I found that I responded to it more than Nashville, which again.

• 1:42:21Sean Fennessey?

  It's more recent.

• 1:42:22Amanda Dobbins?

  It's more recent.

• 1:42:23Sean Fennessey?

  More stars you were like, have a bigger relationship to.

• 1:42:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And it is also a little bit like the, the Nashville thing of, it's always existed to us. So, and everything else is in response to Nashville.

• 1:42:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Yeah. And this is, it's funny because it's, um.

• 1:42:41Sean Fennessey?

  It's not as grand a statement about the country or creativity or politics the way that Nashville is, right? Nashville is so 70s because it is so thematically bound. This is a movie about people, right? About like the, the, the pain and the vulnerability and the mistakes that people make and like the situations that they find themselves in. A lot of his movies too are really good about being like, you're 37 and you're stuck. A lot of his characters are just stuck. And this is a movie full of characters like that and like people who desperately need each other, but don't know how to say the thing they need to say to make things right with the other person that they're with, or like if they're cheating, why are they cheating on their partner and who are they cheating with and what does that say about them?

• 1:43:25Sean Fennessey?

  Like this is just a very, you know, Carver's stories obviously are very, very observant about that nature of human behavior and relationship, but this is a very, a darn good movie. I wish it was easier to see, honestly.

• 1:43:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:37Sean Fennessey?

  But it is going in. And does that give us nine or eight?

• 1:43:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Eight, I think. Claire with seven shortcuts is eight.

• 1:43:43Sean Fennessey?

  So let's go to Prete Porte.

• 1:43:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. This I had seen before, but like in the 90s because it was.

• 1:43:48Sean Fennessey?

  Julia Roberts.

• 1:43:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. It was sort of a buzzy thing. I don't think I saw it in theaters because I was 10, but I would have saw it out at some point. And I'll be honest, I was very puzzled because I was young and I, is Prete, is Prete Porte the first Robert Altman movie I ever saw? It could be.

• 1:44:03Sean Fennessey?

  Could be. 94, it's, takes place during Paris Fashion Week. It is a similar convergence of a number of different characters. I think primarily like Kim Basinger is like a reporter, Julia Roberts is a journalist. Tim Robbins is also a journalist. There's like a number of designers, there's real life designers, real life models who figure prominently. The movie is like kind of, kind of a dud.

• 1:44:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:30Sean Fennessey?

  It's not really super successful. You'd think that this would be a place where he'd be able to do his stuff, but you don't ever get the impression he actually cares about fashion all that much.

• 1:44:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:44:38Sean Fennessey?

  Or at least like the kind of, the art of fashion, that it's more like, it's just the scene is the thing that is portrayed here.

• 1:44:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:45Sean Fennessey?

  Which I guess is a viable space for an Altman movie, but I, I'm not a huge fan of this one.

• 1:44:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And maybe he's also, I mean, the thing is, is that fashion is. Is like a business and hugely commercial and he is pretty skeptical of most of that stuff. So

• 1:45:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:45:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Probably not interested in portraying that.

• 1:45:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Preto Porte.

• 1:45:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:07Sean Fennessey?

  Is red.

• 1:45:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:09Sean Fennessey?

  Ninety six, Kansas City.

• 1:45:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:45:10Sean Fennessey?

  Also, a really good film, not one of his like all time classics or anything, but a period piece set in, I want to say it's the 30s in his hometown, also set amidst an election, incredible performance from Jennifer Jason Leigh in this movie. Haven't seen this in some time. I remember really liking the music. It has kind of a rote criminal plot, criminal political plot behind it, but very solid, but he's like kind of firmly in his like back nine.

• 1:45:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:40Sean Fennessey?

  Back five even with this movie, but worth checking out. The Gingerbread Man is a Kenneth Branagh adaptation of a John Grisham novel.

• 1:45:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, sure.

• 1:45:55Sean Fennessey?

  That came out amidst this, this, you know, flea of Grisham adaptations.

• 1:46:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:46:02Sean Fennessey?

  Let me just make sure I have all my info correct on this one.

• 1:46:04Amanda Dobbins?

  What is the plot of either the Grisham novel or the adaptation?

• 1:46:10Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna read it to you right now.

• 1:46:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:46:13Sean Fennessey?

  So Branagh plays a divorced lawyer who thinks he's gonna have a one night stand with a woman, but he finds out he's in love with this woman. She's played by Ambeth Davids. And he offers to help her with some problems and most significantly, her unhinged father, who's played by Robert Duvall.

• 1:46:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:46:35Sean Fennessey?

  He, she claims that her father is stalking her. And so this guy helps her, the lawyer, but then by helping her, he realizes that she has actually ensnared him in kind of a plot. So it's like a noirish them.

• 1:46:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 1:46:50Sean Fennessey?

  Now.

• 1:46:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it set at Christmas? What's going on?

• 1:46:53Sean Fennessey?

  I don't.

• 1:46:54Amanda Dobbins?

  With the gingerbread man?

• 1:46:55Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good question. I can't remember.

• 1:46:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess you can't catch me. I'm the gingerbread man. Okay, so.

• 1:47:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's a, it's like a twisty.

• 1:47:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:47:04Sean Fennessey?

  Plot. I think it's, I don't know if this book was ever published. I think it might have just been a story that Grisham wrote.

• 1:47:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:47:11Sean Fennessey?

  Here's the thing to keep in mind here. This movie cost $25 million and it made $1 million at the box office. This is kind of a movie that doesn't really exist. Robert Downey Jr. is in it.

• 1:47:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:47:23Sean Fennessey?

  Daryl Hannah is in it.

• 1:47:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:47:26Sean Fennessey?

  You haven't, the fact that you haven't seen it, let alone heard of it, should tell you a lot about how much this doesn't exist.

• 1:47:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, you know.

• 1:47:32Sean Fennessey?

  Brona fan that you are, Grisham fan that you are.

• 1:47:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And Altman fan, but that's, that's an unusual Mad Libs, those three.

• 1:47:39Sean Fennessey?

  It is. So The Gingerbread Man is not going in.

• 1:47:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:47:44Sean Fennessey?

  Cookie's Fortune is another fun ensemble dramedy, like black comedy, about a group of people in Mississippi. Very, very good performances in it. Not the most memorable movie. Glenn Close, Liv Tyler, Charles S. Dutton, your boy Chris O'Donnell.

• 1:48:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's the same thing, like people kind of crossing over into each other's lives. It's fine. It's red. It's not going in.

• 1:48:08Amanda Dobbins?

  How are the Mississippi accents? Respectful?

• 1:48:11Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I don't know how to judge that. I've never known how to judge that. Dr. T and the Women is a movie I always wished was better.

• 1:48:20Amanda Dobbins?

  This, I saw it when it came out.

• 1:48:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:48:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Or shortly thereafter because I had moved into like Entertainment Weekly nerd territory. But this felt like it immediately was like a, a useful, the title itself is just a pop culture pop punchline, you know, like, I mean, it is, it is a funny title. So I never really took it seriously.

• 1:48:43Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:48:44Amanda Dobbins?

  And I didn't revisit it.

• 1:48:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's about a wealthy gynecologist.

• 1:48:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:48:49Sean Fennessey?

  Played by Dr. T, played by Richard Gere and the many women in his life. Among them, Shelley Long, Helen Hunt, Farrah Fawcett, Laura Dern, a lot of blonde women. He has a type. They're all sort of in love with him. They're all sort of annoyed by him. It's, it's a rom com.

• 1:49:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's a, it's a proper rom com. It's not.

• 1:49:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess.

• 1:49:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's not super successful.

• 1:49:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Dr. T. Would you trust someone named Dr. T. to deliver your children?

• 1:49:20Amanda Dobbins?

  My answer to you is no. I'm gonna need a full name.

• 1:49:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:49:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think Dr. T could be reliable. I don't want to see his face on a, on a, like a, an advertisement on the subway.

• 1:49:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, it has that, for sure. We're a billboard here.

• 1:49:37Sean Fennessey?

  I don't want that. Dr. T is out. 2001 Gosford Park.

• 1:49:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Green.

• 1:49:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, this movie is nominated for Best Picture. It's an upstairs, downstairs murder mystery.

• 1:49:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:49:48Sean Fennessey?

  Unlikely movie for Altman to direct, right? A British chamber drama.

• 1:49:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and does, like, really baked in and understands all the conventions of the genre. You know, it is, as you said, a Julian Fellow's script. He went on to create Downton Abbey and the Gildan Age. Perhaps you've heard of them. And so it, it does ultimately upend what you expect from these movies, but it plays, it's not that it is like, you know, sticking to type throughout, but formally and, and visually, it is very, very familiar with the genre. And so really, like, I think brought a lot of people in who were just expecting

• 1:50:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Downton Abbey, which is possibly how it got nominated for so many Academy Awards.

• 1:50:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It was also a huge hit.

• 1:50:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:42Sean Fennessey?

  It made almost $100 million, the box office, which is just remarkable for a movie about old British people. And it was Altman and Bob Balavan's idea, and they gave the idea to Fellowes to write it. And I wonder if I like this movie more because it was Altman's idea, but Fellowes' dialogue.

• 1:51:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:00Sean Fennessey?

  We're, we're on the verge of seeing Downton Abbey 3 in theaters. I'm so excited.

• 1:51:04Sean Fennessey?

  I really liked Downton Abbey. I always have. I've always liked the movies. I do think it is pretty frothy. You know, it is not, it's not very deep. I don't know if this movie is deep per se, but it's very sharp. You know, it is, it has an edge to it.

• 1:51:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it has more emotional depth than

• 1:51:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Downton Abbey with respect, because, I mean, just world historical events are happening on that one at a, at a huge clip.

• 1:51:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's also, I mean, obviously Maggie Smith is in the film as well, but it's Kristen Scott Thomas, Michael Gambon, Clive Owen, Kelly McDonald, Helen Mirren. Like, it is an all-star cast of great British actors. So if you have not seen this one, you definitely should seek it out. Two more.

• 1:51:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:46Sean Fennessey?

  The Company.

• 1:51:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:51:48Sean Fennessey?

  Which is his ballet drama, which has some cool stuff in it.

• 1:51:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, the ballet stuff.

• 1:51:52Sean Fennessey?

  The dance is amazing.

• 1:51:54Amanda Dobbins?

  It's the Joffrey Company. And I, watching that, just, you know, there are not enough ballets committed to film, like, in a, in an artistic way.

• 1:52:07Sean Fennessey?

  He shoots them beautifully.

• 1:52:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I didn't, I didn't remember a story by Neve Campbell, uh, when I, so that's.

• 1:52:15Sean Fennessey?

  Who trained as a dancer.

• 1:52:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen.

• 1:52:17Sean Fennessey?

  And wanted to tell a story about the world of dance. And she and James Franco and Malcolm McDowell and it's, it's a kind of a baddie performance movie.

• 1:52:27Amanda Dobbins?

  It is weird.

• 1:52:28Sean Fennessey?

  The performances are quite strange and the plot is not really all that.

• 1:52:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:32Sean Fennessey?

  Urgent, but I really like how this movie looks.

• 1:52:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:36Sean Fennessey?

  And I'll give it a yellow for that reason.

• 1:52:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Center Stage, you know, so, but I, I, this is.

• 1:52:41Sean Fennessey?

  You do.

• 1:52:42Amanda Dobbins?

  You still have never seen it?

• 1:52:44Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:52:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, my God. There's just a lot of joy awaits you. Mamma Mia, Center Stage.

• 1:52:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Mamma Mia coming soon. The Amanda Seyfried, uh, Oscar run.

• 1:52:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Has that sold yet?

• 1:52:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's gonna be a big one. No.

• 1:52:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:52:55Sean Fennessey?

  The Testament of Anne Lee. Also not, not honored at Venice. We didn't even mention that.

• 1:52:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:00Sean Fennessey?

  Another interesting.

• 1:53:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, the Italian, I guess, I liked it.

• 1:53:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:53:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I hope it sells.

• 1:53:06Sean Fennessey?

  Two thousand and six, A Prairie Home Companion.

• 1:53:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Saw this in theaters, my Lindsay Lohan era.

• 1:53:11Sean Fennessey?

  I did as well. Lindsay's pretty good in this.

• 1:53:13Amanda Dobbins?

  She's good.

• 1:53:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she plays, uh, Meryl Streep's daughter, right?

• 1:53:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:53:17Sean Fennessey?

  In this film. This is based on, of course, The Garrison Keillor Show. And is this similar kind of collection of performances, performances like a huge thing throughout his career, but you can see in kind of the latter stages of his career, people who put on a show kind of fascinate him. It's also obviously, um, very clear in The Company and even in The Upstairs Downstairs and Gosford Parkers, sort of like the downstairs is kind of performing for the upstairs.

• 1:53:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And the upstairs is also performing for each other.

• 1:53:43Sean Fennessey?

  This kind of, this, this idea recurs over and over again. Prairie Home Companion, I think, is also just about like found communities of strange people who have a story to tell.

• 1:53:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:53:53Sean Fennessey?

  Um, which is, of course, the whole idea of his career and his work. And is a nice movie. I think it is like.

• 1:53:59Amanda Dobbins?

  It's fine.

• 1:54:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's fine.

• 1:54:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's not going in.

• 1:54:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's not going in. So.

• 1:54:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I think we have nine greens.

• 1:54:05Sean Fennessey?

  Let's take a look at our list, okay?

• 1:54:09Sean Fennessey?

  In right now, and it's not changing.

• 1:54:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:12Sean Fennessey?

  Mash.

• 1:54:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, one.

• 1:54:14Sean Fennessey?

  McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye.

• 1:54:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Three.

• 1:54:17Sean Fennessey?

  California Split.

• 1:54:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Four.

• 1:54:18Sean Fennessey?

  Nashville.

• 1:54:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Five.

• 1:54:19Sean Fennessey?

  Three women.

• 1:54:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Six.

• 1:54:20Sean Fennessey?

  The Player.

• 1:54:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Seven.

• 1:54:21Sean Fennessey?

  Shortcuts. Gosford Park.

• 1:54:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Nine.

• 1:54:24Sean Fennessey?

  Now, here are yellows.

• 1:54:26Amanda Dobbins?

  You can do that with your hand with the pinky down? That's really good. I can't do that.

• 1:54:29Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean, you can't do this?

• 1:54:30Amanda Dobbins?

  No, look at me. Look at my mangles. I would have had, I would have a real prob. I wouldn't actually get caught in, in Inglourious Basterds. Cause I can't, this is.

• 1:54:39Sean Fennessey?

  Triglazza?

• 1:54:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I can't, yeah.

• 1:54:40Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I am a little ambidextrous.

• 1:54:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 1:54:46Sean Fennessey?

  As well.

• 1:54:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:54:47Sean Fennessey?

  Cause my father's entire family is left-handed.

• 1:54:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 1:54:51Sean Fennessey?

  Um, so.

• 1:54:53Amanda Dobbins?

  You and Knox should talk about this. Cause it's really, it's like.

• 1:54:55Sean Fennessey?

  Is he showing left?

• 1:54:56Amanda Dobbins?

  It's day to day. I mean, he is like definitely showing left, but then sometimes he's like, no, I want to bat right.

• 1:55:02Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's something that happens.

• 1:55:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, I know.

• 1:55:03Sean Fennessey?

  I think Craig Horlbeck is the rose left, bats right.

• 1:55:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:55:06Sean Fennessey?

  Or golf's right.

• 1:55:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, he definitely eats left. Si sucks his left thumb, which I've never seen before. So that guy is, is fully left-handed. Yeah.

• 1:55:15Sean Fennessey?

  Um, yeah. I'm not gonna make the joke.

• 1:55:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:55:18Sean Fennessey?

  I was gonna make a CR joke, but I'm not gonna do it.

• 1:55:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:55:21Sean Fennessey?

  Um, okay, so yellows. Brewster McLeod, Images, Popeye, Secret Honor, Fool for Love.

• 1:55:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:55:30Sean Fennessey?

  And also The Company.

• 1:55:31Amanda Dobbins?

  No, The Company is not yellow. No, that's nice.

• 1:55:33Sean Fennessey?

  You can take that right out, Chuck. So.

• 1:55:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I like ballet, but no.

• 1:55:38Sean Fennessey?

  My, my pick would be Secret Honor.

• 1:55:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:55:42Sean Fennessey?

  I think some people would say that Brewster McLeod or Images are better, or at least more representative of what he does.

• 1:55:49Amanda Dobbins?

  But we have a lot of movies that are representative of what he does.

• 1:55:52Sean Fennessey?

  Well, let me, let me float this to you.

• 1:55:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:55:55Sean Fennessey?

  Is there a world where we should consider putting Tanner 88 in? Even though it's a TV show?

• 1:56:00Amanda Dobbins?

  No, we have never allowed TV shows.

• 1:56:03Sean Fennessey?

  Is that true?

• 1:56:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so.

• 1:56:05Sean Fennessey?

  Ten, but here's the thing.

• 1:56:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Jack is just shrugging. Come on, man.

• 1:56:08Sean Fennessey?

  Shrug wincing at us.

• 1:56:09Speaker 05

  I believe one time we tried and then I forget which party was like, no, we're not putting television in, which I stand with.

• 1:56:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it was you.

• 1:56:16Sean Fennessey?

  Let me talk about Tanner 88 really quickly. He does have, Altman does have a career in television. Some of these movies are made for television. He made a, a series in 1988, co-created with Gary Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury. That is an amazing eight-part series about a prospective presidential candidate named Jack Tanner, played by Michael Murphy. They just throw this guy and a handful of actors, including Cynthia Nixon, a very young Cynthia Nixon, who plays his daughter, into the world of the presidential race in Washington DC in 88, which is of course, the George H W Bush election. And they kind of invent a type of TV show that we now see all the time, that Gary, the

• 1:56:59Sean Fennessey?

  Larry Sanders Show is like this, that the studio is like this, of using the real and the fake and trying to blend them together and shake them up together and see what happens. Michael Murphy plays Jack Tanner, he's amazing on this show. It is definitely one of the best things Robert Altman ever made. It's very watchable to this day. It is a part of this collection on the Criterion Channel. He also made a follow-up movie 12 years later called Tanner on Tanner, which is just a movie, I think, but is not as, is not as good, is not as revelatory as the first one. So if, if you disallow it, I understand, but I want to cite it because it's very cool.

• 1:57:33Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not me. We have rules.

• 1:57:35Sean Fennessey?

  We have.

• 1:57:36Amanda Dobbins?

  We have, we have been working together and I'm pretty sure that we've never allowed TV and I'm sure that someone, you know, our like at-home, um, budsman, um, budsman will correct us if we ever have.

• 1:57:47Speaker 05

  I remember what it was. We were doing Nicole Kidman and I believe the point of contention was Big Little Lies, the television show.

• 1:57:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And did we do it?

• 1:57:55Speaker 05

  I don't think we did.

• 1:57:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, I, yeah.

• 1:57:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I do also want to note that he did a pilot, I think for Showtime in 1998 called Killer App, which you can watch on YouTube, which is about the internet and is not totally successful, but shows how ahead of the curve he was.

• 1:58:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That's fine. We have a task here and it's to talk about film and cinema. So you want to do Secret.

• 1:58:17Sean Fennessey?

  He also made another show called Gun in 1993. It was an anthology show that I think he made, was it for ABC? I think it was for ABC. It was for ABC. It aired from April 12th through May 31st. Number of different directors worked on this show.

• 1:58:30Amanda Dobbins?

  That's cool.

• 1:58:31Sean Fennessey?

  He directed one episode. Daryl Hannah, Sally Kellerman, after the death of a golf club president, womanizer Bill Johnson has elected the new leader, but though he's now in charge of the club, he's losing his grip on the many women he's seeing. Interesting stuff. I lied. Big Little Lies did go in.

• 1:58:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow! Oh, okay.

• 1:58:49Sean Fennessey?

  We did it!

• 1:58:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Great.

• 1:58:52Sean Fennessey?

  See, I think Secret Honor should go in. I bent the knee. I bent the knee.

• 1:58:57Amanda Dobbins?

  That's, I think it's called compromise. If you, I mean, if, okay, that's fine. So we have a precedent.

• 1:59:01Sean Fennessey?

  I'll put Secret Honor in. It's fine. Because I stand for movies, as you know. I don't, none of this TV.

• 1:59:05Amanda Dobbins?

  You don't want to do Popeye instead of Secret Honor?

• 1:59:08Sean Fennessey?

  No, I like Popeye just fine.

• 1:59:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:59:09Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think it's really more of a nostalgia play as opposed to an achievement.

• 1:59:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:59:14Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think people should listen to that soundtrack. That's a really darn good soundtrack.

• 1:59:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I accept Secret Honor. I'm fine with that.

• 1:59:20Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Secret Honor, that's it.

• 1:59:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Were it me, it would be Images, but I think that Secret Honor is the correct representative choice.

• 1:59:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Um, does that, is that our only, that's our only 80's title? So I feel like that's, that's the right move. Okay, so just to recap.

• 1:59:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:59:34Sean Fennessey?

  Robert Altman, MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, California Split, Nashville, Three Women, Secret Honor, The Player, Shortcuts, Gosford Park. That's 10.

• 1:59:44Amanda Dobbins?

  No surprises here. Should we do the blue thing? Remember, was it blue for Paul Newman? Where one pick that's not going in, but we recommend it to people?

• 1:59:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, great idea.

• 1:59:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Mine is Images.

• 1:59:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Mine would be Buffalo Bill and the Indians.

• 1:59:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, there we go. Speaking of Paul Newman.

• 2:00:01Sean Fennessey?

  Both very, both good picks. I think...

• 2:00:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, this is right. Nine of these 10 are also available on the Criterion Channel right now, so you can go and watch them if you haven't seen them. Who is someone you would want to do this treatment for in the future? Where we have to spend nine months prepping?

• 2:00:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you know, it requires like a... Who works at this volume?

• 2:00:27Sean Fennessey?

  Very few people that we don't cover on a consistent basis.

• 2:00:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Do we also have to do it for someone's 100th birthday?

• 2:00:30Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 2:00:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:00:32Sean Fennessey?

  That just happens to be, I just, that's an easy thing to look for. You know, we did it for Mafuni during COVID, Chris and I. We did it for Lumet. It's been helpful.

• 2:00:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I don't know. Has Katherine Hepburn turned 100 yet?

• 2:00:46Sean Fennessey?

  I would imagine she's older than 100 at this point.

• 2:00:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, or would be.

• 2:00:51Sean Fennessey?

  She would be.

• 2:00:51Amanda Dobbins?

  But then we could make her brownies.

• 2:00:53Sean Fennessey?

  She'll be 125.

• 2:00:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 2:00:56Sean Fennessey?

  No, she'll be 120.

• 2:00:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:00:58Sean Fennessey?

  In 2027. She was born in 1907.

• 2:01:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, thanks for trying, but that doesn't.

• 2:01:04Sean Fennessey?

  She died at 96 years old.

• 2:01:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Have you ever, have you ever had her brownies? It's like a famous brownie recipe. They're quite good.

• 2:01:10Sean Fennessey?

  Is it like a batch that she made before she died?

• 2:01:15Sean Fennessey?

  Like a big batch?

• 2:01:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, you could, I'll just, I'll send you the link. It's good. It's on your.

• 2:01:19Sean Fennessey?

  Her recipe for brownies? I mean, they're brownies. Like, how different could the recipe be?

• 2:01:22Amanda Dobbins?

  There are actually many, a lot of variation. But this is a different.

• 2:01:26Sean Fennessey?

  Like a signature ingredient?

• 2:01:27Amanda Dobbins?

  There are walnuts in it, in them. You don't like walnuts?

• 2:01:30Sean Fennessey?

  In brownies, like, I don't, what I, with a brownie?

• 2:01:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:01:34Sean Fennessey?

  I just, the smooth delivery of chocolate is what I'm interested in.

• 2:01:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, and you want like, you want fudgy. You don't want cakey.

• 2:01:41Sean Fennessey?

  Correct.

• 2:01:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Same.

• 2:01:42Sean Fennessey?

  Correct. Fudgy for sure.

• 2:01:44Amanda Dobbins?

  These were on the fudgier side.

• 2:01:46Sean Fennessey?

  But with walnuts.

• 2:01:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I do like walnuts. And I, but I also like a, I like a ganache on the top.

• 2:01:51Sean Fennessey?

  A ganache on the top?

• 2:01:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, like the thick, the thick icing, the chocolate icing.

• 2:01:56Sean Fennessey?

  You're just, you're really weird. Um.

• 2:01:59Amanda Dobbins?

  You don't like icing?

• 2:02:00Sean Fennessey?

  I, but, you know, a brownie is just like, it's just like something you just throw in a pan and you throw it in the oven.

• 2:02:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's what this recipe is like.

• 2:02:07Sean Fennessey?

  Just take it out and then you just give it to your younger siblings and then they just have something to eat when your mom is working. You know, like, that's what you do.

• 2:02:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Katherine Hepburn brownies.

• 2:02:13Sean Fennessey?

  That's how I made brownies.

• 2:02:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, this is basically what it is. It's just cocoa, butter, eggs, sugar, flour. Oh, my God. Come on, New York Times Cooking. I am fucking logged in. Let me, like, Jesus Christ, I pay you!

• 2:02:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:02:32Sean Fennessey?

  So you haven't figured, you wanted to do Hepburn. We can just do a Hepburn episode.

• 2:02:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, when I was thinking of someone like with an expansive body of work over many decades.

• 2:02:42Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 2:02:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Who means a lot to me.

• 2:02:43Sean Fennessey?

  What I usually do when I'm trying to solve against that is I just look for an anniversary of a film.

• 2:02:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:02:49Sean Fennessey?

  So we could say.

• 2:02:52Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm. Well, that's not great. There's no movie in 1950.

• 2:02:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:02:57Sean Fennessey?

  So you'd really want to have one of those. Hmm. It's.

• 2:03:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, do we have to do it this year?

• 2:03:04Sean Fennessey?

  No, I meant for next year.

• 2:03:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:03:06Sean Fennessey?

  We're kind of, we're kind of scheduled out right now.

• 2:03:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. That's what I was saying.

• 2:03:09Sean Fennessey?

  Something every single fucking week.

• 2:03:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Trust me, I'm pretty, I, listen, I know. But so then that would be 51, right?

• 2:03:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, 50th observed.

• 2:03:20Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, the year fit. So you were looking at movies of 1950?

• 2:03:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, 51 is The African Queen. 1940 is The Philadelphia Story. Bringing a Baby is 38.

• 2:03:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. Well, that's a long time to wait.

• 2:03:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we don't have, we don't have any matching. Patton Oswalt's 52.

• 2:03:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, okay, so that would be 20.

• 2:03:38Sean Fennessey?

  If we did it this year.

• 2:03:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Seven. Lion in Winter is 68.

• 2:03:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's no matches. So we got no anniversaries, no, no birthday anniversary, no, nothing.

• 2:03:49Amanda Dobbins?

  All right, well.

• 2:03:50Sean Fennessey?

  Well, fuck off and die, Catherine Hepburn, sorry.

• 2:03:55Sean Fennessey?

  Any closing thoughts?

• 2:03:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm pro Altman.

• 2:03:58Sean Fennessey?

  Pro Altman, good.

• 2:03:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, pro Altman.

• 2:04:00Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks for coming on this journey with me.

• 2:04:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Good job on the Criterion Collection.

• 2:04:04Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks.

• 2:04:04Amanda Dobbins?

  You looked great.

• 2:04:05Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks. They put makeup on my face.

• 2:04:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna ask.

• 2:04:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they put makeup on my face. How did it look? Looked good?

• 2:04:12Speaker 05

  Looked amazing.

• 2:04:13Sean Fennessey?

  Not 18 months off my years.

• 2:04:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:04:16Sean Fennessey?

  The Criterion Collection people have been wonderful and I know I gave a promo code earlier and this is a, you know, a collaboration, but I, what they do, in addition to the Altman programming right now, the programming on the channel right now, which includes two Paul Thomas Anderson movies, 70, 70s conspiracy thrillers, a number of other great packages there, the absolute best what they do. So want to give a shout out to Elisa there, to Kim, to Curtis, who helped me look good during the production of that project. They are all awesome and the whole team there is really great. Thank you for watching all these movies, coming on the journey with me.

• 2:04:49Amanda Dobbins?

  You're very welcome.

• 2:04:50Sean Fennessey?

  This is really one of my guys, although I don't know that I need to see a Robert Altman movie again for quite some time.

• 2:04:54Amanda Dobbins?

  It is, if you are just starting your Robert Altman journey.

• 2:05:00Sean Fennessey?

  Space them out.

• 2:05:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know if the, the binge recommendation lends itself.

• 2:05:08Amanda Dobbins?

  The best, you know, let them, let them breathe, see other stuff. Maybe intersperse it with, you know, PTA, bomb back, other people.

• 2:05:17Sean Fennessey?

  Inspiration points.

• 2:05:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. And so you can like, see how they work.

• 2:05:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good project in the future is if you like.

• 2:05:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:22Sean Fennessey?

  Kicking and screaming, you will like OC and Stig's, you know what I mean? Like, there's a way to kind of match those, those things in the future, too.

• 2:05:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I love kicking and screaming.

• 2:05:30Sean Fennessey?

  I do, too.

• 2:05:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Was that like number three on our list or number two?

• 2:05:35Sean Fennessey?

  On what list?

• 2:05:36Amanda Dobbins?

  We ranked the bomb back movies. I think on the marriage story episode. Yeah, I know. Is it? Oh, my God, that's insane that that was six years ago.

• 2:05:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, more than six years ago.

• 2:05:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 2:05:46Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, okay. Well, I also want to thank researcher Bradley Palmer, who was kind enough to provide like an incredible wealth of documents to us, who went back and looked at every movie, read all the books. I'm also going to do a video about the physical media and some of the books that are out there about Altman. So you should check that out on the way to your movies channel.

• 2:06:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I brought your DVD back.

• 2:06:04Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you very much.

• 2:06:05Amanda Dobbins?

  It isn't actually, it is a DVD and not.

• 2:06:07Sean Fennessey?

  It is a DVD. A lot of these movies are only available on DVD, unfortunately. And thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. And later this week, just to tie everything neatly in a bow, we'll be doing a Paul Thomas Anderson movie character draft. Now, just let's get this out of the way. No one battle after another character is eligible because of CR.

• 2:06:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and, and everyone else.

• 2:06:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Because we can't split, but like.

• 2:06:31Sean Fennessey?

  But there are some good ass characters in that movie.

• 2:06:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, sure. And it's fresh on our mind. I mean, listen, it's what a time we'll have.

• 2:06:39Sean Fennessey?

  What a time we'll have. Thanks to everybody for indulging in this episode, and we'll see you later this week.

• 2:07:33Speaker 06

  For the big, for the small, the short, and the tall. Peacemakers, risk-takers. For the optimists, pessimists. For long-distance love. For introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers. For old friends and new. Coca-Cola. For everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you.