‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’ and the ‘Music Biopic’ Mount Rushmore

Sean and Amanda are joined by Chris Ryan and Yasi Salek to head over to 'State Trooper' town and cover Scott Cooper’s ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,’ starring Jeremy Allen White. They unanimously agree that the movie is overwhelmingly unsuccessful, then dive into why it lacks dramatic stakes (1:42). Later, they hypothesize its box office potential and Academy Awards chances (36:20) before having a conversation about music biopics at large, where they share their personal favorites, as well as ones they hope to never see made (44:00). Finally, Sean and Amanda briefly cover Mary Bronstein’s new film ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ (1:00:48), before Bronstein herself joins the show. She walks through the long and arduous process of getting the movie made, speaks on why she needed to make this movie and the urgency behind her message, and shares insight on her deeply personal connection to the material (1:07:46). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Chris Ryan, Yasi Salek, and Mary Bronstein 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.

• 0:09Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessy.

• 0:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 0:11Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Pictureate Conversation Show about the boss. Today on the show, Chris Ryan and Yasi Salek join Amanda and me to talk about Springsteen "Deliver Me From Nowhere," the latest in a long line of musician biopics. This one's about Bruce Springsteen and the making of the album Nebraska, which you can see adorned on Chris Ryan's long-sleeved t-shirt right now.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  I'm gatekeeping where I got this.

• 0:32Amanda Dobbins?

  What was I gonna say? Oh, okay.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Was it the internet?

• 0:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Got it.

• 0:36Sean Fennessey?

  Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Mary Bronstein. She is the writer-director of "If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You," which is an extraordinary showcase for the absolute terror of being a mother in this world, and features an incredible performance from Rose Byrne. Amanda and I will talk about the movie a little bit after our conversation about Springsteen as well. Stick around for that. But now, let's go to State Trooper Town. Deliver Me From Nowhere. This episode is presented by LinkedIn Ads.

• 1:04Amanda Dobbins?

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• 1:28Amanda Dobbins?

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• 1:42Sean Fennessey?

  Deliver Me From Nowhere. This is a new feature film from writer-director Scott Cooper, who, CR, has been holding his Cooper stock for...

• 1:49Speaker 02

  I still am.

• 1:50Sean Fennessey?

  ...roughly 15 years. The film is based on "Deliver Me From Nowhere," which is a 2023 nonfiction book written by Warren Zanes about the making of Nebraska in this particular period, roughly 1981 in Bruce Springsteen's life and the aftermath of the River album. And Jeremy Allen White stars in it as Bruce. Jeremy Strong appears in the film. Paul Walter Hauser, Odessa Young as a composite character of several women in Bruce Springsteen's life.

• 2:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yasi, why don't I start with you?

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22Sean Fennessey?

  You're the host of Band Splain. The last time you were here, we talked about a music biopic, right?

• 2:29Amanda Dobbins?

  We did. What is it called? Stuncasting?

• 2:31Sean Fennessey?

  Better. No, you're not stuncasting.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  You're also a Christmas episode.

• 2:35Amanda Dobbins?

  But that was also, it was Better Man and Paddington.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:39Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 2:39Amanda Dobbins?

  No, that was separate. The last time she was here was Paddington and Bridget Jones' Diary. So do not type past Yasi.

• 2:45Sean Fennessey?

  Sort of an artist biopic in a different way.

• 2:47Amanda Dobbins?

  She contains multitudes.

• 2:49Sean Fennessey?

  You're not stuncasting, you're a category expert. And that's why you're here.

• 2:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 2:53Sean Fennessey?

  What did you think of Deliver Me From Nowhere?

• 2:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, I'm sorry. No, before we even talk, I can see your notes. And I can just see all of the bullet points. This is single-spaced.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  Okay, I'm challenging myself to begin with a compliment.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, good.

• 3:10Speaker 03

  As you know.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Lead with love.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Yes, lead with love. I loved Better Man. And I do love and admire when people try to do something different than the typical thing.

• 3:28Sean Fennessey?

  Why are you speaking so slowly?

• 3:31Amanda Dobbins?

  That is not what the first does. Give me the notes and let me read the first bullet point.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  I just, I felt like, I was like, okay, it's cool. It's not a cradle to the grave. I genuinely thought that perhaps they were trying to do something artsy with the way it was shot, with the black and white. I don't, was it effective? No, but did they try? Yes. So that is my initial compliment.

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• 5:32Sean Fennessey?

  Are you trying to not get aggregated right now?

• 5:35Speaker 03

  No, I was, like I told you, I'm challenging myself to begin.

• 5:39Sean Fennessey?

  That isn't the goal of this show.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  Well, unfortunately, this film has pushed me into becoming a well actually guy because I have two pages of well actually.

• 5:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm sorry, I just saw that one section of the notes is women in all caps. And then there's one bullet point and then an empty second bullet point.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Right, because I was like, wow, this podcast has two lead females and there's simply one, and one at all female character in this movie.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  There's Gabby Hoffman, the mom.

• 6:12Speaker 03

  Oh, sure.

• 6:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:13Sean Fennessey?

  There's also, um.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. The lady that says mm hmm.

• 6:16Sean Fennessey?

  John Landau's wife.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  She puts on moisturizing cream at one point.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:21Sean Fennessey?

  We've all been there.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Mimi Gama.

• 6:23Sean Fennessey?

  Chatting with our spouse.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Meryl Streep's daughter.

• 6:25Sean Fennessey?

  Amanda, what did you think of The Movie From Nowhere?

• 6:27Amanda Dobbins?

  You absolutely undersold this, dog. Like, you saw this Italian ride before all of us and you were like, well, it didn't work for me. And there's, as I said to you, it didn't work for me. And there's, this is not a movie, which this is straight up not a movie. The three of us saw it together, uh, which was really pleasant. And I don't want, I, I'm, I'm sorry to make light of a film that is, if it's about anything, is, I guess, about depression.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, but we were giggling throughout at the, like, the absolute silliness.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  We were disruptive.

• 7:03Amanda Dobbins?

  And the, the cliche nature of, of this movie. Like, in some ways, I'm almost grateful for it. If we're gonna, if we're gonna do a compliment, if we're gonna lead with love or, you know, silver lining. This takes a lot of the pressure and hatred away from Walk the Line, which is a movie I actually like. Because this film was made after Walk Hard and is remaking the Walk Hard cliches, like, almost to a scene while they've already been pointed out cinematically. So now I feel like I can just, like, walk the line and be like, well, it is what it is, but this, this is silly. I thought this was silly.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  It's tough, having seen the movie with them. Because I can't act like I didn't snort laugh when Flare O'Connor's collected story showed up. I'll put it this way, this is one of my favorite albums. This movie is about the making of Nebraska. Nebraska is one of my favorite albums. I really, really like Bruce Springsteen a lot. I think there are people who know more about him and like him more. Um, I, over the last couple of days, I've been reading the book, as has Yasi. So I reversed myself in what was going on at this time. The early eighties specifically is one of my favorite periods of pop music to read about and to hear about and to see depicted. And I think it's just, one of the hardest things they would have had to have done is pull

• 8:29Speaker 02

  off Jeremy Allen White having a convincing Bruce Springsteen impersonation and his singing voice and all the playing and stuff like that. And I thought that was gonna be the biggest bar, but it turns out the biggest bar was, maybe there just wasn't a movie in this.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  And maybe it was just like a cool idea at a cool time.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  Can I just disagree?

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  Not, sorry to be earnest, goes to camp, but I really believe that music biopics can always be good. And I just, that's why I'm so let down when they're bad. Cause I think this is like one of the most compelling and rich things in the world is the mythology of a musician that people have connected with so much. And again, I do this for a living. Like, I find a story everywhere. Like, it's wonderful stuff. And that's why I'm always so, I think there was a movie there. You read the book, right?

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  The book, again in my notes, I was just like, thing after thing where I was like, you just left this on the table, man. Like, there's a direct-

• 9:29Sean Fennessey?

  Can you give me an example of that? Cause I haven't read the book.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Well, so Warren's, the thesis of the book, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, is, and, is, this is the biggest left turn in pop music culture, pop music history, is that this guy is on the precipice of stardom. He's got these songs bubbling up that will become Born in the USA, but what he decides to do is so radical and, you know, even for, given who he was and given the platform that he had, pretty revolutionary to choose to do this. It's like a reverse going electric, right, for Dylan. And that's not what this movie's about at all. It's about your dad in depression and trying to like, deal with like-

• 10:07Amanda Dobbins?

  And can we get the technological specs exactly right to make this movie?

• 10:11Speaker 03

  You guys heard of a portrait studio? It was a real like, hey fellow Guitar Center guys, let me list out every piece of equipment. I just, okay, let me ask you guys a question. When you go into a music biopic, what do you, what do you want from it?

• 10:24Sean Fennessey?

  If I wasn't doing this for a living, I wouldn't be going to music biopics. I mean, that's a longstanding point of view for me.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  Only because they're bad. But if you were going and you were gonna get what you wanted from it, what would it do?

• 10:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think a deeper understanding of what the artist is trying to accomplish and understanding what the dramatic stakes are for the artist at that moment in time.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 10:44Sean Fennessey?

  I think that this movie is like really sincerely trying to present what the filmmakers believe are dramatic stakes, which is that it's this huge left turn and that you can see all of the other characters are worried about the future of Bruce Springsteen's stardom. Maybe some of that is his artistic merit and popularity, but mostly it's money, right? That this is like an art versus commerce narrative.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  This guy's going to the moon.

• 11:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I don't think the movie really communicates a lot of that stuff well, but this is a, it is literally a movie about an artist at work. I think actually the artist at work stuff, it's a testimony to why this is so hard to do because you know, even if you haven't read the Zane's book, that Bruce Springsteen was inspired by Flannery O'Connor. He was inspired by Badlands. He was inspired by Night of the Hunter. He was inspired by this kind of desperate, stark Gothic period of American popular culture. And that's cool, but it is not, to your point, terribly cinematic. And it obviously commits the crazy sin of like, let's put two of the most important movies of the 20th century on screens.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Psychotic.

• 11:48Sean Fennessey?

  So we can tell you, like, we can show you clearly how this movie is not as good as that movie.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:53Sean Fennessey?

  I don't have the same relationship to Bruce. And I think one of the reasons why, when I came out of my screening at Telluride and we did the pod about the movie, I was, I would say, there were a few, there were very few dissenters coming out of that screening. It was like a hot premiere at that festival. I literally, Oprah Winfrey was standing behind me in line to get into the movie. Like Bruce was there. It was a very warm crowd, an older crowd at that festival. And everybody came out being like, Jeremy Allen White killed it. And God, I love some of those songs. And I think that was just enough for people. And I do think that that may be enough for people with this movie. But the one thing that it does is what you were describing,

• 12:34Sean Fennessey?

  which is that Jeremiah White like does actually nail Bruce Springsteen being Bruce Springsteen onstage.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  The two times that this movie leaves Earth are when they play Born to Run.

• 12:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Which they do in the first five minutes.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  It literally looks like they sold out like a stadium and have all these extras. And the band is the E Street Band. You're just like, I can't, that guy looks like Max Weinberg and is drumming like him.

• 12:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Some of them are from Greta Van Fleet, I believe.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Really? And then the other moment is when he's playing Born in the USA in the studio.

• 13:03Sean Fennessey?

  That is the one scene where I was like, why would you show it to me if I cannot have it?

• 13:06Amanda Dobbins?

  If I can't have it.

• 13:07Sean Fennessey?

  It's a fascinating choice to do that, but it almost feels like an act of cruelty to the audience. And I think Cooper is trying to say something. He's trying to make you feel the way that everyone else in Springsteen's cohort felt in that sequence. Right? That's like, we all know that you are about to be Bruce Springsteen. Why can't you just go there?

• 13:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 13:28Sean Fennessey?

  But you shouldn't like punish the audience to make your point. And it does feel like they're kind of punishing you in this movie by not letting you have the fun of a great Bruce Springsteen moment.

• 13:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Well, and the movie does also doesn't deliver on what it is that makes Bruce Springsteen that the movie's interested in want to do that. And it doesn't like, it doesn't develop the character and the motivation. So you aren't paid off for being punished by being like, okay, but like at the end, we got this amazing thing. Instead, it like literally goes to like some, you know, record printing store and is like, I'm going to do the grooves differently or whatever.

• 14:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  And that honestly, I would have taken like 40 more minutes of the grooves over some of the flashback.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  And so like, I think that kind of gets into an interesting part about this where.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  You know, Complete Unknown was really interesting because obviously like they do that almost as a jukebox musical where like you get all these Dylan performances and all these iconic moments in his career. This one almost seemed to be resisting Springsteen's music and it felt a little bit more like two guys coming towards the end of their lives who kind of are dictating what, how they want to be remembered and what they wish they would have said, you know, over probably how it actually worked and how it was actually happening. And that speaks to their relationship with the composite character that's Faye Romano, who's like Bruce Springsteen's girlfriend at the time.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  A woman.

• 14:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Who stands in for, he's emotionally unavailable, you know?

• 14:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. Do you think it's worth it to be a terrible partner in service of making a great piece of art?

• 15:07Speaker 02

  Um.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Are you pro that? I feel like you've been on record about that.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  I feel like I've definitely enjoyed a lot of art that happened by terrible partners, which is made by terrible partners.

• 15:16Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, think of Neil McCauley. Not the best partner in the world, but awesome thief.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  That's right. Um, but yeah, like I, I just think this thing that I love about Bruce Springsteen is how he makes very specific detailed storytelling into like universal themes and universal emotions. And, um, this movie felt like the inverse of that. It was a very generic story and a very generic scenes. Like you get to the end of scenes and you'd be like, what was, what was that scene about? That scene was about him looking out at a lake or that scene was about him driving back and forth somewhere.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  It didn't ring true because it wasn't, right? Like, again, I was so mad after I read the book because I was like, well, okay, if it's not going to be the platonic ideal of a music biopic, which is the, the Bob Dylan one, which was like, this is fine, right? This is the best possible version of this, then you have to like, show me what the inner workings of this man was when he was making. Bruce Springsteen lived with his grandparents. He says point blank in this book, Nebraska is about my grandparents, not my parents. We did, did we see one grandma? One grandpa in there? His aunt died right before he was born. It was like a specter of a ghost upon his life that created, talks about, where was the, you know, like,

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  If you're, if you're Nebraska head.

• 16:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Aunt's ghost. Yeah.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Where was the aunt's ghost? I would have rather the aunt's ghost.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Paranormal activities, Springsteen. Out in the Pine Barrens.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  Alan Vega and Bruce Springsteen knew each other.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  They had met before Nebraska was made. They had a friendship. What did we get? A scene where he's laying on the floor blasting Suicide? Pan to the album cover, Suicide. Rhodey walks in, "What you listening to, boss? It's called Suicide."

• 17:08Sean Fennessey?

  Well, the problem with that is, Chris, we were talking about this a little bit yesterday. A movie like this, which is actually quite interested in the specific details that people like us like to cite when we talk about artists and what they do, is when you show that to people who care and already know, it feels like obvious bad storytelling. And when you show it to a general audience, it's just baffling.

• 17:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, it makes no sense.

• 17:29Sean Fennessey?

  If you don't have context for Suicide or Night of the Hunter, what does that even really mean in the movie?

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I would say that like the basic storytelling in this movie, besides that's Bruce Springsteen and, you know, you know, born in the USA, is, is boring and coherent to the point that I turned to you 90 minutes into the movie and was like, who is that guy about one of the main characters? And you were like, I have no idea. And I'll be honest, right now, I forgot to Google it. So who was that guy?

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Um, I'm trying to remember because I feel like it was more than once.

• 18:02Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like a friend?

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Oh, it's the guy who's driving him.

• 18:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, who's driving him?

• 18:07Speaker 03

  You want to hear about an amazing filmic detail that they could have put in the thing? The entire drive, that friend had gone through a breakup, was in a terrible state and was holding a huge teddy bear. Wouldn't I have liked to see that? I'm just like, Sean said that I couldn't have directed and written a better version of this. And I do feel like I could have.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  How do you underestimate her?

• 18:27Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mean, you just have no background whatsoever in filmmaking. I didn't, it wasn't because I think that you're not good at the things that you do. The bar is a little bit. Um, I, this is not a successful movie. Like, it really doesn't work. And it, what enervated me about it when I saw it was that it is attempting to be the opposite of Walk Hard, and it inadvertently commits every sin. Like, the flashback stuff is so bad.

• 18:52Amanda Dobbins?

  It happened in the first five minutes also.

• 18:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 18:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And you and I turned to each other, and we were just like, uh-oh.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Well, I remember we had a conversation about the trailer, and I think I said, oh, but that'll probably only be like, the first 10 minutes of the movie is like a flashback to Bruce Springsteen's childhood. It kind of sets up what, like, complicated feelings he has about this older generation of people. And I did not expect it to be at least half the film. Um, and Stephen Graham's on a heater right now, I understand it. Honestly, it's just a, kind of a total waste to Stephen Graham and Gabby Hoffman.

• 19:24Sean Fennessey?

  Waste.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  If you're gonna make a movie and put them in it, you might as well. And it's like, weirdly, like, Gabby Hoffman's on the phone a lot, calling him, but is not appearing, so I almost wonder whether that's stitched together, like, we need to make this work, so we'll do-

• 19:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Some connective tissue.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  -ADR, Gabby Hoffman's calling Jeremy Allen White stuff.

• 19:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, it's like, also, like, did you need to shoehorn in a love story? You had a love story, it was him and his manager. You know, like-

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:49Amanda Dobbins?

  What's the most beautiful, one of the most, there's so many threads you could've pulled that would've made a better movie, but like, the beauty of Don Lando having been a critic and like, rescuing Bruce by becoming a second manager and always believing in him, and like, that, they, I think they like glanced at that a couple times.

• 20:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they don't really over explain that, and maybe like, that might've been helpful context for audiences, that they actually have a very unique dynamic. That being said- That would make it a movie about an artist and a manager. I mean, that also is not a movie.

• 20:24Speaker 03

  It could have been.

• 20:24Sean Fennessey?

  There's something very beautiful about the relationship that those guys still have. Like, I really think that's quite cool that somebody who's basically responsible for making sure that the business works, understands his artist's creativity and greatness, and that he's always been a great advocate because he has a background in understanding artists.

• 20:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:39Sean Fennessey?

  But that's also not a movie. I'm, I'm, that's a, that's a commerce story, you know? That's about being the middleman, protecting you from the influence of a record label and like, it's not even really that severe. Like, the David Crumholtz character, that critical scene when they play Nebraska for him.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:56Sean Fennessey?

  And he's like.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  He's like, it's all like this?

• 20:58Sean Fennessey?

  And he's just like, ah, this is not great. I was like, what are you gonna do? Like, he doesn't have enough power to tell Bruce Springsteen to go back in the studio. They just kind of accept it. And then the great triumph of the movie is like, this movie, or this album didn't have a single on it, but it still went to number three on the charts and has gone on to be iconic. And it's like, I know, we know.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  Great tidbit in the book.

• 21:18Sean Fennessey?

  We can't believe.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Where John Lando's like, and Bruce called me after, and he never asks about the charts, and he asked about the charts because he actually did care. And I was like, that could have been a good thing to put in for me to understand.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  He made a music video for Atlantic City.

• 21:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  You know, like, there, it was.

• 21:33Sean Fennessey?

  His first music video, right?

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Music video, that would have been interesting. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that would have been interesting if they had done basically a docudrama version of this. I think another huge challenge to this, and I was trying to like, build like, a similar to Yasi, like, leave the love, like, try and make a defense or a case for this movie. I was like, okay, so here's my case is, not unlike Bruce Springsteen watching Badlands on TV one night and he gets inspired by the Starkweather story, Scott Cooper is watching Badlands and decides to make a malachy, impressionistic, kind of wandering, um, version of the Bruce Springsteen story that deals with memory and trauma and the natural world around Bruce Springsteen, and there's a lot of like, great scenery, but the narrative itself is kind of in the background. But that's a huge challenge.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  If that would have taken so much more of a leap to be like, this isn't really about Bruce Springsteen, this is about art and inspiration.

• 22:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. And if you do it that way, then please leave the like, you're an idiot exposition at home. That was, like, you either do that and leave it pretty like, challenging and interesting and open to interpretation, but they were just hammering you in the head with this exposition, as we talked about, John Lando talking to his wife. A departure.

• 22:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 03

  It is, yeah.

• 22:52Sean Fennessey?

  I think the intentions of the movie-

• 22:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I just kept waiting, like, is she gonna get to speak on the last cut to her? And no.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  She's in the Marc Baron cut.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. Marc Baron, by the way, best part of the movie in my opinion. Like, all of a sudden, the movie came alive. I was like-

• 23:06Sean Fennessey?

  He has three lines of dialogue.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  And they were the best three lines.

• 23:08Amanda Dobbins?

  For a while, I thought it was a little bit of a bit, that he was just there and he wasn't talking. And I liked that, you know? There was a little bit of restraint.

• 23:15Sean Fennessey?

  I get the impression a lot was cut out from his performance. I-

• 23:19Speaker 02

  I was kind of like, there's two images from this movie that I really wanna take over as memes. One is the Gummer, uh, was it Mamie Gummer?

• 23:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, Mamie Gummer.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Uh, doing her creams at night, and I wanna have it be like-

• 23:30Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I think it's Gr- it's Gracie?

• 23:32Speaker 03

  Oh, the Grace?

• 23:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's Grace. I don't think it's Mamie.

• 23:34Speaker 03

  I'm so sorry. Apologies.

• 23:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, apologies.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Mrs. Mark Ronson.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Her doing her creams at night, and it's like, me explaining to my wife the Chauncey Billups poker scandal.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  And then the other is just like Jeremy, uh, Jeremy Strong, listening to the headphones, and it's just like, the watch starts playing.

• 23:53Sean Fennessey?

  I'm glad you were generating memes.

• 23:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Those are really good memes.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Can I ask you guys a question, a real question?

• 23:59Sean Fennessey?

  What questions have you been asking before this?

• 24:01Speaker 03

  Absolutely false ones.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  Where do you land on VO in general in films? I'm, I'm very into VO, and all I kept thinking-

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Like, voiceover?

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Yes, voiceover.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  Was like, oh, you could've done a lot.

• 24:15Sean Fennessey?

  I think it depends on the quality of the writing, and this script suggests that the quality of the writing would not have been strong. That this is a deeply overwritten movie.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  You can tell what it's-

• 24:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Wholesale from his book.

• 24:25Amanda Dobbins?

  What is part of the text of the movie and the script, and is being used as a device.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And then you can also tell-

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, there's a lot of times where it's like, wow, we didn't have anything, so now we're trying to paper over extra with some voiceover.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  I just feel like people avoid it because they feel it's hack or something, when it can really-

• 24:41Sean Fennessey?

  Well, there are a lot of examples where you can see movies have been Frankensteined, back together with the aid of voiceover. This is, this is such a perspective-driven film about a person alone, and it could've helped.

• 24:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know.

• 24:55Sean Fennessey?

  To me, I think you're right ultimately that there's just not really a true dramatic thrust to this movie. That makes it feel like anything is really on the line, like even.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Well, I think to your point about like the crowd at Tally Ride and you said it was an older crowd is I was talking about this with Craig Horlback as we were coming into the studio and because he had seen it last night. And he was like, man, I just think that generation just are never going to get over their dads. You know, and the idea that like, I was actually pretty surprised. I had, I don't think I read a lot about what this movie was about. So when we get like two thirds in and I'm like, is this movie about him being diagnosed with depression? Like I was kind of surprised, but also like, I'm like, that is not what I thought we were getting at all. And they don't even see the word depression until the title card.

• 25:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  After the film where they're like, he's struggled with depression his whole life, but with help and hope, like he's figured it out.

• 25:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Never again without help.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  But it is, there is still like that generation of people who are around Springsteen's age who are like, I did not, therapy was not popular. Like I did not.

• 25:58Sean Fennessey?

  I was just saying this to them right before you got here, that there is like a therapy 1.0 quality to the Bruce Springsteen experience. I really respect that about him and that he has spent the last 20 years kind of like reexamining his success and the things that he's done in his life that he's not happy with. He's made like several documentaries now about the makings of his albums. He's written books. Like he is really going deep.

• 26:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, like that is wonderful for him. I am a disciple of therapy. I believe in it and I believe in SSRIs and it is bad for art. Like it is great for the artist and really, really boring for art. And we have seen it again and again. It is bad for the tension. It is bad for the dialogue. It like for literally the things that are said. Scott Cooper gives one of those welcome to, you know, deliver me from nowhere speeches, which went on for so long that I don't think voiceover would have been good. Yes. And but you know, he says, he says trauma like twice in that introduction.

• 26:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And again, it's like the point of therapy is to be able to like name and deal with your trauma. It's amazing for a human being, but like. It obviates the art. So it's, this is, this is, this is bad therapy culture movie.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  I used to think that probably one of the more difficult things you would do if you were making a movie about music, or making a movie about a writer, would be to depict them convincingly making that thing. So whether it would be fictional, like the, the wonders in that thing you do. It's like, that song has to be good enough that you want to listen to it 10 times in the movie. Or if it's Dylan and just Chalamet has to convince you that he's Dylan.

• 27:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  But I think the thing that I really struggled with is in this movie was watching someone get inspired. Because that's something I think you can do effectively. Like, there's a really beautiful episode of The Bear, I think from season two, but it might have been three, where Sidney goes all over Chicago and tries all these different foods and starts like writing down in her notebook, like the different like ideas and architecture and how that's influencing what she wants to do with some of her cooking. And so it's possible to hit it. But this was kind of like, he opens Flannery O'Connor's book, reads two paragraphs, and then starts writing down like-

• 28:11Amanda Dobbins?

  It was like one to one.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  It was like, everything was a one to one.

• 28:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Are we allowed to talk about the notebook now?

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, just like-

• 28:18Sean Fennessey?

  You're a person of free will.

• 28:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I mean, so much of the, this structural making of this movie rests on Bruce Springsteen writing in a notebook and then you seeing what he's writing. Double album question mark. Why? Question mark. And then my personal favorite, which is when he's writing the lyrics to Nebraska, and they're in third person, and then he crosses out the he and writes I, and crosses out the him and writes me.

• 28:45Sean Fennessey?

  It reminded me a lot of The Whiteboard in a Quiet Place, which has been memed to death. Where it's sort of like, they can't hear, but why? But we're like, two years into the apocalypse. Um, yeah, it's, it's just not good writing. I don't know that there is a way to do that if you're not going to make a purposefully impressionistic film. Like, The Bear can get away with that because that's a show that, one, is episodic and has a lot of time to tell its story. And two, is pretty audacious in the way that it changes the kind of storytelling it's doing, episode to episode. Sometimes it doesn't work as well as others, but it's cool.

• 29:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, it's run out there a little bit.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  In terms and I, you know, I personally have run out of patience of watching Jeremy Allen White have demons, but not say a word about them on screen.

• 29:25Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to go to the performances next. So that's a good segue to, you know, Carmy.

• 29:30Speaker 03

  And I don't think.

• 29:30Sean Fennessey?

  Making the transition here to movie stardom.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  It's his fault, but it's like another thing where the character is not written besides looking anguished.

• 29:38Sean Fennessey?

  Brooding.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, brooding.

• 29:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 03

  And.

• 29:41Sean Fennessey?

  Like, that is a vein of movie stardom, right? That you like, you have a thing that you are the best at. And that like silent, distant stare, that pained stare, like that is something that other actors in history have become stars with those kinds of tools, you know, like Montgomery Clift was an actor who had that kind of a quality. But it feels like very, it does feel like Carmy like landed in Bruce Springsteen's life.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  And put in some Wes Borland contacts and called it.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  That's a tough comp. I can't unsee that now.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  I'm sorry. It was giving Wes Borland to me the whole time.

• 30:13Sean Fennessey?

  Did you watch The Bear?

• 30:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:16Sean Fennessey?

  Did you think Jeremy Allen White was it was good in the film?

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I did. I thought he did a good job. Like, I think, I think he's a good actor. I mean, there's, there's some parts where I'm always like, oh, he didn't have to go like so hard in the Bruce Springsteen like mouth movement when you're singing or whatever. But I, I think it's fine. That's what you do or whatever. I thought he was, my whole thing, I thought Jeremy Strong was good too, but I was just kind of like, you don't have a lot of work to work with. Yeah.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  Agree.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, I thought Jeremy Allen White was good as this version of Bruce Springsteen, you know, like, is there like, I can't even think of a comp like would, would Josh O'Connor or Miles Teller have done something different with the part?

• 30:57Sean Fennessey?

  Miles Teller, you say?

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Well, I'm trying to think of guys who could feasibly look like Bruce Springsteen.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. I just feel like, again, one of my biggest things with music biopics is that they always choose one tone. And that is the tone of the film and we will not stray from that tone. And it's never when you're, when you're, it doesn't feel real because people are not one note. Bruce Springsteen didn't sit for like four years and be like.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  Oh, you know who I am? Wish I knew. I'm sure he cracked a joke now and again, like I'm just like, and I think the most effective ones for me show a few different sides of a person.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  And this one was just Mr. Depressed, wrote a notebook, can't commit to composite woman.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Can we talk a little bit about the Odessa Young character?

• 31:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Just because, so this is a, this is an amalgamation or composite of a couple of women that he was.

• 31:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think multiple women that he was dating in this period in his life. One of whom it seems had a child.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  Must have. Invented that.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  I thought that that was like a really strange choice to, to make that like basically the centerpiece of the film outside of the father. Not because I was like, I can't believe you're leaving or anything like that. Like I, I thought that was fine, but that was the place where I felt like.

• 32:17Sean Fennessey?

  You think men should leave women with children?

• 32:19Speaker 02

  No, I just felt like I could feel the fingerprints of Bruce Springsteen on like, this is what I'm comfortable sharing, but then I can't get too specific about like the details of these relationships because I'm not there. I don't know if you've read other Bruce Springsteen, like his biography.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  He doesn't get specific about it. I didn't read the whole thing, but I went through those. And he talks about leaving one woman to go to LA and I think all that she said, he says that she's like 21. No name or anything.

• 32:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think Odessa Young's trying her best to give life to an underwritten character who is basically defined as like, I really like Chuck Berry and have a kid.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  I'm cool. I mean, manic pixie, New Jersey girl.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  You're a Chuck Berry fan?

• 33:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Great.

• 33:03Sean Fennessey?

  Bedrock of rock and roll.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:06Sean Fennessey?

  Movie's not successful. Jeremy Strong, you know, one of my guys, I'll support him to the death. Didn't think this was his best work. I thought it was like very self-conscious in a way that it was a little distracting. And I know that that's kind of his bag, but it needs to have like some flair to it. It needs to be Roy Cohn. It needs to be a character with some absurdity. John Landau is by all accounts like a very warm, good guy and that's not.

• 33:32Speaker 03

  There's no warmth in this movie. There's no charisma. There's, except for like. Except for Marc Maron. Maron sitting there. Yeah. And even he is not allowed to speak, but I, I think. You know, to Yasi's point, it's that's flat, but also is not in line, keeping with like the Bruce Springsteen we know, who even if he, you know, he was in a rough patch in his life, but like, that is an international, you know, icon.

• 33:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, a charisma machine.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  Exactly. Like, you could give us something.

• 34:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think, um, I just talking about the Scott Cooper, like, this is like five movies in a row that are just deathly self-serious and dull and overwritten. And this is just kind of the mode he's in. Like, there's been a couple of things I've enjoyed that he's done, but it's been a very long time. And Chris is bursting at the seams right now. He wants to defend Out of the Furnace.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  I like Out of the Furnace.

• 34:20Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he wants to defend Antlers, he wants to defend Hostels, you know.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Antlers has kind of some cool scenes, you don't think so?

• 34:28Sean Fennessey?

  No, I don't think it's successful, no. And it's fascinating that, like, Bruce Springsteen trusted him to tell this story. Like, did Bruce Springsteen watch Antlers? What would have happened here?

• 34:37Speaker 02

  No, I think he watched Out of the Furnace, though, which is essentially a Bruce Springsteen song.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  I heard an interview with him where he was talking about how it got made, and he said, Warren Zanes, by the way, we didn't even mention Warren Zanes also a musician that was in the Delphi, because he's very cool. But he, him and Scott Cooper came to ask about it, and Bruce Springsteen was like, I'm 76, I don't care what happens. Like, that was basically what he said. And I was like, okay, well, then that makes more sense.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  I guess I'm wrong about, like, Springsteen's influence over, like, the way.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  No, he is promoting it. He was on the couch.

• 35:05Sean Fennessey?

  Almost all the time. He is promoting it, for sure. I think he was, I think he's trying to thread that needle of, like, I want him as an artist to be able to do what he wants to do, because that's what I, that's what the movie is about. So it would be contradictory to try to control that. But Bruce Springsteen is a business at this point.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  He's got a really, Springsteen had a really cool quote around the time of the making of Nebraska, or maybe it was in retrospectively, looking back on the making of Nebraska, but he was just like, I felt like I was losing touch with the kind of people that I used to write about.

• 35:33Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  And that my songs were about, you know, and that it was like a moment where obviously he's about to become. Unable to go to diners and unable to.

• 35:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Go to the library and look at a lot of microfiche. And not even just about.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  That's just research.

• 35:47Sean Fennessey?

  That's honestly something I love to do and I miss that in my life deeply.

• 35:51Amanda Dobbins?

  But not even just about him feeling like, oh, I I'm too famous now. It was literally like I am, I have left the atmosphere that I lived in.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:02Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, and that wasn't even really.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Suggestions of it in the, some of the diners, you can see him like looking at guys like eating their, their breakfast or whatever. And you can kind of feel him.

• 36:13Sean Fennessey?

  His alienation.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  His alienation of like, I, I'm not like, I'm not going to be that guy probably.

• 36:17Amanda Dobbins?

  You can't eat breakfast anymore.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  I can't.

• 36:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:22Sean Fennessey?

  So the movie is tracking to make between 10 and 12 million dollars.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  There's also.

• 36:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Is that a lot?

• 36:27Speaker 02

  I just, I wanted to be like this in a diner.

• 36:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  There's one point where Jeremy Strong and Jeremy Allen White are in the diner and they seem to be either have had separately or splitting. A tuna melt and eggs over easy and onion rings. And I just want to say, I don't approve of that diner order.

• 36:43Sean Fennessey?

  That, that's a great order. What do you mean?

• 36:44Amanda Dobbins?

  What's wrong with that?

• 36:45Sean Fennessey?

  Tuna melt and onion rings and one of somebody else's.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  And eggs over easy.

• 36:49Sean Fennessey?

  You're in a diner. You gotta get eggs.

• 36:50Amanda Dobbins?

  We're splitting the eggs. Oh, no, you don't have to get eggs. You can if you want.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cause they won't ruin them. Andy needs to go to Jupiter and have your diner orders.

• 36:57Sean Fennessey?

  No, we need to go to the east coast of the United States of America where diner culture thrives.

• 37:02Amanda Dobbins?

  You're ordering a tuna melt and eggs?

• 37:04Sean Fennessey?

  I'm with Sean. But in a splitting scenario, sure.

• 37:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And you do eat tuna melts, even though, yeah, same, even though you're like against all of the ingredients individually together, their power is combined.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  But you're an anti-mayonnaise guy.

• 37:16Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and I, I eat bread.

• 37:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, right, but everything that goes into the tuna sauce, whatever. And cheese.

• 37:24Sean Fennessey?

  I love cheese.

• 37:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Real up and down relationship with.

• 37:26Sean Fennessey?

  I love it. It doesn't love me, but I'm doing my best to survive it. Um, I, I, I like that order and I support those two.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Okay, Andy ended up getting mozzarella sticks and black coffee. I'm just never going to get that order.

• 37:36Sean Fennessey?

  That also sounds great.

• 37:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that's a great order.

• 37:37Sean Fennessey?

  That sounds awesome.

• 37:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm with you on that. That's really gross.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  You guys are a real diner fascist over here. The whole point of a diner is like, the world is your oyster. Get whatever you want.

• 37:44Sean Fennessey?

  Precisely.

• 37:44Speaker 03

  Mix it up.

• 37:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I, it just doesn't go together, you know?

• 37:50Sean Fennessey?

  Box office for this movie, you kind of shouldn't make this movie unless it's gonna make money. And it seems like they've made a movie that isn't gonna make a lot of money, which then makes this like a very weird curio. This is one of the few subgenres of movies that we've talked about in the last 10 years that can kind of break through to adult audiences and reach them because they wanna go and hear Queen songs really loud, or Ray Charles songs, or Aretha Franklin songs, or Bob Dylan songs, as we saw last year. And it seems like this is not gonna do very well. It seems like Chainsaw Man is gonna take a chainsaw to this movie at the box office this weekend. Anybody seen Chainsaw Man?

• 38:24Amanda Dobbins?

  No, not yet, you know.

• 38:26Sean Fennessey?

  I tell you what, I'm seeing it.

• 38:27Amanda Dobbins?

  We gotta wrap up.

• 38:27Sean Fennessey?

  I'm seeing it in theaters, I'm telling you right now. I'm seeing Chainsaw Man in theaters.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  I mean, it has tickets after this, so I have a hard out.

• 38:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm gonna do a Mastermind-Chainsaw Man doubleheader.

• 38:36Sean Fennessey?

  Those are two different energies, but they could go great together, just like eggs in a tuna melt, you never know. It raises the question of like, why? Like, why was this movie made?

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Why is it gonna do well? Is it because it has bad reviews?

• 38:50Speaker 02

  I don't think the word of mouth will be great on this movie.

• 38:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's not gonna, the word of mouth is not gonna be good. This, the, you know, review scores have come way down since the festival premiere. But I think it's also like, it's about Nebraska, it's not about Born in the USA.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 39:02Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it's not, it's not this exaltation of artistic achievement, which is the opposite, obviously, of A Complete Unknown, which is about this transformative moment, full of songs, that people who are Bob Dylan fans know and can sing along to. I think always of that weird scene in that movie when it seems like there's gonna be nuclear disaster, and Elle Fanning like races downstairs around the corner to see him playing Masters of War in a coffee shop at like 10pm at night. And I'm like, this is the most bullshitty scene I've ever seen in a movie in my life. But it was awesome, it was fucking awesome. So I was like, you know, Masters of War, that's a jam, it's a really good song. And this movie has none of that.

• 39:39Amanda Dobbins?

  But even for a Nebraska head, CR, tell me if I'm wrong, I'm a Nebraska head. There wasn't enough Nebraska songs, and I was like, I didn't even-

• 39:46Speaker 02

  They even, they cucked out when they're pressing the record, and they're like, we're gonna play I'm on Fire. I'm just like-

• 39:52Speaker 03

  I mean, listen, I love I'm on Fire.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  That's one of the greatest songs ever written, but that's not on that record.

• 39:56Speaker 03

  What does this have to do-

• 39:57Speaker 02

  You're making, you're literally pressing Nebraska, just play-

• 39:59Speaker 03

  They wanted to remind you that watching this film was like taking a knife, baby Edgian doll, six inch valley through the middle of my skull.

• 40:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, the why of-

• 40:09Speaker 02

  You like Bruce Springsteen?

• 40:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course I do, I'm an, I'm an American, you know?

• 40:15Amanda Dobbins?

  The why of like, why, it's, it's all tied up in the same thing. Why did you make this movie like this? Like, the fact that this, this movie is as befuddling to us in a, sitting down to watching at this audience set, and that then also, you know, applies to its box office. It's just, I, I don't, why?

• 40:33Sean Fennessey?

  Well, one reason to make this movie is Academy Awards, right? So, when I came out of that screening, I tell you, right? Everybody was like, well, that is a best actor nomination locked and loaded right there for you. And now with some distance, like, you have a very crowded best actor race this year. Right, we have two obvious ones. We have Bob Dylan himself, Timothy Chalamet and Marty Supreme, and we have Leonardo DiCaprio in one battle after another.

• 40:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:56Sean Fennessey?

  We've also got-

• 40:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Michael B. Jordan in Sinners.

• 40:58Sean Fennessey?

  Michael B. Jordan in Sinners. I agree. We've got Dwayne Johnson potentially in The Smashing Machine, though that movie has not done as well.

• 41:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Sean Fennessey?

  You know-

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Austin Abrams in Weapons.

• 41:08Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think he'll be campaigning.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:11Sean Fennessey?

  There are a few other significant contenders.

• 41:14Speaker 03

  Jesse Plemons.

• 41:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Jesse Plemons.

• 41:15Sean Fennessey?

  Jesse Plemons from Begonias is on that list.

• 41:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Look at that Venice jumping out.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 41:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I saw that.

• 41:20Sean Fennessey?

  Well done.

• 41:22Sean Fennessey?

  I hope Wagner Mora for The Secret Agent is nominated. Um, he's amazing in that movie. Hopefully, we'll talk about that soon on the show. I, I don't know if I see it happening.

• 41:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't either, at this point.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  I think if this movie kind of comes and goes and isn't any, doesn't have any traction at the box office, it'll be really hard for them to make the argument.

• 41:39Sean Fennessey?

  It does remind me a little bit of the way that so many best actress nominations tend to happen, where that is the only thing that is recognized in a movie. Cause this is not probably gonna get nominations in other categories.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  In some ways, it's kind of impressive, because obviously, he went through a lot of training, I would imagine, to get as good as he did at guitar and be as good as he did at sounding just like Bruce Springsteen. And if I were him, I'd be like, Scott Cooper, let me, let me play a couple more songs, man. Like-

• 42:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, where is the companion album of Jeremy Allen White singing all the Bruce Springsteen songs like a complete unknown did? That, that actually worked. I listened to that sometimes.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  There actually is. Uh, tonight, they're releasing The Expanded Nebraska.

• 42:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  With the multiple versions of-

• 42:18Sean Fennessey?

  The electric versions, right?

• 42:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, the electric versions that he was not satisfied with. Yeah.

• 42:22Sean Fennessey?

  So, how do you guys feel about that? That's deep Bruce lore.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm so pumped.

• 42:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 42:27Sean Fennessey?

  You're pumped.

• 42:28Amanda Dobbins?

  There you go.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  For the Expanded Nebraska?

• 42:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  CR has an alarm set.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  This is like a legendary, like, when will they give it to us?

• 42:34Sean Fennessey?

  Never appeared on bootlegs.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. That's cool, you don't care.

• 42:39Amanda Dobbins?

  It, oh, it's fine, I'll listen to it.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  I'm not as excited as you are.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  I'm sorry.

• 42:43Amanda Dobbins?

  You're not.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Sorry for loving Bruce Springsteen.

• 42:46Sean Fennessey?

  I know you don't care.

• 42:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I also think that you-

• 42:49Sean Fennessey?

  You're not a real bonus features kind of person.

• 42:51Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I think that you should work really hard, finish your product fully and release it. And don't make me sit through the extras or the redos, you know?

• 43:00Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 43:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Finish it before you ask me for my attention.

• 43:03Sean Fennessey?

  Somebody should let Ridley Scott know that that's where Amanda stands on his work.

• 43:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, and I, you know, the four hours- Have you and Tracy watched Kingdom of Heaven director's cut together yet?

• 43:13Speaker 02

  Not together, no.

• 43:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you could set up a little Zoom.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, you could do it on FaceTime.

• 43:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Sell tickets to that, I would.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  I should find out if Hitmaker watched it yet, because he was like, damn.

• 43:21Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, he did, yeah, he told me he did, yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  He was like, that shit sucked.

• 43:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he said CR is a cuck. It's like, well, it's your opinion, man. Um, let's talk briefly about music biopics. Yasi opened by proclaiming that they could be good. They aren't good very often.

• 43:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  Well, people should take that as a challenge.

• 43:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I still sometimes enjoy them.

• 43:42Sean Fennessey?

  I know you do, because you love to hear music loud and make it fun, right?

• 43:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and I do, it is always the moment that is, in some ways, the cringiest moment, until you have seen Delivery from Nowhere and you understand that it's actually someone writing in a notebook, but-

• 43:58Speaker 03

  Double album, question mark?

• 43:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Double, why, question mark? But when they're sitting there in the studio or somewhere and they're like noodling on a guitar and you're like, oh my God, they're, you know, they're writing respect, they're writing whatever.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  That's how I was sixty-one.

• 44:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I just, I get it, you know, oh my God, he just like, someone just sat down at the organ, you know? Uh, and every single time that works, and even in this movie, it's the real highlight. We're just like, oh my God, he's playing Born in the USA.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  When they have the Max Weinberg start the drum beat, I was like, yeah. Yo.

• 44:28Sean Fennessey?

  I don't really hold the same opinion on that, no. Because that's not usually how it works, but-

• 44:33Speaker 03

  I didn't feel that way.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  What, what isn't how it works? That they just start playing it in the studio that way?

• 44:38Amanda Dobbins?

  So you don't think that Bob Dylan wrote, um, Blown in the Wind?

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, he did, at the vanity table in the hotel room.

• 44:46Sean Fennessey?

  After Blown Out, Joan Baez is back, yeah. Is that what you were gonna say?

• 44:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 44:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's just sitting right on the table.

• 44:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And I guess, I guess. According, according to that scene, he had already written it and she found the lyrics on the, on the

• 45:04Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 45:05Amanda Dobbins?

  coffee table. Yeah.

• 45:06Sean Fennessey?

  It was originally called Blown Out Her Back. He was like, I got a metaphor.

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Men are, men are very creative, post-coital, able to do a lot of things, write a lot of beautiful music or do anything.

• 45:16Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, and then, and then they play and you're like, it's this song. I love this song. I don't know.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  One thing I'll say is, is, uh, we're fucked because they're just gonna keep making movies about artists that are more and more important to us because we're getting old.

• 45:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Well, let's, let's do the good first and then we can talk about the bad. So the good, if you had to choose one, Yasi, if we were, if the four of us were gonna build the Mount Rushmore.

• 45:38Amanda Dobbins?

  The singing for your Oscar round.

• 45:39Sean Fennessey?

  The most essential music biopic that, or the best expression of a music biopic ever.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  Well, you already know what I'm gonna say.

• 45:46Sean Fennessey?

  Well, just say.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  24 Hour Party People, which I know it's cheating a little because it's like, kind of not exactly a music biopic. Because it's a, about a label, a head and a scene, but I think it counts.

• 46:02Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Obviously you can't pick a doc, right?

• 46:06Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Obviously.

• 46:07Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 46:07Amanda Dobbins?

  So, and are we, so biopic, it's about real people as opposed to fake people?

• 46:13Speaker 02

  She's thinking the thing I'm thinking.

• 46:15Sean Fennessey?

  It has to be about real people, yes.

• 46:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 46:17Speaker 03

  You're thinking Spinal Tap.

• 46:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I, I, I don't, this isn't my pick, but since you just said some rude things about Joan Baez and a complete unknown, I do have to say that Monica Barbaro was amazing. I did not think it was actually her singing as Joan Baez and then she was, she was good. I mean, Sissy Spacek, right?

• 46:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that was gonna be my pick, actually. We should have talked about that. Coal Miner's Daughter is definitely the.

• 46:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 46:40Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of the template setter and maybe ruined them a little bit. Um.

• 46:45Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's, I rewatched most of it last night and it's still weird and unexpected, directed by Michael Apted and, um. And crucially, like, there is conflict in her life story and it just shows it in real time. Not a lot of bells and whistles.

• 47:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 47:01Amanda Dobbins?

  The last 30 minutes is just now she's famous and performing and that's complicated too.

• 47:06Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:06Amanda Dobbins?

  But, um, but she's amazing in it.

• 47:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, part of that is, I think, because Michael Atten has a documentarian.

• 47:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:14Sean Fennessey?

  And so like, he's well suited to trying to portray something real, right?

• 47:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 47:19Sean Fennessey?

  And like, that's kind of the trick of these movies is like, Deliver Me From Nowhere just feels really artificial.

• 47:23Amanda Dobbins?

  It would have been an incredible documentary, actually, like, instead of a movie. Well, sure.

• 47:29Sean Fennessey?

  There are documentaries, I think, about the three previous Bruce Springsteen movies. That's the thing. It's like, it almost felt like his team was like, we gotta do a different version if we're gonna do another album.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Although, I probably now, in retrospect, would just do like a long-form Nebraska doc.

• 47:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it would be great.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  I would probably say, uh, I would, honestly, I would say Complete Unknown. I, like, I think that's the one I had the most fun watching. Loved that music. I thought he did a great job. I thought it depicted the fantasy version of that era in a pretty, like, enlivening way. Uh, I did want to ask you.

• 48:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  Gut check, vibe check time. After seeing Deliver Me From Nowhere, how are you feeling about four Beatles movies incoming?

• 48:11Amanda Dobbins?

  God.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Oh, boy.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Because that could go.

• 48:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, so.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Real good.

• 48:15Amanda Dobbins?

  So they cast Saoirse Ronan as Lynda McCartney, right?

• 48:18Speaker 03

  We love her.

• 48:19Amanda Dobbins?

  And then.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  The word is James Norton is gonna play Brian Epstein.

• 48:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, yeah. And then have.

• 48:25Sean Fennessey?

  Good casting.

• 48:25Amanda Dobbins?

  And then.

• 48:27Sean Fennessey?

  It's Paul, Paul Meskell is Paul.

• 48:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 48:30Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Harris Dickinson is John.

• 48:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Joseph Quinn is George.

• 48:34Sean Fennessey?

  Joseph Quinn is George.

• 48:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 48:35Sean Fennessey?

  And Barry Keoghan is Ringo.

• 48:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 48:38Sean Fennessey?

  You know.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  Beautiful casting.

• 48:39Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty good casting.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  Beautiful casting. We love all our boyfriends.

• 48:42Sean Fennessey?

  Four separate films about four separate phases of Beatles life, all four directed by Sam Mendes.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Traditionally undocumented group, so.

• 48:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 48:50Speaker 03

  We know nothing about them, like, actually.

• 48:52Amanda Dobbins?

  And by a director whose last films have really, uh, spoken to me on.

• 48:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 48:58Amanda Dobbins?

  On an emotional and aesthetic level, yeah.

• 48:59Sean Fennessey?

  Has your Empire of Light 4K with the commentary been released yet?

• 49:03Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but I do.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  With the bonus features.

• 49:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I did, once again, find that screener DVD that you let me, like, in the player.

• 49:10Sean Fennessey?

  Hard to believe I forgot about that.

• 49:14Speaker 03

  Do you want it back?

• 49:15Sean Fennessey?

  No, thanks.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  Charlie, what's yours?

• 49:16Sean Fennessey?

  I, my pick would probably be, I, I've been thinking Coal Miners' Daughter because I think it's the one that's sort of like sets it and it's a little hard to surpass it because Sissy Sustained is so good. Probably Love and Mercy, the Brian Wilson film, which is a really good movie and I think does a good job of kind of giving you both. It gives you the making of pet sounds in a way that feels like very satisfying to what you're describing where they're in the room figuring out good vibrations. But then also it shows you Wilson at a different stage of his life, two different performances, two actors I really like in Cusack and Paul Dino. And it's just like, it's a movie you could never predict where it's going. Whereas I feel like a lot of these movies, you know exactly what the arc is going to be.

• 49:59Sean Fennessey?

  And so it's really hard to get to the bar of thrilling you with the way that it's done. But, you know, I think if Joe and Jill Popcorn were making this list, like it would be very different. It would, you know, it would be like straight out of Compton.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  It would be Ray.

• 50:11Sean Fennessey?

  It would be Ray. It would be Walk the Line.

• 50:13Speaker 03

  Velvet Gold Mine. How do you feel about those kinds?

• 50:17Sean Fennessey?

  I, I really don't like them.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Which?

• 50:19Speaker 03

  You don't like it when they're like, it's this person, but it's not this person.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Like Velvet Gold Mine?

• 50:24Speaker 03

  Velvet Gold Mine, yeah.

• 50:24Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, those. Oh, I mean, it probably, it probably depends on the movie, honestly. I don't have anything against them.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  I feel like Velvet Gold Mine was really, really good.

• 50:32Sean Fennessey?

  It is. It's so hard to imagine because, you know, the, the intention of the movie when Haynes started it was just to make Bowie and Iggy and just do, you know, you know, T-Rex, like just to represent all of those people. There's something interesting in him having to change it and it makes for a fun, like, oh, is it kind of guessing game quality to it?

• 50:52Speaker 02

  It gives him a lot more creative freedom. I mean, I think that...

• 50:54Speaker 03

  It's less hitting you over the head, which is, I think, one of the worst feelings. When I watch these movies, the thing I feel is like, oh, you think I'm so stupid? You think I'm an idiot?

• 51:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I think we're, we're at a disadvantage when watching them because... We know a lot about these worlds.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:13Sean Fennessey?

  We've spent a lot of time. You know, you haven't spent as much time in the music.

• 51:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I live among you and around you.

• 51:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 51:19Speaker 03

  I didn't know that much about Nebraska. I learned it all after the fact. That's why when I was watching it, I was like, who is this for? Is this for some, is this for someone who knows everything about it or nothing about it? Because you gotta pick one.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  I feel like I was like.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  You just went down the middle.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  I was like in the 70th percentile of knowing about Nebraska. And I think it misses for every.

• 51:36Speaker 03

  And you still didn't know who that guy was.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  I didn't.

• 51:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  I didn't know who his driver was.

• 51:40Sean Fennessey?

  OK, so what is, what's like your next Nebraska? What's the, what's the one music biopic that you're like, this shall not pass?

• 51:46Speaker 02

  I don't want to ever see a movie about the Clash.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  I don't want to see, like, I, because that also, like, Westway to the World and a lot of the docs about the Clash are incredible. I think the Clash have these like really amazing distinctive eras with a lot of drama to them. They would probably work as movies, but I don't have a ton of confidence that it wouldn't be like, this is about when they played Shea Stadium. They played, should I stay or should I go, you know?

• 52:08Speaker 03

  Let me ask you a related question. When I get the funding to make my Slits biopic.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  Am I allowed to have them as tertiary characters?

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  That's the way to do it.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  We should do more things like that.

• 52:22Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 52:23Speaker 03

  You guys, bang my line. I'm ready to make this film. Yeah.

• 52:27Sean Fennessey?

  Who do you think was listening or watching that?

• 52:29Speaker 02

  Jerry Bruckheimer.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  I'm part of.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  I was like, who is this dazzling fun in a dinosaur junior shirt?

• 52:35Speaker 03

  Using this beautiful podcast as a launching pad for my illustrious career. I know you don't support female directors famously.

• 52:44Sean Fennessey?

  How dare you? You just watched a film that I worked on that was made by a female filmmaker 20 hours ago.

• 52:50Speaker 03

  I know that you, you support all female directors except me.

• 52:53Sean Fennessey?

  There's a female director on this episode today.

• 52:56Speaker 03

  And I don't know what your problem is, but it's gonna be really good.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  What about you?

• 52:59Speaker 03

  My Slits book.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  You got the Replacements movie maybe coming?

• 53:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, that inspired this exercise, which I am genuinely concerned about. I think, you know, it is based on Trouble Boys, the great, great, great pop layer book.

• 53:12Speaker 03

  Fantastic, fantastic book.

• 53:13Sean Fennessey?

  That's an amazing book. The Replacements, one of my favorite bands, one of our favorite bands.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  Me too.

• 53:17Sean Fennessey?

  One of your favorite bands.

• 53:18Speaker 03

  That too.

• 53:19Sean Fennessey?

  But Finn Wolfhard is adapting that film with his dad.

• 53:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 53:23Sean Fennessey?

  And that's.

• 53:24Speaker 03

  Which one is that?

• 53:25Speaker 02

  The Stranger Things.

• 53:26Sean Fennessey?

  Stranger Things.

• 53:26Speaker 03

  No. He is a musician.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  I'm trying to be hopeful and positive.

• 53:33Sean Fennessey?

  Finn Wolfhard is not giving them mats at all, like at all.

• 53:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 53:38Sean Fennessey?

  And that's one, that's like, that kind of sent a chill down my spine when I saw that headline.

• 53:43Amanda Dobbins?

  That's my favorite band. I'm feeling, I think they should cast me in it, number one.

• 53:47Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 53:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And then hire me as a consultant. I know probably more about The Replacements than almost anyone on earth.

• 53:53Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Finn Wolfhard will put you to the test. So that is happening. That's already egregious. To me, it's Beastie Boys. I feel like Beastie Boys, they should not do that. There will be a lot of temptation to do that. Those are three great star parts, three really charismatic guys. You know, our like, American version of The Beatles Nightmare to me is like.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Three Beastie Boys movies.

• 54:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah, that would be so awful.

• 54:12Sean Fennessey?

  You know, three twenty-something.

• 54:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And then Money Mark is the fourth one.

• 54:15Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 54:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's just.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  What if Spike Jonze was directing it?

• 54:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 54:19Sean Fennessey?

  Well, now, if, if you told me that there was like a form-breaking version of the movie, or more of a 24-hour party people, I would certainly entertain that. If it was like Def Jam in 1987, that would be exciting.

• 54:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 54:31Sean Fennessey?

  But anything that's like, here are the trials and travails of these three guys.

• 54:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:36Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I worship them. It's not about them. It's about what it would do to my feelings about them. So that would be my choice.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Do you have one?

• 54:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but it's not out of personal protectiveness. It's out of like, I, like, I don't think that I or we collectively as a society can live through a Taylor Swift biopic.

• 54:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 54:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, we straight up, we just like, we cannot.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Would she cast herself as Taylor Swift?

• 54:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I feel like we are living through it. I like the new album because I don't really listen to the words and I, I've been there through a lot with her. We just, like, can you imagine? We cannot do it.

• 55:12Sean Fennessey?

  In this case, would it be her as herself?

• 55:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that, that could be tough. Or imagine her casting someone, you know, as her and then directing it.

• 55:23Sean Fennessey?

  What if it was Sabrina Carpenter is Taylor Swift?

• 55:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, there we go.

• 55:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 55:28Amanda Dobbins?

  None of, none of them would be good.

• 55:30Sean Fennessey?

  What's yours?

• 55:30Speaker 02

  That's a really good pick, though.

• 55:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  Ernest is going back to camp. I believe that you can make a beautiful and good and interesting version of any music biopic. I don't know that they will.

• 55:42Sean Fennessey?

  There's not a single artist that you're like, don't make.

• 55:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  Leave Kurt Cobain alone. I think they probably will make that film. And they already did make, kind of, Gus Van Sant made that pretty.

• 55:56Speaker 03

  Difficult film.

• 55:57Sean Fennessey?

  Last Days.

• 55:57Speaker 03

  That's right, I saw it.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  That was a kid from Boardwalk Empire?

• 56:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, Michael Pitt.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Michael Pitt. Right.

• 56:05Sean Fennessey?

  Let's, can we just have a sidebar quickly? I just came up in the office yesterday.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 56:10Sean Fennessey?

  Nirvana in 2025.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, yeah.

• 56:14Sean Fennessey?

  Now, I see a lot of teenagers wearing in utero t-shirts.

• 56:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I see a lot of five-year-olds wearing, you know.

• 56:20Sean Fennessey?

  So that's happened, right? Like, and that happened every generation that happens to, right? Like, I got a little kid, I'm not gonna force Nirvana on her, but if she liked Nirvana, I'd be pretty excited.

• 56:28Speaker 03

  She has a PJ Harvey shirt.

• 56:29Sean Fennessey?

  She does, she definitely has not heard Dry yet, but she will one day.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  Sure. She'll know all of it.

• 56:35Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think Nirvana means to America right now?

• 56:41Speaker 02

  You sound like Charlie Rose.

• 56:43Speaker 03

  Oh, great. Are you running for office?

• 56:46Speaker 03

  It's really hard, this is funny that you ask me this, because like, a couple of months ago, I went on a British podcast with Miranda Sawyer, the great, about the 90s, and I talked about Nirvana, and I like, the clip they chose is about me saying, I guess mistakenly, like, okay, boomer, 6'7" vibes. Sorry to bring up 6'7" Jack.

• 57:02Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, my God, that's a whole other podcast.

• 57:05Speaker 03

  But I, but I was like, oh, I feel like Nirvana is sort of frozen in the amber of coolness. I feel like because that was one of the last prominent subcultures, it's still being referred, like, grunge is still a reference to things that are cool today. But I was, the comments came for me, they were like, okay, ma. It's sort of like, what's up, B, Arthur? People think about the, I mean, I was like, oh, my lord, am I old and out of touch?

• 57:38Sean Fennessey?

  People were saying that, that it wasn't, that it's not cool.

• 57:41Speaker 03

  They were kind of saying like, you would think that because that was your cool music. And maybe that's totally true, because I have no way of living outside of myself, you know? So maybe they're not, I don't know.

• 57:52Sean Fennessey?

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• 58:37Sean Fennessey?

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• 59:20Sean Fennessey?

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• 59:41Amanda Dobbins?

  They are, because they aren't still around, you know? Like, it's just handed down. They are not still-

• 59:47Speaker 03

  They didn't evolve into, like, Pearl Jam jam band.

• 59:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Or they're not, like, at the Rose Bowl with all of so-old people.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  Is Oasis uncool?

• 59:57Amanda Dobbins?

  By the way, they should not, we have the documentary, they should not do Oasis.

• 1:00:01Speaker 03

  With my rocks in my pockets.

• 1:00:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Even though it seems like those guys would take some texts.

• 1:00:06Sean Fennessey?

  The rich texts, though, you know, that relationship.

• 1:00:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  That would be a comedy, a buddy comedy.

• 1:00:10Sean Fennessey?

  You like Nirvana?

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  I do. I mean, I think I, and I also like plenty of contemporary bands who are heavily influenced by Nirvana. So I think whether or not Yasi is washed or not is immaterial. Like, there are a lot of bands that do like, and you're not washed.

• 1:00:23Sean Fennessey?

  I have always wanted to do a pod at The Ringer called Am I Washed? Where just like every, each episode is a different staffer and then they're being like drilled by a, you know, 22-year-old staffer with like all the references in the world. Should we get that show going? What do you think?

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  I think so, but I think the 22-year-olds would just be like, no, and like looking at their phone.

• 1:00:41Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, shots fired.

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  Do you think the Nirvana biopic, though, would be like more of an event culturally than this Bruce Springsteen one, for example?

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  I think that would be a real.

• 1:00:53Sean Fennessey?

  It'd be a very hot button.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  It would be like, what are you gonna do about the end there? You know?

• 1:00:57Sean Fennessey?

  I just think if you were like, we're making this an epic tragedy.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:01Sean Fennessey?

  You could, you know, about a person just unable to control the spiral of his life.

• 1:01:05Speaker 03

  How interesting would it be if they made it only about a different part of his life? This is, this is what I'm asking. Like, please just like try to think a little outside the box.

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  If you wanna make a $25 million version of that and make it about the making of bleach, that's interesting.

• 1:01:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And it was called What About a Different Person? And it was called Back to Black, starring Marisa Bella as Amy Winehouse.

• 1:01:24Speaker 03

  Hard, hard refuse to see that.

• 1:01:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I, it was genuinely offensive.

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and, and the way they ended it, which was like with upbeat, tears dry on her own and then, um, you know, some, some block text. Was it like a end title about, yeah, and then she died essentially? That's literally how they did it. It was horrifying.

• 1:01:43Sean Fennessey?

  It was very, very unsuccessful.

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  It's all just like late capitalism where it's like, it's just a cash grab and so they're not doing the art properly. Because they have to make the most money possible and that's just, then it suffers.

• 1:01:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but this.

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  It's not gonna be a classic. It's not gonna go down in time.

• 1:02:00Amanda Dobbins?

  They're, they did not make choices based on money.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  They didn't.

• 1:02:03Sean Fennessey?

  I, I agree, which is interesting.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  They made choices based on throwing a dart at a wall.

• 1:02:10Sean Fennessey?

  It was very intentional. It just was the wrong intention or the misbegotten intention. Anyway, it's not a very pleasant place to end this conversation, but this wasn't the most pleasant viewing experience as a movie.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  I still like Bruce Springsteen, though.

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  We love Bruce Springsteen in this house.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  He's the best.

• 1:02:25Speaker 03

  And I still believe that music biopics can be good.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Best? He's, he's like the best, you know, like he's like the boss. Yeah. He is the boss. Maybe he's not the best.

• 1:02:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. Okay.

• 1:02:36Sean Fennessey?

  I recently told this on another podcast that has not come out yet, but I'm just gonna share it right here. So my dad does not like Bruce Springsteen.

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  Surprising.

• 1:02:44Sean Fennessey?

  I'm from New York, not New Jersey, and my dad, one of the primary reasons that he doesn't like him is because he's the boss. And my dad would literally say when I was a kid, he's not the boss, I'm the boss, which is one of the most dad things that can possibly be uttered. And, you know, his kids would like laugh in his face when he would say this, but I definitely grew up not hating Bruce Springsteen, but just not being in like the church. You know, I think for some people, when you grow up, you're in the, you have the halo of like, this is one of the signature emotional songwriters of the era. And I, I didn't have that. So I didn't even have that, that portal to this.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  I tried to end this on a, on a, on like a positive note, but you brought it back down to how Bruce is in this closet.

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  When are the Beatles movies coming out? 2027 or 2028? Are the Beatles movies in 27 or 28?

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  I have to keep podcasting through this. Yeah.

• 1:03:35Speaker 03

  Can I give a quick shout out to my cousin Lele's best friend Coleman, who loves this podcast and recently asked if she was related to me? Because you say my first and last name on here all the time. I just wanna say to him, hi.

• 1:03:47Sean Fennessey?

  Coleman?

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  That's right. Can you guys say hi to Coleman? Hi, Coleman!

• 1:03:50Sean Fennessey?

  Great stuff, man.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. That's a high note, babe. That's how we end on a high note. Fan service.

• 1:03:55Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you, Yasi. Thank you, CR. Thank, thank you, boss. You did it, sir. Thank you, dad.

• 1:04:07Sean Fennessey?

  It's just us now.

• 1:04:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Hello.

• 1:04:08Sean Fennessey?

  We can say what we really think about Deliver Me From Nowhere, which is the best movie of the year. God.

• 1:04:15Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk briefly about If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You, which is the new 824 movie that is expanding over the next couple of weeks. Mary Bronstein's on the show. She wrote and directed this movie. She hasn't made a movie in 17 years. She made a movie called Yeast in the kind of high times of the mumblecore New York era. And she's been working on this movie for some time, based on very specific, personal experience.

• 1:04:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:04:40Sean Fennessey?

  Of raising her daughter, who was struggling with a physical ailment. And she had to travel across the country and take care of her by herself because her partner was not available to her. And it's extremely intimate, harrowingly intimate.

• 1:04:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Quite literally, much of it is filmed in like tight close up around Rose Byrne, who plays the mother, who's the star of the film's face. It's just following her.

• 1:05:07Sean Fennessey?

  So, you know, this is a podcast that supports mothers.

• 1:05:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:05:11Sean Fennessey?

  And believes in motherhood.

• 1:05:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, thanks so much. We thank you every day for it.

• 1:05:15Sean Fennessey?

  I responded very intensely to this movie, but I was very curious what you thought about it.

• 1:05:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, I, so as I wrote in the doc, I felt like I was gonna throw up throughout this movie, which is said as a compliment, like complimentary.

• 1:05:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:31Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I thought this was astonishingly good and an incredible act of writing and filmmaking in a very personally observed way that does speak to a larger experience in the world, AKA being a mother. Like, I did feel like I was gonna throw up, though. It wasn't the most fun I've had at the movies all year.

• 1:05:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:05:52Amanda Dobbins?

  But an amazing performance, amazing writing. I did think that the close up and the claustrophobic decision making in the cinematography was smart and added to. And there's also one decision they make.

• 1:06:14Amanda Dobbins?

  How they portray the kid that I thought was absolutely wonderful. Um, so yeah, amazing movie. We are gonna have like a mom and dad summit at the end of the year.

• 1:06:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, I, I said to you, though, I think the two themes of movies, of some of the best movies of the year, some of which we haven't even had a chance to talk about yet, is that fathers are trying very hard

• 1:06:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Sean Fennessey?

  to care for their daughters and they're struggling deeply with that.

• 1:06:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:06:40Sean Fennessey?

  And then

• 1:06:41Amanda Dobbins?

  But also they've, they've realized that it's, it's a beautiful thing. Fatherhood is beautiful and emotionally rewarding.

• 1:06:47Sean Fennessey?

  It can be. It can also reveal the male flaw.

• 1:06:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:06:51Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of primal male flaw.

• 1:06:52Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's worth it.

• 1:06:53Sean Fennessey?

  But it's worth it. I agree.

• 1:06:54Amanda Dobbins?

  You guys are, you guys are going through it.

• 1:06:55Sean Fennessey?

  I saw One Battle After Another for the fifth time last night with some colleagues and I was, it was probably my most emotional screening yet.

• 1:07:03Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a bea-, it's a beautiful movie. I really, really like, yeah.

• 1:07:06Sean Fennessey?

  You know, sentimental value is about that. Um, there's a handful of it. Hamnet is, you know, related to parenthood, you know?

• 1:07:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:13Sean Fennessey?

  And, and

• 1:07:14Amanda Dobbins?

  There are a couple more.

• 1:07:14Sean Fennessey?

  And motherhood as well. The other theme this year is sort of like, you motherfuckers don't realize that being a mom is insane. That's kind of what, and you know, Dime I Love is coming out in a couple of weeks. We'll talk about that film soon. The new Jennifer Lawrence, Lynn Ramsey movie.

• 1:07:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Hamnet, also about that. It's obviously like a lesser theme in One Battle After Another, but I think it's like very beautifully done there.

• 1:07:34Sean Fennessey?

  The powerful alienation of giving birth and then how to be a person after that, which this, I think, um, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is a really interesting exploration of that because it's not about a mom with a newborn.

• 1:07:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's not about postpartum. It's just about like being a mother in the world and all the different types of people or systems that, where the ways our world is organized that just like don't support it at all. Or don't like, it's not even that they don't acknowledge it, but it's just so much is assumed and taken for granted and

• 1:08:06Sean Fennessey?

  There's one little detail in the movie that I really like, which, you know, I'm obviously not a mom, but I do relate to, which is very early in the film. Rose Byrne's character is trying to get her family home, get her daughter home and inside. And she's got a pizza and they're going into the house and her daughter off camera is sort of like screaming because something is going wrong and the anxiety and like intensity is already building. And the pizza has already fallen over and is kind of a mess and she just kind of shoves a giant piece of cheese into her mouth.

• 1:08:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Really funny.

• 1:08:37Sean Fennessey?

  And just like the act of eating while parenting is a really difficult survival strategy. And I'd never seen it expressed quite so specifically and perfectly as her shoving that pizza cheese into her mouth.

• 1:08:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I've got a dissertation on the, I guess it's the, the family support group or the mom support group. When we get there.

• 1:08:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:59Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 1:08:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is like some of, some of the best writing I've seen this year.

• 1:09:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's really.

• 1:09:04Amanda Dobbins?

  An amazing Rose Byrne performance and I hope that she is, continues in the Oscars conversation.

• 1:09:08Sean Fennessey?

  I hope so too. Obviously a great actress who's had like a really varied career and has been in big Hollywood box off, box office films, comedies, a great dramatic actress, has been a big TV star now.

• 1:09:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Like I, I did think about her in Neighbors and you know, in this and it's, it's, it's funny.

• 1:09:22Sean Fennessey?

  Like her motherhood in that movie. Yeah, for sure.

• 1:09:25Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a different, it's, you know, an evolution of it.

• 1:09:27Sean Fennessey?

  She's very, um, fearless is always a dumb thing to say, but she's always very willing to kind of like de glamorize herself in aid of telling the story well. Uh, what did you think of Conan O'Brien?

• 1:09:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Really funny.

• 1:09:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was pretty effective, right?

• 1:09:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And like a good use of, and then so he, he plays a therapist. So, you know, we were just talking about therapy culture in, and I'm usually against that in the text of a movie, but it is, I think, used very smartly.

• 1:09:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:09:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and is examined, uh, which ironically is not often the case in, in movies about analysis.

• 1:10:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. A movie, I mean, and also Rose Byrne's character is also a therapist and so you. And it takes place inside of the business of that world in a way that I think is pretty revealing. This movie is a very cool accomplishment and you can also feel, you know, Mary is married to Ronald Bronstein, who is an editor and filmmaker himself, who works with the Safeties. This movie is produced by Alara.

• 1:10:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:10:24Sean Fennessey?

  It is definitely kind of tonally in the realm of Uncut Gems and Marty Supreme.

• 1:10:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:10:30Sean Fennessey?

  And the way that there is like a forced intimacy with difficult moments in life.

• 1:10:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Sean Fennessey?

  That is maybe its own new subgenre of movie that I like. I don't know if I could do three to six of these a year, but.

• 1:10:45Amanda Dobbins?

  No, like I said, it was really, really intense.

• 1:10:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And I was really moved and also like ran out of there when it was over.

• 1:10:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And went home and hugged my kids.

• 1:10:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Don't run anywhere. Stick around now for my conversation with Mary Bronstein.

• 1:11:04Sean Fennessey?

  Mary Bronstein is here. First time on the show. Hi, Mary. How are you? I'm great. How are you doing? I'm really good. I have a lot of questions for you about your film. You bet. Which I found to be fascinating and invasive in good ways. Do you remember the exact day that you began writing it?

• 1:11:23Sean Fennessey?

  I do. I do. I started writing this film on the bathroom floor of a really shitty hotel room because it was the only place I could escape to while sharing a hotel room with my daughter. She was little, lights out at eight. We were roommates in this tiny room with two twin beds. And the only place I could go to be that I could like be, I

• 1:12:01Sean Fennessey?

  thought, like do my own thing, was this bathroom. Turn on the light, awful fluorescent lighting. I'd be in there every night drinking like a cheap wine, scarfing junk food. Lot of Jack in the Box involved in this.

• 1:12:17Speaker 07

  San Diego. And one night I was sitting there. And I just realized I had this like dread, this feeling of dread. And we were there in San Diego because my daughter was getting treatment for illness that she had. She was seven years old and she's 15 now and she's and she's great. She's fine, but I had this sense of existential dread that I couldn't put my finger on. And at first I thought it was because of the situation I was in. Like, will she get better? What will happen? Blah, blah, blah. Then I realized it wasn't that at all. It was a feeling that I felt like I was disappearing into.

• 1:12:59Speaker 07

  Because everything, every part of my being was being put into taking care of her. And and making sure that she was going to get better so that we could get back to New York and get back to normal. But then I realized, oh, wait, she is going to get better. And we are going to go back to New York to our home and it is going to go back to quote unquote, normal. But like, what, what then? What then? Because I've been in this state now for so long. We were there for eight months and she was ill before that, before we even got there. I've been in this caretaking role for so long. It's been my whole life. What then? What's going to happen?

• 1:13:39Speaker 07

  And I literally, in a very literal sense, felt myself disappearing, my being, my, my, myself. And I started writing the script in that bathroom. In that state and in that physical place and in that emotional place right there. And I just started writing it and I first started writing it to kind of like give myself.

• 1:14:11Speaker 07

  A way to express all of these things I was feeling, but also a way to like set, have a hope for the future. Well, if I'm writing this thing. I am not writing it to put it in a drawer later. I'm not gonna Emily Dickinson this. This is gonna, I wanna make this, I wanna make this movie. And it was, it saved me in a little bit away. It gave me an answer for what could be the future.

• 1:14:40Sean Fennessey?

  Were you explicit about the fact that you wanted to make it as a film? Or just that like even the idea of being creative at that time gave you hope for the future of yourself?

• 1:14:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's a really good question. That I wanted to make it into a film. Because part of like, I had this existential crisis, like I said, and part of it was coming back around. I had made my first film, you know, in 2008. And then I made some shorts and then I disappeared from that world. And, and, and part of the existential examination crisis that I was going through, it came around to the fact that, hey, wait a minute. I've been running away from this thing. Like in, in the movie, the character is running away from herself. I've been running away from myself. I'm, I'm a filmmaker. I'm a screenwriter.

• 1:15:35Speaker 07

  That's what I am. I'm gonna, that's what I am. And that's what I wanna do. And I was so outside of the, of any sort of way to imagine that the movie would get made. And so outside of any system. And certainly like the, the standard industry at that point, at any point with my work. That it was, it was really felt like a, like a fantasy that it would get made. But I, but I, I knew that I had to. I had to. I had to. Because I, I had something to say and it was something urgent.

• 1:16:17Speaker 07

  And so many movies get made where the person has nothing to say. And there's no, that person is not in that movie. Their fingerprints are not in that movie. And when they talk about the movie, they can't talk about it because they had no reason to make the movie other than to make a movie.

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  I had a reason to make a movie. I had something to say. And so it was that with that energy and that sort of tenacity that I barreled forward.

• 1:16:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's not, it doesn't scream blockbuster. So how do you like get people to agree to make the movie? How do you raise money? How do you like actually go from where you were when your daughter was seven to now where she's 15? Like, what happens in that eight years?

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, really, it was the script. I honed the script over a two-year period and then started sharing it. And, you know, I had the experience where everybody that read the script said, oh, my God, this is the best script I've ever read. But we can't make this movie, which, which doesn't make any sense, right? But the reason why I was getting those responses was because it's a not, like you said, it's not a blockbuster. Although I did bust a block in Australia. There was

• 1:17:42Sean Fennessey?

  Did you?

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  At a movie theater, there were people lined up around the block. And I was like, that's a blockbuster. That counts.

• 1:17:48Sean Fennessey?

  I take it back. I'm sorry.

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  But I busted a block once. But

• 1:17:52Sean Fennessey?

  How long was the block? Do you have like yardage or?

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  They were around. I feel like if it goes around a quarter, that counts.

• 1:18:01Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  We'll see. We'll see if it happens again. I don't know.

• 1:18:03Sean Fennessey?

  You've made a blockbuster.

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  But yeah, no, it's not. It's a movie where the central struggle of the movie is not a commercial one. It's a, it's a creative one. And those are movies that when they can slip through the system and get made, I think for viewers are the most exciting because it doesn't happen all the time. And for me, really, it was, it was my script that got, that got this done. Everybody responded to the script so strongly. But some people, you know, they didn't want to take the risk. Other people wanted me to change ideas in the script, which I was not willing to do. So I'd walk away. Other people had like really

• 1:18:47Speaker 02

  bizarre ideas about how I should change the script to make it more commercial.

• 1:18:52Sean Fennessey?

  Can you give me an example of one?

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  That it should be a, that it should focus on a story of a, of a missing woman.

• 1:19:01Speaker 07

  Really lean into, you know, there's the police looking for her and it's a crime.

• 1:19:09Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Gone Girl, your story of lost identity. Yeah.

• 1:19:12Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's like, well, no, no, no, that's not right. So I walk away. You have to have confidence. You have to have a lot of confidence in your ideas. To say no to those people in those situations. When I finally got around to A24. I was so confident in my script and so full of a sort of rage that it was that I had been pushing this boulder up a hill for so long, you know? That I approached it with a very sort of radical, like, this is the script, this is the movie. No notes on the script. Do you want to make it or not?

• 1:19:54Speaker 07

  And they said, and they said, yeah, we want to make it. And, and, and I had to go through all that time. I had to go through that rejection to get to that point. And then, once I got there, I had partners who trusted me, trusted my ideas. And really let me do my thing. That doesn't mean that, that it was a cakewalk making the film. And making sure that my ideas were not, that I wasn't making creative concessions. But, but I was in the right place to be able to have those fights and win them.

• 1:20:36Sean Fennessey?

  So I'm, I'm, I'm really curious about whether or not the visual language of the movie was in the screenplay. Cause you, you've made like such a series of very specific choices. So like, and how would you communicate that? In the writing, because I feel like that also informs like whether or not somebody really gets what you're trying to accomplish.

• 1:20:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, totally. I'm a very, so I wrote the script knowing that if it was going to be made, I was going to direct it.

• 1:21:05Speaker 07

  So I wrote it really as a director's script. So I'm also a very visual writer. So I think a screenplay, there's different ways to look at screenplay. Some people look at a screenplay as a blueprint. For something that will be created.

• 1:21:21Speaker 02

  Um, in, in the form of a film or a, or a TV show. Um, I think the screenplay uh is a piece of, is a piece of work on its own, is a piece of literature on its own. But the job of it um is that while, while you're reading the screenplay, the reader should be seeing the movie in their mind. That's a good screenplay. That's a screenplay that you read in one sitting. Um, you know, and uh, and, and that's, um, that's how I wrote it, where the visual choices that you see in the film, those are, those are in the script.

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  Um, because those are central conceptual ideas that inform everything about the movie. Uh, I can't imagine writing a script for this movie that didn't have any of that and then coming up with those ideas later. It's, it's how, it, it's how the story is told. It, it, it, it is the story, all of those elements. And so there's a lot of parts that, that are, that, that were difficult, uh, that were difficult to um put on paper because they're quite abstract.

• 1:22:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  Um, and, and those were the difficult parts of, of, of writing. Um, but, you know, but yeah, that's how it was. So the conceptual elements that you're talking about, like not seeing the daughter, um, the abstractions of um what I call the void, um, the uh hamster um stuff, all of that, uh, the breathwork stuff, the imagery that gets abstracted there, uh, that even the sounds, um, even the sounds um are in the screenplay.

• 1:23:13Sean Fennessey?

  This is an obvious one, but even the idea of just how close the camera would be to an actor.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  That's in there.

• 1:23:19Sean Fennessey?

  That's in there.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  Yes. Mm-hmm. So while I'm writing the script, I'm also, I'm also visually, visually um giving the, the reader what the movie's gonna be.

• 1:23:34Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  Um, and for me... Uh, as someone that was writing it, wanting to be the person to direct it. I'm also giving myself that gift and all of who's gonna be the people that's gonna help me execute my vision. That gift. Because then I have, I have a document that they can read. That's, that, that they can understand what I mean, instead of me trying to

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  translate it just from my brain. It can start from there and then the conversation can start from there.

• 1:24:12Sean Fennessey?

  It also feels like it's maybe potentially a warning to a certain kind of actor who isn't ready to take a leap with something like this, that like

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:24:21Sean Fennessey?

  So I feel like Rose signing on to do it, you know, that's a, this is a very, I don't know if risky is the right word, but you know, it's a, it's a very intense part. I imagine it's very intense making it.

• 1:24:30Speaker 02

  It is, it's, it's, it's, you know, when I was, when I was writing the script, I kept thinking of it as like a gift that I was going to give an actress.

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  Because the character is a middle aged woman.

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  Who is, and the, and the, and it's, it's radically in only her point of view or in her reality. I'm writing it, I'm directing it. That doesn't exist. That doesn't exist. There are not parts for middle aged women that are like this. Where you, if you're a performer, where something that you can really sink your, sink your teeth into and really like go there emotionally, which is what every actor wants to do. That's why they are actors. And I knew that I was also writing a really big check

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  that somebody, the actress, would have to cash and it can bounce or else the whole thing doesn't work.

• 1:25:39Speaker 07

  And so Rose was always on the top of my list for like, for a few reasons. One, she's, I mean, she's, she's an incredible talent. I think she's, I'm biased now, but, but, but at the time, even when, before I knew her, I thought she's one of the best that we have working today. She's somebody that has this like rare combination where she has a innate understanding of comedy and comedic timing that you can't teach. And also has the ability, is a, is a exceptional, proper, technical actor.

• 1:26:19Speaker 07

  This woman, you know, has, has, has played Medea on, on stage. And she also can be in Bridesmaids and she also can be in, in Platonic. But she can also do something like the show Physical, which when I saw the first episode of that show, I felt like that was the audition tape for this movie. I saw, I saw it and I was like, she can do this. She can do this. And she's also beloved. If you mention, whenever I would mention, you know, oh, who's in your movie? Rose Byrne. I love Rose Byrne universally, universally.

• 1:26:57Sean Fennessey?

  True.

• 1:26:58Speaker 07

  That's, that's the thing. So then I can also, I'm harnessing that as a tool as well. Because when her face comes on the screen, it's a face that the viewer, you know, is used to, they have goodwill towards her. They're used to seeing her in things that make them feel good, that bring them joy, that will make them laugh. And so having, I use that as a tool too, because I'm taking the audience into some really, really Dark places. And if I have somebody at the helm of it, who even if it's just subconscious,

• 1:27:41Speaker 07

  you feel good about, I'm going to be able to go even further. And Rose is, you know, the script is very, is very difficult to perform. Sometimes you're getting a laugh on the heels of a very serious scene or and the opposite. And sometimes it's happening inside of a scene. You're getting a laugh inside of a very tense scene. And she, that's what she can, she can do that. There's a very small list of people who can do that. And for me, she's at the top of it. And she, this performance is, it's beyond my wildest dreams. She availed herself to me creatively so fully.

• 1:28:25Speaker 07

  She turned herself inside out and upside down for this thing. It's a physical performance as well. And it was very intense.

• 1:28:35Sean Fennessey?

  I, I wanted to ask you about what it's like to put your experience on screen in front of so many people. I know it's not a documentary and I know that certain aspects of the story are changed, but even just hearing you describe the genesis of the idea, like it seems like there are legitimate one to one.

• 1:28:54Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:28:55Sean Fennessey?

  Points of comparison.

• 1:28:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, like I always, the way that I think about it is it's certainly not, I would never say it's an autobiographical film in the traditional sense, but it's, it's emotionally true. Everything in it is emotionally true, which is what I was trying to get at. So it's started, the impetus for it is a true thing. And then I'm trying to take, what I was trying to do is take that, those, that, those feelings.

• 1:29:22Speaker 02

  That I was having, that existential terror that I was experiencing and abstracting it out into a story that is pretend, you know, and it's, it's, so all of it is based in truth, but most of it is a fantasy, it's pretend, it's a movie.

• 1:29:49Sean Fennessey?

  There's like a tract related to that that I want to ask you about. So because any character that's a mother in a movie, if they do something that is not an expectation of motherhood, if they break a rule, like that that immediately gets identified as an unlikable character, right?

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:30:08Sean Fennessey?

  And you're trying to create like a nuanced portrayal of sensation that you have, but then you, do you know when you're writing and making the film that that's immediately going to be like something you're going to have to tangle with, the idea of being like, you have, you know, ceded your responsibilities or whatever the, you know, castigation ends up becoming?

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And that's part of what I was, that's part of also what I was trying to do is, is, is subvert that. And not only subvert it by putting, the subversion is putting the audience in her, in her reality totally, so that there's no, there's no, there's nowhere else to go, but her experience and her reality and what her, what she's feeling and what she's experiencing. Some of the things she's experiencing, we, we don't know if they could be happening or they could not be happening. It's, that's for the viewer

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  to, to decide. And some of the things that she's doing are a Objectively wrong. Um, and some of the things she's doing ride the line. Uh, maybe, I don't know. And then some of the things she's doing, I know. I know, even when I'm writing the script, I'm, I'm gonna lose some people here. It doesn't scare me. It doesn't scare me. Um, because one thing that I was, that I'm trying to do and I, and I wanna do in all my work and I have done in my previous work is put, um, put women characters on screen that we do not see on screen, but that we know.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  We, they, they are real people that we have encountered in life. Whether, uh, whether, however it is, they are people that exist. When you go through life, there are some people who, um, you don't like. Uh, when you go through life, there's some people who you like, but then make some choices that you don't like. And you have to make a decision on how you're gonna handle that as a person. Film is a, is an art form that is a reflection of life. It is a moving, breathing, alive thing. That's what makes it different than, than a painting or, or even a book or something like that.

• 1:32:36Speaker 02

  And, and so I think the, the whole idea of, uh, it being this taboo thing um, to have the audience have to grapple with those things while watching a film um, is, doesn't make sense to me because you grapple with it every single moment of your day. Um, even going to get your coffee, even, you know, doing anything, much less with your actual like intimate circle of people, your spouse or your children or your, your parents or whatever. Um, you're grappling constantly with human beings who, um, who you don't, who are, who, who you don't like all the time, but that you have a, um, but that you.

• 1:33:22Speaker 02

  It's an empathy test. It's an empathy test. Can you, and that's what film is to me. Can you sit in the dark for two hours and get into somebody else's experience that has nothing to do with yours and find yourself in it? And when you find yourself in it, that's empathy. And that's gonna erase the concept of, do I like this person or do I not like this person? It becomes beyond that. And my, also, I have this idea too, that if you watch a film and a character offends you, you need to look at yourself.

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  You need to look at yourself. Because what about it is bothering you so much? And I'm interested in that. I'm interested, I'm interested in, in that, in reactions to my film, but beyond that, just in, as a, as a person, I'm fascinated by human behavior. I'm fascinated by the things that people do that don't make sense to me. And how, how to make sense of it. Because we're, because I'm a person too. So why am I a person that didn't do that? And that person is. And that's all in the movie. That's all in the movie. Me, myself, I went and I went to the bathroom and turned the light on and would spend the

• 1:34:49Speaker 02

  night in there, you know, with wine and junk food. Linda leaves the hotel entirely. There's a difference there. There's a big difference there. And, and what I'm fascinated in is where, where, where does that division come? Come? And how do we feel about it? And like, at the end of the day, like, art to me is communication. Whether any form, whether it's a song, or, or painting, or a book, or a poem, or a film, or whatever, it's a form of communication.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  And there's also, there's films that you consume that are, that are to be, that are to be sat there and be entertained. And then there are films that are to be experienced. And those are the ones that are communicating to you. And so if you turn your back on it, it's because you don't want to be in that conversation. That's how I feel.

• 1:36:01Sean Fennessey?

  So I have been thinking about how to share this movie with my wife. We have a young daughter and I suspect that the loss of the loss of self, that is a big part of the story. I would, I think it's fair to guess she'll click with it. But I also think it like it will, it will make her feel something that maybe she doesn't want to feel. Like she'll identify, but it will hurt. I'm speculating, I don't want to speak for her, obviously. But it's very hard to not think about that, watching the film from my perspective.

• 1:36:35Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:36:36Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm, I guess I'm curious about how you feel about that, about like, is it better to see something and click with it, even though it hurts, or you know, maybe how you think about even what people have told you about experiencing the movie? Because it is so intimate and specific and there are not a lot of movies about this.

• 1:36:54Speaker 02

  No, there's not. I think that one of the things about the movie that's been most powerful for people, that people have directly expressed to me is that, is that thing that you're saying, is that these are things that like women are trained. The whole movie is about something that, that women are trained not to talk about. Because these feelings feel like a betrayal to your child.

• 1:37:36Speaker 02

  You can love your child and also say or feel that sometimes you need a break. Sometimes it's too much, sometimes you've reached your point. Sometimes you're, you just want to take a nap and you, and, and it's, you can't believe that you can't because you're responsible for this other human being. Sometimes you want to just run away and you can't. Because again, you're responsible for a human life. And in our culture, we do this really weird thing to women where it's like, mothers are like revered and oh, a mother.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  Is the best thing a mother, but it's also completely disrespected and dismissed and ignored as far as what it actually is to be a mother. And, and for, and let's broaden it out to a caretaker of any sort. The, the responsibility of that can sometimes feel crushing, crushing. And, and the 24 hours of it, the 24 hour, they're like, like it doesn't stop. And you are, you are constantly being needed for something and you're constantly fulfilling needs. And then at a certain point, it's sort of like, well, I have needs. I'm a human being.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  I was a full, fully formed human being, individual person before I had a child. Why, why does that change once I have a child? Why is that expected to change once I have a child? Now, it doesn't mean that you, I'm condoning the things that Linda does. But the things that Linda does are, are come out of that feeling. They come out of that feeling. And so I can, I can, I can have them in a film.

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  Because it's not as scary as actually like thinking of doing it yourself. And the idea that women don't even talk about this with each other, by the way.

• 1:39:45Speaker 02

  It is, it is, it is verboten. It is, it is, it is taboo to say, my kid really annoyed me last night. In this one, in this one millisecond of a moment, I didn't like my kid.

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  But you're a human being and your kid's a human being and, and that's normal. It doesn't mean. That you're bad. And then there's this whole other thing that we do to mothers, which is that the only way we can talk about it is by making it a joke. Like, bad moms, like, oh, like, it's wine o'clock, mommy juice, like, all that stuff. And you and making a joke out of it, right? And it's like, no, moms, when kids go to bed, moms drink. And why? Because it's a way to escape without actually doing what Linda does, which is putting her child actually in danger by leaving the premises.

• 1:40:44Speaker 02

  And, and, and so it's like, if somebody, a woman sees themselves in, in the film in a way that scares them,

• 1:41:00Speaker 02

  that's the thing that they, that they should be thinking about, about themselves and, and, and, and why it scares them and, and how maybe to recalibrate things

• 1:41:14Speaker 02

  so that it's not something that is a part of their life, because it doesn't have to be.

• 1:41:21Sean Fennessey?

  So I have a related question. If it's too personal, you tell me. Has your daughter seen this movie?

• 1:41:27Speaker 02

  No, she has not seen the movie. She says to me that she doesn't ever want to see the movie. And that's fine.

• 1:41:36Sean Fennessey?

  Why, what, what does she know about it?

• 1:41:39Speaker 02

  What she knows about it is that it's, is that it is inspired by an experience that, that we had together. But that, with the way I've explained it to her, is that it is not a story about the daughter.

• 1:41:57Speaker 02

  Because I always said, I said to her from the beginning, if you want to tell your story, you can do that one day if you want to. I'm not telling your story. What I'm doing is telling a story about a mother in this situation. And the mother is, is me, but it's, it's my feelings. It's not, it's not.

• 1:42:17Speaker 07

  My, uh, it's not about me either. Um, and, um, she understands it in that way and it, and it's accepts it in that way. She's very proud of the fact that at the end, there's a card that dedicates it to her. Very proud of that. And she's very proud of me. Um, but she said to me, is it okay if I never watched the movie? And I said, it's absolutely okay. It's okay with me. Um, because we also had a shared, we, we had a shared trauma. In the movie, Linda is running away from a very specific trauma that has to do with this situation. And she's running away and she's running away and she's running away by, by drinking, by doing drugs, by literally running away, by, you know, all of these things, by doing,

• 1:43:02Speaker 07

  trying to do breath work, uh, going, you know? And it's like this idea where trauma, it's inside of you, whether you deal with it or not, and it's gonna get you. It's gonna get you. And in this movie, it gets her. It slaps her in the face. Um, and she, she still can't deal with it. She still can't deal with it. And, um, so it's talking up, so I, I explain it to her in that way, is that I, is that your story is your story. I have my own trauma about it. And that's what this movie is about. Um, it's why I also make some conceptual choices, like not showing the daughter.

• 1:43:44Sean Fennessey?

  Does she know how it ends?

• 1:43:47Speaker 07

  Uh, no.

• 1:43:50Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:43:51Speaker 07

  No. Um, no, she doesn't. She knows very little about it, in fact. Um, one, yeah. The, the, the reason that I don't show the daughter is, is for a couple of reasons. One is, like I said, it's not the daughter's story. I wanted to very radically, you know, the bad version, the bad version of this whole thing is, uh, is a, is a, is like a slick, sort of like Lifetime movie, uh, you know, Mother on the Verge, you know? We, we know those movies. We, we know those, you know? They exist. Um, this, I want to do something different, which is, no, no, no, but it's not about her and the daughter.

• 1:44:36Speaker 07

  It's about her. And the daughter is one of the things in her life that she feels oppressed by.

• 1:44:47Speaker 07

  And we hear her voice, but we don't see her.

• 1:44:52Speaker 07

  There's two reasons for that. One is that Linda cannot see her daughter in a figurative sense as anything other than something that's another thing that's oppressing her and put upon her and an obligation and needing her and wanting from her. She can't see her as a little human person.

• 1:45:23Speaker 07

  She can't derive joy from her child. She's bitter about the fact that she can't be a regular mom, that she has to contend with this. This is not what she signed up for. Right? And she's fighting against it.

• 1:45:39Speaker 07

  And then the other reason is that, once you introduce the face of a child, just as human beings, the way we're programmed, your sympathy is going to go with the child.

• 1:45:51Speaker 07

  Automatically. We can't help it. That's how we're programmed, unless you have no soul.

• 1:45:57Speaker 07

  I'm having this character do things where I need that not to be a complication in the way that the audience is looking at this woman.

• 1:46:12Speaker 07

  It's, again, an empathy test. And if I was to have the daughter in there for the whole time, it wouldn't work. It wouldn't work. And then hopefully, you know, there's a payoff for the audience that I have that I know works because people have expressed to me that it is a payoff that sticks the landing and it and it kind of speaks to everything that I just said. Everything that I just said becomes true.

• 1:46:47Speaker 07

  And I don't want to give it away. But, you know, also, I want to say, like, in the script level, I made that choice already. That was one of the first choices I made, that we're not going to see the daughter. That was a real "trust me" moment

• 1:47:05Speaker 07

  for everybody. Trust me, trust me, trust me. I didn't know if it was going to work or not. But I had to have every

• 1:47:15Speaker 02

  Everybody trusts me that it was gonna work and then I think it does work. And I feel like it's one of the things that I'm like, oh, man, I pulled that off.

• 1:47:26Sean Fennessey?

  I think it works and I agree that it sticks the landing.

• 1:47:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:47:32Sean Fennessey?

  Mary, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing they have seen? Have you seen anything that you've liked recently?

• 1:47:41Speaker 02

  Well, well, I haven't seen anything new.

• 1:47:44Sean Fennessey?

  That's okay. Could be anything.

• 1:47:46Speaker 02

  Because I, I, when I'm creating, I can't take in new other people. I don't want to take in other people's ideas. And this has been such a long process. But the last great thing I saw, that is a really good question. I rewatched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf recently.

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  I hadn't seen it since I was maybe in college. And it always was in my mind. It was in my mind as this thing that was like the greatest example of a chamber piece, four people in a room, all performance. The movie is performance.

• 1:48:32Speaker 02

  And then I was like, does this hold up? That it holds up. It holds up. Elizabeth Taylor is kicking ass and taking names. And it is, I think, if, if, probably most of your listeners have seen it. But if they have not, they should see, they should see it right away because it is an example of a movie that doesn't need anything but a great performance.

• 1:49:03Sean Fennessey?

  So interesting too, because it's kind of similar to your movie, which is like, it's a confrontation of discomfort. You know, that there is those conversations that those characters are having is, they're rough, especially for that time in a movie.

• 1:49:14Speaker 02

  It's rough and it's, you know what I love about, about reference, like a pure reference is that like we want. Watch all these movies, we digest them, they become part of our DNA. They become part of our, they sometimes change the way our brain works. They're inside our bodies. And if it comes out in work in a way that I don't even know, that's a pure reference. It's like Orson Welles says, like, the worst thing to happen to filmmaking is the homage.

• 1:49:47Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:49:48Speaker 02

  I agree, that's making movies about movies. And so when I rewatched it, I was like, this is my work. This is, this is so, this is so in my work, but in a way that I didn't even think about when I was making the movie.

• 1:50:03Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great one. Mary, congrats on the film. Thanks for doing the show.

• 1:50:06Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, and thank you for having me. This was so fun.

• 1:50:14Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to Mary Bronstein, thank you to Yasi, thank you to CR, thank you to Amanda, thank you to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. What's happening next week? What are we doing?

• 1:50:25Amanda Dobbins?

  The other side of the festival postmortem.

• 1:50:27Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. So we split this episode in half, actually. We were originally going to also talk about A House of Dynamite, which was the big premiere that you saw at Venice.

• 1:50:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:50:36Sean Fennessey?

  So that film is hitting Netflix today?

• 1:50:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:50:39Sean Fennessey?

  And we'll talk about it on Monday. We'll see you then.

• 1:51:13Speaker 02

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