‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ (Part One) With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey, and Van Lathan

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, a trio of Ringer movie lovers Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey, and Van Lathan use the force to get their galactic leader Bill Simmons to revisit one of the most iconic films of all time, George Lucas’s ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher. In Part 1, the guys break down why they love the movie, how it got made, and the enormous impact it had on Hollywood at the time and to this day. Manager: Craig Horlbeck Video Producers: Ronak Nair, Jack Sanders Audio Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to the brand new Zach Lowe Show. That's right, I'm back to have the same in-depth NBA conversations you're used to. We're going to talk about the games, the X's and O's, the drama. The playoffs are coming up and now you get to see every episode in full on video on Spotify and on my own YouTube channel. Episodes drop every Monday and Thursday with a collection of guests you're gonna love. So make sure you follow and subscribe to the brand new Zach Lowe Show on Spotify or wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts. Let's go.

• 0:35Speaker 01

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• 1:35Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures, WildHorse9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, 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 Kristen 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. WildHorse9 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 WildHorse9, only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now.

• 2:20Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find the watch with CR. That's right. Big Picture with Sean Finacy, Higher Learning. Yes. Midnight Boys?

• 2:30Speaker 03

  Pew pew!

• 2:32Bill Simmons?

  Pew. Pew.

• 2:33Speaker 03

  You better get it right for this.

• 2:34Bill Simmons?

  It's crucial, yeah.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  You better get it right.

• 2:36Bill Simmons?

  I'm Bill Simmons. We're about to do Star Wars. It, uh, it's a major movie and you guys are really, really excited. Let's get it going.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  You fucking dorked off.

• 2:49Bill Simmons?

  You guys, how you guys do.

• 2:50Sean Fennessey?

  You can't bully us throughout this pod, though.

• 2:52Bill Simmons?

  Not bullying anything. I had a great time.

• 2:54Speaker 05

  A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Here they come. Star Wars. Coming in too fast! An adventure unlike anything on your planet.

• 3:06Speaker 05

  It's an epic of heroes. And villains. And aliens from a thousand worlds.

• 3:17Speaker 05

  Star Wars. Rated PG.

• 3:34Bill Simmons?

  All right, guys. First installment of the greatest trilogy ever. Peak of the 70s blockbuster era. Godfather, Exorcist, Jaws, Rocky, Star Wars. Return of popular cinema.

• 3:47Bill Simmons?

  The highest stakes ever in an actual movie. Because the entire galaxy is at stake, man.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:53Bill Simmons?

  What jumps out first for you? Star Wars. 1977. I'm not doing this chapter for New Hope. Fuck that. This movie's called Star Wars.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:59Bill Simmons?

  I saw it in a theater. We called it Star Wars.

• 4:02Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 4:03Speaker 03

  Okay. Oh, it's already begun.

• 4:07Speaker 03

  One of the single most important moments in my life.

• 4:09Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  Is watching Star Wars with my father. It actually opened up my mind to an entire realm of cinematic possibility. Being that deep in space. All of the lore that goes on around it, all the mystery. When you first see it, you're wondering, what's happening, what's happening, what's happening? How do you explain some of the things that are going on? It, it, it assumes that you understand both the natural hero's arc. But also that you kind of get and understand the stakes of the world. It sets you up, for, for me at least, to understand all of the nerd culture stuff and all of the science fiction stuff that I will go on to love for the rest of my life.

• 4:52Sean Fennessey?

  How old were you when you saw it?

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Seven.

• 4:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Seven years old.

• 4:56Bill Simmons?

  I'm the only one who saw it in the theater.

• 4:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I, I mean, this is the movie that I've seen the most of my life, I think.

• 5:01Bill Simmons?

  I was surprised to hear that. You told me that last week.

• 5:03Chris Ryan?

  I mean, you have to remember, it's like from the time that I can basically remember from when I was like five or six to now. I mean, it's just been a constant in my life and especially with the last, what, 15 years of its revival? Pretty much since like 2013, when did Force Wakens come out?

• 5:23Sean Fennessey?

  Fif- fifteen.

• 5:24Bill Simmons?

  It's had two revivals, because the 97 was the first revival.

• 5:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 5:28Bill Simmons?

  When they released it and it like crushed.

• 5:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 5:30Chris Ryan?

  I was partying when that was happening. Like I was.

• 5:32Sean Fennessey?

  No, I was a teenager. It was huge.

• 5:34Bill Simmons?

  Over 200 million dollars.

• 5:35Sean Fennessey?

  I saw them all again in theaters.

• 5:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Sean Fennessey?

  Well, there was also, they added new stuff, so that was part of the appeal. But then they get the prequels too. That was like, there were like four, five waves.

• 5:43Bill Simmons?

  It feels like the mid 2010s and then this whole Disney and or Mandalorian universe was like the fourth revival of it.

• 5:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, it's like, we do these rewatchables a lot and like, we'll talk about movies from, say, like, the early 80s or the 70s. This is the first one I think we've done that I feel like was this turning point where I was born into a world after Star Wars. So I was born at the end of 77. So everything that happened in my life is a world that is reacting to what George Lucas did. And it's so I don't even have like a frame of reference for what going to the movies was like before Star Wars. And I think it's a testament to this movie's legacy and impact that movies were never the same after that.

• 6:23Sean Fennessey?

  And I think also because of what you were saying with Rocky and The Godfather and this era of massive cinema. But most of those movies were for adults and for guys like us who are like in their 40s, who were born into a world of Star Wars. These are movies for kids. I mean, you could, I think I was probably four or five when I saw Star Wars for the first time. And so it just becomes a part of your cultural bloodstream at a very, very early age. So I, it's definitely on the list too for me for the movies I've seen the most. And I vividly remember having the three VHS cassette box, you know, that expanded sized box. And just like running that over and over and over again in dead time in afternoons after school.

• 7:03Sean Fennessey?

  So it's gotta be super high on the list. And, you know, I think like all of us, like it just set us up for a lifetime of getting interested in science fiction, fantasy, comic books, like all this stuff that is so present in the culture now, starts with this movie.

• 7:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was always, I was, when I was watching it this time. I was thinking a lot about Luke and Han. And when you're a kid, let's say when you're like six or seven years older, whenever you see this movie and you're starting to get all the toys. I mean, this movie really, it suggests a lot of things about what we would come to understand about the mythology and the lore around Star Wars. But there's so many pockets for your imagination in this. And I was taken back to like having the toys and like writing my own Star Wars stories. Because it wasn't so, everything was drilled down. All the details were nailed down, like all the things about Star Wars that we now know, which is gonna make picking nits almost hard. Because you can just be like, oh yeah, they answered that in Rogue One, or they answered that in Jedi, or they answered that in Sith.

• 7:59Chris Ryan?

  It's like, well, for me, I came up with them. Like, and that was like this thing that became, it almost belonged to everybody. Because in your mind, you're like, I think about Wedge as much as I think about whoever. And I have like a whole story laid out in my little brain about this. And I think that's why people are still obsessed with it later in life, is because you have this memory of it being like a cortex of how you started to use your creative brain, almost.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  There was scarcity as well.

• 8:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  Like, we didn't have a lot of Star Wars material and content. Obviously, they went on to be television specials, and it was constantly referenced and all of that stuff. But, you know, there weren't like, there were comic books and stuff like that. But then you, until you get to the expanded universe stuff and all of that stuff that we spent all of those years reading, and then they just said, doesn't exist. After hours and hours and hours of reading it, still feel away about that. You had to make the mythology up in your head. You had to wonder, how was this a big deal? You had to think about what the Clone Wars were, like how they fought, what a Jedi looked like when a Jedi was 25. We only knew old Jedis and then baby Jedis. We never knew a Jedi in his prime.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  You had to think about all of these variables because it wasn't given it to you yet. We were still in the baby stages of how gigantic the universe would become. And that sort of goose your imagination to fill in the gaps of the stuff that you hadn't seen but wanted to see.

• 9:31Chris Ryan?

  So, it came out, I think I was at the end of maybe second grade? It was like late, I was still in school.

• 9:37Bill Simmons?

  And people were going to see it like he started, I didn't see it right away. People in my, in my class, some of them, and I was in, you know, Massachusetts. And people were going like four or five times in two weeks. And it was the first time. You're like, wait, this kid David, like this kid David.

• 9:55Chris Ryan?

  You think you're better than me, David? He saw it. Star Wars four times?

• 9:59Bill Simmons?

  He saw it six times in two weeks. And it was like, what?

• 10:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 10:03Bill Simmons?

  He went to the same movie six, like we were just like dumbfounded. And there was like the sports kids. And then there were like the Star Wars kids. And there were these certain kids that they just.

• 10:11Chris Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 10:13Bill Simmons?

  And there was some that overlap.

• 10:14Sean Fennessey?

  There'll be other many more times in this episode.

• 10:16Bill Simmons?

  But there were these kids that really all of a sudden it became part of their personality, like this movie. When we came back for, I guess the net third grade, whatever it was. And there, at that point, some of the merch was out and.

• 10:27Sean Fennessey?

  I think that.

• 10:28Bill Simmons?

  They were just into it. And it was like this whole world. I never remember seeing that before.

• 10:32Sean Fennessey?

  I do think that that is a real generational divide between us at least where to me, like the kids who are in this sports were into Star Wars. Like that was, the ringer exists, I think, because eventually what happened to the culture is that those things were all the same.

• 10:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Sean Fennessey?

  That like your obsession and your passion. And I told you, when you texted me about doing this. I vividly remember being 10 years old and walking down the hill from my house to go to the local bookstore. And I would just sit in the bookstore and I would read the Star Wars encyclopedia for hours. I couldn't afford to buy the book.

• 11:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:01Sean Fennessey?

  The exact thing that Van is describing and that Chris is describing was like, there was so much information that you heard uttered one time in one of the movies. And then there was all this lore that was explained about it. But it was the same exact experience as looking at the back of a baseball card.

• 11:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:15Sean Fennessey?

  Right? Where you're like, you're, you're getting a better understanding of the history of this thing that you have a passion for. But you can only experience it when you're watching a game, or you can only experience it when you're watching the movie. Except there's all this external culture around it. And like, I'm sure when the movie came out, everybody was getting toys and they were.

• 11:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, the Halloween was the first one. Whatever. The Halloween was a few years later and everybody was dressed as like Luke or Princess.

• 11:38Chris Ryan?

  Did David go as Luke or Vader?

• 11:39Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. We probably tried to bully him at some point.

• 11:41Chris Ryan?

  That's cool.

• 11:44Sean Fennessey?

  Where's David now?

• 11:46Chris Ryan?

  David, come on out.

• 11:48Bill Simmons?

  The, uh, but it just, it, it wasn't for me until Empire. It was like, I saw it in the theater, it was cool. We didn't really have cable in the same way back then. I remember there was that famous holiday special they did a year. I didn't see that either. But when Empire came out, that's when it was like.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  That makes sense, though.

• 12:04Bill Simmons?

  When Empire came out, I was like, holy shit. So, and now there's gonna be a third one? We just weren't conditioned to think of trilogies like that.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Empire was the serious movie.

• 12:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  It was the movie where Star Wars grew up. Where there was a defined romance in the movie between Han and Leia. Where Luke.

• 12:21Bill Simmons?

  Wait, don't spoil me, I haven't seen it.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  Where Luke has this adversity and personal crisis about who he is and how he's gonna get there. And that's the movie where they went, okay, let's take all the ideas from the first one. And then evolve them into a movie that is for the movie goer. That's a little bit more of a grown up version of it. Cause it's a lot darker. And there's a lot of double crossing and things that are going on. So they actually kind of made Empire for the guys like yourself. Who were probably, you know, I mean, you were still pretty young at the time. But were more serious film goers and film watchers.

• 12:58Bill Simmons?

  Well, Kate, that came out kind of around The Shining. Eighty was a really good movie year, yeah. But, um, look, you, watching this twice in four days. The first time I watched, I hadn't seen it in a long time. And I was like, ah, it's dated, but nah, this is fun. This is nostalgic. And then I watched it the second time and I was like, this movie's kinda awesome. Like, there's all the themes.

• 13:19Sean Fennessey?

  He was onto something, that George Lucas.

• 13:21Bill Simmons?

  I was like, holy shit.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  We don't need that from him.

• 13:23Bill Simmons?

  I'm just saying, I was like, whoa, they really, they really did a good job.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  Star Wars is a good movie.

• 13:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:29Chris Ryan?

  Would you say over, under ten times you've seen this in your life?

• 13:34Bill Simmons?

  I think I've seen pieces of it for fifty years. But just watching it start to finish. Cause when you start it, especially when we had kids, I was like, I wonder if my kids will like it. And C three PO and R two D two go in the desert. And the movie just dies for like four minutes. And if your kids can get over that hump, you just basically have to get your kids to the Star Wars bar scene. Once you're there, it kinda, you're going from that point. But it does get a little slow there.

• 13:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I had kind of the inverted experience rewatching it. I rewatched it a couple of times for this. The first time I was like, man, we are on Tatooine for a long fucking time. This is just a lot of desert time with Luke. And I was kinda bored.

• 14:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:09Sean Fennessey?

  And it's probably been between five and ten years since I've last watched it. And but by the time we got to the trench run, I was like, probably best movie ever made. This is the best I've ever felt about a movie. I was vibrating. I was like in tears.

• 14:21Bill Simmons?

  That's how I felt the second time. I was like, this is just amazing. Everything they pulled up. Like every time Darth Vader comes in, it's the best entrance. He's the most captivating villain that's ever been in a movie. And you're just like, and he's in the movie for 12 minutes.

• 14:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:35Bill Simmons?

  There's never been a better villain, right?

• 14:37Speaker 03

  It's funny. The movie is about him. It's his story.

• 14:41Sean Fennessey?

  We didn't get it though. We didn't get it.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  We did not know that then.

• 14:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  We didn't know that then, but when you watch it through that lens now, you're still watching his story and the story of his kids and the story of the entire.

• 14:54Chris Ryan?

  And his surrogate father and everything. Yeah.

• 14:56Bill Simmons?

  Well, when Obi-Wan tells the story about what happened to Luke's dad, but you know, I mean, it's, we're gonna talk about a bunch of shit during this pod, but that keeping that secret, not knowing that secret in 1977 at all and watching the movie one way. But now knowing the secret when you watch it, it's a completely different movie.

• 15:14Chris Ryan?

  I think I, the thing that jumped out at me on these rewatches was I always forget how bratty Luke is for that first hour. You know, and like, there's, there's like those funny lines where he's like, you know, I was gonna, I was gonna.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  Tosh Station.

• 15:28Chris Ryan?

  Tosh Station, giving power converters or whatever. And it's really like not until they spring Leia, that he kind of like starts to grow up a little bit. And then that's also when he has the moment that basically makes him a man when he loses Obi-Wan or whatever. But like, yeah, it's really funny. I remember being a kid.

• 15:46Bill Simmons?

  I can't wait to talk about that.

• 15:47Chris Ryan?

  And identifying with Luke because I was a child. So Luke was kind of like a cool older person to me then. And now it's like, you go back and you're just like, I just watch, it's just like, as soon as Solo shows up, the movie takes off.

• 15:58Bill Simmons?

  So well, that's the other thing. When you're watching this, it's Harrison Ford, one of the great actors from a popcorn standpoint in the last 50 years. And he's just this young version of him. It's like watching young, somebody in college, like some NBA player.

• 16:12Chris Ryan?

  So like watching.

• 16:12Bill Simmons?

  To love and they're just dunking on everybody.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Completely fucking confident. Every scene.

• 16:21Bill Simmons?

  Crushing it.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  Is like the movie is written for him. People are talking about stuff and Han's going, that's bullshit. And you're going with that guy.

• 16:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  Are we sure we should be doing the right? Perfectly.

• 16:32Bill Simmons?

  You feel like he can sleep with Princess Leia if you give him like three minutes.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Oh, he feels like it.

• 16:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's like, I could take this down right now.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  Playing with Luke, Luke is like, uh, what do you think of her? They lie, whatever, I try not to. And then Han sees that Luke is, you know, a little into her. And then he starts fucking with him a little bit.

• 16:47Chris Ryan?

  Still, a lot of spirit, though.

• 16:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he is also the only person in the movie who's allowed to talk like a modern person. He doesn't have a British accent. The part when he blows up the control panel and he's dressed as a stormtrooper and he's like, boring conversation anyway. He's like the only guy who's sarcastic. He's the only guy who has really like ju- like modern jokes.

• 17:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Sean Fennessey?

  And so he feels like the cool ver- the cool guy you want to be. Luke is a hero, but he's so bland. I mean, he just doesn't have shape as a person. Han is a guy who's lived, you know, he's thirty four years old.

• 17:20Bill Simmons?

  You think Luke doesn't have shape because of the actor or the way the character was written?

• 17:24Chris Ryan?

  No, I think it's supposed to be a kid who's isolated, who's looking for, feels like his life should have meaning and it doesn't. And it's just.

• 17:33Bill Simmons?

  But if that's eighteen year old Shalameh as Luke in nineteen seventy seven, is Luke a better, more interesting character?

• 17:40Sean Fennessey?

  We're already getting started on Mark Hamill.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  I'm just saying, let's get into the, into the double feature situation, but here's the deal, here's what I know now. That they built lore around that we didn't know then. Luke is being protected.

• 17:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  Very directly by Kenobi and, um, by his uncle, right? Luke's call to action is mystical. The Force is calling to Luke, right? The thing that's making Luke look out at the stars and I'm actually feeling the weight of talking about Luke. It's, it's difficult to explain.

• 18:16Chris Ryan?

  This is like the men's recovery. We're just gonna be like, the three of us are gonna be crying and still be like, yeah. Rocky was good too.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  Right, I'm getting, I'm getting chills. The, the, Luke is being called to something more because it's his birthright.

• 18:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  And so when you watch the film now, he's annoying, but I'm, I'm watching him, I'm going, let him go. Let him go. It's Luke fucking Skywalker. You don't know what he's supposed to become. You guys are muting his life. To that point.

• 18:45Bill Simmons?

  It's like Ciara saying this about Anthony Edwards last year during the playoffs.

• 18:48Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 18:48Bill Simmons?

  Let him go.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  Like when Uncle Owen kinda gets burnt to a crisp, I'm kinda like, alright, cool, not a movie can start. You know what I mean?

• 18:54Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  So, so all of that's happening and he's bratty, but it's a part of the most perfect three film arc to me in movie history.

• 19:00Bill Simmons?

  I have a confession.

• 19:02Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 19:02Bill Simmons?

  I feel like I, I should have gotten more involved in the Star Wars. This actually made me, watching the second time, I'm like, this is a bad job by me. I should have gotten more, but I'm actually excited to watch the second one now.

• 19:13Sean Fennessey?

  You've seen it though?

• 19:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I saw, I saw it in the theater.

• 19:16Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. The second one. What do you think?

• 19:18Bill Simmons?

  I saw all of them in the theater.

• 19:20Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 19:20Bill Simmons?

  I went that you had to go. There was that, you were just left out of the conversation if you didn't go.

• 19:24Sean Fennessey?

  What was it though? Were you like, I don't wanna be perceived as a nerd?

• 19:27Bill Simmons?

  Not, not at all. I just, just never really, never really got me in the way like some sports movies, action movies, all that. I just never really dove in.

• 19:37Sean Fennessey?

  He also has six B's tickets. But you love lore. I mean, you were like, with basketball, when you talk about bas, the history of basketball, this is exactly like listening to Van talk about Luke Skywalker.

• 19:46Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 19:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's the same exact.

• 19:47Bill Simmons?

  I blew it. I was talking to my buddy Jim Grady, one of my best high school friends, and he had two cassettes that were on all the time. We watched Rocky III all the time, and then he would always have Star Wars on. And I would always be, if he was watching that, I would always wanna do something else.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Bill, I'm gonna go back.

• 20:02Bill Simmons?

  And he was like, how dare you do rewatchables? I tried to get you to watch that for the entire late eighties.

• 20:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  I'm gonna dig around in your past. Don't let me find out you were like William Zabka eighties cool kid.

• 20:12Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Karate kid, recede kid.

• 20:14Bill Simmons?

  I just never got, and never, I never really liked Star Trek either. I watched all the Star Treks, but I never really.

• 20:21Sean Fennessey?

  Sci-fi just doesn't grab you. There is an element of sci-fi to this.

• 20:24Bill Simmons?

  But when I watched it this, these two times, I was a little more intrigued because I just like how there's big themes and it steals from the past with all these other things. Like this is basically a western.

• 20:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's an adventure movie too.

• 20:36Bill Simmons?

  This is a Clint Easton movie. He goes back, his family's been wiped out. It steals from ninety different things.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  Steals from Dune to the point that Frank Herbert was pissed off about the fact that he thought the movie was too derivative.

• 20:48Bill Simmons?

  Stole from Flash Gordon.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  Stole from Flash Gordon.

• 20:50Bill Simmons?

  Cause that was what Lucas wanted to make.

• 20:51Sean Fennessey?

  Wizard of Oz. I mean, look at the, the C three PO and R two and Chewie.

• 20:56Bill Simmons?

  It's beyond the stealing of Wizard of Oz. It just feels like.

• 20:58Chris Ryan?

  Kurosawa.

• 20:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, all that stuff is all, it's all synthesized into this perfect little package.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  But also a demonstration that even though we're telling the same stories that invoke the same emotions, it is how you tell them. It is the world that you put people in. It is the ideas and the concepts that you're able to create when you're telling these stories. You have a new, not a new form of government, but you have a new style, a new look. You have the technology aspect of this, which was revolutionary in and of itself, right? You have all of the things that you take to take a cla- that you need, shall I say, to take a classic and making it to something that people have never seen.

• 21:35Chris Ryan?

  Can I ask you a question? Cause you obviously are watching the Star Wars stuff that comes out now with such a close eye.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:42Chris Ryan?

  One of the things I thought was really interesting reading, doing research about this was, you know, Lucas goes through all these different variations of the script. It's two hundred and fifty pages at some point. He has the entire trilogy mapped out. When this stuff comes out, it's immediately like there are going to be twelve movies. He's got twelve in his head. But when you watch the first one, when you watch A New Hope, the thing that blows your mind is that first forty-five minutes, albeit maybe a little bit dull, is not packed to the gills with the information. There's not a ton of exposition about like, well, okay, there's the Senate and then they're doing this and then like, we're going to cut Palpatine and then we're going to cut to here and these characters are going to meet just to talk about the fact that there's a vote coming up or that the Clone Wars were like this. It's just droids wandering around in the desert, which in a weird way becomes more immersive, right?

• 22:26Chris Ryan?

  Like you're like, what the fuck is this movie? What is going on? So do you, do you, I guess I, my question is like, do you have a preference or do you kind of see the difference between how Star Wars has changed over the years?

• 22:38Speaker 03

  I see how we've changed.

• 22:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  So during that time, you trusted the audience more, right? Door opens, seven foot, black droid, black in color and in voice. Rest in peace, James Earl Jones. Pops in, this guy is evil, the death march plays, you know, it's fucking on, right? When you say the Clone Wars, the audience then is going, oh my God, Clone Wars, Clone Wars. Like, in the, the audience now, we're like, what are you talking about, right? So, we kind of demand this interrogation of story that is good. It makes us more sophisticated moviegoers, but it also sometimes, and I can say this about Star Wars fans even now, puts the handcuffs on what filmmakers are able to do.

• 23:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  Because it makes you want to roll out the story faster than what it is that they're giving it to you. This movie, the pace is a little all over the place, but it's expecting you to actually do a little work and putting yourself in the world. And it's giving you enough visually at that time, which I'm assuming we hadn't seen too much stuff like this.

• 23:45Bill Simmons?

  And I had. No, we hadn't seen any stuff like this.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Right, so it's expecting that you'll be wowed by what it is that you're seeing, and you'll sort of succumb to or surrender to like what's on the screen. And by the time you know it, you're on a wild ride.

• 23:59Bill Simmons?

  They also, there's some cheat stuff that they do that's really smart. Like even the ways that they name some of the characters. It's like Han Solo.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:07Bill Simmons?

  He's a solo act.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:09Bill Simmons?

  You know, like, but.

• 24:11Sean Fennessey?

  Luke Skywalker, not the subtlest of titles.

• 24:13Bill Simmons?

  Luke Skywalker, this guy might walk in the sky someday and just every, like, there's.

• 24:18Sean Fennessey?

  Darth Vader, bring out the nose, yeah.

• 24:20Bill Simmons?

  Greedo. It's like, I wonder what this guy's about. You go through, but, and it's stuff that if you're five years old or seven years old, you can kind of, you're just instinctively understanding everybody.

• 24:30Sean Fennessey?

  I love hearing you say the word Greedo. Like, I just never thought we would get there.

• 24:33Bill Simmons?

  Greedo, yeah, a lot of controversy with.

• 24:35Sean Fennessey?

  Coming up next, why Greedo? Who shot first, Greedo? One thing about what you guys are talking about that is interesting though is that. Lucas's imagination is unbelievable. I mean, it is like unmatched. The amount of world building that he has done in this franchise is insane. Obviously, he's pulling from a lot of inspirations.

• 24:54Bill Simmons?

  Is it only Spielberg is the only one who's even maybe like?

• 24:56Sean Fennessey?

  Spielberg doesn't have like a nine film universe that's so extended.

• 25:00Chris Ryan?

  Even Indiana Jones is still George Lucas too.

• 25:01Sean Fennessey?

  It is George Lucas.

• 25:02Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's almost like Stephen King if he had become a director, like somebody like that.

• 25:06Sean Fennessey?

  He's a great comparison. Stephen King's still writing, I mean, still coming up with ideas to this day. It's crazy. But the reason this movie is the way that it is, is because it is an after effect of its practical opportunity. So the movie is basically 25% of what Lucas imagined, but could get on screen. And part of what's amazing about the movie is the way that the technology develops during the production of the movie to get as much of what he wants on. That practical stuff that we love about this movie that makes this movie so special and so perfect is his biggest frustration and regret and why he kept going back and messing with the movie and changing the movie. Because he never felt, he says that the final product

• 25:51Sean Fennessey?

  of Star Wars, when it was released, when you saw it in second grade, felt abandoned. That he was like, this is just as much as I could get done before I had to just stop.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  He's got so many different ways of saying this, and the most interesting thing about it is this. By the time we get to the point that George can tell the story that he wants to tell with the technology that he want, that at his fingertips, he makes three movies that aren't very good. And it's, it's interesting because he makes.

• 26:22Bill Simmons?

  You're talking about the Portman movies?

• 26:23Speaker 03

  The prequels, which I love Revenge of the Sith, which by the way, just came out, made 25 million.

• 26:28Bill Simmons?

  People like, yeah, Joe Mee likes Sith. He was excited about it.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love it.

• 26:31Sean Fennessey?

  I like Sith.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  I like Sith.

• 26:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the other two are bad.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  They, yeah, they're not very good. They're deeply political, like almost the inverse of the first.

• 26:41Bill Simmons?

  I'm old enough to remember how absolutely polarizing and upsetting those movies were to people.

• 26:46Chris Ryan?

  I fell asleep during Phantom Menace when it first came out.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  I refused to believe that it wasn't good. I lied to myself for months and then I woke up one day.

• 26:52Bill Simmons?

  The Godfather 3, my stepfather.

• 26:54Chris Ryan?

  You know what? Don't disrespect. It's good.

• 26:58Sean Fennessey?

  They're very similar. Yeah, very similar.

• 27:00Speaker 03

  So, so it's, it's interesting because he talks about this all the time and he'll, he'll have a com- a Star Wars situation with anyone, but the constraints on the movie kind of made it what it was.

• 27:11Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, this is Sean mentioned this when we were texting about it. It's such a shame the original thing doesn't exist. I would just be fascinated to see like what the special effects were because obviously there's stuff in the version. I watched it. I watched it on Disney Plus, but then I also got the Blu-ray because I want to see that. And there's obviously stuff they've added in the last

• 27:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:33Bill Simmons?

  10, 12 years where it's like you watch Rocky and that's the movie. It's like there's empty seats when those guys are fighting. You just see empty seats everywhere and there's, you know, really bad eye makeup and it's like part of the charm. They made it in 1976. I don't love that they redid it, although I shouldn't say much because Ciara and I have done Heat four times.

• 27:51Sean Fennessey?

  But Michael Mann's not going back and adding, you know,

• 27:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:55Sean Fennessey?

  CGI characters.

• 27:56Bill Simmons?

  More mojitos.

• 27:57Sean Fennessey?

  Shootout. You know what I mean?

• 27:58Bill Simmons?

  He could have added like three more mojitos.

• 28:01Bill Simmons?

  Great.

• 28:01Sean Fennessey?

  I think the last time you could watch the original theatrically released version without any of the added stuff was the first DVD that was issued, that the like alternative version you could watch. I don't have that anymore. I mean, I used to have it in every format, this movie. I've had this movie in every format.

• 28:16Bill Simmons?

  Was there LaserDisc?

• 28:17Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, oh, definitely. Yeah, there was LaserDisc.

• 28:19Bill Simmons?

  So it probably was in that format, I would guess.

• 28:20Sean Fennessey?

  It's definitely on the VHS and on the LaserDisc, but they haven't, on Blu-ray, it has not been issued. You can't watch the original theatrical version.

• 28:28Bill Simmons?

  That's kind of a miss by Lucas, who clearly has wanted to profit out of this in every way.

• 28:32Chris Ryan?

  Doesn't care. I don't actually think he sees these movies, especially this movie, the way we see it.

• 28:38Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 28:39Chris Ryan?

  Like Sean was saying.

• 28:40Sean Fennessey?

  Totems of our childhood.

• 28:40Chris Ryan?

  He looks at it as like a professional misstep that albeit made him a billionaire. Like, I don't think he's looking at it as like, oh, what? This is just a priceless, perfect gem.

• 28:51Bill Simmons?

  It's like a piece of art that you shouldn't touch.

• 28:52Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 28:53Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't, Fincher does this too, right? Doesn't he?

• 28:55Chris Ryan?

  Well, but he does stuff like takes like the dust off of a window and stuff. Like he doesn't change characters. Like Jabba's in this fucking movie in the new versions. Of it, he's not in the first one. So when you meet Jabba, you're like, this is mind blowing.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  Which by the way, steps on Jabba.

• 29:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  It's better the other way.

• 29:13Sean Fennessey?

  It is better. There's no question about it. Like the idea of who is Jabba the Hutt is the same thing as the Clone Wars. You're like, what is this gangster character? Who could, who could it possibly be? And then just by putting him in the movie, it ruins it. But he can't see past that. He can only see into his own imagination and he can only try to reach for what he was envisioning. When he was whatever, 30 years old, when he made this movie. So it's like this never ending quest to fix the mistakes of the production. That is also the most meaningful.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  And I thought it was bullshit at first. Like he would say, you do four, five and six because you didn't have what you needed to do one, two and three, right? And one, two and three, they're going to be hundreds of Jedi running around and all of that stuff and you didn't have what you needed. And so technology has gotten to a point to where I can go back and actually shoot these movies now. And I'd be like, ah, that's bullshit. I mean, maybe he didn't have the story worked out. Or maybe all of this stuff about how much of this stuff that he had ready and planned is just legend. But he continues to prove it because he won't stop tinkering with the movie. He tinkers with it and tries to get it closer, tries to perfect perfection. And actually kind of doesn't get there with doing it. Not just the Jabba thing.

• 30:22Bill Simmons?

  Sounds like he needs a girlfriend.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  He don't, he don't gotta, he gotta.

• 30:27Bill Simmons?

  Oh, he's married again, right? Yeah.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Lucas?

• 30:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Lucas got him a, you know what I'm saying?

• 30:33Sean Fennessey?

  A what? He has, he has a black wife.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  I'm not like, that's what I'm saying is like, that ended up itself. Once I learned that, I was like, I see where the soul comes from. I see where the light comes from. He's well, the force, the force, he's well taken care of.

• 30:52Bill Simmons?

  This movie hits good versus evil, the galaxy, what the fuck is even up there? Right?

• 30:59Chris Ryan?

  What do you believe in?

• 30:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What, what, do you believe, I mean, the force is obviously the key to the whole universe. And what do you actually believe as a human being? Do you believe we're just randomly here?

• 31:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:10Bill Simmons?

  Or is there some greater purpose for all of us?

• 31:12Chris Ryan?

  Or you're like on solo and you just believe in just hitting same game.

• 31:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Are you merciless? Are you a good teammate?

• 31:20Bill Simmons?

  Are you a mercenary, a good teammate? How far will you go to dominate somebody else? How far will you go to the dark side to get more power? Which is certainly a theme that might be more and more relevant every couple of years.

• 31:33Sean Fennessey?

  This movie's very resonant right now.

• 31:34Bill Simmons?

  Including this one.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Destiny, Fathers and Sons.

• 31:41Bill Simmons?

  Getting old.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  Getting older.

• 31:43Bill Simmons?

  Like LeBron in this Laker series, like, you know, where it's like, hey, Obi-Wan, we need 15 rebounds and 40 points.

• 31:49Chris Ryan?

  You think Anthony Edwards is gonna be stepping on the cloak pretty soon?

• 31:51Bill Simmons?

  I think Anthony Edwards, yeah, Anthony Edwards is going, you've gotten old, old man. What is he saying in the duel?

• 31:59Speaker 03

  I am the master now.

• 32:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, that's Anthony Edwards.

• 32:02Sean Fennessey?

  One of my Luke Wilson hot takes, which is, I guess maybe I won't use this one, but there's a direct correlation between the decrease in engagement in organized religion in this country and the rise of Star Wars. And.

• 32:15Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's, that's a legitimate hot take. I like that.

• 32:17Sean Fennessey?

  There is a, there is a case to be made that's certainly among the vast swathes of mostly young men, but women too, who were obsessed with Star Wars and the kind of mythology that was available in popular entertainment. Complete, and because this is a deeply religious movie, it kind of undermines the organizing nature of religion in our society. And it's not the only factor, but it is, in my mind, definitely a factor.

• 32:41Chris Ryan?

  That'd be, that, I have not heard that.

• 32:44Bill Simmons?

  Really good.

• 32:45Chris Ryan?

  But I'm not against it.

• 32:47Bill Simmons?

  I did, my only regret is you didn't do that on First Take with Molly and Ryan Clark. Ryan Clark in a split screen.

• 32:52Chris Ryan?

  Where's my camera?

• 32:53Speaker 03

  Shout out Ryan Clark. So look, I, I'll say this, I gotta disagree with Sean.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  So there's, there's a religion, okay, that my grandmother was a part of at one point. I was not allowed to watch Star Wars in my grandmother's house for a little while. I remember there is a religion, I won't talk about the religion, but that. There was a a videotape that you watched when you were getting into the religion. My grandmother was a part of this religion. And they were talking about all of these things that were bad in um in society. And there's a part of it where Star Wars comes up. And it says that George Lucas believes in a force for real. And he thinks that us the force is a substitute for a belief in God and for a belie- belief in religion. And when I was over my grandmother's house for a little while, she's no longer with the religion. I could not watch Star Wars.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  And I remember it's so funny that you would say that. Back in the day, she deconstructed to me how Star Wars is actually a movie that is giving religious dogma to people. Telling you that you'll be powerful if you believe in this thing. Darth Vader is the devil and Luke Skywalker is Jesus Christ. And she was doing it from trying to like, not poison me, but trying to save my soul. But she was also telling me why the movie was so resonant for me.

• 34:12Sean Fennessey?

  Right, right. But I mean, the movie is in part synthesizing not just Samurai movies and the Wizard of Oz, but like Judeo-Christian myth. Like it is pulling everything from the history of relig- religion into its story.

• 34:23Chris Ryan?

  Like in the eighties especially, we were given all of these tokens of our belief, these fucking toys.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:30Chris Ryan?

  And you would just sit around all day and be like, this is, this is my Han Solo toy. And I now I'm going to think about this guy for three hours, which is more than I thought about Jesus Christ at any given day.

• 34:41Sean Fennessey?

  You used to wear Saint Christopher medal and now you hold a Han Solo toy.

• 34:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, we had less to do, so like for me, it was baseball and football and basketball cards and hockey cards.

• 34:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:49Bill Simmons?

  Right, for other people, they're playing. It was funny, I forgot when doing the research is how late the merch was.

• 34:55Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 34:56Bill Simmons?

  That they made the movie and they weren't even sure it was, and and then it became this race and there. You could buy boxes that were empty. They were almost like IOU for Luke Skywalker dolls because they hadn't had them made yet. It's fucking crazy. Like they had no idea the movie was going to become what it did.

• 35:11Chris Ryan?

  I I feel like all of my toys.

• 35:15Chris Ryan?

  Like the stuff I remember having is more Empire era, like Dagobah. Like I, I think I had the Dagobah that you could like slip through the mud kinda thing.

• 35:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there was always one kid who had the Millennium Falcon. It was like you had to go to his house to play with it. Like I, I didn't have that growing up. That was like the fifty dollar toy, you know?

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Toy saber.

• 35:31Sean Fennessey?

  Right. I never had a lightsaber either.

• 35:33Speaker 03

  Toy saber, all of that stuff, man.

• 35:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the kid who had the toy saber was like the most popular dude in the neighborhood.

• 35:38Bill Simmons?

  Well, this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Life is all about choices. There's a lot of choices in Star Wars and the next three movies that the characters make. Luke makes some good choices. He trusts the force.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  He does.

• 35:51Bill Simmons?

  At State Farm, their goal is to help you make decisions that you feel good about. That's why with the State Farm Personal Price Plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage to help create a competitive price. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans and vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. I had some stuff I want to get to, but I had to ask producer Craig. What's your, you're younger than us. What's your lifespan with this movie?

• 36:22Speaker 07

  With this, like the original three?

• 36:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cuz you're in, it's like they've, they've already made the prequels and shit's going down. So how do you walk into the Star Wars universe?

• 36:30Speaker 07

  Um, I, I, I wish I could like remember specifically when I saw it the first time. I, I may have seen the prequels before I saw these. I don't even really know. I had only seen them a couple of times. I was closer to you, Bill, in that like I saw them maybe once or twice. I liked them, but they didn't like, you know, capture me in the same way that other people did. I don't know. I don't know. I, I think the only troubling thing about Star Wars is it's so complex and people go so deep into it that sometimes it feels like you can't be a casual fan because everybody will exclude you.

• 37:00Bill Simmons?

  That was part of my problem, right?

• 37:01Chris Ryan?

  But you could be on this. You could be on this. You, there was no answers yet.

• 37:05Speaker 07

  Right.

• 37:05Chris Ryan?

  You know, like there, there really wasn't this like, oh, you can refer to one of nineteen animated series that like document this entire.

• 37:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's kinda hard for me to be like, I like Star Wars. And they're like, oh, really? What's your favorite planet? And I'm like, well, I don't know.

• 37:18Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  What are your thoughts on Alderaan?

• 37:21Sean Fennessey?

  Cuz it's a, it's a story that stokes obsession, but then I don't think Star Wars nerds like us realized this at the time, but we were just as alienating to other people as, as we felt alienated from them too. You know, because it's just, you immediately just lock into like. Talking about Hoff.

• 37:37Speaker 07

  But it is like sports.

• 37:38Bill Simmons?

  It's like NHL fans.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. Don't talk about Edmonton. You don't watch Oilers games.

• 37:43Speaker 07

  If somebody comes up to me and is like, oh, are you a sports fan? And I'm like, yeah, and we start talking and they don't know who the quarterback of the Niners is. I'm like, oh, this guy does know what he's talking about. But like, that's me talking about Star Wars.

• 37:52Sean Fennessey?

  That's having little kids, man. If I meet a dad at the preschool who doesn't know sports, I'm like, shit, we got nothing to talk about.

• 37:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  I feel like movies, seen any movies? I took Marie route to see, uh, Phantom Menace like the third time I saw it. And at the beginning of the movie, both Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, they forced Dash into the area where they're trying to get. And she goes, how can they move so fast? And my blood started boiling.

• 38:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  I'm like. Hot date? Like it was hot date. My blood started boiling. I'm like, they're using the Force. She goes, what's the Force? I said, shut up. Shut the fuck up.

• 38:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just let me enjoy this.

• 38:33Speaker 07

  You're embarrassing me.

• 38:34Speaker 03

  Shut up, okay? People can hear you.

• 38:36Bill Simmons?

  We gotta get a movie nerdy for a second because there's this whole, and there's so many things to get in with this movie. But there's the whole impact that this movie had on movies for the next 48 years.

• 38:47Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:47Bill Simmons?

  Because it became massively successful. It's right at the tail end of all of this great creative explosion, all these directors doing amazing things. And then this movie makes a kajillion dollars and, um, there's so much resentment about it that it became a big thing for Lucas. And Lucas has all the, all that stuff he's talked about, about like, look, people get mad about Star Wars ruined movies. And meanwhile, we built multiplexes all over the country and the world because of the money people made from this movie. And there's a lot of, and the Biscan book is the best one for this. We're just, a lot of directors just taking like shots at Lucas, like he ruined it. We were doing great until that movie.

• 39:27Speaker 07

  Meanwhile, Copeland's going up to him like Maury in Goodfellas. I need some money, you gotta help me out here.

• 39:32Bill Simmons?

  Hey, you got that 50K?

• 39:35Speaker 07

  Sean, do you think that's fair?

• 39:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, this is, this is my hot take, which is that Star Wars is arguably the most perfect movie ever made and the worst thing that ever happened to movies. And, you know, it starts with Jaws in 1975. It's the first genuine wide release of a movie. It's the first movie that premieres essentially on a thousand screens simultaneously. That had not happened before. And it's in part because Universal realizes that they've got something on their hands, that they can market nationally and get people to show up. People didn't go see Gone with the Wind that way. They didn't go see Casablanca that way. They saw that the movie opened in their city and then it closed and it went to another city and then it was open across five years. This movie opens even wider than that. It's an even bigger sensation. It really, really encourages the repeat viewing that you're talking about.

• 40:21Bill Simmons?

  And it's edging out other movies because there's, what, three, four movies max in every theater?

• 40:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 40:29Bill Simmons?

  And they're just shoving out other things.

• 40:30Sean Fennessey?

  And also, we're in the middle of a time where movies for adults are dominating the culture. And this is the movie that resets the trajectory for mainstream movies to be made for kids. And that kids is where the pot of gold is. It doesn't change the fact that I think the movie is wonderful and that I'm a huge fan of Star Wars in general, and I still consume Star Wars stuff to this day. But it didn't ultimately benefit filmmakers. It benefited corporations and it benefited movie studios who got more and more greedy because they saw that the ceiling was higher than they'd realized. And so because that ceiling got raised on the potential profits, it just, it had a tremendously negative effect across movie making over periods of time. That doesn't mean that there weren't, there aren't good movies anymore.

• 41:10Bill Simmons?

  The question is, would that have happened anyway?

• 41:12Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that was the same. Somebody else might have got there. Somebody else might have got there.

• 41:15Chris Ryan?

  I think it happens either way. Somebody else might have gotten there. Obviously, when that first movie comes out, we don't know that it's going to be three films, then another three films, then a massive sale to Disney that includes it, a universal expansion of the property. I do think it's predictive of a kind of feverish, monocultural thing that was happening in the eighties, where like, Michael Jackson opens up the idea of how big an artist can get in music, right? Like, for the first time, maybe since The Beatles. Like, it is a literal, like... Everybody is obsessed with this one thing.

• 41:47Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:48Chris Ryan?

  And obviously, there was something in the water coming. That was like, people were ready to have, maybe be distracted. I don't know, but your point's really well taken. I mean, this movie famously had to make way for Sorcerer, the William Friedkin movie. At Mann's Chinese Theater. And it Sorcerer had like a week or two run and they're like, get this shit out of here. We got a pretty Star Wars track.

• 42:09Speaker 03

  I think to split the baby there is our appetites were expanding, period. There are more ways for us to experience things. Home video was having a boom. Um, there was more space and opportunity to build these big multiplexes, right?

• 42:24Sean Fennessey?

  That's in the eighties.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  That's in the eighties. So you're what you're what you're seeing is that people want more stuff. Cable television is starting to to to dominate. We could talk about almost any industry that we love. We could talk about the NFL. We could talk about the NBA. The appetites for these things were met by people who could translate them culturally.

• 42:46Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm. Wrestling.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  Wrestling. Porn. All of that, like in Boogie Nights, they talk about what it was like going from film to video and porn.

• 42:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  And how that exploded the industry. It was gonna happen.

• 43:00Sean Fennessey?

  But also degraded the art form. That's the other theme.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  But but it depends on the way. So this is what I would say. I can't say that you're a but it depends on the way that you look at it, right? Because I could make an argument.

• 43:11Sean Fennessey?

  You're a Floyd Gondoli.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  Exactly, right?

• 43:13Sean Fennessey?

  Johnny Doe comes in.

• 43:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's got a different way of doing it.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  I could make an argument that there is no Axel Braun or Kevin Moore. These are porn directors, by the way. I could make the argument

• 43:25Speaker 03

  that these guys don't exist if there's not an explosion.

• 43:30Sean Fennessey?

  So to speak, yeah, yeah.

• 43:31Speaker 03

  Right? I could make an a a an argument that if movie studios don't become corporations, then the smaller films that guys were taking chances on don't get made.

• 43:43Sean Fennessey?

  Are you still talking about porn or are you talking about?

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Either way. That because of Star Wars, there are more movies and more movies is good.

• 43:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was just, I was really just piggybacking off of what Sean was saying where the idea that.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  Oh, he's definitely right.

• 43:56Chris Ryan?

  But it's like the idea, basically, that somebody who's six years old and thirty six year old could be obsessed with the same.

• 44:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes.

• 44:03Chris Ryan?

  That's crazy.

• 44:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Chris Ryan?

  And that happens once every

• 44:06Sean Fennessey?

  Well, and also.

• 44:07Chris Ryan?

  ten years now, like.

• 44:07Sean Fennessey?

  Regenerating.

• 44:09Bill Simmons?

  New classes of young people every five years, basically, who then dive into this movie.

• 44:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 44:16Bill Simmons?

  That did not exist. There's two other things, though. And I think it had something to do with the backlash. You just have this once in a lifetime, almost like in an NBA draft class, where there's just like seven superstars in the same draft. You have all these guys that grew up together. There's been a million books about it, but you have Scorsese and the Palma and, you know, Paul Schrader and Fried Cain, all these dudes.

• 44:35Sean Fennessey?

  Coppola, yes.

• 44:36Bill Simmons?

  Coppola. And Coppola hits it the biggest to begin with, and then it basically murders him. Spielberg becomes the most commercial and the smarter. He's always the smartest, as we'll get to in a couple of these things. And then Lucas is the one that figures out how to put it all together. And all these other people just start having bombs and failures. So it is kind of like, well, we're failing because everyone wants Star Wars. That's like, no, maybe you're failing because you made a shitty movie that nobody want to go see. Or maybe the other reason for all this, the fucking cocaine era is coming in. And cocaine is ruining a bunch of these directors and storytellers and, you know, I just, and Lucas and Spielberg were the ones that survived. Scorsese came back. Some of these guys ended up making good movies again.

• 45:21Bill Simmons?

  But for the most part, these guys were just built for it.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  Some of its life, Coppola went through some personal tragedies that changed the way.

• 45:28Bill Simmons?

  Paco's now murdered him.

• 45:29Speaker 03

  You know, you know what I mean?

• 45:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  Some of its life.

• 45:31Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, the freaking thing is in is the most instructive to me always because he makes the French Connection and he follows it up with the Exorcist. It's that had never been done before.

• 45:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:40Sean Fennessey?

  No, no filmmaker had ever scraped the ceiling so profoundly before while simultaneously making like arguably the best movie in both genres, like arguably the greatest horror movie ever made and the greatest cops movie ever made. And then it's like in the wilderness, like 15 years.

• 45:56Bill Simmons?

  Well, he did make Cruising, so that was his apex.

• 45:59Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, he made great movies, but nobody cared about them for a long time.

• 46:03Bill Simmons?

  That was the best cruising movie. So three apexes, action, horror and cruising.

• 46:08Sean Fennessey?

  Are you sure it's the best cruising movie? Have you seen all of them?

• 46:10Chris Ryan?

  Apparently there's some Axel Braun film we need to check out.

• 46:14Bill Simmons?

  Probably is.

• 46:15Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's, some of it is luck, some of it is circumstance. I do think that. This the studios got very hip to the potential with franchising after this movie.

• 46:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, plus these guys, part of their thing, they were acting, um, how can I get away with spending as much money as possible and these stupid studios will let me do it. And then after a while, the gig's up and you guys start making some money for some of these people, you know? One from the heart, which Coppola, he bankrolled himself. And it ended up, he thought it was gonna be like, I don't know, like what, eight, 10 million? And it ended up being like almost 30.

• 46:48Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah. And spent all of his own money.

• 46:50Chris Ryan?

  It's the dark, it's the dark side of Bet on Yourself.

• 46:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 46:52Bill Simmons?

  It is the all time, maybe I shouldn't have bet on myself.

• 46:55Chris Ryan?

  Your bet on yourself copy is you being like this with your big blues and your smile. Coppola's got his shirt off in Manila like, ah!

• 47:02Sean Fennessey?

  But he's so, he's so important to this story because obviously he and, you know, Lucas is sort of like his apprentice and works under Coppola and is a USC kid. And he makes THX 1138 and it's a complicated production. I think Warner Brothers puts it out.

• 47:16Bill Simmons?

  It's early 70s, right?

• 47:17Sean Fennessey?

  Early 70s. It's not a big hit. It's acclaimed, but it's not a big hit.

• 47:21Bill Simmons?

  Weird, weird movie.

• 47:22Sean Fennessey?

  It's a strange movie. And Coppola, after that movie comes out and Lucas starts telling him his ideas and he's already starting to formulate some of Star Wars, Coppola challenges him and he's like, man, slow down with the science fiction stuff and show me that you can make a comedy. And that challenge leads to American Graffiti. And if Lucas doesn't make American Graffiti and figure out how to write real people, I don't think Star Wars is any good.

• 47:44Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 47:45Sean Fennessey?

  So, and American Graffiti is great. It's still great.

• 47:47Bill Simmons?

  Harrison Ford.

• 47:47Sean Fennessey?

  And he finds Harrison Ford.

• 47:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that led to a great Bet on Yourself moment, Ben, because they gave him 150 grand to write what would become Star Wars. And then American Graffiti hits. And they're like, hey, you're a hot director now. Here's more money. We're gonna give you 500,000. And he says, nah, I'll keep the 150, but give me all the merchandising and any sequels. And they're like, that sounds great, because nobody, nobody did sequels.

• 48:11Chris Ryan?

  Nobody really pops out sequels like that.

• 48:13Bill Simmons?

  Merchandising didn't work for movies.

• 48:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:15Bill Simmons?

  And that was a 2 billion, kajillion dollar decision.

• 48:19Speaker 03

  One of the all time, I'm not stupid, you're stupid movies where in the, it moves where in the moment, you think, ah, he sounds like a kid that's high on the supply, doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. He's dumb. But either he knows something. Or he doesn't know something. Like either he is so blissfully ignorant that he's just, I'm gonna do this because he doesn't understand how it can backfire. Or somewhere in the recesses of his brain, he goes, I know something about this lore and this mythology that everybody else doesn't get. And I'm willing to take less because we're talking about a half a million in seventies bread. It's a lot of cocaine.

• 48:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's like, it's like Mark Cuban, right? Buying the Mavericks, super smart, selling broadcast.com, buying the Mavericks with it, super smart. And then selling probably low to the Vegas family. It's like, you're still gonna run the team. He's like, great. And then they cut him out.

• 49:10Chris Ryan?

  You're talking about when he sells to Disney? That's what this is?

• 49:12Bill Simmons?

  No, it's just you can look like a genius with one decision and then the next decision, you're like, what the fuck was that guy thinking? How did he not know? Can I read you some sour grapes quotes?

• 49:20Chris Ryan?

  Oh, is this from Pauline Kael?

• 49:23Bill Simmons?

  It's a bunch of things. Siskel in seventy seven does the show with Ebert before it was called Siskel and Ebert and, or at the movie.

• 49:32Sean Fennessey?

  At the movies.

• 49:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was called, what was it called? Sneak previews or whatever?

• 49:36Sean Fennessey?

  I think that was the first one, yeah.

• 49:37Bill Simmons?

  And he kind of scolded the movie and hoped that Hollywood would continue to cater to audiences who care about serious pictures.

• 49:45Sean Fennessey?

  This is a tough one because this is the same year as Saturday Night Fever, which is one of Siskel's favorite movies of all time. So he felt like movies like Saturday Night Fever were getting taken down a notch by Star Wars.

• 49:54Bill Simmons?

  Right. Then you have Scorsese. These are quotes from the Biskin book.

• 49:59Bill Simmons?

  Where he basically says, the success of Star Wars coupled with the failure of New York, New York, which was the Scorsese movie.

• 50:04Chris Ryan?

  Couple of my raging cocaine habit.

• 50:07Bill Simmons?

  Meant that the kind of movies Scorsese made were being replaced by the kind of movies Lucas and Spielberg made. Scorsese said, Star Wars was in, Spielberg was in, we were finished.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Well, in the long run, turned out to be horseshit, right?

• 50:20Bill Simmons?

  I listen.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  He went on to become an incredibly prolific director that made movies that stand the test of time. A lot of different types of movies.

• 50:29Bill Simmons?

  Big comeback.

• 50:30Speaker 03

  I mean, a comeback, yes.

• 50:32Bill Simmons?

  Eighties were rough.

• 50:33Chris Ryan?

  He was in the wilderness for a while.

• 50:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the eighties were tough. And there might have been a couple, couple lines.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Hmm. The eighties were tough for, we're talking about.

• 50:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, he's like out there trying to get like Last Temptation of Christ made. I, this is.

• 50:46Bill Simmons?

  King of Comedy Bombs.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  King of Comedy Bombs, but I mean, but these movies are.

• 50:50Sean Fennessey?

  He made Raging Bull.

• 50:50Speaker 03

  Raging Bull.

• 50:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, you know.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? So he's, he's, The Last Temptation of Christ, in that particular time, talk about another movie that down in the Bible Belt, we had, there were whole Jimmy Swaggart sermons about The Last Temptation of Christ.

• 51:04Bill Simmons?

  How about Angel Heart?

• 51:05Speaker 03

  Uh.

• 51:07Chris Ryan?

  Who's Cypher?

• 51:08Speaker 03

  Who is Cypher?

• 51:09Bill Simmons?

  I got you, you're booked for that.

• 51:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love that.

• 51:10Bill Simmons?

  Don't worry, don't worry, we're not doing Angel Heart.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  So I'm saying, so what I'm saying is like, I, I get it, but Martin Scorsese to me was, was still able to like, you know.

• 51:17Bill Simmons?

  He, he was equals with Lucas and Spielberg. I think a lot of these guys felt like they were all equals and then within four years, they were the, you know, half of Hollywood. When we do Raiders of the Lost Ark together and then Spielberg's doing E.T., they're just fucking annihilating everybody.

• 51:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 51:33Chris Ryan?

  When we do the Angel Heart rewatchables, can we all wear, uh, Canton NFL Hall of Fame blazers and welcome Lisa Bonet? To the Hall of Fame. To the Ring of Honor.

• 51:42Bill Simmons?

  Is there another Hall of Fame for Van?

• 51:45Speaker 03

  Well, there's, well.

• 51:46Bill Simmons?

  It's a final level?

• 51:47Speaker 03

  What, what do you mean?

• 51:48Bill Simmons?

  For your Hall of Fame, so the white girl Hall of Fame.

• 51:50Speaker 03

  White girl, I, I know, but like.

• 51:52Bill Simmons?

  Like, is there a last level of the Hall of Fame?

• 51:54Speaker 03

  Nah, the Hall of Fame is like, you know.

• 51:55Bill Simmons?

  Pantheon?

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:56Bill Simmons?

  John Millia said, um, Lucas and Spielberg showed there was twice as much money out there and the studios couldn't resist that. No one had any idea you could get as rich as this, like ancient Rome. You can clearly blame them. And then Friedkin said, what happened with Star Wars was like when McDonald's got a foothold. The taste for good food just disappeared. Now we're in a period of de-evolution. Everything has gone backwards toward a big sucking hole.

• 52:24Speaker 03

  Shit.

• 52:25Bill Simmons?

  So then Lucas, his comeback was Star Wars didn't kill the film industry infantil infantilize it. Popcorn pictures have always ruled. Why is the public so stupid? That's not my fault. I just understood what people like to go see and Steven has too, and we go for that.

• 52:43Sean Fennessey?

  One of my core beliefs is that movie making, while it is definitively an art form, is a commercial art form. People don't make movies for movie studios for wide release just because they're artists. They make them because they want people to see them and pay for them. So

• 52:57Bill Simmons?

  I would hope so.

• 52:58Sean Fennessey?

  You know, people like Millius, who I really admire and is an amazing writer. Um, that's like kind of a hot take, you know, I, I generally agree more with what Lucas says and I really like a great popcorn movie. It doesn't change the fact though, that ultimately studios are the organizations that determine the fate of what movies get made. So it's just a byproduct of something that is obviously sincere for Lucas and Spielberg. Like Spielberg released Close Encounters of the Third Kind this year. You can't tell me that that was like a cash grab. That's like one of the most personal movies ever made.

• 53:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:29Sean Fennessey?

  So I, there's like real nuance in this conversation. It's just

• 53:34Bill Simmons?

  Hook might've been a cash grab.

• 53:35Chris Ryan?

  The, the sad part about, the truth and the sad part about what Millius is talking about is the Roman excess of wealth that exploded in Hollywood, for the most part benefited the studios and the corporations and the, you know, studio heads and the agents and all the people around Hollywood that decided like, oh, look how much money we can make from this. And that's probably what had more profound effect on what kind of movies that got made than anything Lucas ever did.

• 54:01Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's the Lucas case because he's saying the theater owners had more money. They had more screens. So now people had the, wanted to make more money to put in the screens. And now you lead, that leads to the rise of more indie movies, art house movies. And he's like, Star Wars had this, you know, shelf life that basically created where the nineties got there. And now that the stuff, the books and magazine pieces in the nineties were, they're all like, With the movie industry's falling apart, there are no good ideas left and we like revere all

• 54:31Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:32Bill Simmons?

  From ninety five to ninety nine.

• 54:33Speaker 03

  We're having that conversation now. You know, when I think about the movies that were gigantic movies of the past, obviously, like The Ten Commandments is a gigantic production, right? That is a biblical epic, but that's a piece of commerce. That's something that is tapping into something that everyone in the country is behind, which is, you know, Judeo-Christian values. It's a story that everyone knows and you're trying to do a story that everyone knows to get them into the

• 55:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, mass appeal.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  Mass appeal. I think what really changed was, and what Star Wars might have changed, was kind of what was mass appealing, right? Because if you had all of these biblical movies before and these epics and all of these things that you would pour all of this money to, and these were some of the highest grossing movies of all time, when you talk about making movies for kids or making science fiction pictures, maybe there was a thought that that changed the seriousness of movie making to making movies that were in outer space or making movies that were in the future, or maybe it changed that. But as far as I can remember, the films that I thought, think about that grossed a lot of money were always big, huge films that were relatable.

• 55:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, think about that. This is why I think the sour grape stuff is bullshit. You go back to the seventies, they were trying to make movies like Star Wars all the time. Yeah, it's now like Like Poseidon Adventure. I was just going to say Towering Inferno. A ton of famous, Towering Inferno, that's another one. But in seventy six, I remember, I'm old enough to remember when they, when they did this and made a big deal, but the King Kong movie was basically a Star Wars a year before where it's like, here's a huge movie. Here's Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges. Yeah. And we're gonna blow this up.

• 56:15Sean Fennessey?

  And that's a popcorn movie from nineteen thirty three.

• 56:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This is, we're gonna make this a giant deal. And I, I feel like if you're gonna blame a movie, I would blame Jaws before Star Wars, because I think Jaws fucked everybody up.

• 56:27Sean Fennessey?

  I just think that what happened in the seventies is not replicable and the, the guys who were literally twenty eight years old and at the absolute pinnacle of both the artistry and The box office in movies, there's no that it hasn't happened since and it won't happen again.

• 56:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 56:41Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like.

• 56:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 56:42Chris Ryan?

  It was like punk rock on the Lower East Side.

• 56:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's just, it's not replicable. I was looking at this nineteen seventy six, the highest grossing movies of that year. And it's a really interesting kind of mix of what we're talking about here because Rocky's number one, of course. But then a movie called To Fly, a documentary that was an IMAX movie is number two. Then A Star is Born, King Kong, Silver Streak, All the President's Men, The Omen, The Enforcer, and Midway.

• 57:08Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 57:08Sean Fennessey?

  And then number ten is Bad News Bears, which appealed to kids. So like, I think that that shows you that the, the cool new Hollywood seventies is still happening and still powerful. But also like King Kong and Silver Streak and Bad News Bears are in there. And those are movies that are appealing to broad audiences that are trying to bring in as many people as possible.

• 57:27Bill Simmons?

  There's the other thing, I don't think Hollywood really mastered the kids thing. Because like when I was a kid, the syndicated shows that we all watched were like Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island, The Batman. I used to love The Batman Show. Those were shows that didn't really do that well on TV.

• 57:42Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 57:42Bill Simmons?

  And then they would have the second shelf life on syndicated and they kind of became a thing that way.

• 57:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, for sure. We all watched them on Nick at Night.

• 57:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Hollywood didn't understand, I don't really feel like Hollywood understand kids were such big business for them until seventy seven.

• 57:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's why this movie couldn't get off the ground at first because they said that this is a movie for kids and the only place that does those movies is Disney.

• 58:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:02Sean Fennessey?

  Disney was the only studio that made movies for kids.

• 58:05Bill Simmons?

  Right? It, and.

• 58:07Chris Ryan?

  But now they understand.

• 58:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  But in the eighties, they began to understand because you saw big, huge movies for, for kids. You saw the Neverending Story, a lot of creatures, like different stuff, like all the Dark Crystal stuff.

• 58:19Chris Ryan?

  Well, because they have the blueprint. I mean, the thing that happens is like, there is no graduation out of Star Wars. Yes, most people probably leave it behind, but like what Star Wars invents is the idea that you can continue these people as customers beyond their childhoods.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 58:33Chris Ryan?

  Which is, look at the four of us sitting here talking about Star Wars as if it's like a pressing issue, you know what I mean? And we, we are.

• 58:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:40Chris Ryan?

  There is a Star Wars show on right now. It's probably the best thing on TV. It's like.

• 58:43Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 58:44Chris Ryan?

  It's, we're, it's still with us.

• 58:46Speaker 03

  Dude, I was about to cry like thirty minutes ago. I had to stop myself. I was starting to get chill bumps talking about the movie. Like, like, it, it, it's, it's, it's weird because you know what though? I will say this though. A lot of people listen to the stuff that we do over on The Rigorverse and it's difficult for me to sometimes. Be the actual grown up that I need to be because the nostalgia is just, it's, it's too thick. Like, I can't wade through it, right? And I can't wade through, when I look at the, when I watch this movie for this podcast, I have the exact same feeling as I did.

• 59:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, dude, I stand there, I like, watch Rosario Dawson acting against like a, an invented digital screen, talking to an alien about stuff. And I'm just like, well, I have to, I have to do the work. I, I have to, I have to finish the job.

• 59:33Chris Ryan?

  This great game that we began.

• 59:35Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to think, I was trying to think of a nostalgia as a business for Hollywood. I think it's, it's eighty-nine. It's when they, it's right, right around there when they had the third indie movie.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:46Bill Simmons?

  They do Batman.

• 59:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:48Bill Simmons?

  And they're starting to figure out, and then when we go into the nineties, Disney really starts to figure out the machine of movies and the video cassettes. And it's like, we have The Lion King, The Lion King is gonna come out, Elton John is going to sing the song. And it became like a, almost like a blueprint for how to hit kids, how to make parents. And Sean knows as somebody with a little kid right now, there's a five-year window where it's like, I just want to take my kid to a movie theater for two hours.

• 1:00:13Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:00:14Bill Simmons?

  And feed them popcorn and hope they don't have a meltdown.

• 1:00:16Sean Fennessey?

  We do it every weekend, we do it every weekend, yeah. That's why movies still work though.

• 1:00:20Bill Simmons?

  Get it forever.

• 1:00:22Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think you're right that they, they figured out the formula for sure. I think this moment right now in movies is really interesting and instructive because it is a little bit of an echo of a past period where Star Wars is something that is familiar but new. Two thousand and one Space Odyssey happened, like, there was a movie that had this same visual dynamism in space.

• 1:00:41Chris Ryan?

  The stations kind of look similar, yeah.

• 1:00:43Sean Fennessey?

  The special effects, it's a huge influence on the movie. But the big differentiation aside from the story between this movie and two thousand and one is that this movie is fast. Two thousand one is slow.

• 1:00:55Chris Ryan?

  Two hours, five minutes.

• 1:00:57Sean Fennessey?

  But it's familiar but new. And to me, it's the same thing with what's happening in movies now. Oppenheimer, Barbie, Super Mario Brothers movie, Sinners, Minecraft movie. These are the biggest movies of the last few years. Familiar but new. Like, you've never seen a Minecraft movie. You know what that is? You're aware of it as a video game? You've never seen a movie about it. You've never seen a good movie about Super Mario Brothers. Star Wars is like, we'd seen movies, plenty of movies like this before.

• 1:01:17Chris Ryan?

  And they never put it, put the pieces together.

• 1:01:19Sean Fennessey?

  But never quite this way.

• 1:01:19Speaker 03

  George does something, every couple of scenes, he gives you something cuddly. Because when you think about it, the first scene is Vader brutalizing somebody, right? Like Vader is.

• 1:01:29Chris Ryan?

  He kills like a dozen people and chokes one guy out.

• 1:01:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, he kills a guy, but three P O.

• 1:01:34Chris Ryan?

  The guy was asking for it.

• 1:01:37Chris Ryan?

  Don't talk back to Vader. What are you doing?

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, but Arthur do, do cuddly. By the time you get to, oh, well known Chewbacca, big cuddly guy, you want to give him a hug. He never lets you get too far away from the fact that you're safe and you're okay watching the movie. Two thousand one will make you like, reexamine like life in the universe and yeah.

• 1:01:56Sean Fennessey?

  And it's cold versus warm, intellectual versus emotional, like there, there, there's like a study in contrast that make total sense.

• 1:02:02Chris Ryan?

  There's also like the, the perfect framing device of saying it's a galaxy far away, but it's a long time ago.

• 1:02:09Speaker 03

  A long time ago.

• 1:02:10Chris Ryan?

  So it, it's, it's immediately timeless because they, there are recognizable things about this galaxy that you recognize in your world. But you're also like, but is this, is this like a Western? Is this like a Samurai? Is this like King Arthur? Is this like all these, is it a Bible story? It feels very old, even though it's set in the future. And so you wind up kind of losing yourself in the world of pure imagination. Whereas two thousand and one is about human beings on earth longing for connection with something greater than they have.

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  Even the scroll that begins with Star Wars. Now, I, I realize that that's something that he got from older film reel, uh, Buck Rogers.

• 1:02:53Chris Ryan?

  Cereal.

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  Type of cereals and stuff like that, cereals, Buck Rogers type of stuff. When I was a kid watching it, I just remember trying to read everything and feeling like something insanely important was being said.

• 1:03:05Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:03:06Speaker 03

  Like something really super important is being said.

• 1:03:10Chris Ryan?

  The original Roadbomb.

• 1:03:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. Like you're, you're reading it.

• 1:03:13Chris Ryan?

  Should the NBA pass to this?

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  You're reading.

• 1:03:16Chris Ryan?

  Game six.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  Okay, Princess Leia, and then you're trying to, and even that, there's this majesty and this wonder to it. And I know that it wasn't new, but it felt.

• 1:03:27Chris Ryan?

  You're studying like Bible.

• 1:03:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's called the scroll. It's like you've unfurled of something that Moses read. You know, like it's purposefully.

• 1:03:35Chris Ryan?

  It's starting in the middle. It's episode four. You're like, how did I miss the first three? What happened? You're like, immediately, the urgency of watching is instantaneous.

• 1:03:45Bill Simmons?

  We had Doc Legacy and Influence. Um, I would say this was the first movie to become a worldwide pop culture phenomenon.

• 1:03:53Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:03:53Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if anyone ever put all the pieces together. Talking merchandising.

• 1:03:57Sean Fennessey?

  Worldwide, you know, like how did the movies play in simultaneous release?

• 1:04:01Bill Simmons?

  To Gone with the Wind. There was no.

• 1:04:04Sean Fennessey?

  There wasn't sequel novel.

• 1:04:09Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna ask.

• 1:04:14Bill Simmons?

  Two immediate sequels, plus all the movies they made, novels, comics, video games, amusement parks, merch, everything. Multiple TV series in the last 10 years. It's moved with the culture, wherever it is. It's like, we're doing streaming now. Okay, here's some streaming. Uh, Lucas became, if not the most successful film producer ever, is in the top four. Harrison Ford comes out of this movie. Um, but then we talk about influence. I think this movie has to, we have to give it credit for this, the repeatable blockbuster.

• 1:04:45Bill Simmons?

  I, you can't say Godfather, even though there were two Godfathers.

• 1:04:47Chris Ryan?

  It's the franchise, it means franchise.

• 1:04:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think the only thing.

• 1:04:50Bill Simmons?

  Nobody had done it before.

• 1:04:51Sean Fennessey?

  James Bond is, is on this movie's corner in that respect. I think Bond did this. It's a different, because they kept getting recast and they're not serialized stories.

• 1:05:00Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:05:00Sean Fennessey?

  So there are characters that repeat, but the story doesn't feel like it's woven together. But the idea of, let's go to the new Bond, had existed for years before this.

• 1:05:10Bill Simmons?

  But there was no, there were, you didn't have to see the last one to know.

• 1:05:14Chris Ryan?

  You can watch Russia with Love without having seen.

• 1:05:15Sean Fennessey?

  Correct, correct, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, Lucas filmed all the stuff he created in the seventies, which was cutting edge.

• 1:05:22Chris Ryan?

  Well, Industrial Lights and Magic.

• 1:05:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Sean Fennessey?

  I have a lot on that if you want to talk about ILM. It's the most interesting thing to me about this movie is those guys.

• 1:05:30Bill Simmons?

  I think there's, I think we should add in Half-Assed.

• 1:05:32Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:05:33Bill Simmons?

  Great Bet on Yourself story we covered. May the force be with you, just as a concept, which we talked about. The evil empire.

• 1:05:44Bill Simmons?

  This became the Yankees for us in Boston almost immediately. But the whole concept of an evil side and then like just this.

• 1:05:51Chris Ryan?

  There was no reference.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  In Boston, it was the Yankees?

• 1:05:54Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:55Speaker 03

  Was it integration?

• 1:05:58Bill Simmons?

  I knew I was gonna walk into that.

• 1:06:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was just for some of us.

• 1:06:03Bill Simmons?

  Trying to have a nice moment. Trying to have a nice moment.

• 1:06:08Bill Simmons?

  The scroll, the dark side of the force.

• 1:06:11Speaker 03

  Dark side of the force, yeah.

• 1:06:13Bill Simmons?

  Harrison Ford.

• 1:06:15Bill Simmons?

  All the directors that this movie influenced, J.J. Abrams, Cameron, Fincher, Peter Jackson, Chris Nolan, Ridley Scott, John Lasseter, who was not a director, but a creator.

• 1:06:26Sean Fennessey?

  Michael Bay.

• 1:06:28Bill Simmons?

  Michael Bay, our guy.

• 1:06:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Bill Simmons?

  What else for influence? You just go big ass picture.

• 1:06:35Chris Ryan?

  I mean, just the technique of world building, which has now become.

• 1:06:39Bill Simmons?

  World building.

• 1:06:39Chris Ryan?

  Basically how you get a meeting in Hollywood is like, it's not just this. There's so much more, you know what I mean? There's so many more ways to go. I would add Peter Jackson to your Star Wars.

• 1:06:48Sean Fennessey?

  Definitely.

• 1:06:49Chris Ryan?

  Influences and the way he he made the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I just think, yeah, like it's become now the currency of Hollywood is to go in and say, there's so many different stories we can tell with this main story. I mean, I think there is some fatigue with that because people feel like they're not getting a complete statement. And maybe the success of Barbie and Oppenheimer suggests like people are pretty satisfied with one story.

• 1:07:14Bill Simmons?

  Sinners.

• 1:07:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. But they're already asking those guys, what about a prequel? Like they're they're peppering them on the red carpet.

• 1:07:20Bill Simmons?

  We'll see with Coogs.

• 1:07:22Sean Fennessey?

  I am, I'm keeping the faith with Coog.

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  I I want a Sinners sequel.

• 1:07:28Speaker 03

  Why not? Let's take it to, you know.

• 1:07:30Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, can we go prequel and then sequel?

• 1:07:32Speaker 03

  We can go.

• 1:07:33Bill Simmons?

  Can we go to Chicago with smoke and stack?

• 1:07:35Chris Ryan?

  Can we go to Boston in the seventies?

• 1:07:40Sean Fennessey?

  Why haven't you thrown him out of hoops?

• 1:07:42Speaker 03

  I don't understand this.

• 1:07:44Sean Fennessey?

  Why do I have to get dunked on?

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  Obviously, Jon Favreau, obviously Dave Filoni, those guys are

• 1:07:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:49Speaker 03

  definitely fruit of

• 1:07:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Speaker 03

  Lucas's, uh, Lucas's tree. But you know, it, it, this movie also revived, like, the Doom movie, the David Lynch Doom movie gets made because of Star Wars.

• 1:08:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  Because

• 1:08:04Sean Fennessey?

  And Dino De Laurentiis, who was maybe gonna be a part of Star Wars, doesn't get on Star Wars. And so he doesn't get on Star Wars. He failed on King Kong. So he's like, I gotta get Doom to go. And then he gets it to go and it doesn't work.

• 1:08:13Speaker 03

  It doesn't work.

• 1:08:14Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it influenced everything, but it's not, there's nothing like it. I mean, it isn't really

• 1:08:21Bill Simmons?

  Is this the number one, this movie influenced the most things of all the movies we've ever talked about?

• 1:08:25Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's a strong case that it's the most significant piece of popular culture since like Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan. You know what I mean? Like, there's just these Titanic seismic moments where you can feel the whole, it's what Chris is saying about Michael Jackson. You can feel everything kind of shifting.

• 1:08:40Bill Simmons?

  So it's ahead of eight millimeter.

• 1:08:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like, no, great.

• 1:08:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's like this. Really close.

• 1:08:45Chris Ryan?

  We talked about Pulp Fiction's influence.

• 1:08:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Chris Ryan?

  Was that like five years? Like ultimately, like people love Pulp Fiction.

• 1:08:53Bill Simmons?

  It's like a half a decade.

• 1:08:53Chris Ryan?

  They were making movies like Pulp Fiction for about five years and people were listening to music like the music on the soundtrack for about five. I might even try to be disrespectful. It's like one of my favorite movies. We're, this thing is now five decades of having kind of everything in a headlock.

• 1:09:09Bill Simmons?

  With no sense whatsoever that it's slowing down. I think that's the crazy part.

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  The, this is what I will, will say is changing. Cause I thought about this a lot before we got on here. So when we talk about the dead period in Star Wars, we're talking about a point to where there's not a lot coming out. And like, we're talking in class about the books that we're reading. Now there's still all kinds of stuff. There's still, uh, toys and there are conventions and there are all of that stuff. But if you wanna watch Star Wars stuff on TV and movies, you have to watch the old stuff. Now, there is something that's happening that's interesting. We're starting to wonder if we're running out of story. That is new for Star Wars.

• 1:09:53Speaker 03

  We're we're having, I'm not saying that, I'm saying that whatever they put out, we are going to watch and new people are being turned on to it. But there is something that's happening right now to where we're relitigating this exact same time that this movie is set in. There's a show that's set right now in this same time. It's telling the story in a completely different way. You want to laugh? It it, but we're starting to wonder how much Star Wars we need, which speaks-

• 1:10:19Chris Ryan?

  Well, because everybody's so afraid to push the ball forward because then you're on your own. If you want to just play in the sandbox of like, oh, like we already know canon wise and timeline wise what's happening. Leading up to A New Hope, you can do that.

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  The fans have captured the lore.

• 1:10:34Sean Fennessey?

  But so much so that one of the only Star Wars related things I watched that wasn't this movie before I watched this movie. It was just the last fifteen minutes of Rogue One, which is a movie that I have always liked and I think is a cool movie. But what's most compelling to me about it is the last five minutes when Darth Vader shows up. And it he is the Darth Vader that you see and saw in your mind's eye when you were five years old. Where you were like, this is the baddest killing machine that ever lived.

• 1:10:58Chris Ryan?

  Looks even cooler.

• 1:10:59Speaker 03

  He's way cooler.

• 1:11:01Sean Fennessey?

  But the thing that is interesting to me about that is that when that movie ends, it literally ends all the way up to the last second. Before Star Wars for A New Hope starts. Like that's how much we have exploited the material that we made a movie, a whole movie. About every little thing that happened right before this movie that we're talking about on PodStark.

• 1:11:20Chris Ryan?

  And now we're making a two season TV show about every moment that goes up into that movie.

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  Until that movie, when Solo came out, this was the first time that I was like, there are limits. I liked Solo. But here's the thing about Solo and what's the actor's name?

• 1:11:34Sean Fennessey?

  Alden Ehrenreich.

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  Okay, he's good.

• 1:11:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  That movie changed his career to me because he was on his way up. Everyone loved him. He had this personality and then somebody asked him to be Han Solo. Somebody asked him to be Harrison Ford in the most perfect role of all time. And I don't give a fuck who you get, you can't do it. You can't do it. So there is a part of Star Wars that every Star Wars fan has to come to terms with that cannot be done. Like the way it was done in the past. And I think people are having a hard time coming to terms with that.

• 1:12:08Chris Ryan?

  It'd be funny if like White Lotus.

• 1:12:11Bill Simmons?

  Adopted the Star Wars strategy and like, we're doing an Armand prequel.

• 1:12:16Bill Simmons?

  She's like ripping through, we're gonna follow, what was the family that lost their, the dad lost the money? The Ratliff's?

• 1:12:22Chris Ryan?

  Ratliff's.

• 1:12:23Bill Simmons?

  It's a Ratliff's.

• 1:12:24Chris Ryan?

  It's a Duke UNC.

• 1:12:26Bill Simmons?

  Four seasons. Uh, let's take one more break and there's more George Lucas stuff.

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

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• 1:13:01Bill Simmons?

  When the sun goes down, the appetizers come out. Yeah, you heard that right. Late night, half-priced appetizers are here at Applebee's. Saucy, sweet and spicy boneless wings, crispy, cheesy mozzarella sticks, creamy spinach and artichoke dip. Your favorite apps half-priced, available every single night because why should appetizers have curfews? Tap the banner to learn more. Dining only for a limited time at participating locations. Restrictions apply. Copyright 2026 Applebee's Restaurant LLC. This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy. Every ounce of dirt, sweat and gears, every checkered flag and trophy raised, every lap, every race, every hard-fought place. They're all jammed inside every can of NOS Energy. High-performance energy for burning the midnight

• 1:13:46Bill Simmons?

  oil in the garage and pedal-to-the-metal human horsepower for the streets. Go ahead, crack open a can of NOS Energy and get after it. Just a quick backstory. Lucas wants to do a Flash Gordon-type thing. He starts working on a treatment in 73, called it The Star Wars. He wanted romance and adventure and fun and space and started showing it to people and nobody was supportive. And they were like, why the fuck are you doing this? Why don't you make some real movies? And people are just shitting on him. And then 20th Century Fox finally liked it. They wanted to be in business with Lucas. Gave him 150 grand. American Graffiti crushes. They're like, here's 500.

• 1:14:28Bill Simmons?

  He does the sequels merch thing. He bets on himself and wins to the point that no studio ever does this again to this degree where they're just like, yeah, take it. It never happens again. It's a one and only, this was the only time, the only one. I mean, there's been some close ones, even Kubla recently with Sinners where you can get it back in 25 years. Nobody was ever like, yeah, yeah, it sounds great. Take it.

• 1:14:54Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mean, Megalopolis did just happen. You know, like you can still pay for the movie yourself.

• 1:15:00Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:15:00Sean Fennessey?

  But it's very rare for someone to actually own the creative rights.

• 1:15:05Bill Simmons?

  Of a studio film.

• 1:15:06Sean Fennessey?

  Of a studio movie. Immediately, basically.

• 1:15:09Bill Simmons?

  Immediately and in perpetuity. So he said the screenplay was almost 300 pages long. Ended up, I don't know if you want to go into how he took Revenge of the Jedi and ended up moving stuff around and saving stuff for later.

• 1:15:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Bill Simmons?

  They filmed it in Tunisia in England. He did ILM. This is where you could talk about ILM if you want. He created basically a company to do all the special effects that he also owned.

• 1:15:33Sean Fennessey?

  If he hadn't signed with Fox to make this movie, I don't know if it would have happened because Fox had just closed their special effects department. So there was no one to do the special effects for the movie.

• 1:15:40Bill Simmons?

  Do we have special effects? Maybe we just never had them.

• 1:15:42Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe not in the form that we have them now. Because he brings together this group of people, John Dykstra, Dennis Mirren, Phil Tippett, Joe Johnston, like guys who go on to be some of the most important movie makers in the next 50 years. And all of these guys move into this warehouse in California and he's off in England making this movie and they're figuring out.

• 1:16:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Sean Fennessey?

  How to make the things that are the indelible images that we still see from the movie that still look good. The opening image of this movie with the spaceship flying and then the star crew. Cruiser overhead, there's an incredible documentary series called Light and Magic on Disney+ Plus. If you are even one tenth of a movie nerd and interested in how they do these things, you have to watch this series because the first two episodes walks you through specifically how they developed the technology, all these guys in this warehouse that made all this stuff possible, the motion cameras that they invented, the way that Phil Tippett is creating, like evolving animation styles, like all that shit that they did is so cool. It's dorky. It's no doubt dorky, but it changed movies because ILM eventually becomes the place that

• 1:16:48Sean Fennessey?

  evolves digital animation and computer generated animation that takes us to where we are now in movies. Some of that is for the worse, in my opinion, but what they were doing with practical filmmaking effects, you mentioned the Ten Commandments, they literally get Vista Vision film, the last time a US film had been shot on Vista Vision is the Ten Commandments and they're like, we're gonna shoot these models that we built on this ancient film stock.

• 1:17:09Chris Ryan?

  So that the Death Star looks like a movie.

• 1:17:11Sean Fennessey?

  Amazing and wide and grand and beautiful. So just like really ingenious young guys who have nothing else going on in their lives, but trying to come up with cool ways to make this movie that is out of George's head.

• 1:17:23Chris Ryan?

  There's a shot.

• 1:17:23Bill Simmons?

  And then Floyd Gondola comes in, he's like, guys, I don't see it.

• 1:17:26Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:17:27Bill Simmons?

  I think the future's video.

• 1:17:28Chris Ryan?

  I think that's like.

• 1:17:29Bill Simmons?

  It's like the ones right here.

• 1:17:29Chris Ryan?

  Don Simpson and Jerry Bruck, I ever come in and say, hey, why don't we hose her down a little bit? There's a shot when Millennium Falcon's first fly to Yavin, like towards the end of the movie, and they're about to land at the Rebel base and there's like the red planet and then it comes around that red planet to be able to see the Rebel base planet. And I still to this day, I'm just like, that is outer space, right? Like, I can't get my mind around the fact that guys made that. Like, it looks like a spaceship traveling in outer space to me.

• 1:18:01Bill Simmons?

  Well, and also how fucking cool it was in 1977.

• 1:18:05Speaker 03

  That's what I think. That's, but that's why the movie hit like it did because people are just like,

• 1:18:09Chris Ryan?

  That's why David's gone four times in two weeks.

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  Back to Sean's point about the first shot, you see the first shot, the Rebel Cruiser is trying to outrun the, the, um, the Star Destroyer.

• 1:18:23Speaker 03

  I thought to myself, watching it back, you guys must have lost your fucking minds.

• 1:18:27Chris Ryan?

  My mom said that.

• 1:18:28Speaker 03

  You must have lost your shit.

• 1:18:30Chris Ryan?

  The first, the first ship goes by and you're like, cool. And then the fucking destroyer comes from the top of the screen over the audience. And she was like, everybody in the theater just gasped.

• 1:18:40Speaker 03

  Because e- even the depiction of a space battle, that when the laser is coming in, then it kind of dissipates.

• 1:18:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:48Speaker 03

  There's not really very much sound. They invented the way space battles are supposed to look. They had to invent that from scratch. Cause we never went to the moon. That was all like, you know, uh, the, the, the made up by the government. They shot that in Burberry.

• 1:19:04Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:19:05Speaker 03

  We don't know what space is even like at this point. So we, we, they had to invent what space travel looked like out of nowhere.

• 1:19:14Chris Ryan?

  Can that stuff never happen?

• 1:19:15Bill Simmons?

  Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica, all those shows are happening and Star Wars just seemed like it was crushing it.

• 1:19:20Chris Ryan?

  Was Galactica before Star Wars or after?

• 1:19:22Bill Simmons?

  It was right after.

• 1:19:23Sean Fennessey?

  Dykstra work, goes to work on Battlestar Galactica right afterwards. But he said something really cool that I hadn't really thought about, which is that in that shot, this shot that we're talking about where the destroyer goes overhead. He's like, the entire ship during the whole shot is in focus. You don't realize that how hard it is to do that. There's never a moment where in the foreground or the background of the image, nothing is blurry. Nothing is shadowy. In space, that you can see every detail of that ship. And because all of those models are handmade, they made all of these doors and widgets and windows on the ships handmade and to scale. So it seems like this is something that was built by people. It felt like a real thing.

• 1:20:04Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. You can see that again at the, the last battle.

• 1:20:07Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:20:08Chris Ryan?

  When they're flying over the surface of the Death Star and it's like, you can see every nook and cranny. And you're like, oh my god.

• 1:20:14Bill Simmons?

  George Lucas over underrated?

• 1:20:16Chris Ryan?

  There is a case.

• 1:20:18Speaker 03

  I mean, for real, but when, when you're, when you're.

• 1:20:21Bill Simmons?

  Is he the goat?

• 1:20:23Speaker 03

  When you're looking at the Star Destroyer or the Death Star, you're wondering, I wonder what that does. I wonder what that does.

• 1:20:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:29Speaker 03

  I wonder what these things are. Is that a satellite? What's happening here? What's going on? And that, those are the things that like spawned decades and decades and generations of wonder and curiosity.

• 1:20:42Bill Simmons?

  Well, Fox wasn't impressed. They gave the movie very little marketing support. Did some licensed T-shirts and a couple posters, which are now worth like insane amounts of money. Like insane, like.

• 1:20:55Sean Fennessey?

  Millions.

• 1:20:55Bill Simmons?

  You go on eBay.

• 1:20:58Bill Simmons?

  No, they're, they're like eighty, ninety thousand dollars.

• 1:21:01Sean Fennessey?

  You think your former classmate David is sitting pretty with all his merch from back in the day?

• 1:21:05Bill Simmons?

  They had the lunchboxes, anything like those toys. If you have the, the IOU box that you never actually cashed in or whatever that thing was, like that's the, everything's worth. Anyway, they, Lucas wanted it on Memorial Day weekend. And everybody was like, that's bullshit. We don't, it's a summer movie. We don't do Memorial Day weekend. We don't do stuff in May. And Lucas was like, no, no, we get word of mouth for kids. Again, George Lucas.

• 1:21:31Bill Simmons?

  So they do May 25th. They pair it with a movie called The Other Side of Midnight. Starring Susan Sarandon, based on a Sydney Sheldon novel. Sean, I don't know if you've letterbox that one.

• 1:21:42Sean Fennessey?

  Haven't seen it.

• 1:21:43Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:21:44Sean Fennessey?

  I do love Susan Sarandon.

• 1:21:45Chris Ryan?

  Next week on the rewatch.

• 1:21:46Bill Simmons?

  Pair it together. Yeah, it's a one for us. They pair it together and that movie gets dumped in a week. And, and the rest is history. This is one of my favorite anecdotes. Lucas and Spielberg, who are buddies. And they're, they're arguing about whose movie is going to do better. Close Encounters or Star Wars? And Lucas says, your movie's definitely going to do better. I'll give you 2.5% of the profit on my film. You give me, we'll trade, so we'll root for each other's film. And Spielberg accepted because he thought Lucas was going to have a bigger movie. And Spielberg ended up with 2.5% of Star Wars.

• 1:22:21Chris Ryan?

  Pretty good.

• 1:22:22Bill Simmons?

  Fucking Spielberg, man.

• 1:22:23Chris Ryan?

  I gotta tell you, man, if I was Lucas, I'd go back to Spielberg and be like, look, man. We didn't pay for that.

• 1:22:31Bill Simmons?

  I don't remember doing that. Uh, Lucas was so sure the movie's gonna flop that he went on vacation with a bunch of people, including Spielberg, and the movie's taking off and they're in Hawaii. And they come up with Raiders of the Lost Ark on the vacation. So he's just winning. You know, I don't think anyone's ever winning more over the span of a month than George Lucas.

• 1:22:50Sean Fennessey?

  Do you remember pre-release what the energy around the movie was?

• 1:22:55Bill Simmons?

  No, no, no memory whatsoever. I don't remember until after it came out and the kids in class were starting to talk about it.

• 1:23:02Chris Ryan?

  Lives had changed because of it.

• 1:23:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like we're going, going Saturday and then we're gonna go to Sunday.

• 1:23:06Chris Ryan?

  When you look at the critical response, it's such a huge spectrum where it's like, you know, some of the high-end places are just like, this is empty, there's no characters, blah, blah, blah. Then there's a lot of people who are like, this is definitely going to change the trajectory of culture.

• 1:23:20Sean Fennessey?

  I'm sure you have the Ebert quote.

• 1:23:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Raj was a fan. Harrison Ford.

• 1:23:28Bill Simmons?

  Borderline hottest take, is this his greatest role?

• 1:23:31Speaker 03

  This is.

• 1:23:31Bill Simmons?

  I mean, he was Indiana Jones.

• 1:23:33Speaker 03

  This is the argument.

• 1:23:34Bill Simmons?

  I mean, I think, is there a better movie role than this?

• 1:23:37Speaker 03

  I went to a bar mitzvah one time where there were two tables. It was a movie-themed bar mitzvah. And at one table, there was this guy that was Harrison Ford, uh, and he was Indiana Jones. And another table, there was this guy and he was, um,

• 1:23:48Bill Simmons?

  Han Solo?

• 1:23:49Speaker 03

  He was Han Solo. That moment, I was trying to think to myself.

• 1:23:53Chris Ryan?

  Is this a recent bar mitzvah or?

• 1:23:55Speaker 03

  This is like, this is years ago. I was thinking to myself, is Harrison Ford, Han Solo, or Indiana Jones? Like, what Jersey is he in?

• 1:24:09Chris Ryan?

  What's his Hall of Fame bust? I have the, I have the, the sort of, the answer, my answer for this is, I think Indiana Jones is his more iconic role, but I think he wins Star Wars: A New Hope.

• 1:24:22Chris Ryan?

  Like, I think that.

• 1:24:23Bill Simmons?

  You stepping in the last category?

• 1:24:24Chris Ryan?

  I'm just, I'm just saying.

• 1:24:25Bill Simmons?

  Jesus.

• 1:24:26Chris Ryan?

  I think, I think.

• 1:24:28Sean Fennessey?

  Not even the correct answer to that question.

• 1:24:30Chris Ryan?

  Without Harrison Ford, this movie actually doesn't work. On a, on a whole, on like a, like on a total level. But in my mind, he is Indiana Jones.

• 1:24:40Speaker 03

  I've thought about it for such a long time.

• 1:24:42Chris Ryan?

  Indiana is more important for him.

• 1:24:44Speaker 03

  Probably. I think it's his most enduring role.

• 1:24:47Sean Fennessey?

  We haven't seen the legacy of Red Hulk yet, though, so we can't actually answer that question.

• 1:24:51Chris Ryan?

  Good. Don't step on Thunderbolt's man.

• 1:24:54Bill Simmons?

  I love, I love Han Solo.

• 1:24:57Speaker 03

  I think he's Han Solo.

• 1:24:58Bill Simmons?

  It's such a great character. Every moment, he's the coolest guy.

• 1:25:01Speaker 03

  Indiana Jones, like so much. I think he's, I think he's Han Solo.

• 1:25:05Chris Ryan?

  But he gets to cook in this. He gets to just come in and have fun and flirt and have the best lines. He's in every frame almost of Indiana Jones.

• 1:25:12Speaker 03

  It's true. I mean, look, Indiana Jones is probably his most enduring role. It is, but for some reason, when I think of that character, when I think of him as a guy, I think Han Solo.

• 1:25:27Bill Simmons?

  I would go Han Solo one, Indy two, regarding Henry three.

• 1:25:33Bill Simmons?

  Where he had to get shot in the head to learn how to be a good guy. We'll be doing that on the rewatchables at some point.

• 1:25:38Speaker 03

  I love that movie.

• 1:25:39Sean Fennessey?

  I love that movie. You know what that movie is, by the way? The first screenplay ever authored by J.J. Abrams.

• 1:25:45Chris Ryan?

  Is that true?

• 1:25:46Sean Fennessey?

  Known as Jeffrey Abrams.

• 1:25:47Speaker 03

  He must have been a fucking child.

• 1:25:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, directed by Mike Nichols.

• 1:25:52Speaker 03

  You didn't give your take on Indiana versus.

• 1:25:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think Indiana Jones, I think Indiana Jones is the one, I think the way to measure this will be when he dies and I would imagine that the obituary is already written. The New York Times, it will say, you know, Harrison Ford best remembered for his roles in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars.

• 1:26:14Chris Ryan?

  Anchorman two.

• 1:26:15Sean Fennessey?

  And forty-two.

• 1:26:18Speaker 03

  Working Girl.

• 1:26:19Sean Fennessey?

  In Clear and Present Danger and, you know.

• 1:26:25Sean Fennessey?

  I guess I'll say Indiana Jones. I like the Star Wars movies more.

• 1:26:29Bill Simmons?

  You said.

• 1:26:29Chris Ryan?

  It's Indy is what he's most known for.

• 1:26:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but for you, it's Han Solo?

• 1:26:34Chris Ryan?

  I think Han Solo is the most important part of this movie to me.

• 1:26:38Bill Simmons?

  Who else in the history of recent history of movies, last fifty years, could have been as good as Han Solo? That we have, that we've had.

• 1:26:47Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, you have to be, to me, like when I watch him in this movie, I'm like, this is like if Brad Pitt and George Clooney were the same guy. It's like it's got the ineffable cool and like that kind of remove, but also like can make fun of himself and seems like a Joker. And it's, it's so hard to put that together.

• 1:27:06Bill Simmons?

  There's, there's a Denzel case.

• 1:27:10Bill Simmons?

  He's a little edgier. He's like a little closer to Training Day Denzel.

• 1:27:14Chris Ryan?

  Now you got me thinking about Denzel when he asks for the money from ladies like, cause I'm leaving with something.

• 1:27:21Bill Simmons?

  There's a Denzel case is all I'm saying. Cause it's, it's a charisma role. It's a charisma. I'll steal your girl. I'll steal your money.

• 1:27:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think the most realistic one is if it was a couple of years later, I think Kurt Russell. If you put Kurt Russell on this part.

• 1:27:33Bill Simmons?

  Ah, not bad.

• 1:27:34Sean Fennessey?

  That's like, that movie works.

• 1:27:35Bill Simmons?

  He's basically Snake Plissken as.

• 1:27:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that movie works.

• 1:27:37Speaker 03

  Not bad. Because here's the thing. Han has to be dashing, but not too pretty.

• 1:27:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:27:45Speaker 03

  Because he has to look a little rough around the edges.

• 1:27:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:48Speaker 03

  He has to be.

• 1:27:49Sean Fennessey?

  He's a smuggler.

• 1:27:49Speaker 03

  An asshole, but he's gotta be lovable. He's gotta be somebody that like, a face that you can kind of forget. Because he's gotta get past.

• 1:27:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, Mallor would be furious right now because she thinks Harrison Ford walks on water and is the most handsome man who ever lived.

• 1:28:04Speaker 03

  But in witness though. So that's a couple of years after. He got better as he got older.

• 1:28:09Bill Simmons?

  Uh, music by John Williams. You guys might have heard of him.

• 1:28:11Chris Ryan?

  He blacked out here.

• 1:28:14Sean Fennessey?

  He.

• 1:28:14Chris Ryan?

  He fucking did it.

• 1:28:15Sean Fennessey?

  He.

• 1:28:17Chris Ryan?

  Not a bum note here.

• 1:28:18Sean Fennessey?

  He grabs the belt in this movie. He grabs the belt and he has never relinquished the belt.

• 1:28:23Speaker 03

  He's been a man since seventy-seven.

• 1:28:25Sean Fennessey?

  He has been the goat.

• 1:28:27Chris Ryan?

  Can you imagine just being like?

• 1:28:29Bill Simmons?

  He's like.

• 1:28:30Chris Ryan?

  That shit works.

• 1:28:34Speaker 03

  How many, really, I like, there's an argument to be made and it's just artistically, that he is the most successful person to come out of the movie. Artistically.

• 1:28:45Bill Simmons?

  Well, we've talked about whether he was the Joe Montana and searching for Bobby Fischer. He's better at this than anything you've ever been at. Like, like, is he the number one? He's better at his job than anyone's ever been at a movie job.

• 1:28:58Sean Fennessey?

  He's the greatest film composer of all time. I, I, I actually don't think.

• 1:29:01Bill Simmons?

  Hamer Kaminsky?

• 1:29:03Chris Ryan?

  Kaminsky as the cinematographer?

• 1:29:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:05Chris Ryan?

  I have a couple of guys above Yanoush.

• 1:29:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:08Chris Ryan?

  On my board.

• 1:29:09Bill Simmons?

  I just wanted to plug Yanoush.

• 1:29:11Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's like, obviously, tons and tons of great film composers and like, right now, a big reason why Sinners is so great is because Ludwig and Kugler's partnership and like, it's very similar to what John Williams and Spielberg have, Hans Zimmer. There's tons of great people who do this, but John Williams, as recently as like five years ago, was still writing incredible scores.

• 1:29:29Bill Simmons?

  And getting nominated.

• 1:29:30Sean Fennessey?

  And writing great scores for Star Wars. Like, he's still iterating on this music and making it sound great and new material, and he's in his nineties.

• 1:29:38Bill Simmons?

  He's just writing and now typing, banging the keyboards on a piano that's just on a pile of cash. It's like, it's a piano, he's got a chair, it's like all on hundred dollar bills, and he's just rocking in the hundreds.

• 1:29:51Speaker 03

  So, you know how Harrison has the, which I would have, I would say that not very many actors have that, to that level, are you Indiana Jones or Han Solo? John Williams has that. Is it this? Is it Indiana?

• 1:30:05Chris Ryan?

  E.T.

• 1:30:05Speaker 03

  Is it E.T.? Is it Superman?

• 1:30:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:08Speaker 03

  Like.

• 1:30:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Jurassic Park.

• 1:30:10Speaker 03

  Jurassic, like ridiculously recognizable. You, I would say that it's Star Wars.

• 1:30:14Bill Simmons?

  Eddie Murphy's Axel Foley?

• 1:30:17Chris Ryan?

  That's Falterbier, man.

• 1:30:19Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think of like, if you just associate one thing with.

• 1:30:22Speaker 03

  Oh, you're talking about Eddie Murphy?

• 1:30:24Bill Simmons?

  Eddie Murphy?

• 1:30:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:26Bill Simmons?

  What's Denzel?

• 1:30:28Sean Fennessey?

  What, music?

• 1:30:30Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm talking about associating somebody with one, like you're talking about all these different things.

• 1:30:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:30:35Bill Simmons?

  What is John Williams' one identifiable thing? I'm saying, what are some other ones where it's like instantaneously? Because for, for John Williams, I honestly think of Jaws before.

• 1:30:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I actually forgot about Jaws for like.

• 1:30:47Bill Simmons?

  I think Jaws has to be the number one for him.

• 1:30:50Chris Ryan?

  It's probably the most famous theme, but I think.

• 1:30:53Bill Simmons?

  Nah.

• 1:30:54Speaker 03

  Uh, maybe.

• 1:30:55Bill Simmons?

  Nah.

• 1:30:56Speaker 03

  Maybe. It, it, it's, it's.

• 1:30:57Bill Simmons?

  I mean.

• 1:30:58Speaker 03

  It's difficult.

• 1:30:59Bill Simmons?

  Dun, dun, dun.

• 1:30:59Sean Fennessey?

  We're picking from the most iconic movies of our lives.

• 1:31:02Speaker 03

  I, I know, but think about the, the fact that everyone is so memorable. Now, Donner Superman is not as big of a movie as the rest of these movies. It's a pretty big fucking movie, but it's not. But the theme from the movie.

• 1:31:14Chris Ryan?

  It's pretty great.

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  Is as enduring or even more enduring than the movie itself.

• 1:31:18Chris Ryan?

  He also just like has 10 movies that are not as big as these that like where he just absolutely cooked. Like Empire of the Sun is a gorgeous.

• 1:31:25Bill Simmons?

  It'd be funny if you asked John Williams, like, what, what do you think the number of movies?

• 1:31:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Bill Simmons?

  Like, what about Secretariat?

• 1:31:35Bill Simmons?

  One other thing I want to talk about before we get to the Oscars and all that stuff.

• 1:31:40Bill Simmons?

  We talk about Lucas's imagination with things. And you really, I think one of the reasons this movie was so cool the first time you saw it in the theater was because there's just all these different creatures. Like, in the seventies, we had the Muppet Show. Right? And there were the two guys in the balcony and then there were different things and we knew all those people. And we had like Sesame Street and Lucas like basically quintuples down on all of these things.

• 1:32:02Sean Fennessey?

  Jim Henson is a great comp though. We were talking about Stephen King. Like Jim Henson is one of those guys who's like, I have this world in my head and I'm going to keep trying to get it out as much as I possibly can.

• 1:32:13Bill Simmons?

  He doesn't half ass it. It's like, okay, we have evil sand people and there's, but then when we get to the bar.

• 1:32:19Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:19Bill Simmons?

  And every single person in the bar looks different than the next person. There's that one guy that comes in and it seems like he's got like balls on his chin.

• 1:32:26Speaker 03

  Then there's another guy with a big pig on his nose.

• 1:32:29Bill Simmons?

  The pig nose, yeah. You're just going around. It's like, where the fuck are we?

• 1:32:32Sean Fennessey?

  So to me, the secret MVP of the entire movie is Ralph McQuarrie, who's the illustrator, who Lucas told all of his ideas to for all these characters and McQuarrie draws all of them. Before storyboards, before they totally know what all the financing is, these are the proofs of concept that they share with everybody to say, this is what the characters in the worlds will look like. And if you look at the original Ralph McQuarrie sketches of C-3PO and R2-D2, of all those characters in the Cantina, of the whole world, it's so close to what the movie looks like. So close. And that's why when people are like, ah, George Lucas, his dialogue is terrible. His direction can be stilted at times. Like when you, people can be really critical of him. All that stuff comes out of his head and from Macquarie's pen.

• 1:33:15Sean Fennessey?

  And that to me is like the ultimate case for why he is so, so, so, so, so critical to this, this whole machine.

• 1:33:24Bill Simmons?

  He won five Oscars and got nominated for best film, but did not win.

• 1:33:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You, do you know, do you want to talk about what was nominated that year?

• 1:33:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, go do it.

• 1:33:34Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Close Encounters is also nominated.

• 1:33:38Sean Fennessey?

  No, Close Encounters is not nominated, but Spielberg is nominated and doesn't win. I believe it's, is it Julia, The Turning Point, Annie Hall, which wins that year? And what else? What is the other one? The Goodbye Girl.

• 1:33:52Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:33:53Sean Fennessey?

  So The Goodbye Girl, Turning Point and Julia. Show of hands, how many of you have seen all three of those?

• 1:33:59Bill Simmons?

  I've seen Julia.

• 1:34:00Speaker 03

  I haven't seen all three.

• 1:34:01Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 1:34:02Speaker 03

  I saw The Goodbye Girl. Uh, I don't know what Turning Point even is. What is that?

• 1:34:05Bill Simmons?

  The Annie Hall thing is kind of nuts.

• 1:34:08Speaker 03

  I've never seen that.

• 1:34:09Bill Simmons?

  I think the Annie Hall thing, I've always thought it was nuts even before the stuff that happened with Woody, because then Titanic, 20 years later, basically, everyone's like, yeah, Titanic, that should win. But how does Star Wars not win?

• 1:34:20Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think it was taken that seriously.

• 1:34:22Bill Simmons?

  Obviously.

• 1:34:22Speaker 03

  Maybe not, yeah. It's still hard for movies like, to be honest with you, it's hard for movies like Star Wars to win the top award.

• 1:34:28Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if you could even sense any of the burgeoning backlash rejection of Star Wars in the embrace of Annie Hall that year. I mean, Annie Hall is a quintessentially 70s product.

• 1:34:39Sean Fennessey?

  It is. I mean, Annie Hall is a revolutionary movie in its own way.

• 1:34:43Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:34:43Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, the way that the movie is made and the way that the story is told is, is remarkable. And so to me, it's not like a safe pick per se over a movie like Star Wars.

• 1:34:53Bill Simmons?

  It's just weird that Star Wars didn't win.

• 1:34:54Sean Fennessey?

  You'd be like, ah, come on. Like, that's not, that would be a classic travesty. But like, this movie is nominated for picture director, supporting actor, screenplay, and then all of the tech categories. And then it wins all the tech categories. Alec Guinness.

• 1:35:07Speaker 03

  Oh, rea- oh, okay. Yeah, I I knew that and it jumped right out of my mind.

• 1:35:11Sean Fennessey?

  Which is the classic, like, we got the the celebrated old guy and he got a look in the big movie. Yes, exactly.

• 1:35:16Speaker 03

  He's the guy that kind of in in a in a film with a bunch of newcomers and the kind of new faces was, okay, this is a serious movie.

• 1:35:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:35:24Bill Simmons?

  Ah, a lot of conflicting reports on how pumped he was about this movie.

• 1:35:28Chris Ryan?

  Sounds like he was a really good coworker, but was like, why don't you kill me? I really don't want to do this anymore.

• 1:35:33Bill Simmons?

  They gave him some points to kind of keep him happy.

• 1:35:38Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty, pretty. It must must be nice for the Guinness estate to have a couple of points on Star Wars.

• 1:35:41Bill Simmons?

  It ended up being, you know, this guy won an Oscar and was one of the more famous actors of the 20th century. And this ended up becoming the thing that that outlived him.

• 1:35:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and I mean, he's in Virgin River Quay and Lawrence of Arabia. You know what I mean? Like, he's in some of the biggest movies of all time.

• 1:35:55Bill Simmons?

  People are like, hey, Obi-Wan!

• 1:35:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:57Bill Simmons?

  There you are!

• 1:35:59Speaker 03

  Greatest Jedi of all time.

• 1:36:00Bill Simmons?

  Wearing a rug?

• 1:36:02Sean Fennessey?

  Wearing a rug, yeah.

• 1:36:03Bill Simmons?

  Wearing a rug?

• 1:36:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It's time to finally say it.

• 1:36:06Bill Simmons?

  I was like, that, as you know, I spot the toupees out of nowhere. It's like, that rug doesn't seem.

• 1:36:10Sean Fennessey?

  You think he would have gone to Turkey?

• 1:36:12Speaker 03

  Oh, for sure. Or...

• 1:36:16Speaker 03

  Zering Medical in Beverly Hills.

• 1:36:19Chris Ryan?

  No free ads.

• 1:36:22Bill Simmons?

  Five Oscars: score, sound, visual effects, special achievement, scientific and engineering, which I don't even, is that even an Oscar anymore?

• 1:36:29Sean Fennessey?

  No, definitely not.

• 1:36:30Bill Simmons?

  Uh, $11 million budget, ultimately made, who knows, 775 million? Yeah, it seems like it's higher. Uh, it initially grossed 410 million worldwide and surpassed Jaws to become the highest grossing movie ever. And then E.T. came out, it was, uh, reissued so many times that they had to start changing titles and doing special editions and all that stuff. If you do the inflation-adjusted list, which I know Sean is very passionate about, Gone with the Wind's still number one and Star Wars second.

• 1:37:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yep. Chris's Chris's two favorite movies of all time.

• 1:37:03Bill Simmons?

  Roger Ebert, are you nervous?

• 1:37:05Chris Ryan?

  Nah, not really.

• 1:37:06Bill Simmons?

  Four stars.

• 1:37:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:09Bill Simmons?

  Every once in a while, I have what I think of as an out of the body experience at a movie.

• 1:37:13Chris Ryan?

  Rog.

• 1:37:14Bill Simmons?

  I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a movie theater and thinks it's up there on the screen. In a curious sense, the events in the movie seem real and I seem to be a part of them. And then he just raves and raves and raves about how fucking cool Star Wars is.

• 1:37:27Chris Ryan?

  Me too.

• 1:37:28Bill Simmons?

  Rog.

• 1:37:28Chris Ryan?

  Rog.

• 1:37:29Bill Simmons?

  I knew he'd come through.

• 1:37:30Chris Ryan?

  Me too.

• 1:37:32Bill Simmons?

  I feel like we should take this to a part two.

• 1:37:34Speaker 07

  I was gonna say, we're 95 minutes in.

• 1:37:36Chris Ryan?

  Is this the longest intro of any of your watchables?

• 1:37:39Bill Simmons?

  I think Boogie Nights was seven hours. We're gonna take this to a part two, thanks to Craig Horlbeck and Jack Sanders. We will see you for part two.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

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