‘You Can See Everything’ Mania and Best Picture Power Rankings. Plus: ‘Whalefall,’ ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ and Kyle MacLachlan!

Sean and Amanda open today’s jam-packed episode by celebrating the incredible box office performance over the weekend, especially from ‘You Can See Everything’ and ‘Street Fighter.’ Then, they cover the major shake-up at Netflix, most notably the firings of Bela Bajaria and Dan Lin. Then, they discuss an incredibly “Sean-coded” movie in ‘Whalefall’ and an incredibly “Amanda-coded” movie in ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ which they both were very mixed on. Later, they conduct their second Best Picture Power Rankings of the season and make some drastic changes from last month’s list. Finally, legendary actor Kyle MacLachlan joins the show for a new series called One Year, where Sean asks all about the magical period from 1985 to 1986 when he made ‘Blue Velvet’ with the late, great David Lynch. (0:00) Intro (1:21) The big box office performances of ‘You Can See Everything’ and ‘Street Fighter’ (6:06) Huge Netflix shake-up with major layoffs (15:26) Steven Soderbergh takes over principal photography for Matt Reeves on ‘The Batman: Part II’ (18:23) ‘Whalefall’ (33:11) ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (52:31) Best Picture Power Rankings (1:26:01) Kyle MacLachlan joins the show! Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Kyle MacLachlan Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:15Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy.

• 0:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 0:17Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Picture Conversation Show about the sensibility of whales. Today on the show, we are making sense of a wild weekend at the movies, including the release of several Oscar contenders, some mainstream hits, and some journeys into our movie-loving past. We're talking about the new adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, and also Whalefall, a literary adaptation of a different sort. We'll also be taking our monthly stock of the Best Picture Power Rankings, account for the surge by a couple of new movies, including You Can See Everything, and start crossing off some prospective contenders. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by legendary actor Kyle McLaughlin for a new series I'm calling One Year. Kyle has been talking about his life after publishing a new memoir called Fictional Selves, so I thought we should zero in on that magical period between 1985 and 1986, 40 years later, when he made Blue Velvet with the late, great

• 1:02Sean Fennessey?

  David Lynch. Kyle and I talked about so many details of his life as a young actor, the set of that extraordinary movie, his relationships with Lynch, Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper, and more. Longtime listeners know how much I love Blue Velvet and McLaughlin and Lynch's collaborations, so this was very special. Please stick around for it. But first, some movie news, right after this.

• 1:53Speaker 02

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• 2:10Sean Fennessey?

  You think these intros are getting longer?

• 2:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That one was particularly long. I was honestly checking my texts. I'm sorry, but you did a good job.

• 2:16Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you, yeah.

• 2:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Did you notice that you started like 2X-ing your own voice at the end?

• 2:21Sean Fennessey?

  Sure, I always do that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's... Unfortunately, the one thing that Billy Evans and I have in common is we listen to podcasts fast, and there's...

• 2:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I... Keep it moving.

• 2:34Sean Fennessey?

  So, lot of news.

• 2:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:38Sean Fennessey?

  Box Office: Street Fighter, you saw it? You say what?

• 2:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't see it, yeah.

• 2:44Sean Fennessey?

  So funny. I've not had this experience before, where a movie comes in at number one, it's a big, new, wide release, and not only are we not talking about it today on the show, but I feel like it is really not a thing that happened. I did see it.

• 2:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Did you have a nice time?

• 2:56Sean Fennessey?

  A mixed bag, I'll say.

• 2:58Amanda Dobbins?

  You were looking forward to it.

• 3:00Sean Fennessey?

  I was, I was.

• 3:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And you've programmed another episode with... to talk about it and to talk about your passions and your childhood.

• 3:08Sean Fennessey?

  What I did was I crunched that episode into another episode.

• 3:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, again, to talk about your passions and your childhood.

• 3:14Sean Fennessey?

  That's true, yeah. Later this week on the show, we will talk about Best Horror Movies of the Year with CR, and we'll talk about Street Fighter with Shay Serrano, which will be fun. But, um, Street Fighter made 30 million, which I think is maybe like a little bit of a disappointment, and maybe some of our video game adaptation dreams have been slightly diminished, you know?

• 3:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Our doing a lot of work there.

• 3:31Sean Fennessey?

  Sure. Resident Evil worked. Mortal Kombat 2, not so much. Street Fighter, not so much. Next Year: Legend of Zelda, we'll see what happens. The big story at the movies this weekend was You Can See Everything.

• 3:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely.

• 3:42Sean Fennessey?

  It made $15 million on less than 900 screens in the US. Many international listeners of this show very angry with the lack of release of that film, and I completely understand that feeling. I'm very sorry that you're not able to see the film if you don't live in the US. This is the biggest non-music documentary at the box office since Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004. It's had more than 2,000 sellouts across the country, and I was at the AMC Burbank 16 last night for a 640 screening of Sense and Sensibility.

• 4:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 4:11Sean Fennessey?

  And you would think that Taylor Swift was playing a concert at the AMC Burbank. It was mobbed, mobbed, the busiest I've ever seen that movie theater. Now, there's a lot of reasons for that. There are a lot of new movies.

• 4:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and that is where all of the cinephiles meet. I was there Saturday morning to see Whalefall and ran into several friends of the podcast who were also there seeing Nathan Fielder.

• 4:31Sean Fennessey?

  And my wife on Saturday afternoon saw La Bola Negra there. So there's a real mix at that theater in particular, which I feel like is like the hive mind in LA of, you know, the multiplex cinephile. But it reestablished, reencouraged this like, man, we are cooking with movies right now. Not every movie is good, but the audience is really, really present if you give them a chance to see the movies. So what do you make of this whole thing, the You Can See Everything success, Street Fighter, whatever else is going on right now?

• 5:02Amanda Dobbins?

  It is a very exciting time to be talking about movies with people for a living. It feels great. I think I spent 10% of my weekend investigating with people over text messages, our feelings about how guilty or innocent Elizabeth Holmes may or may not be, which is just, you know, which goes to show you how many people went, saw this movie, that it reignited not just movie-going, but like a cultural investigation. It is a moment, if you will. And it's pretty remarkable. I think it's a testament to Nathan Fielder, to A24, for understanding what they had, allowing what they had to flourish, and then

• 5:42Amanda Dobbins?

  also knowing how to market it. But some of it is a perfect storm. You know, I do think the Elizabeth Holmes of it all is... goes outside of movies. And so a lot of people came in who, you know, had opinions or had ideas or wanted to relitigate things, and that's savvy. But is Street Fighter... I'm sorry that you're not... you didn't have as much fun as you wanted?

• 6:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'm working on a newsletter column that's called Somebody Take My Childhood Away From Me Before It's Too Late, because there's something going on at the moment that is problematic. But You Can See Everything thing is fascinating and wonderful. And, you know, we've been in a really, a real rut, kind of broadly culturally with documentary, especially at the box office, since COVID. And there was a period there, I want to say between 2010 and 2018, when docs could do well. There was a stretch. You know, I remember movies like Three Identical Strangers and was it Apollo 11? Like, there were a handful of films.

• 6:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And then Mr. Rogers documentary before the Muriel Heller.

• 6:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Yeah, so that... I don't know that this necessarily kicks that back off, but there was something else in the news that I think is kind of fascinating, operating opposite this vibe at the multiplex, which is that there was this huge Netflix shakeup over the last week or so. Last Wednesday, they had huge layoffs, more than 1,000 people lost their jobs, which is very sad. And then Bela Bajaria, who is the chief content officer at Netflix, was fired, quite surprisingly, apparently, according to her. And then over the weekend, the head of film at the company, Dan Lin, was also fired. So this is a pretty dramatic change. You know, there's a lot of business analysis reasons for why this is the case. I encourage people to check out The Town. I'm sure Matt will be spending

• 7:31Sean Fennessey?

  a lot of time on it with Lucas today. But a lot's been going on in, I think, the perception of Netflix, and you could feel it during the attempt to acquire Warner Brothers.

• 7:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 7:42Sean Fennessey?

  Where even though people here have really mixed, to sometimes very negative feelings about David Ellison, I never got the sense that people were really rooting for Netflix to get Warner Brothers, which even though the people who work at Warner Brothers, generally in my experience, are very nice. And I... it felt like the worm had kind of turned, and a lot of this like, we're back movie stuff was related to this. This is very much through our personal... this is very much my perspective. But like, that coupled with... It's been a very long time since Netflix has had a really buzzy film or TV show. And so a lot of that in the culture manifesting, and, you know, the engagement is not as up as it should be, the subscribers are not up as they should be. Like, whatever Netflix's

• 8:25Sean Fennessey?

  status is culturally, it seems to have shifted a lot in the last few years.

• 8:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. Well, so this, I think, has been understood by everybody, and not just the business people, as Bela Bajaria taking the fall for the business.

• 8:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Of Netflix for the last six months and really since they tried to acquire Warner Brothers, stock has been down. It's been going way down. We talked at the time about how there's just kind of a natural ceiling to how many users Netflix can have and they are, they're stressed about YouTube. They're stressed about subscribers in general, like their business model is built, like most of capitalism, on just keep growing, keep growing, keep growing and how much more can you grow? So they, they hit a point where they're not growing as much as they should have and you gotta show your shareholders that you're gonna do something. And so this is like how corporations work. So it's Bella Bajaria and, and then seemingly a lot of her regime. Dan Lin is out. Not as much on the TV side yet, but-

• 9:27Sean Fennessey?

  Not as much on the, yeah. The film team has clearly been dismantled quite a bit. Um, you know, we can talk about who's replacing them soon.

• 9:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 9:33Sean Fennessey?

  But, um, the Dan Lin thing is really interesting to me because like the writing to me has been on the wall about this for about six months. There was a piece in June in the New York Times, a profile of Lin that was clearly like set up to be a kind of puffy, like here's our new, here's Scott Stuber's replacement.

• 9:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 9:49Sean Fennessey?

  That was like pretty savage and they could like hardly get any major filmmaker to come on the record and talk-

• 9:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 9:55Sean Fennessey?

  About him or his work with the company. And he was very forthright about not want, not, not worrying about working with filmmakers who wanted theatrical, that like, that there was something. And you know, everything that's transpired since that piece indicates the opposite. Um, and you know, David Fincher has since decided to leave after his contract is up with Netflix after 10 years there. Noobomback is leaving. Um, the, even the identity of the movies that they're programming is like, we're, it's like strictly the kind of like mid-tier streaming programmer kind of thing. Uh, most of the big Oscar contenders for the studio this year are pretty much just acquisitions. You know, La Bola Negra, Inc., like those are really good movies, but they're, it's not, we're not in the days of the Irishman, you know?

• 10:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. Yeah. You're not in the days of Scott Stuber, having relationships with all of the great, uh, the talent and the directors that we love so much and being able to just throw endless amounts of money at them-

• 10:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 10:49Amanda Dobbins?

  To do whatever they want. I mean, the other anecdote from that New York Times piece about Dan Lin was about how he volunteered that he invited Charlize Theron to have lunch at the Netflix canteen and that if you don't want to have lunch, you know, at the Netflix lunch table, then it's probably not the right movie studio for you, which, okay.

• 11:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Not, not, he, he did not come off well in that piece at all. Um, and so now he's out. And so the speculation is ramped up pretty considerably that, um, Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi would be a contender for that job. I'm not sure if that really makes sense based on-

• 11:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:25Sean Fennessey?

  How things played out at Warner Brothers and what their track record is, which is to say creatively very interesting at times. But, um, if there, if there is a sense of more spend thrift in the film department, maybe it's not Mike and Pam's time. I don't know. I heard another name over the weekend that I won't repeat because it's just ranked speculation, but I thought was kind of fascinating. And so we'll see if that one plays out. And if it happens-

• 11:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh huh.

• 11:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'll say that was the name that I heard on the show. And if it doesn't happen, then I won't say it.

• 11:49Amanda Dobbins?

  That's exciting.

• 11:50Sean Fennessey?

  But Peter Rice was hired to replace Bella Bajaria. And this is fascinating to me.

• 11:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:54Sean Fennessey?

  Cause Peter Rice, uh, in 2022, he's a very seasoned executive. In 2022 was fired by Bob Chapek from the Disney Corporation. And the scuttlebutt on why he was fired is like, Peter Rice is kind of too good. And like, he's gonna, he's making Bob Chapek look bad. And I don't know if that's actually the case, but Peter Rice, long time television and film executive. He ran Searchlight for a while. A British guy who's known for having very good taste.

• 12:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 12:17Sean Fennessey?

  That's kind of, that's kind of his rep is like, he's very erudite.

• 12:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:21Sean Fennessey?

  And you don't hear that about executives as much because they have like hard jobs. They think shitty decisions that are about money and it's not as much about your taste.

• 12:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And also often their mandate is to like issue taste in favor of making quote unquote gourmet cheeseburgers and making as, you know, and getting stuff. And so, you know, Bella Bajaria's mandate was grow, grow, grow and get as much stuff on the platform, including shows you may or may not be watching right now.

• 12:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 12:48Amanda Dobbins?

  So, which, you know, we have to sort of had mentioned, mentioned. So it is a marked signal that they are at least, well, I don't know, maybe it's not, maybe Peter Rice is just gonna be like, hey, and now I'm really into Lifetime movies, but on Netflix.

• 13:04Sean Fennessey?

  The floor is lava. I agree.

• 13:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess we don't know, but the interpretation of the choice is like, oh, so you guys are, this is like a retransment.

• 13:11Sean Fennessey?

  I, I'm, I'm very curious to find out. Uh, Peter Rice, when he was, after he was fired from Disney, he went on to produce films for that five year, wait, four year period. And the movies that he produced were 28 Years Later, Saturday Night, Warfare, Misty Green, and the forthcoming Elden Ring adaptation for A24. Whether you like those movies or not-

• 13:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think it gives you a little bit of perspective on the kinds of projects he likes to be involved in. In theory, this is good news to me, just in terms of the quality of the programming that we're gonna get. That doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna work out.

• 13:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Sean Fennessey?

  And, and I think what Netflix is culturally is a little bit up in the air right now. Um, it's obviously still huge and very successful, but whether or not it can evolve from the station that it's been in. The thing that I thought about when, when I saw that Bella Bajaria was fired was, a lot of the people who signed up for Netflix in the early days, signed up for stuff like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. And that's not really the reputation of Netflix programming anymore.

• 14:05Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 14:05Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't mean it can't go back to that. It's a lot of different things now. You know, it's sports and live events and podcasts, as you say, and, um, lots of different kinds of television programming, kind of up and down the scale. And a lot of movies and still a lot of licensed stuff too. But it's so big that the goal to make it all of TV, now it feels to me like is maybe not conquerable. And so maybe the Rice hire is more like, we do need The Queen's Gambit and we do need adolescence and we do need some of this kind of stuff. This like, you know, his experience with like FX and that kind of programming.

• 14:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, or we did need Casey Boyce and we did not get him because we did not buy Warner Brothers. And so now we're putting in this position. And I, I do feel if they are kind of reorient, reorienting to just try to compete with the new superpower that is whatever it's gonna be called.

• 14:56Sean Fennessey?

  Skydance.

• 14:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. That's good. You learned it.

• 14:59Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you.

• 14:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, well, I, if, if they view Casey Boyce as the competition as opposed to David Ellison, then maybe that's, taste wise, that's, that's better than nothing. If we're orient, orienting around that.

• 15:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It means there will certainly be more competition in that space. I mean, the other thing about that is that, um, you know, at the Emmys this year, Netflix didn't perform as well as it has historically, despite having lots and lots of shows. And Apple is also really insurgent in that space in terms of taste and high quality projects with well-known people. So you put the, the Ellison mega machine and then Apple kind of holding the place that HBO used to have.

• 15:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:37Sean Fennessey?

  And then again, Netflix is in kind of this awkward position. So we'll see what happens. Um, we'll see who gets hired in the head of film job, you know?

• 15:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, I don't know why I care so much about this stuff, but I do. Like, I think it's all, it's all, it's kind of important to the history of film, who gets to make the calls. So maybe that's why I think about it so much.

• 15:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, it is also that Netflix for a while, especially when Scott Scoober, Stuber was there and had unlimited resources, they made good movies.

• 16:00Sean Fennessey?

  They did make a lot of good movies.

• 16:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Great movies. They made, you know, Marriage Story, which is one of my favorite movies. And now Noobomback has, has left. And so it would be nice if they were making good movies again, you know? I just, I'm, I'm pro good movies.

• 16:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, same. We share that. Uh, the other news that happened right after we finished recording on Thursday, that is certainly worth noting, it is that Steven Soderbergh is taking over principal photography on The Batman Part Two for Matt Reeves. Matt Reeves has been dealing with a personal issue for some time. It's one of the reasons why clearly the film has been delayed. Um, Reeves did note on X, just to be clear, I am not leaving The Batman Part Two. I am profoundly grateful to Steven for coming to my aid during this challenging time to help me finish principal photography. Thank you to all for your concern and well wishes. Um, still, as just kind of a movie business story, there's something fascinating about someone like Soderbergh, who has so much particular point of view and style, but who's so interested in other people's craft.

• 16:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And also filmmaking is an exercise and a challenge to him. And I can, I don't know the man, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about him and I can see the appeal of, okay, like here is the problem set and here is what I have to solve. And I need to have it look just like this and I'm gonna do XYZ. And I think it's a, a different type of project for him. And Soderbergh likes to work. You read those diaries and he's, you know, editing same day and watching rush, like watching fully cut, but, uh, features within days. So I get it.

• 17:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 17:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's cool.

• 17:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I think, I would encourage people if they haven't before, you know, there's of course the legendary kind of black and white recut of Raiders of the Lost Ark that he did. And there's also a great commentary for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf that he did with Mike Nichols on the Blu-ray that, those are both really interesting examples of showing the way that he's interested in the mechanics of movies. And so the idea of somebody like Reeves, who, you know, has a pretty defined style, especially that first Batman movie, like has a real look and feel. So capturing that effectively, capturing the right, like performance style from the actors, all of that is probably appealing to him creatively. And obviously he's helping his friend too, in a, in a very troubled time. Um, but yeah, this is just one of those things where- You know, I guess authors have had their books finished, you know, in the past.

• 18:12Sean Fennessey?

  There's been the kind of posthumous completions of certain kinds of stories. But in, in the movie business, there's not a ton of examples where sometimes a person is fired. You know, like, um, Richard Donner was fired off of Superman two. And, and, uh, uh, Lester came in to finish the movie. But I don't know, this is just an interesting turn of the wheel in the movie story. Batman two, you in?

• 18:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 18:37Amanda Dobbins?

  So the first one ends with the Joker?

• 18:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but I don't think he's gonna be a part of this one.

• 18:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 18:42Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's, this is more of a Harvey Dent two face movie, Sebastian Stan.

• 18:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Ah, okay.

• 18:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And, and Sebastian Stan said, he compared it favorably to The Godfather when he spoke about the movie. So.

• 18:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Sean Fennessey?

  What do you, Jack, you think that's gonna, you think it's gonna be like The Godfather two?

• 18:55Speaker 03

  It's gonna live up to it fully.

• 18:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, great.

• 18:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Godfather four.

• 18:58Sean Fennessey?

  I'm available.

• 19:00Amanda Dobbins?

  You gotten any calls?

• 19:00Sean Fennessey?

  I'm available.

• 19:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:01Sean Fennessey?

  I'm available to, speaking of channeling Mario Puzo, I can do it. Hand up. Let's talk about some films.

• 19:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 19:08Sean Fennessey?

  We saw some films.

• 19:09Amanda Dobbins?

  We did.

• 19:12Sean Fennessey?

  Whalefall, let's start with Whalefall.

• 19:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 19:14Sean Fennessey?

  We were so excited about Whalefall.

• 19:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's directed by Brian Duffield, it's written by Duffield and Daniel Kraus. It's based on Kraus's novel. It stars Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Shute, John Ortiz, Jane Levy and Emily Rudd. The story is as follows, following the death of his father, Jay Gardner goes diving off the coast of California in search of his remains. He soon finds himself in a desperate fight for survival when he's swallowed whole by a massive whale. Trapped inside its belly, he must figure out a way to escape as his oxygen supply starts to run out. I'm gonna start here.

• 19:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Sean Fennessey?

  This movie is 50% fucking amazing and 50% saccharine and ineffective. And I couldn't, I can't recall another movie experience quite like this, where when it's going.

• 20:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:00Sean Fennessey?

  When I'm in it, when it is a true body horror aquatic.

• 20:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Sean Fennessey?

  Nightmare.

• 20:07Sean Fennessey?

  I was in heaven. The, the pain was the pleasure. But when it was a story about a guy having a hard time with his dad. I was like, let's get back inside the whale. How do we get back inside the whale as soon as possible? And I wanna say, I recommend the movie because there's a lot of good stuff in it. It's not entirely what I thought it was gonna be. I also never watched any other trailers. I just watched what we saw.

• 20:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Same.

• 20:30Sean Fennessey?

  In April. And so I think I was a little surprised to find that it was a heartfelt drama and not a movie about a guy being crunched inside of a whale, although it is that as well.

• 20:41Amanda Dobbins?

  It is that, yes.

• 20:43Sean Fennessey?

  What, what did you think of Whalefall?

• 20:44Amanda Dobbins?

  This is like your Julie and Julia, where.

• 20:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 20:47Amanda Dobbins?

  The, all of the Julia Child stuff with Meryl Streep is amazing. And then Amy Adams having to work at the nine 11 recompensation site, not so much.

• 20:59Amanda Dobbins?

  That's, that's literally what the movie is.

• 21:01Sean Fennessey?

  Weird movie too.

• 21:02Amanda Dobbins?

  So I did learn what happens if you get swallowed by a whale from this movie.

• 21:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 21:07Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 21:07Sean Fennessey?

  You did.

• 21:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I did.

• 21:08Sean Fennessey?

  But is that actually what happens? Is that scientifically accurate?

• 21:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I think the various chambers.

• 21:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 21:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Are accurate.

• 21:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 21:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I think probably the fact that there's methane in there is accurate, which I learned, I would let you know, from Josh Brolin by a flashback and not from the, uh, the whale insides themselves. So in that sense, it served its purpose.

• 21:33Sean Fennessey?

  Right. There was a science corner inside the film.

• 21:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, there are many science corners. So I learned, I don't know whether, I'm not really sure how gravity is working in that context.

• 21:45Sean Fennessey?

  This is where you started.

• 21:46Amanda Dobbins?

  But he's not, he's not floating around, it's not zero gravity. How about that?

• 21:50Sean Fennessey?

  No, definitely not.

• 21:50Amanda Dobbins?

  So that question was answered many.

• 21:52Sean Fennessey?

  That was answered in Pinocchio.

• 21:55Sean Fennessey?

  When they go in Monstro and they're just sitting there chilling.

• 21:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but.

• 21:59Sean Fennessey?

  Big belly crevice.

• 22:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I, I was wondering about like the real version.

• 22:03Sean Fennessey?

  Well, is Whalefall real? We can talk about like what's real about this movie.

• 22:08Amanda Dobbins?

  You know.

• 22:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's not, you can see everything.

• 22:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Questions were asked and questions were answered.

• 22:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 22:14Amanda Dobbins?

  So in that sense, I got what I wanted from the film.

• 22:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's a ride. It's, it is a real ride, I think.

• 22:23Amanda Dobbins?

  On the other hand, do I really wanna watch 45 minutes of a guy just in a, in a whale chamber? Not really.

• 22:31Sean Fennessey?

  I do.

• 22:32Amanda Dobbins?

  You do.

• 22:32Sean Fennessey?

  That is something I do want, yeah.

• 22:34Amanda Dobbins?

  But again, it's, it's just a personal preference thing.

• 22:36Sean Fennessey?

  I, I understand. I think that that stuff that is, it's, it, there's a, there's a lot of contrasting feelings that I'm having about the movie. There's a lot of really, really good practical set construction.

• 22:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 22:47Sean Fennessey?

  Inside the whale. I think the lighting, I think Austin Abrams' performance where he's like largely non-verbal, expressing a lot of the times through a set of scuba goggles. The physical pain that he endures multiple times, like these dramatic and bizarre sequences in which it feels like he's in like acidic goo or something has affixed itself to his hand that he needs to pull it off. Like there is, you can really feel the agony with him. And it's kind of the inverse of Resident Evil where you're also feeling some agony with him, but it's played more comic. This is kind of agonizing in an over the top way. But I thought really, really good. And, um, I like this kind of story. I just felt like what was hammered around the outside of the target.

• 23:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 23:32Sean Fennessey?

  Was very rote. And Josh Brolin as like the great Santini scuba diver was laid on really thick.

• 23:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Incredibly thick, which it has to be both for all of the expositional reasons that we just explained where the, the flashbacks provide the set pieces and also the ultimate solution as well as the emotional narrative. So you need it. I mean, I did think to myself, and we can talk more about this throughout the season, but this is one of those like, is it really that hard to be a dad? Movies for me where I'm just like, like, honestly, what, like, what is your damage? Why was he so stressed out? What was the problem? They don't, they don't give you any of the great Santini background.

• 24:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 24:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And I was just like, I mean, is it this hard?

• 24:22Sean Fennessey?

  Um.

• 24:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe you guys just should take a playoff.

• 24:25Sean Fennessey?

  I, I don't, I don't, I think what it is about, I think what it is about is something that we've seen before, which is that the unspoken circumstances is that Josh Brolin was raised in a certain way that would no longer be socially permissible, which is to say, he was probably beat up as a kid. His dad was probably really hard on him and gave him no approval.

• 24:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:45Sean Fennessey?

  So he's trying to evolve his level of parenting by being hard on his son, but giving him like the tools that he feels he should have that maybe he didn't have. But like, it's not, he hasn't evolved yet. He's not, he's not in the place where most parents are now, or where our kids' parents will be. This is like the most common trope in storytelling.

• 25:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 25:07Sean Fennessey?

  Is what did my parents give me and what did they take away from me?

• 25:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Sean Fennessey?

  And so I think I was just surprised that it was this simple. And I, I don't think it's about like how hard it is to be a dad. I think it's like, that dad is really fucked up. Like, he's obviously like a little bit off. You can see in that scene where he gets really drunk with his son in the flashback when they're on the boat together. And Austin Abrams' character is trying to connect with him, that like, that, the Brolin character is messed up, but like, that's just a, that's just a trite character. And.

• 25:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but that's also the, the scene when he explains what, you know, how whale poop then provides life to the next generation. And then ultimately that like sets up the, here's what a whale fall is. And it's like an entire ecosystem, which is, you know, a very, very obvious metaphor for what we do as fathers. We, again, doing a lot of work there.

• 25:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's, it could be about mothers.

• 25:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:58Sean Fennessey?

  What about mom fall, you know? We can do that too.

• 26:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I, you're right, it's, it's been well covered. And I was like, I, this is not as emotionally rewarding.

• 26:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's not Josh Brolin or Austin Abrams' fault. And it's like, it's clearly, the, the, the film apparently is very faithful to the book. I haven't read the book, um, but it is pulling a lot of that. So I think it's just that whiplash feeling of when, there's a sequence where Abrams is trying to escape through the blowhole. That I was just like, this is incredible filmmaking.

• 26:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Sean Fennessey?

  Like, it's just such great practical filmmaking where you really feel his, the distance between where he needs to go and where he wants to be. You feel his agony trying to make a move through this disgusting ecosystem that he's living inside of. And so I, it's such a credit to that. And this movie was obviously very expensive and it didn't do very well at the box office this weekend, which is too bad, because I like this kind of thing.

• 26:46Amanda Dobbins?

  There was a 12 year oldish boy behind me who started applauding as the credits went down though. So it did find its audience.

• 26:52Sean Fennessey?

  That's nice.

• 26:53Amanda Dobbins?

  It was cute.

• 26:53Sean Fennessey?

  I saw a video of, uh, people watching it in 4DX, which sounds horrifying.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  I have, I'm going to do that when we get back from San Francisco.

• 27:00Sean Fennessey?

  Are you really?

• 27:01Speaker 03

  With my girlfriend, yes.

• 27:01Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I heard that there are like all kinds of smells involved.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  I'm pumped for it.

• 27:05Sean Fennessey?

  Water misting and.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  If there were ever a movie to see in 4DX, which I've never done, I feel like it would be this one.

• 27:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I get, and I get that, I get that. I'm sure it's a lot of fun. Um, I'm, I'm so, I'm so split on this, but yeah, I don't know.

• 27:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought that it accomplished what it set out to do pretty well.

• 27:25Sean Fennessey?

  I, I agree with you.

• 27:26Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, and you do need.

• 27:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think Duffield is really talented. I, I've liked his movies.

• 27:31Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, the dad stuff, I, I do stand by enough with the dads, like figure it out on your own time. But, uh, you do need that structure or else you have Austin Abrams like having to say expedition, expositional, explanatory stuff aloud to himself in the whale, which every time he has to do it, it's only like three or four times. It's so obvious.

• 27:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Amanda Dobbins?

  So, I don't know. I mean, it's not the most sophisticated storytelling structure, but it is also a movie about a guy getting swallowed by a whale.

• 28:03Sean Fennessey?

  I know. I think I'm thinking of like the absolute bravest version of the movie.

• 28:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 28:08Sean Fennessey?

  Which you can't make, obviously. It's completely non-commercial to make a $60 million silent film. But like.

• 28:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 28:14Sean Fennessey?

  That's the version of the movie I think I would wanna see. You can absolutely give me the, the preamble of this guy's father died and he wants to go find his remains. Actually, I think the opening sequence with, with John Ortiz and Josh Brolin is very well done.

• 28:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 28:27Sean Fennessey?

  And very powerful. And you're like, you get involved in the story right away.

• 28:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:31Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and so it's just as soon as we go into flashback territory, I felt, I felt a lot of, um, stress in the film.

• 28:37Amanda Dobbins?

  This is the second movie in recent memory in which, um, a sea creature ultimately is narrating what's, what's going on.

• 28:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 28:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And speaking to the, to the, the people, which I'm okay with, I guess.

• 28:52Sean Fennessey?

  You like to remarkably break creatures?

• 28:53Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I didn't, but I liked being able to tell you, you didn't watch it.

• 28:57Sean Fennessey?

  I never, I haven't seen it.

• 28:57Amanda Dobbins?

  So I liked being able to tell you that a, um, an octopus narrates the whole thing. Also, I believe Sally Field wanted at me for it.

• 29:04Sean Fennessey?

  She did, she did. Thanks to her for a movie.

• 29:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, but a movie for TV.

• 29:11Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Is La Bola Negra also up for the Emmys this year?

• 29:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I do think that Remarkably Bright Creatures also featured prominently in the Dan Lin New York Times piece, just in terms of Sally Field really feeling like it had awards potential, which it did.

• 29:25Sean Fennessey?

  She was 100% right. She was right. She was right in a way.

• 29:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I think, I didn't mind it as much as the other stuff, the, the dad whale narration.

• 29:36Sean Fennessey?

  You didn't mind?

• 29:36Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 29:37Sean Fennessey?

  I, I thought the finale was ambitious and at times it was visually reaching for something psychedelic, which I really appreciate. It never quite got there in terms of it, me being able to buy it in the way that you're always like, I don't know, something this just kind of feels like a screensaver a little bit. Um, but.

• 29:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Though I did, I mean, I did find all of the aquarium like shots very soothing. That sort of is in my wheelhouse. Again, it's what do you want to see when you go to the movies and when, when, when everyone was just floating along peacefully?

• 30:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I respect the ocean, so.

• 30:14Sean Fennessey?

  I, I fear it. Um, I love going to CinemaCon, but I wish I hadn't seen The Squid Chase 2. That's the other thing too, is that having seen that sequence, which is so cool, it did diminish some of the, you know, the excitement that is in the opening 10 minutes of the movie. Um, so yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a mixed for me.

• 30:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:34Sean Fennessey?

  But I, I do recommend people check it out and I, it's, it's a good movie theater movie too, because of how well constructed the scenarios are.

• 30:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:43Sean Fennessey?

  So, I don't know, it's, it, you have to be in, I think you really actually have to be in a body horror to really love it.

• 30:49Amanda Dobbins?

  That makes total sense, but I don't think it's, I think it is a competent movie, you know, like it is, they, like they made the movie and some things are more successful than others and your taste or how much, you know, whale innards you want to see. That's the other thing is that because of Pinocchio, I just had a different idea conceptually of what the inside of a whale looks like. And it is, it is very close and, and plush. And so it's not cavernous.

• 31:18Sean Fennessey?

  No, well, it's, it's, as you said, there are many chambers.

• 31:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:21Sean Fennessey?

  That this character can move into and out.

• 31:22Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and the chambers and, and all of the practical stuff they did, it's so cool that they built it and you can tell and it looks really cool.

• 31:28Sean Fennessey?

  I saw the behind the scenes, like, uh, image of what, how they shot a certain sequence, like what one of the chambers looked like. And it was fucking amazing. I was like, this is what I want movies to be, you know?

• 31:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally. You are just like looking at like Austin Abrams and gross sludge for a while and different types of gross sludge and they are manipulating it. So once again, it's gotta be your thing.

• 31:46Sean Fennessey?

  The jellyfish light though?

• 31:47Amanda Dobbins?

  That was cool. Listen, all of the, all of the things that it has to save. And again, I'm glad I know that whale poop, you know, then fertilizes the plankton and is it the plankton that traps more CO2 than trees or something?

• 32:01Sean Fennessey?

  Keep going.

• 32:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen.

• 32:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I gotta have some facts to take home, you know, to my, to my fact kids.

• 32:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's funny. I, I do think that this movie and Street Fighter operate in kind of a similar register for me where I'm like, when this is good, I feel alive.

• 32:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Sean Fennessey?

  And when it's not good, I feel devastated. And you know what? I just might like movies too much. Uh, and now it's time for Moments That Matter, a segment brought to you by State Farm. Life moves fast. It's full of unexpected twists, big wins and little surprises that stick with us, but that's totally fine because you can rely on State Farm to be there. Speaking of moments that stick, let's dive into the one that really made Whale Fall unforgettable. Okay. So I'm going to give you two options. Is it the initial Austin Abrams' character is swallowed by the whale after the squid is swallowed? Or is it the dawning realization that he is trapped inside of a chamber of this whale's body and he can't get out?

• 32:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, it's The Squid Chase. It's the squid swallowing, which is so, so, so frightening and visceral. And I mean, squids are really scary, which we know.

• 33:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 33:06Amanda Dobbins?

  But at some point you can't tell like what is the whale and what is the squid and, but everything is very frightening and all coming for him all at once. And you do feel like the motion underwater and it's really, really expertly done. So, and I did also have the realization because we'd seen it at Comic Con.

• 33:27Sean Fennessey?

  CinemaCon.

• 33:28Amanda Dobbins?

  CinemaCon, sorry, you know, I think we saw the, you know, they put the best part in the trailer, um, which is always like a mixed bag realization because it was really good and we were so excited, but then I was like, oh, okay. You know, nothing can really, really match.

• 33:45Sean Fennessey?

  Top this.

• 33:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Two vicious animals.

• 33:49Sean Fennessey?

  When it comes to moments that matter in real life, there is no script, but State Farm has your back. With State Farm, you can focus on what matters most, knowing you're prepared for whatever comes next. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 34:00Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Now let's go to your whale fall.

• 34:02Amanda Dobbins?

  This is my whale fall.

• 34:03Sean Fennessey?

  Sense and sensibility.

• 34:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Sean Fennessey?

  This movie is, uh, an adaptation of the 1811 novel by Jane Austen. Perhaps you at all at home have heard of it. Uh, it's directed by George.

• 34:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Can you name the other five right now?

• 34:15Sean Fennessey?

  No, we did, we tried to do this, right? Persuasion, that was one of them. Uh, Pride and Prejudice, that's one of them. Uh, there's like two others that are like very well known that I've completely forgotten, but one is about like a home, what house?

• 34:26Amanda Dobbins?

  They're both about homes.

• 34:27Sean Fennessey?

  No, that's, that's Dickens.

• 34:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park.

• 34:32Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Mansfield Park, I know.

• 34:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And then what's Clueless adapted from?

• 34:36Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, that's Emma.

• 34:38Amanda Dobbins?

  He did it, ladies and gentlemen. Listen, progress.

• 34:41Sean Fennessey?

  I know. And I'm trying to remember which of them I've, I read in high school and maybe only one, but not Sense and Sensibility.

• 34:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Emma was often assigned.

• 34:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. You're probably right. It probably was Emma. Um, Georgia Oakley directed this movie. The screenplay is by Diana Reed. It stars Daisy Edgar Jones, Esme Creed-Miles, Katrina Balf, Frank Delane, Herbert Nordrum, George Mackay and Fiona Shaw. The story, for those of you at home who have not been listening to Amanda's podcast for 10 years, three sisters experience love and heartbreak after they're forced to leave their family estate with their widowed mother and move to a humble cottage. The floor is yours. What did you think?

• 35:17Amanda Dobbins?

  This is my whale fall in that I don't think that it is, oh, it, it's a full movie. Like it's not incompetent. The things, the stakes, the plot, the intent of the movie are communicated. And when it communicates them well, I was paying attention and I had a lot of fun at all the moments where I didn't think it communicated it well. And I went with my friend and we were giggling throughout, but a lot of puzzling choices in this.

• 35:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 35:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I was concerned about this movie because one of my favorite films of all time is 1995 Sense and Sensibility, screenplay adapted by Emma Thompson, who also stars in it with Kate Winslet, it's directed by Ang Lee. It's just kind of a masterpiece of, of the form of both Austin adaptations, costume dramas, movies about women. Um, and I was like, this is too close. You can't remake one of my favorite things. I didn't feel watching it like my beloved 1995 Sense and Sensibility was in any way besmirched. I didn't really feel any connection to it at all.

• 36:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 36:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I felt more of a connection to, uh, the Joe Wright Pride and Prejudice adaptation, which was released in 2005. And I felt that you could see like they were recreating certain shots. They were certainly going for a vibe. The score was very much referenced in the same way. And that makes a lot of sense. It's a very popular adaptation. Uh, I don't really think it was that successful. I was bored at times. I don't, I think it lacks the humor, the verth, um, basic things like lighting and we, we gotta talk about.

• 36:56Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's, I mean, they, they made a choice, I think, to very specifically go in the opposite direction that Ang Lee goes in. I mean, that adaptation, as I recall, when I watched it for the first time, whatever, five years ago for the show, um, is very bright.

• 37:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 37:08Sean Fennessey?

  Is very well lit. Um, and the costuming is very white. You know, there is a kind of like, um, I think this is an attempt to Barry Lyndon Sense and Sensibility, you know, a lot of natural lighting in the space, a lot of candlelight, a lot of sunlight, you know, it's very darkened. A lot of their clothes seem worn. They're kind of dirty. Uh, it's a, it's a very different conception visually of this world.

• 37:33Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a, it's a Lyndon and it's also Bronte-ified, uh, which is kind of what the Joe Wright is doing as well. There's like a, there's a quote unquote wildness to all of it.

• 37:44Sean Fennessey?

  A storminess.

• 37:44Amanda Dobbins?

  A storminess, um, a yearning, a passion. I think you're right to note that, you know, many of things just, it's darker light, more things happen in the evening. The, the Sense and Sensibility is just a very daytime movie because that is actually, that's when Austin novels really happen. They're, they are comedies of manners as much as they are, you know, romantic comedies. They are about social observations and their Brontes get weirder, uh, out on the moors, which this movie has a lot of. Um, this movie doesn't have hairbrushes. The, but the number of times I saw it with a friend of ours, the number of times that we turned to each other being like, what is going on with this one particular wig worn by Mary Ann Esme Creed-Mills?

• 38:30Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I got that they were trying to do a looser version, quite literally.

• 38:36Sean Fennessey?

  Could not, had no thoughts about her hair. Like, it never occurred to me she was wearing a wig. Not even one second. I thought she was fantastic in this movie.

• 38:44Amanda Dobbins?

  She's good.

• 38:45Sean Fennessey?

  She's Samantha Morton's daughter. I'd not seen her perform before. I don't have the same, like, emotional feel to the material.

• 38:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:53Sean Fennessey?

  So, I'm watching it in a different way. But she conveyed, I thought, an inner life that none of the other characters really did to me. And, you know, that's a big part of that character, but she seemed to have a lot more on her mind, and also seemed to know how to use her face to convey desire, frustration, a quest for independence that seems impossible at this time in history. That I thought, you know, short of Fiona Shaw, who's incredible always.

• 39:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 39:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's just something kind of like a little leaden in the vibe.

• 39:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I completely agree. I do think some of that is also

• 39:35Amanda Dobbins?

  she has an ability to communicate things that don't rely on the script. But the script does not have any life to it. It doesn't have any character development. It's certainly not funny in any way, shape, or form.

• 39:47Sean Fennessey?

  I gotta tell you, there were a lot of laughs in my screening last night. I thought that was kind of interesting, because I had a feeling you were gonna say that.

• 39:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:54Sean Fennessey?

  Because it is played a little bit differently than the Yang Li film, which is, again, like,

• 39:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 39:59Sean Fennessey?

  kind of very pop, in terms of its line deliveries. This was more of like, a lot of like, I would say, tittering to themselves, the quality of laughter.

• 40:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 40:07Sean Fennessey?

  And I couldn't figure-

• 40:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Was that because the dancing was so extra? Really, really involved choreography.

• 40:12Sean Fennessey?

  No, it was about-

• 40:12Amanda Dobbins?

  We were giggling.

• 40:13Sean Fennessey?

  It was about the Austin punchlines, you know. She's a very punchy writer.

• 40:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 40:17Sean Fennessey?

  And some of that is retained, right? But I couldn't figure out if in the audience, it was people who were very familiar with the material, who were like, oh, that's like Cap Caught the Hammer, but for Austinites.

• 40:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right.

• 40:31Sean Fennessey?

  Or was it just like, because for some people, this will be their first Sense and Sensibility. So it's kind of like getting on the wavelength of a certain tone of writing that maybe they're not as familiar with. I don't know.

• 40:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't either. I was dead silent when I saw it. And the pacing was pretty slow. And you're right, that they're trying to do something different than the tart, arch social observation that is Austin's bread and butter, and most of the adaptations that have come before it.

• 41:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Amanda Dobbins?

  But-

• 41:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it feels like those are more in line with, almost like, Oscar Wilde, and this is-

• 41:08Amanda Dobbins?

  This is Bronte.

• 41:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's Bronte. I'm trying to think of like, what's a filmic comparison? Like, what is a, because it's interesting, a movie like this would come out in the same year as Wuthering Heights. And I thought the adaptation choices in Wuthering Heights were frequently bewildering.

• 41:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:22Sean Fennessey?

  But it's a movie with a ton of style. You know, it's just like, it's a capital D-directed movie. And this movie is, the choices are made, but it is a little like, loose and soft. And also, even just like, the way it's shot, it's so soft-focus. It's funny to think about, you can see everything opening the same weekend as this movie, which is so deep-focus. And all the inserts and little things that are captured so specifically in that movie. And this movie is just like, we're like, zoomed in on a woman's dress, but you can barely make out what material it's made out of, you know? It's a very specific choice. And I'm trying, is that supposed to be like, a decision about the interior life of the women, that things feel a little hazy, you know?

• 42:03Sean Fennessey?

  Like, I can see that being the idea, but it doesn't really convey anything meaningful to me as I watched it.

• 42:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, I do also think, I appreciate Candlelight and love Barry Lyndon, and like, we're not all Stanley Kubrick. And I do, I do think that some of the intentional choices were just not executed appropriately. Like, you cannot see half of the production design and the clothes and the shots in this film. It's hard to do.

• 42:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I like that they tried. I was reminded of Steven Spielberg talking about visiting the set of Hamlet, and being like, let me know when the lighting is ready. And they're like, no, no, no, this is, this is how we're doing it. And it is, and this is very much, you know-

• 42:43Sean Fennessey?

  He told that in a complimentary way, but it was the kill shot for the movie. Yeah, that was incredible.

• 42:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, it is, it is in vogue, and it's a specific choice. I didn't think it works, because again, in the same way that you go to Whalefall to see, you know, whale guts.

• 42:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I go to see, like, the beautiful clothes and houses and everything just so. And I could tell that they spent a lot of time thinking, like, the production design and the costume and give her- I think the wig was that crazy on purpose. But, um, but that there were no hairbrushes for a reason. And I found it, I found some of it just technically, like, didn't pay off. May we talk about the performances for a second?

• 43:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 43:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Because this was a real roller coaster for me personally.

• 43:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Daisy Edgar Jones plays Eleanor. It's not an exciting part, and it's not supposed to be an exciting part.

• 43:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's a tough job.

• 43:39Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a tough job, and, and it's a especially tough job when Emma Thompson has played it before you so memorably.

• 43:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 43:47Amanda Dobbins?

  But she's, she's not doing very much. She's very beautiful. I was thinking, she's been on one of these great press tours, just fashion-wise, that people are on. And she was on the cover, I think, of British Vogue, kind of doing, like, painting recreations in period style. It was so beautiful, and I was like, oh, so that's the successful version of this performance, which is unfair to everyone involved.

• 44:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 44:11Amanda Dobbins?

  But she's not given much to work with. And again, I don't think the script, I think that the script really jumps through a lot of what's going on between these people, and often jumps through dialogue in order to let them just yearn and have this sort of wistful, I've, I'm not happy with my lot in life moments. That sounds dismissive. They, you know, they don't have a place to live, and they can't work for a living, as other episodes have, as other adaptations have reminded us. But she doesn't, she doesn't get to do much.

• 44:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think it's a challenging part. I still, I'm kind of undecided on Daisy Edgar Jones more generally. She's definitely not bad in the movie, but she doesn't have like, kind of gravitational force that you want.

• 44:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:54Sean Fennessey?

  For a figure like this. And because the movie is not pop, you know, Emma Thompson, obviously, she wrote her own part in that movie, so she knew when to give herself emotional restraint. She knew when to give herself a laugh line. She knew when to give herself some certain things. Daisy Edgar Jones as an actress is so confusing to me. I thought she was wonderful in Normal People. I think that's like, such a beautiful show. And her movie choices have been pretty odd to me. When she did Fresh, do you remember that movie with Sebastian Stan, that weird movie about meat? I was like, oh, she's adventurous. This is gonna be a really bold performer. And then she ripped off Where the Crawdads Sing, Twisters, On Swift Horses, and Sense and Sensibility. Now, coming up, she has A Place in Hell, Here Comes the Flood, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

• 45:42Sean Fennessey?

  She is quite beautiful. She, I feel like she maybe does not have a screen persona.

• 45:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:49Sean Fennessey?

  And she, you know, she's a good actor, but she's trying to be a star. And so like, what am I getting when I sit down for a Daisy Edgar Jones movie? I don't really know. It's hard to, it's just not been communicated to me yet. I don't think this movie is like-

• 46:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And this, this part doesn't allow her to communicate anything else, too. She's paired against George Mackay, who's playing Edward Ferrars, famously played by Hugh Grant, in like, a very specific way. Hugh Grant really makes a choice to be very awkward and withdrawn in that.

• 46:18Sean Fennessey?

  Hugh Grant awkward?

• 46:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Sort of even in a different way than the, there's no awkward charm. He's not actually charming in Sense and Sensibility. On purpose, anyway. And George Mackay doesn't really seem to make much of any choice. I think he's fine as well. They don't have that much to do. When they finally get together at the end, I was happy. I was like, I'm not, I'm not above this. You know, there is some, there are some pleasures in this. So, there is sort of, they're just there.

• 46:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's really funny with all the plotting and Austin stories. I feel this way about Oscar Wilde as well. Because of how influential they are, I frequently feel like I'm just watching a sitcom. Because sitcoms are so based in the social misunderstanding of these stories.

• 47:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 47:03Sean Fennessey?

  Where someone says one thing and it's misconstrued, and then there's one character who's like, laughably evil, and you're like, you know, the, the, what is her name?

• 47:13Sean Fennessey?

  Who plays the new Mrs.?

• 47:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, Lucy.

• 47:16Sean Fennessey?

  Lucy. No, no, not Lucy. Lucy. No, Stacy Martin's character, the blonde who comes in like-

• 47:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, oh, oh.

• 47:22Sean Fennessey?

  And it removes them from the home.

• 47:23Amanda Dobbins?

  The new Mrs. Dashwood. Yes. Fanny.

• 47:26Sean Fennessey?

  Fanny, thank you. You know, that character is just on the page, too. You're just like, all right.

• 47:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:30Sean Fennessey?

  This is like, so unbelievable how cruel and weird she is. But that, we've like, we become

• 47:40Sean Fennessey?

  assimilated with this kind of storytelling, you know, where like, if, there is something kind of warm at the end of the movie, where you feel like characters are getting the things that they want and that they deserve. So, it's not, there's, I don't think the movie is bad at all.

• 47:51Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's, and, and you're right that that structure does undergird like, much of what we now watch. But it's sitcoms, and not, like, yearning.

• 47:59Sean Fennessey?

  Not drama.

• 47:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Romances. Yeah, not drama. So now, now we turn to the other characters. I agree with you that Esme Creed Miles was wonderful, and is very good, and is a real presence, and kind of seems like, in the same way that the 1995 Sense and Sensibility was like, an announcement for Kate Winslet.

• 48:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I completely agree.

• 48:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Everyone she is paired against is just an absolutely, it's the where did they find these people all stars, except then I realized mid movie where they found all of these actors who have been good in other films.

• 48:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 48:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And I was so confused. I just-

• 48:36Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we can go through them.

• 48:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. Okay. So, well, first of all, I know where they found Katrina Balf, and I think she just got some direction to play Mrs. Dashwood as someone who had a head injury. I don't, it was very confusing.

• 48:48Sean Fennessey?

  Katrina Balf is in a tough spot because she's just way too beautiful to be playing mom. And like, she keeps playing mom, like, and it's the same thing in Belfast, where I'm like, this woman, she should be running this country.

• 48:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, the best part of Belfast is just the scene when it's like, hey, look how hot my parents were, you know?

• 49:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. But this is the same thing where I agree, she's not really given, she seems confused a lot. And the one moment when she like, has her voices heard, it's when she makes a terrible decision to leave the Dashwood residence.

• 49:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 49:19Sean Fennessey?

  But yeah, she's not given a lot to do.

• 49:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 49:20Sean Fennessey?

  I thought Fiona Shaw was very interesting. The movie came to life when she, when Mrs. Jennings showed up.

• 49:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Like, when is Fiona Shaw ever bad?

• 49:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 49:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm really talking about the, the male characters.

• 49:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 49:30Amanda Dobbins?

  So Frank Delane is Willoughby. This to me, and I have no knowledge of it, but to me, it seems like they realized they had such a problem, either on set or in the edit, that they really cut him out.

• 49:42Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 49:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Because Willoughby is barely in this movie. And there is really no development of the relationship between Mary Ann and Willoughby. And everything that he does evilly is explained off camera or by another character.

• 49:56Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Is just, it's not working. It's just absolutely, it's, it's a hard no. They have no chemistry. And then, poor Colonel Brandon, who, again, you're played by, in the 1995, and this is where the shadow of the 1995 looms large, because Willoughby is played by Greg Wise, who then famously became Emma Thompson's real life husband. They met on set. So, you know, Emma Thompson then actually marrying real life Willoughby, is, is part of the legend of the thing. But also Greg Wise is, you know, a great actor. And, and they have-

• 50:32Sean Fennessey?

  You may recall, I was unmoved by him when I watched this movie.

• 50:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you're not supposed to be.

• 50:36Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 50:37Amanda Dobbins?

  You know? But, uh, but they are-

• 50:40Sean Fennessey?

  It's nice to think I'm married. I'm happy for them.

• 50:42Amanda Dobbins?

  But they at least have scenes together, Mary Ann and Willoughby, like you see them speaking to each other. I don't think you actually see these two people speaking to each other. It's just out of nowhere. They're like, oh, now we're in love.

• 50:53Sean Fennessey?

  He saves her. Yeah. We don't see them. I've always wondered about this, like, didn't they have a conversation when he's carrying her back to the house all the way from the beach?

• 51:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you'd think so. Maybe he's like winded.

• 51:03Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, wow.

• 51:04Amanda Dobbins?

  You know? I mean, maybe it's hard. Well, or whatever.

• 51:08Sean Fennessey?

  Frank Delane, Stephen Delane, the actor's son.

• 51:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:10Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, who was in Urchin.

• 51:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 51:12Sean Fennessey?

  The Harris Dickinson film. And I think he's a pretty good actor, but I agree, he doesn't leave much of an impression here.

• 51:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And so then Colonel Brandon is played by Herbert Nordrum, who I didn't realize until after the movie that it was worst person in the world guy.

• 51:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 51:26Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, we're doing very different things in this film, and it's just not working. And again, this is someone who was played by Alan Rickman in the original. But again, there's no real sense of, that is the character who is supposed to have the yearning and the romance. He has like, held the candle for this other person for a long time. And then he meets Mary Ann and is supposed to introduce like, what, you know, what real love and longing and patience is supposed to be. I don't think Herbert Nordrum is giving that respectfully. And certainly not to the, the Mary Ann character in this film. And then Elliot Sumner as Mr. Palmer. I was just kind of like, what's happening right now?

• 52:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I just, I'm sorry. Are we in a different movie? So that was tough. That was a real, I know where they found all of those people, to be clear, but it was a real triumvirate of, of miscasting.

• 52:20Sean Fennessey?

  I'd just like to say, I'm keeping my eye on Ciara Coveney, who played Lucy Steele.

• 52:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:25Sean Fennessey?

  She has my attention.

• 52:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:27Sean Fennessey?

  That's all I'm saying.

• 52:28Amanda Dobbins?

  But that's another one.

• 52:28Sean Fennessey?

  In my zone.

• 52:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, when you were talking about like, the evil person, Ex Machina, you know? I thought you were talking about that, because again, the character is not developed and they, they just, they don't honestly seem to know what to do with the plot, which is, it is hard to adopt, adapt a larger novel.

• 52:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Amanda Dobbins?

  And make it comprehensible and kind of make the, if this, then that's work.

• 52:50Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And they don't really manage that in this film.

• 52:54Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. So-

• 52:55Amanda Dobbins?

  But I didn't have a bad time. And then at the end, I talked with my friend about making my own beaded jewelry. So, you know, we like, it served its purpose.

• 53:05Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 53:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right?

• 53:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I feel like we both got what we deserved on this episode.

• 53:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You, you long for something, you yearn for something, the way an Austin character might. You yearn for a whale, for a man going inside of a whale. And you get your just desserts.

• 53:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:20Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, would you like to power rank best picture contenders?

• 53:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I'd love to.

• 53:23Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. So when we last did this, there were 31 contenders.

• 53:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 53:28Sean Fennessey?

  I'm wondering how many of them you think will be able to cross off at this point? It is only October 19th.

• 53:33Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 53:34Sean Fennessey?

  But for example, we have now seen Sense and Sensibility.

• 53:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:39Sean Fennessey?

  That doesn't feel like a movie that's going to be nominated for best picture.

• 53:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree.

• 53:42Sean Fennessey?

  We'll, we'll go through some others. You know, some of these movies have been released, some of them have not. There's now only four that neither of us have seen, as far as I know from your perspective.

• 53:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 53:52Sean Fennessey?

  Those four movies are Being Human, the Apple film directed by Sean Hader, Dune Part Three, The Further Misadventures of Cliff Booth, which I'd just like to say is five weeks away from release. I don't know a soul who's seen it. And Werewolf.

• 54:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:09Sean Fennessey?

  I've started my werewolf film watching.

• 54:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Congratulations.

• 54:13Sean Fennessey?

  Because it's tis the season for werewolting.

• 54:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. But what's exciting for you is that the season then just extends.

• 54:19Sean Fennessey?

  It will go all the way through December 25th.

• 54:20Amanda Dobbins?

  That's beautiful.

• 54:21Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, werewolves, you like them?

• 54:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, how are they different from Wolverines again?

• 54:27Sean Fennessey?

  Wolverines are an animal.

• 54:29Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I, I, honestly, Jack just like groaned in the booth as if-

• 54:32Sean Fennessey?

  That was not a groan, it was a laugh. A werewolf is a man that turns into a hu, a wolf humanoid. And a wol, and a, and a Wolverine is a real animal. Wolverine is just an animal in nature that exists. Also, a werewolf is not like inspired by Wolverines, it's inspired by wolves.

• 54:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. But wolves are, but are like wolves-

• 54:54Sean Fennessey?

  How can you not know this?

• 54:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Are wolves related to Wolverines?

• 54:56Sean Fennessey?

  No. No.

• 54:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, what? It's right there in the title. I'm literally looking at this word, W-O-L-V-E, wolf-erine.

• 55:06Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, they may be in the same phylum.

• 55:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's what I'm asking. All right. Come on, Mr., you know, Richard Attenborough over here, or David.

• 55:14Sean Fennessey?

  But like, a wolf wouldn't give birth to a Wolverine.

• 55:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, oh, sure. Yes. No, I understand that. Okay. So-

• 55:22Sean Fennessey?

  You're so, you're so like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine pilled. Like that, you think that like, the Wolverine is somehow like a more dominant figure in nature than it actually is. Wolverines are like a bit smaller.

• 55:34Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I know. I've once again Googled it, and it looks like a wolf seal. Um-

• 55:39Sean Fennessey?

  This is why you're not invited to the werewolf episode.

• 55:42Amanda Dobbins?

  So werewolves, though, it's about nighttime?

• 55:47Sean Fennessey?

  When a full moon, when there's a full moon, the man will turn into a werewolf, or the woman, for that matter. I just watched a movie in which a woman was the werewolf.

• 55:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's exciting. Um, so have you gotten to the Harry Potter where there's a werewolf character?

• 56:01Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 56:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. But he, that's, he's a werewolf, right, guys? In the booth?

• 56:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 56:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. All right. Thumbs up from Lucas. Okay. So I know something about werewolves.

• 56:09Sean Fennessey?

  Good job.

• 56:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. But not, but not naturally occurring, like Wolverines, which are naturally occurring, but not in the Hugh Jackman form.

• 56:15Sean Fennessey?

  Naturally occurring?

• 56:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. They're real.

• 56:20Sean Fennessey?

  Well, well, the origin of werewolves is up for debate, you know? Was it some sort of mystic who cast a spell on someone, you know, a curse of some kind? Or was it something different? Was it something from nature? We don't know.

• 56:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you believe there are werewolves?

• 56:34Sean Fennessey?

  No, but I'd like to.

• 56:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 56:37Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, let's talk about the films. So we did this a month ago, and a month ago, our top 10 was Obsession, All of a Sudden, The Debut, The Invite, Fjord, Project Hail Mary, Dune Part Three, Wild Horse Nine, La Bola Negra, and The Odyssey. That was from 10 to one.

• 56:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 56:50Sean Fennessey?

  How many of those 10 do you think are coming off?

• 56:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm, at least two, probably three and maybe four.

• 56:59Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. Four would be a lot. That's cool. Okay. So I want to talk about You Can See Everything.

• 57:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:04Sean Fennessey?

  You can see everything is obviously going on the list. We mentioned this-

• 57:07Amanda Dobbins?

  100%.

• 57:08Sean Fennessey?

  On Friday's episode, that we, you can see everything is clearly a best picture contender. It might be contending in some other categories. I don't want to ruin You Can See Everything for people who are trying to enjoy this episode without having seen the movie. But, um, it feels, this is a rapturous-

• 57:23Amanda Dobbins?

  It's true.

• 57:24Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, reception of this movie. I, I, I'm not sure if I can recall the last time so many cynical people in the world of movie going were like, whoa, this lived up. Highest rated movie on Letterboxd ever. Uh, through the roof, performance at the box office, reviews, all around glowing.

• 57:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 57:44Sean Fennessey?

  Even the, even the cynic, like, ah, is this really that good? It's still like three and a half stars. You know, like, there's not, there's no like, the one star reviews are such bad faith that there's not really a big gap there. So-

• 57:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I think the only question is the overlap between the community you just described, which is young and Letterboxd. And I think it was like a wildly young showing at the box office.

• 58:12Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 58:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, under, under 30, had a huge, like, shout out Gen Z, shout out the booth. Um, but so whether that overlap and Academy voters is, is as big as we would hope that it is.

• 58:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 58:28Amanda Dobbins?

  And I, I think it is. Like, we're definitely putting it in, but that, that's kind of the only weak spot that I can sense.

• 58:34Sean Fennessey?

  I think, I think you're right. I think it's unclear.

• 58:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Then what we know is, is not the same as what Academy voters think.

• 58:41Sean Fennessey?

  Agreed.

• 58:42Amanda Dobbins?

  That's all.

• 58:42Sean Fennessey?

  Agreed. I don't, I don't know what to make of that yet. I have not talked to enough people in that wing of the world.

• 58:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:50Sean Fennessey?

  Who have seen the movie and what they think of it. I think the consensus also seems to be what we talked about, which is that the doc branch will probably be a little bit more finicky about this movie. I don't think that really affects its best picture changes, to be honest with you.

• 59:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it might help it, honestly, because the narrative is already out of, you know, what's up with those doc people. And I think that there are many, both cinephiles and also just Academy voters, who don't totally agree with what, what's going on over there.

• 59:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 59:15Amanda Dobbins?

  So, um-

• 59:17Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you see it whenever they put a certain kind of a movie up. They, that's, they voted for My Octopus Teacher, even though that was the only commercial movie in that collection of nominees that year, because they often are kind of operating in opposite to what the, how that branch works. So, let's just, what does your gut tell you that you can see everything? Where does it sit right now in one through 10? Like, is it five?

• 59:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's at least five.

• 59:42Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, you think it could even be higher than that?

• 59:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:45Sean Fennessey?

  You think it could win?

• 59:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know.

• 59:49Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, that would just be.

• 59:50Amanda Dobbins?

  It would be amazing.

• 59:52Sean Fennessey?

  That would be fantastic. It's certainly, I mean, I think it's pretty, pretty clearly my favorite movie of the year right now.

• 59:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, I mean, we live in wild Oscar times, you know? If we're both good and bad.

• 1:00:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I've been, I've been thinking about this, you know, at the halfway mark. I had several Canadian films on my list.

• 1:00:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:09Sean Fennessey?

  This is also kind of a Canadian film because Nathan is Canadian. Insane year for Canadian cinema.

• 1:00:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but I mean, I guess they'll claim it. Although I'm sure that if we tried to draft it in the Canadian draft, then like six months later, various Canadian people would find us and just be like, you are disrespecting the, you know, the North or whatever. But sure, you guys get it.

• 1:00:28Sean Fennessey?

  Nathan and I did talk about Finding Francis, the final episode of Nathan for you, which is two hours long, potentially being like, should that have been eligible in the Canadian movie draft? So there's been some talk about it, but obviously this is a US release and Lance is from Florida. So.

• 1:00:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Sean Fennessey?

  Four, three, you know?

• 1:00:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's put it, let's put it for a four right now.

• 1:00:50Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, okay. You can see everything at number four. Do you feel that

• 1:00:57Sean Fennessey?

  The Odyssey and La Bola Negra have shifted in any way over the last four weeks? La Bola Negra opened this weekend.

• 1:01:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:01:06Sean Fennessey?

  Did apparently pretty well, only on only, in only four theaters.

• 1:01:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Sean Fennessey?

  And my wife loved it, cried.

• 1:01:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I think everybody who sees it really does like it.

• 1:01:16Sean Fennessey?

  She, she did say though.

• 1:01:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:01:19Sean Fennessey?

  Something that I think is true, and we spent some time talking about this. We had a great date night where we hadn't, on Saturday, she saw La Bola Negra Saturday. She saw You Can See Everything on Thursday. We hadn't talked about either movie. So it was like.

• 1:01:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:30Sean Fennessey?

  Two movies that are just so great to sink your teeth into. But she was like, it's very slow, La Bola Negra. That was how she felt. She felt it was very moving and very well made, but very slow. And she literally asked me something that you would ask me on the show, which is like, when people turn this on on the screener app, are they going to be bored and turn it off? And I don't, I don't, I thought that was an interesting question. I don't really know.

• 1:01:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, they, they could be, and I think we're always pretty rude about what we think of people who turn things on in the screen.

• 1:01:58Sean Fennessey?

  Of course.

• 1:01:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know why we would exclude this top. I do, I do think though, that there's something about the scale on which the movie is made that communicates something like old fashioned and Oscar-y and epic that will get a certain voter who otherwise would be like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I need something else, but oh, like you've, you've made a sweeping war epic. Okay, well, I'll sit down and it can take a little more time. I think it's still pretty in the mix and.

• 1:02:30Sean Fennessey?

  I do too.

• 1:02:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Guitara, Cada Fuente. Listen, I, I've practiced, is like very on the circuit now. So, you know, and on the cover.

• 1:02:39Sean Fennessey?

  Is that the best performance in the movie though?

• 1:02:41Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's not, but.

• 1:02:42Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very interesting thing.

• 1:02:43Amanda Dobbins?

  But I think it's because he's a Spanish pop star.

• 1:02:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And so like very big in Spain, you know, and they're, and, and ready made and is like.

• 1:02:51Sean Fennessey?

  He's famous and he's.

• 1:02:52Amanda Dobbins?

  A Dior ambassador and, you know, was like at the Academy Museum Gala.

• 1:02:56Sean Fennessey?

  Fifth best performance in the movie, which is really kind of fascinating.

• 1:02:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I was, I was glad to see that, hold on, let me Google his name, actors. That Miguel Bernadette was on the cover of Variety.

• 1:03:08Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't see it.

• 1:03:09Amanda Dobbins?

  With guitar, guitar, nope.

• 1:03:13Sean Fennessey?

  Cada Fuente.

• 1:03:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Guitara de la Fuente. Yeah, sorry, I closed the tab. He, he's very powerful in the film and I think has been underrepresented in the narrative.

• 1:03:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. He's hot is what you're saying.

• 1:03:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but he's also good at acting.

• 1:03:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:03:31Amanda Dobbins?

  So I think there's, there's a lot of different angles of that one. You know, Penelope Cruz is going to be back on the circuit soon. I think it's, it's rolling out. I think.

• 1:03:40Sean Fennessey?

  I think this is sort of related to what we were saying about You Can See Everything, which is kind of what is the package for a movie like La Bola Negra? It'll be a lot of below the line stuff. You could certainly see production design and best editing and you could see score. You could see a lot of different kinds of things from that film. But if it doesn't have two acting nominations, I don't really think it's a serious threat to win. And so I'll be curious to see whether or not, you know, Penelope Cruz pops in the movie for a very brief period of time, but very memorable.

• 1:04:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:12Sean Fennessey?

  Eileen also was like, Penelope Cruz, wow.

• 1:04:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a classic Judy Dench in Shakespeare in Love.

• 1:04:19Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 1:04:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Nom right there.

• 1:04:20Sean Fennessey?

  And, and if, and if.

• 1:04:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Guitara de la Fuente.

• 1:04:23Sean Fennessey?

  Gets in, then that changes things. I, I think this is still one, two. I think, I think, I think it's.

• 1:04:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I do as well.

• 1:04:29Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's still The Odyssey one and La Bola Negra two.

• 1:04:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Sean Fennessey?

  Look, The Odyssey has, is very wisely laying dormant.

• 1:04:37Amanda Dobbins?

  They're waiting now.

• 1:04:37Sean Fennessey?

  Until about what, November 15th probably? And then all of a sudden, you're going to start seeing some screenings and stuff.

• 1:04:42Amanda Dobbins?

  November 15th is the Governor's Awards, right? And so that's, that's when it all starts.

• 1:04:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, so from there, I don't really know. I, I think I'm a little bit confused by the way that a few of the international titles are being navigated at the moment. Some of them we've not yet seen, like for example, we put All of a Sudden at number nine. We both really liked All of a Sudden and it's not coming out until November. I don't really think it's going to do a lot of business. So what is the like, is it just a, a hope that Hamaguchi and Virginia Fiera?

• 1:05:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Sean Fennessey?

  Can, can drag it into the frame, the same way that like Wagner Mora could helped to drag The Secret Agent into the frame? You think that's the playbook?

• 1:05:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so, yes. And in the same way that, you know, La Bola Negra needs a certain number of acting nominations in order to win Best Picture. I think that Virginia Fiera, getting out there campaigning, putting eyeballs on it. And, you know, Riz Camaguchi has been at the Oscars before, so it's not unheard of.

• 1:05:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, slightly different, you know, that year, obviously in the, in the kind of coming out of COVID times was slightly different, but yeah.

• 1:05:59Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think, you know, to Eileen's point, people turning this film on, on a screener, on a, you know, the Academy website, but on the other.

• 1:06:07Sean Fennessey?

  This is a real put your phone in the other room kind of movie. Like you gotta pay attention to it, lock in. So you think it's still there?

• 1:06:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I don't know.

• 1:06:14Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, I don't think so.

• 1:06:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think so either. I mean, what we really need to talk about is Fjord.

• 1:06:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Which, you know, we were very puzzled by, and we were puzzled by its release schedule. It's not out very widely right now and.

• 1:06:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's still just four theaters.

• 1:06:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, I suppose it'll roll out and it is neon, which knows what they're doing, especially when it comes to international Oscars and Palme d'Or winners. On the other hand, Artificial is also neon. And, you know, I speculated to you again, without knowing anything of whether Neon is just kind of putting its chips away from Fjord into Artificial, which feels like it has a lot more currency right now and juice. So I, right now, I would put Artificial in over Fjord.

• 1:07:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and then once again, we're at the risk of being too American, which we always are at this particular juncture.

• 1:07:07Sean Fennessey?

  Is it possible that Artificial and You Can See Everything are additions? And that maybe like, is, is it possible that Possible Love is also going in here over something like All of a Sudden or Fjord? Like, I'm trying to figure out what is the movie that's going to come in? Cause there's a couple, there's, there's all these ripple effects from You Can See Everything. For example, we had on this list, the debut and the invite.

• 1:07:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I think the invite's still happening.

• 1:07:39Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:07:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And the debut, I don't, I mean, I don't know. Debut is one that I still haven't seen. Everyone at the debut was at BFI, the, the London Film Festival over the weekend for the closing screening instead of at the Academy Gala, but they kind of had their moment. But so it's still competing over, you know, it's not.

• 1:08:00Sean Fennessey?

  The tail end of festival season.

• 1:08:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's not wide release territory yet. You know, they haven't like declared the campaign open.

• 1:08:06Sean Fennessey?

  The debut comes out in December.

• 1:08:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:07Sean Fennessey?

  So it's still a ways away here. I just think I've just watched in person a rapturous reception in a very like Oscar voter-y kind of crowd. So it's weird because I, one of these movies I think is going to have to take a bullet.

• 1:08:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Sean Fennessey?

  You can see everything gets in. Now you could say we're, we're high on the supply of You Can See Everything. It's possible that as three months go by and we learn more about the process of the movie and the, the bloom comes off the rose in some way, but.

• 1:08:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Let me, let me say another word to you that we haven't said yet. Obsession.

• 1:08:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think this was great for list making purposes on September 21st.

• 1:08:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally, no, we, we did it and we had to do it. I, you know, when you start wondering where they're going to make room, I think they're going to make room for the debut before they make room for obsession. I think they're going to make room for the invite before they make room for obsession. I think that, I don't, I don't know, again, this is, these are not quality judgments. These are just observations about the Academy voting body.

• 1:09:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think we gotta get a look at.

• 1:09:14Sean Fennessey?

  What the PGA nominations are gonna be.

• 1:09:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure, but we don't get those until.

• 1:09:17Sean Fennessey?

  No, we don't. Right now, if we stick with The Odyssey, Dune Part III, and Project Hail Mary here, that is three big movies that communicate movies are back.

• 1:09:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:28Sean Fennessey?

  Now, it doesn't mean that there can't be four. And it doesn't mean that Michael is out.

• 1:09:33Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 1:09:33Sean Fennessey?

  Because Michael is not out.

• 1:09:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:35Sean Fennessey?

  Michael played at the DGA over the weekend to a huge screening. And.

• 1:09:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And Coleman Domingo, I believe, was honored at the Academy Museum Gala.

• 1:09:44Sean Fennessey?

  And the Academy loves Coleman Domingo.

• 1:09:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Who doesn't love Coleman Domingo?

• 1:09:47Sean Fennessey?

  I love him as well. And he's gonna campaign his ass off as well for that movie. So it's a weird situation where like, it sounds good to say, oh, Fjord, and All of a Sudden, and Possible Love, and this is the new Academy. But like, there's a bunch of huge movies this year that could be Best Picture nominees. So this is a really interesting race. The actual top of the race is not that interesting because I feel The Odyssey is so strong. But the 10 is a lot of fun. Like, it's kind of hard to cross things off. Like, we can cross off Sense and Sensibility. Is there anything else you would even consider crossing off right now? I mean, maybe Ink?

• 1:10:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's see. Yeah, I don't think Ink's happening.

• 1:10:24Sean Fennessey?

  Because it just feels like more commercial and not really like.

• 1:10:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think Josephine's happening.

• 1:10:30Sean Fennessey?

  It does seem like it's been a little quiet.

• 1:10:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it does seem like it's been a little quiet. That's still not out for another month. So I'm a little reluctant to knock off things before they're out.

• 1:10:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Fair enough. Okay.

• 1:10:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's a tricky one. I'd say let's wait and let's reevaluate that because it'll be literally when it comes out in November.

• 1:10:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:10:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:51Amanda Dobbins?

  But it is, the surprise aspect of You Can See Everything does seem to just have toppled the Jenga tower of the rest of awards season. And that like, and really screwed up a lot of people's strategies, right?

• 1:11:05Sean Fennessey?

  It has. Can I throw another thing out at you?

• 1:11:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:08Sean Fennessey?

  Digger?

• 1:11:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, they are so passionate. And I, again, I respect the commitment. I respect a cause most of the time. I, do you think there's gonna be room for it?

• 1:11:25Sean Fennessey?

  Again, like, when you're like, oh, Fjord, I'm like, this is not, this is Tom Cruise and Al-ahadha the Dalai.

• 1:11:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree, I agree. I think Digger seems more likely than Fjord at this point.

• 1:11:34Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with you.

• 1:11:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And, but some of that is just because of the strategies that everyone has taken in terms of delaying the international releases. You know, some, this is just a reflection of where we are in the calendar.

• 1:11:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, people are passionate about Digger.

• 1:11:53Sean Fennessey?

  I think it makes sense to acknowledge their hive.

• 1:11:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:11:58Sean Fennessey?

  By placing it on this list right now.

• 1:12:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:12:01Sean Fennessey?

  I also think right now Artificial is in.

• 1:12:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I, that's, I feel very strongly that Artificial is in. When you said, how many are coming off? And I said, two with certainty, it was to make room for You Can See Everything and Artificial.

• 1:12:15Sean Fennessey?

  I'll say.

• 1:12:16Amanda Dobbins?

  And I'm totally open to Digger.

• 1:12:18Sean Fennessey?

  Just to play it safe, I would say Artificial is at nine. Just to play it safe.

• 1:12:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Wow, you're just, you're repeating the mistakes of the past.

• 1:12:26Sean Fennessey?

  I'm doing, I'm doing no such thing.

• 1:12:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Get ready.

• 1:12:29Sean Fennessey?

  Where were you when we had long discussions of After the Hunt and Queer?

• 1:12:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I was here for After the Hunt, and I saw it in Venice.

• 1:12:39Sean Fennessey?

  That's what I'm saying. Those movies didn't make it in.

• 1:12:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but Queer, I was on maternity leave.

• 1:12:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I remember.

• 1:12:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think Digger at 10 is just.

• 1:12:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that you want to have fun?

• 1:12:49Sean Fennessey?

  Let's just reflect that this movie has vocal advocates in the community.

• 1:12:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:12:55Sean Fennessey?

  And I'll be seeing it again.

• 1:12:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I probably will too.

• 1:12:59Sean Fennessey?

  Has Wild Horse 9 moved at all?

• 1:13:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 1:13:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's outside of, as you said, we're, we're kind of beyond the Wow, John Malkovich reception when the film first sort of went to film festivals.

• 1:13:09Amanda Dobbins?

  It just seems like a foregone conclusion that it will get a Best Picture nominee and Malkovich will win. And McDonough will be in original screenplay.

• 1:13:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, maybe Rockwell. I could see Rockwell in supporting actor.

• 1:13:21Amanda Dobbins?

  That would be wonderful.

• 1:13:23Sean Fennessey?

  I, yeah. And that's kind of similar to the kind of package that Martin McDonagh movies have gotten in the past. The Three Bullbars got, that Banshees of Inisherin got.

• 1:13:32Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. So four spots. And that means, is Project Hail Mary in the same place that it was? This is also a movie that is not yet campaigning.

• 1:13:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:13:48Sean Fennessey?

  But will. Because Amazon, after parting ways with Artificial, only has one film up for me. Actually, that's not true. It has I Play Rocky.

• 1:13:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, which I, I still have not seen, but which is a real crowd pleaser and also has a history with the Academy.

• 1:14:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure, Bobby Farrelly.

• 1:14:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:09Sean Fennessey?

  I Play Rocky and Michael

• 1:14:13Sean Fennessey?

  as your old school spoiler.

• 1:14:16Amanda Dobbins?

  You can see everything's?

• 1:14:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I think we have to acknowledge that this is such an interesting evolutionary point for the Academy Awards. Where we think that it is, you know, the Parasite, you know, Nomadland Oscars.

• 1:14:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:32Sean Fennessey?

  But also it's the Oppenheimer and

• 1:14:36Sean Fennessey?

  I guess One Battle is kind of the, splits the difference between the two in terms of arthouse and mainstream. But do you think one of Michael or I Play Rocky will get in? One biopic, down the middle, crowd pleaser movie?

• 1:14:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, though, you could argue that we already have the crowd pleasers in Project Hail Mary and Dune Part III.

• 1:15:04Sean Fennessey?

  But those are big spectacle sci-fi movies.

• 1:15:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, and so you want just like the.

• 1:15:08Sean Fennessey?

  This is Bohemian Rhapsody.

• 1:15:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:15:11Sean Fennessey?

  This is The Theory of Everything. This is the, you know, there is a long tradition.

• 1:15:15Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's funny because I kind of think also.

• 1:15:19Sean Fennessey?

  This is Judy.

• 1:15:21Amanda Dobbins?

  In a different way, Digger is getting a lot of that audience because it's not a biopic, but it's Tom Cruise, it's Inaritu, which is a different take. I mean, you know, Digger is not a biopic and, and is annoyingly untraditional in, in many ways. But it is scratching a similar type of itch in a similar type of brain.

• 1:15:44Sean Fennessey?

  I think you're just reflecting on movies you don't like that much. I'm not sure if there's a real correlation between Digger and Michael.

• 1:15:53Amanda Dobbins?

  But Inaritu being.

• 1:15:56Sean Fennessey?

  Bombast, you thinking?

• 1:15:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Bombast and a, a sort of, an overconfidence that Oscar voters have responded to. That we have, like, we know Inaritu is big with the Academy. And we know that also biopics are, like, straight down the line, obvious biopics are big with the Academy. Obviousness. That, that, that is the common theme.

• 1:16:21Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Do you think that Obsession, All of a Sudden, and Fjord are out?

• 1:16:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. Right now.

• 1:16:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, that would leave Neon with one title and 824 with three. If we included The Invite and The Debut, which we do not have to, of course.

• 1:16:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:16:38Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's possible that one of those is going out. You know, we have not considered stuff like Tender Loving Care.

• 1:16:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Sean Fennessey?

  Or Minotaur, or, uh, what's another, Fatherland, Elsinore. Elsinore is an interesting one.

• 1:16:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, people keep.

• 1:16:55Sean Fennessey?

  Because, because critics are not gonna like it.

• 1:16:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Sean Fennessey?

  But actors are gonna love it.

• 1:17:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Hamid vibes.

• 1:17:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they do love it.

• 1:17:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:03Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm saving space for that as well. Because, maybe not in this episode.

• 1:17:09Amanda Dobbins?

  You're very generous. Yeah.

• 1:17:11Sean Fennessey?

  Well, this is a game, right? We're playing a game. I love a game. And it's, right now, it's, right now, we're playing Jenga. And when you remove one, one block, you have to place it on top, and it will teeter. And I feel like we're teetering here.

• 1:17:27Amanda Dobbins?

  We are.

• 1:17:28Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if I see The Invite, The Debut, and You Can See Everything happening.

• 1:17:31Amanda Dobbins?

  But doesn't Neon regularly get three internationals in? I know it's different, but really? What, last year, maybe, was it just two?

• 1:17:44Sean Fennessey?

  I can't remember.

• 1:17:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:17:45Sean Fennessey?

  I can't remember. Why don't we just pull up the 2025?

• 1:17:48Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not unheard of.

• 1:17:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Best Picture 20.

• 1:17:52Sean Fennessey?

  No, because they did not get the Jafar Panahi film, right?

• 1:17:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:17:56Sean Fennessey?

  So they had sentimental value and they had The Secret Agent.

• 1:17:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:17:59Sean Fennessey?

  And that's hard to do. It's hard to get three films from one studio. It's also hard, it's certainly hard to get three international films. That wouldn't be the case for 824. The Debut and The Invite and You Can See Everything are all kind of crowd pleasery. That doesn't even account for Club Kid and The Drama and other movies that were not quite, that I think are kind of, and Primetime as well. I think all three of those movies are a little bit on the outside looking in at the moment.

• 1:18:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Agree.

• 1:18:23Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, there's usually a very even distribution amongst the studios.

• 1:18:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:18:27Sean Fennessey?

  Where you get at most two.

• 1:18:28Amanda Dobbins?

  So between The Debut and The Invite.

• 1:18:33Sean Fennessey?

  Ah, tricky thing about the invite is that Olivia Wilde's making a movie right now.

• 1:18:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and so she can't.

• 1:18:39Sean Fennessey?

  She did so much campaigning in the three months after the release of the film, and now she's making a comedy called Naughty with Jennifer Aniston, I think? Is that right?

• 1:18:50Sean Fennessey?

  And so, I don't know, will that hurt the movie? I really don't know. I, I'm just flagging that because that's another movie that could be impacted by, you can see everything surging.

• 1:18:58Amanda Dobbins?

  And then the debut comes out in December and just charm offensive plus.

• 1:19:04Sean Fennessey?

  The Julianne Moore thing is undeniable.

• 1:19:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's undeniable.

• 1:19:07Amanda Dobbins?

  And she's beloved and she's in Architectural Digest showing off her new townhouse.

• 1:19:11Sean Fennessey?

  I saw that.

• 1:19:12Amanda Dobbins?

  So, did you see the projector? $6,000 projector that I was very interested in.

• 1:19:17Sean Fennessey?

  Bart Freud link, her husband, yeah, filmmaker.

• 1:19:21Amanda Dobbins?

  And, well, but then, and also her brother-in-law, his brother designed the place. But the, but we should talk projectors.

• 1:19:27Sean Fennessey?

  She has an AV guy, like Tracy Lutz.

• 1:19:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so, yeah.

• 1:19:30Sean Fennessey?

  That's nice. I don't have a projector right now.

• 1:19:34Amanda Dobbins?

  It's cool.

• 1:19:34Sean Fennessey?

  But I will, one day.

• 1:19:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:19:35Sean Fennessey?

  I will.

• 1:19:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And then also, you know, it just saves space. Then you don't have to have like the screen in the middle of the room. It's beautiful. So she's campaigning in her own way.

• 1:19:44Sean Fennessey?

  I think the debut is still in.

• 1:19:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I agree.

• 1:19:46Sean Fennessey?

  Eight, the debut.

• 1:19:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:19:48Sean Fennessey?

  Seven, six and five. Project Hail Mary is in?

• 1:19:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so.

• 1:19:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's at seven right now. That's the decision I'm making right here for us. We have two slots, six and five.

• 1:19:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:20:00Sean Fennessey?

  I play Rocky, no?

• 1:20:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, everyone loves it.

• 1:20:05Sean Fennessey?

  Over Michael?

• 1:20:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I think so. The thing about Michael, I know it made a lot of money. I just, and I know people like the music of Michael Jackson.

• 1:20:16Sean Fennessey?

  Sure, I do.

• 1:20:16Amanda Dobbins?

  But I do too. It's just, there's a lot of trouble there, you know? And it seems like I play Rocky is right there is another crowd pleasing thing.

• 1:20:25Sean Fennessey?

  He was like Green Book, Best Picture.

• 1:20:27Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true. You know?

• 1:20:29Sean Fennessey?

  They don't care, they don't give a fuck.

• 1:20:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I just, I think that when you have another option, like I play Rocky, it just, you know?

• 1:20:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And you have many other blockbusters in the mix.

• 1:20:40Sean Fennessey?

  Is I play Rocky and Digger achievable, since they're both?

• 1:20:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think so.

• 1:20:45Sean Fennessey?

  About performance?

• 1:20:46Amanda Dobbins?

  But you want to do this.

• 1:20:48Sean Fennessey?

  I'm having fun.

• 1:20:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think Dune Part Three has to be a number five.

• 1:20:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, I'm fine with this.

• 1:20:53Sean Fennessey?

  What if Dune Part Three doesn't get in?

• 1:20:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know.

• 1:20:57Sean Fennessey?

  And even though not nominated for Best Director for Dune Part Two.

• 1:21:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, they're ungrateful, you know? They make mistakes.

• 1:21:03Sean Fennessey?

  That was heinous.

• 1:21:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree.

• 1:21:06Sean Fennessey?

  That was heinous.

• 1:21:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm looking forward to the film.

• 1:21:09Sean Fennessey?

  Me too, me too. I'm really excited about that one. This is all wrong, but I'm kind of, I'm kind of enjoying myself where we're at right now.

• 1:21:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's totally wrong.

• 1:21:17Sean Fennessey?

  A sop to Digger Hive?

• 1:21:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, they're doing great posting.

• 1:21:22Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 1:21:22Amanda Dobbins?

  And I respect a poster.

• 1:21:26Sean Fennessey?

  You want to read the 10?

• 1:21:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. At 10, Digger, at nine, Artificial, at eight, the debut, seven, Project Hail Mary, six, I play Rocky, five, Dune Part Three, four, You Can See Everything, three, Wild Horse, nine, two, La Bola Negra, and one, The Odyssey.

• 1:21:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, this is good, this is right, this is all correct?

• 1:21:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Speaker 04

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• 1:23:17Sean Fennessey?

  Is there any movie that we haven't mentioned from the list of 31? Or 29, I should say now, now that Sense and Sensibility and Inc. have been next. I'll tell you what, Being Human is another movie that, though I have not seen it, I think is giving people similar feelings to something like I Play Rocky.

• 1:23:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:23:37Sean Fennessey?

  A very warm, uplifting, true story.

• 1:23:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:23:44Sean Fennessey?

  That, I'm, from the director of Coda, who won Best Picture for making a warm, uplifting, not true story. Right, that wasn't a true story, was it? Was that, was that the true story of you?

• 1:23:56Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it wasn't.

• 1:23:58Sean Fennessey?

  Did you ever sing in school?

• 1:24:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I was in choir for sure.

• 1:24:02Sean Fennessey?

  Did you ever have a solo?

• 1:24:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, yes, I did, in second grade.

• 1:24:06Sean Fennessey?

  Do it for us now.

• 1:24:07Amanda Dobbins?

  No, in second grade at the Christmas pageant, I sang the, what's the song about the donkey? Da na da da da.

• 1:24:16Sean Fennessey?

  Dominic?

• 1:24:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Da da, da, no, no, like a carol, like it was, I went to a biblical schools. And but, but here's the important thing about the solo, and I don't know whether you've entered this phase of parenting yet. Are, are American Girl dolls on your radar?

• 1:24:32Sean Fennessey?

  The Italian Christmas donkey. Giggadigging, hee haw, hee haw.

• 1:24:38Amanda Dobbins?

  American Girl dolls.

• 1:24:39Sean Fennessey?

  Isn't that it?

• 1:24:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:24:39Sean Fennessey?

  Dominic the donkey?

• 1:24:40Amanda Dobbins?

  No, yeah.

• 1:24:40Sean Fennessey?

  I'm from New York, for fuck's sake, all right?

• 1:24:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:24:43Sean Fennessey?

  Please respect Dominic. Continue, I'm sorry.

• 1:24:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I asked you a question.

• 1:24:46Sean Fennessey?

  What did you ask me? I was, I was, I was thinking of music. I had a song in my heart.

• 1:24:52Amanda Dobbins?

  All right, girl dad, American Girl dolls. Yes or no?

• 1:24:55Sean Fennessey?

  We have not acquired any.

• 1:24:56Amanda Dobbins?

  So you're not there yet? It's awareness?

• 1:24:59Sean Fennessey?

  No, if I let her go into that store in Century City, she'll never come out.

• 1:25:02Amanda Dobbins?

  What if I get her one for Christmas?

• 1:25:04Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you'd be, you'd be, you'd be.

• 1:25:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I, wow.

• 1:25:07Sean Fennessey?

  Ant of the year.

• 1:25:08Amanda Dobbins?

  This is, this is really exciting. I mean, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna put that because I don't even know which one I would get her, and they have so many.

• 1:25:14Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 1:25:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Since I became a child. I know, I'm really, really excited. Nina and I had a like very long conversation about, like, are we missing out on American Girl dolls because we have sons?

• 1:25:24Sean Fennessey?

  Boy moms, yeah.

• 1:25:25Amanda Dobbins?

  But, uh, you know, anything's possible.

• 1:25:28Sean Fennessey?

  This phenomenon, I'm very aware of the fact that it would take my daughter's life.

• 1:25:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Anyway, second grade, Christmas pageant, singing not the Dominic the Donkey song in a child-sized Samantha outfit. They sold matching, sold matching outfits so you could match with your doll. I had the gray school outfit. I wore it to the Christmas pageant for my solo. That was kind of my apex.

• 1:25:52Sean Fennessey?

  Is it Little Donkey? Is that the name of the song? Which describes?

• 1:25:57Amanda Dobbins?

  It's about what's happening in the manger.

• 1:25:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:59Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think that I had the.

• 1:26:00Sean Fennessey?

  It describes the journey by Mary, the mother of Jesus, to Bethlehem on the donkey of the title.

• 1:26:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I saw the something, da da da, da da da da da da da da. And I had the donkey verse. That's what I remember. And I wore Samantha's school outfit.

• 1:26:18Sean Fennessey?

  This is, uh, first version of this to chart was by Gracie Fields.

• 1:26:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:26:22Sean Fennessey?

  Followed a fortnight later by the Beverly sisters. Why is this written on Wikipedia in this way?

• 1:26:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:28Sean Fennessey?

  A fortnight later.

• 1:26:29Amanda Dobbins?

  But so just, I just want to give you an image here of, so, but, but Amanda sized.

• 1:26:33Sean Fennessey?

  That's what you wear to every episode. We have to put that on the screen, whatever that dress is.

• 1:26:37Amanda Dobbins?

  See, see this little girl?

• 1:26:39Sean Fennessey?

  This is exactly what you wear now.

• 1:26:40Amanda Dobbins?

  That was me. I don't think I wore the bow.

• 1:26:43Sean Fennessey?

  That looks a little like Annabelle from the horror film Annabelle.

• 1:26:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you know.

• 1:26:47Sean Fennessey?

  You probably had some Annabelle vibes.

• 1:26:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Which one is she?

• 1:26:50Sean Fennessey?

  She's the doll.

• 1:26:51Amanda Dobbins?

  She's the doll.

• 1:26:52Sean Fennessey?

  Who's evil.

• 1:26:52Amanda Dobbins?

  But she doesn't, does she clap?

• 1:26:53Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:26:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Who's that?

• 1:26:54Sean Fennessey?

  Who claps?

• 1:26:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Bueller?

• 1:26:58Sean Fennessey?

  The, a clapping doll?

• 1:27:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know, Gilbert Cruz used to always just make a joke with me about one of them. It's not, maybe it's not a doll, maybe it's just like a spirit that claps? Spooky season?

• 1:27:10Sean Fennessey?

  I, yeah, that sounds familiar, but I can't think of what Gilbert was referring to.

• 1:27:14Amanda Dobbins?

  This is going really well.

• 1:27:15Sean Fennessey?

  This is a great show. This is a show about film and film culture, and we have adequately captured it.

• 1:27:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Did you know that Julia Roberts was in an American Girl doll film? I've never seen it.

• 1:27:26Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean? She played the doll?

• 1:27:28Amanda Dobbins?

  She was, yeah, so there's an American Girl film series.

• 1:27:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:27:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Samantha, an American Girl holiday, maybe she just produced them? What's going on with Julia Roberts and American Girl movies? I know she's in one.

• 1:27:40Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:27:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Kittridge, an American Girl.

• 1:27:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:27:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:27:48Sean Fennessey?

  That sounds like something, maybe.

• 1:27:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess she wasn't in it, maybe she just produced it. Okay.

• 1:27:53Sean Fennessey?

  We gotta wrap this up. I got Kyle McLaughlin on the show for Christ's sake.

• 1:27:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:27:57Sean Fennessey?

  Well, thank you to Samantha. Thank you to Dominic the donkey and the donkey, the other donkey that carried Mary to Bethlehem to give birth to Jesus Christ. Thanks to them for their work. Thanks to the whale. Thanks to Jane Austen.

• 1:28:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:11Sean Fennessey?

  And let's go now to my conversation with Kyle McLaughlin.

• 1:28:19Sean Fennessey?

  Here with Kyle MacLachlan. I almost don't know what to do with myself. A person I've spent a lot of time watching over the years. You've written a new book, Fictional selves. It is about your life in full and in the arts and in acting. You've been talking about your life a lot because of this. But I was hoping that in our conversation, we could just zero in on a very particular time, one year of that. Now, I don't know when specifically to start, so you're gonna have to help guide me a little bit. But there's about three chapters of the book that are dedicated to roughly the period where you read Blue Velvet, you agree to be in Blue Velvet, Blue Velvet happens,

• 1:29:01Sean Fennessey?

  and your movie stardom is sort of off in a way.

• 1:29:06Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:29:06Sean Fennessey?

  So I guess maybe you can help me set our 12-month period here.

• 1:29:11Speaker 07

  Can we do 18 months?

• 1:29:12Sean Fennessey?

  Let's do 18 months. It'll be easier.

• 1:29:15Speaker 07

  The, the, well, preface it by saying, so Dune, filming of Dune happened in 83. Majority of 83, seven months of filming in Mexico City, which was my first ever time working in a film. First ever film script, time in front of the camera. I had no idea what I was doing, which is obvious when I look at the movie now, certain scenes, but...

• 1:29:43Sean Fennessey?

  And you said you had expected that you would be largely a stage performer, a theater actor.

• 1:29:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, I was, I went to college, I was trained repertory theater. That was my thing. A very, a wonderful training program, part of the professional training program group, of which were about 10 or 12 schools around the country. Yale included, Juilliard, SMU, Carnegie Mellon. And I was at the University of Washington. So, yeah, three years of basically acting training, which was delightful, because I wasn't good at anything else, it turns out.

• 1:30:14Speaker 07

  Cast in Dune, filmed Dune, expectations very high. I had signed a contract saying that I wasn't going to be in any other film or television until Dune was released. So I couldn't even work in anything like that, because, I mean, that was the part of the contractual obligation.

• 1:30:35Speaker 07

  So that was about, about a year and a bit by the time we finished filming Dune. So September of 83, Dune comes out, December of 84.

• 1:30:49Speaker 07

  I'm, I'm wandering the streets. I'm, I'm in New York City. I'm auditioning for Grease. I'm, I'm trying to figure, trying to do, keep myself busy and active. Dune comes out, massive failure at the box office. During the time of filming, David had given me Blue Velvet and said, "Take a look at this. I'd like to do Blue Velvet right after we finished it." And I read the script and I was floored by it. I mean, it was just extraordinary. Mind you, this is my second film script that I've ever read. So I'm like, okay. But I understood it. I got, I got the journey. I got the story. I had been, become very close with David, so I understood, you know, as much as I could understand.

• 1:31:31Speaker 07

  That was put on hold when Dune came out. Weeks after the movie was released, suddenly there were no, there was no Blue Velvet. There were no Dune pictures, of which I had signed a contract for five. So I was supposed to do five. We did one, and that was it. So those went away. I had three non-Dune option pictures. We tried to find something. Actually, Blue Velvet fell under the parve of one of those. So I was like, okay, that takes care of that. But we didn't start filming Blue Velvet until, I think it was August of 85.

• 1:32:09Sean Fennessey?

  So...

• 1:32:09Speaker 07

  So a little bit of a, there's some gaps in there.

• 1:32:11Sean Fennessey?

  Let me ask you about that one year kind of holding period where you're effectively not meant to be publicly seen.

• 1:32:18Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if that's something that still happens now, but was the intention there to make you arrive as an unknown? Was the intention that you just were being held because you might have to go into sequel production soon? What was the thinking?

• 1:32:32Speaker 07

  I think it was, you know, that was at that time, and I don't think this is really a thing anymore, which was an unknown. We found a complete unknown to play the lead in this, you know, what was meant to be a major motion picture. There were some guys that had been lined, lined up, that were in the running, that, that names that I'd heard, of whom I, you know, became friends with later. But the, the idea, I believe, was, let's just introduce him, you know, in Dune for the very first time. Which is why I couldn't do, they said, "You can do a play. That's fine. We don't care about that." But anything else was, would have been, could have potentially preempted that, you know, kind of first exposure.

• 1:33:17Speaker 07

  And so there was no, there was no, I didn't have anything to hedge, hedge against, right? I mean, there was nothing left. Had I, let's say I'd had a chance to do two films, or maybe had two films in a TV program, who knows, you know, whatever. Dune comes out, doesn't do well. It's like, well, maybe one of these will hit. So you, you know, you're basically just putting money in and hoping that something's gonna pay off.

• 1:33:41Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:33:41Speaker 07

  Or pay out. Didn't happen. And so I was left pretty, pretty high and dry. Not understanding that at the time, of course, but the, but the impact of that was pretty severe.

• 1:33:55Sean Fennessey?

  Where were you living?

• 1:33:57Speaker 07

  Well, I had a great plan. See, I was up in Seattle. I had been working in the theater up there when they found me. Went to Mexico City, filmed Dune. I just went back to Seattle and I said, "Well, what I can do, because I'm gonna be doing five non-Dune, and five Dune pictures, rest of my life is taken care of, right? I'll just go back to Seattle. I live in Seattle. And then I'll drive, you know, go to, go wherever they're filming, and I'll just go make the movies. And then I'll just, you know, but I'll keep my, my, my home base in Seattle, which obviously was not gonna happen."

• 1:34:29Sean Fennessey?

  Did you rent an apartment? Did you go to your mom's house?

• 1:34:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, I had like, no, I had like, I had like a little apartment. It was actually the same apartment that I lived in when I was in school. $145 a month. Yeah, yeah, single. It was a, what do they call it? It wasn't even a single bedroom. It was like a studio apartment, I think they called it, where you put the, you put your bed in the, and you modified the closet, stuck your bed in there. It was a good-sized closet. And put your bed in there, and then you, and you were good to go.

• 1:34:54Speaker 07

  And that suited me fine. So that's kind of where I, where I was hanging out. And when Dune was not well-received, as I said, I was actually with my, over in Yakima, where I grew up, with my dad. And that's when I got the word, and that's when everything kind of shifted, and suddenly, you know, I'm going to LA. And, and I need to start auditioning and trying to get another job.

• 1:35:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I want to hear about that experience.

• 1:35:24Sean Fennessey?

  You know, you write about being up for, or at least discussed for, a lot of very momentous, well-known movies at this time. But you're, you're coming off of a film that is not a success.

• 1:35:36Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:35:37Sean Fennessey?

  But you were, you do carry the movie. I mean, you are the lead of the film. I mean, that's not nothing, even though...

• 1:35:41Speaker 07

  There's some value, even though it was a disaster. There is some value to that. And the fact that I had an agent, I had, I'd got a good agent, and I had a manager. And I had a lawyer, who I'm still with, believe it or not.

• 1:35:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm pretty loyal that way. But, and that was it, sort of. So I had, you know, I had an opening for meetings and, you know, someone that could sort of pitch me, you know, which was great. So I was coming in with some, you know, some strength.

• 1:36:13Sean Fennessey?

  One thing I'm curious about, because you write about how you're kind of dropped into this life that maybe you just didn't ever think was, would have ever been possible, is, did you feel like a very active participant in the strategy of your career at that time?

• 1:36:28Sean Fennessey?

  Because you have all these people who like are working on your behalf.

• 1:36:31Speaker 07

  Yeah. Well, the strategy really only happens when things come to you, right? There was no, there was no like, oh, let's try and develop some things, you know, that you, you can. But developing something and getting someone actually interested in that really only happens when you've done something that people value, right? And they say, "Oh, this guy can, could maybe bring this much money in this. He could do this. So let's, yeah, we'll work with him on this project. See if we can get it somewhere." There was none of that. So it was basically kind of what was available at the time, what scripts were out there? What were the A-level projects? Was, was there a role available? Had it been packaged already?

• 1:37:13Speaker 07

  And then more, probably, you know, more of the, you know, B-level or supporting or these kind of things. Somewhere, let's find something, you know. So, and things came in. One of the ones I mentioned, and this happened actually after Blue Velvet, because prior to Blue Velvet, the Dune, the Dune-verse, or that period of time between making Dune, and actually not until Blue Velvet came out, was, there was just very, very few options to me. Some people were curious, but it was often a strange European, Eastern European film that was being made somewhere in Budapest. I'm just like, I don't know.

• 1:37:56Sean Fennessey?

  That's where they're all made now.

• 1:37:57Speaker 07

  Right, yeah. Well, we would have been ahead of my time.

• 1:37:59Sean Fennessey?

  That's interesting, though, because, you know, you write about a couple of different big films that we can talk about a little bit, but in both of those cases, you're being talked to about the lead of these movies that are true movie star parts. But then you're also saying, well, are you considering supporting parts? Or is your representation telling you, like, "You're Kyle MacLachlan. You're a movie star. You gotta only take the, first on the call sheet."

• 1:38:24Speaker 07

  Yeah. It was weird, because certainly when, when, before Dune came out, the expectations were so high, and they were like, "This is gonna change your life. You're gonna be, you know, major motion picture star." And I was like, "Okay, I don't know. What is that? I have no idea. I don't, I have no relationship with Los Angeles." In fact, for the time after we finished filming Dune, I didn't even go to Los Angeles, because there was no reason to be there, because I couldn't work in the business. I mean, I guess I could have gone around and sort of met people and be seen, and I don't know, you know, but I wasn't thinking like that.

• 1:38:54Speaker 07

  And so there was a, yeah, there was kind of a...

• 1:39:00Speaker 07

  What are we gonna do with him? Type of thing, you know, he said, we have, he has this movie, but then he, but it has, it has no, no credibility within the, within the, the world of Hollywood. Where do we put him? And so they're trying to figure that out. I remember there was one, one thing they were trying to put me with, uh, I was, I think it was Linda Fiorentino. And it was a movie called Making Thunderbirds. I don't talk about this in the book, but Making Thunderbirds, I think was the name of the movie. And it was like a blue collar kid. Who was, I think he like, took his girlfriend or maybe even like kidnapped a model or something. Did something weird and they were gonna drive to LA, some romantic road trip.

• 1:39:42Speaker 07

  And they were gonna try and make it in the, it was just like, no. And I love Linda Fiorentino back in, you know, she was great, but I was like, I, I don't know what this is. And also it was like, it just never happened. So that fell apart.

• 1:39:55Sean Fennessey?

  Did you feel like you had the personal agency to say like, this isn't for me? Even though you were like coming off of a, something that wasn't a success and you're thinking about your career?

• 1:40:02Speaker 07

  It's a good question, cause I, I was definitely hesitant, but at the same time I was like, you know, a couple of things were working. You know, first of all, I'm a young actor, I'm trained to do repertory theater, I'm trained to do anything. Sort of like, you can do that role, you can do this role, you can be any one of these types of people. But the reality is it doesn't really work that way in Hollywood, you know? It's like you sort of fit, you gotta fit the outfit, kind of, you know, fit the role.

• 1:40:25Sean Fennessey?

  Did the way that David spoke to you about both Dune and Blue Velvet? Give you some insight or even like, maybe even have some negative impact on how you perceived yourself? And like what kind of an actor you should be?

• 1:40:37Speaker 07

  Not really, I mean, David was absolutely supportive. I knew I fit into his universe somehow. And I realized during the filming of Blue Velvet, it really had more to do with, I was kind of a guide in a, in a way, you know? He would, he created a very dark universe there, dark world. And we, you know, he needed somebody to sort of take the audience by the hand and say, come on in. And all the same way with Cooper, Agent Cooper, he said, come on in, you know, we're gonna, let's go on this journey together. It's gonna be scary, but I've got you, kind of, you know?

• 1:41:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's funny you say that, I revisited the film, maybe I don't wanna trample on this part of the conversation yet, but I see the movie differently now, having seen it so many times and even having read the book, than what you're describing, but we can get to that. Did you feel, well, you also write about in the aftermath of Blue Velvet, you're meeting all these actors, these successful people who you don't know. And you feel like you're not a part of their club. And you mentioned you weren't in LA in 1984. And you didn't, you were not a part of the community there.

• 1:41:40Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:41:40Sean Fennessey?

  So like, what were you doing with your time when you weren't working?

• 1:41:43Speaker 07

  I mean, it's a good question, cause I'm trying to remember what I was trying, I spent a lot of time in my garden. You know, it was, and the time you're speaking of specifically, I think was, actually you said post Blue Velvet. And I had met Laura Dern, who obviously very, very much a part of the Hollywood world, with her parents, Bruce Stern and Diane Ladd. And she knew all these people and was friendly with them, all the working actors of, of that time, you know? And I remember we would, we would be out together and I would feel, I was there and I was like, well, I did this movie Dune, that everybody hated. And then we've done Blue Velvet, it hasn't come out yet.

• 1:42:27Speaker 07

  I really didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. I just was just kinda, and so I just, I mean, it was really, I was on the ride with Laura. You know, she was sort of leading the way and I was kinda hanging out going, okay, this is all interesting and kind of fun. And getting to know Hollywood a little bit, such nice people too. I remember, I mean, they were really, really nice people. But I just didn't know where I fit into this, you know?

• 1:42:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's interesting the way that you write about yourself and the work that you're doing, cause it feels so often like the characters that you're playing at this time, are in such parallel to the person that you are in time, which is like, a little bit alienated, trying to retain your kind of Pacific Northwest geniality.

• 1:43:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:43:09Sean Fennessey?

  A little surprised by maybe how like, how dark some things are, or how disappointing some things are, you know? Like, did you, did you have any consciousness of the work and the art being two mirrors facing each other?

• 1:43:20Speaker 07

  I think at the time, not necessarily, although, although, you know, in, in, in spending time with, with Laura and opening up another kind of chapter in the acting world, of which I was very hesitant to do, because I felt like, listen, I've gone through three years, this is a really intensive training. I'm ready for whatever comes, you know? Not admitting that, well, there's always room to learn, you know what I mean? And because I didn't wanna put my, I felt like I was going backwards somehow, you know? Like it was, I'm supposed to be moving forward and getting work and jobs and putting into play the craft, everything that I've learned.

• 1:43:58Speaker 07

  Why am I now going back to acting classes and lessons and breaking myself down? And trying to figure out other stuff, which, you know, as I got older, a little wiser, I'm realizing, no, you're doing that all the time as an actor. But at the, but at that moment, I had this, I think I had a chip on my shoulder. I was very much like, even though I didn't admit it, I had, I had a very, I was grumpy, you know?

• 1:44:25Sean Fennessey?

  So interesting, cause that's the opposite of what you're meant to be in Blue Velvet. Let's, let's, let's talk through it. I know you've talked through it many times, but I, I think I'm gonna try to like drill down even further and try to get you to remember some things you don't remember. Cause you've talked over the years about this fateful meeting, where you go to Bob's Big Boy with David and with Laura. And I believe that's the first time you met Laura.

• 1:44:45Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:44:45Sean Fennessey?

  And was David's intention there to see just, would this chemistry work as this Sandy and Jeffrey?

• 1:44:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think so, you know, I, I was kind of Jeffrey for him. I think I was Jeffrey for him even when we were filming Dune. Cause he, he gave me the script and I think his, his idea was this is actually, I want Kyle for Jeffrey. So he, I think he knew that going in. So and then it was a question of finding who was gonna be the Sandy, his Sandy, you know? And I believe, I think, because David casts in a very unusual, I think he saw a photograph of Laura and said, oh, and he got a feeling from it, you know? So that was our meeting, was to meet her and to see what it was like with all of us together, you know? And if there was a chemistry, you know, chemistry, basically, it's a chemistry meet.

• 1:45:37Speaker 07

  And it went very extremely well. I mean, Laura is, yeah, as you know, I mean, she's absolutely delightful. And I think the, the energy started there. And one of the things about David that I learned sort of later, I guess, is that he really, the, the people that he brings into his worlds, whether it's mostly the ones he writes. So if it's Blue Velvet, obviously, or Wild at Heart, or any of the others, Twin Peaks, of course. You're kind of, the character, you and the character, the person and the character become one in, in his mind.

• 1:46:22Speaker 07

  And so you are that character to him, you know, in a way. I mean, you know, obviously you're not, but he thinks of you like that. So he was looking at me and Laura and going, that's Jeffrey and Sandy. So we became Jeffrey and Sandy, I think in that meeting to him.

• 1:46:38Sean Fennessey?

  You guys make a connection, obviously, and eventually did end up together romantically. But how much of that is the imagination of David Lynch perceiving you as Jeffrey and Sandy?

• 1:46:49Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:46:49Sean Fennessey?

  And then manifesting that, and then in real life, that developing, like, did that strike you guys? Did you discuss the psychological impact of that?

• 1:46:57Speaker 07

  It was definitely some, the, the, the table was set, you know, in a way. But I think even beyond that, I mean, Laura's, she's just an exceptional person. So I recognized that immediately and I said, this is a very, very special person. So the fact that we ended into a relationship, you know, part of it, we were both very young. You're working together, you're supposed to be in a relationship, things happen. Okay. And we carried on for about four years after that. And she had a tremendous impact on, on my, my life, my career, you know, who I, who I am today. But I think that, yeah, I think that there is a certain kind of.

• 1:47:41Speaker 07

  Encouragement that David gave us. So he certainly wasn't saying, don't, you know, oh, no, stop, don't get together. No, no.

• 1:47:49Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:47:50Speaker 07

  It was, it was, and it made him very, very happy. And I think to the point where, and I'm jumping way ahead to the return now, where she, we're back working together in, in an interesting dynamic between Laura and myself. And I think in his

• 1:48:11Sean Fennessey?

  This is 30 years later.

• 1:48:12Speaker 07

  30 years later, in David's mind, he had been thinking about this and just wanting to find a way to bring us back together, both as characters, but also as people. The magic of his environment, his world is, it's very special. I don't really know how to describe it. It's unusual.

• 1:48:35Sean Fennessey?

  Obviously, part of what is so appealing, at least to me, about his work and what I think resonates with so many people is the, that collision of the light and the dark, right? And you describe the dark universe that he's creating, but that there is a genuine sweetness and exploration of Americana and love and all these big ideas. You write in the book about your mom quite beautifully, and she read the script.

• 1:49:01Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:49:01Sean Fennessey?

  And she struggled with the material.

• 1:49:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:49:04Sean Fennessey?

  I think for understandable reasons.

• 1:49:05Speaker 07

  I think so, yeah.

• 1:49:07Sean Fennessey?

  But I was hoping maybe you could talk a little bit about just like her impact on you in terms of your taste and when, and then also maybe having the agency to say like, well, even if you don't approve of this, I feel I need to do this.

• 1:49:17Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:49:18Sean Fennessey?

  Because I think that that's such a critical station. Somebody whose mom also introduced him to films and like, I very much relate to the way that you write about that.

• 1:49:25Speaker 07

  Oh, cool. Yeah. It was something I didn't really like to talk about for a long time because I felt like, oh, you know, that's not the strong independent guy, you know? But in fact, she had huge impact on me and my brothers as well. But it was really her, her encouragement in the arts world, theater in particular being something that she really loved. And I'm guessing, and we never had the discussion, but I'm guessing that she sort of saw me recognize that he, that I had this ability a little bit, maybe in some of the early

• 1:50:07Speaker 07

  plays that I did, and just kind of kept nurturing that as a, as a possible career, I guess, even though we didn't really think about it like that. But she was definitely there kind of fanning the flames of that.

• 1:50:20Sean Fennessey?

  Were you a performative little kid?

• 1:50:23Speaker 07

  Not really. I was pretty shy.

• 1:50:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:25Speaker 07

  And I was pretty, as I write in the book, I was scared of a lot of things and pretended not to be.

• 1:50:31Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think she picked up on then that made you, made her encourage you to pursue those things?

• 1:50:36Speaker 07

  I think, I like to make people laugh. So there was, sort of to make up for any shortcomings, it's sort of like, you know, it's like the magician, look here, don't look here.

• 1:50:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:48Speaker 07

  So I think that was part of it. And I think part of it was also, it was something that she probably wanted to do and she didn't.

• 1:50:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:59Speaker 07

  She did it at community theater, stuff like that. She was an amazing pianist and musician. She sang, she was in a couple of the, you know, hometown musicals in the summer and stuff. So I got to see her do it as well, and she brought us into this. We had a wonderful community theater where I grew up. And so we were kind of, we were kind of the little kids running around helping out, you know, during the summer productions and stuff. So the theater was part of our world and it didn't seem weird to me that it was. And a lot of that was because of her. So I wanted her and my dad too, to be part of this new journey, you know, this new success, potential success, you know?

• 1:51:41Speaker 07

  They read the Dune script and they were all very excited about it and, you know, this is all new happening, happening to me from this little town. And, and then when he gave me, when David gave me the script of Blue Velvet, I was like, oh, I'd love for them to read it, give me their thoughts, you know? Not really thinking, maybe, maybe that wasn't the best word, or maybe I should have given her with some pages removed.

• 1:52:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:02Speaker 07

  Anyway, and she responded, as you would imagine, you know, she was very, very protective of her boys and, and I think a lot of things, you know, aware of the community in which she lived, you know? Her parents were also really a big part of how she presented herself and who she was. And I realized that later, you know, as you get older, you mature and you kind of go, oh, wow, she really, she was like, needed to please her parents all the time. And they were tough. My grandparents were tough, lovely, but tough.

• 1:52:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:38Speaker 07

  So I don't know if that factored into your, I mean, thinking

• 1:52:40Sean Fennessey?

  No, it does so much. I mean, I'm thinking specifically, I have a five-year-old and I think about some of the things that I'm trying to do is give my daughter the confidence to do things that maybe my parents didn't give me the confidence to do.

• 1:52:52Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:52:52Sean Fennessey?

  Which I don't know that like, that was their fault or anything, they just maybe didn't realize. But so your mom, being an artistic person and identifying that about you and encouraging you to pursue this, but then this, this confrontation with what you're interested in, what you want to do and almost being adopted by this new family?

• 1:53:10Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:11Sean Fennessey?

  And then that family having a different perspective on how you should pursue your artistic life.

• 1:53:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:53:16Sean Fennessey?

  Is just such an interesting friction.

• 1:53:19Speaker 07

  Yeah. That's a really good perspective because it was David, it was a new, it was a new family, artistic family, and I was scared too.

• 1:53:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:26Speaker 07

  Because it was pretty brutal, obviously, you remember Blue Velvet? And I don't know what I was, I was thinking, oh, she's gonna, it'll be great. So she, my dad was like, yeah, it's fine, it's good. And he was, whatever, it's a total dad response. But she was definitely, but, but at the same time, she never, she didn't, she was also like, I'm not gonna, I don't want to say anything. But her husband, Lonnie, talked to me about it when I asked. I said, what'd you think? And he said, well, you know.

• 1:53:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:58Speaker 07

  And of course, this was right in the middle of her battle with ovarian cancer. She was undergoing chemotherapy. And I didn't even hesitate. I just said, if she's, if this is causing her distress, no, no, I don't, I don't have to do it, we're not gonna do it, not gonna do it. And I told David and he understood very kindly and that was it. That was done. And, you know, I, I couldn't get the script out of my head. And I think, I think I grew up a little bit in that time and I kind of said, you know, I really want to do this. Frankly, there was not a lot of other options. And I said, I'm gonna do this and I, you know, I want you to be okay with it. And she gave me her blessing. I was okay. So off we went.

• 1:54:43Speaker 07

  And I kind of explained, I said, David's not gonna, what you read is not exactly what you're gonna see.

• 1:54:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:48Speaker 07

  You know, because it was quite graphic, as you can imagine, and explicit.

• 1:54:54Sean Fennessey?

  And that turned out to be very true in the making of the movie. A lot changed throughout the making of it too.

• 1:54:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:55:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's an amazing story. I was very touched by it because it's hard to be independent, you know, to say like, I don't need your entire, like, full-blown approval to enjoy something or to, you know, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:55:14Speaker 07

  I do, I do. It was very hard for me. It's still hard for me, you know what I mean? I'm very much a people pleaser, you know? And this has been a kind of a wonderful journey to figure out how not to be so much like that. And I admire people that are, and I write about some of them in the book, that are not that way, that are, you know, right out in front. And I'm like, that, I aspire to that.

• 1:55:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. One of the things that was interesting about reading you, writing through the making of the film is the way that, even though Laura is experienced, but not so experienced, and Isabella Rossellini, who also comes from a filmmaking family, but is not a very experienced actor at this point.

• 1:55:49Speaker 07

  Not at that time, no.

• 1:55:50Sean Fennessey?

  But she's been a model and she has a very strong perspective on how she thinks things should go during the making of the movie.

• 1:55:56Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:55:56Sean Fennessey?

  That seems sort of surprising to you, where she's responding to David and saying like, no, it shouldn't be like this, it should be like this.

• 1:56:02Speaker 07

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:56:03Sean Fennessey?

  And like, I don't know what it was like on the set of Dune, but it's almost like you're learning in real time that you have more agency than you realize going into a project?

• 1:56:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, that, and that's ongoing, to be honest here. And, and it's of tremendous value. And there was a period of time with David, it was sort of, I just said, I guess this is how it's meant to be, you know? And I just sort of accepted everything in Dune. And certainly with Blue Velvet, I might have an idea or something I would offer as a suggestion, but specifically with David, it's like, I can't think of anything else more interesting than what David is asking me to do. It's like, I don't know, you know, if I knew that, then I could have had, I could have been really helpful in Twin Peaks when things started to go off the rails, but I just didn't really know, because it's David. And he's the only one that does this stuff.

• 1:56:54Speaker 07

  So I was kind of like, okay, we're gonna do it this way. And, and I began to, in my, in my third film, so that was the hidden, whole different scenario.

• 1:57:04Sean Fennessey?

  I have some questions about that.

• 1:57:04Speaker 07

  Okay, well, I began to kind of step out a little bit, but literally like, I put a toe in the water.

• 1:57:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:11Speaker 07

  It was not a big

• 1:57:12Sean Fennessey?

  It does seem like there's one sequence in particular in Blue Velvet where you're like, a little bit unsure, uncomfortable with the way that it might be framed. And so you do give some feedback and you do get effectively what you want, like if David agrees, right?

• 1:57:25Speaker 07

  The scene with Dennis, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a scene with Dennis that was very graphic and it looked, very much appeared that there was some kind of rape or something that was going on. And I, I said, David, I think, and it was, again, and now I understand how my, you know, my mom's objections, it's like, it was written very, very specifically. And I said, I think, I'm a little uncomfortable going this far. Can we do it in a way where it's, you know, did it, did it not? We don't know. And let the, let the impact play out the following day, you know, to sort of understand the, so it kept the audience a little bit guessing.

• 1:58:09Speaker 07

  And he actually said, yes, that's, that's a good idea.

• 1:58:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's one of my favorite things about, you know, reading your book and learning as much as I have about Lynch, like, you know, I grew up really venerating him and this whole show is like in tribute to people who make movies and especially the writer-director who is this great visionary.

• 1:58:28Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:58:28Sean Fennessey?

  And then you hear anybody talk about the making of any movie and things are changed in real time, they're constantly evolving, there's like, and it seems like Lynch would be like, let's, let's do, let's just do this, let's try this instead of what I thought it was supposed to be.

• 1:58:41Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah, he was very open to that.

• 1:58:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. What is that, is that intimidating to try something totally new?

• 1:58:48Speaker 07

  It's so fun. It's part of the process that I enjoy the most. You know, it's that period of, it's that time of play, right? When you're figuring stuff out. Now, if you It's a weird, it's a weird finding levels, right? Because in some actors I would watch and I could see that they were pushing against something or trying something and I said, that is not in the Lynch verse, Lynch verse. There it is. That's not, David's not gonna go for that. I just knew, you know? And he would, in a very David way, kind of bring them back in, very gently, you know, just kind of, eh, eh, eh, let's go this way. You know, not this way, let's go this way. And he would nudge you around, nudge the actor around.

• 1:59:32Speaker 07

  But I had an, I guess, an intuitive understanding of kind of where he wanted these characters to go, or my character in particular, where to go. And I, I don't know, I love, he's talked about the happy accident, the happy accident. Everything that we did was, you know, if there was something that changed, he would immediately, he felt it. It wasn't like an intellectual thing. It was like he felt it. And if he didn't know in a moment what, he was like, I gotta think about this for a minute. He would literally just sit for a minute quietly and kind of, you could see it, he could see it in his head, working his way through. And he would go, okay, that's what we're gonna do. And it was amazing, it was magical.

• 2:00:15Sean Fennessey?

  It even seems like, all the way to the conclusion of the third act of the movie, that he's like, he's not quite sure if what he's imagining is right, and we're gonna figure it out as we're going through the process of making the movie.

• 2:00:25Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:00:26Sean Fennessey?

  Which, like, something like Blue Velvet, which as you know, having lived with it, its success for over forty years, is, it's the Mona Lisa now, you know? It is like, it's a perfect object of art.

• 2:00:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:00:38Sean Fennessey?

  That has been studied and will be studied forever.

• 2:00:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:41Sean Fennessey?

  You know, but like, and even if you're just a little bit younger and you receive, you receive it that way. You're told, this is a masterpiece. But then, as soon as you get into the text of you spending the time making it, you realize, well, it could have been completely different.

• 2:00:52Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 2:00:53Sean Fennessey?

  Just completely, if someone had woken up and not had their cup of coffee or something, then it might not have turned out the way that it did.

• 2:00:59Speaker 07

  I think that's filmmaking, you know, honestly. I mean, less than television, because it's a little more of a machine. But in filmmaking, particularly talking about an auteur, you know, who's a writer-director. And the, and the challenge, of course, is to steer it through the storm, you know? And don't hit the rocks, and you know, make sure you kind of, but you have to try different things and you have to be comfortable and confident, which David, David was, you know? And the beauty of it is, I didn't really, you know, I've started with David Lynch, Dune, Blue Velvet, and I'm like, oh, this is filmmaking, you know? And I'm like, and then I, then I'm off on the weeds and I'm going, mm, wait a minute. This is different. And I don't know, I don't know what's happening here, you know?

• 2:01:40Sean Fennessey?

  Can you tell me a little bit about Wilmington, North Carolina?

• 2:01:43Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:01:44Sean Fennessey?

  That's where you made the movie.

• 2:01:46Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:01:47Sean Fennessey?

  And you'd already shot a film in Mexico, so it's not unusual to be traveling and going somewhere new, but.

• 2:01:51Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:01:52Sean Fennessey?

  How long were you there? What is it like to be on location in that way?

• 2:01:56Speaker 07

  It was, obviously, a completely different experience in Mexico City, which was, I mean, we were like a fish out of water on that. But you have this family that exists, which is beautiful, you know, of all the actors and the crew and everybody, so everyone's kind of hanging together. So you have, you liken it sort of to the circus, you know, you bring the circus and it comes to town and they have, you know, this is where they set up. Blue Velvet, completely different, much smaller, obviously. Wilmington, it's odd in its own way, because it's, it's a small town, it's a resort town on the beach, and then downtown is like much darker, more mysterious, slightly scary place.

• 2:02:39Speaker 07

  So two different communities. I had done exactly as you said, I'd sort of picked up, you know, my life, I brought my, you know, brought my bike out, I brought, you know, my music stuff out, I brought, I mean, I brought everything, like, like I was bringing my life with me. Because that's, that's what I thought you did, you know? And I set up there and, and off we went. I came in about a month early, and I just thought, well, I just, I'll just kind of get tuned in. And they were like, they were like, well, we now have to pay the studio for the room that you're gonna be in. I'm like, oh, doesn't that, how, what?

• 2:03:14Sean Fennessey?

  This is sort of what I was curious about most, is sort of like the vagaries of this thing, where you're like, you think that you have some ability to just control what you do, but everything costs money.

• 2:03:23Speaker 07

  And I'm like, oh, oh, sorry. They're like, no, no, it's okay, it's okay, I'm sure, you know, it wasn't that much. But, yeah, you basically set up, you set up camp, you know, which I was kind of used to, because I'd been doing summer stock and I've done some plays and stuff, and you kind of, you know, you move to a small town, you set up your little area, and then off you go. And I still do that, you know? When I go even to a hotel now, if I'm, even if it's just one day, I'll set up my little space and everything, and I'll have everything just as I need it and I want it, and, you know, and from here I can work, you know? And that was definitely Blue Velvet. But, the apartment that I chose was a lot different than the bed and breakfast where Laura Dern and Isabella were hanging. That was a lap of luxury.

• 2:04:06Speaker 07

  So I spent a lot more time over with Laura than I did in my little hovel.

• 2:04:09Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. One thing I was curious about revisiting the film, is you're such a great camera subject, but you studied in the theater, and the types of acting are very different.

• 2:04:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's interesting you say that, because I, I mean, I was always a pretty, I wasn't very bombastic, on stage, and I'm not sort of big, hey, music man kind of guy, I'm, I'm much quieter.

• 2:04:32Sean Fennessey?

  You're still a very still actor.

• 2:04:34Speaker 07

  Still, yeah, and I think.

• 2:04:36Sean Fennessey?

  Which is important in movies.

• 2:04:37Speaker 07

  It is, and in some of that, in some of that, in Dune, it was just fear, really, because I didn't want to do something wrong, so I said, just stay here. Part of it was the costumes, because they were truly difficult to wear.

• 2:04:48Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:04:49Speaker 07

  You know, the green suit, it was like, you know, the collar and the thing, and I was just like this. I said, well, don't move too much. But I didn't really know what I was, I didn't really, I didn't know what I was doing. I was honestly, I mean, I could, you know, you can create the character, you're in the scene. And I gotta say, I'm working with some pretty extraordinary actors and actresses in that, so kind of following their lead. You know, everyone from Patrick Stewart, Linda Hunt, obviously, Francesca, everybody was very experienced, much more experienced than I was. So I just kind of, you know, follow what they were doing. And Blue Velvet, most of it was with Laura, who's such a naturalistic actress.

• 2:05:33Speaker 07

  I just was like, I said, oh, oh, this is nice, on front of a camera, you can just actually talk to the person and forget the cameras there. Because on Dune, I'm very, very, very, very conscious where the cameras and I don't know what's going on, right? But Blue Velvet was kind of disappeared, and I was like, okay. You know? There were also situations, particularly the whole stuff with Isabella in her apartment, when I've got no clothes on, and I'm just like, well, this is what I would do in this situation.

• 2:06:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:05Speaker 07

  Do I leave my socks on? Do I take my socks off? So you just, you know, you're kind of, it's.

• 2:06:09Sean Fennessey?

  That's your naturalism, yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:11Speaker 07

  It was very real, you know? And all the stuff with Dennis, I wasn't doing anything, but just, you know, shaking in my boots, really, whenever he was near. And he was just absolutely most delightful, most professional, coolest, because, you know, I'd cut, he'd be like, back to Dennis.

• 2:06:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'd love to hear you talk about him a little bit, because that period of time is so pivotal for him in his career, because he comes out of rehab.

• 2:06:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:06:38Sean Fennessey?

  And he is, you know, he's had a very complicated reputation, he's a bit of a terrorizer in the sixties, and then he's in some massively important movies.

• 2:06:46Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:06:47Sean Fennessey?

  And then he kind of thinks quiet down a little bit for him and his career for a little while. And then eighty-six is a huge moment, where he's in a bunch of movies all of a sudden in a row.

• 2:06:54Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:06:55Sean Fennessey?

  Where he becomes back in the kind of firmament of Hollywood. But Frank Booth, I mean, that's in the first sentence of his obituary, you know? Like, that is a legendary character, and it's such a big and scary performance, and you're in your second movie. And the whole point of the movie, the whole point of the dynamic is he's scaring you.

• 2:07:10Speaker 07

  Yes, and he did.

• 2:07:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:12Speaker 07

  He was really good at it.

• 2:07:13Sean Fennessey?

  Did you speak to him at all before the making of the movie? Like, how did you figure out how to do that?

• 2:07:16Speaker 07

  I met him, I met him on the back lot, I'll never forget the day, I write about it in the book, I never forget about him, I was hanging out with some of the Sparks and the Electrics, and just on the back of the truck, back lot, you know? And he was, came out, walking out towards me, and I remember what he was wearing, and he just said, hey, I just want to introduce myself, Dennis Hopper, really looking forward to working with you. And I was like, he's looking forward to work with me? You know, I'm just, I'm going, hey, thanks, thanks, man, I'm looking forward to it too. What do you say? You know? And, and he was very, very upfront about how grateful he was to have the opportunity. He said to David, there's that famous story where he called and said, I am Frank Booth,

• 2:07:59Speaker 07

  which David was like, okay, and then is that funny comment?

• 2:08:02Sean Fennessey?

  And that was really, was it in the restaurant when he gets that call, when you guys are together?

• 2:08:07Speaker 07

  No, it was not, no.

• 2:08:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. But he shared that with you at the restaurant?

• 2:08:10Speaker 07

  Yes, and it was, you know, he took, he took a period of his life and then channeled it into that character, which is wonderfully, I think, a wonderfully healthy way to sort of deal with, you know, a part of his life that he probably wasn't that proud of. And, and he was, yeah, he was just truly a force of nature.

• 2:08:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he's, he's absolutely amazing in the movie.

• 2:08:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:08:39Sean Fennessey?

  The movie plays to me now, having seen it a bunch of times as-

• 2:08:43Speaker 07

  You mentioned, yeah, that you sort of, you see it differently. Or you're talking about Dune maybe before, but, or were you thinking about Blue Velvet?

• 2:08:49Sean Fennessey?

  No, I was thinking about Blue Velvet. I mean, seeing it for the first time as whatever teenager, whatever I was, it's just so bracing, right? It's very shocking and it violates you in a way. And it's doing, which is what it's intended to do. But now I only see the movie as a loss of innocence movie. It's not, I see it as not just like a man at war with the two sides, the light and the dark, but like Jeffrey kind of can never go back, really.

• 2:09:12Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:09:12Sean Fennessey?

  After he's seen what he's seen.

• 2:09:14Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:09:14Sean Fennessey?

  And I do see it in parallel, as I was saying, to your experience. And like, I'm wondering if maybe even making that movie, which is, must have been wonderful for you in so many ways over time.

• 2:09:26Speaker 07

  Right.

• 2:09:26Sean Fennessey?

  But did it like, did it ruin anything in your career? Because it's such a special thing and it parallels the experience that you're having in some way.

• 2:09:35Speaker 07

  It was, it, no, I don't think, I think it was the opposite, actually. I think it sort of gave me hope after Dune.

• 2:09:46Speaker 07

  Because I watch it now and I, I just watched a clip of the scene in front of the church, you know? You know, the Robins come down and Laura's got this speech. And, and I sort of remembered it being, oh, this is so corny. Oh, my God. You know, and I'm like thinking about, and I've also remembering it took Fred Elms like, most of the night to light the trees. I mean, it looked beautiful, but I'm like, we gotta do some acting here at some point. You know, the sun's coming up, you know, let's get this. And it was a very, very, you know, they kind of banged off the two, the shots, you know what I mean? And, but I went back to look at it and I, I said, oh, that's a really good scene. I said, and I said, I do some good work in that scene. Laura does some great work in that scene.

• 2:10:29Speaker 07

  And I was like, oh, and I think it sort of brought me back to like, oh no, I can do this. I, I, I am where I'm supposed to be. Because, you know, the Dune pretty much rocked everything. And so when Blue Velvet came out and early, early reviews, there was, people didn't know what to think of this movie. And they just, that was sort of it. So it was sort of dismissed.

• 2:10:53Sean Fennessey?

  Like tested poorly.

• 2:10:55Speaker 07

  Very poorly.

• 2:10:55Sean Fennessey?

  Not a huge hit right away.

• 2:10:56Speaker 07

  No.

• 2:10:57Sean Fennessey?

  Some negative reviews, but then there were, there were also huge defenders of it.

• 2:11:00Speaker 07

  Suddenly, yeah, Pauline Kael in particular, wrote about it. And, and it, a groundswell, basically, you know? Suddenly, you know, colleges, kids, and everybody was like, hey, wait a minute. This is, this is amazing. This is something different. This is something we'd never seen before. We love this.

• 2:11:17Sean Fennessey?

  Similar to a racer hat, actually, in that way.

• 2:11:18Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:11:19Sean Fennessey?

  Where it kind of came along and people didn't know what to make of it and then it built this. And this happens with David, all of David's work, right?

• 2:11:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, pretty much all the way through. I mean, maybe not Straight Story. You know, that would be when you could see-

• 2:11:30Sean Fennessey?

  There's a big cult of it now, though, you know?

• 2:11:31Speaker 07

  There is a big cult of it, yeah.

• 2:11:33Sean Fennessey?

  But I, Twin Peaks weirdly was the one thing that was like, upon arrival, people were like, wow.

• 2:11:37Speaker 07

  When that hit, yeah, that pilot was, and still, and remains one of, I mean, one of the things probably I'm most proud of. And, you know, it's just a 22 day, 23 day shoot, two hour, what they call a backdoor pilot.

• 2:11:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:11:51Speaker 07

  If it doesn't get picked up, it'll be a movie of the week. And look what happened.

• 2:11:57Sean Fennessey?

  Tell me a little bit about the period after you finished filming the movie before it came out.

• 2:12:01Speaker 07

  Of the, of Blue Velvet or?

• 2:12:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, of Blue Velvet. Were you like, I'm, we did it. This is gonna be great. Were you worried about booking your next job? Were you just, I'm David's guy and I gotta hope he keeps making movies? Like, how do you think about it?

• 2:12:12Speaker 07

  I just, I had such a great experience and then, and then I met Laura and so we kind of started up. And so I was so happy, you know, I had a new relationship and we were trying to figure ourselves out and we got a place together and, and then shortly after that, David moved in. Cause he was, he had, had an apartment and he was renovating and he was, didn't, he didn't have a place and he wanted to stay with us. We were like, okay. So he stayed with us. Which is crazy when you wake up in the morning and you walk in the kitchen and you sort of blurry out and there's David making coffee. You're like, hey, Kael.

• 2:12:44Speaker 07

  But it was, it was also a, a time of, because it, Blue Velvet hadn't come out yet. So it was still, there was still the, the taint, the stain, whatever of Dune that was kind of affecting me. So there was still not much in the way of opportunity.

• 2:13:04Sean Fennessey?

  You write in the book how you read for, or had meetings about Platoon and Top Gun.

• 2:13:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:13:09Sean Fennessey?

  Among other, presumably other movies.

• 2:13:11Speaker 07

  Yeah. Platoon was one of those non-Dune option pictures, because at that time it was with Dino's company.

• 2:13:16Sean Fennessey?

  Right, Dino De Laurentiis, yes.

• 2:13:17Speaker 07

  Dino De Laurentiis. Oliver and I met, Oliver and his wife and I met. We had, we had a lunch together and he really thought I would be right for the role of Chris. We talked about it extensively. I read the script. I loved the idea. It was like so exciting. And then we're talking about the idea of going to the Philippines and two weeks of learning how to be a marine, you know?

• 2:13:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you and Dale die, yeah.

• 2:13:38Speaker 07

  Yeah. Thank God. That would have been challenging. But I also kind of, I resisted a little bit. I said, you know, I said, the end of the movie, it's like, you remember, Charlie, you know, shoots Tom. It's like, okay, and Tom's, you know, he's bad. He's evil incarnate. But I'm like, he's become him. I'm like, ah, I don't know. Is there a way that could be, he could sort of be more heroic? But that was the role of Willem, Willem Dafoe's role, of course, was that. But, so I, so I just kind of was like, I don't know. And Oliver, you know, this is a pre-Oliver that who we know. And I was like, man, I don't know. I hesitated.

• 2:14:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:11Speaker 07

  Basically. The movie then moved on to somebody else. And then, you know, the rest is history, as they say, so.

• 2:14:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, I bring both of these up because I think before Blue Velvet comes out, Platoon and Top Gun are released. And so obviously Cruz is already on his way, but that's a stratosphere moment for him where he just goes up and never comes back down. And, and Charlie Sheen also in, in Platoon, you know, his career really takes off after that too.

• 2:14:37Speaker 07

  Huge.

• 2:14:38Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm, I guess I'm wondering about your mentality where you're like, I didn't get those, you know?

• 2:14:43Speaker 07

  I was like, oh, ouch. Um, yeah. But I, at the same time, I was like, well, I'll have my chance. And I sort of was thought, you know, the eternal optimist.

• 2:14:56Speaker 07

  And not long after those came out, you know, a few years, I was like, you know, I don't know if I was mentally, emotionally grown up enough to handle that. Whatever that, whatever that was that happened to those guys, you know? I don't know. And then further that is, is like, well, had that happened, then a whole bunch of other stuff wouldn't have happened, you know? So you have that kind of looking back going, regrets, you know? But still, I have this also.

• 2:15:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's interesting what time does too, because if you talk about that like 12 month period of time, you could make the case that Platoon, Top Gun and Blue Velvet are the three most significant films. One, from a box office perspective, Platoon wins best picture, kind of sets stone off into this incredible stretch of filmmaking.

• 2:15:47Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 2:15:48Sean Fennessey?

  And then Blue Velvet is a movie that, you know, in the annals of filmmaking history, I think has a very big place. And, but in three different ways. And the idea of you being proximate to all three of them is really, really interesting for such a young and inexperienced person.

• 2:16:01Speaker 07

  Yeah. I mean, I don't think I was alone, honestly. I mean, maybe by bringing Blue Velvet into that, yeah. Cause I don't think there were a lot of people that David was, I mean, I know he's thinking about other people when I, when I had backed out. But I don't think anyone, seriously.

• 2:16:16Speaker 07

  But those, yeah, those were two very, I mean, very different roles, expectations. The, the Top Gun was also, I mean, honestly, was not for the Tom Cruise role. It was, it was for the role of Goose. So it was a supporting role. And, but just to be part of that would have been really, and, but I, I also think, I don't know if Tony Scott and I would have really, I think he would have just sort of looked at me like, what are you doing here?

• 2:16:49Sean Fennessey?

  He was tough.

• 2:16:49Speaker 07

  He was really tough.

• 2:16:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:51Speaker 07

  I mean, he was, yeah. And I was like, I was sort of, oh, you know, some artsy kid sort of, you know? I mean, I fancied myself tough, but I was not.

• 2:16:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:00Speaker 07

  I was not, you know?

• 2:17:02Sean Fennessey?

  Did you ever feel like, you know, you move back in with, you move in with Laura in Los Angeles and David's living with you and you're meeting all these young actors? And was there a moment in that period of time where you felt like, okay, I do belong here? Like, I do, I am-

• 2:17:17Speaker 07

  Not really. No, no. I never really felt like I was, I was part of this group. They were all so cool. They all knew each other and they seemed to be busy and working and doing stuff. And I was kind of like, wow, that's great. You know, I was like, just trying to get a meeting, you know?

• 2:17:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:34Speaker 07

  Trying to get in to read. And it was a, it was challenging because I, I, I started to kind of, you know, again, I started to sort of resent things a little bit. And then I started like, pretended like I didn't care. I said, well, well, they don't care. Then I'm, screw them. I don't care either. You know what I mean? I'm, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm just, I'm not gonna prepare for this. I'm just gonna go out and wing it. You know what I mean? And they should cast me. That was my attitude, right? And he was like, just because, they should cast me. You know, I had this weird attitude. And I think still carrying the, you know, the chip, I guess, on my shoulder.

• 2:18:13Speaker 07

  And it took a while to sort of go through that, get, get rid of that.

• 2:18:20Sean Fennessey?

  Do you remember when it felt like Blue Velvet?

• 2:18:25Sean Fennessey?

  Was gaining a meaningful reputation.

• 2:18:28Speaker 07

  Slow and steady. Yeah.

• 2:18:31Sean Fennessey?

  Was it years later when you saw it?

• 2:18:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, it took a while. It took a while.

• 2:18:37Speaker 07

  And but the and this, you know, when it came out, then then the attitude was, oh, he's this, you know, what's the quote from the Rolling Stone, if you kid in the basement, if he spends all the time in his basement or something like that. And I was like, I said, that's not really me. But that's what that what I'm being identified with. So I'm like, okay.

• 2:19:04Sean Fennessey?

  You're the nape, you're the ingenue.

• 2:19:06Speaker 07

  I'm the guy that's, you know, likes the dark things and is kind of has a perverted side and all this. And I'm like, I mean, okay.

• 2:19:17Speaker 07

  So things, you know, start to the magnet, you know, so you start to draw those kinds of things to you. And and one of those that came to me was the one Stephen Soderbergh's sex lesson videotape. And again, a script very interesting. I really, I was really, wow, this is very cool, very intense. And I was like, but I can't. And I was getting some advice from, you know, you said, you can't go and do another character that has sexual hangups and all that kind of stuff. So I was like, okay, you know, and I ended up not pursuing that. And I can't remember if Stephen had said he wanted me for the role, or I was just in consideration, you know, strong consideration, but I removed

• 2:20:00Speaker 07

  myself from the equation. Of course, it went on to, you know, huge acclaim. And thank God, Stephen and I are good friends now. So everything is everything is good.

• 2:20:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, so much of the book is about, like, one chapter is, we made an incredibly important movie that people love. And then the next chapter is this extraordinary sliding doors of what could have happened.

• 2:20:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:20:20Sean Fennessey?

  If something else had transpired.

• 2:20:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:20:22Sean Fennessey?

  And obviously, that's true for a lot of successful working actors. And that's the that's the job.

• 2:20:27Speaker 07

  I'm not the only one that has gone through that kind of experience. And people and Ethan Hawke and I talk about it, too, just things that he was up for as well, that he didn't get. And then the things he did get, you know, and how they have influenced and how he's moved through that, you know, I guess the most important thing that you move through it, right?

• 2:20:43Sean Fennessey?

  One of the things that I'm always so interested in with actors in general is the ability to accept no, like, the not getting the job.

• 2:20:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:20:53Sean Fennessey?

  Which most people, workaday people, myself included, I come here and I do this every day, you know, no one says, don't do that today.

• 2:21:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:21:01Sean Fennessey?

  But you like, can pour yourself into something, prepare your mind to become somebody.

• 2:21:06Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:21:06Sean Fennessey?

  And then they say, not you.

• 2:21:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's really hard. It's really hard. And I didn't deal with it well in the beginning for a long time. Because I'm like, I can do anything. Why isn't it me? You know? Or it's like, I don't have that thing. I don't have that specialness. So you're like, okay, all right, hmm, how do I, where am I going to put this? You know, I'm inadequate, I'm, you know, I'm lacking something, you know? And that's a harder one. And that's the one I think I I said, oh, then I don't care. If I'm going to think like that, you know, I made it very personal, which is not what you want to do. But it's

• 2:21:47Speaker 07

  hard not to. It's hard not to. And every actor has their own method, you know, for processing that and dealing with that. So that was mine.

• 2:21:59Sean Fennessey?

  One thing related to that is, it seemed like at first, you were perceived as a certain kind of, you know, typecast in a slightly more innocent way. And then you're worried about being typecast and the innocent with the dark side way. A lot of actors obviously resist being typecast broadly. But did you feel like you were making choices to actively upend the way that people saw you?

• 2:22:22Speaker 07

  Was trying to.

• 2:22:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:24Speaker 07

  But it but nobody was buying.

• 2:22:28Sean Fennessey?

  Was that frustrating?

• 2:22:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, it was very frustrating. It was very like, ah, you know, you're just like, I want to be this, you know, I want to be the hero. Good. I want to, you know, save the day, blah, blah, blah, do all that stuff. And that was not going to be the that was not my and I tried a couple, you know, there was a, I think it was a Showtime movie two part thing, trying to be the, you know, kind of the tough operator guy, you know, and, you know, don't bother going out to find because they're terrible. They're terrible.

• 2:22:59Sean Fennessey?

  You were the guy with the gun.

• 2:23:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, I was the guy with the gun, you know, in the leather jacket. And not good. You know, not good.

• 2:23:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I probably will watch it. I'm sorry. Just my nature now that I know it exists.

• 2:23:09Speaker 07

  You better find them first.

• 2:23:10Sean Fennessey?

  I have some skills. Yeah, I wanted to ask about The Hidden quickly, too, though, because that's another movie that, you know, it seemed like maybe you didn't have the greatest experience on it. But it's now does also have its own cult. People really like that movie.

• 2:23:21Speaker 07

  It's so 80s.

• 2:23:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:22Speaker 07

  It's got such great stuff in it. It's the sci fi cop buddy slight horror element to it that was happening. You know, you think about, I think it was Lethal Weapon, was that the one that just or was it right around that time? So the buddy, you know, cop buddy thing. And and and I and there were, I really liked parts of it. And then parts of it, I I didn't really like so much. Was working with Michael Norrie. Michael had a, he had a tough time with our director. I was kind of like, well, you know.

• 2:23:53Sean Fennessey?

  You guys are really good together, though.

• 2:23:54Speaker 07

  It was nice, right? Well, we knew each other before. We had chemistry.

• 2:23:58Sean Fennessey?

  There's that great scene at the dinner table where you're telling the story of what happened to your family. It's just amazing. And Michael's reaction to it is great. I was just looking at it yesterday.

• 2:24:04Speaker 07

  That was, Michael was great in that. He was great. And he was, and he was, he was the, he had his own stuff, you know, because he came out of flashdance, you know what I mean? And he's still trying to, you know, kind of find his, you know, identity in a way. So everybody struggles with with something. But that was fun, because that was fun to sort of, I got to do something a little bit different. It was my first time working, not working with David. So that was, that was challenging. The director was, you know, he was a nice guy, but but he was slightly odd. And didn't always have the best answers. But I I had answers, sort of, you know. So I said, I, or I would ask him,

• 2:24:45Speaker 07

  I said, I'm in this scene, but I'm just standing, what am I, you know, what's, what's, what's happening here? And he was like, I don't know. And I was like, I was like, all right, well, I'll finger up something. And that's where I, where I had the scene, I know, he brings me the aspirin. And it was sort of a callback to the Alka Seltzer. And so I take aspirin, and I just drop it in the water, and I'm waiting for it to do a thing, and it doesn't. So it's a little bit of a Dougie moment, you know?

• 2:25:07Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 2:25:07Speaker 07

  And like, oh, I guess this isn't how it works here on this planet, you know? So it's got a bunch of that stuff in it. And I did get to do one really cool thing in The Hidden. When I'm chasing the alien, I'm on the rooftop, and I'm going after it. And I remember when Mel Gibson, and this is, this is how my brain works. So I'm watching him, and I think it was Lethal Weapon, he's chasing somebody, he's running after them, and his gun, and he takes the gun, and he ejects the cartridge as he's running, cartridge goes like this, boom, doesn't look at it, gets cartridge, pulls another cartridge, snacks it in, and goes like that. And I'm like, I'm doing that. And I had, I got a chance to do that. It took me a minute, it took me a couple takes, because I was like, oh, goddammit, fuck, try it again, you know? But anyway.

• 2:25:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's so funny, because that's, it's the same thing as you were describing with David. It's like, it's play, you know, you're just, you're, you're having fun making a movie.

• 2:25:53Speaker 07

  It's play. Yeah.

• 2:25:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great stretch in your life. I appreciate you being so open about it, because you you do great work. And it's like, you write about it very personally, in a way that I feel like many actor memoirs are protecting things from that time. And you know, you talk about your mom and your mom being sick in that period of time, too. And it's, it just must have been such a tornado in that in that 18 months.

• 2:26:16Speaker 07

  It was. It really was. And I think for the longest time, I didn't talk, I didn't want to talk about it. I, you know, you, you feel like, but you got to protect yourself. And in taking on the book and the idea of a memoir, and I thought about it, and I said, the only way I really think this has got value is if if there's a journey, there's a to some lessons. But to have the lessons, you have to have the the not good stuff, or the challenging stuff, or the stuff you're not proud of. And then you're like, and I found my way through to this. And I think I've become a better person. And I thought, okay, that makes sense to me. And I get to tell this kind of crazy story on the way. Every actor has crazy, every actor has a crazy story, you know, and people, I talk to people that, you know, and I say, you should, you should write something, you should

• 2:26:58Speaker 07

  write something, you know, because it's really, it's help, it's healthy.

• 2:27:02Sean Fennessey?

  I just am like amazed by the recall. I cannot remember lunch three days ago at all. And so there is a specificity, too, to the work when you're doing it.

• 2:27:11Speaker 07

  It's, it's, yes, somehow, like, don't ask me stories on either side of the ones that I tell, because I don't remember. But those ones I remember. And I, I guess there are moments where there was, you know, something was deeper than not, you know what I mean? So it had a resonance, and such resonance that it's actually stayed in there. And I get a call back when I start thinking about it. So I said, well, I'm not a journal person, but those seem to have value. So let's talk about those.

• 2:27:41Sean Fennessey?

  I told you before we started that I wanted to do the one year conceit with you, because I want people to read the book. And because you obviously, like, you have crossed paths with The Doors, Twin Peaks, Sex and the City, like, the massive cultural experiences. So there's a lot more that people should check out in the book. The one thing I was asking you about before we go is podcasting?

• 2:27:59Speaker 07

  What was I thinking?

• 2:28:00Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, no, you know, from one to another. I'm curious, like, why are you doing it? What are you getting out of it? What's the intention? What is it teaching you about yourself?

• 2:28:10Speaker 07

  It's, this all, yeah, all the questions that come up, the

• 2:28:15Speaker 07

  I love people. I love talking. I love, I love sitting around sort of discussing, particularly the creative side of things. So I'm like, well, that, I like that. The other thing is, I don't know much about, I didn't, I'm getting better, about what's coming. You know, who are these names that I don't recognize? I don't know, you know, what are they doing? And, and what moves them? And what are they passionate about? And, you know, and, and, you know, let me, just so I'm sitting down with, granted, so my son's 18, the people that I'm talking to are usually their twenties, maybe late twenties, maybe early thirties.

• 2:29:00Speaker 07

  And I'm like, what's it been like for you? You know? How free are they? How tight? You know, just, just, and thinking back to when I was that age. But I really want to know what's driving them, you know? So we sit and really just kind of do this. We just have a conversation, talk about their stuff. I read, you know, a lot about them before I do it. There's some things that pop out. And I'm like, no, wait a minute. Tell me about this. Because, and it's something that they, that usually they, they sort of catches them off guard a little bit.

• 2:29:29Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 2:29:30Speaker 07

  Because it's not like, tell me about your latest project and tell me about, I mean, you know, I want to know, like, what were you thinking when that happened and this stuff? So it's about that.

• 2:29:38Sean Fennessey?

  That's really interesting, because, you know, as somebody who does this for a living, like, people want to narrativize their lives in a very discreet way. But if you ask them a question that they have not prepared for, that's the best way to break up their story.

• 2:29:49Speaker 07

  I think so.

• 2:29:50Sean Fennessey?

  That they're trying to tell you.

• 2:29:51Speaker 07

  If they're comfortable talking about it. And some, some, some will, and, and I would not have been at that age necessarily. I would have been really protective and trying, but, but at the same time, I realize I'm kind of a, I can't help it. I say stuff that I shouldn't say. So I think I've just given into that now and just said, you know, this is, is how I thought, this is how I think, this is who I am, and I'm okay with it.

• 2:30:16Sean Fennessey?

  You're a very good storyteller.

• 2:30:18Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 2:30:19Sean Fennessey?

  We end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen? Are you, are you an avid watcher of new stuff?

• 2:30:25Speaker 07

  Not that much. You know, I mean, I really have to be, I've, to be honest, I travel so much, so I see a lot of stuff on the plane. I just finished last night, the movie, this is, you know, fresh, off the presses, a movie called Zulu? Do you remember this? From...

• 2:30:41Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, the older film. Is it Richard Fleischer? Who made that movie?

• 2:30:44Speaker 07

  I don't even remember the director, but Michael, introducing Michael Caine.

• 2:30:48Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, that gives you... Is that the credit? Is it in introducing Michael Caine?

• 2:30:53Speaker 07

  Introducing Michael Caine.

• 2:30:54Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 2:30:55Speaker 07

  And I was like, and I watched this movie, I don't know why, it just popped up and I said, oh, you know, I've heard about this. I don't know, they, they would say it was kind of the battle sequences were sort of memorable. And it was one of the early, were early location based films.

• 2:31:05Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 2:31:06Speaker 07

  So that's, that's the last thing.

• 2:31:08Sean Fennessey?

  Was it, where did you watch? On a streaming service?

• 2:31:10Speaker 07

  At home. Yeah, yeah, streaming, yeah, yeah.

• 2:31:12Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, that's interesting. I know the movie, I have not seen, it's like, early 60s?

• 2:31:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah.

• 2:31:15Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. And how was Michael Caine?

• 2:31:17Speaker 07

  He was actually very good. He got better in it.

• 2:31:21Sean Fennessey?

  In real time?

• 2:31:22Speaker 07

  In one of his first things. No, I could see some scenes where he was like, I said, and then other scenes where I was like, oh, yeah, he seems to be finding his way.

• 2:31:29Sean Fennessey?

  Do you watch that way? Where you're looking at technique and performance like that?

• 2:31:34Speaker 07

  I can, I can, yeah, I do. I watch it on a lot of different levels. I love it when I forget and I'm just like, wow.

• 2:31:38Sean Fennessey?

  That's what I was going to say, does it ruin the act of enjoying these things?

• 2:31:42Speaker 07

  No, no, because it's something I'm like, I'm curious about that choice. And I'm like, oh my God, how do they play that? And that's a bold choice. And I said, I don't think I would have been, you know, you start evaluating kind of what, maybe what you would have done, what the director did, you know, just stuff. I'm thinking about stuff.

• 2:31:57Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if you can come up with this quickly, but I'm curious, is there like a recent choice that you watched an actor make that you were like, wow, I can't believe they did that, or I'm amazed by that, or it just felt different?

• 2:32:06Speaker 07

  There was one little thing that I remember, I was watching, I think it was before Sunrise. I went back to watch it again. With Ethan and Julie. And in one moment, you know, Ethan is there, I think they're getting off the train, at some moment, he turns, Ethan turns, and his shirt is sort of tucked in, but part of it is hanging out the back a little bit. And I know Ethan, and I said, he did that on purpose. Because it just says in that moment, oh, he's a little haphazard. He's a little, not, slovenly is not the word, but he's like...

• 2:32:48Sean Fennessey?

  Uncamped, though.

• 2:32:49Speaker 07

  Uncamped, a little bit, you know, just a little, not, everything is quite, you know, tight and organized. And I said, I'll bet he, I'll bet he did that on purpose.

• 2:32:56Sean Fennessey?

  Did you double confirm with him or no?

• 2:32:57Speaker 07

  No, I haven't yet. I haven't yet, but I'm going to ask him about it.

• 2:32:59Sean Fennessey?

  That's great.

• 2:33:00Speaker 07

  That's, all those are both are just phenomenal films. And Ethan's relationship with Richard Linklater, Linklater, very special as well. But that was, yeah, that was, that was something I just clocked.

• 2:33:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's very observant. Kyle, this was an absolute delight. Thank you very much.

• 2:33:18Speaker 07

  I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Memory lane.

• 2:33:27Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, thank you to Kyle, crazy. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders. Thanks to Lucas Cavanagh for his production support. Thanks to them both killing it on social media right now. Helping us out. Thank you so much, guys. It's all in the content, brother. Thank you to you.

• 2:33:43Amanda Dobbins?

  You're so welcome.

• 2:33:44Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to the fine people of San Francisco, who we will see very shortly.

• 2:33:47Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 2:33:48Sean Fennessey?

  We're going to visit them and we'll spend a couple of days there, showing films. Speaking of films, we'll have a special guest with us. And anything you want to say before you go?

• 2:33:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Where should we have lunch? Dinner recommendations are not really available.

• 2:34:01Sean Fennessey?

  Taco Bell?

• 2:34:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Or I'm sick. I'm never letting you plan a trip again.

• 2:34:06Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, see you next time.

• 2:34:28Speaker 06

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