Pod Insights The Rewatchables ‘Snake Eyes’ With Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Van Lathan About this episode The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Van Lathan are the kings of the sewer after rewatching Brian De Palma’s ‘Snake Eyes,’ starring Nic Cage, Gary Sinise, and Carla Gugino.
Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, and Eduardo Ocampo
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Transcript 24,698 words · 5 speakers
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0:00 Bill Simmons? This episode is brought to you by Quince. Finding a decent piece of clothing can be a lot harder than finding a decent movie, but that was before Quince. Quince has staple pieces made from premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, and everything is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. It's the perfect place to start building a cozy fall outfit without any absurd markups. For instance, I love a good vest. They have a lightweight, down, packable puffer vest, which is an easy fall layer, although nobody loves layers more than Chris Ryan. You can throw it over a sweater, long sleeve, whenever you want to make an outfit feel a little more seasonal, simple, classic, one of those pieces that works with pretty much everything that's already in your closet. Find your next fall favorites at Quince.
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2:19 Bill Simmons? Snake Eyes, 1998, it's under 100 minutes. It's in Atlantic City. It's Nick Cage, it's Brian De Palma. They say the title in the movie multiple times. There's a fixed boxing match. There's an assassination, there's a cover up, there's a dirty cop. Sean, they just don't make them like this anymore.
2:38 Sean Fennessey? No, man. You know, I was thinking about this, rewatching it last night. There's a certain kind of movie that's, that I like to call the water slide movie. Where once you sit down, like you can't stop, right? You just go down. It doesn't mean that the end of the ride is gonna be the best part. And this is a situation where the end of the ride may not be the best part. It's may not be the best fall, but the slide down in this movie is so fucking fun. So I'm excited about this one.
3:03 Bill Simmons? De Palma, a lot of craft and care. Nic Cage had a great point in his career. I threw this movie at you and wasn't surprised that you were excited about it.
3:11 Speaker 02 Loved it, saw it in theaters. It's back to back years of going into a movie thinking that I knew what the movie was going to be. And then in the first act going, wait a minute, this is different than what I thought it was gonna be. In 97, it was Eve's Bayou.
3:26 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
3:26 Speaker 02 Which I thought was gonna be, which I thought was gonna be a straight horror movie.
3:30 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
3:30 Speaker 02 That ended up being this American, this great American southern drama. And then when I went into this one, Face Off was like a couple of years before this. So I think I expected more of a bombastic action film.
3:42 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
3:43 Speaker 02 Than this kind of scene by scene, like totally kinetic, driving, spy craft espionage type of deal. But I totally wasn't grossed by it.
3:54 Bill Simmons? We'll talk about De Palma in a second. Nic Cage. I'll start here. I'm trying to think, is there a better actor to play a crooked cop? Who has to make a choice whether he wants to do the right thing or not that we've ever had in the history of American cinema? I don't know what it is about. I have some nominees. I mean, Denzel's done this a couple of times. Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta.
4:17 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
4:19 Bill Simmons? Idris Elba, I think, has that kind of vibe to it, but it's, it's, I don't know what it is about an actor matching it with this. Like, I wouldn't buy McConaughey as a dirty cop.
4:30 Sean Fennessey? No.
4:31 Bill Simmons? Bruce Willis, I would still feel like he's Bruce Willis. There's got to be some sort of scumbag.
4:35 Speaker 02 Sleaziness.
4:36 Bill Simmons? Sleazy, but I'm still rooting for you. And it's a really hard tightrope, and I can't explain it.
4:41 Sean Fennessey? It's really unusual, though, that that is the energy that he gives when you look at his background and the kind of roles that he took early in his career. And just the way that he is as a person, if you ever see him talk in real life, he's an artist. You know, he talks like an artist. He's from a, you know, very established, famous filmmaking family, and yet he does seem like a sleaze ball.
5:03 Bill Simmons? He's got like the chest hair going all the way up to his neck.
5:06 Sean Fennessey? His hairline.
5:07 Bill Simmons? Seating hairline. He's just kind of.
5:09 Speaker 02 You know, I think that part of what makes Nic Cage Nic Cage is, is exactly what you're talking about. It is a rejection of, I am from a filmmaking dynasty. I don't want my last name Coppola to influence the way you think I should be doing what I am. I don't want to be the Francis Ford Coppola of acting. I want to be this almost force of nature on screen that goes from playing like one of the hardest to watch movies I've ever watched and loved was Leaving Las Vegas, to then Castro Troy, to this, Raising Arizona, which is the first time, all of these off-bill, off-kilter things, almost like a rejection of what you would think a Coppola would be
5:54 Speaker 02 doing as an actor.
5:56 Bill Simmons? Yeah. I like that you flipped him, made him a Coppola.
6:00 Speaker 02 He is a Coppola.
6:01 Bill Simmons? He's Nic Cage.
6:02 Speaker 02 He is.
6:03 Bill Simmons? Changed his name.
6:04 Speaker 02 He did, but he's, when I, it's funny, when I first learned that, I learned that actually on Saturday Night Live.
6:11 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
6:11 Speaker 02 I learned that he, because there's this skit that they do where they're talking about it, it goes like, if we're talking about good bodies, why don't you mention Sofia Coppola or something like that? And he goes, that's my cousin. And I went, what? His cousin, that's why, that's why I kind of found it out, but he's in his career. That's something that for whatever reason, he definitely did not want to be. I think it's colored the way that he's taken roles and how he's acting and other things.
6:35 Sean Fennessey? It's weird though, because I mean, he appears really early on in a Francis Ford Coppola movie, right? He's in Peggy Sue Got Married.
6:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:41 Sean Fennessey? He's in Valley Girl. He's in these movies in the eighties. He's in Raising Arizona, where he's got this more like comic goofball persona. Moonstruck is kind of an oddball.
6:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:51 Sean Fennessey? And he finds a way to pivot into this like really pained, deep, sincere artist in the mid nineties. And then pivots out of that into these kinds of parts. These like action star parts with guys who are a little greasy, a little untrustworthy. You're rooting for them, but they've done bad things in their life. You know, Con Air is like this.
7:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:16 Sean Fennessey? Face Off is like this. It's just a.
7:17 Speaker 02 Matchstick Man.
7:18 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, Matchstick Man. Yeah, he's just a, he's a really weird screen persona. He's kind of transformed many times.
7:23 Bill Simmons? He wins the Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas. Before that, he was kind of the, he was a draft pick for, hey, who could win an Oscar someday? He would have been the guy that was mentioned. And he rips, the movies he rips off after that, it was inexplicable as it was happening. And there, I had him when I did the Action Hero Championship belt. I think he actually had the belt because he's in The Rock and Face Off and Con Air. The City of Angels, which not an action movie, then Snake Eyes and Eight Millimeter. Though like five of his six, his next six movies are just like these action movies or action thrillers. They're all movies I like. By the way, we've done The Rock, Face Off, Con Air. We've done five, the five of those six unrewatchable.
8:02 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
8:03 Bill Simmons? But as it was happening, we're like, you're a serious actor. You just won an Oscar. What are you doing?
8:07 Speaker 02 But also think about those characters to Sean's point.
8:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
8:10 Speaker 02 Those are not characters that really fit into the archetypes of action movie stuff.
8:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it was like the two point O version of it.
8:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's like i- i- in, in The Rock, he, yeah, sure. He is the driving force of this big action movie, but he's.
8:26 Sean Fennessey? He's a scientist.
8:26 Speaker 02 He's a scientist, egghead nerd type of guy.
8:29 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
8:29 Speaker 02 And then in Face Off, he goes from being this magnificent evil at the beginning to playing the version of Tom, of John Travolta's, uh, because it's Casper Troy. What's John Travolta's name again?
8:44 Sean Fennessey? I can't remember the other character's name.
8:45 Speaker 02 But, and, and he's like, gotta show all of this sensitivity and all of this stuff. He always flipped it. And, and Con Air. I remember seeing.
8:53 Bill Simmons? Con Air is a real action movie. He's ripped.
8:57 Speaker 02 Even that, though, he's big and he's got the hair and it was kind of like, that was a way that you hadn't really seen him before.
9:03 Bill Simmons? Wrongfully imprisoned.
9:05 Speaker 02 Wrongfully imprisoned.
9:07 Bill Simmons? Killed a guy. Defending his wife in a rainstorm. And shouldn't kill them because he.
9:13 Speaker 02 The army ranger.
9:14 Bill Simmons? He's, he had these skills that he shouldn't have used on another human being. Had to go to jail.
9:20 Bill Simmons? No, it's just like, circumstance would never happen to real life, but in these action movies where they have to figure out how to get a guy in jail, it's never like, yeah, he had this 15 year old girl in his neighborhood. It's never like gross. It's always like, you know, he had these skills and he had to defend his wife and the guy, he didn't know the guy was gonna die.
9:37 Speaker 02 And even, even that scene in Con Air, isn't there one part where he's just looking up going,
9:43 Speaker 02 like he's so far out of it. They go so far to make you understand that he's not a bad guy.
9:48 Sean Fennessey? He's just good at playing guys with baggage, with dark pasts, with this like unresolved problem. You know, Moonstruck is like that too. Raising Arizona is like that too. His best movies are always guys where you're like, what the hell happened to this guy? Why is he like this? This movie is kind of like that too. It's just like, why is this guy such a scumbag? Why is he such an operator?
10:07 Speaker 02 Don't you just get the feeling that almost more than any other actor, he just likes having fun on screen?
10:14 Sean Fennessey? Definitely. This movie is a good example of that.
10:16 Speaker 02 He just likes.
10:18 Bill Simmons? When do you think the wheels kind of started to come off with him as a best actor type of guy? Was it this movie or Face Off? Cause these, Face Off, he's dialing it up.
10:27 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
10:28 Bill Simmons? And, cause I always thought with Pacino, when he did Son of a Woman, he just kind of morphed into the Son of a Woman guy.
10:33 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
10:34 Bill Simmons? And with Nic Cage, I feel like Face Off, he never shed Face Off in his brain and just felt, he's nuts in this movie, which is why I like it.
10:42 Sean Fennessey? But if you watch Vampire's Kiss. Which he made before this. That's one of the craziest movie performances of all time, where you can feel him just being like, screw it, I'm taking this movie over and I'm doing exactly what I want and it doesn't matter if any other actor is doing this. And he does tone it down in movies after that, like Red Rock West, right? He's really like low key and cool. But he, even in the early days, was just like, screw it. This movie, Safety Off, I'm doing whatever I want.
11:08 Bill Simmons? Safety Off's a good way to put it.
11:10 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, and he-
11:10 Bill Simmons? That's a good, that's a good list, the Safety Off list. That's Pacino in Devil's Advocate, he's like, "Safety Off!"
11:16 Sean Fennessey? But he meets-
11:17 Bill Simmons? Hoo-ah!
11:18 Sean Fennessey? He meets his absolute match in this movie because De Palma is one of the great Safety Off-
11:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
11:23 Sean Fennessey? Perf- like, encouraging performers, filmmakers, because like, he did this twice with Pacino. Scarface and Carlito's Way are amazing Safety Off performances, so they're like, they're so good together.
11:33 Speaker 02 Something, it's funny about Nic Cage, it is a little unfair the way we look at how his career played out. Because he's been, not just Safety Off, he's been Bazooka Safety Off-
11:46 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
11:46 Speaker 02 For like, the last 10 years. But even after this, Matchstick Man, The Weatherman, all of these movies, there are some real understated performances-
11:57 Sean Fennessey? Hmm.
11:57 Speaker 02 That people really don't give him credit for. Even like, National Treasure, of all the movies that he's played, where he's kind of played them straight up and down-
12:05 Sean Fennessey? Mm-hmm.
12:05 Speaker 02 National Treasure might be one of those things. So it really, for a long time, for a long time even after this, there was a great variety in the roles, and some of the roles were a little bit more understated.
12:18 Bill Simmons? He was a high-volume shooter. His next five after Eight Millimeter were Bringing Out the Dead, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Family Man, and Captain Crowley's Mandaline, along with Eight Millimeter. I remember Captain Crowley's Mandaline, that's when it was kind of ending for Nic Cage, where he was becoming a little bit of a punchline. It is interesting, it's like a different, Snake Eyes, it's not Apex Mountain for him, it's a different- It's almost like Last Title, or La- it's almost like the 1998 Bulls with MJ for the Nic Cage career.
12:47 Sean Fennessey? The Last Dance, yeah.
12:48 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it's almost like Last Dance for him, where you go to Snake Eyes, because it's him and De Palma, "I still have faith, everybody's gonna make the right decisions." And then it probably ends with Eight Millimeter, a movie that I love very much. "The film is real."
13:03 Speaker 02 But that, that, that movie, with that subject matter- He is the only guy, one of the only guys to me, and maybe you guys could think of somebody else, on his level of star, that would have went on that journey.
13:15 Bill Simmons? That would have been like, yeah, showdown with me and machine in a cemetery.
13:19 Sean Fennessey? He was, he was fearless and he was really into kinky, transgressive stuff. He's still really good, though. He's had like a little mini renaissance in the last five years.
13:26 Bill Simmons? For sure.
13:27 Sean Fennessey? He was in Pig, he was in Dream Scenario a couple of years ago, like, he's not a huge box office star anymore, but he's still a really interesting actor.
13:34 Bill Simmons? Long Legs?
13:34 Sean Fennessey? Long Legs, yeah, every third or fourth movie.
13:37 Bill Simmons? Long Legs!
13:39 Sean Fennessey? And he's still trying, he's still trying stuff, you know, like, even if you don't like Long Legs, he's going for it in that movie. He's doing something totally new.
13:45 Speaker 02 There's all kinds of stuff surrounding him about, like, you know, stuff that he's done off screen and stuff that he's bought and.
13:53 Bill Simmons? He's fucking crazy. I mean, he's like a lunatic.
13:55 Speaker 02 Nobody is. He is legitimately, to me, one of the freest artists of my generation. May, as far as actors, there are other guys out there, but Nic Cage is totally free. He makes movies, like, the movie that he made.
14:11 Bill Simmons? By free, you mean blockers?
14:13 Speaker 02 No, I mean, free, like.
14:15 Sean Fennessey? He's not, he's not afraid to be judged.
14:16 Speaker 02 He's not afraid to be judged. Like, he, he puts the movie out there, the premise of the movie could be crazy.
14:21 Bill Simmons? So he's like Craig.
14:22 Speaker 02 Whatever. Like Craig.
14:23 Sean Fennessey? You know, he did make a film called Bangkok Dangerous, and we're of course here with Bangkok Craig.
14:27 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's right, I forgot about Bangkok Craig, yeah. He's right over there.
14:31 Sean Fennessey? It comes out once in a while.
14:32 Speaker 02 Even the whole Bangkok, Bangkok Dangerous era, that movie and then Knowing.
14:36 Sean Fennessey? Knowing, yeah. That's a movie that on paper should have been amazing, and then you watch it and you're like, god damn it, what the hell happened here?
14:42 Speaker 02 So it's not, it's not a movie that is great, but it is a movie that is better than you remember it.
14:49 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
14:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:50 Sean Fennessey? And he, he's just, he has a thing, before we started recording, we were talking about movie stars, he's got a thing where he can just hold a movie on his shoulders. No matter how good or how bad the movie is, if it's an hour and 10 minutes or two, you know, a hun, you know, an hour and 40 minutes, like, you can hang with him the whole time. And that is rarer than we realize.
15:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Good, remember Ghost Rider?
15:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, of course.
15:14 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, that was tough.
15:15 Bill Simmons? That was when the wheels came off for him, but I still went, I saw that in the theater, because I was like, ah, this movie looks nuts, and Nic Cage is in it, and.
15:21 Sean Fennessey? Ghost Rider, if it was released in 2017 in the Marvel machine back then, would have been cool.
15:26 Speaker 02 It would have been fantastic, because you might have got a different take on it. There's also a Ghost Rider sequel that is like. Almost unwatchable.
15:32 Sean Fennessey? Spirit of vengeance.
15:33 Speaker 02 Spirit of vengeance, yeah. Eat Yourself and Now one is very, very hard to watch.
15:37 Sean Fennessey? Tough one.
15:38 Speaker 02 But um, he's also like a huge comic nerd. Him, he's, he's into that stuff. That's a cool character. If you're that type of star, maybe Johnny Blaze is not the comic book character that you choose to play, but that's the one that he wanted to.
15:53 Bill Simmons? De Palma. We've done, this is number five. There's a few things left on the bone.
15:59 Sean Fennessey? What do you, what, what do you really eye long term?
16:01 Bill Simmons? Scarface, we haven't done yet. Carlito's Way, we haven't done yet. Um, and there's one other.
16:06 Sean Fennessey? Dressed to Kill?
16:07 Bill Simmons? Dressed to Kill, we haven't done it.
16:07 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Those, that's, I think that's the big three that are left.
16:11 Bill Simmons? So I, I found a nineteen ninety.
16:12 Sean Fennessey? Carrie, we haven't done Carrie?
16:13 Bill Simmons? Oh, we haven't done Carrie. I found a nineteen ninety eight premiere magazine where they interviewed him about Snake Eyes. And it was a Q and A. And the question was, your leading men often seem ineffectual, dwarfed by insurmountable obstacles. De Palma's like, yeah. Here's his answer. The establishment kind of overwhelms the protagonists in my movies. And it's like the Tar Baby. It's very difficult to beat. You keep socking it, but you just keep on getting another limb sucked in.
16:43 Speaker 02 Jesus.
16:44 Bill Simmons? De Palma. Fucking weirdo. I love this guy.
16:48 Sean Fennessey? He is the best.
16:48 Bill Simmons? He's like just a maniac.
16:51 Speaker 02 I, I, I think of all the directors that are out there, the like, the, obviously, he's a really important director for, was it New Cinema?
16:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
16:59 Speaker 02 It's called, like, he, his movies are the ones that I feel the closest to.
17:06 Sean Fennessey? He's a freak like you.
17:07 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's. I'm glad you said it.
17:09 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, he's a freak.
17:10 Speaker 02 His, his movies are the ones I feel closest to.
17:12 Bill Simmons? It's almost like one of, I was gonna have this on one stage, the worst. One of the most disappointing things about this movie is he kind of suppresses his freak.
17:19 Sean Fennessey? A little bit.
17:20 Bill Simmons? When they're, when we're going over the hotel rooms. 1970s, early 80s De Palma would have had some crazy fuck scene in one of the rooms.
17:28 Speaker 02 But aren't we-
17:28 Bill Simmons? This was like mid 50s De Palma, like, I don't need to do that anymore.
17:31 Speaker 02 At this point, though, aren't we at the point where De Palma is most flirting with mainstream cinema filmmaking?
17:39 Bill Simmons? He's coming out of Mission Impossible.
17:40 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, he's on, I think he's on the mountaintop. I mean, this is really the highest, the pinnacle of his commercial appeal as a filmmaker. But you, you think that that might have like muted his desire to show some of that stuff?
17:51 Speaker 02 He flirts with it, right? Like, there's, there, there are ladies in the movie that their sexuality plays a big part in the film. But there's a little bit of holding back, to me, of that stuff, that some of the movies that he made in the past, obviously, like Scarface is just like, just-
18:10 Bill Simmons? Well, dressed to kill.
18:11 Speaker 02 Like, all of that stuff.
18:12 Sean Fennessey? We did Body Double. I mean, you know, yeah.
18:14 Speaker 02 But in this, you can feel those urges being rolled back a little bit. For the sake of, I want you to see the story and how the story shakes out.
18:21 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
18:21 Speaker 02 I feel like we're doing something really smart.
18:23 Sean Fennessey? All the movies are about, they're not about the women and they're not even about having sex with the women. They're about men watching the women. That's what all the movie, they're all about voyeurism. So the movie is still like that. It's just that like, I guess the women don't take their tops off in this movie, but for the most part.
18:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
18:38 Sean Fennessey? It's just, it's the same thing.
18:39 Bill Simmons? If it should be a PG 13 or an R, and I think it ended up, they said fuck it and went for R.
18:44 Speaker 02 Speaking of that, when we're doing Fem Fatale.
18:46 Sean Fennessey? That, well, I would argue that's his last great movie.
18:48 Speaker 02 I know.
18:48 Bill Simmons? Which one?
18:49 Sean Fennessey? Fem Fatale. That's a couple of years later.
18:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
18:52 Bill Simmons? He saw something in Rebecca.
18:53 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, yeah.
18:56 Bill Simmons? Look, you always know when it's his film. I think that's the, it's like we always, Sean and I would always talk about back when, uh, back when our fingers used to work. When we'd see other writers and you could cover their byline and you knew who the writer was.
19:09 Sean Fennessey? It's the best feeling.
19:10 Bill Simmons? I know who that is.
19:11 Speaker 02 Right.
19:11 Bill Simmons? De Palma, like, you know.
19:12 Sean Fennessey? Well, you know, how the camera's moving. As soon as the camera starts moving and you see what it's once, what it's looking at, then you can tell.
19:19 Bill Simmons? He's always gonna take one big, long shot swing at some point. Just to kill he does it.
19:26 Sean Fennessey? This one might be the granddaddy.
19:28 Speaker 02 Which is why I always thought, I mean, looking back on it, he was the perfect director to get the Mission Impossible franchise started.
19:37 Bill Simmons? Well, he agrees because it allowed him to do movies like Snake Eyes. Because it did well and he made money from it.
19:42 Sean Fennessey? It's still shocking to me, though, how that worked.
19:46 Speaker 02 How so?
19:46 Sean Fennessey? Because he's, he never made anything even close to that scale of a movie. Scarface is a big movie, but it's only got like seven characters in it.
19:53 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
19:54 Sean Fennessey? And him being able to pull off like the, the tunnel scene at the end of that movie is stunning.
19:59 Speaker 02 Oh, just the set pieces, the action.
20:00 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, the scope of that movie is so big, but it's so, I still love the original. It's so good.
20:04 Speaker 02 And it's, it's the hideous one of all of them. Some people would argue that the movies became more and more ridiculous from a plot standpoint.
20:12 Bill Simmons? What's your favorite De Palma?
20:14 Speaker 02 Ever?
20:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
20:15 Speaker 02 Carlito's Way.
20:17 Bill Simmons? What's yours, Sean?
20:20 Sean Fennessey? It's probably Blowout. I mean, we talked about it on the Blowout pod, which I just think is like a perfect movie. Um, but tha- that whole stretch.
20:27 Bill Simmons? I respect Blowout the most, but I enjoy Scarface the most. I fucking love Scarface.
20:31 Sean Fennessey? Scarface, dressed to kill, blowout.
20:33 Bill Simmons? Because it's like, I, I don't want to waste it yet.
20:36 Sean Fennessey? I know. All those movies are great. Carlito's Way is great. There's, there's like a 15 year period where he is unmatched and able, being, being able to make a sequence in a movie. His, his sequences are so cool.
20:46 Bill Simmons? You know why I can't have a baby with her, Manny? Her womb is so polluted.
20:52 Speaker 02 We'll keep going.
20:53 Bill Simmons? Nah.
20:56 Speaker 02 But like, Scarface, so the reason why I like Carlito's Way, I can't say that I like Carlito's Way more than Scarface, but the reason why I'm more connected to Carlito's Way is because Carlito's Way feels like Al Pacino and De Palma and Sean Penn together doing an actual thing. Scarface is legitimately, take the reins off somebody.
21:20 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
21:20 Speaker 02 Let them fucking go until they can't go anymore. It is like something to behold and while Carlito's Way does actually really, really deep themes of connection and betrayal, like recidivism.
21:36 Sean Fennessey? There's bad hair.
21:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, this, I just, I, I feel real, me being a.
21:40 Sean Fennessey? I, I love Penn's wig in this movie. In that movie, it's so good.
21:43 Speaker 02 But I, but I.
21:43 Sean Fennessey? Dave? Yeah, I love Dave.
21:45 Speaker 02 I love that, I love that character.
21:47 Bill Simmons? Craig, when we do Carlito's Way. Between Sean, Chris and Van, if it's a three-person pod, we should have some sort of reality show competition where two people can make it and the third one just gets voted off somehow.
22:01 Sean Fennessey? The running man, but for, yeah.
22:02 Bill Simmons? Bowling at Lucky Strike, just like that.
22:06 Sean Fennessey? Wow, you want to have a bowl-off? To get on the Carlito's Way pod?
22:08 Bill Simmons? To see who gets the two spots.
22:10 Sean Fennessey? There's an incredible Carlito's Way homage in this movie.
22:13 Bill Simmons? Well, here's the other thing, the long shot, which I think is the signature from a rewatchable standpoint, it's, it's so amazing how they do it. And he's never really said that it was, it's 12 straight minutes.
22:25 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
22:26 Bill Simmons? But he's never really admitted it was all 12 straight minutes. So then in this premiere magazine thing, they ask him about it. And he says, the movie starts on the boardwalk, blah, blah, blah. The shot establishes Nic Cage's character as he wanders through the arena and the blah, blah. It's a steady cam shot that goes on for about 12 minutes. Then he says, one continuous shot can really only be the length of a 30, 35mm magazine, a 400-foot load. In Bonfire, that was one five-minute shot. We went as far as we could go. Of course, you can make it look longer, like Hitchcock's rope, have somebody pass in front of the camera, keep going. Need artful staging and very good actors. So I think he's saying it was five minutes and they figured out some sort of cheat code. And you could, I was watching it again and you can see like.
23:10 Sean Fennessey? I think it's four cuts.
23:11 Speaker 03 You can see it.
23:12 Sean Fennessey? Ultimately, yeah.
23:13 Speaker 03 He rounds the corner one time on the wall, you can kind of tell. Down at the fight floor, they do it once.
23:17 Sean Fennessey? Yes, he definitely is cutting, but the staging of the scenes, even with the cuts, is crazy because of the size of the, of the sequence.
23:27 Bill Simmons? It's a fucking boxing match.
23:28 Sean Fennessey? He's in a freaking arena doing this, it's amazing.
23:30 Bill Simmons? Guzman goes down the escalator at one point and you're like, how the fuck did they do all this?
23:33 Sean Fennessey? Camera going around that corner, yeah, that is just wild.
23:36 Speaker 02 I, I mean, looking back on it when I watched this, because I hadn't seen this in a while. This is technically really impressive movie.
23:43 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I agree.
23:44 Sean Fennessey? One of his most impressive. It's one of his least interesting thematically, I would say. It is very relevant right now, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But it unlike Dress the Kill or Carlito's Way, it's not like a heady movie about the way that people really feel in the world, you know, it's it's kind of trashy. It's like a trashy noir movie, but he's using it as this vehicle to do all this cool shit with the filmmaking.
24:05 Bill Simmons? Nic Cage does say one interesting thing though at the end. When he was like, basically he was like, well, at least I get to be on TV or whatever. Something there's something about celebrity going on in the late 90s that I think De Palma was interested in, but I don't. He didn't really hit it hard enough.
24:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, the the movie is is good and it's one that, you know, I really liked when it came out. It's not quite as smart as it probably wanted to be.
24:28 Bill Simmons? It needs like 10 more minutes, weirdly. Sorry, Craig. Hundred and eight minutes might might have been able to nail it. There's some sort of thing about instant celebrity and I the most interesting part of the movie to me is the the fall after where it sets him up as the hero. And then you're just like, hey, by the way, he was found with cocaine. And then all of a sudden, he's just on the boardwalk and he had his moment. It was gone.
24:49 Sean Fennessey? But that I think that's a reshoot, which we can talk about why. But I don't think any of that stuff is supposed to be there in the first place. And you could have made the case that if they had thought about it more, that they could have made it more this arc about leaning into like what you want out of celebrity in life, which is like a part of that character. There's other ideas in it that are kind of interesting about conspiracy thrillers. But there it's more like the classic De Palma stuff of being about other movies. Like this is very much, you mentioned Rope in that quote. He's constantly being compared to Hitchcock, who's his great inspiration. And he's always like looking for a way to take a framework that Hitchcock has and then elevate it. So he has some movies, you know, like Obsession from the 70s with Cliff Robertson is kind of like this. Fundraising Kane is kind of like this.
25:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
25:32 Sean Fennessey? Where they're like more exercises than they are great movies where he's like, let me see if I could do this.
25:37 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
25:37 Sean Fennessey? And they're still crazily entertaining. But you don't walk away from them with the same feeling that you do as like Dress the Kill or Blowout.
25:45 Speaker 02 Yeah. The movie here is like surprisingly straightforward.
25:50 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
25:50 Speaker 02 Like there, the things happen, right? Uh, you find out that Gary Sinise is your bad guy. There's no levels to that. That just continues to play itself.
26:00 Sean Fennessey? It's revealed and then goes.
26:01 Speaker 02 It's revealed and then it goes. And there's not a lot of, oh, my God, I did not see that coming in the movie at all. That's why the technician part of the movie and is so important because you need that to keep the kinetic energy of the film going. It's kind of like what's gonna happen next from your eyes and like not what's gonna happen next from your brain.
26:26 Sean Fennessey? Hmm.
26:26 Speaker 02 So it's like what the next thing you're gonna see rather than the next thing that's gonna happen plot wise. Real quick, where are you on Bonfire of the Vanities?
26:34 Sean Fennessey? Oof, I don't think it really works very well.
26:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:37 Sean Fennessey? Um, I do think that sequence that he's talking about is interesting, the long, that long tracking city cam shot that they do, but it's like totally gratuitous and you can, he's just a mismatch with the material.
26:46 Speaker 02 Hmm.
26:46 Sean Fennessey? Like, I think if you had a different filmmaker make that movie, even if you had Scorsese make that movie, it'd be a little bit more interesting, but I don't, I never get the impression he's like interested in that world, you know?
26:55 Bill Simmons? That's why there's been books and podcasts and everything else done about that movie because it's was such a great piece of IP. And then every choice that, every actor they cast was wrong. He was the wrong director.
27:08 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
27:09 Bill Simmons? It's pretty tough. Every like five years I forget that it's bad and I'm like, oh, you know what, I'll give this a whirl and it's just not good.
27:15 Sean Fennessey? Here we go.
27:15 Speaker 02 I always liked it.
27:16 Bill Simmons? Oh, my God.
27:18 Speaker 02 I'm sorry, my bad, guys.
27:20 Bill Simmons? Hanks is, Hanks is bad in it. It's weird.
27:23 Sean Fennessey? He's also miscast.
27:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he's just not good in it.
27:25 Speaker 02 I, I, I always liked it. I think I was at a time in my life.
27:29 Bill Simmons? You just would have, you were destined to like it.
27:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
27:32 Speaker 02 Where it was like Willis, Hank, Melanie Griffith, like all in a movie together being like that entire, but remember also I liked, you know, at that time, anything set in New York in that whole, who's that girl, Madonna? Loved the movie.
27:46 Sean Fennessey? Hmm.
27:47 Speaker 02 So like, I just, I've always liked it and I've tried to go back and watch it and find reasons to like not like the movie, but I always go, oh, man, I like this.
27:54 Bill Simmons? Well, that came out in 90. After that, it did Raising Cain, Carlito's Way, Mission Impossible, Snake Eyes.
28:01 Bill Simmons? It's kind of over after that. Like, he didn't really have the commercial movie after that. That's kind of the end of the run, which is interesting because it's also the end of some sort of, it's some sort of invisible line with the end of the Nic Cage run, even though we didn't know it yet.
28:14 Sean Fennessey? He says something, he did, I read a couple of interviews with him around this time. I wanted to read this to you guys, something he said right around the release of this movie. He said, "I think that something new is coming. I really think that the conventional movie making world is over and the greatest work is behind us. I really do." "The industry sort of peaked in the 40s, 50s and 60s mainly because of the turmoil, wars, all that stuff, European influx into Hollywood. That was the beginning of movies and it's over. It's never going to be again. I think the next thing that's going to happen is going to happen on the internet with interactive media. Now you can have all this video technology, your own little video camera, and edit stuff at home. You can make movies like novels now. You really can. You can make them inexpensively with your friends and put them on the internet."
28:54 Bill Simmons? Wow, and he didn't even see the prestige TV coming, but he basically nailed 95% of it.
28:58 Sean Fennessey? Yes, that's 1998 when he said that.
29:00 Bill Simmons? He was early, but he was definitely right. Also, his whole class, which we've talked about before, that there's been books written about with Spielberg and Lucas and Coppola. All of them are kind of hitting the end of some sort of road, right? Scorsese is about to transition into those 2000s, which were really interesting.
29:17 Sean Fennessey? He's about to take off and become kind of the winner of this coming moment, which is really interesting because De Palma, for a period of time, was kind of kind of big dogged him a little.
29:24 Bill Simmons? Lucas is transitioning into, "I'm just gonna redo the IP I did before." I'm just a corporate god. Spielberg has his crazy like Minority Report, like he's moving into like that post Saving Private Ryan world and De Palma kind of doesn't know where to go.
29:39 Sean Fennessey? He demands a lot of control on his movies too, and you can tell that he's not able to convince people to let him make the stuff he wants to make. I mean, he's only made four movies in the last 25 years.
29:51 Bill Simmons? Some more stuff to talk about this movie. We're gonna take a quick break. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. Let's talk about holiday shopping. Make the most of your money with PayPal. They give you the flexibility. To pay in four, no fees, no interest and save the offer in the PayPal app to get 5% cash back when you pay later. So whether you're shopping for an ugly sweater or a work gala, PayPal helps you make the most of your money this holiday. All you have to do is save the offer in the PayPal app. Expires 12/31. See paypal.com/promotermsubject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payinfor. PayPal Inc. NMLS 910457.
30:34 Bill Simmons? A couple of actor stuff to talk about this. Evil Gary Sinise.
30:37 Sean Fennessey? That's great stuff.
30:38 Bill Simmons? So I was thinking, we were one Evil Sinise movie away from Evil Sinise Month. We could have done Reindeer Games, Snake Eyes and Ransom. We already did Ransom.
30:47 Sean Fennessey? You want to re-ransom? I gotta say, I love Ransom.
30:50 Bill Simmons? We could have.
30:51 Speaker 02 Is Ransom the peak of Evil Sinise?
30:54 Bill Simmons? So I was gonna ask you, what's the most Evil Sinise? I think it's Ransom.
30:58 Speaker 02 I think it's Ransom.
30:59 Sean Fennessey? You dropped the Reindeer Games in there, huh?
31:01 Speaker 02 Reindeer Games is in there, but Reindeer Games is not as.
31:04 Bill Simmons? I like Reindeer Games, unfortunately.
31:06 Speaker 02 I like it too.
31:07 Bill Simmons? It's a guilty pleasure movie.
31:09 Speaker 02 But that was a DVD classic for me, man. That was a DVD.
31:11 Sean Fennessey? We gotta do Frankenheimer Month, you know, 52 pickup.
31:14 Bill Simmons? Oh, wow. There's a lot of Frankenheimers.
31:17 Speaker 02 But like.
31:17 Bill Simmons? What is it about Sinise though, that you just make it like, oh, man, this motherfucker?
31:22 Speaker 02 He's got that thing. Like even at the end of Ransom, where the kid hears his voice and he starts peeing himself, like Gary has that thing, that intensity, that face where he can go from somebody, because he does this in, does this in Ransom and also in this movie, where he goes from a face that you're supposed to trust. And then as soon as the turn happens, he is legitimately a face that you can revile in one thing. And like.
31:51 Bill Simmons? And Gump, he does the flip. He's, he feels like he's evil and then you root for him.
31:55 Speaker 02 Like, he's like, it's, he can do either thing so effectively that it works in movies.
32:01 Sean Fennessey? I don't, what, who is the modern day Gary Sinise? I mean, these kinds of actors who are like, he was pretty much a star, you know, Academy Awards.
32:11 Bill Simmons? Because he had the pilot 13 piece too, and Gump, he's the third leading.
32:15 Sean Fennessey? Gump became so famous. Yeah. I mean, I, that's a really interesting thing where it's, he's got this incredible stage background. He transitions to Hollywood and he gets cast in big Hollywood movie after big Hollywood movie, whether he's the hero or the villain. And he's not. Uh, heartthrob?
32:31 Bill Simmons? No.
32:31 Sean Fennessey? He's not always the villain, right? He's not like JT Walsh or something like.
32:35 Bill Simmons? Right.
32:36 Sean Fennessey? He is.
32:37 Bill Simmons? No, he feels like he's a little more leading man-ish.
32:39 Sean Fennessey? But he's like that weird, really weird blend between character actor and leading man. Right? Where like he could carry a movie. It's probably not ideal if he's carrying your movie. But if he's in the number two spot, like in a movie like this.
32:49 Bill Simmons? He's Scottie Pippen.
32:50 Sean Fennessey? It's probably gonna be good.
32:50 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
32:51 Speaker 02 It's like he is a super duper talented, like backup quarterback.
32:57 Sean Fennessey? Right, right.
32:58 Speaker 02 To where.
32:58 Sean Fennessey? The Jeff Hostetler of movies, yeah.
33:00 Speaker 02 To where you kinda don't know like what to do with them. But he can definitely be a crazy addition to your team if in fact he has to carry the team.
33:09 Bill Simmons? What's your Sinise relationship, Craig?
33:12 Speaker 03 Gump in Apollo.
33:13 Bill Simmons? Uh, see, that's, see, he's a good guy in those movies.
33:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, but just a really awesome, steady, it's like side character. Oh, who, yeah, he's good in everything. I like Gary Sinise.
33:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I don't know who he is now.
33:25 Speaker 02 Who's like that guy who can then be the bad guy and stuff like. But you know what? Can I tell you something? The American character actor of that ilk. Like you've talked a lot about, I think it's an interesting, um, observation about sort of the next great Italian American actor. That can like, you know, you're talking about Leoto or, you know, the rest of these guys and Robert De Niro and all of these. But like, just the stalwart American character actor, like who are those guys now?
33:56 Bill Simmons? They're on TV.
33:57 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, it's, I mean, it's not something movies are even sold on anymore. There are plenty of them, but.
34:02 Speaker 02 I'm sure there are plenty of them.
34:03 Sean Fennessey? Sinise is a, is a, is an unusual one. So I was just thinking of one of my favorite Sinise parts is, uh, he's Stu Redman in the Stand adaptation, which was on TV in the nineties. And he's, you know, I, I always loved that. That's kinda my Bonfire of the Vanities where I saw it at an age where I was like, this is my favorite thing of all time. If you watch it now, it's a little harder to sit through, but he's so good as Stu in that series.
34:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, but that movie is still terrifying to me.
34:23 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I loved it.
34:24 Speaker 02 Who's the guy that plays Randall Flagg in that one?
34:26 Sean Fennessey? Jamie Sheridan.
34:27 Speaker 02 Just, that, that's still.
34:28 Bill Simmons? Jamie Sheridan.
34:29 Speaker 02 Like, that's a mini-series, but that's still like a haunting, terrifying, weird movie.
34:34 Bill Simmons? Sinise is good, cause it's like, he's a stage actor. He didn't really wanna get into Hollywood, but he really loves and he really takes it. And then like 10 years later, it's like CSI New York with Gary Sinise.
34:46 Sean Fennessey? Didn't he do that show for like 10 years?
34:47 Bill Simmons? They're seaming on the bed. Get the blue lights.
34:51 Sean Fennessey? Well, money's good, right? Everybody likes money.
34:54 Bill Simmons? At some point, everybody's like, yeah, fuck it. CS:GO, New York, sounds great.
34:57 Speaker 02 To be real with you, if you look at him, William Peterson.
35:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
35:01 Speaker 02 Like, a lot of those guys ended up finding their homes on shows like that. They're trusted faces that let you know that a procedural or something like that is a serious piece of art.
35:12 Sean Fennessey? And who came up playing cops and detectives in movies and then they transitioned, yeah. And then they killed movies.
35:17 Bill Simmons? Did you read the Peterson interview for the 40th anniversary of To Love and Die in L.A.?
35:22 Sean Fennessey? Your guy Bill?
35:23 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he hasn't acted in 15 years. They asked him why and he's like, because I've done everything. I don't need to do anything anymore. I love when I hang out with my kids and my grandkids. I live in Chicago, I have a great life.
35:33 Sean Fennessey? That's nice.
35:33 Bill Simmons? I've played every part I've wanted to play.
35:34 Sean Fennessey? I respect it.
35:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I loved it.
35:36 Speaker 02 I respected it too.
35:36 Bill Simmons? I was like, you do your thing, William Peterson.
35:38 Speaker 02 I just.
35:39 Sean Fennessey? He gave us Manhunter, you know?
35:40 Speaker 02 Manhunter, fantastic. Like, I just kept waiting for the role or the moment. I guess J.K. Simmons is one of those actors that we were talking about.
35:50 Sean Fennessey? He is.
35:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, I kept waiting for the role. I kept waiting for the J.K. Simmons moment.
35:54 Bill Simmons? Like the later in life?
35:56 Sean Fennessey? Oh.
35:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, the I.
35:57 Sean Fennessey? A big supporting part.
35:58 Speaker 02 The I'm in whiplash, now you gotta contend with me.
36:01 Bill Simmons? Was it Fear with Mark Wahlberg for you?
36:03 Speaker 02 No, it wasn't. It wasn't, I fuck with that movie though.
36:05 Bill Simmons? It's pretty good.
36:06 Speaker 02 It's very hard, I mean, people keep hearing me saying, it's very hard to mention movies that I really don't fuck with.
36:10 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, well, like 1991 to 1997, it's kind of like, eh, they're all good.
36:15 Bill Simmons? They really are.
36:16 Sean Fennessey? I.
36:17 Bill Simmons? I would go all the way to 99.
36:18 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, yeah.
36:19 Bill Simmons? I was watching the last hour, I was doing some work and I wanted to put on something, so I was flipping cable and Fight Club was on, which we've already done. And I was watching the last hour of Fight Club, kind of half-heartedly, as I'm doing football stuff. And then I just started watching the last 15 minutes and then it ended with the Pixies song and I was like.
36:37 Speaker 02 Legitimately a brilliant movie, though.
36:38 Bill Simmons? I was, and things are blowing up and he's staring out the window and Where's My Mind comes in. I was like, man, we used to fucking make great things in this country.
36:45 Speaker 02 We'll even have the nuts to make that one now. The movie interrogates too many things. I mean, if they.
36:50 Bill Simmons? It's a nuts movie.
36:51 Speaker 02 If they made it, it would probably be a little overwrought, a little too self-serious. That movie's winking at you a little bit in a way.
36:57 Bill Simmons? It's very fit for the book, too.
36:59 Sean Fennessey? I don't know, man. One, Eddington, One Battle, these movies are pretty angry and pretty much about what's going on. Like, it happens, it just doesn't necessarily happen in the same way.
37:07 Speaker 02 They are, but they're in. There's, there's, there, there is a specific.
37:12 Sean Fennessey? Great movie.
37:13 Speaker 02 There's a specific critique and question that Fight Club asks that was would turn so many people off now. It feels like, like the whole, the, the whole conversation around masculinity. The fact that hurting people makes these guys feel, there would be a thousand really annoying think pieces.
37:31 Sean Fennessey? There were then, I mean, it was not, it didn't have the warmest perception, yeah.
37:35 Speaker 02 Fair enough.
37:36 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
37:36 Speaker 02 Fair enough. I guess I was part of one of those.
37:38 Sean Fennessey? I was a very angry seventeen year old that came out and I was like, this is clearly the greatest film ever made. You know, like this, there will never be another, a better movie than this. I've had like a weird relationship to it over the years. But maybe you could cite that movie as kind of like the end of an era in some ways. Like it is, it is ninety nine, it is kind of like closing the book.
37:53 Bill Simmons? Y two K really did shift us from here to here and it's hard to explain.
37:59 Sean Fennessey? Not literally, not the computers.
38:01 Bill Simmons? It just felt, everything felt slightly different after Y two K and I don't know why. And then nine eleven was the other big catalyst, but it just, that, that late nineties just felt like something.
38:10 Sean Fennessey? When Snake Eyes came out, I was like, every movie will be cool forever. You know, like to go see a movie like this in theaters, you're like, yeah, of course this was pretty good. And I don't want to get over my skis about it.
38:20 Bill Simmons? Same weekend as Halloween H two O and Saving Private Ryan came out the week before. And it was just like, that's kind of what we did back then, Craig.
38:26 Speaker 02 I was just so into movies.
38:28 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
38:28 Speaker 02 I was in, I was at, uh, City Place. So I was just in the movie theater. My man Stefan worked there. Stefan would hook us up with the tickets. Like it, like I would, he was, Stefan was the man. But like, I, I was just so into movies. I was finding myself there all the time at that point. And I think that it used to be that it was like, you could just make a movie and cool was the barometer. It's just cool.
38:58 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
38:58 Speaker 02 It's ju, it's just like you make a, I was watching So I Married an Axe Murderer.
39:02 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
39:03 Speaker 02 Uh, like.
39:03 Sean Fennessey? All time classic.
39:04 Speaker 02 Like a couple of weeks ago, I'm like, would they make this movie now? A movie where it's, would they, it's just a, I mean, there's a whole MTV type of ecosystem because you have the making of the movie type of deal, Mike Myers was on there.
39:16 Sean Fennessey? I have a take about this.
39:18 Speaker 02 Would they make, would they make just a cool story now that didn't like, So I Married an Axe? Would they make that movie?
39:23 Sean Fennessey? One thing I'm really surprised hasn't happened, because we've talked about many times over the years, the SNL to movie pipeline on pods, how there has not been a streaming movie pipeline for SNL actors, where you're like, oh, this, this person's kind of like, Chloe Feynman's got, kind of got something.
39:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:41 Sean Fennessey? But maybe he doesn't need her own TV show, but maybe let's give her a $20 million Netflix movie and see what happens.
39:48 Bill Simmons? I mean, they kind of did this with Please Don't Destroy, and it was on Peacock, and it bombed.
39:52 Sean Fennessey? But that was supposed to be a theatrical movie that Judd Apatow produced, and then like, it didn't turn out, and then they put it on streaming. I'm talking about like, shouldn't there be like a little division?
40:00 Bill Simmons? Could Marcelo have a thing where he's like?
40:01 Sean Fennessey? Right now, he's a perfect example. I'm like, that guy's just funny, you could tell he's funny, he could carry something, make it low stakes. So I Married an Axe Murder isn't the greatest movie of all time, but it was like, it was a road tester.
40:12 Bill Simmons? But this is the problem with comedies now, and why horror movies have, have, just keep ascending, and they just have not figured out comedy at all, the way that, we had them in the 90s. Because now it's, you just put them on Netflix or Amazon or whatever, they spend no money.
40:26 Sean Fennessey? Let these guy, young guys take some at bats.
40:28 Bill Simmons? They don't want to take the at bats. I'm with you.
40:30 Speaker 02 I know we got to get back to Snake Eyes, but I will say about that particular movie. I, I know, I mean.
40:33 Bill Simmons? What are we talking about?
40:34 Speaker 02 I, I know we got to get back to, but I will say with that particular movie, if you, you look at the movie, right, and it's Mike Myers doing his thing, it's like, almost like a pilot for, uh, Austin Powers.
40:45 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
40:45 Speaker 02 Because he plays the dad, he's singing the, um.
40:48 Sean Fennessey? He's gonna cry himself to death on this huge pillow.
40:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, the, the whole nine, right?
40:52 Sean Fennessey? Son, heed, heed, move!
40:54 Speaker 02 He's doing all of that stuff, and you're like.
40:56 Sean Fennessey? It's a virtual planetoid.
40:58 Speaker 02 Right, and he's singing the, the Ross Stewart song, it's hysterical, right? And it's almost like proof that that guy can play those characters in a movie that, it, it, it works as proof of concept, and it's kind of like, they don't do that anymore.
41:12 Bill Simmons? You know why? Because they overthink everything. We talked about this with Dirty Work. They're just like, Norm MacDonald's, we'll figure it out.
41:18 Sean Fennessey? Oh, they're absolute banger.
41:19 Bill Simmons? We don't need a full script yet.
41:21 Sean Fennessey? Perfect movie.
41:21 Bill Simmons? Chris Farley said he'd be able to have two days on the set, we'll figure it out. I think they spend too much time overthinking. What do you think it is, Craig? I mean, part of it is your generation's fault.
41:31 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. You guys killed comedy.
41:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, we're trying to bring it back. I, I think that SNL doesn't cast the same type of people anymore is also part of it. Like, they're, they're not, I don't think there's a lot of people who are try, who are like, character actors on SNL anymore.
41:45 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
41:46 Speaker 03 Like, it is, it's rare that they bring somebody in who can do like 10 different characters. It's not really like what they do anymore. So I, I don't even think the pipeline is set up to work because it's completely different casting now.
41:55 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Shane, Shane could have done it. I mean, Shane doing tires is basically like a 90 minute comedy in 1993.
42:02 Sean Fennessey? That's it. That, that actually replaced his movie, his dirty work.
42:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Um, back to this.
42:10 Sean Fennessey? Incredible pivot.
42:11 Bill Simmons? We never talked about Carla.
42:14 Speaker 02 Who's gonna go first?
42:15 Sean Fennessey? God damn. This is a real Venn diagram for Bill Van Sean.
42:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:20 Sean Fennessey? This is, this is one of the real like.
42:22 Bill Simmons? You know, we've talked about this.
42:24 Speaker 02 We gotta be professional.
42:25 Sean Fennessey? We met on a cold, dark night.
42:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:27 Sean Fennessey? This conversation stays between us.
42:28 Bill Simmons? In a deep Reddit board?
42:29 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
42:29 Bill Simmons? Um, look, man, sometimes people just don't find the right.
42:36 Bill Simmons? Sometimes they just don't find the right roles. And there's, we talk about like in the seventies and eighties, it was just because they didn't have good roles. In her case, the role, I just, I don't know whether it was her fault, she couldn't read the scripts, like didn't know which ones to do. No, no director saw what was sitting there.
42:55 Sean Fennessey? I'd love to know how many great roles she finished in second place.
42:59 Bill Simmons? Right.
42:59 Speaker 02 And it was, and you guys gotta think, man, we're talking about, first of all, I wanna say she's had a fantastic career.
43:06 Sean Fennessey? Great career. Very successful.
43:09 Speaker 02 In the nineties, where we're talking about, we're talking about the rise with Julia Roberts as a Stranglehold, but then right under Julia, there's Sandra Bullock, there's, uh, Cameron Diaz. It, this is.
43:20 Bill Simmons? But don't forget the Friends thing, and it's like, if you put her on Friends as Rachel, I think she's like an A plus lister. She just never had the one thing.
43:28 Speaker 02 But, but all of this, though, this is a crowded, crowded field.
43:33 Bill Simmons? True.
43:33 Speaker 02 And she took the Sarah Jessica Parker, where she was in Miami, she was in Miami Rhapsody.
43:38 Sean Fennessey? That's exactly who I was gonna say. I was like, Sarah Jessica Parker had the kind of career she could have had. She could have been a.
43:44 Bill Simmons? Could Carla have been the Carrie Bradshaw?
43:45 Sean Fennessey? Uh, definitely.
43:48 Bill Simmons? Because the thing about her is she could be in a rom com, she could be in a movie like this. I think she could have been in like an early eighties De Palma movie. Like she could have played the Deborah Shelton character in Body Double.
43:59 Bill Simmons? And every guy was in love with her.
44:01 Speaker 02 Devastating.
44:02 Bill Simmons? And I thought she was a good actress. And she's funny. Like at the end, when she's turning on the charm with Nic Cage. And you're like, this guy's a fucking loser. Why do you, why, but I, I believed it.
44:13 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, there's a hot moment there where both Carla Gugino and Connie Britton were on Spin City. And I was like, what is, what is happening?
44:21 Bill Simmons? Connie Britton's another one. Think about how long it took for Connie Britton. It took, and then it was Coach Taylor. And it's like, oh yeah, Connie Britton, she survived.
44:28 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, she's just, I'll, I'll just be very frank, just insanely hot in Snake Eyes. Like it is, it is insane how hot she is, at least to me in this movie. And it is weird because she's like, still working and, and doing really good work.
44:44 Speaker 02 For sure.
44:45 Sean Fennessey? But there are a few people like we've talked about on the show over the years where you're like, one, one turn of the dial and it would have been a different career.
44:52 Speaker 02 Right. You, you see her now, she's in the Mike Flanagan stuff a lot. She's doing a lot of different stuff. She's all, she's a presence and a deal, but once again.
45:00 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it's weird. The last seven, eight years was the, probably the best run she's had from an IMDB standpoint.
45:06 Sean Fennessey? Well, she, she had, she had Karen Sisko. That was supposed to be a big TV show. That didn't pop, you know, but she did.
45:11 Bill Simmons? She was in the Cameron Crowe Roadies, that Showtime show. That didn't work. That seems like it should have.
45:15 Speaker 02 It's, it's, it's, once again, it's somebody that you always feel like is, who's having a great, great career. But you feel like is one role away from that next echelon of stardom.
45:30 Bill Simmons? Like she probably was looking at Aniston like, I could fucking have her lunch. Could kill her.
45:36 Speaker 02 I'll be honest with you. Well, I'm looking at the, uh, the, the list of roles here. It's very, very, she took, Miami Rhapsody is a movie that I love that not a lot of people have seen.
45:46 Sean Fennessey? It's a really fun movie.
45:47 Speaker 02 It's a really fun movie.
45:48 Sean Fennessey? She's really good in it, Carla Gugino.
45:49 Speaker 02 She's good in it. Sarah Jessica Parker, Antonio Banderas, it's kind of like free willing. Jeremy Piven, story of love and relationships that takes place in Miami. It's like a really interesting.
46:01 Bill Simmons? There's some Amanda Peet parts she could have played.
46:03 Sean Fennessey? Hmm, that's a good comp too.
46:04 Bill Simmons? It's just like, I just think you're right. I think it was a loaded.
46:07 Sean Fennessey? Comedic actress with dramatic chops.
46:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
46:10 Speaker 02 Right. And then, you know, later on, her career just keeps trending. She's in Sin City, which is a role that I really, really enjoyed from her.
46:18 Sean Fennessey? Did you?
46:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, that was.
46:21 Sean Fennessey? What'd you think was the best part?
46:22 Speaker 02 I thought she brought a lot to the table in Sin City, like a lot.
46:26 Sean Fennessey? Anything specific?
46:27 Speaker 02 Some things were unexpected, but I liked that it happened.
46:31 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
46:31 Speaker 02 But if you guys want to just get into the whole thing.
46:34 Sean Fennessey? It's a good film with some good scenes.
46:35 Bill Simmons? She never had, like even if she played the Ellen Pompeo part in Old School, with some sort of thing that just was like on all the time for 25 years. She never had that movie.
46:46 Sean Fennessey? She did For My Wife, which is True Beverly Hills.
46:48 Speaker 02 Oh, come on.
46:49 Bill Simmons? Interesting.
46:50 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
46:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:51 Sean Fennessey? To Eileen, she'll always be the girl from True Beverly Hills.
46:54 Speaker 02 I know you love it.
46:54 Bill Simmons? Well, in this movie, she tests missile results for power aircraft.
46:58 Speaker 02 Speak on True Beverly Hills.
47:00 Bill Simmons? Which one?
47:00 Speaker 02 Speak on True Beverly Hills. Just, I want your opinion.
47:03 Bill Simmons? I haven't seen it in 45 years, remember? Yeah?
47:08 Speaker 02 Beverly Hills, what a.
47:09 Bill Simmons? Can we talk about how Carla was, Carla was testing missile results? Which, I'm just gonna give her this. Special category. We don't get to give out much. The Elizabeth Shoe is an Oxford Electrochemist Award for most ridiculous casting.
47:23 Speaker 03 I was hoping that would fall to me. It didn't, damn it, that category.
47:26 Bill Simmons? You, that was gonna be yours?
47:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, of course.
47:28 Bill Simmons? Oh, my bad, Craig.
47:29 Speaker 03 Sorry.
47:30 Speaker 02 Can I ask?
47:30 Speaker 03 I knew it was gonna go.
47:31 Speaker 02 What does, cause I always bring this role up when we, when we do this one. Denise Richards as.
47:38 Bill Simmons? That's the, that, that could probably be the title of this.
47:41 Speaker 02 Nuclear physicist.
47:42 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, her name is Dr. Christmas Jones.
47:45 Speaker 02 I remember she's on Jay Leno and Jay Leno goes, nuclear scientist, Dr. Christmas Jones. And she goes, I can play a scientist. Like, what, when we do this, is this category, what do you need to play a scientist?
48:01 Sean Fennessey? I think it's more her age is the issue. It's like she's a 26-year-old missiles expert.
48:06 Speaker 03 They're so specific about this. She's like, I'm 26. It's like, ah, you could have been 31. Why are you 26?
48:12 Sean Fennessey? It's very strange.
48:14 Bill Simmons? Um, we also have a very crowded that guy and graduated that guy group.
48:19 Speaker 02 This is, is this the that guy movie of the nineties?
48:22 Bill Simmons? There's been others, but.
48:24 Sean Fennessey? It's a good one.
48:25 Bill Simmons? Louis Guzman, Stan Sean, John Heard, Mike Starr, who's the guy who dies from eating the peppers in Dumb and Dumber and was in a million mob movies.
48:33 Sean Fennessey? Great pull on that being Mike Starr. Yeah.
48:35 Bill Simmons? Kevin Dunn, who was that guy from Dave?
48:38 Sean Fennessey? Absolutely.
48:38 Bill Simmons? Who was the dad in Mad Love and was just in a lot of nineties movies.
48:42 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
48:42 Bill Simmons? And then, uh, Michael Rispoli, who is Grandma in Rounders and this in the same year.
48:47 Sean Fennessey? I was just gonna say, I mean, you're stepping on a X amount here. Yeah.
48:50 Bill Simmons? Going for The Sopranos and finished the second again, Dolphine.
48:53 Speaker 02 Oof, tough.
48:54 Bill Simmons? Ninety-eight for Rispoli.
48:56 Sean Fennessey? He must have really felt like the world was right in front of him.
48:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
48:58 Sean Fennessey? You know, he's, I'm in a Brian De Palma movie. I'm in this exciting movie with Matt Damon and Edward Norton. I'm gonna be Tony Soprano.
49:05 Bill Simmons? Yeah, this HBO show.
49:07 Speaker 02 He ends up as Jackie, right?
49:08 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
49:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, he ends up as Jackie. So it's like, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's crazy. You miss one. Jeanard Burks, you know who that is?
49:16 Bill Simmons? Which one was that?
49:17 Speaker 02 So in Devil in the Blue Dress, remember the movie Devil in the Blue Dress?
49:21 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
49:22 Speaker 02 He plays in the movie, I'll never forget this, it's one of the great cuckings in any movie that's ever happened. In Devil in the Blue Dress, it takes place easy, goes over to this guy's house and he has sex with his wife while the guy is sleeping. Do you remember this?
49:44 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
49:44 Speaker 02 Leesin Nicole Carson in the other room.
49:47 Sean Fennessey? Continue.
49:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, he has sex with his wife.
49:51 Bill Simmons? That's who's in this?
49:52 Speaker 02 Is sleeping, huh?
49:53 Bill Simmons? That's, that's this guy?
49:54 Speaker 02 He's like, he's like, uh, cause he says to Leesin Nicole Carson's character, he goes, yo man is sleeping in the other room. She doesn't care. She's like, he's so drunk, he's knocked out and then they do it and Jeanard Burks plays the guy that gets cut to no, shout out to him. He's been in a lot of stuff, but.
50:09 Bill Simmons? Well, there's a that girl in this too. That girl from Devil's Advocate, the, the black witch lady.
50:16 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, she's in the first scene.
50:18 Sean Fennessey? Oh, yeah.
50:19 Bill Simmons? What's her name? She's the announcer.
50:20 Sean Fennessey? Tamara Tooney, is that her name?
50:21 Bill Simmons? Can't remember.
50:22 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
50:22 Speaker 02 That's her name.
50:23 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
50:23 Bill Simmons? Uh, written by David Koep, who apparently is the fourth most successful screenwriter ever by box office.
50:29 Sean Fennessey? He wrote Jurassic Park, among many other movies.
50:31 Bill Simmons? War of the Worlds, Carlito's Way, Mission Impossible, Spider-Man. Also directed seven movies that weirdly, The Trigger Effect, Stir of Echoes, Secret Window, they're all like, kind of the same weird,
50:42 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
50:42 Bill Simmons? strange movie.
50:43 Sean Fennessey? I, I, he's had a amazing career.
50:46 Bill Simmons? Really good career.
50:46 Sean Fennessey? He is considered one of the like, geniuses of screenwriting.
50:50 Speaker 02 Have you guys done The Trigger Effect?
50:52 Bill Simmons? No.
50:52 Speaker 02 Would you do The Trigger Effect?
50:53 Bill Simmons? Probably not.
50:54 Sean Fennessey? I like it. Another movie that came out in the nineties where I was like, the concept alone is so cool to me.
50:59 Speaker 02 Elizabeth Shue.
51:00 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
51:01 Bill Simmons? Yes.
51:01 Speaker 02 Another actress that's right there, crowding up.
51:05 Bill Simmons? Grabs leave in Las Vegas, yeah.
51:07 Speaker 02 Crowding up the space.
51:08 Sean Fennessey? Wow.
51:08 Speaker 02 For Carly, would you like, another, it's, I'm telling you, it's a deep, deep.
51:11 Sean Fennessey? Boxed out, yeah. We could have had At First Sight, you know, with, I don't know, was that?
51:15 Bill Simmons? No, that was Mira Sorvino. She was also in there.
51:18 Speaker 02 Mira Sorvino, I'm telling you, there's a lot going on. Gwen Palchro.
51:21 Sean Fennessey? I'm thinking of The Saint.
51:23 Speaker 02 Towards the end, it's like a lot of people coming in.
51:25 Bill Simmons? Craig, you know what At First Sight is?
51:26 Speaker 03 No.
51:27 Bill Simmons? It's a drama that's now comedy.
51:29 Speaker 03 Okay.
51:30 Bill Simmons? Um, Val Comer's blind, but there's an operation where he can get his sight back. So he can see things for about thirty minutes in the movie and falls in love with Mira Sorvino. But guess what? The surgery had after effects and he's gonna lose his sight again. And now he has to decide what's important to him.
51:48 Bill Simmons? And they go to a hockey game at one point.
51:49 Speaker 03 Why don't we do dramas that are now comedy month?
51:51 Bill Simmons? I have it, I have it.
51:52 Sean Fennessey? It's a good idea.
51:52 Bill Simmons? I've done all the work. Cause it's a regarding Henry driven month.
51:55 Sean Fennessey? I saw At First Sight in high school on a first date with a girl who loved it and I broke up with her after that.
52:02 Bill Simmons? That was it.
52:05 Bill Simmons? It's a true story.
52:06 Speaker 02 You're over it. Regarding Henry as unintentional comedy is going to be a really interesting movie to do.
52:13 Bill Simmons? There's another one for dramas that are now comedy month that I might be the only one that thinks it's funny, but Legends of the Fall is hilarious now. I haven't seen it in a long time. It's, that was like a very serious drama that is now like laugh out loud funny.
52:26 Speaker 02 Man, that's just another movie in the never ending chapter of my mama's white boy thing. Just every once in a while, my mama would say something that would really piss my dad off.
52:34 Bill Simmons? Want that to be a month fan?
52:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:35 Bill Simmons? My mama's white boy thing month?
52:37 Speaker 02 My mama's white boy thing, my mama watched Legends of the Fall and be like, I told you about the, uh, the Thelma and Louise story.
52:43 Bill Simmons? Yes.
52:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, my mom goes.
52:45 Bill Simmons? Your mom like Brad Pitt.
52:45 Speaker 02 With her friends, she goes, I just saw the finest white boy I've ever seen before in my life. And then she go, she's watching Legends of the Fall and she just says, he keeps getting finer. I don't understand what's going on. My father could not handle it.
52:58 Bill Simmons? Just think, when she went to see Once, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, did she go?
53:03 Speaker 02 No, she didn't see it. She's over it now. She's militant again.
53:05 Bill Simmons? Seventy-three million dollar budget for, seventy-three million dollar budget for Snake Eyes that made a hundred and three point nine million dollars. And our guy Raj. Oh no. He one starred it. Oh no. I think this is only like the fourth one star we've gotten from Raj. He said, it's the worst kind of bad film, the kind that gets you all worked up and then lets you down instead of being lousy from the first shot.
53:28 Speaker 02 Damn.
53:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah, settle down Raj. Come on.
53:31 Speaker 02 He said the movie's.
53:32 Bill Simmons? He loved the, he loved the Steadicam shot in the beginning and then he just thought it fell apart.
53:36 Speaker 02 Man, oh man, oh man. Interesting.
53:38 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
53:38 Speaker 03 He get Halloween two, two stars and this movie one star?
53:42 Bill Simmons? Yeah, he was, sometimes Raj would just be in a bad mood.
53:45 Speaker 02 Cranky.
53:46 Bill Simmons? Yeah. This is, this is, this is a tough review. Oh, you read it? Yeah. Yeah. It's a tough one. Uh, most rewatchable scene. It's brought to you by the Home Depot. Black Friday happening now at the Home Depot, which means it's the perfect time to add to your collection. Right now, when you buy a select battery kit from top brands like Ryobi, Ryobi, Ryobi, Ryobi.
54:06 Speaker 02 Fucking Drew.
54:06 Bill Simmons? Or Milwaukee, you'll get a select tree for free with Black Friday deals like these. The Home Depot has got you covered. Uh, we mentioned for the first rewatchable scene, the opening one shot.
54:20 Bill Simmons? In the running for best overacting of Cage's career.
54:24 Bill Simmons? He's going for it. Because I was made for the sewer, baby, and I'm the king. He's just screaming for no reason.
54:30 Speaker 02 It was like an Ace Ventura moment for me. Like when I sat down to watch Ace Ventura, it took me 10 minutes to be like, yo, why is he acting like this? And then you got it.
54:37 Bill Simmons? Tyler!
54:38 Speaker 02 When you got, when you saw Nic Cage in this, you're like, yo, what the fuck is going on?
54:41 Bill Simmons? Is he supposed to be on cocaine?
54:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's like, he's.
54:44 Sean Fennessey? Well, there's the cocaine my ass line at the end of the movie, I think indicates he likes to indulge in this fight night. I think it's reasonable to assume. That said, Cage is kind of like this in a lot of movies.
54:53 Bill Simmons? Yeah, this is a nine and a half out of 10 on the Cage scale.
54:57 Sean Fennessey? He's nuts, yes.
54:58 Bill Simmons? An all time dial up by him. A really cool scene.
55:02 Sean Fennessey? It's great when you can see him nailing the synchronization with the crowd. Like, there's a moment when he is watching the fight and he stands up and as he stands up, the whole, and he yells something and then the whole crowd stands up behind him, where it's like, that is, to get that many extras to work at the same time is master filmmaker A plus it. There's, that's not CGI, all those people in the crowd, though. That's like hundreds, maybe thousands of extras.
55:29 Bill Simmons? I think it helps the rewatchability of the movie, too.
55:31 Sean Fennessey? Totally.
55:32 Bill Simmons? Cause it's, it's like, definitely like, how the fuck did they do this 10 minutes?
55:36 Speaker 03 Also, very skilled. He's going back and forth between the girlfriend and the wife on the gold flip phone, the pizza with the wife, the birthday with the girlfriend.
55:44 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
55:44 Sean Fennessey? And they let you figure it out, right? They're not like, over explaining everything. You're just, the movie just drops you into his world.
55:50 Speaker 02 You get like one second to set up and then we're going.
55:54 Bill Simmons? The shooting scene itself, pretty good. When he watches the video, the knockout punch,
56:03 Bill Simmons? where he realizes it's a Sonny Liston situation, right into Carla wiping blood off in the bathroom, which I just put it for Van.
56:11 Sean Fennessey? That scene alone, I think, is worth spending some time on.
56:14 Speaker 02 Alone, yeah. Just right there.
56:15 Bill Simmons? Hey, the blood off.
56:16 Sean Fennessey? The angle that he chooses, I think, is really interesting, you know?
56:18 Bill Simmons? Gotta get the blood off.
56:19 Speaker 02 Once again, the Palma-esque.
56:21 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
56:21 Speaker 02 You keep thinking that he's gonna go for it, that there's a change of clothes happening or something, but he.
56:27 Sean Fennessey? I admire the restraint.
56:28 Speaker 02 I admire the restraint as well. As regable as it might be.
56:31 Bill Simmons? The next scene I wrote down, Stan Shaw and Nic Cage scream at each other.
56:37 Bill Simmons? It's an all time Ruffalo Hannah Rubenek Partridge combo overacting award. They're just screaming for two minutes.
56:44 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, well, I'll come back to that.
56:47 Bill Simmons? Flashback to the redhead pulling, um, pulling Sinise away from the fight. That whole, I like when De Palma goes backwards. Always fun. The elevator chase.
57:01 Bill Simmons? The overhead shot of the Atlantic City rooms.
57:05 Bill Simmons? I'm thrown in the Mallory Rubin Award for did this movie need a better sex scene here? I feel like one of those rooms could have had some freaky Atlantic City shit going on. De Palma's like, you know what? I'm older now, I'm wiser, I'm not gonna put that in.
57:16 Sean Fennessey? It's more important that frat boys spray beer on each other in a hotel room.
57:19 Bill Simmons? Which was just weird. Yeah, that was weird. Carla tells her story to Nic Cage on the staircase. I thought I'd get fired, not killed.
57:31 Bill Simmons? De Palma goes split screen as she's telling the story. I always liked how De Palma would use boxes and split screens. I just feel like not enough directors do that. They see multiple things at the same time. By the way, even when the Dodgers won the World Series, I would have gone split screen, multiple boxes, so we can see three different things happening at the same time. They always discount. Our TVs are better now.
57:53 Speaker 02 What did you mean to things? What like for the Dodgers?
57:56 Bill Simmons? No, like we see the people on the mound celebrating, but then they split screen and we also see the people in the dugout celebrating.
58:02 Sean Fennessey? I gotta give a shout out to my friend John Di Marsico, who does the, directs the Mets broadcasts, because he's, this has been written about many times, but he's a huge cinephile and in the baseball broadcasts that he directs, he constantly is using all of those.
58:15 Bill Simmons? Oh, really?
58:16 Sean Fennessey? He has like huge, he's a huge De Palma fan, has all kinds of De Palma much. You just Google him and look up all the stuff he's done. You'll just be watching a Mets game and he'll just pull a move from Scarface in the middle of the Mets game.
58:26 Bill Simmons? Wow.
58:27 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, it's really cool.
58:27 Speaker 02 What the fuck I'm talking about?
58:28 Bill Simmons? That sounds like your soulmate.
58:29 Sean Fennessey? He, he is the man.
58:31 Bill Simmons? Does he hate his sports life like you do or no?
58:33 Sean Fennessey? I don't think he has as tortured a relationship to the Mets as I do. He sees them as a vessel for his creativity, much like De Palma sees Carla Gugino and Nicholas Cage.
58:41 Bill Simmons? You almost got passed by Ariel Hawani this weekend because he almost had the back to back days of the Blue Jays losing the World Series, then the Bills blowing the Chiefs game.
58:49 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, well, we share, Ariel and I share the Knicks.
58:51 Bill Simmons? Yeah, and, and you had the Hal Burton game in, in May.
58:54 Sean Fennessey? Thanks for reminding me. Yep, awesome. Great stuff.
58:58 Bill Simmons? Cage finds the hidden video of Sinise. The classic. You're like, oh, man, you just have your back to that door for too long. We're gonna see the legs going down this thing. There it is. It's Sinise. I really like when bad guys explain why they did what they did. And you're kind of like.
59:16 Bill Simmons? I see his point.
59:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
59:18 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
59:20 Bill Simmons? He's trying to save the country.
59:22 Speaker 02 You feel like Sinise has a point. He's trying to save a country with something that doesn't really work.
59:25 Bill Simmons? He's a bad guy.
59:26 Sean Fennessey? Uh huh.
59:27 Bill Simmons? But at least he he seems a little conflicted, but I think he's just a good actor. He seems a little, as he's telling it, he's like. I know this is kind of fucked up, but here's how we got to this point versus like, I'm evil.
59:39 Sean Fennessey? Is he just rationalizing his own greed?
59:42 Bill Simmons? Totally.
59:42 Sean Fennessey? You know?
59:43 Bill Simmons? Totally, but I bought it as he was doing it. I was like, okay.
59:46 Sean Fennessey? It's also, you guys see House of Dynamite? Like, this is a plot point in House of Dynamite where it's like. This technology might not work, you know, it's like there's only a fifty fifty percent chance of these, you know, anti ballistic.
59:58 Bill Simmons? I saw the first episode of House of Dynamite. I didn't get to the second episode yet.
1:00:01 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:00:03 Bill Simmons? I saw the part it was it was about to get to where the bomb was and then the credits came up. So I just, I'm gonna wait till next week to finish it.
1:00:10 Sean Fennessey? Okay, let us know when you finish the season.
1:00:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:00:12 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:00:13 Sean Fennessey? It's not, I mean, it's not that good. It's really not.
1:00:15 Speaker 02 Curse is again in the second one. He isn't cursed in the first one.
1:00:19 Bill Simmons? Uh. By the way, Nic Cage smoking in this, the Sean Penn, I brought my own pack award for excellence on screen smoking. Underrated smoker, Nic Cage.
1:00:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, smokes on all these.
1:00:28 Bill Simmons? Kind of could have it dangling in the right way.
1:00:30 Sean Fennessey? I would say very believable.
1:00:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:00:31 Sean Fennessey? Almost as though he has partaken.
1:00:33 Bill Simmons? We also, Van, we get. Somebody says the name of the movie in the. In the in the dialogue.
1:00:39 Speaker 02 Love that.
1:00:40 Bill Simmons? You got nothing, kiddo. Snake eyes. The house always wins. Great. You did it.
1:00:44 Speaker 02 Love it.
1:00:45 Bill Simmons? You worked that.
1:00:46 Sean Fennessey? Cage runs it back too at the end.
1:00:47 Bill Simmons? Runs it back. Um, yeah, there's no we, Kevin. You got snake eyes. With the chess suicide, which we don't see a lot in the action thrillers.
1:00:56 Speaker 02 I.
1:00:57 Sean Fennessey? Have some notes on that.
1:00:57 Bill Simmons? I love it.
1:00:58 Speaker 02 That you like the chess suicide?
1:01:00 Bill Simmons? I think it's smart. Open coffin.
1:01:03 Sean Fennessey? But he's like, I have to, I have to turn my back.
1:01:07 Speaker 02 Fuck.
1:01:11 Bill Simmons? He's thinking, he was looking out for his family.
1:01:13 Speaker 02 On in your brain, man.
1:01:15 Bill Simmons? Chess suicide. You don't see it in action movie.
1:01:19 Sean Fennessey? You think he'll be getting like a really a formal military funeral?
1:01:22 Bill Simmons? Yeah, now it'll be much better for him. And then last but not least, the fall of Richard Santoro, which happens for reasons we'll discuss later. What's your most rewatchable scene, Sean? Steadicam?
1:01:33 Sean Fennessey? So the the opening scene is no question the the best scene, the most memorable scene in the movie for me. Gugino notwithstanding, but I do like all four flashback sequences or basically all all of the POV sequences. So you get you see it through Rick Santoro's eyes in that opening scene. You see it through Tyler Lincoln's eyes when he's telling the story, his version of the story. You see it through Kevin Dunn's eyes when he's telling his false version of the story. And then you see it through Julia Costello's eyes, Gugino's character, when they're sitting on the steps. You know, it's it's an obvious homage to Rashomon in a lot of movies about like the failure of memory. But you you you mentioned it when you were describing them, like every time he goes back, even though we're seeing something that we think we already know,
1:02:15 Sean Fennessey? he manages to turn the key just a little bit differently, which makes it to me a huge improvement on a movie like House of Dynamite, which does a very similar thing, way worse.
1:02:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:02:24 Sean Fennessey? And there is a way to do this kind of storytelling and make it very exciting. I don't love how this movie concludes, find the final 10 minutes a little tough, but everything leading up to that, I think, is really engaging.
1:02:34 Speaker 02 So the the open is obviously, like you're saying, the the best stuff to me. However, the specific scene where Garry Sinise, he turns bad and you see that he is really bad, not turns bad, you actually see what he is, for me is was just way more compelling than I remember it.
1:02:53 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:02:54 Speaker 02 In this particular time where he's executing his accomplices and all of that stuff. To me, it just it it worked a lot better. Like after that, that's a real turning point in the movie to where this guy embodies scumbag asshole. Well acted, very high leverage, so that really worked for me.
1:03:10 Sean Fennessey? Do you guys buy them as old friends?
1:03:14 Speaker 02 Ah.
1:03:15 Bill Simmons? Good question.
1:03:16 Sean Fennessey? They have, they have different energies.
1:03:18 Speaker 02 They, they do, and they needed something else. There needed to be, they're old friends, yeah, cool, we get it. But there needed to be something else that undergirded their friendship.
1:03:30 Sean Fennessey? Are we supposed to believe that they were in the service together?
1:03:33 Bill Simmons? Either that or like high school.
1:03:34 Sean Fennessey? It said that they were friends, like childhood friends, but did they all, did, was Nic Cage's character, did he serve? I, I couldn't figure that out.
1:03:41 Speaker 02 Garrison Neese's character has such a, a faith in his ability to come work for like the State Department or something like that. It's almost as if he knows that he, that he has a set of skills that can be useful on the federal level because of something they did together, yeah.
1:03:57 Bill Simmons? That was today's most rewatchable scene brought to by The Home Depot. Time to check out the Black Friday savings at The Home Depot. So go online or in-store to check out the best deals of the season. Stock up on tools for all your upcoming projects. Black Friday savings happening now at The Home Depot. This will be fun. Next category, the most 1998 thing about this movie. I have a couple nominees for you.
1:04:19 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:04:19 Bill Simmons? Huge heavyweight fights in Atlantic City.
1:04:22 Sean Fennessey? This was my number one.
1:04:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's the obvious.
1:04:24 Bill Simmons? The 90s were like, Atlantic City was the place for nine years, and then it died.
1:04:28 Sean Fennessey? This was right in the heart of Tyson Holyfield.
1:04:31 Bill Simmons? Yep.
1:04:31 Sean Fennessey? When those two fights.
1:04:32 Bill Simmons? Foreman had a couple there, yeah.
1:04:34 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, those two fights were right in that 96, 97, 98.
1:04:37 Speaker 02 And Vegas was making a very direct move to become like, not just a place where you gamble and have, but the actual entertainment capital of the entire world. There was a very direct corporate move to Vegas, and that's what ended up happening to Atlantic City, just Vegas just had the support of all the big hotel chains.
1:04:57 Bill Simmons? Vegas got it back in the early 2000s. The, the fights all came back.
1:05:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, it, at the end of it, it started to be like you couldn't have a big fight in, in AC anymore, like you couldn't be out there.
1:05:08 Bill Simmons? Uh, next, 1998 cellphone.
1:05:11 Sean Fennessey? That's the other one I wrote down, the gold embossed flip phone.
1:05:14 Bill Simmons? And it's giant.
1:05:15 Sean Fennessey? That's the most 98 thing ever.
1:05:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it's like you could, you couldn't even fit it in your jeans pocket. I also have people caring about the Defense Secretary.
1:05:25 Bill Simmons? What do you mean? Pete Hegson is in the news every day. I'm just people like, oh, he's here. He's at the fight. It's like, I don't know, in 1998, I would not have cared. The Defense Secretary was in a fight.
1:05:34 Speaker 02 I have people clapping for the Defense Secretary.
1:05:38 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
1:05:39 Speaker 02 Still a situation to where people went, hey, somebody high up in the government, yay.
1:05:45 Bill Simmons? The only other one I have is at some point, one of the characters says, we got a goddamn Columbo around running loose. You know who Columbo is?
1:05:52 Speaker 03 Only because of Poker Face.
1:05:54 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:05:56 Bill Simmons? What stage is best? Hasn't trickled down?
1:05:58 Speaker 02 Culturally inspired.
1:06:00 Bill Simmons? That was, that's a good show. Need Kathy Bates to bring him back. It's a very enjoyable TV show. What's, what age is the best for you? Yeah.
1:06:06 Speaker 02 One more thing. If so and so is having it like, you're watching it, you're like, ah, you're fucked. Columbo knows.
1:06:14 Bill Simmons? I like Quincy. I was a Quincy guy. Never saw that. That's when the-
1:06:17 Speaker 02 The doctor?
1:06:18 Bill Simmons? Coroner. M.D.
1:06:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, the Quincy M.D. Of all of those detectives, if you're in a draft of TV detectives, what do you got to tell Savalas?
1:06:26 Bill Simmons? Kojak. Kojak.
1:06:27 Speaker 02 Kojak, you got Kojak, you got Matlock, you got-
1:06:29 Bill Simmons? It's Dan Tana from Vegas is the answer. Dan Tana, Robert Yerke? He got down. Even his like assistant was hot. Down? He was just surrounded by the ladies.
1:06:40 Speaker 02 That's not what we were talking about.
1:06:41 Bill Simmons? That's my favorite one.
1:06:42 Speaker 02 Who's the best at solving crimes, you freak?
1:06:44 Bill Simmons? Oh, Quincy. Cause Quincy could use coroner shit.
1:06:48 Speaker 02 But I feel like-
1:06:48 Bill Simmons? He was a cop who could also do autopsies of the victims. Like, nobody can beat that. It's a crazy act for a TV show.
1:06:56 Bill Simmons? It's not enough to just be a detective. And every once in a while, he would, he would look up at Sam, his assistant, and go, it wasn't suicide, Sam, it was murder.
1:07:04 Speaker 02 Okay, just different situation, cause one guy is legal and the other guy is medical. But as far as doctors who are also somehow detectives.
1:07:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:07:15 Speaker 02 Do you have Quincy or House M.D.? Cause House M.D.
1:07:20 Bill Simmons? House M.D. was good.
1:07:21 Speaker 02 House M.D. was looking to some shit and give you, House M.D. was the man.
1:07:26 Bill Simmons? House M.D. was good. Did you like House?
1:07:28 Speaker 03 Didn't watch it. No interest.
1:07:32 Bill Simmons? What's age the best? An athlete falling into debt and having to do something illegal. Oh shit. Wow. With the mafia. I wish that wasn't topical right now.
1:07:41 Sean Fennessey? Uh, yeah.
1:07:42 Bill Simmons? Jesus.
1:07:43 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. There's a couple of these you're gonna be able to cite.
1:07:45 Bill Simmons? Man, don't just talk about the players. Show the mafia.
1:07:49 Sean Fennessey? Oh, yeah?
1:07:50 Bill Simmons? Those are my people.
1:07:50 Sean Fennessey? You wanna talk about the mafia?
1:07:52 Bill Simmons? I don't really wanna talk about them as much. Uh, what do you have for what's age the best, Sean?
1:07:57 Sean Fennessey? Uh, interesting how you kicked it to me. I mean, this is a very topical film right now, right?
1:08:04 Bill Simmons? Let's do that part later.
1:08:05 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:08:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I have another spot for that.
1:08:08 Sean Fennessey? Um, I think the, uh, Maestro movie is like a thing where it's like, let this guy cook. Like, we're gonna, we're only making this movie because this guy knows how to make movies feel fucking awesome. Like, this is something that is also kinda gone now from movies, but as I said, like, this is maybe the 10th or 11th best Brian De Palma movie.
1:08:33 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:08:33 Sean Fennessey? But it is one of the most watchable movies of the 1990s, and it is only that way because he can see the movie in his head and he makes it so special in the style that he has. So, I don't know, there's just not, that has aged nicely. We don't get those as often as we used to.
1:08:50 Bill Simmons? Oh. I have the moment in action thrillers when we realize someone we thought we knew is the bad guy. There's always that, like, in this movie, he's Sinise is walking in the hallway and he kinda, somebody's going ahead and he kinda stops and he looks around and you're like, oh no.
1:09:08 Bill Simmons? It's you? You're the bad guy?
1:09:09 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:09:09 Bill Simmons? And he just gets on his phone. But they always, those moments are always fun. Um, Sinise as a bad guy, we talked about. Did we have another acceptable loss? Like, acceptable losses.
1:09:21 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:09:21 Bill Simmons? Been a good fantasy team name.
1:09:25 Bill Simmons? An award for the random guy who didn't do anything wrong in an action thriller, but has to die anyway, we might have to consider for this next batch when we do our 26. In this case, the guy who thinks he's getting laid by Carla and takes her up to the room, and that guy just gets shot with a silencer. It's like, did that guy do anything wrong?
1:09:43 Speaker 02 That's what's aged the best to me.
1:09:44 Bill Simmons? What, that guy getting murdered?
1:09:46 Speaker 02 Uh, asshole Josh Gad, um, being used by a super-
1:09:52 Bill Simmons? I thought the same thing was Josh Gad.
1:09:53 Sean Fennessey? I forgot the guy's name. He was on Malcolm in the Middle, that guy.
1:09:55 Speaker 02 It's not Josh Gad.
1:09:56 Bill Simmons? It's pre-Josh Gad.
1:09:57 Speaker 02 It's pre-Josh Gad. It's Gad before the Gad.
1:09:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah, pre-Gad.
1:10:00 Speaker 02 That guy being used by a hot woman for her own thing, thinking that he's the man. I, I never understand. So you're that dude. Shout out to the Josh Gad guy.
1:10:12 Sean Fennessey? Josh God, yeah.
1:10:13 Speaker 02 Josh God. You're that guy.
1:10:15 Bill Simmons? I call him Gad too.
1:10:16 Speaker 02 You're at AC.
1:10:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:10:18 Speaker 02 One night, Carla Gugino, for some reason, shows interest in you.
1:10:23 Bill Simmons? It's over. Yeah.
1:10:25 Sean Fennessey? She's, she's wearing a white miniskirt and a black bomber jacket that's zipped up with only a bra underneath.
1:10:32 Speaker 02 And she comes up to you and is like, yeah, let's go up to your, and you don't in any way-
1:10:36 Bill Simmons? Do you have air conditioning? I do.
1:10:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, right. You don't in any way think, what's going on?
1:10:41 Bill Simmons? It can make it really cold.
1:10:42 Speaker 02 Like, what's the deal? Cause there's guys, that guy just knows he's hot. He came to AC to fuck. And now it's about to happen.
1:10:48 Bill Simmons? Whatever happens in AC in Vegas.
1:10:50 Sean Fennessey? I, he, he's not a very nice guy, that character.
1:10:53 Bill Simmons? He's not.
1:10:53 Sean Fennessey? You know, when she's like, I'm in trouble, he's like, get the fuck out. He puts his wedding ring back on very pointedly.
1:10:58 Bill Simmons? Did he deserve to die with a silencer?
1:10:59 Speaker 02 So here's the thing though, he's not a nice guy, and the wedding ring thing is fucked up. But him actually, at the moment that he realizes that it's not gonna go down, putting some distance between him and her? That's smart.
1:11:14 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:11:14 Speaker 02 Hey, I don't want there to be any type of, like, you know what? You're not down. Let's, let's end the night right here.
1:11:21 Bill Simmons? Well, what's aged the worst for this is, now in 2025, you just assume this, this woman who's all of a sudden randomly interested in you is gonna drug you in your room and take all your stuff.
1:11:31 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:11:31 Bill Simmons? Cause there's been a lot more awareness of that the last 25 years, especially in Vegas and Atlantic City.
1:11:35 Sean Fennessey? Literally happened to a friend of mine. I will not say who that friend is, but that literally happened to a friend.
1:11:39 Speaker 02 New Orleans?
1:11:40 Sean Fennessey? Uh, in Las Vegas.
1:11:42 Bill Simmons? Um-
1:11:43 Speaker 02 I blame him.
1:11:44 Bill Simmons? Here's one for Sean.
1:11:45 Sean Fennessey? I'm not casting any blame.
1:11:47 Bill Simmons? Here's a what's age the best for Sean. De Palma Easter eggs and pivotal moments that we circle back to. The bring that you're watching this live for the first time. Here comes the pain. Here comes the pain. And it's basically the owl in blow in blowout. But it's like, man, he's really interested in this owl. And then it's like, oh, he's John Travolta's character is gonna watch this video. And it's like, oh, there's the owl hooting.
1:12:11 Sean Fennessey? Before he says that, though, we do see that he's wearing an earpiece.
1:12:15 Bill Simmons? True.
1:12:15 Sean Fennessey? And that you that's a dead giveaway that something is up.
1:12:18 Speaker 02 That he's fucked, yeah.
1:12:20 Bill Simmons? Dirty cops who decide once and for all, nobody's gonna buy me anymore. I was like that movie. I've been bought for one last time.
1:12:29 Speaker 02 I'm trying to think of another time I've seen that.
1:12:33 Bill Simmons? I just have to mention a Palestinian sniper terrorist assassinating someone over their cooperation with Israel is topical in 2025.
1:12:40 Sean Fennessey? It is.
1:12:40 Bill Simmons? When I move on. Snake Eyes was the last Brian De Palma film for which Steven Spielberg viewed the rough cut. It's an official end of the group.
1:12:50 Speaker 02 Oh, they're not fucking with each other anymore.
1:12:52 Bill Simmons? And they just kind of got old. It's like college buddies who don't really talk anymore.
1:12:56 Speaker 02 God damn, are you telling me that there's an end to the Bill Simmons, Joe House run coming?
1:13:00 Sean Fennessey? Wow. Wow.
1:13:02 Bill Simmons? No.
1:13:02 Sean Fennessey? So I will say, De Palma is interviewed in the new Martin Scorsese doc, Mr. Scorsese. And it's a he's great in it because he's known Scorsese for 60 years. But he's still a little competitive with him and you can tell.
1:13:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Like, how come this guy got five parts? My documentary is 100 minutes.
1:13:19 Speaker 02 When, when, when I was getting into movies and I just thought there those guys' relationship was so awesome. I think Spielberg comes on the set of Scarface and he's like, do this, do that, all of that stuff. And then one day, like all things, it must end, it's over.
1:13:33 Sean Fennessey? It is cool, though, that it's like, let me just call it my best friend, who's also the the greatest living filmmaker. And he'll just help me on one day. That is fucking awesome.
1:13:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, like this is the way and then that scene becomes fucking. But it's it's also like a testament to the collaborative nature of these guys and, you know.
1:13:51 Bill Simmons? It's like when Craig asked me for advice for the fantasy football show. I just pop in like Spielberg. Cut this, move this around. High Fits, quiet down. Have you ever thought about High Fits, maybe not doing?
1:14:01 Sean Fennessey? So Craig, the Spielberg in this, in this analogy?
1:14:05 Bill Simmons? I think it's Soderbergh.
1:14:06 Speaker 02 The punk, yeah.
1:14:07 Bill Simmons? I have one last what's age the best, Trump? Who I think would have hoard out his Atlantic City Casino for just about anything in the 90s, being like, eh, this is a little rich for me, this, this whole evil casino owner. So can you make that the Powell Millennium instead? And they don't use the Trump.
1:14:24 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
1:14:24 Bill Simmons? Very surprising that he did not allow them to use this.
1:14:26 Sean Fennessey? Or that he didn't appear in the film himself. Yeah, that's the real surprise.
1:14:30 Bill Simmons? Trump's right there.
1:14:31 Sean Fennessey? You would have started, yeah.
1:14:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah, so something must happen.
1:14:33 Sean Fennessey? John Heard, though, love John Heard.
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1:15:14 Bill Simmons? That's why Trivia Allolos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener is a smooth, balanced tri-blend that delivers sugar-like sweetness with zero calories per serving and no aftertaste. If you're looking for a better way to enjoy sweetness with zero calories per serving, you really need to try Trivia Allolos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener. Available online and nationwide at Kroger, Target, and your favorite local grocery retailer. Hey, it's time for the Sean Fantasy Award for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm.
1:15:51 Sean Fennessey? One of the great categories on this wonderful show. My favorite is the scene when Gugino and Cage are sitting on the staircase. And there's an overhead shot of the staircase and showing you all the levels of the stairs. And it gives you this sense of disorientation, which is a direct lift from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. There's a scene near the end of the film in the, in the chapel where we see Stuart looking down the staircase and feeling the sense of disorientation. And obviously De Palma. I think Vertigo is his favorite movie of all time and also one of the most perverse movies ever made about. You know, wanting to have sex.
1:16:27 Bill Simmons? I want to actually do it for rewatchables in 2026. Cause that movie is full fledged, off the rails, bonkers.
1:16:34 Sean Fennessey? It is the, it is the like, origin point of so many of our favorite movies.
1:16:39 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:16:39 Sean Fennessey? And favorite directors.
1:16:41 Bill Simmons? It would be hilarious if they just released that movie in like, March with Sydney Sweeney as the Kim Novak character and they just gave nobody any context. People would be like, what the fuck is happening in this movie?
1:16:54 Sean Fennessey? I mean, I will kill myself if that happens and yet I would watch it. Like I need to see it first and then kill myself.
1:17:00 Bill Simmons? What'd you have for great shot, Gordon Award for most cinematic shot? I had the overhead A C rooms.
1:17:06 Sean Fennessey? That's a good one.
1:17:06 Bill Simmons? Long shot, just cause I always think about like, huh, how'd they do that? Did they have to build all these rooms one by one on a set? Did they steal, did they have to match it with the casino like?
1:17:19 Sean Fennessey? I think, yeah, I mean, I think it's all sets that they've built. There's a recent example of that in John Wick four. There's this very similar sequence where they enter an apartment building and you, it's the entire action sequence takes place overhead that is fucking amazing. But you, I would not be surprised if they looked at this to do that.
1:17:35 Bill Simmons? It's long.
1:17:37 Speaker 02 No, you, have you seen that sequence?
1:17:38 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:17:39 Sean Fennessey? Where he has the fire gun. It's crazy.
1:17:41 Bill Simmons? Apparently in episode four of House of Dynamite, there's something like that. I haven't seen it yet. Front of my head screener.
1:17:48 Sean Fennessey? Uh, my cinematic shot is when Carla Gugino falls to the floor and her glasses fall on the floor. And the camera's all the way on the bottom of the floor and it's just looking at the glasses and you're like, oh no, somebody's gonna step on those glasses. And then crunch, somebody steps on the glasses.
1:18:00 Bill Simmons? It's a good one.
1:18:01 Speaker 02 Uh, mine is, uh, there is a sort of pretty long shot through a cracked door at the party.
1:18:11 Bill Simmons? With the two guys talking, yeah.
1:18:13 Speaker 02 In there where it starts with a bunch of hot models smoking crack, it looks like.
1:18:17 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:18:18 Speaker 02 There's smoking crack cocaine, which I didn't realize.
1:18:21 Sean Fennessey? In Tyler's room.
1:18:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, in Tyler and, and so, but there's a long, and it stays there for a second. And you look like you're watching something that you're not supposed to be watching. So it puts you directly, and I like when the camera or the style of the movie puts you in an emotional like situation.
1:18:39 Bill Simmons? Then you're like, is that Bobby Brown?
1:18:43 Speaker 02 Out of nowhere. New Edition getting back together.
1:18:46 Bill Simmons? Chess Rockwell Brocklanders Award for best character name. Lincoln Tyler, the AC Executioner.
1:18:52 Sean Fennessey? It's pretty good.
1:18:52 Bill Simmons? AC Executioner is really good.
1:18:54 Sean Fennessey? I do think the main characters' names are really good in this movie. Detective Rick Santoro, Atlantic City PD, and Commander Kevin Dunn, US Naval Service.
1:19:04 Speaker 02 Commander Kevin Dunn.
1:19:05 Bill Simmons? And they had a Kevin Dunn in the movie, but they didn't change the name of Commander Kevin Dunn. So there was the actor Kevin Dunn from Dave, but then there was a character Kevin Dunn.
1:19:15 Sean Fennessey? Must have been confusing.
1:19:16 Bill Simmons? What do you have for a flex category, Sean?
1:19:18 Sean Fennessey? I chose the I used to fuck guys like you in prison award for craziest quote. It's kind of more of an exchange, but it's very fast. Starts with Kevin Dunn saying, how's Angela? And Rick Santoro says, fat, fabulous, fantastic. I love her. Then Commander Kevin Dunn says, how's the other one? What's her name? Candy? And Santoro says, oh, Monique, skinny, mean, expensive. I love her. That's just a great moment in this movie. That's a cage cooking.
1:19:45 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:19:45 Sean Fennessey? The line reading is perfect and sums up what an asshole this guy is.
1:19:51 Bill Simmons? The Butch's Girlfriend Award for weak link of the film. Well, let's talk about the tidal wave. There's supposed to be a tidal wave in this movie that ends the movie. It was filmed by Industrial Light and Magic. You can see some of it online because the original ending or part of it is in there. And for some reason, they bail on this in the post edit, do the different ending. But it explains why when you're watching this, it's thunder, it's rain, people are looking up. The movie begins with them talking about a storm and then there's no payoff. And I have no idea why they cut it.
1:20:27 Sean Fennessey? He has talked about how he ultimately didn't feel that this is what this movie was about. It wasn't a spectacle movie. It was a movie about that intrigue that Van was talking about at the top.
1:20:36 Bill Simmons? But how did they not know that before they committed to this tidal wave?
1:20:38 Sean Fennessey? I think that they weren't happy with how the tidal wave looked. You can watch the tidal wave sequence on YouTube. It's on YouTube. It is okay. This is kind of getting into my hottest take, but I think my hottest take is that it's significantly better. If you put the tidal wave back in, even what's existing.
1:20:54 Bill Simmons? That's why I have it as the weak link. I don't know why they took it out. It's like that we danced toward it for 90 minutes and then it just doesn't happen.
1:21:01 Sean Fennessey? The movie just deflates. And also, the, the Kevin Dunn self assassination, you know, is just weird. Like, that whole moment is very strange. Where he turns his back to the camera and then does the-
1:21:14 Bill Simmons? Put the gun down. We know who you are. It's like, how do they know who he is?
1:21:17 Speaker 02 I think the, the movie ending with the tidal wave is, to me, like, a natural evolution of the chaotic nature of the film.
1:21:25 Sean Fennessey? Yes, the escalation.
1:21:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, to where something just kind of like, random, or not so random, but something that's been building comes along and sweeps everything up.
1:21:33 Sean Fennessey? Totally agree with that.
1:21:34 Bill Simmons? You pro tidal wave?
1:21:35 Speaker 03 Pro tidal wave.
1:21:36 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:21:36 Speaker 03 I thought, I think even at the very end, like the cage in Gugino on the, on the beach, like the kiss, it felt like very outside what the movie was. It felt a little too buttoned up and rom-comy.
1:21:46 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
1:21:47 Bill Simmons? Woods age is the worst. Um, I think if you made this movie in 25, there would have been all the cameras, they would have been trying to, they would have figured out so many weird things about this assassination. Why did this girl in the white dress with the blonde wig go? And it fell off? And who is this? And we would have had all of these people-
1:22:05 Speaker 02 So are you arguing that?
1:22:07 Bill Simmons? No, I'm saying just 1998, you could get away with an assassination thing like this at a fight and not have people, they didn't even know that blimp thing was there.
1:22:15 Speaker 02 Oh, know who it was.
1:22:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah, yeah.
1:22:17 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:22:18 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
1:22:18 Speaker 02 Well, obviously.
1:22:19 Bill Simmons? This whole assassination thing made way more sense in 1998, I think, than it would in 2025.
1:22:24 Sean Fennessey? It's an insanely elaborate plan.
1:22:26 Speaker 02 Right.
1:22:26 Bill Simmons? Really, with a lot of people, pieces and-
1:22:29 Speaker 02 With a lot on the line, like, at this particular time, it's almost, there's, one of my picking this is that there's a more efficient way to do what it is that they wanted to do.
1:22:38 Bill Simmons? Yeah, why, why did this boxer have to take a dive for them to kill this guy in the front row?
1:22:43 Sean Fennessey? I don't fully understand that. Obviously, the enlisting the Palestinian to, to be the trigger man, but then immediately killing the trigger man is very, you know, shades of JFK, obviously, in this. And then also, I don't really understand Carla Gugino's character's plan either. Like, why does she have to use this event to go talk to the secretary of defense?
1:23:04 Speaker 02 It just seems like there's a simpler, much more straight to the point way of everyone getting what they wanted to get accomplished in this movie.
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1:23:56 Bill Simmons? Van, you're up with the flex category.
1:23:58 Speaker 02 Uh, my flex category is Van Lathan, how would you have gotten out of this?
1:24:03 Bill Simmons? Oh, which character are you playing?
1:24:06 Speaker 02 So I'm Rick Santorum.
1:24:07 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:24:08 Speaker 02 And so you have a wife.
1:24:09 Sean Fennessey? Rick Santoro or Santorum?
1:24:11 Speaker 02 Excuse me, Santorum. I'm thinking of political.
1:24:13 Sean Fennessey? You should be Rick Santorum in this, in this.
1:24:16 Bill Simmons? Rick Santorum as Rick Santorum.
1:24:17 Speaker 02 As Rick Santorum. So you have a wife and a girlfriend that you have to explain where you've been. Okay? It's like something's going crazy, there's all this stuff going on, but you haven't been home, you're not really on the phone anymore, you have a wife and a girlfriend, it's two completely different ways.
1:24:32 Sean Fennessey? So you have to call Angela and Monique.
1:24:33 Speaker 02 Angela and Monique, because they're both calling you and they want to know what's going on. The wife is Angela, right?
1:24:38 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:24:39 Speaker 02 So you, you talk to her first, and you let her know that, look, honey, I don't know if you know, what's the, what's the homeboy's name again?
1:24:45 Sean Fennessey? Commander Kevin Dunn?
1:24:46 Speaker 02 Yeah. Man, Kevin, this guy is not who I thought he was.
1:24:52 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:24:52 Speaker 02 All right, Kevin, not coming back to Christmas, baby. No more, no more Kevin. Kevin is like one of the most, you know how he picks up, he plays with the kids, he does all of this stuff?
1:25:02 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:25:03 Speaker 02 That's not the guy. This guy's a killer, this guy's an asshole, she's on the other end of the phone like, I always told you there was something about him that I didn't like, I saw, I saw the darkness in him, I could look at him and I could tell that there's just something wrong about that guy. And you're like, baby, you were right, you were right, this guy's out of our life forever. Look at my face, look at what happened to my face. That was him. He had the heavyweight champion of the world assault me. Baby, you were right about him. Totally different situation with the girlfriend, the girlfriend's name again as well.
1:25:32 Sean Fennessey? Monique.
1:25:33 Speaker 02 Monique. Where have you been? I haven't talked, ay!
1:25:38 Speaker 02 That's not how our relationship goes. What did Jay-Z say? Our time together is our time together. Our time apart is our time apart. So you love Rick with your mind and not with your heart. I got a whole family. You don't call me and ask me where I've been. That's not what you do. Now, I will tell you this. The rooms at this hotel in AC are amazing. So if in a couple of days after this all blows over, you want to come check this out, that's cool. If you want to have some fun, that's cool. But I got kids and a family and a wife. Don't call this phone no more after 10:30.
1:26:13 Bill Simmons? Wow, a clinic on how to deal with the Gumar.
1:26:18 Sean Fennessey? One thing I really like when he's talking to, to his wife early in the movie is she's asking about what pizza order they should do.
1:26:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:26:26 Sean Fennessey? And he's giving her the details about what's on the different pizzas. And he's like, I don't fucking know. I'm not gonna be eating it. I'm not gonna be home. You know, it's a very relatable fight.
1:26:35 Speaker 03 Also, why does she, can his wife not order a pizza? Why does he have to bring the pizza home at 1:00 in the morning? Fucking order a pizza yourself.
1:26:42 Speaker 02 This is, but that's the kind of, that's what he got in his, he the man of his family.
1:26:47 Speaker 03 I guess.
1:26:47 Speaker 02 That's what he got going on.
1:26:48 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:26:49 Speaker 02 You know what I'm saying? Maybe y'all let, y'all women have free reign to order pizzas and stuff like that, but not Rick.
1:26:54 Sean Fennessey? I feel like since we know that Monique is skinny, mean and expensive, she might push back a little bit on Rick's attempt to manage that scenario.
1:27:03 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:27:03 Speaker 03 And we know his wife is, to use his words, fat.
1:27:06 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, and fantastic.
1:27:07 Bill Simmons? So it might have been a late night pizza for her. She might have already had dinner.
1:27:10 Sean Fennessey? Might have been her second pizza of the day.
1:27:12 Bill Simmons? We're gonna take a break and then do hottest take.
1:27:16 Bill Simmons? All right, the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. Sean, did you do yours?
1:27:21 Sean Fennessey? So I said the title would have been a much better ending, but I, I do think the less classy the material, the better the Brian De Palma movie. So like, obviously we talked about Bonfire of the Vanities, very classy novel, um, adaptation of a Tom Wolfe book. Not a successful movie. The, the hot take part is that I just don't think The Untouchables is very good. And I, it is like the classiest of the De Palma movies, and it's never been one of my movies. I've never really cared about it. I don't think it's that interesting. And I would much rather watch Blowout, or Dressed to Kill, or Body Double, or this movie than The Untouchables.
1:28:02 Speaker 02 Now, do you think those movies are better? Or do you think The Untouchables kind of sucks?
1:28:06 Sean Fennessey? I don't know if it sucks, like it obviously is so well made. I just find it kinda dull.
1:28:12 Speaker 02 You agree.
1:28:13 Bill Simmons? We did on rewatchables, I, there's some, it's got the De Niro stuff that I love. It's got the costume. Like, I, I like it more than Sean. I get it. I get his take.
1:28:23 Sean Fennessey? It's just.
1:28:23 Bill Simmons? He, if a different director had made it, I think you would like it more.
1:28:27 Sean Fennessey? That might be it. It's like, I'm, I'm like, this is a missed opportunity. Like, switch this, like, two directors should trade again.
1:28:31 Bill Simmons? You're watching Jason Kidd in the triangle offense going, what's going on? Give this guy the ball and let him go.
1:28:36 Speaker 02 So, yeah, that's kinda the thing, right? When a director like him, with like, De Palma, plays it slate, safe and straight up and down the line.
1:28:43 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:28:44 Speaker 02 It kinda weighs on you a little bit, and that is a very.
1:28:47 Bill Simmons? It's like when Van Gogh's on CNN.
1:28:51 Speaker 02 I'm a rabble rouser on CNN.
1:28:54 Sean Fennessey? You did, you did.
1:28:55 Speaker 02 Hell raiser.
1:28:55 Sean Fennessey? You did, uh, the glaze moment. That was, that was, that was good.
1:29:00 Bill Simmons? You did do the glaze.
1:29:00 Sean Fennessey? That was really good.
1:29:01 Bill Simmons? Do you have a hat's take?
1:29:03 Speaker 02 Um, I do. That, it's not a better movie, but it might be a more interesting movie if the lead's roles were reversed.
1:29:11 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:29:12 Bill Simmons? Sinise as the hero.
1:29:13 Speaker 02 Sinise as the hero in this, and Nic Cage sort of playing up, but Nic Cage dialing it down and Sinise dialing it up.
1:29:23 Sean Fennessey? Can Sinise pull off that shirt?
1:29:25 Speaker 02 Maybe not, but maybe you get something, maybe, maybe Sinise wears, you know what he could pull off? A notorious big, uh, B I G Versace type joint.
1:29:33 Sean Fennessey? Oh, yeah, the sweater.
1:29:34 Speaker 02 A little louder and stuff like that.
1:29:35 Bill Simmons? I thought you were gonna go Travolta Cage reunion.
1:29:38 Speaker 02 Oh, that works too.
1:29:41 Bill Simmons? Where either of them could have played either part.
1:29:43 Speaker 02 But you know what? Travolta can dial it up.
1:29:46 Sean Fennessey? He could have been Kevin Dunn, I think, cause he, he's got the general's daughter in him. We know he can wear the uniform, right? General's daughter, you seen that one?
1:29:53 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah.
1:29:54 Sean Fennessey? It's an unfortunate film.
1:29:54 Speaker 02 As I saw the movie, I, I kinda felt like in this movie, at a certain point, Cage was doing what he was doing.
1:30:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:30:01 Speaker 02 And Sinise was doing what he was doing.
1:30:04 Sean Fennessey? That was what I'm saying. They had different energies. They're kinda like not really on the same wavelength in this movie.
1:30:08 Speaker 02 Right. If they would have switched it up, each guy would have subverted something and it might have been a little bit more interesting.
1:30:15 Bill Simmons? My hat's take. Nic Cage, number one guy all time you could cast in any part of a Vegas or Atlantic City movie.
1:30:23 Speaker 02 Oh, he's done it.
1:30:24 Bill Simmons? He could play all the parts.
1:30:24 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:30:25 Bill Simmons? He could be a blackjack dealer, cop, crooked cop, gambler, bookie, fight fixer, pimp, security guard. Name a, name anybody that works in a casino, Nic Cage could play that part.
1:30:37 Speaker 02 Hmm, great take.
1:30:38 Bill Simmons? The only one that, I can't think of anybody else you could say that about.
1:30:41 Speaker 02 Also can be the, the everyman that kind of gets his girl stolen by James Cullen.
1:30:46 Bill Simmons? Could have been in the car with Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, younger Nic Cage, that's like the third buddy. Being like, Vegas! Could have done everything.
1:30:53 Speaker 02 Great take.
1:30:54 Bill Simmons? Casting whatevs. Wow. De Palma offered Sinisa's role to our guy, Al Pacino.
1:31:06 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:31:06 Bill Simmons? Who turned it down. Who, uh.
1:31:11 Speaker 02 Would have been, would have needed an older actor to play the other part. If you do that, right?
1:31:18 Bill Simmons? I was with Rick Santoro half an hour ago!
1:31:24 Speaker 02 He, of course, is the original utterer of.
1:31:27 Bill Simmons? Here comes the pain!
1:31:28 Speaker 02 Carlito's Way.
1:31:31 Bill Simmons? And then, this is where it gets.
1:31:32 Speaker 02 You want to be big time? You're gonna die, big time!
1:31:36 Bill Simmons? This is where.
1:31:37 Speaker 02 Carlito's Way is so. So good. Yo, I, I, I been with made guys, connected guys, who you been with?
1:31:45 Bill Simmons? Ben, this casting whatevs is gonna break your brain.
1:31:48 Speaker 02 Okay, let's see.
1:31:49 Bill Simmons? Offered Sinisa's role, wouldn't take it because he wanted 20 million and they offered 12. Our guy Will Smith decided to do Enemy of the State instead. We all won.
1:32:01 Speaker 02 Good movie.
1:32:02 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:32:02 Speaker 02 Good movie.
1:32:03 Bill Simmons? Two winners. I'm glad he did Enemy of the State.
1:32:05 Speaker 02 I like Enemy of the State. Look at the incestuous Enemy of the State he takes, because Tom Cruise turned it down, who worked with De Palma.
1:32:12 Bill Simmons? That's how movies go.
1:32:13 Speaker 02 Like, the whole nine. Interesting movie with Will Smith in this movie, man.
1:32:19 Bill Simmons? Could have, also could have played either part, but I think him as Commander Kevin Dunn, Will Smith never played a part like that.
1:32:24 Speaker 02 Right. I, actually.
1:32:27 Bill Simmons? Would have been really interesting. Either one.
1:32:29 Sean Fennessey? He never plays sleazy guys either.
1:32:31 Speaker 02 Never plays sleazy, never really plays villain. So like.
1:32:36 Sean Fennessey? He needed a couple of those, man. He really did.
1:32:37 Bill Simmons? Give Will Smith the fucking 20 million. It's 1998, like, that's, he was the most bankable.
1:32:43 Sean Fennessey? It's kind of surprising that they wouldn't pay up.
1:32:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:32:46 Sean Fennessey? It is kind of surprising. There's a long line of.
1:32:48 Speaker 02 They had to pay for the title wave.
1:32:50 Bill Simmons? Best that guy word. We went through all the candidates.
1:32:56 Bill Simmons? I think it's, I think it's Michael Rispoli, even though we know what his name is. I think he's the most that guy of all the that guys.
1:33:02 Sean Fennessey? I have Don Rispoli and Mike Star. I think those are like elite that guy actors.
1:33:07 Speaker 02 I have Burks just because Denzel fucked his girlfriend in the other room while he was sleeping, Devil in the Blue Dress.
1:33:13 Bill Simmons? Who do you have for Deon Waiters' word?
1:33:16 Sean Fennessey? It's the first I'm hearing of this.
1:33:17 Bill Simmons? Who do you have for Deon Waiters?
1:33:18 Sean Fennessey? Uh.
1:33:19 Bill Simmons? Carla's not eligible.
1:33:20 Sean Fennessey? A woman named Jane Hightmire, who plays Serena, the redhead, AKA the blonde, who, uh, is my pick for the CR. I would throw my life away for her.
1:33:31 Speaker 02 There you go.
1:33:31 Bill Simmons? Wow.
1:33:32 Sean Fennessey? Uh, she's just, she's.
1:33:33 Bill Simmons? I was gonna say, the Palma movie with the redhead and gambling and it's a lot of things that check Sean's boxes.
1:33:39 Sean Fennessey? Very comfortable movie for me, yeah. It's like a warm bath.
1:33:42 Speaker 02 She's like, like a prototypical Deon Waiters in this role.
1:33:45 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:33:45 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:33:45 Speaker 02 Like prototypical.
1:33:46 Bill Simmons? I'm down with it.
1:33:49 Bill Simmons? Recasting Couch director or city. Can we talk about Stan Shaw being a little bit too old to be Lincoln Tyler?
1:33:56 Speaker 02 Isn't it?
1:33:57 Sean Fennessey? He was gonna be my weak link.
1:33:59 Bill Simmons? He's like, looks like he's 47. Now, we did have older champs at that point, like Foreman was older.
1:34:05 Sean Fennessey? But if this is, if this is.
1:34:07 Bill Simmons? He seems like he's almost 50.
1:34:08 Speaker 02 But yeah.
1:34:09 Sean Fennessey? But if, if this is Michael Clarke Duncan or Ving Rhames, aren't you like, yeah, I buy that?
1:34:15 Speaker 02 It, it, like, I like seeing him as a boxer. He played a boxer at Harlem Nights, all of that stuff. I love him as an actor, but when you watch it, I know he's supposed to be a little bit older, but he's jarringly a little bit older in this situation, like jarringly old to me.
1:34:29 Bill Simmons? Yes. We're two, it's two years too early, but this would have been a great 50 Cent part.
1:34:35 Speaker 02 Two years too early.
1:34:36 Bill Simmons? Cause he wasn't 50 Cent yet. That that came out in like 2000. I was trying to think this. It felt like a good stunt casting. I don't think we need a real actor.
1:34:43 Sean Fennessey? There's just not a lot of actors who could credibly play a heavyweight.
1:34:47 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:34:47 Sean Fennessey? You have to be tall.
1:34:48 Bill Simmons? By the way, he didn't have to be a heavyweight. He could have been a welterweight or a middleweight. It didn't really matter.
1:34:52 Sean Fennessey? That's true.
1:34:53 Bill Simmons? You know?
1:34:53 Speaker 02 You know, it I I guess, but at that time during the 90s, there's probably a reflection to the fact that we only really, really at that point in the 90s, were really super caring about heavyweight boxing. The only guy that was really drawing someone at the lower weights was Della Hoya.
1:35:08 Sean Fennessey? And the the executioner is obviously modeled on Tyson in a lot of ways, right? They're like, hasn't been knocked out in 28 professional fights and I saw him in the Gold Gloves.
1:35:16 Bill Simmons? They could have just cast Tyson.
1:35:18 Speaker 02 Could have. They I always like it. Does I have something later on, but like, I always like it in these movies where they go with actual fighters. This role is a little bit maybe too much because then you gotta act.
1:35:31 Sean Fennessey? He's got some real scenes with Cage. Yeah.
1:35:33 Speaker 02 But like when they get like a real fighter, somebody that could do it.
1:35:36 Sean Fennessey? He could have done it. He ran a boxer and undisputed.
1:35:38 Bill Simmons? Could have kicked the tires, maybe called Wesley Snipes his agent, being like.
1:35:42 Speaker 02 Too small of a role for Wesley.
1:35:44 Bill Simmons? 98?
1:35:45 Speaker 02 Too small of a role for Wesley.
1:35:46 Bill Simmons? In the late 90s?
1:35:47 Speaker 02 Blade. Same year.
1:35:49 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:35:49 Speaker 02 Too small of a role for Wesley. Yeah.
1:35:50 Bill Simmons? Craig, you still have your flex category or no?
1:35:52 Speaker 03 A lot were swiped. I I was gonna bring up Lincoln Tyler. I got the Elizabeth shoe for uh Gugino. Also, like, why did she have to wear that wig and dress? Why didn't she dress super understated? I don't understand why she looked like that. That makes no sense to me.
1:36:06 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, she could have worn like a hat and a brown wig.
1:36:09 Bill Simmons? Baseball hat.
1:36:10 Speaker 03 Doesn't make sense at all. This one might not go over well. I I don't know about the title of this movie. I don't think it has anything to do with the movie. I feel like Snake Eyes is more of a casino term. There's no dice in the movie. It's about boxing. I just thought Snake Eyes didn't make any sense. So like, we could have had a better title. Call Fight Night.
1:36:25 Sean Fennessey? Well, it it.
1:36:26 Bill Simmons? Fight Night.
1:36:27 Sean Fennessey? It's a double entendre.
1:36:28 Bill Simmons? Fight Night's a good title.
1:36:28 Sean Fennessey? Double entendre because it's like.
1:36:30 Speaker 03 House always wins.
1:36:31 Sean Fennessey? No, but Sinise is the snake. Like, he's the one who you think he's one thing, but he's actually the opposite.
1:36:36 Bill Simmons? And they said the title.
1:36:37 Sean Fennessey? He's luring you into his trap and he's a predator.
1:36:39 Speaker 02 Everybody loses. Everybody comes up Snake Eyes.
1:36:41 Speaker 03 Well, like, the house always wins. It's like, well, there who is the house? Like, there wasn't. There's no real.
1:36:46 Speaker 02 Casino gambling.
1:36:47 Sean Fennessey? It was the missile defense system, which eventually gets pushed forward, which you learn about. So Gilbert Powell, who is at the seat of power, wins, as power always does. That's the house.
1:36:57 Speaker 02 That's why I said I don't think it would go over well. Get your head out of your ass, Craig. I'm just saying.
1:37:01 Bill Simmons? Craig, I like that.
1:37:02 Speaker 02 Stay woke.
1:37:02 Bill Simmons? I like when Craig zags.
1:37:04 Speaker 02 So what, what's a good title then? Fight Night. Oh, you did say Fight Night.
1:37:08 Bill Simmons? Fight Night's good.
1:37:08 Speaker 02 Fight Night works. Everybody's fighting. They're on battle. Sure. Yeah.
1:37:13 Bill Simmons? Apex Mountain for Cage, no. The Palma, no. Fixed Boxing Movies?
1:37:20 Speaker 02 Dick's Town.
1:37:21 Sean Fennessey? Ooh.
1:37:22 Bill Simmons? Rispoli, Rispoli, yes.
1:37:24 Sean Fennessey? I have a Rispoli.
1:37:26 Bill Simmons? Carla, no. Atlantic City as a viable destination for a movie like this, yes.
1:37:33 Sean Fennessey? Now, I think the answer to that is the movie Atlantic City, the Louis Malle movie. With Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, which is an amazing movie, but this would be number two for me.
1:37:42 Bill Simmons? You know that movie?
1:37:43 Speaker 02 I saw it.
1:37:44 Bill Simmons? That's a throw your life away, Susan Sarandon performance.
1:37:46 Speaker 02 What era are we talking about?
1:37:48 Bill Simmons? 1981?
1:37:49 Speaker 02 Okay, yeah. That's her throw your life away era, for sure.
1:37:52 Sean Fennessey? She's very attractive in that.
1:37:54 Bill Simmons? That's another movie that's gone. That's one of those 80s, 90s movies. There's no record.
1:37:59 Sean Fennessey? Older Guy Character Piece?
1:38:00 Bill Simmons? No, it's like gone.
1:38:01 Sean Fennessey? Oh, people don't watch it. Yeah, yeah.
1:38:02 Bill Simmons? No, I think it's like, doesn't exist. I think it's one of those that's just out.
1:38:07 Speaker 02 I have thoughts about the Older Guy Character Piece.
1:38:09 Sean Fennessey? I love those movies.
1:38:10 Speaker 02 I love them.
1:38:11 Sean Fennessey? I love a movie where it's like, this guy's 63.
1:38:13 Speaker 02 But they won't do them anymore.
1:38:14 Sean Fennessey? It's all slipping through his fingers.
1:38:14 Speaker 02 Because the older guys.
1:38:16 Sean Fennessey? They want to be too young.
1:38:16 Speaker 02 They want to be too young.
1:38:18 Sean Fennessey? This is the problem.
1:38:19 Bill Simmons? You know, Criterion, the, the, the streaming app, which is really good, and every month they change the movies, and they'll have some that haven't been streaming for a while.
1:38:31 Sean Fennessey? Their programming is amazing on that service.
1:38:32 Bill Simmons? Them and AMC are the only ones left that would have a movie like Atlantic City. But for the most part, they're just gone. And I don't know whether it's like a rights thing, but it's really frustrating, especially for this show, because there's movies we can't do because they don't exist. Revenge of the Nerds is gone.
1:38:48 Speaker 02 Do you know, like, this is interesting that we're talking about this. Like, a month ago, like, I'm at the crib, and I was just like, I want to watch The Mac.
1:38:57 Speaker 02 You seen The Mac?
1:38:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:38:58 Speaker 02 I want to watch The Mac. I could not find a Mac to watch it.
1:39:02 Bill Simmons? Bernie Casey?
1:39:03 Speaker 02 No. The Mac is, uh, The Mac is, um, Max Julian. As.
1:39:09 Bill Simmons? That's what it was.
1:39:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah, yeah.
1:39:10 Speaker 02 So like.
1:39:11 Sean Fennessey? The closest you can come is watching them watch it in True Romance. That's what Drexel Spivey is watching on the TV, right?
1:39:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:17 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:39:18 Speaker 02 You see, I, I know I'm pretty, but I'm not pretty as a couple of titties. But like, it, it, it's.
1:39:23 Bill Simmons? That one's gone.
1:39:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, the Mac, couldn't find the Mac, wanted to watch the Mac, couldn't find the Mac. Watch, settle for Superfly.
1:39:28 Sean Fennessey? As always, I'll just say, by physical media, you will always have access to these movies.
1:39:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:33 Bill Simmons? That is true. Some of them, oh, Atlantic City is, you can rent it.
1:39:37 Speaker 02 Mac somewhere.
1:39:37 Sean Fennessey? Great. Recommended.
1:39:38 Bill Simmons? Oh, no, that's the wrong one.
1:39:40 Speaker 02 I bet my mom and them got it. They gotta have it in Louisiana somewhere. I know we got it somewhere.
1:39:45 Bill Simmons? Atlantic City, huh, anyway. All right, moving on. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse Nine. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Minnehoshan and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse Nine is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year.
1:40:29 Bill Simmons? Don't miss Wild Horse Nine, only in theaters November 6th. Get tickets now. Uh.
1:40:35 Speaker 02 Oh, Apex Mountain. How about this?
1:40:37 Bill Simmons? Yep.
1:40:37 Speaker 02 Boxing matches in non-boxing movies?
1:40:42 Speaker 02 In a movie that's not about boxing.
1:40:45 Bill Simmons? I'm trying to think who, what else is in there.
1:40:47 Speaker 02 Like, in a movie that's like.
1:40:48 Bill Simmons? Pulp Fiction?
1:40:50 Sean Fennessey? There's no, we don't see the fight at all.
1:40:53 Speaker 02 Like, think about it. It, this movie is not about boxing. Normally boxing matches come in movies that are specifically about boxing or about the sport.
1:41:02 Sean Fennessey? It's a very good call. There definitely has got, gotta be another example out there.
1:41:05 Speaker 02 There's gotta be, yeah.
1:41:06 Bill Simmons? You should prep Sean.
1:41:07 Speaker 02 It's gonna come.
1:41:08 Sean Fennessey? Now I'm gonna just be haunted when I forget to name one movie.
1:41:12 Bill Simmons? His, his own Criterion closet, just looking for a boxing movie.
1:41:15 Sean Fennessey? Well, there's a lot of movies in the 40s and 50s like this, right? Like, The Harder They Fall is technically about, the 50s version with Bogart. It's technically about fights, but it's not a fight movie, but there's a fight in it.
1:41:29 Speaker 02 Right.
1:41:30 Sean Fennessey? I'm, I'm trying, there's gotta be a good example of this. I can't think of it.
1:41:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I'll think of it about nine hours from now after the pod's already done.
1:41:37 Bill Simmons? Stan Shaw, no. I do like Stan Shaw.
1:41:41 Speaker 02 He's awesome.
1:41:43 Sean Fennessey? I think he's a little miscast in this.
1:41:45 Bill Simmons? Oh, he's too old. But I think, I was trying to think what his, he's been in a lot of good stuff, but I think that number one is probably Great Santini. But he's also in this movie that doesn't exist anymore, Tough Enough with Dennis Quaid, where Dennis Quaid's in a tough man competition. And Stan Shaw is like his, I think he's the other guy in it, but he's been around. Stan Shaw was in five boxing movies somehow.
1:42:08 Sean Fennessey? I feel like I know him best, where do I know him best?
1:42:10 Speaker 02 Does he have a boxing background?
1:42:12 Bill Simmons? Because he must.
1:42:13 Sean Fennessey? Oh, I know him from Monster Squad. Ever seen Monster Squad?
1:42:16 Speaker 02 The kids, they, they all get together and they're gonna go fight the monsters because the monsters come out of the, the vortex, right? And Abraham Van Helsing, he comes in at the end of the movie, but then like then, before he comes in, they have this girl, she's supposed to have a virgin, read this incantation that's gonna send Dracula back to this thing. And they have one of their friends of the monster squad, they have their sister read the incantation. And it doesn't work because it turns out she's not a virgin. And that you didn't know this because you figure like she's like sixteen, seventeen years old. It's facts.
1:42:53 Bill Simmons? I definitely haven't seen this.
1:42:55 Speaker 02 It turns out, and then they have one of their little sisters who's a little girl. She reads it, Van Helsing comes back through the thing, gets Dracula, pulls him back through the vortex. They win. I think Shane Black wrote that.
1:43:07 Bill Simmons? What year is that?
1:43:08 Sean Fennessey? It's directed by Fred Decker, it's like eighty-six.
1:43:11 Speaker 02 All the monsters come back to this town.
1:43:12 Sean Fennessey? Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein.
1:43:15 Speaker 02 The creature from the Black Lagoon, all of them.
1:43:17 Sean Fennessey? It's perfect gateway horror. If you're eight years old and you see it, you're like, I'll watch horror movies forever.
1:43:22 Speaker 02 And it fucked with me because I learned about the lore of the Wolfman because they killed a Wolfman in the movie.
1:43:27 Sean Fennessey? Wolfman's got nards.
1:43:28 Speaker 02 Wolfman's got nards. They killed a Wolfman in the movie and then a Wolfman goes, oh, thank you. Because he's been released from his curse. I fell for him.
1:43:36 Sean Fennessey? Stan Shaw's in that movie.
1:43:44 Bill Simmons? Cruise or Hanks?
1:43:45 Sean Fennessey? Uh, it should, so this is gonna be my other hottest take, but I didn't want to step on this category. It should be Cruise and Hanks. Cruise is Santoro.
1:43:53 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:43:53 Sean Fennessey? And Hanks is done. And then when Hanks, it's revealed that Hanks is the bad guy. It's the most shocking reveal of the nineties.
1:43:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:44:00 Sean Fennessey? And this movie would have made nine hundred million dollars. You leave the tidal wave in, you get an extra fifty million dollars in the budget because you've got the two biggest stars of the era. And it's directed by Brian De Palma, who's just worked with Cruise on Mission Impossible. And we know it will be great in the movie. And it, Hanks, of course, was already in Bonfire of the Vanities. What make this movie?
1:44:18 Bill Simmons? Wouldn't, couldn't you make the same argument for Cruise and Will Smith?
1:44:22 Sean Fennessey? They're not the same age.
1:44:24 Bill Simmons? You, you.
1:44:25 Sean Fennessey? To me, you could, you could get away with, I think, Cruise and Hanks being the same age.
1:44:30 Speaker 02 I- if it's Cruise and Hanks, this movie is the espionage version of Interview with the Vampire. It's like two titans coming together to where just the fact that their names are up there together sparks a whole bunch of interest for the movie.
1:44:45 Bill Simmons? Is there a spot for Cruise to run in this movie?
1:44:49 Speaker 03 Not really. It's pretty confined. Maybe through the back hallways. You can always find spots for him to run.
1:44:54 Sean Fennessey? Down the hotel room.
1:44:54 Bill Simmons? Maybe he, oh, he has to run down the hallways.
1:44:57 Speaker 03 Hotel hallway, yeah.
1:44:58 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:44:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah. I think he would have put that in his, uh, in the negotiations.
1:45:02 Sean Fennessey? In his contract, yeah.
1:45:04 Bill Simmons? He's like, I read the script. When Rick's on the thirty-fifth floor, what if he's on the wrong side and has to sprint the other way? Uh, Scorsese or Spielberg? This is obviously Scorsese. This would have been a cool Scorsese movie.
1:45:19 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
1:45:19 Bill Simmons? And what part would Philip Seymour have played? I think Sinisa's part would have been.
1:45:24 Sean Fennessey? I wrote Gilbert Powell.
1:45:26 Bill Simmons? Which one was that?
1:45:27 Sean Fennessey? The Donald Trump figure that John Heard plays.
1:45:29 Bill Simmons? Oh.
1:45:30 Sean Fennessey? When he gives the big, he's yelling at Sinisa's character about all the, his plan and what's gonna happen and how he needs the millennium to open. That's just a very PSH kind of moment in the movie.
1:45:42 Bill Simmons? Pick a nits. What do you got, Van?
1:45:45 Speaker 02 Uh, they're having a full-on party with crack before a heavyweight title fight. Um, they're smoking crack. It's pre-fight. Now, I know that boxers get crazy, but I don't know how many times I've seen them go to the back where the fighters are getting ready, and there's a full-on model party happening in the dressing room of the boxer where they're getting down and...
1:46:09 Bill Simmons? I think that might have actually happened during the Tyson post-jail era.
1:46:13 Speaker 02 Maybe.
1:46:14 Bill Simmons? Maybe.
1:46:14 Speaker 02 Before the fight. Um, just the, she's covered in blood and she's running through the thing. One guy stops her. Other than that, nobody really gives a shit. It's the whole time she's covered in blood. I'm like, I'm trying to think of any time I've ever seen someone even with a bloody nose. You're like, hey, man, I don't know if you know, but your nose is bleeding. She's got blood all over. Nobody cares.
1:46:34 Sean Fennessey? You wanted a cop to set her aside, full-body cavity search. That's who you wanted.
1:46:38 Speaker 02 Full search.
1:46:39 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:46:39 Speaker 02 And why don't you get out of those bloody clothes?
1:46:41 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
1:46:41 Speaker 02 Those are the types of movies I like. Um, he's running security. Garrison Easys' friend, Garrison Easys' running security. He, however, gets his boy tickets to the fight, and there's been no security screening of any kind. He just chills right there with the Secretary of Defense. I'm like, is there no lyric or no piece of dialogue where you go, hey, man, I'm glad that you guys put me through this extensive security search where now I get to chill and sit right next to the Secretary of Defense? All of that stuff, none of that happened. It's just, I'm the bodyguard for the Secretary of Defense. Hey, my friend, come to the fight. I don't think that it works that way. I don't know why. It popped in my head. Uh, another thing is...
1:47:26 Bill Simmons? Wow, you're really bringing it to the table this time.
1:47:28 Speaker 02 Just one more time.
1:47:29 Bill Simmons? You're snake-eyesing it up.
1:47:31 Speaker 02 These are some slightly high BMI heavyweights. Now, I am not in any way...
1:47:35 Bill Simmons? I thought the same thing.
1:47:37 Speaker 02 I'm not in any way...
1:47:37 Bill Simmons? This looks like an ESPN Friday Night Fights fight.
1:47:40 Speaker 02 If you guys look at me, I'm not in any way shaming anyone. I'm just saying, this is a two heavyweights fighting that...
1:47:49 Speaker 02 In the 90s, this wasn't the heavyweights. It was Lewis and Tyson and Holyfield and all of that.
1:47:56 Bill Simmons? Razor Ruddock.
1:47:57 Speaker 02 Razor Ruddock, you know, you had maybe a couple of guys. But these, these are some high BMI heavyweights. That's it. That's all.
1:48:04 Bill Simmons? What'd you have, Sean?
1:48:06 Sean Fennessey? Well, I mentioned already that Carla Gugino's plan is incoherent. Craig also points out that she's dressed like Marilyn Monroe in an attempt to get the attention of the Secretary of Defense at a fight. But then is her, her whole intention is to be a whistleblower, to have this whole plan destroyed and then so she would put herself out of work in theory.
1:48:26 Speaker 03 He also, he doesn't need to get her attention. He invited her theoretically.
1:48:29 Bill Simmons? More importantly, we have fucking email in 1998. Send him an email.
1:48:33 Speaker 03 She said she wanted to deliver it by hand because I think she didn't want to get.
1:48:37 Bill Simmons? No, she, she, we have email.
1:48:39 Speaker 02 There's specifically some mention in this movie somewhere of an email that was sent.
1:48:43 Bill Simmons? But it was a mention and that was said in a way where email was still kind of new and it seemed conceivable she wouldn't be able to get an email to him.
1:48:50 Speaker 02 No, but she, she says something in the movie about either she sent an email or there was an email or something in the movie.
1:48:59 Bill Simmons? I feel like she could have gone up to him before the fight versus during the fight.
1:49:04 Sean Fennessey? Right, rather than during the fight.
1:49:04 Bill Simmons? And maybe given it to him.
1:49:06 Speaker 03 When every camera's on him and she's gonna hand him an envelope.
1:49:08 Bill Simmons? Everything is out there. I agree.
1:49:09 Speaker 02 Couldn't she just have also gone to the press?
1:49:12 Sean Fennessey? In theory, yes.
1:49:13 Speaker 03 Probably worried about her life.
1:49:14 Sean Fennessey? Although because he was being applauded, maybe he was a beloved SecDef.
1:49:18 Speaker 02 Right.
1:49:18 Sean Fennessey? You know, he could have been a hero.
1:49:20 Bill Simmons? I have a really stealth boxing nitpick. The crowd is just too energetic and into it and upset in the first minute of the fight. They're just booing because there's not enough action. No crowd has ever been this.
1:49:32 Sean Fennessey? He got two knockdowns in the first round.
1:49:34 Bill Simmons? But, but initially they're booing because there's not action yet and it's like the fight just started. That never happens.
1:49:38 Sean Fennessey? Can we talk about Jose Pacifico Ruiz for a moment?
1:49:44 Sean Fennessey? So I didn't know where to put him. I don't know if he should have been in overacting. I don't know if he should have been weak link. I don't know if his characters.
1:49:51 Bill Simmons? It might be a new category. It might be the Jose Pacifico Ruiz worst sports movie character.
1:49:56 Sean Fennessey? First of all, you know, I'm sure he was a wonderful boxer. His acting is abominable. Like, he is absolutely terrible in this movie. Also, when Stan Shaw.
1:50:04 Bill Simmons? He really is awful.
1:50:05 Sean Fennessey? He's so bad. He's mugging in the camera.
1:50:08 Bill Simmons? His name sucks. Jose Pacifico Ruiz.
1:50:11 Sean Fennessey? He, if we're to believe what Tyler Lincoln says, this guy was also on the take, but he's fucking up the plan? Because he doesn't know how to box? Like, what exactly is going on? Where he, he pulls back on the phantom punch? He doesn't, he doesn't go for the kill when he's supposed to. He's kind of jabbing him. You know, you know what he's describing?
1:50:31 Speaker 02 And he's talking shit. Yeah, he's talking too much shit. He's losing sight of what the job is to do.
1:50:38 Bill Simmons? Do you think he even knows that there is a job?
1:50:40 Sean Fennessey? Isn't it clear that he's, he's supposed to know? When he hears the sign two?
1:50:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think they're both.
1:50:47 Sean Fennessey? They're both in on it, right?
1:50:49 Speaker 02 I think they're both in on it. I could be wrong.
1:50:51 Bill Simmons? It's terrible. Good play, Bushon. Uh, here's my biggest nitpick. Why isn't Carla wearing contact lenses? It's 1998. It's like, if I lose these glasses, I just become Mr. Magoo? Like, you have a job working for a defense? You, you know, of your weapons analyst? You can't put in some contacts?
1:51:10 Sean Fennessey? There is really, there is one really funny Mr. Magoo's style pratfall moment, though, where she comes out of the bathroom after she's cleaned herself up, and she's walking back into the arena and she bumps into the wall? And she like looks at the wall because she can't see.
1:51:22 Bill Simmons? Right, because she can't see.
1:51:23 Sean Fennessey? It's like a nice reminder of the fight.
1:51:24 Bill Simmons? Also, if she was that blind, the glasses would be way thicker. And I, I say this as somebody who's blind, and I've never had a pair of glasses that, those look like reading glasses.
1:51:32 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:51:33 Bill Simmons? Like, come on.
1:51:34 Sean Fennessey? Contact lenses, A+. Love them. Where would I be without them?
1:51:40 Bill Simmons? The actual, uh, oh, nobody notices the heavyweight champ punching out a cop. That one jumped out to me. And then obviously Carla making a move on Nick at the end. Where, where does that come from? They have no sexual attention the whole movie. And she's batting her eyelashes and being cute and being like, maybe you should look me up sometime. It's like, what, what is happening?
1:51:59 Speaker 02 They did that.
1:51:59 Bill Simmons? This guy's a loser scumbag.
1:52:01 Sean Fennessey? He does make a move on her earlier in the movie. When he sits her down before it gets real and he learns that his friend has betrayed him. But, so there's some indication that he wants, he's, he's down.
1:52:12 Speaker 02 The only nineties movie that had the sense to take out the underlying sexual energy between the man and the woman was The Pelican Brief.
1:52:24 Sean Fennessey? Yes, because America's racist, right?
1:52:26 Speaker 02 That's part of it.
1:52:27 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:52:28 Speaker 02 And that's where the sense came from.
1:52:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah, missing some, a major chunk of that movie.
1:52:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, like, that's the only movie that was like, you know what?
1:52:34 Sean Fennessey? You think they showed full penetration in that scene that they cut out?
1:52:37 Speaker 02 Gone, I think they.
1:52:38 Bill Simmons? Darby Shaw got her world rocked.
1:52:39 Speaker 02 I think they should have gone with The Pelican Briefs.
1:52:42 Sean Fennessey? Heyo.
1:52:43 Speaker 02 Like, you, you make that movie, right? I'm surprised I haven't come out with that.
1:52:46 Sean Fennessey? Did this movie have a porn parody, you know?
1:52:48 Speaker 02 Definitely could, and so like, but everything else, they just had to do it. Like, they, they had it, they, they had to do it. They had to make the people have some type of energy. They, they always had to do it. I guess they didn't do it in, um, didn't they take it out of, uh, of, um, You Can't Handle the Truth?
1:53:06 Sean Fennessey? A Few Good Men, yeah.
1:53:07 Speaker 02 They took it out of that one, too.
1:53:08 Sean Fennessey? Joe.
1:53:09 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:53:10 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, Joe doesn't get it.
1:53:12 Bill Simmons? She was with the galactically stupid.
1:53:14 Speaker 02 You with the galactically.
1:53:16 Bill Simmons? Sequel, prequel, Prestige TV, all black cast, untouchable. Um, Prestige TV, maybe, I don't know.
1:53:24 Sean Fennessey? Oh, wow, so defeated.
1:53:25 Bill Simmons? No, I just.
1:53:26 Sean Fennessey? Oh, my God.
1:53:27 Bill Simmons? I wouldn't fuck with this.
1:53:28 Sean Fennessey? Never seen you be so defeated by your own category.
1:53:30 Bill Simmons? I think this movie's fine. I wouldn't, I wouldn't do.
1:53:33 Sean Fennessey? I, I, I think a prequel about Rick and Kevin growing up is kind of fun.
1:53:37 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:53:38 Sean Fennessey? And then we see Kevin's dark side, but Rick can't see it because he's kind of a scumbag.
1:53:42 Bill Simmons? Hmm. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Mad Dog Russo, Doris Burke, Buffalo Bill, Sam Jackson, Nell Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Consor, Dana Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley in The Firm? I, uh, I have a new, new combo for this. Joe Davis and John Smoltz announcing the fight.
1:54:05 Bill Simmons? And there's another knockdown, John. Whoop, gunshots. The Secretary of Defense is down. And John Smoltz goes, "Yeah, we've never seen this before, Joe." "This is pretty crazy."
1:54:19 Bill Simmons? That's all I got.
1:54:21 Sean Fennessey? Is the idea there that they don't have enough energy?
1:54:25 Bill Simmons? Yes, that's the idea, Sean.
1:54:29 Sean Fennessey? But if Shohei Ohtani was present at that fight, they would have cut to him and said, "There he is! The greatest man in the history of attending fights! Ohtani again!" Joe Davis, that bastard. If it's a Dodgers moment, he really gets his dander up. Poor Blue Jays fans.
1:54:49 Bill Simmons? I should have put in something about them bringing up the Joe Carter homerun. During the Lincoln Tyler fight.
1:54:55 Speaker 02 Fucking, just stop bringing the fucking shit up, man.
1:54:58 Bill Simmons? Joe Carter. It's like history lesson time.
1:55:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, now it's tough. A moment for Blue Jays fans, that was brutal.
1:55:05 Sean Fennessey? Brutal.
1:55:06 Speaker 02 That was brutal.
1:55:06 Bill Simmons? And Lincoln Tyler is down again.
1:55:11 Bill Simmons? He sure is, Joe.
1:55:15 Sean Fennessey? I do think, I can't adequately do this because Chris is not here, but I do think Byron Mayo would be incredible in this movie. If he was like, "Kevin Dunn, my old friend, meet my friend Serena."
1:55:29 Bill Simmons? Oh, in the backstage? Yeah.
1:55:31 Sean Fennessey? That would have been good.
1:55:33 Bill Simmons? What was Carlos' name in this movie?
1:55:36 Speaker 02 I forget.
1:55:37 Bill Simmons? Carla! "I noticed you lost your top. Let me take you to the gift shop."
1:55:43 Sean Fennessey? Carla, I've got air conditioning.
1:55:47 Bill Simmons? Probably an answerable questions. I just don't know why all bad guys don't use a silencer. What's the downside?
1:55:54 Sean Fennessey? Great note.
1:55:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a good note.
1:55:56 Sean Fennessey? Incredible note.
1:55:57 Bill Simmons? Is it heavier? What is it, Craig? It's bigger, bulkier, harder to pack, it's longer.
1:56:02 Speaker 02 Harder to conceal.
1:56:03 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:56:04 Speaker 02 That's true.
1:56:04 Bill Simmons? Just like if I was ever an assassin, silencer every time.
1:56:07 Sean Fennessey? But I love a scene when I, when like two assassins are getting ready to go to work and they start screwing the silencer on. I'm like, this is, that's movie magic to me.
1:56:14 Speaker 02 Because you're getting ready for, to do a job.
1:56:16 Sean Fennessey? Action's gonna happen.
1:56:17 Speaker 02 Yeah. Shows how deliberate they are.
1:56:19 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
1:56:20 Bill Simmons? Fan duel line for Lincoln Tyler versus Jose Pacifico Ruiz heading into the fight?
1:56:25 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:56:25 Bill Simmons? Like Tyler minus 650? They said he was 10 to 1. Mm-hmm. Oh, they did? 10 to 1 favorite.
1:56:30 Sean Fennessey? Ruiz was, oh, he's 10 to 1 favorite.
1:56:32 Speaker 02 Well, that's why he was getting his, he, he, he was so fucked up about the bet.
1:56:35 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:56:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah. What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? I could offer you the bloody $100 bill.
1:56:41 Sean Fennessey? Mm-hmm.
1:56:42 Bill Simmons? I could offer you Nic Cage's jacket, which you could wear. I could offer you an actual poster of the fight.
1:56:48 Sean Fennessey? Mm-hmm.
1:56:49 Bill Simmons? Could frame that. What would you take?
1:56:50 Sean Fennessey? I have another answer.
1:56:51 Bill Simmons? Go.
1:56:53 Sean Fennessey? The ruby red ring, which is revealed in the concrete slab at the end of the movie, at the end of the credits.
1:57:01 Bill Simmons? Oh, good point.
1:57:02 Sean Fennessey? Which is the ring that Serena, the redhead, wears. And she's killed and then they're pushed off into a, into the concrete slab. That's like, there's all this, this big sequence where after he kills them, we see them getting loaded up.
1:57:14 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:57:15 Sean Fennessey? Into this truck, which is really a weird way to dispense, and the two dead bodies are inside of that concrete slab.
1:57:20 Bill Simmons? So you'd want the ruby red ring?
1:57:22 Sean Fennessey? Chip that out.
1:57:23 Bill Simmons? Coach Finstock, our best life lesson? I'm naive. There's worse things to be. Guess that would be it. Don't be naive. Best double feature choice? Blowout? Face Off?
1:57:35 Speaker 02 I'll put Face Off. I'll put Face Off. Just run it, run it right back. Nick?
1:57:40 Bill Simmons? What do you have?
1:57:40 Sean Fennessey? I have five nominees.
1:57:41 Bill Simmons? Domino?
1:57:42 Sean Fennessey? You tell me which one you like.
1:57:43 Speaker 02 Okay, cool.
1:57:44 Sean Fennessey? Dressed to Kill. JFK. In the Line of Fire. No Way Out.
1:57:50 Bill Simmons? Oh.
1:57:52 Sean Fennessey? L.A. Confidential.
1:57:55 Sean Fennessey? Which of those do you like?
1:57:57 Speaker 02 No Way Out.
1:57:58 Sean Fennessey? It's pretty close, tonally, right? Where you're like, this is a sleazy crime drama, set in the world of high-power politics.
1:58:05 Bill Simmons? Craig ruined No Way Out, though.
1:58:07 Speaker 02 Why?
1:58:07 Bill Simmons? He said Sean Young wasn't hot.
1:58:09 Sean Fennessey? Oh, that was the worst.
1:58:10 Speaker 03 This is one of the greatest big time fuck-ups.
1:58:13 Sean Fennessey? No, no.
1:58:14 Bill Simmons? Classic Generation.
1:58:15 Speaker 03 Let's get a poll. Let's get a poll going online.
1:58:17 Speaker 02 It's just embarrassing. Because the poll would have to be. It sends me to like, in like, an actual.
1:58:23 Sean Fennessey? Gen Z can't participate. Like, we need like, we need like geo-blocking, but for a generation.
1:58:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, only boomers get to vote.
1:58:29 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:58:30 Speaker 02 It's like, sends me to a range.
1:58:31 Sean Fennessey? That's just how she'd be in America, too. Only millennials and boomers get to vote now.
1:58:34 Speaker 03 Here's the poll. Watch the movie, does she do it for you? I'm winning that.
1:58:37 Speaker 02 But I, okay. I mean, maybe amongst your generation, the ones that shy away from perfectly good press movies.
1:58:43 Speaker 03 I'll take it across the board. I'll take your generation, too.
1:58:45 Speaker 02 It's like, but dude, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a tough one, bro.
1:58:48 Speaker 03 I also remember, she is Finkel to me. She is Einhorn.
1:58:52 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:58:52 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:58:53 Speaker 03 It's a whole different relationship with her.
1:58:56 Bill Simmons? It's fair.
1:58:57 Sean Fennessey? It's a stellar performance.
1:58:58 Bill Simmons? That's fair.
1:58:58 Speaker 03 But also, she's not getting it.
1:59:00 Bill Simmons? Who, uh, who wants Snake Eyes for you guys?
1:59:05 Speaker 02 I don't think Cage has ever lost a movie he's starred in.
1:59:08 Sean Fennessey? Oh, interesting.
1:59:09 Speaker 02 I don't. A movie where he's the guy?
1:59:12 Sean Fennessey? Now, that would have been a great hottest take.
1:59:14 Speaker 02 He has this overwhelming energy that like, I don't think he's ever lost a movie he's starred in.
1:59:20 Bill Simmons? I had De Palma.
1:59:21 Sean Fennessey? I mean, you know.
1:59:22 Bill Simmons? I thought about Carla. I, I did test drive Carla, but I think it's De Palma.
1:59:26 Sean Fennessey? Carla's bra?
1:59:27 Bill Simmons? Well, because it's De Palma's last one that actually made some money and was memorable and.
1:59:33 Sean Fennessey? That was my other probably unanswerable question is, did De Palma quit or get fired from the role of major director? Like, what actually happened?
1:59:42 Speaker 02 Let's look.
1:59:43 Sean Fennessey? Because he makes Mission Impossible, massive sensation. He makes this movie, makes money. It's a well-known movie. We're doing it on the show right now. And then, what happened?
1:59:54 Bill Simmons? It's his late 50s and directors usually have a run of somewhere between seven and 25 years, unless you're Scorsese or Spielberg.
2:00:03 Sean Fennessey? I think he turned 50 when he made this movie.
2:00:05 Bill Simmons? It said he was 56 in this.
2:00:07 Sean Fennessey? 50, okay, maybe it's 56.
2:00:09 Bill Simmons? 56, 57, yeah.
2:00:10 Speaker 02 So, we talked about Mission to Mars.
2:00:13 Sean Fennessey? That bombing, you think that killed it?
2:00:15 Bill Simmons? That's a bad movie.
2:00:16 Speaker 02 Disney swing, right? And
2:00:18 Sean Fennessey? He never should have made that movie.
2:00:19 Speaker 02 And then he comes back and femme fatale was like a movie that people enjoyed, but it lost money. And it was sort of controversial.
2:00:28 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
2:00:28 Speaker 02 And a little bit off kilter.
2:00:29 Sean Fennessey? It was like a Euro sensation.
2:00:31 Speaker 02 Right, right. And then after that, he kind of just.
2:00:34 Sean Fennessey? Oh, it's like Black Dahlia, redacted.
2:00:37 Bill Simmons? What was that movie?
2:00:38 Sean Fennessey? Passion.
2:00:39 Bill Simmons? The McAdams, that one's weird.
2:00:40 Sean Fennessey? Passion, yeah.
2:00:41 Bill Simmons? Office one.
2:00:41 Sean Fennessey? I think it's interesting, yeah, it's cool.
2:00:43 Bill Simmons? Ever seen that?
2:00:43 Sean Fennessey? It's very, it's very classic De Palma, really kinky.
2:00:45 Bill Simmons? It's a to be classic.
2:00:49 Sean Fennessey? But yeah, he's.
2:00:49 Speaker 02 But it's almost like he, I think maybe he threw his chips in, because he didn't go back to do.
2:00:54 Sean Fennessey? That quote about him saying it's the internet's time now, movies are over in 1998 is chilling.
2:00:59 Bill Simmons? He's pretty lit, and I think there were some things that happened too. There's things that happened to him in the seventies and eighties. That I think there were some things ingested and smoked and, and done.
2:01:10 Sean Fennessey? God bless him. The, the no bomb back Jake Paltrow documentary about him is one of the most pleasurable things I've, I've ever seen. I can put that on at any time of day and enjoy myself, or just him talking about what a genius he is making his movies.
2:01:23 Bill Simmons? Him and, and Schrader, well, I guess and Friedkin too, three guys who were like, is that recorder on?
2:01:34 Bill Simmons? Just a fire blower, they could give a shit. Craig, let's hear it, what'd you think?
2:01:38 Speaker 03 Loved it. Every time I watch, every time I watch a De Palma movie, I'm like, man, I fucking loved this movie. I gotta watch every De Palma film, because I think I've only seen the ones that we've covered on the show. I love Body Double. Uh, I, yeah, I, I just like in general when great directors make smaller movies, like this, even though the budget was big or whatever, the story feels small. And kind of random or insignificant. And I just think it's more enjoyable, the stakes feel lower.
2:02:03 Bill Simmons? That's the end of the rewatchables.
2:02:05 Speaker 03 Sure.
2:02:07 Bill Simmons? Thanks to Craig Horlbeck for producing. Thanks to Gahav who passed out an hour ago.
2:02:11 Sean Fennessey? Under the.
2:02:11 Bill Simmons? Thanks to Rana, as usual. And we'll be back next week.
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