What It’s Really Like at an Awards Show. Plus: Cliff Booth Returns and the Best Super Bowl Trailers!

Sean and Amanda open the show by reacting to every movie trailer from the Super Bowl, including those for David Fincher’s ‘The Adventures of Cliff Booth’ and Steven Spielberg’s ‘Disclosure Day’ (1:25). Then, they talk through their experience at the DGA Awards this past weekend and explain what it’s actually like at an awards show (33:15). Finally, Sean is joined by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, the directors of ‘KPop Demon Hunters,’ to discuss why they wanted to make a movie for themselves first and foremost, how legendary Korean directors Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook inspired their filmmaking style, and the importance of writing interesting and strong female characters (1:25:38). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans Producer: Jack Sanders Video Producers: Sarah Reddy, Donald LoBianco, and Ryan Todd Audio Producers: Devon Baroldi and Kevin Cureghian Additional Production Support: Nick Kosut and T Cruz A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.® Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit mddallies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 1:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 1:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 1:47Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Picture Right Conversation show about our trip to the Directors Guild of America Awards Dinner and what it's really like in an award show. We'll have an interesting conversation digging into that experience. Later in the show, I have a conversation with Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, the co-directors of K-Pop Demon Hunters. Perhaps you've heard of it. The talk happened after a midday screening of the movie at our local nonprofit theater, Vidiet's. You were there, Amanda. It was a fun time, pandemonium for our kids.

• 2:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 2:14Sean Fennessey?

  Maggie and Chris, they made a really fun movie that has obviously completely changed the lives of many people around the world. So we had a good chat. I hope you will stick around for that conversation. When we come back from our break, we will talk about the Super Bowl trailers, right after this.

• 2:29Amanda Dobbins?

  This episode of The Big Picture is presented by State Farm.

• 2:32Sean Fennessey?

  You know those friends who show up for whatever you're into? The ones who'll debate which superhero universe is better or binge true crime documentaries with you at 3:00 in the morning? Those friends are gold.

• 2:41Amanda Dobbins?

  State Farm is like that, helping you figure out the coverage that actually fits. Car, home, life, whatever you need, they've got your back. And if you want a hand, a local agent is just a tap away on their award-winning app.

• 2:52Sean Fennessey?

  Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 2:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, we're a little late this week because you and I have both been felled by illness.

• 3:00Amanda Dobbins?

  But we're back.

• 3:01Sean Fennessey?

  We're back, we're on our feet.

• 3:02Amanda Dobbins?

  We're building back better, sort of.

• 3:05Sean Fennessey?

  Something like that.

• 3:05Amanda Dobbins?

  One piece at a time.

• 3:06Sean Fennessey?

  Hopefully not Joe Biden-esque in terms of building.

• 3:09Amanda Dobbins?

  The other dominoes in my family have fallen but are working their way back up.

• 3:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, we're all trying to get better every day.

• 3:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:15Sean Fennessey?

  I did watch the Super Bowl in its entirety, even though I said I would not. And let me tell you, I'm so glad that I did.

• 3:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that was happy for you.

• 3:22Sean Fennessey?

  It was a magnificent evisceration of the New England Patriots.

• 3:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I was vomiting and or asleep for the first half. I did make it awake in time for Bad Bunny, which I really enjoyed.

• 3:32Sean Fennessey?

  I did too.

• 3:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And then kind of watched the second half, but it was pretty boring. And sort of tuned into the commercials, found they were mostly about AI, turned them off, and then watched the trailers the next day in the comfort of my own laptop.

• 3:48Sean Fennessey?

  Well, okay, one quick thing about Bad Bunny that I appreciate, that other people have noted, but I thought was very smart on his part, because there obviously was going to be somewhat of a lack of familiarity among some people in the audience with his music. And there's been all kinds of like bizarre controversy conversation around it. Yeah, but I don't want to talk about that. But I loved the sort of like production-style presentation of that show. And it's very rare that at a halftime show, you get basically a mini movie. And that was what Bad Bunny attempted to create. So I really loved that. And that was really in keeping with, I think, a lot of what was going on. Most of the commercials, I thought, were borderline evil.

• 4:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely.

• 4:23Sean Fennessey?

  During the telecast, the trailers, I thought, were pretty interesting and pretty fun. And I felt like last year, we didn't have such a good batch. The year before that, we didn't have such a good batch. This year, there was one big surprise, which I had gotten tipped off to. I don't know if you had gotten tipped off to.

• 4:37Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 4:37Sean Fennessey?

  The big news, which was that there was a trailer for, or a sort of a teaser for The Adventures of Cliff Booth, or So We Think That's the name of the movie. But there was a one-minute spot for the new movie, written by Quentin Tarantino, directed by David Fincher. That did not feature the title of the movie, that felt like it was essentially a fake 1970s exploitation style reel.

• 5:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Sean Fennessey?

  For the film. What did you think of it?

• 5:03Amanda Dobbins?

  And also a little bit of a gag reel. It was so it was a trailer for a Netflix film shown during the Super Bowl, directed by David Fincher and written by Quentin Tarantino. So there are a lot of things like not suitable for general audiences, quote unquote. So they use bleeps in a, in a very funny way.

• 5:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, like a visual bleep, a scratched out image.

• 5:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And use them like at scale. So purposely to kind of tease you with like, oh, there's a lot of naughty stuff in this. And that was a major bit and part of the trailer, which like I thought was funny. I thought was effective in terms of communicating like awe vibe of the movie. And maybe piquing some interest without really telling us anything about what's going on in it. Other than that people are cursing and it does look somewhat 70s-esque.

• 5:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it looks like a, like a dingy, beautiful 70s exploitation movie, which is kind of what I hope it turns out to be, you know, obviously Fincher's visual style is different from Tarantino's and it looked extremely Fincher to me.

• 6:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Sean Fennessey?

  And obviously he's shooting on digital, but he's like the only director alive who makes digital look like that. And I'd love to see a more high def version. It's interesting that it hasn't been officially released. Like it just aired, people ripped it off the, off their TVs. But if you go to Netflix's YouTube channel, for example, it's not available there.

• 6:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but I think we know why, because Netflix does not want to give one single minute of content to YouTube that it, you know.

• 6:34Sean Fennessey?

  Well, yeah, but they do promote their movies with trailers. Like there's something else going on here that they're, it's a, it's a serpentine secret campaign that they're trying to do, which I think is smart. And I think withholding the title of the movie is interesting.

• 6:49Sean Fennessey?

  The use of the Peter Gunn theme. The other thing that it reminded me of a little bit is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo teaser, which was set to Karen O's version of Immigrant Song. Which was like, basically the Fincher style, which is just like flashes of images and no story. Like, you could not really ascertain what this movie is gonna be. You can just get the vibe, like you said. You can just kind of feel that it's gonna be kind of a rollicking, fun movie. Like, basically, it looks like a buddy comedy where, and I don't know who the other buddy is, but it's gonna be Brad Pitt, and maybe it's Elizabeth Debicki, maybe it's Yahya Abdul-Mateen. You know, maybe it's...

• 7:23Amanda Dobbins?

  All people I like.

• 7:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, the cast looks, maybe it's Carla Gugino, God bless. Her walking out onto the veranda, wearing a bikini, we'd love to see it. That's one of the best things I've seen all year.

• 7:34Sean Fennessey?

  Holt McCallany, apparently, is in this movie, I didn't know. Longtime Fincher collaborator. Karen Karagulian, from Enora and the Sean Baker films, is in the film. Scott Kahn, who I'm sure will say fuck you roughly 40 times in the movie.

• 7:47Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, I haven't read the script. I don't want to read the script. I kind of want this to be the last thing I see of this movie, but I don't know if I'll be able to control myself.

• 7:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, this is an issue with all of the rest of the trailers that we're gonna talk about, which is, we're, we are watching them because the marketing and the trailer is such an important part of getting people into the theater, but also, we're gonna go anyway, so I really don't want stuff to be spoiled.

• 8:10Sean Fennessey?

  I know, I know. I definitely put on my, my analysis cap, like, just seeing there's a moment where a car comes around the corner of the Paramount lot. And up on, in the lot are three posters, which is still how the Paramount lot looks these days. And the three posters for the three films from 1977 are Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Black Sunday, and what looks like First Love, a movie I have not seen, but some, some X.com sleuths discovered that. It's sort of like out of view.

• 8:40Sean Fennessey?

  And so I do hope that like the sort of the essence of Hollywood is very much a part of this movie too. At that time, we see a movie theater at a certain point that looked like the Vista to me. It looked like the Vista was dressed in some way.

• 8:52Amanda Dobbins?

  It's the Vista and not the Highland Park Theater? Because they were filming there.

• 8:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think the Highland Park Theater is the exteriors. And I think the interior was, because it had, the Vista has the three separate sections, where it has that primary, middle section and two aisles down the end and has like, I don't know, 400 seats. And it looked like a really big room, but I don't know.

• 9:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 9:11Sean Fennessey?

  I'm pretty excited about this. Big Kahuna Burger on the slathered on that wall.

• 9:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like this isn't the Tarantino verse, clearly.

• 9:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm looking forward to this and I am, I'm not participating in the take cycles. You know, like when this was announced, there was a lot of hand wringing of like, what are we going to do? And like, you know, why are greatest minds, you know, committing to sequels on streaming services and blah, blah, blah. I don't care. It's a movie written by Quentin Tarantino and David Fincher. I accept. And then, you know, then there's a lot of hand wringing of like, is this going to be good enough? Is that, but looks great. I'm going to have a great time.

• 9:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Neither you nor I have had as hard of a time with this era of David Fincher. I think there are some people who can't get away from being 13 and how they feel about seven and Fight Club anymore.

• 9:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 9:56Sean Fennessey?

  Honestly, the movie that this looks most like to me is Fight Club. Like in terms of the tone, the energy, the, um, the kind of like visual dynamism, the sort of like that puckish, punkish, kind of rude quality, which I really enjoy. So hopefully, I don't know if it's going to be Fight Club, but I hope it lives up in some way. Okay, disclosure day.

• 10:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:17Sean Fennessey?

  This one was very brief and it was essentially also a one minute teaser trailer.

• 10:21Amanda Dobbins?

  What is the rate for commercials on the Super Bowl in 2026? Do we know?

• 10:25Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. There was, there was some discussion about this on The Town last week on an episode about around ad buys. And they, they were in the five to 10 million discussion range.

• 10:36Amanda Dobbins?

  According to USA Today. Because I don't trust the AI results, even though they paid for all of the commercials. We're at about eight million for a 30 second spot.

• 10:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that was that was essentially the discussion. I think it depends on how early you make the buy.

• 10:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:54Sean Fennessey?

  So, okay, maybe this was an 11 million dollar commercial.

• 10:58Amanda Dobbins?

  So you think there you think you're getting a discount for the 60 second buy?

• 11:04Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think that the movie studios know that they need to buy early.

• 11:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 11:09Sean Fennessey?

  And so the earlier you get in, the cheaper it is.

• 11:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And this, well, this was also, the Super Bowl was on NBC this year, which was confusing to me.

• 11:17Sean Fennessey?

  Why?

• 11:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's just not what I associate with the Super Bowl.

• 11:20Sean Fennessey?

  It was awesome, though. It was Tariq and Collinsworth.

• 11:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I love Tariq and Collinsworth. It's great. And then it segued right into the Olympics. So I did not have to get up in my diseased state to change the channel. We just segued right into the Olympics. I did get up. I didn't want to watch Lindsey Vonn crash. Thank you. No, thank you.

• 11:35Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't watch that either. You know what I loved is when Drake made through that interception into God knows where. And Chris Collinsworth's take on that was, uh, yeah, I don't really, I don't have any thoughts on that. It was just like, it was so bad that he was completely stumped for commentary. That was a wonderful moment.

• 11:53Amanda Dobbins?

  But so it's M E C, which is Comcast owned and also Universal is Comcast owned. Are they getting a discount?

• 12:01Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, good point.

• 12:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I don't know.

• 12:04Sean Fennessey?

  Well, this isn't the last of the Universal releases that was promoting their movie. Disclosure Day, they're hiding the ball. This was a very short trailer. It was somewhat similar to what we saw previously. There's one incredible set piece clearly where a car gets trapped underneath the train. There's like an old school Spielberg style action set piece that got me excited. But everything else is basically like, we're not really going to tell you the premise. And you will see something moving through a cloud that appears to be a UFO at the conclusion of the trailer. Another thing where I'm like, I really want to know everything about this movie immediately, but I'd like to know nothing as well. And that's like, I guess that's an effective trailer, right? Like, that's really what you're trying to accomplish.

• 12:41Amanda Dobbins?

  There's a moment in the trailer where you see one side of a woman's face and forgive me, I don't know the actress's face. And then the camera moves and then the other side is Emily Blunt.

• 12:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 12:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And but I, again, was not at like peak physical powers, so I didn't know why. So.

• 12:58Sean Fennessey?

  Where are you at on shape shifting? Is that is that a power you would want to have if you were a mutant?

• 13:03Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 13:03Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 13:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I think invisibility.

• 13:06Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, that's a good one.

• 13:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Flying. Getting, getting somewhere instantly.

• 13:11Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, teleportation.

• 13:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Mind reading, mind control.

• 13:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, look at you.

• 13:16Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, like a lot of.

• 13:18Sean Fennessey?

  These are all also famously very feminine powers.

• 13:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 13:21Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 13:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's fine.

• 13:22Sean Fennessey?

  Invisible woman.

• 13:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Every day I'm here.

• 13:25Sean Fennessey?

  Jean Grey's mind control.

• 13:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Having it all.

• 13:28Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 13:28Amanda Dobbins?

  And reimagining what is possible for superheroes.

• 13:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 13:31Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and women in them.

• 13:32Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Mystique is also a shapeshifter. She's all, you know.

• 13:35Amanda Dobbins?

  She's the blue one.

• 13:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, Jennifer Lawrence.

• 13:37Amanda Dobbins?

  But I'm not really interested in that.

• 13:38Sean Fennessey?

  Why not?

• 13:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I just, I don't know. It seems like a lot of hassle. Like, for what?

• 13:43Sean Fennessey?

  Do you feel you're not really, that's actually not one of your skills.

• 13:46Amanda Dobbins?

  What?

• 13:46Sean Fennessey?

  We were talking about this on Saturday night, but you're not, you can't really fake it. You know, you're, you, you.

• 13:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 13:54Sean Fennessey?

  You are yourself.

• 13:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 13:57Sean Fennessey?

  Part of being a shapeshifter is about performance. That's, this is an underrated aspect of shapeshifting. It's not just how you look. You can change your voice, of course.

• 14:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 14:05Sean Fennessey?

  But what is the sort of tonality and experience, the personality change, once you've shifted shape? And you can't do that.

• 14:14Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 14:14Sean Fennessey?

  You're.

• 14:15Amanda Dobbins?

  But, but my superpower is, lies in the opposite. You know, I'm on the other end of the spectrum. Where I am, just myself, wherever I go.

• 14:21Sean Fennessey?

  Being a demagogue, yes.

• 14:22Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just like, it's, it is what it is. Yeah, and I will try to, you know, so then I need to be able to like teleport. Or be invisible, so I can take that power wherever it needs to go as myself.

• 14:34Sean Fennessey?

  Your flavor of alien. You like like a little green man? Do you like a, like a tall, kind of robotic invader?

• 14:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm, no.

• 14:42Sean Fennessey?

  Do you like someone that comes as a humanoid style?

• 14:44Amanda Dobbins?

  No, that's, that's creepy.

• 14:46Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 14:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And then it brings up too much like robot AI, like whatever stuff. Which I'm not interested in, much like Jacob Elordi. I'd rather just be on a beach, reading a novel, sunburnt. Um. One of the great quotes of our time. Let's see.

• 14:59Sean Fennessey?

  This is really Jacob Elordi week for you.

• 15:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah, it's true. No, I mean, I like the arrival aliens.

• 15:05Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, the big octopi.

• 15:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Sculptural and beautiful. Let's, you know, bring some artistry to our, to our mind. I'm not looking for gross out. I guess, as long as you're going for some sort of like, something spiritual, some sort of like, let's, let's open our consciousness to the, to the world outside this world.

• 15:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 15:26Amanda Dobbins?

  If you're trying to scare me, then whatever. Gross, gross aliens.

• 15:29Sean Fennessey?

  I like an alien that can kind of alter the shape of reality, you know, like in Contact? When Jodie Foster gets to the, wherever she goes to. And she's sort of like, she's experiencing an alien exploration of spirituality, but like, it's not represented in some corporeal form. It's like, it is the great mysticism. I like when they're like, this, this alien race has advanced 10 million years beyond human form. Their understanding of science and technology and power has far eclipsed.

• 15:58Amanda Dobbins?

  And that, that doesn't just impact weapons, it impacts philosophy. A pretty earth centric understanding of aliens, you know?

• 16:04Sean Fennessey?

  How so?

• 16:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that it's like, they, they've out, you know, they've outstripped humans, but like, who says they're competing with humans? They're living in their own world by their own science, by their own spirituality, by their own laws of physicality of.

• 16:20Sean Fennessey?

  You're right about that. You're right about that. However, these stories are often about these races coming to Earth.

• 16:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 16:28Sean Fennessey?

  Either to annihilate humans, or to take a resource from them, or to learn something else from them. Usually, in our sort of solipsistic society, it's stories about how we still contain as humans.

• 16:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:39Sean Fennessey?

  A kind of emotional power that an alien race couldn't possibly understand.

• 16:43Amanda Dobbins?

  That's why I like Arrival, because the aliens, just they understand something that we don't, and they come to teach us about it.

• 16:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 16:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:50Sean Fennessey?

  I'm glad you like Arrival. That's nice for you.

• 16:52Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really good. Didn't make 25 for 25, but I, I think it's the best villain of.

• 16:57Sean Fennessey?

  We disagree. Uh, speaking of aliens.

• 17:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:01Sean Fennessey?

  Project Hail Mary.

• 17:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Didn't watch it. Will not watch anymore about this. Show me the movie. There we go. Show me the movie. Thank you.

• 17:09Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, that was your Regina King slash Rod Tidwell moment there. Uh. Yeah, I started to watch it and I turned it off. Cause I was like, we're, I'm, I'm already sold.

• 17:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm at like a year into the hype machine for this. I'm ready. I'm excited. I will be there.

• 17:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 17:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't want to drive across town to sit in the Amazon theater personally, but like I, I will.

• 17:30Sean Fennessey?

  That's what you'll have to do.

• 17:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. And that's really tough for me. I just hope that they don't like put, you know, the watermark on it after I drive all the way.

• 17:37Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think that'll be the case.

• 17:38Amanda Dobbins?

  That happened once to someone in my family.

• 17:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I don't think that will happen. I, uh, I was there recently. I saw a film there. I saw Crime 101 there.

• 17:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:44Sean Fennessey?

  It's a nice screen, nice theater, but it is very far from my house. Uh, Project Hail Mary sounds great. It's coming out in six weeks and I.

• 17:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it really six weeks?

• 17:54Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's March 20th. Yeah.

• 17:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. So it's the week after the Oscars. So it's five weeks to the Oscars and six weeks to.

• 18:00Sean Fennessey?

  You got this, mama. Hang in there, mama.

• 18:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Time moves so fast and so slowly all at once.

• 18:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 18:06Amanda Dobbins?

  What are we gonna, okay.

• 18:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I look at my child and I'm like, this is now starting to go way too fast.

• 18:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:11Sean Fennessey?

  And I look at the Oscar race and I'm like, please, can we please get on with this? Uh, Minions and Monsters.

• 18:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:17Sean Fennessey?

  Many people have been wondering how you're feeling about this.

• 18:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Just like electric, okay? As you wrote, as you wrote in this, I love monsters. And as I wrote in my head, I love a movie about making a movie. With your powers combined, I'd look so funny. Knox is gonna lose his mind. I can't wait to show him this.

• 18:36Sean Fennessey?

  It looks pretty fun.

• 18:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, I know many people have been waiting for me to speak on the Minions figure skater. Um, and I'm so, you know, so there was a Spanish figure skater who had a minions themed routine. And he dressed as a minion. And I believe he, uh, danced to like music adapted from the score of.

• 18:54Sean Fennessey?

  Now that sounds like NBC Paola.

• 18:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, so here's the thing is that the controversy was that none of it was cleared. And so like a week before the Olympics, there was like legal issues. And apparently like the world of figure skating is like the wild world of fair use, all sorts of. There are often a lot of problems.

• 19:14Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 19:15Amanda Dobbins?

  So, but there was concern that he was not going to be able to skate his minions routine. But of course this was like two days before the Olympics. So how is he going to come up with a whole new routine?

• 19:24Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Let alone a new costume. And then I, he, I do believe it was cleared. So my theory is that this actually was, you know, like a deep NBC promotion. Because obviously this is

• 19:39Sean Fennessey?

  Feels that way.

• 19:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Which honestly, well done.

• 19:41Sean Fennessey?

  How was the routine?

• 19:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Good job. I have not yet seen it.

• 19:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 19:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I fell asleep. If it aired Sunday night, I didn't get to see it.

• 19:48Sean Fennessey?

  Are we at peak Minion though? Like, are we good on this? Even if the movie's good, or is there gonna be a downturn?

• 19:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Why? I feel this is great.

• 19:58Sean Fennessey?

  Everything dies.

• 19:59Amanda Dobbins?

  They're freed from the shackle of Gru, you know, they've got a new little guy. And he's not an alien, but I thought he was funny.

• 20:05Sean Fennessey?

  The little green, kinda gelatinous.

• 20:08Amanda Dobbins?

  And then the other minion be like, he's a baby, he's so small.

• 20:12Sean Fennessey?

  You gotta do that Minions episode in Minions voice for two hours.

• 20:16Amanda Dobbins?

  But I'm in a really good, I mean, I'll have to like, learn more languages because, you know, they are, they're multilingual.

• 20:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 20:23Amanda Dobbins?

  But they are also at the same time, kind of at like, size level of language right now.

• 20:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 20:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is, baby, baby, so.

• 20:29Sean Fennessey?

  How old are the minions?

• 20:31Amanda Dobbins?

  They're, I think they live forever.

• 20:32Sean Fennessey?

  Eternal. Yeah, they are eternal. The Mandalorian and Grogu.

• 20:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I listened with interest as our dear friend Chris Ryan crashed out about this, which was very funny on the watch. In which he proclaimed that he was not happy about this commercial.

• 20:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 20:46Sean Fennessey?

  And he is out on this movie and will not be seeing it.

• 20:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, unfortunately, he has to take my son. Did you hear how Knox greeted Chris at his birthday party?

• 20:54Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 20:55Amanda Dobbins?

  So another friend of ours gave Knox a Lego.

• 20:58Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, Knox showed me. Yes. He tracked me down and said, I need to show you something.

• 21:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I, can we just, so it was a, do you remember what it was? It was like a Mandalorian ship?

• 21:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 21:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's what it was. He asked me if the helmet comes off.

• 21:09Amanda Dobbins?

  So here's like a Star Wars mommy report for everyone at home. These kits are satanic. Do you know how small the pieces are?

• 21:16Sean Fennessey?

  First of all.

• 21:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you know how quickly we lost one of these pieces? Why is the Mandalorian's tiny sword in five pieces?

• 21:24Amanda Dobbins?

  How am I supposed to put that together with a four-year-old? And there's a one-year-old coming up like,

• 21:29Sean Fennessey?

  Let's walk this back.

• 21:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Help us out.

• 21:30Sean Fennessey?

  Let's walk this back. Let's walk this back. First of all, I asked you specifically if I could get Knox a Mandalorian and Grogu Lego set.

• 21:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:38Sean Fennessey?

  And you said no.

• 21:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Why?

• 21:39Sean Fennessey?

  You were like, I have a small child.

• 21:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Sean Fennessey?

  Who's gonna eat all the Legos.

• 21:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:43Sean Fennessey?

  So I didn't get him a Lego set. And then as soon as he showed me the Lego set.

• 21:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:47Sean Fennessey?

  I was infuriated. I was like, why was this message not broadcast more widely? Because I wanted to be the person who could give this to your son. But of course, I agree, this is a good learning time. This is a good learning time.

• 21:59Amanda Dobbins?

  The problem is that the pieces are so small that they just, they disappear even before they came out of the-

• 22:06Sean Fennessey?

  You need to get little bins that they'll go in. I can show you what we use, because we, because we have a lot of Legos.

• 22:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, I'm happy for you that you have a single, like, calm, respectful, organized child. I have two Sonic the Hedgehogs. There is no way that I can get these tiny pieces from the little packages to the bin. Anyway, he loved it. He was proud to show you. He was proud to show Chris. He ran up to Chris and he just said, does this guy, meaning the Mandalorian, have a face? Which I thought was a great question.

• 22:35Sean Fennessey?

  He was very interested in the helmet technology. We did not see the Mandalorian's face in this commercial, which was a 30-second spoof of the Clydesdale Budweiser commercials, where Sam Elliott was narrating about the essential nature of being in the snow or whatever. And what we saw was Hoth, I think. I think they were in, on Hoth, because they were being dragged by tauntauns. You may recall tauntauns from The Empire Strikes Back.

• 23:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Sean Fennessey?

  Where Luke is riding one. And then the, the snow monster gets him. And that, you, you remember this at all? They have to hide inside the tauntaun to stay warm.

• 23:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Vaguely, but I'm-

• 23:10Sean Fennessey?

  Which was then remade in The Revenant.

• 23:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm more up to date on Star Wars and New Hope and also Grogu content.

• 23:16Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Well, you gotta get up on Empire Strikes Back.

• 23:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And Grogu peeking up over the table in the other trailer, because that, it just is hugely popular in our house. We talk about it a lot.

• 23:25Sean Fennessey?

  The, this be-

• 23:28Sean Fennessey?

  We're three months away from the first new Star Wars movie in seven months, in seven years.

• 23:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 23:32Sean Fennessey?

  And we're just doing beer commercials. It's kind of weird. Like, it does feel like there's a kind of flat anticipation for this. And this used to be the most anticipated popular culture thing. I mean, when the prequels were coming around, that obviously was absolute pandemonium. Even the reissue of the original films before the prequels.

• 23:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:53Sean Fennessey?

  I was just talking to Mallory Rubin about this yesterday, about how exciting that was to go back to see the reissued versions of those films. Obviously, The Force Awakens remains one of the biggest movies of the last 50 years, and the anticipation for that movie was huge. Even The Rise of Skywalker, which was such a dud, people were still like, I really want to see how they wrap this up.

• 24:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:12Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't really even feel like this movie is happening. And there's something so strange about that.

• 24:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you think they've given up on adults?

• 24:19Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, I don't know, and I'll be honest, I don't have a problem with that. I think one of the reasons why Star Wars lost its way a little bit is it got a little too adult.

• 24:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 24:27Sean Fennessey?

  And I think that revisiting these movies as I have been.

• 24:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Counterpoint, Andor, which I haven't seen yet, I'm gonna watch it, I gotta watch some other things.

• 24:33Sean Fennessey?

  Um, right, but Andor is for us, right? Andor is for adults, like, Andor's not for kids. Maybe some kids are watching it and enjoying it and learning about, you know, how resistance is crushed in fascist societies, but for the most part, that was.

• 24:46Amanda Dobbins?

  You can also learn that from Wicked, so.

• 24:48Sean Fennessey?

  You could learn it in the original Star Wars movies, too, honestly. It's in the text of it, but not as overtly. This is a movie purely for kids, and I think that's a good thing. I just think, like, what it is, which is an extension of a TV show, just feels small.

• 25:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:01Sean Fennessey?

  And Star Wars should be big. And I've been watching these movies, we watched Revenge of the Sith on Saturday, great experience with Alice. These movies are big, man, and even if you think that they're lacking in story or performance style, or you don't like the Lucas movies because he doesn't know how to direct actors or whatever, they're fucking events. They are cultural events, and this is not an event.

• 25:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean. Star Wars, the new Star Wars movie, having a Budweiser commercial 30-second spoof in the Super Bowl is not a metaphor, but like a tidy summary in the ways of which not just Star Wars, but Disney as a whole have, you know, gone from one of the great, imagineering, creative fonts of the world to, you know, just another place to take your kids to spend $300, which is what I will do when this movie comes out. So, I mean, obviously creatively, artistically, cinematically, it's a disgrace. I watched it and I was like, well, Knox will probably like that. So it's kind of, that's where I am with it.

• 26:00Sean Fennessey?

  I feel the exact same way. My kid is gonna love this movie and that's probably enough. But it just, it dawns on me as it being the most significant pop, pop culture thing in my life as a person at 43 years old.

• 26:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Two things can be true.

• 26:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, you're right. Supergirl.

• 26:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I forgot to Google this one.

• 26:20Sean Fennessey?

  Little worried about this one. I, this kind of looks like an old version of what superhero movies used to be, where it's like a lot of kind of jokey, winky conversations in rooms, followed by a lot of big set pieces with like explosions and like, you know, one person with powers blowing everything up around them. I, I thought we were done with that era of superhero movies. It could be more than that. I think Millie Alcock's very, very charming and could be great as Supergirl, but I don't know. It did dawn on me while watching this, that when this movie comes out, which is on June 26th, it will have been 11 months since the last superhero movie was even released, the Fantastic Four. And that's gotta be the longest stretch of time we've had in forever.

• 27:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Since 2008, since Iron Man, or even...

• 27:07Sean Fennessey?

  Gosh, I mean, even then.

• 27:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Did that machine move as...

• 27:12Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I'm, I'm sure someone, and I think even during COVID, right, we had in 2020, did we have Black Widow in 2020 or was it in 2021?

• 27:20Amanda Dobbins?

  2021.

• 27:21Sean Fennessey?

  2021? Are you sure?

• 27:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I just Googled it.

• 27:23Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so maybe that's what it was. Maybe it was, maybe it was...

• 27:29Sean Fennessey?

  Was it Spider-Man after Endgame? And then a long period of time? I mean, there might, but was there a DC movie that came out in 2020? There was, Birds of Prey. So what was the distance between Birds of Prey and Black Widow?

• 27:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's see, Birds of Prey. I remember seeing this movie, she rollerskates. So that was February 7th, 2020.

• 27:50Sean Fennessey?

  And when was Black Widow?

• 27:52Amanda Dobbins?

  July 2021.

• 27:53Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, maybe, so that probably was the longest stretch. You know, I'm quibbling at this point.

• 27:59Amanda Dobbins?

  When did they release the Snyder Cut?

• 28:01Sean Fennessey?

  Ah ha.

• 28:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's see, March 18th, 2021.

• 28:06Sean Fennessey?

  So that's 13 months. Was there any, were there any other superhero movies in 2020? That's a really good question. Probably not anything from Marvel or DC. Anyway.

• 28:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I just remember the Snyder Cut because I remember being in lockdown in my home, watching four hours of that.

• 28:23Sean Fennessey?

  When was The New Mutants released? That's the one.

• 28:28Amanda Dobbins?

  What is The New Mutants?

• 28:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 28:30Amanda Dobbins?

  The New Mutants, this is fun.

• 28:32Sean Fennessey?

  The New Mutants was released August 28th, 2020.

• 28:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 28:36Sean Fennessey?

  So, The New Mutants is a spinoff of the X-Men about young mutants. This is a

• 28:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 28:43Sean Fennessey?

  really massively failed movie that apparently was reshot and recut several times. It does star Anya Taylor-Joy as Ilyana Rasputin.

• 28:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 28:53Sean Fennessey?

  The mutant known as Magic.

• 28:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Relation to the other Rasputin?

• 28:58Sean Fennessey?

  To Rasputin of Russian history?

• 29:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 29:02Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, you know, I don't know.

• 29:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, well, I don't think someone did their homework today.

• 29:07Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's an insinuation there, you know, that she conjures a similar power.

• 29:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I've now clicked it, so apparently her name is Magic with a K?

• 29:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that I know.

• 29:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so I'm just, I'm on Wikipedia here, okay? And she's the younger sister of Russian X-Men member Colossus?

• 29:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that I knew.

• 29:24Amanda Dobbins?

  An X-Men enemy, Mikhail Rasputin, who is, I'm clicking through him. He was a cosmonaut, my son would be so excited. But it doesn't seem like he is related to the Rasputin of Russian history. I'm scrolling, but I'm not, I'm not seeing anything. Okay, well, it seems like a missed opportunity, or perhaps a sequel.

• 29:49Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, so 11 months is, is the longest period of time probably since 2008 and maybe even before that.

• 29:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 29:57Sean Fennessey?

  And that's just interesting. That's just in, in, in 2019 and 2020, we did a lot of episodes about comic book movies. And some of it was in the lead up to Infinity War and Endgame and kind of looking at this accomplishment that the MCU made. And some of it was just about what I find to be most interesting about it, which is like trends in storytelling. What big groups of people are really interested in over a period of time. Taking this long a period of time between movies, some of it is circumstantial, new leadership at DC, for example, resetting the table for the, for the Marvel movies. And some of it is just about what people want. And they don't want these movies as much. And so we're getting fewer of them and they're going to try to reset the table big time. You know, there's going to be a second Superman movie.

• 30:42Sean Fennessey?

  There's going to be the Batman two. There's going to be another Spider-Man movie this summer.

• 30:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm sorry, I briefly stopped listening.

• 30:47Sean Fennessey?

  Avengers.

• 30:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so they're making, yeah.

• 30:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 30:49Amanda Dobbins?

  They're, they're going to keep going, but it's different.

• 30:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's just interesting that they stopped.

• 30:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I haven't lost any sleep at night. I mean, I have, but for different reasons. No, no, it's, it's, it's a good point. It's factual. Um, I feel a little bit freer.

• 31:05Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 31:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't watch the trailer for Supergirl because I didn't like the first one and then I forgot. So that is maybe an indication of where it is in my consciousness.

• 31:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I just think something else is filling its spot and I'm not sure how much you care about that either, you know?

• 31:17Amanda Dobbins?

  You mean video games?

• 31:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 31:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's true. But listen, I, you know, men and, and.

• 31:24Sean Fennessey?

  What men?

• 31:24Amanda Dobbins?

  People who like screens. That's true.

• 31:26Sean Fennessey?

  Women, women.

• 31:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Need to have their pursuits as well.

• 31:29Sean Fennessey?

  You don't know any women who play video games?

• 31:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I mean, I do. I know Mallory.

• 31:33Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 31:34Amanda Dobbins?

  She plays them, right?

• 31:35Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 31:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Does Joanna?

• 31:37Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 31:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think I know anybody else in my civilian life who plays video games.

• 31:41Sean Fennessey?

  You might want to expand your pool a little bit. Did you watch the Good Will Duncan commercial?

• 31:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I did, yeah. That was really tough. And listen, you know that everywhere I go, I ride for my guy Ben Affleck. Including, you know, getting his finances topped up by Dunkin' Donuts every year. It's an annual tradition. This was tough. It was really tough when Jennifer Aniston and Tom Brady showed up in the window. And I know that Ben Affleck is from Boston and that Tom Brady is still welcome there, even though apparently he would not support the Patriots.

• 32:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Well, there's a lot going on there. Would you like me to explain it to you?

• 32:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, or we could just say it's none of our business and move on.

• 32:26Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think it's so private.

• 32:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 32:29Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, he was discarded by the team and moved on to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, went on to win a Super Bowl with them, needed to show the world that it was not the Patriot way that led him to great success. It was individual success. That was compounded by the fact that he is a part owner of the Raiders, the Las Vegas Raiders, and that the Raiders had just hired Clint Kubiak, who was the offensive coordinator of the Seattle Seahawks. And so I think in a way, he was rooting for Clint Kubiak in the Super Bowl. So he didn't want to have any allegiances in any direction.

• 32:59Amanda Dobbins?

  And none of that is in conflict with his role as a commentator.

• 33:03Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's not something I would do, but you know, that's how Tom Brady chooses to live his life, in conflict.

• 33:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I, why did everyone have to wear such ugly wigs?

• 33:15Sean Fennessey?

  In the commercial? I would have preferred less AI de-aging.

• 33:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 33:19Sean Fennessey?

  You know, for Ted Danson in particular, I found that to be a bit chilling. I, you know, I'm not opposed to people getting money. I think that's actually a smart, to just like siphon that money out of that company.

• 33:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I do think that Ben Affleck has done the work for Dunkin' Donuts over the years. And he has done the work for us in, as a target of the paparazzi, as like the king of memes.

• 33:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 33:46Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 33:46Sean Fennessey?

  This wasn't a Ring camera commercial. It was for something that he actually consumes every day, which I respect. You know, between the like nostalgia baiting and the AI and the general like grotesquerie of the imagery in the commercial, could have done without it. Could have done without it.

• 34:04Amanda Dobbins?

  It's also.

• 34:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Good Will Hunting is a Matt and Ben thing, so I was a little bit like, this makes me a little sad that just, you know, only one of you is here making the money off of this.

• 34:16Sean Fennessey?

  Alfonso Rivero and Jaleel White could make it.

• 34:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:18Sean Fennessey?

  Jennifer Aniston could make it, and yet Matt Damon could not.

• 34:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Well, it's just also like, maybe Matt Damon didn't need the check, you know? So it's, it's Ben.

• 34:25Sean Fennessey?

  Spending those Odyssey dollars.

• 34:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so.

• 34:29Sean Fennessey?

  Must be nice.

• 34:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't, it didn't feel good, but that's okay.

• 34:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm moving on.

• 34:33Sean Fennessey?

  You're being so rude about Marvel and superhero, and then your beloved boy Ben Affleck just degrades himself during the Super Bowl.

• 34:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't say that it was good.

• 34:42Sean Fennessey?

  No, it wasn't good. I love Ben too. Okay, um, shall we pivot to our, our Saturday evening?

• 34:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Sean Fennessey?

  Shout out to the Directors Guild. They've been inviting us to the show for a few years now, and I appreciate the invite. And we've never gone, because I'm not that fun, and I don't want to do stuff. And, uh, I don't remember if we had really seriously talked about going in the past, but I had always wanted to go, despite my unfunniness, because this is an untelevised award show. That is always a little bit more interesting, because you get a little bit of a looser crowd, a little bit of a looser energy at the show. And obviously, we love filmmakers.

• 35:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 35:18Sean Fennessey?

  And filmmakers are a bedrock of this show, and kind of, kind of the lens through which we see a lot of the movies that we talk about.

• 35:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 35:24Sean Fennessey?

  And this is a great year.

• 35:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say, this is.

• 35:26Sean Fennessey?

  For our filmmakers.

• 35:27Amanda Dobbins?

  It was many of our people.

• 35:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 35:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And something I did not know about the DGA Award Ceremony until we arrived, but, uh, that really played to our interest is that all of the nominees for Best Feature Film, so in this case, that was, uh, Paul Thomas Anderson, Guillermo del Toro, Chloe Zhao, Josh Safdie, and Ryan Coogler, give speeches before the winner is announced. Instead of doing the like, you know, weird person associated with the movie coming out to present like a clip package of.

• 35:59Sean Fennessey?

  Which they did have.

• 36:00Amanda Dobbins?

  They did, but you know, normally it's like, a searing work on the power of connection. This is him, you know? And then you just like, watch, whatever. Um. They have the actual filmmakers speak and they also have someone from the film come and present.

• 36:19Sean Fennessey?

  A medallion.

• 36:19Amanda Dobbins?

  A medallion to them and do it like an extended introduction. And there's no time limit because it's not televised. So it is, it's our guys and our gal and very focused on them and they actually get a lot of like stage time, if not screen time. So that was very, very cool.

• 36:37Sean Fennessey?

  It was really interesting.

• 36:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And made sense for us to be there. The other thing was that it's held at the Beverly Hilton, which is also where the Golden Globes are held every year. So that was just some good location scouting for yours truly.

• 36:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it gives a little bit of insight into what that show might be like too, and the ways in which it is similar and different. And what you just described, I think that's the centerpiece of the show. You know, the best theatrical feature film is the primary award and the show is sort of oriented around that order. But there are a lot of other awards that are given out. There are limited series TV, series TV, comedy, variety and talk show. There are commercial awards that are given out. There's a first time feature filmmaker award that is given out. So it is a proper award show where going through the night, you have someone coming out and presenting the nominees and then giving out an award and people go up and they give acceptance speeches. You've also got a host. We had a host, Kumail Nanjiani was the host and I thought it was really, really funny.

• 37:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I laughed a lot.

• 37:33Sean Fennessey?

  So Judd Apatow has been hosting this show for the last few years and we had been warned ahead of time by a few people that this is a really long award show, that it like could run three and a half, four, four and a half, maybe even five hours.

• 37:46Amanda Dobbins?

  It was a real roller coaster because at first we learned, oh, the awards, you know, drinks start at five, the awards kick off at 6:30. I was like, oh, great. Like we'll be, we'll be done early. And then everyone was like, no, no, no, no, it might go till 11. And then I was like, oh, have I signed my whole life away to the DJs? Do I live at the Beverly Hilton now? But in this particular case. This show ran on time.

• 38:11Sean Fennessey?

  It was really crisp.

• 38:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Sean Fennessey?

  Kumail did a really nice job in the monologue. He was legitimately very funny and all the jokes were written to a director's audience. And that's the thing, the crowd at the, at the show is, there's some press. We sat with some press, you know, um, our friends Joshua Rothkopf and, uh, from the LA Times and Kyle Buchanan from the New York Times were seated at our table. But also seated at our table were, um, Jason Chalamet and, uh, Mike Sweeney, who were from the Conan O'Brien Travel Show, which is on HBO Max, and they were nominated.

• 38:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 38:42Sean Fennessey?

  That, at that night. And that's kind of the composition of most of the tables is folks who work on shows like that, who are nominees or who are guests of the nominees. And, um, lo and behold, Mike won in his category.

• 38:55Amanda Dobbins?

  It was so exciting.

• 38:56Sean Fennessey?

  So we watched, and if you are a longtime Conan O'Brien fan and have been watching since he was doing Late Night in the 90s, Mike is kind of an icon. He's been on the show a long time. He's been, the, both of those guys have been with Conan for decades. And so as he has moved on to become a podcast host and to be making these streaming shows in the aftermath of his talk show, um, he, that, that same crew of people are all still together. So just to watch Mike go on stage, just a very funny guy. And you could tell he gave probably the funniest speech of the night, I would say.

• 39:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely. Because the comedy, the, the category was like variety, reality and quiz show all at once. And so he gave a very like self-deprecating speech about this being the most important category of the night, you know, but like, don't be nervous. But it was, it was very charming, like off the cuff. Um, they were lovely table mates.

• 39:41Sean Fennessey?

  Super nice, yeah.

• 39:42Amanda Dobbins?

  And it was very exciting. They won. And then we were like tasked with keeping the applause going, you know?

• 39:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, we were psyched up, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:48Amanda Dobbins?

  But, but it is also like, it is a bit of a walk, which you under, you know, which you see at home, but then, yeah.

• 39:52Sean Fennessey?

  We didn't have the best seats in the house, so Mike had the stride up there.

• 39:55Amanda Dobbins?

  We had a good view.

• 39:55Sean Fennessey?

  We did.

• 39:56Amanda Dobbins?

  But we were not up in front. That's true.

• 39:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 39:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, so, yeah, delightful, very exciting.

• 40:02Sean Fennessey?

  That part of it was really cool. And I think that speaks to really the composition of the guild. And there was a lot of conversation throughout the night about what the guild is. And the guild is not just Ryan Coogler and Paul Thomas Anderson. It's a lot of people who work as assistant directors or second assistant directors that comprise this kind of- Organism of movie making that doesn't get as much attention or clarity. I don't have first A Ds on the show, you know, because there's like this primacy of authorship around the lead filmmaker. But the, the, these directors depend on these people so much to make the movies happen.

• 40:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I just remembered the Kumail joke that was Michael B., he was explaining the difference between Michael B. Jordan and Michael Jordan and then Scottie Pippen and Scottie.

• 40:44Sean Fennessey?

  B. Pippen.

• 40:45Amanda Dobbins?

  B. Pippen. And then he explained Scottie Pippen as the, as the A D of any, uh, yeah. And it's, it was, it was gentle poking.

• 40:54Sean Fennessey?

  The joke was essentially that he does more or less the same amount of work for significantly less credit.

• 40:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:59Sean Fennessey?

  And money. And that was kind of a theme of the night was the sort of like a lot of these big time filmmakers honoring the groups of people who work on their directing teams.

• 41:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 41:08Sean Fennessey?

  And that the award is not just for the filmmaker, but for the entire team who worked on the film. And that's, I think, really useful to understand. And, um, most of the big noisy award shows, the Oscars is different in this respect, but most of the big noisy award shows are only spotlighting above the line talent.

• 41:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's really all they're thinking about. Forget about, and then there's like below the line talent, like superstar below the line talent, like there's like the Ludwig Gouransons where you're like, this guy's gonna win like six Academy Awards and he's like one of the most acclaimed composers in the, in the world and he's like in his 40s. But then there's like the person below the person and then the person below that person. And so I appreciated that the show took some time to talk about those people and talk about the work that they do. When you were walking in the room, I'm curious, like, what were you looking for? How would you describe the vibe of the show and party itself?

• 41:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I felt like we were the plus ones at a large wedding. Like in a good way. And I enjoy being a non-essential guest at a wedding. It's kind of an ideal, uh, assignment.

• 42:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 42:12Amanda Dobbins?

  So as, as you know, we weren't, we weren't in the front row. We weren't next to Leonardo DiCaprio, who was there.

• 42:18Sean Fennessey?

  He was there.

• 42:19Amanda Dobbins?

  But we had a great view. We could see everyone coming and going. And it was, you know, it's seated tables. The DJs serve Josh wine, in case anyone's wondering.

• 42:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Chardonnay.

• 42:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, I think.

• 42:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure. California all the way.

• 42:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And. There's, you know, a served meal that you're trying to get through before the speeches start, just like a wedding. And then, for the most part, you're watching people, some of whom you recognize, some of whom you don't talk about, very meaningful moments in their lives, while you do or don't drink the wine. So it did feel, it was like watching an award show at a wedding, instead of watching an award show at your home.

• 43:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's a funny way of putting it, because it is, it's a seated dinner from 5:30 to 6:30, and then the show starts. Then the food comes off the table. If you want to keep drinking, you can. You don't have to. I would not describe this as like a very boozy affair.

• 43:15Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 43:15Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't feel like the old globes, you know, where it was just like, everyone's kind of, they've had their third martini for some reason. This was like, it wasn't staged and it wasn't boring. You know, like, obviously, this is, I'm in the bag for a show like this, but I think just any common person could have sat down and been kind of relatively entertained by what they saw.

• 43:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it was very produced and very professionally done. And so, you know, Kumail hosted and had like a very, I think that monologue would have played well on TV. I mean, he's obviously like a professional comedian and very good at what he does. But the show ran as if it were being staged for television. It was just being staged for us in the room. So you could just, you were entertained for the most part. And there were moments when we were looking at our phones, or posting, or trying to take pictures of our, like, place cards.

• 44:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. They were very kind to provide us with a little tiny golden director's chair, which we then both gave to our children. Yeah. How closely were you paying attention to the way in which the nominees and various people were being received? The applause, the love for movies in the room? Because this is something you hear about a lot at a lot of these events. It's sort of like, this can dictate what's going to happen. At the events that are to come, at the Academy Awards, for example.

• 44:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I I wrote down who got a standing ovation until I realized that every single theatrical feature film director was getting a standing ovation and they all deserve it.

• 44:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 44:39Amanda Dobbins?

  So it was it was one where you would note the enthusiasm and applause for one person being like, oh, look, got a lot of people in the room. And then that seemed pretty equally dispersed. So and in the end, it just seemed like a real. It does seem like this is a group of nominees that everyone likes.

• 44:59Sean Fennessey?

  And I think they like each other as well.

• 45:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:01Sean Fennessey?

  There does not seem to be much animosity amongst this group. This doesn't seem to be like a very sharp elbowed fight. There's this curiosity of both Sinners and One Battle After Another, which are, of course, the two front runners right now, being from the same studio, too. And so I wonder if there's like a slightly more of a play nice circumstance going on, not between the filmmakers, obviously, but just like the awards machine that is operating around those movies. I did think there was a little bit more energy for both Sinners and Hamnet than there was for the other films. And that might just be because there was like a more vocal contingent of people in the room. But it did seem a little bit louder for both of those movies.

• 45:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, there is also the fact that Hamnet was introduced instead of by one of its stars, by Steven Spielberg, and that Steven Spielberg was at the Hamnet table.

• 45:46Sean Fennessey?

  He was. And he kind of loomed over, his aura kind of loomed over the event.

• 45:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Steven Spielberg was the star of the night.

• 45:51Sean Fennessey?

  He was.

• 45:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And almost everyone, including Kumail, in what I thought was like a wonderful anecdote about seeing Jurassic Park for the first time in Pakistan where he grew up.

• 46:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Everyone referenced Spielberg and almost talked to him like at some point during their speech.

• 46:08Sean Fennessey?

  They like looked right at him and addressed him or basically like, thank you.

• 46:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was sort of like the one Meryl Streep used to sit front row at the Oscars and everyone was like, oh, there's Meryl Streep.

• 46:15Sean Fennessey?

  Great call.

• 46:16Amanda Dobbins?

  But they were like, oh, it's Steven Spielberg. And and then that became a self fulfilling prophecy also of like now it came one of the bits of the night in a good way. These are these are these are people who pick up on cues and know how to tell a story throughout the night. So Spielberg became so central to the night that Hamnet by association just kind of gets lifted up in it. But yeah, I think that there was a Sinners, definitely. I noted that as well.

• 46:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 46:41Amanda Dobbins?

  That that people were very excited anytime any like it was mentioned. Kugler gave a wonderful speech.

• 46:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, let's go through those one by one. I think that's kind of interesting for folks listening at home. I think I have the order. Do I have the order right here, the way I've written it down?

• 46:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm, I, I think that maybe Chalamet and Josh Safdie went before Chloe Zhao, but I could be wrong.

• 47:07Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 47:08Amanda Dobbins?

  You took the, the program home. I forgot mine.

• 47:11Sean Fennessey?

  And I left it at home.

• 47:13Sean Fennessey?

  Leonardo DiCaprio came out.

• 47:15Amanda Dobbins?

  He sure did.

• 47:15Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty early on in the show.

• 47:16Amanda Dobbins?

  He did.

• 47:16Sean Fennessey?

  And introduced One Battle After Another and Paul Thomas Anderson. And, you know, all of these presenters who were presenting the nominee, who would then give that speech that you were describing, you know, they all had prepared remarks. Some were reading off of a prompter, some were reading off of a, you know, a card that they had in their hand. I would say, you know, perhaps unsurprisingly, Leo very crisply and cleanly gave his speech. He knows how to read lines. And his was really good. It was really interesting.

• 47:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Sean Fennessey?

  I, I did tweet about him talking about Paul coming to his mom's house in Los Feliz in the 90s before bookie nights. I think when he was discussing possibly taking on the role of Dirk Diggler. And under one arm, he said he had a LaserDisc of Raging Bull and under the other arm, he had a VHS cassette of a John Holmes movie.

• 48:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:00Sean Fennessey?

  And they were going to watch that at Leo's house.

• 48:02Amanda Dobbins?

  At Leo's mom's house.

• 48:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, Leo's mom's house, which, you know, Leo eventually didn't do that movie. I wonder if that was a factor. But then I thought he spoke warmly and smartly about what makes PTA's movies so effective and the experience of working on One Battle.

• 48:17Sean Fennessey?

  And then PTA also gave a very good speech. Did he quote the John Steinbeck quote in that speech? Or was it in the speech later in the evening?

• 48:27Amanda Dobbins?

  About?

• 48:28Sean Fennessey?

  Sort of the, like, John Steinbeck once said that no one has a soul. We all have a piece of a soul and that all people together kind of share a soul. And he was like, I see my filmmaking team that way.

• 48:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:39Sean Fennessey?

  And he, that goes to the point I was making about how they see their crews.

• 48:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that that was in the prepared, that was in, in the first, in the first speech that he gave. Because spoiler alert, if you don't read any headlines, Paul Thomas Anderson did eventually win this award.

• 48:50Sean Fennessey?

  He did win.

• 48:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And he did give a second speech.

• 48:52Sean Fennessey?

  He did.

• 48:52Amanda Dobbins?

  That was also quite lovely. Yeah. So I think he did a Steinbeck quote. And then, um, and then he thanked Maya Rudolph, who was there with him and was just talking about, um, how everyone in the room knows that directors can be impossible to live with.

• 49:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 49:05Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 49:05Sean Fennessey?

  He wasn't the only director who made that joke either. Almost all of them made the joke of just what an absolute nightmare it is to live and deal with. Uh, also several filmmakers, um, had sick children at home.

• 49:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yeah, let's talk about Coogler.

• 49:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Let's talk about Coogler. So Michael B. Jordan also introduced Ryan Coogler, um, and similarly gave a really great speech. And obviously there's something really nice there. There's sort of like the, the funhouse mirror of each other, Leo and PTA, who had been rumored to work together forever and ever and ever and never did. And then they finally did, and they've made this movie.

• 49:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 49:34Sean Fennessey?

  Whereas MBJ and Coogler are kind of intertwined. Like he really is, he's not just his De Niro. He's going into like another phase where like they are inextricable from each other creatively. And you can kind of see Ryan writing through Michael B. Jordan's skills. And I liked how MBJ talked about how he sees something in him that he doesn't see in himself. And then Coogler came on stage and like, once again, Coogler is like just the coolest guy in the world.

• 49:56Amanda Dobbins?

  So the first thing he said was that he was extra nervous because his wife, Zinzi, um, couldn't be there with him because she was at home with their son, I believe, um, who is ill and he's going to be okay. But then Coogler held up his DGA card and his insurance card. And he says, and he said something to the effect of, I've always been grateful for these, but I'm really grateful tonight. And, um, which was like, you know, meaningful. And I also had a sick child at home. So I was like, I, you know, I see you, Ryan.

• 50:25Sean Fennessey?

  It was echoing in you.

• 50:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And I think many people could relate to that. But then he pivoted to talking about being in a union and talking about his uncle, who was a Black Panther and then became a joint part of the union, I believe that Teamsters, but I, um, and the revolutionary power of unions. And it was awesome.

• 50:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 50:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and right on and, and like, and pitched to the room and, and also, and pitched to our moment, but not in a like overly didactic way. And also in keeping with the themes of sinners. I mean, he's just, he's the best. He's so smart. He's so cool. Um, and, and so in tune with.

• 51:08Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, our world and what is going on it.

• 51:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think he's just an amazing. This is true of actually, I think, all five of these nominees in a way where they they not all filmmakers are like this, and I've talked to so many, but they're all really great advocates for how they see and understand movies and the way in which their worldview is imprinted onto the movies that they make. And a lot of the way that Kugler has kind of gone through the last year. And it's been about a year since that first video of him kind of talking through the Kodak film and the film stock and the style that they shot Sinzon came around, which was this kind of flashpoint, I think, for 2025 at the movies. And he's just done this pretty consistently over the last year, where every time there's a moment where he's on stage and he has to make a point. He's one of the only people, I think he was might have been the only person on stage

• 51:52Sean Fennessey?

  that night who mentioned the federal government's overreach and the way that they're invading people's lives and privacy and inflicting violence upon them.

• 52:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:01Sean Fennessey?

  And he didn't say fuck ICE, but he came pretty darn close to.

• 52:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and it was it was like the most specific reference.

• 52:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, so that was really interesting. And, you know, there's just a lot of energy and and passion for that movie for obvious reasons. And I did turn to you at a certain point during the show and I was like, I wouldn't be shocked if he won. I wouldn't be shocked, you know, there there are reasons why I think PTA won, and we can talk about them when we get into that. But I really liked what he said. After him was Jacob Elordi, who came out wearing a brown suit and a foulard tie.

• 52:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Sean Fennessey?

  And he's like seven feet nine. He's like one of the tallest people that's ever lived.

• 52:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 52:39Sean Fennessey?

  And you were you were just a flutter.

• 52:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you know, I was in the same room with him and his tallness could be communicated across that space.

• 52:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes.

• 52:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And I mean,

• 52:49Sean Fennessey?

  He was too tall for the microphone.

• 52:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly, so he had to lean over, but even like the kind of loose way he was like leaning over to talk into the microphone, I was just like, you can't, you can't recreate this. It's powerful stuff. Almost anyone could use it, you know, for good. We'll talk more about those who can't later this week. But anyway, he was very charming and and pitched the speech in like in a like very in the emotional way that fits for Del Toro. And I think at the end, he said, like, I love you, Guillermo. I'm so happy to be in this movie, which I think is in keeping with the performance and also set up.

• 53:28Amanda Dobbins?

  The tone of Del Toro's speech very nicely.

• 53:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think as a famous person, he's done a really good job in the last couple of years, Alordi, of clarifying that he's a serious actor and a cinephile and an artist and wants to be a part of good projects. Like, that's what he's most interested in. You know, some of them are hit or miss. He's, I think he's the best thing in Frankenstein. And he, it was almost like paying tribute to like your beloved uncle or your father.

• 53:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:49Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, there was some real warmth for like, I feel lucky to have gotten to be a part of a movie made by somebody who I really venerate. And so it was a nice speech. And it was a different character, I think, because they don't have like a longstanding partnership. They haven't probably even known each other for more than a couple of years. In fact, it was supposed to be Andrew Garfield as the monster in that movie, you may recall. He came in last minute and did that part and did it so well. And then, I guess we can talk about Chalamet. I can't remember who came for Spielberg's Chalamet.

• 54:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, we should just say, Del Toro, you know, gave like a lovely speech. He started the President Nolan of it all. Or maybe he didn't start it, but he was the one, he said, he acknowledged President Nolan because Christopher Nolan is the president of the DGAs and opened to the ceremony with his speech. And then he said, I really like how that sounds. It's so nice to say it, you know, say president and then have something nice come after it. At which, again, started another bit throughout the night.

• 54:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Wouldn't be the last time President Nolan was in court.

• 54:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but he also, like, he chuckled and was, he is such a warm and charming presence. And then, at the end, he invited everyone over to make.

• 54:53Sean Fennessey?

  Models.

• 54:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Models.

• 54:55Sean Fennessey?

  Model kits, yes.

• 54:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And he said, I'll make quesadillas and you can do a model kit. And would you like to explain the?

• 55:00Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's a real thing. There's a, there's a group of friends, I know among them are J.J. Abrams and James Cameron, who will go to Guillermo del Toro's home on a Sunday afternoon. And he was saying, some people watch football.

• 55:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:12Sean Fennessey?

  We make models.

• 55:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:13Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, that at heart, these guys are just kids playing with their toys, you know, building things together and trying to make something that looks the way that they imagine it might look. That's the whole job, right?

• 55:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:25Sean Fennessey?

  And so there's something sweet about that. You know, Del Toro, I don't think he's the villain of this season for us. I just think that's a movie we don't have a lot of enthusiasm for.

• 55:32Amanda Dobbins?

  But it was incredibly endearing.

• 55:33Sean Fennessey?

  But in general, I like his movies and he's obviously a really nice guy.

• 55:38Sean Fennessey?

  Shalhoub.

• 55:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:39Sean Fennessey?

  I was a little surprised to see him here. Not because he's like bigger than this moment or anything, but.

• 55:46Amanda Dobbins?

  He's in town, you know, they planned it out. So he's doing, he was doing his American Cinematheque retrospective.

• 55:51Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. That's right. He's on the trail.

• 55:53Amanda Dobbins?

  And I, I don't know whether he made it up to Santa Barbara or not, but the Santa Barbara Film Festival was also this weekend.

• 55:59Sean Fennessey?

  Did you notice the Lordy was wearing the exact same outfit there that he wore to the DGAs?

• 56:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. I wondered if he went from one to the other.

• 56:05Sean Fennessey?

  Was it the same day?

• 56:06Amanda Dobbins?

  It was, I mean, it was Saturday night. I don't know. It's, you know.

• 56:10Sean Fennessey?

  I thought that was on Sunday. Anyway, um, no shots. I re-wear outfits all the time.

• 56:15Amanda Dobbins?

  These things are expensive. I mean, he does have several contracts, but still.

• 56:18Sean Fennessey?

  I think he's gonna be okay.

• 56:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:21Sean Fennessey?

  Shalhoub gave a great speech.

• 56:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Sean Fennessey?

  Very funny and really captured, I think, the energy of the Safdie movie and the New York-ness of those movies. And, um, he at like, maybe two minutes into it was getting a lot of laughs and he was like, wow, I'm killing up here. He really was pleased with himself.

• 56:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:39Sean Fennessey?

  But he was really funny and I can't remember any like specific.

• 56:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, well, I do remember. At one point he said, just the other day, out of the blue, Josh said to me, if you ever need an Elias, go by the name Mike DiPpe.

• 56:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And then he just, he emphasized out of the blue, which is, you know, which is in my mind, when I imagined those two chuckleheads together, making this movie and then promoting it. That's like, you know, that's some real like JFK rewatchables energy, you know? You can't recapture it. It's just like in the room.

• 57:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 57:16Amanda Dobbins?

  People I think are idiots, but I also love doing things. So that's great.

• 57:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Um, he, his, his speech was very good and he was very loose, I think, in the presentation. It didn't feel as formal as some of the other.

• 57:28Amanda Dobbins?

  He's really in a Damien Chazelle phase of life physically. It's the hair length and the mustache.

• 57:33Sean Fennessey?

  Almost like the Durtanian.

• 57:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, he looked great. Great suit, but I was like, this man looks a lot like Damien Chazelle right now.

• 57:39Sean Fennessey?

  He does. And may they make many films together. That's what I wish for. And then Josh came up and gave his speech, which I thought was really actually quite beautiful.

• 57:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:47Sean Fennessey?

  Very, very personal about his relationship to movies and the movies that his father gave him.

• 57:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 57:52Sean Fennessey?

  And he spent a lot of time talking about Kramer versus Kramer.

• 57:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And so the two children of divorce sat up a little straighter.

• 57:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. So a very relatable story about how the movies were weaponized against his mother. And he was living with his father at the time. He talked about his father as an immigrant and that his father, who showed him and his brother Benny a lot of movies, showed him Kramer versus Kramer and literally said, that's your mom and pointed to the Meryl Streep character. And then they went on a trip with their mother to spend some time with her and were awful to her. And literally explained to her what their father had done and said, you're like the Meryl Streep character in Kramer versus Kramer. And then he said that that went right into the file during the divorce proceedings.

• 58:30Amanda Dobbins?

  During the custody battles.

• 58:31Sean Fennessey?

  But then that helped him explain how, you know, essential movies in life are and how intertwined they are for him and the way that he takes how he's feeling and puts them into his movies. And there would be no other way for him to do what he does. And I thought it was very affecting and people in the room seemed to really dig it too.

• 58:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, we were both, it's very, it's very close to the heart for both of us. I was just like wincing, you know, as the, as soon as Kramer versus Kramer, but like in the intended way, in the, in the way that Marty Supreme and Uncut Gems want to make you feel like you're, you're, you're hanging on to the table for dear life.

• 59:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes.

• 59:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Which, which they achieved.

• 59:08Sean Fennessey?

  He got us close to that psychology. And then you mentioned Spielberg spoke on behalf of Chloe Zhao and told what I thought was a hilarious story, which is that he showed up on the set of the movie. And, you know, he really adulatory towards Chloe Zhao and what he does and what she does. And I think the story illuminated the differences between them as filmmakers, which is that she, he arrived, he arrived on the set and he said,

• 59:33Sean Fennessey?

  this is not, this is too dark. This is not lit correctly.

• 59:38Amanda Dobbins?

  No, that's not what he said. He said he tripped over something and he said, let me know when it's lit. And he was like, and then I'll be able to find my way. And Chloe said, it is lit.

• 59:48Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. And.

• 59:52Sean Fennessey?

  He used that as a way to illuminate, illuminate?

• 59:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:56Sean Fennessey?

  The naturalism that Chloe Zhao's films are seeking. You know, that she is really interested in our kind of intersection and, and union with the natural world and the way that Jessie Buckley's character, Anyas, and kind of is connected to nature and then by extension, her family and her offspring.

• 1:00:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:15Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, he was saying it in a way that was meant to compliment her. And I think, in fact, he kind of like located something about the movie that I was like, that I don't really connect with, that I don't really jive with. But it's notable to me that I think someone like him, who most people think of as a filmmaker is like someone who can really do anything. You know, like he's really, especially in these later years where he's making movies like The Fableman's, where you're like, wow, this is even like emotionally confrontational in a way that his movies didn't always seem to be. But that there's still things that he looks at and he's like, I don't know how to do that. And I do think that that was-

• 1:00:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:00:47Sean Fennessey?

  I think he advocated for that film very well. And then Chloe Zhao came up and she brought up her first AD. And I thought she also gave a really nice speech about, you know, kind of like the unknowability of process and going forward and being like really interested in that material in a way. But like that movie is very different from everything else that she's done and kind of locating the ways in which she was able to kind of like try something new while also staying true to what she does. So I don't know if you had any thoughts on Chloe's speech?

• 1:01:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, she, she hit, she said the name William Shakespeare more than once and also, I think, located what is the, the best part of that film, which is its, its conclusion and that there can be, if, you know, life or at least some sort of connection after grief and what art can do and what they do as directors. So, you know, and that part of the film does speak to me, even if the, the naturalism in the tree, there was a lot of forest talk, you know?

• 1:01:43Sean Fennessey?

  There was, there was.

• 1:01:44Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I, you know me and forests.

• 1:01:46Sean Fennessey?

  I like the forest.

• 1:01:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Where, so mountains, forest.

• 1:01:51Sean Fennessey?

  The lake, I like a lake.

• 1:01:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Lake.

• 1:01:52Sean Fennessey?

  I like a lake.

• 1:01:53Amanda Dobbins?

  And then down, down, down, beach.

• 1:01:54Sean Fennessey?

  I like the high desert. I like, uh.

• 1:01:57Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just absolute opposite.

• 1:01:57Sean Fennessey?

  I like the frozen tundra.

• 1:01:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, and then beaches below all of that?

• 1:02:01Sean Fennessey?

  Beaches dead last.

• 1:02:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Insane take.

• 1:02:04Sean Fennessey?

  Dead last.

• 1:02:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, good luck to you.

• 1:02:06Sean Fennessey?

  The ocean, I enjoy.

• 1:02:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:02:08Sean Fennessey?

  Could we get the ocean without the sand?

• 1:02:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:02:11Sean Fennessey?

  That's something I've been looking for.

• 1:02:12Amanda Dobbins?

  It's called the Mediterranean.

• 1:02:13Sean Fennessey?

  Haven't been.

• 1:02:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 1:02:14Sean Fennessey?

  Haven't been.

• 1:02:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Coming soon.

• 1:02:16Sean Fennessey?

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

• 1:02:59Sean Fennessey?

  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.

• 1:03:11Speaker 05

  Ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease symptoms don't pause for the moments that matter. That's why understanding your treatment options matters. Discover what's possible with Trinphaya. Guselkamap. Trinphaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections, or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Talk to your doctor and explore what's possible or call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more about Trinphaya and visit trinphyradio.com.

• 1:03:57Sean Fennessey?

  Any other awards that night that you want, you know, the Pitt won, the SNL Music Concert won, what other shows won?

• 1:04:04Amanda Dobbins?

  The Studio won.

• 1:04:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that was a notable moment, thank you.

• 1:04:08Amanda Dobbins?

  And they gave a tribute to Catherine O'Hara.

• 1:04:11Sean Fennessey?

  Seth and Evan.

• 1:04:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, which is very nice.

• 1:04:15Amanda Dobbins?

  And then the documentary win, they had to go after the documentary win, which was, went to.

• 1:04:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Mataslov Chernov won for 2000 Miles. 2000 Miles. 200 Drivka, yes, which is just, he gave a very serious and somber speech about, obviously, the absolute terror that he witnessed while making the film and what is transpiring in Ukraine right now. And, you know, we talked about his Mariupol film a few years ago, which came out, I'm still shocked this movie was not nominated for Best Documentary, but it was a different energy when he spoke.

• 1:04:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I think was the only way to play it.

• 1:04:52Sean Fennessey?

  Agreed.

• 1:04:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, like what he does in terms of filmmaking is absolutely incredible and essential and harrowing. And he even talked, the anecdote that he gave was about, while filming for this film, and he was, he was with, like, a friend, a colleague, someone else, who turned to him and said, you know, "Why do you have a camera in your hand instead of a gun?" And, you know, and he talked about, like, this sadness of the world that we live in that you, and where he's from in the Ukraine, you need a gun instead of a camera right now, but also that the, you know, the filmmaking world allows him to use the camera in a different way. I mean, it, like, I thought it was illuminating, it was not, like, uplifting because the situation

• 1:05:38Amanda Dobbins?

  there is not uplifting right now.

• 1:05:40Sean Fennessey?

  It's not.

• 1:05:40Amanda Dobbins?

  But I just respect his work so much.

• 1:05:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and I think it gives a show like that a lot of shape, that it can be a lot of fun, and it can be Timothy Chalamet busting his friends' balls, and it can also be honoring really good work like that.

• 1:05:56Sean Fennessey?

  And then, and then Paul Thomas Anderson won.

• 1:05:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:58Sean Fennessey?

  And we can talk a little bit about the speech and the acceptance and then maybe just like what this is, if anything, what it means, if anything. So he spoke, I thought, quite movingly, again, about Adam Sumner, who was his first AD on the film, the first AD who's worked with a lot of great filmmakers, including Steven Spielberg. One Battle After Another is already a tribute to him. And at the end of the film, if you stay through the credits, you can hear Sumner's voice kind of moving a crowd during a, during a sequence as a tribute to him. And it was, it had been communicated to us by a couple of people, like, he's probably going to win in part because the movie is kind of oriented around the directing crews and speaking to the work that they do.

• 1:06:41Sean Fennessey?

  And like, it honors, you know, someone who's passed and also PTA, who's not won this award, who's been making movies for the last 30 years.

• 1:06:47Amanda Dobbins?

  But I think, you know, as you said, Sumner has worked with, or did work with so many great filmmakers and was so beloved in that community. And it was not just on Saturday night that PTA was talking about Sumner. And the very first One Battle After Another screening that you and I went to at the Directors' Guild, in his Q and A with Steven Spielberg, he talked a lot about Adam Sumner. He's thanked him, you know, at every awards show. This has been essential, you know, the film is dedicated to him.

• 1:07:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:13Amanda Dobbins?

  So, um, so that, I'm sure that that knowledge and affected the voting process, but I think that's kind of also what the DGAs are for.

• 1:07:22Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 1:07:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And that was what was cool about being there. So I thought, yeah, he spoke, you know, very, very lovingly. He, he started again with sort of a Spielberg tribute and just in that he, he compared the experience to like being in Close Encounters, that everyone in the room has like a call to the mountain. But then the, the Adam Sumner tribute was, was very emotional.

• 1:07:47Sean Fennessey?

  Very heartfelt.

• 1:07:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. And not like really.

• 1:07:49Sean Fennessey?

  He was like, I wish for you to have the love that I had with this man who we worked with.

• 1:07:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. And if you have it, hold it close.

• 1:07:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And, yeah, like, very emotional and like not overly, you know, prepared. There was even a moment where he was kind of.

• 1:08:05Sean Fennessey?

  Got a little caught up.

• 1:08:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And, and ultimately ended by saying like, he would have just loved this. Like, thank you so much, because he would have loved it. It was really, um, it was meaningful. So it was, it was special to be there for that.

• 1:08:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was a really, really good speech and, and a good win and an interesting win. And I'm kind of turning it over in my mind. In terms of the shape of the race, like, to me, this award show was, it was a valuable experience for us because we talk about this stuff like they're action figures, you know, and it's just like, or it's like, you know, the DVOA in terms of performance, like a football team when we talk about the award season. But like, when you're talking about a colleague who you made a movie with who passed after you made the movie and then you're being honored for the movie, that's a human relationship. That's a real person who died and is a big part of this person's like long professional career. We all have experiences like that. But it is still a race, you know, and this is still kind of like a stop on the trolley tour of leading up to the Academy Awards. And, you know,

• 1:08:59Sean Fennessey?

  in the 80-year history of the DGAs, the DGA winner has only lost the Oscar eight times. It is like one of the most rubber stamped awards that we have in the world. And so you can safely bet now that Paul Thomas Anderson is going to win Best Director at the Academy Awards. And I think it's a collision of a lot of things. Obviously, admiration for the film, admiration for his body of work. I think the way that he has kind of like walked through this last six months has been pretty, pretty smooth. It's kind of hard to go through this, considering like what this movie is about and what, how, what people are asking about it. And it is divisive. Like, there are clearly people

• 1:09:37Sean Fennessey?

  who do not like the movie, too. Beyond that, do you think this does anything else for the race?

• 1:09:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, we were talking about it at the ceremony of like, how do we feel about sinners? And, you know, where is it? And is it surging? And I had a few conversations on Friday. I said to you, like, all of the questions were about sinners. And, you know, I, and so it certainly seems like there is some movement. I, and as you pointed out, there has been a split between Best Picture and Best Director several times in the past

• 1:10:16Sean Fennessey?

  More frequently since they went to 10 nominees.

• 1:10:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Sean Fennessey?

  And I, we can, we can explore like, why that is. But I do think that that's interesting.

• 1:10:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. Though even there, the most recent split is in 2021. And I do feel that because of how quickly the Academy votership is changing, and even how, you know, some of the voting rules are changing, like precedent really only applies like a few years back at this point. And I think 2021 also being one of the pandemic years, it really 2018 is your last real. Split moment, so that's, that's almost 10 years now.

• 1:10:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I want to talk about that a little bit. So just, there's been six examples in the last 20 years. Those six examples, just for everybody at home, are Argo winning Best Picture and Ang Lee winning for Life of Pi. In 2013, Twelve Years a Slave won Best Picture and Alfonso Cuarón won for Gravity. In 2015, Spotlight won Best Picture, Alejandro González Inarritu won for The Revenant. In 16, of course, Moonlight and Damien Chazelle, the famous mix up at the Best Picture final award. In 2018, Green Book won Best Picture and Alfonso Cuarón won again for Roma. And in 2021, Coda won Best Picture and Jane Campion won for The Power of the Dog. In 2021, Coda had this incredible late surge.

• 1:11:38Sean Fennessey?

  You know, where it was a movie that premiered at Sundance one year earlier, but very few people got around to seeing it. It was an Apple film, Apple, you know, not that, didn't have like much primacy as a streaming service or as a movie studio. But they did have a lot of money to spend and they spent a ton of money very smartly on their campaign. Basically from November, end of November through February. And they managed to race ahead of The Power of the Dog, which is a movie that I think people admired and didn't love. And so there was a vulnerability there. And that's really the only case where I think this can happen. I think if you look at the other examples, if you look at Spotlight over The Revenant, I think people just liked Spotlight more.

• 1:12:20Sean Fennessey?

  They admired the craft in The Revenant, but The Revenant is a tough movie. If you look at Moonlight over La La Land, that's an interesting one. Because that, that marked a real shift in the Academy. But there was, I think, maybe just something about the sincerity of Moonlight that overwhelmed it in that particular case. And Green Book and Roma is the, the ultimate example of this, where it's like, I think people looked at Roma and they were like, this is a master filmmaker telling a truly personal story.

• 1:12:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:12:45Sean Fennessey?

  But. Green Book, I had a good time.

• 1:12:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, not all of these examples, but some of them are crowd pleasing versus, or, or I, not even crowd pleasing, but like wider reach versus technical achievement, uh, which, which I don't really think is a split that applies here.

• 1:13:05Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it, it is box office wise, obviously Sinners.

• 1:13:09Sean Fennessey?

  Sinners is the bigger movie.

• 1:13:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:11Sean Fennessey?

  Irrefutably the bigger movie. Um, it's also the most commercial movie.

• 1:13:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:13:16Sean Fennessey?

  Um.

• 1:13:17Amanda Dobbins?

  But I don't think one battle is closed off.

• 1:13:20Sean Fennessey?

  It's not small.

• 1:13:21Amanda Dobbins?

  In the, right. And, and also is not, it's not inaccessible, even if it's provocative.

• 1:13:27Sean Fennessey?

  It's very timely, truthfully. You know, a lot of what transpires in the movie, obviously, is reflected in what's been happening in America, especially in the last two months. And I think that kind of benefits it in a, in a, you know, hopefully that doesn't sound gross when I say that, but I do think it is meaningful that there's, um, this reflection of the times. Sinners, uh, I think it's, I think it's better to just talk about this plainly. I'm really curious to see what an international academy thinks of that, that story.

• 1:13:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Sean Fennessey?

  Because American black stories were consistently told, don't travel. Sinners didn't do as well internationally relative to its domestic performance and is very much an American story, a black American story about the very nature of creativity in the black community over, you know, 300 years. And I don't know if that's going to resonate. I really don't. It obviously resonated with the body enough to give it that many nominations. Um.

• 1:14:23Sean Fennessey?

  A split would be interesting. I don't think it would be bad. I think it would be.

• 1:14:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:29Sean Fennessey?

  I think it would be an interesting outcome.

• 1:14:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I, I still.

• 1:14:33Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 1:14:33Amanda Dobbins?

  The fact that they're competing in original screenplay and adapted screenplay, like really opens up the lane. I, I feel really confident that Coogler will and, and should win original screenplay.

• 1:14:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think PTA will as well.

• 1:14:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 1:14:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think he'll win an adapted for sure.

• 1:14:48Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 1:14:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, we've talked about it over and over, but original screenplay is always our favorite award and is where like the, the real ones get awarded every year and all our heroes are awarded. And then the Academy often skips those, you know, Jordan Peele won for Get Out in original screenplay, Tarantino won for Pull Picture in original screenplay, Sofia Coppola won for Lost in Translation in original screenplay. Those movies did not win best picture. Um, you know, what's weird about it is that normally in a quote unquote less deserving in our minds movie triumphs over films like that. And in this case, we both really love one battle after another. It's, it is strange to be talking about this

• 1:15:33Amanda Dobbins?

  race while rooting for both films. Um, we don't typically, yeah, I know, it's wonderful. But, and, and I do wonder how it affects like our, our handicapping where.

• 1:15:43Sean Fennessey?

  That's, I think that's it. You just nailed it where I'm like, I kind of don't know. Um, I feel a little lost in the sauce on this one because it's very clear that there's an overwhelming admiration for Sinners. It's also clear that there's an overwhelming admiration for Paul Thomas Anderson. Like, and so that, that's why the split seems plausible to me.

• 1:16:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:02Sean Fennessey?

  Um, you know, we've obviously got a month before this all wraps up, but this was more or less confirmation that he's really, really strong in director.

• 1:16:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I asked you in the room when they're going to re-release Sinners before the, before the Oscars, which just seems like an absolute no brainer to me.

• 1:16:21Sean Fennessey?

  They did do it in kind of fits and starts.

• 1:16:23Amanda Dobbins?

  IMAX, but they all, and they did like an IMAX.

• 1:16:25Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly. It was an IMAX re-release, but it was not a wide re-release.

• 1:16:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I just don't understand why not.

• 1:16:31Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good question. I'm not sure. Did you see the news that the Academy?

• 1:16:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I did.

• 1:16:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. So the Academy is no longer screening films for Academy members after the nominations because they're getting very low attendance.

• 1:16:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:16:43Sean Fennessey?

  An average of five people showing up to screenings that the Academy is paying for and putting on in various theaters around the city and probably around the world, around the world. So that people can come and watch the films and then vote on them after that in a theater. And that's because the Academy Portal exists, which is an app that the Academy has created very wisely to make everything accessible to all their members so that they can vote on it. You know, I find this incredibly troubling and sad, but it's also obviously not unreasonable that this happened.

• 1:17:11Amanda Dobbins?

  But also you and I also use the portals for the practical.

• 1:17:16Sean Fennessey?

  I try to not do first watches that way. I genuinely try not to do first watches that way.

• 1:17:21Amanda Dobbins?

  As do I, as much as I can, but this is also, they're canceling them after the nominations.

• 1:17:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Amanda Dobbins?

  And people already have access through the portal. I like, I don't know, this, this just seems like reality. This just seems like budget, but.

• 1:17:37Sean Fennessey?

  It's a slow step, though, in the march to everything kind of, kind of ending. And I'm, it's not cataclysmic. It's just like the Academy Awards isn't going to do screenings. It's like the Academy Awards that is premised upon theatrical movies.

• 1:17:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's because people aren't going.

• 1:17:51Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 1:17:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is, I don't, I don't blame them, you know?

• 1:17:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's just like, it's just what happened.

• 1:17:55Amanda Dobbins?

  It is what it is.

• 1:17:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's just what happened.

• 1:17:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:58Sean Fennessey?

  We failed to mention Charlie Paulinger won for The Plague for the first time feature award, which is a bit of an upset, I think, relative to the nominees. But I liked The Plague and I thought it was pretty promising and I like what he's flashing. And I mentioned to you that he's making The Mask of the Red Death for A24 now and I'm looking forward to that movie. He seemed a bit gobsmacked, gobsmacked up there.

• 1:18:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:18:17Sean Fennessey?

  He was also, who, who, who did he address? Was it, was it Steven Spielberg? Who was he addressing? Maybe, no, it was President Nolan.

• 1:18:24Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right.

• 1:18:25Sean Fennessey?

  He said President Nolan, but not in a funny way.

• 1:18:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:18:27Sean Fennessey?

  He said President Nolan, like, you know, he, he like, uh,

• 1:18:31Amanda Dobbins?

  It's.

• 1:18:31Sean Fennessey?

  Lives in a, in a, in a communist nation, you know, and was sort of like, I bow down to thee.

• 1:18:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I think he said it feels incredibly strange to be in the same room, you know, as you, President Nolan.

• 1:18:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes. Which was kind of funny. And we, just, just to put a button on the Nolan thing.

• 1:18:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:45Sean Fennessey?

  So Nolan spoke before Kumail's monologue.

• 1:18:48Amanda Dobbins?

  He walked out to Kashmir by Led Zeppelin.

• 1:18:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:18:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And gave the first speech of the night.

• 1:18:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Fascinating musical choices throughout the evening.

• 1:18:56Amanda Dobbins?

  He did, he did acknowledge it. He was like, that was quite dramatic. He's like, I enter every room to that, which I enjoy.

• 1:19:03Sean Fennessey?

  He gave a thoughtful speech about the loss of work for the many members of the DGA and just kind of how Hollywood in general is in this. You know, conflagration of a moment, you know, things are really fucked up in the world of movie making right now. I do think we've turned a corner a little bit, and I think if you look at screenplay sales and spec scripts are like kind of ticking upwards recently. And that is a good sign that maybe we're just kind of getting to the next phase of all this. To my point about the superhero movie thing, I do think that we're in a big transition. But, you know, as the president of the guild, he needs to be thinking about the members and how they're working and if they're working. And then through the rest of the night,

• 1:19:48Sean Fennessey?

  it was almost like Spielberg was passing the baton to Nolan or something as like the signature directorial voice in the world. And that is really interesting that he's taken that space.

• 1:19:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Or like the institutional guy in Hollywood in that room.

• 1:20:05Sean Fennessey?

  But not just, but to me, it was almost like when you say the word director to the public at large, who is the first name that comes to your mind? And Steven Spielberg has been that person for more than 30 years. I mean, he might, he might be the ur example, like maybe going back to like John Ford, you know, like it was like, who, what is director? Maybe Alfred Hitchcock is probably the best or Stanley Kubrick.

• 1:20:25Amanda Dobbins?

  But like even still, because like with Jaws, he invented the summer blockbuster. And so, and you know, then Indiana Jones, then Jurassic Park, like everyone has a Spielberg moment. So he like, he kind of took it global.

• 1:20:40Sean Fennessey?

  And I do feel like in movies in the last 10 or 15 years, like a lot of the norms have been eroded around movie going, the way that franchises have incurred, you know, the way that theatrical exhibition is down, the primacy of movies as a central art form in our country. But this was something that I was like, this is an old school like baton pass that we're witnessing. Like we're watching one master very gently, like let this guy take center stage. And it's so interesting that he is the president of the guild at that time. And then during Paul Thomas Anderson's final speech, he was acknowledging his fellow nominees. And he started insinuating the possibility of President Del Toro, another beloved auteur.

• 1:21:15Amanda Dobbins?

  He said, President Nolan has a, does have a nice ring to it, and so does President Del Toro, come to think of it.

• 1:21:21Sean Fennessey?

  So I wonder if the next administration, the bull, as, as, as PTA described it, could be coming. Good, good show.

• 1:21:28Amanda Dobbins?

  It was fun.

• 1:21:29Sean Fennessey?

  Good night, fun night.

• 1:21:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:31Sean Fennessey?

  How'd you feel getting gussied up?

• 1:21:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, I like an occasion. It was great. I borrowed a dress from my friend Lauren.

• 1:21:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 1:21:38Sean Fennessey?

  You looked great.

• 1:21:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Thanks. It was Loewe by Jonathan Anderson. I, no one, no one asked or cared. They're like, I didn't walk a carpet.

• 1:21:44Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:21:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, but, uh, but I liked wearing it.

• 1:21:48Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I forgot to mention Emily Bader.

• 1:21:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah. I went to the bathroom and Emily Bader was there and I was this close to being like, you're great. Uh, but I didn't, she was talking with some other people.

• 1:21:58Sean Fennessey?

  She would have loved that. Um, there, so even though Timothy Chalamet and Jacob Elordi and Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael B. Jordan were all there and spoke, you get the impression, they weren't really sitting through the ceremony.

• 1:22:08Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I didn't see them.

• 1:22:09Sean Fennessey?

  I think they jumped right on a PJ.

• 1:22:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:10Sean Fennessey?

  And then went to wherever they went. In Leonardo DiCaprio's case, I think he went right to a Super Bowl party. God bless. He was photographed later that night in San Francisco.

• 1:22:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that's.

• 1:22:17Sean Fennessey?

  That's just king shit.

• 1:22:18Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a quick point.

• 1:22:19Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 1:22:19Amanda Dobbins?

  He loves an event.

• 1:22:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, for sure. Um, but they weren't sitting through, but Emily Bader sat through and she also presented an award and, uh, she was stunning.

• 1:22:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, very beautiful. Yeah.

• 1:22:32Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know what to say. She looked really good. Um, and I hope that everything works out for her. I hope she becomes a big star.

• 1:22:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I do as well. She was there with Lucas Gage, who I did not remember from the film People We Meet on Vacation.

• 1:22:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he was the guy who drove the boat.

• 1:22:43Amanda Dobbins?

  But he was there as well. Yeah.

• 1:22:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he was there. He was in Smile Two.

• 1:22:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:22:47Sean Fennessey?

  Did you see Smile Two?

• 1:22:48Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:22:49Sean Fennessey?

  Wasn't my favorite.

• 1:22:49Amanda Dobbins?

  All right. Did I see Smile?

• 1:22:53Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you know, I've been thinking about what you were saying about your reaction to horror movies. And actually, my primary criticism of Smile and Smile Two is your general criticism of horror movies, which is I found it scares to be annoying.

• 1:23:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:23:06Sean Fennessey?

  Rather than effective.

• 1:23:07Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 1:23:08Sean Fennessey?

  And so I'm not sure if it would be the movie for you. A lot of people love those movies, though. They've been big hits.

• 1:23:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm happy for people that they enjoy things.

• 1:23:15Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, closing notes on the DJs.

• 1:23:17Amanda Dobbins?

  It was fun. Invite me to your party.

• 1:23:19Sean Fennessey?

  What other award show would you like to go to?

• 1:23:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Do we want to go to the Oscars?

• 1:23:23Sean Fennessey?

  I really don't.

• 1:23:24Amanda Dobbins?

  It's because we got to work and I've been in that room. It seems like a real hassle.

• 1:23:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm like, respectfully, I'm not doing a press room.

• 1:23:31Sean Fennessey?

  You know, the Academy has always been very generous and has invited us many years in a row and we don't go because we have a professional obligation. I have, I have two virtual tickets in my email right now for both of us.

• 1:23:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay. I didn't know that.

• 1:23:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I told you in the past that we get that, but it just doesn't make sense for our job.

• 1:23:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:45Sean Fennessey?

  To, to go to the show. I guess out of curiosity, I'd like to go once.

• 1:23:50Amanda Dobbins?

  The thing is, is like, I'd love to go to all the parties afterwards.

• 1:23:54Sean Fennessey?

  Another thing I don't care about.

• 1:23:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, well, I mean, it just, Matt Bellamy just talks about like the hors d'oeuvre spread, you know, all the-

• 1:24:01Sean Fennessey?

  What?

• 1:24:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I love-

• 1:24:02Sean Fennessey?

  hors d'oeuvre spread?

• 1:24:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I love a past app, as you know. Once again, I'm a great wedding guest.

• 1:24:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:07Amanda Dobbins?

  So if we could work.

• 1:24:08Sean Fennessey?

  No, that's just like a pathway to getting RSV or something. I don't, I don't need that.

• 1:24:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, it's done, you know, I'm free again. I'm ready, I'm ready to hit the, hit the party.

• 1:24:17Sean Fennessey?

  You're clear, you're clear now. Uh, no, I don't want to go to the parties. I don't care about that. I want private conversation with people I think are cool. That's different from going to a party.

• 1:24:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't want that at all.

• 1:24:27Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's the best part.

• 1:24:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that makes me, well, I don't want to meet people. Like, I have no, Jacob Elordi was at the perfect distance for me. Why would I want to meet them? What am I supposed to say? Like, hey, I think you're cool?

• 1:24:38Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's-

• 1:24:39Amanda Dobbins?

  What are you saying to them?

• 1:24:40Sean Fennessey?

  What are you talking about? You taught, you immediately start talking about their work and their life and who they are as people.

• 1:24:45Amanda Dobbins?

  That's so weird. Why would you want to do that?

• 1:24:47Sean Fennessey?

  I do whatever happens, though.

• 1:24:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but that's because everyone, there's a contract here at this table, you know? Where we talk about our work. Just like, hey, man, I really admire, was like, no.

• 1:24:57Sean Fennessey?

  You know what it immediately becomes? It's just like any other conversation with any other adult in my life right now.

• 1:25:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, it's about kids. It's kids, or it's the Knicks. But like, I don't have the Knicks or the Mets to fall back on, what I'm going to talk about.

• 1:25:07Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, while we were recording this episode, I got news that, um, Francisco Lindor broke a toe bone. Is that what it is? Is it a toe bone, Jack?

• 1:25:14Speaker 06

  Not sure about the specifics, other than the surgery requires a six-week recovery and we are six and a half weeks away from opening day.

• 1:25:21Sean Fennessey?

  I will kill myself.

• 1:25:22Amanda Dobbins?

  That's fine, though. Like, for a toe bone, my, my son called me to his room last night because he banged his, he like stubbed his toe.

• 1:25:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And I told him, I was like, the thing about hurting your toe, you just gotta let it rest. That's all you can do. So he's gonna be fine. He has six weeks. It'll rest and then he'll be fine.

• 1:25:37Sean Fennessey?

  He's getting surgery, though.

• 1:25:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 1:25:39Sean Fennessey?

  You know what you need when you play baseball is your toes? You need to be able to move around out there. When you play shortstop, range is very important.

• 1:25:45Amanda Dobbins?

  He's young, he'll have surgery. Surgery's not, when you're young, it's fine.

• 1:25:49Speaker 06

  It's not a toe. It is the hammate bone, which is, I believe, is in the wrist.

• 1:25:53Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, no.

• 1:25:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's bad.

• 1:25:55Speaker 06

  Pinky side of the palm?

• 1:25:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, now I take it back.

• 1:25:57Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, no, that's what Francisco Alvarez had.

• 1:25:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Wrist is bad.

• 1:26:00Speaker 06

  Oh, no.

• 1:26:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And you need that.

• 1:26:02Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, no.

• 1:26:03Speaker 06

  This season's fucked.

• 1:26:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And like, and like-

• 1:26:05Sean Fennessey?

  No, okay, let's, let's pull back for a second.

• 1:26:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:26:07Sean Fennessey?

  Stern's masterclass, this is why we signed four shortstops. We're, we're rich with shortstops. We've got four shortstops playing the four infield positions. Maybe one of them can slide into the shortstop position for a shortstop.

• 1:26:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Is name checked by Tracy Lutz in the Kathryn Bigelow film, House of Dynamite, though.

• 1:26:21Speaker 06

  God, that was just so special.

• 1:26:23Sean Fennessey?

  But I bet that that character in that film also has admiration for Bo Bichette. That's all I'm gonna say.

• 1:26:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, Bo Bichette is also a shortstop?

• 1:26:30Sean Fennessey?

  He, he was. We're moving him to third base, but now maybe we're not.

• 1:26:33Amanda Dobbins?

  But he could dip in? Okay.

• 1:26:35Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's probably more likely...

• 1:26:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Is, is shortstop and third base like an interchangeable thing? Or is it like teaching, uh, Chris Pratt to play first base?

• 1:26:44Speaker 06

  I think it's more interchangeable.

• 1:26:46Sean Fennessey?

  Are we moving Marcus Semien to shortstop?

• 1:26:47Speaker 06

  No, Bo would play short. Semien's at second.

• 1:26:49Sean Fennessey?

  But, I mean, Bo is a net negative defensively.

• 1:26:53Speaker 06

  I disagree.

• 1:26:55Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, alright. Um...

• 1:26:57Speaker 06

  Also, you guys have to go to the Oscars one year. One year, you have to do it.

• 1:27:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's literally the biggest episode of the year.

• 1:27:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:04Speaker 06

  But we, we'll still make it happen. We'll make it work.

• 1:27:07Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, you wanna do, you think we can go and then do an episode right afterwards?

• 1:27:11Speaker 06

  I will be-

• 1:27:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Have you, like, but what do you know about press rooms, Jack Sanders?

• 1:27:15Speaker 06

  Literally nothing.

• 1:27:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so, why don't you go this year and scope it out for us?

• 1:27:20Sean Fennessey?

  No, we need him!

• 1:27:23Speaker 06

  That would be very funny if you guys sent me to the Academy Awards.

• 1:27:26Amanda Dobbins?

  By the way, at the iHeart Awards, we're sending you, so, yeah.

• 1:27:30Speaker 06

  Absolutely. Is that over?

• 1:27:31Sean Fennessey?

  You're staying in Austin.

• 1:27:32Speaker 06

  Is that done?

• 1:27:33Sean Fennessey?

  Did we win? I don't think so.

• 1:27:34Speaker 06

  Okay, alright.

• 1:27:35Sean Fennessey?

  I did, I did tell Amanda that if the Rewatchables wins, I will immediately retweet with, "I demand a recount." Just putting that out there.

• 1:27:45Sean Fennessey?

  Anything else? K-Pop Demon Hunters, you saw it in theaters.

• 1:27:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. I was at the screening. It was wonderful.

• 1:27:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:50Amanda Dobbins?

  It was so exciting. Uh, Knox was there also, and it really- It had its intended effect in my household, which is like, we drove home, listening to the soundtrack. Soda Pop came on, and my four-year-old son was like, "No, no, this is the boy's song. We don't listen to that." Which was incredible.

• 1:28:07Sean Fennessey?

  He learned properly.

• 1:28:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't know that he was capable of that level of plot investment.

• 1:28:11Sean Fennessey?

  Alice also knows Saja boy's songs, not allowed in our house whatsoever.

• 1:28:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I'm gonna tell you something. Soda Pop is a jam. He's asked to re-watch it several times.

• 1:28:20Sean Fennessey?

  Exciting.

• 1:28:20Amanda Dobbins?

  He's very into The Tiger. So, and then even my son, my younger son, he feels the rhythm of the K-pop, you know?

• 1:28:28Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of bangers in there.

• 1:28:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It's been fun to watch it happen in my house, now that they're slightly older.

• 1:28:33Sean Fennessey?

  We've been circling having Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans on the show for a long time, so I'm glad we got to do it in this environment. I hope people enjoy it. Let's go now to my conversation with Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans.

• 1:28:47Sean Fennessey?

  Hello. I'm Sean. How are you? What'd you think of that movie?

• 1:28:55Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty amazing, right? This is Maggie Kang. This is Chris Appelhans. They're the directors of this film.

• 1:29:02Sean Fennessey?

  Co-screenwriters.

• 1:29:05Sean Fennessey?

  Guys, wow. What is it like to see so many young people having an emotional experience with something that you've created?

• 1:29:14Speaker 07

  Pretty cool.

• 1:29:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Pretty amazing. Oh, so cute.

• 1:29:19Speaker 07

  My favorite part, my son Alexander is here. Hi, Alexander.

• 1:29:25Speaker 07

  He's five, and he was in the bathtub, and he was singing about seeing the beauty in the broken glass. And I was like, okay, there's a lot of feelings going on.

• 1:29:36Speaker 08

  It's a tough life for a five-year-old.

• 1:29:39Sean Fennessey?

  I do think it makes young children reflect on their deepest feelings. It's one of the magic tricks of this movie. Was that something you thought about when you were writing it? About trying to give kids access to a feeling they don't know how to put words to?

• 1:29:54Speaker 07

  Not intentionally.

• 1:29:56Speaker 08

  Not intentionally, yeah. I mean, to be honest, we wanted to just make a movie for ourselves. I mean, I think as a filmmaker, that's the first person that you make the movie for. Because, you know, I don't know, you're gonna be on this journey for... I mean, I was on this journey for seven years, so I'm not gonna invest seven years of my life in someone else's life, I guess. So, yeah, like, we made the film for ourselves. And for me, it was just all ages of myself. I wanted to see characters like this in a movie like this, growing up. And so it was for my young self, like, seven, eight-year-old self, the 12-year-old self that loved K-pop and had to kind of hide it.

• 1:30:40Speaker 08

  And this was like, yes, now we can celebrate this. I was right all along. And then for my, you know, something, something version of myself, aged redacted, as a filmmaker and a mom and, you know, grown women wanting to kind of explore a deeper theme in movies like this, having worked in the animation industry for a long time. And, you know, we tend to kind of cater those films a little younger to children. And we are firm believers, as well as like Sony Pictures Animation, and trying to push the boundaries of what the animation medium can do and what kind of stories we tell.

• 1:31:22Speaker 08

  So, yeah, I think we just wanted to, like, make a movie we wanted to see.

• 1:31:28Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to ask you both if you can remember the first animated film that you saw, and maybe what impact it had on you.

• 1:31:37Speaker 08

  Oh, first ever, oh.

• 1:31:38Speaker 07

  Now we have to unredact our ages. The original's Snow White.

• 1:31:46Speaker 08

  Unless you say like Gertie the dinosaur.

• 1:31:50Speaker 07

  I think my, the first memory of a feature I have was Beauty and the Beast.

• 1:31:56Speaker 07

  And I remember thinking as Belle was singing, there must be more than this provincial life. I was like, yes, there must, for me too.

• 1:32:06Speaker 07

  And I grew up in a small town in Idaho, so maybe it kind of makes sense, but um, yeah. But I, I don't know, I didn't have an experience of like, I must make animated films. It was more, I love to tell stories and, and this is a great medium to do it in, yeah.

• 1:32:22Speaker 08

  Yeah, me too, same. Like, I grew up with a cinephile dad, so I think I was like eight years old when I watched um, like Hidden Fortress, you know?

• 1:32:30Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 1:32:30Speaker 08

  And, yeah, like very, and I was, grew up on carousel films and didn't-

• 1:32:35Speaker 07

  Did you see it before Star Wars?

• 1:32:37Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 1:32:37Speaker 07

  So you were, so you knew that it was ripping off Hidden Fortress?

• 1:32:40Speaker 08

  I believe, and I think that's why my dad showed it to me, because he's like, you must watch this before you watch this.

• 1:32:47Speaker 07

  That's a great education.

• 1:32:48Speaker 08

  Yeah, so, because he was very much like a film snob, but then also loved Hollywood films and loved like, um, just, just everything. He was just kind of like a full spectrum kind of guy, so, and, and still is. He still, he, he watches for like the last like 35 years, he's watched anywhere from like two to four films a week, and still does.

• 1:33:11Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 1:33:11Speaker 08

  Which is like-

• 1:33:12Speaker 07

  Those are low numbers for me.

• 1:33:14Speaker 08

  Oh, really?

• 1:33:14Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:33:15Speaker 08

  Oh, okay.

• 1:33:15Speaker 07

  But for normal people, that's very impressive.

• 1:33:17Speaker 08

  Oh, wow, okay, well.

• 1:33:21Speaker 08

  Okay, then, I will tell him that.

• 1:33:22Speaker 07

  Didn't he organize them by director and region?

• 1:33:25Speaker 08

  Oh, he does, yeah.

• 1:33:26Speaker 07

  You do that?

• 1:33:26Speaker 08

  Region, director.

• 1:33:27Speaker 07

  I do it by director, yeah.

• 1:33:28Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:29Speaker 07

  That's interesting.

• 1:33:30Speaker 08

  And he has like a whole catalog where he like tracks, and he's like circles stuff. He's like, I need this one, I can't find it.

• 1:33:35Speaker 07

  Can you give him my phone number when this is over?

• 1:33:37Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:38Speaker 07

  I feel like we have a lot to talk about.

• 1:33:41Sean Fennessey?

  I was actually wondering, you know, this is gonna seem a little weird to say in front of a room full of little kids, but watching the movie this time around, I was like, oh, I think that's a Train to Busan reference. I feel like there are a lot of Korean film references in this movie, and a lot of film references in general. And I'm wondering like how much, how intentional a lot of that was, and how much you thought about inspirations and actually putting them into the screenplay.

• 1:34:06Speaker 08

  Wait, I wanna know what this Train to Busan reference is.

• 1:34:08Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you've got a big train sequence with demons and then an empty train car. It seemed, popped into my mind.

• 1:34:15Speaker 08

  I don't think, I don't think anything is intentional, right? Is there something?

• 1:34:20Speaker 07

  No, it felt like one of our big bonds as filmmaking partners was, we're both huge fans of Bang Jun Oh, and we both had like a formative experience watching The Host, where we're like, wait, you can be so dramatic and scary and funny right next to each other? And the tone of this movie is full, we're jumping all over the place. But I think we also bonded on all the K-dramas that we've watched, and then like Director Park, like so many, I think we're in this cool era, like for me as a kid from Idaho, I, starting at 23 when I saw a movie called My Sassy Girlfriend, which is a great Korean rom-com,

• 1:35:02Speaker 07

  if you've never seen it. And it's like this lovely, funny relationship that's very Korean, but very accessible. So, starting at 23 to now, many decades later, like so many of my formative filmmaking experiences were Korean films, which I think happens a lot more now, because young people can watch movies from all over the world. All of our crew on this film had an amazing library of anime that they'd watched, so we could just refer to Cowboy Bebop, or Sailor Moon, or whatever, fully, coolly, and they were on it. So I think we're living in a new time where that... That education can come from outside the US, which is pretty cool.

• 1:35:47Speaker 08

  But then it's all of that, like, coupled with, like, all the comedy that we love. Like, I love The Simpsons. And, um, and like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and, uh, Pen Thirteen, which is like something that, Pen Fifteen, Fifteen?

• 1:36:03Speaker 07

  Thirteen.

• 1:36:03Speaker 08

  Oh, Thirteen?

• 1:36:04Speaker 07

  Because it looks like a...

• 1:36:05Speaker 08

  Oh, that's right, okay. Yeah.

• 1:36:09Speaker 08

  And so, uh, yeah, just, just, it was, this movie is like everything that we like, you know, all across the board, like film, music, fashion, design, color. And so it's just a celebration of like, and, and oddly, like, we slowly, I don't know, slowly, probably slowly, we, we realize we just have the same taste. And that's what made it so easy for us to work together because, um, we kind of envisioned the same movie, like, just even from the beginning, and then we slowly, like, realized that as we were making the film. And then, um, going on this awards circuit, we traveled together and we realized, like, oh my gosh, we actually really have the same taste, where we're like ordering the same

• 1:36:54Speaker 08

  food on the plane or like at a restaurant, and then realizing, like, our spouses are almost the same.

• 1:37:03Speaker 07

  And then Maggie forced me to buy these shoes and we're in Europe, and I got home and Maureen was, my wife, Maureen, who's here, was like, "Finally you have a proper pair of shoes." I was like, "Oh no, there's no escape."

• 1:37:14Sean Fennessey?

  You mentioned that the movie is a lot of different kinds of movies all in one, right? It's a musical and it's an action movie and it's a buddy comedy and it's a lot, a lot of different kinds of things and it's really hard, I assume, to balance all those styles. Like, how do you know that it's working? How do you know that the, there's, there's balance in that tone that you're going for?

• 1:37:36Speaker 08

  I think we just, you have to kind of try it. And that's the beauty about the animation process is you can rework something so many times versus in a live-action film. You know, you only get like one or two tries to like shoot it and then that's your movie. With animation, we can iterate until basically we run out of time or money or a producer says, "Okay, that's enough." Like, this is the movie. And so, we just tried a lot of stuff and we spent most of the production, like in the story process, just tweaking everything.

• 1:38:16Speaker 08

  Like, our movie, the plot and the emotional story never changed that much from the first draft. And we had that concert scene at the end in the first draft too. And we felt like that was such an emotionally satisfying moment for a film like this. And so, we were like, "How do we earn that moment?" And that was what we were working towards in all the kind of versions of the movie that led us to the final.

• 1:38:41Speaker 07

  Yeah. I think also, what we tried to do is, even if a sequence was maybe primarily comedic, it wasn't ever just doing that. So like, there might, if you guys remember the scene where they're signing for the fans and it becomes this funny sign-off and battle. Within that is a conversation between Rumi and Gino about her anger about how she feels about herself and he's prodding her and she blurts something out. You learn a little bit about how he feels about Kima. So, superficially, that's a really wacky moment, but it's actually advancing character. And then other times, like in the final scene, you're singing this beautiful anthem that's

• 1:39:25Speaker 07

  so vulnerable and soulful and then like 10 seconds later popcorn is coming out of Mira's eyes, right? So you're never just doing one of the things. You're always trying to mix the ingredients and then it feels coherent and not scattershot, I guess.

• 1:39:41Sean Fennessey?

  Whenever I'm talking to animation filmmakers, I'm curious to like demystify the process. So you say you would tweak it and see it over again. So like, what is it specifically that you're seeing again? Like, are you entirely reanimating a sequence? Is it just like an animatic? Like, what do you see and then how do you know if it plays or it doesn't play?

• 1:39:58Speaker 08

  It's always an animatic with storyboards that are drawn in black and white. And they're just very loose sketches that convey emotion of the characters. So it's a lot of faces and the eyebrows and acting. And you know, we just had a talk with Phil Lord and Chris Miller the other day. And Chris mentioned something really great, like with an animated film, you should be able to turn off all sound and still know what's going on with the story. Because the acting of the face, of like the body, and just all the kind of interesting, I guess, visual cues and visual moments

• 1:40:42Speaker 08

  should tell you what the story is.

• 1:40:44Speaker 07

  Like the ultimate show don't tell.

• 1:40:46Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:40:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It's funny you bring up Lord and Miller. So I read that you said that Spider-Verse was a bit of an inspiration for the film. And I wanted to hear you both talk about the animation style that you landed on for this movie. It feels like it's kind of between your classic 2D and 3D and how you guys thought about it and why it looks the way that it does.

• 1:41:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think it was all a product of wanting a certain set of characters and their story and a tone. So the tone and the characters drove everything. So we wanted them to be incredibly glamorous and powerful and awesome and pop stars. And also goofy and weird and have none of their makeup on and wear their pajama pants. And also pour out their soul sometimes. And so the character designs were influenced by things like Cowboy Bebop, kind of in, which if you guys haven't seen it, it's a great animated series. That's kind of got its own, it's got a relationship to K-dramas

• 1:41:47Speaker 07

  in terms of these sort of larger-than-life characters that they're so cool, but also they're very funny and flawed. So those influences of the story we wanted to tell, really, we reverse engineered the designs, their expressiveness, to be able to accomplish that whole tonal range. And that led, because the ingredients at the start were unique, it led to a unique look, I think, for the animation.

• 1:42:11Speaker 08

  And then we animated mostly on twos, which Spider-verse does as well. And we made that decision because there's a lot of dancing and choreography and fight choreography in this film. And when you animate on twos, it allows you to be more snappy and high contrast. And that's something that we really like. And there's a lot of like, high contrast moments in the comedy tone of it. So that's why we went with the two, animating on twos. But, you know, there are times when we animate on threes, on ones. I don't really remember what those moments were,

• 1:42:51Speaker 08

  but I think, yeah, they're all choices made because the moment asks for it.

• 1:43:00Speaker 07

  And I think the biggest, first, when we saw Spider-verse, we were watching the premiere and we were like, two, three years into the movie? And like, five minutes?

• 1:43:10Speaker 08

  Yeah, like, on one, I know, I was here.

• 1:43:12Speaker 07

  Opposite sides of the theater. And like, five minutes in, Maggie texts me, she's like, "Oh, my God, it's so good." But I think what it, we felt like this movie was very ambitious. And there were times when we're like, is it too ambitious? Are we trying to do too many things? And you watch Spider-verse and you're like, nah. And do anything. And we just, we were like, pedal to the metal. We're gonna do all of it and make it as, and just execute till we had nothing left to give, yeah.

• 1:43:39Sean Fennessey?

  I'm glad you mentioned choreography. So there's an amazing amount of dance choreography and fight choreography in the movie, an unusual amount for a movie like this. Are you writing that into the screenplay? Do you know what the movements of the characters are meant to be? Do you have choreographers that you work with to execute? How does that, explain how that works for us?

• 1:43:58Speaker 08

  No, in the writing phase, you just write, "Now they dance."

• 1:44:04Speaker 07

  And it's really cool.

• 1:44:05Speaker 08

  We're like song starts. Yeah, we had a lot of, we had, we had a few teams of choreographers that we worked with from Korea, Korean, a really famous K-pop choreographer, dance choreographers. And then we worked with a team called the K Tigers, who are Taekwondo specialists. And, but then they're also integrating pop dance moves into like their choreography. So the first time we went to Korea as a group on a research trip, we met with them and we were like, yeah, you know, we were thinking like, you know, Taekwondo mixed with modern K-pop and they're like, okay.

• 1:44:49Speaker 08

  And so they start doing it and we're like, oh, we didn't think this was possible, but they, they were already doing it. And I don't know, we just had this kind of like moment where we're all just like crying and thinking like, oh my gosh, it's actually possible, like we could actually pull this off. So, um, yeah, and, and that's kind of what happened throughout this entire process when we were like, how do we pull this off? And we go to the pros for some advice, they're like, oh, this is, you know, and, and it's because they were so inspired by the concept, they were excited to be challenged. And at every stage of this production, every team was like, yes, we are down to be challenged. Let's figure this out. And I think that's, that's how we got this done.

• 1:45:35Sean Fennessey?

  I have a similar question about the songs. What are you writing when you're saying like, and now, one of the greatest K-pop songs you've ever heard that you will live, will live in your mind forever?

• 1:45:46Speaker 08

  That's what we write.

• 1:45:48Speaker 07

  It's, it's one of the hardest and funnest parts of the film and it was a, it really was, there was no roadmap, because people have written musicals before, but they aren't, those aren't pop songs. And people have written pop songs, but never that were trying to live in a story. So the part that we spent Months on, we would write essentially, we called them like a song document, and it's like a five-page thing. And it's a scene, but in song structure. So if you're thinking like "Golden," it's like, we're talking about what each of the girls, almost a monologue about where they came from and how they felt before they found each other.

• 1:46:30Speaker 07

  And then the pre-chorus is about what it meant to find my place in a group, and the chorus. And so we're writing the scene that should feel interesting to read as a scene. And then we're talking about the metaphor, because one of the lessons we learned is like, you can't sing, "And now the honeymoon will be golden." Like, it's no longer a pop song, it's something else, right? So we had to have a metaphor, whether it's your idol or "Takedown." Like, we'd talk about the songs on a whole different level of like, "Takedown" is about having like, some boyfriend you broke up with who you know is a jerk, and you just can't wait for everyone else to find out what a jerk he is.

• 1:47:10Speaker 07

  Or "Golden" is about feeling like, you have so much to offer and you haven't found the place to do it yet. And I'm so close now to really showing the world who I am. So we were always juggling this very particular story things, and then this more pop metaphor. And then we would give that to the song team, and then just say no for the first 12 versions, until it was great, until it gave us butterflies in our stomach.

• 1:47:38Speaker 08

  We'd like to say that we tricked all the songwriters into working on an animated movie, because they're like, "Wait, what? How many versions of this are you doing?" And we're like, "Ooh, many." They were very surprised, because usually in pop, pop writing, you do maybe like, I don't know, I think like two, three max versions, you know, iterations, a round of notes, and then you're kind of done. But, you know, our story process is that it's constantly evolving and changing. And, you know, if we tweak a story moment here to kind of affect a character's arc, then we have to like do these little nips and tucks everywhere. And that's what needs to happen with the music as well.

• 1:48:21Speaker 08

  So it was a real challenge. It was kind of like two stories, or like two writing things, challenges, that you were facing, like just with the screenplay. But then the music is so interwoven into that story, so we were working. We were basically writing two screenplays.

• 1:48:40Sean Fennessey?

  I couldn't think of very many comparisons. Like Bye Bye Birdie popped in my head. It's like, what's a musical that is reflecting a current moment in popular music? That features songs that are sort of in the spirit of that music? But it kind of hasn't been done before. So did people say, this is not going to work?

• 1:48:59Speaker 07

  No, which is wonderful. We had a great executive music producer whose name is Ian Isandra. He comes from a Broadway background. And then we had many partners, but foremost was Black Label, which is one of the best labels in K-pop. And so I think it was more like the onus was on us to be able to give them the direction on the pop level and the story level. So they had a shot at creating this synthesis. But there were part of it was like, we were like, we won't be able to point you to anything because it hasn't been done. So we're going to have to do a new thing that you don't know how to do, we don't know how to do, and we're going to have to find it together.

• 1:49:40Speaker 07

  And everybody was just, to Maggie's point, they were just down for that and down for doing version 13, which is amazing.

• 1:49:50Sean Fennessey?

  My daughter's here. She's four and a half. She, this is one of her favorite movies of all time. And I think one of the reasons why, even if this is subconscious, is that this is a movie, as a friend said to me before this screening started, about women just saying like, yeah, we'll do it ourselves. Which is, there's not a lot of movies about that either. And I know there are a lot of themes that you guys were thinking about as you were writing through, but that's one that seems to be really resonating. I was hoping you could maybe talk about writing that into the characters.

• 1:50:17Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean, one of the main parts of the initial pitch was just seeing female characters in a movie like this that I feel like we haven't seen. I've been in many story rooms where it's an entourage and there's one or two female characters out of six or seven. And we spent hours talking about, how do we make our female characters pop? And I'm like, oh, I just hate that. And I've been in many rooms where I would suggest like, "Well, why don't we take the most interesting male character and make that one of the female characters?" And then it's just silence.

• 1:50:59Speaker 08

  And so when it came time to make a movie of my own, that's, you know, I wanted to just kind of like, you know, relieve that frustration. And this is the version of female characters that I want to see, you know, I feel like I am this kind of, like, I'm very silly and this, and I like to make dumb faces, but I'm also serious and emotional. And I just wanted to explore, like, what is the type of women that I wanted to see? And so the task was, how do we make three distinct female characters that are that? And so that was part of the initial pitch. And also, it's a story about sisterhood,

• 1:51:40Speaker 08

  it's about found family, and a friendship between these three girls. And, but it all, and I truly believe, true intimacy only comes when you are the most silly version of yourself with somebody else. And so that, the kind of zaniness of the girls and being stupid, we like to use that word a lot in this movie, like, we want it to feel stupid. And I think it's, there's, there's power and confidence, you know, to be, like, to be stupid is like, it takes a lot of courage. And to be that version of yourself in front

• 1:52:20Speaker 08

  of somebody else takes a lot of courage, too. And so it wasn't just like, for fun, it really, you know, brings the girls together. And we get to see that intimacy in a different, you know, in a different way. So that was what was so important about the comedy of it.

• 1:52:40Sean Fennessey?

  Maggie, you mentioned you've been working on this for seven years. Chris, I know you also came off a long run on your previous film, Wish Dragon. It's a little different from other kinds of films where you have to spend a really long time making these movies. How do you maintain the focus, stay interested, like, follow through when it takes, you know, huge stretches of life just to complete something?

• 1:53:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, I don't know. I think we actually, another thing that we bond around is neither of us got into directing movies because we wanted to be called a director. We were generally a little frustrated with the type of movies that we're working on. And some of them were great, but some of them were not. And feeling like, man, we could do more than this with this medium and with the stories we want to tell. So when I joined the film, which was six years ago, it was, we very quickly bonded around this representation that felt really overdue, this love of music and what it means for people.

• 1:53:47Speaker 07

  And the sort of seams of the movie about like, how are we going to treat other people's vulnerabilities in our own? Because it can be weaponized against people and you can control people. And that's kind of what Kima represents, you know, is a toxic version of that. Or you can offer grace and connect to people through this shared vulnerability. And that makes a really strong bond and you lift each other up. Those are pretty important things and we really cared about them. And I think you need to find at least an inkling of what that is early on. Because then that is the reason, that's like your north pole. That's the mountaintop.

• 1:54:29Speaker 07

  And it's so hard to keep going some weekends and some nights when you're just exhausted or you feel like you can't crack it. But when you believe that this thing needs to exist, then it's like raising a child. Like you just care so much about it that you will suffer constantly. Because you believe in the thing that's taking shape in front of you.

• 1:54:50Speaker 08

  It's like you have, you start to build this like love-hate relationship with your movie.

• 1:54:56Speaker 07

  Like your child.

• 1:54:58Speaker 08

  Yeah, but you, yeah, like, yes, yes, that's true.

• 1:55:00Speaker 07

  I didn't say that.

• 1:55:02Speaker 08

  But you believe in it so much. So you kind of have to fight for that love, I guess. Yeah.

• 1:55:08Sean Fennessey?

  I probably don't have enough critical distance at this point, but with the distance that you guys have now, really, what do you, what do you attribute to this becoming just, it's genuinely a phenomenon that is very, very rare, like not just in animation, but in any movie. For a movie to hit this many people, to hit them so deeply, what do you, what do you think it is that is resonating with people at this point?

• 1:55:34Speaker 08

  I mean, I think it's the theme of the movie. You know, embracing parts of yourself that you don't think are acceptable or very pretty. One of the most amazing things that I've seen just on social media and stuff is people coming to this movie like and relating to the scars that Rumi has or the patterns. And they connected through like their surgery scars and the pain that they had to go through to like, I thought that, I was like, I had never even thought of that. And I thought that was so beautiful. And I think there's so many ways that people are interpreting Rumi's journey and what the scars represent. And so I think there's just so many different

• 1:56:19Speaker 08

  ways that you could take that story and people are kind of relating to it. So I think that's a big thing. And of course, the music, but we truly believe that the music, all of the music is having its moment because people love the movie so much and the characters and it kind of returns back to the story. Yeah. And it's really pretty, you know? I like to just turn it on and it's just kind of a background like prettiness.

• 1:56:46Speaker 07

  We joke about what we call sneaky deep. It's like our light, how we like to tell the story. And it's very related to like the true foe quote about a great movie is truth and spectacle. So we really wanted to entertain and be funny and be relatable and be spectacular and then plant these little seeds, sneak up on you. Because ultimately, this movie succeeded on word of mouth. People got to the end and they said, oh, I really, that was worth my time. I felt something special. And they just tell somebody else. And that's, it's such a cool era we live in where that's so powerful.

• 1:57:28Sean Fennessey?

  We end every episode of The Big Picture by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing they have seen? Have you guys seen any good movies lately?

• 1:57:36Speaker 07

  I just watched On the Plane.

• 1:57:39Speaker 08

  I was gonna say the same thing, I think.

• 1:57:41Speaker 07

  Is it the Skarsgård film?

• 1:57:42Speaker 08

  Yeah, Sentimental Value.

• 1:57:43Speaker 07

  Sentimental Value? It's so good, right? Oh, my gosh.

• 1:57:47Sean Fennessey?

  What did you like about it?

• 1:57:49Speaker 07

  I loved, I was like, man, this is a real slow European film. But I didn't, again, he tricked me. He said, he was sneaky. There's like a shot progression and a silent storytelling to so many parts of the film and the house and the subtext. And I was like, well, that was really cool. And then it kind of gets through and then you come to the end and all of that comes full circle structurally. It's genius, so intentional, so efficient. And I was like, I'm crying on this plane.

• 1:58:20Speaker 08

  And then, and then the acting is so subtle. There's no like real, like, you don't see anybody like cry or like just in the, the relationship with the daughter and the dad at the end. They don't even like physically close the gap, but you know that everything's gonna be okay. I just love, love films like that. So, yeah, it was beautiful. Loved it.

• 1:58:43Sean Fennessey?

  Great recommendations. Congratulations to you both. Thank you to Netflix. Thank you to Sony Pictures Animation. Thank you to Vidiotz. If you're not a member of Vidiotz, you should join. Thanks to Maggie. Thanks to Chris.

• 1:58:56Speaker 07

  Thank you, guys.

• 1:58:57Sean Fennessey?

  Hit it up.

• 1:59:05Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Maggie and Chris. Thanks to my friends at Vidiotz for the fun event. That was awesome. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode later this week.

• 1:59:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:15Sean Fennessey?

  So, very horny Valentine's Day double feature.

• 1:59:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, or is it? That might be part of the problem.

• 1:59:21Sean Fennessey?

  Well.

• 1:59:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure, one of them.

• 1:59:24Sean Fennessey?

  I'm very, so our friend Sam Sanders is coming on this episode, which will be fun. And we've been doing his show the last couple of years for KCRW. And we asked him to do this. I think with the hope that the horniness would deliver.

• 1:59:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:37Sean Fennessey?

  And we don't totally know where he stands on Wuthering Heights or Pillion, the two movies that we'll be discussing in the next episode. Have some suspicions.

• 1:59:45Amanda Dobbins?

  We-

• 1:59:46Sean Fennessey?

  But it'd be nice to disagree, honestly.

• 1:59:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:47Sean Fennessey?

  It'd be useful for the show to disagree. Because I think we're in pretty lockstep on these two feature films. Excited to discuss them?

• 1:59:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely.

• 1:59:58Sean Fennessey?

  I am too. Emerald Fennel, you know, she gives a lot.

• 2:00:01Amanda Dobbins?

  She does.

• 2:00:02Sean Fennessey?

  She gives a lot.

• 2:00:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I appreciate it. There is much to discuss.

• 2:00:06Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. We'll discuss it later this week. We'll see you then.

• 2:00:27Speaker 09

  This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Fall is here and Whole Foods Market has everything you need for cozy meals, seasonal treats, and easy entertaining. Elevate your hearty dishes with tasty bone-in beef short ribs or New York strip steaks with no added growth hormones or antibiotics. And as the fall evenings draw in, why not get ahead of cold season with immunity shots, herbal teas, lozenges, and supplements? Make sure you look for sales throughout the month. Shop fall flavors with higher standards at Whole Foods Market.

• 2:00:56Speaker 10

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple, like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive, or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting, and completely delicious. Simply. Say yes to simple.