The "Ask Sean Anything" Mailbag. Plus: The Amazing Life of a Character Actor, with Patrick Fischler.

Sean is back from vacation, and to celebrate, we opened up the mailbag with an incredibly fun “ask Sean anything” prompt. Before diving in, he reacts to the massive commercial success of ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ wish-casts some potential ‘X-Men’ roles following more casting updates, and shares his thoughts on the trailer for ‘Primetime,’ starring Robert Pattinson. Then, he answers all of your questions on how he prepares for filmmaker interviews, which actors are the most reliable chemistry alchemists, and whether he is “too horny.” Finally, Sean is joined by Patrick Fischler to break down what it’s really like to be a character actor in the industry. He tells the incredible story of how David Lynch taught him how to act in ‘Mulholland Drive,' and much more! (0:00) Intro (1:25) ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ box office (7:41) ‘X-Men’ casting updates wish-casting (12:24) ‘Primetime’ trailer reaction (14:05) ‘Paper Tiger’ teaser (15:18) Movies delayed to 2027 (16:58) The "ask Sean anything" mailbag (1:17:24) The Amazing Life of a Character Actor, with Patrick Fischler Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Patrick Fischler Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh 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.

• 0:15Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fantasy and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about me. Later in this episode, I have a very special conversation with the actor Patrick Fischler. You may know him as the man who recounts his nightmare in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, or the Dharma Initiative's dastardly fill from Lost, or the embittered comedian Jimmy Barrett from Mad Men, or as one half of the smart couple who don't have kids in Idiocracy, or the guy trapped in the elevator in Speed, or, well, I could go on. Patrick is one of the most recognizable character actors in Hollywood, and he appears in not one, not two, but four projects this summer, including the films Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and The Social Reckoning. So I thought it'd be fun to talk to him about his life as a working actor. This is the kind of conversation I've wanted to have on this show for a very long time.

• 0:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's a practical, thoughtful discussion of the art, commerce, and experience of life as a working actor. Stick around for it. Patrick has wonderful stories and is a great guy. But first, some movie news now that I'm back.

• 1:12Speaker 01

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• 1:37Speaker 02

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• 1:49Speaker 03

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• 2:36Speaker 03

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• 2:42Speaker 04

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• 3:15Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so as I said, this is an episode about me. We're doing an Ask Me Anything mailbag. Jack will read your questions. I will answer them sincerely, with modesty, and hopefully with some depth. But before we got to do that, we have to talk about Spider-Man: Brand New Day. So I was very, very sure of myself that this movie was going to be very successful, but not absolutely beloved when we talked about it with Van and Amanda a couple of weeks ago. And now that I have returned from vacation, I am pleased to report that I was wrong. This movie is an absolute sensation, one of the biggest sensations in recent movie history. It has already made in 12 days $1.67 billion. That is not a typo. I have not misstated anything.

• 3:59Sean Fennessey?

  $1.67 billion in 12 days. So obviously, we're back. We've been back for a long time with movies. This has been a wonderful year in that respect. This is highly unusual, even for a film like this starring Spider-Man, to do so well. And now, it feels like potentially the sky is the limit. It's already earned $655 million in North America. It's made $1 billion overseas already. The big question here in America is, can it catch Spider-Man: No Way Home, which went to 814? Seems like it will. Can it catch Avengers: Endgame at 858? Seems like it will. Can it catch The Force Awakens at $958 million? Probably not. That would be crazy. A movie has never crossed $1 billion domestically, so we shall see.

• 4:44Sean Fennessey?

  The big question now, though, beyond how much money can it make, is why is this happening? There are obvious answers for why this is happening. Obviously, everybody loves Spider-Man. I love Spider-Man. Little kids love Spider-Man. There's a smart piece in the Wall Street Journal about how Spidey and his amazing friends is the gateway portal for three- and four-year-olds like my daughter to get interested in and know Spidey. Spidey is very accessible for teenagers and pre-teens because he himself is a teenager in some of the storytelling, especially in the Tom Holland films. The movies are good. That's helpful. I have liked all four of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies to some degree or another. I think most people feel that way. There is something true that has happened here, which is that Tom Holland and Zendaya

• 5:27Sean Fennessey?

  are cresting in terms of their stardom right now. And so, both actors are going to be 30 years old this year. They're obviously married. They have spent the last 10 years not just growing their fame, but doing so in intriguing ways. Zendaya perhaps more than Tom Holland, who starred in the drama earlier this year, who closed out her run on Euphoria earlier this year, who's going to be appearing in Dune Part III. Tom Holland, of course, was in the summer's other huge movie, The Odyssey. And so, you've got these two figures who are entrenched in real life and in this story. Their relationship is critical to Brand New Day, and that's something that obviously a lot of people who have grown up with these movies since 2017 have felt emotionally invested in. I probably overlooked that when talking about how well the movie could do, but there's no doubt it's true.

• 6:12Sean Fennessey?

  Zendaya was 19 years old when they filmed Spider-Man: Homecoming, which is fascinating. One under-discussed point, I think, in this film's success is how it does feel a bit like a culmination. It's been five years, so there is that scarcity point that you're hearing from a lot of people, but it's more so that this is not quite an Avengers: Endgame-level event, but it has been a decade-long period of storytelling for these specific films. Spidey has appeared in other MCU movies, but for the most part, his world is very self-contained with Zendaya, with Jacob Badaloon, who plays Ned, with a lot of the villains who don't often cross over into other stories. So there is this sort of like, we have arrived moment with this film, which makes some of

• 6:53Sean Fennessey?

  its connectivity to the MCU at large sort of interesting to look at. And it means that Spider-Man, perhaps more so than any other IP, is in that upper tier, upper echelon of where things can go. It's basically Spider-Man, Avengers, Batman to a lesser extent, and Avatar that have powered their way through the 2000s. Those are the films at the absolute ceiling. You could make a case for Star Wars, though it has dramatically tailed off, and the Mandalorian and Grogu's underperformance brings the average way down on that movie. You know, it's only been five years since, or it's been five years since the Spider-Man live action, but we also, obviously, every three or four years are getting a Spider-verse film now, too, so it stays in the culture, but we don't feel overdrawn on the story at times.

• 7:38Sean Fennessey?

  The other thing is just that the stories travel really well. This movie's going to end up making $1.5 billion, maybe more, overseas, and that's unbelievable. Now, I'm happy that everybody's going to the movies, and I'm happy that if people can't get into Spider-Man: Brand New Day, maybe they'll throw themselves into The End of Oak Street, or Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, or Tony, or any of the other great movies that are out in August this month. But this is still the old way. The maximize your overseas profits, utilize your IP to maximum effect. This is not a change in any way. This is not like obsession. You know, this is not like a film like The Odyssey or Oppenheimer. This is an old playbook, and it still works. It works more rarely.

• 8:21Sean Fennessey?

  I do want to address the people in all of my mentions who seem to think that I always have hated the MCU and comic book movies. That just means you only started listening to the show 12 months ago. I understand. That's okay. You should go back and listen to our episodes, even about many post-COVID films that were released, particularly Thunderbolts and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, two movies I liked a whole heck of a lot. Before that, if you go back to pre-COVID times, I'm very positive about many MCU movies. I have certainly been burnt out. Spider-Man, of course, is different. We've said Spider-Man is different for a long time now. This proves that there is no exhaustion on this story. I'm kind of curious to see what this means for Avengers: Endgame.

• 9:01Sean Fennessey?

  Does it mean that the ceiling is now higher on a movie like that, that it can be bigger than Endgame, or bigger than this movie? Or does it mean that it will be more indicative of, you know, more of an artifact of storytelling? And I think there's obviously a lot of speculation that this movie, with its multiversal storytelling and Doctor Doom's role, will essentially dispense with many of the heroes who we've come to know over the last 15 years in the MCU, and kick-start a new X-Men era, introduce a whole new level of hero. Obviously, the new Avengers are going to be a part of that. And what role and responsibility do those characters have to the future of comic book stories? We're going to find out.

• 9:44Sean Fennessey?

  In the meantime, speaking of X-Men, some casting updates while I was out. So we know Sadie Sink is there as Jean Grey. Sorry if that's a spoiler for Brand New Day, but I assume every single person who's listening to this right now has seen that film by now. There was a report that Samara Weaving, who was a guest on this show about a month and a half ago, was confirmed for Emma Frost, which is, who is a canonical villain in the X-Men storytelling. I'll just say, elite casting. If you've seen Samara Weaving's work, you know she is definitely a white queen-style figure. The leaks over the weekend indicated that Kit Connor, who folks may know from Heartstopper, who I really enjoyed in Alex Garland's Warfare, is likely to be Cyclops. Seems fine.

• 10:27Sean Fennessey?

  I think you need a nice, emotionally inert leader type to be Cyclops. I do think one of the most underrated parts of the Fox X-Men movies is James Marsden's casting as Cyclops. I thought he was an excellent Cyclops. I relate to Cyclops in some ways as a stymied leader here at The Ringer. Other figures who are tabbed for potentially appearing in X-Men right now, it sounds like maybe Charles Melton will play Beast. Kaylee Spaney has been rumored to play Rogue. They were stars, of course, in Beef, Season Two. Indy Noveretti has at least been raising her hand to play Mystique. I don't know how seriously to take that. She's doing a lot of press, as she should in the aftermath of the success of Obsession. I saw a rumor about Jamie Lawson from Sinners playing Storm, and she's also rumored to

• 11:12Sean Fennessey?

  be a part of Black Panther 3. I could see that making a lot of sense. Aurora Monroe having a lot of connectivity between Black Panther and X-Men. Okay, so who do I want to see? Nobody asked me this question, but I'm just going to riff. I gave it some thought last night. Obviously, I'm getting older. So the idea of me brainstorming about which 23-year-old actor should play comic book characters is kind of pathetic. I realize that. Okay? I get it. It's a little sad, but it is something I did. First person who popped into my head is Connor Story from Heated Rivalry. Feels like a great angel to me. Warren Worthington III, who eventually becomes Archangel. I preferred Archangel to Angel personally. I wasn't a super way back X-Men fan. I came in in the late 80s and early 90s.

• 11:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yur Borasov is Colossus. It's like almost so obvious it should happen for Monora, who's going to be appearing in Artificial later this year, the Luca Guadagnino film. He's Russian. Colossus is Russian. He is bald, and Colossus is not bald, but he's also metallic. So maybe they could put a hairpiece on him and digitize him. Lana Condor plays Jubilee in X-Men Apocalypse, and I know that they're going to kill all those Fox X-Men characters, but they should probably still bring her back for Jubilee. I thought that was inspired casting. I think it was Lana Condor's first acting role. Lucas Bravo is a name that I have heard from Amanda on this show many times and also from my wife, because he is the romantic lead in Emily in Paris. And I couldn't think of

• 12:38Sean Fennessey?

  any Cajun actors, so I thought of French actors. And Lucas Bravo looks a lot like Gambit to me. So that's my pick there. This one, I think, is inspired. Gabriel LaBelle from The Fableman's and Snack Shack and Saturday Night as Bobby Drake, aka Iceman. What about Harry Melling as Nightcrawler from Pillion, from the Harry Potter films? Okay, now I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna try to manifest something. This isn't gonna happen. I'm not even sure I want it to happen, but what if Jesse Plemons said he would play Professor Charles Xavier? Would you, would you be interested in that? Is that something that you think could work?

• 13:21Sean Fennessey?

  Just picture him bald-headed, sitting in the chair in the Danger Room, instructing these young mutants how to do things. I feel like there's something to that. Plemons has not really shown much interest in IP in the last 10 years, but I don't know. Xavier has such gravitas. It's kind of hard. It's gonna be really hard to replace Patrick Stewart. He was kind of the ideal Xavier in many ways, but we'll see. I couldn't think of a single goddamn person for Wolverine. It's so difficult to cast an effective Wolverine, and I wonder if it's actually a better idea to go with the complete unknown for that part, because obviously Hugh Jackman made him iconic and appeared in many, many, many films as Wolverine. He seems to be unwilling to, to give up the adamantium clause, but I couldn't think of

• 14:06Sean Fennessey?

  a single person. The person I thought of for Magneto might be a little long in the tooth, but he has the gravitas we needed. It's Guy Pearce. Guy Pearce nose-to-nose with Jesse Plemons. There's, there's an age difference, obviously, but Guy Pearce is a youthful 58, in my opinion. Okay, those are my ideas. Are they good? Maybe not, but they're the best I could come up with last night. All right, primetime. I'm not referring to the hours between 7:00 and 11:00 PM on network television when I was a kid. I'm referring to the new film from Lance Oppenheimer. If you've been listening to this show for the last few years, you know the affection I have for Lance Oppenheimer's work. He was a guest on the show a few years ago, talking about his documentary Ren Faire. He's made a number of documentaries over the years, including Sperm World, that I recommend

• 14:49Sean Fennessey?

  people check out, because his debut feature film, Primetime, had its trailer released while I was on vacation. And it's good. It's good, you know, for one notable reason, which is that we have Robert Pattinson right in that amazing sweet spot with an actor who has a tremendous amount of skill, is very famous, and can make things happen, and clearly has good taste. So the film is obviously a portrait of Chris Hansen, the Dateline, and Catch, To Catch a Predator host. I spoke a bit about David Ossit's documentary that came out last year, Predators. This film seems like it's very much in communion with

• 15:29Sean Fennessey?

  that documentary, and it looks like an angsty, chaotic nightmare of a movie. A lot of, I've saw a lot of people compare it to, to Nightcrawler, the Jake Gyllenhaal film. I think there's a lot of accuracy to that. Haven't seen the movie yet. Comes out September 25th. Amanda will be seeing it at Venice. I'm hopeful that the film will show up at the Telluride Film Festival. And it's just very exciting to see someone like Pattinson using his powers for good. This is really it. Like, great actors who have great taste, who are willing to do parts like this. It made me think a bit of Cruz and Magnolia. That's, this is the kind of thing we want to see from, from folks in this industry with this kind of leverage. So I'm very excited for that film. I'm also very excited for the world to see Paper Tiger, which released a teaser this morning. This is James Gray's new movie,

• 16:13Sean Fennessey?

  which Amanda and I talked about at Cannes. It stars Adam Driver and Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson. And it's a James Gray movie. It's a crime thriller set in the 1970s about two brothers who find themselves in some real trouble. I won't say more than that. It is deeply connected to all of Gray's films. It is him very much in his comfort zone, and it's just fantastic. So it comes out in November. I'm looking forward to talking about it on the show. And, you know, I'm almost certain James will be back. He's been one of the two or three best guests in the history of this show. And if you only did just start listening to the show, I would recommend you go back and listen to his episodes, because he is actually, talking to him for the first time about the lost city of Z, I

• 16:56Sean Fennessey?

  think, and this will come up during our, our mailbag, helped me realize what I could do in talking to filmmakers on the show because of how open and erudite, and I think willing to go a little deeper that James was when we talked about that film, his life, his career, the way he's perceived as an artist and how he thinks of himself. So hopefully we'll have another good conversation come November. Okay, a couple of quick things. A bunch of movies were reportedly pushed back, according to Variety today. A bunch of movies that we've been talking about a lot on the show over the last six or seven months. That includes Here Comes the Flood, the Denzel Pattinson movie from Netflix. Sounds like that's a 2027 movie. The Riders, which is a Brad Pitt movie from May 24 that

• 17:39Sean Fennessey?

  is getting pushed to 2027. Cry to Heaven, the Tom Ford film, which was surprisingly absent from the Venice Film Festival lineup, is also still without a distributor and likely going to 27. And then Jack of Spades, which I have in the auction, which was very high on my most anticipated movies of the year list, which comes from Joel Cohen, his second solo directorial film starring, starring Josh O'Connor. And that film is also without a distributor. Hopefully that'll, it'll be getting one soon, and it'll crop up, but it sounds like it's a 2027 movie. Things are starting to come into focus. You know, La Bola Negra's been dated. We just had Ink dated earlier today by Netflix. Seems like all the Cannes films have their

• 18:21Sean Fennessey?

  release dates. We're gonna see Fjord. We're gonna see Once Upon a Time in Harlem. We're gonna see Minotaur. We're gonna see a lot of the movies that you heard us talk about in May, and Amanda and I will have deep, long conversations about them. I'm looking forward to it. I'm also very happy to be back. I had a nice vacation. I went to Long Island and New York City, where I'm from. I visited my hometown movie theater, my hometown rep house, indie house, the Cinema Arts Center. I introduced a movie there and greeted some folks. You know, I give Long Island a hard time, but it felt good to be home for a change. That might also be because my daughter's five, and so she can travel well now. So I'm looking forward to spending more time there in the future. Okay. I think we can mailbag. Jack, what's up? What did I miss?

• 19:04Speaker 05

  All right. Our first question comes from Alex. These questions were very fun doing. Ask Sean anything. Emphasis on the anything was enjoyable. So this first question comes from Alex. What is your single best Nathan for you-esque idea to get more butts in seats in the cinema?

• 19:22Sean Fennessey?

  Just give shit away. I just tell people that there's free hot dogs at every movie. You know, but people love free shit. Free shit is cheap. This is not even that Nathan for you-esque. I, we could make the case that what we need to really do is, is build a, you know, a massive spaceship that will take people away, because that's what movies are, you know, and try to trick them into thinking that you're going on a journey. But I think movie theaters forget, like, I'll give you an example. My wife brought home the Odyssey poster from the screening of The Odyssey on the first day of release, and she showed it to my daughter, and my daughter was like, what is that? And now she's all interested in The Odyssey. And my wife was like, should we put this Odyssey poster

• 20:05Sean Fennessey?

  up in our house? We're not gonna do that. I know, as much of a movie freak as I am, that seems a little bit silly. But there's something about the giveaway. Think about, like, the way that baseball stadiums do this. You know, I know yesterday there was a My Chemical Romance situation at Citi Field in New York, and they gave away Gerard Way, Mr. Met bobblehead dolls.

• 20:29Sean Fennessey?

  Shit is not hard, you know, like, just, just treat people like the lemmings that they are and gratify them. Stop starting to try to squeeze every single dollar out of the experience and just give us some free stuff. Okay, that's the, I mean, Jack, I don't know what.

• 20:44Speaker 05

  I think that's a perfect example. I also like how you called it the My Chemical Romance situation, not a concert.

• 20:50Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not an MCR person. I'm just gonna say that.

• 20:53Speaker 05

  You know who is?

• 20:54Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't, Bobby Wagner is.

• 20:55Speaker 05

  Oh, I was gonna say Christopher Ryan as well.

• 20:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Bobby and NCR are huge MCR. I'm not, I'm not opposed to My Chemical Romance. I have nothing against them. I don't dislike them. Just never been my bag. That's all I'm gonna say. The other thing is like, we don't actually have to try to get people back into movie theaters. They know. Like, people know now that one of the great things about going home was that every single person in my extended family who I spent time with over the week wanted to talk to me about what they thought about The Odyssey, which was great. They had all seen The Odyssey. You know, my, my 73-year-old father and his wife had seen The Odyssey. My 13-year-old niece had seen The Odyssey. Like, everyone went to go see that movie. And I think if I went back two weeks later, I think most of them would have seen Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Not my dad, but most of the other people

• 21:42Sean Fennessey?

  that I was with would have gone to see that movie as well. So that, that spirit of summer blockbuster that we kind of communed with for 40 years in this country, it does feel like it's back this summer. I don't know if it's a permanent condition, but it does feel like it's back. So I'm actually less worried about this whole trying to get people back in movie theaters thing than I have been ever since COVID. And, you know, the numbers bear that out pretty significantly. What's next?

• 22:04Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Alexandra. You're great at asking questions. Can you talk about the research you do before interviewing guests and how you decide what to ask? I love this question.

• 22:14Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks Alexandra. That's, that is a nice question. And I do put a lot of time and thought into it. So I appreciate you saying so. I do do a lot of research and I'll tell you what the research is, but I don't think that the research is the reason why the conversations are fruitful. The research that I do is obvious. One, I tend to re-watch a lot of films. If you track me on Letterboxd, you can follow and you can get a sense of when I'm getting ready for something. I obviously, if it's a filmmaker with a long and storied career, I tend to seek out the collections of interview books that they've done. I tend to go back through a lot of movie magazine history and look at the questions. You can imagine for the Steven Spielberg conversations I had in the spring, I went back and read it a

• 22:58Sean Fennessey?

  ton. I read a biography. I read several interviews with him over the years for a couple of reasons. One, I think asking questions is not only about asking the questions that they want to be asked. It's also not about only asking questions that you're curious about. It's about finding a meeting point between where the guest wants to go and where you want to take a conversation. So you have to make them comfortable in the environment, I think, and get them, show them in concise ways that you are not just conversant in their work, but that you're deeply engaged in their work. So the way that I try to do that is I try to figure out what are either thematic or structural or even just kind of linear notes

• 23:40Sean Fennessey?

  of their career that I have noticed. Sometimes it's coincidences. Sometimes it's very purposeful choices that a filmmaker makes to show patterns to them. Sometimes they respond to them. Sometimes they don't. I learned this from listening to Elvis Mitchell, who hosts KCRW's The Treatment and was a film critic at The New York Times, among other places, and is wonderful at this work. And I love his show and I think he's excellent in having conversations like the ones I've tried to have. And those patterns tend to show the person that you're sitting with that you really care about what it is that they do. And that can only come from reading a lot about them and watching their work closely. But the other thing that I'll

• 24:19Sean Fennessey?

  say is the most important thing I think to have with conversations with artists is follow-up questions. So when they say something, you're not rifling through your list of questions, making sure you get to every single beat that you've created for yourself. It's when you hear them say something that fascinates you, being willing to go down that tributary with them. That's the thing that I think is most important. And maybe you'll hear me do it with Patrick Fischler, because I prepared a lot to talk to Patrick on this episode. And he has such a vast career. He's got a, you know, almost 40-year career at this point as an actor. But I didn't get to everything I wanted to. For example, I didn't get to talk about Under the Silver Lake with him, the David Robert Mitchell movie that I love.

• 25:01Sean Fennessey?

  And he's used in that movie in a very similar way to the way that he's used in Teenage Sex and Death: A Camp Miasma. And as an actor, he's become this kind of indicative figure, like of a certain kind of a movie that a filmmaker is trying to make. And I could have talked to him about that movie, but we went down other paths and I never quite got to it. But it was okay, because we got to things that I didn't know were gonna be great. So just being reactive and intuitive and, and listen. I really think listening is obvious. It seems obvious, but it is the most important thing, especially in this era where you watch a lot of junket interviews on social media and you see that there's like, somebody's been sat down for five to 10 minutes at a time and the journalist, and I have empathy for them, because I've been in this situation in the earlier parts of my career, where they just have to kind of plow through the three or four gimmicky questions that they

• 25:46Sean Fennessey?

  know will get them hits on social media. I have made like a sincere concerted effort on this show to make it more about slightly more long-form conversations, never less than 30 minutes. I try to have as many of them in person as I possibly can, because they're just better, they're just different. And also because I'm, I'm putting the time in and they're taking the time to come and sit with me. And so I want it to be worth it for everybody involved. So I appreciate the question very much. And it's a great timing on the question, because there's a great guest on the show this month with really good conversations and like a wide variety of experiences. So, and the other thing too is, I sometimes will have a great conversation with a guest and then that guest will become

• 26:28Sean Fennessey?

  a part of the firmament of the show. So like Alex Ross Perry is somebody who just came in to talk about his movie Golden Exits and we hit it off. And we just, we had a lot in common. We had similar taste in things. And he's become a huge part of the show and a genuine friend of mine. And I love that. I love that that can happen. You know, Ben David Grubinsky was here earlier this year, and he's gonna come back later this month and talk with us about something that I'm excited to share. So, you know, it's one of those things where if you, if you give people sincerity and time, they usually will repay you if you're in the right atmosphere. Okay, what's the next question?

• 27:07Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Greg. With the current turning of public opinion against AI and data centers, I feel that Eddington was even more ahead of its time than previously recognized. What are some other movies that you feel were ahead of their time and deserve a re-watch and more attention? Just gotta say, it's really nice basically seeing the Babylon Hive happen again with Eddington Hive. You know, every day there's another person on X.com, the everything app going, did we, did we look past Eddington?

• 27:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 27:32Speaker 05

  Yes, you fucking did, motherfucker.

• 27:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Well, as per the Spider-Man: Brand New Day note, like, I'm not always right, but I knew I was gonna be right about this one the minute I saw the movie. Also Ari Aster, another person who I've had on the show several times and have gotten to know a little bit. And I'm, I'm, I feel a kinship with his storytelling, so maybe I have to check myself on this sort of thing. But Eddington just felt tremendously transparently, clearly right about how we are with each other, to each other and about the world. And so I'm happy that people are coming around to it. It's also just very, very, very funny. And it's hard to be funny about the things that it's funny about, but it is. And so, yeah, I'm thrilled about that.

• 28:17Sean Fennessey?

  I thought of a couple of movies that I think sort of saw the future or were prescient or were a little bit overlooked upon their release or maybe need a revival. The one that I think needs a revival and that is not really available in too many forms, like there's not a fancy Blu-ray release, for example, is Bob Roberts, which is a 1992 political satire comedy directed by Tim Robbins about a millionaire Republican presidential candidate. And who could that possibly have something in common with? I don't know. The movie is really funny because Bob Roberts, the character that Robbins himself plays,

• 28:57Sean Fennessey?

  is sort of like a folk singer, but he's transforming folk ballads and popular contemporary music into Republican sloganeering. And it's a very amusing movie, but it's mostly a movie about the kind of messaging, branding and packaging of political candidates and the way in which provocation is used strategically, the way in which the sort of like empty suit persona is leveraged very clearly by most politicians. And Tim Robbins, of course, is a huge lefty and very politically active. And he's portraying somebody who's all the way on the other side of his politics in an effort to draw attention to it. The movie, I think, was a Miramax film. And I think it's basically, basically been kind of buried

• 29:39Sean Fennessey?

  in part because of maybe some of Robbins' opinions. I'm not totally sure of the origins there. But it's a movie that if you look at our contemporary political landscape, it sees the future, I think, in a way that is very similar to Eddington. And it probably seemed like it was a little bit broad and over the top at the time that it was released. And now it seems maybe a little mild relative to the world that we live in. Another movie I thought about was Karan Kusama's Jennifer's Body. And there's two things happening in that movie that feel very contemporary to me. One, it's a very kind of...

• 30:14Sean Fennessey?

  Amusingly and intensely scary slash funny combo that recalls obsession. And it's not quite at that kind of demonic chaos point that obsession gets to. It is a little bit more arch because it's a Diablo Cody script, but it does feel like it's moving in a similar direction to that movie. And then the other thing is like, it's a very, it's a very comfortably queer story without the trappings of a lot of traditional queer storytelling. And I think that if you look at something like Teenage Sex and Death and the way that like, it's kind of responding to the history of slasher films, and we'll talk about that more with Adam Namon later this week. This movie is kind of a link in that chain.

• 30:57Sean Fennessey?

  And it's not surprising that it's had like a big cult resurgence in the last 10 years and is being rightly recognized and, you know, Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox are so terrific in that movie. Adam Brody is so funny in that movie, but that's one that feels like just tonally. It was way ahead of the curve and trying to replicate something that was happening in the eighties. It was hard to replicate at that time, but now feels more comfortable. So I'll point people to that. I just rewatched Ghost in the Shell, the Japanese anime film from 1995. And I just feel like that movie sees everything style wise. And it's been noted over the years how most science fiction storytelling seems to be riffing on it these days in

• 31:38Sean Fennessey?

  terms of the sleekness, the sort of robo tech that you find in it, that kind of cutting edge surveillance style that it utilizes. And, you know, it's kind of in the aftermath of the cyberpunk moment, but it also feels like it's predicting things like The Matrix that are coming very shortly thereafter. If you haven't seen Ghost in the Shell, I couldn't recommend a movie more.

• 32:02Sean Fennessey?

  This seems kind of obvious, but Psycho, which at the time, there were not very many movies about mass killers and the serial killer psychosis and attempting to psychoanalyze that, those figures in any way and about repression in that way. And Psycho is of course, one of the most historic movies ever made. We've talked about it many times on the show over the years. Might be fun to do like a proper psycho. Actually, when I get questions about what would be the best old school rewatchables that we could do. We've joked about movies like Casablanca in the past or The Wizard of Oz. Psycho is kind of an obvious one. I actually think that would be a great episode if anyone from the rewatchables universe wanted to do it, because it does feel still so modern in the way that it tells its story.

• 32:44Sean Fennessey?

  And, and kind of pinned to that, I thought of They Live a bit, the John Carpenter film from the 1980s about obedience in society. And then the fifth one is Speed Racer. And people may have heard Daniel Goldhaber, the director of Faces of Death, stumping for it on the show earlier this year. The 4K was released this year, went back into theaters. If you were lucky enough to see the movie again in theaters, you know what a sensation it was. At the time when Speed Racer was released, I must admit, I did not get it. It's not that I disliked it. I don't think I truly saw the vision though, that everyone sees. And I have really been swayed over, over the last five or 10 years as it has become more of a cult object. And I look at the incredible vision that the Wachowskis had for that movie.

• 33:27Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't watch the Speed Racer cartoon as a kid, and so I thought maybe it was a little bit outside of my realm of interest, but it's such a propulsive, electric, colorful movie that it feels like

• 33:42Sean Fennessey?

  it consumes everything around you. Like there, you can't, in a time of distraction, you can't be distracted watching a movie like Speed Racer, because there's so much happening in the frame at any given time. So that movie, I think also, like I said, it was way ahead of my time. Like it was way ahead of time for me because I just didn't, I didn't see the way. I think I was looking for something a little different from the Wachowskis after The Matrix trilogy and kind of got wrong footed by it. And now I go back and look at it. And maybe the same will happen for me for Cloud Atlas or for Jupiter Ascending, movies that like, I never really have totally clicked in with, but I had, there's a lot to admire about them, but there seems to be something silly and a bit strange about them at times. But that was sort of how I felt about Speed Racer. The Wachowskis are really due an episode on this show because their, their legacy is so incredible.

• 34:26Sean Fennessey?

  And I just heard Lana on, on the business, the KCRW podcast with Kim Masters last week. And, and there's just an amazing wellspring of stuff going on there. So maybe we'll think about a Wachowskis episode in 2027. Okay, Jack, what's coming next?

• 34:43Speaker 05

  This next question really gets to the ask Sean anything portion of the mailbag. It comes from Simon. How do I know when I find someone that I love and want to pursue as a partner? When did you know you were in love with your wife? How did you know you wanted to spend the rest of your life with her? Was it a realization one day or did it require a lot of work to get to where you guys are? Simon!

• 35:05Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, Simon. And earlier in this episode, I threw out the names of actors I think should appear as X-Men characters in a movie that's not even on the calendar yet. And this guy's asking me about how I fell in love with my wife.

• 35:18Sean Fennessey?

  What an amazing show we've created. Well, I've been with, I've been with my wife more or less since 1999. So I, I'm not the most experienced when it comes to playing the field. And so it's an interesting question to ask me. I think that, but I like, I like the way that he framed it. Cause it's not about falling in love. It's about being in love. Falling in love, I think is relatively easy because you know, when you connect with someone, you know, when you have things in common with them, you know, when you're on their emotional wavelength, you know, when you have fun together, it's having, it seems obvious, but having fun together, I think is the most important thing.

• 36:00Sean Fennessey?

  Eileen and I, my wife, you know, we met when we were very young, probably met when we were in sixth grade. But we were not even really friends for a number of years, all the way up until 11th grade. And then in 11th grade, we had health class together. I don't know if they still teach health class, but they do, Jack.

• 36:20Speaker 05

  They did for me.

• 36:21Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 36:23Sean Fennessey?

  I just said a thing like, I don't know if they still teach, which just means I'm officially in my mid 40s. So health class, Eileen sat in the front row and I was seated behind her. And I would say neither of us were terribly interested in the class. And, but we talked, it was the first class in the morning, this first period. And we both, let's say you get to school five minutes early, we talked nonstop for five minutes. We had connective tissue because we had a mutual friend, our friend Becky, who sat next to Eileen in the class and I sat behind both of them and they would both turn around and talk to me. And then I would talk to Eileen, make jokes, attempt to charm her throughout class. And then we had AP American History immediately after that together. And same thing, she sat in front of me.

• 37:09Sean Fennessey?

  No, she sat beside me. And she famously cheated off me on a test. I'm just going to throw that out there. I'm sorry, Eileen, you're going under the bus. Not a cheater, Eileen was an excellent student and yet for some reason she cheated. And the question was about the Enola Gay, which I believe was the, the plane that, I can't remember what the, what bomb the Enola Gay dropped, but it was a significant plane in military history. I did very well on the American History AP, by the way. And Eileen looked at my paper and tried to copy my answer on this, this quiz in class. And she wrote down Erwin Gray. And that is not Enola Gay. She just couldn't read my chicken scratch handwriting.

• 37:52Sean Fennessey?

  And that was the funniest thing in the world to me at the time. And I remember that story vividly to this day. And we weren't dating when all this was happening, when we were getting to know each other in 11th grade. But I just remember laughing a lot with her and really appreciating that she got my sense of humor, which is sometimes welcome and sometimes not. And so, and we basically kind of danced around the idea of dating all the way up until the, the first day of our senior year of high school. And she's the one who stepped to me and was just like, let's, let's, let's get on with this big romance, as James Caan says in Thief, quite memorably.

• 38:36Sean Fennessey?

  And we did, and we haven't looked back since. And I don't think we analyzed it a lot. We were, we were two people who were like, pretty sure we were going to be together for a very long time. We clicked into place. We had some similar experiences and some different experiences. I was a little bit more tentative about marriage, given my parents divorce. I was not a person who wanted to have kids. I was very driven in my career and very focused on things I felt I wanted to accomplish. She was always, I think, I feel like the work always came to her very easily and she was not as career motivated, even though she's very successful. But we were very like in, in step and in tune and we liked to do the same things together and spend a lot of time together. I'm sharing all of this with you on this podcast because if you have to think a lot about it, if you have

• 39:21Sean Fennessey?

  to spend a lot of time intellectualizing it, I, I don't think you're in love probably. But if it feels like it is flowing and your life is sort of falling in together, then you are in love. The falling in love part is like, you're going to be physically attracted to a person, then you're going to start talking to them and you're going to get much more attracted to them if you like talking to them. And then you're off to the races, I think, but I haven't really done this in 27 years. So don't take me at my word. Maybe, maybe somebody can ask Amanda when she comes back. She, she, she took a little bit more time to find her partner. So she might have a little bit more insight than I do. Okay. Interesting question. Thank you, Simon.

• 40:00Speaker 05

  I would love to know how old Simon is. Write back at me, Simon. The next question comes from Ryan. I started a movie club with friends and family where we each pick a movie and meet every few weeks to discuss. We started picking movies from each decade, starting with the 1940s and we're currently in the 1980s. Can you lend me and the listeners some lesser known criminally underrated eighties movies that we should check out for our movie club?

• 40:24Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I love a family movie club. That's just wonderful. Um, yeah, I can talk about some 80s movies. I'm not the biggest 80s fan, although I have caught up with a lot of blind spots over the last 10 years and have somewhat shifted my opinion on the 80s as a film decade. I do think a lot of it is really related to when you were growing up and the 90s is really more my period. But um, just a couple of quick ones for you. Sleazy fun movie, maybe don't watch this through your parents, but I really like John Frankenheimer's 52 Pickup starring Roy Scheider and Anne Margaret, which features an incredible John Glover performance. It is just like a nasty piece of trash that I love. If you're looking for some anxious, Safdie-style energy, I recommend The Boost, which is a

• 41:08Sean Fennessey?

  Harold Becker movie about a guy who moves with his wife from New York to California to try to level up in his career. It stars James Woods in an electrifying performance, a movie that really surprised me and I'd never seen before. If you're looking for self-referential horror, try Fade to Black, a movie about a movie-obsessed teenager who becomes a killer and is inspired by the movies to execute his kills. If you're looking for some Armageddon fun, when it feels like everything is burning around us, try Miracle Mile, one of the great Los Angeles movies starring Anthony Edwards. Slick thriller, I just watched The Package late last year, the Gene Hackman movie, which I think will come up when we do our Gene Hackman Hall of Fame later this fall.

• 41:51Sean Fennessey?

  I will be doing it with Tracy Lutz. I've been doing a lot of Abel Ferrara prep for an episode and one movie that I haven't seen in a really long time and I just revisited is China Girl, which is sort of his version of West Side Story, sort of a romance between an Italian-American kid and a Chinese girl, Chinese-American girl, living in downtown New York. That is just absolutely gorgeous and beautiful to look at and beautifully told. And then sci-fi comedy, I think a lot of people know this movie, it just got a beautiful 4K from Arrow, but Inner Space, Joe Dante's comedy about, I guess, a man who has to go inside of another man, be shrunk down in the meantime, starring Martin Short and Dennis Quaid.

• 42:36Sean Fennessey?

  It is great and is also a very fun movie that my wife loves. So those are my 80s picks. You know, there's a lot more there. I'm just trying to give you some recent favorites. What's next, Jack?

• 42:48Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Nick. Who are the most reliable chemistry alchemists in Hollywood history? I.e. which actor reliably produces it across many different partners, genres, and directors? Came to mind when reflecting on Gosling's career, just next level with Rachel McAdams, Emma Stone, et cetera. You'd believe he'd married each of them.

• 43:07Sean Fennessey?

  Good question. Cary Grant, number one for me. There's nary a performance where you feel like he's not in the relationship that he's in and I think he's really well-known for playing this kind of fast-talking, prat-falling, debonair, screwball comedy figures, but an Alfred Hitchcock movie I love is Suspicion, where he plays a man who may or may not be plotting to kill his wife. And he is dynamite in that movie and he has great chemistry with all of his opposite numbers. Jack Nicholson? Jack Nicholson could have chemistry with a telephone pole.

• 43:49Sean Fennessey?

  He is the most locked-in actor, I think, of all time. And I find him to be so fun opposite women that he obviously has a connection to. I just discovered Ironweed for the Meryl Streep Hall of Fame, I'd never seen that movie before, and their chemistry is incredible in that film. But yeah, he is, I mean, The Witches of Eastwick, opposite all three of those women, is amazing. You know, we talked about Reds and the way that he connects with Diane Keaton in that one critical sequence as he's playing Eugene O'Neill. So he's somebody who's very obvious to me. I'm trying to think of a contemporary person.

• 44:30Speaker 05

  Can I give a shout?

• 44:31Sean Fennessey?

  Please.

• 44:31Speaker 05

  I just saw Tony yesterday and I would shout Antonio Banderas. Not strictly from like a romantic perspective, but when I walked out of the movie and I was talking to my girlfriend, I was like, he is such a force multiplier in that he brings the best out of all of his scene partners.

• 44:44Sean Fennessey?

  I completely agree with that, Jack. It's a great shout. He's one of the absolute highlights of Tony, we'll talk about him a bunch. I had Antonio on the show for Pain and Glory, the Almodovar film, and he's been one of my favorite actors. He might have been one of the very first solo actor conversations I ever had on the podcast because I like him so much. And I'll tell you what, I think he and I had chemistry. We were clicking that day and he was very humble, a very humble actor. But Tony is a real, like, he doesn't have an Oscar and he should have an Oscar and we should just like start pushing that. He is the absolute hardcore of Tony and I agree with you.

• 45:26Sean Fennessey?

  And he's like great opposite Salma Hayek in Desperado, but he's also great opposite Sylvester Stallone in Assassins. You know what I mean? He can really do it all. Okay, next question.

• 45:37Speaker 05

  Really fun one up here. This one comes from Kyle. I recently saw a tweet going around claiming that you're, quote, "too horny." Would you agree? Or are you the right amount of horny? For context, that tweet exactly says, "I love Sean Finacy, but sometimes he's too horny on the big picture."

• 45:54Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's a misrepresentation. I'm not saying I'm not too horny, but on the big picture, I think me noting my appreciation for certain actresses, you know, I have my faves, right? Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, there's others there. That is not too horny. It's like looking at a great work of art and saying, "God, there's such depth and specialness here. We should acknowledge it every time we see it." If you go to the Louvre, you've been to the Louvre five times, you don't not look at the Mona Lisa, you look at the Mona Lisa. It's there. It's a classical work of art that's meant to be appreciated over and over again and it's right to say so. Is that too horny?

• 46:39Sean Fennessey?

  No. That doesn't mean I'm not horny, but it doesn't mean I'm too horny. And the other thing I'll say is, one, you know, elder millennial, repressed Irish Catholic, like I'm doing the best I can. There are times when I feel like I shouldn't say anything and then there are other times when I feel like I should only say what I'm really thinking. And this is the paradox of being a podcaster. You want to be honest, you want to be yourself, but you're also performing, but you're also protecting yourself, but you also want to create avenues of no ability. I'm doing my best. If I cross the line sometimes, it's only out of appreciation and respect. I'm not trying to objectify anybody and I won't. Amanda, on the other hand, is too horny for the big picture. Next question.

• 47:23Speaker 05

  Getting us back on track with a question from Lucas, not our Lucas. There were lots of conversations around Nolan's strengths and weaknesses as a filmmaker after the release of The Odyssey. I saw some people saying that others could have made a better movie if they were able to get a $250 million budget, which makes me wonder, who are the $250 million directors? The people that a studio would give that much money with no questions asked? And in addition, who are your $250 million folks? The people that you would like to see, given that much money through a studio, might not take that same chance with them?

• 47:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think the question has a faulty premise because there are no $250 million, no questions asked, directors. The idea that Christopher Nolan did not have to sell Universal on his idea is wrong. It doesn't mean that Universal is desperate to keep Christopher Nolan in their stable. Of course they are. He is the most proven commodity in filmmaking right now, but nobody writes a $250 million check to a notor and says, "Have fun." That's just not how it works. Like, there's a huge process that goes into these movies getting made. So I'm not sure I totally agree with that idea. I do think that there's obviously a few people who have a tremendous amount of leeway when they want to make a film. Obviously Nolan is on that list, Denis Villeneuve, I think, is climbing the ladder on that

• 48:40Sean Fennessey?

  list, James Cameron has been at the top of the food chain for a very long time. But even then, like, I don't know if Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, a lot of the kind of masters that we venerate on the show, none of those people really have $250 million blank checks. You know, does Greta Gerwig have a $250 million blank check? Not really. I mean, she's adapting IP for Netflix, so she's making a very big movie, but I don't really think that that exists. I don't think that there's a person, I don't think Ryan Coogler could get a $250 million original movie made right now unless the material was exciting enough for the people who are funding it. So to me, there's a vast difference between my desire to see artists empowered and the

• 49:25Sean Fennessey?

  way that we talk about people getting a chance to tell original stories or fresh stories and the fact that telling them at scale is really what matters. And part of what makes The Odyssey so special is those boats are out at sea. That movie, it looks like it was incredibly difficult to make, incredibly challenging, and it was so challenging in part because it was so expansive and expansive often means expensive.

• 49:48Sean Fennessey?

  But I don't really think there's anybody who gets to do that. You know, I would love it if somebody gave Steven Soderbergh $250 million and he got to do whatever the hell he wanted. And he could be the most experimental version of himself while also scaling every massive building in the world and traveling to the pyramids and to Machu Picchu and doing all kinds of crazy things. But that's not realistic. Like this, it is a commercial art form. And this kind of relates to a question that we'll get later. But the, one of the reasons why I constantly talk about box office and industry trends and where things are going and what power people have on the show. One, obviously it's fun and it creates some dynamic structures for the discussion. But two, it is a commercial art form. It is not painting or poetry.

• 50:32Sean Fennessey?

  It is meant to be, it is the creation of a work of art that is meant to go out into the marketplace and consumed. So you have to see it from that perspective to understand it. And as much as we want to say like, well, that guy should be able to do whatever he wants. Greta Gerwig made Barbie, she should do whatever she wants. Like, it's pretty much never going to work that way. And it's good to understand that that's not, not going to be the case anytime soon. Okay, what's next?

• 50:57Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Mallory. I really like this one. I am 17 years old, just starting my senior year of high school and trying to figure out what to do after I graduate. I love to watch and write about movies and I'm considering getting a journalism or film degree and going into entertainment journalism or academia. You have what would basically be my dream job and I really admire the way you discuss movies on the podcast and in your writing. I wanted to ask if you had any advice on how to get better at thinking, talking and writing about film. This is also a great question because of the conversation you had with Patrick.

• 51:28Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:28Speaker 05

  About giving advice to younger people. So this is a great one, Mallory.

• 51:31Sean Fennessey?

  I find this very hard to answer now. And years ago, I would do lots and lots of calls with college students who would reach out and ask about this. And I always tried to make time for people because people made time for me when I was really young. In New York, I would reach out to people. I told the story about meeting Chris Ryan, but like, there were a lot of people whose writing I really liked and I would reach out to them. Some of them made time for me and chatted with me and gave me some insights into their journey and, you know, things are much harder than they were before. I think there's a big difference between like, how do I make a career out of this? And how do I get better at thinking, talking and writing about it? If you just want to think, talk and write better, you just have to do those things all the time. You have to read a lot. I would just go out and buy the five Pauline Kael collections.

• 52:15Sean Fennessey?

  I would go out and buy the five key Ebert books, you know, just those like real starter kit kind of things. You know, I, I have vivid memories of going on road trips with my parents, my two siblings in the backseat and I'm sitting at the window on the right side behind my mom and poring over the Pauline Kael collections, you know, like 5001 nights at the movies. And I would get them out of the library and my parents thought I was an alien. And I probably was like, kind of an alien. We were going on like a beach vacation and I just wanted to be inside and reading about movies, which is, will be no surprise to you if you see me now, given how pale I am.

• 52:54Sean Fennessey?

  But I, I think that was all like work towards getting to this place where I got super lucky to get the opportunity to do this. But all that reading and then making friends who are really into movies and spending all my time talking about movies with my friends and music and, and other forms of culture, books that I really cared about. But I talked a lot, I do still talk a lot about movies all the time and I'm constantly thinking about them. And so it's just like, it's a life's practice. And if I didn't have this incredible job, I'd still be doing that. And I, when I was doing a not this job, as recently as nine years ago, I was doing that. I think one of the reasons why I'm doing the show right now is because Bill Simmons was sick of hearing me talk about movies all the time. So I, I would just encourage you to kind of throw yourself into it as much as you can

• 53:39Sean Fennessey?

  in your free time. And, and some people, if you're really lucky, you get to make your hobby your career. And that is something that I don't even really felt I knew I could do and has slowly snapped into place over time. But journalism degree is, is, is a tricky one, I'll say, as someone with a journalism degree. I had a good college experience. I learned a lot at my college. I learned most of it from doing it. I learned most of it from working for the school newspaper, writing for local newspapers, working for Newsday in my summers off, getting internships at magazines. That was where I really learned to do the work. The classroom stuff, not as much. I wish I had spent more time in film class.

• 54:23Sean Fennessey?

  I wish I had spent more time studying film theory and film technique because I had to do all that work as a catch-up when I got older. And I'm still doing it. I'm doing it to this day. I'm still trying to learn as much as I can without kind of burning out my passion and enthusiasm for it. So I would say think critically about what kind of degree you think you need to go forward. What's next?

• 54:45Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Jackson. Has it sunk in that you are considered one of the major founders of, quote, "It's so over, we're so back" and how much it has become a ubiquitous saying in modern lexicon? I use some variation of it all the time and it's also used constantly on the internet. See, the Alamo draft has reopening or acquiring the Cinerama Dome, excuse me. Beyond your daughter, would you consider impacting the English language your greatest career achievement?

• 55:11Sean Fennessey?

  Beyond your daughter? Uh, no, I would not consider that my greatest achievement. I also don't even really know how responsible I am for it. I've been asked this many times. I was interviewed by the New York Times about this a couple of years ago where they said I was one of the proprietors of the phrase. I don't know, I definitely didn't invent it. And I do think it was a, very much a component of what it felt like in COVID as a hardcore movie fan, someone talking about movies every day, because it did feel dramatic. And I was, I was dramatic about how things were going and that feels like a long time ago, given how things are now. But, um, you know, catchphrases are important. I have no shame about having a catchphrase. It's nice to have something that people can relate to and remember you by.

• 55:53Sean Fennessey?

  And if this is something that people relate to me and remember me by, I'm not opposed to it. I do think it would be really funny if there was a large banner over my coffin that said "It's so over" at my funeral. Just throwing that out there for everybody if they're interested in that.

• 56:10Speaker 04

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• 57:29Sean Fennessey?

  What's next?

• 57:31Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Steve and Charlotte. Criterion calls you and says you can do a commentary for any movie you want with any guest you choose. What movie and which guest do you pick?

• 57:42Sean Fennessey?

  Love this question. I just did another commentary with Tracy Letts and I had a great time and I, I really like doing those with him because he's so smart and so informed. And we're similar in some ways, but he sees things from a different angle in ways that not just like educates me, but really entertains me. And so I would do, I would do commentaries with him until the day I die. And if you work at a Blu-ray 4K distribution space that is, is looking for commentaries with folks, give us a shout because we're, we're interested in doing that. And I think we've really enjoyed doing it together. But the, the easy answer for me with this is The Third Man with Orson Welles. I never met Orson Welles. He, he died well before I was in the movie game.

• 58:27Sean Fennessey?

  But there's probably not a single person I like listening to talk more. When I'm bored and I don't have a movie in my queue, I will sometimes just go to YouTube and just Google Orson Welles interviews and talk show appearances and just listen to him cook for a while. And The Third Man's my favorite movie and he's obviously one of the stars of that film. And it would be amazing to just sit with him for a couple of hours and hear him talk about his experience making that movie and the craft of acting and filmmaking. He didn't direct the movie, but you can see that he would see what is so special about the filmmaking in that, in that story. So that's what I would really love to do. I, I'm such a fan of those early Peter Bogdanovich books, the Who the Devil Made It and Who the Devil's in It and a couple of others.

• 59:12Sean Fennessey?

  There's a, now I think a full, I think there's a full My Lunches with Orson Peter Bogdanovich book as well, that is just his conversations with Wells over the years. And Bogdanovich is such an interesting cat, you know, obviously a great director, but... He spent the first five, 10 years of his career effectively transforming his movie, Psychosis Fandom, into a sort of hobbyist career as well, where he would write these index cards out and do these kind of like mini reviews of movies just for himself when he was a kid and a teenager. And then he transformed that into kind of a journalism career, which allowed him to meet a lot of the iconic film directors of the 30s and 40s, who, some of whom he befriended. And he would have these long conversations with them and these deep relationships with them. And he learned a lot from them and he applied

• 59:55Sean Fennessey?

  some of those techniques to the films that he made. But he and Wells had a really fascinating relationship. And I, I just wish I could have been in the room for some of those conversations, let alone watching a movie with them and talking about it while it was happening. So there's my answer to that question. Okay, what's next?

• 1:00:11Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Adam. Similar to CR's stocking guys like Logan Marshall Green and Luke Wilson, I was wondering who you have stock in and no one else seems to be buying?

• 1:00:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's interesting that no one else seems to be buying thing. Cause I don't know, I don't really think you could have that anymore. Like in this, in the era of stan culture, everyone's got a shooter, everyone's got someone who they claim. So it's a little tricky to be like, well, no one loves Patrick Fischler, so I had him on the podcast. Like, we put that picture of me and him up on Instagram today and people were just like, hell yeah, that guy's amazing. So everyone knows who everyone is now. So it's a lot harder to achieve that. Um, part of what's really funny with CR is that, you know, he loves Logan Marshall Green, but he also loves Tom Hardy and Logan Marshall Green is constantly mistaken for Tom Hardy. And he's even talked about this in interviews now. And so what that means is really that CR has a type. There's a certain kind of a man. There's a masculine

• 1:01:00Sean Fennessey?

  man, a Bernthal type, a Luke Wilson type that Chris is very fond of. So the question could have been, do you have a type? And I probably do, but I didn't give that too much thought. So I just thought of a couple of people who are like earlier in their careers, who I think I'm sure have lots of fans and lots of supporters, but who I am very fond of. The first one is Juliette Garepi, who is the star of Red Rooms, which we have talked about a bunch on this show, movie that came out a couple of years ago, Canadian film, about a woman who is obsessed with a serial killer who is standing trial. And Adam Neiman talked about it lovingly. CR and I talked about it on a couple of our horror episodes as well. And she also cropped up in Chandler Lavack's Mylon Kicks earlier this year, which I think is on Netflix now, if you want, if you haven't seen that movie. And she plays

• 1:01:42Sean Fennessey?

  the woman who lets her house to Barbie Ferrera's character when she's moved to work as a PR flack for a band. And she's completely different in Mylon Kicks, completely transforms. You wouldn't recognize her as the scary obsessed girl from Red Rooms. And so I have a lot of stock in her right now. I feel like she's a super special actress and I'm excited to see what she does next. The other person who popped into my head is Theodore Polaren, who, forgive me if I'm mispronouncing his name. He was the star of Lurker, the Alex Russell movie that came out last year. And he gives an insidious and terrifying performance in that movie. And I feel like he's got a really bright future. And then two filmmakers

• 1:02:25Sean Fennessey?

  who I really like, one is Arkasha Stevenson, who directed the first Omen, who was a great guest on this show during that. And then she's now making a movie for 824 that I've heard some very exciting things about. And I think she will, she is about to be a thing. So buy her stock now. The other is Curtis David Harder, who made two movies for Shudder, one called Influencer, the other called Influencers, a follow-up film, that I thought were very slick and really well-made and really entertaining and deserved a little bit more attention than they got. And I could really see him making something pretty profound that I, so those are my early stock buys for actors and filmmakers. Okay, what's next?

• 1:03:02Speaker 05

  Made sure to include this one for you.

• 1:03:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Thank you so much for including this.

• 1:03:06Speaker 05

  Of course. This one comes from Nick. Could you see Jay-Z releasing a Taylor Swift-esque concert film with all the hype he has generated with the three nights at Yankee Stadium? Is there real domestic or worldwide box office potential for more hip hop oriented concert films to succeed now or in the near future? And please give a quick top five HOV album ranking if possible.

• 1:03:28Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible stuff. This has got to be a real, a real one who's, who asked this question, Nick. Um, I mean, Jay already had a theatrically released concert film. It's called Fade to Black. It's one of the best concert movies of all time. Unfortunately, it only made $800,000 at the box office, but it was, uh, meant to be his final performance. That also is sort of acts as a dual making of, of the Black album where you see him behind the scenes, working on songs with Timbaland and Pharrell and Kanye and all the producers who worked on that record. And it's a great movie. It's a really fun movie. I saw it in movie theaters. Not many people did, but among Jay fans, it's a hugely

• 1:04:09Sean Fennessey?

  relevant artifact. Could he do another one? I mean, I guess he could release the Yankee Stadium performances that he just did a couple of weeks ago. And, and that would be cool. And I was really jealous to not be there for those. I've seen Jay in concert many times, probably 10 or 12 times. Um, so I don't, I don't feel like I need to go see him again. I saw him on tour with Mary J Blige. So it was like an unbelievable performance at MSG. So I've seen him quite a bit. Um, top five albums is hard. This really torpedoed my night, looking at this question. I got back from, um, from vacation. Let me just tell you a little story about my travel back from vacation for a second. I had a 12 PM flight

• 1:04:51Sean Fennessey?

  on JetBlue and we flew out of JFK, which is the eighth circle of hell. And 12 PM flight took off at 11:45 PM. We had an 11 hour and 45 minute delay. We were boarded, we were about to take off, and they told us the flight path closed. We were de-boarded. We sat in the terminal for about three hours. Then we scanned our passes again. We went back into the airway, the sort of the air bridge. We lined up, stood there for 30 minutes. Then they had us exit again. And we sat in the terminal for another three hours. Then they

• 1:05:34Sean Fennessey?

  boarded us again and we sat on the plane for two hours. And then we were told that the pilot was going to time out. This was after the previous round of pilots had already timed out. We're told that the pilot was going to time out at 11:45. Plane took off at 11:43. I was traveling with my wife and a five-year-old. This was one of the worst days of my life. There's nothing more boring than travel struggle stories from people who have nice lives. I understand that. I wish I could have used that time that I lost in this 12-hour period, listening to Jay-Z albums to come up with a better list for you.

• 1:06:07Speaker 05

  Can I tell you something?

• 1:06:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:06:09Speaker 05

  This exact thing happened to my father. You guys must have flown on the same day, except he made the critical mistake of not getting off the plane. So when they said everybody can get off the plane, he stayed on the plane, but then they got delayed again for like another six hours. So he was stuck on the plane the entire time.

• 1:06:26Sean Fennessey?

  We actually were going to stay on the plane, but they told us we had to get off after an additional hour. So anyway, that's, that's 12 hours that are never coming back in my life. I did nothing of use at that time, other than just be like a coil of anxiety about what was going to happen because there were no flights the following day. Everything was all booked out. And there were prob, there was only one or two flights on Monday. I wouldn't be here with you, recording this episode and thinking about Jay-Z, my beloved Jay-Z, if not for that. Jay, let me just say a quick thing about Jay. I've like, I've met Jay-Z many times, like maybe four or five times. I've been proximate to him a bunch of times, had interviewed him maybe twice. Um, he's like one of the signature artists of my life, somebody who I've poured so much time and energy into thinking about. None

• 1:07:11Sean Fennessey?

  of that comes up on this show because of what the focus of this show is. It's so funny that Nick asked this question and that Jack even knows to include this question. Making a top five is a disaster because of how much time I've spent with the records. I, there's a part of my list-making instincts that wants to be like, oh, people don't understand how underrated Blueprint 2 is, or American Gangster, or, you know, I still ride for Watch the Throne, despite Kanye being an absolute nightmare public figure and doing deplorable things. I still hear Watch the Throne and I get excited. Um, you know, I have a lot of time for 444, even though I was kind of shifted out of that world by the time that record came around. And I respect old guys making hip hop. It's something that has not happened very often. And that's a very reflective album that I appreciate.

• 1:07:53Sean Fennessey?

  But the five for me right now, one is Clearly Reasonable Doubt, which is one of the most cinematic albums in the history of music. And, uh, it's just the introduction to a storytelling icon and someone whose grace with verbocity truly inspired me. I really, I love listening to Jay string words together and also craft his persona in such a compelling way. And really like using the tools of gangster movie storytelling, of 40s gangster movies, of Scorsese films, of Coppola films. Like if you listen to, um, the best songs on that album, then, you know, Can I Live is, is one of my favorite Jay songs of all

• 1:08:37Sean Fennessey?

  time. And that song sounds like it belongs in The Godfather, even, even though it was recorded 25 years after that movie came out. Number two, okay, here's my one zag. Just go with me on the zag. Number two is volume three, The Life and Times of Sean Carter. Now, does it have the best, most insightful lyric writing? No. Does it have the best pop hits? No, give or take, Big Pimpin'. But it sounds like the future. Like we had that question about movies that see the future. And the production on that album, the Dr. Dre beats, the Timbaland beats, the, the beats are so crazy. It still sounds like a, it sounds like a THX 1138 or something. It's such an incredible document of the way that

• 1:09:20Sean Fennessey?

  hip hop production was evolving and that Jay was always willing to kind of jump on where it was going and push it a little bit further. And I was in high school when that album came out. And I'm, I remember mowing my mom's lawn and being so fucking miserable. I had to mow the lawn twice a week for years and years. And, uh, you know, not unlike the Long Island weather I was experiencing this weekend. And, um, volume three was my salvation. Being able to listen to volume three loud enough that I could hear it over the lawnmower, it transported me. Okay. So that's number two. Most people will probably say that's a crazy choice, but it matters to me. Number three is the Blueprint. Um, truly one of the-

• 1:10:00Sean Fennessey?

  You know, most significant personal documents, I think, in rap storytelling. And also a movie that I think shifted the paradigm of hip hop production. Really, really personal record. Number four is The Black Album, which is such a fascinating farewell. And I would love to know what it, what, what the world of rap would be like if he never came back. If he just stayed gone, he obviously was never going to stay gone. But such an interesting experiment by using a number of different producers. Not every song holds up for me on that album, but the experience of that album's release in real time was incredible. Number five is The Dynasty Rockla Familia, which is a fun album full of bangers. That's all I got.

• 1:10:43Sean Fennessey?

  You could easily slot in volume one or volume two into number five. I love volume one and volume two. I was listening to Friend or Phone 98 nonstop on the way to work today, feeling like I was 16 again and loving it.

• 1:10:56Sean Fennessey?

  My best experience with Jay was I went to a listening session, for those of you who don't know what that is, once upon a time, journalists would be invited by a record label to come and sit and listen to a new album. Oftentimes, those events that I went to in the 2000s were full of like 100, 200 people and they'd ply you with free drinks and they'd play the album so loud you could barely hear it, that the decibel level was so overwhelming that you couldn't tell if a song was good or bad. Jay-Z had this great tradition of inviting a select few people to come and sit with him and he would play the songs one by one and talk about them. I did that with him like maybe three or four times. And I did it once for the American Gangster soundtrack, which I thought was such an inspired idea.

• 1:11:39Sean Fennessey?

  And I sat right next to him during that session and he was making fun of me because I'm a dorky white guy. I was about to get on a plane ironically, based on that JetBlue story. And I had all my bags with me and I was like the first person to arrive. And so I took the first, basically the front row seat and he like lovingly mocked me the whole time because I was like really vibing out and feeling myself during that listening session. And afterwards, I got to hang out with him and talk to him for about 15 minutes because I was taking so many jabs from him throughout the session. And just a fascinating artist, like somebody who I really, to this day, just by thinking about this question and listening to those albums was, was really taken.

• 1:12:24Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's do a couple more questions.

• 1:12:27Speaker 05

  Okay, great. This next come one comes from Shreeman. On a few occasions, you've said that you and Amanda are not critics. That being said, you continue to have, quote, "serious critics on the show like Wesley Morris and Adam Naaman. In decades past, serious critics like Pauline Kael played a significant role in shaping the film canon that we appreciate today. What role do you think academic criticism has to play in defining the current era of cinema for the future? Do you think instead that Kael's progeny has been replaced by you and Amanda, Griffin, David, CR, et cetera?"

• 1:12:59Sean Fennessey?

  Um, gosh, this is such a, this is such a thorny one.

• 1:13:05Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think anything has been replaced by anything. I don't, I don't think that critical canon is going anywhere. I just, I spent a lot of time over the break, reading Jonathan Rosenbaum's Substack, which is full of his writing over the years. He had a great piece about his time with Sam Fuller, the filmmaker. So all that work is still present. There are tons of great working critics. I do think movie podcasts are very successful and popular right now. And so that maybe is throwing some of this in a state of disrepair. I say that this show is not criticism because it's not. It doesn't mean that we're not saying whether we like or don't like a movie, but saying whether you like or don't like a movie, and even doing thematic analysis of a movie, isn't necessarily film criticism. But the reason I keep saying it is because not just I have respect for the craft of it,

• 1:13:47Sean Fennessey?

  having done it many times over the years, especially when it comes to music. But, and not just because it's a conversation, but because we're operating from a wholly subjective point of view in this space. And I don't really subscribe at this stage of my life to this idea of a kind of objective analysis of a work of art. I'm very informed by my relationship to the filmmakers, not just in real life, but my relationship over the years. I'm, I fully acknowledge that. If, if it's a filmmaker that I love, I just wrote about this recently with Spider-Man 3, like Sam Raimi, I'm just, I'm really interested in what Sam Raimi is interested in. And so I'm more willing to be forgiving of certain flaws in a film because I see other things that I admire so much. We talked about this a bit in the Spider-Man Brand New Day conversation about the subjective

• 1:14:32Sean Fennessey?

  experience of art, as it's been more democratized across lots and lots of platforms, thanks to social media. It doesn't mean that criticism isn't still, there isn't still incredible work being done in that space because of course there is. And maybe I do it from time to time, but I always feel a little uncomfortable with that word because I'm also talking about a lot of things in the show that are not necessarily historically the domain of criticism, not just interviewing people, but talking about the industry and history of the business and my relationship to the careers of figures and a lot of hierarchical stuff, which is all like kind of made up sports jargon-y stuff that doesn't really have any meaningful relationship to criticism.

• 1:15:17Sean Fennessey?

  I, people are always saying like, do I not call myself a critic so that I can like be nice to movies and not break relationships on the show? Which like, I, I get why people think that's the case, but I don't really know what to say. Like, I don't ever have a guest on the show whose movie I don't like, or I'm at least not interested in. And I see all the movies beforehand. I never book a guest before seeing the movie. So it's not really about that either. It's more just that the act of criticism, I think, is a very, a very singular experience. David Sims is a great film critic. I'm not sure that he's practicing film criticism when going through, you know, his favorite hamburgers on Blank Check, you know?

• 1:15:59Sean Fennessey?

  Like, they're just two totally different styles of media. And so I don't think that they're going anywhere. You can read David's work in The Atlantic. It's terrific.

• 1:16:10Sean Fennessey?

  You know, you can read my Substack and there, sometimes there will be some criticism. I think, I've been thinking about Final Girls a lot. So I was reading Carol Clover's book again, Men, Women and Chainsaws, and its relationship to teenage sex and death and a lot of the horror movies that we've seen this year. And so I'm thinking like a little bit more academically about the history of horror and female representation in the stories. And you could make the case that whatever I end up writing, if I write it, would be an act of criticism. But talking with Adam on the podcast about some of those ideas and talking through them, I don't, I don't, just don't see it in the same, through the same prism. But thank you for your question. What's next?

• 1:16:46Speaker 05

  Next question comes from James. Coming off the Knicks finally ending their long championship drought and the Mets recently celebrating the 40th year anniversary of their last World, exactly, World Series. I was wondering if you held any optimism for the future of the Jets and Mets to do what the Knicks have done? Which team do you think is more likely to do so first? And what is the path forward for these franchises? For the record, I wholeheartedly disagree with Sean's take.

• 1:17:11Sean Fennessey?

  Boy, I'm excited about everything going on at Jets camp.

• 1:17:15Sean Fennessey?

  You know, the obvious answer is the Mets, right? The Mets have young talent. They have two exciting outfielders. They have three potential rotation pieces. They have Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto and Bo Bichette, almost certainly, on their team next year. They have Steve Cohen's spending power. They have a, I think, a very shrewd behind the scenes team, especially in the developmental phase. This year's been a fiasco. The year before that was a fiasco. I'm happy with the five out of six run that they're on right now. And I do think that they're, that Nolan McLean's going to be a really, really, really good pitcher for a long time and that Carson Benj is a star. I agree with all those things.

• 1:17:55Sean Fennessey?

  Something is not clicking though, and the Mets find ways to lose in dispiriting ways. I guess all the things I'm saying are also true of the Jets and the Jets are even more foolhardy and ridiculous as a franchise.

• 1:18:11Sean Fennessey?

  But I don't know, I just have a weird feeling like it's been too long for the Jets, for them to not do anything. We just had 2024 with the Mets and now I'm just doing like Cosmos stuff where like the Cosmos were so against the Knicks for so long that like the dam had to burst at some point. And I have a very similar vibe with the Jets. I love the offensive skill players in those position groups. I don't love Aaron Glenn as their head coach and I don't think he'll be their head coach. I don't think he'll be drafting their quarterback of the future next year. I could be wrong about that. I do think the team will be much improved this year though. I think they'll win six or seven games and they'll be a pain in the ass to play at times because they're just going to chuck the ball downfield every single game. And I, I really like Darren Muji, their GM. And I think he's made several smart moves.

• 1:18:56Sean Fennessey?

  And so, yeah, I'm choosing the Jets. Prove me wrong. If the Mets win next year, fucking A, who cares? Being wrong would be meaningless. I was totally wrong. I thought the Knicks should have signed Katie and Kyrie and their failure, failure to sign them, I thought was the worst thing that had ever happened to the franchise. You know what, why that mattered? Not at all. Katie and Kyrie, I could not care less about them. Jalen Brunson is an icon. Great story. Stayed in a hotel for a couple nights in New York City and we had to walk to the Long Island Railroad to Penn Station, my family and I, last weekend. And we walked from our hotel to Penn Station and we arrived right outside of Madison Square Garden and one of the big LED screens flashed an image and my daughter looked up at the image and she raised her hands and she said, Brunson.

• 1:19:42Sean Fennessey?

  It was Jalen Brunson on the screen. And I've never felt better about being a New Yorker in my life. Obviously, I'm not a New Yorker anymore, but I will be forever. Okay, one last question, Jack, let's go.

• 1:19:53Speaker 05

  Comes from Leslie. What movie are you most excited to show Alice that you haven't yet?

• 1:19:59Sean Fennessey?

  We tried to watch Project Hail Mary yesterday and it didn't take. It was too human and too complicated, but it made me think this week we should do ET. Project Hail Mary is the first movie that hasn't worked on Alice in a long time. She's a very good watcher, but it reminded me of just how much you need ET to get Project Hail Mary. So that's my answer. I think that'll do it. We should save some of these and do some more in a future date.

• 1:20:26Speaker 05

  That sounds good.

• 1:20:27Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Thank you for all your incredible questions. I hope I was open and honest in ways that were useful to you. I hope you find love. In the meantime, please enjoy my conversation now with Patrick Fischler.

• 1:20:46Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Patrick Fischler is here. You're here to tell me about the life of an actor, your life of an actor.

• 1:20:51Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:20:52Sean Fennessey?

  I want to start like all the way at the beginning. The first thing that I read about you is that you were named after, or an iconic eatery was named after you.

• 1:21:00Speaker 04

  An iconic eatery was named after me.

• 1:21:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, so Patrick's roadside.

• 1:21:04Speaker 04

  Roadhouse.

• 1:21:05Sean Fennessey?

  Roadhouse, excuse me.

• 1:21:06Speaker 04

  I was four, four, five, when my dad opened it. And literally, it just closed last year. So it was open for like 49 years.

• 1:21:14Sean Fennessey?

  And this is on the one?

• 1:21:15Speaker 04

  It was on the PCH going up before Malibu. And my dad opened it when I was super little. And it kind of took off. And in the late 70s, 80s, it was like incredibly iconic here. And I was around sort of the business, starting at a really baby young age.

• 1:21:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so tell me about Los Angeles in the 70s, 80s, 90s. What was it like growing up here? What was it like to live here? What was your relationship to the media entertainment complex like?

• 1:21:44Speaker 04

  I, I love LA. I love LA. But LA in the 70s and 80s was pretty fucking great. It's really great.

• 1:21:51Sean Fennessey?

  In what ways?

• 1:21:53Speaker 04

  It felt alive in a way. Santa Monica was not what Santa Monica is. It was not rich. It was a lot of old age homes. You know, on Ocean Avenue, it's all like fancy hotels and club. None of that. It was my grandmother, who was in her 80s, lived on Ocean Avenue in an old age home in one of those tall buildings. So it just felt different, especially Santa Monica. The West Side was not a thing. So that felt different. And being down at the Roadhouse, I just, I grew up in front of a TV. I was like a latchkey kid. So my mom lived in South Africa. My dad had the Roadhouse. And after school, I'd get home at age seven, which I can't believe because I have a daughter, that I'd walk home alone from school. And I would eat a bowl of Lucky Charms

• 1:22:37Speaker 04

  and watch TV all day. And so I grew up in front of a TV and went to movies every five seconds. And then actors started coming in the Roadhouse. And that for me was like, wait, holy shit. These people are real. And at a very young age, like Goldie Hawn, I was a huge fan of Foul Play. Private Benjamin seems like old times. And so she'd come in the Roadhouse, you know, 1979, 1982. And I was a little kid. And so it just, it was kind of mind blowing. And then it just became normalized. And I worked there. That was my first job when I was, you know, 12, child labor loss.

• 1:23:15Sean Fennessey?

  It's a family business.

• 1:23:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's fine. So it was kind of incredible. It was kind of great. I mean, I just, I just love the business and not the business side of the business. I just love movies and TV. I think they have been kind of everything to me.

• 1:23:30Sean Fennessey?

  Did you learn that actors were real people by seeing them in your father's establishment?

• 1:23:36Speaker 04

  Hundred percent.

• 1:23:37Sean Fennessey?

  Do you remember the first person you saw that kind of broke the illusion of movies and TV?

• 1:23:41Speaker 04

  I'm using Goldie Hawn as the example because she meant a lot, a lot to me. Like, she's a comedic genius. And I guess Foul Play was really like late 70, 78. So I was very little when I saw this person that, and Foul Play kind of covered a lot of stuff that was interesting to me, mystery, thriller, comedy. And I tried showing my daughter a couple of years ago, and she's like, mm, mm.

• 1:24:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's really fallen out of fashion, that movie. For a movie that was a really big hit, like came out, it's not, it hasn't been canonized in quite the same way as some of the others.

• 1:24:14Speaker 04

  It didn't really hold up. But at eight or nine, fuck yes. I mean, it was great. So yes, she's someone I really remember as like, wait, what? Oh, that's you. Oh, yeah. And then it just kind of snowballed.

• 1:24:26Sean Fennessey?

  Did that encourage you to want to be an actor?

• 1:24:29Speaker 04

  No, no, no. I didn't, I don't know what encouraged me to be an actor. I kind of, I went to NYU. And when I went to NYU, I didn't even know if I wanted to be an actor. I, before I went to NYU, I worked at Paramount in the story department.

• 1:24:43Sean Fennessey?

  No kidding?

• 1:24:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, for like six months. My dad, again.

• 1:24:46Sean Fennessey?

  Like after your senior year of high school?

• 1:24:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I took a sort of, I went to Northridge and went for a month to Northridge. And I was like, nah, I don't want to be here. And my dad from the Roadhouse knew Ned Tannen, who.

• 1:24:58Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, sure. Of course, legendary executive.

• 1:25:00Speaker 04

  Yes. So he was like, does your son want a job at an internship? It won't pay. I'm like, he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I worked at the story department and then did a good job. And worked then for Teddy Z, who was a vice president of production. And he would just put me in a screening room and be like, watch these old movies. Tell me if we should remake any of them. It's like, what is happening? And at that time, they were doing like Cousins. Do you remember that movie? It's a remake of, oh, I think you guys just talked about this. It's a remake of the French film.

• 1:25:30Sean Fennessey?

  Cousin, Cousin, yes, yes.

• 1:25:31Speaker 04

  And Joel Schumacher did it. So that was Teddy's movie.

• 1:25:35Sean Fennessey?

  That's the movie that, gosh, who is the star of the film? It's William Peterson, right?

• 1:25:40Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:25:41Sean Fennessey?

  And it's like the William Peterson, like sliding doors. Yes, that's so funny.

• 1:25:45Speaker 04

  So that was Teddy's movie. So that's one of the ones I remember we did. But so I was at Paramount. I was like, oh, I'm going to be an exec. And then a bunch of my friends who were the year below me at, I went to Beverly Hills High School. They were like, we're going to go to NYU. I'm like, well, I want to go to NYU. And again, Roadhouse, everyone's going to be like, oh, nepo guy, but I'm not. Steve Tisch came in the Roadhouse. And so he, Tisch School of the Arts. He was, my dad was like, my son wants to go to NYU. He's like, well, he's got auditions. So I went to New York, auditioned and got in. And went with my friends to New York, to NYU. And when I was there, I was, I was really like, am I going to be an actor or an exec? And by the end of school, I'm like, nah, I'm going to be an actor.

• 1:26:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's so fascinating. Were all of your friends going to study acting?

• 1:26:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:30Sean Fennessey?

  And was that because they were Hollywood kids and that was what you did?

• 1:26:32Speaker 04

  Well, one of my friends, who was a really good friend of mine, is Jameson Newlander. He was in The Lost Boys, the original Lost Boys. He was one of the Frog Brothers. And so he went and I thought, I just want to go. And they weren't, they weren't Hollywood kids. They just all wanted to kind of be actors, which changed very quickly. When you go to college and everybody realizes freshman year, this many people stop sophomore, junior, it goes, the pool gets smaller and smaller.

• 1:26:56Sean Fennessey?

  Why did it whittle down?

• 1:26:58Speaker 04

  Because people realized like, I don't want to be an actor. They think they do. I mean, it has continued to whittle because then a bunch of my friends after school moved here, a whole group of us. And it's just hard. The business, you know, wears you down.

• 1:27:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I have a lot of questions for you about that.

• 1:27:12Speaker 04

  We can hit all of them.

• 1:27:12Sean Fennessey?

  I'm very curious.

• 1:27:13Speaker 04

  It's a real, it's a real thing. And so, anyway, so I went to NYU. And by the end, I decided, oh, I want to be an actor. I want to go back to LA. Now, I laugh because I do believe in my heart, if I said I want to be a studio executive, I'd probably be a miserable guy, but I'd be running somewhere because I just, I knew I was on that. Those are sliding doors. Those are my paths.

• 1:27:34Sean Fennessey?

  Can we talk about that for a minute, like one minute? You having that exposure to that kind of world at such a young age is really interesting to me. I feel like I'm talking at studio executives professionally all the time. And most of the men and women that I meet that do the job are really kind, thoughtful people who really like movies. Not all of them. It's changed a lot in the last 15 years. But a lot, the ones who are aware of this show, I would say, usually are like, you really love movies. Let's talk about movies. But that job gets a terribly bad rap. And the idea of you going in the direction of like pure artist and expression of yourself, working in these formats versus the person who's making the decision that hurts people

• 1:28:19Sean Fennessey?

  and breaks their soul and maybe ruins the movie industry, is such a fascinating pivot in your life. Like, is there any part of you that wishes you went into the executive route?

• 1:28:28Speaker 04

  This is amazing because I've never talked about this, besides with my group of friends. And no, there's no part of me that wishes I'd done that because I really love being an actor. I love it so much. But I would have been one of the few studio execs who tries not to break everybody's heart, but it's impossible. The job sucks because you can't make everybody happy. Like, there's no way. I go to so many movies and I see all the movies that are greenlit and I'm so excited. And then sometimes they're bad. There's ones that don't make it. It's just all, it's all impossible. So no, I'm happy. I'm, my choice, my choice luckily worked.

• 1:29:02Sean Fennessey?

  Who were the actors that you looked up to, wanted to be like, thought about emulating, especially when you're going to Tisch?

• 1:29:11Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm going to, I'm going to shout out the number one because people never expect it. Glenn Close. She is, by the way, I'm just saying right now, if you ever do a Hall of Fame and you do not call me, we are never speaking again.

• 1:29:24Sean Fennessey?

  That's good to know. And I love that. And as you know, I love to have somebody backstop us on a Hall of Fame.

• 1:29:28Speaker 04

  That she is, and again, as a young kid, randomly, my dad took me to New York when I was like 10 and we saw Barnum, the musical. And it was starring her. And she, I remember being like, who is this woman? She's incredible. And then seeing her in Garp was the beginning. I mean, she has a run of Oscar nomination, Oscar nomination, Oscar nomination that are, that's mind blowing. And again, the, the big chill personally means a lot to me because I was a kid, latchkey, family, sort of not around a lot. And I, my friends kind of became my family. So I saw that movie at 13. And I was like, oh, friends are the answer for everything.

• 1:30:10Speaker 04

  And it has stayed that way. That my group of friends, I've known since college, my wife I met in college. So that movie really spoke to me and kind of shifted my life a little bit. And then she continues on a run that's just like, I mean, Fatal Attraction is, her performance is unbelievable. Yeah. So anyways, she was someone that I thought, wow, she can kind of do it all.

• 1:30:34Sean Fennessey?

  So is that what it was? Was it her flexibility, versatility as a performer? The fact that she could do period, she could do contemporary?

• 1:30:41Speaker 04

  All of it. Because forgetting, by the way, Dangerous Leisons, which was another one that I thought, she just always blew me away. And obviously, De Niro, Pacino were all I watched, like as a kid and thinking, I want to be them. But then something happened with her and it continued for years because Damages, which was a show I was obsessed with, and my, a good friend of mine, Glenn Kessler, created it. And I, I remember seeing her on that when movie stars weren't doing TV. And I just was like, she's, she can just do, she can sort of be a bad guy, but you still just love watching her and care about her. And it.

• 1:31:21Speaker 04

  Kept going. It's in everything she does. So maybe that was it. I don't know. I just, her versatility was probably the biggest thing.

• 1:31:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's fascinating. She's still going. I just saw her in La Bola Negra at Cannes and I'm like, she's great, you know? It's amazing that she's still doing great parts.

• 1:31:36Speaker 04

  Incredible. I mean, I think she's kind of gonna go forever.

• 1:31:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:39Speaker 04

  Like, she's someone who the business is lucky to have.

• 1:31:42Sean Fennessey?

  That's a great role model, though, because you can tell that she chooses things that interest her.

• 1:31:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:48Sean Fennessey?

  You know, that she's not driven by market forces.

• 1:31:51Speaker 04

  Not at all, no.

• 1:31:52Sean Fennessey?

  And that's really interesting for an actor like you. Did you study a particular methodology with a particular kind of teacher?

• 1:31:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I went to, at NYU at the time, and still now, you pick a studio. So it was like Lee Strasberg, Stell Adler. I picked a place called Circle in the Square, which is a Broadway theater on like 50th. And their method spoke to me because, again, this is kind of how I work. It was like everything put into one. Meaning, there's no right method. There's whatever method you choose, which Adler was very specific. Strasberg was very specific. And I just knew, I didn't want, I wanted to just kind of take a bunch of the meal and see which piece I like, what bite I like. So I went there and that was, I had a teacher named Alan Langdon, who passed about two years ago, and he was, that was it. That's when I knew I was a good actor.

• 1:32:41Speaker 04

  He helped me realize, oh, I'm a really good actor. Cause when I went, I didn't know. I was 18 years old. I had no idea.

• 1:32:46Sean Fennessey?

  Were you intellectualizing the process in college? Like, did you like that idea? Or was it, because some actors are like that and some are very just feel-based, right? They're just emotional.

• 1:32:55Speaker 04

  Fully feel-based. Fully. I hate overthinking anything in life. My wife would tell you right now. I make decisions very quickly. I'm like, I think this is our, I go with my gut, and that's the same with acting. Obviously, if there's things to do or research to do, I'll do it. But I'm the guy who really likes to just go.

• 1:33:13Sean Fennessey?

  As you were learning about acting and thinking about it as a career, was your relationship to movies changing at all? Like, there's a little bit of that thing where, like, you are a sports fan growing up, and then you become a sports writer, and you lose all your fandom because you've learned too much. You didn't, you never lost that.

• 1:33:27Speaker 04

  I'm one of the few, there's so many actors I talk to, they're like, I don't like movies anymore. I don't watch TV anymore. I watch everything. I go to every fucking movie I can go to. I have made my daughter, who is 17 now, at a young age, be like, we are going to the theater. You are not watching this at home. We are going to a movie theater. I love movies. It's, it's one of the reasons this podcast kind of just shifted my life recently. Because I'm like, oh, there's like-minded people out there.

• 1:33:55Sean Fennessey?

  We're still around.

• 1:33:56Speaker 04

  I'm not alone. And by the way, the business, we're back a little bit.

• 1:33:59Sean Fennessey?

  We are back a little bit.

• 1:33:59Speaker 04

  It's an exciting time to be here. But I just, yeah.

• 1:34:04Sean Fennessey?

  So what'd you do? Did you immediately move back home?

• 1:34:07Speaker 04

  Immediately. I mean, like.

• 1:34:09Sean Fennessey?

  That was always the plan.

• 1:34:09Speaker 04

  The day, the day after I graduated. I knew, here's why. Cause I had friends who stayed there. My wife, who I wasn't married to at the time, she stayed in New York for a couple of years. I knew I wanted to do film and TV. And this was at a time when film and TV was not in New York. It's so different now. It's so crazy that film and TV is not in LA. It's everywhere else. But I knew I wanted to get right into that. I just, I wasn't, theater wasn't where I was going. I just, I wasn't as interested in it. And so I moved back here right away, and then slowly, a bunch of my friends from New York started moving.

• 1:34:39Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, you're 21, you've moved back.

• 1:34:41Speaker 04

  22.

• 1:34:41Sean Fennessey?

  22.

• 1:34:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:42Sean Fennessey?

  You, do you have to get an agent? How are you figuring out how to go on auditions? Like, how do you actually do the job?

• 1:34:49Speaker 04

  Again, anyone who's listening to this podcast who's under 40-something will not realize that it was a time when we had to do plays. And so with my friends from NYU, we started a theater company called Neurotic Young Urbanites. Terrible name, but NYU. And we, our first play was like a night of one acts. I mean, my God, I can't even, if I saw it now, I'd probably die.

• 1:35:13Speaker 04

  And from that play, one of the girls in the play had an agent. And they came and they were like, hey, do you want to audition for us? Come in to the fucking offices and do a monologue. So I went into, it was an agency called Buckwald, and this is 1993 at this point. And I went in and did a monologue.

• 1:35:33Sean Fennessey?

  Do you remember what you did?

• 1:35:33Speaker 04

  From the play called Private Wars. I did a monologue from the play I was doing. And they signed me. And I started auditioning.

• 1:35:43Sean Fennessey?

  What was, when you were signed, was there a mentality like, it's happening, I will be De Niro? Like, genuinely, like, give me, give me a.

• 1:35:50Speaker 04

  There's gonna be a meme of me saying it, so I'm not gonna say it.

• 1:35:53Sean Fennessey?

  But just examine your ego from that time. I'm very curious, like, what you thought.

• 1:35:56Speaker 04

  This is, oh my God, you ask such good questions. I didn't think I was gonna be De Niro, but I did think, like, here we go. And the reality is this, so we can get, we'll get to this at a later point possibly, but my look in the 90s was actually not a look that the business really wanted very much.

• 1:36:17Sean Fennessey?

  Can you describe what that means?

• 1:36:19Speaker 04

  Like, not generic, not handsome. If I was born in, if I was 22 in the 70s, my career would be totally different.

• 1:36:30Sean Fennessey?

  Leading men.

• 1:36:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:36:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:32Speaker 04

  I can't believe that sometimes when I see these guys. I watch movies and I go back, I'm like, fucking A, this is the best time. And it started to shift in the 80s, but by the 90s, forget it. So I didn't audition as much as my other friends, who were like, you know, more traditionally handsome, or, you know, I didn't audition as much, but I did start working very quickly. Because it took directors who were like, I like his look. And my first job was someone who appreciates, he's a European director, and appreciates a different look. So I did kind of think, like, here we go. And it didn't kind of go like I thought right at the beginning.

• 1:37:11Sean Fennessey?

  Well, okay.

• 1:37:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:14Sean Fennessey?

  Tell me about your first job.

• 1:37:16Speaker 04

  Speed.

• 1:37:17Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so you booked Speed.

• 1:37:19Speaker 04

  So I went in and auditioned for Speed.

• 1:37:21Sean Fennessey?

  This is, you know television before this? This is the first job in film and television that you got was Yon de Bont's Speed in 1994?

• 1:37:27Speaker 04

  Hold on, it's 93.

• 1:37:29Sean Fennessey?

  93.

• 1:37:30Speaker 04

  No, the film's about in four, but we shot it in three.

• 1:37:32Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:37:34Speaker 04

  I may have done like a guest spot on, I can't, I kind of don't know. There was like a really bad show. I did do, again, Roadhouse. Oh God, these stories suck. I did a Knots Landing.

• 1:37:47Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:37:48Speaker 04

  Which was, the producers used to come in the Roadhouse. And I wanted to get my SAG card. And that is how I got my SAG card, was Knots Landing. I was like a guy at the business who was like, hey, where are you going? I mean, I don't know, if you found it, again, worst thing. And so I made that, this is how I got my SAG card. But the first job I think I booked may have been Speed. So I went in and auditioned, and it was Yon. And I was auditioning for like, the guy on the bus. There was like a younger guy on the bus. And I didn't get it, but my agents were like, you got the guy on the elevator. I'm like, great. Amazing. I didn't care. I'm like, oh my God. And we, that elevator shit shot for two weeks.

• 1:38:30Speaker 04

  And we shot down, we shot downtown and we shot at Fox. And they built the whole, you know, elevator shaft. And I'm 23, and I'm like, this is everything. This is the great, this business is amazing.

• 1:38:46Sean Fennessey?

  Wait, so before I ask you about that, can you just tell me how you were cast out of it? As Yon in the room when you're reading? And a casting director, who, anybody else? Any of the stars? No?

• 1:38:55Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no. I was Yon, casting director, producers.

• 1:38:59Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:38:59Speaker 04

  Because I pre-read, I'd read for a casting director, and it was the guy on the bus. So I don't even remember. It was like, I had a couple of lines. I don't even remember. And then I got called back to read with Yon for that same part. And he was, I remember just sort of loving his energy. And I could tell he liked me. Then, yeah, and then I, I got cast.

• 1:39:20Sean Fennessey?

  Did you know when you were making the movie, this is gonna be a massive sensation?

• 1:39:24Speaker 04

  No, we could talk about this for probably three hours. We won't. But you guys, that movie was, I mean, it was, it was not, Sandra Bullock had never done anything. Keanu Reeves was Bill and Ted. So yes, we had Dennis Hopper, I mean, you know, but the movie was not anything anyone talked about, ever. Like, that was not talked about. So when it opened, I love those movies. When all of a sudden, everyone in town is like, wait a minute, this fucking thing is great. And when we were shooting it, I did feel something. I did, which I have the experiences where I can feel something and I'm right, or feel something and I'm wrong. And this one was like, oh, I think this could be really good.

• 1:40:05Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think, what's your percentage, you think, over your career in terms of guessing right, whether something's gonna work or not? Cause you've been in a million things at this point.

• 1:40:11Speaker 04

  I'll go, I'll go 60/40.

• 1:40:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, 60 right.

• 1:40:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. But most of the wrong was when I was younger. I'm pretty good now.

• 1:40:19Sean Fennessey?

  So Speed happens.

• 1:40:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:40:22Sean Fennessey?

  Millions of people see that movie. It is a genuine sensation. Does it have a meaningful effect on your career? Like, are you, not at all? That's why this is a weird job.

• 1:40:30Speaker 04

  It's, honestly, man, there's, there's not, I mean, we can talk about it, but there's very few jobs that have been like the thing, that have changed something. Speed, I mean, I had like two lines, and I'm at the beginning of the movie. So it was like, I just went back to auditioning for guest spots on TV shows, like small little things.

• 1:40:50Speaker 04

  It didn't, it didn't, if it did anything, it was introduce me to Yon, who then cast me again in Twister. That was the only thing it really did. It did something for me, though, because like, and emotionally, it actually did something for me. Sharing a personal moment of like, my dad died in 97. So taking him to The Man's Chinese in 94 to see Speed and be like, you know.

• 1:41:17Sean Fennessey?

  I'm doing it. I did it.

• 1:41:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was really lovely. That was lovely.

• 1:41:20Sean Fennessey?

  So what, how do you make a career at this stage of your life? You're in your 20s. But jobs, they're not like jobs I've had, where I, I am hired by a corporation and they pay me money to do a thing, and I go in every day.

• 1:41:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:36Sean Fennessey?

  You're trying to piece together each component part of your life. Is your, is your now wife like still living in New York? Are you guys gonna get back together?

• 1:41:43Speaker 04

  She, we, we, she, we were just friends until she moved here. And then we started dating about two years after she moved here. We've been together for 30 years. So we started dating in 97. So at this point, she moved here in 95, but I had this whole group of friends. To be honest, I, I love this because I'll be frank and my daughter will watch this. But like, we just get high and go to movies. I mean, that was what we were doing. It was 1994 and I was like, we'd either all have an audition and we'd work on auditions. We'd be like, oh my God, we have an audition. And then, you know, but financially I stopped working. I worked at the Roadhouse up until Speed. And from that moment on, which is kind of amazing, and I feel incredibly proud of it.

• 1:42:23Speaker 04

  I got health insurance every year, um, which is hard to get in SAG, especially when you're not working a lot. Uh, health insurance every year and never went back to waiting tables. So that's pretty, that, that, that's how it changed my life. You know, because I would do guest spots. I would get a guest spot on, you know, um, NYPD Blue. Like I did, I did that, like I do stuff like that, you know?

• 1:42:48Sean Fennessey?

  Can you describe maybe the psychological feeling of constantly being evaluated when you're reading for good jobs like this?

• 1:42:55Speaker 04

  Um, it'll break you.

• 1:42:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:58Speaker 04

  It, it has not broken me. I actually, I had a very weird strength that I still have, which is the power of saying no and the power of passing and, and not trying to take stuff personally. I, I feel like most actors are totally unempowered. And I try to talk to young actors to be like, don't let the business not treat you well. Because it's going to try to break you, not intentionally. It's not like some evil thing, but it's really hard. It's really hard to not go into a room and not think that you're, it's something to do with you personally. And it's often not.

• 1:43:37Sean Fennessey?

  Are you trying to be artistically strategic when you're trying to book jobs like that? Are you trying to say, I'm looking for filmmakers or shows that I know I respond to or creators?

• 1:43:46Speaker 04

  At that point?

• 1:43:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:47Speaker 04

  Do you want to give me money? I mean, like, I, I couldn't. There was no way, because I wasn't capable of doing that. Because I also just, I think the reason I have as big a career number wise as I do is because I'm a real believer in like, I just love working. I love it. And I enjoy making the money because there's been many years I haven't made as much. So residual checks are everything. They are everything. And that's another way I lived back then. I'll never forget that, um, after Speed came out on DVD and I hadn't been working a little bit. And then, oh, actually it wasn't Speed, damn it, it was Twister. But I got a residual check a year later that was so big, I'd never seen a check like that.

• 1:44:31Speaker 04

  Because this was back when residuals were like insane.

• 1:44:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:35Speaker 04

  And, uh, so I'm very grateful that residuals have fed my life, um, for a long time. But I'm, I, I'm, I do pass if I don't feel like I'm being valued in the way I, I feel like I deserve to be valued.

• 1:44:47Sean Fennessey?

  What did you learn on the set of Speed about acting? Like, I'm sure you learned a ton about how movies worked, right?

• 1:44:53Speaker 04

  I learned nothing about acting.

• 1:44:54Sean Fennessey?

  Nothing?

• 1:44:54Speaker 04

  No, but we'll get to the day I learned about acting on film. It, we're a ways away from it, but I, yeah. Because I'm here, I'm a 23 year old kid from New York who'd only really done theater. And I thought, I, I didn't realize what the camera was. And that will come, but, uh, no, what, what I learned about more was starting to see like shots. And there's two things. There's acting on camera and a big one that a lot of actors don't do is learning where the camera is. So you, you, the camera's doing scenes with you. Like if you and I are doing a scene, you're my scene partner, but the cameras are scene partner too. And I, I, I think it's very important to be aware of it, um, which a lot of actors aren't, but I, I, I.

• 1:45:38Sean Fennessey?

  Why is it important?

• 1:45:40Speaker 04

  Because for certain shots, it's very important to know the size. So I want to know if we're wide, my performance is going to be a little different than if we're here. Because I, I try to give the same performance, but when, you gotta save some of the stuff here. And it's also got to be just a little bit less when you're here.

• 1:46:01Sean Fennessey?

  So much of what, uh, film actors do is with their face. So I've always wanted to ask an actor this and I never have. Do you look at yourself in the mirror and practice making a gesture or a move with your face that indicates something? I just wa, I just re-watched a bunch of episodes of you doing Jimmy Barrett. And, um, that's such a physical performance that you're doing in that, in that, in Mad Men. And it is a different kind of character than you have played in, in many times over the years. And I was looking at the choices that you're making very specifically, but like, is that something that you have to work on individually to know that you're getting what you want to accomplish and what the film needs?

• 1:46:42Speaker 04

  Mad Men is very specific. So that can be its own like conversation. What I didn't do though is practice in front of the mirror. I don't, I, I, I can't really do that. That would make me crazy. That would, it would make me crazy to look at myself. It just would not, uh, so I, maybe I've done it, maybe. What I, saying the lines out loud, but looking at myself, I, I don't know. I feel like I'd go crazy. Um, no, I've never done that. Never done mirror acting.

• 1:47:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so.

• 1:47:09Speaker 04

  I'm gonna try it now though. I'm gonna try it once.

• 1:47:12Sean Fennessey?

  Don't, whatever you're doing is working, don't change right now.

• 1:47:16Sean Fennessey?

  In the nineties, were you thinking at a certain point, this is going to evolve and I'm going to be a big star?

• 1:47:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, probably. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

• 1:47:27Sean Fennessey?

  And, and, and was there a moment when you realized like, actually I have a different niche? Or I have a different skill and I should apply that?

• 1:47:35Speaker 04

  Uh, no, no, I just kept going. Also, you know, I mean, you were being in your twenties, you're just an idiot. And so I was kind of just an idiot. So I just was like, let's just go, let's just go, let's hang out, let's go drinks, let's go to the bar, let's do that. Like, that really was my life. And because I had a group of friends, we were all together, we all lived in Santa Monica. We all went out all the time. I started dating my wife. It was just like a sort of super free time. And I really wasn't thinking, we were all talking about what jobs we were booking. And I was psyched for every guest spot I got. I was psyched for the jobs, but no, I wasn't, you know, and I was thinking like, where's this going? You know, but I don't know. I think just people in your twenties, you're just so dumb.

• 1:48:16Sean Fennessey?

  Were you and your friends competitive with one another?

• 1:48:19Speaker 04

  Uh, not really, no, I don't think so. I don't, I mean, I don't think so. We were all super psyched for each other and we were in a theater company together. So we were all happy to, you know, congratulate each other and be there for each other. And it was all exciting. So we were all kind of riding the same wave together. And the, the wave started to break differently as it goes.

• 1:48:37Sean Fennessey?

  What was it like when one of your friends, either in school or in this time in your twenties, like threw, threw in the towel and was like, I'm not, I'm not going to pursue this anymore. I'm going to go get a day job.

• 1:48:47Speaker 04

  It was, you know, it's always hard because I, I find the business is like rolling dice. I, I, I don't believe if you're great, you're gonna make it. It just, it doesn't work like that in any, in any field of art. It's, it's, it's, a lot of it is random. So it was a little heartbreaking. It was, it was heartbreaking because I, I just feel like I, I know many talented people who should be working more than people I see that, or work with that I'm like, wait, what? I find it very random a lot of the times.

• 1:49:15Sean Fennessey?

  What would it be like? I don't know if you want, I don't know if you'd feel comfortable, just setting a specific example.

• 1:49:20Speaker 04

  Of?

• 1:49:20Sean Fennessey?

  Did you ever go up for something that you thought you were perfect for and didn't get that really hurt?

• 1:49:26Speaker 04

  Oh my God, fuck. I must have, didn't I?

• 1:49:30Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 1:49:31Speaker 04

  This is hard in this moment.

• 1:49:33Sean Fennessey?

  I've certainly applied to jobs and I haven't gotten them. But like, god damn it, I would have killed this.

• 1:49:36Speaker 04

  This is the worst question because I would answer it. I can't think of it right now.

• 1:49:41Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:49:42Speaker 04

  There is.

• 1:49:42Sean Fennessey?

  Still want it while we go through your career.

• 1:49:44Speaker 04

  There is a hundred percent, uh, jobs that I've gone out for that I've been like, I can't believe I didn't get that.

• 1:49:50Sean Fennessey?

  Did you have any preference towards film or television when you were booking jobs? Because you've done a lot of both and you've done a lot of TV now at this point too.

• 1:49:58Speaker 04

  It's just, there's more TV made.

• 1:49:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:00Speaker 04

  I ca, I, I started to come into a time when like TV exploded, you know, in the 2000s till now. It's like, so there were more opportunities and I was a believer of you do it all. I, I, I, even though I grew up at a time where film and TV actors were so separate. So like when Clooney left DR, he went and did movies, you know?

• 1:50:18Sean Fennessey?

  I just saw From Dust Till Dawn at the Academy Museum and I was like, that was the moment. That was the moment when he was doing, when he decided to do that.

• 1:50:24Speaker 04

  That's so funny. I love that movie.

• 1:50:25Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great movie.

• 1:50:26Speaker 04

  So no, I was, I was a big one for like, because I also grew up in front of a TV. I love TV and I think you can tell incredible stories on TV. And so I, I was, I was happy to do any of it.

• 1:50:40Sean Fennessey?

  What was the job where you really figured out what film acting really was?

• 1:50:47Speaker 04

  Mahal and Drive.

• 1:50:48Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so let's, let's talk about it.

• 1:50:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:50:52Sean Fennessey?

  I know that you get asked this all the time. But it does feel like it may be at the top of your legacy.

• 1:50:59Speaker 04

  It is.

• 1:51:00Sean Fennessey?

  In terms of what you've done. So you know, you appear in this extraordinary sequence in the film, legendary sequence. Lynch just passed last year. I'm sure people were asking you about it or talking to you about it nonstop. But I do want to hear from your perspective, how did you get that job? How did you prepare for that job? What was it like doing that sequence? What does it mean to you now? Like, I want the, the whole kid kaboodle.

• 1:51:20Speaker 04

  I, I could talk about this forever.

• 1:51:24Speaker 04

  So I'll start with, he doesn't audition actors. So I don't know if you've ever heard this. He didn't audition actors. You would go and meet with the casting director and she would ask you questions about your life. And so I went to audition for Mahal and Drive. And it was an ABC TV pilot, which I'm sure you know. And so she would just say, hey, where are you from? And I was like, you know, and we just had a conversation like this with the cameras filming. And that's what David watches. So it's why in his movies, you could get like some amazing acting and then some like, is that person an actor? Do you know what I mean?

• 1:51:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:52:00Speaker 04

  And so, because he never auditioned. He never auditioned people.

• 1:52:03Sean Fennessey?

  But he's responding to an essence that a person has.

• 1:52:06Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. And so I did that and then I was like, okay, never heard anything, but not right away. And then all of a sudden, my agents were like, you got that David Lynch pilot. And I was like, what?

• 1:52:20Speaker 04

  And then they sent, here's your scene. And I see this monologue and I'm like, oh my God, I'm gonna die. How am I doing this? And I kind of internally panicked because I will say this before I tell the story that David Lynch means more to me than anyone in this business. Because as a 14 year old, he sort of changed what movies could be. When I saw Blue Velvet, I forgot what year it was.

• 1:52:47Sean Fennessey?

  Eighty six, yeah.

• 1:52:48Speaker 04

  So I was 16. As a 16 year old changed, I didn't realize movies could be that. And then in college, I didn't realize TV could be what Twin Peaks was. So it changed movies for me. It changed TV for me. And then he changed acting for me because doing Mahal and Drive with him was a game changer. So.

• 1:53:06Sean Fennessey?

  Was that the number one reason you went up for that? Was that like a thing where somebody was like, you should, you should audition for this because it's a new show? Like, how does that actually work? Are you seeking it out?

• 1:53:13Speaker 04

  No, my agents called and said, there's an audition. David Lynch is doing a new show. And I, I mean, the answer was immediately of, oh my God, yes.

• 1:53:20Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:53:21Speaker 04

  Because I was, Twin Peaks was, I think people don't realize how ahead of the time Twin Peaks was. It really, there was nothing like that. That was not TV. In 1990, yeah, 91?

• 1:53:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:34Speaker 04

  No, come on. Nothing looked like, we were just coming off Dynasty and Dallas. Like, it was late 80s was just ending. It was, there was nothing like that. So I did it, went and just talked to the, the casting director and got it. It was Joanna Ray was the casting director. And then they called and sent me the pages. And then I go to, to set.

• 1:53:58Sean Fennessey?

  Wait, let me ask you one question before you talk about that.

• 1:54:00Speaker 04

  Please.

• 1:54:00Sean Fennessey?

  Was the idea that that part that you were playing in that pilot was, would be an ongoing character in the series? It was, okay.

• 1:54:07Speaker 04

  I don't think I've ever said this, but it was, and people have guessed. They're like, oh, he's a guy talking to his therapist or their businessman. We were, I was an agent.

• 1:54:17Sean Fennessey?

  Ah.

• 1:54:18Speaker 04

  Which makes total sense when you think about that show. So I don't know where that would have gone, but that's what I was told. And.

• 1:54:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's amazing because it actually just makes it way more legendary that A, we don't know. And B, that it didn't continue in that way.

• 1:54:32Speaker 04

  No, I know. I don't know if that had been a pilot and kept going, this would not be talked about in the way. The whole thing would be different. So again, that's another sliding doors. There's Mahal and Drive, the ABC show that lasts for one season. Or there's Mahal and Drive, the film.

• 1:54:47Speaker 04

  So.

• 1:54:47Sean Fennessey?

  You show up on set, what happens?

• 1:54:49Speaker 04

  I show up on set and I do terrible, terrible impersonations. So when I start to sound like him, it doesn't sound like him.

• 1:54:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:54:56Speaker 04

  But you'll understand. I go and so we rehearse the scene at the, at the table. And I do the monologue and I was doing what I thought was good acting. And David, who is one of the loveliest people who's ever lived, came and sat next to me and was just like, wow, that was, that was really good, Patrick. Really good.

• 1:55:20Speaker 04

  And I'm like, thank you. And he said, so, you know, let me just, let me just talk to you. You know, you're just having, you're just having a dream. You know, you just, you had a bad dream, right? You've had bad dreams. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he goes, and it's just, um, and he, he didn't want to say the word simple. But I could tell what he was telling me was just bring it, do, do a little bit less. Do a little bit less. Because I think what I was doing, if we could ever see that rehearsal footage, was pretty like, just didn't work for what he was doing and doesn't work for film and TV. And I instantly understood when he was like, you know, it's just, it's simple. It's just a, a bad dream. And I thought, okay.

• 1:56:04Speaker 04

  And I'm kind of internally panicking because I'm like, oh, I'm doing a bad job. And then something just clicked in me and I just shifted everything I was doing. And I could just tell right after I did it and him coming over and just putting his arm around me. And I just knew like, oh, this is what acting in front of a camera is. It's just, it, it's just less. It's just less.

• 1:56:31Sean Fennessey?

  And you'd been doing it for eight years at this point?

• 1:56:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I've been doing, you know, nothing that had a guy like that. Jan is amazing, but Jan's watching the stunts and the like, making everything be incredible. And David was not doing that.

• 1:56:48Sean Fennessey?

  This was still in the rehearsal, though?

• 1:56:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. But then we shot it and he never gave me a note again, that whole day. And we shot all of that in two days, I think. Cause then we did the inside and then we did the walk outside. Which I, he talked me through what he was gonna do sound wise.

• 1:57:04Sean Fennessey?

  That's what I was gonna ask you. Because so many of the choices that he's making in that scene, I feel like would inform how you would perform. Like, cutting out all of the background noise and the ambient sound, but then what he's gonna do with score? And then how even the camera is gonna move? Like, maybe you can help us understand what that's like when you're creating something. But it's all, there's, it's just artifice all around you.

• 1:57:25Speaker 04

  I mean, now in my career for many, many years, I'm, I'm very clear on what's happening with the camera, with direct. Like, I want to know everything because I understand that. I didn't fully get that then. But he was clear enough to say, we're gonna, he did tell me that like, a lot of the sound was gonna be taken out. But he didn't talk about score or anything. And at that point, I was so kind of in it that I just, I didn't even need to know anything. Cause I knew the idea was this guy, as we all would be, if we had a bad dream somewhere, to take your friend to that place, the, the dream is just what you're thinking about when you're walking down there. And so him taking out the sound and the score and the like, that, that's what it internally felt like to me. So I didn't even need to know that much.

• 1:58:09Speaker 04

  But he did include me in some of it. And camera wise, he didn't. But again, I, I'm not an actor-y actor, but I was kind of lost in all of that at the time, in a great way. I felt very just lost in the whole thing. Cause it was also, it's so Lynchian to be lost.

• 1:58:25Sean Fennessey?

  So does a moment like that spoil you as an actor where the next thing that you're working on that is more of a workaday type job? You're like, I wish I could get back to that feeling?

• 1:58:32Speaker 04

  That's an entire career. That is my entire career. Yes, yes, that is, that is, that, I, I would love to talk to any actor that wouldn't say, you get spoiled and then the next one may spoil you again, or it may not. And you just kind of gotta go and do it.

• 1:58:49Sean Fennessey?

  Well, how did, can you just talk about that interregnum between the, it not becoming a series? And then it ultimately becoming a film? I'm curious how you felt about it because I'm sure you felt like, I gave a good performance in a David Lynch thing and I want this to come out.

• 1:59:01Speaker 04

  I was like, I can't wait till everyone sees this. This is gonna change everything. And then we got word, ABC didn't pick it up. And I was like, okay. So back to the grind of auditioning for Step by Step or whatever, which I wasn't.

• 1:59:12Sean Fennessey?

  Has that happened many times though, where you were in things that eventually never?

• 1:59:15Speaker 04

  Yes, God, yes. It's again, continual. You just can't expect anything to be anything because when you don't expect it to be something, it's obsession. And when you like, meaning you just don't know. But I was bummed. I was severely bummed. And then I got a like, a letter in the mail. I'm not kidding. I got a letter in the mail from David, a typed letter saying, hey, Studio Canal wants to put up some money to turn Mulholland Drive into a movie. Would you, for scale, come back and do a little additional thing? Which is what ends up being when she turns around and sees me standing at the cash register. That was added.

• 1:59:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:59:56Speaker 04

  And I was like, oh my, obviously, of course. So we went back to that same place. I just did that little shot where Naomi looks over and I'm standing there. I had no idea what's going on. And then, next thing I know, it's a film. And the majority of the first hour and something is the pilot. Like, he really just shot another movie. Like, he shot like 45 minutes, I guess, of additional footage to turn it into a film.

• 2:00:24Sean Fennessey?

  This is an interesting contrast to the Speed Experience, too, because even though the Speed part is significantly smaller, you don't have a monologue, it's not this kind of iconic moment. It also, both sequences happen early in the film.

• 2:00:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:00:34Sean Fennessey?

  And you could forget them, just like people tend to forget the first hour of many movies after they sit down and watch them. But your scene, I mean, I remember I was in the theater when that movie came out, and we were all like, what the fuck just happened? Like, it really is such a truly memorable moment, in a film that is full of memorable moments and really impacts people in a very deep way. Did anything change after that? Because I'll tell you from the outside what changed for me.

• 2:01:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, please.

• 2:01:02Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think that that's when you ascend to the that guy status, where it's like, you are a person who, at a minimum, you will forever be associated with that. And then, when you see older things of you, and you're like, oh, my gosh, that guy. And I'm interested in that person, because they can do something that is very special. So even if your name is not yet known, you take on, you become a character in the wider world of Hollywood storytelling.

• 2:01:25Speaker 04

  Here's what I'll say. That is all absolutely true. It didn't happen at the time. It has happened over a progression of time. Because, at the time that movie comes out, it's not, it was like, people, I mean, obviously, he got a Best Director nomination, but it still didn't shift anything for me. I kind of just kept on the same, because the business was like, Naomi Watts is the thing you take away from that movie, not the guy at the diner. But the that guy status, what started is, that performance, as you just said, kind of helped people notice me in other stuff. And then it has built, what's happened over the years is that movie has become so incredibly

• 2:02:10Speaker 04

  iconic that my, that movie being associated with me has helped me much more in the last 15, 20 years than right when it came out, even though, I guess that's 25 years ago it came out.

• 2:02:23Sean Fennessey?

  Do you feel like that part is the thing that led to that, you know, Ghost World, Old School, Black Dahlia, like, you're in this like chain of movies where they're made by real filmmakers, and they're, or they're studio movies? And are you getting like called in to audition?

• 2:02:40Speaker 04

  No, I don't think so. I mean, I got in to audition for Ghost World, which my wife is in Ghost World as well. That was the first thing, she's the girl, have you seen that movie a lot?

• 2:02:48Sean Fennessey?

  Of course, yeah.

• 2:02:49Speaker 04

  At the yard sale, the one that's like, fuck you.

• 2:02:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that's great.

• 2:02:53Speaker 04

  That's my wife. So we have like three things we've crossed over together.

• 2:02:56Sean Fennessey?

  That's a phenomenal movie.

• 2:02:57Speaker 04

  It's an iconic moment. So that movie was an audition I had, and then, I mean, all of that was all me, just kind of, that part again was nothing, but sort of the pen in the ear was all me just kind of doing it. At the time, I honestly, I don't even remember, but I don't know how much that was all Mulholland Drive, but it was like a slow build, and Old School, I actually, this is fun to tell stories I've never told, but like, it was Piven and I for his part. And then, I didn't get it. And then, they were like, do you want to be this guy? And I'm like, sure, I'll be that guy. And so I did that, and then, it just kind of kept going. It kept, it just kind of kept growing, but I don't know how much at that time had to do with Mulholland Drive. Like, Black Dahlia had nothing to do with Mulholland Drive, because I auditioned for

• 2:03:42Speaker 04

  that, and I'm, Carrie was the first movie I saw in a theater, which is unfortunate, because I was six.

• 2:03:50Sean Fennessey?

  Nothing unfortunate about that.

• 2:03:52Speaker 04

  I know, it's pretty great. And I-

• 2:03:54Sean Fennessey?

  So De Palma was big for you.

• 2:03:56Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 2:03:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, the dressed to kill, blowout Carrie, that's it. So when I went in and read for that, I was really nervous, and when I was leaving, after I read, I just read, and he was there, and he was like, okay, thanks. And then I left, and before I left, I'm like, I just have to tell you, you mean a lot to me. Like, as a director, you have meant a lot to my life.

• 2:04:17Sean Fennessey?

  How did he receive that?

• 2:04:18Speaker 04

  Fine.

• 2:04:19Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, yeah. He's not the warmest.

• 2:04:20Speaker 04

  No, no. He received it De Palma-esque.

• 2:04:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:04:24Speaker 04

  And I was like, okay. And then I got it, and went to Bulgaria and shot that, which, I will share and be totally frank, that is a movie I think I'm not very good in. I think I'm fine. I think I may be miscast, I think I may be too young, and I also think I may not, I think I didn't, I still needed a director to help me, and no offense, I'm not sure that's what was going on. We were all in different movies, like Scarlett, and me, and Josh, and Hillary, we were all like, I kind of just felt like in different movies. And that is so interesting, because I'm really, sort of, I like, I like to look at myself and be like, honest about it. And I do remember kind of watching that and thinking, uh-oh, that's all right, it's not great.

• 2:05:02Sean Fennessey?

  So interesting, you know, Amanda and I always talk about duplicity, and like, if you did duplicity 100 times, like, would it come out better 99 times?

• 2:05:10Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 2:05:10Sean Fennessey?

  Black Dahlia is kind of one of those movies to me, too, where I'm like, it's all the right people, it's the right story, it's the right material.

• 2:05:17Speaker 04

  I mean, it was Phil Moesigman, Dante Ferretti, because I remember doing it and thinking, there we go, hold on, this is a perfect example of what you asked. I was like, oh, it's about to change, because 13 Oscar nominations, I was thinking of the Oscar nominations when I was there. And then I went to the premiere, and the air was going out of a tire, like, live while I was watching that movie, and thinking, oh. And I felt it on set, and I don't blame Brian, I don't, I don't even, I don't know what it was, we were all in different movies. And movies can't work if everybody's in a different movie. You all need to be doing the same thing, no matter what, the TV show, the movie, you all need to be on the same page. And that felt like something that, it just felt off. It felt like the, like you said, the parts didn't click. And maybe there's a version where the parts do click.

• 2:06:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's such an interesting thing. Is there ever a moment when you realize that on set, and you can change the dynamic or shift it?

• 2:06:09Speaker 04

  The director, I can't. I mean, I can only realize, and I, and I do realize it on set now, and I didn't then, because I was, again, 33, 30, I was young.

• 2:06:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:20Speaker 04

  That's why I think I was kind of too young for that role, but, and, you know, I just, I'm so grateful for him, because I loved doing it, and I got to travel a lot of that part of the country, and my wife came to visit me, and everybody was lovely, and, you know, there's nothing you can do about it, because you're not in charge. And so, if people are, I don't even think anyone was necessarily miscast, it was just, it just was a, you know, I like to cook, and sometimes you, the ingredients just, they don't make a dish that just tastes good.

• 2:06:49Sean Fennessey?

  You mentioned you have a daughter.

• 2:06:50Speaker 04

  I do.

• 2:06:50Sean Fennessey?

  Um.

• 2:06:51Speaker 04

  Fia.

• 2:06:52Sean Fennessey?

  This movie was made before you had her.

• 2:06:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:06:55Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm wondering, like, if your career and the jobs you took changed before you had a family?

• 2:07:00Speaker 04

  Hmm. If it changed once I had the family? No. No. Yes, sorry, yes, actually. I've been offered like, serial killer, like, which I would totally play a serial killer, if it was in something that was trying to do something, or was, but I've been offered things that are not, or child molesters, or things that I'm like, I don't want any part of that unless the writing is incredible. And I feel like we're going to touch on something that hasn't been touched on. So I have said no to stuff that just feels like, since my daughter, that I would have taken at 30.

• 2:07:37Sean Fennessey?

  I'm interested in that component, too, because many people think of a working actor as like somebody who's constantly trying to book jobs, but I love talking to Tracy Letts about this, about like, well, the things he said no to, where they're like, we want you because you're perfect for this, and you're like, well, this isn't something that I want to do, but also I want to pay the bills and take care of my family, and so on and so forth. Maybe can you talk about the decision-making, like, the financial component, the artistic component, how those two things fit together?

• 2:08:01Speaker 04

  Well, yes, as we said earlier, I'm good to say yes. I enjoy saying yes. But, and I enjoy making the money, because it helps to pay the bills and send my daughter to college and all of that stuff. But, it just, if it just feels wrong, it's not going to be fun for anybody, including myself, or anybody there. So, and, if, you know, I've been doing this a long time, so if you're not paying me what I feel like I should be paid- That's the other thing is I'm just, I'm okay to say no.

• 2:08:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:35Speaker 04

  Because I know something, I've always been this guy, that I know something else is around the corner and I know I'm gonna be okay. And, um, and I feel like it's served me. I, I, I've yet to be like, and I've done stuff for money. I'm, I'm not past doing stuff for money. I have no problem with that because I do have to, uh, it's my job.

• 2:08:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:53Speaker 04

  But I, uh, it's not hard to say no when something just feels like, nah, yeah.

• 2:08:59Sean Fennessey?

  Does some, does your antenna go up when something like Lost comes around? Where you're like, I know that this is a sensation and I'll do anything to be a part of it?

• 2:09:05Speaker 04

  Fuck, yes.

• 2:09:07Sean Fennessey?

  Can you talk about joint, cause I wanna hear about Lost and Mad Men and appearing on two shows just as they are, like, something is happening.

• 2:09:14Speaker 04

  I mean, just an incredible time. I was also at the same time on a show that didn't take off in the way I thought.

• 2:09:19Sean Fennessey?

  Southland, amazing show. I loved that show.

• 2:09:22Speaker 04

  That was like, what is happening in my life.

• 2:09:23Sean Fennessey?

  I know, that show was on AMC or HBO, it would've been different.

• 2:09:26Speaker 04

  It would've been, that show was, um, really incredible. So, Mad Men was first, so if we wanna, do you want me to talk about that before?

• 2:09:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, let's do Mad Men.

• 2:09:34Speaker 04

  So, Mad Men, I was out of town in Florida doing a show called Burn Notice.

• 2:09:40Sean Fennessey?

  That was a show as well.

• 2:09:41Speaker 04

  It was a show.

• 2:09:42Sean Fennessey?

  Popular show.

• 2:09:43Speaker 04

  And I was doing that and my manager, uh, who is, been my manager for years, I have two managers and they're amazing, she reached out to me and she said, hey, oh my God, I wish you were back, they're auditioning for this comedian on Mad Men, you'd be great for it. And this is before, again, self tapes, we are in a different era now. This is, this is, the, that self tape was not a thing. So I wasn't in LA and I was like, I, well, I'm shooting, I obviously can't come back. I landed and got a phone call from her and she's like, they're, they're doing one more day of Mad Men, can you get this, all these sides together tonight? And I'm like, oh, for fuck's sake. And I look at the material and, um, it was the, um, dinner scene when I go and, yeah.

• 2:10:28Sean Fennessey?

  From the benefactor, yes.

• 2:10:30Speaker 04

  So, something clicked where I knew this, I knew who this guy was. I really knew who this guy was. My dad, um, at the Roadhouse would insult people when they came in. He was a very gregarious guy with white hair and he stood in the front and he'd insult people and they'd laugh and people would come to be insulted. It was really, uh, interesting. And I had this moment of like, oh, this is kind of like my dad. And I thought, I also just, I didn't even watch anything, but I was like, oh, I kind of feel like, uh, I get this kind of insult comedian. And I wanted him to have some sort of charm, cause I didn't want it to, and he wasn't Don Rickles, it's not Don Rickles.

• 2:11:15Speaker 04

  Like, he was kind of Don Rickles meets Joey Bishop, in my mind. And so, I went in and I read, I met Matt and there is a New York Times Magazine that you, you, article you can find about, there was a reporter in the room when I auditioned. And it's in the New York Times Magazine, so I only know all of this from fucking reading the article.

• 2:11:39Sean Fennessey?

  And you didn't know when you walked in that room at that time?

• 2:11:40Speaker 04

  No, it was Matt, casting, this woman, I thought she was a producer. And she wrote about.

• 2:11:46Sean Fennessey?

  A little unfair to you.

• 2:11:47Speaker 04

  It's kind of awful.

• 2:11:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:48Speaker 04

  Cause she writes about, they couldn't find this part and they kept seeing people. You have to find this, Google my name, New York Times Magazine, um, not New York, it was, you know, in the, in the Times, on Sundays, yeah.

• 2:11:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:11:59Speaker 04

  And it was a whole article on Matt and it was.

• 2:12:01Sean Fennessey?

  This is coming off of the first season, the success of the first season and we're leading into Mad Men season two, yes.

• 2:12:06Speaker 04

  And so she talks about, and in, I'm not giving myself a fucking compliment here, I'm quoting what it said, she goes, "And in came gold." And she talks about Matt's shoulders going down and like, to read about what someone was in an audition experiencing with you, I've never had since, I'll probably never have again, cause that's not a thing, reporters are not in rooms, so.

• 2:12:28Sean Fennessey?

  Great for your legend.

• 2:12:29Speaker 04

  Dude, dude. So, but I knew when I was in the room and I knew Matt, I could tell his energy to me was like, oh shit, I just got it, I got the guy. And so then I read, got the part, go to the table read, and the woman who was playing my wife, Melinda McGraw, is older than me. And Matt came up to me after the read and he's like, we gotta do something to make you look older, it's a problem. And I'm like, I'm getting fired. I can't fucking believe I'm getting fired from Mad Men. And I, my hair is very white. I, most jobs dye it, like the show I'm on right now, colors it. And I said to him, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, it's really white under here. And he goes, what? And I go, look, look, look, so I show him my roots and he's like, okay, we gotta go, let me get hair.

• 2:13:12Speaker 04

  So they got the hair department and he's like, I want him to have all white on the sides and that'll help age him. So don't dye your hair, we'll just dye the top, cut this short. All of this is happening as I'm thinking, fuck, am I fired, am I fired, am I fired? And I wasn't fired, obviously. Um, and then I go and do Mad Men.

• 2:13:31Sean Fennessey?

  It's a wonderful thing, cause your performance is phenomenal. It's also, you know, coming off of a moment where the show gets very hot all of a sudden after that first year, so a lot of people are interested in it. It's also, it's the media's favorite show, so they're constantly talking about it. But it's also, your character is so pivotal to the rest of the future of the series.

• 2:13:48Speaker 04

  Dude.

• 2:13:48Sean Fennessey?

  Because of what he does and how, what, how he affects Betty and Don's marriage. So like, you're one of the 10 most important characters in the history of that show.

• 2:13:56Speaker 04

  I kind of knew it when we were doing it.

• 2:13:57Sean Fennessey?

  You did?

• 2:13:58Speaker 04

  Oh, well, I, I knew what I was do, meaning, I'm the first person, like, I'd telling Don off, calling him on his shit and telling, uh, Betty about his affair. So I knew it at the time, I'm like, this is insane. And, um, when I did the first episode, you know, I hadn't seen scripts, I didn't know what was coming. But Matt did say to me, he goes, to help your performance, you're gonna have a line in six episodes from now. I'm, I've been standing behind guys like that my whole life. And I was like, my God, like, I just got it.

• 2:14:29Sean Fennessey?

  Did you know then that you were on a, like, a six episode run, that it was gonna be multiple episodes in a row?

• 2:14:34Speaker 04

  I think they had told me, I forget, but I think they told my reps.

• 2:14:37Sean Fennessey?

  Is that usually how it works?

• 2:14:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:14:39Sean Fennessey?

  Like for Paradise, are you like, I'm signing up for X number of episodes?

• 2:14:41Speaker 04

  Yes, with Paradise, I knew, um, yes, they tell you, they, uh, shows that haven't mapped out usually tell you, yeah, most of the shows I've done recently in the last years, yeah. So Mad Men, I think they had told me how many I was doing. But he, I didn't know, I didn't know that I was telling, I didn't know any of that. So he just wanted me to know, here to help you, this is, this is a line you're gonna have, does that help? And I'm like, that's it, that's the guy, that is literally the guy. I've been standing behind guys like this my whole life, is the line, I mean, that's who this guy was.

• 2:15:10Sean Fennessey?

  I still think that's the best show, it is my favorite, just going back to look at what you were doing yesterday, I was like, I'm in my happiest place watching this show.

• 2:15:16Speaker 04

  It is really remarkable. So, that was spectacular and super fortunate and I, again, that is, that show was the career shifter for me.

• 2:15:24Sean Fennessey?

  Was it?

• 2:15:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was the game changer.

• 2:15:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's, that's interesting to hear, so, does that lead directly to Lost?

• 2:15:29Speaker 04

  That leads to Lost, that leads directly, and Carlton, my first recurring thing on TV, was a show called Nash Bridges.

• 2:15:36Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, of course.

• 2:15:37Speaker 04

  Oh, boy.

• 2:15:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, the late Chuck Norris.

• 2:15:40Speaker 04

  Off mic, we can talk about that, no, not Chuck Norris.

• 2:15:42Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I'm sorry, Don Johnson. Not, not Walker, Texas Ranger, Nash Bridges.

• 2:15:46Speaker 04

  No, no, no, the other ones, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson.

• 2:15:48Sean Fennessey?

  My apologies.

• 2:15:49Speaker 04

  Boy, oh boy, anyways.

• 2:15:51Sean Fennessey?

  Fun production?

• 2:15:52Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:15:54Speaker 04

  And so, again, I'm 24, 25, recurring on the show, playing a character now I'd be canceled for, I, again, I mean, seriously, never, it is so.

• 2:16:03Sean Fennessey?

  On network television?

• 2:16:04Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, so offensive, I, I honestly, I just can't even, but I, I mean, look, in fairness to me, I didn't know what the hell was going on, the world was different. It was, it's the, that was a whole ball of something, but, um, Carlton Hughes wrote on that show, Damon Lindelof wrote on that show, Sean Ryan wrote on that show. I mean, that show found some sort of something.

• 2:16:24Sean Fennessey?

  All of those network shows were crucibles for all those creators who you ended up working with later in your career.

• 2:16:28Speaker 04

  And so that was lost. And so then I get a call, um, that they want you to come do Lost, and that was an example of they didn't tell me how many episodes. I just went and did that first one and then I kept not being able to leave, cause they're like, wait, you're in the next one, wait, you're in the next one. And my wife was pregnant. And so, I will always give credit to this, to Damon, the line producer, everybody for helping me, but I knew we were done, they kept saying, and I said, am I in the finale? And they said, yes. And I said, my wife is due, I, I, I can't, either you have to shoot me out way at the beginning, or I can't do the end episodes. And they changed the, they put all of my stuff, which people don't do on big productions,

• 2:17:10Speaker 04

  they do not do, especially, I wasn't some huge part or anything, but they, um.

• 2:17:14Sean Fennessey?

  Critical, though.

• 2:17:15Speaker 04

  I guess, sure, you know? And then, they did it for me and I was able to get back, I, I had to be back like three weeks in case, you know, my, my daughter came early and I just was like, no job. There are just things, you're just, nothing in my life am I ever missing for, for any kind of job, no matter what the job.

• 2:17:32Sean Fennessey?

  That's such fascinating timing, too, that your daughter would be born at this time when it feels like everything changed, where you're like, I, I assume stability is a part of that, like?

• 2:17:40Speaker 04

  For the most part, with a window in there where I did think like, oh, I was wrong. My, it comes up later where I had a sort of dry period where I, and it, it came at a time when my wife was on True Blood, she was on True Blood for five years. So the timing was okay, because we've always seesawed, kind of. But I knew in my heart it was all gonna be fine. But yes, my daughter, I think children bring great luck and great fortune and great everything and she brought that for sure, cause it was all just happening. And Lost was one of those things, then that year, Lost and Mad Men were the five nominated writing Emmy draw, those two shows, so I went to the WGA Awards and presented because I was on both shows.

• 2:18:25Speaker 04

  So it was pretty fucking cool to be like, oh, wait, these five things nominated are all something that I got to say the words of.

• 2:18:31Sean Fennessey?

  That is absolutely amazing. What's it like being in, um, a marriage with somebody who is doing the same job as you?

• 2:18:37Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 2:18:39Sean Fennessey?

  You talk about the work?

• 2:18:41Speaker 04

  Well, we've been together so long, we talk about the business more than the work, but we talk about the work, we talk about everything. I mean, she's my best friend and, I mean, it's just my, my life, but, uh, yeah, I love it, people are always like, don't marry, and I'm like, that's complete bullshit. If you're stable and you're cool and you guys love each other and you're best friends, you can both be actors, it's all gonna be okay.

• 2:19:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's interesting.

• 2:19:01Speaker 04

  So.

• 2:19:03Sean Fennessey?

  What is the, what is the down period that comes up? This is after the shows?

• 2:19:07Speaker 04

  It was after Mad Men lost Southland. And there's like, if we look at my M D B page, there's like a period that's like, eh, what was I, I don't know.

• 2:19:19Sean Fennessey?

  Did you, did you ever think about quitting?

• 2:19:21Speaker 04

  No, God, never, literally.

• 2:19:23Sean Fennessey?

  Never.

• 2:19:24Speaker 04

  Twenty-two on never. It was never an option and I knew I wouldn't have to. No, so when I see a down period, I still worked, but I'd maybe get a guest spot of one episode. Or like, it was sustaining me, but it wasn't, it's so hard to go from the best show on TV to, you know, I don't know, whatever I did. But it was, it was a little bit of a, a period of time that just felt like I was not being seen. You know?

• 2:19:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:52Speaker 04

  And that was, that was a little challenging.

• 2:19:54Sean Fennessey?

  You were, you were a little critical of your own performance in Black Dahlia. Is there anything that you've ever done that maybe is lesser seen or lesser known that you're like, I know I crushed this. I know that I was good in this.

• 2:20:05Speaker 04

  Defending Jacob, an Apple.

• 2:20:08Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't seen it. Is this the Chris Evans show?

• 2:20:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:20:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yeah.

• 2:20:11Speaker 04

  Um, I, that was a perfect example. I shot that and I thought,

• 2:20:18Speaker 04

  I mean, here we go. Chris Evans is doing TV. This is a game changer. And that was it. Such a great story. The showrunner of that told me when my audition came in, he saw my face and was like, oh, he's not right for this because it's a grieving dad who's, I'm the dad of the, the kid who's been killed. Um, and he just was like, I mean, I love that actor, but he's always playing the asshole or the villain or the this. And so he watched my tape and said to me, I was totally wrong. You floored me. And that was one of the best auditions I've ever given, ever. Because it's in a very emotional scene and that's, emotion stuff is, is often hard. I can, I can find it in my later life.

• 2:21:03Speaker 04

  It's post-kid, super easy to find.

• 2:21:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:06Speaker 04

  And this is a thing.

• 2:21:07Sean Fennessey?

  I relate to that, yeah.

• 2:21:08Speaker 04

  About a kid who's passed, who was murdered. And so he totally, it was amazing to have someone be honest with me. That is the business. They want to box us. And I'm just like, don't box me. I, I promise you, I can, I can do a lot of stuff. And so defending Jacob was one of those things that when I was shooting it, I did think, and I, and I'm good in it. And I thought, oh my God, I can't wait for the world to see it. And then COVID came out, COVID came and it came out in April 2020. So again, people were home and the reviews weren't great, but it's fine enough that I thought people would watch. And Chris is one of the loveliest people I've ever worked with. He is an absolute joy.

• 2:21:53Sean Fennessey?

  So that, when you say you thought everything would change and you had that thought a few times, was part of that thinking like, maybe I won't be typecast as the asshole or as the villain?

• 2:22:03Speaker 04

  That's exactly it, which I'm, I'm really, I'm really not anymore. I will say the business doesn't, um, they, there are people that still want that and they wanna, they wanna limit you because, you know, I think it's easier for them. And I'm happy to play the asshole. Like I, I love playing the asshole. It's great. Um, but I also wanna play the this or the that. And I, and I feel like I'm really getting to. I feel like I'm really, really getting to do that.

• 2:22:29Sean Fennessey?

  What do you, what do you, why do you think that is?

• 2:22:32Speaker 04

  Because I think I'm older and I'm done enough work that a lot of directors and showrunners and writers trust me. And they just know that I'm capable of much more than people maybe thought at first. You know, I'm not just Jimmy Barrett. I can do Jimmy Barrett because I have an ability to do a lot of different things.

• 2:22:52Sean Fennessey?

  Right, right.

• 2:22:53Speaker 04

  You know, that, that's why.

• 2:22:55Sean Fennessey?

  So I find you at an interesting time where you're in a bunch of things.

• 2:22:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:23:00Sean Fennessey?

  And I feel like you're being used differently in all of the things.

• 2:23:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:23:03Sean Fennessey?

  Um, you know, the, the top of the list for, for this show is, is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

• 2:23:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:23:10Sean Fennessey?

  Where I feel like you're being used almost as like a talisman, like almost as like a sign to the audience of like, do you know what movie you're watching?

• 2:23:17Speaker 04

  That is.

• 2:23:17Sean Fennessey?

  You remember Patrick? This is what he represents to us. Like, is that how you felt about it?

• 2:23:22Speaker 04

  That's how Jane feels about it. I think, I'm putting words in their mouth, but um, I, yes, I do think that as well. I think that is Imbolholland Drive talisman, to be honest. And I think, I remember when I got the offer for that, um, and I love TV Glow. So I was pretty thrilled and I'm a Friday the 13th absolute fanatic. The first one is, again, I, I could talk about Friday 13th forever. It, I like when killers are not just monsters, but the fact, anyways, spoiler alert for Friday 13th.

• 2:23:57Sean Fennessey?

  You're wearing a Halloween t-shirt today, but you're repping for Friday the 13th.

• 2:23:59Speaker 04

  I am, I am, because I don't have a Camp Crystal Lake shirt and if I did, I maybe would've worn it. But.

• 2:24:04Sean Fennessey?

  I have one, that would've been great if I'd worn it today.

• 2:24:06Speaker 04

  Oh, fuck, I should've.

• 2:24:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:06Speaker 04

  Um, but when I got the script and then I spoke to Jane and I'm, I mean, I, I thought the idea is so brilliant and I thought, I, I, I love your work. I told Jane whatever you want, but I looked at it and that part is like the, the guy at the gas station, it was written, not me. And I said, hey, I have thoughts. If you want me to do this, maybe it's not like the normal, you know, like hick at the gas station guy. And Jane was like, what is it? Tell me, I'll, what do you think? And I was like, what if I'm in like a sports coat? And it's more of like Norman Bates combined with something else. And Jane was like, let me go rewrite it.

• 2:24:48Speaker 04

  And then sent me pages, rewrote the, that stuff. And I was, my answer was like, amazing. Yes, I'm in.

• 2:24:55Sean Fennessey?

  So the thing that interests me about that, from your perspective is like, what does it mean to become a signal to movie culture? You know, that like your, just your mere presence communicates something to those. Obviously it's a very meta film and it's a film for, that really rewards like horror obsession.

• 2:25:10Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:25:10Sean Fennessey?

  But for you as a person, that you've gotten to a place in your career where someone is casting you in a part because of what you tell us about what kind of movie you're watching.

• 2:25:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. I, I mean, it's everything.

• 2:25:22Sean Fennessey?

  It, it's. Pretty cool.

• 2:25:23Speaker 04

  It, it's, no one has said that to me and I haven't been able to put that in those exact words, but that is, that is everything. That's all, that's all I could ask for. Like, I don't need, I don't need anything at this point, but that's pretty fucking cool.

• 2:25:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:37Speaker 04

  And Jane, I, I remember writing them a note after shooting because Jane reminds me of David Lynch. And there, there's something similar happening of not caring what anybody thinks and just putting a singular vision on screen. And so yes, I'm happy to be a talisman. I'm thrilled to be a talisman, please.

• 2:26:02Sean Fennessey?

  So interesting. I do want to ask quickly about, um, working on L A Noir, the video game.

• 2:26:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:07Sean Fennessey?

  Which is another like working actor thing, like that's a job.

• 2:26:11Speaker 04

  Only game I've ever done. I, I don't say yes to games. I don't want to do games.

• 2:26:14Sean Fennessey?

  Why did you want to do this?

• 2:26:16Speaker 04

  Because it was right after Mad Men and it felt like cool. I don't know, something felt cool about it and different. Again, I didn't know people, I've never, I think I've seen my image on the game. I, I don't, I don't.

• 2:26:27Sean Fennessey?

  You don't play, you're not, not a gamer.

• 2:26:28Speaker 04

  Uh-uh. I played Atari and.

• 2:26:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, that's a little different.

• 2:26:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:31Sean Fennessey?

  But it's a different kind of acting, right? Cause presumably it's a mocap?

• 2:26:34Speaker 04

  Oh, it's all mocap.

• 2:26:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:36Speaker 04

  And it was, the craziest part was the room with all the cameras in the face. And you know, the mocap was all, they had the, the whole sets laid out and the, um, all the, you know, whatever, silverware and, you had to, you had it all there, but then you had to go into the room with all the cameras around you and do the face stuff.

• 2:26:52Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 2:26:52Speaker 04

  It was pretty remarkable and I'm so glad I did that because it was super cool. And I'm, wait, who do I play in it?

• 2:26:57Sean Fennessey?

  Mickey Cohen.

• 2:26:58Speaker 04

  Right. And then I played, yes, and I played Meyer Lansky on the Frank Darabont show that didn't last, Lost Angels or whatever.

• 2:27:05Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 2:27:06Speaker 04

  Yes. So I did that. I remember that was one, there we go. I was in the finale and I'm like, season two. This is Meyer Lansky and, and Darabont was so lovely. And I'm like, I can't wait for, wait, it's canceled? Oh, okay. Oh shit, all right, that's over.

• 2:27:22Sean Fennessey?

  What a weird career you have. I have to ask you on Amanda's behalf, something's got a gift?

• 2:27:28Speaker 04

  Oh, tell Amanda, well, she'll hear this.

• 2:27:31Sean Fennessey?

  She'll hear this.

• 2:27:32Speaker 04

  Um, I had to audition for that. I want to really give the real answer here. I think I had to read for it four times because Nancy is very specific.

• 2:27:43Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:27:43Speaker 04

  Four times. I think I have three lines. Um, maybe four lines, four times. And at the time, I remember being like, what, what's happening? When they called me back, the note was A or the note was B, very small. And I'm like, okay. And I was fine doing it because I knew who the movie starred. And then I will say this, shooting it, there's maybe no one lovelier in the world than Diane Keaton. That was, she was just the best. And I was a young guy and I was so starstruck and she was so lovely. And then Jack was just watching the Lakers. I mean, no joke. Literally they had to bring a TV to set because we were in like a big theater downtown.

• 2:28:28Speaker 04

  I forgot which one. And she's, he's just got the TV rolled in because it was at a time when, and you know, she's just talking to me and he's just watching the Lakers. And I was like, Hollywood.

• 2:28:39Sean Fennessey?

  That's really great. Um, maybe setting aside Mulholland Drive, what's your favorite thing you've been a part of or maybe your best experience on a project?

• 2:28:49Speaker 04

  Oh, man. Oh, my God. Oh, um, there's a very undiscovered gem of a TV show that I don't know if you can find it anywhere called Happy. It stars Chris Maloney.

• 2:29:01Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:29:01Speaker 04

  I just did it in, uh, we did two seasons. It was sci-fi. S that not like S C I S Y.

• 2:29:08Sean Fennessey?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:29:10Speaker 04

  And, uh,

• 2:29:11Sean Fennessey?

  What, what years?

• 2:29:11Speaker 04

  Netflix, 2018, 2019.

• 2:29:14Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:29:14Speaker 04

  Uh, it's based on a graphic novel by Grant Morrison.

• 2:29:17Sean Fennessey?

  Of course.

• 2:29:18Speaker 04

  About a hitman who starts seeing an imaginary blue flying donkey that's his daughter's um, imaginary friend that was voiced by Patton Oswalt. And I'm Smoothie, who's the big villain of the show for two years. It is so spectacular. Brian Taylor.

• 2:29:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:29:36Speaker 04

  It's his show. Um,

• 2:29:37Sean Fennessey?

  I've never seen it. I don't know it.

• 2:29:39Speaker 04

  I find it. It's so fucking weird. It's so over the top. We did two seasons of it. I was so proud of it. It's balls to the walls. It, I love Maloney. Uh, I loved working with him. Our chemistry was great. And I'm the big villain that carries through the two seasons that it was on the air. And it was an amazing experience and nobody watched

• 2:29:57Sean Fennessey?

  Happy?

• 2:29:58Speaker 04

  Happy.

• 2:29:58Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:29:59Speaker 04

  Exclamation point. Happy exclamation point.

• 2:30:01Sean Fennessey?

  Um, before I let you go, let's, let's nerd out about movies a little bit.

• 2:30:04Speaker 04

  Please go.

• 2:30:04Sean Fennessey?

  So you're, you actually are watching new releases regularly?

• 2:30:09Speaker 04

  In the theater, of course. I mean, I have not seen the new release, but I'm going Sunday.

• 2:30:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:30:13Speaker 04

  Cause we had to wait. I have to take my, my daughter again, making her go to the theater. But yes, I'm seeing, I mean, I just saw The Invite, which is one of my favorite films of the year.

• 2:30:21Sean Fennessey?

  Wonderful. So I'm, I'm interested in your like ability to still be enthusiastic about it. When you're watching a movie, are you seeing the stitching and the choices that are made in a different way than like, are you explaining to your daughter, well, here's how they did this, or I've been on a set that does this?

• 2:30:37Speaker 04

  She loves movies. She loves writing. She loves a lot. So I don't explain, at this point, she's in. Um, no, I gotta tell you, man, it's the best. I watch things. I love things. Like, I wanna go in, I'm not going in judgmental, which is not common for actors and direct, and people in this business.

• 2:30:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:30:54Speaker 04

  I want to be swept away. I wanna be emotional. I could cry at anything. So I'm so open. So when I don't really like something, which is rare, but has happened this summer, there, there's been some things I've seen that I've been like either disappointed by or they've been okay, or.

• 2:31:11Sean Fennessey?

  Me as well.

• 2:31:11Speaker 04

  Um, I'm open. I'm totally open. And I don't watch the, I don't even think about actors on set, you know? I think about watching The Invite. I think about how fucking good the writing is. And I think about choices they're making, um, and how incredible they are. Um, but I, I really, I go in really wanting and open to this being great. I'm so excited to see stuff.

• 2:31:35Sean Fennessey?

  What about TV? Do you watch a lot of TV?

• 2:31:37Speaker 04

  We watch way too much TV. I'm, I just, none of it's ever gonna go away. We watch so much TV. Like, we're, we have a couple, we're slow with TV, my wife and I, cause we have like six shows going at once, which is kind of insane.

• 2:31:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:50Speaker 04

  But like, you know, we're still trying to get through Beef. We're getting through Widows Bay. We finished Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed. It's exhausting. I am so busy in my life right now that we laugh like we find time to just squeeze it in. But the same with TV. I am so open to wanting things to be good. I'm excited.

• 2:32:07Sean Fennessey?

  How much of when you're watching things is just like kind of industrial concern for the health of Hollywood? Like, do you think about that? Like, I think about that for reasons that are mysterious to me. Like, I'm like, why do I care about this so much? But I do. And I, it's a lens through which I see a lot of things. You know, once I'm done being swept away by something.

• 2:32:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:32:24Sean Fennessey?

  And I've figured, tried to figure out why I like it.

• 2:32:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:32:26Sean Fennessey?

  Then immediately it's like, well, what does it mean?

• 2:32:28Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:32:28Sean Fennessey?

  How does it impact XYZ?

• 2:32:29Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:32:30Sean Fennessey?

  And when I think, sit down to write about something, it's always a, through that lens? And I'm trying to figure out why that is. But I'm curious for somebody who actually does the job, who is actually reliant upon, you know, the health of the movie business or the health of television or streaming versus whatever else is the other alternative. Are you thinking with that cap on?

• 2:32:47Speaker 04

  I'm not, but we're fucked. No, I'm just kidding. Um,

• 2:32:50Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't, it seems like it's really, really bad and also okay at the same time.

• 2:32:54Speaker 04

  It's the weirdest feeling. That is exactly what it is.

• 2:32:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:56Speaker 04

  It's so scary. And it's not going great. And then at the same time, I'm like, I think we're okay. So I don't understand the feelings I'm feeling. I'm confused by them.

• 2:33:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:06Speaker 04

  Um, but I feel it with TV. TV's weird. TV's not great. Here's why TV's not great. I'll tell you this. I just listened to, um, a while back, David Kelly on, um, The Town.

• 2:33:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 2:33:16Speaker 04

  And he described this, that when he used to make TV, that, um, it was like, the execs were like, um, customers at a restaurant who would just be at their table and say, I don't love this. And the chef would be, the showrunner would be like, oh, let me get you something else. And they'd go and fix it, or let me fix that for you. All good. Now, the execs who are the customers say, I don't like this. I'm gonna come in the kitchen with you and I'm going to tell you what to do. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna cook the meal. And it's like, that doesn't work. Execs are, the best shows are, I think, when execs give their notes, but also step back. And there's a lot of just touching that doesn't need to be happening.

• 2:33:57Sean Fennessey?

  From your perspective, as a, not a creator or showrunner, do you think that that is just because it's a very data oriented business that tells you the things that we, they believe people do and do not want?

• 2:34:08Speaker 04

  Yes. Yes. I think we are, not we, you and me personally, but the business is relying on computers to tell them what, the, the joke in Barry, the algorithm joke.

• 2:34:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:21Speaker 04

  It's not a joke. It's totally real. It's just really scary. That they're like, this is, there's no audience for this. And it's a computer telling them based on data. But it's, yet, stuff comes out. If, um, I can't believe Baby Reindeer was adolescence that a network that relies, a streaming service, I guess they'll never hire me again, relies on an algorithm, let those shows that then became huge, and they're not realizing, oh, maybe we don't need to, can you imagine adolescence being put through an algorithm?

• 2:34:54Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 2:34:55Speaker 04

  Of who, what? That, an algorithm would say, no one wants to watch something like that. So, um, yeah, it's a little bit weird. It's very weird right now. It's very weird. I'm glad I'm not, um, 20. No offense to 20 year olds, but, or 24. I'm glad as an actor, I'm not starting out right now. Cause it's, um, it's a little scary.

• 2:35:12Sean Fennessey?

  Do you encourage people to do it? Wouldn't people ask you like, can you make a living? Is it something I should pursue?

• 2:35:17Speaker 04

  I tell them, if there's anything else you wanna do, do it. Do the other thing.

• 2:35:20Sean Fennessey?

  Really?

• 2:35:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:35:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's what I tell young people who wanna be journalists. That's so funny that you say that. But why are we so?

• 2:35:25Speaker 04

  Wise?

• 2:35:26Sean Fennessey?

  Cause it's, no, but like, it, it worked out. Like, we're okay.

• 2:35:28Speaker 04

  Because I didn't wanna do anything else more than I wanted to do this. Like, I love what I do. And that doesn't mean, but if I, I've gone and spoken at, at, uh, acting classes, universities, and I've said, you know, do you have anything else? Do you, you know, if someone's like, I love interior designing as well. I'm like, oh, you should do that. If acting is the only thing you want to do, if there's nothing else, you're like, I can't see any other light. God, go. Just go toward the acting light. But if there's anything else, it's just, it's just hard. It's just hard. And you will, you gotta fight and you gotta stand up for yourself. All the same stuff. You know, it's just, it's not easy. And the business is getting harder.

• 2:36:05Sean Fennessey?

  Patrick, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? You, you mentioned The Invite.

• 2:36:12Speaker 04

  Fuck, why did I say The Invite?

• 2:36:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you shouldn't have said that. You're gonna have to go back to something before that, I think.

• 2:36:16Speaker 04

  Obsession.

• 2:36:17Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. So you mentioned you're a horror fanatic.

• 2:36:20Speaker 04

  That's why.

• 2:36:21Sean Fennessey?

  And it's a movie that I think took off, got huge.

• 2:36:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:36:26Sean Fennessey?

  And then anything that gets huge, there's a significant backlash to it as well.

• 2:36:29Speaker 04

  I saw it opening weekend. I saw it before, and I took my wife hates horror. My daughter loves horror. I took my wife, cause I'd read the reviews and I'm like, I think this is special. This is not what you think it is. And she fucking loved it. We all three loved it.

• 2:36:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:42Speaker 04

  Loved it.

• 2:36:43Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like it did, it crossed that Rubicon of non-horror likers, got interested in it.

• 2:36:47Speaker 04

  Because there's two scenes that are hard, maybe. But otherwise, it's just, you know, and it's well directed, it's well written, it's well acted, it's, it's great. It's great. But by the way, I should say that this, I, we're big on showing my daughter movies. And this weekend, we showed her Moneyball and Memento.

• 2:37:03Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. What did she think of those?

• 2:37:04Speaker 04

  Loved. Memento, she said, maybe one of her favorite movies she's ever, I did, she hasn't been Nolan, she hasn't been, and she's going to The Odyssey this weekend with us. So I said to her, let me show you, let's start without the following, let's start at the beginning.

• 2:37:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:16Speaker 04

  And, um, she just was absolutely blown away.

• 2:37:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's a big leap from Memento to The Odyssey.

• 2:37:21Speaker 04

  I know. Sorry. We missed the in-between. I know, we'll get back to it. She'll get to it. I just, it felt like the right time to show her that. And, you know, and, and Moneyball, we went through 25 of 25. I was looking through and I'm like, which by the way, I laughed. I'm, I'm on two of them.

• 2:37:34Sean Fennessey?

  What's the second one?

• 2:37:35Speaker 04

  Somebody's gotta give.

• 2:37:36Sean Fennessey?

  Of course. Of course. How can I ask you about both?

• 2:37:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:37:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Well, that, maybe that's why you're sitting here.

• 2:37:40Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 2:37:41Sean Fennessey?

  Cause you're an icon of this show as well.

• 2:37:42Speaker 04

  I'm 10%.

• 2:37:43Sean Fennessey?

  You've been, uh, incredibly generous with your time and, and your candor. I appreciate you speaking honestly about your, your working career. Thank you.

• 2:37:50Speaker 04

  I thank you guys for doing this show because it really does, it means a lot.

• 2:37:55Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks, Patrick.

• 2:37:56Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:37:58Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Patrick for sharing his life. What a great chat. Thanks to the listeners for your questions today. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on today's episode. Thanks to Lucas Cavanagh for his production support. Later this week, we are talking about Jane Schoenbrun's fascinating new feature, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, with several very special guests. We'll see you then.

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