‘Sinners’ Is for the Sickos, the Cinephiles and You, with Ryan Coogler!

Sean and Amanda are joined by Van Lathan to unpack Ryan Coogler’s highly anticipated vampire horror film, ‘Sinners.’ They applaud the film for its originality and authenticity, debate whether or not this is Michael B. Jordan’s best performance of his career, and unpack one of the film’s most controversial and daring scenes by hypothesizing about whether its boldness will be well received (2:28). Then, Sean is joined by Ryan Coogler to explain why he felt like he needed to make this movie, the importance of shooting on film, and the advice Christopher Nolan gave him for shooting on IMAX film cameras (1:12:03). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Ryan Coogler and Van Lathan Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to the brand new Zach Lowe Show. That's right, I'm back to have the same in-depth NBA conversations you're used to. We're going to talk about the games, the X's and O's, the drama. The playoffs are coming up and now you get to see every episode in full on video on Spotify and on my own YouTube channel. Episodes drop every Monday and Thursday with a collection of guests you're going to love. So make sure you follow and subscribe to the brand new Zach Lowe Show on Spotify or wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts. Let's go.

• 0:35Sean Fennessey?

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• 1:07Speaker 02

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• 2:17Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 2:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 2:19Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the big picture at Conversation Show about Sinners. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Ryan Coogler, the writer-director of Sinners. His fifth feature film and first wholly original story. It's a sexy, violent, complex, entertaining vampire horror movie. It's also a story about twin brothers and our duality as men. It's an erotic, deep south musical. And it's an exploration of the American blues. It's a lot of movie. It also looks and sounds phenomenal. If you want to know how and why he did it, stick around for my conversation with Ryan. I met Ryan in 2017. Never had him on the show before. He's been at the top of my wish list for many, many years. I hope you'll stick around for our conversation. Seated now with us is Van Lathan. What's up, Van?

• 3:00Speaker 04

  What's going on, guys? How you doing?

• 3:01Amanda Dobbins?

  The duality of men before me.

• 3:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 3:03Speaker 04

  The smokestack twins right now.

• 3:05Sean Fennessey?

  Who's who is really the question here. Who is going to turn and who is not going to turn? Interesting question. So, Van, it's been a minute since you've been on the show.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  A little bit.

• 3:14Amanda Dobbins?

  What's been up to?

• 3:15Speaker 04

  Um, I can't remember what we did last. I don't remember.

• 3:19Sean Fennessey?

  We had a very fun conversation about Joker: Folie de.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:23Sean Fennessey?

  I think that might have been the last time.

• 3:24Speaker 04

  It might have been the last time I was on, yeah.

• 3:25Sean Fennessey?

  And Amanda was on leave at that time. So you guys haven't been together in forever.

• 3:28Amanda Dobbins?

  That was six months. Yeah, because that was, that was Si's first. I mean, Si hasn't seen that movie, but that was his movie weekend, so.

• 3:35Sean Fennessey?

  You should show him Joker 2. See what he thinks.

• 3:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, he'd be excited.

• 3:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of made for the mentality of a six-month-old.

• 3:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I never watched it because I listened to your podcast, which I very much enjoyed, but it didn't really even seem like you guys cared about it or liked it, so.

• 3:48Speaker 04

  No one cared about it. It's almost as if the movie never happened. It's a weird phenomenon.

• 3:52Sean Fennessey?

  It is a very strange thing. It is notably the same movie studio that is releasing Sinners.

• 3:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Look at you.

• 3:57Sean Fennessey?

  Joker: Folie de, huge bomb. Sinners, a movie of incredible importance to Warner Brothers this year. As I said, written and directed by Coogler. Stars, as most of his films star, Michael B. Jordan, of course, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Keaton, newcomer, Jack O'Connell, Wonmi Masaku, Jamie Lawson, Omar Miller, Lee Jun Lee, and Delroy Lindo. Stacked cast for this movie. He also has reassembled the Black Panther Department head's murder team. Just some of the best in the business. Production designer Hannah Beekler. Cinematography by Autumn Derald-Arkpa. Uh, Michael P. Schauer, his editor. And Ludwig Gorenson, the composer, who is now, I think...

• 4:40Sean Fennessey?

  Has just kind of grabbed the belt. And we don't need to necessarily start the full conversation around music, but the music of this movie is way more crucial than I ever would have expected based on the marketing.

• 4:52Amanda Dobbins?

  And essential to the movie. I mean, it is a movie about music. I mean, literally in the plot, there are blues musicians and a blues club and then other musicians who show up.

• 5:04Sean Fennessey?

  They certainly do.

• 5:05Amanda Dobbins?

  And also the themes and ideas of the movie. So I think you can talk about the music.

• 5:09Sean Fennessey?

  We definitely will. We'll go in depth because it's not just Goran's who's making music in this movie. There's all kinds of different genres and different cultural traditions that are portrayed in the movie. But let's start very simply. Dan, I'll ask you, what did you think of the movie Sinners?

• 5:24Speaker 04

  I thought it was phenomenal. I really enjoyed it. I had talked to you about it because you had seen it before me. I went to the LA screening, I think it was the last week, week before last. A complete cultural experience. And look, I'm not saying that the movie is perfect, right? But what I'm saying is parts of the movie are effective because they aren't perfect. And they're not, to me, trying to be perfect as much as they are trying to be deeply authentic. And as we talk about originality lacking in Hollywood now with some of the IP stuff, I think people are saying originality, but they're actually meaning authenticity.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  They want a story that, from a filmmaker, that feels like they have to tell a story. And you know when you're watching a movie that someone feels like they have to tell a story because they take great tale and, great care, should I say, they take great care and tell it in great detail. And not always like you would want them to tell it, but always the way they do.

• 6:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  And when you come away from Sinners, you go like, you know, this guy had something to say. And he packaged it in something that is very watchable, sexy, but it's not easy, right? He's got something to say. So I was actually blown away, not just by the execution of it, but by how daring the movie was and how it elevated a lot of the performers in it. It's as good as Mike has ever been. The, the music is fantastic. I haven't seen music used in a film like this in a while. So, uh, my expectations were high and the movie still managed to exceed them.

• 7:10Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think, Amanda?

• 7:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I completely agree with Van, but I, I think because I saw it third of this group and my expectations were very high for it as a, as a movie of ideas and a movie of, and you know, Sean, you said to me at some point, and I hope this is not a spoiler, you were like, this is a movie about the blues and I don't think people know that.

• 7:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 7:32Amanda Dobbins?

  And I really admire Coogler's work as well, and I know him as someone who can create like big, broad studio movies with a lot of, you know, with ideas and themes and, and things to say inside of them. So I was expecting all of that and it, and the movie totally delivers on that. It is also just like a straight up on vampire movie, you know, like it is.

• 7:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 7:59Amanda Dobbins?

  And it really, and so I almost went in and, and I say that in a, in a complimentary way as well. I think Coogler does just, he finds the perfect balance between genre, not even like a balance between, he managed to do like full genre movie and full like movie, movie, uh, like ideas movie where serious people like all in one. You, you can have it all if you're Ryan Coogler. So I, I really, really liked it, but I, as we're talking about it for other people, I just don't want to undersell the fact that like they just, the vampires like go for it and you know, and he sets up like a whole world as Van said.

• 8:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 8:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and characters and stakes and then, and it's, and it is really, I had this moment because I was so immersed in these, in this world that he builds in like thirties Mississippi. And then I realized, oh, I see. Now we're all assembled here and now like the vampires are like just going to go for it. And, and, and I, I again, I was like, wow, I didn't even realize what you were doing and how deftly you were putting together this framework that I like, that I do recognize, but like there it is and here we go. So that's cool. And we like, I really enjoyed it. And also like, we need movies like this. So you know, the world does.

• 9:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I fully agree. Um, over the years, I've had a lot of conversations with people. Bill is somebody who asks us about this from time to time, sort of like. Who is the next generation of people that are gonna make the kinds of movies that we wanna go see? And the list was always very short, but it was the same handful of names. It was Damien Chazelle, it was Greta Gerwig, it was Barry Jenkins, it was the Saftees, it was Ari Aster, it was Denis Villeneuve, it was like, it was a pretty short list. Kugler was always on the list for me. I like all of his movies with some serious reservations about Wakanda Forever, which we talked about on the show some years ago. Yeah. So interesting to me that this is the film that he has chosen to do after Wakanda Forever, because it feels like a real palate cleanser for that movie.

• 10:01Sean Fennessey?

  Which is not to say that it's a rejection of Wakanda Forever, it's not. But it is so outside of any of the mythological framework that he has lived in as a writer and director for the last seven or eight years, that you can really feel him flexing his muscles. He's very loyal to vampire stories in the movie, but everything else in the movie, I've never seen a vampire movie like this. The setting, the time period, the characterization is all a new take on a hundred-year-old story type in movies. And it's phenomenal, it's like, it's, this is basically exactly what I'm begging for. This reminds me of like, when No Pitt, when Oppenheimer hit, like, there's a handful of movies over the last few years where I was just like,

• 10:44Sean Fennessey?

  this is what I'm looking for, somebody with a really strong take, with an incredible visual sensibility, who knows how to direct actors, who understands the way the music has a relationship to drama, and also just wants to have fun, like, this movie is really fun. And it's, you know, there's lots of homage to From Dust Till Dawn, and The Thing, and movies that we love that, some people who love vampire movies might see this movie and be like, this is like a From Dust Till Dawn ripoff, but this is like in the lineage of what these kinds of movies do. That movie's thirty years ago.

• 11:13Amanda Dobbins?

  But it is also like, like, an old-school Hollywood musical, like, for half of it. And, and there are, like, musical set pieces, so, you know, I, I, the musical nerd, was like, oh, look at that, oh, look at that, this is so exciting. I mean, there's, there is something for everyone, including, you know, stakes to the heart.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  So, you know, I enjoy movies like this. I really enjoy From Dust Till Dawn.

• 11:36Sean Fennessey?

  I love it, it's a fave of mine.

• 11:38Speaker 04

  One of the most re-watchable movies ever, right? And I really enjoy, for as campy and kooky as it is, Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight.

• 11:45Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  Right? Which are two movies where you have people, a ragtag bunch of people, trapped inside of a building. With a horde of vampires waiting outside. The most interesting thing about those movies are the vampires themselves are very interesting, right? You have an all time Billy Zane performance in

• 12:05Sean Fennessey?

  Demon Knight.

• 12:05Speaker 04

  Demon Knight. You guys, I'm telling you.

• 12:07Sean Fennessey?

  Your guy Billy, Billy Z.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  Rockin'. Okay. Um, and then you have so much about From Dust Till Dawn that is memorable. Osama Hayek, Tarantino, Clooney's, the whole deal. But it's always kind of about why are those guys in those situations? And how they rise, those characters rise to heroism. J.D. Pinkett Smith in the case of, uh, from, uh, in Demon Knight. Now, this movie gives you all of these different elements of a very complicated and untold culture, which is the culture of the Mississippi Delta, right? Um, the music of it, the, the look of it.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  A lot of people are gonna watch the movie and go, huh, they're two Asian American, they're grocers that exist down there. Is that real? It is, and it's a very interesting piece of it. And then when you get to the vampires, they take over. Now you're full on in a vampire movie.

• 13:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 13:07Speaker 04

  And the backdrop of all of the characters just feeds the reasons why everybody makes a decision. It gives you a lot, but it doesn't waste anything. Because every single thing that it gives you where, if it's cultural, if it's about the blues, you're thinking, they're just packing a bunch of stuff in there to make their movie hit with people who want to see more representation on screen. No, it all matters. It all has something to do with the story.

• 13:35Sean Fennessey?

  I think that specificity and authenticity that you were talking about is there. It feels like it is researched and accurate. Also, it's a vampire movie.

• 13:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:43Sean Fennessey?

  And it's a very classical style of film writing and filmmaking. This is a three act movie. The first 40 minutes of the movie are entirely setting the scene, letting us understand this world, letting us understand these twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, who they are. They've just come back from Chicago. They are originally from Clarksville, Mississippi. They're coming home to open this club. And we're learning about what Clarksville is like this time. We meet these grocers. We see this young cousin of theirs who's a preacher's son, who's a, you know, an aspiring musician who wants to help them open this club. We see the woman who Stack had been in love with when he left. We see a woman who Preacher Boy will soon fall in love with at the train station.

• 14:25Sean Fennessey?

  We meet an old blues musician, clearly modeled after like a Sonny Boy Williamson type. Like, there's just a lot of detail and specificity that goes into the first forty minutes of this movie. A lot of times when you watch a movie like this that has that formulaic structure, the first forty minutes are boring because it just feels like setup. This movie does the great thing that a lot of genre movies do, which is that you don't know anything about the vampire stuff for the first forty minutes. And in fact, as I was watching it, even though I'd seen the trailer, I forgot it was gonna be a vampire movie. I wasn't like, when's a vampire gonna come around? Because I was trying to figure out what they were doing with the story. And then forty minutes in, Jack O'Connell arrives. And the film's energy shifts. And, I mean, he's just fantastic in this movie and we could talk about him.

• 15:08Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, all the performances are great, but I love what they did with him in particular. And then the next forty minutes becomes this escalation into that musical that you were talking about, Amanda. And then you get to that end of the second act when something awful happens. And then the final forty minutes is about survival. This is a very, very classic thing. This has been happening in movies for a very long time. It's not gonna be surprising the way the movie is shaped, but how it feels is always so alive and so, like, there's a sense of humor about it. There's like a real sexiness to it that I find is so unusual in modern movies now, especially modern movies from quote-unquote important filmmakers. Like, characters are going down on each other. There's explicit conversation about how to have sex in the movie.

• 15:50Sean Fennessey?

  You know, there's like, uh, literally, you know, turns in the storytelling around a sex scene that felt, you know, kinda like the stuff that we are always like, why isn't it like 1997 anymore?

• 16:01Amanda Dobbins?

  People also have actual chemistry.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  Yeah. Like, they, you're watching people on screen that look like they actually wanna fuck each other. You know what I mean? And it's a part of the actual story. Ev- even getting down to the way that, uh, Jack O'Connell, who is just like really scary and awesome. Like, we're talking about- The expression of the blues in here. This movie made me look up Irish jig dancing and songs and whatnot. Cause they look like they were having fun too out there. Going nuts. I was like, do I wanna, which party do I wanna be in? When they were out there as vampires getting it out. And then, and he's dancing around, I'm like, yo, that, that was like, that's pretty.

• 16:49Sean Fennessey?

  To me, that's a, that is the, you know, for obvious bias reasons. My favorite example of why Cooler is so great is that the scenes where you see Jack O'Connell, who plays an Irish vampire, um, is singing and dancing and exploring the Irish folk tradition are so good is because they're just very entertaining. They're fun to watch and they're, it's sort of, it's sort of a sequel to an earlier musical sequence. It's sort of the other side of that coin and it's sort of the light and the darkness like in any vampire story. But you know, the Irish folk tradition and American black blues is like, they're two musical forms that are totally related to each other. They're interconnected. They're both born of impoverished people who have to use culture to find a way to reckon with.

• 17:33Speaker 04

  And to tell their stories.

• 17:34Sean Fennessey?

  And to, and to, and to express themselves in the face of really difficult things. I asked Kugler about this. He noted, for example, that his first name is Ryan, which is an Irish name and that he in fact is like, this was very much on his mind when he was making the movie. But that's like a heady idea that if you care about that sort of thing and you're into musicology and you're into the origins of American music, which this movie is just filled with, it's a lot of fun. If you don't care about that stuff, it's just Jack O'Connell going off dancing and it's super fun. And I should say, I guess that we're gonna spoil this movie as we have the conversation throughout, cause I feel like it's kind of necessary to give it its proper due. So if you haven't seen the movie yet and you don't wanna hear anymore about what we're discussing.

• 18:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Go see the movie.

• 18:11Sean Fennessey?

  Go see the movie.

• 18:12Amanda Dobbins?

  On the biggest screen possible.

• 18:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, it is. If you can see it in IMAX, you should see it. It was shot on film. Kugler is taking great pains to talk about how and why he shot this movie with IMAX cameras in 65 millimeter format. You can see it on 70 millimeters at some places. I got a chance to see it in that way. It was very much worth it on a big screen.

• 18:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:29Sean Fennessey?

  Um, let's, let's, let's talk about the, the movie itself specifically. So you said this is the best you think Michael B. Jordan has, has been in a movie period, you think?

• 18:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:41Sean Fennessey?

  So he's got a tall task because he is playing dual roles. Similar but different brothers, very Cain and Abel framed, I think here. There's like the sort of more aggressive leader type.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  Talking about Cain and Abel from the Bible or Cain and Abel from No Limit Records? It's gangsta-fied. You ever heard that?

• 18:58Sean Fennessey?

  You know that I have. I was more of a Silk the Shocker guy personally.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 19:04Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you. But I was referring to the Bible, but if you want to talk No Limit, we could do that too. Mia Ex, I was a fan.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  Oh, shit. Shout out to Mia Ex, the baddest mami.

• 19:15Sean Fennessey?

  Were you a big No Limit fan back in the day?

• 19:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I missed that one.

• 19:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, were you a fan of the tanks, you know?

• 19:19Speaker 04

  Like Mr. Servon? You fucking with Mr. Servon? You like him?

• 19:24Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think of Michael B. Jordan? What do you think about him in general?

• 19:26Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I had a similar thought to Van that I don't know if it's his best ever, but there was a revelation to me in this movie in which I do think he's quite good. And I don't always think that that's the case. I realized that I think that Michael B. is a great facial and like expression actor.

• 19:45Sean Fennessey?

  He's a movie star.

• 19:46Amanda Dobbins?

  He's a, well, he's a, but, but he can use, he can give you visually what you need.

• 19:53Sean Fennessey?

  He's Steve McQueen.

• 19:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, but like dialogue.

• 19:56Sean Fennessey?

  But that's what I'm saying.

• 19:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 19:57Sean Fennessey?

  Like, he doesn't need to talk to sell it.

• 20:00Amanda Dobbins?

  That's not the only definition of movie star is what I'm saying.

• 20:03Sean Fennessey?

  You're right, but he's, he's, he's best suited, yes.

• 20:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Our visual expression and, you know, like in Black Panther, he's doing what I would call like an all caps acting style, which is kind of where like a lot of dialogue can go. So this movie uses what he does well. And even uses, there are two of him, so you're looking for the visual, like the tiny tells of each character, which are in expressions, you know, like mannerism, physicality, and he can do that. And so I thought it used him really well. And obviously, like, he has presence, he is a movie star, he fills the screen. And when there are two of them, whatever they did digitally, good job. Cause it, then you just have two Michael B. Jordans. So I thought it was great. I agree with Van.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  So the reason why I liked it so much is because, obviously, once again, Coogler's intentional with this, right? He's never done a movie without Mike.

• 21:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 21:01Speaker 04

  Mike's in every movie, so he knows him. Very intimately. Once again, this proves the reason why great directors go back to their guys so many times. They have frequent collaborations because they think in terms of character, of course, first. But they also think in terms of the strengths of the people that they know that can embody these characters. And so when you have Smoke and Stack, uh, one brother that's a more of a fast, talking type of wink and a nod brother, and this other guy that is very grounded and solemn, um, and dedicated to protection, uh, and a little bit, a little bit rougher around the edges. You have two parts of Mike's personality.

• 21:45Speaker 04

  You have, uh, Michael B. Jordan that we know as the, you know, really polished movie star. And then you also have a guy who is a very serious, uh, craftsman, a very serious artist, and somebody who cares and puts a lot into roles, gets beefed up for roles, really works at it.

• 22:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Watches a lot of anime.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. He does. I don't mean that, and like, he took that very seriously.

• 22:15Speaker 04

  And so Kugler knows that. Yeah. And so he gives you the two differing forms of who Mike is, and he gets to fall into both of them and essentially make one character. And so when I watched it, I thought it was the perfect usage of him. That's why, and it sounds so nuts to me, uh, uh, even when I say it. It's almost like the movie to me where he arrived, to where I'm like, oh, this now is proof of concept, for as much work as he's been putting in, this is proof of concept of actually where he is going to go as one of the biggest, maybe the biggest star, like, of his generation, you know? But, um...

• 23:00Speaker 04

  And it's, it's, it, it all comes together and it works because it was such an intentional choice to have this guy played, play these two characters and the world that was built around.

• 23:10Sean Fennessey?

  I think part of it is just that Michael B is just a grown up now. We've been living with him since The Wire, since he was a teenager and he's 38 years old now. I'm not sure how old the Smoke Stack Twins are supposed to be, but these are guys who served in World War I, who were in Chicago during the Great Depression and were presumably bootleggers and gangsters.

• 23:29Speaker 04

  Working for Al Capone.

• 23:30Sean Fennessey?

  And quote, "Working for Al Capone." We don't know if that's actually true.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  That's true, yeah.

• 23:32Sean Fennessey?

  But the film frames them as these guys who've lived and they're coming home after having lived, you know, particularly, uh, Smoke has lost a son and in part has left Clarksville because he's lost a son. Yeah, I guess he's married or with Winnie Misako's character, Annie, and that has like forced him to flee. Stack, on the other hand, who's like, you're right, the more sort of like enterprising hustler type, has also left and he's left behind a woman, uh, Mary, played by Hailee Steinfeld, who was the daughter of the woman who helped raise them after they lost their father. A lot of this information is communicated like really well. It doesn't feel exposition-y. It feels very natural to the storytelling because you've got these, this reunion framework of all these characters who haven't seen each other in a long time. So the things that they say to each other

• 24:16Sean Fennessey?

  feel like they need to be communicated. It's very good writing in this movie that like makes, I think, the performance of somebody like Michael B, who to me sometimes can be limited as a performer, but is, I always like him in, um, in Ryan's movies because he understands like where he excels.

• 24:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:32Sean Fennessey?

  He can do hardened, alpha leader type. He can do like slick, cool guy if he wants. He can do guy who's got like, is almost obsessed with his own ideas. I feel like both Adonis and Killmonger are like kind of consumed by their own idea of the world and Smoke is the same way. Smoke is like, we have to do this. We have to make this project. The project, I was wondering how you guys felt about this in the movie because the movie presents it as in two ways. Are they starting Club Juke because it's a get rich quick scheme? Are they starting it because it's like a way to give back to the community and plant roots? Is it both? Is it neither? What is the purpose of them buying this killing floor from this KKK leader and trying to build up this place?

• 25:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Good question.

• 25:16Speaker 04

  You want me to take it?

• 25:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:19Speaker 04

  Um. There's absolutely no reason for them to come back to Mississippi. That's key in understanding.

• 25:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, unless they are on the run because they stole everything. They stole the Italian wine and they stole the Irish beer. So they played both sides and now they gotta get out of town.

• 25:36Speaker 04

  Los Angeles, New York, all of that. When you are electing to come back to Mississippi, they talk a little bit about it in the movie. You're reinserting yourself to being at the bottom of the social order, which they found out was kind of the same in Chicago. But they're choosing familiarity to come back down to Mississippi and to reinsert themselves into the life that they left. For some reason, right? He talks about the fact that he went to a different town of freed slaves and he understood what it was like there. He's been to Chicago, been all around the world, but they come back there. The club is them setting down roots.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  For whatever reason, they've seen all the other evils of the world, the evils of the war, the evils of a certain liberalized metropolitan brand of American racism. The evil of a black freedman in a town that didn't accept them. And they're choosing the devil they know. And so they're gonna be there for a while. And what actually they realize is that there is a completely different devil that they have never met before.

• 26:49Sean Fennessey?

  This is the not so subterranean idea of the movie that I love and that I think is played really well. Jack O'Connell is a vampire, presumably hundreds of years old. He's from Ireland, he somehow made it to America, and he is attempting to grow his flock. He's killing people in an attempt to escape the Choctaw Indians that are, you know, trailing him throughout Mississippi.

• 27:11Speaker 04

  Could he use more of them?

• 27:13Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. And I got the impression Cooler was very interested in them too and maybe just didn't build the movie out around that. Maybe it's Sinners too. Anyhow. O'Connell's character, you're gonna laugh at me, but you're not, reminded me a little bit of Thanos. Because there is a little bit of, are we sure he's wrong? About, about this character in this movie?

• 27:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:38Sean Fennessey?

  Because the whole movie is about temptation and the other side. The allure of living on the other side of the law, the allure of living in another city that is different from yours, the allure of another race, the allure of another kind of music, another kind of culture. Is the grass greener if you go over here? Is the grass greener in vampiric immortality? And the movie makes a really strong case for vampiric immortality, all the way up until the post-credit sequence.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:03Sean Fennessey?

  Which is extremely alluring.

• 28:04Speaker 04

  They look like they having a good time to me.

• 28:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  They can't go outside during the day, but they look like they chilling.

• 28:11Sean Fennessey?

  But you're also placing the movie in the context of the black church, gospel, faith and spirituality. There's an, you know, an underpinning of Christianity that runs through some of Coogler's films. You know, there's a lot of messianic imagery in all of his movies. This is deep stuff.

• 28:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:27Sean Fennessey?

  Using a vampire story to tell it. And I came out of the movie a second time, loved seeing it a second time, it worked even better, feeling like this vampire, he's got some points. He's got some points. I don't.

• 28:39Speaker 04

  Well, the title of the movie sinners, right? And it seems to be litigated with every character, like how much sin is enough for you? Like, how much sin are you, like, are you willing to completely become a vampire, to be beautiful forever?

• 28:56Speaker 04

  But there was even still mortality with the vampire, because I swore that they were gonna kill preacher, preacher boy. But then they go, nah, I told him I will live. And I am, I still love my brother. I'm a vampire. But I still love my brother enough to like, keep his promise. I'm like, oh, maybe he's not that bad, you know, cuz he's, he's kind of more, cuz he's, that's Stack, right? That smokes.

• 29:16Sean Fennessey?

  That's Stack, yeah, who lives, yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  The Stack. So he's kind of more Stack as a vampire than he even was as a human being. Cuz he's, he's, he's carefree. It didn't seem like he thought things out. Well, now he doesn't have much to worry about, right? Besides the sun. And maybe if there's some kind of Abraham Van Helsing in this universe somewhere, maybe that guy, the Choctaw Indians are gonna come back. Um, but. Preacher Boy falls in love with Perlene. She's cheating on her husband. Like, are, are, oh, one, the, one of the guys i- in the movie, uh, Daryl Lendo's character, who's does, does the most heroic thing in the movie, is a, a drunk.

• 29:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  And a violent and all of those things.

• 29:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  So, eh, when you start litigating everybody's morality in the movie, it kinda comes back to a central idea of, like, what's your version of worse? Like, what, what's your version of bad?

• 30:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and the two, the twins, the Michael B. Jordan characters, also ultimately, like, their ends carry that out as well. Right? Of like, what, you know, like, what would you pick? Who, like, who are the real sinners? Like, what is the real sin? Like, which, what is, what is the devil you know? What is the lesser of the two evils? You know, like, and, and some of it is exploring, I guess, you know, probably the different two sides of, like, of each of us. Like, which way would you go? You know, cause the twin is, like, one person divided.

• 30:42Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and I, like, the movie, I mean, we're fully spoiling it, right?

• 30:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Amanda Dobbins?

  So, one person becomes a vamp, one twin becomes a vampire, and the other person is, is dead, but also gets to be reunited with his, like, his wife and child.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:00Amanda Dobbins?

  So, but-

• 31:00Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible scene.

• 31:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Incredible scene, and, and also-

• 31:03Sean Fennessey?

  And he falls to the ground and shoots up the KKK leader and he sees the vision of Annie.

• 31:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and that's also, you know, that's another thing where it's like, you've finished the movie, um, like, the climactic nighttime scene is the, you know, the humans against the vampires at night, but then it's like, oh, wait, there are other daytime vampires, right, that come back? And so, we have to, like, one person, you know, you get your nighttime vampire shootout and the, there's a, there's a twin, there's a duel for everything.

• 31:28Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, but, so, his, his actual death is not played at all like a death. It is played, I mean, he dies, but-

• 31:34Speaker 04

  It's a release.

• 31:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a release.

• 31:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he gets salvation.

• 31:36Amanda Dobbins?

  It's happy, he gets salvation, it's happier life. So, in, like, in both cases, eh, the Jack O'Connell character is right, and it's like, well, this is definitely better than your, than your current life. And then, the movie portrays the other option, which is just dying, as like, definitely better than your current life, which is sort of, I mean-

• 32:03Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, the thesis of the movie is basically that just like staying, that the participation in the everyday is actually the, is the worst case outcome.

• 32:13Sean Fennessey?

  Well, there's one other, there's one other like critical element of this that kind of splits the difference between these, this, this duality idea.

• 32:24Sean Fennessey?

  The movie's set in Clarksville in 1932. In 1932, Robert Johnson, famed blues musician, goes to Clarksville. It's the last year before he decides to become a traveling musician, go down to the crossroads, meet the devil, be granted his incredible musical powers, and then basically change music, change American music, change all music.

• 32:42Speaker 04

  Ralph Macchio.

• 32:43Sean Fennessey?

  Change Ralph Macchio in Walter Hill's incredible film Crossroads, which is a film about a white kid from Long Island, who quote unquote, "meets Robert Johnson and is touched by the blues gods."

• 32:52Speaker 04

  You guys never saw that movie. That movie's good.

• 32:54Sean Fennessey?

  Crossroads is very good. Thank you for acknowledging it. It would be a great movie to watch in a double feature with Sinners. Anyhow, the point is, obviously, this is not a mistake that this movie is set in that year. This is not a mistake that Robert Johnson, who bears a passing resemblance to Preacher Boy,

• 33:09Sean Fennessey?

  who then becomes, we find out later, basically Buddy Guy, who moves to Chicago, one of the innovators of Chicago Electric Blues. All of these, these kind of intersections, I think, are showing you that like you kind of need to confront evil before you can transcend and become something bigger and better. And that maybe you can become Buddy Guy, or maybe you can become Preacher Boy, or maybe you can become Robert Johnson, but that you need the dark to have the light. Doesn't mean the dark goes away, but it means that you can kind of confront it and go forward. I think that's ultimately the big takeaway of the movie.

• 33:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, that's the very brief. By the way, no one told me there was a post-credit sequence, so.

• 33:45Sean Fennessey?

  You missed it.

• 33:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I didn't know.

• 33:46Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, my god.

• 33:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, listen, it's not a Marvel movie, okay? I was trying to respect Ryan Coogler, okay? He's freed from Marvel.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  No, but this is, I'm glad this happened to you.

• 33:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, thanks.

• 33:56Speaker 04

  I'm glad this happened to you because this, this happened to you because of your rebuke of the Marvel movies.

• 34:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay, is that what it is?

• 34:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, pay your penance.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  And since you rebuked them, you missed a great part of the movie.

• 34:07Sean Fennessey?

  It is very cool.

• 34:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 34:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I just, I didn't.

• 34:10Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it was gonna be really silly and on, so here's what happens.

• 34:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Someone told you to stay? Well, like, why?

• 34:16Sean Fennessey?

  Literally, I was told to stay.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  But through, but throughout the credits, though, they're showing you him play.

• 34:21Sean Fennessey?

  They cut to Buddy Guy.

• 34:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, which is meant to be Preacher Boy. He's got the scar on his face that he gets at the end of the film.

• 34:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I saw that.

• 34:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's right, at Perlene.

• 34:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And then I was like, cool. Like, you know, good movie. I'm gonna drive home now.

• 34:32Sean Fennessey?

  Perlene also, by the way, a Son House song, so that's, that's where that character's name comes from. Um, in the post-credit sequence, uh, Stack and Mary show up in 1992 in the back bar of a club where Preacher Boy has just played, where Sammy has just played, and he's now in his late eighties.

• 34:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 34:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:53Sean Fennessey?

  And incredible Coogee sweater and like hardcore 1992 hip-hop outfit.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  She's got the big door knockers on.

• 35:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, door knockers.

• 35:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, but they-

• 35:01Sean Fennessey?

  They look like they've just walked off the set of In Living Color. They look amazing.

• 35:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Incredible, but they also, they haven't aged because they're vampires.

• 35:07Sean Fennessey?

  They haven't aged.

• 35:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, I, you know, I'm just, you know, listen, I'm, I'm here with you. I'm learning and we're learning and growing together.

• 35:15Sean Fennessey?

  It's a funny thing, though. Not, not that Marvel invented the post-credit sequence or whatever. It had been done before.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure, yeah.

• 35:20Sean Fennessey?

  But I like the idea of Coogee or taking a little piece of that and putting it in this movie because in this, he basically, Stack sits down next to Sammy and he asks him, you know, he tells him that my brother told me that he would let me live if I didn't fuck with you, if I let you live. But you're now at the end, you've lived a good life. Would you wanna turn and be a vampire? You can keep playing music forever. You can make some money. You can live the life you wanna live and be celebrated. And he says, you know what? I'm good. No, thank you. And then Stack sort of reflects for a minute and says, you know, I like what you're doing here, but I miss the real. Like, I miss, and then we flashback to Sammy as a young kid playing the acoustic guitar and that slide guitar in the car when he has this great moment of reverie when he's singing "Travelin'". And-

• 36:03Sean Fennessey?

  Buddy Guy breaks out the acoustic guitar and he just plays for them. And very amusing Hailee Steinfeld just being like, oh damn, I do love the blues kind of moment from her. Really appreciate her white girl efforts for all of us.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  She's not as white as we thought, apparently.

• 36:17Sean Fennessey?

  Not, at least not according to this film.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Oh, according to her. She said that she was, you didn't see this?

• 36:22Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 36:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that this is-

• 36:24Sean Fennessey?

  She's descended from?

• 36:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I think in the, whatever descent that they use in the, in the film is what-

• 36:29Sean Fennessey?

  Is accurate.

• 36:30Speaker 04

  She, she said that she got some black and Filipino.

• 36:34Sean Fennessey?

  Well, God bless. That's great. In this film, she's one eighth?

• 36:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 36:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:39Sean Fennessey?

  Her father's mother was black? Her mother's father?

• 36:43Speaker 04

  Her mother's father was-

• 36:44Sean Fennessey?

  Was half black.

• 36:44Speaker 04

  Was half black, yeah.

• 36:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 36:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm just looking at, at the quotes and according to Wikipedia, that's also what she's citing in real life.

• 36:51Sean Fennessey?

  That's dope. She has a tremendous amount of swag and I, I wish her all the best.

• 36:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Not to be like the, the white girl being like-

• 36:59Speaker 04

  You like it.

• 37:00Amanda Dobbins?

  She was very good. I didn't know she had that.

• 37:02Sean Fennessey?

  I-

• 37:02Speaker 04

  Some, there's some, some lines in there, we, Hailee, you know, was stirring up some feelings.

• 37:06Sean Fennessey?

  Turn it down a little bit.

• 37:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, no, no.

• 37:08Sean Fennessey?

  I'll turn it up.

• 37:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I was fucking with it.

• 37:09Sean Fennessey?

  She's given some of the raciest dialogue in the movie.

• 37:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, she's going for it. And like this, this, I'll grow it up.

• 37:16Sean Fennessey?

  The post-credit sequence is fun.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  It is fun.

• 37:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I'm sorry I missed it. No, you know.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  It's fun and it also kind of like, um, it's meaningful too because when they're listening to him play, it's, they start to reflect a little bit.

• 37:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 37:30Speaker 04

  They've lived for a long time. They're never gonna get any older.

• 37:33Sean Fennessey?

  Never see the sun.

• 37:34Speaker 04

  They're never gonna see the sun. He says, this is the last time I saw the sun.

• 37:38Speaker 04

  They're not ever gonna be human again, but they, you wonder with vampires, do you miss your humanity? So when they're sitting there talking, they offer him, you know, eternity. He says no. And then they reflect a little bit about how they were once what he is. And then they leave without massacring the whole bar, which I thought that they maybe might do. And so they're out of there. So it was kind of a way to let us know that the central tenets of the story still exist even though the characters don't anymore. And just to go back to that. I think the term sinners, cuz you know, we have all sinned and fall short of

• 38:18Speaker 04

  fell, fallen short of the glory of God. I think the term sinners just means this movie is just about people. Because unlike Marvel movies, good doesn't win in the end, evil doesn't lose, life just goes on. Um, every character has a different sort of fate that they meet. The, there's the forever fate, there's the fate of the human, there's the fate of death. Um, every character shows a tremendous amount of frailty, but it doesn't button itself up in a way where you think everything's gonna be okay. It doesn't button itself up in a way where you think everything's gonna be terrible. We live in a really complicated world with a lot of complicated people.

• 39:00Speaker 04

  Who if you put them in an extraordinary situation, might do some things that are heroic. Or some things that are monumentally stupid, but they're like just people. Living through this thing, even Preacher Boy's backstory with his dad and how his dad views religion. You would have thought that Preacher Boy would have been like, I've seen the devil, so let me run to the church. Not what he does. I've seen the devil, I'm not gonna be here forever. Let me go live out my days in the way that is the most meaningful to me. Let me do the thing that they're telling me not to do. He still rejects God, basically.

• 39:40Speaker 04

  After he's seen Satan, because he chooses himself. Very, very interesting choices all around. Interesting movie from that perspective to me.

• 39:48Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk a little bit more about Preacher Boy cuz um, he's portrayed by Miles Kaden, who I'd never seen before, who is phenomenal. Here's what I wrote down, he looks like a young Derek Luke and has the voice of a young Shine Poe.

• 40:00Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. Shout out to Shine, President of Belize.

• 40:03Sean Fennessey?

  It's a huge, huge episode for 90's rap so far.

• 40:07Sean Fennessey?

  He's very, very good in this movie. He has a tricky role because he's opposite some very experienced heavyweight movie stars. You know, he's opposite Coogler twice. Um, he's opposite Hailee Steinfeld. He's opposite Delroy Lindo. Like, he's really confronted by some-

• 40:21Amanda Dobbins?

  And he's like the framework of the movie and also sort of like the audience stand-in.

• 40:25Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly. He's kind of our surrogate.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  First character we see.

• 40:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And his music and his desire to make music and his struggles with God and struggles with the church is the center of the story. Now, he is the agent of change in what I'll describe as what will be the most controversial scene in the movie, which is a scene that I love, but I think will be a big talking point coming out of this.

• 40:43Amanda Dobbins?

  This is so funny because, so the day I went to see it, before I went, you guys were talking about this and you were not using like, you know, specific nouns. You were speaking in abstract, but you were clearly signaling to each other about some big scene and really controversial.

• 40:59Sean Fennessey?

  Van asked me, what did you think of that scene?

• 41:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you guys were talking about it and you said you really bought into it and Van, you were like, some people were not going-

• 41:09Speaker 04

  I liked it, but some people that left the screening were like, it was too much.

• 41:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So I spent the whole screening being like, okay, so when is the really fucked up thing gonna happen?

• 41:19Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, you thought it was gonna be a fucked up thing?

• 41:21Amanda Dobbins?

  That's the way that you guys were describing it. I was in there, all right, like, what's the scene? What's the scene? Um, and it didn't occur to me until the very end of the movie that that was the scene.

• 41:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's more so that it is an audacious moment in the movie. Now, obviously, this is a movie that has vampires and supernatural elements, so audacity and storytelling is kind of a given, but what is portrayed in this one scene that we're talking about, which is the centerpiece of the second act is preacher boy gets on stage to finally play his music at Club Juke. And he starts playing the blues and it very quickly transforms into this very acrobatic camera moving through the club as the people are dancing. And as they are dancing, we are basically seeing the evolution of music both hundred years ago in both Africa and China and, you know, uh, performance style and musical style. And also into the future, into funk and into hip hop and everything in between. And it is-

• 42:17Speaker 04

  twerking too.

• 42:18Sean Fennessey?

  twerking.

• 42:19Speaker 04

  Don't even know that big shit, Shaw.

• 42:20Sean Fennessey?

  There's Bay Area stuff in there for sure. Like, you can hear all the different textures of music that he's playing with. It's crazy sound mixing in that sequence, but it is- For lack of a better word, weird. You know, it's completely out of the context of the narrative of the movie. It is a, like, almost like a psychotronic, like hallucinogenic kind of feeling. Now, if you love music and you're interested into the history of music, as I at least was once upon a time, I'm like, this is fucking awesome. This is so cool that he, and what he, the phrase that he used to me was using the power of cinema language. Like, you can only do this in a movie. You can only say, here's how all of these things, not just African and black music, but Chinese music and American rock and roll and all these other things are all related to each other.

• 43:04Sean Fennessey?

  They're part of a lineage, a cultural lineage, a sonic lineage. And people having a good time and getting something off of their chest with music is a fundamental human experience. I loved it. I got, I felt like I got it immediately. But it is, it is, it is a bold choice.

• 43:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I did, I did have a moment when it concluded of being like, did I miss something narratively? Because it is at a point in the movie where you're still doing a lot of exposition. And so I was like, okay. I mean, listen, I love a dream ballet and that's what it was. To me, like, it's a very recognizable part of a, like, a Hollywood musical.

• 43:45Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 43:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And expression of, like, the joy of cinema, color, music, movement. Like, I, like, I was totally into it, but then I was like, my only hesitation was, do I not understand everything that's going on? Because, but I, Amanda, am also-

• 44:02Sean Fennessey?

  Has this transcended another world or something?

• 44:04Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, but it's just, there's still a point where he is putting out the, you know, the movie is building, okay, here are the stakes, not literally, you know, pun not intended, but like intended, you know? And, and I know, like, my vampire stuff, like, I know, somehow I knew, how do I know that you, they have to be invited in? I don't, I don't know that-

• 44:23Speaker 04

  It assumes that you know.

• 44:24Amanda Dobbins?

  It assumes that you know.

• 44:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's critical to the story.

• 44:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And I did, and I did know that, but I couldn't tell you where I learned that. So I think that I was always trying to make sure that I had all of my lore and, and the, the basic framework of the movie set down. And for one moment, I was like, okay, is, is, is the shack really on fire or is it not? But, but then I, then I just got back into it and I was, and I was rocking and it was okay. And I thought it was really cool.

• 44:52Speaker 04

  So this is the theme.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  I loved it, loved it. To her point, I was wondering, and the one thing that I do feel like the movie doesn't really explain, is we're told that Preacher Boy's music is so special that it can thin out dimensions or bring people from another place or whatever. And this is why the head vampire is so interested in him.

• 45:18Sean Fennessey?

  It's a siren song to this vampire, yes. That will bring him back to his, uh, his, uh, ancestors.

• 45:25Speaker 04

  Right. That's underplayed, first of all. That idea.

• 45:29Sean Fennessey?

  That detail, yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 04

  That detail is underplayed. That scene, I thought, was going to connect us to that. It's demonstrating that, but not in a way that is more meaningful than what the scene does visually. The scene doing that visually shows us the power of music, right? It shows us the connectivity across, across different eras of culture and humanity through sound. Like a, a sonic prayer session, like throughout the years. Awesome. It was great. But for about five minutes after, maybe even 10, I was wondering, well, does Preacher Boy have special powers? Like, did that really happen? Did that happen for us?

• 46:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Or did that happen there? Like, are the, is Preacher Boy gonna be able to play the guitar? And then two dudes from Oakland gonna come out with AK-47s and kill all the vampires? You know what I mean?

• 46:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's an interesting idea.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 46:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I was wondering if he- I didn't think of it that way, but sure, yeah.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  If Preacher Boy had the ability to, like, uh, you, you, uh, Kincaid from Nightmare on Elm Street. Remember Kincaid? No, no, it wasn't Kincaid, it was Alice. She could call other people into her dreams? And that was her dream power? You guys, I'm getting, I'm sorry, I apologize, but like-

• 46:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I just remembered that I had a dream last night that I was supposed to interview Anne Hathaway, and I didn't bring my tape recorder, and it was really stressful. Sorry, and I meant to tell you about it. Continue.

• 46:48Sean Fennessey?

  Why was I not there?

• 46:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. Isn't that really, it's like, it's really thinking of like calling people into your dreams. Okay.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  So, you know, she could, she would be like, she'd be, "Kincaid, Joey", and then they would show up in, in her dream and help her fight Freddy.

• 47:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  So it's like, can he do that? And so, but after, I was like, oh, they was just getting their shit off. I was like, okay.

• 47:06Sean Fennessey?

  You know what I thought? I'll tell you what I, how I read it specifically, and why it doesn't do that, and I'm glad it didn't do that, even though it is still a vampire movie.

• 47:15Sean Fennessey?

  This is expressed in the post-credit sequence that Amanda missed, but when you're sitting close to someone that has a talent, especially a musical talent, and they start showing you their musical talent up close, it feels supernatural.

• 47:27Speaker 04

  It's nuts.

• 47:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's like, especially me as someone who does not have any musical talent, when someone plays the guitar in front of me, or even when someone's DJing in front of me, that's a great example. I'm like, what is this fucking warlock doing?

• 47:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:38Sean Fennessey?

  You know, the sense of time, the sense of rhythm, the sense of connectivity across music. Like, there is something about it that... It seemed clear to me, the Kugler was like, Preacher Boy has something that like one out of every 20 million people have.

• 47:53Speaker 04

  I see.

• 47:53Sean Fennessey?

  And...

• 47:53Speaker 04

  And those people in that scene are the people that have that.

• 47:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, exactly. They are manifestations of the past and the future. You see the, you know, Parliament funkadelic style guitarist. Like, that's something, you know, Bootsy Collins had it, something like that. And I like that idea. And that idea is made manifest at the end because we see that he had a 70-year-long career as a beloved and celebrated musician. So he actually was the real deal. It would have been interesting if it went like one tick further into the... This is all connected to the story. But I think just instead the sort of like siren song to the devil made sense to me.

• 48:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think it needs to though. Ultimately, I'm with Sean that it like, it's just a, it's a cool thing that I really liked.

• 48:33Speaker 04

  I agree as well.

• 48:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And I also think that the... A thing I really like about the movie is that for all its, you know, dream music sequences and characterization and specificity, it does all that within a recognizable three-act framework and uses enough stuff that you do know. So it like, it doesn't matter if you and I were confused for five minutes because then the rest of the story is built there and we can just latch back on and we know where it's going. And... And it uses that to its advantage to just then be able to do wild, cool stuff.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  The movie was able to elicit your surrender.

• 49:13Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  Which, it's like, what George Clooney say that time? George Clooney says, you sit down and you make a deal with the movie. And the minute that the movie breaks the deal, you're like, I'm out. You know what I mean? What you're saying on the screen is true and whatever. By that point, the movie had already surrendered to the movie.

• 49:32Sean Fennessey?

  Hundred percent. So to me, I was gonna be in no matter what. I'm very interested in movies like this. I'm very interested in music and the history of music. But there's a great moment at the end of the first act. After Jack O'Connell's character has sort of invaded this family's home. By the way, Lola Kirk in that scene, I love Lola Kirk. She's wonderful. She has a great scream at the end of that scene. But as soon as that scene happens and right before Club Juke opens and we cut to that, there's like a doom metal musical cue and we get a hard shot of a full moon. And it's the most like, you're in a fucking vampire movie moment. You didn't know you were in a vampire movie until now, but you are. And I was looking at the official Sinner's playlist on Spotify for this movie. And it's a lot of what you might expect.

• 50:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's a lot of Delta Blues, you know, it's a lot of Son House and Sonny Boy Williamson. And you hear Pick a Robin, Pick a Poor Robin Clean, which is sung in the song. And then there's like some Zac Brown in there. And then there's some Dubliners and some Irish folk music. And then there's a little stretch where it goes Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Metallica. In the official playlist.

• 50:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:43Sean Fennessey?

  And then all the way at the end, there's a Young Dolph song.

• 50:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 50:46Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm like, this is why Coogler is the best, that he sees these intersections of, in vampire movies, there is a fucking metal aspect to these movies that you kind of have to represent to really fulfill it. It's not overdoing it. There was no guy playing metal in the blues club. But it is a quality of these movies. And he gets it. He's willing to put it on screen.

• 51:07Speaker 04

  It's time for Ray's eyes.

• 51:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  Okay, race eyes.

• 51:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Hi.

• 51:13Speaker 04

  Okay. Is this a character or just a tool that you have? It's I'm looking, it's me using, looking at things through the lens of race. It's time for race eyes. If you guys are watching, you see the race eyes are coming up. Ryan Kluw is able to do something that's really, really fascinating to me.

• 51:30Speaker 04

  He's able to portray black characters as people. That sounds stupid. I know it does. When I say black characters, I mean fundamentally and very deeply black characters. He's able to play them as people. As people that are in a story.

• 51:53Speaker 04

  It's hard to do. It's hard to do because there's so much that sometimes black creatives and artists want to express. And so much of it has to do with our condition, um, the uniqueness of it, and the specificity of the black experience in America, right? This movie has all of that. But as we're watching it, we're watching them as people and not as black people. They are black people. Mm-hmm. I am a black person. Mm-hmm. My mother is a black person. My father is a black person. I am insanely proud. Wouldn't have it any other way.

• 52:33Speaker 04

  Love my culture so much, like worship my ancestors, right? But sometimes I just do stuff. And then stuff just happens to me. And sometimes it doesn't have very much to do with anything other than me being Van, right? Now, me being Van is incredibly informed by where I'm from, by the sacrifices of the people that came before me. And if you guys don't know that by now, by listening to me, you, then you haven't been listening to me. Mm-hmm. However, there is something beautiful about being able to tell a story that is this distinctly black and is also broad because it taps into, uh...

• 53:18Speaker 04

  Themes that are so unifying as human beings that you forget that you're in the Mississippi Delta, you forget that you're in these different places, you're watching a story about people.

• 53:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 04

  And there's so many black performers and, and they say it in weird crude ways sometimes. Like, I don't want to be in a black movie. Then we go, we don't want to hear you say that. We don't want to hear you say you don't want to be in a black movie. Or I don't want to play a black character. I just want to play a character. We know what you mean, but it's grating to hear because our, some of our power is in our identity, but he's able to do it. And in this movie, he does it. It's a very distinctly black film about black culture with black music that I don't feel like one person will be alienated from.

• 54:01Sean Fennessey?

  I also don't think it will be described as a black movie, even though 90% of its cast is black. I think it's the same reason that whether it's Martin Scorsese and Italian-American identity and the mafia and faith versus violence, or Celine Tsuyama and being a woman of, a woman from France and interested in queer stories, or Juan Carwai and being Asian and looking at the idea of like yearning versus what is natural. Sean Baker being somebody who's interested in people that are very different from him.

• 54:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's basically just any good filmmaker that has really core ideas. Like Kugler has already done this. In Black Panther, it's a story about nationalism versus isolationism.

• 54:40Speaker 04

  It's a tension in a diaspora.

• 54:43Sean Fennessey?

  Right. In Creed, it's about male identity, vulnerability, it's about finding purpose. In this movie, it's about faith versus making your own luck. It's about that duality that we're talking about. But also, these are all fun movies to watch.

• 54:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:58Sean Fennessey?

  You don't need to have had the exact same experience of the people. You better understand the experience of the people by enjoying the movie. So, I, I mean, I think it's interesting because he is, he is- Pretty clearly the most commercially successful successful black filmmaker ever. Like, there's really, he's like so far ahead because of the success of Creed and Black Panther. He is, there's never really been anyone like him in in American movies.

• 55:23Speaker 04

  And those movies do not shy away from race.

• 55:27Sean Fennessey?

  At all. They're about it.

• 55:27Speaker 04

  They don't. Yeah.

• 55:28Sean Fennessey?

  But they're not about it at the same time. Like, there are so many things in Creed that are just like, this is what it's like feeling stuck at this stage of your life. This is what it's like having a complicated relationship with your father and his legacy. This is what it's like, like not knowing how to be a dad in Creed 3. Like, there's all this stuff in these movies. It's just human stuff.

• 55:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:44Sean Fennessey?

  So I really like that. I really like that he's like, also, it's a vampire movie with a doom metal music cue and there's some Irish dancing in it.

• 55:49Amanda Dobbins?

  And it is like, and it is both those things. And that is like, you know, Black Panther is about like diaspora and nationalism. And it is also like a superhero movie where, you know, they like all battle at the end, right?

• 56:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's a magical metal.

• 56:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, it it has, yeah, I I remember, you know, yeah.

• 56:10Sean Fennessey?

  You love vibranium.

• 56:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, vibranium. Is what was, what's the one in the new?

• 56:15Speaker 04

  Adamantium.

• 56:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much. Yeah.

• 56:17Sean Fennessey?

  They found that in the celestial.

• 56:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, and that one's, you know, more like, that's.

• 56:21Sean Fennessey?

  That's an unbreakable metal that Wolverine has binded to his skeleton.

• 56:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's right. Because because Chris leaned over me and said, that's what Wolverine's claws are made of. Yeah.

• 56:32Sean Fennessey?

  And and soon his skeleton.

• 56:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Anyway, but it's like, it's, it's not even that he's like, he doesn't have to pick and choose between the two of them. What? The claws?

• 56:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. When you, when you say it out loud, it's hysterical.

• 56:43Sean Fennessey?

  A little silly, yeah.

• 56:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's a little silly.

• 56:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I get mocked for leaving before the credit.

• 56:50Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's not your fault.

• 56:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I get mocked for saying it out loud. Oh, when I hear it.

• 56:54Sean Fennessey?

  Just in general, the fact that we have devoted a lot of our time.

• 56:56Speaker 04

  We started doing, we started this when we were nine.

• 56:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 56:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 04

  It's core lore.

• 57:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 57:01Speaker 04

  But when you say it outside, it's funny.

• 57:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  We say it out loud, it's funny.

• 57:04Sean Fennessey?

  When you say it, it feels different.

• 57:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, well.

• 57:05Sean Fennessey?

  Which is not an insult to you. It's in fact a compliment to you.

• 57:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Thank you so much. Anyway, despite vibranium or vibranium, which I guess is cooler than adamantium.

• 57:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, I liked that movie, but and it was both. It was pure superhero and also like pure ideas.

• 57:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Same with Creed, like that is a movie that just like made me weep because it hit that music, you know, cue right as he like hit someone in the, you know, it is, it is like pure.

• 57:34Sean Fennessey?

  Sports movie.

• 57:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Sports, genre, pleasure, and also big ideas. And I really, Kooler has a unique gift to not to, to make them one thing, as you're saying, Van, like, it's really, it's awesome.

• 57:48Sean Fennessey?

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• 58:31Sean Fennessey?

  That's LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. There's nothing better than having friends who support whatever you're into, like rewatching a director's entire catalog in the lead up to their latest release. And like those friends, State Farm is there to help you feel supported by helping you choose the coverage you need. With so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you. So, you can check coverage off the list and spend more time debating movie rankings. Go online at StateFarm.com or use the easily accessible app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime.

• 59:16Sean Fennessey?

  What pairs with big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime.

• 59:30Speaker 04

  It's just interesting that he wrote this movie. And it's interesting that this is a movie that he wrote and came up with, and it's completely out of his head. It's just interesting that this isn't some, like, somebody else's take on it. Because he was very smart to do something in his career, in my opinion. So Fruitvale Station comes out, great movie, proof of concept that this guy's a good director. Creed is kind of a cheat code. It's a cheat code because it's-

• 1:00:03Sean Fennessey?

  He gets to leverage some of the coolest lore in movie history.

• 1:00:05Speaker 04

  In movie history, right? Then Black Panther, the movie is better than anybody could have imagined that it was going to be in the hands of Ryan Coogal. Wow, this guy can really handle this. But at this point, he's, we are seeing, he's doing stuff that we're familiar with, right? And comes back with Wakanda Forever. Mixed. Divisive movie, I loved it, but divisive movie. Then by the time we get to this one, this is totally out of his brain, right?

• 1:00:31Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:31Speaker 04

  And it's so specific. It's specifically blues and horror and all of this stuff, and he came up with it. What I'm trying to say is that, like, I wouldn't have thought that his first original film would have been this. I wouldn't have thought that it would have been this. I wouldn't have thought that it would have been something that the degree of difficulty is so high on.

• 1:00:54Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. Well, I think he's obviously really, really in love with genre. If you've read any of the interviews that he's given on this round, he's talked a lot about John Carpenter and Robert Rodriguez and a lot of classical horror that he really likes. So it's great to hear that as somebody who's kind of obsessed with that stuff, but I'm not terribly surprised because he so clearly understood the mechanics of superhero storytelling and of sports movies.

• 1:01:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Sean Fennessey?

  That's one of the reasons why those movies are in the kind of upper echelon, especially this century of those kinds of movies. It is a big challenge. I think there's an important part of this story. That is outside of the text, but related to the text, which is that it's been reported quite a bit that he negotiated after he wrote the script, he sent it to the studios and he said, highest bidder, you know, whoever will pay me the most money for this movie. And in the negotiation, he was able to leverage that after 25 years, the copyright of the film returns to his ownership. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is incredibly unusual. We know that this is something Quentin Tarantino did for once upon a time in Hollywood. Very few filmmakers in the history of studio filmmaking have been able to get this. Now, he's been a little bit circumspect in the press as

• 1:02:01Sean Fennessey?

  to why he wanted that, but I'll just make a conclusive leap that a movie about blues, which is an art form that was adopted, transformed, stolen in America, and turned into white profit, making a movie that is essentially about the origins of that and the way that that is like, there is a temptation and there is like a desire to transgress, but that transgression can be a beautiful art. And then owning that, after making that movie, I'm sure is very metaphorically and financially rewarding for him. Um, you know, he has said that he's not going to be asking for this on future movies, that this is a one-shot deal. We'll see if that's true. I remember last year, I was at CinemaCon and talking to people about this, which is around the time when that news broke that Warner Brothers

• 1:02:45Sean Fennessey?

  had agreed to give him the copyright back after 25 years. And they were like, yay, yay, yay, not a big deal, one-off deal, one-off deal. If I was somebody like Coogler, and there are not a lot of them, but if I was a young filmmaker who had a lot of promise, I would push for this every time. This will break movie studios. Yeah. Yeah. But it is the next step in artistic ownership in this kind of way, and it can only happen in an original story. It can't be based on a classic novel, it can't be based on a superhero, pre-existing IP. You can't own that. Somebody else owns that. This is his thing. He invented it. And people liked the script so much and they saw so much promise in this movie, it went from probably being like a $50 million movie to like a 90 or 100 million dollar movie with a reversion of copyright. So it's a huge gamble for Warner Brothers. That leads me to my question, which is like, do you guys

• 1:03:28Sean Fennessey?

  think this movie is going to be a big hit? Do you think people are going to go see it?

• 1:03:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think it's gonna be a Minecraft movie, I'm sorry to say.

• 1:03:36Speaker 04

  Minecraft movie.

• 1:03:37Sean Fennessey?

  Did you see that yet?

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  I have not.

• 1:03:38Sean Fennessey?

  I'm surprised to hear that.

• 1:03:39Speaker 04

  But I saw people going nuts about it.

• 1:03:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Including this guy.

• 1:03:43Sean Fennessey?

  I wouldn't say I went nuts about it, but I did see it in a movie theater with people who were going nuts.

• 1:03:48Speaker 04

  I saw my, uh, good friend Diallo Riddle, shout out to Diallo.

• 1:03:52Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, Diallo. So I saw Diallo, when everybody was at CityWalk to see Sinners, and I thought that Diallo was there to see Sinners, and he goes, "Now I'm here with my kids seeing the Minecraft movie." And I just, I, I, I just laughed, because everybody's seeing it. Um, it's interesting. Everybody who I know is going to see this movie, everyone's talking about it, people are very excited.

• 1:04:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  I am a nerd enough to follow tracking. Like, I'm

• 1:04:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:20Speaker 04

  hand-wringing over the tracking for Thunderbolts. We need one, guys. And so

• 1:04:25Sean Fennessey?

  We're gonna find out.

• 1:04:26Speaker 04

  Like, we, we need one.

• 1:04:27Sean Fennessey?

  Ten days, we're gonna find out.

• 1:04:28Amanda Dobbins?

  You going in Burbank?

• 1:04:29Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, no, no, no, I'm going to, uh, The Grove.

• 1:04:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 1:04:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:04:33Sean Fennessey?

  Sad for you.

• 1:04:34Amanda Dobbins?

  That's sad. Just comes in next to me.

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  Burbank is a little bit of hype, guys.

• 1:04:39Sean Fennessey?

  Not for me.

• 1:04:40Speaker 04

  So...

• 1:04:42Speaker 04

  But, R-rated vampire movie. Still has, you have to set expectations in terms of what it is.

• 1:04:52Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, uh, let me zag on your, your point, because I think that that is the conventional historical point of view.

• 1:04:57Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:04:58Sean Fennessey?

  Horror is one of the most underrated in terms of tracking.

• 1:05:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Sean Fennessey?

  And as you know better than anybody, black audiences are always underrated when it comes to movies like this.

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  We going to see Sinners.

• 1:05:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. This is the same thing that happened with Black Panther, where everybody was like, "This should be a, a double for Marvel." And it's now one of the biggest and most important Marvel movies of all time.

• 1:05:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:15Sean Fennessey?

  So... I don't know, I want, I choose to be optimistic. And I, I

• 1:05:22Speaker 04

  Give me a number, give me a number. Give me a number first week, because I, I, I was

• 1:05:26Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's tracking like forty?

• 1:05:27Speaker 04

  It can't, it's no fucking way, bruh, it's gonna make more money than that.

• 1:05:30Amanda Dobbins?

  It is, I agree with that.

• 1:05:31Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's gonna make like fifty-two million.

• 1:05:33Speaker 04

  Okay, so fifty-two million is a win?

• 1:05:35Sean Fennessey?

  I think so.

• 1:05:36Speaker 04

  Okay. Okay, now, now

• 1:05:38Sean Fennessey?

  This is an original story.

• 1:05:39Speaker 04

  But let me tell you why I'm asking, it's because we think with Marvel brain, a lot of times when we think about this, so we're thinking, does Sinners get to Six hundred million dollars, the centers, you know what I mean? But for this, we're talking about a

• 1:05:50Sean Fennessey?

  No, I can't get that, that would be, I mean, if that happens, phenomenal. Like, that's amazing.

• 1:05:55Speaker 04

  Right, um, so I guess when we say, are people gonna see it? I guess I'm trying to set a standard to what would be a win.

• 1:06:02Sean Fennessey?

  Long term on the box office?

• 1:06:04Speaker 04

  A box office for the movie. Ninety million dollar budget, then you gotta think about the marketing, like, what's a win?

• 1:06:09Sean Fennessey?

  Uh.

• 1:06:11Speaker 04

  The movie people.

• 1:06:11Sean Fennessey?

  One fifty?

• 1:06:12Speaker 04

  Really?

• 1:06:13Sean Fennessey?

  I think one fifty would be a huge win.

• 1:06:14Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:06:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, like, overall, domestic?

• 1:06:17Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know what international is. The one thing historically is, uh, black stories don't travel that well. Like, it's just a fact. Like, internationally, they just don't, they just don't play that well.

• 1:06:26Speaker 04

  It's been a big thing when you talk about, uh, how you get a hit overseas.

• 1:06:31Sean Fennessey?

  It's the inversion of the underestimating the black audiences in America. Overseas, they, one of the reasons why, um, these movies are not marketed in the same way internationally is they

• 1:06:41Speaker 04

  El Race?

• 1:06:42Sean Fennessey?

  Underperform, yeah.

• 1:06:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Sean Fennessey?

  Um, so, total? God, I don't, I don't, it's hard to say.

• 1:06:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:47Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like it can do fifty, which I think is a win for an original horror movie in the middle of April. I think that's a, would be a great success. You could make the case that a movie like this shouldn't cost ninety million. That's what some people will say. I don't really care.

• 1:06:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:58Sean Fennessey?

  Um.

• 1:06:59Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not your money.

• 1:07:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's not, not gonna be our money. The, one of the reasons why I, it would be great if it got into that two hundred million dollar range is not only would there be financial success, I think he's also getting first dollar gross, which is like Tom Cruise territory. Like, he's in rare territory in terms of negotiating. Not only great for Kugler and his team, it's great for movies like this getting greenlit. It's great for movies like this being possible.

• 1:07:21Speaker 04

  Y'all need this bad.

• 1:07:22Sean Fennessey?

  Badly.

• 1:07:23Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like, so, so, like, we are desperate.

• 1:07:27Sean Fennessey?

  It's really important.

• 1:07:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, it really

• 1:07:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:07:30Sean Fennessey?

  But

• 1:07:30Amanda Dobbins?

  That's why I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, ideas, rich texts, whatever. This is a vampire movie, like, please go see this movie in theaters, so they were like, we can all keep talking about shit like that.

• 1:07:40Sean Fennessey?

  The other thing is, we've had these, like, all these hand-wringing conversations about Warner Brothers over the last couple of years, and everybody's demonizing David Zaslove, recently featured in New York Magazine and a long profile this week. Um, set all that aside, Mike DeLuca, who runs Warner Brothers, like, works with good filmmakers and lets them make cool movies. Like, this is a cool movie.

• 1:07:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Sean Fennessey?

  You know, one battle left another, sounds like it's gonna be a cool movie. Like, he takes risks with original stories. That's his whole thing. He's been doing it since New Line. I don't want him to get fired. People who want Mike to look at a fire don't love movies. That's fucking crazy. If you like, if you like studio movies.

• 1:08:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Most of the people who talk about tracking and box office and everything don't love movies.

• 1:08:16Sean Fennessey?

  But I'm the sort of person who actually looks at tracking and cares about box office performance, but cares about the quality of the movie first. So to me, the premise of the show is the interconnected nature of is your movie good and how well did it do so we can get another one? So this to me is such a perfect test case for that big question. I would implore people to go see it. I liked what you said at the very top of the conversation, though. This is not a perfect movie. Genre movies by their very nature are complicated. They're hard to make them make sense. We've been rapturous for an hour while discussing the movie. You're probably gonna see it and take quibble with some things.

• 1:08:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I ask a question related to this? Okay, so all the vampires that are, you know, outside for sunset and thus are lit on fire at the end of the movie. But there's, they come back. The fire doesn't kill them?

• 1:09:01Sean Fennessey?

  No, none of them come back.

• 1:09:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, those, so, oh, I thought that Hailee Steinfeld was in that.

• 1:09:06Speaker 04

  They ran away.

• 1:09:06Sean Fennessey?

  They ran away. They survived.

• 1:09:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Alright, thank you.

• 1:09:08Sean Fennessey?

  I was wondering if they were hiding in the, in the club.

• 1:09:11Speaker 04

  They might have been.

• 1:09:12Sean Fennessey?

  And then even when, when Smoke gets killed at the end, they're still hiding in the club, but they can't come out inside and help him.

• 1:09:17Speaker 04

  They can't, they're watching them. Yeah, they ran. They were able to get away.

• 1:09:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Alright.

• 1:09:21Speaker 04

  They're in love.

• 1:09:21Amanda Dobbins?

  So, but, yeah. It's endless. And that's great. That's beautiful.

• 1:09:26Speaker 04

  Interracial.

• 1:09:28Sean Fennessey?

  Well.

• 1:09:29Speaker 04

  Ah.

• 1:09:30Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, yes and no.

• 1:09:31Speaker 04

  Yes and no.

• 1:09:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I would watch like their, their Twilight, you know? I guess like both Twilight.

• 1:09:36Sean Fennessey?

  There is definitely a sequel that they could do if this movie is a massive success, which I would watch.

• 1:09:41Speaker 04

  I would watch it. I, I think a sequel set in contemporary times would be dope.

• 1:09:48Sean Fennessey?

  What if it was 1970s like Shaft style blaxploitation movie with vampires?

• 1:09:53Speaker 04

  That would be amazing too. The only thing is I want now to.

• 1:09:59Speaker 04

  I don't know how you orient the sequel. Is it if it's around them? Are they the heroes? Are they the same thing?

• 1:10:05Sean Fennessey?

  Good question.

• 1:10:06Speaker 04

  You know what I mean?

• 1:10:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we know they survived too.

• 1:10:08Speaker 04

  We know they survived.

• 1:10:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, interesting, yes. So it can't be a Bonnie and Clyde type thing.

• 1:10:12Sean Fennessey?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:10:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 1:10:13Sean Fennessey?

  Well, present day would be the way to do it then.

• 1:10:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:16Sean Fennessey?

  Or immediately after the events in the post credit sequence.

• 1:10:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and then you could play the post credit sequence at the beginning so I could see it.

• 1:10:22Speaker 04

  I thought about you guys when I watched.

• 1:10:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I'd like to see Buddy Guy play. I was like, fuck.

• 1:10:26Sean Fennessey?

  It was cool. It was cool.

• 1:10:28Speaker 04

  I thought about you guys when I watched this movie recently as we talk about original films. Did you guys talk about Companion on here?

• 1:10:33Sean Fennessey?

  We did.

• 1:10:34Amanda Dobbins?

  We sure did. We really liked it. And we responded to your text.

• 1:10:37Speaker 04

  Did you?

• 1:10:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I liked it.

• 1:10:38Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a great movie.

• 1:10:39Sean Fennessey?

  Also Warner Brothers.

• 1:10:40Speaker 04

  So here's the thing. When I saw Companion, I would, I thought about myself 1992. I thought about myself 1992, watching a movie that I love and will watch five, six, seven, eight, nine.

• 1:10:59Sean Fennessey?

  Wishing you had a sex robot?

• 1:11:02Speaker 04

  The whole thing. There were movies like that back then.

• 1:11:04Sean Fennessey?

  There were.

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, but the movie to me, which has an awesome script, which has a good villain turn from Jack Quaid.

• 1:11:14Sean Fennessey?

  He's great.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  What the shit?

• 1:11:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  Uh, I felt like it came and went and people didn't really support it.

• 1:11:19Sean Fennessey?

  I, we did talk about it a couple of times. I had Drew Hancock, the director, writer, director on the show. Super, super smart, nice guy.

• 1:11:26Sean Fennessey?

  One January movie, so not a lot of fuss made over it. I think they also moved it to streaming very quickly. I imagine it did pretty well on streaming, um, or on P V O D, I should say. But it did okay business. I just, I use this as an example of like, movies are fucked up now because that movie should be in movie theaters for two months.

• 1:11:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:43Sean Fennessey?

  And it wasn't. It was out of movie theaters real quick.

• 1:11:45Speaker 04

  It just, it just, to me, all the bones of a good movie, and I just wonder, as much as we talk about this, am I gonna go on my old man yells at cloud slash the moon thing? Do you guys just like good movies? Because it's a movie with a very inventive script that gives you a surprise every 10 minutes. Great performances, cool people to look at.

• 1:12:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Very funny.

• 1:12:07Speaker 04

  Very funny.

• 1:12:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Clever, like the, you know, and uses the, builds, follows its own rules very well and like with a lot of fun.

• 1:12:16Speaker 04

  Right, and I just wonder, and we'll see, is, are good movies enough anymore?

• 1:12:22Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:12:23Speaker 04

  You guys say no. I'm telling you.

• 1:12:26Sean Fennessey?

  I'm holding my thought. This year is important to that.

• 1:12:28Amanda Dobbins?

  This is like, it's finally maybe turning a little bit, but it's been like a tough year. You know, I mean, it is been, it's just been a.

• 1:12:35Sean Fennessey?

  This cuts both ways. This cuts both ways because if Thunderbolts and Superman and Fantastic Four underperform, then what?

• 1:12:45Speaker 04

  Well, then that's, then the question is, are movies enough anymore?

• 1:12:48Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we can save that existentialist conversation for a future episode. Ben, you're the best. We can hear you on Higher Learning.

• 1:12:56Speaker 04

  Higher Learning.

• 1:12:57Sean Fennessey?

  Midnight Boys?

• 1:12:58Speaker 04

  Midnight Boys.

• 1:12:59Sean Fennessey?

  The Rewatchables?

• 1:13:00Speaker 04

  The Rewatchables.

• 1:13:02Sean Fennessey?

  What else?

• 1:13:02Speaker 04

  Anywhere.

• 1:13:03Amanda Dobbins?

  You're gonna come on Jam Session soon.

• 1:13:04Speaker 04

  Jam Session.

• 1:13:05Sean Fennessey?

  Jam Session. You were on Press Box recently.

• 1:13:07Speaker 04

  I was on Press Box recently. That was a lot of fun. I think I maybe I brought too much heat. But, but no, I'm, I'm extremely thrilled.

• 1:13:16Sean Fennessey?

  How come I haven't been invited on Higher Learning?

• 1:13:19Speaker 04

  Really? You could be. You know what? Let me tell you why we need to, so we had Omar Miller from, from, uh, uh, from The Centers on Higher Learning today.

• 1:13:30Sean Fennessey?

  Today?

• 1:13:31Speaker 04

  Today. Today. It'll be out tomorrow.

• 1:13:32Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he's great in Eight Mile.

• 1:13:34Speaker 04

  Uh, he's great.

• 1:13:34Sean Fennessey?

  White representation. Thank you.

• 1:13:39Sean Fennessey?

  He's actually very good in this movie.

• 1:13:40Speaker 04

  Very good.

• 1:13:41Amanda Dobbins?

  He's really good in this movie?

• 1:13:41Sean Fennessey?

  He's important. He's a key role.

• 1:13:43Speaker 04

  We, we have to do something for Rachel. What we need is the big picture, because I've been saying that the.

• 1:13:49Sean Fennessey?

  She doesn't watch movies.

• 1:13:51Speaker 04

  She doesn't watch movies.

• 1:13:52Sean Fennessey?

  I know this about her.

• 1:13:53Speaker 04

  We were, we did, uh, top five black vampires on Higher Learning.

• 1:13:58Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:13:59Speaker 04

  He said Blade, and then he was astonished because Rachel has never seen Blade.

• 1:14:03Sean Fennessey?

  That's really sad.

• 1:14:05Speaker 04

  And so you guys need to help her by making a list of essential movies. She hates The Princess Bride. She hates it.

• 1:14:12Sean Fennessey?

  Does essential movies ever?

• 1:14:14Speaker 04

  Well, essential movies for her to watch.

• 1:14:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 1:14:17Speaker 04

  I'll give you the year of her birth and then.

• 1:14:19Amanda Dobbins?

  What, and what movies? Are there any movies she does like?

• 1:14:23Sean Fennessey?

  That would be helpful.

• 1:14:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Princess Bride is a no?

• 1:14:26Speaker 04

  She doesn't like Princess Bride. She li, she likes, uh.

• 1:14:29Sean Fennessey?

  So she doesn't like fun?

• 1:14:30Speaker 04

  She doesn't like movies that are perfect. Which the princess bride is in every single way, except for the fact that they ain't got no black people in it. We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll allow it. Um, so that's what you can do. You guys, we can bring you guys on and we can have a, a conversation with Rachel. About the movies that she has to see. We'll do the big picks, essential Rachel, Rachel movies.

• 1:14:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:14:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, racial movies.

• 1:14:53Sean Fennessey?

  You're not gonna bring me on to talk about Trump?

• 1:14:55Speaker 04

  We could. We could do all of that.

• 1:14:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:14:58Speaker 04

  The police.

• 1:14:59Sean Fennessey?

  Just noting that. Yeah, the police? Yeah, I got a lot of thoughts about the police. I got inside information.

• 1:15:04Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 1:15:04Sean Fennessey?

  Um, man, thank you very much. Amanda, thank you.

• 1:15:07Amanda Dobbins?

  You're welcome.

• 1:15:07Sean Fennessey?

  Let's now go to my conversation with Ryan Coogler.

• 1:15:15Sean Fennessey?

  For the first time on the big picture, the great Ryan Coogler, very happy and honored to have him here. Ryan, um, I want to start with this. After two Black Panther films and Creed, was it important for you to make an original story at this stage of your career with Sinners?

• 1:15:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, I, I, I would say absolutely, man. And like, it was more like at this stage of my life. Like, um, I, I work with, I work with a lot of my friends and, uh, I could feel us all kind of like transitioning. Into like a different, a different mode, you know, um, everybody's life is changing. Uh, around me, like people who didn't have kids, man, having kids now and they, and they big and they getting ready to start school and. They joining baseball teams and, you know, like, uh, taking piano lessons and, and, and, uh. People buying minivans and shit, you know what I'm saying? So, so it, it, you know, like, like, you know, we got companies now and, and we no longer like the youngest people in the room when we walk into.

• 1:16:15Speaker 05

  You know, uh, and I, and I, and I realized, you know, I had been making movies. You know, for, for 12 years now, uh, that had been, you know, going into international cinemas. And, and, and, and I still hadn't done anything I was like, that was like all me, you know? Um, and that scared me, bro. I had a conversation recently with Michael Fleming, remember, where I, where I talked about that and. But what scared me more was realizing that, that pretty soon I wasn't gonna be able to pick up the phone and call everybody who I, who I, who I wanna make a movie with and get them to like. Fully, fully commit just because like the direction that they lives were going, you know what I mean? Like people were starting to get. Offers to direct movies and, and, and. Um, different type of full-time positions, you know what I'm saying? Like my, my picture editor, um, Michael Sharer, who's cut all my stuff.

• 1:17:00Speaker 05

  You know, his son is like, like I mentioned, man, joining a baseball team and like, like getting serious about it and like, like it was, it was, it was, it was starting to become so complicated that, that, that I, I kind of panicked a little bit. Realized I had this really cool story I wanted to tell and, and, you know, realized Lou V was free and had, had Zane, my producer and my wife, um, call around and check on Hannah and, and Beakler and my production's on it and Ruth Carter, Costin is on it, Autumn Arkapoff, Sina Tyre, if we call in, check on them and see what they schedule, what the like, and, and I checked in with Mike B and, and realized, man, we might have an opportunity to go, you know? Um, so we went, you know, like, like, uh, we went like, like, like, like a bat out of hell, bro.

• 1:17:45Speaker 05

  Like I, I used to retire, uh, kicks, like kickoff from my play of football, you know, that was one of the things I was, I was really good at. And like, I remember sometimes I would, I would like think I saw something, you know, like in the, in the, in the, in the way, like sometimes somebody would slip.

• 1:17:59Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:00Speaker 05

  You know what I mean?

• 1:18:01Sean Fennessey?

  There was a hole, a hole opened up.

• 1:18:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, well, it's not, it's not there yet, but I, I think it might be there. You know, you know what I mean? And then, and then, and you just gotta go, you know, you know what I mean? Run like it's, run like it's gonna, run like it's gonna open up. And, and, and, and that was what this, that, that was what this process was, man. Like, um, and I, and I was, and I, and I picked just the right time where everybody could kind of run with it, you know? And I don't think it'll happen like this again, to be honest.

• 1:18:25Sean Fennessey?

  It's so interesting to hear you say that, cause I know you're a very modest person, but I, a lot of those people are getting a lot of big looks in part because of the work that you guys all did together on these movies over the years. So I, I have to assume they still have a kind of loyalty to you and want to come together to make something when you're like, I have an idea.

• 1:18:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, but the thing is, bro, it's like. As much as I order me, I'll order them first and foremost. But the other piece is like, when it comes to people's kids, bro, and their lives, like, it doesn't matter.

• 1:18:55Sean Fennessey?

  I have a four-year-old, I hear you.

• 1:18:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, it don't matter what our history is, you know what I'm saying? Like, and it's the same for me, you know, I got a couple of kids now and like, if I gotta choose between them and anybody else, like, you know, the answer is them, you know, you know, you know what I mean? And like, like, that was what I was, I was watching, like, I was watching like the kind of people we were gonna be for like the next twenty, thirty years, it was solidifying, bro. You know, you know what I'm saying? And like, you know, look, faces like one of my closest friends, Louis, he's also, he's also Chris Nolan guy. He's also a John Favreau guy now, you know, you know what I'm saying? And like, if I catch him at the wrong time, he's not having time for me, you know, you know what I'm saying? That's just, that's just the reality of, you know, like, in, in, in, you know, when I, when I, and I had a gap, bro, where I needed a commitment from him,

• 1:19:42Speaker 05

  very different from any, any other time I called him before, I needed him to be an executive producer, I needed him to move his family to Louisiana, you know? I needed his wife to work on this, you know, you know what I'm saying? I needed his all, in a way that he could probably never give it again, you know, you know, like, like, um, you know, and, and, and bless these folks, man, once they understood the urgency of what, what, what I was trying to do, you know, I mean, everybody, everybody showed up for me, man, and, and then at that point, you know, you look up and you're in Louisiana, man, and everybody, everybody's kids is down there.

• 1:20:13Speaker 05

  Then you realize, oh man, I can't let, I can't let these people down, you know?

• 1:20:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's an amazing, amazing thing that you're able to assemble these people. You know, we met a long time ago around Black Panther and we had a conversation and one of the stories that you told me at that time was that before you were starting on Black Panther, you had a conversation with Francis Ford Coppola, and he told you to check out Brigadoon. I remember you telling me that, and I was wondering if you had any version of that, if you went to anyone, if you linked up with anybody who told you to look at something, or if you just looked at something for yourself before you started making a movie like Sinners?

• 1:20:47Speaker 05

  I I I like that something for myself, bro. I like that uh I I like that Don't Look Now.

• 1:20:53Speaker 05

  Which was a which was a movie that I've been hearing about and I owned it. You know what I mean? I bought it a long time ago. It was something that that that it was it was actually something like like really it was oddly like clawing at me. You know, um um you know how it is, bro. You buy a movie and it's like I'm gonna get to this at some point. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:21:11Speaker 05

  I was watching some YouTube video. It came up and I said, man, let me look at this thing. And I and I and I watched it. I watched it right before. Like I I didn't really, you know, I was so green, bro, and I did the first Panther. Uh that that that I consulted with a lot of people, man. Like I consulted with Chris and Emma and Francis was the big one. You know, um, you know, he had this, he had this history of like taking on larger than life uh uh things and coming on. Other side with them with them feeling um original and bespoke, you know what I'm saying? And that was what I was trying to, that was what I was trying to figure out, man, like throwing myself into the gun. Um, you know, you know, coming out with someone on the other side that that still felt like me. Uh, and he gave me some incredible advice when it came out. His number one piece of advice was bring my family with me.

• 1:21:56Speaker 05

  And I followed that for for I followed that since that initial conversation. We've had several since. You know, but uh but but but for this one, man, I talked to Chris and Emma about the format. You know, when when when Lars format became uh something that we were discussing and and and thinking about. Uh, cause they had just navigated, you know, both camera packages, me and the W's and we used different lenses for our system sixty five package. Uh, we used the uh Ultra Panavision. Two seven six, as you seen, you seen the film, I imagine.

• 1:22:28Sean Fennessey?

  What did he tell you? What did he, what did he share with you about working in those formats?

• 1:22:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, man. He he he he basically told me not to be scared. You know, uh, and and and don't let anybody, don't let anybody bow down to the camera on set. You know, he acknowledged that it's an intimidating. Uh, piece of equipment, you know, and and that, cause he uses a lot of handheld uh camera work in his in his history. And and and those cameras, you can't handheld, um, the sync sound cameras. You can handheld the the uh. The high school that will, alright, so, uh, I'm gonna nerd out.

• 1:22:59Sean Fennessey?

  This is the place, do it.

• 1:23:00Speaker 05

  The catch of the of the IMAX camera package i- is uh is that it it is it is technically not a sync sound camera. In that, in that, you know, I think the new version that he has on Odyssey is, you know, uh, but the one that, the one that they shot Oppenheimer with is the same one they shot Dunkirk with is the same one they shot, uh, The Last Two Dark Nights with. You know, the, the, these cameras are massive cameras that, that are ripping, uh, celluloid through the gate fifteen, um, uh, uh, uh, perks per picture. At twenty-four pictures per second, right? Grrrrrr. So it's they, they, they sound like, like somebody, uh, uh, took seven weed whackers and, and, you know, and tied them in a steel box.

• 1:23:44Speaker 05

  And have, and have them going, you know, you know, you know, synchronized, you know what I'm saying? That's what, you know, so, so, so if you, if you wanna shoot over the shoulder dialogue scene. You know, that, that camera's gonna be all over the dialogue. It is automatically, uh, uh, gonna be ADR, you know what I'm saying? The five per sixty-five millimeter camera package, the System sixty-five, has two sync sound camera bodies. Sync sound. So now these, these, these sound like action and it's rolling and you don't hear anything. You know what I'm saying? That should put your ear all the way up to the blimp. Now, all of that soundproofing, uh, because that, because that, that, that, that, you know, that, that camera's doing a lot of work ripping that sixty-five, uh, uh, uh, millimeter, uh, Kodak celluloid.

• 1:24:25Speaker 05

  Through the gate at just five perks per second, you know what I, you know what I mean? Like, so it's, so it's a little less mechanics happening there, but still very violent, still very loud. But all of that soundproofing is heavy, it's insanely heavy. So it becomes, it becomes a, a, a, a hundred pound camera system with zero ergonomics. So, so, so it is, it is, it is impossible to handhold the sync sound version of that camera, you understand? And Chris, and Chris comes from, uh, the school that I, I also come from the school of like, you know, whatever works for the scene. So you'll see some of those movies, you know, uh, he's handholding that camera a lot, you know what I mean? And, and when you decide to shoot System sixty-five and you wanna sync sound camera happening, you can't, you're not handholding that. Right. And you ain't steady camming neither, you know, you know what I mean? You just need a setup.

• 1:25:10Speaker 05

  It, it, it's, it's just too heavy. You have, you are on sticks, you're on a crane. Yeah. Or, or the camera on the ground, you know, you know what I mean? And so he, he was like acknowledging that, that, you know, there's another version of this camera that is the high-speed System sixty-five camera. Now this, now this is basically, uh, the same camera without the soundproofing. Okay, so now this camera is about 60 pounds. That camera can be handheld, that camera can be put on a study camera. But now, your dialogue with that camera, ADR immediately. You know what I mean? Because it's almost as loud as, maybe if not louder than the IMAX camera. You know what I mean?

• 1:25:45Sean Fennessey?

  I actually had a question about this for you because I talked to Hoytama about Oppenheimer and carrying that thing around and what that was like for the actors and the intimacy that, how intimacy is hard. And like this movie in particular that you made is very sexy, very sensual, very up close. You know, like it's very physical. Like, don't look, hearing you say, "Don't look now" is not surprising when you see the movie. But when you've got this giant piece of machinery up in someone's face, when you're trying to do a scene like that, like, is that hard for the actors? Was it different for you than what you'd done in the past?

• 1:26:18Speaker 05

  So Chris's advice to me was to use it like a super A camera. He said, "Use it like you would normally use your camera." You know, and he told me straight up, he was like, "Man, you'll see scenes of Oppenheimer where I got that camera right up against Killian's face." You know, and yeah, but we got close with that thing, man. Like, that was a part of what the movie had to be. You know, it had to be, you know, it had to be the sexiest movie I ever made. You know, we knew we were gonna get intimate with these cameras, man. And to be honest with you, everybody brings a A game with that, with that, you know, when you're shooting film in general. Like, I missed it since I was there. For real. Like, digital, to be honest, man, it's hard for people to take it serious. You know what I mean? Like, because people just take it for granted, bro. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:27:03Speaker 05

  You gotta, you gotta go, you gotta go out your way to have folks really, really respect when the camera's rolling. You know what I mean? And because you got that, you know, your DP is generally in the ditting. And everybody's got these high-def monitors everywhere, man. You know what I'm saying? It's, you know, when you bust out that film camera, bro, and you hear it rolling, and you know, man, you on the clock for real. And if you don't get it right, you're gonna miss it and you're gonna have to reload. You know what I mean? Everybody's... Right there, you know what I mean? And, and, and, and, you know, the focus that you get, man, the attention that, that, that, that, that goes. People hold their breath, bro.

• 1:27:45Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:46Speaker 05

  You know, and it's the same thing when it's, when it's close to the, when it's close to the actors. You know, you know what I'm saying? Like it just, it feels like, um, like you're doing something timeless, especially with these cameras, bro. They look old, you know, you know what I mean? Like, like, um, uh, the, the reality of it, man, I had never seen a lens that looked like that. It was a kind of vision lens, you know, um, I'm in a lot of movies, bro. Busting that thing out and knowing, okay, man, that shot been her on this thing. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, it does something to you.

• 1:28:12Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, I'm interested in kind of like the inversion of the intimate stuff too. I have to ask you about, there's a sequence in the middle of the movie, the sort of musical centerpiece of the movie, which I thought was like one of the boldest, coolest things I've seen in a studio movie in forever. And I was like, this is just so outside of the pocket of what this movie was. And it's taking it to a totally different place, but it's also like very acrobatic in the filmmaking and

• 1:28:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:28:38Sean Fennessey?

  you're taking like big visual risks with it. And I was trying to figure out how you actually did it and why doing something that is that sort of like fantastical and historical inside of this movie was something that you wanted to do.

• 1:28:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, man, that's a great question. Um, you know, I, I, I believe in, uh, it's, I look like, like, like when I do my job, bro, I got certain responsibilities, right? It's an expectation of me as a writer director to be fluent in film language. Like, like what are, what are the, the, the points where I, I, like, a must do the thing that can only happen in this movie?

• 1:29:11Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:29:12Speaker 05

  You know, you know, like, like, like in communication through film language, you know what I'm saying? If you, if you're making a, a good movie, you get a few moments like that. You know, the great movies are chock full of, you know, you know what I mean? Like things that you could, things that can only, that can only happen in this, in, in, you know, you know, you know, in a movie, number one, in, in this movie, number two. You know what I mean? And while I was writing the screenplay. It was after I haven't done a research about about this music that my uncle was obsessed with. Uh, and realizing that this this this music changed the world. Uh, but these these people who are living this this reality had no idea that that that that. You know, that that this music that they live for just for Saturday nights, you know what I'm saying? We we we had a type of outside's global impact.

• 1:29:55Speaker 05

  Uh, uh, that our art form could have, maybe maybe the most impactful American art form. You know, and and for this time it was just there, you know, you know what I mean? But but but they they also had to had to the the the, you know, the the luck of being born. Uh, black in in in to to sort of their adulthood was going to be experienced in the thirties. You know, you know what I mean? They wouldn't know anything other than than than than than than share a crop, Jim Crow. You know, you know what I'm saying? Uh, backbreaking the racist laws, you know, um, back backbreaking the racist economy. You know what I mean? I that that's what, you know, and and they would live for the hope that maybe their their their descendants will have it better. And I'm realizing like in this movie, I'm about to have them these characters encounter.

• 1:30:39Speaker 05

  Cosmically horrific vampiric violence, you know, so like that's coming from this this this movie. Um, and and and I and and and I have to to to to to buttress that. With something cosmically beautiful, you know, you know what I mean? And and and and it's something that's true. That can only be communicated through film language, you know what I'm saying? And that and that was how we came up with that. That was how we came up with that, with with we we realized that the movie needed that scene.

• 1:31:04Sean Fennessey?

  I love that choice. That part is incredible to me. Um, one thing I one theme I wanted to ask you about in your movies that I feel like recurs a lot is this. Moment when two disparate cultures like confront each other and are forced to understand each other. Right? So like you got the Jabari and T'Challa. You got, you know, Sly and and and Adonis, you know, you got people coming from different walks of life like. You know, you got the Talikan and you got the Wakandans. You got you, there's always a a sort of like confrontation in this movie. You've got black American blues and Irish folk music and this like and obviously vampires and humans, right? These two different cultures that are kind of like forced to meet each other. I was hoping you could just kind of talk about like why you tend to synchronize the movies that way and what's interesting about it in this one.

• 1:31:49Speaker 05

  I mean, I, I, I, I don't, I, I never thought about it as a student as you just described it. Yeah, Sean, like, like, that's, that's, that's actually incredibly, bro, but, but, um, but look, man, like, I'm a black man from, from, uh, from, from Auckland, California, you know, um, my grandmothers are probably gonna second wave of the Great Migration. I got an Irish first name, bro. Not only do I have an Irish first name, but my baby brother has an Irish first name. His name's Keeney. And I'm from the Bay Area, which I think with the exception of like Long Beach or something, is like the most diverse place in the country and one of the most diverse places on the planet. You know what I mean? So, so, so every, every, every day I, I, I, I've been, you know, every day of my life, I've been encountering, you know, cultures that are different from mine and negotiating

• 1:32:34Speaker 05

  that and, and, and having family members that married in the other cultures and cultures that married in mine, you know, in, in, um, that, that's, that's my reality. But that's also the reality of, of, of, of, of the Delta Blues, you know? Um, it's a lot of literature written about the fact that, that Charlie Patton was likely part Choctaw. Everybody knows, man, Irish people were around and were influenced in that music, you know, and, and, you know, and, uh, uh, you know, the banjo comes from Africa, but it, but, but now it's most associated with Appalachian, you know, you know what I mean? And, and, and those people of, of, of Irish descent there, it's so ironic when you look at the history of all those people, it's a ton of crossover, you know what I mean?

• 1:33:13Speaker 05

  Like, like, uh, the, the, the dichotomy of, of living in a place of, of, of extreme agricultural abundance, but starving under, under, as a result of a backbreaking, uh, uh, colonial and capitalist system that's not your own, you know, um, having your way of life outlawed. Your way of worship uh uh uh demonized, you know, the way that you dance demonized. You know what I'm saying? Like all all all of these things. And and and it was it was exciting for me to have a character who who who presents as a thirty year old Appalachian. But it was really a centuries old Irish Irish vampire who who's who's who's finding himself in in in nineteen thirty two. Uh uh, Carstow, Mississippi. Who does he want to hang out with?

• 1:33:57Speaker 05

  Who does he identify with? You know, like like these questions, I'll ask myself, you know, um, uh, that that that that that that made a lot of that made a lot of sense. What music is he gonna be attracted to? At the time, I was listening to a lot of music, man, like a lot of Delta blues music, but also just like a lot of black music from from different areas. And I was I was getting obsessed with this Marvin Gaye song, bro. Um, which which a lot of people consider like the sexiest song ever written by by by by by a man, you know. Um, and and the lyrics are, I want you, but I want you to want me too. Which is like so powerful and and and and sexy and and and I was thinking of, you know, I know I knew I needed that from my being. You know, I mean, there's there's this this idea of, you know, I'm strong enough to take.

• 1:34:39Speaker 05

  You know, but but that's not that's not satisfying to me. You know, I I need to I need to convince you I want to take, you know, you know what I mean? And that that felt synonymous with the vampire, felt synonymous with blues music, you know what I'm saying? Like, it just made sense. You know, bro, when we brought Jack on board, you know, his his his his late father was a was a uh was an Irish immigrant to the to the UK. And and and he's just up there and like like it's like, you know, so far with his own personal truth. Like, I'm dealing with my, I'm dealing with the the the uh the love and the and the grief from my uncle. He brought the love and the grief from his father, you know? And and when we shot that scene, the counterpart to that to that other scene you're talking about, you know, the Rocky Road, the Dublin scene, man. Bro, we we shot that scene, man, and he pulled me close and he and he whispered in my ear and said, man, it's my father's birthday.

• 1:35:25Speaker 05

  And and and I I just became a baller.

• 1:35:28Speaker 05

  You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, everything, but but but, um, you know, it was something else that I worked on this on on on this movie. I I like I I'd be crazy to try to repeat, you know, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:35:38Sean Fennessey?

  I just love, yeah, I loved how you twinned those two things. It was really, it's just like amazingly effective and, you know, Sean Fantasy, you might imagine, is Irish. So I saw saw a little of myself.

• 1:35:47Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:50Sean Fennessey?

  One thing I need to ask you about is, uh, you're one of the few filmmakers that I've talked to on this show who's under forty years old, who's directed five features that have been released in movie theaters. That is becoming a rarer thing. And I know theatrical is really important to you. How are you feeling about movie theaters, the movie going experience, where it's at right now? Cause there's been a lot of talk this year.

• 1:36:10Speaker 05

  Look, man, it's such a subject matter. I can't talk about what I've become emotionally, bro. Look, man, when I was researching this movie, I found out that my grandmother, who's ninety six years old, I found out where her first date with my grandfather was. Took her to the movies. Took her to the movies and, and, and he tried to make out with her in the movie. And she told him, she told him, we can do that after. I'm trying to watch this.

• 1:36:34Sean Fennessey?

  You know what the movie was? What was the movie?

• 1:36:36Speaker 05

  She couldn't remember. But, but, but, but, but she remembered the conversation she had with him. You know what I mean? And, and me and Zinzi, you know, who's my producer on this, most important person in my life. Our first date was to the movies. Uh, we went to go see Bring It On.

• 1:36:51Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:36:51Speaker 05

  My pet read. Yeah. Star Gabby, Christian Dush. Yeah. Like, look, bro, for me, it's everything, man. Um, my favorite, my favorite cinema in LA has been closed since the pandemic. Man, ArcLight, ArcLight Hollywood.

• 1:37:06Sean Fennessey?

  So painful. Sucks here.

• 1:37:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, man, like, like, um, I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for the experience of watching, you know, these movies at a, at a time when, you know, it was pre-social media, man, where you couldn't get a movie spoiled. Forty five, you know, seven nights from Sunday. You know what I mean? And every time I set the camera up, bro, I'm thinking about the feelings that, that, that great film actors gave me. You know, in my formative years and now, I, I, I love you. I think to, to, to quote a, a, a friend of mine, Marion Baccabia, who I, I went to school with. You know, it's, it's a giant empathy machine. You know what I'm saying? I think it's best experience with strangers, you know, in the dark where you can't, you can't judge each other. You know what I'm saying? Even though it's getting incredibly expensive, but I'm making an IMAX film, man.

• 1:37:52Speaker 05

  This thing is gonna be on every PLF imaginable. You know, you know what I mean? And like the, the, the, the cost, bro, uh, coupled with inflation of, of, of taking, you know, a date to the movies, man. You know, so by the time you get your parking and your, and your, and your, uh, and your babysitter, you know what I mean? And all that stuff like, like, I know it's, I know it's expensive, but it, it still is.

• 1:38:14Speaker 05

  Such a democratized form of entertainment, man. You know what I mean? Like, like, like it was always the thing for the people, for the working man. You know, you know what I'm saying? To, to, to, to go have a, to go have a nice, uh, night, night out, travel somewhere and experience something. You know, um, I, I, I'll fight tooth and nail to keep that, to keep that, to keep that around. You know what I'm saying? Like, like, um, you know, I don't know what I would do without it, to be honest with you. Uh, you know, um, and I, and I always consider myself fortunate that my movies have come on theaters. It was, it was really got nothing to do with me. It's just the timing, bro. Like, um, had Fugil been made a calendar year later, you know, um, we might be having a different conversation, you know? Um, straight up, uh, and, and, and, um, and I think about these things, man.

• 1:38:59Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, I'm really glad that you're still putting movies in movie theaters and, and making them for them. Um, Ryan, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen? Have you seen anything that's moved you recently?

• 1:39:11Speaker 05

  It's a great question, bro. Uh, I've been incredibly busy.

• 1:39:16Sean Fennessey?

  Could be new or old, it doesn't have to be a new thing.

• 1:39:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, no, no, um, it was one of these days.

• 1:39:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, so fun.

• 1:39:24Speaker 05

  It was, it was one of these days, man. Um, and, and Sharita Singleton wrote that, bro. I know, I'm, obviously I know her father, rest in peace, but, but I, I was, I was, um, I was blown away by it.

• 1:39:33Sean Fennessey?

  What did you like?

• 1:39:34Speaker 05

  I liked that it felt like Friday, which is, which is, which is a movie that I love, but it, it felt, uh, uh, so feminine. You know what I mean? Uh, I love Kiki, you know, and I, and I, and I, and I was like blown away by, by, by her performance and SZA's performance. I was blown away by filmmaking, bro. Like, like, like the, uh, I love, like, like the, the, the, how it's celebrated, like the, the resourcefulness of black women. You know what I'm saying? Like, I love, like, like, one of my favorite scenes is like, when you realize her mom has a store in, in, in the jungles, you know what I'm saying? People coming, like, I love you, man. You know, you know what I mean? Like, like, like it felt, it felt very in conversation with, with, uh, with our scene with Annie, you know?

• 1:40:14Speaker 05

  But I love, I love the cinematography, um, I love the humor, like, I, you know, it just made, it just made me feel alive, bro.

• 1:40:20Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great pick, one of my favorites of the year. Ryan Coogler, I appreciate you, man. Thank you so much for the time.

• 1:40:25Speaker 05

  Man, thank you, Sean, thanks for having me.

• 1:40:32Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to Ryan Coogler. Thanks to Van. Thanks to Amanda. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Next week, we have our next 25 for 25 entry. I will not reveal what it is.

• 1:40:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you want to guess, Van?

• 1:40:44Speaker 04

  25 for 25.

• 1:40:45Sean Fennessey?

  25 best movies of the century.

• 1:40:47Speaker 04

  People have been really telling me, they've been peppering me. Tell Sean to do this movie. Tell Sean to do this movie. Tell Sean to do this movie.

• 1:40:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm involved too.

• 1:40:57Sean Fennessey?

  What?

• 1:41:18Sean Fennessey?

  What did they tell you that we should do?

• 1:41:19Speaker 04

  Oh, so many different movies.

• 1:41:21Sean Fennessey?

  Guess, guess, guess what we're doing next?

• 1:41:22Speaker 04

  Somebody told me I should do Ghost Dog.

• 1:41:26Sean Fennessey?

  I would love to do Ghost Dog. I don't know if I could get Amanda on board with Ghost Dog.

• 1:41:32Speaker 04

  Next movie, Moonlight.

• 1:41:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's not Moonlight.

• 1:41:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:41:37Sean Fennessey?

  Spoiler alert. See you then.

• 1:41:58Speaker 06

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