‘The Studio’ Makes Hollywood Look Cool Again. Plus, ‘Dope Thief.’

Chris and Andy talk about the news that Amy Pascal and David Heyman have been chosen to produce the next James Bond movies for Amazon and what that could mean for the future of that franchise (03:17). Then they talk about the new Seth Rogen series, ‘The Studio,’ and how this show succeeds at the difficult task of making a show about making things (28:25). Finally, they talk about the new Apple TV+ series ‘Dope Thief,’ a crime show sort of set in Philadelphia that stars Brian Tyree Henry (44:31). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Senior Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production and Editing: Jon Jones 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.

• 0:00Chris Ryan?

  This episode of The Watch is brought to you by Coffee Mate. Coffee Mate has been searching the globe for flavors that pair perfectly with coffee. So when they heard the new season of HBO's original series, The White Lotus, was set in Thailand, they were inspired to brew up two new flavored creamers, Thai Ice Coffee and Pina Colada flavored creamers. They're available for a short time only, so for the love of coffee, go try them now.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  I need support staff to clear the room.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Stand up and walk now.

• 0:29Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com and joining me in the studio, perfecting his Philadelphia accent for Apple TV, it's Andrew Greenwald.

• 0:43Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know why you say that. That was not a barrier for entry into Dope Thief, having one.

• 0:48Chris Ryan?

  We're gonna talk about Dope Thief. We're gonna talk about the studio, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's new show, both on Apple TV+. We went to just like a little bit of a survey of the old Apple TV project. It's great to see you. We're recording a little early, so if any Signal chats get leaked, I don't, you know, we're not maybe gonna be the most timely pod this week, but it's great to see you again.

• 1:07Andy Greenwald?

  Prayer hands emoji.

• 1:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, so you also want to say like, I feel like you should, you should tell the people why we're not covering the pit this week.

• 1:17Chris Ryan?

  It's not we're not covering the pit this week. We can chat about it if you want.

• 1:20Andy Greenwald?

  I just was worried that like maybe big insurance companies had.

• 1:23Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, pharma got to me.

• 1:25Andy Greenwald?

  I think maybe they got to you finally.

• 1:27Chris Ryan?

  The only people who are getting really well off of the pit is, I have never been more from going from, I have no idea what this thing is to, it's the only thing I think about is I O drills.

• 1:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:41Chris Ryan?

  What the fuck are those, man? Would they do those?

• 1:43Andy Greenwald?

  Well, did you Google it or you just want to like riff on? I feel, this is a non spoiler conversation, but for people who have not been watching the pit, you know, I think people who've watched medical shows or perhaps been inside of hospitals or even had medical treatments understand that often you get like an IV line, right? Like maybe dev drugs put in or saline or blood drawn, right?

• 2:04Andy Greenwald?

  In a.

• 2:04Chris Ryan?

  Sometimes that happens after a late night in East London. Just get a little.

• 2:08Andy Greenwald?

  You go get a drip?

• 2:09Chris Ryan?

  Get a little I O drill.

• 2:11Andy Greenwald?

  Well, so during a traumatic, like we don't have time to do this like gracefully situation on the pit, they just start taking what appears to be like.

• 2:20Chris Ryan?

  A Black and Decker power drill.

• 2:21Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. And just going in for the main vein, like right in the arm.

• 2:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:27Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it seems to be effective. I like, so is your, are you staunchly opposed?

• 2:35Chris Ryan?

  Uh, no, I'm pretty into it, but I would need to be completely under anesthesia.

• 2:39Andy Greenwald?

  Intubated.

• 2:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like, I want to be intubated. I want to be out if that's happening to me. Um, yeah, we were, I mean, like, the pit, I think we've talked about a couple of weeks in a row, uh, in detail. I think maybe we could, we can save it for next week if you'd like.

• 2:52Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 2:52Chris Ryan?

  We'll be remote, but you know, like, it's, it's still.

• 2:55Andy Greenwald?

  I'll still feel close to you. We love, and we love the pit and we love this week's episode, but we're getting this one out a little early.

• 2:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so a couple of things for Apple as we round into this conversation about Dope Thief and, uh, and the studio. Um, two shows that I think we're incredibly affectionate about, by the way.

• 3:09Andy Greenwald?

  We are. This is going to be a pro. Do we want to do any other news before we get into Apple?

• 3:13Chris Ryan?

  Well, I mean, if you want to talk a little bit about, um.

• 3:16Andy Greenwald?

  The Malcolm in the Middle revival?

• 3:17Chris Ryan?

  No, let's talk about James Bond.

• 3:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:20Chris Ryan?

  Uh, James Bond, which was a story that we didn't get really that deep into, but was, Amazon bought out, uh, Barbara Broccoli, who had long been the steward after her father passed away, Albert Broccoli, who was sort of like the long-term caretaker and producer of these Ian Fleming novels and the, the character James Bond. He's the one who sort of popularized it with all the Sean Connery films, Barbara Broccoli.

• 3:45Andy Greenwald?

  And Michael Wilson.

• 3:46Chris Ryan?

  And Michael Wilson had taken over for, it was a family business, essentially.

• 3:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 3:51Chris Ryan?

  And I, I think for our listeners, like, you know, there's this story where it's like, Jeff Bezos just bought Barbara Broccoli out. Like, it was just like, what's the number that get you to go away? So I can start making money penny spinoffs. There's that part of it. There's also this, uh, story about like turning the page in the way Hollywood used to function, which was a lot of like relationships, business, glad handing, family businesses, people kind of coming up through the ranks, et cetera. There were different kinds of characters you would encounter on different kinds of, uh, franchises that people who stewarded them.

• 4:25Andy Greenwald?

  It's funny that we're talking about this the same day we're talking about the studio. I feel like the tendrils of that conversation are going to be throughout the podcast.

• 4:31Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and so. What happened was, I mean, obviously, like, the Amazon bought out Barbara Broccoli for control over-

• 4:38Andy Greenwald?

  This Michael Wilson erasure.

• 4:39Chris Ryan?

  I'm sorry, it's just easier for me to say broccoli. I mean, does Michael Wilson, like-

• 4:43Andy Greenwald?

  They're brother and sister.

• 4:44Chris Ryan?

  Cool, yeah. I feel like the Broccolis are like the ones that you think of when you think of James Bond, right?

• 4:50Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, just because the name is cool.

• 4:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:52Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 4:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm not doing 60 Minutes here, I'm just trying to get through the story as fast as possible.

• 4:57Andy Greenwald?

  I just feel like behind every broccoli, there's a Wilson.

• 5:03Chris Ryan?

  But we're fucking reenacting The Insider here, because you're like, say his name! What about Michael Wilson?

• 5:08Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know what he's got on you. I just feel like maybe you're compromised. American flag, prayer hands emoji.

• 5:13Chris Ryan?

  Um, so, my point was more that there is like this goodbye to the way things used to be with these long-

• 5:20Andy Greenwald?

  They're step siblings.

• 5:21Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 5:23Andy Greenwald?

  You're so mad at me right now.

• 5:26Chris Ryan?

  You interrupted me three times, why don't you take it from here?

• 5:28Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, go ahead.

• 5:29Chris Ryan?

  My point was really more that, uh, the personal touch, the idea of it, something being a family heirloom, like-

• 5:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 5:37Chris Ryan?

  That kind of thing is kind of going by the wayside. It would be very easy for the next big headline to come out of this is like, "Amazon to Feed James Bond Into Its Proprietary AI And Spit Out 4,700 New Spinoffs Of It And Like An Animated Series And A Prequel Show And The Russo's Are Gonna Make This Or Whatever."

• 5:58Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:59Chris Ryan?

  And instead, we got almost an old-school like, "Hey, we know you guys must all think we're new-tech charlatans taking this over. We're gonna kind of assuage that fear by who they brought on to produce the next iteration of James Bond."

• 6:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and it's pretty shocking. So the announcement, I mean, it was leaked a little bit last week, but it was officially confirmed today that Amazon is bringing on Amy Pascal and David Heyman. Together to shepherd the property in whatever forms it might take. And for people who aren't familiar with these names, Amy Pascal was formerly the head of Sony Pictures. And then after the hack and all that, sort of golden parachuted into a career as one of the most successful producers in history. In charge of the Sony Spider-verse movies.

• 6:48Chris Ryan?

  And she particularly will come up during our studio conversation.

• 6:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I think she might, as well as more prestigious fare like Greta Gerwig's Little Women.

• 6:58Andy Greenwald?

  And David Heyman is also like pound for pound, in the sense of the British pound. One of, if not the most successful producers of the 21st century, produced the Harry Potter films. Producing the Harry Potter television series. And so thus someone that I now know. And as well as producing like Alfonso Cuarón's movies, not just his Harry Potter movie, but also Gravity. He produced Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for Tarantino. These two are incredibly unique figures. Because there aren't very many unique figures left in Hollywood. These are executives who are as known for their creative touch, as well as their financial acumen.

• 7:40Andy Greenwald?

  They're known for their particular idiosyncrasies and and style, both personal and professional. And they are widely respected and they are people who are, I think.

• 7:53Andy Greenwald?

  Among the very few remaining avatars of what you were saying, a relationships business. What's interesting about this is that, at least to my knowledge, and we're just talking about this off the announcement. I don't know if they have a relationship. They are both used to running their own fiefdoms. And I would be very interested to learn if.

• 8:13Andy Greenwald?

  Some of the some of the bullet points on the deal. Are they doing separate projects within the Bond verse?

• 8:21Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 8:22Andy Greenwald?

  Like, is Amy Pascal in charge of the. Universe expansion and David Heyman is in charge of the next Bond movie?

• 8:30Chris Ryan?

  Which is, Matt Bellany has talked about this, the rumor is that Cuarón will is being lined up to do it.

• 8:35Andy Greenwald?

  So for example. Did they first approach Amy Pascal and then they and then Corron and Hayman were a package deal for the movie? We don't know. It also might not be relevant. But it is very interesting that like the only story of recent times that this reminds me of, and I'm glad we're talking about the studio today because this is a little bit the town inside baseball stuff, was a year and a half ago when David Zaslove went to Cannes and like asked Grayden Carter how to host an industry party because he wanted to and he bought Robert Evans's house. And he was basically like, I am going to either cosplay or just attempt to rest the mantle of an old style mogul.

• 9:15Andy Greenwald?

  This is the first move in the new streaming tech version of Hollywood that we are all now living in, that it seemed like someone was trying to reach backwards to to maintain some continuity. And Bond itself is maybe the right property for this because Bond is a classy, old school figure.

• 9:34Chris Ryan?

  So in lots of cases, retrograde, you know what I mean? I mean, I think that the Daniel Craig films put a kind of primer coat of prestige on those movies that they maybe lacked before. I mean, obviously, I'm a relatively big fan of the entire James Bond franchise. I have my favorites and the ones that I think are silly and ones I think are just straight up bad. But I was not a super big fan of Pierce Brosnan's 007 movies and

• 10:05Andy Greenwald?

  The Pierce Brosnan video game we were fans of.

• 10:07Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I will do a three hour podcast about that, whatever you would like.

• 10:11Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, great.

• 10:12Chris Ryan?

  If you want to do.

• 10:14Andy Greenwald?

  I think you should go back to Philly, go to your mom's house and dig up the Nintendo 64 and then we'll podcast in the middle of the night.

• 10:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and so, but the last couple of films, while also having some turkeys in there, like Spectre and and honestly, No Time to Die, I thought was quite poor to use a Seanism.

• 10:35Chris Ryan?

  I think that move, those movies gave this project like this a little bit more of a crown jewel. Now, we should also say globally, and especially in England, it is a crown jewel. It is considered, who's going to be playing next Bond is something people bet on. It's something that's talked about in the British press a lot. I think it's a very durable, global franchise, so I completely understand why it's of note. But to me, it's this secondary story. We think it's going to be.

• 11:04Chris Ryan?

  Brought down to, everything good?

• 11:07Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm?

• 11:07Chris Ryan?

  Okay. We think-

• 11:08Andy Greenwald?

  But, sorry, I thought that was your phone sitting on the- Are we on video? There was just a phone on the table and I was like-

• 11:14Chris Ryan?

  We can cut here-

• 11:15Andy Greenwald?

  I was like, Chris, that's so rude. You left your phone on the table.

• 11:17Chris Ryan?

  Um, I think the secondary story is more interesting where it's the assumption that Amazon is going to take everything out of it that they can by feeding it through some some machine and in fact, they go and get two of the more-

• 11:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 11:33Chris Ryan?

  Heralded, old school producers to be the shepherds of the project.

• 11:37Andy Greenwald?

  Look, I mean, I don't, we are not here to glaze the Jeff Bezos Corporation. I shopped at Whole Foods this morning and I, now I can't afford to shop again. So I'm not really here to like, to pretend that they know what they're doing or that they have the consumer best interest at heart. That said, if anyone is paying attention to the industry, there is, there are plenty of cautionary tales of franchise management, of how you can win the headlines and you can win the trades by securing the rights to something that has some residual curating fan affection and then you can squander it or certainly, uh, best case, really not recoup your initial investment.

• 12:19Andy Greenwald?

  And you could look at Amazon's own, uh, The Tolkien Package, which, you know, that show is fine and people like it, but they didn't spend that much money to have something that was fine, that people kind of like. It kind of slipped between the cracks of our travel schedules last month, but we didn't really talk about Kathy Kennedy retiring-

• 12:38Chris Ryan?

  But not-

• 12:39Andy Greenwald?

  Lucasfilm, but not-

• 12:40Chris Ryan?

  She didn't. She did that whole interview with Mike Fleming on Deadline and she was like, I'm not leaving.

• 12:45Andy Greenwald?

  I did not see that.

• 12:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:47Andy Greenwald?

  Really?

• 12:47Chris Ryan?

  She, I think she was like, I will leave when it's time and we are talking about the next generation of leadership here. But I think she was like, the, like, news of my death is greatly exaggerated.

• 12:57Andy Greenwald?

  Did anybody storm the rotunda in Burbank?

• 13:01Andy Greenwald?

  Like, stop the steal at Lucasfilm?

• 13:05Chris Ryan?

  Wow.

• 13:06Andy Greenwald?

  Um, okay, regardless.

• 13:09Chris Ryan?

  Well, I don't know what the truth of the matter is. Her statement was like, it's not going to be for like at least a year.

• 13:15Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I mean, there won't be a movie next year either, so that's fine, but um.

• 13:19Chris Ryan?

  No, they got Grogu coming. She's staying for Grogu.

• 13:21Andy Greenwald?

  Grogu coming.

• 13:23Chris Ryan?

  You got a goofy little energy today. Could I tell you that?

• 13:26Andy Greenwald?

  You think, ah, my, my, I had to wake up really early, so the caffeine's hitting at different times.

• 13:32Andy Greenwald?

  The point being, it is not, it is not necessarily a slam dunk to be like, we are a forward facing media company with multiple outlets now, and we can um strip this thing for parts. And we can make TV shows and we can make movies. Star Wars has shown us that is not necessarily the case. So, a smarter move would probably be to put a lot of money into maintaining or improving upon the status quo first, which is to say, you don't start with a money penny.

• 14:02Chris Ryan?

  No, you gotta get the flagship.

• 14:04Andy Greenwald?

  Get, get on going again. And so they, I guess they do seem to understand that. But um, look, a lot of what we're gonna say going forward, and we can turn the page and talk for about the Apple stuff, I think, is about how regardless of how bullish you feel about the future of entertainment or of television, no matter how swamped I think I personally feel, and maybe you do too, about the number of shows coming out in the next six to eight weeks that I'm legitimately excited about, and suddenly it's like.

• 14:29Chris Ryan?

  I felt that way for the last month.

• 14:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's boom times in that way. Regardless of all of that, like, it is a fundamentally different business than it was two years ago, four years ago, certainly 10 years ago. And so I, for that reason alone, this hiring does stand out and is interesting to me. Like, I can't pretend to be um, I cannot pretend to be neutral about this because I have had a personal or business interactions with both of these producers, and I find them both really memorable people.

• 14:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:59Andy Greenwald?

  And really good at what they do in a way that stands out. So I'm very interested how that collaboration between them works and what it might mean for Amazon's attempt to preserve something, not just iterate and profit from something.

• 15:14Chris Ryan?

  Be funny if, if, you know, you're talking about the division of labor, if like Amy Pascal had the Felix lighter show.

• 15:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Chris Ryan?

  Like, they divided it, it's like, both sides of the Atlantic get a say now.

• 15:24Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, shh.

• 15:26Chris Ryan?

  The special relish, you know?

• 15:29Andy Greenwald?

  Don't give this away anymore. Stop talking. That would be fire.

• 15:32Chris Ryan?

  It would be kinda fire. Cause you know, the intelligence committee is in the news this week, but if they did, basically like two liburors.

• 15:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, but, but they had, they existed in the same.

• 15:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Andy Greenwald?

  Five Eyes universe.

• 15:47Chris Ryan?

  Basically like Felix Slater and their Bond and M and Q over here. But then they worked on stuff, but it was also like, got a little, got a little bit of tension between the two sides.

• 15:59Andy Greenwald?

  And then they formed like, super.

• 16:01Chris Ryan?

  Like a.

• 16:02Andy Greenwald?

  You could, you could call it NATO. And everyone would be like, this is fantasy show is wild.

• 16:09Andy Greenwald?

  You see what we're doing?

• 16:09Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 16:11Andy Greenwald?

  That's sick.

• 16:12Chris Ryan?

  Get Dave on the phone, man. Tell him I got some ideas.

• 16:15Andy Greenwald?

  I got the laptop open.

• 16:17Chris Ryan?

  All right, let's talk a little bit about Apple. Um, Apple is coming off of what is at least, I would say, however you want to define it commercially, I, it's impossible to with Apple. But critically, I would say Severance broadly was a success. The, the second season was a success.

• 16:35Andy Greenwald?

  I, I don't think there's any question.

• 16:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:36Andy Greenwald?

  It was a success for what they are doing and it'll be rewarded, it'll feel even more so when it is rewarded at the Emmys.

• 16:41Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, that's a good point. And then also I would say generally speaking, they have had a run of shows that really pushed like my, my concept of like the bubble and how many people are watching something versus how many people are tweeting about it and writing about it and talking about it online. And maybe like bringing it up casually. I mean, this is where like living in Los Angeles gets a little bit heady because you're like, do people watch Shrinking or is Shrinking just like talked about a lot, you know?

• 17:11Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 17:12Chris Ryan?

  So in any case, I would say Apple is definitely on an upswing. As Severance was wrapping up its second season, a story came out in a, um, Tech and finance publication called The Information that got aggregated widely. That was based on two people familiar with the situation told The Information that Apple was losing a billion dollars a year on its Apple TV plus project. Where now you can account for that being money paid on content, whatever it is, money spent on content. But that was, that was the sort of takeaway is that Apple's TV plus is a, is like a big money loser for their company. Now, Apple obviously makes iPhones, they make computers, they make lots of hardware

• 17:57Chris Ryan?

  that people need to replace every two or three years. And so they print money essentially over there.

• 18:03Andy Greenwald?

  You pointing to my new MacBook Air?

• 18:04Chris Ryan?

  I just, I thought I'd.

• 18:05Andy Greenwald?

  So where's the camera?

• 18:08Andy Greenwald?

  Paid for it, but.

• 18:09Chris Ryan?

  We won't have that low hum of like.

• 18:10Andy Greenwald?

  It's negotiable.

• 18:11Chris Ryan?

  Spiritualized late period feedback.

• 18:15Andy Greenwald?

  My computer was so old. So is wheezing on the table. Yeah. I mean, look, anecdotally, we and many people have been saying this for years, that, that the entertainment project was a lark for them. Right? Like it was not in any way relevant to their bottom line as a company. The number is staggering when you hear it that way, but I, I guess the argument would be that internally, I don't think Tim Cook thinks of that billion dollars as a loss. I think he thinks of it as a spend.

• 18:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Andy Greenwald?

  And.

• 18:46Chris Ryan?

  It's just the price he pays to tweet at Ben Stiller and get a response.

• 18:51Andy Greenwald?

  Apparently you can do that for free from what I've been hearing. That he, that, that they feel that, you know, having Jason Sudeikis's face on every screen in every Apple store from Bangor to Bangalore like that. Do you think there's one in Bangor? Do you think that worked?

• 19:11Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if there's one in Bangor. There's certainly one like in the greater Portland, Maine area.

• 19:14Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah. Okay.

• 19:16Chris Ryan?

  Well, I wonder how many Apple stores are on Maine? There's like seven in Clendale.

• 19:19Andy Greenwald?

  You know, you know who could tell us? Tim Simons. Right now, he's pulling to the side of the road and, or he's just dictating to Siri. Guys, there's one.

• 19:30Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, there is value in what they are doing for them. But in the larger scheme of things, it is both incomprehensible how much money that is. And then also, it is completely asymmetrical because very few of its legacy competitors can lose a billion dollars and then be like, by the way, we just signed Jessica Chastain and Adam Driver for a new TV show.

• 19:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that is the thing I was gonna follow up with, which is that despite the billion dollars a year, and they note that Apple spent over $5 billion a year on content after launching Apple TV from 2019, but trimmed it down to $500 million last year.

• 20:08Andy Greenwald?

  Trimmed the loss of the expenditures.

• 20:09Chris Ryan?

  Well, the expenditure. So, you know, take that as you will, because I find a lot of the financial, like, a lot of the numbers ascribed to television and film production and budgets now, to be pretty confusing. I talked a little bit about this with Sean and Amanda on the pod Monday on Big Picture, because we were talking about Alto Nights and some of Warner Brothers' bigger, sort of, box office collapses that they've had recently, flops. And I don't really understand it. You know, I don't understand why a movie about F1 costs $320 million, if it did cost $320 million. I don't know.

• 20:48Andy Greenwald?

  You're talking about the film F1?

• 20:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and I don't know why Alto Nights cost, although $130 million did. I assume a lot of it is, like, talent deals and I guess, like, part of it, I mean, I don't even know if you could even begin to speak to why budgets seem to be so inflated now for stuff that isn't VFX-driven special effects stuff.

• 21:09Andy Greenwald?

  Well, there is, I mean, there are, this would actually be, I'm sure they've done versions of this, but I would actually just say, like, Sean and Amanda should do a show on this. Like, the five types of movies you meet in hell, just in terms of, like, the movies that are made today. And one of the style of movies is, we will keep making this movie until we find it. And I think that, you know, both anecdotally, and I think a little bit more reported than anecdotally, F1 is a movie that they committed to making and then started making a version of it. And they were like, we're not sure if this is the movie we want to make.

• 21:41Chris Ryan?

  Tom Freestyle, where he's like, we're just gonna find it.

• 21:42Andy Greenwald?

  We're gonna keep making this movie and we're gonna keep bringing in, you think the script's written, we're gonna keep bringing in writers. You think that it's directed, we're gonna keep bringing in new set pieces and new, you know, new sizzle things to put in a trailer for whatever. And- Apple can keep paying for it.

• 21:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:59Andy Greenwald?

  Because that that does go back to that point of like, well, they're they're not. They don't seem to be in this to make a profit in a traditional sense.

• 22:07Chris Ryan?

  No, and what's interesting to me is that you would think, if you and I were Tim Cook and Eddie Q and we had a trillion dollar market cap or whatever the hell they have.

• 22:16Andy Greenwald?

  We'd just be playing GoldenEye.

• 22:18Chris Ryan?

  We'd be playing GoldenEye.

• 22:19Andy Greenwald?

  Our lives would be so sick.

• 22:21Chris Ryan?

  What about Dope Thieves?

• 22:23Andy Greenwald?

  That's such a good idea.

• 22:25Chris Ryan?

  But if we were those guys, I think we would probably imagine ourselves taking a lot of the whatever the budget we had and be like, it's about, we could do a quality play. Like, rather than do two to three shows a month, let's do six great shows a year, right? And let's have like the best development team we possibly can and let's never spare expense on, let's not go into shows and not know how they end and, you know, kind of have like

• 22:50Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 22:51Chris Ryan?

  rough rough seas that way. And it seems like they are making almost a a Netflix-y. It's not near the scale of Netflix, but it rarely a week goes by that you do not read a story about a new show that's been greenlit by Apple. Um, and and it does not ever seem to let up. So this week alone, it was announced that Adam Driver and Jessica Chastain, uh, who are two of the most respected actors of their generations or current working actors, are gonna make a show called The Dealer, which is about the art world, which marks Jessica Chastain's second Apple show.

• 23:27Andy Greenwald?

  The first one hasn't even come out yet.

• 23:28Chris Ryan?

  The first one hasn't even come out yet. That's called The Savant and that's about, um, hunting, um, serial killers before they actually commit crimes. Which sounds just like a TV show to me. You know what I mean? Like, it's the they're still going out and grabbing the ritziest, biggest names to do pretty straightforward TV for the most part. And I find the whole project pretty fascinating. I don't know how sustainable it is. I suppose. It is for as long as Apple's stock and its spare cash lasts, which seems indefinite. But.

• 24:01Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I mean, I think that the project kind of remains the same. You look at, you call up your Apple TV home screen and there are a lot of famous people on it.

• 24:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Andy Greenwald?

  And they're not just that there are a lot of famous people on it. There are shiny new boxes with new famous people on it pretty reliably.

• 24:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:17Andy Greenwald?

  Whether it's Brie Larson, or it's Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, or Gary Oldman's battered visage. Or Harrison Ford now on the shrinking poster, you know. That's, that home screen in a way is their business. They don't have the sort of rumbling underworld that Netflix has where, where, you know, it is also in the like, get new subscribers, keep people, keep people signed up, avoid the churn with some big stuff. But just underneath it, you can consistently find interesting international dramas or, you know, smaller scale.

• 24:54Chris Ryan?

  Lots of docs.

• 24:54Andy Greenwald?

  Higher quality show docs. And then within the Netflix ecosystem, there is room for surprise. I mean, I think that is a different thing to it is a much larger and different. And also that is their business is making, is making that service as opposed to making the devices also. So you're not going to get a, I don't think you're going to get a baby reindeer on, on Apple. Not for necessarily only for the subject matter, but in terms of something that just, whoa, we didn't see that coming. That burst through the noise.

• 25:23Chris Ryan?

  The closest thing would be maybe a Drops of God.

• 25:26Andy Greenwald?

  Drops of God is a good comp because.

• 25:28Chris Ryan?

  Pachinko is, you know, like this wonderful adaptation, you know, like.

• 25:30Andy Greenwald?

  Well, Pachinko is a very expensive quality play.

• 25:33Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 25:33Andy Greenwald?

  Drops of God is a better, I think, comp because Drops of God is like that second, third tier of Netflix shows where it's like four countries paid for this and everybody. And it's a, and it's a, it's a bee in every corner of the world. You know what I mean? And I happen to like that a lot. But, but I guess, look, like this is.

• 25:52Andy Greenwald?

  The moment when we're going to be talking about Apple a lot. We're about to talk about two shows in a couple of weeks. We're going to be talking about Your Friends and Neighbors, The Jon Hamm Show. That at least, have you watched it yet? I have not checked it out yet. But from the way that people are hyping it, it's like, hey, guess what? Apple got one.

• 26:08Chris Ryan?

  It's already been renewed for a second season. Which is not remarkable for an Apple show, but it is notable.

• 26:13Andy Greenwald?

  Getting renewed is not notable at Apple. Getting renewed before the first season premieres or even a trailer comes out is more notable. Because that does seem like it's a response to both the quality and the momentum of the work on it. Okay, but let's talk about why, I mean, the studio has a lot of conversation points that I think are really interesting for the state of the industry as a whole. Do you feel, before we get into the specifics, do you feel like these two shows that we like a lot are emblematic of a service coming into its own and figuring out how to be good at what it does? Or is it a, you know, a stop clock is right twice a day?

• 26:55Chris Ryan?

  I think that both of these shows present two paths forward for Apple, and they have the money to take both roads. I think the studio is the best possible end result of them partnering with someone, giving them a lot of resources, saying, make your show, make us proud. And Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg did that with the studio. Now, there's a lot of inherent irony of making a show about the romantic, like that romanticizes Hollywood and making movies.

• 27:29Andy Greenwald?

  Making a TV show about the lost art of making movies.

• 27:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. Dope Thief is, and I mean this in the best possible way, workman-like TV at a high level. You know, and is actually a show that is a throwback in a way to, Roxanne Hadadi actually really intelligently linked it with, Some of the great vintage FX crime shows like Sons of Anarchy and Terriers and The Shield. I would also say it's vintage TV in the way you can feel them working out the kinks as they go. And figuring out what the tone should be after a pilot that kind of covers a lot of different angles of what kind of story they could tell. It's starting to zero in a little bit more and get its footing as it goes along.

• 28:17Chris Ryan?

  So we can talk about, I think the studio makes sense to talk about first, just because we've been talking about Hollywood.

• 28:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 28:22Chris Ryan?

  Where do you want to go with this?

• 28:26Andy Greenwald?

  Well, if we're starting with the studio, I want to say, I love it.

• 28:31Andy Greenwald?

  I think, I think there is a lot to enjoy here. Especially considering the degree of difficulty when you're making a show about making things. And it can be, these things can really, really disappear up their own asses very, very quickly. I think what's remarkable about it is, is twofold. One, to, to, to piggyback on what you said. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have been friends since high school. They've been creative partners since Seth Rogen got into the business. They famously wrote Superbad together, kind of about themselves. And they have been working steadily, Seth in front of the camera and prolifically.

• 29:11Andy Greenwald?

  You know, Preacher, The Boys in, in movies as well.

• 29:16Chris Ryan?

  Pineapple Express, This Is The End, yeah.

• 29:19Andy Greenwald?

  But in producing and writing, but also like Point Gray being a company that makes things.

• 29:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Andy Greenwald?

  You know, and then that sets things up and lets them run too, because they are not, I mean, they're produced, the executive produced The Boys, but they're not, they're not in there with Eric Kripke, I think, breaking story.

• 29:35Andy Greenwald?

  All, what I mean by that is they know how to make stuff. And what's thrilling about this show is that it is. Deeply melancholy about a lost time and a lost industry. But it is at once so celebratory about what once was. It loves movies. It loves Hollywood. It loves Los Angeles. It loves actors, directors, writers, performers, in spite of shrinking margins and easily satirized catastrophes that are around us at all times. It's also, and well, specifically, this is relevant for episode two, just a masterclass in style and aesthetics and filmmaking.

• 30:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:20Andy Greenwald?

  Which is really not what I expected when I heard that they were making an industry parody, not an industry parody of industry, but of this industry. This thing has style. It has wit. It zips. It flies. It's so fun.

• 30:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:34Andy Greenwald?

  To watch.

• 30:35Chris Ryan?

  I was really taken by it. I mean, it has so much energy. I would say that, you know, most TV shows, because of the nature of the long-form storytelling that they're gonna do, and they just can't sustain, and it'll be really interesting to see if the studio can, they can't sustain that level of verve and virtuosity and also manic nature of the performances. I mean, the first two episodes, Seth Rogen plays a character named Matt, who has been elevated to the head of Continental Studios after his mentor is deposed. His mentor, played by Catherine O'Hara, who plays a pretty obvious Amy Pascal stand-in.

• 31:16Andy Greenwald?

  For what it's worth, Seth Rogen's movie, The Interview, was at the heart of the hack at Sony.

• 31:23Chris Ryan?

  Yes, which sort of brought about Amy Pascal's downfall. And the first two episodes are essentially the madcap day that he finds out he's gonna be the head of the studio and his attempts to find a director for a Kool-Aid movie, a Kool-Aid IP movie that his corporate boss, played by Bryan Cranston.

• 31:45Andy Greenwald?

  And people who are listening might remember Bryan Cranston as the real-life father of Dr. King on the pit.

• 31:51Chris Ryan?

  Dude, I know.

• 31:52Andy Greenwald?

  Wild.

• 31:53Chris Ryan?

  I know. And Brad Durif is Fiona Durif, Dr. McKay's.

• 31:57Andy Greenwald?

  Our favorite nepo babies.

• 32:00Chris Ryan?

  Anyway.

• 32:02Chris Ryan?

  There's so much energy in this first episode as he tries to assemble a project to solidify his place at the head of the studio. And he goes and he engages Martin Scorsese in trying to make a Jonestown movie that they then backdoor into being a Kool-Aid movie. And then the second episode is set on a film set. And it's essentially a love letter to the chaos and beauty of a collective of people coming together to try and get the shot. But it's almost more of a character portrait of this guy Matt and his boundless energy that really does not have any boundaries.

• 32:38Andy Greenwald?

  Did you find it to be a palate cleanser to see an episode that was a oner that was not about a 13-year-old boy accused of murder?

• 32:45Chris Ryan?

  I was quite glad that it was just Gretel Lee walking past the pool, yeah.

• 32:48Andy Greenwald?

  Smoking a joint. So the second episode is called The Oner, and it is about Matt's hapless inability to get out of the way when visiting the set of Sarah Polley, playing Sarah Polley's new movie, which is going to end with a beautiful oner.

• 33:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:03Andy Greenwald?

  At sunset.

• 33:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Andy Greenwald?

  Very winking, very knowing. There's a moment when he's saying like, well, you could just, you know, you could fake it, using trickery and whip pans as the camera whip pans between the two of them having the conversation about it. I mean, there's two tracks we could talk about it on. I think we should probably talk about it first, just, it's just a, it's nice to have a comedy. It's nice to have a comedy that has ambition and can back it up. So much of that resides on Seth Rogen really settling in to his screen persona with such affability and such comfort, but also with real pathos. I mean, I really like him as an actor. I've always liked seeing him on screen, but I think this is someone that he just feels in his bones and has a lot of fun with.

• 33:48Andy Greenwald?

  And because he has such good relationships with so many people, you get Sarah Polley, you get Martin Scorsese, you get every person that they mention actually playing themselves on screen. But you also get Ike Baranholdt, who is probably a first-ballot sidekick Hall of Famer.

• 34:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:02Andy Greenwald?

  You get Catherine O'Hara.

• 34:03Chris Ryan?

  Catherine Hahn.

• 34:05Andy Greenwald?

  You get Catherine Hahn, giving a performance that can only be described as one for her. But that makes me love it all the more.

• 34:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Andy Greenwald?

  And it's-

• 34:17Chris Ryan?

  Who's the assistant who becomes the executives at Chase Sue We Wonders?

• 34:20Andy Greenwald?

  Chase Sue We Wonders, yeah. And I think that every time there's anything that's kind of industry naval gazing, I reference these books, but I want to do it again because I always want people to read them, which is the Hollywood novels by a guy called Don Carpenter, particularly a book called Turnaround. But I think all three of his Hollywood movies have been collected into a single volume. I feel like people always are like, "What did you just say?" So I'll say, "Don Carpenter." The thing that makes a book like, seriously though, I'm just trying to be servicy. People are like, "D A W N Carpenter."

• 34:50Chris Ryan?

  You're in the middle of a beautiful tribute to one of your favorite authors and you're like, "I fucking hear you read it." I'll say his name again.

• 34:57Andy Greenwald?

  I hear him coming. I hear this heavy like Sasquatch feet. You know what I mean?

• 35:05Andy Greenwald?

  The thing about Turnaround, which is very much like of the genre of like, "This town isn't what it used to be," but it was written in the 1980s, is that even though the studio execs are doing cocaine binges with the writers and the writers hate themselves and everyone else, everyone hates the writers, and this came from a real place of this novelist being like, "I'd like to write for Hollywood." "Oh, Jesus Christ, no, I wouldn't."

• 35:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:28Andy Greenwald?

  He fucking loves the movies and he can't help himself that he loves the movies and he can't help but love it more even as it, he's hugging it while it hits him. And that spirit is in this as well. It is cynical, it is dopey, it is sloppy and slapsticky, sometimes almost to the point of absurdity as it is in the second episode, but it's pretty emo about what it loves.

• 35:48Chris Ryan?

  Incredibly.

• 35:49Andy Greenwald?

  And that's the second part of the conversation to have about the show. We're only two episodes in, but it's really melancholy in a way that I think gives it a little more ballast than it might otherwise have.

• 36:00Chris Ryan?

  Is it melancholy because it's melancholy or is it melancholy because we know what's really going? Because we live here and we know nobody's shooting anything here and we know that Sarah Polley does not get, where she's probably not shooting one or in the house, in a house in the hills.

• 36:14Andy Greenwald?

  Silver Lake or, and Greta Lee isn't really able to negotiate a press tour in a private jet.

• 36:21Andy Greenwald?

  So, yes, you might be right. I think that, just, I'm curious your perspective on it. From my perspective on it, there has been a real, real sense in the last few months that whatever the industry used to be, and I know this can sound a little bit like, well, let me get, I was about to give an example that I thought would be more universal, but I realize it's even more niche, which is, you know, everyone writes their "Why I'm Leaving New York" essay?

• 36:47Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:47Andy Greenwald?

  Jesus Christ, this is a coastal elite podcast. There's, everyone, you have the moment that you have in the industry that you have it or whatever.

• 37:00Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 37:01Andy Greenwald?

  But it's just unquestionably, when I say that the industry is different now, and I've been having this awareness over the last few months, I am not pining for the Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer 90s, I was not here for it. I'm not even pining for the like, "Yeah, I can, you know, I can really build up my guild pension by writing on 30 episodes of Becker this season."

• 37:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:21Andy Greenwald?

  I wasn't here for it. I mean genuinely 10 years ago, when the tech companies and the kind of like uberfication of all American industry was like, kind of just in the background.

• 37:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we were like, "That seems like it will probably affect us one day, but not quite prevalent."

• 37:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, or even pre-strike, when I was still believing that like the, "Thank God, the strength of the unions in this town might protect aspects of this industry more so than unfortunately other industries that have been ravaged by this kind of rapacious capitalism." Not the case. We are living in a moment when, I mean, you can use the anecdote you told me on the way in, but like, production, I mean, there was always going to be a contraction of TV shows and of movies. The idea that production has basically been outsourced.

• 38:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. There's a clip going around that way, I was telling Andy about this, but there's a clip that's gone a bit viral that is Adam Scott's appearance on Rob Lowe's podcast that's on like Conan O'Brien's podcast network and...

• 38:19Andy Greenwald?

  That's it, that sentence alone, but yeah, go on.

• 38:21Chris Ryan?

  Rob Lowe is telling Adam Scott about how he makes this game show for Fox called "The Floor," and that it's cheaper for Fox to fly 100 Americans to Ireland to make the show and probably shoot like six a day or whatever, than it is to walk across the street and shoot it on a soundstage in the Fox lot, on the Fox lot.

• 38:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 38:40Chris Ryan?

  And they are talking back and forth about how if Parks and Rec was made today, it would shoot in Budapest.

• 38:46Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, and it's hard to, this is not our forte, and this is not our industry, but like, I am having trouble getting my arms around Apple being like, yeah, we'll lose a billion dollars because we don't care. And also, you can't work in Glendale or Burbank anymore? Like, something is deeply amiss here, and it is like termites eating through the foundational structure of what once was a problematic, always, but at least life sustaining for many people who work here.

• 39:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it was an industry town that you could, if you worked in the industry, if you were a first AD, or if you were a character actor, or a staff writer, you could get a house somewhere, and your kids could go to school, and you would have like a decent.

• 39:32Andy Greenwald?

  You had a restaurant that served an okay salad on Melrose near Paramount. Like, there is a trickle down effect to it.

• 39:39Chris Ryan?

  That there might be a movie theater like on Sunset Boulevard, you know what I mean?

• 39:42Andy Greenwald?

  That you could go see movies in. I mean, I think that like with many things at this particular fraught and awful moment in the country, like, there's a lot of like, gosh, nervous laughter, you know, like the Selena Meyer from Veep meme where it's just her saying, nervously laughing, what the fuck? Like, we could connect to these pieces, and what would emerge would be a pretty terrifying image.

• 40:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, okay, so I think I would answer your question, or it's not really a question, but I would counter it by saying, really great shows tend to play up the importance of whatever the subject matters that they're talking about. So, was SportsCenter ever as emotionally trenchant as Sports Night makes it seem like it is?

• 40:25Andy Greenwald?

  There were a couple nights in 1996 when I thought so.

• 40:27Chris Ryan?

  Was it routinely like, direct to camera, like, I'm talking about my dead brother, or like, the beauty of marathon running? No, right?

• 40:35Andy Greenwald?

  I wish our podcast reached for those lofty goals, but go on.

• 40:40Chris Ryan?

  So it's not, it's not out of bounds for them to be like, you know what really matters is movie making. I think that the...

• 40:48Chris Ryan?

  The feeling that this is an industry that used to work.

• 40:54Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 40:55Chris Ryan?

  And I think Seth Rogen is a product of, he's always spoken very pragmatically about his art and also working within the confines of studio systems. So he is one of my favorite.

• 41:06Andy Greenwald?

  He's not a bomb thrower, yeah.

• 41:07Chris Ryan?

  No, but he's one of my favorite people to listen to talk about writing because he's so practical about it and he's so like, you know, one of the big things that people are always talking about writing and I just don't think they write enough, like people actually need to, and that's, he's very prolific with, you know, he obviously practices what he preaches. So in some ways, I feel like he has the bona fides to make a show like this because he remembers a time not so long ago when maybe this kind of thing worked.

• 41:37Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:37Chris Ryan?

  But at the same time, it's hard not to watch it and feel that same sense of melancholy. I saw Seppen while compared to The Player, which is Robert Altman's, you know, absolutely poison heart black comedy about Hollywood from the late 80s or 90s.

• 41:53Andy Greenwald?

  92, 93.

• 41:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And I think that this show is more romantic about Hollywood than The Player is. I think that.

• 42:00Andy Greenwald?

  Very much so.

• 42:01Chris Ryan?

  There is something about, and I think almost it goes beyond whether or not Continental Studios is making good stuff. It's just about the joy and the excitement that comes from making movies, which I think is a really cool thing to watch and it does communicate that enthusiasm. Ultimately, this is just a really funny, well-written show that's directed really well and it has a ton going for it. And the Martin Scorsese episode alone, I would just watch 100 of these.

• 42:31Andy Greenwald?

  It's really funny.

• 42:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, but yeah, it's such a complicated, not even ethical dance you have to do, but you, it, there is, there is something, there's 5% of my brain that's always like, eh, not anymore.

• 42:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but I think that what you also want as a viewer is I want the people, I want creative people to take the biggest swings that they are empowered to make. And one of the things that I think allows this to work is what you were saying about how Seth Rogen has put in the time and on all sides of the business and camera and has learned a lot and appreciates what he appreciates. And he is romantic about things that he loves and things he's seen in the past. He's also, um.

• 43:17Andy Greenwald?

  It's not romantic, but he is very, very taken with how fun it is to do stuff with the people that you like, or the people that you love, or the people that you meet along the way. And so the process part of it is really spirited as well. And if Apple is saying, here's the check we're gonna write for this show, he's like, great, look what I'm gonna do with it.

• 43:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:36Andy Greenwald?

  There is a feeling that is, that it, there's kind of a, like a stagnant feeling in some of the previous Apple glossy shows, which does not feel like people doing the most they can.

• 43:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:49Andy Greenwald?

  It feels like doing what they were paid to do. And it looks a certain way, but it feels sort of sticky sweet, or hollow, or not really fully realized. Certainly not vibrant. Certainly not like, let's fucking go, the way this show feels with its style and its camera. And take advantage of what you've got, if you're still one of the people who's able to make these things. And I think that I'm responding to that as well. And that, the melancholy part is, might be behind the scenes. It is actually exhilarating to see someone take advantage, like, if there's X amount of oxygen left in the, in the life pod, let's get on the treadmill and burn it fast.

• 44:26Chris Ryan?

  You know, I guess that, that is as good a place as any to go towards Dope Thief, which I think is just an example of like, television made extremely well. This is a show that comes from Peter Craig. It's based on a novel by Dennis Tefoya.

• 44:42Andy Greenwald?

  Peter Craig is the guy who wrote The Town, right? And collaborated with, I think he wrote some of the, he wrote some of the Hunger Games things as well?

• 44:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and-

• 44:50Andy Greenwald?

  Hunger Games movies, yeah.

• 44:51Chris Ryan?

  It stars Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Mora, and they basically play small-time Philadelphia crooks who get pulled into a Pennsylvania drug war that hits every part of their lives. It's got a very good supporting cast of faces many people might know, but my favorite is Maren Ireland.

• 45:12Andy Greenwald?

  Oh yeah.

• 45:12Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, one of the last times I saw her in a consistent TV role was Sneaky Pete.

• 45:17Andy Greenwald?

  She was great on that.

• 45:18Chris Ryan?

  And she was great on that. She's great in this. She plays a DEA agent, undercover DEA agent in the show. And this thing just- Has grimy Elmore Leonard comic caper energy. It's a little, it gets a little melodramatic at times, but the best, the show at its best has this kind of buddy cop or buddy comedy, uh, crime film vibe to it that I, I just can't get enough of.

• 45:44Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, did you say that Ridley Scott directed the pilot? It's crazy.

• 45:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like if I, if you didn't see his name, would you have, I, I'm being completely honest. I mean, like I, I, I think the pilot is really cool. Uh, Spencer Grenice is in it as like, uh, as the sort of Jesse Pinkman-esque character who shows up for an episode and he's awesome.

• 46:03Andy Greenwald?

  The only one who does the Philadelphia accent.

• 46:04Chris Ryan?

  And he does the Philly accent very well and it's, uh, it's just really, uh, I would not say I, I, I would, I would not say it was like obviously a Ridley Scott.

• 46:16Andy Greenwald?

  You would put this up with the Kingdom of Heaven director's title.

• 46:18Chris Ryan?

  No, I would not. Would you?

• 46:20Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, no. Here's what I'll say. I really love the show and we can get granular as to why, but there's really only one reason. And people know this. I think Brian Tyree Henry is the best actor working. He's my favorite actor. I would watch him do anything and this show, more than anything so far on screen, yes, even more than the Eternals, allows him to fully cook, to be completely alive. And he plays a guy named Ray Driscoll, who's a recovering addict who spent time in prison.

• 46:52Chris Ryan?

  Dad's still in prison.

• 46:53Andy Greenwald?

  His dad, played by Ving Rhames, is still in prison. His whole life has been affected by the carceral state, let's say. And he's incredibly charismatic and incredibly clever, but maybe too clever for his own good because he ends up getting himself and his best friend, um, uh, Manny, the Wagner Moore character into much more trouble than they could get into, than they realized.

• 47:13Chris Ryan?

  They basically have a gimmick where they rob drug dealers while wearing DEA jackets and then this blows up in their face predictably.

• 47:20Andy Greenwald?

  I, I almost don't know how to articulate how alive he is scene to scene. He is. Very stressed during much of the show. I mean, the tension builds and the threat to him and to his loved ones only increases episode to episode. Within the moments of stress, he finds these little pockets for silliness, for fun, for frustration. His eyes are always pinballing around and taking in absolutely everything. And like, he makes, when I say he makes a meal out of every crumb, it is the opposite

• 48:02Andy Greenwald?

  of when you talk about like, a big, big, hammy, scene-stealing actor. I am never able to take my eyes off him. And we've watched three episodes. I guess the fourth one will be coming up right around the time that this episode drops. We have not watched ahead because we're digging it, and there are, I believe, eight episodes total. But there's a sequence at the end of the second episode. I'm not even sure if we're gonna, how much we're gonna spoil, how much one needs to spoil.

• 48:27Chris Ryan?

  I think we could spoil the first two because those are the first ones that went up. So let's feel free.

• 48:30Andy Greenwald?

  But I don't even know if it's a spoiler to say at the end of the second episode, Ray is at, to what is, to this point, the lowest moment of his life. And he is sobbing in the, by the way, very nice, office of a young lawyer in Philadelphia because he thinks that his best friend is dead and it's his fault. And the lawyer thinks he's sobbing because of his father's

• 48:51Chris Ryan?

  Cancer diagnosis.

• 48:52Andy Greenwald?

  Cancer diagnosis in prison. And, I mean, I'm talking about how lively and funny he is. Brian Tyree Henry can cry on camera and have you feel for him. The end of the scene, though, the burner phone that he's taken off of the body of a guy, of a biker sent to kill him, rings. And he's been unable to guess, despite being a big muso, what this melody is. And the lawyer, improbably, is like, oh, Meatloaf, bad out of hell, right? And Ray looks up and he's just like, oh shit, or some version of that, like, yes.

• 49:25Andy Greenwald?

  And it's so true and it's so funny. And I think it take it, take, expand the aperture past me being like, this performance is just magnetic and one of my favorite of the years. I think that's, that's what you said, what, that's the reason why you like the show in a nutshell. Right? Because unlike most things, it's a little bit funny.

• 49:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:46Andy Greenwald?

  It's a little bit clever. It's a little bit sly.

• 49:48Chris Ryan?

  It's also got a great edge in two crooks on the run from bigger crooks. And on the run from the law is good shit. And they've got a very cool setting with Philly, obviously. They're running all through alleyways, chain link fence, fences into a sort of off market gun dealers, houses, you know, people are going to Atlantic City for the weekend. People are going out to the, the sticks to buy meth or to rob meth dealers. There's a real landscape here. And to your point about Brian Tyree, Henry, I just really think, one thing I noticed when I was getting through the second and third episode and the juices are flowing, uh, the actors always have something to do.

• 50:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 50:33Chris Ryan?

  I really like.

• 50:34Andy Greenwald?

  You've been noticing this with the fruit on White Lotus, too.

• 50:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, well, I think what it is, is that you'll watch shows sometimes and it, and you're like, this scene only exists so that two people can kind of exchange information. And maybe it's entertaining, but you know, they've, they've sat down and they've begun to drink coffee. And then they have this conversation and the conversation was just to basically get from scene one to scene three.

• 50:59Andy Greenwald?

  Cold Harbor.

• 51:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, well, I honestly, there's a lot of that in, in Severance where there's a lot of like very static blocking.

• 51:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 51:06Chris Ryan?

  To, to me at least, or sometimes.

• 51:08Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it's stylized. It's that, it's consistent in the show, but I know what you mean. I didn't mean to derail you.

• 51:12Chris Ryan?

  What I like about, uh, what they're doing in Dope Thief is, uh, I'm sure there's like an actorly term for this, where it's like you're, you're, you have to act a behavior, you know? And it's like, you can't really worry about anything else, but this is a guy who's looking for a piece of paper at a desk. Now, the scene takes place and they communicate all the information you need to do. But I feel like Brian Tyree Henry always has something to do in this show. Uh, and I really, I think that that really makes it, it juices it up for me a lot.

• 51:40Andy Greenwald?

  It's, I think it is more stage acting, which is where he started, right? Where, and that comes from like, like the Meisner technique of like, you repeat an activity and the words are secondary to the behavior. But stage actors, you know, you're, you're seeing all of them all the time. You're not cutting and so they have to understand and inhabit the character's full body, not just the face in the tight, uh, close up shot. The, the, the challenge that I think some stage actors find hard to, um, overcome is the scale. Like, stage actors are busy and projecting, uh, busy with their bodies and projecting their voices, right? And then you get on camera and the great film actors speak in very hushed tones often.

• 52:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:24Andy Greenwald?

  And hold weight, power and charisma through stillness. So sometimes when you feel like performers are doing too much, it might be because they're jumping between mediums and not adjusting for that. Um, and that's also why sometimes film actors feel very stiff or dead when you see them on stage.

• 52:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:42Andy Greenwald?

  He is one of the rare people who is able to bring his full performing self onto the, you know, in front of cameras and still feel, uh, appropriate, if that makes sense. Like he's alive within the camera frame or within the scene. He's not trying to punch his way out of it.

• 52:58Chris Ryan?

  Now, you and I love these kinds of stories.

• 53:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 53:02Chris Ryan?

  Uh, there's a real like Elmore Leonard, people have read Patrick Hoffman will recognize like some of the vibes of this show.

• 53:08Andy Greenwald?

  And I've never read Dennis DeFoy, but I feel like.

• 53:10Chris Ryan?

  I mean, either, but I should check it out. What do you think of, the only time where I'm like, this feels.

• 53:18Chris Ryan?

  Like a little extra layer of I didn't need this is put on, an extra layer is added that I didn't need. Is some of the black and white flashbacks that are kind of explaining Ray's backstory. Maybe why, you know, he went down the path of addiction that he did, why he turned to a life of crime that he did. I kind of didn't need that. I didn't really need that yet. I mean, how are you feeling about some of the wrinkles?

• 53:44Andy Greenwald?

  It's interesting because it's also regardless of whether it's like going on Ridley Scott's like Hall of Fame resume. He's a very impactful and important directorial figure. And when you have a series like this with an autoris director who sets the tone. It creates a visual template and a storytelling mode that then the other directors who are episodic. Who just come on for a couple of days to shoot their block or shoot their episode have to reckon with. It felt heavy at the beginning and then it feels at least through three that it's sort of dissipating. Am I wrong in thinking?

• 54:17Chris Ryan?

  That's why they have to do a really cool job with three, which has the showdown. I mean, there's a showdown outside of a prison. It's a little bit more of like a cat and mouse game. I mean, the whole thing is a cat and mouse game, but yeah.

• 54:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's also, it does, to your point, I think it does feel like a little bit maybe of a sop to the people who do don't love this sort of thing necessarily. And need some more like, well, what's your motivation for this? Or like, yeah, let's go. They're in a van. Say less. Do you know what I mean? The, I mean, there is a feeling that, I think you could argue it two ways. You could say it becomes, it's a little heavy handed at the start, or you could say it's a little ambitious at the start. And then at least, and then by the time you get to three, as you said, I think this appeals to us more, but it is a little bit more rote. It's like, okay, now we're, now we're just a cat and mouse robbers and worse robbers kind of show.

• 55:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:10Andy Greenwald?

  We're not trying to say something generational.

• 55:11Chris Ryan?

  Cause I think Brian Tyree Henry can communicate any emotion you need him to and any character's history and experience. He can do it in the present tense in a scene. He doesn't actually need a backstory. Or he does, but he could communicate that through present. It's just something, it's a TV thing that happens where there's like, well, you know, we want to make sure that people actually don't reject the premise. Of this guy who robs drug dealers and is falling on and off the wagon. So let's make sure we all know he's got some this and that and the other going on.

• 55:41Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, he did that for Fastos, the immortal eternal who invents technology.

• 55:44Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 55:44Andy Greenwald?

  You know, and I know you were thinking of that. Two other details about the show that I think we have to mention. One is I need to do a temperature check on Wagner Mora because I find, I don't know if there's any other actor whom I like more. I'm like, I like that guy, I like his performance, I like the way he acts, I like seeing him, but consistently feels wrong to me, if that makes sense.

• 56:07Chris Ryan?

  So he replaced Michael Mando on this show.

• 56:09Andy Greenwald?

  From Better Call Saul and from Orphan Black before that, who was fired for his, they never went into details, but it did say a clash with a co-star.

• 56:17Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 56:18Andy Greenwald?

  And this was two years ago when they were shooting the show.

• 56:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, we're just.

• 56:21Andy Greenwald?

  This was very strike affected.

• 56:24Chris Ryan?

  I happen to love Wagner Mora. I, I think that he is really the right kind of, I, especially in three, when, when we finally get back to his character and his character turns up again. His arc from, I'm wearing a button down Oxford shirt and trying to get my life together to I'm strung out, hiding in an attic is, is great. And he is a really good foil for Brian Tyree Henry. I think he can both be his straight man and also be the, the accelerant to the fire.

• 56:57Andy Greenwald?

  I, I also appreciated that they rewrote the part to be Brazilian. So that he could just own his, his accent and the way that he, and the way that he is and what he brings to every part, as opposed to sort of shoehorning him in as another Philly guy or necessarily, you know, I want to be careful what I'm saying. There are many immigrants that be, are very Philly guys. I didn't mean that, but it, it feels more naturalistic.

• 57:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 57:20Andy Greenwald?

  I think that those actors are both so good that they were quickly able to just establish a friendship, a rapport, a history that doesn't need flashbacks. I agree with you, there is something.

• 57:31Andy Greenwald?

  And maybe this is a little carryover from watching Civil War where I was like, the movie where I was not Captain America.

• 57:37Chris Ryan?

  Or The Civil War.

• 57:38Andy Greenwald?

  Or The Civil War, just been watching it, the documentary.

• 57:45Andy Greenwald?

  I'll work on this and think about what it is because I like him so much in a single and then sometimes when he's put into these worlds, I bump a little bit on his integration into it, but I'm not, this is the Brian Tyree Henry Show and everyone else is supporting it. We have to, as native Philadelphians who have yet to check out Long Bright River, another Philadelphia cop show, who are eagerly anticipating task.

• 58:08Chris Ryan?

  Have watched some Deli Boys.

• 58:10Andy Greenwald?

  And Deli Boys. This is a really fun, really entertaining, high-quality crime show. I would not say thus far it is a very high-quality Philly show. There is almost nothing Philly about it, other than that one dude's accent at the beginning and that I guess they, federal agents, have funerals in front of City Hall.

• 58:33Chris Ryan?

  Yes, I didn't remember any DEA funerals growing up, but sure.

• 58:36Andy Greenwald?

  No, but you know, maybe that was a Frank Rizzo thing and not a Wilson Good thing, unclear.

• 58:42Chris Ryan?

  Amir Arison plays Mayor Ireland's boss in the show. He's really good, he's a deadpan DEA agent and when he's like, I have to put a flag over this guy's coffin and bury him outside of City Hall. I'm like, you do?

• 58:56Andy Greenwald?

  I don't remember that. I remember my kids ice skate in front of City Hall sometimes. They didn't know it was on the graves of fallen DEA.

• 59:01Chris Ryan?

  And no disrespect to the DEA agents, you know, working in Philadelphia. I just didn't know that that's what happened.

• 59:05Andy Greenwald?

  It seems a little high-profile. You know, I feel like a lot of what they do is shh.

• 59:10Chris Ryan?

  There's, I love when a TV's like, it's like, whatever you do, don't come to this funeral and then she's there and she's like.

• 59:16Andy Greenwald?

  Not only they like, don't come to this funeral, like you were under deep cover, you've asked to stay under deep cover, you're mute now, okay? And we intentionally placed you under very obvious like martial guard.

• 59:28Chris Ryan?

  And you've snuck past them to get to this funeral.

• 59:30Andy Greenwald?

  Which is happening at City fucking Hall in the center of Center City. I can't decide and maybe I need to watch some more of these shows to decide whether, whether it would be worse if these guys were making any effort to be from Philadelphia, other than saying John twice? Like, would it be worse if they were all just trying to, trying to do the accent? Or am I, or would it have made the show richer? Like Kate Mulgrew, the great Captain Janeway from back in the Star Trek days is. Well cast and giving a perfectly good performance as Ray's stepmom.

• 1:00:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Andy Greenwald?

  She is playing a working class elderly lady from someplace.

• 1:00:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:00:12Andy Greenwald?

  Could be New York, could be Boston, doesn't matter.

• 1:00:14Chris Ryan?

  Well, the Aryan Brotherhood guys are definitely from Boston, like, or Maine.

• 1:00:18Andy Greenwald?

  Well, one of them is intentionally Boston. And what's funny is Brian Tyree Henry, who went on Colbert and was like, I had to learn the Philly accent. I'm like, was that just private study, independent study that you didn't bring to the show? His character Ray is like, this guy has an accent like people have from up north. And I'm like, Finland? What does he mean up north? Like, it's so clear. Everyone knows what a Boston, are we living in a fantasy world?

• 1:00:42Chris Ryan?

  But he even says like, he refers to like a John Havlicek ass accent, you know, like.

• 1:00:47Andy Greenwald?

  That's very specific.

• 1:00:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and it's like, well, then you're referring to New England, like.

• 1:00:50Andy Greenwald?

  We all know. It's not vague. But do you think it's a deal breaker or just?

• 1:00:56Chris Ryan?

  My attitude about it is that I, I just love to see Philly shine.

• 1:01:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:01:02Chris Ryan?

  Even in a, as a rough diamond like this. And I almost prefer it this way where no one's really going full mayor of Easttown.

• 1:01:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Chris Ryan?

  I will say probably for us, Philly shot shows are gonna feel season five of The Wire for us where we're like, eh, that's not actually how you get to Aramingo, you know what I mean?

• 1:01:23Andy Greenwald?

  Like, to you, yeah, it's true, though. We are kind of like experiencing what Boston was experiencing 20 years ago in terms of like suddenly there are a lot of crime shows set there and people think they can do the accent or they avoid it, but also we are now champions in sports.

• 1:01:36Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:01:37Andy Greenwald?

  And that's really what matters.

• 1:01:38Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:01:38Andy Greenwald?

  So people are coming for us, you know, heavy is the head.

• 1:01:40Chris Ryan?

  So look at, look at Apple, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

• 1:01:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I feel like there's still, well, it's an ongoing conversation. We'll be talking about your friends and neighbors, like, the, the model that you're talking about.

• 1:01:56Andy Greenwald?

  Both of these things, the studio being good and Dope Thief being good in the respective lanes that I think you sketched out very well, those are not high batting average scenarios. We are going to empower successful people to do their dream project and use their Rolodex to populate it.

• 1:02:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Andy Greenwald?

  Is the studio. Best case scenario in some ways for that type of.

• 1:02:19Chris Ryan?

  Worst case being disclaimer.

• 1:02:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, right. Dope Thief is, we're going to sprinkle a little apple and money magic on what otherwise could be on any service, really, right?

• 1:02:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:34Andy Greenwald?

  And it being.

• 1:02:35Chris Ryan?

  But I actually, the funny thing is, is you say that.

• 1:02:38Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:38Chris Ryan?

  And I think to sort of draw this all back to the town and to the way things work now.

• 1:02:44Andy Greenwald?

  The movie Peter Craig wrote? Oh, the podcast?

• 1:02:46Chris Ryan?

  The podcast, not even the podcast, like The Place, like the way Hollywood works now. As we always say, I feel like we've made that reference of like, oh, and, but this could be on another network. But there aren't actually that many places that it could be. I mean, yes, it could, could Dope Thief have been on Peacock for sure? Could it have been on Netflix? I guess there's a world in which it could have, you know, HBO has its own Philadelphia crime show. So yes, there are examples, but it's starting to like feel a little bit more like this is one of the only games in town to me.

• 1:03:17Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's, I think that's right. If you look at the pieces, this is not an obvious sell anywhere. Maybe it would have been 10 years ago, but not so much now. A novel that is respected and not very well known, a genre that we love, but isn't always a home run ratings wise or return on investment wise. But you take Peter Craig, who's a screenwriter, who's, and he also wrote The Batman, so he's a pretty well established and I'm sure well compensated screenwriter. Ridley Scott and Brian Tyree Henry, who isn't an A-list actor, but is respected like one and isn't going to say yes to just anything. Those three pieces get it made, but when you put those three pieces, those costly pieces in place. It's it's Apple that's gonna make it.

• 1:04:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Andy Greenwald?

  You're right. So they sort of they they sort of A-listed themselves into a corner and it worked out.

• 1:04:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I think that you could probably do a dissection of the shows that Apple has. And you could assign them in one way or another to one of those two paths. This is either a reliable piece of genre television or someone we want to be in business with. And sometimes it's both. So sometimes it might be Jake Gyllenhaal, or sometimes it might be Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.

• 1:04:32Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 1:04:33Chris Ryan?

  But for the most part, when you look at their shows and the ones that work, they fall into one of those two buckets. They fall into like, this would be on 10 other television networks eight years ago, but whoops, we happen to have a trillion dollars to blow.

• 1:04:48Andy Greenwald?

  You know who I'd like to talk, I'd like to get into weigh in on this, and obviously, we're not gonna do it today. We're not gonna cold call him.

• 1:04:53Chris Ryan?

  Tim Cook?

• 1:04:54Andy Greenwald?

  But you call Tim, I'll call David Heyman. Our buddy Chuck Close from me used to say, we would have conversations with him, and I don't remember if we ever talked about this on a podcast, but that he was always struck by the fact that as recently as when we were talking about this, it was 20 years ago, that just from like the the visual, the look of a show, he could tell what network it was on. That CBS shows had a certain way to that they were they were color corrected, or ABC shows were shot with a certain kind of vibrancy and NBC sitcom, whatever, that they had a visual identity. And I wonder if Apple is an inheritor of that now, that there is a certain look.

• 1:05:39Andy Greenwald?

  Or maybe it's just the the the the price of the talent that we're looking at.

• 1:05:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Andy Greenwald?

  But can you tell an Apple show just by throwing it on?

• 1:05:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I I think for a while I joking about how like, it seems like everybody in Apple shows wears logoless hats.

• 1:05:55Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:55Chris Ryan?

  It's like there's an anonymity to when I when I see people on Shrinking and they're all wearing like bonobos. You know what I mean? Like, I know they're not, but it just.

• 1:06:04Andy Greenwald?

  Bonobos and allbirds?

• 1:06:05Chris Ryan?

  But it just feels like they're all wearing like, this is a shirt and pants, you know?

• 1:06:09Andy Greenwald?

  Like.

• 1:06:11Chris Ryan?

  But I'm like, who looks like this?

• 1:06:13Andy Greenwald?

  Say more.

• 1:06:14Chris Ryan?

  Do you know what I'm saying?

• 1:06:15Andy Greenwald?

  To be fair, shrinking is set in Pasadena, where I do spend quite a bit of time, and people do dress like that there.

• 1:06:22Andy Greenwald?

  Excuse me, sir. Is that a pair of shoes on your feet? Hmm, yes, I think it really complements my shirt. And this I call a sweater.

• 1:06:31Chris Ryan?

  I'm sorry that it took me 58 minutes to make a joke on this podcast.

• 1:06:35Andy Greenwald?

  Do you feel like you've been kind of serious today?

• 1:06:37Chris Ryan?

  No, I feel like I just, I just, I had, I had a, I feel like this was like a game that they'll be like, way to go there, slugger. We'll take it from here.

• 1:06:45Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 1:06:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:46Andy Greenwald?

  You?

• 1:06:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:47Andy Greenwald?

  You're, you're always playing at an elite level. You're the only person you're playing against at this point in your career.

• 1:06:52Chris Ryan?

  I'm chasing ghosts. I'm chasing Jordan.

• 1:06:54Andy Greenwald?

  It's like LeBron.

• 1:06:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, do you want to, because we're recording early, this will go up Thursday. Do you want to say where you physically are in time and space on Thursday?

• 1:07:02Chris Ryan?

  I'll be in Boston.

• 1:07:03Andy Greenwald?

  People gonna come out? You want people to come out?

• 1:07:05Chris Ryan?

  I want to perform to an empty House of Blues. Just me and Rosello.

• 1:07:08Andy Greenwald?

  Sometimes, is Rosello coming?

• 1:07:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Rosello's doing the rewatchables.

• 1:07:11Andy Greenwald?

  That's sick. Sometimes, uh, there have been times on this podcast where I was like, Chris, you want to talk about your live rewatchable show? And you're kind of like, it's already sold out.

• 1:07:20Chris Ryan?

  No, that's not what I mean.

• 1:07:21Andy Greenwald?

  People feel bad.

• 1:07:21Chris Ryan?

  That's not what I mean. I just, I just, it's a, you know, I'm, I'm here for you. I'm here about, this is about us and what we do.

• 1:07:28Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah, we discussed this the other week. We don't even post this, right? You just, you're just like, you're just worried about me.

• 1:07:34Chris Ryan?

  Talk it out, bud. How's Hollywood doing?

• 1:07:36Andy Greenwald?

  You're just worried about me? So you rent the studio. I notice Kai is not even coming in anymore.

• 1:07:42Chris Ryan?

  Kai actually doesn't work at the Rayer. She works at Department of Social Services.

• 1:07:49Andy Greenwald?

  I hope, I hope she has, I hope she responded to the email positively about what she does every day.

• 1:07:53Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it was great talking to you. We'll be back Monday. We have Lotus. Um, and maybe we'll go more in depth into Severance. Or not Severance.

• 1:08:04Andy Greenwald?

  Jeez.

• 1:08:05Chris Ryan?

  Maybe we'll go more in depth into the studio after people have had a chance to really digest it.

• 1:08:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but there's also other stuff we have, we've sort of dropped the ball on. There's Top Chef, there's Gemstones, there's Daredevil. This is a busy time.

• 1:08:15Chris Ryan?

  It is. And then Andor and Last of Us are coming.

• 1:08:18Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, that's, that's coming too soon, honestly.

• 1:08:20Chris Ryan?

  I am.

• 1:08:21Andy Greenwald?

  So you say Kathy Kennedy's still in her office? Should I just tell her to just like pump the brakes?

• 1:08:25Chris Ryan?

  We should start a website that is, is Kathy Kennedy, Kathy Kennedy in Office.com?

• 1:08:33Chris Ryan?

  Just to find, because it would be like, we used to, Grantland, we used to have like sites, we would start a site that was like, is Joel Embiid playing tonight.com?

• 1:08:41Andy Greenwald?

  That site has been static for quite some time.

• 1:08:43Chris Ryan?

  It has. I don't want to let us go, man. I just love talking to you.

• 1:08:47Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think, this is like the outro track that we used to have on CDs?

• 1:08:50Chris Ryan?

  I think Kyle needs to go. All right. All right. Thanks to everybody. We'll talk to you guys on Monday.