Oscar Nominations, ‘Sentimental Value’ Is Sensational, and Screenwriting in the Double-Screen Era. Plus, ‘The Pitt’ S2E3.

Chris and Andy talk about this year’s Oscar nominations (6:14) and why the Academy got it mostly right—especially with ‘Sentimental Value’ (11:21). Then they react to Matt Damon’s comments on how Netflix and other streamers want their talent to approach filmmaking for distracted viewers (36:16). Later, Andy makes the case for why you should be watching ‘Drops of God’ Season 2 on Apple TV (46:35), they discuss Season 2, Episode 3 of ‘The Pitt’ (53:32), and close with sports talk (01:05:36). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Jacob Cornett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:17Speaker 00

  I need sports staff to clear the room.

• 1:20Andy Greenwald?

  Stand up and walk now.

• 1:23Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me in the studio, he has sentimental trade value. It's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:37Andy Greenwald?

  That's really good.

• 1:38Chris Ryan?

  That's all, I feel like that's back in my Grantland bag.

• 1:41Andy Greenwald?

  That is so good.

• 1:42Chris Ryan?

  I would have called an entire blog post that and 17 people would have read it.

• 1:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but those 17 people would have all gone on to form blogs.

• 1:49Chris Ryan?

  It would have been like Velvet Underground.

• 1:50Andy Greenwald?

  Velvet Underground and Nico Harrison. Come on, we still could do this, just come on.

• 1:55Chris Ryan?

  Right there, it's on.

• 1:56Andy Greenwald?

  Come on.

• 1:57Chris Ryan?

  Man.

• 1:57Andy Greenwald?

  God, sports, pop culture.

• 1:59Chris Ryan?

  Why don't we just, should we start like a place on the internet where we can publish these opinions? Andy, it's great to see you today on the pod. Oscar nominations, reactions, a reaction to some stuff Matt Damon said on the Joe Rogan pod. Not, not that, it's not that, no. He has some interesting thoughts on screenwriting in the era of Netflix that I wanted to bounce off my resident screenwriter.

• 2:21Andy Greenwald?

  What better place to share those thoughts, by the way?

• 2:23Chris Ryan?

  We will do Pitt, episode three, season two. We are gonna talk about sentimental value.

• 2:29Andy Greenwald?

  Drops of G.

• 2:30Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, I didn't watch, but you can do your show and tell. Let me just do a little housekeeping.

• 2:34Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 2:34Chris Ryan?

  As usual, you can write us at the watch at spotify.com. You can follow us on Instagram, the watch pod underscore Kai, doing great work, making sure Andy is seen in the best possible light.

• 2:45Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, you're allowed to talk about it. I, I've been muzzled.

• 2:49Chris Ryan?

  I just don't want you constantly referencing it. You know what I mean? I want you to be free.

• 2:52Andy Greenwald?

  I'm fine. I just, for the record, I didn't say Kathy Kennedy did a good job.

• 2:56Chris Ryan?

  Well, I mean, history will tell us.

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  What I said?

• 2:59Chris Ryan?

  No, whether she did. And you can watch us on YouTube, Ringer Dash TV. You can also watch us on Spotify, where I hope you are listening to us. And then I just want to mention, next week, next Friday, Yasi and I in Boston at the Sinclair, 8pm. We're doing a live podcast with Pat Flynn from Fiddlehead. And there's still some tickets available.

• 3:20Andy Greenwald?

  Nice.

• 3:20Chris Ryan?

  So cop those. And then Yasi and I, the next night, at the Coolidge Corner Theater, doing a special presentation of Repo Man. At the Coolidge, which is one of my favorite movie theaters in the country. So please come out, tickets are still available. I think some, by the time you'll be listening to this. So try, try and, try and make it out, try and say what up. It's gonna be cold.

• 3:41Andy Greenwald?

  Can I ask you a question? Just for like, setting the mood for what you'd prefer in Boston?

• 3:45Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 3:46Andy Greenwald?

  Do you want the, do you want the Pats headed to the Super Bowl? Or do you want that off, off the docket for the region?

• 3:52Chris Ryan?

  I feel like the, I wonder what the crossover is of people who care about the Pats

• 3:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:59Chris Ryan?

  a lot and people who are coming to see Repo Man at like 9:30 PM on a Saturday night.

• 4:03Andy Greenwald?

  So you're saying like, is there a Boston sports guy or gal?

• 4:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I don't know if Bill likes Repo Man.

• 4:11Andy Greenwald?

  I, I just feel like there's an archetype here.

• 4:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:13Andy Greenwald?

  For someone from that region who likes both.

• 4:16Chris Ryan?

  It's true.

• 4:16Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's possible.

• 4:17Chris Ryan?

  It's true.

• 4:17Andy Greenwald?

  You've been up there at times when the Pats have been good and times when they've been bad. So I didn't know if you like, as a vibe merchant.

• 4:23Chris Ryan?

  I'm trying to remember what they were when I was, I think they were still, it was pre Brady when I was up there. So I was never up there when they were good.

• 4:30Andy Greenwald?

  No, we were up there in the Parcells era.

• 4:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they got good in oh, one. I was in New York.

• 4:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, you were in New York raging about the tuck rule.

• 4:41Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry, sorry to blow your cover. You've kept that quiet around.

• 4:43Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 4:44Andy Greenwald?

  The offices for a long time.

• 4:45Chris Ryan?

  How are you? How are you doing?

• 4:46Andy Greenwald?

  I'm, um.

• 4:47Chris Ryan?

  I have my announcements. What are your announcements?

• 4:49Andy Greenwald?

  Um, no, I'm just sorry. My head's not fully in the game because I just had a long conversation about how I can assist my aging father in renewing his subscription to Gramophone.

• 4:59Chris Ryan?

  My dad had a Gramophone.

• 5:00Andy Greenwald?

  Hell yeah. This is beautiful.

• 5:03Chris Ryan?

  No wonder you like sentimental values.

• 5:06Andy Greenwald?

  Gramophone, for those people who don't realize, at least in my knowledge of it from 30 years ago, is like a brick.

• 5:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:12Andy Greenwald?

  Not, not in the Stringer Bell sense, but like this thick book.

• 5:16Andy Greenwald?

  It's basically like. No, but it's basically like, isn't it like capsule reviews of like?

• 5:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like the Paris Review for classical CDs and my dad used to, it was like my dad's most beloved periodical.

• 5:29Andy Greenwald?

  When it showed up.

• 5:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:30Andy Greenwald?

  No, my dad was like Baseball America. That was his other big periodical.

• 5:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you gotta keep your eye on some of those guys because you want to know who the Dodgers are going to sign in eight years.

• 5:39Andy Greenwald?

  You gotta track the moves. You gotta see the whole game.

• 5:41Chris Ryan?

  I actually have some watch after dark slash SportsCenter stuff for you at the end.

• 5:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I actually wondered, maybe this is.

• 5:48Chris Ryan?

  Motherfuckers.

• 5:49Andy Greenwald?

  You want to talk hot stove? How we're actually gonna, are you gonna zag and say we're gonna be good?

• 5:53Chris Ryan?

  I didn't say that.

• 5:54Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. Okay, I appreciate that. I do think there is value, and again, I don't want to step on Shields' corner, but like, could we do a daily OC hunt? We do a podcast called The OC, and it's not about the kid from Chino and the pool house. It's about how we're going to, how the Eagles are inevitably going to have to hire a kid from Chino to be their

• 6:14Chris Ryan?

  Because that's the last guy available who doesn't have a job.

• 6:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that's what I really want to pod about.

• 6:19Chris Ryan?

  I would like to figure out a way to like, upstream it to the Ringer's Philly special feed. You know what I mean?

• 6:24Andy Greenwald?

  I just want to go on the record as saying, I am now all in on Declan Doyle.

• 6:29Chris Ryan?

  I told you, we would have SportsCenter at the end of the podcast.

• 6:31Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, but do you know why? Because I'm gonna forget to say this, because I'm old. Now, I just read gramophone all day.

• 6:35Chris Ryan?

  So now, this is, I've kind of noticed this about you, where you're like, I'm worried that I'm gonna forget later. So, at the expense of like, normal conversation, I'm just gonna put my take up front, wherever, when it hits your head.

• 6:50Andy Greenwald?

  Bill said this is the best part of the pod.

• 6:51Chris Ryan?

  Bill? Oh, yeah. I thought you were gonna be like, Bill also just says whatever comes into his brain.

• 6:56Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't say that. I'm a big fan. The, I just wanted to say that Declan Doyle, the current offensive coordinator of the Bears, is the same age as our friendship.

• 7:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but Declan Doyle.

• 7:07Andy Greenwald?

  That's why I wanted to bring it up.

• 7:08Chris Ryan?

  Fine, we can do this now. Declan Doyle.

• 7:10Andy Greenwald?

  We don't have to do it now. I just thought that would be sentimental.

• 7:12Chris Ryan?

  Do you know what Declan Doyle does at the Bears? He says, "Mr. Johnson, would you like three shots of espresso or two?"

• 7:18Andy Greenwald?

  If he only wants two, that's a problem. That's the third coffee run of the day, I'd imagine. "Mr. Johnson, would you like shirts on or off?"

• 7:25Chris Ryan?

  A little, you know, people who've been listening to this podcast for the last couple of weeks, probably have noticed.

• 7:30Andy Greenwald?

  That we're sundowning what?

• 7:33Chris Ryan?

  That Greenwald's just on a tear with film, with cinema.

• 7:36Andy Greenwald?

  I'm trying to catch up.

• 7:37Chris Ryan?

  And that he's catching up. And I would say, I doubted you, and I now, I don't doubt you anymore. You're every, every other, a couple of days, you're like, watch this, watch that. Do you feel like by the time, in a month, when these Oscars happen, you will have seen the 10 BP's?

• 7:53Andy Greenwald?

  Well, we've discussed my relationship to Hamnett.

• 7:56Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 7:57Andy Greenwald?

  But, yeah.

• 7:58Chris Ryan?

  I'll give you that mulligan.

• 7:59Andy Greenwald?

  I'm actually feeling fairly confident, especially because, you know, F1, which I still haven't seen. I thought that was being pushed down the docket because I'm like, well, that's that's one for me.

• 8:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, right.

• 8:09Andy Greenwald?

  That's not one.

• 8:10Chris Ryan?

  Now it's it's professional obligation.

• 8:12Andy Greenwald?

  It is. I have to watch this.

• 8:14Chris Ryan?

  I was hoping F1 would come back into like IMAX.

• 8:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I don't want to watch it at home.

• 8:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:19Andy Greenwald?

  It's the truth.

• 8:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:20Andy Greenwald?

  Um, I do feel pretty confident about my uh ability to get in front of all these nominees. And I feel semi-confident um echoing a bunch of people who I like, trust and respect. And what if this is a this was a good year for movies.

• 8:34Chris Ryan?

  It was a good year for movies and uh it's an exciting Oscars. Sinner's got 16 nominations. It broke the record, I believe. Uh, One Battle got 11. The Best Picture nominees are as follows, one battle after another. Sinner's Hamnet, F1, Marty Supreme, Begonia, Frankenstein, Train Dreams, Secret Agent, and Sentimental Value.

• 8:54Andy Greenwald?

  Uh.

• 8:55Chris Ryan?

  Which I think people are surprised that uh it was just an accident or no other choice uh didn't make it into that list somewhere. F1 kind of.

• 9:05Andy Greenwald?

  That's pretty cool though.

• 9:06Chris Ryan?

  Vroom vroomed into it off the back of the PGA nominations, I believe. You should really listen to Sean and Amanda. They've been tracking this stuff for months.

• 9:12Andy Greenwald?

  Just saw them. They've been podcasting all day today.

• 9:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Andy Greenwald?

  Live.

• 9:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:16Andy Greenwald?

  They look great.

• 9:17Chris Ryan?

  Well, they they have a tendency to do that.

• 9:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I I I was really happy to finally be able to connect to Sean and be like, Sean, Sentimental Value is like the the Andor of movies.

• 9:28Chris Ryan?

  Do you want to explain that for people who aren't on X.com?

• 9:31Andy Greenwald?

  The everything app? Do you think they've given up? Just that it was very sweet. Sean is very, very committed to that social media platform.

• 9:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:40Andy Greenwald?

  And said that, you know, he he caught up on Andor season two and he was like, this is better than most movies.

• 9:45Chris Ryan?

  And that it went viral.

• 9:47Andy Greenwald?

  It went viral. It went viral so that when I did my Eagles OC check, sorry to bring it back again, that's I do get most of my news. Well, first I scanned Facebook, you know, and then Facebook Marketplace.

• 9:57Chris Ryan?

  I really want to do your media diet.

• 9:58Andy Greenwald?

  And then I did look on.

• 10:00Chris Ryan?

  You wake up, you make yourself a nice cup of espresso, right? What?

• 10:04Andy Greenwald?

  Nope, but go on, yeah.

• 10:05Chris Ryan?

  What do you do?

• 10:05Andy Greenwald?

  I send Declan Doyle out to the corner store. Give me a pack of cigs and a fucking Celsius.

• 10:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and think of some ways to get Dante Devante Smith in space.

• 10:18Andy Greenwald?

  And then I go through my Facebook groups just to see what kind of action there is.

• 10:22Chris Ryan?

  How often are you checking Facebook?

• 10:24Andy Greenwald?

  Facebook is like a last resort thing. Like, Facebook is a, I have looked at things that are giving me value.

• 10:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:31Andy Greenwald?

  Or entertainment.

• 10:31Chris Ryan?

  Which it would be, give me an example of something like on the internet that does that.

• 10:35Andy Greenwald?

  Do you remember Peach? That was a fun, fun app.

• 10:37Chris Ryan?

  That was dope.

• 10:40Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like I got on a plane and was like, there was a group text with like you and Sean, and I feel like Amanda was involved and Zach.

• 10:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:46Andy Greenwald?

  Everyone's like, yo, sign up for this. And I was like, I don't know if I'm falling for it again. Okay, signed up, got on the plane, got off, and you were like, yo, that's over.

• 10:53Chris Ryan?

  No, I was, I was the lord of Peach. I was so good at Peach.

• 10:56Andy Greenwald?

  That doesn't mean what you think it was.

• 10:56Chris Ryan?

  I really was. Like, all of my shit on Peach was, was like...

• 11:00Andy Greenwald?

  What were you dropping on Peach?

• 11:01Chris Ryan?

  It was like GIFs. It was basically like a meme generator, wasn't it?

• 11:06Andy Greenwald?

  I, I didn't even engage.

• 11:08Chris Ryan?

  In any case, Peach was great. We gotta go back. Peach, Vine, all those, all those, like, that era of, of social media was my favorite.

• 11:16Andy Greenwald?

  No, like, I, I will, I will wake up, I will look at my feel-good app, The New York Times, which had a great profile of our buddy Jason Manzoukas.

• 11:22Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 11:23Andy Greenwald?

  Today, that was really good. And then I will look at Instagram, you know, which is mostly like, uh, um, like painters and ramen shops and fascism. And then I will look at...

• 11:36Chris Ryan?

  You were truly one of one.

• 11:37Andy Greenwald?

  I will look at my James Demetri reels, because he's doing a great run of the best breakfasts in the world.

• 11:42Chris Ryan?

  Big Rewatchables fan, right?

• 11:44Andy Greenwald?

  Big Rewatchables fan. Great content, always. And then I will do my deep dive of 11 newspapers related to the Philadelphia sports.

• 11:53Chris Ryan?

  Good.

• 11:54Andy Greenwald?

  Then, later in the day, if I have work to do, which I've had a lot of these past few weeks, that's really prime Facebook time. When I've run out of anything else to look at, that's when I'll do it.

• 12:06Chris Ryan?

  And that's when you start screenshotting Facebook tapes.

• 12:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Chris Ryan?

  And send them to me.

• 12:09Andy Greenwald?

  Send them to you.

• 12:10Chris Ryan?

  Why did we get off on this? Uh, Sean and Dorx.com, right? I was actually, Sean should come on and talk about Andor.

• 12:17Andy Greenwald?

  I would love that.

• 12:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Andy Greenwald?

  Can I, can I go on and talk about sentimental value?

• 12:21Chris Ryan?

  We can talk about sentimental, you can do whatever you want.

• 12:22Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 12:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. You're the one who has like a pay-for-play situation, you know? It's hard to keep you...

• 12:27Andy Greenwald?

  I do.

• 12:27Chris Ryan?

  Keep you topped off.

• 12:28Andy Greenwald?

  Except for Philly Special.

• 12:30Chris Ryan?

  That's, that's for you.

• 12:31Andy Greenwald?

  That's for me.

• 12:33Chris Ryan?

  Did anything jump out at you?

• 12:34Andy Greenwald?

  Well... I mean, mainly, the number one was, this was a very high-quality year across the board. I, again, we are not Sean and Amanda, I've not been tracking this. I'm sure there are snubs that even maybe you've noticed on a cursory pass or two, but I was looking at this feeling very good about basically every category. And my main takeaway, though, which we alluded to the other day, was sentimental value is, in my mind, a total masterpiece.

• 12:59Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 13:00Andy Greenwald?

  I-

• 13:01Chris Ryan?

  Do you want, let's talk about sentimental value out of this conversation. We can save the pit for later.

• 13:06Andy Greenwald?

  Well, the segue is, I was thrilled how many nominations I got. Um, I think it is, it's really, really, it was just really, really exciting to me to see that, um, Rhonda Rhine's fake got nominated for Best Actress, and Stellan Skarsgård maybe is the favorite for Supporting Actor, got nominated for, Joachim Trier got nominated for Best Director. This isn't like a, I don't get the sense that this is like a, this is the 10th out of 10 nominations.

• 13:29Chris Ryan?

  Do you go Joachim? I go Joachim.

• 13:31Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, do you think it's Joachim? I, you know, I don't know.

• 13:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:35Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it's Joaquin Phoenix, unrelated.

• 13:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. But he's American.

• 13:40Andy Greenwald?

  He's American.

• 13:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, when you get to the Jays over there, I guess, yeah, you get fjord.

• 13:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think it's Joachim.

• 13:46Andy Greenwald?

  Joachim?

• 13:46Chris Ryan?

  Joachim, yeah.

• 13:48Andy Greenwald?

  Joachim?

• 13:49Chris Ryan?

  Yo.

• 13:50Andy Greenwald?

  All right, I'll go with Joachim Trier. Regardless, it's his winter, spring, and summer. Did you, you watched the movie?

• 13:55Chris Ryan?

  I did, yeah.

• 13:56Andy Greenwald?

  You, you've been a big Trier guy from the beginning.

• 13:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, uh, Reprise and Oslo were, are big ones for me. Oslo especially is a really huge movie for me. And I, I liked Worst Person in the World a fair amount, and I, I thought this was lovely. I mean, I, I thought there were moments of, like, there were flourishes in sentimental value that I thought were, didn't quite land for me.

• 14:22Andy Greenwald?

  Like, like some of the, um, almost Wes Andersonian, like, the history of the house?

• 14:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, no, I mean, the house thing was, hit me pretty hard, but like, I think that some of the flashbacks and some of, like, the, some of the, I mean, I guess, do you want to get into kind of like spoiling sentimental value here?

• 14:39Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know if you can, but-

• 14:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, there's, there's moments that I thought- You know, like, people have compared it to, like, Bergman's Persona and, you know, some other, like, I know that he drew from Olivier Assais and stuff like that, and like, it's, it's a, it's a wonderful movie. You know, and I just, actually, you know, I, the thing I wanted to talk to you about with it was about how, when you've watched, like, I mean, for lack of a better term, a bunch of, like, American blockbuster

• 15:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, this is what I want to talk about.

• 15:08Chris Ryan?

  engineered stuff. It's, it actually now, I think I've watched so much of, of the, of that, that when I watch something that is a two-hour and 15-minute study of a family coming to terms with, like, old wounds.

• 15:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:25Chris Ryan?

  I'm like, oh, yeah, like, that's, that's real life, and I have to, like, reset my brain that there's not, like, a transactional thing happening, or a, like, an endpoint to this, or something like, you know?

• 15:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, I watched this, and I was like, oh, my god, I have to get out of this country.

• 15:41Chris Ryan?

  That is, I gotta talk to you about, they, they, I know, every, his version of Oslo, I'm just like,

• 15:47Andy Greenwald?

  It's always summer.

• 15:47Chris Ryan?

  Why is everybody beautiful? It's always summer.

• 15:52Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, we had a good time in Norway.

• 15:54Chris Ryan?

  No, I know.

• 15:55Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, I think, like, I loved Marty Supreme, and I loved One Battle After Another, and I'm not trying to play a one's better than the other game, but there is something, and maybe in a different mindset, or in a different geopolitical era, we could take pride in the specificity of tone and expansional, expansionist Americanisms that these movies still represent, even though they are, you know, thoughtful, and, I mean, I don't want to politicize them, but I don't think that these are exactly, like, right-wing movies, but, like, they are still imperialist, I would say, in their volume setting and in their ambition.

• 16:28Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 16:28Andy Greenwald?

  And I loved the experience of watching both those movies in the theater. And then I watched this, and I was, like, alive. Like, to see a movie that is about people, the fullness of people, there's a great profile of Trier in The New Yorker from a few months ago that just talks about, it talks about his filmmaking in a way that I kind of overlook, because I'm just vibing with it, about how interested he is in faces.

• 16:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:50Andy Greenwald?

  And how close he gets and his cinematographer gets, and his super emo cinematographer, who has to have a special heat shield, so that his tears don't affect the lens, apparently.

• 17:01Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 17:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 17:04Andy Greenwald?

  It woke me up and like I, I'm gonna be generous. This morning, a trailer dropped for the He-Man Masters of the Universe film.

• 17:13Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 17:14Andy Greenwald?

  And I watched it and I was like, basically gonna be like, you fucking dorks. Like, I was gonna do the William Shatner SNL monologue about this.

• 17:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:23Andy Greenwald?

  And then I was like, well, there probably are a subsection of people, maybe in our age cohort, who are responding to this movie with the same electricity that I felt.

• 17:32Chris Ryan?

  Is it a movie or is it a series?

• 17:33Andy Greenwald?

  It's a movie.

• 17:34Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 17:34Andy Greenwald?

  That I felt jolt through my body as soon as sentimental value began. Like, there wasn't a single moment in watching this movie that I wasn't riveted and thrilled and delighted and laughing. Like, it's funny, it's human, it's emotional, and it's just a great film. And it's like, to your point, he is the distillation of a lot of classic filmmakers that I love, whether it's Bergman or Ozu or Assas, like, summer hours, family vibes.

• 18:01Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it is a healthy, I think, descendant of Woody Allen in the sense that Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning are not a couple in the film, which is really good. I love movies like this, and I think he is a low-key master of something that I wish, that is very hard to do.

• 18:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's funny, it's like, he's, I found those first two films to be so comfortably dark for me. Like, I've been thinking a lot about this in terms of like, the ending of films like Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, and whether or not, you know, and Sean's talked to those filmmakers, and I think I understand where they are in their personal lives and why they made the movies that they made, and why those films specifically end the way they do.

• 18:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Chris Ryan?

  Which is on, I think, without spoiling anything, a moment of hopefulness, or a note of, of, you know, perhaps better days are to come. And- I guess I feel like that happens in sentimental value. You know, I mean, there's some ambiguity to the end of the film, but there's, I think, ultimately like a kind of meeting of, meeting in the sort of midway point of between these two characters.

• 19:12Andy Greenwald?

  And a note of communication.

• 19:13Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And I kind of, I kind of long for a movie to be like, that's not how it works.

• 19:21Andy Greenwald?

  Well, you have, I think, homed in on something important, which is this is a trilogy of girl dad films for the ages. And Trier has said that this is the first movie he has made since becoming the father to two daughters.

• 19:34Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 19:35Andy Greenwald?

  And this is a beautiful movie about sisters and that relationship. So I'm locked in, obviously, but I think that you're on to something that is very intentional. And I'm there for it.

• 19:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:48Andy Greenwald?

  As someone who has to find a shred of hope every day.

• 19:50Chris Ryan?

  Sure, yeah.

• 19:52Andy Greenwald?

  Which is why, you know, I frequent Facebook. So I could not recommend that movie more highly. Oh, I also want to say, I didn't even report on this to you, as part of my, you know, decades-long campaign of quiet support for Rose Byrne, thrilled that she was nominated, I did.

• 20:08Chris Ryan?

  Quiet support?

• 20:10Andy Greenwald?

  Some people are noisy. I've been there.

• 20:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:13Andy Greenwald?

  I've done, you know, I watched Physical, you know, we didn't even talk about it always, but I watched it.

• 20:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:19Andy Greenwald?

  I did give If I Had Legs I'd Kick You a spin.

• 20:23Chris Ryan?

  Did you?

• 20:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Chris Ryan?

  You gotta get a letterbox, I'm behind on what you're up on.

• 20:27Andy Greenwald?

  That's a tough one.

• 20:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:29Andy Greenwald?

  It's real tough. Not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it's a real tough watch. She's amazing. And I'm thrilled for her nomination.

• 20:37Chris Ryan?

  Very deserving of a nomination.

• 20:39Andy Greenwald?

  Would you like to do a similar statement of public support for Kate Hudson in Song Sun Blue?

• 20:43Chris Ryan?

  You know, it's on my to-do list is both to see that film and then to vocally support her. I noticed with interest that

• 20:53Chris Ryan?

  There are, there's this like very fascinating matrix that I don't quite understand that I think Sean and Amanda are very keyed into about what's getting supported within guilds, or then within the town, or within, you know, because you have to understand, like when you read those anonymous Oscar ballots, I think some of them are a little bit like they're outliers. Like, it's like, almost like-

• 21:13Andy Greenwald?

  They harvest the most extreme takes off.

• 21:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I almost just like, is this person, I, I'm sure that they're real, but it seems like somehow they find the five people who are like, "I lost my password, so I'm voting for F1," you know, like, uh-

• 21:27Andy Greenwald?

  Luckily, I still have my subscription to Gramophone.

• 21:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I did notice that, like, you know, Song Song Blue had been presented as like the feel-good movie of the year or whatever, and, or actually more just like, kind of like a jukebox musical of Neil Diamond songs sung by these two people, and I, apparently it's much darker, you know, than that. And I think that they have now kind of like, at least on billboards and in some of the, the press I've read, gotten on top of that narrative of like, it's actually like a searing, you know, dramedy and a return to form for Kate Hudson, you know? So, I knew that that movie seemed to have some momentum, and it's always interesting when you see like, who's hosting guild screenings?

• 22:12Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean? And like, like, I think Frankenstein's a good example of a movie that I don't believe had a ton of critical adoration, but seems to be almost universally, universally beloved within the industry.

• 22:25Andy Greenwald?

  Sort of like the Denver Broncos this year. Like, we keep thinking it's, they're fraudulent, but they keep winning.

• 22:32Chris Ryan?

  I would almost say that the Broncos are like more of like a media darling, so the-

• 22:36Andy Greenwald?

  It's the reverse.

• 22:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like, I think, because Sean Payton does a lot of work of, of like working on his reputation with them.

• 22:43Andy Greenwald?

  We want to be a Grantland podcast so badly today, I'm really digging it.

• 22:46Chris Ryan?

  We should do best picture nominations as NFL teams.

• 22:51Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 22:52Chris Ryan?

  Who are the birds?

• 22:54Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, name the three that didn't get nominated.

• 22:58Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry, I didn't.

• 22:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:00Andy Greenwald?

  Who was the biggest?

• 23:01Chris Ryan?

  No other choice, yeah.

• 23:03Andy Greenwald?

  No, I think "It Was Just an Accident" is Kevin Patullo's first line in a lot of his upcoming interviews.

• 23:08Chris Ryan?

  What went wrong? Um, yeah.

• 23:11Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I think that's interesting. I have to say that I definitely didn't get the feel-good vibes from Song Sung Blue because one experience, I don't have many theatrical experiences.

• 23:20Chris Ryan?

  If you saw the trailer, it makes it seem like these two people just like become superstars.

• 23:24Andy Greenwald?

  No, I feel like I saw a different trailer because the one theatrical experience that I have that maybe I share, that you don't, that maybe I share with Paul Thomas Anderson, Josh Safdie and Joachim Trier, is that when I go to these matinees of like Zootopia 2, the only trailers that they can show for kids are kids movies and an unending fountain of movies, mostly starring Zachary Levy about like a guy who was in a Christian rock band and then fell in hard times and the band gets back together to save the quadriplegic son of one of the, like the bassist. And that's the vibe of Song Sung Blue.

• 24:03Chris Ryan?

  The Kevin Patullo story right there.

• 24:05Andy Greenwald?

  Truly. I thought it was one of those movies. You know, like it's just like a little bit off.

• 24:09Chris Ryan?

  I think it has that vibe from what I understand.

• 24:11Andy Greenwald?

  So, all right, well, Ethan Hawke nominated.

• 24:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was, you know, you bring up Ethan Hawke who got nominated for Blue Moon. He is fucking extraordinary in that movie.

• 24:22Andy Greenwald?

  You've seen it.

• 24:23Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God, yeah, Blue Moon.

• 24:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I want to see it.

• 24:25Chris Ryan?

  My boy Rick just double-barreled this year.

• 24:28Andy Greenwald?

  After hit, I know.

• 24:29Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Nouvelle Vague is great and Blue Moon is, you will love Blue Moon.

• 24:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I know. My dad had a gramophone subscription. Like, this is clearly a movie I can get behind.

• 24:38Chris Ryan?

  My favorite Oscar category is always Best Original Screenplay.

• 24:42Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 24:42Chris Ryan?

  I always really enjoy, like, both how they divvy up, like, obviously, I think Enora won last year, so it was like, kind of like a Sean Baker sweep.

• 24:53Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, but usually, you're right, usually screenplay is for the real heads.

• 24:56Chris Ryan?

  It's like, hey, here's pulp fiction, you know what I mean? You get Best Original Screenplay. So, Best Original Screenplay is your, goes to Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident, Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value and Sinners.

• 25:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 25:10Chris Ryan?

  And I don't know what would be the like, here's a tip of the cap to this. I don't know. I wonder if Blue Moon.

• 25:20Andy Greenwald?

  I think my sense is.

• 25:22Chris Ryan?

  You think Sinners wins this and then One Battle wins?

• 25:24Andy Greenwald?

  I think Sentimental Value wins this. And then I think Coogler and PTA are in a knockout fight for the other two categories.

• 25:33Chris Ryan?

  I see.

• 25:34Andy Greenwald?

  That's my, that's my guess. The other thing, just to mention, One Battle After Another isn't adapted because it was inspired by Thomas Pynchon's. Apparently that is how you say it.

• 25:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:44Andy Greenwald?

  I don't, I stand with you.

• 25:46Chris Ryan?

  No, I just, I was just shocked. I mean, I guess I have not yet worked up the courage to go into a bookstore and said, say, pardon me, sir, do you have the new novel from Thomas Pynchon?

• 25:59Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like of all the places you could try that out, fucking Skylight would be the safest room for you.

• 26:05Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 26:06Andy Greenwald?

  What are you worried about?

• 26:07Chris Ryan?

  That they would just be like, you mean Thomas Pynchon?

• 26:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but then you could be like, aha, sir, let me show you some internet comments.

• 26:12Chris Ryan?

  Hold on, I'm gonna pull up a clip.

• 26:13Andy Greenwald?

  Scroll through this. I also think.

• 26:16Chris Ryan?

  No, these are just an Instagram reel of Brian Dawkins' biggest tacticals ever.

• 26:21Andy Greenwald?

  Let me make a really relatable analogy here, if you don't mind. I think it's okay to just roll with the popularly adopted pronunciation of things. Like in America, we say Adidas.

• 26:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Andy Greenwald?

  If you leave this country, something I'm clearly humble bragging about, it's Adi, the man's name was Adidas.

• 26:40Chris Ryan?

  The Brits say Nike. They still say Nike.

• 26:42Andy Greenwald?

  They don't.

• 26:43Chris Ryan?

  A lot of them do.

• 26:44Andy Greenwald?

  Which ones? Name names. James Demetri, come on here and say the names of sneaker companies challenge. I dare you. All right. The only other thing, is this a snub? Like Sinners cleaned up, but I thought Miles Cadden, who was the kid in the movie, supporting actor.

• 26:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Andy Greenwald?

  He was very good, and I was surprised that he wasn't nominated.

• 27:02Chris Ryan?

  I was surprised that he wasn't nominated as well. Paul Meskell did not get nominated for Hamnet. Chase Infinity did not get nominated for One Battle After Another.

• 27:10Andy Greenwald?

  That's a tricky one, though, because she.

• 27:12Chris Ryan?

  I think, is that the Elle Fanning? Is that?

• 27:14Andy Greenwald?

  No, she, Chase Infinity submitted as lead.

• 27:18Chris Ryan?

  I did not know that.

• 27:18Andy Greenwald?

  That was a big, that's the kind of thing that like gets a headline six months ago that that's what she would be angling for and maybe some of the thinking was Tiana Taylor had supporting in the back.

• 27:27Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah.

• 27:28Andy Greenwald?

  So they didn't want to compete against each other directly, but she did go for best actress. So in a way Kate Hudson and Rose Byrne stole that, stole that slot. To you, I'm not going to hold you to it. We have a month to consider. Do you have a head, heart, best picture pick here? Like what you would want to win versus?

• 27:43Chris Ryan?

  I think one battle after another is, is probably both. I think one battle after another certainly has, I, I wonder whether the precursor events like Sean and Amanda have talked about, talked about a little bit. A lot of the like, I, I don't know whether or not the Oscars are going to hugely differentiate from the way things have been going so far.

• 28:02Andy Greenwald?

  In with the awards, yeah.

• 28:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Typically what would happen, I think because the, the, the voting base has become so diversified internationally and you know, like they've done a huge effort, made a huge effort to make it a more of an international, uh, voting block.

• 28:19Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:20Chris Ryan?

  Typically like, I think that would indicate that maybe something like sentimental value, but like it almost surprised, I wonder whether or not the absence of it was just an accident and no other choice and best picture suggests like a course correction or some sort of like, I, I don't know. That, that was interesting to me.

• 28:39Andy Greenwald?

  Can I give you, I have no skin in this game. I do not, I'm not involved in a popular film podcast. So can I just, I'm going to give you my day of nominations. I'm going to give you my predictions and if I win.

• 28:49Chris Ryan?

  You can start hosting the big picture.

• 28:51Andy Greenwald?

  You'll watch a Miyazaki movie. Okay. Best adapted, I, I think it's going to be one battle for best adapted. I think it's going to be sentimental, sentimental value for screenplay. I think Tiana Taylor. I think Stellan Skarsgård, Jessie Buckley, Shalhoub, director, PTA.

• 29:06Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:07Andy Greenwald?

  Picture, Sinners.

• 29:09Chris Ryan?

  So Sinners winning best picture with no other awards. I wonder what the precedent would be for that.

• 29:13Andy Greenwald?

  No, I think it'll, oh yeah. What other awards would it win?

• 29:15Chris Ryan?

  Well, I mean, it's up for 16. I think there's a lot of technical awards and other things.

• 29:19Andy Greenwald?

  I think it would win those. I, I actually, as I'm saying it.

• 29:21Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if Sinners, like I, I can't remember the last time a best picture also got no other above the line awards.

• 29:27Andy Greenwald?

  Director and picture usually are in tandem. So I actually, I'm going to revise, I'm going to go on the record as Kugler. I think PTA gets writing.

• 29:33Chris Ryan?

  So and does one battle after another win best picture? Or you think Sinners wins best director and best picture?

• 29:38Andy Greenwald?

  I think so.

• 29:39Chris Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 29:39Andy Greenwald?

  I do not agree with this. I'm I would go on the record with that as well. But I think that's my prediction.

• 29:46Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 29:46Andy Greenwald?

  I I think that because again, I'm not I'm not in the guilds. Actually, I am in one of the guilds, but I'm not like following the the trends of the guilds.

• 29:55Chris Ryan?

  But you don't vote. Do you vote in the Writers Guild Awards?

• 29:57Andy Greenwald?

  For the Writers Guild Awards, yeah, I can vote.

• 29:59Chris Ryan?

  Do you?

• 30:00Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, I can't comment on that.

• 30:02Chris Ryan?

  Okay. They don't let you comment?

• 30:03Andy Greenwald?

  No, I'm just deep in the poly market for it as well. So I don't want to like tip anything.

• 30:09Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna make a joke about how why would they have poly market for the Writers Guild Awards? But they really do have poly market for anything.

• 30:14Andy Greenwald?

  For like the number of times I mentioned Effengers on this podcast and we just hit the over. Big win for me. I would say that the these are these these voting blocks are not monoliths and they aren't. They don't necessarily vote with a personality or a point of view or an agenda. That said, I think the opportunity to crown Sinners is tough to pass up because it is original IP from a young filmmaker and it sort of ticks the box of this is a popular movie. This movie did very well at the box office. It is also critically adored and, you know, you certainly can't. You can't argue with the technical genius of the film. So I have I feel like there and with the number of nominations today, I just feel like momentum is trending in that direction.

• 30:59Chris Ryan?

  Interesting. We'll have to listen to Sean and Amanda see what their take is.

• 31:02Andy Greenwald?

  I would listen to my take, go hmm, and then actually listen to the experts.

• 31:06Chris Ryan?

  That's what I just did. That was interesting.

• 31:09Andy Greenwald?

  Do what Kristen, tolerate me.

• 31:11Chris Ryan?

  And not tolerate you. I brought up the the screenplay nom.

• 31:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 31:16Chris Ryan?

  And screenwriting has been on my mind this week, probably because I don't have to do any. So I'm sure you get done screenwriting and you're like, the last thing I want to talk about or do is write for screen. But Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have been on the promo tour for The Rip.

• 31:34Andy Greenwald?

  Have you seen it yet?

• 31:35Chris Ryan?

  I did. I loved it. I did the big picture on it. I loved it. I loved. I liked it a lot. I thought it was it was quite entertaining.

• 31:44Andy Greenwald?

  I'm very excited to see it. It looks like a lot of fun.

• 31:46Chris Ryan?

  Our producer, Kaia, not as big of a fan.

• 31:48Andy Greenwald?

  Kaia, you didn't like it?

• 31:49Speaker 03

  I I liked it.

• 31:50Chris Ryan?

  They're not gonna get mad at you.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  Who's they?

• 31:53Chris Ryan?

  Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  Um, no, I liked it. I just thought some of the dialogue was corny and I would thought, I said to Chris before we started recording, it really showed me the power of directing because I thought Tiana Taylor, who was quite good in one battle after another and quite bad in this movie.

• 32:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Interesting. I thought maybe you were worried it was a sequel to R I P D.

• 32:15Chris Ryan?

  No, I did not worry about that. I think that one's been buried. Uh, or, or maybe there's, it would be funny if in the Blake Lively, Taylor Swift text, uh, truth, there was like, Ryan's hard at work on Ripped 2.

• 32:28Andy Greenwald?

  Did that?

• 32:29Chris Ryan?

  We gotta get it in while Jeff Bridges is still with us.

• 32:31Andy Greenwald?

  Did that leak? Give you any pause about the free flowing exchange of ideas that we have with Zach Baron?

• 32:37Chris Ryan?

  I do not want to be deposed.

• 32:38Andy Greenwald?

  About anything?

• 32:39Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 32:40Andy Greenwald?

  No FOIA's for you?

• 32:41Chris Ryan?

  It's not even like that. I'm that ashamed about it. I just would just to see text messages in that context. The other thing that was shocking to me.

• 32:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 32:49Chris Ryan?

  If we're really talking about it.

• 32:50Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 32:52Chris Ryan?

  Is when Blake Lively is like, hey, so this is like, if you haven't been following along with this, this is the, the sort of lawsuits that have been going back and forth between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni over the It Ends With Us movie and the debacle that came out of that, although it was quite successful. Uh, they've now somehow, for whatever reason, it's been like, well, you need to turn over all of your text messages. I don't, this is a, this is like a part of the American legal system where I'm like, really?

• 33:23Andy Greenwald?

  Can't imagine that ever coming back.

• 33:24Chris Ryan?

  And also it's weird is that like, they got the January 6 texts, but they're like, never mind. You can just be president.

• 33:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I'm glad you've reached this point. Were you doing sober, like Jack Smith, consideration of these issues until just today? Did you just break your silence?

• 33:42Chris Ryan?

  I'm just saying, so Blake Lively had sort of brought Taylor Swift into this whole process because there was going to be like Taylor Swift music in the movie and.

• 33:55Andy Greenwald?

  And their pals.

• 33:56Chris Ryan?

  Their pals. And so at one point they're like going back and forth, but Blake Lively is like mad at Justin Baldoni and is like, sort of like employed Taylor Swift to like be on her side and to kind of like do this and do that and have a meeting with him and tell him he's nothing and whatever. Then like, you know, months pass or whatever and things have been going poorly for Blake Lively and Taylor Swift. We're just off and Blake Lively is like, hey. Love you seems like you're like maybe mad at me, but maybe that's just in my head. And like Taylor Swift's like, no, it's not in your head. I was like, oh shit, I would hate that.

• 34:34Andy Greenwald?

  If someone was like, if someone broke the social contract and told the truth.

• 34:37Chris Ryan?

  No, only Taylor Swift.

• 34:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's the thing is that like that decision where it's just like, I think, I don't think guys really do this very much. Where it's like, hey, is something wrong? And they're like, yeah, you, you know?

• 34:57Andy Greenwald?

  I don't, I mean, generally like our texts are, we're really going to interview Jim Bob Cooter? And that's not like, like, that's not like a metaphor.

• 35:06Chris Ryan?

  It's not code for.

• 35:07Andy Greenwald?

  No, that's like.

• 35:08Chris Ryan?

  Shoot heroin.

• 35:09Andy Greenwald?

  No, that's actually a football coach's name.

• 35:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:12Andy Greenwald?

  That's true. We're kind of surfacing that. Like Kai, do you want to weigh in on this?

• 35:15Chris Ryan?

  Were you surprised that when Blake Lively was like, hey, is something wrong? Taylor was like, yeah, there is something wrong. You're, you sound weird. You're, you're weirdo now.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  I mean, I gotta respect it because like I, I've come, I'm a non-confrontational person.

• 35:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, me too.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  Also, Taylor Swift says she's never been to therapy, but she speaks like someone who's done a lot of therapy.

• 35:35Chris Ryan?

  I feel like now because of the over-therapization of like a lot of like movies and TV shows and everything. It's like you can kind of like talk in that talk without actually doing the work.

• 35:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Chris Ryan?

  That's my plan at least. She's like, I don't have to go to therapy. I saw sentimental value.

• 35:53Andy Greenwald?

  You're not wrong. I guess I, I respect the directness. I feel that there is something, there's something vulnerable here, but also kind of affirming that all of these people who work so hard and pay so many people to create their public facing personas really just are who they are. Like Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Reynolds texts like Deadpool. Like, did you see the, the text he sent calling Hoover where he was like, I'm sorry, I couldn't speak to you at the party. I was so deep inside the mouth of that marketing exec. I'm still trapped here. Help get me out. Like, and he's like, you and B created something so powerful and beautiful.

• 36:30Andy Greenwald?

  You can dial it down a little bit, you know, it's fine.

• 36:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:32Andy Greenwald?

  I also say this as someone who would never, ever want to be exposed in this way. And yet, there is a part of me that does think that of all the body of work, the great body of work that I've left in the public domain these last 25 years. I do think the very best of it is like a one-off text to Tim Simons where I send the right gif at 4pm.

• 36:53Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:53Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? Or if I just come in hot.

• 36:54Chris Ryan?

  That's where you do your, that's, that's like, that's your legacy.

• 36:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and so I do.

• 36:57Chris Ryan?

  It's a shame, it's like, I wish, you know, people used to leave their letters to universities.

• 37:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, yes.

• 37:02Chris Ryan?

  It'd be great if you had a terminal illness and you were just like, went up to the.

• 37:06Andy Greenwald?

  University of Phoenix donations.

• 37:07Chris Ryan?

  No, you went back to Brown.

• 37:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:09Chris Ryan?

  You went up to the library and you're like, here you go. Just give them the iPhone. It's like, I turned Face ID off.

• 37:14Andy Greenwald?

  It's unlocked.

• 37:14Chris Ryan?

  It's all yours.

• 37:16Andy Greenwald?

  Like, this guy really cared about the offensive schemes.

• 37:19Chris Ryan?

  This guy fucking loved pints.

• 37:20Andy Greenwald?

  This guy visited Facebook a lot. All right, all this was because of Matt Damon's comments.

• 37:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I just wanted to bring this up because I thought Damon and Affleck have done. This is one of those, like, I think they've gotten more press for their press tour than for the movie kind of thing where it's like.

• 37:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, they are more famous than this movie is.

• 37:37Chris Ryan?

  Um, but they were on Rogan. And Damon started talking a little bit about the notes process and like the kind of desires of Netflix when it comes to like what they're looking for when it, with their film and television. And he said that, you know, things have changed, that back in the day when they would make action movies, you would basically do a big set piece. You do a set piece per act in ascending order of scale.

• 38:05Andy Greenwald?

  Craziness.

• 38:05Chris Ryan?

  And craziness and tension and consequences. And he's like, now they want you to have something grabby in the first opening moments of a movie so that people don't click out of it.

• 38:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 38:16Chris Ryan?

  Which is something I don't really do. Like, I don't really like, I personally am certainly not watching a movie and be like, well, nothing as grabby has happened yet. And it's like, I'm fine watching the credits and 10 minutes or 20 minutes of setup.

• 38:29Andy Greenwald?

  You're old school.

• 38:29Chris Ryan?

  I am old school, I am. But, uh, and so he was like, now we're kind of inverting it where something huge has to happen in the first minutes or they're convinced people are gonna click out of it. And then furthermore. And this is something that he articulated what I felt about the last season of Stranger Things that I just couldn't put my finger on, which is the the uh, the consistent like reiteration of plot and reiteration of what the like sort of stakes are and the setup and like narrating what is pretty obvious on screen and sort of being like, we have to go over there. And then they go over there. It's like, well, you could just show me them walking over there and I would be able to piece that together.

• 39:11Chris Ryan?

  But at least according to Damon, this is like the idea that people are constantly looking at their phones while they're watching these movies and shows. Then that they might forget. And I have to admit that when I watch either say Pluribus or Sentimental Value and either there's not dialogue or there's no dialogue in a language that I know, I am like, oh, fuck, I actually can't look at the Athletic to see if we've hired an OC because like I'll miss the entire point of the scene.

• 39:38Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 39:39Chris Ryan?

  Um, anyway, I just was wondering whether or not, I guess not explicitly, have you ever gotten notes that suggest as much? Not from Netflix per se, because I don't think it's exclusively Netflix. I think when I see other shows.

• 39:52Andy Greenwald?

  And I've never worked at Netflix.

• 39:53Chris Ryan?

  Right. But have you noticed a post streaming and perhaps to put it at a point, I think I would identify this as a post-COVID thing because I do think that people have kind of developed a now debilitating need to have their phone in their hand all the time. Probably because we had it in our hands a lot during, during lockdown and stuff like that. Like, have you noticed that like there is like a change in the way that you're being asked to write scripts? Or how you write scripts anyway, just because you're seeing so much of this?

• 40:25Andy Greenwald?

  This is why we've made fun of it without ever really saying why it exists, but why the number one most annoying trend in pilots especially over the last three years is start with something incredibly exciting and then say.

• 40:38Chris Ryan?

  Six months earlier.

• 40:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. Let's go back to the more natural starting point for the story that's not as interesting. We have created a generation of helicopter executives who.

• 40:50Andy Greenwald?

  Do their job the way parents behave on the playgrounds of Highland Park. You know, like the children cannot be left out of your sight for one second lest they do something dangerous, or in the case of the executives, lest the audience just-

• 41:03Chris Ryan?

  Or lest they get hired to be the OC of the Eagles.

• 41:04Andy Greenwald?

  I think we should start young and raise them right.

• 41:07Chris Ryan?

  It's the prince who was promised.

• 41:10Andy Greenwald?

  This young boy. It's like higher egg is our new offensive core there.

• 41:15Chris Ryan?

  The kid in the fucking Matrix is like bending spoons, except he's getting guys open for yak.

• 41:20Andy Greenwald?

  It's enders game, but it's the Cowboys in November.

• 41:23Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I hope people are enjoying this.

• 41:25Andy Greenwald?

  These are really good ideas and they're free. Yeah, so, you know, because they're, I mean, we, we keep, we, we keep distracting ourselves. We're digressing on this podcast, talking about reels and other things, and that is the experience of audiences. I will say that I have not come up against the restatement of plot, but the absolute surefire note, particularly from streaming services, like, I guess everyone is a streaming service these days, but particularly when you are developing for a Netflix or an Amazon that comes from the tech world, they are hyper, hyper focused on the first three minutes more than anything else. That they have very, very concrete evidence that there's, there's a time, there's a window,

• 42:08Andy Greenwald?

  a clock starts when someone presses play, where they either are going to commit or they are not going to commit, and that those have to be the stickiest moments possible. And I think that's interesting from the perspective of people who've been making movies for a while, how that has just upended or rearranged in a more charitable way, just, you know, recalibrated what a movie is and how it is supposed to feel. That it's not ascending, that it's actually in some ways descending in the first moment and settling in.

• 42:37Chris Ryan?

  Now, look, like, there are, there are plenty of examples, Heat opens with an action scene, you know what I mean? Like, there are plenty of things that movies and television shows that open with something big, but I think you can see it, to your point- A show like Black Rabbit, which I did actually like quite a bit, but has some of that like, why is this show opening with what should be the highlight of the first couple of episodes, which is building up to this robbery? You know what I mean? Instead, we're gonna go backwards now, knowing that this is gonna go wrong for these two guys. But what, we're not exactly sure who all the players are. Now, and I don't know whether that was a note, or whether that was them saying like,

• 43:20Chris Ryan?

  we can't just open this and have an hour of these guys trying to set a restaurant up.

• 43:23Andy Greenwald?

  It's not just that, it's that like, the analogy that I would use that is hyper-specific to me, and again, the other girl dads who have made films this year, is when I'm making the kids lunches and I open the drawer to find containers to put aspects of their lunch in, and I have all the wrong sizes. So like, I have like a small thing made for like a side of sauce and I'm trying to put like, fucking takeout chicken satay in there with the stick coming out of it, that was just this morning. But, the point being, Black Rabbit has to exist in an ecosystem where the sizes are all wrong. I think that the filmmakers were rightfully, I mean, they cared about the action sequence and the crescendo of their story, for sure. But what they also were excited about was a story of mismatched brothers

• 44:07Andy Greenwald?

  coming together and starting a restaurant and the community of people that would be in the restaurant, who would become people you would get to know, care about, so that when this crescendo happened, you would be invested in it.

• 44:16Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 44:16Andy Greenwald?

  Then they're trying to cram that in to a Tupperware that is made by Netflix, which means it has to be a certain way at the beginning. And they're trying to do it in an ecosystem where they want, that they went for, I don't know if they wanted, but they ended up with Jason Bateman and Jude Law, stars who are not committing to five years of slow build.

• 44:32Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 44:33Andy Greenwald?

  So the whole thing ends up being slightly misshapen from maybe what they originally thought, and to our critical eyes was like, oh, that's not, that wouldn't have been my preferred way to enter into a story. The fact that you got to a place where you liked the story and you still engage with it, is a triumph.

• 44:46Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 44:48Andy Greenwald?

  The notes are weird, and they are changing our filmmaking experience. And it goes back to what I was saying about sentimental value, which is,

• 44:56Andy Greenwald?

  your mileage may vary from mine, but the way that movie opened with the voiceover and the house,

• 45:02Chris Ryan?

  I loved, I thought it was beautiful, yeah.

• 45:04Andy Greenwald?

  And then into the main character's backstage freakout, which honestly mimicked how I felt before our F Y C Atlanta panel eight years ago.

• 45:16Andy Greenwald?

  I found that so hysterical in all senses and I was so riveted. But that's my version, I guess, of a massive car chase or something. Like, I was in on that and 100% that would be noted.

• 45:29Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 45:30Andy Greenwald?

  You know, if it was, and there's a lot of Netflix jokes in that movie.

• 45:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's an interesting experience because, you know,

• 45:38Chris Ryan?

  when Sentimental Value begins, there's three full screens of financier, like, cards.

• 45:46Andy Greenwald?

  And also, every country in Europe's film commission.

• 45:49Chris Ryan?

  Has kicked in 10 grand.

• 45:51Andy Greenwald?

  I was thinking about this too.

• 45:52Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, the movie itself is about Stellan Skarsgård's character, who's a sort of lionized, critically beloved filmmaker, who's gonna make one last movie. And he initially is gonna make it with his daughter, played by Renata Ranzva. And then he chooses, after she rejects him, to make it with an American movie star, played by Elle Fanning. And it's, uh, it's, there's this, there's this kind of like art imitating life, imitating art thing going on in the movie. But I did note with interest that when he gets, you know, Elle Fanning to sign onto the movie, Netflix just signs on to produce the film.

• 46:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 46:35Chris Ryan?

  When he, before that, he's like, we'll scrape together the necessary funds from all of these nations' film boards and do whatever is necessary to do that. Maybe you hire one. I don't know why, like, the Film Society of Ireland kicks in money to, like, a Joachim Trier movie, but it's just fascinating, like, what you have to do to patch together funding to make anything if you're not making it for one of these major things.

• 47:02Andy Greenwald?

  Can I give away an idea here? I think the way to bring all of this together in a way that is both creatively satisfying and maybe illuminating to the larger world is for the Safdie brothers, or at least one of them. Pick 'em to make a movie called The Financier. Not about Jeff Epstein, but about the guy whose job it is to go hat in hand to every liberal Western democracy and ask for a few, you know, thousand euros or whatever to make a movie. You get Lars Idinger to play the lead.

• 47:33Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 47:34Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like this would be, I feel like it would be quite stressful.

• 47:38Chris Ryan?

  I can't imagine it. I mean, I also don't know how much longer that will, that will be the case, you know?

• 47:44Andy Greenwald?

  Well, you know, I think it all depends on Greenland.

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• 49:45Andy Greenwald?

  Before we get into the pit- Yeah, sure. Can I just make the small... Speaking of small projects that are multilingual with lots of subtitles, so you can't look at a second screen, I would like to make the case for Drops of God, season two. Please do. This is a very, very hyper-specific, very charming series that premiered two-plus years ago on Apple TV. It is a massive international co-production. The first season is about a... Essentially, a wine tasting competition in which a Robert Parker-esque, but one who is respected around the world, not just in America, wine expert dies, and he leaves his legacy, his guide, his cellar

• 50:27Andy Greenwald?

  to the winner of a competition that is between his daughter, who's a French one, played by Fleur Joffreer. Can you just say that name one more time? I believe it's Fleur, and I believe it's Joffreer. Okay. I actually did listen to an Instagram beforehand. It was an interview between her and Joachim Trier, and I was only listening to what she was saying. Well, you're an ally. Always, above all else. And the second competitor in the wine tasting competition is by the Dead Legend's disciple, who, spoiler alert, might be more than his disciple, who lives in Japan, played by Tomohisa Yamashita, that I do. And anyway, it was a really, really entertaining series.

• 51:11Andy Greenwald?

  I think there's a bunch of ways into it. It is sort of melodramatic and over the top, but it is also beautifully international on films in France and Japan and all over Europe. And it got renewed.

• 51:21Chris Ryan?

  That's, I mean, yeah.

• 51:22Andy Greenwald?

  And now it's back for season two. And it continues to be very, very escapist and charming this season. In the first episode already, they go to Spain, they go to Marseille. The stakes are now to hunt down the origin of a mysterious unlabeled bottle of wine.

• 51:38Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that they're really going to those places or are they just shooting in Budapest?

• 51:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 51:41Chris Ryan?

  And like, ah, Spain.

• 51:42Andy Greenwald?

  This could be a subplot of the Safdie brothers, the financier movie, because a lot like, there are a lot of international names in this cast and a lot of like, production companies. And I don't quite get how it works, but it works. The only thing that I will say about like, because some people might turn to me and say, how do you find stakes in a show about two people decanting?

• 52:02Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:03Andy Greenwald?

  And I will say that this season introduces Isai's new obsession with freediving.

• 52:09Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:10Andy Greenwald?

  Which, which definitely is a lot more dangerous than swirling and sniffing.

• 52:14Chris Ryan?

  I watched a whole documentary about that.

• 52:17Andy Greenwald?

  The other thing that the first episode does, and I loved it, I want to be clear about that, was that there's a moment when, when Isai tastes, he sniffs and he tastes this wine, this mysterious wine. And he has a vision when he has the, when he, and the vision is of the fucking sea of tranquility on the moon. And I'm telling you, I was like, are they saying this wine's from space? For a moment, I was like, Apple's notes were so crazy that they were like-

• 52:47Chris Ryan?

  Can we get some for all mankind involved?

• 52:48Andy Greenwald?

  They were like, for all mankind works for us. Foundation works for us. Can we spice this up? Can we space this up? I don't think that's-

• 52:56Chris Ryan?

  No, it was probably just his, his sort of, that was his poetic mind, traveling all the way out there.

• 53:01Andy Greenwald?

  But the fact that even for a second, I was like, oh shit, dog.

• 53:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:05Andy Greenwald?

  They terraformed Mars.

• 53:07Chris Ryan?

  Got that terror war.

• 53:08Andy Greenwald?

  Quatu was like, the minerality of the red soil is so unique. And he's sniffing, he's sniffing it, like, all of the face inside of him is sniffing it and tasting it. That's not true, but did I make it sound more interesting?

• 53:23Chris Ryan?

  I'm interested. I liked the couple of episodes that I watched last year. It just didn't really grab me that much.

• 53:29Andy Greenwald?

  It is a very gentle watch, and I'm happy that it's back. And for people who like it, like, you will not be disappointed.

• 53:35Chris Ryan?

  Did you feel like when they finished the first season, it was like you guys said what you needed to say? Or was there obviously a lot more in this world to explore?

• 53:43Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it's based on a longer running manga series, and I think it was quite freely adapted. So I don't actually know how close to any original text it is. I think that the genius of it is, yes, they seem to have found a second quest worthy of the first, which I think would be a challenging assignment for a writer's room. But more than that, the show just has a very, very pleasant international cooperation vibe, which is a little bit out of step with the times. And it does have a seriousness and specificity when it comes to wine and winemaking. And like, there's a whole digression in this episode about how they are like,

• 54:20Andy Greenwald?

  defending this vineyard against climate change in ways that are non.

• 54:25Chris Ryan?

  What's climate change?

• 54:26Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly, exactly. One thing I'm realizing as my kids get older is I can't, I'm not on a podcast with them. So like, my younger daughter was like, we watched a film in science class today. I was like, oh, that's interesting. What was it about? And she goes, climate change. And I said, well, that's a myth. And she's like, what do you mean? And I was like, okay, don't tell mom. I'm gonna walk that back.

• 54:49Chris Ryan?

  Did you also, what was the nicotine thing?

• 54:52Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah. My older daughter was in science class. They were talking about the addictive effects of nicotine and how vapes are really easy to get.

• 55:02Chris Ryan?

  Not true.

• 55:04Andy Greenwald?

  And vapes are really easy to get, but like, it's kind of gross. And I was like, well, if you ever want to, you know, talk to Uncle Chris, I'm sure he could come in and address your class. I was like, he hasn't smoked in, you know, you used to have a cigarette smoking habit.

• 55:19Chris Ryan?

  I did.

• 55:20Andy Greenwald?

  You haven't had that habit in quite some time, but nicotine still plays a role.

• 55:23Chris Ryan?

  I will tell you that. The cigarette that Stellan Skarsgård and Renato Rhines was share. I was like, I gotta get back to one.

• 55:34Andy Greenwald?

  Can you be a chipper like Malcolm Gladwell said?

• 55:36Chris Ryan?

  Well, you know, the thing is, is when you take a long time off and you hit that one, it's like, ugh. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't, I like the feeling of it being part of my bloodstream. You know what I mean? It's not like a, an every, it's, it's like, I, I like nicotine. I don't know if I really want to go back to smoking cigarettes, even though they, they are my best friend.

• 55:57Andy Greenwald?

  I think you just answered that question. This is the most emotional I've ever seen you be on this podcast.

• 56:02Chris Ryan?

  Well, I'm also coming off a week of watching Zodiac three times and like the smoking in Zodiac definitely makes you kind of want to eat an entire pack.

• 56:11Andy Greenwald?

  Should we comment on my erasure from the Zodiac rewatchables history or should we say that?

• 56:14Chris Ryan?

  It's not the first time we've redone a podcast, though.

• 56:17Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's the first one that I've been edged out of history.

• 56:19Chris Ryan?

  I'm sorry, yeah.

• 56:20Andy Greenwald?

  It's tough. It's tough. The game changes.

• 56:23Chris Ryan?

  Bring your rate down.

• 56:23Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? It's, it's not that, it's just that the Declan Doyles are on my heels.

• 56:28Chris Ryan?

  It's just me, Bill and Sean.

• 56:31Andy Greenwald?

  I think the previous one was me, you and Sean.

• 56:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and weren't you like, this is a pretty good movie?

• 56:37Andy Greenwald?

  It was early in the run of rewatchables.

• 56:38Chris Ryan?

  So you weren't sure that you were supposed to be, you know?

• 56:41Andy Greenwald?

  Full-throated in my defense.

• 56:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. Let's talk a little bit about The Pit. I didn't intentionally say, let's put The Pit an hour into this podcast, but I will say, a very good episode of The Pit that I don't have a ton of comments on.

• 56:54Andy Greenwald?

  Was that what you were asking me? Because you, you, it was interesting. You texted me asking if I had watched it yet, and I hadn't. And then when I reported that I had, I thought you had a leading question.

• 57:03Chris Ryan?

  No, I thought, you know what it was, is I was trying to remember when The Pit last season went into like, holy shit, overdrive. This is just like every week, I'm like, that was awesome. I enjoyed that a lot. I can go through all of our patients that we've got.

• 57:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 57:20Chris Ryan?

  If you want, and you can just sort of like, give me some comments.

• 57:22Andy Greenwald?

  I have comments. I do want to say, I loved this episode.

• 57:25Chris Ryan?

  It was a very good episode.

• 57:26Andy Greenwald?

  And I, but I think that what I loved about it may have been.

• 57:28Chris Ryan?

  The Tree of Life stuff?

• 57:29Andy Greenwald?

  The, I did love that, but I also just loved the.

• 57:34Andy Greenwald?

  We could probably just replay our comments from episode three a year ago, but I am so in awe of the maestro level Lydia Tarr-esque conducting that they are doing. Like, just in terms of building-

• 57:48Chris Ryan?

  That's a good point. Maybe I'm just, I mean, I don't mean-

• 57:50Andy Greenwald?

  No, you take it for granted, because we used to have, we used to have things in this country, and we used to have TV like this regularly. And the way that they bring people on and off the field, and the way that the stories dovetail and interact, but constantly leave these little pockets of air for the characters to share a look, or share a moment. The way that it's coming up with continually creative and, you know, we've grown up with medical dramas our entire life, and how many different, how many different styles of problem can you present to us? But finding a different way into the problem, whether it's a couple showing up in one set of circumstances, and the set of circumstances then reversing.

• 58:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Or we think that this guy's beating his kid, but it turns out she has an autoimmune disease, you know?

• 58:36Andy Greenwald?

  Or, to speak to the Tree of Life survivor care woman patient in this episode, who turns to Perla and is like, "Are you Muslim?" And you're like, and you have the same tension in your body as when Langdon goes in with a thing to the kid knows, the kid who can't sit still. And you're like, "Is this, which way is this gonna go?" And you truly don't know. This was the week this season for me, where I was like, "Man, I am just, I'm at Dorney Park and I'm on the river."

• 59:03Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 59:03Andy Greenwald?

  I am having a great time being caught up in it.

• 59:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, we had a tweaker student. We had the security guard who claims to be, who have been, to have been assaulted by the aforementioned student.

• 59:13Andy Greenwald?

  And did he tase him? The security guard tased the kid?

• 59:16Chris Ryan?

  I think we're gonna find out that that guy, that that kid has whatever issues gonna, I wonder if it's not-

• 59:23Andy Greenwald?

  He was clean from drugs.

• 59:24Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And so then the security guard, what's his problem? What did he do?

• 59:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 59:28Chris Ryan?

  Uh, we have the unhoused gentleman who's been getting washed down. That's Charles Baker from Breaking Bad.

• 59:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 59:34Chris Ryan?

  Skinny Pete. Um, we got Mr. and Mrs. Yi, who you mentioned, who had the kind of, the rope-a-dope where we think Mr. Yi is gonna be quadriplegic. Then he's fine, because it's just potassium.

• 59:46Andy Greenwald?

  Damn.

• 59:46Chris Ryan?

  But then Mrs. Yi goes down. Uh, they got in an accident with a motorcyclist. He's dead.

• 59:53Andy Greenwald?

  He was, he was real dead and Robbie said that he always wears helmets.

• 59:57Chris Ryan?

  But he doesn't.

• 59:57Andy Greenwald?

  That's not true.

• 59:58Chris Ryan?

  I know. Unreliable narrator. Uh, who else? Michael Nury is, uh, walking around the ER greeting people.

• 1:00:05Andy Greenwald?

  Really flirting too.

• 1:00:06Chris Ryan?

  The guy from, uh, Derek Cecil, uh, from House Cards plays Mr. Williams.

• 1:00:11Andy Greenwald?

  He's down bad.

• 1:00:12Chris Ryan?

  He is down bad, but there was like a nice, that note of, of the, the woman who he, is that his ex-girlfriend?

• 1:00:18Andy Greenwald?

  No, it was his ex-wife.

• 1:00:19Chris Ryan?

  Ex-wife. They broke up because he started losing his temper all the time. It turns out that might be a tumor. Then you gotta look back and say, shit, if I could have had, if I could have known that.

• 1:00:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. What would you have done? You want to weigh in on that? I feel like this is a real sliding doors moment for you.

• 1:00:34Chris Ryan?

  This is my thing. It's like, that was a great scene. I don't know. I don't know what to say. Uh, the young girl with bruises has a dad who is a giant asshole, but it turns out the girl is suffering from an autoimmune thing. So we get the, we get the depiction of the guy as a prick, but perhaps not a Charlie Beazer.

• 1:00:50Andy Greenwald?

  I think definitively not, although you never know with the show.

• 1:00:54Chris Ryan?

  The Tree of Life thing I thought was handled beautifully, you know, uh, and it is an example of the moments and the space the show is taking in these quiet hours before this Code Black kicks in, that I think is going to be the beginning of the dominos of the rest of the day of the show, of the season. Um, I, I thought that this was just a lovely character moment. I think they are doing a really good job with Robbie. Perhaps last season with some of the flashbacks and the longing looks at his mentor's memorial and it being the anniversary of his death and all this stuff. This season, I feel like they're doing a little bit more show don't tell with him.

• 1:01:34Chris Ryan?

  And like you said, riding to work without a helmet, which Noah Wiley has since commented on saying like, that is important. And the interaction with the Tree of Life survivor, talking about faith, talking about their religion and not.

• 1:01:49Chris Ryan?

  I don't, I don't think they

• 1:01:50Andy Greenwald?

  And his midlife crisis.

• 1:01:51Chris Ryan?

  And his midlife crisis, yeah.

• 1:01:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's just, it's just more interesting TV to make the season about a character's current life pitched forward as opposed to the character in his current life, you know, obsessed with the trauma of the past. Like, it is just much more, and much more in keeping with, I think, the spirit of The Pit, which is a show about immediacy and is in real time.

• 1:02:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Andy Greenwald?

  So it's just, it's a more interesting characterization for the lead. I noted with interest that this was the episode of the season, I assume there's only one per season due to workload, that Noah Wiley is also the credited screenwriter of. And so now we know.

• 1:02:27Chris Ryan?

  That was the Hawaii and prayer episode last year, right?

• 1:02:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and this is the Langdon just has long quotes about fatherhood available to him due to his long time on the bench, you know. I think there's a moment where you, you could look at that scene and be like, well, this is a little bit declarative, this is a little bit tell, don't show. It's even bordering on corny, but there is an earnestness that's baked into the show that I don't bump on. And genuinely, the vibe that the show creates and harvests, like that scene, and that's the scene between the father of the young kid who has beads up his nose.

• 1:03:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Andy Greenwald?

  And can't sit still, Langdon and the nurse who's, I

• 1:03:07Chris Ryan?

  Just had

• 1:03:07Andy Greenwald?

  I'm really struggling with names of the tertiary characters on the show, but he's a new father or about to be a father. And that's been a running

• 1:03:14Chris Ryan?

  They're, he's a new father. They're doing like, he's just dealing with like the sleep schedule stuff.

• 1:03:19Andy Greenwald?

  And speaking of texts we don't send each other, but Taylor Swift does, I was like, I don't know if I've ever had a more satisfying interaction with other men than the 45 seconds they spent taking beads out of that child's nose. Like, these three guys are all gathered together, raising this boy, freeing his nose of colorful baubles.

• 1:03:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Andy Greenwald?

  They quote something, and then they all look at each other, they get the job done, and they fucking fist bump? Why can't it ever be that easy? We have to do 15 years of a podcast just to be honest with each other. You know what I mean? That was so efficient.

• 1:03:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Andy Greenwald?

  I thought that was lovely.

• 1:03:53Chris Ryan?

  How do you feel about the fact that they have now kind of like zeroed in on like

• 1:03:58Chris Ryan?

  The the kind of power radiating off of Catherine Lannasa. And she gets a lot more like cut like kind of cutaways. And she's in there a lot more and and you know, it's it's an interesting remix of, I think, the the characters.

• 1:04:13Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's good, again, thinking about the show as if you're just thinking about the the execution of like, like X's and O's, bringing it back to offensive game planning. It really works for me hour by hour to understand that there is that is a heliocentric show in the sense that she is Dana is at the center. And everyone else is orbiting around her and they can touch back. We know what's at the heart of it all. You know, just just geographically, having her charisma there works for me.

• 1:04:43Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:44Andy Greenwald?

  Um, and then you think about the orbit because finally, Al Hashimi and Robbie split up and they had a cute little interaction about like seeing other people and going in reverse orbit of each other.

• 1:04:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, which I was glad for because the benefit of the show moving this quickly is you don't have a lot of time to get annoyed or get.

• 1:05:00Chris Ryan?

  It's also just like they first meet, he's put off by it. But then over the course of a couple of patients and maybe a couple of hours, he's like, I'll make a joke, she makes a joke back, we're starting to loosen up a little bit, it's okay.

• 1:05:11Andy Greenwald?

  It's reasonable, but also the dynamic, that initial dynamic was starting to wear thin. And I think we're headed towards more of it as there seems to be some sort of code black, like hospitals are going offline and that.

• 1:05:21Chris Ryan?

  That's in the trailer, I don't know, I mean.

• 1:05:22Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, the end of the episode, they get the call saying they're about to get hit with everything from another hospital because of a code black there.

• 1:05:28Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:05:29Andy Greenwald?

  And so there's a suggestion that there's some tech.

• 1:05:31Chris Ryan?

  But he's like, that could be anything, right? It's in the trailer that they're like.

• 1:05:35Andy Greenwald?

  You told me that.

• 1:05:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:05:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we have not watched, you haven't watched it.

• 1:05:38Chris Ryan?

  No, I haven't watched it, but in the season trailer, it's like, we gotta go analog.

• 1:05:42Andy Greenwald?

  I I just found the the character who is exists, at least in the opening hour, is only to be slightly different than Robbie, but is just following him everywhere. I I'm glad that they split up.

• 1:05:53Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:05:54Andy Greenwald?

  Like, that was a smart use of that. Um, are you, can I just? Can I treat this a little bit like school, like, can I pop quiz you on something?

• 1:06:02Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:06:03Andy Greenwald?

  What exactly are they extracting from Louis's body?

• 1:06:07Chris Ryan?

  I think he has some sort of like, uh. I don't know.

• 1:06:12Andy Greenwald?

  What are they gonna do with that?

• 1:06:13Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna give you like a kind of a half-hearted like I sort of understand that. He's obviously retaining a lot of fluids.

• 1:06:20Andy Greenwald?

  I would say so. Five jugs worth.

• 1:06:22Chris Ryan?

  So it's a liver problem, I bet.

• 1:06:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:25Chris Ryan?

  Because of his alcoholism.

• 1:06:28Andy Greenwald?

  He does have alcoholism.

• 1:06:29Chris Ryan?

  And I don't know why they can drain that much, but yes, like there's probably some organ failure going on there.

• 1:06:36Andy Greenwald?

  Do you watch those scenes with increasing dread that something else is going to come out of him? That there's some like that that is a misdirect?

• 1:06:45Chris Ryan?

  Louis has been there for a while now. I mean, he was there in the first season.

• 1:06:48Andy Greenwald?

  He was?

• 1:06:48Chris Ryan?

  And I don't know what's gonna come out of him or how one of these new kids are gonna fuck this up.

• 1:06:53Andy Greenwald?

  Or what anecdotes, including like Pittsburgh's connection to the history of fireworks?

• 1:06:56Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 1:06:57Andy Greenwald?

  I do enjoy that. Um, the only other notes I had from this episode were I could take or leave the racing crew. I don't quite.

• 1:07:07Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it's Western Pennsylvania.

• 1:07:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but they're from Georgia. They're up there for some reunion.

• 1:07:13Chris Ryan?

  Right?

• 1:07:13Andy Greenwald?

  And then all of them seem to have a succession of problems and they all share pills.

• 1:07:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:17Andy Greenwald?

  Which, I mean, look, who among us didn't live in New York City in their twenties? I'm just saying you grow out of that.

• 1:07:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Andy Greenwald?

  I like the ways for a show that we sometimes ding, or at least we point out the ways in which it is overtly, I mean, sad to say, anything about good people trying to help in an overloaded system.

• 1:07:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Andy Greenwald?

  That is by definition, political. And we point out when the nurses like gathered together like the.

• 1:07:40Chris Ryan?

  That was the first season.

• 1:07:41Andy Greenwald?

  Musical, first season. The subtle ways that the show does it as well, like the fact that Robbie has a lot of experience removing tasers from people.

• 1:07:50Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:07:50Andy Greenwald?

  And how you treat that.

• 1:07:51Chris Ryan?

  Or the fact that they have to send, they have to like their, the insurance is having them move.

• 1:07:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Chris Ryan?

  A surgical patient to another hospital because it frees up a bed.

• 1:08:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 1:08:02Chris Ryan?

  And it's, I thought it was good that they had some sort of, um, a mixed variety of reactions to that. Rather than just like, this is unacceptable that insurance does this. It was kind of like, well, it frees up a bed and it does this. And it's like, this is how the system works.

• 1:08:15Andy Greenwald?

  Are you happy that the, that the security guard guy can get the bet pool running again? Like the, like the FanDuel of the pit?

• 1:08:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:22Andy Greenwald?

  Is back up and running?

• 1:08:23Chris Ryan?

  I, I'm excited for next week's episode. I haven't watched it yet, but I am excited for next week's episode in that regard.

• 1:08:29Andy Greenwald?

  You think it's, you think something big's coming?

• 1:08:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think usually after, at around four, they start to.

• 1:08:36Chris Ryan?

  And for people who are just listening, I just changed gears.

• 1:08:39Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I wonder what the other option was if you were audio only, what they thought was happening with you.

• 1:08:46Chris Ryan?

  Do you want to do a few minutes of of sports talk or are you tapped out?

• 1:08:50Andy Greenwald?

  I'm curious, where do you want to go with it? You had a Phillies take you wanted to jump into.

• 1:08:54Chris Ryan?

  It's interesting how many things in my life that I like are under full on assault.

• 1:09:00Andy Greenwald?

  Like democracy, what?

• 1:09:01Chris Ryan?

  To being like to collapsing. And I don't know if that's extreme, but.

• 1:09:05Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 1:09:07Chris Ryan?

  And I'm I'm happy. I am honestly happy for Sean and the Mets. Like, I'm glad that those guys.

• 1:09:16Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like you.

• 1:09:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. But the Dodgers thing has been getting to me a little bit this week. And I'm so glad the Mets got Peralta. Instead of the Dodgers, because if the Dodgers got Peralta, I do think like people would be like, we're not going to fucking spring training. This is ridiculous. And, you know, I've been.

• 1:09:34Andy Greenwald?

  Do you feel similarly if the Ellison's get Warner Brothers? Like, I just want to know where.

• 1:09:38Chris Ryan?

  No, it's college football that I've been thinking about a lot. Because not because of the portal, because I think the kids should be able to transfer, but.

• 1:09:44Andy Greenwald?

  Wait till I tell you about what Amazon's done to wages. It's gonna blow your mind, but we'll get there. We'll get there.

• 1:09:51Chris Ryan?

  No, but I did. I did breathe a sigh of relief that somebody besides the Dodgers got Peralta from the Brewers.

• 1:09:58Andy Greenwald?

  Do you feel, though, economic inequality aside, how does it make you feel knowing that the Phillies have essentially done nothing? They've lost depth, lost players, still have Nikestia Hano's on the books.

• 1:10:14Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:10:14Andy Greenwald?

  And yet still somehow have the fourth highest payroll in Major League Baseball.

• 1:10:19Chris Ryan?

  Well, they take care of their guys. You know?

• 1:10:22Andy Greenwald?

  It's a union town.

• 1:10:26Andy Greenwald?

  Annoyed at the running it back thing, but at the same time, like it would, baseball is so weird and fluky. That all these-

• 1:10:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they could be healthy and hot and they could win it, you know, I mean, probably not with the Dodgers, but they could.

• 1:10:41Andy Greenwald?

  No, well, no, it's, it's a race for second place. No, no shame in that.

• 1:10:44Chris Ryan?

  I was excited by like, I can't remember who I saw talking about. The Dodgers were scared of the Phillies. That was like who they thought the basically the World Series was with. It didn't feel that way during that series, but-

• 1:10:55Andy Greenwald?

  No, it did not because, you know, and I can relate, like when you reach a certain age, like your highs are still pretty high, but you get, you don't get to them as much. You know, you can go real cold for a couple of weeks.

• 1:11:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:07Andy Greenwald?

  I, I believe in Justin Crawford. I do not necessarily share the same optimism about Andrew Painter and whoever else we've got coming up. To pitch, but you, but, but you made a very, and this is interesting, I thought. You were, you, you, you threw on the burgundy pee.

• 1:11:24Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:25Andy Greenwald?

  Within minutes of the 49ers game, like you were ready to-

• 1:11:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:28Andy Greenwald?

  Go on to baseball.

• 1:11:29Chris Ryan?

  Bro, I was watching Flyers Mammoth last night.

• 1:11:31Andy Greenwald?

  That's crazy.

• 1:11:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Andy Greenwald?

  How's that feel?

• 1:11:34Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I just, this always happens, like the football dwindles and it is the thing that unlocks my true fucking. Sports obsession. It's just like watching the Rams Bears game. I was like, that was an absolutely amazing reward. For watching an amazing thing.

• 1:11:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:53Chris Ryan?

  I just want to watch sports all the time.

• 1:11:56Andy Greenwald?

  I'm with you on that. I just want to watch sports all the time.

• 1:11:58Chris Ryan?

  Football goes away and you're like, fuck. It's the All-Star game for NBA. You know what I mean?

• 1:12:03Andy Greenwald?

  It's pretty-

• 1:12:03Chris Ryan?

  So I'm just kind of like, I'm scraping around for stuff.

• 1:12:05Andy Greenwald?

  It's pretty fun watching sports when you don't care. I know you always like to pick someone to root for and I probably inevitably do that too.

• 1:12:11Chris Ryan?

  You care too much though.

• 1:12:12Andy Greenwald?

  But I care too much. I, it's just not healthy.

• 1:12:15Chris Ryan?

  Amanda Anasimova, I'm like, one night, I'm just like, go get him, girl. And then I'm done. You know, I have no idea whether she's still playing tennis.

• 1:12:22Andy Greenwald?

  You have never, ever supported anyone the way you supported that woman for three and a half hours. Last year.

• 1:12:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Andy Greenwald?

  I've never seen passion like that.

• 1:12:31Chris Ryan?

  That was during the, the lightning storm of the Cowboys game. Oh, right. Right. When we had some, we had to look at something else briefly. And you just took all your chips and you went all in on your girl.

• 1:12:43Andy Greenwald?

  Passion is good.

• 1:12:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Andy Greenwald?

  Passion is good.

• 1:12:45Chris Ryan?

  We'll be back on Monday. We're going to talk about, uh, Knight of Seven Kingdoms and industry. And I'm sure we'll have other news and notes to go over and keep Kai here for 90 plus minutes as we discuss the Phillies offseason and institutional under institutions under assault.

• 1:13:03Andy Greenwald?

  Just well.

• 1:13:04Chris Ryan?

  I think, I think that we did a good job today of being a little bit flighty, but keeping it, keeping the main thing, the main thing.

• 1:13:12Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I also like that backdoor Jalen shout out. That's good.

• 1:13:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Kaya McMullin is our producer and Kai Grady makes us look good and, uh, we'll be back on Monday. I hope everybody has a great weekend.

• 1:13:33Speaker 00

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