The Physical Media High Council Reconvenes!

Hear ye, hear ye! Gather 'round for the (somewhat) annual reconvening of the illustrious Physical Media High Council! Grand Maester Fennessey is joined by his three lords, Chris Ryan, first knight Timothy “Hitmaker” Simons, and the king of physical media Tracy Letts, to discuss the state of collecting and share some of their personal favorites from their respective collections (00:06). Then, they open up the mailbag to answer all of your questions regarding how to organize a collection, detailed breakdowns of their personal at-home setups, and share their individual 4K “grails” (1:35:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Executive Producer: Amanda Dobbins Guests: Chris Ryan, Tracy Letts, and Tim Simons Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro-football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 1:30Sean Fennessey?

  This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail-biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with the big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime.

• 2:10Sean Fennessey?

  It is I, Sean Fennessy, Grand Maester of the Physical Media High Council. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about that physical media. I am honored to be joined by the three Lords, the three leaders, the three guiding lights of this endeavor. Of course, Igor, Chris Ryan, here to help us with his chemistry.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  Just let out of my room in the basement.

• 2:35Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. The First Knight, Timothy Hitmaker Simons.

• 2:38Speaker 05

  Sire.

• 2:39Sean Fennessey?

  And the King of Physical Media, Tracy Letts.

• 2:42Speaker 06

  Please, please.

• 2:44Sean Fennessey?

  Gents, thanks for reconvening today. This is a semi-annual tradition.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:49Sean Fennessey?

  This is the second time this quartet has come together for this endeavor. As you can see, we're taking it very seriously. Chris, how are you feeling about how you look right now?

• 2:59Speaker 04

  Uh, I'm worried that I either look like a chronic masturbator, public masturbator, or some kind of like guy who got the wrong Big Lebowski robe on eBay, but is still going with it. What do you think?

• 3:14Speaker 05

  I hope.

• 3:15Sean Fennessey?

  Masturbator, I think is the answer, yeah.

• 3:16Speaker 05

  I hope that when you take the robe off, you still don't also look like a public masturbator, like, oh shit, it wasn't the robe.

• 3:22Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have clothes on under the robe?

• 3:24Speaker 04

  I do, yeah.

• 3:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, good, good. Uh, Tim, how are you feeling?

• 3:27Speaker 05

  I'm feeling great. As I texted many times, I'm like, really, I've really been looking forward to this. Yeah. What I, uh, off mic just a moment ago, I was saying, and Tracy, I don't know if this happens to you, like, I feel like we've both done like, public work that people have seen. But I feel like I get recognized so much just for this episode. Like, people coming up to me, asking me, like, what are the, what are your grails? Like, in public, I have been asked that question. Has that been happening to you?

• 3:56Speaker 06

  Uh, it does happen to me. I don't go out in public much, but, you know, Carrie was just doing, I played Bug on Broadway, and she would go out and sign programs after the show. And she said, every night, there was one... Person there was like.

• 4:11Speaker 04

  One guy.

• 4:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, I loved it. Wasn't always a guy.

• 4:14Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, how exciting.

• 4:15Speaker 06

  Loved the physical media podcast. Loved the, you know, loved listening to Big Pick, blah, blah.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  Oh, that's great.

• 4:21Sean Fennessey?

  How wonderful. How are you feeling about this, this project? You feel like at home, you feel safe? You feel like in your, you're in your kingdom?

• 4:28Speaker 06

  I, I feel like I'm doing my job. This is my job. I used to be a playwright and actor.

• 4:40Speaker 06

  Now those are hobbies. Those are sidelines. Next to my, my full-time job of podcaster and physical media collector.

• 4:49Speaker 04

  I think we can all safely say that nothing you've ever written stands close to what your, your physical media collection is.

• 4:55Speaker 06

  Safely. Yeah, I can safely say it.

• 4:57Speaker 05

  Are we gonna hash out the third chair fight today, or is this just gonna be ongoing?

• 5:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's not for me to answer. I think there are two gentlemen here.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  So you just wanna see open combat?

• 5:07Speaker 05

  I wanna, yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  This is not, honestly, not my king. My king would do things differently.

• 5:12Sean Fennessey?

  Well, this is the, the real king here, so you can speak with him, you know?

• 5:15Speaker 06

  This isn't the forum to address that question.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  This is about love and sharing.

• 5:21Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think you could grow a beard the way that Tracy has? Cause that's actually under consideration for third chairdom.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  No, I mean, obviously like, you know, I'm follicularly challenged when it comes to that. No, I have like, actually, it's just very faint. But I was, I was growing a little bit of, of, I've been in, watching Takashi Miike movies for three days stubble. But I guess it didn't really translate.

• 5:41Sean Fennessey?

  We gotta get you a beard cam so we can get a close up on all that transparent hair on your face.

• 5:45Speaker 05

  Like the, like that Eagles Nest live cam?

• 5:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. Watch this bear fond for salmon. Chris D. Nye.

• 5:53Speaker 06

  He grows a beard. He grows a great beard.

• 5:56Speaker 05

  Beard. It's got, I'm avoiding it because I've got these gray streaks in it. You know what I mean? Like right here, I got these sort of Wolverine gray streaks.

• 6:04Speaker 04

  Go, man. You look like a 1970s pitcher.

• 6:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, or like Ted Nugent.

• 6:08Speaker 06

  No, the gray streak, believe me, trust me.

• 6:10Speaker 05

  That's the thing. I almost want it to be all gray.

• 6:12Speaker 06

  Right.

• 6:13Speaker 05

  Or, or it's just these weird patches. I don't know.

• 6:16Sean Fennessey?

  I'm having a bit of a crisis where the beard is effectively white and the hair on the top of my head is not yet white.

• 6:21Speaker 06

  Just for men, but for beard.

• 6:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You know, I was watching a film yesterday, last night.

• 6:26Speaker 06

  What? Stop dying your hair.

• 6:27Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I don't dye my hair and how fucking dare you say that?

• 6:33Sean Fennessey?

  I was watching a film with an actor, an esteemed actor and filmmaker.

• 6:38Speaker 04

  You were watching it with that person?

• 6:40Sean Fennessey?

  No, he was in the film.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:41Sean Fennessey?

  I saw him on screen. And he's a man, you know, I'd say he's in his 60s.

• 6:46Speaker 04

  George Hamilton.

• 6:47Sean Fennessey?

  It was not George Hamilton. And there's no way that that's his hair color or beard color. Like, there's just no way.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:53Sean Fennessey?

  And he's playing a man in his late 60s. And what are we supposed to think about that as viewers? Like, are we supposed to accept that? That this man is lying to us in that way?

• 7:03Speaker 04

  You think there's unfair beauty standards for men?

• 7:06Speaker 06

  It's always been the case. You know, HD has helped reveal Bogart's hairpiece, Jimmy Stewart's hairpiece, right? Movies where you thought, oh, he's not... Oh, no, they were wearing hairpieces long way back.

• 7:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, shoe polish in the hair, too.

• 7:24Speaker 05

  There is a thing, though. I also feel like the, I don't know if it's the technology or just the implementation. I have noticed from movies in like the 80s where it was like, oh, this actor is maybe like a little bit older, but they've dyed their hair. Like, I think the implementation of it now is much more subtle. And there's some nuance to the hair color that makes it look not like it's like a shoe polish hair dye. But I've noticed in some 80s movies recently that I'm like, oh, they went for it.

• 7:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 7:58Speaker 05

  And they should have left a little in there.

• 8:00Sean Fennessey?

  This person had reddish auburn hair at the age of like 65. Just did not, just jumped out at me. I'm not going to name that person, but he'll be in a film soon. That's all that I'll say.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  All right. Oh, okay.

• 8:13Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about physical media properly.

• 8:15Speaker 06

  I'm going to take off this.

• 8:16Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 8:17Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so we gathered last fall and we talked about a whole range of issues and we've asked for...

• 8:22Speaker 06

  A whole range of issues?

• 8:26Speaker 04

  The Strait of Hormuz.

• 8:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was like that Republican presidential debate when there were 16 men onstage yelling at each other about important political matters.

• 8:37Sean Fennessey?

  This time around, we've asked for questions from listeners of the show, men and women who enjoy physical media and are interested in this endeavor. But before we do that, I thought we could, once again, just talk about the state of the art. I thought it was actually quite an interesting conversation last time around because this thing that, you know, you and I started talking about, is it four years ago when we first did an episode about it? And that you and I have been talking about the last couple of years and that you and the last year or so have really gotten interested in. There's probably some self-selecting bias going on here, but something's going on, right? Like, it feels like the industry in the boutique side is getting very big. And it feels like the interest from the big studios is getting pretty small. There was a news story last week that Disney Home Entertainment's entire staff was let go.

• 9:20Sean Fennessey?

  And so there's no longer people overseeing the production of that work. It's all being outsourced, I think, to Sony at this point. So there's this weird dissonance right now with this fun hobby that we love. It feels like it's simultaneously thriving and noisy and fun. And there's a young generation of people collecting. But then also, the people who own the rights to the stuff and who technically manage all of the property seem completely disinterested in this. What do we make of that dissonance?

• 9:47Speaker 06

  I don't know. I don't have the slightest idea. I mean, it seems like exactly what you described. The market seems to become more specialized.

• 10:00Speaker 06

  The prices go up as a result. But these boutique labels seem to be thriving or, I mean, enough that they're keeping their doors open for the most part and continuing to do great work.

• 10:14Speaker 06

  And the big boys, they still put out, they're still going to put out the big releases on 4K. They still get enough attention. I mean, I hope that eventually the market drives, the interest drives the marketplace forward. And we continue to have this. It doesn't seem like it's going the other direction. It doesn't seem like it's just continual constant diminishment.

• 10:39Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't. It's, I mean, I feel like even from when we first, kind of like, almost offhandedly recorded an episode that was like, how awesome is this? It's just gotten a lot bigger, or like, the culture of it has gotten a lot bigger. Do you feel that?

• 10:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, I've definitely noticed that. Just in like, the amount, it feels like a little, like, a much less niche conversation and something that more and more people are getting into, whether it be, like, you know, obviously, like, vinyl has been a thing for a while, but then, people started collecting cassette tapes. I know there's a question in there about VHS, like, I know that it's much more in the ether, the idea of like, what we initially talked about, the idea of like, oh, we actually own that thing. And it, like, looks great. And just as a side note, we were gonna watch, like, last Tuesday, we were gonna watch, is it Warren Oates's film, Cockfighter?

• 11:29Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, sure.

• 11:30Speaker 05

  And we tried to stream it.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  When you say we, do you mean you and the family?

• 11:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, me and the family. We're gonna sit down, just watch Cockfighter. And

• 11:39Sean Fennessey?

  Terrific movie, by the way.

• 11:40Speaker 05

  I can't, we're actually, everybody's coming over tonight. I got the Blu-ray.

• 11:44Sean Fennessey?

  Like, your extended family?

• 11:46Speaker 05

  No, like, the Tuesday night movie group that I have.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  The Parent Teacher Association is coming over.

• 11:52Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, is it Monty Hillman, Cockfighter? Yeah, sure.

• 11:54Speaker 05

  I have, like, a group of neighborhood friends, and every Tuesday night, we get together and we watch these kinds of movies. And so Cockfighter, I had to order from the UK, but like, I was like, oh, it is available to stream on Amazon or whatever. And it was honestly, like, watching, like, a 480p snuff film. Like, you couldn't even make anything out of it. And somebody even called it out, like, we're not watching this. Like, we're not going to watch this in this condition. And so I ordered it that night. This was a couple of weeks ago. It arrived yesterday. But no, anyway, that just seems to be much more in the conversation, to the point where I was surprised to hear that

• 12:32Speaker 05

  One of the largest companies had completely shut down that division only because it just seems like there is, look, I'm not a fucking businessman, but it seems like there's money there. And it seems like you guys used to make a lot of money on this and why not maybe try to foster it a little bit? Like you can see that there's a little bit of a groundswell of interest in this, in physical media broadly, like why not try to foster it rather than cut it off at the knees? But I don't know.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's the, I could see it from both sides. On one hand, if they're trying to keep.

• 13:04Speaker 05

  Fucking Charlottesville over here.

• 13:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Many good points from Bob Iger and his new CEO.

• 13:13Speaker 04

  Good people working in the business development. I could see if you were like, one of our main business interests is a streaming service. So why would we give somebody an excuse to spend 150 bucks on the five movies that they like, or the seven movies that they like, and then cut the streaming service? On the other hand, specifically Disney has always had, like, one of their crown jewels was always like their home, their home video department and the way in which they would, you know, put things on shelves and then take them off and it would be like, hey, man, next week for an indefinite amount of time, Cinderella no longer available and people would rush out and get it. So it's confusing.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  I was curious whether or not you felt like the major studios are like, looking at this and they're thinking like, we're going to start licensing our stuff to these boutiques to make these special editions of these films? Or do you think it's just something that, like a business model that those major studios haven't figured out yet, but aren't willing to give up?

• 14:12Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's because when you have a division, it requires employing a lot of people and this is like a very low priority on the totem pole ultimately. And so they feel comfortable saying, well, we'll just license to Arrow and Arrow will be putting out the eighties and nineties action adventure movies that we have pretty much forgotten about for the next 10 years. And like Arrow has just been doing incredible work with that band of movie over the last couple of years. And so they'd rather not think about it. But what you were describing specifically about Disney's home video strategy. Is, I don't know if it was revolutionary, it actually was sort of taunting to fans where it was like, don't tell me you can't make more video cassettes of The Little Mermaid. Like, I know that you can if you just make an effort to. But they were kind of stoking a very similar level of limited edition feeling that I think a lot of

• 14:56Sean Fennessey?

  the Blu-ray companies and 4K companies pursue now. Like, I was in the video store with my daughter over the weekend and we were looking at the Disney live-action films, not the remakes of animated movies, but just the films from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. And I was looking for a copy of the remake of The Parent Trap, because I wanted to show her that movie, the Lindsay Lohan movie. They had the Hayley Mills version, they didn't have the Lindsay Lohan version. But then I was looking at, like, Return to Oz. The video store had Return to Oz on Blu-ray, which I think on eBay is like 300 bucks. It's hard to find. The fact that there's demand for something like that means that there's probably demand in the broader world and that they could probably just have at least a modest business remaking those things.

• 15:39Sean Fennessey?

  But there just does not seem to be an interest beyond whatever outside company says, we want this title. You know, we want, I don't know what's a good example, like Red Sun, the Charles Bronson, Tashira Mafune movie is coming from Arrow in July. There had to be some guy at Arrow who was like, you know what I, you know what we need to do? We need to get Red Sun out there. Like, that's one that really needs to exist in a beautiful $50 edition. And so they just don't want to employ people to do that work, which I do kind of understand because of the streaming concern that you're talking about. And there's a million other businesses that these capitalized mega corporations have to consider. But it does feel like leaving a $50 bill on the ground a little bit.

• 16:21Sean Fennessey?

  And maybe that's just our own personal interest speaking, but it feels, something feels not quite coherent there.

• 16:26Speaker 06

  We're not gonna know. They're not gonna pull the curtain back and let us know what's driving those decisions. Meanwhile, I'm having a hard time keeping up. I mean, there are a lot of releases happening every week. And if I go a few weeks and then try to catch up, it's tough. It's like, suddenly the mailbox is really jammed.

• 16:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's totally part of the dissonance, is I feel completely overwhelmed. And I have way too many unwatched movies going right now. And I don't know how to make sense of that. Maybe we'll get into that a little bit.

• 16:56Speaker 04

  Can I ask a little bit about, like, watching habits? Because obviously you're watching for all new releases, pretty much all, like, releases from a year. You're gonna try and see 99% of those. You guys are both very busy men, but like have to watch stuff I'm sure adjacent to your work, whether it's like, I want to watch something from a filmmaker that I might work with or a writer or whatever. Are you making special time to watch the things that you've bought? Do you have like a system for three times a week, twice a week, I'm going to make sure I I get something from the unwatched pile. And then maybe like an old chestnut, like what's like your habits right these days?

• 17:35Speaker 05

  I tend to, because I'm the like the the night owl of my family.

• 17:42Speaker 05

  We have a general system worked out where, because my wife wakes up early, she kind of like will get the kids up and get them breakfast and then I sort of wake up a little bit later, handle some of the morning, get the kids to school. But that also

• 17:55Speaker 04

  And then you watch Cockfighter.

• 17:57Speaker 05

  And then, you know, and then I watch Cockfighter, uh, 9am.

• 18:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, your morning constitution.

• 18:03Speaker 05

  You get, you get it. And, uh, but that means I sort of take the nights so that, because she goes to bed on the earlier side. I take the nights I deal with bedtime, I get them settled. And I have made a point this year of being like, I have a lot of unwatched discs and I am like, not going to do the thing where I'm just like, oh, I'm gonna, and I'm say this, and I have watched Sicario again, where I'm not going to like, watch the, the comfortable thing that makes me feel good. I'm going to be like, no, I'm going to crack this open. And like a recent example of this was like, I've had a copy of The Ascent. The like, the Russian war film.

• 18:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 05

  And it's, I've probably had it for four years and was just like, I'm just kind of going with like the A's. Just starting there, being like, oh, The Ascent, I haven't watched that yet and I'll throw that on.

• 18:49Sean Fennessey?

  That's a real mood brightener, that movie.

• 18:50Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:51Sean Fennessey?

  That'll get your Monday going.

• 18:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so that's sort of what I do. The kids go to bed and I'll watch something and I am making an effort to watch the things that have just kind of been there. Yeah.

• 19:05Speaker 06

  I'm programming for my wife and for our nanny, who will from now on be known as the nanny. My wife and the nanny, and I'm either programming for my wife, or the nanny, or my wife and the nanny. And so a lot of what I'm programming is based on what they've seen or haven't seen. And I'll, I'll give them an occasional quick survey. Have you seen this? Have you seen this? So I have, know what I can choose from on the night. And then I make that choice and they don't know what I'm put. I try to, I try to not even tell them, show them the disc. Right? They're sitting in front of the screen.

• 19:44Speaker 04

  It just says a monkey helmet.

• 19:46Sean Fennessey?

  So you don't offer any enticements? You know, I know you're a fan of this person.

• 19:49Speaker 06

  None at all.

• 19:50Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. And do you think that they have any interest in what the disc looks like?

• 19:54Speaker 06

  They can look at it when the movie's over.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Oh, that's nice.

• 19:58Sean Fennessey?

  Like a lending library. That's nice.

• 20:01Speaker 06

  By the way, again, this isn't the way I want it. This is the way they want it.

• 20:06Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, okay. That's very democratic.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  And it's exciting because Tracy, he's a little shy, but he has a new play coming out called My Wife and the Nanny.

• 20:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 20:15Sean Fennessey?

  A searing political farce.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 20:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I'm really excited about that.

• 20:20Speaker 06

  It's just two people sitting down and watching a movie.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  And at the end of the play, they look at the disc box.

• 20:26Sean Fennessey?

  And your nanny is Fran Drescher or no?

• 20:28Speaker 06

  She's not Fran Drescher. She's an actress from Los Angeles.

• 20:32Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 20:32Speaker 06

  And when we get super busy, she comes and she stays with us for a time. And she actually lives in with us for a while. So like the other night, the nanny and I watched In the Realm of the Senses together.

• 20:42Sean Fennessey?

  Stop it.

• 20:43Speaker 06

  It was quite a night for the two of us.

• 20:46Sean Fennessey?

  Are you serious?

• 20:49Sean Fennessey?

  Had you seen it before?

• 20:51Speaker 06

  I had not seen In the Realm of the Senses.

• 20:52Sean Fennessey?

  I just saw it for the first time this year too. Not a movie I would watch with my nanny.

• 20:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, watched it with my nanny. We both enjoyed it. Lot to talk about.

• 21:01Sean Fennessey?

  Oshima will come up later in this episode, actually. Interestingly enough, uh, how do you choose?

• 21:08Speaker 04

  I tend to be a little bit of a victim of recency bias. So it's like the most recent thing I buy is the one, this happens with books too, is I'll be halfway through a novel and then I make the mistake of going to skylight and then I'm like, well, I guess it wouldn't hurt to read 20 pages of this. And then all of a sudden I can't remember who's who and what book. Um, this is a particularly hard part of the year because of basketball playoffs still are like of a personal and professional interest to me. So it's like hard to like then at the end, end of a two game night, put on, you know, a Yakuza movie.

• 21:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:41Speaker 04

  But, you know, we, we all make choices in this world. We all make compromises. I've been, um, I've been really excited though. Recently, I think most of my buying has not been blind, but it has been on stuff I haven't seen. So the stuff that I've been buying recently is usually not like, and then of course I've watched that 50 times in my life, but now I have a good copy of it. It's more like, oh, I've never like watched a movie by this director. So this is very exciting. I, I find it entices me to stay on top of my purchases a little bit better.

• 22:11Speaker 05

  This is slightly out topic, but I just want to shout it out because I think I may have texted you this and I wanted to do on a mic. When we were here last, CR talked about Fun City Editions.

• 22:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:21Speaker 05

  A welcome to Fun City. And number one, he mentions it and it sells out immediately.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 22:28Speaker 05

  I have to email the Fun City Editions guy to be like, I will buy this, but just, do you have any?

• 22:34Speaker 04

  I was sitting next to him when he said it. So.

• 22:38Speaker 05

  I was like, I actually really do. And I, I am not kidding. I have never found a better thing. Cause like trailers will have, usually will have a Blu-ray player and a television. Sometimes there's a cable box hooked up to it. I have never found a better thing to put on in a trailer than just five hours of like, here are movie trailers in from 1976.

• 23:03Sean Fennessey?

  You mean when you're preparing to do your work as an actor?

• 23:06Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 23:06Sean Fennessey?

  In a trailer. Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 05

  Sometimes you lock in and then you can fade away and you can like look at your lines, but just to have the background.

• 23:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's a vibes machine, that whole disc.

• 23:14Speaker 05

  It is incredible.

• 23:16Speaker 04

  Is the downside that you like walk out of your trailer and you're like, I think I'm going to bring a kind of Martin Ballsum quality.

• 23:23Speaker 05

  Feeling like this scene had a little bit of a street walk in vibe.

• 23:29Speaker 04

  Have you gotten any of your colleagues to like come by and hang out and watch a little fun city?

• 23:34Sean Fennessey?

  Why are you watching nine consecutive taxi driver trailers?

• 23:37Speaker 05

  Cause it rules. I think they were hesitant. I mean, like they, they understand the nerdy parts of my life and I think they're supportive of them. But it was nice to when like, when I would have it on and they'd swing by to just see their eyes kind of go toward it and then become sort of engrossed in it. And like, that was nice to be like, see? It's not just me. This actually feels good. You know what I mean?

• 24:01Speaker 06

  It would be nice to have friends.

• 24:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You've replaced them with discs. Except when you come here. I, I don't know how to deal with what I haven't, how, how to choose anything anymore. You know, like Tracy and I are preparing for a Robert Duvall Hall of Fame episode that we're going to record this week. And, you know, the man made 95 feature films.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:23Sean Fennessey?

  And so that endeavor that I created thoughtlessly when we were talking about people like Tom Hanks, for whom I have seen every single movie. I'm like, yeah, I could do Duvall. And then I'm seven weeks into trying to conquer his filmography and I've acquired, I don't know, 70% of his filmography on physical. And I just can't get through it. And so what I don't have now because of this stupid job that I invented for myself is the time to just be like,

• 24:50Speaker 04

  Personal curiosity.

• 24:50Sean Fennessey?

  I'd like to watch this thing that I bought two years ago that I was really interested in when I bought it. And I know in my heart is actually how I would spend my time if I were free from my own prison. But, so I'm, I'm kind of trying to cope with that a little bit. And, and that's like a very specific concern, but I, you got, you, I think you really do have to make time when you spend money on these things to like, respect, appreciate and enjoy them. And if you don't, then you're just stamp collecting. Then you're not really like,

• 25:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:19Sean Fennessey?

  doing the thing that this is, the purpose of this experience, I think.

• 25:23Speaker 06

  When the nanny showed up a few weeks ago, I said to her, it's all Duvall and 1976. She said, great. You know, so we've, every night it's a Duvall movie or a 1976 movie. In the Realm of the Senses, 1976.

• 25:36Sean Fennessey?

  It sure is. Yeah. Again, amazing choice by you. We're going to circle back to that.

• 25:42Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I asked you guys to bring some new acquisitions, some things that you're excited about. You traveled across the country to do so. You drove from 18 minutes from here.

• 25:53Speaker 05

  I did take the ride. I wasn't paying attention and I made it a little bit longer because I went north on the five. Out of like sort of habit.

• 26:00Speaker 06

  I made a similar mistake on the way here, yeah.

• 26:02Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. And yet you guys both made it miraculously. CR, you took your private helicopter and you landed on the pad on the roof. Did you bring your stuff?

• 26:13Speaker 04

  I did, of course.

• 26:15Sean Fennessey?

  You brought your stuff. I brought some stuff on your behalf as well.

• 26:18Speaker 06

  Who's gonna start?

• 26:20Sean Fennessey?

  I think Chris should start because you were the fawn. You were the baby bear last we spoke.

• 26:25Speaker 06

  But which is he? Is he a fawn or is he a baby bear?

• 26:28Sean Fennessey?

  He's an anthropomorphized gorgeous little guy.

• 26:33Speaker 04

  I mentioned Takashi Miki earlier, so the first one I want to talk about is Underworld Chronicles.

• 26:39Speaker 06

  Where's the camera?

• 26:41Sean Fennessey?

  CR, hold it up right to your camera.

• 26:42Speaker 04

  Are ni three?

• 26:43Sean Fennessey?

  There you go.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  This is from Radiance. It's a trio. I want, I suppose loose trilogy. I wouldn't necessarily say you need to understand one to get the other, but they're all.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  Takashi Miki movies, Yakuza movies, Japanese crime films from his V cinema era. And a lot of people, so there's three films. There's Fudo, The New Generation. There's Agitator, which is his 200 minute epic. And then there's one I want to talk about, which is Deadly Outlaw Rekka. Deadly Outlaw Rekka is an insane film and it features the greatest opening five minutes to a movie I've ever seen, which I will describe starting now, if that's okay.

• 27:25Sean Fennessey?

  Please do.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  Starts with an old Yakuza chieftain talking about wolves. And then it cuts to the Incredible Flower Band, which is an early psych rock band from Japan going.

• 27:42Speaker 04

  And then a dude running down a street at full speed while an old man crosscut is walking up some steps. And it turns out that this dude running full speed down the street. Is going to jump over a wall with two guns in his hand while this psych rock is playing and gun down the old man thus setting off a Yakuza war. But it is the most electrifying, adrenalized, opening five minutes of a movie ever. I cannot recommend this more highly. It is a fucking weird, crazy movie that is, you know, cascades of blood and intense violence and then interspersed with like Jim Jarmusch scenes of guys just eating rice and talking.

• 28:22Speaker 04

  It is a bit confusing in terms of telepathic connections to other Yakuza leaders and like you can feel the pain of other people. There's some strange stuff going on in here, but I highly recommend it and I highly recommend this box. I am not a McKay completist. It's a new, it's kind of like, I obviously seen the big ones like Audition and Ichii, but like this is, this is a whole new world and I'm excited to be there. It's a big filmography, right? Huge. Like he was making three, four movies a year at some point.

• 28:51Sean Fennessey?

  He is still extremely active as well. He released a film last year. I think he has a film at Cannes this year.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  Bad Lieutenant?

• 28:57Sean Fennessey?

  Bad Lieutenant Tokyo.

• 28:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. These are from 94, like 01 and 02. So just extraordinary pieces of action filmmaking. So I highly recommend it.

• 29:08Sean Fennessey?

  Great, great pick.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  And from Radiance, our boys.

• 29:10Sean Fennessey?

  So when you, did you buy that blind? You were just like, I want this.

• 29:13Speaker 04

  I have a subscription for Radiance.

• 29:14Sean Fennessey?

  So when you got the box?

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 29:15Sean Fennessey?

  What made you choose that out of the three in there since you hadn't seen those three?

• 29:18Speaker 04

  Uh, I did a little bit of research, but I also watched the trailer that they put out for this, for this set and the footage from Rekka from Deadly Outlaw was like, whoa, what is this? If you want to hear the aforementioned scream, you can just watch the trailer for this, for this collection.

• 29:36Sean Fennessey?

  Seventy-five.

• 29:37Speaker 04

  You're still fucking, you're like, what happened?

• 29:39Sean Fennessey?

  Seventy-five percent of my YouTube subscriptions, the things that are actually in my feed are just physical media companies posting trailers to movies that I want to buy. And it's a, it's a nice way to pass the time.

• 29:50Speaker 04

  And it's Flower Traveling Band, not Incredible Flower Band. I mixed up with Incredible String Band. My bad.

• 29:54Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Tim.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  So I went with.

• 30:01Speaker 05

  I went with, so I talked about it before. There's like this Tuesday night thing that I've been going for, for probably three and a half years now.

• 30:11Sean Fennessey?

  Cockfighter Tuesdays, yeah.

• 30:12Speaker 05

  It's, uh, it's, uh, it's now expanded to like five people. My, me and my friend, uh, Johnny, who was very happy the night that you guys met at the screening of, um,

• 30:24Speaker 04

  House of Dynamite.

• 30:25Speaker 05

  Uh, House of Dynamite. Uh, when you were introduced, you went, oh, Tuesday nights. And he was like, that's so cool.

• 30:33Speaker 05

  Uh, but we do call ourselves the programmers. Like we talk about the programming and I was really happy to hear you say that earlier. This idea of like-

• 30:40Speaker 04

  Can I ask, do you call yourselves that to anybody else?

• 30:44Speaker 05

  We-

• 30:44Speaker 06

  Well, now to the world, you know?

• 30:45Speaker 05

  We die now to the world. I mean, like when we talk-

• 30:48Speaker 04

  At the barista, like, are they like, and your name is, and you're like, the programmer?

• 30:51Speaker 05

  Programmer. Well, no, I have to put Hitmaker on for that one. I, when I'm talking, when we're talking to our wives, they'll be like, hey, what do you guys have coming up? Like this Tuesday, what are you doing? Cause there are nights where I'm like, Annie, you shouldn't, you actually shouldn't even walk through the living room on this one. Like you're not, you're not gonna want no part of this one.

• 31:11Speaker 05

  But-

• 31:11Speaker 06

  I'm curious what that would be.

• 31:13Speaker 05

  Solo was one where I was like, you just don't want any part of this.

• 31:18Speaker 04

  That's what it's just for the guys.

• 31:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 04

  Just for the boys.

• 31:20Speaker 05

  Solo's for the dudes.

• 31:22Speaker 06

  I don't, I, I-

• 31:23Speaker 05

  No, I just, I just-

• 31:24Speaker 06

  Respectfully disagree.

• 31:25Speaker 05

  Annie's, no, I, I think, I think it's less, it's for the boys and more, I know what would upset my wife in movies. And there are things that she can engage with and things that she is just like, I, I don't like, I don't like seeing that. Like whatever experience that is, I don't like that experience.

• 31:43Sean Fennessey?

  And it does seem like the Tuesday nights, you're in pursuit of extremity sometimes.

• 31:47Speaker 05

  We are very much in pursuit of extremity. And, uh, and so I kind of chose things based on like, from this lens of, I'm happy that this exists in like an elevated form. Because this feels like the kind of thing that could just go away. That a streaming service is like, we are not going to host that on our platform. So those are the choices that I made. And I'll start with- Pull it out.

• 32:19Speaker 06

  I'm, I'm weirdly excited.

• 32:25Speaker 06

  The suspense is.

• 32:27Speaker 05

  With a thriller, a cruel picture.

• 32:30Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 04

  Christina Lindbergh.

• 32:32Speaker 05

  There are, we definitely go with themes sometimes. Uh, you know, we'll have like.

• 32:38Speaker 04

  This feels bootleggy.

• 32:40Speaker 05

  But it does, but it's not. And.

• 32:42Sean Fennessey?

  Who makes that disc?

• 32:44Speaker 05

  Who made this one?

• 32:45Speaker 04

  Vinegar.

• 32:45Speaker 06

  Vinegar syndrome. In fact, there's a nice, uh, slipcover box in the limited edition, maybe.

• 32:53Speaker 05

  I think I, this is just the standard.

• 32:55Speaker 06

  Right.

• 32:56Speaker 05

  So this.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  It feels like the chick with the eye patch would get invited to Tuesday nights, though.

• 33:00Speaker 05

  A hundred percent. And, uh, so we have these themes, like one time we did like under singing Tangerine Dream soundtrack. So we did that for a month.

• 33:11Sean Fennessey?

  Great idea.

• 33:11Speaker 05

  And, and then like it, we did like a big Giallo run last October for how like around Halloween. And this was sort of like in a accidental, but in that world of extremities, there's a lot of rape revenge. So like this was one, and it was one, at the end, we all stood up and actually gave this movie a standing ovation. Like this happens when there was a particularly good one at the end, we stand up and we clap. And there are like, and I know that there might be families that are listening to this.

• 33:39Sean Fennessey?

  Does five men standing applauding a rape revenge film at like 11:00 PM on a Tuesday?

• 33:43Speaker 04

  Not allowed to walk through the room.

• 33:45Speaker 05

  Look, it sounds. It sounds bad and it's gonna sound worse when I tell you that, no pun intended, there is a hard cut to close up anal sex in this movie. Hard cut to just all of a sudden. And it's like that kind of thing where I'm like, this shouldn't exist.

• 34:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  We shouldn't be watching it.

• 34:09Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 34:10Speaker 05

  But, but now, like in perpetuity, no matter what corporations do, it exists. And I think that's why I brought that.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  You are on a watch list now.

• 34:18Speaker 05

  Oh, a hundred percent.

• 34:20Speaker 04

  I'm glad that me salivating at a dude jumping over a wall with two nines and killing a Yakuza chieftain is not the weirdest thing that's happened in this first.

• 34:30Sean Fennessey?

  Are all five discs that you brought in this vein?

• 34:34Speaker 05

  One is not, but all the others are.

• 34:36Sean Fennessey?

  Legendary shit.

• 34:36Speaker 04

  One is the parent trap.

• 34:37Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know how you're gonna follow that up.

• 34:39Speaker 06

  Uh, there, there is no way to follow it up, so I'm gonna class it up.

• 34:42Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 34:43Speaker 06

  Network, baby.

• 34:47Speaker 06

  Selected because out on 4K, which those of us who love this movie, uh, just, it just feels like, it just feels like manna that this would be out on 4K. Also, I selected it because it is the, it's at the intersection of what we're doing this week. That's right. Robert Duvall, 1976, physical media, all are encompassed here in this American classic.

• 35:14Speaker 04

  It's a big titted hit.

• 35:15Speaker 06

  It's a big titted hit. That's all I got to say about it.

• 35:18Speaker 05

  I just watched it probably for the, maybe the third time, but not, honestly, probably not since I was in college and was pretty blown back by how relevant it stays. And I don't know, it really was like, oh, fuck, man, they did it. They're like, there's a reason everybody talks about this one in those glowing terms. It's fucking fantastic.

• 35:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I, uh, at the risk of tipping picks, it is one of my absolute favorite films ever. And maybe the first movie that made me feel like there was a world beyond the world that I was exposed to. And whether or not it's actually true, and maybe at that point, it wasn't as true as it is now, but it made me, it grew me up, I would say, in an interesting way. Um, okay, that's a great pick. That, that disc in general is, looks very nice. And those features on it are very good as well. Um, all right. So what, how do I create?

• 36:17Speaker 04

  I mean, this is, this is an interesting buffet that you have to choose from.

• 36:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I think I have stuff that represents all those different ways.

• 36:24Speaker 05

  Should we, should we somehow?

• 36:27Sean Fennessey?

  So this is, um, the movie orgy.

• 36:33Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:34Speaker 05

  Ooh.

• 36:34Speaker 06

  A blind buy for me that I have not checked out yet.

• 36:36Sean Fennessey?

  So something that I've always wanted to see, and I had never seen before. Despite some of this discussion here, it does not actually feature an orgy. It is in a somewhat similar vein to Welcome to Fun City. It is a kind of like recombinant mashup movie. It's like a collection of stray cultural film television ephemera that is all smashed together. In this, the runtime is 276 minutes.

• 37:02Speaker 06

  Jesus Christ.

• 37:03Sean Fennessey?

  It is directed by Joe Dante, the legendary movie maker behind Gremlins and many other classics. One of my favorite directors of all time. This is something he did in the late 1960s, 1968, as like kind of a real project that showed off his editing skills. He also worked as an editor under Roger Corman, worked with Alan Arkush. And this is like, if he could get his brain on film, like all the things that he saw, that he loved and was interested in, that tried to represent this massive tapestry of like schlock, genre, weirdo, side door culture, that informs like all the movies that he made in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s.

• 37:48Sean Fennessey?

  And it was just not available for the longest period of time. And it would pop up on YouTube and then come down. It was like a rights issue forever.

• 37:56Sean Fennessey?

  AGFA, A-G-F-A, released this edition. They release a lot of really cool stuff like this.

• 38:00Speaker 06

  American Genre Film Archives.

• 38:02Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 38:03Speaker 06

  Is that right?

• 38:04Sean Fennessey?

  And it's just a really cool artifact of movie history that, as recently as three years ago, I was like, we'll never get this. And I'll never get a chance to see it. And now it does, like I said, it operates in that similar way. We can just kind of like pop it on. And if you want to just like fast forward an hour, you're not like missing the narrative in any way. It's just like.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  Give me like, what's a 20 minute section of that like?

• 38:26Sean Fennessey?

  It moves very fast. So it'll be like a crazy monster movie about giant ants. And then it'll be like, you know, what seems like a comfortable drama that has like a hard left turn that reveals that it's actually like a movie about like a possessed kid, you know? Like, and it just kind of constantly reveals the ways in which these stories were being told over this period of time. It's a lot of fun. It's very strange. And it is like.

• 38:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's an unusual way to show like what your skills and interests are. It kind of reminds me of like, um, it's like a Pinterest board. For, from, from 1968. Yeah, it's, it's just a really cool thing.

• 39:04Speaker 06

  Check that out. I own it, haven't watched it, but I will.

• 39:07Speaker 05

  Same.

• 39:08Sean Fennessey?

  CR.

• 39:08Speaker 05

  I'm still in the A's and B's. I gotta get, I gotta get to the M's.

• 39:11Sean Fennessey?

  M is far.

• 39:14Speaker 04

  One of the cool things about this experience so far of doing, starting to buy this stuff is that occasionally I buy something because I already love it. Sometimes I buy something because the production of the disc, the production of the film for, for home, home physical media is such that it gives the film itself a different context or a different kind of weight. And that's how I feel about this At Close Range, uh, from Vinegar Syndrome. This is 1986 movie.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  Actually, is this from cinema?

• 39:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's cinematography, which is Vinegar Syndrome.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:50Speaker 04

  1986 James Foley movie set outside of Philadelphia, kind of like a rural noir with Christopher Walken and Sean Penn. This has maybe my favorite Sean Penn and Christopher Walken performances individually. It's a really, really beautiful movie, and this is one that I feel like I'd seen on VHS or streaming over the years, but takes on a whole new weight with, uh, the 4K and has a lovely hardcover book, kind of like the kind of thing that you'd find on your dad's shelves you can pull on out. And, um, great, like contextual information about the making of the movie.

• 40:28Speaker 04

  And, uh, just a lovely, lovely package that gives a kind of, I wouldn't say forgotten, but moderately admired, uh, genre movie from the mid eighties. And now I'm like, God, this thing has heft. And it, it definitely has grown in my kind of estimation because of the production of the film.

• 40:46Sean Fennessey?

  Can I tell you something? The film celebrates its 40th anniversary this week.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  How about that?

• 40:51Speaker 05

  R I P James Foley.

• 40:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that's right. Arguably his best film.

• 40:58Speaker 06

  I'm a fan. Good pick.

• 41:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. I'm going with Going Places, which is another two-

• 41:04Sean Fennessey?

  You're really pushing it.

• 41:05Speaker 05

  I'm really pushing it. I feel like the other ones, I go one more that pushes it and the other two don't really push it.

• 41:10Sean Fennessey?

  Tell us about it.

• 41:11Speaker 05

  But Going Places is Gerard Depardieu, I believe this is the movie that like made him a movie star. And I don't know how to describe it other than it's like two French sexual harassers drive around France and are bad people. But-

• 41:38Sean Fennessey?

  Bertrand Blier, yeah.

• 41:40Speaker 05

  And- Any hard cuts to anal sex in this one? No, but they do approach a breastfeeding mom on a train and one of them ends up breastfeeding from the woman.

• 41:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 41:55Speaker 06

  Who among us-

• 41:55Speaker 05

  Who among us has not found ourselves in this situation? Respect your fellow commuters. This is one of the reasons I feel like I'm not successful in this business. Is that now when I go-

• 42:07Sean Fennessey?

  Guy with the Hitmaker name says thing that is not true.

• 42:11Speaker 05

  Or maybe I could have moved the, pushed the stone up the hill a little more if I wasn't going into like general meetings and being like, "Hey, I had an idea for a show." Has a few aspects of this, but also have you ever seen Going Places? Because, no, like the content is up for discussion, but there is no denying that I think this movie might have one of the funniest edit runner I've ever seen of these two men approaching a situation. Like the director puts all the elements together of something that's happening and then it smash cuts to them running away while the event is like- Oh god. The aftermath of the event is in the background.

• 42:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:57Speaker 05

  And it is one of the funniest things I've ever seen and you can't believe that you go through this movie- I think the magic trick of this thing is that these are two of the worst people you've ever seen and yet they are not really portrayed as heroes, but they are sympathetic or you are empathetic to them. Like you, you, you find yourselves wanting, you find yourself wanting them to do better and they don't. And then the final, like the final shot of the movie then kind of tells you why it's called Going Places. And I don't know, it was like another, another one. And again, hard to find on streaming services. I can understand why nobody wants to host it, but there's like a lot of amazing stuff in there.

• 43:40Sean Fennessey?

  Is it, is it Cohen? Who put this out?

• 43:41Speaker 05

  It's Cohen. Yeah. And I think this had to come from, I think this was another out of country one.

• 43:47Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't, I haven't seen that before. It is a very controversial film. It was a huge hit in its time though.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  Huge hit and like minted both of them as movie stars. I think Gerard Depardieu to a much larger extent internationally, but then.

• 44:00Speaker 06

  Well, Patrick DeWare was a big movie star too, but he killed himself. But he's so young.

• 44:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:05Speaker 06

  Kind of at the height of his career too.

• 44:06Sean Fennessey?

  Ebert writes, despite its occasional charms, Going Places is a film of truly cynical decadence.

• 44:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. I would broadly agree. I think when we stood up and applauded at the end, I think that's one of the things that we admired about it.

• 44:19Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Tracy, what's next?

• 44:21Speaker 06

  Uh, Cutter's Way from Radiance. Uh, this is one of my favorite movies ever. It's on my list. It's on my top whatever list. I love this movie. The fact that this is available on 4K is just one of those, again, it's just like, I didn't think I would live long enough to see something like this available on 4K. If you haven't seen this movie, don't read about it. Don't, don't look at a trailer. Don't want to, don't just, just get this and watch it. It's a great, it's a great film. Great, uh, Jeff Bridges, uh, performance just at his hottest and, uh, John Heard just doing some, some amazing work in this thing. Ivan

• 45:02Speaker 06

  Passer, uh, uh, great, uh, Czech New Wave director. Uh, it's a great film, great noir.

• 45:10Speaker 04

  Check it out.

• 45:11Sean Fennessey?

  Awesome movie. Go ahead.

• 45:13Speaker 05

  I have not seen that, and I'm going to take that advice of just getting it and watching it.

• 45:17Sean Fennessey?

  My favorite John Heard performance. The thing that's funny about this one is I completely agree that it's fascinating that it's on 4K, but I think this is the third time a boutique distributor has put this movie. I think Twilight Time put it out many years ago, and then Fun City put a version out on Blu-ray.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  I think I had the Fun City version.

• 45:35Sean Fennessey?

  Five years ago. And then now Radiance is putting out this edition, which is the best one that's come out yet.

• 45:40Speaker 05

  I bought them all.

• 45:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's one of those things where like, so there is definitely a market of people who are like, I need to keep buying Cutter's Way. I need to keep discovering this movie.

• 45:50Speaker 05

  Do you know how many times I've bought Einheims and Coronets? The greatest Tracy Let's quote that has ever existed.

• 45:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's so funny, though, that like, there are these, there's a lot of movies that are not available and may never be available, and we'll probably talk about them shortly. But like, there are also movies that just keep coming out and new additions. And we're like, well, I just gotta upgrade.

• 46:10Speaker 06

  Cutter's Way is funny in that it, for so long, kept appearing on these lists of the greatest movies you've never seen, the greatest movie you've never heard of. It's always on that list. So I have to assume by this point, a lot of people have heard of it. But if you haven't, check out Cutter's Way.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  Great, great novel, too.

• 46:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, it is.

• 46:31Speaker 06

  Newton Thornburg.

• 46:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:33Speaker 06

  Pulled that out of my ass.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  Way to go.

• 46:35Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I'm gonna get a little fusty, so...

• 46:38Speaker 05

  What? No.

• 46:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, me.

• 46:40Speaker 05

  Fency?

• 46:40Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 46:42Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:44Sean Fennessey?

  So Frederick Wiseman passed away recently, the great documentarian, or perhaps the greatest American documentarian of all time. And I've seen some of his films, especially all of them made in the last 15 years or so. But the films that he became extremely well-known for, they're not hard to find, but they were collected by BFI some years ago. And so when he passed away, I immediately raced out and bought this. And now it's a little bit harder to find than it was. It's called Cinema Expanded: The Films of Frederick Wiseman.

• 47:12Speaker 06

  I thought this was fairly new.

• 47:13Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's in the last year or so.

• 47:17Sean Fennessey?

  And it features, I think it's his first five features, which is Titicutt Falls, high school, hospital, juvenile court, and welfare.

• 47:25Speaker 06

  Goddamn.

• 47:26Sean Fennessey?

  The reason those films have those titles is because that's what they're, they're explorations in documentary form of institutions. That's the thing that he did over his... Almost 60 year career where he would go into spaces and train his camera on a a mental health institution or a recently City Hall. He spent a year chronicling Boston City Hall and how their local government operated. He recently did one about a French restaurant. And some of these films are incredibly durational. They're like four hours long and they have no narrative, no into camera conversation. They are just observational and edited in a very discreet style to show you how these worlds work in a kind of with

• 48:09Sean Fennessey?

  an unobtrusive camera. But the first films made a lot of noise because they seem to reveal, you know, some of the decay that was happening in some places like the institution or in high school or in hospital. And they're not like, you probably won't stand and applaud in quite the same sicko way that you would when you get through thriller with your boys. But they're just tremendously important pieces of American art. And I hope that they like, I hope BFI continues to collect his movies and put all, puts them all out, even though I think there's more than two dozen films that he made over his career. But he's just such a huge and important voice. And it's a great set.

• 48:51Speaker 06

  I think Titicut Follies was kind of instrumental in shedding light on mental hospitals and the condition of those. I think a lot of changes happened as a result of that film being distributed because people had simply never, most people had simply never seen what went on inside those institutions before that film.

• 49:10Sean Fennessey?

  That's definitely true. And I think that there's a, like documentary is not journalism, but sometimes it can be.

• 49:16Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 49:17Sean Fennessey?

  And the, some of these movies are cases where that's the case. So anyway, that's a little bit of seriousness.

• 49:22Speaker 05

  Do those have the same kind of vibe as like Streetwise? Or is, is Streetwise a little bit more narrative to camera?

• 49:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, like in Streetwise, they're asking people like, how, when did you start working on the street? This is, it's really more like the camera sits back and people are like having a meeting in a room and the camera's just looking at their meeting.

• 49:43Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 49:44Sean Fennessey?

  And So it feels like you are spying in a way. And it's usually in a very public kind of forum. But it also feels like you're not supposed to be in the room. And so like you're gathering information. And also, sometimes it's like quite dull. Sometimes it shows like how boring life can be and how like a lot of functionaries work throughout the world. And sometimes it can be beautiful and explosive and interesting. But anyway, that's Frederick Weisman.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  I will go, I wonder if one of you guys also brought this. Go with Stuntman. Which just came from Transmission a couple of months ago. I think one of their first releases, I believe this is the second release they did. The Transmission's a sub-label of Radiance. Stuntman is maybe my favorite film about making movies. It stars Peter O'Toole, directed by Richard Rush. Barbara Hershey's in it. And my gosh, what's the Stuntman's name?

• 50:38Speaker 06

  Steve Reel's back.

• 50:39Speaker 04

  Steve Reel's back. And maybe one of my like favorite opening hours of a movie. Like really like before, you know, they have to end it. Like there is a magic to this movie. There's a kind of mixture of cynicism and wonder that I really adore. And this is an incredible package. So not only is it a fantastic, just like reference, I don't know, reference quality. I don't even know if I am qualified to say so. But.

• 51:11Sean Fennessey?

  Tracy is.

• 51:13Speaker 06

  I approve.

• 51:13Speaker 04

  Fantastic piece of movie preservation. And then it comes with a fantastic, you know, book booklet with it. But then you get like these awesome postcards, which I can't bring myself to actually use, but really don't.

• 51:29Sean Fennessey?

  You should just send one to me. Just like write me a letter. Hey, was watching the Stuntman, thinking of you. Hope you're well. See you at the office tomorrow.

• 51:35Speaker 06

  Sounds sweet.

• 51:37Speaker 04

  And a dope poster. So really awesome package. Really excited about Transmission. And this is exactly the kind of movie that deserves this kind of production.

• 51:45Speaker 06

  Have you watched it since you got?

• 51:47Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 51:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, I watched it too recently. Showed it to the wife and the nanny.

• 51:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, thumbs up.

• 51:52Speaker 06

  Thumbs up, definitely. Barbara Hershey, man, underrated.

• 51:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 06

  Great, great actress, underrated.

• 52:00Speaker 05

  Uh, feelings were mixed about Steve Railsback, though I think he's great in film.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's one of those, I don't know who I would replace him with in that movie, but um, I like him in In the Line of Fire, which is really the only Railsback movie I can think of.

• 52:12Speaker 05

  Well, Helter Skelter, I think, yeah. Uh, I really like Stuntman, I think it's a great movie and the great mystery of Richard Rush and why he didn't have a bigger career.

• 52:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, there are some sequences in this movie where you're like, "This guy Spielberg? Like, this is nuts." Like, what he's like, a helicopter is flying across and then a crane shot is going around this and he's shooting a crane shot, like.

• 52:33Sean Fennessey?

  It's a fascinating, I mean, he was in the same lineage of many of the movie brats, where he made a bunch of biker movies for Corman and had a lot of success. And then in the seventies, he makes Getting Straight, Freebie and the Bean, and then Stuntman, and then nothing, until Color of Night, fifteen years later.

• 52:52Speaker 05

  Is that the Bruce Willis? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 52:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's maybe for you and the boys one day.

• 52:57Speaker 05

  I mean, it might be for me and the boys.

• 52:58Sean Fennessey?

  Similar energy.

• 52:59Speaker 05

  Contradictory.

• 53:00Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think the anal is on screen in that film.

• 53:02Speaker 05

  No, but the dick's on screen.

• 53:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 53:04Speaker 05

  So, that's good.

• 53:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 53:05Speaker 05

  That's good. Definitely it would be a contender for programming. Oh, I also want to shout out Tracy, I think you brought this one in last year, that Fun City lifeguard, the St. Elliot lifeguard movie, which we ended up watching on a Tuesday night and is a fantastic. Just a great movie, yeah. It's a great, and it's kind of presented as like a sort of like bikini beach party, but then it's a tone poem on aging?

• 53:30Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 53:30Speaker 05

  Like, it's wild how good that movie is.

• 53:33Speaker 04

  It kind of reminded me of um, the books that McMurtry wrote about the Last Picture Show characters, like after Last Picture Show, it's just like aging out of youth and trying to figure out who you are. It's really good.

• 53:45Speaker 05

  I, uh, at the Actor Awards, formerly called the SAG Awards, this year, I was at a table close to, uh...

• 53:54Speaker 05

  I was close to

• 53:56Sean Fennessey?

  Sam Elliott.

• 53:57Speaker 05

  Uh, Sam Elliott. And I just said, fuck it. And I went over. And I did. I was like, excuse me, sir. I'm so sorry to interrupt. I just need to let you know I recently saw Lifeguard. And I think it's a fantastic film and you were incredible in it. And he said, oh, thank you very much. I don't think he was expecting, hey, man, I saw you in Lifeguard.

• 54:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 54:17Speaker 05

  And so I think that was a good, like, it caught him off guard in a, in a good way. And then I didn't, I didn't belabor, but I felt it was, I felt it needed saying.

• 54:25Speaker 04

  Was he like, did he, did he have anything to say about Lifeguard? Or is he just like, keep it moving?

• 54:29Speaker 05

  I, I kept it moving.

• 54:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:31Speaker 05

  I think he was like, oh, thank you very much. You know, that. Oh, thank you very much.

• 54:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's pretty good. What, is that something? So I was, I was with a, with an accomplished person yesterday and,

• 54:42Speaker 05

  Oh, not like us.

• 54:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, not like today.

• 54:44Speaker 04

  Fucking bums watching Swedish rife.

• 54:47Sean Fennessey?

  I say that to pivot to your perspectives imminently. Um, and he was telling a story about how nervous he was to talk to somebody who he really admired. And like, will you guys do that? Will you go up to people frequently that you really, if you really like what they've done in their careers? The way that you just described, is that common for you to go up to someone like Sam Elliott and say like, hey, I love that you did this. Also, I'm on this show.

• 55:11Speaker 05

  I, it is, I would say it's common, but I try not to belabor it. You know, or, I mean, honestly, more often than not, I try to engage in conversations that have nothing to do with the business. You know what I mean?

• 55:28Sean Fennessey?

  Like, I like that hat?

• 55:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:29Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 55:30Speaker 05

  Or, you know, like, you know, I got to meet, uh, like I met, you know, in passing Oscar Isaac at like an after party or whatever. Like dude's been dressing really well recently. He's been going with like the, you know, the sort of.

• 55:43Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have like a drip off with Oscar Isaac?

• 55:45Speaker 05

  I didn't, I mean, if there was a drip off, he would have won, but it was like nice to talk to about like, hey, man, the pant, you're fucking killing it with the pants. You know what I mean?

• 55:53Speaker 06

  Now here's Oscar Isaac, who probably would like to be complimented about his work as an actor. Yeah. As opposed to the clothes somebody else gave him to wear.

• 56:01Sean Fennessey?

  Nice pants, dog.

• 56:02Speaker 04

  What's your favorite death part in a movie? I mean, I, I guess.

• 56:05Sean Fennessey?

  You want to do a Going Places, me and you?

• 56:07Speaker 04

  I think. Where we just take our big pants off?

• 56:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You ever go up to a gal on the train breastfeeding your child and try to nudge in there?

• 56:14Speaker 05

  Guys, I should only be complimenting the fans because that is the shit I would say. And then I'm gonna be asked to leave the party. No, I think I try to do it if I'm gonna have that conversation. I try not to do it in circumstances like that where it's, that's probably the majority of what you're hearing. And especially at like any event like that, you're so in a different brain that it's hard to even just have a regular conversation. So if I'm gonna have that one, I try to do it in a, in a more subdued circumstance. I don't know about you.

• 56:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'll go up to somebody and say something, you know, I like it when people say something nice to me. You know, I, I will tell them I admire their work or what their work has meant to me. But again, yeah, I'm selective about it and I, whatever it is, I make it, I keep it brief. Unless they want to extend the conversation, I keep it brief. Like, I'm not gonna bother you, you know?

• 57:05Sean Fennessey?

  What about pants?

• 57:06Speaker 06

  I have never discussed their pants.

• 57:08Speaker 05

  You gotta get in there.

• 57:09Speaker 06

  I guess so.

• 57:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, try it out.

• 57:11Speaker 06

  I know, I, I think that's right.

• 57:13Speaker 05

  Like, if somebody wants to continue talking, like if I was talking to Oscar Isaac and he was like, hey, I'd actually really like to talk about Inside Lewin Davis. I would be like, yes, let's take a seat because I have questions.

• 57:25Sean Fennessey?

  That would be weird if he said, thanks for the compliment about my pants, but can we please discuss my performance in Inside Lewin Davis?

• 57:32Speaker 05

  I would be all for it, but I definitely, like, yeah, I try to keep it brief.

• 57:37Sean Fennessey?

  What, what bundle of depravity do you have for us next?

• 57:40Speaker 05

  Okay, so this one is actually.

• 57:42Speaker 04

  You're hiding it, which makes me really nervous. Like, maybe we can't see it.

• 57:47Speaker 05

  So this was actually after our aborted cockfighter. I did say, well, somebody did recommend, and I just bought Death Game.

• 57:58Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:59Speaker 05

  Which I don't think is as depraved as the other two, but is, I feel like it has had a few different remakes, including a.

• 58:08Sean Fennessey?

  Eli Roth remade it, yeah.

• 58:09Speaker 05

  Eli Roth, Knock, Knock. The conceit of it is incredible. This was released by Grindhouse Releasing.

• 58:15Speaker 06

  Now, she's wearing a brassiere and no panties.

• 58:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that's right. That's Colleen Camp, I believe, in that photograph.

• 58:22Speaker 06

  Oh, Colleen Camp, yeah.

• 58:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, and, and.

• 58:27Speaker 04

  You should go to Colleen Camp.

• 58:28Speaker 06

  No, I said brassiere, like.

• 58:29Speaker 05

  She has 1948.

• 58:31Speaker 06

  Oh, I spy that lady. That, that gentlewoman is in the room, neither.

• 58:36Speaker 05

  Neither interested in pants nor seems to care that she isn't a brassiere.

• 58:41Sean Fennessey?

  She doth protest to thine undies.

• 58:46Speaker 05

  So, an incredible conceit of a movie of like a happy family man who

• 58:52Speaker 04

  Good luck with this.

• 58:53Speaker 05

  Ends up fucking to to go, Jesus Christ.

• 58:58Speaker 05

  Okay, so they they say that they're teenagers. We don't know if that's the truth.

• 59:06Speaker 05

  But there is like an extended scene in a bathtub.

• 59:09Speaker 04

  It's a case. We can't be sure.

• 59:13Sean Fennessey?

  Well, the actors were not teenagers.

• 59:15Speaker 04

  The actors were.

• 59:16Sean Fennessey?

  Famous last words.

• 59:21Speaker 04

  I have to do my own research.

• 59:23Sean Fennessey?

  This is a tough one because I love this movie, so I will kind of want to be on Tim's side here.

• 59:27Speaker 04

  I'm also just like hyperventilating imagining Tim going up to Colin Kemp. It was like, I watched you in Death Game and did you know on the cover you're wearing a brassiere? But no panties.

• 59:39Sean Fennessey?

  But no panties?

• 59:41Speaker 04

  I'm gonna keep it moving. Great pants on you now, though.

• 59:45Sean Fennessey?

  Great pants on you now.

• 59:46Speaker 05

  Who takes the brassiere off before the panties?

• 59:49Sean Fennessey?

  You.

• 59:50Speaker 05

  Like the weirdest fucking Seinfeld bit.

• 59:53Sean Fennessey?

  You're making it seem like people who are interested in this hobby are like afraid to buy porn, but will get to the absolute edge of porn and say, click. But they can't put me on any lists.

• 1:00:07Speaker 04

  The weirdest thing is before we started, we were walking it and I was like, sometimes I worry that people get the wrong idea about me because of the movies I pick. I had no idea what he was gonna do.

• 1:00:19Sean Fennessey?

  This one's worse in the description than it is in the execution.

• 1:00:22Speaker 05

  In the execution. And so, but ultimately, what I what I love about this movie, and again, this got a standing ovation, especially because of the end. And I think the reason that this was recommended to me is because I was talking about the movie pieces and how that has the best ending to a horror movie that I've ever seen. And they were like, well, have you seen Death Game? And I said, no. And we watched this and when I saw the ending, we we abs were fucking floored by it. But I think this also exists in this world that I don't know that we have anymore, where people that are overqualified for the material are taking it on. So I am now, of course, forgetting the actress's name.

• 1:01:01Sean Fennessey?

  Sandra Locke.

• 1:01:02Speaker 05

  Sandra Locke. And Colin Camp, definitely, and Sandra Locke, certainly. It is clear how good of performers they are. And Sandra Locke elevates this to some, like, where it has a feeling of Marat Saad, or like, this is somebody who studied theater and is bringing something to this that shouldn't be there, but is because of their own talent. And I don't know that we have that as much anymore. And so there is something, again, this feels like a piece from a different time that I am glad exists. I am showing my ass to the entire world today.

• 1:01:46Sean Fennessey?

  No, I think this is a great pick. I don't know if you remember this, but I gifted you this film as part of, like, because I think I told you about Ryan House releasing, and I sent you a couple of discs. This was one of them. It's been called a couple of different things over the years. I think The Seducers is another title for the movie. Seymour Cassell is the male lead in the movie. I mean, he's an amazing actor.

• 1:02:03Speaker 05

  Apparently hated the director, refused to do ADR, which is why there is all this very awkward ADR.

• 1:02:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's not his voice. It's barely his voice. Somebody he's been dubbed over, which is very strange. But, you know, this is the same year that Sandra Locke made The Gauntlet with Clint Eastwood. Like, it's 1977. It's, she's about to become a very well-known person in Hollywood. And it's like a pretty, it's like a sexy, weird, almost psychedelic at times, like torture sex movie. It's fascinating.

• 1:02:33Speaker 05

  And that is, the thing is that, like, at its basis level, that's what it is. But at the end, when she's playing a judge, it has like this sense of theatricality to it that just, that goes so far beyond the material, you can't help but be impressed by it and by her.

• 1:03:00Speaker 05

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• 1:03:26Speaker 06

  The Gambler?

• 1:03:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:28Speaker 06

  Cinematograph? Cinematograph, Radiance, all getting a lot of love here. Oh, look at that. There we go. I doubled up on Gambler.

• 1:03:39Speaker 06

  My dad took me to see this in 1974. I was nine. So dad took me to see this in the movie theaters when I was nine and I could, and I remember it. I remember

• 1:03:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Speaker 06

  seeing the movie and I remember like, uh, uh, uh, asking the questions when the movie was over, like, uh, daddy, why did he, uh, why, why did he?

• 1:04:04Speaker 04

  Why did he sacrifice so much for so little?

• 1:04:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:04:09Speaker 06

  I do, what I really remember from it is the sense of dread. You know, the, the, just that, that sense of dread when you're, when you're in over your head and you're making it worse, that compulsion to, to

• 1:04:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:20Speaker 06

  to make it worse.

• 1:04:23Speaker 06

  Great movie, Carol Reese movie. Great. Again, I've had a bad DVD of this on my shelf for 25 years.

• 1:04:33Sean Fennessey?

  This is a big one. This was a long desired one.

• 1:04:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:04:35Sean Fennessey?

  People wanted forever. Um, I wonder if this is a bit of a keystone to some of your writing.

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  Oh, The Gambler?

• 1:04:44Sean Fennessey?

  Which is like about a character who's a very sophisticated, well-read person, who is also kind of trapped by base desires, addictions, obsessions. This movie about sports gambling, you know, famously remade.

• 1:04:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Sean Fennessey?

  With Mark Wahlberg, a film that Chris and I think is fascinating.

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  I admire quite a bit.

• 1:05:03Speaker 06

  Really?

• 1:05:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Speaker 06

  I thought it was just considered a total misfire.

• 1:05:07Sean Fennessey?

  It is considered that by most.

• 1:05:10Speaker 04

  But there's a lot going on in there.

• 1:05:11Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 1:05:13Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think it has a, has a lick on this one.

• 1:05:15Speaker 05

  Kind of like thriller, a cruel picture. There's a lot going on in there.

• 1:05:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:17Speaker 06

  James Caan, man.

• 1:05:18Sean Fennessey?

  He's the greatest.

• 1:05:19Speaker 06

  James Caan, such a force. You know, we recently did a Godfather and Godfather two re-watch, which we'll probably get into later in the week.

• 1:05:30Speaker 06

  To really Mrs. Khan, he's such a force of nature, you know, he's such a such a whirlwind, just a charisma machine, he's just a tractor beam, he's really something to watch.

• 1:05:42Speaker 05

  I, that's something I've sort of realized recently is that I don't know that he, obviously, like, it's not like people don't know who James Khan is, but the more I've gone back and watched earlier movies like this one, I am like, oh, he should be spoken in the same breath as De Niro and Pacino, like, he has that level of charisma and ability, and his choices are incredible, like, he, and it's an incre- also, an incredible movie about-

• 1:06:14Speaker 04

  It feels dangerous, too.

• 1:06:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:16Speaker 04

  Which is maybe why he's not thought of like those guys, like, he has like an edge to him.

• 1:06:21Speaker 05

  That maybe they were like, is that just what he's like?

• 1:06:24Speaker 04

  It feels authentic rather than studied, where maybe like De Niro is like, studied it, but like, James Khan playing Jake LaMotta is like a different animal than De Niro, maybe, but it's, you're completely right.

• 1:06:34Speaker 05

  There, and there is also something, I love a movie, having a part of my brain that understands that thankfully I've never seen, but that understands that level of like going on tilt or the attraction to making it worse, I'm always very, I always really respond to movies that have that thing, that that really gets you to feel like what it is like to go on tilt, like Uncut Gems, I think is a really good example of that this California split, those movies that are just like, why didn't they just stop? Or the last moment of California split with him being at the apex of everything he's

• 1:07:17Speaker 05

  been looking for and then being like, this is it? Like, this is the thing? I, it didn't do anything, like, oh, fuck, this is bad news, you know what I mean? I love that, I love films that examine that idea.

• 1:07:30Sean Fennessey?

  I think one of the reasons why he's maybe not held in the exact same esteem is because he, you know, De Niro and Pacino also have quieter 1980s and then they have these big comebacks in the 90s and Khan never quite got that, but there's some really good Khan performances in the 80s, like obviously Thief first and foremost, but like Gardens of Stone, I think is like the opposite of what we're describing, like a very internal, quiet Coppola movie that like not a lot of people have seen that I always point to to be like, there's different shades to these directors, to these actors, to these guys from this period of time, looking at that sense of mortality that I think they're all starting to feel at that period. One of my faves.

• 1:08:05Speaker 06

  You know, all those guys at some point started to kind of trade on their persona for comedic purposes, right? And Khan did that earlier than the rest of them, where he did become a kind of, eh, bada bing, you know, this kind of guy. Sometimes to good effect, I'm not saying it wasn't, but I wonder if it didn't rob him of some opportunity, or maybe he just wasn't getting the kind of opportunities those guys were getting.

• 1:08:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Speaker 06

  Because he certainly seemed to make the most of them when he did get those opportunities.

• 1:08:33Sean Fennessey?

  Well, he worked a ton in the 90s.

• 1:08:35Speaker 05

  I mean, the program rules.

• 1:08:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but like he did, like he did it in Mickey Blue Eyes, for example. That was a movie that like he was kind of trading on that, but it didn't quite have the same like Meet the Parents level explosive hit quality. Anyway, we're talking a lot about James Khan. My pick is John Singleton's Hood trilogy.

• 1:08:51Speaker 06

  Nice.

• 1:08:51Sean Fennessey?

  From The Criterion Collection, which is really fascinating. Of course, you would expect The Criterion Collection to pick Boys in the Hood for the collection because it's one of the landmark 90s films, one of the most important black American movies ever made, you know, a beloved movie that launched John Singleton into like a huge career in Hollywood. But what I love about the choice is that it also features Poetic Justice and Baby Boy, which are two of his best movies that I think to like a certain segment of the audience that was tuned into what he was doing at the time, they really care about, but are like really underserved historically by places like The Criterion Collection.

• 1:09:26Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:09:27Sean Fennessey?

  Baby Boy especially, which I think for the longest time was only available on DVD.

• 1:09:30Speaker 06

  I've never seen it. I haven't seen Baby.

• 1:09:32Sean Fennessey?

  Such a good movie. Tyrese, a phenomenal Bing Rames performance in the movie. It's like a real, like classical melodrama in a lot of ways, but also a really funny movie. Um, and I wish that Higher Learning was in this set as well, because that's the other film of his that like I watched over and over again as a kid. And I really love the like outsized, almost like Douglas Serkisian quality to a lot of his movies. Like, he really does like old school, dramatic 50s Hollywood-style productions, but in the world of these characters. And like, they're just not, there are hardly any movies in this like LA milieu in the 90s and 2000s. So it's like, you might think that they're attempting to like class up something, but then it's the opposite.

• 1:10:12Sean Fennessey?

  Like, to me, this gives such like definition and shape to what The Criterion Collection should be and can be. And they're also like, they're studio movies. They're not, they're meant to be like crowd-pleasing and entertaining and interesting. Like, Poetic Justice is Janet Jackson and Tupac.

• 1:10:26Speaker 04

  On like a road trip.

• 1:10:27Sean Fennessey?

  On a road trip. And like giving, I think their two best performances. I just think that this is like, signals a path for where we can go. Once we get past like the Janus Films 100-year history of international cinema. Like, there's a lot that's happened in the last 30 years that needs to be like mined and supported and lifted up.

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's also a really good job of contextualizing three movies that maybe everyday people don't associate with each other. Like, they know that he directed them, but they don't think of it as a piece of work like that.

• 1:10:55Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly. That they're connected in a way, in the same way that like, we think of like Tarantino's movies as being connected to each other. Anyway, next pick, Chris.

• 1:11:07Speaker 04

  Don Borman's Excalibur.

• 1:11:08Sean Fennessey?

  Nice.

• 1:11:09Speaker 04

  Which just came out in this deluxe Arrow Edition. It's a movie from 1981. It's about, uh, it's John Borman's big swing. I'm gonna make a King Arthur movie. And it is something that like my dad showed me when I was a kid. That was like an object of like complete obsession for me, but because I was more into King Arthur and like Arthurian legend and the idea of the sword from the stone and all that stuff. It's like, that really interesting thing that happens with some movies from your childhood where you remember like- You watched it a lot because you cared about what it was about. And then all of a sudden, somewhere along the line, it becomes because you care about the movie, you know, and because you care about the director, or because you care about the actors in it. That's happened

• 1:11:51Speaker 04

  with this. Some notable people in this Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, Nicole Williamson plays Merlin. It's really cool performance, pretty hammy. This is something that didn't look this fucking good when I was a kid. You know, obviously, we had boxier TVs and, and, you know, VHS that was of dubious quality. This is an, almost a reimagining of the movie to my eyes. And it kind of took me back to like, seeing it for the first time. So.

• 1:12:18Speaker 06

  So you've, you have watched this?

• 1:12:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's fucking intense. It's beautiful.

• 1:12:22Sean Fennessey?

  You have been talking about it for like 10 years, though, as a movie that you love, but maybe don't get to see.

• 1:12:26Speaker 04

  Well, it's also notably the first time I ever saw people have sex on screen was in this movie.

• 1:12:30Speaker 06

  Funny, buddy, do I have some films for you.

• 1:12:33Speaker 04

  But Gabriel Byrne has sex with a woman while wearing a full suit of armor, which I still haven't quite figured out the mechanics of that.

• 1:12:43Sean Fennessey?

  But you've been attempting to recreate it in years.

• 1:12:45Speaker 04

  It happened. But yeah, this is, this is a wonderful pickup.

• 1:12:50Speaker 05

  My last one might be controversial because I'm on the big picture, but I think it.

• 1:12:56Speaker 04

  Dude, I brought it too.

• 1:12:57Speaker 05

  You did?

• 1:12:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:59Speaker 05

  Okay. It is, but I think it speaks to something that we talk about. And that is, I believe this is the, is this Italian? No, this is from the UK. It's 000. It's like the Blu-ray of 000, which I don't believe.

• 1:13:12Speaker 04

  This is an important thing to talk about.

• 1:13:14Speaker 05

  I don't think you can stream this.

• 1:13:16Speaker 04

  It was a Prime Video original.

• 1:13:18Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:13:19Speaker 04

  That is no longer on Prime Video. It does not, it is not available for streaming.

• 1:13:22Speaker 06

  I'm delighted to say, I've never heard of this. I don't even know what this is.

• 1:13:26Speaker 05

  This is, what, eight episodes?

• 1:13:28Speaker 04

  Limited series.

• 1:13:29Speaker 05

  Limited series that kind of came out, I think it came out during the pandemic.

• 1:13:33Speaker 04

  During COVID.

• 1:13:34Speaker 05

  And so it got a little bit COVID memory hold, has, it's about the cartel and their cocaine business, the shipping, and the shipping company that is attempting to get it to the Italian mafia. And it is those three stories told over the course of eight episodes. Andrea Reinsbruck, Dane DeHaan.

• 1:13:59Speaker 05

  Gabriel Byrne, speaking of fucking in a suit of armor and a gentleman whose name I can't remember, but who plays like the guy who tries to take over the car.

• 1:14:10Speaker 06

  Michael Pena?

• 1:14:11Speaker 04

  No, it's a guy, a Mexican actor who I haven't seen do a lot.

• 1:14:15Speaker 05

  Honestly, one of the best performances I've ever seen and also one of the most terrifying. It is, it's incredible. It is something that even as I was watching it during COVID, especially during COVID, I was had this feeling of, I don't know that this will ever get made again. The amount of actual location shooting they were doing, landing helicopters on shipping, on shipping vessels in the middle of the ocean, the level of violence that's in it. It is an unbelievable series that you just can't see anymore. And from what, from what I understand, there is an Italian cut.

• 1:14:55Speaker 04

  There is, yeah.

• 1:14:56Speaker 05

  That doesn't do as much handholding for the audience.

• 1:15:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I haven't seen that. I'd read about it when I bought this disc. This is this crazy period of Amazon where they were just kind of throwing money around. This is also the, the time period that produced Too Old to Die Young, the Nicholas Winding Refn, Miles Teller thing, which is just a complete fever dream. Stefano Salima directed a bunch of these episodes, who did Gomorrah and did Day of the Soldado. Just an awesome, awesome TV series.

• 1:15:27Sean Fennessey?

  I watched the first two episodes, as I have with most shows that Chris has recommended, enjoyed it and thought, I'll get back to that at some point. But that was exactly what I was gonna say, which is it's just an artifact of like a very recent history.

• 1:15:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:38Sean Fennessey?

  In artists racing towards opportunity and taking advantage of like corporate circumstances in very interesting ways.

• 1:15:48Speaker 05

  And I do think that like, as we talk about film preservation, especially in a streaming era where stuff can just be pulled off and like memory hold and no longer found, I kind of think this is gonna end up being something that we'll be looking into in the future of.

• 1:16:06Speaker 04

  I had, uh, this one gave me kind of chills when this came off of Amazon and prompted me to think differently about. Picking up stuff like it, series like that, that seem like international co-pros that got bought by a streamer for a finite amount of time.

• 1:16:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:16:24Speaker 04

  That if it's available, I'll grab it if I loved it because you just really never know if the rights come up again, if anybody's gonna bother.

• 1:16:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, like I do have a copy of Station Eleven on 4K.

• 1:16:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, you should.

• 1:16:35Speaker 05

  For that reason, you know, who knows?

• 1:16:37Speaker 06

  Am I up?

• 1:16:38Speaker 05

  You're up.

• 1:16:39Speaker 06

  All right, I'm gonna dive into the...

• 1:16:43Speaker 06

  This is from my friends at Second Run, which is a UK label.

• 1:16:50Speaker 06

  This is a trilogy of films by Yves Van Jabo. I'm sure I'm not saying that correctly.

• 1:16:55Speaker 04

  Sounds pretty close.

• 1:16:56Speaker 06

  They all star Klaus Maria Brandauer. They're all on Blu-ray, but one of them perhaps on Blu-ray for the first time.

• 1:17:08Speaker 06

  If I, if I were making, uh, Mount Rushmore for perform, for film performance, Klaus Maria Brandauer in Mephisto is on it. I think it's one of the great film performances ever filmed.

• 1:17:23Sean Fennessey?

  Can you tell people what the setup for that film is? Cause it's a really interesting movie.

• 1:17:26Speaker 06

  It's a, it's basically a Faust story about an actor in Nazi Germany who's, you know, selling his soul in order to be a successful actor in Nazi Germany. And it's based on a true story and it's horrible and heartbreaking and fascinating. And Brandauer was just amazing in it and...

• 1:17:47Speaker 05

  Do you think there are any current day comps to what that might feel like?

• 1:17:50Speaker 06

  I have no idea what you're talking about. No idea what you're talking about. Can't think of any.

• 1:17:57Sean Fennessey?

  I've not seen those other two films. Mephisto is amazing.

• 1:18:02Speaker 06

  You should see him. Hunnison is a, is pretty great.

• 1:18:06Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:18:08Sean Fennessey?

  Do you want company in the perverted category?

• 1:18:11Speaker 05

  Please God, Sean, I'm out here on an island.

• 1:18:14Sean Fennessey?

  So this comes from the fine people at Umbrella Entertainment, which is a Australian company. This is what has been defined here, and I don't know I had ever seen it described this way as the day of the woman set. This is, um, I Spit on Your Grave and I Spit on Your Grave deja vu. Now, I'm not yet seen I Spit on Your Grave deja vu, which is a follow up to the original film.

• 1:18:38Speaker 04

  Please tell me it doesn't document the same characters.

• 1:18:41Speaker 05

  Oh, God.

• 1:18:42Speaker 04

  Deja vu.

• 1:18:43Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I, I'll find out when I see the film. Um, I Spit on Your Grave is a 78 movie directed by Mir Zarkey. Uh, it is one of the ur rape revenge texts. It is like been studied far and wide. Um, it is a very violent, scary, sad movie, but it is a movie that like really centers a woman taking revenge on the people who assaulted her and features incredible performances, especially Camille Keaton as the star of the movie. You know, the movie's been remade a couple of times. It was remade in the 2010s, but when you're trying to understand the history of violence on screen, I feel like this is an essential movie. Um, there are lurid thrills in the movie and that like you can see the movie was made

• 1:19:25Sean Fennessey?

  with that intention, but that the filmmakers are also subterraneously doing something socially with what it's trying to portray and do. And this is another movie that was hard to find for a while. You can find it on VHS, you can find it in video stores for sure, and was passed around amongst sickos discovering horror movies over time. But, um, this set is pretty crazy and there's just a tremendous amount of work that's been put into it. Similarly has like a huge booklet with several essays. If you've ever wanted postcards featuring Day of the Woman.

• 1:19:55Speaker 04

  I actually do.

• 1:19:56Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, you want those?

• 1:19:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, so maybe I'll send you a stunt man one and you send me a.

• 1:19:58Speaker 05

  That's really sweet.

• 1:19:59Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good idea.

• 1:20:00Speaker 05

  That's nice.

• 1:20:00Speaker 06

  We should send more postcards.

• 1:20:02Speaker 05

  There is a, there, uh, the postcards that come in these books, I remember talking to a friend of mine about, they had like given me like a nice bottle of wine for a birthday or something and they asked if I, we'd had it. I said, no, I'm like saving it for a special occasion. They told, and this is going to be way too heavy a story when it comes to postcards that come in Blu-ray box sets. But they were like, I actually recently had a friend who was diagnosed with cancer and he was a wine collector and they had all this wine and because he had limited time left, they were just like cracking bottles at breakfast because he had never and was not going to have the opportunity to taste these. And really like what it came down to was drink the wine. Don't wait for a special occasion, just drink it. And so I think I'm just saying that I apply that same sort of thing to those postcards. It's like, oh, I gotta keep those in there.

• 1:20:46Speaker 05

  Those are special. Fucking put a stamp on them. You know what I mean? This is how we make friends as adult men. You gotta get in there Tracy with those postcards. You program

• 1:20:55Speaker 06

  Oh, I didn't know this was coming, coming my way.

• 1:20:59Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we're sharing postcards, so you guys can share.

• 1:21:01Speaker 04

  Honestly, you have a postcard and then you pay for it.

• 1:21:04Speaker 05

  Menjo's still has a job. You know what? I met somebody at a party and I wanted to talk to them more and we didn't have the opportunity and I'm gonna send them a postcard. You know what I mean? This is how we make connections in the modern world.

• 1:21:16Speaker 06

  Nice.

• 1:21:16Sean Fennessey?

  How are you feeling about making friends at this stage of your life? You've made, you've made a couple of references here.

• 1:21:22Speaker 06

  Dear friends around this table. Really lovely.

• 1:21:26Sean Fennessey?

  Chris, you're up.

• 1:21:26Speaker 04

  It's the day of the woman, man. Don't worry about it.

• 1:21:29Sean Fennessey?

  It will be momentarily, actually.

• 1:21:31Speaker 04

  My last one is.

• 1:21:35Sean Fennessey?

  Was that one too perverse?

• 1:21:36Speaker 04

  No, it's just like kind of repetitive with some of the other stuff. I grabbed Red Rooms, which is.

• 1:21:41Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I didn't get this.

• 1:21:42Speaker 04

  One of the best.

• 1:21:43Speaker 05

  I've got it.

• 1:21:43Speaker 04

  Movies of this decade, I think, and one of the most relevant movies of this decade. It's from Utopia. I know that this is another example on the flip of the 000 conversation, a film that, um, a French Canadian like horror thriller that Sean and I both loved that you really cannot speak enough about because I think this is Pascal Plante is a very, very, um, powerful filmmaker and I cannot wait to see what he does next.

• 1:22:08Sean Fennessey?

  Who put that out?

• 1:22:09Speaker 04

  Uh, Utopia.

• 1:22:10Speaker 05

  Utopia.

• 1:22:11Sean Fennessey?

  Utopia, okay.

• 1:22:11Speaker 04

  And not a lot of special features, nor do you need them. It's a great looking movie and I just wanted to make sure it didn't fall through the cracks. I was gonna ask you guys how you approach buying recent releases. Do you think, okay, I gotta get.

• 1:22:29Speaker 04

  Oppenheimer or whatever, like as soon as it hits 4K, do you wait for something special to come along in terms of it's an addition? Cause I'm sort of like in my head about like, do I need to buy a movie that I saw 18 months ago or 24 months ago? And this feels so much more historical and archival. And then when I buy something from 2023, I'm like, I'm glad to have it. But this was just when I was worried about it falling through the cracks of streaming.

• 1:22:54Sean Fennessey?

  I have an answer to that question. I'm obviously like trying to collect complete filmographies of many filmmakers at this point. And so I was thinking about, do I need to be spending money on Begonia? Which is a movie I liked, but didn't love, wasn't like in my top 10 or anything like that. But I'm just interested in Yorgos Lanthimos and interested in having a stack that just is all of his movies. And I'm like, am I going to spend $45 on a steelbook of Begonia? A movie that I like, maybe we'll watch one more time before I die. And the answer is no. But I am going to get it at some point. And the movies like that, to the point about big studios putting movies out, I'm like, I'll just wait until this movie is on sale at some point in the next two years.

• 1:23:36Sean Fennessey?

  And it will happen and it'll be 1199 and I'll, and I'll, I'll get it at that point in, for my sake of completism. But that's, and that's been my strategy with newer stuff, unless it is in the one battle after another sphere where I'm just like, I'm just auto pre-ordering it no matter what. I'm going to pay top dollar. Like I just want it. It matters to me in a way that like a movie like Begonia does not.

• 1:23:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was kind of thinking this would fall almost more like, do you buy the Christopher's as soon as it comes out or something? Because it's like a Steven Soderbergh movie. And in any case, if you guys don't know about Red Rooms, if you missed me and Sean talking about it before, Sean and Naaman talking about it before, I found out about it because of Sean and Adam. If you like Fincher, if you like Olivia Seuss, if you like Lynch, I would highly recommend.

• 1:24:21Sean Fennessey?

  Cronenberg, for sure.

• 1:24:23Speaker 04

  It's just, yeah, incredible.

• 1:24:24Speaker 06

  We watched, Carrie and I watched it. We didn't know anything about it. It was one of our favorite movies of the year. We watched the Utopia disc too. And I, you know, I, I don't buy everything new. I don't have a consistent, I mean, I did buy Begonia because it's like, well, I'd rather see it in 4K than watch it on the Academy streaming app. I'd rather give it a more of a shot than that. You know, one battle after another, we really wanted to see on the big screen, but timing in our lives, we weren't able to do that. And so we have a big screen in the house. But again, I wanted to wait for the 4K to watch it as opposed to the Academy streaming app. So some of them I buy, some of them I don't. I've made some bad decisions over the years doing that, but I live with it.

• 1:25:05Speaker 04

  That's how I wind up with his copy of Wrath of Man.

• 1:25:10Sean Fennessey?

  One weird thing I just want to say very quickly before we get away from Red Rooms, I watched this movie Mile and Kicks recently, Chandler LeVax's movie, and Juliet Garepi is in that movie, the woman from Red Rooms. And it was like seeing like Freddy Krueger in like a comedy, like it just didn't, because that actress is so singular in that movie that the idea of like seeing her in another environment was super confusing.

• 1:25:30Speaker 04

  Lena Gore from Eastern Gate is in a Charlie XCX movie coming up soon. And I was just like, this doesn't feel right. You're supposed to be shooting your boyfriend in the face.

• 1:25:40Sean Fennessey?

  Sorry, I interrupted you, Tim.

• 1:25:41Speaker 05

  Well, no, I was just gonna say, I was very rudely looking at my phone a moment ago, because I don't know if I, this is like a tweet that I saw a couple of years ago that I love, that I may have actually read the last time. And if so, I apologize and you can cut this out. But it is a joke where it's like essentially a conversation between a filmmaker and Vinegar Syndrome. Filmmaker, this is my worst movie, beyond reclamation, serious, but only for true sicko completists who will never see the light of God. Not even I will watch this again. Vinegar Syndrome, now available in limited edition, $40 media book slipcase with 40 page booklet. And there is so much of this that of what we do that

• 1:26:25Speaker 05

  is summed up in this, like, this is irredeemable garbage. And also, I have the nicest presentation of that irredeemable garbage possible. That is from somebody named Ashley Nuff Tool on Twitter, I believe.

• 1:26:43Speaker 02

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• 1:27:27Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is brought to you by the Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo. The Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo is built for travel. You can earn rewards wherever you book, your favorite hotel site, your go-to airline, and more. You get five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants, and other travel, and one point on other purchases. Whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway, from booking your stay to that first meal when you arrive, you're turning your trips into rewards with the Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo. Learn more at wellsfargo.com/autographjourney. Terms apply. Okay, so you've all done all five now? Yeah. So you're up now.

• 1:28:04Speaker 06

  And I cheated. I got a couple more extras. This is also from Umbrella. This is Suicide Club.

• 1:28:10Sean Fennessey?

  Haven't seen this.

• 1:28:11Speaker 06

  On 4K. You haven't seen this?

• 1:28:12Speaker 05

  Is this the...

• 1:28:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:15Speaker 05

  Have you seen this before?

• 1:28:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, but not in a long time. It's upsetting. It's hilarious. And ultimately, surprisingly, it's very moving.

• 1:28:29Speaker 06

  For my money, it treads some of the same ground as audition, but I think I prefer Suicide Club to audition.

• 1:28:36Speaker 05

  I'll check it out.

• 1:28:40Speaker 06

  I'll just describe the opening to the film. There's a busy train station in Tokyo and you just see people milling around, almost documentary style, busy train station there, all different types. And these schoolgirls arrive at the train station to take the train. And 54, and they're sort of sailor suits. 54 schoolgirls step forward in the train and as the train is approaching, they hold hands and jump onto the train tracks and are immediately massacred. Suicide Club.

• 1:29:13Speaker 04

  What's wrong with us, man?

• 1:29:16Speaker 06

  As long as we're pervin' out, I think I should mention Russ Meyer. Some of his work has become available on 4K.

• 1:29:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:27Speaker 06

  Thanks to the good people at Severin. And I really like Russ Meyer and Carrie likes Russ Meyer. I've shown her a couple of these movies now and she's really enjoyed them. They're very funny and we really enjoy the film. The presentation of these movies is absolutely gorgeous on 4K. You never thought you would get it. I've even got both Carrie and the nanny Russ Meyer Buzzamania t-shirts that Severin, and they wear them and they're great conversation pieces. They love wearing their Russ Meyer shirts.

• 1:29:59Speaker 04

  That's like school pickup wear.

• 1:30:01Sean Fennessey?

  Russ Meyer is like a perfect saint for this conversation. Because as a filmmaker, one of the most impressive and accomplished independent directors in American history and also a guy who just loves a big rack. Like all of these movies are just like, these gals are stacked and I am into it and I'm not afraid to talk about it and show it to you explicitly. Also, watch me move the camera and cut like Steven Spielberg. It is an amazing weird collision of like, I'll say heterosexual impulse.

• 1:30:38Speaker 06

  You know, there's been an argument ever since these movies first came out about the feminist impulse and Carrie and the nanny can speak on that because they're not simply, it's not a simple matter.

• 1:30:51Sean Fennessey?

  It's not, it's complex.

• 1:30:53Speaker 06

  Something else going on there.

• 1:30:54Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't know that this was going to happen, but I'm, I'm, I'm not mad that it happened.

• 1:31:00Speaker 04

  We seem to be going through something collectively.

• 1:31:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:02Speaker 06

  Hold on, I got one more.

• 1:31:04Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, you got one more, go ahead. Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:06Speaker 06

  So this is the, the, the good fellow who bought Hammer Films. I bought it a couple of years ago and they've started releasing these Hammer Films. I mean, you've got dictionaries at home that are not as big as this edition of The Curse of Frankenstein. Now you'll notice that this isn't open.

• 1:31:24Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:31:25Speaker 06

  Because I thought we'd have a little.

• 1:31:27Speaker 04

  Ooh, unboxing.

• 1:31:28Speaker 06

  Unboxing Boy Senior, right?

• 1:31:30Sean Fennessey?

  I'm titillated.

• 1:31:31Speaker 06

  I'm Jebadiah Unboxing.

• 1:31:34Sean Fennessey?

  You've just set off the smoke alarm.

• 1:31:38Speaker 04

  The Department of Homeland Security found us.

• 1:31:40Speaker 06

  Bill Simmons fucking heard part of this recording and pulled.

• 1:31:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think the FBI is coming through the doors for Tim.

• 1:31:49Speaker 04

  A fire emergency reported in the building. Please evacuate the building by the nearest exit.

• 1:31:55Sean Fennessey?

  Jack, how does this keep happening?

• 1:31:57Speaker 06

  Well, I have to pee. There has been an Unboxing Boy emergency in the building.

• 1:32:02Speaker 04

  Jim Simons tried to revive Gerard DePurge.

• 1:32:05Speaker 06

  All right. So I'm, my name is Jebadiah Unboxing and I am the Unboxing Boy's older brother.

• 1:32:16Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think I've given the Unboxing Boy a first name. If it, if you're Jebadiah, maybe I'm Rutherford?

• 1:32:25Speaker 06

  Look at this.

• 1:32:26Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:32:27Speaker 06

  That is, that is nice.

• 1:32:28Sean Fennessey?

  Gorgeous.

• 1:32:29Speaker 06

  The other side.

• 1:32:30Sean Fennessey?

  Vintage poster.

• 1:32:31Speaker 06

  Yeah. What do we have inside here? We just bought.

• 1:32:37Sean Fennessey?

  I can't believe you did this for us and not your son.

• 1:32:40Speaker 06

  The Books of Frankenstein, Volume One, a very replete booklet. Here's The Curse of Frankenstein, the horror classic as a graphic novel.

• 1:32:53Sean Fennessey?

  That's cool.

• 1:32:54Speaker 04

  Postcards.

• 1:32:56Speaker 06

  Postcards. Maybe I'll send some of these to my friends.

• 1:33:03Speaker 06

  Sweet poster.

• 1:33:04Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, is that French poster? Italian?

• 1:33:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, French.

• 1:33:08Speaker 06

  There you go. I don't need to unwrap this goddamn poster. And then look at the discs.

• 1:33:15Speaker 04

  How many we got there?

• 1:33:15Sean Fennessey?

  My goodness.

• 1:33:17Speaker 04

  What? Twelve? Six? Six.

• 1:33:20Speaker 06

  The widescreen UK theatrical version, full screen as film version, widescreen US theatrical AR, widescreen UK theatrical version, full screen as film version, widescreen US theatrical AR special, and two discs of special features.

• 1:33:37Speaker 04

  You gotta get a padded room if you watch all of those.

• 1:33:39Sean Fennessey?

  How much could a person love this film?

• 1:33:42Speaker 06

  My son loves it a great deal.

• 1:33:44Sean Fennessey?

  Will he watch all of these versions?

• 1:33:47Speaker 06

  Right now, he wouldn't know the difference between the versions, right? But maybe he'll get to that point. Anyway, Hammer is putting out just these delicious boxes. Thanks to a guy who has a lot of money who bought a company and decided that this is the way he wanted to spend his money, as opposed to some asshole who buys social media company and decides that's how he wants to spend his money.

• 1:34:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, Sam Altman, just fucking release 000.

• 1:34:18Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Yeah, step it up.

• 1:34:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, do something good for the world.

• 1:34:21Speaker 05

  Can I throw out a take, and we don't have to belabor it because I know there's a time constraint, that I don't think is going to rival Tracy's trench run take?

• 1:34:28Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. Here we go.

• 1:34:30Speaker 05

  I don't know if I give a fuck about Frankenstein.

• 1:34:32Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:34:33Speaker 05

  I think there's just a part of me that my entire life, I've watched all these Frankenstein movies, including last year, and it has nothing to do with the film or the filmmakers.

• 1:34:40Speaker 04

  Or Oscar Isaac's pants.

• 1:34:42Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:34:44Speaker 06

  There's an essential problem with Frankenstein. And I love Frankenstein. But there is an essential problem. This guy has discovered how to bring dead people back to life, and they're just gonna like kill him and throw him out of the village. He's gotta like find equipment and build it. Why would you not like give this guy a big grant? Why would you not let Frankenstein cook?

• 1:35:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's a fair point. Obviously, the original intention is a fear of science, right? In a God-fearing community, the man who has control over life and death is dangerous and not to be celebrated.

• 1:35:22Speaker 05

  It feels like also like that that take might be like sort of like, like when Meghan McCain is posting pictures of Bob the Butcher being like, "This is all of America this weekend." And it's like, shit, did you watch the same movie? I think that was the bad guy. Where you're like, there's a little bit of this, like, here's the thing about Frankenstein, is that he played God and nobody rewarded him.

• 1:35:48Sean Fennessey?

  We're both sidesing Frankenstein. Okay, two more for me as well. You mentioned you watched "In the Realm of the Senses." This is a set I've not had a chance to dig into yet, but that I'm very excited to, which is called Radical Japan. It is cinema in state. It is seven films directed by Nagisa Oshima, the Japanese director of "In the Realm of the Senses," who made some of the most confrontational, politically and socially aggressive movies in Japan in the 60s, 70s, and 80s into the 90s, I believe. And this collects seven of his movies. A couple of them are fairly well-known. "Death by Hanging," specifically, is in the Criterion Collection. But a lot of these films are not often seen. "The Man

• 1:36:31Sean Fennessey?

  Who Left His Will" on film, "Boy, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief," that are like all effectively looking at different aspects of Japanese society and training a very intense lens on them. I'm very excited to dig into this. I wanted to give it a shout. It is now sold out, as I understand it, at Radiance, but hopefully they will print up some more and let people discover these movies. Because "In the Realm of the Senses" split my head open when I saw it earlier this year.

• 1:36:59Speaker 06

  Fantastic film. It really is. He's also the director of one of my favorite movies of all time, "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence."

• 1:37:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:37:06Speaker 06

  It's a great movie, available in the Criterion Collection.

• 1:37:09Sean Fennessey?

  The last one I want to shout out comes to us from our friends at Fun City. It's called "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains," which is one of the best movies about music and bands. And this is a fake band that, you know, led by Diane Lane. Another movie that I think was like very much a cult classic for many years and now has been restored. Majestically to 4K?

• 1:37:31Speaker 06

  Why did I not get the box? I don't, I'm pissed off. I apparently got a standard edition when I definitely would have liked a limited edition.

• 1:37:40Sean Fennessey?

  It also features a poster. But it does not feature any postcards, but this is-

• 1:37:44Speaker 06

  No postcards? How are you supposed to have any friends?

• 1:37:47Speaker 04

  You can't have Diane Lane postcard sending me?

• 1:37:51Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, but long live Tony Thrills. And yeah, that's, those are our top five, six, sevens. And some of these stories, respect women and understand women.

• 1:38:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:38:01Sean Fennessey?

  Some don't.

• 1:38:02Speaker 06

  Some a little less.

• 1:38:03Sean Fennessey?

  Some less so.

• 1:38:04Speaker 06

  Russ Meyer is in the respect category.

• 1:38:07Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. Speaking of women,

• 1:38:11Sean Fennessey?

  there, there, we have, there's a woman is present. A woman is-

• 1:38:15Speaker 04

  But she has not been present the entire time.

• 1:38:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, does that woman want to be named?

• 1:38:20Speaker 04

  Well, I thought it was gonna be funnier if I just said the first question is from John. But, you know, you blew, it's okay. The first question is from John. I'm here, I've sort of been listening. I've also been doing my expenses and preparing for other podcasts. I've learned a lot about you all, and I think you're very respectful towards the female form.

• 1:38:37Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you.

• 1:38:38Speaker 04

  In, in physical media and in all other forms. Okay, I'm here to ask questions.

• 1:38:45Speaker 04

  The first question is from John.

• 1:38:48Speaker 04

  Your soul is being transferred onto Blu-ray, and you will be put on your shelf with the rest of your collection. You get to choose where on the shelf you will live for an eternity. Will you wedge yourself between two beloved films or hide away in a far corner? What will be your eternal resting place?

• 1:39:06Speaker 06

  Well, that's a totally normal question.

• 1:39:08Sean Fennessey?

  That's actually Cronenbergian, the idea of your final form existing in one of these boxes. I, I have such little like love and respect for myself that there's no way I would like wedge myself between two filmmakers.

• 1:39:25Sean Fennessey?

  There's no chance. Like I think I would, even if I was on disc form, I'd still want to be buried somewhere is how I feel about this.

• 1:39:31Speaker 05

  I am, I think ultimately, and this is maybe more for my family, but is also a little bit of like, we all want to be remembered. I would get one of those little stand up things and it like on the shelf or above the fireplace, it would just be placed on the little stand up thing.

• 1:39:48Sean Fennessey?

  Oh yeah. Like a Mickey Mantle rookie card.

• 1:39:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, like a little Mickey Mantle rookie card or whatever. Just like fuck, like a war boy. Like witness me. You know what I mean? That's what I'd do.

• 1:39:57Speaker 04

  I think I would just be happy to be slid into a bunch of Friedkins, you know?

• 1:40:02Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 1:40:02Speaker 04

  Just the, the book of CR, just like the book of Frankenstein, you know? And, uh, just.

• 1:40:07Sean Fennessey?

  Between Bug and Killer Joe perhaps?

• 1:40:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure, man.

• 1:40:10Speaker 06

  Nice. I'll go buy the Russ Meyer collection. And then my, when my kids come to check that out later in life.

• 1:40:17Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 1:40:18Speaker 06

  I'll be right there.

• 1:40:19Speaker 04

  It was like, oh, there's Dad.

• 1:40:20Sean Fennessey?

  There's Dad.

• 1:40:21Speaker 05

  There's also.

• 1:40:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:40:24Speaker 05

  Vixen bosoms?

• 1:40:28Speaker 05

  Don't be mad when they pick that one. Like I'll, I'll unbox Dad in a minute.

• 1:40:33Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have a favorite Meyer vixen?

• 1:40:37Speaker 06

  Uh, you mean?

• 1:40:39Sean Fennessey?

  From his troupe?

• 1:40:40Speaker 06

  Actress.

• 1:40:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:41Speaker 06

  From, no, I don't have a favorite.

• 1:40:43Sean Fennessey?

  I do. It's Erica Gavin. Um, next question, please.

• 1:40:46Speaker 06

  Understandable.

• 1:40:47Speaker 05

  This is totally normal so far. The next question is from Ian. How do you organize your Blu-rays? Personally, mine are in chronological order by release date because I'm a psychopath. On a side note, a woman I'm dating picked a movie from my collection for us to watch after a date last week. She went with Total Recall. She's a keeper.

• 1:41:12Sean Fennessey?

  Ian, congrats on dating a woman.

• 1:41:14Speaker 04

  I would love to know what her other choices were though.

• 1:41:17Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I, we haven't discussed this.

• 1:41:20Speaker 04

  I just go alphabetical by title. I don't have, uh, I'm not putting up the numbers yet to be like filmmaker or genre or anything like that, but I would love to get there one day.

• 1:41:29Speaker 05

  I'm alphabetical. At one point on the shelves, the criterions were by spine number, but when it started spilling into the next shelf, I was like, I just gotta go alphabetical.

• 1:41:40Speaker 05

  I would love to, I just don't know that I have the executive function to be able to find anything. If it were somehow by filmmaker, and then what if you only have a movie that's, you only have one movie by that filmmaker?

• 1:41:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, where does that go?

• 1:41:53Speaker 05

  You know, where does that go?

• 1:41:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:54Speaker 05

  Then you're doing alphabetical and other things. Just go alphabetical.

• 1:41:57Speaker 04

  I like putting all the Radiance discs together. Like, I think there's an argument to be made for by label, but how do you do it?

• 1:42:04Speaker 06

  Wrong. I do it wrong. And I'm about to undergo a massive reorganization, I think.

• 1:42:12Speaker 06

  Because it's wrong. It's mainly by label. Stuff that isn't on interesting labels is alphabetical. But the nanny recently watched Spy Who Came In From The Cold, and she didn't watch the 4K. And I was enraged by this because it was so poorly organized. She didn't know there was a 4K available.

• 1:42:31Speaker 04

  How dare she? Is she allowed to make a selection for herself? This was not programmed by you?

• 1:42:35Speaker 06

  I was going, I mean, like, she, you know, right? She's picking movies for herself right now. So, yeah, the fact that she watched Spy Who Came In From The Cold and didn't see the 4K was, hurt me.

• 1:42:45Sean Fennessey?

  I like what she's cooking, though, by just choosing that film. That's a great choice.

• 1:42:48Speaker 05

  I also am.

• 1:42:49Speaker 06

  She's a good nanny.

• 1:42:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:50Speaker 05

  Wild to me that this person is still in your employ.

• 1:42:56Sean Fennessey?

  I've spoke of this before. I organize by director, sort of by preference of director, but that was something that was started more than a decade ago. And I've changed living environments multiple times through that strategy, and I have to rethink it completely.

• 1:43:10Speaker 04

  And then there is the looming Amanda reorg.

• 1:43:14Sean Fennessey?

  Which oft threatened, but unfollowed through on, I think because that's like a nine-day project, and Amanda just doesn't have the time. So she knows deep down, she bit off more than she can chew. But I gotta figure something else out, too, because I also do not, I'm fully in double stacking era. Like, I am now, it's beyond the beyond.

• 1:43:31Speaker 06

  I am investigating with my AV man, putting movies on a server. He's, he's going to start putting movies on a server. I've given him a couple of stacks of stuff that is not watched much to put on a server and he's going to show me sort of a prototype for how this would work.

• 1:43:49Sean Fennessey?

  Like a Plex situation?

• 1:43:51Speaker 06

  I, I, like, I don't know that it's that, but like that.

• 1:43:54Sean Fennessey?

  Is this a private technology that's been developed for you?

• 1:43:57Speaker 06

  Not necessarily, though. I have a very good AV man. You know, he was Milos Forman's AV man. A lot of people don't know this, but Milos Forman was a collector, was a physical media collector and had quite an extensive collection.

• 1:44:12Speaker 04

  How will you decide whether or not there's any degradation by moving it to digital?

• 1:44:18Speaker 06

  He insists there's not. I'm, I can tell, I can tell obvious changes. I can't tell, I'm not, I don't have that thing, right? I, I can tell when it looks.

• 1:44:31Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:32Speaker 06

  Like a reference quality. Yeah.

• 1:44:33Sean Fennessey?

  Does your AV man travel?

• 1:44:36Speaker 06

  He probably would. You want to, you want to bring my AV man out?

• 1:44:40Speaker 04

  But I don't know if this works, though. I don't know if you guys building your own streaming libraries is really honoring the physical media.

• 1:44:47Sean Fennessey?

  I would never give up the discs. That's my thing. I would never give up the discs.

• 1:44:50Speaker 06

  It's not like I'm throwing the discs.

• 1:44:51Speaker 04

  Then you would pack them away, maybe.

• 1:44:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's some things that I, that don't necessarily warrant display, yeah, would get packed into a storage area.

• 1:44:59Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:45:00Sean Fennessey?

  Man. Okay.

• 1:45:01Speaker 06

  I'll let you know how it goes.

• 1:45:02Speaker 04

  It would be great to, you should have the AV man on the next episode.

• 1:45:06Sean Fennessey?

  A good idea. I, I, I don't know if I can do what you're describing, but I do need a new system entirely. I need a new space.

• 1:45:12Speaker 06

  I asked him, by the way, if he wanted a shot on the show and he said, you know, we only work by.

• 1:45:17Sean Fennessey?

  Appointment only?

• 1:45:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, by recommendation.

• 1:45:19Sean Fennessey?

  Recommendation. No kidding?

• 1:45:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:21Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. Wow. He's like a drug dealer. Um, okay. What's the next question?

• 1:45:26Speaker 05

  I promised that I wouldn't insert my own opinions into this, so we're just gonna keep going.

• 1:45:30Speaker 06

  I never believed the promise.

• 1:45:32Speaker 05

  I, I did. Sean said that this had to be a safe space, so I love you all and I support you. Um, Johan from Sweden.

• 1:45:38Sean Fennessey?

  What is your most anticipated release that's been announced for 2026? I thought we could quickly talk about the Near Dark situation.

• 1:45:47Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, that and that was one of the Tangerine Dream lesser known soundtracks run that we had.

• 1:45:53Sean Fennessey?

  And how did you watch it? Did you just rent it?

• 1:45:57Speaker 05

  I honestly, I don't even know if it's available for rental.

• 1:46:00Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:46:01Speaker 06

  I have a Blu-ray. It's not great.

• 1:46:03Sean Fennessey?

  And is it a US produced?

• 1:46:05Speaker 06

  It is US produced, but it's old.

• 1:46:07Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, there was an announcement, maybe a year ago, that this was in process. And then on April Fool's Day, I want to say it was, was it Severin who announced that they had been working on it? And then people could not figure out.

• 1:46:23Speaker 05

  If it was a joke?

• 1:46:23Sean Fennessey?

  If it was a joke or not.

• 1:46:24Speaker 05

  What a weird thing to joke about.

• 1:46:26Sean Fennessey?

  And I know, but to to to our community, Near Dark is one of the precious few kind of lost to physical masterpieces, right?

• 1:46:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:46:36Sean Fennessey?

  Catherine Bigelow's earliest films, one of, we've talked about it multiple times on the show. And I still don't really have answers on like that news that came on April 1st, if it's real or not, or if we're being fucked with. But there's like a fairly elaborate communication from the owner of a of a physical media company about the process that they're exploring. It seems fake to me, but then there were some who suggested, well, it seems like a bit, but it's actually not a bit. So I'm a little bit confused about it. But that's one that if it were happening, I've had that circled in red pen for 10 years. Any others?

• 1:47:12Speaker 06

  The General Buster Keaton coming out on 4K from Eureka just next month. I'm very excited about that. The Outfit 4K coming from Arrow. We'll talk about that on the Duval draft.

• 1:47:28Speaker 06

  HUD from Criterion, Long, right? That's been a white whale for a long time, HUD. And Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, also from Criterion. Those are some biggies. Those, there you go.

• 1:47:41Sean Fennessey?

  In the same year, we were getting Boxcar Bertha and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, which I think are, are they the final two Scorsese films that were not available on Blu-ray or 4K? I think they are.

• 1:47:51Speaker 06

  Makes sense.

• 1:47:52Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and he's for you, Tim?

• 1:47:54Speaker 05

  I don't have the executive function really to keep track of things that are coming up, but I am excited about the outfit, which you told me and then I forgot and now I'm remembering and that's great.

• 1:48:04Sean Fennessey?

  I, I don't mind sharing that my, my owning a DVD copy of the outfit was my earliest in with Quentin Tarantino. When I met Quentin, he was like, have you seen the outfit? And I sent him a photograph of my DVD copy. And I think that that was like, oh, okay. You're cool. And because that movie, which is directed by John Flynn, who also made Rolling Thunder, which is one of his favorites, we've talked about many times, um, is just an absolute stunner of a crime thriller from the seventies. What's, what do you anticipate?

• 1:48:33Speaker 04

  Like Tim, I'm not like trawling for like release dates. I let, I let the game come to me.

• 1:48:40Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 1:48:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:41Sean Fennessey?

  I like that attitude. I don't understand it really.

• 1:48:44Speaker 04

  I, I mean, it's just, I can't also be on top of that. That's like, I feel like I'm kind of like almost early 27, knowing what's coming out on TV. So it's like.

• 1:48:54Speaker 06

  He can't keep on top of that because he's first chair on the watch. Because he's trying to be first chair on the rewatchables. Because he's maybe spread a little thin.

• 1:49:03Sean Fennessey?

  That's true. That's true.

• 1:49:06Speaker 04

  That is a, a absolute dirty pool and I, I don't respect it. I'm not going to dignify it.

• 1:49:12Sean Fennessey?

  Can I tell you the movies that I have on preorder right now?

• 1:49:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:49:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:49:16Sean Fennessey?

  Moneyball 4K, my beloved, was supposed to be arriving in my house, April 28th. That's today. It got pushed back by Amazon to, uh, May 12th and I'm not happy about it, but arriving on May 12th as well. Fight Club 4K Steelbook.

• 1:49:28Speaker 05

  Oh, yes, that one.

• 1:49:29Sean Fennessey?

  Extremely excited.

• 1:49:31Speaker 06

  You gotta try to get off the Amazon pipe. It's hard, but you gotta try.

• 1:49:34Sean Fennessey?

  With those releases, there's not a lot of.

• 1:49:37Speaker 04

  Politics or because of like, just they screw with the release dates and they're.

• 1:49:41Speaker 06

  Because of politics, because of, it's terrible.

• 1:49:44Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I generally agree with you. Um, Speed Racer 4K, May 19th.

• 1:49:50Sean Fennessey?

  The Cars That Ate Paris and The Plumber 4K.

• 1:49:53Speaker 06

  Ooh.

• 1:49:53Sean Fennessey?

  That Peter Weir films. And then along with that bundle, I ordered from the Atomic Movie Store, Benedetta 4K. From Paul Verhoeven.

• 1:50:01Speaker 04

  There you go, brother.

• 1:50:02Speaker 06

  Benedetta fucking rules.

• 1:50:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:04Speaker 06

  Fucking rules.

• 1:50:05Sean Fennessey?

  Great movie.

• 1:50:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:50:06Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, and the one Battle Steelbook, which I still don't have. I'm still waiting.

• 1:50:10Speaker 04

  Is that delayed or something?

• 1:50:11Sean Fennessey?

  It was delayed to June 2nd. So I sit here quietly with my.

• 1:50:15Speaker 06

  Wait a minute, do I have the Steelbook or do I just have a regular?

• 1:50:18Sean Fennessey?

  Presumably you have the regular edition.

• 1:50:21Speaker 06

  Looks good, by the way.

• 1:50:23Sean Fennessey?

  Question reader, would you want to be identified by name?

• 1:50:28Sean Fennessey?

  Whatever, whatever you think works. Are you the executive producer of this episode? Sure.

• 1:50:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:50:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You want that credit on your CV forever? I do, because once again, I think that you guys have been really respectful to women and to cinema. You know, you lift us up every day. Yeah.

• 1:50:44Speaker 04

  There's women in red rooms.

• 1:50:47Sean Fennessey?

  This is the bosom mania episode, executive produced by Amanda Dobbins. So, you know, as like any good girl boss, I'd like credit for that. Um, the next question is from Gabriel. Who are some directors or actors whose history feels like they are being forgotten by current generations? And could use an Arrow or Criterion, et cetera, box set to help regain a new generation of viewers?

• 1:51:12Speaker 06

  Well, I'll jump in here. I had this listed on my white whales as well. Paul Mazursky is one of my favorite directors and he's wildly underserved on physical media. Harry and Tonto, my God, just release it so I, all these fucking people bitching about Al Pacino not winning the Academy Award can see that Art Carney was cooking. Blooming Love, Alex and Wonderland, The Tempest, Next Stop Greenwich Village. This, his whole 70s run, almost the entirety of his 70s run is not available even on Blu, much less 4K.

• 1:51:50Speaker 04

  Really?

• 1:51:50Speaker 06

  What the hell, man?

• 1:51:52Sean Fennessey?

  We've talked about this before. Next Stop Greenwich Village does have a Twilight time, I think, but all of those other titles are not even available on Blu-ray at all. It's kind of a mess and it's, you know, I, some of his films, like Moscow on the Hudson, there's a nice indicator, right? There's a couple of titles that have, but, you know, in that. Realm of like, kind of second tier, you know, a tor comic voices from that period of time, like, working in the mold of like, a Woody Allen type. And like, these movies are kind of forgotten.

• 1:52:19Speaker 06

  Or Hal Ashby, who's very well represented. And yet, I think of Ashby and Mazursky in the same sentence.

• 1:52:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's like, it speaks, I think, to the way that, like, some people just get canonized and others don't. And there's the other example that I think of all the time, and we mentioned this, Amanda, when we talked about Meryl Streep, is Mike Nichols, who is considered a much more sort of like, hallowed and legendary filmmaker. But when you go back and look at all of the movies that he made, especially his movies in the 70s and 80s, like, there are a lot of them are not available on anything beyond DVD. Or if they're available on Blu-ray, like, there are very limited runs of Blu-rays. So like, Silkwood and Heartburn and, you know, Bluxy Blues, I think, just came from Shout! Select in the last couple of years, but that was not available for a long time.

• 1:52:58Speaker 06

  Catch 22 just came out on a Shout! Select as well, which is a underrated movie, as far as I'm concerned.

• 1:53:05Sean Fennessey?

  And I think last time we were all together, we talked about Carnal Knowledge and that coming from two different places. And like, it's, you know, in 2025, they're kind of finally getting around to a bunch of these movies. So he's one I think of all the time. And it's kind of inexplicable. Like, these were big studio movies, and then they just never got that attention. I think, is Postcards from the Edge, is that also not available on Blu-ray?

• 1:53:26Speaker 06

  I don't think so.

• 1:53:27Sean Fennessey?

  That, I mean, that's crazy.

• 1:53:28Speaker 04

  That's, are you serious?

• 1:53:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. So there's a, I don't know if there's anybody else that you guys are thinking of that you think?

• 1:53:33Speaker 04

  No, not really. I mean, like, you know, when I first got into this, I was like, oh, there's no way, like, these 10 VHS classics from my childhood will ever have, like, deluxe really, and they all have, you know, like, there's like, a deluxe edition of Rad, you know?

• 1:53:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:47Speaker 04

  So I feel like it would be hard for me to think of. There are directors that I would like to see centered as the sort of principle of the release, rather than maybe the title. Like, I would love to, like, get, like, a bunch of McTiernan movies that are, like, about him and about, like, what he did. But, I don't know. I mean, like, there's, there's plenty of good releases of his movies. It's just really more about the context than what they're presented.

• 1:54:10Sean Fennessey?

  But Die Hard's still not on 4K.

• 1:54:10Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 1:54:11Sean Fennessey?

  Like, there's still, there's still plenty of things like that, that are just kind of no brainers, that are obvious. Like, you know, for example, Disney is waiting to put Star Wars on 4K in a set next year to match the 50th anniversary, right? Like, they're gonna do that. I'll be shocked if they don't do it. And they'll probably put all the versions on it.

• 1:54:29Speaker 04

  Is there any danger of that not happening, though, with them getting rid of the home entertainment?

• 1:54:31Sean Fennessey?

  It's definitely possible. But like, I was thinking about, for the 76 draft, this movie Not a Pretty Picture, this Martha Coolidge kind of documentary slash scripted exploration of sexual assault, which is a really fascinating, interesting movie that was effectively retrieved and saved and reconstituted by the Criterion Collection. Then I was looking at her career and it's like, a lot of her movies have been issued in recent years, like Cinematograph to Joy of Sex, Valley Girls available, Real Genius has a 4K. Like, this is a filmmaker, do you think, like, well, Martha Coolidge, we need to do more work to protect her, but, you know, Rambling Rose, like, all these movies have nice editions of them, and then Mike Nichols doesn't have Blu-rays for a bunch of his movies.

• 1:55:12Sean Fennessey?

  So it's just a very capricious kind of business, and you don't totally always understand why this happens. Anyway, what's next?

• 1:55:21Speaker 04

  This one comes from Andrew. This is a big one, I hope you guys are ready. I hope you got your Tom Cruise emails ready. My TV just broke, it's time to upgrade. I want to hear from each of you, what is your full AV setup? TV projector, audio and 4K player, seating, lighting, popcorn maker? Give me the full details.

• 1:55:44Sean Fennessey?

  Popcorn maker?

• 1:55:45Speaker 04

  I don't have a popcorn maker.

• 1:55:48Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have a microwave?

• 1:55:50Speaker 04

  I do, yeah. I barely use it, but I do have a microwave. I have a pretty standard setup. I can't remember how big my Samsung TV is, but it's fairly large. And I bought the Sony that Sean had recommended before, that was sort of like the starter kit for multi-region DVD viewing. There's really nothing remarkable about my setup, though.

• 1:56:16Speaker 05

  I think I have a Sony OLED. I think I went into the 80s for that, like 80, like, it's big, it feels nice. Have a soundbar, a Sono soundbar, I think, and then, yeah, like, a region-free 4K player. The only thing, I think, in this question that I- I think PlayStations and Xboxes can play 4Ks, but I feel like Xbox specifically, which we do have, has like kind of can't play the larger storage versions of 4Ks, which is sort of, which is why I went to the region-free 4K Sony Player, the one that

• 1:56:56Speaker 05

  you recommended, just because like, I think it's like, if it's 100GB disk, Xbox can't play it. And I was having trouble with that because then I wouldn't be like, well, fuck, I gotta watch this Blu-ray, that's lame. The whole thing is lame, but if you want to, you know, if you want to just parse it out, playing the Blu-ray when you have the 4K is lame. So yeah, that's sort of the setup that I have.

• 1:57:22Speaker 06

  I asked my AV man what I have.

• 1:57:29Sean Fennessey?

  I'll just say, before you pull it up, very quickly, if you want to upgrade from that Sony that I recommend, which is the one that I usually recommend to listeners of the show, because it's like 200 bucks and it does most of what you need. Occasionally you'll meet a 4K where you can't handle the bitrate and it's too strong. But if you want to upgrade, I think the Panasonic DPUB 820, which is a region-free Blu-ray player, is very powerful and can do most of what you need. Okay, what do you got?

• 1:57:58Speaker 06

  We have a flagship 7.1.4 immersive environment, meticulously architected with a full monitor audio array. This high-fidelity 11-channel layout is driven by the reference-grade silicon of the Morantz, delivering a seamless Dolby Atmos soundstage that marries British acoustic precision with legendary musical warmth.

• 1:58:32Speaker 06

  The auditory experience is matched by a monumental 150 inch canvas illuminated by a Sony Premium 4K laser projector, under the unified orchestration of a Crestron control system. These elements serve as the exhibition stage for broadcast TV, high bitrate streaming, and a bespoke master tier digital library, the Cinema Athenaeum.

• 1:59:05Speaker 04

  I'm sorry, did he write you this text message?

• 1:59:08Speaker 06

  He did.

• 1:59:09Speaker 04

  Holy shit.

• 1:59:10Speaker 05

  He also ghost wrote bug.

• 1:59:14Speaker 04

  Is that the setup that you watch? You're gonna watch Kyler Murray on British Acoustics?

• 1:59:20Sean Fennessey?

  Quick check in on that. How are you feeling?

• 1:59:23Speaker 06

  Feel good, baby. Skull. Skull, baby.

• 1:59:25Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, you're feeling good.

• 1:59:26Speaker 06

  Skull. The draft is, we're gonna see. We took a couple of big swings. We're gonna see.

• 1:59:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:59:32Speaker 06

  I would have worn my Cubs hat. I am aware it's baseball season, but my wife looks too good in it. She stole it. She stole my Cubs hat.

• 1:59:38Sean Fennessey?

  That's adorable. Uh, well, that was information.

• 1:59:44Speaker 04

  Fucking stand on that? Like, can you beat that?

• 1:59:46Sean Fennessey?

  Do you, no, but I'm but a pauper relative to Mr. Letts. I,

• 1:59:51Speaker 04

  It almost, it's weird how like our setups are commensurate with our station in the High Council. Like, I'm like, I'm about to have a TV, an Xbox. I haven't seen sunlight in years. This fucking guy's got like,

• 2:00:06Speaker 06

  I will tell you this rule of thumb about your setup. Well, first of all, let me say this. Get an AV man. Get an AV man.

• 2:00:15Sean Fennessey?

  You know, get a chauffeur.

• 2:00:17Speaker 06

  No, it's not a chauffeur. It's a, it's worth, you know, maybe if you're a bit of a tech head and you know how to hook everything up and do all that stuff. I can't hook up, I can't do shit.

• 2:00:27Sean Fennessey?

  Critical question.

• 2:00:30Sean Fennessey?

  Democracy falls. You gotta get out of this country immediately. Maybe something for us all to consider. You can only bring one person with you, your AV man or your nanny. Who's coming with you?

• 2:00:40Speaker 06

  The nanny.

• 2:00:41Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:00:43Speaker 04

  I have a critical question about this. What's the remote control setup? Like, is this something that you need to have, like, high level understanding of different channels and all this other stuff like? Or can you just hit play and it goes?

• 2:00:58Speaker 06

  My kids can operate the remote control. Well, yeah, my kids, both my kids can operate the remote control.

• 2:01:04Speaker 04

  Is it like an iPad that you have like, kind of like?

• 2:01:06Speaker 06

  No, it's just a, it's a big ass remote control, but they can get around on it.

• 2:01:10Speaker 04

  That's often the, uh, we have some disagreements in my home about how complicated the remote controls have gotten.

• 2:01:15Speaker 06

  So the first thing is get an AV man. And the second thing is whatever you spend on your visual, you should match in the audio. If your TV and your player cost $600, you should be spending $600 on your sound system.

• 2:01:32Sean Fennessey?

  I love the philosophy. That's nice.

• 2:01:36Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, what's our next question?

• 2:01:38Speaker 05

  This comes from JD. And I'm, let's be clear that I'm, I'm channeling the voice of JD here. Greetings, gentlemen. I am humbled to be addressing Tim Hitmaker Simons, Tracy Playmaker Letts, and Chris Haymaker Ryan in the esteemed council of physical media. Thank you, Grand Knight Fentis Fennessey, with Noble Squire Sanders at your side for assembling this roundtable to tout the tangible rebuff buffering and elevate classics new and old to their 4K glory.

• 2:02:16Speaker 06

  Holy shit.

• 2:02:17Speaker 05

  And of course, Lady Dobbins, who probably wants no part of this allegory, correct? But we all owe you a Negroni. My question deviates from substance and in-

• 2:02:28Speaker 06

  Instead focuses purely on the aesthetic. Do you remember a film you purchased purely for the box art, heft, or style?

• 2:02:38Speaker 06

  No.

• 2:02:41Sean Fennessey?

  You know, this, it, I don't really have a lot of examples of this. It does raise a question about buying things in person versus ordering online. Over the weekend, I went to the video store in part so that my daughter could pick some movies out. And also to see if there was anything I wanted to buy to bring here today. And it just so turned out that at this video store, which I love, Videotech in Highland Park, I just didn't, there wasn't anything that really appealed to me. But I will occasionally, if I see something, I'll just grab it and say like, what the heck, I'm gonna try it out. But nothing sprung to mind because I don't do a ton of in-person shopping at this point in my life.

• 2:03:18Speaker 04

  Far more likely to do this for books than a movie.

• 2:03:20Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 2:03:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:21Sean Fennessey?

  Just from cover art?

• 2:03:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, like I love going through used bookstores and it's like, if, if, if there is a tableau that I am interested in on the cover art, I'll be like, this is really good. Even sometimes even just the title of the book, I'm like, that sounds really compelling. I'll just grab it if it's like a $5 paperback or whatever.

• 2:03:39Speaker 05

  I kind of agree that like, most of these are based on emotion or recommendations. So there isn't, you know, like I have a connection to the movie or I love it, or it was seminal from when I was growing up, or you guys have recommended it, that kind of thing. But I don't know that I've ever gotten something just because it's sort of like, looked nice. You know what I mean? I've definitely gone with like, blind buys, but again, that's just sort of by recommendation.

• 2:04:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, or it's the label and, or you know what I mean? Like it'll be, like, I'm happy to do that. Like I, I, the Radiant subscription is one of the best purchases I've made in, in years. But I, I don't, I don't know that I would necessarily just like walk into a video store and like, just grab something like that, because I like that.

• 2:04:21Speaker 06

  I, I'll double up. I will occasionally double dip and buy a movie that I've already got, because there are some bells and whistles that I'm interested in. I, I'm buying the John Woo movies on Arrow, in addition to.

• 2:04:33Sean Fennessey?

  Are you really?

• 2:04:34Speaker 06

  The Shout.

• 2:04:35Sean Fennessey?

  So I almost brought the stack of Shout John Woes, just to kind of put a circle around, all of these films are available now, or like, you know. Choi Hark's The Blade just came from Criterion. Like that wave of Hong Kong cinema, like all of it is now coming

• 2:04:51Speaker 06

  I know.

• 2:04:51Sean Fennessey?

  to physical, which is so crazy because it was among the most desired stuff forever. But why, you just want to have, you want to see the different transfers? Or you want to see the different features?

• 2:04:59Speaker 06

  I think they're essentially going to be the same transfers, but the special features are going to be wildly different. Some of the bells and whistles are a little different, but I don't buy it because of the box, right? I don't buy it because of the heft of the box or anything. I bought both Carnal Knowledgees, right? I thought that was worth, and those transfers are very different. They both look great, but they're both, the color correction on them is very different from each other.

• 2:05:25Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 2:05:26Speaker 05

  I've been like intrigued by the idea of like the Halloween that was going to come, the Halloween box that was going to come in a pumpkin or the Unboxing Boy Chainsaw Massacre. But it really then, I guess, like, do I love those movies enough to have it take up that amount of space? So I end up sort of pulling back from that.

• 2:05:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I don't really want toys, really.

• 2:05:46Speaker 06

  I don't really want the toys.

• 2:05:48Sean Fennessey?

  I'm much more, if there's an elaborate box, I'm open minded about that.

• 2:05:53Speaker 06

  That might be something you're interested in.

• 2:05:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I could dabble. Quite an elaborately phrased question as well. Thank you for that. What's next?

• 2:06:00Speaker 06

  From Will, oh hallowed council members.

• 2:06:05Speaker 06

  Can you explain the differences between standard Blu-rays and 4K Blu-rays? Also, more importantly, how confident are you that there won't be a new updated medium in 20 years that will render 4Ks obsolete like DVDs and VHS have become?

• 2:06:23Speaker 05

  I think I'm only qualified to handle the second one and even then a little bit hesitant. My understanding is that if you go up to 8K, the human eye can't actually tell the difference.

• 2:06:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's my understanding as well.

• 2:06:38Speaker 05

  You know, talk to us in five years when we're around the, hey, guys, new 8K release of I Spit on Your Grave and I picked it up. And you know what I mean? Kindheart's Coronet's 8K. Tracy got it on free order.

• 2:06:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's possible that that happens. I don't get the impression that there's going to be a pivot anytime soon technologically, just based on how a lot of these companies are operating. The difference between Blu-ray and 4K is fairly legible by just saying there's more information in, in the technology so that you're just getting more pixels effectively. So you're getting brighter color, deeper blacks. You're getting sometimes a different aspect ratio depending on how the transfer operates. It's just a, it's like a bigger piece of machinery that you're consuming with the film. You know, sound is improved often.

• 2:07:27Sean Fennessey?

  It's just better, clearer. Not always. I think there are some films, there's like a human eye component to, relative to how the films are remastered. We talked about the James Cameron movies and how like they don't really look the way that the James Cameron movies look on screens.

• 2:07:42Speaker 04

  I've been having this issue recently with toying with the settings on my television in terms of matching them to what I think that, you know, there's the standard kind of like what is recommended for watching a 4K on my kind of television. But you can get in there and start to adjust it from like warm one to warm two. And some things come out like a bit brown, I think I find. So it's like, I'll, I'll, I'll mess with it. Cause I'm like, I don't think Excalibur is supposed to look like this and you can, I, but that sort of gets into like, then like you're playing Dr. Frankenstein with your movie and it's hard sometimes to like exactly identify that perfect thing. My thing with the, if they do come up with an 8K and they're like, now you could buy these movies again.

• 2:08:25Speaker 04

  I would probably say to Tracy's point earlier, that the more money you spend on your setup, you'll probably get more out of your movies that you already have than worrying about some new technology coming along.

• 2:08:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:36Speaker 04

  Um, and I would imagine at a, at a point Tracy's AV guy is probably right that there is going to be more and more work done on like having a private server and having all this stuff backed up so that you have like a digital copy of it as well.

• 2:08:51Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's right.

• 2:08:51Speaker 05

  You know what'll help with your remote control investigation?

• 2:08:55Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:08:55Speaker 05

  AV man.

• 2:08:57Sean Fennessey?

  Um, what's next?

• 2:09:02Speaker 06

  I do think that, yeah, sure, something will come along that'll replace it. Just like something came along that replaced DVDs, but not everything gets replaced, right? I've, I've got the outfit on DVD. And I'm glad, I've got a California split on DVD. I'm glad I've had those to go to until something better comes along. So maybe my 4Ks will be the thing I have until something better comes along. I'm glad that the technology has advanced as far as it has. But sure, something better always, you know. We, we don't know what the world's gonna look like in 20 years. It's probably just gonna look like all of us, you know, grubbing for food.

• 2:09:41Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I hope so.

• 2:09:43Speaker 05

  It's gonna look like the beginning of Fury Road with Elon Musk with a bunch of fake medals turning on the water and telling us not to become addicted, because we will mourn its absence.

• 2:09:54Sean Fennessey?

  At least I'll have these, you know?

• 2:09:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:09:56Sean Fennessey?

  They will, hopefully won't degrade by then. Uh, what's our next question?

• 2:10:00Speaker 05

  They won't because they're made of plastic. The next question is from Georgia. It is I, Georgia, one of the dozen of women who collects physical media.

• 2:10:10Speaker 06

  Yes!

• 2:10:13Speaker 05

  I, Georgia, am new in my journey and looking to grow my collection this year. What is one director you recommend buying their whole body of work or as close to the whole body as possible?

• 2:10:25Speaker 06

  Russ Meyer.

• 2:10:29Speaker 06

  Uh, that's a tricky question, right? Because I-

• 2:10:32Sean Fennessey?

  What kind of movies does Georgia like?

• 2:10:33Speaker 06

  Well, that's just it. It's like, you don't wanna, I don't wanna sit here and say, well, Georgia's gonna like movies directed by women. It doesn't necessarily follow. The nanny, for instance, her favorite movies are action movies. And she's the one who's made us watch all those goddamn Mission Impossible movies. We've watched them because of the nanny.

• 2:10:53Sean Fennessey?

  Let's try this again. Say the same thing, remove the word goddamn from the sentence, and then we're okay.

• 2:10:58Speaker 05

  And maybe add thankfully.

• 2:11:01Speaker 06

  So, uh, different people have different tastes. My, my wife tends to not like the action movie. She can't, she, she, if you ask her one thing about the Mission Impossible movie, she couldn't tell you one thing that's happened in those films. Uh, she likes a more personal story, so it's hard to know where to start.

• 2:11:22Speaker 04

  I would just say that the filmmakers who I've had the most fun collecting their titles, I, I think I have all of them up to a point, is the Coen Brothers. And, uh, I'm just gonna take a wild guess and say if George is listening to this show, she probably likes them, but these are, I think, uh, relatively economical purchases, you know? Um, you can get the full breadth of two of the great filmmakers of, of this, this era. And, uh, I find that like, having those as, having those as physical objects is really satisfying and you can follow their, and there's a bunch of different kinds of, of additions of them and you can, you can mess around with that, but I, I love, I think that's a good place to start.

• 2:12:04Speaker 05

  Yeah. No, I don't really have, like, what director do you like? And then go get all their movies and like, watch them in chronological order and like, see them develop and see, like, man, why did they make this weird choice? And it was like, oh, cause they were a cokehead and they ran out of money and they needed to take a job, you know what I mean? Like, see it in order would probably be interesting.

• 2:12:27Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's a, there are some simple signposts to direct people to. For example, I'm fairly certain that the Criterion Collection has issued every single Charlie Chaplin feature film. So if you wanted to have the totality of Charlie Chaplin's feature filmmaking career, you could just get all 10 of those discs and just say, well, here is- A pretty dramatically important phase of filmmaking.

• 2:12:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:12:57Sean Fennessey?

  And that if you watch these movies, and this is like the totality of their filmography, which spans like 40 years, you can get a lot out of that. Like, if you were just like starting a project and you wanted to say, well, let's say there are 100 important filmmakers, that's one of the first 10 that would probably get named in your standard 101 film class. But most directors, I would venture to guess, no other directors shy of like Bergman, have a complete collection from one distributor. Most of them are kind of dotted across, and so it's like harder to find, even the Coens, like, there is no Blu-ray of The Lady Killers.

• 2:13:30Speaker 04

  I don't think there's a 4K of Raising Arizona, like, that kind of thing, yeah.

• 2:13:33Sean Fennessey?

  So, you know, you have to think hard about which are the ones that you can get in totality. But, you know what, Georgia, write back.

• 2:13:41Speaker 04

  Let us know who you like.

• 2:13:42Sean Fennessey?

  What are your five favorite movies? And then maybe we can help direct you in the future.

• 2:13:45Speaker 04

  Enjoy all those Charlie Chaplin movies.

• 2:13:47Sean Fennessey?

  And thank you for your womanhood and your insightfulness.

• 2:13:50Speaker 06

  Oh, my God. You just thanked her for her womanhood.

• 2:13:55Speaker 05

  We're not beating any of Amanda's allegations.

• 2:14:00Speaker 05

  The next one is long, but it's incredibly worthy, so buckle up. It comes from Luke. Hello, High Council. My name is Luke, and I'm a librarian down in Florida who runs our movie section. I want to sing the praises of the High Council. Most of our patrons don't have internet or can't afford to go to the movies, so physical media is their only way to watch these films and shows. It's the only way most people get to experience film. So I'm thankful for y'all's passion and obsession.

• 2:14:29Speaker 06

  Y'all, points for y'all.

• 2:14:30Speaker 05

  Thank you. Well, you know, I come by that one personally. To honor the High Council, I would love to put together a High Council Picks collection. These are usually five to six movies picked by the staff that we...

• 2:14:42Sean Fennessey?

  Think go together or carry similar themes genres. I would love to have a reason to explain to my boss who Tracy Letts, CR, the Hitmaker and Shaun are.

• 2:14:52Sean Fennessey?

  So we'll start with thriller, obviously.

• 2:14:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, obviously thriller, thriller, quote, put that in the kids section.

• 2:14:59Speaker 05

  For the family.

• 2:15:00Sean Fennessey?

  This is a big, big ask.

• 2:15:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:15:03Speaker 06

  I, I maybe don't understand the ask. What is the ask?

• 2:15:06Speaker 04

  They want to have like a basically like what are, what are?

• 2:15:09Sean Fennessey?

  Recommended by the High Council.

• 2:15:10Speaker 04

  Recommended by us, but it would be helpful if they fit together.

• 2:15:13Speaker 05

  By the High Council.

• 2:15:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. What's a thematic quintet of films that we would select to represent our tastes and interests and speak highly of physical media?

• 2:15:21Speaker 04

  Australian new wave horror films.

• 2:15:24Sean Fennessey?

  That's the thing is like, I think that the, the, the craft of physical media has, is really peering down like exploitation, horror, you know, these extreme subgenres. So you're not thinking as much of like Forrest Gump is now available on 4K. You know, but a lot of that stuff is also available. And so what, what represents this, this, this project?

• 2:15:48Speaker 04

  Should we keep a generic and pick like one criterion movie each?

• 2:15:52Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I was gonna say like, you want to do like one Samurai movie, one Italian crime movie, one, you know, we can say like, what are the kind of pet interests of each council member?

• 2:16:03Speaker 04

  Okay. Uh, I'll pick an Italian crime film. I'll just do one that I have in my bag that I, I'll grab it actually.

• 2:16:09Sean Fennessey?

  Look at you, holding out on us.

• 2:16:11Speaker 04

  Illustrious corpses.

• 2:16:12Sean Fennessey?

  Nice.

• 2:16:13Speaker 04

  Radiance, uh, Luna Ventura, and it's about, um, a bunch of Supreme Court justices in Italy getting murdered. And this guy's got to get to the bottom of it, but it's really like, uh, a meditation on corruption in institutions. And it's from Radiance and it's fantastic. And I think actually would, would still play, you know, like I think if you're just like, hey, I'm coming in, I'm just picking up so slow, maybe, but.

• 2:16:34Sean Fennessey?

  Fabulously bleak ending on that movie.

• 2:16:36Speaker 05

  I wouldn't know. I don't know that I would like, put this in my like top five movies of all time, but I think it might be a good thing. Like if you're at the library, you're interested in movies, I'm just going to go off the Coen Brothers thing and be like, throw Miller's Crossing in there.

• 2:16:49Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:16:50Speaker 05

  Because.

• 2:16:52Speaker 05

  It might not be the Coen Brothers movie that you've seen, but I've like weirdly like watched it four times in the last couple of years and I find it so comforting. And I think it's like, I don't know, I think it's great. And I think if you're just like in the library and you're looking for a good time from a filmmaker that maybe you haven't seen their entire filmography, like you're probably not, you probably haven't seen that one. I think that'd be fun. It'd be fun to sit down and watch that for the first time. Throne, Miller's Crossing.

• 2:17:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't think it's their best movie, but that's my favorite movie by them.

• 2:17:20Speaker 06

  You go Sean.

• 2:17:23Sean Fennessey?

  My go-to is always The Third Man, which now has like multiple editions that you can find of the movie. Um, I think it's one of the richest and most interesting men. It's a huge influence on Miller's Crossing. Um, I'm fascinated by post-war collisions of noir and crime movies. Um, and it's the kind of movie that I think is best appreciated with like a really high quality addition of the movie because it's a black and white film that has like this amazing cinematography, this black and white photography. And it kind of, it has like, um, an interest in like perverting perspective, you know, like every

• 2:18:06Sean Fennessey?

  time you see a character, the way that they're shot indicates how the film feels about that character. And it's like, one of the great powers of cinema is that like, it's not like watching a stage play or even a television show, which is usually standard, like on a tripod, you know, the camera's not moving a lot. Um, and it's also just from a kind of writing, performance and character perspective, feels like the pinnacle of 20th century movies to me. So, but maybe, maybe the Studio Canal most recent 4K of The Third Man.

• 2:18:35Speaker 06

  The Third Man, illustrious corpses.

• 2:18:37Speaker 05

  Miller's Crossing.

• 2:18:40Speaker 06

  I'm gonna go with Don't Look Now.

• 2:18:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:18:42Speaker 06

  I'm gonna put Nicholas Rogues, Don't Look Now in there. A couple of beautiful 4K editions of that, both from Criterion and Studio Canal is the other gorgeous edition of that. So, yeah, 4K, Don't Look Now.

• 2:18:56Sean Fennessey?

  Hopefully the fine folks of that Florida library enjoy those movies. All right. This one is from Self-Sty.

• 2:19:04Speaker 05

  Gen Z Dominic. Hi. I'm sitting up straight to read this one. I don't understand what that means. It means I didn't identify him as Gen Z Dominic. Oh, I see. He identified himself as Gen Z Dominic.

• 2:19:20Speaker 06

  I thought you were saying his, his name was. So.

• 2:19:27Speaker 05

  Illustrious council. My name is Dominic. No way that all of these started like this.

• 2:19:35Speaker 05

  You can't interrupt me on this one right now. I'm so sorry. It's okay. It's just, I need everybody to hang on for the ride. Okay? Illustrious council. My name is Dominic and I'm a 20 year old student at the Ohio State University. After hearing the last convening of the council, you all awoke a nostalgia within me for the discs and Blu-rays I had growing up. Editor's note, five years ago, because I am 20. Eight months later, I have now basically given up going to the bars to fund my 4Ks and vinyl collection that I have started because you all made me realize the joy and human connectivity we feel towards physical media. I did want to tell you all that any person my age who has seen my collection has taken an actual interest and have expressed interest in starting a collection of their own.

• 2:20:20Speaker 05

  But I will say sadly, whenever I bring back birds from the bar, not once has one asked me about the 4Ks. However, it is quite automatic after I throw on a tame Impala or the new Bruno Mars vinyl. P.S. Yesterday I was able to show a girl I've been seeing Fight Club in theaters for the anniversary screening and she loved it. She had no idea about Tyler Durden and I was able to see her reaction. My friend then told me tonight that it was crazy to have taken a date to see Fight Club. Is he right?

• 2:20:50Sean Fennessey?

  What a roller coaster.

• 2:20:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I didn't know where that was going. I don't. So if the question is, was it crazy? I don't think it's crazy, just in that way of like, I think you should be radically yourself on a first date. Sure. And if they don't, if they're not into you, then they're not into you. If you can't love me at my, at my Fight Club. Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:21:10Sean Fennessey?

  I, well, what do you think about that?

• 2:21:13Speaker 06

  I showed a woman I was going out with a Clockwork Orange. And right before Alex's rehabilitation starts, she burst into tears and asked me to take the movie off. And I was like, but, but, but you don't understand. He's about to, there's about to be a, he's gonna get, like, if you stop now, all you have is horror. There, you know, there's, there's.

• 2:21:37Speaker 04

  Plenty of those to show you.

• 2:21:41Speaker 06

  There's another, yeah. It was not a, not a great selection, as it turns out. Her dad was in the hospital. Maybe it just wasn't a great selection.

• 2:21:50Speaker 04

  Can I be candid with Dominic?

• 2:21:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:21:53Speaker 04

  I would just say, don't necessarily, at your young, ripe age, where you're still experiencing life, like, don't, don't shut yourself off from real life experiences, because that's what's going to inform your, your movie taste in the first place, is.

• 2:22:06Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's a bit of a contradiction in this email, which strikes me as bit stream of consciousness, where he says that he's basically given up going to the bars to fund his 4Ks and vinyl collection. But then, one or two sentences later, is talking about bringing back birds from the bars.

• 2:22:20Speaker 04

  Do you think he's like, not drinking at the bar, but is still going to nab women to take to Fight Club?

• 2:22:28Sean Fennessey?

  That's an interesting use of the word nab. Um, I.

• 2:22:31Speaker 04

  Maybe we've been in this room for too long.

• 2:22:34Sean Fennessey?

  I, um.

• 2:22:35Speaker 04

  This is like going places.

• 2:22:37Sean Fennessey?

  I, I want to say this.

• 2:22:40Sean Fennessey?

  Getting physical media does not mean that you're shutting out the rest of the world.

• 2:22:44Speaker 04

  I don't, I didn't say that.

• 2:22:45Sean Fennessey?

  And I know, I know, I'm speaking for, I'm speaking to Dominic as well. Um, I think, go to repertory theaters and experience films with people as well. That's important. Um, don't spend all of your money on 4Ks and Blu-rays, despite evidence to the contrary, that's not what I do. Um, I think that.

• 2:23:03Sean Fennessey?

  It's good to share these things. It's good to experience them with people. Like, that's kind of one of the magic of movies, right? That you can have this communal event. It doesn't, it isn't just, but the collection is more of like, organizing your feelings around some of these things. That's one of the things it helps with. So I hope Dominic understands that.

• 2:23:20Speaker 05

  I would, I would, I want to echo that Dominic and say like, one of the reasons I got into this was because I had gone to see like a rep screening of Out of the Blue in Atlanta. And the community around that kind of movie, I was, I felt great about. Amanda, what is the name of that theater?

• 2:23:41Sean Fennessey?

  The Clermont?

• 2:23:42Speaker 05

  No, the other one, like one screen revival.

• 2:23:46Sean Fennessey?

  In Atlanta?

• 2:23:47Speaker 05

  In Atlanta.

• 2:23:49Sean Fennessey?

  Not the, I don't know, besides the Clermont?

• 2:23:53Speaker 05

  Okay, whichever one it is, and it very well might be Clermont.

• 2:23:56Sean Fennessey?

  Is it the Plaza?

• 2:23:57Speaker 05

  The Plaza. Thanks a lot.

• 2:24:03Sean Fennessey?

  I've been there in 25 years. It is Atlanta's oldest continuously operating cinema and a hub for indie films, cult classics and film festivals.

• 2:24:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, I would say, like, take the money you would have spent on the bar, or maybe spent on a Blu-ray that you think would look good on the shelf, but isn't one of your favorite ones, and go to a rep theater and find a community there. You know what I mean? Like, still get out there in the world. We are old as fuck. You still have a life ahead of you. We are on the downswing.

• 2:24:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, we close the bars.

• 2:24:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:24:31Speaker 04

  And now we buy DVDs.

• 2:24:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:24:33Speaker 04

  Tracy's just gonna tell him to get an AV guy.

• 2:24:36Speaker 06

  It's my best advice. Get an AV guy. And I don't know about all this going out into the world. I can't get behind that. Stay in.

• 2:24:46Speaker 05

  Stay in and program.

• 2:24:48Sean Fennessey?

  Let's read our next question. Before we manage, I have two clarifications. Number one- Tim, I'm sorry, the Claremont is a strip club that is right next to the Plaza.

• 2:24:58Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 2:24:59Sean Fennessey?

  So I was confused. Yeah, I apologize for that. And, you know, hello to everyone in Atlanta, still in Fulton County.

• 2:25:06Speaker 06

  Especially at the Claremont.

• 2:25:07Speaker 05

  And I just, I want to say two things about the Claremont.

• 2:25:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:10Speaker 05

  A wonderful honky tonk bar that also happens to be a strip club.

• 2:25:15Speaker 05

  The two times that I have been there, one was with, who played the king, the king in the King's Speech? Colin Firth? I went to the Claremont at one point with Colin Firth, and I know that's a little bit of a name drop, but I just want to say, with a large group of other people, but I just want to say that Colin Firth went to the Claremont, and I was there for that. And the other time that I went there-

• 2:25:39Speaker 06

  I can see the expression on his face.

• 2:25:42Speaker 06

  It's already imprinted right here.

• 2:25:45Speaker 05

  The other time that I went there, I parked and a gentleman came up and said, hey, for $5, I'll make sure that nobody steals your windshield wipers. And it was very clear he was telling me, if you don't give me $5, I'm going to steal your windshield wipers. And I was like, yeah, that actually sounds like a pretty good deal. And I gave him $5, and when I came back, the windshield wipers were there.

• 2:26:08Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's wonderful.

• 2:26:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:26:09Sean Fennessey?

  I do love the idea of Colin Firth in an English manner. He's popped downstairs, having his breakfast and tea, and he's checking out what's going on with his friends on the big picture. What are they discussing today? Yeah. And he's listening, and he's like, oh, Timothy Simons, I know this fellow. I'll listen to this episode all the way through this three-hour digression. I once went to a bistro with him in a great Atlantic area. Yeah. And lo and behold, he reveals, we guys watched women dance together.

• 2:26:38Speaker 05

  There was a very large group of people. It's very, it's kind of like Jumbo's Clown Room in LA. It's not, it's not a sort of salacious place. It's more of like- A celebration of dance. A celebration of dance.

• 2:26:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's a review.

• 2:26:50Speaker 05

  A review, a coed hang, and like a good indie bar honky tonk.

• 2:26:54Speaker 06

  The kind of place Russ Meyer might have enjoyed.

• 2:26:56Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:26:58Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I think we have time for two more.

• 2:27:02Sean Fennessey?

  So this comes from Nathan and Emily. Dear esteemed members of the High Council.

• 2:27:07Speaker 05

  Again.

• 2:27:08Sean Fennessey?

  We are getting married at the end of June and have been struggling to think of interesting items to put on our wedding registry. One thing that is a big part of our lives is a massive-

• 2:27:17Speaker 05

  Physical media collection that takes up a full wall of our house. So we ask you, is it appropriate to put Blu-rays or 4Ks on a wedding registry? And if so, what movies or box sets would you recommend we ask for?

• 2:27:34Speaker 06

  Uh, Criterion Fellini box, Kurosawa box, Bergman box. Right? I mean, that's a, that's a lot of the history of film right there. Those chaplains that he talked about. Again, it depends on the kind of collection you're trying to.

• 2:27:51Sean Fennessey?

  So you're thinking this is appropriate for them to put Blu-rays and 4Ks on the registry?

• 2:27:54Speaker 06

  More than, you know, some cheap ass toaster.

• 2:27:57Speaker 04

  Marriage in people's gift bags.

• 2:28:00Sean Fennessey?

  I just love that Nathan and Emily are doing this together, right? They've sent this email in together, which means that they're committed not just to a life together, but to collecting and supporting film history together.

• 2:28:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:28:09Speaker 05

  I mean, a hundred percent, it's a good thing to throw on there. You know, I mean, do the napkins and all that. Like, you know, if you need some dishware, that's important. You're starting a new life together. You need new dishware. But I think that's like, that's your life. That's your life together.

• 2:28:24Speaker 04

  It'd be cool if you could put an AV guy on your registry.

• 2:28:28Sean Fennessey?

  Is that a service he's willing to provide?

• 2:28:31Speaker 05

  I would throw in like that Wes Anderson box too. And I think maybe, I think you're maybe right to keep it to boxes rather than individual titles. Just because you're probably less likely to spend the money on a, on a box.

• 2:28:45Speaker 05

  And, uh, and it would be, and it would be fun. And you'll always remember that it was for your wedding.

• 2:28:50Sean Fennessey?

  And maybe that Capra Columbia box set. That would be a good one, right? That's a, it's a pricey one.

• 2:28:56Speaker 06

  Wong Kar Wai set from Criterion.

• 2:28:59Sean Fennessey?

  Great one.

• 2:29:02Speaker 05

  That Godzilla one for their future kids.

• 2:29:04Sean Fennessey?

  Godzilla one. Terrific, yeah.

• 2:29:07Speaker 06

  Herzog, uh, collections from, uh, Shout.

• 2:29:10Sean Fennessey?

  One of my first big boxes was that, that set. That's how I got up to speed on all of Herzog's, his first 20 movies.

• 2:29:17Speaker 06

  The Zhang Yimou set from, uh,

• 2:29:20Sean Fennessey?

  I don't have this.

• 2:29:21Speaker 06

  From Umbrella?

• 2:29:22Sean Fennessey?

  I don't have that.

• 2:29:23Speaker 06

  Is it Umbrella? No, it's imprint.

• 2:29:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:29:25Speaker 06

  The imprint.

• 2:29:26Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's, you could get into the Australian and English companies that, where they're going to be more expensive to import to. You could think about that.

• 2:29:37Speaker 05

  And I just want to throw this out, and I don't know your plans on having children. When you get to a baby registry, you'll absolutely need burp cloths, get more of those than you need. You're gonna need onesies. But you know what? Throw kids movies on that registry as well.

• 2:29:51Sean Fennessey?

  Great idea.

• 2:29:52Speaker 04

  Or Larry Clark's Kids.

• 2:29:53Speaker 05

  Larry Clark's Kids.

• 2:29:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, there you go.

• 2:29:55Sean Fennessey?

  Which is available from imprint, actually, but not in the United States of America.

• 2:29:59Speaker 06

  My, uh, my boy right now is really into, uh, Time Bandits.

• 2:30:04Speaker 04

  Oh, man, that scared the shit out of me when I was a kid.

• 2:30:06Speaker 06

  He and, uh, his little sister dressing up as Time Bandits.

• 2:30:09Sean Fennessey?

  Really?

• 2:30:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:30:10Sean Fennessey?

  He's got great taste.

• 2:30:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, he does.

• 2:30:12Sean Fennessey?

  Um, okay. What, will this be the last?

• 2:30:15Speaker 05

  Yes, this is the last one.

• 2:30:17Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:30:17Speaker 05

  It comes from Trevor. A hot topic in the physical media world is the Grail 4K. The one movie above all you'd like to see get a 4K remaster. I'd love to know yours.

• 2:30:30Speaker 04

  I don't have one that's like a collector's grail. It's one that I just missed the window on, which is A Canterbury Tale, the Powell and Pressburger movie. Uh, I watched that for the first time randomly on TCM, uh, a couple of months ago. Fell deeply, deeply, deeply in love with it.

• 2:30:48Speaker 06

  Great movie.

• 2:30:49Speaker 04

  Um, I know it came out on Criterion. I've seen it used on eBay. I think I've seen a couple of times, like for 80 bucks, like unopened on eBay. But I would love like a beautiful, beautiful, like addition of that. And that's like one I'm really waiting for.

• 2:31:04Speaker 05

  The ones that come up for me are, I think at one point, like the devils might have been in that question. Like the devil seems to be like, and I, but that's gonna be a lot of people's answer.

• 2:31:15Speaker 05

  I think the Danny Boyle movie Sunshine, which really only has like a very.

• 2:31:20Speaker 04

  What are we doing?

• 2:31:20Speaker 05

  I have the Blu-ray of it that I found in a thrift store, but I think it's like finicky and skips a lot. I think that was, there was like a problem in the production.

• 2:31:32Speaker 05

  I think one up, I mentioned it earlier, sort of offhand, but you can only find Blu-rays of streetwalking that are used and that are like in the hundreds of dollars. And so it'd be cool to see that upgraded. And then just one of my favorites that I kind of can't believe doesn't have a Blu-ray or 4K is The Candidate, which I think is a phenomenal

• 2:31:54Sean Fennessey?

  Great pick.

• 2:31:55Speaker 05

  movie and one of my, and has become one of my favorites. And, and it just bums me out that like that performance in that movie isn't more accessible in that format.

• 2:32:06Speaker 06

  A few, The Conformist. I don't understand why there's not a 4K of The Conformist, which is not only one of my favorite movies ever made, but you know, there's a, there's a book or documentary, I think it's called Visions of Light, right? Interviews with cinematographers. And the, the one movie that is consistently referenced by all of them is The Conformist. It, it, when, it's like when they were getting together to make the great movies that they made, they sat down with the director and watched The Conformist. That's the first thing they watched. So it absolutely needs reference level disc. California Split, we've talked about, really needs an upgrade. It's my, maybe my second favorite

• 2:32:49Speaker 06

  Altman after Nashville. The Heartbreak Kid, I think is a great white whale for a lot of people. I've got a bad old DVD of it, but such a great movie. Lonely Are The Brave, a great movie that's not talked about very much anymore. David Miller movie with Kirk Douglas and Walter Matthau. There's a Twilight Time, oh, and Jenna Rollins also. There's a Twilight Time disc of that, but that could certainly use an upgrade. I just did Year of Living Dangerously on Blank Check. There's a terrible, terrible DVD, but there is no Blu-ray representation or 4K. And then a sentimental pick, because it's the first

• 2:33:29Speaker 06

  movie I ever watched with my wife, Sherman's March, which is a great, hilarious, wonderful documentary.

• 2:33:35Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you something, last Saturday, Ross Mackelwee, the director of that movie, was at the American Cinematheque presenting that film. And they asked me to moderate the Q and A and I couldn't do it and I was devastated because I love that film so much, saw it in college. And speaking of documentaries that cooked my noodle.

• 2:33:54Speaker 06

  Really, for those writing about your nascent relationships with your partners, I have to say Sherman's March got Carrie and I off on the right foot. That was a great movie to start our relationship.

• 2:34:06Sean Fennessey?

  If she clicked with it, that's a good sign.

• 2:34:08Speaker 06

  She definitely did.

• 2:34:09Sean Fennessey?

  I made a list about a year ago of 21st century movies that are not available in this, these formats. Part of it is there are a great many Netflix and Amazon movies that have never been issued and hopefully we're changing that over time. But I'll just go through like a handful of them. Some of them, for example, David Byrne's American Utopia, which was only available on HBO Max for a while, The Criterion Collection put it out, directed by Spike Lee. So fascinating capture of the stage show that Byrne put up. But like, uh, let's look at a couple of them here. The Handmaiden is still not on 4K. Sexy Beast is still not available on 4K. Waking Life, I don't believe is available on Blu-ray, maybe an international Blu-ray, Richard Linklater's film.

• 2:34:51Sean Fennessey?

  Tic Tic Boom, the Netflix film that Lin-Manuel Miranda directed, is not available. In the Bedroom is not available on anything beyond DVD, as far as I know.

• 2:35:00Speaker 06

  I don't think so. I think there's an, maybe an imprint. Yeah, there's an Australian in the bedroom.

• 2:35:06Sean Fennessey?

  By the same token, Little Children, Todd Field's other film, I think is also only available on DVD. American Splendor, as far as I know, is not available on Blu-ray. We could go on and, I mean, The Tragedy of Macbeth is a Joel Coen movie that is just not available on physical, period.

• 2:35:20Speaker 04

  It's just on Apple, right?

• 2:35:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I think Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes is not available on physical or maybe just on DVD. How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a recent film that was never issued in physical. One of the big ones on this, my list for years and years was Birth. And finally Criterion put that out, which is wonderful, but.

• 2:35:42Speaker 06

  Still haven't seen it. Never seen, I mean, I just got the disc, but I've never seen it.

• 2:35:46Speaker 04

  Is there something up with the Glazer movies that takes, takes a while to come?

• 2:35:49Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I know Under the Skin is on Blu-ray. Zone of Interest has a 4K from A24.

• 2:35:56Speaker 04

  Under the Skin doesn't have a 4K?

• 2:35:58Sean Fennessey?

  As far as I know, does not.

• 2:35:59Speaker 05

  Just watched Birth last week. Fantastic. Yeah.

• 2:36:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's amazing movie. Speed Racer was on this list. That's been since corrected. To your point about 000, there's a movie that Chris and I really loved from a few years back called The Vast of Night. That Amazon distributed that just, it may as well be gone. I think it's still available on the service.

• 2:36:17Speaker 04

  I believe so, yeah. I like checked recently enough.

• 2:36:20Speaker 05

  So you know. Throw the killer on there, like.

• 2:36:22Speaker 04

  Dude, I mean, that's the thing is the Fincher's and the Soderberghs of the last 10 years are, are all, I don't know. I've been like, No Sudden Move might have gotten a release when it was on from Max and.

• 2:36:34Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think it did. I don't think, I think many of those Max and Netflix Soderbergh movies are not available. I'm thinking of anything that's not available. The one that, you know, Zach Craig is Barbarian, not available in any physical format, period.

• 2:36:44Speaker 05

  That's wild. Yeah.

• 2:36:47Sean Fennessey?

  You know what's a really weird one is I Heart Huckabee's, which is only on DVD as far as I know. Which was a pretty big film in its time. A lot of big stars, big director.

• 2:36:56Speaker 05

  We can get the Lily Tomlin.

• 2:36:59Sean Fennessey?

  But it on the.

• 2:37:01Sean Fennessey?

  But like, wouldn't you want to see an interview with her today about her experience on that film? That would be fascinating. Another weird one is M. Night Shyamalan's The Village.

• 2:37:08Speaker 05

  All right.

• 2:37:09Sean Fennessey?

  Only on DVD as far as I know, as other, his first few films have now since been issued on 4K. I could do this for like hours, but there's, there's Shattered Glass is one that I think is still only on DVD as far as I know. Lot of favorites of mine over the last 25 years. In fact, one of Amanda's favorites, Something's Gotta Give, was only available on DVD for the longest time and they announced this a month ago that it's coming to 4K.

• 2:37:34Speaker 05

  Amanda, is that exciting for you? I look forward to one of you giving it to me for my birthday. And, and I'll, listen, I'll treasure it. This morning, I'm not joking, my, my son went upstairs and found the only 4K I own, which is the 4K of Bring It On, which.

• 2:37:50Sean Fennessey?

  John got me last year, a treasured artifact explaining what a 4K is to a four year old was interesting. But we're gonna try to make the the player work. Or is it 4K or is it Blu-ray, Sean? What is it? It's 4K. Okay. Tracy, have you watched that film yet?

• 2:38:09Speaker 06

  Uh, I I haven't. I own it. I haven't watched it.

• 2:38:11Sean Fennessey?

  I remember.

• 2:38:12Speaker 06

  Right. I've been watching. I've been steeped in Duval in 76. I told the nanny, I said, as soon as I come home, we're gonna start watching stuff that's not Duval in 76. She's very excited.

• 2:38:23Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, how do you feel about all these questions? You feel that everyone is normal who really enjoys this experience?

• 2:38:28Speaker 04

  Who are we to judge what's normal after the selections we just made?

• 2:38:32Speaker 06

  Well, you know, we we talk about, we joke about the people who come up to us and they they and the people who came up to Carrie and say, well, they're a fan of this. It really is great. It really is great to know that people are enjoying this stuff, especially when I feel that they're diving into some of the older or more obscure stuff and they're starting to expand their their vision of what a movie is or how a movie works or I I just think it's really cool. I'm really and I would say something else about the the guy who talked about not going to the bars.

• 2:39:03Sean Fennessey?

  Dominic.

• 2:39:04Speaker 06

  I have 12,000 discs. I've also been sober for over 30 years. If I do the math of how much money I haven't spent on booze and drugs and other vices and I put that money toward the discs, that's why I have 12,000 discs with money left over, I might add. From what I saved from, you know, getting off the dope. Get off the dope.

• 2:39:32Sean Fennessey?

  I do think that's, I think you need to rationalize that with your own personal success.

• 2:39:38Speaker 04

  You're in four versus Ferrari. I mean, you know, like, I don't know, fucking Dominic's gonna like.

• 2:39:44Speaker 06

  I'm just saying. Hey, little scratch left over. I'm just saying. You have a pulitzer. Get off the dope. That's my advice because not only is it a financial question, but the truth is that I like myself more as a dork with a huge physical media collection than an asshole at the end of the bar who's cynical and, you know, puffing on his cigs and, you know.

• 2:40:08Speaker 04

  It's the scales of justice, man.

• 2:40:10Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, couldn't have said it better myself.

• 2:40:12Speaker 05

  What would have happened if Nancy Reagan had that messaging instead of just saying no?

• 2:40:16Speaker 04

  But would you have done that as an undergrad in college? Been like, it's time for my dork, my dork era. Like you, you want to go out and like, you have like a couple of years of.

• 2:40:26Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I feel like I've always kind of been myself. Yeah, I've kind of always been like really into the stuff that I'm into, to the potential alienation of others. But I think when you have a lot of enthusiasm for stuff, it can be infectious. Like, I think this, this literally did start out as a weird like, can you just come in and let's hang out? Like, it was not some strategy. And the fact that people responded to it is why it is like,

• 2:40:49Sean Fennessey?

  become this beautiful space where these men and women send us letters about how, how we're like royalty.

• 2:40:54Speaker 06

  And to, to that point, Carrie also is like, I'd rather be, you know, it's not, it's not like she's a scold about my collection. She's like, I'd rather be with a guy who's doing this than a guy who's got some other vice, right? That is ugly or unmanageable.

• 2:41:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, playing on college basketball or something. Yeah.

• 2:41:14Sean Fennessey?

  But are you still like a little hung up on being cool at this point in your life?

• 2:41:17Speaker 04

  Me?

• 2:41:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:18Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:41:19Speaker 05

  Dude's effortless about it. He's not hung up on it at all.

• 2:41:22Speaker 04

  Do you think I used to be hung up?

• 2:41:23Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you're kind of circling back to like, what I want to be doing is ripping heaters and picking up chicks at the bar.

• 2:41:27Speaker 04

  I didn't say, I did not circle back to that. I was saying to Dominic that these years at the Ohio State University are formative and you want to build your own lore. You know, you want to have your hopes.

• 2:41:40Sean Fennessey?

  Dominic was in the UK and the other, the Ohio State was a different person.

• 2:41:42Speaker 04

  Oh, well then fuck it. Yeah. He's mine. I'm just saying.

• 2:41:45Speaker 06

  Let's, regardless, let's be careful out there.

• 2:41:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. Everybody be careful. Everybody make good decisions.

• 2:41:51Sean Fennessey?

  Be careful with these, with Thriller, you know? If you get Thriller, watch it in.

• 2:41:55Speaker 05

  That's not a first date movie unless you think she's really special.

• 2:41:59Speaker 04

  She's really, really the one.

• 2:42:01Speaker 05

  Unless she's really the one. I also, one thing that I love about this is what this all comes back to.

• 2:42:10Speaker 04

  Is she hard cut material?

• 2:42:12Speaker 05

  Hard cut.

• 2:42:13Speaker 06

  Wait a minute. What? Whoa. Wait.

• 2:42:17Speaker 06

  Cut was a little, that cut was a little hard.

• 2:42:20Sean Fennessey?

  It's not the only thing that's hard. Yeah.

• 2:42:23Speaker 05

  I think what this comes back to is that ultimately my favorite thing that this opens up is that, is that you end up in a conversation with someone and then you're talking about movies, which is what a fucking great thing to do.

• 2:42:35Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 2:42:35Speaker 05

  To just be out in the world and somebody that you don't know comes up to you and then you're just talking about movies for a while. There's nothing better than that.

• 2:42:42Sean Fennessey?

  Couldn't have said it better myself. Um, this was, this was healthy. This was normal. This was the behavior of mature men.

• 2:42:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. Our, our selections reflect incredibly peaceful interior lives.

• 2:42:54Sean Fennessey?

  We're not trying to understand anything more deranged or depraved within ourselves. We're all in functioning relationships.

• 2:43:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:43:02Sean Fennessey?

  Right?

• 2:43:02Speaker 04

  We trust institutions.

• 2:43:04Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely. We're upholding democracy.

• 2:43:06Speaker 05

  I'm in a functioning relationship with my wife and my nanny.

• 2:43:14Speaker 04

  It's the great, the romantic square. Tracy, his nanny, his AV guy.

• 2:43:23Sean Fennessey?

  Is your nanny aware of your AV guy?

• 2:43:25Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 2:43:26Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think they would have chemistry?

• 2:43:27Speaker 05

  Uh, no, I don't think so.

• 2:43:29Speaker 04

  Would you be jealous of your AV guy?

• 2:43:31Sean Fennessey?

  You can't have her running off with him. Yeah.

• 2:43:33Speaker 04

  Cause then you'd lose childcare and AV guy.

• 2:43:38Speaker 05

  Total nightmare.

• 2:43:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Uh, I'd like to thank Amanda Dobbins for her.

• 2:43:47Speaker 05

  Any words of wisdom, Amanda Dobbins? I would just say to go back to Dominic one more time, um, that the tradition of watching Fight Club with a woman who you're not willingly, willing to publicly call your girlfriend, is time honored. It's generational and everyone needs to go through it at least once. So he's gonna be okay. I think.

• 2:44:11Speaker 05

  You know what? She has to see it sometime, you know? And that's.

• 2:44:14Sean Fennessey?

  That's probably the right context in which to see Fight Club. Fight Club was released the month I started dating my now wife. And we saw the film and we're together to this day.

• 2:44:23Speaker 04

  And hey, look at that.

• 2:44:24Sean Fennessey?

  What more can you say?

• 2:44:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:44:25Sean Fennessey?

  What more can you say about the film? Amanda, thanks for sitting in on this. Really quite a strange choice on your part. I admire it. I have to be honest, I was doing other work here. That's the second time you've said that.

• 2:44:35Speaker 04

  You've been very clear about that.

• 2:44:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but listen, it's called multitasking. It's called having it all, which I, as a woman, can do. You're like a Russ Meyer heroin. Despite everything that was just said on this podcast.

• 2:44:47Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Lucas Cavanagh for production support. Thanks to Jack Sanders for the robes, for producing this episode, for guiding the council comfortably. How will you be cutting social clips of this episode safely?

• 2:44:59Speaker 01

  I mean, we probably have at least like 24 ready to go. So we're okay.

• 2:45:02Sean Fennessey?

  That's cool. We'll reconvene again.

• 2:45:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:45:06Sean Fennessey?

  This year?

• 2:45:07Speaker 04

  Conceivably.

• 2:45:09Sean Fennessey?

  Christmas.

• 2:45:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think we need to bring the four Santas together.

• 2:45:13Sean Fennessey?

  Like on Christmas Day, you want to record an episode?

• 2:45:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, just let your kid know. This is what it's gonna be like.

• 2:45:19Sean Fennessey?

  Sorry, Alice. I gotta go sit with some men, talk about plastic.

• 2:45:23Speaker 04

  We should do a Christmas, like a holiday gift guide.

• 2:45:25Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I like that. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I do not know when this is airing or what episode is next, but I'm sure it'll be very good and we'll see you then.

• 2:45:32Speaker 04

  Oh, wait, shout out Alex Ross Perry, who's angling.

• 2:45:35Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah. What do you want to do about that?

• 2:45:36Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 2:45:37Sean Fennessey?

  Well, okay, actually, before we truly wrap, there's been some questions about admission into the council, right? Like Griffin Newman wants in, Alex Ross Perry wants in. These are men who are longtime collectors.

• 2:45:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:45:49Sean Fennessey?

  Of various items.

• 2:45:52Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, what are the thoughts?

• 2:45:53Speaker 04

  I don't feel like I can be possessive here of a new addition to the council. Also, I think if you wanted to create like a high and low chamber of Congress, you know, like maybe an East Coast.

• 2:46:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:46:04Speaker 04

  Like you, Tracy, Alex and Griffin could do that. I'm not going to stand in the way of that. I mean, the round table was round for a reason, right? So as to not have a hierarchy. I mean, I feel like if you swap in and out, it's like, you know, we're all one head of a Hydra or something. I don't think Tracy feels that way, but yeah. No, Tracy obviously doesn't feel that way and he is irreplaceable.

• 2:46:23Speaker 06

  No.

• 2:46:28Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that'll do it. We'll see you next time on The Big Picture.

• 2:46:50Speaker 05

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