‘Sinners’ With Bill Simmons, Van Lathan, and Wesley Morris

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Van Lathan, and Wesley Morris pop open a cold bottle of Irish beer as they revisit Ryan Coogler’s instant classic, ‘Sinners,’ starring Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, and Miles Caton. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Ronak Nair, and Chris Wohlers Free eBooks library. It’s on Prime. 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.

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Viori. All right, let's talk about a category we appreciate. Clothes that stay in the rotation. Viori earned that spot. Their core shorts are good for workouts, travel day, weekend, whatever. And the Strato Tech T ridiculously soft. It's the kind of gear you keep reaching for because it's comfortable while still looking put together. Get 20% off your first purchase at Viori.com/rewatchables and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. The Rewatchables brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. We can find Van Lathan. Yes. Higher Learning. Absolutely. With our friend Rachel Lindsay. Midnight Boys. Pew pew. Yep. Wesley Morris not on The Ringer Podcast Network,

• 0:44Bill Simmons?

  although he does have a podcast that he refuses to promote. I'm not refusing to promote it. Cannonball with Wesley Morris. I'm gonna get better at it. Van and I are gonna be guests at some point. I'm very proud of this show that we make called Cannonball. There you go. There we go. I'm Bill Simmons. We're gonna do a rare thing. Talk about a 2025 movie on The Rewatchables. Sinners is next.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  I've been all over this world.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  I ain't never seen no demons,

• 1:12Speaker 01

  no ghosts,

• 1:15Speaker 01

  no magic.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Till now.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Admit to it.

• 1:24Bill Simmons?

  Admit to what?

• 1:25Speaker 02

  That you're dead.

• 1:31Bill Simmons?

  Sinners, only in theaters coming soon. This episode of The Rewatchables is presented by Prime. You listen to this podcast for the movie talk. So let's set the scene. Our lead, tall, dark, stranded at the airport. Hours of delays. He's scrolled, strolled, and loitered by every overpriced snack stand. But just when all hope seems lost. Plot twist. He remembers he has Prime and without a whole library of free ebooks ready to read right from his device. Cue the tramp and score. Roll credits. Free ebooks library at some prime.

• 2:20Bill Simmons?

  So we've only done this, we've had the rewatchable since 2017. I think we've only done this for three other movies. Get Out, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Top Gun Maverick, where a movie was so instantly rewatchable that we said, fuck it. And we just decided to give the rewatchable streaming. There's some drawbacks to it. There's not enough information about the movie with some distance. We don't know how the movie's gonna play out for the next five, six years. The casting what ifs, as the years pass, they start making up shit about who almost got what part. Like, right now, there's like, nothing. But this movie, I saw it with Van the day it came out.

• 3:00Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 3:01Bill Simmons?

  What did I predict to you that it was gonna? I said it was gonna make over $200 million.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  You did?

• 3:05Bill Simmons?

  I did.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Oh, he was all over it.

• 3:07Bill Simmons?

  I was like, that movie's gonna be a monster.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Like, when we left, I might as well just put a koofi on Bill's head. Like, Bill, Bill, like, Bill did that thing, where Bill looked, he went. It's tremendous. I, I, we're sitting outside the Grove, he goes, I predict the movie makes over $250 million. And that was a big deal at that point, because remember, all of the talk was around the business of the movie.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  I mean, all of the, what we can now call BS around the conversation around the movie.

• 3:39Bill Simmons?

  A weird conversation, because everyone was fixated on this. Kugler Daily gets it back in 25 years. They spent so much money.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  This one title!

• 3:48Bill Simmons?

  And then the box office was good the first week. And then there was like, four or five different news stories about, well, they still have a lot to recoup.

• 3:55Speaker 03

  We don't know if they're gonna recoup.

• 3:57Bill Simmons?

  It's like, when did we ever talk about that with movies? It felt like people were lined up a little against this. What's interesting about it from a rewatchable standpoint is it's completely rewatchable. And my son, my son and I have watched it twice together since it's been a home video. He saw it twice in the theaters and then twice here. Once they get to the bar, once we're starting the bar, like about 40 minutes in.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  An hour.

• 4:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, they have.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  You mean, like, once the bar opens?

• 4:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, once they open the bar.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:26Bill Simmons?

  It's about an hour and a half, and it could really be its own movie. But I think as the years pass, that's gonna be it. So. I'll go to you second because I already know how you feel about this movie. You never wrote about this movie as its own piece, but you put it in a Beyonce like bigger picture piece. But what's your relationship to this movie Wesley?

• 4:44Speaker 03

  Uh.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  I find it fascinating. It is, it is. I love it when some work of culture or art that becomes then culture.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  It gives you a new way of seeing a thing that you have always understood to be the case. You know, Get Out gave us The Sunken Place. In addition to other ways of looking at the relationship between black people and particular kinds of white people. And here we have not necessarily new metaphor for what kind of lazily gets called appropriation.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  Cultural appropriation. But you have it so that the metaphor isn't quite fixed to mean that it's that the white interest in the black music is inherently bad. It's that the vampires here, which who are also kind of zombies.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  We can talk about this. Their, their interest is, their own interest is confused, right? Because anyway, the, so I just, we can talk more about what I'm trying to say. But I just love that people responded to this movie in the way that they did, both with, you know, intellectually, emotionally, their sense of entertainment was satisfied.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  And I enjoyed it. I feel like there's two things that I truly, that just truly do not work for me after three experiences with this film.

• 6:34Bill Simmons?

  Save that. Let's go positive first and we'll circle back.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  But I just, the first hour of this movie is, I didn't even need the vampires. The vampires to me are like dessert. Because the first hour of the movie is just a meal. It is, it is something that you rarely see in a movie about black life and black culture in the South in the past. And

• 7:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there was, there was stuff I didn't catch the first time we saw it. Like even, like when they go to the stores and how they position the storefronts and the two sides and even how the stuff in one store is slightly different than the stuff in the other. There's all these nuances to it that you kind of pick up the more you watch this movie.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  It's such a, that first hour, you can tell that there was real sort of intellectual labor that went into recreating um, this town and the relationships in it. Um, this is the Jim Crow South. Um, the Jim Crow Southeness of it is atmospheric. It does not feel like it's dictating day to day life. Of course, but you know, it's a psychological condition at this point. We're in the 30s. And I don't know. It's just, what would it look like for black people in the South to just be living a Tuesday?

• 8:02Speaker 03

  Um, what would it be like for them to be living for Saturday? Right? The one day of the week where time stops and you can just dance your ass off and gamble what little money you have and drink. And then you go to church on Sunday and say, I'm sorry, I did that. I'm gonna go to sleep and wake up to work on Monday. Like Saturday night is the, was the biggest night of the week. For certain black people. And then you went to church on Sunday and some preacher made you feel bad about it. That's all in this movie in the first hour.

• 8:36Bill Simmons?

  When you, you saw it twice in the theater?

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, three times.

• 8:39Bill Simmons?

  So did the first hour or the second hour, what did you respond to more?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Uh, I think that I responded to different things in different viewings. When I saw it, when I rewatched it for the podcast, the first hour by far just had me captivated. It just like to what you guys are talking about. I think for a couple of reasons. One is something that Wesley hit on when he was talking about the film, which is that

• 9:07Speaker 01

  this movie does something that I think a lot of period pieces that have black people in them don't attempt to do, which is it treats the black people in the movie like people. And they have very different experiences. Like even Smoke and Stack, who are twins, they have two completely different experiences of even love. Smoke has this tragic, all encompassing, consuming, identity reaffirming love. Stack has a love that is almost divorced of its identity. It's trying, it's searching for one. They have all the feeling, but everything else is kind of being dictated by the fact that they're not safe to be together.

• 9:52Bill Simmons?

  For the audience, Stack becomes the vampire and Smoke does not.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Smoke is the hero and Stack actually becomes, in my opinion, the movie's greatest victim.

• 10:04Bill Simmons?

  Because he turns into Radio Raheem.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Oh, how? Careful, careful there.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  I mean, it's interesting to think about him that way. Keep going though, keep going, keep going.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  And then the second part of the movie is this relationship to the American South. I am from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

• 10:19Bill Simmons?

  They filmed in Louisiana?

• 10:20Speaker 01

  They filmed in Louisiana. Uh, this movie is set in Clarksdale, Mississippi. There's something about the American South that is supernatural and there are a lot of reasons for it. Number one, a lot of this happens to be the fact that it's the blackest place in America. That, there's something that comes along with that. One thing is that all the stories, all the spirituality, all the culture that had to be developed in response to the brutality of America, it exists there in a very distinct and special way. Right? So, all the cultural invention, the music, the dance, the spirituality, that had to be invented out of survival, it sits right there on top of the South.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  And when you see something that depicts the American South, it makes you think about the carnage and brutality that it took to create the society that we live in. That's the economic driver, the engine. And the people inside of those movies are sort of, it's orphans. They're the orphans of American exceptionalism. And stories about them always make you go, shit. Like, you always have to sit back and go, look at the cotton. You always have to sit back, he's paying for something with plantation. Look at the toll, look at the cost. And the movie is able to depict those things without in any way languishing on them.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  With, like, how do you make sharecropping not a big deal? How do you make living on a plantation not a big deal? Well, when there are vampires attacking you. It seems like it's not as big of a deal, at least in that moment. And I'm, I have been and remain transfixed by what the movie was able to do. And, and, and, he's from Oakland. I could get it, look, man, the work, to your point, the work and the craft and the care that must have gone into Coogler's exploration of particularly the Delta. I, I haven't had a chance to talk to him about it, but I don't know how he crafted that. I've been there, my daddy's from Maryland, Louisiana.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  I know these people. This is who they are, for real. Like, and it's, it was, it really, really, really an achievement to me.

• 12:38Bill Simmons?

  You know, we did that video for Ringer Movies when we talked about, basically, the premise was, why doesn't Ryan Coogler make more movies? And you could say that about, some directors work a lot, some directors, like, take their time. And I, I was like, my only frustration with him is, I just wish he... Did a

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Bang them out?

• 12:57Bill Simmons?

  Work a little more, like, once, yeah, just like, just do a buddy cop movie for six months, like, just bang one out. And what Ben just described is why he does, why, and especially like doing the re- real research for this. That's not his process. Like, if, if he's gonna do sinners, he's gonna get every single piece of the movie correct, and that takes, like, real time. It's like a labor of love for him.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  I also think that, I don't know, he got, it, it worked for him so fast, so early.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  You're doing great. You're doing great, Craig.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  I am partying a lot lately, I gotta tell you. Look at this man. The picture of party.

• 13:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  You don't know, you don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's the whole point, right? I just feel like, it all, he got very,

• 13:57Speaker 03

  he was touted very quickly, like, out of the gate, Fruitvale Station makes him a person of interest to lots of people in the industry.

• 14:05Bill Simmons?

  He's in his mid twenties.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Which is not-

• 14:08Bill Simmons?

  After Fruitvale.

• 14:09Speaker 03

  Yes. And the question is, like, what does he do after that? Like, this is a guy who could be writing original screenplays and making really good dramas for the rest of his career. And Coogler, Ryan Coogler is like, "Ah, I actually have a thing that I've always been thinking about doing, and it's, it involves the Rocky franchise."

• 14:29Speaker 03

  And I think he, I had always been curious about what it would look like for this person to write another original screenplay that is coming from something, some, some place in his imagination, or his, or his,

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Soul, his interests that isn't connected to, you know, some other entities.

• 14:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's the thing with this is his first movie with its own IP that came completely out of his head.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  Right.

• 14:58Bill Simmons?

  Cause I always think Creed, but actually Creed is in the Rocky universe, right? Like he has a couple of built in characters.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  That's definitely true for sure. I think that there is a common thread between Creed, Black Panther and this.

• 15:12Speaker 03

  Oh, sure. A hundred thousand percent. Yeah.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  I think this, what Coogler is really good at doing.

• 15:19Bill Simmons?

  Is that Fred Michael B. Jordan?

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, Michael B. Jordan, him and Michael B. Jordan, like that's like, that's his muse. But I think what he's really good at doing is, um, the lore development, like evolving lore. Like Black Panther, in and of itself, the movie ends up being a, an interrogation of black diasporic unity. And that's a hell of a swing for Disney, right? Like that's a pick.

• 15:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  That's a big idea. The movie starts off in, with the, the history of the Wakandan civilization and then we go right to Oakland. He takes the story and then he evolves it. And this, in the same way, just like the, the bedrock of Creed is the Rocky franchise. The bedrock of Black Panther is obviously the Marvel Cinematic Universe and decades upon decades of, of, of, of comic lore. This one is really all of the different aggressions and microaggressions and circumstances that exist in the American South. In that part, in the Delta specifically, forget about the, it's the Delta.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  It's the Delta. Cause even those, uh, the Asian characters, the Chow family, uh, they exist specifically in the Delta. We're in Louisiana, in South Louisiana, where I'm from, we didn't have, I'm like, when I first looked at the movie, that was even unfamiliar to me. I'm like, what? I've never seen, but he took that and then he was able to build on that and put the vampires like on top of it. And so he's, he has his way of taking things that are so familiar to us and then making them original. Creed should have been stupid, bruh. Creed should have been stupid.

• 17:00Bill Simmons?

  We talked about that when Creed came out. We were like, how did this work? The odds were like 20 to 1.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Like Creed should have been stupid, but it just wasn't stupid.

• 17:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Because.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  Well, cause he unders- like to your point though, he kinda understands, like he, it, this isn't a cynical investment, right? This is a hard investment.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  And clearly these worlds mean something to him. And the question is like, the, these movies operate, and I'm not saying they come from this place, but they definitely correspond with this urge that, that a lot of people who, I'll, like in this case, black people go to a movie and you're kinda like, well, I really, what's it like at Apollo's house? Like, how come we don't spend enough time getting to know, uh, you know, what Apollo's life is like when Rocky's not around? There's not enough of that. And so.

• 17:55Bill Simmons?

  Not to mention Duke. I mean, what was going on with Duke? Did he have a condo, an apartment?

• 17:59Speaker 03

  I mean, I just think there's a whole world that, that, I mean, so many times I'd go to a movie and just wonder what was going on with a bunch of other characters who clearly are interesting and interesting to the world of the movie we're actually watching, right? Like Rocky Balboa is friends with this person. What's his life like? When Rocky, like separate from Rocky, who was he?

• 18:22Bill Simmons?

  Like Basic Instinct, Roxy, what was she up to?

• 18:25Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 18:25Bill Simmons?

  Did she have a job?

• 18:26Speaker 03

  But I do wonder.

• 18:28Bill Simmons?

  Cause Roxy was living a life.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Roxy, I fuck with Roxy.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  I mean, doesn't every, I, I fuck with Roxy.

• 18:35Bill Simmons?

  Roxy. Roxy didn't just win the Dion Waiters, she tried to make out with it. When we did, when we did that part.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  What a movie. Oh, but yeah, like it's such a great point. Like Apollo is, Apollo is the, a boxing legend in the film, uh, the standard of boxing. And he really only shows up as Rocky's Jimmy Cricket.

• 18:59Bill Simmons?

  Right, yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  And then, so there's so much fertile ground. We didn't even know how much fertile ground there was.

• 19:05Bill Simmons?

  Remember Rocky IV, he's in the pool watching, he's watching a TV of a Drago interview in the pool.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  And he got, gotta fucking.

• 19:11Bill Simmons?

  And he's, gets mad and it's like, what's going on with this guy?

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:15Bill Simmons?

  What else is he doing?

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Some manners about America.

• 19:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  And then he gets fucked over.

• 19:18Bill Simmons?

  So this movie, it's a vampire movie.

• 19:23Bill Simmons?

  It's a one-location horror action movie, which is a fifty-year franchise. It's a blues movie. It's a religious critique. It's an all-in-one-day movie.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:36Bill Simmons?

  Everything happens in twenty-four hours, basically. And it's a movie about a hundred-plus years of black culture, all in the same movie. Is there anything I missed? Six things. It's six different movies in one movie.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  Uh, well.

• 19:49Bill Simmons?

  And it's a little bit horny.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  In there, you've got these, these, these other things, right? It's a father-son movie. It's a brothers movie. It's a sex movie.

• 19:57Bill Simmons?

  It's a twins movie. It's a horny movie.

• 19:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, um.

• 20:00Bill Simmons?

  This movie gets its horns on a couple times.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  Oh, yes. I mean.

• 20:04Bill Simmons?

  It's a movie about Cunnilingus. Yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  I mean, the.

• 20:07Bill Simmons?

  A boy's journey with Cunnilingus. That was the original title. A boy. Yeah, they changed it. Didn't test well.

• 20:18Bill Simmons?

  Boy's Journey to Cunnilingus. Okay. New, from Focus Features.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  Sounds right.

• 20:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  Focus would do it.

• 20:24Bill Simmons?

  Tested terrible.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  You got the right studio. Focus would have done it.

• 20:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Is there any, anything else you would put out of those six?

• 20:32Speaker 03

  I think those, that kind of covers it. I mean, there's so, also, it's a musical. It's a musical.

• 20:37Bill Simmons?

  That's probably the biggest thing that.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  It's a musical.

• 20:40Bill Simmons?

  So that's from a rewatchable standpoint. There's a couple of music scenes in this movie. I mean, including the famous one, but holy shit. It's just like all-time, all-time music scenes.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  So have you ever been watching a movie where the characters in the film are having so much fun, but they're not necessarily at a party that you would want to be at?

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is, this is, yes.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  This, like, so Kugler, when they're making this movie, he's like, I want to make sure that people want to be at the juke joint. That you wanna party with them. I wanna make sure the people look good. They're glistening, the sweat is good. And look, something else. We in an era right now where people, they do this LA thing. When I first came out to LA, I noticed how the clubs in LA are, right? The clubs in LA are like, this how it goes. You go to the club, you in there, and it's a dude. He's sitting on the couch, you doing like this. He's just saying hi to people. It's like, there's one dude in the club in LA that all he does is say hi to people all night. That's all he does. He's just, oh, what's up? I always wanna know who that guy is. I always wanna know. You see him, he's like, what's up?

• 21:51Speaker 01

  The most intriguing person in the club is that guy. Yep. So every once in a while, he does this thing that I hate. If you are a celebrity, stop doing this. Stop seeing people and doing a little prayer hands. And they go, thank you so much. And then it's a girl doing this in Louisiana. The prayer hands are tough. I hate the prayer hands. I like the prayer hands. If I say, the next time somebody do that. What does that mean? I was praying for you to come here and you've arrived? Prayer hands. It's like, hey, man, I really fuck with that record you put out, but thank you so much. Hey, nobody asking for the prayer hands. Just be like, yeah, man, we worked real hard on it. Break out. Like, so. This is a man good hottest take. We did the bad prayer hands. I mean, I like that this drives you crazy.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  I hate it. You hate it, okay. I look at, I have two different types of celebrities. I got prayer hand celebrities and regular celebrities. I remember one time I went to, I'm just gonna drop a name. I went to a YG listening party. I told YG I liked the record. YG was like, yeah, you fucking with it? That's cool. I was like, he didn't prayer hands me. That's a real motherfucker right there. Way to go, YG. He didn't give me the prayer hands. That just made me a huge YG fan. But I'll say this, in the South, at least when I was, I don't know how things are, that I've been at home and partying as much. Nah, man, we go into these parties and we go in looking great, all dressed up. We come out sweating. Yeah.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  We are dancing. We are. I bring two shirts. That's a Wes more staple. We are celebrating. He's the sweatiest club guy who ever lived. I bring two shirts.

• 23:32Bill Simmons?

  He loses like five times the sweat at some of these places. I've seen it.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  So when you're inside a club, you you really have to have a sense of the vampires ruined the greatest day of Preacher Boy's life. The vampires ruined a fantastic party.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  But conversely, man, the party is so good that even these racist ass vampires

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Want to come in.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  Want to come in.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Like, which is really the politics of the movie, right? I mean, is it time to get into that? Because I just feel like the the the sort of

• 24:09Speaker 03

  political, intellectual achievement here, one of the achievements is is that, which is that you he found a metaphor that also doesn't entirely feel metaphorical because in the world of the movie, these vampires are real. They kill people, convert people, um, and grow a little army. But they also serve, they serve a metaphorical purpose, right? Which is that the

• 24:42Speaker 03

  the moment they, okay, so for an hour, you were watching Smoke and Stack basically gather the resources, human and

• 24:50Bill Simmons?

  It's a put the band back together movie.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 24:53Speaker 03

  And to to get the Saturday night hopping. And you watch them do everything to to make the club the club. And the minute after Sammy does his number and you get the the sort of metaphysical supernatural

• 25:16Bill Simmons?

  It ends with a number, the roof's on fire. It finishes and it cuts right to the three vampires.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And Remick is like, gee.

• 25:24Speaker 03

  I, you mean, I can, I can get, kill all the birds in one, I can get. Two hundred and fifty years of music? In, in one bite?

• 25:35Bill Simmons?

  I paused it, I paused that moment for Ben, cuz Ben, Ben's seventeen now and he's in that, I'm smarter than everybody else stage. Like, don't tell me what, I know more than you, like, he thinks he's, he thinks he's a shit right now. So I paused that and I was like, true or false, is this what the movie's about right here? And he was like, what? And then I explained it to him and it was one of my moments where I kinda hit him with the newspaper. I'm like, I'm still smarter than you motherfucker.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  Did he get it?

• 26:01Bill Simmons?

  He got it.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 26:02Bill Simmons?

  But I was like, you didn't figure this out yet, see? You're not that, you're not smarter than me yet. Seventeen year old little shit.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Is Jimmy Iovine?

• 26:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  I mean, no, I mean, take, throw a rock, right? Throw a rock. Because Jimmy Iovine is actually great because he claims to come in peace. He, he has an ally, he, he forges an allyship, right? Like, on his terms, I bite you, you fuck with me. Um, cuz you don't really seem to have a choice. There's just so many things happening once the metaphor goes to town.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  I, I, one thing, and all of that, and in some way, it wasn't alienating. The thing that I still get, that I-

• 26:48Speaker 03

  What do you mean by that?

• 26:49Speaker 01

  What I mean is, but with this movie and Get Out, these movies are direct criticisms of whiteness.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  They, they, they, they direct. I expected to come out of theater with Bill go, with Bill going, ah, they should have had Wahlberg in it.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  Not two, I can't do two Wahlbergs in two days.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  But he fucked with it, it's, the movie is, there's no way around it. The movie is a direct criticism of whiteness and only the people that were trying to be offended by it actually were.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Which tells you just the powerful, the, the power of the medium.

• 27:26Bill Simmons?

  That says more about the person, though.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Oh, a hundred percent.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:29Bill Simmons?

  Can I read you something a great writer wrote?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:32Bill Simmons?

  About this movie? That Sinners is a nightmare in which black art is doomed to be coveted before it's ever just simply enjoyed.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Jesus, who's that guy?

• 27:41Bill Simmons?

  Wesley Morris.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Who, wow.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  Oh, I really?

• 27:43Bill Simmons?

  Wesley wrote that.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Well, Jesus.

• 27:44Bill Simmons?

  Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Wesley Morris. Fucking just, just dropping some, some knowledge out there, but I thought that was really good, though.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Real quick, what do you think is more impressive, a Pulitzer or a Peabody?

• 27:58Speaker 03

  I have no comment. They're both wonderful awards. May everybody win one.

• 28:03Bill Simmons?

  I think I have a P. I have a P buddy. Pulitzer's more important.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't know. They're both great. Why, why, why choose, Dan?

• 28:12Bill Simmons?

  Can I give you a couple more sinners themes other than black art deemed to be coveted before it's ever simply enjoyed?

• 28:19Bill Simmons?

  The musically talented are called griots in this movie and their gifts attract evil.

• 28:26Bill Simmons?

  We were talking yesterday at dinner about why people get so famous that they kind of lose their minds. Like, why don't we care about this more as a society when we look at the people that have

• 28:37Speaker 03

  Fame is a disease.

• 28:38Bill Simmons?

  The people that have really flown super close to the sun, a lot of times just fucking lose it.

• 28:46Bill Simmons?

  And I was thinking, like, do your gifts actually attract evil?

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:51Bill Simmons?

  Or is that just like a theme in this movie? Cause I do wonder, you think of all the people who have flown too close to the sun and it went bad.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Oh, I see how you're asking this.

• 29:00Bill Simmons?

  Coincidence, or should we actually start wondering?

• 29:04Speaker 03

  But this is, I mean, I think you, in the world of the movie, the evil that's attracted is not the evil of, well, let me think about this.

• 29:13Bill Simmons?

  All they care about in this, all the vampires care about is preacher boy. They don't care about anyone else in this.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  I have a thought here.

• 29:18Bill Simmons?

  They want him. That's it. They want to take him and bring him into their fold.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  Well, he's the only mus, well, let me think about this because he's the only musician they would have been. They want everything.

• 29:31Bill Simmons?

  No, but he's

• 29:32Speaker 03

  He's the only physical manifestation of the thing that drew them to the club in the first place.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Well, he's the only one capable of doing what he did when he performed.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  He lured the ancestor, he lured the, the past and the future. That song brought, you know, I lied to you, by the way. I mean, we, we should talk about what a banger that song is.

• 29:51Bill Simmons?

  Have you seen the, the video of Miles Kane performing that with the, with the guy who did the score? What's his name?

• 29:58Speaker 03

  Oh, Ludwig.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  That guy's a genius, by the way.

• 30:01Bill Simmons?

  The two of them just do it acoustic for some crowd. It's like a sinner's thing and it's fucking unbelievable.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  I'm sure it is.

• 30:06Bill Simmons?

  And we're gonna talk about my, I have lots of Miles thoughts coming later.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  I, I think two things, one about fame and one specifically about the way fame and the, the, the black part of it. This is coming from

• 30:20Speaker 01

  just my TMZ brain. I think these people go crazy because we drive them crazy. And I think we we don't mean to, but we do.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Yes, we do.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  You think we mean to?

• 30:30Speaker 03

  That's what I said last night.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we drive them crazy. I remember I remember sitting in the office and something very sad happening to someone and me talking to a producer and going, man, I don't really think this is news. Like, why would this be news? And they just went, because the person's a celebrity. Right away, because you have notoriety, it piques people's interest. And because it piques people's interest, they have all different types of attitudes and thoughts about what you should do and how your life affects theirs. And that is just not, to me, a natural.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  No, nothing about it is natural.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  It's just not.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  I mean, obviously, some people can handle it, some people can't. I think that we don't talk about it, and I wonder, I want, we don't talk about it as a disease. You know, there are a couple professional shrink oriented people in my life, psychologists and psychiatrists, who definitely think there's some, that that it should be considered a mental health situation that people who are put in that zone should be prepared for. Yeah.

• 31:41Bill Simmons?

  Oh, interesting.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  Um, I mean, if you look at the way influencers operate at this point, right? And the way that social media operates.

• 31:48Bill Simmons?

  Turns them in and out.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  It completely changes, it warps people's understanding of reality. Their own personal reality.

• 31:56Bill Simmons?

  There's three different types of, I mean, three people for this conversation, right? Musicians, actors, athletes. When you're an athlete, when you're like somebody like Tom Brady, and like you win the, you come back against the Falcons and you win your Super Bowl, you become the GOAT. And you come back from 28 to three and everybody's just like, wow. Oh my God, like this, I don't know how you're normal 10 years later after that. So there's that. Then you have the musicians where you're selling out arenas night after night. And everybody's just losing their fucking mind. And that's just your life. And you're going from city to city. And you just get this crazy three hours of adoration. I don't know how you stay normal there. And then actors, even just, not only do they become famous, like the Leo type of famous.

• 32:40Bill Simmons?

  But I remember when I had MBJ on the second time in 2015 during Creed. Oh no, the third time. It was after Black Panther. And he was talking about how Black Panther fucked him up because he like inhabited the role and he had to become like a dark person in that movie. And he couldn't.

• 32:57Speaker 03

  Being dark?

• 32:57Bill Simmons?

  Like.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  Killmonger.

• 32:59Bill Simmons?

  Stop.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, you're trying to start some shit. Okay.

• 33:07Bill Simmons?

  You can't give him any red meat.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  Oh my God, okay.

• 33:11Bill Simmons?

  But he was saying, he couldn't, they finished filming the movie and he couldn't get out of the place he was in in the movie. Like he couldn't, he had to like, he talked about it. He had to like go get therapy. And it became like a news story because he admitted like, I needed therapy to get out of, get out of that, wherever I was.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  Of killmongers.

• 33:29Bill Simmons?

  So when you're an actor, you have to like do that. I don't know. I think after like 20 years, you fucking go nuts.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  What if what you do is not just the best part of somebody's day, but the best moment in somebody's life?

• 33:46Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  What if that play that you made, like somebody from Atlanta talks shit to me, I go 28-3. Don't matter how many.

• 33:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, what would happen if you met Tracy Porter right now?

• 33:58Speaker 01

  I'm gonna sit down and talk to him.

• 33:59Bill Simmons?

  You'd fucking bear hug him. He'd start crying.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  So, so the Saints won the Super Bowl. I did not think that that was possible. It was a ridiculous happening. So it's just a weird space to, to operate in. And then this movie talks about something else as well. Man, when you hear them early recordings, I remember listening to you talk about, uh, some of this stuff, um, as part of the 16, 1619 project. When you listen to those early recordings of.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Uh, muddy waters or the music that was coming out at that time. You think what series of circumstances and events led to that man making that sound?

• 34:39Speaker 03

  Yep, I always, that's the thing you always think about because they came, they were first.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just go, what made him go, I have to sit down right here and get this out. And when that sound went everywhere, it was no different than what Preacher Boy did. The Stones heard it, the Beatles heard it. Everybody heard it everywhere and they want, I'm not saying that they were vampires at all. I'm not saying that at all, but I'm saying what I'm saying.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  You can, you cannot not say.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  I don't wanna say that. I'm not trying to say that.

• 35:09Speaker 03

  No, no, just keep going, just keep going.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so what I'm saying is when like the music actually did in real life, what it did in the movie, everybody went, Jesus Christ, what is that? I wanna get as close to it as I possibly can and let it push me forward to connect in the same way. I wanna make that sound or at least I wanna understand it. Um, and those early recordings are hard to come by now, but when you hear him, it feels like he is speaking in interdimensional language with the, the combination of the guitar and his voice and the emotion.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  And so like that part of the movie where Remick goes, oh, that feeling happens. Like that, like that's a real thing, you what the fuck is that? I gotta have you. Um, and then the movie orients itself around that.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  But that's the point at which it like it,

• 36:10Speaker 03

  the, the need to, I mean, there's so many things happening with Remick as both a person who understands the rules of vampirism, right? Like the need to be invited into the club, that whole, that whole aspect of the metaphor, right? In order for this to work, you guys, I need you to believe in me in order.

• 36:32Bill Simmons?

  For me to take this from you.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  For me to take it from you. You have to, you have to let me do it. Um, I mean.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  That is how those low max recordings worked in a lot of ways. I mean, in the same way that you don't want to talk shit about Mick Jagger and Robert Plant. Like, I don't really want to talk shit about, about, about those, those recordings, those field recordings. But like, I think that there's an aspect of, and, and this movie understands that a lot of the history of the creation of black art has had to, in some way, if it's going to proliferate through a sys- through an economic system, it's gonna need a white person because they control the system. And I think that there's some balance.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  I mean, this isn't even about, this is as much about it, about artists, but it's really not about white artists and black artists. It's about white business and black artists. And Remick's offer is so ambiguous, right? Like, I mean, we understand at the very least that these are vampires who have a job to do in terms of biting the people, but they also stand for something. And it actually, I take that back because I just forgot the most important thing about Remick, which is he's part of a minstrel trio, right? Like, when they arrive at the club, they arrive as three people. One's got a banjo, one's got a fiddle, and the other one's got a guitar. And- By the way, they sound pretty good.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  I liked it.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  I mean-

• 38:06Speaker 01

  I liked Remick's music in this movie.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. It was kind of innocent. That's the joke, of course, when, when, wait, what? You, that's what you liked, Bill. Pick for Robin Queen. Pick for Robin Queen. But, look at him go. Look at him go, America. Bill Simmons just got bit.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  But, you know, Rember and I had a conversation about this movie for, for Cannonball. Well, now it's Cannonball.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  And we talked a lot about Pick for Robin Queen as, you know, it's an old song, right? That these two black women would go around and perform. It made them very successful. And, um, you know, in, in the limited range in which two black women could be successful at the turn of the century, performing a kind of blues music.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  Nationally speaking, but I mean, they were very regionally known and this song was no secret. It was popular. And to think about what the song is doing in the world of the movie, We Picked Poor Robin Clean, like, that is simultaneously vampirism of, of the, of the most literal sense, but also the metaphorical vampirism, right? Like, we are, we are, we are eating at the bones of a thing. And that thing, in some case, could be black culture as we know it. And that's the song that they use to impress these black people who are standing in the doorway, being like, what y'all want? And of course, there is one person, because there's always

• 39:42Speaker 03

  somebody in the back who's just like, I, wait, I, now I can't remember if it's, if it's, if it's, if it's Stack, or- It's Mary. If it, is it Mary? Who says, we gotta go out? No, no. I don't know what you mean. The person who's like, you know what? They sound pretty good. That was Stack. Stack like, Stack like, Stack, Stack, Stack like- I like this. Yeah, Stack like-

• 40:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, ironically, Stack gets, gets bit, becomes vampire.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Right. But I mean, I think that that appreciation, I mean, I think there's something true in that moment, right?

• 40:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  Which is, you know, so much of what is happening at that, at that, in that doorway, is, is really about the complexity of the relationship between black art and white music, or white musicians, which is like, when you got it, you got it. We can't, you cannot be denied.

• 40:34Bill Simmons?

  Well, there's a, there's a third theme that we're gonna get to right after we take this break.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Prime. Sure, we're called the Rewatchables, and yeah, we usually re-watch movies obsessively, but every now and then, we trade screenplays for eBooks. Some moments, just call for it. Like, when the credits roll and you're still in movie mode, but your watch list is empty. Or when everyone says the original story is better than the movie, and you gotta see what the hype's about. Prime gives you access to a whole library of free eBooks, so you can swap the re-watch for a reread, or try something new. Free eBooks library. It's on Prime.

• 41:15Bill Simmons?

  So the third theme of this movie that I had written down was something Stacks says after he becomes a vampire, because we're talking about the vampires trying to seduce everybody in the juke.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 41:26Bill Simmons?

  Stacks telling his brother, no, it's better this way. You should come this way. And then he says, we was never going to be free.

• 41:33Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 41:34Bill Simmons?

  Which is the third theme looming around this, like, hey, maybe this is actually a better life for everybody here in the nineteen thirties.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  Which is the most, this is the darkest.

• 41:45Bill Simmons?

  It's about as dark as you get. Yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you look at what those two brothers had done to find their freedom, when you look at where they had gone, they had gone to fight enemies abroad, they had gone to be gangsters up north, they had gone everywhere trying to search for whatever it is that they did not grow up with, whether it was safety from their father, whether it was respecting their community, whether it was love, right? One man couldn't love his woman because she was too righteous. The other man couldn't love his woman because she was too white. So whatever they were looking for, and they

• 42:31Speaker 01

  were going out to find it, they came right back home and still had to deal with all the accrued interests of the horror that waited for them.

• 42:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, and by the way, they were gonna die the next morning.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, the guy was gonna.

• 42:45Bill Simmons?

  Those guys were all coming back to kill them and clean the floors.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  I got a nitpick there.

• 42:50Bill Simmons?

  Okay, save it.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think I might share your nit.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got a nitpick there.

• 42:55Speaker 03

  But nonetheless, writ large, the nit aside, that I think I probably share, I can't wait to hear what it is.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  This, it's so crazy, this movie is as popular as it is because it is a full-scale, comprehensive tragedy. And like, everybody is trapped in their circumstances. All the options suck. The cosmos of the Jim Crow Delta means that there was no way that any sort of white power structure was gonna allow this club to stand, right? And I just, even once you get to that post-credit sequence, which is essentially.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  Buddy Guy as as old Sammy.

• 43:50Speaker 03

  Like, sitting with the fact that he made it, and you kind of can't believe, I was like, wow, Sammy made it. But also, the, what he made was the blues. He is now the descendant of, because we haven't even talked about what Del Rey Lindo represents in his strain of blues. I feel like he's an overlooked, that character is kind of overlooked in the larger.

• 44:13Bill Simmons?

  I've not gonna be on this podcast.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  We're not gonna be overlooking Del Rey Lindo's performance. It's the best performance in the movie to me.

• 44:19Bill Simmons?

  Holy shit.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  But, um, and that's not taking anything away from Mike, but.

• 44:23Bill Simmons?

  You just did. You literally took something away from him.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  No, because Mike has a lot more to do with this movie. It's his best performance so far. I'll tell you something else. I wonder, so.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  The movie is a tragedy. Everybody dies. Everybody gets fucked up. The child's daughter is an orphan. Like, all of those people in there die. They have families out there. The movie is a profound tragedy. There's nothing but blood left. The only person that is, the only people that are left are Stack and Mary. And I have not been able to understand what we are supposed to take from that. Because.

• 44:58Bill Simmons?

  Listen, Van.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Like Stack comes back and he is now, I don't want to get too deep into this, but I was thinking about this.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  No, you gotta get deep, because like.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  That didn't get dressed like that by accident. Stack comes back and now Stack is a vampire version of actual black experiences and expressions from the past. Now, he got the big.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Coogee sweater.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Coogee sweater and the whole nine.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  She's got door knockers.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  She's got door knockers.

• 45:29Bill Simmons?

  I thought it was like, like literally Radio Raheem, like he has the stuff on his knuckles.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, that's just, that's just, but what I'm saying is, in that situation, he's there. And if I was to look at that in my most galaxy brain way, that character represents what we had to give up, which is literally the sun. Like, we had to give up the sun. We had to exist in the night now. All he's got, he's decorated. He's ornate. He is going to live. He has, he has survived. As something lesser and more grotesque.

• 46:06Speaker 03

  Not human.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Not human than what the people around him were. And that, when I saw that, because when, at the end.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  But he says it, though.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  I'm happy Stack is alive.

• 46:16Speaker 03

  He says it was the happiest day of his life.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:19Speaker 03

  But it was 60 years ago.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  He's smiling when he says, it's the last time my brother, it's the last time.

• 46:24Speaker 03

  Last time I saw my brother.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  And this is the last time I saw the sun. And I'm like, fuck. But he's happy. And I'm happy he's alive, even though he's lesser than human than what he was before.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  Um.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  There were compromises made.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  I have been thinking about, the, the only thing I really think about with this movie in terms of what it means and where it could go. I don't know how committed to intellectual property proliferation Ryan Coogler is. He is definitely a master at reinterpreting other people's IP. But I don't know if there's gonna be like a Sinner's Four, if we're, if we're headed that direction. So I've got. He says no. Plenty of time to think about what is going on in that sequence. And the third time I watched it, you know what I thought of? The bridge from They Won't Go and I Go, the Stevie Wonder song. Um.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  People sin in just for fun. They will never see the sun. They won't even show their faces. For them, there is no room for the hopeless sinner. Who will take more than he will, oh my God, I'm gonna start crying.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Oh no. Who's got Wesley?

• 47:37Speaker 03

  He got through Brook back then without crying. I was gonna cry.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  They got Wesley.

• 47:43Speaker 03

  Um, for they will never show their faces. For them, there is no, for there is no room for the hopeless sinner who will take more than he will give. Um, he will give, he will give, he ain't hardly gonna give, whoa. And it's Stevie like going from up here to down here, from the mountain to the valley, to acknowledge that there are these people. Who have been forsaken or have forsook. And every time I, the three times I have seen this sequence with, with um, Smoke and uh, what's her face, the Hailey Steinfeld character as this vampire. Yeah, thank you, me.

• 48:27Speaker 03

  Stack, sorry. Um, and they're talking to this old man who we now, we've experienced as a younger person. I'm hearing this, I'm hearing that song. Who chooses death rather than be one of them.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  I, I hear, I hear the, the they won't go when I go. It, that's literally true because these people are never gonna go. Right. They will live forever and they will never see the sun, S O N or S U N. Right. Right?

• 48:57Bill Simmons?

  When we saw the movie, the movie ends with, with uh, Michael B. Jordan, the, the second twin dying. Right? And he's going to where Annie is with the baby and the credits came up and I started to get up and Van's like, hold on, hold on.

• 49:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, don't go nowhere.

• 49:13Bill Simmons?

  And I'm like, what do you mean?

• 49:16Bill Simmons?

  And then that whole other scene came in. Not only is it the best scene in the movie, I think it's one of my favorite scenes.

• 49:21Speaker 03

  Me too.

• 49:22Bill Simmons?

  I just couldn't believe how good it was. And each time I watch it, it gets better. And I just can't believe the choice of starting the credits, but then skipping ahead was so interesting that they did that and not do the fast forward to 1992 or something to keep you in. It's, it's almost like an Easter egg, but it's so much better than an Easter egg. And uh,

• 49:42Speaker 03

  No, it's a coda. It's an epilogue.

• 49:44Bill Simmons?

  I just, I can't believe they landed the plane on that. It probably shouldn't have worked. But not only did it work, it was, it's the, it puts, it brings the whole movie together in the best way. And also like to have Buddy Guy and just like. I just can't believe they pulled that off. They were saying he's 88 years old. They had to film for like 14 hours. They're in like the, you know, it's fucking hot. And he just was there banging it out. And that's going to become a big part of his legacy is where does that sound? Cause I think this movie is going to endure in its own way, you know, and he's that he's so crucial to that part.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Well, the idea that that person, I just kept wondering. Cause you know, the blues song like I lied to you is not in any way a 1930s anything, right?

• 50:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 03

  The Delroy Lindo character is the, the embodiment of like the Delta Blues. And, and Sammy is something else. Preacher Boy is, is a completely like, I would say 1980s oriented blues, right? Like a Robert Cray kind of blues musician, like late Buddy Guy.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  The type of guy who wants his blues to take him everywhere.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Elton Simba wants to stay right there at the same club for the next 20 years. Preacher Boy wants that guitar to take him everywhere. It's a little bit more accessible.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  Right. And I, you know, but, but what do they say when they, when they find old Sammy in that club that night? Oh, man, this electric shit.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:10Speaker 03

  I don't know about that.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  We, we like the old shit. Well, I bet y'all would.

• 51:17Speaker 03

  Stands to reason.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:20Bill Simmons?

  We gotta keep moving. Michael B. Jordan, Fruitvale 2013, Creed, Black Panther, Panther 2, Sinners.

• 51:30Bill Simmons?

  He needed this one.

• 51:31Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 51:32Bill Simmons?

  That's our guy. He, he needed a great performance and a great movie, I think for the catalog. Cause I, I just think he's, you know, he's not 40 yet. I think the talent's there. He's been in our lives the entire century, dating back to The Wire and Hardball and Friday Night Lights. And I, I said this to Ben when we, when we did the video about it the last time. I didn't a hundred percent know he had this one in him. I think there's stuff he's doing in this movie. And I feel like Wesley's gonna zag on this.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  Well, just keep going.

• 52:08Bill Simmons?

  That I didn't think he could do. First of all, to play twins, I just think is like a whole other level of hard acting. I don't like to be able to just do that on a set every day. I felt like the twins were slightly different in ways that the more I watched the movie, I can recognize them. And I just think there's a presence with him. He nails the dialect. There's a physicality to him. It's like all the stuff he's good at. And it's just like perfect for him. And I was just really happy for him because I like him.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Well, it's a movie star role.

• 52:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  And so it, he needed it insofar. Every actor that's going to be a movie star needs one just like that. It's a movie star role. It's a movie where if that character doesn't work, if those characters don't work, you don't have a movie.

• 52:56Bill Simmons?

  It's different. And by the way, this is the movie we always wanted Will Smith to make, right? During his entire prime?

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Will.

• 53:02Bill Simmons?

  Like something that actually really said something?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Movie star?

• 53:05Speaker 03

  It's a different thing though, because Will Smith can do.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  He could charisma his way through.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  Differently charismatic.

• 53:11Bill Simmons?

  I know, but I think Will Smith thought like Ali would be his version of this movie and it just isn't.

• 53:15Speaker 03

  No, but he is like so many other things that I find, I don't know.

• 53:19Bill Simmons?

  I didn't mean to attack Will Smith, but you know what I mean?

• 53:21Speaker 03

  I hear what you mean.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  What I mean is this movie shows Mike gets to be a little sinister. He gets to be smooth. He gets to be vulnerable. What you're essentially talking about, from my perspective, is every movie star needs a film where they show their entire range of talents. Like everything that they could do.

• 53:41Bill Simmons?

  It's kind of like Leo in Wolf of Wall Street, to be honest. Like, like he, he didn't need it, but he kind of needed it.

• 53:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wolf of Wall Street?

• 53:49Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 53:50Speaker 03

  Interesting. At that particular moment in time, you think he needed it?

• 53:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because that, that and the revenant combined, I think, raised into just a different strata.

• 53:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I think.

• 54:00Bill Simmons?

  And he was already doing great.

• 54:02Speaker 03

  This is slightly different because at the point at which Leo.

• 54:05Bill Simmons?

  He was, he'd already.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  Leonardo DiCaprio makes Wolf of Wall Street, he had done. He had, he'd done Django, right? Like, one of the weirdest performances he, nobody, anybody's ever asked him to give. I feel like he'd already, he's already done enough conventional movie star work.

• 54:22Bill Simmons?

  I'm just talking about a moment, a specific moment in somebody's career when there's a shift and you can feel it and they've elevated in some way.

• 54:29Speaker 03

  This to me, well, the additional tragedy here.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  The extra narrative tragedy of this movie is that the reason that we're talking about whether Michael B. Jordan needed this part or like needed this movie to work in some way is that there isn't a lot for him to be doing as a movie star right now anyway, right?

• 54:55Bill Simmons?

  Part of that was his fault, though. He does two more Creed movies. He, he tried, like, it's funny, because we talked about this when I did a part with them 10 years ago about, let's map out the next 10 years. You gotta do a legal movie. You gotta do buddy cop movie. You gotta do your action movie. So he did his revenge movie without remorse.

• 55:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:12Bill Simmons?

  He did the legal movie, Just Mercy. Did Fahrenheit 451. That was like his weird sort of science fictiony movie. So he's checking the boxes, but none of them, none of them really hit like this. And this just goes in a different way.

• 55:26Speaker 03

  That's, I just think that the industry is, the industry was changing under his feet, right?

• 55:31Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  Like, the movie, those movies didn't not work because of him. I mean, Just Mercy, I mean, I don't think the movie is great. But I mean, there's so many deep and moving things in that movie, like Rob, Morgan and Jamie Foxx. I mean, you just need him. Michael B. Jordan, to me, is like a Robert Redford, right? He's not the greatest actor. He is extremely handsome and alluring. There's something about Michael B. Jordan that makes you want to know. What else is going on in there? Um, and every once in a while, some movie or some co-star will, will bring that out of him. It has to be brought out because he's not going to give it to you.

• 56:13Speaker 03

  Somebody's got to like lure it from him, which is why it's so interesting that he keeps working with Ryan Coogler. Because that is the guy who can push Michael, who seems to be able to push Michael B. Jordan into these really interesting zones. Um, of both, both as an actor and consequently, not that he's, not that he, I don't know if he knows he's a movie star, but he's got the thing that we want from a person that we would classify as a movie star.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  So I was talking to somebody, I was talking to Kalika last night and she was talking about, uh, F1. And she was just like, I don't know, I just like Brad Pitt. He's like, I just like watching Brad Pitt and stuff. Like Brad Pitt just, she goes, Danson is, uh, so beautiful and he's such a good actor, but he's in a scene with Brad Pitt and you're looking at Brad Pitt and you're just going like, you know, whatever. Don't make jokes about my girl, like looking at Brad Pitt.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  Really seems like she was looking.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  And seems fine with it.

• 57:18Speaker 03

  I was just looking out for you. I just see, I just see.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Okay, I just see what you're doing over there.

• 57:23Speaker 03

  But.

• 57:24Bill Simmons?

  Watch out for Kalika.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  And she goes, uh, and she goes, she goes, Brad Pitt just has, I don't know. I was like, do you know what he has? And she goes, what? I'm like, he has it. And there's really no way to really articulate it, but some people have it. Some actors have this thing to where you go, hey, I like this scene because this guy, this gal is in it. They have it.

• 57:51Speaker 03

  It doesn't matter.

• 57:52Bill Simmons?

  I think you and I, this is the one thing we've talked about probably the most since I've gotten to know you in the last 14 years. It's how do you determine whether somebody has it or not?

• 58:00Speaker 01

  So this is my.

• 58:01Bill Simmons?

  And Hollywood is trying to push it all the time, but it's like you either have it or you don't.

• 58:05Speaker 03

  You can't, you can't make me think you have it.

• 58:07Bill Simmons?

  It's like with the NBA, like who's the face of the NBA?

• 58:08Speaker 01

  You won't, you won't have to ask the question when that face makes it so.

• 58:11Bill Simmons?

  We'll know when the face arrives.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  So.

• 58:14Bill Simmons?

  And it's not Shady Joseph Alexander, unfortunately.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, all right.

• 58:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's just not.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Mike.

• 58:19Bill Simmons?

  We'll know when it arrives.

• 58:20Speaker 03

  Mike, it's Anthony. Come on, why are we, what are we doing here? There's one person, it's Anthony Edwards.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  Hopefully Anthony Edwards. He definitely has it. Mike has it.

• 58:28Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  But even when you have that.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  This is important.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Even when you have that, you need a very flavorful, creative gumbo. And you need the director or the creative that knows how to utilize it. And there've been very few guys that have been able to get there without somebody going, hmm, I know which role this guy needs. Does Tom Cruise need to smile his way through a movie? Or is it, yo, homie, is that my briefcase? And so with Mike, I mean, but either one of them, right? Both of those scenes, like Maverick smiling bright in 1986 or whatever, you go, wow.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  But at the same time, the guy in Collateral, he's magnetic in the same way. Mike, this was the role for him to display the fact that he is a magnetic, unforgettable, unforgettable screen talent. And he brings it every single time.

• 59:34Bill Simmons?

  So De Niro and Scorsese is a good example of this, right? I think De Niro happens anyway, but he catches Scorsese at the perfect point of his life.

• 59:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 59:44Bill Simmons?

  And that elevates it.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  I think, though, there's a couple of things, right? I mean, we, what we talk about when we talk about both the it and the star maintenance is at bats, right? How many, how many times you get to go up to the plate and like swing at some pitches? And increasingly now, people's batting averages are based on way fewer at bats. And so when you get up to the plate now, it really matters a lot more how good your swing is. And I just don't think that Michael B. Jordan has had enough at bats. I mean, I've been saying, and I still kind of feel this way, like, like, I don't have enough data.

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  I still don't feel like, well, no, I mean, I think that, but, but the question is what happens next?

• 1:00:38Bill Simmons?

  But he's still, he's still like 38, 39?

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:42Bill Simmons?

  I think he's under 40s though. So this is gonna be, this should be the peak of his career, starting right now.

• 1:00:47Speaker 03

  I just gotta say, we are talking about, I feel like we're talking about this as though it's like 1999 or even 2010.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  What like if if the movie isn't going to win him an Academy Award? Or it's not gonna make four hundred and fifty million dollars at the North American box office in two and a half months? That middle zone where the movie star is the movie star is tested and the movie stardom is is given a workout, that doesn't exist.

• 1:01:20Bill Simmons?

  Well, do we do we think he can win an Oscar for this?

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  I think he'll be nominated.

• 1:01:24Bill Simmons?

  He'll definitely be nominated.

• 1:01:25Speaker 03

  I think he could be nominated. I but no, he I don't but again.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  A nomination on on.

• 1:01:31Bill Simmons?

  I would bet anything.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  I think he would be nominated.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  That is.

• 1:01:34Bill Simmons?

  I'll bet that right now.

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  I don't disagree.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  And a nomination for and a nomination for and a nomination for like. Tell you something, you better get nominated. If you guys think nineteen ninety two out here was bad.

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  Like he he better he he better get nominated.

• 1:01:51Speaker 03

  I mean, that's the way that I've been thinking about this.

• 1:01:54Bill Simmons?

  No, this movie is gonna.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Bill Simmons?

  This movie will win for score and we haven't even seen five months of movies, but it will win for score.

• 1:02:01Speaker 03

  The the news, the news here is.

• 1:02:03Bill Simmons?

  Coogler has a real chance.

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  There what are we talking about like there's like twenty movies left to come out?

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  And a lot of great ones too. There've been some really good ones, but what I'm saying is that.

• 1:02:13Speaker 03

  He'll probably get nominated. This is like.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  That but that but that right there is just so insanely important for him and his career. We go back and we talk about Ali. Ali was not what Will would have thought that it would have been from the standpoint of the quality of the movie. I like it.

• 1:02:31Bill Simmons?

  We're doing on the rewatchables at some point. We both like it.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  OK, like I like it. I get that people for whatever.

• 1:02:37Bill Simmons?

  It didn't quite get there.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  I did do it. I I like I like the movie. I've always liked the movie. But when when you saw.

• 1:02:44Speaker 03

  There's some great stuff in that.

• 1:02:45Bill Simmons?

  Great, great, great sequences.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  Will Smith nominated for an Academy Award. It was like, oh, OK. I didn't know that was a thing. It was a thing. It was a big deal for his career that him and Michael Mann got together and made a movie that rose to the critical reception to where he could have been nominated for an Academy.

• 1:03:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, he should have got nominated for Six Degrees of Separation.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  He definitely should have got nominated for it.

• 1:03:07Bill Simmons?

  You know who else has been nominated? Ryan Coogler.

• 1:03:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Bill Simmons?

  Uh, thirty nine years old. There's a class of directors. I wanted to throw this to Wesley.

• 1:03:20Bill Simmons?

  Coogler, Shizel, Greta Gerwig, Chloe Zhao, Sean Baker, Robert Eggers, Ari Aster, maybe the Safthees, I don't know how you feel about that.

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  I've, that's no reason to like kick them out of the club.

• 1:03:34Bill Simmons?

  Cord is gonna, Cord's only made one movie that, but I think he's, has a chance to be in this group. Well, he's older. Jordan Peele's forty six.

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  Oh, I see, under forty.

• 1:03:42Bill Simmons?

  These are all like, late thirties.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  Cord's forty three.

• 1:03:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, these are late thirties, early forties, and then you could, you could shoehorn Jordan in that too, even though he's forty six.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  I'd say Trey Schultz is probably in this conversation.

• 1:03:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but it's, right. Bigger point is, we have like a real class of creatives that I don't feel like, you know, we talk about all the seventies, you romanticize like these different eras of directors. Think it exists now.

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  But again, like, we're still, like, well, there's two things happening, right?

• 1:04:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Speaker 03

  I, I mean, Coogler even, if you look at, the crazy thing about this movie is, look at what this man has done. Like, it, it, he is, from the standpoint of what this town cares about, like, he's made these people so much money.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  No, he the, no, he the man. He owns, he owns some Spielberg shit though.

• 1:04:30Speaker 03

  Right, this is, this is what I'm talking about, right?

• 1:04:33Bill Simmons?

  No, he's probably the best commercial director we've had in a while.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  And, and just all, all of these hits in a row, just all of this money, he's, they, they're printing money off him.

• 1:04:41Speaker 03

  He hasn't missed, he hasn't missed yet.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  Right? He hasn't missed yet. And I don't think that people think of him as a person who hasn't missed yet.

• 1:04:51Bill Simmons?

  No, they.

• 1:04:52Speaker 03

  I think that the way we've been talking about this movie, it proves it, right? I think that one thing that's really important here, and this is kind of both the point and beside the point. This movie came out in the spring, a dusty time, traditionally anyway, for movie releases. It comes out in the spring, is a big hit, it's got ideas, but it's not a movie that was being sold as being an ideas movie. It was sold as a vampire movie, so you had to wait an hour to get the vampires, and people stayed, and then they kept going back.

• 1:05:24Bill Simmons?

  I do think there was a buzz to it, leading up to it. I think Coogler had reached a point where it's like, Coogler is a vampire movie, this is happening.

• 1:05:30Speaker 03

  My point is not that. Again, they were selling us Michael B. Jordan in a tank top, so like, I'm in line.

• 1:05:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:37Speaker 03

  But, but, but the point, the point is, whoa. Why are we pretending that what's happening isn't happening?

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Oh, the movie is filled with gorgeous people.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Beautiful people. They're beautiful people in the movie.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  You're giving us, you're giving us, Miles and Michael, I hadn't, I didn't even know Miles could act.

• 1:06:00Bill Simmons?

  I don't, I don't think anyone knew Miles could act.

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, I, as a musician, like, I, I, he wasn't unknown to me, but.

• 1:06:07Bill Simmons?

  Oh, look at Wesley fucking dropping.

• 1:06:10Speaker 03

  I don't, I mean, I'm not.

• 1:06:11Bill Simmons?

  I knew about Miles.

• 1:06:12Speaker 03

  I don't know that.

• 1:06:13Bill Simmons?

  He was on my Blues Reddit board.

• 1:06:17Speaker 03

  Anyway, I feel like this movie was, was, was advertising something to me that was very appealing and not that hard to understand. Michael B. Jordan probably killing a bunch of vampires or zombies.

• 1:06:30Bill Simmons?

  But what's funny is the movie was so good, you forgot about the vampire part the first time you're watching it?

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:06:35Bill Simmons?

  For forty plus minutes.

• 1:06:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Bill Simmons?

  And then when we finally have a vampire, it was like, oh shit, I forgot.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  We, we talked about this when we talked about the film before a little bit, but there was one thing where I realized, obviously, um, cause me and Sean were going crazy over this. When Coogler was able to successfully give a ten minute dissertation on how the film should be watched. Why he shot it in seventy or IMAX or whatever, list off all the, and that bitch got to like fifteen million views. I watched every second of a ten minute video about a director telling me the best way to watch his movie.

• 1:07:18Bill Simmons?

  That was Fantasy's version of a Diddy freak off.

• 1:07:22Bill Simmons?

  He was covered in baby oil watching it, just going, dressed it all away.

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  So I'm like, I'm like, oh, this shit different. And by the way, he is not in any way giving the audience a break. This is the thing that I like about what he does. Now, he's not giving you a break. He's making you come to these ideas, these heady ideas, because they're too delicious for you to pass up on. He's saying, look, shoot it like this, this is five perfect, this is fifteen, this is this, this is that, this is the different things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And. People went for it. That made people more excited to go see the movie in the more expensive format.

• 1:08:02Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  In the format that was gonna drive the box office a movie up.

• 1:08:06Bill Simmons?

  It's incredibly filmed and directed. They film it for IMAX. The famous one-shot scene with Sammy Song.

• 1:08:15Bill Simmons?

  They couldn't actually with the IMAX, they couldn't actually just do the Scorsese nightclub one-shot all the way through because the the cameras, so they had to like somehow stitch it together, make it seem like a one-shot. But it was all stuff designed for this has to look as cool as fucking possible.

• 1:08:31Speaker 03

  It still feels panoramic anyway.

• 1:08:33Bill Simmons?

  It's amazing.

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  I just, I wanna come back to what I was saying about the directors and what has changed. I feel like the industry is, we are now more reliant, this industry is now more reliant on people that it sort of took for granted for years and years to give it credibility, which is basically our art tour of filmmakers, right? Like, these people are now more important than they ever were to the, to some studios' bottom line.

• 1:08:59Bill Simmons?

  So you want Joel Schumacher to start, Schumacher to start making movies again?

• 1:09:04Speaker 03

  Well, listen, if, if, if.

• 1:09:06Bill Simmons?

  He's gonna come back.

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  But I mean, I do think for as much as, for as like bad as the Joel Schumacher movie was as a movie, he really understood something about American popular culture, right? He understood what a movie star could do.

• 1:09:23Bill Simmons?

  He spoke to Van and I. I liked it. Eight Millimeter, too?

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Eight Millimeter.

• 1:09:28Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  The Lost Boys.

• 1:09:30Speaker 03

  This is what I'm saying, like, I mean, I, we, we don't have a Joel Schumacher now. We don't have anything like a Joel Schumacher. What a luxury to not like a Joel Schumacher movie now.

• 1:09:39Bill Simmons?

  We're, we're behind schedule, so I gotta move to Preacher Boy quick. Sammy Moore, who learns how to please women from Stack. He learns how to stand up for himself from Smoke.

• 1:09:51Bill Simmons?

  He learns how cruel the world could be from Delta Slim. And he learns that religion doesn't necessarily make you a good person from Remick. He takes all of these lessons, has a great blues career, opens a club called Perleens.

• 1:10:06Bill Simmons?

  Has some scratches on his face, but other than that, um, goes through and I, I guess we're supposed to believe he was one of the best blues musicians.

• 1:10:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:16Bill Simmons?

  That's how they're setting it up, right? Like he's one of like the guys, but he's played by Miles Keaton, who I knew nothing about when I saw this movie. I had no idea the backstory. It's his first movie ever.

• 1:10:28Bill Simmons?

  Kugler and his casting director get audition tapes from all over the world because he's like, this movie fails unless I find the right person. And they're just, everyone's sending him stuff and Miles sent him something. He was like 18, didn't, Kugler didn't know he was a child prodigy, um, son of a gospel singer, performing his whole, you know, life, basically, but hadn't, wasn't famous. And Kugler knew right away, this is it.

• 1:10:54Bill Simmons?

  20 years from now, this might be more of a Miles Keaton movie than we, we're discussing now. If he becomes like, I, I guess the question is, what's the ceiling for this dude? Cause he's fucking awesome in this movie.

• 1:11:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:07Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what happens with him.

• 1:11:08Speaker 03

  It's the, I don't have to keep beating this drum, but like, what if a move like, give him the work. Let the screenplay.

• 1:11:14Bill Simmons?

  But maybe he's just a musician though.

• 1:11:16Speaker 03

  Open the screenplay floodgate and let him.

• 1:11:18Bill Simmons?

  But maybe this is the only time he acts in a movie. I don't like, something will happen to him. I just don't know what it's going to be.

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  I'll tell you this, anytime Miles Keaton's coming to town, the ticket's been bought. You know what I mean?

• 1:11:30Bill Simmons?

  Cause if you watch him actually in concert, like he's, you know, he tones it down for a preacher boy, but he's got, he's a charismatic performer.

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:38Bill Simmons?

  They don't make him like this. They stopped making him like this 50 years ago. I don't know where he came from.

• 1:11:43Speaker 03

  Stop making him like this.

• 1:11:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, I'm saying like, he's like out of like, out of like three other eras.

• 1:11:48Speaker 03

  50 years ago? Um, so they stopped making.

• 1:11:53Bill Simmons?

  Such a dick.

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  Um, so, okay, so there is.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  There is the singer, the mid credits, and then there's the singer. And the singer, he just picks up his guitar and he starts singing. And I'm like, what the fuck is this?

• 1:12:08Bill Simmons?

  I thought they were dubbing his voice the first time I saw it. I was like, this, how is this voice coming out of this kid?

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Did you, like, the look on Stack's face when he had never heard Preacher Boy?

• 1:12:18Speaker 03

  In the car.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  In the car.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  There's that great moment.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Same way that I felt. And by the way, you can get somebody in there to sing them songs. Have you had a lot of acting before this?

• 1:12:30Bill Simmons?

  Never.

• 1:12:30Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  That is phenomenal.

• 1:12:33Bill Simmons?

  Phenomenal performance, and I'm glad you mentioned that, because that's my favorite moment in this whole movie. In that final scene, when he's talking about, when he's talking about Preacher Boy's voice, and they have the flashback of him hearing it in the car. And now it cuts back and he's the vampire in 1992. And it's just, it's just really good. It's just, Coogler's just good at stuff.

• 1:12:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, but that moment, there are those two moments, there are two really, well, we can talk about it. It won't be.

• 1:13:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, all right, we'll keep going. Ludwig Koranzen, I think that's how you say it.

• 1:13:05Speaker 03

  Goranzen.

• 1:13:07Bill Simmons?

  Ludwig Goranzen?

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  Goranzen.

• 1:13:08Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, I'm gonna mess it up. He's already won two Oscars.

• 1:13:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:12Bill Simmons?

  He did Creed, Black Panther, Tenet, Oppenheimer, Sinners, he's doing The Odyssey. So when you're Ryan Coogler's guy and Chris Nolan's guy.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're the man.

• 1:13:24Bill Simmons?

  It's a good place to be.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  And Ryan and Chris seem like they have a good relationship. You know, I first heard him, he was very instrumental on one of my favorite albums of 2010, which was.

• 1:13:36Speaker 03

  Was it Childish Gambino?

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Because the internet.

• 1:13:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Childish Gambino, when Donald was still finding himself as a musician,

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  and he drops this weird, brilliant avant-garde.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  Really sort of masterpiece. And that's when I first heard of Lil' Wick. I didn't even realize he was as into the movie stuff as he was until about three years ago.

• 1:14:04Speaker 03

  I'd only know, well, I mean, I guess I didn't.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Three or four years ago.

• 1:14:06Bill Simmons?

  He's basically like new wave John Williams.

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I didn't connect the dots between the Donald Glover, the Childish Gambino stuff and the, and the movie stuff.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:15Speaker 03

  Cause they're such different, I mean, these two worlds have, I mean, you know, to the ear have nothing to do with each other. Right? Um.

• 1:14:23Bill Simmons?

  And he got a lot of direction from Kugler, cause Kugler had all these sounds in his head for the scenes and one of them was, he kept thinking Metallica.

• 1:14:32Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:33Bill Simmons?

  And he wanted like a certain, certain couple moments in the movies to kind of kick in, almost like a Metallica song would. So they figured all of it out.

• 1:14:40Speaker 03

  It's so interesting, the way rock music ideas figure in to how we're supposed to understand tragedy and horror in this movie.

• 1:14:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:52Speaker 03

  And I, I think it's such a bold choice because it's so not explicitly those chords aren't black rock and roll chords. Those chords are, those chords are metal chords, right? Um, I mean, you can do a tree that gets you from Black Sabbath to

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

  the Delta Blues. But, but those chords themselves, um, when you're just kind of banging them out like that, I mean, they're not banged out, but they're essentially familiar from another zone of American popular music, right? Or, you know, just popular music in, in general. Um, and they're used here in this world of, um.

• 1:15:46Speaker 03

  Exploitation, like forced collaboration. The way that different musical styles are functioning here is really kind of hard to sort of map out and, and process because they're just kind of presented and you, I'm still not sure, for instance, what to make of the Irish jig that happens in the middle of the movie that turns into kind of like a grungy mosh pit situation where like really what we're looking at is a, is a kind of Nirvana concert, honestly. And the way that, that the, the turned club goers who are now Remick acolytes have essentially become moshers alongside this guy while also, you know.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Like Limp Bizkit?

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, actually, that's not wrong.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  But, but I think, first of all, I love that scene. I think two things are happening. One, one there, one, Remick has his own culture. That's the first thing. It's not devoid of culture.

• 1:16:45Speaker 03

  No, it's definitely cultural.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, like he, he, he has, he has his own culture. And number two, once they are in with him, they've completely lost any autonomy or objectivity.

• 1:17:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  They are loving everything that he is doing. He is the best dancer they have ever seen. He is the best singer that they have ever seen. Like they're, the people who they were just before they got bit are completely gone. Like all the soul that they had, all the, just their, their culture, their outlook, everything is gone. They are just, the only way to be close to him is complete uncompromising worship and oneness. He will accept nothing.

• 1:17:39Speaker 03

  Well, you know what's really interesting? There's that moment where the last person I think we see get turned is the Omar Benson Miller character who was supposed to be watching the door and keeping everybody from. You know, he didn't know he was keeping vampires out, but if he hadn't gone to take that piss.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  Cornbread.

• 1:17:58Speaker 03

  This, this might not have happened. But when he gets turned, there's this, the only time we see this happen in the movie. He, he's prone on the ground and he sits up and he goes.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Like he just woke up.

• 1:18:14Speaker 03

  Like he just, like he just got woke.

• 1:18:18Speaker 03

  And it is.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Peabody Pulitzer.

• 1:18:21Speaker 03

  Yes. Just. Just.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  Peabody Pulitzer moment.

• 1:18:25Bill Simmons?

  Should be a category.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  The pull, yeah.

• 1:18:27Bill Simmons?

  The Peabody Pulitzer moment.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Peabody Pulitzer moment.

• 1:18:32Speaker 03

  Anyway, the point is, like, that to me is, is obvious, it's deep, but also opening up this other line of argument about blackness. What people, what freedom looks like, right? Because at this point, Bremick has made his pitch, right? You gotta join us over here. We are, we are about love and peace and freedom. And, you know, to paraphrase our current president, when he was talking to try to get black people to come vote for blacks and Latinos to come vote for him. He's like, what y'all got to lose?

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Got to lose.

• 1:19:09Speaker 03

  You can't do worse.

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  That the Klan's about to come get you like.

• 1:19:12Speaker 03

  I mean, come join us in, in living death. It's better over here than whatever's about to happen to y'all tomorrow. Cause he would have known about this too, cause right? He turned, he turned a Klansman, one of the ministers to show up at the club.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  He tells him, he goes that, he goes, uh, like, that motherfucker is his uncle. Like this, this whole place is a, is a tomb anyway. It's like, this is a big funeral, like you guys, that you don't have a future here. Your only future is with me. You're, you're precisely right.

• 1:19:42Bill Simmons?

  Couple of actors we have to mention quick. Hailee Steinfeld.

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. Josh Allen's wife.

• 1:19:47Speaker 04

  Josh Allen's wife.

• 1:19:48Speaker 03

  Oh, that's right. He got married real quick after this movie. He married her real quick.

• 1:19:53Speaker 04

  He liked it down fast.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  He didn't want.

• 1:19:56Speaker 03

  Did they speed it up? Did they change the date?

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  Like, she was immersed in a new audience there.

• 1:20:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:20:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He's like, I'm like, it's down right now.

• 1:20:04Speaker 03

  She saw her with Michael B. one time and was like, we need to get married fast.

• 1:20:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I need to get. There's not a lot of people I can lose my, my future wife to, but there's one. Yeah. MBJ. She's great. I've always liked her. Always had stock.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Ridiculously talented.

• 1:20:20Bill Simmons?

  I loved that just seventeen. I thought she was really good in that movie, but she's just always been good. And. I love, I love her vibe, everything. I love how she lays back in the last scene. When they catch up with Sammy.

• 1:20:31Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Cause she doesn't have any lines, but she's all presence.

• 1:20:35Bill Simmons?

  Presence and it actually works, but she, I think this movie is a huge win for her.

• 1:20:39Speaker 03

  Um, I gotta say. When she gets off the, you know, the, I mean, most rewatchable scene, when she gets off the train, her first scene, she gets off the train, she comes over. Um, Sammy sees her coming and. I guess, I guess Smoke sees or Stack sees that he, that he's there, that she's there. And the kid's like, yo, this is what do you, what do you, and she walks up and she's like. So you're gonna fuck me? And then never call me? Well, like, you know.

• 1:21:16Bill Simmons?

  I have the line.

• 1:21:17Speaker 03

  What is it?

• 1:21:18Bill Simmons?

  I heard you loud and clear, but then you stuck your tongue in my coos and fucked me so hard. I figured you changed your mind.

• 1:21:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, talk about the blues.

• 1:21:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 1:21:27Bill Simmons?

  Coming in.

• 1:21:30Speaker 03

  She delivered.

• 1:21:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  That motherfucker.

• 1:21:32Speaker 03

  There is a way she, she like, I'm sorry, I hate to put it this way. If you give that line to Kim Basinger, who I could have believed would take a part like this once upon a time and we would just accept.

• 1:21:44Bill Simmons?

  She doesn't nail it.

• 1:21:45Speaker 03

  She doesn't like.

• 1:21:47Bill Simmons?

  Van, go ahead.

• 1:21:47Speaker 03

  This person lives in the line.

• 1:21:48Bill Simmons?

  Put her in.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  White girl Hall of Fame?

• 1:21:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  No, okay, so.

• 1:21:52Speaker 03

  But complicated.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Because.

• 1:21:55Speaker 03

  She's a negro.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  She, we, we found out some things about her.

• 1:22:00Bill Simmons?

  So what Hall of Fame is she going?

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm, because I'm trying, I'm trying to break the news to Bill.

• 1:22:05Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  You know, she.

• 1:22:07Speaker 03

  You just lost one.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  You lost one. She's like.

• 1:22:11Bill Simmons?

  What did we find out?

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  Well, she's, what is it? Her grandfather is black or half-black or something like that?

• 1:22:17Bill Simmons?

  Her father, oh, interesting.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  Something like that, yeah, something, there's something there. So what I'm saying is-

• 1:22:21Bill Simmons?

  I'll cancel the ceremony.

• 1:22:24Speaker 03

  Well, now you gotta have a different ceremony.

• 1:22:28Bill Simmons?

  She was great.

• 1:22:31Bill Simmons?

  Delroy Lindo.

• 1:22:33Bill Simmons?

  I, I almost did this as my hottest take. Is it possible the two greatest roles of his career have happened in his late 60s, early 70s?

• 1:22:43Speaker 03

  Are you thinking about the Spike Lee movie? Yeah, interesting.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  About the five bloods?

• 1:22:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, interesting.

• 1:22:48Bill Simmons?

  Whether you like that movie or not-

• 1:22:50Speaker 03

  I do not.

• 1:22:50Bill Simmons?

  It's an awesome part.

• 1:22:52Speaker 03

  He-

• 1:22:53Bill Simmons?

  I was looking back at all of the parts he's played, trying to figure out what his best parts were.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  So you got West Indian Archie, which I love.

• 1:22:59Bill Simmons?

  He's been a lot of stuff over the years.

• 1:23:01Speaker 03

  Clockers.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  Clock, Clockers is a great role from him. You remember Clockers, right?

• 1:23:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. The dad-

• 1:23:08Bill Simmons?

  That's why I didn't do his hottest take, I couldn't, I couldn't carry it.

• 1:23:11Speaker 03

  In Crooklyn.

• 1:23:13Bill Simmons?

  But, this one was, was, Delta Slim's pretty great.

• 1:23:16Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  Get Shorty?

• 1:23:18Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Oh, ooh, sexy Delroy.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, that's really good, Del. What's the, what's the point of being in LA, in LA if you're not in the movie business? Like, I love Get Shorty. Have you not done Get Shorty yet, rewatchable shit?

• 1:23:30Bill Simmons?

  Haven't done that one yet.

• 1:23:31Speaker 03

  So good, so good.

• 1:23:33Bill Simmons?

  Could be an Elmore Leonard month.

• 1:23:34Speaker 03

  Weirdly timeless, too. Strangely. Um, but the thing I love about this performance is that it is funny. Like, he seems to be completely unashamed of two of the grossest lines in the movie. Or like, most ridiculous lines in the movie, anyway.

• 1:23:52Speaker 03

  And, but, he gives the, the most powerful, one of the more powerful moments in the movie is the speech after they pick him up. He's recruited, basically, to perform in the club because he's, he's Delta royalty. Everybody knows who he is.

• 1:24:06Bill Simmons?

  Need him at the juke.

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:07Speaker 03

  And, there, there, it's, it's, it's Sammy, what's this character's name again?

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Delta Slim?

• 1:24:15Bill Simmons?

  Delta Slim.

• 1:24:16Speaker 03

  And, and-

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  Smoke.

• 1:24:20Speaker 03

  Smoke.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Stack, stack, stack.

• 1:24:21Speaker 03

  They're in the car together and he gives a speech about essentially that aligns the blues with lynching essentially. And there's a way in which he delivers that, that tells a story about somebody who got lynched, essentially, I'll cut it short. But the way that Del Rey Lindo delivers it, it kind of, it is its own blues. It stands in for the development of a history of an aspect of this music, but not the whole music, because another thing I love about this movie is that it is blues as a cultural

• 1:25:03Speaker 03

  experience, as experienced by people who danced to, danced to this music, because this was dance music for us.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:25:11Speaker 03

  And it was a whole life of joy and excitement and just jubilation. It wasn't just my baby left me and I don't know what I'm gonna do. This was, this was club music. And I think that the story that he tells in that car is a really crystal clear allegory or parable for how the music as an art, how a wing of the music as a sort of cultural expression and the expression of a circumstance comes to be.

• 1:25:53Speaker 03

  You almost don't really, if you never heard another song in this movie, you'd be okay because that story as delivered by Del Rey Lindo is so powerful. And I believe, I can't remember now, does he play? I think he sings a little bit at the end of the speech.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:14Speaker 03

  While in the car. Well, he's banging on the car door. With his harmonica there. Yeah, I mean, it's, that is a great scene.

• 1:26:22Bill Simmons?

  He's one of those guys, when he pops in the movie, you're just happy to see him.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:26:26Bill Simmons?

  Say, "Hey."

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:26:28Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Jack O'Connell.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:26:30Bill Simmons?

  This is a really big movie for him, and I think, I think he gets nominated, too.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:26:34Bill Simmons?

  I think it's gonna be, the nomination's gonna be interesting for this movie.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Interesting. I had that.

• 1:26:39Bill Simmons?

  Cause we didn't talk about Annie yet, cause she's also really good.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  Oh. I, she is a force. When it was like, well, she's like, she is, uh, she's

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  of all the characters in all the movies that legitimately reminded me of the women that I grew up around.

• 1:27:02Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:27:03Speaker 01

  This was the one.

• 1:27:04Bill Simmons?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Like, you know, my mother and other people, or my sister, hoodoo practitioners, I don't know if you knew that.

• 1:27:12Bill Simmons?

  We've discussed.

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  Like, they're, they, they do root work.

• 1:27:16Bill Simmons?

  I was, I was waiting for Van to dive into Annie.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, like.

• 1:27:20Bill Simmons?

  Figured you had some Anies in your life.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was waiting to dive into Annie, too. And, and, and so what I'm saying is, like, and there's something else about this, like,

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  that is a beautiful, sexy woman.

• 1:27:35Bill Simmons?

  I mean.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  And not, and, and Hollywood has turned their back on the brilliant beauty of a black woman. And I don't wanna say her natural form, because black women are natural and beautiful in all different types of way. But that type of black women, we love them. And when a lot of people were like, you know, when I first saw her and Smoke in that scene together, I heard some people, some people on the line have been like, like, I thought that that was like Smoke's mom. I saw some people saying that. Yeah, that's, you've been poisoned by the movies. Not the uninitiated.

• 1:28:17Speaker 03

  You've been brainwashed by Hollywood.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  Like, right away, you could see that a man like that, in that situation, had a woman like that. And really, she grounds his character. Look at small things.

• 1:28:29Speaker 03

  She makes his performance more interesting.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:28:33Speaker 03

  A hundred percent.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  Look at small things in the movie. Like, you would think that the movie would be dripping with misogynoir if you're talking about male and female dynamics in the movie, right? When Remick is at the, oh, not Remick, when Corbraid is at the door, and he is talking to Smoke. She goes, "Don't talk to him, talk to me." And Smoke doesn't interrupt her, Smoke doesn't get in the way. Whenever Annie speaks, Smoke knows that she is speaking with love and wisdom.

• 1:29:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, right, authority.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  And authority, and he, and, and, and, and he defers to that. And he is accepting and appreciative of that. Just very authentic and beautiful. And you know, something else I'll say about the movie is the love story in the movie that everybody was talking about was, or the, the coupling of the movie that everyone was talking about was the coupling between Stack and Mary, which has its own.

• 1:29:43Speaker 03

  That's a, that's a whole other Hollywood history.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  In the, in the movie, right?

• 1:29:47Speaker 03

  American history.

• 1:29:48Speaker 01

  But, the, the, the relationship that even from a chemistry standpoint that grounded this movie to me was Smoke and Annie.

• 1:29:59Speaker 03

  I mean, just thinking about, just think about, I would, I mean, I don't know, this is probably answerable if you just called these three people up on the phone. But, I mean, Coogler knows the whole history of, like, large black women in Hollywood. What a woman who is built like Annie would be doing in a movie, because we have a hundred years of that archetype doing that work. Often to the, often for the laughter of an audience. Um, I mean, the, the, the limitations placed on black women to only.

• 1:30:42Speaker 03

  Do service work. Um, because they were dark skinned, because they were full figured. Um. Thick women had one job in the movies and it was to serve a white person in a uniform. Um, or to do that work in some other guys, but essentially you're doing service work. And here, that club, she is running that club. She is trying to heal from a terrible thing that happened to her. Um, the thing that I love about this performance is it's capacious enough to sort of convey the authority, but also the hurt, the vulnerability. She's the person who knows the entire, she knows what's gonna happen.

• 1:31:27Speaker 03

  And she's like, you know what? Don't turn me.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:30Speaker 03

  Kill me.

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:31Speaker 03

  I'd, I'd, the character is like, I'd rather die, but there's something.

• 1:31:34Bill Simmons?

  This was my son's biggest nitpick with the movie was he didn't understand how Annie knew everything right away. Like how she knew immediately, oh, these are vampires. And I was like, no, no, that's, there are people like this. Like she, she fucking knows shit. Like you just have to go with it, Ben.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:31:53Bill Simmons?

  She's like, come on, he would, she would know that right away that this is, and I was like, yes, she actually would.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  Man.

• 1:31:58Bill Simmons?

  But this is my annoying seventeen year old.

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  Like, just real quick, my dad, my dad, my dad would argue with my mom to a point. And then he would just leave the house. And I'd be like, yo, where you at? He'd be like, son, what you don't understand is that your mama and your grandmama is some hoodoers. And I ain't about to stay in here. I don't want no hacks. For the next four hours and get hoodooed by these women over no cable TV.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  You'd be so on edge about it. He'd be like, did you walk outside and see cracked eggshells all over the front? He's like, that was for me. Your mama tried to hoodoo me and he would be going like a damn dude. So, but when you had a question about, uh, you know, if you were scared or like if you did, you would go to them, you go to these women and they would give you spiritual and energetic.

• 1:32:59Speaker 03

  And we, we see her, like, there's a kid who's like, when, when, when he gets to her for the first time, there's some kids whose parents, whose mother basically sent the kid over to Annie's to like, yeah, yep, yep.

• 1:33:14Bill Simmons?

  She's great. A hundred million dollar budget for this movie. It made three hundred and sixty six million and counting. Second highest grossing original.

• 1:33:21Speaker 03

  Is that in North America or globally?

• 1:33:24Bill Simmons?

  That's gotta be global.

• 1:33:24Speaker 03

  That's global.

• 1:33:25Bill Simmons?

  That's everything. Uh, second highest grossing original horror film domestically behind The Sixth Sense.

• 1:33:33Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:33:33Bill Simmons?

  Number two of all time.

• 1:33:34Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:33:35Bill Simmons?

  Pretty good.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Was The Sixth Sense rated R?

• 1:33:37Bill Simmons?

  It was, right? Yeah.

• 1:33:38Speaker 03

  Was it?

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, had to be.

• 1:33:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Bruce Willis was alive in the end, spoiler.

• 1:33:43Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:33:43Bill Simmons?

  Tough.

• 1:33:44Speaker 03

  Wow, we're still doing that, huh?

• 1:33:46Bill Simmons?

  Tough beat, tough beat for anyone that hasn't seen it. Roger Ebert has been, uh, long gone. Do you want to hear Chat GPT's?

• 1:33:55Speaker 03

  Oh, no, no, come on. We ain't about to replace Roger Ebert with Chat, Roger Ebert with Chat GPT.

• 1:34:03Bill Simmons?

  Do you want to know what Chat GPT thinks Roger Ebert would have said or no?

• 1:34:06Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  I'm into it.

• 1:34:07Speaker 03

  All right, let's try it.

• 1:34:09Bill Simmons?

  If Roger Ebert had reviewed Sinners, his review would have likely been a bold, heartfelt appraisal, blending admiration for its audacity with a critical eye for its unruly ambition. Expect something like three and a half to three and three, four stars. In true Ebert form, Sinners dazzles, it overwhelms. It's a movie you must see for its sound and energy and invention. Go in, ready for the ride.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:34:33Speaker 03

  Hmm. I thought a little Roger Ebert.

• 1:34:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit, little.

• 1:34:37Bill Simmons?

  Shout out to Chat GPT.

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:34:39Bill Simmons?

  And the AI that's gonna take over all of us. When we're all dead and the rewatchables are still happening with AI avatars of our voices. I can't wait.

• 1:34:49Speaker 03

  It's really, I mean.

• 1:34:51Bill Simmons?

  Let's, let's take a break and we'll do the categories.

• 1:34:56Speaker 05

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• 1:35:40Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Truvia. Sweeteners are like movies. The best ones don't leave an aftertaste. That's why Truvia Allolos 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 Truvia Allolos 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 Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys.

• 1:36:22Bill Simmons?

  Star in the Sharp Witted Comedy Thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9. Only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now. Most rewatchable scene. Smoke goes downtown, shoots a thief, makes a deal.

• 1:37:06Bill Simmons?

  We talked about the two sides. All of that has been surprising.

• 1:37:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I like that.

• 1:37:13Bill Simmons?

  The train scene we already talked about. Preacher Boy meets Perlene. Haley comes in, comes in hot.

• 1:37:22Bill Simmons?

  I like that whole, this doesn't happen in movies all the time when the hero, a girl from the past or, and they pop in and just when you see the life sink from their body for a second, like, oh, boy, this is gonna be good.

• 1:37:37Bill Simmons?

  All right, I'll put my seatbelt on for this, something's happening.

• 1:37:41Speaker 01

  Something interesting about that scene, first of all, when they're introducing both of those guys is essentially what these two scenes are. They introduce Smoke with his gun, they introduce Stack with his mouth. Because that's each person's respective superpower. Smoke is your enforcer and your protector, Stack is your smooth talker. You think that Stack is afraid of Annie because she's white, but that's not really why he is afraid of her.

• 1:38:06Bill Simmons?

  Not Annie, excuse me, Mary, Mary.

• 1:38:08Speaker 01

  Mary. You think that Stack is afraid of Mary because she's white, but that's not really why he's afraid of her. He's afraid of her because he's in love with her. And he doesn't want to have to confront the feelings that he has for her and the fact that he abandoned her and used the fact that she was white.

• 1:38:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  The fact that he ran out and used the fact that they couldn't have what they were supposed to have as the reason why he did it. And that becomes very, very, very apparent as the movie goes on. And as she continuously pokes and prods him about the fact that you don't have to be scared, you don't have to be scared, you don't have to be scared. And it starts right there.

• 1:38:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I mean, interesting.

• 1:38:56Bill Simmons?

  We didn't mention, it's a quick one and the research on it's more interesting, but when we first see the twins and they do the cigarette trick.

• 1:39:05Bill Simmons?

  That was apparently very complicated, which all, but it could be, it's a borderline mini scene for most rewatchable, but the the science of having Stack light the smoke for, and then doing the lighter. But having one actor do that and make it seem like it was two was like the hardest thing they had to do the entire movie.

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:39:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'll go through that in a second.

• 1:39:26Speaker 03

  Split screen technology still has a, it's still hard to do it.

• 1:39:29Bill Simmons?

  It's, it's the best it's ever been, but really hard. Vampire rope-a-dope, poor Bert, ever had a chance?

• 1:39:38Bill Simmons?

  When uh.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  What's Vampire Rupert? I don't know what you're talking about.

• 1:39:41Bill Simmons?

  When Remick, when he uh.

• 1:39:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:44Bill Simmons?

  When he.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  Oh, when he gets us out their house. Oh, yeah, yeah. They had it coming.

• 1:39:49Bill Simmons?

  I'm giving this a special, okay, motherfucker! Award for the exact moment when the movie goes up a notch.

• 1:39:55Speaker 01

  Oh, when Remick drops out? Oh, for sure. No doubt.

• 1:39:57Bill Simmons?

  When he takes us to do vampires.

• 1:40:02Bill Simmons?

  Sammy sings. This is the best scene in the movie, other than the ending, for me. This is my second, my number two most rewatchable.

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  I want to know what Wesley thinks about that particular scene.

• 1:40:13Bill Simmons?

  This whole scene, when they bring in, just the way it's shot, the camera angles, everything, I just, I think it's just a mesmerizing five minutes.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  Incredibly polarizing. It's a very polarizing.

• 1:40:23Bill Simmons?

  I just think it's incredibly rewatchable to watch, but I also understand the cases against it, so go ahead.

• 1:40:30Speaker 03

  I just wanted the whole song uninterrupted by the, the, the weight of the future and the past. I just didn't, I didn't, like, this is, that sequence is so up my alley. That is my entire, like, intellectual project, right?

• 1:40:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:46Speaker 03

  Um, one of the things I care most about as a critic. And.

• 1:40:53Speaker 03

  For me not to like it, something is going wrong.

• 1:40:56Bill Simmons?

  Didn't like it?

• 1:40:57Speaker 03

  No, I didn't. First of all, I.

• 1:41:00Bill Simmons?

  Interesting, even with how inventive it was?

• 1:41:01Speaker 03

  To say it for the fir-, for the fourth time in this conversation, I love that song, right?

• 1:41:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:07Speaker 03

  And I was falling in love with that song and that, like, the performance of the song and just the way it's shot. And then all of a sudden, it's the strange, it's, it's always gonna be one of the strangest things, even when I've seen this movie 10 times. Which is when the twerking starts, who's first? Is it the twerker?

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:41:27Bill Simmons?

  No, it's the first.

• 1:41:28Speaker 03

  Oh, it's the guitar player. It's the.

• 1:41:29Bill Simmons?

  Guitar player.

• 1:41:30Speaker 03

  It's the not, it's the not.

• 1:41:32Bill Simmons?

  Record scratcher guys in there.

• 1:41:34Speaker 03

  Booty, but it's.

• 1:41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like.

• 1:41:36Speaker 03

  But it's playing the electric guitar. Um, and you're just like, wait, what? Is that Andre Thiem? What is going on right now? It's all the ghosts from the past and present Wesley. Why are you explaining? Okay, keep explaining it to me.

• 1:41:51Speaker 03

  I think that the thing that I just, it did not work as a sequence to me. The, the argument is beautiful. I love the argument.

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  You know, you like what it's trying to say.

• 1:42:00Speaker 03

  I love the thing that it's arguing for and asserting is definitely true and powerful about this particular person and this particular piece of music. I am curious about why this song, Love It As I Do, is the thing that does the unlocking. I, you almost convinced me a why earlier, but I don't know. It just didn't, it just, I'm one of the people who just found it to be excessive. Internet guy.

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  Peabody Pulitzer.

• 1:42:30Speaker 03

  Peabody Pulitzer now on Reddit, an anonymous name, killing Ryan Coogler. The, the, the breadth of this history that it, that, that is being conjured up in this scene is both generous, but also kind of confusing. You know, Chinese folk singers, the, the, the amount of African artists that we're, that we're seeing. There is, it's generous to a fault in some way. Um, but I also, there's a part of me that's like, oh Wesley, calm down. Just, this is a beautiful thing. You like watching it though. It is arguing for a folkloric timelessness. But what about the visual of it though?

• 1:43:14Speaker 03

  I like when the fucking roof comes off, like I just, and then landing on the vampire. Like I just thought all was so cool. Like, because what happens, what, what world are we in at this point?

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  But so, you know, so.

• 1:43:24Speaker 03

  Once the, once the club burns down. Coogler's like, I just want to cook for four minutes.

• 1:43:28Speaker 01

  So I have two thoughts. That's the first thought. And the second thought is that it's supposed to be the scene where the movie becomes a supernatural fable. Kind of it's earlier where, where, where Remick dropped, where Remick drops out of the sky. But the movie, the reason why that scene was so fantastical maybe is because that's the point that the movie becomes a supernatural fable. The vampires are waking up.

• 1:43:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  And then the second thing I say is this.

• 1:43:51Speaker 03

  No, that, that's a key point. You need it because it's the.

• 1:43:54Bill Simmons?

  We now move into the different part of the movie where now we're like, things are gonna get fucking crazy.

• 1:43:58Speaker 03

  I think my literal brain though, go on.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  I know, I get it, I get it. A lot of people felt it this way, by the way. But I think from also a philosophical standpoint, the movie means something from the creative standpoint, which that scene just means I'm going to do whatever the fuck I wanted to.

• 1:44:14Speaker 03

  That's fair.

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  Everything in this movie is exactly the way I wanted it. If you thought the movie was too on the nose with some of the messages, I'm sorry. If you thought the movie was too on the nose with this, I mean, he kills the Klan at the end. Actually, that scene to me seems a little bit more support for Lewis.

• 1:44:35Speaker 03

  Oh, I love the Klan murder.

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  I like it a lot. I love watching it, yeah. But, but, but.

• 1:44:41Speaker 03

  Why you pointing at Bill?

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  But, but that scene seems like a scene that was just kinda like, okay, this happens almost for no reason. But I, I, but I, but also in this movie.

• 1:44:53Speaker 03

  But there is a reason for it.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  There is a reason. I, I get it. And it's, it's a beautiful send off of smoke.

• 1:44:59Bill Simmons?

  There's a couple of reasons though.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  There, there, there is a reason. But what I, but what I'm saying is, and by, by the way, that's one of my most rewatchable scenes. I like.

• 1:45:05Bill Simmons?

  It's coming up later.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  But, but what I'm, but what I'm saying is, both scenes, all of this stuff is just, we're making this movie exactly the way we wanna make it. And i- if it was any less authentic, it wouldn't have been what it was. But a lot of people are, are back and forth with that scene.

• 1:45:20Speaker 03

  I mean, it was, we were calling it like a week after the movie, it was being called The Scene.

• 1:45:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:27Speaker 03

  And I knew immediately when people were texting me being like, okay, go. I was like, oh, I know what you're talking about. And it was, it was immediately the thing that all the black people in my life who were seeing the movie were just like, okay, what, did it do it for you? Um, and it really worked for some people and it really.

• 1:45:48Bill Simmons?

  It's funny, cuz maybe cuz I'm a white person. I watched it more for the filmmaking part of it and I just thought it was so cool how they did it. And I was more caught up in that. I was like, fucking Coogler, Jesus Christ.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  Sean saw the movie before me, a little bit before me.

• 1:46:01Speaker 03

  Sean Fantasy, okay.

• 1:46:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, Fantasy, yeah. And Sean goes, there is one scene in the movie that as soon as you see it, I wanna know what you thought.

• 1:46:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  And I thought it was something grotesque or, I don't know, I thought maybe it was some kind of vampire abuse scene or something like that.

• 1:46:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  And I was like, and but when I was in the theater, I automatically knew that's what he was talking about.

• 1:46:23Speaker 03

  But this is the thing to love about this, about this movie though, right?

• 1:46:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:28Speaker 03

  Like, this is a, this is, I'm gonna say officially, a vampire movie. But the, but the scene is this amazing tribute to the power of black music to lure the vampires, right?

• 1:46:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:45Speaker 03

  Like, the, the movie, in the, in the movie's understanding of itself, does not exist without this scene. So, I mean, I know what it's doing and why it's there. I think maybe I would have preferred a musical number, right? Like, maybe you get all these different, you get these drummers and DJs and twerkers and folk singers to like, just devise a musical number for them, instead of this, this more

• 1:47:16Speaker 03

  spectral, supernatural, metaphysical way of, I don't know. But, but again, like, it is, I don't know if it's evenly divided, but there are as many people who, who think that scene is perfect as it is, as people like me who think there had to have been a better way to do it.

• 1:47:33Bill Simmons?

  Can I have the final word?

• 1:47:34Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 1:47:34Bill Simmons?

  I support Ryan Coogler, and I support true artists. I support artistic choices.

• 1:47:40Speaker 03

  Oh my god!

• 1:47:41Bill Simmons?

  This guy.

• 1:47:41Speaker 03

  That is just, oh boy!

• 1:47:43Bill Simmons?

  Now, you know what I love about it?

• 1:47:44Speaker 03

  Is he on the other side of the door right now?

• 1:47:46Bill Simmons?

  You know what I love about it? He knew it was gonna be polarizing, and that's fucking why he did it. And guess what? I still love that directors are doing that. He like, you know what, I'm gonna have this one scene, some people are gonna not like it, some people are gonna love it, and I'm just doing it.

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  It tested weird, I'm sure.

• 1:48:02Speaker 03

  I knew he got a note, he got a note.

• 1:48:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:06Speaker 03

  He got a, probably a lot of notes, but I would say, I'm glad he didn't cut it. Um, as a person who is often asked to, to remove things from things that I think are great and wish could stay. So you win some, you lose some. I think he probably, this was a hill he probably died on.

• 1:48:22Bill Simmons?

  That's your fault, cuz you don't work for The Ringer. Next rewatchable scene.

• 1:48:28Speaker 03

  You really, okay Zeus, keep throwing the lightning bolts!

• 1:48:33Bill Simmons?

  The vampires get merry.

• 1:48:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:36Bill Simmons?

  Outside is a great scene with a really good jump scare.

• 1:48:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I I love that moment. I love a moment where any-

• 1:48:43Bill Simmons?

  Jump scare.

• 1:48:44Speaker 03

  That is good.

• 1:48:44Bill Simmons?

  Little Exorcist three-ish.

• 1:48:45Speaker 03

  Good editing. But is it a jump scare or is it, it's even?

• 1:48:49Bill Simmons?

  First time I watched it, I'd-

• 1:48:50Speaker 03

  You jump, you mean when he flies?

• 1:48:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:53Speaker 04

  Everybody in the theater went, oh, fuck.

• 1:48:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:56Speaker 04

  I love that. It was so good. Everybody just like made a a groan.

• 1:49:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, in the theater, it really worked.

• 1:49:02Speaker 01

  It was just so, it was just like, oh shit, she's fucked. Like, it's it's it's a scary thing.

• 1:49:07Speaker 03

  But then there, but just let's think about like how well put together this movie is. You get that scene, like Remick floats down from the sky behind her and it's a cut back to the club.

• 1:49:20Bill Simmons?

  To the people dancing.

• 1:49:21Speaker 03

  So now you've gotta wait.

• 1:49:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:23Speaker 03

  How is she gonna, like, what guise is she gonna appear in when she comes back to the club? Um, it's, you're, the, the levels of suspense or the suspenses that are happening simultaneously here are really, really effective. And again, I was happy with the first hour. I didn't need any of this. So I'm, I'm having an experience now that is is more stressful than what I think I signed up to have.

• 1:49:48Bill Simmons?

  Mary kills Stack is the next one.

• 1:49:50Speaker 03

  I mean, listen.

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  Fucking crazy.

• 1:49:53Bill Simmons?

  Finn, Finn would have taken it.

• 1:49:56Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:49:57Bill Simmons?

  That kind of sex, but then afterwards you get bit in turn.

• 1:50:00Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  I'm going, like, I'm going.

• 1:50:02Speaker 03

  I mean, that's the power, that's-

• 1:50:04Bill Simmons?

  Get right here.

• 1:50:04Speaker 03

  That's why I'm-

• 1:50:05Bill Simmons?

  Try not to- Do it a little lower so I can wear shirts over it.

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm going.

• 1:50:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  Smoke wasting no time.

• 1:50:16Speaker 01

  Smoke wasting no time. That whole thing where there, this is what I love about the, the From Dust Till Dawn, Tales from the Crypt, Demon Knight style, where vampires are on the outside, we're stuck in the inside movie.

• 1:50:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  I love the moment where everyone realizes that it's vampires. The moment where, uh, uh, uh, Salma Hayek turns in From Dust Till Dawn to where everybody's like, fuck, or like in, to where-

• 1:50:46Bill Simmons?

  That's what Annie says here. She's like, you a hain now.

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:49Bill Simmons?

  Says that to Cornbread after.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  So, say it again how she said it?

• 1:50:53Bill Simmons?

  You a hain now. I said that correctly.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  So, so, uh, so, um, but like that moment in that room, Smoke doesn't know what to do. Like he, like, Mary just killed Stack and just like the whole thing is, is, is nuts.

• 1:51:12Bill Simmons?

  Says the best thing about me was him.

• 1:51:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is, that'll, I mean, I kind of well, I mean, I, I, that got me, that got me.

• 1:51:21Bill Simmons?

  That's, well, you don't even think MBJ's getting nominated.

• 1:51:24Speaker 03

  That's not my wish. That's not my wish. I don't wish for him not to be.

• 1:51:28Bill Simmons?

  He said he was like honorable mention.

• 1:51:30Speaker 03

  Why are you doing this to me?

• 1:51:31Bill Simmons?

  Second tier.

• 1:51:32Speaker 03

  I don't want that to not happen to him. I would love Michael B. Jordan to have an Oscar nomination.

• 1:51:36Bill Simmons?

  Next one, Stack comes back from the dead and he knows what to do right away. Next one, vampires make the case for taking preacher boy.

• 1:51:46Bill Simmons?

  And that's when, when Stack does a, we were running around looking for freedom. We ain't never gonna be free.

• 1:51:54Bill Simmons?

  The big fight scene heading into the sunrise. Um, I have some nitpicks on the fight that'll come up later.

• 1:52:01Speaker 03

  That sequence.

• 1:52:02Bill Simmons?

  But, um, Smoke gets Annie, not you. Um, Stack has to kill Annie.

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  Well, Stack.

• 1:52:10Bill Simmons?

  True love. I'm sorry, did I mess that up?

• 1:52:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we, we done it. We just, we done it a couple times. Stack gets Annie, yeah.

• 1:52:17Bill Simmons?

  Sammy escapes.

• 1:52:20Bill Simmons?

  Twins have a fight. We think we know who won, but actually we don't. Um, and then the sun comes out. It's always great to see the sun in a vampire movie.

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Fucking awesome. You know you're safe.

• 1:52:31Bill Simmons?

  There it is.

• 1:52:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:52:36Bill Simmons?

  Smoke dies after killing 12 KKK racists.

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:52:40Bill Simmons?

  This is Kugler who seems like he's doing, he has that one shot of MBJ coming at the camera with the machine gun, like doing the Rambo. And it was almost like Kugler was doing the, fuck you guys. You wanted your old school action movie. I'll give you this one scene, but I'm doing this like to fuck with everybody.

• 1:52:57Speaker 01

  Something. That scene also was a great mindfuck for the trailer.

• 1:53:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:03Speaker 01

  Because it.

• 1:53:04Bill Simmons?

  Oh yeah, that's a good point.

• 1:53:05Speaker 01

  Because like, we hear that it's a vampire movie.

• 1:53:10Speaker 01

  And when the trailer first comes, there are no vampires. And then there's Michael B. Jordan shooting a machine gun in broad daylight.

• 1:53:16Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:53:17Speaker 01

  So you're like, wait a minute, what is it about?

• 1:53:19Bill Simmons?

  It's a good zag.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you and you really don't know because and it's not until the movie that it actually makes sense.

• 1:53:26Speaker 03

  You know, those ads, I mean, I have to say this movie was delivered to the country very seductively and to give it to us during basketball games and football games.

• 1:53:37Speaker 01

  Fantastic.

• 1:53:38Bill Simmons?

  Like, it's so much better than the Jason Tatum Superman ad when he's blown out of Kelly's. That just tortured me for four days.

• 1:53:44Speaker 03

  Um, it's gonna be okay.

• 1:53:47Bill Simmons?

  Last scene, the fake closing credits, um, which wins the Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness or Best Needle Drop as well. Um.

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  Only two scenes I'd add.

• 1:53:57Bill Simmons?

  Okay, let's hear it.

• 1:53:57Speaker 01

  One, Remick's dance scene outside with everyone.

• 1:54:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:54:01Bill Simmons?

  Good call.

• 1:54:02Speaker 03

  It's intriguing because you'll never get to the bottom of it.

• 1:54:04Speaker 01

  Loves that. I'll just, they was cutting up out there. And two, you know what scene, you know what scene I really like?

• 1:54:11Speaker 03

  River dancing.

• 1:54:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. I like the introduction of the child's where just from a filmmaking standpoint, which we might get to in Gray Shaw Gordo, which that's gonna be the hardest to maybe get up and give out ever. To where he comes there and he's talking about the child's, they're getting everything together and you're seeing smoke negotiate. The camera follows their daughter out to the other side of the restaurant where she retrieves her mom, the mom comes back, like that entire part. That just, I, it's a really amazing scene to me, like when they're introduced, the whole nine.

• 1:54:43Bill Simmons?

  Mm hmm. What do you have for most rewatchable?

• 1:54:46Speaker 03

  I think it's the end. I think it's that.

• 1:54:48Bill Simmons?

  I have the end as well.

• 1:54:49Speaker 03

  The Perleons.

• 1:54:51Speaker 01

  Overall, this probably the, the, is the, the, the ending of everything.

• 1:54:55Bill Simmons?

  What do you have, Craig?

• 1:54:56Speaker 04

  I think it's right when Remick floats. And you're like, uh oh, and things start to turn up in the juke joint. I'm not, I'm not turning the channel.

• 1:55:05Bill Simmons?

  Okay. What's the most 2025 thing about this movie?

• 1:55:12Bill Simmons?

  I'll throw in, I didn't have this originally, but Wesley Morris, not liking the most important scene. I'm putting that in. The twins technology being really good, I'd put that in there. Kugler asking studios for first dollar gross, final cut, privilege and ownership 25 years after its release, specifically 2025. But I am going with, um, this movie premiered on Max, which then turned into HBO Max after it premiered. It was the most 2025 thing because we had to change the name of the Max app. I like that. Yet again. I like that. Yeah.

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  Um, the filmmaking technology, the fact that it took high tech filmmaking technology, as far as what they were able to do with the IMAX stuff, how they shot it, to make the movie look authentically 1930s. It took that much to make it look that authentic.

• 1:56:07Bill Simmons?

  Okay. What's it's the best? I'll give you a couple.

• 1:56:12Bill Simmons?

  I always like this, movies that start with a distinct scene and then we go backwards. We live a whole movie and then we circle back to the scene we saw in the beginning. Yes. Which some people try to pull off and fuck it up. But they don't fuck it up. I don't love that as a. It's sometime a lazy gimmick, not in this. Yeah. Twins technology mentioned. The survivors eating garlic cloves to make sure one of them might not be a vampire. I love that. Pulled from the thing.

• 1:56:43Bill Simmons?

  I enjoyed that. We mentioned the Chinese couple with the two separate stores that sell different things to different clientele.

• 1:56:52Bill Simmons?

  There's a whole Chris Rock thing in there that I didn't even notice until I did the research. When, uh, the Klan guy pulls up at the end and he said, Club Ju, grand opening, grand closing. So Chris Rock bit.

• 1:57:08Bill Simmons?

  I like the line, I know plenty of musicians, I ain't never met a happy one.

• 1:57:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:57:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:14Bill Simmons?

  Any movie character named Cornbread?

• 1:57:18Bill Simmons?

  I saw Cornbread Earl and me in the theater.

• 1:57:20Speaker 03

  I was about to say, is there a Cornbread Earl and me poster coming?

• 1:57:23Bill Simmons?

  I love that movie.

• 1:57:24Speaker 03

  I know you do.

• 1:57:27Bill Simmons?

  You rob banks and trains, but won't steal this pussy for a night?

• 1:57:31Speaker 03

  She's got some bangers.

• 1:57:34Bill Simmons?

  She's dropping it.

• 1:57:35Speaker 03

  She just got some bangers.

• 1:57:36Speaker 01

  And that was her as a vampire.

• 1:57:38Bill Simmons?

  Is there a Dirty Girl Hall of Fame?

• 1:57:44Speaker 03

  Dan's Rolodex is flipping so hard right now.

• 1:57:48Speaker 01

  Don't make me live in that.

• 1:57:50Speaker 03

  I can see it turning.

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  Don't make me live in that part of myself, but uh, yeah.

• 1:57:56Speaker 01

  And that was, you talking about things that the theater was like, cause I saw it, I went to a screening of it and then I saw it with, you talking about things in the theater, people was like, oh shit.

• 1:58:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:06Speaker 01

  Cause everybody, you know, you used to hear her talk like that.

• 1:58:09Bill Simmons?

  That's when Josh Allen was like, fuck, I gotta get a ring tomorrow.

• 1:58:13Speaker 03

  Hey, maybe, I don't think we're going to that Travis Scott concert. I'm sorry, excuse me, they ran these lines. Don't think they didn't run, Josh is running lines with Hailee Steinfeld.

• 1:58:22Speaker 01

  You think Josh was dressed up like Stat?

• 1:58:24Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 1:58:25Bill Simmons?

  Josh tried to get her drop out.

• 1:58:26Speaker 03

  She, I mean, I don't know, I don't know Hailee Steinfeld's like.

• 1:58:30Bill Simmons?

  I don't know this Coogler guy, it's kinda crazy.

• 1:58:34Speaker 03

  He was definitely running lines with Hailee.

• 1:58:37Bill Simmons?

  Um, Coogler, here's a what's aged the best. Coogler, they asked him if he wanted to do a sequel. He said, I wanted the movie to feel like a full meal. Your appetizers, starters, entrees and dessert. I wanted all of it in there. I wanted it to be a holistic and finished thing. So his answer was no. He's definitely making a sequel.

• 1:58:54Speaker 03

  No, he can't.

• 1:58:55Bill Simmons?

  He'll do it in like 15 years.

• 1:58:56Speaker 03

  I don't want it.

• 1:58:56Bill Simmons?

  It'll happen. This is how the world works sadly.

• 1:59:00Speaker 01

  If there's a sequel made, I hope it's him, cause if this was 1997, the sequel would be straight to DVD and it would be Sinners 2, The Sun. And it wouldn't star like Michael B. Jordan.

• 1:59:14Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:59:15Bill Simmons?

  Would Shannon Wurry be in this?

• 1:59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. They switch everything out. So like, if he does it, it, I just hope that Sinners 2 is not made without Ryan Coogler.

• 1:59:28Bill Simmons?

  I could give you a whole thing about how they filmed the cigarette scene, but I'm not gonna do it. You can go read that online. Big Hoonah Burger, well, what other what's aged the best? Do you have anything else?

• 1:59:38Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go with the look of the film. I'm gonna give props to a higher learning guest.

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  Autumn Doral Akapah, who was this, the, the, the DP. She shot the movie. And she came on Higher Learning and told us all about how she got the film to look like it did. How she lit the film, everything about it. So it was fantastic.

• 2:00:00Bill Simmons?

  Any other what's age of best for you?

• 2:00:03Speaker 03

  I think that.

• 2:00:04Bill Simmons?

  The movie just came out.

• 2:00:04Speaker 03

  I know.

• 2:00:05Bill Simmons?

  It's a tough category.

• 2:00:06Speaker 01

  It's a tough category for what's age of best.

• 2:00:07Speaker 03

  You know, Michael B. Jordan's Michael B. Jordan-ness, right? Like, I think that that is. I, I think people came for him and like stayed for Kugler.

• 2:00:19Bill Simmons?

  They did a pie chart of who came out for it and MBJ was like 47%. Kugler was 43% for biggest reason.

• 2:00:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:27Bill Simmons?

  Which I thought was interesting.

• 2:00:28Speaker 03

  I think, and I wonder what happens. I don't know how you exit poll to find out like who won the movie. But basically, I think you, you would have been satisfied if this movie had just been Michael B. Jordan Kills All The Vampires.

• 2:00:44Bill Simmons?

  Big Kuna Burger, our best use of food and drink, probably eating the garlic?

• 2:00:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:00:48Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  It's Delta Slim in the beer, man.

• 2:00:50Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the Irish beer? I had that. That was my other choice.

• 2:00:52Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting. For me, it was, it was just that sequence when they're preparing all the food.

• 2:00:58Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:00:59Speaker 03

  Right? Like that great kitchen sequence, which I could have used an entire five minutes of. Oh, that catfish.

• 2:01:06Bill Simmons?

  Nancy Meyers did the kitchen.

• 2:01:08Speaker 01

  Shut up.

• 2:01:10Speaker 03

  I almost.

• 2:01:11Speaker 01

  I, I believed it for a second too.

• 2:01:13Speaker 03

  I'm gonna leave.

• 2:01:14Speaker 01

  It's just funny. It's just when, when, cause you know, Stack is talking to him and he's giving Stack shit. And Stack goes, okay, cool. And when he twists the top off the beer, the Delta Slim goes. Oh.

• 2:01:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:30Speaker 01

  Like he goes all like and he performs for the beat.

• 2:01:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:01:34Bill Simmons?

  I like the garlic only because I know the actors probably actually had to eat it. And I always like when real life intersperses with actors where they're like.

• 2:01:42Speaker 03

  You think it was actual garlic?

• 2:01:44Bill Simmons?

  Hundred percent.

• 2:01:44Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:01:45Bill Simmons?

  That's some method acting shit.

• 2:01:46Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:01:47Bill Simmons?

  But you're eating garlic, you, you, you're gonna act naturally as you're eating garlic. Craig eats garlic all the time.

• 2:01:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm a vampire. No, I don't, you think it was real? I feel like that was like chocolate that they painted to look like garlic or something.

• 2:02:01Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 2:02:01Speaker 04

  So hard to eat. And how many takes you gotta do with that?

• 2:02:04Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 2:02:04Bill Simmons?

  For everything Coog did in this movie, like you gotta have everybody eat the real garlic.

• 2:02:08Speaker 03

  I think there's so much other suffering these people are being asked to deal with.

• 2:02:12Bill Simmons?

  Alright, yeah, they got fake blood.

• 2:02:13Speaker 03

  I think eating fake garlic.

• 2:02:14Bill Simmons?

  That was in the research, there was a lot of complaining about how gross the fake blood was and having it stuck on your face and stuck on your chin.

• 2:02:20Speaker 01

  Well, there's an alternative, so.

• 2:02:22Bill Simmons?

  Great shot Gordo Award for most cinematic shot.

• 2:02:26Speaker 01

  It's too tough. It's really, it really is ridiculously tough. I like Remick falling out of the sky. I just thought that scene where Remick falls out of the sky.

• 2:02:34Speaker 03

  Just comes to like lands to the earth, yeah.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  That's like magic hour, which it has to be because the sun is going down because.

• 2:02:42Speaker 03

  Oh, to get to turn the, the clan's men and the wife.

• 2:02:45Speaker 01

  People.

• 2:02:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:02:46Speaker 01

  So Remick falling out of the sky the first time, he's, he's, the, the sun, he's sun bruised.

• 2:02:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  The, we're gonna talk about, we haven't even talked about my homies, the Native American vampire catchers.

• 2:02:57Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:57Speaker 01

  They, they got.

• 2:02:58Speaker 03

  The smartest people in the movie.

• 2:02:59Speaker 01

  They got one sec.

• 2:03:01Speaker 04

  That's the sequel.

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  They, yeah, that's the sequel. They got, they got one category locked up for sure. They do. Um, but I just like that scene, the way it looked, even when he's sitting there talking and it's dust behind him, it's like, time is running out, like the whole thing, I just really enjoyed it. I'm talking to you.

• 2:03:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love that sequence because it promises you a movie that you don't get. But also I'm very comfortable, I'm happy to not have had it because I under, their, their whole point is like, listen, I'm trying to tell you, something's going on. If you got something in your house, give it to us now, cause we're not coming back.

• 2:03:36Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:03:36Speaker 03

  I mean, also, we're not coming back to this movie because we're here to tell you that this shit is fucked up.

• 2:03:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:41Speaker 03

  We're not doing it.

• 2:03:43Bill Simmons?

  The sunset's pretty cool how they filmed that.

• 2:03:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:45Bill Simmons?

  In the end.

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  But they're probably, the, the, the movie is just a collage.

• 2:03:50Bill Simmons?

  It's full of the great shot Gordos.

• 2:03:51Speaker 01

  Phenomenal shots, man.

• 2:03:53Bill Simmons?

  I think one of the ones I, we mentioned earlier, but the flashback when they're talking in the end and it flashes back to them in the car and him hearing him play for the first time and how much joy he has in his face. I think is just really well done. Random new category, or it's, you only use it sometimes, the Ed Norton Reverse Dunk Award for did this movie need a random sports scene? Could we have like a baseball catch in here or something? Yeah.

• 2:04:16Speaker 01

  I thought about this.

• 2:04:17Bill Simmons?

  The old mitts, the two twins like throwing the ball for each other?

• 2:04:20Speaker 01

  Like Delta, like Delta Slim is throwing the ball. He's like, fastest man I've ever seen with a fastball. Satchel Paige, they wouldn't even let him play in the league. We just gotta be out here throwing the ball around with us. Just something like that.

• 2:04:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:33Speaker 01

  Like baseball, like something.

• 2:04:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Weave it in. Chess Rockwell and Brock Lander's award for best character name.

• 2:04:39Speaker 01

  Preacher Boy.

• 2:04:40Bill Simmons?

  Smoking, smoking stacks pretty good. Smoking stacks. Preacher Boy is, is pretty tough to beat.

• 2:04:45Speaker 01

  They got a bunch of names in movies.

• 2:04:47Bill Simmons?

  Wesley, you have a flex category. I, I'm doing a flex. I thought Van was taking a flex. You don't need to. I'm gonna pass on my flex category. Butch's girlfriend award for weak link of the film?

• 2:05:04Bill Simmons?

  I have one. I'm thinking, I'm thinking. The fight scene. It's eight people against 50 vampires and it makes it seems like, like it's on like an eight on eight.

• 2:05:15Bill Simmons?

  And there's like 50 vampires outside and I don't understand how they just didn't all get bitten right away.

• 2:05:21Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:05:21Bill Simmons?

  That's a pretty tough one.

• 2:05:23Speaker 01

  I call this the Blade conundrum. I've talked about this before. If you go back and you watch some of the fight scenes from like the original Blade movie, which fight scenes are great. But is one, is, is three people rushing Blade?

• 2:05:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:40Speaker 01

  But really is one on ones because one person is fighting Blade and the other person is behind. Like.

• 2:05:48Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's what. And the Warriors is like that when they're in Central Park and it's three against eight and they come one at a time like the baseball bat.

• 2:05:55Speaker 03

  It's like John Wick versus like forty people in a room.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  But they all rush them. They all just like, one person is fighting Blade and I'm, and the first time you don't, you don't, you don't notice it, but then the second time you notice it's like, yo, why the other person standing behind like twirling the stick, like hit Blade in the leg or do something like that? This movie.

• 2:06:14Bill Simmons?

  It's a, it's a lot of that.

• 2:06:16Speaker 01

  It's a lot of that. Cause like the vampires retreat at all times, like the stack one time goes to Mary, come on, let's get out of here. I'm like, wow, why don't I just finish killing? Mary runs out of the juke joint when she could have stayed in there killing. They don't even know that she is a vampire yet. So there's a couple of times that you're in a move.

• 2:06:35Speaker 03

  I take that as they need to be near Remick. They like, they have to, they're stronger in groups.

• 2:06:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh, he's like their Delta star. Yeah.

• 2:06:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, ma- maybe, maybe.

• 2:06:42Bill Simmons?

  Um. The Mallory Rubin Award for did this movie need a better sex scene?

• 2:06:47Speaker 03

  Mallory, oh, you couldn't do, I don't know. Sorry, Mallory. The answer is no.

• 2:06:52Speaker 01

  Nah, I don't think so. Well, you want, did you want more nudity is the thing? Cause there's no nudity, although there's some sex scenes in here. No nudity.

• 2:06:59Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, MBJ in the, in the kitchen with Annie. I don't know. Could they have kept going on that one? Gone for the NC seventeen?

• 2:07:08Speaker 03

  I think the spit, I think the spit.

• 2:07:11Bill Simmons?

  The drool spit? We didn't talk about that. Yeah, the drool.

• 2:07:13Speaker 03

  I think when she drools into his mouth and he, and he catches it.

• 2:07:19Bill Simmons?

  He saw that.

• 2:07:19Speaker 03

  That is so much more than anybody was asking for.

• 2:07:23Bill Simmons?

  Woods age is the worst already. I guess is, I guess we have to call that the category. Um, we mentioned already the coverage of, uh, the first two weeks post-release about.

• 2:07:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think.

• 2:07:34Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie gonna make enough money? So fucking weird.

• 2:07:37Speaker 03

  The early, the early weeks of that movie.

• 2:07:39Bill Simmons?

  This movie, it should have been a fucking celebration that somebody made a movie that was a new piece of IP out of nowhere. That was super creative.

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  Well, there was no other conversation to have. A lot of times we overreact on Twitter, but that's not one of them. I'm like, all right, man. Like what the, what, what? What the fuck you do is sinners makes 50 million, but is it enough? What are you talking about?

• 2:07:59Speaker 03

  Is it enough for who?

• 2:08:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I mean, just like, and who sits around? This is like the NBA ratings conversation, same thing. It's like, who's sitting around like at dinner going, hey, sinners, did you see it only made 51 million? Do you think that's enough for Cougar? Like, nobody's in real, in the real life is talking about this.

• 2:08:17Speaker 03

  It's week one, the budget was 90 million dollars, which I, I mean, which I have been told by some people who are doing some work with the studios that we're now in this new place where there's a class of, of movie that the studios want to try to make, which is called responsibly budgeted.

• 2:08:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:38Speaker 03

  Right? And

• 2:08:39Speaker 01

  Between 70 and 90.

• 2:08:41Bill Simmons?

  Congratulations.

• 2:08:42Speaker 03

  But responsibly budgeted is like under 15 or something like that. Or like, I, I don't know what the, I don't know if that's an official number, but like, everybody's got their responsibly budgeted ceiling. But 90, like 75 to 90 is the other side of responsibly budgeted. Right? We're like, there's the whole 74 to 17 million dollar, like zone where like, nobody can get a movie made for that much anymore. Like, that's money not worth spending or some, somehow? I don't, I don't quite understand the finances on this, but.

• 2:09:13Bill Simmons?

  The deal that Coogler made, which became a big topic in a lot of ways. This is future stuff. Warner Brothers was like falling apart. They needed the movie. Like, they were gonna do whatever it took. It's like, if you have free agency one year and somebody signs some cra-, like Deshaun Watson gets a no trade contract and 230 million guaranteed from the Browns. It's like, they gave him that because they're the fucking Browns. He wasn't gonna go there unless they gave him the contract. And then people always miss that part.

• 2:09:41Speaker 03

  Who's the Deshaun Watson in this scenario?

• 2:09:43Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm just saying, I'm just saying.

• 2:09:46Speaker 01

  Tough, tough example.

• 2:09:48Bill Simmons?

  All right, guys. Geez, we're on the same team here. I'm saying Warner Brothers is the Browns.

• 2:09:54Speaker 03

  Okay, fine.

• 2:09:55Bill Simmons?

  They're a fucking mess. They gotta do what they have to do to get the movie they want. Nobody wants to play for Warner Brothers.

• 2:09:59Speaker 01

  There's one difference between Warner Brothers and the Browns. Boy, has Warner Brothers been on a fucking win streak.

• 2:10:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they figured it out. But part of it was because they did this deal. It was a crazy deal that wasn't so crazy because they got this movie.

• 2:10:11Speaker 01

  And they, they, they needed to lure that type of talent away from Disney.

• 2:10:16Bill Simmons?

  See, Vanil, Vanil, he'll jump off my car anytime, any chance he gets.

• 2:10:20Speaker 01

  Well, it's fun. It's just like, because you, because this is.

• 2:10:23Bill Simmons?

  So you drive real fast, Bill.

• 2:10:24Speaker 01

  That was it. It's just funny.

• 2:10:26Bill Simmons?

  He just popped out of the car. I hadn't even landed the metaphor yet.

• 2:10:29Speaker 01

  I agree with you.

• 2:10:30Bill Simmons?

  Cleveland Browns, Warner Brothers.

• 2:10:35Speaker 03

  But Deshaun Watson also. But wait, can I, wait.

• 2:10:38Bill Simmons?

  He was a piece.

• 2:10:41Speaker 03

  The, the question really is, how the, like, oh, little, oh, oh, ye of little faith, right? Like, the idea that this was some chance that Warner Brothers was taken on some guy named Ryan Coogler. And Michael, with Michael B. Jordan in it, it's a vampire movie. I just, you know, it's, now, to be fair to somebody, right? Like, they probably, they saw the movie. They, there probably were some questions about whether it took too long for the vampires to show up. Do people want to really stick around and just watch black people be black people and regular black people in the, in the Jim Crow Delta? Like, there are, like, things I can imagine a studio person having some concerns about,

• 2:11:23Speaker 03

  given how out of practice everybody is telling stories about regular humans now.

• 2:11:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:30Speaker 01

  And Coogler was like, nah, but it's gonna work, though. Cool.

• 2:11:36Bill Simmons?

  He's like, I'm four for four.

• 2:11:39Bill Simmons?

  Four for four. You do the calculations for that batting average, because it's a thousand.

• 2:11:45Bill Simmons?

  The overacting where the roughlohan or a bit of cartridge.

• 2:11:50Bill Simmons?

  I say this out of complete love. But it's probably Delroy Lindo who dials it up a couple of times, but I loved all of it. I supported, I appreciated it. But if you're gonna say if anyone dialed it up in the movie, it's probably him.

• 2:12:02Speaker 03

  Oh, him. Oh, it's him. He's, he is having the time of his life.

• 2:12:06Bill Simmons?

  He's, I want him to dial it up. He's supposed to dial it up. And then Delta Slim is supposed to be at 10.

• 2:12:12Speaker 01

  Mrs. Chow started getting on my fucking nerves, too.

• 2:12:14Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:15Speaker 03

  Well, she makes a bad choice. Her choice makes no emotional sense. It makes no practical sense.

• 2:12:22Speaker 01

  We're gonna get to some nitpicks, but she was giving it at, at some point. She started, she's getting on my nerves.

• 2:12:27Bill Simmons?

  Dan, you have a flex category?

• 2:12:28Speaker 01

  Uh, my flex category in this situation is going to be the Den of Thieves Benihana Award for seeing, seeing stealing locations.

• 2:12:35Bill Simmons?

  What do you got?

• 2:12:36Speaker 01

  Clarksville and the American South.

• 2:12:39Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:12:41Speaker 01

  What a beautiful, textured, gorgeous, heavenly depiction of a place that I am so, so connected to. I, I, I told the story to you guys before of riding through Mississippi with Ryan Rusillo.

• 2:12:59Bill Simmons?

  Whoa, I didn't see that coming.

• 2:13:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. We did something at, uh, we did something at, um, at, uh, at Ole Miss. We did a, we did a.

• 2:13:09Bill Simmons?

  Okay, got it, got it, got it, got it.

• 2:13:11Speaker 01

  So we had to fly into Memphis and then we had to drive to, uh, Oxford. And, you know, I've told this story before, but like, you know, we're, we're in Mississippi and there are cotton fields. You, you see cotton fields there. It's still a cash crop and you, you can tell in the car who's not used to seeing that, cuz, um, they're not saying anything. And I'm like, yeah, guys, look at the cotton out there. Just check it out. Look at the cotton. How's that make you feel? Right away, subject change. But it's, there's also this brutal beauty to the South. Things are old. Things have existed for a long time. A general store is a beautiful thing to look at,

• 2:13:55Speaker 01

  particularly when you're down there in the South. So they really captured that in the movie.

• 2:14:01Bill Simmons?

  The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. If you have one. You don't necessarily have to. Van probably has one.

• 2:14:12Bill Simmons?

  Was he's not a hot take artist?

• 2:14:13Speaker 03

  I, yeah, I don't really have a crazy, crazy hot take here. I don't, I don't know. I feel like, you know, I just think not liking the scene is about as

• 2:14:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you already did yours. Do you have one?

• 2:14:26Speaker 03

  As I can get.

• 2:14:27Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:14:29Speaker 01

  Preacher Boy.

• 2:14:32Speaker 01

  Is there.

• 2:14:34Speaker 01

  You know, he's older. And they say, hey, we want to make you a vampire. If I'm preacher boy, I go, I want to be a vampire. I'll take a shot at Mary though.

• 2:14:47Speaker 01

  I'm on my way out of here. You know, I've, I've held it down. You know? You were asked to leave me alive. And but like, you know, maybe me and Mary one time with a vampire is that?

• 2:15:01Speaker 03

  Wait, but hold on. We didn't even talk about a whole other sex scene that preacher boy has.

• 2:15:07Speaker 01

  He has it with Perlene.

• 2:15:08Bill Simmons?

  We have a, we have a spot for it.

• 2:15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, he has it with Perlene, but I'm saying Perlene's gone. He's named the club after her. He's an older guy.

• 2:15:15Speaker 03

  I see.

• 2:15:15Speaker 01

  You know, i- i- if you really fuck with me like that.

• 2:15:19Bill Simmons?

  So age eighty-eight, like?

• 2:15:20Speaker 01

  Age eighty-eight. Like, can I just one time?

• 2:15:23Bill Simmons?

  Can I reenact how you died?

• 2:15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:25Bill Simmons?

  With a sex scene slash death fight?

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  One time, by the way, you can, by the, since I'm about to be gone anyway, look. Stat, you can stay here, kill everybody in the bar. Like, I don't even know this guy. I just hired.

• 2:15:37Speaker 03

  This is insane.

• 2:15:38Bill Simmons?

  You take up Perlene.

• 2:15:42Speaker 01

  I just hired these guys. I don't really even know who they are. Take out everybody in the bar. Just one time with Mary, we out.

• 2:15:46Bill Simmons?

  I like it.

• 2:15:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:48Bill Simmons?

  Here's my hottest take. Uh oh. Being a vampire, not that hard. I just feel like you just have to bite somebody on some part of their body and, and it's a W.

• 2:15:56Speaker 03

  But this is an interesting.

• 2:15:57Bill Simmons?

  You come in, it's like, oh, I'm trying to bite him, trying to bite him. It's like, just bite any, you can bite anything. You bite their calf, bite their hip. I just think if you have the giant fangs, if I try to jump on Van right now, he could fight me up, but I could still bite him at some point. I'm gonna land a bite in a ten second stretch. Vampire movies make it seem like, oh, it's just, I just think you're gonna be able to eventually.

• 2:16:22Speaker 03

  But there, I love a vampire movie where the vampires don't like, they're just like, I'll just go around your arms, sir. I will, I will just, I'll just bite you anyway.

• 2:16:30Bill Simmons?

  Cause it doesn't, it could be anything. It could be the side of your leg. It could be your butt cheek. Like, they always make it seem like it's gotta be this area in a vampire movie.

• 2:16:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:39Bill Simmons?

  I guess that's probably where the most blood is.

• 2:16:42Speaker 01

  But not to.

• 2:16:43Bill Simmons?

  Not to turn, not to. Yeah, but if my goal is to turn you into a vampire, it doesn't matter where I bite you.

• 2:16:50Speaker 01

  It just has to give you a bloodstream.

• 2:16:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Just don't overcomplicate it. The new, like, if we're doing, like, Sloan Conference Analytics for the best vampires.

• 2:16:59Bill Simmons?

  It's the, it's the undiscerning vampires. They're just the ones who are like, I don't care what part I bite.

• 2:17:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:17:04Bill Simmons?

  I don't need to feed. I have, my job is to create other vampires.

• 2:17:08Speaker 03

  Leg.

• 2:17:08Bill Simmons?

  I need a nice group of vampires. Then we can go like, then we'll fucking feed.

• 2:17:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:17:13Speaker 03

  I'm with you. This is a great point.

• 2:17:15Bill Simmons?

  Casting whatevs. Didn't really have any, except for Halsey completed a script read.

• 2:17:20Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 2:17:22Bill Simmons?

  For the Haley part, didn't get it.

• 2:17:23Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 2:17:24Bill Simmons?

  That's all I got.

• 2:17:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:17:25Bill Simmons?

  Twenty years from now, it'll be like, every single actor from there, it'll be like, Chalamet was almost in this as.

• 2:17:32Bill Simmons?

  Best that guy award, it's gotta be cornbread.

• 2:17:35Speaker 01

  Omar Benson Miller.

• 2:17:36Bill Simmons?

  I didn't know what his name was until I looked it up during the research for this movie.

• 2:17:40Speaker 01

  But he's been around for a long time.

• 2:17:42Bill Simmons?

  I just never knew what his name was.

• 2:17:43Speaker 03

  Some of your favorite movies.

• 2:17:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Oh, no, he's, I just never knew. He was a classic that guy.

• 2:17:49Speaker 03

  I mean, his film, his, his list of, of, his filmography is just like.

• 2:17:55Bill Simmons?

  It's a lot.

• 2:17:56Speaker 03

  Oh, right. Oh, right. Oh, right. Yeah.

• 2:17:58Speaker 01

  Now, did you, have you heard the story about how he got in this movie really quickly?

• 2:18:03Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:18:04Speaker 01

  Ryan Coogler, he told it at the premiere, Ryan Coogler was.

• 2:18:08Bill Simmons?

  Name trap.

• 2:18:09Speaker 01

  Uh, Ryan Coogler was either a film student or just graduated SC. When he went to a screening of The Miracle at St. Anna.

• 2:18:24Speaker 03

  Hmm, the Spike Lee movie.

• 2:18:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:18:27Speaker 01

  That Omar Benson Miller was in. He went there and he told him, like, one day. I'm gonna work with you and put you in a movie.

• 2:18:36Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:18:36Speaker 01

  Like, I'm gonna be a filmmaker. We gonna work together one day. And years later, when Cougar was putting the movie together, he reached out to Omar Benson Miller and he put him in the movie.

• 2:18:49Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:18:50Speaker 01

  Like, so.

• 2:18:50Speaker 03

  I love that.

• 2:18:51Speaker 01

  He Omar told the story at the thing. He was like, he, we actually got a chance to work for him. He's like, this kid, who came up to me, uh, ended up doing everything that he said he was going to do in his career, and then we ended up working together all of these years later.

• 2:19:08Bill Simmons?

  Craig and I have a different story. Craig just came out here to be an actor.

• 2:19:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right.

• 2:19:12Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 2:19:13Bill Simmons?

  Kind of stumbled into it.

• 2:19:14Speaker 04

  I was in a commercial, though.

• 2:19:15Speaker 01

  What commercial were you in?

• 2:19:16Speaker 04

  Uh, it was a Nationwide Insurance Gruden Grinder Monday Night Football when he was doing that.

• 2:19:22Bill Simmons?

  Gruden Grinder?

• 2:19:23Speaker 04

  He had a Gruden Grinder segment.

• 2:19:24Speaker 01

  Wow, the Gruden Grinder.

• 2:19:26Bill Simmons?

  Love the Gruden Grinder. Uh, Dion Waiters Award. It's either Delroy Lindo or Buddy Guy.

• 2:19:33Speaker 01

  I gotta be honest with you. It to me is easily the Native American vampire hunters.

• 2:19:40Bill Simmons?

  The Choctaws?

• 2:19:41Speaker 01

  The Choctaws. They are in it for one scene. They try to warn everybody, like legitimately. They come in, they cook, they look cool. They're very important. They tell this woman, look, it's a vampire in your house. And the up, the guy said at the front, he's like, you know, I really wanna help. Homeboy is like, hey.

• 2:19:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, we gotta go.

• 2:20:00Speaker 01

  The sun is going down. They dead. Let's get the fuck out of here.

• 2:20:05Speaker 03

  You know, the Choctaws. I like the Choctaws is.

• 2:20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:08Bill Simmons?

  I like it.

• 2:20:09Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. I like that.

• 2:20:10Bill Simmons?

  Recasting Couch Director City.

• 2:20:14Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna explore the studio space on this one.

• 2:20:17Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:20:19Bill Simmons?

  It's one more character. I'm just gonna create a new character. Get our girl Villa Davis in this.

• 2:20:27Bill Simmons?

  Ant?

• 2:20:30Bill Simmons?

  Maybe she's the aunt of Smokey and Stack.

• 2:20:32Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting. Okay.

• 2:20:33Bill Simmons?

  She's got some special skill, like she knows how to make. We just got one extra scene with her. I just, I feel like we're one person short with the group.

• 2:20:41Speaker 03

  Okay. You want more star power?

• 2:20:44Bill Simmons?

  I just want one more.

• 2:20:45Speaker 03

  Is there a character?

• 2:20:46Bill Simmons?

  One more famous person, a little older, somewhere between the Delroy Lindo age and MBJ's age. Early 50s, family member, knows some history with the twins and doesn't like Mary.

• 2:21:00Speaker 03

  But doesn't she kind of upstage a little bit of what Annie is doing?

• 2:21:04Bill Simmons?

  No, not a huge part. Maybe it's an uncle. I was just trying to figure out one more person we can throw into this.

• 2:21:10Speaker 01

  What if you put in somebody who is Delta Slim's estranged wife?

• 2:21:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, because he's the one, but you know, we already know he's probably got four X's.

• 2:21:20Speaker 01

  Four X's, but she's in there and there's like, I don't want to see this drunk motherfucker. Fuck him. And then like, you know.

• 2:21:28Bill Simmons?

  See, there's, we're just five minutes short with somebody. I don't know who it is. Has to be.

• 2:21:33Speaker 03

  I'm trying to think of a good actor.

• 2:21:34Speaker 01

  I have to be, you need somebody with a little comedy, a little older, a little comedy.

• 2:21:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is the thing. Oh, Jennifer Lewis.

• 2:21:41Speaker 01

  Jennifer Lewis. You put Jennifer Lewis in there.

• 2:21:43Speaker 03

  Then it's, but it's too much. She is the, she is the brontosaurus steak that tips over the Flintstones car. You don't want, you don't want, just Jennifer Lewis is too much.

• 2:21:54Bill Simmons?

  Half-assed internet research. I'll go quick. Our guy Ludwig, he drew inspiration from blues music, but more importantly, performed the score on a 1932 Dobro Cyclops Resonator Guitar, which was the one Sammy has the whole movie.

• 2:22:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:22:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Kluger said his two biggest influences for the film, two of his biggest influences, Dust Till Dawn, The Faculty with Roger Rodriguez.

• 2:22:21Speaker 03

  I get it.

• 2:22:22Bill Simmons?

  Starring Jon Stewart, a movie that I think he tried to buy all the copies up to destroy, but he has not because it's still on cable.

• 2:22:29Bill Simmons?

  Uh, yeah.

• 2:22:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:22:30Bill Simmons?

  They cast a twin double named Percy Bell, who had the same kind of body as MBJ. Um, and they also hired twin consultants.

• 2:22:39Speaker 03

  Oh, twin consultants.

• 2:22:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:41Speaker 03

  Well, also consultants wise, Rhiannon Giddens, um, the great Americana musician and I guess, I mean, we'll call her a scholar.

• 2:22:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:52Speaker 03

  His, you know, his person Beyonce turned to to sort of figure out how to think through what Cowboy Carter was doing.

• 2:23:02Speaker 03

  Huge blues presence, Cristone Kingfish Ingram is in the band at the end with Buddy Guy. He's one of the musicians you see in that slow motion. Transition shot. Yeah, this, this, this play, the, the Irish, um, culture consultant, whose name has now escaped me. There's a lot of just, you know, let's make sure we.

• 2:23:22Bill Simmons?

  This goes back to the, this is why it takes Kugler two plus years to make a movie. When Smoke and Stack return, they go to downtown Clarksville, Mississippi, but it was shot in Donaldsonville, Louisiana.

• 2:23:35Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 2:23:37Bill Simmons?

  Fans like, I dated a girl from there.

• 2:23:39Speaker 03

  Talk to us about Donaldsonville.

• 2:23:40Speaker 01

  We used to have our horses there. Donaldsonville, like we used, like we used to, before we had the barn, we used to board horses there. Donaldsonville is cool. Girls in Donaldsonville, Donaldsonville High used to be fine as hell.

• 2:23:53Speaker 01

  I've been for real. Girls in Donaldsonville High, the track team, track team.

• 2:23:56Bill Simmons?

  This surprises me.

• 2:23:57Speaker 01

  Donaldsonville had a nice track. Girls in Donaldsonville High was fine as hell.

• 2:24:00Bill Simmons?

  They had to, um,

• 2:24:03Bill Simmons?

  they had to make it dirt roads. And they had to bring in all this dirt to make, to actually make the dirt road over the pavement. So Remick mentions how Christians took his father's land.

• 2:24:15Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:24:16Bill Simmons?

  But he's Irish. And that actually puts, puts his life somewhere between the fifth and seventh centuries.

• 2:24:21Speaker 01

  So he's old as shit.

• 2:24:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:26Bill Simmons?

  The film, there's a lot of like Robert Johnson stuff that I was not really, did not know a lot of. About the guitar player, blues guy, who supposedly sold to the devil. And then died young.

• 2:24:40Speaker 01

  Crossroads with Ralph Macchio?

• 2:24:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:43Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 2:24:45Speaker 03

  What are we, we were doing so well. Although shouts, shouts to Joe Seneca, shouts to Joe Seneca, but.

• 2:24:52Bill Simmons?

  Wes, you like this, the working title of this film was grilled cheese. Because Coogler was used to making complicated dishes. He wanted this to be an enjoyable, easy eating, eating experience. So he named it grilled cheese and all the, and all the script demo shit.

• 2:25:09Speaker 03

  The finest grill air he could find, too.

• 2:25:12Bill Simmons?

  Apex Mountain, hard to do when it's, movie just happened, but Ryan Coogler.

• 2:25:18Bill Simmons?

  I, I find it hard to believe he's gonna have more power than he has right now. And if he does in a couple of years, God bless him, but this is about as much juice as you're gonna have for a director, I think.

• 2:25:28Speaker 03

  But think about.

• 2:25:30Bill Simmons?

  Like who's not making his next movie? He could be like, I'm gonna make a movie about Van's left kneecap and they're like, here's a hundred million.

• 2:25:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:37Speaker 03

  But think, I just think like how they're, how they were talking about this movie.

• 2:25:41Bill Simmons?

  I know, but now that this happened, it's.

• 2:25:44Speaker 01

  So he asked him for ninety sight unseen at, for this, really?

• 2:25:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:48Speaker 01

  He could literally go to them right now and said, I need two hundred and fifty million bucks.

• 2:25:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, let me even tell you the idea, two fifty.

• 2:25:55Speaker 01

  To, this, I'm like, it's not, it's not, we're not doing superhero shit, we're not doing this, I need two hundred and fifty million dollars. And we're gonna go make a movie and they will, they will say.

• 2:26:04Bill Simmons?

  It's a movie about the Donaldsonville High Girls in nineteen ninety-two.

• 2:26:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:26:09Bill Simmons?

  The cheerleading squad.

• 2:26:10Speaker 01

  Wouldn't it be ninety-two, I'm not, you know.

• 2:26:11Bill Simmons?

  Ninety-six.

• 2:26:13Speaker 01

  Donaldsonville High?

• 2:26:14Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Michael B. Jordan, Apex Mountain.

• 2:26:17Speaker 03

  Hmm, hmm.

• 2:26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think so.

• 2:26:20Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 2:26:21Bill Simmons?

  I, well, I think for where his career is so far, yes.

• 2:26:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, all right, fine.

• 2:26:26Bill Simmons?

  He's just.

• 2:26:26Speaker 01

  I think it is.

• 2:26:27Bill Simmons?

  That's the face of a five hundred million dollar.

• 2:26:29Speaker 03

  Where does he go? What does he do?

• 2:26:31Bill Simmons?

  Does he have another level to it? Does he have his version of the revenant?

• 2:26:36Speaker 01

  I think we're at the so.

• 2:26:41Speaker 01

  Okay, you'll you'll get this. You know how.

• 2:26:44Bill Simmons?

  Cause I'm white.

• 2:26:45Speaker 01

  No, because you love NBA basketball. Okay, but that's probably because you're white. But like, I love watching him dunk, dad.

• 2:26:58Bill Simmons?

  They jump so high.

• 2:26:59Speaker 01

  So high, dad. You should have, you should have seen.

• 2:27:05Speaker 01

  The chief, what he was able to do. Um, so you know how a player has all of these? They have all NBA. They have all star seasons.

• 2:27:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:15Speaker 01

  Then like twenty six, twenty seven is the official beginning of their prime.

• 2:27:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:19Speaker 01

  So I think this is the official beginning of Michael B. Jordan's prime.

• 2:27:23Bill Simmons?

  I said that earlier. I totally agree.

• 2:27:24Speaker 01

  I'm not saying.

• 2:27:24Bill Simmons?

  I think these next five, six years will be, this is gonna be it now.

• 2:27:28Speaker 01

  I'm not saying he hadn't been all NBA. I'm not saying he hadn't have been an all star. I'm saying this is the official beginning of his prime.

• 2:27:36Bill Simmons?

  It's like a little Hakeem in the early nineties for the Rockets where it all starts coming together and he has that crazy stretch wins two titles.

• 2:27:43Speaker 03

  I don't disagree. I'm just like, I feel this way about so many people. Timothy Chalamet is is Pac-Man right now. Any script that's on a table anywhere, like his people are gobbling up. And whatever gets excreted that is still intact is what gets picked up and done. Right? Like, I just feel like, show me the scripts. I keep.

• 2:28:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but that that changes all the time because like in the Goldman books, which are right over your right shoulder. But he always talks about like who has that alpha seat with the scripts.

• 2:28:19Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:28:19Bill Simmons?

  But it it flips and the year has become somebody else.

• 2:28:22Speaker 03

  Change, but I feel like there are so few people now who are viable, both in the minds of the public and in the sort of books of the industry. That I definitely think this is the moment for people to be giving Michael B. Jordan or offering Michael B. Jordan really interesting things to do. Um.

• 2:28:43Bill Simmons?

  Well, he's also at the age now where he can play any adult role.

• 2:28:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:28:46Bill Simmons?

  Like he'd be in a sports movie right now. He could be the cop who's been on the force for a while. He could be a detective, like you name it. He he's he's not too old to be anything yet.

• 2:28:56Speaker 03

  Okay, I just, I I'm not here to disagree.

• 2:28:59Bill Simmons?

  How about vampire movies? Apex Mountain?

• 2:29:02Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:29:02Speaker 01

  It can't be.

• 2:29:04Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:29:04Speaker 01

  I'd have to think about it.

• 2:29:05Bill Simmons?

  So what is it?

• 2:29:07Speaker 03

  What do you mean?

• 2:29:08Bill Simmons?

  What's, what's the apex of vampire movies?

• 2:29:11Speaker 03

  Oh, it's probably that period where.

• 2:29:13Speaker 01

  Dracula?

• 2:29:14Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 2:29:15Bill Simmons?

  No, which Dracula?

• 2:29:16Speaker 03

  Stoker's Dracula? I think it's that period where, well, here's what I'll say.

• 2:29:21Bill Simmons?

  Probably late seventies.

• 2:29:21Speaker 03

  Here's what I'll say. I feel like this is a great moment in, in American life. Or like, maybe even considering where Europe is right now.

• 2:29:33Speaker 03

  To really be thinking about what these vampires are offering in these movies. If you think about Robert Eggers' Nosferatu.

• 2:29:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:41Speaker 03

  And, and the way that, that Eggers is arguing for a vampirism that is hard to resist because it is just too sexy to say no to. Right? The power of the vampire is too strong to not want to have sex with. And so you give yourself completely over him. It's one of, that Nosferatu is one of the most convincing sort of political, psychological arguments for vampirism I've ever seen. I think.

• 2:30:12Bill Simmons?

  Was he wants to bring vampirism back?

• 2:30:14Speaker 03

  Well, it's here. We're watching it happen. And I think that this is.

• 2:30:18Bill Simmons?

  I'd like to be a conciliary to the vampires. Just go for any body part.

• 2:30:21Speaker 03

  Um, well, in this metaphor.

• 2:30:23Bill Simmons?

  Stop going for the next.

• 2:30:24Speaker 03

  You don't, you don't want it. You don't want to be anywhere near these people.

• 2:30:27Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 2:30:27Speaker 03

  But I will, but I also think that Kugler has also found a very appealing way. I think vampire, this is definitely apex mountain moment.

• 2:30:38Bill Simmons?

  For vamp, for vampire culture?

• 2:30:40Speaker 03

  As metaphor, as metaphor.

• 2:30:41Speaker 01

  It's the apex mountain certainly for black vampires.

• 2:30:45Bill Simmons?

  How about twin brother movies?

• 2:30:47Speaker 01

  You don't think so?

• 2:30:48Speaker 03

  Have you seen Black Ulo?

• 2:30:49Speaker 01

  I've seen Black Ulo. I've seen, I've seen.

• 2:30:51Speaker 03

  Vampire in Brooklyn?

• 2:30:52Speaker 01

  Vampire in Brooklyn, but I would say it was between this and Blade.

• 2:30:55Bill Simmons?

  It's bad.

• 2:30:55Speaker 03

  Oh, Blade, okay. But this is not about, but, okay, fine. You're, this is fair. Uh, not enough black vampires though, right?

• 2:31:03Bill Simmons?

  Eddie tried during his worst part of his career, my guy. Uh, twin brother movies?

• 2:31:10Bill Simmons?

  Maybe twin movies?

• 2:31:13Speaker 01

  This.

• 2:31:14Bill Simmons?

  This is the most successful twin movie.

• 2:31:15Speaker 03

  Is this the highest grossing twin movie?

• 2:31:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:17Speaker 03

  Almost certainly.

• 2:31:17Speaker 01

  With twin leads, yeah, for sure.

• 2:31:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, Hailee Stan- Steinfeld? Steinfeld?

• 2:31:22Speaker 03

  Van Felt.

• 2:31:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably.

• 2:31:23Bill Simmons?

  Why can't I say it? Hailee Steinfeld.

• 2:31:25Speaker 03

  Uh, yes, for sure.

• 2:31:27Bill Simmons?

  For sure. So far, I think there might be another moment for Pickle Garlic Juice, yes.

• 2:31:33Bill Simmons?

  Cunnilingus Advice?

• 2:31:34Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:31:35Speaker 01

  Cunnilingus Advice.

• 2:31:36Bill Simmons?

  Can't remember a better Cunnilingus Advice scene in the movie?

• 2:31:40Speaker 03

  No, we're not doing better than this one.

• 2:31:42Bill Simmons?

  Just look for that button.

• 2:31:43Speaker 03

  Well, I'm sure, I'm gonna say never, cuz I'm sure there's one I'm missing, but.

• 2:31:47Speaker 01

  I can't think of one.

• 2:31:48Speaker 03

  But I can't think of it.

• 2:31:49Bill Simmons?

  The Blues, I'm gonna go no. Hanks.

• 2:31:52Speaker 03

  But the Blue, well, let me think about this. The Blues are movies for sure. Right? Like, the Blues as.

• 2:31:59Bill Simmons?

  Ben would say more better Blues.

• 2:32:01Speaker 03

  But that's a jazz movie. This is like.

• 2:32:05Bill Simmons?

  Ben wouldn't say more better Blues.

• 2:32:07Speaker 03

  Oh. Uh, I think this might be, let's think about the Blues, let's think about this, this is definitely, at least in the movies, this is the, this is the, this is the Blues, this is a great Blues movie.

• 2:32:20Bill Simmons?

  How about drooling?

• 2:32:25Bill Simmons?

  Best drool scene ever?

• 2:32:27Speaker 01

  But there are several good drool scenes in here, this is a good drooling movie.

• 2:32:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:32:31Bill Simmons?

  Movie characters named Cornbread?

• 2:32:34Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:32:35Bill Simmons?

  Probably yes, I don't think Cornbitterol and me has really had a long shot life.

• 2:32:39Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:32:40Bill Simmons?

  Um, alright. Cruise or Hanks?

• 2:32:43Speaker 01

  So we're talking about for Remick?

• 2:32:45Bill Simmons?

  Can be for any role you want.

• 2:32:46Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 2:32:47Bill Simmons?

  But obviously, can't be for certain roles.

• 2:32:49Speaker 01

  Cruise, I was about to say, can't be for any role.

• 2:32:51Speaker 03

  Cruise would kinda fucking kill it as Remick.

• 2:32:54Speaker 01

  Cruise would murder fucking Remick.

• 2:32:58Speaker 03

  He's played Remick, that's why we know.

• 2:33:00Bill Simmons?

  He would be fucking devastating. Mid 90s Cruise.

• 2:33:05Speaker 01

  Fucking crazy.

• 2:33:05Bill Simmons?

  This would've been like the best part of his career.

• 2:33:07Speaker 01

  Right, now, now he did fuck up. To me, as

• 2:33:12Bill Simmons?

  Lassat.

• 2:33:13Speaker 01

  I did not like that at all because

• 2:33:15Bill Simmons?

  Movie was bad.

• 2:33:15Speaker 01

  That's not what I'm talking about.

• 2:33:17Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 2:33:17Speaker 01

  I'm talking about

• 2:33:17Speaker 03

  He would love another crack at that part. I'm sure.

• 2:33:20Bill Simmons?

  He's basically, he would be basically Cocktail Cruise as a vampire.

• 2:33:24Speaker 01

  Vampire, he would kill.

• 2:33:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:33:27Speaker 01

  As Remy.

• 2:33:27Bill Simmons?

  He'd get behind the bar and start flipping bottles.

• 2:33:29Speaker 01

  That dance scene would be so fucking bizarre and crazy.

• 2:33:33Bill Simmons?

  He would learn how to do the Irish, Irish dance, whatever dance.

• 2:33:37Speaker 03

  He would do the tropic thunder dance.

• 2:33:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:33:40Speaker 01

  Kill as Remy.

• 2:33:40Speaker 03

  But I think though, this is raising a sort of alternate series of questions about what Tom Cruise's life looks like after this year, right? Like what are his choices? What's he doing? If Kugler is offering, let's say this movie gets made a year from now instead of two years ago.

• 2:34:00Bill Simmons?

  He's only the KKK guy.

• 2:34:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:03Bill Simmons?

  He's the old guy that sells on the house.

• 2:34:05Speaker 01

  Him and Mike would be smart to get in the movie together.

• 2:34:07Speaker 03

  I mean, this is what I'm saying.

• 2:34:11Bill Simmons?

  Dan asked for this one, Denzel or Will? Pick any, any age range.

• 2:34:16Speaker 01

  In their primes, ass smoking stack.

• 2:34:18Speaker 03

  This is not fair to Michael B. Jordan. Why are we doing this to Michael Jordan?

• 2:34:22Speaker 01

  In their primes, like if we do it.

• 2:34:24Bill Simmons?

  It's a movie podcast of hypotheticals. Play the game.

• 2:34:27Speaker 03

  Oh, well, that's no, it's a no brainer. You're just taking, you're taking like

• 2:34:31Speaker 01

  So two Denzels, as two Denzels or two Wills?

• 2:34:34Bill Simmons?

  I think you're going early nineties Denzel or like ninety-three, ninety-four range.

• 2:34:38Speaker 03

  Definitely, yes.

• 2:34:39Bill Simmons?

  And I think

• 2:34:40Speaker 03

  Devil in a blue dress era.

• 2:34:41Bill Simmons?

  Fucking crushed it.

• 2:34:43Speaker 03

  Devil in a blue dress era Denzel is a no brainer.

• 2:34:46Speaker 01

  You don't think a little younger?

• 2:34:48Bill Simmons?

  I, I would have gone early nineties.

• 2:34:50Speaker 03

  Devil in a blue dress is ninety-five.

• 2:34:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I would have gone ninety-two, ninety-three range.

• 2:34:54Speaker 03

  Like Malcolm X era?

• 2:34:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like right after.

• 2:34:57Speaker 03

  No better blues Malcolm X, Mal, uh, Denzel? Sure. Let's do it.

• 2:35:01Speaker 01

  A smoking stack.

• 2:35:02Bill Simmons?

  Scorsese or Spielberg?

• 2:35:06Speaker 03

  Uh, I can see

• 2:35:08Speaker 01

  Spielberg has never done

• 2:35:09Bill Simmons?

  It's Scorsese.

• 2:35:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, Spielberg's never done any kind of horror massage.

• 2:35:13Bill Simmons?

  We got some nineteen thirties cocaine with Scorsese.

• 2:35:17Bill Simmons?

  One of the, one of the, one of the vampires I

• 2:35:22Speaker 03

  The fangs coming out? Wow, that just gave real big Pacino. That was my favorite. Wow.

• 2:35:31Bill Simmons?

  Never know cocaine.

• 2:35:36Bill Simmons?

  What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played?

• 2:35:39Speaker 03

  Oh, he'd be a good Remick.

• 2:35:41Speaker 01

  He would be a good Remick. He could also could have been the Klan guy, but maybe he's a little too young for that.

• 2:35:45Speaker 03

  Not enough, not enough part there.

• 2:35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, not enough part there. But he could have been a great Remick too.

• 2:35:50Bill Simmons?

  Special category. I didn't even put this on the rundown. How would Van Lathan get out of this one?

• 2:35:56Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 2:35:58Speaker 01

  I don't which one?

• 2:35:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, in this case, the situation is,

• 2:36:04Bill Simmons?

  you're now a vampire and you're trying to convince your brother not to drive a wooden stake through your heart. How do you get out of this one?

• 2:36:13Speaker 01

  Okay, wait, so I'm the vampire?

• 2:36:14Speaker 03

  This is a great parlor game.

• 2:36:15Speaker 01

  I'm trying to convince my, my brother not to kill me?

• 2:36:19Bill Simmons?

  And, and like, here's, here's my plan. Let's go.

• 2:36:23Speaker 01

  Right, okay. First of all, I say to Smoke, I go, Smoke, first of all, you already killed our father. Right? You killed our father. You're gonna kill me too? What are you? Person that kills your own family?

• 2:36:35Bill Simmons?

  Right. How many family members can you kill?

• 2:36:37Speaker 01

  How many people can you kill? Smoke, violent man? I saw you early, shoot two black men in the street. Don't we have enough going on in this city? You know who shoots black men and kills black families? White people. You one of them now? You one of them now, Smoke? Smoke, as a matter of fact, you need to come over here with me, bruh. There's a new dance that's taking over Clarksville. It's called the jig. We ain't never done it before, but you jump high, you flip your legs up around. When you come down, your credit score done gone way up.

• 2:37:06Speaker 01

  Bruh, you don't wanna do this. You wanna come on this side, bruh. Seriously, don't kill me.

• 2:37:12Speaker 03

  All right, you live, you live.

• 2:37:13Bill Simmons?

  You live. Picking it's.

• 2:37:16Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 2:37:19Bill Simmons?

  Why did Smokin' Stack leave Chicago?

• 2:37:22Speaker 01

  They robbed somebody.

• 2:37:24Speaker 03

  They robbed Capone?

• 2:37:25Speaker 04

  They robbed the Italians and the Irish.

• 2:37:27Speaker 01

  They either robbed Capone, they robbed someone.

• 2:37:29Bill Simmons?

  Alright, so they robbed them and they leave.

• 2:37:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, because they stole the Irish beer and the Italian one.

• 2:37:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, they stole, yeah.

• 2:37:34Bill Simmons?

  Okay. But now they're, like, the deep south is this burgeoning business opportunity?

• 2:37:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:37:41Bill Simmons?

  I don't really understand their business plan.

• 2:37:43Speaker 03

  Well.

• 2:37:44Bill Simmons?

  It seemed like in Chi- I'm better off just robbing people in Chicago, there's way more money there.

• 2:37:48Speaker 03

  I think there's such a history of black, first of all, they gotta get away.

• 2:37:51Bill Simmons?

  And they realize almost immediately, nobody has enough money to make this a functioning enterprise. Fuck, we fucked up.

• 2:37:57Speaker 03

  But then there's a community argument to be made for, like, keeping it open anyway. I don't know, it's a very moving, kind of, like, naive, like, desperation slash naivete that's happening here, right?

• 2:38:09Bill Simmons?

  Don't get sentimental, this is picking nits.

• 2:38:11Speaker 03

  A belief in your people, sorry, your, your nit has been picked, I...

• 2:38:14Speaker 01

  They say, well, in the movie, they say that they decide to go with the devil that they knew, which is very, uh, interesting because there happens to be a devil.

• 2:38:23Speaker 03

  An actual devil.

• 2:38:24Speaker 01

  That they have no idea about.

• 2:38:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:38:26Speaker 01

  But yeah, so that's the deal, um, with the reason why they came in.

• 2:38:30Bill Simmons?

  So, first time we see Remick, he's diving into that, toward that person's house. Right?

• 2:38:36Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:38:37Bill Simmons?

  And gets in and he's like, covered in whatever. The sun's out.

• 2:38:43Bill Simmons?

  So why didn't he just die? I thought they died the moment the sun was out.

• 2:38:46Speaker 04

  Well, it's like sundown, he, he was like, about to...

• 2:38:49Speaker 01

  It's dusk.

• 2:38:50Speaker 04

  Or it's dusk.

• 2:38:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:38:53Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 2:38:54Speaker 03

  It's not high as sun.

• 2:38:56Speaker 01

  The sun is not, by the way, this...

• 2:38:58Bill Simmons?

  Are there rules with how high the sun has to be?

• 2:39:00Speaker 04

  His skin is boiling.

• 2:39:01Speaker 01

  This, this, yeah, his skin is boiling, this varies from vampire movie to vampire movie, there are certain vampire movies...

• 2:39:05Bill Simmons?

  We've never, we've never established a code here.

• 2:39:08Speaker 01

  Where the sun comes out and the vampire immediately disintegrates.

• 2:39:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:11Speaker 01

  But there are certain vampire movies where the sun comes out, like in Blade.

• 2:39:14Speaker 03

  It's like, ah! Like gotta get run out of here, please don't.

• 2:39:19Speaker 01

  So I guess this was more of a of a slow.

• 2:39:21Speaker 03

  Slow burn, okay.

• 2:39:23Speaker 04

  You know what this movie does that I struggled with, but then you know vampires, so you probably didn't think about it. But I don't know how much you do or you do, but like the whole, you have to let a vampire, you have to invite a vampire in. They don't really hold your hand through that, like they just expect you to know it.

• 2:39:37Speaker 03

  But they, but it's such a plot point here.

• 2:39:40Speaker 04

  Eventually like it gets banged into your brain.

• 2:39:42Speaker 03

  I kinda love, I love, I had, I'm not familiar with with that.

• 2:39:47Speaker 04

  Like I didn't really know that.

• 2:39:48Speaker 03

  That was a rule.

• 2:39:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:39:49Speaker 03

  But I kinda love how important it is in the world of the movie because it is also serving the metaphor. The sort of racial metaphor.

• 2:40:00Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:40:01Speaker 03

  Right, um, and the movie really commits to the invitation question.

• 2:40:06Speaker 04

  And watching it the second time, you pick up on how early on they start to ask if you can, if they can be invited in it. Cause originally you don't really think about that.

• 2:40:13Speaker 03

  The second time I watched it, I was like, oh, the invitation is crucial.

• 2:40:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so maybe we had consent back in the nineteen thirties in a way we didn't realize.

• 2:40:20Speaker 01

  It's true. I still like, if you guys are looking for all time vampire, let me in scene, that's funny. The original Buffy the Vampire Slayer where David Arquette is outside Luke Perry's window.

• 2:40:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:34Speaker 01

  And he's flying, he's, he's floating and Luke Perry has just like woken up and he's going to open the window for his friend. And he realizes that his friend is flying and he's like, let me in, let me in. He goes, no. Like you're in the air.

• 2:40:54Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:40:54Speaker 01

  Like it's, it's legitimately hysterical. It's a very funny scene and otherwise I fucking about to diss the movie. I love that fucking movie.

• 2:41:03Bill Simmons?

  Quick nitpicks.

• 2:41:03Speaker 01

  Um, I love that movie. Fuck, I will fuck with that.

• 2:41:06Bill Simmons?

  They built the juke joint in three hours, just got that thing right up.

• 2:41:11Speaker 04

  But they're not building it, building it, like they're just.

• 2:41:14Bill Simmons?

  Pretty complicated bar.

• 2:41:15Speaker 04

  Inhabitable. I'm just asking.

• 2:41:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, they had a lot of help.

• 2:41:19Bill Simmons?

  Lot of stuff happened that day leading up to the night of the the juke.

• 2:41:22Speaker 04

  I still love it. I don't care.

• 2:41:25Bill Simmons?

  Just here to pick some nets. Would the three vampires have really turned into an awesome banjo band in two minutes?

• 2:41:32Speaker 03

  Another hilarious, another hilarious development, though. I, no.

• 2:41:36Bill Simmons?

  No rehearsal?

• 2:41:37Speaker 01

  But they have all of Remix's memories.

• 2:41:39Bill Simmons?

  Right. Oh, okay.

• 2:41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:42Bill Simmons?

  Alright, fine.

• 2:41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:44Bill Simmons?

  Uh, and then we talked about this earlier. How did Andy know so much about vampires? And how did the vampires not immediately win the 50 versus A fight? What did you have for nitpicks?

• 2:41:52Speaker 01

  So, okay, number one, we all, let's say we all are here right now. The vampires are outside.

• 2:42:01Speaker 01

  Craig is like, yo, man, Liz is out there. Craig, go, go find her, bro. Peace. The fuck out. Like, he like, he like, go, go find your wife.

• 2:42:11Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:42:12Speaker 01

  I'm not about to be like, Craig, you can't go. Craig, you gotta stay here. Man, Craig, you feel like you gotta go find your girl. I feel you. We in this bitch.

• 2:42:21Bill Simmons?

  Good luck.

• 2:42:21Speaker 01

  Good luck, Craig. We in this bitch till sun up.

• 2:42:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:26Speaker 01

  Go find her. And that's what I would have told Ms. Child, been like, hey, you know, hey, you know what? You're right. That's unfortunate. I don't know what they're gonna do with the kids and stuff. Take your ass out there to Bo. Go find him.

• 2:42:38Speaker 03

  They also didn't seem interested in anybody else other than the people in the club.

• 2:42:42Speaker 01

  They're, they, they are.

• 2:42:43Speaker 03

  Your daughter's probably fine.

• 2:42:45Speaker 01

  They, they are, in my, the moment I saw a vampire, my whole life would be changed in such a fundamental, profound way. Like, it would be so different. Like, yeah, you wanna go, you're right, man. Ain't you a soldier? Hey, he is, and he gonna stay in here and protect us. Get the fuck out. I would have kicked her out. I would have pushed her out of the thing.

• 2:43:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can't kick her out, but I, I understand the urge to because she instantly becomes a very annoying person.

• 2:43:13Speaker 01

  The Klan.

• 2:43:15Speaker 03

  Uh-oh.

• 2:43:16Speaker 01

  Why would you come to Jew joint in the morning to kill everybody? Wouldn't it be a better idea?

• 2:43:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, why not come at 4:30 at night?

• 2:43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:25Speaker 01

  When they're actually partying.

• 2:43:26Bill Simmons?

  And they're drunk.

• 2:43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, everybody's in there drunk. You gonna come in the morning, first of all, you don't hear any music. Like, you don't hear anything going on. The door isn't open. The Klan actually thought that the, the, the people were inside there, where he thought they all were sleeping.

• 2:43:41Speaker 03

  Have you met the Klan?

• 2:43:43Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 2:43:44Speaker 03

  These people are not winning any McArthur's, McArthur Genius Awards.

• 2:43:49Bill Simmons?

  They're not winning Peabody posters.

• 2:43:50Speaker 03

  They're, they're not. They don't even get 200 points for putting their name on the top of the SAT.

• 2:43:56Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 2:43:57Speaker 03

  Like, I don't know, these are not, these, they don't even have a draw.

• 2:44:01Bill Simmons?

  Not a lot of oxygen with the hoods. I think it does hurt them.

• 2:44:04Speaker 01

  Probably so. We can't see in these goddamn things. All y'all do is criticize, criticize, criticize. Now, last thing. Man. I'm for indigenous black unity.

• 2:44:17Speaker 01

  But boy did our native brothers leave us out there to get our asses kicked by the vampires, man.

• 2:44:23Speaker 03

  They said they were leaving and not coming back.

• 2:44:25Speaker 01

  I know, but.

• 2:44:26Speaker 03

  Mad respect.

• 2:44:27Speaker 01

  I know, but we are, we are there and we are getting held. There's vampires and our native brothers, they, they left us out, they hung us out to dry, man.

• 2:44:38Speaker 03

  Didn't they hang us out?

• 2:44:40Speaker 01

  Kind of, first of all, if I was them, so they're hunting the vampires, right?

• 2:44:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:46Speaker 01

  Why not go throughout the town and let people know?

• 2:44:49Speaker 03

  But who knows?

• 2:44:50Speaker 01

  There are vampires afoot.

• 2:44:52Speaker 03

  Where their other stops were. We don't, I mean, because this is, the sun is setting, right?

• 2:44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:57Bill Simmons?

  Or send an email.

• 2:45:00Speaker 01

  Something.

• 2:45:01Bill Simmons?

  Well, there is an alternate version of this movie where the, where the chalked out show up at the end, like, right as shit's going down and all of a sudden they have like additional.

• 2:45:09Speaker 03

  I've thought about that. I was like, that wouldn't make me, I don't know.

• 2:45:13Bill Simmons?

  It would have been more conventional.

• 2:45:14Speaker 01

  One last question.

• 2:45:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:16Speaker 01

  Do vampires have to ask to get inside of your car?

• 2:45:23Speaker 03

  Great question.

• 2:45:25Speaker 01

  Because if you have to invite a vampire in and everybody's like scattered outside, why just go jump in the cars? Jump in the, like, just.

• 2:45:34Bill Simmons?

  It's a good rule of thumb for people listening.

• 2:45:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:45:37Bill Simmons?

  When the vampires come to get us.

• 2:45:39Speaker 03

  Comes everybody.

• 2:45:40Bill Simmons?

  Just get in it, get in a closed body of something.

• 2:45:43Speaker 01

  Get in the closed, whatever. Now Colin Farrell in Fight Night, he changed the game. Because he wouldn't be let inside of the thing and he went and ripped up the gas lines of the kid.

• 2:45:54Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:45:55Speaker 01

  And then did like this and put the, the, the match.

• 2:45:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:59Speaker 01

  To the thing. It's like, I'mma, I'mma burn the fucking house down.

• 2:46:02Bill Simmons?

  Love vampires, man.

• 2:46:03Speaker 01

  I love vampires.

• 2:46:04Speaker 03

  Colin Farrell.

• 2:46:04Bill Simmons?

  Are you a vampire guy or a werewolf guy?

• 2:46:06Speaker 03

  Uh, depends on my mood.

• 2:46:12Bill Simmons?

  Should have known, about to ask that question.

• 2:46:15Speaker 04

  Can I, can I pick one nit?

• 2:46:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:16Speaker 04

  And then I, Liz has a nit.

• 2:46:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:46:18Speaker 04

  Okay, the, when Mrs. Chow makes the Molotov cocktail, lights it on fire, throws it at Rennick. He slaps it away and it hits the barn door and lights the barn door on fire.

• 2:46:29Speaker 03

  How?

• 2:46:29Speaker 04

  Nothing happens from that. The place does not burn down. There is no fire. The whole place would have burned down. The whole barn door is on fire. He hits it into the.

• 2:46:37Speaker 03

  Well, he can't burn the bar down. He can't burn the barn down twice, right? Like, he's already given you the metaphorical barn burning.

• 2:46:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, then I don't know why they include that.

• 2:46:46Bill Simmons?

  It's a red, it's a red herring burn. It's the Russian.

• 2:46:49Speaker 04

  The whole door is on fire for a scene. He hits it and it ignites and then they never get back to it. You never see the fire again. It's like a continuity here.

• 2:46:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:56Speaker 04

  Second one from Liz. She thought smoke and stack were too ripped. Didn't make sense.

• 2:47:02Speaker 03

  They weren't ripped. They were just thick. I did notice that.

• 2:47:04Speaker 04

  Huge. Michael B. Jordan is extremely fit, like Creed fit.

• 2:47:08Speaker 03

  But you're bringing your old, you're bringing your memory of the old Michael B. Jordan body to this body. I think this is just a thick guy.

• 2:47:17Speaker 04

  Oh, come on.

• 2:47:18Speaker 03

  Like, I think like.

• 2:47:19Bill Simmons?

  No, this is in 2025.

• 2:47:22Speaker 04

  With the machine gun, he is like Rambo Jack.

• 2:47:24Bill Simmons?

  Those like George Foreman, Ken Norton type bodies in the 1930s.

• 2:47:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I think that he's, I think that I actually, I truly believe that that is the body he was trying to get to. And I don't know, he's not as, also, we never see him with his shirt off, right?

• 2:47:39Speaker 01

  We see the tank top, that's it.

• 2:47:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's about as far as it goes. I feel like somebody was aware of like this concern. And he was probably asked to eat as many croissants as he possibly could to like.

• 2:47:52Speaker 01

  So he didn't look like he had.

• 2:47:54Speaker 03

  Like to detone himself.

• 2:47:55Speaker 04

  They would have to be working out a lot to be, and they both look the same.

• 2:47:59Speaker 03

  Um, yeah.

• 2:48:00Speaker 04

  I don't know, maybe there was a gym in Chicago.

• 2:48:03Speaker 01

  They were in the military.

• 2:48:04Bill Simmons?

  Sequel.

• 2:48:04Speaker 03

  And they were in the military.

• 2:48:05Speaker 01

  Twenty years ago.

• 2:48:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TBL, Black Cast or Untouchable. Interesting.

• 2:48:12Speaker 01

  It's actually a tougher category than you would think.

• 2:48:14Bill Simmons?

  Can I test drive the prequel? Them in Chicago stealing from Al Capone, like, I'm in.

• 2:48:22Speaker 01

  I will watch it.

• 2:48:23Bill Simmons?

  It's not a vampire movie. It's just like a nineteen, late nineteen twenties, action, Great Depression in Chicago movie.

• 2:48:30Speaker 03

  I'm interested in that.

• 2:48:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:31Speaker 03

  That's like, that's like a little Godfather two to me.

• 2:48:33Bill Simmons?

  Think about it.

• 2:48:34Speaker 01

  I don't fuck with that.

• 2:48:35Bill Simmons?

  Think about it, Ryan Coogler. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collins, or Daniel Plainview? Long Legs or Wilford Brimley?

• 2:48:47Speaker 03

  Ooh, Daniel Plainview.

• 2:48:50Speaker 01

  Daniel Plainview is funny.

• 2:48:52Bill Simmons?

  Did Sam need to be in this movie? Do you think he was upset he wasn't asked?

• 2:48:55Speaker 01

  Bill, don't do it.

• 2:48:57Bill Simmons?

  What? I'm, he's in the category.

• 2:48:59Speaker 03

  I don't, I feel like.

• 2:49:01Bill Simmons?

  Sam's like, I'm right here.

• 2:49:02Speaker 03

  He's done.

• 2:49:04Speaker 01

  Sam is Delta Slim?

• 2:49:06Bill Simmons?

  I'm going with a new answer for this. That's not in the rundown.

• 2:49:09Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 2:49:10Bill Simmons?

  The Good Doctor.

• 2:49:12Speaker 01

  Oh shit, you love this show now.

• 2:49:14Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting. You like that show?

• 2:49:16Speaker 01

  I like it. I like it.

• 2:49:18Bill Simmons?

  The Good Doctor is one of the people in the.

• 2:49:20Speaker 03

  Oh my god, wow.

• 2:49:22Bill Simmons?

  In the.

• 2:49:24Bill Simmons?

  And they're trying to figure out what's going on and they're like, the vampires are trying to kill us. We cannot let them in. Because they are vampires. If you open that door, they would, and it's just like, he's almost like Spock for the crew. And everybody's like, this guy's so fucking annoying. Send him out.

• 2:49:38Speaker 03

  Throw him out.

• 2:49:39Bill Simmons?

  Let's get rid of him now.

• 2:49:41Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 2:49:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:44Bill Simmons?

  Craig wasn't expecting that one.

• 2:49:45Speaker 03

  Sam made this movie, Sam Jackson made this movie. It's called Black Snake Mode.

• 2:49:48Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I did not like that movie.

• 2:49:50Speaker 03

  Many people didn't. It is not, it is not entirely worth.

• 2:49:54Speaker 01

  I tried, I've tried a bunch of times. I appreciate the.

• 2:49:57Speaker 03

  There is a Crazy Blues movie for you.

• 2:49:59Bill Simmons?

  Uh, just one Oscar. Who gets it?

• 2:50:02Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 2:50:03Speaker 03

  It's Ryan Coogler.

• 2:50:06Speaker 03

  I think.

• 2:50:07Speaker 01

  Just one Oscar is probably. I have, I have Mike, but probably the direction is probably, is probably Coogler, man.

• 2:50:16Speaker 03

  It's Coogler for directing.

• 2:50:18Bill Simmons?

  I think it's Coogler for directing. I think if you did this, what's the safest bet Oscar from this movie is the scores winning.

• 2:50:26Speaker 01

  The scores are winning.

• 2:50:27Bill Simmons?

  Like that's, I didn't even know what the other scores are.

• 2:50:29Speaker 03

  I would vote for original screenplay.

• 2:50:32Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 2:50:32Speaker 03

  I would vote for originals.

• 2:50:34Bill Simmons?

  How about that new category? Cause we, this, it hasn't happened yet. What is the over under for Oscars for this movie? Knowing, not even knowing what's coming out.

• 2:50:42Speaker 03

  Winning or not?

• 2:50:43Bill Simmons?

  Winning.

• 2:50:44Speaker 03

  Winning.

• 2:50:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, let's go winning and nominations.

• 2:50:46Speaker 01

  Okay. So. I'm gonna.

• 2:50:49Bill Simmons?

  FanDuel, just FanDuel set this at three and a half?

• 2:50:52Speaker 01

  So picture.

• 2:50:54Bill Simmons?

  Pictures in play.

• 2:50:55Speaker 01

  Because that's a 10, that's a 10 nomination category, right? Or did they, did they?

• 2:50:59Bill Simmons?

  Oh, for nominate, for nominate.

• 2:51:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's definitely a best picture.

• 2:51:02Bill Simmons?

  Picture a hundred percent.

• 2:51:03Speaker 01

  Picture.

• 2:51:03Speaker 03

  You can't get to 10 movies right now.

• 2:51:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:51:07Bill Simmons?

  Picture Coogler, score.

• 2:51:10Bill Simmons?

  MBJ.

• 2:51:11Speaker 01

  Can I sell you, can I sell you? On Annie's character as a best supporting actress nominee?

• 2:51:17Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I think a hundred percent.

• 2:51:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can see that.

• 2:51:20Bill Simmons?

  To me, it's like, can she and Haley both get in? Only five spots.

• 2:51:25Speaker 03

  I think Winmi is, is much.

• 2:51:26Speaker 01

  I think Winmi, yeah.

• 2:51:27Speaker 03

  Like much likely.

• 2:51:28Bill Simmons?

  I think, I think she'd be the favorite in that one. And then.

• 2:51:31Speaker 03

  But I wouldn't be mad if.

• 2:51:32Bill Simmons?

  Delroy's getting nominated.

• 2:51:34Speaker 03

  Oh, he's getting nominated.

• 2:51:34Bill Simmons?

  Like lock that in.

• 2:51:36Speaker 01

  He's honestly.

• 2:51:37Speaker 03

  But we've been saying this, can I just say, we have been saying lock that in for Delroy Lindo for 20.

• 2:51:42Bill Simmons?

  Jack O'Connell?

• 2:51:43Speaker 03

  For 30 years.

• 2:51:44Speaker 01

  Jack O'Connell as well. I think.

• 2:51:45Speaker 03

  And he's never been nominated.

• 2:51:47Speaker 01

  I think Delroy is the most likely to win.

• 2:51:49Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 2:51:51Bill Simmons?

  Listen, there's 20 total acting nomination spots and this movie might. End up with five of them.

• 2:52:00Speaker 01

  I think Delroy is most likely win.

• 2:52:02Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 2:52:02Bill Simmons?

  I would, I would bet on Delroy right now if Fandor had the odds.

• 2:52:06Speaker 01

  Eddington and then the PTA movie.

• 2:52:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we haven't seen the PTA movie.

• 2:52:11Speaker 01

  Are gonna be like fucking mammoths, but, cause Eddington is phenomenal, but it.

• 2:52:17Speaker 03

  But you, this is interesting. This is a completely different conversation about Eddington.

• 2:52:23Speaker 01

  I think Eddington's great. You didn't like Eddington?

• 2:52:25Speaker 03

  Uh, I mean, I have mixed feelings about it, but I feel like there are a lot of people who really don't like it. I don't know. I can't tell how, how many, how leggy.

• 2:52:34Bill Simmons?

  It's an exceptionally polarized movie.

• 2:52:35Speaker 03

  Coming, coming, coming the end of the year.

• 2:52:37Bill Simmons?

  Uh, probably an answerable questions. We did everything. Um, I only, the only one I have left is, did Josh Allen enjoy this movie?

• 2:52:45Speaker 03

  Oh, great question.

• 2:52:47Bill Simmons?

  What an unbelievable press conference moment that would be before like the first week one. Hey, what do you think about the Pats defense? Blah, blah, blah. And then Josh, uh, Bill Simmons here from ESPN.com.

• 2:52:59Speaker 03

  What was your least favorite scene from Sinners?

• 2:53:01Bill Simmons?

  How much did you hate Sinners on a scale of one to 10?

• 2:53:05Speaker 01

  That's funny. Uh, I have one unanswerable question.

• 2:53:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:09Speaker 01

  Do Stack and Mary in 1992 still listen to Irish music?

• 2:53:15Speaker 03

  Oh, great question. Well, the great thing about that question, about that question.

• 2:53:20Speaker 01

  Remix dead. Do they ever just put on, cause that was around the time that Lord of the Dance?

• 2:53:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:25Speaker 01

  Was starting to like, do they watch?

• 2:53:27Bill Simmons?

  Think they moved on.

• 2:53:29Speaker 03

  I mean, they're, they're dressed, I mean, think about how they're dressed. That, the end of that movie is really kind of deep, right?

• 2:53:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:35Speaker 03

  Because if we're thinking about this as a music movie, and he has all these feelings about the blues. They are dressed like Keith Sweat and like some Mary J. Blige prototype, some like, like Salt and Pepper, basically.

• 2:53:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:52Speaker 03

  And.

• 2:53:54Bill Simmons?

  Shout out to Keith.

• 2:53:55Speaker 03

  They, they're clearly.

• 2:53:59Speaker 03

  I don't know. I mean, there's something about the vampires being aligned with hip hop at this point.

• 2:54:04Speaker 01

  Funny, yeah.

• 2:54:05Speaker 03

  And they're going out into the night to do who knows what. Um, like what if if they're musically driven, what are they musically driven to do?

• 2:54:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:16Speaker 03

  Um, and what are they musically already doing? I don't know. There's a lot of like, cause I mean, they would have had to have figured out these clothes. They would have had to have survived the seventies and the sixties.

• 2:54:29Bill Simmons?

  This should have been a good, unanswerable question. What'd they do for sixty years? How many people did they bite?

• 2:54:34Speaker 01

  They had, they've had to bite.

• 2:54:35Bill Simmons?

  Did they have favorite restaurants?

• 2:54:36Speaker 03

  I mean, here's a, here's a, here's a sequel or like a pre.

• 2:54:40Bill Simmons?

  Smoke was a big Bulls fan, late eighties, early nineties, really got into MJ. Started going to games, got season, bit the guy who had awesome season tickets.

• 2:54:49Speaker 03

  Who can say? Like, I mean, I don't know. There's a whole world of, of, there's like, what? Five decades, six decades to just like.

• 2:54:58Bill Simmons?

  Lot of shit coming. Um, quickly, let's, let's rip through because we're late on time.

• 2:55:03Speaker 03

  I have to go to the airport.

• 2:55:04Bill Simmons?

  What piece of memorabilia do you want or not want from this movie?

• 2:55:07Speaker 01

  It's gotta be the good.

• 2:55:09Bill Simmons?

  The harmonica.

• 2:55:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:55:10Bill Simmons?

  What about the broken guitar?

• 2:55:11Speaker 01

  Would love that too.

• 2:55:13Bill Simmons?

  Coach Finstock, what are best life lesson? You keep dancing with the devil. One day he's gonna follow you home.

• 2:55:19Speaker 01

  I have a different one.

• 2:55:20Bill Simmons?

  What do you got?

• 2:55:20Speaker 01

  White women can come in the party, but not white men.

• 2:55:26Speaker 03

  Amen. But listen, this, a black woman did come in.

• 2:55:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'm saying.

• 2:55:32Speaker 03

  I mean, no white woman entered.

• 2:55:33Speaker 01

  We might let, we not one of the fifty-three percent of white women, they know who they are. But the other, we might let them in the party, but white men, y'all bring too much shit with y'all.

• 2:55:42Bill Simmons?

  Uh, best double feature choice. What do you got?

• 2:55:45Speaker 03

  Oh, great question.

• 2:55:47Speaker 01

  For me, it was From Dust Till Dawn. Easy.

• 2:55:49Speaker 03

  I was gonna pick a Tarantino, my impulse is to pick a Tarantino movie, interestingly.

• 2:55:54Bill Simmons?

  Um, I had The Thing.

• 2:55:56Speaker 03

  Oh, that's a good one. It's a good one.

• 2:55:57Bill Simmons?

  But I think the answer is Fruitvale.

• 2:56:00Speaker 03

  Oh, say more.

• 2:56:01Speaker 01

  First.

• 2:56:01Bill Simmons?

  Go in the beginning. Then follow the journey all the way this fully, fully realized 12 plus years later. Here are these guys again in a completely different amazing movie.

• 2:56:13Speaker 03

  I like that idea.

• 2:56:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:14Speaker 03

  I like that idea.

• 2:56:15Bill Simmons?

  All right, toughest one, who won the movie? Maybe not that tough.

• 2:56:18Speaker 03

  It's not tough. Ryan Coogler.

• 2:56:20Speaker 01

  Ryan won.

• 2:56:20Speaker 03

  Ryan Coogler won.

• 2:56:21Speaker 01

  I mean, Mike is right there. Really, really it's Mike and Ryan.

• 2:56:24Speaker 03

  I mean, just think about the way we, we have been talking, the afterlife of this movie, which really is still its actual life because it's, it's been, it's only been like three or four months. Like, these are Ryan Coogler's ideas. These are ideas that are older than Ryan Coogler, that he has like reframed in a way to make us think about them in a different way. And these are ideas that are exciting to think about as ideas, right? Like, what does this movie mean? What is it saying? What is it doing?

• 2:56:56Bill Simmons?

  Coogler's answer.

• 2:56:57Speaker 01

  There's a Miles Cate in 20 years.

• 2:57:01Bill Simmons?

  But, but 20 years from now, we might be saying it was Miles Cate and if he becomes this massive A plus list star and this was the launchpad for him. Be like, you know, actually win that movie?

• 2:57:12Speaker 03

  I don't see it happening, but we could, let's see.

• 2:57:15Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Craig, what are your thoughts? Quick?

• 2:57:17Speaker 04

  Uh, saw it in the IMAX at the Grove with a friend. Loved it. Incredible theatrical experience. Um, I think Van comparing Coogler to Spielberg is, is correct. And I've thought about that because Coogler really knows how to be theatrical. He knows how to sell it. Like, I think this movie is so good because you can kind of just watch it on the surface and have a great time and think it's a 10 out of 10. Or you could really get into it and all the layers of it and think it's a 10 out of 10 for a completely different reason.

• 2:57:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:44Speaker 04

  Um, and like I, him drawing this whole movie up, knowing how to market it, the shot of Michael B. Jordan with the gun, like building the trailer correctly to get people into the theater. He has that Spielberg like magic sauce to him where he knows how to combine a great movie and also make it feel like a popcorn movie. So, great.

• 2:58:03Speaker 03

  I just had a whole conversation about like all of Steven Spielberg's children. In this conversation I had with my friend Eric about the 100 greatest movies of the 21st century or whatever on Cannonball. See, I can do it, Bill. Um, but we were talking about the ways in which Spielberg is.

• 2:58:24Speaker 03

  I mean, remains the most important father of like these tributaries of filmmakers.

• 2:58:30Speaker 04

  Like his coaching tree.

• 2:58:31Speaker 03

  Who are very different from Spielberg, but like really understand Spielberg's sort of entertainment philosophy. And hold, if held on to some of his ideas while also just being themselves at the same time.

• 2:58:43Speaker 04

  This movie is also just like so shockingly original, like even I watched it with Liz and her, my brother in law the other night, Liz hadn't seen it yet. 20 minutes in, she was like, this isn't based off anything, right? I was like, no.

• 2:58:55Speaker 03

  Think how sad that is.

• 2:58:56Speaker 04

  It's just so.

• 2:58:57Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, and that's what we did our video about last month. It's just like original IP, man. It's still, it still wins in the end.

• 2:59:04Speaker 04

  Even if you don't like the big musical scene or whatever, I just like that the movie feels like it's one person's hands all over it. Somebody had an idea. You know what I mean? Yeah, somebody had an idea.

• 2:59:12Bill Simmons?

  Sinners, an all timer. HBO Max is now the platform that it's on, I guess, but you can watch it. But I would recommend if you haven't seen the theater yet, go to the theater. Wesley Morris, a true pleasure. Ben Lathan, great as always. Thanks to Craig and Chris as well. And one name movie month will continue next week.

• 2:59:43Speaker 02

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