The Top Five Ethan Hawke Movies and a Double Shot of Richard Linklater, With Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater!

On today’s action-packed show, Sean and Amanda dive deep into the two newest films from one of their favorite filmmakers, Richard Linklater. Before diving in, they react to a handful of movie news headlines, including Tom Cruise’s honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards, the new teaser trailer for the live-action ‘Moana’ film, and Georgia Oakley’s upcoming remake of ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ starring Daisy Edgar-Jones (1:14). Then, they discuss ‘Nouvelle Vague’ (16:06) and ‘Blue Moon’ (28:11) and explain why they found the former to be an interesting exercise and the latter to be one of the best movies of 2025. Later, they break down what makes Ethan Hawke such a great actor and rank their five favorite performances of his career (46:07). Finally, Sean is joined by Hawke and Linklater to explain why 'Blue Moon' was the perfect project for a collaborative reunion, explore how they have evolved as filmmakers and performers over their illustrious careers, and discuss why they feel optimistic about the current state of moviegoing and the challenges both the industry and society face (56:29). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:13Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 1:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 1:15Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about life and death.

• 1:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And art.

• 1:19Sean Fennessey?

  And art for sure. On today's episode, we'll discuss two new Richard Linklater films, Nouvelle Vague, which is now available on Netflix in the United States, and Blue Moon, which is expanding in theaters later this month. The former is a recreation of and homage to the making of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and the dawning of the French New Wave. The latter is Blue Moon, an elegiac portrait of the lyricist and musical theater legend Lorenz Hart, which stars Ethan Hawke in one of the year's great performances. Later in this episode, Amanda, I will have Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke here for a conversation. I don't know if I could name two people that I like more or like talking to more that have been on this show before. And to have them together was very special. It was a very good conversation. They were here. They were sitting right in the seat that you were in, not on top of each other.

• 2:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:01Sean Fennessey?

  There was a third chair here. Ethan Hawke was third chair on the big picture.

• 2:05Amanda Dobbins?

  And he was in the middle?

• 2:05Sean Fennessey?

  He was right in the middle.

• 2:06Amanda Dobbins?

  That's cute.

• 2:07Sean Fennessey?

  He middled, and it was honestly

• 2:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm excited to hear it.

• 2:10Sean Fennessey?

  Quite moving. They're obviously great. We'll talk about their films here as well. But before we get into the two new Linklater films, let's talk about The true beginning of the Oscar season, which started last night, the Governor's Awards were held and there were a handful of Academy honorary awards given out, along with the Gene Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Now, normally, we would just talk about this event in passing and just cite who the people are. For years, these awards were given out on the telecast. I wish they would go back to that, but they no longer do that. This year in particular seems like it would have been a good time to do it, in part because the most famous recipient of all the recipients?

• 2:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, Dolly Parton won the humanitarian award. She was not able to attend because she has been ill, but let's just, let's put Dolly Parton aside. Don't you dare try to compare.

• 2:56Sean Fennessey?

  Dolly Parton is a world historical icon. She's not Tom Cruise. She is not known in the same way that Tom Cruise is.

• 3:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think that we needed to pit them against each other, like you did.

• 3:04Sean Fennessey?

  Well, the Academy did by putting them on the same show, on the same night, on a Sunday night. Debbie Allen, the great choreographer, actress, dancer, also was given an award and Win Thomas as well. But Tom Cruise received an honorary Oscar last night.

• 3:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, so there were a lot of photos circulating last night of Tom Cruise holding an Oscar statuette and looking grateful. To this, I say, give him a real Oscar. Like, this doesn't count. As I said to you before we started recording, write a novel and give Tom Cruise a real Oscar. You know, no half-measures for me. So, that's fine. It seemed like a nice party. Literally, everyone who is involved with an award season, or who is running for an award this season, was in attendance, except for Bradley Cooper.

• 3:48Sean Fennessey?

  Where were we seeing?

• 3:49Amanda Dobbins?

  He was at the Eagles game, watching the Eagles barely squeak by the Detroit Lions. I really want to know what's up with their offense, but that's a conversation for another day.

• 3:58Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I picked the wrong year to draft Saquon Barkley on my fantasy team, I gotta say. This has been actually quite challenging.

• 4:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I just let, I don't actually watch the games anymore because I have to be in charge of two children, but I, you know, I check the score as just a mood indicator to know what I'm walking back into. And it's just been 3-0 in the fourth quarter, like, five times this season. It's just not really the explosive offense that we're looking for.

• 4:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's not. For more of those takes, you can turn to any of the Ringer football podcasts, there are a great many of them out there. The Tom Cruise honorary Oscar, of course, for his work in movies for the last 40-plus years. He talked about the fact that, you know, he doesn't think of movies as something he does, but something that he is, you know, that he is a person who makes movies.

• 4:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 4:38Sean Fennessey?

  And he used some familiar lines that we've heard in his speech last night. He, um... He is also running. He's just running a year early.

• 4:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 4:48Sean Fennessey?

  You know, the person who handed him this honorary Academy Award last night was Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the filmmaker that he's just finished a film with that is coming out next year, next summer, in fact. And many people believe that this movie will be a bid for another Academy Award to pull a Paul Newman.

• 5:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 5:05Sean Fennessey?

  Who famously received an honorary Academy Award before winning for Best Actor.

• 5:09Amanda Dobbins?

  In a film with Tom Cruise.

• 5:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 5:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Does this next summer give you any pause?

• 5:15Sean Fennessey?

  Um, not really.

• 5:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 5:17Sean Fennessey?

  I think Sinners came out in April and it's doing just fine.

• 5:20Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 5:20Sean Fennessey?

  I think the paradigm, you pointed this out to me many times over the years.

• 5:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:23Sean Fennessey?

  The paradigm has kind of shifted there.

• 5:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but not for an Inarritu film.

• 5:26Sean Fennessey?

  No, but he's a unique case where, for the most part, his films have commercial viability and they also tend to draw water, uh, awards wise. You know, Bardo, that was not the case for Bardo?

• 5:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I was literally trying to remember the name of the Bardo. That was a nice kitchen that they had in that apartment.

• 5:44Sean Fennessey?

  In Bardo?

• 5:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 5:45Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 5:45Amanda Dobbins?

  That stays with me. The tile work was beautiful.

• 5:47Sean Fennessey?

  I see. Got it. Moving on. Um, congratulations to Tom Cruise, I suppose. I agree. I, I think an honorary Oscar is a nice thing and I do like it when it recognizes someone who's been doing great work.

• 5:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Every time we talk about it and, and every time they come up in the context of the show, they're about people who definitely deserved at least one real Oscar and all they could muster was an honorary Oscar. It's an also ran award. It's fine.

• 6:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Moving on. Uh, we saw a teaser for Moana this morning.

• 6:17Amanda Dobbins?

  We watched it together on this very laptop.

• 6:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And it was just breathtaking. It was truly staggering. No, so there's a, there, next year, also in addition to this Inarritu, Tom Cruise movie, one of the other big event movies of the year is a live action remake of Moana.

• 6:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:33Sean Fennessey?

  Moana in my home rings out. It is a truly important cultural artifact. It is a film that is going to be 10 years old in 2026. And so that means that this live action remake, which candidly looked like it was animated.

• 6:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's just-

• 6:51Amanda Dobbins?

  It looked like, as you said, it looked like Avatar.

• 6:54Sean Fennessey?

  It did look like Avatar.

• 6:54Amanda Dobbins?

  The island, the water, the creatures. I mean, Avatar, the way of water is beautiful in its own way.

• 7:00Sean Fennessey?

  See, okay, so this is my point here. Obviously, we've struggled, both you and I have struggled through the duration of this entire program with Disney Live Action Remakes. We don't like them, we don't really get the point of them. This one in particular feels bizarre because Moana is still very much a part of the consciousness. We just saw a sequel last year. People, kids rewatch these movies all the time. But more specifically, like, there's not even that sense of recreating an ancient magic that you might get in A Beauty and the Beast, or even in A Lion King. The Lion King was the most recent, largest gap between original film and new film. I think it was 25 years. We're not talking about 10 years gone by.

• 7:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 7:42Sean Fennessey?

  The other thing is that Dwayne The Rock Johnson is reprising his role as Maui in this movie, but he's not to be seen, at least his face is not to be seen in this teaser. Does that indicate anything to you?

• 7:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it's been a rough three weeks, six weeks, at the box office and in movie world for Dwayne The Rock Johnson.

• 8:02Sean Fennessey?

  It has.

• 8:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know, this is a teaser, as you said.

• 8:05Sean Fennessey?

  All right.

• 8:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. What is your daughter's relationship to Maui?

• 8:09Sean Fennessey?

  She thinks he's funny.

• 8:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, but she's watching it for Moana.

• 8:12Sean Fennessey?

  100%.

• 8:13Amanda Dobbins?

  So they're making this for the daughters of the world, not for people who are gonna be like, "Hey, The Rock is in the new live-action Moana as The Rock."

• 8:22Sean Fennessey?

  I think Moana tends to bridge the gap between the young male and young female audience.

• 8:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but young, as opposed to parents who are like, "Oh, hey, it's The Rock."

• 8:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you know, the songs, though, the songs are good.

• 8:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 8:36Sean Fennessey?

  Like, really good.

• 8:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's go, let's hear it.

• 8:39Sean Fennessey?

  I could do Where I'll Go from start to finish, which I think is a masterpiece.

• 8:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, what is that song about? What is it expressing?

• 8:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's about the yearning and desire to break free from home.

• 8:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 8:51Sean Fennessey?

  You know, to find your own path, to be a wayfinder, the way that Moana becomes a wayfinder.

• 8:55Amanda Dobbins?

  It's part of your world.

• 8:56Sean Fennessey?

  It is absolutely in the tradition of Ariel's journey. I think that's part of why it's one of the good Disney films. I don't-

• 9:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Be updating some of our concerns about Ariel's priorities.

• 9:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she's-

• 9:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:09Sean Fennessey?

  Moana's not driven by a man. She's in part driven by a demigod.

• 9:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Or by things.

• 9:15Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 9:15Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 9:16Sean Fennessey?

  She's not covetous.

• 9:17Amanda Dobbins?

  She's not a materialist.

• 9:17Sean Fennessey?

  She is-

• 9:20Sean Fennessey?

  But Celine Song probably does like A Little Mermaid.

• 9:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 9:23Sean Fennessey?

  And probably Moana, if she's in a Zootopia, one imagines. Zootopia 2, I don't have it on the schedule.

• 9:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 9:29Sean Fennessey?

  What are we gonna do about that? It's gonna be like the third biggest movie of the year.

• 9:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I'll take Knox to see it.

• 9:34Sean Fennessey?

  In what condition would we discuss it? Cause like, I'm looking at the schedule, it's like, wow, we gotta have a Jay Kelly conversation.

• 9:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 9:40Sean Fennessey?

  We're gonna talk about sentimental value. At what point does Zootopia 2 figure in? Any thoughts?

• 9:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you don't wanna do a double headed, double header? You wanna do half Jay Kelly, half Zootopia 2?

• 9:50Sean Fennessey?

  I guess we could do that.

• 9:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Speak to the two halves of ourselves, you know? Inside me, there are two wolves.

• 9:55Sean Fennessey?

  I guess so. I guess, I guess that's something that we can do. Speaking of, um.

• 9:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if there are wolves at war in this, with this announcement, but this morning, we learned that Focus is gonna be releasing.

• 10:06Amanda Dobbins?

  We means you. I knew, I've known about this.

• 10:09Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, you knew this was gonna happen? Okay, I didn't know about this. So there's going to be a.

• 10:12Amanda Dobbins?

  We've also talked about it on this podcast.

• 10:14Sean Fennessey?

  No, no recollection of that.

• 10:15Amanda Dobbins?

  That's fine, you don't remember anything that I say, that's okay. You know every single label that has released every single of the 10,000 Blu-rays that you own, but you don't remember actual recorded conversations that we have together about things that are interesting to me.

• 10:29Sean Fennessey?

  I don't. What do you think that says? What do you think that indicates?

• 10:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I am not surprised to learn it, but I, now the rest of the audience has it confirmed.

• 10:35Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, to put this out there, there will be a new version, a new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, coming next year from Focus, that is gonna be directed by Georgia Oakley with a script from Diana Reid, starring Daisy Edgar Jones. It's officially dated for next September.

• 10:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's 30 years later, after your beloved 1995 classic.

• 10:57Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true, which I would like to note that is being re-released in theaters in December, a limited re-release for its 30th anniversary. I'm excited, I will be there.

• 11:09Sean Fennessey?

  Is this a good idea to re-adapt this?

• 11:11Amanda Dobbins?

  The thing about Jane Austen adaptations is that they are plentiful. You know, this is, they have made a million Pride and Prejudices and also spinoffs of Pride and Prejudice. Pride and Prejudice Set Here, you know, the Bridget Jones Diary is an update of Pride and Prejudice. Clueless is a update of Emma. Like, it's, they are both used, um, like, as the actual text and also inspiration. So you can't say, like, oh, Sense and Sensibility is sacred and you can, like, never remake it. There is also, I believe, a TV show of Sense and Sensibility. Yeah, like.

• 11:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, apparently there's a 2008 version, which I'm not familiar with.

• 11:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, they keep on doing this, so you just have to pick the versions that mean something to you and stay true to those.

• 11:58Sean Fennessey?

  It does feel less picked over than some of the others.

• 12:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I think it's a weirder story, and also the 1995 Ang Lee version, written by Emma Thompson, starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant, and the late Alan Rickman, and Hugh Laurie, and the list goes on, is an absolute classic. Like, it is very, very hard to live up to. And, you know, Pride and Prejudice is the is the holy, most referenced of the Jane Austen texts. And for a long time, its most celebrated or most famous adaptation was a TV show.

• 12:43Amanda Dobbins?

  So then when Joe Wright came in to make a movie, there was something that was slightly different about the format. This is a movie to, this is a film-to-film thing, which I think is, you know, playing with dice. You know, a little trickier, but it's fine. What are you gonna do?

• 13:00Sean Fennessey?

  So, just reading this, I would have thought, I saw Georgia Oakley's previous film, Blue Gene, from 2022, which is an interesting movie. And I would have thought that the version that they would have pursued

• 13:14Sean Fennessey?

  might have been a modern update or a retelling. I was watching Hedda this morning, Nia DeCosta's adaptation of Hedda Gobbler, which is like a reinterpretation of that.

• 13:24Amanda Dobbins?

  This morning. It is, it is 9:58 a.m. right now. So what time did you start Hedda?

• 13:30Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, 7:30.

• 13:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 13:32Sean Fennessey?

  When my family went out of the house.

• 13:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 13:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I'm about this life.

• 13:37Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I know, but I just like, I mean, that's fascinating. Good on you.

• 13:41Sean Fennessey?

  I'm doing the work.

• 13:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 13:43Sean Fennessey?

  This is what we have to do.

• 13:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I also, I also do the work, but I'm just like sitting there with a hairdryer at 7:30 in the morning, trying to get ready for this shit, you know?

• 13:50Sean Fennessey?

  This all comes naturally. This level of beauty.

• 13:55Sean Fennessey?

  My point being that I would have thought that this film would have been a kind of a reimagining like Hedda.

• 14:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 14:01Sean Fennessey?

  Which is an interesting movie, and we can talk about it down the road. Just looking at set photos, it does look like it is holding to traditional period.

• 14:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:08Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, that's interesting, I guess. It makes the comparisons more stark, more specific, because we already have a film that is from this period.

• 14:16Amanda Dobbins?

  But this happens. You know, they've made Little Women every 30 years since movies started. So my, my issue is that the, the wonderful Katrina Balf is playing Mrs. Dashwood, which is just a real, like, we are all old together, that she is-

• 14:32Sean Fennessey?

  How old is Mrs. Dashwood supposed to be?

• 14:33Amanda Dobbins?

  She's old enough to be a widow and to have two daughters of quote unquote, marriageable age. Obviously, they scaled everything down back then, but I don't know, she's at least mid 40s?

• 14:45Sean Fennessey?

  Katrina Balf is less than three years older than me.

• 14:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I, right, but, you know, she, it's tough for all of us. It's just more like, we're the, we're the parents now, you know?

• 14:54Sean Fennessey?

  Smoking, wow. Ireland for a percent.

• 14:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Let me tell you, Belfast, an incredible movie about how hot she and Jamie Dornan are. I've never seen anything like it.

• 15:03Sean Fennessey?

  I suspect we'll talk about this movie a lot more when it comes out.

• 15:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, will you go see the 1995 version?

• 15:08Sean Fennessey?

  I watched it for this podcast.

• 15:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. And that, your take was like, your take was like, I don't really get, like, why women are so stressed. That was, that was what you came with.

• 15:18Sean Fennessey?

  Common refrain on this show.

• 15:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, alright.

• 15:20Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, no, I liked it. I did like it. I remember. Did I not like it?

• 15:25Amanda Dobbins?

  You, you did, mostly.

• 15:26Sean Fennessey?

  I think I was a little more down on the English patient in our movie swaps.

• 15:29Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true, yeah.

• 15:30Sean Fennessey?

  Sense and Sensibility, I liked a lot. Ang Lee, one of my faves.

• 15:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Very beautiful. Will you read the, the published journals that Emma Thompson kept during the filming of Sense and Sensibility? They're wonderful.

• 15:41Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, maybe I will.

• 15:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 15:43Sean Fennessey?

  How long is it?

• 15:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not that long. It's out of print. I was thinking last night as I went to sleep, like, that I should get it out and read it again. It's a comfort read for me when things are a little stressful.

• 15:51Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I talked to-

• 15:53Amanda Dobbins?

  So after I find it, I'll give it to you.

• 15:54Sean Fennessey?

  Please do. I, I talked, I do, I love a journal during a production.

• 15:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. It's really, it's very cool. And she's talking about, like, you know, they're making adaptations. She's throughout the production process, because she's a screenwriter, but she's also in it. Um, and has, it's wonderful.

• 16:12Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds great. Um, when I was speaking to Linklater and Hawk, we got into a conversation about reading, and just like how it's harder to read now than it used to be for not just young people, but older people as well. And-

• 16:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's interesting because this is a pair of movies that are not about reading per se, but do feel not just from a different era, but from like a different time in film sensibility. You know what I mean?

• 16:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I mean, they are for sure. And they are both period pieces about making art almost 50, more than 50 years ago. And about two forms of art that definitely feel of a time, of a throwback, if you will, in a musical or just kind of like standards for musical theater and the films of the French New Wave.

• 17:09Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about the latter of the two, the latter of the two, which is a film that was made more than 65 years ago.

• 17:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:16Sean Fennessey?

  Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, which is the framework for Nouvelle Vague. So this new movie is written by Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo. The same duo, I believe, that wrote Me and Orson Welles, which is sort of the last time that Linklater went back into a period of examining a great artist making something in this very specific, somewhat true way. The film stars Guillaume Marbec, Zoe Deutsch, Aubrey Dullon, Bruno Dreyfus, a handful of others. It's, as I said, it's an attempt to recreate, if not totally to the truth, at least the essence of what it was like to be in Paris in the late 50s as this cohort of film critics turned filmmakers started achieving great success.

• 18:01Sean Fennessey?

  And this film focuses very narrowly on Godard right on the verge of making and then ultimately filming.

• 18:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. No, I mean, it has a day by day breakdown of what is going on in Breathless and is, you know, titled like Day Four or Day Twenty. You know that there are 20 days of shooting. So it's, we'll start with Nouvelle Vague, but I do think that these are a very interesting pair because they are both about the creation of art and they are about.

• 18:35Amanda Dobbins?

  An artist at a certain phase of career. And Nouvelle Vague is the really ambitious, young guy, starting out, has a dream, trying to make something happen, uncompromising, sort of ridiculous, sort of endearing. We can talk about whether this movie likes Godard as we talk about the film. And then Blue Moon is about an artist who has achieved something and who is at the end of his career and is having a hard time letting go. So I really do think that they bring out the best in each other. I think Blue Moon is more successful on its own. But what I liked about Nouvelle Vague was because I had just seen Blue Moon a couple of weeks ago.

• 19:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And I was like, oh, so you, you know, you worked with Blue Moon. Linklater works with a longtime collaborator in Ethan Hawke. And it is an end of life movie. And very sad and very affecting. And this, in a lot of ways, is Linklater going back, I mean, it's going back to the beginning of a career, but also going back to the beginning of his career. I was thinking a lot about the walk and talks through Paris in Before Sunset. This is filmed in Paris. It looks beautiful and is about someone very exacting and pretty delusional and definitely annoying and a bunch of people being annoyed with him and also not quite being able to

• 20:05Amanda Dobbins?

  keep up. I think that it has a lot of, it's made with a lot of empathy for everyone involved in a really nice way. Like, it's kind of a loving, nostalgic portrait of a bunch of kids who kind of knew what they were doing, but also definitely didn't know what they were doing at all. I think the, all the stuff around it, especially at the beginning, and I guess at the end, though I wish there had been more about the editing room, personally, which is an incredible thing to say about a film. And it is more compelling than just the recreation of a day to day. You know, we have Breathless.

• 20:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Notably, this film does not show us a single frame of Breathless. It shows us lots of the making of.

• 20:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 20:55Sean Fennessey?

  This kind of, kind of breakneck, but also moving at a snail's pace.

• 20:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Sean Fennessey?

  Trip through Paris with these two, primarily with these two actors. It's a really strange movie. I watched it a second time and I'm glad that I did because I watched it in the reverse order that you did. I saw Nouvelle Vague first. Nouvelle Vague premiered at Cannes, Blooming premiered at Berlin. And so both of these movies have been in the world for some time, but they're only just now getting seen by wider audiences. Nouvelle Vague, the first time around, felt a little bit like what I'll call namesome guys cinema, which is a thing that baseball fans talk about when they, as you've seen Chris and I, just saying men's names from, who played third base in 1996.

• 21:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Or no, it's always the early 80s Cincinnati Reds.

• 21:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes. And there's something very sweet about Linklater, you know, who is a massive cinephile and started the Austin Film Society and has seen everything and, you know, loves the new wave, has been talking about the new wave for years and years. And him just getting the chance in this very specific period way where he's shooting on Kodak film in black and white, you know, the aspect ratio, even the way that the subtitles are written on the screen. It just, it feels like you're watching a movie from 1959 or 1960. That's very comforting. It's very fun. It's very fun to cast an actor to play Jean Pierre Melville. It's very fun to cast all these young actors to play Chabrol and, you know, to play Truffaut and all the familiar faces from that

• 22:20Sean Fennessey?

  period in time. It felt like a little stunt-y to me, I think because Breathless is already such a well-chronicled film. You know, there's so much scholarship, those journals that you were talking about that Emma Thompson wrote, there's a lot of journals. Godard was kind of breathlessly tracking every step that he took throughout, across these films. That's something that the critics from Cade de Cinema were really good at. They were really good at like, materializing their ideas about movies and not just about what's in a movie, but how to make a movie, how to sell a movie, what an audience thinks a movie should be and what we think a movie should be.

• 22:52Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and the film does communicate a lot of that. And when you're in the Cade de Cinema office or when you get to go to the film with them and then have them like shit talking it afterwards, that's, that stuff is very charming and fun.

• 23:05Sean Fennessey?

  That, that stuff is my favorite stuff in the movie because it felt the most like Everybody Wants Some, but for the new wave. Where it's just like friends hanging out, shooting the shit, kicking ideas around, making fun of each other. There's nobody in the world who's better at that than Richard Linklater. Like, he is the master of that kind of a hangout movie. The actual making of the film stuff I thought was Kind of interesting only insofar as how much tension can Zoe Deutsch bring to the film as Gene Seberg?

• 23:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 23:31Sean Fennessey?

  And whether or not you believe that she actually was like really struggling during the production of it and like mad at him all the time, which is very reasonable.

• 23:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:39Sean Fennessey?

  You know, his producer is also mad at him. He's working in this very difficult way where he's waiting for inspiration to strike. He's trying to follow Roberto Rossellini's, you know, call on like, you know, philosophical digressions about the way to do things.

• 23:52Amanda Dobbins?

  That's a great scene, driving along in the car.

• 23:53Sean Fennessey?

  I love that scene.

• 23:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's wonderful.

• 23:54Sean Fennessey?

  Everything that is like that, everything that is like Chris Sabo played third base for the Reds, that stuff is so good.

• 24:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And everything that involves poor Zoe Deutsch having to speak fluent French in her American Gene Seberg accent, I was like, I can't, I'm, and I know what this is like. And I know that Gene Seberg did not have a perfect French accent in the film Breathless.

• 24:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 24:15Amanda Dobbins?

  But, but let's be real, everybody, there's only, there's only so much, well, it's not, it's not anybody's fault. It's just the structure of the movie of having to have everyone, it's implausible and grating.

• 24:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she looks like her, though.

• 24:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 24:29Sean Fennessey?

  Her, the pixie haircut and the styling of the film, the production design of this movie is pretty amazing.

• 24:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, no, it looks beautiful. And that's another thing where it was just very, um, yeah, comforting and charming.

• 24:42Sean Fennessey?

  It definitely has charm.

• 24:44Amanda Dobbins?

  To, to be wandering around for a while and that, you know, they, they go to Cannes and there's a conversation had, uh, while someone's doing like a pinup Cannes photo. She, I was like, all of this, the vibe is very good. It's just, it, once you're recreating Breathless, I mean, Breathless is currently available to stream on HBO Max, you know, which I then did go do.

• 25:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I didn't do that. It's funny, I, so I rewatched it last night with Eileen. I'm sure Eileen and I watched Breathless 25 years ago, but I haven't seen it in a very long time and I was just trying to situate her in what this movie was.

• 25:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 25:19Sean Fennessey?

  And what it was attempting to do. And it's a little hard about halfway through to be like, so what is, what are we really worried about here? It is, if you accept it as a hang, I think it works really, really well. If you're looking for something that is sort of like driving in some way, it doesn't, it's not that kind of a movie. Most Linklater movies are not really like that. I do think, though, that It's very consistent and Godard's point of view on making this movie is very consistent with what Linklater is interested in, like his ethic. You know, it's like work with your friends, trust your gut, acknowledge tradition, but try to break your own path. Like, all of these things, I just feel like they're things that resonate deep inside of him. You mentioned something interesting, though, which is like, does this film like Godard?

• 26:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that it has empathy and recognizes what's going on. You know, Godard and the Linklater, like the filmmaker is obviously the stand-in for the other filmmaker, but there was some knowing lovingness about the way that this person is young and idealistic and like preposterous and, but impassioned and believes in what he's doing that I think, I think Linklater is rooting for him. I think the film is, yeah, of course, which like, how could you not? But it's also like, you know, what an idiot sitting there being like, no, no, we're done for the day after two hours.

• 26:45Sean Fennessey?

  Which is seemingly not the way that Linklater would work either, and has learned how to survive in, within independent filmmaking for a long time. I think he obviously has a tremendous amount of respect for him. I thought this when I first saw the movie and then Linklater confirmed it too, that he was like, I'm really more of a true faux guy. And the humanism of true faux just seems much more in step with what Linklater is usually after. You know, Godard is this very kind of like dogmatic, almost ideological, hard-edged figure in the history of cinema and...

• 27:18Amanda Dobbins?

  He has that great scene where they're fighting about the continuity of the cup, which I did think was very funny, and he's just yelling, I mean, like, but what is real? Like, the reality would be that you, you know, I can't recreate it, it's also in French, but it's very funny. And it is, and it gets to...

• 27:36Amanda Dobbins?

  You understand that Linklater relates more to a different style of filmmaking, but he is, it's a funny idea and also just a funny portrait of what it means to be like a young, idealistic artist setting out, which I do think that Linklater has a lot of affection for.

• 27:54Sean Fennessey?

  He definitely does a staggering resemblance across the cast. Guillaume Marbeck.

• 28:00Amanda Dobbins?

  It's true.

• 28:01Sean Fennessey?

  Just looks just like Godard. You know, I think anybody who has that kind of like widow's peak hairstyle and is slim and wears, can wear shades.

• 28:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:08Sean Fennessey?

  You could pull it off to some extent, but he really captures what we imagine, at least the energy of him to be at that time. And that helps the movie a lot. A lot of the other historical figures, even if we don't really know what those people were like. It feels very close and that goes a long way. You know, what was it that Linklater, he cited a recent example of trying to find someone in a movie that looked like the person that they were representing. And he was really appreciative of the work that was done there. I want to say it was in Justin Chang's piece about Linklater that was in The New Yorker a few weeks back, but the attention to detail.

• 28:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Sean Fennessey?

  Is what makes this movie, I would say, more or less successful. It's an interesting experiment.

• 28:49Amanda Dobbins?

  And the production design and the, I mean, I did, I was sitting there being like, okay, so clearly they were in Paris, but like, how did they do this? This is, you know, which is, it's worth seeing.

• 29:00Sean Fennessey?

  Definitely, definitely worth seeing. Fun movie. It's, I'm not quite sure internationally how it's being distributed. I know in France it's playing in movie theaters. I think it's only in the US on Netflix, but definitely fun and worth seeing.

• 29:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Sean Fennessey?

  Let's, let's talk about Blue Moon now.

• 29:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Sean Fennessey?

  So this movie is written by Robert Kaplow, who is the author of the book Me and Orson Wells was based on, but he had not write that screenplay, but he did write this. This is his first screenplay.

• 29:28Amanda Dobbins?

  He's also, did you learn this related, do you remember The Watcher?

• 29:32Sean Fennessey?

  I did, I read this.

• 29:33Amanda Dobbins?

  So he's, yeah, he's involved in, so The Watcher was a Reeves, Wedeman, New York Magazine story from five, 10 years ago, but.

• 29:42Sean Fennessey?

  Adapted into a Netflix mini-series.

• 29:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, which Kaplow was involved in because he was not actually The Watcher or. Living in the house that was part of The Watcher, but he lived in the same town and was also doing some watching of his own or something. I'm fascinated.

• 30:00Sean Fennessey?

  At first, some thought he might have been The Watcher, but then he was not The Watcher.

• 30:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but check that out.

• 30:06Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting life for Robert Kaplow. This movie that he's written is quite fascinating. It sounds like it was written many years ago, maybe more than 10 years ago, and that Hawk and Linklater have been circling it for a long time. It's been more than 10 years since Hawk and Linklater made a movie together. They've made nine movies together. They're one of the great cinematic partnerships, certainly of our lifetime. And this movie is set in 1943. It is about Lorenz Hart, a lyricist, who is confronting shattered self-confidence in a bar. It's an all-in-one night movie, for the most part, as his former collaborator, Richard Rogers, is getting set to arrive at Sardis, the legendary New York City theater bar, after the opening night of Oklahoma.

• 30:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Exclamation point.

• 30:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, which is his first piece, working with Oscar Hammerstein, the composer who would then go on to create one of the most successful duos in the history of musical theater. Prior to this, Rogers and Hart were a tremendously successful duo who made musical theater.

• 31:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And wrote some of the great songs and standards of the early 20th century in America, including "Blue Moon" and also "My Funny Valentine," which is referenced in "New Vile Vogue."

• 31:22Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. That's right. I forgot about that. So Linklater was, for years, apparently, a huge fan of Ella Singh's Rogers and Hart, which is an Ella Fitzgerald album that features 20 of those standards performed by her. And this is, I'll just say, one of my favorite movies of the year. I think this is just a tremendously beautiful and sad movie, and kind of the inverse of "New Vile Vogue," where "New Vile Vogue," on its surface, you would think would be tough, difficult, and underneath the surface is actually a very warm and kind of sweet movie about friendship and about success and about pursuing something that you believe in and achieving it. And this movie is the opposite. It's a movie that, on the surface, you have this smiling Ethan Hawke,

• 32:07Sean Fennessey?

  who's got his head shaved and has got a comb over and has been shrunk down to five feet. And- Is very sweet and charming and charismatic, but right underneath the surface, within the first five minutes.

• 32:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Embittered and wistful and just like, life is not even slipping away, but like, has slipped away.

• 32:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 32:28Amanda Dobbins?

  And you, you can watch that reveal itself.

• 32:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 32:31Amanda Dobbins?

  In real time, over the course of the night.

• 32:33Sean Fennessey?

  Desperate and unloved.

• 32:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:34Sean Fennessey?

  Is how I would describe this version of Heart. And I think it's like, one of the best things Hawk has done in years. And very out of his traditional range. And also, it's just a great all in one place movie. And it's hard to make an all in one place movie entertaining and interesting. And the way that this movie is shot and blocked is unfussy, unshowy. It's not trying to do too much with the fact that it has limitations. But I was like, just tremendously emotionally engaged in this movie. What, what did you think about Blue Moon?

• 33:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I loved it. I mean, any movie that starts with the characters quoting Casablanca to each other.

• 33:10Amanda Dobbins?

  No one ever loved me that much. I mean, it's, and, and it uses, this is, this is a movie that, that loves movies and like, you know, old Hollywood as, as much as we do. And it's very much built into the text and to the script, which I, I think is very good. In some ways it is like, you know, a play, but a movie. But I mean that in the best possible sense where it is really focused on it. It's like tightly written, it has ideas, it's focused on the performances.

• 33:39Amanda Dobbins?

  People show up for kind of one or two scene areas and it, it makes the most of what is, what it has and is, you know, just a very, I agree, very sad.

• 33:54Sean Fennessey?

  Very sad movie.

• 33:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Movie about being really old and, and not being able to.

• 34:01Sean Fennessey?

  But not that old.

• 34:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 34:02Sean Fennessey?

  To your point about Katrina Balf, I believe Heart was 46 years old.

• 34:06Amanda Dobbins?

  That's why we're all so like, oh God, you know, life is coming for us. This, this film does the thing that you normally don't like.

• 34:13Sean Fennessey?

  Shows you something at the beginning.

• 34:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:14Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't love that either.

• 34:15Amanda Dobbins?

  OK, even here, even though I do find that that choice sets the tone, because I honestly, I don't know what

• 34:24Amanda Dobbins?

  before this film, I didn't know about the life story of Lawrence Hart, you know, and I don't know his outcome. I mean, I know what happens with Oklahoma. Just incredible theater criticism of Oklahoma throughout this movie. It's really, really funny. But, um, I, and you know, so I know that he, I know that Rogers and Hammerstein go on to great fame. But I didn't know the, the pretty sudden tragedy that happens after this film. And so knowing that does help you interpret the film in a different way, because it's kind of, it's all sort of a lost cause, you know, and there's like, he keeps, he keeps talking about, so Andrew Scott plays, um.

• 35:09Sean Fennessey?

  Richard Rogers.

• 35:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Richard Rogers, thank you, sorry. And they keep talking about how they're gonna revive, you know, play with five more songs and there's, and you know, and that's presented.

• 35:19Sean Fennessey?

  A Connecticut Yankee, yeah.

• 35:22Amanda Dobbins?

  The Hart character is like, this'll, you know, I'll be back in it, this'll be my big break. And I think we all know, because of the way the film opens, that like, even if that does happen, it doesn't matter that this is not going to be the beginning of another career. So I, I think functionally, I understood the decision.

• 35:38Sean Fennessey?

  That's interesting. I, it's the, it's the only thing that I really took issue with in the movie. I also did not know much about the life of Hart. I was happy to not know much about it. I think the movie does that very interesting thing where it allows the character to kind of talk through their own personal history in a way that felt mostly naturalistic in the setting. It didn't feel like forced exposition.

• 35:59Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 36:00Sean Fennessey?

  And I think if you remove that opening sequence where we see him fall in the rain.

• 36:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:06Sean Fennessey?

  For someone who didn't know about the person's life, it would have felt more dramatic. It would have felt, and the sort of revelations about the aftermath of this opening night of Oklahoma, I think would have felt stronger, more powerful. It would have hit, it would have been a little bit more tear in my throat than it ultimately is.

• 36:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so, but it's not, the movie is not a melodrama. You know, it's like an elegiac, there is something, you're watching this guy and it's like, it's over before it started.

• 36:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 36:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And that is what the film and the character is about. And he is the only character who has not quite made peace with that. But to understand what's going on with him, I do kind of think you need to know the contours to get the full, I don't know, it worked for me.

• 36:54Sean Fennessey?

  Setting that aside, the other thing that I think this movie shares in common with Nouvelle Vague is that, to use a word that you use to describe Godard, both of these movies are about delusional men. You know, like men who are just like convincing themselves that what they're gonna do and what's gonna, how everything is gonna work out.

• 37:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:12Sean Fennessey?

  And in one case, someone is incredibly successful. In another case, someone fails miserably. But that, there is something too about the, I think, a sensitivity to artists, people trying things, which is just a really vulnerable, strange thing.

• 37:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:24Sean Fennessey?

  You and I get in front of a camera and we talk at each other and it's fine and it's vulnerable, but not like when you're like,

• 37:28Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, absolutely not.

• 37:29Sean Fennessey?

  Here's something I have poured my soul into that means the world to me. And Hart in particular, a writer who was sort of moving out of fashion in the mid 40s in terms of the style of comedy lyricism that he was gifted at. And also like a sense of how the world was changing. You know, this is like amidst World War II and there's a kind of optimism in Oklahoma that is completely absent from most of what Hart pursues. He can write a romantic song,

• 37:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 37:55Sean Fennessey?

  but he, it's usually a little bit more pointed and cultural and. You know, Rogers originally went to Hart to write Oklahoma and he turned him down. And then Rogers turning to Hammerstein leads to this.

• 38:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music.

• 38:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's the most successful.

• 38:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 38:13Sean Fennessey?

  Collaboration in the history musical theater, probably.

• 38:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, absolutely. But, you know, those are all pretty sappy. And I say that as the world's.

• 38:21Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not a huge fan.

• 38:22Amanda Dobbins?

  World's number one Sound of Music fan over here, but, you know.

• 38:25Sean Fennessey?

  I can't pretend to be an expert on the shows of Rogers and Hart because they're actually just so out of fashion that they're not produced as often as the Rogers and Hammerstein stuff, which I've seen most of and most of I just don't think is that great to me. But people love them and Hart being a known genius who's washed up is as tragic as it comes.

• 38:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:50Sean Fennessey?

  You know, just like the way that Hawk embodies this incredible sense of sadness without having lost his wit and his intelligence and his kind of nascent, annoying charm.

• 39:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 39:05Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 39:05Amanda Dobbins?

  There's a charisma.

• 39:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 39:07Amanda Dobbins?

  That is kind of like flickering in, in real time and the bitterness and the alcoholism and, and the delusion breakthrough throughout the course of the film. But every once in a while, he just steers it back to something just completely effervescent and amazing. And you're like, oh, this is who this person was.

• 39:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 39:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And just cannot get back there and life won't let him get back there.

• 39:32Sean Fennessey?

  Another thing that this movie shares with New Vile Vag is that there are a handful of famous figures who crop up in the story. These are significantly more invented than what you might see in New Vile Vag. For example, at Sardi's on this night, sitting at a table by himself, writing in his journal is E.B. White.

• 39:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:49Sean Fennessey?

  E.B. White, seemingly at the doorstep of writing Charlotte's Web.

• 39:53Amanda Dobbins?

  And Stuart Little, because they literally.

• 39:55Sean Fennessey?

  Of course.

• 39:56Amanda Dobbins?

  He gets inspiration for Stuart's name. And how to spell it from heart.

• 40:01Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think that's actually how that happened.

• 40:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't either, but it is written into the script of the film. They reference it, you know?

• 40:07Sean Fennessey?

  I really like that little jag where E.B. White comes in as kind of like the gentle, observant conscience of creativity for a short period of time. And then there's like a fairly amusing, but also a little silly introduction of a very young, presumably Stephen Sondheim, who is neighbors with Oscar Hammerstein and who, you know, joins him at the premiere of Oklahoma and has seen every musical theater performance and had some withering takes for the work of Lorenz Hart.

• 40:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, yeah.

• 40:35Sean Fennessey?

  And it's just a funny like nudge in the ribs of any musical theater fan. Because Sondheim obviously would go on to kind of take on the mantle of the greatest living musical theater writer. I mean, probably immediately after Rodgers and Hammerstein.

• 40:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I, yeah, I guess so.

• 40:54Sean Fennessey?

  This movie is, this doesn't usually always work for me when an actor is like, I'm doing a biopic or I'm recreating a figure, I'm transforming.

• 41:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Sean Fennessey?

  I'm hair and makeup, we're going to use trenches to make me seem smaller than I actually am. And Ethan Hawke, he never does this. He never, he never wears makeup.

• 41:16Amanda Dobbins?

  He's very naturalistic.

• 41:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he always, he almost always embodies a version of himself. It might be in the year 2300, like in Gattaca, but he still looks like Ethan Hawke.

• 41:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:27Sean Fennessey?

  And I thought this was a fascinating twist. This is also a small, low budget movie made, I think in 15 days, which

• 41:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Sean Fennessey?

  would have been pretty challenging.

• 41:38Sean Fennessey?

  And I think it's like among the best things he's ever done.

• 41:42Amanda Dobbins?

  He's wonderful in it. And I think, I want to talk about the Margaret Qualley character, who is, who is, for lack of a better term, the love interest, though how that works out is in keeping with how things work out in the rest of the film and is kind of another dimension to, I don't know whether it's delusion or denial or self hate.

• 42:11Amanda Dobbins?

  But it is very funny to see Ethan Hawke not getting the girl mode, or not even close to getting the girl.

• 42:20Sean Fennessey?

  I asked him about this. I asked him specifically, like, I can't think of a single time where you played the guy who cannot get the girl.

• 42:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:25Sean Fennessey?

  And the level of self-hate, that's the other word that I use, this self-loathing

• 42:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 42:29Sean Fennessey?

  that Hart has. Hart was believed to have been a closeted gay man, but he proposed to multiple women and wanted to be seen

• 42:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 42:36Sean Fennessey?

  as a

• 42:38Amanda Dobbins?

  A man about town.

• 42:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, exactly. And maybe even like a conqueror in some ways, and was constantly falling short of that. And in the film, Margaret Qualley plays a young woman named Elizabeth Wyland, who is a Yale student, who's an aspiring musical theater composer, and wants to be in this world. And she befriends Hart, and they have this kind of confidant relationship, and he feels romantic feelings for her, or at least says that he does. And she sort of leads him on, in part, so he can introduce her to some people, but she also seems to have affection for him, but certainly not in the way he keeps asking for. I think there's an extended sequence of them alone in an office that runs a little long for me.

• 43:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:25Sean Fennessey?

  I think Margaret Qualley is well cast. I think this is like, actually

• 43:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Best use of her, yes.

• 43:30Sean Fennessey?

  A good use of her. And what her kind of wide-eyed beauty represents, and her ability to sort of like, be one step ahead, but the audience thinks she's one step behind for most of the sequence. So I liked that part okay. It's just kind of the final nail in the coffin, almost literally,

• 43:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 43:50Sean Fennessey?

  of Hart's ego.

• 43:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Sean Fennessey?

  And his sense of self-worth.

• 43:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And also, the idea of himself versus the reality of the world that he's living in.

• 44:04Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think many successful people feel this way? Have this intense sense of regret, longing?

• 44:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, um.

• 44:12Sean Fennessey?

  Failure?

• 44:13Amanda Dobbins?

  When it runs out, yes.

• 44:15Sean Fennessey?

  How do you know if it's run out?

• 44:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I think he knows it's run out.

• 44:18Sean Fennessey?

  I'm just asking for a friend.

• 44:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, this is a very sensitive portrayal of somebody who is losing it.

• 44:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:29Sean Fennessey?

  And I really like it. Hawk, well, let me, let's talk about Linklater really quickly.

• 44:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 44:33Sean Fennessey?

  So he's 65 years old.

• 44:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:35Sean Fennessey?

  He did not, he does not seem it. His hair is brown.

• 44:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:39Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he's in good shape, still seems like an athlete. He's in the midst of this production of Merrily We Roll Along.

• 44:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. How long, how many years has it been now?

• 44:50Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's been less than 10. So I think he's about a third of the way through.

• 44:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 44:55Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe a little more than that. And the plan is to film until 2040.

• 45:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 45:01Sean Fennessey?

  And he's doing this with Paul Mascol, Beanie Feldstein, and is it Ben Platt?

• 45:05Amanda Dobbins?

  That sounds right.

• 45:05Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's Ben Platt. And-

• 45:07Amanda Dobbins?

  So he'll be 80?

• 45:08Sean Fennessey?

  So he'll be 80 at the conclusion of this production.

• 45:12Amanda Dobbins?

  It is Ben Platt.

• 45:13Sean Fennessey?

  So that is, you know, he's obviously done this before with Boyhood.

• 45:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:18Sean Fennessey?

  These kind of derational projects over time. You know, I think Justin Chang also pointed out that this is sort of his version again of what Truffaut did with Antoine Donnell, like that, this idea of like tracking the same character and the same actor over a long period of time. But in this case, he's doing it in standalone movies.

• 45:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:37Sean Fennessey?

  Which is just one of his ultimate fascinating time-based innovations. But just in the last few years, he's been very productive. He made the rotoscope animated film Apollo 10 and a Half a few years ago for Netflix, and then Hitman last year for Netflix, and then now Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon in the same year. Very vital at this stage of his career. He's made over 20 movies.

• 46:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Good for him.

• 46:01Sean Fennessey?

  He's fucking killing it.

• 46:03Amanda Dobbins?

  He loves to make movies.

• 46:04Sean Fennessey?

  What are you gonna be doing at 65?

• 46:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. I'm reading a very grim book about the future right now.

• 46:12Sean Fennessey?

  What's the book?

• 46:12Amanda Dobbins?

  It's the new Ian McEwan novel.

• 46:14Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, you've been anticipating it.

• 46:15Amanda Dobbins?

  It's wonderful. It's really, really good. I'm almost done, but I's not optimistic about what any of us will be doing at 65.

• 46:21Sean Fennessey?

  What's the name of the book?

• 46:22Amanda Dobbins?

  It's called What We Can Know by Ian McEwan.

• 46:24Sean Fennessey?

  I see. So that'll be 22 years from now for me. 22 years will be 2047.

• 46:33Sean Fennessey?

  My daughter will be 26. Oh, that's fine. I can be dead by then.

• 46:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 46:37Sean Fennessey?

  That's fine. I gotta get to 21 for my daughter. That's, that's, that's the most important thing.

• 46:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Her age.

• 46:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 46:42Amanda Dobbins?

  You need to get, and then, and then, good luck, Alice.

• 46:45Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I don't want to die, but if I die, it'll be okay.

• 46:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 46:49Sean Fennessey?

  I won't fight it, you know?

• 46:50Amanda Dobbins?

  That's good.

• 46:51Sean Fennessey?

  I will fight it. I'll fight it tooth and nail. Don't pull the plug on me, as George Carlin once said.

• 46:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I mean, I, you know, I hope you have other arrangements for that written in your will.

• 47:00Sean Fennessey?

  No, you're the first call. When I'm on my deathbed, you are the first call, because I trust you to be unsparing.

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• 48:29Sean Fennessey?

  Before we go to Hawk and Linklater, I want to talk about Hawk quickly.

• 48:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:34Sean Fennessey?

  So I, I hope he gets nominated for Best Actor. I genuinely hope. It, it's an extremely competitive year.

• 48:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:40Sean Fennessey?

  I-

• 48:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And this is a small, this is our, well, listen, Sony Pictures Classic has done it before.

• 48:45Sean Fennessey?

  No doubt. They're amazing at this.

• 48:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Never forget the wife.

• 48:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, I have forgotten it, but I know what you're, I know what you're saying. Let's very quickly go through Best Actor before sharing our favorite Hawk stuff, okay? So at the moment-

• 49:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow, look at this glamour shot we've introduced him. Looking great. I mean, he's always looked great.

• 49:04Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he's also on the low down on FX, which I haven't started watching yet, but I intend to watch over the Thanksgiving break. Along with Andor, I'm gonna set movies aside for a week.

• 49:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 49:13Sean Fennessey?

  Watch some television.

• 49:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 49:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm gonna be on an airplane with two children under four, so.

• 49:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, a blue moon of your own. Good luck to you. I'm so excited for that week because I'm not going anywhere. So at the moment, Variety has, here's the top 10 for best actor in reverse order from 10 to 1. Clooney for Jay Kelly, Plemmons for Begonia, Dwayne Johnson for The Smashing Machine, Brendan Fraser for The Rental Family. I still haven't seen that.

• 49:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Nor have I.

• 49:39Sean Fennessey?

  Jeremy Allen White for Springsteen.

• 49:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I can't believe we're still doing this.

• 49:42Sean Fennessey?

  Michael B. Jordan for Sinners.

• 49:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh huh.

• 49:45Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Wagner Moro for The Secret Agent.

• 49:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh huh.

• 49:47Sean Fennessey?

  Timothy Chalamet for Marty Supreme.

• 49:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 49:49Sean Fennessey?

  Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another. And in the one, number one position, Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon.

• 49:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Who has this?

• 49:55Sean Fennessey?

  Clayton Davis at Variety.

• 49:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 49:57Sean Fennessey?

  This was published on September 26th.

• 49:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Um, I take issue with, with some of that ranking. Uh, I would love that for Ethan Hawke. I, I don't think that he is in pole position. Is that the correct usage of the term pole position?

• 50:13Sean Fennessey?

  It certainly is.

• 50:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Thanks so much.

• 50:14Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds like you've seen F1.

• 50:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 50:16Sean Fennessey?

  Let me tell you.

• 50:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I was actually gonna ask what sport it's from. So good.

• 50:19Sean Fennessey?

  As a counterpoint, on October 23rd, Awards Watch said that Ethan Hawke was in 11th place behind Will Arnett, Dwayne Johnson, Jesse Plemmons, Jeremy Allen White, Joel Edgerton. I don't think that's right either.

• 50:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 50:32Sean Fennessey?

  This is almost, almost three weeks, three weeks ago now.

• 50:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so I mean, I think Michael B. Jordan, yes. Leonardo DiCaprio, yes. Wagner Moro, yes. Still haven't seen that film, but I'm looking for it.

• 50:41Sean Fennessey?

  I gotta figure out how to talk about that movie.

• 50:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, I'm very excited, but I just, um, who is the fourth guarantee that I'm forgetting right now?

• 50:48Sean Fennessey?

  Leo.

• 50:49Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I already said Leo.

• 50:50Sean Fennessey?

  Leo, Wagner Moro, Michael B. and Timothy Chalamet.

• 50:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, and Chalamet, of course, yeah.

• 50:54Speaker 00

  Gold, Gold Derby currently has him at fifth, so that's a little bit in the middle between the two.

• 50:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's probably right. I, and that's what I'll hope for.

• 51:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 51:01Sean Fennessey?

  I think that would be an awesome five. That would be close to what I think are the five best actor performances of the year. And that doesn't usually happen. But this is a really, really competitive year. I think some of the like lower, you know, I think Brendan Fraser and Daniel Day-Lewis and, you know, Russell Crowe from Nuremberg. Like, those are not really, I haven't seen that yet. That's also gonna be part of the Heda episode where we talk about 10 movies that we didn't talk about.

• 51:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so Heda, Nuremberg, what about the, what's it called? The Choir, the Corral?

• 51:30Sean Fennessey?

  The Choral.

• 51:30Amanda Dobbins?

  The Choral. I just, the trailers before my Blue Moon screening were just like an incredible 1998.

• 51:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the SPC rundown.

• 51:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Sony Pictures Classic Throwback situation.

• 51:42Sean Fennessey?

  I like those. Have you seen Serat?

• 51:44Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but don't tell me anything. Tell me nothing. I'm going.

• 51:47Sean Fennessey?

  What about Kiss of the Spider Woman?

• 51:48Amanda Dobbins?

  No, with respect to Jennifer Lopez.

• 51:50Sean Fennessey?

  I will see it.

• 51:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:51Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, we haven't talked about Ballad of a Small Player.

• 51:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, that's just on Netflix. Gotta see that.

• 51:56Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 51:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:58Speaker 05

  Threw that on last night.

• 52:00Sean Fennessey?

  What did you put on last night?

• 52:01Speaker 05

  I threw on Ballad of a Small Player. Completely forgot it was out.

• 52:05Sean Fennessey?

  It's not very good.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  It's a disappointment.

• 52:06Amanda Dobbins?

  The Lost Boss?

• 52:08Sean Fennessey?

  The Lost Bus.

• 52:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, The Lost Bus.

• 52:10Sean Fennessey?

  With Matthew McConaughey.

• 52:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, right.

• 52:12Sean Fennessey?

  These are all, in theory.

• 52:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, we're gonna, listen, we're gonna get there.

• 52:15Sean Fennessey?

  We're gonna get there. Um, Hawk. Let's, we can do this fairly quickly. We match on, what, one movie?

• 52:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 52:22Sean Fennessey?

  Two movies.

• 52:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and I put, I matched at number four, so we could be cute with our lists.

• 52:30Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think makes him a good actor?

• 52:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I, there is a, uh, an, I don't know, he's just so cool, honestly. Like, there are like a bunch of different things that I was trying to describe, but like, well, he's very like, he's, you know, very calm and like, he sits back but also really emotionally open. There's like a physicality to him. I, I don't know. I mean, I saw him in Reality Bites when I was like 11 and I was like, that's it. That's what's gonna haunt me for the next 35 years of my life.

• 53:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I know what you mean. I think he has changed a lot as a performer over the years. I do think that he was really puppy dog as a kid and in one of your picks.

• 53:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 53:12Sean Fennessey?

  And had this kind of like, G. Willikers kind of anxiousness to him as a performer. And then he really like, almost does the exact opposite in his twenties, where he pulls back way back.

• 53:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right.

• 53:24Sean Fennessey?

  He's cooler than cool, you know, when he's in, um... Is it Hamlet, the modern, modern adaptation of Hamlet? In Reality Bites, of course, like in a lot of those 90s performances. And then in the 2000s, I feel like he goes back the other way. He goes back to this, like, he has a kind of jitteriness to him, like in Training Day, where you can, right on the surface, you can feel that this is a person who's having a hard time. And he's not, nothing is settled.

• 53:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:48Sean Fennessey?

  And he, the, being able to toggle between those two energies is very cool.

• 53:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I, I do kind of think, like, for us, it's just an emotional register over time and, you know, an up and down that I recognize, you know? Of being like fairly earnest in your teens and then what I thought was cool was also what he was trying to be. I have just kind of watched him go through the phases of life about five years ahead of myself.

• 54:17Sean Fennessey?

  That's exactly what it is.

• 54:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And feel about them the same way that I do.

• 54:19Sean Fennessey?

  That's exactly what, he's somebody that, it's very easy to map your own experiences on to, because he's made a bunch of movies about going through those experiences. And obviously the Before trilogy is signature in that, but a lot of his movies are like that. So, he's just, he's, he's a special guy.

• 54:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Sean Fennessey?

  He's a special actor and uh...

• 54:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And one of the great podcast guests, so I'm very excited to hear your...

• 54:37Sean Fennessey?

  He's just an awesome talker, you know? He just, he's read a lot and seen a lot and he loves music and he's just into figuring it out.

• 54:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:44Sean Fennessey?

  And is very eloquent in conveying how he feels. So, hopefully people will enjoy that conversation. Before we get to it, do your five and I'll do my five.

• 54:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I put Dead Poets at five, which is just how I remember probably the first time I saw him. And also, you know, that openness that I do think characterizes all of his work, except for the 20s when he's, his 20s, when he's trying to be an asshole. Uh, I put Blue Moon at four, because you also have Blue Moon at four.

• 55:13Sean Fennessey?

  I do have Blue Moon at four.

• 55:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's pretty, it's extraordinary. And, and him trying something different, which is cool. Boyhood at three, Boyhood, not my favorite Linklater, but... It is as much a study of, I mean, it is a study of Ethan Hawke over time and what they're doing together and

• 55:30Sean Fennessey?

  I've not seen divorced dad energy represented so clearly.

• 55:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And what he and what Hawke is doing like in terms of vulnerability and and like openness and also anger, you know, it's the full gamut of what he can do over time. It is that like career that we've been talking about.

• 55:45Sean Fennessey?

  Him picking up Eller Coltrane at the house in his muscle car is like, gives me sad chills.

• 55:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Two is Reality Bites.

• 55:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 55:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Forever.

• 55:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 55:58Amanda Dobbins?

  And then number one, Before Sunset.

• 56:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I know. You go by, you go by.

• 56:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 56:05Sean Fennessey?

  My number five is Training Day, which is, he's been very good over the years at toggling between mainstream Hollywood movies and projects that light him up that are a little smaller. He obviously also loves the theater. Training Day is like the perfect fusion of the two disciplines that he is interested in, where it's like, it's a big time Hollywood crime movie, opposite Denzel, but they both get to do really interesting work as actors in it. And I would argue that we would not think about that Denzel performance in the same way if he was opposite a lesser actor.

• 56:39Amanda Dobbins?

  For sure.

• 56:40Sean Fennessey?

  Because I think that movie is like, pretty well-written, but not really that well-written. And it's like, pretty well-directed, but not that well-directed. But you're there for those two guys exploding. And some other actors on the periphery as well, but those two guys specifically bouncing off of each other. I also had Blument at four, I agree with everything that you said. I have Before the Devil Knows You're Dead at three.

• 56:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Good one.

• 56:59Sean Fennessey?

  The Lumet crime movie. Ethan mentioned Philip Seymour Hoffman during our conversation. They're magic opposite of each other as two very different, but very similar brothers. Before Sunset is number two for me. Number one is First Reformed.

• 57:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. It's First Reform season.

• 57:13Sean Fennessey?

  Boy, it sure is. Although Pope Leo, the fourteenth.

• 57:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Pope Leo.

• 57:21Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, he's really, he's coming through for cinema.

• 57:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. It's beautiful. Yeah.

• 57:25Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, what if I went back to the church?

• 57:28Amanda Dobbins?

  We'll talk about that. There's another movie where we can talk about it.

• 57:31Sean Fennessey?

  Why not now? What if I rejoined the church because Leo hosted a great number of filmmakers at the Vatican? Greta Gerwig was there.

• 57:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:42Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Spike Lee was there.

• 57:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, I mean, I appreciate all that he's doing.

• 57:47Sean Fennessey?

  The Pope?

• 57:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, for cinema, I guess.

• 57:50Sean Fennessey?

  He says you should go to the movie theater to see films. You know who else says that?

• 57:53Amanda Dobbins?

  You.

• 57:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 57:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And me too.

• 57:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Should I be the next Pope?

• 57:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think you'd do a really good job.

• 57:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think I've earned it.

• 57:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, you know, you have the outfit already from our Oscar show, so that's good.

• 58:04Sean Fennessey?

  And Conclave taught me how all that stuff works, so I'll be really good at winning that race.

• 58:11Sean Fennessey?

  But First Reformed, Paul Schrader also came up when I was talking with Ethan.

• 58:16Sean Fennessey?

  Man, that movie, I should have fought for it for 25 for 25. That movie fucked me up. I love that movie. And that movie is also so on the money about how everything feels right now.

• 58:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:29Sean Fennessey?

  So on the money. And Ethan Hawke, again, is at the center of it as a desperate person who's lost hope and can do that just as well as he can do Lauren's heart. So he's a wonderful actor. Any closing thoughts?

• 58:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm excited to hear you talk to the two of them.

• 58:44Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's go to my conversation with Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater.

• 58:52Sean Fennessey?

  Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke back on the show, here to talk about Blue Moon. Guys, it's been 12 years since you made a film together. I was stunned to learn that when I was reading up on your long-term collaboration. Was there anything that came up in the interim? 10?

• 59:08Speaker 06

  10 since Boyhood, I think.

• 59:09Speaker 07

  Well, 14, that came out in 14.

• 59:11Speaker 06

  It is?

• 59:12Speaker 07

  Yeah, okay. So, but we shot this in 24, so.

• 59:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 59:16Speaker 07

  There was a 10-year gap.

• 59:17Speaker 06

  10-year gap.

• 59:17Speaker 07

  Of us rolling camp.

• 59:18Sean Fennessey?

  Were you, was there?

• 59:19Speaker 06

  We were in a horrible fight.

• 59:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 59:21Speaker 06

  Sometimes.

• 59:22Speaker 07

  You didn't speak for what, nine?

• 59:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, he has these temper tantrums and then he comes and he apologizes.

• 59:27Speaker 07

  And Ethan falls off the wagon and it's a real thing. I just have to, at some point, you have to.

• 59:31Speaker 06

  It's a cutoff thing.

• 59:31Sean Fennessey?

  So this is an art reflecting life situation, yeah.

• 59:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:35Sean Fennessey?

  Did you, were there any other things that you were thinking about doing in that time? Like, why the break?

• 59:38Speaker 06

  God, I hope so. 10 years, we better have thought of something to do.

• 59:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we're always throwing around things. Well, this was, Blue Moon was in the works before.

• 59:47Speaker 06

  He gave me the script to Blue Moon before we finished Boyhood.

• 59:49Sean Fennessey?

  Probably like in 2012? No kidding?

• 59:51Speaker 06

  Am I close enough to the microphone?

• 59:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:53Speaker 06

  Sounds good.

• 59:53Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 59:54Speaker 07

  Um, yeah, this was something been kind of rolling around in our heads for a long time. And we would get together in New York, usually because Robert lives, he's in the area, Ethan's there, I would be there. We would just kind of do a table read and talk about it more and just kind of just working with Robert over the years on the script.

• 1:00:11Speaker 06

  I was, in fact, I was so impressed with Robert's patience with

• 1:00:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15Speaker 06

  our methodology, you know, because we really enjoyed doing readings, talking about it, thinking about it. Because you knew you never get a second chance. It's not like a painting where you can do one version of it and then a year later, try it again. It's like, we were gonna have one shot to make it right. So we took our sweet time.

• 1:00:35Speaker 07

  Building up to something. And it's such a minimal, and we shot it in 15 days. It's a no budget movie, all that stuff. And yet, it was, we treated it over these years as some kind of really thing that we would just have to perfect and it would be hard to do.

• 1:00:50Sean Fennessey?

  How did you know it was the right time to do it?

• 1:00:53Speaker 06

  I knew because he said so.

• 1:00:56Sean Fennessey?

  How did you know?

• 1:00:57Speaker 07

  Ethan tells these jokes about when, when he first started, it's like, well, you're too young, you're too tall. It took Ethan all those years to lose the height, actually. About an inch a year.

• 1:01:07Speaker 06

  Inch a year.

• 1:01:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, we finally got there.

• 1:01:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's funny, though, because you were 10 years ago around the right age for Lorenz Hart, but maybe didn't look, you weren't ready to look the way that he looked at that time in his life?

• 1:01:19Speaker 07

  Well, 54 is 47 back then, or whatever.

• 1:01:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, definitely. There was some, I mean, I don't, that's a very simplistic way of looking at it, that we also knew that the thing about a movie like this is the bullseye is extremely small. And if you don't hit it exact, if you don't penetrate the exact bullseye, this movie's not really even a movie. It has to, for it to ring the bell, you know, for it to vibrate and sound right, we, we knew it had to be just right. And so, we would do these readings and Robert, it's never like we did a reading and thought, okay, it's ready to go. It, we would thought, oh, this is a great idea. What is it? And then Robert would have some ideas and he would go back and Rick and we would all talk.

• 1:02:05Speaker 06

  And then, but there was no time pressure. So it'd be like, six months later, Robert would send a new draft and We wouldn't read it aloud again until we were all in the same city again.

• 1:02:16Speaker 07

  Which might be a year and a half.

• 1:02:18Speaker 06

  There goes another year, you know, and then we would do it in the same conversation would take place and certain missteps would happen and.

• 1:02:25Speaker 07

  Scenes came and go, came and went.

• 1:02:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Speaker 07

  You know, we were breaking, we were just kind of, it was getting more minimal.

• 1:02:32Speaker 06

  And the last, the last reading we did was really fantastic. We were at my house and I remember it was over and everybody left and we both kind of were like, wow.

• 1:02:41Speaker 07

  It's, we're ready.

• 1:02:42Speaker 06

  This is the time.

• 1:02:43Speaker 07

  It was great. I thought, okay, I'm ready to go into rehearsals and like we're shooting in, you know, a month.

• 1:02:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Speaker 07

  That would be, I think we're ready to get, we were that close.

• 1:02:52Speaker 06

  And in the meantime, I had gotten a lot older and, and also strangely felt more ready to try a, a lot of the parts that I've done in my life are variations on something you might call close to my own identity. And, and this was a, a farther push out and, but I really felt I loved Larry and I felt like I'd grown up with people like Larry and my whole life in the theater, this, this movie is intimate with those men.

• 1:03:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Speaker 06

  And, and so I really, really wanted to do it badly. And I really believed that we could do it and do it well. And now I feel after so many years of every, you know, it's like a to do list on your, in your brain that you have and a blue moon was always there. We've got to make that, we've got to make, I can't believe we've checked that one off.

• 1:03:45Speaker 07

  I still with Margaret last night, I was like, oh, wow. It's a couple of years ago, we were sitting there with her. We got all of our, we went to cast Elizabeth. It's like, I wonder if Margaret Qualley would do, and Sharon, if she met with us, really liked the part, totally got it. Years ago, we said, well, we got to get Connolly to play.

• 1:04:02Speaker 06

  When we, when we were first talking about, we're like, you know, who should be the bartenders? Bobby. Bobby would be amazing.

• 1:04:08Speaker 07

  And then, but you know, actor's availability and all that, we just got lucky. Everybody was, and then Andrew Scott came aboard. That was the really, the, the crucial piece, the last piece.

• 1:04:20Sean Fennessey?

  Were, are there like 10 or 12 other projects like this for both of you guys? Where you're like, we're still, we're checking boxes. We have things that we know we want to do.

• 1:04:27Speaker 06

  10 or 12 is a lot, but there's certainly a bunch. Yeah.

• 1:04:30Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 1:04:30Speaker 06

  Because sometimes, sometimes the universe isn't.

• 1:04:34Speaker 07

  It's never on your time schedule. Yeah, you know, they a project like this, we need the right partners, you know, to to come through to help finance it. You know, this is, nobody's doing this movie because they think they're gonna make a quick fortune. You know, they have to kind of believe in it. And we have several projects like that. Unfortunately, none of our projects seem to have their finger on the pulse of what America really wants to be watching. But we've had some that have never gotten made and some that may might still.

• 1:05:06Sean Fennessey?

  Since you guys hadn't been on set together in a long time, had either of you changed in any way? Was there anything that was different about actually making a movie 10 years later?

• 1:05:15Speaker 07

  I wouldn't say either of us had changed in any way that affected anything. It's just the demands of this particular film required us to be different. It was a different vibe.

• 1:05:26Sean Fennessey?

  I want to hear about that.

• 1:05:27Speaker 07

  That the challenge was such that. Well, I knew it even in the readings we were doing, I was like, I'd look at Ethan reading it a little as Ethan, I was like, oh, he doesn't know what he's in for. This is all gonna go away. You know, he would put an emphasis on something and then, so I knew this day was coming when we had to sit down and like really get into this and I was like, okay. And that was very difficult. Yeah, it was like, this all has to go away. That's a masculine, confident Ethan gesture from a guy who's six feet tall and, you know, used to get laid a lot.

• 1:06:06Speaker 07

  See, Larry has none of that.

• 1:06:10Speaker 06

  I can feel that now. That was the biggest difference in the 10 years.

• 1:06:18Speaker 07

  But it actually, it's, he's not lying. I didn't realize that. And and Rick did.

• 1:06:29Speaker 06

  And but this is the vow, there's a, it's a weird razor's edge to walk when we all love the idea of long-term collaborations, but it's very hard not to get sick of your friends. It's very hard not to tire them. And sometimes it's very hard to be honest with your friends, you know, because it feels like things are at stake. It's, it's not just a movie like Rick and I can't go make Blue Moon. I can't let him down or disappoint him or have a fight with him and, and walk away from the movie. I'd be walking away from a 30-year collaboration. It's, it's bigger than one job. And Rick was really giving

• 1:07:07Speaker 06

  me the opportunity to be the actor that he knew as a young person I dreamed of being. He knows who my heroes are. He knows the kind of work that I find significant and important. And he was giving me that opportunity, but it wasn't going to happen just by showing up, you know. All the things that people like to talk about, you know, whether you're talking about movies where people gain weight or lose weight, or joking about the height, or hair, shaving head, or, you know, gestures, voice, all that stuff is meaningless if it doesn't unlock something true and some, something with soul to it, you know. All

• 1:07:49Speaker 06

  those details are things that will ruin the movie if we don't get it right, but they won't actually give the movie the heart and soul to make it worth your time to watch. So this one had, this one had so many things we had to work on to, like, on before, the before trilogy, for example, I'm being asked to play a certain position on a team. And this movie was like, I was in the same team, but I was playing a different position than I'm normally asked to play, if that makes sense.

• 1:08:18Sean Fennessey?

  Can you, can you give me the literal position change that you, that you made so that we can even deepen this metaphor? Like, are we moving from quarterback to tailback? Are you moving from tailback to right tackle?

• 1:08:27Speaker 07

  Quarterback to waterboy.

• 1:08:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:08:29Speaker 07

  In the masculine, in the tough guy.

• 1:08:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:34Speaker 07

  But a very colorful waterboy.

• 1:08:36Speaker 06

  A really charming, charming waterboy. I, I think the better analogy might be a band and I used to play rhythm guitar and now I'm being asked to play the violin.

• 1:08:47Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:48Speaker 06

  You know, it's like we're like, and, and the bandleader's the same. So a lot of, when you're on a link letter set, this, I think it would

• 1:08:58Speaker 07

  If you think about your older friends, have they changed? I venture to say most of us, not that much.

• 1:09:04Sean Fennessey?

  It might be imperceptible. They may have, but you can't see it.

• 1:09:07Speaker 07

  Our sense of humor is the same. We're still making each other laugh with jokes that happened that are citing things that happened 30 years ago, and I still laugh. And we still find the same, I know when I'm reading something, whether Rick will like it or not. You know, so, you know, I'll come across, you know, we know. I even, the other day, I was like, I had this really kind of crisis moment in my brain, something that was really profoundly depressing me. And I went for a walk and I just imagined talking to Rick and I felt a lot better.

• 1:09:38Speaker 07

  I didn't actually need to talk to him. I'd say this and he'd say, well, why are you going that direction? And I'm like, oh yeah, he's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:44Sean Fennessey?

  It's funny you say that, though. So Glenn Powell was on one of our shows last week. And on the show, he said, he was paying you a compliment. And he said, Rick was the hardest director on me in terms of performance. He was the person who was the most direct about what I was doing and whether it was working or not. And that some artists are a little bit uncomfortable giving that feedback that you're talking about. Is it, do you think it's even more harsh with Ethan? And how do you even communicate that?

• 1:10:09Speaker 07

  Well, it was on this time. I try to give specific directions when it comes to performance. I think that's the best you can do, not just like, oh, go again, do better. You know, it's like, no. Playable notes, something that is actually. We rehearsed this, we worked on it for a long time. We had, knew what we were going for. But this was just different and we knew what arena we were stepping into. This was just gonna be much more rigorous. And I think, had we not had each other's back for 30 years and the other films, we had a trust, you know, I saw my friend working to his absolute limit. And, you know, this is built around his ability to deliver what the film had to. You know, Ethan has to peel off these seven page monologues.

• 1:10:54Speaker 07

  We have 15 days to shoot the movie. I knew we could do that. We had done versions of that before. But then this, this physical thing, I, I just, it was a deductive process. Ethan had to disappear, you know? So that was the naggy, I was a naggy, like, you know, Ethan, you know, do that thing again. Like, it would have been, I think, because we had this communication shorthand, it helped that. It was less confrontational, but it was, it was exhausting, kind of. It really was, this was, but we loved it. It was a joy, we were so happy to have the opportunity to finally make this film. But within that, it's like, holy crap, this is, but we knew that's what we were heading into. But at the end, it was like, oh, we did it.

• 1:11:36Speaker 06

  You know, the, the thing that Rick's talking about, which is really, really, truly remarkable, I think, is that he didn't, it wouldn't be an honor and it wouldn't be fun if we didn't do our absolute best. And so he has to be discerning with somebody that he knows really well. He's also spent 30 years of me complaining about directors, right? And soon as I know you don't like this, but I have to, I have, if I don't say this right now, we cannot return to this moment. This is not as good as it needs to be. And I have to be humble enough to hear it and, and not lose my confidence, you know?

• 1:12:14Speaker 06

  And that's, that's, and one of the things that I think what Glenn is talking about perhaps is that Rick can, because Rick's an athlete, Rick can be extremely direct without being malicious. There's no, sometimes you sense in directors or producers, a desire to, um, oh, to be crass, to pee on your shoulders or something, just to have dominance. And, um, and that is, creates an atmosphere of.

• 1:12:50Speaker 06

  Competitiveness, aggression. Rick is not, Rick, you genuinely feel he wants you to excel. And so, and you know, he doesn't like being mean or critical. So if he's, I would have to do this. I remember when I was directing Maya, I had to explain, listen, obviously I want to say great job.

• 1:13:12Speaker 07

  I have every incentive in the world.

• 1:13:14Speaker 06

  That is what I want to say.

• 1:13:15Speaker 07

  But.

• 1:13:16Speaker 06

  But I can't yet. So don't, I'm not being mean. I'm not telling you you're doing something wrong. I'm telling you it can be better. And it's not as good as I know it needs to be, to be before we're done today. And so there's this that, but that doesn't mean it wasn't. But I do think it's so important. I remember, I remember this, um, it pops in my brain about, he's standing on a beach somewhere and they, they're asking John Lennon before he died, like, would you ever play with Paul McCartney again? And he says, play what?

• 1:13:48Speaker 06

  He's like, I, I definitely would.

• 1:13:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:13:50Speaker 06

  Like if, if, but it's, it's what? And it's not that, we can be friends every day of the year. What do we want to make together? Do we want it to make this together? Well, it has to be the best movie he can see and has to, like, we have to actually work to. That's what I thought what John was saying was like, I call him John.

• 1:14:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:14:08Speaker 06

  Yeah. But I think what he, I, I always liked that answer because you, you could see in the answer that if there was a cool idea, he would jump on it. But it wasn't just to be together. The point can't be that we're like together. Then you're making Cannonball Run Five, you know?

• 1:14:26Speaker 07

  Well.

• 1:14:26Sean Fennessey?

  We would watch your version of Cannonball Five. What, why was, so I, I think I understand why you wanted to do this and why you loved Larry. But why did, why did you want to tell this story?

• 1:14:38Speaker 07

  Well, the same reasons. I love Lorenz Hart, you know? I've been a big fan all these years, since my twenties, when I discovered his music, I would say. And, uh, when Robert told me he was writing a story about him, because I knew, I knew a little bit about his life, kind of the, you know, a little bit of the tragedy and.

• 1:14:59Speaker 07

  Rogers moved on and he was a beloved character. You know, if you ask anyone, okay Rogers, Heart or Hammerstein? Almost everyone says Heart as the lyrics.

• 1:15:08Speaker 06

  Musicians, yeah.

• 1:15:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, but the shows, you gotta go with Hammerstein. Those are still performed. His, it's a different era, different era, different time. But there's something endearing about Heart. And so just his life and what I read in the script is something that we never, isn't expressed much or talked about in artistic world, you know, circles. But it's kind of that an artist would have an expiration date, that you could be left behind, not only by your collaborators, but by the times. It kind of lingers in your mind. It's something kind of sad and poignant about like an athlete's career comes to an end just biologically. You know, no ballerina or gymnast or even ball player thinks they're gonna be playing at 60

• 1:15:52Speaker 07

  or 50 or, you know, but every artist thinks, yeah, no, I love this. I'm gonna do this forever. And in certain arts, particularly performing arts, film, theater, it can sort of be taken away from you. They can just not fund you. You can fall out of vogue, you know, you can, yeah, you need that support. So it was, I always, when I first read what Robert sent me, I said, oh, this is like the sad little howl into the night by an artist being left behind.

• 1:16:18Speaker 06

  He said that to me the first time on the phone, we were talking about it.

• 1:16:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's a funny witty, but it was kind of like, oh, that's such an interesting for a movie to be about, a guy who's kind of at the end. He even says it in the movie in different ways.

• 1:16:33Speaker 06

  Forgotten, but not gone.

• 1:16:34Speaker 07

  Yes, that was my tagline. Yeah, so I don't know, I just loved it. It was portrait of art and that time, you know, it's such a fascinating little moment in musical theater history. I love that period. I love all the music. So it's hard to say what, what makes you want to make a movie. But it definitely got into me, this character. And also the utter challenge on how to make it work. Can this even be a movie?

• 1:16:58Speaker 06

  One room, you know, like, is that a movie? Most would say no, and people did say no for a long time. But, you know, we got it made. So it's a little cinematic challenge, but really a storytelling. You know, it's hard to say what makes you wanna wanna tell a particular story.

• 1:17:15Sean Fennessey?

  I have some questions about the how you did it, the the single location idea. But before that, it definitely does feel like a second half of your life movie. You know, and I feel like it will resonate more deeply with people who are like, am I at the end of this or is the end coming closer? And obviously, the film is sets that up too for for.

• 1:17:31Speaker 06

  The film itself is a final act.

• 1:17:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:17:35Speaker 06

  But Larry Hart didn't make the transition into the second half of his life. You know, I I see that with some of my friends. You know, you you have to keep growing and you have to keep changing and adapting. You know, maintain your curiosity and maintain your health and these these things that require a certain vigilance to weather the vicissitudes of life, you know? And Larry didn't make that turn. And I do think that that's haunting to people like us who dream of doing this at 80. And my brain is, since I was young, my brain is, why, you know, why is Stopper so great in his 80s? Why is, you know, why is this?

• 1:18:19Speaker 06

  Why is Dylan still making relevant music? Why, what happened to so many? Why did they lose? Why did this filmmaker? Why is first three movies amazing? What what is it? Is it and is it? Is it them? Is it their instrument? Or is it the times losing interest? And you my brain is fascinated by that. Or it's the old personal demons. We're watching an alcoholic kind of put himself on the bench. You know, that's for sure. Let's not forget that. Yeah. So, yeah, a lot of the people you go, what happened? It's like, oh, you know, they didn't help themselves.

• 1:18:50Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have? Do you have any fears about the time running out or not being able to do all the things that you want to do?

• 1:18:56Speaker 06

  I don't.

• 1:18:58Speaker 07

  Illogically so.

• 1:19:00Sean Fennessey?

  Do you?

• 1:19:00Speaker 06

  Well.

• 1:19:01Speaker 07

  I mean, I definitely feel like I'm motivated to just keep doing what I'm doing, but.

• 1:19:06Speaker 06

  But one of the other things is that you don't give the responsibility of your own creativity to anybody else.

• 1:19:13Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:19:14Speaker 06

  Meaning, the industry could very well just totally dismiss both of us at the.

• 1:19:19Speaker 07

  I feel like it has, you know, that's not.

• 1:19:22Speaker 06

  But it wouldn't stop you from making things. It would never, I mean, I remember somebody said that about.

• 1:19:27Speaker 07

  That's true.

• 1:19:28Speaker 06

  Paul Schrader, if you put him in jail, he'd come out with a movie.

• 1:19:32Speaker 07

  He would write it, he would have some.

• 1:19:33Speaker 06

  And that's the way I feel about Rick, it's like, not, that's not gonna, I, I don't, you, you don't even need the world to care, you're going to do it. And, and I always feel if you left me alone, I would do something.

• 1:19:49Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:19:49Speaker 06

  I don't, I don't put that much weight on people's responses to the work. I love, you know, obviously, I love a compliment, I love it, and, and I live for it, but it's not my main motivator.

• 1:20:04Speaker 07

  I mean, that really defines our 30-plus-year collaboration. It's like, we both are excited, you know, we always have stories we're trying to tell, characters we love, we're exchanging ideas, some things become a potential movie, you know, others don't, but, yeah, and, you know, we're just always kind of sailing forward.

• 1:20:24Speaker 06

  I did an interview the other day with somebody who's a lot younger than, than you and I are, and, and he said, well, it must have been so hard for the fans of Before Sunrise to wait nine years for the next one, I was like, there weren't any.

• 1:20:37Speaker 07

  Fans, wait, no one wanted a sequel.

• 1:20:40Speaker 06

  The only people that wanted that sequel were you and I, truly.

• 1:20:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, and Lauren Schaefer, Casper.

• 1:20:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:45Speaker 07

  Maybe Johnson, yeah, there was about five people on the planet.

• 1:20:48Speaker 06

  He couldn't quite register, like, wait, oh, then why was there a sequel, because we really like ourselves.

• 1:20:53Speaker 07

  Yeah. Now, that was our tagline, the, the least successful film to ever. Spawn a sequel.

• 1:21:00Sean Fennessey?

  Proved to be a smart move, though, in retrospect. The other movie that I was thinking about is Tape. And the idea of a single location and a smaller cast and, you know, that's, it's been a long time since that movie and the like, the challenge of that movie too.

• 1:21:16Speaker 06

  That's a great point to your question about how have we changed? Not much.

• 1:21:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:21Speaker 07

  One room, no problem. Real time, let's do it.

• 1:21:24Speaker 06

  This film was a lot more challenging, it's period. The verbiage, the ideas at play.

• 1:21:34Speaker 06

  But we learned a tremendous amount on tape that I think was really valuable for this movie.

• 1:21:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, not that we did that for any other reason than to do that movie. But years later, it's like, oh, this is kind of our bigger version of that. It's good to have gone through that too, because that's, that from a production standpoint is completely reliant on the actors being able to. Because we shot that in six days. We shot this in a whopping 15 days. So it's completely reliant on the actors being able to just kind of, us be able to shoot for seven minutes straight. And, you know, I have two cameras and that's just kind of the technical. We can't be fumbling around figuring out what we're doing. We have to shoot all day. And I have to get long stretches of dialogue.

• 1:22:20Speaker 07

  And we can do as many takes as we need, but it has to start off pretty close to perfect.

• 1:22:25Speaker 06

  But your, your desire, interest and curiosity to rehearse, meaning some directors really get bored without a camera in their hand. They just, but, but Rick can work for a long time before he picks up the camera. And, and work, and that's what makes doing seven minute, 11 minute, 14 minute, 17 minute takes possible. Because we've, we've talked about and worked on the nuances of the performance, the ins and outs of where the pauses are, where the rests are, when it needs to speed up, when it needs to slow down. It's like, what's so thrilling about as an actor is you're a part of the filmmaking process. Because he's not, and your relationship with Sandra, his editor is amazing and they do amazing work together. But we're invited into that process of like,

• 1:23:10Speaker 06

  He would like to edit the movie based on what the best cut is, not to edit around your performance, you know, like.

• 1:23:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, I never feel like I'm constructing it in post or we're putting anything together. It has to work on the day. It's always self-evident right in front of us. So, and I just enjoy that collaboration too, because you find everything. I can't imagine making a movie where you just start. Plus, I'm nervous with the crew standing around while we create and while we.

• 1:23:38Speaker 06

  It feels indulgent, I know.

• 1:23:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, like, we have to talk intimately about every little thing and you find so much. You know, even, it's amazing what on the page doesn't really, it works on the page and then in the room, it just doesn't work because it's not real, you know? We're all looking at each other like, oh, we're doing, this is a big opening night party. What's missing? It's like, oh, all the interruptions.

• 1:24:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:24:03Speaker 07

  Wasn't really in the script. All the people, hey, Dick, great show. You know, you can't talk 45 seconds to someone at your own opening before someone else. And like, that wasn't even in there at all. Like, yeah, what's not working? So we kind of.

• 1:24:15Speaker 06

  Why? And that reminded me of like, one of my favorite things about Philip Seymour Hoffman is he would often stop in rehearsal and go, why is this fake?

• 1:24:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, what's wrong here?

• 1:24:23Speaker 06

  What is it? Is it the line? Is it, is it the?

• 1:24:26Speaker 07

  The first thing you have to realize what's not.

• 1:24:29Speaker 06

  It's just, it's like he could smell, something doesn't smell right. Is it the way I'm sitting? Is it the costume? Is it the set? Should we be standing? Should we be further apart? Or is it the dialogue? Is it, you know, am I not in the right emotional space? And that's where good things happen, when you sniff that out and then get rid of it.

• 1:24:50Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to ask you something about your performance. So, a lot of, it seems like, hearts, when a view, artistry is born of this like, self-hatred, or this sense of his own maybe ugliness, and, you know, you have to transform physically in the film. But I suspect that maybe you don't have the same relationship to your own appearance. You've been a star for a long time, and that's a, that's a very difficult place to get to mentally of like, that level of.

• 1:25:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:25:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's self hatred, you know.

• 1:25:21Speaker 07

  There's a self-loathing for your own body. Cause well, no one's ever noticed, no one's ever wanted you. That was the, we talked about that.

• 1:25:27Speaker 06

  Well, this is a great.

• 1:25:28Speaker 07

  You don't understand, like, no one has ever wanted to be with you.

• 1:25:33Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:25:34Speaker 07

  For your, for your body. You have this incredible wit, mind, people love you in a certain way.

• 1:25:38Speaker 06

  But not that way.

• 1:25:39Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah, so that's a huge leap.

• 1:25:42Speaker 06

  One of the things we laughed about was, um, and this, this was the real challenge for me is, is a great story. Mike Nichols would tell about, um, Redford really wanted to be in The Graduate. You remember this story?

• 1:25:53Speaker 07

  Right, yeah.

• 1:25:54Speaker 06

  And, and, and, and Redford called him up and said, he's like, I really like this script. And, and Mike said, well, I love your work, but let me ask you a question. You know that feeling when like you meet a girl and you ask for her number and she doesn't want to give it to you? And Redford goes, what do you mean? And, and, and he goes, that's exactly why I can't cast you.

• 1:26:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:26:13Speaker 06

  You know?

• 1:26:14Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:26:14Speaker 06

  And, and, um.

• 1:26:15Speaker 07

  Me too.

• 1:26:16Speaker 06

  But I'm at a place in my life where one of the things that acting has taught me is that, um, our experiences in life are not nearly as unique as we think they are. In that we have the capability to understand each other and our, our powers of empathy, um, are, are very strong. And that I do know, I do not know what it's like to have rejection every day. I know what rejection feels like and I can imagine what that would be like, like you get. I've been punched in the face. I haven't been punched in the face 90 times in the same day. Larry Hart has, but I can, I can have empathy for that and I can embody that.

• 1:26:58Speaker 06

  And that is part of the wonderful part of my job is putting on other people's clothes, looking through another keyhole at life. And the powers, our imaginative powers are so, so powerful. And you can, and if things in a film, when Bobby's treating me a certain way and Margaret's treating me a certain way, and the dialogue is right, and there's this, the yeast starts to rise and there's this thing that starts to happen, um, that.

• 1:27:31Speaker 06

  It can have the stuff of magic to it where you really can, I really felt for him. And I definitely understand the feeling of being misunderstood and trying to express yourself and being rejected and to try to pour that into the performance and make that real. I don't know, I just really wanted to do it.

• 1:27:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, anybody, any artists, actors in particular, I think finding a connection with someone is, that's never the problem. I think we're all got our antennas out there and in this case, a little rejection, who hasn't been rejected? And a little bit of that goes a long way. And so you look to someone and it's like, oh, their whole life. You know, we all grow up with people or we see someone who have certain things about them that it's like, oh, wow, what would that be like? An artist goes through their whole life going, what would that be like? Oh, my God, that's a whole nother world. That's a whole nother thing. It was fun to see you, once you were five feet tall, looking up at everybody. You're

• 1:28:36Speaker 07

  like, holy crap, it's a different world.

• 1:28:39Speaker 06

  It's, yeah.

• 1:28:39Speaker 07

  When you're looking up at the world and you're not-

• 1:28:42Speaker 06

  And the world is so heinous, it's amazing.

• 1:28:44Speaker 07

  Yeah, I could just see it come over him. It was like, oh, yeah.

• 1:28:46Sean Fennessey?

  Try to not let that get in the way.

• 1:28:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:28:50Sean Fennessey?

  I'm curious, Rick, for you this year, two films set in the past, two films about artists. You know, you've done things like this before. You mentioned Robert wrote the book that me and Orson Welles is based on. You've been in these worlds before, but what does that indicate to you about where you're at in your life that these are the things that are so compelling to you?

• 1:29:07Speaker 07

  Well, these were two longstanding, long gestating projects that they just happened to come. I shot them back to back and they kind of came out near the same time. But it were just two stories I really wanted to tell, two places in history I really wanted to drop back in on. And I think I've done that a number of times, not only to, in a nonfiction way, but even in the fictional worlds I've created, like, even if it's a college or high school comedy I've done, I'm doing the same thing. I'm dropping a camera back into a moment in time saying, this is what it was like. And it's fun to do that if that moment in time is my own life, but it's even more fun to drop it in to a moment

• 1:29:49Speaker 07

  that, before I was born, and imagining, oh, what it must have felt like. Like, to me, that's, that's really magical and fun, that kind of-

• 1:29:58Speaker 06

  Creative, constructive element of that, to put that together historically. And so, yeah. And with Nouvelle Vague, just the filmmaking aspect of that, the cinephile heaven that that represented to me. So that was fun. I mean, these films are clearly in some kind of conversation with each other. You know, Blue Moon's the end of an artistic career. Nouvelle Vague's the beginning of one. And, but, you know, portraits of two, two amazing 20th century artists, that's for sure. So, I don't know. I just.

• 1:30:31Sean Fennessey?

  I want to ask you a big, open-ended question about this, okay?

• 1:30:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:30:35Sean Fennessey?

  So I was thinking about this idea that you're suggesting, which is that Blue Moon's about the end of something, Nouvelle Vague's about the beginning of something. I think among a lot of film fans, there's a concern that we're at the end of something. That, or maybe something already ended and not everyone knows.

• 1:30:48Speaker 06

  Guess what the great news about that is? If they're right, you know, every departure is an arrival. So no sooner does something end than invariably, something else has to begin. I feel really strongly that, that something, I, I feel this, and maybe it's just my nature, but with the ways in which things are moving right now, it's like, oh, you know what's about to happen? Things are about to get really exciting. I, I think with this thing about, I think, I, I see a lot of the young, I have a lot of young people in my life, and I see them getting absolutely sick of manipulated images, of stupidity, of they're getting tired of short attention span theater.

• 1:31:33Speaker 06

  It's not like we're going to rebel from a lot of what's happening. I think politically, emotionally, artistically, we're, we all operate in an interconnected community way, you know, like the, it was funny, I got to see, there was, um, Scorsese produced a documentary, he was giving a talk back and he was talking about the early period of his career and how he just thought, oh, God, everybody's over using the word masterpiece. Every damn movie is a masterpiece. And he's like, it was. He's like, I was living through this amazing 10 years. Yeah, looking back, a lot of masterpieces. Oh, wow. Yeah, Bergman, Godard, you know, just, you know, Hal Ashby, he's like, actually, these are. Your friends, your godfathers, yeah.

• 1:32:15Speaker 06

  It was, these were phenomenal films and that happens because a collective thing is happening and not just with the artistic community, with the audiences. You know, the audiences have to care about David Bowie. They have to think that's cool. They have to be interested in John Cage. They have to be interested in Frank Zappa. They have to be interested in Miles Davis. They have to be like, and that, and that makes the money people want to make more of it, you know, and there's this, so we, we operate together, you know, and, and this, and I do feel there are more and more, as we kind of get depleted, and I think what you're talking about is kind of an exhale, but the good news about that is there's about to be a giant inhale. And I do feel it coming. I, I feel it politically too.

• 1:33:00Speaker 06

  Do you feel that?

• 1:33:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I just, no film history, let's just talk about film, because I think that was your, like, is it over, is, do films matter in the culture and all that stuff? And we've always been under existential threat. You know, if you really look at the last 70 years, it's always, there's threats and I think whenever technology and art and commerce intertwine, there's a lot of jobs threatened. There's a lot of challenges always. So it has our little amygdalas going all the time. You know, it was like, TV, oh, that's the end of that, that's the end of that. Oh, you know, video is going to kill, you know,

• 1:33:43Speaker 07

  so it's always been that. But, you know, we're, there's a, there's a bigger threat in the world and it, it could be the thing that interrupts what you're talking about, the audience and the thing and what people want. We have an adversary now that is coming after our attention and consciousness in a way that we, hasn't before. So I think that's the great interrupter. That's what, up to each individual to kind of. Stifle that.

• 1:34:10Speaker 06

  To rebel against the algorithm.

• 1:34:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, you gotta save yourself. You gotta admit you're addicted. We just need a group session. You know, like, no, you have to put that down. You have to. But I'm seeing it a lot. You know, I'm a film society in Austin. I sell these young people, just when you thought, oh, they grew up watching, you know, YouTube and TikTok and that. Audience is full at the theater of young people in their twenties, really discovering movies, the history movies, current movies, out in the lobby, talking about them, having a drink with friends, community. So each individual has to kind of save themselves by participating in community and humanity and art and giving a shit and realizing, oh, that's a fun life.

• 1:34:52Speaker 07

  Wherever you fall in the spectrum of art or just appreciator of art or consumer, just no, it's more fun to be engaged with art and other people. And, you know, so that's how you save your own soul. But there is a, there is an opposition. There is an enemy out there who, who wants something else from you.

• 1:35:11Speaker 06

  If I can, I'll, I'll risk telling a personal story. I hope you don't mind, which is, was one of the best things that happened to me this year is we were at Telluride Film Festival and we went on a long hike with my kids and my two daughters were working Rick over in front of the wall complaining that their mother and father were trying to limit their screen time and, and asking, you know, that they thought it would be better that they learned control over their own screen. It's not that they thought that I should just have unlimited screen time, but they thought we need to be able to monitor ourselves. We need permission to do this. And Rick said, well, you know, that's, that's an interesting point, but the real goal,

• 1:35:54Speaker 06

  I'm paraphrasing, but he said something like this, which was, is to be your own best friend. And that phone is getting in the way of you being your own best friend. Cause if you have, if you're your own best friend, then your best friend's always with you.

• 1:36:09Speaker 06

  And this algorithm and this thing is this giant distraction.

• 1:36:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, to follow your own instincts.

• 1:36:15Speaker 06

  Your own instincts.

• 1:36:15Speaker 07

  That book led to that movie, led to that book.

• 1:36:18Speaker 06

  Thinking about, and you were talking about, you were telling Clementine about passing through that space of boredom that feels uncomfortable. It's this liminal space of what the world calls boredom. And when you come through it, oh, hours can disappear and it's your own mind. It's your own mind that leads you to these beautiful thoughts and beautiful things. And now you're in control of where your mind is going, not an algorithm that's trying to sell you something, right? And, and, and then you, when you're through that space, there's your best friend right over there. Just pass through that doorway. It takes but a second, you know? And it really had a big impact on them. And, and I think that's, that's the true adversary.

• 1:37:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, that used to be the thing, finding yourself. That was the cliche for the last several generations. You know, the hippies were like, I'm gonna find myself. Well, you're not gonna find yourself today. That's not, you're gonna find yourself, you know, being delivered to advertisers. That's always been the thing. It used to be via TV and radio. Now it's this thing that's attached to you. So it's more, time to be more vigilant than ever. But yeah, that always needs to be in the air.

• 1:37:28Sean Fennessey?

  I have one layer, more layer for that question. So one thing I found maybe 10 years ago, when we would have a conversation like this, we would, we would point it at your kids, my kid, younger generations having this problem. I always think of you as one of the great daydreamer filmmakers. I can see you in a room, coming up with an idea, just sitting there quietly. But I find that I am more distracted than ever. I don't know if you're more distracted. Like, I'm finding it harder to just sit there quietly.

• 1:37:54Speaker 06

  I'm enjoying this conversation as further ammunition to give me the energy. Yeah. I've, I was, among my friends, I, I was one of the last to give in to a cellphone. Like, people would text me and I would be like, why, what are you even doing?

• 1:38:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm never gonna send a text. I'm never gonna. I'm never gonna do that.

• 1:38:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, I remember, I remember, I remember saying to a friend, I said, I know cell phones are catching on in LA. That's, that's never gonna fly in New York. What was I talking about? And, and I feel, um, one of the great joys of people talk like the amount of verbiage I had to learn for Blue Moon, for example, and I, I, it was, one of the things I remember most about the summer was the fact that I didn't look at my phone hardly at all because I would, I had too much work to do.

• 1:38:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:38:43Speaker 06

  But, oh, the, the, the space in my memory it occupies now of just being in my dressing room. You know, I would, I would, I would roll the set, make some texts in the car, going over there, set the phone down, change, leave it in there. And I wouldn't pick it up till we wrapped, you know? And on the drive home, I'd look at it. But the day actually felt so much more expansive without looking at it. You don't realize how it's contracting your brain. And, um, I know it's boring. We're all thinking the same thing.

• 1:39:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:39:10Speaker 06

  But I think we do need to give each other like permission to, uh, to rebel.

• 1:39:14Speaker 07

  Yeah, but no, you feel it. Do I have the patience like I used to to lay around and read all day? It's like, no, what's this little thing in me that's kind of jumpy, a little irritated, a little, no, I'm gonna get up and, I'm gonna check the news feed.

• 1:39:28Sean Fennessey?

  That's the number one thing I'm struggling with at this stage is like, I would roll through 50 books a year. And now if it's 10, it's shocking. And that's just a huge change.

• 1:39:36Speaker 07

  Huge.

• 1:39:37Speaker 06

  Well, it's really, really impacting society. I mean, when you think about, I mean, even, uh, you know, the, a literary star, we haven't had a literary star like we used to have, um, you know, um, because, because literature is not the way that we're communicating and that's a huge loss. You know, I just read Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping. It's an old book to this day. And I was like, It felt to read literary fiction again, it literally felt like, oh,

• 1:40:07Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:08Speaker 06

  Well, there you are. There's my true, like, because she was speaking to me in a way that I, that made my soul feel like it mattered, that my experiences are part of a collective experience that actually is significant. And what I think about a rainstorm and what I think about my daughter and what I think about actually has some substantive value like I, and I was like, oh, right. Nobody's talking to me in this way. There is great paragraphs I'd have to read three times. And the third time I read it, I was like, oh, so glad I read it the third time. It was worth it. You know, the power of the language, the power of the ideas were not easily understood. And they were better because of it.

• 1:40:49Speaker 07

  Right. Yeah, that was the delivery system. It was novels, it was poetry, it was films, it was, yeah, the interrupter there. If you're gonna get all paranoid, big picture, it's like, yeah, if they can, you know, the way you go after institutions, if you can go after all the art forms and make them just not that relevant, oh, you got a whole nother population here. So we all have to stick up for our art forms and give them that kind of,

• 1:41:21Speaker 07

  that space, they, they're, they're still there. They are writing the novels. People are making the movies and writing the poetry. It's just, it's up to everyone to elevate.

• 1:41:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's, it's, for me personally, it's a little nuanced because what you're describing requires not just focus, but consideration. And that's, the consideration is the, that's why I like doing this show.

• 1:41:43Speaker 06

  Well, that's the invitation. It's an invitation for you, you know, that's what I feel like, what I like about when I feel like a movie is made well or a book is made well. It's an invitation for you, the audience, to join us in this conversation. It, it, it's not telling you what to think. It's, it's, the audience is a part of that. I felt that way when I was a kid watching One for the Cuckoo's Nest or something. It's not telling me, when, when the chief is running into the woods and those drums are playing and there's the broken window with the sink that's through it. And I'm like, I'm looking at that going, what does this mean? It doesn't, it's not clear. Like, wait, it's better than clear. It's the great, you know, it's the mystery.

• 1:42:26Speaker 06

  Things without mystery have no power. Mystery is the reality. We do not know why we're born and why we have to die. We are, we are living inside immense mystery. And this illusion is that you have some control or power or that you like. Things that invite mystery are off. They're giving you a chance to consider it yourself. The artist isn't right or wrong. It's what do you think? And now we're in dialogue together. And that's what made those movies or those albums or those books, things that you could revisit.

• 1:42:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, but, you know, new waves are always in opposition to the status quo, the mainstream. Our particular mainstream of this era, as we talked about, great novels and stuff. You realize, well, those novels used to be on talk shows. You know, they used to be part of the culture. That's a producer, an editor, people are making those choices like, let's, oh yeah, it's a great book. It's the book of the year. It's the best book I've read. But our audience doesn't, you know, they don't, they don't occupy the spot on the talk show at night. But let's give that to some 21 year old who has a million followers, who did this thing.

• 1:43:35Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:43:35Speaker 07

  Cause that's going to get the eyeballs. So, you know, it's just straight up money. But that's something to rebel against for sure. Cause we have to, first you have to admit the mainstream is overall pretty weak.

• 1:43:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. Ironically, one of my hobbies is watching those interviews on Dick Cavett.

• 1:43:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:43:54Sean Fennessey?

  On YouTube though, but in a space where you're being assaulted at all times with other things to look at.

• 1:43:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, but it's there as a record, a historical record. Look who's on the Dick Cavett show that night. And you have three different people like, oh my God, what a lineup. And that's what the world wanted to, they wanted to converse and hear from them.

• 1:44:10Speaker 06

  Right. It's one of the great things about like, when I was making The Last Movie Star, it's that documentary about Paul Newman. Is I got to watch all those old talk shows and see the other people before and after and see how meandering they were and how intelligent they were and they.

• 1:44:26Speaker 07

  It was the position they had in the culture was exciting. Like, who has that now? You know, even room for public intellectuals and.

• 1:44:34Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean? You guys are here right now. We're doing it. We're doing the work.

• 1:44:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, people like that.

• 1:44:38Speaker 06

  We're here and we're grateful to be here.

• 1:44:40Speaker 07

  You gotta flip it. Yeah, it is this, the, the podcast era is kind of, that is that now. That's where people get together and talk. So, you know.

• 1:44:49Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks for contributing to this.

• 1:44:50Speaker 07

  Gotta be grateful for that. No, things we, we lament what's not there, but what is here.

• 1:44:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, this is here.

• 1:44:55Speaker 07

  This, there, there's a whole new thing. You just have to, you know, you can't really.

• 1:44:59Speaker 06

  I mean, yeah, you're absolutely right. Like oftentimes we don't see what's good. I listened to, I think I called you after, but I listened to Ken Burns, um, who's got this revolution documentary coming out. Listen to him on Joe Rogan for two and a half hours. It was brilliant.

• 1:45:12Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:45:12Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, it was as, as good as anything we're mourning. It was amazing, staggeringly intelligent conversation.

• 1:45:18Speaker 07

  There's never been a medium that gave people that space to talk, you know? Thirty minutes on Dick Cavett is one thing, but even the radio shows back then weren't, they were commercial programs. Yeah, you didn't get, you respond to talk about your book for five minutes or something, but it was not the space and time to talk, so.

• 1:45:35Sean Fennessey?

  Everything's terrible. Everything's great.

• 1:45:36Speaker 06

  I know, I know. It's always, it's, you know.

• 1:45:39Sean Fennessey?

  Um, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen? Doesn't have to be on YouTube, obviously. If you guys seen anything good that you like. You were in Telluride? You were in Telluride?

• 1:45:52Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, the last thing I, I have to say, this is going to be kind of annoying, but I did just watch Vin Vender's American Friend.

• 1:46:00Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:46:01Speaker 06

  And I have to say, it's like, that photography is unbelievable.

• 1:46:08Sean Fennessey?

  Was that Robbie Mueller?

• 1:46:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:46:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, that was, yeah.

• 1:46:10Speaker 06

  It's, it's, I, I personally wish I was really good friends with them and I could have done a second draft of the script.

• 1:46:17Speaker 06

  It was like some plot holes.

• 1:46:18Sean Fennessey?

  He's not interested in the details of her story.

• 1:46:21Speaker 06

  Dennis Hopper and those images, um, they're like, they're, it's like, wow. And it's not flashy photography. It's just stunning, absolutely stunning. Um.

• 1:46:35Speaker 07

  That's a great pick. I love that movie.

• 1:46:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, this is a big question because I have modern stuff and then.

• 1:46:42Speaker 07

  Anything you like.

• 1:46:43Speaker 06

  You know, I watched Story of Adele H. recently.

• 1:46:46Speaker 07

  The Truffaut film.

• 1:46:47Speaker 06

  And I hadn't seen that lately and it was just as beautiful and.

• 1:46:51Speaker 07

  I talked to Noah Baumack yesterday and he recommended a Truffaut film as well.

• 1:46:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:46:54Speaker 07

  Small change. That's funny.

• 1:46:55Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Truffaut never goes away.

• 1:46:57Speaker 07

  Never goes away.

• 1:46:58Speaker 06

  He's the guy, you know, for forever. And then current, you know, like everybody, one battle after another.

• 1:47:05Speaker 07

  Things like that, you know, gotta, gotta give it up.

• 1:47:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, I had, this has been happening for many years, but my just hat is so off to DiCaprio.

• 1:47:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:47:17Speaker 06

  Who.

• 1:47:17Speaker 07

  Holy shit.

• 1:47:18Speaker 06

  He's just such a leader in, in my profession and he's.

• 1:47:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:47:22Speaker 06

  It's, it's just been staggering to watch, just really, really inventive, thrilling work. You can like one, love one, dislike one, but they're always worth your time. They're always bold. They're always daring.

• 1:47:35Speaker 07

  Paul together in this is just.

• 1:47:37Speaker 06

  Just.

• 1:47:37Speaker 07

  Amazing.

• 1:47:38Speaker 06

  Just fantastic. And I also thought, Emma Stone, Begonia, I thought, I was like, wow, who is this woman? She just keeps being great. And it's, it's nonstop. And so hats off to.

• 1:47:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, but there's so much. There's always, you know, I never rag on. Every year is a good year for film. Worldwide, there's always a lot of films, more than most people have time to even watch, that are always great.

• 1:48:06Sean Fennessey?

  Blue Moon is great, too. Thank you both for being here.

• 1:48:09Speaker 06

  Thanks.

• 1:48:09Speaker 07

  Congrats on the film.

• 1:48:16Speaker 07

  Thank you to Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater. Thank you to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Later this week, what do we have, Amanda?

• 1:48:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Number four from 25 for 25, which we recorded several weeks ago at the Egyptian Theater, or at least a week ago. And as of this recording, has not been leaked that I know of.

• 1:48:34Speaker 07

  Nor I. Why do you think that is?

• 1:48:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Because we, we built a society of trust.

• 1:48:40Speaker 07

  You think that the listeners are afraid of you?

• 1:48:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think that I led with fear. I think I led with inspiration. I invoked Beyonce and I invoked mutual respect. And I gave people an opportunity for their clout photo. And then you gave them some Letterboxd how to. So, you know, we're creating a safe space.

• 1:49:00Sean Fennessey?

  I think the pick is good and I hope people enjoy it. We'll see you then.

• 1:49:22Speaker 06

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• 1:49:51Speaker 07

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