‘She’s the One’ With Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Wesley Morris

Three frustrated Irish Catholics head to Long Island and share a couple of beers while revisiting Ed Burns’s 1996 romantic comedy, ‘She’s the One,’ starring Ed Burns, Jennifer Aniston, Cameron Diaz, and Mike McGlone. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Matt Pevic 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.

• 0:06Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find the big picture with Sean Finacy.

• 0:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 0:12Bill Simmons?

  That pod's still going.

• 0:13Sean Fennessey?

  We're still doing it.

• 0:14Bill Simmons?

  Movies are happening.

• 0:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, a lot of movies.

• 0:16Bill Simmons?

  The Odyssey's coming, the Odyssey.

• 0:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, seen it soon.

• 0:18Bill Simmons?

  Odyssey's, is that gonna be the sequel?

• 0:20Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 0:20Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 0:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but it's S.E.A.S.

• 0:23Bill Simmons?

  Three S.

• 0:24Sean Fennessey?

  And it's set in high seas.

• 0:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh, two.

• 0:27Speaker 02

  Deciding.

• 0:27Sean Fennessey?

  Too odda too sea.

• 0:30Bill Simmons?

  Too, oh, like Too Fast Too Furious, I like it. Wesley Morris is here. We used to work with him a long time ago back at a website called Grantland, that had podcasts and video and all kinds of things. And now you're at the New York Times and you have a podcast there called Cannonball?

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 0:45Bill Simmons?

  And you write things.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  I do write things.

• 0:47Bill Simmons?

  And?

• 0:48Speaker 02

  I write things.

• 0:48Sean Fennessey?

  What are you writing?

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Uh, well, the reason that we're starting late is because I'm in the middle of trying to get published a potato salad essay.

• 0:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, we'll talk about that later. Right now, we're gonna talk about...

• 1:02Speaker 02

  You don't wanna talk about potatoes.

• 1:04Bill Simmons?

  No, we're gonna talk about the potato salad of mid 90s rom-coms. A movie very dear, dear to my heart and Sean's heart. And maybe not to Wesley's, but he's promised to be nice.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  I cannot wait to talk to you guys about this because...

• 1:16Bill Simmons?

  And then Craig's take at the end, this is gonna be elite. She's the one is next. This episode is brought to you by Angry Orchard Hard Cider. Halloween's just better with a scary movie and something good to drink. Angry Orchard's limited edition glow-in-the-dark thriller variety pack is the perfect companion. It even includes a mystery flavor can featuring the iconic Ghostface from Scream. Don't get angry, get orchard this Halloween. Find Angry Orchard in a store near you or visit angryorchard.com. Angry Orchard Cider Company LLC. Angryorchard.com, please drink responsibly. Angry Orchard is a hard cider with other natural flavors.

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• 3:13Bill Simmons?

  The male POV rom-com, Almost a Unicorn. Uh, sure. We're used to these during the female perspective. Appetow is able to do it with Knocked Out Forty Year Old Version. His whole universe had forgetting Sarah Marshall. We had High Fidelity with Hitch, movie that might be on the rewatchables this month for all we know. Interesting. 500 Days of Summer, Crazy Stupid Love. Occasionally, we have the rom-coms told through the lens of the men. Yeah, yeah. Something Ed Burns loved to do. Ed Burns does it here in She's the One, his follow-up to Brothers McMullen, a very formative movie. We'll let Sean start here, because Sean's a Long Island kid. Sure. Who loved Ed Burns.

• 3:57Bill Simmons?

  Um, yeah, let's just do the...

• 4:01Sean Fennessey?

  Let's do the Sean Ed Burns comment.

• 4:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, let's do it. Let's go.

• 4:05Sean Fennessey?

  Let's just do it.

• 4:06Bill Simmons?

  Let's get it over with.

• 4:07Sean Fennessey?

  Cause I'm, I'm, I'm 13 years old when The Brothers McMullin arrives in theaters and.

• 4:13Bill Simmons?

  After having been a thing at Sundance.

• 4:15Sean Fennessey?

  Huge Sundance movie that was effectively pre-bought by Fox. But still legendary story where Ed Burns, who's working as a, as a P A on Entertainment Tonight, hands a video cassette of a rough cut to Robert Redford, who's there promoting a movie. I don't know what movie it was.

• 4:33Bill Simmons?

  Big Shot Bob.

• 4:34Sean Fennessey?

  So Big Shot Bob, who of course founded and runs the Sundance Film Festival, takes the tape, hands it to one of his, uh, folks who works at the festival. That person watches the tape, calls Ed Burns and says to Ed Burns, are you the guy who handed Robert Redford the tape? And he says, yes. And he says, is this your movie? And he says, yes. And he says, we're interested in your movie, but it said this was a rough cut. So what did you cut out? And Ed Burns, lying through his teeth, is like, well, I finished the film. And here are the scenes that I've cut out. He's done none of this. In fact, the movie is unfinished and he needs more money to finish the movie.

• 5:10Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wow.

• 5:11Sean Fennessey?

  So he lies to the guy from Sundance. The guy hears what he's gonna cut out and he says, great.

• 5:17Sean Fennessey?

  Lo and behold, he makes a series of connections through people. He gets to, um, Tom Rothman at 20th Century Fox, who gives him 50 grand for a first look deal to get this movie made. The movie goes to Sundance, massive sensation at Sundance, wins the grand jury prize. This is all happening on Long Island and is becoming a thing on Long Island. Because this is becoming one of the quintessential Long Island movies when it gets released in 1995. So she's the one and the lead up to it, there's a lot of anticipation for it. I'm just a teenager. I'm like, kinda sort of getting into.

• 5:47Bill Simmons?

  You're aware of this.

• 5:47Sean Fennessey?

  I'm aware of it because my parents are aware of it. My parents have gone to see this movie in movie theaters. Everybody in Long Island in their, at their dinner tables, who care about movies, obviously, are talking about it. But Ed Burns is the son of a cop, just like myself. He is from a family with multiple siblings, raised Irish Catholic, obsessed with Woody Allen, and constantly thinking about movies all day, every day. And all of his sideline jobs are to get closer to movies.

• 6:15Sean Fennessey?

  Who can relate? I mean, like, to me, this was incredible. Now, I didn't, I don't know that I loved Ed Burns's movies through and through, but I felt like immediately connected to them based on the story. And it's a little bit like rooting for a sports team, where sometimes you have good seasons and sometimes you have down seasons. But the first two seasons of Ed Burns, these first two movies, I completely love.

• 6:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, you also saw Brothers McBullen when you were 13. Which brings up the Bill Simmons theory, Wesley. The movie you loved when you were 13 becomes your favorite movie for life for at least one of them. Mine was Forty Eight Hours.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  It's critics, it's criticism proof. You can't, you can't, even you're, you don't have access to your criticism brain watching a thing that means that much to you. Like, even if you applied it, it wouldn't, your heart wouldn't be in it.

• 7:08Bill Simmons?

  So what was your 13 movie?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  13? I would say for me, it's like 11, though.

• 7:14Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Yeah, you don't, yeah, I guess.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Broadcast, that, 1987. 1987, 1988, like, that.

• 7:22Bill Simmons?

  That stretch, yeah.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  That, those years were like truly the greatest years of my cultural life.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  And everything I saw, even the things I recognized as an 11 and 12 year old that were shitty, I didn't care.

• 7:41Bill Simmons?

  Mine was 80/82, obviously, because 80 was all the comedies and then. What was yours, Craig?

• 7:46Speaker 04

  Well, when I was 13, Superbad came out.

• 7:47Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah. We've talked about this.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 7:50Bill Simmons?

  This is it.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  You can't, I wish that I had been able, I wish I had been 13 when Superbad came out. I was, I don't believe in too old, too young, whatever, but like, I, I would have loved to have not had access to my brain. Watching Superbad.

• 8:07Bill Simmons?

  Or you could have had access to my son at like age eight when we let him watch Superbad. And he was like, this is the greatest night of my life.

• 8:14Sean Fennessey?

  Well, so I think that's like a big component of of these movies for me. And I I think you guys will relate to this, that there's something about watching men or women who are somewhere between 10 and 20 years older than you.

• 8:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:26Sean Fennessey?

  And thinking that's how adults are. And that you you almost like pattern your your expectations of adulthood based on what you see in these movies. And you think you don't, you don't, you don't base it on your parents. You don't base it on your parents' friends. You base it on characters who you find entertaining. And then you find, we talked about this when we talked about Last Days of Disco. We're like, kind of, my whole thing is Chris Iguaman characters from 1990s movies.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 8:51Sean Fennessey?

  And like, I don't know if I was intentionally doing that, but I fell in love with those characters the same way I'm kind of fascinated by these guys. These guys are a lot less likable to me. Um, but they're really interesting because they're really close to a lot of people I was observing in my real life. They're just 20% more on time and entertaining.

• 9:05Bill Simmons?

  I I like that point of learning about relationships through movies and TV. Because like Sam and Diane's relationship in Cheers was like my first most important relationship.

• 9:15Sean Fennessey?

  Good example.

• 9:16Bill Simmons?

  Just living through them and hoping they made it or not. And then the movie about last night with Rob Lowe and Demi Moore was like, so this is what a relationship is like when you fall in love and you're moving together, but it might be too soon. And that's just, how was I gonna know?

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah. I mean, for me, my version of that would have been Harry Met Sally. I would have been 13 when that movie.

• 9:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Came out. Um, it was fun watching people talk about, watching adults talk about a thing that I hadn't, didn't understand.

• 9:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Didn't, hadn't experienced yet, but knew was out there somewhere for me. Um, I also think that what you're saying, Sean, about if you're going to become an artist, and it's so clear with Ed Burns, like what was going on with him. Um, I'm gonna call him Edward Burns throughout this conversation, by the way.

• 10:08Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna call him Ed.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  He's gonna be Edward Burns.

• 10:11Sean Fennessey?

  You get all three, by the way. Ed, Eddie, and Edward. Also, my father's named Edward, and he was an Ed, Eddie, and Edward, depending on who was talking to him.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Depending on who's talking. I'm gonna be Edward Burns. So, I, I understand what you're saying about, um, the things that you watch while you're figuring out what kind of human being to be, um, and then what kind of artist to be. Like, you learn a lot about, you're formed by the art that you watch, and it's so clear to me. Cause I had the same thing that happened to Edward Burns, which is like, I watched a bunch of Woody Allen movies. And all I wanted to do, watching them, was get to New York. I wanted to find a therapist.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  You know, I wanted to like, explore, I wanted to like, be smart in front of other people.

• 11:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean?

• 11:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  There's so, and the, I don't know, you can see that Edward Burns clearly, clearly, clearly, I don't know anything about this man's life, but he must have been, if he's anything like the characters that he plays in his movies, especially the early ones, he must have been lonely. You know, he must have been, if he acted like these guys, little sensitive, smart, mildly neurotic, um, what was he doing at his high school? And who, what, what was his, uh, what was his high school nomenclature?

• 11:47Bill Simmons?

  Or he knew that was the smart lane for him to have, because my guess is he was probably a handsome guy in high school, who didn't have a lot of lady problems.

• 11:53Sean Fennessey?

  I think his looks have thrown people off the scent with him for many years. And you could argue that in the second half of his career, it has kind of held him back in some ways from being able to transition into some of the like, movie director persona.

• 12:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 12:07Sean Fennessey?

  That Wesley is describing, because most guys who make movies like Edward Burns do not look like Edward Burns. They look more like.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Guys, no body.

• 12:15Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  I think I can just say that he is the most attractive American director we've had in like.

• 12:20Sean Fennessey?

  Since Robert Redford?

• 12:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, what's funny is, yes. He wants to be Woody Allen, but. Woody Allen looked like Woody Allen.

• 12:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 12:28Bill Simmons?

  You guys left out one key piece with the Ed Burns thing, which is where I come in. Because I'm probably exactly the same age as Ed Burns in this movie. He's like hardcore Gen X.

• 12:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Bill Simmons?

  And the themes in his movies were kind of the themes that are around there, which is like Gen X. First generation whose parents like regularly got divorced. Fear of commitment. Drifting. We've talked about this in other movies we've done, like Singles and Reality Bites. And what do I do now? Where am I going? Like this character, he's driving a cab.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  I love this observation. I love this.

• 13:00Bill Simmons?

  He had his heart broken by some girl. Now he's rashly marrying this girl he meets who he's known for 24 hours. His brother's in a fucked up love triangle. His dad's. It's all about like dysfunctional relationships, which is kind of like the lifeblood of Gen X. This is what we had.

• 13:17Sean Fennessey?

  Think about the two parental relationships in Brothers McMullin and in this movie. In the first movie, the Brothers McMullin opens with a conversation between his mother and her son at the father's gravesite.

• 13:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:31Sean Fennessey?

  And then we learn in that movie that the mother's gone back to Ireland to be reunited with her long lost love.

• 13:37Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 13:37Sean Fennessey?

  And then in this movie, the mother and father are still together, but we never see the mother.

• 13:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they do the fear from cheers.

• 13:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And John Mahoney's character, the father, is such a central primal figure in the movie. I mean, he's arguably the most important character in the movie because of the way that he has kind of shaped and informed the sons who drive all the action in the movie. And you're right, both of those relationships are broken relationships and that totally informs everything that you're talking about.

• 14:02Bill Simmons?

  And then in real life, Ed Burns, he's dating Maxine Baines, who's in this movie. Breaks up with her, dates Heather Graham when she's at the top of the roller coaster.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  That's right. Wow.

• 14:13Bill Simmons?

  She was probably the number one catch of whenever he dated her. And then goes right from there to Kristin Turlington and lives happily ever after.

• 14:19Sean Fennessey?

  You forgot about the two years with Lauren Holly, but we'll forgive.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  And Lauren Holly, another one. So he made movies with every person he fell in love with.

• 14:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, he was, the Maxine Baines thing was.

• 14:30Sean Fennessey?

  That was before they started making movies.

• 14:32Bill Simmons?

  She was like his sounding board for the first two movies.

• 14:35Sean Fennessey?

  That was his girlfriend in like 1990.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  Right. What I'm, I don't know what, I don't know if they, if, I'm not saying that Lauren Holly and he fell in love on the set. Whatever happened, he's made movies with people he's fallen in love with.

• 14:48Bill Simmons?

  Heather Graham was sidewalks in New York. I'm not sure if they were together at that point, but yeah. Craig, when you listen to all of this. Your generation doesn't have the same fear of commitment. It's kinda different.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  And they have other fears.

• 15:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we have other fears.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  We have other things to worry about, I guess I would say.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Y'all ain't fucking.

• 15:05Speaker 04

  We got, we got, like, buying a house is pretty hard.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  No houses, no babies.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  Like, we're committed to our phones.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  And each other, and each other in some way.

• 15:15Bill Simmons?

  And anxiety and social media.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Roving gangs of, roving gangs of young people.

• 15:21Sean Fennessey?

  A marriage, like, think of all these things that I've gotten, that if all these things, these fears I've gotten over, and you're stuck.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 15:27Sean Fennessey?

  You're stuck, no, you're married.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  You got married, Craig got married.

• 15:30Bill Simmons?

  It's funny, I watched Reality Bites, which we've already done on this pod, and I watched only the last like forty minutes of it, it was just on, and I was like, you know what? I'm staying for the U2 song, because this is just a really good U2. And then I really got into it, and Ethan Hawke, he sings that Violent Fem song, and it's just fucking intense, and it's really good, and he disappears. And then at the end, she's gonna go get in a cab to go find him, but he's in the street, and he just goes to this monologue, he's like, my father died. Um, but that's not why I'm telling you this, and blah, blah, blah, and then I realized.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Bill, you're gonna make me cry!

• 16:03Bill Simmons?

  Then I realized what, all I wanted was to be with you, because I love you, and they clog, and then all of a sudden, they're playing like Lisa Loeb. And I was like, this shit worked for years.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  That was on Turner Classic Movies, like, three weeks ago, and I watched it.

• 16:19Bill Simmons?

  It's really good.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  I, on the one hand, it's so nineteen ninety-three slash four.

• 16:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  But on the other hand,

• 16:30Speaker 02

  like, I, I had never, first of all, there's a few things that you need to know about me, I would never in a million years have chosen Ethan Hawke. I would have chosen Ben Stiller and made a mistake.

• 16:41Bill Simmons?

  But that, that's kinda the point of that movie, is in your twenties, you think Ethan Hawke is the one who should win, and then as you get older, you're like, eh, Ben Stiller had some good points.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  But Ethan Hawke wins that movie because he is...

• 16:55Speaker 02

  It's a performance, right? And

• 16:58Sean Fennessey?

  It's unfair because he gets the final, the final monologue and he looks like Ethan Hawke. So it's not, it's imbalanced.

• 17:04Bill Simmons?

  And he's perfect nineteen ninety-three, ninety-four. Looks like he hasn't showered in two weeks. Doesn't care if he ever has a job because he's too cool.

• 17:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 17:12Bill Simmons?

  He's too cool to care about that.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  But, but the kissing in that movie too. It's like real kissing.

• 17:18Bill Simmons?

  And, and a lot of, you just know the cigarette breath was just coming on both sides.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Well, the smoking.

• 17:24Sean Fennessey?

  Doesn't

• 17:24Bill Simmons?

  They're just fucking inhaling cigarettes in that movie. We don't know why, so like she's lighting the next one. And they're not smoking like the, the parsley cinnamon cigarettes. These are fucking Marlboro Reds.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Well, this movie, She's the One is also a smoking movie.

• 17:39Sean Fennessey?

  So much smoking.

• 17:39Bill Simmons?

  So much smoking, but the point is like to bring it back to She's the One. These, this was like a really intense time. We didn't have, we didn't have the internet yet. Nobody kind of knew it was going to happen and we would just spend a lot of time reflecting, talking, getting fixated on things and, and this movie kind of fits into that where he gets married in twenty-four hours. His brother's like, what the, you fucking married her? Like, I don't know, it seems conceived, but now it'd be like, did you hear Craig got married to some girl he met in a cab? He'd be like, what?

• 18:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 18:09Bill Simmons?

  This would be like a Reddit thread.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:12Sean Fennessey?

  I think this is also, it's a symptom of a time where I think commitment was expected to happen much earlier in people's lives. Like that is one thing that has materially changed. I don't think people who are younger now are afraid of getting married. I think they just know to take their time a little bit.

• 18:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:25Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, I got married in my twenties, but I was pretty unusual amongst my friends. And this is a movie where I don't even, how, Mike McGowan's character is twenty-five in this movie? He's acting like he's forty years old.

• 18:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I would have

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Making half a million a year?

• 18:39Bill Simmons?

  Forty-five.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  You're making half a million a year, aren't you?

• 18:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and he's, I think he says he's twenty-five and that's seeing his father-in-law, right? So there's something about that too. And like, that's kind of the crisis of Winona Ryder's character in Reality Bites is like, she has to choose between these two.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  She didn't make like whole

• 18:56Sean Fennessey?

  She doesn't have to, she just graduated. Like, what is she choosing?

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, but that is. It's such an interesting set of models, right? I mean, because the reality bites, Gen X resistance is all about not being a boomer. Right? Like obeying.

• 19:13Bill Simmons?

  It's zagging at all times, yeah.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Yes, I mean, I won't do what daddy tells me to do. I'm just not gonna do it.

• 19:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's our beloved kicking and screaming is another one like that. These guys just trying to delay being adults.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 19:24Bill Simmons?

  We're just gonna stay in college, even though we don't go to college anymore and still go to the parties and.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Well, what's interesting to me about She's the One is there's a, there is a value system at work that is not. It is a Gen X movie on the one hand, but it's also, to me, it feels transitional to like this moment. Right? Like, every, every character in this movie, every man in this movie is basically right now. They either stormed the Capitol. Their Fox News is on all day.

• 19:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  And.

• 20:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the dad's definitely watching Fox News.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, Mike McGlone is like operating a crypto, a crypto camp.

• 20:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Mike McGlone, Mike McGlone might be going to jail at some point.

• 20:11Sean Fennessey?

  There's definitely some like.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  He might actually have a, he might have been pardoned. Do you know what I mean? He might have already received his pardon.

• 20:18Bill Simmons?

  Or he's in Wolf of Wall Street, the real life version of it as it's happening.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:22Bill Simmons?

  In 10 years.

• 20:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, I, I, I, I see the movie like so close to the bone because the attitudes of the guys in the movie are just so similar. So similar, I mean, it's eerily accurate to how people from Long Island act. And like the, the sort of like, um, the performed masculinity that is barely hiding insecurity. Like the Mike McGlone character is what, which is like a big farcical kind of broad comic character. But is also like eerie documentary about three generations of Irish-American men on Long Island. Like it is so accurate. Ed Burns' character is the one where I'm like, who is this guy? That's the one that is a little bit.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  That's.

• 21:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:03Sean Fennessey?

  Because that guy is like, he's kind of bohemian, he's kind of Gen X and like laid back.

• 21:08Bill Simmons?

  He should be living in Silver Lake.

• 21:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 21:10Bill Simmons?

  Trying to like, write a book.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  But he doesn't have any talents or skills.

• 21:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  He doesn't want.

• 21:17Bill Simmons?

  Or at least something that he knows.

• 21:18Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly, what does he want?

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Want anything and he doesn't, he knows what he doesn't want, which is a, to your point, Bill, super Gen X, right? I know what I'm rejecting, but I don't know what I'm embracing.

• 21:30Bill Simmons?

  Good way to put it.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  And I, I have always found Edward Burns really fascinating because I think that whatever the void is in this character is also true for the movies themselves. And to me.

• 21:53Bill Simmons?

  Like great hang, but, but you're kind of wondering what you've spent the last two hours doing.

• 21:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think he might be a mirror in some way. I don't, I don't know. Like, he doesn't, his ambitions are not grand. He doesn't want to be the greatest or the best. He just wants to work, right? To me, this is a wild way to think about a film career, but this is a guy who is essentially like, I build houses for a living. I love building houses. You know, somebody will live in this little house that I built, maybe I'll build a big house, but like, I don't know how to do anything else. So this is what I do. And I'm going to do the same thing. What has he made? I counted. It's like fifteen.

• 22:39Sean Fennessey?

  Fifteen movies.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Fifteen movies?

• 22:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Still going. He's got a movie this year.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  It's some, it's the same movie every time.

• 22:46Bill Simmons?

  I enjoyed it.

• 22:46Sean Fennessey?

  His movies are perfectly pleasant.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  I, I watched it to talk to you guys and

• 22:53Speaker 02

  it's interesting watching him evolve, but only, only, it's not, it's not evolution, it's age. Right? He's becoming more seasoned, but he hasn't changed, right?

• 23:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  This is a very, um.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  We've never, I can't think of a director who's had this similar. Henry Jaglum is a director that comes to mind. Where like, Henry Jaglum has a thing, right? He is making movies about Beverly Hills people, more or less, right?

• 23:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Like, the lives of a particular class of Angelitos.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  The movies are kind of all the same movie.

• 23:33Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  He gets fixated on actresses and they become the star of the movie, then you never see them again.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  There's not a lot of variation in tone. Sometimes the movies are funny, but most of the time they're embarrassing. But every once in a while, the clock will, the clock is right twice a day. And Edward Burns, to me, has become one of those people where like, you can go in there and there'll be something there. And clearly, the people who love working with him, love working with him. Because he seems like a great person.

• 24:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 24:06Bill Simmons?

  Well, isn't the best way to capture that, the fact that a lot of the people who are in this movie, these are like the best versions of them? He has a way of getting really good performances. Like, we'll talk about Aniston and Diaz in this, but...

• 24:22Bill Simmons?

  I mean, we could talk about Diaz now, or do it later, but I just think Diaz is...

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Let's save it for later.

• 24:26Bill Simmons?

  We'll save for later, but I think she's incredible. What she's doing in this movie is like, almost like a what-if for her career.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  If nobody's ever asked her to do what she's doing.

• 24:35Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like it's...

• 24:35Bill Simmons?

  One other movie has, Any Given Sunday.

• 24:39Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, like the harshness, like the sharpness that she can bring.

• 24:42Bill Simmons?

  This is kinda, yeah. Cause the thing with her is she can be there, something about Mary. She can be the dits in my best friend's wedding. Or she can be this character. This is by far the most interesting version of her. Where she's like, "I'm a fucking ice queen, I'm a killer."

• 24:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  I mean, The Counselor, y'all know how, y'all know, I think...

• 25:00Sean Fennessey?

  That's a version of that, too.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  That is, that is an all-time performance. It goes with the European, the European bombshells. That is the best version of that, that an American person has done. Cameron Diaz in The Counselor. If y'all haven't seen it...

• 25:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, then McGlone.

• 25:19Sean Fennessey?

  I had so much stock. Yeah, you can't believe how much stock I had.

• 25:22Bill Simmons?

  I looked at his IMDb and it's like, this was really the peak and I don't really understand what happened. I don't know why he wasn't on CSI for like 11 years.

• 25:30Sean Fennessey?

  I don't. I mean, I have some, some takes about him in the categories.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, Fran- Francis.

• 25:36Bill Simmons?

  Would you, just watching this movie, would you have expected him to at least have been on Law and Order for like nine years?

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Well, save my thoughts.

• 25:43Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 25:46Bill Simmons?

  Can't wait.

• 25:46Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, obviously he had, he just gets to do a tremendous amount of shit talking in the movie. And so as a teenager, when I saw the movie, I was like, there's something very attractive here. It's very, um, Randall and Clerks. Where it's like, some guy just gets to just have all the funny lines, even though he's kind of the buffoon of the movie. He still gets so many heaters and you can feel Ed Burns' id going right into McGlone, which is really fun. And I, I really just wish they made more movies together.

• 26:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, me too.

• 26:13Sean Fennessey?

  He writes really well for him. The same way that I always thought Kevin Smith wrote so well for Jason Lee. And Jason Lee is never better.

• 26:18Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 26:19Sean Fennessey?

  In every Kevin Smith movie, he's so great.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Chris Eichmann.

• 26:22Sean Fennessey?

  Same, same thing. Chris Eichmann in all the, um, in that trilogy of Whit Stillman movies is so, so good. But, um, McGlone, I mean, he obviously is best known now for his work in commercials. That that, it's the, it's the Geico character, right?

• 26:37Bill Simmons?

  And, and documentary narration.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  God, he's in the Geico ads.

• 26:41Sean Fennessey?

  That's what he's been doing for the past 10 years.

• 26:43Bill Simmons?

  He's done a lot of documentary narration stuff.

• 26:45Sean Fennessey?

  He's, he's a great narrator in the, in the Geico commercials.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 26:50Sean Fennessey?

  I'm sure he's got a very comfortable, cool life. Um, and he was an interesting representative of like, a certain kind of like post Gordon Gekko, stockbroker, aspirational. It's like pre Wolf of Wall Street, post Michael Douglas. Guy, black, dark suit, slicked back hair. There's a very like Irish-American thing too in this movie where like, all these guys have great, great hair. They're all way too pale. You know, they're all like, they think they're fucking the man. But you know, deep down, they're really guilt-riddled.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  Little dick energy. This whole movie is just little dick energy.

• 27:23Sean Fennessey?

  The whole thing is like Irish curse meets Irish goodbye. Like that is the, that is the like, the subtitle or the alternate title for the movie.

• 27:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Cameron Diaz does the, what the orgasm thing. She's faked it enough to pick fake with Papa and then she holds up the three.

• 27:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's like, oh.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Wait, can I just say one quick Mike McGlon reading? It's, there's a moment where he comes over. I guess I'll just set this up. Uh.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Edward, Mickey meets, um. Heather, she gets into his cab. They.

• 28:03Bill Simmons?

  Oh, and they show up at the house.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  They used to be married. He comes over to the house to get this television set that he left there. You know, old school, you know, not old, old school, but like the last of those big.

• 28:15Bill Simmons?

  Big fat ones.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Square tube TV. Cathode ray, cathode tube TVs. Um. Comes over to get it. She's trying to get with him. He's like, I'm not, what are we doing? Shame on you. I'm taking this, this not really that heavy TV and I'm walking out of here.

• 28:34Bill Simmons?

  But he does, you do see him entertaining it.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  He thinks about it.

• 28:39Bill Simmons?

  Three seconds.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  But he, you know, what's funny is he is a good actor.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  But there's something, there's like one more gear in the, in the watching a character try to work out whether or not to do something. That's not happening here. That registers to me as a viewer of these people as, as indifference. Right? He should be considering this, but I just don't think he is in the wrong world. He is trying to find some other place to be. I mean, Bill, maybe it is, maybe he should be here.

• 29:19Bill Simmons?

  He should be in California.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  But, but I don't know, nothing interests him here.

• 29:24Bill Simmons?

  But what, how does this tie into McGlon?

• 29:26Speaker 02

  So he takes the TV. The TV's living in his place. McGlon comes over one day because he knows.

• 29:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  From Heather that the TV's gone.

• 29:37Bill Simmons?

  And he's worried this guy, his brother fucked his girlfriend.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  You're right. Did you, I'm sure, let me, let me do some, some like not that low key sleuthing to find out whether or not my brother fucked my mistress. But it's really his ex.

• 29:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  And he's like, why would you even go back there for that TV? That's, that's pathetic. And he's like, it's like you're.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Oh my god, I can't even read my own handwriting. It's like, basically, you can't afford a new TV. And then he kind of trails off. And it's kind of like, the way he trails off, it's like, you can't afford a new TV, and there's like a, there's like a, you know, that he doesn't even say, or like a huh, like.

• 30:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  There's so much hilarious, regular guy judgment in that not big a deal detail.

• 30:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  And the way that he does it is just, it's just chef's kiss. And he's kind of dumbfounded, he's kind of embarrassed for his brother. But he also doesn't really know why he's fixated on this TV, except he just wants to know if his brother fucked his mistress.

• 30:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he circles back to it later in the movie when they're having an argument, and he's like, Mr. Loser cab driver can't afford a new TV. It's, it's this status symbol to him, and he's like, the only thing that really matters to me is money and, and being the cock of the walk. My brother, who doesn't really have the same ambitions that I do, even though he's older than me, he's a loser, I'm better than him, it's important for me to be better than him. It is like, you always do the boss, and you think you're better than me. Long Island has that, we have a little bit, we don't live in the city, you know, we're very provincial, it's very blue collar. Like, there's this constant desire to go up a level and to be better than people. That is, and McGlone is just very good at representing that energy.

• 31:22Bill Simmons?

  It's a shame that David Chase never tapped into him for a Sopranos season.

• 31:26Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  There's just so much good money that's left on the table for him. There's gotta be a story there. There's gotta be a story.

• 31:34Bill Simmons?

  Sometimes.

• 31:35Sean Fennessey?

  Sometimes it doesn't happen.

• 31:36Bill Simmons?

  Sometimes it just doesn't happen.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  You mean, he went to a bunch of auditions, and the part went to like Vincent D'Onofrio?

• 31:41Bill Simmons?

  There's like, there's a Charlie, Charlie Sheen versus him, like, I feel like it's a little closer than maybe, if you really think about it.

• 31:48Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting.

• 31:49Bill Simmons?

  Like, he just could have been in Two and a Half Men for 10 years.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 31:53Bill Simmons?

  Just being, I, I just don't understand why he wasn't on, he's such a natural TV actor.

• 31:57Sean Fennessey?

  He is.

• 31:58Bill Simmons?

  Could you see him for ten straight Thursdays?

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Well, it's funny that, I mean, I got fixated on what that TV was really doing. You know, as, as a metaphor for like-

• 32:08Bill Simmons?

  Erection proxy?

• 32:09Speaker 02

  Well, no, just like the, the movie's ambitions in some way. Do you know what I mean? Like the confusion of like how far down or in to go.

• 32:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  And it just really, this movie, without the application of some critical and like emotional pressure from us, it kind of, does kind of live on the surface.

• 32:31Sean Fennessey?

  It's, but it's, I was saying as we were walking into Bill, like, it's a great rewatchables for me and I watched it fifty times on cable television growing up. Because it is on the surface. It's a movie of lines, of dialogue that you remember. It's a series of like episodic sequences. The stakes are so low in this movie. I mean, what are really the stakes? There's a, there's a-

• 32:50Bill Simmons?

  She might go to Paris and not bring him.

• 32:52Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, man.

• 32:53Bill Simmons?

  And he's got to figure out if he's getting divorced or not, his brother.

• 32:56Sean Fennessey?

  Bunch, bunch of beautiful twenty-somethings who like, stuff's probably gonna work out for no matter what. Like, it's, it's a very low octane movie, but it's very enjoyable. I did want to just say one thing about what you were describing about Burns as an actor. And maybe we can kind of think of some examples like this.

• 33:11Bill Simmons?

  When you want me to do my Ed Burns impression after you describe it?

• 33:12Speaker 02

  I used to do one too!

• 33:14Sean Fennessey?

  So, Robert Redford is not a great actor, but he is a great screen presence. And he figured out one thing, and I've thought about this a lot, because like, we did a Hall of Fame last year, I've watched every movie he's ever made. He understood that he was at his best when he was in pursuit of moral superiority. That he could kind of represent something decent about the world. And all of his best movies are him operating in that mold. Edward Burns didn't really figure out what that thing is that he should represent to distract from his beauty. So when you're watching him, you're like, this guy doesn't have any problems. He's married to Christie Turlington. Like, what emotional crisis could really be happening that could be bringing him down to this place? And I feel this a little bit when I'm watching this movie. When this movie is, when I'm watching this movie, I'm like,

• 33:59Sean Fennessey?

  let's get away from Ed Burns and Maxine Bonds. We gotta go back to Mike McGowan and Jennifer Aniston. That's where the real heat, the weirdness is. When John Mahoney's spinning wisdom about what it's like to be a man in America. I want to go back to that part. There's no, and I like Ed Burns on screen, but that character is kind of nothing. He's bringing just like, just presence, but not psychology to the character.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 34:20Sean Fennessey?

  It's a weird thing because he invented the world. It's his movie.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can see why you think that.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  You know, I'm just trying to be in a movie. Just trying to do my thing.

• 34:33Sean Fennessey?

  What's wrong with that?

• 34:36Speaker 02

  It's so funny because that is the thing that, especially in this movie more than the other ones. Because I've seen like half of, half of the Edward Burns collection. Maybe a little bit more than half. And this,

• 34:53Speaker 02

  this is like, you can feel him trying to channel Woody Allen here. Like Woody Allen, the actor. Right? There are like, would this guy, who, is he older, is Mickey older than Francis? So he's 27? Yeah. Like, Probably like 26 and 25. 27 year old man from, from his part of Long Island, really talking about degenerates? Do you know what I mean? Like, there's something about the, the, you know, the stuttering, the repetition, the stuttering that isn't really the way you're searching for a thought. It's just you're doing a bit.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  And I, I really love the imitation here because it's the last person you would think

• 35:42Speaker 02

  would be interested in impersonating Woody Allen, which is kind of what's fascinating about Edward Burns as an actor to me.

• 35:48Sean Fennessey?

  This is going to sound like a broad stroke, but here's the thing. With Woody Allen, it's neurosis. With Edward Burns, it's angst. And that is the difference between Jewish American, Irish American, at least where I come from. The Irish Americans are like, a little angry. About something and in Edward Burns's performance, when he really comes to life, he's like, what the fuck are you talking about?

• 36:08Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 36:09Sean Fennessey?

  Like, he's got a little bit of, there's a little bit of heat underneath. Whereas Woody Allen is never aggressive in that way in his performances. Cause it, it's not a natural component to his character that he created on screen.

• 36:20Bill Simmons?

  He's, he's already up.

• 36:22Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly.

• 36:23Bill Simmons?

  Ed Burns is like, even kill, even kill, even kill. And when he snaps, you really feel it, cause he's not supposed to snap.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  But I think everywhere else.

• 36:32Sean Fennessey?

  This movie is. He literally knocks somebody out in this movie. I mean, he's physical in a way that Woody Allen would never be.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Right. It is his brother and it's like such a stage punch. But I, I just, you know, the thing is.

• 36:44Bill Simmons?

  Get up Dorothy.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  To your, to your point, I feel like the thing, there are a few things underneath this movie that, you know, we can, we can talk about, but the movie is kind of, it doesn't know how to be anything other than what it is. And so there is, there are these subtexts that the movie wants to, thinks it's satisfied by making them textual. Like Francis, the best, I mean, well, we can talk about this later when we get to the categories, but

• 37:18Speaker 02

  the is Francis gay storyline is very compelling because he should just be gay. He should just, he should just be gay.

• 37:28Bill Simmons?

  I mean, he wears cologne.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, the thing, the signifiers of gayness are absurd, except, I mean, Sean, you can speak to.

• 37:36Bill Simmons?

  This is also true though.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  There were cultural assumptions about like what makes a, what makes a man a fag, right?

• 37:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Like, and that was a, that was a huge aspect of the way I grew up. I mean, as a person who was, who knew he was gay.

• 37:51Bill Simmons?

  Not wanting to have sex with Jennifer Aniston in 95 would certainly have been maybe a red flag.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  Except we know he's fucking Cameron Diaz. I don't know why you can't do both, but again, this is the Catholic, this to me is, is like where the Woody Allen, I think.

• 38:07Bill Simmons?

  You don't want to cheat on your wife with your girlfriend?

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Well, the, I mean, it's interesting, like Madonna whore never gets explored in, in Irish American work, but that's a Catholic, that's a province of, of the, of the Catholic condition, whether you're in Italy or here. But it is essentially what's happening here, right?

• 38:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's also like a mimic of what's in Brothers McMullen, where the older brother in that movie is cheating on Connie Britton. And you're like, you have Connie Britton at home. Like, what are you doing?

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Who's the mistress in that movie?

• 38:39Sean Fennessey?

  I forget the name of the actress.

• 38:40Bill Simmons?

  It's Ed Burns' flaw, because he's just surrounded by beautiful women at all times. So this is just normal to him.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  But that kind of makes it interesting to me, right? Like, this is why I wish that Francis had just been gay. Because, but I also, I also do believe that there is a kind of curse that we've talked about this on this, like, in these conversations about these movies. There is a heterosexual curse, right? Like, we're being governed right now by a heterosexual curse. These are all men who, like, given their druthers, would all be having sex with each other. But they are cursed to be, they're cursed to be attracted to women. And-

• 39:21Sean Fennessey?

  You've pierced the veil in an interesting way.

• 39:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  But I just think-

• 39:25Bill Simmons?

  I'm not signing off on this take, but I admire it.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  I think that this movie would have really benefited by taking the risk of just having somebody be gay.

• 39:36Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mean-

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Or bisexual, or some, something that makes them more interesting than, than a regular human person.

• 39:46Speaker 04

  The only hint at bisexuality is Leslie Mann's character.

• 39:49Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 39:49Bill Simmons?

  That's a missed opportunity, too.

• 39:52Sean Fennessey?

  And that's also, to me, that idea is actually broached in Chasing Amy in an interesting way.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 39:59Sean Fennessey?

  These are two guys who are in love with each other.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  It's more than brooch. It is, that's the movie.

• 40:03Sean Fennessey?

  Right. So, and the, and the kind of duality between the genders and their feelings towards each other and the way that those things collide or don't collide, I think is explored more interestingly in that movie. To me, this movie is much more male fantasy. Like, I think the whole movie all around is male fantasy. And Burns gives a lot of the anxiety to the other character, and he doesn't take it on. But in this movie, look at the women that he cast in this movie. I mean, Jennifer Aniston, Cameron Diaz, Maxine Bond, and Leslie Mann, and Amanda Peet.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  And Amanda Peet?

• 40:35Sean Fennessey?

  All of whom, I mean, have, they all are so beautiful in this movie. And they're so appealing in each slightly different registers for a certain kind of guy.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  They're all a different kind of hot.

• 40:47Bill Simmons?

  I have some material on this.

• 40:48Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  I'll bet you do.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  We just traded into your wheelhouse.

• 40:54Bill Simmons?

  This is the best looking collection of women ever in a movie. I wrote down, this is the 2012 OKC Thunder of rom-coms. We're wondering why that had to be broken up. Why'd you have to trade James Harden? I also wrote down, I was around the age of everyone in the movie and needed oxygen at the halfway point. I didn't even know who to be in love with the most. I mean, you have Anniston, she's after season two of Friends. Everyone in their twenties is in love with her from the first two seasons of Friends. But then Cameron Diaz, who'd already been in The Mask and a couple other things, in love with her too. Then they bring Amanda Peet and Leslie Mann out of nowhere.

• 41:36Bill Simmons?

  And Maxine Baines, who we'd already seen from Brothers McMullin, it's just like, this is an embarrassment of riches.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Well, we have, what we have known Amanda Peet and Leslie Mann from anything else. This is the first time we would have seen them.

• 41:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this was like pretty early for both of them.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Cause I didn't remember when I saw this originally.

• 41:53Bill Simmons?

  We gotta, we gotta keep going on this, but we gotta take one break.

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• 42:58Bill Simmons?

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• 43:38Sean Fennessey?

  Well, hold on.

• 43:39Bill Simmons?

  From the first two seasons of Friends. From the first two seasons of Friends.

• 43:41Sean Fennessey?

  But no disrespect to Leprechaun, please. That's her, that's really where she broke through, the horror film Leprechaun.

• 43:46Bill Simmons?

  Her first movie after her career took off. Filmed between season one and season two. And everybody's getting her hair. Every guy's in love with her. We have no backstory with her other, with that whole cast. The only person we knew was Courtney Cox. And I wrote this down too. Single handedly, the reason I saw this movie in the theater.

• 44:08Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 44:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:10Sean Fennessey?

  True star power.

• 44:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I, I, I probably would have gone anyway because I didn't have a lot going on in 1996.

• 44:15Sean Fennessey?

  Did Brothers McMullen get into your atmosphere?

• 44:17Bill Simmons?

  I saw it, but I, I didn't have a lot going on in 1995 either.

• 44:22Bill Simmons?

  But 96, it was like, oh my God. Like especially if you saw the ad, it was like, everybody looks great in this movie. Ed Burns, I'm going, great job. But, uh, Burns said, I knew who she was, hadn't seen the show.

• 44:38Bill Simmons?

  I rented, uh, I didn't rent, I bought Independent Ed, the book that he wrote about all of the movies he made. And then there was some good interviews. He could not figure out how to cast this role or the Cameron Diaz role. And Aniston came in and killed that role. We could talk about the mechanics of having a sexually frustrated wife who looked like Aniston later. And then Cameron Diaz. So I mentioned the smoking hot callous ice queen bitch, which she tapped into.

• 45:10Bill Simmons?

  Rita Hayworth in Gilda? Okay. That's kinda what they're going for, right? Like those nineteen forties, I should stay away from this person, but I can't. Um, Burns said, everyone else we auditioned did a real breathy Marilyn Monroe, but she got it. She knew the character would be a little more vulnerable. I don't know who's better in this movie, so I'm gonna ask you guys.

• 45:30Sean Fennessey?

  Between Anderson and Diaz?

• 45:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:32Sean Fennessey?

  In terms of performance?

• 45:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Oh, well, Cameron Diaz.

• 45:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Diaz by a mile, I think.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  I mean, Jennifer Aniston is sort of making the most of a not-quite-stock part, but because-

• 45:45Bill Simmons?

  But that's the case, though, because she's got nothing to work with, and I think it's a really good character.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  It, it is-

• 45:51Bill Simmons?

  Like, I like her relationship with her family, like-

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Those scenes are nice.

• 45:55Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. I would, I-

• 45:57Bill Simmons?

  But again, Diaz is-

• 45:58Speaker 02

  It's meaningful, it's not nothing to me that he goes through a lot of rigmarole to go get that television set. And haul it back to his apartment from her, from Cameron Diaz's place. There's so many, like, there were things that are familiar to me from, from television relationships.

• 46:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Um, that, like-

• 46:21Bill Simmons?

  It's a symbol of something bigger.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  The thing that makes it a movie is you've got these relationships, like, intercut with each other.

• 46:28Sean Fennessey?

  I'll, I'll also say, I think the best parts of the performance that Burns is giving is opposite Diaz. The scene that Wesley talked about, when he goes up to the room, and then near the end of the film, which is one of my favorite scenes in the movie, when the two of them are back together and they have an almost wordless scene.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 46:43Bill Simmons?

  It's the last, like, forty seconds, they're not talking, and she physically, like, kinda moves closer to him.

• 46:50Sean Fennessey?

  In that scene, I was like, ooh, this is, this is like who Edward Burns could have been as a director. Like, this is so good, the camera is very gently moving, they're getting closer and closer, and then the camera's getting closer and closer to them.

• 47:02Bill Simmons?

  And then she reaches for something, right?

• 47:03Sean Fennessey?

  She reaches, you think she's reaching to him, and she's getting him his coat. I love that scene. Burns is like- It looks like it's all happening. Like in that sequence, you're like, oh, man, he's not, maybe he's not Woody Allen, but he's something different. I don't think he really ever gets back to that moment in his filmmaking career. But part of it is because she has such gravity as a, as, as a, as a screen presence and she's bringing out something good in everybody in this movie. She's just really a really good counterpoint to, to honestly, so many of the good male stars of the nineties and two thousands.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. No, I mean, when used properly, when properly cast, even when miscast, right? Like you think about gangs in New York, like the time she's having makes that DiCaprio performance a lot more interesting to me than if they had cast the part right in some way.

• 47:52Bill Simmons?

  I, we talked about this when we did there's something about Mary.

• 47:56Bill Simmons?

  I think she's become like legitimately underrated as an actress.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I've been saying this the whole time.

• 48:02Bill Simmons?

  One of, because remember we always were fascinated by Gwyneth Paltrow?

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:06Bill Simmons?

  And how we thought she was, this was a big one Wesley and I got to know each other and became friends. So it was like one of our passion points that we shared, like she fucking had it. She had it cooking for years and, you know, kind of let control of the steering wheel and Diaz, like you look back at her career now, it's, it's all kinds of movies and really, really fun characters and she took some chances and.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  I never say this.

• 48:29Bill Simmons?

  She made movies like The Holiday and, you know, Something About Mary, like massive hits.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  I, I believe when Night and Day came out, um, somebody at the, when I was at the Globe, wanted to know if I wanted to write about Tom Cruise, something. And I was like, no, I want to write about Cameron Diaz.

• 48:50Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Because Cameron Diaz is a way more interesting person for Tom Cruise to be hanging out with.

• 48:55Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Like it just makes all the sense in the world and I, for as professional as Tom Cruise is, I would love to know so hard.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  What it was like for him to work with a person who seems to just be making it up?

• 49:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:15Speaker 02

  Like takes direction well, but just doesn't.

• 49:18Sean Fennessey?

  I'm a huge Vanilla Sky defender and I feel like she really has him on his back heels in that movie. And the scenes between the two of them, especially she's starting to lose it.

• 49:26Bill Simmons?

  That's another one.

• 49:27Sean Fennessey?

  In that movie.

• 49:28Bill Simmons?

  Another, I forgot about that one.

• 49:30Sean Fennessey?

  She's so good in that movie.

• 49:31Bill Simmons?

  I just bought that on 4K to get ready for our Vanilla Sky rewatchable.

• 49:34Sean Fennessey?

  I just think that's such an interesting movie and honestly, like, picture another actress in her kind of age range in that part of Vanilla Sky and it doesn't work nearly as well. Because her beauty and her intensity is what makes that stuff so good. And that movie was like a reunion of that and it's supposed to be like a meet cute adventure movie that doesn't totally work.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  It doesn't work.

• 49:54Sean Fennessey?

  But.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  But she's, she's working it.

• 49:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 49:57Bill Simmons?

  But this is what's interesting about her when you compare her to Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, whoever, Sandra Bullock. Where she could easily just be the rom com lead who you're like, I love that person. I would want to spend my life, spend my life with her. But she could also be the fucking crazy, she could, she could have been the girl in obsession, right? She has that.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Oh my God, don't do that to us.

• 50:18Bill Simmons?

  She has this.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Don't do that to us, Bill. Don't, don't try to do that.

• 50:21Bill Simmons?

  She has this version in this movie. She could be like the goofy Charlie's Angels lady.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  But the thing about Cameron Diaz, it is very important to say, in the same way that you like very brilliantly nailed the, the thing that, that burns, that separates Burns from, from a person like Redford and then Alan.

• 50:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  The thing about Cameron Diaz that could never allow her to be Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, or Sandra Bullock is Cameron Diaz is down to fuck.

• 50:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, pure sex appeal.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Cameron Diaz understands what sex is. She likes using it.

• 51:02Bill Simmons?

  Diaz and DTF.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  I mean,

• 51:11Speaker 02

  I just think like-

• 51:12Sean Fennessey?

  She played a lot of characters who were like that.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  And it's not, I mean, but even initially, it didn't feel great because it felt like the movies didn't care that there was a person attached to the body.

• 51:25Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  You know, I think the thing that made her charming in Something About Mary was she somehow managed to transcend the the objectification of the part. And the Farrellys wrote something for her to surmount, right?

• 51:41Speaker 02

  But even in something like Bad Teacher, um, like-

• 51:45Bill Simmons?

  No, they're good, bud.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  These are, that's a great movie star movie. And her stardom in that film and like Charlie's Angels, you know, a dozen other movies are completely predicated upon her prowess uh, as a, as an actor who understands how to play being sexy.

• 52:04Bill Simmons?

  You know who else has that? Kidman.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 52:08Bill Simmons?

  Where, like, you could have put Cameron Diaz in Eyes Wide Shut, and I don't know if it doesn't work.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 52:16Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if it works with crew, no.

• 52:18Sean Fennessey?

  She's not as refined as Kidman, which I think is part of that.

• 52:20Bill Simmons?

  We've never, we've never seen her try to do something like that.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  You don't even have to go that far.

• 52:25Bill Simmons?

  So you disagree with me?

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Cameron Diaz doesn't have the one thing, the thing that, the thing that makes Diaz more interesting in some way than Bullock, Ryan and Roberts, all of whom I love, I have either come to love or just-

• 52:38Bill Simmons?

  Or Reese Witherspoon's another one.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Or Reese Witherspoon. The, like, she's, she, she's a, she's a cut different from them because of the sex. What keeps her from being Kidman is she's not willing to go completely insane. Right? She doesn't have the crazy here-

• 52:58Bill Simmons?

  Or get completely naked.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  Well, maybe, but I mean, I think that-

• 53:02Bill Simmons?

  What's like the craziest sex thing she's ever had?

• 53:04Speaker 02

  I think that, well, I mean, if you want to be explicit-

• 53:06Sean Fennessey?

  The counselor when she fucks the car.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Right, I mean-

• 53:09Sean Fennessey?

  That's one of the craziest, but it's not, it's not-

• 53:11Speaker 02

  She had to get there.

• 53:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's not basic instinct.

• 53:13Bill Simmons?

  Craig wasn't expecting that answer. The counselor when she fucked the car. Craig's like, ah.

• 53:18Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, she literally, she literally-

• 53:23Sean Fennessey?

  Octopus tentacles the car.

• 53:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:26Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  What does that mean?

• 53:27Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not gonna explain to you.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  You just gotta see it, Craig.

• 53:29Sean Fennessey?

  Go watch the film.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  You gotta see it. It is one of the great performances.

• 53:32Sean Fennessey?

  Is that an accurate description of what she does?

• 53:34Speaker 02

  A thousand percent. A little beautiful. But I think that it's one of those, she had to, she had to get there.

• 53:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  I don't think that she had that performance in her when she was doing Charlie's Angels. She didn't understand.

• 53:45Sean Fennessey?

  To your point, though.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  I don't know that she didn't understand it.

• 53:47Sean Fennessey?

  Her career and how we think about her career, which is really interesting. And this is kinda like, I think this is really the meeting point of our interest in movies. Exactly what we're doing right here.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:55Sean Fennessey?

  She spent 10 years making Charlie's Angels movies and sex farces. That was where she kinda threw, and The Counselor isn't a sex farce, but it is too.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  But it is, but it is.

• 54:04Sean Fennessey?

  And Bad Teacher and those movies. And then, she retired. And she stopped making movies. And she took basically seven or eight years completely off of movies. Now she's come back to do a couple Netflix movies since then. But going away and not really pursuing this work in her early 50s means that we don't think about her in the same way and then she kinda gets diminished. But her body of work, I totally agree with you, super interesting, pretty varied, took a lot of chances.

• 54:32Bill Simmons?

  Better than Julia Roberts, I think. If you're going totality of it. This is like one of those, when I go on Basketball Reference and I'm like, wow, Chris Paul made 13 All-NBA teams. I thought it was eight.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, but interestingly, I like, I like where you're, I like this, I like this comparison, but it, Julia Roberts is still gonna win for me.

• 54:54Bill Simmons?

  Well, cuz, cuz her Pretty Woman just beats everything.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  But also.

• 54:59Bill Simmons?

  Also, they went head to head in my best friend's wedding.

• 55:01Sean Fennessey?

  She, but Karen Diaz doesn't have a Brockovich, she doesn't have a like prestige star part Oscar winner.

• 55:07Bill Simmons?

  Or Charlie Wilson's War.

• 55:09Sean Fennessey?

  Well, she, she doesn't have that either.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  But Julia, you guys, Julia Roberts is.

• 55:16Bill Simmons?

  Coming out in 4K. Pre-order it now.

• 55:21Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't order it. I showed some restraint.

• 55:23Bill Simmons?

  A non-order?

• 55:23Sean Fennessey?

  A non-order.

• 55:25Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my god.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Well, let me, just like Julia Roberts doesn't have, Julia Roberts, the thing that makes her great is that she had a persona to, she had a much more elastic and well-established persona, both to exploit and then subvert, right? She was, she very brilliantly-

• 55:43Bill Simmons?

  She could just sleep with the enemy and you, you got it. It's like, oh, Julia's in danger in this one.

• 55:47Speaker 02

  Is she like just a straight romantic comedy person?

• 55:50Sean Fennessey?

  No, she's Mary, she's Mary Riley.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  She was, right, well, I mean, she was Mary Riley.

• 55:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  And, you know, she was Tinker Bell in Hook. But, I mean, but that was sort of like the,

• 56:04Speaker 02

  that was a kind of misuse of the thing that made her great at the, at the peak of her-

• 56:08Bill Simmons?

  Like Cameron Diaz in Gangs of the York.

• 56:10Sean Fennessey?

  It's just bombshell versus America, sweetheart. They're two different identities that film actresses get slotted into and how you subvert them both. It's more challenging for the bombshell to subvert because your appeal is predicated on your looks, not on your essence. And so I, I think Cameron Diaz actually has a harder job, even though Julia Roberts is a greater and more important star in the history of movies.

• 56:31Bill Simmons?

  Here's a good way to frame it. Which, which one would your wife be less likely to say, "Yeah, you can give her a ride home"?

• 56:38Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think my wife would let me drive either of these women home. Um.

• 56:43Bill Simmons?

  Cameron Diaz would be the longer pause. Meanwhile, Maxine Baines.

• 56:48Bill Simmons?

  Maxine Baines, um, it's tough, like-

• 56:50Speaker 02

  Is it Bonds or Baines?

• 56:52Sean Fennessey?

  I always thought it was Bonds, but I don't know.

• 56:53Bill Simmons?

  Catherine, Maxine Bonds.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 56:57Sean Fennessey?

  Harold Baines? Maxine Bonds?

• 56:59Bill Simmons?

  She created the rare character that I can't describe at all.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  Oh, this is a great-

• 57:06Sean Fennessey?

  Tells you all you need to know.

• 57:07Bill Simmons?

  I love this. Hey, describe that Maxine Bonds character in one sentence, like, uh.

• 57:12Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean? She's gonna study at the sore bone. Study what? I don't know.

• 57:15Bill Simmons?

  Is she flatty? Is she sarcastic? Is she hard, like?

• 57:23Bill Simmons?

  I I just don't know what this character is.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  I.

• 57:25Bill Simmons?

  And it's probably the biggest flaw of the movie.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  She gets, I mean, she isn't, well, we're talking about this as a male fantasy, right? I guess I, it's what's unclear to me is what the fantasy is. Right? Because the real fantasy is.

• 57:41Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you.

• 57:42Speaker 02

  My brother is my best friend. Right?

• 57:45Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  Because there's, there's so many scenes where like, they have the fight in his apartment. M Mick and.

• 57:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Francis, they have the fight in his apartment. Where, you know, Francis breaks down and says, you know, I feel terrible. You know, I feel like everything is closing in on me. This divorce has really wrecked me. And and and Mickey's like, you know what your problem is? You're a terrible person. You're cheating on your wife.

• 58:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  That's what you should feel bad.

• 58:13Bill Simmons?

  You're living a lie.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  The next scene, they're in the park, they're like walking. Oh, what is it? Brooklyn Bridge or like the the Brooklyn Promenade?

• 58:23Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  Brooklyn Heights Promenade, like, they're together again. And they're having it, they're bonding some more. I mean, so you can say what the fantasy is. I just think that.

• 58:35Bill Simmons?

  So you're saying it's a relationship move between the brothers and Maxine Bonds?

• 58:38Speaker 02

  A thousand percent. I just don't.

• 58:40Bill Simmons?

  Does that matter?

• 58:40Speaker 02

  Know that it matters what any of these women are.

• 58:43Bill Simmons?

  You describe it to the dad, like, what's she like? She's earnest.

• 58:49Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's really just.

• 58:50Bill Simmons?

  Good hang.

• 58:51Sean Fennessey?

  The same is true for her performance in Brothers McMillan. She's just not a good actress. And it's, I think it's okay to say that. She does, she has no real depth as an actress. And so she cannot provide character to what's written on the page, which is the opposite of so many of the other actresses that are.

• 59:05Bill Simmons?

  And the problem is there's every, the four other actresses in this movie, even the two that don't have a lot to do.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Oh, four, yeah, four, yeah.

• 59:13Bill Simmons?

  Are all lights out. Like, Leslie Mann's like, oh, this person's gonna be a star. Amanda Peet, you're like, ah, this person has it.

• 59:19Sean Fennessey?

  And so Maxine Bonds was in Brothers McMillan because she was dating Ed Burns at the time. She was the, you know, first person who read everything that he wrote. And he said during the making of that movie, the reason I cast her in that part as the girl who his character falls in. With is because I knew she would show up to work every time we were shooting. I didn't have to worry about that.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  She was reliable.

• 59:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, which is like kind of a tough thing to hear a lot, but also like.

• 59:41Bill Simmons?

  Craig said about high fits.

• 59:44Sean Fennessey?

  He always shows up.

• 59:45Bill Simmons?

  I knew we'd host every part we did.

• 59:48Sean Fennessey?

  You're always there Danny H. Uh, and so, you know, that. You can look at her other work. She didn't do a lot of other notable work. She's just not a very gifted performer. And she's getting blown off the screen by a bunch of people who are red hot in their careers.

• 1:00:01Bill Simmons?

  I have a recasting couch that I'll just do now for this. I think if Maxine Bonds and Leslie, Leslie Mann just switch roles. And Leslie Mann is in the cab. It's a better movie.

• 1:00:13Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Leslie Mann is great.

• 1:00:14Bill Simmons?

  Cause she, cause then she's just doing weird Leslie Mann, the whole movie and quirky and you're just like, oh, I get it.

• 1:00:19Sean Fennessey?

  But she just pops off the screen.

• 1:00:20Bill Simmons?

  Stay away, but I can't stay away.

• 1:00:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:00:22Bill Simmons?

  And now it makes a lot more.

• 1:00:23Sean Fennessey?

  Her line readings in this movie are so good. You're like, this is a, this is a trained actor.

• 1:00:28Bill Simmons?

  Well, she.

• 1:00:28Sean Fennessey?

  When you're watching her.

• 1:00:29Bill Simmons?

  Burns said that she was in one scene and he deliberately wrote two extra scenes that weren't in the script because he had to get her in. Wait, we have to, um, we have to get quickly to, this is the last piece of my rundown before we get to categories. Gen X indie darlings. Cause Ed Burns is right smack dab in the middle of this. Sean laid out the story. The older class, the old, the seniors in this high school are Tarantino and Soderbergh and Linklater.

• 1:00:56Bill Simmons?

  And then I think the juniors and sophomores are Kevin Smith, Ed Burns, Rodriguez, Bombak and Wes Anderson.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  I would throw Whit Stillman in there.

• 1:01:05Bill Simmons?

  Was he a senior or junior?

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  He's a senior.

• 1:01:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's a senior.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Um, Wes Anderson, did you say Wes Anderson?

• 1:01:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think he's a junior, but he stayed back a year.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  Soderbergh.

• 1:01:16Bill Simmons?

  Soderbergh's a senior. Yeah. And he was 19 when he graduated.

• 1:01:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Sex, Lies and Videotape. Sex, Lies and Videotape is what launches this.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  It's also on this, on this movie's mind too.

• 1:01:26Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:01:27Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  Um, but again, it doesn't have.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  The, it doesn't have a fetish.

• 1:01:34Bill Simmons?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  Right? It doesn't have a deep, dark secret.

• 1:01:36Bill Simmons?

  That's Ed Burns's, that's the secret sauce with him. I just want to be a good hang and talk and some people who are conflicted about relationship stuff. And then 98 minutes later, we're all gonna live happily ever after and ride off on a boat.

• 1:01:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's a dinner party movie, you know? You know, you go to a good dinner party and you're like, ah, we had like three or four really interesting conversations.

• 1:01:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:57Sean Fennessey?

  And then you walk away and you're like, well, that was over. And it was just a nice night.

• 1:02:01Bill Simmons?

  I had a glass and a half of Pinot Noir.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  There's also some dinner parties where like, you're just like.

• 1:02:08Sean Fennessey?

  This is boring.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  Did I say that?

• 1:02:10Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  Did I? Did that just happen?

• 1:02:11Sean Fennessey?

  Did you see the invite?

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  I mean, yes, I mean.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  But again, that movie somehow doesn't go far enough.

• 1:02:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, maybe. I really liked that movie. I, that movie is also a kind of a conversation with this movie, yeah.

• 1:02:25Bill Simmons?

  So that high school I mentioned of Gen X indie darlings, um, really generation.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  I mean, John Singleton and Matty Rich, I mean, there's like another, I've just, I just made a list of like Nicole Holof Center. They're Noah Baumbach, did you say Baumbach?

• 1:02:40Sean Fennessey?

  He did.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  Okay, um, I'm just throwing some nor names.

• 1:02:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's weird, cause Singleton, the first.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  Not indie.

• 1:02:46Bill Simmons?

  No, but the first movie, first movie was young or whatever, but then he just, he could make whatever movie he wanted after that.

• 1:02:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:53Bill Simmons?

  I don't, like Ed Burns, even for this, I think he had a $3 million budget. You know, Baumbach probably didn't have a big budget for the entire 90s.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's worth noting too, I think that, to your point about the Sundance indie guys, that Brothers McCallum and this movie were distributed by Fox Searchlight. And Fox Searchlight, the first movie they ever distributed was Brothers McCallum. Fox Searchlight still exists, it was the, kind of the rise of the indie shingle under major studio organization. And so Disney had already bought Miramax. And so every studio, basically over time, decides, we need a smaller branch inside of our building that looks for these kinds of movies and markets them because they can make a lot of money. You know, Paramount Vantage and.

• 1:03:33Bill Simmons?

  Vantage, yeah.

• 1:03:34Sean Fennessey?

  You know, you've got like all of these various things, not all of them worked out, but Searchlight is still around. Searchlight is still putting out good movies.

• 1:03:41Bill Simmons?

  I actually, I was gonna do this later, but this was an independent ed, which I bought on Apple Books for like $6.99.

• 1:03:49Bill Simmons?

  Which was really interesting about, he makes this movie, Fox Searchlight, they're like, you're our fucking guy. We love you. And, and, uh, they film the movie.

• 1:04:00Bill Simmons?

  His agents get involved.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Oh, the agents.

• 1:04:03Bill Simmons?

  So they want to do the next movie. This is what he writes.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  The agents.

• 1:04:06Bill Simmons?

  My agent decided, my agents decided to negotiate a Woody Allen type deal for me in the studio, a put deal, which basically stipulated that Fox Searchlight would green light any script I wanted to make sight unseen, as long as the budget was under fifteen million, starting with the next movie he made.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Five, zero?

• 1:04:21Bill Simmons?

  Fifteen.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Fifteen, okay, I'm like.

• 1:04:23Bill Simmons?

  So, he was like, are we sure we want to do this? Like, they've been really good to me. Why are we playing hardball? Um, agent says, no, no, you have the leverage now, let's do it. Says he has a tense phone call with Tom Rothman, who said, what happened? Didn't we do good by you? And a really uncomfortable lunch with the Fox Entertainment chairman, who said, Bill Mechanic, who said, why would you ask for this? I thought you were part of the family.

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  Ugh.

• 1:04:49Bill Simmons?

  And he was like, look, it's my team. So, Fox Searchlight gets mad, kind of buries She's the One, and then doesn't bid on the third movie. And he has this whole thing in his book about it, like, I didn't know any better. I just trusted these stupid agents I had. The lesson is always, is agents are fucking worse.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  Oh my god, like, just, you and I just had a conversation about agents before we started having this, this conversation.

• 1:05:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's, just be careful out there, yeah.

• 1:05:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's a tricky one. I think if Ed Burns's next couple of movies were better, he might not look back on this in quite the same way. That's just, that's a little bit of a harsh way of describing it.

• 1:05:22Bill Simmons?

  Well, because the next one's No Looking Back, which did not do well with Lauren Holly.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  But, in the moment, that was such an upsetting thing to Tom Rothman.

• 1:05:31Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  And it was confusing.

• 1:05:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but also like executives saying like, you were a part of the family is also like.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  I get that part.

• 1:05:41Bill Simmons?

  Classic movie shit.

• 1:05:42Sean Fennessey?

  That's movie shit, yeah.

• 1:05:43Bill Simmons?

  So he said, she's.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  So what's the right thing to do?

• 1:05:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's gotta be somewhere in the middle. It's gotta be like, you need to pay me more, or give me a little bit more flexibility, and I'll make my movie with you, like that. And the agent should also know that that's what the client wants. Like, there's always a middle ground.

• 1:05:55Bill Simmons?

  But he was in his mid twenties. The move would have been to go out with Tom Rothman, blah, blah, blah. But he said, She's the One, still went on to gross nine point five million, was Searchlight's biggest hit that year, but the message was clear. I had blown it. Then the studio passed on his next movie, which was called Long Time, Nothing New.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:11Bill Simmons?

  And, so he got it back. He's, he moves to LA, he does sidewalks in New York, and then gets his mojo back in a real way.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  It's important to say that, like, between, like, among those three movies, he manages to, to play.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  Like a meaningful role.

• 1:06:28Bill Simmons?

  And that's what the agents told him. He's in Saving Private Ryan.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  Saving Private Ryan.

• 1:06:31Bill Simmons?

  And a couple others, because they're like, you're a lead actor, like, go this way.

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  But he hasn't.

• 1:06:36Bill Simmons?

  Sort of.

• 1:06:37Sean Fennessey?

  I like him in Saving Private Ryan.

• 1:06:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's, he's a supporting actor.

• 1:06:40Sean Fennessey?

  School nineteen forty's.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  You could think, and I think Spielberg knew.

• 1:06:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  That face.

• 1:06:46Sean Fennessey?

  He's Robert Ryan.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:06:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:06:48Bill Simmons?

  Our guy, Steve Spielberg.

• 1:06:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:51Bill Simmons?

  We, we all hung out with him in two thousand twenty six.

• 1:06:54Sean Fennessey?

  Are we?

• 1:06:54Bill Simmons?

  Good friend of all of us.

• 1:06:55Sean Fennessey?

  Can we say that? Our guy?

• 1:06:56Bill Simmons?

  Our guy.

• 1:06:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Bill Simmons?

  Our guy, Steven Spielberg, the greatest director of all time. Um. You know who, uh, wasn't Ed Burns' guy? Roger Ebert.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:07:06Bill Simmons?

  Two stars. Although this movie disappointed me, it did not dishearten me about Edward Burns as an actor or filmmaker. He knows how to move a scene. He has a nice feel for the ground level human touches that make his character real. She's the one plays like an overhaul of the Brothers McMullen with a larger budget. And it's time for him to move on. This was how I felt when I saw it. It felt in the vicinity of Brothers McMullen in a way like not, kind of not new enough.

• 1:07:32Sean Fennessey?

  But you're right.

• 1:07:33Bill Simmons?

  It's like a little bit of a remake in some ways of the first movie.

• 1:07:37Sean Fennessey?

  It, the difference is, the biggest difference to me is the characterization of McGlon. Because McGlon in, in McMullen is this really kind of tortured, faithful Catholic young man.

• 1:07:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:49Sean Fennessey?

  And in this movie, he's Catholic and he believes in these things because of his religion, but he's really kind of a shitheel of a guy.

• 1:07:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Sean Fennessey?

  And to me, that, the broadness of that character, I think is really effective. Like, I think he really is really entertaining in this movie. I know Craig's gonna say something negative against him, and I'm gonna get in front of that right now. Um, but.

• 1:08:10Bill Simmons?

  Don't do it, Craig.

• 1:08:11Sean Fennessey?

  I think actually it's something that Burns, like, missed out on going forward in his movies. His movies get like a little bit more sincere and serious.

• 1:08:18Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:08:18Sean Fennessey?

  And they're not as funny as the funniest stuff in this movie is.

• 1:08:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Well, I think he started living a life, too.

• 1:08:26Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  Right? I mean, I think that he was, he's always trying to find a way to keep the movies, um, to have some cultural osmosis happening in them, but.

• 1:08:39Bill Simmons?

  We're um, we're taking one more break. I'm gonna go to the bathroom cause I'm old. Great. Then we're gonna come back and do the categories. Wonderful. This episode is brought to you by Trivia. Sweeteners are like movies. The best ones don't leave an aftertaste. That's why Trivia Allos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener is a smooth, balanced tri-blend that delivers sugar-like sweetness with zero calories per serving and no aftertaste. If you're looking for a better way to enjoy sweetness with zero calories per serving, you really need to try Trivia Allos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener. Available online and nationwide at Kroger, Target, and your favorite local grocery retailer. This episode is brought to you by Quince.

• 1:09:24Bill Simmons?

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• 1:10:07Bill Simmons?

  Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order, 365-day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it's a Rewatchables podcast. They would appreciate that. It's the best way to support the show.

• 1:10:26Bill Simmons?

  The categories.

• 1:10:30Bill Simmons?

  Three million, thirteen million dollar revenue from this movie, by the way. So this movie was successful. Uh, categories quickly, just some scenes, most rewatchable scene, when we meet the fighting Fitzpatricks. Where's your sister, all that stuff, and then the brother comes out and that first scene, basically.

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  That movie was supposed to be called The Fighting Fitzpatricks, right? I remember that.

• 1:10:51Bill Simmons?

  The cab ride, the, uh, Aniston and McGowan arguing about sex and Mick showing up at the new bride, that's fun. Mick picking up Cameron Diaz and going to get his TV back would be my first, like, legitimate rewatchable scene.

• 1:11:06Sean Fennessey?

  The first one I wrote down was Heather shows up in Mickey's cab.

• 1:11:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this is when the movie goes up a level. You're the only English-speaking white guy driving a cab in New York? We're like, oh, so she's like a mean person. This is good, let's go.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  She's on it.

• 1:11:18Bill Simmons?

  You know what, Heather? I gotta imagine it beats sucking dick for a living.

• 1:11:23Bill Simmons?

  Depends on whose dick it is. This is the best character of all time.

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  I mean, the one great thing about this character is, in a different movie, she would have to atone. For, she would either deny that she did it.

• 1:11:38Bill Simmons?

  Right. No, she doesn't care.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  Or she'd have, or the, or the plot would force her into atonement.

• 1:11:44Sean Fennessey?

  Is she the hero of this movie is a question you can ask.

• 1:11:46Bill Simmons?

  Right, it's like Sharon Stone has some basic instinct too.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  I thought about Sharon Stone.

• 1:11:50Bill Simmons?

  These characters that are just like, I have no blood in my body, so keep trying to cut me. There's, nothing will come out.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  Nothing's coming out.

• 1:11:57Bill Simmons?

  I'm bloodless.

• 1:11:58Sean Fennessey?

  I would say Heather shows a little more vulnerability than the psychotic serial murderer Catherine Trammell, but...

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  Never, never known. Never convicted. But it, but if she started, if she showed up, if she showed up at Nikki's, at Nikki's front door, and she certainly could do that, if she just wound up in basic instinct.

• 1:12:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Speaker 02

  Basic instinct-er.

• 1:12:20Bill Simmons?

  I like how you called him Nikki.

• 1:12:22Speaker 02

  Um, Nikki, right? His name is Nikki.

• 1:12:24Bill Simmons?

  Nick, but you called him Nikki, which was her pet name for him. Like, he went a whole other level of basic instinct.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  I, I would believe it. She'd know what to do.

• 1:12:32Sean Fennessey?

  Heather, I think we see a couple of, well, here's the thing with Heather. Heather loves Mickey. Now, she cheated on Mickey.

• 1:12:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:39Sean Fennessey?

  But she was, she was engaged to Mickey.

• 1:12:42Bill Simmons?

  I think she likes Mickey the most.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  She's, she likes Mickey the most. She'll love him.

• 1:12:45Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe, maybe not. And she's obviously a very transactional person because she marries a wealthy guy who treats her nicely and gives her orgasms. But.

• 1:12:52Bill Simmons?

  Sounds like a, sounds like a great hang.

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  Does she say, is he 60?

• 1:12:56Bill Simmons?

  I hope he's older than me.

• 1:12:57Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. Can I just say one of my favorite things?

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  Cause I'm betting he's like 40 years old.

• 1:13:01Sean Fennessey?

  This isn't the, the Floyd Gondoli, but it's in the realm, which is anytime Mike McGlone describes somebody as an animal. He does it like three times in this movie. He's an animal. And he says, says that about Papa. It's great.

• 1:13:14Bill Simmons?

  Uh, now that we watch while McGlone arguing the concept of a down cycle.

• 1:13:19Bill Simmons?

  She's great. We're sitting down cycle. The Aniston, Pete McGlone, three, three people scene and Pete's just, can talk about her in a second.

• 1:13:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Bill Simmons?

  Um.

• 1:13:29Sean Fennessey?

  His tits are bigger than mine.

• 1:13:31Bill Simmons?

  The second Mickey Heather scene that goes right into our guy Frank Vincent.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:37Bill Simmons?

  Badgering Aniston about his sex life. Were you excited to see Frank Vincent?

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Loved Frank Vincent.

• 1:13:41Sean Fennessey?

  He's so good.

• 1:13:42Bill Simmons?

  Is it ever a time when it's like, oh no, Frank Vincent's here? Is that where it's said it's ever been said?

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  But can I just say something about jeans? What world does Frank Vincent and Anita Gillette produce Jennifer Aniston?

• 1:13:59Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I thought about this too.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  I think she.

• 1:14:01Sean Fennessey?

  I kinda bought it.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  I think she thought about it. Like, how do I make sense with these two great character directors? You mean that you think that Amanda Peet? Oh, yes. I believe that.

• 1:14:12Sean Fennessey?

  She could be the offspring of that couple.

• 1:14:14Speaker 02

  I, that I believe, that I believe.

• 1:14:17Sean Fennessey?

  Frank Vincent throwing 106 miles an hour in this movie.

• 1:14:20Speaker 02

  He's really good.

• 1:14:21Bill Simmons?

  It's, it's gonna be a fun Dion Waiters. We also have when that, when Mickey and Heather together, the second time we get the, maybe we made a mistake. When it's just our hero, just like, no, man, don't fall for this. This is gonna go so badly. I would have fallen for it. The is Francis gay montage right into breaking up with the innocent.

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  It's.

• 1:14:41Bill Simmons?

  The Cologne part, we mentioned earlier.

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  That's the number one.

• 1:14:44Bill Simmons?

  Mick finds out Franny's with Heather. That's where we get the, how do you like that, Mr. Loser cab driver who can't afford a TV? We get the boxing gloves. You are an ugly bitch. I pity you. You've said that to see our.

• 1:14:59Sean Fennessey?

  My absolute favorite line in the movie. Actually, my second favorite line in the movie. You are an ugly bitch. I pity you.

• 1:15:05Bill Simmons?

  Then he gets punched.

• 1:15:06Sean Fennessey?

  The perfect elocution.

• 1:15:08Bill Simmons?

  And then the, the, um, the whole scene at the end that we talked about, which is my pick. You don't love her because she's unlovable.

• 1:15:18Bill Simmons?

  Like a hooker? No, not like a hooker. She was a hooker and then McGowan storms off.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  She's still in the apartment, by the way.

• 1:15:26Bill Simmons?

  Probably listening.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  She, I mean, but there's no evidence that she was, but also the performance is so. She holds on to so much that there's a world where she might have been listening.

• 1:15:39Bill Simmons?

  Why aren't you rooting for her in this movie? It's like rooting for the murderer in a true crime documentary or something like. Oh, I hope he just could stop at the post office. He could get out of this.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  But what does she do that's bad? She does nothing.

• 1:15:51Sean Fennessey?

  So thorny.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  She does nothing bad.

• 1:15:53Bill Simmons?

  She's intentionally, she gives the watch to Mike McGowan.

• 1:15:57Sean Fennessey?

  She's fucking with these guys.

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  That's on him.

• 1:15:59Bill Simmons?

  This is now, she's like a cat just playing with.

• 1:16:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she's fucking with these guys. I, but I think that the movie, there are times when it feels like the movie really does not like women. Where it's like, it's a little, it's a little rough on the female characters. And it is a very mid nineties thing. And then there's other times where you're like, he definitely affords Heather more agency, power and happiness than this kind of character would ever usually get in a movie.

• 1:16:21Bill Simmons?

  A thousand percent.

• 1:16:22Sean Fennessey?

  So it's super complicated.

• 1:16:23Speaker 02

  She'd be dead at the end of it, by the end of a different movie.

• 1:16:26Sean Fennessey?

  That woman like that gets punished. And she like gets to go marry some rich guy.

• 1:16:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Papa.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  Which she wanted, right?

• 1:16:33Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  She got what she she got what in the world of this movie she wanted.

• 1:16:38Sean Fennessey?

  But she still has two brothers who were assholes calling her a whore in her own house.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, but look how they wind up.

• 1:16:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. My most rewatchable is that scene when they're sizing each other up silently for thirty seconds. I just think that scene's awesome.

• 1:16:51Sean Fennessey?

  Love it.

• 1:16:52Bill Simmons?

  What do you have?

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Oh, the montage. I mean, the the is he gay montage?

• 1:16:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  Which also has the best filmmaking. I mean, you know, it's it's not like.

• 1:16:59Bill Simmons?

  That's the most Woody Allen.

• 1:17:01Speaker 02

  It's like it's like movie making one on one, but there's just like a.

• 1:17:04Sean Fennessey?

  Two shot, two shot, two shot matching.

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  Of a camera panning across the screen and they gotta get the lines out in enough time for the camera to get from one side of the screen to the other side of the screen.

• 1:17:13Bill Simmons?

  Are you ugly bitch? I pity you is your favorite or something else?

• 1:17:16Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I I like that that's that that unspoken scene between Heather and Mickey, but the other one I love is after Franny goes back to try to reunite with Heather and she tells him that she's engaged to Papa and that she gets in the car and he closes the car. She closes the car door and he says, thanks for the memories. You ruined my life.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. That is such a nineties indie movie thing to do.

• 1:17:39Sean Fennessey?

  In the trailer, yeah.

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  Right? Like, and I remember it from the trailer.

• 1:17:44Bill Simmons?

  I had that for the rough low hand and Ruben and Parker Joe Brackton.

• 1:17:47Sean Fennessey?

  You ruined my life.

• 1:17:48Bill Simmons?

  He really goes for it.

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  No motherfucker.

• 1:17:50Bill Simmons?

  What's the most ninety six thing about this movie, Wesley?

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  Oh, man, um.

• 1:17:56Bill Simmons?

  I can give you a couple of options.

• 1:17:57Speaker 02

  Oh, the hair. The hair, for sure. I mean, also, was the haircut trademarked? Because you'll notice in the Jennifer Aniston's haircut, I should say, the.

• 1:18:06Bill Simmons?

  It's the she did the Rachel haircut for like a year and a half.

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  Because.

• 1:18:10Bill Simmons?

  Second half of season one and then all season two.

• 1:18:12Speaker 02

  You'll notice it's not fully Rachel did this movie. It's like half of it is. Like, there's some clause in the contract that says you can't have a full Rachel. You can do a half of Rachel. So the hair is like flatter on one side than it is on the other. I don't know. It's just a thing you notice because because it was that it was that.

• 1:18:32Bill Simmons?

  She looks great.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  That haircut.

• 1:18:34Sean Fennessey?

  Beautiful.

• 1:18:34Bill Simmons?

  She just looks she's just ten out of ten in this movie.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  She's also so relaxed.

• 1:18:39Bill Simmons?

  I have that as most nineteen ninety six. Thing in this movie. Amazing. The TV that Ed Burns wants back all movie, the giant TV.

• 1:18:48Speaker 04

  I'd say.

• 1:18:48Bill Simmons?

  When you see TVs like that, are you just like, what the fuck were they doing thirty years ago?

• 1:18:52Speaker 04

  Yes, but I remember that we used to have TVs like that, but it's not even the TV. It's like the concept of needing to go back to get the TV because the TV is so valuable. So nineties like now it's like, obviously. Yeah, TVs are so cheap and you could just like toss them away. And like the fact of that was like, I gotta go back for the TV three years later.

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  How much did it weigh? Like he's really carrying it like.

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  Heavy they really were.

• 1:19:20Speaker 04

  Thirty pounds.

• 1:19:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, they probably took out those.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  He's holding that TV for like five minutes at some.

• 1:19:27Bill Simmons?

  I also had a somebody driving a cab, not an Uber. And then this is my favorite one, a femme fatale character named Heather.

• 1:19:38Bill Simmons?

  We have no Heathers anymore. Heathers are gone.

• 1:19:41Sean Fennessey?

  I have a related one. Which is that in this movie, there are young people who are named Connie, Francis, Mickey and Renee.

• 1:19:49Bill Simmons?

  Renee is another one.

• 1:19:50Sean Fennessey?

  Show me a single one of those people under the age of twenty right now.

• 1:19:55Bill Simmons?

  Maybe a.

• 1:19:57Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe that's a family name. But I mean, those are and a Francis who's known as Franny, which I don't, is that like a Salinger-esque?

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  It could be, but I think that the way that they deal with trying to feminize.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  Well, Franny and Mickey, but definitely Fran, right? Like they Franny, Francis. I mean, I wrote down all they call him sister. They call him nun. They call him Princess. They call him Dorothy. They he's upset that he wasn't the best man at the wedding. What man in the history of weddings is upset because he wasn't the best man at the wedding? I mean, even if it's true that there's one or two, this is a feminization.

• 1:20:39Sean Fennessey?

  This is another one of my takes, which is that in this movie, he's looking at Woody Allen movies, but he's like, what if I made Tony Roberts the lead and Woody Allen the side? And like, so he's playing Tony Roberts and his brother is playing Woody Allen.

• 1:20:52Bill Simmons?

  Flood gun, dolly butter on my ass, lollipops in my mouth award for something I just enjoy. What do you have, Sean?

• 1:20:59Sean Fennessey?

  I have a really important thing. I love to see Irish Americans accurately portrayed on screen as guilt riddled sanctimonious weirdos who've been fucked up by their parents. It's just something I enjoy.

• 1:21:11Sean Fennessey?

  Something I relate to.

• 1:21:12Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one. I figured, I figured you might have that one.

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  I just think that like,

• 1:21:19Speaker 02

  is he gay? It's just like,

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  I just, I just, even when it's not true, I don't even need, in this movie, I need somebody to be gay.

• 1:21:28Bill Simmons?

  Ed Burns is listening to this right now, like, what the fuck? I was just making a movie about guys trying to get laid in their mid twenties. Let's just gotta do it.

• 1:21:34Sean Fennessey?

  I do think he knows what he's doing. The Franny thing is very real, where it's like.

• 1:21:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  I just think that the movie, I would love to know how far they took his sexuality before. Because the only reason he's straight in this movie and not anything else is because it's almost a plot device. It's the only way to connect Heather to the brothers.

• 1:21:58Bill Simmons?

  Do you think they should have done a ending like Pacino shaving and cruising? Mike McGlone just staring in the mirror.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  It's so funny that you're saying that because I just feel like.

• 1:22:08Bill Simmons?

  Buzz is into it. It's like, yeah, I actually think they should have.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  Movie had some, because this also, this movie came out at a really great time for indie gay movies, right? This movie didn't need to be gay. I'm just saying that, that gayness is on its mind, right? The perception of what kind of man you are if you do or don't do the following 25 things. So what if?

• 1:22:33Bill Simmons?

  I, but you, you're miss, the mid nineties was, it was not in the forefront of how anyone was thinking. I remember seeing Chasing Amy in a theater with, on a date and not seeing the gay thing at all until she brought it up at the end and then being like, what the fuck's going on? Like, literally being blindsided by it.

• 1:22:52Sean Fennessey?

  Like a, like a Shyamalan plot twist.

• 1:22:54Bill Simmons?

  I, I just couldn't, I, I was like, what, what happened in this movie? But. But now I watch them, like, how did I miss this? There's an hour and a half of clues.

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  But it's in the infrastructure of the work itself.

• 1:23:03Sean Fennessey?

  You're right, but the problem with, from my experience, the problem with that idea, if it, to literalize it, is he probably would be, if not cast out of his family, they would not have the same dynamic. The sort of the, because his father is such a small minded person. He's like,

• 1:23:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:19Sean Fennessey?

  borderline bigoted towards Maxine Bonds, who might be from the islands.

• 1:23:22Speaker 02

  Oh my God, from the islands.

• 1:23:23Sean Fennessey?

  But that's real shit, man. I mean, that's, that, that is the most Long Island thing in this movie.

• 1:23:28Bill Simmons?

  That's her best scene in the movie, when he's like trying to find out where she's from.

• 1:23:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  What's the exact line? It's like, uh, Yeah, she's, she's from the island and Edward Burns is like Rhode Island. Yeah.

• 1:23:42Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that is foreign territory.

• 1:23:43Sean Fennessey?

  Mahoney also puts this movie on his back for about 20 minutes where he's like, I got this. Clear out. Don't worry.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. But I, but he does have that moment, though, when he's talking to Francis, where he's like, it would be fine if you were.

• 1:23:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Speaker 02

  It'd be fine if you were. And he has a moment where he's like,

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  but I'm not.

• 1:24:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  But I'm not.

• 1:24:03Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:24:04Speaker 02

  I don't know. I just have, having had that conversation with people in my life about moi.

• 1:24:10Speaker 02

  It just seems like I, I don't know. I'm relating to this on a whole other. Also, I mean, can I just say, I've had sex with Francis. Do you know what I mean? Like, I've had sex with a Francis.

• 1:24:21Sean Fennessey?

  That guy.

• 1:24:22Speaker 02

  I've had sex with him.

• 1:24:23Bill Simmons?

  Compelling argument.

• 1:24:24Speaker 02

  Multiple times.

• 1:24:25Bill Simmons?

  Got it.

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  Like, it's not like, I'm not like grasping at straws. I am also bringing my life experience to this bitch too, boys.

• 1:24:34Bill Simmons?

  I, to me, it was, to me, it was an Irish curse, but um, this is a decent counterargument.

• 1:24:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think I.

• 1:24:41Bill Simmons?

  I always thought it was an Irish curse.

• 1:24:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:24:44Bill Simmons?

  My, my deep down fear is I can't satisfy this lady who is being satisfied by Papa.

• 1:24:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:24:49Speaker 02

  I'm not, I'm not even.

• 1:24:51Bill Simmons?

  And my wife's in the bathroom with a vibrator.

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  Also, the fear of the, the fear of sex in this movie is also, it's such a conservative. It's a really conservative movie in that sense, too.

• 1:25:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, all that stuff is very literally in Brothers McCallum. Their conversations about the hangups about Irish Catholic guys and what they're supposed to like, you know, McGloin in Brothers McMullin is like, you know, it's almost like if I masturbated as much as I wanted to, I would be banished to hell instantaneously. You know, like, that stuff is on Burns's mind big time.

• 1:25:24Bill Simmons?

  My Floyd Gondole is the gimmick of never seeing the mom, which is a device some movies and TV shows use.

• 1:25:30Sean Fennessey?

  I like that.

• 1:25:31Bill Simmons?

  It's just really good. We never see her. There's one time we had that, but we never know what she looks like, anything. And it's, I don't know. I appreciate it.

• 1:25:37Sean Fennessey?

  I like it, too.

• 1:25:38Bill Simmons?

  What's age the best? We mentioned Diaz and Aniston. Um, McGloin and Burns is ball busting brothers, but butting heads.

• 1:25:46Bill Simmons?

  I wrote John Mahoney exclamation point. Really enjoy that guy.

• 1:25:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:50Bill Simmons?

  He's no longer with us.

• 1:25:51Sean Fennessey?

  He was great. He was, he's always great.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  I've always wanted to ask you this. Where was his say anything Oscar nomination? Like, that was a crowded year. And I go back every once in a while. Eighty nine. So that would have been, it actually, you know, Iello, uh.

• 1:26:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:11Speaker 02

  Denzel won.

• 1:26:13Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:14Speaker 02

  That was a year that Morgan Freeman should have been nominated, but it was so crazy that he didn't even make the cut. He was, he was in Driving Miss Daisy then, but anyway, Mahoney should have been.

• 1:26:24Sean Fennessey?

  Great, great in Moonstar.

• 1:26:26Bill Simmons?

  How do you feel about Dan Aykroyd in Driving Miss Daisy getting an Oscar nomination?

• 1:26:29Speaker 02

  He took, he took about three people's Oscar nominations.

• 1:26:32Sean Fennessey?

  Abomination.

• 1:26:33Bill Simmons?

  Marlon Brando in A Dry White Season?

• 1:26:35Speaker 02

  Oof. I mean, I'm sorry.

• 1:26:37Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my guy, Martin Lando in Crimes and Misdemeanors.

• 1:26:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 1:26:42Bill Simmons?

  Just, that, he should have. Just watched it.

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  Did you?

• 1:26:44Bill Simmons?

  Little rewatchable scouting. You know, that's one of my movies.

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  Oh, I love it.

• 1:26:48Bill Simmons?

  That was the year when I really started artsy fartsy with movies. That was one of my first ones where I was like, here's what Woody's trying to do here. I was like nineteen.

• 1:26:56Bill Simmons?

  Woody's trying, in that scene, I'm just like talking out of my ass.

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  I watch that movie every, every two years, every three years I watch it. Cause I'm just like, am I, am I, is it, is this, is this not?

• 1:27:08Bill Simmons?

  My hottest take, my hottest Woody Allen take is I think that's his best movie.

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  Oh, that's not a hot take at all.

• 1:27:14Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's definitely in the conversation.

• 1:27:16Speaker 02

  It's almost, I mean, I'm not gonna say inarguable.

• 1:27:19Bill Simmons?

  Plus it's got Orbach.

• 1:27:20Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's so good.

• 1:27:22Bill Simmons?

  We fucking killed her. What do you want? Like, she's gone. The problem's gone.

• 1:27:26Sean Fennessey?

  The single reason it's so good is because it's both strains of Woody. It's very funny starring Woody Allen comedy. All the, Alan Alda is hilarious in that movie. And then the, the, you know, the murder plot and the, the psychology is, is legitimately, it's like all the good parts of interiors. Mapped onto a suspense movie.

• 1:27:47Speaker 02

  Given Hitchcock.

• 1:27:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's so.

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:49Bill Simmons?

  Comedy is tragedy plus time.

• 1:27:54Bill Simmons?

  When he shows it in the documentary, that is one of the funniest and Woody Allen's like dying laughing. He's putting Mussolini in it. I love that movie. We gotta do that one.

• 1:28:04Speaker 02

  It is one of the great American movies.

• 1:28:07Bill Simmons?

  You've never seen it, right?

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:28:08Sean Fennessey?

  That's, that's part of my what's age, the, the best in the movie is that at this time, I do think that New York needed an inheritor of Woody Allen's throne of his legacy. And like, there's a lot of people who picked up on it. Bomback, Spike Lee, like a lot of people had kind of like grabbed pieces of it. But he's, he was going for, he's going for that crown.

• 1:28:26Bill Simmons?

  That's my mom's biggest critique of the rewatchables is that we haven't done a Woody Allen month. And I'm like, well, not ruling it out, but there's some complications. Even crimes and misdemeanors, there's a little girl that he's hanging out with.

• 1:28:40Speaker 02

  I think it's very, I think it's very doable because you're bringing the problems into the room.

• 1:28:45Bill Simmons?

  I think that's why I would have to be a, like, finding a sponsor might be tough, but we'll, we'll work on it.

• 1:28:51Sean Fennessey?

  The movies hold up. I watched Love and Death last night for a Diane Keaton episode that we're doing. I mean, the movies hold up.

• 1:28:56Speaker 02

  They just hold up. Can I just say, the thing about Edward Burns though, as a person who loves Woody Allen, he does, is he doesn't have a crimes and misdemeanors in him, right?

• 1:29:07Bill Simmons?

  But cause he's, yeah, he's a nice guy.

• 1:29:09Speaker 02

  He's, he's, I mean.

• 1:29:10Sean Fennessey?

  Seems like a good guy.

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  Is, is Burns too, is Burns too nice? Is Burns too nice? Is he too good a person to?

• 1:29:20Bill Simmons?

  He's got a great life.

• 1:29:21Sean Fennessey?

  But he's, he, he's made 15 films, married to Chrissy Turlington, probably has a beautiful family.

• 1:29:26Speaker 02

  Does that, I mean, okay, fine.

• 1:29:28Sean Fennessey?

  We're just three schmucks talking about movies on a podcast. He's fucking living the life. He went to Ireland to make that golf movie and I'm like, that seems like a good idea to me.

• 1:29:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I was, I was jealous that day. Even in the, the McMullen sequel, like Tracey Ellis Ross is randomly in that movie for a few scenes. She's great.

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's great.

• 1:29:46Bill Simmons?

  And if he could just pull out like these great. Things out of just these random people, they pop into those movies.

• 1:29:52Speaker 02

  But again, I think in his, in his, in his, every fiber of his. There is something.

• 1:29:58Bill Simmons?

  You're challenging him. There's maybe a big show for him down the road, like his 35th anniversary college movie. A couple more, the Long Island dad having a rule, no woman on the boat.

• 1:30:09Sean Fennessey?

  That's my life lesson.

• 1:30:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:13Bill Simmons?

  No woman on the boat. Hey, it's just, it's just understood.

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  I know a few people.

• 1:30:17Bill Simmons?

  In the 1990s, by the way, people would have, would have said that and nobody would have questioned it. It's like, yeah, no, dad said, no woman on the boat. All right. Uh, brothers settling arguments with boxing gloves was my other one. Anything else?

• 1:30:31Bill Simmons?

  What's aged the best?

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  I have a question.

• 1:30:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:36Speaker 02

  Smoking.

• 1:30:37Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's, yep, that's my next category.

• 1:30:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:30:39Bill Simmons?

  The Sean Penn, I brought my own pack award for excellence in on-screen smoking. Mike McGlone.

• 1:30:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you, Pete is ripping some heaters, though.

• 1:30:48Bill Simmons?

  Pete, I have as well. Aniston, I gave her, her and Pete combined the Edie Falco and Copeland award for character that got three times hotter when they were smoking.

• 1:30:56Sean Fennessey?

  Pete's throwing off some vicious energy.

• 1:30:59Bill Simmons?

  I have a Pete section for later.

• 1:31:01Speaker 02

  I've got a lot of movie pet peeves.

• 1:31:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  And I've never smoked a cigarette. I grew up in a house of smokers. I know you got.

• 1:31:08Bill Simmons?

  I just feel Sierra, like, Sierra's gonna go through.

• 1:31:10Sean Fennessey?

  I don't smoke, no.

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  You never smoke?

• 1:31:11Sean Fennessey?

  Both my parents smoked till I was like 15.

• 1:31:12Bill Simmons?

  Sierra's gonna come through the window right now, like the lady in Obsession, just come flying through.

• 1:31:16Sean Fennessey?

  I've got a camera facing down on us.

• 1:31:21Speaker 02

  I call bullshit on 70% of smoking in movies.

• 1:31:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  It's like teeth tooth brushing. It's like, nobody's ever done this before, but you're gonna pretend for two hours that you know how?

• 1:31:33Bill Simmons?

  Leslie, this is the secret passion of this podcast, the smoking scenes.

• 1:31:37Speaker 02

  You know, though, who's a great smoker? I don't know if she smokes in real life. Jennifer Aniston knows how to smoke a cigarette.

• 1:31:45Bill Simmons?

  She does smoke in real life?

• 1:31:46Speaker 02

  She does?

• 1:31:47Bill Simmons?

  At least she did for a long time.

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:31:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Well, she.

• 1:31:51Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wow. She's a fucking hot actress who smokes cigarettes. What are you talking about?

• 1:31:56Sean Fennessey?

  That's never happened.

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  But I don't believe Amanda Peet is a smoker in this movie. I believe Jennifer Aniston as a smoker in this movie.

• 1:32:02Bill Simmons?

  I believe in everything Amanda Peet did.

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  I, all right, fine, fine, fine.

• 1:32:07Sean Fennessey?

  Truly a captivating presence.

• 1:32:07Speaker 02

  Jennifer Aniston's smoking in this movie is, is exquisite because it's real.

• 1:32:11Bill Simmons?

  You know why? It's, it's patient. And it's just part of what she's doing and she's not thinking about it.

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:32:17Bill Simmons?

  It's like an extra finger on her, on her hand.

• 1:32:19Speaker 02

  But also she takes real drag.

• 1:32:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  She's not puffing. And interestingly, the only, like, the only person not smoking is Edward Burns.

• 1:32:27Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  Does he have a cigar at some point? I don't even think he has a cigar in this movie.

• 1:32:31Bill Simmons?

  They should have had Maxine Bond smoke, cause at least her character would have been doing something. Big Kahuna Burger were best use of food and drink. Just a lot of bottled beer in this movie?

• 1:32:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. There's a, there's a-

• 1:32:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Is that a Long Island thing?

• 1:32:43Speaker 02

  Is a cooler Budweiser.

• 1:32:44Bill Simmons?

  Long Island and bottles versus drafts, huh?

• 1:32:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think they're, they're definitely communicating like, these, this family drinks Budweiser. They drink Budweiser Original. Like, that, that is what they drink.

• 1:32:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the first thing you see.

• 1:32:53Bill Simmons?

  We drink Michelob Ultra and the Rewatchables.

• 1:32:55Sean Fennessey?

  There's also a very prominent Coca-Cola can, right in the middle of Mickey's apartment. That's like, I'm America. That's kind of what the character is doing.

• 1:33:02Speaker 02

  There was one weird beer scene though that jumped out to me, where at, at the bar that Hope works at.

• 1:33:07Bill Simmons?

  Great bar, by the way.

• 1:33:08Speaker 02

  A, a man named Mickey Fitzpatrick drinks a canned Guinness. An Irishman named Mickey Fitzpatrick, it's a Guinness out of a can.

• 1:33:15Sean Fennessey?

  There's an even worse one.

• 1:33:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you would do tap.

• 1:33:17Sean Fennessey?

  When they're down on the shore with, with Jennifer Aniston's parents, Frances is drinking an Ice House. And I'm like, in what, I mean, I guess that's what that family would have.

• 1:33:26Bill Simmons?

  I did notice that as well.

• 1:33:27Sean Fennessey?

  A little weird.

• 1:33:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the Ice House. It, it did-

• 1:33:30Sean Fennessey?

  It's a low tier lager.

• 1:33:32Speaker 02

  Well, relate it. Can I go back to the smoking for one second? What does it mean to smoke Merits? Or smoke, you have to like-

• 1:33:39Bill Simmons?

  Nah, that, so-

• 1:33:39Speaker 02

  That's the brand here.

• 1:33:40Bill Simmons?

  Lot of cigarette history for me in the 90s. Merits.

• 1:33:43Speaker 02

  What do Merits say about you?

• 1:33:45Bill Simmons?

  Merits were like Marlboro Lights, but, um, they lasted a little longer, but same kind of, people felt like they were a little better for you than the Marlboro Reds or, you know, the hard Camels.

• 1:33:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:33:55Bill Simmons?

  Basically, the hierarchy was Camel Light, Marlboro Light, Merits. And if you're bumming cigarettes off girls outside bars, Merits or Marlboro Lights were probably the two that they were gonna have.

• 1:34:08Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:34:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:09Speaker 02

  Cause Merit is very apparent in this movie.

• 1:34:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Merits were good ones. I had a Merit stage.

• 1:34:13Sean Fennessey?

  My dad smoked Parliament's, my mom smoked Winston's. I always remember thinking that that was, that was a tough scene.

• 1:34:18Bill Simmons?

  Smaller box on the Merits, that was always good, fitting in jeans.

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:34:22Bill Simmons?

  Not that I'd know. Um- The great shot order were most cinematic shot. That shot when they're in the brothers or it's like dusk and they're walking with the water behind them.

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  Oh, this is the park shot.

• 1:34:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's a very good shot. I like that.

• 1:34:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think also Maxine Bond's leaning forward in the cab and you're getting them in a two-shot while he's driving. I was like, this is pretty clever. I don't know if I've seen this before.

• 1:34:45Bill Simmons?

  What do we have for the Sean fantasy word for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm?

• 1:34:50Sean Fennessey?

  Um, sorry, I gotta find it.

• 1:34:52Bill Simmons?

  A category that was immortalized during Steven Spielberg's appearance.

• 1:34:56Speaker 02

  It really was.

• 1:34:57Bill Simmons?

  He was delighted.

• 1:34:59Sean Fennessey?

  John Mahoney, Anita Gillette and Robert Weil all starred together in another New York romance called Moonstruck, which this movie is very clearly a kind of continuation of, at least in terms of what it's interested in most, which is like, I think it's like all the Burns movies are about the impossibility and the inevitability of relationships. Like they're, they're all about that and Moonstruck is the same thing. It's a perfect, I mean, it's a much better movie than this movie, but I love that he's kind of like tipping his cap towards that.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  I think his, I think his, his love, I think the other thing that, that's sort of wonderful and frustrating about him as a filmmaker is he's so clearly ardent about the, the movies he loves and is so shaped, been shaped by.

• 1:35:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:52Speaker 02

  So many of them and like, I didn't even think about that until you said it. I didn't make the connection among all those three, all three of those charac, all three of those actors. I don't know. It's very, it's very touching.

• 1:36:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. He loves, he loves New York movies.

• 1:36:09Bill Simmons?

  Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness wore best needle drop. The Petty song right after McGlon and Aniston meet Mickey's bride. And I forgot to mention Tom Petty at the top.

• 1:36:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:19Bill Simmons?

  Who's a huge part of this movie. We got so sidetracked in so many different ways. That uh, this Tom Petty part where Tom Petty apparently like Brothers McMullen, Burns met with them, hey, you might give me a song and he had just done, what did he do, Wildflowers?

• 1:36:34Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is like-

• 1:36:35Bill Simmons?

  Had all, it was gonna be a double album, then it wasn't. He's like, I got all these songs. He's like, what about this one? It was great. What about this one? Great. Um, my wife who loves this movie, one of the reasons I'm doing this, cause it's been on a lot in the house. It's, to her, like, Tom Petty's the star of the movie. He just keeps popping in.

• 1:36:50Sean Fennessey?

  He's in the middle of this incredible resurgence as a star. I mean, he was like a massive star on MTV at this time.

• 1:36:56Bill Simmons?

  And it's his, his music fits the movie.

• 1:36:59Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:36:59Bill Simmons?

  Makes sense. It pops in at the right times.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  There's not enough of it, though.

• 1:37:03Bill Simmons?

  I wish there were two more songs. You're right.

• 1:37:05Speaker 02

  There's some flavoring, you know what I mean? Like, there's some, there's some Petty's song flavoring in the score.

• 1:37:10Sean Fennessey?

  Bookended by Walls, which is a great song. It's like one of his great nineties hits. But then, it doesn't use it as like score, really. You know, it just is like interstitial music that gets you from one sequence to another.

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:37:20Bill Simmons?

  It fits into this nineties songs that were in, like, Kicking and Screaming had a, the Freddie Johnson song.

• 1:37:27Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:27Bill Simmons?

  I know I got a bad reputation. All these like kinda indie, a guy like in a guitar, like just angsty or like petty, like there's certain like-

• 1:37:38Speaker 02

  I love Freddie Johnson. I really, I haven't even thought about that guy in thirty years.

• 1:37:42Bill Simmons?

  That was his, that was his big hit.

• 1:37:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:44Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't Petty not write the title song, though? Wasn't it the World Party guy who?

• 1:37:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, who that has his own version of.

• 1:37:52Speaker 02

  Carl Wallinger?

• 1:37:52Sean Fennessey?

  I think he wrote She's the One.

• 1:37:54Speaker 02

  Oh, she's the one. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:55Sean Fennessey?

  And so Petty is covering Carl Wallinger's song. And then that, and then that led to him doing the whole album.

• 1:38:02Bill Simmons?

  That enraged CR and Yasi more than anything anyone's ever said.

• 1:38:06Sean Fennessey?

  About World Party?

• 1:38:07Bill Simmons?

  World Party, um, The Replacements with worse PR. Yasi almost had a stroke.

• 1:38:12Speaker 02

  I love that!

• 1:38:13Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not, no, stop.

• 1:38:14Bill Simmons?

  Yasi almost had a stroke.

• 1:38:15Sean Fennessey?

  Don't encourage him, please.

• 1:38:16Speaker 02

  I, listen, Bang, one of my favorite albums. I love Goodbye Jumbo. Great album.

• 1:38:21Bill Simmons?

  Great album. How about the Reality Bite song?

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  I mean, great song.

• 1:38:25Bill Simmons?

  When You Come Back to Me, one of like the best poppin' or movie songs.

• 1:38:27Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, uh-

• 1:38:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just bad PR.

• 1:38:31Speaker 02

  Way down-

• 1:38:32Bill Simmons?

  Way down now? Way down. Yeah, come on. I mean, I love Carl Wallen. Was there, was there a better title for this movie? I'm gonna say no. I like She's the One.

• 1:38:41Sean Fennessey?

  Either Irish Goodbye.

• 1:38:43Bill Simmons?

  Irish Goodbye.

• 1:38:44Sean Fennessey?

  Or Irish Curse.

• 1:38:46Bill Simmons?

  I love Irish Goodbye. Irish Goodbye. Craig's the king of titles.

• 1:38:49Speaker 02

  Those are both better, I think. But now in four, doesn't Lindsay Lohan have a movie called Irish?

• 1:38:53Sean Fennessey?

  Irish Wish.

• 1:38:54Speaker 02

  Oh, Irish Wish.

• 1:38:55Sean Fennessey?

  Which is not a thing.

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  What is that?

• 1:38:57Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it's a movie where she plays a leprechaun.

• 1:39:01Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:39:02Speaker 02

  For real?

• 1:39:02Bill Simmons?

  No, she goes to Ireland.

• 1:39:04Speaker 02

  It's like a Christmas.

• 1:39:05Bill Simmons?

  Shame to admit, I've seen it.

• 1:39:06Sean Fennessey?

  Irish Wish. How was it?

• 1:39:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, my wife watched it.

• 1:39:08Sean Fennessey?

  Speaking of, I mean, the queen of Long Island, Lindsay Lohan, of course, you know, this is.

• 1:39:12Bill Simmons?

  Irish Goodbye is a great title.

• 1:39:13Speaker 02

  She's from Long Island?

• 1:39:15Sean Fennessey?

  Of course, yeah. She's a goddess to those of us who were in our twenties.

• 1:39:20Bill Simmons?

  I like Irish Goodbye. Wesley, you have a flex category. What'd you pick?

• 1:39:25Bill Simmons?

  Do you remember?

• 1:39:26Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:39:26Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Why don't you just keep moving?

• 1:39:29Speaker 02

  What? Uh.

• 1:39:30Bill Simmons?

  Nah, you don't need it. I'm gonna keep moving.

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:39:32Bill Simmons?

  The Butch's Girlfriend Award for weak link of the film is Mike McGlone not wanting to have sex with Jennifer Aniston in 1995.

• 1:39:40Speaker 02

  He's in a down cycle.

• 1:39:41Bill Simmons?

  You could almost rename The Butch's Girlfriend to I Don't Want to Have Sex with Jennifer Aniston in 1995.

• 1:39:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:47Bill Simmons?

  Again.

• 1:39:48Sean Fennessey?

  Franny's Down Cycle could also be a title for this movie.

• 1:39:51Bill Simmons?

  This is an actual quote.

• 1:39:52Speaker 02

  That's a very spanking the monkey, like nineties indie American title.

• 1:39:58Bill Simmons?

  He says this about Jennifer Aniston in 1995. It's like you've been driving a 74 Buick your whole life, then you find yourself behind the wheel of a brand new Porsche. It's like, what are you talking about?

• 1:40:11Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:40:11Bill Simmons?

  To her face.

• 1:40:12Sean Fennessey?

  Why did Jennifer Aniston want this part?

• 1:40:15Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 1:40:16Speaker 02

  It's kind of weird.

• 1:40:17Bill Simmons?

  No, no, no, no, no, no, it's not. Like, she, she would not have been, like, she wasn't.

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  She's got a very complicated relationship to the movies, right?

• 1:40:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she made a lot of bad ones.

• 1:40:29Speaker 02

  She quite miraculously never got market corrected. But she was constantly downstream of Julia Roberts, who was still at her peak. And Sandra Bullock, who was getting the don't want the Julia Roberts.

• 1:40:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but you're leaving out one thing. She was on the biggest show the last thirty years.

• 1:40:51Speaker 02

  But she, but they all, I mean.

• 1:40:53Bill Simmons?

  It's tough. It's really tough to break out from that.

• 1:40:55Speaker 02

  But she was so clearly being set up as the person who was gonna continue.

• 1:41:00Bill Simmons?

  But was Brangelina good or bad for this?

• 1:41:05Speaker 02

  I think it was.

• 1:41:06Sean Fennessey?

  It made her a bigger movie star, but she just didn't make good movies. I mean, she just didn't make good movies.

• 1:41:10Speaker 02

  But the movies were also, the thing that happened was the movies kept changing. I think she was unlucky. Right? Because if you watch some of the movies.

• 1:41:17Sean Fennessey?

  Taste matters, man. Taste matters. She didn't pick good parts in the beginning and she didn't really pick good parts at the end.

• 1:41:22Bill Simmons?

  I like where the Millers is solid.

• 1:41:24Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 1:41:24Speaker 02

  But that's, but that's way, that's also later.

• 1:41:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and that's her playing off of her sex appeal.

• 1:41:29Speaker 02

  Picture perfect. I mean, the mustard movie is what I always call it. The, it's just, I honestly believe there was, I mean, Meg Ryan was still at her peak. Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, what was she gonna do?

• 1:41:42Bill Simmons?

  Reese Witherspoon took her.

• 1:41:43Speaker 02

  And then Reese.

• 1:41:44Bill Simmons?

  I think Reese Witherspoon market corrected her as an actress.

• 1:41:46Speaker 02

  Probably, but Reese doesn't show up till like ninety-nine.

• 1:41:49Bill Simmons?

  I know, but that's when Anderson start, like, they're trying to push her as a star.

• 1:41:53Speaker 02

  That's true. She's just got too many, she can't break through because the walls before her are too formidable. Like she, it just makes sense that it didn't happen.

• 1:42:03Sean Fennessey?

  The best movie she's ever been in is Office Space.

• 1:42:05Speaker 02

  Oh, well, and also, the movies are terrible, but those horrible bosses movies, she's great at.

• 1:42:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and those movies are huge hits. She became a big star, like a big movie star. She did, you know, The Breakup was a big hit. Like, she did eventually become the thing that, like, you wrote about in the nineties. You were just like, when is this gonna happen for her? I remember you writing about that.

• 1:42:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:42:23Sean Fennessey?

  Because she wasn't picking the right stuff, but she just, I don't know.

• 1:42:26Bill Simmons?

  Unlike our, our girl Cameron Diaz, who just made great choices for like fifteen years.

• 1:42:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she tried stuff.

• 1:42:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:32Speaker 02

  Also, when Cameron Diaz missed, she was back fifteen minutes later in something that, that hit.

• 1:42:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:39Bill Simmons?

  What's age the worst? We've hit most of this stuff, but the, there's this whole part where Maxine Bonds is trying to be jealous because he went to the apartment and it's like, oh, my girlfriend's getting jealous. It's just bad.

• 1:42:53Speaker 02

  That doesn't work.

• 1:42:54Bill Simmons?

  And then, um.

• 1:42:55Speaker 02

  Doesn't work.

• 1:42:55Bill Simmons?

  And the whole thing with her going to France and she might come and Leslie, man, are you in love with her? You're not in love with her? I thought I was going. Did you guys have a relationship? It's just, we needed like three more scenes.

• 1:43:06Speaker 02

  Again, it's like to Sean's point, it's just not psychological enough.

• 1:43:13Speaker 02

  It just isn't, you know, because sometimes those Woody Allen movies aren't very deep either. And yet he is, his influences are so much, have like, they come with a psychological, psychological.

• 1:43:26Sean Fennessey?

  They're all high minded.

• 1:43:27Speaker 02

  That they.

• 1:43:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's classical literature. It's Bergman and Fellini.

• 1:43:30Speaker 02

  But even when it's like these, those throwaway movies like Melinda, Melinda and Melinda, which comes after this movie. But like, I just think that his source materials are so much richer that even when he has no idea why he's making a movie, except he too likes to build houses. There's something there that's, that's appealing one way or another. Um, and this, this is second movie, to be fair to Edward Burns. It just isn't, it doesn't have enough of even an accidental subtext.

• 1:44:04Bill Simmons?

  And then what's age the worst, the, uh, you could make a case the way, you know, it's from the male perspective. There's misogynistic case you could go if you want to get excited.

• 1:44:15Speaker 02

  Well, the things Edward, the things that Mickey is saying to Heather in this movie.

• 1:44:19Bill Simmons?

  I get it.

• 1:44:20Speaker 02

  I don't even believe this guy believes those things.

• 1:44:23Bill Simmons?

  I just think he's hurt and lashing out.

• 1:44:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:25Bill Simmons?

  Trying to hurt her back.

• 1:44:26Sean Fennessey?

  Because he's not like that to any other character in the movie. Even his brother, who he has a lot of problems with, you can see he has more affection for.

• 1:44:32Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for a flex category?

• 1:44:34Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I'll tell you, hold on.

• 1:44:36Speaker 02

  You also can't underrate what it, what it must feel like to feel cuckolded in that, in that masculinity environment. I don't know. I mean, that, and for, to have everybody else know.

• 1:44:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's an elegant segue to my, my flex category, which is the Dennis Peck relationship test.

• 1:44:53Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:44:54Speaker 02

  That was mine.

• 1:44:54Bill Simmons?

  You were doing that too?

• 1:44:55Sean Fennessey?

  Could Dennis have broken up the main relationship? Of course, Richard Gere from Internal Affairs could break up every single relationship in this movie.

• 1:45:03Speaker 02

  I wrote down, he would go four for four and hit for the cycle, Dennis Peck.

• 1:45:07Sean Fennessey?

  These are facts.

• 1:45:08Speaker 04

  Hope, Renee, Heather, John Mahoney's wife.

• 1:45:10Sean Fennessey?

  No question.

• 1:45:11Speaker 04

  Leslie Mann, you keep going.

• 1:45:14Bill Simmons?

  You know what we're talking about, right?

• 1:45:15Speaker 02

  Also.

• 1:45:16Bill Simmons?

  Richard Gere in Internal Affairs.

• 1:45:18Speaker 02

  Fran, come on.

• 1:45:19Sean Fennessey?

  Well, wow.

• 1:45:20Speaker 04

  Fran too.

• 1:45:21Speaker 02

  He could have turned everybody.

• 1:45:22Bill Simmons?

  That would have been for sport, yeah. He would have thrown that in.

• 1:45:24Speaker 02

  But it would have counted.

• 1:45:25Speaker 04

  Just to say he did it.

• 1:45:26Speaker 02

  Also, there are moments in this movie where, to me, Edward Burns looks like Richard Gere.

• 1:45:35Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean? Like, there's a, there's a.

• 1:45:39Sean Fennessey?

  Dewy, squinty, pretty boy.

• 1:45:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there is a Gere-ness to him.

• 1:45:43Bill Simmons?

  Dennis Peck could have spent three seconds with the Aniston character and be like, hey, why don't we take a walk?

• 1:45:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, done deal.

• 1:45:49Speaker 02

  What a.

• 1:45:49Sean Fennessey?

  Closed deal.

• 1:45:50Speaker 02

  Did they ever work together?

• 1:45:53Speaker 02

  Richard Gere and Jennifer Aniston?

• 1:45:55Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so.

• 1:45:55Speaker 02

  Richard Gere and Cameron Diaz?

• 1:45:58Speaker 02

  Hollywood, what were you doing?

• 1:46:01Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so.

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  What were you doing?

• 1:46:02Bill Simmons?

  Gere didn't make enough movies during that run of where he just should have been Dennis Peck in nine other movies.

• 1:46:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:07Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 1:46:08Bill Simmons?

  Or that should have been just the TV show spin-off, Dennis Peck.

• 1:46:12Speaker 02

  Dennis, Dennis Peck.

• 1:46:13Bill Simmons?

  Each week, he breaks up somebody's marriage. Uh, the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. I'll start, um.

• 1:46:25Bill Simmons?

  I think skanky, smoking hardcore Long Island Amanda Peet is the hottest woman in this movie.

• 1:46:30Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:46:30Bill Simmons?

  She is throwing a hundred and thirty-eight miles an hour, which I don't think anyone has ever done before. Every single moment, she's just blowing everyone off the screen. It's unbelievable. Sean, was this like your all time, is this how I feel about Blake Lively in The Town?

• 1:46:48Speaker 02

  She's throwing Ben Shelton serves is what you're saying here?

• 1:46:51Bill Simmons?

  Is this the ultimate Long Island girl ever? And she's obviously not even from Long Island, but what's going on here?

• 1:46:57Sean Fennessey?

  I'm married to a Long Island girl. There's a very special elixir. It's a dangerous elixir.

• 1:47:02Bill Simmons?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:47:02Sean Fennessey?

  These girls fucked with a lot of my friends.

• 1:47:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:08Sean Fennessey?

  But, I mean, one, obviously, I think, I think the Ringer writ large, we got, we kind of all got a crush on Amanda Peet, right? Amanda Peet is kind of, she's in a hundred percent approval territory.

• 1:47:19Bill Simmons?

  When we do our seventy-fifth anniversary theme, I think she'll be.

• 1:47:22Sean Fennessey?

  But when, when she's talking like Denise, who I went to high school with, like using the exact voice that all the girls I went to high school with are using, it does kind of get underneath your skin in an exciting way.

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  Hmm. Listen, I, I wish I could say I was immune to Amanda Peet, but I'm not. But I do love listening to men talk about her because you guys get really giddy and.

• 1:47:46Bill Simmons?

  She's just the best.

• 1:47:47Speaker 02

  Like, it's different from all the other actors, Amanda. I mean, just listening to men talk about.

• 1:47:53Bill Simmons?

  You know, even on your friends and neighbors now, like, she just doesn't give a shit. She'll just, she's up for whatever. That's what, and she's been that way her whole career. She's just ready to roll. She's up for whatever, whatever you want to do.

• 1:48:04Sean Fennessey?

  Straight talking, no bullshit, evidently intelligent, but not uptight or pretentious in any way.

• 1:48:09Bill Simmons?

  Even she did somebody's podcast recently and, and she, I saw the clips from that and it's like, she's just even the best at this.

• 1:48:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  I would love to see that. I've never really experienced her much in the wild, like off of.

• 1:48:20Bill Simmons?

  What's your, what's your number one Amanda Peet thing that jumps to mind when you think of Amanda Peet?

• 1:48:25Speaker 02

  God, that's a good question. Something's gotta give? I don't know.

• 1:48:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, whole nine yards.

• 1:48:29Speaker 02

  Good one, whole nine yards.

• 1:48:30Bill Simmons?

  Whole nine yards.

• 1:48:31Speaker 02

  Whole nine yards. Oh, yeah. Whole nine yards.

• 1:48:32Bill Simmons?

  Whole nine.

• 1:48:33Speaker 02

  Cause that's what, like, three years later? That's three years after this movie?

• 1:48:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:39Speaker 02

  I mean, they really figured out, I mean, this movie is responsible, I think.

• 1:48:43Sean Fennessey?

  Launches a lot of ships.

• 1:48:44Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:48:45Bill Simmons?

  This movie's the ninety-two dream team. They should have made fucking cups.

• 1:48:51Speaker 02

  They should have, oh my God, Bill! They should have made cups!

• 1:48:57Sean Fennessey?

  I would have wanted, like, a special collector's Connie Britton cup as well, you know? Can we just honorarily add Connie Britton to this? Burns just has exquisite taste.

• 1:49:06Bill Simmons?

  The Burns Universe cups?

• 1:49:07Sean Fennessey?

  Burns.

• 1:49:07Bill Simmons?

  Sidewalks in, Sidewalks in New York, Heather Graham.

• 1:49:10Sean Fennessey?

  Burns tasting ladies is just super special.

• 1:49:12Speaker 02

  Lauren Holly, I mean.

• 1:49:14Bill Simmons?

  The Ed Burns collector cups.

• 1:49:15Sean Fennessey?

  He's like, really tapped right into like the cortex of my brain.

• 1:49:18Speaker 02

  Is she, he got, he got her at the, at her moment.

• 1:49:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:22Speaker 02

  I knew her from the soaps. Lauren Holly was my girl from all my children.

• 1:49:26Sean Fennessey?

  Shit's.

• 1:49:27Bill Simmons?

  He made this movie about divorced people in their fifties that, of course, I saw because I supported Ed Burns.

• 1:49:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, I saw it. It's interesting. It's kind of bad, but kind of good.

• 1:49:37Bill Simmons?

  Exactly, but it's, I wanna say Gretchen Mall?

• 1:49:40Sean Fennessey?

  Gretchen Mall's in it, yeah. And she plays like an ex-indie rock star.

• 1:49:44Speaker 02

  Oh, Gretchen Mall!

• 1:49:46Bill Simmons?

  Another one.

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  Just like, we all know what happened, right? But the tragedy is every time you see her in something, you're like, god damn it!

• 1:49:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:57Bill Simmons?

  Well, what was the?

• 1:49:58Sean Fennessey?

  She did, she did good stuff in the 2000s too, when she got kinda free from some of that baggage.

• 1:50:02Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh.

• 1:50:04Sean Fennessey?

  And, and Juliana Margulies as well in that movie too?

• 1:50:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes.

• 1:50:07Sean Fennessey?

  Where he's like, actually remember, she's really hot. Don't forget, she's hot too. Like, he just has a weird radar.

• 1:50:12Bill Simmons?

  The thing with Gretchen Mall, she was in the American Gigolo TV series with Bernthal that only me and Mallory watched.

• 1:50:18Speaker 02

  Oh, I watched it. I mean, again, like, I'll watch, I'll, Gretchen Mall was great in that.

• 1:50:23Bill Simmons?

  Um, alright, we'll keep going. Unless you have the hottest take you wanna unleash?

• 1:50:28Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I have one.

• 1:50:29Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:50:29Sean Fennessey?

  Um, if Edward Burns hired a better co-writer, he'd be Noah Baumbach right now.

• 1:50:34Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:50:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't even know how hot that is. I think you're right.

• 1:50:39Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:50:40Sean Fennessey?

  There, there was an opportunity for him to go right into that space. And he is a little held back by what I will describe as something that I find very relatable, which is like, he's just a little normie. You know, the same way that I was like, you know what, I'm gonna get married. I'm looking forward to getting married. I'm looking forward to buying a house. Like, there's something kinda bred into you on Long Island about a very comfortable, regular lifestyle. And he never gets too uncomfortable. Whereas Baumbach, when he's at his best, he's like, you know what, I'm gonna show you the worst fucking side of every person I've ever met. That is super special. And if he could've tapped into that, he would've been a much bigger and more interesting filmmaker.

• 1:51:16Bill Simmons?

  So Ed Burns wouldn't have had a scene of somebody smearing their semen onto library books?

• 1:51:22Speaker 02

  No! The answer is no, Bill.

• 1:51:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

• 1:51:27Bill Simmons?

  Do you think if we had introduced Joe Esterhouse to Ed Burns in like 1995?

• 1:51:31Speaker 02

  But he saw those movies too! But he saw those movies too and he made a choice.

• 1:51:35Sean Fennessey?

  He did.

• 1:51:36Speaker 02

  Right? Like, I mean, there's a world where if I really wanted to be a filmmaker, I'm probably, well, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm definitely bringing more jagged edge into whatever it is than Woody Allen.

• 1:51:48Bill Simmons?

  That's why you love From Hell Month so much. I'm sorry we left you at a From Hell Month. You don't live here.

• 1:51:52Speaker 02

  I didn't need to be part of that because I felt like that was one of the great wringer rewatchable months of my life. Like.

• 1:52:02Sean Fennessey?

  We got the rare text from Wesley on domestic disturbance.

• 1:52:04Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:52:05Sean Fennessey?

  Gentlemen, thank you.

• 1:52:06Speaker 02

  I am, I am a whole, I mean, I'm holding for, uh, what's the, what's the one on my queue that I haven't listened to yet?

• 1:52:12Sean Fennessey?

  Pacific Heights.

• 1:52:13Speaker 02

  Pacific Heights. I mean, terrible movie.

• 1:52:15Bill Simmons?

  Domestic disturbance, my texts were half, I can't believe you did that movie and half, thank you for doing that movie. Which I think something up. Uh, casting with ifs, Byrne said for the two lead female roles, this was from his book Independent Ed. Between LA and New York, we auditioned Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lopez, Heather Graham, Amanda Peet, Anne Hatch, Lauren Hill and Jennifer Garner.

• 1:52:39Speaker 02

  Stop it. Lauren Hill?

• 1:52:41Bill Simmons?

  Lauren. And Jennifer Garner.

• 1:52:43Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:52:44Bill Simmons?

  Basically, everybody wanted to be in Ed Byrne's second movie and it was like, I have some hot actress parts.

• 1:52:49Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying about Anderson. Like, like everybody, he was a thing. He was a thing.

• 1:52:54Sean Fennessey?

  Lauren Hill and Jennifer Lopez just, just did my head in in this movie.

• 1:52:59Bill Simmons?

  Jennifer Lopez playing the Cameron Diaz character.

• 1:53:02Sean Fennessey?

  Intriguing.

• 1:53:03Bill Simmons?

  Wouldn't not have been interesting.

• 1:53:04Sean Fennessey?

  Intriguing.

• 1:53:04Speaker 02

  Right. No.

• 1:53:05Bill Simmons?

  Cause that, yeah.

• 1:53:07Speaker 02

  Would have worked.

• 1:53:09Bill Simmons?

  And then the other thing he said, Amanda read for Renee's sister, came in with her hair teased, chewing gum, speaking with a thick Long Island accent. I said, that girl's great. She's the real deal. She's like the girls I grew up with. And the casting director said, that's all I put on. That's not her accent. She's from New York City. She graduated from Columbia. And they're like, she's got it. But yeah, she, she just did it. Legend.

• 1:53:30Sean Fennessey?

  Trailing off thinking about her.

• 1:53:31Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, for the theme song, they tried to get the wallflower Sixth Avenue heartache.

• 1:53:36Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, another banger.

• 1:53:37Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:53:38Bill Simmons?

  Banger. For the song before they went down the petty road, but that, you could have put all the wallflower songs in there and this movie works.

• 1:53:49Bill Simmons?

  So then he has the old Tom Petty thing and Ed Burns wrote, so he gets all of these songs from Tom Petty and he writes, this was as good a start as you can have in Hollywood. I thought this was always how it was going to be.

• 1:54:02Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:54:04Bill Simmons?

  Fade to commercial.

• 1:54:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's heartbreaking. He tells the story about getting pulled aside immediately after the Q and A at the first screening of the Brothers McMullin, and he said there were people lined up out the door of the theater, all along the theater. And that once, I guess maybe a friend or representation came over to him and they were just like, don't, you have to realize it will never be like this again. That this is the absolute peak of this kind of experience, so cherish this moment in real time. And, you know, that was kind of true.

• 1:54:34Speaker 02

  I have a question.

• 1:54:35Bill Simmons?

  Steve Steele said that to me during NBA Countdown once.

• 1:54:40Sean Fennessey?

  And was she right?

• 1:54:41Bill Simmons?

  No, kidding.

• 1:54:43Speaker 02

  Um, I have a question. I mean, I guess this is a, this is a, like, I guess this might be unanswerable. This might be going to later.

• 1:54:51Bill Simmons?

  Is this for the movie?

• 1:54:51Speaker 02

  It's for the movie. But, I mean, it's not related. It's kind of in the, in the zone of what we're talking about here. Like, I just wonder what his, does he talk about Saving Private Ryan in?

• 1:55:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they talked about he's trying to establish he can also be a leading actor because they felt like that. Basically, but he's doing it because they're like, this will help your movies. Hire your profiles as an actor.

• 1:55:12Speaker 02

  But did he learn anything from spending all that time on?

• 1:55:15Bill Simmons?

  On the set, he did. He writes about that. Yeah, he did.

• 1:55:17Speaker 02

  Okay. Because I just would love to know more about that.

• 1:55:20Bill Simmons?

  Is that guy a word?

• 1:55:23Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, it might be Mike McGlone. I think most people know him just as the guy from these movies and might not even know what his name is.

• 1:55:29Sean Fennessey?

  I have Rob, two people. Robert, Robert Weil, well, I'll get to him in a second. Robert Weil, who is Mr. DeLuca, the hardware store owner.

• 1:55:37Bill Simmons?

  Because he is a that.

• 1:55:38Sean Fennessey?

  He's in Moonstruck, Saturday Night Fever.

• 1:55:40Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:55:41Sean Fennessey?

  And then Malachi McCourt, the chauffeur.

• 1:55:44Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 1:55:45Sean Fennessey?

  Who is in Brewster's Millions. He is Frank McCourt and DeAngelo's ashes author's brother. And the McCourt brothers are, you know, a very famous group of guys, you know, storytellers. They all wrote memoirs. They were kind of fixtures in New York City for a long period of time.

• 1:56:04Bill Simmons?

  Deion Waiters, we have Frank Vincent, Leslie Mann, or Amanda Peet.

• 1:56:10Sean Fennessey?

  I have Frank Vincent and Amanda Peet.

• 1:56:12Bill Simmons?

  What do you have, Craig?

• 1:56:13Speaker 02

  I think it's Pete.

• 1:56:15Bill Simmons?

  I think it's Pete.

• 1:56:15Speaker 02

  I think it's Pete.

• 1:56:16Bill Simmons?

  Great.

• 1:56:17Speaker 02

  I mean, but I just will pour one out for Frank Vincent because he just is so comp- like, he's never been asked to not kill somebody or not threaten to kill somebody. And yet, that energy, he's bringing that energy to this part. And it's all aimed at whether Francis has what it takes to be with his little girl.

• 1:56:40Sean Fennessey?

  The part, the second scene that he's in where he's like, this downcycle nonsense. I've been with your mother for thirty-five years, never had a downcycle in my life.

• 1:56:48Bill Simmons?

  Every morning. The daughter's like, no!

• 1:56:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's great stuff.

• 1:56:54Bill Simmons?

  Recasting couch director city. I mentioned how Leslie Mann switched roles of Maxine were probably better up. What if I gave you, um, the mother of Jennifer Aniston and Amanda Peet in this movie, Susan Sarandon? Just for, just for kicks and giggles.

• 1:57:08Speaker 02

  This like, then you're tipping it over into like, it's too much. Cause the movie came out the year after she won the Oscar. Like, you're just completely changing.

• 1:57:17Bill Simmons?

  How about Kathleen Turner?

• 1:57:19Speaker 02

  Oh, this is after, this is after, this is after, um, Serial Mom.

• 1:57:23Bill Simmons?

  How about little Diane Keaton?

• 1:57:25Sean Fennessey?

  Ooh, great movie.

• 1:57:26Speaker 02

  That's Marvin's room era Diane Keaton? Too much.

• 1:57:29Sean Fennessey?

  A little too WASP-y, I think.

• 1:57:30Bill Simmons?

  I was just trying to think of somebody who'd be a name.

• 1:57:32Speaker 02

  But none of it.

• 1:57:33Bill Simmons?

  How about Talia Shire?

• 1:57:34Speaker 02

  No!

• 1:57:35Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 1:57:35Speaker 02

  Whoa, interesting.

• 1:57:37Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:57:37Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:57:37Bill Simmons?

  Now I've caught your attention.

• 1:57:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is.

• 1:57:40Sean Fennessey?

  Talia Shire as, as Jennifer Aniston and Amanda Peet's mom, I'm kinda, I'm kinda into that.

• 1:57:44Speaker 02

  That's interesting. Because you don't, like, the thing that's great about this movie is nobody is too big at this point to tip the movie over.

• 1:57:51Sean Fennessey?

  That was a very Bill Simmons pull. How about Talia Shire as the third recommendation? Yeah, that's good.

• 1:57:57Bill Simmons?

  She could have been really mad at the end because, um, the dad killed Mike McGlone.

• 1:58:05Bill Simmons?

  I know you did this. Uh, oh, Craig, you have a flex, but you already did it.

• 1:58:09Speaker 02

  It was Peck. It was Peck just cleaning up on all the beta males in this movie.

• 1:58:14Bill Simmons?

  Half ass and research, we did all of it. Apex Mountain.

• 1:58:19Sean Fennessey?

  Eddie Burns.

• 1:58:20Bill Simmons?

  Ed Burns, yes.

• 1:58:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:23Bill Simmons?

  Maxine Bond, Spains, yes.

• 1:58:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:25Bill Simmons?

  Amanda Peet, no. Mike McGlone, yes.

• 1:58:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:58:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:58:30Bill Simmons?

  Cameron Diaz, no.

• 1:58:31Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:58:31Bill Simmons?

  John Mahoney, no. Although he's on Frasier in this era.

• 1:58:36Sean Fennessey?

  He's kind of at his.

• 1:58:37Bill Simmons?

  He's at his. It's already happened.

• 1:58:38Sean Fennessey?

  Consistent apex.

• 1:58:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:40Bill Simmons?

  It's already happened.

• 1:58:40Sean Fennessey?

  Isn't ninety six, is ninety six also Primal Fear? Season Primal Fear, he plays.

• 1:58:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:58:45Bill Simmons?

  Maybe it was his apex.

• 1:58:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:49Bill Simmons?

  Long Island, just in general?

• 1:58:51Sean Fennessey?

  Is this Apex Mountain for Long Island?

• 1:58:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, what is Apex Mountain for Long Island, Sean?

• 1:58:56Sean Fennessey?

  I would have to say.

• 1:58:57Bill Simmons?

  Not when Colin Jost bought the fucking ferry.

• 1:59:00Sean Fennessey?

  Like eighty, eighty-one, eighty-two, when the Islanders go for three in a row. And the Islanders win the trio Stanley Cups.

• 1:59:07Bill Simmons?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:59:08Sean Fennessey?

  Four, four Stanley Cups, excuse me. Um, that, right, that time?

• 1:59:12Bill Simmons?

  Right after Amityville Horror?

• 1:59:14Sean Fennessey?

  That's a little bit after that, yeah.

• 1:59:16Bill Simmons?

  The Lutz House?

• 1:59:17Sean Fennessey?

  Amityville Horror is not.

• 1:59:17Bill Simmons?

  Horror comes out in seventy-nine, then the Islanders go on a run?

• 1:59:21Sean Fennessey?

  Amityville Horror is not related to Apex Mountain, though. That's a bad thing that happened. Like, that's not.

• 1:59:27Bill Simmons?

  That's the only reason I ever wanted to go to Long Island, to see the house.

• 1:59:30Speaker 02

  Nancy Meyers.

• 1:59:31Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:59:32Speaker 02

  Something's gotta give. Is that Something's Gotta Give, or is it?

• 1:59:34Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:59:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, Something's Gotta Give.

• 1:59:35Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's the, the, isn't the Meryl Streep one? Meryl Streep.

• 1:59:39Speaker 02

  It's complicated?

• 1:59:40Sean Fennessey?

  It's complicated. Isn't that Long Island? Am I crazy? Something's Gotta Give is Long Island?

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:59:43Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, no, you're right, you're right, you're right.

• 1:59:44Speaker 02

  I think it's, I think Something's Gotta Give. If you, if we don't know, the answer is no. Something's Gotta Give is the Hamptons. It's complicated as Santa Barbara.

• 1:59:51Sean Fennessey?

  Right. So here's the thing. The Hamptons is not Long Island. Like, the Hamptons is on Long Island, but that's not a Long Island movie. You know what I mean? There's, it's culturally different.

• 1:59:59Bill Simmons?

  So Long Island not playing in the white party with Michael Rubin?

• 2:00:02Sean Fennessey?

  No. And like the Fitzgerald family in this movie doesn't go to the Hamptons, they go to Montauk.

• 2:00:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:00:07Sean Fennessey?

  There's a big difference. They can't afford to go to the Hamptons. These are, these are blue collar people.

• 2:00:12Bill Simmons?

  I was so confused by this whole part of New York that one time on the internets, I went on and I looked at a map to try to really figure out where everything was. Because I was just, it's like Long Island's here, Brooklyn's here.

• 2:00:25Speaker 02

  You've really?

• 2:00:25Bill Simmons?

  But Long Island's not part of the Hamptons.

• 2:00:27Speaker 02

  I look at a Long Island map once a month.

• 2:00:29Bill Simmons?

  I landed in New York and people are like, go that way and this and I just, I, I, so I actually had to figure it out in my head where everything was.

• 2:00:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Brooklyn is part of the contiguous island, but it's not a part of what's delineated as Long Island. The Hamptons is officially part of Long Island and Suffolk County, but nobody would ever consider it that.

• 2:00:46Bill Simmons?

  It's its own thing.

• 2:00:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's its own thing. Plus, we haven't even talked North Shore, South Shore, which, you know, you could read that in F. Scott Fitzgerald. You can also read it in Nelson Demille novels in my dad's house. Like, there, there's a whole, it's a subculture.

• 2:00:57Bill Simmons?

  It's like the Hamptons with, uh, is like, is like Brentwood here.

• 2:01:02Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 2:01:03Bill Simmons?

  It's here, but it's fucking over there.

• 2:01:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's not really.

• 2:01:06Bill Simmons?

  For people like Craig. It's for the elite.

• 2:01:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. In my apartment, yeah.

• 2:01:12Bill Simmons?

  Brentwood's way down there. Uh, okay, couple more categories and then we'll go. The Ed Norton Reverse Dunk Award for did this movie need a random sports scene?

• 2:01:22Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we do get a boxing sequence.

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  I can't believe there's no trip to a Knicks game or Islanders.

• 2:01:27Bill Simmons?

  Can I offer you, can I offer you an Islanders game? Can I offer you a, a par three nine hole?

• 2:01:34Speaker 02

  Something.

• 2:01:35Bill Simmons?

  Golfing event?

• 2:01:36Speaker 02

  Something.

• 2:01:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:36Bill Simmons?

  Can I offer you a pickup basketball game where they're on different teams?

• 2:01:39Sean Fennessey?

  Where does this, where does this family play? Because if.

• 2:01:41Speaker 02

  I'll bet you they shot one of these.

• 2:01:43Sean Fennessey?

  He's from Valley Stream, right? So I'm trying to think of what golf course. I mean, would he play at the Dix Hills Public Golf Course? I mean, yeah, I guess, but Beth Page is like, that's a once a year.

• 2:01:53Speaker 04

  I like golf and they wouldn't be that good at it.

• 2:01:55Sean Fennessey?

  Got a spring for it, for the Muni course. It's really hard. These guys probably suck at golf.

• 2:01:59Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, I mean, I just wouldn't.

• 2:02:01Speaker 04

  They definitely are not good at golf. They like playing it.

• 2:02:03Bill Simmons?

  Get there!

• 2:02:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, a lot of that.

• 2:02:06Speaker 04

  What's wrong with me?

• 2:02:10Bill Simmons?

  All right, couple more. Um, Cruiser Hanks?

• 2:02:13Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's both of them, obviously. It's Hanks. Hanks is Mickey and Tom is Fredo. Yeah.

• 2:02:18Speaker 02

  God!

• 2:02:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:19Speaker 02

  Oh!

• 2:02:20Bill Simmons?

  I had Cruze.

• 2:02:21Speaker 02

  In nineteen ninety-six?

• 2:02:23Sean Fennessey?

  They're brothers.

• 2:02:23Bill Simmons?

  I had Cruze as Mike McGlone.

• 2:02:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's no doubt.

• 2:02:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:28Speaker 02

  Can you?

• 2:02:28Bill Simmons?

  It's just being agonized.

• 2:02:31Speaker 02

  I don't, I'm torn though.

• 2:02:33Sean Fennessey?

  Did Edward Burns need to be the star of his movies? That's another interesting question.

• 2:02:38Bill Simmons?

  I like Ed Burns.

• 2:02:39Sean Fennessey?

  I do too.

• 2:02:39Bill Simmons?

  He should have, he needed a writer for the Ed Burns scenes to come in like a, he needed William Goldman to come in and just rewrite.

• 2:02:46Speaker 02

  This is a great question.

• 2:02:47Sean Fennessey?

  But if he decides, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna write parts for movie stars.

• 2:02:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:52Sean Fennessey?

  Instead of I'm gonna make Woody Allen movies where it's like kinda my world of people that I star in. Is, are things different?

• 2:02:58Speaker 02

  If he could have kept getting, if he kept, if he could have kept pulling what he pulled here, right? And you know, the way everybody wanted to work with Woody Allen?

• 2:03:07Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:03:08Speaker 02

  Or if he had a Diane Weest or a Judy Davis.

• 2:03:12Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:03:12Speaker 02

  Somebody who could come in on any movie he needs them to come in on and just dunk, dunkity dunk dunk dunk.

• 2:03:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:18Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 2:03:18Bill Simmons?

  Or Mia Farrow.

• 2:03:20Speaker 02

  Or Mia Farrow.

• 2:03:21Bill Simmons?

  For a while, anyway.

• 2:03:22Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 2:03:22Bill Simmons?

  She's in Crimes and Misdemeanors.

• 2:03:24Sean Fennessey?

  She is.

• 2:03:24Speaker 02

  I mean, she's, I mean, and also just like under, everything about Mia Farrow as an actor has become to me underrated. And I think that the way she functions in a lot of the Woody Allen movies is, is especially underappreciated.

• 2:03:39Bill Simmons?

  Next category is the Catherine Trammell, would you throw your life away for this obvious stay away word? I just wrote yes, and then I put in parentheses, fill in whatever charac, I, for, I think four of them.

• 2:03:52Sean Fennessey?

  Aniston is not a stay away. She seems like a really down to earth, cool girl in the movie, her character. Her character's not weird. She has a vibrator.

• 2:04:00Bill Simmons?

  So three.

• 2:04:01Sean Fennessey?

  But the other, the others, you know.

• 2:04:02Bill Simmons?

  You're getting Frank Benson with her, though. Pete.

• 2:04:04Sean Fennessey?

  Good point.

• 2:04:05Bill Simmons?

  Amanda Peet's character.

• 2:04:06Speaker 02

  You go straight to the follow up.

• 2:04:08Bill Simmons?

  No, but that, the obvious one. Cameron Diaz is the one for this.

• 2:04:11Speaker 02

  They kinda balance each other out.

• 2:04:13Bill Simmons?

  Cameron Diaz, would you throw your life away?

• 2:04:14Speaker 02

  Also, can I, can I just raise an interesting question here? Like, like, I think the more interesting movie here would have been if Mike McGlone was sleeping with Amanda Peet. Why is he not sleeping with Amanda Peet?

• 2:04:27Bill Simmons?

  That should have been the last 20 minutes. That's the missing scene in this movie.

• 2:04:31Speaker 02

  That to me.

• 2:04:32Bill Simmons?

  I had that in Unanswerable Questions. When did he start fucking Amanda Peet? And it's probably the sequel of this movie.

• 2:04:38Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's when he gets murdered by Frank Vincent. I mean, that would be the end of that.

• 2:04:41Bill Simmons?

  And Frank kills him. Frank.

• 2:04:42Speaker 02

  Then it's a From Hell movie, right? Then it's like, it's the.

• 2:04:46Bill Simmons?

  He would have been almost as mad as.

• 2:04:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the.

• 2:04:48Bill Simmons?

  Almost as mad as when Vito came out of the closet. In season five of Sopranos, season six, whatever.

• 2:04:55Speaker 02

  Oh, Vito, Vito.

• 2:04:57Bill Simmons?

  Poor Vito.

• 2:04:57Sean Fennessey?

  What was his name?

• 2:04:58Speaker 02

  Poor Vito.

• 2:04:58Sean Fennessey?

  Johnny, Johnny Cakes? Johnny?

• 2:05:01Bill Simmons?

  Vito and Johnny Cakes.

• 2:05:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Johnny Cakes.

• 2:05:03Bill Simmons?

  Made a hell of a pancake.

• 2:05:04Sean Fennessey?

  Um, man, almost time for a Sopranos rewatch. Can't wait.

• 2:05:07Bill Simmons?

  Picky Knits. The greatest thing we've produced. Picky Knits. A drifter cab driver just got married in 24 hours, but now he's drawing the line at maybe moving to Paris with his new bride?

• 2:05:18Speaker 02

  I think this is another important thing to say about what, what, what Edward Burns just doesn't have an interest in doing, right? That, that question slash sentence is like, that movie, whatever that movie is, is not this movie.

• 2:05:35Bill Simmons?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:05:35Speaker 02

  Right?

• 2:05:36Bill Simmons?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:05:37Speaker 02

  That movie sounds weird and dangerous and cute. I mean, but not cute at all. It sounds like something freaky could happen.

• 2:05:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:46Speaker 02

  This is not, the exploration of the relationships here do not have a capacity for like very human things like darkness, fetish, um, you know, real, real sexual risk.

• 2:06:00Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's like you were saying, it's like, just like some of the other stuff, it's a device. Like the, him getting married in 24 hours to a girl that he doesn't know is just a, a way to get his character to a different place and to draw this other, because he just seems least interested in that relationship. The dynamics of it, the threat of what it is or is not to other people.

• 2:06:18Bill Simmons?

  He definitely got bored of her about eight states and it was like, fuck. Wish we hadn't gotten married.

• 2:06:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:24Bill Simmons?

  Um, why didn't Cameron Diaz's character have better choices than an old sugar daddy and a married Long Island goon?

• 2:06:31Speaker 02

  I need to see the sugar daddy, though.

• 2:06:33Bill Simmons?

  There wasn't one more guy she could have met at a bar and been like, hey, how about this guy?

• 2:06:36Speaker 02

  We need to see that, we need to see the guy.

• 2:06:39Bill Simmons?

  How did the creepy hardware store guy steal John Mahoney's wife?

• 2:06:43Speaker 02

  Great question.

• 2:06:44Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I think he's very loving and affectionate and shows her the attention that she she needs at this time in her life.

• 2:06:48Speaker 02

  I love that detail. That, that to me is my favorite detail in this movie and it's proof that he, he is, he is a good writer.

• 2:06:56Sean Fennessey?

  It's nice and specific. It's just like the great story that he tells in Brothers McMullin about how his mother goes back to Ireland to be with her beloved. That's a great moment in McMullin, too. He does have this kind of Irish storyteller. It's almost like he's better at writing about older people than the people that are his age.

• 2:07:10Speaker 02

  I also think that the mother thing is kind of the unexplored dimension in his work somehow. And I don't know if it's like that work is being worked out through the, the, the, the way these characters are being deployed is really about the mother relationship.

• 2:07:25Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. He, he does tell a story about getting to introduce his mom to Robert Redford and that being a real thrill when he's got McMullin at Sundance.

• 2:07:33Bill Simmons?

  Heather, um, just married Papa in the morning out of nowhere. Say, I got married this morning.

• 2:07:39Speaker 02

  We don't know if she really did it.

• 2:07:41Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 2:07:42Speaker 02

  We don't know if she really did it.

• 2:07:43Bill Simmons?

  Interesting.

• 2:07:44Speaker 02

  I mean, she's done so many other underhanded, sneaky things. We don't know if she really did it.

• 2:07:49Bill Simmons?

  Any other nitpicks?

• 2:07:51Sean Fennessey?

  No, I, there is that, there's a paragraph in Ebert's review that features like five consecutive plot logic, character motivation questions that is just like, he just kind of takes the movie down fully with that one graph, even though I find this movie incredibly enjoyable. It's not, it doesn't really hold up to investigation.

• 2:08:09Speaker 02

  What does he ask?

• 2:08:10Sean Fennessey?

  And then the one, the one of the ones that Bill had just asked, the sort of like, this guy who's a cab driver, met this girl 24 hours later, you know? That whole thing is just, it's so, it's so undeveloped.

• 2:08:21Bill Simmons?

  Not to mention driving, she's gonna fly, she has a plane ticket. She's like, I'd much rather drive with you for, from New York to, where was it? New Orleans? It's a long fucking flight. That's like 15 hours.

• 2:08:32Sean Fennessey?

  How does Mickey afford that apartment? You know, like, what are these guys' lives?

• 2:08:37Bill Simmons?

  Uh, sequel, prequel, prestige, TV, all black cast, untouchable. This is an Apple TV show in 2026.

• 2:08:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:08:44Bill Simmons?

  I don't think there's any question.

• 2:08:47Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better than Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Florist, Saint Lo, Robert Evans, Dr. Charles Nichols? Ted Levine or someone else? I have Sean Fantasy is the third Fitzpatrick brother here. It's 13 year old Sean.

• 2:09:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, looking up to these idiot older brothers.

• 2:09:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:03Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting.

• 2:09:04Sean Fennessey?

  Learning all the.

• 2:09:05Speaker 02

  Having a little brother, having an even littler brother here. I was wishing for some, for there to be.

• 2:09:13Bill Simmons?

  Shauny, go start up the boat.

• 2:09:16Bill Simmons?

  Hold on, Dad, I'm finishing this Woody Oates movie.

• 2:09:19Speaker 02

  Where were the Lucas Hedges of like nineteen ninety six? That would have been good. He could have like flirted with Amanda Peet.

• 2:09:25Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:09:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just feel like there is a character.

• 2:09:27Bill Simmons?

  You make a run in Amanda Peet, no question.

• 2:09:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he would have.

• 2:09:30Bill Simmons?

  You think you're better than me, Amanda Peet?

• 2:09:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, somehow there's a character missing here.

• 2:09:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 2:09:36Bill Simmons?

  You could have made it.

• 2:09:36Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna clock that, thank you.

• 2:09:37Bill Simmons?

  Just want to ask her who gets it, Cameron Diaz?

• 2:09:41Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I wrote down Mike McGlone, I don't even care. I just, I, I absolutely love Franny. I, I, I can't disagree with anything Wesley's saying. I'm not saying he's the best actor of all time. He's doing, he's like, he's in a Preston Sturgis movie. He's doing a big comic broad performance. And it's funny. I think he's really funny.

• 2:09:58Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I think the also more than, I mean, I think the thing that I love about Mike McGlone and Edward Burns is like they really are in a way we'll never probably have again. These real, um, archetypal continuations of the beginning of the movies, or at least Hollywood movies.

• 2:10:20Speaker 02

  Like, they belong in the thirties, they belong in the forties, and I don't know, I mean, I don't know what Edward Burns knows about himself, but I think the thing he's trying to avoid is being pigeonholed as a person responsible for like visually being on that continuum, right? Like, like performing that. But it's very satisfying to experience McGlone as a person who really knows that there is like a hundred movies he could have been in if he was born in nineteen nineteen instead of, you know, nineteen seventy or whatever.

• 2:11:04Bill Simmons?

  Um, Zouan, oh, yeah, Zouan Nia Award, what happened the next day? I think, I don't think Ed Burns and Maxine Bond stay together in real life or in this movie.

• 2:11:13Sean Fennessey?

  Hope and Mickey break up, is what I wrote down.

• 2:11:15Bill Simmons?

  Probably an answerable questions. I only wrote down one. Was Ed Burns a good actor?

• 2:11:19Speaker 02

  Yes. In this movie, or?

• 2:11:23Bill Simmons?

  Was Ed Burns a good actor?

• 2:11:25Sean Fennessey?

  I think he's, I think he is a good screen presence. I think you like watching him. I think he's a little hard to root for because he doesn't let himself be flawed enough or weird enough.

• 2:11:35Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 2:11:36Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 2:11:37Speaker 02

  I think he needed the pressure. I would say, you know, I, I lost, I had a, oh, I wrote it down. The last movie, he, he's only acted for himself since 2012. He has not been in anybody else's movies.

• 2:11:51Bill Simmons?

  Not been directed by anyone, yeah.

• 2:11:52Speaker 02

  Right. So, I think that in the way that you wonder what things would have been like had he worked with another, if his co-writer had been, did you say Noah Baumbach?

• 2:12:06Sean Fennessey?

  No, I, I said he could have been in that Noah Baumbach lane.

• 2:12:09Speaker 02

  If he had the right co-writer, co-writer. I think it'd be interesting if he were interested in, if acting were a thing that were important to him. And I don't know that it is or isn't, but he clearly doesn't do it as often as he's doing the directing himself. But what if he just kept working? What if like once a year, um, he just made a movie with one of the great directors?

• 2:12:31Sean Fennessey?

  Well, is it, he's in The Holiday, right?

• 2:12:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:12:34Sean Fennessey?

  Like, and he's playing, and he's playing like kind of a dirtbag in The Holiday. And it's like Nancy Meyers sees him and she sees a guy who's ma, who's made all the mistakes.

• 2:12:44Speaker 02

  He lets her, like, control him.

• 2:12:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And like, he, well, he doesn't do that to himself in his movies. He's always a little bit more genteel.

• 2:12:51Bill Simmons?

  I think the answer is yes. It's a little unanswerable though, because we've never seen him test himself. Was like, he's like, I'm making this movie. It's talented Mr. Ripley. I'm gonna play Tom Ripley.

• 2:13:01Sean Fennessey?

  No, he doesn't do that.

• 2:13:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like, he just, there's a level he couldn't have gone to.

• 2:13:04Speaker 02

  But what if he did want that? I don't know.

• 2:13:06Bill Simmons?

  What did you have for an answer, bro?

• 2:13:08Speaker 02

  Fascinating person.

• 2:13:08Bill Simmons?

  Did you have one?

• 2:13:09Sean Fennessey?

  Did Ed Burns blow it by failing to stick with McGlone? Um, and then does this movie love or hate women? Is something that I think is like an open question. It's got a very uneasy relationship with women.

• 2:13:20Speaker 02

  Uneasy.

• 2:13:21Bill Simmons?

  I think that's just the mid 90s.

• 2:13:22Speaker 02

  But- How old is he in this movie? Like, is he?

• 2:13:27Bill Simmons?

  Twenty seven, twenty eight, yeah.

• 2:13:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:29Speaker 02

  I mean, so he's just really become developmentally an adult. I think that there is, I mean, it's important to me, like, what, like, how old are the people making my art when they're making it?

• 2:13:39Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:13:40Speaker 02

  Because it matters, because it means you you are primed to see the world a particular way.

• 2:13:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's true, but it's a movie that's called She's the One, but it doesn't answer the question of who is the one?

• 2:13:51Speaker 02

  The one what, though? The one what?

• 2:13:53Bill Simmons?

  So he's twenty, he's twenty seven when he made the movie, twenty eight when it was released.

• 2:13:57Speaker 02

  Right, but we don't know.

• 2:13:58Sean Fennessey?

  If we assume that it's the romantic one, the final one, and the movie ends with him and his wife on a boat together, who is his real life girlfriend, and they break up within a year of this movie being made, it kind of undercuts a lot of the ideas in the movie, too.

• 2:14:13Bill Simmons?

  The actual story is not as exciting, he just really liked the Bruce Springsteen song, he thought it'd be a good title.

• 2:14:18Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Do you think it's, the Finding Fitzgerald's is better?

• 2:14:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:14:23Bill Simmons?

  I don't mind She's the One, but Irish Goodbye was the best one.

• 2:14:26Speaker 02

  Irish Goodbye is great. Finding, Finding Fitzpatrick's is too close to Brothers McMullen, I'm assuming, so they just, like, found something.

• 2:14:31Bill Simmons?

  Memorabilia you'd want from this movie, other than the TV, maybe the fishing rods, I don't know.

• 2:14:36Sean Fennessey?

  Boxing gloves?

• 2:14:36Bill Simmons?

  Boxing gloves is good, okay.

• 2:14:38Speaker 02

  The watch. Oh, the watch is good. Hello, thank you, Craig.

• 2:14:41Bill Simmons?

  Finstock Miyagi, Best, Worst, Life, Less, and Where the Down Cycle, would you have?

• 2:14:46Speaker 02

  No women on the boat.

• 2:14:47Bill Simmons?

  No woman on the boat.

• 2:14:48Sean Fennessey?

  I, I don't get all sensitive on me now, Barbara.

• 2:14:52Bill Simmons?

  Double feature choices, Brothers McBowen.

• 2:14:55Sean Fennessey?

  Look what I wrote down.

• 2:14:57Bill Simmons?

  Crimes and misdemeanors, wow. Interesting, why?

• 2:15:00Speaker 02

  Say more about that.

• 2:15:02Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I, I mean, I wrote this down last night, I didn't write this down when you were talking about it. Uh, I think that he's trying to do a dramedy in this movie, and he's struggling with the drama.

• 2:15:15Speaker 02

  Somebody needs to die.

• 2:15:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:16Speaker 02

  Somebody needs to die. Cameron Diaz needs to, I mean, at the end of the day, we love that she doesn't suffer, and she's the winner, she's the winner of the movie. Oh, sorry. I don't know if I want to step on who won the movie, but like.

• 2:15:29Bill Simmons?

  No, that's our next category.

• 2:15:31Sean Fennessey?

  But that, and that, that's the really the question is he's trying to do something that has gravitas and has laughs. Crimes and misdemeanors is the ultimate movie that has those two things working.

• 2:15:40Speaker 02

  I, I love that. I would go, I would stay in the era and I would pair this with walking and talking. Nicole Hall's center movie with Anne Haitian Catherine Keener about, you know, two friends. This is in each other.

• 2:15:54Bill Simmons?

  It's good, man. I haven't seen that one in a while.

• 2:15:56Speaker 02

  He makes each other movies, right? Like, we're, we are here for each other. We need each other. If I don't have you, I don't know.

• 2:16:05Bill Simmons?

  We can have a fight and we'll be together in the next scene again, like it didn't happen.

• 2:16:08Speaker 02

  It doesn't, it doesn't matter because we've got each other.

• 2:16:11Bill Simmons?

  So you had Diaz winning the movie?

• 2:16:13Speaker 02

  Cameron Diaz is your winner.

• 2:16:15Bill Simmons?

  I had Diaz as well, but I really agonized about McGlon or Tom Petty, because I think you could make a case for either.

• 2:16:22Speaker 02

  I think there's also a case to say Edward Burns won the movie because he got, look what he did.

• 2:16:26Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:16:26Speaker 02

  Look what he did.

• 2:16:27Bill Simmons?

  Edward Burns. So long-term, long-term Ed Burns? Short-term Cameron Diaz?

• 2:16:32Speaker 02

  Short-term Cameron Diaz, long-term, I think Edward Burns is your winner.

• 2:16:35Sean Fennessey?

  I think Edward Burns made a movie for a major studio with these huge stars, or would soon be.

• 2:16:41Speaker 02

  Would soon be huge stars. That's the important.

• 2:16:43Sean Fennessey?

  Really kind of confirms him. And whether you like or don't like the next 13 movies he makes, he's been in the firmament of American movie making for a long time now. Um, and he's still doing, he's still making movies. So.

• 2:16:55Speaker 02

  Also, he's making movies about a people that don't, that barely have a cinema. Do you know what I mean?

• 2:17:04Bill Simmons?

  Everyone, everyone in Long Island and the Hamptons.

• 2:17:06Sean Fennessey?

  But, but this was the thing with the brothers McMullin, though.

• 2:17:09Bill Simmons?

  Nobody got my joke.

• 2:17:11Speaker 02

  Wait, what did you say?

• 2:17:12Bill Simmons?

  I said he's making movies for everyone in Long Island and the Hamptons.

• 2:17:14Sean Fennessey?

  I forgot. I had one, I had one last take on this, which is like.

• 2:17:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:19Sean Fennessey?

  The Long Island Director Hall of Fame.

• 2:17:20Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, please. I can't even, I don't know if I could do this.

• 2:17:24Sean Fennessey?

  So, I mean, there's one who stands.

• 2:17:25Bill Simmons?

  Are there porn directors in this?

• 2:17:27Sean Fennessey?

  No, I.

• 2:17:27Bill Simmons?

  Just straight.

• 2:17:28Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't go that deep.

• 2:17:29Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 2:17:29Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't go all that deep in general, literally or figuratively, but I mean Francis Ford Coppola, of course, is number one.

• 2:17:35Speaker 02

  Long Island.

• 2:17:36Sean Fennessey?

  Francis Ford Coppola graduated from, uh, North Great Neck High School. Now, he went to military school.

• 2:17:41Speaker 02

  Stick was showing fantasy.

• 2:17:43Sean Fennessey?

  He was, I think he was born in Detroit because his father played in an orchestra that was funded, I think, by Ford Motors.

• 2:17:49Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:17:49Sean Fennessey?

  But he mostly grew up on Long Island.

• 2:17:52Speaker 02

  It's a good number one.

• 2:17:53Sean Fennessey?

  Number two, I mean, it's, it's John Cassavetes, born in New York City, but mostly grew up on Long Island. Number three is Apatow.

• 2:18:01Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:18:02Sean Fennessey?

  Who's from Syosset, owned it proudly.

• 2:18:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:18:05Sean Fennessey?

  Has an amazing career, one of the most influential people last thirty years in movies. Burns, Hal Hartley.

• 2:18:13Speaker 02

  Oh, Hal Hartley.

• 2:18:13Sean Fennessey?

  Who is kind of the flip side.

• 2:18:15Speaker 02

  Where in Long Island is he from?

• 2:18:17Sean Fennessey?

  I, that's a good, uh, Lindenhurst.

• 2:18:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:18:20Sean Fennessey?

  He's from Lindenhurst. And a lot of these guys are from like the Five Towns area, Nassau County, not really my neck of the woods.

• 2:18:25Speaker 02

  Hartley's a great one, because that's in the movies.

• 2:18:27Sean Fennessey?

  And Hal Hartley and Edward Burns are like these kind of weird mirror images of each other, you know? Like, all the stuff that we wish Ed Burns has, Hal Hartley has.

• 2:18:34Speaker 02

  Doing, and like, overdoing.

• 2:18:36Sean Fennessey?

  And Hal Hartley could maybe use a little bit of it, what Ed Burns has. Um, and then the last couple, Ted Demme.

• 2:18:43Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:18:44Sean Fennessey?

  Who is a really good filmmaker, who died very young. Uh, Howard Deutsch and, and, and the famed artist Cindy Sherman, who directed one movie.

• 2:18:52Speaker 02

  Wait, she's from?

• 2:18:53Sean Fennessey?

  She's from Long Island as well.

• 2:18:55Bill Simmons?

  And Jack Horner.

• 2:18:56Speaker 02

  Well, she's out, and she's a Hamptons person, Jack Horner.

• 2:18:59Bill Simmons?

  Jack Horner for Boogie Nights. It's the best filmmaker we ever had.

• 2:19:02Speaker 02

  Jack Horner.

• 2:19:03Bill Simmons?

  So when they're gonna remember him.

• 2:19:05Sean Fennessey?

  He feels like he's, you think?

• 2:19:06Speaker 02

  What town is Jack?

• 2:19:07Bill Simmons?

  Where was Jack Horner from?

• 2:19:08Sean Fennessey?

  Jack was from like Ohio and he invented himself as Jack Horner in, in Los Angeles? Or was he like born and bred in the valley?

• 2:19:17Bill Simmons?

  No, because he was late fifties, probably.

• 2:19:21Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:19:22Bill Simmons?

  You're not living in the valley in like nineteen fifty-one.

• 2:19:25Sean Fennessey?

  When are we gonna re-Boogie?

• 2:19:27Bill Simmons?

  We did two parts.

• 2:19:28Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, I'm ready to go right now.

• 2:19:29Speaker 02

  Again? Oh, my god, guys.

• 2:19:32Sean Fennessey?

  I'll do it every year.

• 2:19:33Bill Simmons?

  You know what was funny? I was thinking for the thirtieth anniversary, if we just blind, nobody was allowed to prep. I don't even have an iPad.

• 2:19:41Sean Fennessey?

  You should have tricked us.

• 2:19:41Bill Simmons?

  And we just go and we just try to do it.

• 2:19:43Sean Fennessey?

  You should have pulled the come over to my house. I want to do something trick.

• 2:19:45Bill Simmons?

  Maybe I will.

• 2:19:46Speaker 02

  I don't even.

• 2:19:48Bill Simmons?

  Blind Boogie Nights.

• 2:19:49Speaker 02

  Is this even, why are you making it seem like this would be like a hard thing to do?

• 2:19:53Sean Fennessey?

  It would be so easy.

• 2:19:54Speaker 02

  It's like.

• 2:19:55Bill Simmons?

  It really wouldn't be hard at all.

• 2:19:56Sean Fennessey?

  I could have done it with She's the One. So if I could do it with She's the One.

• 2:19:58Bill Simmons?

  This is gonna be the saddest part of the podcast when Craig gives us take on She's the One. Oh, boy. Here we go.

• 2:20:04Speaker 04

  I just want to say I did enjoy listening to you all talk about what it meant to you guys when this movie came out, exploring the themes that people have them filmed that you appreciated.

• 2:20:12Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, my God. I'm about to get a D on my homework. What a wind up that was.

• 2:20:16Speaker 04

  I wrote down two things. I wrote, from hell month continues with the script from hell.

• 2:20:23Speaker 04

  And then I wrote, ah, to be a tall, decent looking white man in the 90s with a little bit of talent.

• 2:20:29Bill Simmons?

  I mean, so not a fan.

• 2:20:31Speaker 04

  I don't know. I mean, look.

• 2:20:32Bill Simmons?

  This might have been a you had to be there movie.

• 2:20:34Speaker 04

  I watched it with Liz and I, I just felt, I, I don't disagree with you guys that like the themes are interesting and, and are like fun to talk about. I genuinely just felt like the writing and the acting in this movie is like just pretty clunky and blocky and it was just like, it just, it didn't really land. I don't know if it's because I'm viewing it more from like the objective.

• 2:20:53Bill Simmons?

  This might be his least favorite of the year.

• 2:20:54Speaker 04

  And like, I have no relationship to this, this time, this place, these people, like any of it really. So it's like 30 years later, when you don't have the attachment of your whole, you know, like we are viewing it from completely different prism. So.

• 2:21:07Sean Fennessey?

  You, but like you literally had to be in Valley Stream on Long Island to get this movie in some ways, in some ways.

• 2:21:13Speaker 04

  I mean, I don't know. Cause I, I am, I am with Craig. I just feel like the thing that would, well, there are two reasons that I was excited to talk to you guys about this movie. One is I love, I mean, I, I love listening to straight men talk about women, period. It just, when it's, when it's like legit and from my heart.

• 2:21:38Bill Simmons?

  Authentic talk.

• 2:21:39Speaker 04

  I, I just, I enjoy it because.

• 2:21:41Bill Simmons?

  Like my Dream Team Cups analogy. That was really why you flew across country to do this pod.

• 2:21:47Speaker 02

  Like top five bills.

• 2:21:48Bill Simmons?

  Okay, good.

• 2:21:49Speaker 02

  One of the top five.

• 2:21:50Speaker 04

  It's a fun movie to chew on. I don't disagree with that.

• 2:21:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's it's it's great because it's a it's a cosmology movie, right? It's about.

• 2:21:57Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:21:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's it's the constellation of stars and how they all fit together. Like, it sets up so many good discussion points. But I'm being dead serious when I say I legitimately think that McGlone saying, what does he say? You're an ugly fuck. I pity you. Like, I legitimately laugh at that every time he says it.

• 2:22:14Speaker 04

  There's a couple of good lines. I like when when Aniston and him get divorced. When he's like, I'm I'm having an affair and I want to get divorced. And she just goes.

• 2:22:20Speaker 02

  Who is he?

• 2:22:21Speaker 04

  Who is he?

• 2:22:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:22Speaker 04

  Who is he? And she plays it really flat. I thought that was really good.

• 2:22:25Speaker 02

  I mean, that's a great moment.

• 2:22:27Bill Simmons?

  Craig, I get it. We didn't expect you to like this one.

• 2:22:30Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:22:30Bill Simmons?

  I'm not even positive. I liked it when I saw it in the theater, but it it just kind of.

• 2:22:34Speaker 04

  I really think it's not great.

• 2:22:36Speaker 02

  I I also think that, like, the the moment in time of it is is. I just like revisiting this moment.

• 2:22:42Bill Simmons?

  And that's why we had to do the podcast.

• 2:22:43Speaker 02

  Thinking about Edward Burns and like, uh, what he means, what he meant.

• 2:22:50Speaker 02

  The the place he occupies that nobody else, like, there just is nobody like him.

• 2:22:55Bill Simmons?

  You know what it'd be if it was NBA? It would be the Twitter montage of Ed Burns highlights where it'd be like, Ed Burns was a problem.

• 2:23:02Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly.

• 2:23:03Bill Simmons?

  And it would be all like the best parts of his movies.

• 2:23:05Sean Fennessey?

  It's all shots of him.

• 2:23:06Speaker 02

  Wow, Ed Burns is amazing.

• 2:23:07Sean Fennessey?

  Walking through parks with the hottest actresses of the late 1990s.

• 2:23:10Speaker 04

  He's got a great eye for talent, you know?

• 2:23:12Sean Fennessey?

  So the the like really unkind way of framing this is that you mentioned those indie stars and kind of that group of people that who came before him. And all of those people, in one sense or another, were really transgressive and complicated, like filmmakers who made violent movies or these really frank movies that had these like hard, dark themes.

• 2:23:33Sean Fennessey?

  And Edward Burns was like the logical conclusion of that time because he was the guy who movie executives felt most comfortable wrapping their arms around and saying, I want to have my own Woody Allen. I want to have my like safe handsome, you know, East Coast neuroses movie. And that that this kind of also signals the end of that era. You know, the the era of sundance crisis just kind of ends with with Edward Burns in a way. So. And like, if you hear Tom Rothman talk about getting Brothers McMullen and how much it meant to him, there's an interview with him on the Brothers McMullen Blu-ray. You know, he's like, this is like him discovering Dennis Hopper or something. He's like, I found the next great voice.

• 2:24:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:17Sean Fennessey?

  And I do think that that plays a big part in kind of understanding the context and why this movie, these movies took off.

• 2:24:22Bill Simmons?

  You made the key point, though. You talk about some of the other guys we mentioned in the indie film high school, the seniors and the juniors. Like, Bombak made a bunch of weird movies after kicking in screaming. Like, it took him a while, and he really took all kinds of chances all over the place. Soderbergh, same thing.

• 2:24:39Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:24:40Bill Simmons?

  He goes into like, he's just all over the place.

• 2:24:43Sean Fennessey?

  No one tried more stuff than him.

• 2:24:44Bill Simmons?

  I could throw this splitter. I can get it over in the strike zone 98% of the time, and this is my pitch, and I'm gonna throw it.

• 2:24:51Speaker 02

  I also think that there is a kind of, he's resisting something, too. Right? Like, this movie, Brothers McMullen, comes out during this, like, very important, this other very important moment for American independent movies, which is the Scuz era.

• 2:25:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:09Speaker 02

  And there's no world in which a different, like, Schmedward, Schmedward Schmerns isn't out here doing like, you know, rape, rape, rob, and drive away.

• 2:25:24Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 2:25:24Speaker 02

  15 times.

• 2:25:25Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 2:25:26Speaker 02

  Right? But he is so determined to uphold this other value system.

• 2:25:30Sean Fennessey?

  He's raising the Catholic Church. He goes to church every Sunday, just like I did. Yeah, and he loved Woody Allen.

• 2:25:35Bill Simmons?

  Just wanted to capture New York and relationships and people walking outside, talking about stuff.

• 2:25:39Sean Fennessey?

  Walking outside. Well, they, the, they're, I think Brothers McMullen is 75% exteriors because he, so he didn't have to pay for lights, which I thought was such a great idea, that he had no money. That movie cost $20,000. He had no money to pay for lighting.

• 2:25:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, we learned today that Ed Burns is maybe underrated, maybe properly rated, or maybe overrated.

• 2:25:57Speaker 02

  I will say one other thing.

• 2:25:58Bill Simmons?

  We learned that this movie had a bunch of great looking females in it, and we learned that Craig doesn't care about independent film.

• 2:26:07Bill Simmons?

  So the three things we've learned. He's not a supporter of just people in their mid twenties, just trying to catch a break.

• 2:26:14Speaker 04

  Just, I just, we, we, we gave it an earnest try, Liz and I, and halfway through we were like, I just don't think this is landing.

• 2:26:20Speaker 02

  I'll just say one other thing.

• 2:26:21Bill Simmons?

  I respect it.

• 2:26:22Speaker 02

  I buried a very important leader. It's not that important, but like, I was on a Sundance jury.

• 2:26:27Sean Fennessey?

  I thought you were gonna say, I've been in a 20 year committed relationship with Mike McGlone.

• 2:26:34Speaker 02

  A boy can dream.

• 2:26:34Bill Simmons?

  That would've been an amazing end to this.

• 2:26:36Speaker 02

  A boy can dream. No, I was on a Sundance jury with Tom Rothman and Edward Burns.

• 2:26:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:41Speaker 02

  And, uh, it was the jury that gave Coogler the Fruit Valsation.

• 2:26:46Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:26:47Speaker 02

  And.

• 2:26:48Bill Simmons?

  What a fucking flex.

• 2:26:50Speaker 02

  He, they were, I mean, I think the hatchet's been buried. I don't know what, I don't know how Edward is, Edward Burns is writing about it in the book, but, um,

• 2:27:02Speaker 02

  they really believed in Ryan Coogler. I will just say that they, they really did. That was, um, also, um.

• 2:27:12Bill Simmons?

  What happened to that guy?

• 2:27:14Speaker 02

  Who?

• 2:27:15Bill Simmons?

  Ryan Coogler.

• 2:27:17Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't know. I don't know.

• 2:27:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:19Speaker 02

  Everything, everything.

• 2:27:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he made a She's the One and he disappeared forever. Yeah. But that, I mean, I will give, I will give them both credit, but that Rothman talks about this a lot where it's like, you basically, and I wish he did this at fucking Sony and he doesn't do it. And if you're listening to this time, Rothman, fucking open up an independent division, support it, like it is not just Sony Pictures Classics, but like, investing in the filmmaker was the whole thing. This is how Hollywood got so good in the nineties is, they made these bets on these people and they let them make two, three, four, five, six movies.

• 2:27:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:48Sean Fennessey?

  And if you don't do that, then you're not gonna get better movies. You made the point about Bombak. It's the same thing. I don't wanna get on my high horse too much, but I really think this matters. And like, if those guys in a jury room can believe in Coogler, then why did Coogler not get a five picture deal immediately from a studio that was like, do whatever you want, you're the future. Nobody fucking does that anymore.

• 2:28:03Bill Simmons?

  Why are you asking why Coogler didn't?

• 2:28:06Sean Fennessey?

  Why? I mean, I know why, but it's not as though the.

• 2:28:11Speaker 02

  I know, but like writ large, it is extremely frustrating that well also. Like what would it look we're seeing what we're watching in real time right now. What it looks like to not do that with these directors.

• 2:28:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, we're watching in real time because these movies are making money. They're good. They follow the money right now obsession backgrounds.

• 2:28:32Speaker 02

  But does he have like hit? Does he have a five picture deal? Does he? Is he doing?

• 2:28:37Sean Fennessey?

  He he does. He has a.

• 2:28:39Speaker 02

  And isn't the next thing he do?

• 2:28:40Sean Fennessey?

  I know too much about this.

• 2:28:41Speaker 02

  Like a like a like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

• 2:28:44Sean Fennessey?

  He signed up for an A twenty four movie, but he's more than likely going to make his next couple of movies.

• 2:28:48Bill Simmons?

  You're talking about obsession guy?

• 2:28:49Sean Fennessey?

  I'm talking about Curry Barker.

• 2:28:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:50Sean Fennessey?

  More than likely to make his next two movies with Blumhouse Universal. But like, and some of that was done beforehand and some of that is being done in the aftermath of the success of the movie. And it's I'm not saying we should go back to nineteen forty five where somebody is in a lifetime contract with a movie studio. But it's more like you have an executive that executive is your guy. And that person takes care of you. The the example I cited all last year was Mike DeLuca. Who was just like, I'm I'm bringing in PTA for Boogie Nights. He's getting to make Magnolia. I believe in him fully. And then you cut to thirty years later. And he's the person who is willing to pay for one battle after another.

• 2:29:24Bill Simmons?

  The flip side of that is when it was like, I believe in Maggie Gyllenhaal and the bride's gonna be awesome. And then the bride doesn't work and.

• 2:29:30Speaker 02

  But that's the business.

• 2:29:31Bill Simmons?

  And then they get scared off and they're like, oh shit.

• 2:29:33Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, no, no, no. This is the same thing that Mike DeLuca does. Mike DeLuca signed up Maggie Gyllenhaal to do her next movie at Warner Brothers. Because that's how he rolls. He's one of the only executives who is like, I'm betting on the filmmaker more than any other thing. And sometimes you miss and it's okay.

• 2:29:47Speaker 02

  And sometimes because she she definitely swung at that pitch.

• 2:29:51Sean Fennessey?

  I and I I liked the effort.

• 2:29:52Bill Simmons?

  But they they talked about it. It's like.

• 2:29:53Sean Fennessey?

  I the movie doesn't work, but I liked that she tried to do that.

• 2:29:56Bill Simmons?

  They said afterwards, like, we would back that movie a hundred times out of a hundred. She had a good vision for it.

• 2:30:01Sean Fennessey?

  To me, that's the thing. Sometimes.

• 2:30:02Bill Simmons?

  We paid for it.

• 2:30:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:03Speaker 02

  That's just the movies.

• 2:30:05Sean Fennessey?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 2:30:05Speaker 02

  Like you go back to the bride and like. At the end of the year, it's going to look different than it did at the beginning of the year. That's just going to play in a whole different way when you watch it in December. Versus watching it when the stakes were high and she was up. Against Emerald Fennel. I'm not saying it's gonna make it a great movie. But I'm saying there will be some, it, it's subtexts will be more apparent. Like the badge, we can talk about like why it doesn't.

• 2:30:32Bill Simmons?

  I watched seven more minutes of Babylon. I'm at the fifty two minute mark now.

• 2:30:36Speaker 02

  You're affirmatively making your way through Babylon.

• 2:30:39Bill Simmons?

  Every, every year I watch seven more minutes.

• 2:30:43Bill Simmons?

  I'm almost at the one third point.

• 2:30:45Sean Fennessey?

  Honestly, I mean this sincerely, I know it's been a complicated week, but shame on you, shame on you.

• 2:30:50Speaker 02

  Just, you gotta just finish this. Babylon's good. Because also, that is a director, I mean, we don't need to go, I don't need to do this on Dan's.

• 2:30:57Sean Fennessey?

  I like, he's been getting some shots.

• 2:30:59Speaker 02

  He's got enough.

• 2:31:00Sean Fennessey?

  He's, he's been getting some shots. He's not somebody who hasn't been getting a chance, but I think the more director should get chances the way that he gets chances to try things.

• 2:31:06Speaker 02

  Because also, like, until this year with these two guys, and who knows how that's gonna turn out, we weren't having this conversation.

• 2:31:14Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 2:31:15Speaker 02

  We were talking about how it had died.

• 2:31:17Sean Fennessey?

  No, but I, I did talk about it, we might have even, the, the three of us or another group of us might have talked about how, um, Sinners, Weapons and F1 isn't a mistake. It's not, it's that this was something clearly that audiences wanted, that they wanted original movies with new stories that didn't have to be like, oh, you've never seen a movie with vampires, or you've never seen a race car driver movie, but that making them new and not making them attached to something old.

• 2:31:43Speaker 02

  I also think that we throw weapons, you know.

• 2:31:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I included them among those three, yeah.

• 2:31:50Bill Simmons?

  Unfortunately, at least half of them were horror related though, which I don't think is an accident.

• 2:31:54Speaker 02

  I agree with you.

• 2:31:55Bill Simmons?

  Does your generation still go into more movies or less movies lately?

• 2:31:59Speaker 02

  I mean, the, you, the numbers suggest more, but like people under thirty five, we're, we're going to more movies now. And I think that the end of the superhero era is gonna help, is, is half of the reason why all this is happening.

• 2:32:09Bill Simmons?

  That's what my kids say too.

• 2:32:10Sean Fennessey?

  Hundred percent.

• 2:32:11Bill Simmons?

  My kids were always going to the movies from the moment they could drive. Um, but I feel like they're more excited about the movies they're going to versus like, eh.

• 2:32:20Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 2:32:21Bill Simmons?

  We saw whatever.

• 2:32:22Speaker 02

  IP feels old now. Jurassic Park feels old now. And I, I do feel like it's finally time for new stuff to come in and people want to see new stuff.

• 2:32:27Bill Simmons?

  Thank God. Took fifteen fucking years for us to get to this point.

• 2:32:30Speaker 02

  You know what?

• 2:32:30Bill Simmons?

  Wesley and I saw, what did we see together with the, was it a King Kong movie or Planet of the Apes?

• 2:32:36Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:32:37Bill Simmons?

  What did we see?

• 2:32:37Speaker 02

  It was the Samuel Jackson.

• 2:32:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we saw one of those.

• 2:32:41Speaker 02

  The Sam Jackson King Kong.

• 2:32:43Bill Simmons?

  Wesley was in town. Oh, yeah. We're like, alright, let's go to that.

• 2:32:45Sean Fennessey?

  Skull Island?

• 2:32:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that.

• 2:32:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there was no other movie to go to. It's like, alright, I'm gonna fucking go to Skull Island.

• 2:32:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so depressing. That's ten years ago.

• 2:32:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:52Speaker 02

  I do think we're in an action glut because I feel like action was filled in by superheroes for so long. A lot of the action franchises like John Wick are kind of over.

• 2:33:00Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:33:00Speaker 02

  We don't really have any good action franchises going right now. It's like Mission: Impossible, all these, and it's, and.

• 2:33:05Bill Simmons?

  You know why? Cause we don't have the actors.

• 2:33:07Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I, I.

• 2:33:07Sean Fennessey?

  Well, this was, I was, I didn't want to put this on the table.

• 2:33:10Speaker 02

  Like, is the original action boom going to come next? Like, some other original John is doing okay.

• 2:33:14Sean Fennessey?

  You gotta go see The Furious.

• 2:33:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, but.

• 2:33:16Sean Fennessey?

  You gotta see The Furious. That, now that's obviously, um.

• 2:33:20Bill Simmons?

  We need more guys like that guy.

• 2:33:21Sean Fennessey?

  A Chinese tie production.

• 2:33:22Speaker 02

  Yes, we like have no action. It is wide open right now.

• 2:33:25Bill Simmons?

  He's staring at you right now, like, holding a gun and looking at you, Sean.

• 2:33:28Sean Fennessey?

  I know. I love him so much.

• 2:33:29Bill Simmons?

  But there's none of me right now.

• 2:33:31Speaker 02

  But this poster is saying, I was here. I was here. Like.

• 2:33:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:37Speaker 02

  What? I just don't know. Cause also the thing about Die Hard, and this is important to say.

• 2:33:44Sean Fennessey?

  McTiernan? Is that what you're looking at? Joel Silver?

• 2:33:46Speaker 02

  It's got a screenplay.

• 2:33:48Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:33:50Speaker 02

  It's got a screenplay. And it's got interesting people. Like, this guy, why is he a movie star? Do you know what I mean? Like, there's so many reasons this should not have worked.

• 2:34:01Sean Fennessey?

  Hart Bachner.

• 2:34:03Speaker 02

  Right. Hart Bachner. Oh, Hart Bachner.

• 2:34:05Sean Fennessey?

  Hart Bachner. Coked out of his mind. Great stuff.

• 2:34:07Bill Simmons?

  We're, we're overdue to do it again. Wesley, true pleasure. Thanks for coming to see us. Sean, fantasy, thank you. Craig, I'd still thank you even though you didn't like our movie. Thanks to, thanks to Eduardo and Gahow. Anybody else?

• 2:34:21Speaker 02

  Uh, Matt.

• 2:34:22Bill Simmons?

  Matt. Um, we have no theme this month.

• 2:34:25Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:34:25Bill Simmons?

  Um, but we do have a couple other good movies coming this month, so stay tuned for the rewatchables.

• 2:34:41Speaker 06

  Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes, para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro, para los que están lejos, los que no vende lejos, y los que no vende cerca, para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos, para los que piensan y los que hacen, para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola, para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.