A Mailbag for All Time. Plus: Alex Ross Perry Returns!

Sean and Amanda open up the mailbag once again to answer all of your questions about underrated indie directors they’d like to see get the “Sean Baker treatment” at this year's Oscars, why Amanda majored in classics, recent films that are the most likely to inspire the next generation of filmmakers, and much more (3:05). Then, Alex Ross Perry returns to the show to discuss his new genre-bending music biopic, ‘Pavements.’ They discuss what attracted Perry to making this stylized vision, the complicated and interesting process behind making the movie, and what types of projects he’d like to take on in the future (1:02:33). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Alex Ross Perry and Bobby Wagner Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, except we did 120 songs. And now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aughts. 2000 to 2009. The Strokes, Rihanna, J Lo, Kanye, sure. And now the show is called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s. Wow. That's too long a title for me to say anything else right now. Just trust me. That's 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s, preferably on Spotify.

• 0:35Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. There's nothing better than having friends who support whatever you're into, like re-watching a director's entire catalog in the lead-up to their latest release. And like those friends, State Farm is there to help you feel supported by helping you choose the coverage you need. With so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you. So you can check coverage off the list and spend more time debating movie rankings. Go online at statefarm.com or use the easily accessible app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:49Speaker 02

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• 2:15Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 2:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 2:17Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Picture Conversation Show about whatever you want to know. We're opening up the mailbag today and taking your questions. Bobby Wagner is here to read them. Later in this episode, Amanda and I will be joined by our pal Alex Ross Perry to talk about his hilarious, ingenious new movie Pavements. It's a biopic, jukebox musical, documentary, meta-textual deconstruction of the 90s indie rock slacker icon's pavement.

• 2:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And also the idea of making a movie about a band.

• 2:45Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely. There has really never been a movie like this before. It is incredibly strange and incredibly interesting. Also, Alex is like a nine, 10, 11, 12 time champion of this show. He's been here many, many times. You have never interviewed him with me before. Did you enjoy that experience?

• 3:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. Well, because, you know, I just, with him, I was just chatting.

• 3:04Sean Fennessey?

  He's a pal.

• 3:04Amanda Dobbins?

  He's a pal. And I just got to ask what I wanted to ask about instead of having to be like, so when you sat down, I guess I did ask a version of that.

• 3:12Sean Fennessey?

  You did ask a couple of like interview-y questions.

• 3:14Amanda Dobbins?

  It was mostly like, what's wrong with you? In a nice way. Why is your brain like this?

• 3:17Sean Fennessey?

  This was, I think, a four or five year odyssey for him to get this movie on screen. We hosted a screening on, was it Thursday night at Vidiot's, which was really fun? And Alex is the best, so stick around for that convo. First, we need to talk about the fact that there's really no news other than the Cannes Film Festival starts today.

• 3:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:36Sean Fennessey?

  How do you feel?

• 3:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I'm, I'm making peace with my life at home, you know?

• 3:42Sean Fennessey?

  You're making peace with your life at home?

• 3:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not there, I'm here. I had a great weekend. Uh, and that's, I need to, to go through life, I think that I just need to accept what I have instead of being angry about what I don't, which is a first class ticket to Cannes.

• 4:01Sean Fennessey?

  You always make it sound like you're like a terribly poor 19th century Polish farmer, you know, like I return back to the land and things are difficult. I cannot continue in this life. But you're a podcaster, you know, when you talk about movies? You didn't get to go to the quads at this year, which is too bad.

• 4:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Next year?

• 4:19Sean Fennessey?

  We'll see. We'll see. How will we cover Cannes from here?

• 4:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I guess I'll just like angrily send you links while you're golfing.

• 4:29Sean Fennessey?

  Very cool.

• 4:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 4:30Sean Fennessey?

  And so it won't be that different from most times here in Los Angeles. That's it. You want to go to the mailbag?

• 4:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I do.

• 4:36Sean Fennessey?

  Bobby Wagner, producer of The Press Box. What's up, man?

• 4:39Speaker 04

  That's correct. I'm having a fun time talking about Journalism, the Horse and the Occupation.

• 4:46Amanda Dobbins?

  A great blogging episode. I have a mailbag question to start this off, actually. My mailbag is from Amanda on YouTube and it's for Bobby Wagner. And it's Bob, how was your trip to London?

• 4:57Speaker 04

  Oh, my trip to London was great. I got to actually see a couple of films. I went to Prince Charles and I went to BFI, which was incredible.

• 5:03Amanda Dobbins?

  What'd you see?

• 5:04Speaker 04

  I had never, I realized I never had seen a movie in a foreign country at all. Even in all my travel, I had never actually gone to the movie theater, which is crazy to me because I don't know, it just seems like something I would have done. But you know, you're too busy worried about seeing churches and cathedrals, which is what you usually do.

• 5:18Sean Fennessey?

  You are.

• 5:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  So that's true.

• 5:20Sean Fennessey?

  There's only one American.

• 5:21Amanda Dobbins?

  This is actually, this is the best part of Venice Film Festival is like you don't, you just kind of look at the church from the outside and then you just go see cool movies, you know?

• 5:28Speaker 04

  Right. Which is a preferable thing, anyway.

• 5:30Sean Fennessey?

  What movies did you see?

• 5:32Speaker 04

  I saw Memories of Murder at BFI.

• 5:35Sean Fennessey?

  Nice.

• 5:36Speaker 04

  At South Bank? Uh, yeah, yeah, right down the river.

• 5:39Sean Fennessey?

  That's a very cool place.

• 5:41Speaker 04

  And then I saw Parallax View at Prince Charles.

• 5:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's really fun.

• 5:44Sean Fennessey?

  Amazing.

• 5:44Amanda Dobbins?

  What was the vibe? Like, what was the, the demo in the Prince Charles?

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Uh, the demo was actually, so I was noticing this when I was seeing movies there, but it was like a lot more like diversity of age, a lot older people coming to see it. Whereas like in New York, it's all just a bunch of like, and I can say this because I am an annoying 29 year old, a bunch of annoying 29 year olds. Like, yo, I'm here to see this. I'm so fired up. Yeah. A lot of older folks, which was, which was cool. Uh, like a genuine round of applause when the name Gordon Willis came up. In the opening credits.

• 6:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Man, I love it so much.

• 6:17Sean Fennessey?

  We, we have.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  It was on a film print. It was, it was kind of a rough one. And I was like, this is a, this is a good vibe.

• 6:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Well, uh, we've sourced some questions from listeners. Uh, the questions are getting more and more ornate and difficult.

• 6:29Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 6:30Sean Fennessey?

  They're sort of like, if you were a man that was born in 1972 and you had a cat, but you were a filmmaker, what film would you put your cat in? And I'm like, sir, it's like Monday at 9 a.m. Come on.

• 6:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I think some of it's email. You know, and it's like you're confronted with the blank page and you're like, I gotta fill it. And I do appreciate that people want to fill it. But, you know, we had a robust conversation before we hit record about charging my various facial devices, you know, and there is room for that. And, and there is room for one sentence questions along with these. Did you notice that I deleted a couple?

• 7:04Sean Fennessey?

  I deleted a couple as well.

• 7:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, good. Not out of, not because they were bad questions, just because we didn't have the time. We did a lot of homework for Paul Newman and we had to catch up with the rest of our life.

• 7:14Sean Fennessey?

  Just in terms of your facial devices, as you were talking, I was picturing you like the precog from Minority Report, like laying in a bath backwards, but you've got like all these nodules attached to your head. Is that what it's like?

• 7:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's not that different, except I don't do it in the bath because of, you know, like electricity and not wanting to shock myself. I do actually, I often do it while on my computer, you know, so I was prepping this morning while wearing my LED mask.

• 7:39Sean Fennessey?

  So you need to do a get ready video for the big picture Instagram feed and you need to post that immediately while you're wearing whatever masks you wear.

• 7:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you know what they look like? Have you like seen pictures of them?

• 7:50Sean Fennessey?

  Honestly, no, and I don't want to see them and I don't want to see you in them.

• 7:53Amanda Dobbins?

  It's very common. Like, Jack and Bobby at least are like, you know, open to the wider world. They knew what I was talking about. You know, Bobby is, Bobby has some issues charging his Theragun, so he sees my difficulty, right?

• 8:05Speaker 04

  This is true. Anytime I'm going to use them, like I need the Theragun real bad right now. Nope, there it is. It's dead. And it only has one specific charger. So it's not like I can just throw it on a phone charger or whatever.

• 8:15Amanda Dobbins?

  And also then like certain devices can't do like the high speed charger, like the zip halo. So you gotta find then like a different outlet, but it's, you know.

• 8:22Sean Fennessey?

  That's me, but for my daughter's Yoto at night. When it runs out of battery, and I'm like, no!

• 8:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Our Yoto, our Yoto has not been charged in like, three months.

• 8:31Sean Fennessey?

  The Yoto is right behind iPhone in most essential device in my home, like by a significant margin, more than my television. I need that Yoto every night.

• 8:39Amanda Dobbins?

  We were having some real issues with the karaoke mic not being charged, which was purposeful on certain member, from certain members of our household and then Knox.

• 8:47Sean Fennessey?

  And Zach loves to sing.

• 8:48Amanda Dobbins?

  But Knox also just like. Kept finding random chargers and then trying to plug them in.

• 8:53Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty smart.

• 8:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, none of the matching. I know, I was impressed and I was also like, once again, childproofing is impossible, you know, because like, where did you get this cord? It's another charging cord that I haven't been able to find for five years.

• 9:04Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mean, stop buying so many masks to wear at night and he won't be able to find those cords.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  No, I think the problem that we have here is that we need to decide as a society, we need to come together. Maybe the new American pope can make a ruling on this. I don't care who does it. We need to decide whether we're a USB society or a USB C society. I'm so sick of not having the right USB cable when the U in USB stands for universal.

• 9:25Sean Fennessey?

  We're trending C right now, clearly, but there's, we, it was 10 years of USB and we can't get over what we once had. So in this transition, you just need to have both on hand at all times. You need to have backup cords.

• 9:38Amanda Dobbins?

  That's very stressful.

• 9:39Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I agree. I'm not happy about it. I think Bobby is right.

• 9:42Speaker 04

  We pass the buck on to the consumer and it's a shame.

• 9:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:45Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mean, the lightning cable revolution is, it is literally just a financial ploy to get more money from you. To upgrade your devices. So this is the hell that we live in.

• 9:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:53Sean Fennessey?

  Um.

• 9:54Amanda Dobbins?

  No questions about chargers or cords.

• 9:57Sean Fennessey?

  Well, let's, let's see. We don't know. There may have been a few added at the end. Jack may have slipped a few in there. Bobby, what's the first question?

• 10:03Speaker 04

  The first question comes from someone named Tracy. Not sure who wrote this one in. Can you shed some light on the third chair? While I love all the folks who regularly guest on the show, it's clear no one is better suited for the job than Tracy Letts. He knows his stuff. He does the work. He's outrageously funny and he brings in the important Born in 65 demo. Chris Ryan is great, of course, but he's stretched so thin with his other ringer duties that he's dead inside. Also, if Tracy had the title of third chair, maybe you could get Carrie Coon to come on the show. And she is hotter than a hen in a wool blanket. Signed, enthusiastic listener.

• 10:39Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I wonder who sent that.

• 10:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I think these are great ideas. Really, really strong points. Chris is not dead inside, but otherwise, I, I think that Tracy brings a lot to the show.

• 10:49Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:49Amanda Dobbins?

  He's welcome anytime. Uh, he does, I, I think have a homework list of films that he needs to see before he comes on the show. First among them, Ghost. So Tracy Letts, if you're listening, I know it's on your list.

• 11:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 11:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm waiting. I can't wait for your review. And obviously Carrie Coon is welcome absolutely anytime. A legend in the game.

• 11:10Sean Fennessey?

  Obviously, Carrie is welcome. I need Tracy to watch Avengers Endgame and then maybe we'll talk. That's that's top priority right now. Tracy's wonderful. He needs to leave New York and move back to Los Angeles. And as soon as he does, he's welcome anytime, you know, bring his entire family. Sure, they can afford it. Carrie, she's the biggest star on TV right now. Come on. Tracy, what are you waiting for? Your your third career awaits you. Playwright, character actor. Right. Third chair. There we go. What's next? No, Tracy Tracy, don't leave New York, man. What an East Coast soul on that man. You should not go back to LA. I don't know. I don't know. California, I like it. I like it. I'm pro.

• 11:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I like it too, but I I it was pointed out to me again this weekend that I'm raising two native Californians and that is weird. I do need to keep my East Coast soul. And so if maybe we need our third chair to be connected.

• 12:02Sean Fennessey?

  What's it really worth?

• 12:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't. Do you really feel Californian? Like, are you that relaxed? No.

• 12:07Sean Fennessey?

  That's not what California is. That's a fallacy.

• 12:10Amanda Dobbins?

  What is it?

• 12:10Sean Fennessey?

  Everyone in California is uptight, too. It's just in a different way.

• 12:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but in a way I find pretty annoying.

• 12:16Sean Fennessey?

  I think one is about anger, like East Coast is anger and West Coast is anxiety. That's my that's my differentiation.

• 12:24Amanda Dobbins?

  As someone who is fluent in both, I would say that I have I had plenty of East Coast anxiety. I think there is something aggressive versus passive aggressive of the of the two. And I let's like, if we're gonna do it, let's just let's say it. Let's get it out.

• 12:42Sean Fennessey?

  All right, I understand. Can I tell you something that happened to me when I got when I was driving to work today? I was getting on the five and I was getting ready to on the turn on and there were two cars in front of me stopped and the guy who's two cars in front got out of his car and he walked over to the guy whose car was directly in front of me and he started screaming in his face. Clearly, something had just happened, some sort of altercation on the road. And he pulled the guy's car open and was demanding that he get out so they fight in the street. And it was one of the most New York things I've ever seen happening in California. And the guy would not get out of his car. He wouldn't take his seatbelt off. He was terrified. And then the guy very.

• 13:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I do think that is the right decision.

• 13:18Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, of course, I would have done the same thing. I'm not fighting a guy in the street at 9am. But then the guy, so he closed the door on the guy and then he spit not at him or in the car, but just on the ground in front of him as if to say, I reject thee, which I thought was a very dramatic kind of Shakespearean moment. Got back in his car, drove off, then I got to work. So there's a little bit of New York still inside of California. Sure, I was fine.

• 13:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I think there are a lot of transplants.

• 13:39Sean Fennessey?

  I was getting ready to turn around, though. I was like, I don't know if I want to be stuck behind these guys. They'll find another on ramp to the five.

• 13:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Sean Fennessey?

  Anywho, a lot of movies so far.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  Real world star moment for you. You could have videotaped that and gone viral.

• 13:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  Imagine if you just tweeted that no context? You just tweeted a video of this fight happening, no context.

• 13:56Sean Fennessey?

  Mid shouting, the guy who had gotten out of his car picked up his head and looked me right in the eye as if to say, don't take out your phone. And I didn't.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  That's incredible. Okay, next question comes from Kadir. Is there any underrated indie director you would wish to get the Sean Baker treatment in this year's Oscars? And then Kadir goes on to say, personally, I would love to see the universe where Kelly Riker wins a bunch of Oscars.

• 14:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, me too.

• 14:20Sean Fennessey?

  I, you know, it's not out of the realm of possibility. We said that the mastermind, her new film is playing at Cannes this year. Some people think it could be an Academy Award contender. 10 years ago, I was like, directors like Kelly Riker never compete at the Oscars. And everything's changed so much. It could happen. I'm not ruling it out. We both listed a bunch of people here. I mean, there's a ton of people that I think exist in this orbit, some of whom are indie, some of whom are just kind of smaller studio filmmakers, some of whom have been around for 20, 30, 40 years, some of whom have only been around for a short time. But James Gray is the first person that popped into my head, in part because there was some casting news on his new movie, Paper Tiger. Did you see this?

• 14:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Anne and Jeremy Strong out. Miles Teller and...

• 14:58Sean Fennessey?

  Scarlett Johansson in. So Miles Teller and Adam Driver will play brothers in this movie. And I think, I don't know if it's a love triangle or not with Scarlett Johansson, but Anne Hathaway is gone, Jeremy Strong is gone after his wonderful work in Armageddon Time with, with James. Um, Gray to me is like the epitome of this, where it's like, everybody agrees he's great. He's never really had that like explosive, wow, he did it moment, um, where everyone recognizes it. In the US, yes. In France, he's won 15,000 Cezars. Um, I wrote down Boots Riley, who has a new movie coming out with Demi Moore, I think later this year called I Love Boosters. Um, he's only made, uh, one film and a TV series, but kind of feels like he's in a similar vein. Lynn Ramsey has a new movie at Cannes.

• 15:44Sean Fennessey?

  I know we both love Mike Mills.

• 15:45Amanda Dobbins?

  We do.

• 15:46Sean Fennessey?

  Mike Mills would be, he's kind of the, he's in that Sean Baker, Kelly Riker zone of... Eight or nine independent features, most critically acclaimed, not a huge box office driver, but somebody, and it's been a while since he's made a movie. When was Come On Come On? Like four or five years ago?

• 16:02Amanda Dobbins?

  2021.

• 16:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 16:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Because it was, because I was pregnant with Knox and I remember it and it just absolutely took me out.

• 16:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great movie.

• 16:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:09Sean Fennessey?

  Very, I thought very underrated, maybe due to COVID in part.

• 16:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so.

• 16:12Sean Fennessey?

  Or underseen. David Lowery, he also has another movie coming out later this year.

• 16:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 16:16Sean Fennessey?

  Same, same zone.

• 16:17Amanda Dobbins?

  With Anne Hathaway.

• 16:18Sean Fennessey?

  Anne Hathaway, Mother Mary. Carla Simone popped in my head. I think she also has a movie at Cannes. I might've just been looking at the Cannes schedule as I did this, but she had Alcaraz a few years ago, Summer of 1993. Andrew Hay, who had All of Us Strangers, who we thought could be an Oscar contender.

• 16:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, another one where we just, oh, there's another question where I should write All of Us Strangers down.

• 16:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Lucretia Martel, I thought of Sean Durkin, Kelly Freeman Craig, who did Edge of Seventeen, and Are You There, Margaret? Are You There, God It's Me, Margaret. Jeremy Sagnier, just had a huge hit with Rebel Ridge, but hasn't been an Oscar guy. Safdie's.

• 16:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 16:51Sean Fennessey?

  Josh and Benny both have movies this year.

• 16:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:53Sean Fennessey?

  Never been Oscar nominated. And you wrote Bombak.

• 16:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean.

• 16:57Sean Fennessey?

  I thought about it. I mean, he's been nominated for three screenplay Oscars.

• 17:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 17:01Sean Fennessey?

  And one Best Picture, but.

• 17:03Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not.

• 17:04Sean Fennessey?

  He never really was competing, right?

• 17:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, never, never in the, it's like always a bridesmaid situation.

• 17:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Amanda Dobbins?

  And he's, you know, one of our favorite working filmmakers.

• 17:12Sean Fennessey?

  So Jay Kelly.

• 17:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm ready.

• 17:14Sean Fennessey?

  Coming out this fall.

• 17:15Amanda Dobbins?

  November.

• 17:16Sean Fennessey?

  November. It's Clooney.

• 17:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:18Sean Fennessey?

  And Adam Sandler. I was looking at, I was, I was texting with Bill and Van and Chris this weekend, and we were texting, and Craig too, and we were texting about whether or not Michael B. Jordan could compete in Best Actor this year.

• 17:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 17:35Sean Fennessey?

  And what the odds are for him. And we were like, yeah, you know, it's like huge movie acclaimed, like this box office hold that it has going on is crazy. It's going to cross $300 million more than likely, maybe even more than that. It's getting into like bigger than inception mode, which is really quite something. And then I looked at some of the projections for Best Actor.

• 17:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 17:59Sean Fennessey?

  And it's insanely competitive. Let me see if I can pull this document up. This is just like a speculation.

• 18:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:08Sean Fennessey?

  But Timothy Chalamet, Marty Supreme.

• 18:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 18:10Sean Fennessey?

  Jeremy Allen White in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

• 18:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course.

• 18:13Sean Fennessey?

  The Springsteen movie.

• 18:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 18:14Sean Fennessey?

  Leo in One Battle After Another.

• 18:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 18:16Sean Fennessey?

  Paul Mescal in The History of Sound.

• 18:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 18:18Sean Fennessey?

  Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine.

• 18:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:20Sean Fennessey?

  Jesse Plemons in Begonia. Talked to somebody who saw that recently who said he's a lock.

• 18:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, wow.

• 18:25Sean Fennessey?

  George Clooney and Jay Kelly, per our conversation.

• 18:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 18:27Sean Fennessey?

  Colin Farrell in The Ballad of a Small Player, new Edward Berger movie from Netflix. Michael B. Jordan for Sinners and Denzel for Highest of Lowes.

• 18:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I was like, where's Denzel? Yeah.

• 18:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's a fucking stacked ass category.

• 18:39Amanda Dobbins?

  It is.

• 18:39Sean Fennessey?

  And then, of course, there's one or two people who we don't even know about who will slide in. And it's a really interesting balance of like, old and new.

• 18:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:46Sean Fennessey?

  You know, you got your Leos and your Denzels and your Cloonies, and you also got your Plemonses and your Chalames and your Michael Bs. So, could be a really exciting Best Actor race this year.

• 18:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, I'm excited.

• 18:57Sean Fennessey?

  You think, but you think Bombak, you think he's gonna do it?

• 18:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, no. I don't, I don't think he'll win again. But they asked who we would like. I also wrote Santiyama down.

• 19:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she, what's going on with her? Has not made a movie since Petite Mau.

• 19:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, which was just absolutely magical.

• 19:12Sean Fennessey?

  Great film.

• 19:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I don't know. People take time.

• 19:16Sean Fennessey?

  They do. Bob, any, any additions to this? Anybody you thought about that you're a big fan of?

• 19:20Speaker 04

  Nothing really comes to mind. That's a pretty extensive list. I mean, I'd like to see Boots Riley win an Oscar because I think it'd be funny, but I don't think that's really on the table.

• 19:27Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, you never know. You never know. Stranger things have happened. Um, okay, what's, what's next?

• 19:33Speaker 04

  Uh, I'm gonna bounce around on this list here a little bit, so I'm gonna go down to the bottom and ask a question from Roman. Can you remember the first time you were truly let down by a movie? Whether from your own expectations or from the marketing of the film? Thanks and lots of love.

• 19:49Amanda Dobbins?

  The first time. Okay, I mean.

• 19:51Sean Fennessey?

  I have one very vivid memory.

• 19:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Go ahead.

• 19:55Sean Fennessey?

  I remember figuring out the twist of the village like in six minutes.

• 20:01Sean Fennessey?

  And getting super mad the whole way through. And knowing where it was going and maybe that's when the Shyamalan twist thing codified in my mind. Obviously, you know, it's something that he did in Unbreakable as well as in The Sixth Sense. But sitting there watching The Village and feeling like, is this, spoiler alert for The Village, which came out 21 years ago, is this, are they just in modern times and they escaped?

• 20:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Got it.

• 20:26Sean Fennessey?

  To get away from society?

• 20:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:28Sean Fennessey?

  And then that being the exact thing was, it's not that I was like, oh, I'm smarter than movies, even though I know I act like that all the time on the show. It was just that, that unfortunate thing where you're gratified by your own cleverness, but you're disappointed by the fact that you sat in that feeling for an hour and a half.

• 20:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:46Sean Fennessey?

  I still, I like that movie.

• 20:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but it's not what you want from that experience.

• 20:50Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly.

• 20:51Amanda Dobbins?

  You want, you want them to pull it off. The first thing that popped into my head was the 2010 film, How Do You Know?

• 21:00Sean Fennessey?

  Great, great call.

• 21:01Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, uh, directed, you know, a James L. Brooks comedy starring Reese Witherspoon. And it's just not, it just, like, five minutes in, you're like, oh, this isn't gonna happen. This is not gonna work.

• 21:14Sean Fennessey?

  That's a really good call. That's a tough one. Is that Nicholson's last or second to last movie? And Owen Wilson?

• 21:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:21Sean Fennessey?

  In his butterscotch stallion era? You remember that?

• 21:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I do. It was just, it is, just doesn't come together. Reese Witherspoon's a softball player?

• 21:28Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. Sure. Like you do. She was based on, Bob, who was the blonde softball player? Was it Jenny something?

• 21:36Speaker 04

  Jenny Finch?

• 21:37Sean Fennessey?

  Jenny Finch, yeah, who was kind of a phenomenon for a little window there. Felt inspired by Jenny Finch, right? I think that's right.

• 21:43Speaker 04

  I never saw that movie, but if it's a blonde softball player, Jenny Finch is very famous. Lots of like weird, you know, digital only content of like Jenny Finch striking out Major League Baseball players at like softball All-Star games. A lot of good stuff. A real turn of the 2010s.

• 21:57Sean Fennessey?

  I remember that very well. Do you know her? Do you know anything about her?

• 21:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't. Yeah.

• 22:00Sean Fennessey?

  She was-

• 22:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And that's the reason why this movie didn't pan out for me, because I wasn't there for like the real life tie-in.

• 22:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, that's a really good call. I mean, I'm sure there were plenty of movies-

• 22:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I know there are.

• 22:09Sean Fennessey?

  In the 90s when I was, you know, like, uh, The Sixth Day was a Schwarzenegger movie that came out in the late 90s where I was like, alright, cool, we're on a run here. He's got nine good movies in a row and it just was a stinker. And that led to, I think, like, Eraser, The Sixth Day. End of Days, he had like a little run there at the end of the 90s. It was just bummer town.

• 22:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Sean Fennessey?

  They all weren't that great, but um.

• 22:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I was really into Alicia Silverstone and Chris O'Donnell in 95, so Batman and Robin was.

• 22:36Sean Fennessey?

  You know what else was a bummer was Excess Baggage with Benicio del Toro. Did you see that one with Alicia Silverstone?

• 22:41Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 22:42Sean Fennessey?

  I think she gets kidnapped by him. That was the one where I was like, I think that might have been her first movie after Clueless.

• 22:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:47Sean Fennessey?

  And that did not hit.

• 22:49Amanda Dobbins?

  What's the John Cusack movie about dogs?

• 22:53Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Must Love Dogs.

• 22:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that I saw at the Battery Park AMC or Regal or whatever it was that on a hot summer day didn't click.

• 23:03Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't play?

• 23:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:04Sean Fennessey?

  Must Love Dogs. Haven't seen that one. Diane Lane, John Cusack, Elizabeth Perkins, Dermot Mulroney, Stoker Channing, Christopher Plummer.

• 23:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you know.

• 23:11Sean Fennessey?

  That's quite a cast for a movie called Must Love Dogs. Um, okay. What's next, Bob?

• 23:18Speaker 04

  My answer for that, by the way, would be I Am Legend, which I thought was gonna be the coolest, greatest movie ever. And I was 11 years old and I was like, wow, this kind of fell apart.

• 23:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good shout. That movie is not good.

• 23:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  No, it's not. Uh, next question comes from Austin. What are your favorite what ifs in movie history? As in movies that were almost made, actors almost cast in iconic parts, or directors almost directing certain movies?

• 23:40Amanda Dobbins?

  So did you write these down or did Austin?

• 23:43Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't. I assume Austin did, right?

• 23:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 23:45Sean Fennessey?

  So Austin gave us a bunch of fake or candidates, I guess, or maybe his favorites.

• 23:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, yeah.

• 23:52Sean Fennessey?

  They include Tom Hanks dropping out of Nixon.

• 23:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 23:55Sean Fennessey?

  And, and being replaced by Anthony Hopkins. I'm not sure if I knew that.

• 23:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't either.

• 24:00Sean Fennessey?

  Tom Hanks is a little young for Nixon in 95, wasn't he?

• 24:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 24:04Sean Fennessey?

  Um, David Fincher almost making World War Z. Now, David Fincher is my answer, but for a different movie that he almost made.

• 24:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 24:11Sean Fennessey?

  My answer would be 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which is a movie that he was gonna remake and would have been the biggest Fincher movie ever. And Disney, which owns the rights to that story, because they made the jewels for an adaptation back in the 50s, I want to say. Um. Were uncomfortable with the way that he wanted to shoot it, hard to believe, a David Fincher movie, and it never happened. And now he's like

• 24:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Sean Fennessey?

  Rich and in his 60s and crushing it at Netflix and he'll never go back and try to make something that hard would be my guess. Also, Gosling wasn't fired from The Lovely Bones. That was a famous, I'm not sure The Lovely Bones could have been saved by Gosling, but Mark Wahlberg is terrible in that movie.

• 24:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Which one is The Lovely Bones?

• 24:48Sean Fennessey?

  Peter Jackson adaptation of a story about a little girl who's killed and like her, I think her like spirit presents itself and helps this guy solve what the case.

• 24:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm happy for Ryan Gosling.

• 24:58Sean Fennessey?

  Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci.

• 24:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I do, yeah. Oh, and Stanley Tucci is the creepy, yeah. Gosling's fine.

• 25:05Sean Fennessey?

  Emily Blunt, if she was let out of her contract at Fox to be Black Widow in The Avengers.

• 25:10Amanda Dobbins?

  She's doing fine.

• 25:11Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Keanu Reeves didn't tour with his band. Do you know the name of his band?

• 25:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Dog something?

• 25:17Sean Fennessey?

  Dog Star.

• 25:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I was right.

• 25:19Sean Fennessey?

  Must love Dog Star. Keanu Reeves didn't tour with his band Dog Star and did Heat instead of Val Kilmer. I think it worked out.

• 25:26Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, yeah, we're good.

• 25:27Sean Fennessey?

  And we got all this, that great Dog Star memorabilia. You know, I've got that whole, whole storage facility full of Dog Star stuff, which I'm excited about.

• 25:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:34Sean Fennessey?

  Anything else? Any other ones that jump out to you?

• 25:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, the, um, the Secret History adaptation that was supposed to be Al Pacula and a screenplay by Didion and Dunn.

• 25:44Sean Fennessey?

  Whoa, is that a 90s thing?

• 25:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's a 90s thing and then he died. And so, yeah. And so, I mean, you know, this is, who knows how true it is, but.

• 25:53Sean Fennessey?

  That would have been great.

• 25:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it could have been great. It also could have been awful. Like, you know, but it's, Didion and Dunn, like, lived very cool lives and hit and miss on the screenplay.

• 26:04Sean Fennessey?

  True.

• 26:04Amanda Dobbins?

  But I would like to see a Secret History movie.

• 26:07Sean Fennessey?

  Agreed. Bobby, do you have a what if that you're interested in?

• 26:11Speaker 04

  I don't know if this would be my number one in history, but I'm really curious what would have happened if Stanley Kubrick didn't die and he direct, he finished directing AI. I think that's a movie that I might have liked more and I would have, but I also in turn then would have liked to see where Spielberg would have put the energy that he was intrigued by with that script and movie into. Like, what movie would he have made because he didn't get to make AI and take it over from Kubrick? Would have been interesting.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  We'll never know.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  Also, Kubrick almost made Napoleon.

• 26:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 26:42Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, that's a great one. That's a great one.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  And that Taschen book that is the entirety of the pre-production of Napoleon, that includes like the script, all the storyboards, all the costumes, like everything that had been picked out. And then I forget what the reason was that that movie was not made, but that's literally a 700-page book with one of those Taschen books that has like that carbon paper, like the paper is so thin. It's like you're reading an ancient Bible.

• 27:06Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 27:06Speaker 04

  Kubrick's Napoleon plus Barry Lyndon could have been the greatest double feature of all time.

• 27:10Sean Fennessey?

  But he wouldn't have made Barry Lyndon if he had made Napoleon. That's why he took all that energy and research and put it into Barry Lyndon. So that would have been weird if he was like, now that I've completed Napoleon, I shall make Barry Lyndon.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  What if he did Barry Lyndon first and then Napoleon? Okay, next question. Dana, can you talk about the movie theater business model? You mentioned in your Oscars hangover mailbag episode

• 27:33Speaker 04

  that certain movies would not be financially able to play in 1,000 theaters nationwide. Why is that? When a movie decides to have a limited release, I assume part of the way they control this is by picking certain cities, but do they also limit their movie to a certain number of theaters in that city? And if so, how do they choose?

• 27:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's both. It's an agreement between the theaters and the studios that they want to book certain films. In the case of Thunderbolts, there's not really much of a conversation. Every Disney movie plays on thousands of screens. They don't do limited release. They don't do, you know, slow rollouts for films. I think this most adequately applies to like your A24s, your Neons, your Sony Pictures Classics, the films that like, you know, usually start small, like Friendship opened over the weekend in only a couple of, in only a few theaters around the country. And I think it's going wide on Labor Day or on Memorial Day weekend. And so I think what the, the limited release opening is leading, is kind of testing the ground for how wide it can or should go.

• 28:33Sean Fennessey?

  Friendship's the kind of movie to me that like, I would guess it'll go into like 1,500 theaters. It'll be a super competitive weekend because it's Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning, and Lilo and Stitch.

• 28:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 28:43Sean Fennessey?

  So it's kind of like counter programming. But the theaters have to want to book the movie and the studios have to want to expand it. So it's like a negotiation and how they're booked. I don't.

• 28:54Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like a symbiotic relationship. It's, it's kind of the reason that CinemaCon exists. Like it's not actually to. You know, give us funny stories from Las Vegas. It is because these studios are to some extent courting the movie theaters. Now, it's like, it's like a very bizarre codependent relationship because like, what else are the theaters gonna do?

• 29:17Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:17Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, so that's a little bit of a, we want you to show these things, but also you don't have any other options. But yeah, there, there's ongoing conversations between both sides of what is gonna be the best business for us.

• 29:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and I don't think that there was much, too much talk about Sinners last year at CinemaCon. There, I think maybe Ryan Coole was on set and shared like a Zoom video.

• 29:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:45Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and then this year, because the movie was two weeks away, there was hardly anything about Sinners at all. But that's the kind of movie that's kind of interesting in this question that's being asked because that was a movie that fought for the premium large format screens and got them and got them for two weeks. And then Thunderbolts came in and took those screens. And now, after two weeks, Sinners has taken them back. So I think Sinners is getting IMAX again this coming weekend. And that isn't something that was prearranged. It's something that basically was caused by demand. So as much like planning and strategizing as you can make, if a movie takes off, it can get theaters that it wasn't originally planning on because the theater business has to be attentive to the customer demand. So it really is case by case. Um, I don't even, what was the movie we were talking about where I was like, this movie can't play a thousand screens?

• 30:30Sean Fennessey?

  Was it Enora, maybe?

• 30:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I have, maybe, yeah.

• 30:34Sean Fennessey?

  It might have been. I, I don't, actually don't know what the maximum theater count that movie ever had was, even though it ended up doing like 20 million, um, total in US box office. But I, you know, the business is in a weird spot. It's, it's harder and harder to find phenomenons and so they have to be like more reactive. You can't just be like nine months in advance, you can't just be like, well, our schedule is locked. Like, do you know what the number five movie at the box office was this weekend?

• 31:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Revenge of the Sith?

• 31:03Sean Fennessey?

  No, good guess.

• 31:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 31:04Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Clown in a Cornfield.

• 31:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 31:07Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a new horror movie from IFC and Shudder, which is pretty fun. Um, and-

• 31:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Great title.

• 31:14Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it's, and it is what is on the label.

• 31:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So it's like thousands of beavers or hundreds of beavers.

• 31:20Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, but with murderous clowns.

• 31:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Which one is the, is it hundreds or thousands?

• 31:25Sean Fennessey?

  It's hundreds.

• 31:26Amanda Dobbins?

  But thousands could be the sequel.

• 31:27Sean Fennessey?

  Could be. The hundreds of beavers folks I know were listeners to the show.

• 31:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I listen. The, the greatest title ever, ever.

• 31:35Sean Fennessey?

  It was a great film. Um, Clown at a Cornfield is, uh, I didn't have that on my bingo card. It's like opening at number five. A month ago, six months ago, for sure. But here we are. We live in a time where it rains. Bob, what's next?

• 31:49Speaker 04

  Philip asks, my question is which fake movie from the studio works the best?

• 31:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. So I am not caught up yet. All right.

• 31:57Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 31:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Because.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  I think all of the ones that, that Philip mentioned here are probably from episodes that you've seen. There's Sarah Polley's artful drama about a woman finding herself.

• 32:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I've seen that one.

• 32:06Speaker 04

  There's Scorsese's Buscemi vehicle Kool-Aid.

• 32:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  And there's Ron Howard's Taxi Driver action movie.

• 32:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, right. Where they got it.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  I think there are more throughout the series. So maybe you don't, but these are the three that Philip mentioned.

• 32:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm sorry. Once again, I was watching a lot of Paul Newman movies. Um,

• 32:25Amanda Dobbins?

  which has the most commercial viability?

• 32:28Speaker 04

  Which works the best is how it's phrased.

• 32:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you gotta go with Scorsese. Like that's, and the, I, I would watch it even though like I slightly agree with Catherine Hahn. It's like Steve Buscemi, wonderful actor is not like the first person I pick to, to headline, uh, you know.

• 32:48Sean Fennessey?

  Because he's not beautiful enough? Or like, what are your thoughts there?

• 32:51Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I just, well, it's, I, I mean, I guess it's a new spin on a cult leader. And so it's a different interpretation of the magnetism and the cult of personality, literally that, uh, that sprouts up. But, you know.

• 33:06Sean Fennessey?

  In the most recent episode. Zoe Kravitz appears in the episode.

• 33:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, cool.

• 33:12Sean Fennessey?

  And she is nominated for an award for a movie.

• 33:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:15Sean Fennessey?

  And then she is pitching a future film.

• 33:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:18Sean Fennessey?

  The future film is called Blackwing. I won't spoil it for you.

• 33:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 33:21Sean Fennessey?

  But that's the one that I was the most like, hmm.

• 33:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I would watch this.

• 33:25Sean Fennessey?

  I would like to see that. So that's my answer.

• 33:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 33:30Sean Fennessey?

  The Ron Howard movie I thought looked terrible.

• 33:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, not my vibe.

• 33:33Sean Fennessey?

  Funny episode, but I thought that looked really bad.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  I thought it was a really funny episode just because of the way that they went about it, where they were like, I love this movie, and then it went on for 45 more minutes.

• 33:43Sean Fennessey?

  We've been there. We've been there.

• 33:44Speaker 04

  It's really good.

• 33:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:45Speaker 04

  Uh, okay.

• 33:46Amanda Dobbins?

  We've literally also been in that screening room.

• 33:48Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, the literal one?

• 33:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, that was, that was on the Warner Brothers lot. That's the, uh, I saw, that's where I saw Horizon Part One. That's where I've seen, you've been in the.

• 33:59Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, I've been in that room.

• 34:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's that room. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:01Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, yeah, okay.

• 34:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, what else have I seen there? That's where I saw The Way Back, the, one of the last, that's the Ben Affleck.

• 34:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, sports drama, yes.

• 34:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Sports drama. That was like one of the last pre-pandemic movies that I saw, trying to think. But so, yeah, I've literally been in that. Though they sit in the middle.

• 34:16Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm, in the front.

• 34:18Amanda Dobbins?

  In the front. I will sit in the front, but I'll forever. Yeah.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  Okay, next question comes from Tim. I'm curious about why Amanda majored in classics and hope that she will discuss it some on the pod. I was the only person with the major in my entire graduating class, and I meet so few people who share this background, so I'm genuinely interested. But the real question for the movie podcast is, does Amanda feel or think any sort of way about the ancient history movies? Asking this with the idea, of course, that we have Nolan's Odyssey adaptation coming up, coming in hot. So this is going to be a point of discussion.

• 34:51Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if I've ever heard you answer this.

• 34:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much, Tim, for asking, for being curious. Um, so I think the reason, so I went to Dartmouth, and they have a wonderful classics program, and they just have.

• 35:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Like a lot of like great professors and so I think I I had to take a survey course and I met Edward Bradley is one of the professors and it just seemed sort of like a small college, like old school, like fun experience. I like part of it was on was the professors in the department, but the other thing was it did feel like the classics were the building blocks for most of like Western storytelling. And so to because I like reading, because I like movies, I you know, because I like the arts, I was like, this seems like my blind spot.

• 35:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And so to study these, these stories and this world will then give me the language, like story language to then to read everything else. And that that is sort of true, at least for the Western canon.

• 35:57Sean Fennessey?

  What was your intention? Like, what did you hope to do with it?

• 36:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Nothing, which is, you know, useless. Um, I mean,

• 36:05Sean Fennessey?

  You weren't like to be an academic or to be just a journalist?

• 36:08Amanda Dobbins?

  There was a time where I thought maybe I'll be an academic. I did also like maybe want to work in books or or magazines, or I think maybe I thought I wanted to be in books for a while.

• 36:20Sean Fennessey?

  I'm surprised you didn't become a book editor, now that I know you as well as I do.

• 36:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Because I I like it was it was on the table, but it's so slow. And I wanted to do magazines, you know, like magazines is actually the fusion of, you know, books and then my attention span.

• 36:36Sean Fennessey?

  Well, back then.

• 36:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Back then.

• 36:39Sean Fennessey?

  Now it's TikTok and One Magazine, you know?

• 36:43Amanda Dobbins?

  But so, I mean, I do like reading, so I thought it would be useful. So that's why I so as a result, I don't really think that it affects. I don't pay a huge amount of attention to, they don't really make that many like classics adaptations. I'm obviously very excited for The Odyssey, but I would say that it more informs the way that I watch all movies or something, you know, you and you can just you. It's not even that they're ripping it off. You you just like, I have a respect for the patterns and the like, the forms and the formulas of of of literature and and what people can do with them. And I and I I it's not, it's not copying. To me, it's that real artistry isn't finding a fresh way to tell like, the three stories

• 37:28Amanda Dobbins?

  that like, we all come back to.

• 37:30Sean Fennessey?

  I was thinking about this particular concept, actually, over the weekend. I was listening to Plain English, Ringer podcast hosted by Derek Thompson, and their episode last week was about, is this the worst time in American pop culture? Like, are things as bad as they've ever been? And Spencer Kornheber, who's a writer at The Atlantic, I guess, had written a piece about it. I have not read that piece. But they were using, Derek was kind of premising upon a couple of things, one of which was music and how new music is, accounts for the lowest amount of listening than it ever has, apparently, in the kind of American consciousness. But then the other thing was just that the IP-ization of movies and television has created this kind of circling the drain quality, which is something that we talk about all the time, hopefully have been nuanced about over time.

• 38:14Sean Fennessey?

  The one thing that kind of like scratched at me is they were having their chat and that Derek was zeroing in on was, it's not that it's just IP. Like, over 100-plus years of movies, this is even more true in the centuries of books, is that there is like, an archetypal story structure that is repeated. And I would venture to guess there's been more than 10 adaptations of Robin Hood in movies since 1920. I would venture to guess the same is true of Christ-like stories, or of knights tales, or of Romeo and Juliet-esque doomed lovers. And sure, like, there's something super specific and kind of soul-deadening about 11 Transformers movies in 15 years.

• 38:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 38:59Sean Fennessey?

  But even the Transformers movies are like, underdog stories about a band, like, a group of bandits who have to overcome, you know, the more powerful, you know, galaxy conquering Zeus-like figure. Like, so if you kind of like, pull back a little bit, I think you can be a little bit more generous about the state of stories if you put it in that context. But you kind of have to do some of the work that you were doing in college, I think, to have that perspective on it.

• 39:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, also, their first Transformers movie, which is

• 39:29Sean Fennessey?

  A masterpiece, thank you.

• 39:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, but also like, a fresh spin on, you know, Robin Hood, but also Like, I don't know, Sisyphus, or, you know, whatever. The first time you're reinterpreting it in that way, or you're, you're starting with this recognizable story, like, in a new world, and what does that new world, like, teach you? It's fun. By the eighth one, when you've then had to, like, reinvent and add, like, five more villains, and you've gotten away from the basic story structure, you're saddled with all this canon, and also, like, it's just robots going like this, you know? Like, the robots going like this is the only good thing.

• 40:09Sean Fennessey?

  But that is very good.

• 40:10Amanda Dobbins?

  So, but, yeah, and it is, and it is very good, but it's like, it, I, I think what you're saying is true and right, and is honestly, like, a lot of the reason that we like genre movies, because genre movies are just these archetypes and stories that we know so well. Yeah, like, by the way, we're not doing anything, this is just Joseph Campbell, like, it's not, we're not, like, reinventing the wheel here. So I think, I think you're totally right, and then it is also possible to get saddled down in, like, sequelitis, and just a hat on a hat on a hat on a robot.

• 40:44Sean Fennessey?

  I think I just get a little bit concerned with people, like, it's never been worse, and I'm like, what, how many, did you watch all 280 films that were released in 1937? Like, if you didn't, I'm not sure you're qualified to absolutely certify that fact, because in, at that time, there were tons of incredibly redundant westerns that were using the same story structure over and over and over again. Maybe they didn't have as much lore attached to them as what we have now, but they had a kind of blandness in the way that they told their story, that you could just completely tune them out. What's worse, you know? Like, I think it's all just a kind of a squishy debate, and I'm as guilty of anybody as, of, like, raising the temperature on a take, but it's an interesting thing to think about, even at our lowest moment, that...

• 41:28Sean Fennessey?

  Most of this stuff is just iterating on stories that are thousands of years old.

• 41:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:31Sean Fennessey?

  You studied, um, not thousands of years ago. How many years ago did you study?

• 41:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, like four. And I remember everything. That's the other thing to that my like, you know, my mastery of both dead languages, ancient Greek and Latin, um, was exact. And the anytime Zach and I are traveling and we find like a Latin inscription, he just loves to be like, all right, what does that say, big kid? I've never gotten one right, like literally never. I

• 41:58Sean Fennessey?

  Latin is hard.

• 41:58Amanda Dobbins?

  The other, the other reason I majored was that you had to, there was a language requirement. Um, and for most languages that are spoken, you had to go to language lab. But, uh, for Latin, obviously you didn't. So a lot of the athletes, and especially all the hockey players took Latin. And so I just like took Latin with the hockey players, which was a great time. They know, they knew how to throw a party.

• 42:20Sean Fennessey?

  Enough said. Uh, but what'd you study in college?

• 42:23Speaker 04

  I studied good old journalism.

• 42:25Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, good.

• 42:25Speaker 04

  I have a journalism degree at, at New York University, which is my alma mater. Beloved, definitely no problems going on there at all these days. Uh, they make you double major. You can't just major in journalism. So I was also an American studies major.

• 42:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh yeah. The classic American studies.

• 42:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. The one true myth.

• 42:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Zach was a social studies major, which is the actual myth.

• 42:47Speaker 04

  Honestly, yeah. Uh, American studies is basically just like social studies, but they're like, we've thought differently about it now.

• 42:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:52Speaker 04

  You know, we, we have some different takes on it. Uh, so those are my majors.

• 42:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. What's next?

• 42:59Speaker 04

  Uh, question comes from Cameron. Question for Sean, as a burgeoning physical media obsessive, I'm curious if there are any Blu-ray white whales out there that have, you've been hunting for, but haven't been able to obtain. I've been trying to find 28 years later at a sub $100 price.

• 43:15Sean Fennessey?

  I believe they're reissuing 28 days and weeks later ahead of

• 43:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, they should.

• 43:19Sean Fennessey?

  Release of the new film. So that you can take that one off your list. I do have the double disc that features both movies on one thing, which I don't know when I got it. It must've been a long time ago, probably around when it came out. So I do have that. Dogma is like. A long-desired one that is finally coming out. They're re-releasing the movie in theaters in June.

• 43:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:37Sean Fennessey?

  I'm trying to figure out what to do.

• 43:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you gotta-

• 43:40Sean Fennessey?

  To finally do Kevin Smith, try to get Kevin on the show, Matt and Ben on the show, CR. Yasi threw her hat in the ring, she wants in.

• 43:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, really?

• 43:48Sean Fennessey?

  She wants to, because of the Alanis of it all.

• 43:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I really like Dogma, but I just assumed that you guys were gonna just go full Kevin Smith.

• 43:54Sean Fennessey?

  You're more than welcome. I mean, you know, it could be a nine-person pod. You could use it between Matt and Ben.

• 43:59Amanda Dobbins?

  That seems great.

• 44:02Sean Fennessey?

  So I was thinking about this also when we were doing Paul Newman. There was a really great Blu-ray company that went out of business some five or six years ago called Twilight Time. And they issued editions of Exodus, Ombre, and The Long Hot Summer on Blu-ray. And those are all like 80 bucks, 100 bucks on eBay. And I'm like, I don't really know that I need to own these movies, but I would like to have them for my collection. So those are on my list. And then Near Dark is probably the single biggest one. There is a, I think, I'm almost certain there's an existing American edition of Catherine Bigelow's vampire movie. But it's consistently like at least 100 dollars on eBay. And it's weird that it hasn't been issued.

• 44:44Sean Fennessey?

  I have to assume it's like a music rights thing, that it hasn't been re-released, because a lot of people would buy it.

• 44:50Sean Fennessey?

  But that's the shortlist I made. There's also like hundreds of movies that are just not available in the format that I could make a 10-hour episode of, but I won't do that.

• 44:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 44:58Sean Fennessey?

  To spare you.

• 44:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 45:00Sean Fennessey?

  Is there anything you would like to own on Blu-ray? Everyone is like, when will Amanda, when will the domino fall? When will she topple?

• 45:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't have a collector's mindset. I just don't for this. So like the thing where you're like, I really need to own The Long Hot Summer. I think it's important that people be able to see movies. You know, that like they not be lost to, you know, time and corporations and the foibles of technology and licensing. But like, I don't also, I just don't have that mindset where it's like, I need to have every single thing here in my house right now.

• 45:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 45:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And- I buy, and I do understand like the format also, you know, for books, I prefer to have, like, I guess I am a, I'm a physical media for books. I mean, like, you've seen my house. It's really.

• 45:51Sean Fennessey?

  I was gonna call you on this, but I'm glad you will cite this.

• 45:54Amanda Dobbins?

  But I can't be, there's no way to be definitive with books, you know? And so I just kind of buy the ones that I want to have and that I want to revisit. And I, I don't know, I'd rather go to a movie theater to see an old movie, you know? I'd like, I'll put the money towards, like, videos, just showing more stuff that I want to see all the time.

• 46:20Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 46:21Amanda Dobbins?

  But that's, that's where I am. I like, I really honestly don't think it's gonna happen. I just, the plastic's also really ugly. Like, I just do actually think it's, it's pretty ugly. I'm sorry.

• 46:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 46:31Amanda Dobbins?

  That's where I am.

• 46:33Speaker 04

  Next question comes from Scott. I recently spent an entire Saturday enjoying a Los Angeles movie marathon with a friend of mine. We watched Hell Caesar, Boogie Nights, Wrath of Man, Point Break, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. If you had an entire Saturday to spend watching a themed movie marathon, what theme would you pick? And what snacks might you have?

• 46:53Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I do this all the time. This is my job. So the question is not that novel to me.

• 47:00Amanda Dobbins?

  You don't need to be snotty about it. I have a fun idea.

• 47:02Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Oh, great.

• 47:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:03Sean Fennessey?

  Go ahead.

• 47:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, just a thing I've been thinking about.

• 47:06Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 47:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think inspired by, like, a couple drafts that we've done. And that I was sort of able to get. So I wanted, I would do a yuppie cinema. And also, it's inspired by certain parts of people's lives, not naming any names. So here's what I've got so far. Baby boom, working girl, broadcast news, Wall Street, Fatal Attraction.

• 47:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 47:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And then I think you ought to have, like, pesto pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, you know? And what are some other really, really 80s foods?

• 47:36Sean Fennessey?

  You want to watch 10 straight hours of? Moderately wealthy people having problems that are manageable.

• 47:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't you, but it's an interesting cultural moment. It is also just because those are all like eighty seven, eighty eight, eighty nine. So they are movies about my parents, more or less, and I, and the time that we were born into, which is sort of interesting. I like, I just, I find it, I find it funny. I find, I love, obviously, I love working girl. I love broadcast news. I love Fatal Attraction. I think like Baby Boom and Wall Street are culturally interesting, and I like them. I don't know. It's just, it's like a funny grouping of things.

• 48:19Sean Fennessey?

  Watching your kids while you do this.

• 48:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Um, I guess the person who inherits them via a mechanism that's never really explained in Baby Boom.

• 48:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It's okay.

• 48:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's a flaw in the film. Um, I don't know. I mean, I did, I did this for the Free to Cinema last year, the great cinema, the OC. I'm not angry.

• 48:40Amanda Dobbins?

  You're just kind of like, I do this, you know, it's a mailbag.

• 48:43Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not, I'm literally just like, my whole job is thinking of themes for movies and then watching the movies and then explaining the theme on a podcast.

• 48:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, I, yes. So I, when I was getting ready this morning, and I was like, I was doing my prep.

• 48:59Sean Fennessey?

  Several masks.

• 48:59Amanda Dobbins?

  So I actually, I did, I wore my LED mask for part of it. And then this was crucially when I took my LED mask off. But I was just sitting there looking at my computer and like Zach came in the room and like looked at my face and then like looked scared in a way that I recognized.

• 49:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was like Darth Vader taking off the mask.

• 49:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, he was like, and, and I realized I had to explain my facial expression. And I was like, I'm just like, I'm just doing some mailbag questions. And I'm like, I'm, I'm thinking, I'm modulating my action. He, and I was like, you didn't do anything. He was like, okay, I thought I did something. And then he said to me, he was like, be kind to your public. They want to ask you questions. So be kind to your public. They want to ask you questions.

• 49:40Sean Fennessey?

  I know you're not giving me this lecture after eight years of being unkind on this podcast. Okay, what's next, Bob? Bob, you have a marathon that you would program?

• 49:50Speaker 04

  I mean, it's hard for me not to just think about the fact that I would watch every Mission Impossible movie in one day, but that's really too obvious. This is one of my favorite things about rep theaters is when they curate stuff like this. You can tell that they're really just kind of like searching for a theme and then putting all these movies in there. Like Metrograph does a really great job of this. Right now, they have a collection of illustrating the future, like all the movies that Sid Mead did the production design for, which I went and saw Blade Runner during. So like little stuff like that, I think is really cool. So if this is the type of brain that you have when it comes to watching movies, check out your local rep theater.

• 50:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Or listen to this podcast.

• 50:25Speaker 04

  Or listen. I hope you're already listening.

• 50:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Bob, I'm just talking this artwork behind you.

• 50:30Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:31Amanda Dobbins?

  This is, is this new?

• 50:33Speaker 04

  No, this is, I've had for a little while, but since we moved.

• 50:35Amanda Dobbins?

  You rehung it. I really, I like it a lot.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  Put it in my office. Thank you.

• 50:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. There you go.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  Spencer asks, "My question is about family movie traditions the three of you had growing up. For me, it was a blockbuster runs every Friday night, immediately after school, no exceptions. So what were those family movie traditions you had growing up and any you're looking to pass on to family and friends?"

• 51:00Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, blockbuster runs are also part of our, our youth.

• 51:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I totally. I remember spending hours and hours and like, you know, looking at the backs of VHSs and hoping that there would be like a cassette behind the cover, you know, that you could, that you could grab.

• 51:18Speaker 04

  A very resonant feeling.

• 51:19Amanda Dobbins?

  But the, the, the family tradition that comes to mind is, um, I think probably started when in high school or maybe when I was, or college, but, um, for Thanksgiving night and Christmas night, I would always go to the movies with my dad and usually my Aunt Betty and Uncle John and.

• 51:44Amanda Dobbins?

  That's a fun thing to do, but my dad always had the pick and just like a hilarious run of like the worst holiday movies, you know, like The Savages, like, uh, Sinectity, New York. Um, I'm trying to think of some-

• 51:59Sean Fennessey?

  That will now make it three references to Sinectity New York on this podcast.

• 52:02Amanda Dobbins?

  What else? Uh, let's see. What's Something and a Half Grams with Nine Gr- do you remember the drug movie?

• 52:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the Inaritu movie.

• 52:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:12Sean Fennessey?

  Is it Nine and a Half?

• 52:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, you know, like, all the numbers get jumbled together, but it was not an uplifting holiday movie. Um, you know, so, and then I remember, and then-

• 52:25Sean Fennessey?

  Twenty-one grams.

• 52:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Twenty-one grams, yeah. So he just, like, gets it incredibly wrong, and I'm sitting there with my aunt and uncle, just being like, this is, like, really inappropriate for all of us to be watching this together. Or, you know, classics, like, we, we went to see the romantic comedy Morning Glory, which is wonderful, and when we left, my dad was like, so well, that went in the Oscars. Same reaction to Chris Rock's Top Five, which was, I think, the first holiday movie that my dad, that Zach and my dad spent together. Oh, no, no, no, it was actually Inside Llewyn Davis, which my dad and Zach absolutely loved. And I was like, it was pretty good. And then my dad said, Amanda doesn't like it if people don't talk in the movies, which is true, which was great criticism. So-

• 53:09Sean Fennessey?

  Hard to believe you ended up here.

• 53:10Amanda Dobbins?

  So my dad roasting me, uh, on the holidays is my favorite holiday, uh, movie tradition.

• 53:16Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, we didn't have a ton of traditions. I went to the movies all the time, obviously, with my parents. My parents split up when I was about 10, and so I would spend every other weekend at my dad's house. My dad lived on the beach in a kind of, like, really rundown version of a Michael Mann house. Um, and he lived in, uh, oh, shit, what was the name of the community? It was right next to Gilgo Beach where all those terrible murders happened. Um, and-

• 53:44Sean Fennessey?

  You know, when we were kids, every Saturday night HBO premiered a new movie at 8:00 PM on the network. And so sometimes it would be a comedy and sometimes it would be an action movie. And sometimes it would be like an absolutely depraved crime drama. And my dad, like every Saturday night was like, well, let's watch the HBO movie, whatever the new HBO movie is. And I'm certain that I saw several men get their heads blown off at like 10 years old because my dad was like, whatever, we're watching this. And my brother was six at the time. So that's a fond memory that I have of being a kid and seeing movies. I mean, as far as right now, what traditions we have, Alice and I go to the movies all the time. Irene comes with us, obviously, a lot of the time, too. And now every Sunday, we've been watching a Godzilla movie, which has been really fun.

• 54:29Sean Fennessey?

  And it's like themed up and she's like, I'm ready for Godzilla, let's do it. We watched Ibera Horror of the Deep, which is about a giant evil crustacean that goes to war with Godzilla yesterday. Wasn't my favorite, but Alice just standing on the couch cheering during the fights, just like, I need Godzilla to do it. You know, and like at one point Godzilla rips off the crustacean's claw and starts beating him with it. Great moment. Mothra is her fave. So she was, so she's like cheering Mothra on to wake up because like all of the native people that like worship at Mothra's feet. And then they have to like sing a song to awaken her.

• 55:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 55:05Sean Fennessey?

  And so she, she'll be like, wake up, Mothra, wake up. Anyway, a really weird tradition that we have going, but inspired in part by Tracy, who told me that he and his son had been watching all the Kaiju movies and she's been digging it. So that's a good one.

• 55:17Amanda Dobbins?

  That's really nice.

• 55:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You're, you're, you're in your family have any?

• 55:21Amanda Dobbins?

  We have Friday night movie nights.

• 55:23Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 55:23Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's mostly Knox just being like, I want to watch either Porko Rosso. Thanks, thanks to Sean and Bobby for that recommendation. Though I do have to say at one point that like Knox had a straw and then put it in his mouth like a cigarette and he's like, I'm being like Porko. And I was like, whoa, maybe I should have screened this. Uh, I think, I think CR has watched Porko with Knox many times on Friday night movie night.

• 55:49Sean Fennessey?

  Elite.

• 55:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Robin Hood's.

• 55:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, they are, they are really beautiful planes. Robin Hood's really in the rotation after Vidiot's did the special screening.

• 56:00Sean Fennessey?

  Great one, the Disney one.

• 56:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, Top Gun Maverick, obviously, and um, Mary Poppins has really been hanging on in a big way.

• 56:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 56:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, Singin' in the Rain has fallen out, which is a little depressing for me, but we had a good run.

• 56:13Sean Fennessey?

  These things come in waves.

• 56:13Amanda Dobbins?

  We'll get there.

• 56:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Want to do one more, Bob?

• 56:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I really love this question from Sharon. Um, Sharon says, on an earlier episode, Sean mentioned that he anticipated years down the road, conversations with future filmmakers about the film I Saw the TV Glow. This film was appreciated and discussed by critics and cinephiles, but remained largely unknown to the wider public. Uh, from this comment, I began to wonder what other films from the last few years that were not widely recognized by the Academy or general public have been added to the film canon? What are the lesser known recent films that are the most likely to inspire the next generation of filmmakers?

• 56:49Sean Fennessey?

  I like that question. Before we get into it, Jane Sean Run's new movie was just announced a few days ago, uh, which I think they talked about on the show, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which is gonna star Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, um, which is a movie, so that's exciting. Uh, I mean, I wrote some stuff down, like, I just tried to look at the last few years of movies that we liked, that were, you know, cinephilic, but maybe didn't take off in any other way. The biggest one for me from last year is Nickel Boys, which I think still hasn't really found its cult moment, you know, like, it was really loudly proclaimed.

• 57:33Sean Fennessey?

  It's just a tough movie to watch at home, because if you have any distraction, you kind of lose your way in it. So, but I do think that that's a movie that you could see a world where even like two years from now, it gets like a repertory screening.

• 57:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 57:45Sean Fennessey?

  Reputation.

• 57:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that's, that's what'll happen.

• 57:47Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and then also last year, I thought of Red Rooms, which we talked about multiple times, though we never devoted an episode to it. I don't know if you ever got a chance to see it.

• 57:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't, but I, it was like a solid 25 minutes on the top films of the year.

• 58:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, well, me and Adam and Chris were all like, you know, in the sicko meme throughout the entire film. And I've seen that film start to get memed a little bit online that in a way that tends to signal that it's gonna be a big one. I don't know. What are some other ones for you in recent years?

• 58:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I wrote down Nope and was surprised that you didn't, which I mean, I understand it was it was moderately successful.

• 58:23Sean Fennessey?

  It made like $300 million. So, you know, or maybe maybe not that much. It made a lot of money.

• 58:26Amanda Dobbins?

  But it did make a lot of money, but it's funny even

• 58:31Amanda Dobbins?

  some movie, some thread that you started

• 58:36Amanda Dobbins?

  was having some fight about like Jordan Peele and how many are like hits and how many are misses and Nope was like really tossed up, you know?

• 58:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was 170 is what it made ultimately. Yeah, which is good, but not great.

• 58:48Amanda Dobbins?

  But I like that has been a real cause of yours and a lot of cinephiles of just like, this is the one.

• 58:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a it's you're right. And I think that there is an increasing belief among some people that that is kind of, even though it's not as fun a movie as Get Out, that its themes are so big.

• 59:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 59:06Sean Fennessey?

  And it's also a movie about movies and movies about movies. I think something is like held against them a little bit, too. Like, they can get very culty, but then it's a little bit like, this is only for nerds. But yeah, I like Nope. That's a good one. Just some obvious ones like Babylon.

• 59:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 59:21Sean Fennessey?

  We've spent a lot of time on it. Didn't really do very much business or do much with the Oscars. X and Pearl, the first two movies in Ty West trilogy, I think are really, really big among cinephiles. People love those movies.

• 59:35Sean Fennessey?

  The Fableman's?

• 59:37Amanda Dobbins?

  We've been trying.

• 59:39Sean Fennessey?

  I think we're gonna get to the end of the decade and people are gonna say this is one of the most important movies of his career. And we some people did say that and we were very passionate about it on the show, but it was not a huge Oscar movie. It was not, didn't do that well at the box office.

• 59:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:00:00Sean Fennessey?

  It was almost like Spielberg like waited too long to make his super personal, you know, biographical story for some people, but.

• 1:00:10Sean Fennessey?

  There's so, there are many shots in that movie that are very self reflexive and get people kind of like pondering about themselves, about their relationship to movies, about their relationships to art.

• 1:00:19Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a great movie. It is also, I mean, as soon as you say, I think Fableman's is the answer, but also we all slept on West Side Story. I mean, like you and I didn't, like, we loved it.

• 1:00:28Sean Fennessey?

  Both of these movies, I feel good.

• 1:00:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And obviously it was affected by the pandemic, but it was like, this is like a really great movie by one of our great living filmmakers and like, no one seems to really care.

• 1:00:37Sean Fennessey?

  I was a little cool on a bunch of Spielberg's stuff in the 2010s and I've been super hot on his last two and think that they're among his best movies of the last 25 years. So there's others like First Cow, I think also got a big hit because it was one of the last movies released before COVID.

• 1:00:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:00:52Sean Fennessey?

  And so like, a lot of people streamed it and watched it at home. And so, you know, I think Kelly Reichert's kind of profile was raised somewhat among younger movie watchers. I see a real baby girl.

• 1:01:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I see, I see it percolating.

• 1:01:04Sean Fennessey?

  That's an interesting one, yeah.

• 1:01:05Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, it's like, I think that it had a certain corner of cinephiles and then also seems to, it obviously wasn't like widely seen, though it did make a.

• 1:01:14Sean Fennessey?

  It did pretty well.

• 1:01:15Amanda Dobbins?

  It did pretty well, you know, having Nicole Kidman.

• 1:01:17Sean Fennessey?

  People were asking us about Nicole Kidman not being on our list, on our 35 over 35. That seemed to be the big omission and there's always one where we forget about somebody. I wouldn't have put her on the list, though, because she hasn't been the star of a movie that was an authentic box office hit in like 15 years.

• 1:01:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:01:33Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it's been a really long time. It doesn't mean her movies aren't good.

• 1:01:35Amanda Dobbins?

  It might honestly, what happened might have been that she fell off eligibility for one of the prior lists because she does so much TV.

• 1:01:43Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:44Amanda Dobbins?

  And then.

• 1:01:45Sean Fennessey?

  That was the other reason.

• 1:01:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And then we just forgot.

• 1:01:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. The other reason was just she's just does a ton of television. And so she's kind of shifted.

• 1:01:49Amanda Dobbins?

  But this is really, Baby Girl, people are seeing it, people are referencing it. It's like, I think it's getting, starting to get memed a little bit, like the milk and everything. You can just kind of.

• 1:02:00Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think about the take that it didn't go far enough? That it should have been even more sexually explicit and/or depraved?

• 1:02:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I, there are plenty of sexually explicit or depraved movies out there. I, like, I, you know.

• 1:02:15Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:02:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I think.

• 1:02:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I like, to me, it didn't feel dishonest or censored in, in that way. Like, the, the parts that fell a little flat were like the girl boss stuff and not the sex stuff. I thought that this, what was interesting about that movie was it was exploring that particular character's sort of desire, set of, specific set of desires, which were taboo, but not like perverted and weird, or not too perverted and too weird, just kind of like something that you're not supposed to say, rather than-

• 1:02:51Sean Fennessey?

  It wasn't like violent.

• 1:02:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. And I think that there, that is what makes it interesting, is the specificity of it. So, I liked Baby Girl.

• 1:03:00Sean Fennessey?

  I liked it too. Bobby, what about you? You got, got some recent classics that you think should, are gonna go in the canon in the next few years?

• 1:03:06Speaker 04

  Um, I'll throw two at you. I don't know that this movie is going into the canon, but I do think it's doing weird enough stuff that people who make films will cite it in 20 years, and that film is Megalopolis.

• 1:03:16Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:03:17Speaker 04

  There's some stuff visually and just, uh, audacity wise, that I think is inspirational to people who want to make the movies. And of course, there was enough coverage about that movie that there's a lot of, to learn about it. Um, the other one is The Northman. I think a lot of people are gonna be like, that inspired me to make something so dedicated to a specific vision about a story that is not necessarily commercial, but is still an incredible act of filmmaking. Those are the two that I would say.

• 1:03:43Sean Fennessey?

  Both really good shouts. Megalopolis comes up again in our conversation with Alex.

• 1:03:47Amanda Dobbins?

  It does.

• 1:03:48Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, because-

• 1:03:49Amanda Dobbins?

  King of the segue.

• 1:03:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, thank you. Um, should we go there right now?

• 1:03:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:53Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Let's go to our conversation right now with Alex Ross Perry. Thanks so much for all your questions out there. Alex Ross Perry is here. He's here to talk about Pavements, but I was thinking about this. You more so, I think even than CR, than Tracy Letts, than all of these, you know, Van Lathan, these Joanna Robinsons, these people who like would be king, would be third chair, like you have been fighting the fight for longer than anybody, I feel like, on this show.

• 1:04:22Speaker 05

  I will say at no point in that sentence that I know where it was going. It started off-

• 1:04:26Amanda Dobbins?

  As soon as Tracy came into the picture, I was like, okay, I know where this is going.

• 1:04:28Speaker 05

  I thought it started off about, about we're gonna talk about tapes or something. No.

• 1:04:32Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  Uh, or, you know, physical movies. But then you just pivoted to people I've never met. Maybe. I mean, I guess it's, I was just saying, this is, you know, maybe the fourth, have I recorded in more physical spaces for appearances than any guests?

• 1:04:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause you guys did one in New York.

• 1:04:49Speaker 05

  You were there?

• 1:04:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, no, that, you did one without me in New York, but I was thinking last night when you were talking about the long process of making this movie, that we recorded the day that you, or like the day before you were doing your Pavements Museum exhibition. And I, when like, we were in New York and you were trying to explain to us what was going on. And I like nodded politely.

• 1:05:11Speaker 05

  And I made promises in, that was New York Film Festival.

• 1:05:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Speaker 05

  So it would have been September twenty-three. Twenty-two, yeah. Twenty-two. It was twenty-two, yes. Almost, almost three years ago. And I made promises about what the movie would be.

• 1:05:25Speaker 05

  And yeah, I was like, it's this and this and this. You followed through.

• 1:05:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And it like did actually happen.

• 1:05:30Speaker 05

  I know. It's weird when stuff like that works out. Um, Sean came to the museum that is in the movie. We recorded in person. That was, I think, something I've never heard replicated, which is, we did horror draft and you just gave commentary, which I was extremely into. And I feel like that format has never been repeated of like-

• 1:05:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, in many ways, that is the, like, half of these episodes are him just being like, let me tell you about Minecraft. And I'm just like, let me tell you about the rest of the world.

• 1:05:58Speaker 05

  This was really like, me, you and Chris had had-

• 1:06:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:01Speaker 05

  -draft prep. And you were like, I'm here to talk about my aversion to this genre and my unwillingness to explore it at all. And it was, I thought, for good.

• 1:06:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I enjoyed it. I learned a lot about you. I think of you every Halloween now and your various backyard,

• 1:06:17Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 1:06:17Amanda Dobbins?

  installations. How is that going?

• 1:06:19Speaker 05

  It's gonna pop off this year, cause I have, I moved upstate.

• 1:06:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:06:22Speaker 05

  A big yard now.

• 1:06:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. And then everything came with you.

• 1:06:24Speaker 05

  Well, I only had a few things and they were small.

• 1:06:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Can you share any of your plans for this year?

• 1:06:29Speaker 05

  Well, I've already started buying blow molds.

• 1:06:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:06:31Speaker 05

  My plans are that I moved and like, Facebook- Marketplace.

• 1:06:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Speaker 05

  Like in, you know, small towns is really useful. In New York, it's not. In LA, it's probably not.

• 1:06:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:06:41Speaker 05

  And I just, you can start picking up Halloween blow molds in like March.

• 1:06:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:06:45Speaker 05

  And I'm, I'm collecting.

• 1:06:47Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, open it to the public. Is it like another museum?

• 1:06:50Speaker 05

  But I was told when we looked at the house, like Halloween in this town is crazy.

• 1:06:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, good.

• 1:06:54Speaker 05

  So I was like, good, I need to.

• 1:06:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:06:55Speaker 05

  I need to compete.

• 1:06:56Sean Fennessey?

  You said you're somewhat proximate to Sleepy Hollow, which is exciting.

• 1:06:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, we're like less than an hour.

• 1:07:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's a lovely part of New York.

• 1:07:02Speaker 05

  But yeah, we'll be there.

• 1:07:04Sean Fennessey?

  Well, so wait, in terms of recording.

• 1:07:06Speaker 05

  This is gone, the, the, the amount of information covered in like three minutes is so astonishing at this point.

• 1:07:10Sean Fennessey?

  This is how we do.

• 1:07:10Speaker 05

  Cause me trying to talk about how many locations I've visited.

• 1:07:13Sean Fennessey?

  So you.

• 1:07:14Speaker 05

  To now we're talking about my Halloween record.

• 1:07:15Sean Fennessey?

  Here in LA, you've never recorded with us in LA before? No, you did in Hollywood.

• 1:07:19Speaker 05

  You.

• 1:07:20Sean Fennessey?

  You came in into the old studio in Hollywood.

• 1:07:22Speaker 05

  And I think you've said it was like year one of the show.

• 1:07:25Sean Fennessey?

  It might've been year one. Was it, was it for Golden Eggs?

• 1:07:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, okay. So you also went to the Manhattan office in One World Trade. You also went to the Brooklyn studio, which is no longer open.

• 1:07:36Speaker 05

  So this is my fourth physical.

• 1:07:37Sean Fennessey?

  There's one more, do you remember?

• 1:07:39Speaker 05

  Oh, in South by Southwest.

• 1:07:40Sean Fennessey?

  By Southwest.

• 1:07:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, with Elizabeth Moss.

• 1:07:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 1:07:44Speaker 05

  Now that's obviously not a proprietary space of yours, but.

• 1:07:47Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it is now. I bought it after that conversation and I wanted to memorialize that space.

• 1:07:52Speaker 05

  So I've recorded in a huge amount of physical spaces, which is weird because I feel like I often do it on Zoom also.

• 1:07:57Sean Fennessey?

  That's true. You've been on Zoom a few times. My point is.

• 1:07:58Speaker 05

  Has anyone, has any, has anyone else been in that many spaces other than employees of this company?

• 1:08:04Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so.

• 1:08:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I haven't been in that many spaces.

• 1:08:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's not true.

• 1:08:07Amanda Dobbins?

  As the, I, because I'm not South by Southwest and I don't think I've ever been in the Manhattan studio. So.

• 1:08:11Sean Fennessey?

  Is that true?

• 1:08:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, we gotta.

• 1:08:14Speaker 05

  Your last New York trip was the Brooklyn studio.

• 1:08:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so. I, yeah.

• 1:08:18Sean Fennessey?

  Shame on you. What have you been doing? Having kids?

• 1:08:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Sean Fennessey?

  Tough.

• 1:08:21Speaker 05

  It's only slightly more austere than this one.

• 1:08:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:08:26Sean Fennessey?

  You're not, you don't feel warm in at home here?

• 1:08:28Speaker 05

  Um, it's warm. Kind of take my jacket off during the recording.

• 1:08:31Sean Fennessey?

  I'm wearing short sleeves today.

• 1:08:32Amanda Dobbins?

  We are also allowed to stop down and adjust the temperature.

• 1:08:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I see you, Jack. Thank you for your support always.

• 1:08:37Speaker 05

  You walk into an office like this and you're like, it's either going to be 55 degrees in here and I need to wear a jacket for two hours. Or it's going to be like weirdly warm because of the lights.

• 1:08:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think it being an unseasonably warm 93 degrees in Los Angeles this morning is a factor. We don't quite know how to react to that in May. It's usually 70 or lower in May, oddly in this city. Anyhow, hey, welcome to LA.

• 1:08:57Speaker 05

  Cinteing stuff.

• 1:08:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:58Sean Fennessey?

  You.

• 1:09:00Speaker 05

  You made a movie.

• 1:09:00Sean Fennessey?

  You screened Pavements last night.

• 1:09:01Speaker 05

  Yes, we did.

• 1:09:01Sean Fennessey?

  You've been screening it around the country, around the, around the world. You went to Canada?

• 1:09:04Speaker 05

  Relatively, yeah.

• 1:09:05Amanda Dobbins?

  You went to Venice?

• 1:09:06Speaker 05

  Yes, I went to Venice.

• 1:09:07Sean Fennessey?

  You went to Venice?

• 1:09:07Speaker 05

  Famously.

• 1:09:09Sean Fennessey?

  New York Film Festival?

• 1:09:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, the world's getting smaller when you include that, but Rotterdam, and it played a bunch of places I didn't go.

• 1:09:16Sean Fennessey?

  Rotterdam, pretty fancy.

• 1:09:17Speaker 05

  Well, the London Film Festival.

• 1:09:18Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:09:19Speaker 05

  You know, should be on your radar.

• 1:09:20Amanda Dobbins?

  It should. I'd love to go.

• 1:09:21Speaker 05

  It feels like the kind of thing you could lobby for.

• 1:09:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:23Sean Fennessey?

  Sure. Who's, I mean, she could lobby and I could decline. That's.

• 1:09:26Speaker 05

  Would you, you would decline London in October?

• 1:09:29Sean Fennessey?

  I love London.

• 1:09:30Amanda Dobbins?

  October? Oh, that would be, we could, is it like right after New York? Or is it before New York?

• 1:09:33Speaker 05

  It is directly after New York.

• 1:09:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, so we could just keep going. Keep flying east.

• 1:09:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, sure. Thanks for furthering this issue.

• 1:09:38Speaker 05

  It's really, it's a festival I have a lot of affinity for.

• 1:09:41Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, but you did not go or you did?

• 1:09:42Speaker 05

  I did.

• 1:09:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:09:43Speaker 05

  It's, it's held in the Prince Charles, among dozens of other theaters.

• 1:09:46Amanda Dobbins?

  We love the Prince Charles.

• 1:09:47Speaker 05

  Um, it's a beautiful time of year to be in a beautiful place, and I was there for this. And then, you know, when, when you're young, you can go to 15 international festivals. When you have family, you can go to like two.

• 1:09:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:09:59Sean Fennessey?

  Has the film been rapturously received and have you been called the genius?

• 1:10:03Speaker 05

  It has. Yes, these are all true things, which is, which is interesting, not because I want that for myself, but because it's an obtuse thing that's risky and strange and it's, the risk of failure in this is severe, not because it's like controversial, but because it's like, you're just giving someone something that's in a shape that is radically unfamiliar.

• 1:10:25Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:25Speaker 05

  And the response could just be like, nice try, right? Like, I, I can't even think of something that that's like. So the fact that people are warm.

• 1:10:34Sean Fennessey?

  Megalopolis, perhaps?

• 1:10:35Speaker 05

  Almost, yeah.

• 1:10:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Sean Fennessey?

  There's, there's a little hint of that. This is the indie rock Megalopolis.

• 1:10:39Speaker 05

  I feel a huge affinity for Megalopolis, and when I saw it, basically like four or five days before our New York premiere, I was like, this is so in step with what I'm about. And I loved the experience of being like, this is just someone else who's working through something and going like, why, why does it have to be this way?

• 1:10:55Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:56Speaker 05

  Why can't I just like do something different? I wish the film had gone further. As I've conveyed to you, my ultimate edit of Megalopolis is it edited together with this Mike Figgus documentary.

• 1:11:06Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:11:06Speaker 05

  Where it's like.

• 1:11:07Sean Fennessey?

  Have you seen that?

• 1:11:08Speaker 05

  No. But like, as with this movie, which you've now both seen, like, wouldn't most movies, or at least a Megalopolis-type movie, be better if it's like, this scene's not working? And then you just cut to them making the scene and you're like, all right, now this has some juice.

• 1:11:22Sean Fennessey?

  Well, some of the greatest movies of all time do have that component, like Apocalypse Now has that, Fitzcarraldo has that, and those movies' legends are bigger because of the fact that those things exist, that sort of like external documentary about the making of the thing. But you decided to put the documentary inside the making of the scripted film and the musical that is also inside another kind of documentary about a reunion. Like, it is all of the pieces all together smashed in.

• 1:11:47Speaker 05

  It's like a turducken.

• 1:11:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It is, yeah.

• 1:11:50Speaker 05

  A thing I feel like people used to talk about a lot.

• 1:11:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say, do we need to translate that for people under 30 who listen to this bypass, who like weren't on the internet?

• 1:11:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was like a meme before me. Like, people just thought it was funny.

• 1:12:01Sean Fennessey?

  My memory of it is, is that it was John Madden at the NFL games on the Thanksgiving that was rolling out the turducken to be served to whomever was attending.

• 1:12:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Again, is everyone under 30, you know, logging on to that?

• 1:12:13Sean Fennessey?

  Do they even know who John Madden is?

• 1:12:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. Do they play that game?

• 1:12:15Sean Fennessey?

  Many people do.

• 1:12:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:12:17Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 1:12:18Speaker 05

  It's a turducken of a movie, but, which I've never said before, and I'll never say again, because it's horrifying phrase, but Malcolm has said about Wowie Zowie, it's an album with its own B-sides on it. 18 tracks, as opposed to the traditional 10, 11, 12. So we just thought, let's like make a movie with its own discarded material in it, but let's make a movie with its own EPK in it.

• 1:12:37Sean Fennessey?

  But you also told-

• 1:12:38Speaker 05

  Electronic press kit. Let's make a movie with its own, like, table read in it. Let's make a movie with its own, like, I'm in the movie. Like, make a movie with the director in the movie both as a character and then in, like, footage, I didn't know we had a camera rolling when I was talking. But I'm like, sure, put it in. Like, that's a fine moment.

• 1:12:56Amanda Dobbins?

  But the extra material also becomes part of the text.

• 1:13:00Speaker 05

  It does. It is the text.

• 1:13:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:02Speaker 05

  It's the text because-

• 1:13:06Speaker 05

  It's like a movie about process. I don't know, like, this is a weird thing to say if you haven't seen it, but

• 1:13:12Speaker 05

  like, if you're making a documentary, which I'd never done before, except for my short piece on Paul Schrader for Criterion Channel. It's like, what are you making? And you make something first, and then that dictates what you're shooting next. And then you're like, we'll figure this out, we'll figure this out. And the first thing we filmed was seven, eight, nine days of the band rehearsing. And we were like, this could be very boring. And I thought it was very interesting. So then the next thing we filmed, I thought, well, the buildup to the show became more interesting than the show itself. I feel like we're probably going to skew 70, 30. And then 70, 30 became kind of like, that should be everything. And as you may know, the structure of this film, to me, I was like, let's just rip off Dunkirk. Okay. I see it. I see it.

• 1:13:57Speaker 05

  I think once, I think once I say that, people are like, you know, that's incredibly obvious now that you say it. Yeah. It is. It is like a tripartite. I did not think of Dunkirk while watching it. But it is things taking place in different temporal spans. Dunkirk is a week, a day and an hour. And about an hour into the movie, they all are happening at the same time. And I would, seriously, when I was in the movie, I was like, I've never seen something like this. I cannot believe that these three things converged, seeming like they've taken place concurrently, even though I know they haven't. And I just got really excited by like, this is a hundred million dollar World War II film made by one of our greatest. Let's just copy that as a structure and a format for a nonfiction film about a 90s alternative rock band.

• 1:14:41Speaker 05

  Because building these different components into a cohesive thing just felt achievable to say like, we'll hit that Dunkirk moment, like an hour and 10 into our movie. Where everything is suddenly like, it's locked in. And now like the, all four wheels are turning at the same time. And the moment in the movie where the band is performing a song called Grounded, well-known to fans at the Fonda Theater here in LA. Joe Keery is playing Grounded in a filming fake biopic moment. Michael Esper is performing Grounded on a musical theater performance of Pavement Song. And a super group of young women bully soccer mommy.

• 1:15:25Speaker 05

  Snail, Male, Speedy Ortiz are playing Grounded at the ribbon cutting of this museum that Sean graciously attended, that you were seeing movies at the New York Film Festival during. They're all four cut together. And we have archival footage of the band playing Grounded, so five. And that moment, which is two minutes in the movie, is like, that is four years of work to have like, a bunch of different people playing the same song in different things, filmed over two years. And that kind of effort is really interesting to me because it doesn't look hard. It just looks like you're cutting these things together, which is so easy to cut things together. But you have to build every one of those things from the ground up. Like, it's the simplest thing to watch and the hardest thing to make.

• 1:16:07Speaker 05

  And that challenge of process to me was like, I want to make a movie that way. But not for a hundred million dollars, for barely a million dollars. And what if we did that? Like, could that be done? Why would that be? I've never seen that. They all look like documentary moments, but there's not a single thing in there that I didn't, you know, vehemently put my finger on the scale to create. Why not?

• 1:16:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I ask?

• 1:16:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:16:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. No, I know. All right. Well, I'm asking Sean if I can step in. Because, okay, so.

• 1:16:39Speaker 05

  I'm so excited to have you here for, I feel like, I'm not used to being like, at the back half of an episode now. I haven't put out a movie since Her Smell, where we talked at South by Southwest for like, maybe 20 minutes.

• 1:16:51Amanda Dobbins?

  So you're, so you're ready?

• 1:16:52Speaker 05

  I'm happy to be in the back half, and I'm happy to have you here, so jump in.

• 1:16:55Sean Fennessey?

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• 1:17:39Sean Fennessey?

  That's LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by the Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo. The Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo is built for travel. You can earn rewards wherever you book, your favorite hotel site, your go-to airline, and more. You get five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants, and other travel, and one point on other purchases. Whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway, from booking your stay to that first meal when you arrive, you're turning your trips into rewards with the Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo. Learn more at wellsfargo.com/autographjourney. Terms apply. This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail-biting thriller?

• 1:18:24Sean Fennessey?

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

• 1:18:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I want to ask about how you get to-

• 1:18:42Speaker 05

  And you're both in the movie. We didn't even mention that.

• 1:18:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Our names are.

• 1:18:45Speaker 05

  Your name's in the movie.

• 1:18:46Sean Fennessey?

  Spoiler.

• 1:18:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Spoiler. But it was-

• 1:18:48Speaker 05

  It's in the trailer.

• 1:18:48Amanda Dobbins?

  You zoomed in.

• 1:18:49Sean Fennessey?

  Is there a trailer?

• 1:18:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, we are in the trailer. And my sister-in-law, I told you, my sister-in-law saw it at Film Forum. She was like, hey, I don't really know what Pavement is, but did you know you're in this trailer? And I was like, I do. I do.

• 1:19:00Speaker 05

  You know they're in the trailer because you posted a screen grab of it when the trailer came out.

• 1:19:04Sean Fennessey?

  Did I do that?

• 1:19:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:05Sean Fennessey?

  My brain is shot. I am shot. Okay, anyway, that's lovely.

• 1:19:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, okay. The broad version of this question is like, like, where the hell did this come from?

• 1:19:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:19:16Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, but let's, let's bring it back to the Dunkirk moment.

• 1:19:19Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:19:19Amanda Dobbins?

  So, as you said, there is a point pretty early in the movie where you have four or five different things going on. You've got archival, you've got the docu, you've got the biopic.

• 1:19:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Amanda Dobbins?

  You've got the musical.

• 1:19:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:33Amanda Dobbins?

  You've got the museum.

• 1:19:34Speaker 05

  Yeah. Those are my three-

• 1:19:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so those are your three timelines.

• 1:19:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:39Amanda Dobbins?

  That you built.

• 1:19:40Speaker 05

  Archival plus the actual documentary of-

• 1:19:41Sean Fennessey?

  This would be like if you, Dunkirk also had a component that was footage that John Ford shot during World War II.

• 1:19:48Speaker 05

  Yeah. Or, you know, David Lean more realistically.

• 1:19:52Sean Fennessey?

  Right, right.

• 1:19:52Speaker 05

  And yeah, like, that would, that would be a fine-

• 1:19:54Sean Fennessey?

  In Which We Serve was blended together.

• 1:19:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:19:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, with Dunkirk.

• 1:19:58Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's many years of work and a lot of creation to get to that point. When did you and how did you decide that what you really needed to this, in addition to the rehearsal footage that you mentioned, was all three of these things, a biopic, a musical and a museum? And that they all needed to come together?

• 1:20:20Speaker 05

  Immediately.

• 1:20:21Amanda Dobbins?

  This was the idea?

• 1:20:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was recently asked and I was on like a phone interview. So I could just like look at my computer and like my first document, which is May 2020, like which I must have done within a week of Danny Goodbye. One of the movie's producers just saying, would you be interested in this? Malcolm is seems not unlike a fictional character in an Alex movie. Put together some ideas and the ideas changed, but the idea one of the, it was a bad biopic on paper. It was a museum on paper and then it was a art film on paper. And I said, it would be like art film, like Edvard Munch, like a very austere silent movie about like an alternative musician, which is essentially last days. And that idea obviously didn't click, but I did later find that I texted Malcolm. I was like, have you seen this movie?

• 1:21:06Speaker 05

  Asking him if he knew the film. One of my favorites, a film kind of in and out of circulation physically. I feel by the way. Not very present since days in the culture. I feel like it did come out a few years ago, but anyway, for whatever reason, like this just goes into the sort of like the movie junkie answer, which is if you love stuff, you just watch things all the time.

• 1:21:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Speaker 05

  And we all, you know this, this is your life. This is your job. And to me, the whole question is like, I just consume. I consume and I consume and I consume and I consume fiction and I consume nonfiction. And I'm inspired by whatever. And the freedom to say, I'm inspired by something irrelevant is very nice. Like usually you can't do that. You can't. I was saying to Sean last night, the Sean produced Alanis Morissette documentary or EP or I don't know what your credit is on these movies. Yeah, EP. Like that movie and the Tina Turner movie on HBO, I must have seen around the same time. And they both have those women going to a Broadway show of their music. Right.

• 1:22:11Speaker 05

  And it's just like, in a film, like, nothing else you could do, you'd be like, that's inspiring to me. And it's not even that seeing it once was inspiring, seeing it twice was inspiring. And I got very excited by that because, like, you get older and you get tired of what you do and you're just looking for something else. You're looking for the freedom to be like, I need to just smash the wall. I need to do something different because it's boring.

• 1:22:35Speaker 05

  And this opportunity, a multifaceted portrait of a extremely complex, multi-dimensional, brilliant figure like Malkmus, and the strange output of this band and their odd story over the years. I just instantly was like, there's so much freedom. I can do whatever I want. Especially because the band said, don't make a traditional documentary. Don't make a movie about how great we are. We don't want to be in it at all, or very much. So you need to think of other ways to tell the story. And sort of it should feel written. And with that, I was just like, so we'll have other people playing you. We'll have a whole jukebox musical where we hear the music that way. Let me film you as you rehearse for this tour. And that might be it. That might be all I need. And then come to the ribbon cutting.

• 1:23:18Speaker 05

  And that was kind of basically the promise I delivered on. Because, you know, you just look for permission to be like, I'm bored, but I'm inspired by many things. And there's a line in the movie where Malkmus is saying,

• 1:23:32Speaker 05

  what, he says like, inspired by like, the Eagles for Range Life or classic rock for Silence Kid. I'm always inspired by things that sound like shit to me. I don't know why that is, but I still am. And it's the same thing. It's like, people are afraid to be inspired by something that you're like, well, this is bad. I'd like to do something exactly like this, but I want to contextualize it in a creative way where it's bad on purpose, but the process is what I'm making the movie about. But like, I'm trying to find my own truth in a form that is irrelevant to me. Or I'm trying to make a biopic, but like, you know, we watch all these things. You guys have to, so you have no choice.

• 1:24:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You wonder why I make you do episodes about Marvel movies. I think Alex just summarized it very eloquently.

• 1:24:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, I do understand. Well, sort of. It's also because they are the most popular movie format. They were. They were. They no longer are.

• 1:24:21Sean Fennessey?

  And now they are.

• 1:24:22Speaker 05

  What is now?

• 1:24:23Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Pavements. It's really exciting.

• 1:24:25Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:24:25Sean Fennessey?

  Wait, can we go back to something you just mentioned?

• 1:24:27Speaker 05

  Second highest per screen average of the weekend after Thunderbolts.

• 1:24:29Sean Fennessey?

  No kidding?

• 1:24:30Speaker 05

  I mean, one.

• 1:24:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:31Speaker 05

  Literally, yes, but with a mass, an asterisk that would put the one in Thunderbolts to shame. Such a huge asterisk, but our producer was like, it's very funny that they had like a 17,000 per screen average. And we had 13,000 on one, on one screen.

• 1:24:44Sean Fennessey?

  It was 4,200 screens versus one, but you got something to be proud of. You did say though, that, so the band said that they would want it to feel written, which I don't think I had heard you say before. Why was that? Do you know?

• 1:24:55Speaker 05

  I think Malcolm has felt that if you hired a documentary filmmaker, you'd get a documentary. And if you hired someone with a narrative approach, you would get something that was structured in a way that felt more like a piece.

• 1:25:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:25:06Speaker 05

  Uh, like a piece of material. And I, that was just the first thing I was told. And I was like, I can approach this. I love writing, I love overwriting. And it was just a mysterious thing that the whole thing was just there. And I, but it's also like, this is a perfect thing for Sean, like, you know, you use what you're supposed to do. You use your job, your opportunities to be like, I'm just going to like, put all of my attention on this thing that I care about. Because I can. But no one else would let me do that. But I have created a world where I can do whatever I want. And I can be like, I'm putting my foot down and this is the thing we're all gonna do. And for me, it's like, I love archival work. I love museum curation. I love thinking about the like, stories told through objects.

• 1:25:51Speaker 05

  Most people do. This is not an original thing of mine, but I like, love it so much, I want to do it. And I was like, well, if I just create the conceit of a museum, I get to go through the archive. I get to wear white gloves and like, touch priceless objects. And I get to fill in the gaps with a production designer, which I also love.

• 1:26:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:26:09Speaker 05

  And I would love to be like a pop-up curator. And it was so fun to make a pop-up exhibit. And create a physical experience for people to come, walk through a room, be together, look at things, take pictures, like figure out which corner we want to be like, that's our Instagram corner. Everyone's gonna take pictures in front of this wall. Like, it was really fun to design a room that way as a physical space that is a movie set, but is also just like me getting to poke around the archives for six months. And I love musicals. I love theater. And I just have to create my own opportunity to like, you know, no one's going to say like, somebody saw your movie, they'd like you to make a musical.

• 1:26:53Speaker 05

  But I would like to do that, or I'd like to at least try it.

• 1:26:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you think someone will see this and be like, would you like to do a real musical?

• 1:26:58Speaker 05

  Well, the only thing that's happened is people saying, we want to bring the musical back.

• 1:27:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:27:01Speaker 05

  And do it for real, which could, which could be great.

• 1:27:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I want to ask about the performance in the musical, but maybe can you?

• 1:27:09Speaker 05

  You must like musicals.

• 1:27:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's interesting. I felt, I think that you and I probably have a similar, I appreciate them when they're well done. And I also see the absurdity in them, which seems to be your take on what's going on in the musical. But explain to people how you, where you wrote the musical portion of the movie.

• 1:27:29Sean Fennessey?

  Before you do, I just want to say, to me, this is the divining thing of the movie. This is the thing that makes this such a brilliant success. The musical aspect of it, yes.

• 1:27:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:27:38Sean Fennessey?

  The idea is the way you think about the band, the way that you create documentary format, the way that you do, you know, the way that you replicate some of your previous experience as a narrative filmmaker, like those are all things that I knew you could do. And I know, since I know you well, like I know that you have an affinity for those things. The musical aspect is genuinely inspired and right on that incredible line that I find so many musicals are of like, this is glorious and terrible at the same time. And it feels like an active choice to make it that way.

• 1:28:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, I'm a big fan of the medium,

• 1:28:11Speaker 05

  but not of like the contemporary version of the mixtape musical, the jukebox musical. Not because I don't like them. I don't think I've ever seen one. I've missed all the ones that are even vaguely relevant that everyone in this movie has been a part of.

• 1:28:27Speaker 05

  I didn't go to the Sufjan Stevens musical that came out right after we made this, but by all accounts, it's identical, but not done as a joke.

• 1:28:35Speaker 05

  Which, you know, is good for the people who made it. But like, I'm very inspired by that movie, by that show's marketing material. And we've replicated that marketing material with our own marketing material. Of just like, these kind of ham-fisted shots of people like, sitting there talking about finding the story. Like, we've replicated it. Yeah. Exactly, because it's so silly. And it cuts to these shots of like, people dancing to Sufjan Stevens' music, holding like, a lit up ball. And I'm like, this is just what we did, but like, we did it in eight weeks for fun. And I like, no one's gonna like, give me a Tony for it, but, but I would take one. And, like, the thing about the band to me, which, you know, like, in declining order, like, Chris, favorite. Sean, familiar with you, I, you know, presumably unfamiliar, less familiar. Less familiar. Yeah, so it's like- Familiar, but not-

• 1:29:19Speaker 05

  It's a sliding scale, but to me, like, like, name a band that you're like, I could really lock in on a documentary about this band. Just like, someone that you're like, this would be my, this would be my shit. And like, if it was happening, I'd be like, the expert with my arms crossed.

• 1:29:31Sean Fennessey?

  The Strokes would be your answer.

• 1:29:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, okay, a perfect answer. If you were like, I'm gonna ask a hundred Strokes fans. Give me like, five qualities, Family Feud style, that really speak to what you love about the band. It would, those answers would be very similar. This just like, beautiful retro analog feel, the style, the kind of detachment, this New York qual- Like, everyone would give the same answers. But pavement are the opposite of that. If you ask a hundred fans, someone is like, I love that Malcolmus is a brat, he's a slacker, he's funny, doesn't take anything seriously, the whole thing just feels totally ironic. And then someone's like, he's a poet. You know, Yasi has his lyrics tattooed on her, like, this man has changed my life. Sincerity, I cry when I listen to their music, they got me.

• 1:30:16Speaker 05

  And it's like, okay, so that's the same band.

• 1:30:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:18Speaker 05

  Right. The two completely opposed-

• 1:30:20Sean Fennessey?

  The paradox is true, though, in his case.

• 1:30:22Speaker 05

  It is.

• 1:30:22Sean Fennessey?

  That's part of what's-

• 1:30:23Speaker 05

  The appeal of him. And that paradox was the paradox of structuring the movie with different segments, of smashing them together, and of creating one piece of the movie, and the biopic does this as well, where you're like, you're merging highbrow and lowbrow, you're merging irony and sincerity, you're merging real and fake, as like, a conceit of how we made it. And the musical is just that, where I was like-

• 1:30:48Speaker 05

  A, as I say in the movie, as the character directing the musical, A, I think this will work. B, I think it will be good. C, I don't think you could do this with many other bands. And D, like, why not? Like, just because I feel like some of these things that exist, musicals, biopics, I really feel like the decision-making process stopped and ended at, why not? It's like, yeah, oh, why not? Like, that'd be fine. People would come to that. And I just was like, why not? And it seemed like a great... And originally, when the movie wasn't Dunkirk, when the movie was Mishima, where I thought it'd be, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, the musical would have been first. And the musical would have been a sort of breezy, Billy Elliot-inspired,

• 1:31:30Speaker 05

  small-town, working-class story about kids who just want to get out of their small town through music.

• 1:31:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:31:37Speaker 05

  And it would have been a way to give the first 30 minutes of the movie,

• 1:31:42Speaker 05

  30 straight minutes of music, 45 songs, just one after the other.

• 1:31:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Performed in Broadway style.

• 1:31:48Speaker 05

  No, that would have been a movie. This was, of course, when we thought we'd raised three times as much as we did. And, but then it became theater as a way of differentiating it. And then it became less literally the story of the band. And then it became a sort of Greek chorus throughout the movie. So like, the whole idea was there immediately, but everything changed up until the edit. And I just thought it'd be fun to like, you know, I love, I got to go to work in Times Square for two months.

• 1:32:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I will say, I was very moved by your performance, sitting at a folding table during rehearsals. That was like the...

• 1:32:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's me and Ben Daras in Baby Girl, sitting at the folding table, doing theater rehearsals in like, the canon of recent nonsense. And that movie really gets one thing wrong, which is after the show opens, he's still in the theater at the table. And I've learned, like, that would never happen. When the show's open, the director's retired and the stage manager runs the show. And that show opens, they go to opening night, and then like, weeks later, he's still showing up and sitting at the lighting console, which is bogus.

• 1:32:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Huh.

• 1:32:46Speaker 05

  An expert like me has learned from doing this once as a joke. But I sat at the table.

• 1:32:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:52Speaker 05

  And, you know, I contributed, but I wrote the musical, which is sung through. No dialogue.

• 1:32:59Speaker 05

  At my residency on Bergman Island.

• 1:33:02Speaker 05

  Which was a great thing I did after seeing the film, which I assume you both.

• 1:33:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:33:05Speaker 05

  You probably liked the movie.

• 1:33:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Have you, speaking of Bergman Island and Duke Park musicals, have you seen Mamma Mia?

• 1:33:11Speaker 05

  No, I've never seen it.

• 1:33:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow, okay. Well, that is, well, I just, you know, there's a climactic ABBA song used in both films. Very movingly.

• 1:33:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:33:19Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like that maybe is your pavements. Like you should reconstruct Mamma Mia and then rebuild it through different mediums.

• 1:33:25Speaker 05

  And, yeah, I'll say this of being on Bergman Island, that we went, there's like, it's called Foro.

• 1:33:31Sean Fennessey?

  Faro, yeah. People may not know what it is. You should explain like what it actually is.

• 1:33:34Speaker 05

  The actual island or the movie?

• 1:33:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, the island, but the movie, or people could just go watch the movie.

• 1:33:38Speaker 05

  Stoymer Bergman just moved to some island off the coast of an island called Visby, which is off the coast of Sweden. So it's an island off the coast of an island. I, I think the island of Foro is like maybe the size of Silver Lake. It's like preposterously small. And it feels like you've left the planet Earth. He filmed four or five movies there, notably Persona and Shame, parts of Scenes from a Marriage. Me and Hanson Love makes the film Bergman Island. I saw it like on a Thursday, applied for the residency on a Monday. Was there the following summer and, you know, I had like, I was there for three weeks. And you go to Bergman's house to work, which is seen in the film. Actually, there's an important thing coming here for you that you'll be excited by.

• 1:34:21Speaker 05

  And it's at the end of the movie when Vicky Creeps goes to like his house, which is presented as like this sanctum. And you just go to his house and work and his house is so quiet. I had to open a window because I was getting a migraine. It was so quiet. Like, I've just never been somewhere that's that hermetically removed from civilization. And it's on the beach, it's on the rocks, and I had to open a window so I could hear the ocean because I was like, I feel like I'm in a deprivation chamber. And that's where he worked and I, there's no wifi, so I downloaded 40 Pavement songs and I crafted this structure based on the chronological working of their discography of the 40 songs I had chosen. And looking at the lyrics of like, oh, this lyrical passage suggests this guy's leaving

• 1:35:06Speaker 05

  a small town. They have a song called All My Friends. Everyone's going out tonight. Tonight, all my friends are strangers. And I'm like, that's a great song to show that this guy is moving away from the people he's come up with and he's leaving. There's not a second of that in the movie, but it was very crucial in like the story of the musical. And it just kind of got built from that. And this is all a way of saying like, this is 20 minutes of the movie. And like, I worked on it for a year. And that's insane. That's very silly.

• 1:35:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And you like did rehearsals and you filmed rehearsals and then built a set.

• 1:35:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, like the audition scene, A, like, I wanted the chorus line, all that jazz, like New York, creaky wooden floors, audition scene. You could script that scene and hire actors to do it, or you could just like put out a casting call and hang up signs saying you're being filmed. And we got half of our cast from that open call. And we got a lot of people being like, is this a prank? What am I doing here? But it's a good scene. And I just wanted that scene in the movie. That's where I sit hard at that table.

• 1:36:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's really.

• 1:36:10Speaker 05

  But you know, I had to pay attention.

• 1:36:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:12Speaker 05

  I had to like watch what everyone was doing.

• 1:36:14Amanda Dobbins?

  You're looking for something. You're not sure if you're gonna find it. You're communicating all of that.

• 1:36:18Speaker 05

  Well, really Angela Trimble, who was the choreographer and ultimately co-director, you know, I was just like, I'm not gonna tell you who to cast. You cast who you can work with. We had Michael Esper, Zoe Lister Jones, and Catherine Gallagher. So for the ensemble, I was like, you guys just need mercenary dancers. Cast whoever you want. And it was fine. And but yeah, we did a lot of work for something that's like inscrutable in the movie. But to me, that's like, isn't that part of the fun? Like, isn't working more fun than having worked?

• 1:36:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean.

• 1:36:49Speaker 05

  If you're doing something cool.

• 1:36:50Amanda Dobbins?

  If you're doing it on your own terms and your own ideas. Yeah.

• 1:36:54Speaker 05

  Like, it's not that I wanted the musical to be over. She said with sorrow in her voice.

• 1:36:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I don't know. I think not everyone, like, it's, you know, like, because you, as you said, you get to do exactly what you want to do. You are just making this crazy thing and everyone's going for it with you.

• 1:37:09Speaker 05

  Yes, it's create, I mean, the Sinek and New York comparison comes up, a movie I abhor, but I respect the comparison.

• 1:37:19Speaker 05

  And

• 1:37:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's the Alex I know is that that just popped out. That was not press tour Alex.

• 1:37:23Speaker 05

  I respect the comparison. Oh, yeah, we're off. We're off the we're off the record now, I think. I respect the comparison and I get it. And what I what I respect is what I wanted out of that movie.

• 1:37:35Speaker 05

  But anyway, so the Bergman thing. So I'm in his house. I'm writing the musical. And then I we rewatched Bergman Island when we were there. We were staying in the house where the characters stayed. And the house where some scenes from scenes from a marriage were shot.

• 1:37:47Sean Fennessey?

  That's a Russian nesting doll right there.

• 1:37:49Speaker 05

  In his house, the scene with her and what's the guy's name? The Anders Danielson Lee. They're like in his living room and then they walk and then they're in his library, but they skip a room in the middle, which is Bergman's video room.

• 1:38:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, my God, your face.

• 1:38:07Speaker 05

  Where he has

• 1:38:07Sean Fennessey?

  Are his are his videos in there?

• 1:38:09Speaker 05

  I counted like 2,500 videotapes.

• 1:38:13Speaker 05

  Organized alphabetically and, you know, sort of by section because he has a lot of theater and there's like a theater section. And everyone

• 1:38:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Alphabetically by title?

• 1:38:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:38:24Speaker 05

  And then within the theater section, that's alphabetical and there seemed to be like subsections of different countries. But then, you know, this legend, oh, he's so cold to his children and this and that. And behind the door is an entire shelf of children's movies. 20 Swedish Pippi Longstocking films.

• 1:38:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:38:40Speaker 05

  And I'm like, it couldn't have been that cold if he had like 100 tapes for his grandchildren to come watch.

• 1:38:46Sean Fennessey?

  Or, as you know, maybe he was just trying to avoid spending time with them by putting something on the television.

• 1:38:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, but it's far away. Like, you don't bring your kid, your grandkids there and then

• 1:38:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good point.

• 1:38:54Speaker 05

  It's not like they stopped by.

• 1:38:56Sean Fennessey?

  And there's nowhere else to go.

• 1:38:57Speaker 05

  It's the ends of the earth.

• 1:38:58Amanda Dobbins?

  But once you're there, you gotta have 20 Pippi Longstockings. Yeah.

• 1:39:02Speaker 05

  And but, you know, so like his the screening room, as seen in the film, was right in front of our house, which is not where his house was. It's like in front of his other house.

• 1:39:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:39:09Speaker 05

  Kind of like his office house.

• 1:39:10Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think I knew that you had done that. I knew a lot of what was going on during the production of the film, but when I visited the museum. Which is just, again, another ingenious stroke of the movie. I don't think I understood what was happening.

• 1:39:21Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:39:21Sean Fennessey?

  I was like, I thought it was just a day's event. It was sort of a celebration oriented around the production of the film. Not that it was an intrinsic part of the design of the movie.

• 1:39:29Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:39:29Sean Fennessey?

  And did you even explain? Maybe you did.

• 1:39:31Speaker 05

  I don't know. At the time, I wanted to get you on camera because I wanted to have like interviews with experts and have you talk about like music and movies. And we just ended up not doing that because there was too much going on. Yeah, it was intrinsic. And we didn't announce that on Saturday, there'll be four bands playing and the guys will be there. We just, the reason there's 800 people in the room is because we all told our friends to come. The label brought 200 people. The band's families came.

• 1:39:59Sean Fennessey?

  It was a scene.

• 1:40:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:40:00Sean Fennessey?

  I remember it was a rainy day and it was a scene.

• 1:40:02Speaker 05

  We really stacked the room.

• 1:40:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:03Speaker 05

  But people who just happened to be like, oh, I'll go to that on Saturday. We're like, what on earth is going on? Like, why is the band here? Why are all these bands playing? But it was just filmmaking in public, which is interesting to me.

• 1:40:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:13Speaker 05

  Because that is documentary filmmaking, but the entire conceit was like, I spent nine months curating this room and we spent a month production designing it. Custom building vitrines to hold zines and Xeroxes of zines that we couldn't find and like fakery on top of other stuff. And I noticed that pavement shirts were $300, $400, $500 on Depop and Grailed. So we just made an entire wall of fake T-shirts where it's, if they were real, that'd be like $10,000 worth of shirts. Right. But instead, that's like a thousand dollars worth of production design. And they were all aged to look very old. And it's authentic, like, but that's, you know, if you take a picture in front of it and you have a good time, what does it matter?

• 1:40:56Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:40:56Speaker 05

  That we made that last week and it's not from 1994? Like, that's not what it's about. But it was intrinsic. And because like another movie, a movie I would watch, a movie you might even executive produce, you have the ephemera, you just shoot it against black felt. That's fine. I'll look at that.

• 1:41:14Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:15Speaker 05

  And another movie would interview. Sophie Allison from Soccer Mommy. And have her talk about her love of the band. But that's the op- I didn't want to do that. I wanted to take the ephemera and put it in front of everybody. Have the band look at it on camera for the first time in decades. And have the musicians not just speak, but just sing their three favorite songs. But in the movie, every one of these younger artists, they get two songs. And you hear each one for 40 seconds. That doesn't mean we didn't fly these bands in from all over the country. There's an entire other song everyone played that I couldn't even tell you right now because I forget. This is not in the movie. I don't remember what the third song she played was.

• 1:41:52Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I definitely stayed for Snail Mail and Bully, I think, when I was there. And it was, it was, it was just a good show.

• 1:41:57Amanda Dobbins?

  It looked fun. Yeah.

• 1:41:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was a good show. And some of the, some of the artists requested to play the song a second time, which obviously confused people who had no idea what was going on. And we filmed the ribbon cutting twice. Because we had the ribbons, the ribbon was a prop. And we filmed it once from the front and once from the back. And the same speech, and of course, everyone in the room was like, why are they doing this a second time?

• 1:42:17Sean Fennessey?

  Like, Steve really did it with gusto in the film, I gotta say. One of his most spirited moments in that.

• 1:42:21Speaker 05

  He's having some fun. The shot of him lifting up the scissors was filmed by Joshua Weinstein, who made the film Minashay. He was there shooting that for us that day.

• 1:42:31Sean Fennessey?

  Nice.

• 1:42:32Speaker 05

  Had a real murderer's row of like fiction, nonfiction people there.

• 1:42:35Amanda Dobbins?

  So the, the people who just show up are like, what's going on? Don't really know that we have a film.

• 1:42:41Speaker 05

  And, and, and the, and the musical.

• 1:42:44Amanda Dobbins?

  So they, they show up for the audition. Once they're, once they're cast.

• 1:42:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:49Amanda Dobbins?

  What's, so, yeah, explain that. And then there is a climactic performance of the musical.

• 1:42:54Speaker 05

  We performed it.

• 1:42:55Amanda Dobbins?

  With an audience.

• 1:42:56Speaker 05

  We performed it for an audience three times.

• 1:42:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, wow.

• 1:42:58Speaker 05

  And privately, just for cameras once. Or sort of once with like, we need to do that one again. Like, people got cast in the show. None of the, none of the ensemble had heard of the band. One girl, a girl. Sophie, long brown hair, is like a real indie rock fan. She knew the band, no one else had ever heard them or heard of them. And ultimately, we cut all the scenes of me explaining the band to them. And, you know, just being like, this is the vibe. Like imperfection is fine, embrace it. Sloppiness is a virtue. You can, you know, musical theater owners don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear it doesn't have to be perfect.

• 1:43:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. That's not what they love. You're just giving these people a shot. These people who go to an open audition and then suddenly they get cast in a role that's an official Actors Equity stamped production. On a stage in New York, like, that's legit. It's like being an actor who just wanders in and ends up like being a corpse on Law and Order. Like, that's what you want. That's what you moved to New York for. So they're having a blast and they're giving it their all. They don't care about the cameras. Like, I learned very quickly, these people, these performers, these eight members of the cast, and ultimately even Zoe, Michael and Catherine as the leads, they're excited to be in a movie. And they know we're filming, but they don't really care. Because, keeping in mind, like, that was three years ago. Like, I couldn't explain the movie. Right. I could just be like, it's this tapestry of a bunch of bullshit.

• 1:44:19Speaker 05

  Of an artist you have no context for. That means nothing to you. And this is going to be interwoven. And everyone's like, I stopped listening to you while you were explaining this because we're on the clock and I need to like, do my routine. I need to work on these bizarre lyrics. I need to figure out this choreography. Film us all you want, like, I genuinely don't know or care. And certainly, once we're on the stage, because we then did a week at our theater of building the sets, doing tech rehearsal, certainly when we're in there, they're like, I so don't care that you're filming. Like, the filming is so immature to my creative process of doing this. Right. And that's really nice to have your performers in a movie be like, I don't even

• 1:45:03Speaker 05

  want to think about the movie that you're making. Instead of like, I'm hyper fixated on the movie that you're making. I only care about the shot, the image, my line. Can I try that again? It's amazing to be like, I've scripted all of this. You're all in this bubble, this Bergman-esque bubble. Of performance in reality and you just don't care. Like you're just living, you know, like then when I saw something like Zone of Interest. And I was like, why is this movie filmed this way? Like, what do these shots look like? And it's like, oh, they just had cameras all over the house and the actors didn't know. And I'm like, see, that's incredible. Like, that's just an idea of someone being like, what if?

• 1:45:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we surveilled this family.

• 1:45:39Speaker 05

  What if, like, what if I just did this thing that's incredibly obvious? I'm not inventing technology. I'm not like, you know, remaking the wheel. But it's just like, what if we just did it this way? Make a virtue of deficiencies, as Malcolm says in the movie. Like, just do something. We don't have the money to do so much. So why don't we just use? We don't have the money to, you see a scene in a movie where someone goes to see a play. And if something's got to give, for example.

• 1:46:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:46:06Speaker 05

  You know, you have to pay all those people to sit in the room until AI replaces the, the work of SAG actors. Uh, as, as is obviously threatened by the special effects industry. But we had people pay us to be in the movie because we put on a show for them. They bought a ticket. They were cheap. We, you know, this ticket.

• 1:46:23Amanda Dobbins?

  So yeah, how are you publicizing it?

• 1:46:24Speaker 05

  It was Pavement's Instagram and Madder's Instagram and it sold out in 10 minutes.

• 1:46:28Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:46:28Speaker 05

  There was just like two workshop performances, Friday and Saturday. $30, come on. And people were like, what is this? I'm going. And that was it. And they were in the movie and the reality of what was happening was very vague to people. We have cameras everywhere, which is either relevant or not. Some people were like, something's up. Some people were like, I recognize that guy. He's a filmmaker. He's like running around like moving, like talking about the cameras. There must be something going on here. But we did the museum and the musical without announcing that there was a movie. So there's no reason to be like, what's up?

• 1:47:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:47:03Speaker 05

  It's more just like, like people walked into the museum who I vaguely knew and I was just sitting at a table. Because we had three very easy days at the museum and then one very complicated day. And the other days I was at a table, tea, laptop. People would walk in and be like, what are you doing? Like, oh, we're making a movie right now. It's like, what do you mean? It's like, oh, well, that guy over there, talking to those people, that's my friend. He's an actor. He's playing a curator and that other guy is filming them. And they're all mic'd and there's signs up and they're like, what are you doing? And I'm like, nothing. I just hired him to play this character. He's over there doing his own thing. None of that ended up in the thing, but this guy Jay, who plays Peter Delfino, the curator of the museum, is a diehard fan. And we were like, yeah, just come six hours a day, walk around, same costume, same wardrobe.

• 1:47:47Speaker 05

  And just everyone who comes in, introduce yourself as Peter Delfino, curator, just talk to people and just like, get their stories, their stories about the band. And then he's the one presenting the ribbon cutting. And I'm like, I mean, this is, I'm directing the movie, but I'm like mostly just kind of focused on like the cup of tea and, you know, I mean, I left the museum to go record the big picture. It's not like I had to work that hard. I just left for a couple of hours and then came back. So it's not like I was, you know, actually doing anything. But I had done work for months and months. And that's like, kind of an amazing way to work. Like you could just hit record and leave.

• 1:48:22Sean Fennessey?

  How did you afford to get Griffin Newman in the movie?

• 1:48:24Speaker 05

  It's a great question. Blackmail.

• 1:48:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:28Speaker 05

  Severe blackmail.

• 1:48:30Sean Fennessey?

  Very effective.

• 1:48:30Speaker 05

  The good Griffin story is like, we wrapped the movie, the biopic, which features Joe Keery as Malchus, Matt Wolfe as Spiral Stares, Fred Heckinger as Bob, Logan Miller as Mark Eibold, and then Griffin as Steve West, the drummer. And Steve West now is like a burly man, big guy beard. He's a mason. But at the time, he was like, kind of a scrawny, gingery guy. We all went out for pizza when we wrapped. I left to go get something or go to the bathroom. And I come back and Griffin's sitting there with this, the whole cast. And as I sit down, he's going. So the way Warren Beatty renews the rights to Dick Tracy every 10 years is by making these bizarre little pieces of ephemera.

• 1:49:09Sean Fennessey?

  He was blank checking at the table?

• 1:49:11Speaker 05

  He just like, somehow in the five minutes I was gone, he just immediately was like, I need to lock these guys in on the right situation of Dick Tracy. So he's true to himself and, you know. That's beautiful. Griffin fans will be happy to know he was, as our producer said, the latest, he's like, this guy's the latest one every day. He's your friend. Why is he the only one who's not on time? It's like Joe's on time, Heidecker's on time, Schwartzman's on time, this guy's your buddy. Why is he the only one we're waiting for? And I was like, it's the scorpion and the frog. Like he just has to, he just has to go down. But, but he was, he was a very welcome presence.

• 1:49:43Sean Fennessey?

  One last thing about the movie. So this is like a very daring exercise. Feels as much as like a creative expulsion of something as it is like a intellectual exercise. Is any part of it like an audition for a kind of thing you would like to do in the future? Because it is so many different kinds of things.

• 1:50:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, what could that even be?

• 1:50:03Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 1:50:04Speaker 05

  You look like you, I mean, Ty West, he said, no, you're not going to come back from Venice and have somebody say, congratulations on your experimental documentary, here's a job. And he was right.

• 1:50:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you're getting great press though. And I think that this band resonates with so many people who potentially have power to help you make something.

• 1:50:23Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:50:23Sean Fennessey?

  No?

• 1:50:24Speaker 05

  The band does?

• 1:50:25Sean Fennessey?

  No, just people who are fans of the band.

• 1:50:27Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:50:28Sean Fennessey?

  No?

• 1:50:28Speaker 05

  Gen X has no power and no money.

• 1:50:30Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting. Explore that.

• 1:50:32Speaker 05

  We learned while fundraising this movie for two years.

• 1:50:34Amanda Dobbins?

  It's tough.

• 1:50:35Speaker 05

  This is why we have so much baby boomer content. They have the money.

• 1:50:37Sean Fennessey?

  What about elder millennials? Are we more powerful?

• 1:50:40Speaker 05

  That is why the Sufjan musical was on Broadway and the pavement musical was a joke.

• 1:50:44Amanda Dobbins?

  That's tough.

• 1:50:44Sean Fennessey?

  That's great, though. It's great for us. What will we do together? Yeah, how do we leverage this moment?

• 1:50:49Speaker 05

  We don't.

• 1:50:50Sean Fennessey?

  We skip Gen X, that's fine, it's our time.

• 1:50:52Speaker 05

  No, it's not.

• 1:50:52Sean Fennessey?

  That's what Minecraft tells us, it's our time.

• 1:50:54Speaker 05

  Is this true?

• 1:50:55Sean Fennessey?

  I think so. I'm dead serious. This is my big theory.

• 1:50:58Speaker 05

  Oh, go on.

• 1:50:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but we're using it for Sufjan. That's, that's the problem.

• 1:51:01Sean Fennessey?

  I always, always, always point to Seth Rogen. I'm like, Seth Rogen is the one who shows us the way. He was the one who was like, he got taught by one Gen X guy, Judd Apatow, how to make your own industry. And now he like has a tremendous amount of power. He has his own weed business. He produces television shows and movies.

• 1:51:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Makes ceramics.

• 1:51:16Sean Fennessey?

  He's younger than us. Like, and he, he has a, he's younger than me. He has an entrepreneurial state of mind.

• 1:51:22Speaker 05

  I don't know how old he is.

• 1:51:23Sean Fennessey?

  I think he's 41.

• 1:51:24Speaker 05

  So he's in between.

• 1:51:25Sean Fennessey?

  He's in between, yeah.

• 1:51:26Speaker 05

  I see.

• 1:51:26Sean Fennessey?

  And I, and I, you know, I had my famous like meltdown slash celebration of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated movie where I was like, what the fuck is this shit? Like, they just, they're repeating me at nine years old to me at 41 years old. But it worked.

• 1:51:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:40Sean Fennessey?

  So what can we do together? What, how can we make?

• 1:51:42Speaker 05

  Nothing.

• 1:51:42Sean Fennessey?

  Make hay of this.

• 1:51:43Speaker 05

  There's no hay.

• 1:51:44Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:51:44Speaker 05

  We, we tried to raise money for this movie for a year.

• 1:51:47Sean Fennessey?

  But this movie's about guys in their 50s. I'm talking about, what about, what about our 40s? That's, that's the thing I'm pointing to.

• 1:51:51Speaker 05

  But who is that? The Strokes?

• 1:51:53Sean Fennessey?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:51:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:54Speaker 05

  I don't think there's capital in that.

• 1:51:55Sean Fennessey?

  But you're only thinking of music. I'm like, what else, what in the world at large, you know?

• 1:51:59Speaker 05

  You're saying like?

• 1:52:00Sean Fennessey?

  What is the ultimate millennial drama that Alex Ross Perry can author?

• 1:52:04Speaker 05

  I don't even, I don't even know what those words mean. The millennial drama.

• 1:52:08Sean Fennessey?

  Think about it.

• 1:52:09Speaker 05

  But what is that?

• 1:52:09Sean Fennessey?

  How can you be the Bergman of your time?

• 1:52:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:11Sean Fennessey?

  How can you reflect?

• 1:52:12Speaker 05

  But nobody wants that anymore.

• 1:52:13Sean Fennessey?

  I wonder.

• 1:52:14Speaker 05

  The seriousness of that kind of storytelling is so not interesting to people of a certain age.

• 1:52:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's true. That's true.

• 1:52:21Speaker 05

  And I know this because the Broadway show I did see around this time was Stereophonic, which was wonderful. And I love Fleetwood Mac. Like, this is a band I like.

• 1:52:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:29Speaker 05

  And I know the story as well as anybody. And this is Baby Boomer crack, this show. And I was so into it. It was so beautiful. The staging, I think it's coming here. If it comes here, you should 100% see it.

• 1:52:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, Sean doesn't like Fleetwood Mac.

• 1:52:43Sean Fennessey?

  No, that's not true. I just think it's, they're overrated.

• 1:52:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:45Speaker 05

  Okay. Well, this, I mean, you know, this is, this is not literally Fleetwood Mac, but it's, but you like that, you like that era.

• 1:52:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:51Speaker 05

  You could hang for a three hour play about a band, I mean, Almost Famous, like, you would,

• 1:52:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:56Speaker 05

  You would watch this play for three hours, and it is remarkable. But that's, again, I was like, saying to the, during the intermission, I'm like, it's just so funny. Like, this Baby Boomer shit just will never go away. And this guy turns around, like, big white beard, like a tie-dyed bucket hat. And he was like, ah, did you just say, like, it's funny, I just, I was thinking about this show during the first half, like, Baby Boomer art, like, yeah, that's really what this is. And I was like, dude, look at yourself. I just blew your mind with that? Like, what are we talking, like, this is so obvious to me, like, why you would be here, like, grooving on these, like, 70s music narratives for, you know, the 50th straight year. But stuff like that isn't, like, we just, the, the fanbase of the band, they're not putting the money

• 1:53:37Speaker 05

  into the culture. They're, we're, that whole generation is hamstrung by the fact that the Baby Boomers still have the power to tell their own stories.

• 1:53:44Amanda Dobbins?

  And the money and, and the, yeah.

• 1:53:47Sean Fennessey?

  Can I pitch a theory that I just shared with somebody on another podcast?

• 1:53:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, great. We love your secondhand theories.

• 1:53:53Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if this will be used, but it, it, it occurred to me kind of in mid-conversation, and it's related to what we're talking about, which is, just trying to, we were trying to, talking through, like, why the rep theater culture is doing so well, like, at least in big cities in America right now, and how a lot of younger people are showing up for older movies and they're building these relationships to, like, Heat and Thief and, you know, movies that came out 20, 30, 40 years ago. And to me, I started paralleling it to sitting in the car with my dad and the onset of classic rock radio, like classic rock radio becoming a format and arguably like a key format in the sustainability of FM radio through the 80s, 90s and 2000s. And how that music just got bled into our, like, our personal cultural lifestyle as adolescents.

• 1:54:35Sean Fennessey?

  And then we came to accept The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac. These bands mattered to us, even though they had all broken up by the time we were born, basically.

• 1:54:44Speaker 05

  Well, except for those of us that made our own choice and realized Kiss was the ultimate from that era.

• 1:54:47Sean Fennessey?

  There, but that's your version of that. But the fact that that music was sustainable, whereas like Perry Como, Como was not sustainable to my dad, even though his parents loved Perry Como. So.

• 1:54:57Speaker 05

  Well, my dad, my dad worked his whole career for classic rock radio. 1029 Philadelphia's. See, it did matter. Philadelphia's Magic and their TV commercials were Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen, all that stuff. And that was, that was the, you know, that was it growing up. And this was 1993. You know, that music was 20 years old.

• 1:55:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:17Speaker 05

  At the time. And it was classic rock to me. It was classic rock to that generation. The problem is that like, to get analytical here, I agree that this movie culture thing is happening. The weird thing is that my movie culture of what I was hooked on when I was going to the movies seven days a week, when I was 22, 20 through 30, that was all about discovery. All we cared about, all that was being given to us was things that you've never seen before.

• 1:55:44Sean Fennessey?

  You mean like going to film forum?

• 1:55:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:55:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:46Speaker 05

  I would go to film forum and see 35 different Otto Preminger films.

• 1:55:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:51Speaker 05

  Because that was a full retrospective and I had seen four and I needed to see every single one. That is not what programming is anymore.

• 1:55:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's not.

• 1:55:58Speaker 05

  And, and if that happens, it doesn't have the numbers you're describing.

• 1:56:02Sean Fennessey?

  There are strains of it in Los Angeles. Like the, the cinema tech, the American cinema tech will do.

• 1:56:06Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 1:56:07Sean Fennessey?

  A month long sustained program.

• 1:56:08Speaker 05

  These happen. And this happens in New York as well. And people do go. But what you're describing, the boom, is not like people are showing up for Daisy Kenyon and it's sold out.

• 1:56:19Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 1:56:20Speaker 05

  It's more like people are showing up for Thief. And it's like, well, to me, that's just watching cable. Like, I don't need to go to the movies to see the movie I've seen. I always wanted to go to be like- But it's not passive. It's, oh, no, I know it's not.

• 1:56:33Sean Fennessey?

  Definitely not passive.

• 1:56:34Speaker 05

  It's a huge activity.

• 1:56:36Sean Fennessey?

  To me, though, there's a split in the demographics because there are always somewhere between 30 and 50% of the audience is like, just looks like Chris, and they're just so pumped to see Thief for the 300th time. But the other half has never seen it. And I know because I go to idiots all the time. Maggie always asks people, raise your hand if you've never been to idiots or seen this movie before. And half the people raise their hands. And then they just haven't seen Thief. So they are discovering it. It's just not at that, like, sustained, cinephileic, academic approach to movies. It is more like an eventized, emotional exploration.

• 1:57:07Speaker 05

  Which I'm all in favor of. I'm all in favor of it seeming less exclusive.

• 1:57:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:12Speaker 05

  But to this point, like, what's one of the most consistently screened movies? Probably doesn't go two weeks without screening in New York or LA, Possession. But back in the day, it was the complete Zulaski.

• 1:57:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:22Speaker 05

  We were seeing Shaman and On the Silver Globe. And, uh, you know, what's the other one with the great, long title, like?

• 1:57:30Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 1:57:30Speaker 05

  Color, like, Love, Love is the Most Beautiful Thing, Love. It's like, it wasn't about Possession. That was the least relevant part of the Zulaski series. It was about these ones that had never played.

• 1:57:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:40Speaker 05

  That the Prince didn't have subtitles. And it's just different. I mean, it doesn't matter. It's like, it's going pop. It is, which, which is good. Which is the same thing that we're talking about with the legacy of, if this movie's like about one thing other than a band, to me, it's like, it's about the way that these legacies, histories, consumption, media, narratives, change, get codified, get packaged, get sold. That's what the entire biopic portion of this movie is about, which we've not really talked about, even though that's where we throw in a headline of you guys doing an episode on Joe Keery, which is plausible in that if an actor was being tipped for like, this is his moment. Right. You would be like, we need to talk about this because this is a thing.

• 1:58:19Sean Fennessey?

  But in an ironic, unironic-

• 1:58:23Sean Fennessey?

  Post meta point of view, when I watched them, was watching the movie again yesterday, and I was like, Joe Currie is phenomenal in this movie.

• 1:58:29Speaker 05

  He's really, yeah.

• 1:58:30Sean Fennessey?

  Like, just really beautifully walks that line between, I know that I'm satirizing, but I'm also emotionally connected to this performance.

• 1:58:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:58:39Sean Fennessey?

  And so you kinda, kinda did do the thing that you were making fun of midstream.

• 1:58:43Speaker 05

  Like, he's completely the real deal. I mean, I know you love Free Guy, which I guess he's in. I've never seen it.

• 1:58:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's a piece of garbage, but I'm glad he did well.

• 1:58:50Speaker 05

  I only know he's in it because he's in the trailer. What's?

• 1:58:53Sean Fennessey?

  He works at the video game company, I believe.

• 1:58:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:58:57Speaker 05

  In the trailer, there's a shot where he has his feet up on a desk and he goes like this.

• 1:59:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:59:02Speaker 05

  That's all I know about his performance in the movie.

• 1:59:04Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, all, all respect to him, uh, Free Guy sucks.

• 1:59:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't know. He's never mentioned it, except in passing when he mentioned knowing Jodie Comer.

• 1:59:10Sean Fennessey?

  Free Guy is my cynical key in New York, actually. Yeah.

• 1:59:13Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:59:13Sean Fennessey?

  I, I get what it was trying to do and I respect that, but it's terrible.

• 1:59:16Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, but that, that kind of like, you know, cultural snake eating its own tail is just interesting to me. And as I'm sure we prepare, I, I realized this last night, you know, wrapping up with you and Chris, but like, Amanda, what would you say the odds are that six months from now Sean and Chris admit that they cried during the Bruce Springsteen biopic?

• 1:59:34Speaker 05

  Like, two to one?

• 1:59:36Sean Fennessey?

  I was pretty sus of it when I saw the trailer.

• 1:59:38Amanda Dobbins?

  This is the thing is that Sean's heart is like too protected, which is like his own version of, you know, like this moment is coming for him and he doesn't know.

• 1:59:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:59:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, the most fascinating podcast of 2024, in my opinion, was Sean, Chris and Mallory talking about A Complete Unknown.

• 1:59:54Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:59:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And parsing through your feelings and like, which in many ways is the movie that you're parodying.

• 2:00:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:00:02Amanda Dobbins?

  In, in Pavements, like, big time. I mean, there are like multiple Timmy with a guitar just being like, oh my God, now he's watching like, Blow, now he's writing Blowin' in the Wind after banging Joan Baez.

• 2:00:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:00:14Amanda Dobbins?

  But also, sorry.

• 2:00:15Speaker 05

  And we haven't seen it. We haven't seen the movie.

• 2:00:16Amanda Dobbins?

  It was a good scene, but.

• 2:00:18Speaker 05

  In, in Complete Unknown is a good scene, you're saying?

• 2:00:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it was.

• 2:00:21Sean Fennessey?

  You like that scene?

• 2:00:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I like that scene. Yeah. Last night during the Q and A, you were making fun of, you know, that scene. And you, I think you do a perfect setup of it.

• 2:00:30Speaker 05

  The musician sits down and writes.

• 2:00:32Amanda Dobbins?

  But there is, I can be honest about it, and I think the problem with Sean is like, maybe he can't be honest about it.

• 2:00:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's not true.

• 2:00:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Or there's something, like, it's so stupid.

• 2:00:42Sean Fennessey?

  It has not how creativity works.

• 2:00:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It's so stupid. And but when they do it right, and then I'm like, oh, my God, they're playing, you know,

• 2:00:50Sean Fennessey?

  All you're responding to is hearing something that you know that touches you.

• 2:00:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:54Sean Fennessey?

  But that's not cinematic.

• 2:00:55Amanda Dobbins?

  You had that watching the Bob Dylan movie, and you'll have it during the Springsteen movie.

• 2:00:59Sean Fennessey?

  Ah.

• 2:01:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And then you're gonna, you know.

• 2:01:02Sean Fennessey?

  No, the Bruce Springsteen movie is tough one because I'm honestly not, I don't, I don't dislike Bruce Springsteen, but I'm not like a Bruce Springsteen disciple. He's not a person that like influenced my adolescence the way that Bob Dylan did. So I don't come to the table with as much on the line for that one.

• 2:01:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:01:17Sean Fennessey?

  It also.

• 2:01:17Speaker 05

  So maybe the odds are like four to one that you and Chris are gonna be like, look, man, I'm not, I'm not a disciple, but I'm.

• 2:01:22Sean Fennessey?

  Not only will Chris cry, Chris, Nebraska is Chris's favorite album.

• 2:01:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:01:26Sean Fennessey?

  So the whole, the movie is about the writing and production.

• 2:01:29Speaker 05

  I'm just picturing the two of you watching that movie, and it's like the last scene of We Own the Night. And you guys are Joaquin and Wahlberg just holding each other, being like, they're just crying, and you're just like, I love you, man. It's like, I love you, too.

• 2:01:39Sean Fennessey?

  No, that was us at the end of Nosferatu, yeah.

• 2:01:41Speaker 05

  That's depressing.

• 2:01:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:43Speaker 05

  It's possibly the saddest thing I've heard in a long time. I just feel like that's coming for us. I'm like, I watched the entire Bob Marley movie on someone else's seat on a plane last year.

• 2:01:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's a weird movie.

• 2:01:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:54Speaker 05

  And it seemed like the same thing. But it's like, what was the press around that movie that I saw in the New York Times? Here's how they made the wig.

• 2:02:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:02:03Speaker 05

  Like, is that the most, like, here's the press around Pavements in the New York Times. Here's how they made the movie. And it's like, don't we love stuff enough to be like, I don't care about the wig, I don't care how long this guy learned how to play the harmonica to play famous troubadour, Bob Dylan, like, how's the movie? What is the movie about? Like, and I reread the New York Times article from 15 years ago about I'm Not There. It's such a good article, fascinating stuff.

• 2:02:27Sean Fennessey?

  New Yorker, the New Yorker?

• 2:02:28Speaker 05

  No, it was the New York Times. It must have been like a Sunday magazine, it was such a long article.

• 2:02:31Sean Fennessey?

  It was a long Todd Haines piece, I thought it was the New Yorker.

• 2:02:34Speaker 05

  This was a New York Times article. Where his discussion of being told to approach Dylan was so exactly the same as how I was told to approach Malibu. Don't use the word genius, don't use this, don't say that. And I'm just like. This is what, you know, I love about the project of what you guys are always doing is like, what do we want to talk about? Do we want to talk about the thing? Or do we want to talk about like the facetious quality of what this thing is made for? And if you guys were just like analyzing box office and marketing, that would be boring. But what I like is like, can't we talk about the thing? Like, isn't the thing, isn't the creative process more valuable than the set dressing of the dreadlocks?

• 2:03:18Speaker 05

  Or of the prosthetics? Isn't there more to this than that?

• 2:03:22Sean Fennessey?

  I always think that that stuff is worthy of an aside. And so in this format, it's easy for us to say, for one minute, we can talk about the costumes.

• 2:03:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:03:30Sean Fennessey?

  But we don't need to hyper focus. And that's like also about the erosion of the media economy around culture, which is a much longer conversation.

• 2:03:36Speaker 05

  And that's what the movies, that's what the Range Life stuff is about. It's about the erosion of all that. And obviously it's, you know, Joe looks enough like Malcolm X that there is no wig needed. There is no, he's a great musician. There is no training needed, but like.

• 2:03:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Were the clothes really on loan? That was a joke.

• 2:03:50Speaker 05

  Oh, from the mud clothes?

• 2:03:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Was that a joke? Well, not, not the mud clothes, but throughout the wardrobe.

• 2:03:55Speaker 05

  Oh, no, no. The, the thing that Steve West says about the mud clothes is that the ones at the museum.

• 2:04:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:04:00Speaker 05

  That are still dirty from.

• 2:04:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:02Speaker 05

  Are, and one of my biggest regrets is that I wrote on the placard, on loan from the band members. And the day I printed it, I was like, I should say on loan from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

• 2:04:12Speaker 05

  And I was pretty, I was pretty bummed at my, my failure on that one.

• 2:04:15Sean Fennessey?

  You're still thinking of gags from the movie.

• 2:04:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know. There's a couple of other things that I thought of subsequently. And some of which like, including you guys, could be fixed in the edit. But no, none of that. I mean.

• 2:04:27Sean Fennessey?

  Could they get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

• 2:04:29Speaker 05

  You tell me.

• 2:04:30Sean Fennessey?

  I'm a voter.

• 2:04:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you're a voter. Have they ever been on the ballot?

• 2:04:33Sean Fennessey?

  I think that, were they not?

• 2:04:34Speaker 05

  There's no way.

• 2:04:36Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like recently they might have been.

• 2:04:37Speaker 05

  Let me ask this. Has an independent band ever been on the ballot?

• 2:04:40Sean Fennessey?

  Now, that's a very interesting question.

• 2:04:41Speaker 05

  Literally a band that is not affiliated with a major label at all.

• 2:04:45Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, but Matador is so close. I mean, Matador is the 824 of independent labels, you know? It is like, it is so.

• 2:04:53Speaker 05

  Is or was?

• 2:04:54Sean Fennessey?

  At least was in pavement's heyday, for sure. So I.

• 2:04:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't have my phone, or we just pull up your Instagram and look at the ballots.

• 2:05:02Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 2:05:03Speaker 05

  It just seems like one of those things.

• 2:05:04Sean Fennessey?

  They do it differently. If they do it online now, they no longer give you the paper ballot.

• 2:05:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's sad.

• 2:05:07Speaker 05

  It seems like one of those things that much like the way movies are, you know, awards are bought and sold. And you're told by Sean's return from Telluride, here's the movies you have to deal with for the next four months. It just seems like one of those things that you're like, actually like to even get towards the ballot requires like a corporate investment.

• 2:05:25Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't feel that way. I don't, I don't know people in the committee, so I'm not sure.

• 2:05:27Speaker 05

  Are there ever like that level of critics favorite bands that are like numerically irrelevant in the ecosystem of music history?

• 2:05:34Sean Fennessey?

  Well, there's sort of like the old timers list, though, that people like 30, 40 years after their original contention for the Hall of Fame, they then get re-added. You know, they'll be like, oh, we forgot like the Shirelles. So now we gotta add the Shirelles.

• 2:05:46Speaker 05

  MC5, maybe.

• 2:05:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, MC5 is a good example of that. Yeah. So I could see them getting in once all of the baby boomers have died and Gen X is in their 70s.

• 2:05:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:05:56Sean Fennessey?

  And then.

• 2:05:56Speaker 05

  What a day, and what a day that will be.

• 2:05:59Amanda Dobbins?

  People are like, you know.

• 2:06:00Speaker 05

  It'll be like one day until then the Gen X is dead too. It's gone. I'm like, I'm just waiting for the last baby boomer to go. I mean, well, yeah, I would, I would welcome a list of what 90s bands are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Nirvana, obviously. I would, I would welcome.

• 2:06:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Did Beastie Boys make it?

• 2:06:15Speaker 05

  You're the voter.

• 2:06:17Sean Fennessey?

  Did Tribe Called Quest?

• 2:06:18Speaker 05

  I mean, yeah, I should have, I should have put them in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the movie is what we're saying. Yeah.

• 2:06:23Sean Fennessey?

  I think they could get there. Anyhow, we gotta wrap up soon, but before we do it, like you like are an observer of movie culture in addition to being filmmaker. You always have like takes, like you always have takes on the business.

• 2:06:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 2:06:33Speaker 05

  Give us the takes.

• 2:06:34Sean Fennessey?

  What are you holding on to? What do you want to get out?

• 2:06:35Speaker 05

  I mean, we could just read, read, read the text thread.

• 2:06:38Sean Fennessey?

  We do. The epic news and deals texts.

• 2:06:40Speaker 05

  Nothing publicly viable. I mean, it just kind of feels, I feel bad saying this to you guys. This is like telling a kid there's no Santa Claus, but it's just like, it feels like it's over. It just feels, it just feels oppressive. It feels bad. Because creativity is not valued in the ecosystem in the way that I think it should be. I don't really know what I'm saying with that, but it just feels like when you spiral, I'm like, finally some truth. And then a week later, you're like, just kidding, we're back. Minecraft. No, like someone put something in Sean's water. He's like, all happy again. I just feel like, um, like the studio stuff is just like, it just feels over.

• 2:07:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:17Speaker 05

  Obviously there's beacons of hope.

• 2:07:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Such as?

• 2:07:20Speaker 05

  Well, like when something cool is successful.

• 2:07:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:07:23Speaker 05

  Like Sean, I mean, I don't think I go 24 hours without getting a text from Sean about Sinner's box office.

• 2:07:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, yeah, yeah, you really are.

• 2:07:30Speaker 05

  It's just like, guys, have you seen these Wednesday numbers?

• 2:07:34Sean Fennessey?

  You reveal too much. Amanda doesn't have to hear about those things anymore because I can just share them with you and David.

• 2:07:40Amanda Dobbins?

  You still text them.

• 2:07:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:41Amanda Dobbins?

  You send some of them. Yeah, not as much as I do.

• 2:07:43Sean Fennessey?

  But I get no response from you and I know I can get some engagement over here.

• 2:07:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's when you sent it to me and Chris and I'm like, well, Chris can deal with this, like, contextless screenshot of the top 10 Netflix movies that you sent me at like Wednesday at 8 p.m.

• 2:07:55Speaker 05

  Sean does the work when he's, even when he's never off the clock.

• 2:07:58Sean Fennessey?

  I'm never off the clock.

• 2:07:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you don't send those to me either. You just send me memes.

• 2:08:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:08:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I do, but they're good memes.

• 2:08:03Speaker 05

  So whenever I make a Sean meme on the group chat, I send it to you with no context.

• 2:08:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, exactly.

• 2:08:08Speaker 05

  So you don't understand what led up.

• 2:08:10Amanda Dobbins?

  But I have the context of having lived through the event that inspired the memes, so I can kind of get it.

• 2:08:14Speaker 05

  But like with no understanding of what we were talking about.

• 2:08:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:17Speaker 05

  I feel like, to answer the question somewhat seriously, like, what worries me as a vaguely impartial participant.

• 2:08:25Sean Fennessey?

  You're not, but okay.

• 2:08:25Speaker 05

  Is like, it's becoming the same problem with American politics, where there's two parties and nobody thinks that they actually represent the best of what people want. And the problem is that like the so-called independent hope of the last decade seems like all those companies are upgrading themselves and getting out of the business of what they've built, which is obviously a huge problem because it creates a hole in the ecosystem.

• 2:08:49Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:08:50Speaker 05

  This movie's being released by Utopia, a company I think does a lot of good work. After A24 and Neon, I don't know what people would say is third in the ecosystem of independent film distribution, in the way that there is no third in political parties.

• 2:09:08Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mean, it is.

• 2:09:08Speaker 05

  And everybody in America knows that's a fucking disaster.

• 2:09:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:12Speaker 05

  It's a huge disaster to be like, there's, there's bad and there's less bad. And then there's 45% of nothing. And then there's like some other options you can use. And if the, if the parties get too big and they don't speak to the interests of the people that supported them. I'm talking about movies now.

• 2:09:28Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:09:29Speaker 05

  If the companies get too big and they don't speak to the interests of people who supported them, then who's left? Because they've now, they've ruined the ecosystem.

• 2:09:36Sean Fennessey?

  It's possible that it can't be rebuilt. And I don't mean to be like a mouthpiece for studio executives, but the impression that I've gotten in the last two years or so is that they realized that they kind of fucked it. And that they're trying in some ways to DIP and to become less reliant on the thing that got everybody so fat over the previous 25 years. Whether or not they can actually accomplish it, I don't know. I, I do think the, whatever is happening at Warner Brothers and Universal, those are two companies that are trying to basically turn back to 1990s, 80s, 70s, where it's like it's filmmaker focused. It's original stuff. I don't know if that's actually going to be sustainable at the scale that we're used to. And they're, they're not going to stop making IP movies. That's not what I'm suggesting.

• 2:10:18Sean Fennessey?

  But there's at least an awareness that the bloat of 2002 through 2019 was never sustainable and the international money was never sustainable. So whether or not studio system can be fixed, I don't know. You're right, though, that A24 Neon are like, we could and probably will try to get bigger. And that takes a lot of independent movies off the board.

• 2:10:41Speaker 05

  What was like, maybe focus, but like one of those companies that like, the movies just got bigger and bigger. And then they just kind of like toppled and went away. You know, like a Paramount, like those companies just end up getting too big for their britches. And they realized they're outspending their resources and they're not meeting market demands. And like, this is the move, like, speaking of this movie, like, we all just want to be 1997. Right? Like, we want it to. Yes. The thing that I, the thing that just doesn't exist. And this minted all of your heroes. Uh, Virgin Suicides to Lost in Translation, Bottle Rocket to Rushmore to Royal Tenenbaums, Hard Eight to Boogie, what, what we don't have is like, nobody saw your movie. It's kind of a disaster. Critics liked it. Here's 15 times the amount of money.

• 2:11:26Speaker 05

  Try again. And then everyone's like, generational masterpiece. Like, no, not a lot of money.

• 2:11:32Sean Fennessey?

  You're right.

• 2:11:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're right.

• 2:11:33Sean Fennessey?

  That is the exact kind of searing insight that you always bring.

• 2:11:35Speaker 05

  All the things I just said, you know, those are modest swings.

• 2:11:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:39Speaker 05

  And the, the, the, the success, the dividends on those movies will last 100 years. Because it was just like, I mean, what does Rushmore cost? $10 million with Royal Tenenbaums, 20? Like, these movies will last until the end of time.

• 2:11:51Sean Fennessey?

  There are, there are some, like, I, like, Emma Seligman is somebody who I feel like is on a more traditional trajectory. She made a super small movie with a friend, and she made a slightly bigger movie for a studio. It didn't perform maybe as well as they wanted it to, but she's somebody who, like, in theory, could keep building at the right scale.

• 2:12:07Speaker 05

  Right, but that's a scale, that's a different scale, because all the things I listed, like, those first movies were studio movies. Those weren't produced and then acquired. Somebody let Wes make Bottle Rocket at Columbia, that someone was James L. Brooks.

• 2:12:19Sean Fennessey?

  Right, right.

• 2:12:20Speaker 05

  It was a disaster.

• 2:12:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:22Speaker 05

  And then within two years, it was like, what's your next dream? Forget about the disaster. And this is just, this just doesn't happen anymore. And that, that was the thing that made all of our heroes.

• 2:12:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:33Speaker 05

  Everyone we love from our lifetime.

• 2:12:35Sean Fennessey?

  There was a loose change division in studio filmmaking that doesn't really exist anymore.

• 2:12:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, and, and, you know, there's just too much money at stake to be like, go make Rushmore for $10 million. Or like, go make this for like, a little bit of money. Oh, Oscar nomination, like, now what do you want to do? And as I always like to complain, uh, she's a great example. I'm a great example, like, listen up, Philip, Sundance 2014. If that was 2004, by two years later, I would have made a $10 million movie of my complete desire. This doesn't exist anymore. Like, we just missed the boat on like, let's, let's nurture, let's build up. Because it just becomes like, what, what job do you want to get? And spending four years making something as deranged as this is like, just, look, I can like, do my own thing. This is creatively fulfilling, which ultimately is what matters.

• 2:13:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:24Speaker 05

  It's not financially rewarding at all, but we never made the movie for more than like, seven days at a time. So I didn't really have to miss too much family time.

• 2:13:33Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 2:13:33Speaker 05

  Obviously, the musical took weeks and weeks, but every day of rehearsals, I left in time for dinner. Because again, I was doing very little. And then I was like, all right, well, it's the week of the show. I will not be home for dinner this week. And that's that. And the week of the Range Life shoot with Joe and the guys, it's like, I will not be home this week. But every week of prep, I was home for pickup, for dinner, because I wasn't working that hard. And that's the inspiration of Malcolmus is like, I have a thousand complex ideas that might approach brilliance or insanity. I'm just gonna work at them like 70%. And then like when I need to, I'm gonna go above and beyond. And for him, that's when he's on stage. And for me, I'm like, all right, this is my week to like, actually lock in. And I'm just going to like, give it 50% for another month. And then I'm gonna like, really lock in again.

• 2:14:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:16Speaker 05

  And he's very inspiring.

• 2:14:17Sean Fennessey?

  The time is sending memes of me.

• 2:14:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, this is pre that. But now, now, now my life is much richer because of the meme, because of the meme work. But I don't know, it just feels like that's a big problem. And something like you're saying, what does this lead to? It's like, historically, big things. Now, like, nothing leads to anything. Like, I left the agent I'd been with since Listen Up Philip was at Sundance, specifically because there's no path into like, you want to work on a Hollywood movie, you want to work on a studio film. And I was just like, I want to get off this treadmill. I can't do this anymore. Like, this is no interest. As a writer, yes, that's all I do. As a director, who care, like, this is what I want to direct.

• 2:14:57Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 2:14:58Speaker 05

  Like, stupid stuff where I'm making films in public with audiences that pay to be in my movie. I want to like, break the rules and break the form. I don't want to make like, pablum. And like, you know, nobody wants to do that. Everyone who grew up my age wanted to be all these heroes. And some people get to do that, but I'm just nervous that the system is not going to continue to be even remotely supportive of something that gives anybody the chance. Right? Like, just because money is getting harder to unlock. Like, no one's working, no one's making anything. I have so many friends, producers, five, six projects, they can't get anything. They have actors attached, they have locations, they just can't get the money. No one's giving the money. This is unfortunate. And I say

• 2:15:41Speaker 05

  to people, what's your advice? Well, who do you want to release your movie? They say, so send them the script and see if they want to make it now. I did, they passed on it. Don't make the movie. Like, I'm sorry to say it, but like, you, you will lose your money. Don't make the movie now. If the company who you want to release it won't make it, they're not going to buy it later. But they could just buy it now. Or if they do, they're going to buy it for a third, or a quarter, or a fifth of what you spent on it. And that's bad business. And bad business doesn't lead to more business. So like, a Sinner's, that's an anomaly. We love anomalies. Independent anomalies, it's like, I mean, you do the math, like, two years of Sundance, like,

• 2:16:22Speaker 05

  75 narrative films, documentaries, 100, like, five sales, 10 sales, like, people aren't talking about that enough. That's very bad. Not for those movies. It's just bad for business. And like, to have a very strange music film documentary, you know, there's dozens of these, hundreds a year, maybe. Premiere, Venice, where of course Amanda has a great time and I had a less great time. Just very, very hot and a lot of issues there, but.

• 2:16:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Logistically, it can be complicated. Yeah.

• 2:16:56Speaker 05

  But now you know what to do with your kids. And I told you about the camp there.

• 2:16:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Oh, they're not coming?

• 2:17:00Speaker 05

  Well, there's a camp for them.

• 2:17:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:17:02Speaker 05

  I told you, there's a camp.

• 2:17:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but we didn't, you didn't tell me which island.

• 2:17:06Speaker 05

  It's on the Lido.

• 2:17:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 2:17:07Speaker 05

  You drop them off, you walk to where the movies are. It's literally down the street from the movies.

• 2:17:12Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 2:17:13Speaker 05

  You know, that's very validating to be like, music documentaries don't go there. They don't play at the New York Film Festival. They don't even get released in theaters. We don't get like, maybe one screening. And so it's, it's an absurd privilege to have finished this thing exactly as we want it, for half the money we needed.

• 2:17:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You're really turning the boat around. You were ending this episode in a really down note. So please have some gratitude for your greatness.

• 2:17:34Speaker 05

  Talk about the industry negative, talk about myself. I feel very, I feel very, very fortunate. Because the thing's being released, like, and because of the Film Forum in New York, like, it's an exclusive, eight or 10 week theatrical, because Film Forum still requires that. So we get to have screenings like last night and. Throughout the next couple of weeks, throughout the country, and that's a privilege for any movie, but for a music documentary that was made not to be a music documentary, but to be like, this is a film. This is a film created as a film, not as like a piece of promotional content for the brand, for the back catalog. It's a real privilege, but um, you know, like, maybe I earned it by having done this for 15 years. Maybe I earned it by riding the coattails of an iconic band.

• 2:18:16Speaker 05

  But regardless, like, this didn't create a sustainable model for anything. Like, I hope no one's inspired by this movie, because it will lead them to, you need.

• 2:18:24Sean Fennessey?

  You just said it's important to be inspired by dumb shit.

• 2:18:26Speaker 05

  Exactly, yeah. Well, I hope someone hates it and they get inspired to make something. But yeah, people are like, man, like, they really just not the pavement movie I wanted, or it's like, well, then make your own pavement movie to the, to the next series.

• 2:18:39Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not sure there will be another pavement movie after this movie.

• 2:18:41Speaker 05

  Well, no, because we put all five of them in one.

• 2:18:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you can, you did it all.

• 2:18:45Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Alex, thank you so much.

• 2:18:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, congratulations.

• 2:18:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Congratulations.

• 2:18:48Speaker 05

  Thank you for having me. Lovely to see you both, as always, and happy to be here for my, like, you know, sixth physical in-person space.

• 2:18:57Sean Fennessey?

  What number are we on, though? Is this nine?

• 2:18:58Speaker 05

  Of episodes? Well, that I'm not prepared to answer.

• 2:19:00Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not either. Anyway, uh, thanks, Alex. Go see Pavements.

• 2:19:09Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Alex Ross Perry. Thanks to Bobby Wagner. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders. We'll be back later this week with the next entry in our 25 for 25 series. Any, any hints you want to provide?

• 2:19:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm so excited. I was like, and my, I would say that my excitement is, like, maybe doesn't cor- no, it does correspond.

• 2:19:28Sean Fennessey?

  So you have revisited it?

• 2:19:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:19:29Sean Fennessey?

  I'm revisiting it right after this.

• 2:19:31Amanda Dobbins?

  And I was just like, this is, I like, I, I was just like, I love us. I love that we're doing this. I really, this makes me so happy, which is when you guys find out what a movie is, is awesome.

• 2:19:42Sean Fennessey?

  What a great tease. We'll see you then.

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