Best Picture Power Rankings, ‘Bugonia,’ and the New Paranoid Thriller, With Yorgos Lanthimos!

Sean and Amanda kick off the show with a brand-new version of their Best Picture Power Rankings (1:43). Then, they cover Yorgos Lanthimos’s new movie, ‘Bugonia,’ starring Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone. They explain why this is their preferred “flavor” of Lanthimos, crown it as a new type of paranoid thriller, and praise Plemons's and Stone’s incredibly sincere and sympathetic performances (21:31). Later, Lanthimos joins Sean to talk through the difficulties and benefits of shooting the film with a large format in VistaVision, what interests him and intrigues him as a storyteller, and why he has anxiety about the future regarding our inability to communicate with one another (1:01:49). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Yorgos Lanthimos 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 Finacy.

• 0:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 0:11Sean Fennessey?

  And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about begonia. Today on the show, we're talking about the new paranoid thriller comedy, What's It? From Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. We'll also be updating our monthly Best Picture power rankings, which may or may not feature begonia. Gut check, yay or nay?

• 0:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm realizing I forgot to scroll to the other document right now, but I, we had it on the last one, right?

• 0:33Sean Fennessey?

  We did. I have a surprise coming for you very shortly about that. Later in this episode, though, I do have a conversation with Yorgos Lanthimos. He's actually never been on this show before, which is quite strange. Filmmaker we like, we've talked about all of his movies in the last seven or eight years.

• 0:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And very active in the last seven or eight years.

• 0:47Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely. He's on this hot streak, three movies in three years. This is his fourth consecutive film with Emma Stone, who is, of course, my GOAT. So, Yorgos, great guest, very thoughtful guy, and hope people will stick around for that. Coming up next, movie talk.

• 1:03Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is presented by LinkedIn Ads.

• 1:05Amanda Dobbins?

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

• 1:12Sean Fennessey?

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• 1:29Amanda Dobbins?

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

• 1:43Sean Fennessey?

  You know, usually, we start the episode by talking about the movie.

• 1:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:47Sean Fennessey?

  Today, I want to do the power rankings first.

• 1:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:49Sean Fennessey?

  How do you feel about that?

• 1:51Amanda Dobbins?

  So that then we can talk about the movie and... People who only want to listen to the power rankings won't have it spoiled.

• 1:57Sean Fennessey?

  Let's not explain the podcast mechanics inside of the podcast.

• 2:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I was actually thinking about this before we started recording because you made a beautiful outline.

• 2:08Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you.

• 2:09Amanda Dobbins?

  You were just blogging through it.

• 2:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And I did add a section to it.

• 2:12Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I haven't seen it.

• 2:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, which was about the ending and which has been a topic of conversation among those people who have seen it. And I think we can't really talk about the fullness of the movie without discussing it. But obviously, movies like Bugonia are like, you know, a slower release. Not everyone's seen it, so it's not podcast mechanics. It's consideration for our audience.

• 2:35Sean Fennessey?

  I take it back. You're absolutely right.

• 2:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:37Sean Fennessey?

  And thank you for adding that section.

• 2:39Amanda Dobbins?

  You're welcome.

• 2:40Sean Fennessey?

  Also, that is exactly what I was thinking, which is that this would not be a complete conversation about this movie if we did not talk about its entirety. And so I do want to be able to talk about that. So let's talk about the power rankings first, and maybe that will betray some thoughts about Bugonia, but I don't think so.

• 2:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:53Sean Fennessey?

  So scrolling. Just as a recap.

• 2:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Sean Fennessey?

  We did this on the episode that we did with Van about the smashing machine the last time. And that was October 1st. It's been about a month.

• 3:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:04Sean Fennessey?

  Most of these movies have come out, though not all of them.

• 3:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 3:08Sean Fennessey?

  Most of them have played at festivals, though not all of them. And here's where we left it last time. We had Wicked for Good at 10, Frankenstein at 9, Bugonia at 8, House of Dynamite at 7, It Was Just an Accident at 6, Jay Kelly at 5, Sentimental Value at 4, Sinners at 3, Hamlet at 2, and One Battle After Another at 1. Couple of things have happened since then.

• 3:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 3:30Sean Fennessey?

  You and I have both seen Marty Supreme.

• 3:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Correct.

• 3:33Sean Fennessey?

  We still have not seen Wicked for Good or Avatar Fire and Ash.

• 3:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Correct.

• 3:38Sean Fennessey?

  I have seen Wake Up Dead Man.

• 3:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I saw it this morning.

• 3:41Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so we can talk about that. You have still not seen Train Dreams.

• 3:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Monday.

• 3:45Sean Fennessey?

  We both have seen No Other Choice.

• 3:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Correct.

• 3:48Sean Fennessey?

  And The Testament of Anle.

• 3:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Correct.

• 3:51Sean Fennessey?

  We are very comfortably able to cross Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere off the list.

• 3:57Sean Fennessey?

  And then the final piece of this puzzle, I think, aside from the two big tent pole movies that are coming.

• 4:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 4:02Sean Fennessey?

  Is, is this thing on?

• 4:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 4:04Sean Fennessey?

  Which I see this evening.

• 4:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 4:07Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm very excited about.

• 4:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Twist.

• 4:08Sean Fennessey?

  And I.

• 4:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 4:09Sean Fennessey?

  What I've read about it.

• 4:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Sean Fennessey?

  Forget about this Best Picture power rankings bullshit that we've created here on the show. Has got me excited because there's a Jim Brooks movie coming out later this year, but this kind of sounds like the Jim Brooks movie.

• 4:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 4:20Sean Fennessey?

  And I like the idea of Bradley Cooper saying like, I'm just gonna make a good old fashioned adult drama. Now, I don't want to get my hopes too high, but I'm, I'm actually very excited to go to the movies tonight to see this film.

• 4:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I like the films of Bradley Cooper. I, so I'm excited to, there is standup comedian, uh, energy, literally, in this, which, you know, I'm not going to see it tonight, so no one, people have to wait. That's one concern, and then there's just like a persistent like, why? You know, with like every movie, not like, why are you trying to make good movies? But there are three, as I understand it, uh, adult dramas about, uh, a man who, uh, makes art for a living in some sort of personal crisis.

• 5:03Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:03Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's hard not to like, connect some dots.

• 5:05Sean Fennessey?

  What are those movies?

• 5:06Amanda Dobbins?

  But not be able to connect, uh, Star is Born.

• 5:08Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, his three movies.

• 5:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Maestro. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 5:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 5:11Amanda Dobbins?

  No. So I, I'm like.

• 5:13Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's very easy to psychologically analyze Bradley Cooper.

• 5:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but I don't have the whole picture, you know?

• 5:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 5:20Amanda Dobbins?

  So that's just kind of where I want to be.

• 5:23Sean Fennessey?

  I get it, I get it.

• 5:24Amanda Dobbins?

  But sure, I'm, I'm open.

• 5:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm very open. We, so we can't, I, that's the one in particular, the, the scuttlebutt out of the New York Film Festival when it premiered was that it is good, but not an Oscar movie, whatever that means. So let's just, let's look at it.

• 5:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 5:37Sean Fennessey?

  We talked earlier this week about the fact that House of Dynamite, given its reception now.

• 5:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 5:41Sean Fennessey?

  It's probably out.

• 5:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so.

• 5:43Sean Fennessey?

  So we can just take that off the board completely. Is there any other movie here that you look at and think, I don't know, I'm having second thoughts? I don't, I don't think, you know, the fastest riser is clearly Frankenstein, which I know is a little bit frustrating for you, but it does seem like.

• 5:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't, don't put me on an island, okay?

• 6:00Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean?

• 6:00Amanda Dobbins?

  You didn't like Frankenstein either.

• 6:02Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't.

• 6:02Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's, I just don't say.

• 6:04Sean Fennessey?

  But I don't, I'm not, I'm not begrudging its place in the Best Picture race. That's not what this, this, this work is about. This, this is about taking a snapshot of the moment.

• 6:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't say that either. I, I, it's clearly on the list, but what I'm saying is, you don't have to just put me over there. This is when my husband, whenever he doesn't like something in the house, he's like, oh, I see, like, you know. Your broccoli is there or whatever, you know? And it's always like your thing when I don't want anything to do with it.

• 6:31Sean Fennessey?

  Well, he and I are very close.

• 6:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so you don't like broccoli. But yeah, Frankenstein is on the rise. Sure. Whatever, whatever people want, you know?

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• 8:12Sean Fennessey?

  Do you feel that one battle after another, Hamlet and Sinners, have been moved out of the one, two, and three spot at all?

• 8:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, really.

• 8:19Sean Fennessey?

  I don't really either.

• 8:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Sean Fennessey?

  You've now seen those three movies. Have you seen Sentimental Value?

• 8:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I have.

• 8:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 8:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I need to see it again.

• 8:27Sean Fennessey?

  How would you say you're feeling about it at four?

• 8:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, it's...

• 8:34Amanda Dobbins?

  A percolate, that's hard because it's still, is it out yet? It's not, it's not available.

• 8:38Sean Fennessey?

  November 7th.

• 8:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 8:39Sean Fennessey?

  So that's gonna start. November 7th is limited, and then it's not out until, I think, Thanksgiving in a wide capacity, which is when we will have a long conversation about it.

• 8:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And it was just an accident, has been out in a very limited capacity, but these are, you know, the kind of, the Cannes 1 and 2.

• 8:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 8:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Movies that are rolling out, and so I can't really say that they're up or down. It's a holding pattern until people and, and I guess voters can see them more widely.

• 9:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. J. Kelly.

• 9:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Sean Fennessey?

  Which has had a very circuitous route.

• 9:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:12Sean Fennessey?

  It does not feel like it has had the same spike that Frankenstein has had.

• 9:15Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 9:16Sean Fennessey?

  Also, the idea of, you know, the Netflix slate is, is complicated. Um, I said earlier this week that there were four movies, there's actually five movies if you include Nouvelle Vague.

• 9:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 9:26Sean Fennessey?

  So.

• 9:27Amanda Dobbins?

  But you personally don't, I still have not seen it.

• 9:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I was, I was mixed on Nouvelle Vague, and we'll talk about that when we talk about the other Linklater film, Blue Moon, which I thought was wonderful. Um, Blue Moon probably not competing for Best Picture. Wicked for Good.

• 9:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 9:42Sean Fennessey?

  One of the things that we did in my house, um, on Monday night.

• 9:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, dear.

• 9:47Sean Fennessey?

  Was, uh, we watched the Lego.

• 9:50Amanda Dobbins?

  When, I was at your home Monday night.

• 9:53Sean Fennessey?

  After you left.

• 9:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 9:53Sean Fennessey?

  When we were corralling bedtime.

• 9:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 9:56Sean Fennessey?

  Um, the Lego Wicked for Good trailer adaptation.

• 10:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm.

• 10:03Sean Fennessey?

  You know, they transform the trailers into like Lego animation.

• 10:06Amanda Dobbins?

  But they're not actually making a full Wicked for Good in Lego, just.

• 10:10Sean Fennessey?

  No, they probably should.

• 10:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:11Sean Fennessey?

  Candidly.

• 10:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:12Sean Fennessey?

  But one of the very first times, I think my daughter, like, spent a lot of time saying, can I look at your phone, was when the first Lego Wicked, Wicked trailer came out, and she was like, I need that in me, like, crack now. And, and we gotta look at this one.

• 10:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:28Sean Fennessey?

  I've seen the Wicked for Good trailer, of course, I'm not anticipating Wicked for Good, I know you're not either.

• 10:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:32Sean Fennessey?

  But she was like, like, let's go. Like, this is, it is my time now.

• 10:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen.

• 10:37Sean Fennessey?

  And a lot of people do feel that way.

• 10:39Amanda Dobbins?

  On jam session this week, Juliette started our recording by just singing Wicked for Good to me. I mean, this was before we hit record, but then she just did like a Wicked for Good update segment as a Wicked fan. I, people, people who care, care. Do you know they're, they have written two new songs?

• 10:55Sean Fennessey?

  I did know that, yes.

• 10:56Amanda Dobbins?

  You did know that, but they have not debuted them yet. They're going to be debuting them on the like Variety Hour special that Cynthia Revo and Ariana Grande are co-hosting.

• 11:06Sean Fennessey?

  Is that on NBC?

• 11:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, the same night as our Big Pick Live event. So if you've got tickets for Big Pick Live and you'd rather stay home and watch Variety Show Live.

• 11:16Sean Fennessey?

  Honestly, like, we should just cancel the show. I feel like people are going to want to stay home for that.

• 11:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's being filmed at the Dolby Theatre and I thought it was doing live. So I thought that we could actually go from one to the other, but it's pre-recorded, I think.

• 11:29Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, good to know.

• 11:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, people are excited.

• 11:32Sean Fennessey?

  I'm bringing this up because I'm like, I think Wicked for Good is in a, is in a good spot right now.

• 11:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I do too, of course.

• 11:38Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 11:39Amanda Dobbins?

  It's never not been on our power rankings.

• 11:41Sean Fennessey?

  No, I know, it was number 10 last time and I do feel that it is a bit higher. To me, I feel like Jay Kelly is down a little bit. We'll see if it gets a spike back and we know House of Dynamite's coming off.

• 11:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Adam Sandler did get a Gotham Awards nomination for Jay Kelly supporting performance.

• 11:56Sean Fennessey?

  Which is just terrific news.

• 11:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but that was, that was the only one.

• 12:00Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like Frankenstein is at five and maybe Wicked for Good is at six.

• 12:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 12:08Sean Fennessey?

  If we're leaving that top four in place, I don't really see a reason to meaningfully change anything about the top four.

• 12:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 12:16Sean Fennessey?

  And then you've got the Bugonia question.

• 12:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:21Sean Fennessey?

  Setting aside your feelings about the movie, which we'll talk about very shortly. Is this a Best Picture contender? Now, Yorgos obviously has the, the, the, the legacy.

• 12:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 12:32Sean Fennessey?

  Because a handful of his films have been nominated for Best Picture over the years. But this, even by his standards, is a bit strange.

• 12:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it? It's strange. And also, I felt, of course, it's strange. And Emma Stone shaves her head, like, we all know, and they're building stunts around it. But it-

• 12:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's very conventional until it isn't. And I would say also, the thing that it is doing, it is doing a thing that is very similar to Eddington, which put a lot of people off.

• 13:00Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true. But I-

• 13:01Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't put us off, but it put a lot of people off.

• 13:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I do think that Lanthimos and Emma Stone are both kind of carved into the Academy vote of infirmament. And I've been surprised by the number of conversations I've had with people not co-hosts of podcasts about movies, who are anticipating Bugonia, because they know about Emma Stone. They know, especially from the favorite Poor Things 1, 2 of Lanthimos, that this is something they should be looking out for.

• 13:35Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 13:37Amanda Dobbins?

  And Jesse Plemons is well-liked. I don't-

• 13:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it is still in the conversation right now.

• 13:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think you're right. I think it's like 10.

• 13:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 13:50Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's like at number 10. I'm very curious what kind of business this movie does, because, you know, his, two of his last three movies have actually made basically $100 million at the box office.

• 13:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 13:59Sean Fennessey?

  There isn't a real audience for these excursions, kinds of kindness notwithstanding.

• 14:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, like, what would you want to put instead of Bugonia?

• 14:07Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I think it's pretty-

• 14:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, we don't have Marty Supreme in here, though.

• 14:10Sean Fennessey?

  But that's going in the House of Dynamite spot. To me, Marty Supreme, that basically is number seven.

• 14:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:16Sean Fennessey?

  Where it like-

• 14:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely.

• 14:17Sean Fennessey?

  People loved it at the New York Film Festival.

• 14:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:19Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if it's really seriously competing for Best Picture right now, but it's gonna, there's gonna be a lot of warmth towards it. The Chalamet performance is sick.

• 14:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Lights out.

• 14:27Sean Fennessey?

  It is so good. And, you know, I'm sure we'll talk for six hours about that movie on the pod. It's very big-picture coded in a lot of ways. But I, you know-

• 14:40Amanda Dobbins?

  So what else could go in place of Bugonia? The Secret Agent is just not there right now, which is not to say it can't happen.

• 14:48Sean Fennessey?

  I do want to, I do want to say, I know you're seeing it this week. We just saw with I'm Still Here, the Brazilian contingent is very powerful.

• 14:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally, totally.

• 14:57Sean Fennessey?

  And I, I wouldn't be stunned.

• 14:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, I a hundred percent agree, and I think that also really applies in the acting categories.

• 15:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, and to me.

• 15:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And which we've said.

• 15:05Sean Fennessey?

  And Bugonia and The Secret Agent kind of have something in common, which is that they have these very funky genre trappings.

• 15:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 15:13Sean Fennessey?

  Around what is also like a very kind of sensitive emotional grief-stricken story. And so like you could see like only one of those two getting the nod. It would be cool if The Secret Agent made it in. I don't know about at the expense of Bugonia, but it's an interesting consideration.

• 15:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 15:27Sean Fennessey?

  And then.

• 15:28Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's not, it's not being released until end of November.

• 15:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 15:32Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 15:33Sean Fennessey?

  It's gonna take a while.

• 15:34Amanda Dobbins?

  It's gonna, it's gonna take a while.

• 15:35Sean Fennessey?

  And we'll get to that too, when it comes out. Then what we have to think about is I think Avatar, Fire and Ash, Train Dreams. I don't think Wake Up Dead Man's gonna make the list. I think, I think it's, people are gonna like it. I think they're gonna, you know, I thought it was very good. I think.

• 15:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Same.

• 15:49Sean Fennessey?

  He has gotten original screenplay nominations for the first two Knives Out films.

• 15:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I could see it.

• 15:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's not out of the realm of possibility.

• 15:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I could see it, but I, I would agree with you that.

• 15:58Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think it's Best Picture. So Avatar and Train Dreams are either of those, or is No Other Choice possibly sliding Bugonia out? I think that'd be cool.

• 16:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:10Sean Fennessey?

  For, for park fans, you know, that's a, that was a very fun movie.

• 16:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but to me, to me, and I, it is because I saw them in rapid succession, but like, that is a, that's a great double feature, and I think you either have one or the other.

• 16:24Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 16:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I do think the Academy voters are, are trained for Land the Most First.

• 16:31Sean Fennessey?

  Probably, probably the case.

• 16:32Amanda Dobbins?

  And then the Emma Stone of it all.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  Can I ask you a question?

• 16:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Speaking of Academy voters having, you know, roots to some of these filmmakers, for the last two months, I feel like pretty consistently, both you two and David Sins have been like, we're really worried about Avatar. But from my personal perspective, I just feel like I would be stunned if they do not give it a Best Picture nomination. Especially with Cameron.

• 16:56Sean Fennessey?

  My biggest hangup with it is that it's only been three years since the last one. And it just is going to feel less impressive because it's so soon. That's total speculation and has nothing to do with what I think about the quality of the movie. I'm fired up. Like, I like the Avatar movies. I've always been honest about that. I think they're cool.

• 17:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:14Sean Fennessey?

  I think this one could be cool. I just don't know if it feels like special in the same way.

• 17:18Amanda Dobbins?

  There's also, you only get one franchise blockbuster spot, usually.

• 17:24Sean Fennessey?

  And you think that's Sinners?

• 17:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, no. I think it's Wicked for Good. I would be surprised if they did Wicked for Good and Avatar Fire and Ash. Just from a, I mean, it's different audiences, but the, look, you can make, you know, quote unquote art while also making millions of dollars.

• 17:47Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's some differentiation between them just because one is like a movie musical.

• 17:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:52Sean Fennessey?

  Versus a spectacle, right? And so like, there is usually like a musical spot, there is a spectacle spot. So there is, but your point is well taken, which is that it's not often that you see multiple franchise movies in the, in the race. It's a tricky one. I'm, my gut is to leave Bugonia in right now. And to say Jay Kelly is at nine, and It Was Just an Accident is at eight. That's kind of boring.

• 18:16Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I mean, do you want to?

• 18:19Amanda Dobbins?

  They've got Marty Suprem in. I like, I haven't seen the evidence for, for Train Dreams yet, like literally.

• 18:26Sean Fennessey?

  And also. It premiered at AFI.

• 18:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:29Sean Fennessey?

  Re-premiered at AFI. People liked it.

• 18:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:31Sean Fennessey?

  That would mean three Netflix movies, which is a lot to ask.

• 18:36Amanda Dobbins?

  They're, they're, they're good in nominations.

• 18:38Sean Fennessey?

  Very good. They're, they are, they are literally the best at getting nominations. Yes.

• 18:42Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 18:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Weapons out.

• 18:47Sean Fennessey?

  I think so.

• 18:47Amanda Dobbins?

  We flirted with it, but, and that was fun.

• 18:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I'm fired up for the Amanda Seyfried Testament of Ann Lee.

• 18:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Same.

• 18:53Sean Fennessey?

  Best Actress campaign, which is gonna be hot and heavy.

• 18:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but I agree that I don't think that it'll crack the top 10.

• 19:01Sean Fennessey?

  Nothing else, right?

• 19:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know, you can't really, I, yeah.

• 19:03Sean Fennessey?

  I am, I'm just gonna say this again. I, I may, I mentioned it this week and you scoffed at me, but I'm not, I'm not closing the door on the F1 nomination. I just wanna say.

• 19:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 19:13Sean Fennessey?

  That there is a world where, one, it's, that's Apple's only horse in the race.

• 19:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 19:20Sean Fennessey?

  And that's a movie that has great craft. So you've got all those guilds and all those artisans who are gonna be behind it. Kaczynski's already had a film in Best Picture before.

• 19:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:32Sean Fennessey?

  With Maverick. The movie did really well, and it did really well internationally. It's, to me, it's not crazy. There is a history of movies like this, these like muscular event films that have the sheen of prestige. I'm just, I'm just, I'm not ruling it out.

• 19:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I, like, everything that you're saying is factually true. It's always a good strategy to stake out a wild thing as like a, it could happen.

• 20:00Sean Fennessey?

  Hey, I said it.

• 20:01Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 20:01Sean Fennessey?

  I've been doing, this has been.

• 20:02Amanda Dobbins?

  October 30th.

• 20:03Sean Fennessey?

  This has been my business for years now.

• 20:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that's fine. Um, I, Brad Pitt was like at the Dodgers game last night, right next to Flea. So, you know, he's maybe thinking about popping back up here and there.

• 20:15Sean Fennessey?

  Of course, and sure it's gonna hit the streaming service soon, you know?

• 20:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think it has the juice.

• 20:21Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 20:21Amanda Dobbins?

  At like, at this point, I, I just, it didn't have the juice when it came out. I know it made a good amount of money and we were all like, hey, pretty good. Remember when the Zeppelin hits? You know?

• 20:31Sean Fennessey?

  Internationally, it did really well. It's now, it, it made like 600 plus million dollars. It actually turned out to be, it's like, made roughly the same amount of money as Superman. You know, so from, from an international box office perspective, huge success. US, pretty modest. Not, not as big as they would, I'm sure would have wanted it to be. But I'm just thinking about, like, it's freaking Hans Zimmer and Joseph Kaczynski and Jerry Bruckheimer producing. Like, it is Hollywood.

• 20:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 20:55Sean Fennessey?

  But with an international sport that a lot of international voters might have an understanding affinity for. I don't know, just, just.

• 21:02Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, I hear you.

• 21:02Sean Fennessey?

  Just podcasting with you, you know?

• 21:04Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I, I love to podcast every day. So. The campaign would be run by Apple and not Warner's because Warner's distributed it.

• 21:13Sean Fennessey?

  I believe so. I could be wrong about that.

• 21:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Because I want to ask you this. Do you think any of the, you know, the Warner's Paramount acquisition of it all, who does that splashback on if it goes through? If there is dissatisfaction in the industry, if not the world at large, at the consolidation of

• 21:34Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very good question.

• 21:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Of studios and the loss of jobs and everything that that entails.

• 21:42Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great question. I think they won't punish the artists. I don't think that they'll punish One Battle After Another because there's an effort to sell Warner Brothers. I don't think. I could be wrong. I could be wrong.

• 21:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but does Warner's get like three or four, you know?

• 21:57Sean Fennessey?

  I think they're gonna get two. I've been pretty consistent that I think they're gonna get two. I think Sinners and One Battle are locked in. I don't think they'll punish them for that because it's not anybody's fault to work on those movies.

• 22:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think so either, but I'm just thinking out loud.

• 22:08Sean Fennessey?

  Paramount doesn't have a movie that's competing.

• 22:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, yeah, that's the problem.

• 22:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 22:11Amanda Dobbins?

  About money.

• 22:12Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mean, they're trying to make a change there, which could, you know, damage the movie going long term. We'll see. I think I feel good about this. So this list would be Bugonia, J. Kelly, It Was Just an Accident, Marty Supreme, Wicked for Good, Frankenstein, Sentimental Value, Hamnet, no, excuse me, Sinners, then Hamnet, and then One Battle After Another.

• 22:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:32Sean Fennessey?

  No reason to believe One Battle After Another is moving out of first place. You're not swayed by the Hamnet shift.

• 22:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's just because Hamnet's gonna be released in a few weeks, you know, so we're like

• 22:42Sean Fennessey?

  So then you'll be putting it at number one then?

• 22:43Amanda Dobbins?

  We're in the press cycle. No, we're in the press cycle. It's when people are talking about it, you know? And then also, people need other stuff to write about, so they're hand-wringing about One Battle After Another International Box Office or whatever. That's just, it's where we are. But I think we can reassess.

• 22:58Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds good.

• 22:59Amanda Dobbins?

  In a month.

• 23:00Sean Fennessey?

  I feel fine about this.

• 23:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 23:01Sean Fennessey?

  Shall we talk about Bugonia?

• 23:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:02Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Let's get into it. So this will be a spoiler conversation. I don't know if we'll be like really deeply spoiling it until we get much further into our conversation.

• 23:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And we will say, and now we're gonna talk about the ending.

• 23:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. So if you don't want anything about this new film spoiled, I do believe it's opening wide this weekend, so everybody will be able to see it. As I said, new movie from Lanthimos, his fourth movie with Emma Stone. The screenplay is by Will Tracy. Will Tracy, interesting figure. He was the editor in chief of The Onion. He wrote on Last Week Tonight. He wrote on Succession. And then he wrote the movie The Menu from 2022. This is his new screenplay, which it sounds like was Perhaps engineered by Ari Aster, who showed him the material for, based on Save the Green Planet, which is a South Korean film that came out in the 2000s. It has a very similar structure, but not all the same things in it. So, as I said, Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbus, Stavros Halkeis,

• 23:57Sean Fennessey?

  and Elise Silverstone are the stars of this movie. It's an interesting cast.

• 24:03Sean Fennessey?

  The framework is two conspiracy-obsessed men kidnap a CEO of a pharmaceutical company because they've become convinced that this CEO is an alien come to Earth to destroy it.

• 24:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 24:16Sean Fennessey?

  What did you think of Bugonia?

• 24:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Big fan. And as I was prepping for this last night, I am thinking about all the different parts of the movie. I was like, oh, I actually really liked this.

• 24:25Sean Fennessey?

  I had the same reaction.

• 24:26Amanda Dobbins?

  But we discussed this right after seeing it, is that this is our particular flavor of Yorgos Lanthimos movies. And we were talking a bit with Jack, who loves Lanthimos. But you, Jack, is in the favorite Poor Things demographic, right?

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Well, I think I just had more fun with Poor Things. I think I also, you know, we had Yorgos on the show, and I heard his conversation with Sean before I saw the movie. And I think going in, I was just bummer town. You know, Sean noted, if you listen to the conversation the first time, he found it quite funny. The second time, he found it quite sad. And I think that might have rubbed off on me a little bit, and that I just, generally speaking, had more fun with Poor Things. But I also really enjoyed this film.

• 25:11Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think that's useful to what you're saying, which is, is your Yorgos Lanthimos's films fun? And is that important if they're fun? Because I find his movies to be incredibly bleak and mordently funny.

• 25:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 25:28Sean Fennessey?

  But kind of punishing when thinking about the human condition. But in a way, as you know, knowing me the way that you do, like, I love that.

• 25:34Amanda Dobbins?

  But same, actually. And I'm like, if you're gonna go for it, like, let's absolutely go for it.

• 25:39Sean Fennessey?

  If you put Melancholia on your 25 for 25 list, it's like, it's in that mode.

• 25:42Amanda Dobbins?

  And by the way, Melancholia is really funny to me. So, until it is, until it's not.

• 25:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 25:48Amanda Dobbins?

  So, I've always been in the dog to lobster, less so Killing of a Sacred Deer, because everybody's gotta have...

• 25:54Sean Fennessey?

  That's incredibly bleak.

• 25:55Amanda Dobbins?

  It's incredibly bleak and just, like, creepy. And I like a little more...

• 26:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Human desperation and interpersonal connection in my bleakness, or the absence of, and the longing for at least. But I saw this and I was like, oh, it's Dogtooth. Like this, it's like he's wearing his Dogtooth hat and not his Poor Things hat.

• 26:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 26:20Amanda Dobbins?

  The favorite is probably like the closest melding of the two. And, you know, and that's a lot of people's favorite for a reason. And I get it, but I tend to err towards the weirder and less hopeful. And frankly, just like less costume drama-y stuff, even though I'm a person who loves costume dramas and I think he sends them up very well. But to me, this was smart, funny, refreshingly weird. And without spoiling anything, like it got me. It got me a few times over.

• 26:54Sean Fennessey?

  I felt very similarly. I think seeing it a second time, as Jack said, did reveal to me that there's the charge because there is a kind of mystery quality to this movie. This idea that these men are convinced of this truth about this woman that they've kidnapped. And then the movie becomes a series of dialogues trying to ascertain the truth. And so, once you've seen the movie a second time, you're not watching it with the same tension.

• 27:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 27:18Sean Fennessey?

  You know, you're not laughing at the weirdness as much. You're more thinking about the psychology of these two characters, really, who are facing off against one another. And then Jesse Plemons' character, I think it's a very, very sad person.

• 27:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 27:31Sean Fennessey?

  And it's, I think, a very sad testimony to the way that a lot of people have been sucked into a rabbit hole in the face of a series of tragic experiences. And this is a character who you come to learn over the course of the movie, has suffered some real pain in his life and is pretty lonely. And really only has his cousin, who is neurodivergent, to spend time with. And he falls down these rabbit holes and he can't get himself out. And he keeps like looking for answers and looking for truths in the world. And like you could just map this on to any number of things that have happened in the world. You can map this on to the Charlie Kirk assassination. You can map it on to January 6th. You can map it on to QAnon.

• 28:14Sean Fennessey?

  There's like a whole bunch of things, like all of these things are all informing. I think where a lot of the writing and like feeling of the movie is coming from, even if none of that stuff is in the movie literally. And so I really love Jessie's performance. And then conversely, Emma Stone

• 28:31Sean Fennessey?

  has a really interesting job in this movie.

• 28:32Amanda Dobbins?

  She does.

• 28:33Sean Fennessey?

  And I think is a pretty amazing in terms of what she's accomplishing.

• 28:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 28:40Sean Fennessey?

  Her character is kind of broad. And I think it becomes clear why she's kind of broad over time when you're watching it. But I like her consistently undermining her America's sweetheart persona. And this is a very nasty person that she's playing in this movie.

• 28:56Amanda Dobbins?

  She doesn't give a fuck. And she is, she encapsulates the, the, the corporate greed systemic aspect of this situation. She is the CEO of a company that did something horrible to Jessie Plemons's family. But she's also just like seen in HR training being like, you know, everyone can go home, but they can't go home. But like, there, there are a few things and, um, including one exchange that like you noted, and I guess Will Tracy, the screenwriter like ID'd where she's like, let's have a dialogue about this. Like the corporate speak in this movie that, that she is asked to give is, is chilling and, and funny in that I like, I want to jump off a cliff sort of way.

• 29:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And I, you know, having worked in these environments in the past, like a lot of this is very familiar to me. And if you have been subjected to it, it's pretty vomit inducing. I liked what Tracy said about it. He said, there's that scene where Teddy and Michelle are arguing in the basement and Michelle asks to have a dialogue and Teddy snaps at her. I think maybe I wrote that out of a feeling after reading countless pieces with titles like what we talk about when we talk about universal healthcare. There's a lot of talking, but nothing actually happens. The talking itself becomes the point, as, as does the inaction. That's depressing and confusing for someone who comes from a less advantaged situation like Teddy. He's been abused by the system that keeps talking without doing anything.

• 30:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, which is, which is I think really true and observant and leads to like a great character in Teddy, but it's also kind of where I think this movie is like a bit broader and a bit more accessible than maybe we're giving credit for because like, yes, it's weird, but there's a lot of talking, but nothing actually happens.

• 30:32Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Is something that any person with a corporate email account like has ever experienced, you know, any person who's ever had to like file for health insurance, you know, anybody

• 30:42Sean Fennessey?

  Can I put some time on your calendar to talk about this?

• 30:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Or just like the random invitations from someone being like, hey, we're gonna have a summit about like how to empower like women, you know, and candle making.

• 30:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'm sorry for all those invitations.

• 30:52Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, none of that comes with the raise. So it's like, everyone can understand this situation that he's been in, in like, the broadest level. And then the further you get into it, the weirder it gets and, and the sadder it gets for him, but it's, it's all recognizable.

• 31:14Sean Fennessey?

  It is. The world itself is real and it's actually the most real grounded world.

• 31:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:20Sean Fennessey?

  I think he's probably ever made a movie in.

• 31:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:24Sean Fennessey?

  If I had to think, I'm, I'm, I guess Kinds of Kindness looks like our world, but it never, it never feels like it is.

• 31:31Amanda Dobbins?

  They're, they're in a, like a compound, like the cult, whatever, you know?

• 31:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes. And in this movie, it's like Teddy works in a, like a packaging facility for an Amazon style corporation, you know?

• 31:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 31:43Sean Fennessey?

  That, that is a very recognizable space. Like his house is just a dilapidated home in a suburban neighborhood or in a, in a, in a rural neighborhood. And because of that, I think it makes the formal stuff that Lanthimos does seem more weird. And I think he's like, he's shooting this movie as though it is an intense anthropological animal documentary. Like it opens with these images of the bees. And this idea of, you know, the apiary that they manage at the home. And that it's obviously a very broad metaphor about how we all exist on this planet and in these societies. And we all have our roles and we all work for the queen. And if we lose our purpose and we don't know where to go, that's just like me on this show.

• 32:27Sean Fennessey?

  I work for the queen and if she's not doing well, then we're gonna have a tough episode, you know?

• 32:32Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I was honestly just thinking about how this is also how the Netflix series With Love, Meghan opens, which explores many of those themes in a similar way.

• 32:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and she bears some resemblance to Michelle in this film.

• 32:45Sean Fennessey?

  And but, you know, so he's using this like interesting formal style where in Inside the House interiors is very, much more normal than what we expect to see from him. Not as much of the fisheye lens that you see in The Favorite or in Poor Things. Not the elaborate production design that you would have seen in Poor Things or the costuming. It's much more grounded in that way. But then when you go outside, well, like when Teddy goes to his job.

• 33:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:11Sean Fennessey?

  There's this sense of like doom everywhere.

• 33:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 33:14Sean Fennessey?

  The music gets very loud and you get these wide shots of Teddy on his bicycle or like characters moving through that natural world. And like a dinosaur is gonna eat them or something. You're waiting for something terrible to happen to them. And so it's a very effective like.

• 33:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is true in pretty much all his movies. The larger outside worlds. It's they're about people who are constrained in small spaces, but like either by choice or by someone else. But that the, you know, danger, danger is just outside.

• 33:42Sean Fennessey?

  That's right, like the mad scientist father in Poor Things thinks he's protecting his creations, but in fact, he's not allowing them to be free. Like it's something that Lanthimos comes back to over and over again. This is an interesting example of it just because this one didn't originate with Lanthimos. Like he didn't write the screenplay. He didn't develop the material as he did with Tony McNamara on a couple of movies. And it still feels like it's right in his.

• 34:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:07Sean Fennessey?

  You know, his wheelhouse, like he's very comfortable in it. It's also like, it's very, it's unsurprising for him to make a movie about alien paranoia. You know, he's never made a movie about that, but that he's, he would be very comfortable doing that kind of thing.

• 34:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, and that's just like the literal expression of like a paranoia of.

• 34:27Amanda Dobbins?

  That things are not right and that there are like people either people who you can't see and you can't really pin down what's going on that is against you, but they're out there. And it's if you can just find them, you can solve all your problems.

• 34:42Sean Fennessey?

  It's the only way to make sense of what's happening to people, you know? Because even if you are living a blessed life, awful things are going to happen. And when they happen, you're like, how can this possibly be? How can it? This is not fair.

• 34:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:56Sean Fennessey?

  This is not what was promised. And whenever something like that happens,

• 35:01Sean Fennessey?

  you want there, you want to find a way to rationalize it. Like, it's a very understandable approach to a sympathetic character. But Teddy is also not sympathetic.

• 35:10Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 35:11Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he's all, he's incredibly violent and he's willing to do whatever it takes to get his truth.

• 35:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 35:20Sean Fennessey?

  Which is something that is also in the, in the modern condition right now.

• 35:23Amanda Dobbins?

  It's true. The character itself is not sympathetic. I do think that Plemons plays him, if not with, with sympathy. I mean, he

• 35:34Sean Fennessey?

  I think sincerity.

• 35:35Amanda Dobbins?

  It's an incredible performance. Yes, and he is not judging the person. And so then watching someone who is both like within a mania and also incredibly practical about it, because it's become real to him. And Plemons like does keep it very grounded and keeps it as, you know, kind of like next steps and, okay, we're gonna need to, to follow this. And he creates someone who so believes the world that he has constructed, that you kind of, you believe it too, or at least you don't judge him. Maybe you're like, you're like, this is bad. And you're watching it even being like, okay, I'm supposed to think about like these N cells and these people who are radicalized by YouTube.

• 36:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And like, you can think of the real illusions, but I at least found myself having some sort of connection for the character.

• 36:24Sean Fennessey?

  So one thing I felt when I was watching it related to that was he does things that feel like they are over the line, like they're violent, they're intense. He doesn't really have control of his emotions. However, whenever he attempt, whenever Michelle Attempts to pull him into a dialogue.

• 36:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 36:39Sean Fennessey?

  He's prepared with all the buzzwords to counteract anything that she says to him. Like, he cannot be drawn into her game in any way because he's like, I've read all that. It's very much like Will Hunting in the bar. You know, he's like, I know what tactics you're gonna try to deploy to disarm me, to make me think about how I'm in an echo chamber.

• 36:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 36:59Sean Fennessey?

  And he's like, I know everything all the way on the far left. I know everything all the way on the far right.

• 37:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 37:04Sean Fennessey?

  He's like, I'm on my own mission. I got my own shit. Now, that is definitely what sociopaths say when they kill people, but it is also what politicians say when they try to convince people of things. And I think the movie is pretty clever about that, about keeping you in the middle in terms of where to land on Teddy. Where he'll torture Michelle and you're like, this is awful.

• 37:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:24Sean Fennessey?

  But then you'll hear Michelle say something after she's been tortured and you're like, God, I wish you would kill her. And that's a very clever trick. I give Tracy a lot of credit for getting that in the screenplay and keeping that balance.

• 37:36Amanda Dobbins?

  The right villain.

• 37:37Sean Fennessey?

  Very much.

• 37:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and both, I think the character is purposely broad because that broadness is part of what the enervating quality of just being like, why can't you just like be a person or do a thing?

• 37:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 37:51Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, so there's nothing for me to respond to, so.

• 37:53Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know that we've ever had a good conversation about the she EO girl boss era, which does feel a little bit bygone. Obviously, there are still people who represent that in the culture, but it's not as prevalent as it was like five, 10 years ago.

• 38:07Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 38:08Sean Fennessey?

  But she is very much inspired by that.

• 38:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Sean Fennessey?

  Did they?

• 38:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I have a lot of them, yeah.

• 38:11Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, how come? What did they do?

• 38:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, they were very nice on Slack primarily, and then they forgot that there was a record of it.

• 38:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's tough.

• 38:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you don't want that.

• 38:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, it's funny that Stone is like, I'm in my mid 30s. It's time for me to be.

• 38:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 38:30Sean Fennessey?

  A little sharper and to be unafraid to be unlikable in movies. There's a funny like. Charting of the favorite to Cruella.

• 38:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 38:41Sean Fennessey?

  Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, Eddington, this movie, The Curse.

• 38:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 38:49Sean Fennessey?

  Where she's like, maybe it's better if I'm terrible? Maybe that's my screen persona, like a bad person?

• 38:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe. I just think it's like, she's into some really weird shit.

• 38:59Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 38:59Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, it's so cool.

• 39:00Sean Fennessey?

  I love it.

• 39:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And she is just absolutely dedicated. Like she is just making.

• 39:03Sean Fennessey?

  It's the best.

• 39:04Amanda Dobbins?

  So many movies with Jorgos Lend, but when she's not, she's just like, sure, I'll move to New Mexico and do the curse. Like, like we are a long way from easy A.

• 39:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 39:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And that's really rad.

• 39:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 39:15Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, that's, I admire it, but the, the endurance, we're like, it's a durational performance at this point.

• 39:22Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Also, two movies that are totally in conversation with each other in Eddington and Bugonia.

• 39:26Sean Fennessey?

  Hundred percent, obviously both in part from Ari Aster, right?

• 39:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Sean Fennessey?

  Already produced Bugonia, we should say, and that's not a mistake. It does make me think a little bit about how, because of all these feelings that we're talking about, like,

• 39:39Sean Fennessey?

  this is a new version of a paranoid thriller. You know, this is.

• 39:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Sean Fennessey?

  This is, we had the Alan Pacula films.

• 39:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 39:46Sean Fennessey?

  And Three Days of the Condor and all that stuff in the seventies, which was a manifestation of post 1968, Watergate, the Vietnam War, all these things happening in the country that manifested creatively in these kinds of movies that gave you this sensation.

• 40:02Sean Fennessey?

  This now feels like an actual little boomlet.

• 40:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:06Sean Fennessey?

  You know, when you look at One Battle, you look at Eddington, you look at even 28 years later, where you've got these movies, Civil, your beloved Civil War. These movies that are kind of filtering the moment and trying to find something to say about them. And I don't know, I think, I think sometimes I get a little bit stuck on what is this movie trying to say around all of these things?

• 40:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 40:30Sean Fennessey?

  I think just their, their, their, their existence together in a very short period of time, though, I think is saying, we're a period of like controlled chaos, where everyone's individual life is like going along okay. It doesn't, you know.

• 40:44Amanda Dobbins?

  No, not even okay, like pretty badly.

• 40:47Sean Fennessey?

  I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't, I shouldn't pay with a broad brush. Like, if, if you're being, you know, if you can't get a job, or you're abducted by ICE, that's obviously an absolute nightmare.

• 40:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:57Sean Fennessey?

  But I would say in the sort of like middle class, upper middle class especially, there's a little bit of like not my problem going on in the country, which is one of the reasons why a lot of things are getting worse.

• 41:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 41:10Sean Fennessey?

  Is because there's not a lot of rage in the, in the, you know, the class that has something to lose.

• 41:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 41:16Sean Fennessey?

  Which is kind of what, that's kind of what fascism is depending on, you know? It kind of banks on people comfortably sitting in their house, watching their TV shows or their podcasts.

• 41:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 41:26Sean Fennessey?

  So that people can make hay of the power. And it's, it's rare for art forms to actually meaningfully try to communicate something is wrong. This movie might be a little bit too oblique to make any kind of meaningful change, but it is, it does feel like a product of this last five, 12 years where people are like, why the fuck does everything feel so much worse every day? Why do I feel so much less in control of my own fate?

• 41:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 41:53Sean Fennessey?

  Than my parents did.

• 41:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And certainly Eddington and, and, and no other choice, I would say, which I know people really haven't had a chance to see, like isolate a particular, no offense, male character who has like emerged in the last five to 10 years and feels cast out by certain parts of society and then also overcome by.

• 42:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Late-stage capitalism, basically, and, and everything that you're describing and is responding to their lack of place in the world in a specific way. And, but, you know, I was, you mentioned Three Days of the Condor, and I was just then imagining Robert Redford in his peacoat compared with, you know, Jesse Plemons in, in this movie. Heartthrobs of their age as actors, but like, you know, that's, that's the hardest, the hottest that Redford has ever looked. And then, poor Jesse Plemons just has to play a complete, an utter, like creepy loser.

• 42:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, an unwashed maniac.

• 43:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Doesn't reflect well on our times. You know, like, who our, like, who our Avengers are, and they're not really our Avengers. That's another part of the problem. These are all people who are, like, have been really, really, uh, trodden down by the world, and the way they are responding is not, like, solving Watergate.

• 43:19Sean Fennessey?

  No, there, I think there's absolutely something to that. I mean, a lot of these movies now are about how fragile men are making problems. I guess Nixon was kind of a fragile man in some way as well.

• 43:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 43:31Sean Fennessey?

  But those movies were interested in locating at least ideas of heroism, you know, that a journalist could be a hero in this place, or even just like a, a kind of bookkeeper, librarian type, like in The Three Days of the Condor is an unlikely person to try to save the day. Parallax View also is a, is a journalist.

• 43:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 43:53Sean Fennessey?

  Klute, is a cop, like, it's these kind of like regular guys who have heroic qualities. These movies, Eddington, Civil War, Bugonia, you don't come out of the end of them and think like, oh, there was a hero. These movies are not about that at all.

• 44:08Amanda Dobbins?

  No. I mean, the sad part about all of them is that there is no hero.

• 44:13Sean Fennessey?

  That's, they're more, they're even more hopeless.

• 44:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:15Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, The Three Days of the Condor, the ending of that movie is very hopeless. I would argue these movies are more hopeless.

• 44:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 44:21Sean Fennessey?

  And that's interesting, and it's interesting for them to be kind of coming through the mainstream movie studio system. Like, this is a focus movie. Universal acquired the rights to distribute this movie. And I think it's pretty, pretty audacious in that way, and the idea that even a movie like this is commercial is quite fascinating. There, like so many other things, there also is a way to read this movie as kind of like a very tense popcorn thriller, you know, like the metaphor is unmistakable, but if you're not thinking too hard about it, it could just be like, is this lady an alien or not movie?

• 44:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, I watched it the first time, I really wanted to know. And should we put off the spoiler demarcations?

• 45:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, let's just say we're going to talk more significantly about the results.

• 45:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Here we go, we are both like making a box around ourselves and also this part of the podcast. No, I spent a lot of time being like, oh, is she an alien? Oh, I don't think she is. And like, there was a second level to it, which is I know I'm watching a Yorgos Lanthimos movie, so I know he's trying to wrong foot me, and I know this type of movie is trying to wrong foot me. And so, I'm like, oh, that's cute, and then there, but she's not going to be, but then, then I'm like, wait, no, maybe she is, but I know she's not going to be, but then I am supposed to think that she's not going to be. And I really did go back and forth four or five times.

• 45:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that the movie is like very cleverly structured and performed, and that credit to Emma Stone, so that I didn't really know. And honestly, when she goes back to the closet and then the big reveal, like, I laughed. I was like, that is genuinely funny, you guys got me.

• 46:04Sean Fennessey?

  I totally agree.

• 46:05Amanda Dobbins?

  You straight up got me.

• 46:06Sean Fennessey?

  I really enjoyed the reveal, and I similarly went back and forth, back and forth, thinking about it, and using the psychology of our movie history with the filmmaker, which matters to it. And Yorgos, when we talked, he said just that Emma thought about this a lot, you know, that she put a lot of time and effort into thinking about what she was showing and not showing in her performance, because a lot of her performance is about this very clipped manner of speaking, is about trying to maintain control in an environment in which she has no control, and what she's supposed to be saying. And when we do in fact learn, spoiler alert. That she actually is an alien.

• 46:42Amanda Dobbins?

  When she runs back to the closet and jumps in, I was like, no, nah.

• 46:46Sean Fennessey?

  Well, when they cut back to her in the, in the ambulance, I was like, okay, confirmed.

• 46:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:50Sean Fennessey?

  Like, you know, they reveal her to, you know, ready to make her return to her ship. I, I laughed as well. And, and I felt a little bit sad again, like I said, because this is something that I alluded to when we talked earlier this week on an episode, but Teddy.

• 47:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:07Sean Fennessey?

  Was right.

• 47:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:09Sean Fennessey?

  His suspicion that there isn't just an alien species, but that she was, and not just a, a meaningful member of the species. But he learns because of these procedures that he's doing.

• 47:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:22Sean Fennessey?

  That she is a high ranking official in the Andromedan.

• 47:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 47:25Sean Fennessey?

  Empire.

• 47:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 47:28Sean Fennessey?

  And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because he's just a dumb guy with no agency.

• 47:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:33Sean Fennessey?

  And he's just another bee.

• 47:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 47:35Sean Fennessey?

  In, in the hive.

• 47:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 47:36Sean Fennessey?

  And he can't make any change and she pretty easily outsmarted him, even though he had her dead to rights, trapped in his house. She still outsmarted him.

• 47:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Sean Fennessey?

  And we're all just.

• 47:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And also, uh, he killed his mom with antifreeze.

• 47:49Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 47:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:50Sean Fennessey?

  He's an idiot. He's a fucking online idiot.

• 47:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but it's sad. Yeah.

• 47:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's very sad, but it's like, she convinced him to do something just like so many other people have been convinced to do.

• 47:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Also, we're in the era where Alicia Silverstone is just being like the drugged out mom.

• 48:03Sean Fennessey?

  How do you feel about that?

• 48:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it, life comes for us all, you know?

• 48:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 48:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm glad she's getting work and I thought she looked great at Venice.

• 48:10Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, great.

• 48:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Not, you know, in a bathtub or whatever, or on an IV or whatever is going on.

• 48:15Sean Fennessey?

  The most Lanthimos-ish moments in the movie are the black and white flashbacks.

• 48:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:21Sean Fennessey?

  Where we see, which I think you could make the case didn't need to be in the movie. There, I think they're in attempts to show the, like, the trauma and psychology of Teddy.

• 48:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 48:30Sean Fennessey?

  But I think inferring it actually would have been a little bit more interesting. That's something I didn't love about it. I think those sequences are beautiful, but they're not, they didn't change the way I felt about Teddy.

• 48:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I, I think they soften both Teddy and the film a little bit. And again, that's where they like broaden it a little bit for me, where even if you are, I mean, this guy like literally murders people who turn out to be aliens, but you know.

• 48:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. So was the implication that they were all aliens?

• 48:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:59Sean Fennessey?

  All seven of them?

• 48:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Because remember when her voice changes and she's like, how many of them were Andromedans?

• 49:03Sean Fennessey?

  Right, right.

• 49:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, and.

• 49:06Amanda Dobbins?

  So I guess I don't know how many, I don't remember, but several of them. He definitely tortured people.

• 49:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 49:12Amanda Dobbins?

  But you are also given this backstory of, but it's because this, this agribusiness or whatever it is, um, killed his mom and is trying to buy him off. And that, and that's something that like, you know, I don't want to use maybe like civilians, people who aren't here for just like true fucked up, you know, dogs youth land can latch on to.

• 49:36Sean Fennessey?

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

• 49:47Amanda Dobbins?

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

• 50:00Sean Fennessey?

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

• 50:08Sean Fennessey?

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

• 50:53Sean Fennessey?

  Go online at statefarm.com or use the easily accessible app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 51:02Sean Fennessey?

  One of the things that this movie had me thinking about was that. The sort of like, the realm of conspiracy has shifted from left to right over the last 30 years. So when I was coming of age and learning and reading about American history.

• 51:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right.

• 51:19Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of the ideas when you are reading.

• 51:21Amanda Dobbins?

  That the CIA killed Kennedy.

• 51:23Sean Fennessey?

  And like, Noam Chomsky will be like, the entire country is founded on rape and pillage and backroom deals.

• 51:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I mean.

• 51:31Sean Fennessey?

  Which we know, but we understand now in a way that even was not taught in the 1980s nearly as much. And there's this wave of generations that are reading like, Lies My Teacher Told Me and all these books.

• 51:42Amanda Dobbins?

  People's History.

• 51:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, People's History of the United States, like all these books which are so, and if you study media and journalism like I do, you're like, start reading McChesney and all these people and they reveal like corporate power is the thing that tends to dominate the mind. And they're doing it on purpose. Advertising is doing it on purpose. This is a way to bilk you and to narcotize you to not take action.

• 52:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:04Sean Fennessey?

  And then over time, especially in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Tea Party. That strategy of saying like, you're being lied to.

• 52:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:15Sean Fennessey?

  There's something wrong in the world and you need to take action.

• 52:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 52:18Sean Fennessey?

  Has shifted as to become more of a strategy on the right. Now, you can make the case, and I'm sure people are listening, they'll say that both sides still do it, and I'm not going to argue about that. But this movie has a really interesting relationship to that concept. Because Teddy is kind of neither left nor right, and he literally says that in the movie. But this framework of like, I'm gonna do, I have to take action. I have to stop this madness.

• 52:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 52:44Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm gonna kill people to do it. I'm gonna imprison, torture and kill people to get to my truth.

• 52:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:52Sean Fennessey?

  Is like, it's not outlandish to put this in a movie. Like, it feels pretty kind of close to the real world, even though it's an alien movie. And we just talked about a Catherine Bigelow movie, which was, you know, was very recently a portrayal of torture and an effort to ascertain information. And this is a more ridiculous genre-based premise, but not really very different.

• 53:12Amanda Dobbins?

  It feels very close to the bone. Yeah, it's like you recognize not just the allusions and you, you know, it is in some ways like, obvious metaphor alert, you know, it's not.

• 53:24Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 53:25Amanda Dobbins?

  That.

• 53:25Sean Fennessey?

  People are gonna gripe about that, too. They're gonna be like, this movie is dumb as shit because it's so obvious, which I also understand people feel like. I didn't feel that way at all.

• 53:31Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's not like, let's, you know, send Gretel Lee to a reenactment of Gettysburg.

• 53:35Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's much cleverer than that.

• 53:37Amanda Dobbins?

  It's within the text and it's part of the structure. But no, it's the, the re, not the reality of it, but the recognizability of it in a movie that is about, hey, did like aliens come to Earth to take us over?

• 53:52Amanda Dobbins?

  It's pretty remarkable.

• 53:53Sean Fennessey?

  How do you feel about the actual, like, final conclusion of just eradicating the humanity? And then the bees come back?

• 54:00Amanda Dobbins?

  So I remember the incredible filmmaking. I also just want to say, though, I, this movie was filmed, I believe, in Atlanta and in the UK. And incredible Atlanta representation. And then last montage, Fernbank Center, I see you. I see the dinosaur bones remained, if not all of the people. But I was like, hey, real trip. So that was, I appreciated that. Also, she's like driving around Ansley Park at some point. If you know, you know.

• 54:29Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 54:30Amanda Dobbins?

  But I remember sitting in the theaters being like, oh, fuck, this is really working on me. And I was like, really freaked out and devastated. And I, I, I remember thinking, and this is, it's, the film's making a completely different point. And also, like, I do understand that aliens aren't real. But I was like, I haven't felt like this since that coda in The Big Short when they're like, Michael Berry is now shorting water. And I'm just like, well, the world, like, we all are just gonna end. You know, we're gonna die and this is how it's gonna, that's gonna happen. And it's just a little coda at the end of a movie. And I'm unprepared.

• 55:07Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I, I think it's, I did just have this feeling very recently in a movie. And it's when you're looking at the data center when the Bobby Gentry song plays in the beginning of Eddington, where it was like, ooh, goddamn, I am powerless.

• 55:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:18Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, and, and power is very centralized and you, you know, enjoy your yogurt at home. You, you moron. Because.

• 55:28Amanda Dobbins?

  It now costs like fourteen dollars, but whatever.

• 55:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that is true. I think that.

• 55:36Sean Fennessey?

  This is an interesting one for Yorgos. It sounds like he's gonna take a little bit of a break after this because he's been on this breakneck pace.

• 55:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm really, really, I really think both Stone and Plemons are exceptional in this movie. I've read some criticism that people thought it would work better if Plemons was like a little more cartoonish. But I liked it. He was just kind of this tragic loser.

• 56:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that's, I mean, that's the thing of people always want the bad characters to be punished. And I think that the, the lack of punishment, except that like, we're all punished because life is hell.

• 56:11Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 56:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That's, that's the wavelength you and I are on.

• 56:13Sean Fennessey?

  I know, I know. It's nice. It's something we share.

• 56:18Sean Fennessey?

  What else? Any other thoughts about this movie or where it even fits in with Lanthimos's, uh, his filmography?

• 56:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So I think it's kinda, it's more first half than second half, which I think is cool.

• 56:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yep, I agree. I'm happy he kind of went back to that energy.

• 56:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you know, we did power ranking, best picture power rankings to start this. And I, I do kind of feel like Poor Things had a lot of success at the Oscars because it was weird and outlandish, but also ultimately sort of like good girl.

• 56:51Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of hopeful.

• 56:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you know, it's like the she-oh makes good. And she becomes her own she-oh, you know?

• 56:57Sean Fennessey?

  Indeed.

• 56:59Amanda Dobbins?

  So I guess now I do wonder how Bugonia will go against. It's, this isn't the most hopeful of, of, even of the movies this year that are dealing with how men are cast out of the world that we live in.

• 57:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I mean, if you put it up against One Battle After Another, that's a significantly more hopeful movie, even though it's riven with tragedy. I, like, my personal favorites are also Dog Tooth and the Lobster. Those are probably my two favorite films. I don't know if they're the, his best made movies per se. He's really, at this point, his production design is pretty incredible. Like, he just, he's kind of in master filmmaker territory for me. Doesn't mean every movie is my favorite. I really didn't dig Kind of Kindness, even though it felt very close to the Dog Tooth energy. I didn't think that the script was as good. And I know you don't, you don't love anthology.

• 57:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that's true, you know? Tell a story. Favorite and Poor Things are both excellent.

• 57:54Sean Fennessey?

  They are. I really like both of them as well. But this is, this would be near the top for me. I don't, I don't, I've seen it twice now. I don't, I don't know if I'm gonna race to see it again. I think it doesn't have as much.

• 58:06Sean Fennessey?

  As much comic payoff as The Lobster does. The Lobster, to me, is also very tragic and has an insanely bleak ending. But it's very amusing. But going, if I spent any time thinking about it, I feel very bad.

• 58:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's the point, right?

• 58:22Sean Fennessey?

  It is the point.

• 58:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:24Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  I have a question.

• 58:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  Do you think there is any chance Emma Stone gets a Best Actress nomination?

• 58:31Sean Fennessey?

  And this is a good question.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  The reason I ask is, you know, I'm watching the movie and you guys already celebrated her. It's an amazing performance, but she's put in a position of vulnerability, which her character has truly, really never been in. And she plays it very well. And there's one moment where she is in a position of power, which is when she's on top of Teddy. And the mask just completely comes down and she just delivers that line where she says, "I'm a winner and you're a loser." And she delivers it so sharply and her teeth are gritting and it just, it cuts right through. And I was stunned and right after I'm like, well, surely she's going to be nominated for Best Actress. But I wonder, is there a little bit of Emma Stone fatigue following the second win from Poor Things?

• 59:11Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think there's fatigue for her as a performer.

• 59:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:15Sean Fennessey?

  I just think that the Oscars is usually kind of strategic about this and that, you know, she was obviously, you know, in a tight race when she won for Poor Things. And I wouldn't say that was a surprise win. I think you picked it and I didn't. Is that right?

• 59:31Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I think that-

• 59:33Sean Fennessey?

  Or I picked it and you didn't?

• 59:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe we both didn't pick it, but then it was real like, oh, God, I knew this was coming. Like, I knew it. It was one of those.

• 59:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, very similar to Mikey Madison beating Demi Moore too, where it was like, ooh, right. Why didn't I use my brain on this one? Three before 40 would be a lot. That's just not-

• 59:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, he's not asking if she's going to win.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just saying-

• 59:55Sean Fennessey?

  I think she'll be nominated.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 59:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, she is a huge star. Clearly, one of the actresses of her generation, if not the actress of her generation. Yorgos is Academy certified, like you were saying. And I don't, I don't know how successful the movie will be, but I don't, I think some, I think people will see it.

• 1:00:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I do as well, and she's also, she's working the trail.

• 1:00:16Sean Fennessey?

  And she's just super charming.

• 1:00:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Sean Fennessey?

  You know, she's just like great on the right carpet, great in interviews, she's a good star. And those people tend to walk away from their careers with like nine nominations.

• 1:00:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but so who do we have now? So we've got Emma Stone, we've got Jessie Buckley, for sure.

• 1:00:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:00:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Chase Infinity is running in Best Actress.

• 1:00:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:00:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Which would be exciting.

• 1:00:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:00:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:00:39Sean Fennessey?

  We have Renata Rensvy for Sentimental Value.

• 1:00:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:00:42Sean Fennessey?

  We have Amanda Seyfried for The Testament of Anne Lee.

• 1:00:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:00:45Sean Fennessey?

  We have Kate Hudson for a film called Song Sung Blue.

• 1:00:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I heard about that. I like that she tried. I, um, never mind, we can talk about that later.

• 1:00:54Sean Fennessey?

  We have Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs I'd Kick You.

• 1:00:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'd love to see that.

• 1:00:57Sean Fennessey?

  Sydney Sweeney for Christie.

• 1:00:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:01:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's gonna happen.

• 1:01:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:01Sean Fennessey?

  You said J. Law for Die My Love?

• 1:01:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't say it yet, but that's another one.

• 1:01:04Sean Fennessey?

  Um, there's probably a couple more.

• 1:01:07Amanda Dobbins?

  A lot of angry moms there on the list.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  Cynthia Erivo.

• 1:01:11Sean Fennessey?

  Cynthia Erivo for Wicked for Good. I haven't, um, I haven't seen Hedda yet, but maybe Tessa Thompson, she's gotten very good reviews for that movie. I don't think Julia Roberts for is this, or for After the Hunt is gonna happen. Laura Dern, is this thing on?

• 1:01:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Could be.

• 1:01:24Sean Fennessey?

  Lot of contenders this year. Um, I think that's, I think that's roughly the shape of it.

• 1:01:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. That's, that's a lot.

• 1:01:33Sean Fennessey?

  That's a lot. To me, it still feels like Jessie Buckley's to lose.

• 1:01:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Agree.

• 1:01:39Sean Fennessey?

  I, what do you think about the Chase Infinity thing? Her choosing to run in Best Actress, or them choosing to run her in Best Actress? Which obviously makes room for Tiana Taylor and Regina Hall to run in Supporting.

• 1:01:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I like it. Again, I don't, I don't really feel category fraud, or like in the way that you do, or, you know, I know Wesley Morris. You and Wesley like feel very strongly about it. I'm just like, I don't know, go win an Oscar.

• 1:02:02Sean Fennessey?

  You rarely see the inverted fraud.

• 1:02:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:02:06Sean Fennessey?

  Where somebody who feels like a supporting character goes into lead.

• 1:02:11Amanda Dobbins?

  But she doesn't feel like a supporting character. I mean, she's the, the movie, this, two thirds of the movie, Tiana Taylor's the prologue. And then she is the girl lead in the end.

• 1:02:22Sean Fennessey?

  She is, but act two is Bob's movie. So she gets one section of the movie. And the movie obviously becomes hers by the end. She's.

• 1:02:29Amanda Dobbins?

  So you get one, two, three. So, I mean, Leo's not running in supporting actor.

• 1:02:35Sean Fennessey?

  No, but he's in every phase of the movie. He's the only character who's in every phase of the movie.

• 1:02:41Amanda Dobbins?

  All right. I mean, I, like, you don't need to mansplain to why Leo is the best actor and everyone is supporting actor. It's like, what do you care? Like, are you?

• 1:02:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's more just a question of like.

• 1:02:51Amanda Dobbins?

  The category police.

• 1:02:52Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I did, actually, by hosting this show. Category police is a good idea for a segment. Let's, let's do that.

• 1:02:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:02:59Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think it's, I think it'd be cool if she got nominated. She's in Infinitys, excellent in that movie.

• 1:03:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:04Sean Fennessey?

  It's her third performance on screen ever. It's crazy.

• 1:03:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Sean Fennessey?

  But I, I think she's, she's pulling a tough draw here with some.

• 1:03:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Sean Fennessey?

  A bunch of people who've been nominated before, a couple of people like, you know, Cynthia Revo, Amanda Seyfried, Jessie Buckley, they've all been nominated before.

• 1:03:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence have won before.

• 1:03:24Sean Fennessey?

  Have won in this category before.

• 1:03:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Sean Fennessey?

  Sydney Sweeney was in a jeans commercial.

• 1:03:30Sean Fennessey?

  So there's, you gotta consider that.

• 1:03:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Have you watched those?

• 1:03:33Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:03:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Well, we'll, we'll do it before Christie. Oh, no, we'll do it. We'll do it.

• 1:03:39Sean Fennessey?

  Rose Byrne should be nominated.

• 1:03:41Amanda Dobbins?

  1,000%.

• 1:03:42Sean Fennessey?

  I, I will, I will endeavor to, I'll, I'll communicate about that on an ongoing basis for the next five months. I think she really deserves it.

• 1:03:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Begone, yeah, pretty, pretty good. I liked it.

• 1:03:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I really do.

• 1:03:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Go see it if you haven't. If you're still listening and you didn't see it, I, okay.

• 1:03:58Sean Fennessey?

  You're bad.

• 1:03:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Those are your choices.

• 1:04:01Sean Fennessey?

  Your choice now is to either turn this episode off or more likely stick around for my conversation right now with Yorgos Lanthimos.

• 1:04:13Sean Fennessey?

  For the very first time, joined by Yorgos Lanthimos, the great filmmaker. Very excited to speak with you, sir. I wanted to start with this. Three of your last four films have been written by screenwriters other than yourself. And this one, I read, is the first one that you didn't even really develop the material. So I'm curious, like, when a script hits your desk, what are you looking for? What is it that excites you in a story?

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  Well, I'll start by saying, like, all of these scripts until recently, I'm either, you know, involved as a writer or kind of found the original material, or they were all like really long process of, you know, development. So I was involved with the script, screenwriting for many years. So in that sense, this is even more exceptional. It's the first time that I receive a screenplay and I think that it's, you know, almost ready to go. Of course, I had to do a little bit of work with Will just to get it more to my sensibility

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  and, you know, feel more comfortable and, you know, make it aligned with my vision of the film. But it was like a, you know, very short process and I felt immediately from the beginning that it would, you know, work because already the screenplay was incredible. So... And what it was, like, it's difficult to say. Like, I guess one thing, the less profound is like it was different to what I've done before. But then, you know, it was something that I read and I read it like in one go and I

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  found it, you know, entertaining and suspenseful and complex and, you know, very funny, but also like dealing with, you know, a lot of darkness, a lot of issues around humanity and human nature, which always interests me, and done in a quite different way, in a contained way. So...

• 1:06:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it just got me excited immediately. And I immediately sent it to Emma Stone. The same night that I read it, it was so and so much of an immediate reaction, I guess. I'm curious why you were open to this kind of a process at this stage of your career, you know, as opposed to developing or identifying the material or even writing it yourself. Like, why were you open to just receiving someone else's script? I guess I'm always open. I just, I had never received a script that felt, you know, that it had the right,

• 1:06:55Sean Fennessey?

  you know,

• 1:06:57Sean Fennessey?

  material or the right tone or the right anything. But it was that different with this one. So I've been reading scripts. It's just that nothing really clicked up until now the same way that this one did. Were you familiar with Save the Green Planet before you got the script? No, not at all. I hadn't seen it and actually read the script first. Got excited, shared it with Emma. And then basically, when we kind of, you know, felt strongly about it, I, then I watched the original film just to make sure that it was different enough to warrant, you know, a remake. And, you know, I saw that that was the case.

• 1:07:42Sean Fennessey?

  And so we decided to go ahead with it. You're on this breakneck pace right now with three films in three years, which is very unusual for filmmakers these days. I was curious if you see the last three films as thematically linked in any way beyond Emma appearing in them. Well, I mean, what we mentioned before, there's a lot of exploration of human, you know, condition and behavior and

• 1:08:18Sean Fennessey?

  yeah, something along those lines.

• 1:08:23Sean Fennessey?

  At the same time, like they're

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  Formerly different and seemingly, you know, quite different stories.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  I don't know, like it's that thing that like it's hard to, you know, make a self-analysis and understand what it is that draws you to this kind of things. I think that's, you know, better done by other people that don't are not so much involved in the in the process of, you know, making those.

• 1:08:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I'll do it for you then if you want me to.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah. I mean, it's always interesting to hear that, you know, those things. And especially when you do recognize something that someone says, you go like, oh, yeah, do that. That's true.

• 1:09:03Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to ask you about the formal aspect of it because this new film does feel a bit like you took pieces of Poor Things and pieces of Kindness kindness in terms of the style of film that you were making and kind of blended them together. You know, that these are like a lot of interiors shot in small spaces, but these kind of big outsized ideas and a kind of high melodrama to a lot of the execution of the story. Like, is that something that you feel conscious of when you're like, all right, I've used these tools over here and these tools over here and what if I smash them together?

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, a little bit, basically trying to do, you know, something slightly different with each film, but at the same time, having developed a certain kind of taste and a certain kind of preference about things and then seeing what you can do to, you know, tweak things just to make it more interesting. But also I rely a lot on what the material is and what that gives me in order to make that shift, not just

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  without any reasoning, just do something different for the sake of it. So, you know, for example, on this film, on Bugonia, we decided that, well, first we decided that we're going to shoot on Vista Vision, which was like a huge decision. We had shot some Vista Vision on Poor Things, but at the time, we couldn't really find a camera that was reliable enough to and quiet enough. To shoot uh sing dialogue with. So we couldn't shoot much more and but those images stayed in our heads. So as we were making other stuff, we kept like interrogating

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  the the possibility and Robbie was like looking around for, you know, what other camera there cameras there could be. So we found this camera, the Will Cam, which is uh quieter. I mean, you can still hear it, but.

• 1:10:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's still a pretty big camera though, right?

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's it's quieter, but it's really huge.

• 1:11:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  So uh we did some tests and we liked it. So, you know, then you get into the, okay, we have this restriction. It's gonna be huge and it's slow. I mean, it takes a lo- a long time to, you know, change the magazine and all of those things. So that puts you in a certain kind of a mode. And if you accept that and you commit to that, then you figure out, you know, the rest of it. So for me, it was like interesting to use such a larger format in what you you described as well, like smaller spaces, kind of claustrophobic. Um a film very much focused on characters and dialogue.

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  I think that kind of depth of the larger um format kind of created this almost iconic portraiture of the characters. So we decided that we're gonna stick with that and not, you know, uh use uh too many wide angle lenses and see a lot of the space necessarily most of the times and then juxtapose those that portraiture with when you're outside and you see, you know, like something wider. So the the contrast is greater. So. You just kind of build from the material, from one decision that you make, that it leads you to the others. We always love restrictions as well, like with Robbie, we've done, you know, the last few films together and

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  so most of the times we kind of impose them ourselves because it just makes things clearer and easier. Like, so you develop this language and you say like, this is the alphabet. There's like these lenses and the camera doesn't move unless people move and, you know, it's a huge camera, so we can't do like a thousand different angles, uh, you know, those things. And that kind of helps, you know, um, uh, free you in the process, especially, you know, during filming. It's very stressful, you don't have much time. So when you have less options, it kind of frees you to, you know, focus on other things or be creative of how you find a solution for something.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  So it it either comes from, you know, circumstances or a choice that you made. But it's always helpful, I find, to like narrow things down.

• 1:13:24Sean Fennessey?

  I love that juxtaposition in the film that you talked about, this idea that whenever Jesse's on his bike or Emma is just kind of walking briskly through a space, that it feels like the camera is very wide and that there's like this sense of impending doom, like someone might come up behind them at any moment. But how do you avoid, when you impose those rules, the film like feeling too schematic? You know, feeling too mannered. Do you think about that?

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, which I think I I don't mind. I like the aspect of a of a certain construct to be obvious. And I like to mix that with other things, like, you know, there can be a, you know, very, as you say, like conscious construct around how the film is, um, recorded. But then like there's these, you know, quite realistic, although realistic, although I don't really love the term, performances from the actors or the the the environment is like really dirty and real.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  And then you have this other layer of sound that or music that's over the top and, uh, super dramatic. And I think, you know, all of these things, you know, by combining all these different, uh, layers, you create this tone, this tonality, which is You know, different to its parts. So that's why I'm interested in. But then, of course, if you see it and analyze it,

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  you know, you can see the structure of that. And I don't know, like, I find something interesting about like watching a film, getting lost in it and then something reminding you that you're watching a film.

• 1:15:09Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm. I I know what you mean by that. And there was something related to that I want to ask you too, which is that I feel like most of your films are not dependent on dramatic reveals. But especially having seen this movie twice now, it plays very differently the second time that you see it.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:24Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm curious what it was like to, you know, essentially be making what feels like a pot boiler in some ways. You know, you're waiting for kind of like revelation. And if that changed how you thought about making the film in any way.

• 1:15:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was more, I think it was more important for Emma, for example, for her performance to to think about that a lot, like what it would be. And she talks about that, like that it's the first time that she thought thought about it in those terms, like what would it be if someone watched the film for a second time? So she did have that in her mind. And, you know, of course, you know, I was there and I, you know, certain things that I could see, I could help with, I would. But for me in the end, like when I started thinking about that too much, I felt like in the end, that's not, you know, the strength of this film. That's not what it's about.

• 1:16:20Speaker 02

  And also, like, it's it's based on a, you know, on an older film. If you want to look it up, you know what it is. And I think the effort was like to make, you know, every scene, every second, every, you know, um, situation compelling and interesting, the same way that I read.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  The script, because I I understood that when I was reading the script. It was about like these characters and you know how you get drawn to each one and then how one manages to convince you about something and then the other and then you don't know where you are and I felt like in the end. Whatever the outcome is, it's not as important as you know this process of being engaged in those ideas and those characters in that way. So I kind of let that go a little bit and also I don't think you can control it. I think certain people will you know, would be able, even if they didn't didn't know the original film, would be able to like decide for themselves.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  Oh, I know what it's gonna be and they might be right, they might be wrong, someone else thinks something different. There's the people that are gonna be alternating the entire time. You know, you can absolutely control that because there's so many different people. So. Yeah, I think I let go of that idea of like having to make, you know, a big reveal.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  That impactful and to make sure that nobody understands that from the beginning. I think it's interesting to allow everyone to have their own mind about it and then just, you know, make the the journey there fulfilling and interesting and exciting.

• 1:18:04Sean Fennessey?

  I did find it much more tragic the second time around, I will say, but I felt much more sad and you know, the the film that's the script is laden with all these modern phrases and this social framework and this kind of exploration of a life spent online in some ways and you know, our inability to communicate with each other essentially. And then the movie itself is this series of communications. I'm curious, like, how much does that this aspect of the world and this state of the world like you know, actually concern you or scare you and how much of it is a vessel to explore individual human relationships?

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  Well, a lot. I mean, it's it's becoming more and more obvious that, you know, there's the the the divide between, you know, the different. Groups of people and all these bubbles that are created, especially with the aid of technology and how fast it progresses. Is something scary because I I see that it's becoming really hard to burst through that bubble, to be able to, you know, to listen to someone else and, you know, actually properly consider a different opinion or a different truth. Or the nuance between what you believe and what someone else believes.

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  And that's, you know, just being in those bubbles is just being reinforced, you know, it just reinforces your, you know, ideas instead of like opening you up to other ideas, which is something that technology, you know, would be able to do. If it didn't operate in that kind of, you know, algorithm structuring thing where it just gives you what you want. And the same thing with AIs like giving you what you want, what you wanna hear, what, you know, what you, the direction you wanna go and just, you know, it just seems like it can become

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  totally uncontrollable in a sense. If you don't check in, you know, with other people or other things. So, yeah, it it it realistically seems scary, other than it being a vehicle for us to explore. You know, what that could be, you know, if you actually had that

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  conflict in person instead of like, for example, doing something like that online. I think Will Tracy, who wrote the script, talks about that, like, you know, a basic idea of his was when you started writing the script is that, like, if you took all these people that anonymously, you know, make all these comments and are so, you know, absolute about all these things and, you know, take those people and put them in a room. What happens, you know, like?

• 1:20:57Sean Fennessey?

  Well, one of my favorite takeaways. Least feelings from the movie is that being right is not a solution. You know, that even if you are the loudest and most obnoxious person, you might actually be right about what you think is happening in the world. And that doesn't mean that anything is fixable or that you're working towards a solution either, which is just such a fascinating confrontation with the way that we fight with each other every day. And I really, I clicked with that.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I agree. And it's, it's funny because like also like, you know, both sides could be right about some of the things. So again, like if you can't work together and, you know, you know, figure out, you know, what, what part of what you believe is true and what part of what, you know, I believe is true, then you, yeah, it's, it's kind of impossible to get to a solution.

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  So yeah, I totally agree with that.

• 1:21:55Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to ask you about Aiden Delbus, who, you know, is a complete unknown. You've got basically, he's right in between two performers you've worked with multiple times now. Where did he come from? How did he get cast?

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  Well, I, as soon as I read the script, as I said, I sent it to Emma. It was very straightforward for me. And when she responded to it, again, we both thought of Jesse being, you know, perfect for this. We had just worked with him on Kind of Kindness. So that was like very quickly resolved in a way. And so right after having those two in mind, I immediately felt that I wanted someone was a, was not a professional actor, who hasn't had any film experience. And I do that in, in all of my films to, you know, various

• 1:22:51Speaker 02

  levels. But this was obviously a very important part. It was like the third part, you know, three part kind of film. So, yeah, we just started the street casting. Basically, we worked with Jennifer Venditti, who has, you know, a lot of experience with finding people that are not, that do not have any film experience. And the other thing is like.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  Being inspired by how the character was written in the script, I just felt that it was an opportunity to cast someone who was neurodivergent. Like it felt that way in the script, and I think someone who would actually have that sense of the world and have that perspective would enrich the character. So we, yeah, we kind of focused towards that and, you know, very quickly, actually. We was one of the first few batches where we saw Aiden, who's autistic, and he prefers that term. And we saw his tape and we were really, he really stood out.

• 1:24:04Speaker 02

  And, but we kept looking because it felt like it was too, too early to have found, you know, such a.

• 1:24:12Sean Fennessey?

  It should be harder to find the perfect person for this part.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, like we thought like it would take forever. So we kept looking, but like, you know, we just kept saying, you know, Aiden is, you know, the best we've seen so far. So, so we met him and we met him for the first time, all three of us, like me, Emily and Jesse. We went in to do a test with the infamous Vista Vision camera, the big one. Because you can still hear it. So I wanted to have Jesse and Emily experience it to make sure that it wouldn't throw off their performances when they, when they would hear, hear the camera. It actually made them feel better because there was like a white noise in the room.

• 1:24:58Speaker 02

  It wasn't like dead silence in between their dialogue. So they, they found it like quite comforting, the sound of the camera.

• 1:25:05Sean Fennessey?

  I did want to ask you about that. I asked Adrian Brody about it around The Brutalist too, because it's a similar thing where it's got to be a little intense. And Aiden as well, like having no film experience, what, you know, what was that like for him too, to have that camera in the room?

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, The Brutalist, I think they, they shot only with a really loud camera, so they probably had them far away or something.

• 1:25:30Speaker 02

  But yeah, Aiden didn't, so we met him on that day, like, so we, it was an opportunity to meet him as well.

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  And. You know, again, it it it was obvious that, you know, he was the right person for it and we were very nervous to meet him, like, we didn't know, you know, what he would think of us, like, you know, testing this huge camera, these actors, he didn't really know who they were or what we've done before. At some point, he recognized Jesse, I think, cause he um, he watched Breaking Bad, he liked Breaking Bad and he likes horror films and stuff, so he's, so he realized who Jesse was and, you know, that started a great friendship and relationship. Um, so, yeah, he was like totally unfazed by, you know, the camera or us or like we were way more nervous meeting him.

• 1:26:22Speaker 02

  Um, and, yeah, again, that was like a confirmation that, you know, he he is the right man uh, to bring in. And, yeah, I mean, I I was nervous as well, like, you know, how it would be, you know, with someone like him and we we had an access coach on on set who's, you know, experienced um, in these kind of situations, Elaine, and she was extremely helpful because she would walk Aiden through, you know, the process and explain to him what everything, how everything is gonna be done, make sure that there were no, there weren't any things that, you know, would um, upset him in any way and, uh, but then in the end, it was like,

• 1:27:06Speaker 02

  you know, I put in the same trust to him that I put in Emma and Jesse, although they, you know, they're come from a totally different place. Um, for me, what is, you know, great about, you know, working with great actors or great people that have great presence, it's just like allow them to come in with their idea about the characters or their instincts, you know, and and then mold that instead of me, you know, trying to prescribe, you know, what it is that they have to do or what the role is. And it was the same thing with Aiden, like, he had instincts about the um, the character and, you know, I I just allowed the same way that I allow, you know,

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  And Emily to like bring that in and enrich, you know, the process and what's going on. Um, it was a great experience.

• 1:27:59Sean Fennessey?

  I really liked his performance. Um, I have two quick ones for you before we go. The first one is I'm curious just to hear your thoughts on the state of movie going because, you know, Poor Things and The Favorite were pretty sizable hits at the box office and you're one of the few auteur filmmakers who's making original material and getting audiences to come out and see the films. And we're constantly, at least on this show, debating like, what is the future of this medium and format and experience? So how do you see it right now?

• 1:28:33Speaker 02

  Well, that's a very long conversation, but um, I, what I think, I think that again, the divide has become greater, like the, there's a, there's a very absolute decision, I think, in which, which films might do well. So which films were like promoting and, you know, spending money on and, and that's like a decision that is made very, very early on. So like smaller films have less of an opportunity to be seen unless there's like this, you know, like something that happens, like a certain circumstance and something catches on for some reason

• 1:29:17Speaker 02

  and doesn't need the the support of a whole system, you know, like a huge cost around, you know, promoting a film. So, well, there's that, um, which is pretty tricky. And then there's, you know, the actual decision of people going into the cinema and

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  I, I hope that it's, you know, it will never change because it's such a different experience. It's just a like communal experience. You perceive films so differently, you know, watching something in the cinema. So, you know, though, of course, you know, streaming and all these things will always, you know, be popular because you can, you know, it's easier and more comfortable. I think if we're, you know, educated enough and try and preserve, you know, that aspect of, you know, Films and going to the cinemas and, you know, save all cinemas from closing down and pass that baton on to the younger generation,

• 1:30:27Speaker 02

  which is curious and, you know, is interested. I think that would should never go and would never go. It's like, I don't know, like saying that there would, there won't be any live concerts concerts of music anymore because it's easy to just listen to it, you know, at home. It's a totally different experience and we should do whatever we can to, you know, retain it.

• 1:30:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yorgos, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen? Have you seen anything that you've really enjoyed?

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  The last great thing, yeah, I mean, Kelly Reihardt's Mastermind.

• 1:31:03Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I love this movie. Tell me why you like it.

• 1:31:08Speaker 02

  Well, I always try to tell her why I like her films. And it's always embarrassing and go like, I'm sorry, but I'm gonna say the same things again. I just find what she does so delicate, but at the same time powerful. Like it's so

• 1:31:29Speaker 02

  subtle, but then it leaves you like a very lasting, strong impression. And I think that's so difficult to do and it's so particular to her and how she constructs these films. Yeah, that every time, you know, I watch one of her films, I'm terribly moved. So, yeah, things is one of the great, you know, filmmakers. And again, you know, as we talked about before, not enough people get to see her films because, you know, whatever the reason, people decide to either, you know, support such a film, the level that they're gonna support such a film or not. So definitely her, yeah.

• 1:32:11Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great recommendation. I saw your film and her film on the same day, Until You Ride So, a perfect match, yeah. Yorgos Lanthimos, thanks so much for the time and congrats on the film.

• 1:32:20Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thanks.

• 1:32:27Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Yorgos Lanthimos, thanks to Amanda, thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Next week, we're drafting again. Me, you, CR1989. You feel ready?

• 1:32:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I do. I have some personal anecdotes from the year, probably like 1991 to share. Because that's when some of the movies made it, you know?

• 1:32:46Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 1:32:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Because I couldn't stay up late.

• 1:32:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, you were just a tadpole.

• 1:32:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Here I go.

• 1:32:51Sean Fennessey?

  And then you became a real girl.

• 1:32:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:52Sean Fennessey?

  Roughly two years later. Okay, we'll check in then.

• 1:33:15Speaker 03

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