Jason Mantzoukas on ‘Shoresy’ Season 4 and ‘SAS: Rogue Heroes.’ Plus, Richard Price on Writing ‘Lazarus Man.’

Chris is joined by Jason Mantzoukas to talk about the fourth season of the Canadian hockey show ‘Shoresy’ and how the show manages to be both side-splittingly funny and extremely heartfelt at the same time (2:45). Then they talk briefly about the latest season of ‘SAS: Rogue Heroes’ (29:42) and another new Steven Knight show ‘A Thousand Blows’ (43:39), before Chris is joined by famed author and screenwriter Richard Price to talk about his newest novel, ‘Lazarus Man’ (1:01:45). Host: Chris Ryan Guests: Jason Mantzoukas and Richard Price Senior Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production: Chris Thomas Video Editor: Stefano Sanchez 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

  Hey, it's Bill Simmons letting you know that we are covering the White Lotus on the Prestige TV Podcast and the Ringer TV YouTube Channel every Sunday night this season with Mally Rubin and Joanna Robinson.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Also, on Wednesdays, Rob Hone and I will be sort of diving deep into theories and listener questions, so you can watch that on the Ringer YouTube Channel and also on the Spotify app.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  Subscribe to the Prestige's podcast feed. Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube Channel. And don't forget, you can also watch these podcasts on Spotify. White Lotus, let's go.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  I don't know what I'm doing. Need a break. Forget it, I quit.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 0:39Speaker 04

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 0:41Speaker 03

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free. Shwing! Even our news is uplifting.

• 0:47Speaker 05

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 0:48Speaker 03

  Watch Tommy Boy, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more. We're not worthy! The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 1:04Speaker 05

  Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes, para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro, para los que están lejos, los que no ven de lejos, y los que no ven de cerca, para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos, para los que piensan y los que hacen, para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola, para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.

• 1:34Speaker 06

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

• 1:40Chris 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 to reset the tone, it's Jason Mantzoukas! Let's go! Oh, hell yeah, fuck yeah.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  Come on, boys.

• 1:58Chris Ryan?

  Guess what? We're talking about Shore Z again. Yes, Jason is here to help me talk about Shore Z season four, which dropped this week on Hulu. We are also going to talk about the second season of Rogue Heroes, which has concluded its run on MGM.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Incredible. I cried during both shows. Every show we're going to talk about, I have cried during.

• 2:16Chris Ryan?

  And then we're going to talk about A Thousand Blows on Hulu, at least the first episode, another Stephen Knight production that is just blowing my mind. I love it so much. At the end of this episode, or the second half of this episode, I have another guest. Richard Price.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  Get this fucking guy out of here.

• 2:32Chris Ryan?

  Author of Clockers, author of Freedomland.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, the wire writer.

• 2:36Chris Ryan?

  The screenwriter behind A Color of Money and the screenwriter behind The Night Of.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  Lush Life?

• 2:42Chris Ryan?

  Lush Life, my favorite novel, maybe. One of my favorite novels. Richard Price is here to talk to me about his latest novel Lazarus Man.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  DP?

• 2:51Chris Ryan?

  Lazarus Man, which came out in November and you should check out. It's about a ensemble of characters dealing with a building collapse in Harlem in 2008. It's an amazing novel. You should definitely read it. And I was just honored at Richard Price on. He'll be on the second half. I guess I have to deal with you now.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  I'm furious that you've double booked. I'm assuming this is going to cut into my time?

• 3:11Chris Ryan?

  This is a big thing.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  I have a lot of other shows I want to talk about.

• 3:14Chris Ryan?

  We always do this with Bill, where there was a run where he would have an incredibly famous person, but then front load the show with like

• 3:22Speaker 03

  Some turkey?

• 3:23Chris Ryan?

  Three basketball writers. So he's like, on the next on the pod. I got Rob Mahoney talking about whether or not the Hornets are going to make the lottery. And then former Secretary of State James Baker.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Oh, no, that is absolutely true. I mean, to have Richard Price, like, I kind of want to just leave. I kind of want to just fast forward to that interview.

• 3:42Chris Ryan?

  You're not allowed to go.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Ah, fuck. I almost did. Last time we talked about Shore Z.

• 3:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  They sent me a shirt. They sent me a hockey jersey and I forgot to bring it.

• 3:53Chris Ryan?

  I didn't.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  I meant to bring a hockey. I also talked about it a bunch of other places.

• 3:57Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so maybe I haven't hit my quota.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  Maybe you'll get it. Hey, Shoresy. Hey, guys. Hey, Shor- hey, Team Shoresy. Get the fuck it. Get it together and send CR some swag.

• 4:07Chris Ryan?

  I asked for Kiso. I asked, I'm asking for jerseys. I'll wear the shit on camera. I don't care.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  I've been trying to talk to Jared Kiso for literally years.

• 4:15Chris Ryan?

  Is he Daniel D. Lewis-ing it or what?

• 4:17Speaker 03

  He is just in his own world up there. And it is, I've talked to other people inside of like, that community, the Canadian film and TV community, and they are like, he has figured it out in such a way that he's just like, no, I'm doing my thing.

• 4:32Chris Ryan?

  He's just summer in Sud Vegas.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  Oh my god. I mean, let's all go to Sudbury. Let's all go to Sudbury.

• 4:38Chris Ryan?

  Let's get into this, because season four is actually the beginning of part two, for Shoresy. Now, Jason and I talked about the previous season, season three, which culminated with, you know, the Sudbury Bulldogs winning this national championship.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, the Sudbury Blueberry Bulldogs.

• 4:54Chris Ryan?

  Sudbury Blueberry Bulldogs, my bad. Winning this national championship of senior whale shit hockey. One of the great sports stories ever told on screen, if you ask me. Heart rendering, but also hilarious. And then, you know, they were like, this is the end of part one of Shoresy. Stay tuned for part two. With all that, like, the anxiety and headaches and, oh, can we do this? Can we could do that? I don't know of any other show that's just so graceful, like, yep, now we're a new show.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  Not only, not only that, but this, that, this show, after executing at such a high level of exactly what you said, like, one of the best sports stories put to film, one of these, like, an incredible underdog story that become, that is just relentlessly hilarious. For them to just exhibit and then follow through on true curiosity for the emotional well-being of these hockey thugs, these senior, like, this is recreational hockey for middle-aged men.

• 5:54Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  To be clear, that's what we're talking about. Yes, they coach a younger group. Yes, they're, you know... There are younger people, but this is, this isn't like a pro team or something like this is like a hobby team that is taken so seriously, but that they are really investigating and interrogating, specifically with Shoresy, who if you've been following since Letter Kenny, is, has gone from an unrepentant absolute villain

• 6:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 03

  to maybe like a character that has the most heart and has shown the most growth and the most

• 6:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, now he's in Field of Dreams or some shit now.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  I mean, as Mal and Joe would say, we love a character on an arc. Uh, and Shoresy is unequivocally on one of the most interesting arcs on television.

• 6:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so the first three seasons are obviously about the kind of Bad News Bears development of this ragtag group of veteran hockey players who come together and with the help of some ringers and some gyms, win the national championship.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  Don't promote the network. Please don't promote the network.

• 6:53Chris Ryan?

  The ringers like-

• 6:54Speaker 03

  No, no, don't promote the network like that. More like, say it like this. They, yes, they've got some grand lands, but you know, they've got-

• 7:01Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and then season, part two, season four, is life after hockey. Uh, and it is essentially summed up, and Jason and I, I look, like you should take this as two thumbs up, Siskel and Ebert.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 7:14Chris Ryan?

  If you haven't watched Shoresy season four, just put a, put a pin in it. I don't want to see our retention rate fall off, or can talk about some other shows. Jump ahead to whatever part of this pod you want.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Or listen to us joyfully discuss this show.

• 7:27Chris Ryan?

  J O about this show, yeah.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  And then come back and listen to it again after you've watched it. This is a show that I've watched multiple times, all of the seasons. It's hilarious. I cry constantly during this show because, cause it's, it's catching me by surprise.

• 7:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  You know, and not for nothing, it's still dead funny. That they're, that they're executing on something like Weird Sudbury.

• 7:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  That they're doing Kangaroo Court, that they're doing all of these things that would be at home in earlier seasons of the show or on Letter Kenny episodes where, where a bit is enough for a whole episode. You know, like the episode of Letter Kenny that is just about the adult spelling bee.

• 8:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Or the one where the entire town tries to describe and figure out what's the best potato chip.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  It's a real episode of TV.

• 8:13Chris Ryan?

  That's what I.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  The whole episode is just chips reviews.

• 8:16Chris Ryan?

  I was just watching, I got served something on Instagram the other day that was, uh, who plays Toby on The Office, Paul?

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Lieberstein.

• 8:25Chris Ryan?

  Lieberstein?

• 8:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:26Chris Ryan?

  And he was talking about the difference between writing television and film and what kind of, uh, maybe networks are getting wrong about comedy now and how sitcoms are about characters.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 8:37Chris Ryan?

  And it just really does not matter what happens on sitcoms. If people like the characters, you can give them the, just the least amount of plot going on.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Yes, the mistake we've made is thinking that story matters for shows that are funny.

• 8:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  You know, and story doesn't matter. It is characters. It is these people and watching them recalibrate, you know, piece by piece. What's funny about watching a show like 30 Rock isn't just, oh, this is so funny. This is clever writing, blah, blah, blah. But each season, watching them decide, oh, wait a minute, let's, let's pair Jack and, uh, Jack and Kenneth up in this. And like, you finding, if you build good characters, then you can just mix them around into different duos and trios and it's dynamite.

• 9:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And what this show does that I think I kind of put my finger on as I was watching the last episode, which I did not intend to burn through season four in about 12 hours.

• 9:28Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:28Chris Ryan?

  But I did.

• 9:28Speaker 03

  I, I did as well.

• 9:29Chris Ryan?

  Uh, is it does this accordion thing where this entire season is essentially about Shoresy and Goody and Hitch and Michaels and, uh, Dolo mentoring these young, like, pretty high level prospects who are about to go off to national clubs in different parts of Canada. It's their like summer before, essentially their graduation summer or whatever.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  So whereas the previous seasons have been about the hockey season.

• 9:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  The, the games, the playoffs, the, the urgency of a championship. This season is off season. This is summer break. This is, the boys are doing too much partying.

• 10:08Chris Ryan?

  They're tubing.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  They, they're tubing too much.

• 10:10Chris Ryan?

  And tubing's incredible.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  And but, yes, but you're right. Like the introduction of these younger players and them having to figure out what it means to have an emotional kind of. An emotional impact on the lives of these kids.

• 10:25Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  And that Shoresy goes from someone who is truly lost. You know, without hockey, Shoresy has now, he cannot play anymore. He's had too many concussions. It is, it's done for him. And the struggle of Shoresy over this season to find his place.

• 10:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  Both as a person and in a relationship with Laura or to the team or to the players. He is just kind of, he's nowhere.

• 10:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Throughout the season and it's, and Kiso is incredible at doing this.

• 10:54Chris Ryan?

  He's awesome and they just basically open up this season and you're like, in any other show, you would imagine that getting this kid, Jack, to do karaoke for a girl he's really into or.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Well, that was the most surprising thing to me is the introduction of these kids weren't just an opportunity for Shoresy and the other adults to kind of roast them or whatever. The latter half of the season, and the season we should say is six episodes long. Each episode's a half an hour, so you can get through it quickly and it rewards that. It's a very compelling singular storyline. And what's interesting is starting halfway through, it becomes a coming of age story.

• 11:33Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  Like a beautiful coming of age story. These are the moments that I cried.

• 11:37Chris Ryan?

  It's fucking so moving.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  When the, when the, when the, when the adults decide to forego their own pleasures, their own getting into the weird Sudbury orgy sex party, but then foregoing that in order to go and help their young charge, do a choreographed dance so he can get the girl.

• 11:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  Like it all felt like a, you know, John Hughesy rom-comy coming of age story. But the people that are actually coming of age are not the kids.

• 12:05Chris Ryan?

  It's the guys.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  It is the adults.

• 12:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  Like, and that is, what a trick that is.

• 12:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I could see a different show doing the kids in one episode. Where it's like today, the, the hockey players are mentors. And then the next episode they do this and it's instead they're like, no, you're going to get introduced to these guys. This is a show with a pretty caustic relationship to children, I would say.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  Oh, aggressively.

• 12:24Chris Ryan?

  Jory Jordan. And everybody else like Corey and all the kids that Shoresy is always talking about their mothers.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:31Chris Ryan?

  And the mothers do come up a lot in this season. But it's basically like they stretch this relationship out over six episodes and you're right. I would recommend you watch as much of this in one sitting as you can because what I don't think I got the first time through Shoresy was the amount of jokes that just get echoed through episodes.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:49Chris Ryan?

  And the amount of callbacks. And if you're watching it in this sort of marathon, you will like find it a lot more funny and resonant because.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  Because it functions the way that you and your friends function. You know, it's like Letter Kenny, Shoresy is a hangout show. A lot of the action takes place when the guys are at the bar, sitting at home. It's, you know, in the locker room. It's a, it's a shaggy kind of hangout show. Letter Kenny really it does that, indulges in that. But just like Letter Kenny, Shoresy is interested in everybody doing callbacks to jokes that they've already done with each other. And as we're watching now, like you, there might be a callback three episodes later just because it works for the moment and that's what these guys would do.

• 13:33Chris Ryan?

  There's an incredible example of this where if you're watching the show and obviously Jason and I are talking about details of season four. I hope you watch it if, I hope you're enjoying this conversation, but there is an a moment early on in this, I think it's in the first episode of the season, where a bunch of the players are partying on a lake. They're tubing. Tubing's incredible. And they leave the gyms on a dock.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:56Chris Ryan?

  Because the boat's full with broads, with tens. And you're like, oh, that's a funny visual gag of the gym standing there.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  So and the, just for people in case you are wondering, the, it's basically the team, a bunch of guys on the team have taken a bunch of hot girls out on the boat and left three of their teammates behind.

• 14:14Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  All of whom are named Jim. Jim, Jim and Jim.

• 14:17Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  And this is a, a slight that goes un.

• 14:21Chris Ryan?

  The three indigenous guys who basically won them the championship and are the big fighters on the team.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 14:26Chris Ryan?

  Basically the security guys for the rest of the, the players.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  And they are absolutely hilarious. They function in the show because the show, for the most part, every. Everybody is like crackling dialogue, fast talking, just tons of stuff. And the gyms are laconic and laid back, men of few words. They just really answer usually with one word answers or brief answers.

• 14:49Chris Ryan?

  And it's always the same two level joke. It's like the first two gyms, they'll ask the gyms a question and the first two gyms are like, yes. And the second gym's like, yes. And then the third gym says the most emotionally intelligent thing in the flattest way possible. And I could watch it happen 7,000 times an hour. Like, I don't care how, how many times they hit that joke.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  They are very good at creating character games that, for me, do not wear out their welcome. Mostly because they're not clobbering it over and over and over. They also have a rich enough bench of characters that you're just not being hit with the same jokes. But for the gyms, when they do pop up to participate in this same game, is so funny and so rewarding.

• 15:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  Um, and it's just, you, there isn't, you don't, you feel as though there's nobody being like, hey, we gotta dig into the gyms. We gotta get gyms backstory. No, we don't. We just, we, all we need to know is their feelings were hurt, that they were ditched at the.

• 15:46Chris Ryan?

  And they tattled.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  And then they told, and then many episodes later, they get their retribution. And what then happens, which is so funny, is they make you wait for that and then the gyms tattle. And then they do this thing called Kangaroo Court, where the hockey team in the locker room.

• 16:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:03Speaker 03

  Becomes a courtroom and Michaels, the goalie, is the judge. And a whole episode is just.

• 16:09Chris Ryan?

  I think it's like an episode and a half.

• 16:10Speaker 03

  It's an, yes, it is. It's just them litigating what happened.

• 16:15Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  Why the gyms did, told on the rest of the team. And then the reveal that their feelings are hurt because they were ditched at the docks. And everybody has to, like, that lands with everybody because they didn't even realize they'd done it.

• 16:27Chris Ryan?

  Right. And, you know, and then the gyms wind up hooking up with these guys' ex-girlfriends who they cheated on with the chicks.

• 16:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 16:35Chris Ryan?

  With the moms of the, of the team that they're coaching now.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  Yes. So one of the through lines of Shoresy is that Sudbury is full of the most beautiful women who only want to fuck hockey players.

• 16:46Chris Ryan?

  Tens everywhere.

• 16:47Speaker 03

  Tens, nonstop tens everywhere, just chasing the hockey players. And the hockey players are always talking about this, but then whenever they are out in the world, it is borne out. Like, they are always being approached by women. It's very funny. But the fact that the dynamic between these episodes is a romantic triangle of of of just bad behavior on everybody's part, and that it all gets litigated in the locker room, fantastic.

• 17:12Chris Ryan?

  It's also, there are two central relationships, which is basically Shoresy and this woman Laura, who is a journalist, like a sports journalist, who is essentially got Shoresy in a kind of probationary period to prove that he's serious about a relationship. I think because she has a son, I can't, yeah, right?

• 17:29Speaker 03

  She has a kid. She is, while the rest of the guys are out chasing like young women, that's how it's, you know, most of the women who are in and out of the hockey player house are like 20-somethings, let's say. And then the guys are also, they're also fucking the moms of the hockey players they are coaching. Shoresy is going after Laura, who is a more, I think, a peer of Shoresy's, you know? And she has a son, and she demands to be taken seriously.

• 17:58Chris Ryan?

  So she's like, you gotta like go figure yourself out this summer and figure out whether you're ready for what we are.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:04Chris Ryan?

  And so there's that really sweet thing in the middle of the, like, the relationship Shoresy has with Laura and the relationship he has with Nat are these incredibly emotionally rewarding pairings, while around them, everybody is getting tug jobs and, you know, like having sex with people's moms. So you get the sugar and the spice.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  Well, there's also like, the show is also shot through with very long music sequences, music montages. Letter Kenny did this expertly as well. And in, when the show is in season, it's also hockey. It's also the sports footage. But offseason, it's instead them partying or them dancing. In Letter Kenny, there are great ones that are like four-minute choreographed brawls, because Kiso's character in Letter Kenny is the strongest guy. And Letter Kenny, so everybody's constantly trying to fight him. So the fight sequences are relentless and so funny, but so hardcore.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  Um, and I love that they are punctuating a lot of the, this is again, a 24 minute episode with a four minute, like,

• 19:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  Music montage.

• 19:12Chris Ryan?

  If you ever see a, a Shoresy that's like a 33 minute runtime, it's because there's like a seven minute montage.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 19:18Chris Ryan?

  Of, of tubing, hockey practice and nightclubbing.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  And I love it.

• 19:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  And I'm, I, I never am like, oh, this is going on too long. I'm like, no, I love this. And what's, and what's great about specifically the Shoresy Laura romance is it infects the, the Jack, the younger Jack's journey to finding love with the woman he's interested in because Shoresy is constantly in pursuit of Laura, trying to prove to her that he is up to this, that he is, and, and he's relentless about it. He's the kid, when he's singing her karaoke, it's great. When, at the, the, one of the times that I cried in this season was at the, in that last episode, when Jack is reading the letter to Laura as Shoresy enters and, and it's heartbreaking.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  It's, it's beautiful and it's a terrific, uh, it's a terrific arc that he's on that you are invested in. Like the fact that I'm invested in Shoresy finding love with the single mom in Sudbury. The fact that I care and am so absorbed in that for a show that is mostly about, are they gonna win?

• 20:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Are they gonna win the championship?

• 20:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  You know, um, the fact that they can also just kill it on a storyline that is so small stakes and emotional based. It's great.

• 20:37Chris Ryan?

  The, uh, the whole thing with Nat and Shoresy, so Nat was like basically this cornerstone figure for the first three seasons. She remains so this year, but like, I think the way that they were able to slowly pull Shoresy back towards the Bulldogs, uh, via Nat, who Nat has some of the same problems Shoresy does, which is that she only really thinks about life through the prism of this hockey club and whether or not this hockey club is successful and winning. And cause, because they hate losing all this stuff. Zieg and Meeg finally talk Nat Nat into like chilling out a little bit, which is a great subplot in and of itself. But Nat and Shoresy wind up having this amazing conversation midway through the season, or towards the end of the season,

• 21:20Chris Ryan?

  where she's just like, look, I love my mom. She was my best friend when my mom passed away. I needed a place to put my love and I put it into the club. And she's like, you need to-

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Find a place to put your love.

• 21:29Chris Ryan?

  And I was just like, come fuck on. Yeah, like you shouldn't be able to have like the best comedy on TV and then also have like a part like this.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Not only, and I just got like goosebumps again when you said it. Um, when she says it, it's so perfect. And it's also in a conversation. Again, Nat is the owner operator of a local hockey team. Shoresy is a middle aged, like also ran, now is out of the league. But they both have so much heart, but are both so stoic and kind of unable to show anything. And so when Nat just offers that up, you need to find a place. And then she's talking about it in the context of finding a therapist. My shrink told me I needed to find a place to put my love. And that Shoresy interrogates both. You have a therapist?

• 22:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  Because, and he's basically, because I think of you as the tallest building in town. But I think of you as solid.

• 22:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  You know, and that, that there is a pro mental health message in here. And that then Shoresy comes back later. And this is another time that I cried and he says, I want to put it here. I want to put my love, you told me to, you told me to find a place to put my love. I want to put it here.

• 22:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, as a coach of the boys.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  As in, I'm gonna coach the team.

• 22:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  Um, and boy, like that just lands. You know, they are setting up beautiful emotional beats that then they pay off in a very simple way. It's a transactional, you know, it's coming.

• 22:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  But boy, it works like gangbusters.

• 22:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, a couple of my other favorite moments of the season. The guys being presented with the Blueberry Buddies shirts.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Incredible.

• 23:05Chris Ryan?

  A five-minute joke about all the other fruits that they could be and all the other cooler names, the Blueberry Buddies, which is the name of the mentorship program. And while three men are making like, we could be the pomegranate pals, we could be this, we could be that, Bulldog Bros, Hitch just keeps being like, I didn't know golf shirts came in long sleeves and just keeps saying it. And like, that's one of the things that's so great about this is you can re-watch this show and realize there is a second or third joke happening underneath three other jokes.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  The show is very joke dense and that is very rewarding to re-watch, I will say, because you sometimes, because there are, this season may be a little bit less, but there are often even more characters. Like, because, because it's a hockey team, because there's youth hockey as a part of it, because there's, there's a lot of moving parts. So it's very easy to be like, oh, I didn't even, like, I didn't even know Dolo's game for a while, because a lot of times he's subtitled and I've missed it, or ba, ba, ba, like, or Hitch, or whatever. And you find like, oh, there are sub-games going on here. There are little, like you were saying earlier, little callbacks or little, they're just have, it's loose and they're having fun.

• 24:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  And a lot of it feels like, if you, if you miss it, that's fine. Like, that's okay. Like, the show doesn't need you to get every joke to succeed.

• 24:28Chris Ryan?

  Another amazing, just one, one-off footnote is during Kangaroo Court, and then it kind of bleeds into something else. Shoresy is talking about Brian McKnight.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:41Chris Ryan?

  And Dolo breaks the French thing and just starts going, did you say Brian McKnight?

• 24:45Speaker 03

  So good.

• 24:46Chris Ryan?

  He's like, yeah, I'm not talking about Genuine.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:48Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, you're hilarious, bro.

• 24:51Speaker 03

  It's so funny. That, those are the, those are the bits, because it does feel like conversational bits are happening between friends. And that is, Letter Kenny had that too. That is a delight. And that you get different little, you get the hockey players and how they riff and, and kind of roast each other. There's a lot of ball busting. There's a lot of, what's interesting is it's a show that is. That appears to be telling a story about these hockey players and about this league and blah, blah, blah, but it's really about like helping these hockey players understand that they have emotions and and now also how to take care of those emotions, you know, how to how to exhibit

• 25:35Speaker 03

  them, how to like they are, it is, I mean.

• 25:37Chris Ryan?

  It's one of the most like humanist affirmative things you can watch. It is definitely very therapeutic. I actually got like a really wonderful email from a listener named Andre Cormier who wrote very long thing. A lot of it is about like Canadian identity and popular culture and kids in the hall and SCTV and a bunch of other stuff, but I'll just I'll just read the second half here just because I think it touches on some of the stuff that we're talking about. Shoresy is different from different. The show is so filled with heart that it breaks me to think about how goddamn reflected it is of a sort of Canadianness I thought was gone forever. We can only hope that our country never take itself too seriously, except when we're figuring out where to put our love. And the whole display is effortless. The show interlocks harmonious diversity without attention seeking. It manifests self-deprecation

• 26:22Chris Ryan?

  without the burden of colonial trauma. It celebrates tired nation building mythologies and yet has all sorts of time for exposing the hypocrisy of their exclusivity.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:31Chris Ryan?

  I was like, dude, this is also a fucking funny show, but that's right.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  And yes, oh, that's absolutely right. And that is present in every scene of every episode, but also it's dead dumb funny.

• 26:42Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  It's also interested in absolute silliness. And boy, isn't that awesome?

• 26:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  You know, what a what a what a what an incredible show that is that appears to be just a nonstop blast. But boy, like, like I said, I cried a bunch. It's very, it's a it has so much heart.

• 27:02Chris Ryan?

  I also love that Weird Sudbury is built up the entire season and we don't see it.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  I love it. I love that we don't even go. We get like we get the warm up party and that's all that's we're not weird enough. They know we're not weird enough to see Weird Sudbury.

• 27:16Chris Ryan?

  I gotta say, though, one of my favorite bits this year, and one of the most heartwarming ones is the Michael stuff.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 27:22Chris Ryan?

  So Michaels is the goaltender. He was the former coach who gets fired and then becomes the goaltender of the club. And then basically the running bit through three seasons, three and a half seasons of the show is that every time Michaels talks, Shoresy says, shut the fuck up, Michaels.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  They, everybody just dumps on Michaels.

• 27:38Chris Ryan?

  I was just like, I wish I didn't work with you so I never had to hear you talk. So two very funny things happen. One is that of the mentees that they, they're, they're shepherding through this process. There is another kid goalkeeper who in turn, Michaels is like Caleb, shut the fuck up every time he talks.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Also, they give Caleb such good stuff. Caleb himself is so, so funny. They, they do a thing, you mentioned it earlier, where they do a thing constantly, which is, um, they will repeat dialogue with subtle slight changes. And the one where they're trying to get all the kids to say their, their bit.

• 28:16Chris Ryan?

  A masterpiece.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  Crying laughing. I was laughing to a point where I like had to stop and catch, I got scared.

• 28:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  That I wasn't able to breathe.

• 28:23Chris Ryan?

  Don't say your age, it's not a fucking dating profile.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  Connor says his age. And then the next guy starts and he says.

• 28:29Chris Ryan?

  Caleb's always just like, I'm Caleb. I got to work on my game and myself. All the Michael stuff, also Michael's being left out and Shoresy being like, I can't leave this guy out.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  Ex-girlfriend runs or is the connection for weird Sudbury.

• 28:44Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and then, yeah, all the, um, I think that the hitch karaoke training scene is among the best things I've ever seen in my life.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Incredible, incredible.

• 28:52Chris Ryan?

  Him talking through it, but then singing and then the gang vocals on it are just.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  And then, and then them going with Jack to the place and Jack singing and the way, there is just such a palpable sense of emotion and camaraderie without having to like say it on, you know, say it with dialogue.

• 29:11Chris Ryan?

  Do I have to get into like Canadian pop country now?

• 29:14Speaker 03

  By the way, they're also constant, it's just all Canadian music throughout the whole show. Have not heard Sloan yet, but I'm sure they're in there.

• 29:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Um, all right. Before we get to Rogue Heroes and Thousand Blows, any other Shoresy stuff?

• 29:26Speaker 03

  You know, I, you know, I wrote a lot of that stuff too. You know, find a place to put your love is like, what a beautiful idea. What a beautiful sentiment, you know? Um, yeah, I'm, I'm just looking through the, I, I wrote notes just because I write notes. Notes. Um, I'm watching both Shoresy and Reacher right now. And somehow, boy, do I want a Shoresy-Reacher crossover because they're-

• 29:48Chris Ryan?

  Reacher got good again, apparently, right?

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Reacher, I'm so sorry. Has Reacher been bad?

• 29:52Chris Ryan?

  Well, I saw Richson talking about how he was like, we let the fans down.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:59Chris Ryan?

  With like the fight choreography.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  He felt like the action in season two wasn't up to snuff.

• 30:03Chris Ryan?

  What do you think?

• 30:04Speaker 03

  I, you know, it's, I don't remember a lot of the action set pieces, so maybe it's unmemorable.

• 30:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 03

  But I don't remember watching it being like, this is bad. And in fact, bits that I loved when he like kicks the car and the airbag goes off. And there's things like that in there that I think are like iconic to the show.

• 30:22Chris Ryan?

  I will, we'll have to do some kind of Reacher, Reacher round at some point, but-

• 30:26Speaker 03

  Season three of Reacher is pretty fucking great.

• 30:29Chris Ryan?

  Uh, we can move on to the Stephen Knight verse now.

• 30:32Speaker 03

  Oh, let's do it.

• 30:33Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so Stephen Knight, um, is a very prolific-

• 30:37Speaker 03

  UK Taylor Sheridan?

• 30:38Chris Ryan?

  Incredibly accomplished screenwriter, basically the UK Taylor Sheridan. He's probably best known for Peaky Blinders. He, uh, has done a bunch of stuff with Tom Hardy. He has done so much feature film, screenwriting.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  Was he on Taboo Island?

• 30:52Chris Ryan?

  He, he wrote Taboo.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  He was Taboo?

• 30:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so Chips Hardy and Tom Hardy brought Taboo to him.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Oh, I thought Chips wrote it.

• 30:59Chris Ryan?

  No, Chip was an idea and a character base that Chips thought of. Uh, and he also did, um, the Dickens adaptation that I liked that came out last year. Great expectations, I think.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  Yep, he did Maria this past year. He did, um, This Town.

• 31:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, which has not come out in the States yet.

• 31:16Speaker 03

  Has not come out. I've been trying to find it and get it. Very hard to get, but he is wildly prolific.

• 31:23Chris Ryan?

  Yes, yeah. All, all the seasons of Peaky Blinders and now is doing the Peaky Blinders movie currently. He, I think he has his own, not unlike Taylor Sheridan, his own sound stages now in Birmingham where he's from in, in England. So he is basically creating this like industry around the stuff he does. Rogue Heroes, I guess we'll talk about first.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Great.

• 31:42Chris Ryan?

  Love, love, fucking love season one of Rogue Heroes so much.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  So good.

• 31:46Chris Ryan?

  One of my 10 best shows of the year. So excited that it's coming back. This season is also awesome.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  I agree completely, full stop. It's, I'm having a blast.

• 31:57Chris Ryan?

  With the caveat that one of the great things about the first season is this dynamic between Jack O'Connell, who plays a character named Patty, who is this hot-headed, ultra-violent, tortured Irish soldier in the British SAS, and then Connor Swindells, who is this almost conman-ish gentleman, like ambitious, like-

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Clever, like almost like a mischief maker, trickster kind of character.

• 32:26Chris Ryan?

  And their kind of sensibility, their clash, but also their friendship is this enormous part of why season one is so good.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  And they are kind of the de facto leaders of this rogues' gallery of absolutely chaotic soldiers.

• 32:40Chris Ryan?

  And like you may remember in the first season, there were some other, like I may call it a bunch of upcoming actors, like Tom Glenn Carney, who's now on House of the Dragon, is incinerated on House of the Dragon, but like, you know, this just does a really good job of putting together an ensemble. First season is set during the North Africa campaign and it's got, follows the formation of the British SAS. And now the second season, one of my favorite World War II campaigns, is the effort to retake Italy.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  What are your favorite World War II campaigns?

• 33:12Chris Ryan?

  I'm not really a Pacific theater guy.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  Because people are like, what's your top, who's your top five rapper? Who's your top five? What? But I would love to know, CR, what are your top five?

• 33:21Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so I can actually answer this sincerely.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  I love this.

• 33:24Chris Ryan?

  This is only in terms of not like what they actually accomplish, but what I like to watch stuff and read stuff about.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  Sure, how you like it, what you enjoy-

• 33:33Chris Ryan?

  The French Resistance, number one draft pick, easily. People working like odd jobs in Paris, but also at night having like secret radio stations. It's my shit. Alan first wrote like 10 books about that.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Well, you're a sucker for anything with a secret radio station. I mean, you've got your pump up the volume tattoo.

• 33:49Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I think-

• 33:52Chris Ryan?

  I really love a bit of desert foxing. I love the North African stuff.

• 33:56Speaker 03

  I loved all that stuff in season one.

• 33:58Chris Ryan?

  And Italy is just like, the cool thing about Italy, they shot this second season in Croatia, but it does a decent job standing in.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  I thought it looked great.

• 34:05Chris Ryan?

  And I love all the like, we gotta go up the boot, we gotta get, you know, we were trying to outflank these other armies and it was basically this wedge that they put in Europe so that they could really do D-Day, which is how season two sort of culminates with them going off to do D-Day. Did you mind the separation of Swindells and O'Connell?

• 34:23Speaker 03

  You know, we talked a little bit about this on text. My presumption is that they, these are real stories about real people in history, right? This is the formation of the SAS, which is the British Secret Service, not Secret Service, the British.

• 34:36Chris Ryan?

  Like SEAL Team.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  Yes, like Special Forces, like a commando unit. They are a, they are a wet work commando unit that are sent in ahead of the troops to just cause as much damage as possible. And so they're, they are beholden to elements that are the history of this thing. So my presumption is Swindell's character just was truly in prison during this.

• 34:59Chris Ryan?

  I saw that and I also saw like Swindell's didn't know he was gonna be on the show until Stephen Knight was like, I need you back for a couple of things.

• 35:04Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 35:05Chris Ryan?

  So I think his character is supposed to be captured.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  I didn't mind that he was absent from the troops, because I just was so into what was going on and I felt like we got such incredible stuff from, from Reg.

• 35:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  We got, so we, without Swindell's there, we were able to get deeper into a lot of the other players, which I was very into.

• 35:29Chris Ryan?

  It's a strange thing, cause like this show itself goes to great pains to be like, this is certainly not historical.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:36Chris Ryan?

  You know, this is not historically accurate.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  Playing AC/DC while, while they're, while they're blowing tanks up with bazookas.

• 35:41Chris Ryan?

  When one guy takes on 40 Nazis while the White Stripes plays. Which is just, guess I had that dream on Tuesday, but still. It's basically.

• 35:53Chris Ryan?

  It's still a really great show and it's also really fun to watch O'Connell be put in this position and he does fucking incredible work.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  He's incredible.

• 36:02Chris Ryan?

  And he's like this traumatized soldier who is gay and lost a lover during the first season and so is just still haunted by that. A lot of the first part of this season is about them invading Italy and doing something. I won't spoil this one part in case you're listening and you're gonna give it a shot. They do something on their way into Italy that haunts this whole squad for the rest of the season.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  Boy, does it. And it haunts me. You know, like that's what, I think this show's so incredible because, a little bit like Shoresy, yes, it's a war show. Yes, it is about the active campaigns inside of World War II, but they are doing incredible work showing the, basically, how humanity is being wrung out of these men. How by the end of this season, they have been cumulatively decimated by what they've seen, done, and lost. And that is evident in all of their performances. And I think this show, again, like Shoresy, is a very rewarding watch in close, you know, proximity.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  Again, it's only six episodes. This feels like, if you are inside of it, this is fantastic, character-based storytelling that happens to also have big, huge set pieces, war set pieces.

• 37:23Chris Ryan?

  And I gotta say, man, like, I watch a lot of action movies, I watch a lot of contemporary thrillers and action. This show, despite some pretty obvious CGI and not using like real fire and stuff like that, does such a great job. The sort of centerpiece of this season is the taking and then defense of a small town in Italy. Where the soldiers basically take back a town from the Nazis and then have to hold off a Nazi attack. And that's like classic Seven Samurai kind of like setup. Where it's like, the few versus the many, how can we? Help the, how can the townspeople help us? How can we set ourselves up? Is there a spy? Is there any high ground that we need to? And you were like-

• 38:06Speaker 03

  All of it.

• 38:07Chris Ryan?

  I understand physically like where everything is coming from in this show. And it's like for a TV show, they, honestly, most TV shows don't fucking bother.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Oh, no, this has like cinematic, not aspirations, but it's cinematic quality. Yeah. This is, this is beautifully shot, beautifully constructed, gorgeous choreography. I'm never confused.

• 38:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  I'm never like, wait, who are those guys? Who are these guys? Where are we now? Like, how much time has passed? They are really good at walking you through this without it feeling like they're holding your hand through this.

• 38:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's, it's an interesting conversation to have about like, obviously like this whole like, there's, there's the Jack O'Connell's SAS and then Connor Swindell's his character. His brother starts a second group that's more buttoned up and is a commando unit, but is like, we're doing things a little bit more by the book.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  A commando unit with good soldiers.

• 38:59Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  With like the best soldiers. So the SAS, the original SAS was basically made up of-

• 39:05Chris Ryan?

  Lunatics.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Lunatics, like the cast offs, the people who were, it's like the Dirty Dozen.

• 39:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:09Speaker 03

  Was turned into like a special forces unit.

• 39:11Chris Ryan?

  Guys who like being stuck in the desert for 40 days.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, and guys who are very comfortable with killing, very morally gray, if not worse. So what's interesting is you've got all these interesting kind of crazy characters, but then you introduce now a lethal, but very buttoned up version of it under the guise of, what's his name?

• 39:33Chris Ryan?

  Oh, William, I think it is.

• 39:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, Bill, yes, yeah.

• 39:36Chris Ryan?

  So it's Sterling's brother. Now, you could just say, well, if I was just making this TV show and I had Connor Swindell's, I would have him be the commander of this other unit. Right? Like you, just to keep these two around, but like obviously there's some adherence to some historical fact there. So Connor Swindell's his character is imprisoned the entire season.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  The entire season.

• 39:54Chris Ryan?

  Uh, he makes multiple attempts at escape. It's pretty grueling, like he gives him, you know, he has this concussion, so he's having visions, but essentially is just a POW and not even like a cool, great escape POW.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  No, it's not, he is, his arc is pretty stacked.

• 40:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm sitting in a room.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  Yes. Um, which I, I, again, I didn't mind because they, uh, I think in a good way, they only go back to it every once in a while.

• 40:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  You're not like, it's not given equal, uh, airtime to the rest of the show, which is at a breakneck pace for the most part. You know, there's a couple of episodes where they stop down for a rest or a meal or a this or a that. But for the most part, they are just like, cause they give you dates.

• 40:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:36Speaker 03

  They give you, they're constantly giving you the dates and the majority of season two takes place in like a couple of weeks.

• 40:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's basically like they're run through Italy and then the last episode they get to go back.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  And they're losing.

• 40:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  Dozens of members, uh, you know, they also give you, because it's historical, uh, they're giving you information on screen. There, there'll, there'll be title cards every once in a while that are like between October 15th and October 17th. 21 members of the SAS died defending the town or whatever, you know, they, they give you information.

• 41:05Chris Ryan?

  Taramillo or whatever the town is.

• 41:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, which is, which I found very helpful because it helps you understand the stakes for these guys, you know?

• 41:12Chris Ryan?

  Termali is the town, sorry. Yeah. Um, and then I just thought I'd shout out a couple of performances outside of O'Connell, uh, which is mostly down to Theo Barkland Biggs who plays Reg.

• 41:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, this, this is an incredible performance.

• 41:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, uh, this character is basically a behemoth. Like you'd think, oh, this is like the Jack Reacher of SAS. And his whole job is like kicking ass and taking names and he has probably the most emotionally identifiable like arc in the season, where he experiences this really dark thing in the beginning of the season and then is just basically pushed beyond.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 41:48Chris Ryan?

  You know, any human experience.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  Shattered as a human being. You, he is the character that is, kind of stands in for what they're all going through, because all of them are going through, um, there are so many events that happen to them in such a brief period of time that are not just traumatic, but devastating.

• 42:05Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  That, um, and everybody's feeling it to a certain degree and you get, you get peaks of it through other people. But Reg, you, is really the stand-in for the person who starts in one place in the beginning of the season. And by the end, you are just looking. At a hollowed out, you know, a man who is just wanting to die.

• 42:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, the, the, uh, the Italian village defense and, and fight is not on the same level, obviously, but it's very reminiscent of, um, the sort of final battles in Saving Private Ryan.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Uh huh, yeah.

• 42:38Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, I really liked the interactions between Reg and Yves Mens or the Sofia Batella character, who's a French spy kind of working in conjunction with SAS, but is operating as a journalist. Any other rogue heroes? I mean, it ends very much like awaiting season three.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Every, yes, which I'm thrilled and I have they announced, do you know?

• 42:58Chris Ryan?

  I read something today that was pretty convincing that Stephen Knight can basically go to the BBC and be like, I will be doing.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  I hope so because it's, I can't imagine it's a cheap show. These are expensive actors. The scope and scale of this show is large. This is an expensive show. So I hope they get to keep doing it because all I want is the next chapter of this. I want, exactly. I want to see how this happens next. Um, what was I gonna say? Uh, we covered most of the stuff because really, I really wanted to talk about just Reg. That Reg arc, I think is unbelievable, but, but they also, uh, much like, um, uh, we were talking about before, one of the things that I appreciate, sometimes I feel like the adherence to history may be knocking us off what could be better storytelling, you know, or more, um, easier story.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Like you pitched like, oh, what if, you know, uh, our guy, instead of being in prison, was head of SAS two, you know? Wouldn't that be better storytelling? It probably would be, but we're not there. And, but what that does give us, whereas Swindells is in prison and it's kind of fine. The guy who is captured and then escapes.

• 44:07Chris Ryan?

  Tonkin, yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Tonkin, so that you have like multiple episodes of just a single man behind enemy lines, who is just trying to get back to his unit.

• 44:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  And that, that we keep cutting back to that journey, which is much slower, much quieter, not as chaotic, but nonetheless, super tense and stressful.

• 44:26Chris Ryan?

  Because it's about like Hitler doing away with the Geneva Conventions of like, if somebody surrenders themselves, you're supposed to put them in a prisoner of war camp and they're like, if he's a commando, he can be executed.

• 44:35Speaker 03

  They're basically saying anybody from SAS can be executed, you know, at any time.

• 44:39Chris Ryan?

  All right. So let's talk a little bit about the other Stephen Knight show that's on right now. Another rock and roll period piece. I would describe his, when Stephen Knight is cooking, he makes rock and roll period pieces.

• 44:50Speaker 03

  A hundred percent.

• 44:51Chris Ryan?

  Stuff from across history that he, that infuses with this kind of like backroom of a pub sensibility with the music blaring.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  And it's always music we know. It's always popular music of this era. Or not this era, but it's mostly of, I think, his era. So it's The Clash. It's the, you know, it's stuff that is, he feels connected to.

• 45:14Chris Ryan?

  I was blown away by a thousand blows so far.

• 45:17Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm so glad.

• 45:18Chris Ryan?

  So I've only watched the first one and a little bit into the second one.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  Great.

• 45:21Chris Ryan?

  Cause I needed to see how the boxing match in the end of the first one goes.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  Holy shit.

• 45:25Chris Ryan?

  This show is hitting all the TV benchmarks you want where you are introduced and/or see a bunch of people that maybe you're vaguely familiar with, but they're now like in starring roles. So number one, I have to talk about Erin Doherty.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  Unreal.

• 45:41Chris Ryan?

  She's so good in The Crown, but in this smaller part of Princess Anne. Erin Doherty is essentially the centerpiece of this show, or one of the, one of the central characters of the show. And she plays a woman named Mary Carr, who is the queen of the elephants. The elephants are a female gang of pickpockets, con women, petty thieves in East London.

• 46:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is a show that takes place in like the street level crime of, of, yes, of London. So it is, it's pickpockets, it's bare knuckle boxers, it's bar owners, it's, that is the scene.

• 46:15Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna ask you if you've ever experienced this, like acting in a scene with somebody, but I've noticed when I was watching her, the blocking or whatever of scenes are nothing out of the ordinary, extraordinary. A lot of this show, like any other show, is two people talking in a room. She does not take a single second off. No plays off for her.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  Oh, I, yeah.

• 46:35Chris Ryan?

  She's acting and doing something interesting in every frame of this show.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  I, so I did not watch The Crown.

• 46:42Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 46:43Speaker 03

  Okay, so for all intents and purposes, I looked it up and I have seen her in a few things, but she's in smaller roles and stuff that I've seen and I didn't clock it as much. So for me, this is. Like her arrival for me full stop.

• 46:56Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  And I am like captivated by this. This is a performance that needs to be seen. Because she is electric to watch. She is so compelling. It's like I'm rewatching Wolf Hall right now. Because Wolf Hall season two comes out next month. And what you're watching on Wolf Hall quite often is Rylance not talking. Not having the focus, not being, and she's doing something similar in that she's not always saying the thing. But we're watching her clock everything. We're watching her put it all together. We're, we're cutting to her a lot. Not because she has something to say, but to watch her make sense of the surroundings.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  You're, you're watching her watch, which I love.

• 47:43Chris Ryan?

  So she has, especially in the episodes that I've watched, like moments that are like not uncommon in Stephen Knight shows. Not uncommon in any television show. You better do this or I'll fucking kill you. Or I like, don't you mess with me because this is who I am. The dialogue is really good. In fact, I would, I wouldn't put it up on the same level as, but it is giving me Deadwood vibes. Like the density of the dialogue and.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  Well, I keep, cause I, the, the bar that is the set, the setting where the, the boxing matches take place. Is so reminiscent of Al Swearengen's place. And there's, there's a lot of Deadwood.

• 48:20Chris Ryan?

  There's even like, like the, uh, has a Kaya's character who we'll talk about is like very like Seth Bullock arriving and.

• 48:27Speaker 03

  No, this is, I, I also have, this is very Deadwood.

• 48:32Chris Ryan?

  But Doreen's doing like all this facial stuff, or it won't even be like big acting. It'll be like, I'm looking at this guy so, you can feel through my eyes. That I want to kill this guy. And it's much scarier or more involving than just even the dialogue. I, but like, it's almost like I would wonder whether or not the people who are in scenes where they were like, whoa, you're kind of like.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:57Chris Ryan?

  You are cooking right now.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  Oh, she's, I mean, in a show of phenomenal performances.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  Is just, I mean, this show has Stephen Graham in it.

• 49:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:07Speaker 03

  And she is just demolishing all over the place. And what's super interesting is she's, because everybody is inside of this criminal underworld, nothing is to be trusted or believed. We see everything, a lot of the action, we see through the eyes of two Jamaican immigrants, who, so it's an immigrant story as well, uh, who have just arrived in London and are trying to get the lay of the land.

• 49:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  And so we're also watching them, we're watching them watch Mary and the elephants do all of their pickpocketing and all of their, their, like, I love that scene in the beginning where one of them is giving birth on the street and while the rest of them are infiltrating the crowd and just picking their pockets while

• 49:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:49Speaker 03

  this fake birth is happening, just scams, just like really street level scams. I love, I love that it's not big giant heists or something. It is just like scraping by, street level stuff.

• 50:03Chris Ryan?

  And it's, it's so awesome, like, the, the writing puts characters in these incredibly dramatic, but very real situations. These two brothers, or, uh, Malachi Kirby plays a guy named Hezekiah Moscow, and then, uh, he has, is it his cousin who's with him?

• 50:20Speaker 03

  I, I

• 50:20Chris Ryan?

  Who's Alec?

• 50:20Speaker 03

  I think so, yeah.

• 50:21Chris Ryan?

  Francis Lovehall plays Alec Monroe. I think that's his cousin. And they've come over from Jamaica to London, basically because Moscow has had a correspondence with a zoological, a zoo, uh, animal trainer guy. And he's like, I wanna, this guy has a dream of becoming a lion tamer.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Yep, he wants to, he's gonna come and learn how to be a lion tamer.

• 50:42Chris Ryan?

  And the head of the zoo has been like, when you get here, I'll give you a job. It turns out that that job is incredibly racist and demeaning. But these two guys arrive in London and have five shillings.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:51Chris Ryan?

  And the show itself, the plot is basically hinges on, well, what would you do if you only had two shillings left?

• 50:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:59Chris Ryan?

  And what would you do if you only had one shilling left?

• 51:01Speaker 03

  What are your top five shillings?

• 51:04Chris Ryan?

  Kurt Schilling, uh, two Bob, three pence. Uh, I actually don't even know what a Schilling would translate to now.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  Couldn't tell you.

• 51:13Chris Ryan?

  But they run out of Schillings pretty fast and then they have to basically earn money back with their fists. So there's a whole bare knuckle boxing plot. Stephen Graham is sort of the center of that. He plays a character named Sugar Goodson, who is-

• 51:26Speaker 03

  Terrifying.

• 51:28Chris Ryan?

  Uh, one part Jake LaMotta and one part Paul Sorvino from Goodfellas and is essentially the swear engine of that area. But I want to shout out James Nelson Joyce, who plays his brother Treacle.

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Incredible.

• 51:40Chris Ryan?

  Awesome. He is awesome.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  Is he a fighter? His fight, I don't know. His fighting stuff was so convincing.

• 51:47Chris Ryan?

  The British Shameless. He's been in, he's a veteran.

• 51:50Speaker 03

  He was such a good fighter just in the fights that I was like, oh, is this his background? Um, if, did you watch this? So all of this stuff, the bare knuckle boxing stuff is fantastic. And similar to Deadwood, it exists in a period where they're like, hey, uh, Mary says to Sugar, she gives him boxing gloves.

• 52:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  And she's like, hey, use these. It's like, this is a London that is still a frontier feeling, a, a, a lawless frontier. Um, and, but change is coming, order is coming, boxing is being legitimized. It's being put up in hotels where you can make money. It's not in the back of bars, et cetera, et cetera. So this is again, and I liked Deadwood, a story about a place that is about to be like civilized, but is now lawless.

• 52:35Chris Ryan?

  And the production design is so good on this show, but at the same time, it's an example of how great writing can do the work of say, uh, uh, $10 million to build a set. So in the beginning of the first episode, Alec and, uh, Hezekiah are looking for a hotel. They're obviously having a hard time finding one because they're Jamaican and it's a racist city. But a cop tells them, if you, you walk east until basically you can't see anymore.

• 53:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:05Chris Ryan?

  And you can't breathe anymore because it's so polluted and so hazy. And it's basically like the Farit, he's like, you might find a hotel you can afford. And when they get out- There they find another amazing character, Mr. Lau, who runs

• 53:18Speaker 03

  Incredible.

• 53:18Chris Ryan?

  This hotel and is gonna be involved, obviously, with the larger plots of the show. And it's just like, I feel like every time you walk into a room in the show, you meet somebody interesting.

• 53:28Speaker 03

  It's awesome. It's fantastic. I cannot recommend this show enough. The bare knuckle boxing element of it and a lot of the other kind of frontiery, kind of chaotic elements of it, lawlessness, remind me a lot of Jonathan Tropper's fantastic show. Warrior.

• 53:46Chris Ryan?

  Warrior, sorry, yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 03

  Warrior, because Warrior has the fights.

• 53:50Chris Ryan?

  And that's in San Francisco, right?

• 53:51Speaker 03

  It is.

• 53:52Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  And I love that show. I love Warrior. I think it's fantastic. And there is a similar element to it, which is there is a whole thing going on down here that exists outside of law.

• 54:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:03Speaker 03

  And that the the encroachment of government and law and order and all this stuff is like this threat that threatens everything, all the way of life inside of this this area of San Francisco, or in this case, this area of London. Incredible. I'm, I love, I love this show so much. All I want to do is, I want like this to stop and for Rogue Heroes to come back, and then that to stop and this to come back. Like, I just want to be watching these shows.

• 54:31Chris Ryan?

  Isn't this the best, though, when you get, I had no way it was like in a, in a kind of TV slump, but in some ways, I almost like Severnson White Lotus are like known qualities.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:42Chris Ryan?

  And there's something about having all this new shit and also like

• 54:46Speaker 03

  What a surprise.

• 54:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:47Speaker 03

  What a surprise, because I asked you if you were watching A Thousand Blows. You said you hadn't started it. And then I woke up to a Texas morning, all caps, you love it.

• 54:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 03

  And that's, that is

• 54:55Chris Ryan?

  Wife loves it. It's just like, and she was like, we can watch like one a night. I don't want to overdo it.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  Great. It's, it's, it is, isn't it great that even though we're consuming and like, and I feel like nobody consumes more than you do, because you're watching basically everything I'm watching.

• 55:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:13Speaker 03

  Plus more, plus sports.

• 55:15Chris Ryan?

  Plus sports.

• 55:16Speaker 03

  Which I'm never watching.

• 55:17Chris Ryan?

  Well, I don't have to watch that much sports because the Sixers suck this year, so it's okay.

• 55:20Speaker 03

  I'm so sorry.

• 55:21Chris Ryan?

  It's okay.

• 55:22Speaker 03

  I'm sorry. That's football?

• 55:23Chris Ryan?

  No, that's basketball. The Eagles won the Super Bowl, so I'm fine.

• 55:25Speaker 03

  Oh, that's right.

• 55:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like, it is, it's really cool, the Aaron Doherty part, Malachi Kirby, who I, I thought was incredible in Small Axe, the Stephen Queen stuff, but To see people kind of like blossom right in front of you is really cool.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  Discovery.

• 55:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:40Speaker 03

  It's so fun that even though we're watching all this stuff, there are still shows that arrive that are fucking great. And I didn't know there was a new Stephen Knight show.

• 55:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:50Speaker 03

  I didn't know this show was coming until it was on Hulu. And I was like, oh, fuck. Okay, I'll watch this. And then immediately obsessed.

• 55:57Chris Ryan?

  Interesting that the three shows we're talking about are all six episodes.

• 56:01Speaker 03

  That is interesting. Well, they are, I will say, one of the things we have liked about all of them is that they are forward moving singular storylines for the most part. These are long narratives. These are, it's a movie.

• 56:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  It's a mini series. These are not formulaic TV. These are not episodic TV. These are narrative, heavily serialized stories that we're, that we're digging into. I think if they went much longer, it might get a little wonky.

• 56:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  Uh, maybe. I don't know. Um, I'm, I'm just loving this.

• 56:29Chris Ryan?

  Thousand Blows has already been renewed.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  Thank God.

• 56:31Chris Ryan?

  I know Shorzi is definitely coming back for season five, obviously. And then I'm just, fingers crossed, we get to see Rogue Heroes.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  Oh, like, everybody, the bummer about Rogue Heroes, the only bummer is that in order to watch it here, you have to subscribe to MGM Plus.

• 56:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:48Speaker 03

  Uh, which is absolutely stupid. Um, this is where streaming is fucking us.

• 56:53Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  It's, it's, it's, it's making it such that shows that deserve an enormous audience cannot, literally can't find them because they do not have the subscribers. Because who on earth would subscribe to MGM Plus?

• 57:06Chris Ryan?

  I just don't understand why we're in 2025 and there's not just like a BBC America that

• 57:11Speaker 03

  Crazy.

• 57:11Chris Ryan?

  is like, here's what's on BBC in England. If you want us to wait for three months or whatever it is, that's fine.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  We can window all this stuff.

• 57:17Chris Ryan?

  Put it, put it on.

• 57:18Speaker 03

  But put it up. Why is it so hard for me to get this town?

• 57:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  That show has been out for over a year. Anyway, but so that's, that's the hard thing is like, some of these shows just become, become difficult to find and that makes people not pursue them.

• 57:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Speaker 03

  Versus if you could just opt into it, if I, if you could turn this off right now.

• 57:38Chris Ryan?

  One was available on Prime for a while. I don't, I mean, it was, it was,

• 57:41Speaker 03

  Really?

• 57:42Chris Ryan?

  It was just Prime.

• 57:43Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 57:43Chris Ryan?

  And now it's switched. Over to this MGM plus like you have to pay seven ninety nine a month.

• 57:47Speaker 03

  But you can't. What you can do is sign up for a free week. Watch it and cancel it. It's only six episodes.

• 57:53Chris Ryan?

  Or maybe there's a ton of magic inside of the MGM plus library.

• 57:56Speaker 03

  But that's the bummer because there are. I'm sure there are good things. But I mean, like, those are the shows that, to me, get lost in the shuffle. SAS Rogue Heroes is one. The Gold was one. You guys were big champions of.

• 58:09Chris Ryan?

  It was. I don't think it's actually on Paramount Plus anymore.

• 58:11Speaker 03

  No, it's not.

• 58:12Chris Ryan?

  They took it off, yeah.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  Perpetual Grace Unlimited, Steve Conrad's show. It was on Epix. It was on Epix's streaming service. So it was just truly bizarre to try and figure out, and a phenomenal show.

• 58:24Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 58:24Speaker 03

  Um, anyway, I'm gonna, I know we're wrapping up. I'm gonna give you a show to watch because it took me a long time to get you into Shoresy, but you're here. Welcome. The water is warm. Here we go. I know you will now, I wouldn't have said this in the past, but you will now watch animated things.

• 58:41Chris Ryan?

  Is this gonna be the Scavengers Reign new show?

• 58:43Speaker 03

  Oh, it may, it might be. It's not, it's not Scavengers Reign in that, in the same sense of like crazy.

• 58:51Chris Ryan?

  But didn't they do a new show?

• 58:52Speaker 03

  No, oh, no. You know who did a new show? Oh, you might be talking about Common Side Effects.

• 58:57Chris Ryan?

  Okay, yeah.

• 58:57Speaker 03

  Which is incredible.

• 58:59Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 58:59Speaker 03

  That show, absolutely watch.

• 59:01Chris Ryan?

  And that's on?

• 59:02Speaker 03

  Adult Swim.

• 59:03Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 59:03Speaker 03

  I think. Boy, I'm, yeah, I'm almost positive it's Adult Swim. Um, which means it's Max, maybe? I think Dead, I think Adult Swim Dead Ends at Max. Uh, but regardless, um, there is a show.

• 59:16Chris Ryan?

  Dead Ends at Max. What a world. It is on Max.

• 59:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. R.I.P. Um, there is a show that I have now watched multiple times all the way through within the year it's been available. Um, it is an animated show called Freeeren Beyond Journey's End.

• 59:33Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 59:33Speaker 03

  And it's on Crunchyroll. It's an anime. It's an anime show. I watch anime now.

• 59:37Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 59:38Speaker 03

  I'm a fifty-two-year-old childless man with a Crunchyroll subscription. Watch out. Um, it is incredible. It is absolutely staggering.

• 59:49Chris Ryan?

  Say the name again?

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Freeeren. F.R.E. F.R.I.E.R.E.N. How, hold on. I'm, I'm not trying to picture it. Freeeren.

• 59:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's you had it. F R I E R E N.

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  Yes, and then colon, Beyond Journey's End. It's based on a popular manga series. And it's hard to explain what's truly incredible about it. Because what it, it's one of those shows that what it looks like isn't exactly what it is.

• 1:00:16Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:00:16Speaker 03

  It looks like a show that's about like a, a party of heroes. Um, who are fighting, uh, you know, a, a mage, a warrior, a, a healer, a priest. Uh, the mage has an apprentice. And they are, they see a dragon and they have to fight a dragon or whatever. It's all of these, the tropes and the archetypes of a fantasy show.

• 1:00:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  But what it's really about is Freeran is the mage character. And she's an elf. And she is essentially immortal. And what she is dealing with is the consequences of having become, she, we're watching her in a heroes' party on one journey, but we're flashing back to 80 years in the past when she was on a, she was part of a different heroes' party.

• 1:00:59Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:00Speaker 03

  That was successful in fighting someone called the Demon King.

• 1:01:03Chris Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:01:03Speaker 03

  And we never see that, but what we do see is Freeran wrestling with, her immortality means she has trouble connecting to people and she starts to lose people that are important to her. Yeah. No, it really, it's very similar to Shoresy because it's about people who are learning how to care about other people. They're learning how to be, how to have emotional connections, how to exhibit emotional connections. It is an incredible show.

• 1:01:33Chris Ryan?

  You're in my cool book. If you recommend me a bunch of people.

• 1:01:36Speaker 03

  Let's do it.

• 1:01:36Chris Ryan?

  Like watching The Phone Book, I'll watch it.

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  I, I think it's, it's exceptional storytelling and it's beautifully done.

• 1:01:42Chris Ryan?

  Freeran.

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  Freeran.

• 1:01:43Chris Ryan?

  All right, we have our recommendation from Jason. You were such a prince for coming in and talking to me about these shows.

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  Nothing made me happier than your text saying, where are we?

• 1:01:51Chris Ryan?

  I like the idea that Richard Price is just like quietly waiting in the lobby, waiting for you to finish, but he's not. We already recorded that.

• 1:01:56Speaker 03

  I wish.

• 1:01:56Chris Ryan?

  I hope people stick around for my interview with Richard Price.

• 1:01:59Speaker 03

  Oh, please do.

• 1:01:59Chris Ryan?

  It was a real treat for me. Uh, and if you have, are looking for a Richard Price novel to read, you can start with Lazarus Man, which is his most recent book, or Lush Life, which is my favorite one.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  Incredible.

• 1:02:08Chris Ryan?

  Clockers is also awesome. Jason, thank you so much for coming in.

• 1:02:11Speaker 03

  Thank you, Chris.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  The Ex Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  The best things on TV really are free.

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  You just have to know where to look.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 1:02:42Speaker 05

  Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes, para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro, para los que están lejos, los que no vende lejos y los que no vende cerca, para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos, para los que piensan y los que hacen, para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola. Para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  Born in Texas, made in America. That's Valero. Keeping America moving, rain or shine, day or night, 365 days a year. Giving back to our communities and helping businesses thrive. We're proud to fuel the people who keep this country moving. So whether you're exploring new roads or heading down ones you know, we're here, fueling drives coast to coast. Proudly American, proudly getting you where you need to be. Right now. Valero.

• 1:04:17Chris Ryan?

  My guest today is one of my favorite writers, full stop. Richard Price is the author of ten novels, including The Breaks, Clockers, Freedomland, and one of my favorite books ever, Lush Life. He is also an accomplished screenwriter and his credits include The Color of Money and Sea of Love on the big screen, and The Wire, The Night Of, and The Deuce on TV. His latest novel, Lazarus Man, was released last November and it's about a building collapse in Harlem in 2008, and it is fantastic, and I'm honored to have him on the watch. Richard Price, thank you so much for joining us on The Watch.

• 1:04:53Speaker 06

  My pleasure.

• 1:04:54Chris Ryan?

  I'm such a massive fan of your work. I had asked, you know, if you might be out in Los Angeles anytime soon so that we could do this interview in person. And said, I wasn't sure whether or not you made it out here very often.

• 1:05:04Speaker 06

  Not hardly ever.

• 1:05:08Speaker 06

  Unless it's related to something I'm doing, like a TV show, or, you know, getting Nobel Prize or something.

• 1:05:17Speaker 06

  I used to go out a lot, but.

• 1:05:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you used to come out here. So when you were doing that sort of break between The Brakes and Clockers and you were doing a lot of screenwriting out here.

• 1:05:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And beyond that, you know, because whatever movies I was doing, or whatever TV shows I was doing, whether they happened or not, you know. You know, the internet just eliminated the need for all that.

• 1:05:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, well, it's the sunshine. The internet can't quite do the sunshine, but it's definitely the traffic is better on the internet. I wanted to ask you a little bit about that early part of your career, or the earlier part of your career where, you know, you write four novels, I think, that you've talked about them being very self-referential and essentially autobiographical. And then you take this break for Hollywood and come back to Clockers years later, eight years later, I believe it was, and.

• 1:06:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

• 1:06:11Chris Ryan?

  But since then, you know, it seems like you've been able to, the transmission is different where you're able to switch back and forth between doing some screenwriting work, going back to a novel, some screenwriting work. Was there something that, is that just age? Is that just familiarity and reps? Or what was it, the change that made you feel like you could go back and forth a little bit easier?

• 1:06:30Speaker 06

  Well, I just could because

• 1:06:34Speaker 06

  the reason why I could do novels is because I was making money from screenplays, you know, and you know, for a novelist, the most valuable thing you can buy is time. You know, if you got, you know, if you gotta buy eggs, you're in trouble if you're just writing novels.

• 1:06:52Speaker 06

  But I had a facility for both, you know.

• 1:06:56Speaker 06

  When they asked me to start writing screenplays, they did it because I had read my earlier books and they liked my dialogue. But dialogue, I've often said this, has nothing to do with how good a screenwriter you are. I mean, actors will give you a good dialogue. I mean, screenwriting is about.

• 1:07:17Speaker 06

  You got two hours. You got four characters. Race to the top of the pyramid. You know, uh, it's architecture. Um, and it also helps if somebody, some gorilla is involved.

• 1:07:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:32Speaker 06

  You know, and then you could write alphabet soup. It doesn't make a difference, you know? Not really, but.

• 1:07:38Chris Ryan?

  But Paul Newman helps, right?

• 1:07:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, but, uh, Martin Scorsese helped too.

• 1:07:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:45Speaker 06

  More, you know, more so, or just differently. Um, if you, the most elaborate calling card you can have is, is a well-received screenplay. It, it just, it has babies, you know?

• 1:07:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:00Speaker 06

  And then you're on your way. Um, when you make enough money and you feel like you found something that you don't want to give uh, to others to, to manipulate. That's a novel.

• 1:08:13Chris Ryan?

  So that was, that's what Clockers was at the mo-.

• 1:08:16Speaker 06

  Yeah. It all came out of research, The Sea of Love, um, which was a Pacino cop movie.

• 1:08:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:22Speaker 06

  Because they did ride alongs with detectives in Jersey City. And they went to a housing, I grew up in a housing project in the Bronx in the, in the 50s and 60s. But, you know, it was basically a working class, uh, environment. But now it's like late eighties, crack time. And, you know, to build the bricks were the same. Everything else was like, oh my God, what happened?

• 1:08:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:48Speaker 06

  You know, because crack was, it's just, everybody looked so dangerous or lost, you know? And the whole place smacked of doom. And because I had my own drug habit. I mean, but it was, you know, like middle-class drugs, you know, sniffing, you know? Uh, we used to say coke is God's way of telling you, you're making too much money. Um, but, you know, that, just powder coke. And now here comes the sting crack. And it's a juxtaposition of my own drug history and housing project environment.

• 1:09:24Speaker 06

  And I just wondered, what the, what happened here?

• 1:09:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:30Speaker 06

  You know, and it scared the crap out of me. Uh, but at the same time, you know, it, it drove me forward. Uh, you know, like a bird and a snake. Sometimes the bird eats the snake.

• 1:09:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I remember very vividly being in, I think, high school, early high school, when the, I think Clockers was adapted, or at least being talked about adapted relatively soon after it was released. Am I right about that? Like?

• 1:09:56Speaker 06

  Um, well, you know, the movie came out in ninety, I don't know when the movie, ninety five, I guess.

• 1:10:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but.

• 1:10:02Speaker 06

  I can't remember, but ninety two, the book was published.

• 1:10:04Chris Ryan?

  So I, right after the book, I was not a voracious reader. I, I read a little bit, but I was a big, big movie fan and I, I was really into the sort of then exploding independent film scene then. I remember reading an interview with a director that I liked a lot named Nick Gomez, who had directed.

• 1:10:23Speaker 06

  Oh, I know Nick.

• 1:10:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:23Speaker 06

  I know Nick.

• 1:10:24Chris Ryan?

  And he had directed.

• 1:10:25Speaker 06

  He was great, Jersey Drive.

• 1:10:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:27Speaker 06

  But he, what was the other movie?

• 1:10:28Chris Ryan?

  Laws of Gravity was the first movie he did.

• 1:10:30Speaker 06

  Laws of Gravity, but I, um, both those movies knocked me out. He primarily does TV directing right now.

• 1:10:38Chris Ryan?

  He did some homicide episodes, but he had done an interview around Laws of Gravity and they were asking about what he was going to do next and what is he hoping to do? And I think the interviewer said, well, what about something like Clockers? And he was like, well, Clockers, it's Richard Price. I mean, it's, that's huge, that's huge. And I'd never heard your name and I all of a sudden, you know, just voraciously sort of jumped into the, to the bibliography up to them. But it's interesting how the.

• 1:11:01Speaker 06

  Wow, thanks, Nick.

• 1:11:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, thanks, Nick. But the film, I mean, that probably changed my life in some way. And, but even then, even in the nineties before the internet, the way that the film career could inform the novels and the novels could inform the film career, I'm sure you felt that yourself.

• 1:11:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I just, you know, things come out of things. So you, I learned things writing screenplays and I learned things. I mean, each sort of informed the other. On the other hand, the best screenwriter in the world would make the world's worst novelist because there's no prose, there's no narrative, there's no consciousness, it's, it's all too deep. And. By a reverse, the world's best novelist will make the lousiest screenwriter.

• 1:11:43Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:11:44Speaker 06

  Because he's too wordy, he's too windy. You know, things don't move, you have all the time in the world to have a conversation in a book. You know, you could sit there eating a sandwich in a book, 15 minutes, 15 pages, as long as the the talk is is good. And you try that in a movie, it's like, you know, it's like, okay, well, I wrote this scene, and it goes off, two pages of talking. What's the director gonna do, aim the camera, you know, push play, go out and have a sandwich? You know, there's nothing, there's no movement.

• 1:12:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:15Speaker 06

  We don't, you don't need movement in a novel, like you do in film. You don't need, it's, one is kinetic, the other is static. It's on a page.

• 1:12:25Chris Ryan?

  Talk to me a little bit about writing for TV, though. So obviously, had you done stuff before season three of The Wire? I know you had that, the NYC 22 show, was that pre or post The Wire?

• 1:12:36Speaker 06

  That was afterwards.

• 1:12:37Chris Ryan?

  That was after, okay.

• 1:12:38Speaker 06

  The less said about that, the better. It was awful, because it was a network. It's a, network wants what the mainstream wants. The mainstream does not like anything that that's different. You know, it's gotta be something that reminds them of something, that reminds them of something before that.

• 1:12:57Chris Ryan?

  Right, right.

• 1:12:58Speaker 06

  You know, if you wanna do something different, you have to do independent film, I guess. I mean, the budget has to be small, the expectations have to be low, but you're free to do what you wanna do. The minute, as, as the cost goes up, the, the, whoever's in charge of making money, it just clomps down on anything that smacks of like, well, people don't know about this. Well, let's try it. I can't afford to try it. Do you know how much money you've got there?

• 1:13:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. But I was curious whether or not there were any moments in the, in that Wire writers' room, or in the times that you've, experiences that you've had making long-form television, where you felt like you did have that creative freedom? Because if film is thought of as a director's medium, and is perhaps more of an actor's medium, TV is at least advertised as a writer's medium.

• 1:13:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, maybe the writer creator, you know, like, whoever, god, names are terrible. You know, whoever's in charge of the Law & Order endless franchises.

• 1:14:01Chris Ryan?

  Sure, Dick Wolf, yeah.

• 1:14:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, or... You know, somebody who had, the more you have under your belt, the more, more control you have going forward. Um, the thing, ironically, the wire has zero control in a way.

• 1:14:17Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:14:18Speaker 06

  I mean, it's, it's a whole room of people, but you've got such a chaotic character. And so, everything somebody does has to resonate forward X number of episodes. And you have to know, you have to lock down every episode to the point of, well, we need this, this and this to happen, this, this and this to happen, and this, this, this to happen. So, when you leave a, a meeting for one of the episodes of the Wire that you're supposed to write, you've got this, this handful of, uh, multicolored index cards coded for each character. And, okay, now, okay, now I gotta do a scene where Omar's on the phone, who's he doing?

• 1:14:59Speaker 06

  And Omar's talking to this guy, because whoever's doing the next episode passed me, everything has to dovetail. I mean, you can't go off, I have a better idea, what if I kill Omar?

• 1:15:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:10Speaker 06

  You know, uh, or, you know, what if we find out that McNulty's gay? So, wait a minute, wait a minute, this is an assembly line.

• 1:15:19Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:15:20Speaker 06

  The, the only, uh, wiggle room I had was, uh, in humor, you know? But every, every episode was written in a telephone booth. You know, that's about mu- that's about as much wingspan as you ever have.

• 1:15:34Chris Ryan?

  So, do you have like a, do you have a preference to what size room you're writing in then? If it's a telephone booth and is the novel then a wide open landscape? Do you feel like you can do either? Do you like having the experience of moving?

• 1:15:45Speaker 06

  You know, I don't know, I, you listen, I love, my favorite thing is to write episodic TV based on material that I didn't write.

• 1:15:54Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:15:55Speaker 06

  You know, cause I can see, oh, this guy more, this woman more or less laid it out for me. Yeah, I'll, I'll take it. You know, but sometimes freedom is a noose. I like to know exactly where I'm going.

• 1:16:08Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:09Speaker 06

  And then, then I'll go to town on where I'm going. You know, I'll make, I'll make the best of it. If I have to like create an original thing for TV, if I have to create a really original thing, I'll write a novel.

• 1:16:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:21Speaker 06

  You know, but I'd rather... If I'm writing something that's been adapted, like The Night Of, it was called Criminal Justice on BBC. You know, then it's like, okay, I got it. I know where the story is going. Now, now I'm going to Americanize it. Um, the funny thing is, I watched Criminal Justice. It was six episodes, great acting. And I really enjoyed it. But now all of a sudden, you say, okay, well, we're going to adapt this now. Then you watch it more carefully, and you go, that makes no sense. What the hell? How do, like, everything looks like crap to you.

• 1:16:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Speaker 06

  Because you, what do I do with that? I mean, what, what? You know, so you wind up having to invent, invent, which is fine, as long as I have that backbone of, of, you know, progression of story, but, you know, that somebody else.

• 1:17:11Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:17:12Speaker 06

  Suggested, I'm good. But if it's original, I don't, I want to do TV.

• 1:17:17Chris Ryan?

  When you're doing novels, do you work from a really strict structure? Do you know where it's going to end? Do you, do you, are you, are you basically answering to your own adaptation in some ways?

• 1:17:27Speaker 06

  Well, I give myself an elevator pitch.

• 1:17:29Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:17:29Speaker 06

  You know, I mean, basically, because so much of it, I mean, you can, you could outline this thing to death. The minute that you start writing, everything changes. At the minute, you go, uh, it was a dark and stormy night, in your own handwriting, and you look down at it. You know, it's all bets are off, you know, because outlining does not, is not writing. You know, it's like Lamaze class. So that's not giving birth. So, I mean, it helps to be organized, but you got to leave a lot of room for inspiration, or you got to leave a lot of room for how you feel after you've committed a character to a place.

• 1:18:14Speaker 06

  And start beating inside the character, then realize, well, you know, point eight, twelve doesn't make any sense now. You know, because character acts, you know, listen, why's this guy eating ham? You know, you. I mean, I learned that partially, I learned that from avoiding actors.

• 1:18:32Chris Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:33Speaker 06

  When I was writing movies, because actors will have ideas after the horse has left the gate.

• 1:18:38Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:18:39Speaker 06

  And you don't, and you don't, they'll, what if, is there a world in which blah, blah. But then, at one point, I remember writing ransom, Mel Gibson.

• 1:18:50Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:18:51Speaker 06

  Gary Sinise. And Gary kept haunting the production office. Every time he saw me, he slowed down. And I was trying to hide under the table because he's gonna come in. But at some point, I realized what he's saying actually makes sense because he is the character. He's been walking around in that, in those, that character's brain and clothing. And, you know, he would have as, just as valuable a take on what that character would and wouldn't do as, as myself. And that's, I still want to avoid actors.

• 1:19:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Speaker 06

  You know, I, I have respect for the fact that, well, I take my characters that do this, do this, do this. Okay, let's start writing. Oh, no, no, he's never gonna do that. You know, it's like.

• 1:19:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:41Speaker 06

  The writing tells you what, what you don't know because the writing, nothing happens until you write.

• 1:19:47Chris Ryan?

  Were you attracted to being on set just as a spectator? And did you find the process of making this stuff very interesting? Or were you, was it?

• 1:19:56Speaker 06

  I hated being on set. It's the boring thing in the world. You know, the reason why they, on the set, they're constantly passing around like food treats.

• 1:20:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Speaker 06

  Like a platter of tortillas will come out. Or all of a sudden, there's like, you know, dipped Monte Cristo sandwiches are coming around. Or, you know, like, you know, little custards. And the reason why they do that is because they want to allay everybody's boredom.

• 1:20:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:23Speaker 06

  You know, so you feel like, oh, you know, you know, if I stand here and nobody asks me a question and I go into a semi-coma, I get rewarded in 20 minutes with something else I'd never read. You know?

• 1:20:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, but all you, but time of movie is done. Nobody's clothes fits.

• 1:20:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I did notice that in the few times I've been to set is the abundance of M and Ms is just outrageous.

• 1:20:45Speaker 06

  Oh, God.

• 1:20:47Chris Ryan?

  One of my, I mean, my favorite novel by you, one of my favorite novels is Lush Life. And I was living in New York when that came out. I sometimes, if my memory of New York is foggy at the time, I almost just refer to Lush Life as a kind of biography. I mean, I was not unlike the protagonist at that moment in my life. I was wondering whether or not you had authors that taught you what New York was, authors that filled in articulated what New York meant to you, because obviously it's such a huge character in a lot of your books.

• 1:21:22Speaker 06

  Well, New York, like, who's New York? I mean, you know, if they say the five, let's, let's just stick with film directors. Is it Martin Scorsese's New York? Is it Whit Stillman's New York? You know, is it Spike Lee's New York? Is it?

• 1:21:37Chris Ryan?

  Woody Allen, yeah, right.

• 1:21:40Speaker 06

  You know, Greta Gerwig's New York? It's like, it's like, New York doesn't exist. New York is a collection of New Yorks.

• 1:21:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:48Speaker 06

  You know? So, I didn't, nobody needed to tell me about New York. I mean, I lived here all my life. If I don't know by now, I'm, I'm like encased in something. But I did have, there are writers that gave me, showed me a way to write that was comfortable for me. And it's, and I've always talked about this, is Lenny Bruce. Because he, his spritzings, I just read transcripts, transcripts when I was in high school of, of his routines. And they, they paste, they used the lipsticks every time we paused.

• 1:22:31Speaker 06

  And then he would free associate, free associate, somehow get to get there. You know, and that was like my kind of, like, poppy kind of thing.

• 1:22:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:41Speaker 06

  And the other writer, I guess, was, I always speak of Hubert Selby, because last segment to Brooklyn, you know, it was basically, you could look at it as kind of like social realism, but it's social realism on speed. You know, it's impressionistic, it's fast, it takes all the, you know, the, the time-honored social fiction. Is usually, you know, like an indictment and a demonstration to the court of unfairness in the world. And it can read very solemn, you know, because the subject is solemn, but I didn't want to

• 1:23:19Speaker 06

  write like, like I was writing with a hammer and tongs, you know, and I guess Selby, who roomed with, he was part of the village, uh, I don't know if it was the jazz scene per se, but he was in that bebop.

• 1:23:35Chris Ryan?

  The beat scene kind of down there.

• 1:23:36Speaker 06

  Time to be with bebop.

• 1:23:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:38Speaker 06

  And, uh, you know, he didn't waste a lot of time and the, the stuff was lyrical without, you know, being so poetic, you didn't know what the hell he was talking about. But it was kind of a, it taught me how to write narrative with, with, with a jazz heart. You know, it was lighter. It was like social realism. I wouldn't say it's social realism light, but it's like, there was music in the sentences.

• 1:24:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Speaker 06

  You know, and that's me. That's me. I want to, I want to write like that sort of.

• 1:24:13Chris Ryan?

  I did certainly is that, that very much resonates with me. When I listen, when I, when I read your books, I actually hear them rather, you know, there are some writers that you, you're reading and you're sort of intellectually processing all the things that are happening. But with your books, I, I can hear these people talking and it, it has a rhythm of its own. With lush life and, and honestly with Lazarus, man, I think one of the things I admire about you is that you acknowledge that New York City is in this constant state of transformation, that it's an, for whoever just moved to New York, there's someone there who misses the old New York, but you.

• 1:24:44Speaker 06

  Yeah. I miss still Harlem.

• 1:24:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:47Speaker 06

  I'm a white guy.

• 1:24:48Chris Ryan?

  But you write very non judgmentally about that. You know, I think you, you're very matter of fact about it, but I don't think you geolocate or chronologically locate a time when New York was at its best and since then has fallen.

• 1:24:59Speaker 06

  Every generation has its own nostalgia, you know, uh, and in turn will be a source of nostalgia for somebody and it's always half bullshit because, you know, you say, oh, oh, oh, when Glenn Miller played songs that made the hit, you know, that whole fact, you know.

• 1:25:19Speaker 06

  You know, people will, oh, it was a nickel to buy a hot dog. Yeah, well, your, your salary was $60 a week. So it better cost a nickel. I mean, they, they just remember what seemed more innocent.

• 1:25:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:31Speaker 06

  But there's a lot of dirty around that innocent that is, it's selective amnesia.

• 1:25:37Chris Ryan?

  I find myself nostalgic for the Barnes and Noble in Union, Union Square. Uh, not, not you, Astor Place, the Astor Place Barnes and Noble, that was.

• 1:25:45Speaker 06

  Are you kidding me? I remember when the first Barnes and Noble went up and I said, you know, well, there goes the neighborhood. You know, because the whole thing, you're supposed to have small, independent bookstores. And you didn't think of them as independent bookstores. They were just bookstores. You know, as Barnes and Noble, that put in the word independent, AKA fighting for its life.

• 1:26:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I, uh, I was, when I was reading Lazarus Man, I felt like I could feel that book in conversation with other works that you've, that you've produced. You know, I especially, there were parts of Lazarus Man that really reminded me of Freedomland. Um, in terms of, you know, the protagonist who has a, a, a, a huge secret. Obviously, it's much more destructive in Freedomland than in Lazarus Man. It's more almost transformative, this new identity that this person comes through. But, you know, when you're writing these books, I, I'm curious how much you're conscious of your own bibliography, of your own past works. And you're like, oh, that's, that's in harmony with this.

• 1:26:44Speaker 06

  You know, it, it dawned on me, you know, halfway through writing Lazarus Man, well, one of the main characters is a Harlem funeral director. You know, uh, you know, a black funeral, oh my God, the whites, which I wrote just before I had a black funeral director base in Harlem. But I, I didn't, it would, I'm not thinking, oh, I better not do Freedomland or better not do Clockers again. I just, it's each time, it's like, what triggers me?

• 1:27:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:11Speaker 06

  What do I want to write? But, and if I wind up writing about a, a tight place, like a geographical location, you know, you, you could do a thousand books about New York or a thousand books about anywhere, a village without leaving the village and still bring something to the party, every book that wasn't there before. Because as you, the. You grow as a writer, so you bring new perspectives and you can bring a new depth that you perhaps hadn't had, or new insights that life has given you that you hadn't had when you wrote the last book, and it's gonna show up.

• 1:27:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, I think that's a beautiful place for us to wrap up. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Obviously, your work's meant an absolute mountain to me, so it's really an honor to meet you. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 1:28:06Speaker 06

  Oh, my pleasure. I've enjoyed it.

• 1:28:08Chris Ryan?

  Take care.

• 1:28:18Speaker 04

  I don't know what I'm doing.

• 1:28:19Speaker 06

  Need a break.

• 1:28:20Speaker 04

  Forget it, I quit.

• 1:28:21Speaker 06

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 1:28:23Speaker 04

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 1:28:24Speaker 06

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free.

• 1:28:28Speaker 04

  Shwing!

• 1:28:29Speaker 06

  Even our news is uplifting.

• 1:28:30Speaker 04

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 1:28:32Speaker 06

  Watch Tommy Boy, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 1:28:37Speaker 04

  We're not worthy!

• 1:28:39Speaker 06

  The best things on TV really are free.

• 1:28:42Speaker 04

  You just have to know where to look.

• 1:28:43Speaker 06

  Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.