The “Should I See It in a Movie Theater?” Test: ‘Tron: Ares,’ ‘Roofman,’ and ‘After the Hunt.’ Plus, the Magic of ‘Mr. Scorsese.’

Sean and Amanda begin the show by honoring the legendary actor Diane Keaton, who passed away at 79 last Saturday (3:19). Then, following a disappointing box office performance from a handful of new weekend releases, they have an extensive conversation around what audiences want from movies at the movie theater (9:54). They form a rubric from their main takeaways and apply it to ‘Tron: Ares’ (14:53), ‘Roofman’ (29:47), and ‘After the Hunt’ (0:00). Finally, they briefly cover Rebecca Miller’s new documentary miniseries, ‘Mr. Scorsese,’ a thorough exploration of Martin Scorsese’s fascinating and iconic career (46:54). They then have Miller herself on to talk through the incredible journey and process from start to finish (1:14:18). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Rebecca Miller Producer: Jack Sanders Unlock an extra $250 at linkedin.com/thebigpicture 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.

• 0:00Sean Fennessey?

  We're excited to share that we are partnering with American Cinematheque to screen one of the top five movies from our 25 for 25 list on the big screen with you. For those of you in LA, we'll be at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood on Saturday, November 8th. We're keeping the movie a secret, but we promise you won't be disappointed. We'll come out for a conversation right after to talk through what we've all just watched together. Tickets go on sale this coming Monday, October 20th at 12:00 PM Pacific time, and more information will be available at the ringer.com/events very soon. Again, we're going to be screening and talking about one of our top 5 25 for 25 list movies live at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood on Saturday, November 8th,

• 0:41Sean Fennessey?

  and you can join us. Tickets go on sale this Monday, October 20th at 12:00 PM Pacific, with details to come on the ringer.com/events soon.

• 1:02Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy.

• 1:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 1:03Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the big picture and conversation show about going to the movies. As always, later in this episode, Rebecca Miller joins me. She is the writer, director of a new documentary called Mr. Scorsese.

• 1:15Amanda Dobbins?

  The way you said that made it sound like Rebecca Miller joins you on every episode.

• 1:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:19Amanda Dobbins?

  She doesn't. Just this one. Maybe she should. I'm excited for it.

• 1:22Sean Fennessey?

  She's, she's, she's great. Her, her new film is great. We're going to talk about Mr. Scorsese on this episode.

• 1:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And she's great in the documentary, just as a talking behind the camera, but she gets a lot out of a lot of people.

• 1:33Sean Fennessey?

  I usually don't like that when documentarians do that, but she was very effective in her usage.

• 1:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Also a filmmaker.

• 1:38Sean Fennessey?

  She is.

• 1:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Also has a lot of experience with great dads. So with the capital G. Great.

• 1:43Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely. Her previous documentary was about her father, Arthur Miller, the famed playwright. This new documentary is even more expansive. It's a five-part mini-series, really about arguably our favorite director in the history of movies. It's now available on Apple TV. We had a long conversation about how she really got under the hood of his whole life, not just his films, but his personal life, his childhood, his influences, and the way he's living right now. It's genuinely an amazing piece of work. I hope you will stick around for our conversation. We'll also on this show be talking about three new movies, Tron, Ares, Roof Man. What's the third movie?

• 2:19Amanda Dobbins?

  After the hunt.

• 2:20Sean Fennessey?

  After the hunt.

• 2:21Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right.

• 2:21Sean Fennessey?

  That'll be interesting. Luca Guadagnino's new film. And that has presented a confrontation for me about the future of movies. Not in a big way, but in a modest way.

• 2:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's like, let's, let's slow play it. Right now, for you and for everyone else.

• 2:35Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, that's all coming up.

• 2:38Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is presented by LinkedIn Ads.

• 2:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Sometimes, marketing gets wasted on the wrong people. Like, if you see an ad for movie-themed dog sweaters when you don't even have a pet.

• 2:47Sean Fennessey?

  Reach exactly who you need with LinkedIn Ads with a network of 130 million decision-makers. They can help you target by job title, industry, company size, or even skills. It's one of the reasons LinkedIn Ads generates the highest B2B return on ad spend of all online ad networks. Seriously, all of them.

• 3:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Try it out. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. Terms and conditions apply.

• 3:18Sean Fennessey?

  Before we get into those movies, we should talk about some news. We were in New York last week, and while I was there, the news broke that Diane Keaton passed away at 79 years old. She, of course, is a genuine film icon. Someone whose work we just celebrated on our 25 for 25 list with Something's Gotta Give. And she's just, it looms very large over a period in movie history that I think we both hold dear. Both the 70s and the 80s and early 90s. 70s for me, my favorite period.

• 3:49Amanda Dobbins?

  And the 2000s. Yeah, I mean, she is like a new Hollywood figure and a titan along with all of the, the boys, who we talk about it at great length. But The Godfather, Annie Hall, Reds. You know, it's, it's an incredible run of films that are like taken very seriously.

• 4:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, in the canon.

• 4:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and they are, they are letterbox. And, you know, and then my personal experience was every single woman I know on God's green earth reposting the scene from First Wives Club of Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler singing You Don't Own Me. And Diane Keaton is the center of that one. And so she had a, not even a second career, she just, she, she kept working and, and broadened the scope of it, as Hollywood broadened the scope of it, and made a lot of different movies that mean a lot to a lot of people who aren't on Letterboxd as well. So it's

• 4:50Amanda Dobbins?

  an amazing, incredible career. I was thinking, you know, she was pretty singular and-

• 4:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's hard to find adequate comparisons for her career.

• 5:00Amanda Dobbins?

  The blend of heft and flightiness. And there's a great Meryl Streep clip, I believe, at the AFI tribute that is comparing Diane Keaton to a hummingbird. And it's just like, oh, she's over here, over there. Wait, now she's doing this. What's going on? Which, you know, Meryl Streep is very good at her job, so it's a good description. I've been thinking a lot about a Nancy Meyers story. I looked everywhere on her Instagram. I couldn't find it. So it must have been like one, an Instagram story. But it was about Baby Boom, which is a movie that Nancy Meyers co-wrote and produced with her husband, Charles Shire.

• 5:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And so if you haven't seen Baby Boom, it's about Diane Keaton as like, as a yuppie in the 80s who inherits a child. Literally, that's what happens. It was the 80s, things are very weird. And so she's, Nancy Meyers was talking about the scene where Diane Keaton goes to like, pick up the child at the airport, and then like, brings her back to the office. And she says that Diane Keaton makes a decision, made a decision, it was not in the script, they didn't discuss it, but she's getting the kid out of the taxi, and she holds the child under her arm like you would, you know, like a-

• 6:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the way Barry Sanders would carry a football.

• 6:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly, like tucked under and the child is sideways.

• 6:19Sean Fennessey?

  Like Jim Brown racing down the sideline.

• 6:20Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not the way you would hold a child. It's the way you would hold a piece of-

• 6:23Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you wouldn't. I might, yeah.

• 6:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 6:25Sean Fennessey?

  I would hold one of your children in that way.

• 6:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I actually probably have at some point, but-

• 6:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, it was funny and unexpected and says everything about the character and is a little daffy. And I found myself thinking about that moment throughout the weekend of just a thing that only Diane Keaton could do.

• 6:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I agree that she's completely singular. There's a handful of other actors who emerged around that time. You mentioned Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda, a handful of icons of the 70s American cinema, who also have, were able to accomplish what she did, which is very rare, which is that she was an ingenue star in her 20s, a, like, industry leader in terms of taste and quality of work in her 30s and 40s, and a box office star in her 50s and even early 60s.

• 7:05Amanda Dobbins?

  In her 70s, please don't forget Book Club.

• 7:07Sean Fennessey?

  Well, but, and there was, of course, Book Club. Not as many hallowed achievements in her 70s. She did make some films.

• 7:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I saw Book Club 2 in theaters. This is a podcast about going to see movies in theaters. And there I was.

• 7:18Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to the Book Club franchise. She, you know, I think is also remembered for a kind of effortless style. Like, she kind of invented a way of looking on screen.

• 7:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, yes. So you mean being on screen, rather than... Like, she also is very famous for her fashion styling, which I would not...

• 7:35Sean Fennessey?

  That's what I mean.

• 7:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I would not call it effortless. It was a lot of hats. You know, like, she was...

• 7:41Sean Fennessey?

  She just popped them on.

• 7:42Amanda Dobbins?

  She was like, quite literally, a hat on a hat sometimes, you know? But that's, but that's okay. It was great. It's distinctive, distinctive.

• 7:48Sean Fennessey?

  She was very distinctive. She pulled off looks that on most people would be absurd. And on her were absurd, but were often a match for the personality that she brought to movies. And, you know, just her work with Woody Allen alone is like enough to put her in a kind of movie Hall of Fame. Like, she worked in them, I think, six times. All of her performances in those movies are great. They're all very different. If you look at the difference between, you know, Love and Death, Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan Murder Mystery, like, these are very different kinds of movies. So you put all that work, plus you've got the Coppola movies, plus you've got all the movies with Nancy Meyers, plus you've got...

• 8:29Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I think Reds is her greatest performance for me personally.

• 8:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Sean Fennessey?

  That's a very complicated character and she's up opposite Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty, who are kind of Alpha One, Alpha Two.

• 8:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 8:40Sean Fennessey?

  Of that era. And I think she's like blowing them off the screen.

• 8:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 8:44Sean Fennessey?

  And so, you know, that's, that'd be an interesting movie for us to kind of unpack at a certain point because we haven't.

• 8:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I would love to.

• 8:50Sean Fennessey?

  We haven't done a Keaton episode, we haven't done a Nicholson episode, and we haven't done a Beatty episode.

• 8:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Sean Fennessey?

  I think we will try to do a proper Dan Keaton tribute. Our Redford tribute got pushed to November, so maybe Keaton in December, so we can have some time to catch up on some things.

• 9:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:03Sean Fennessey?

  She has a lot of underrated or underlooked, like Looking for Mr. Goodbar is having a second life right now. It's been reissued and people can find it finally. There's a handful of others. There's, um, what's the Lecaree adaptation?

• 9:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Little Drummer Girl.

• 9:14Sean Fennessey?

  Little Drummer Girl.

• 9:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Mixed on it, but.

• 9:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Mrs. Softail. Like, there's a few other films from that 70s and 80s period.

• 9:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Morning Glory, The Family Stone.

• 9:23Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good movie. I like that.

• 9:24Amanda Dobbins?

  The Family Stone actually is, I watch it.

• 9:27Sean Fennessey?

  Morning Glory's okay.

• 9:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Morning Glory's amazing. Are you kidding?

• 9:29Sean Fennessey?

  It's okay.

• 9:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, she and Harrison Ford are news anchors and he makes a frittata and she does ballet with little children.

• 9:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:36Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really funny.

• 9:37Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 9:37Amanda Dobbins?

  And then Patrick Wilson is there booing, you know, Rachel McAdams.

• 9:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 9:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Even though he works at, you know, CBS or 60 Minutes or whatever. Um, yeah, a lot of great movies.

• 9:50Speaker 02

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• 11:14Speaker 04

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

• 11:21Sean Fennessey?

  We'll talk more about her in the future, but she is a legend, so rest in peace to her. All right, so let's talk about the new films.

• 11:28Amanda Dobbins?

  So you're not going to have a breakdown? I need you to state that right now. It's not one of those.

• 11:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's not, no. It's like more of a thought experiment.

• 11:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, we just, sometimes we get nervous when you've been thinking.

• 11:38Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I have a lot of ideas, and I'm exploring them adequately, I would say, in this venue. So, three new movies came out last weekend. I think all three of them essentially underperformed their expectations of the box office. Two were in wide release, one was in limited release. I'm not going to freak out about the box office, but the fact that these three movies, which are of varying degrees of quality, didn't quite click with audiences, had me asking myself the question, what do people want from movies at the movie theater? Because we have had some interesting successes, and we have had some big struggles this year. We clearly are in like a pullback in the Marvel era. We got news a few weeks ago that the Fast and the Furious franchise is basically in neutral and may not be going anywhere anytime soon. A lot of the stuff...

• 12:23Amanda Dobbins?

  That news was Vin Diesel has not been telling the whole truth.

• 12:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, hard to believe.

• 12:28Amanda Dobbins?

  It is another way of interpreting what we learned.

• 12:31Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Jurassic World: Rebirth did do very well, but not as well as the previous three installments.

• 12:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not with you.

• 12:36Sean Fennessey?

  And not, well, they're all bad in some ways, but...

• 12:41Sean Fennessey?

  We're in a transition phase. We're also, I didn't quite realize it was this perfect with this episode, but it's essentially two full years since the WGA and SAG strikes ended. WGA was in September of 23 and SAG was in early November of 23. So we're starting to get far enough away from the quote unquote recovery period, right? Usually movie production timelines are anywhere from two to four years in terms of development and production and completion. So now's the time where it's like, we can't really use that crutch too much anymore. So are we in like a different era in terms of filmmaking? The other thing that's happened is that The Smashing Machine, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Gabby's Doll

• 13:22Sean Fennessey?

  House, a handful of movies that like on paper, you'd be like, huh, I could see that doing pretty well.

• 13:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 13:29Sean Fennessey?

  All did not do well at all.

• 13:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 13:31Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I guess that Gabby's Doll House did okay, but there are like 300 episodes of that show on Netflix and it's a big hit and nobody went to go see this movie. So.

• 13:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I know a four year old who did, but.

• 13:42Sean Fennessey?

  My four year old hasn't seen it yet, but I think we will watch it at home.

• 13:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 13:46Sean Fennessey?

  Which maybe tells you a little something.

• 13:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I know a four year old, it was her first theater experience ever.

• 13:50Sean Fennessey?

  That's beautiful. Did you like it?

• 13:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, in New York. She did.

• 13:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I heard it was good. This is not really a qualitative conversation. I liked The Smashing Machine too, but that movie really, really did not perform well at all. And then The One Battle After Another box office thing, we talked about it with Van, it's been a big topic of conversation. That movie's probably going to end up making somewhere between like 175 and 200 million dollars when all is said and done next year, which is not 300 million dollars, which is what people say it should make for it to be profitable theatrically.

• 14:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 14:18Sean Fennessey?

  We don't need to rehash all that. Um, this coming weekend.

• 14:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 14:22Sean Fennessey?

  We have The Black Phone 2 and Good Fortune, which I think are two more interesting tests. Black Phone 2, sequel to the Ethan Hawke Blumhouse movie from a couple of years ago. Good Fortune, the new Aziz Ansari comedy starring Keanu Reeves and Seth Rogen.

• 14:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:34Sean Fennessey?

  Two guys who are very familiar with successful movies in theaters. I don't know a lot of people talking about Good Fortune.

• 14:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I went to the theater this week to see all the movies for, for this podcast and I was like, oh yeah, I probably should figure out when I'm going to see that.

• 14:47Sean Fennessey?

  I'm trying to see it tonight, but I was not invited to a screening.

• 14:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna ask if we were.

• 14:51Sean Fennessey?

  No, I was not invited to a screening. So I don't even know what that's about.

• 14:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:53Sean Fennessey?

  Um, you, anyway, uh, so I'm putting all this together in a stew and I'm like looking at what's going on here and then I'm thinking about these three movies. And these three movies, as we said, Tron Ares, uh, which was wide, Roofman, which was wide, and After the Hunt, which was in limited, but didn't do so well in limited. And it's having a little bit of a tough run right now in the, in the, in the review space. All three of these movies are star vehicles. All three of them are from major studios.

• 15:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:20Sean Fennessey?

  All three feature components that we've seen drive interest in the past, right? Like social spicy, social commentary, um, a throwback to like a bygone genre that people really like, or a legacy IP, which is what Tron is. And I wanted to use three different components to evaluate the movie. So we can talk about them the way that we talk about any movie on any episode.

• 15:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 15:40Sean Fennessey?

  But then when we get to the end of that conversation, I want to talk about the wow or FOMO factor, which I think is a thing that drives a lot of movie interest these days.

• 15:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. Is, okay, sure.

• 15:49Sean Fennessey?

  The communal factor, which is how fun or not fun is it to see this movie with a group of people, a group of strangers?

• 15:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 15:57Sean Fennessey?

  And then the, is this any different at home factor?

• 16:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 16:01Sean Fennessey?

  Which is like, if you could just watch it on your couch, does it feel exactly the same?

• 16:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 16:07Sean Fennessey?

  Which is like something that we all, parents especially, have to think about all the time. When you have to get a sitter and go out and it's more of a challenge. So we did an episode like this a couple of years ago and it was about the different ways to go see movies.

• 16:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:18Sean Fennessey?

  So this is more like, what is a movie in a movie theater now? Um, let's start with Tron Ares, because it's the biggest of the three releases. You just saw it yesterday.

• 16:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I did.

• 16:27Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you for your service.

• 16:28Amanda Dobbins?

  You're welcome. Um. Did I take a nap for 10 minutes? Yes.

• 16:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Thanks for getting that right out front.

• 16:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I, listen, I have to be really honest, because like, uh, you know, once they were on the hunt and I understood the teams.

• 16:39Sean Fennessey?

  Not after the hunt.

• 16:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Not after the hunt.

• 16:41Sean Fennessey?

  When they were on the hunt.

• 16:41Amanda Dobbins?

  They were, right. And I understood who was aligned with who and who I was supposed to be rooting for.

• 16:48Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 16:49Sean Fennessey?

  You don't want me to set this movie up at all? You're just diving right in?

• 16:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Go ahead. Well, I just wanted to justify the brief nap.

• 16:55Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Um, the movie's directed by Yokim Ranning. It's the third movie in the Tron franchise. It's the first since Tron Legacy, some 15 years ago. Uh, the music is by Nine Inch Nails.

• 17:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Sean Fennessey?

  That's the best part of this movie. It stars Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner Smith, Hasan Minhaj. Gillian Anderson and Jeff Bridges.

• 17:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:17Sean Fennessey?

  Logline: Born of a battle between two technology behemoths, Tron Ares follows a highly sophisticated program called Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission marking humankind's first encounter with AI beings.

• 17:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:33Sean Fennessey?

  10 minute nap aside, what did you think of Tron Ares?

• 17:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I was happy for my neighborhood hero, Greta Lee.

• 17:41Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Who, are you, are you up on this? I believe that she is a neighbor, but she got the cover of Vogue.

• 17:47Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 17:48Amanda Dobbins?

  This month, and do you know where she did her Vogue interview?

• 17:51Sean Fennessey?

  I don't.

• 17:51Amanda Dobbins?

  At Houston's Pasadena.

• 17:52Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, that's huge for you.

• 17:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 17:55Sean Fennessey?

  That's great.

• 17:56Amanda Dobbins?

  So I couldn't believe it. I was really, really proud of her.

• 17:59Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 17:59Amanda Dobbins?

  So then I was like, well.

• 18:00Sean Fennessey?

  Geez.

• 18:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't say that. You know what? The Vogue writer said that as well.

• 18:04Sean Fennessey?

  Really?

• 18:04Amanda Dobbins?

  The Vogue writer was like, this, this place is, yeah, but like, this place is neither trendy or cool, and it's not trendy, but that is the hardest reservation to get in Los Angeles.

• 18:14Sean Fennessey?

  It is quite hectic there all the time. Yes, I agree with that.

• 18:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I think.

• 18:17Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think they did for the interview, though? Did they like, how did they lock down quiet time? Do you think they called the restaurant and said, hey, Vogue wants to bring Greta Lee in?

• 18:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you can get a reservation. You just have to.

• 18:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but even when you get a reservation, they're like, we're gonna need you to wait nine minutes.

• 18:29Amanda Dobbins?

  For like 45 minutes by the Koi pond.

• 18:32Sean Fennessey?

  We're clearing the table. There's like an older couple that won't leave.

• 18:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Once you sit down, though.

• 18:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 18:35Amanda Dobbins?

  It is, the, there's good volume control. So I think that's probably.

• 18:39Sean Fennessey?

  It would be a good, if you get a back, back booth, yeah, this is what people listen to the show for.

• 18:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Anyway, so that's why I went to see it. Greta Lee, um, happy for you.

• 18:48Sean Fennessey?

  And. Are you? Cause she's terribly miscast in this film.

• 18:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, is anyone besides Jared Leto appropriately cast in this film?

• 18:54Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so. I think it's a product of, one, this movie is not good. It's a, it's a very, it's a big misfire. There are a variety of reasons why it's a misfire, and we can talk through each of them. Individually, I like every member of this cast except for Jared Leto. Um, and there are movies in which I have enjoyed his work. Uh, they all are not. They shouldn't, none of these people should be in this movie.

• 19:16Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 19:16Sean Fennessey?

  Son Minaj, even Evan Peters, who I think is like trying to do something like classical movie villains, like, you know, snively movie villain stuff is like, doesn't really feel like he has his heart in it.

• 19:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, he's also just like yelling at a computer screen, literally, for the whole time.

• 19:29Sean Fennessey?

  And that's part of the problem with the movie is, is that there's a ton of exposition told through computer screens and news reports, and it's an attempt to continue the story of Tron, which is a 1982 movie about a video game designer who gets trapped in the world that he creates, and then the sequel, but it basically ignores the events or the characters from those previous films, with the exception of one lone moment of fan service that features Jeff Bridges, which has been spoiled in all of the marketing materials of this movie. And so instead, it's just like, what if Jared Leto was a cool AI? What if he was AI Jesus? That's what the movie is.

• 20:03Amanda Dobbins?

  It is.

• 20:03Sean Fennessey?

  And Jared Leto, who's had some very unfortunate allegations made against him in recent years, and who also has basically never opened a movie successfully? He's never opened a franchise movie? We just watched Morbius Bomb. You know, he has an Academy Award.

• 20:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that happened.

• 20:20Sean Fennessey?

  And has some respect as an actor, but like, he, you know, he's terrible in Suicide Squad, as the Joker, like, he, he's not a star. He's a known actor, but he's not a star. And he was the person, apparently, who was responsible for getting this movie made, because there was a Tron movie turnaround at Disney. He loves Tron. He said, "I'll become a producer on this film and we'll do it." And like, he's just kind of a blank fish in this movie. He like, doesn't do anything interesting. He's not fun to watch.

• 20:45Amanda Dobbins?

  He likes Depeche Mode?

• 20:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I guess that was cute, and I'm sure that that was inspired by his own taste. But it's like an inverted Terminator, where it's like, what if the evil robot was actually like a nice guy?

• 20:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Empathy activated, was, is I think, one of the warnings, said on the thing.

• 21:02Sean Fennessey?

  Well, what's the timing of this movie? At a time when all creative people are like, AI is dangerous, and we shouldn't be like, trying to humanize it? And they're like, "This movie's about humanizing AI." What the fuck is that?

• 21:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't like it. I took a nap. Like, I didn't want to go see it. I just, you know, I'm rooting for Greta Lee. I have this job. I show up. Don't really remember what the first two Trons are about.

• 21:23Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 21:23Amanda Dobbins?

  So that's why.

• 21:24Sean Fennessey?

  First one's a cool artifact.

• 21:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I think I've seen the second one. And maybe I saw the first one to see the second one.

• 21:30Sean Fennessey?

  Second one's not bad. It's Joseph Kaczynski.

• 21:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I remember that. And, you know, I know about the lights.

• 21:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's not great. It's not bad.

• 21:38Amanda Dobbins?

  But so the video game thing is why Greta Lee's sister who died is okay. No, so Greta Lee is the video game programmer and her sister was like trying to save the world through programming.

• 21:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they were a duo who take over the company that Jeff Bridges founded.

• 21:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, and then Evan Peters.

• 21:59Sean Fennessey?

  They took it over from Garrett Hedlund, who was Jeff Bridges's son.

• 22:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, I do remember that.

• 22:05Sean Fennessey?

  And he disappeared with Olivia Wilde when she came out of the Tron world and they fell in love.

• 22:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I saw this movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:12Sean Fennessey?

  That's some cool stuff.

• 22:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, those people are hot. So happy for them.

• 22:15Sean Fennessey?

  They are not to be seen in this film. There's one photograph of them.

• 22:18Amanda Dobbins?

  They're in the real world?

• 22:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, well, so are we. That's the whole thing is that this is Tron comes to the real world. So it's like, where's Garrett Hedlund? Is he just not available? Like, what is this plotting? Why are we yada yadaing significant characters in a legacy sequel?

• 22:31Amanda Dobbins?

  That's fine. I have my own version of this for the other two movies. So yeah, I'm with you.

• 22:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 22:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I like, I didn't care, but like, I didn't care going in.

• 22:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I didn't, I like, I'm not like talking about Tron. When I realized, let me tell you how I learned that Greta Lee was in Tron areas is when I read this Vogue profile and I was happy for her Vogue cover and all her Dior clothes.

• 22:52Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 22:53Amanda Dobbins?

  So like, I really, it was not on my radar.

• 22:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 22:57Amanda Dobbins?

  But, you know, that's, I'm sorry to the people who are disappointed about Tron.

• 23:01Sean Fennessey?

  I do think that.

• 23:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you know anyone who cares about Tron?

• 23:03Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I'm glad you ask. Here is how I saw this movie.

• 23:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, boy.

• 23:06Sean Fennessey?

  I was in New York City.

• 23:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 23:09Sean Fennessey?

  And I was awaiting the arrival of my wife and daughter.

• 23:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 23:12Sean Fennessey?

  And I had three hours to kill before they got here.

• 23:15Amanda Dobbins?

  You make it sound like you're in like a costume drama from the 1900s.

• 23:18Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that is how it felt sometimes being in New York, which is very disorienting and I'm so happy to be home. So.

• 23:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I love New York. I had a great time. Thank you, New York.

• 23:26Sean Fennessey?

  I have nothing, I'm from New York. I have nothing bad to say about New York. It was disorienting to be away from home for so long. Anyway, I'm waiting for my family to arrive. And I was like, I gotta see Tron areas at some point because we're going to do an episode about it. And there was a fan early access screening four blocks from where I was staying at the Lincoln Center AMC.

• 23:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:45Sean Fennessey?

  And I was like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm just gonna go. As soon as I get off, I'll walk back and I'll literally greet my family getting out of the car from the airport and, and we'll go upstairs. So I go to the movie and who comes out to introduce the movie but Jared Leto?

• 24:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 24:02Sean Fennessey?

  And that was the response that he got. Everybody was like, oh.

• 24:07Sean Fennessey?

  Cool. Nobody fucking cared. Cause Jared Leto is not an intrinsic part of the Tron experience.

• 24:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 24:14Sean Fennessey?

  And he's not really beloved.

• 24:15Amanda Dobbins?

  They were there for Tron and not for Jared Leto. But like, did you like, did you mingle? Did you ask them about Tron?

• 24:21Sean Fennessey?

  Well, there, I was, I was.

• 24:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Were you doing any reporting?

• 24:24Sean Fennessey?

  Eavesdropping the conversations.

• 24:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, okay.

• 24:25Sean Fennessey?

  There was one guy to the front left of me who was like, dude, this is fucking sick. Jared Leto's here? And then there were two other people who, to my right, who were, who literally said, who is that? When he came out. Cause he came out, he was like, what's up, guys? You know what it is? Tron, Ares time, let's go. And everybody was like, who is this fucking guy? Trying to get in front of my movie? Anyway, um, nobody really cared and nobody really particularly cares about that. That being said, I do think there's a case for this movie as a like, let's get very high. Go see it in 3D or Dolby or 4DX. And just like, let the colors and the nine inch nail score wash over you. Cause it looks cool at times. Some of the, the, like, especially the light bike sequences are pretty cool. And the music is good.

• 25:09Sean Fennessey?

  Everything else about it is like, totally negligible. Like, there's really not anything to hold on to in the aftermath.

• 25:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I still think that's a pretty narrow band of people that you're describing. So, maybe if you make it on a much smaller budget and then it's like a specialty thing for the people who care about both Tron and like, premium formats, you know?

• 25:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and.

• 25:37Sean Fennessey?

  I just can't make a big movie like this for not a lot of money. You know, that's the thing. And it only made 33 million dollars.

• 25:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 25:43Sean Fennessey?

  So, you know, I, I, I find that those kinds of experiences only really work when the storytelling is like, actually moving or involving. You know, like Top Gun Maverick is one of those movies where you're like, this is spectacle, but I'm also emotionally locked in. Or it's like, the spectacle is unique and totally reliable. To me, that was why Rebirth worked earlier this year. It's just like, there's only one franchise that really does dinosaurs well.

• 26:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:07Sean Fennessey?

  If you like going to see dinos on screen, these are the movies. You know, like that part of it.

• 26:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And now they're taking New York.

• 26:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes.

• 26:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, I. Your first two qualifications are magazine brainways of saying it's either good or a good time.

• 26:21Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 26:22Amanda Dobbins?

  And this was neither Tron Ares is neither good nor a good time.

• 26:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so it fails the wow fomo factor, right?

• 26:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Because if it's if it's good, then people are like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe it. You need to you need to go see this. And that doesn't carry everything to like to a billion dollars.

• 26:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 26:37Amanda Dobbins?

  But it does. It it does inspire other people to be interested to like go buy tickets to go see a thing.

• 26:45Sean Fennessey?

  I totally agree. What about the communal factor? Is it better? How many people were in your screening?

• 26:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I was the only person, which is why I took a nap. I texted you for that. I said, I said, I'm alone at Tron Ares.

• 26:57Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it was like 20 minutes before the movie started. Nobody came in?

• 26:59Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, I no, listen, come on, on a weekday, I'm showing up when the thing starts. I like I've got the timings down.

• 27:05Sean Fennessey?

  So just you?

• 27:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I it was me alone at Tron Ares.

• 27:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, that's extremely funny. They should make a movie about that. I was at a packed early access screening. The energy was low, I would say.

• 27:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I saw it with a good number of people yesterday, and the energy was also low.

• 27:21Sean Fennessey?

  It was low. Yeah, it's a it's a low energy film.

• 27:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 27:24Sean Fennessey?

  And is this different at home factor? Now, I would say.

• 27:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 27:28Sean Fennessey?

  This is the one aspect of the movie that you could say this if this sucks in theaters, it will really suck at home.

• 27:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:35Sean Fennessey?

  Like, if you watch this on a 40 inch screen, you're really not getting any of what's cool about it.

• 27:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was. I mean, and the score was very loud. I also, in addition to I I'm gonna be very honest, in addition to the 10 minute nap, I also had to leave the screening briefly because our heat is broken at home. And so I had to call to speak to the technician. And I, even though I was alone, I could not take the call in the theater.

• 28:00Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 28:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Because the music was quite loud. And so I was like, oh, please hold on.

• 28:03Sean Fennessey?

  So you've seen roughly 38 minutes of Tron Ares. That's what you're saying.

• 28:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I got there right on time. I saw all the news clips. I saw the empathy activation. I saw Greta Lee like get taken over by the Tron bike.

• 28:14Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 28:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I know that. Jodie Turner Smith plays Athena. And that was when they really lost me. I was like, and I also know that they say Ares, like the god of war, about 10 to 15 times, which just, you know, our Greek mythology literacy is one of many problems facing this great nation.

• 28:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, this movie does activate a phrase I have uttered before, but not in some time on the show, which is moron mode, which it just assumes that every person in the theater is an absolute idiot.

• 28:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 28:43Sean Fennessey?

  I hate movies like that. I fucking hate when they're like, okay, so just so you know, we named this character this because this is the definition of this character's name. Bad stuff.

• 28:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I do a science corner real quick?

• 28:53Sean Fennessey?

  Please.

• 28:54Amanda Dobbins?

  John Ares.

• 28:55Speaker 04

  Welcome to Amanda Doppens's Science Corner.

• 29:02Amanda Dobbins?

  They're looking for the permanence code because they can bring AI to the real world, but it only lasts for 29 minutes before it disintegrates.

• 29:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, thank you for pointing that out.

• 29:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And so at some point, one of the characters, they're testing whether they found the permanence code and they create like an AI orange tree.

• 29:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, an orange tree.

• 29:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Out of nothing, which is pretty cool. It's a nice orange tree.

• 29:24Sean Fennessey?

  In an Arctic setting.

• 29:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I've always wanted to have like that lush of an orange tree.

• 29:28Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 29:29Amanda Dobbins?

  But I.

• 29:29Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe you should move to California.

• 29:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. And my citrus situation is just, it's dire. But so then Greta Lee's character, I don't remember her name. She's not Tess, her sister is Tess. Anyway, she picks an orange.

• 29:44Sean Fennessey?

  Her name's Houston's at Pasadena.

• 29:46Amanda Dobbins?

  What do you think her order is?

• 29:48Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it gotta be crispy chicken sandwich.

• 29:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, it's really the only way to go. Okay.

• 29:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Now I want one. So she's holding the orange. And as I was sitting there, I was thinking, oh, what if she eats the orange? And then it decomposes inside her? What happens? What do you think happens?

• 30:08Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I forget the point of science corner. Is it that you are answering the questions?

• 30:12Amanda Dobbins?

  We're just asking, you know? It's a vigorous discussion, you know?

• 30:22Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I don't know the answer to your question.

• 30:24Amanda Dobbins?

  What do you think happens?

• 30:25Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, particle physics, not really, um, anything I studied at the College.

• 30:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Or AI particle, like, and there's like some 3D printing involved, I think.

• 30:33Sean Fennessey?

  There is. Well, that's more on the Evan Peters side, yeah.

• 30:36Amanda Dobbins?

  But they 3D print this AI orange tree. So I, then, is it AI? Is it? What would like AI food?

• 30:44Sean Fennessey?

  But it doesn't think. So it's not artificial intelligence. It's just.

• 30:47Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just 3D printed.

• 30:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's just crea-, it's just, yeah, it's just generated.

• 30:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. But so could she even eat it? You know, they, they, they completely sidestep this question.

• 30:58Sean Fennessey?

  She does hold it.

• 30:58Amanda Dobbins?

  She holds it, but I was like, are you gonna peel it? Are you gonna eat it? What's gonna happen? I don't think they have that last sound.

• 31:03Sean Fennessey?

  This is the number one podcast in America for stupid questions about movies. And I just want everyone to know that. It's very important that we put a big red circle around that.

• 31:13Sean Fennessey?

  Tron Ares, would you recommend it?

• 31:14Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 31:17Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about Roof Man.

• 31:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm so glad to talk about this with you.

• 31:20Sean Fennessey?

  Me too. I had a very different movie-going experience with this movie. I went in the middle of the day on Monday.

• 31:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 31:27Sean Fennessey?

  No, Tuesday, at 2:30. To a movie theater in a mall, the Burbank Town Center 8.

• 31:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Ah, Jack's favorite.

• 31:36Sean Fennessey?

  Sold out.

• 31:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, it's not?

• 31:38Sean Fennessey?

  Six, because they have the recliners. The Six is good. I like the Six. I'll go into the Six tonight.

• 31:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Where's the Town 8?

• 31:44Sean Fennessey?

  The Eight's in the mall.

• 31:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Inside the mall.

• 31:47Sean Fennessey?

  Inside of the mall. There are three AMCs within .2 miles in Burbank. The 16, the 8, and the 6. The 16 is where the real gods go.

• 31:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's where I saw After the Hunt.

• 31:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, the Eight is where you go.

• 32:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Because it's only playing in two theaters.

• 32:00Sean Fennessey?

  When you have to go to Sears. The Six is where you go when you want to get good parking and get in those recliners. So.

• 32:06Amanda Dobbins?

  The Six is where I saw, um, what Bo is afraid and someone was just like rolling calls on their laptop in the back of the Six. So, you know, we can experience it all in Burbank.

• 32:17Sean Fennessey?

  Just so everybody knows, there are 30 movie screens within .2 miles of Burbank. Is that necessary?

• 32:24Amanda Dobbins?

  It is also where a lot of studio people live.

• 32:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 32:27Amanda Dobbins?

  It is.

• 32:27Sean Fennessey?

  This is what this episode is about.

• 32:28Amanda Dobbins?

  It is also like the, you know, the billboard strategically placed in everyone's neighborhood. Someone very high up in FX lives near where I live.

• 32:37Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 32:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Roof Man.

• 32:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:40Sean Fennessey?

  Sold out 2:30 PM screening on a Tuesday.

• 32:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, awesome.

• 32:43Sean Fennessey?

  So this is the new movie from Derek C. in France. It's his first movie in some years. It's the first movie that he's made that we are able to talk about on this show. It's written by C. in France and Kurt Gunn. It's based on a true story. It's about a man named Jeffrey Manchester, who is an army veteran, who is also a struggling father. And he turns to robbing McDonald's to pay for his family's lifestyle. And he gets this nickname Roof Man.

• 33:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Lifestyle makes it sound like he's too.

• 33:07Sean Fennessey?

  Well, he buys a house, he's throwing birthday parties.

• 33:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure. He can't afford to buy her a birthday present the first time. And let's, you know.

• 33:13Sean Fennessey?

  That's very sad.

• 33:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:15Sean Fennessey?

  He gets caught. He goes to prison.

• 33:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:17Sean Fennessey?

  He escapes prison.

• 33:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Sean Fennessey?

  And then he tries to start a new life. And then new people begin to come into his life. So this movie stars Channing Tatum, your girl Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, Lakeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Melanie Diaz, Uzo Aduba. Great cast in this movie.

• 33:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Amazing.

• 33:32Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think of Roof Man?

• 33:35Amanda Dobbins?

  For the first hour, I was absolutely grooving.

• 33:39Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 33:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's hard to end movies like this, but I have, I would like to discuss the last part where I think it falls apart.

• 33:48Sean Fennessey?

  The conclusion of the film?

• 33:48Amanda Dobbins?

  The conclusion of the film. Yeah. Which is, I guess, also I'd like to discuss life and how it regularly falls apart.

• 33:53Sean Fennessey?

  This is a beautiful film. This is a film that we should be supporting on this show.

• 33:57Amanda Dobbins?

  So you know what we are gonna do? And this is not just about Roof Man, but several other movies that some we've discussed, some to be released.

• 34:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 34:04Amanda Dobbins?

  So we are going to have a girl dad summit at the end of the year.

• 34:08Sean Fennessey?

  That sounds great.

• 34:08Amanda Dobbins?

  And that will, and we're gonna interrogate all the, all the girl dads and you.

• 34:14Sean Fennessey?

  This is one of the, this is just a great girl dad movie. There's something going on right now in the culture.

• 34:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. But it's like, and it keeps going. There are more coming.

• 34:21Sean Fennessey?

  I don't even know if Derek C. in France has a daughter, but he's very tapped in on the energy and as is Channing Tatum. You know, this movie is a big, like 70's style, character study showcase for Channing Tatum. It's like, what is Channing Tatum good at? He's good at. Blending very carefully, kind of like, losery, anguished guys who have incredible charm.

• 34:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:43Sean Fennessey?

  Who utilizes his innate athletic handsomeness, but also his dopey Florida boy regularness, and mashes those two things together. He's a really good star.

• 34:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:54Sean Fennessey?

  And he has not had a lot of star opportunities in the last five or six years. I think this movie really gets Channing Tatum and what he's good at. It lets him play. It's very loose.

• 35:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 35:04Sean Fennessey?

  It's a little shambolic, the movie. You know, it kind of takes its time on unraveling its story. And maybe that might be where you tripped a little bit.

• 35:12Amanda Dobbins?

  No, actually, I was gonna say, I agree with you that this movie understands what is great about him and is built around him. And also built around the fact that you are going to like this guy, despite what he is doing, which it starts with an armed robbery at a McDonald's. And he is stealing, lying, holding things up.

• 35:38Sean Fennessey?

  Very flawed guy, making a lot of mistakes in this movie.

• 35:41Amanda Dobbins?

  But he's also dancing around a Toys R Us at night. Because what happens is, once he escapes prison, he is, he takes up residence in Toys R Us. And that part is fun, survival and genius. How's he gonna get the M&Ms? And what's he gonna eat?

• 35:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 35:59Amanda Dobbins?

  All that's very crafty. I think what it understands about Channing Tatum and his appeal is ultimately the flaw in the movie for me as well. Because I don't think, I think there's Channing Tatum, and I think there's this character. And it does not totally bridge the gap between the two. And it is, it's pretty complicated. And the movie is sort of suggesting that he's both doing bad things and that it's flawed. But it doesn't examine, really, the connection between.

• 36:35Amanda Dobbins?

  What, you know, the nice side of him and this compulsion that he seems to have.

• 36:40Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about that. I'm really interested in what you're saying because the movie that I thought about while watching this movie is very different, but has many of the same hallmarks. Catch Me If You Can. Catch Me If You Can is a movie that is about a very similar kind of like grifter, huckster criminal. Yeah. Who's got a lot of innate charm. It's, that movie is more globe trotting. It's more kind of epic in its filmmaking style. It's not as grounded as this movie, but it actually does do what you're saying, which is it kind of locates this, you know, disconnection from family.

• 37:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 37:13Sean Fennessey?

  In the Frank Abagnale character and like this circling back to the father figure and the Christopher Walken and the guy who'd never really kind of quite got what he deserved. And that like psychologizes Abagnale.

• 37:24Sean Fennessey?

  I think that that's appropriate for that movie. In this movie, I actually think it's okay to just be like, this is a guy who went to the service, got out, didn't really have any, you know, skills that poured it over. And just kind of found himself with a kid and shit out of luck in terms of his prospects.

• 37:43Amanda Dobbins?

  So that all makes a lot of sense to me. It's as the movie goes on and really the resolution of the movie. And when things get out of control for him again, a second time. And there are a couple leaps of logic and a leaps of, I guess this is what he did in real life, but you know, suddenly, he's just out living a full life with no, and has basically taken on a second family, which is complicated in its own way, you know, and is presented in this is just kind of like, yeah, but he just like loves families.

• 38:19Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, and. Well, I think it's that he's seeking connection.

• 38:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 38:22Sean Fennessey?

  That he's a lost person.

• 38:24Amanda Dobbins?

  But, and, and, and maybe it's more that like the way that Channing Tatum, there's, there's, there is nothing.

• 38:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Damaged about what's going on with Channing Tatum, besides that he really loves his family. There's like nothing weird going on. And so

• 38:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 38:43Amanda Dobbins?

  As the movie continues, he makes a couple erratic decisions. There are a couple of things that are going on. This is a person that you're definitely rooting for, but is also not thinking smart. And it's not just because he is as a like, someone on the news says, like, a genius moron.

• 39:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 39:02Amanda Dobbins?

  There is something weird that I don't think Channing Tatum communicates.

• 39:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you're, I mean, you're right, but I like that about it. Like I, to me, it's like, that's what Dog Day Afternoon is. I'm not saying this is nearly as good as Dog Day Afternoon, but it's like fuckups, making big mistakes.

• 39:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 39:18Sean Fennessey?

  But have, but having an undeniable emotional connection to the character is, is a strain of filmmaking I love.

• 39:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I totally did. I think it also probably just like takes a little too long towards the end.

• 39:30Sean Fennessey?

  It is a little baggy.

• 39:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Restraining credulity. But for me, the, you know, I knew it was real and I didn't know how it ended. So, oh my God, that was another thing. The scene, like the voiceover at the end when spoiler alert, I guess, for Roof Man.

• 39:46Sean Fennessey?

  If you don't want Roof Man spoiler for you, carve out the next few minutes.

• 39:49Amanda Dobbins?

  And then also is based on a true story. Um, so he is arrested again.

• 39:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 39:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Because his girlfriend, Playback, here's a nun's like, figures it out and calls it in. And then he's imprisoned and he like gives a whole like incarceration is great for me speech. And I'm where I need to be and everything, which I thought was completely insane and was offended by. And

• 40:14Sean Fennessey?

  No, he was lying.

• 40:16Amanda Dobbins?

  He was lying?

• 40:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's the whole point. Cause he break, in the, in the aftercard, it talks about how he broke out two more times.

• 40:21Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but like, so, and then it goes to the aftercard and he breaks out two more times. But the way that it is shot and the way that Channing Tatum is communicating that is not lying, is not threatening. It's not like there's something going on here. It's not still waters run deep to me.

• 40:35Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think, to me, I, I read it differently.

• 40:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And I really, really bumped on it.

• 40:40Sean Fennessey?

  I, I read it differently. I just read it as he is a helpless grifter. Like he cannot stop scheming.

• 40:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's like, the only thing he's actually good at is these like plots and these plans and this observational stuff that he's talking about at the beginning. And so he knows if he, like, if he answers yes to that question when it's posed to him about, do you still think about breaking out? That they're gonna tighten the vice grip on him.

• 41:02Amanda Dobbins?

  It's the voiceover. It's when he's like, and, and maybe he's lying in that too, but he's literally giving a voiceover and it's a montage of like everything.

• 41:10Sean Fennessey?

  But doesn't a guy ask him, or what does a guy ask him at the end? Yeah, at the end, he's asked point blank by one of his fellow inmates when they're in that therapy circle. He said, doesn't he say to him, like, do you still think about breaking out?

• 41:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:21Sean Fennessey?

  Or does he say, did you ever see Lee again? It's one of those two things.

• 41:24Amanda Dobbins?

  He definitely asks, did you ever see Lee again? And I, maybe in the voiceover, he's like, and I don't really think about breaking out anymore and all those sorts of things.

• 41:31Sean Fennessey?

  I guess I just saw that as kind of like the informant, you know, where it's just like this guy, this is an unreliable narrator.

• 41:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I would like, Channing Tatum is a Matt Damon. You know, and, and that is, that's kind of what I really like him. I thought he was very charming, but like, at some point, the performance and the casting of Channing Tatum does not, to me, communicate the, like, everything that's going on under the surface.

• 41:51Sean Fennessey?

  I get it, I respect that.

• 41:52Amanda Dobbins?

  So I was a little confused by the end.

• 41:54Sean Fennessey?

  Did you like Kirsten Dunst in the film?

• 41:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought she was great.

• 41:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 41:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I like her, she's just basically the girlfriend, but she gets to do a little bit more. Um, I would have been really pissed if someone bought my kid a car without asking me, let alone driving, but that's when she seems to things.

• 42:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's an interesting scene. I thought Lily Calias, who plays the older daughter, was very good.

• 42:15Amanda Dobbins?

  She was great.

• 42:15Sean Fennessey?

  She was in Good One, uh, last year, which is a good film. Um, yeah, I think that one of the things that this, that helps this movie is that it's just dotted with all of these insanely talented actors in pretty small roles.

• 42:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, the Ben Mendelsohn stuff is elite.

• 42:28Sean Fennessey?

  Ben Mendelsohn, uh, Peter Dinklage as the manager of the Toys R Us, Lakeith Stanfield as his, like, flunky army buddy.

• 42:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 42:36Sean Fennessey?

  Juno Temple as his flunky army buddy's girlfriend, hairdresser.

• 42:39Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's really fun.

• 42:40Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, there's a lot of, like, little, it just felt like a movie from 30 years ago.

• 42:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 42:45Sean Fennessey?

  You know, and I was like, I love movies like this.

• 42:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Every single set piece, for lack of a better term, but like, the escape, everything that he is doing to make a life in Toys R Us is like, very real and exciting and, like, and filmed really well. There's a scene where he's trying to get out of a truck, and I was like, very stressed out, and it's, you know, one wide shot and the blocking, and again, Channing Tatum's physicality. A lot of it is really, really good. I just really bumped on the ending.

• 43:11Sean Fennessey?

  So See in France, um, has made a lot of very angsty, emotional movies about families breaking down. Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines, My Beloved.

• 43:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, sure.

• 43:23Sean Fennessey?

  Um, The Light Between Oceans. Those movies, I think, are all good and all accomplished. I have a huge place in my heart for the, for the second of the three.

• 43:33Sean Fennessey?

  They all, though, are very like, kinda trying to put on somebody else's jacket sometimes.

• 43:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:39Sean Fennessey?

  And you can really feel the weight of influence. A thing I like about this movie is even though it feels like an old movie, I don't feel like it is him making somebody else's movie.

• 43:48Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 43:48Sean Fennessey?

  It felt like, he felt very, it felt very comfortable in its own skin. And I just, I, I feel it is my job to sell, to like lift up a movie like this.

• 43:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally. I, I think it is, I, what's interesting to me about it is I think that my, like, resistance, or the, the thing that didn't compute about the movie for me is also what makes it hard to sell.

• 44:10Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 44:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and you expect one thing, you associate one thing with Channing Tatum, and this is a movie that's been marketed, like, around Channing Tatum. He is on the poster.

• 44:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 44:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So.

• 44:22Sean Fennessey?

  There he is.

• 44:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, there he is. You know, and it's like, pretty funny.

• 44:27Amanda Dobbins?

  But, so I, I'm, I'm in one, one mode in my head when I'm going in to see it. And I don't know if he quite gets to the other place that the movie needs to, to get him to. But also if you go in expecting, I don't know, it's confusing. What are you telling someone, like a random person who's not us, what this is?

• 44:47Sean Fennessey?

  Well, let's, let's talk about the components then. Wow, FOMO factor. I'm trying to create a FOMO factor by talking about my enthusiasm for the movie, but I don't think that that exists in the movie. It's just not that kind of a movie. It is a smaller film. It's not like, it's not tiny or anything like that. It is still like very famous people and it's got a very expansive crime story to it. But there's, you're not like missing out by not going to this movie. The communal factor played really well in the room that I was in. People were laughing, they were emotional. It seemed like it was clicking.

• 45:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I, again, I also saw this weekday afternoon. I saw it right after Tron Ares, and there were more people in my screening than Tron Ares, but it was quiet.

• 45:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's so interesting that this movie seems to be doing okay.

• 45:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, by more, I mean like, five as opposed to one.

• 45:32Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's also, it's, you know, ultimately, like, one of the very, could maybe end up being one of the last releases of the Paramount previous regime. You know, the Redstone era of Paramount, which is now changing hands. And it's the kind of movie that like, I don't know if it would even be made at many other major studios, so. Okay, the, the, is this different at home factor? Now, C. and France, the last thing that he did was a TV mini-series for HBO. And you could make the case that this is something that would play perfectly well at home. However, I do think you would miss a lot if you were like, had your phone out.

• 46:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's always true.

• 46:08Sean Fennessey?

  And you're like distracted.

• 46:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Sean Fennessey?

  And, but part of its charm, I think, is in like, this like subtle character quietness, where like, if you put your head down for a second, you don't see that he's like going around the corner to do another thing, or like what he grabbed off the shelf at Toys R Us.

• 46:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:23Sean Fennessey?

  By the way, Toys R Us.

• 46:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:24Sean Fennessey?

  Did you have one where you grew up?

• 46:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course.

• 46:27Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think of Toys R Us?

• 46:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It was, I tried to go there all the time.

• 46:33Sean Fennessey?

  It's the most important place in the world.

• 46:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly, yes. I was like, I would like to be there again.

• 46:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, that's definitely where I bought the Tamagotchi. I mean, I remember where it was located. It was next to the Old Navy.

• 46:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 46:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, right where you got on the, like, Georgia 400, which my ATL people will know. So, that was my local Toys R Us.

• 46:51Sean Fennessey?

  Man, it just kicked ass going in there.

• 46:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:53Sean Fennessey?

  That feeling, that rush.

• 46:54Amanda Dobbins?

  So, a real issue now is that I have to locate a Jeffrey the Giraffe.

• 47:00Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, right, because of the videos.

• 47:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because...

• 47:02Sean Fennessey?

  Toys R Us has been out of business for like, two decades?

• 47:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. So, I mean, I haven't like, deep dived to eBay, but if anyone knows where I can get a Jeffrey the Giraffe, like, life-size costume, you know, that someone, probably Chris Ryan, can wear to my child's birthday party.

• 47:15Sean Fennessey?

  That's funny.

• 47:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Please let me know.

• 47:16Sean Fennessey?

  Toys R Us.

• 47:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Jeffrey the Giraffe, eBay, okay.

• 47:18Sean Fennessey?

  The store's closed in 2018.

• 47:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 47:21Sean Fennessey?

  So, that'll be interesting. I wish you luck. Jeffrey the Giraffe, good mascot? Knox takes a side?

• 47:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I, I, he wanted, he wants to give him a hug, so I guess it's good.

• 47:31Sean Fennessey?

  Cool, that's nice.

• 47:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:33Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I liked Roof Man a lot.

• 47:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, I, I liked it, and I was pretty baffled by the, wow, $1,000 on eBay for this costume. It's, and it's not even Jeffrey, it's Gigi. I guess that's why, it's $1,000.

• 47:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's Gigi, like his female companion?

• 47:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, she's the Mrs. Met.

• 47:52Sean Fennessey?

  You can now watch the big picture on Spotify and The Ringer's first ever television channel, available exclusively on Samsung TV Plus, the subscription-free streaming destination, bringing you the best of TV.

• 48:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Rewatch some of our greatest hits like the 1999 movie draft, the best horror movies of the decade, and more on the new all-day Ringer channel. You can also settle in and catch up with your other Ringer favorites, including the Rewatchables, The Ringerverse, and Higher Learning.

• 48:16Sean Fennessey?

  To watch, open the Samsung TV Plus app on your Samsung TV or Galaxy mobile device, navigate to the Ringer channel, and boom, you're in.

• 48:25Sean Fennessey?

  Let's speak about After the Hunt. After the Hunt is the new film directed by Luca Guadagnino.

• 48:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Sean Fennessey?

  Boy, we love Luca on this show.

• 48:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Love it.

• 48:35Sean Fennessey?

  We're two of his biggest fans. This new movie is written by Nora Garrett. It stars Julia Roberts, another actor we love. I O. Debré is also in this movie. Andrew Garfield, Michael Stilbar, Chloe Sevigny. Not sure if there's a cooler collection of actors.

• 48:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, all our guys and gals.

• 48:50Sean Fennessey?

  That's a lot of great stuff. This score is done by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

• 48:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure is.

• 48:54Sean Fennessey?

  You know what? This movie was shot by Malika Samsaid, who has not shot a movie in 27 years. But the last movie he shot was one of my favorite movies of all time, Belly. He also shot a number of Spike Lee movies in the 90s. He's well-known for his music videos, including Beyoncé's Formation. One of the greatest eyes in the world.

• 49:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 49:15Sean Fennessey?

  Should this be the greatest movie of all time?

• 49:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Probably.

• 49:18Sean Fennessey?

  It probably should. Unfortunately, it is not that.

• 49:21Amanda Dobbins?

  It is not. So I famously, to me, saw what I now know to be about 70% of this movie at the Venice Film Festival. And then I had to leave because it started late. Won't say whose fault that was. And then I had to get to another screening. I've now seen the whole film. Turns out, I left at the perfect moment for this to be a good movie.

• 49:42Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 49:43Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, and then I saw the other 30%.

• 49:46Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well, let's, let's talk about it. I, this movie hasn't been seen by a ton of people, so it's hard to get in the weeds too much, but I have to get in the weeds as much as I can.

• 49:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's been a few weeks since I've seen this, so you can help hold my hand through some of it. But it's a film about a college professor who's forced to grapple with her Own secretive past after when one of her colleagues is faced with a sexual assault accusation.

• 50:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 50:07Sean Fennessey?

  So in the film, Julia Roberts plays, I guess, a middle aged teacher going for tenure.

• 50:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Rude.

• 50:15Sean Fennessey?

  Is she not middle aged?

• 50:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Why, but like this way you said like middle aged teacher. She plays a professor at, a philosophy professor at Yale.

• 50:24Sean Fennessey?

  She's a lady who's older. No, she's, she's an esteemed woman.

• 50:29Amanda Dobbins?

  She's a.

• 50:29Sean Fennessey?

  Why does she not have tenure? I don't fully understand that.

• 50:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Because she had to, she had to take some time off.

• 50:34Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 50:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Because she has a mysterious illness and she keeps vomiting.

• 50:37Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 50:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, she.

• 50:39Sean Fennessey?

  Are you defending Julia or the character?

• 50:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm defending middle aged women who wear blazers. Okay. Like, once you saw it, did you notice the similarity?

• 50:47Sean Fennessey?

  Wear this on purpose?

• 50:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course I did. Yes. But this is my Julia outfit, but like, did I have many to choose from?

• 50:54Sean Fennessey?

  Well, she's.

• 50:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I sure did.

• 50:55Sean Fennessey?

  She styled impeccably in this film.

• 50:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but did you also see why, like, did you see the Amanda similarities in the outfits?

• 51:01Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's something only you see.

• 51:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Wow, that's so rude. Okay.

• 51:06Sean Fennessey?

  It was just a good line. Um, I think, what, so she plays this, this professor who's up for tenure. Her friend, and it seems like maybe she, he was a mentee. It's unclear, given the age difference. Maybe there's like a 10 or 12 year age difference. Andrew Garfield's character is also going up for tenure.

• 51:23Amanda Dobbins?

  It seems like maybe they've like co-written papers together.

• 51:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 51:26Amanda Dobbins?

  They're in the same department. They're in the philosophy department.

• 51:29Sean Fennessey?

  They're close colleagues. They have what seems to be a kind of history between them, but it's unspoken.

• 51:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 51:35Sean Fennessey?

  That they have.

• 51:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's, you pick up on that history because Andrew Garfield, much like at the Golden Globes, only has two shirt, buttons on his shirt buttoned.

• 51:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 51:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And is wearing a pendant and is just, is absolutely shooting lasers everywhere at all times.

• 51:51Sean Fennessey?

  He's, he's, this is Andrew Garfield in overdrive.

• 51:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:55Sean Fennessey?

  Performance wise.

• 51:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 51:56Sean Fennessey?

  Um, perhaps too much so.

• 51:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 52:00Sean Fennessey?

  I O. Debré is essentially Julia Roberts's character's TA, and she worships her. And we see her and the young cohort of students and grad students who worship these two professors and the discourse. And we also see this generational clash between how these younger students view the world and how the elders view the world, and the kind of cynicism that has grown inside of the older folks and the rejection of the more progressive ideas emanating off of the younger folks.

• 52:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 52:29Sean Fennessey?

  This should be a very contemporary movie, right? This is a thing we joke about, this sort of stuff on the show all the time. It's obviously in the culture wars, all over the place, regarding any number of issues, not just sexual assault, but world conflict and, you know, pay gaps. And there's a million things you can make a movie like this about. But this one very quickly becomes a story about a he said, she said sexual encounter between an older professor who visits the home of a younger student, and something happens. We don't see what happens. The film very purposefully hides the event in question. And then it becomes this sort of like, somewhere between a detective story, trying to ascertain the truth of what's happened,

• 53:12Sean Fennessey?

  but more specifically, how this event affects this woman, who is not the primary participant in the incident, but is like, her knowledge of the people and the event looms large. And sort of like, what is the responsibility of someone with knowledge in these spaces? So that's like a very oblique setup for a direct kind of idea. And while the film looks good, and I think Julia Roberts is actually excellent in this movie. I think this is legitimately one of her best performances in some time.

• 53:46Amanda Dobbins?

  She's really good.

• 53:48Sean Fennessey?

  I thought this movie was like, I actually have no idea what it was trying to do. No clue what its script was trying to say.

• 53:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's very confusing.

• 53:55Sean Fennessey?

  I found the ending to be baffling.

• 53:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 53:59Sean Fennessey?

  The baffling. I thought I O. Debré, an actress I really like, to be way in over her head in this movie.

• 54:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Though I did wonder whether that was a purposeful choice, like a performance choice.

• 54:10Sean Fennessey?

  Possibly, but she just does not have the gravitas in a couple of moments where she's expected to deliver some might on the other end of her speeches, and... You know, I don't know, and I don't know if that's the direction. I don't know what it is. I did not think she was kind of up to this kind of material. And I think that the material was not up to its ideas.

• 54:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. The one thing that you left out from the description that I think is pretty central, both to the movie itself and then also perhaps its failure, is that this is very much a campus politics movie too. Like, it's, you know, it opens honestly with a title card in the Woody Allen font saying it happened at Yale. And then there's like a little montage of campus life in Woody Allen's hat, which, again, I thought this was funny. Parts of this, to me, are amusing.

• 54:57Sean Fennessey?

  I was, I thought it was going to be much more wry about these ideas because of that setup.

• 55:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally. But so, and so it's campus politics. It is set not just like on a campus, on a college campus, but in the philosophy department of Yale. And so, and there is a lot of, along with the campus politics debate, like, a lot of intergenerational stuff. And, you know, much of it is older generation being like, what's wrong with these younger people? But also, maybe they're right, but what's wrong with them? And so that is just always kind of a dead end as a, as a story, you know?

• 55:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 55:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And even-

• 55:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's a debate. It's not a movie.

• 55:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. But, and, and so it tries to infuse that and basically like what is sort of a cranky New York Times op-ed

• 55:52Amanda Dobbins?

  with like very, very soapy plot stylings that like, sorry, you can't make tenure that soapy even if you want to. And like, they really do try. And then it completely like abandons all of the soapy plotlines as well. Like, everything is just kind of fine. So it doesn't commit to any of the things that it is trying to do.

• 56:19Sean Fennessey?

  This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. There's nothing better than having friends who support whatever you're into, like rewatching a director's entire catalog in the lead up to their latest release. And like those friends, State Farm is there to help you feel supported by helping you choose the coverage you need. With so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you.

• 57:01Sean Fennessey?

  So you can check coverage off the list and spend more time debating movie rankings. Go online at statefarm.com or use the easily accessible app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. To your point about the Woody Allen font at the beginning of the film, the film that this is most indebted to is Crimes and Misdemeanors. Crimes and Misdemeanors, interesting movie to kind of unpack because it's two tales tied together about people whose lives cross over. In the one film, you've got in the one story, you've got Martin Landau having an affair with Angelica Huston and then afraid to be kind of caught in this affair and he attempts to have her killed. Right. Very serious, kind of mordant, character piece about the failures of masculinity.

• 57:46Sean Fennessey?

  Right? And then on the flip side, you've got Woody Allen and Mia Farrow as this couple who are like, he's a filmmaker and she's working with Alan Alda, who's a more successful filmmaker and kind of a blowhard. And it's got a little bit more of that like classical Woody Allen comedy energy. And you've got these two worlds kind of colliding and rubbing up against each other. One's pretty funny. Alan Alda's hilarious in that movie. One's really deathly serious in this kind of moral dilemma film. So elevens, the two sides, this movie, especially in the final 75 minutes, is just like deathly serious. Like, there's no sense of humor about it at all.

• 58:22Amanda Dobbins?

  And boring. It just slams on the break.

• 58:24Sean Fennessey?

  Which is, for Luca, I'm just so surprised.

• 58:26Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really weird.

• 58:28Sean Fennessey?

  I find that all of his movies, even his very serious films, have like a, a kind of knowing sensibility about them. You know, a kind of like, I'm making my cannibal romance movie, but I, I'm making it kind of funny. You know, even though it's gross, there's something kind of arch.

• 58:45Amanda Dobbins?

  So, the first hour, though, and it was very funny, because the second time I saw it, it was after you'd seen it, everyone else, the reviews have been incredibly unkind.

• 58:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's been pilloried, yeah.

• 58:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's a pretty limited distribution, especially for a movie that stars Julia Roberts. So, I went in, and the first hour, and again, I'm Luca-pilled, that is my personality, but I was like, wow, he's kind of cooking. This is kind of fun. And the first hour, you know, and part of it is, it's like, it's absurdly beautiful, the apartment is like my new dream apartment.

• 59:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, amazing.

• 59:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, and well-observed, and the costumes, and the details, and the way they speak to each other. And like, the scene with Chloe Sevigny in Three Sheets, the bar, funny, about this miss, you know, I was like, oh, okay, so I know who we're speaking to, we're speaking to, to me.

• 59:36Sean Fennessey?

  To older, yes, yes.

• 59:37Amanda Dobbins?

  To older people.

• 59:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. This is not a movie for 22-year-olds, it's a movie for 45-year-olds, yes.

• 59:42Amanda Dobbins?

  So, there is, like, a knowingness to the way that he's making it.

• 59:49Sean Fennessey?

  I know, but the script, you can't live up to that.

• 59:51Amanda Dobbins?

  But I agree with you, I agree that it doesn't. I completely, completely agree that it falls flat on its face. But I, you know, we're, the Luca-ness is there, and, and then it goes away.

• 1:00:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he can't help but bring his sense of production design, and the way that the film is lit is quite interesting, where everything is kind of like, even in these lush, like, cream-colored environments, there's something kind of like washed out, like, Julia Roberts looks like she just woke up, or just threw up, like, the entire film.

• 1:00:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:00:19Sean Fennessey?

  Even though, you know, she's such a striking star, she's, she's doing a really physical performance in this movie that's very effective. And, you know, he's on this interesting progression now, you like, if you look at Challengers and Queer and this film, it's almost like he's trying to strip out everything, that, like, all of the energy from his movies, Queer is also this similarly kind of like... Ambling road movie.

• 1:00:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:00:42Sean Fennessey?

  Psychological fantasia. And this is like a much more practical movie, like an in the weeds movie. Especially like there's a, near the end, there's a very tense confrontation between Roberts's character and Deverry's character where they're talking outside in a parking lot.

• 1:00:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I thought you were going to talk about the tar scene when it is Julia in a blazer, just absolutely excreting students for their.

• 1:01:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's, which is not well written.

• 1:01:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's very over written.

• 1:01:10Amanda Dobbins?

  By the way, like philosophy is the foundation of civilization and also really stupid. So that, that's kind of what I took away from that. Philosophy corner. But when she finishes, then she's just like, Marcus is here. Julia Roberts is still really funny and good in this movie. And there is like a sense of humor to, at least what she and Luca are doing, that again, the script and the other performances don't live up to.

• 1:01:36Sean Fennessey?

  Let's try to put another spoiler warning about this because maybe you can help me understand what you thought the ending was because I really don't get it. And if you haven't seen it or don't want, or you don't intend to see it, you can keep listening, but we're going to talk about the ending.

• 1:01:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:01:49Sean Fennessey?

  The movie here. So at the end of the movie, we learn a couple of things. We learn, one, that Roberts' character and Garfield's character did have an affair, that they were together at a certain point, which is very clearly insinuated in that first bar scene where she has a kind of longing towards him. We then learn that because of the physical way that he treats her when she finds him sleeping in her second apartment.

• 1:02:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Sean Fennessey?

  That he probably did.

• 1:02:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:02:21Sean Fennessey?

  Commit an assault.

• 1:02:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:02:22Sean Fennessey?

  That it's more than likely, maybe almost certainly that he is responsible for this incident he's accused of.

• 1:02:28Amanda Dobbins?

  As I O Deverry's character says, like he crossed a line.

• 1:02:31Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:02:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Sean Fennessey?

  She is fired because she steals a script, a prescription.

• 1:02:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, very different.

• 1:02:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I wish someone would steal this script, but she steals a prescription page from Chloe Sevigny's character's office. She's a therapist and professor, and she gets.

• 1:02:50Amanda Dobbins?

  She's a psychiatrist because she can prescribe medication, which she does.

• 1:02:54Sean Fennessey?

  Psychiatrist.

• 1:02:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Julia, it's a controlled substance.

• 1:02:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:02:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Because Julia Roberts is like having unexplained pain like attacks.

• 1:03:02Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:03Amanda Dobbins?

  And barfing a lot throughout the movie. And so she needs the quote unquote, good stuff.

• 1:03:09Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:03:09Amanda Dobbins?

  But the prescription is flagged because it's, you know, and so she gets caught. Chloe Sevigny reports her tenure is, she's not fired, but tenure.

• 1:03:20Sean Fennessey?

  Tenure's off the table.

• 1:03:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Is paused indefinitely.

• 1:03:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, she, she, she will not be getting tenure. She is then identified as not an ally to a Debré's character, who then goes to Rolling Stone magazine.

• 1:03:35Amanda Dobbins?

  For the second time.

• 1:03:36Sean Fennessey?

  To give her side of this story of sexual assault, which is then, I guess, written in like a long feature in Rolling Stone magazine, which feels like a very obvious nod to a rape on campus.

• 1:03:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:03:46Sean Fennessey?

  The since debunked.

• 1:03:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:03:49Sean Fennessey?

  Feature story that ran, I think in 2014 in the magazine about a person claiming to be raped that was, I believe entirely invented, right?

• 1:03:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't totally remember, so let's just say that it was.

• 1:04:02Sean Fennessey?

  There were falsehoods.

• 1:04:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:04:04Sean Fennessey?

  But in this case, that, that story is meant to be true. So it's supposed to conjure this idea of something that transpired that we know about and then make us further question the environment and what is the truth of these events.

• 1:04:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:04:17Sean Fennessey?

  And then we then finally learn that Roberts's character, in fact, many years ago, as a teenage girl, had an affair with her father, one of her father's best friends. And she was in love with this person and he broke her heart because he left her for a woman who was more age appropriate. And then she went to the press and told the press.

• 1:04:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, did she go to the press or she reported?

• 1:04:45Sean Fennessey?

  She, okay.

• 1:04:46Amanda Dobbins?

  You know.

• 1:04:47Sean Fennessey?

  We, I guess, I don't, is that, is that what they say?

• 1:04:50Amanda Dobbins?

  We don't know. We don't, we don't actually know because.

• 1:04:52Sean Fennessey?

  We see a newspaper clipping.

• 1:04:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because I, whatever he goes to the bathroom at a lovely party and then is just rooting around in the cabinets. She's looking for toilet paper, but then she's like looking up under the taping of the thing.

• 1:05:05Sean Fennessey?

  What the fuck is that?

• 1:05:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I mean, I agree.

• 1:05:07Sean Fennessey?

  100% agree. So bizarre. What kind of movie bullshit is that scene?

• 1:05:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Quite lazy. I was also like, wow, good hiding place. So.

• 1:05:14Sean Fennessey?

  It, it is a good hiding, but like, why are you even, like, you have a second apartment? Why is that not, that stuff not just in your second apartment?

• 1:05:21Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a great point because then at some point.

• 1:05:23Sean Fennessey?

  Fucking terrible writing.

• 1:05:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Julia Roberts burns everything else, but it seems like she has like a second and she burns a photo of the guy, but then she has a second photo at the Wharf apartment, which once again, like, this movie would love, you know, someone watched Tar and then was like, let me try this. But.

• 1:05:40Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's generous. I mean, I.

• 1:05:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, just like in the actual structural there, she has the second apartment where all of the things happen in Tar. There is a scene in A Blazer where someone of the younger generation is excoriated for having incorrect opinions about, you know, progressive politics or whatever.

• 1:05:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's definitely similarities to it. I, I just, I think its aims are slightly different and I, so we learned that she had this relationship.

• 1:06:07Amanda Dobbins?

  But here's how we learn that is that because she has like another attack and she's hospitalized.

• 1:06:13Sean Fennessey?

  And that's. While being confronted by the woke mob, quote unquote, outside of the campus.

• 1:06:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, literally. She's surrounded and then she collapses. And then, so it's perforated ulcers and her therapist husband, uh, her analyst husband.

• 1:06:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, who's just having a grand old time.

• 1:06:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Conducting John Adams and cooking.

• 1:06:36Sean Fennessey?

  Just a ridiculous performance that I really enjoyed. I don't know what movie he's in.

• 1:06:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Very funny. And then, so she in like in the hospital bed tells him the story. And she's like, I made it up. I loved him. And he in the text is like, no, he was older. No matter what you think, it's his responsibility. Like you actually were assaulted. And then she and then all she says is, I loved him. And then he says, I love you. Cool.

• 1:07:11Sean Fennessey?

  Right. So.

• 1:07:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Great, great, great ideas. We have that philosophy, ladies and gentlemen.

• 1:07:15Sean Fennessey?

  Not good. What's only worse than that scene is the epilogue, which is some years later.

• 1:07:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Five years later.

• 1:07:25Sean Fennessey?

  And in this epilogue, the debris's character and Roberts's character meet up at the same restaurant where Roberts and Garfield's character had had a very tense discussion.

• 1:07:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is apparently a real like standby in New Haven.

• 1:07:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so.

• 1:07:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And made me want Indian food.

• 1:07:40Sean Fennessey?

  At this point, we've learned that Roberts's character has become the dean of another school.

• 1:07:45Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I think she's become the dean at she's at another school.

• 1:07:50Sean Fennessey?

  She's the dean at Yale?

• 1:07:51Amanda Dobbins?

  That sure looks like the office of the other guy.

• 1:07:54Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe, maybe, maybe that's what it is. She's the dean of Yale after not being a tenured professor?

• 1:07:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Dean of humanities.

• 1:08:00Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:08:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is presented earlier in the movie as his administration job and not as fun as thinking. Listen, I'm not, I'm not in charge.

• 1:08:09Sean Fennessey?

  The point stands either way.

• 1:08:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't work on campus. And also she's watching a news report about the LA fires from January, because it's January 2025, just to let you know, it's January 9th. So.

• 1:08:19Sean Fennessey?

  Not ideal. But I don't even know what that's a comment on.

• 1:08:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't either. She's just watching it. And she's just like, wow, this is terrible.

• 1:08:27Sean Fennessey?

  And then they meet for this lunch and they have this discussion, even though they've had this world colossal falling out, these two people and and a debris's character admits that she was in love with her.

• 1:08:36Amanda Dobbins?

  You didn't mention that there's a second Rolling Stone piece that I O's character writes that is like about how I had like a bad mentor and it's just excreting the Julia Roberts character?

• 1:08:50Sean Fennessey?

  That was the one that I was referring to. Because that's the one that really spins out.

• 1:08:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, okay.

• 1:08:54Sean Fennessey?

  Spins out Roberts's character.

• 1:08:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:58Sean Fennessey?

  And it turns out that like, they're gonna let bygones be bygones and like, very briefly discuss the events of the film and talk about how like, it actually worked out well for both of them. Because now Roberts' character is the dean and Debré's successful in her own way.

• 1:09:13Amanda Dobbins?

  It's insane. I think that this-

• 1:09:15Sean Fennessey?

  It's psychotic. What the fuck is that?

• 1:09:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I think this is, this is the part where I always miscast. Uh, and it's just, cause I think that there is supposed to be something suggested. There's supposed to be like, a lot of work under the, under the text. I, I mean, I still, that still doesn't justify it, but like, that's not happening.

• 1:09:35Sean Fennessey?

  She was both sexually assaulted and is also a sociopath?

• 1:09:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so.

• 1:09:40Sean Fennessey?

  Or is that, does it communicate somehow that-

• 1:09:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Because now she's dressed totally differently.

• 1:09:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's so, it's so muddled, because it's like, did this event-

• 1:09:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not justifying-

• 1:09:47Sean Fennessey?

  Energize her to then become more hard bitten? Is it that this was always this way and that she had this kind of talented Mr. Ripley thing going on with Roberts' character? Like, it's totally unclear. The, the psychology is so messy.

• 1:10:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I have no idea what it's supposed to do. And, and then-

• 1:10:03Sean Fennessey?

  And not smart, man.

• 1:10:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Julia, no, I agree. And then Julia's playing it like, complicated, but like, but, but yeah, like, so is life.

• 1:10:12Sean Fennessey?

  There's a hint of like, you know what? We knew all along, like, us gals, we gotta stick together so that we can ride out this crazy moment in history. I'm like, what the fuck is this trying to say?

• 1:10:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. I really don't know.

• 1:10:22Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't like it.

• 1:10:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:23Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't like it. I thought there was cool things about it.

• 1:10:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I liked the first hour.

• 1:10:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Kind of despite myself. I was like, ooh, spicy. And then it was really very silly.

• 1:10:32Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it's not doing very well.

• 1:10:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:35Sean Fennessey?

  However, and I, and there is clearly no FOMO factor whatsoever with this movie, right? Cause it's not even like, a car crash, cause it's Luca Guadino, so like, it looks good, music is good, she's got style.

• 1:10:47Amanda Dobbins?

  That striped couch, man. I, I need it.

• 1:10:49Sean Fennessey?

  Sure, absolutely.

• 1:10:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I need the striped couch in Stu, Stu Varg's office. I need the whole kitchen.

• 1:10:53Sean Fennessey?

  Next August, we'll get on it. We'll figure it out.

• 1:10:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Should I be wearing like, a white jacket like she's wearing at the party, you know?

• 1:10:59Sean Fennessey?

  You might have to dye her hair blonde if you wanna do that.

• 1:11:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, she has like, really like, 40's style. I, I can't really do that.

• 1:11:06Sean Fennessey?

  Um, communal factor. I saw this at a press screening.

• 1:11:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:11:10Sean Fennessey?

  Wasn't a ton of energy in the room.

• 1:11:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I saw it at the Venice Film Festival and everyone was really pissed off, cause we waited in the rain for a long time. And then I saw this midday, Burbank 16, where the real heads go. Uh, I would say everyone was pretty quiet.

• 1:11:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. The is this different at home factor? I kinda wanna watch this again so that I can see if I can figure out what the hell's going on.

• 1:11:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:11:31Sean Fennessey?

  I feel that I'm fairly good at understanding, if not plot mechanics specifically, psychological intention of characters. Like, I actually think that that is something I am pretty good at when it comes to reading movies.

• 1:11:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:41Sean Fennessey?

  And I don't really know what this movie's trying to say.

• 1:11:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't either.

• 1:11:45Sean Fennessey?

  So maybe one more viewing at home?

• 1:11:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:11:48Sean Fennessey?

  What am I gonna do? Because I don't really wanna own this movie. What happens to the Lucas stack?

• 1:11:52Amanda Dobbins?

  That's between you and your demons.

• 1:11:54Sean Fennessey?

  You're gonna buy it.

• 1:11:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Are they gonna release it?

• 1:11:58Sean Fennessey?

  It's Amazon MGM, so I don't know.

• 1:12:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:12:01Sean Fennessey?

  We shall see.

• 1:12:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's not a success.

• 1:12:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:06Sean Fennessey?

  And we gotta get Julia W., you know?

• 1:12:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I don't know. She's fine.

• 1:12:15Sean Fennessey?

  She's fine.

• 1:12:16Amanda Dobbins?

  She seems happy. She's still very beautiful, you know?

• 1:12:20Sean Fennessey?

  Should we talk about Mr. Scorsese briefly before Rebecca Miller? So this was made over five years, started during COVID.

• 1:12:29Sean Fennessey?

  Miller told me she just had the idea after making the film about her father, like, oh, would you wanna spend some time digging into next? She told me the first Marty movie she ever saw was Goodfellas and that she was not like in allegiance of his until much later. Her husband, of course, has worked with him, Daniel Day-Lewis.

• 1:12:49Sean Fennessey?

  I thought this did a couple of things really, really well. One, shockingly intimate.

• 1:12:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:57Sean Fennessey?

  I've been following Scorsese's career extremely closely since I was a teenager. There's a bunch of stuff in this movie I've never heard or seen before.

• 1:13:06Sean Fennessey?

  Then, in addition to that, and I don't wanna spoil what that is for people who haven't seen it yet. The second thing is that she gets basically everyone except Joe Pesci to talk.

• 1:13:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:18Sean Fennessey?

  Right?

• 1:13:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Almost. There were a couple, but yes, basically, all of the major characters.

• 1:13:23Sean Fennessey?

  Isabella Rossellini.

• 1:13:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Incredible, the star of the documentary.

• 1:13:26Sean Fennessey?

  Like, who she, he was married to, just like, being quite severe about him at times.

• 1:13:32Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but also lovely. No, it's really.

• 1:13:34Sean Fennessey?

  Very loving, but very like, you know, this is a short man, you know, like, let us not forget. I believe she used the word miniscule.

• 1:13:41Amanda Dobbins?

  The other part, the best part is when she was like, you know, I, I remember asking Marty one day, you know, do you really just think about, like, are we good, are we bad, what are we here for all the time? Is that what's going on in your head? And he's like, yes, what's going on in your head? She's like, what happened for lunch? It was, it was great.

• 1:13:56Sean Fennessey?

  It was very, very good. Robbie Robertson, who's since passed, appears in the film. He's considered, you know, one of his closest friends and somebody who was with him during some really dark times in the seventies and eighties. Jay Cox, who many people know as his actual best friend, you know, time magazine journalist and film critic, and then later screenwriter. And he's like, kind of the keystone to the movie in a lot of ways. Like, every time Miller's like, how do I pivot out of here? He, she just cuts to Jay Cox, be like, and then this needed to happen.

• 1:14:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21Sean Fennessey?

  Um, which works really well. And then just my favorite thing of all time, which is movie documentaries about filmmakers, specifically analyzing their work and how it correlates to their personal life.

• 1:14:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:14:33Sean Fennessey?

  Right? There's like some examples of this, like De Palma, the De Palma doc does this really well. But that movie's like 100 minutes. This is five hours.

• 1:14:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's awesome. And so, and it goes through the career. And it does also, it not only analyzes the, like, it, it understands the work so deeply that like the editing and what it's pulling together and just what you're seeing in real time. You know, there is like a film school. It's made by a real filmmaker.

• 1:14:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:14:56Amanda Dobbins?

  So, um, you're understanding, and he is very open to talking about what's going on in his life, how it connects to the work. The people who are around him at that time are also giving their, you know, their perspective. And then it is bringing together not just the movie in question, but other films from the career and, you know, whether it's like recurring shots or recurring themes. It is beautifully edited, um, and really knowledgeable.

• 1:15:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Um, anything else that you wanted to cite that you liked about it?

• 1:15:29Amanda Dobbins?

  The kid, I think this was another thing that made me think about Girl Dads. And because he has daughters and his daughters are in it and it is a really interesting portrait of parenthood.

• 1:15:41Sean Fennessey?

  Across generations.

• 1:15:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Across generations, being an artist. You know, I noticed to me, all of the stars of the documentary of the sitting, besides Mr. Scorsese himself, were women. And, you know, so I think Rebecca Miller really like figured something out around him, but also.

• 1:16:04Sean Fennessey?

  This is a very smart to lean on Thelma Schoonmaker in the movie.

• 1:16:07Amanda Dobbins?

  But then she has like the editing bay and it's just showing you stuff that's so smart.

• 1:16:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:10Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really cool.

• 1:16:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I loved even just seeing him storyboarding at like 10 years old and being like, I have the movie in my head.

• 1:16:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally, and he's like, I still do this shot and then it cuts to all the shots.

• 1:16:20Sean Fennessey?

  That stuff is just amazing.

• 1:16:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's so cool.

• 1:16:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well, if I, people should check this out. It's very worth your time if you love movies. And pretty rare for something about an artist like this to be this expansive. You know, usually, it's usually much tighter. So if you want to hear more about it, let's go now to my conversation with Rebecca Miller.

• 1:16:41Sean Fennessey?

  Rebecca Miller is here. We're here to talk about Mr. Scorsese. Rebecca, I thought we could start by hearing about the first Martin Scorsese film that you ever saw. Do you remember what it was?

• 1:16:51Speaker 05

  For someone actually that I remember seeing is actually Goodfellas. So it wasn't one of the early films. I had to go back and experience the earlier films after that.

• 1:17:02Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. So was there like a reason that you didn't check out his work in the 70s or 80s or just just happenstance?

• 1:17:09Speaker 05

  You know, I don't know. I don't know why. I think I was, I was a painter at that time. I was drawn to other kinds of films. I didn't.

• 1:17:22Speaker 05

  You know, I'm not really sure what happened. But then I wasn't open to them in some way. And then, when I, once I opened that door, I was just kind of blown away by them and, and got, you know, watched them again and again. And then Age of Innocence was also a really important film for me. Raging Bull was huge for me, and so on and so on. And then, you know, I've watched them all.

• 1:17:45Sean Fennessey?

  Tell me about developing the idea to make a film. I know you originally wanted to make what you thought would be a regular feature-length doc that has become this very expansive piece. You know, where did it start? How do you even broker a conversation? Martin Scorsese, I'd like to make a film about you. Can you talk me through some of the actual, you know, details of getting this thing off the ground?

• 1:18:09Speaker 05

  Well, I had this weird instinct that I should make a film about him. I, I had a conversation with, with my producing partner, Damon Cardassius, and I said, like, I'd like to make another documentary. I really liked the, the practice of making documentary and sort of alongside preparing features. And then he said, who would be your person that you'd want to do? And I just had this, I just said, Martin Scorsese. And, you know, Marty and I had a kind of relationship where we had a, you know, a slightly social relationship back when they were making Gangs of New York.

• 1:18:46Speaker 05

  And, uh, but we didn't have a, like, an ongoing social relationship. But he had recommended some voiceover films for me to watch from the, like, the 1940s English films, because I was gonna make Personal Velocity, which had a lot of voiceover, and I was very nervous about that film. And so I asked him for advice, and he loves to give that kind of advice. So he gave me some films, you know, to look at. And then, um, I showed him the film, and he gave me a little bit of notes. Like, he gave me, well, one really good note. So then, he, I, somehow, he ended up watching other films of mine and giving me notes. And that became our relationship. I didn't have much of a social relationship, but he knew me sort of very well through my films, and then it turned out he'd read my books.

• 1:19:31Speaker 05

  So that was already in the background when I said that. And I thought, like, I feel like I could maybe have an insight into him, because I also had a feeling, like, I was really curious about his spiritual life and how it... What role it had to play in his movies, which it wasn't obvious. I just thought it'd be really nice to be able to explore that with him.

• 1:19:54Sean Fennessey?

  You mentioned that he has this encyclopedic knowledge of film history and could give you reference points. Did he have a point of view on the director portrait? You know, this is a kind of a type of documentary. And there are not actually a ton of great ones, especially not made about filmmakers while they're still alive. Like, did you talk about that form at all with him?

• 1:20:14Speaker 05

  We didn't talk about how he just was always saying, like, I don't know what you're doing. It was just sort of like, he didn't want to know, kind of. And actually, in the beginning, it started as a feature and then started to grow. And, you know, when I first interviewed Brian De Palma, who was one of the first people I interviewed apart from Marty, I said, you know, he said, you know, you can't do this in a feature film. And at that time, I said, yeah, no, I think I can do it. I have a sense of how I can do it. And of course, a year later, he was like, no, you're going to get to Taxi Driver. You cannot do the whole thing. And he was completely right, of course. You know, like, I totally couldn't do it. And luckily, I was able to change tack and they allowed me to make it five hours instead of like, an hour and a half or two hours.

• 1:20:57Speaker 05

  But, um, so I didn't really talk to him because I also didn't know exactly what I was going to do. I mean, I wrote him a letter. When I first proposed it, I wrote him a letter. I proposed it to his doc producer, who I knew, Margaret Bodie. And so she talked to him and he said, let her write a letter. So I wrote a letter. And basically in the letter, I just said, I want to take an approach like a Cubist approach, where like, just looking at you from all different angles, like different, you know, both collaborators, family, all the different angles to make a human portrait. And that was kind of my, but of course, that's pretty vague. So.

• 1:21:35Speaker 05

  That's where I began and I didn't really know and I didn't know exactly who was going to be in it either.

• 1:21:40Sean Fennessey?

  It seemed like you had a number of sit downs with him. I know you've been working on this for a number of years. Like, how did you even determine what was the right order to talk to people in? Like, as a journalist, you sometimes don't necessarily want to speak to the primary subject first. You might want to talk to a bunch of people first and then sit down with them. How did you kind of strategize around when was the right time to have sit downs with him?

• 1:22:01Speaker 05

  Well, I definitely started with him and there were, you know, more than it looks like, because each sort of outfit that he's wearing represents two very long interviews. So there were about 20 hours of interviews altogether over this five-year period. So and we would, we started on my porch outside because it was the beginning of the pandemic. And then, you know, we gradually, you know, graduated to his office and then eventually to his inner sanctum, his buddy, which was my, which was my goal. And, um, so, um, I, but, but yeah, so I really wanted to kind of, like, I was fascinated by the geometry of his first family, like his original family, you know, the mother to, to son, to brother,

• 1:22:45Speaker 05

  to father, et cetera, the neighborhood. Then I started to get these ideas about, okay, so early on, I thought, well, it would be really great to get the friends because I could tell that the friends were essential to how he had become an artist and the voices. And I thought, we've got to hear those voices somehow. So getting in touch with the friends was an immense, for me, it was like, maybe the most exciting thing.

• 1:23:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's one of my favorite aspects of the movie. I'm, I'm so fascinated by that choice. I mean, do you even have to broker that with Martin and say, I want your childhood closest friends who know you from your most vulnerable moments as a young person to speak openly about this? Like, I assume that's how you would go about approaching it.

• 1:23:27Speaker 05

  I did. I talked to him. I said, I would, because of course I didn't have their numbers. So, I mean, like, you know, apart from Salvatore, like Sally Gaga, I, nobody had his number. That was a complete accident. But everybody else, he was, you know, he was still in touch with. There was one guy that Robert De Niro brought. Marty was actually delighted by that. I think because he's such an anthropologist by nature, that he liked the idea of preserving the neighbor and preserving these people almost as a historical thing. And he was like, can I have, he wanted some of the footage just for himself to have it as, as, because the people, the way these people talk and their memories are really history by this point and. You know, times have changed and so it's rare, it's rare already. And but he had a very strong sense of like, there were two gonna be two sit downs.

• 1:24:09Speaker 05

  One was in a Cafe Roma and one was in a restaurant that, you know, and there were different people and they dozed different people. You know, not everybody went with everybody else. And he was very, you know, he was clear about that, about who should be sitting with who and so on, and the conversations and kind of stemmed were wonderful. And partly the reason was that I think he had kind of curated that. So he wanted, and then I went to Florida to go and interview Robert Uracola and John Bavona and then Salvatore.

• 1:24:44Sean Fennessey?

  You know, his personal life is, has not always been neat and tidy. And this is a tremendously revealing portrait of him. I have a huge fan of his work and have been studying him closely just as a fan for years and years. And you hear like faint whispers of aspects of crazy times in his life or his relationships. But it's extraordinary how comfortable it seems he is talking about a lot of this stuff, people he was in relationships with, extremely close friends. Did you feel like there was a moment where like a wall came down or there was a sense that there was not, the guard was not going to be up around some of the more sensitive aspects of his life?

• 1:25:22Speaker 05

  Definitely, it was a gradual relationship that was built between us, you know, because so much of this is, it's really a conversation. I didn't know, like you were saying, I really don't know very much about his personal life. I knew about, I had studied by this time the films very closely. I felt like I knew them well and I had studied the films that I thought were relevant to his films and so on, you know, the influences. But there was a lot I didn't know. So all the questions I'm asking him are genuine questions, like, you know, I, and he, I think, I think that once he decided to go with me, he made a decision that he was gonna be pretty honest. I think that there was an initial decision. And then as time went on.

• 1:26:08Speaker 05

  There was a trust that was built and he just decided, you know, but he'd also, like I said, he knew my work, he knew my previous documentary. So it was like, that's, I think, what informed his decision. Um, I, you know, and then other people too, like somehow his gut infected by his honesty, I think, a little bit and sensed because of the way I was talking about what he had talked to me about, they knew, oh, okay. So he's done that. He's talked to her about this stuff. So then they were talking to me also about it.

• 1:26:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you had your credibility stamped through that.

• 1:26:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, because everybody wouldn't want to, you know, insult him or transgress, you know, but then once they realized that, oh, this is a different kind of situation, then it changed.

• 1:26:51Sean Fennessey?

  So Scorsese's work, you know, it's a convergence of a lot of big ideas. You mentioned faith already and guilt and violence and passion and repression and all of this heavyweight stuff, America, a lot of big ideas. Was there something that spoke to you about his work that you felt was unexplored or that you wanted to be a big focus of the piece?

• 1:27:11Speaker 05

  Well, I initially, I was really interested in faith and violence, how a Catholic, somebody who's still, you know, looking at things through a Catholic lens is approaching these things. How does that work? What was the relationship to the sinner, you know, and like those, those questions like, and that was my initial road in because I thought, well, I don't, I haven't really seen that explored deeply, you know, as far as I know. I mean, not that I've seen absolutely everything and read absolutely everything, but I just felt like there was, there were, you know, and then I was interested in his, you know, in the females in his life, you know, I was really interested in his mother. His mother

• 1:27:52Speaker 05

  is an essential character who, thank God, was captured in his documentary. And then there's another, you know, additional one that was taken done in the 90s of him and his mother and his father, that voice, that personality, I feel like is really key. Her, the, she's a larger than life figure and really has, I think, the personality of an artist, you know, like she's, she's, she's. Just an electric figure.

• 1:28:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's something wonderful about her being a painter in Goodfellas. You know, that she is a person who makes art. You know, it seems to be him almost like communicating to us that he's getting something from her in that part of the movie.

• 1:28:30Speaker 05

  Absolutely. I think I think it really, I think he really did get a lot of his, his, his, the artist part of him from his mother.

• 1:28:39Sean Fennessey?

  I was fascinated by Jay Cox in the movie. It feels like he's almost like the bullshit detector. Like every time you need somebody to be like, here's what's really going on. You used him in such interesting ways. Tell me a little bit about, um, you know, the idea of a friend like him over periods of time and the way that they can speak to his, not just who he is as a person, but his work in such critical terms.

• 1:28:59Speaker 05

  Well, you know, he, I knew that Jay was really his best friend. You know, Joe Morales was his best friend as growing up as a kid. And he, and he's so wonderful. He's the one with the sort of tinted glasses with the bar. It's like so frank. And then there's Jay, who is like, saw him through everything. And I also knew Jay, had come to know Jay because I was writing something with him. So I knew him as a person quite well. And so there was a certain rapport there between us. And I felt like, and um, yeah, he's just, I wanted to kind of almost like reenact, like, recreate scenes for the audience, like to really be there, to really be in the hospital with the neuro in him,

• 1:29:43Speaker 05

  to really be in like there with, you know, Cassavetes. What of all these big moments, but to somehow like make people feel like they had actually experienced it. It's hard because like in documentaries, especially when somebody who's like 50 years on talking about something. It's like, it's, it's hard to get back into a feeling of like visceral experience. That's really what.

• 1:30:05Sean Fennessey?

  I'm curious about the other side of that coin too, which is the truth. Like, how much do you feel you're getting the truth? Because as time passes, and especially in show business, mythmaking is a part of this. Like, how do you navigate whether you feel like you're getting what actually happened? What's been massaged? You know, you know what I mean?

• 1:30:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, of course. I mean, but you know. Well, what is the truth, anyway? The truth is that there's so many shades of truth. My truth about what happened, somebody else's truth, it slightly shifts, right? Because of point of view. And one of the things, the reasons I called it a portrait, is I wanted to be clear that this is my portrait of him. There isn't like an angel that did some kind of like absolute piece of work. It's my truth as I understood it. But the thing about Marty is like, he is the most self-honest person that I've ever met. Like, he's really honest with himself. He's not pretending to himself to be other than he is. And that's an extraordinary thing, and I've learned a lot from that, I think. You know, like, just, and I think you can see it in his work.

• 1:31:06Speaker 05

  Like, the mercilessness of his work, to some degree, comes from his own honesty to himself. And, you know, so the answer to that question, I guess, is like, you just try, first of all, to have an honest conversation with your main subject, but also get these points of view from different vantage points, and then hope that you're creating something that's close to what, as close to the truth as far as truth can exist, is.

• 1:31:37Sean Fennessey?

  Who was the most difficult person to nail down for this? Because you definitely got a few people that you don't see sitting for a lot of documentaries.

• 1:31:44Speaker 05

  My husband was not that easy. I was happy to see him in it. It was not a slam dunk. He was like, yeah, only because he's just like, ah, you know, he doesn't really love doing that kind of thing. He doesn't, he feels that, you know, that he can't add anything. It's like a whole thing, but I'm so glad that he did it. He was tricky, you know, as you can see, like, Joe Pesci didn't actually stand for an interview, but, but the nice thing is that there were some really great interviews of some of these people earlier.

• 1:32:26Speaker 05

  And in some ways, it's nice, you know, to just have it in the, more in the period that they're in. And so when there was something like, um...

• 1:32:34Speaker 05

  Like Ellen Burstyn, like for example, like there were these wonderful interviews that were done really on set for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. And I just feel like I don't need more than that. Like, how wonderful that she sat for that interview, you know?

• 1:32:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's a couple of them, like Father Prince of A, I feel like is one, too, or just Having That. And I don't know, it's interesting. He's, I almost feel like he has built his own mythologies in some ways, because he has all these skeleton key figures over the years, you know? You got to speak to Robbie Robertson before he passed away, it seems like. I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit, too, since they were, you know, quite, quite a pair for a long period of time.

• 1:33:07Speaker 05

  Well, that was another one where, you know, I think as I began to explain to him what I knew about Marty, what he had already spoken about, he became more open about talking about the time that they lived together and stuff. And, and, uh, yeah, it was a song. I mean, he seemed so well. I couldn't believe that shortly thereafter, like, he died, like, not that far after that. I don't know if it was his last interview, but probably among the last ones. Um, yeah, that was a great interview. I mean, you know, the last Walt sequence in the film is one of my favorite sequences because it's just so pure. You know, the purity of his impulse. He's shooting New York, New York. And I love that. I love that line that Robbie says is like, the one thing Marty says, the one thing that big studios don't like when you're shooting a big studio picture is to go away and shoot

• 1:33:51Speaker 05

  another picture while you're shooting the first picture. And yet, like, he couldn't stop himself. That's sort of like that chapter of like, all this film is filming isn't healthy. And he really paints a portrait. And then there's that wonderful footage of them together in the seventies, which is just, you know, irreplaceable and precious. And, um, uh, so, yeah.

• 1:34:11Sean Fennessey?

  I love when, um, when Thelma Schoonmaker comes into the film, too. It does feel like she also has this kind of sense of what is really going on with Scorsese's work, you know, because she's side by side with him for so long. And it's basically been forced to look at more of what he has made than almost anybody. But even just that, that transition that you make in the film from his work on Woodstock, her coming into his life, even the style of filmmaking that you deploy, where it sort of feels like you're looking at Woodstock in that time is so interesting. What was it like, you know, chatting with her about working with him for 50 years?

• 1:34:51Speaker 05

  Well, I'm so glad that I shot her at the editing bay. I mean, I'm so happy with myself, you know, that she's just sitting there. She's able, because there's something about the way she watches when she's stopping it and talking about it. It's like a hawk, her eyes. I mean, it's really special to watch how she is, you know, and the level of intimacy that she has with the work, with him, having watched him through all these periods, just such a, it really is a beautiful testament to the collaborative nature of film. I mean, that you really, you know, Marty was, I do believe, like, it's a word I don't like very much, but I do think he was born like a genius. I do think that's true. But that alone would not have accounted for what happened.

• 1:35:35Speaker 05

  I mean, he needed to encounter these, what I think of as these angels in his life, and she's definitely one of those people, you know, that he could trust and that helped him make the work. De Niro is definitely one of them. DiCaprio becomes one of them, and then some of the people that actually allowed him get the money to do these things, you know, because you can't do it alone. And that's one of the more interesting things about it is I really wanted that sort of macro-micro. There's him and his talent and his life, but there's also the larger, the people who help him, and then the larger culture that's developing and changing in the country as time goes on.

• 1:36:12Sean Fennessey?

  You gave a significant amount of time to almost every film that he made, which is part of just the absolute joy of watching this, is hearing the stories, hearing the mechanics of how it's made. You mentioned De Palma earlier. There's a really interesting documentary about him that is much shorter, and there are so many movies that I wish they had spent more time on in the De Palma doc. Was there anything in your movie that you wish you could have lingered on more, or you felt like you had so much material, but you just couldn't find a way to make the time for it?

• 1:36:42Speaker 05

  Not for this movie, if you know what I mean, because this movie really is. I mean, yes, there's a couple of places where, oh, I'm like, oh, should we should. Is there a way we could have sort of shoo here and something in that we took out. But basically, this movie lives and dies on how the life is affecting the art and the art is affecting the life. It's like this tango that goes back and forth. And when we ran that, there's a certain, and there's only so much life. You know, there's like, and there's, and it was like the films that really had the biggest effect on him. Or which life most affected are the ones that are most effective in the film, if you know what I mean. So if like, sometimes it's surprising, like Shutter Island becomes a very important film because he has this sort of semi breakdown.

• 1:37:27Speaker 05

  And it's a kind of hinge to the rest of his life. I mean, they're, they're, they're, they're, you know, so, you know, we do discuss deeply 32 films, which is a lot of films, but The Man has made even more films. So, but, but we basically, I do feel that we, we, thank God, we got into a lot of them. And there is a sequence, like, for example, about how he kind of rescued Michael Powell and the love story between Thelma Schumacher and Michael Powell, which is a beautiful little bit, it became almost like a little film in itself that was like a cul-de-sac. So I was like, I still want to actually put that out somehow as its own little film.

• 1:38:08Speaker 05

  That's an example of it just couldn't, you know, it just didn't fit into this film.

• 1:38:15Sean Fennessey?

  Right. I, I still, I still would take a 10 hour version of this, if I'm being totally honest with you.

• 1:38:21Sean Fennessey?

  The other thing is that you're able to show this incredible aspect of his personal life near the end of the film, which is something that maybe you hear about, but you, we've never really seen and is incredibly intimate and is such a humanizing capstone on the piece. And I'm, I'm a kind of amazed, just as a longtime fan, that he was willing to open up his world in that way. And I was hoping you could kind of talk about how you decided to do that, how you were able to spend time in his home at that, at this stage of his life.

• 1:38:53Speaker 05

  His family was all, they were all very willing and open to talk, including Helen, his wife, and wanted to be part of it. And I think that they wanted to be seen, you know, as, because it's so important. And I really thought it was so important because, you know,

• 1:39:15Speaker 05

  you can't really understand a person just on their own, you know, in their office with their work. It doesn't work like that. People are not, people are rounded figures, you know? And it was very important, it was hugely important to me that you see the arc of his life. And, and his life now, that you're describing and that that's sort of like in the film is so important. And I think he somehow knew that. But also, that desire to, to, to be in the film came also from Helen, you know? So it just sort of unfolded that way. That's how the whole thing unfolded. Like, none of it was preordained. It kind of like, I didn't know where we were going. I just had this really strong instinct that I had to make this film.

• 1:40:00Speaker 05

  And thank God, he agreed with me. And then we just walked into the dark together. I mean, really, like, just, I followed the breadcrumbs.

• 1:40:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's very, it's very beautiful, what you've done at the end. By the time you finished, what was the most surprising thing you learned about him or his work or really anything in that world?

• 1:40:17Speaker 05

  So hard for me to answer the question because it's almost endless, the things that I learned. I mean, it's like, I, I don't even remember what I was like before I started the film anyway, because I learned so many things about filmmaking, about like, thinking about how to shoot a sequence, about working with actors, you know, about the influences, the turning points, how many times he was really almost left for dead by the industry, or really didn't look like he was ever going to break in, or... You know, thought that he'd finally broken in and then was sort of told that what he had done was really worthless and then he had to start to get, I mean, fired from his

• 1:40:58Speaker 05

  first, you know, film. There were so many things that, that, that I didn't, you know, know. And also was fascinated by the development of his relationships, you know, the, how, how different he is now in some ways. Like, I think in some ways, he's exactly the boy that he was when he was seven and going, you know, going to these movie theaters because he could breathe in, in, in Manhattan when it was so hot and no air conditioning. And that person is still there. But then you look at some of these, his persona and how dark he was in some ways, you know, there's a real difference. And it's very interesting as a protagonist. Somebody yesterday talked about him as a protagonist, like just looking at it as a film, you know, just saying it's a film, like never mind the documentary.

• 1:41:43Speaker 05

  He's a fascinating protagonist.

• 1:41:45Sean Fennessey?

  He has all these trials that we know a lot about, but then there's a whole host of others that we don't. One of my, the other things that I love is just essentially seeing that he was storyboarding movies at such a young age, that like at seven years old, he has this camera brain that like perfectly unfolds a story, which to me is just completely, that's just madness, you know, that somebody can think in that way.

• 1:42:09Speaker 05

  And that's where I say that that's genius. I mean, that's like, what the hell is that? You know, because he understood film language and could think in that dimension. And it's so, it's wonderful. That, one of my first things I, I thought when we were first sitting there, he's looking at his little storyboards, you know, that he'd done when he was little. And he's like, I'm still trying to do that, this shot.

• 1:42:26Sean Fennessey?

  I love that.

• 1:42:29Speaker 05

  We have to animate these storyboards. Because like, you know, and then you see all the times he's still doing it. And it's like, my God, you know, he, he was kind of born fully formed in some ways and just had to take his whole life to realize a vision that really was born as in his childhood.

• 1:42:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's really special. Rebecca, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing they have seen? I know you've been watching a lot of Scorsese over the last five years, so I assume it was not a Scorsese movie. Have you seen anything else good recently?

• 1:43:01Speaker 05

  I thought Marty Supreme was really good.

• 1:43:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Were you there on Monday?

• 1:43:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:43:06Sean Fennessey?

  I, it was so fun, wasn't it? What did you like about it, without spoiling it for the folks who haven't seen it yet?

• 1:43:13Speaker 05

  I loved the energy. I felt like it was very, it had the energy of the person who made it, like, deep inside. And I really, and I also really liked the message about masculinity. I thought it was kind of beautiful. But, you know, like, I love that.

• 1:43:27Sean Fennessey?

  I couldn't agree more. Rebecca Miller, congrats. Thanks so much for doing the show.

• 1:43:32Speaker 05

  Thank you. So nice to meet you.

• 1:43:39Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Rebecca Miller. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Thanks to Amanda. Amanda, you will not be on the next episode because it's about the Black Phone 2.

• 1:43:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Sick.

• 1:43:48Sean Fennessey?

  And the best horror movies of the year. You've seen a few of them. You saw, you saw Weapons.

• 1:43:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I did.

• 1:43:53Sean Fennessey?

  You saw Sinners.

• 1:43:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I did.

• 1:43:55Sean Fennessey?

  You wrote Final Destination: Bloodlines.

• 1:43:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. I have seen one scene from it.

• 1:43:59Sean Fennessey?

  You did. Oh, yeah, you did. That's right.

• 1:44:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And I was the science corner consultant for that. So everything having to do with magnetic fields.

• 1:44:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And that's why it's so accurate, so realistic to what would actually happen. CR will be joining me for that episode, and we will see you then.

• 1:44:32Speaker 06

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• 1:45:03Speaker 07

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