One Mailbag After Another, and the Updated PTA Movie Rankings

Sean and Amanda have an action-packed episode today following the release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘One Battle After Another.' They begin the show by reacting to the film’s opening weekend box office performance and astounding initial critical acclaim (0:57). Then, they open up the mailbag to answer all of your questions about Paul Thomas Anderson and his new movie (13:03). Next, our mean pod guy, Adam Nayman, the author of 'Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks,' joins the show (but isn’t very mean). He celebrates one of the most expressive action sequences ever put to film, explains why Benicio Del Toro gives an MVP-level performance, and highlights the strong influences from one of Anderson’s favorite filmmakers, Jonathan Demme (1:14:01). Finally, Andy Greenwald comes on to finally tell his side of the story with regards to the time he and Amanda saw ‘The Master’ together, and shares his brief thoughts on the film (1:53:37). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Adam Nayman and Andy Greenwald Producer: Jack Sanders 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.

• 0:09Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 0:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 0:11Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the big picture, a conversation show about Paul Thomas Anderson and One Battle after another. We're back at it. We're having a mailbag to talk about the biggest movie of the year for us. Later in this episode, we'll be joined by two friends of the show. First, Adam Nayman, our Mean Pod Guy, beloved Ringer contributor, author of Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks, a book I highly recommend, as does Amanda. He'll pop in to talk about One Battle. He wrote a piece about the film for TheRinger.com. He's got a lot of great insights. And then our pal Andy Greenwald from The Watch will join us. He'll talk about that fateful night when you saw the master with him and you guys went all Lancaster Dodd together. And he'll share his One Battle thoughts, too.

• 0:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's a convention of girl dads.

• 0:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 0:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Plus me.

• 0:52Sean Fennessey?

  All my beautiful boys are coming together over this film. And my beautiful girl.

• 0:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much.

• 0:56Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, okay. But first, let's talk about the One Battle box office. So much speculated about, lot of hand wringing.

• 1:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03Sean Fennessey?

  What will we do?

• 1:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Lot of people with shareholder disease.

• 1:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I thought was a really, I can't remember who coined it on, on the internet, but good job because you guys gotta let go, you know?

• 1:15Sean Fennessey?

  Well, here's what I'll say. One of the reasons why I want us to talk about the box office on a regular basis is that the box office does matter. I'm not saying it doesn't matter.

• 1:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:24Sean Fennessey?

  It does matter.

• 1:25Amanda Dobbins?

  The box office is a, is a barometer and also indicates what gets made and what doesn't going forward. That all matters. But all the people being like Warner Brothers is not going to get its $150 million back or all this sort of stuff, like it's not your money.

• 1:39Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:39Amanda Dobbins?

  So chill out.

• 1:42Sean 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,

• 2:26Sean Fennessey?

  and eligibility vary by state. We are aligned on that because there has to be, there are gradations of understanding in this specific environment. So this weekend, uh, one battle after another made $22.4 million in the United States and Canada. It made $48.5 million globally. Easily Paul Thomas Anderson's biggest opening weekend, his highest grossing movie is, uh, There Will Be Blood at $77 million. This is gonna fly past that.

• 2:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:52Sean Fennessey?

  Whether or not it gets to the 130 or 145 or 165 million dollar budget is to be determined. I, I think I mentioned this to you last week, but I had a kind of pre-pod conversation about this with Van Lathan, who I think is currently having this conversation on The Midnight Boys as we speak. He has a lot of feelings because there's a lot of pocket watching that goes on in the world of superhero movies. He was very angry about Killers of the Flower Moon's, you know, quote unquote, failure at the box office and that not being called to task in the same way that a lot of films that he really cares about are called to task.

• 3:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 3:29Sean Fennessey?

  Here's, here's what I'll say. One of the reasons why I feel comfortable saying that I don't care about the box office for this film is the fact that this film was made is anomalous. This is not an indicator of whether or not movies like this will be ever made again.

• 3:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 3:43Sean Fennessey?

  Because there are no other movies that are like this. And one of the primary reasons that this movie has been made is twofold. One, Mike DeLuca is the, the co-chair of the film division at Warner Brothers right now. Mike DeLuca is the executive who helped Paul Thomas Anderson get Boogie Nights and Magnolia Made a New Line. This is his guy. In Hollywood, this is what happens. You make relationships with people who have power. You keep those relationships and over time, those relationships pay off. Secondarily,

• 4:11Sean Fennessey?

  TCM, there was speculation some years ago that TCM was going to be deleted from your cable package.

• 4:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Turner Classic Movies.

• 4:18Sean Fennessey?

  Turner Classic Movies, which is a, a huge obsession of Paul Thomas Anderson's. And reportedly Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese came together and pled with David Zaslove to not get rid of the channel and also offered to participate in helping promote the channel over a number of years. And in doing so, they all forged a bond with David Zaslove, the sort of partnership. In which they were seen together at events. David Zaslove, of course, runs the company that paid for one battle after another. This is corporate synergistic relationship building at its finest.

• 4:58Sean Fennessey?

  And Paul Thomas Anderson, very wisely, has used all of these convergences to get $150 million movie about revolutionaries made. This is not like Black Adam failed. It's a completely different circumstance.

• 5:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I like, I'm not Van.

• 5:15Sean Fennessey?

  I know, I know.

• 5:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm just like, why are you, yeah, no shit.

• 5:18Sean Fennessey?

  I'm getting it out. I'm getting it out.

• 5:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Here's what's good. When you get $150 million from a corporation that we don't think that much of to fund awesome art, you know, that I am pro that every single time. And honestly, if you're, if you're mad about the superhero stuff, maybe they should make better superhero movies. This is kind of where I am.

• 5:37Sean Fennessey?

  Of course, I agree with that.

• 5:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Spend a shitload of money on good things is where I am. That's what happened. It's not your money. It's, I mean, maybe the people posting are actually Warner Brothers shareholders, which I have some notes for you as a financial advisor, but it's.

• 5:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's been a tough couple of years.

• 5:51Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not your money.

• 5:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 5:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Who cares? Let's fund great things.

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• 7:25Sean Fennessey?

  It's not our money or your money. It does matter when big movies completely fail.

• 7:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, listen, I understand. I would like people to go see this in order to suggest to these faceless corporations that spending all of this money on actually good things does yield results. Because that's the only way that you'll get them to do it again.

• 7:53Sean Fennessey?

  And I think one of the results that it's important to think about, and we discussed this somewhat around centers, which ended up becoming a huge financial sensation, way bigger, I think, than even the most optimistic fans of Kugler's expected. But this is also true of a movie like this. Box office is a short term analysis game. It's not a long term analysis game because the information around how much money a movie generates over one year, five years, 25 years is very opaque. The studios are not incentivized to release how much money they garner from licensing a film to a streaming service, what their VOD numbers are going to be, what it means when a movie wins awards and comes back into the conversation. Movies can be valuable over, they're like an annuity.

• 8:37Sean Fennessey?

  They can generate revenue over long periods of time.

• 8:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 8:41Sean Fennessey?

  And a movie like one better after another is an interesting contrast to something like, like a dead stock movie. The example I used when Van and I were talking about it was Aquaman. So Aquaman came out in 2019 in December, and it was in the midst of the height of the superhero movie fervor. And that movie made a billion dollars. People may forget, but Aquaman, starring Jason Momoa and Nicole Kidman, made a billion dollars. That movie that year was obviously tremendously profitable and successful. We are now in a completely different era of DC. The next Aquaman you see will not be Jason Momoa. That Aquaman movie, which some people will watch and still have some affection for, but will become increasingly obscure over the years and will generate less revenue

• 9:26Sean Fennessey?

  over the years because we're now in the James Gunn era. And probably in 10 years, we'll be in a different era of DC. These movies are not as valuable over time because they are a product of their moment. One battle after another is never going to make even close to a billion dollars. So I'm not trying to conflate the two things, but if one battle after another does win Best Picture and does have a six-month run towards success and becomes a forever movie, it becomes valuable over time. Just this morning, I was shopping for 4Ks, as I often am at 7:30 in the morning.

• 9:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I honestly am going to start dissociating. Like, we were just yelling, you were yelling about Aquaman for a long time. And like, you're right.

• 10:01Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not yelling. I'm making a very reasoned case.

• 10:04Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's like, you know.

• 10:06Sean Fennessey?

  I am not yelling.

• 10:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I feel like, I feel like I am the star. I don't know. It's, you know.

• 10:10Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I'm sharing some, some hard-earned thoughts.

• 10:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Go ahead. Okay, so you were shopping for 4Ks.

• 10:17Sean Fennessey?

  And The Ten Commandments was on sale for $14.99 on 4K. I don't own The Ten Commandments.

• 10:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:22Sean Fennessey?

  I was like, maybe I should buy that movie. I don't even think I like The Ten Commandments, to be totally honest with you. And I'm, of course, a man of lapsed faith.

• 10:27Amanda Dobbins?

  What time of day is this?

• 10:29Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's early in the morning.

• 10:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so it's like.

• 10:31Sean Fennessey?

  Right before my daughter woke up.

• 10:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so you like, you roll over, you check the time. Do you like, check email first or you go straight to Blu-ray?

• 10:39Sean Fennessey?

  I wake up in the morning, I call the hotline and they say, "Rise and shine." And I start giving the passcodes. It just got me thinking about the value of a movie like The Ten Commandments. That the fact that 70 years later, the studio was still making money on it. They're still finding a way to format it and put it out in the world because it's a forever movie. It's a movie that feels important. It's a movie that has a kind of historicity to it.

• 11:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:01Sean Fennessey?

  That. A movie like this could have, and that is another reason to make movies like this, is to create a lineage, not just to make something that will satisfy people for six months and then it will expire. That is a reason to take a chance on a movie and to spend a little bit more for something on a grand scale. That's, that's why I'm sharing all this information with you.

• 11:21Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I agree with you.

• 11:22Sean Fennessey?

  So, to me-

• 11:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Make art, not content.

• 11:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. If you want to do the snapshot, when this movie makes $92 million worldwide and everybody wants to bang the drum about how it's a failure, let's talk about it in 10 years. And let's talk about it in 20 years. We're probably not gonna be doing the podcast at that point, so we won't talk about it, but someone will. And they'll remember that I said this in such vociferous terms. And you know what? I completely understand all the people that are listening to this right now, and they're like, "You're a PTA fanboy, and you have no perspective or objectivity." And you're right, I don't. And I don't give a fuck. I'm very happy that this movie is here.

• 11:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Wait, who do you imagine that is listening to this podcast?

• 11:56Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you who I'm imagining. Lunatics, haters, and punk trash.

• 12:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 12:01Sean Fennessey?

  And they need to-

• 12:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, can we talk about-

• 12:03Sean Fennessey?

  They need to step back.

• 12:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Can we talk about that movie, instead of Aquaman?

• 12:05Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, yeah. So, um, A Cinema Score.

• 12:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Sean Fennessey?

  95 on Metacritic.

• 12:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:11Sean Fennessey?

  Very high.

• 12:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. People like this movie.

• 12:14Sean Fennessey?

  It has a 4.5 average on Letterboxd, which would make it one of the highest rated movies in the history of that app.

• 12:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:19Sean Fennessey?

  So, anything you want to get off your chest before we dig into the mailbag? Because we'll talk about all kinds of details of the movie in the mailbag.

• 12:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I would like to thank everyone, including the multiple people in my life who listened to our episode, our one battle after another, full spoiler episode, heard me say to turn off the episode if you haven't seen it yet, and, and actually did. My friend, my friend Lauren, my father-in-law, and my friend Maureen.

• 12:46Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 12:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Hi, Maureen, who was really, came through with childcare this weekend. All listened to the episode, then said, "No, thank you. We will, we will turn it off and go see the movie." So, that's good. It's just, it's nice when people are taking things seriously.

• 12:58Sean Fennessey?

  You like being heard.

• 13:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I do.

• 13:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's the takeaway from that story.

• 13:02Amanda Dobbins?

  And I would also add, as we, we will be talking about spoilers in this episode.

• 13:07Sean Fennessey?

  We will.

• 13:08Amanda Dobbins?

  So, once, once again, you've gotten to hear Sean rant about Aquaman and-

• 13:11Sean Fennessey?

  I did not rant.

• 13:12Amanda Dobbins?

  The Ten Commandments.

• 13:13Sean Fennessey?

  I delivered a cogent, deeply analytical analysis.

• 13:17Amanda Dobbins?

  It is also like, you're just edging closer and closer to being like, like, no, no, no, these Blu-rays are my investment. Like, you know, that my discs are currency.

• 13:26Sean Fennessey?

  Who says they're not?

• 13:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Right?

• 13:27Sean Fennessey?

  I am contributing to the history of film culture.

• 13:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 13:30Sean Fennessey?

  Day by day.

• 13:32Amanda Dobbins?

  But you're just like imagining a post-Cavalcade society where you're like, you know, here's my 4K of Witness versus here's my something, but you don't have it. Or did you get Witness?

• 13:41Sean Fennessey?

  I've always had Witness.

• 13:43Amanda Dobbins?

  But you don't respect Witness.

• 13:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's not that I don't respect it. I think it's good and not great. That's how I've always felt. I don't think it's bad.

• 13:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so I would-

• 13:51Sean Fennessey?

  I don't want to have sex with Harrison Ford. The premise of appreciation for the film is, I want to have sex with a 78-year-old man. No, I don't. I think he's great.

• 13:59Amanda Dobbins?

  He's 78 in Witness!

• 14:00Sean Fennessey?

  Right now.

• 14:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, is he, is he only 78?

• 14:03Sean Fennessey?

  He's 114 years old.

• 14:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I think that you, you're missing out on, you know, some of the, the great joys of life.

• 14:09Sean Fennessey?

  We're out of a cannon. Um, I'm glad that everyone listened to you and didn't listen to the episode. That's great. That's great for our business.

• 14:15Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's people who are going to get, who, like, who have tickets.

• 14:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, get educated. Go see the film. We're gonna start talking about the film very shortly. I just wanted to have like something really strong out of the shoot because I knew we were gonna get into spoilers. That's, you know, this is programming.

• 14:31Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 14:31Sean Fennessey?

  I'm doing great programming. All right, Jack Sanders, uh, help us with the mailbag. We got a lot of good questions.

• 14:37Speaker 05

  A lot of good questions. A lot of questions. I mean, this is definitely the most amount of questions we've ever gotten, especially-

• 14:42Sean Fennessey?

  Really?

• 14:42Speaker 05

  I've probably read 500 emails and that was just Friday to Sunday night.

• 14:46Sean Fennessey?

  My goodness. Okay, that's great. This is obviously-

• 14:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Good job, kids!

• 14:49Sean Fennessey?

  This is the Super Bowl for this podcast, you know, for, not just because it's Paul Thomas Anderson, but what the movie turned out to be.

• 14:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's obviously, it's a huge deal for both of us.

• 14:57Speaker 05

  And, you know, it's a little bit of a silly start, so it's only fitting that our first question comes from Tyler, who says, "There are so many LOL moments throughout the film, but what piece of dialogue or gag made you laugh the loudest?"

• 15:08Sean Fennessey?

  It took me five seconds to write down 10 things.

• 15:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 15:12Sean Fennessey?

  The first one.

• 15:13Amanda Dobbins?

  You did a lot of blogging in this document.

• 15:15Sean Fennessey?

  Did I?

• 15:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's good. That's great.

• 15:18Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I'm just activated.

• 15:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I, yeah.

• 15:20Sean Fennessey?

  I'm activated by the cinema. The first one is life, man, life. That's my favorite three seconds in the movie, which is when Bob is sitting in Sergio's back room.

• 15:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 15:31Sean Fennessey?

  And is reflecting briefly, not talking on the phone. I like to thank Warner Brothers, the company we were just talking about, for putting that on TikTok. I was able to re-watch it a couple of times over the weekend.

• 15:43Amanda Dobbins?

  That's good.

• 15:44Sean Fennessey?

  So that was one that jumped out to me. What's one that you like?

• 15:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, the entire Benicio del Toro sensei's like sequence is either deeply moving or incredibly funny. I do think, you know, there's a reason it's in the trailer. But when Leo is getting into the trap door, you know, to the tunnel and just one more viva la revolución is like genuinely really, really funny. Benicio's dance at the end, I mean, you know, a few small beers is funny, but for me, for me, it's the dance. And also Leo just falling off a roof, the side.

• 16:20Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible.

• 16:21Amanda Dobbins?

  And then the skateboarder being like, hey, man, your guy fell off the roof and got arrested.

• 16:24Sean Fennessey?

  Fell 40 feet.

• 16:27Sean Fennessey?

  Those are great.

• 16:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:28Sean Fennessey?

  I also like Leo screaming at comrade Josh. Anything he yells at comrade Josh is great.

• 16:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Comrade Josh.

• 16:34Sean Fennessey?

  You know, these are noise triggers.

• 16:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah, that was, that's all really funny.

• 16:39Sean Fennessey?

  What kind of revolutionary are you, man? We're not even in the same room. And he's like, clearly you don't have kids, you fucking idiot. When he's at the end of the phone call with him. Love that. I really like when Tim goes to visit the Christmas adventures downstairs and they start talking about chicken licking. I love their nuggets. That line is great. That always makes me laugh.

• 16:57Amanda Dobbins?

  You already did haters and punk trash, but that's really special.

• 17:00Sean Fennessey?

  When Bob is saved at the hospital and he jumps into Sergio's car and he's like, let's do a selfie. That's really good. Uh, semen demon, James Downey's line delivery of semen demon is magnificent. That got a huge laugh at my screening on Friday. Um, Tom fucking Cruise, which I don't think we've made much light of in the moment. I think the comb licking from Sean, which is obviously disgusting, but is also quite brilliant. There's like, there's a hundred of them in the movie. You know, that's, that's one of the joys of a Paul Thomas Anderson movie is a lot, a lot of small funny moments. Okay. Next question.

• 17:36Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Kelsey. One of the things that jumped out to me was thinking about how many men will be dressing as Bob Ferguson for Halloween this year. What PTA film characters do you think make the best Halloween costume?

• 17:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you, would you like to share the text message that you sent me and Chris Ryan at 9:30 a.m. on Friday morning?

• 17:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I was at the Vista to see the film again, and there were three men dressed like Bob Ferguson. This was the opening day, opening morning of the movie.

• 18:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So we have to pass. So it's 9:30 in the morning for a 10 a.m. screening.

• 18:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 18:08Amanda Dobbins?

  So you got there early.

• 18:08Sean Fennessey?

  Packed house.

• 18:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone got there. Okay. Did you have to wait in line?

• 18:12Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 18:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Um, and then on opening morning at the Vista were already three people who presumably they could have based the costume on the trailer.

• 18:24Sean Fennessey?

  They could have.

• 18:25Amanda Dobbins?

  But the, the vibe at that location would suggest that they had already seen it once and were already like, had gotten a costume together for the Friday morning screening.

• 18:36Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't ask anyone if they'd seen it previously, but you know, this wasn't like incidental morning. I rolled out of bed and I'm still wearing my bathrobe. Like they were wearing the glasses, you know, like the blue blocker glasses. So yeah, it was weird.

• 18:49Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 18:49Sean Fennessey?

  Um, interesting fact about the Halloween costume.

• 18:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:54Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Colleen Atwood says, this is not a robe you can buy. The costume designer, that, that, the material, she made it from, from, she and her team made it from materials that they had found. This isn't, so you can't just like hop on the Etsy. You probably can't hop on the Etsy. You can't just hop on the Amazon and buy this bathrobe. But I suspect you will see a lot of Bob Ferguson's this year. Cause it's very easy to pull off.

• 19:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Sean Fennessey?

  That costume. I mean, other PTA characters, there's, there's, there's so many. I think Dirk and Reed Rothschild are both really good ones. Roller, Roller Girl, a very common one, struck in 1998. Um,

• 19:29Sean Fennessey?

  I, I think Lancaster Dodd with the slicked back hair and the pack of cools.

• 19:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you, you kind of have to go in a pair though, for most of them, right? You have to, you have to do Joaquin and Philip Seymour Hoffman. You have to do, because like you could do Reynolds Woodcock solo. But you would just be fancy unless you have.

• 19:52Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think Zack and Knox could do Daniel and H W Plainview? I think that would be good.

• 19:57Amanda Dobbins?

  You know what? Last night at dinner was the first night that Knox asked me what I'm going to be for Halloween.

• 20:02Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, and we know you don't do that.

• 20:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And I explained to him, I was like, I'm going to be a mom, you know? And he was like, no, I want you to be something too. So that it's, life comes for us all.

• 20:12Sean Fennessey?

  You will be getting dressed in a Halloween costume at some point in the next five years. So you gotta brace yourself for that.

• 20:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:17Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I think you could try to be Reynolds Woodcock if you wanted to.

• 20:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Because you also, you know, the tailoring is really important there. But again, you have to have the, the dress to go with you and those are harder to come by.

• 20:32Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you, the Punch Drunk Love suit is something you could pull off. That blue suit that Sandler wears.

• 20:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Sean Fennessey?

  Not a ton of.

• 20:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And if you just went everywhere with like eight, you know, women dressed as the sisters.

• 20:44Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 20:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And some Snackwells, you know, or it's Snackwell, right?

• 20:47Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think so, yeah, the, the pudding.

• 20:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Or Healthy Choice.

• 20:50Sean Fennessey?

  Healthy Choice, okay.

• 20:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:51Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, no free ads.

• 20:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Do either of those still exist?

• 20:55Sean Fennessey?

  Genuinely don't know.

• 20:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 20:56Sean Fennessey?

  I hope they're both doing great. Uh, okay, next question.

• 21:00Speaker 05

  Next one comes from Amanda's Instagram DMs.

• 21:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  From a gentleman named Nick. The power went out in the middle of his one battle after another screening. Without telling you where it went out, I need to know. Yes, when it went out, I need to know what you think would be the worst place in the film for the power to go out.

• 21:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean. Like, the most obvious answer is obviously during the car chase.

• 21:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the car chase.

• 21:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right?

• 21:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that would be bad.

• 21:25Amanda Dobbins?

  That would be bad.

• 21:26Sean Fennessey?

  You've gone through two hours and 35 minutes of movie.

• 21:28Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, working back from that, I think, like, this scene between Willa and, um...

• 21:36Sean Fennessey?

  Lockjaw?

• 21:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Lock... No, no, no, no, no. I was like the standoff, um, with all of the, you know, the crazy Jan 6 guys, and...

• 21:46Sean Fennessey?

  Like, when she's apprehended?

• 21:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 21:47Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 21:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And when she's arrested, and like, before, like, when Avanti is coming, you know, and like, what's gonna happen there?

• 21:53Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 21:54Amanda Dobbins?

  That's a pretty high tension thing. You wouldn't want it to cut out in the middle.

• 21:58Sean Fennessey?

  That would be unfortunate.

• 21:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I think it would be a real bummer if it cut out, like, right during the bank robbery to Chase to, like, you know, of Profidia in that prologue, where, because there is so much energy.

• 22:14Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I think it would be tough if it cut out shortly after that, um, during that convenience store sequence, like, right before the wig gets blown off, uh, A Wanda Himes wig, which is a shot I have been thinking about a lot, uh, the wig flying, and...

• 22:36Sean Fennessey?

  Very good fellows, as it's been pointed out. That's a real, like, oh shit.

• 22:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, sure. Well, listen, we all...

• 22:40Sean Fennessey?

  The consequences have hit, you know?

• 22:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Um, we all like Murney, you know? It's not, it's not a crime.

• 22:45Sean Fennessey?

  I love him. Love the guy. Love the guy.

• 22:47Amanda Dobbins?

  What else?

• 22:49Sean Fennessey?

  Those are some great calls.

• 22:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:50Sean Fennessey?

  All those are great. I mean, I think that there's also just some comic moments, like, actually, so I'll tell you the story of my Friday screening, because this is relevant to a question later on. So, let's, like, can we just jump to the question about format?

• 23:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, a lot of people ask this question, which is just basically, what is your favorite format to watch the film in?

• 23:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so on Friday morning, as I said, I went to the Vista. I had already seen the movie three times. The three ways in which I had seen it was I saw it with you in 70 at the DGA.

• 23:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:13Sean Fennessey?

  I saw it at the premiere at, on IMAX at the Chinese.

• 23:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:18Sean Fennessey?

  And then I saw it again with you at Universal CityWalk in 70mm IMAX. Those are three of the six ways you can see it. The way that Paul Thomas Anderson says you should see it

• 23:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:29Sean Fennessey?

  is in VistaVision.

• 23:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 23:31Sean Fennessey?

  There's three screens in America that are available to the public in which you can see it in VistaVision. There's a fourth on the Warner Brothers lot, not open to the public. We do happen to have one of them in Los Angeles.

• 23:43Sean Fennessey?

  The Vista ran the film on Thursday night and I read that it broke.

• 23:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:49Sean Fennessey?

  And they were able to get it back going and there was some delay. But I shared this with my wife because I saw it with my wife on Friday. Friday was our wedding anniversary. We had a whole day together. It was great.

• 24:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's nice.

• 24:00Sean Fennessey?

  We saw the movie in the morning. We had lunch. We picked up our daughter, had an afternoon with our daughter. Then we went out to dinner. We had a huge day. It was 16 years married.

• 24:08Amanda Dobbins?

  That's really good.

• 24:09Sean Fennessey?

  It was nice. So, and you know, she likes Paul Thomas Anderson. She loves Leo. We saw the movie. So, but right before the movie starts, I was like doing the, you know, annoying like guy explaining something to a hot girl meme where I'm like explaining to her like the formats and stuff. And, you know, in a self-aware way.

• 24:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 24:26Sean Fennessey?

  And, but I was like, here's the thing, hon. Like, this is kind of a risk to be going to this movie theater because this, this could break.

• 24:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Sean Fennessey?

  And lo and behold, 40 minutes into the movie, it broke. I don't know if it was the, it said that the film rolled out on itself. That was what they, they communicated to us and that there was no way to fix it. Now, I know that the film played later that evening at that same theater and it didn't break. And Paul Thomas Anderson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jason Infinity were at that screening. They introduced the movie at the Vista on Friday night. But for us, the film broke 40 minutes in. They tried to fix it. We had a 10-minute break. They did fix it. It ran for two seconds, then broke again. So then they switched to DCP. I didn't even know they had a DCP projector at the Vista because Quentin Tarantino, movie theaters are always on film. That's the whole idea. But they did, thankfully, so that everyone could at least see the rest of the movie. There was, I cannot overstate the difference between the Vista Vision and the DCP.

• 25:20Sean Fennessey?

  To actually have in real time, see the depth and beauty and the screen size that they have formatted in the Vista for how the movie is supposed to look. And having seen it in other formats, the first 40 minutes, it was easily the best version of it that I saw.

• 25:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Sean Fennessey?

  So kind of heartbreaking to then have to go to the DCP. You know, Eileen, she doesn't care as much about these kinds of things. It's not as meaningful to a normal moviegoer. But I, I actually now feel like I kind of need to go again and see it in that format.

• 25:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I, every, everything that you're saying is, you know, valuable in your experience. There are four theaters in the world that can play Vista Vision. Four theaters in the world.

• 25:58Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so what would you recommend?

• 26:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, I, I think my best answer is the, the movie theater that you like the most. Like you, not, not you, Sean, though.

• 26:10Amanda Dobbins?

  That can be your answer too, but like if you are deciding like go see a movie theater, but go see one that you like. And with respect to Paul Thomas Anderson, who made the film like my favorite movie of definitely of the last five years and is a genius. Like, we are making like The Great, The Enemy of the Good, a little bit here. Like, go to a movie theater, go see it, see it as big as possible, but like, let's all calm down. You know, like, because most people are not gonna go see it four times. Most people are not gonna be there at 9:30 on a Friday morning waiting for the projector to break. And like, I, you know, I'm with you. I see, I saw it on 70mm at the DGA, and then I saw it in IMAX 70mm at the CityWalk.

• 26:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I vastly preferred the DGA experience.

• 26:57Sean Fennessey?

  You did?

• 26:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, cuz like respectfully, I don't wanna go to the fucking CityWalk. Like, you know, like, it's like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna go to a music park. Yeah, but people have different experiences. Um, and so.

• 27:09Sean Fennessey?

  That's funny. I find it actually easier to get to CityWalk than I do to DGA, but that's kinda neither here nor there.

• 27:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I also was like a princess. And thank you once again to my friends who like reserved me a seat at the DGA. I had like the prime seat and like a beautiful theater designed by directors. So it's not like, you know, I was watching it in my basement.

• 27:29Sean Fennessey?

  Your, your point about our privilege is, is well taken. I mean, I, one of the reasons why I live here is so that I can have these experiences, and I don't mind saying that. Um, I agree with you that I think if you can see it in a large format, it's, it's better. I think it's better in a large format.

• 27:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think if you can see it on film, it is better. It's like seeing, you know, the actual painting versus the print. Like, we do, these things do matter, but also just like see it in a movie theater. Yeah, like, make an experience of it, but make sure you enjoy yourself.

• 27:57Sean Fennessey?

  Next question.

• 27:59Speaker 05

  About 100 of the 500 emails were, what are the updated PTA rankings?

• 28:04Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 28:05Sean Fennessey?

  I, I wanna hear yours as well.

• 28:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I've been thinking about it.

• 28:08Sean Fennessey?

  I don't feel good about this right now.

• 28:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm. I don't agree with your list.

• 28:14Sean Fennessey?

  Well, of course. I mean, it's a list. That's the whole point. I don't, ever, a lot of movies are very tightly packed together, and.

• 28:23Sean Fennessey?

  Seven, eight, nine are all like four and a half, five star movies to me. And that's weird for a movie to be at number nine on the list and be a beloved movie for me. And I'll tell you, some of what I'm about to share is informed entirely by the movies I've seen most recently.

• 28:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 28:39Sean Fennessey?

  Except for number one, but we'll get there in a second.

• 28:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 28:43Sean Fennessey?

  Ten is Heart Eight. I think Heart Eight is very good.

• 28:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Sean Fennessey?

  I think it is a really impressive debut by a 24 year old. It still feels like a movie made by a 24 year old. Number nine is Punch Drunk Love.

• 28:56Sean Fennessey?

  I, I don't know why it's number nine. It just is number nine right now. It just is number nine right now. I think, um, number nine feels like something that like,

• 29:06Sean Fennessey?

  he like, like an exorcism of something, like him like trying to reject what had come before. Like it, he like, I don't want to say he vomited it up because that would makes it sound gross. It's beautiful, but it feels like a reaction.

• 29:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:20Sean Fennessey?

  To Magnolia and Boogie Nights. Uh, number eight is Licorice Pizza. I have not rewatched Licorice Pizza since we did a number of pods about it back in 22, 23. Number seven is In Her Advice.

• 29:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:33Sean Fennessey?

  I could make a case for this as high as four right now. I know you don't like this movie.

• 29:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 29:37Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I'm keeping it at seven. I've kept it fairly low.

• 29:41Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 29:41Sean Fennessey?

  I do, I'm now much more on its, I'm as fully on its wavelength of just go with it and stop trying to understand it as I ever have been. Number six is Boogie Nights. This is the lowest Boogie Nights has ever been on my list by far.

• 29:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm mad for you. And the last time we did this exercise, you ranked it like much lower than you should. And I remember telling Bill Simmons.

• 30:01Sean Fennessey?

  I think I put a three last.

• 30:02Amanda Dobbins?

  You did, but I remember, I remember then being the person to tell Bill Simmons how lowly you had ranked Boogie Nights. And that was at three and he was appalled. So.

• 30:11Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you know, I work for Bill, but I don't work entirely in service of Bill. I have my own tastes.

• 30:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:16Sean Fennessey?

  And, uh, Boogie Nights is amazing. It is a five star classic that changed my life.

• 30:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 30:21Sean Fennessey?

  I had multiple dads at the kid's birthday party that we went to together this weekend.

• 30:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:26Sean Fennessey?

  Ask me about my first time seeing Boogie Nights. It is such a totemic movie for dads. Of my age.

• 30:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I was literally crawling on the floor, taking plastic broccoli out of my child's mouth.

• 30:38Sean Fennessey?

  It gets better, Amanda, you know, just wait till those kids grow up. I didn't have to say one word to my daughter for four hours. It was a great birthday party. She played with her friends and had a great time. Number five is Magnolia. I've had a big turnaround on this movie. I rewatched it and I love it. I love it. I've completely flipped. It's still only a number five. Number four is Phantom Thread.

• 30:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:59Sean Fennessey?

  Which I think is a great film about marriage. Number three is One Battle After Another.

• 31:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Sean Fennessey?

  I, it's ridiculous to know where this belongs right now. It's just too soon.

• 31:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Sean Fennessey?

  I obviously am over the moon for the movie. I don't think the movie is without flaw. I do think there's some story. I think that there is some, let's just roll with it in the filmmaking that Paul talked about in the interview. That you can kind of feel in some of the plotting at the end of the movie. To me, it's not a, it doesn't like ruin the movie or anything. But it's interesting because there's like a lot of unanswered questions at the conclusion.

• 31:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure. Same in life.

• 31:40Sean Fennessey?

  True enough. Number two is The Master. Number one is There Will Be Blood.

• 31:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 31:45Sean Fennessey?

  There Will Be Blood and The Master have been in my top two for five years.

• 31:51Sean Fennessey?

  I, maybe I'm just having a hard time letting go of that.

• 31:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 31:54Sean Fennessey?

  And, and maybe one battle goes up. Maybe Magnolia goes up. Okay. Maybe Boogie Nights makes a roaring return when I actually revisit it. I haven't watched it since we did a four hour rewatchables about it some years ago.

• 32:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. That's no way to treat a movie you love.

• 32:09Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Boogie Nights, I don't, I could never watch it again and I will have seen it more times than most living humans. So that's not really a problem for me. And I will just say, I don't feel good about the list.

• 32:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I don't really agree with it.

• 32:21Sean Fennessey?

  You've already said that. What is your list?

• 32:23Amanda Dobbins?

  So number 10, Inherit Vice. Get out of here. Number nine, it's just not for me. It's not for me. And I revisited it like in the last two weeks.

• 32:31Sean Fennessey?

  Don't be an enemy to artists.

• 32:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not, you're asking me to rank things.

• 32:35Sean Fennessey?

  Don't say get out of here to a beautiful film about lost love and reckoning with the past. What could have been?

• 32:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I just, listen, I will never be on that level of weed wavelength, you know? Like, I just am not.

• 32:47Sean Fennessey?

  I want to get closer and closer as I get older.

• 32:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm on other wavelengths, even not literally.

• 32:52Sean Fennessey?

  I'm so ready to be weed dad and all I need to do is not have a job and have my child be old enough to take care of herself.

• 32:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you really think you have weed?

• 32:58Sean Fennessey?

  And as soon as those two things happen, I'm gonna be so stoned all the time.

• 33:02Speaker 05

  That's coming real soon.

• 33:03Sean Fennessey?

  12 years from now.

• 33:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that you're being pretty dishonest with your.

• 33:06Sean Fennessey?

  No, you're wrong.

• 33:07Amanda Dobbins?

  You don't have weed dad energy.

• 33:09Sean Fennessey?

  That's exactly the point.

• 33:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:11Sean Fennessey?

  That's where I need to go. I need to be freed from these shackles.

• 33:15Amanda Dobbins?

  And you think that that's where it would go?

• 33:17Sean Fennessey?

  Of course it would go there. I would mellow out. I would just sit on the couch and watch movies, which is all I want to do.

• 33:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so at 10, I have inherent vice, nine, hard eight. Like, very good movie, but, um, eight, Licorice Pizza, seven, Punch Dracula, Punch Dracula.

• 33:35Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 33:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Drunk Love, two movies that I think are magnificent, but that's just kind of how ranking things works.

• 33:42Sean Fennessey?

  Great love stories.

• 33:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I can stick, I can roll with six Boogie Nights, five Magnolia. And just by the way, the fact that I haven't started singing Let Me Roll It yet is just an amazing act of willpower by me. All right, so four, three, two, one.

• 33:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Four, There Will Be Blood.

• 33:59Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 34:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Three, The Master, two, One Battle, one, Phantom Thread.

• 34:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 34:09Amanda Dobbins?

  There I am.

• 34:10Sean Fennessey?

  I like the differentiation.

• 34:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, There Will Be Blood is an absolute masterpiece. I'm like, I understand, we've all like, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's, it's an announcement, he did it, yay. But, you know, um, there are others I connect to.

• 34:23Sean Fennessey?

  You don't have to be dismissive of There Will Be Blood, one of the finest films made in our lifetime.

• 34:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm dismissive of all the other people, you know, being like, tattoo There Will Be Blood on my chest.

• 34:33Sean Fennessey?

  I've never done that.

• 34:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I know.

• 34:36Sean Fennessey?

  If you could get a tattoo of any film, the entire poster on your back, what poster would it be?

• 34:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I would, I would not.

• 34:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's one of the most boring answers imaginable.

• 34:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, I don't know, I, there's a level of permanence to it that I'm not comfortable with, you know?

• 34:51Sean Fennessey?

  Understood.

• 34:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Life keeps changing.

• 34:53Sean Fennessey?

  Life! Uh, next question.

• 34:58Speaker 05

  Next question comes from John. As someone in my late twenties, who only really got into movies during COVID, one battle after another feels like the most monumental and important film I've had the chance to see in theaters. As people who have been having important theater-going experiences for a long time, where does this stack up for you guys? When is the last time a movie felt as significant and important in the way that this movie does? Obviously Infinity War and Endgame felt big, Barbenheimer was huge, but I don't remember a collective feeling of this movie is going to go down as one of the greats that one battle seems to have.

• 35:32Sean Fennessey?

  I think this, I actually, it's a really good question.

• 35:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:35Sean Fennessey?

  And, and, and I appreciate John's question, and I like the way that he's framing

• 35:40Sean Fennessey?

  this, because there's two different things going on here. One is something that we love and talk about all the time, and we were really at the height of it during Barbenheimer, which is movie-going events.

• 35:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:52Sean Fennessey?

  When everyone is going to see something, and it, movies take over the culture. That is very special and very rare. It does not, really kind of doesn't happen anymore. You know, Barbenheimer way more of a crazy event. And then there's the other part, the second half, which is the...

• 36:10Amanda Dobbins?

  They're like, this will live on in film. It was like, you know, I was there. I, like, I saw the Beatles.

• 36:16Sean Fennessey?

  That's what it is.

• 36:16Amanda Dobbins?

  At Shea Stadium.

• 36:17Sean Fennessey?

  That's how it feels. That is how it feels. I made a list of a bunch of things that I don't think even quite get to the center of...

• 36:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Of those two.

• 36:26Sean Fennessey?

  Of those two converging in any way. I, I do want to say,

• 36:32Sean Fennessey?

  in 1994, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, and The Lion King all came out.

• 36:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Sean Fennessey?

  And I was 12, so you can take, take this with a grain of salt, but all three of those things in different ways felt very big. And I think they felt very big to three different audiences, to kids, to cool young people, and to parents. But they were, there was a kind of, we can have it all quality for that year. And you can disagree about whether or not Forrest Gump is boomer crap, or The Lion King is overrated, or whatever, we can talk about that.

• 37:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:04Sean Fennessey?

  But the idea of something happening that feels very big in our lifetime, there were not a lot of... Examples much bigger than that to me. I'll say the one that I think is bigger is undeniably bigger than I know you will have some relationship to is Titanic.

• 37:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:21Sean Fennessey?

  When Titanic came out, that was, that was, that was the biggest thing in movies for years. And people were legitimate, not weird guys like me. All people were going five times.

• 37:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, but and it's and then teenage girls were going like forty five times. It was like a Swifties energy, but applied to the movie theaters and to Leo.

• 37:44Sean Fennessey?

  To a big historical drama.

• 37:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:46Sean Fennessey?

  And, and certainly Leo was a huge engine of that and Cameron's ability to do spectacle was a huge engine of that. And then the other thing that was happening with that movie is for the 12 months in the lead up to it. No movie had ever been declared a disaster pre-release as loudly as that one. There was so much bad presser on the movie that it felt like this incredibly positive whiplash effect. And then I've, to me, like, the next run of movies is all a product of

• 38:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:11Sean Fennessey?

  Like IP franchise fandom kind of thing, but these were all big things and a lot of these movies are very good.

• 38:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's not, there's one exception.

• 38:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there are, there are a couple of them that you could perceive as exceptions, but The Matrix to me, because of its kind of out of know- awareness.

• 38:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Sean Fennessey?

  And like a lack of relationship to the filmmakers.

• 38:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I remember this, like, I, I saw The Matrix on a very tiny screen because my high school boyfriend was like, no, no, you gotta, you gotta know about The Matrix. So, there you go.

• 38:36Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to him for doing the work.

• 38:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Lord of the Rings trilogy?

• 38:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, if you say so.

• 38:41Sean Fennessey?

  Just massive event for movie fans.

• 38:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, and I keep hearing about it.

• 38:45Sean Fennessey?

  Massive.

• 38:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:46Sean Fennessey?

  Jack, you were being born, you were being born.

• 38:50Speaker 05

  Born in 2000.

• 38:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, all right.

• 38:53Sean Fennessey?

  Let me kill myself. Um, The Dark Knight?

• 38:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, though, I mean, I, that was a thing for you. Notably missing from this list is Inception, which comes a couple of years later and is its own Nolan thing.

• 39:06Sean Fennessey?

  It was a huge thing.

• 39:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:07Sean Fennessey?

  Dark Knight was a bigger movie, though.

• 39:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, that's, yay, Batman.

• 39:11Sean Fennessey?

  I like Batman. Avatar?

• 39:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, now, none of these movies, I don't think. With maybe the, I don't remember the Matrix reception being, this is going to go down as one of the greats. I remember it being like, this is a mind blowing, game changing spectacle. And it is a step forward in science fiction storytelling, but I don't know if we thought this is like Star Wars.

• 39:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:36Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe I'm wrong. I don't really know. The only one of these that we knew immediately, like this is movie is going to be around forever is Titanic.

• 39:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:41Sean Fennessey?

  You know, or it was like, this is an awards movie. It's immense. Two young stars. It is a filmmaker who's been innovating aggressively for 20 years, reaching the mountaintop like that, you know, and then, you know, Avatar is obviously Cameron doing that again. Mad Max Fury Road did have the thing to me of, you know, like Witness Me being one of the mottos of the movie.

• 40:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 40:07Sean Fennessey?

  Became like something that you heard people talk about.

• 40:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I mean.

• 40:10Sean Fennessey?

  The experience of going to the movie.

• 40:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I didn't really personally, but it, I mean, it, it was definitely a thing. And it also felt a little bit like that, um, the Leo once upon a time in Hollywood meme of pointing at the screen of every other filmmaker, anyone who has anything to do with movies pointing being like, how did they do that? Like, can you believe that?

• 40:30Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe that's part of what it was is that George Miller's peers located that movie as so special. This is a smaller scale, but it was a thing. Get out.

• 40:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, no, it was a huge thing.

• 40:40Sean Fennessey?

  I think the way that Get Out got into the culture, which we talked about on our, on our 25 for 25 episode, the phrases, yeah, the conceptual ideas, the way it kind of like confronted audiences to maybe think about some things in their life or in society that maybe they hadn't strongly considered before. I think was a really powerful version of it. And I do think that we, that movie was pretty much confirmed as a classic within six months.

• 41:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 41:03Sean Fennessey?

  You know, um, and then, you know, John mentioned Avengers Endgame, just from a pure movie going perspective, that was a thing. People losing their minds in movie theaters. We have not had that since where people are like filming the screen and everybody is like exploding. Like, I know you can, you can denigrate the quality of the entertainment, but that, I can't remember.

• 41:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, people going nuts, yeah.

• 41:23Sean Fennessey?

  That, that shit. And then, and then Barmanheimer. Um, which was real. That was.

• 41:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It was a thing.

• 41:29Sean Fennessey?

  That was crazy. We saw multiple screenings of both of those movies, you know, with paying crowds. And it was like.

• 41:35Amanda Dobbins?

  They were.

• 41:36Sean Fennessey?

  Three hundred women in pink, you know, in the room and or three hundred men in trench coats, thinking about the powers of science.

• 41:44Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, next question. You have any, have I forgotten anything? I'm sure there's a bunch of others that I'm not thinking of, but these feel like.

• 41:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Those are all, those are the event movies. In terms of movies where you're like, wow, I'm watching something that will go down in cinema history. That becomes like, I have a lot of personal examples of that.

• 42:02Sean Fennessey?

  There Will Be Blood was that for me. I felt my soul leave my body when I was watching that movie.

• 42:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 42:07Sean Fennessey?

  I really, I really did feel I had a hugely spiritual experience watching the movie.

• 42:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I remember Inglourious Basterds. I was just being like, oh, like this is happening and everyone and and a little bit everyone going nuts, you know, on a smaller scale, but I wasn't in the theaters for Pulp Fiction. So that was kind of my, my Tarantino moment.

• 42:28Sean Fennessey?

  You're right. In that first scene in Inglourious Basterds, that incredible, you know, when, when um, Christoph Waltz comes to visit the family.

• 42:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 42:35Sean Fennessey?

  And they're under the floorboards that that you could, there was a palpable feeling in that moment.

• 42:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Um, I think, once upon a time in Hollywood,

• 42:45Amanda Dobbins?

  you know, especially when we saw it in the Arc Light Dome, again, speaking of formats, you kind of felt like, oh, this is another, you know, in the Tarantino vein. I'm trying to remember, you know, the rest are like, Clueless was a huge one for me. Like Lady Bird was a huge one for me. Um, but.

• 43:04Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but you know, those weren't on the scale of Oppenheimer.

• 43:06Sean Fennessey?

  There's something about this movie is going to go down as one of the great, as John put it, that is, is complicated because I think there's a lot of fear about overhyping or overstating. Even I can feel myself, even with one battle after another.

• 43:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 43:20Sean Fennessey?

  I want to sell it as hard as I can because I really believe in it and love it. And I'm like, I don't know if this will last the test of time. I hope it does.

• 43:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:26Sean Fennessey?

  But it's a little hard to know because these things.

• 43:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And that is.

• 43:30Sean Fennessey?

  Change, you know, and and smaller movies that fail become huge.

• 43:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. And sometimes you don't know in the moment. Also, sometimes it takes a second viewing or something going down, standing as like one of the great movies, you know, of history, like.

• 43:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Is 80% the movie and then 20% the moment? How it's alchemized with the audience also? So you can't, you don't always like a thousand percent know.

• 43:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's spot on.

• 44:02Sean Fennessey?

  Next time we hear one, we'll, we'll, we'll wave the flag. Yeah. This is one of the greats of all time. Okay, what's the next question? This is a good one.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  I, well, I was also gonna say, I think for people my age, Gen Z, this is like the first one. I think.

• 44:14Sean Fennessey?

  Really?

• 44:15Speaker 05

  You guys mentioned.

• 44:16Amanda Dobbins?

  As grownups? Yeah.

• 44:17Speaker 05

  As, as an adult, like the last time I think we experienced this was Parasite. That happened when I was a freshman in film school. So that also was very special. Like at Ithaca, we got an early screening and it was like, holy shit, what just happened?

• 44:29Sean Fennessey?

  Go bombers.

• 44:30Speaker 05

  But then COVID happened and you know.

• 44:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 05

  Movies got held up. So this feels like the first one for like this age range.

• 44:37Sean Fennessey?

  You didn't feel that for Oppenheimer? I felt like a lot of young people were really into it.

• 44:40Speaker 05

  I did, and that's totally true, but as of right now, I think Oppenheimer had way more detractors right out the gate than this movie did.

• 44:48Sean Fennessey?

  Good point.

• 44:49Speaker 05

  There, there were people zagging from the jump, saying, here's why I didn't really get with this or that. Whereas this one, it's like, it really feels close to you.

• 44:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And by people, you mean me?

• 44:58Speaker 05

  I know lots, I know plenty of people. Danny Hightower, not with Oppenheimer.

• 45:02Sean Fennessey?

  But, but it was also a billion dollar movie that steamrolled to the Oscars. You know, such a behemoth.

• 45:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:08Speaker 05

  And there's also something special about it being this movie because there were so mu- I mean, six months ago, we were all very nervous, you know, like hearing bad things, what's going on? It's not playing at festivals, et cetera, et cetera. And then for it to come out, kind of similar to what you were saying about Titanic, right? Like there was a little bit of anxiety and nervousness around him for it to be so great is a relief.

• 45:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's really interesting to think about, that this is for, for that generation to put their arms around this movie and, and love it. I think that would be great. Okay, what's next, Jack?

• 45:37Speaker 05

  So if the PTA rankings were asked 100 times, this question in some form or another was asked 250 times. Peep, a lot of people are talking about Eddington with this movie coming out.

• 45:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 45:49Speaker 05

  People wanna know, how are they similar? How are they different? Is it a trite comparison? Is this marking a trend going forward of politically charged mainstream movies? It's a very open ended question, but did you guys think about Eddington at all following this movie?

• 46:05Sean Fennessey?

  Definitively.

• 46:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 46:07Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I, I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts about this. I do as well. When Eddington came out.

• 46:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 46:15Sean Fennessey?

  When I shared our episode, I tweeted something that said, this is the movie of the year and maybe the movie of the decade. And I was very specific about how I phrased that. What I meant by that. And this is a movie that I really, really, really, really like. Um, I think is incredibly successful in what it's trying to accomplish. But I was like, this is a movie that captures this time in a way that I've not, not seen very many movies even attempt to. And one of the ways in which it captures the time, Eddington, is that it is a movie about being on your phone.

• 46:48Sean Fennessey?

  And a very, the way that being on your phone can be diverting, but also paranoia inducing. It can cause you to misunderstand other people, to feel a real loss of connection. It can cause you to feel rage about things that maybe don't even really matter all that much. It can dupe you into thinking things are true that are not true. And that life lived through screens is a very dangerous experience.

• 47:12Sean Fennessey?

  One Battle After Another, you said, is the movie of the year and probably the movie of the decade on our episode last week. And I, I think in part, what you were saying was that it is the, it may be the best, it may be the best made, maybe the most successful, but also that it might be the thing that I was talking about with Eddington.

• 47:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:31Sean Fennessey?

  The difference between the two films is that Eddington is a movie about being on your phone and One Battle After Another is about not being on your phone. And One Battle After Another is about being in the world. And the talking point that me and you and Chris have brought up many times with PTA is why won't he make a movie set in modern times?

• 47:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 47:50Sean Fennessey?

  Um, why are these filmmakers afraid of this? And I know at least with Paul, that he views the idea of people just looking at their phones as very un cinematic. Some filmmakers have been able to subvert that. I think what Park Chan Wook has now done in two consecutive movies with phones is pretty remarkable and does show a path from making that feel more, um,

• 48:11Sean Fennessey?

  Narratively intriguing, but this movie, if you think about this movie's relationship to phones, it's fascinating because Bob is using a 1G phone that he's desperate to try to charge and he can barely charge it. He talks on payphones.

• 48:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:25Sean Fennessey?

  Willa has a cellphone and it gets thrown out the van and smashed on the ground.

• 48:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:29Sean Fennessey?

  And then Bob, at the end of the movie, when he is essentially like kind of given up, he's like on the back end of his life and he's no longer a progressive, forward-thinking activist person, is trying to figure out how to take selfies and figure out his flash on his phone.

• 48:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:44Sean Fennessey?

  And the movie's relationship to what phones are and what they do is really interesting because it's kind of, it feels more like a sequel to Eddington in that way. It's sort of like in the postmortem of Eddington, the chaos of that movie, if you put your phone down and go be in the world, maybe you can make some change as opposed to just panicking about a world that won't change.

• 49:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 49:09Sean Fennessey?

  And-

• 49:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, the very, very last shot of editing Eddington, though, is the, the landscape of the AI center that is, you know, being built to help your phone further ruining your lives, further ruin your life.

• 49:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 49:23Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's inescapable, uh, which, which to me is the, yeah, they have a ton in common. They're set in the present day about kind of impotent guys, um, trying to figure out what to do with themselves as the world completely falls apart for, you know, political capitalistic reasons. Um, so-

• 49:46Sean Fennessey?

  In the American West.

• 49:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, in the, in the American West. So yes, they are, like, I definitely thought about them. That Eddington has no hope. Um, and I think one battle after another, I'm, you know, I'm, it, it, it wants to have hope and it believes it wants to send, uh, the Willa character out into the world as the next generation, or at least acknowledges that there's, that the next generation might be able to do something that we cannot. So it's not, it doesn't end on a like, we're all fucked.

• 50:16Sean Fennessey?

  You're right.

• 50:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, so to me, those are, you know, that, that is the main difference. I agree with you that like whether or not you're on a phone may determine whether or not you're fucked going forward in life.

• 50:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 50:28Amanda Dobbins?

  They say on YouTube. Um, but you know, I, to, to me, it's an energy and a, and an outlook.

• 50:35Sean Fennessey?

  Then there's something nuanced too. I think at the end of that moment in One Battle where- I think a criticism a lot of older people, you know, lodge against Gen Z is that their version of activism is very soft and that it is very online oriented and not action based and that there's like a friction in the dynamic and you can really feel the weirdness, the kind of anxiety of him ripping a story from the eighties about the sixties and trying to plug it into the present day where if you, if we try to conflate this too much with our modern society, then it gets a little bit dicey trying to unpack it because it's like the most that we got to in 2008, 2009 was like Occupy Wall Street.

• 51:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Sean Fennessey?

  Um, in terms of that rigorous activism based lifestyle. But this movie like kind of presents it the opposite. It says that like Willa is getting in her car and driving to the protest, you know, that she is go, she is like, gets the bat signal to go be a part of something and goes out and finds it, which is not, I don't, I don't even know if hopeful is the right word there, but it is forward thinking. It is the sense that like people are still fighting, which-

• 51:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's not a, it's not a foregone conclusion.

• 51:48Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 51:48Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not done.

• 51:49Sean Fennessey?

  Like, you know-

• 51:50Amanda Dobbins?

  At the end of Eddington, the center is built.

• 51:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and one of the reasons why I jived with that movie so much is because I don't have a lot of hope.

• 51:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:57Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I'm very cynical and am not in an activism era of my life at all.

• 52:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:03Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and, and part of why Bob is so interesting to me is that that is a very resonant thing of just like, you know, I'd rather just get high and watch Battle of Algiers on my couch.

• 52:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 52:11Sean Fennessey?

  Because that's all there is left to do. It's just, these are very like, I think they're both very sensitive portraits of super flawed failing people and-

• 52:21Amanda Dobbins?

  In failing times.

• 52:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, and Eddington is more comic and one battle after another is more sincere, but one battle after another is really funny and Eddington is really devastating. And so they're, they're almost like mirror images of each other in some ways. I totally understand people drawing the conclusion. I prefer one battle after another at this point, but it doesn't, it doesn't take away from my appreciation for-

• 52:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Same.

• 52:45Sean Fennessey?

  Ari's movie.

• 52:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I like, I am ultimately a softie, you know, and I, and, or I would like to, I would like to, I, I would like to believe in hope. I like what PTA is offering at the end of it, even though I, I still think it's pretty- Eddington's hardcore, you know, I like, it's, it's really, it's hardcore and I really respect it.

• 53:04Sean Fennessey?

  I do too. Um, okay, let's do a couple more.

• 53:08Speaker 05

  Okay. Olivia asked our next question. Can you spend some time working to suss out what makes a PTA movie a PTA movie? To me, PTA being the same guy who did One Battle After Another and Punch Drunk Love is wild. What are your thoughts? Can you define PTA's films in terms of style, tone, or interest?

• 53:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, One Battle After Another and Punch Drunk Love are about two guys with an inability to connect socially with the world, who are also thinking outside the box of your traditional capitalist structures in order to, I don't know, try to feel something. So there's, you know, there's a lot of similarity there.

• 53:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think all of his protagonists, there's a through line through all of his protagonists, for sure, from Doc Sportello to Dirk Diggler, they all have a kind of sensibility that I talked about on the last episode, where they're all really horny and they're all creative, but socially obtuse, and they're good at solving things, but they do it in a bumbling way, you know, like they're all, it's

• 54:24Amanda Dobbins?

  There's a man on the other line of the telephone screaming at them?

• 54:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, there's a mattress man on the other end. Um, so that's one way you can kind of spot one of his movies is there's a consistent characteristic in the protagonists, but um, I think there are a few other things. I think there is a sensibility about sexuality that he's very unashamed of, that I think is really just normal and common and interesting and funny to men.

• 54:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:53Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe to women too. But for me, speaking as a man, to men. And this movie's got like five sex jokes in it. And all of his movies have five sex jokes.

• 55:00Amanda Dobbins?

  They do, yeah.

• 55:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's like, that's his sense of humor. And it could be seen as juvenile or it could be seen as natural, naturally occurring. And there is like a sense of perversion, you know, there's a guy who watched like a lot of pornography as a young person, you know, like, and if you process that through the movies and the kinds of stories and the kinds of characters that he writes, there's a person who casts porn stars in movies, it's a person who, you know, is calling a nunnery the Sisters of the Brave Beaver, you know, like, he's

• 55:30Sean Fennessey?

  He's like a horn dog pervert. That's like one of his things that, you know, I'm sure he's a wonderful dad and he seemed like a lovely guy. But only always had great interactions with him. I really like him personally, just in conversations with that.

• 55:40Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a part of humanity.

• 55:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he's into his stuff. And like, that's a thing that helps to make someone seem singular. You know, like there are jokes in this movie that would not appear in any other movie like this. And we can talk about the collision of satire and real world stakes. We can talk about the male psyche and, you know, as Adam Nayman will share with us shortly, his relationship to female characters. I think Adam's insights into that are really, really good.

• 56:08Sean Fennessey?

  There are a lot of things that you can look at. I wonder if Olivia, I wonder how old she is. Because I do think you can-

• 56:15Amanda Dobbins?

  You don't need to age shame her.

• 56:16Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not age shaming her. I'm just gonna cite that if you have been paying attention since the movies have started being released, you can see progressions and recurrences that feel very connected.

• 56:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's true of most filmmakers.

• 56:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I, I think there's obviously a difference in scale and in these movies and just in, I mean, this is a big budget action movie, you know, and Punch Drunk Love mostly happens like in a warehouse in the valley.

• 56:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 56:42Amanda Dobbins?

  So I, you know.

• 56:42Sean Fennessey?

  And Hawaii.

• 56:43Amanda Dobbins?

  That, you're right. You're right. And Hawaii. Thank you. Yes. With the airline miles. But, so I, I think scale and,

• 56:54Amanda Dobbins?

  and number of characters, even though Punch Drunk Love does have, you know, a tremendous number of, of, of women who also have opinions and are calling him on the phone to yell at him.

• 57:04Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I also, the John Bryan score in that film, which is simultaneously very big and lush and then very kind of like nervy and weird and plinking is very similar to One Battle.

• 57:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And like the, the song that plays between the two, the receivers.

• 57:22Sean Fennessey?

  Oh yeah, the melody.

• 57:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:24Sean Fennessey?

  Very, very much, very much. Sounds like that. So yeah, I could see they have something, they definitely have some things in common. It's a, it's a person working at a totally different scale, as you said. Okay. I mean, there's more we could probably talk about in terms of his style, but I'm not an expert in how he moves the camera or the color palette that he explores. They're all we're seeing. What's next, Jack?

• 57:46Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Peter. I couldn't help but think on my drive home, how much one battle after another is similar to Star Wars. The revolutionaries, Jedi, get betrayed by the chosen one, fall apart and all have to go into hiding. Years later, the child gets told to lie about their dead parent. Please help me find more One Battle After Another connections.

• 58:08Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Leonardo DiCaprio himself made this, this observation in my conversation with them. He was like, I keep thinking about Star Wars when I think about this movie, which is great.

• 58:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And we were talking about Last Jedi for some reason and training. And then it came up for One Battle After Another and how grouchy the Mark Hamill is in Last Jedi, but it's hard to be an aging revolutionary, you know?

• 58:30Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 58:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 58:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I think Bob does it with more grace personally.

• 58:36Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of people have been asking for the syllabus for this movie. I'm a little like betwixt and between on syllabuses because I like doing them. People seem to like them, but I feel like they give away too much of the movie usually.

• 58:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 58:44Sean Fennessey?

  And also now all the filmmakers are like, I have a syllabus.

• 58:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:47Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm like, have the marketing people been just watching the syllabus and then telling the filmmakers to just do it themselves?

• 58:51Amanda Dobbins?

  We need to invent the concept of a syllabus.

• 58:54Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, The Ringer's been doing syllabuses for a long time since before I started, but

• 58:57Amanda Dobbins?

  But sure.

• 58:57Sean Fennessey?

  They're very specific filmmaking, like watch these movies.

• 59:01Amanda Dobbins?

  So you have here, we have three things. We have three sections. This is where you really, you know, logged into blogspot. But the first you have here are Paul's picks. So are all these all movies that he cited?

• 59:12Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Paul and Leo, in part in my conversation cited these movies. So when we talked, Leo cited Star Wars.

• 59:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:19Sean Fennessey?

  And then later he talked about Dog Day Afternoon because of all of the phone conversations that Al Pacino has in that movie. And so phone acting being a thing to think about, which I thought was a great observation. Paul pointed out The Lion and Winter and he was like, There's no tangible connection from my story of one battle after another to The Lion and Winter, but he said it's the best acting you will ever see in your life. And so he was like, I asked Leo to look at that.

• 59:41Amanda Dobbins?

  True.

• 59:42Sean Fennessey?

  Great. And then the five that they cited ahead of the release, it was part of the official syllabus, which we got into a little bit in the talk, was Searchers, Running on Empty, Battle of Algiers, which we see in the film, French Connection, car chases, and Midnight Run with the comic sensibility. I think specifically between Sergio and Bob. So there's callbacks in the movie.

• 1:00:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:00:04Sean Fennessey?

  You pointed out Casablanca, of course, a very important one with the French 75 and with Prophidia.

• 1:00:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:00:10Sean Fennessey?

  Set it off is literally something that Jungle Pussy says when they're robbing the bank. She's like, this is some set it off shit. Great moment. Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

• 1:00:18Amanda Dobbins?

  The shot of Sean.

• 1:00:19Sean Fennessey?

  Sean Penn rising. And then a lot of people have pointed back to that 1997 interview with Charlie Rose that Paul Thomas Anderson gave, where he told his story about film class, film school.

• 1:00:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:00:30Sean Fennessey?

  And he was like, I didn't go to film school because like, the first day I went into film school, I sat down and the first thing the professor said to us was, if you're here to write Terminator 2: Judgment Day, leave. And Paul was like, what if somebody, what if that's their favorite movie? How could you just say that to people when they come in to make it to film class? And he, you know, turned on the idea of film school very hard in that moment. And he's obviously nodding to it in this. And I mentioned Star Wars and Doctor Strangelove, which I also talked about in our episode.

• 1:00:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And that was the first thing that Spielberg brought up when we, when we saw him talking with PTA.

• 1:00:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And Kubrick also, you know, Kubrick getting older and a little bit less in fashion, but Kubrick always been a big person for PTA. He's talked about it many times. So here's like the work that I've done. I'll try to talk about this very quickly.

• 1:01:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:11Sean Fennessey?

  So I think you can really deepen the context of this movie with a bunch of movies. I pair them as double features. The first one is Putney Swope, Robert Downey Senior's satire that I think I did mention last week.

• 1:01:22Amanda Dobbins?

  You did.

• 1:01:23Sean Fennessey?

  And then The Three Day Pass, which is Melvin Van Peeble's his first film about an interracial relationship that is a very interesting movie. The next grouping is Fast Times at Ridgemont High,

• 1:01:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:33Sean Fennessey?

  Which also has an American Girl needle drop.

• 1:01:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I didn't remember that.

• 1:01:37Sean Fennessey?

  And obviously features Sean Penn. Paired with that, Chris mentioned Cheech and Chong. Up in Smoke is probably their best movie. And The Big Lebowski.

• 1:01:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:01:45Sean Fennessey?

  Undeniable homage to Big Lebowski in this movie. Number eight is for the revolutionaries. I just rewatched The Weather Underground, which is a documentary about the activist organization, the violent activists in the 1960s, which spends time interviewing them in the present day of 2002, which is really fascinating psychological portrait of people. And like the fact that so many of the people portrayed in the movie are still as hardline about their ideas as they were in 1968. And then The Company You Keep, which is the last movie directed by Robert Redford, that is modeled on some of the people from The Weather Underground and a man who goes into hiding and becomes a lawyer in a small town. Pretty interesting movie. Number seven, I mentioned Uptight, the Jules Dassin movie from the late 60s about black revolutionaries. And then Judas and the Black Messiah.

• 1:02:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:02:30Sean Fennessey?

  Really the only other movie I could think of from the last 15 years in which revolutionary acts are portrayed on screen.

• 1:02:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm sure we're missing some.

• 1:02:38Sean Fennessey?

  From a studio, you know, from like a big studio.

• 1:02:41Sean Fennessey?

  Zabriskie Point Medium Cool, I think I mentioned both of those when Chris was asking about it. Vanishing Point for the car chases.

• 1:02:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:47Sean Fennessey?

  Along with Duel.

• 1:02:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:49Sean Fennessey?

  And there is a Dodge Challenger in Vanishing Point that reminds me a lot of Avanti Q's car. Parallax of You Include for the score and the conspiracies. Support the Girls, which is Andrew Bujalski's movie from about 10 years ago about a Hooters style restaurant and the waitresses who work there.

• 1:03:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Is that with Haley Lou Richardson?

• 1:03:12Sean Fennessey?

  Haley Lou Richardson is a star, along with two stars from One Battle After Another, Regina Hall, who plays the manager of the restaurant. And Jungle Pussy, Shayna McHale, is also one of the waitresses. That's where they met. I wonder how they came together for this movie. And then A Thousand and One, which is Tiana Taylor's movie, A.V. Rockwell's movie that she stars in from a couple of years ago that I thought was just an absolute knockout. Silence of the Lambs, speaking of American Girl needle drops, and Deep Focus. Close Ups, Jonathan Demme's movie, along with Something Wild, Demme's other movie, which kind of feels like two sides of the coin, the same that this movie like has like 40 minutes of a certain style and then 40 minutes of another style. And then Nashville and Shortcuts for the Altman heads.

• 1:03:53Amanda Dobbins?

  There you go.

• 1:03:53Sean Fennessey?

  Big ensemble dramas.

• 1:03:55Amanda Dobbins?

  You're not weed dad, you can be weed programmer.

• 1:03:58Sean Fennessey?

  That I would love.

• 1:03:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:00Sean Fennessey?

  That's where I'm headed.

• 1:04:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 1:04:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's really where I'm headed.

• 1:04:02Amanda Dobbins?

  For you.

• 1:04:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Will someone buy me a movie theater?

• 1:04:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. No, you'll use your currency, which are discs, in order to trade it for

• 1:04:11Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:04:11Amanda Dobbins?

  a movie theater.

• 1:04:12Sean Fennessey?

  Got it. Sounds great. Thank you for letting me.

• 1:04:14Amanda Dobbins?

  That's how the new economy works, you know?

• 1:04:17Sean Fennessey?

  The barter system?

• 1:04:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:18Sean Fennessey?

  When our currency fails.

• 1:04:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:04:19Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I do have some, I have some rare materials that people may want.

• 1:04:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, wait, we gotta do one more. Can we do? Yeah. Do we have time for one more?

• 1:04:26Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:26Amanda Dobbins?

  That was really good.

• 1:04:27Sean Fennessey?

  No, we can do two more. Let's do two more.

• 1:04:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, let's do two more.

• 1:04:29Speaker 05

  All right, we'll start with James and end on the special.

• 1:04:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  James has a question here. He says, what are some small moments or shots in One Battle After Another, or any PTA movie for that matter, that you can't stop thinking about?

• 1:04:43Sean Fennessey?

  My favorite thing in the movie is

• 1:04:49Sean Fennessey?

  when Willa is in the yard with her dog and this Johnny Greenwood, like, kind of bluesy, atonal guitar is playing. And then the camera shoots up and we see a hawk flying overhead outside of her and Bob's house in Bacton Cross. And then we cut back, I think, to Bob looking out the window. And then we shoot back to that same image where we saw the hawk flying overhead. And then we see a Black Hawk helicopter.

• 1:05:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:15Sean Fennessey?

  And that is the signal that the movie is about to go sideways. That we know that, you know, the MKU is on their way and the lockjaw is here to blow up whatever is happening in Bacton Cross. That's just a visual filmmaking, I guess, metaphorical thing that is beautiful and interesting and a little nerdy, but that I like a lot.

• 1:05:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I have, I think mine are more the little character moments. Not surprising coming from me, I guess. But, um,

• 1:05:47Amanda Dobbins?

  the, this, the, see, all the scenes in the tunnel, really all of the scenes of Benicio del Toro, of Sensei interacting with all of the, um, the families who he's giving a safe place to and, and then moving. And, um, just little moments of like, you know, don't be scared or it's okay, like, all in Spanish.

• 1:06:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And all of these, all of these, you know, these families and like what they're clutching. I mean, there is just, there is something. And, and the movie spends time of all of it. With, you know, the opening scenes, um, when the French 75er.

• 1:06:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Liberating that camp, sort of, in the tunnel, that long shot through the apartment that you talked about. Um, I think, what else?

• 1:06:34Sean Fennessey?

  I had, I had small, like, some people asked, somebody asked me online, why we don't see, okay, so something that I love that hit me hard the last two times I saw was just the Steely Dan needle drop into seeing Willa performing karate. And then we get that hard close up on Benicio's face, and he says, you're not breathing. And then go back, and she's synchronized to Steely Dan's dirty work. And for whatever reason, it just kind of gives me chills now when I watch that scene. For the longest time, that song, to me, was Tony Soprano's song. That's the song that James Gandolfini is singing when he's driving the car, in that New Jersey accent. It's very funny. And now that song belongs to that

• 1:07:14Sean Fennessey?

  moment in the movie. But there is a moment later in the movie where Lockjaw is trying to drag Willa to Avanti Q, to his car, and she hits him with a takedown. And she drops her knee, and she hits him with a karate move. And he goes down. This is like a soldier who goes down. And so when the person was like, why doesn't she ever use karate? I was like, she does. She uses like a real, uh, I don't know enough about karate to explain what it is that she's doing. But you can see that it is from her training. And I really like the through line of that, too.

• 1:07:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Thought of another one, which is the shot at the, it's a shot mirroring the beginning of the movie, at the very end, when, um, Profidia is reading the letter, and remember, and they, they shot, they cut back to Leo and Profidia and baby Willa, or baby Charlene, in bed together. And the first time you've seen it, she's crying, and no one can console her, and it's really tough. And then the, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start crying, but like the last moment is-

• 1:08:17Sean Fennessey?

  They're happy.

• 1:08:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. It's really lovely.

• 1:08:19Sean Fennessey?

  So, not to, not to-

• 1:08:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Sorry, sorry to be parents on a podcast.

• 1:08:24Sean Fennessey?

  Not to dispel your feelings about this, but I've had a couple of friends, including our friend Michael, ask us, ask me.

• 1:08:32Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think that Bob wrote the letter?

• 1:08:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, um.

• 1:08:36Sean Fennessey?

  Which is not how I read that scene, but I think there are some people who are speculating that maybe he did that.

• 1:08:42Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not.

• 1:08:42Sean Fennessey?

  To free her.

• 1:08:43Amanda Dobbins?

  And that's, and that's beautiful in its own way.

• 1:08:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, I didn't, I didn't respond to it that way, just because Tiana Taylor is reading the letter and like, reading the letter.

• 1:08:57Sean Fennessey?

  That is what, that's, that's how I feel. That's how I feel.

• 1:09:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and because I really did interpret.

• 1:09:06Amanda Dobbins?

  The, the reasons for her leaving are very complex. And one of the things I like about this movie is that it's not just like, mom, motherhood is hard, you know, it's like, um, everything's all entwined together, but it does, that scene is a very beautiful and it's really a montage of just the many ways in which that period of life can be difficult and figuring out who you are as a person. And so to me, it makes sense that in the moment, in that moment, you would only remember the crying and then, you know, 20 years later, you would remember that lovely moment.

• 1:09:40Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think I said this on the episode, but Eileen and I talked about it after we saw it. The other thing I like about that, those scenes is that when Perfidia is talking about how she feels about like her jealousy and her frustration and her, you know, her experiencing postpartum, we never see her. We always see Bob standing outside the room because that almost feels like PTA saying like, this is as close as I can get.

• 1:10:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:04Sean Fennessey?

  To understanding this, which I thought was extremely powerful. Like, you know, obviously from my perspective of not being able to like, you kind of can't help, like, there's not really anything you can do in that scenario if you're in Bob's shoes.

• 1:10:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Sean Fennessey?

  But you do feel close to that.

• 1:10:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Or, or you see Bob and the baby together and you see her watching it, which is like a very, um, you know, they're, they're writing about like, I carried her for nine months and now she gets to be.

• 1:10:32Sean Fennessey?

  Adored.

• 1:10:32Amanda Dobbins?

  The person is like, is, is spot on. Like that is like, really, that is like known stuff.

• 1:10:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Whoever's contributing that. So, but, but you know, the, the camera's communicating that distance. So that stuff.

• 1:10:46Sean Fennessey?

  What a, what a great movie.

• 1:10:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's really good.

• 1:10:50Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is brought to you by Hulu. Glenn Powell is Chad Powers.

• 1:10:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Hi Glenn!

• 1:10:55Sean Fennessey?

  Coming September 30th to Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ Eight years after flushing his college football career down the toilet, hotshot quarterback Russ Holiday makes a comeback disguised as Chad Powers. An oddball athletic talent who walks onto the struggling South Georgia Catfish, determined to once again take college football by storm. Watch the hilarious new Hulu original series Chad Powers. September 30th, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ For bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 1:11:23Sean Fennessey?

  Let's do one more question, Jack.

• 1:11:25Speaker 05

  All right, our last one comes from Sharon and it's not PTA related. She says, "I am a longtime listener of the show."

• 1:11:30Amanda Dobbins?

  It is a little. At the end.

• 1:11:32Speaker 05

  That is true. Good point. "I am a longtime listener of the show and proud member of the Dob Mob. I recently secured two tickets to the upcoming live show in New York City, which I am unbelievably excited about. They were supposed to be for my boyfriend and I, but we recently split up. Would you guys be willing to help a newly single big pick girl meet her big pick boy? And help me put the word out that I'm looking for NYC-based listeners who might want to buy my second ticket and be my date to the show. I'm 29, live in the East Village, and this is my Letterboxd top four: The Social Network, Phantom Thread, Lady Bird, and Clueless." And Amanda had me reach out.

• 1:12:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so can I explain why?

• 1:12:08Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 1:12:08Amanda Dobbins?

  So I had you, right back to Sharon, because I wanted to get like, some parameters before people can submit themselves. So I asked for like, what are three movies that any prospective New York City-based date should know and love? And then also to understand sort of like lifestyle compatibility, I asked, what time of day does Sharon listen to the big picture?

• 1:12:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Jack, please read the answers.

• 1:12:37Speaker 05

  Her three movies are The Social Network, Phantom Thread, and Marriage Story. And she listens during her morning runs.

• 1:12:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I think I might need to be Sharon's date, honestly.

• 1:12:50Amanda Dobbins?

  But I have to be on stage, so I, those are, those are really good answers. Except for, I will say, I am married to someone who listens to this podcast during runs and who listens to podcasts during runs. I do feel that it is a psychotic act.

• 1:13:05Sean Fennessey?

  It's not something I would do.

• 1:13:06Amanda Dobbins?

  But I know that there are many people that do it. So if you are a New York City-based boy.

• 1:13:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Who is like available and not weird and wants to buy the ticket.

• 1:13:19Sean Fennessey?

  Huge caveat there.

• 1:13:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I know, but I was, I was a little nervous about this, but then I was like, it is like a group event. So everyone else who has tickets to the New York City show, we're all going to be responsible for each other. We're all looking out for each other and for Sharon and also for my in-laws who are going to be there. So everyone behave. But anyway, if you are New York City based, single guy, who is looking for a ticket to the show and is also open to the possibility, like maybe you'll have romantic sparks. Maybe you won't. Maybe you'll just make a friend. That's great too. Email, what's our email again, Jack?

• 1:13:53Speaker 05

  Big pick mailbag at gmail.com.

• 1:13:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. And I'm going to read them and I.

• 1:13:58Sean Fennessey?

  I am not.

• 1:13:59Amanda Dobbins?

  And yeah, Sean's not I, and I'm going to collab with Sharon and we like, we will pick someone. But then we're not, I'm not going to, we're not going to further put you on blast. This is just like a one time service that I work with you, but make the emails good, you know? Make your case.

• 1:14:15Speaker 05

  I mean, the greenest of flags for the three movies she listed.

• 1:14:18Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, you know, I mean, I do, I do feel like I'm being worked a little bit, but that's okay.

• 1:14:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Sharon is a bot.

• 1:14:24Speaker 05

  To be fair though, she in the original email, put down her letterbox top four before I reached out.

• 1:14:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:14:31Speaker 05

  And two of the three movies she wrote back was in her top four. So I don't think she's catering.

• 1:14:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. But it's good that you also need to know and love marriage story because you should understand that relationships can be complicated.

• 1:14:42Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe a red flag, loving marriage story. I'm just putting that out there.

• 1:14:46Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, it's fine.

• 1:14:47Speaker 05

  What are you talking about?

• 1:14:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Will you say the, say the email one more time?

• 1:14:50Sean Fennessey?

  It means you get a sick high off of watching the dissolution of love.

• 1:14:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't get a sick high. I cry.

• 1:14:55Speaker 05

  Do you get a sick high from watching There Will Be Blood?

• 1:14:58Sean Fennessey?

  Of course. Yeah. Cause we all live under God and capitalism. You know, we have to understand that.

• 1:15:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yasi Salak just texted me, do you feel like it's important to see one battle in IMAX or regular is fine? Yasi.

• 1:15:11Sean Fennessey?

  I hope she listens to this episode.

• 1:15:12Amanda Dobbins?

  You should listen to this episode by Yasi. I'm once again answering your text on a podcast. I think if you can get an IMAX ticket, sure, but regular is fine. As long as you like the theater. Go see it.

• 1:15:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Let's go to our friend Adam Eamon.

• 1:15:32Sean Fennessey?

  As Amanda just introduced him, one of the great scholars is here to talk about one of the great films, Adam Nam and the mean pod guy. I don't suspect much meanness from you today. How are you doing, Adam?

• 1:15:42Speaker 06

  I'm doing okay. The Toronto Blue Jays are in the playoffs.

• 1:15:45Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, we didn't have to start. That was not the right place to start this conversation.

• 1:15:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It's the only bad part of the weekend for Sean.

• 1:15:52Speaker 06

  I'm, I'm, I'm just in a good mood. We don't, we don't make the playoffs that often, you know, it's a good, it's a good day.

• 1:15:58Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I'm happy for you, I guess.

• 1:16:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:16:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Let's talk about brighter news. The brighter news is that one battle after another is, is out in the world. And this is an unusual situation, and here's why. Nearly unanimous acclaim from critics, not entirely unanimous, but nearly. And I think that there are some listeners of this show who know that you are a very rigorous and hard charging critic, and you are not swayed by the crowd. You follow your own light, which we all respect and admire. And you also loved this movie. So before we dig into the movie a little bit more, I'm curious what you make of the fact that, you know, we're, we've fallen in line on one battle after another. Is this a generational masterpiece in the way that it has been discussed in your eyes?

• 1:16:47Speaker 06

  I mean, I would say that people are trying to rally around something at the moment for a lot of reasons. I think film culture is trying to find things to rally around. And some of it is a little bit of that throwback mentality, a phrase you may have heard a couple of times, you know, we're so back, you know?

• 1:17:05Sean Fennessey?

  Never heard of it.

• 1:17:07Speaker 06

  Never heard of it. You know, there's, there's a desire to have movies that kind of make us feel the way we felt at a certain point. You don't want to say make movies great again, right? But to capture something of a past, to feel like movies are pushing against bigger cultural trends. So either find movies that are authentically political that feel like sites of resistance, or try and construct them as sites of resistance. We like to think about people spending money the right way, whatever that means. We saw earlier this year, there was that sort of really stupid cycle of press around sinners, like, is this movie going to make its money back? And then it more than did. So that sort of gives that film a different kind of clout, right? Like a director made a movie with big studio money and it succeeded. People were trying to do the same thing with Mong Jun Ho.

• 1:17:53Speaker 06

  And Mickey 17, which was less of a happy ending, I think, on both fronts. People have invested a lot in Paul Thomas Anderson, right? They've invested stuff in him from the beginning because he's always pushed for final cut. And he's very ambitious. And there's an idea of an American cinema that you guys are very conversant with. Sean, I watched your Altman introduction on the Criterion Channel last night. I hadn't watched it yet, you know, it was really good. And an idea of like what a maverick, tough, uncompromising filmmaker works with. These are myths, right? But there's truth in them. This is one reason why people really like this movie. There's also the fact that the first wave of critical reaction to this movie is very white

• 1:18:36Speaker 06

  and very male and deeply happy to have access to it and happy to sort of try and be on the front lines of trying to say, here's some actually good news. And I'll be interested to see how it does with the longer, deeper cycles of discourse, because if the movie can't stand up to that, and if a movie can't have consensus challenge, it's actually probably not very good. But when I sat down to write the piece, not only did I not feel like challenging consensus, I felt like I was on the front lines of a movie I reacted really strongly to. In some cases was like exhilarated by and then tried to manage that response and writing about it honestly, because he's leaving himself open to some things with this movie.

• 1:19:21Speaker 06

  And that has to be talked about as well as the craft and the performance and the we are so back stuff. I believe in all that, but it's a big enough movie that you got to chip away with it a little bit.

• 1:19:33Sean Fennessey?

  Are you surprised by the critical more or less consensus?

• 1:19:38Amanda Dobbins?

  No, because to Adam's point, it does feel like even right now in the cycle, we're still in phase, you know, like the first circle of film critics, Letterboxd bros, movie nerds to Adam's point, like a pretty predominantly white boy culture, though, you know, I guess I can be a PTA boy too, but you know, I have half of that covered. And so it does seem like we are still like at target audience and it's going to keep growing.

• 1:20:13Amanda Dobbins?

  On the other hand, and you know, this is just anecdotal evidence, but I have many people in my life who have tickets for a few weeks from now, who don't normally go see every single movie in theater. So it feels like it, we're at the start of something and it's, and it's growing. And that is maybe not surprising, but exciting.

• 1:20:36Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's some correlation in what you're describing and what you're describing too, which is that one of the reasons why critics race to the front line just to, to excitedly share their love and obsession with a new movie. Certainly there's like some ego involved and there's all kinds of cloud chasing that comes with this era of criticism and the expanded nature of it. And the fact that a lot of people have voices now, which is more or less a good thing. Um, I think there is a genuine desire to, to proselytize for art and to get, encourage people who normally wouldn't go see a two hour and 45 minute movie about, you know, revolutionary politics in some ways, uh, to

• 1:21:20Sean Fennessey?

  get them to go out to go see it, to explain how exciting it is and how fun it is and how deep it is. And that's, that's a good thing. Like, I don't, I don't really have a problem with that. I, I liked what you said, Adam, though, that if the movie is not being challenged, that's probably a bad sign. Um, I think there is a certain strain of criticism that like, is singularly positive. Um, and maybe even, even in this, uh, conversation we have today on the episode, we can talk about some things that like, maybe don't click as much or don't make as much sense. But you said, he leaves himself open to some things. Like, I'm curious what, what it is you think he's leaving himself open to with the movie?

• 1:21:54Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, leaving himself open or just by nature of his authorship open, right? We have a tendency to sort of graft filmmakers onto their movies and look for those strains of autobiography, right? And, you know, if a movie's not personal, then it's impersonal. And that's kind of shorthand for hackery. And whatever you think of Paul Thomas Anderson, that's not what he is, right? Even his detractors, even the keenest critics would never suggest that this is an impersonal filmmaker. So you look at this as a film where DiCaprio's character, and it's been a- It's been a byproduct of so many readings of the film already that there's, you know, a strand of potential autobiography in there, not least of all because you're dealing with the white father of mixed race daughter, but also that Bob sort of seems to be generationally

• 1:22:36Speaker 06

  and age wise somewhat analogous to Paul Thomas Anderson. Anxieties about parenting are now at the other end of the spectrum than they were at the beginning of his films. He used to make movies about absent fathers, dying fathers, imperfect fathers who were sort of seen from the point of view of their kids. Now that's been kind of flipped around in some ways with this movie, but also that Bob's job is to create diversions for a revolutionary sect. Like he's the showman, you know, they're like, Bob, make a distraction, Bob, or Pat rather as ghetto Pat, you know, set off the fireworks. And I read something of his shift to action filmmaking in that idea that his job is not to have the politics or the ideas, it's to create the show.

• 1:23:18Speaker 06

  And then you have what he's chosen to adapt from Vineland and then tweak very, very strenuously in the direction of kind of like, is this radical chic? You know, that Tom Wolfe idea from the sixties, Wolfe, a contemporary of Pinchons, that you're not really that interested in the politics, you're interested in the performance and in the appropriation of that performance with Pat slash Bob as one of the few white members of a predominantly African American sect, or let's just say a diverse group of revolutionaries, but very much headed by a, by a kind of female black leader in Perfidia, Beverly Hills, played by Tiana Taylor, and that what unites Bob slash Pat and also Lockjaw,

• 1:24:00Speaker 06

  the Sean Penn character, is a degree of fetishism towards that woman, towards Tiana Taylor's character. And PTA has been written about, I don't want to say accused because it's so loaded, right? Like he's been written about and debated in terms of his gender politics and particularly the way women are objects of desire in his movies and the master in Her and Vice, it's always chasing an absent woman, there will be blood is defined by female absence. And here you have another woman who disappears. She happens to be seen. The most principled, aggressive, you know, visionary member of this group who then sort of bails and doesn't just snitch on her compatriots, but sort of walks out on her family.

• 1:24:43Speaker 06

  This is all stuff that should not pass without comment. It shouldn't just be folded into like, wow, this movie is well made. You know, I think it serves what's interesting about the movie, which is that he is dealing, I think, I said this in my review with with you guys. He is dealing with his role in telling this story. And I can't tell if he is staying in his lane or swerving a little bit. And that's why some of the ways that people have read the movie's politics are pretty it or the question whether he even really has politics, or if that's just the texture of this action movie story. It's interesting.

• 1:25:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I've been thinking a little bit about the conversation that we had about it. And the way that the end of the movie confronts you with the idea of what did Pat and his cohort and perfidia accomplish, if anything at all.

• 1:25:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:25:33Sean Fennessey?

  And I think that I think you're right that the movie is not communicating. This is good politics. And I think a lot of the like immediate online backlash from people who reject revolutionary politics is just this very binary reading of like, if this is in a movie, then it's bad.

• 1:25:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:50Sean Fennessey?

  And I don't, I think the movie has this really interesting relationship to the first generation of revolutionaries where more or most of them, if not all of them, are either murdered, sent into exile, um, imprisoned and or left behind. You know, in the case of Bob, who's just a dad, a burned out dad on a couch. There is a very hopeful portrait of Willa.

• 1:26:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:15Sean Fennessey?

  You know, who's excitedly pursuing her future, but is kind of left with the wreckage of everything that came before. And I think that like crosses over interestingly with the showman concept that you're suggesting, Adam, this idea that like. What did I really do with the last 30 years of my life? You know, I made some fun movies and what did that, what did that amount to? Which is maybe self critical, maybe just something that kind of all men in their 40s and 50s start doing, where they're just sort of like, what was I, I thought this was so important. Why did I waste my time on this?

• 1:26:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, to Adam's point about the autobiographical or semi autobiographical nature of this, like, you know, most of that, that feeling and the obviousness of it is located in the Bob character and his sad bathrobe. But, um, I, you know, the perfidia Beverly Hills character has her own version of that. And I like, I think we walked out of the theater saying like, okay, so what, like where, where will the challenges to this movie be? Like, what will people, and, and that character is obviously, that's him taking on someone other than his experience and, and like going for it. That is a person, that is a character who is the leader of the politics, but also, you know,

• 1:27:33Amanda Dobbins?

  is subject to all of this fetishization and then rats and then disappears. So you like, you have a lot of sticky things there. I do think that the characterization of perfidia and like, explains it and develops it and brings in those, not just the sense of, of failure. I didn't get to hint on what I needed to do, but all, you know, the, everything having to do with whether you call it postpartum depression or just what it means to have a kid, what it means to experience, um, that, like the sexual,

• 1:28:11Amanda Dobbins?

  like abuse, I guess, you know, or fetishization and, and how that affects your politics and who you are as a person and how you want to do things. Like it is, it is all in the text. Now I'm, you know, whether it's developed enough, whether it's centered enough, to Adam's point, I think that like, those will be the good conversations and as more people see it and it grows, but. I, you know, like, the profidia Beverly Hills stuff is a prologue to the rest of the movie, you know, and that character does hang over the, the rest of the film, which is different than it being about that character. So I completely understand if there's pushback. But I like, I like, you know, it's pretty textured, especially in the context of women

• 1:28:55Amanda Dobbins?

  characters in PTA movies.

• 1:28:58Speaker 06

  Well, like, this is a guy, he uses female absence.

• 1:29:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:02Speaker 06

  A lot, right? I mean, and there will be blood, there's no women. And you sort of see what it is. Aside from Mary Sunday, the kid.

• 1:29:09Sean Fennessey?

  Beautiful Mary Sunday. Look at the relationship between Daniel and Mary.

• 1:29:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:29:14Speaker 06

  For sure. But I mean, there's a, there's an absence there that defines Daniel's psychology and the kind of homo-social, homoerotic thing in There Will Be Blood. The master's all about like leaving literally Doris Day behind. You know, every woman in that movie is sort of like a specter of his teenage sweetheart. Her advice, quite literally, is about Shasta being gone. I mean, Phantom Thread, the absent mother, Reynolds' mother, and Wetherell is sort of replacing her. It's like, of course, he's going to structure this movie. And everything Amanda said about profidia is exactly right. And that's his authorship, right? He is taking a small part of Vineland and scooping out her narrative into the present tense because he likes to tell the story this way. It's just very loaded when it's not just an absent

• 1:29:58Speaker 06

  female character, but it's this absent female, black revolutionary, whose example hangs over not just her husband, but also her daughter.

• 1:30:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:30:07Speaker 06

  And the other models of resistance we see in the, in the movie. It's not about good or bad. It's just, I can see where the anxiety from some viewers is, is coming from in that case, because it's extra, it's, it's extra loaded.

• 1:30:22Sean Fennessey?

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• 1:31:55Sean Fennessey?

  I think the most resonant scene featuring her for me, especially having seen the movie quite a few times now, is the scene right before she leaves the house after Will has been born, when she has the conversation with, with Ghetto Pat. And she's explaining that this is the new consciousness. Right. You know, your unoriginality, I'm not, you know, I'm not interested in that. And it's, you know, her trying to claim not just a version of independence, but a new way of being alive and recognized in the world. And immediately after that scene is the bank robbery and her arrest and her humiliation and eventually her turning on her friends and then her disappearance from the movie. And that's

• 1:32:41Sean Fennessey?

  A consequence of her trying to break the expectations of a person in society, of a woman and a mother, of a person's politics. And I don't think it's, I think it's very sympathetic to her, you know? And I don't think it judges her, which I think I said last week. I think it just shows how borderline impossible it is to actually execute on those kinds of ideas and to live in that way when everybody expects you to do a certain thing in the world.

• 1:33:09Amanda Dobbins?

  There is also, just to credit Tiana Taylor's performance, the way that she even says that line, like, this is a new consciousness, like, it is not the rallying cry that she has, you know, in the opening scene. Yeah, and it's complicated, and that is communicating a lot, not just about where she is in her own life, but where she is in relationship to the revolution. I mean, it's an amazing performance. There's been a lot of speculation about who should get this. They can all get supporting nods, but I know where my vote was going.

• 1:33:38Sean Fennessey?

  You're, you're.

• 1:33:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I might know where it's going, yeah.

• 1:33:40Sean Fennessey?

  Tiana Taylor.

• 1:33:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I am, yeah.

• 1:33:43Sean Fennessey?

  What was most striking to you about the movie? What surprised you the most?

• 1:33:48Speaker 06

  I mean, I was surprised, even as a fan of his, just how fluid and intense the storytelling is in those first 40 minutes. I mean, one common refrain, not just from critics, but like on Letterboxd with friends, is they're like, that first 40 minutes takes like five minutes, you know? And he has this amazing ability, I wouldn't call him a montage-driven filmmaker necessarily. This is definitely, in some ways, the shortest, I guess, average shot length, or, you know, less long takes than some of his other movies. But he does something here where he crystallizes like speed and clarity at the same time, which is very hard to do. You know, people sort of see him as a show-offy filmmaker sometimes, and here, it's not so much showing off, there's no time, because the narrative just sort of moves so quickly.

• 1:34:33Speaker 06

  So, wouldn't say I was surprised by that, but I was exhilarated by it. I saw the movie with my brother, Matt, who's an editor and sometimes does special effects. We were trying not to talk, especially first time we watched, and they just kept nudging each other with some of the cutting and sort of going like. Wow, even even for this, even for this budget level and even with this filmmaker, this is pretty virtuosic. But I have to say, not surprised, but the the part of the film that has stuck with me the most is Benicio del Toro. And the degree to which that sequence, I mean, it's it's the parental nature of his care, because there's so many families there. And those little glimpses of the families on the on the margins in his various homes and rooms, the little things you see kids doing, they're very, they feel very authentic.

• 1:35:18Speaker 06

  And they feel very tender. I don't think I've ever seen a better depiction of multitasking in a movie. Like, in a, in a, in a, in a very charged sense, this is like life or death, and Bob's trying to find a, a cellphone charger, and there's this big police confrontation brewing. But the calm that del Toro has, and it's not disengagement, right? It's not the calm of someone who's disengaged. It's not the calm of someone who's cynical. It's like that line, play defense, which I think is the best invention in the Anderson script. And, you know, it's set up with the scenes of Willa rehearsing her, her moves, that idea of playing defense and teaching defense and self-defense. I think del Toro's sublime. Like, I'm not thinking in terms of Oscars. I'm like, he's one of the best characters

• 1:36:01Speaker 06

  I've ever seen in an Anderson film. Everything about his performance and what he does to help elevate DiCaprio's acting and give him in the movie something to bounce off of. And I don't, I don't know how deeply you went into the weeds with spoilers already, but this is obviously, you've talked about the movie already. His final scene, where he's pulled over.

• 1:36:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, the shimmy.

• 1:36:24Speaker 06

  The little, the little shimmy, the way you realize that he's kind of getting himself into a DUI in order to sort of protect Bob, the delight he takes in not quite being able to walk the straight line. People are already, and I'm, I have mixed feelings about clips from this movie showing up already. But I've already seen people capping the few small beers bit, where he's kind of laughing under his breath. And it's beautiful. It's a beautiful, humane performance. I wrote in the piece for Ringer that he seems to have wandered in from a Jonathan Demme movie, which for me is a high compliment. I'm sure Anderson would take it as one, because Demme is a huge filmmaker for him. We can maybe talk about the American Girl music cue at some point if you guys want to, because I think that that's important in the, in the Demme of it all. But yeah, del Toro's my MVP. He's so friggin' good.

• 1:37:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Same.

• 1:37:12Sean Fennessey?

  Two things about that. One, I said, I think, last week about how much I love that same sequence that Adam is talking about where they're walking through Sensei's world, essentially, and introducing all the people. And then there's that great conversational set piece where Bob's on the phone with comrade Josh, and he's really starting to unravel. And the thing that, a cool choice that Anderson makes in that scene is, he doesn't just hold the camera on Leo the whole time. He keeps cutting back to what Sensei is doing. So he goes into the bathroom at a certain point and washes his hands, and you get the laugh line of him answering the "what time is it?" question. And then you get this series of extended shots of him trying to pull the rifle out from under his bed. You know, there's a shot underneath the bed of Sensei

• 1:37:57Sean Fennessey?

  reaching towards but not quite able to grab the gun, that like, other filmmakers probably would not spend a lot of time cutting back to that other character and showing that there's a balance there. And I think my favorite thing that PTA told me when I talked to him for the show was that he and Benicio and Leo just kind of worked all that stuff out when Benicio got there. That he wrote a scene, but that Benicio got there, he had a very limited amount of time because he was shooting the Phoenician scheme. And Benicio was like, "I love this, but can we just sit down and talk through what all of this is, so that I understand and we can make it make sense?" And it sounds like they rewrote it. A lot. Which is amazing, because it just

• 1:38:41Sean Fennessey?

  seems like a very assured, very like, clearly defined, like, all in one guy's head kind of a thing. And I'm as guilty of valorizing the mega genius O'Toole more than anybody, but they've talked a number of times throughout this cycle of the amount of moments during the making of the movie where they were like, "Okay, let's like, set aside what we thought this was gonna be, and actually do it based on what's standing right in front of us now." Which is, I feel like, a new way of hearing PTA movies discussed. You know, they're usually discussed as these like- You know, granite chipped monuments to genius.

• 1:39:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, even when we saw Spielberg interviewing PTA, remember at the end, they were talking about how they find that final sequence. And do you remember Spielberg then goes like, and then you storyboarded it, you know, and, and, and Paul Thomas Anderson was just like, no, you know, we just wrote it. And he like responded with like a very loosey goosey thing that did indicate, you know, it's a small moment of like, no, we were, you know, we were feeling it out.

• 1:39:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, it's, it's, it's a relief as somebody who just runs a little tight sometimes, you know, that maybe as you get older, you can let go, like let things happen. I was encouraged by that. What else, Adam?

• 1:39:53Speaker 06

  I think that, yeah, we're talking about the, the, the movement of the camera. I mean, this stuff is obviously military precision, right? And the juxtaposition of the different groups. I mean, Anderson's very, very good at this, at personifying different movements within individuals and cults of personalities. So like you see Sensei's world and Lockjaw's world, you know, they both kind of preside over these different groups of people who are sort of helping them. They come into, into conflict with each other. And then, you know, the way that Bob moves kind of stumbling, falling on his face, Willa's movement is constrained because she's constantly being passed from group to group. And then even when she's finally on her own, she's literally kind of handcuffed. She's forced into this position of driving, which I thought was really

• 1:40:37Speaker 06

  funny. But you know, like part of the way she becomes, goes from being a teenager to a real teenager, she kind of like has to drive. It's such, it's such an automotive culture. But I think what you're saying about the spontaneity of the del Toro scene, it's actually something that I think Anderson's earlier movies were conceptualized more around because at that point, people were seeing him as an Altman-esque filmmaker, right? So people would be like, well, how do you find those moments with the actors in Boogie Nights and Magnolia? Not that the camera wasn't a big deal, but that there was, the rhetoric was that he loves actors. And then starting with There Will Be Blood, the rhetoric sort of becomes, oh, my God, these visuals, oh, the size, the scale, the period piece quality of them. So I think this movie finesses some of those things together,

• 1:41:19Speaker 06

  but this is obviously made with military precision, but there's the possibility of some spontaneous give and take between the actors. It kind of feels like people like sneaking their stuff in. A little bit and you know, actors are kind of taking their cues from each other. I mean, I'm sure you guys talked about it, but I know you have because I've listened to the various, you know, coverages of the film, just the way that that final sequence, it's one of the most expressive action sequences I've ever seen, where it's not just that it's suspenseful or exciting and spatially coherent. That way of visualizing the themes in the movie and the rise and fall of the road. And the fact that he kind of is able to bring it all back to the searchers at the end, which every American filmmaker since the seventies is trying to do, you know, they've all talked about it.

• 1:42:01Speaker 06

  Scorsese and Spielberg and Schrader, you know, this is my searchers, this is my searchers. And it's not a contest, but Anderson's searchers pretty darn amazing.

• 1:42:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:10Speaker 06

  When she doesn't know if she can recognize her father because of the different kinds of communication and trust, right? Another critic pointed out that when Penn is carrying Willa around at one point, he's carrying her like Ford carries, uh, like Wayne carries Natalie Wood in Searchers, right?

• 1:42:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:28Speaker 06

  On his hip, you know?

• 1:42:29Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:42:29Speaker 06

  These things are integrated at such a casual, high speed, you know, high velocity level.

• 1:42:36Sean Fennessey?

  Even, you know what's another example of that? I noticed this when I was watching the movie this weekend is, um, there's a cutaway to Avanti. When Willa is trying to get away from Lockjaw and it's just hard on his face, which is just like one of the shots of the Native American characters in the searchers where there's sort of like

• 1:42:55Speaker 06

  The searchers.

• 1:42:56Sean Fennessey?

  The amusement frustration, this kind of like ugliness of this culture that is proximate, but, but, but so far away from what we're experiencing, like a lot of little gestures like that that are so great. And it's kind of risky to be like, I was really thinking about the searchers, you know, in 2025, like because we've heard that so many times. So to pay it off is really impressive.

• 1:43:16Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, because the idea of thinking with the searchers, it's a cinephilek idea. But when you think about the searchers in terms of what it's about and how little that that movie, how much it's about, how little has been resolved. A lot of these ways in the sixty, seventy years. And then it has to do a lot with Penn's performance. Did you guys have you guys talked or thought about a friend of mine pointed this out to me last night that DiCaprio's last shot, his last image rhymes visually with the last we see a lockjaw. You know, I take lockjaw's ending very much as for dying, you know, dying, thinking he's the good guy. To me, that's boomers burning in hell, right? This, this, this pathetic little corner office, you've achieved nothing, you look like shit doing it, and then you die. And, you know, you think you did something, you don't realize that you've

• 1:44:00Speaker 06

  left nothing. But I mean, Leo's last shot, I don't think is as critical, but it's a mirror, you know? And, and I, I don't know what you guys think about, you know, the, the whole, the point of the whole movie is that a dad learns to use an iPhone, which is a bit productive. But even just the use of selfies and photography and, um, you know, you know, self-image in this movie, I think is pretty potent as well. I've still only seen it the once. So I'm sort of, you know, I, I watched it the one time, wrote about it. And then I'm just picking and choosing little nuggets that I see people leaving out there until I can watch it again. I want to update the book at some point, which will involve watching it, you know, a bunch of time. But there's a lot.

• 1:44:38Sean Fennessey?

  There's, there's a couple of echoes inside of that triangle where early in the film, when we first see Perfidia, she's wearing a black, tight t-shirt and, and fatigue pants. And that is the outfit that Lockjaw is wearing at the end of the movie, a tight, black t-shirt that Willa mocks him for. Why is your shirt so tight? Yeah. And

• 1:44:57Speaker 06

  What shirt?

• 1:44:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Bob's, uh, bathrobe is the same color and design as the shirt that Perfidia is wearing when she's shooting the machine gun. Um, you've got like all of these, you know, these echoes of these characters and the ways in which they're bound together and are not really talking to each other. That's the other thing, too, is I think that there's like a There's definitely a comment about people in that generation, in the generation in front of Willa, not really knowing how to talk to each other, and then that leading to a lot of confusion and the expectation, like even Sean Penn saying, like, you know, maybe if you were a little nicer, we could have got to know each other. And the difficulty

• 1:45:39Sean Fennessey?

  of parents getting to know their children, like, there's a lot of amazingly insinuating pieces of writing throughout this, or in costume design, or even just the idea of, like, a car chase that goes up and down.

• 1:45:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:52Sean Fennessey?

  You know, that that is so exciting on its face, and then metaphor-packed, and also something you've not seen before in that specific way. So it's just, when you do watch it five, or six, or seven more times, and expand the book, I think you will see how rewarding it is. I mean, I'm on four, and I'm still really enjoying it. And the one, the other thing, too, is that I have found, you said, you mentioned a version of this for sure.

• 1:46:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:17Sean Fennessey?

  That you had a much more emotional relationship to it the second time around.

• 1:46:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. It was less, less funny, more visceral and upsetting.

• 1:46:25Sean Fennessey?

  Right. And I'm finding that, like, different stages of it, I'm having different emotional reactions to different scenes, things that I thought were funny, now I think are sad.

• 1:46:33Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, since becoming a parent, I'm just, I'm just a mess all the time.

• 1:46:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:46:38Speaker 06

  But I took, I took my older daughter, I took Leah to karate on Saturday, which is literally one battle after another, because

• 1:46:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:44Speaker 06

  she's impossible. But, you know, she's eight and a half, and she was doing her little stuff. I just teared up, you know? And I mean, I think that that has to do with just being a parent more than the movie. And I think in some ways, projecting yourself into that vision of parenting is dicey, but it's not so dicey for Anderson, because, as people have pointed out, that line about not knowing how to do her hair,

• 1:47:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:06Speaker 06

  which choked me up in the theater, that comes from an interview, I believe, that,

• 1:47:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Maya Rudolph did.

• 1:47:11Speaker 06

  That is, that, that Maya Rudolph did, sort of, about her, about her father, right?

• 1:47:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:16Speaker 06

  And that line is absolutely loaded. Like, that's not just, like, oh, dumb dad. I mean, that has to do with not being able to connect, maybe on a certain level culturally, or there's, there's You know, not just something that mom can't do, but you know, it has to do with hair. It has to do with, you know, with, with, with, with racial identity. But it's a beautiful line and, and I think when he says it is what gets me so much. It's like long into the chase, you know? Like she's disappeared. She's been taken. We know what's happening. He's already tried. He's already failed. This is kind of downtime with Sensei. And he just thinks about something so tangible about her. Like it's such a little tangible strand of some larger failure.

• 1:47:56Speaker 06

  And it choked me right up in the theater and you know, it's almost like it's almost going on set as people are focusing on Penn and Tiana Taylor and you know, Jim Downey, who gets my Oscar vote, because you know, Jim Downey is the greatest. But I mean, what DiCaprio, what DiCaprio does as a movie star in this film, much like what I think he does in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It's almost so good that you take it for granted now at this point. You know, and I'm not just talking about the significance of the casting and how funny it is to have Leonardo DiCaprio of all people as a girl dad. Like I will stop myself from describing his extracurriculars because I don't know him. But the casting is pretty funny, you know? And he folds all of that into a performance that I think is, is, is, is really quite something.

• 1:48:38Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's part of the reason why it's getting so much acclaim is because it feels like such a transformation.

• 1:48:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but it is, it is legitimate. Like he really, it's an incredible, deeply felt performance, which I just, I knew that he could do almost anything, but I didn't know he could do this.

• 1:48:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:53Speaker 06

  Can I ask you guys, at your various screenings, whether these are like secret Christmas adventurer screenings that you guys get, or you know, you're seeing it with normal people?

• 1:49:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:49:02Speaker 06

  Did people like laugh with recognition at Jim Downey? Like, does the public understand who this is or care?

• 1:49:08Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I don't think so. I mean, I think he immediately gets laugh lines. And so it's a little hard to tell if they're picking up on it.

• 1:49:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that he did at the, uh, at the

• 1:49:18Sean Fennessey?

  DJ.

• 1:49:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, no, no, no, at the IMAX on Wednesday night, which was like, you know, true.

• 1:49:24Speaker 06

  What does he say like punks, punks?

• 1:49:26Sean Fennessey?

  Lunatics, haters and punk trash. We're going to eliminate them. No more lunatics.

• 1:49:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, that's a truth social post.

• 1:49:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:34Speaker 06

  And I think, and it's funny too, because if you know Downey's history at SNL, he's pretty strenuously down the line in terms of their political content.

• 1:49:42Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 1:49:42Speaker 06

  He's Norm MacDonald's, I feel like tapping my heart when I say this, you know, he was Norm MacDonald's Confederate there and they refused easy applause and all that Weekend Update stuff. So like when Jim Downey is kind of doing the Christmas adventurer bit, you sort of know the pendulum has shifted in, you know, for even Downey to put his stamp of approval on a movie from this side of the partisan aisle, I think is pretty, pretty great.

• 1:50:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the other funny thing is that he actually did become more famous in the last year because of the Conan meme, but is unrecognizable relative to how he looks in this movie. So even then, I think the levels of recognition are maybe not there as much. I agree with you though about the Leo thing. I think it's pretty special. It's very rare that the best, the actor most capable of giving a great lead performance is also the biggest star at the same time. That's not common. And, uh, not that Leonardo DiCaprio needs more laurels per se, because I think he's had a wonderful life, but it's very, very cool that he is spending his capital making movies with these people, because he could be making a lot of crap right now.

• 1:50:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, and dragging an audience, I wouldn't say dragging them kicking and screaming. Maybe let's not say dragging, let's say pulling an audience towards this. Because again, like we talk about echo chambers of criticism. I mean, you guys navigate this stuff, you know, smartly all the time, but like, there's a huge difference between what we think is what people are talking about and what the larger pop cultural sphere is talking about. If you were to go by my timeline last week, this is like the moon landing.

• 1:51:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:11Speaker 06

  You know, and then you, and then you look at how much it makes in its opening weekend and it's less than like Conjuring Last Rites, which is a movie I swear no human being has seen. I've seen it and I didn't see it.

• 1:51:21Sean Fennessey?

  It's one of the largest films of the year.

• 1:51:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:51:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, so it's, it's, so DiCaprio is one of the few actors who can bridge this and bridge it just effortlessly without special plea. How much did it make its first weekend in North America? Not that I'm a box office guy, but like

• 1:51:37Sean Fennessey?

  Twenty-two and a half.

• 1:51:37Speaker 06

  Twenty-three million dollars? Yeah, that's not Paul Thomas Anderson fans. Paul Thomas Anderson fans can get the master, you know, a high per screen average. Leonardo DiCaprio can get this movie a $23 million North American opening.

• 1:51:52Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I'm sure we will talk about this earlier in this episode, but one of the things that I think having Leo in your movie does is set aside the opening weekend box office. It just creates a level of awareness that there is a new Leo movie that even if you don't see it opening weekend, you're probably going to check it at some point.

• 1:52:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And he also has been like pounding the pavement in a way that he hasn't, you know, he doesn't make movies that often anymore, but he has not been doing press at this level. Like if they, if they announced a Hot Ones next week, I would not be surprised, which is he is, he is saying yes.

• 1:52:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Not since the 2000s really has he done this much press.

• 1:52:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:27Sean Fennessey?

  Which, you know, I think is

• 1:52:28Speaker 06

  It should be.

• 1:52:28Sean Fennessey?

  Was contingent on getting this movie.

• 1:52:29Speaker 06

  It should be Sean, Sean, Sean Penn should go on Hot Ones.

• 1:52:32Amanda Dobbins?

  You're right. He should.

• 1:52:34Speaker 06

  If I'm drafting one battle after another cast members for, for Hot Ones, it's Sean Penn is the, the first draft.

• 1:52:39Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good draft. Yeah. We should do that. The Hot Ones draft period is a great draft for us.

• 1:52:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:52:45Sean Fennessey?

  Just in the entire sphere of entertainment.

• 1:52:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:52:48Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe we can come team up with Sean Evans on that one.

• 1:52:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:52:52Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Closing thoughts. What do you like?

• 1:52:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:52:54Sean Fennessey?

  What, what, what is the?

• 1:52:58Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I'm loaded to be like, where does this stand in your rankings? But kind of like, what is your biggest emotional takeaway from this movie?

• 1:53:05Speaker 06

  My emotional takeaway from this movie, I tried to put it in the piece, which is that it's about time, you know? And Anderson, he, he won me over for the first time in real time. I mean, we're around the same age. I think you were more into him when you were younger than I was. I, I saw him as a filmmaker to react against. I talked with this in the book. We've talked about it that when I was 20, I was like, no, you know, I, I like Robert Altman and I like Scorsese and this is leftovers and all that. And then that match cut in There Will Be Blood. Which I didn't understand until I got older, how true that is about how time just jumps away. But I mean, just on a formal level, when I saw that in There Will Be Blood, I'm like, I like this filmmaker now. I'm on board, you know, it's just so beautiful. And this movie gets at that idea of time. I mean, time is the password.

• 1:53:50Speaker 06

  Time is what Bob doesn't understand. Time is what the guy on the other side of the phone doesn't really understand. Just because it's the password, in the end, Bob gets it right. You know, what does the guy say? He's like, you know, time doesn't exist. It it controls us. And Bob's like, fuck that, you're not a parent, you know? That's the part of the movie that I that I took away from. And it's what, you know, as I tried to put in the piece, it's what made Dakota work for me. Because I was worried that he's willing optimism that doesn't exist. And people, I know some people say it should ended by the side of the road. But The Searchers doesn't end by the side of the road. The Searchers ends with Ethan, with Ethan not being able to go inside the house. It's a beautifully ambiguous ending. And I see the ending of this movie as ambiguous. He's willing hope into it, but I believe in the hope, you know?

• 1:54:35Speaker 06

  I think Bob knows what time it is, and that's his little triumph.

• 1:54:39Sean Fennessey?

  I I love that part of your piece and that observation. I hadn't thought about it in that way. And the other thing about that last moment is even to the very end, Bob says, you know, that's like a three and a half hour drive. It's the most dad thing you could ever say. It's like trying to prep your kids with some some information ahead of their trip.

• 1:54:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:54:58Speaker 06

  And and what a beautiful detail that it's a drive because you know what? We've seen that she can do that.

• 1:55:03Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:55:04Speaker 06

  And, you know, I think that that's a that's a that's a wonderful little detail. And again, the other thing that kind of choked me up in the theater was just when he says, be careful. Because that's really, at this point, all I feel like I have to offer the people in my life I care the most about. I mean, they're not old enough for me to send them out on their own, of course. But my daughter walked to school herself this morning. And I was like, be careful. And I wasn't doing it as a bit, like, you know, it wasn't a bit. I was just literally like, you know, be be careful. And I think that being able to thread the needle between either revolutionary politics as subject or texture, but shrink it down to something human like that, he's always been good at that. Is this my favorite of his movies? It's always going to be The Master, but that's because that speaks to the oblique, conceptual, desperate.

• 1:55:51Speaker 06

  Kind of movie making that I really love. I mean, that movie is tough and this movie's not. This movie is more pleasing in the end, but he's earned it, man. You know? I don't know if we've earned it, but he's, he's earned it.

• 1:56:05Sean Fennessey?

  I feel that I have earned it.

• 1:56:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I know.

• 1:56:07Sean Fennessey?

  I feel I have put in the work.

• 1:56:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:09Speaker 06

  It's, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty good, you know?

• 1:56:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's pretty good.

• 1:56:13Speaker 06

  Pretty, pretty, pretty good movie.

• 1:56:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's pretty good. You're pretty good, Adam. Adam, thank you. We'll have to figure out what you're coming on next for. I don't know what that's gonna be. Whatever the next movie.

• 1:56:21Speaker 06

  The hot, the hot, the hot ones.

• 1:56:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Hot ones draft.

• 1:56:23Sean Fennessey?

  That's it. That'll be it. Next time you're in Los Angeles, me, you, Amanda, C R and Sean Evans. That'll be a good pod.

• 1:56:29Speaker 06

  Sounds great. Thank you, guys.

• 1:56:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, buddy. Thanks, Adam.

• 1:56:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Thanks, Adam.

• 1:56:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, bye.

• 1:56:33Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, now let's go to our friend Andy Greenwald.

• 1:56:41Sean Fennessey?

  Andy Greenwald's here, co-host of The Watch, one of the biggest boys I know. A man boy? Would you just describe yourself as a man boy?

• 1:56:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I tried that for a while, but as I've sort of moved into my latter 40s, I think it doesn't really work anymore.

• 1:56:54Sean Fennessey?

  The boyishness evaporates slowly over time. So on this pod a few weeks ago, Amanda told the story.

• 1:57:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, good. Oh, yeah, we're doing this. Yeah, great.

• 1:57:02Sean Fennessey?

  There's a story about Paul Thomas Anderson Films. She was, you were, you were 14 years old. How old were you on the night of this? This movie going experience?

• 1:57:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. This was September 20, 2012. Yeah, uh, so I was 28 years old.

• 1:57:16Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, 28 years old. And it was a date?

• 1:57:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I think Zach and I were dating at this point because you had moved to Los Angeles, which, you know, cleared up his schedule. So that then, and Chris had as well. Yeah, go ahead. If I may help with the timeline, you were dating because the first time I met you was at another film screening. Right, after The Avengers. After Marvel's The Avengers.

• 1:57:38Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I was there for that one.

• 1:57:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and, and so Flatbush Farm and Barn has since closed, which is sad. It's a, yeah, but that's where we were.

• 1:57:45Sean Fennessey?

  But so you guys went to go see The Master then?

• 1:57:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. Yeah, it was the premiere.

• 1:57:49Sean Fennessey?

  In the fall.

• 1:57:50Amanda Dobbins?

  In the Ziegfeld Theater? I believe so. It was the New York premiere.

• 1:57:53Sean Fennessey?

  So who, among, among the guests who was there?

• 1:57:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, who was there? In our party or?

• 1:57:58Sean Fennessey?

  Just do the whole guest list if you can.

• 1:57:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I think it was us and Zach and Chuck Loesterman. Yes. And maybe someone else who you.

• 1:58:05Speaker 05

  Could rush them on style, bring them on next week.

• 1:58:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:58:07Speaker 05

  The person I'm forgetting, but I.

• 1:58:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I don't remember. I remember.

• 1:58:10Speaker 05

  That's the crew.

• 1:58:10Sean Fennessey?

  Joaquin Phoenix, was he present?

• 1:58:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:13Sean Fennessey?

  He didn't show up?

• 1:58:13Speaker 05

  He loomed large that night. It was a very big theater.

• 1:58:16Sean Fennessey?

  More ways than one. Did, did, did you guys go somewhere afterwards?

• 1:58:19Speaker 05

  Okay, so may I interject? So it's, it's beautiful to me that this night was meaningful.

• 1:58:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:58:26Speaker 05

  For you and has played a large role in your podcasting. This night is also of outsized importance in my own life.

• 1:58:32Amanda Dobbins?

  But not, yeah.

• 1:58:34Speaker 05

  Both because I got to spend time.

• 1:58:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:58:37Speaker 05

  The lovely and charming 28 year old date of my friend Zach. But also because I had a very unique experience as we, we got into the theater. It's plush seats. There was a lot of like hubbub because it was, it was a New York premiere. And they were doing some like introductions and things before the movie for people in attendance. And two things happened at the, almost the exact same instant. Uh, one was I received a text message from my wife with a positive pregnancy test.

• 1:59:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 1:59:06Speaker 05

  And I stared at this with utter disbelief and shock. And the only thing that pierced my sudden surprise was the voice of someone up front introducing the beloved executive producer of the movie Harvey Weinstein.

• 1:59:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Stop it.

• 1:59:22Speaker 05

  Who then went on like a rapturous monologue about the luminous Amy Adams. So all at once, I have imminent fatherhood.

• 1:59:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 1:59:33Speaker 05

  A true life monster speaking. Now, these moments are inextricably linked now.

• 1:59:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:59:37Speaker 05

  I sort of quiet my heart rate and it's also when, you know, as you, as you both know, that when you get the within the family positive test, you don't share that. So it's too early. So you may begin acting like a lunatic or sweating.

• 1:59:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Let me ask, like, is that a, are you responding by a text message? Or are you hopping out to make a quick phone call?

• 1:59:54Speaker 05

  Well, no, because there was security to get in and you can't miss a PTA movie.

• 1:59:58Amanda Dobbins?

  So, so that was just, that was just a text response.

• 2:00:01Speaker 05

  That was a text response and more than one, you know? And then I was just trying to quiet my heart rate and, and just like lose myself in this world of like lightly masqueraded Scientology or whatever was to come. And then, you know, they finished and Amy Adams speaks and whomever else. And they like start to dim the lights and I like, I'm clutching my Coke Zero or whatever. Like they don't give us snacks and press screening, so I had nothing. Um, and it was before I learned about water or water bottles. I only learned about that when I moved here. So I was dry mouthed clearly. And then I got another text. And I hoped it would be like, um, and isn't it great that we're having a child?

• 2:00:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:35Speaker 05

  But it was a text from the same person informing me that her great aunt had that moment died.

• 2:00:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:00:42Speaker 05

  So all within about a 90 second span, next to you in blissful puppy love, I had the full spectrum of birth, death, Harvey Weinstein.

• 2:00:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:00:53Speaker 05

  And then the fucking master starts.

• 2:00:56Amanda Dobbins?

  That's good.

• 2:00:57Speaker 05

  And the John Greenwood music's like dong, dong, dong, dong, like the blue water. And I was like, absolutely like your friend on a bad acid trip for at least the first 60 minutes of the film.

• 2:01:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:08Sean Fennessey?

  That is better than I ever could have imagined.

• 2:01:10Amanda Dobbins?

  That's really good.

• 2:01:11Speaker 05

  So then, and I don't know how much of this factored into the stories you've been telling, but then we did go out to a place that I love in Manhattan. It's like a secret step down Japanese izakaya.

• 2:01:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:01:21Speaker 05

  And they serve beer by the pitcher. And I ordered a pitcher of beer and then I said, oh, do you guys want some? Because I was.

• 2:01:29Sean Fennessey?

  And you didn't share your news with anyone at the table?

• 2:01:31Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:01:31Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 2:01:33Sean Fennessey?

  Did you feel, I've told the story of going to see the master a few times on the show because I saw it with Chris. He had also recently moved out here and Alex Papademos. We went to a midnight showing at the ArcLight on a Thursday night.

• 2:01:45Speaker 05

  That's not a short film.

• 2:01:46Sean Fennessey?

  And it's a long movie and we walked out into the streets of Los Angeles at 2:30 in the morning. And everyone who had walked out of the movie was just like gobsmacked, did not know what to say to each other. It was, it's not the kind of movie that after you've seen it, you're like, okay, let's break down every scene. It's not, it has a different kind of power. And so you're, you're coping, channeling, figuring out how to feel about these huge events in your life.

• 2:02:11Speaker 05

  I have no idea how I feel about that movie to this day. I don't think I've ever really seen it clean.

• 2:02:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Here is the thing about the Japanese izakaya spot is that Chuck Klosterman was also in attendance. So we were, yeah.

• 2:02:21Sean Fennessey?

  Was he breaking it down?

• 2:02:22Speaker 05

  He was holding court.

• 2:02:23Amanda Dobbins?

  He was holding court. And I think that I was, I mean, I, you know, congratulations, you know, and also condolences. But I like.

• 2:02:32Sean Fennessey?

  The origin of a girl.

• 2:02:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Yeah, which, which will come into play very shortly, but. I was also, I was contending with having seen The Master, like, new friends. And then, and then my first time experiencing Chuck hold court, which is a, you know, a sight all on Twitter.

• 2:02:50Sean Fennessey?

  Very, very fun thing.

• 2:02:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so all I really remember is just being like, oh, this guy.

• 2:02:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's kind of like.

• 2:02:56Speaker 05

  It's like going to your first ice hockey game and sitting right next to the glass where they smash.

• 2:03:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:01Sean Fennessey?

  I do, one, I mean, he doesn't live in New York and neither do I anymore, but I do miss.

• 2:03:04Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:03:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:03:05Sean Fennessey?

  Being out for drinks with Chuck.

• 2:03:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:07Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I, that's amazing.

• 2:03:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:03:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:03:10Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, did you, did you like the movie?

• 2:03:12Speaker 05

  Which one?

• 2:03:13Sean Fennessey?

  The Master?

• 2:03:14Speaker 05

  I have no idea. At the time, I had no idea. I think that, um, I like, I don't, like, it, it's not dissimilar to One Battle After Another, which I exited feeling so many emotions all at once and being in awe of the, um, the Jenga tower of, of competing feelings that I was experiencing. And I had almost no desire yet to hold court about any of it.

• 2:03:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 2:03:37Speaker 05

  Like, it filled me up with something that I'm not fully sure. I gotta go. No, no, I'm ready. I'm, I'm ready. But, uh, I, I have come to love The Master, but not in the same way that I have loved some of his other movies, I would say. It is not in my top five.

• 2:03:54Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. Okay. Good to know. One Battle After Another, is it in your top five?

• 2:03:57Speaker 05

  I think so.

• 2:03:58Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:03:58Speaker 05

  But I, this is such a hedge. I do need to see it again.

• 2:04:02Amanda Dobbins?

  We did this earlier.

• 2:04:03Speaker 05

  You've seen it a lot.

• 2:04:04Amanda Dobbins?

  He's seen it four times. I've seen it twice.

• 2:04:05Speaker 05

  I definitely, and I said this briefly a moment ago on The Watch, just that, like, I tried to stay completely, um, in the dark about a lot of it, but the one thing you can't keep out, um, because it's not technically a spoiler, is everyone saying this is a masterpiece.

• 2:04:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:04:20Speaker 05

  And that this is a generational film by one of our great talents who has finally ascended even further. And because of that, and because of how deeply, deeply connected I was feeling to certain moments and momentum early in the movie, then when it became, and I say this actually not as a pejorative, as a good thing, when it became a PTA movie, sometimes I was like, whoa, oh, I didn't know that the brakes were on this car or that we were turning right.

• 2:04:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:04:46Speaker 05

  I want to see it again. So all of that's gone and I'm more deeply engaged. And I would also say, and I'm curious for you guys as the, um, the, the, the, the masters of cinema to comment on this. Um, I was very excited. To go see it in Vista Vision. Cause I also, a format I learned about six weeks ago when they announced it.

• 2:05:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:07Speaker 05

  And so I did see it at the Vista and, uh, which was, you know, it's a wonderful theater on the east side of LA. And I didn't know two things. I forgot that they don't have assigned seats. So I didn't get to the theater two hours before with the rest of your Letterboxd lads who were already there.

• 2:05:21Sean Fennessey?

  Well.

• 2:05:22Speaker 05

  Most of whom were talking about the master, not a bit. Like there was a lot of talk about the master in line. And then two, uh, so because of that, I was in the like second to last row, which I would prefer over it being in the front. But Vista Vision, not a big format.

• 2:05:37Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's a very, it's a tall and narrow screen. They've refashioned the screen at the Vista for this film.

• 2:05:42Speaker 05

  So I felt lucky to see it in an intended format, but it did not do the thing that I was most wanted it to do at the start, which is I want it to be in the movie. In the last row with a small screen was a little bit like watching something on television.

• 2:05:56Sean Fennessey?

  One thing, one thing about the Vista is it is a huge room.

• 2:06:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:06:00Sean Fennessey?

  And there's lots of room between the aisles, which is so unusual. Movie theaters is actually the exact opposite of the city walk.

• 2:06:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:07Sean Fennessey?

  Where the aisles are too close together, the rows are too close together. I would recommend checking it out in IMAX.

• 2:06:13Speaker 05

  I want to see it again and I want to be more immersed in it.

• 2:06:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:16Speaker 05

  So, so I have a smoother ride. But I, I felt, I don't know, do there are specific things you want to get into?

• 2:06:22Sean Fennessey?

  I'm just curious for your take on it. I mean, as somebody who I know likes his movies and the girl dad part of it is always interesting.

• 2:06:28Speaker 05

  I mean, those are the two biggest planks. I mean, like in terms of, there are things that I am just in awe of in terms of performance. Like this might be, this is top three Leo performance for me.

• 2:06:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely.

• 2:06:36Speaker 05

  Top two, maybe rising further. I think Benicio was perfect in this movie. I think Tiana Taylor, like everything that has been compelling about her, whether it's music videos, music, or her episode of my super sweet 16, he put it into a movie, which is shocking and awesome. But the two main threads that I'm carrying, which I think neither are particularly insightful or unique. One is it was absolutely electric to see a movie made by an artist who seemed to be telepathically intuiting what it feels like to be alive at the moment the film is released. And how exciting and important it is for artists to deal with the moments that we are living in. And not like in a, you know, like a pedagogical way, but like.

• 2:07:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:07:18Speaker 05

  With art, with fiction, with heart, but like to just look forward for once, instead of just always running backwards. I found just so compelling and exciting. And then yes, hashtag girl dad.

• 2:07:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:07:29Speaker 05

  The last two lines of this movie have destroyed me in a way that I don't remember a movie destroying me before.

• 2:07:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I already started crying on this podcast about that last scene.

• 2:07:39Speaker 05

  I can't say it.

• 2:07:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And I'm not, and I'm not a dad, so.

• 2:07:41Speaker 05

  I can't.

• 2:07:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I have one, but.

• 2:07:42Speaker 05

  Well, that's good. So you're up there. You're hashtag dad girl.

• 2:07:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:48Speaker 05

  As a daughter of fathers, I feel like how you should begin everything on this podcast. I, I said, I said this on the watch, but like, that is the new want to have a catch dad from Field of Dreams for me. I can't say it or I will start crying.

• 2:08:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:01Speaker 05

  And I'm as grateful as I am for a movie to be like contemporary and alive to what's happening and not running from anything or the complications or nuances of it. I was so happy to have a movie that gave me that feeling.

• 2:08:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:16Speaker 05

  Of like being alive in myself, not just alive in a moment.

• 2:08:21Sean Fennessey?

  I'm glad you liked it. You, you did just remind me of a story that I told very briefly over the weekend to a friend, but in 2007, I was working at Vibe Magazine, working with our friend, John Caramanca. And what would happen when I was working at Vibe is artists would come in and they would want to introduce themselves to the magazine so that they might be spotlight featured somehow. You experienced this many times, I'm sure, in the, in the spin days, especially spin.com days.

• 2:08:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:08:49Sean Fennessey?

  And in 2007, Tiana Taylor came in and she had a song called Google Me. It was a, her, her R and B pop breakthrough.

• 2:08:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:56Sean Fennessey?

  Still relevant to this day. And she came in with like, you know, a manager and a handler and just talked at me and John for an hour and obviously was captivating. I mean, she's like one of the most magnetic looking people in the world and has so much, so self-assured.

• 2:09:13Sean Fennessey?

  And it never really happened for her as a musician, you know? And yet she didn't go away and I probably would need a hundred hands to count the number of artists that we ran small profiles of who never made it and have not been heard from again between 2005 and 2008. But for whatever reason, she kind of hung in the culture, right? She's like in the Fade video, the Kanye video. She got married to Amon Shumpert. She started taking more acting parts and then.

• 2:09:42Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of out of nowhere, has been plucked to be the most critical character, like the engine of the movie.

• 2:09:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:09:49Sean Fennessey?

  In this PTA movie. It's just a, it's a fascinating road because that was 18 years ago?

• 2:09:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:09:56Sean Fennessey?

  When I met her, 18 years? That's fucking crazy to me.

• 2:09:59Speaker 05

  It kind of reminds me of a time, like, definitely closer to 18 years ago than five years ago, when I was stopping by Atlantic Records to do something like, "Here are the new Paramore single" or something.

• 2:10:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:10:10Speaker 05

  And as I walked in, the newly appointed president of one division of Atlantic was there to introduce the workers to the new artist he had signed. And the artist was Janelle Monae, who performed in The Artist. And the president was Sean "Puffy" Combs. So, a lot of, like, near misses with predators in my time in New York.

• 2:10:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:29Speaker 05

  Hasn't happened again.

• 2:10:30Sean Fennessey?

  That's tough. That's not ideal.

• 2:10:32Speaker 05

  But it is funny. You do, you do remember when people are like, "This is gonna be the next someone." And then, it's not the path you expect, but...

• 2:10:38Sean Fennessey?

  You know, we've just had a whole second episode about this. You're, you're at the tail end of it here, and we didn't, I don't know-

• 2:10:44Speaker 05

  They call that the closer show.

• 2:10:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:45Sean Fennessey?

  You are the closer.

• 2:10:46Speaker 05

  The Edwin Diaz.

• 2:10:46Sean Fennessey?

  You are. He pitched well! How, how, how dare you?

• 2:10:50Speaker 05

  I already said I was never going to-

• 2:10:54Sean Fennessey?

  He pitched well! Actually, Andy did say on a podcast that in a way, he doesn't, he doesn't hate the Mets. Like, he doesn't feel like anger towards the Mets.

• 2:11:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow. Where is the anger directed?

• 2:11:03Speaker 05

  Cowboys, mostly. Braves in baseball.

• 2:11:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Don't stop it. I've renounced the Braves. Okay, I've told every single person I know from Philadelphia.

• 2:11:14Speaker 05

  No, the, the Met, like, also having lived in New York for so long, the Mets are the correct choice. And many of my good friends, Sean included, are true believers.

• 2:11:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the alternative is evil.

• 2:11:24Amanda Dobbins?

  So, they're out. No playoffs.

• 2:11:25Sean Fennessey?

  They're, they're out.

• 2:11:26Amanda Dobbins?

  They're out. So, you can't-

• 2:11:27Sean Fennessey?

  We've gotten this far in this episode. This is the first time it's come up.

• 2:11:29Amanda Dobbins?

  You can't rip the Phillies' hearts out in the playoffs again this year.

• 2:11:32Sean Fennessey?

  No, and I think Philly fans are celebrating in part because they don't wanna have to deal with us.

• 2:11:36Amanda Dobbins?

  That was bad last year. I mean, I, I was there watching all of it.

• 2:11:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was bad.

• 2:11:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was real bad.

• 2:11:39Sean Fennessey?

  See, we can all unite over that. We're, we're friends. We're actually friends. Uh, I-

• 2:11:45Sean Fennessey?

  The name that hasn't, I don't think has been uttered is Chase Infinity. Throughout this whole conversation.

• 2:11:50Speaker 05

  Who, and as the, the TV critic here, I could say was exceptional and a standout in Presumed Innocent last year.

• 2:11:55Sean Fennessey?

  I'm loathe to spoil Presumed Innocent, but if you haven't seen the show Presumed Innocent, I guess.

• 2:12:00Speaker 05

  You could say that she plays a pivotal role.

• 2:12:02Sean Fennessey?

  She's a huge part and you would not guess that.

• 2:12:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, the show itself spoils it in the third episode, but whatever.

• 2:12:07Sean Fennessey?

  Does it?

• 2:12:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Or the fourth, like, yeah.

• 2:12:10Sean Fennessey?

  I don't remember what she does.

• 2:12:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe it's the fifth, I don't know, but like.

• 2:12:12Speaker 05

  Maybe it's the finale.

• 2:12:14Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not the finale. It's well before the end.

• 2:12:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:12:18Sean Fennessey?

  It's a fun show.

• 2:12:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:19Sean Fennessey?

  But another, another actress who like, when I saw her on that show, I was like, oh, she was good. But I was not like, this is a generational superstar come to us.

• 2:12:26Speaker 05

  Well, but there is a thing, right? But like the greatest directors, and you two could speak on this much more cogently than I could, but like, they know what they want from actors and they know what they love in actors and they can get it. And so you look at the, the, the INDB page for this movie and you have a mix of like, the greatest actors of their generation who have been, you know, Oscar rewarded in, in, in Leo, in Benicio, in Sean Penn. And then you have like in key supporting roles, the artist Jungle Pussy and also Dijon. And then also a guy who's composed the music for the early Safdie Brothers films. And then the interrogator who was so disturbing and you look him up and it's like, oh, he's an interrogator.

• 2:13:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:04Speaker 05

  And somehow they are all playing on the same field.

• 2:13:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's the best. It's the best thing about PCA movies.

• 2:13:09Speaker 05

  That's so cool.

• 2:13:10Sean Fennessey?

  It is like, it is always the collision of here's Joaquin Phoenix.

• 2:13:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:13:14Sean Fennessey?

  And here's a, a character actor who you've never seen before. Like, for example, in this movie, the woman who plays, um, Will's teacher, when, when Bob goes in for the teacher conference. You know, and he's like, all these fucking slave owners.

• 2:13:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:13:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:31Sean Fennessey?

  That woman is a theater actress who's never appeared in a film before.

• 2:13:34Amanda Dobbins?

  The Philippines.

• 2:13:35Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 2:13:36Speaker 05

  I'm sure you'll get to that.

• 2:13:37Sean Fennessey?

  So naturalistic and perfect in that scene. It feels like we're in that school. And he's obviously doing a lot. Leo was very big in this movie and he's very big in that scene where he just starts crying.

• 2:13:46Speaker 05

  He's so funny in this movie.

• 2:13:48Sean Fennessey?

  But I love that they, that ability to kind of handpick people out of nowhere. And it seems like Chase Infinity obviously was, is a working actor and is gonna have a big career. So she wasn't like, nobody, nobody, but. If you told me she's Meryl Streep 40 years from now, I couldn't be like, absolutely not.

• 2:14:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:04Speaker 05

  But I think there's two different styles. I mean, I'm sure there are many more than two. But like directors who quote unquote, know what they want. There's a version of it that I think actors find very oppressive where they're just told where to stand and how to say a line. And you know, they're really just chess pieces on the bigger board of the frame. And then there's directors who know what they want, who have already seen, they have, they're able to hold the cut movie of their dreams in their head and get there. You know what I mean? So that the actors feel like they're alive and they're playing things, but they're being either, they're being put in the position to succeed and be the best versions of themselves in that process.

• 2:14:35Sean Fennessey?

  It seems like that's what he was really able to accomplish in this movie is that he didn't, he wasn't acting like the conductor, you know? Where it was like, you play this, this note at this exact moment. It didn't seem that like that kind of a set.

• 2:14:47Speaker 05

  Where, because I haven't listened to the, because I only just saw the movie. I've not listened to you guys expound upon it. I don't want your listeners to hear it again.

• 2:14:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you for following the directions.

• 2:14:54Speaker 05

  Of always. Oh, whenever someone tells me I don't have to do something, that's easy for me. Amanda, where are you with the movie and are there?

• 2:15:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm incredibly high and it's definitely top three of my PTAs.

• 2:15:08Speaker 05

  Really?

• 2:15:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I was, I was blown away by it.

• 2:15:11Speaker 05

  What makes it top three for you?

• 2:15:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, we've been talking a lot about it in the arc of his career and you know, as Sean has pointed out in a lot of ways, it's like, it is as a summation of all of the different phases and things that he's been doing. But I find that I respond most to the PTAs that, the later period when my heart starts opening a little. And also where women do start showing up in the movies. I mean, I would just not, you know, I like, I don't say that as like, I must be a woman in a movie for me to like it. But I do notice the correlation. And so.

• 2:15:50Sean Fennessey?

  They get equal billing in the last three, in a way that they did not previously.

• 2:15:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. And so, and, and so I just kind of, I, I find them more accessible, I guess. Or just like, I can connect to them more easily. But I think that this has everything that is great about the last three movies. It obviously has the, you know, like the huge spectacle and the action sequences that is brand new. It brings in like what we know from other PTAs. You know, I can't, I really don't like PTAs inherent vice.

• 2:16:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:16:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, but, but this takes pension and takes, um.

• 2:16:25Amanda Dobbins?

  But like, not the same lessons, but it just, like, everything from all of his other movies

• 2:16:30Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:16:30Amanda Dobbins?

  works together in this in a way that's pretty amazing for me.

• 2:16:33Speaker 05

  It also, I think, feels very personal.

• 2:16:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:16:37Speaker 05

  In that this is a movie about a hero who doesn't do anything other than parent ultimately. Like, everything that he does, he's kind of a patsy, he's kind of along with the ride.

• 2:16:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well put.

• 2:16:47Speaker 05

  He's being pushed into things, he falls off the roof, he's the beneficiary of so many people's hard work and sacrifice to get to a point where he's like, hasn't done anything except maybe he's done the most important thing. And also, you know, as PTA, being a parent of biracial kids in the world, like, I just feel like that there's something that he was willing to play with that he probably couldn't have in the past. But what is your top three? I'm sure you said it on the podcast.

• 2:17:09Amanda Dobbins?

  We just, we did it earlier in this podcast. What did I do? Did I do Master 3, One Battle 2, Phantom Thread 1?

• 2:17:17Speaker 05

  Yes. We have the same number one?

• 2:17:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, Phantom Thread is, you know, it's still...

• 2:17:22Speaker 05

  I think it's Phantom Thread 1, Boogie Nights 2, this 3.

• 2:17:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:17:25Sean Fennessey?

  I bumped Boogie Nights all the way down to 6 on this episode.

• 2:17:27Speaker 05

  That's so wild. Which is crazy to me. You should watch Boogie Nights again.

• 2:17:30Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really good.

• 2:17:31Sean Fennessey?

  That is what I said. I said I have not seen it since we did the rewatchables and I have been rewatching most of his movies. But that one is so committed to memory that I was like, eh, I'll come back to it another time.

• 2:17:39Speaker 05

  I think the thing that, the reason I want to see it again, well, there are many reasons, but one of the reasons is there are aspects of his filmography where he makes choices that are so, at least to my mind, feel so intentionally confounding that sometimes I feel locked out of them. And there were moments in There Will Be Blood, but ultimately, I did not feel locked out of that. The Master was more of that.

• 2:17:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 2:18:00Speaker 05

  I'm one of the few people that doesn't like Punch Drunk Love at all.

• 2:18:03Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:18:04Speaker 05

  And I did not like Licorice Pizza at all. And so, when that happens in this movie, I wanted to like, I want to see it again to let it feel as part of the whole, not detours from it.

• 2:18:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 2:18:14Speaker 05

  One thing that I do admire, and I think it's kind of something he has in common with the other Anderson, with Wes, is that there's scenes in this movie where I'm like, he's still doing the thing where he's having Dirk Diggler make a movie inside of a movie. There's like, there's, there's, there's things that are so... Like, it's not that there's quotes around them bracketing them, but they are stylized and filmed like, we're having a laugh here, aren't we?

• 2:18:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the phone call with Comrade Josh is like, it's like such a meta moment, you know, of like a guy just, everybody's been using that as a bit, exactly. It's like, I'm called the cable company and I'm trying to get them to help me, you know, unlock my password so that I can get the cable to work in my house. That's, and that's such a universal thing, but it does, it does feel a little quote markish.

• 2:18:55Speaker 05

  There was a moment in that moment, there's a moment in watching that scene where I was like, oh, this is what my younger daughter saw me doing when we were, when StubHub sent us fraudulent tickets to see Hamilton. And I was like, ma'am, this is a Broadway theater.

• 2:19:11Speaker 05

  They don't wait for latecomers.

• 2:19:13Sean Fennessey?

  What kind of revolutionary are you?

• 2:19:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, truly. The most porch watch of all time.

• 2:19:20Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, any, any closing thoughts? When are you gonna go next?

• 2:19:24Speaker 05

  I don't know. Maybe I'll have to see it. I'm, I'm traveling, so I may have to go see it in London. The BFI, is that, what's the format there? Do they have the same formats there or are they?

• 2:19:32Sean Fennessey?

  They do. I believe they have 70 millimeter. I don't know if South BFI, South Bank has an IMAX. I'm sure some intrepid listener can communicate that to you.

• 2:19:40Speaker 05

  Have you guys already done the box office spin and your take on the spin?

• 2:19:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, Sean, Sean did a whole monologue.

• 2:19:47Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:19:48Sean Fennessey?

  Feel good about it.

• 2:19:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:49Speaker 05

  I do too, but I also kind of appreciate that we are in a world where there is goodwill towards, like, I'm sorry, step on the podcast I did 30 minutes ago, but like, it's not too long ago that like, other, other studios would go on background like Paul DeGherabadian and be like, that, those numbers are actually bullshit. That, this movie sucks and it's DOA. And now you could get any person in town being like, an encouraging start truly for original film. Which is nice.

• 2:20:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think a lot of the, one thing that we didn't talk about is, the idea is that this movie's gonna be around for a really long time. Like Warner Brothers is not gonna put this on VOD for like five months.

• 2:20:27Speaker 05

  Good.

• 2:20:27Sean Fennessey?

  So unlike other films where if you make less than $30 million in your opening weekend, you can expect to see it at home, I don't think they're gonna do that. I think they're gonna try to play it out for a long period of time, hope that they don't have a big second week drop, but also. I think it's, this is an occasion, not all occasions with big movies from auteurs are true in this way, but this is an occasion where I'm like, if it doesn't make back its budget in the next six months, that's okay. Like, it's probably gonna be a legendary movie.

• 2:20:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:55Speaker 05

  And not our money.

• 2:20:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Again.

• 2:20:57Sean Fennessey?

  That's what Amanda was saying.

• 2:20:59Amanda Dobbins?

  But, yeah.

• 2:21:00Speaker 05

  I did have a moment where I'm like, all the hype, all the, like, even before anyone had seen the movie, like, in the trades, it was announced that, like, a big deal for an original movie, but Warner Brothers is ponying up this much money because it's PTA's most commercial script ever, and it's a great role for Leo, all of which is true.

• 2:21:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:18Speaker 05

  None of which said that in minute six of the movie, Sean Penn has a raging boner in his camo pants.

• 2:21:23Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's such a PTA movie. It's still, no matter what, no matter how exciting the chase sequences are, and there's explosions.

• 2:21:30Speaker 05

  He's like, I gotta be me.

• 2:21:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:21:31Sean Fennessey?

  It is a PTA movie. Well, I, just an incredible, way better story than I ever would have guessed.

• 2:21:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's really good.

• 2:21:38Sean Fennessey?

  The mastery of life.

• 2:21:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 2:21:40Sean Fennessey?

  And really, like, truly a button on this for a girl dad. I mean, perfect.

• 2:21:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 2:21:46Sean Fennessey?

  From conception to teenagedom.

• 2:21:48Speaker 05

  That was the night I.

• 2:21:50Amanda Dobbins?

  There you go.

• 2:21:50Speaker 05

  That was the night I became a hashtag girl dad.

• 2:21:52Amanda Dobbins?

  There you go. Beautiful.

• 2:21:53Speaker 05

  Yeah. Thanks for letting me share it.

• 2:21:54Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks for coming by, Andy.

• 2:21:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Thanks.

• 2:21:55Speaker 05

  Always a pleasure.

• 2:22:02Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to Adam Nayman. Thank you to Andy Greenwald. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Interesting week.

• 2:22:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:09Sean Fennessey?

  Number 10 on 25 for 25.

• 2:22:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm excited.

• 2:22:11Sean Fennessey?

  You're very, you're very smiley right now. It'll be a good one. And after that, The Smashing Machine. I've also invited Van to join us.

• 2:22:19Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I know.

• 2:22:19Sean Fennessey?

  And maybe Van wants to counter some of my one battle thoughts as well.

• 2:22:23Amanda Dobbins?

  All right. He's sitting in the middle because I'm, it's gonna be a coffee break for me. I love you both, but, uh, go see the movie in theaters. If you're listening to this part and you haven't seen the movie in theaters, I'm pissed at you.

• 2:22:35Sean Fennessey?

  That goes double for me. We'll see you later this week.

• 2:22:56Speaker 02

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• 2:23:24Speaker 03

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