Is ‘The Uprising’ a Secret Robin Hood Movie? Plus, ‘The Pitt’ Season 3 Trailer, an ‘Adults’ S2 Preview, and Late Summer Recommendations.

Chris and Andy talk about the bizarre marketing rollout of ‘The Uprising’ (1:43), the Season 3 teaser trailer for ‘The Pitt’ (11:57), and Kate Winslet teaming up with ‘Adolescence’ cocreator Jack Thorne for a new Netflix limited series (15:25). Then they discuss the potential return of the weekly release model across television (21:41) before previewing ‘Adults’ Season 2 (31:28). Later, they share some late summer recommendations for things they’re watching, reading, and listening to (39:01). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Studio Production: Jason Arreola 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

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:05Speaker 02

  I need support staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.

• 1:11Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me in the studio, my secret Robin Hood project, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:24Andy Greenwald?

  But secretly, I'm the bad prince the whole time.

• 1:27Chris Ryan?

  Greenwald, it is Thursday, which means it's kind of a chaos menu. We can just do whatever we want. Today, we've got some holly weird news that we're going to go through from the world of television and beyond. We were going to talk a little bit about Adults, which is the second season of which is airing the first two episodes this evening on FX, which is a show.

• 1:50Andy Greenwald?

  They're not dumping the whole thing?

• 1:51Chris Ryan?

  They're not dumping it, dog. And that's funny that you should bring that up. Good segue.

• 1:54Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you.

• 1:55Chris Ryan?

  Because there's also some new statistics out, some new charts out from in the world of people who make charts about this stuff.

• 2:04Andy Greenwald?

  That's perfect.

• 2:05Chris Ryan?

  That about the return of the weekly release model.

• 2:08Andy Greenwald?

  I can't wait. That really allows us to play to our strengths with you as the Brad Pitt and me as the Jonah Hill of the podcast.

• 2:14Chris Ryan?

  Oh, in like terms of Moneyball?

• 2:15Andy Greenwald?

  No, I mean socially.

• 2:17Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:18Andy Greenwald?

  Why? What have you heard?

• 2:19Chris Ryan?

  Well, I am off the wagon, so.

• 2:21Andy Greenwald?

  It's true, and I love jujitsu.

• 2:22Chris Ryan?

  I just wanted to ask you this off the top before we get too deep into it. The joke we made at the beginning of this podcast is, oh, you can hit us up at the watch at spotify.com and the watch pod underscore is Instagram and ringer-tv is YouTube.

• 2:35Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 2:36Chris Ryan?

  And then you can watch us on Spotify or listen to us wherever you get podcasts. And the joke was.

• 2:43Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 2:43Chris Ryan?

  There's this movie called Uprising coming out from director Paul Greengrass, director of several of our favorite and not so favorite Bourne films.

• 2:52Andy Greenwald?

  That's fair.

• 2:53Chris Ryan?

  And in recent years directed The Lost Bus with Matthew McConaughey, which went straight to Apple.

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  Did they ever find it?

• 2:59Chris Ryan?

  It was a true story about fires, so.

• 3:02Andy Greenwald?

  I keep doing this.

• 3:03Chris Ryan?

  Just might want to.

• 3:04Andy Greenwald?

  Where's my?

• 3:05Chris Ryan?

  Beep, beep, beep. Back out of that one.

• 3:08Andy Greenwald?

  I had a really good one of those at dinner last night, but I don't even remember what it was.

• 3:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes, you were making fun of someone whose parents had died.

• 3:14Andy Greenwald?

  Now, hold on. Before this goes viral.

• 3:20Chris Ryan?

  Not you were knowingly doing that.

• 3:22Andy Greenwald?

  I made, I poked some light fun at a celebrity I'd never heard of. Perhaps suggesting that she had nepotism.

• 3:33Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 3:34Andy Greenwald?

  And I was informed and said she had family tragedy. So I regret that.

• 3:37Chris Ryan?

  What do you, what do you think that your kids are going to think when they're, when they're working in a lime mine somewhere like, and they're just like, it would have been nice to have been a bovont who wrote for and about television.

• 3:52Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 3:52Chris Ryan?

  But my father pulled down the.

• 3:54Andy Greenwald?

  I pull up the ladder in all directions. I'm completely alone. There's no ladders, no chutes either.

• 3:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:00Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just floating above. Do you think they're going to be really mad like that they couldn't even get an interview for the fourth reboot of The Harry Potter Show on HBO Paramount Raytheon Network?

• 4:13Chris Ryan?

  But my dad consulted.

• 4:16Andy Greenwald?

  This time, we're going to get the Hogwarts Express right.

• 4:19Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I was bringing up this Paul Greengrass movie, Uprising, which stars Andrew Garfield because it has had one of the most hilarious.

• 4:26Andy Greenwald?

  Bizarre.

• 4:26Chris Ryan?

  Um, marketing pushes in recent memory. And I'll tell my listeners, my listeners, our listeners.

• 4:33Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, I think that's correct.

• 4:36Chris Ryan?

  I'll tell our listeners straight up, this is one of those stories that it feels better just to have surface knowledge of. You know how like sometimes you're like bond markets or what happened there? Like, it's better just to kind of, when you're reading about like the economy, you're like, I feel like I'm, I need to get in deeper with this so I fully understand the picture. This is not one of those things. So I'm going to give you a, I'm not reading anything about this right now, straight off the dome.

• 5:02Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 5:02Chris Ryan?

  Uprising, I believe is set in the 14th century. It was supposed to be about like a farm.

• 5:06Andy Greenwald?

  Well, apparently it is about.

• 5:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I saw the trailer.

• 5:09Andy Greenwald?

  We all saw the trailer.

• 5:10Chris Ryan?

  And it's about like a peasant uprising in England and in some time.

• 5:17Andy Greenwald?

  An actual historical event, the peasants revolt.

• 5:19Chris Ryan?

  Let me just get through the setup here.

• 5:21Andy Greenwald?

  I just want to make sure that people know that in the peasants revolt, I'm on the side of the peasants.

• 5:25Chris Ryan?

  Um, and this movie had been advertised and I'd seen people even say that it might be pretty good. And it's coming out like a week.

• 5:34Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's being released on Friday, September 11th.

• 5:37Chris Ryan?

  Oh, interesting. A big day for Paul Greengrass because he also did United 93.

• 5:41Andy Greenwald?

  A big day for Paul Greengrass, yes.

• 5:43Chris Ryan?

  And recently, in like the most recent batch of, of press, or not press, but like marketing materials for this movie.

• 5:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:53Chris Ryan?

  They just slid, slid something in there. It's a Robin Hood movie.

• 5:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:59Chris Ryan?

  It's the true story of Robin Hood or something like that.

• 6:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 6:02Chris Ryan?

  Here's the best part.

• 6:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 6:04Chris Ryan?

  We don't know if that's true because it doesn't seem like anyone involved in the movie is acknowledging this and or being like, now that the cat's out of the bag or the Robin is, we can talk about the fact that yes, this is a backdoor Robin Hood movie. And.

• 6:19Andy Greenwald?

  Backdoor Robin Hood movie? That, okay. That'd probably do quite well. Specialty box office.

• 6:25Chris Ryan?

  And now there's like, in England, they've, they've pulled the Robin Hood nomenclature off of the posters and stuff like, there is seemingly, seemingly some walk back of this. In any case, I love this.

• 6:38Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, okay.

• 6:38Chris Ryan?

  I love, like, hey, you know, we're only tracking it like 62% audience awareness score or whatever.

• 6:46Andy Greenwald?

  So here's what we're going to do.

• 6:47Chris Ryan?

  Take a public domain piece of IP and just slap it on there and see if anybody notices.

• 6:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:52Chris Ryan?

  Now, this is kind of like what happens with Tony, which is at the very end of Tony.

• 6:57Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, the very end of Tony.

• 6:59Chris Ryan?

  He's just like, I'm Anthony Bourdain.

• 7:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, no, at the end, he says he's Tony Stark.

• 7:03Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 7:04Andy Greenwald?

  We can spoil it now.

• 7:05Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 7:05Andy Greenwald?

  It's an incredible bit of.

• 7:07Chris Ryan?

  But I don't know. I just wanted to say that Hollywood, you guys, you guys are the best.

• 7:11Andy Greenwald?

  Well, first of all, I, we should have prepared more for this. I mean, that's a blanket statement for this podcast, but I think that there are ways, I think there's a good conversation to be had about ways this could have helped other recent box office bombs. Do you know what I mean? Like, what if, like Supergirl, for example? Okay, what if, what if Supergirl at the end, she's like, and that's why I'm going to run for Congress and my name is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Do you know what I mean?

• 7:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:41Andy Greenwald?

  And everyone's like, oh, oh, this was always an AOC origin story. That's where she's from.

• 7:46Chris Ryan?

  She's the woman of tomorrow, yeah.

• 7:48Andy Greenwald?

  Are there any, like, any other recent, you just did a Flops draft.

• 7:52Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 7:52Andy Greenwald?

  I know in the big picture, are any of those movies you think could have been saved if they just made a hard pivot?

• 7:57Chris Ryan?

  Trying to think of the ones I drafted.

• 7:58Andy Greenwald?

  Right before it was released. While you think about it, I do want to say that I love the reporting on this incredible sleight of hand because this is where we are as a culture. The studio was like, you don't like what this is? Okay, what if we told you it was this? Are you more into it? And then the trades are caught so flat footed by this that this is actual reporting from The Hollywood Reporter. The decision to release this element so close to the film's debut and not keep it as a plot twist or simply begin its marketing run by saying it's a Robin Hood movie has, it seemed, confused social media users, notoriously the least credulous people alive. Quote, this actually kind of, so here's the thing, there are two wolves inside of all social media users. Here's one. This actually kind of bums me out because as a history nerd, I thought someone was

• 8:43Andy Greenwald?

  actually tackling the peasants revolt, which is a time in history that could make for some epic films we never see, wrote Andy Greenwald on X.

• 8:53Andy Greenwald?

  The other person they quote.

• 8:55Chris Ryan?

  Barstool Andy.

• 8:56Andy Greenwald?

  The other person that you're. I have parked on that.

• 9:00Chris Ryan?

  Fucking history pod for Barstool.

• 9:02Andy Greenwald?

  I've parked on that. I just keep my options open for the next renegotiate. The other person they quote is this, quote, "It's a fucking Robin Hood movie." This is, this is, this is the industry. It's like, I mean, I imagine if you were reporting on Hollywood, you might be able to like pick up the phone and call the studio.

• 9:20Chris Ryan?

  Well, here's what I'm curious about.

• 9:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Chris Ryan?

  I would imagine Robin Hood is in public domain now.

• 9:26Andy Greenwald?

  Who do you think was hold, who do you think was parked on that copyright for years?

• 9:29Chris Ryan?

  Nobody. I mean, this is, this is, this is what happens is after a certain amount of time, like the copyright or whatever.

• 9:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 9:35Chris Ryan?

  Reverts to all of us. Like Kai and Kaya could be editing a Robin Hood movie right now.

• 9:39Andy Greenwald?

  That's the real peasants revolt.

• 9:41Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 9:42Andy Greenwald?

  Am I right, guys? Let's do it.

• 9:45Chris Ryan?

  Anyway, just keep pumping out these Robin Hood movies, guys.

• 9:47Andy Greenwald?

  But that's the other, here's the weirdest thing about it. I can almost see the logic in this. Had the, had the June release, what was the movie? The, uh, The Death of Robin Hood, which was released earlier this summer.

• 10:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 10:01Andy Greenwald?

  By A24, completely tanked.

• 10:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:03Andy Greenwald?

  So it's not like they're trying to skitch on some like cool Robin Hood vibes that have permeated the culture. You saw his death, now check out his birth. That's not working.

• 10:13Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 10:14Andy Greenwald?

  How do you, what do you think is the health? Should we do a temperature check on the Robin Hood IP generally?

• 10:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, I, I don't think anyone really cares about like the real story of it.

• 10:23Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 10:24Chris Ryan?

  They've tried to do the, like, the origin story. They've tried, you know, Costner's done it, Taron Egerton's done it.

• 10:31Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 10:31Chris Ryan?

  We have had the death of Robin Hood.

• 10:34Andy Greenwald?

  Recently.

• 10:35Chris Ryan?

  We've tested every permutation of Robin Hood. I think we're good.

• 10:39Andy Greenwald?

  There's one permutation that I think is overlooked.

• 10:41Chris Ryan?

  Robin Hood offensive coordinator.

• 10:46Andy Greenwald?

  Would you like to do some character work?

• 10:47Chris Ryan?

  No, just like, what, what is it? Is it like Friday Night Lights reboot, but Robin?

• 10:52Andy Greenwald?

  No, it's Robin Hood OC. Robin Hood OC, where he steals from Sean McVay and the other rich from their playbooks?

• 10:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, we can't afford Ben Johnson, but we can steal his playbook.

• 11:02Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm saying. No, I'm saying that like, you know, my, my older daughter's 13 years old. And so she definitely has crushes on some like actors in some of these teen shows or like Outer Banks or whatever. But her number one is Fox Robin Hood from the Disney Robin Hood movie.

• 11:19Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, the cartoon, right?

• 11:20Andy Greenwald?

  I think that that guy is like, that guy, that guy's a sneaky heartthrob.

• 11:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he has riz.

• 11:27Andy Greenwald?

  Incredible riz. So I feel like we could bring that guy back and it would do better than this movie.

• 11:31Chris Ryan?

  Every once in a while, I will notice that, not, not like words that I don't understand, but new words will enter your lexicon. So like you've been saying things rip and that they own a lot recently. Is that from your daughters?

• 11:49Andy Greenwald?

  Boy.

• 11:50Chris Ryan?

  Have you noticed that?

• 11:51Andy Greenwald?

  I, those aren't the words that I would say that I took from, from their.

• 11:55Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 11:56Andy Greenwald?

  Chats.

• 11:57Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 11:57Andy Greenwald?

  No, I, I think that, I think the, uh, it's also, there's a lot of like, that's crazy, bro. Bro, you're crazy for that. There's a lot of that. And I'm, I'm, I'm workshopping some of it. I'm like, they're like, what's for dinner? And I'm like, I made chicken. They're like, you're crazy, bro. That's crazy.

• 12:14Chris Ryan?

  And then do you say like, it's actually the most common dinner in America?

• 12:18Andy Greenwald?

  Like, yeah, then I pull up the charts that I put on my Peter Brandon Moneyball outfit. I'm like, actually, we can't make a, a proper dinner, but we can create an aggregate with chicken parts.

• 12:31Andy Greenwald?

  No, the slang thing is, is a roller coaster.

• 12:33Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 12:33Andy Greenwald?

  It's a roller coaster.

• 12:34Chris Ryan?

  All right. I just wanted to get to the bottom of some of psychological motivations behind the things you say.

• 12:39Andy Greenwald?

  But you said riz. Where did you get, where, where'd you pull that from? That's actually.

• 12:42Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, from you, like from you telling me that they said it, but now they don't say it anymore.

• 12:46Andy Greenwald?

  It's not, it's not cool anymore.

• 12:47Chris Ryan?

  Let's just move on then.

• 12:48Andy Greenwald?

  I made a six, seven joke the other day and they looked at me like, that was crazy, bro. I can't keep up.

• 12:54Chris Ryan?

  It's because you were holding two chickens.

• 12:56Andy Greenwald?

  That was.

• 12:57Chris Ryan?

  Some news, some real news beyond.

• 12:59Andy Greenwald?

  That was interesting.

• 13:00Chris Ryan?

  Fake Robin Hoods.

• 13:01Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 13:01Chris Ryan?

  Uh, we got a pick teaser for, for the season three.

• 13:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 13:04Chris Ryan?

  Which will be with us early next year, um, as is the custom. The, uh, gist of this is it's Robbie's first day back.

• 13:13Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, wow, what a blow to the Robbie truthers. I can't believe it.

• 13:18Chris Ryan?

  The Robbie truthers, like people being like Robbie's never coming back.

• 13:21Andy Greenwald?

  He came back.

• 13:22Chris Ryan?

  I think there's one thing we don't know is at what point in the season does he return?

• 13:29Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, so you think that the first few episodes might be Night Crawler's running wild?

• 13:33Chris Ryan?

  I do.

• 13:34Andy Greenwald?

  And then the morning, I do think, I do believe you. I think that that is a, I believe you. I think that is a correct read that this season might start a few hours before Robbie's arrival.

• 13:45Chris Ryan?

  I do think that is the case. I just wonder. I mean, cause like they've done Night Crawler's, the Sean Haddacy, Dr. Abbott crew really didn't come in until the very end of the second season.

• 13:56Andy Greenwald?

  Well, he was freelancing.

• 13:58Chris Ryan?

  He was kicking around a little bit with the SWAT team, but.

• 14:01Andy Greenwald?

  That's basically like when you record with Van in between recording the watch. You know what I mean? You just do that for fun.

• 14:08Chris Ryan?

  That's Night Crawler's right there. It's gonna be really weird if they have the first episode and he's just not in it. But I could see some world in which he shows up like an hour or two into the season.

• 14:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Also, because he's so intimately involved with every aspect of the show, he's, he's written an episode every season. He's, I believe, directed at least one episode every season.

• 14:28Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 14:29Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe that's what he, maybe that's how he wanted to begin the season this year. So his acting commitments would come later.

• 14:34Chris Ryan?

  They have not tipped their hand as to what the catastrophe of the season is. And perhaps there won't be this season. Maybe it's just a really chill day. I actually just watched.

• 14:42Andy Greenwald?

  That would be amazing.

• 14:43Chris Ryan?

  An Instagram video where you're not supposed to say it's pretty quiet today in an emergency room if you're working there.

• 14:48Andy Greenwald?

  Why?

• 14:49Chris Ryan?

  Because they just, you jinx it and then it just becomes chaotic. So.

• 14:52Andy Greenwald?

  Do you believe that?

• 14:53Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 14:55Andy Greenwald?

  Television has taught me there has never been a quiet day in an emergency room. I do think that would be quietly radical.

• 15:00Chris Ryan?

  That is true.

• 15:01Andy Greenwald?

  If it was just fine.

• 15:02Chris Ryan?

  Slow TV emergency room.

• 15:05Andy Greenwald?

  Oh my God. Wait, I would love that show. They're like, what do you want to get for lunch?

• 15:08Chris Ryan?

  Ponytail trying to choose which granola bar to eat.

• 15:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:12Chris Ryan?

  I love it.

• 15:13Andy Greenwald?

  But then we are all like, is she gonna choke on the granola bar? Any, any other addition, like any other info from this? It, it just seemed to be, I mean, this is, this is the brand of the show. It's just, hey, there's, we're back. There's gonna be more.

• 15:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:26Andy Greenwald?

  Trauma and emotional outpourings and.

• 15:29Chris Ryan?

  I think some people were curious about whether, uh, Dr. Alshimi was gonna come back.

• 15:34Andy Greenwald?

  She's there.

• 15:35Chris Ryan?

  Is she there? I, in what capacity? I don't know if she's, she's still rolling with Robbie, if she's on Abbott's crew or what? Like she was.

• 15:43Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think.

• 15:43Chris Ryan?

  The secondary attending, right?

• 15:44Andy Greenwald?

  In theory, she was doing Robbie's job while he was on his vision quest.

• 15:48Chris Ryan?

  That's true. But then he was like, I don't think you should be doing that because of your condition.

• 15:52Andy Greenwald?

  And then she was like, I think you shouldn't be doing that because of your condition about being too sad to ride motorcycles.

• 15:57Chris Ryan?

  Did they resolve that? Not, he was like, you have to report yourself or otherwise I will, right?

• 16:02Andy Greenwald?

  He did say that, yeah.

• 16:03Chris Ryan?

  But I don't know that they were like, did you do that? Cause it's, you know, temporally, we, we just left for the day. That was my major observation. Obviously, Dr. Santos and, uh, Dr. Whitaker seemed happy with each other in terms of being roommates. That was cool.

• 16:18Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's fun.

• 16:20Chris Ryan?

  Great. I think we did a great job summarizing a 30 second trailer.

• 16:25Chris Ryan?

  More news. Kate Winslet has joined a Netflix series.

• 16:28Andy Greenwald?

  I wasn't briefed on this. What do you mean?

• 16:29Chris Ryan?

  Called Unheard and it's from the adolescence team.

• 16:31Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 16:32Chris Ryan?

  And it's written by Jack Thorne.

• 16:34Andy Greenwald?

  That's why, okay. So there was a rumor that there was going to be a second season of adolescence that she was joining, but in fact.

• 16:39Chris Ryan?

  It is maybe from the.

• 16:41Andy Greenwald?

  From the creative minds of.

• 16:43Chris Ryan?

  ACU, the Adolescence Cinematic Universe.

• 16:45Andy Greenwald?

  Right. Aren't we all living in that?

• 16:46Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Yes.

• 16:48Andy Greenwald?

  Every minute of the day?

• 16:49Chris Ryan?

  Uh, this one's written by Jack Thorne and it's about two sisters on the run after committing an act of vengeance. And it co-stars Maxine Peake, who we loved in Say Nothing.

• 16:58Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, great casting. That's exciting.

• 17:00Chris Ryan?

  And this, it's always cool when, and it helps when we like the show.

• 17:05Andy Greenwald?

  It helps.

• 17:06Chris Ryan?

  It's always cool when you see a show that maybe didn't get recognized in its moment, but obviously people within the television community watched it because Lola Pata Crew currently.

• 17:18Andy Greenwald?

  Crushing it.

• 17:19Chris Ryan?

  Crushing it on Furious and Maxine.

• 17:21Andy Greenwald?

  And Anthony Boyle's just announcing the cast of another Netflix show.

• 17:23Chris Ryan?

  Fucking everything. And House of Guinness got renewed.

• 17:26Andy Greenwald?

  Really?

• 17:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:27Andy Greenwald?

  Is it going to jump ahead to influencers standing outside of the Devonshire splitting the G? Like, is it just gonna be a TikTok season?

• 17:36Chris Ryan?

  Slow pub TV?

• 17:38Andy Greenwald?

  Not slow.

• 17:40Chris Ryan?

  No, it's not slow.

• 17:40Andy Greenwald?

  Not slow. They really put them away. Wait, that's cool. Wait, but is Philip Barantini directing it also? Is it really an adolescence reunion?

• 17:46Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I didn't see if Barantini was directing it. I was really more bringing it up because it was, uh, they did specify that it was five episodes. And, uh, I just want to renew my battle cry.

• 17:59Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:00Chris Ryan?

  That we can have TV seasons of any, any length.

• 18:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 18:03Chris Ryan?

  Um, the, the, the, one of the coolest things about when I first started watching TV from England, I don't know, 2010, 11, when that stuff started like floating around the internet a little bit more freely, if you know what I mean?

• 18:18Andy Greenwald?

  What was your website again?

• 18:19Chris Ryan?

  Arakgoals.net, but that was for soccer highlights.

• 18:23Andy Greenwald?

  So incredible.

• 18:24Chris Ryan?

  Specifically and only for soccer.

• 18:26Andy Greenwald?

  No, for sure. Nothing else.

• 18:28Chris Ryan?

  The kinds of pop-ups I would get while I watched, you know, like a Europa League match. Were fucking diabolical. But I could have gotten in early on Bitcoin if I had paid attention to them.

• 18:40Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think that's mostly what it was?

• 18:41Chris Ryan?

  There were some of that. There were some of that, like, early, like, I was like, what is crypto?

• 18:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Chris Ryan?

  And then it was also like.

• 18:47Andy Greenwald?

  Let's be honest, we're still like that.

• 18:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:49Andy Greenwald?

  We're still like that.

• 18:50Chris Ryan?

  Um, yeah, I just think that, uh, I would love to see two things happen.

• 18:55Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 18:56Chris Ryan?

  I would love to see shows like Reggie Dinkins or adults, which we're gonna talk about, and, and, and shows that seem like they have the structure to which to support more than 10 episodes in a season.

• 19:09Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 19:10Chris Ryan?

  To, to grow in that way.

• 19:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 19:11Chris Ryan?

  I don't know that we'll ever get back to 22 episodes a year. Um, but I think it would be cool to have some shows that ran from, from fall to spring like that. I think Abbott is the one that I watch that is the closest to that.

• 19:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 19:25Chris Ryan?

  And I think they're at like 15 to 20 episodes a year. I can't remember.

• 19:29Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, they're still on a broadcast schedule. It's, it's not as.

• 19:31Chris Ryan?

  Like a broadcast schedule, sometimes Abbott's just not on for three weeks. It's, you know, because of various Monday Night Football, whatever happens. But I, I would love for that to happen and I would love for shows to go back to, or series to experiment with. Here's a three-episode season like Sherlock, or here is a five-episode or six-episode season. And not everything is like, well, this is probably four hours of story that we've stretched into eight hours.

• 19:53Andy Greenwald?

  It's very odd that when, I mean, one of the main differences in tele, like, here's the best example of it, was The Office. The British version, the original version of The Office was, I believe, two seasons and a Christmas special.

• 20:07Chris Ryan?

  Of six episodes each?

• 20:08Andy Greenwald?

  I believe something like that, yes. And I, again, no way of knowing, but we could find out to get the exact numbers. And then one of the major lifts was how would they make it in the American model, which.

• 20:20Chris Ryan?

  Six, six, two.

• 20:21Andy Greenwald?

  Good job. Which, you know, I knew that they made a ton of those episodes, but I forgot that the era in which, that the, the era in which The Office was thriving was also that Jeff Zucker, soon to play himself in the movie Primetime, was in charge of NBC and was doing things like supersizing episodes and also supersizing seasons.

• 20:39Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:39Andy Greenwald?

  So there are seasons of The Office where they made 25 episodes.

• 20:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:42Andy Greenwald?

  Which is insane. But we were at a moment when the two, across the Atlantic, the two sides were looking at each other, being like, what the hell? You either make six or 25, and instead, we somehow ended up meeting in the middle where we now both do the exact same thing in lockstep.

• 20:58Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 20:58Andy Greenwald?

  Where, I said it last week, this is actually something people are saying, that eight is the new 10. Then the, everything is shrinking. And, you know, we don't need to talk about this today, but downriver effects of all that aren't just for the audience. It is shrinking the income and stability of all creative careers in the industry and causing mass chaos.

• 21:16Chris Ryan?

  I randomly got served, I think I was telling you about this, a Neil Patrick Harris interview where he was talking about, um, the schedule that they used to have for How I Met Your Mother.

• 21:24Andy Greenwald?

  Famously the best schedule.

• 21:26Chris Ryan?

  And he was like, this is the best job that you can ever have. I worked for an hour on Monday. I went in briefly on Tuesday and Wednesday to rehearse and do blocking. And then we shot Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and if you weren't in scenes, you just didn't have to be there, and they would schedule it as such. And he was like, and he got paid $250,000 a week or whatever.

• 21:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 21:49Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and you had every fourth week off so that the writers could catch up.

• 21:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 21:52Chris Ryan?

  And we fucking killed the golden goose, man.

• 21:56Andy Greenwald?

  We had something beautiful. Everyone who's ever done a multi-cam sitcom says that it is the greatest schedule, working schedule in entertainment.

• 22:05Chris Ryan?

  You were 22 weeks a year?

• 22:06Andy Greenwald?

  Um.

• 22:07Chris Ryan?

  Something like that?

• 22:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, half the year.

• 22:09Chris Ryan?

  The actors do, yeah.

• 22:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Everyone I've ever talked to about it has said that. I remember, do you remember years ago, we had Laurie Metcalf come on?

• 22:15Chris Ryan?

  I'll never forget it.

• 22:16Andy Greenwald?

  And she, and I, and I think.

• 22:17Chris Ryan?

  Her description of working on Roseanne was like, I would drive over the hill into Hollywood, go to Fort Knox, take, take my giant gold bar out of BBC and go back to the valley.

• 22:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and, and we would just like, and laugh with John Goodman for an hour.

• 22:33Chris Ryan?

  And then I would go do Steppenwolf, like, and, and whatever, like, when I had free time.

• 22:37Andy Greenwald?

  It's pretty good.

• 22:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:39Andy Greenwald?

  We broke it.

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• 24:42Chris Ryan?

  We do seem to be seeing some signs of things going back to the way they were, though. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit about this, I think, remarkable, uh, development in television. So this was from Axios. They do like a media newsletter, and then Parrot Analytics contributes to it. And Parrot, we've mentioned before, uh, Julie Alexander, who writes for the, the town occasionally, or not for the town, but for Matt Bellany's What I'm Hearing newsletter, and has done a lot of, she used to work at Parrot, so I think that there's, I, I'm aware of what they do, and they, they try to like, give some metric, statistical understanding to what is a very vague and opaque system now of,

• 25:23Chris Ryan?

  what do streaming minutes really constitute and like, you know, subscriptions versus, versus time spent and all this stuff. This is from, a quote from that Axios and Parrot report. "For the first time last year, the supply of streaming shows in the United States more than doubled that of binge releases. A testament to how much streamers have changed their strategies since the binge show dropped first became popular in the late aughts." Now, I must say that it was chilling to think of the late aughts as, as time immemorial.

• 25:54Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:54Chris Ryan?

  Uh, but it is the case that I, you get sometimes, you know, with the case of The Bear or something like that, you still get your binge drop. Outside of Netflix, most networks have gone to a, we'll put two up and then it's once a week, or we put the three up and it's once a week after that. And, um, I think it's working. I think, generally speaking, and anecdotally, so not Parrot Analyticsly speaking, we're seeing a lot more shows that are developing a traditional slow burn. Have you seen this? Have you seen this? Have you seen this? You have to catch up with it, kind of, I kind of, audience. Do you agree with that?

• 26:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, the caveat we always have to say is, obviously, as podcasters, we would prefer a weekly model.

• 26:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:42Andy Greenwald?

  That serves us. But I genuinely think, and have, I think, always thought, that the binge model does a disservice to almost everybody. Except the shareholders of the tech company that is attempting to launch a profitable streaming service, which is why it started to begin with. It was both an attempt to disrupt and break the model and surprise people, but also an attempt to flood the zone for attention and interest and give people a different kind of relationship to the service, much like, much like the introduction of reels on Instagram to just basically get you into the ecosystem and get you locked in and wanting more and expecting more, um, and not turning away.

• 27:23Andy Greenwald?

  Fundamentally, I mean, I don't know the numbers of it, but, but, but, uh, even Netflix, that still does mostly binge releases, just the library is so large now.

• 27:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:32Andy Greenwald?

  That the new releases don't have to have the same cadence as everything else, because you're likely gonna be there and find that other binge, uh, relationship anyway.

• 27:43Andy Greenwald?

  I know I lean on this too often as my like, in the same way that our beloved Thomas Friedman in the New York Times always leans on the cab driver in Karachi that told him about how the world economy really works.

• 27:53Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 27:54Andy Greenwald?

  That's how I use my children on this podcast, but I promise you, they are real. And I was really interested that this weekend, my older daughter was saying that she, because I've said before, and I believe this to be true, that their relationship to TV generally is so different from ours.

• 28:10Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God.

• 28:11Andy Greenwald?

  Because it's like, it's more like the way movies had gone in the sense that like, for event shows that are cultural touchstones for, I'll use my older daughter, for her generation, so Stranger Things or Wednesday, will get her to be like, when's it coming out, you know, let me watch it. But otherwise, like I was saying last week, she's on a steady diet right now of Modern Family and The O.C., all of which finished their run quite some time ago. That said, this weekend, she was saying that she preferred the way Summer I Turned Pretty came out, because it felt momentous. It felt that same way that we talk about those halcyon, late aught days of the end of Breaking Bad, for example. Late teens?

• 28:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:51Andy Greenwald?

  Mid-teens? Anyway, that's the way she was talking about it, too. Like, it was a nice event to have over a period of time. And it just strikes me as one of those things, like, you know, three years ago, everyone's writing off the movie experience as outdated or not meeting the customer where he or she is. And then suddenly, we have a couple of years where people are like, no, actually, it's pretty good.

• 29:11Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:12Andy Greenwald?

  We like it. It actually works. Maybe there's a way to even connect it to your point about, you know, the episodic model, which is, we just keep breaking stuff because we think we need to iterate all the time, when maybe people like the way it is.

• 29:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I also would ask you, from a creative standpoint and from a development standpoint, whether or not the timelines for these shows have changed drastically in relationship to when the shows are going to be released. So my question is essentially, like, if you were to be working on Tires or Adults, so let's say, like, something like Tires that gets released.

• 29:51Andy Greenwald?

  I got respectful passes for both, but thank you.

• 29:53Chris Ryan?

  You guys would have to write and produce the entire season and deliver it. It wouldn't be like, we're four episodes ahead.

• 30:02Andy Greenwald?

  I mean.

• 30:03Chris Ryan?

  And when it starts airing, and we're kind of like iterating off of things and seeing what people are responding to and changing the material as the season goes on.

• 30:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. I think that, I think the issue is more that there are, in this brave new world, like, there are series that benefit from a different sort of schedule, that certainly benefit from, if there's only five episodes of story, make five episodes. And if that's the case, and especially if it's a limited, you could treat it more like a film and perfect it and get it right, and then deliver it to the network, you know, to do as you see fit. And then, of course, there's the other category that just simply didn't exist 10-plus years ago, of the massive visual effects spectacle show that requires almost eight to 12 extra months for, and that's just always going to be that way. I think one of the real problems, though, is the sort of the virus of prestige and how prestige TV

• 30:54Andy Greenwald?

  gets made infected all shows. So that the timeline and the way things are put together is just, it's like, really, really incoherent mix of hurry up and slow down, that it's going to take what it's going to take, but also we needed to decide two weeks ago, but also we want to hit this window, but then also we're going to sit on it for a year because our numbers say that our audience doesn't like this anymore until Love Island comes back, or whatever.

• 31:17Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 31:18Andy Greenwald?

  So everything, the entire industry got fed into the same, like, production timeline wood chipper.

• 31:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:26Andy Greenwald?

  Of certain shows that require or even benefit from a certain timeline. I think that's why not just, like, we every year, we're like, wow, they really did it. The pit's really coming back in January, when anyone older than, even older than us, is like, you mean it's a TV show?

• 31:42Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 31:43Andy Greenwald?

  But it's like, it's like some lost art that we forgot collectively how to do. And it is talked about that way internally, too, inside the industry of like, wow, that's remarkable. They shoot in L.A. and they do it every year? I don't understand why we can't get back to that. But maybe it is because that middle, the middle class of TV shows, fell out of favor. And so it's either, I mean, CBS is still churning out 20 episodes of Elspeth a year, but then, you know, when you turn to, like, prestige things on other services, they are, they're in a different business entirely.

• 32:16Chris Ryan?

  I saw recently that there was, I can't remember the Netflix show, but it was like, something is moving production from North Carolina to Georgia because of the vagaries of tax breaks.

• 32:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 32:27Chris Ryan?

  And, yeah. I mean, the one thing, whether or not you believe that everything should be made in L.A., or that, you know, what the issues are with, like, shooting overseas, which a lot of stuff does now, it would be nice if, like, these studios just took a haircut every once in a while, and we're like, yeah, it's going to cost a little bit more, but we're going to get the best people, and those people get to live in the city that they make, do their job in.

• 32:52Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it is so deeply entrenched in every fiber of American business now, that a corporation should never, ever, under any circumstance, pay the people who work for them a little bit more.

• 33:07Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 33:08Andy Greenwald?

  Like, and somehow, we have all.

• 33:09Chris Ryan?

  I don't even know if it's been paying them that much more.

• 33:11Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 33:12Chris Ryan?

  It's like, make it easier for them to do their jobs. And it's like.

• 33:13Andy Greenwald?

  Those are connected.

• 33:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 33:15Andy Greenwald?

  But we're all.

• 33:16Chris Ryan?

  But getting to live where you work is the number one thing, you know?

• 33:20Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, I completely agree with you on that. I just think that we don't, they've done a really good job. They, like, we cheer for, like, corporate earnings reports, you know, like, the whole narrative, even the way The Hollywood Reporter, when they're not busy trolling X accounts to see how they feel about the peasants revolt, like, definitely, that's probably the only attention they pay to the peasants revolt, in terms of like, why the fuck does this all cost so much? Like, we're not actually interrogating any of that. And then, you know, suddenly, this became a completely different kind of revolt. But like, you know, the entire nature of the conversation isn't, we should make more episodes of something, and we should allow people to live where they work and

• 34:04Andy Greenwald?

  establish a beachhead of, like, consistency and, and, and all of that. Instead, the conversation is, David Ellison doesn't get what he wants, he's going to pull up his whole company and move it to Texas, like Joe Rogan. Like, what?

• 34:17Chris Ryan?

  It was actually Tennessee, I think he was really looking at, right?

• 34:19Andy Greenwald?

  Was he?

• 34:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:21Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, well, Joe Rogan pulled up and went to Austin, right?

• 34:22Chris Ryan?

  He did, Ben. Yeah.

• 34:23Andy Greenwald?

  And it worked out.

• 34:24Chris Ryan?

  I guess.

• 34:25Andy Greenwald?

  Is he hiring?

• 34:26Chris Ryan?

  [laughing]

• 34:27Andy Greenwald?

  Because I could switch that opinion real quick.

• 34:29Chris Ryan?

  A show that I think in a, is a very traditional show, and in a maybe non-traditional way, or it's about, you know, it's about younger people who are living together, making their way in New York City, even though it's

• 34:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 34:40Chris Ryan?

  quite obviously shot in Toronto, is Adults, which is coming back for its second season on FX tonight. Two episodes dropped tonight. I believe it's an eight-episode season, like, the last season. I wish it was 15 episodes or 12 episodes. I'm not trying to make anybody's life harder than it needs to be, but it is. I find the show really delightful. And I think the second season is a big leap forward. Look, I admit that I have just like a weakness slash soft spot for sitcoms, and I kind of still use it as a reward for making it through another day in America, is just to fire up, like, 22 minutes of something, like, mildly funny before I go to bed.

• 35:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 35:22Chris Ryan?

  And this is just an example of, like, a show that just needs a little bit of time to find the rhythms of not only how, like, the writing works, but also, like, how the characters interact with each other. It's essentially like a screwball comedy of, like, I believe, five people who wind up living together in Queens as they try to, like, navigate, like, getting jobs.

• 35:44Andy Greenwald?

  Your numbers check out, by the way.

• 35:45Chris Ryan?

  About five people?

• 35:46Andy Greenwald?

  I was just backstopping you. There are five members of the cast.

• 35:48Chris Ryan?

  Awesome. My favorite actor or my favorite performer on this show is probably Owen Thiel, who's also like a podcaster. And I just think he's fantastic in this show. But, yeah, I know that you had mixed feelings about the special, the

• 36:07Andy Greenwald?

  Well.

• 36:08Chris Ryan?

  between-season special that they put up.

• 36:09Andy Greenwald?

  I thought it was really interesting that, well, we talked, we touched on it briefly in a different conversation. I thought this was really, really interesting. John Landgraf, longtime head of FX. prides himself on thinking outside the box and zagging and looking for inefficiencies and trying to do things the way other people don't, or at least getting ahead of the curve. And many, many examples in the television landscape and in the television cemetery of shows that just felt like they launched wrong, you know, and they wish they could do a do-over, whether it's they didn't, they, the pilot wasn't the right episode to begin with, or, you know, I imagine that, I have to believe both because I'm a fan and because I do think this is partially true, that the failure of the late, great FX show Terriers, and

• 36:54Andy Greenwald?

  the fact that people just didn't like the name, probably still rankles. Like, if it was just called, like, Oceanside Detectives, it would be in season 41 right now, because they were doing two seasons a year, because everyone was like, this rules.

• 37:06Chris Ryan?

  CSI San Diego.

• 37:07Andy Greenwald?

  Basically.

• 37:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:09Andy Greenwald?

  Cool surf individuals, that's what it stands for. So that he basically-

• 37:15Chris Ryan?

  A Robin Hood story.

• 37:17Andy Greenwald?

  Why not? If this was called Adults Are Robin Hood Story, we could see. So if anyone did or didn't check out this first season, it began with a scene that, like all pilots do, wants to set the tone, what the comedy's gonna be and who the characters are in a outlandish circumstance. And in this circumstance, our five friends were on a New York subway car and encountered something that all of us who have ever lived in New York encountered, which is a gentleman pleasuring himself on the train. And then one of the characters, I believe it's Issa-

• 37:46Chris Ryan?

  Issa, yeah.

• 37:47Andy Greenwald?

  -responds by pleasuring herself in kind. And I believe FX has-

• 37:54Chris Ryan?

  You don't see that on Modern Family, I'll tell you that.

• 37:55Andy Greenwald?

  And I, although I did see it once on a J train, I will tell you that. Because the streaming era, FX definitely has the numbers and could probably show you on the curve when all of the audience dropped out at that moment and never came back.

• 38:09Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 38:10Andy Greenwald?

  I know, I mean, I'm exaggerating, but, but it wouldn't surprise me if they pointed to that as like, maybe not the best way to onboard people to the show.

• 38:18Chris Ryan?

  I think you're right. That is probably the sitcom's way of doing like a dead body and then saying six weeks earlier. It's like, you have to like, you have to lead with the most outrageous thing that will grab people.

• 38:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and that was definitely encouraged. And then they were like, well, this, we actually think, it's also a sense that they were like, the creators, Ben Cronen golden, Rebecca Shaw, and Nick Kroll is an EP on it, that they were like, we believe in these guys and we believe in the ensemble, in a way that we often say, like, comedy needs time to gel. So they let them make a second pilot, and, called Marathon Day, and they released it a few weeks ago, we talked about it briefly, and they dropped it. This was the most interesting part for me. Not like the Gary episode of The Bear, which is a similar outside the box thing. It doesn't exist in its own little box. This new episode, Marathon Day, is now the first episode of the show on the Hulu menu thing.

• 39:06Chris Ryan?

  And it is canonically, like-

• 39:08Andy Greenwald?

  A prequel.

• 39:09Chris Ryan?

  A prequel to the show itself, yeah.

• 39:10Andy Greenwald?

  So I admire-

• 39:11Chris Ryan?

  It's how they meet this character, Paul Baker, who's played by Jack and Anna. It's really, very good.

• 39:15Andy Greenwald?

  I admired the moxie of that and the, the creative thinking of that. I hated the episode, and I don't really feel like continuing with the show, because comedy is, you know, deeply subjective. And for me, the, everything about the episodes I've seen are just, it's just, it's really trying, really trying hard at all times to make you interested, care, laugh, shocked. And I don't feel any actual chemistry or warmth, or, um-

• 39:47Chris Ryan?

  Wait, so you watched this special?

• 39:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Chris Ryan?

  And you watched how much of the first season?

• 39:51Andy Greenwald?

  I watched-

• 39:52Chris Ryan?

  The first 30 seconds?

• 39:53Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no, no, I'm saying, I think that's what their data said.

• 39:55Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 39:56Andy Greenwald?

  I watched the first six, I think, of the first season.

• 39:58Chris Ryan?

  Look at you. I do the work.

• 40:01Andy Greenwald?

  Dig and deep.

• 40:02Chris Ryan?

  I think that they found a rhythm in the second season that's quite delightful.

• 40:04Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 40:05Chris Ryan?

  Um, I recommend the show, Andy does not. Uh, and you can, you can hear more of Andy's thoughts on comedy in our Tires episode.

• 40:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 40:13Chris Ryan?

  It's not all negative for you and me, though, brother.

• 40:20Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 40:21Chris Ryan?

  So I wanted to take a brief minute, since we are recording this on Thursday, next Monday, uh, we'll have a little bit of a Frankenstein episode about the finale of Furious, which airs on Sunday. Um, and, uh, then we'll talk about Lanterns, and maybe Lioness, the following Thursday.

• 40:40Andy Greenwald?

  I, I gotta say that, um, I would be, I would be more invested in Lioness if I could watch you and Van talk about it.

• 40:49Chris Ryan?

  Don't tempt me with a good time.

• 40:51Andy Greenwald?

  I, I mean, because you tell me things, and I resp, I'm, I'm human.

• 40:59Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:00Andy Greenwald?

  I watched that clip. Well, you showed me the clip.

• 41:02Chris Ryan?

  I was like, look at the engagement.

• 41:04Andy Greenwald?

  I just hope-

• 41:07Chris Ryan?

  A lot of people are saying-

• 41:08Andy Greenwald?

  Like, why do, why are these views numbers so elevated? Why are they all coming from one phone? I, I'm not saying that, that we're recognized, but we were in the, like, the zone of interest, so to speak, where people are like, CR, more often than not. And there was a moment last night when, in that zone, where you are exposed, you know, we are potentially visible, where many people could have seen you holding up your phone, showing me you talking on our podcast.

• 41:37Chris Ryan?

  I was just showing you that Van was very good, and very funny.

• 41:40Andy Greenwald?

  And how were you?

• 41:41Chris Ryan?

  I was fine.

• 41:42Andy Greenwald?

  I thought you looked great.

• 41:43Chris Ryan?

  Thanks.

• 41:44Andy Greenwald?

  But I also thought that, like, there's a moment when he told me that Joe Zoe Haldani is being tortured, and her torturer pauses to give a disquisition on what they did to us with COVID.

• 41:53Chris Ryan?

  Uh-huh. Maybe it is just better if I update you on where we're at on the season, and you don't have to watch it. I did want to talk about some things that we had been enjoying. So as it is a late summer, kind of Dog Days moment, we were gonna do some recommendations, uh, of things we are reading, things we are watching, um, and things we are listening to. The thing we were watching, that, you know, we, we obviously, basically breathlessly account for all watching on this show, but we didn't really talk about Tony. Um, we had seen it a couple weeks ago, it's had a very, sort of like, staggered rollout.

• 42:31Andy Greenwald?

  It seems like it's a hit.

• 42:32Chris Ryan?

  I think people really like it.

• 42:34Andy Greenwald?

  But not just critically, it seems like box office, that the slow rollout is really working.

• 42:38Chris Ryan?

  And sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it doesn't. Uh, I think the word of mouth was both infuriating but good for this, because I think people were like, why do people keep saying this is a masterpiece and it's not playing in my city yet? And now that it is finally starting to get out there, I think people are going to, and I think it's people who cared about Anthony Bourdain and people who were indifferent, and, or didn't care at all, you know, and, because it's a really good movie.

• 43:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 43:04Chris Ryan?

  And that is maybe what the future of biopics should be thinking about, is like-

• 43:11Andy Greenwald?

  They always should have been, yes.

• 43:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Uh, is like, let's make a good movie first and worry about servicing this person's legacy and, and story second.

• 43:18Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think, do you think somewhere in Liverpool Danny Boyle is hearing this podcast, being like, shit.

• 43:23Chris Ryan?

  [laughing]

• 43:25Andy Greenwald?

  I gotta go back to the drawing board of these Beatles movies.

• 43:27Chris Ryan?

  That's Sam Mendes.

• 43:28Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 43:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Danny Boyle.

• 43:30Andy Greenwald?

  Why did I think he was making that?

• 43:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I don't know.

• 43:32Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, because he made, um, Yesterday.

• 43:34Chris Ryan?

  Yes, he did.

• 43:36Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, we don't recognize that as a Danny Boyle film?

• 43:39Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it's a Himesh Patel movie, I, I respect it.

• 43:41Andy Greenwald?

  We all have ways of entering. I apologize for the air. Sam Mendes probably was listening to it from, um, I don't know, Canary Wharf? Where do you think Sam Mendes is listening to our podcast?

• 43:51Chris Ryan?

  Abbey Road, probably.

• 43:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Chris Ryan?

  Where you're shooting those guys walking across the street. Anyway, uh, I wanted to give you, uh, a platform to talk about the movie, because I got to chat about it on Big Pick with Sean. But I, like, what did you think, and?

• 44:03Andy Greenwald?

  I love this movie. I've genuinely felt exhilarated by watching it. And to your point, not really because I read and loved Kitchen Confidential, or think a lot about Tony Bourdain, or who he was and what he was and his legacy, which we talked about in a special podcast episode a few weeks ago. I thought this movie, from the opening frames, is so tactile and organic and alive, and in a way that many contemporary movies don't feel to me. And I, I wonder if this is a hallmark of Matt Johnson who made it. Um, I haven't seen Blackberry yet, I haven't seen Nirvana, the band, the movie, the TV show, the movie.

• 44:42Chris Ryan?

  That's it. You got it the first time.

• 44:43Andy Greenwald?

  Did I get it?

• 44:45Chris Ryan?

  More or less, yeah.

• 44:46Andy Greenwald?

  And that's a Danny Boyle picture?

• 44:47Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 44:48Andy Greenwald?

  It was just so evident to me from the beginning that he understood the assignment maybe even more than the people who gave the assignment. In the sense that this movie, he very much wanted to make a movie about a coming of age story, set at a certain time with a certain kind of rough-hewn feel to it, and was able to do something that I think is very hard, it, for anyone in the public eye, but certainly when dealing with beloved stories, he was able to filter out what he felt was irrelevant to this movie he wanted to make. And it just had all these little touches that felt, I keep wanting to say old fashioned, and I don't mean to like disparage movies, because I've been enjoying a lot of, a lot of movies this year. I think good movies are still made, obviously. But the,

• 45:30Andy Greenwald?

  sometimes I'm watching things, and I feel them kind of slip away, like the fact that the main character of this movie, that the version of Tony played by Dominic Sessa, is an asshole, and is not a great guy sometimes, and is selfish and ego-driven and deeply fragile. And then beneath that is a sensitivity that you understand, and that you can connect to the real person that we saw later in life, and that in some ways was, is kind of the skeleton key to understanding his whole existence-

• 45:59Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 46:00Andy Greenwald?

  -private and public. But the permission to do that, and not make him a magic boy or a magic saint, you know, who is just needed to be unlocked in the right way, was really, really appealing. And then you throw into it, just like, you populate a world, and it's a period piece that doesn't feel like it's winking at you all the time, being like, there were no cell pho, with the line in the shards, there were no cell phones, only serial killers. Like, it wasn't that at all. It was 70s, but other than a few details and like, cars and fashion choices and nunchucks, it could be any era.

• 46:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:33Andy Greenwald?

  Um, and just all the performances. Um, Banderas, Amelia Jones, and especially our guy, number one draft pick, Leo Woodall.

• 46:40Chris Ryan?

  Unbelievable in this. What a great year. Have you seen Tuner?

• 46:43Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 46:44Chris Ryan?

  He's really, really good in this. Like, it's basically a very down and dirty, small stakes, like, crime film. Not in small stakes, quite, quite large stakes, but it's him and Dustin Hoffman.

• 46:54Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 46:55Chris Ryan?

  Um, and he plays a-

• 46:56Andy Greenwald?

  Dusty's still acting.

• 46:57Chris Ryan?

  A piano tuner with auditory problems.

• 46:59Andy Greenwald?

  Sometimes I think you're making movies up.

• 47:00Chris Ryan?

  No, it's great, though. You should check it out.

• 47:03Andy Greenwald?

  Did Sean see it at Cannes? Like, what, how?

• 47:05Chris Ryan?

  It came, I mean, it came out in the spring, I think.

• 47:08Andy Greenwald?

  Of?

• 47:09Chris Ryan?

  Of '26, of this year.

• 47:10Andy Greenwald?

  Are you sure?

• 47:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 47:12Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 47:13Chris Ryan?

  Am I sure?

• 47:14Andy Greenwald?

  Did you see it on IraqGolds.net?

• 47:16Chris Ryan?

  It's already come out on streaming. It's already on, on VOD.

• 47:19Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just gonna, anyone else in the studio ever hear of this movie? No. Can't say I have. Ever like see the box underneath the tile?

• 47:25Chris Ryan?

  You just don't believe that these movies exist unless they like are served right to you?

• 47:30Andy Greenwald?

  Isn't that a great way to be?

• 47:31Chris Ryan?

  I love this film and I echo all of your sentiments. I think that there are so many sequences in this that have stuck with me, like the I don't want to give it away, no spoilers here, but like there's a specific fishing scene that I love.

• 47:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 47:48Chris Ryan?

  Um, it was shot by Michael Baumann, who did One Battle After Another and you know,

• 47:54Chris Ryan?

  is or Licorice Pizza and is like one of PTA's collaborators and it just looks incredible. So yeah, I just think it it just, it's just, it's probably my favorite movie of the summer.

• 48:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, it's so vibrant. I mean, Dominic Sessa from The Holdovers to, I mean, he is a star. He's super charismatic and fun to watch. But there's this very specific kind of electricity that you can feel when you sit down in a movie theater and you feel like you're in good hands and you feel like you're going to be told a story. And in a way, this is a connected conversation to what you were saying about the problem with TV bloat. You know, where it's the wrong number of episodes, but things like that, like this is a story about a specific person in a specific circumstance, in a specific place, in a certain amount of time.

• 48:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:38Andy Greenwald?

  And it does not, other than as you alluded to at the beginning, there's a, there's a little bit of, of off-roading like or onboarding into the future at the very end, which is sort of like a nice little grace note.

• 48:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:48Andy Greenwald?

  But otherwise, it does not feel any pressure to explain everything or really anything, other than what happened to one guy, kind of.

• 48:58Chris Ryan?

  I think it's also a great movie about the choices you don't know you're making in your life.

• 49:04Chris Ryan?

  At various points in this film, the Tony character is presented with different paths he can follow. And one of them is the Leo Woodall character and, and that's kind of more of a model of self-destruction. One of them is the Antonio Banderas character, who is somebody who seems to have become a little bit

• 49:24Chris Ryan?

  like living within himself now, like he tried once, they got his ass kicked and now makes four things well, but only four things at a, at a like quick serve fish and chips restaurant on the Cape. And he doesn't want either of those things, like he, there are parts of each that are attractive, but like you can see him formulating his own ideas about who he wants to be by reacting to what other people have become.

• 49:49Andy Greenwald?

  It's mythmaking and I think that one of the things that is underserved in the debate about whether like Tony would have liked this or whatever is that he loved mythmaking and he loved myths and he loved running at them and challenging them and celebrating them. And some of the best episodes of his TV shows were absolutely just running at

• 50:06Andy Greenwald?

  not cliches, but tropes of the movies he loved or of the celebrities that he admired or the painters and poets.

• 50:10Chris Ryan?

  He made the George B. Higgins one in Boston. He made the

• 50:13Andy Greenwald?

  The Pasolini, Pasolini episode. And so I think that what he would have, would have, it's a fool's errand to even say this, but I think the version of him that I briefly knew, I think, or in, in, observed, I think would have been tickled at the idea that he was worthy of such

• 50:28Andy Greenwald?

  totemic adulation. And given this movie in which exactly, as you say, there's enough of it there to put together something deeper and bigger, which doesn't mean truer, but in some ways, doesn't mean more accurate, but it might mean, it might be more truthful. Meaning the Antonio Banderas character, chef, who doesn't really have a name until the very end. It's such a, it's a beautiful performance. He's just such an incredible actor and presence on the screen. Tony, always in his life, at every moment when he was interviewed, at every stage of celebrity, would say what he really wanted. And what he really wanted was for the first few years, he was going to just unplug and live in Vietnam for a year to write a book that would be inspired by Graham Greene or whatever.

• 51:11Andy Greenwald?

  He would talk about, in the interview that I referenced that he did with me in 2013, he talked about, you know, his happy place being raising his daughter, whether it was in New York or with his wife's family in Sardinia. He was always talking about

• 51:24Chris Ryan?

  What he'd rather be doing.

• 51:25Andy Greenwald?

  The rather doing in the quiet shack or whatever. And also, he loved wearing those sweaters. He loved wearing those same kind of like corded seafarer sweaters that Banderas wore. And, and the thing about if you're 15 minutes, if you're, if you're anything but 15 minutes early or late, was him in everything. He, that's, that was canon and that was my experience and everyone's experience, whoever interviewed him. Similarly.

• 51:46Chris Ryan?

  Were you on time for him? Did I ask you this?

• 51:48Andy Greenwald?

  He was there before me.

• 51:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I know. Were you on time?

• 51:51Andy Greenwald?

  I was on time for him. Well, you weren't there that day. You were in California. Yeah, of course.

• 51:57Andy Greenwald?

  And, uh, and the Leo Woodall character, you know, there's elements, as you said, of self-destruction that he later experienced in his life.

• 52:05Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 52:05Andy Greenwald?

  And, you know, for like deep, deep

• 52:09Andy Greenwald?

  Wikipedia truthers about him, like the, the Amelia Jones character is Nancy, who is his first wife.

• 52:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:14Andy Greenwald?

  Who is a, um, a very, very important and very underrepresented and kind of misunderstood figure in his life because she was with him during everything up until the point when he became who he became.

• 52:28Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 52:30Andy Greenwald?

  And that's, that adds an extra level of, of sort of ghostliness to the movie. I, I don't know. I just thought it was like, it's an incredibly difficult thing to do, but it was done with such style and personality and, and I thought it was an exceptional movie.

• 52:44Chris Ryan?

  Comes with our highest recommendation. So let's talk about some other things we recommend. Want to do books first, since you brought show and tell here?

• 52:52Andy Greenwald?

  I brought show and tell.

• 52:53Chris Ryan?

  So why don't you go first? What have you been reading recently that you like?

• 52:58Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I know that you wanted to save my thoughts on Saul Bellow for like a special podcast. Is that right?

• 53:03Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it depends on if that's what you think Stick the Landing should become, is Saul Bellow talk.

• 53:07Andy Greenwald?

  I have not stuck the landing of Humboldt's Gift yet. I will tell you that. That was the wrong book to bring poolside this weekend.

• 53:12Chris Ryan?

  So you're on a Saul Bellow journey, but that really just means reading some of Humboldt's Gift.

• 53:17Andy Greenwald?

  It just means, you know, there's different reading experiences, like the book I'm about to talk about, I read basically in a day and a half. And then there's the one that you sort of chip away at in the background. And you're going to recommend a book, I think, that I said to you, I meant to bring with me for my little vacation that I was on this week. And at the last minute, uh, I decided, no, no, I shouldn't bring that out. I should bring Humboldt's Gift to the poolside and it didn't get a lot of burn. But yeah, I'm going to hold up. This is the new novel by one of our favorites, one of our heroes who's been on the podcast before, George Pelikanos.

• 53:50Chris Ryan?

  As NPR says, a modern master, storytelling master.

• 53:53Andy Greenwald?

  What does CR say?

• 53:54Chris Ryan?

  A modern master of storytelling.

• 53:56Andy Greenwald?

  Pretty much the same thing.

• 53:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:57Andy Greenwald?

  Isn't that what got the guy at New York Magazine in trouble?

• 54:00Chris Ryan?

  Oh, just like remixing NPR?

• 54:01Andy Greenwald?

  Just remixing the words. Um, this is a novel called The Blue Flame. It is the first novel starring one of his, he has a sort of a, a stable protagonist. This is the first Derek Strange mystery that he's written in, I think, probably 20 years. It's, so little background, we've talked about Pelikanos before. George has been on the podcast. His, he is, he is like the bard of Washington DC. He has written, I think, 23 novels now, all of which are set in the district that he knows so well, which is not the city of House of Cards or even Veep. It is a city of real people, a predominantly black and brown city that has like a deep cultural legacy and history and that goes well beyond like Beltway politics.

• 54:45Andy Greenwald?

  And, uh, his early books are incredibly important to us. When he was writing about a loosely autobiographical kind of wild child Greek American investigator named Nick Stefano.

• 54:56Chris Ryan?

  Coked out punk rock fan.

• 54:57Andy Greenwald?

  Like, like, like jump roping out coke sweats while listening to The Replacements, Tim. So I would say that we loved these books. Uh, and then

• 55:08Chris Ryan?

  Real ones will understand how important that is.

• 55:12Andy Greenwald?

  Then he matured into writing these books. I think we're big fans of, and we recommend as a jumping off point, always the DC Quartet.

• 55:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:19Andy Greenwald?

  Which is a series of four books that he wrote, again, over 20 years ago now, about a, um, a black and white investigative team, basically, Marcus Clay and Dimitri Karas. Each book is set in a different decade, um, 70s, 80s, 90s.

• 55:34Chris Ryan?

  King Suckerman is the 70s. Sweet Forever is my favorite, is set during the 80s.

• 55:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yep. Um, Shame the Devil. Oh, and then there's The Big Blowdown, which is not set in the 2000s. It's a

• 55:43Chris Ryan?

  The prequel, right?

• 55:43Andy Greenwald?

  Prequel.

• 55:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Andy Greenwald?

  But yeah, I think Sweet Forever is the one we always recommend the most because it's an entire like weekend of like debaucherous violence set against the backdrop of the NCAA tournament and Len Bias's untimely passing. And, uh, it's just an incredible crime book. And what's amazing, and then George went on, he was integral to The Wire and The Deuce and, and, and The Wayne Jenkins Story. We have The City as well.

• 56:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:10Andy Greenwald?

  So he's done tons of TV and stuff. But what's really cool about this book, I would say, which is a very fast read, is his writing has gotten more, it's gotten slower, it's gotten more thoughtful, it's gotten more heavily researched, like in terms of the attention to detail and how murder police do their job and how cases actually move through the system. But what he never forgets are two things. One, the dignity of the people involved in the kind of cases that don't get covered in the Washington Post. But also, he just fucking loves what he loves. And there are long, like there's, he introduces a murder cop named Angie, and then there's just an entire page where it talks about how Angie grew up loving Slant Six and once played at Fort Reno before she became a police officer.

• 56:53Andy Greenwald?

  There's a lot of stuff about vintage cars. There's a lot of stuff about old movies. And I think the best way to consider a lot of his more recent books is that they are westerns. And Derek Strange is the aging sheriff called back one more time.

• 57:05Chris Ryan?

  Trying to make sense of a world that's changing around him.

• 57:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but the things that matter to him still ought to matter, which is like a decent day's work, you know, respecting people around you, you know, basically what I do by showing up on time to this podcast every day. But, um, just a, just a great writer who never gets enough flowers, but is still doing it.

• 57:22Chris Ryan?

  Uh, a couple from me that I got via an excellent newsletter that I subscribed to recently, by a writer named Max Reed, who used to work at Gawker and has a Patreon newsletter called Reed Max. And I don't know how I like arrived at this specific element of his work, which is a lot of it is about technology and, and social media and writing about the sort of digital world around us. But then he also has like a tremendously deep reservoir of book and film recommendations. So I highly recommend people, first of all, sign up for Max's newsletter. But the two books that I grabbed off of his recommendations, one is called Declare, uh, which is by a writer named Tim Powers.

• 58:06Andy Greenwald?

  That's the one I should have brought with me. I bought it as soon as you told me about it.

• 58:08Chris Ryan?

  I'm still really curious to know whether you're going to vibe with this. So like, I personally have not ever really done much hard sci-fi or fantasy, and I wouldn't describe either of these books as those, but they have elements of them. And, uh, Declare is like an epic. I would liken it to

• 58:26Chris Ryan?

  I would say Le Carre, but I don't even know which specific Le Carre I would liken it to. So I'm going to say Alan first, who we obviously love very much is a writer, writes a lot of espionage books set during World War II. His first one, Night Soldiers, is sort of his epic that he wrote if he wasn't going to get to write another one.

• 58:45Andy Greenwald?

  And then he wrote the same book 12 more times, but shorter.

• 58:48Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and it's basically this arc across, you know, the entirety of World War II from the late 30s until the end. And, uh, Declare is very much like that. If also, the Bible was real and like, there's like some Raiders of the Lost Ark stuff happening. And it's fantastic. I mean, it's, it's dizzying and at times kind of like almost hard for me to wrap my mind around some of the ideas or visuals that he's painting. But it is like a really fun spin on the usual, like, One Perfect Spy, moving through, you know, forties Paris and Berlin. Um, so I highly recommend Declare.

• 59:31Chris Ryan?

  Another one that I picked up off of Max's recommendations is a book I'm reading now called Life During Wartime, which is a book by a guy named Lucia Shepherd, and it is about Americans stationed and fighting a war in Guatemala in the 80s, I think.

• 59:48Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 59:49Chris Ryan?

  And it has elements of like, it's a little bit of Joseph Conrad and a little bit of Jonathan Hickman.

• 59:56Andy Greenwald?

  Look what you're doing here. I like this.

• 59:58Chris Ryan?

  Uh, so Jonathan Hickman, obviously a comic book writer that Andy and I love, but writes a lot about psychological warfare and psychic warfare. And I would say that's a huge element of this. I'm still early days in this book, probably about 75 pages in, but again, like another one of those where you get to a scene that you've read a few times before in other books, but then you're like, wait, what? Did he just say?

• 1:00:21Andy Greenwald?

  But now it's multiversal?

• 1:00:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, or whatever, like, it'll be like something slithering in this guy's arm, like, what? You know, like?

• 1:00:27Andy Greenwald?

  That sounds cool.

• 1:00:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so I love this and I've recommended this before, but the last one I'll throw out there is just London Falling, the Patrick Radenkeef book.

• 1:00:35Andy Greenwald?

  You finished it.

• 1:00:35Chris Ryan?

  I did finish it. And, you know, obviously it had been excerpted to some extent in The New Yorker, or he had written a piece in The New Yorker and then wrote a full book treatment of this, um, this case of a suicide, but was it a suicide or was it a prompted suicide? And what happened to this young boy who leapt off a balcony at Canary Wharf, of all places, um, in London? And what's happened to London over the last 25 years or so?

• 1:01:03Andy Greenwald?

  Would you like me to weigh in on that?

• 1:01:04Chris Ryan?

  I'm sure, I'm sure you have plenty of opinions. Any records that you're banging right now?

• 1:01:08Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like this is the one that you, you would have brought up, honestly.

• 1:01:11Chris Ryan?

  Well, I have, I have a couple I wanted to throw out.

• 1:01:14Andy Greenwald?

  Specifically this God of War record.

• 1:01:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Andy Greenwald?

  You all about that life, right?

• 1:01:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Andy Greenwald?

  You talk about that. I have no, I am absolutely have no right to be the one to talk about this album because this is, they're gunning a body of water.

• 1:01:25Chris Ryan?

  I had, uh, Doug from They Are Gunning a Body of Water on the pod.

• 1:01:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Chris Ryan?

  Last year. And, uh, this is his side project that he has with another band, um, from Philly called Hooky.

• 1:01:38Andy Greenwald?

  Who are awesome.

• 1:01:39Chris Ryan?

  Who are awesome.

• 1:01:40Andy Greenwald?

  Recently discovered them.

• 1:01:41Chris Ryan?

  Basically like really glitchy gorgeous pop.

• 1:01:44Andy Greenwald?

  Drone kind of shoegaze pop.

• 1:01:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I just, this is a short EP. You can, you can listen to it on your drive to or from work and it, it rules though. I mean, I don't know if you have any like further descriptions of it.

• 1:01:57Andy Greenwald?

  My description of it was, I think all of the verbs and adjectives that you said I was getting from my kids, I used in a text about this record.

• 1:02:04Chris Ryan?

  Rips owns.

• 1:02:05Andy Greenwald?

  I loved it.

• 1:02:06Chris Ryan?

  Crazy bro.

• 1:02:07Andy Greenwald?

  I loved it. Um, I also am really into this band called The Tubbs.

• 1:02:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Andy Greenwald?

  Who are Welsh and they kind of are like, what if the Pogues were teenage fan club? Does that make sense?

• 1:02:20Chris Ryan?

  We're getting really good at describing stuff.

• 1:02:22Andy Greenwald?

  It's almost as if this was our job 25 years ago.

• 1:02:25Chris Ryan?

  But it's also like, why can't we do this for TV? Why can't we just like knock that out?

• 1:02:28Andy Greenwald?

  That's our job. This is fun.

• 1:02:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:30Andy Greenwald?

  Um, they have a, they have a new record called Hard Life coming out really soon. I think it's in two weeks and every single, and it's their first record on Merge. And every song from it has been better than the last song and I love it. But the other thing that we do have to mention, um, I think I had it, I had it open here was that, uh, the Lauren Laverne BBC Six playlist that she did last week, which is, speaking of how London has changed, so Lauren Laverne's, uh, radio BBC presenter who fronted one of my favorite 90s bands, Knickie.

• 1:03:03Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:03Andy Greenwald?

  And she did a special for her show on BBC Six Music called Rave Forever 90s, where she had the drum and bass producer Goldie on to talk. And then they just played nothing but the best drum and bass bangers from the 90s for an hour.

• 1:03:19Chris Ryan?

  Which you did have a brief but deep and passionate love affair with.

• 1:03:24Andy Greenwald?

  I would say it was passionate and quite expensive.

• 1:03:28Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:03:28Andy Greenwald?

  Because you'd be like, you want to come to Boston this weekend? And I would be like, I would love to. Unfortunately, I've just spent $40 on L T J Bookham's Earth compilation on import, which comes in a lovely cardboard box.

• 1:03:41Chris Ryan?

  And the most important part about this was that we weren't going dancing.

• 1:03:45Andy Greenwald?

  Never. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We were very, you know, the, you know, the line in Waiting for Guffman where Eugene Levy says, I wasn't the class clown, but I sat next to him and studied him. That's what I did with rave culture. Nothing was more interesting to me than the idea of taking drugs and going to large dances. Can't say I did much of either at that time.

• 1:04:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Andy Greenwald?

  But I found it very interesting and I studied it closely. And, uh, yeah, this, this playlist is, I don't know what other words to use.

• 1:04:18Chris Ryan?

  Where is it found?

• 1:04:20Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, if you Google, it's on bbc.co.uk. If you search.

• 1:04:24Chris Ryan?

  One of your favorite websites.

• 1:04:25Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it's bookmarked. If you go to, if you just search Lauren Laverne Goldie, you will get this playlist.

• 1:04:31Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:31Andy Greenwald?

  You can play it off of, um, you can play it off of their website.

• 1:04:35Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if somebody has made a Spotify playlist of it. That's why I was asking.

• 1:04:37Andy Greenwald?

  When this, this song Valley of the Shadows came on by Origin Unknown, I briefly left my body and saw myself from a far distance jumping rope, thinking about raves.

• 1:04:48Chris Ryan?

  That happens a lot in the books I've been reading.

• 1:04:50Andy Greenwald?

  People just, I know, I looked at my arm and I saw something squirming and it was the youth I should have had. It was so intense.

• 1:04:56Chris Ryan?

  Do you know what? Those songs are usually like six and a half minutes long.

• 1:04:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:04:59Chris Ryan?

  Do you listen to the entire thing?

• 1:05:01Andy Greenwald?

  Five out. Well, no, I'm not like.

• 1:05:03Chris Ryan?

  Cause my problem with DJ sets is I'm often like, this is the best collection of music I've ever heard. I will now assemble it as a playlist so I can re-experience this. Cause I'll listen to something on like NTS or whatever.

• 1:05:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:13Chris Ryan?

  And then you're like, oh, all these songs are actually five and a half minutes and it's much different if nobody's mixing them together.

• 1:05:19Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, because you're not getting the, the best of, the best of it. You're just getting like the whole experience of each track.

• 1:05:24Chris Ryan?

  Which is totally fine, but like, I, I think.

• 1:05:26Andy Greenwald?

  I think it depends how you're experiencing music. I mean, at this point in your life, with the number of screens we have, the number of podcasts you have to do, how many playlists are you really just sitting like, you know, uh, cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed, lotus position, just experiencing?

• 1:05:39Chris Ryan?

  I gotta tell you something.

• 1:05:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Chris Ryan?

  Not having children is remarkable. You know? Nobody tells me what to do.

• 1:05:46Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, my God. Do you know how many Midnight's bonus tracks I listened to on the drive yesterday?

• 1:05:53Chris Ryan?

  Um, a couple of other records I wanted to recommend, the new Afghan Wigs record.

• 1:05:59Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 1:05:59Chris Ryan?

  Soft Control is out and it's really great. Uh, Greg Dooley, obviously a favorite of mine, um, has been making records for 40, 40 years.

• 1:06:07Andy Greenwald?

  And an occasional guest on this podcast.

• 1:06:09Chris Ryan?

  Occasional guest on this podcast. His new album with the, with the Wigs is called Soft Control. And I would say it is, uh, uh, really beautiful, uh, reckoning with like his like age, you know, where it's like, I think he knows what he can and can't do anymore in terms of like what kind of music he wants to make. And it's got some really glistening, beautiful melodies on this kind of like tapestry of surprisingly like modern R and B rock songwriting. So it's, it's really, really great.

• 1:06:37Andy Greenwald?

  He, can I, can I tell you, I think you probably have your own version of this and maybe everyone has their own version of this, but like, one of my happiest moments of happenstance of like, oh, I've made it to the other side of something and I'm in a different phase of my life was walking into an acupuncture clinic in Los Angeles and, uh, Greg Dooley is sitting there and he was like, hey, man. It's like, wow.

• 1:06:59Chris Ryan?

  Like, did he recognize you or was he just?

• 1:07:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, cause I was right around when he had been on the podcast and like, once he, I think once he invited us to Dodger, like he's a very nice man to us. We've been, like, we first interviewed him in, on his tour bus for the Twilight Singers record in New York in 99, 2000.

• 1:07:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Andy Greenwald?

  But just the fact that like, if you had said to either of us, and certainly to him in 1999, that one day you will be living a very happy and healthy life, getting acupuncture somewhere in Highland Park. I think it would have been like a, very much like the novel Declare.

• 1:07:29Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Uh, one more record I'll shout out is this band Idle County, uh, which is, I think they're from North Carolina and they have a new record, a new album called Long Gone Saviors. This is my no depression shit.

• 1:07:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:44Chris Ryan?

  This is, I'm back on it. Uh, this is for fans of, uh, Uncle Tupelo and Sunvolt.

• 1:07:52Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:53Chris Ryan?

  Jason Isbell, Zach Bryan, uh, M J Lenderman.

• 1:07:58Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:00Chris Ryan?

  It's fucking good. It's a great, great, great country rock record.

• 1:08:04Andy Greenwald?

  I want to hold up that record and instead of the NPR quote, it just says, "It's fucking good, Chris Ryan." That would move units, certainly in Silver Lake.

• 1:08:13Chris Ryan?

  The title track I have played like 50 times this week.

• 1:08:18Andy Greenwald?

  I thought you were gonna do, I thought you were gonna do a little gotcha journalism with me, though, about music.

• 1:08:23Chris Ryan?

  Oh, well, we could talk about West Side Cowboy if you want to.

• 1:08:25Andy Greenwald?

  Do it.

• 1:08:27Chris Ryan?

  West Side Cowboy is a British band who just released their debut album. And I think it's fantastic. I don't even know exactly what I would compare it to. I think it's just like, it's not that much different than Tubbs, is it?

• 1:08:43Andy Greenwald?

  It's, I wouldn't compare it to Tubbs, but I think they're very good.

• 1:08:46Chris Ryan?

  How would you describe them?

• 1:08:50Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, musically, I think it is, I feel like it's from this-

• 1:08:55Chris Ryan?

  They kind of feel like Luis Campesino-y to me, too.

• 1:08:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, well, there's like Black Country, New Road, Dry Cleaning. These are bands that do more spoken word stuff. Dry Cleaning does more spoken word stuff. It's not that, but it is that kind of like American influence, kind of groovy, percussive, and then with bigger ideas thrown on top of it. I like the record a lot.

• 1:09:12Chris Ryan?

  But?

• 1:09:13Andy Greenwald?

  Well, my only thing was, like, I, you know, you had Lain, our friend Lain Brown, on talking about the way the algorithm is cooked and fixed and all this. And I was like, this was served to me. And I was like, cool, this indie band, you know, it obviously serves and also serves my interests to be like, oh, I wonder if I've got the drop on Chris with this one, you know, like, I've discovered them first.

• 1:09:32Chris Ryan?

  It's not competitive, man.

• 1:09:34Andy Greenwald?

  A little bit, but then, you know, and I'm listening to them and I like those early singles, and I'm like, they're on island?

• 1:09:42Chris Ryan?

  Who cares?

• 1:09:42Andy Greenwald?

  They formed two years ago?

• 1:09:44Chris Ryan?

  Who cares?

• 1:09:45Andy Greenwald?

  I just don't know how that, Windhorse Fingers, I just don't know how that happens anymore. Like, why would you, in the year of our Lord 2026, be a young band from Manchester and put your first record out on a major global label?

• 1:09:57Chris Ryan?

  Maybe the majors are so cooked, they're taking what they can get. Maybe they know that, like, real bands are back. Who knows?

• 1:10:02Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not trying to diss them. I hope they earn back whatever advance they got, and the record is good. But I was actually bringing it up as a point-

• 1:10:09Chris Ryan?

  You're like, this is a psyop.

• 1:10:10Andy Greenwald?

  No, I didn't say it was a psyop, but I said-

• 1:10:12Chris Ryan?

  Yes, you did, actually. You did say it was like, this is more of a psyop than Geese.

• 1:10:16Andy Greenwald?

  Neither are psyops, but this is more of a potential psyop than Geese.

• 1:10:22Chris Ryan?

  You know where we can-

• 1:10:22Andy Greenwald?

  Who are legitimately great.

• 1:10:24Chris Ryan?

  We can continue this conversation at the New York Film Festival premiere of Paul Thomas Anderson's Cameron Winter concert film.

• 1:10:30Andy Greenwald?

  That's a psyop.

• 1:10:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Andy Greenwald?

  That's, that's a psyop.

• 1:10:34Chris Ryan?

  That's happening.

• 1:10:34Andy Greenwald?

  I know.

• 1:10:36Chris Ryan?

  Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thanks to Kai and Kaia for producing. And we'll be back on Monday with a standalone discussion of Furious, the finale, which is airing on Sunday. Hopefully, some guests joining us for that one.

• 1:10:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:50Chris Ryan?

  And then we'll be back next Thursday for regular scheduled programming, i.e. lanterns and anything else that comes across the-

• 1:10:57Andy Greenwald?

  Definitely lanterns, because it's gotten short shrift from us, I feel like.

• 1:11:00Chris Ryan?

  It actually has.

• 1:11:01Andy Greenwald?

  And we like it.

• 1:11:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. What an ending.

• 1:11:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Andy Greenwald?

  That's it. We call that an act out in the industry. Strong.

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