‘Materialists’ and the Top Five Movie Love Triangles. Plus: ‘The Life of Chuck,’ With Mike Flanagan.

Sean and Amanda have an in-depth conversation and unpack their very mixed feelings on a pair of two new releases coming this weekend. They start with Celine Song's ‘Materialists’ and celebrate Song’s wonderful writing while also exploring their inability to connect to Dakota Johnson's and Pedro Pascal’s performances of the material (1:46). Then, they create their list of the top five movie love triangles of all time (45:10). Next, they discuss Mike Flanagan’s newest Stephen King adaptation, ‘The Life of Chuck,’ and explore why they think it will be such a divisive movie (53:57). Finally, Sean is joined by Flanagan to talk about his relationship to King, why he felt that this was the right time to make a shift away from horror, and how to tightrope walk the thin line between corniness and sincerity (1:21:01). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Mike Flanagan 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.

• 0:00Sean Fennessey?

  Friendly reminder that tickets for the Chicago screening and conversation around number 14 on our 25 for 25 list go on sale today, Friday, June 13th at 10 a.m. Central Time. We're headed to the Music Box Theater in Chicago on Sunday, July 20th, and ticket information is at the ringer.com/events. We'll see you at the movies. 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? 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.

• 0:45Sean Fennessey?

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• 1:25Sean Fennessey?

  go to LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. That's LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. Terms and conditions apply.

• 1:43Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 1:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 1:45Sean Fennessey?

  And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about material things and spiritual journeys. Later in this episode, I'll be joined for the first time by Mike Flanagan. He's the writer-director of the new film The Life of Chuck. The Stephen King adaptation won the Audience Award at TIFF last year and is now in theaters around the country. Flanagan, best known as a horror filmmaker behind movies like Dr. Sleep, Gerald's Game, and Oculus, as well as a string of successful Netflix TV shows, including The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher. I've been a big fan of Mike's for a long time, so very happy to chat with him about this departure for him as a movie. We'll talk about that movie here on this podcast. Stick around for our conversation. But first, we've got this pair of very interesting movies to dig into today. Amanda, how are you?

• 2:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm well.

• 2:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's nice to see you.

• 2:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Nice to see you.

• 2:30Sean Fennessey?

  I love when we get a couple of movies.

• 2:32Amanda Dobbins?

  That we can argue about?

• 2:33Sean Fennessey?

  That, well, just that, just that are, are full of stuff that we're interested in.

• 2:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and to talk about. And I, I sat through both of them, fighting the impulse to text you multiple times.

• 2:43Sean Fennessey?

  The same. I was, I was excited about both of them, yes.

• 2:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Saying things to you and was like adding things to the document at like 7:30 this morning, being like, oh, another thing. So, yeah, it's fun.

• 2:52Sean Fennessey?

  I think both of these movies are imperfect, but also very rich to examine. So let's, let's start with Materialists.

• 2:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:59Sean Fennessey?

  Which is, I think, safe to say, one of the more anticipated movies of the year for both you and I. Comes to us from Celine Song. She's the writer-director. She was the writer-director of Past Lives. Which was, that was in your top five of 2023, was it not?

• 3:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought and still think it's a pretty magical movie.

• 3:14Sean Fennessey?

  A very special film. This film is a follow-up. This is a, I would say, more Hollywood follow-up, particularly because of the, clearly, like, an increase in budget and star power that accompanies this movie. The movie stars Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Winters, Erin Ireland, Dasha Nekrasova. It's about a New York City matchmaker who finds her life getting complicated when she becomes torn between an ex, who she still has feelings for, and a new bachelor who enters her life and kind of sweeps her off her feet. Chris Evans is the ex. Pedro Pascal is the bachelor.

• 3:51Sean Fennessey?

  What did you think of Materialists?

• 3:52Amanda Dobbins?

  As I said to you, I really liked it and also didn't think it totally worked. I don't think that all of the fascinating stuff that is in it

• 4:04Amanda Dobbins?

  totally comes together in, in one movie. And so there are a lot of things that I really responded to, a lot of things that I thought were funny. I think that this is a movie that is in the conversation with a tradition of movies that I really love and, and not just romantic comedies. And we'll talk a lot about the trailer, how it's being marketed. And it's not a romantic comedy. It's, it's not really even that funny. Parts of, there's, there's some, it has its moments. Very amusing, observant moments, but it is not.

• 4:37Amanda Dobbins?

  There's nothing slapstick. It's not a 40s rom-com. How about that? And I think it's very smart. I love the way that Celine Song writes. And it is, it is very written. Both of these films today are very written and we'll talk about the pluses and minuses of that.

• 4:56Amanda Dobbins?

  So I, I'm really excited to talk to you about it. I still, and I, and I find myself like arguing with myself being like, okay, but wait, do I actually really like it? Because I have so much to say about it. And I, I do really like it. I, there are just some things that like straight up don't work for me in it.

• 5:15Sean Fennessey?

  The same is true for me. I feel similarly as you, but I feel like you are like a little bit pained by your lack of all in-ness. And I think I, I was, I was pretty nervous about this movie because of the trailer. And I think it revealed itself to be clearly just an urban romantic drama. This is, it does have some comic moments, but it is a very straight movie. And you know, just this morning, well, last night, somebody added me and said on, on X and said, are you doing any syllabuses soon? I haven't done a syllabus in a while. And I was like, I, I kind of want to, but if I had seen Materialist sooner, I would have done one about Materialist. Because it's kind of rich with a little bit of movie history in it. And, and A24, the movie studio that is releasing Materialist, just tweeted out all of the film references.

• 5:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Working on it for weeks and they just tweeted it out.

• 6:00Sean Fennessey?

  They just tweeted it out. But in March, she clearly wrote someone an email with all the film references. And if you look at the movies that Celine is referencing for the film, that's a lot of costume dramas.

• 6:10Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a lot of Jane Austen and it's a lot of Edith Wharton, which, which is definitely what jumped out to me.

• 6:16Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely. And this idea of sort of class and, and finance and wealth informing romance is, is a huge key. It's kind of the keystone of the movie itself. And then the other critical voice, whose name pops up on this list is James L. Brooks. And James L. Brooks, who wrote funny scenes, but deep emotional films. And I think at times, Materialist is that. So. The movie that it reminded me of while watching it, because we get so few movies like this these days, is Marriage Story. Because Marriage Story was a movie that I really, really loved. I loved it more than this movie. But that I think I had more fun thinking about and potting with you about than I did actually sitting and watching it.

• 6:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 6:55Sean Fennessey?

  I don't find myself returning to Marriage Story over and over again the way I would other bomb back movies.

• 7:00Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 7:01Sean Fennessey?

  But it was so loaded with things that like lit my brain on fire.

• 7:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but some of the lack of rewatchability is just that it's a very tough subject matter and very, you know, emotional to us, subject matter that is handled beautifully. I did rewatch it, uh, maybe a year or two ago for some podcast that we were doing and just like found myself in tears again. So that's why I am not like, hey, it's Friday night, let's, you know, like fire up Marriage Story, even the way I would for, say, Kicking and Screaming, or Frances Ha, or, um, I guess Greenberg. Uh, I mean, can we, it's 15 years of Greenberg.

• 7:36Sean Fennessey?

  You want to do a Greenberg pod?

• 7:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, really, really underrated.

• 7:39Sean Fennessey?

  I'm turning into Greenberg. I think everyone knows that I'm turning into Greenberg, so I'm trying to get around that as much as I can.

• 7:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 7:47Sean Fennessey?

  I think the thing that that movie did, that you've identified that this movie doesn't do, is it doesn't get me, it didn't get me emotionally involved. And there are a couple of reasons why Materialist doesn't get us as emotionally involved as we'd like to be. For me, I'm gonna be very careful about how I frame this.

• 8:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 8:05Sean Fennessey?

  I don't get Dakota Johnson, comma, the actress.

• 8:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I, yeah.

• 8:11Sean Fennessey?

  I think she seems like a super cool person. She was on Amy Poehler's podcast this week, Good Hang. Great interview.

• 8:17Amanda Dobbins?

  The asparagus bit, the, I mean, like, it's really good.

• 8:20Sean Fennessey?

  She, it's a great, it's a great episode of the show.

• 8:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Lights out press tour. And it would also, and I'll, I'll do this work for you. Um, she's astonishingly beautiful, like, she's so beautiful and she's so pretty in the movie. And I did find myself just in the movie just being like, wow, your hair is so shiny. Um, and I have, like, had conversations with friends being like, Dakota Johnson has always been beautiful, but whatever she has, has put together for this press tour.

• 8:46Sean Fennessey?

  She's at the right age, I think.

• 8:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And this film, it is like, it's, it's powerful.

• 8:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she's luminous and, and that, I think in some ways works against her in this movie in, in a specific way. But to me, it's not about whether or not she holds the screen. I think she is a good movie star. I just don't think, I can't get connected to movies where she has to drive the emotional action.

• 9:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 9:06Sean Fennessey?

  If she is in a bigger splash and her kind of reservedness.

• 9:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 9:10Sean Fennessey?

  Is plain or suspiria where this sort of like restraint and fear is driving it. I can get interested in it. But a movie where she has to be the person that we are feeling for all the time. I just can't. It's just, it's black licorice for me. I can't get into it. I don't buy her as this person.

• 9:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Sean Fennessey?

  And the whole movie is kind of hinging on that. And so as much as I can admire and we can unpack thematically, visually, what is so cool and accomplished about this movie. I just kept banging my head against like, did she just read these, this dialogue for the first time in this scene?

• 9:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, okay, yes.

• 9:43Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 9:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I would, I would like to mount like a limited defense.

• 9:47Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 9:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is to some point, I think her reservedness and the, and the disconnect from the world and an emotion. That, that she brings is a cool theme of, of the movie. And there are aspects of it that work and kind of highlight, I think, what Celine Song is trying to do.

• 10:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I do not think that Dakota Johnson is built for long, uh, stage monologues. She's just not. And to your point about, did she just get this for the first time? You know what? She's not the only actor in this movie who can't do it. So there are some really, really tough moments of two people. Saying what I think are like very interesting, well-written, like well-digested. If like a bit long, um, speeches about love and society and, and money and. You know, the, the ideal marriage. And it just goes on and on and on.

• 10:51Amanda Dobbins?

  So I'm, I am with you at some point that the, the people who are cast to do this work can't sell what they need to sell.

• 11:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's a, it's a complete paradox because a movie like this doesn't get made without.

• 11:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Sean Fennessey?

  Pedro Pascal, Dakota Johnson, very, Chris Evans, very well-known people. Who you want to get emotionally invested in their character stories. But it's hard. And broadcast news will come up probably multiple times in this conversation. It's notable to me that it's the very first movie on Celine's list. And the dynamic between Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks and William Hurt.

• 11:27Sean Fennessey?

  Is is sparks all the time.

• 11:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 11:30Sean Fennessey?

  It is a it's a very hot movie.

• 11:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:32Sean Fennessey?

  Um, this is a little chilly.

• 11:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 11:35Sean Fennessey?

  At times. It is a little bit removed. And I think it's interesting to see Celine Song elevate herself as a filmmaker. I think some of that coldness is because she has entered like a world of wealth and class that we don't see in past lives.

• 11:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 11:49Sean Fennessey?

  You know, the Pedro Pascal character is a private equity guy. And he's got this like classic American Psycho bachelor pad.

• 11:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 11:59Sean Fennessey?

  That is beautiful. He only dines in elegant, subterranean, beautifully lit restaurants.

• 12:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:06Sean Fennessey?

  Um, a lot of the way that she shoots all of these things is it's not it's not a watch commercial, but it's it's not Fellini either, you know, it's kind of like in this middle ground between there's like a real point of view.

• 12:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:19Sean Fennessey?

  But it's very polished.

• 12:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought a lot of Sofia.

• 12:22Sean Fennessey?

  That definitely, definitely.

• 12:24Amanda Dobbins?

  And the observation, not just there's that great, the apartment reveal scene is done. Um, it's also like the first time they have sex and and I think Dakota Johnson is great in that moment because she's hot for the apartment, not for him.

• 12:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, there's a great shot of her like kind of peering around the corner to check everything out.

• 12:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And the camera is working with her too. So I think that's really well done. And then there is a lot of, um, you know, there are things at the edges, like both weddings impeccably designed and really like say something about these characters and, uh, you know, what kind of chess pieces they are in this game. Um, and they are also just like incredibly well observed, like that barn wedding, like I was like, is this where I got married in a way that was really upsetting?

• 13:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's very familiar.

• 13:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was not. Um, and it was a beautiful wedding. So good job, Zach and good job this movie. Um, the bridesmaids and the, um, like at the first wedding and the comedy of that. So there is, there is stuff that she's doing, like with the camera, with scene setting, with world building that is like.

• 13:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Very, very well observed, very sharp. And, and really works.

• 13:36Sean Fennessey?

  I think the first 15 minutes in particular is very, was very Woody Allen, Nancy Meyers to me. Where it was much more comic, it's much more introducing many characters who have like their foibles are right on the surface. They're constantly talking about the things that they want, which reveals their own weaknesses. And there is an energy. And then as soon as we start determining what the emotional conflict of the movie is going to be.

• 13:57Amanda Dobbins?

  There's no emotional conflict. There's no emotional conflict.

• 13:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's just a little flat.

• 14:00Amanda Dobbins?

  There is, there is plot suspense, sort of. And I, I did find myself wondering, well, I wonder how she's going to end this. Because like, I know what's going to happen according to the, like, the emotional or the, not even, not even the rules.

• 14:15Sean Fennessey?

  But like, the rules of expectation.

• 14:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure, but I was like, okay, are you going to follow the rules or are you going to subvert the rules? You know, and, and you could pick either. But in terms of what's happening between these characters and, or at least what's being performed. I know exactly where the emotions lie. There's no doubt. And, you know, respectfully, there's just zero chemistry between Dakota and Pedro Pascal. Like absolutely nothing. And their press tour has been amazing to watch because they do have a different, really electric kind of chemistry. Like, please check out the Vogue interview. It is so funny.

• 14:52Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't seen that. I think we, we will kind of start to nudge into spoiler territory. So if people have not had a chance to see Materialist, I would say for me, it is a soft recommend. And I think some people are going to love it.

• 15:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:03Sean Fennessey?

  And I think some people are going to be like, what is this? I, I, I ultimately did like it. I might even like it more seeing it again. I have only seen it one time. But I think that what you just described about their kind of anti-chemistry between these two people is the feature and not the bug because. That is the theme of the story is when you're seeking a partner in your life.

• 15:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:27Sean Fennessey?

  Is it better to seek the person that will give you the things that are on your checklist? Or is it better to seek the person that will animate that spark inside of you? And that's, that's really what Song is interested in, right? Like, that's what she wants to explore.

• 15:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I, yeah, but like, no, thank you. Like, I, I'm a veteran of this, like, should you pick, like, is it Mr. Big? Is it Aiden? Is it something like, thank you very much. Like, and I know when I see, like, the push-pull and, oh, I would choose this thing, or I would choose that thing. And there's just like.

• 15:56Sean Fennessey?

  But is.

• 15:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Nothing between them.

• 15:58Sean Fennessey?

  Seriously, like, let's explore that, though. Is there ever a time in the movie when you're meant to believe that Dakota Johnson's character is actually interested in Pedro Pascal as a person? Because I'm not sure that the intention is for that to exist, unlike, say, Carrie Bradshaw.

• 16:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 16:13Sean Fennessey?

  Where you really can tell that she's like, I don't know, I like, I like both guys. You know, like, this movie is different because even though Chris Evans is on the periphery of the story.

• 16:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:24Sean Fennessey?

  He's not fighting for her. He's thinking about her.

• 16:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 16:28Sean Fennessey?

  They're in contact, but it's not a competition in the, in the way that we usually see it in the, in the Philadelphia story sense, where you're like, these two guys are right next to each other and they're kind of fighting for the same dame. This isn't really that kind of a movie.

• 16:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it is like a what is she gonna choose? But that character is also given so much, like, even if it's incorrect self-knowledge, but she spends the whole time being like, no, this is how it works. And I know, I know everything, and I know this game, and I know this. And I, like, I understand that I would only be picking this person for this. And then there is that, like, there's that long and beautifully shot and, for my money, interminable scene at the restaurant, the subterranean restaurant. Where.

• 17:13Sean Fennessey?

  Gordon Willis's dining, the most shadowy restaurant in New York.

• 17:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it's, it's beautiful.

• 17:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 17:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and.

• 17:22Amanda Dobbins?

  It seems like he's turning her a little, maybe not emotionally, but in the sense of where do her like emotions go?

• 17:34Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:34Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, like.

• 17:36Sean Fennessey?

  But to me, that scene is really good because he just pulls a move that men pull.

• 17:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:44Sean Fennessey?

  Which is like direct eye contact compliment, which like humans cannot resist.

• 17:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:52Sean Fennessey?

  You can't resist when someone just looks at you and is like.

• 17:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Stop doing it. It's weird.

• 17:56Sean Fennessey?

  But that's what I'm saying. It is very powerful.

• 17:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I know that you do it, but it's weird.

• 17:59Sean Fennessey?

  But it is something that like most guys I know do it. And it is like, it almost feels like Celine Song has like located the particular moves. And maybe it's because she has this backstory where for six months she worked as a matchmaker.

• 18:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 18:12Sean Fennessey?

  So she did actually spend time looking people in the eyes, asking them what they want, getting communication from them. And you know, I don't know if I believe that either of those people are real. I believe that Chris Evans' character is real.

• 18:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:24Sean Fennessey?

  That is a, and she works with a lot of stage actors as a playwright. And like, she seems to be putting a lot of failed stage actor into that part. These two people feel like more constructs, but she's using them as a platform to explore her own interest in this idea. And like, a lot of these ideas are basically like wealth and security.

• 18:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 18:44Sean Fennessey?

  Or passion.

• 18:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 18:45Sean Fennessey?

  Which is very Jane Austen, you know, very Edith Wharton. Um, and.

• 18:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Remember when you, I find, you finally watched Sense and Sensibility and you were like, I mean, what's the big deal? Like, what's really, what's going on with them?

• 18:57Sean Fennessey?

  I liked it.

• 18:58Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I know, but like you didn't, you know, it's, we've, we've made a lot of progress. So you understand the stakes dramatically here.

• 19:04Sean Fennessey?

  I, I read House of Mirth in college and I was miserable reading that book too. So I, I think I don't, that's just, it's not, it's not my. I was much more interested in a contemporary setting. Like, I think I, I clicked to it more.

• 19:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 19:16Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but so I think this movie is ultimately going to be a challenge for us because you're not very into Pedro Pascal and I'm not very into Dakota Johnson. And so they are the first two thirds of the movie in so many ways with Evans on the periphery. Anytime they're getting into those speeches, I kind of dug it. It felt very Sorkin and Matmet to me, whereas like you make. You make exceptions for writers who are being writerly out loud if you like the things that they're interested in. You know what I mean?

• 19:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't mind that they're being writerly out loud. I just don't think that the performance of the writing always gets there. And there is both like a, there's a tone and a pacing thing in this movie that kept sticking out to me. I mean, it has like five endings. Like literally, I thought five different times that I was watching the last scene. And

• 20:06Sean Fennessey?

  I think she kept trying to pull the rug out from you where you're like, you're at a wedding and they're together and you think you're gonna have a moment.

• 20:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And there's like, and as you noted, there's like a great front stoop moment. And you're like, oh, that's so nice. Callback, past lives, we're doing it again. But I do also think because there is a disconnect between the three characters, or I know that there is an intentional disconnect between them, but I think there also is like a real tonal disconnect and the way Dakota Johnson is playing it is in a slightly different movie than the way Pedro Pascal is playing it, which is in a like way different movie than Chris Evans, which is like sort of the point. But so sometimes it just, the moments where it's as if they were on the stage together, speaking to each other, it's like they're not on the same stage.

• 20:53Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. There's, there is something just a little off in the chemistry. Let's talk about matchmaking and that as the other angle of the movie, because the other focus of it is that Lucy, the Dakota Johnson character is, I guess in her early 30s and

• 21:07Amanda Dobbins?

  She's 39.

• 21:08Sean Fennessey?

  She's 39 in the film?

• 21:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Lucy, the other matchmaker? Oh, no, Lucy. Oh, I thought you were talking about Zoe Winter.

• 21:15Sean Fennessey?

  No, not Zoe Winter. The Lucy character, I guess is like 32, 33, maybe.

• 21:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I think she's 32.

• 21:19Sean Fennessey?

  She was trying to be an actress. That's how she met John, the Chris Evans character, but she's given up on acting.

• 21:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 21:24Sean Fennessey?

  And she says she makes $80,000 a year as a matchmaker, which is not, not a lot.

• 21:28Amanda Dobbins?

  No, and does not support the apartment that we see at the beginning.

• 21:32Sean Fennessey?

  And maybe, was that like a winking nod at the unreality of a lot of these films? Okay. I thought that was notable. I mean, it obviously underscores the fact that money matters to her, that like she is thinking about money and you need money to survive, especially in New York City. But this profession.

• 21:50Sean Fennessey?

  Is very strange in that it has a kind of like thousands year arc. The film in fact starts with this like the origination of

• 21:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 22:00Sean Fennessey?

  Marriage, you know, like the earliest people on this planet. And then the idea of families coming together to create strong bonds and to share wealth and to grow and to build societies is this deep idea that's kind of embedded in it. But most of the people that I know that have gotten together and gotten married in the last 10 years.

• 22:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:17Sean Fennessey?

  Not online. And most people just meet online now.

• 22:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:21Sean Fennessey?

  And that like rambunctious and weird bar culture that you and I were in in New York is like seemingly a little bit more toned down these days, at least based on the people that I know in my life.

• 22:32Sean Fennessey?

  And I don't, I don't know anybody that's worked with a matchmaker.

• 22:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I do.

• 22:34Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I'd love to hear about the, their experiences anonymously because I find this to be such a odd.

• 22:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:41Sean Fennessey?

  Thing to pursue, to be interested in, to attempt. And the movie does ultimately, I think, come out on the side of like, this is maybe a bit evil, like a bit toxic and quite dangerous when you hear about some of the, a particular instance that happened to one of her clients.

• 22:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. I mean, the, the, the Dakota Johnson character Lucy is always talking in terms of spreadsheets, you know, she's a woman after your own heart and.

• 23:04Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe that's why I'm, I'm a little.

• 23:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And non-negotiables and, and that it's, it's math. That's something that I think she says over and over again.

• 23:12Sean Fennessey?

  She does.

• 23:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, and so I think the movie definitely comes down on the side of it's, it's not.

• 23:18Sean Fennessey?

  It's not math.

• 23:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Or that love is not math. And I, you know, I think this difference between love and this movie's idea of marriage and what you should,

• 23:33Amanda Dobbins?

  how the two should or shouldn't be inter, you know, intermingled is interesting, but.

• 23:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Is marriage a business proposition or is it a, an emotional experience?

• 23:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly. And I think the movie definitely thinks that the matchmaking and the mathematic approach to long-term partnership is evil.

• 23:53Sean Fennessey?

  Is there any truth in it? Like, did you do calculus in your head when you were getting married?

• 23:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, no, not at all, but I do also think that.

• 24:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Zach and I, like, a lot of the qualifications that she keeps repeating of, you know, like, similar backgrounds, similar education, like, it just, it happened that way, that that's, Zach and I do actually meet up to the spreadsheet, even if we weren't checking on the list. Same with you and your wife.

• 24:19Sean Fennessey?

  Very, we went to high school together, so yeah, we have tremendously similar backgrounds.

• 24:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 24:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 24:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, so, but no, I didn't, I didn't do the checklist. And I think I was pretty pissed off the first year when I realized that I had to file taxes with Zach.

• 24:34Sean Fennessey?

  I remember this.

• 24:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Remember this?

• 24:35Sean Fennessey?

  I do.

• 24:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because I was like, no, no, no, no. It's, I, I didn't think about it as forming a business, and I didn't want to form a business with him.

• 24:42Sean Fennessey?

  You wanted an individuated Amanda Industries.

• 24:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I do. I wanted my own business, like, we still have separate bank accounts, you know, like this, all of this stuff. Um, but, you know, you go through and you learn that it actually, you did form a corporation.

• 24:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I would love to see her sequel to this, that kind of explores that. I think that would be really interesting. I, I think some of, uh, some of the exploration of this idea was a little overwrought, like, at a certain point, we're kind of like 90 minutes into the movie and she's still doing the kind of like, well, by my calculations, approach to this, which just, I, I understand why it's like schematic way to kind of follow the story all the way through. But the, the, the idea itself of, could you hire someone to help you find this thing that you're looking for? But then more specifically, what's really inside people who can't find what they're looking for? Is something that is an aspect of the movie? It's a smaller aspect than Lucy's quest to figure out whether or not she wants to be with either of these guys?

• 25:38Sean Fennessey?

  But Zoe Winters, who people probably best know as Logan Roy's assistant come lover in succession, plays, pun intended, uh, plays a, one of, one of Lucy's clients, a, I would say somewhat desperate 39-year-old woman, who is sort of ordinary in every way, per Lucy's description, that she is like- Not great at anything, but not bad at anything. All of her attributes and characteristics are nice.

• 26:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Sean Fennessey?

  They're good. And that lack of specialness that Dasha Nekrasova from Red Scare talks about there. So funny to me that Dasha's just in movies now.

• 26:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Podcasters can be anything.

• 26:20Sean Fennessey?

  They, I guess so.

• 26:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Guys have a mobile network, you know, like.

• 26:23Sean Fennessey?

  Congratulations to them. They really made it. I'm super happy.

• 26:26Amanda Dobbins?

  We start a mobile network.

• 26:27Sean Fennessey?

  I don't really know what that is.

• 26:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't really either. Is it just like poor Jack has to go and like connect people's calls like operator style?

• 26:34Sean Fennessey?

  I, I don't wish that on Jack anytime soon.

• 26:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe it could just be a service that's like, don't make this phone call, which is, would be my, my advice.

• 26:41Sean Fennessey?

  Would you, would you consider an advice service where you took one call per week from a listener? And you just gave them, you do, you Dear Abby'd them?

• 26:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Thousand percent.

• 26:49Sean Fennessey?

  You would do that.

• 26:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, my God.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  And there's next week's episode.

• 26:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I'd be so good at it.

• 26:54Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so we don't have an episode for next week because we, because we were gonna do this movie and like a chuck together.

• 27:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And now, and now we're combining them.

• 27:01Sean Fennessey?

  I saw both movies and I was like, I feel like these movies fit together.

• 27:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, they do.

• 27:04Sean Fennessey?

  So what, I want it to go live on Monday.

• 27:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 27:07Sean Fennessey?

  Just for like an hour and 90 minutes and, and just like be in the chat. But if we did like, uh, the advice episode.

• 27:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Sean Fennessey?

  I think that would be funny, Bobby. I mean, Bobby, Jesus Christ, Jack, do you think we could do that?

• 27:17Speaker 02

  I think we could make it work.

• 27:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, I mean, live, I feel, I feel really connected to our listeners right now, the nice ones anyway. And, um, and like, and really ready.

• 27:29Sean Fennessey?

  You can Dear Abby it.

• 27:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:31Sean Fennessey?

  Jack, do you think you need to navigate what we answer or are we looking at the chat while we're live?

• 27:36Speaker 02

  I think I should probably throw you some bones.

• 27:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that probably makes sense. Okay, that would, well, that could.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  There's gonna be a lot of guys in the comments being like, Sean, sign my Blu-ray.

• 27:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, we gotta shout out to those guys. We love you.

• 27:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I just wanna say, uh, skincare questions, Jack, are allowed.

• 27:54Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I don't know about that.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 27:56Sean Fennessey?

  Anyhow, let's go.

• 27:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Did you see that Chris shared his skincare routine on Jim?

• 27:59Sean Fennessey?

  I will.

• 27:59Amanda Dobbins?

  It was amazing. He went and got every single product. Check out Jim's session.

• 28:03Sean Fennessey?

  How many products does he have for skincare?

• 28:05Amanda Dobbins?

  He had at least four to show and then I had to follow up about sunscreen. Are you wearing sunscreen?

• 28:11Sean Fennessey?

  I, there's SPF in my moisturizer, but that's the only thing I put on every day.

• 28:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, that's good. That's good.

• 28:16Sean Fennessey?

  Little dime of moisturizer, that's it, SPF.

• 28:18Amanda Dobbins?

  There you go.

• 28:19Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I got a lot of sunburn at Disneyland and like Orlando last week, I gotta tell you.

• 28:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:24Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, let's go back to Zoe Winters.

• 28:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 28:28Sean Fennessey?

  That scene's really funny, where they're talking about how she's kind of unspectacularly fine.

• 28:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 28:34Sean Fennessey?

  But that character becomes tragic, because as the story goes on, she's, in her attempts to kind of find someone, anyone who will click with this woman, he sets her up with this guy, Mark P., and it turns out that Mark P. is a-

• 28:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Number one voiced, never seen, and voiced only, voiced by John McGarraw.

• 28:53Sean Fennessey?

  Instantaneously recognizable.

• 28:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and I was, I got to see this movie with Rob Mahoney and Joanna Robinson, which was really fun. And the moment you heard his voice, Joanne was like, oh, it's John McGarraw. You know, it was just a very exciting, and then, and then the movie went on. Would you like to share what happens from there?

• 29:11Sean Fennessey?

  Unfortunately, this is not the John McGarraw of past lives. This is the Mark P. of materialists, and he assaults Zoe Winters's character on their date, after, when she goes to the bathroom. And Lucy, while she's kind of entrenched in this relationship with Pedro Pascal's character, and she's trying to figure out like who she is, she eagerly like seeks out Lucy's approval on Mark, doesn't hear back from him, or doesn't hear back from her. She calls Mark, we hear Don McGarraw's voice. He's like, yeah, it was like, it was a good, I think I would see her again.

• 29:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I don't know if it'll be serious.

• 29:45Sean Fennessey?

  And immediately, we're like, okay, something's wrong here.

• 29:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:48Sean Fennessey?

  And we learn that he has assaulted her from her boss, played by Maren Ireland. How wonderful to see Maren Ireland not in a terrible horror movie.

• 29:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 29:55Sean Fennessey?

  I'm used to seeing her having her eyes gouged out by a demon, and in this case, she's just a boss.

• 29:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Or like stuck in a basement, yeah.

• 30:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. So, you know, Zoe Winters's character decides to sue the matchmaking service that Lucy works for, and then this sends Lucy into a kind of a tailspin of like, is what I'm doing wrong?

• 30:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 30:12Sean Fennessey?

  Is everything about my life wrong? What is love? Is this pointless? Is this hopeless? And that, I would say, even more so than the, will she pick him or will she pick him, feels like the narrative thrust of the movie. I'm not sure that I ultimately got to the conclusion of that feeling, though. Like, is by choosing the person that she chooses, and we can get into Chris Evans momentarily, does that answer the crisis that she's having in the second act of this movie?

• 30:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, then, I think the film thinks it does. I, I don't think this is handled particularly well. And I, like-

• 30:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's valid to open up all the questions and like, what am I doing? And, and is everything wrong? But the resolution, and again, spoilers, um, is that after not being in touch, the Zoe Winters character calls Dakota Johnson because the, you know, faceless.

• 31:10Sean Fennessey?

  Mark P.

• 31:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Mark P. is outside her apartment. Um, and she's terrified and like, doesn't know, know who else to call or to help her. So Lucy answers the call, goes with Chris Evans, like helps, you know, helps her get a restraining order. Um, but you know, which is, is all good. But then in the movie, it's like, that event is what leads her to really, you know, reconcile, uh, like Aaron Best and Chris Evans. And there's a little bit of like implied cause and effect of like, oh, this person had to be assaulted in order for you to like, choose love.

• 31:53Amanda Dobbins?

  That was maybe not even intended, but to me doesn't, it didn't sit right.

• 31:59Sean Fennessey?

  I, I think that that is definitely a little bit messy. The, the, when I was watching it, what I struggled with was just a very simple straining of credulity around, why would this woman call Lucy? She literally says on the phone, I don't have any friends in the city.

• 32:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 32:16Sean Fennessey?

  I'm like, why do you live in the city?

• 32:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Sean Fennessey?

  What do you even, what? You don't know anybody except this woman whose company you're suing? This is the only person who can come and help you in this moment of need?

• 32:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:25Sean Fennessey?

  That just seemed pretty crazy.

• 32:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I mean.

• 32:27Sean Fennessey?

  Just like a, just a gaping plot hole where I was like, huh? You just took me out of the movie by saying that out loud. You know what I mean?

• 32:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, that's, that's all valid. I mean, then that, you know, they race back from the.

• 32:39Sean Fennessey?

  At the side of your wedding.

• 32:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, at the side of my wedding. Um, and then.

• 32:43Sean Fennessey?

  What town was that in?

• 32:44Amanda Dobbins?

  So I don't remember. I remember what the event, the.

• 32:47Sean Fennessey?

  No, that, no, your wedding.

• 32:48Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I know.

• 32:49Sean Fennessey?

  You don't know the name of the town that you were married in?

• 32:50Amanda Dobbins?

  No, because it wasn't even a town. It was called Handsome Hollow is the event space. Shout out, uh, Kate, who runs Handsome Hollow, did an amazing job.

• 32:57Sean Fennessey?

  No free ads.

• 32:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, yeah, no free ads.

• 32:59Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 33:00Amanda Dobbins?

  But, uh, I don't know. It was like Western Catskills.

• 33:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 33:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Remember? Yeah. I mean.

• 33:06Sean Fennessey?

  I was there, yeah.

• 33:07Amanda Dobbins?

  But you stayed in the Airbnb next door, so you didn't have to do anything. Yeah.

• 33:11Sean Fennessey?

  That was awesome.

• 33:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was nice. It was a fun wedding.

• 33:13Sean Fennessey?

  Very fun wedding.

• 33:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Um. But that that she would like immediately be led into, you know, I had like security concerns. I'm like, why are you buzzing this random person into your home if there's someone else outside? You know what I mean? And then you're just like gonna hang outside on the stoop and make moony eyes at Chris Evans? I don't know.

• 33:33Sean Fennessey?

  I I thought the movie was, if not tight, I found it to be very controlled all the way up until they went up to the wedding.

• 33:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:42Sean Fennessey?

  Upstate. And then the movie kind of gets a little bit loose in how it kind of wraps itself up. And it's hard because this is a framework that if it's not Jane Austen, it's Hollywood convention is our expectation. And it wants to subvert it, but it knows that it can't because we've already set up this Chris Evans character in the way that we have. So let's just talk about Chris Evans quickly.

• 34:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's been taking an absolute beating on this podcast for about two years.

• 34:02Amanda Dobbins?

  From you.

• 34:03Sean Fennessey?

  From me. I I it's because I believe in him and I really want better for him and I really like him. And I see him, I've seen him in a couple of interviews with Dakota Johnson for this press tour. And I'm like, he's clearly like a cool, smart guy. It's kind of a simple guy.

• 34:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:18Sean Fennessey?

  Which is okay.

• 34:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you see the clip of their non-negotiables for dating IRL? So his is, and literally must love dogs. I don't know if he knows that that's a 2000 and something film.

• 34:27Sean Fennessey?

  He's just a bro.

• 34:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, must love dogs. And then Dakota Johnson's is like, don't be an asshole, which was live on the Today Show. So then she gets in a little trouble.

• 34:36Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 34:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:37Sean Fennessey?

  Good rule, though.

• 34:38Amanda Dobbins?

  All right, yeah.

• 34:38Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I think his character in this movie is fine. I think his performance is very good. I think it like it really utilizes his charms very well, which is that he's this incredibly handsome guy, but has like a little, like a little low hum of loser energy that he can access. And part of why I have not enjoyed him in movies in the last few years is because he keeps taking parts where he's like, I'm the hero. And it's really boring. And he was a good Captain America because he's like

• 35:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:06Sean Fennessey?

  the wimp at the beginning of the movie. And then he utilizes his Evansesness to become a superhero.

• 35:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I I agree. I think that he, and I I like Dakota Johnson, I like Pedro Pascal, I'm sorry, but in contrast to the other two, he um, he is like very like emotionally forward.

• 35:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 35:25Amanda Dobbins?

  And there are a lot of shots of him like not saying anything and just giving sort of like the longing puppy dogs there and stare. And it works every time.

• 35:35Sean Fennessey?

  Totally agree.

• 35:35Amanda Dobbins?

  He's so good at it. And I like can't, I respond and just kind of swoon to it. And so. That, you know, and in some ways, that's in the text, right? Because he is the emotional choice versus Harry, the Pedro Pascal character, who is the financial choice. Um, but you know, movies are an emotional medium in this. And so you do find yourself responding. He's wonderful.

• 35:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think the movie is very intentionally not letting you really get too close to Harry. But it kind of hurts the movie because you never feel like it's ever going to be Harry at any time when you're watching it. And so that desire that you want, when you're having, when you're watching a movie like this, to kind of figure out where our, our hero, our star, our lead is, is leaning.

• 36:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:14Sean Fennessey?

  Never really exists because when she's shooting Chris Evans, sitting on the ground outside of a bodega on the phone. You're like, God, I hope he gets what he wants.

• 36:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:22Sean Fennessey?

  Gosh, he's a really, he's a portal of empathy.

• 36:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:25Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 36:25Amanda Dobbins?

  She shoots his apartment really well. Also, it's so gross and so familiar.

• 36:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we've been there.

• 36:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, oh.

• 36:32Sean Fennessey?

  I, I'm so happy to be not living in New York City.

• 36:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, I'm so glad to no longer be dating men with roommates.

• 36:40Sean Fennessey?

  Did you ever date a guy who lived in Sunset Park? Apparently that's where he lived.

• 36:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, no. Although I think, I mean, Zach was like, South, South Park slow.

• 36:50Sean Fennessey?

  He was, he was in Greenpoint when he and I became friends.

• 36:52Amanda Dobbins?

  But like, but by the time I met him, no roommates. So that was good.

• 36:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. He had a, he had a nice apartment. I liked his apartment.

• 36:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:59Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think that Evans is good in this. He obviously has less to do and is less of the focus of the movie. Um, I certainly feel like I've also seen that absolutely terrible off Broadway play he was performing in a couple of times in a warehouse, somewhere on the outskirts of Brooklyn. Uh, that just feels like a world that she really knows and a person that she really knows. And that was part of what I was responding to, that it was just like a little bit more lived in, a little bit more naturalized as opposed to this sort of, I can feel her moving the chess pieces a little bit with Dakota Johnson and Harry and the private equity world. And.

• 37:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 37:29Sean Fennessey?

  Um, let's talk briefly about the Harry character. There's a big reveal about this character, which I think is actually, I thought was pretty good.

• 37:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and it was funny, it was funny in, I was in a packed screening because there's real anticipation for this movie and. It was like funny to clock everyone realizing in real time and it like as soon as I saw like, you know, one, I was like, oh, of course.

• 37:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 37:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause it's, it's, you know, Chekhov's like height surgery is too weird.

• 37:59Sean Fennessey?

  Earlier in the film, there's a discussion about the fact between Dasha's character and, and Lucy about how men can have a surgery to lengthen their legs and become taller.

• 38:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:11Sean Fennessey?

  And this movie is very interested in the idea of what height means to a man.

• 38:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:16Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 38:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I think it and, and in many ways, height as like their financial, it literally their capital.

• 38:22Sean Fennessey?

  It's a status builder, for sure.

• 38:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I think is pretty true. So I, you know.

• 38:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 38:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It is. It's, it's just like, I'm, I'm sorry to say, and anyway, so it is revealed that Harry, the Pedro Pascal character, has in fact had this height surgery. Six, six inches, he says. And there is one fantastic shot at the end of that scene where he like crouches down. And it, you know, kind of pulls back and wide and you see how much shorter than, and it's like very effective and, and.

• 38:55Sean Fennessey?

  This conversation in the kitchen, when it becomes clear that they're not going to be together.

• 39:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Sean Fennessey?

  That Lucy has made the choice that she can't be with him because she doesn't love him and he, she knows that he doesn't love her. But that they have come to this conclusion that they should be together was the most James L. Brooks to me in the movie.

• 39:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:11Sean Fennessey?

  This was the closest I thought, because it felt very true and it felt like where she's driving the whole time where she's like, I know I'm getting to this scene where they need to have this conversation. And she had landed on this idea of lengthening your legs.

• 39:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:23Sean Fennessey?

  As that being like a checkable box and this being his, his fatal flaw, his Achilles heel, his like, his ancient wound.

• 39:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 39:33Sean Fennessey?

  He's a short guy.

• 39:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:34Sean Fennessey?

  And he's got short guy energy and he can't get around it.

• 39:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Sean Fennessey?

  And that being a psychological blocker. Me, I couldn't relate, you know, just not something I understand.

• 39:42Amanda Dobbins?

  You have tall guy privilege and you walk around it with it every day.

• 39:45Sean Fennessey?

  I do.

• 39:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Really.

• 39:46Sean Fennessey?

  I do. What must that be like? I don't know.

• 39:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Congratulations.

• 39:48Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but it's, I thought it was really clever. I like this part of the reveal. I like that this is how they kind of broke them up.

• 39:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Fun, like people gasped in the screening, which was pretty funny. And, and as soon as I saw, I was like, oh, all right, this is clever.

• 39:59Sean Fennessey?

  It was good. Yeah.

• 40:00Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's good.

• 40:02Sean Fennessey?

  One other thing I want to note is I love the music in this movie.

• 40:05Amanda Dobbins?

  So good.

• 40:06Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible needle drops, like really tasteful, like in my brain needle drops. Cat Power, Harry Nilsson. There's a Daniel Pemberton score that is very elegant and subtle and doesn't overdo it. The music, I think, is the thing that immediately clued me into what kind of a movie it is. Like, as soon as you get that kind of wide shot in New York of people, the crowds moving down the city streets and you hear the Cat Power Manhattan needle drop, I was like, oh, this is like a Mike Nichols movie.

• 40:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:35Sean Fennessey?

  This isn't a Nora Ephron movie, you know what I mean? Like, it's just, there's just something different energy-wise. And I'm ultimately grateful for that. I wish the story was told a little bit differently and I, who is a different, who's an actress who would be better in this part?

• 40:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Who's an actor who would be better against Dakota Johnson?

• 40:52Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, it's like a rude thing to do, but I couldn't, watching it, I couldn't help but try to get my head around who would be more engaging as a dramatic performer, because there's this, there's a great moment in the movie where, we've just seen John's performance of his play. They go to a dingy Brooklyn bar afterwards. Harry in his, like, rich guy, sort of dressed down outfit. Lucy being supportive of John. Lucy and John are having a conversation at the bar and they're talking about acting and she says, I always love to watch you act. And then Lucy's character says, I was never any good at it. I don't know how to talk, I don't know how to stand. And I was, in my deepest mind was like, is Celine's song, is she making fun of Dakota Johnson?

• 41:35Sean Fennessey?

  Is she making fun of me thinking this about Dakota Johnson? Is Dakota Johnson being self-aware about some of the feelings about her kind of like affectless distance as a performer?

• 41:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, but it was unmistakable that scene is in the movie, where she's been, her character's like, I can't act.

• 41:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:53Sean Fennessey?

  Which is something I've been thinking about her for five years.

• 41:55Amanda Dobbins?

  She does have incredible presence, though.

• 41:57Sean Fennessey?

  I, I agree.

• 41:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm trying to think of what actor could really, I mean, the answer to your question is Jennifer Lawrence, you know? Which is the, which is the answer for every single under, you know, 30 to 35.

• 42:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. That would be interesting.

• 42:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And she, she can bring the-

• 42:12Sean Fennessey?

  I used to think she couldn't do this kind of thing, but now I think she can.

• 42:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, she can, she's all emotion, you know?

• 42:18Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think they went to her?

• 42:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe.

• 42:22Sean Fennessey?

  Seems possible.

• 42:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Who is, is the man, is the, is the question for me.

• 42:31Sean Fennessey?

  What if it was Brad Cooper?

• 42:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, oh, wow. I could see it.

• 42:37Sean Fennessey?

  A little older.

• 42:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:39Sean Fennessey?

  You know, needs to make a move.

• 42:41Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a good one. Okay.

• 42:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's just, what could have been?

• 42:44Amanda Dobbins?

  What could have been? I like Chris Evans where he is.

• 42:48Sean Fennessey?

  I think there are some people who are listening right now who are like Pedro Pascal is my favorite actor. And they're very upset with you.

• 42:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's what, you know, what's new?

• 42:56Sean Fennessey?

  We've talked about how, we talked about in the 35 over 35 episode, how this is a big summer for him.

• 43:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 43:01Sean Fennessey?

  You know, that he's got this movie and soon Eddington and then Fantastic Four, First Steps. So you think he's over one thus far in his quest to become a big star?

• 43:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I think he's miscast, the same way that you think Dakota Johnson is miscast. He has presence and I've liked him in other things and I am going to see both of those films.

• 43:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I definitely like him more than you.

• 43:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:21Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if he's perfect for this movie, but I like, I like being with him in, in, in movies and TV.

• 43:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I think I do too. I just think that he's wrong in this, in this part.

• 43:32Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I was gonna ask this about the next movie that we're gonna do, but does this movie have any like awards chance? I don't, I don't really think so, but.

• 43:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I.

• 43:40Sean Fennessey?

  Is there like an original screenplay nomination out there possibly? Like what if it could be a hit?

• 43:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and I'm, I know I was out last night and like choose ever people who have babysitters lined up to go on date night to see this movie opening weekend. So I think there is like a core group of people who are excited about it. And maybe people will respond differently than, so far, at least the critical response is.

• 44:03Sean Fennessey?

  I'd say soft positive.

• 44:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but like with heavy notes.

• 44:08Sean Fennessey?

  Which is what we just did.

• 44:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is what we just did.

• 44:10Sean Fennessey?

  Jack, is this like high on your radar?

• 44:12Speaker 02

  Very high. I reached out to Amanda to try to see it early. Unfortunately, timing didn't allow it because I was in Colorado. But yeah, I mean, Past Lives was a huge movie for my girlfriend and I.

• 44:21Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, yeah, I guess.

• 44:22Amanda Dobbins?

  How'd you guys meet? Are you willing to share that on the podcast?

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Sure, I'm willing to share that. In high school, my girl best friend went to a camp called Girl State. They actually made a documentary.

• 44:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  They met there because my girlfriend now was roommates with a girl who went to high school with my best friend. And they met and clicked because they thought the whole thing was incredibly ridiculous.

• 44:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, great.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  And then this was during the senior year of high school. So over the summer, lots of grad parties and we just met at grad parties.

• 44:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so through people?

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:52Amanda Dobbins?

  All right. And also you're dating a, a Girl State alum?

• 44:55Sean Fennessey?

  That is true.

• 44:56Amanda Dobbins?

  That's pretty rad.

• 44:57Sean Fennessey?

  That's fascinating.

• 44:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:58Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe we'll get into that in the future, Jack.

• 45:02Sean Fennessey?

  So, no Oscar stuff. But we think this is gonna be like kind of a mid-level hit.

• 45:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I think in the screenplay mix, maybe.

• 45:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I'm excited about, you know, this is now the third movie in a row that Justin Kuritzkis and the Celine Song Union has created about love triangles.

• 45:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Versus a more, you know, practical, modern choice.

• 45:26Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:27Sean Fennessey?

  What's going on there?

• 45:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I also noted it as when we left.

• 45:30Sean Fennessey?

  What's happening?

• 45:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. You know, write what you know.

• 45:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. How many times can you write it? How many times can you explore this concept?

• 45:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Honestly, here's the thing, though. Are we gonna do our top five?

• 45:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 45:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, because we'll watch it every single time. So, I think it's great.

• 45:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think if you're as good a writer as those two, then absolutely.

• 45:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, the thing that's interesting to me about Celine Song is that, like, so she was also a matchmaker in addition to having like this long lost, because Past Lives was also pretty autobiographical, as I understood it. So, I mean, she just seems like she's living a cooler life than me.

• 46:03Sean Fennessey?

  Well, her other thing is when she was on the show a couple of years ago, by the way, great guest. If you didn't listen to that, if you've seen Past Lives since then, I encourage you to go back. She was such a cool person to talk to. But she was like, what I really want to do is write a movie about poker. I'm really into poker. And I was like, you are the coolest person I've ever met.

• 46:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I was just...

• 46:19Sean Fennessey?

  So, yeah, she's great.

• 46:20Amanda Dobbins?

  What are we doing? Yeah.

• 46:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, movie love triangles. Now, just quickly, do you see this as a love triangle, this movie? Like, in the classical sense?

• 46:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it's a who should she choose?

• 46:29Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 46:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is sort of the setup.

• 46:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And, yeah, so, yes.

• 46:35Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Let's do our list. We share a number one.

• 46:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:40Sean Fennessey?

  And it's come up already. But let's, number five, go ahead.

• 46:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Past Lives.

• 46:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 46:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Really, really great. Don't forget that. And I also just really did want to point out that this is, there's a continuous theme here in Celine Song's movies and also her husband's work. Her husband, it's a very nice guy also, by the way, and a good interview on this show.

• 46:57Sean Fennessey?

  Also a guest of this show. I... Did she choose correctly in that film?

• 47:04Amanda Dobbins?

  In Past Lives?

• 47:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 47:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 47:07Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, it's a tough one. My number five is Fight Club.

• 47:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I think this is really funny.

• 47:13Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think I really understood until somewhat recently

• 47:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:19Sean Fennessey?

  that that's what this movie is really about.

• 47:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's like, should I decide to be in a committed relationship or not?

• 47:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, yeah.

• 47:27Sean Fennessey?

  And if I don't,

• 47:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:29Sean Fennessey?

  should I be an agent of anarchy? Uh, which is just a really, you know, when you're 17, you don't get,

• 47:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Sean Fennessey?

  all you can get is the angst.

• 47:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:37Sean Fennessey?

  All you can get is the why is the consumerist, you know, nightmare world this way? But this is, should I just decide to put a ring on that girl's finger?

• 47:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 47:46Sean Fennessey?

  You know, that girl who loves to go to meetings about colon cancer. Um, and I think it's very funny to view it through that lens.

• 47:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:53Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, what's your number four?

• 47:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, another recent topic on this show, Something's Gotta Give, which I did kind of approach this exercise in, under the thought umbrella of, what are my most like, oh, maybe she should have chosen the other guy movies of all time? Because that is like the success of a love triangle in some ways that both are like real candidates.

• 48:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 48:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, so obviously Keanu Reeves, the faceless Hamptons doctor who you insulted on this podcast. And two, I just,

• 48:22Sean Fennessey?

  She's not a real person.

• 48:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, yeah, but it is like a real, can we, can, it's, it's powerful.

• 48:28Sean Fennessey?

  We'd all like to have sex with that guy. There's no question about it.

• 48:30Amanda Dobbins?

  But also,

• 48:31Sean Fennessey?

  Beyond that, what is going on with that guy?

• 48:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't you think you would have a nice life with him? He's a doctor in the Hamptons and he likes plays.

• 48:37Sean Fennessey?

  Uh.

• 48:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And Paris.

• 48:40Sean Fennessey?

  He just, um, is not real. I don't, I don't know what to say. He's just a complete fantasy.

• 48:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:47Sean Fennessey?

  Written by a brilliant middle aged woman.

• 48:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:49Sean Fennessey?

  And you know, no disrespect to her.

• 48:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 48:51Sean Fennessey?

  We all, I'd love to encounter, what is my version of Keanu Reeves wandering into the, into my life out of nowhere? You know, like I, we all have that thing.

• 48:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 48:59Sean Fennessey?

  And I respect that she created that thing.

• 49:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 49:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great pick. Uh, my number four is Burning, which is a 2018 Lee Chong Dong movie, um, a South Korean film about,

• 49:14Sean Fennessey?

  a guy who gets entrenched in a very complicated world driven by kind of like trickster devil figure played by Steven Yeun. And it's like, it's a little bit unclear, like how much of it is actually a love triangle? But the movie is very good at focusing in on like,

• 49:30Sean Fennessey?

  When you're competing against another guy, and the other guy just has moves that you don't have.

• 49:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 49:35Sean Fennessey?

  And you can see the woman responding to the other guy, and you're spending time together, the three of you. Not all of these movies are about like, we're all together at the same time in fight.

• 49:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 49:44Sean Fennessey?

  They're never together at the same time. But there's this, there's that, there's a famous scene in this movie where they get high and they're sort of standing outside and they're like looking up at the sky. And you can see that, uh,

• 49:58Sean Fennessey?

  you know, Yu Iin and Jung Jong Soo and Steven Yeun like have this very fraught chemistry together. And the movie popped into my mind immediately when I was thinking of this idea. So that's Burning.

• 50:09Amanda Dobbins?

  That's a good one.

• 50:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, number three for you.

• 50:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Reality Bites, an absolute classic. And also a real, you know, marker of your own age and your own view of the world. Because in your twenties, obviously Ethan Hawke is the choice.

• 50:21Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:22Amanda Dobbins?

  And then you get to your thirties, you get to your like Lucy materialist phase. And you're just like, well, Ben Stiller has a job and a car.

• 50:31Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:32Amanda Dobbins?

  And he like shows up when he says he does. And like the editing wasn't that bad. Sometimes you do kind of need an editor, you know? And then now that I'm in my forties, I'm back to it's, you gotta do Ethan Hawke again.

• 50:45Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 50:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, which is like a new recent thing.

• 50:48Sean Fennessey?

  So you had a time where you were into Ben Stiller? Not just that, just what he represents?

• 50:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I was just kind of like, that is like the obvious choice.

• 50:55Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 50:56Amanda Dobbins?

  That where that's the practical choice.

• 50:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 50:57Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, if you're, but if you have your Lucy materialist headset on.

• 51:00Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting though, because you are not interested in someone that I would say is artless. There is an artlessness.

• 51:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Sean Fennessey?

  To Stiller's character. He of course directed the movie, which is very funny that he cast himself in that part. Um, okay, that's cool. It's good to know. So you're back on your, back on your Hawk bullshit.

• 51:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course.

• 51:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, stay tuned to this podcast.

• 51:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 51:21Sean Fennessey?

  In case you want to hear more about that. Uh, my number three is Being John Malkovich. Not a lot of movies.

• 51:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:27Sean Fennessey?

  Two women and one man.

• 51:28Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 51:29Sean Fennessey?

  And increasingly fewer movies about two women who want to be together.

• 51:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 51:33Sean Fennessey?

  Instead of with the man.

• 51:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:35Sean Fennessey?

  A different kind of construct, but in this case. One of the women needs to go inside the body of a man.

• 51:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:41Sean Fennessey?

  Is this a quadrangle? Or is John Cusack just fully cucked out and doesn't have any participation? So it's only between John Malkovich's body, Charlize Theron's,

• 51:54Sean Fennessey?

  or excuse me, Cameron Diaz's soul?

• 51:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:58Sean Fennessey?

  And Catherine Keener's verve, desire?

• 52:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 52:04Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 52:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I, you know, I think John Cusack is on the outside looking in.

• 52:08Sean Fennessey?

  So it is, it is a proper triangle.

• 52:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it counts.

• 52:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Being John Malkovich is three, what's your number two?

• 52:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Philadelphia Story, the original, the arc, the, the blueprint for every single one of these.

• 52:18Sean Fennessey?

  OG.

• 52:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Featuring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. Just, and then, and then the, just like fighting each other while she laughs.

• 52:26Sean Fennessey?

  An iconic film, uh, also iconic Casablanca.

• 52:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm glad you did this one. I was like, I can't do Casablanca because I always would.

• 52:32Sean Fennessey?

  I was surprised it would be, it would be an incomplete list without Casablanca. Another interesting question of did she pick right?

• 52:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I famously discussed is, uh, When Harry Met Sally.

• 52:42Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 52:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Another movie that is referenced in materialist, like pretty explicitly.

• 52:45Sean Fennessey?

  It is, and you know, in, in our doc, you, you noted that like it uses that tool of, um, into camera.

• 52:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Like dating stories, yeah.

• 52:54Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a really good point. I think the thing that I found to be so different from When Harry Met Sally versus this movie is anytime Billy Crystal talks in that movie, it's funny.

• 53:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 53:04Sean Fennessey?

  He basically always has a line throughout the entire film.

• 53:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:08Sean Fennessey?

  And materialist doesn't work that way. It's like not, none of these actors are really like, Chris Evans is kind of funny, but he doesn't have a funny part.

• 53:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 53:15Sean Fennessey?

  So even though it's using the tools.

• 53:17Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not, it's not a, it's not a comedy.

• 53:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's not aping it.

• 53:19Amanda Dobbins?

  But in the same way that just like When Harry Met Sally is a foundational text of people falling in love on screen and the different ways that you can do it. It is definitely intentionally referenced.

• 53:29Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I agree with you. Um, what's our number one? We share a number one.

• 53:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Broadcast news, obviously. Yeah. And you know, it, I guess it's telling that our number one is the one where she picks herself.

• 53:39Sean Fennessey?

  No one. That's the whole point. That is, that is why that movie is such a magical. Is there, is there any other movies that do that?

• 53:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Taylor later on, uh, on.

• 53:48Sean Fennessey?

  On 90210?

• 53:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:49Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. That's quite a pull.

• 53:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And yeah, there are definitely.

• 53:52Sean Fennessey?

  Between, between.

• 53:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Brandon and Dylan.

• 53:55Sean Fennessey?

  Chris Lee and Luke Perry? Okay. Wow. Okay.

• 53:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Ultimately, she, I mean, she chooses each of them.

• 53:59Sean Fennessey?

  Simmons with the 90210 drop?

• 54:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And, well, I mean, but Kelly Taylor choosing herself. I think I learned about Kelly Taylor choosing herself before I learned about. Um.

• 54:09Sean Fennessey?

  Sister Carrie?

• 54:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no.

• 54:12Sean Fennessey?

  The works of Theodore Dreiser and Edith Thornton?

• 54:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure, all of those things, but before I learned about broadcast news, so.

• 54:17Sean Fennessey?

  Sure, yeah, me too. What's Jenny Garth up to?

• 54:20Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I'm so glad you asked. Have you noticed that she's sponsoring the, um, this stretch of the 134 right by our house? I swear to God, like the Adopt a Highway thing, it just says Jenny Garth, and every time I drive by, I'm like, I wanna get a picture. It's just Jenny Garth.

• 54:34Sean Fennessey?

  Just Jenny Garth, not her family or not her-

• 54:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Like no context, it's just Jenny Garth.

• 54:38Sean Fennessey?

  Should the big picture sponsor a stretch of highway?

• 54:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess we could, but I just like, I'm, I'm driving always, so on the highway, so I can't-

• 54:45Sean Fennessey?

  What stretch of highway would you want to sponsor?

• 54:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 54:48Sean Fennessey?

  What's your favorite place to be stuck in traffic in Los Angeles?

• 54:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it would obviously be a stretch of the two for us, you know?

• 54:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's our, that's, that is by far my favorite highway, the only good highway in Los Angeles, in my opinion, the only one that isn't fucking destroyed at all times.

• 55:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:03Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, okay, this was a great exercise. We have another movie to talk about.

• 55:06Amanda Dobbins?

  We sure do.

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• 56:39Sean Fennessey?

  I'm just gonna put this out there. I know that you're not gonna like this movie. Uh, I'm okay with that and I'm ready to discuss it with you.

• 56:45Amanda Dobbins?

  You did text me and you said, "I'm, uh, putting this movie that you'll probably hate on the schedule." So I didn't hate it.

• 56:53Sean Fennessey?

  The movie is The Life of Chuck.

• 56:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. I'm not sure that I would call it a movie.

• 56:58Sean Fennessey?

  Let's explore that.

• 56:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, but I, what I would just like to say that parts of whatever it was that I saw were charming to me.

• 57:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I'm happy to hear you say that.

• 57:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, most of it was, I disagree with, but you know, I was charmed by-

• 57:10Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 57:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:11Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so The Life of Chuck is, as I said, written and directed by, uh, Mike Flanagan. It's based on a Stephen King novella, I guess, short story, basically, from his 2020 compilation, If It Bleeds. It stars Tom Hiddleston, Chouettele Escheffure, Karen Gillan, Mia Sara, Carl Lumley, Benjamin Pejek, Jacob Tremblay, and Mark Hamill.

• 57:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Who still cannot act.

• 57:33Sean Fennessey?

  We can talk about that. Uh, it is ostensibly the story about a man named Chuck Krantz having an experience of life. That's kinda your very vague log line. The, it's a, it's, it is a classical Castle Rock production Stephen King story in the mold of, well, I saw it a second time at the Vista and they did a, the, the, um, old trailers-

• 58:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:02Sean Fennessey?

  -ahead of the movie. And the trailers that they showed were Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile. I don't think that this movie has quite the kind of like canonical importance, especially of those first two. But tonally, there is a certain kind of Stephen King story or book that is different. Parts of Atlantis is a version of this.

• 58:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:19Sean Fennessey?

  That is different from It, Carrie, Salem's Lot, you know, the, the historic horrors that he has written over time.

• 58:28Sean Fennessey?

  This one is pretty lofty and pretty unusual. And so even, you even just saying, "Is this even a movie?", I find really interesting. I actually asked Mike about that because-

• 58:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:38Sean Fennessey?

  -this movie doesn't really have a protagonist. It has a nonlinear structure. It's unclear, and if you don't, if you wanna see this movie and don't wanna have anything spoiled for you, stop listening right now. Um, for the record, I liked it.

• 58:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's unclear if it's a death dream, if it's a memory, if it's an anecdote that is being retold, if it is just merely like a kind of a deathbed engagement psychologically. But it opens and I it's I don't even know if you could describe it as reverse order because it's not a linear story.

• 59:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it does say act three, so it is trying to signal to you that we're starting at the end here instead of the beginning.

• 59:18Sean Fennessey?

  It does. And act three is takes place in a world that is falling apart. It is the literal apocalypse. And we were with Chutel Ajif's character. And he is a teacher in a local school and natural disasters are occurring around the world. And it's very clear that things are we're wrapping things up here on earth. The internet is going down. Social services is falling apart. Doctors are walking out of hospitals and abandoning patients.

• 59:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Stink holes are opening up.

• 59:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, the just natural life is unable to be explored. This is a

• 59:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Pornhub is down.

• 59:52Sean Fennessey?

  Pornhub is down. My favorite part of the movie, David S. Malchon is really great. The first act of this movie is my favorite part of the movie. Because as I was watching the movie, and I never feel this way anymore because of the thousands of films I've seen, I was like, what the hell is going on? I what where's Tom Hiddleston?

• 1:00:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:00:08Sean Fennessey?

  What is this movie? Who is Chuck? What is going Chuck is, you know, communicated in this first act as just a person on a billboard that says, I think it's like, thanks for

• 1:00:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Thanks Chuck for thirty nine great years.

• 1:00:20Sean Fennessey?

  Thirty nine great years, yes. And the characters in the in this section seem to think he was like a bank employee of some kind who's having some sort of send off. And then that image of him signing off starts appearing on television broadcasts, you know, on radio broadcasts. He becomes it's clear that he is kind of the big brother of this world. And we learn pretty quickly that he's the big brother because this is all happening in his head. That this is like, this is all collections of memories, experiences, people he's met, things he thought he saw, jam together while he's ostensibly on his deathbed.

• 1:00:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. How quickly do we learn that?

• 1:00:57Sean Fennessey?

  I think by the end of the first act.

• 1:00:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, yeah, yeah, but not like in the first 10 minutes. It's more like 45 minutes.

• 1:01:04Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to ask you how long it took you to kind of figure out what was going on here.

• 1:01:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I think once they flashed back to Tom Hiddleston on a deathbed, I was like, oh. But before that, I did not really know at all. And I just knew that it was like one of the fanciful Stephen King things. So I was like, well, I guess anything could happen. I thought part one was pretty effective. Well, most of it, it was the most emotional. I was stressed out. I thought the like evocation of the way the world was falling apart and how they were learning about it. And how Chouetel Edgifor in particular was thinking about it was upsetting and effective.

• 1:01:46Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. He's such a good actor and his, I mean, he's just like me for real. You know, watching TCM at night, drinking whiskey, trying to make sure, trying to like pretend everything's fine. It was very relatable.

• 1:02:00Sean Fennessey?

  Karen Gillan, another actress I like who plays his ex and he's, they're sort of like seeking each other out. And then we come to see that maybe she represents another person that Chuck encountered in his life at a certain point. But maybe it's like a distortion.

• 1:02:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right.

• 1:02:12Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, and so seeing the film a second time, you can see that all of these figures that we meet in this first part represent these little scraps.

• 1:02:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:02:21Sean Fennessey?

  Of experience of Chuck's life. And one of the reasons why I think it's so effective is I completely agree for a low budget, independent movie.

• 1:02:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Sean Fennessey?

  To render the world falling apart in very subtle and small ways. There's no CGI in this movie. There's no.

• 1:02:33Amanda Dobbins?

  There's a, there's a little bit at the very end of part one, and it doesn't look that good, but that's okay.

• 1:02:37Sean Fennessey?

  For the most part, it's not relying on your kind of like epic Dean Devlin style disaster movie. So I like a lot of that stuff.

• 1:02:48Sean Fennessey?

  The film does have narration.

• 1:02:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Sean Fennessey?

  So I'm not typically a fan of narration in films. I'm willing to make exceptions. Nick Offerman reads the narration. Much of it is pulled directly from the story.

• 1:03:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:03:05Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to ask you if you think this movie is better if you simply remove the narration.

• 1:03:09Amanda Dobbins?

  1,000%, a disastrous choice, in my opinion. And it's not just like here and there voiceover. He is reading long chucks. It is verging on audiobook. I was so angry. And I also started dissociating at some point. I mean, it's not how I, I'm not an audiobook person.

• 1:03:28Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:03:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I am a, I'm a visual learner. So at someone, I was like, please stop talking. I'm not even hearing you anymore, you know? And, um, I thought, I understand that it's based on a Stephen King text, but it was doing a lot of telling of the feelings that the, the movie was, and the actors were doing a, a much better job showing, so.

• 1:03:50Sean Fennessey?

  I kind of agree. There are a lot of times where you hear his voice and I'm like, you don't have to tell me this.

• 1:03:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And it just goes on and on and on.

• 1:03:57Sean Fennessey?

  I think I would have been, I would have been more on board with it if he merely was setting up each chapter for 30 seconds.

• 1:04:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:04:05Sean Fennessey?

  The way that you, you get into a new chapter of a book and you can almost feel the narrator guiding you into this new section.

• 1:04:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:12Sean Fennessey?

  You know, when you're like, if you're shifting perspectives in a Franzen novel, right? You're like, oh, now we're over here three years ago with these other people in this family.

• 1:04:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:04:18Sean Fennessey?

  That would have made sense to me. I think there is just like a real overemphasis on it, especially in the final act. We can get to that. Um, the other thing that is just kind of gnawing at me a little bit was that there's this great movie, um, It's Such a Beautiful Day, that Don Hertzfeld, the animator, made some years ago. It was like a collection of three shorter films that he had made and he put them together. And Hertzfeld, the animator who does everything, draws everything, also narrates the movie. And his voice is really close to Nick Offerman's voice. So I was like, does, did Mike Flanagan seen this? Is this like an homage? Is it an accidental closeness? Because that also is a film about like someone's life coming apart and mortality. Anyway, um.

• 1:04:59Amanda Dobbins?

  The narration just, I would add on, really just like heightened.

• 1:05:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Like the TV-ness of the filmmaking a little bit for me, both, you know, more reliant on words and story, but you know, it's clearly shot on like some like weird mall in Vancouver. And

• 1:05:19Sean Fennessey?

  There's an artificial quality to some of the sets.

• 1:05:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And it just, and, and it feels a little Netflix-y, which I, you know, and so, and I, and I just, the

• 1:05:29Sean Fennessey?

  Can I tell you something? Seeing it on a struck print at the Vista?

• 1:05:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Sean Fennessey?

  It looked a lot better than seeing it on digital in a screening room.

• 1:05:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm sure that that's true, but I think, I, I do think that the fact that there was just, the narration went on and on and on. And so also you're having to like pair images to it that felt a little bit filler.

• 1:05:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Because you're trying to serve the words instead of the image that it just, it stuck out.

• 1:05:53Sean Fennessey?

  I hear what you're saying. Um, the second act is basically like a reverie about Chuck having one magical moment where he encounters a busker on the street.

• 1:06:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Sean Fennessey?

  In what looks like a fake version of the Santa Monica Pier, I guess, the 8th Street.

• 1:06:06Amanda Dobbins?

  No, that's, that's like the Vancouver mall that I was talking about. It's like, it's like an open mall or something.

• 1:06:11Sean Fennessey?

  But do they say where it's supposed to be? That's what I was kind of getting at.

• 1:06:14Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:06:14Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Um, and he encounters this busker, a woman playing drums and he breaks out into dance.

• 1:06:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:23Sean Fennessey?

  And it's kind of an extended Gene Kelly homage.

• 1:06:28Sean Fennessey?

  He eventually has a, a dance partner.

• 1:06:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Sean Fennessey?

  A redheaded woman, much like Karen Gillan is redheaded. And that's it. They dance. They, they create movie magic for five minutes.

• 1:06:39Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like the majority of Tom Hiddleston's screen time.

• 1:06:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. He doesn't have a lot of dialogue. They, they reflect on why they danced with the busker afterwards. And they split the money between them that they earned because they've drawn this incredible crowd because of this amazing dance that they perform. But that's really it.

• 1:06:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Sean Fennessey?

  There is a very interesting moment at the end when Hiddleston and the redhead kind of part ways and Hiddleston is sort of has a, he's had a couple of moments of like, gentle, physical distress.

• 1:07:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Sean Fennessey?

  Where he's kind of like clutching his head and you can see he's like having a bit of a spell or an episode. And I think this is kind of indicating that's like he has cancer. Something's wrong. He doesn't know what it is.

• 1:07:15Amanda Dobbins?

  The narration has let us know.

• 1:07:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:07:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that that's happening.

• 1:07:19Sean Fennessey?

  A thing I wish they hadn't communicated.

• 1:07:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:07:22Sean Fennessey?

  And then in the background, I don't know if you clock, well, you see that certainly the girl on roller skates who appears in the first sequence. And then I noticed that the other nurse that Karen Gillan worked with was sitting at a table.

• 1:07:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, was sitting at a table, sure.

• 1:07:33Sean Fennessey?

  And there are all of these people that you can see, okay, all of this is like little, these little strands of his life that are being pulled into his experience. Did you think that that sequence was meant to be something that actually happened? Or a memory that was distorted of what some, a day that could have been? I couldn't quite determine how we're meant to understand that.

• 1:07:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't think that hard about it, to be honest. I just, I, like, I honestly, I, I, it didn't, so I guess it didn't engage me in that level. I will say I was incredibly charged by it.

• 1:08:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's really good.

• 1:08:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, listen, get people dancing on screen. And I was like, oh, so this is why it won the audience award at Toronto.

• 1:08:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:08:07Amanda Dobbins?

  It's great.

• 1:08:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's a happy making moment in the movie. And a movie that is otherwise like full of Walt Whitman and, you know, exploration of sadness.

• 1:08:15Amanda Dobbins?

  And the world ending.

• 1:08:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:08:16Amanda Dobbins?

  In plausible ways.

• 1:08:17Sean Fennessey?

  I, I like this part two. Act one, it loses me a little bit. Um, because I think because it is protracted and it is defined by a lot of that narration. And then you've got these long stretches of time transpiring where the, the Chuck character is going from like seven to 11. And he's spending a lot of time with his grandparents because we learned that his parents have died in a car crash. His mother was pregnant with a little girl and when they died. And a lot of time is spent with Mia Sarah and Mark Hamill, who play his grandparents. Mia Sarah, film icon.

• 1:08:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:52Sean Fennessey?

  Truly a magical force in movies that I think has only appeared in four films.

• 1:08:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Incredible to see her, yeah.

• 1:08:56Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it was really nice to see her, as beautiful as ever. Um, people, you know, listeners may know her from Ferris Bueller's Day Off or from, um, oh my God, what's the other one that I'm forgetting? We were just talking about this on the Tom Cruise, uh, legend. Um, and I thought she was very good in this movie. Um, Mark Hamill.

• 1:09:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I can't.

• 1:09:18Sean Fennessey?

  Mark Hamill, you know, is, is, is, is a, is a, an obsession.

• 1:09:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Sean Fennessey?

  Amongst the multiple generations of people. There are certainly the Bill Simmons, Amanda Dobbins school people that think Mark Hamill can't act, right? There are other people who think that Mark Hamill has kind of settled into Grouch par excellence, you know, they're like, that's kind of what he does. He, he has a very craggy voice. He's a very famous voice actor now. For years, he voiced the Joker on the Batman animated series. That's like one of his most famous performances now in his career. He plays a drunken account grandpa in this movie. And when Mia Sarah's-

• 1:09:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Drunken account grandpa?

• 1:09:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and you know, to our point about math-

• 1:09:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:56Sean Fennessey?

  And the balance between love and the stars and the cold, hard facts of decision making-

• 1:10:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:04Sean Fennessey?

  In materialists. This is where these two movies kind of come and meet. And the same ways they kind of like, don't quite finish, to me.

• 1:10:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:13Sean Fennessey?

  Um, this movie is, I wrote down that it's very wet. Some movies are dry.

• 1:10:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:10:21Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 1:10:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Sean Fennessey?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:10:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I know what you mean.

• 1:10:23Sean Fennessey?

  Steve Jobs, the movie Steve Jobs, that movie is dry.

• 1:10:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. This is-

• 1:10:27Sean Fennessey?

  It's quick, it's got pace.

• 1:10:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:29Sean Fennessey?

  It barely catches its breath. It's smooth.

• 1:10:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:33Sean Fennessey?

  Everything flies.

• 1:10:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:35Sean Fennessey?

  This movie sits in its feelings and it's really soggy.

• 1:10:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Has so many of them.

• 1:10:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:41Sean Fennessey?

  And it wants you to cry, and you might cry.

• 1:10:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't, but it did elicit emotional reaction for me and not just like anger that Nick Offerman wouldn't stop talking. But, um, it, it does, it has that pull. It, it gets you in certain places. Um, both the cataclysmic stuff at the beginning, um, and, and the dancing. It's, there is another dance sequence and, you know, despite myself.

• 1:11:06Sean Fennessey?

  You enjoyed it.

• 1:11:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course I did.

• 1:11:08Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we learn in this final sequence that, um, Mia Sarah's character introduces Chuck to classic movie musicals, which is why we see at the beginning of the movie, she would tell as if we're watching-

• 1:11:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Cover girl.

• 1:11:20Sean Fennessey?

  The 1941 movie Cover Girl, great Gene Kelly, uh, Rita Hayworth movie, Rita Hayworth, a redhead. And-

• 1:11:26Sean Fennessey?

  That movie kind of like pops up at the beginning of the movie. We see that that is in, it is the least known of the all time classics in the blockbuster stack in this movie, which I think includes West Side Story.

• 1:11:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Singing in the Rain.

• 1:11:38Sean Fennessey?

  Singing in the Rain, All That Jazz.

• 1:11:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:11:41Sean Fennessey?

  And Cabaret.

• 1:11:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:11:42Sean Fennessey?

  And then the fifth film that they watch.

• 1:11:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Is Cover Girl.

• 1:11:44Sean Fennessey?

  Is Cover Girl. And we see that Mia Sarah's character teaches Chuck how to dance. He's pretty good at dancing. And that is kind of his superpower when he goes to middle school.

• 1:11:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:11:54Sean Fennessey?

  And how he gets the attention of girls.

• 1:11:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:11:56Sean Fennessey?

  And how he can kind of be his best self.

• 1:11:58Amanda Dobbins?

  That and also that maybe he can see the future, or he at least knows the dances ahead of time.

• 1:12:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, which then plays a part at the end of the movie. Uh, is it that he invents it or that he's just copying what he's seen? That was my impression.

• 1:12:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, but.

• 1:12:12Sean Fennessey?

  You think he invents it?

• 1:12:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, they have never seen it before.

• 1:12:17Amanda Dobbins?

  So I think that he, he has some sort of like future dance site.

• 1:12:21Sean Fennessey?

  I hadn't considered this.

• 1:12:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I mean, the Mark Hamill character has some sort of future site.

• 1:12:26Sean Fennessey?

  He does, he does.

• 1:12:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And he, I think, and it is like when they're doing the dances.

• 1:12:31Sean Fennessey?

  It applied to dance. I thought it just applied to death.

• 1:12:33Amanda Dobbins?

  What, like the first dance scene, the, the dance class, he knows every single dance. Like instinctively, that's how they present it.

• 1:12:41Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 1:12:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and it does seem like this is the 80, it seems like it is pre moonwalk. And they're all like, what, what are you doing?

• 1:12:51Sean Fennessey?

  So you think this movie is Minority Report for dancing?

• 1:12:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean.

• 1:12:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good take.

• 1:12:56Amanda Dobbins?

  There are worse interpretations.

• 1:12:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's a really good take. Um, I think I just agreed to let this movie have me.

• 1:13:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Sean Fennessey?

  You know, and I think you, you have to do that to enjoy it. And I think it will have a, it'll be really divisive. And I think people are gonna be like, this is treacle crap. And other people are gonna say, no movie touched me more than this one this year. I think, you know, it's like a lot of things with us. We constantly are talking on the show about like films, um, about children that, you just have a different relationship to it now because of the stage of your life that you're in.

• 1:13:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:29Sean Fennessey?

  If you've been through anything that this movie is trying to get at, you're just probably gonna be a little bit more.

• 1:13:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:35Sean Fennessey?

  Sentimentally open to the earnestness that it is attempting.

• 1:13:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Or also if you're.

• 1:13:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you're a Stephen King nerd. And so you're like, you are very open to this style of storytelling.

• 1:13:49Sean Fennessey?

  I am.

• 1:13:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and this strain of sentimentality and this sort of like unexplained supernatural, but it, it all works out.

• 1:13:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. This is the metaphysical strain.

• 1:14:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Or it doesn't work out, but you know, we, we all feel our feelings together. So, uh, so I, I think it's totally valid.

• 1:14:07Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's also very, you know, Flanagan is really interesting. It's very much a part of his mission. This is really like, in some ways, maybe a movie that explains his mission. Now, he makes, he's made some really gnarly horror movies. But most of those movies I find are about the distance between people, like our inability to connect. Gerald's Game is a movie that he made that is also a Stephen King adaptation about a woman who becomes like, um, uh, who's having a sexual sort of BDSM moment with her husband. In the movie, it's Bruce Greenwood and Carla Gugino. And he handcuffs her to the bed and then he has a heart attack and dies. And she's handcuffed to the bed and she can't move. She can't get out.

• 1:14:51Sean Fennessey?

  And then it's sort of like everything that goes on in her mind as she thinks back on their relationship, her life. She has this kind of like cosmic LSD style trip through these feelings. And it is a movie that is about like connectivity and its loss. This is the same thing. So I, as a fan of his and as somebody, like, I don't really watch a lot of Netflix TV shows. I've watched all of his Netflix TV shows.

• 1:15:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:15Sean Fennessey?

  I like his whole mission, his whole project. So I find, I found myself more open minded. There's like, when there's a long, long sequence where horror icon Matthew Lillard shows up as like, I guess, like a local, is he a construction worker?

• 1:15:27Amanda Dobbins?

  He is his neighbor.

• 1:15:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Chou Talajevor's neighbor. And he becomes this vessel for just like reciting facts about the end of the world.

• 1:15:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:36Sean Fennessey?

  And when you're watching the movie, you're like, how does he know all this shit? And why doesn't Chou Talajevor know any of this stuff? How did this happen?

• 1:15:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:15:42Sean Fennessey?

  But then you realize that this is like, in your own mind, you've got different spaces where different pockets of information exist and these people represent these different pockets of yourself. That's just like watching The Haunting of Hill House, where in a family, like, each person represents a different version, a different memory, a different experience of that family. So I think I'm very, I'm very open to this movie in a way that some people won't be, which I understand.

• 1:16:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Why don't we have more dancing in movies?

• 1:16:09Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I don't know. You don't want singing.

• 1:16:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, they didn't really sing in this.

• 1:16:13Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 1:16:13Amanda Dobbins?

  It was great.

• 1:16:14Sean Fennessey?

  I, it occurred to me while watching it. I was like, I think a man is gonna like this because no one broke out into song.

• 1:16:19Amanda Dobbins?

  If they sang like, good or offensive songs, it would be okay. I mean, it's, as we have discussed, most new musicals.

• 1:16:27Sean Fennessey?

  What's a good, inoffensive song you want sung in a movie?

• 1:16:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I mean, I don't mind singing in the rain, you know?

• 1:16:33Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:16:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Make 'em Laugh is okay.

• 1:16:36Sean Fennessey?

  But only songs from older musicals? You don't want like Espresso to be sung?

• 1:16:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I think if the arrangement were okay, that that would be funny. But I don't really think, I, I guess Mamma Mia, when they're singing those songs, that's part of the joke. You still have not seen Mamma Mia, right?

• 1:16:51Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't seen Mamma Mia, no. Um, I have to tell you something about that. You just reminded me of something, but I can't, I can't talk about on the show.

• 1:16:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:16:59Sean Fennessey?

  What about if they just started singing Addison Rae songs?

• 1:17:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I haven't listened yet. Have you?

• 1:17:05Sean Fennessey?

  I have, yeah.

• 1:17:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, how are they?

• 1:17:07Sean Fennessey?

  It's fine. I think there's like a real crazy grade curve thing going on here where people are like, oh, this isn't bad.

• 1:17:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:17:13Sean Fennessey?

  An influencer made a pop album that's okay. Perhaps we should give it a nine out of 10. And just like, same old bullshit.

• 1:17:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not, I'm not that interested. I'm still, I'm, I'm still with last year's Pop Girlies, you know?

• 1:17:23Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, who are they? Sabrina Carpenter.

• 1:17:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Sabrina Chapel.

• 1:17:26Sean Fennessey?

  Dua Lipa.

• 1:17:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And, um,

• 1:17:29Amanda Dobbins?

  and my beloved Charlie.

• 1:17:30Sean Fennessey?

  Charli XCX, yeah.

• 1:17:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Dua Lipa, um, did it, last summer's album didn't really pan out, but she's engaged. Did you see? To Callum Turner?

• 1:17:37Sean Fennessey?

  I did, I did.

• 1:17:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Congratulations to those two really hot people.

• 1:17:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, just a slab of meat.

• 1:17:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Who just seem incredibly in love.

• 1:17:43Sean Fennessey?

  Slabs of meat.

• 1:17:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. She has a brain. She's got a great book club.

• 1:17:46Sean Fennessey?

  So I've heard.

• 1:17:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:48Sean Fennessey?

  Can I?

• 1:17:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

• 1:17:50Sean Fennessey?

  This is important, this is actually important. This is really, this is, this is pure Amanda material.

• 1:17:53Amanda Dobbins?

  This is why we podcast.

• 1:17:54Sean Fennessey?

  Is reading just reading?

• 1:17:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:57Sean Fennessey?

  Just being into reading?

• 1:17:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59Sean Fennessey?

  Does that make you smart? Because there's a new, you see the new paradigm. They're like, oh, Kaia Gerber.

• 1:18:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Sean Fennessey?

  Loves books.

• 1:18:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen.

• 1:18:07Sean Fennessey?

  Dua Lipa loves books. I'm not saying they're not smart. You're an avid reader. I know you're smart.

• 1:18:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true, but I do not, they read far more challenging material than I do at this point.

• 1:18:16Sean Fennessey?

  Does that mean that?

• 1:18:17Amanda Dobbins?

  That's not true, actually.

• 1:18:18Sean Fennessey?

  Does that matter?

• 1:18:18Amanda Dobbins?

  But, um,

• 1:18:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I, I, I, there's an ambition.

• 1:18:24Sean Fennessey?

  To me, that's actually weirdly kind of sexist that people are like, oh, she reads books. She must be brilliant.

• 1:18:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it is sexist. Um, you're, I mean, you're totally right, but it's more that like, I am continually like, wow, that seems pretty heavy. And I don't know if I feel like reading that about their book choices. Like there, there is like a seriousness and um, like a, a level of challenge to both the Kaia Gerber and the Dua Lipa.

• 1:18:48Sean Fennessey?

  But that's because their work is frivolous.

• 1:18:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think their work is frivolous. Okay. I think what Kaia Gerber does in Bottoms is very funny and.

• 1:18:57Sean Fennessey?

  Would you say it is deep in searching? Would you say it is about the human spirit?

• 1:19:02Amanda Dobbins?

  It is, it.

• 1:19:03Sean Fennessey?

  That's what this show is about.

• 1:19:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Hot girls have feelings too. Okay. And they deserve to be explored on screen.

• 1:19:10Sean Fennessey?

  Lord knows I respect them.

• 1:19:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, I think that they're reading in a case of curiosity that I admire.

• 1:19:16Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:19:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and also that I'm like not, uh, I was just like, I've like all the books. I'm like, wow, that seems really hard. I'm going to read another Detective Donald. Sorry.

• 1:19:24Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, has Dua Lipa read The Life of Chuck?

• 1:19:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I don't think so, but I haven't either. So I'm not one to cast a, you know, judgment.

• 1:19:34Sean Fennessey?

  One thing that was tough was Charlie XCX on TikTok obviating the entire need for this podcast by.

• 1:19:41Amanda Dobbins?

  By doing the Final Destination, right? Yeah. I, I send you the content and you did not really, she's wearing a bikini. And I know she's wearing a bikini and so you were like a little distracted, but that's the point. You're supposed to engage with the whole picture.

• 1:19:52Sean Fennessey?

  She's wearing a bikini, drinking a cocktail, talking about Final Destination. It was like, it was like an FBI task force and entrapment circumstance for me.

• 1:20:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. It was really, really good stuff.

• 1:20:02Sean Fennessey?

  I was like, this is dangerous for me. Um, so yeah.

• 1:20:05Amanda Dobbins?

  She's a Leo like us.

• 1:20:07Sean Fennessey?

  No shit. Um, she, we should just cancel the pod.

• 1:20:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:20:12Sean Fennessey?

  Cause I think she's, should she host it?

• 1:20:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Charlie?

• 1:20:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. She's making a film now as well.

• 1:20:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I would love for her to accompany my co-host. Why, why don't you go on like a six month vacation and it'll be me and Charlie.

• 1:20:23Sean Fennessey?

  Oh my God. I would love nothing more.

• 1:20:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Live from tenants of the trees.

• 1:20:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't get to have my brat summer last year. We'll do it this year.

• 1:20:31Sean Fennessey?

  That sounds fantastic. I'm very happy for you. Quickly on Life of Chuck, uh, before we go to Flanagan. It did win the audience award.

• 1:20:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I but last year, you know?

• 1:20:41Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 1:20:41Amanda Dobbins?

  So then I think.

• 1:20:43Sean Fennessey?

  The audience award winner, I think, is it like 11 out of the last 13 have been nominated for Best Picture? Maybe more.

• 1:20:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but they all are either previously owned or get like and have a release plan in place, or they get rushed out in the same calendar year.

• 1:20:58Sean Fennessey?

  If Anora didn't exist, would this film have been nominated for Best Picture last year? Because one of the reasons why is because Neon was like, we got our contender. We don't need to put this movie out right now.

• 1:21:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I I don't think so, with respect.

• 1:21:11Sean Fennessey?

  Do you feel it's being buried in the awards race?

• 1:21:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 1:21:15Sean Fennessey?

  If this was a November film, would it have done a little better?

• 1:21:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe, but I I I don't know. I think it's a summer, a summer feel good. I I think Neon knows what it's doing, like a summer feel good movie. And then, you know, it won the Toronto, so everyone needs to go check it out. But I don't think it's actually seriously going to be in an Oscar race. So you don't have to put up the money for that.

• 1:21:41Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think people are going to check it out?

• 1:21:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. There were like 10 other people in the theater with me. So on at, you know, 11 a.m. on a Wednesday, so.

• 1:21:51Sean Fennessey?

  You saw a.

• 1:21:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I saw a regular screening.

• 1:21:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:21:54Amanda Dobbins?

  It's pretty limited release, so.

• 1:21:56Sean Fennessey?

  Was everyone sobbing?

• 1:21:58Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I don't think anyone was crying.

• 1:21:59Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, that's too bad.

• 1:22:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:01Sean Fennessey?

  Um, any other thoughts? How's everything else going in your life? You're you're down for the advice episode on Monday?

• 1:22:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm really, really excited.

• 1:22:09Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I I don't want to, I told you.

• 1:22:11Amanda Dobbins?

  It's because it's Father's Day. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I just, I do want it on record that like I still had an episode to prep for after Mother's Day.

• 1:22:19Sean Fennessey?

  Is that true?

• 1:22:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think so. Uh, I mean, I, I guess, no, I think it was Melancholia that we did the next day. So it doesn't, it's it was like a present. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And maybe it was Tuesday. Maybe I didn't have to do any prep now that I'm.

• 1:22:32Sean Fennessey?

  I.

• 1:22:33Amanda Dobbins?

  You think that you thought about it?

• 1:22:34Sean Fennessey?

  I think that not only did I do, I think I thought about it. I think I also thought thought about it in a selfish way because I had a very busy Mother's Day.

• 1:22:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:42Sean Fennessey?

  So I was really not able to do any preparation.

• 1:22:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm scrolling back now. No, we did the mailbag, the 10 a.m. after, yeah.

• 1:22:49Sean Fennessey?

  Did we?

• 1:22:50Amanda Dobbins?

  We did. I'm looking at the calendar. It's okay. A mailbag is like as low as like an advice.

• 1:22:54Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe that's why we did that.

• 1:22:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:56Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't want to have to.

• 1:22:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's awful. Thank you so much.

• 1:22:58Sean Fennessey?

  I don't even know if I did that on purpose.

• 1:22:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Happy Father's Day. You never said Happy Mother's Day to me on the podcast.

• 1:23:02Sean Fennessey?

  I'm so sorry.

• 1:23:03Amanda Dobbins?

  It's okay.

• 1:23:04Sean Fennessey?

  You're a great mother.

• 1:23:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Thanks. You're a great dad.

• 1:23:06Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks. I feel bad that I didn't say it.

• 1:23:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And your girl dad view of the world is really changing all of us. So I thank you.

• 1:23:14Sean Fennessey?

  You're mocking me, but it has changed me.

• 1:23:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I know it has. It's beautiful.

• 1:23:18Sean Fennessey?

  Completely.

• 1:23:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:19Sean Fennessey?

  I'm having an excellent time being a father recently.

• 1:23:22Amanda Dobbins?

  She rules. She's so great.

• 1:23:23Sean Fennessey?

  She's doing great. She is extremely selfish and is going to destroy everyone around her, but it's okay.

• 1:23:29Amanda Dobbins?

  So are both of my children at this point?

• 1:23:32Sean Fennessey?

  The life of children, yes. Okay, should we go to my conversation with Mike Flanagan?

• 1:23:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 1:23:36Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's go to my conversation with Mike Flanagan.

• 1:23:43Sean Fennessey?

  For the first time on the show, Mike Flanagan, very excited to speak with him today. Mike, I revisited Hush last night and I clocked the bookshelf of Stephen King novels, which I don't think I picked up on last time I saw it. And this is obviously not your first go around with adapting Stephen's work, but did this one feel specifically different in any way?

• 1:24:01Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. This one was very different for me from the start. I mean, when I first read the story, I thought it was different from anything I'd seen from Stephen King in a very long time. The structure was so unique, but the thing that struck me about it was this was a story, obviously not a horror story, but a story that didn't have an ounce of cynicism to it at all. And that's just, I mean, I can count on one hand how many stories I've come across in my life that exist in that rarefied place of total earnestness. And so it was clear to me that my approach to it would have to be radically different from any of the other work I've done.

• 1:24:44Speaker 06

  But yeah, its differences made it, I think, kind of irresistible to me.

• 1:24:49Sean Fennessey?

  Do you talk to Stephen about these adaptations at all? Do you like, you know, ask permission to make changes? What is the process like?

• 1:24:58Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. You know, Steve has an amazing perspective on this, that he's grown over the years, being adapted so much, where he says, "The book is the book. The movie is the movie. The book is mine. The movie is yours. I will stay out of your way." And he believes, and I think he's right, that he can't lose in that equation. Because if the movie's terrible, people say the book is better. And if the movie's great, they say, of course, it's great. It's based on a great book. And so he keeps a very respectful distance. That said, he has an enormous amount of approvals when it comes to cast and scripts. I've gotten to talk to him a few times leading up to an adaptation.

• 1:25:42Speaker 06

  The biggest one being the conversations around Doctor Sleep and around incorporating the Kubrick kind of cinematic language into that, knowing his feelings about that adaptation. With this one, I remember the first conversation we had about it, I said to him that I really believed if he trusted me with the material, it might be the best movie I'll ever make. And I had just gotten the rights to The Dark Tower at the time. And he said, I hear you. I think that sounds great. That story isn't an obvious adaptation to me, so I'm curious to hear how you'd approach it. But I think we should just focus on Dark Tower. He doesn't like you to have more than one thing, because it means one thing isn't moving forward.

• 1:26:26Speaker 06

  And so with this one, I remember I sent him the script and he came back with no notes and was just like, go on, go make it. I can't wait to see how this works out.

• 1:26:39Sean Fennessey?

  You made like a pretty dramatic choice, though, in the way that the story is structured. And I know that people have been doing this with King's work for a long time and making strong artistic choices against the framework of his stories. But are you nervous to share with him, like, hey, I think it should be more like this instead of the way that you conceived of this story?

• 1:26:58Speaker 06

  Oh, I thought I was, with this one, I thought I was pretty in the ballpark of what he did. You know, I made some additions to it, but I kept his structure intact and I changed this the least compared to Doctor Sleep and Gerald's Game, I guess would be how I would frame it.

• 1:27:19Sean Fennessey?

  Do you see a delineation in the kinds of stories that he writes? Like, this one feels very, what I would describe as like Castle Rock Entertainment, you know, like in the mold of the films from that production company that had some relationship to his movies. Do you see like a bifurcation in any way?

• 1:27:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, there's definitely kind of the Steve who wrote, you know, Stand by Me, Shawshank, both Castle Rock, you're talking about, The Green Mile, you know, where he's really kind of letting the the genre elements take a backseat to the human story he's telling. And then there's, you know, there, there, yeah, Steve contains multitudes, as do we all. So I definitely see the difference. I think, though, there's, there's an incredible commonality to it in that Stephen King, regardless of whether he's doing Pet Sematary, which is one of the scariest and darkest stories I've ever read in my life, or Hearts

• 1:28:18Speaker 06

  in Atlantis, which is one of the most gentle, both of them are about the decisions we make based out of love. And no matter how dark the story is, that is always kind of the engine. So I think one of the things that's amazing to me is to see how many different expressions of this idea, this humanism Stephen King is capable of creating. It makes it really exciting as a, as a constant reader and as a fan of his to kind of never really know what we're in for, but to only know that there's an emotional honesty to it

• 1:28:58Speaker 06

  that's going to kind of connect it to everything else. So, yeah, I, I, I feel that, I feel the, the distinctions that you're referring to for sure. But I think as I've gotten older, I, I, I zero in much more on the common threads kind of underneath them.

• 1:29:14Sean Fennessey?

  So for you as a filmmaker, why, why was this the right time in your life to adapt a story like this? And to, you know, I guess it's a pivot in some ways from the work that you've done previously in genre?

• 1:29:26Speaker 06

  Very much it is. I, I, I think the answer to that, you know, there's always the crazy circumstances that have to come together for you to make a, any project. So there's a certain amount of that that's never in my control. But while, what makes me very glad about the fact that I was able to do this movie when I was, is that I've, I've got three kids. They're 14, eight, and six. You know, when I first read this, it was 2020, April 2020, and the COVID lockdown was brand new.

• 1:29:59Speaker 06

  And my kids were looking to me for some kind of answers and reassurance while I tried to pretend I wasn't utterly, utterly terrified of what was happening around me. And looking at them, wondering what kind of world they were going to inherit. That really touched on an incredible parental anxiety that I'd never felt before. But the story that Stephen King wrote also gave me an enormous amount of hope and gratitude. And so I think this movie came around at the right time in my life because my entire motive in trying to get it to the screen was that I wanted it to exist in the world

• 1:30:42Speaker 06

  for my kids when they hit that inevitable feeling that I had in 2020, that I have again now, that the world is coming off its wheels. And that finding joy, connection, and love and optimism is more important than ever. So this just happened to coincide with a time when I don't know that it was ever more important to me to feel those things and to grab onto them myself for my kids.

• 1:31:15Sean Fennessey?

  As a viewer, there's another commonality with that period in time for me, which is there's this, I had not read the story before I saw the film, and so there's just this tremendous disorientation that you feel through at least the first two acts of the movie.

• 1:31:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, just the, the way that you've chosen to make it and being faithful to King's story, this, it's hard to tell whether it's a series of memories, or dreams, or visions, or reveries, or what, what are we actually experiencing in the way that you've kind of like set us off balance for our movie watching expectation? Can you kind of talk about how you, the intentional choices that you made to keep us in, I assume that's the space you wanted us to be in, but how you actually were able to execute on that?

• 1:31:59Speaker 06

  Oh, absolutely. I had a similar feeling when I read the short story, you know, and we approached it a little differently in the movie, but I had felt, reading it, like I had been thrown face first into this reality that all the other characters had already caught up with and gone through the various stages of grief and acceptance.

• 1:32:17Speaker 06

  There's no context to that. And the thing is, that more than anything mirrors my experience of the world right now. The context that we are reaching for is coming from, you know, from media we can't trust. It's coming from social media that contradicts itself. The idea of truth and of all these grounding forces that would help us orient ourselves in reality have all been ripped away or distorted. So I feel that way today. I feel that that disorientation way too frequently.

• 1:32:58Speaker 06

  The idea for this was to plant the audience in that space of that chaos and gradually lead them to peace, to optimism, to hope, through joy, you know, and through mourning and sadness too, where appropriate. You know, I think King balances those really well, and we tried to replicate that. But the way we would approach it was, you know, actively avoiding getting into expository dialogue that would orient us, only offering a little bit. Every scene had a new piece of information about this world, but nobody had the whole picture.

• 1:33:40Speaker 06

  And by the time we kind of realize what might be happening, the world that we've been presented with is already ending. That feeling that time's too short, that you never really get your feet under you, resonates with me a lot.

• 1:33:56Sean Fennessey?

  The other thing that really sticks out to me when I think back on the movie is, it doesn't really have a protagonist. It has a title character.

• 1:34:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:34:07Sean Fennessey?

  And it certainly has a through line in Chuck, but it's so unusual, even beyond your traditional ensemble, like the series that you made for Netflix, they're a big ensemble piece and they have multiple characters. At times, you're kind of clinging to just the idea of existence and experience throughout the movie rather than a person, which I found to be such a, just a cool choice. And I was wondering how you thought about that and just kind of maintaining a narrative film without having that thing to lean on that you often do.

• 1:34:35Speaker 06

  It was really fascinating to watch incredible actors come in and make an incredible impact in short bursts of time. Because you're right, there is no clear protagonist in this. Chu Atal kind of is that protagonist in the beginning, but that gives way. And I think that's interesting because it speaks to the theme of the multitudes that we all contain. You know, there's no one particular version of me that is the main one, you know, that is the protagonist of my life. And I think we're all this kaleidoscope of different people. And we're informed by this kaleidoscope of different people. What I love about it is it gives the audience a chance to put themselves in the story

• 1:35:19Speaker 06

  more than trying to hang their identity on a particular character. Chuck's kept at a distance. You're right, he's the title character, but certainly not the protagonist, you know? Even though I think by the time Benjamin Pejek is on screen, it feels the closest to feeling like, oh, that's our protagonist, but he's not there for an hour. You know, this is a very interesting and very strange way to tell a story. Chuck is specific, but Chuck is also meant to be all of us. And we're meant not to be hanging on the events of his life so much as thinking about the events of ours. And withholding a clear protagonist allows us to do that.

• 1:36:00Speaker 06

  It allows us to immerse ourselves in these different vignette moments and start to experience it as the kaleidoscope it is. I think that's closest to how we experience life. Certainly not how we're taught to make movies. So it was completely uncharted territory for me and for the cast, but it was really incredibly rewarding for that.

• 1:36:25Sean Fennessey?

  I found it uniquely engaging, and I really liked how you executed on it. I wanted to ask you about the thin line between corniness and sincerity.

• 1:36:34Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:36:35Sean Fennessey?

  And how do you tightrope walk it with material like this?

• 1:36:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, and that was something we knew going in was always going to be the tightrope, you know, that we would be walking and that ultimately we would never get a consensus on, on the other side of it, because all of us are in a different place when it comes to that. The rule of thumb that I tried to embrace was to never be cynical, to never be dishonest, and to never try to make anyone feel anything.

• 1:37:03Speaker 06

  I had certain feelings reading the story. I was having emotional reactions, contemplating the story. It was important to me that the movie never tried to manipulate. And I think that's the big difference. With the Newton Brothers, with the score, we talked about avoiding manipulative scores. I don't think there's a minor key in it. Because we didn't want to say, this is sad, this is hopeful. We wanted a emotional optimism that carried us throughout, but whether it was death we're watching, or whether it was, you know, a moment of pure innocence and joy, it was kind of operating on the same baseline.

• 1:37:40Speaker 06

  I think we live in a very cynical world. And I can very easily understand how stories that are this earnest may not resonate with everyone. In a lot of ways, we have our guards up. We have to. There's a level of cynicism that's required to survive in this world. But it's so rare for me to... Some of my favorite films I've seen through my life, these rare movies that don't have that cynicism, to be able to make something like that, I just felt like if I ever felt like I was pushing it, or lying,

• 1:38:22Speaker 06

  or trying to force someone to feel something, then we were doing it wrong. It was really just about putting it out there as authentically and honestly as we could. Hiddleston approached it. I remember the word that left to my mind when I saw him come to set was that Tom approached it with incredible humility. And that, I think, was our north star for this. I hope it resonates with people. Historically, films that do engage in that level of earnestness can certainly go both ways.

• 1:38:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's a brave act, yeah, to be heartfelt in a movie in 2025.

• 1:39:00Speaker 06

  It is. And I was grateful to see that that courage was brought to set every day by my cast. Because they're the ones, they're the ones who sell it.

• 1:39:13Speaker 06

  It was, I think, an incredibly brave story for Stephen King to include in this volume full of horrors, you know, with If It Bleeds, which is a wonderful collection. But this is very different. And so, yeah, it is a fine line. I hope we landed on the right side of it. That'll be up to the individual viewer.

• 1:39:32Sean Fennessey?

  Mike, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen? You're a cinephile. You're on Letterboxd. I know you are.

• 1:39:41Speaker 06

  The last great thing I saw was Ryan Coogler's Sinners.

• 1:39:44Sean Fennessey?

  Tell me what you liked about it.

• 1:39:46Speaker 06

  So, so much. I saw it three times, twice in IMAX. And there are moments of pure genius in that movie. There's, there's, there's an incredible musical number that dropped my jaw in theater and reminded me why. I saw it in a sold out theater in a large format, and it reminded me. I love these reminders that come along every so often about what makes that experience so profound and unique and different than the one you get at home, or the one you get on streaming, or the one you get even in a theater that isn't populated, you know? But yeah, that's the last great thing I saw. It really knocked me out.

• 1:40:25Sean Fennessey?

  Great recommendation. Mike, I'm a big fan of your work. Thanks for doing the show.

• 1:40:28Speaker 06

  Thank you so much. Thank you for your time.

• 1:40:35Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Mike Flanagan. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. On Monday, we are officially doing it.

• 1:40:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Confirmed.

• 1:40:43Sean Fennessey?

  9:30 AM PDT, 12:30 PM EST. We are going live on YouTube.

• 1:40:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Why'd you say PDT and then EST?

• 1:40:53Sean Fennessey?

  That's how you're supposed to do it.

• 1:40:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Really?

• 1:40:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:40:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Standard and then Pacific Daily?

• 1:40:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:40:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, well, who decided that?

• 1:40:59Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know the answer to that question, but you are messing with our plug right now. We are going live on YouTube on The Ringer Movies channel to do Amanda's Advice Corner.

• 1:41:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And you just saw some of the incisive questions that will be asked as we solve your problems together.

• 1:41:20Sean Fennessey?

  So if you want to chat with us, and more specifically, get Amanda's deepest, darkest thoughts about how we delineate time in this country, hop onto YouTube at 9:30. You can ask us some movie questions if you want.

• 1:41:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:33Sean Fennessey?

  But I would say, if there are things in your life that you need clarified. This is the gal for you. We'll see you then.

• 1:42:00Speaker 04

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• 1:42:30Speaker 05

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