‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ Is the End of 'Star Wars' As We Know It. Plus: The Winners and Losers at Cannes.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away … we used to have good ‘Star Wars’ movies. Before diving into ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’, Sean and Amanda give a final recap of their trip to the Cannes Film Festival, and cover a handful of movie news headlines they missed while they were overseas (2:28). Then, they are joined by ‘Star Wars’ superfan Van Lathan to discuss who the movie was actually made for, why it doesn’t feel special for one of cinema’s biggest movie franchises, and how this film marks an end of an era for ‘Star Wars’ at large (32:02). Finally, Sean is joined by Daniel Roher to discuss why he felt his new film ‘Tuner’ was an exercise to prove to himself that he could broaden his horizons outside of the documentary genre (1:28:33). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Daniel Roher and Van Lathan 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.

• 0:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Toronto movie lovers, we are coming for you. This summer, for the first time ever, The Big Picture is going to Canada.

• 0:13Sean Fennessey?

  The kind folks at TIFF invited us to participate in this summer's TIFF Lightbox series, Christopher Nolan: Grand Designs. We can't wait to join their slate of programming.

• 0:23Amanda Dobbins?

  On July 8th, you can join us for a live recording of a very special draft episode with some friends of the pod, Canadian and not Canadian.

• 0:32Sean Fennessey?

  And then we'll run it back on July 9th with a screening and discussion of one of our Nolan favorites, Tenet.

• 0:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Now, pay attention. There will be special, limited pre-sales for Big Picture listeners and TIFF members for both of these events. The pre- I'm still pointing, the pre-sale for the July 8th live show will be on June 3rd at noon Eastern, and the link will be available at theringer.com/events. If tickets remain after that, there will be a general on-sale on June 5th at noon Eastern.

• 1:04Sean Fennessey?

  Then, the pre-sale for the July 9th Tenet screening will go live on June 11th at noon Eastern, and the link will also be at theringer.com/events. If tickets remain, there will be a general on-sale on June 12th at noon Eastern. Further ticketing information will be available at theringer.com/events soon, and more programming details are at tiff.net/nolan. See you in Canada.

• 1:38Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 1:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 1:40Sean Fennessey?

  And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Mando and the end of Star Wars as we know it. Van Lathan will join us today to break down The Mandalorian and Grogu. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Daniel Rohr, the writer-director of the incredibly tight and entertaining new thriller, Tuna, about a piano tuner who finds himself entrenched in a criminal underworld. I had a chance to see this movie back at Telluride. I've been eager for the rest of you to see it ever since. If you know Daniel's name, it's because he's an Academy Award-winning documentarian, best known for Navalny and this year's AI doc. I had fun talking with Daniel about pivoting to scripted features from docs, how he pulled Tuna off, and where he's going from here. See his movie, stick around for that conversation. But before we dig into The Mandalorian and Grogu, we need to circle back to the Cannes Film Festival and everything that happened since we left that darn country, right after

• 2:25Sean Fennessey?

  this. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not so great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that, bull spend. Instead, why not invest in what looks good to your CFO? LinkedIn Ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. Reach the right buyers with LinkedIn Ads. You can target by company, industry, job title and more. So cut the bull spend, advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture.

• 3:09Sean Fennessey?

  That's LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. Terms and conditions apply.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Whether it's hot yoga, over 100 degree weather, or too much sun. Gator Light, with a specialized blend of five electrolytes, was scientifically designed to help move fluids into the body faster for rapid rehydration. Shop now at retailers nationwide. Gator Light hydrates faster than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 3:45Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Dobbins, you want to talk Cannes first or movie news that we missed over the 10 days we were gone?

• 3:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's do movies first.

• 3:51Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 3:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm following what you have here in the doc. I'm doc loyal.

• 3:54Sean Fennessey?

  Lucas Cavanagh put all this information in the doc. Shout out to you, Lucas. Let's start with obsession.

• 4:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 4:00Sean Fennessey?

  So CR and I recorded an episode about horror and obsession well before we went on our vacation.

• 4:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 4:06Sean Fennessey?

  And...

• 4:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's not say vacation, but well before we went to Europe to see movies and represent this great institution, The Big Picture, on the international stage.

• 4:17Sean Fennessey?

  That's true. It honestly wasn't a vacation. It was a lot of work. It was a lot of work. But you know what? It was fun work. And while we were gone, America got obsession fever.

• 4:26Amanda Dobbins?

  They did.

• 4:27Sean Fennessey?

  And this very small film, $750,000 budget, has earned $68 million in roughly 12 days. And Curry Barker, the writer-director, was on the show and talked about his experience. I never in a million years would have guessed that the movie would have become what it is becoming when he and I spoke. You haven't seen it yet, you're going to see it very soon, I think.

• 4:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Tomorrow, I believe, yeah. But it's, the box office went up.

• 4:50Sean Fennessey?

  It literally went up

• 4:51Amanda Dobbins?

  In the second week.

• 4:52Sean Fennessey?

  Weekend over weekend, yes, which almost never happens and virtually never happens in a non-holiday period, like a non-Christmas period.

• 5:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 5:01Sean Fennessey?

  And with a non-IP story or a non-sequel. So this is like very rare air that the movie is in right now, and it has kind of caught fire on social media. It's got a very young audience thus far. I'm very interested for your take on it because it is, it is kind of a rom-com.

• 5:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, great.

• 5:19Sean Fennessey?

  Um, not in any way that you would hope for it to be one. But, uh, it, it's a, it's a fascinating, fascinating testimony to the thing that we've been talking about, about finding younger audiences.

• 5:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:31Sean Fennessey?

  What they want, why they want it, the sustainability of, of horror storytelling at the box office right now. We're on the verge of backrooms.

• 5:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:39Sean Fennessey?

  This, this Thursday, Friday weekend, and, um, the, the fervor for that is at an all-time high. We just had a chance to see the movie and we'll talk about it on Friday. Um, so this is just delightful.

• 5:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:49Sean Fennessey?

  As a, as a film fan.

• 5:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, you shared with me that some of the internet culture that is already developing around it, like people within the movie are, are breaking out.

• 5:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 5:59Amanda Dobbins?

  And it seems to be a whole thing, which I'm excited about. I hope you didn't spoil anything for me.

• 6:02Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so either, but I do think that we'll, we can have an Indy Navaretti conversation.

• 6:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:07Sean Fennessey?

  The female star, when, once you've seen the movie. Uh, other news, David Fincher's Cliff Booth will premiere in IMAX before debuting on Netflix.

• 6:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 6:14Sean Fennessey?

  In November, which is going into the slot that Greta Gerwig's Narnia film previously occupied.

• 6:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. So it gets two weeks in IMAX.

• 6:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 6:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Over Thanksgiving.

• 6:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 6:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And then will be on streaming services December 23rd.

• 6:26Sean Fennessey?

  So roughly a thousand screens?

• 6:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:29Sean Fennessey?

  In North America?

• 6:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Here is my question for you. Why does no one else want the Thanksgiving date? Because as soon as the Narnia movie vacated that, we thought, oh, okay, well Avengers, whatever, will now move up and it can dump Infinity Vision or whatever. And they're not moving off December 18th.

• 6:50Sean Fennessey?

  Fascinating.

• 6:51Amanda Dobbins?

  There's, the, it does seem, I'm excited for Cliff Booth, you know, we're- We like Quentin Tarantino, we like David Fentcher, we like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But it does seem like they just took the screens because no one else wanted it. And I don't really understand what's going on with the Thanksgiving date.

• 7:07Sean Fennessey?

  I wonder if there was a tacit agreement when they made the Narnia move for IMAX to hold that space for Netflix, that this was always the intention.

• 7:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Sean Fennessey?

  I think I did speculate that this could happen.

• 7:18Amanda Dobbins?

  You did.

• 7:19Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and it does seem very logical. I wish it was a month or six weeks and not two weeks.

• 7:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 7:25Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but I don't know, Disney and Warner Brothers seem very set on having the, uh, having the, the, the Dune's Day Showdown. That's Dune with a three.

• 7:36Amanda Dobbins?

  With a three.

• 7:37Sean Fennessey?

  Remember TM, the big picture. Dune's Day Showdown, and they're not moving. So this is the spot. December 11th also still wide open. There's not a single, there's not, no major release on December 11th right now.

• 7:48Amanda Dobbins?

  What's going on?

• 7:49Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty weird.

• 7:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, it is strange, and I feel like there's something that they know that we don't.

• 7:53Sean Fennessey?

  It does feel that way.

• 7:54Amanda Dobbins?

  This, I mean, this is nice. It's good that Netflix is putting the movie on bigger screens as opposed to smaller screens. We are, we are pro that. It doesn't, it's not that different from a traditional prestige release for a Netflix movie, which gets a more limited, usually two to three, three week run in theaters to qualify for awards and then gets its streaming date.

• 8:14Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I'm curious if they're going to have to report box office numbers for any reason, if being on IMAX informs that, because they don't have to report any box office numbers and the other forms of distribution that they do, even though the companies tend to speculate like how much K-pop Demon Hunter has generated. I just, I want this to be at a minimum, the new normal, that these movies that are of this scope and size that they're making are going in this way. And we talked a lot about when they were doing their Warner Brothers analysis, whether or not this would create a new opportunity for Netflix theatrical. I don't know what the downside is like I it just feels like they're screaming into the ocean at this point, so I'm hopeful that this means we're moving in the right direction.

• 8:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, sure.

• 8:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 8:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I hope so, too.

• 8:57Sean Fennessey?

  But also maybe not.

• 8:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I hope a lot of things until they don't happen.

• 9:02Sean Fennessey?

  I like that this is the third thing on this list.

• 9:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:03Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you, Lucas. So I'm seeing here Paul Schrader had, quote, "an AI girlfriend who, quote, 'terminated our conversation,'" colon, quote, "what a disappointment." I don't have much to add beyond that. Have you explored AI partnership?

• 9:20Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I followed the Zach Braff does not have an AI girlfriend despite what comedian said on a podcast.

• 9:28Sean Fennessey?

  Right, okay.

• 9:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And then was sent an article about how that actually works in real life when you have an AI girlfriend, but I didn't read the article. So that is kind of where my my knowledge ends.

• 9:41Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 9:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Tough to be dumped by the AI girlfriend.

• 9:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 9:46Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 9:47Sean Fennessey?

  I don't have a lot of comments about this story. I do think it's funny to say those words out loud.

• 9:52Amanda Dobbins?

  It's it was a great headline.

• 9:54Sean Fennessey?

  The Batman Part Two confirms its cast and production has begun. How are you feeling? Are you ready?

• 9:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm excited for everyone. I'm Team Robert Pattinson. Maybe I'll watch the first one again before it comes out. It seems like I still have a little while. Is this 28, 29? Will we still be podcasting?

• 10:09Sean Fennessey?

  It depends on if it comes before or after the Beatles films. I, in Batman news, watched the trailer, I suppose, for the new Lego Batman video game with my daughter.

• 10:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yesterday, and now I'm a little worried that she wants that game.

• 10:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:26Sean Fennessey?

  That game featured every single Batman villain and also was soundtracked by Seal's Kiss from a Rose.

• 10:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:33Sean Fennessey?

  And my wife and I were rocking out.

• 10:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:34Sean Fennessey?

  We were just like, remember being 13?

• 10:36Amanda Dobbins?

  That's beautiful.

• 10:36Sean Fennessey?

  That was very fun.

• 10:37Amanda Dobbins?

  While we were traveling, I saw a friend and I saw two friends, one who has a son who is five, he's also my friend, and he was telling me about movies. And he said that he only likes one movie, and it's the Lego Batman movie. And then he tried to watch the Lego movie, but he didn't like it because it was the Lego Batman. It was not Lego Batman.

• 10:57Sean Fennessey?

  Understandable.

• 10:58Amanda Dobbins?

  So this is great news for him, and I'm excited.

• 11:02Sean Fennessey?

  More news. Adam Sandler's Grown Ups 3 is in the works. I'm writing and directing this film. Just wanted to let you know. It's going to be on Netflix.

• 11:08Amanda Dobbins?

  But what will my part be?

• 11:10Sean Fennessey?

  You're gonna be grown up number 12.

• 11:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 11:13Sean Fennessey?

  Which is gonna be a breakthrough performance. Dion Waiters-esque. Matt Damon is in talks to star in the Daniels new movie.

• 11:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure. So everybody's in talks until they're not in talks. We've learned this, okay? Let me know when something's signed.

• 11:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'm in talks to have a conversation with Jessica Chastain.

• 11:29Sean Fennessey?

  Image from Mel Gibson's The Resurrection of the Christ Part One sequel to his 2004 film, The Passion of the Christ, has been released.

• 11:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, clicking through right now. Skip ad.

• 11:40Sean Fennessey?

  What is it a picture of?

• 11:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, right now.

• 11:43Sean Fennessey?

  How's Christ doing in the picture?

• 11:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't see the picture. Why isn't it in this post? I see an ad for food. What? Where can I see this photo, Lucas?

• 11:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's in tremendous podcasting.

• 11:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 11:57Sean Fennessey?

  You'll be seeing these movies?

• 11:58Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 11:59Sean Fennessey?

  I had actually an interesting thought about them because the timing of them is kind of strange. So Part One is coming out May 6, 2027, which is the same day, the same weekend as The Legend of Zelda, which is like one of the most anticipated movies of all time.

• 12:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 12:17Sean Fennessey?

  And then the second one is coming out the same day as Star Wars: Starfighter?

• 12:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 12:22Sean Fennessey?

  I was like, wow.

• 12:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Counter programming?

• 12:24Sean Fennessey?

  Mel is really betting on counter programming.

• 12:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so.

• 12:28Sean Fennessey?

  I guess I'll watch them. I don't know. I don't, I have no respect for myself. Next news item, Sam Raimi to direct modern update of ventriloquist dummy horror movie, Magic, for Lionsgate. Are you familiar with Magic?

• 12:38Amanda Dobbins?

  The concept or the movie?

• 12:40Sean Fennessey?

  The original film?

• 12:41Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 12:42Sean Fennessey?

  The original film from the 1970s stars Anthony Hopkins as a ventriloquist whose dummy comes to life. It is based on a novel written by William Goldman. The screenplay is by William Goldman. Pretty cool little movie. Interesting that Sam Raimi's going back to it. I don't, not much to say about this.

• 12:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 12:59Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's all the news we need to recap. Let's talk about Cannes.

• 13:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. So. That's news in its own.

• 13:03Sean Fennessey?

  There was a lot of news.

• 13:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:05Sean Fennessey?

  The biggest news, of course, was the winner of the Palme d'Or, which was my favorite, and I don't know if it was your favorite. I don't know if you actually did your proper rankings, but fjord, Christian Monju's film starring Sebastian Stan and Renata Rines, but one.

• 13:18Amanda Dobbins?

  It was top two.

• 13:20Sean Fennessey?

  It was top two.

• 13:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And it was top one of the films in competition eligible.

• 13:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, and you were greatly relieved because you saw it.

• 13:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I did see it.

• 13:28Sean Fennessey?

  And there were a couple others that were a catch that you missed.

• 13:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It was a late break in Cannes, huh?

• 13:31Sean Fennessey?

  It was.

• 13:32Amanda Dobbins?

  We had to spend the first week, you know, pontificating about Europeans and their existence.

• 13:37Sean Fennessey?

  I did warn you about this.

• 13:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, it was when I was available. Also, you couldn't be there, so someone had to go and see what Lea Sadio was up to or not up to.

• 13:46Sean Fennessey?

  I just meant when Anora premiered, I think on the Wednesday two years ago, I was like, I will not be getting Anora at my first Cannes.

• 13:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 13:53Sean Fennessey?

  And thankfully, neither of us did. Speaking of the film that you were nearly Anora'd by, which was Minotaur, which premiered while you were still on the ground, but you were not able to attend.

• 14:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Other work obligations.

• 14:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, you were getting drunk, right? Is that what you were doing?

• 14:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Recording jam session.

• 14:09Sean Fennessey?

  That film won the Grand Prix.

• 14:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Sean Fennessey?

  And I think we had talked about how it felt like that was that and all of a sudden, that was really the race amongst the three of those films. The Dreamed Adventure, which is a film that I was not able to stay for, Valeska Greisback's new film, her first film in like 10 years since Western, won the jury prize. Other winners included Los Javies.

• 14:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 14:33Sean Fennessey?

  Which won in a tie for best director for their work on La Bola Negra and Pavel Pavlikowski for his work on Fatherland. Want to ask you about ties momentarily. Best actor went to Emmanuel Machia and Valentin Campan from Coward, which you also were not able to stick around for.

• 14:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Sean Fennessey?

  Good Performances, not my favorite movie, the new Lucas D'Ante film. Best actress went to Virginie Yafira and Tao Akamoto, which we may have suggested might have been a possibility for all of a sudden.

• 14:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I think we picked it for Grand Prix.

• 15:02Sean Fennessey?

  We did.

• 15:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Or we thought it would be in the top three. And then you sent me some speculation after the fact.

• 15:08Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, did I?

• 15:08Amanda Dobbins?

  That identified this as a possible best actress.

• 15:11Sean Fennessey?

  Smart way to honor that movie. Very good performances. And then Emmanuel Maire won for A Man of His Time, AKA Notre Salut.

• 15:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 15:19Sean Fennessey?

  A film I saw and did not really enjoy at all. And was deeply French about the rise of the French bureaucracy during the occupation of world, during World War II.

• 15:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Sean Fennessey?

  Just any, what's your, what's your just quick glance on the way that they gave these prizes out?

• 15:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, they were also bored in the first week.

• 15:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, a lot of late breaking prizes. La Bola Negra premiered very late, Coward premiered very late, The Dream's Adventure premiered late, Ford and Minotaur were midweek.

• 15:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Nothing really from the first week.

• 15:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, other than Fatherland.

• 15:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so I, I left because I went to Paris. It's a tough life being me. And I saw a friend there who was asking about Cannes and was asking about the awards in particular. And he was like, so is it just a lot less bullshit than the Oscars? And is it a lot fairer and more, you know?

• 16:07Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 16:08Amanda Dobbins?

  And I say, no, not at all. I was like, it's a very different system. You know, and because it's a jury and it's closed deliberations, they're gonna, they're gonna make different types of decisions. But I explained that it usually did feel as though they were trying to spread the wealth, that you don't see a film, you know, gather 14 prizes as you do at the Oscars, that, you know, like, as like at the Oscars, you know, the filmmaker's history, like previous performances at Cannes, et cetera, can come into consideration. Certainly, like the jurors' relationship to the filmmakers or the previous work can also be part of the deciding process,

• 16:51Amanda Dobbins?

  at least as much as we can glean from the press conferences and from rumors. So, you know, in a lot of ways, this seems pretty, pretty Cannes-like.

• 16:59Sean Fennessey?

  It does. I think the case for Minotaur would have just been that Andrei Zivganitsev had not won the Palme d'Or before and that Christian Monju had won before.

• 17:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 17:09Sean Fennessey?

  And so while there have, there had been 10 previous two-time winners of the Palme, that, you know, it would have been reasonable in that wealth-spreading idea

• 17:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 17:18Sean Fennessey?

  to give Minotaur the Palme. And so it was a little bit of a surprise. I think also Minotaur... I would say is very definitive in its political and social point of view.

• 17:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 17:29Sean Fennessey?

  Whereas Fjord is a little bit of a, a little bit of like a political football.

• 17:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I see everybody's getting a little itchy.

• 17:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 17:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Since it got released.

• 17:38Sean Fennessey?

  And like, there's definitely been some, some, some, some hard, you know, takes against it. I think it's going to be much discussed over the next six to 12 months.

• 17:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Some of you have never worked for a Scandinavian company and it shows.

• 17:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, I think, um, what you think Fjord is says a lot about you. And, and I liked it.

• 17:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I liked it as well.

• 17:58Sean Fennessey?

  But, but, but this outcome is kind of fascinating in that they did not lean in that very clear direction and, you know, Park Chen Wook and Demi Moore and Paul Laverty, the screenwriter. And there's a lot of different interesting figures from different experiences in the film business who are making this decision. Stellan Skarsgård, of course, who we know is close with Renata Reinsva from their work on Sensational Value. But then with Minato.

• 18:18Amanda Dobbins?

  You saw that she wore his suit or the same suit.

• 18:20Sean Fennessey?

  I did, I did.

• 18:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you caught up with that.

• 18:21Sean Fennessey?

  I'm having an amazing week with Renata Reinsva, just in general.

• 18:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, aren't we?

• 18:26Sean Fennessey?

  So that, to your point, like the who's, what the jury's comprised of and what their experiences are and what they like and what they bring to it versus what the experiences of the filmmakers who've been here before is notable. You know, for something like The Dream Did Venture, I have no opinion. I didn't see it.

• 18:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:42Sean Fennessey?

  Jury prize is usually like a recognition of something special and unique, but isn't, most people think of the best director prize, as I understand it, as really more like a third prize. And so in this case, there was a tie for a third prize. You're not a big fan of ties, as I, as I understand it.

• 18:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I, that's true, but in this case, when you're doing it to spread the wealth, it's not like a, it's not a democratic system or not a voting system where you could just do a runoff.

• 19:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 19:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's not a sporting competition where you could just have another overtime or whatever, like play to the death. Um, this, this seems fine to me.

• 19:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 19:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not mad.

• 19:21Sean Fennessey?

  It's so.

• 19:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't see La Bola Negra, and this is the other thing I texted you is I want to be very clear, we will be calling it La Bola Negra and not The Black Ball, even though it was acquired by Netflix and will become one of their award season, you know, centerpieces and has like a very fun cast. Who will definitely hit award season hard. I'm looking forward to that. We, we will stick to La Bola Negra. We will have self-respect and we will use the original language. We can say it.

• 19:50Sean Fennessey?

  I'm totally comfortable with that. For those of you who have not heard about La Bola Negra, it is a story of gay men in three different phases of Spanish history in the early 30s, the mid 30s and the 2010s, and the ways in which their lives intersect in surprising ways through the Spanish Civil War and a number of other events. There's a lot of kind of literary history baked into it. There's a lot of social history baked into the film. It is a big, bold, chest out, audacious piece of filmmaking. I think very flawed, but very fun to watch. It'll, it'll be a rich conversation, I think, on the show as well. I really look forward to you seeing because there's a lot about it that I really admired.

• 20:31Amanda Dobbins?

  But I got one of those texts from you. You walked out of it and you were like, I was kind of blown away by this. And then, you know, you start thinking through it and not everything totally wakes you. But your instant reaction was very much like, this is, this is a big deal.

• 20:42Sean Fennessey?

  And it 100% is a big deal and not surprising and probably very smart for Netflix to pick it up, being the worldwide distributor that it is, so that the people around the world can enjoy the film. The thing about it is, it is so different from every other movie they played at the festival, which was a fairly restrained series of chamber pieces.

• 21:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:02Sean Fennessey?

  And one of the reasons why it popped so much for me was because it was a breath of fresh air. It was a big, sweeping war film.

• 21:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:08Sean Fennessey?

  And so, you know, I, I wrote in the newsletter that it reminded me of Atonement, you know, that it had that kind of like the character drama, but then against this huge canvas of battle and history and struggle. And that's a, that's a, that's a timeless thing in the Oscar race. So.

• 21:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm excited.

• 21:25Sean Fennessey?

  It'll be interesting to talk about as we go along. Fatherland is the opposite. Fatherland is a, is a post-war film and is a very restrained, very meditative work about what's in our past and what's unspoken.

• 21:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 21:37Sean Fennessey?

  And also a very beautiful movie in a lot of ways, but, but literally almost the emotional opposite of what La Bola Negra is doing. So it's funny to pair them up.

• 21:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I mean, it's a showy filmmaking in its own way.

• 21:48Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 21:48Amanda Dobbins?

  In terms of it is incredibly beautifully photographed as like the Pablo Pavlikowski trilogy at this point, like all are.

• 21:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 21:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and for all its moments of restraint, it has several very memorable or, you know, funny, or the, the ending is like very beautiful. So it is, even though we kind of were like, okay, this is the, a more minor work from Pavlikowski, it's really, it's showing off in a, in a lot of different ways, just different ways.

• 22:16Sean Fennessey?

  So let's talk about some winners and some losers from the festival writ large.

• 22:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:20Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Neon, clearly the biggest winner of the festival. Their, their streak of seven consecutive Palme d'Or winners is intact.

• 22:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Sean Fennessey?

  And I doubted them, and we can talk about that momentarily.

• 22:32Amanda Dobbins?

  You did.

• 22:33Sean Fennessey?

  I doubted that they were gonna have the one, and I, I thought that that instinct to, to spread the wealth would have extended to Minotaur, but they got it again.

• 22:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Renata Rhine's with the star of, of Fjord, and now the new queen of Cannes. I mean, she really is at the center of so many films that have premiered there over the last five or six years. We just saw her this morning in back rooms and kind of amazing the way that her star has risen in a very short period of time as a non-native English speaker.

• 23:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 23:00Sean Fennessey?

  And someone who's kind of bouncing between countries in terms of her productions and primarily working with auteurs on like honestly more challenging material.

• 23:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 23:09Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but doing it right. I really appreciate what she's doing.

• 23:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, but you know, she's also, she's been lingering like she was in Presumed Innocent.

• 23:17Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. For whatever reason. That's true. I forgot about that. Yes.

• 23:20Amanda Dobbins?

  She's once worst person in the world, which was also a Cannes film, happened. She but kind of very quickly became everyone's like, oh, I'm interested. I want to know more about her. She also just has a huge fashion following already. So it kind of seems, did you see that she recreated the famous Justine Trier smoking, holding the

• 23:36Sean Fennessey?

  I did.

• 23:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Palme d'Or. Several people were doing that over the course.

• 23:39Sean Fennessey?

  Did you do it?

• 23:39Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I didn't because I'm.

• 23:40Sean Fennessey?

  Have you held a Palme d'Or before?

• 23:41Amanda Dobbins?

  No, because that's the only reason that I haven't. I didn't get to do it this Cannes. Uh, I wasn't there for the actual handing of the Palme d'Or. Um, but yeah, she's kind of entering meme, you know, or not internet girlfriend territory is the way to do it in addition to.

• 23:56Sean Fennessey?

  She has been, she's been in that position for some time for me.

• 23:59Amanda Dobbins?

  International cinema.

• 24:00Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, very big fan of hers and so happy to see that. Her performance in Fjord also is very different, I think, from what you, from the girl from The Worst Person in the World.

• 24:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 24:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very different character and she transforms pretty ably. Jordan first, been clearly one of the big winners of the festival.

• 24:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely.

• 24:14Sean Fennessey?

  His movie was acquired for $17 million, Club Kid. And I think to most of the, most, not even most of the North American critics, most of the critics I met.

• 24:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:24Sean Fennessey?

  During the entire 10 days at Cannes were like, that's my favorite movie there.

• 24:27Amanda Dobbins?

  People have been asking me, what, what was the best thing you saw? And I said, Club Kid.

• 24:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 24:31Amanda Dobbins?

  And you'll, you will hear a lot about it in the next six months and you'll enjoy it.

• 24:35Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. Um, so great for him.

• 24:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:37Sean Fennessey?

  And then Los Javies, like I mentioned, Javier Ambrosia and Javier Calvo, who are these incredibly beautiful and charismatic men. Directed La Bola Negra, who, you know, are, are celebrities in their own right and have worked primarily in TV, have made a couple of films as well. And were, were judges on Spanish Drag Race.

• 24:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. And I believe also International Drag Race.

• 24:59Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 25:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I think they at least appeared at some point.

• 25:01Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not up on all the iterations of Drag Race.

• 25:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so. Forgive me if I'm wrong.

• 25:04Sean Fennessey?

  But brace yourself for.

• 25:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:05Sean Fennessey?

  Nine months of them as well.

• 25:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Also interesting for Los Javies, um, who were romantically paired for many years, including, I think, during at least part of the making of La Bola Negra. And then are, uh, they have since split up, but then they won best director together. And now they're on a rocket ship for the next nine months.

• 25:22Sean Fennessey?

  Should be interesting.

• 25:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, listen, it's gonna be great content and I'm, and I'm happy for them.

• 25:27Sean Fennessey?

  Everyone always says, uh, work with your ex. That's something you hear all the time.

• 25:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Everyone also says, work with your ex in front of cameras, yourself, because what's, you know.

• 25:35Sean Fennessey?

  And promote stories about the complicated, fractious relationships between people at times of great struggle.

• 25:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:42Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, losers.

• 25:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:43Sean Fennessey?

  So I, we both lost.

• 25:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:45Sean Fennessey?

  Here's the way you lost. You, you missed five of the seven main competition winners.

• 25:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Main competition, yes, but I did see the winner of the Queer Palm.

• 25:53Sean Fennessey?

  You did.

• 25:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, so, um, I, that's, that's one for me.

• 25:58Sean Fennessey?

  I'm seeing it next week, so it's gonna be okay.

• 26:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, we both missed the, um, Uncertain Regard winner, even though I had tickets for it because it was about a family going to Tenerife.

• 26:08Sean Fennessey?

  Is it La Benayima?

• 26:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Every time. No, that's Uncertain Regard.

• 26:11Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, La Gradiiva? No.

• 26:13Amanda Dobbins?

  No. I think you're, Uncertain Regard is every time, Sandra Wolner.

• 26:18Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, the Sandra Wolner.

• 26:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:20Sean Fennessey?

  Tenerife. This is the thing that you learn when you go to Cannes.

• 26:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:25Sean Fennessey?

  You think it's really important to see every competition title?

• 26:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:28Sean Fennessey?

  Or like, I thought it was. And then through the first three days, you're like, why did I skip all of these films in director's fortnight? And in certain regard, those are the movies, this year at least, there were more good movies in those categories than there were in competition. And I'm glad I saw the competition movies that I did, but I'm regretful about missing a bunch of stuff.

• 26:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. I mean, the reason why is because we were terrified of having that missing Enora moment, you know? Like, in any way where it was there and you just didn't go see it and then it went to the palm.

• 26:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 26:57Amanda Dobbins?

  You feel like an idiot, which I definitely would have felt like. You can't imagine how happy I was when I checked my phone at dinner Saturday night. And I was like, oh, my God.

• 27:05Sean Fennessey?

  The fjord won.

• 27:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I made it.

• 27:08Sean Fennessey?

  You can't imagine what an idiot I felt like when I saw that fjord won, because...

• 27:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because the other loser is you, who on this podcast, and I told you in real time.

• 27:16Sean Fennessey?

  You did.

• 27:17Amanda Dobbins?

  As you were picking Minotaur, I was like, don't do this. You are F1-ing it. And you F1'd it.

• 27:22Sean Fennessey?

  I did.

• 27:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it's okay. How can we correct this in the future? Like, what is... Do I just say F1 to you?

• 27:30Sean Fennessey?

  This is just a true thing about me. I am so smart.

• 27:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 27:35Sean Fennessey?

  And so stupid.

• 27:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 27:37Sean Fennessey?

  It is the absolute... And I think it is like part of my appeal as a human. Sometimes you'll be talking to me and I think you'll be like, wow, that guy, he's really got some ideas. And then other times, people are talking to me and they're like, why is this guy fucking such a moron? And there is something kind of charming about that. And this is a case where I was like, in my bones before the festival, I was like, this is right. And then after we saw the movie, I was like, this is it. This is exactly what the...

• 27:59Amanda Dobbins?

  You walked out and we had to stop in the middle of the press center so you could get the tweets off.

• 28:03Sean Fennessey?

  Did I?

• 28:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And then...

• 28:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I did.

• 28:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, you did.

• 28:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 28:05Amanda Dobbins?

  It was in like, kind of the trade show, where they're like, come film in, like, you know, Ireland. And then, the last moment, you got yourself a little bit talked out by other people.

• 28:16Sean Fennessey?

  I did.

• 28:17Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 28:18Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I bought into the narrative of the filmmaker who had not won. And that was wrong.

• 28:22Amanda Dobbins?

  That's your own narrative.

• 28:23Sean Fennessey?

  I was... You're right. I gotta believe in myself more. I gotta be comfortable with my own strengths and my own weaknesses. I'm happy for Christian Monju, you know? Like, I think people should... I hope people will go back now and look at his movies. Obviously, most people have seen Four Months, Three Days, like, that's a legendary film from 2007. But Graduation and Beyond the Hills and RMN, these are really, really, really good movies. And he was on the show in 2022 talking about RMN. So I hope that people will dig into his work ahead of... What will probably be like a long run of talking about Fjord.

• 28:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:54Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Lea Seydoux did not win best actress. We suggested she might. She had two different movies up. You saw both of them.

• 28:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I saw both.

• 29:00Sean Fennessey?

  And, uh, you're a better woman for it. Sorry to her.

• 29:03Amanda Dobbins?

  And now we have some good bits. I do believe that Gentle Monster was also acquired by Netflix.

• 29:08Sean Fennessey?

  It was.

• 29:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Which makes sense.

• 29:10Sean Fennessey?

  Hilarious choice.

• 29:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, but.

• 29:11Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, because he said it was trashy.

• 29:13Amanda Dobbins?

  It is trashy and Netflix, you know, has the whole sideline of like, you know.

• 29:17Sean Fennessey?

  Right, right. Sorry, I killed my boyfriend.

• 29:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Her real story, right? And all these sorts of things. And it is just European that.

• 29:23Sean Fennessey?

  Whoops, I ate my boyfriend's liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

• 29:28Amanda Dobbins?

  So it makes a lot. It makes sense.

• 29:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and, you know, I'm happy for Lea Seydoux. She put in the work at both films.

• 29:34Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, no, I ran over my stepdad with a snowplow.

• 29:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Have you ever watched any of those?

• 29:38Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 29:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I haven't either, but many people have. So I guess it makes sense.

• 29:45Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, final can note.

• 29:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:47Sean Fennessey?

  James Gray.

• 29:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Really brutal.

• 29:48Sean Fennessey?

  No prizes.

• 29:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:50Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, for seven in can competition history.

• 29:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Well, I don't know. It's really, it's.

• 29:57Sean Fennessey?

  What are we doing?

• 29:57Amanda Dobbins?

  First of all, we were, you know, we were so excited about it and then everyone was so hot and we were like, what's going on? And then no prizes. And we're also just like very confused. I don't know why we can't reach a happy middle with James Gray, which was just giving him some awards.

• 30:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I mean, they gave, um, a man in his time, the screenplay prize. And I'm like, really?

• 30:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know.

• 30:18Sean Fennessey?

  I know it's a French film festival, but like.

• 30:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I will say that Le Figaro, the French paper, um, posted that they were very angry or they, the headline was they were very angry about the palm pick and that their personal palm pick was James Gray's Paper Tiger. So at least he still has the French.

• 30:35Sean Fennessey?

  I noticed that he had a very high score in the French grid of critics, um, which is historically the case, but that, that, that festival has not been very good to him. Paper Tiger, very good movie. Uh, look forward to talking about that. That'll probably. So now all of these movies enter the atmosphere where they are all going to be at the festivals over the next few months. And then most of them will probably have October, November, December, January releases.

• 30:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 30:56Sean Fennessey?

  And also probably 40% of them will never come to the United States.

• 30:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:59Sean Fennessey?

  And the ones that we missed, we may never see.

• 31:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Will people get to see The Unknown?

• 31:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I need them to, because we gotta be able to reference it, you know?

• 31:08Sean Fennessey?

  I know. I hope so. I hope so.

• 31:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I need that. I mean, I need the whiteboard to get out there.

• 31:14Sean Fennessey?

  You know, some people hated it and some people loved it. I've seen some people say like it is their favorite film at the festival and a masterpiece. I'm really right in the middle. I think it has like a lot of cool ideas and I'm glad I watched it, but there's some absurdity and dullness to it. But I do think it would be good for the culture of this show to have bits about the unknown.

• 31:30Amanda Dobbins?

  We need that and we need the, we need the whiteboard released.

• 31:33Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Please put the whiteboard in the trailer when you release all of a sudden, which I do also think we could have called Sudan, like we can say, but you know, that's.

• 31:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Amanda Dobbins?

  But I guess it's being translated several times over.

• 31:45Sean Fennessey?

  So many things that are gonna alienate normal movie watchers from all of a sudden, you know?

• 31:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It's true.

• 31:50Sean Fennessey?

  Hey, Ken, we did it.

• 31:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Loved it.

• 31:52Sean Fennessey?

  You feel good?

• 31:53Amanda Dobbins?

  A plus.

• 31:53Sean Fennessey?

  A plus.

• 31:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought it was so much fun. You didn't think it was.

• 31:57Sean Fennessey?

  A plus. I mean, how many things in my life get an A plus?

• 32:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, an A or A minus if you want.

• 32:03Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 32:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Because we didn't get to the cap.

• 32:05Sean Fennessey?

  We did not get to the cap.

• 32:06Amanda Dobbins?

  We did not get to the cap and I did not go on a yacht. So there's always next year.

• 32:10Sean Fennessey?

  About the yacht.

• 32:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but I would have liked to go swimming, you know?

• 32:13Sean Fennessey?

  Going on the yacht is like, that's the first act in a Taken sequel, you know? It's like, I gotta get Amanda back because she's with some Bulgarians who took her to some foreign island. Anyway.

• 32:24Amanda Dobbins?

  So, yeah, A minus, but I thought it was a great time. And I also thought it was really lovely to just be in a, watching, in a different part of the world, watching like very different movies than we normally.

• 32:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 32:37Amanda Dobbins?

  See, like, obviously I got a little over indexed on Europeans and their problems.

• 32:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 32:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Here and then and now, but when I was sitting watching Mandalorian Grogu, I was like, well, you know, for two weeks I was doing something different.

• 32:51Sean Fennessey?

  I had the same exact feelings. And I'm glad you, you put it that way because there is something about being captured by a festival that can be really fun. And when things started to get good, kind of in the middle of the festival there, where we saw three or four films over two or three days, and we were like, this is okay. Finally, we've come around on something here. That's a great feeling. So, um, I'm glad we did it too. All right. Well, speaking of Mandalorian Grogu, let's now bring in Van Lathan to talk about that film.

• 33:19Sean Fennessey?

  Boom, Van Lathan is here. Hello.

• 33:21Speaker 03

  What's up, guys?

• 33:22Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you for being here. You asked on, and I love when you ask on this show.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:26Sean Fennessey?

  Because it's Mandalorian and Grogu time. Now, Amanda and I have seen the film. We took our respective children.

• 33:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 33:35Sean Fennessey?

  Who are Star Wars fans to this movie.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:37Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna give some brief details of the movie, and then we're gonna dig right into it, because I've got some feelings, and I bet you guys do, too. So it is directed by Jon Favreau, who is the, I guess, the official creator of the television series.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:47Sean Fennessey?

  Upon which this is based. It's written by Favreau, Dave Filoni, who is the new overlord of the Star Wars universe, and Noah Klor. It stars Pedro Pascal, sort of, Jeremy Allen White, and Sigourney Weaver. The story is as follows: "The evil empire has fallen, but Imperial warlords remain scattered throughout the galaxy. Hate when that happens. As the fledgling New Republic works to protect everything the rebellion fought for, they enlist the help of legendary Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin and his young apprentice Grogu." Amanda, I'm gonna start with you.

• 34:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:22Sean Fennessey?

  What are your thoughts on The Mandalorian and Grogu?

• 34:25Amanda Dobbins?

  This was incredibly boring for both me and the four-year-old sitting next to me. So, and obviously, they are trying to, if not grab everyone, then grab as much money as possible. And then, in the consequence of that was grabbing no one, and not as much money as they would like. So, I have honestly no judgment on whether it's, quote, "good" or "bad." I knew that I didn't care at all at any point. And I was interested to the extent that my four-year-old, who was vibrating with excitement when I told him we were going to see this movie, and he brought his toy Grogu with him that Sean gave him. And anytime that Grogu was on the screen, he was very excited. But the rest

• 35:07Amanda Dobbins?

  of the time, he was just not engaged. And I was a little worried after seeing the footage at CinemaCon that he would be scared, because, you know, there was gun violence as opposed to lightsaber violence. And people, like, punching each other as opposed to, you know, lightsabers are fun. He's never scared about lightsabers. But I, and then, and then I didn't even know about the monsters, but they're monsters. Couldn't have cared less, just absolutely went over his head. And his review was, there was a lot of fighting, but not in a way that was upsetting to him or that has caused nightmares. So this seemed like a big nothing to me.

• 35:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And because Star Wars is not as essential to my childhood and is because my child was fine with it, I'm not that upset about it, but I'm here to support anyone else who has any feelings that they want to go through, positive or negative.

• 36:03Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well, what were your feelings? I told you, I haven't listened to your other podcast about this film, so we're coming in fresh.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 36:11Sean Fennessey?

  The podcast is The Midnight Boys, by the way, one of the very best podcasts here at The Ringer.

• 36:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  Nice little pew pew there. Um, so look, uh, so there's no way to look at the movie and say that it's like a coherent piece of cinematic art. You can't.

• 36:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  You guys, it's boring when I talk about this stuff. I'm in the bag for Star Wars. I'm in the bag for it.

• 36:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 03

  It is a part of my makeup. My creative and film watching makeup is Star Wars. It helped me form and understand story. So whenever I'm in the world, I am having a good time. Whenever I'm in the world, I'm having a good time. But you can't cape for the movie and act like the movie takes itself seriously. The movie doesn't take itself seriously. The movie doesn't try to advance the story of Star Wars, the individual character story of Denjarin or of Grogu in any way. It gives you a slice of their adventure and it hopes that you will be happy with that.

• 37:10Sean Fennessey?

  Right, that's a description of what it is.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:15Sean Fennessey?

  Did you like, did you like, I mean, I'll share my thoughts at length, I promise. But like, did you like that?

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Well, so when you asked me if I like it, the question is gonna be, for me. Is how could I not?

• 37:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  So that's what I'm trying to say is like.

• 37:28Sean Fennessey?

  What is any Star Wars movie you would enjoy? Just any, anything that they served to you, you would say, good, I like it.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  Interesting when you say they served because I think that's the difference between me and a lot of other people.

• 37:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Think they did not serve.

• 37:40Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 37:40Amanda Dobbins?

  As I understand.

• 37:41Speaker 03

  Right, so that's the difference between me and a lot of people. Like, okay, you can watch boxing and I'm a huge boxing fan. You can watch a bad fight, a cynical fight, a stupid fight, a mismatch fight or whatever. But if you are enough of a boxing fan, then the fact that the fights are on is why you're there.

• 38:00Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  And so like for me, that is the thing about Star Wars. So I don't want to come on you guys' very serious movie podcast.

• 38:07Sean Fennessey?

  Hey, hey, hey.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  And listen and like, and bullshit the audience. The fact of the matter is, I for the most part liked the Mandalorian and Grogu. But I know that you won't.

• 38:18Sean Fennessey?

  Well, okay, I think I've been trying to sort through my feelings.

• 38:22Amanda Dobbins?

  So this is a defensive pose that you're taking.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  Not necessarily defensive pose, it's like I've, I've accepted something.

• 38:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  What I've accepted is that it, for some reason, the things that I watched first, the things that I watched first have this cynical control over me. Like I go, people talk about like Howard the Duck is one of the worst movies ever made, not to me.

• 38:46Sean Fennessey?

  I know what you mean by this.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Not to me, the things.

• 38:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Coyote ugly, two thumbs up.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  There's a lot of reasons to love that movie. But what I'm saying is the, for me, Star Wars is an experience. And so being inside of the world, there are varying degrees of disappointment that you can have. But this movie is at least, from a story standpoint, it's a nothing burger, right? But it's competently made enough that I enjoyed it.

• 39:12Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  And the Star Wars that I have not liked is the Star Wars that actually isn't at all well made. That's not well acted, that seems a little stale or wooden. This movie at points seems like unnecessary and unfocused. But I'm never sitting there going, I'm watching a scene and not having a good time with that scene. Uh, so that's kind of the, the conundrum I, I'm in when I'm, when I'm talking about the movie. Cause I had fun watching him fight. I had fun watching a brawlic hunt with shoulders. Like I had fun doing it.

• 39:49Sean Fennessey?

  Rada, yeah.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  But I, but leaving the movie, you didn't really take anything with you, which is to me, the mark of a good film. The mark of a good film is not the experience you even had in the theater so much. It's what, what you take with you when you leave it.

• 40:01Sean Fennessey?

  You said something interesting that I leapt to when I was writing down some thoughts about the movie over the weekend. Which is that this story doesn't really advance anything. It doesn't reveal any additional mythos about Grogu or where he comes from, or even Din Djarin, or like who he is really as a person. And why, how, why he's a part of the, the Mandalore way. It doesn't really reveal anything about that religion. It doesn't. Even a lot of this stuff is in the show, which I know you didn't see, but a lot of the directions that the show sort of pushed some of these characters is not really a part of the movie. And then I was stopped myself as I was thinking about these things and I, I tend to go down these rabbit holes and I'm thinking about like, why was this movie valuable or not valuable?

• 40:43Sean Fennessey?

  What did it, how did it get us closer to where we're supposed to be going with the story? And I was like, well, that's not the only thing that matters to a movie. It's not just pushing the mythology forward. But it is about how connected you are to characters and what their actions reveal about their humanity or their alien-ness in this case. And this movie doesn't have anything like that. It, it is just a series of adventures and in fact, just feels like four distinct episodes of the TV show. And I know many people have said that, but it is what it feels like. It feels like there are act breaks throughout the movie. And so if you just receive it in the way that you're describing, which is like, I'm going to turn my brain off to go.

• 41:25Speaker 03

  Spend time in the world.

• 41:26Sean Fennessey?

  To go chill in this place with these, with, with these people and to watch this kind of level of craftsmanship, then it's fine. It's like perfectly okay. I didn't think it was above average. I didn't think it was below average. I thought it was average. You use the word nothing. I agree. There's a kind of nothingness to the entire thing because it doesn't even really change anything about the Mandalore. Or Grogu, like if this movie never happened, you could just pick up the next season. And we would not really have like felt a dramatic change, aside from the fact that, you know, one of the characters is, his life is threatened severely, but like, maybe that won't ever come up again. We don't even really know.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  There's only one part of it that I think is useful and was emotionally resonant in a real way. Which is, and this is, this is a legit gauge on how much you care about these characters. And your connection to the lore. Grogu will live to be eight hundred years old. His father will die. His father, he will outlive his father, not like we will outlive our fathers, but he'll outlive his father by hundreds and hundreds of years.

• 42:26Amanda Dobbins?

  By his father, you mean Din?

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Din is his dad, basically, right now.

• 42:30Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I mean, I, I saw the movie, you know?

• 42:32Sean Fennessey?

  His adopted father.

• 42:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Parents come in many forms, right? Okay, well, like, we honor the caregivers.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  His found father.

• 42:37Amanda Dobbins?

  So that's fine. I just wanted to make sure, I knew I was, there wasn't like another baby Yoda somewhere.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  There's probably something.

• 42:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, how do Yodas, which is what we've named the species in my home, just to keep kids to bring you in, yeah. How are Yodas born?

• 42:52Speaker 03

  I mean, I don't.

• 42:53Sean Fennessey?

  We don't know anything about them.

• 42:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Stop it, don't make that face at me, okay? Sorry for asking questions.

• 42:59Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's a fair question, but we don't know anything about that.

• 43:01Amanda Dobbins?

  You're doing like whale fall face, okay? And it's just, I'm just asking.

• 43:04Sean Fennessey?

  There's just, they're, we only know about three of these creatures.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  We don't really know the name, the, all of this stuff.

• 43:10Sean Fennessey?

  This raises a point, which is like, in this movie, I'm not sure that I thought I was gonna learn about like, what's truly in the heart of Grogu when they showed him, but I thought I would learn a little something else about this world in, in some ways. And, and shit, I love an adventure movie. I'm not against an adventure movie, but we don't learn anything.

• 43:26Speaker 03

  You don't, but what I was saying was that there is a whole portion of this movie where Din is incapacitated, and then Grogu gets a little solo journey. And we get to see Grogu slightly, in a little way, grow up. Like, live in a world where his dad is not there, where he has to save Din, where he has to use his own resourcefulness, where he, and that to me, obviously because Grogu is so cute, and also because you know that eventually these characters are gonna say goodbye to each other. There's a final goodbye coming, and that goodbye is gonna be like heart wrenching, and who knows like when that's going to happen? That, to me, was important for that character, but also for the audience.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  That was priming the audience for a version of Grogu in the future where Din is not around. Um, and

• 44:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, yes, but you have to bring all of that information to the movie. The, the film itself is not telling you, giving you any of that, either textually, explaining, you know, where Grogu came from or how Yodas are born, but also emotionally. It, even in the moments where he's like taking care of what's Din?

• 44:35Sean Fennessey?

  Din.

• 44:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Din, that's what we're calling him?

• 44:37Sean Fennessey?

  We can call him Mando.

• 44:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Yeah. Well, I, I noticed that he is, he is a Mandalorian, but they call him Mando. That seems confusing. Anyway, when he's like burying him effectively or creating shelter for him, there's also a joke, you know, embedded in that of like, he doesn't make it quite large enough. And so it's going back and forth, which undercuts the seriousness of the situation.

• 45:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. To Amanda's point about the, um, taking your children to the movie and who the movie is for, uh, there, there's a lot of confusing messages being sent because that segment in particular, I think really shows off the kind of puppetry and animatronics that this franchise is very acclaimed for.

• 45:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. He's really cute.

• 45:19Sean Fennessey?

  And, and a lot of that stuff is hand, is done by hand. In fact, the, the sort of Deus Ex Machina, like alligator swamp lord who creates some sort of healing medication for the Mandalorian. That when he hands him that paste in the little green leaf, that's real, that's, that's puppetry. Right? And so there's something like kind of nice and nostalgic about watching a sequence that is made by hand in this movie that is full of all of this digital effects. And that stuff feels like it is, even though it's potentially about death, like marketed to kids. It's like a sweet, cute Grogu sequence where he is getting some agency and has to figure out how to grow up. And then there are whole other chunks of the movie that are full of blaster battles and explosions

• 46:02Sean Fennessey?

  and really high toned action and crazy monster effects work that is extremely violent. And my daughter thought scary and my daughter doesn't, doesn't really get scared of stuff and thought it was very intense. And I, so I, I couldn't really figure out, was I think back on the movie, like it seemed like it was marketed to like five to nine year olds, but it was made for like 25 to 45 year olds. But then it also doesn't gratify the 45 year olds who are like, I need my Star Wars to have a certain kind of a feeling. And then you look at the movie in full and you're like, What was this? Like, who, what, who was this designed? It's not who was it made for, but it's like, what was it meant to be designed as? Because Star Wars is obviously the biggest tent possible, right?

• 46:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's the biggest franchise that we've ever had. And I'm, I'm a little confused about how a movie full of puppets and cute little guys, but is also overflowing with guns, gangsters, monster showdowns, old school puppetry, but modern VFX shot on the volume.

• 47:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Martin Scorsese voice work.

• 47:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 47:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I was like, okay, I mean, I guess this is for me and I'm here in the theater. But I was like, what? I, I thought about trying to explain this to my date. And then I was like, I don't really know how to even communicate what's going on here.

• 47:18Sean Fennessey?

  This is an octogenarian Italian-American filmmaker who is providing this voice. This is funny because, you know, he made an enemy of Van Lathan when he talked about these films becoming theme park rides.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  Tough, Marty.

• 47:29Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 47:30Speaker 03

  So you know what is the most interesting thing about this question? Is this is a question that Star Wars can't answer. This for kids, for adults thing, whatever it can't answer. But it's also a question that wasn't being asked when Star Wars was created, which is a reason why it can't answer it. See, when Star Wars was first created and the movie comes out, Leia doesn't have a bra on.

• 47:52Amanda Dobbins?

  No bras in space.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  No bras in space. So if you're.

• 47:55Sean Fennessey?

  Looking back on that, huge.

• 47:59Sean Fennessey?

  Formative.

• 47:59Speaker 03

  Not huge, but perfect.

• 48:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:01Sean Fennessey?

  Well, yes, I wasn't being descriptive.

• 48:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Much like space, wait less, you know? At the moment in time.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  If they're perfect.

• 48:08Sean Fennessey?

  Wasn't there, wasn't there a tape scenario going on?

• 48:10Speaker 03

  So like, all kinds of stuff is happening, right? But I want you to think about it. They, we all know, they make the movie. The movie is not cutting edge cinema, it's actually bleeding edge cinema, right? So a lot, a lot of Star Wars now feels like a very safe, contained story. But at that time, it was incredibly ambitious. So the story itself had to be something that you could come to. But I mean, you have a guy in solo murdering somebody because he's a scoundrel, right? First thing you see, boom, kills a guy, right?

• 48:39Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  Then you have a really scary villain with a red laser and.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  All of this stuff is very serious. However, it was more accessible to kids. It became for kids. It was more accessible to kids. Now, our expectations for that stuff is a little different. And Star Wars doesn't really know how to reconcile that. So the way that they've actually done it is to make stuff that's so cynical, it can only be consumed by adults, which would be Rogue One or Andor. And then in other places to try to split the baby.

• 49:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 49:10Speaker 03

  It's not a question that Star Wars can answer. It's not, also not a question that used to be asked as robustly as it is now. So to me.

• 49:17Sean Fennessey?

  Because you have a generation of pundits such as ourselves who grew up on this stuff, who are reckoning with it in real time.

• 49:22Speaker 03

  But also because I think that media has changed in this time to where we've had stuff like was saved by the bell for kids. It was, I certainly watched it as a kid. Jesse was doing dope. Okay, like.

• 49:38Sean Fennessey?

  But that, that, that is the same to me as Star Wars, which is, it is sort of behaviorally aspirational, but baked in a kind of childlike wonder. Like that is the intention of a lot of media that is made for kids that are basically like nine. I would say that seems like the ripest age for Star Wars. It's the ripest age for that sort of a TV show too.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  The problem is that now wonder isn't enough to make it for children because it can't be too scary. It can't be too violent. Like it can't be too anything. Wonder isn't enough anymore. Like in animated spaces, that's an easier thing to do. What you can do in an animated space is you can have some stuff on there that's for kids. Then you can make a couple of adult jokes that the kids won't get. And if we laugh, we feel like the movie was for us.

• 50:20Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 50:21Speaker 03

  Star Wars cannot do this. It has not shown the ability to do this. The sequel trilogy was not for kids. It was complicated and it was this and it was that. And so we go, can't do that. So they come back, they don't really know how to do this anymore. And the reason why is because we kind of are in a space right now where we don't know what is for children and what is not for children. You guys just said that you went to the movies. Your kids thought that it, it was perfectly okay and it was too scary for yours.

• 50:53Sean Fennessey?

  I'll get, I'll, I'll read Alice's review. I gave her a bath yesterday. We sat down, broke out the laptop and I was like, just tell me what you thought. I want to know specifically what you thought. I've never done this exercise with her before. And she said, I said, what was your favorite part? She said, my favorite part was when the ship crashed into the Huts tree home. We should talk about Huts momentarily. Uh, she asked then a follow up, what was it that the huts were trying to do? Which then had me explore the idea of them playing both sides, both the, the, the new republic, not the, not the magazine, but the actual republic being formed and the, the empire. And then she said, Rada wasn't trying to be like her aunt and uncle, right? He was trying to be on the good side.

• 51:35Sean Fennessey?

  I did like how whenever they bumped into the villain, they fought, but did not talk. And I liked that Grogu was healing the Mandalorian.

• 51:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 51:43Sean Fennessey?

  Now, the fought but did not talk.

• 51:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Talking is fascinating.

• 51:45Sean Fennessey?

  Was so interesting to me because that is what the movie accomplishes. The movie is actually not a series of human interaction. So you can compare this movie to the first movies or to the most recent sequel trilogy. But those movies, even if they did have violence in them and adult themes in them, they were about human behavior and character, using their actions to tell us more about who those people are. This movie doesn't do anything to show us who these people are. Right. It shows us that the Mandalorian is heroic and that Grogu loves him, but we knew that already. That's not new. That's incredibly different from watching Luke turn literally from boy to man over the course of A New Hope.

• 52:26Sean Fennessey?

  So I think it's fair to say, like, this movie is very unsuccessful in that very specific way, because even though it does accomplish like a two hour adventure in the world of Star Wars, which might be more than enough for some people, it's not a good movie because it doesn't really give you anything that shows you like growth, development, an arc of progression in any direction dramatically. So that's, to your point, that's the nothing.

• 52:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, there are no characters and no emotion, um, at, at all.

• 52:53Sean Fennessey?

  Except for Rada.

• 52:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess, yeah. Rada is there in the traditional Jeremy Allen White role of being completely pulverized by the men who came before him and trying to break free of their expectations, whether it's in chef form or Swole Jabba form.

• 53:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 53:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Or Bruce Springsteen. Form, I'm sorry. Yeah. Or Bruce Springsteen, which my husband watched on the plane back. Um, and that is still not a very good movie. I I have been trying to think about why my son was not scared of this, but is absolutely, he's had bad dreams in the past week from Ratatouille and Frozen, which are two animated movies where things not merely as quote unquote scary as what we saw in Mandalorian Grogu happens. And he keeps bringing them up and he wants to like, talk about and unpack what it is. And I think it is because much like his mother, like emotions and sadness are the real scary part. And people being in like mortal peril, he doesn't even know what

• 53:52Amanda Dobbins?

  that is. And or if he does, he just knows that it's gonna be okay. I guess once or twice, when the fighting really started during this, he turned to me and he said, Grogu's, Grogu's okay. Grogu's okay. And he just thought by like, willing it, that it would be so. But I thought it was notable that he only cared about Grogu. And that otherwise, because there wasn't any, like, there weren't any feelings, he doesn't really know these characters because he hasn't watched the TV, hasn't watched the TV show. And there were like, no emotional stakes whatsoever for him. And so, and there's just nothing to grab on to here, especially if you haven't watched the TV show.

• 54:31Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, if you haven't watched the TV show, there's probably nothing for you. All of that stuff is, I acquiesce to it. I get it. It's difficult to connect with Den sometimes because his helmet's on the whole time. So it's a character that has a helmet on the entire time. You can't see him. Actually, some of the most emotional moments of the television show is him having to remove that helmet and then break the oath of his sect of Mandalorians and all of that stuff. All of these things are built in limits that a story like this has, which is why when this movie was announced, a lot of people were like, there's just not enough meat on the bone to tell a Star Wars story about the Mandalorian and Grogu. I get all of that. For me, there's no real defense of the movie as a story. There's nothing there, right?

• 55:15Speaker 03

  As a piece of Star Wars and as the existence of a contemporary piece of the a piece of the contemporary existence of Star Wars, I have to defend the movie because I believe in the world of Star Wars. I believe in the imagination that can go into that world. I believe in everything that the world can be and is. And I've just devoted so many hours to it in comic book, novel, in YouTube, in all of that stuff. Um, I think that's kind of the larger question that people are asking. You guys, there's no way to say that The Mandalorian and Grogu is a fully formed movie. I'm actually surprised at the movie being as on the nose as what it was because of Jean Favreau's involvement.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  And if nothing, over the course of his filmmaking career, he's shown how to make you care about a character and then put that character in a different place than like how it was when you found it.

• 56:10Sean Fennessey?

  I'm a huge fan of his movies in general. I mean, he's made a few duds here and there, but I think he's not just a skilled crafts person. But going back to swingers, like I have always thought he has a real ability to capture human, human behavior. Like that's and whether it's in a big world or in a small world, um, I like it. I think this just kind of, it feels like Moana two, which was intended for Disney plus. And they kind of upscaled it a little bit and added a few more dynamic elements to make it more theatrical and to leverage a moment, maybe a week open space in a calendar to create something a little bit more theatrical. And I, I groused about this when Solo came out in 2018. I was like, Star Wars movies are special and Solo is not special.

• 56:52Sean Fennessey?

  And this movie is not special. And so it kind of undermines the entire premise of the Star Wars exercise. I think you could make a case that, um, the streaming series in general, I think, kind of violated a lot of that. And we could probably look back at a lot of different things over the last five years that were undermined by making them streaming TV series. But this one, I think, would work really well if you were just moving from season three of the show. And then you were just like, you're on a binge and you just binge the movie immediately after watching season three, and then maybe you go right into season four. And in that way, it's a totally viable thing if you like these characters in this world. But for the big Memorial Day weekend Star Wars movie, this ain't good enough, man.

• 57:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's just straight up what it is to me. It's just not good enough.

• 57:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I agree, but I also don't have the standards of it there. I don't think there was anything.

• 57:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I guess if it were really good, I'd be like, hey, that was really good. And I was excited, but I'm not bringing to it any sort of like fan expectations or anything other than I went to see a movie and it wasn't really a movie. And I won't think about it again. And with the remove, it just also, you know, becomes increasingly clear. The generous version, as Van put it, which is that Star Wars, the Star Wars world is at such a disadvantage because they have to like please everyone and they also have to please every individual age group fan base all at once. And they have to be both niche and broad, and that's impossible. The ungenerous version is that they've just backed themselves into a corner and there's

• 58:31Amanda Dobbins?

  like no way to do anything interesting anymore at the scale that they have to do it for financial reasons.

• 58:37Sean Fennessey?

  So what do you, what, what is Star Wars now then with that in mind? You know, like this is, was a seven year gap theatrically.

• 58:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:47Sean Fennessey?

  We have obviously a very big movie coming one year from now, Starfighter, the Ryan Gosling, Sean Levy movie. I do think that this augurs the end of an era of Star Wars. Like we were in, there were, there have been four phases to this point. There's the original trilogy.

• 59:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 59:05Sean Fennessey?

  There's the sequel or the prequel trilogy. There's the sequel trilogy and then there's the streaming era. This to me feels like an end cap on the streaming era and it's underperformance of the box office, relatively speaking, feels like a, like a clear signal to Disney like, reset, you gotta reset. Now next year probably is a reset. I don't, how are you feeling about it?

• 59:26Speaker 03

  So I think what this signals for Star Wars, where Star Wars is right now is where a lot of these things are, which is a monocultural institution trying to wrestle with the death of contemporary monoculture.

• 59:39Speaker 03

  What Star Wars has to do, or what anything has to do is segment itself. And it's very difficult to do when you want to make a movie and you want everyone to talk about it. You want everyone to go see it. This is best explained or expressed, or the best example of this, shall I say, is The Last Jedi. The Last Jedi is a Star Wars movie that did everything that serious highbrow film goers want to see. They subverted your expectations of what was going on. They went in new places. They established new lore. They did all of that stuff. And for the fans that are looking at Luke Skywalker as this father figure Jedi god, who at his height would be able to overcome any problem and do whatever, they went, that's not what we want, right?

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  And then, as a film project, you had a whole bunch of people that were saying, that's exactly what we want. That's exactly where you have to go. And then Star Wars splintered and didn't know how to do it. Then they made a really dark space opera in Andor, and they went, yeah, that's what, that's what we want. But then people couldn't really connect with that. That wasn't for every Star Wars fan. So I think what Star Wars has to do is realize that there are pockets of their audience that will watch anything that they put out. Like, I will watch LSU versus Western Tennessee Tech on 3:00 PM on Saturday and be up for every down.

• 1:00:59Sean Fennessey?

  Subscribe to Ring Your Tailgate.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  Ring Your Tailgate, because I love LSU football so much that I'm interested in seeing what the third-string walk-on quarterback does when he gets the opportunity to come in the game. So that's, you, you have a low bar for me. But not everybody's going to tune in for that college football game. So if you want everybody to tune in, you might have to expand the lore or do some different things. I say all of this to say that as a huge blockbuster, $2 billion entity, there are questions to answer. But if you're not a Star Wars fan right now, if you're out on Star Wars right now, then you were certainly out in 1993, or 1994, or 1996, where there was no stuff coming out.

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  Where there was nothing that you could turn on your television and see. You had to go to your A bookstore and buy books and go seek this stuff out. And for me, my fear is actually going back to that. My fear is actually not having people bring new ideas, even though those ideas are poorly executed or under executed. My fear of Star Wars is not overabundance. My fear of Star Wars is the wilderness.

• 1:02:09Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:09Speaker 03

  Because I lived through the wilderness as a Star Wars fan, where Star Wars, so, so, so, so, so, so that's my deal. And so that's the dividing line that I think I am on with a lot of people.

• 1:02:20Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very, very interesting way to frame this, and I, I would argue Amanda didn't care because she was not fully invested in the original trilogy, even as a young person. But I was, as I, I would assume as much as you up to a point. And then I never really got into the novels. That was something that, that was like beyond what I was interested in.

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  Certainly, yeah.

• 1:02:39Sean Fennessey?

  But I would, I vividly remember being 11 years old, sitting on the floor of the Barnes and Noble in my hometown, reading the Star Wars encyclopedia for two hours, like just obsessed with every component of the lore. And the absence of new movies actually, I think, might have helped. I think having fewer things as I got older to pick apart helped it grow in my estimation. And then when the prequels came along, which I actually always kind of liked and always kind of defended, you can check with Chris Ryan on this because I knew him back then. I, I, I could see their flaws.

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Sean Fennessey?

  And the, the way that they were received, especially critically, made, made me feel like we were going again into a wilderness because it was like, all right, maybe we didn't need to go back to this. Now, what we've had since 2016, 2015, when it was Force Awakens 15?

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  15, something like that, yeah.

• 1:03:33Sean Fennessey?

  So in this 11-year period, we have 10 times the amount of Star Wars hours than we ever had for the first 40 years of my life. And it's too much. It's, we're not going to the wilderness. That's never going to happen again. It's corporately held. They're never going to stop. There makes no sense for them to stop. So there's no reason to be worried about the wilderness. What we should be worried about is this. Is the, like, the watering down, the degradation.

• 1:03:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, this is the essential tension or conflict of fan culture, right? Which is like, do you actually want to get what you want? Is fan service actually fan service? And I think there are many people who watch it and, and, and who get. The, you know, new movies and new iterations and the Easter eggs and everything and receive it as like, that actually is why I'm going to the movies. And then I think there is a different type of people who watch movies in a very different way, who understand fan service to just kind of be spooning things out to you to try to-

• 1:04:30Sean Fennessey?

  Are those people in the room with us right now?

• 1:04:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Are those people in the room with us to try to get your money? But that's always the risk, right?

• 1:04:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Isn't, I mean, that's the-

• 1:04:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, it's just like, I'm not inherently a cynical movie watcher. So like, not, not at all, right? So I just, it doesn't bother me. We're not going back to the wilderness, but this is the first Star Wars movie in like seven years.

• 1:04:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:50Speaker 03

  Right? So like, as far as a big screen Star Wars experience, we are in the wilderness, right?

• 1:04:55Sean Fennessey?

  We were, yeah, we were.

• 1:04:56Speaker 03

  We were, right? So this is the first one in seven years. Look, I would rather, with any of this stuff, any of the stuff that we're talking about, I would rather say, hey, do as much as it, as a dude, I don't want to limit on it because I don't necessarily believe that scarcity, like breeds greatness, right? What I would say for everyone, and this is despite my criticisms of, of The Last Jedi, what I would say to everyone is, like, tell a story that you feel like is important. Like, tell a story that like is meaningful to you. If fan service, once there's a lightsaber on the screen, I'm serviced. Okay?

• 1:05:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:39Speaker 03

  Like, I'm serviced.

• 1:05:40Sean Fennessey?

  Interestingly, no lightsabers in this film.

• 1:05:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  Right. And this is the kind of not that story. Once there's a lightsaber on it, I'm serviced by being there in the world. That doesn't mean that like, me as a Star Wars fan is going to look at a movie and agree or necessarily think that every decision that was made was right. It also doesn't mean that I can't be glamored. The Force Awakens is a glamoring of Star Wars fans. It is a retread of so many things that we had already seen to where it took two weeks after the movie till we went, huh, was it very much in that film that we hadn't been accustomed to seeing before? That's kind of a remake of the first one.

• 1:06:14Sean Fennessey?

  I will say though, one thing that that film accomplished that I don't think this film accomplishes, to the point about our own children is, that movie- Activates young imaginations for people coming into Star Wars for the first time. And it makes you think about the fact that The Force of the Wakens wasn't just made so that you or I or you could have an exciting new Star Wars experience in our 30s. It was made to create a new generation of fans. And I really question whether or not a movie like this can create a new generation of fans. Starfighter does seem like the kind of thing that could do that because it sounds like it's wholly original in this world. Like, it sounds like it is outside the realm of the Skywalker saga and all this other stuff. But that's sort of why I question the intent of this movie a little bit is, is it, is it

• 1:06:59Sean Fennessey?

  just like a mile marker? Is it just like, well, we just gotta get back in theaters? And so, let's do the best we can because we've had so many stops and starts throughout the Kathy Kennedy, you know, seven-year corridor where nothing really was being made? And that actually, it's hard to not see a movie cynically through that lens. I agree with you. I, people listening to the show in the last three or four years might be surprised to hear this, but if you listened to the show before that, I was very excited about a lot of the things that were happening in this kind of storytelling. And it's hard to not see this to me as like, this is like the death belch of like an entire era of movies and TV making where like, this is kind of like the best they could do. This is like, they ate a big meal and this is like, kind of what's coming up. And it's not, it just doesn't, it doesn't sit right with me.

• 1:07:44Sean Fennessey?

  It's not a fiasco, it's not the sky is falling. It's just like, they just needed to put $600 million on the board this year and this was the best way they could do it.

• 1:07:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yep.

• 1:07:53Sean Fennessey?

  And-

• 1:07:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And Favreau was willing.

• 1:07:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And they had enough pieces in place.

• 1:07:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and it's just, it's like, I, that's not exciting.

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  But you're absolutely correct. Everything that you're saying is right, right? Like, everything that you're saying, there's no way to push back on anything that you're saying, it's all right. This was the most film-ready adaptation that they could put on the screen and make some money and say, hey, Star Wars is back in movie theaters. That's absolutely correct.

• 1:08:15Sean Fennessey?

  Do you agree then that audiences are smart enough to know that?

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  No. I think that like, I think that like, true film connoisseurs are smart enough to know that, right? I think audiences just will have a visceral response to whether or not they had a good time with it. And it's difficult to have a good time with something that doesn't have like a really thrilling story, right? It's like the Super Mario Brothers movie, which is what I compared Mando to.

• 1:08:41Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:42Speaker 03

  Super Mario Brothers movie.

• 1:08:43Sean Fennessey?

  Very similar.

• 1:08:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Speaker 03

  Very similar, right? They, they go to a place, you're like, okay, this is where the story of the movie is gonna get started. And then somebody makes a call and they go, Mario, we're on this planet, and then they leave.

• 1:08:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:08:52Speaker 03

  And then you're like, wait a minute, this movie doesn't care. They give you Star Fox, they give you all of this stuff, and then they go, hey, if you liked it enough when you were a kid, or if your brain is, isn't developed enough, you'll have a good time, a billion dollars see you next time, right?

• 1:09:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:05Speaker 03

  And so, that has to be looked at as a, in a, with a certain cynicism, just like this does. I, I will say this though, like, take the film biopic, like the biopic movie. So we've got Michael, we've gotten Bruce Springsteen, we've gotten a, a complete unknown. We've gotten a bunch of different versions of this in the last, like, they, they've joked about it. We've gotten, and almost always, with what's happening right now, these movies are bad. Almost always. Some of them are laughably bad, right? And to me, when I look at them, they have a, almost no excuse to be bad. Because you could literally make a movie just about Michael Jackson during the thriller period,

• 1:09:47Speaker 03

  and all, everything that happened, and it would be a kick ass, unbelievable movie.

• 1:09:51Sean Fennessey?

  I think we might have even said.

• 1:09:52Amanda Dobbins?

  This was my pitch, which is if you had called it thriller instead of Michael.

• 1:09:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:09:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And it were, and you took the Springsteen approach, but to this material.

• 1:10:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:10:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Speaker 03

  But th- these types of, these types of films are important for two reasons. Number one, they have built in audiences because people are really interested in these people. Number two, they are big, showy, performance pieces for the leads in these movies. So they're never going to stop making them, despite the fact that they are almost always bad.

• 1:10:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:10:20Speaker 03

  So when I see them, I go, like, even sometimes in the, the, the pictures, like, the, the poster, I'm like, I'm signing up for a two hour ride that's about to be some bullshit. I'm comparing them to Star Wars only to say that it's not that I necessarily think that they should stop making that type of film. What I think that they should do is when they are taking into consideration the story and the stuff that they are doing, make that film with some actual artistic inspiration and ingenuity. Because there is a good Bruce Springsteen movie in there. There is a great Bob Dylan movie in there. So I don't need less Star Wars. I need Star Wars to remember the face of its father. Its father is George Lucas.

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  And George Lucas was concerned with new worlds, new ideas, and consistent storytelling. And that can exist in Star Wars.

• 1:11:13Amanda Dobbins?

  But then he sold it to Disney. And then, you know, and the problem with Michael, the problem with Springsteen is that if you want the music and the like artistry that inspires everything else, there are a bunch of people who own all the rights to that and they have to... You don't get to do it artistically if all of these other lawyers are involved, which is a shame.

• 1:11:31Speaker 03

  Well then, well then, here's the deal then.

• 1:11:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree with you. Make good things. I'm like, like A plus. Make good things, not bad things.

• 1:11:39Speaker 03

  And once again.

• 1:11:40Amanda Dobbins?

  According to my standards of them, I'm available. I will answer the phone.

• 1:11:43Speaker 03

  Once again, I say it all the time. I've read stories about Darth Vader trying to get his lightsaber and having to decide he's not going... The Emperor says, "You're not gonna bleed a crystal to get your lightsaber. You gotta go take it from a Jedi." Which means he then has to find a Jedi that's taken the bearish vow. The bearish vow is when a Jedi swears off being a Jedi. So he has to get a list of every Jedi that's ever taken the bearish. He has to find out where they are. He picks the wrong fucking guy, cuz that guy legitimately, his only job in the Jedi was to fight. And then he has to go and fight up to the top of a mountain and get this... I have seen exhilarating, new, interesting Star Wars characters and stories that are based on existing lore.

• 1:12:28Speaker 03

  I know that it can be done.

• 1:12:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course.

• 1:12:30Speaker 03

  I'm going to have a good time watching Star Wars movies, but I haven't lost faith in the entire world because there's so much imagination that can be put to it if, in fact, these types of movies can defeat the same thing that I'm saying other genres of films have to defeat, which is all the stuff that Amanda just mentioned.

• 1:12:50Speaker 04

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy, you might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade, hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 1:13:19Speaker 05

  Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.

• 1:13:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think one of the reasons why The Last Jedi resonated with a certain sector of the fandom and of filmgoers in general is the very famous Kylo Ren, "Let the past die" line. And that spoke to the Star Wars mythology, but you could also apply it to this kind of broader component of culture. And what you just described, there's a part of me, there's an 11-year-old part of me that really wants to see the Darth Vader wrecking shit, you know, mid-story movie, where he's like having battles and figuring out how to be the real, true Dark Overlord of the Empire. Then there's a part of me that's like, I don't know, I already know what happened to Darth Vader.

• 1:14:30Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, I know how he died, and I know how he saved the rebellion, and I know what he means to Luke and Leia, and like, I saw Return of the Jedi. That story's over. It's not that it can't be done and it shouldn't be done, and I'm not telling people, like, don't tell another Darth Vader story, but it's never going to be as special as that very specific feeling when something big and new arrives and it can take over for a while. And part of what I've been trying to talk through on the show for the last few years is like, something is dying and something new is happening. We might not always like what the new thing is. In fact, Super Mario is one of the new things. It's something from our childhood, but in movie form, it's one of the new things. But as we have gone through, and credit to Amanda for sitting in that chair for like

• 1:15:14Sean Fennessey?

  five-plus years of pretty bad... Fandom stuff.

• 1:15:18Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:19Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 1:15:20Amanda Dobbins?

  10 years now. I mean, going back to Solo.

• 1:15:22Sean Fennessey?

  But but more of that stuff was tolerable or interesting, I thought, from 2015 to 2020 than what we have had in the in the five years since.

• 1:15:29Speaker 03

  Alright.

• 1:15:30Sean Fennessey?

  That's my perspective.

• 1:15:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Just saying, Rise of Skywalker was 19. So I think it's 2018 is when it starts going south.

• 1:15:36Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe it's been seven years of not great stuff. Nevertheless. It's something's changing. Like, movies like this don't happen if they're not like afraid. This is like a scared move. This is a scared move.

• 1:15:47Speaker 03

  Well, no, we know what's changed. What's changed is that you you make a movie now, this for all films, you make a movie now and you have.

• 1:15:57Speaker 03

  I was just talking to somebody about this. The amount of times I went to the movies and saw what's considered now to be a bad movie. We would talk about how bad the movie was for a day, two days. I was talking about a movie called Ride that my boy Derek Darnsberg went to see. And Derek Darnsberg came out and said, man, how was Ride? It's like a hip hop type movie from the mid to late 90s, right? And he goes, man, that shit was an hour and 20 minutes long. It just didn't feel like it was an actual film. We went and saw it. Ride sucked. And then we got over it. Now, every time a movie comes out and that movie is bad. First of all, we hype these movies like, I mean, not the Star Wars. We hype these movies like there's no tomorrow.

• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  Every film is going to be this deep exploration or this is brand new breathtaking new filmmaker that's going to change everything, right? We hype this and then we rip them to shreds, which we should have conversations about movie. Any prestige in any art form is, to me, oriented around criticism. If you have a low critiqued art form, it can have no prestige. Prestige is oriented around criticism. But now, like, we take the qualities of these movies, the quality of these movies, a little bit more personally than we used to. And there is one or two places where people are allowed to direct all their vitriol.

• 1:17:19Speaker 03

  And they sing very loud. And then the people who are A, creating them, and B, marketing them and financing them, get their shit scared out of them. The actors get fucking harassed. The directors get

• 1:17:31Sean Fennessey?

  You're right.

• 1:17:32Speaker 03

  I knew that they would make a movie like this because they have this political belief.

• 1:17:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:35Speaker 03

  I knew that they would do-

• 1:17:36Sean Fennessey?

  A man that gets clipped on Instagram and she's hectoring some poor young actress who's just doing her best, you know, trying to be a slave girl in a Star Wars film, you know?

• 1:17:45Speaker 03

  Right. So, so always, so, so there's, like, there is different. How do you make it? You don't. What you do is you say, I have this, and I, I think the, the next group of Star Wars, the, the next batch of Star Wars stuff that we, that we're getting is a lot more original. It's got some characters that we recognize, but we'll see, like, how the story is told. You go, hey, I have a take on this world. Characters be damned. World decide. How can I get this original take out? And you let the people who are fans, a part of the fandom, you let them go out. And then people who don't want to fuck with it, don't watch it. Like, it, like, it, like, don't, like, do, don't watch it. Don't go to it. Because I, like, I am-

• 1:18:29Sean Fennessey?

  If only for Amanda.

• 1:18:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. I'm just like, you know, preach. Like, if we could get to that place, that would be beautiful.

• 1:18:35Sean Fennessey?

  Unfortunately, you have two young boys, so you're, you're, you're in for a penny, in for a pound here. This is it.

• 1:18:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Even Sai knows who Grogu is now.

• 1:18:41Speaker 03

  So to me, there is both the ability to be critical and be honest about the fact that we are in the dirt in terms of Star Wars content that's come. We in the dirt.

• 1:18:52Sean Fennessey?

  We're in the dirt.

• 1:18:53Speaker 03

  There's no way. We in the dirt with Star Wars. We in the dirt with Marvel. We in the dirt.

• 1:18:56Sean Fennessey?

  Let me ask you something.

• 1:18:57Speaker 03

  We in the dirt.

• 1:18:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. In the series, there's a couple of things that are, that were kind of Easter egg-y, fan service-y that you were describing. You know, Luke obviously appears in the series at a certain point.

• 1:19:08Amanda Dobbins?

  In Mandalorian and Grogu.

• 1:19:10Sean Fennessey?

  Are in the Mandalorian series. Uh, Sok'tano, um, we get the, the, the dark saber. Like, we get, we get things. The dark saber is a, is a, is a lightsaber.

• 1:19:20Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's dark.

• 1:19:21Sean Fennessey?

  But it's, but it's dark.

• 1:19:23Speaker 03

  And

• 1:19:26Speaker 03

  why don't you show some respect to the dark saber?

• 1:19:28Sean Fennessey?

  Some of that stuff.

• 1:19:28Speaker 03

  It's the single.

• 1:19:30Amanda Dobbins?

  When you were talking about how.

• 1:19:32Speaker 03

  And you get in, you rule the Mandalorians.

• 1:19:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I had to stuff down so many questions about where you get a lightsaber when you were describing the fanfiction or whatever it was about Darth Vader going to find his lightsaber. I mean, I just, I don't, there's.

• 1:19:45Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 1:19:45Amanda Dobbins?

  But I would watch that.

• 1:19:46Sean Fennessey?

  You just reminded me because I, my daughter and I built a lightsaber three weeks ago.

• 1:19:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:19:51Sean Fennessey?

  At Galaxy's Edge.

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:53Sean Fennessey?

  At Disneyland and I will say.

• 1:19:55Speaker 03

  Not cheap to do.

• 1:19:56Sean Fennessey?

  It, well, it was, it was promised and it was delivered. That's what I'll say. We've been discussing it for a long period of time.

• 1:20:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:02Sean Fennessey?

  And she chose the white lightsaber because she loves Ahsoka Tano.

• 1:20:06Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:20:06Sean Fennessey?

  Not because she's a young white girl, Van Lathan. How dare you? Um, no, she loves.

• 1:20:10Speaker 03

  What about the dark saber?

• 1:20:11Sean Fennessey?

  She, she loves Ahsoka.

• 1:20:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:12Sean Fennessey?

  And so, um, but that was very special. And then I saw you tweeting yesterday about being at Disneyland and ranking your favorite rides.

• 1:20:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:21Sean Fennessey?

  And, and Rise of the Resistance was at the top of your ranking.

• 1:20:24Speaker 03

  It is.

• 1:20:25Sean Fennessey?

  And it was your first time going on it?

• 1:20:26Speaker 03

  No, no, that's my third time.

• 1:20:27Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I, it was, I went on it for the first time with my family three weeks ago and I, for the first time in a while, I was like, there's nothing like Star Wars. Star Wars is the best thing that's ever existed.

• 1:20:38Speaker 03

  So there's a part of Rise of the Resistance that people that haven't ridden it before don't think is coming. And one lady cried. So like she cried when, because they.

• 1:20:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's pretty cool.

• 1:20:48Speaker 03

  They put you inside of the world. There's a part that a door opens and you're like, shit.

• 1:20:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Are there, are there people in costume running around? You have to interact with them?

• 1:20:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:20:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I'll never do it.

• 1:20:58Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 1:20:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's so cool.

• 1:20:59Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I hate that so much though, when they, I, I really am afraid of audience participation and like character interaction.

• 1:21:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:06Amanda Dobbins?

  So this would be tough for me.

• 1:21:08Sean Fennessey?

  But it was.

• 1:21:08Amanda Dobbins?

  But I'm glad you guys loved it.

• 1:21:09Sean Fennessey?

  It was, it was an interesting reminder. It, it just, it, it transported me. It brought me back in a way that the movies and TV shows in the last seven years just never could. And it, it reminded me that like this does have a real power and that there's something really handmade about this world. And the idea of making a theme park ride that has that level of detail and tactility, you know?

• 1:21:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:29Sean Fennessey?

  That you felt like you were on the ship in a way that no other ride has ever given me. Before, even though I was a Star Wars freak when I was five years old.

• 1:21:37Speaker 03

  I love Star Wars.

• 1:21:38Sean Fennessey?

  Which is, and it's great now too. They've updated and everything, but nothing is like this ride. And so it's got, I kind of got to jog my memory sometimes too, where it's like, don't just be burned out. You know, podcast guy who's like, I hate everything from when I was a kid. It is still special and it can be special again, but just not this way.

• 1:21:57Speaker 03

  This is what, you're right. This is what I'll say. Okay. So all of the things that you talked about in Mandalorian, in the, the, the early Mandalorian series.

• 1:22:06Speaker 03

  Skywalker comes into that. That is fan service without a doubt.

• 1:22:09Sean Fennessey?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:22:10Speaker 03

  What, but it's also story. Meaning Grogu is a force being. He calls out to the force for assistance. If he did that at that time, who is the guy that would show up, crush everybody and save the day? And then tell Grogu about the way of the Jedi, the thousands year old tradition that he has the opportunity to be a part of. Then when he has a chance to be a part of that tradition, Grogu actually making the decision not to be a part of that tradition. Both because of the shortcomings of what has happened to that order and because of his connection to his father. It is actually a real choice.

• 1:22:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:55Speaker 03

  So you use Skywalker and it was so great to see Luke. As soon as the X wing, I was like, oh shit. Luke is like, what's wrong with you? I'm like.

• 1:23:05Speaker 03

  You know what I mean?

• 1:23:06Sean Fennessey?

  Not now, my stories are on.

• 1:23:07Speaker 03

  Exactly. I, I know it's about to go down. So yes, that is fan service without a doubt.

• 1:23:13Amanda Dobbins?

  But even that is something to hold on to. When Grogu in the Mandalorian Grogu is using the force. I'm like leaning over, was it the force?

• 1:23:23Sean Fennessey?

  It was the force.

• 1:23:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I am leaning over to my foil and being like, hey, that's the force. And that's what Luke Skywalker does. And I, Star Wars idiot mommy, am having to explicate this to a four year old during the movie. Cause the movie can't do the work for itself.

• 1:23:36Speaker 03

  The movie assumes that you know about the force. They assume that you.

• 1:23:39Sean Fennessey?

  What an interesting and weird choice.

• 1:23:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And it doesn't even, but it doesn't use the drama.

• 1:23:42Speaker 03

  I know, but, but. You can't. So, so this is why I will say about that. Um, and I'll finish off that point by just saying, yeah, you're right. The, the earliest, the early Mandalorian stuff was new. It was a new way to tell the Star Wars story. But they also incorporated things about Star Wars that we already knew. And it worked until it got cynical as a part of itself because there was people at, uh, at Disney, respect to everybody, that wanted to sell toys surrounding Grogu, want more than they wanted to tell stories. That's how you lose.

• 1:24:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:15Speaker 03

  You lose when you put the toy first and the story second, but I'm telling you in Star Wars, story can still win. Now, as far as Rise of Resistance, Rise of the Resistance has to play to people who are not massive Star Wars fans. I was at Rise of Resistance with two people yesterday. One of them, Kalika, who knows about Star Wars. The other one, our friend Alexis, who is not in any way initiated with Star Wars, right? When we left, she had a million questions. I don't want to ruin the ride for anyone. Why did they stop us? Why did they do this? Why did this happen? She was exhilarated because the Imagineers at Disneyland, they know that they cannot make a ride that is just specifically for Star Wars fans.

• 1:24:59Speaker 03

  They have to put you in the middle of the world, make you feel stakes, make you feel overwhelmed, and then make you win at the end. That is still possible for Star Wars, and I believe that it will be done. We just in the dirt right now, but out of that dirt, I'm telling you something's gonna grow.

• 1:25:13Sean Fennessey?

  Rise of the Resistance is one of the first things, forget about Star Wars, forget about Disney. It's one of the first experiences I've had where I had been hearing about it for years since they opened it. And I was like, wow, this is really fucking cool. And, and I'll just encourage people to check it out if they find themselves at Disneyland. All right, we gotta wrap it up.

• 1:25:31Speaker 03

  Before, before we go, I have to say one thing.

• 1:25:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:33Speaker 03

  All right, there's something that the streets are really involved in.

• 1:25:36Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:25:37Speaker 03

  And I don't know if you guys know, all of the big pick heads like myself, shout out to the big picture Reddit. Y'all know how much I fuck with y'all, okay? We're obsessed with the latest beef on this show.

• 1:25:49Sean Fennessey?

  What's the latest beef?

• 1:25:51Speaker 03

  The race for third chair.

• 1:25:53Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• 1:25:54Speaker 03

  We're obsessed with this.

• 1:25:56Sean Fennessey?

  Did you raise your hand for this episode because you really want?

• 1:25:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, are you?

• 1:25:59Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm the black chair, not the third chair.

• 1:26:02Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 1:26:03Speaker 03

  Okay, no, no, okay. I don't wanna, I don't wanna be the third chair. This is a clear, this is a clear.

• 1:26:07Sean Fennessey?

  These chairs don't see race.

• 1:26:11Speaker 03

  This is a clear two-horse race.

• 1:26:14Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 1:26:14Speaker 03

  Between Tracy.

• 1:26:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:26:16Speaker 03

  And Chris. Now, I'm of the belief that it's a one-horse race.

• 1:26:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:21Speaker 03

  Because there's only one true third chair, which is the incomparable Chris Ryan.

• 1:26:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:26:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:26:27Speaker 03

  However, there are those who believe that with the single-minded focus and dedication that he has when he's on his podcast, this is a guy who has a great fucking life, by the way.

• 1:26:38Sean Fennessey?

  Talking about Tracy.

• 1:26:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, this guy has a great fucking life, by the way, right?

• 1:26:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:26:42Speaker 03

  Married, beautiful, talented lady, has a fantastic career, also as a, as on the screen and on the stage.

• 1:26:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:50Speaker 03

  But yet he is.

• 1:26:51Sean Fennessey?

  This man is a father. He has a family.

• 1:26:53Speaker 03

  He has a family. However, being third chair matters to him.

• 1:26:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:58Speaker 03

  I would caution Chris Ryan not to take him for granted in this. I would caution Chris Ryan.

• 1:27:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:05Speaker 03

  So maybe, look behind. See, see, he's coming.

• 1:27:09Sean Fennessey?

  I think he's hearing some footsteps.

• 1:27:11Speaker 03

  I think he's hearing some footsteps with Tracy.

• 1:27:13Amanda Dobbins?

  You saw it when he closed the computer, you know, at the end of, at the end of the draft. He knows.

• 1:27:19Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:27:19Amanda Dobbins?

  And that's the beauty of Chris Ryan is that, you know, he's waiting, you know, for his moment. Tracy was on a heater in the month of May. I appreciate the work that he did, watching 85 million Robert Duvall films, uh, and, you know. Giving us some travel time.

• 1:27:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:35Amanda Dobbins?

  But I, we are living in like the Tracy afterglow right now, you know, and he's also.

• 1:27:41Sean Fennessey?

  This was like rewatchables after CR month too, you know, where it was like, oh, okay, well.

• 1:27:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And I would just.

• 1:27:45Sean Fennessey?

  That was then and this is now, you know, let's, let's talk in a few months.

• 1:27:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you know.

• 1:27:50Speaker 03

  Well, how long would Tracy have to deliver this current level of performance? I'm a CR head, CR is the third chair.

• 1:28:00Sean Fennessey?

  Here's a real challenge, and this is, this is the absolute truth in this question. One. The third chair will always be the friends we made along the way. That's just how I've always thought about it and we've made so many friends just doing this show. Two, if there is in fact a true race for third chair, the thing that Chris does and will continue to do, that Tracy has not yet shown himself willing to do, is that Chris will join us at 10:15 a.m. on a Tuesday after a holiday weekend to go see Backrooms in Beverly Hills. That is the work of this, making this show. In addition to hanging out, talking, making our little documents, having our strongly held opinions, you gotta go see the new movies at the annoying times and places where they're being held.

• 1:28:41Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:28:42Sean Fennessey?

  And then come to the episode and record with us on a regular basis. You can't just say, "I raised my hand for this episode and that's it." You gotta do the work. And CR, pre-big-picture, been doing the work with me for 20 years. So, he will have an inherent advantage as long as he continues to do that. That's just a fact.

• 1:29:01Speaker 03

  That's a, that's a goner.

• 1:29:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Tracy's also shopping for third chairs on some other podcasts. I'll just, I'll just put that out there.

• 1:29:06Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:29:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay?

• 1:29:07Sean Fennessey?

  A little third-chair curious.

• 1:29:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:09Speaker 03

  A third chair.

• 1:29:10Amanda Dobbins?

  So, there's, there's a, there's a little bit of a loyalty question.

• 1:29:13Speaker 03

  Is Tracy a third-chair thot?

• 1:29:16Speaker 03

  What are you talking about? You trying to see?

• 1:29:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's not flinch him anymore, but let's just say.

• 1:29:21Sean Fennessey?

  The other thing is, I just don't, I don't want to discount the Van Lathan's and the Joanna Robinsons and all the people, the Rob Mahonies, the people who serve.

• 1:29:29Speaker 03

  It's a clear two, Rob is great. It's a clear two-horse race. And Chris is way ahead. Like, us big pick heads know, Chris is way ahead. But what I liked more than anything, it's the last of my rabble-rousing that I'll do. What I liked more than anything is Tracy told Chris his face that he wanted it. I'm like, yo, what is he on? He told Chris to his face, "I'm coming for you." You know, it's like a movie, you know, it's like, it's like a movie, like, I watched John Wick not too long ago. John Wick is all bound and all like that, and he's looking at Vigo and he's going, "I'm gonna kill you." I always wonder in movies like that, like, how you gonna kill him? Shouldn't you? You're dead, dawg. You're caught.

• 1:30:09Sean Fennessey?

  Din does it in Mando.

• 1:30:10Speaker 03

  Din does it in Mando.

• 1:30:11Sean Fennessey?

  When he's tied up in front of the huts.

• 1:30:12Speaker 03

  Like, whenever somebody's, "You can't wait, can't wait till I..." Here you die screaming alongside. That's what Tracy did. Tracy was like in his face. Look at him. Chris has got the power. He goes, yo, I'm coming for you, dawg. I appreciated it.

• 1:30:24Sean Fennessey?

  I did too. I did too. Uh, Van Lathan, Tailgate, Midnight Boys, Higher Learning, Rewatchables. What else you been doing?

• 1:30:32Speaker 03

  Everywhere. I'm everywhere. I'm doing a lot of stuff. It's fun. I'm having a great time here at The Ringer. And so.

• 1:30:41Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you for being here.

• 1:30:42Speaker 03

  No problem.

• 1:30:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's go to my conversation now with Daniel Roher.

• 1:30:50Sean Fennessey?

  I'm here with my East Side of Los Angeles compatriot, Daniel Roher. Welcome back.

• 1:30:54Speaker 06

  Hey, man.

• 1:30:54Sean Fennessey?

  Nice to see you on the show.

• 1:30:55Speaker 06

  So cool to be here.

• 1:30:56Sean Fennessey?

  So you co-wrote and directed a feature film.

• 1:31:00Speaker 06

  I did.

• 1:31:00Sean Fennessey?

  Last time we spoke, that wasn't what you were doing.

• 1:31:02Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:31:03Sean Fennessey?

  You were, you were doing something mysterious when we last spoke. You had directed Navalny, which then went on to become an extraordinary sensation and won you many prizes. Congratulations. But I don't know that I saw this trajectory. What's, what's been happening for the last three years?

• 1:31:17Speaker 06

  When we last talked, I was in my, my clandestine spy days. Everyone has to go through it. It's just a phase. Uh, I was in Kiev, I think. It was a couple of weeks. It would have been, that would have been in January or February 22.

• 1:31:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:31:31Speaker 06

  So just before the war started and I was doing my, my clandestine Ukrainian stuff.

• 1:31:37Sean Fennessey?

  You went because you knew that things were on the precipice of.

• 1:31:39Speaker 06

  I didn't know the war was gonna start. I was with Bellingcat, Cristo, the guy in Navalny. It was like I got, we're doing this big expose in Kiev and we, we wanna make a movie about it. And I was like, oh gee, okay, great. It's like, I'm looking for something to do. That's why I was in Kiev when we last connected and I was on a film set, a documentary set interviewing like whistleblowers from the Department of Defense who wanted to blow the whistle on this clandestine operation that had gone belly up. And they were, they were accusing Zelensky and his government of sabotaging this mission. And, and I was making a documentary about that. And, uh, you know, it didn't, we didn't end up making that movie.

• 1:32:21Speaker 06

  But yeah, a lot of water under the bridge since that conversation. I'm no longer doing, I'm sort of like moved out of the spy genre, the nonfiction spy genre. And to your point of like, whoa, didn't see this like fun, heisty crime movie coming down the pike. That was kind of the point. I did Navalny, that film was a sensation. But you know, when you're 29, you win an Oscar, it's really cool. Like, not gonna lie, it's pretty sick.

• 1:32:48Sean Fennessey?

  I imagine.

• 1:32:48Speaker 06

  Uh, but also, it's really daunting.

• 1:32:51Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 1:32:52Speaker 06

  And, and it very much had this sense of like, oh, what do I do now? And people would come up to me like, wow, you just made like the ultimate movie of your life, you should just retire, ha, ha, ha, ha. But that made me anxious. And so for me, it was very much like, okay, how do I cope with the feeling of like, what the fuck do I do now? And the way I chose to deal with that was by, you know, doing something completely different. And the world knew me as a documentarian. Um, um, you know, my first film was about the band, Robbie Robertson and the Band. It was a music doc that sort of takes place in the extended Bob Dylan cinematic universe. And we saw this in the Chalamet movie last year. Bob Dylan's a folk musician, people loved his folk music. He did really well. Accolades, he was lauded for his folk music. And then he was like, you know what? I think I want to play rock and roll. And so he plugged in and he went electric.

• 1:33:37Speaker 06

  And in my own little tiny way, tuner is me proving to myself that I can play electric. That I can do that too.

• 1:33:44Sean Fennessey?

  Was that always, um, on the menu for you? Did you know you, like, did you see yourself as being a lifetime documentarian? Or did you know you always wanted to make scripted films?

• 1:33:53Speaker 06

  No, I, I like, I can, I can point to, so like, anyone who knows me is used to see me with a book, like a little blue book like this. I carry my sketchbook wherever I go. It's sort of a important part of my creative process and how I, how I cope and navigate life. And I've been doing it since I was 14 and I can go back to being 15 or 16 and passages like, dear future Daniel, if you're not a Hollywood director, you have failed me. You have discussed, you will have like, like really intense.

• 1:34:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's a burden, yeah.

• 1:34:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, like 15 year old me was dialed in. And so, no, I always wanted to be making movies. Documentary was a tributary, the most amazing tributary. I love documentary, I love nonfiction. I will always be doing both. I'm always making documentaries. I just premiered a documentary, Sundance. And I hope to always be making fiction films, different skillsets. Some of the fundamentals are the same, but really not so much the same.

• 1:34:49Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I had Robbie, who has since passed away, on the show, actually, for Once Were Brothers. I didn't talk to you for that movie.

• 1:34:55Speaker 06

  I was mad that they sent him and not me.

• 1:34:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, I was happy to talk to Robbie, but I didn't know you then. And I'm glad I got to have that conversation. But, you know, we didn't actually, I don't know how much we spoke when we spoke about Navalny, about kind of how you ended up at like 26 years old, making a movie about the band. So maybe before we-

• 1:35:10Speaker 06

  Dude, I was 24 when I got that job.

• 1:35:12Sean Fennessey?

  How did that even happen?

• 1:35:13Speaker 06

  Okay, so I was in Toronto, I dropped out of college. When I was 18 or 19, I started making documentaries. So the technological revolution that I kind of clung on to was that in like 2010, 2011, 2012, DSLRs became a thing. So for the first time, you could like put some stuff in a backpack, some equipment in a backpack, go make a movie that looked like cinema with a shallow depth of field and kind of that sort of cinematic air and feeling. And before then, documentary was like, you know, like Panasonic GH2s, where you're running around with like Mini DV and it kind of looks good, but kind of like shit.

• 1:35:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:35:51Speaker 06

  But you know what I'm talking about, it doesn't look like cinema.

• 1:35:53Sean Fennessey?

  Often more handheld.

• 1:35:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so here I was, sort of coming of age, when this technological shift's taking place. And it's like, oh, I can just go make movies. And for me, that was very empowering. So I'd like film a bar mitzvah in Toronto, where I was from, and make a couple thousand bucks. And then I would go make a movie. And I'd fly somewhere in the world that was of interest to me. I did one of those on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip. I did one in a slum in Uganda. I did one in the high Arctic in northern Canada. And I would just tell stories and make movies and like make a documentary. And I did probably four or five of those films. I'd send them to film festivals. They mostly got rejected, but I just keep making stuff. And that was sort of my film school. And so by the time I was 23, I had made enough of those movies that in Toronto,

• 1:36:36Speaker 06

  people kind of was like, oh, it's that kid who keeps showing up to the documentary film festivals. And the other thing about documentaries, I could just go do it. I found that very empowering. If I was doing a fiction film, I'd need like my mom to like do craft services. I'd need my friends to come act in them. I'd need like my dad to like let me use his car or whatever it is. And I did that in high school, but by the time I was like 19 or 20, it's like, I just want to be out in the world making stuff. And I was very motivated by that. And so I just did enough of those shorts that they knew me a little bit in Toronto. I knew that I wanted to find a film that was sort of bigger, that would put me into a bigger stage of first feature film. Robbie Robertson had written his book, his memoir called Testimony, came out in 2015. I read this thing and I just sort of like lapped it up. It was like, so he's such a great storyteller.

• 1:37:20Speaker 06

  It's an amazing musical odyssey and I identified it as something that is Canadian. So I could get this thing financed in Toronto, but it'd have a global, like certainly an outside of Canada

• 1:37:34Speaker 06

  scale and scope. And so I went on a campaign to get that job, took me like six or seven or eight months to get in front of Robbie. And I went to meet with Robbie Robertson. It's my first time in Los Angeles. I went to the Village Studio. I met with Robbie and I kind of just like put up a mirror. I was like, dude, I am you. I will fucking die to make this movie. Like you can hire some like big wig documentarian. It'll be one of five projects that that person's doing, but if you like hire me, I will like literally leave it all on the ice. Like, come on, like I gotta do this. And he was like, you're hired. So.

• 1:38:07Sean Fennessey?

  That is shocking, though, that he agreed to that.

• 1:38:10Speaker 06

  Irresponsible perhaps from his perspective. Like if you think about normally who his guys are.

• 1:38:15Sean Fennessey?

  He's best friends with Martin Scorsese.

• 1:38:17Speaker 06

  That wasn't lost on me, but, but you know, Robbie, to his credit, he just saw something in me.

• 1:38:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:22Speaker 06

  And, and when someone's like sitting across from you and it's like, look, on paper, I may not look like the obvious candidate to do this job. But like, I am telling you, look into my eyes, I will like die to do this. Like I won't eat until the job is done. Like that is compelling. And so I gave him that sort of pitch. He hired me. That job took two years to make.

• 1:38:44Speaker 06

  You know, I made it in a broom closet in Toronto with a couple of my buddies, which was a fun experience. And it turned out well and it was the opening night film of TIFF and Robbie was pleased with it and, and Marty came to the premiere, which for me was. You know, he was the executive, him and Ron Howard were the executive producers of that film, which is wild for me. And, you know, that sort of set me on the path, which, you know, COVID hit just as that film was premiering. I think that film was in theaters, Magnolli released it February 20th.

• 1:39:15Sean Fennessey?

  He was one of the very last people I spoke to before lockdown.

• 1:39:17Speaker 06

  Is that right?

• 1:39:18Sean Fennessey?

  On the show.

• 1:39:18Speaker 06

  That makes sense. Yeah.

• 1:39:19Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe the second to last person I spoke to.

• 1:39:20Speaker 06

  It could be. So that film premiered in theaters, I think we did a week, you know, in like 800 theaters, arthouse theaters, and then everything shut down. And so I was like, okay, my life is over, like many of us thought, like any momentum, I had no momentum. It all stopped. You know, I didn't have a career at that point. I'd just done this one movie and I was looking for the next thing. And, you know, by contortions, a fluke and destiny and whatever you call it, I went out in the world. I flew to Vienna, Austria on a hunch. I met someone who introduced me to someone and I met, and then I eventually met this guy, Kristo Grozev. And that, meeting that person, meeting Kristo was what led me to Navalny and the experience of making that movie, which was its own fever dream.

• 1:40:03Speaker 06

  Crazy. Like, there's still the cognitive dissonance that I went and did that movie. And, you know, that, that film was pure chutzpah. It was just like, you know, courage and bravery and I, I wouldn't have been able to do it now. You know, I'm at a different point in my life. It was just, you're 26, you have nothing that's holding you down.

• 1:40:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:40:20Speaker 06

  And like the leader of the Russian opposition is like, okay, come make a movie about me. And I'm like, okay. You know, again, I'll leave, I'm gonna leave it all on the ice here. Like, this is one of those things, I'm just gonna give it my all. We put together an amazing team, we made that movie. And that film was kind of like the rocket sauce that really propelled my life.

• 1:40:39Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:40:40Speaker 06

  And I, it's, that film is the original miracle of like, it's extraordinary that that film happened. It's extraordinary that I met Navalny. It's extraordinary that he was as amazing a subject as he was, that we were able to make that movie. In the rolling out of that movie, I met my wife, you know, we're, we have a family now. Like, so it's like, everything good that's manifested was because of the, the original sort of fluke of, of getting to do that film. And, you know, to the original question of like, you follow up Navalny with a film like Tuna. It was, it was, I was thinking about being 15 years old, being in Toronto, making movies, like running around on the subways with our cameras, shooting stuff in the alleyways,

• 1:41:23Speaker 06

  you know, getting our friends to be acting in it. Like, that's what I was doing in high school. And I came to documentary not through journalism, like many of my colleagues, but through like Tarantino and the Coen Brothers and Scorsese and Christopher Nolan and-

• 1:41:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, movies you liked.

• 1:41:40Speaker 06

  Movie, yeah, yeah, like my cinematic heroes. And, uh, and I always had in my head, and it was also Robbie. After I did Robbie's doc, before I found Avolny, Robbie was like, "You gotta go find a script. Go find a script you can sink your teeth into. That's what Marty would do. Enough of this documentary stuff."

• 1:41:56Sean Fennessey?

  He was a big cinephile, too, Robbie.

• 1:41:57Speaker 06

  He was, oh, yeah. And we, we talked a lot about that. And, you know, one of the, you know, something I think about that's, you know, as we're here talking about, that's sad, is that Robbie never got to see me do that. Uh, uh, cause he kinda saw that I could. And he sort of had that belief in me when I didn't always have it in myself. And, um, but he inspired me in that way. And Robbie's life is a testament to doing the impossible. Like, this vision that you have for your life, it's like, it can be ginormous. You can do, it's like, like, the only thing that stops you from achieving something amazing is your own self-perception of what it could be. And that's what Robbie's life was, this kid from Toronto who, who grew up and became this, this, this rock star. Um, and, you

• 1:42:40Speaker 06

  know, so Robbie saying to me, like, "Go find yourself a script. Enough of this documentary. Go do fiction. Go to a, go to a real, a movie movie."

• 1:42:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:49Speaker 06

  That you can sink your fangs into. He probably would've said something like that. And, and, you know, that would've made me think, "Oh, maybe I could do that." You know?

• 1:42:57Sean Fennessey?

  Well, okay, let's talk about it. Cause I was gonna ask you all these questions, like, you know, Errol Morris did this, Steve James did this. They've all, they've all had their try-

• 1:43:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:43:04Sean Fennessey?

  At a scripted film, and they worked out or they didn't work out.

• 1:43:06Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:43:06Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Asif Kapadia, like, all great, all great documentarians, legendary documentarians, people who kind of like-

• 1:43:11Speaker 06

  I love those guys.

• 1:43:12Sean Fennessey?

  Push the form forward.

• 1:43:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:43:13Sean Fennessey?

  But you're, you're describing yourself as somebody who always wanted to be making scripted films. And I'm curious, like, what, if you had to learn anything or relearn anything, having made these movies the way that you did, as you prepared to make this one?

• 1:43:27Speaker 06

  Well, look, um, on, on my first day of shooting Tuna, uh, I got on set and I, and I said to everybody, you know, spirit of transparency, transparency, like-

• 1:43:39Speaker 06

  Every single person here has more experience making movies than I do. You've all been on sets more. This was like, I've only been on set a couple of times when I stepped on my own set. But the button on that was, but I have more experience making this specific movie. Because I've been making this movie in my head and on paper and in drawings and in writing for two, two and a half years. And I, and I really just tried to summon both the humility and the chutzpah required to like, get the job done. But it's a, like, I had never worked with actors before. Leo Woodall, who is wonderful in the film, he really taught me a lot about, he probably, Leo's probably taught me more about working with actors than anybody else. And not, not, not necessarily overtly like, this is how you direct actors, but more just

• 1:44:24Speaker 06

  like, in process. But yeah, it's a, it's a different skill set. But as I look to like, as I understand who I am and where I come from, like, I started out drawing comic books. Like, I was 12 years old, 13 years old, going to comic book conventions with a portfolio under my arm, talking to big artists, being like, hey, will you look at my drawings? And I was always been a visual artist. And so, the idea of, of making a fiction film always seemed like a very natural extension of what I've always wanted to do. The documentary, my documentary career was almost like a tributary that is a reflection of my love of politics and history and current events and geopolitics and all of these things

• 1:45:07Speaker 06

  where documentaries are amazing lens to explore those issues. But cinema has always been my first love and making movies has always been my, my number one passion. So, after Navalny won the Oscar, you know, for a second, I'm like, oh my God, what do I do now? This is amazing but scary. And the answer was like, okay, doors are, a door might open that doesn't open for a lot of people. And so, I wanted to go make a movie. And I wanted to make a movie that, that, that, you know, was, was like the films I loved watching, that was propulsive and fun and engaging and like, musical and, and romantic, like, a movie movie. And that's what I, that was my mission for this film. That's what I set out to do.

• 1:45:47Sean Fennessey?

  I was trying to describe the movie to someone just outside earlier. And I was like, you know, it's like, um... It's like Rain Man meets Shine meets Heat. You know, like, it's not, it's a very

• 1:46:01Speaker 06

  It's tough.

• 1:46:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very odd collection of different kinds of stories. Like, where did the conceit come from? Like, obviously, you get this opportunity.

• 1:46:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:46:10Sean Fennessey?

  And you got to run through it. But like, did you have a drawer full of scripts and things that you knew that you wanted to do?

• 1:46:14Speaker 06

  No, not, not at all. It was very much like, you know, I sat down. I, I really tried to like draw up a game plan and quarterback it. Like, I had this dream that like, you know, maybe with the success of Navalny, I could get to a point where I could make a real movie. And, and so, you know, it was about designing a movie that I would want to watch. And I wanted to be a crime story. I, I had this idea of doing something auditory. Like, that was just so interesting for me. But the sort of linchpin was that I had just met my wife. I had just become her boyfriend. And she was sort of taking me around to meet her friends. And one of her friends that I went to say, have dinner with was this couple called Michelle and Peter. And Caroline and Michelle were like kibitzing and hanging out. And I'm chatting with Peter. And I was like, what do you do?

• 1:47:00Speaker 06

  Pete, nice to meet you. What do you do? And he's like, I'm a piano tuner. I'm like, huh. Tell me about that. Like, that's interesting. And he took me into his like little garage, which is like, a piano exploded and its guts are on the walls. And he's like, well, piano tuning, you know, I, I go and make sure the instruments are in good shape and I have keep them. And I'm like, no, I know, I get that. But like, what is, like, what's your day to day like? And he's like, well, I'm in my van and I, and I sort of bop around and I have some clients who are like real musical people. And I have some clients who are just like rich people. And I, you know, prefer obviously like the, the conservatories. He just started describing his work and in no time, he was talking about like philosophy and spirituality and talking about like entropy and atrophy and the forces of the universe that want to pull these things out of tune.

• 1:47:45Speaker 06

  And the natural order is chaos. And it's my job to restore order where there wants to be chaos. And I was like, this is amazing. It's like, and it's auditory and it's lonely and he's by himself. And some people treat him like he's the plumber and some people revere him like he's like, oh my God, thank God you're here. And I loved all of that and I thought it was like a really interesting job. I liked the itinerant quality of it. I liked how it kind of like defied modernity in a way like, like, you know, there's no way to kind of like, there's no like smart piano tuner, no apps. It's really just like a guy and

• 1:48:16Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:48:16Speaker 06

  You know, I really appreciated that. And I followed him around. I went to work with him for a day and sure enough, you know, within 10 minutes, he's, we're in this like ballroom.

• 1:48:26Sean Fennessey?

  Wait, what did he say when you asked him, can I follow you around?

• 1:48:29Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 1:48:29Sean Fennessey?

  He's like, you're a weirdo?

• 1:48:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, basically. I was like, can I come to work with you? Can I just like do a ride along? He's like, uh, I don't think he got, Pete, Peter at that point hadn't seen Navalny. He didn't really, you know, I don't think he had a full understanding of who I was or what I was about or what I did. I just, he knew I made documentaries. So he thought it was odd, but he was also like, probably not, because my clients like would not be into that. I was like, well, maybe just ask, because I'd love to if it's okay. And so I ended up doing a ride along with him and we went to this, you know, the guy had a ballroom in Brentwood or something with this giant Yamaha, like, you know, a really expensive, big, beautiful piano. And I was just sort of sitting there and taking pictures and doing some drawings and being in the space. And, you know, they were like doing construction next door and Pete was like a little like, oh, fuck, god damn it,

• 1:49:15Speaker 06

  they're making a lot of noise. And then within 15 minutes, like, the cleaning lady or the housekeeper was like, hey, can you take a look at the toilet downstairs when you're done? Like, and Pete was like, no, it's not, I'm, I'm the piano guy, like that whole, I just thought the job was so interesting and like, okay, this is a really interesting world and, and moving around and montage-y and itinerant and we're meeting different people and going different places. And, and so that was sort of the genesis and the nucleus of the piano tuner. And then I was like, how can I make this a crime story? Like, what, where, where is the crime part? And then I kind of had this epiphany that like, what's tactile and hearing? Safe cracking. And then I was like, is safe cracking a real thing? Or is that just a movie thing? So then I went down that rabbit hole and I started doing all this research and safe cracking and I called LA's like top safe cracking guy. And,

• 1:49:58Speaker 06

  and, you know, the, the reality is, is it's like kind of somewhere in the middle. It's like, the way you see it in movies is sort of fictionalized, but it definitely is a real thing that exists.

• 1:50:06Sean Fennessey?

  There's something to it.

• 1:50:07Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. And like, and there are people who can go in there with a stethoscope. And do the thing and, you know, open a door. And I was like, okay, well, that's all I need.

• 1:50:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:15Speaker 06

  So I was just sort of off and I sort of developed from that. And I wanted to make something that was musical, that was propulsive, that was auditory, where the sound design really helped, you know, elevate the production design. Because I didn't know how much money a movie costs to get made. I figured someone would finance a movie, cost a couple million dollars. That's what I understood. But I wanted to make something that punched above its weight class, that, that, you know, when you'd watch it, you'd be like, oh, that feels both refreshing and familiar at the same time. That's sort of what I was going for. And, you know, once Black Bear got involved, the whole thing sort of came into focus. And I was able to go, you know, do this impossible dream of making this movie.

• 1:50:53Sean Fennessey?

  Do you play music?

• 1:50:54Speaker 06

  Play a little bit. I learned a little bit of guitar when I was doing Robbie Robertson's movie.

• 1:50:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:50:58Speaker 06

  So I do play a little guitar, enough that if like a guitar, a real guitar player was next to me for like 15 seconds or 20 seconds, they'd be like, oh, hey, like, but that's it.

• 1:51:07Sean Fennessey?

  So that's really interesting because the movie, obviously, in addition to having this incredible sound design, is very musical, the way it's cut.

• 1:51:13Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:51:13Sean Fennessey?

  And obviously, the music is a huge part. There's a lot of jazz needle drops, especially in the beginning of the film. So very, very, it feels like a movie made by a musician.

• 1:51:21Speaker 06

  Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. You know, there's this old convention of like, write what you know. I heard that a lot when I was trying to, you know, come up with a screenplay idea. And, and, you know, what I understood is like, yeah, write what you know, but also maybe like, write what you're interested in. Write what you'd like to know more about and explore. And, you know, the idea of a conservatory and, and this, this woman who, who, you know, met this guy, but they seem great for each other, but maybe it's not the right time. All of these things, in a way, were metaphors for things happening in my own life. I met my wife just as she was embarking on her first feature film. And so I was like, hey, you're wonderful. Like, this is really cool. But like, don't get in the way of this big dream I have. And I was like, I totally get it. I'm only here to support.

• 1:52:05Speaker 06

  You know, all of these sorts of things. But yeah, I wanted it to have the authenticity and lived in this. And I think that's what drives me to documentary in the first place. And an overlap between fiction and documentary is just an exploration of something fascinating. Like, I'm really. Interested in music. I'm really interested in classical music and jazz and learning more about the history of jazz and through this film and literally getting, you know, one of the great luminaries of jazz to do a cameo in the movie was really exciting for me. And, you know, while it's it's an unfamiliar world to me that I had to learn about the sort of themes and emotionality of the film felt very real to me and everything else was like stuff I could learn.

• 1:52:43Sean Fennessey?

  Tell me about hopscotching in the kind of subgenres and tones and making sure that that was all working because you it is like it's a romance.

• 1:52:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:52:52Sean Fennessey?

  And it's a crime movie and it's a movie about a person with a special gift.

• 1:52:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, that's that was the scariest part of the movie. It's like, you know, it sort of starts off and it's like, kind of like, kind of a not comedy, but almost a comedy. Like, it's kind of light.

• 1:53:04Sean Fennessey?

  Totally buddy comedy in the first, yeah, 20 minutes.

• 1:53:06Speaker 06

  Buddy comedy in the first 20 minutes. And then like, and in the same movie, like, the guy's head gets blown off and like, you know, carnage and death and like, those films have to be in the same movie. And and the sort of miracle of that of of that whole thing is that we were able to like, get the tones and the frequencies right and thread those genres into one another. You know, I worked with Greg O'Brien, my extraordinary editor, who really helped us find that frequency. And we, we, we, that was the biggest, the biggest challenge. But at the script stage, I sort of just understood how everything had to bleed into one another and and sort of like the elements that would adhere everything.

• 1:53:47Speaker 06

  Like, the music in a film like Tuna is like the adhesive that just brings everything together, right? And if you and if you can sort of figure out those elements, figure out how you're going to shoot it, sort of propulsiveness of it, we were able to get it all working when we were cutting the film. But but those those sorts of like tonal shifts were certainly tricky. And the thing going into it that I was like, I hope this will work. Like, if we don't figure this out, we're fucked. But I think we will be okay.

• 1:54:17Sean Fennessey?

  I noticed a very interesting name in the credits of this film. Joanne Sellers is listed as a producer, who is Paul Thomas Anderson's longtime producer, produced many of his films.

• 1:54:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:54:25Sean Fennessey?

  And I think this is her first film that is not a PTA movie that she's produced in some time.

• 1:54:30Speaker 06

  Like, oh, he hath a mighty have fallen.

• 1:54:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Well, so how did she get involved? What did you learn from her?

• 1:54:35Speaker 06

  So Joanne, Joanne Sellers, who was the producer of the film with Laila Koub and Mike and Teddy from Black Bear, you know, she is this sort of like epic producer who's produced like some of the greatest films ever. And, you know, she was, had this sort of professional, I don't know, this like thing with PTA for 25 years, almost feels like a professional marriage of sorts. Her and her husband, Daniel Loopy, who's an amazing producer as well. And, you know, I never really litigated the details, but, you know, as it happens sometimes with people, you work with someone for a long time and, you know, you wake up one morning, you're like, maybe this isn't right anymore, or something like this.

• 1:55:20Speaker 06

  And that's just life and that happens. But I came to Joanne, I was fortunate enough to meet Joanne via Rob Ramsey, who I co-wrote the script with. And Rob and Joanne knew each other, their kids went to school together. And that's how I came to meet Joanne. And Joanne, you know, was sort of looking for projects to do and reading scripts. And she read Tuna and she really saw something in the script and she and I really hit it off. And, you know, her experience is kind of like, you know, those movies come on, they're just like, you know, it's pretty intimidating when you look at the filmography. But I was so lucky because with Joanne and Lila, I had a first film that was kind of a smooth endeavor.

• 1:56:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:01Speaker 06

  And, and, you know, a lot of first time filmmakers, it's like, you're up Schitt's Creek and, and you don't really have the support. But with Joanne and Lila, a problem never got to me before it was solved. And, and, and that's sort of the mastery of an amazing producer. It's like I'm focusing on the creative and, and if something happens, if someone falls out, if there's an issue, when it's brought to my attention, it's like, hey, this thing happened, kind of a bummer, but here's our working contingency, here's our plan, here's our overcome. And that was very meaningful for me and something that I really appreciated in, in working with the two of them.

• 1:56:36Sean Fennessey?

  I think the movie is really accomplished and I really liked it a lot.

• 1:56:39Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 1:56:39Sean Fennessey?

  And I hope you make more movies like this. I am really interested in your perspective on putting a movie like this out into the world in which it's a little bit more challenging to release. Effectively, an independent feature.

• 1:56:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:56:52Sean Fennessey?

  Commercially, especially because you in your twenties had such an amazing experience releasing what is usually not considered very commercially viable in docs.

• 1:57:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:57:01Sean Fennessey?

  But you got attention for them.

• 1:57:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:57:02Sean Fennessey?

  And now, like, what are your expectations with putting a movie like this out in the world? You had festival premiere and all that went seemingly went well, but like now you're going to be in the marketplace.

• 1:57:10Speaker 06

  Sure, and market don't lie. Those numbers don't lie. And that just is what it is, and I accept that and understand it. But at the end of the day, you know, I look at some of my film heroes and I just read that amazing Stanley Kubrick biography.

• 1:57:26Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 1:57:27Speaker 06

  And Stanley Kubrick was like obsessed with every morsel of the process, right? Like, making the movie through to promoting the movie, through to the key art, through to the trailer, through to, he was across all of it. And, you know, my perspective is, I really know what I love to do, and I love to make movies. The marketing and selling of a movie is kind of a different job. And so as I look to like the type of career I want to cultivate in my sort of film heroes, I look to like a Soderbergh or a Linklater, these guys who are just sort of like movie of year, love to work, love to stay busy, they'll go do a $2 million indie movie and then a $75 million studio movie, and then a doc, and just sort of flirt between the two, like that to me is really exciting.

• 1:58:10Speaker 06

  The prize of the Oscar and the attention that comes with it is that I get to work. That's the prize. And I understand that about myself. So, look, my expectations, what I hope is that everyone in the world sees the movie. That's my dream for it, of course, that's why we do this. But I'm sort of clear-eyed and I understand that it's a tough market and there are overcomes and everything like this.

• 1:58:32Speaker 06

  But at the end of the day, I also believe like if something's good and cool and like original, like people will seek it out or find it. I do believe that too. And maybe it's not like. You know, the film doesn't gross $150 million globally. But maybe like, you know, some people see it in theaters and then it finds a home on streaming and people see it there. Like, I just, I just try and be optimistic about people wanting original stuff, especially in a moment when like, you know, everything is turning into computer goop. I think that, to me, really matters. But I really just try and be like, fully committed and fully detached. Like, I want this to do well. I work my hardest to make the best possible movie. But there are so many forces that are outside of my agency. So I'm kind of like, I hope it works.

• 1:59:15Speaker 06

  The guys who are in charge of marketing are doing a great job. And meanwhile, I'm gonna go, go off and make my next one, because that's really what drives me, what I'm so passionate about.

• 1:59:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so you're about to go make the next one?

• 1:59:26Speaker 06

  Going to make the next one.

• 1:59:27Sean Fennessey?

  Smart to do it before the movie comes out. Very savvy strategy on your part.

• 1:59:31Speaker 06

  Because if it bombs, I won't get a job.

• 1:59:33Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you never know. I'm not saying that.

• 1:59:35Speaker 06

  Um, yeah, look, I, I, more than anything, again, I just love to do this. Like, for 20 years, I was just like, for 15 years, I was like, what a dream it would be to make movies. And I have books of like, every, every film I saw, and I'd save the ticket, and I'd write a review, and I'd give it a star system. Like, I had a whole thing before Letterboxd was a thing. My books were Letterboxd for me. And, and so the fact that now I can have this career is extraordinary. And I, and I, and I feel very, very, very lucky to be able to do this. And it's what I love to do. I'm so driven by the work. And being a film director is this all encompassing job where you never have a second off, and I love that. And, and it's just like, my work and my family.

• 2:00:18Speaker 06

  So, the next film is, if you, if you read the script for the next one, after watching Tuna, you'd be like, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense.

• 2:00:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:00:27Speaker 06

  Like, that's a natural, let's say, evolution. So it's this sort of like, heist con man story, that's almost like To Catch a Thief, but if you took Cary Grant and Grace Kelly and swapped them with Zoe Saldana and Matthew McConaughey, that's the movie. And it's sort of this like, expat in Positano, in, in the Amalfi Coast, who has this little restaurant, who moonlights as this prolific thief, and he's really good at it. But on one particular job, he crosses paths with someone. Somebody else and gets them into all kinds of trouble. And that is sort of the premise of the movie. So sort of jazzy and propulsive, much like Tuna, but with a much bigger canvas, which takes me outside of my comfort zone.

• 2:01:01Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:01:02Speaker 06

  And so that's something that I'm really excited about. It's like, you know, the tone and, and, and the sort of like genre work. I know that I can do. Never done a car chase before, though.

• 2:01:10Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:11Speaker 06

  You know, never done all this big location work. Never worked with these big movie stars. And so all that's just exciting. And these are just, you know, motivated by being outside of my comfort zone. Um, but knowing in my heart that I got this. And that's a very empowering place to be sort of operating from. So we're shooting the film this year and it's been really, really exciting for me. Just in the preliminary stages of getting it set up. We just got it greenlit of, of scouting the film, working with McConaughey, working with Zoe, and just getting the thing off the ground has been of a like wonderful, wonderful opportunity.

• 2:01:46Sean Fennessey?

  Good luck.

• 2:01:47Speaker 06

  Thanks, man.

• 2:01:47Sean Fennessey?

  We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing they have seen? What have you seen? You must be, you gotta be doing some Oscar cramming, right?

• 2:01:56Speaker 06

  I'm not an Academy member.

• 2:01:58Sean Fennessey?

  Get out of here.

• 2:01:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, I swear. I swear.

• 2:02:00Sean Fennessey?

  No kidding?

• 2:02:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm not, I'm.

• 2:02:01Sean Fennessey?

  You've won and you've not been, what's going on there?

• 2:02:04Speaker 06

  The dock branch is a little.

• 2:02:06Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 2:02:07Speaker 06

  They're a little persnickety.

• 2:02:08Sean Fennessey?

  I see. Well, maybe now that you're a feature filmmaker as well, you'll get invited.

• 2:02:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, maybe. Well, I'm, I'm, God, the last.

• 2:02:14Sean Fennessey?

  That's fascinating.

• 2:02:15Speaker 06

  Isn't that funny? I like literally daily, I'll get an email from someone and be like, hey, can you watch our short film? It's like we're going, and I'm like, I'm not an Academy member. And they're like, okay, thanks. Goodbye. Like they don't, you know.

• 2:02:26Sean Fennessey?

  You should just automatically be inducted if you win an Oscar.

• 2:02:29Speaker 06

  I sort of thought that's how it worked, but at the end of the day, it's like, trust me, I'll take the award over the membership to their club. Maybe one day I'll get in, but in the meantime. God, what's the last great thing I watched? Um, I've been watching the classics of Italian cinema.

• 2:02:43Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:02:43Speaker 06

  And so I.

• 2:02:44Sean Fennessey?

  Prepare for your trip.

• 2:02:45Speaker 06

  Yeah. So really like, like just, just learning the fundamentals, you know, before I go make a film in Italy. And I rewatched Cinema Paradiso.

• 2:02:52Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm. Yeah, sure.

• 2:02:53Speaker 06

  Uh, and it probably has the best ending of any movie ever in the history of movies. And if I was ever became an actor and I had to do a crying scene, it's like, okay, cry. I would think of the ending of that movie and just, it would get me like that. And then, you know, more contemporary what's out now. Uh, I, I, like everybody, watched Marty Supreme. Uh, and I, and I, I. I felt, it was such a complicated movie for me. I recognize myself in Marty, but that's challenging because he's kind of a sociopath.

• 2:03:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 2:03:28Speaker 06

  And then a bunch of people were like.

• 2:03:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but you're on the other side. You got a kid now.

• 2:03:31Speaker 06

  I know.

• 2:03:32Sean Fennessey?

  Hopefully you're being a good guy now.

• 2:03:33Speaker 06

  I'm after the hero's journey.

• 2:03:34Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 2:03:34Speaker 06

  I was never a bad guy like Marty, but I, but you know, there's this sort of like fast talking Jewish.

• 2:03:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:40Speaker 06

  Trop that.

• 2:03:40Sean Fennessey?

  Striver.

• 2:03:41Speaker 06

  Enough people were like, oh, you, he reminded us of you. And I was like, I don't know how I feel about that. But I love the propulsiveness. I love the cadence. I, I love, you know, how, how Josh Safdie just pulls you into that movie and doesn't let you go. And that's something that I'm very inspired by. Those are always my favorite kind of films. So I think those are two safe bets. And then I just saw Sarah Dosa's new film, Time and Water.

• 2:04:04Sean Fennessey?

  I just saw it as well.

• 2:04:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:04:05Sean Fennessey?

  Very good.

• 2:04:06Speaker 06

  And, and that is a film that I had to see in a theater that was, you know, meditative and patient and thoughtful and, and just like a, just like, just like all Sarah's films.

• 2:04:16Sean Fennessey?

  Tell people what it's about because it just premiered at Sundance.

• 2:04:18Speaker 06

  Yeah. So Sarah Dosa's new film, Time and Water, is it Water and Time or Time and Water?

• 2:04:22Sean Fennessey?

  Time and Water.

• 2:04:23Speaker 06

  Time and Water is about this, three generations of this Icelandic family who their sort of like identity as a family is almost moored around their love and appreciation for the natural beauty of Iceland where they're from. And in this case, the glacial fields that Iceland's famous for. And it's, it's about how the family shifts over time and the sort of pain and challenge of these glaciers, which do not shift over time. That's the whole conceit. They last thousands and thousands, thousands, thousands of years. And they're sort of living, breathing things, these giant ice sheets. But except in this changing climate of ours, the glaciers are dying.

• 2:05:02Speaker 06

  And so it's about this family coming to terms with this thing that doesn't change, but it's changing now. And how do you mourn? How do you mourn the, almost like the death in the, in a family of when your family's a glacier? Like that's your family member who's dying. It's like, how do you mourn that? So it was like beautiful and thoughtful and I just did. A documentary that premiered at Sundance. And I was struck by how similar it was to Sarah's movie insofar as it's like, big thing in the world, big issue that's moored around like a personal story. And in my case, it's about AI and entering fatherhood, which is how we approach our AI documentary. And so Andreas, I think, is the name of the protagonist in Sarah's movie. And he and I kind of had a hug after both of our films premiered. And I was like, how are you feeling?

• 2:05:47Speaker 06

  And he's like, pretty good. How are you feeling? I was like, dude, we did it. We did it. So those are some, that was a long answer, but those are some films that I saw that have stuck with me.

• 2:05:56Sean Fennessey?

  Great recommendations. Daniel, thanks for coming back.

• 2:05:58Speaker 06

  Thank you so much. So cool to be here.

• 2:06:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, thanks to Daniel, thanks to Van, thanks to Jack Sanders for his production work on this episode. Thanks to Lucas Cavanagh for getting all that info about Paul Schrader in the document. Appreciate that. I mentioned we saw Backrooms.

• 2:06:17Amanda Dobbins?

  We did.

• 2:06:18Sean Fennessey?

  That's coming later this week.

• 2:06:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:20Sean Fennessey?

  Pre-sales are through the roof.

• 2:06:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I've seen that.

• 2:06:22Sean Fennessey?

  Gen Z is extremely fired up.

• 2:06:24Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I go where Gen Z goes.

• 2:06:26Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think there might have to be some sort of like Gen Z horror mommy thing that we develop as well here?

• 2:06:31Amanda Dobbins?

  For me or just in general?

• 2:06:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I was just watching Will U and Ciara get a little startled in a movie. It was a lot of fun.

• 2:06:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Honestly, it was really mostly Chris. He jumped a lot.

• 2:06:39Sean Fennessey?

  He did, he had a couple of jumps.

• 2:06:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And I was like, well, I won't spoil it, but I knew what was going on.

• 2:06:45Sean Fennessey?

  We will get into Backrooms very soon. And until then, see you.

• 2:07:09Speaker 05

  Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.