‘The Sting’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey pull off the big con and revisit ‘The Sting’ to kick off Redford Month in honor of the late, great Robert Redford. 'The Sting' also stars Paul Newman and Robert Shaw and was directed by George Roy Hill. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Ronak Nair, and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is sponsored by State Farm®️. A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.®️ 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.

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• 2:06Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables, brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. You can find the watch with CR.

• 2:11Chris Ryan?

  Still there.

• 2:12Bill Simmons?

  Who wrote his first site. Can't believe you're the showrunner at task. You didn't tell us.

• 2:17Bill Simmons?

  Under the pseudonym Brad Inglesby.

• 2:19Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 2:19Bill Simmons?

  Congratulations.

• 2:20Chris Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 2:21Bill Simmons?

  Sean Fantasy, big picture.

• 2:22Sean Fennessey?

  Hi.

• 2:24Bill Simmons?

  What was Physical Media Council something?

• 2:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we had a high council meeting, four guys. You're invited to the next one.

• 2:30Bill Simmons?

  Well, I just showed you.

• 2:31Sean Fennessey?

  Make it a big five.

• 2:32Bill Simmons?

  I have a big stack now.

• 2:33Chris Ryan?

  Are you boosting now?

• 2:35Bill Simmons?

  Well, I keep it low.

• 2:36Chris Ryan?

  Are you taking Physical Media Creation?

• 2:38Sean Fennessey?

  So CR came to the most recent episode. He's done one episode a year, the last three years. And he walked away with like 40 Blu-rays.

• 2:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:46Bill Simmons?

  How did that happen?

• 2:47Chris Ryan?

  Because Tracy Letts has lots of doubles.

• 2:49Sean Fennessey?

  So he brought all of his doubles and gave them to Chris. So if you want to double your stack, think about it.

• 2:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:55Sean Fennessey?

  2026.

• 2:56Bill Simmons?

  Double my stack. Speaking of doubling stack, we're doing this thing today because it's Redford Month. And we actually extended the month. It starts on September. We're doing five Redford movies in the Rewatchables. Some that we were, they were always in the hopper to do anyway. But we had to start with The Sting, an iconic movie that won Best Picture in 1973. We'll be back in a second.

• 3:33Bill Simmons?

  The Sting, 1973, comes out in Christmas. I think my dad said he took me to the theater for this one.

• 3:40Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 3:40Bill Simmons?

  I was four. Not a lot of memories. Well, there are no babysitters. There are no rules in the 70s.

• 3:46Chris Ryan?

  So you like.

• 3:47Bill Simmons?

  It's like, I want to go see The Sting. Let's, let's take Little Billy and hope he doesn't like fall over and somebody sees.

• 3:52Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, my kid is four, so I'm trying to imagine bringing her to see a movie.

• 3:56Bill Simmons?

  A two plus hour con movie?

• 3:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that would be great for me.

• 3:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't really have a lot of memories. It was a Robert Redford, Paul Newman, George Whitehill reunion from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Has there ever been a more successful Get the Band Back Together non-sequel?

• 4:12Chris Ryan?

  Ooh.

• 4:13Bill Simmons?

  I actually did some homework on this and I thought there'd be more examples than there were. Where it's like, those two guys, I love those two guys. Now they're in this.

• 4:22Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 4:23Bill Simmons?

  It's really rare. It's rarer than you think.

• 4:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's a classic BS. You didn't prep me for this one.

• 4:27Bill Simmons?

  I should have prepped you. Like, I fucking Damon are gonna try to do that right now. They did with the last duel.

• 4:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but with air, it's not, it's not the same thing, though, right? Like, I, I feel like.

• 4:38Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you could say Dogma was a follow up to Good Will Hunting.

• 4:43Chris Ryan?

  Dogma is the sting to Good Will Hunting's Butch Cassidy.

• 4:46Sean Fennessey?

  For Ben and Matt.

• 4:47Bill Simmons?

  I was worried CR was gonna go with like Peter North and Christie Canyon.

• 4:50Sean Fennessey?

  Well, they had a lot of, I mean.

• 4:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they had a lot of, a lot of comebacks.

• 4:55Sean Fennessey?

  That was banger after banger. Yeah.

• 4:57Bill Simmons?

  So I did the research on this. And you know, AI now with, with Googling stuff, they'll just serve you a lot of good stuff.

• 5:04Chris Ryan?

  Are you getting served? Are you sponsored by Gemini? Or are you just turning yourself over to the machines?

• 5:08Bill Simmons?

  No, but it was, there were some helpful things. So it used to happen all the time. It would happen with like Keppern and Tracy.

• 5:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:14Bill Simmons?

  Like we, this was how we did it forever. Uh, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman.

• 5:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yep. Bullgarden.

• 5:21Bill Simmons?

  Now?

• 5:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 5:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, now, like, really, this was the last one, and then it shifted to rom-coms. It's like Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, they're back. And now it's You've Got Mail. Richard Gere and Julie Roberts, they did Runaway, Runaway Bride, I can't speak. And then Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore is probably our best. We got the band back together of the last 30 years, which is both exciting and depressing.

• 5:43Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 5:44Bill Simmons?

  But like my, my kids know them as like a combo. I knew Newman and Redford. I always considered them like a combo just for these two movies.

• 5:53Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you what it is. It's, uh, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly.

• 5:57Chris Ryan?

  That's a good one.

• 5:58Sean Fennessey?

  It's Talladega Nights and Stepbrothers.

• 5:59Chris Ryan?

  That's really good.

• 5:59Sean Fennessey?

  That's probably the closest we have. Where like they hit on something in Talladega Nights, they were so good together. And they were like, we gotta follow up this energy as soon as we can. And within three years, you got it.

• 6:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cuz sometimes, why do you think more actors aren't like, we were great together, let's run that back? We say with sequels and that's it.

• 6:16Chris Ryan?

  Because I think that they're supremely competitive people. And you can even see when you read about like the making of this movie, is that even though Newman is in this kind of, you're minted, you're in Hall of Fame, you're going, you're going anywhere you want. He's still thinking like. I'm the star. I am the, I am the top billing. Like, how do I relate to this kid trying to take my spot in a, in a way that I think probably more actors think about than they actually reveal?

• 6:43Bill Simmons?

  Robert Shaw had a good quote about this. Cause at that point, Redford was a massive star. You know, when they did it, Butch in 69, he was on the way up. 73, he's minted. He's one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. But Newman was still Newman. And Robert Shaw said when they were filming this and they're filming it, you know, in relatively public places like Chicago and LA, um, he said, everyone was just going nuts for Newman. And then they asked like, what about Redford? And he was like, nah, it was really Newman. I wrote, they were just going right after. I can't do, do it CR.

• 7:16Chris Ryan?

  Redford goes in the water. Shots in the water.

• 7:21Bill Simmons?

  But yeah, Newman had that special something. But it's funny because this is Redford's most charismatic movie.

• 7:27Sean Fennessey?

  How do you, so how do you, like, what's the comparison modern day to that right now? Cause.

• 7:32Bill Simmons?

  Isn't it Pitt and Clooney? Or would it be like Pitt and?

• 7:35Sean Fennessey?

  But that would be like if people were going crazy for Clooney, if Pitt was present, you know, because Newman is about 10 years older than him.

• 7:41Bill Simmons?

  It needs to flip.

• 7:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. So you need, who is the, the older star who's like, you know, less of a hunk? Like Paul Newman, one of the most beautiful guys ever, but still like Redford was the ideal for a male movie star.

• 7:53Bill Simmons?

  It's like Brad Pitt and Leo, and then Leo catches up to Brad Pitt.

• 7:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like the example, the most recent example that I can even think of would be Top Gun Maverick, where it's like Tom Cruise with two younger actors who were probably in their dreams. Like if I could get a 10th of that.

• 8:08Sean Fennessey?

  And he's got 20 plus years on those guys, right?

• 8:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, those guys weren't, they weren't famous like Redford was for this second movie.

• 8:14Chris Ryan?

  But I think in the conception of Top Gun Maverick, just like maybe in the conception of, of the Sting, like there was probably a little bit more real estate for the younger guys to take it, put a flag down on. And then Tom Cruise is like, actually this is Tom Cruise movie. So like.

• 8:27Bill Simmons?

  I mean, the, the, the bigger question is we just don't have movie stars like this in the same way anymore that are under 50 years old.

• 8:34Sean Fennessey?

  I, you know, in, in Dune part two, Timothy Chalamet and Austin Butler have like a showdown, right? Like the conclusion of that movie is those two guys fighting. And it's a Dune movie. It's an IP. It's sci-fi. It's a big event movie, but. In that scene, I was like, these two guys should make a movie together that is not sci fi, where they're not fighting, like, they should actually be joining forces. But I think there's like-

• 8:58Bill Simmons?

  Like two bartenders in early 2000s New York, right after 9/11, who loved The Strokes.

• 9:03Sean Fennessey?

  Cocktail Legacy sequel, not a bad idea.

• 9:05Chris Ryan?

  Con stealing prequel.

• 9:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Eddie Greenwald at CR coming in. They're like, yo, have you seen the Yeah, Yeah, Yes?

• 9:11Chris Ryan?

  I heard there's free Rhine Gold tonight.

• 9:14Sean Fennessey?

  Not the worst idea I've ever-

• 9:15Bill Simmons?

  That's amazing. We can be here tonight.

• 9:18Chris Ryan?

  I don't understand why it's Hollywood failing.

• 9:23Chris Ryan?

  We made a movie for Yeah, Yeah, Yes fans. Yeah.

• 9:25Bill Simmons?

  I think the answer is actually, you stumbled on it with Chalamet.

• 9:30Bill Simmons?

  It's probably Chalamet and Leo, even though their, the ages are a little different.

• 9:34Sean Fennessey?

  Years apart, you know, like Leo's 50 now.

• 9:36Bill Simmons?

  But Leo was here and Chalamet was here. Now Chalamet is like, very close.

• 9:41Sean Fennessey?

  And he is, of course, playing the Leo playbook. Like, he asked him for advice. Leo gave him the advice, no superhero shit, no drugs, all that stuff. You know, that was the advice they gave him.

• 9:50Bill Simmons?

  Did Chalamet actually say that on the record?

• 9:52Sean Fennessey?

  I think he did, right?

• 9:53Chris Ryan?

  I think it was like, no drugs, no capes, or something like that.

• 9:57Bill Simmons?

  Don't have something called the pussy posse. Maybe don't call it like, anything like that, but do it anyway.

• 10:04Chris Ryan?

  Be like, my group of friends.

• 10:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, me and my buddies.

• 10:07Bill Simmons?

  Leo's like, there's these rich guys that will just fly you on their jets. Just make friends with as many of them as possible. And then you don't have to pay for anything. Jets and yachts. That's where this is.

• 10:16Sean Fennessey?

  Honestly, a really good idea.

• 10:18Bill Simmons?

  They love, Tom Brady's like, yeah, that's in Jets and Yachts. Um, best con movies ever? I don't know if this is the best, but it has to be mentioned. It's almost like when we talk about best actresses ever, and it's like, you gotta mention Meryl Streep.

• 10:31Sean Fennessey?

  Is it the first?

• 10:34Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 10:34Sean Fennessey?

  I think it might be the first.

• 10:36Chris Ryan?

  There are, I think that there, obviously, The Con Man is like a staple of crime literature and like fiction from before this, but like, this is super, this is definitely popularized, The Con Man, as something in popular culture.

• 10:50Sean Fennessey?

  I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but what, I watched an interview with Redford where he talked about the movie, and he said that when he read the script, he was like, there has never been a movie in this world before.

• 11:01Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 11:01Sean Fennessey?

  And, and that's unusual, you know? Like, it's really hard to tap into a new unseen space. And I love con man movies. I've talked about them over the years, how much I love them. House of Games, like, one of my favorite movies of all time. But, um, I couldn't think of something specifically set amongst these kinds of guys before this movie.

• 11:18Bill Simmons?

  You know who's in House of Games? I wanted to be a nurse.

• 11:24Bill Simmons?

  Who were these people?

• 11:26Sean Fennessey?

  Lindsey Krauss.

• 11:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:28Chris Ryan?

  I can't believe Lindsey Krauss and Robert Shaw are like, we don't have to say what we're imitating.

• 11:36Bill Simmons?

  Quietly unbelievable IMDB for her.

• 11:38Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:39Chris Ryan?

  She's amazing.

• 11:39Bill Simmons?

  She's even in all the president's men.

• 11:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she is.

• 11:42Bill Simmons?

  Hey, you used to go out with the guy who had the the list of creep people. And then they kind of bullied her into giving her the list.

• 11:49Sean Fennessey?

  Are we?

• 11:50Bill Simmons?

  Lindsey Krauss month?

• 11:51Sean Fennessey?

  We're not re-presidenting?

• 11:54Bill Simmons?

  So I watched it this weekend and my wife was furious.

• 11:57Sean Fennessey?

  Why?

• 11:57Chris Ryan?

  Why?

• 11:58Bill Simmons?

  Cause she's like, really? Again?

• 12:02Sean Fennessey?

  Did you know that they put it in theaters? That it's like in theaters this weekend? And it was not related to Redford's passing. It was just that it was, I guess it's an anniversary. Is it the?

• 12:10Bill Simmons?

  It must be.

• 12:11Sean Fennessey?

  Fifty year anniversary of the movie? Can't be. I don't, it's back in movie theaters.

• 12:14Bill Simmons?

  In theaters, I think this weekend too. Or by the time people hear this, maybe it won't be.

• 12:21Bill Simmons?

  That movie's still banging.

• 12:23Sean Fennessey?

  I'm ready to be president.

• 12:24Bill Simmons?

  Criterion, the the channel, which you you did something for with Allman. They're they're really, they found their stride in 2025.

• 12:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:32Bill Simmons?

  They had a seventies like thrillers. Whatever. And they had like nine of them, including all the president's men.

• 12:37Sean Fennessey?

  It's a pretty sick program.

• 12:38Bill Simmons?

  Looks good.

• 12:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 12:39Bill Simmons?

  And there's always like one or two where I'm like, what's this Jeff Bridges movie?

• 12:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:43Bill Simmons?

  Jeff Bridges, 1979? I don't even know what that is.

• 12:46Sean Fennessey?

  That's Winter Kills, right?

• 12:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 12:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:49Chris Ryan?

  Is that about a president getting assassinated?

• 12:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's like kind of a satire of those movies. It's not as like hardcore as the Parallax viewer.

• 12:55Bill Simmons?

  Could we talk them into rewatchables movies we can't do because they don't exist month?

• 13:00Sean Fennessey?

  Like what?

• 13:00Bill Simmons?

  Eddie and the Cruisers, The Sure Thing, Kiss of Death with Nick Cage.

• 13:03Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Because they're unavailable anywhere.

• 13:05Bill Simmons?

  Recutable differences, just unavailable.

• 13:07Sean Fennessey?

  Is Eddie and the Cruisers not on Tubi?

• 13:09Bill Simmons?

  It's not available.

• 13:10Chris Ryan?

  It played once on like Cinemax.

• 13:13Bill Simmons?

  CR told me.

• 13:13Chris Ryan?

  A couple of months ago.

• 13:14Bill Simmons?

  No, it was TCM.

• 13:15Chris Ryan?

  TCA or, or actually AMC.

• 13:17Bill Simmons?

  One of them, yeah.

• 13:18Chris Ryan?

  And I taped it.

• 13:19Bill Simmons?

  Me too.

• 13:20Chris Ryan?

  And was just like, hey, Eddie and the Cruisers literally is broadcast once a year.

• 13:24Sean Fennessey?

  But you guys were responsible for getting Pump Up the Volume back onto streaming.

• 13:29Bill Simmons?

  Right, into mainstream.

• 13:29Sean Fennessey?

  After you did the episodes.

• 13:30Bill Simmons?

  And it was on Criterion too.

• 13:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's what we're just trying to spread the word.

• 13:33Bill Simmons?

  But we've been, we've been complaining about Kiss of Death and some of these other ones for a while. But CR and I have Eddie and the Cruisers recorded on cable.

• 13:42Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 13:42Bill Simmons?

  But if we did re-watchables, nobody would be able to see it. When House and Jacko were here, we're going to be Revenge of the Nerds. It's not available.

• 13:48Chris Ryan?

  Is it not?

• 13:49Bill Simmons?

  Nowhere.

• 13:50Sean Fennessey?

  I wonder if it's because some of the material in that has.

• 13:53Chris Ryan?

  You think Revenge of the Nerds has been canceled?

• 13:55Bill Simmons?

  Anthony Edwards used, he's some of, used some of his ER movie. He's like, we're, we're getting rid of this one.

• 13:59Sean Fennessey?

  Could be, could be.

• 14:00Bill Simmons?

  It's a goner. Uh, best con movies, The Sting, Ocean's Eleven, Focus, Catch Me If You Can, Caller Money, House of Games, Trading Places.

• 14:08Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:08Bill Simmons?

  I would start with those seven. There's a bunch more.

• 14:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Bill Simmons?

  Like The Grifters and like you keep going and going.

• 14:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Bill Simmons?

  But I think that's in the vicinity and it usually involves a swerve. I think what's interesting with The Sting, it's telling you what the chapters of, it's now where the setup.

• 14:24Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:24Bill Simmons?

  Like it's kind of walking you through it.

• 14:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's like the guidebook.

• 14:27Bill Simmons?

  But in the most fun way possible, cause they have these amazing cards. And it's one of many reasons why I won Best Picture. It's just really well put together.

• 14:33Sean Fennessey?

  Such a good lingo movie, you know?

• 14:35Chris Ryan?

  Incredible.

• 14:35Sean Fennessey?

  Constantly dropping little vocabulary words that make you understand that what you're inside of. And you can never, like, I couldn't tell, I was like, is this based on something that is real? Were these real cons?

• 14:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think a lot of this stuff, when Twist is putting together the team of con men is actually drawn from like, you know, books and stuff about that, but you don't get Usual Suspects without this. You know what I mean? You don't get like the lingo and some of these.

• 15:00Bill Simmons?

  So that's technically a con movie.

• 15:02Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:02Bill Simmons?

  So there's basically two versions of a con movie. I think Focus is the traditional con movie. And then Usual Suspects, ones that have a swerve.

• 15:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Sean Fennessey?

  Right, like a crime thriller that has a con at the root of it.

• 15:13Chris Ryan?

  Like Spanish prisoner, man, it's like really, really, really.

• 15:15Sean Fennessey?

  Really into this world, yeah.

• 15:17Bill Simmons?

  So would you, let me, let me solo with CR for a second.

• 15:20Sean Fennessey?

  Go ahead, by all means.

• 15:21Bill Simmons?

  I know you'll have some thoughts. Just, I'm gonna let CR cook.

• 15:24Sean Fennessey?

  I'm an audience.

• 15:25Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna put something on the oven for CR.

• 15:26Sean Fennessey?

  I, I've spent so much time listening to just you guys talking about movies. I feel very comfortable in this space.

• 15:31Bill Simmons?

  Uh, if you could write a heist movie.

• 15:36Bill Simmons?

  Or a con movie? And it's like the one script you ever wrote and it would actually get made and be really good. What's more appealing to you, heist movie or con movie?

• 15:45Chris Ryan?

  I think a heist movie.

• 15:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, see, I knew that was gonna be his answer.

• 15:48Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, I don't think I'm smart enough to write a con movie. Like, sometimes when I watch these, especially the-

• 15:52Bill Simmons?

  You're not nefarious enough.

• 15:54Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's just like, I don't think that my brain works in five steps ahead logic, which all of these movies essentially, like, they rely on one person knowing, like, all the different permutations of someone's reaction to a situation. And I think you can kind of undo the stitching on con movies pretty easily, but I, my brain doesn't work that way. My brain works like, we're not here for your money, we're here for the bank's money, your money's in show.

• 16:22Bill Simmons?

  Don't try to be a hero. Shaun would be a con movie.

• 16:26Sean Fennessey?

  No, undoubtedly.

• 16:27Bill Simmons?

  It would be, and it would have multiple poker scenes?

• 16:31Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's a nice little sprinkle on top that games of chance are often a part of con men movies. But I also like, I like puzzles and I like mazes and I like magic. Like, those are things that I'm actually, that's sound, maybe the dorkiest thing I've ever said, but I do like all three of those things sincerely. You know, I'm just a man who likes a puzzle.

• 16:50Bill Simmons?

  Is this a resume to be in the prestige rewatchables?

• 16:54Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I mean, I love the prestige, that's like by far one of my favorite Nolan films.

• 16:58Bill Simmons?

  It's a good one.

• 16:59Sean Fennessey?

  So, but those worlds are really fun and con men movies kind of bring in all of those worlds. Like, you get to saw some, I do, I do empathize though with what Chris is saying, which is you have to be extremely smart to be able to devise a good con, especially one that makes sense in a movie. Like, it's one thing to con a guy out of money in real life, and you can read some of the books that this movie's based on, but to actually make it a coherent, plotted, narrative experience, I think is pretty challenging. It's why there's so few of these movies.

• 17:26Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that the nature of our digital life experience now has pretty much killed the possibility of a con movie?

• 17:33Bill Simmons?

  Because there's so much conning going on.

• 17:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, because the second you get set up, you could just start a Reddit thread and be like, has anyone ever had somebody come up and ask them for nuclear secrets? You know, like, and also so much of like what we would consider conning or a con 30 or 40 years ago is now phishing emails or your Amazon delivery just needs your social security number, please call this like.

• 17:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, what it was, you know, obviously the origins of cons is in confidence and confidence men, but I would argue that it is now about conspiracy. Like, that's really more than the realm of what the cons you find are like, here's the Ethiopian prince who needs $10,000, please wire him this immediately.

• 18:12Chris Ryan?

  Guy had a compelling story.

• 18:14Bill Simmons?

  Is it possible people are just smarter now, too?

• 18:17Chris Ryan?

  It's hard for me to say that they are smarter right now.

• 18:19Bill Simmons?

  Well, no, because you have the experience of decades and decades of hearing stories about, you know, that's why like the bomber quippers thing is such a fun story to talk

• 18:30Chris Ryan?

  about. I think they have more access to information. They have more access to information than they've ever had, and I wouldn't necessarily say that makes people smarter.

• 18:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's the same exact premise, though.

• 18:39Bill Simmons?

  Savvier?

• 18:39Sean Fennessey?

  Like, confidence men lull people into a sense of security. And we are definitely in a time where we're like constantly being lulled into a false sense of security. And that's why people like give their money away or fall prey to really influential people or whatever is happening right now. So I don't know, I feel like it's all kind of the same. Like, everybody's usually the same. They want to be feel safe.

• 19:00Bill Simmons?

  The bomber story, so we're taping this on the 20 seconds, so who knows if there's like big revelations in next week. But the bomber story, if you feel like he actually didn't try to circumvent the calorie cap, it's basically a con story.

• 19:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:13Bill Simmons?

  That's what Mark Cuban's been arguing. He's like, these guys were con artists, they defrauded all of these people, they did all this. We've seen like when, like with the Hak Tua girl, when she had her, she did her pull the rug move.

• 19:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 19:26Bill Simmons?

  Those are basically these short cons. So the cons now are are just kind of less fun and. More aggressive versus like something like this where it's like, we're gonna do a con. I'm gonna have 30 people in my fake racetrack parlor. We're gonna call fake game like, I don't know, it's just more fun back then.

• 19:43Chris Ryan?

  I think that the great thing about this sting is that it starts out as basically a pickpocket movie. It starts out, it's creative germ is David War, the guy who wrote it was researching pickpockets for a different screenplay. But Luther and Hooker's original kind of move is essentially a glorified pickpocket job.

• 19:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:00Chris Ryan?

  And then each step he takes, Gondorf kind of shows him, there's so many levels to this. Where you can have like a 20 guy team, you can have fake storefronts, you can have fake wiretaps. And that's just, that's what makes it so rewatchable is to just go down the rabbit hole with those guys.

• 20:16Sean Fennessey?

  I have a question for both of you guys about this. How comfortable are you lying to people's faces? Cause like my wife says, this is a likely story, she cannot lie. Like when she, she's, she gives, she has lots of tells, I would say.

• 20:31Bill Simmons?

  But that's interesting.

• 20:32Sean Fennessey?

  You know, and the, the big part of being a good con man is never breaking, never revealing.

• 20:37Bill Simmons?

  I feel like there's, there's so many bad karma things that go with lying.

• 20:41Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 20:41Bill Simmons?

  Really aggressively lying, I am always in the back of my head thinking about that. But I would have a lot of trouble just lying to somebody's face.

• 20:47Chris Ryan?

  Distinctions though. Number one is like, there's the version of lying that you lie when you're like, what time did you get home last night? Or like, why is this broken? And you're like, I have no idea. You definitely know.

• 20:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Chris Ryan?

  Then there is the version of the lying that these guys do, which is more like theater. And also crucially often directed at people who quote unquote deserve it. Like I never took them, you know, what's Hooker's like all mad that he would be accused of taking up like, taking off winos.

• 21:16Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 21:16Chris Ryan?

  He's like, I've never robbed a wino. Like I go after guys who deserve it.

• 21:19Bill Simmons?

  You like the code of honor of con artists? Yeah. Why can you lie? Well, you like playing poker where all you do is lie in poker.

• 21:26Sean Fennessey?

  I like that. I like the way that Chris framed it, which is like in the theater of something. I think I feel comfortable in like the conversation about like who broke the toilet seat or whatever. Let's, you know, I'm not as comfortable with that.

• 21:37Bill Simmons?

  Just wait till your kids get older. There's a lot of lies that happen.

• 21:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I'm starting to feel that already.

• 21:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I didn't leave the fridge open. It's like, you definitely did.

• 21:45Chris Ryan?

  You're on camera.

• 21:46Bill Simmons?

  Heard you, heard you at midnight, go downstairs and the fridge was open after you did it. No, I didn't. It's a lot of that.

• 21:54Chris Ryan?

  I have no idea who ordered all these Christie Canyon films. But that person was probably just curious about her work.

• 22:00Sean Fennessey?

  A man of taste.

• 22:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the hotel porn order pay-per-view. What a great era that was. I didn't order this.

• 22:06Chris Ryan?

  Seventy-four dollars.

• 22:08Bill Simmons?

  What is this? So this thing is a triple con movie. There's a.

• 22:13Sean Fennessey?

  What's a triple con movie?

• 22:14Bill Simmons?

  There's three cons happening simultaneously. Salino, the waitress, who's actually the assassin hired to kill Hooker. Redford turning on Newman, but then he actually doesn't. And then the feds breaking up the bedding, but they're actually not the feds. So basically, everyone in the movie is lying to somebody. And the hardest thing to pull off with the audience is that I have to be surprised at the end that they, oh, it's like one of those.

• 22:41Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 22:41Bill Simmons?

  Focus had a great thing with that, with the, uh, with the Super Bowl. When they elaborate on.

• 22:47Sean Fennessey?

  Early in the film.

• 22:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the, the Super Bowl and Will Smith and.

• 22:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's the best part of that movie.

• 22:51Bill Simmons?

  Pick that jersey. It's like just an awesome 20 minutes. And then he gets rid of Margot Robbie. But that's like by far the best part of the movie.

• 22:58Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Yeah. I mean, they're hard to do because this movie, maybe because it's so old and also is set in a time even 50 years before that. We don't, we're not as suspicious of every single decision that's being made. Like, we want to be on the emotional journey with the characters, so we're not doubting them. The challenge of a confidence man movie now is like, you have to suspect everything that the person says is bullshit.

• 23:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:24Sean Fennessey?

  And a lot of like matchstick men kind of undercuts this by having a lead character who, you know, is struggling with something. And so you're like, it complicates our ability to trust them or not. But it's really hard to make a present day version of these kinds of movies.

• 23:37Chris Ryan?

  I don't know whether this played this way in the early seventies, but one of the ingenious things about this film is that when you're watching it, it's like, they cast somebody as Salino, who you're like, maybe that's just a waitress, you know? Even now, even after seeing this movie dozens of times, I still forget. Like when you first meet the waitress, you're just like, yeah, she just seems like a waitress working at a depression era diner. You don't think that is the one lady hitman.

• 24:03Sean Fennessey?

  I have a lot of questions about her, though. I feel like for unanswerables or picking nits, there's a lot to explore there.

• 24:08Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 24:09Bill Simmons?

  A loose waitress is what she was. Man's knocking on her door at two in the morning. He's just lonely. That door locked.

• 24:16Chris Ryan?

  I'm lonely, just like you.

• 24:17Sean Fennessey?

  She's working strategically, though.

• 24:19Bill Simmons?

  Well, we don't know that when it happens. We're like, wow, this is Redford. I know he's handsome, but come on.

• 24:26Bill Simmons?

  Paul Newman, you've all heard of him.

• 24:30Bill Simmons?

  In a slump since Butch Cassidy, heading into this movie.

• 24:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Bill Simmons?

  WUSA, WUSA, what's that movie?

• 24:37Sean Fennessey?

  It's a movie about a radio talk show host, conservative radio talk show host, that is eerily prescient about media, but the movie itself is not good.

• 24:49Bill Simmons?

  Sometimes a great notion. That didn't do well.

• 24:51Sean Fennessey?

  That's very underrated, in my opinion, just for the record. We just did a Paul Newman episode like six months ago and I rewatched every single movie ever made. He directed that movie. It's really good. Adaptation of the Ken Kesey novel.

• 25:00Bill Simmons?

  Pocket Money.

• 25:01Sean Fennessey?

  Bad.

• 25:03Bill Simmons?

  Judge Roy Bean, solid.

• 25:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, pretty good.

• 25:05Bill Simmons?

  By the way, easily just, hey Netflix, just make that a prestige show. Just put a judge somewhere in the South.

• 25:12Chris Ryan?

  Frontier Justice being.

• 25:13Bill Simmons?

  Just like Kyle Chandler. We don't have to spend a lot of money.

• 25:16Sean Fennessey?

  Perfect. Great.

• 25:17Bill Simmons?

  Kyle Chandler is just gonna kill some guys his own way.

• 25:20Sean Fennessey?

  In.

• 25:21Bill Simmons?

  And then the Macintosh man.

• 25:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, not as successful. That's his second movie in a row with John Huston. And he plays an Irish spy.

• 25:30Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 25:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, it gets worse because he turned down Dirty Harry because he thought it was too right wing.

• 25:35Chris Ryan?

  But recommended Eastwood, right?

• 25:37Bill Simmons?

  Recommended Eastwood.

• 25:38Sean Fennessey?

  That would, would that have worked for you?

• 25:40Bill Simmons?

  No. I think it, I think it worked out great for everybody.

• 25:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 25:43Bill Simmons?

  Too expensive for French Connection. That's when we're maybe shave the salary and.

• 25:48Sean Fennessey?

  He would have been in Popeye Oil?

• 25:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Sean Fennessey?

  Huh.

• 25:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cut the salary on that one and just do French Connection.

• 25:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's so perfect.

• 25:56Bill Simmons?

  Supposed to be in Paper Moon.

• 25:59Bill Simmons?

  And did not work. Did not work out. Signed on, the producers gave him top billing, 500K and a profit percentage. But Redford also got 500K. I don't know if he got a proper percentage, but uh.

• 26:10Chris Ryan?

  Worked out pretty well for Newman.

• 26:11Bill Simmons?

  This was, this was the last of this 50s, 60s era Newman, and then he starts in the mid 70s. He's moving towards slapshot. Verdict Newman.

• 26:21Sean Fennessey?

  That was one of, gonna be one of my takes was that this is the first installment in old Paul Newman. You know, where he's like, his hair is more gray, mustache, like it's a new era.

• 26:29Chris Ryan?

  It's a compromise though, I think, because the original version of the story is like, he's supposed to be fat at old. And he's supposed to be like, basically giving the keys to Hooker. And it's not in the movie very much, apparently in the original script. And then Newman was like, I'll do it, but like.

• 26:45Bill Simmons?

  Here are my notes.

• 26:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I get a lot more minutes played on, I got a lot more time on the court.

• 26:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 26:50Chris Ryan?

  And a lot more shots.

• 26:51Bill Simmons?

  I mean, just the poker scene alone, it's worth it. Paul Newman, like that, it's like for his time, not to mention the movie was a massive success, but that nine minutes, he's just cooking, all time cooking.

• 27:03Sean Fennessey?

  Sorry, I was taking a crap.

• 27:06Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible line.

• 27:07Bill Simmons?

  And then Redford, um, which I guess we probably should have talked about him more at the top since it's Redford month, but we have five movies to talk about it. But he's in the middle of one of the best five year runs of all time. Candidate, Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, The Sting, Great Gatsby. They re-released Butch Sundance, That Crush, Great Wally Pepper didn't do great, Three Days of the Condo, All the President's Men, all in five years.

• 27:27Sean Fennessey?

  Unbelievable.

• 27:28Bill Simmons?

  And.

• 27:28Chris Ryan?

  Unreal.

• 27:29Bill Simmons?

  Um, and by the time All the President's Men happens, he's a producer on the film. He's starting to get his tentacles out. He's thinking about directing.

• 27:38Chris Ryan?

  You know, I was gonna ask you guys, both big William Goldman readers, and William Goldman writes so well about star power.

• 27:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:45Chris Ryan?

  And the way that it emerges. I don't know, you would probably know better than me at what the timeline is, but these guys essentially are like, I know that if I sign on, this movie gets made. This movie gets a really good runway, a really good runway to success. Were people like that using their power in the 60s? Is this like kind of a new phenomenon in the 70s that goes along with New Hollywood?

• 28:04Bill Simmons?

  Hundred percent new phenomenon. I actually think Redford is in the running for maybe inventing it.

• 28:09Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I, I think he, I, I think like John Wayne could do this, like John Wayne could, but what John Wayne, 80% of the time would be like, let's just get John Ford to do it. You know, like he had his teams and stars have their teams and the people that they like to work with and Howard Hawks and George Q. Corr and all these like well-known figures. Redford in particular, this movie I think is the perfect movie to have that conversation about because. And I'm sure you have this in the notes, but David Ward, who wrote the movie and Julia Phillips and Michael Phillips, the producers and Tony Bill, basically brought the movie to Redford. And they were like, what do you think? And David Ward said he was gonna direct the movie. It was gonna be his first film as a director. And Redford was like, nah, this movie is too complicated.

• 28:52Sean Fennessey?

  We need a, we need a real master craftsman to make this movie work. And he went to George Roy Hill, who they just made Butch Castiel's son.

• 28:58Bill Simmons?

  Our fucking guy, George Roy Hill.

• 29:00Sean Fennessey?

  And he used that power that you're talking about to basically decline on the movie. And he says that George Roy Hill got his hands on the script. My theory is that he passed this script to George Roy Hill. Seems kind of likely. And then George Roy Hill was like, hey, guys, I'm interested in this movie. And then all of a sudden, the studio is like, oh, my God, we could get George Roy Hill and Robert Redford together and they have Paul Newman's phone number? Let's do that.

• 29:24Chris Ryan?

  They have like, great stories on the, the 4K of this has a great making of where they have completely opposing memories of how the movie came together. Like Newman's like, oh, they're at my apartment and they're twisting my arm. And I'm like, guys, I don't know. And then an elevator skips a floor and I'm like, all right, I'll do it. And then Redford's like, I have no memory of an elevator. It seems like Paul Newman wanted to see this movie. Like, and he's like, his mind is going, what can you do?

• 29:51Bill Simmons?

  Like. Yeah, well, this is, I mean, this was a real problem with Redford and Goldman. One of the many reasons they had such a, such a feud. But Redman, Redford came up with this whole alternate version of All the President's Men in the early 2010s. And basically it was like Goldman wrote one script and I did everything. And, um, but I do think he had that side of him, which I think it was a little prickly in some ways in Hollywood because he would just be like, somebody brought me this script? We'll cut that guy out. He's very cutthroat.

• 30:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 30:21Bill Simmons?

  In a way that, um, I think more actors probably are now.

• 30:25Sean Fennessey?

  He, he, the thing is, the kind of apology for it is he was so shrewd. Like, he really had great taste. And when he would take a movie like away from someone, he was often putting it in the hands of another really good artist.

• 30:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:37Sean Fennessey?

  So it's easy to kind of make allowances for it because he just made so many good movies in a row over a 20 year period of time that he was kind of able to get away with being as intense with this stuff, as you're saying.

• 30:47Chris Ryan?

  I guess Beatty becomes this at a certain point, right? Nicholson.

• 30:51Bill Simmons?

  Beatty was way more transparent about it, though.

• 30:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:54Bill Simmons?

  They like, I think he really frustrated a lot of people and was famous on. Lollygagging around with scripts and being way more cutthroat overtly than Redford was. I think Redford was way more Michael Corleone-ish.

• 31:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 31:06Bill Simmons?

  Like, we gotta get this guy out.

• 31:08Chris Ryan?

  And it's like, there's stories about Beatty taking like, two years to say no to something.

• 31:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and he wanted to kind of lead everyone along on everything. He, both of them had the same, not issue, but they always wanted to be the hero. Redford was very, very calculated. There, there was that, that famous story about him in The Verdict. Where he was like, that guy's a loser, we gotta make him less of a loser. And they're like, the guy is a loser, that's how we're making the movie. And he's like, well, I'm out.

• 31:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Redford, I feel like both in front of the camera and behind the scenes throughout his entire career, really worked hard to burnish this vision of dignity, right? That he was, he was very rarely-

• 31:44Bill Simmons?

  And a moral compass.

• 31:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, exactly. But there was something kind of moving him forward through the universe that was very powerful. And that made him a great star, not always a great actor, because he didn't always play characters that you could empathize with. You know, he always just felt so like heroic and magical and perfect. And that is probably why he's never been in my, like, personal mega pantheon. Like, he's not a top five actor for me, because he makes a similar kind of movie over a long period of time.

• 32:12Bill Simmons?

  Top five choice actor, though.

• 32:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he made, I mean, he made great movies.

• 32:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 32:16Chris Ryan?

  I think that he's, he's, Cruise is more part of his lineage, you know, whereas, trying to think, I guess DiCaprio would be more of like the Newman lineage of like, I'm really looking for provocative work to work with really interesting filmmakers. I'll turn my trust over to them and have them depict me how they see fit. I think Redford was like, if people are gonna pay to come see a Robert Redford movie, Robert Redford needs to do these five things. And it wasn't as locked in as like Eastwood, but it was, it was pretty, you're right. Like, I don't remember the names of a lot of Redford characters, but I remember the movies perfectly.

• 32:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, he had a couple moves with the characters, right? Because for a while, he's playing the 1970s versions of the Cruise roles, right? Downhill Racer is a Cruise character. You know, The Candidate, you could have seen Cruise potentially in that. It would have been a little bit of a push for him, but Three Days of the Condor is a classic Cruise movie. I think Cruise easily could have been Hooker. But then he also, he had that, uh,

• 33:17Chris Ryan?

  He arguably is Hooker in Color of Money, you know what I mean?

• 33:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but that's, I think, the thing that Sean's hit that, that he, there was a spot he wouldn't go to. Even like he does Brubaker, it's basically Robert Redford. It's the thing that I think separates Denzel from him, is Denzel, every once in a while will just fucking go for it with some, some role where you're like, wow, Denzel.

• 33:38Sean Fennessey?

  You, I mean, he almost never did something morally reprehensible on screen, you know?

• 33:43Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 33:43Sean Fennessey?

  Like, literally, not until he was in like a Marvel movie.

• 33:46Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 33:47Bill Simmons?

  Like, would Redford have been in Out of Time?

• 33:49Chris Ryan?

  Would Redford have been in Flight?

• 33:51Bill Simmons?

  Would, right.

• 33:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's, I think that The Candidate is interesting because that guy is like kind of an empty suit for the whole movie. And then that incredible conclusion where you're like, you know, what do we do now? Is, is morally complicated, but he doesn't like kill a guy in cold blood, you know? He doesn't like throw a woman down the stairs. Like, in the seventies, all these guys were making, you know, Pacino and De Niro, they were playing these really complicated men. And he was always like, he was the spirit of America. It was a changing America, but he was like a positive force in the world.

• 34:24Bill Simmons?

  He wouldn't have played Neil McCauley.

• 34:26Chris Ryan?

  No. He was Roy Hobbs. He wasn't Neil McCauley.

• 34:29Sean Fennessey?

  He did rob banks in The Hot Rock.

• 34:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Sean Fennessey?

  He did rob banks one time.

• 34:33Chris Ryan?

  One of my favorites of his, yeah.

• 34:36Bill Simmons?

  He's really good in this movie. It's, it's the most, it's the hardest he's worked, I think, in a movie from a charisma, look at my personality, look at, and I don't, I don't think after this movie, I don't remember him doing that again. Like Waldo Pepper, I think, was a little charismatic, but not, not like this. This guy's like, this is the most fun role in the movie and you wouldn't have normally, you would have expected Newman to have it, you know?

• 35:00Sean Fennessey?

  I can't remember too many movies where he smiles this much.

• 35:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, this is, this is a real, like, it's hard to pick nits with this movie because it just looks like the people making it are having the time of their life. And you parasocially are like, just want to hang out. Like, if you guys wanted to do an hour-long version of those guys drinking Schlitz and trying to figure out what con to run, I probably would have watched it.

• 35:25Bill Simmons?

  Let's take a break and we'll talk about Robert Shaw. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Life is full of decisions, big and small. Like, let's not throw to A.J. Brown this week. It's a small decision. Big decision, let's try to beat the Cowboys. Sometimes you make a decision you can really, really stand behind. I'm trying to think, like, I guess when we formed The Ringer.

• 35:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:48Bill Simmons?

  And we were like, we feel like we can pull this off. We don't care if we're independent. We feel like podcasts could be a big thing in this.

• 35:56Bill Simmons?

  And we'll, we'll see where it goes. Trusted our guts.

• 35:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, used to behind us.

• 36:01Bill Simmons?

  Spent a lot of time together, just brainstorming, figuring out, out stuff. State Farm gets it. Making confident choices can make all the difference. That's why with the State Farm Personal Price Plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage to create an affordable price for you. Talked to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose the bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Robert Shaw, the third piece of this movie. This is not just a Newman and Redford movie. It needs Robert Shaw. Robert Shaw is only 45 in this movie.

• 36:41Chris Ryan?

  Unbelievable.

• 36:42Bill Simmons?

  Are you older than Robert Shaw in this movie? You are, you're older than Robert Shaw in this movie.

• 36:45Chris Ryan?

  Not quite, I'm getting there. I got more gray hair than he does, though.

• 36:49Bill Simmons?

  Robert Shaw, 45.

• 36:50Chris Ryan?

  He polishes his hair with shoe shine.

• 36:53Bill Simmons?

  Robert Shaw makes the sting, palm, one, two, three, jaws, Robin and Marion, Black Sunday in the Deep in five years, and then just dies in 1978 of basically natural causes. He dies in 50 because his body was just like, we're gone, we're done.

• 37:07Chris Ryan?

  Can I take a half-ass international research and put it up here?

• 37:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:10Chris Ryan?

  After they finished filming this movie, apparently.

• 37:12Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I had this in the Steven Seagal shitting themselves award for.

• 37:16Chris Ryan?

  George Roy Hill and Robert Shaw go to West Ireland to party and go on like a one-week pub crawl bender that ends with Robert Shaw in his underwear playing a guy in ping pong.

• 37:27Bill Simmons?

  Screaming.

• 37:28Chris Ryan?

  Screaming, "One more game, you bastard." And then he fucking died.

• 37:32Sean Fennessey?

  So Shaw was in that class of guys with Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole and Oliver Reed, who just like absolutely drank themselves to death.

• 37:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:41Sean Fennessey?

  Just, just could not stop drinking. And some of them, like Oliver Reed made it to like 75 miraculously.

• 37:46Chris Ryan?

  And he was drinking like shots with the Gladiator cast. Yeah.

• 37:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Hill said, Hill said he kind of like passed out after a day and a half and then woke up and heard Sean in his underwear screaming at some dude playing ping pong. These guys are like, we did all the Jaws stuff about him daring Dreyfus and like basically like bullying him.

• 38:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 38:05Bill Simmons?

  To climb up to the top of the boat and then they had to intervene and like, dude, you, we're not doing this.

• 38:11Sean Fennessey?

  Isn't it so funny though? Like he's obviously a very decorated actor. He's in A Man for All Seasons, right? He's one of the great, great movie actors, but the more his like life physically is getting out of control, the more exciting it is to watch him in a movie.

• 38:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Sean Fennessey?

  The more of a mess he becomes, the more like it's just, Quentin is intoxicated.

• 38:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Sean Fennessey?

  When he's on screen in that movie. Same thing with this movie. I mean, he's like kind of a one dimensional bad guy in this movie. He's just angry the whole movie.

• 38:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Sean Fennessey?

  But there's just something about him that you can't look away from.

• 38:39Chris Ryan?

  Angry and gullible. Yeah.

• 38:41Bill Simmons?

  I didn't, I tried to do as much, uh, as much Shaw research as possible. Sadly, I couldn't find a lot more than the Jaws thing, but one of the things was he, Sean Connery was like his natural rival.

• 38:51Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:52Bill Simmons?

  He hated Sean Connery and felt like they were, they were like basically bird in magic.

• 38:56Sean Fennessey?

  What was it? From Russian with Love? Yeah. They went up against each other. Yeah.

• 38:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And it was like the Scottish Irish thing, but it was just like, that guy's in my way. It's like one of those type things. He was just having 20 drinks a day.

• 39:07Chris Ryan?

  That whole scene in From Russia With Love where he's like, I'm basically your, like he's pretending to be his like counterpart and it's, it's like, this guy could have been Bond. This is crazy.

• 39:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 39:17Bill Simmons?

  I miss the days when a 45 year old could look like him.

• 39:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Bill Simmons?

  Like.

• 39:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 39:22Chris Ryan?

  Like.

• 39:23Sean Fennessey?

  Pilates now.

• 39:23Bill Simmons?

  Sean McVay is like 45. You think in that context?

• 39:29Bill Simmons?

  Robert Shaw looks like he's in his mid 60s in this movie.

• 39:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Well, think of the, just the timbre of his voice. It just sounds like he was born in 1740.

• 39:37Chris Ryan?

  I'm also trying to imagine Robert Shaw wearing joggers.

• 39:42Chris Ryan?

  And crushing tape.

• 39:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, in a warrior.

• 39:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:45Bill Simmons?

  So he dies in 1978. And let's just say there wasn't like a big police investigation on maybe what happened. They're like, yeah, Robert finally died. Um, just, uh, just getting after it. Supporting cast, Eileen Brennan, Ray Wallston, Charles Durning, and our guy Jack Keigho. We have another category for we'll get to later, but, uh, Robert Earl Jones is Luther.

• 40:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 40:06Bill Simmons?

  Father of James Earl Jones.

• 40:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 40:08Bill Simmons?

  Who was like, kind of, kind of in a whole bunch of shit for a while, like 30s, 40s, 50s.

• 40:14Sean Fennessey?

  He's kind of playing the James Earl Jones part in this movie.

• 40:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:16Sean Fennessey?

  You know, you can see that they have a connection.

• 40:19Bill Simmons?

  So we mentioned the title cards and then, uh, Scott Joplin's The Entertainer was adapted by, uh, your guy Marv Hamlish.

• 40:26Sean Fennessey?

  What a year for Marv.

• 40:27Bill Simmons?

  Marv had a huge year.

• 40:28Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible.

• 40:28Bill Simmons?

  The way we were in this, multiple Oscars.

• 40:31Chris Ryan?

  He's Barbara's guy, right? Like he's, he's always tinkling the ivories.

• 40:34Sean Fennessey?

  Among many other people's guy. Yeah.

• 40:37Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, it was based apparently maybe on this book in 1940, The Big Con.

• 40:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, David Marr.

• 40:44Bill Simmons?

  Who then sued them and David S. Ward was still mad about it. David S. Ward, we have that category sometimes where I think you might be involved in the Wikipedia in this. Cause there's a lot of.

• 40:54Sean Fennessey?

  Some specific details.

• 40:56Bill Simmons?

  Very specific, like, although there was no way they plagiarized the book, they had to settle to get to avoid the publicity. It was one of those.

• 41:03Chris Ryan?

  And then his wife won the Bel Air Forest Competition. It's like, really?

• 41:09Bill Simmons?

  Very, very strange, uh, IMDb though, because eventually writes Major League, The Program and Sleepless in Seattle.

• 41:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 41:16Bill Simmons?

  Just becomes like, uh, he said he was inspired to write this thing while researching.

• 41:20Chris Ryan?

  Wait, is this David Ward's fifth attached rewatchables?

• 41:24Bill Simmons?

  I think it is. We don't have a screenwriter rankings yet, but.

• 41:27Sean Fennessey?

  Well, and when you do the Malagro Beanfield War, um, later on in Redford Month.

• 41:31Bill Simmons?

  There we go.

• 41:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll have six David Ward films.

• 41:34Bill Simmons?

  This movie won seven Oscars. Best Picture and Director, Writing, Editing Score, Costume Design, Production Design, 10 nominations. Had a top 10 song and a hit soundtrack.

• 41:44Sean Fennessey?

  This is one of the higher percentages Academy Awards wise.

• 41:47Bill Simmons?

  70%.

• 41:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Seven out of 10 is pretty good. There are a couple of movies that have won 11 out of 12. That's the.

• 41:52Bill Simmons?

  Are you good with this over American Graffiti and The Exorcist?

• 41:55Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not. I'm not. It's not better than either of those films, in my opinion, and The Exorcist not winning is a goddamn nightmare.

• 42:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Chris Ryan?

  One of my hottest takes is The Exorcist.

• 42:03Bill Simmons?

  I knew we'd get into it at some point, and I think we did this when we did The Exorcist.

• 42:07Sean Fennessey?

  We did. The Sting is good. I like The Sting.

• 42:08Chris Ryan?

  It's, it's tough because like The Sting for what it is, is perfect. But The Exorcist is a way more important movie.

• 42:16Bill Simmons?

  How about the fact they came out on the same day?

• 42:18Chris Ryan?

  Fucking hell.

• 42:19Sean Fennessey?

  I have a, I have-

• 42:19Bill Simmons?

  Remember when we had movies? We're coming back.

• 42:23Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, we're doing great. Movies are doing great.

• 42:24Bill Simmons?

  Doing great. We're never gonna have comedies anymore, but we're doing great.

• 42:28Sean Fennessey?

  Can I pitch one of my takes at you?

• 42:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:30Sean Fennessey?

  December 1973 at the movies. Here are the films that were released. Serpico, the French animated movie Fantastic Planet in the Criterion Collection, The Wicker Man, The Three Musketeers, The Last Detail, Papillon, Woody Allen Sleeper, Amercard, The Fellini Movie, then on Christmas Day, Magnum Force, The Dirty Harry sequel, The Sting and The Exorcist.

• 42:49Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 42:50Sean Fennessey?

  Is that the best month in movie history?

• 42:52Bill Simmons?

  It's right. It's right when movies probably mattered the most for entertainment.

• 42:57Chris Ryan?

  What do you want for Christmas? Let me go to the movies for nine hours.

• 43:00Sean Fennessey?

  That's insane.

• 43:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:01Sean Fennessey?

  And all, I mean, you know, the year itself is also amazing. It's like, that's Paper Moon, that's American Graffiti, as you said. There's a ton of other great stuff, but that month in particular is mind blowing.

• 43:11Bill Simmons?

  Best directing George Roy Hill wins. He beats Lucas Bergman, Friedkin, Bertolucci. Some scalps that year, man.

• 43:19Sean Fennessey?

  Heavy hitters.

• 43:21Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, Redford, only nomination ever for acting does not win.

• 43:25Chris Ryan?

  This is crazy. I didn't know this until I was reading about The Sting, that I could, I couldn't believe that.

• 43:30Sean Fennessey?

  I'll wait for my hottest take.

• 43:31Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 43:32Bill Simmons?

  Jack Lemmon wins for Save the Tiger. How are we feeling about that one now?

• 43:37Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I mean, this is part of the long domino history of makeup awards where like, he probably should have won for The Apartment or Days of Wine and Roses or something like that. And because he didn't, Pacino doesn't win for Serpico, which is a sin. He should have won for Serpico. And then Pacino doesn't win until Send of a Woman, and then who was

• 43:56Bill Simmons?

  Joel Embiid beat Jokic that year? Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'm getting confused.

• 44:00Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, same problem, exact same problem.

• 44:02Chris Ryan?

  Um, are you, so you think Pacino over Nicholson for Last Detail?

• 44:07Sean Fennessey?

  It's oh, it's okay for me to accept that because Nicholson wins for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest two years later.

• 44:13Bill Simmons?

  Pacino for Serpico, come on.

• 44:15Chris Ryan?

  Last you tell is incredible.

• 44:16Sean Fennessey?

  I love, I love both.

• 44:17Bill Simmons?

  We have to do Pacino month before Pacino dies. I don't like that we

• 44:21Chris Ryan?

  That we wait.

• 44:22Bill Simmons?

  We had, you needed a death to trigger Redford month.

• 44:25Sean Fennessey?

  Two for the money, looking for Richard.

• 44:27Bill Simmons?

  The two for the money is I'm gambling month. We already had that one planned out.

• 44:31Chris Ryan?

  I'm gambling again.

• 44:35Sean Fennessey?

  What else is in Pacino month?

• 44:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, there's a bunch of good ones left.

• 44:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 44:39Bill Simmons?

  We have some Dog Day Afternoon we haven't done yet. We haven't done Scarface.

• 44:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Well, yeah. Wow.

• 44:43Bill Simmons?

  There's some, there's some big ones left. Uh, 5.5 million dollar budget for this movie made 257.

• 44:50Chris Ryan?

  That'd be like 900 million now, right?

• 44:52Sean Fennessey?

  One of the most profitable movies of all time.

• 44:53Bill Simmons?

  I think they said if you adjusted it, it's like the biggest non IP movie probably ever.

• 45:01Sean Fennessey?

  Although there is a sequel.

• 45:03Bill Simmons?

  We don't talk about the sequel.

• 45:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 45:05Bill Simmons?

  Uh, second biggest movie in 73 The Exorcist was first, graffiti was third, Redford had two of the top five. Our guy Raj, Raj, Roger Ebert, four stars.

• 45:13Chris Ryan?

  Bang.

• 45:14Bill Simmons?

  Said one of the most stylish movies of the year. Really enjoyed it. You know who didn't enjoy it? Pauline Kael.

• 45:18Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 45:18Bill Simmons?

  We have fuck you Raj and now we have settle down Pauline. She wrote, meant to be rogersly charming entertainment and that's how most of the audience takes it. But I found it visually claustrophobic and totally mechanical. It keeps cranking on section after section and it doesn't have a good spirit.

• 45:37Sean Fennessey?

  Cranking on, you say?

• 45:39Chris Ryan?

  These plebes liked it, but not me.

• 45:42Sean Fennessey?

  Let me ask you a question.

• 45:42Bill Simmons?

  I mean, this is why Pauline's stuff was so fun to read because half the time you're just like, come on.

• 45:48Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think you would be friends with Pauline?

• 45:51Chris Ryan?

  He would, he would definitely have tried to hire Pauline Kael.

• 45:54Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that, that's for sure. But would you, because you would have been like, goddamn, didn't see this one coming. You love when someone just, just curveballs you.

• 45:59Bill Simmons?

  I mean, she probably had the most zags of any critic of all time.

• 46:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but she had her guys too. She had her people. I would like any, I

• 46:06Bill Simmons?

  I would have absolutely tried to hire. I would have been friends with her and there probably would have been multiple times where we didn't talk.

• 46:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, two grudge holders. Yes.

• 46:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:16Bill Simmons?

  Like she would have.

• 46:17Chris Ryan?

  You would send Sean a note saying you can't let Pauline write stuff like this.

• 46:20Sean Fennessey?

  I need you to call Pauline and tell her she's fucking wrong about the statement.

• 46:23Bill Simmons?

  Tell Pauline, this is, we can't have this.

• 46:26Sean Fennessey?

  You running the New Yorker in 1973 would be amazing.

• 46:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:29Bill Simmons?

  I would have been all for the zags, but there's just some times where she was just, she just got, she just put her, put her shoes in the ground and just.

• 46:37Chris Ryan?

  Bill editing Cy Hirsch.

• 46:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, Wesley Zags, I always loved the Wesley Zags. At least he put some thought into them.

• 46:45Chris Ryan?

  A zag artist.

• 46:45Sean Fennessey?

  She, I mean, her pieces are amazing to read.

• 46:47Bill Simmons?

  They're amazing.

• 46:48Sean Fennessey?

  They just, it just seems like they're written from another planet.

• 46:50Chris Ryan?

  Can you think of the best recent?

• 46:51Bill Simmons?

  Visually claustrophobic is such like a weird, how do you even come up with that?

• 46:55Chris Ryan?

  Well, so I would say that it's a film where he like was inspired by 1930s movies to not have a lot of extras in it. And there are several scenes where it's like late at night, there's only three people in this diner, you know, like.

• 47:07Sean Fennessey?

  It's also because those movies were all made on sound stages and they chose to shoot this movie on, on sound stages. And so it's a fake world. Like you're in, you're in somebody's dream idea of a 1935 movie instead of what 1935 actually looked like. Nothing is worn down. Nothing feels real. It's all this kind of like elevated production design. So I get what she's saying, but I don't know. The movie's pretty loose and fun. Like it doesn't feel claustrophobic at all.

• 47:30Bill Simmons?

  I, I just love that all her takes. I think, I go back and read them sometimes. I really enjoy it. She just is like, here are my thoughts. Like nobody does that anymore. So yeah, she would have driven me crazy. I would, I would have been mad at her like three times, but ultimately I would have loved having her in my life.

• 47:45Chris Ryan?

  Do you think Pauline Kael would have liked one battle after another?

• 47:47Sean Fennessey?

  I know that she would have.

• 47:48Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, that's nice.

• 47:49Bill Simmons?

  You know that she would have, interesting. You talked to her in a Ouija board?

• 47:52Sean Fennessey?

  There's so many things in it that are like the things that, that turned her on.

• 47:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. All right. Let's do most rewatchable scene. The, the first con, the switch in the pants with Luther. It's great stuff.

• 48:06Sean Fennessey?

  Guy comes up to you.

• 48:08Chris Ryan?

  This isn't going to work though.

• 48:09Bill Simmons?

  It's 1936.

• 48:11Sean Fennessey?

  Give me, give me all the money in your, in your breast pocket.

• 48:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Sean Fennessey?

  And I want to show you what I'm going to do with it.

• 48:20Sean Fennessey?

  What are you, what are you doing? What are you doing?

• 48:22Chris Ryan?

  You're the one who carries cash still.

• 48:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think I only have 10 bucks in my pocket. I used to carry like $500 every day, but I don't do that anymore.

• 48:28Bill Simmons?

  I always had no less than $400 on me.

• 48:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 48:31Bill Simmons?

  I was just in Boston for eight days. I never used a dollar bill.

• 48:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's what I was gonna say. Aside from tipping people, when's the last time you, like, when's the last time you handed someone 20 bucks to pay for something?

• 48:41Bill Simmons?

  You can't do this thing now, because it would be like, you'd be like stealing somebody's wifi, yeah.

• 48:47Sean Fennessey?

  Give me your social security number.

• 48:48Bill Simmons?

  A bitcoin sting would suck. That's my take.

• 48:52Chris Ryan?

  Wasn't that what, no, that's not what the runner runner was about, right? The Affleck thing?

• 48:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that one, yeah.

• 48:59Sean Fennessey?

  I don't recall.

• 49:01Bill Simmons?

  I really like this scene. It's a good way to kick the movie off.

• 49:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 49:05Bill Simmons?

  Fast forward about 35 minutes to Lana getting pickpocketed on the train, Newman showing off car tricks to Redford. The gin trick, which I know CR still obeys.

• 49:15Chris Ryan?

  Every time I do the watch.

• 49:16Bill Simmons?

  Newman playing poker. I think this whole 10 minutes is just, he's gotta like make that one long giant scene.

• 49:22Sean Fennessey?

  Always drink gin with a marked kid. They can't tell if you cut it.

• 49:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:27Bill Simmons?

  Great stuff.

• 49:27Sean Fennessey?

  You wanna, you're, so you're, you're skipping over Hooker loses at roulette.

• 49:34Bill Simmons?

  We can put it in. It makes me mad, because I know that they're establishing that he's a loser and compulsive and, but, um, I just don't think you would bet the 3,000 right away. You can't be a good gambler and a bad gambler at the same time. You're having a night out. It's like, I had this for nitpicks for later. You're basically, you're being 500 a hand, like, you're spreading it out. You're not just doing that.

• 49:59Chris Ryan?

  It's also good, because it's like, even though he's hit this big payday, he, you might as well just light the money on fire. He wouldn't, he doesn't know what to do with it. It needs to be a more significant victory than cash.

• 50:10Sean Fennessey?

  What about the scene when Hooker gives Snyder Charles Durning the counterfeit money? I like that scene. I actually don't have a lot of rewatchable scenes, but I do like both of those scenes.

• 50:19Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 50:19Sean Fennessey?

  They're like world establishments.

• 50:20Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to scale it down for the rewatchable scenes. I like both of those, though. The poker, there's some nitpicks with the poker we can get into later, but I really enjoy this scene, and Newman's hilarious and, um,

• 50:32Sean Fennessey?

  So fun.

• 50:33Bill Simmons?

  And somehow ends up with four jacks.

• 50:35Chris Ryan?

  Hilarious in this.

• 50:36Bill Simmons?

  Give me the deck with the threes and nines. We think it was all threes and nines?

• 50:43Chris Ryan?

  I don't know enough about poker to even guess.

• 50:45Sean Fennessey?

  I don't even know how they could have arranged that. And obviously, what did he have? He had his jacks up his sleeve, I suppose, for the big, for the big win.

• 50:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cuz he kept doing.

• 50:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he's up against his body. Yep.

• 50:55Bill Simmons?

  Somehow.

• 50:56Chris Ryan?

  His, his like comic acting in that scene is so great. He was just like looking behind him.

• 51:01Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to think how many stars ever are as good in that scene as he is. Like, you really need to have the right amount of charisma. You gotta be kind of a scumbag, but I'm still rooting for you. He doesn't get his ass kicked, which is important. You know, he's pushing the line.

• 51:17Sean Fennessey?

  There's something.

• 51:18Bill Simmons?

  Not, not a lot of dudes. Leo, Wolf of Wall Street Leo is a little bit in that thing.

• 51:23Sean Fennessey?

  There's, there's something

• 51:27Sean Fennessey?

  interesting about Newman with that because he was a functioning alcoholic for like 30 years. And he would drink like 12 beers a day. And the whole thing with dipping his face in the cold water and, and, and he does it in three other movies.

• 51:42Chris Ryan?

  Ruffalo does it in Task.

• 51:44Sean Fennessey?

  Does he really?

• 51:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:45Sean Fennessey?

  That's, that's a thing that he did every day because he drank every day. And in that scene, he's playing drunk, but he spent his whole life pretending he wasn't drunk. So there's like a really interesting dynamic going on there.

• 51:59Chris Ryan?

  Do you think he's like, is he loaded during movies? Like when you're watching him?

• 52:02Sean Fennessey?

  I assume not, not when he's filming, but I mean, the stories are legion of him just crushing every day.

• 52:08Bill Simmons?

  And now he lives on in the spirit of my mom.

• 52:15Bill Simmons?

  Sorry, not sorry.

• 52:19Bill Simmons?

  Hooker, Hooker sells Lonigan on double crossing Newman. It's like, whoa.

• 52:24Chris Ryan?

  In the train.

• 52:25Bill Simmons?

  Is this real? Is this not real? What's going on here? The fake blue note, fake blue note race that Shaw wins. Really good stuff.

• 52:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:32Bill Simmons?

  We're entering this whole other world in the movie.

• 52:36Bill Simmons?

  Newman Redford have a good scene with the revenges for sucker scene. So why are you doing it? Seems worthwhile, doesn't it? I just like seeing them in a scene. Salino, the assistant gets killed. I think CR was a little sweet on Salino.

• 52:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:50Bill Simmons?

  Not, not a traditional, not a traditional Hollywood beauty, but.

• 52:54Chris Ryan?

  It's 2 AM, we're both lonely. Blue plate special between us.

• 52:57Sean Fennessey?

  Well, she's been around.

• 52:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:59Sean Fennessey?

  Like she could show you some things.

• 53:00Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 53:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 53:01Chris Ryan?

  Just gotta silence her.

• 53:03Bill Simmons?

  Her getting killed is a good, wait, what? She's the assassin.

• 53:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:06Bill Simmons?

  And then the final con, really good stuff. You're not gonna stick around for your share. Nah, I'd only blow it. My favorite's the poker scene. That's my most rewatchable.

• 53:15Chris Ryan?

  Poker's pretty high up there. I honestly have one, my, my most rewatchable scene you did not mention, which is the first time Gondorf and Hooker meet. And Gondorf's.

• 53:24Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 53:24Chris Ryan?

  Way hungover.

• 53:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:26Chris Ryan?

  He's like, Luther said I could learn from you. I already know how to drink. Like, every line is perfect. The two of them jousting is perfect. The obvious affection that they have for each other, but also like, you kind of can't decide whose movie this is gonna be in that scene.

• 53:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:40Chris Ryan?

  And you never really figure it out. And I love Newman in that scene. That's, that's.

• 53:45Bill Simmons?

  What do you have?

• 53:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great pick. I would do the poker scene as well for obvious.

• 53:48Bill Simmons?

  Of course you would.

• 53:49Sean Fennessey?

  Poker reasons, yeah.

• 53:50Bill Simmons?

  What's the most 1973 thing about this movie? It's a hard one because it's set in 1936 Chicago, but I still have an answer.

• 53:58Sean Fennessey?

  I have one thing. So this is a movie about the depression, but it seems like a charming throwback because we're, enough time has passed.

• 54:10Chris Ryan?

  That people have like romantic ideas about that era.

• 54:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Like this would be if there was a movie in 2062 about right now. You'd be like, oh, there's some like, isn't that interesting? Whereas like living here right now, we're like, we live in hell right now. It's a weird time to be alive. But when enough time passes, but what feels like the worst thing in the universe has a kind of charm.

• 54:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Bill Simmons?

  I thought you were gonna mention Eddington there.

• 54:37Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, part of the reason why I like that movie is because I've seen very few movies that are like, it's as bad as it seems. You know what I mean?

• 54:45Bill Simmons?

  I want to do, I want to do a family rom com about how much weirdly fun the first two months of COVID was because you just stuck with your wife and kids.

• 54:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 54:55Bill Simmons?

  It was the most time I spent with my kids probably ever for the rest of my life. And now I'm nostalgic for it, but we, we heard Paul fearing for death and couldn't leave our house.

• 55:03Sean Fennessey?

  You were at the perfect time in your life, though.

• 55:05Bill Simmons?

  I was.

• 55:06Sean Fennessey?

  Ask a parent who had like a four year old and a one year old. What it was like to have kids then?

• 55:11Bill Simmons?

  I didn't say it was rational.

• 55:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 55:13Bill Simmons?

  Every part of COVID was horrible, but the, the one thing was like, ah, we were all kind of hanging out.

• 55:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yours turned out really well. You were like right at the precipice of empty nest, right?

• 55:21Chris Ryan?

  I was doing some seasonal cleaning of my house and came across like a bunch of the, uh, what we thought were like suitable masks from really early COVID, but it was just like, some woman made it on Etsy.

• 55:35Chris Ryan?

  Like, it says, like, we'll get through this together knit across the front.

• 55:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:42Bill Simmons?

  Air just flying into it.

• 55:43Chris Ryan?

  I had like a fucking Liverpool, like, what's the thing on Survivor that they get?

• 55:48Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, the buffs.

• 55:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I had a Liverpool buff and I was like, this will keep me safe from the novel coronavirus.

• 55:55Sean Fennessey?

  You've had COVID, what, eight times now? How many times have you had it?

• 55:57Chris Ryan?

  The guys still have it, yeah.

• 55:59Bill Simmons?

  You were talking to Newsom a lot back then.

• 56:01Chris Ryan?

  That's right, me and Gav.

• 56:02Bill Simmons?

  Like Gavin said, stay away from the beaches, it can really spread there off the water.

• 56:06Sean Fennessey?

  How's your, how's your pod with Gav going?

• 56:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 56:08Chris Ryan?

  He surprisingly hasn't been picked up by Spotify.

• 56:10Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 56:12Sean Fennessey?

  That's funny.

• 56:14Bill Simmons?

  I have heard the most 1973 thing, Robert Shaw not seeming like he's 65 years old because he's actually 45. I just think that's a different era of actor.

• 56:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Bill Simmons?

  You see all these dudes and you're like, uh, and then payphones.

• 56:28Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 56:29Bill Simmons?

  How, it's like a nostalgic version of the payphone in these movies? And now payphone, I just see, I notice payphones when I see them in movies now. Cause they're so far removed from society.

• 56:43Sean Fennessey?

  It is weird to see one and there is one in one battle after another, actually. In a pivotal scene in the movie, but yeah, I mean, when's the last time you saw one in the wild? I can't even remember.

• 56:53Chris Ryan?

  I've seen them in Philly, but they're like completely stripped for parts, to the extent that there are any parts in there.

• 56:58Bill Simmons?

  Did you write any payphones in the task when you were working on the episodes?

• 57:04Bill Simmons?

  What's age the best? What do you got, Sierra?

• 57:05Chris Ryan?

  Uh, well, let's see. You know what? Sean mentioned something about,

• 57:11Chris Ryan?

  about like looking back romantically on the, on the 1930s. And I did feel like the thing that's maybe aged the best about this movie is that it inverts everything it's about. So it's like a movie about the depression, but all these guys are dressed really snazzy.

• 57:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:26Chris Ryan?

  And they're like in cool bars and there's money flying around.

• 57:29Sean Fennessey?

  Loose cash, yeah.

• 57:30Chris Ryan?

  This is a movie about like an incredibly anxious, tight situation and everybody is cool as shit.

• 57:37Bill Simmons?

  Nobody's like, I haven't had a meal in eight days.

• 57:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, nobody is like, man, I'm really sweating this. What if we fuck up? It's like, hey, kid, what's the worst that could happen? It could kill you. And it's like, that's what makes it work. The stakes are so high, but the guys are so cool. And you watch this and you're like, this is just everything from Ocean's Eleven is just drawn directly from this.

• 57:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great take.

• 57:55Bill Simmons?

  Good one. I have, uh, great clothes in this movie. The three-piece suits and fedoras. Just really enjoyable. Apparently started a little fashion trend in the, in the, uh, 73, 74 range with the suits.

• 58:07Sean Fennessey?

  Would you ever do an episode of this show where we had to dress up?

• 58:11Bill Simmons?

  Dress like that?

• 58:11Sean Fennessey?

  Like the costume, yeah, from the movies?

• 58:13Bill Simmons?

  We dressed like golfers for Tin Cup. That was fun. Yeah, I don't, I don't know if, uh,

• 58:16Sean Fennessey?

  You did?

• 58:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, we just were like wearing.

• 58:19Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 58:20Chris Ryan?

  Just, just. House just dressed the way House dresses.

• 58:22Bill Simmons?

  We just dressed like House, basically. Uh, I have fixing races, counterfeit money,

• 58:31Bill Simmons?

  cheating at poker.

• 58:33Sean Fennessey?

  These are all very much still alive.

• 58:35Bill Simmons?

  All these things that just seem like they were way easier to do once upon a time.

• 58:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:39Bill Simmons?

  And now will be way harder. It made me think like, you know, John Tate Porter's probably watching this going, man, in 1936, I really could have been cooking.

• 58:49Sean Fennessey?

  He would have cooked back then. He would have cooked.

• 58:51Bill Simmons?

  You could just be, people would believe anything. Just give them fake money. They wouldn't look at it.

• 58:55Chris Ryan?

  It is funny.

• 58:55Bill Simmons?

  Easier times.

• 58:56Chris Ryan?

  Are you ever on like a group text about a, a game and you're watching it on cable? So you're ahead by like a minute?

• 59:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 59:03Chris Ryan?

  And you can't like, cause like yesterday I was on, I was watching the Eagles on cable, but Andy and Zach were watching on like YouTube TV. And I kept being like, holy shit. And they'd be like, we're not there yet. But it's like, you could be like, no, not Jalen Hurts.

• 59:18Chris Ryan?

  I just watched him die for a minute.

• 59:21Sean Fennessey?

  I thought you were gonna bring-

• 59:21Bill Simmons?

  That looked like his name.

• 59:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's non-contact. You hate to see that.

• 59:26Sean Fennessey?

  I thought you were gonna bring up how easy it was to identify Tony point shaving in Blue Chips. You know, it was like 35 years ago and it was like, we just watched the VHS tape and it was very clear that he was doing it.

• 59:37Bill Simmons?

  No, no, man. Not Tony. Redford running?

• 59:42Chris Ryan?

  He spends a lot of time running in this movie.

• 59:43Sean Fennessey?

  He does. He does.

• 59:45Bill Simmons?

  Really? Cruze-esque?

• 59:46Sean Fennessey?

  Form? Yeah, Cruz.

• 59:48Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna do this later. I'm happy to do it now. Just best A-list acting runner? Redford versus Cruz. I think Redford has a real case.

• 59:57Sean Fennessey?

  Also, kind of underrated in The Great Athlete Stars. We talked about Reynolds and Cruz and all these guys who do all that stuff. But skiing, baseball, you know, I guess he doesn't appear in The Legend of Bagger Vance, but that's a golf movie.

• 1:00:10Chris Ryan?

  Somewhere Gilbert Arenas is like, Redford was a bucket.

• 1:00:16Bill Simmons?

  Who's a better runner than Cruz? Are they in the finals for sprinting?

• 1:00:20Chris Ryan?

  Cruz versus Redford?

• 1:00:21Bill Simmons?

  In the sprinting A-list finals? Is there anybody else?

• 1:00:24Chris Ryan?

  The question is whether or not Redford can go straight into tumbling the way Cruz does in The Firm. You know, straight into like somersaults.

• 1:00:32Bill Simmons?

  I mean, The Firm, for 10 minutes, Cruz is sprinting.

• 1:00:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:00:37Bill Simmons?

  He sprints into an office, jumps out of a window, sprints, goes to that tram thing, sprints again.

• 1:00:42Chris Ryan?

  Sprints to Arkansas, basically, yeah.

• 1:00:45Sean Fennessey?

  I mean-

• 1:00:45Bill Simmons?

  I think he's still the GOAT.

• 1:00:46Sean Fennessey?

  He's the GOAT of running.

• 1:00:47Bill Simmons?

  Here's another one. What's it your best? Pretending to be drunker than you are when you're gambling. I know Sean's done this.

• 1:00:53Chris Ryan?

  Have you?

• 1:00:53Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't. It's not really my thing. Cause I'm just not a big talker at the table.

• 1:00:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you got your-

• 1:00:57Sean Fennessey?

  I don't talk a lot of shit, yeah.

• 1:00:59Bill Simmons?

  Uh, how about characters named Horseface Lee, Slim Miller, Suitcase Murphy, The Boon Kid, Daffy Burke, Limehouse Chappie?

• 1:01:08Chris Ryan?

  I was wondering whether you would put this group up against the Goodfellas nicknames.

• 1:01:12Bill Simmons?

  They're really good. Big Alabama, Cryin' Jonesy?

• 1:01:15Chris Ryan?

  Big Alabama, crucially from New Orleans, though.

• 1:01:18Bill Simmons?

  Right. And then we have, uh-

• 1:01:19Sean Fennessey?

  Nothing on Nikki two times and-

• 1:01:22Bill Simmons?

  We also have a Leroy and a Luther and a Hooker.

• 1:01:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:01:26Bill Simmons?

  Uh, pickpocketing.

• 1:01:29Chris Ryan?

  It's age the best?

• 1:01:30Sean Fennessey?

  Has age the best?

• 1:01:31Bill Simmons?

  I think it's an underutilized movie device at this point. Maybe because it should almost be phone pocketing instead of wallets.

• 1:01:37Sean Fennessey?

  Pick up on South Street, Sam Fuller movie, incredible pickpocketing scene. And then Linus from Ocean's Eleven.

• 1:01:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Sean Fennessey?

  An all time pickpocketer.

• 1:01:44Bill Simmons?

  Another forty eight hours, really good pickpocketing scene. Saving it for movies I like to hate watch month. What's age the best? Any train trip with stars where you feel like something might happen?

• 1:01:56Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:56Bill Simmons?

  The Trading Places corollary?

• 1:01:58Sean Fennessey?

  Love it.

• 1:01:58Bill Simmons?

  It's like, oh, we're gonna be on a train for a little while. This'll be good.

• 1:02:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's great.

• 1:02:03Chris Ryan?

  You and Sal should do Guess the Lines, but like from LA to San Diego.

• 1:02:07Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Bill Simmons?

  Shaw limps of this movie because he injured his leg. Playing handball, that was the official explanation. And they just told him to use the limp for the character.

• 1:02:18Sean Fennessey?

  You think he just fell down a staircase after nine scotches?

• 1:02:21Bill Simmons?

  What we know about Robert Shaw, would you go with door A, handball? A handball accident or door B?

• 1:02:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:28Bill Simmons?

  Door B, thirty eight drinks on a Sunday night and fell down a flight of stairs. I don't know.

• 1:02:33Chris Ryan?

  Uh, what's age the best? Not only Schlitz in bottles.

• 1:02:37Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:37Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Schlitz was the biggest beer, uh, in America in the thirties, but also guys drinking beers because it's too early to start drinking in the morning. So they'll have like a beer for breakfast.

• 1:02:47Sean Fennessey?

  Right, right. That's what I do.

• 1:02:49Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that just everybody before like nineteen sixty four was shithoused the entire day?

• 1:02:55Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that's basically what Bad Men's about.

• 1:02:57Sean Fennessey?

  Can we talk, let's talk about drinking for a second.

• 1:02:58Bill Simmons?

  But then they all died when they were like fifty one.

• 1:03:00Sean Fennessey?

  So, okay, this is my thing.

• 1:03:01Chris Ryan?

  They got the most out of life, though.

• 1:03:04Sean Fennessey?

  I know you don't, you, you don't drink as much as you did when you were in your twenties and thirties, right?

• 1:03:07Bill Simmons?

  God, no.

• 1:03:08Sean Fennessey?

  So not even close.

• 1:03:09Bill Simmons?

  Fair to say, definitely not.

• 1:03:10Sean Fennessey?

  So neither do I, and I know you don't either, right?

• 1:03:13Chris Ryan?

  I mean.

• 1:03:14Sean Fennessey?

  You've never been a huge, a tonnage drinker.

• 1:03:16Chris Ryan?

  I still drink five days a week.

• 1:03:19Bill Simmons?

  Sierra's in black tar heroin now.

• 1:03:21Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:03:21Bill Simmons?

  Cleaner.

• 1:03:22Sean Fennessey?

  What happens to your body where you get to a certain age? And then they're like, if you cross the two drink thresholds and they're like, no, I will make this really hard on you the next day in a way that you never, ever understood it. What is the, because these guys who we're talking about, when I was growing up, I was like, well, this is what men do. They have eight drinks and it's fine. But then you learn a little bit more about life and more or less you die at fifty in your sleep when you drink this way. Like, it's just not.

• 1:03:49Chris Ryan?

  Or playing handball.

• 1:03:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Bill Simmons?

  I think it's pretty simple. The more you drink, the worse you sleep and the worse you sleep, the faster you die.

• 1:03:58Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I'll go with that because I definitely sleep much worse when I drink now as opposed to even 10 years.

• 1:04:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, especially if you're having like two, three glasses of wine, just the sugar from that. If you're having a little later, like, you know, I mean, we were, I was, I saw a bunch of my, a bunch of buddies this summer for different reasons, including my old high school buddies. We would talk about how I would, we, all of us would, we would drink Jack and Cokes. But then I would have like six Marlboro Lights and I'd have eight Jack and Cokes. And then I would wonder why, like, I woke up at 4:30 in the morning.

• 1:04:34Bill Simmons?

  Clean out some Moroccans playing, playing pool.

• 1:04:38Bill Simmons?

  But I'd wake up at four in the morning with my, like, thinking I was gonna have a heart attack. Like, oh, really? That's maybe eight Cokes.

• 1:04:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Bill Simmons?

  And eight Cokes and cigarettes.

• 1:04:49Sean Fennessey?

  It is like a real confrontation with middle age, though, where you're like, I had two and a half drinks. And I've awoken at 4:00 AM and I'm like sweating. Whereas in the past, that was like work.

• 1:05:00Chris Ryan?

  I agree with you, but I do think that there's something, there's like a, an environmental thing where it's like, if you're very aware of what it's gonna do and everybody's having conversations like this, like, oh, my sleep, my sleep. Do you think any man before the Vietnam War talked about what kind of sleep they were getting?

• 1:05:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 1:05:18Chris Ryan?

  Not that I want to go back to that. I'm just saying that like, if you were just like, I have to suffer in silence.

• 1:05:22Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:05:23Chris Ryan?

  I woke up three times to pee.

• 1:05:24Sean Fennessey?

  The greatest generation did not need to listen to the Huberman Lab podcast. That was not important to them.

• 1:05:30Bill Simmons?

  Robert Shaw apparently was a huge infrared sauna guy, though.

• 1:05:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Sean Fennessey?

  But Redford looks like a guy who's never had a drink in his life.

• 1:05:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:37Sean Fennessey?

  Newman, part of what's so interesting about him is he was so, so beautiful and always so fit, even though he was drinking a case of beer.

• 1:05:44Chris Ryan?

  It's because he took pure sunlight.

• 1:05:47Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Yeah, he swam in infested rivers. Strong constitution.

• 1:05:52Bill Simmons?

  There's one other what's aged the best, and I encourage people to go watch this on YouTube. Liz Taylor presents the best picture for this thing.

• 1:05:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Bill Simmons?

  Liz Taylor.

• 1:06:02Bill Simmons?

  I'm not saying she's the hottest woman of all time, but she's just, just make sure you mention her from 58 to 70.

• 1:06:08Sean Fennessey?

  Mention her to who?

• 1:06:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This is just, if, if the conversation's being had, just bring her up.

• 1:06:13Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:06:14Sean Fennessey?

  But in 73?

• 1:06:15Bill Simmons?

  She looks great.

• 1:06:16Chris Ryan?

  Okay, this is getting a little like your Sinatra take, but go ahead.

• 1:06:20Bill Simmons?

  Sinatra was the coolest person ever lived.

• 1:06:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:06:24Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:06:26Bill Simmons?

  I won that argument. Everyone, everyone says.

• 1:06:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, everyone says that.

• 1:06:30Bill Simmons?

  People are saying, people are saying I won.

• 1:06:33Sean Fennessey?

  It, it wasn't an argument.

• 1:06:36Bill Simmons?

  Liz Taylor still looks like Lights Out of 1973, goes up to do Best Picture. The Streaker had just happened.

• 1:06:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:06:43Bill Simmons?

  And she's frazzled by the Streaker and trying to get through the things and she stops at one point and she's like, I'm sorry, I'm still a little whatever. And then gets through it, the sting wins. And, uh, and then one of them is like, I can't believe, oh, Julia Phillips, I can't believe I'm up here with Liz Taylor and you hear Liz Taylor like happily laughing. It's just like, it's very Hollywood-y. Everything about the Oscars back then, it wasn't as polished as now.

• 1:07:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:09Bill Simmons?

  And it's just like, eh, everybody's just going, they're probably all bombed before they get there. They're not worried about like the red carpet being interviewed by somebody.

• 1:07:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. In 73, Liz Taylor, I think at that point, had been married to Richard Burton, the other world-class drinker.

• 1:07:23Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:23Sean Fennessey?

  The Welsh titan of getting hammered.

• 1:07:26Bill Simmons?

  Back then. So then Pacino, who was nominated for Best Actor, he had a whole story about he didn't realize the.

• 1:07:32Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:07:32Bill Simmons?

  The category was televised and he was like zonked out and drunk.

• 1:07:35Chris Ryan?

  He's like, he took a Xanax or something, right?

• 1:07:38Bill Simmons?

  And thought it was an hour-long show and it was three hours. So by the third hour, he had to pee. He didn't know whether he could get up.

• 1:07:44Sean Fennessey?

  How does Al Pacino not know how long the Oscars are in 1974?

• 1:07:51Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 1:07:51Sean Fennessey?

  There have been two Godfather movies that he is the star of.

• 1:07:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Sean Fennessey?

  He's nominated.

• 1:07:56Chris Ryan?

  If you're on value, you're just like, I guess.

• 1:07:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He was saying he hoped they didn't win because he thought he was like incoherent.

• 1:08:03Sean Fennessey?

  But he like, he was treating the Oscars like it was a Starbucks drive-through. He's like, I'm gonna wrap this up in like 20 minutes. We'll be back out on the road. You've been to the Oscars like five times.

• 1:08:12Bill Simmons?

  This sounds like the best Oscars you could have gone to. It sounds like it was the craziest, um, The Streaker was fun.

• 1:08:19Sean Fennessey?

  Where does David Niven rank in your all-time hosts? Cause he was the host and he was the one who had that, that crack about the shortcomings with The Streaker.

• 1:08:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:27Bill Simmons?

  I have him low.

• 1:08:28Sean Fennessey?

  Low because he was British?

• 1:08:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Chris Ryan?

  David, I think, put close some bars with Robert.

• 1:08:33Bill Simmons?

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• 1:09:17Bill Simmons?

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• 1:10:03Bill Simmons?

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• 1:10:27Chris Ryan?

  Shaw.

• 1:10:28Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:28Sean Fennessey?

  For sure.

• 1:10:30Bill Simmons?

  We'll take one more break and then we'll do the mini categories. Okay. Big Hoonah Burger Award for Best Used Food and Drink, the fake gin. Who beat that?

• 1:10:41Chris Ryan?

  I had the blue plate special.

• 1:10:42Bill Simmons?

  Just, oh.

• 1:10:43Chris Ryan?

  What, like, have you guys ever had a blue plate?

• 1:10:45Sean Fennessey?

  What was on it?

• 1:10:46Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. He, she, he should have had the meatloaf, but she was like, it wouldn't be much better.

• 1:10:51Bill Simmons?

  That was my dad's podcast that we never gave him at the Ringer.

• 1:10:54Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:10:54Bill Simmons?

  The Blue Plate Special, I was gonna call it. Great shot, go to award, most cinematic shot, what do you have?

• 1:10:59Chris Ryan?

  I actually went off book here and did Wonderful Edit Willie for William Reynolds, Hollywood editor, who did Sound of Music.

• 1:11:06Bill Simmons?

  See, he's zagging like Pauline Kael right now.

• 1:11:09Chris Ryan?

  Day that Bursts itself, Godfather, just the use of wipes. You know, makes the movie kind of feel like softer than it probably would have been. It's very gritty content, but it's like a very beautiful like.

• 1:11:19Bill Simmons?

  Great Edit Willie?

• 1:11:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20Bill Simmons?

  Great Cut Willie?

• 1:11:21Chris Ryan?

  Wonderful Edit Willie.

• 1:11:22Bill Simmons?

  Wonderful Edit Willie?

• 1:11:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:24Sean Fennessey?

  He uses the iris transition as well, right? Where the screen shrinks down.

• 1:11:28Bill Simmons?

  Good one. Kid Cudi Pursuit of happiness word, it's gotta be the entertainer.

• 1:11:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:11:34Bill Simmons?

  Chess Rockwell, Brock Lenders were best character name? I mean, I mentioned 30 of them. Johnny Hooker's really solid, though?

• 1:11:40Sean Fennessey?

  Henry Gondorf? I feel like you hear that name and I can see Newman in my head right away.

• 1:11:44Chris Ryan?

  I do, I do think if you were gonna close your eyes and think of an Irish mobster, Dale Laughtigan is like as close as you could get.

• 1:11:49Bill Simmons?

  Pretty good. What do you have for a flex category?

• 1:11:53Chris Ryan?

  I had Den of Thieves, Benny Hahn Award for steal, scene stealing location is the Carousel Whorehouse. Just.

• 1:11:59Bill Simmons?

  You love a good whorehouse in a movie.

• 1:12:01Sean Fennessey?

  Now, is the idea there that you get a ride on the ride? Like, what's the, is there like some cross promo?

• 1:12:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I also just really love the idea that it was like, the girls aren't busy tonight, can they ride the carousel? Imagine just going downstairs, seeing a bunch of hookers on.

• 1:12:16Sean Fennessey?

  You really gotta like wipe down those, those horses on the carousel.

• 1:12:19Chris Ryan?

  I don't think in the 1930s they were.

• 1:12:20Sean Fennessey?

  They didn't have like disinfectant that they would put on there.

• 1:12:23Chris Ryan?

  That way.

• 1:12:24Sean Fennessey?

  Got it.

• 1:12:25Bill Simmons?

  There's parts of the 1930s that just sounded great.

• 1:12:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:29Chris Ryan?

  90% of people are having to clap.

• 1:12:30Sean Fennessey?

  Syphilitic whorehouses.

• 1:12:33Bill Simmons?

  That part, baby.

• 1:12:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:37Chris Ryan?

  Drinking 16 Schlitzes.

• 1:12:40Bill Simmons?

  Those Schlitz in the bottle look really tasty.

• 1:12:42Sean Fennessey?

  I'd love to take half a million dollars off of an Irish gangster. Yeah, that sounds really fun.

• 1:12:46Bill Simmons?

  Butch's Girlfriend Award for weak link of the film.

• 1:12:49Chris Ryan?

  I have one.

• 1:12:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I have one too.

• 1:12:51Chris Ryan?

  So there's like a.

• 1:12:54Chris Ryan?

  It's hard to explain this, but there is a subplot of two other hitmen pursuing Hooker. It's Cole and Sullivan.

• 1:13:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:02Chris Ryan?

  And they're supposed to be taken off the job by Lonigan, who puts Salino on the job, but they stay on it. And it just gets confusing and it's really a hat on a hat. It's unnecessary to have yet another

• 1:13:14Bill Simmons?

  Multiple assassins.

• 1:13:15Chris Ryan?

  Team of hitmen chasing him.

• 1:13:16Bill Simmons?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:17Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and it just really creates more running for Redford. Um, so on 30th rewatch, I was like, I could do without Cole and Sullivan. It doesn't really do anything for the movie.

• 1:13:25Bill Simmons?

  Do you have anything?

• 1:13:26Sean Fennessey?

  I don't really think any of the performances are bad. Do you, you have somebody that you want to point to that doesn't really work?

• 1:13:32Chris Ryan?

  If you say Eileen Brennan, I'm walking out.

• 1:13:35Bill Simmons?

  No, I liked her. Um, I did have the question, how is there not a 1936 babe in this movie? What are we doing?

• 1:13:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, you, you get the, the, the, um, striptease

• 1:13:46Chris Ryan?

  Sally Kirkland.

• 1:13:47Sean Fennessey?

  At the beginning of the film. Yeah. So.

• 1:13:49Bill Simmons?

  Just some of the people we had in the 73 range. We had young Jane Alexander, we Julie Christie's sitting there for one scene.

• 1:13:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:56Bill Simmons?

  We dying lad, we Tuesday Weld.

• 1:13:58Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:59Bill Simmons?

  Like, we had, we had, we had the troops. We could have pulled something off. George Whitehill was not interested. He's like, this is a guys movie. I want everybody to look like 1936 people and that's it.

• 1:14:10Sean Fennessey?

  It would be unlikely, I guess, at the time for a woman to be a more elaborate part of a con. But that's where you'd want to see.

• 1:14:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Sean Fennessey?

  You know, you want a woman who would kind of ensnare Doyle.

• 1:14:21Chris Ryan?

  Maybe Lonigan has a girlfriend that Hooker's going after.

• 1:14:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Chris Ryan?

  Mistress.

• 1:14:26Sean Fennessey?

  Sure. Yeah, definitely.

• 1:14:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. That's where we get Christie Canyon, you know?

• 1:14:30Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:14:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, maybe, uh, what's Newman's character's name? Gandalf?

• 1:14:34Chris Ryan?

  Gondor.

• 1:14:35Sean Fennessey?

  Gondor.

• 1:14:35Bill Simmons?

  Gondor?

• 1:14:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Gandalf.

• 1:14:36Bill Simmons?

  Gandalf.

• 1:14:37Sean Fennessey?

  Gandalf the Grey.

• 1:14:37Bill Simmons?

  James Gandalf, eh?

• 1:14:38Sean Fennessey?

  He's an incredible wizard.

• 1:14:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And maybe he goes and he's going to get food by himself and he sees somebody who works in a bookstore.

• 1:14:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:47Bill Simmons?

  Does one of those, it's like, why are you so interested in what I do, lady?

• 1:14:49Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:14:50Bill Simmons?

  You just have one of those scenes?

• 1:14:51Sean Fennessey?

  Catherine Ross, a little reunion from Butch Cassidy.

• 1:14:53Chris Ryan?

  A book about horses. What's it is the worst?

• 1:14:56Bill Simmons?

  The sequel, you mentioned it earlier. It's really awful. Mac Davis is in it. Jackie Gleason.

• 1:15:02Sean Fennessey?

  The one thing is Jackie Gleason is perfect for Gondorf as he has written in the script.

• 1:15:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Sean Fennessey?

  Aging, heavyset, really insinuating and knowing. I'm just, I'm just saying, like, you could have seen a world where this movie was Gleason and Redford, and that would have been coherent. It would have been a different kind of a movie, but it would have been coherent.

• 1:15:23Bill Simmons?

  80s HBO and 80s cable, The Sting and The Sting 2 were on a lot, and The Sting 2 is really bad. And it was on for a while, for a couple of years, unfortunately. Few racial slurs in this movie, not awesome. It's slow in an endearing 70s way, but it is a little slow.

• 1:15:40Chris Ryan?

  Shaggy.

• 1:15:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Like for, I don't know if my son Ben Simmons is making it two plus hours.

• 1:15:46Sean Fennessey?

  After the Blue Note scene, it kinda takes its time.

• 1:15:49Chris Ryan?

  Well, cause it's like they insist on doing another bet before the sting.

• 1:15:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Where he's gotta get like more information.

• 1:15:55Chris Ryan?

  A long time.

• 1:15:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's a lot of Ray Walston helping him set up the situation and, and, um, and who's the other guy?

• 1:16:03Bill Simmons?

  Twist?

• 1:16:04Sean Fennessey?

  Twist, yes. Twist, Kid Twist.

• 1:16:06Bill Simmons?

  This is what, this is what it said in Wikipedia about the author of The Big Con selling them and settling out of court for 600K. This is the Wikipedia excerpt. "Universal settled out of court for 600,000. Erking Ward, who resented the presumption of guilt implied by an out of court settlement done for business expediency."

• 1:16:26Chris Ryan?

  I didn't know that there was a whole cottage industry of people who kind of trail behind big scripts to make these plagiarism accusations.

• 1:16:36Sean Fennessey?

  We just saw this, right, with the Dave Franco, Alison Brie movie together. There was a big suit about that, the plot of that movie being lifted from another writer.

• 1:16:44Bill Simmons?

  I wanted to sue for, to get my 100 minutes back. The movie fucking sucked. Um, listen.

• 1:16:49Sean Fennessey?

  I wasn't a big fan either.

• 1:16:50Bill Simmons?

  I didn't sue when, I didn't sue when they stole The Purge from me. They literally stole The Purge. Yeah, I created The Purge.

• 1:16:57Sean Fennessey?

  The Purge. You are, you filing an injunction against Blumhouse?

• 1:17:01Bill Simmons?

  Kevin Wildes and I half picked, half picked ideas. I did the whole idea about Leap Year.

• 1:17:05Chris Ryan?

  It's interesting what you could claim, you know?

• 1:17:07Bill Simmons?

  I, I said on Leap Year, there are no rules, no crimes. It's one day. I did a whole thing about it and then, and then The Purge happened.

• 1:17:15Chris Ryan?

  Don't you know Grillo? Can't you ask him about it?

• 1:17:17Bill Simmons?

  No, I, you know. No bad ideas in a brainstorm. But yeah, you're right. This is a cottage industry.

• 1:17:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, if you want to shift the sort of business strategy of The Ringer, full stop, to you suing guys who had ideas that you had 10 years earlier.

• 1:17:35Bill Simmons?

  Leap year and you watched The Purge. I'm just saying, I'm just saying.

• 1:17:41Bill Simmons?

  They also apparently plagiarized some 1958 Maverick television series episode with James Garner.

• 1:17:46Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 1:17:47Bill Simmons?

  There was some stuff.

• 1:17:47Chris Ryan?

  There was also some.

• 1:17:48Sean Fennessey?

  Another great con man movie.

• 1:17:50Chris Ryan?

  Inspired by Orson Welles' radio play, The Three Lives of Harry Lime. There's a, there's some similarities, apparently, in this story.

• 1:17:57Bill Simmons?

  It's a con movie. Uh, overacting award. Redford dialing up like two or three times here and uncharacteristic for Redford ways.

• 1:18:06Sean Fennessey?

  Kehoe?

• 1:18:08Chris Ryan?

  Well, that's his thing though, right?

• 1:18:09Sean Fennessey?

  Kehoe kind of.

• 1:18:10Bill Simmons?

  Come on, Chenzer!

• 1:18:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but even before he, even before he's doing the con, you know, like in the bar with Charles Durning, he's, he's, he's laying it on.

• 1:18:20Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. He enrolled in detective school.

• 1:18:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:22Chris Ryan?

  I, I got Lannigan, uh, being like, the name's Lannigan. Don't you forget it.

• 1:18:27Bill Simmons?

  I, did you think Ciara would be talking like Robert Shaw this whole movie?

• 1:18:31Sean Fennessey?

  I was hoping.

• 1:18:31Bill Simmons?

  This whole pot.

• 1:18:32Chris Ryan?

  I'm just mad we're not doing Irish Mob Month now.

• 1:18:34Sean Fennessey?

  What else would be in the mix there?

• 1:18:35Chris Ryan?

  State of Grace.

• 1:18:36Sean Fennessey?

  And you're gonna say that.

• 1:18:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and Bruges, yeah.

• 1:18:39Sean Fennessey?

  Got a fourth one?

• 1:18:40Chris Ryan?

  No, not off the top of my head. Do you?

• 1:18:43Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:43Chris Ryan?

  I guess The Irishman.

• 1:18:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure. That works.

• 1:18:48Bill Simmons?

  It does work. You have a flex category.

• 1:18:52Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I'm gonna call my own number and do a criteria orgasm.

• 1:18:57Bill Simmons?

  You know, I had it, just in case you didn't do it, I had it for later, but let's do it.

• 1:19:00Sean Fennessey?

  So the rigged black 22 on the roulette wheel.

• 1:19:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:04Sean Fennessey?

  Where Hooker loses in that scene early in the movie is the same spot that Rick Blaine uses for both Captain Renault and the Bulgarian couple to set them up to win in Casablanca.

• 1:19:14Bill Simmons?

  Ah.

• 1:19:15Sean Fennessey?

  A very purposeful homage to Casablanca.

• 1:19:19Bill Simmons?

  Wow, a little criteria orgasm.

• 1:19:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:23Bill Simmons?

  The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. I have one.

• 1:19:30Sean Fennessey?

  I have one as well.

• 1:19:31Chris Ryan?

  I kind of tipped my hand with the, this is an all time classic, but it should not have won best picture.

• 1:19:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:36Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:19:36Bill Simmons?

  Um. I don't even think that's that hot of a take.

• 1:19:38Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if.

• 1:19:39Bill Simmons?

  Exorcist should have won.

• 1:19:40Chris Ryan?

  Movie is less rewatchable. I shouldn't say I wonder, it's a hottest take. This movie would be less rewatchable, but more interesting if Gondorf betrayed Hooker or vice versa. There was some actual real tension and it wasn't all like. Play acting for.

• 1:19:55Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's great successes because of the spirited vibe you walk out of the movie on.

• 1:19:58Bill Simmons?

  It's happy and you're like, yeah.

• 1:20:00Sean Fennessey?

  But I.

• 1:20:00Bill Simmons?

  They did it.

• 1:20:01Sean Fennessey?

  I think. This is not my hottest take, but it is something that I felt watching it. I think this movie is best seen every 10 years. Because you made this point earlier, if you forget. A few of the.

• 1:20:13Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:20:13Sean Fennessey?

  Plot moments. It's more fun.

• 1:20:15Chris Ryan?

  If you forget that the FBI is fake.

• 1:20:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:20:17Chris Ryan?

  Cause if you know the FBI is fake, you're kind of like, all right.

• 1:20:20Sean Fennessey?

  Or if you forget Salino, I just forgot Salino.

• 1:20:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Sean Fennessey?

  I just, I had forgotten.

• 1:20:23Bill Simmons?

  I forgot, I hadn't seen it in nine or 10 years.

• 1:20:25Chris Ryan?

  I remember that there was an alleyway shooting, like where Redford thinks somebody is walking towards him and then they get killed, but I couldn't remember.

• 1:20:31Sean Fennessey?

  There's some.

• 1:20:32Bill Simmons?

  The every 10 years club.

• 1:20:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:33Bill Simmons?

  Usual suspects.

• 1:20:35Sean Fennessey?

  That, another good example, the more details you forget, the more fun it is to revisit. My hottest take is even though it's his only nomination, this wouldn't make my top 10 performances for Redford. And I think he's better in many other movies. And it's weird that he was never acknowledged as a great actor. Cause he's, he's great in a lot of movies.

• 1:20:52Chris Ryan?

  Can you think of the example of the, I can't believe he wasn't nominated for this.

• 1:20:55Sean Fennessey?

  The Condor to me is one where it's like, that's a really tough performance. And he's like, he's a guy, he's like a, if you compare what he does versus Beatty in the Parallax View, Beatty is like incoherent. That's a super cool movie, but. The performance that Newman gives is, that Redford gives is so interesting in that movie. Plus he's, you know, he's iconic in The Natural, stuff like that, that like, how did he not get recognized for those kinds of movies? And I love him in this and I think he's really fun. I just think he's a little too old and Newman is a little too young. And so him being like the kid again, he's like 32.

• 1:21:29Chris Ryan?

  Newman's supposed to be in his.

• 1:21:30Bill Simmons?

  That's the whole, Redford did that for most of his career, always playing somebody he was 10 years old to play.

• 1:21:37Bill Simmons?

  You know, rewatching All the Presidents, he's fucking amazing in that movie.

• 1:21:42Sean Fennessey?

  He's another one he would have been grateful for.

• 1:21:44Bill Simmons?

  So, but unfortunately, that was like the most load. I guess he probably could have took Giancarlo Janini's spot.

• 1:21:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Was that for Seven Beauties?

• 1:21:53Bill Simmons?

  I thought he was so good in that movie. That, that one long scene when he calls, he calls, uh, Kenneth Gaul, Gaul, whatever.

• 1:22:02Chris Ryan?

  He's doing the little illustrations.

• 1:22:04Bill Simmons?

  The other guy calls and then he has to put the guy on hold and it's just all one shot. And it's like seven minutes.

• 1:22:10Chris Ryan?

  Is that I have a wife and a child and a dog and a cat?

• 1:22:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's fucking crushing it.

• 1:22:15Sean Fennessey?

  One nomination is weird.

• 1:22:18Bill Simmons?

  It's a tough one though, because like we do this with sports sometimes when somebody only wins however many MVPs and we're like, how did that happen? Like Kobe, they do this with Kobe and it's like, well, go through.

• 1:22:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:29Bill Simmons?

  Cause there's probably one more he should have won, but other than that.

• 1:22:32Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, Embiid, how did he only win one?

• 1:22:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, what am I gonna do with Embiid? My hottest take, so there's a setup for this. There's a story about Newman and Redford drove Porsches and loved them. They're both big car guys and they became like lifelong friends. Like they loved each other. They actually like, uh, looked for a third movie forever, never found it. At one point they lived like a mile from each other in Connecticut and they're like legitimate boys. And one day Newman stole Redford's Porsche on the set and hid the car and made Redford think someone stole it. And then it was revealed that, no, no, here it is. Ah, big laugh. He also had all of these pranks with George Ray Hill that

• 1:23:17Bill Simmons?

  went back and forth and led to him sawing George Ray Hill's desk in half. And then he basically won the pranks.

• 1:23:25Chris Ryan?

  Did Clooney get all his prank shit from these guys?

• 1:23:28Bill Simmons?

  This is my hottest take. Where did we go wrong where pranks stopped being cool and just became fucking weird? Cause in the seventies, everyone had a great time with pranks.

• 1:23:39Chris Ryan?

  But it would be workplace harassment.

• 1:23:40Bill Simmons?

  And now it feels like, yeah, it's workplace harassment or somebody trying too hard.

• 1:23:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. As you know, my active favorite current meme by far is utter woke nonsense. And I share that meme as often as I can. And being anti-prank is utter woke nonsense in my mind.

• 1:23:55Bill Simmons?

  Like if CR snuck in your house and stole all of your Blu-rays.

• 1:23:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that would take a long time.

• 1:24:02Bill Simmons?

  All right. He stole, stole like whatever he thought your favorite.

• 1:24:05Sean Fennessey?

  All my grails. Yeah.

• 1:24:06Bill Simmons?

  And you just lost your mind. And then it was like, no, I actually have them. You'd be like, you fucking psycho. Why'd you do that? Something shifted with pranks.

• 1:24:16Sean Fennessey?

  I would call the police and tell them that I was robbed.

• 1:24:19Bill Simmons?

  I don't know whether the internet changed the tenor of pranks. Or was Ashton Kutcher's punked when he made Justin Timberlake cry that time?

• 1:24:26Chris Ryan?

  That's right. Yeah.

• 1:24:28Bill Simmons?

  But somewhere between punked and now, pranks stopped being cool.

• 1:24:31Sean Fennessey?

  You're not a big prank guy.

• 1:24:33Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. I think that would be the level of like, I would have a hard time lying, like doing, pulling off a prank. But I do find it interesting, the idea of like, I think we're all just worried about like, if I just saw the desk in half at Spotify, would I just immediately like not have access to Slack, you know?

• 1:24:49Bill Simmons?

  Just saw Jeff Chau's desk in half. Like what happened to here? I was playing a prank. Casting whatevs. Jack Nicholson offered the lead role, turned it down. His quote afterwards was, "I had enough business acumen to know this thing was going to be a huge hit, but Chinatown and The Last Detail were more interesting films to me." Just sucking up to Sean.

• 1:25:08Chris Ryan?

  It all worked out.

• 1:25:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's hard to argue at that point. I do think he would have crushed this movie.

• 1:25:14Bill Simmons?

  It's the kind of movie I wish he had made in the seventies or eighties that he just didn't.

• 1:25:17Sean Fennessey?

  He just has so much native charm. He would have been great.

• 1:25:23Bill Simmons?

  Sterling Hayden turned down the role of Doyle, didn't want to shave his beard off. Richard Boone.

• 1:25:29Sean Fennessey?

  Sterling Hayden on another legendary.

• 1:25:30Bill Simmons?

  We were going like, yeah, deep, deep back. Best that guy word.

• 1:25:36Bill Simmons?

  It's gotta be Jack Keough. I think we're probably the only three people who know he's Jack Keough, right?

• 1:25:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the only other candidate I had was Charles Dearkopf, who's Lonigan's bodyguard Floyd.

• 1:25:46Bill Simmons?

  Oh, the guy who never talks?

• 1:25:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:47Bill Simmons?

  I have been a later guy, the guy with the squished nose. I love that guy.

• 1:25:50Sean Fennessey?

  That guy's great. He's in Butch Cassidy.

• 1:25:52Chris Ryan?

  And the guy who's like on the putting green with him. He's like, if this guy sees me.

• 1:25:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:25:56Bill Simmons?

  So Jack Keough is that guy from Midnight Run to me.

• 1:25:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:59Bill Simmons?

  And I gotta say, I didn't officially know his name until I researched this.

• 1:26:03Sean Fennessey?

  So.

• 1:26:04Bill Simmons?

  Maybe I better go get some donuts.

• 1:26:06Sean Fennessey?

  The only other guy is Harold Gould as Kid Twist, who is the guy from The Golden Girls to me.

• 1:26:12Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:13Sean Fennessey?

  He was on, he was on, and he was he on Maude? He was on another show in the seventies as well, but I knew him as the guy from Golden Girls.

• 1:26:20Bill Simmons?

  Better go get us some donuts. Dion Waiters word.

• 1:26:23Chris Ryan?

  That's great news, Jack.

• 1:26:26Bill Simmons?

  Lonigan's henchman, we'd mentioned him. Luther, basically two scenes. Selena, the assassin. Eileen Brennan's eligible, and I really like her in this movie.

• 1:26:37Sean Fennessey?

  She's great.

• 1:26:37Chris Ryan?

  Oh, you don't think she's in too much of it?

• 1:26:39Bill Simmons?

  Maybe, maybe she is. So the answer is probably the henchman.

• 1:26:42Sean Fennessey?

  I.

• 1:26:42Bill Simmons?

  Who doesn't, I don't think have a speaking line.

• 1:26:45Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to put up Dana Elkar as the FBI agent.

• 1:26:48Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:48Sean Fennessey?

  Hulk. I feel like he's really good because when you first meet him, you totally buy him as, the movie is really good at selling you on the FBI's thing. Where it's like, of course, the FBI would be set up in this like abandoned warehouse. That's just what the FBI does.

• 1:27:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:00Sean Fennessey?

  But then in fact, you see that it's actually easier to set up a false.

• 1:27:03Chris Ryan?

  And Gondor says in the beginning, like, the feds are on to me and all that stuff. Yeah.

• 1:27:07Bill Simmons?

  I think my vote goes to the henchman.

• 1:27:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:27:10Bill Simmons?

  Cause he does, he has no role and no lines and somehow stands out, even when he's behind Newman in the poker scene. And he's just got that look on his face. It's just, I think it's really hard to stand out with no lines. Recasting Couch Director City. Can I offer you Jane Alexander as Selena, the assassin?

• 1:27:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:27:28Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:27:28Sean Fennessey?

  Just a few years before all the president's been.

• 1:27:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:33Bill Simmons?

  Half I started research, Hill really wanted this to feel like the 1930s, watched a bunch of gangster films and realized none of them had extras. And that's why this movie, it's the streets seem so empty.

• 1:27:45Chris Ryan?

  It's claustrophobic, yeah.

• 1:27:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, which I thought was really interesting because this movie really didn't need extras. But now if they made it, it'd be like Gangs of New York. There's just people everywhere.

• 1:27:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that is interesting. I mean, I, it never really bothered me. It never occurred to me, why is this not bustling Chicago the way I'd hoped? It just, it feels manufactured on purpose.

• 1:28:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:28:05Bill Simmons?

  The, a lot of the cars in this movie were, uh, real period cars.

• 1:28:10Chris Ryan?

  And Tony Bill got a lot of them, right?

• 1:28:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the producer found some of them.

• 1:28:17Bill Simmons?

  Snyder rejects Billy's drink by pouring it on her hand and it was an accident. And they improvised it and Eileen Brennan was annoyed. There you go. The movie's filmed in the diner is the same diner that they use for Back to the Future when Marty McFly meets his father and calls Doc Brown, because it's right on that Universal lot. I don't know if you've ever been to.

• 1:28:38Sean Fennessey?

  I have.

• 1:28:38Bill Simmons?

  But, um, it's pretty cool. Like it's.

• 1:28:41Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great tour.

• 1:28:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then, uh, Redford had a broken right thumb from a skiing accident. And was supposed to be in a cast but didn't have one and is using a lot of stuff that isn't with his right thumb during the movie.

• 1:28:55Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, the downhill racer returns.

• 1:28:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This is what Robert Shaw said about Newman.

• 1:29:02Bill Simmons?

  They all recognized Newman to be sure. Everyone would come up and kind of swoon over him. But they didn't in Redford's case, not at all.

• 1:29:10Chris Ryan?

  Do you think he's just fucking with Redford?

• 1:29:12Sean Fennessey?

  That's a weird story.

• 1:29:13Bill Simmons?

  Obviously didn't like Redford.

• 1:29:15Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Marv Hamish, three Oscars that year. And he's like, I'm gonna dominate the next 30 years. Who's, who could possibly come in and take my spot? And John Williams was like, here I come.

• 1:29:27Sean Fennessey?

  So Marv's Oscar for this movie is a weird one because it's best scoring adapted.

• 1:29:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, which is adapting Scott Joplin's music.

• 1:29:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, which is not something that exists anymore and you don't hear about that. In fact, if you're adapting previously used music, you are ineligible for the best score Oscars now.

• 1:29:43Bill Simmons?

  He's like, what if it goes?

• 1:29:47Bill Simmons?

  They're like, yeah, Marv, crank that out.

• 1:29:49Sean Fennessey?

  I did like that tidbit that Ward said where he thought this was should be like a 1930 Chicago blues movie.

• 1:29:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:56Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he wanted it to sound.

• 1:29:57Chris Ryan?

  And that hunger growing up with like black friends. Yeah.

• 1:29:59Sean Fennessey?

  And that that George Roy Hill was like, actually, no, it's ragtime music. That's what we should be playing, even though it takes, you know, that music was popular 20 years before this movie takes place.

• 1:30:09Bill Simmons?

  Julia Phillips, first woman to be nominated for and win the Academy Award as a producer for Best Picture.

• 1:30:15Chris Ryan?

  She has a great.

• 1:30:15Bill Simmons?

  And wrote a book.

• 1:30:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And she has a great anecdote about if you don't, everybody negotiated the font or the thickness of their name in the credit. Except for the producers and it wound up being like very, very thin. Like, so it just seems like everybody else is more important than them.

• 1:30:32Bill Simmons?

  And then she tried to snort the font.

• 1:30:35Bill Simmons?

  Redford.

• 1:30:36Sean Fennessey?

  God, laugh out of your hell, no, yeah, you like that?

• 1:30:41Bill Simmons?

  Newman, Newman and Redford had one issue according to Julia Phillips because Redford was always late. He was at least 40 minutes to an hour late every day on the set, which was apparently a Redford thing for his whole career. And she said, one day Newman tore him apart for it. Paul is the bigger star and he said something like, what are you, a movie star? Um, and then Redford started showing up just 20 minutes late instead of 40. And, uh.

• 1:31:08Chris Ryan?

  What do you think Redford was doing?

• 1:31:09Sean Fennessey?

  Power move.

• 1:31:11Bill Simmons?

  Julia said, uh, it was a psychological flaw, a compulsion to not be on time, comes with the mantle of being a star. I did a film with Steve McQueen, same thing.

• 1:31:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Power move.

• 1:31:22Chris Ryan?

  You like it?

• 1:31:25Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe I'll pick it up going forward.

• 1:31:27Bill Simmons?

  Sean shows up at four o'clock for a rewatch.

• 1:31:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sorry. We just finished.

• 1:31:30Chris Ryan?

  Sorry, guys. I'm here now. Apex Mountain Newman.

• 1:31:36Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:31:36Chris Ryan?

  No. I don't know when it was, but it wasn't this.

• 1:31:43Sean Fennessey?

  Cool hand Luke.

• 1:31:44Bill Simmons?

  It's somewhere in the sixties.

• 1:31:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Sixties. Um.

• 1:31:48Bill Simmons?

  Redford, I think, yes.

• 1:31:51Chris Ryan?

  Oscar and then this seventies run.

• 1:31:53Sean Fennessey?

  Probably.

• 1:31:54Bill Simmons?

  Wrapped up seventy two, seventy three. I think this is like the specific moment where he could do whatever the fuck he wanted.

• 1:31:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's like, I'm, I, I call the shots on what I, what I make.

• 1:32:01Bill Simmons?

  I'll work with who I want. I'll get the, I'm the first call.

• 1:32:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yep. Way we were and this movie, same year. They're both two of the 10 biggest movies of the year and he's nominated for an Academy Award.

• 1:32:11Bill Simmons?

  This would be a good championship belt to figure out is first call. Who had the first call championship belt? Redford is now, after this thing, first call for like, I would say three, four years.

• 1:32:23Chris Ryan?

  Do you think DiCaprio is still first call or is he first call for a certain kind of movie?

• 1:32:26Sean Fennessey?

  No, I think he's held the belt for, for 25 years.

• 1:32:30Bill Simmons?

  I think Shalhoub is first call now.

• 1:32:31Chris Ryan?

  I don't.

• 1:32:32Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so. I don't, Timothy Chalamet can, there's no proof that he can open a movie by himself.

• 1:32:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Leo's in his fifties now.

• 1:32:39Sean Fennessey?

  He's fifty and we're now getting like a real tough test of whether or not he still can, but Killers of the Flower Moon, which is like four hours long, made over a hundred and fifty million dollars worldwide. Like that's crazy.

• 1:32:50Chris Ryan?

  And everybody knew it was going to be on streaming. Yeah.

• 1:32:53Bill Simmons?

  So you think Leo is still first call?

• 1:32:55Sean Fennessey?

  I do.

• 1:32:56Chris Ryan?

  I think the Heat two thing is remarkable because I think it was just like, this movie literally can't happen unless he does it, if he's doing it.

• 1:33:04Sean Fennessey?

  And it's been true since Titanic that he's had that belt. So that's almost, what is that, 28 years?

• 1:33:09Chris Ryan?

  That's how Blood Diamond got made.

• 1:33:10Bill Simmons?

  You don't think Brad Pitt ever, ever?

• 1:33:12Sean Fennessey?

  That's how Body of Lies got made.

• 1:33:14Bill Simmons?

  You don't think Brad Pitt ever grabbed it for a split second?

• 1:33:17Sean Fennessey?

  Not really. I mean, Brad, F1 is Brad Pitt's biggest movie of all time.

• 1:33:22Bill Simmons?

  So Leo's had it since?

• 1:33:24Chris Ryan?

  Brad Pitt makes a lot of weird movies. Yeah.

• 1:33:27Bill Simmons?

  Maybe it wouldn't be a good podcast. It's probably more fun than the seventies, eighties.

• 1:33:30Sean Fennessey?

  The seventies, eighties, I think is a lot of fun because you've got Schwarzenegger and Stallone and you've got those battles. You got Bruce Willis.

• 1:33:36Bill Simmons?

  Cruz is in there for a while.

• 1:33:37Sean Fennessey?

  Eddie Murphy, you know, you've got so many people, but I think Leo has so thoroughly dominated because he's also been able to play anywhere from 20 to 50 in that time.

• 1:33:46Chris Ryan?

  And he was ascendant right when Cruz became All I Do Is Mission Impossible and like weird.

• 1:33:53Bill Simmons?

  Harrison Ford got it after Witness. I think in eighty four, he had it and then Costner came on his corner a little bit. But, uh, yeah.

• 1:34:01Chris Ryan?

  Hank's probably has it for a minute.

• 1:34:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:34:03Bill Simmons?

  Oh, no question.

• 1:34:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:04Bill Simmons?

  The ninety three to ninety, he kind of took it from.

• 1:34:07Chris Ryan?

  Denzel, I think still does to some extent have it or has had it, had it. You ever shaking your head?

• 1:34:13Bill Simmons?

  Well, I don't know if he ever completely had it.

• 1:34:15Sean Fennessey?

  But he, he did have the thing where you'd had a lot of scripts that were written for white guys. And then they would then either Denzel got his hands on it or some agent was like, what if it was Denzel? And then they would have to refashion the entire movie around him, which is a really specific kind of power. But not the same as.

• 1:34:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Lonzo originally white.

• 1:34:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It was originally they were flipped roles. It was going to be Ethan Hawke.

• 1:34:35Bill Simmons?

  Well, that was Eddie Murphy with Beverly Hills Cop. It was written for Stallone.

• 1:34:40Bill Simmons?

  Well, anyway, Redford, I think grabbed first call.

• 1:34:43Sean Fennessey?

  Is it also Apex Mountain for George Roy Hill?

• 1:34:47Bill Simmons?

  I think it is because he wins best director. Now he has this and but she can do whatever the fuck he wants after that.

• 1:34:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:52Chris Ryan?

  He has Waldo Pepper after this?

• 1:34:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:55Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Scott Joplin?

• 1:34:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, probably.

• 1:34:58Chris Ryan?

  I don't think a lot of people knew ragtime music before this. Not, not a ton of people.

• 1:35:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:03Bill Simmons?

  And marvelous Marv Hamlish?

• 1:35:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:35:06Bill Simmons?

  Probably.

• 1:35:06Sean Fennessey?

  Definitely.

• 1:35:09Bill Simmons?

  Eileen Brennan?

• 1:35:11Sean Fennessey?

  I always say Clue. I love her in Clue. She's amazing in Last Picture Show.

• 1:35:15Bill Simmons?

  It's weird. I would say Private Benjamin.

• 1:35:18Sean Fennessey?

  Great in that too.

• 1:35:19Bill Simmons?

  Cause she.

• 1:35:19Sean Fennessey?

  Is she nominated for that?

• 1:35:21Bill Simmons?

  I think she might have been.

• 1:35:22Sean Fennessey?

  She was nominated.

• 1:35:22Chris Ryan?

  She was awesome. You might be right, which I guess that would probably be a, she really just like walks up and down a hallway in this thing. She's incredible, but she doesn't.

• 1:35:28Sean Fennessey?

  She has a great presence. She's a good screen star.

• 1:35:30Chris Ryan?

  It's also awesome. Every time she leaves a room Newman like stares at the door for like a beat.

• 1:35:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's his soulmate.

• 1:35:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:37Bill Simmons?

  She has a very nineteen thirties kind of face and look too.

• 1:35:40Sean Fennessey?

  She's a good fit for the, the, the madam in nineteen thirty.

• 1:35:44Bill Simmons?

  Nineteen thirty Chicago movies?

• 1:35:47Chris Ryan?

  More than Untouchables, right?

• 1:35:50Sean Fennessey?

  The Public Enemy, probably.

• 1:35:51Bill Simmons?

  I would say Untouchables, yeah.

• 1:35:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:53Bill Simmons?

  How about Madams with a Heart of Gold?

• 1:35:56Sean Fennessey?

  It was Julie Christie and Michael.

• 1:35:58Bill Simmons?

  Pull your list out of your pocket. Who's on there?

• 1:36:00Chris Ryan?

  Madams with a Heart of Gold, my unmade Christie Canyon mini-series.

• 1:36:06Bill Simmons?

  So here was an Apex Mountain Schlitz in the 1930s, was apparently by far the biggest beer in the world.

• 1:36:12Chris Ryan?

  Did it have a, I wonder if it had a 70s pop after this, though?

• 1:36:16Bill Simmons?

  Might have.

• 1:36:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:17Bill Simmons?

  I remember, um, there were a lot of Schlitz commercials in the 70s for sports. It was like the last hurrah, especially for Bruins games.

• 1:36:26Sean Fennessey?

  Schlitz is still, they still make Schlitz, right?

• 1:36:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they do. I mean, by the time I was in college, Schlitz was like, we only have 10 bucks.

• 1:36:34Chris Ryan?

  Let's get a case of Schlitz.

• 1:36:35Bill Simmons?

  Let's get a case of Schlitz.

• 1:36:36Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like Schmitz Gay, the SNL.

• 1:36:38Bill Simmons?

  Cause based on Schlitz.

• 1:36:39Sean Fennessey?

  It kind of like torpedoed Schlitz a little bit.

• 1:36:42Bill Simmons?

  Probably did. Uh, Robert Shaw, no. Con movies, I think, yeah, cause certainly the most successful one.

• 1:36:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's not the one that I want, I would go to first to watch a con movie.

• 1:36:58Bill Simmons?

  But it kind of created the genre.

• 1:36:59Sean Fennessey?

  It did, it kind of invented, yeah.

• 1:37:02Bill Simmons?

  And then, yeah, that's it. Cruise or Hanks?

• 1:37:05Chris Ryan?

  Cruise.

• 1:37:06Bill Simmons?

  For which part?

• 1:37:07Chris Ryan?

  For Hooker.

• 1:37:08Sean Fennessey?

  See, this is my answer. It's Cruise and Hanks. This is, this would be the perfect Cruise and Hanks movie.

• 1:37:13Chris Ryan?

  But using two timelines.

• 1:37:15Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:37:15Bill Simmons?

  No, Hanks is Gandalf.

• 1:37:17Sean Fennessey?

  Hanks is Gandalf. Hanks is Gandalf and, and Tom Cruise is Frodo and they have to

• 1:37:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:25Sean Fennessey?

  return the ring to, to, to Mordor.

• 1:37:27Chris Ryan?

  And Lonigan is, is Sauron.

• 1:37:30Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:37:30Bill Simmons?

  See, if Hanks is Newman and Cruise is Johnny Hooker, what year is this? Like 1998?

• 1:37:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking, late 90s.

• 1:37:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think that's the answer. Our first tie for Cruise and Hanks.

• 1:37:40Chris Ryan?

  Hanks is older than Cruise in real life?

• 1:37:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I want to say Hanks is like sixty eight.

• 1:37:47Bill Simmons?

  Is he?

• 1:37:47Sean Fennessey?

  And Cruz is sixty, right? Is that right?

• 1:37:50Bill Simmons?

  I thought Cruz was older.

• 1:37:51Chris Ryan?

  I thought Cruz is older than sixty.

• 1:37:53Sean Fennessey?

  Let's look it up.

• 1:37:54Bill Simmons?

  Cruz is is at least sixty. Hanks was doing.

• 1:37:59Sean Fennessey?

  Tom Cruise is sixty three.

• 1:38:01Bill Simmons?

  Hanks is at least sixty seven, sixty eight. Cause he was in Bosom Buddies in like nineteen eighty.

• 1:38:07Sean Fennessey?

  Tom Hanks is sixty nine.

• 1:38:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:09Chris Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:38:09Sean Fennessey?

  So they're they're actually, I mean, I think Newman and Redford were like ten or eleven years apart.

• 1:38:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think that works. Scorsese or Spielberg?

• 1:38:17Chris Ryan?

  I have Scorsese for the grit and Spielberg for the like wonder of the movie.

• 1:38:22Sean Fennessey?

  Should they have made this movie together?

• 1:38:23Bill Simmons?

  A co-director?

• 1:38:23Chris Ryan?

  Another another tie.

• 1:38:26Bill Simmons?

  No, I think this is Scorsese.

• 1:38:28Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:38:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:30Sean Fennessey?

  There's something.

• 1:38:30Chris Ryan?

  There's a lot more stabbing.

• 1:38:32Sean Fennessey?

  There's there's something very winning about the tone that George Roy Hill can can hit that's I feel like only Spielberg knows. Spielberg, you know, he does movie magic where in the movies over here.

• 1:38:41Bill Simmons?

  Although Spielberg did catch, no, no, he didn't do Catch Me If You Can.

• 1:38:44Sean Fennessey?

  He did.

• 1:38:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he did.

• 1:38:45Sean Fennessey?

  He did.

• 1:38:46Chris Ryan?

  I think it would also be Spielberg, I think would be adept on the Universal backlot. You know?

• 1:38:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, for sure.

• 1:38:51Chris Ryan?

  He wants to be in Chicago.

• 1:38:53Bill Simmons?

  If he did it, it would have had the feel of Catch Me If You Can.

• 1:38:56Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a great movie.

• 1:38:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:58Bill Simmons?

  Which role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played clearly Lonigan with some sort of Irish accent?

• 1:39:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, hundred percent.

• 1:39:03Bill Simmons?

  Been awesome. Picking nets. Some poker missteps, guys?

• 1:39:07Chris Ryan?

  Let's do it. Tell us all about it.

• 1:39:09Bill Simmons?

  There's some splash in the pot pot out of order. I thought the calls were off.

• 1:39:13Chris Ryan?

  You don't think Lonigan could be like, I will splash the pot.

• 1:39:17Bill Simmons?

  No, he basically is doing that.

• 1:39:21Bill Simmons?

  They're not going in order.

• 1:39:24Bill Simmons?

  I I.

• 1:39:25Sean Fennessey?

  I have a related picking net about the game, which is if what the conductor is just back there for the whole game?

• 1:39:30Chris Ryan?

  He's the bank?

• 1:39:31Sean Fennessey?

  Who's taking care of the train? It's like I do.

• 1:39:34Chris Ryan?

  He's like a concierge guy.

• 1:39:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's I think he's the conductor.

• 1:39:37Chris Ryan?

  But I think he, no, he's like ticket taking, isn't he?

• 1:39:40Sean Fennessey?

  Isn't that the whole thing is the conductor runs the game?

• 1:39:42Bill Simmons?

  Conductor, but he obviously had an assistant conductor.

• 1:39:44Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, yeah, well, slacking.

• 1:39:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just something's off about the rhythm of it. I think more people are calling, checking.

• 1:39:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:55Bill Simmons?

  You know?

• 1:39:57Sean Fennessey?

  That's but I like the way that Dondorf bullies everybody at the table.

• 1:40:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's good strategy.

• 1:40:02Chris Ryan?

  I have a

• 1:40:03Sean Fennessey?

  Keep pushing the action.

• 1:40:04Chris Ryan?

  Lonigan has had dudes killed. I think he notices there are no entry or exit wounds on Hooker.

• 1:40:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, that's good. I have, does Lonigan really have no way of checking whether or not there's a New Hampshire horse race? Like, these are obviously fake horse races, right?

• 1:40:18Chris Ryan?

  No, they're real horse races. Right?

• 1:40:21Sean Fennessey?

  But like, is it like, would he not look in the newspaper the next day to confirm the results of the race? Like, there's so many things, like, if you go into the cons, you have to assume that Lonigan is like, okay, I guess I got worked. And it accepts it.

• 1:40:35Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:40:36Bill Simmons?

  There were newspapers in 1936.

• 1:40:39Chris Ryan?

  Ray Wilson's reading a real wire, isn't he? Like, they are real races?

• 1:40:45Chris Ryan?

  Or no?

• 1:40:45Sean Fennessey?

  I thought they were imagined because they're controlling the action.

• 1:40:48Chris Ryan?

  But he's like, oh, we can't use this one. It's four to one. We can't use this one. It's six to like.

• 1:40:53Bill Simmons?

  I thought they made up the races.

• 1:40:56Chris Ryan?

  Because Lonigan is gonna do

• 1:40:57Bill Simmons?

  Tough one for us.

• 1:40:58Chris Ryan?

  Lonigan's gonna do the second bet, when he's like, I need to do another small bet before I do the big bet. And they're like, we don't have a horse that comes in, like, if this horse hits, we're gonna get cleaned out. So we have to basically stall him and make it so that he can't place his bet. I think that's because they're taking real results so that the next day Lonigan will see Blue Note won, you know? But it's just delayed. I, but I don't understand how they have like the whole fake walls. The fake like wiretapping thing with Twist. So it is, it is a complicated element of it. But I always thought that they were real races. And then that would be the kiss off would be like, he's like, shit, I guess I just placed the wrong bet. And then the FBI raided it.

• 1:41:42Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:41:44Bill Simmons?

  Picky nit. Eileen Brennan's job. So running a whorehouse day to day.

• 1:41:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:51Bill Simmons?

  But also available for to help her friends with elaborate con artist scams.

• 1:41:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I think Madam has.

• 1:41:58Bill Simmons?

  Basically Travis Hunter. She can play offense and defense.

• 1:42:01Chris Ryan?

  AMPM. Yeah.

• 1:42:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I think you have flexible hours as a madam.

• 1:42:04Bill Simmons?

  You need a good number two at the whorehouse.

• 1:42:07Chris Ryan?

  I also feel like the way that life works in that world is that you are up all night long. And then like you sleep from like nine AM to three PM.

• 1:42:17Bill Simmons?

  It's like bartending.

• 1:42:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:20Sean Fennessey?

  As a, working as a madam?

• 1:42:21Chris Ryan?

  Or like as a con man. Yeah. So not a lot of like, hey, I'm just out here getting some lunch errands done.

• 1:42:26Bill Simmons?

  Here's my biggest one. Um, how many extras in the betting parlor? Like 30?

• 1:42:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:32Bill Simmons?

  They're all in on the con job?

• 1:42:33Chris Ryan?

  They said that he, he needs at least 20 guys.

• 1:42:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. So what percentage do they get from the take, the final take of 500k?

• 1:42:38Bill Simmons?

  Let's say splitting, I don't know, what, everybody gets 1%?

• 1:42:43Chris Ryan?

  Of 500 grand?

• 1:42:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then.

• 1:42:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good day's work.

• 1:42:48Bill Simmons?

  Then the other guys are split half. Not one of these people are a threat to just be like, I bet I could make more if I go tell Lonigan this is going on.

• 1:42:56Sean Fennessey?

  It's a, it's a good, good question.

• 1:42:57Bill Simmons?

  You're just trusting these 30 people in the con world. Not one of them is going to scam you.

• 1:43:01Chris Ryan?

  I think IMDb did the math where it's if this takes place in the 1930s, $500,000 would be adjusted for inflation, $9.2 million in 2020.

• 1:43:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's a lot of money to be walking around with.

• 1:43:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I had, I did the same thing. It was almost 11 million, they said.

• 1:43:19Bill Simmons?

  Which is less than Dorian Finney Smith's going to make on the Rockets this year.

• 1:43:25Sean Fennessey?

  Do you see, uh?

• 1:43:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I did.

• 1:43:27Sean Fennessey?

  Fred. Yeah.

• 1:43:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:28Sean Fennessey?

  R and P.

• 1:43:29Bill Simmons?

  Sequel, prequel, Prestige TV Outback Cast are untouchable.

• 1:43:34Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Prestige, are you interested?

• 1:43:36Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I'm interested in, in them on the run. I would be interested in like-

• 1:43:41Bill Simmons?

  From Lonnigan? Like a, like a so sequel?

• 1:43:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. On Lonnigan, also like the temptation of pulling something again, knowing that they have like this, this skill, you know, this level of skill.

• 1:43:51Sean Fennessey?

  I wrote that on Prestige TV. I feel like a Bernotis style show every week, Gondorf and Hooker.

• 1:43:56Chris Ryan?

  In a different town. Yeah.

• 1:43:58Bill Simmons?

  What about Gandalf?

• 1:43:59Sean Fennessey?

  Gandalf and Frodo running scams.

• 1:44:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:01Sean Fennessey?

  Those scams.

• 1:44:02Chris Ryan?

  After you get the ring, what do you do next?

• 1:44:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, seriously.

• 1:44:05Chris Ryan?

  Con guys.

• 1:44:05Sean Fennessey?

  Now what? Like an existential drama, sort of like Sopranos, but in the world of-

• 1:44:09Chris Ryan?

  Short Hobbit?

• 1:44:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Middle Earth.

• 1:44:12Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better than Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Mad Dog, Russo, Doris Burke, Buffalo Bill, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs? Or Wilford Brimley in The Firm?

• 1:44:27Chris Ryan?

  I haven't done Long Legs in a while, guys. He would have loved to come. Good movie.

• 1:44:34Bill Simmons?

  What do you have, CR?

• 1:44:35Chris Ryan?

  Mad Dog hanging out, uh, in the, in the Wired, the, the horse race parlor. Be like, Mike, everybody knows Blue Note's never done much. He's just had a round out the field. Mike, what's Lonnigan doing betting fourth and now he can't sit?

• 1:44:51Chris Ryan?

  I don't even know if that's a good Mad Dog.

• 1:44:52Sean Fennessey?

  But Mike and the dog, whenever they would talk about horse racing, immediately turn the channel.

• 1:44:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:56Sean Fennessey?

  Immediately turn it off.

• 1:44:57Bill Simmons?

  I mean, Mike, there's Blue Note, hasn't won a race in eight months. There's Lonnigan just betting on him. Something's fishy, Mike.

• 1:45:08Bill Simmons?

  I, I thought for sure you were gonna do Wayne Jenkins on that one.

• 1:45:10Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm saving him.

• 1:45:11Bill Simmons?

  God damn.

• 1:45:13Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like the guy who would crush in this environment is Byron Mayo. You've got, you've got scams, you've got wars, you've got, you know, Dino.

• 1:45:25Bill Simmons?

  Salina, I know you're an assassin, but there's something lingering in those pants. Uh, just one Oscar, who gets it? It's the movie.

• 1:45:35Sean Fennessey?

  You think best picture?

• 1:45:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, I mean, well, George Roy Hill?

• 1:45:38Sean Fennessey?

  I wrote George Roy Hill.

• 1:45:39Chris Ryan?

  He got it.

• 1:45:40Sean Fennessey?

  He got it. The movie is tough because of its competition in and of itself.

• 1:45:46Bill Simmons?

  That's a good point. So if we're doing just one Oscar.

• 1:45:49Sean Fennessey?

  Hamlish?

• 1:45:50Chris Ryan?

  I have it. I had Ward.

• 1:45:52Bill Simmons?

  Marv Ham?

• 1:45:53Sean Fennessey?

  Ward?

• 1:45:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, cuz they said that after the couple of drafts, like, once they changed the amount-

• 1:45:58Bill Simmons?

  Ward, I like that.

• 1:45:58Chris Ryan?

  Newman was in it. I think Newman says they didn't change four words, shooting it.

• 1:46:04Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good call.

• 1:46:04Bill Simmons?

  Also, widely considered one of the great scripts.

• 1:46:07Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:46:07Bill Simmons?

  Like that aspiring screenwriter study and the structure of it, everything. Yeah, I like that. That's good.

• 1:46:12Sean Fennessey?

  Good one.

• 1:46:13Bill Simmons?

  Probably an answerable questions. We did everything, I think.

• 1:46:16Sean Fennessey?

  I got one.

• 1:46:17Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:46:17Sean Fennessey?

  What was Doyle's handicap?

• 1:46:20Chris Ryan?

  Uh, golfing? Well, he's putting in like forest in the, like, there is no rule to the, to those greens. So I don't know what 1930s golf is like.

• 1:46:29Bill Simmons?

  His handicap was his handball injury from the limp.

• 1:46:32Sean Fennessey?

  Very good point.

• 1:46:33Bill Simmons?

  When he was playing handball and he tumbled over.

• 1:46:34Chris Ryan?

  I think he cheated a lot.

• 1:46:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, a lot of kicking the ball out of the rough.

• 1:46:38Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah. This isn't an OB.

• 1:46:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:40Sean Fennessey?

  Look, I found my ball.

• 1:46:42Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. Had that kind of crazy drunk Irish strength, though.

• 1:46:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:46Bill Simmons?

  I'd probably say like a 15.

• 1:46:47Sean Fennessey?

  Big hitter?

• 1:46:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:49Bill Simmons?

  Big hitter, probably swore on the course.

• 1:46:50Chris Ryan?

  Percedant, though, you know, it's not getting as much distance.

• 1:46:53Sean Fennessey?

  Short game, a little off, though, right? Kind of kicking the ball.

• 1:46:55Bill Simmons?

  Exploded out of a couple of caddies.

• 1:46:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:58Bill Simmons?

  What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? I went with all the poker chips from the poker scene.

• 1:47:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:04Bill Simmons?

  Would be really impressive.

• 1:47:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I said Henry's playing cards.

• 1:47:07Bill Simmons?

  Hmm. Yeah, something from the poker, I think, would be the move. The wallet's interesting.

• 1:47:11Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:12Bill Simmons?

  Lonnigan's wallet.

• 1:47:12Chris Ryan?

  Alligator wallet.

• 1:47:13Bill Simmons?

  Counterfeit money in there, the fake money.

• 1:47:15Chris Ryan?

  I would be, uh, I think I would feel like my life amounted to something if I could ever pull off overall tank top fedora. The way that Paul Newman does when he's going through like how they're gonna set up Lonnigan and he's just rocking fucking overalls.

• 1:47:29Sean Fennessey?

  Will I ever see you in a tank top like that?

• 1:47:34Bill Simmons?

  I don't.

• 1:47:34Chris Ryan?

  Don't, don't dream big.

• 1:47:36Bill Simmons?

  Rule yourself out, CR. Coach Finstock or best life lesson? Revenge is for suckers?

• 1:47:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I wrote, you have to keep this con, keep this con even after you take his money. He can't know you took him. Just like basically never give away the game.

• 1:47:51Chris Ryan?

  I have the Lonnigan line where he's talking to Floyd on the putting green. Take a look at that face, Floyd. Because if he ever finds out I can be beat by one lousy grifter, I'll have to kill him and every other hoodoo wants to muscle it on my Chicago operation. It's kind of how you pod, you know?

• 1:48:06Bill Simmons?

  That's how I feel.

• 1:48:09Bill Simmons?

  I also, I wrote down, I don't know enough about killing to kill him.

• 1:48:12Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:48:13Bill Simmons?

  I just thought it was a good line. David S. Ward.

• 1:48:15Sean Fennessey?

  Good stuff.

• 1:48:16Bill Simmons?

  Cranking it. Uh, what do we have left? We have.

• 1:48:20Chris Ryan?

  Double feature?

• 1:48:21Bill Simmons?

  Double feature. What do you got?

• 1:48:22Chris Ryan?

  Butch and Sundance.

• 1:48:24Bill Simmons?

  Good double con. Do Focus?

• 1:48:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:27Bill Simmons?

  Focus 11?

• 1:48:29Sean Fennessey?

  You could do the Hot Rock too, because it's a kind of like Redford style, right around the same time, kind of similarly breezy and fun. And there's a, you know, bank heist that is really cool.

• 1:48:40Chris Ryan?

  Do you want to give people a hint of what the next Redford and Redford month is?

• 1:48:43Bill Simmons?

  Well, we gotta do who won the movie first.

• 1:48:45Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:48:45Bill Simmons?

  Who won the movie?

• 1:48:47Chris Ryan?

  Newman.

• 1:48:48Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's Redford, because Redford walks out smelling like gold in this movie.

• 1:48:53Bill Simmons?

  I think it's Redford too.

• 1:48:54Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:48:56Bill Simmons?

  I think there's a George Roy Hill case, though.

• 1:48:59Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:49:00Bill Simmons?

  To have this and Butch.

• 1:49:04Chris Ryan?

  Do you wish they made more movies together? Or are you glad that they went two for two? Perfect.

• 1:49:08Sean Fennessey?

  Newman and Redford?

• 1:49:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and Hill. Yeah.

• 1:49:10Bill Simmons?

  You know, I was thinking about this, because

• 1:49:14Bill Simmons?

  there's this weird stretch with both guys, post slapshot for Newman, and then Redford for like three years doesn't really do anything, and then does Electric Horseman with Jane Fonda, which is one of the weirdest Star movies.

• 1:49:26Chris Ryan?

  He falls into a weird run, I guess, probably when he starts to get more involved in like his causes and charities or whatever.

• 1:49:32Bill Simmons?

  But then he starts doing like he does, he directs, he does Brew Baker, he does The Natural. There's some space from 78 to 84 where I felt like that could have been Detectives or something.

• 1:49:43Sean Fennessey?

  See, I was gonna say a little bit older, because I think if, let's say you just take these movies off the board completely for each of the three of them. Take Legal Eagles out, we don't need it. Take, uh.

• 1:49:53Bill Simmons?

  Wesley loves that movie.

• 1:49:54Sean Fennessey?

  Take Fat Man and Little Boy out from Newman, we don't need it. We have Oppenheimer now, we don't need that movie. And take out Funny Farm, which is George Roy Hill's last movie. So you've got 1987?

• 1:50:05Bill Simmons?

  Hold on a second. Did you just extinguish Funny Farm?

• 1:50:08Sean Fennessey?

  I deleted it. I deleted it from culture.

• 1:50:10Bill Simmons?

  Horrible take. Funny Farm's great.

• 1:50:13Sean Fennessey?

  It is not great.

• 1:50:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:50:15Sean Fennessey?

  It is not great.

• 1:50:16Bill Simmons?

  Funny Farm's amazing.

• 1:50:19Sean Fennessey?

  That this is an age gap thing.

• 1:50:20Bill Simmons?

  No, Van Lathan loves that movie too. He's been pushing for it.

• 1:50:23Chris Ryan?

  I can't remember the last time I saw Funny Farm. Chevy Chase?

• 1:50:26Sean Fennessey?

  You would rather have Funny Farm over a reunion of Redford and Newman?

• 1:50:31Bill Simmons?

  Why can't I have Funny Farm and the reunion?

• 1:50:33Sean Fennessey?

  Well, because George Roy Hill makes World According to Garp, which I know you love.

• 1:50:37Bill Simmons?

  But somewhere in 85, 86, they could have all done a movie.

• 1:50:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they could.

• 1:50:41Bill Simmons?

  I'm with you on Legalegals. I would get rid of that.

• 1:50:43Sean Fennessey?

  Get rid of that.

• 1:50:44Chris Ryan?

  They could have done something around Color of Money. Everybody's minted.

• 1:50:49Bill Simmons?

  Color of Money, like 87.

• 1:50:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:51Bill Simmons?

  How about this? Could Newman have been Max Merce in The Natural?

• 1:50:56Chris Ryan?

  Well, the thing is, is that the reason why they're so interesting though, is that Newman doesn't ever want to give an inch. You know what I mean? He doesn't want to be the old guy turning it over to Redford. I just don't think he would play like that, that part in The Natural.

• 1:51:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:14Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. It's a weird time for Redford. His 80s are kind of funky.

• 1:51:17Bill Simmons?

  Can we put both guys in Top Gun?

• 1:51:20Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:51:20Bill Simmons?

  One of them is the Tom Skerritt part, and then we just create another one for the other guy.

• 1:51:25Chris Ryan?

  Paul Newman would be an awesome Viper.

• 1:51:26Bill Simmons?

  There's both in there. Paul Newman would have been amazing. Yeah, it just never happened.

• 1:51:30Chris Ryan?

  Slightly overqualified for Viper, yeah.

• 1:51:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:32Bill Simmons?

  I think it's something where like they're aging detectives in the 80s and it's, there's, I, where the point of life, both of them were, is there probably would have been some sort of like moral.

• 1:51:44Sean Fennessey?

  Let's just put them in Black Rain.

• 1:51:47Bill Simmons?

  I mean.

• 1:51:47Chris Ryan?

  Or I could have seen Redford showing up in something like Nobody's Fool.

• 1:51:53Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, for sure. Yeah. And he made some of his own versions of movies like that.

• 1:51:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:56Sean Fennessey?

  But I think Newman had a ultimately more interesting final 10 years, but there are a couple of like late period Redfords.

• 1:52:04Bill Simmons?

  You'd like All's Lost though.

• 1:52:05Sean Fennessey?

  All's Lost is great. Old Man and the Gun is great, but like.

• 1:52:08Bill Simmons?

  Well, Old Man and the Gun was supposed to be Newman and he was too old at that point.

• 1:52:11Sean Fennessey?

  And but Redford is perfect for it. I mean, he's perfect in that movie.

• 1:52:14Chris Ryan?

  What did, weren't you tweeting about a company we keep, company you keep?

• 1:52:18Sean Fennessey?

  Right before he died.

• 1:52:18Chris Ryan?

  And then Bill was like, what are you doing?

• 1:52:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, right before he died. I was like.

• 1:52:22Bill Simmons?

  It was like right as the football started.

• 1:52:24Sean Fennessey?

  I was just on YouTube, just doing my thing, just looking at stuff.

• 1:52:28Bill Simmons?

  All right. To end the pod, producer Craig Rollback usually lets us know what he thought of the movie. He's not here today because big road trip for the Fantasy Football Show, but he sat in on the whole pod. And now we're gonna get your thoughts. What were your thoughts?

• 1:52:41Chris Ryan?

  Uh, so I have seen this thing. I saw it 10 years ago in college. And so you guys saying that you should see it every 10, 10 years. I think really rang true because I didn't, I forgot about the FBI thing being fake or being a part of the con. And I forgot about, uh, Salino in the diner. I thought that was just a relationship that Hooker was having. So it completely worked on me, but I loved it 10 years ago. I loved it even more now. I, but. For me, the best movies, the movies that I like the most are the ones that are, that succeed commercially and critically. They kind of like hit that perfect middle. And I think this is the best example of that. I love that the whole thing's filmed on a set. Like you can tell the whole time, but to me, it just proves that if, if you have like talented people

• 1:53:23Chris Ryan?

  and a good script, like you can make anything work. This whole movie is just like five people running around a set in a backlot. And it looks, it looks like a painting. It looks like an Edward Hopper painting. It's, it's, it's unbelievable. Um, I, I, it's pretty impressive to me how cinematic this movie feels, considering most of it is just in tiny little rooms and fake sets that you can clearly feel are sets.

• 1:53:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, take that Pauline Kill.

• 1:53:45Chris Ryan?

  The president of cinema is.

• 1:53:46Bill Simmons?

  Was too claustrophobic for Craig.

• 1:53:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:49Chris Ryan?

  No, no, this movie's amazing. Also, I, the dialogue, I, you guys touched on it a little bit, but I realize watching this movie. There are like 50, 20 to 30, 30 phrases that I just don't know what they're saying without context clues. Like, I don't know if it's like every hundred years jargon resets, but I wrote down a couple of lines here of things that people say. I'm gonna read them. Okay. Dookie, we're setting up a wire store on the north side. I'm gonna need a 20 man boost right away. These men have got to be quill and everything will be Jake.

• 1:54:19Sean Fennessey?

  I love that.

• 1:54:20Chris Ryan?

  I just know when he's gonna run his chum, make his sting, get the pinch. I hear the mark is some big New York wheel. Like, that could be Gen Z slang. I have no idea what that shit means.

• 1:54:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:30Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:54:31Sean Fennessey?

  That was the skibitty toilet in 1930.

• 1:54:33Chris Ryan?

  Doyle on again slays.

• 1:54:35Bill Simmons?

  What is, what do we think wheel is? Like, is somebody with money?

• 1:54:38Chris Ryan?

  I guess.

• 1:54:39Sean Fennessey?

  Like a whale.

• 1:54:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like a whale.

• 1:54:41Chris Ryan?

  High roller. But like, I didn't, I've never heard. Quill, these men have to be quill and everything is gonna be Jake.

• 1:54:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they have to be perfect.

• 1:54:46Chris Ryan?

  There's also like plenty of lines that you are, you can decipher them, but the way that they are delivered is so good. Like when the guy who sets up the wire store for them and they're like, you want a flat rate or percentage? And he's like, who's the mark? And they're like Doyle on it. He's like, flat rate.

• 1:55:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Love that part.

• 1:55:04Bill Simmons?

  I, I miss the nicknames too. I don't, I just don't think we're good at nicknames in the same way anymore.

• 1:55:09Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:55:10Bill Simmons?

  It's like if Justin Fields was jumping Justin Fields or something, you would just have more confidence in him.

• 1:55:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, flopping Justin Fields.

• 1:55:17Bill Simmons?

  Night train, Justin.

• 1:55:18Chris Ryan?

  Georgia Justin at Ohio State.

• 1:55:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:20Chris Ryan?

  Who was the guy giving out suits when he was recruiting them to be a part of the con team? Was it Twist?

• 1:55:25Sean Fennessey?

  Twist, yeah.

• 1:55:26Chris Ryan?

  I love that. If you, if you made it, you got a suit. That was cool.

• 1:55:29Sean Fennessey?

  Kid Twist.

• 1:55:29Chris Ryan?

  Go, go pick yourself out of suit.

• 1:55:31Bill Simmons?

  Like you called Danny Kelly DK, even that was an exciting name, but think if you had named him Twist.

• 1:55:36Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you gotta be careful because remember their show used to be called the Dan to see football podcast.

• 1:55:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true.

• 1:55:42Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't hang in there too long.

• 1:55:43Chris Ryan?

  Decisions we've ever had at the Ringer.

• 1:55:46Bill Simmons?

  I gotta be honest. I think I was involved in the decision.

• 1:55:48Sean Fennessey?

  I believe you were the author of the name.

• 1:55:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:50Chris Ryan?

  I think I might've came up with that.

• 1:55:52Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you're the, you're the author of the show in some ways, so it's okay.

• 1:55:55Bill Simmons?

  It was a double terrible idea because it was a terrible name, but it also then you couldn't search for fantasy as you search for pods.

• 1:56:02Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:56:02Bill Simmons?

  It really hurt us.

• 1:56:03Sean Fennessey?

  Not strong as you.

• 1:56:04Chris Ryan?

  I would auto correct you away from fantasy.

• 1:56:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:06Chris Ryan?

  The time you typed it in.

• 1:56:07Bill Simmons?

  Listen, even the greats can't bat a thousand.

• 1:56:10Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Even Gondorf missed, you know?

• 1:56:13Chris Ryan?

  Ed Gandalf.

• 1:56:13Sean Fennessey?

  Ed Gandalf.

• 1:56:14Bill Simmons?

  What is the Redford movie you're hoping we do the most on Redford month, Greg?

• 1:56:18Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Condor. Yeah, me too.

• 1:56:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Condor's sick.

• 1:56:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Cause it would have been all the presidents, maybe we've already done that.

• 1:56:26Bill Simmons?

  The only problem with Condor.

• 1:56:28Sean Fennessey?

  Is Faye Dunaway is throwing 140.

• 1:56:31Chris Ryan?

  And that she gets kidnapped and slapped around.

• 1:56:33Bill Simmons?

  Problem is we, we do need it for 70's conspiracy movie month and we just, other guys would have to step up.

• 1:56:42Chris Ryan?

  It's time to step up, Warren Beatty.

• 1:56:44Bill Simmons?

  There's be like.

• 1:56:45Sean Fennessey?

  Like, like Trevion Henderson after Remandre's two fumbles.

• 1:56:47Bill Simmons?

  That's the thing. After we wave Remandre, it's like Trevion's got to step up now. So if we lose Condor.

• 1:56:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you're doing night moves.

• 1:56:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Is Black Sunday ready? Like, it's one of those.

• 1:56:57Sean Fennessey?

  Great question, but we could return to Robert Shaw with Black Sunday.

• 1:57:00Bill Simmons?

  That's true.

• 1:57:00Sean Fennessey?

  That one of his final performances.

• 1:57:02Bill Simmons?

  So if you, if we waste a Condor chip.

• 1:57:05Chris Ryan?

  It's, you have to decide, is it Redford or Conspiracy? What matters more to you?

• 1:57:09Bill Simmons?

  Or could you have both and they both matter equally?

• 1:57:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but they could layer onto each other. The last Redford could be the first Conspiracy.

• 1:57:16Sean Fennessey?

  It's like how Spotify songs now blend into one another. We can do that.

• 1:57:19Bill Simmons?

  Interesting. Goes right into Conspiracy Month.

• 1:57:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:23Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I like, I like that idea.

• 1:57:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:25Sean Fennessey?

  It's a nice way to spend a chilly November with a paranoid thriller.

• 1:57:29Bill Simmons?

  Good idea. Craig, safe travels. Thanks to Gahal as well. Thanks to Ronic. You can watch all of these on our Ringer Movies YouTube channel. And Redford Month, four left. Maybe it'll bleed into 70's Conspiracy Month. Really interesting idea. Thanks, TR. Thanks, Sean.

• 1:57:46Chris Ryan?

  Thanks, Bill.

• 1:57:52Bill Simmons?

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