'Marathon Man' With Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan have one question for you: Is it safe? The guys sit down in the dentist chair to revisit the 1976 crime thriller ‘Marathon Man,’ starring Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, and Roy Scheider. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Jack Sanders, and Ronak Nair 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:44Speaker 00

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• 1:00Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where we can find the watch with Chris Ryan.

• 1:04Chris Ryan?

  Sure can.

• 1:05Bill Simmons?

  Pops on the big picture from time to time as well.

• 1:08Chris Ryan?

  I do.

• 1:08Bill Simmons?

  And about nine other Ringer podcasts.

• 1:09Chris Ryan?

  Well, I honestly am keeping it to the big three right now. But I'm always open.

• 1:13Bill Simmons?

  Philly special, maybe, for the draft?

• 1:16Chris Ryan?

  Perhaps. We'll see who we get at three.

• 1:18Bill Simmons?

  Who are you rooting for?

• 1:19Chris Ryan?

  Trade down for Edgecomb.

• 1:21Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:21Chris Ryan?

  Get another piece.

• 1:22Bill Simmons?

  There you go. It's still New York City month. It kind of just fell into New York City month.

• 1:26Chris Ryan?

  I saw you did that.

• 1:27Bill Simmons?

  Five episodes in June, though. We have to find two more New York movies after this.

• 1:33Chris Ryan?

  Twist my arm.

• 1:34Bill Simmons?

  Marathon Man was an easy one. We've been circling this one for a while. You've kept nudging me.

• 1:41Chris Ryan?

  I've been begging to get in the dentist's chair.

• 1:44Bill Simmons?

  I forgot to bring the book. I was gonna put the book

• 1:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46Bill Simmons?

  right out there. But anyway, Marathon Man is next.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane, Marta Keller.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Is it safe?

• 2:03Speaker 03

  Is it safe?

• 2:10Speaker 03

  Marathon Man, a thriller, rated R.

• 2:14Bill Simmons?

  This episode of the Rewatchables is presented to you by Amazon Prime. Prime is more than just fast delivery. It's also where you can dive deep into your favorite movie genres with Prime Video and get what you need fast to fuel your obsession. You also, if you, if you watch a movie in Amazon Prime, you can click down and see the actors in each scene for a lot of the movies, which is great. Snacks for movie night, a new book on film theory. It's all there too on Amazon Prime. Whatever it is, Prime helps you get more out of whatever passions you're into or getting into. Head to amazon.com/prime and follow your obsession wherever it goes.

• 3:04Bill Simmons?

  Nazis.

• 3:09Bill Simmons?

  The greatest movie villains we will ever have.

• 3:13Chris Ryan?

  Well, this has been the Rewatchables.

• 3:16Bill Simmons?

  We just peaked. We're just never gonna top it. There's nothing better.

• 3:20Chris Ryan?

  If you, if you have a chance to get a vice angler in the movie, you gotta, you gotta do it, man.

• 3:25Bill Simmons?

  It's just, you know, you can have all these different types of villains. You can make them as evil as you want. You can make them as intimidating, as tough as you want. But then you throw in Nazi war criminal walking through the jewelry district, hoping nobody recognizes him. And I'm like, we've peaked.

• 3:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:43Bill Simmons?

  I was thinking about the, basically Pauline Kael called this a Jewish revenge fantasy, Marathon Man. But I was thinking about what's, what's like the top of the line for that? And Glorious Bastards is probably number one, right?

• 3:55Chris Ryan?

  That would be the apex, yeah.

• 3:56Bill Simmons?

  Marathon Man's in there. Munich?

• 4:00Chris Ryan?

  For sure.

• 4:02Bill Simmons?

  Raiders?

• 4:03Chris Ryan?

  Well, he's not Jewish, but yeah.

• 4:05Bill Simmons?

  But the Nazis are the villains in there.

• 4:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, are you talking about just Nazi villains? Yes.

• 4:10Bill Simmons?

  Some, just being in, somewhere in the vicinity where at some point you're watching the movie going, we gotta take these guys down.

• 4:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:18Bill Simmons?

  And this one has probably the single best villain of all those villains.

• 4:22Chris Ryan?

  Which is weird because he.

• 4:23Bill Simmons?

  Or would you go with Waltz and Bastards? It's tough.

• 4:28Chris Ryan?

  It's tough. I think, uh,

• 4:31Chris Ryan?

  Christian Zell, because of what his, he's got one move and, and that move is pretty, pretty arresting. The dental work thing is like, you, you take that.

• 4:40Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I thought you were gonna say the, I've suddenly have a razor coming out of my sleeve.

• 4:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. So he's got two moves, but, but Waltz in, uh, Landa is pretty, pretty amazing and such an orator and just an incredible, like, character in general, but Zell.

• 4:54Bill Simmons?

  Better entrance. Zell, although Zell's entrance with the opera with him folding the shirts.

• 4:59Chris Ryan?

  Shaving his head?

• 5:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, pretty solid.

• 5:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Bill Simmons?

  But Waltz's first scene is pretty great.

• 5:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 5:04Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. They're in the finals.

• 5:08Chris Ryan?

  Pyramid?

• 5:11Bill Simmons?

  We'll work on social Nazi villain Mount Rushmore.

• 5:14Chris Ryan?

  I want to find out who's, who's, uh, the number thirty-five to forty-three ranked Nazi villain.

• 5:25Bill Simmons?

  You know what's funny? We can't have them anymore. Cause now it's that you couldn't do this in the modern age because it's been too far away.

• 5:31Chris Ryan?

  They're making a push.

• 5:32Bill Simmons?

  You need like grandchildren of, of the war villains. It just doesn't have the same, in my opinion, the same kind of zest.

• 5:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, that's the thing that I think when you're watching this film, we, we talked about this, I think on a pod recently and I can't remember which one it was. But it's crazy to watch this movie that's four years old and they're, they're so much closer to World War Two now that in this movie than we are even to this movie now.

• 5:58Bill Simmons?

  I know.

• 5:58Chris Ryan?

  And so it's, it's a very living, breathing thing. And the idea that this guy has come out of hiding and his actual victims are like, holy fucking shit, the devil has come back. Is like one of the most like terrifying arresting moments in movie history to me.

• 6:14Bill Simmons?

  And everything Olivier does with the character, and I can't wait to talk about Olivier.

• 6:18Chris Ryan?

  About Larry.

• 6:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Sir Larry just, uh,

• 6:23Bill Simmons?

  I think what's so great about the character is he's, he's fully evil.

• 6:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:28Bill Simmons?

  The torture scene, you, you can just see it. You're like, okay, I get it. I get that this guy is as dark as we can get as, as humans. But then when he's, there's a couple, like he's getting off in the, in the airport. He's in the jewelry district and he's got the right level of like, I'm actually nervous for my own safety.

• 6:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:46Bill Simmons?

  You don't see like vulnerable evil villains that often.

• 6:49Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 6:50Bill Simmons?

  He balances it perfectly.

• 6:51Chris Ryan?

  I think it was a case of the filmmakers playing into the realities of the actor. So Olivier is sick while making this movie. He's old, like he can't do a lot of physical stuff. He can't do a lot of stunts. He can't move around that much. But then, then every move he makes and everything he does takes on this huge amount of importance.

• 7:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:12Chris Ryan?

  So they like played to his remaining strengths in the film itself. And the dentistry scene, which is one of the most horrifying things in movie history, is actually, doesn't require a lot of him, right? Like he's just sort of like pacing around this room a little bit and asking this question over and over and over again.

• 7:28Bill Simmons?

  One of the greats.

• 7:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:29Bill Simmons?

  Sir Larry.

• 7:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause you think by all accounts, one of the greatest stage actors who ever lived. I don't know if he's one, two, three, where he ranks in the pyramid.

• 7:39Chris Ryan?

  It's like him and Barrymore. I mean, of the modernist era.

• 7:41Bill Simmons?

  He has to be mentioned. If you're just being like, hey, who are the great stage actors? He's always, has to be mentioned.

• 7:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:47Bill Simmons?

  But part of, I think what made him great when he's playing like Richard the third, things like that is he's got this physical presence of walking around the stage. So by the time we get to Marathon Man, you know, that, and there's been some unbelievable writing about this movie. Goldman has a whole chapter about it in his book about how physically frail he was and how hard it was for him to stand. But he's still an imposing guy.

• 8:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:10Bill Simmons?

  So he, he's just the perfect balance of old, frail, scary. I actually still believe like he could kill Hoffman.

• 8:19Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 8:20Bill Simmons?

  And it's just, it's just an awesome performance, which of course he, he does not win, but he was inspired. His character in this movie is the White Angel. But it was inspired by Mengele, who was the angel of death. And it was the same thing in the concentration camps. He, he would just see him with the white, they would see him with the white hair and they just knew. So it's based on that.

• 8:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Goldman's idea, so this is based, Goldman wrote the screenplay based on his own novel and his, I think the genesis for the novel was what if Mengele had to come out of hiding? Or go to New York to get medical treatment?

• 8:54Bill Simmons?

  Right, to get, yeah, to get some sort of something.

• 8:56Chris Ryan?

  What happens when you put a character like that in play? A person like that in play? And then he builds out the world from around that.

• 9:02Bill Simmons?

  So he writes the book, he publishes it in 74. That's less than 30 years after World War II. It's still pretty fresh, like, think about it now, in 2025, that's 95, so that's like basically the OJ trial.

• 9:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Bill Simmons?

  Which doesn't seem like it happened that long ago, right? Even though it did, even though like Craig, you know, was born that year.

• 9:22Chris Ryan?

  Would have loved to hear Christian Zell's takes on the OJ trial.

• 9:27Bill Simmons?

  He probably would have been able to get a better confession out of OJ. Goldman writes the book, knowing it's gonna be a movie, cuz it just reads perfectly as a movie. Sells the film rights for 500K. Bringing in our guy, Big Shot Bob, Robert Evans.

• 9:42Chris Ryan?

  So it's funny.

• 9:43Bill Simmons?

  Ally McGrath, the kind of legs that can stop a room.

• 9:46Chris Ryan?

  It's a wonderful picture. There's a making of, uh, this is, I was gonna save this for What's Aged the Best, but there is a making of Marathon Man on YouTube.

• 9:54Bill Simmons?

  I can't believe I missed this.

• 9:55Chris Ryan?

  20 minutes, it's also, I think it's also on the 4K. It's Robert Evans, his foot's up on the chair. He's got a navy V-neck sweater and a perfectly like starched white shirt underneath. And he's standing there with his glasses and he's just like, ever since I came to Paramount, we love to make incredible pictures for everybody's entertainment.

• 10:18Chris Ryan?

  You'll see in the waterworks, we recreated that in Paramount and Sped, no expense. Took up two sound stages.

• 10:25Bill Simmons?

  I can hear him saying it.

• 10:26Chris Ryan?

  And the entire wall behind him is just pictures of Robert Evans.

• 10:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He was like a parody of a parody of a parody.

• 10:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Patton Oswalt did the amazing, like the greatest ever Robert Evans impersonation, but it's actually beyond impersonation. If you watch this video, I wish producers still did this today.

• 10:43Bill Simmons?

  I just think the seventies weren't just the apex of unintentional comedy. It's, I don't think we'll ever even come 10% close ever again.

• 10:51Chris Ryan?

  No, the combination of cocaine and everything else is just incredible.

• 10:55Bill Simmons?

  You know, and it would manifest itself in some ways, like basically everything Telly Savalas did as Kojak, the Battle Network stars, the first couple of years, just there's a lack of self-awareness all over the place. But Bob Evans was the ultimate producer for that. Just no self-awareness.

• 11:10Chris Ryan?

  It would be fucking incredible, though, if we did the backdrop for you is just 100 pictures of you.

• 11:17Bill Simmons?

  I think LeBron might have done that for mine the game. They might have talked him out of it. Bob Evans said, "The book reads like the movie movie of all time. I regard it as a cheap investment because you don't often find books that translate into film. This is the best thing I've read since The Godfather."

• 11:34Bill Simmons?

  "I knew I never should have let Ali McGraw leave with Steve McQueen. I knew I'd never get her back."

• 11:41Chris Ryan?

  That son of a bitch Peck and Pa.

• 11:43Bill Simmons?

  "Two months with Steve McQueen, even I would have folded." So anyway, Bill Goldman, Bob Evans, and then they're like, "Let's just get a bunch of awesome, famous actors."

• 11:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:55Bill Simmons?

  And not to step on casting what ifs, but they went, Bob Evans said, they actually went five for five.

• 12:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Bill Simmons?

  With the people they wanted for the movie in the roles they wanted and just got all of them because everybody loved the script.

• 12:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there was some rumors about if this person said no, we might look at this person or like John Schlesinger, the director, might have wanted this person. But it sounds like Evans got his first draft picks.

• 12:20Bill Simmons?

  Dustin Hoffman, Larry Olivier. I like that they call him Larry. I can't wait to talk about my Laurence Olivier deep dive in the Indian airport on Saturday. William Devane.

• 12:31Chris Ryan?

  Wait, so you did Olivier into Dylan Harper tape?

• 12:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I'd finished my Marathon Man research and then went right into four hours of YouTube. And our guy, Russ Scheider.

• 12:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:43Bill Simmons?

  Big time for him.

• 12:44Chris Ryan?

  Humphrey Bogart of the 1970s.

• 12:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, love that guy.

• 12:46Chris Ryan?

  The thinking man's action star.

• 12:47Bill Simmons?

  Still, still recovering from Sean saying he wasn't handsome. Remember Sean's whole thing?

• 12:52Chris Ryan?

  I mean, he's not conventionally handsome. He's got that nose.

• 12:54Bill Simmons?

  Sean just downed him.

• 12:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:55Bill Simmons?

  Poor Ray Shatter can't even defend himself. Just not handsome enough for Sean. Uh, Hoffman's the lead. He's coming off Lenny. This comes out same year as All the President's Men. He loses 15 pounds, runs four miles a day. And Evan said Hoffman would quote, would run just for a take. He would run for a half mile. So he came into the scene, he would actually be out of breath. This was the height of Dustin Hoffman, difficult method actor guy.

• 13:26Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 13:27Bill Simmons?

  Um.

• 13:27Chris Ryan?

  And he pressed Olivier with it.

• 13:29Bill Simmons?

  He did. So, hold that, because I want to get into some of those stories, because we had Olivier too. This leads to All the President's Men Marathon Man. The straight time in 78, you like that movie?

• 13:40Chris Ryan?

  I do.

• 13:42Bill Simmons?

  Agatha, Kramer versus Kramer.

• 13:45Chris Ryan?

  That's 79, right?

• 13:47Bill Simmons?

  We covered that on the rewatchables. That's my favorite Dustin Hoffman movie and performance. Three years off, Tootsie. Three years off, Death of a Salesman on TV. Two years off, Ishtar.

• 14:01Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:01Bill Simmons?

  He's doing a lot of stage stuff. Have we ever really had a Dustin Hoffman, how much did you like him? Conversation?

• 14:10Chris Ryan?

  We haven't. Uh, he's probably of that cohort of 70s actors. 70s associated actors. I would say not necessarily, like, I go, I go down to, like, Duval. You know, like, like, Pacquino, De Niro, Duval, Hackman. You know, like, I get pretty far down the 70s before I'm like, Hoffman's great. I mean, I think you can see, like, it's an interesting point in his career because he can impose his creative choices on the material rather than the reverse.

• 14:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:43Chris Ryan?

  So if you read the book, Babe is much chattier, much more, much funnier.

• 14:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Chris Ryan?

  And is like, kind of this, like, nervous, but is also supposed to be like six foot one and kind of like a, cut out a piece of rock, like a pretty big athlete. And Hoffman, it like makes him into a much more damaged, much more nervous, much shyer kind of character, I think. And that was obviously his choice.

• 15:06Bill Simmons?

  Not against it. The other side would have been pretty interesting.

• 15:09Chris Ryan?

  It's a different kind of movie. It's a different kind of movie. It's like a little bit more playful. And I'd say the novel is more playful.

• 15:16Bill Simmons?

  It's weird. I'm with you. Like, I could list a whole bunch of 70s actors and 80s actors before I'm like, and then Hoffman. I don't, you don't have a lot of conversations with people that are like, my favorite actor is Dustin Hoffman. That's my guy. I ride with Hoffman.

• 15:31Chris Ryan?

  Do you think it's like-

• 15:31Bill Simmons?

  Everybody agrees he's really good. He's almost like an athlete where you're like, yeah, I really respect him, but not a huge fan.

• 15:37Chris Ryan?

  Do you think maybe some of his films, like, I mean, All the President's Men is like basically 50/50 him and Redford anyway, right?

• 15:46Bill Simmons?

  And he's awesome.

• 15:47Chris Ryan?

  He's incredible in it. But he almost, it's almost like he needs someone to play off of. And it really depends on who he's playing off of is kind of where it goes.

• 15:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you wouldn't want to see him in The Revenant.

• 15:58Chris Ryan?

  No, I would not.

• 15:59Bill Simmons?

  Just climb into a bear naked.

• 16:02Chris Ryan?

  I feel like that's the second Revenant reference you've made recently.

• 16:06Bill Simmons?

  It might have been scouting a little bit. You wouldn't want to see him in The Martian. You wouldn't want to spend two hours with him in Mars by himself. I wouldn't want to be in Cast Away with Dustin Hoffman. I wouldn't really want to be in a buddy cop movie with Dustin Hoffman.

• 16:19Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 16:19Bill Simmons?

  I think there are particular things that he's really good at, but I always feel like he's Dustin Hoffman in the movie. Don't you, that like, he's not one of those people who gets lost in a role. Hackman, I feel like, because we get horny hacks.

• 16:33Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 16:34Bill Simmons?

  We get Hoosiers hacks. Like, I feel like he has different moves, but like, the Kramer versus Kramer guy versus this guy, are they like that different?

• 16:43Chris Ryan?

  They're all cerebral. I think they all have like a certain nervous energy. I think-

• 16:46Bill Simmons?

  Cerebral, nervous, little bit, um, little bit damaged.

• 16:50Chris Ryan?

  He's also incredibly unconventional looking guy. You know what I mean? Like-

• 16:53Bill Simmons?

  And tiny.

• 16:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. So it's, it's a lot of these 70s stars, with the exception of Redford, and I guess Beatty, but even Beatty was kind of a weirdo, like, have a really, really, really particular energy. It was a moment where guys who maybe in other times in Hollywood history would have been character actors or become the biggest movie stars in the world.

• 17:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, one of the, I'll step on casting what ifs. One of the reasons he took the movie was because he heard Pacino wanted to do it. And I think Pacino and Hoffman were on each other's corner in a bunch of different ways.

• 17:23Chris Ryan?

  Hoffman was up for Michael, wasn't he?

• 17:25Bill Simmons?

  I just feel like you had like the Redford side of like leading men guys over here. And Newman and McQueen, and then you had kind of the Hoffman, Pacino, maybe De Niro a little bit, but the little artsier actor guys. And I think Hoffman and Pacino, Pacino did a better job of stretching parts and kind of falling into characters and losing himself in characters.

• 17:50Chris Ryan?

  I feel like in some movie, to me at least, Pacino's cooler. Like, he can be cool.

• 17:56Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 17:56Chris Ryan?

  Hoffman rarely is.

• 17:59Bill Simmons?

  But it all worked out for him because he became, you know, he's definitely in the first sentence with all those guys. But I just think he was, I always felt like he was a little more limited than some of those other guys. Like, I don't think he could have been Tony Montana, you know?

• 18:12Chris Ryan?

  That would have been really funny.

• 18:15Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if I would have wanted to see him in Dog Day Afternoon.

• 18:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:19Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if I would have believed him as Serpico. I don't think he would have been fun as Vincent Hanna.

• 18:23Chris Ryan?

  The closest he gets to that is Straight Time. It's Straight Time.

• 18:26Bill Simmons?

  Which I think is a really interesting movie. I wish he had made like three more zags. I guess Lenny is a zag, but that's a pretty.

• 18:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:35Bill Simmons?

  That's a pretty dated movie.

• 18:36Chris Ryan?

  And then Lenny is the movie.

• 18:37Bill Simmons?

  Lenny's not a fun hang.

• 18:38Chris Ryan?

  In All That Jazz, that's what Bob Fosse's editing. So when he keeps looking at the stand-up footage, it's supposed to be Lenny.

• 18:43Bill Simmons?

  Even like, even if he'd been the shiter part in All That Jazz, that would have been really fun. If he had been the lead in Jaws.

• 18:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. It just seems like he was very particular about the parts he took, but this is like a classic Dustin Hoffman part.

• 18:57Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 18:58Bill Simmons?

  Right?

• 18:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:58Bill Simmons?

  It's perfect. He gets to be the hero. He's a little damaged.

• 19:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Bill Simmons?

  He gets to stutter and do.

• 19:04Chris Ryan?

  He does full commit. It's full, it's full sentence. He jogged, he lost 15 pounds. He probably like wore prosthetic fucked up teeth after the dental scene.

• 19:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:14Chris Ryan?

  He immerses himself in it.

• 19:16Bill Simmons?

  Craig, you have Dustin Hoffman thoughts?

• 19:18Speaker 04

  I just, I think that, I can't tell if, the reasons why there's not a lot of Dustin Hoffman's now is just because we need people who fit into more traditional buckets, like, you know, action star, or comedy guy, or also, or if it's more just that the movies he was in aren't as popular now and don't get made now, which is why people like him aren't as famous. I don't know which one it's-

• 19:38Chris Ryan?

  It's kind of what we were talking about with Beatty, you know, when we were like, how come Beatty's movies, how come Beatty doesn't, like, I don't feel like his name has the instant recognition, or the associations that Redford does.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  Cause there is no Hoffman comp right now. Like, I don't know who I would pick, because the movies that Hoffman is starring in that made a lot of money back in the day, that made him famous, aren't making a lot of money today. They're still being made.

• 20:00Chris Ryan?

  The closest thing I can think of is Jesse Eisenberg, but he's not as intense as Hoffman by any stretch of the imagination.

• 20:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's a good one.

• 20:07Chris Ryan?

  Like, Kieran Culkin honestly has some Hoffmann-y qualities, but, like, if you put the two of them together, maybe it's like Hoffman, but I don't know.

• 20:15Bill Simmons?

  Well, by all accounts, um, pretty polarizing as a hang-

• 20:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:20Bill Simmons?

  In some of these sets and some of the movies, and Goldman was not a fan.

• 20:23Chris Ryan?

  He was not.

• 20:24Bill Simmons?

  Um, and Goldman was not shy about, uh, a couple of the actors that he didn't like.

• 20:29Chris Ryan?

  Well, Hoffman was apparently a big part of why the ending of the movie got changed and they brought in Robert Downey.

• 20:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, hold on, I still have a part for that. We gotta hit Olivier really fast.

• 20:38Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 20:43Bill Simmons?

  I think one of the great 20th century actors-

• 20:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:46Bill Simmons?

  He clinched that one. He won two, he won an Oscar and two honorary Oscars. He went for Hamlet in 1949. He won five primetime Emmys?

• 20:56Bill Simmons?

  He was knighted in 1947?

• 20:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Bill Simmons?

  They said that the two greatest things you could have seen him in were Othello and Richard III. Goldman wrote, if he could have seen two performances when he was younger, one of them would have been Othello.

• 21:09Chris Ryan?

  There's that awesome anecdote in Adventures in the Screen Trade where- Olivier keeps referencing his, the last time he's been in New York and he references like these years and Goldman's like, I realize that like he's calling it 51, but that's actually like when he was doing Glass Menagerie or whatever.

• 21:27Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 21:27Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, holy shit.

• 21:29Bill Simmons?

  It'd be like Tom Brady listing off Super Bowl locations.

• 21:31Chris Ryan?

  Indianapolis before.

• 21:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I was in New Orleans.

• 21:36Bill Simmons?

  So anyway, by the time we hit the seventies, he's, he thinks he's dying of cancer. Takes the role to make more money for his family to leave some stuff behind and he's on pain meds all the time. Robert Evans had to get loads of London to insure him. And.

• 21:51Chris Ryan?

  One of the great insurers in the entire world.

• 21:53Bill Simmons?

  Had to talk to Lloyd himself.

• 21:56Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, and he does the movie and then recovers and then has this really weird IMDb stretch afterwards, where he's in a bunch of TV movies. He's in A Bridge Too Far. He's in The Boys From Brazil. He's in A Little Romance, which is a really good movie. That was Diane Lane's first movie. He's in Dracula. He's in The Jazz Singer with Neil Diamond, which is one of the worst movies of the early eighties.

• 22:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:20Bill Simmons?

  He's in Clash of the Titans in 81 as Zeus. So all of a sudden he's grabbing some paychecks near the end there, but, um, I mean, the reverence that everyone talks about acting with him, I don't know who that is now.

• 22:35Bill Simmons?

  Where it's like Olivier's in our movie. This is, I'm psyched out.

• 22:38Chris Ryan?

  Daniel D. Lewis, probably.

• 22:40Bill Simmons?

  Like 15 years from now.

• 22:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. If DDL came back and was like, you know what, I'll, I'll make a couple of, I'll just make like five more movies.

• 22:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, play Zell.

• 22:49Chris Ryan?

  Pat out the checking account.

• 22:50Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God, that's DDL. Devane, uh,

• 22:55Bill Simmons?

  Goldman had this thing, I'm just gonna read it. I cornered, he's talked about, they broke from a scene. I cornered Devane, who is bright and very articulate. I told him how wonderfully he had done and asked what it was like rehearsing with Laurence Olivier. It doesn't matter, Devane replied. I didn't know what and how he was talking about and said so. This is rehearsal, Devane said. It's nothing. When the camera starts to roll, he'll give me a little of this, he'll give me a little of that and you'll never know I'm in the movie. No one's gonna be watching me. That's Olivier, man. That's how everyone thought about him, except for Hoffman.

• 23:25Chris Ryan?

  Except for who's like, let's fucking improvise, Larry.

• 23:27Bill Simmons?

  Let's go.

• 23:29Chris Ryan?

  Hoffman's like Anthony Edwards. He's like, I don't care.

• 23:32Bill Simmons?

  Oh, well, so that Goldman tells this long story of him making Olivier rehearse Hoffman and making him stand. And it was clear to everyone on the set that Olivier was starting to really fade and improvise. And, and everyone thought it was like this power play. And then Hoffman said after the story wasn't true.

• 23:51Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna go with my guy Goldman.

• 23:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:53Bill Simmons?

  Cause he doesn't make shit up. But this leads to, I'm gonna put this category right here. The Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot.

• 24:08Chris Ryan?

  It goes to Laurence Olivier.

• 24:10Bill Simmons?

  So.

• 24:11Chris Ryan?

  portrayal as Henry the fifth.

• 24:13Bill Simmons?

  So the story was method act, there's a method acting thing and Hoffman was up, this is the story. I'm not saying it's true.

• 24:22Bill Simmons?

  Hoffman said he was up three days to try to simulate what it would be like to be up for three days. And he's telling Olivier about this and Hoffman had, he was just rubbing Olivier the wrong way.

• 24:35Bill Simmons?

  And Olivier finally said about method acting, my dear boy, why don't you just try acting?

• 24:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:41Bill Simmons?

  And everyone on the set was like, oh, it was like just this huge cut down. And this became a legendary Hollywood story.

• 24:48Chris Ryan?

  It's gotten told in 13 different ways by everybody who was like a part of it, from Goldman to Hoffman. You Schlesinger, like everybody has got their version of how it happened.

• 24:59Bill Simmons?

  Whether he was joking, whether he was serious.

• 25:02Chris Ryan?

  Hoffman's version is he had been going to Studio 54 a lot and that he had been partying a lot.

• 25:06Bill Simmons?

  And the problem is Studio 54 wasn't open until the year after. So that's where his story falls apart.

• 25:14Bill Simmons?

  Because it opened in 1977, a year after the movie came out.

• 25:19Chris Ryan?

  You got Johnny Cochran over here.

• 25:20Bill Simmons?

  Sorry, sorry, Dusty.

• 25:24Bill Simmons?

  He said on Inside the Actor's Studio, "The exchange was distorted and he'd been up all night at a nightclub, and Olivier was merely joking."

• 25:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:32Bill Simmons?

  It's too famous of a story. I also don't think there's a lot of people like protecting Dustin Hoffman at this point because he seems a little prickly.

• 25:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:42Bill Simmons?

  So, uh, he also said Hoffman, on the last day of shooting, Olivier visited him. He brought him a book, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and then proceeded to read scenes from several of the plays for Hoffman. And Hoffman said it was an absolute delight. They loved each other. And then he said Goldman made up this stuff or exaggerated it because he was mad because they changed the ending.

• 26:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:07Bill Simmons?

  Again, I'm gonna go with Goldman.

• 26:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's incredible. We don't really have enough of this anymore where I think for like several decades Hoffman and Goldman were essentially like trash talking each other whenever they would be asked to talk about Marathon Man.

• 26:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 26:24Chris Ryan?

  And

• 26:25Bill Simmons?

  And simultaneously, he was also trash talking with Redford.

• 26:28Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 26:28Bill Simmons?

  And then Redford came up with this whole alternate version of how all the President's men allegedly happened.

• 26:33Chris Ryan?

  Exactly.

• 26:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So they neither, I mean, that's the most famous movie book anyone's ever written.

• 26:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:39Bill Simmons?

  His first one. And both of those guys really resented it.

• 26:42Chris Ryan?

  Sure. And I mean, for Goldman, it's his novel, it's his screenplay, and then the star has his ending rewritten by like arguably the only screenwriter who's bigger than him, Robert Town.

• 26:52Bill Simmons?

  So who do you believe?

• 26:54Chris Ryan?

  I like, I like Goldman's version better. And I could

• 26:56Bill Simmons?

  I still think he would make it up.

• 26:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:57Bill Simmons?

  He was like a very prideful guy.

• 26:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:59Bill Simmons?

  He remembers everything.

• 27:01Chris Ryan?

  And I think he's also pretty like honest about his shortcomings and the times he's fucked up.

• 27:05Bill Simmons?

  Right. He's very self-deprecating and he's the first one to criticize himself. So in this case, they changed the ending. We'll get in all this.

• 27:12Chris Ryan?

  I can't remember which one in Adventures in the Screen Trade where he's like, I screwed, like, was it right stuff where he's just like, I just didn't do this well?

• 27:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Chris Ryan?

  And then they, they completely like saved it. So he's honest about his failures.

• 27:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, no question. I mean, and he went into like huge writing slumps and all kinds of things. So, listen, it was the seventies and these guys had huge egos and they get studios were kowtowed to them and all of them took advantage of it and. That was it, but I'm team Olivier and team Goldman. So Olivier was nominated for best supporting actor. He did not win, but it's quite a category. Robards wins for All the President's Men, Ned Beatty Network, Burgess Meredith Rocky, Burt Young, Rocky as Paulie Panino. And then Olivier.

• 28:05Chris Ryan?

  That's a stacked category.

• 28:07Bill Simmons?

  Robards is amazing.

• 28:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:09Bill Simmons?

  You're good with that, right?

• 28:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Beatty, I think Beatty's like in third there behind Olivier.

• 28:17Bill Simmons?

  And then Hoffman did not get nominated.

• 28:20Chris Ryan?

  But he did for Presidents?

• 28:22Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 28:23Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 28:24Bill Simmons?

  Nothing. $6.5 million budget made $28.2 million. And we should have mentioned this sooner, the kind of movie that just doesn't exist anymore.

• 28:38Chris Ryan?

  No, this would be a prestige TV show by far.

• 28:42Bill Simmons?

  Or it would be like an Apple movie that they hired two huge stars for. It had a huge budget, but it was almost too big.

• 28:55Chris Ryan?

  I mean, if you made this movie today.

• 28:58Bill Simmons?

  You just, nobody would.

• 28:59Chris Ryan?

  I was just thinking about all the scenes that are outdoors in Paris and New York City. Like, I don't even know how much that would cost. Like, they shoot on the street in New York. There are scenes where it's like, they had, they must have had different rules about extras back then because

• 29:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 29:13Chris Ryan?

  people are like looking at the camera, you know? So it's obviously they're just running around these cities handheld with Hoffman and Scheider.

• 29:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they just seem there like in the jewelry district with 500 people.

• 29:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:24Bill Simmons?

  I don't know how they do it.

• 29:25Chris Ryan?

  It's incredible.

• 29:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so it'd probably be, you're right, probably a scripted.

• 29:28Chris Ryan?

  But it's also a perfect 70s movie in a lot of ways. It's certainly like the place where our interests converge. It is a political conspiracy thriller meets a revenge thriller. So it's about like. All this like this pent up historical anxiety, the Jewish factor, the Nazis, but it's also about a guy who's been living inside of his brain for a long time, who's forced to like step out and become a physical force and defend himself, which is basically what a lot of like, we talked about it with Death Wish, but a lot of the revenge movies and Hoffman's made other movies like that with Straw Dogs and stuff.

• 30:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and we should have, I should have said this sooner too, but the paranoia piece of it, it's just so specific to this era and it's so good. It's like Saw in my wheelhouse. There's something about the vibes of these movies where it's just like, don't trust anyone ever.

• 30:20Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:21Bill Simmons?

  Everything is shadowy at night. There's never people around. It's always dark. You just never know who's coming around a corner. Um, there's always could be like some sort of henchman, even in a park.

• 30:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:32Bill Simmons?

  Just some henchman could just mug you and you don't know what their intentions are.

• 30:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they make the everyday seem surreal. Like you can shoot at uh, the Library of Congress and all the president's men, or you can shoot somebody's apartment in Harlem in Marathon Man and make it seem like this German expressionist kind of saying where you know, like the entire world is pushing down on these characters. It's, it's honestly one of my favorite kinds of movies is these, if these seventies thrillers.

• 30:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we've talked about it. It's a specific era. It's coming out of Watergate. It's coming out of Vietnam. It's coming out of the JFK assassination, the RFK assassination, the MLK assassination and just people not knowing what to believe anymore and who were the good guys, who were the bad guys? And you could see a movie like this where you could feel like you could be Babe. You're just studying for some exam or something.

• 31:21Chris Ryan?

  Dissertation, yeah.

• 31:22Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you're in your bathtub and then all of a sudden somebody's breaking down your door and trying to get you.

• 31:26Chris Ryan?

  Isn't it an interesting turnover where, cause we did Star Wars and I think the, the thrill of Star Wars is every kid who watches it can say to themselves like, what if I was Luke Skywalker? Like what if I saved the galaxy and I was the special person? But the, the thrill of these movies is like, what if every dark fantasy I had is true? And everybody is out to get me?

• 31:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 31:47Chris Ryan?

  And the government is following me and I mean, it's just such a weird changeover in the seven, in just one decade. They change over to like, no, no, no. Like what if the galaxy, like you could fix it all. Yeah.

• 31:58Bill Simmons?

  And then it moves into the eighties and everybody's like, you know, it'd be cool being rich. Here's a movie about that. Hey, here's another movie.

• 32:06Chris Ryan?

  You know what? If an alien came, he might be friendly.

• 32:09Bill Simmons?

  6.5 million budget, 28.2 million makes it, and Ebert goes, uh, three stars.

• 32:17Bill Simmons?

  He said, "If holes in plots bother you, Marathon Man will be maddening, but as well crafted escapist entertainment is a diabolical thrower. The movie works with relentless skill." I'm gonna give this...

• 32:29Bill Simmons?

  It's like a half fuck you rush.

• 32:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:32Bill Simmons?

  I think he robbed it of a half star.

• 32:34Chris Ryan?

  Should we start giving stars to Ebert's stars?

• 32:37Speaker 04

  I was just about to say that. We have to review Ebert.

• 32:39Chris Ryan?

  Because I think this is a two star review for a three star movie that we actually think is four stars.

• 32:44Bill Simmons?

  It's... Listen, if he wanted to say three and a half, because there's a couple of plot holes, I would have been upset about it, but I'd like... If this movie came out now, we would be like, "Oh, my God."

• 32:55Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 32:55Bill Simmons?

  They figured it out. Movies are back. And this was just like another movie in 1976 that was really good? But we were just cranking these out 10, 12 a year.

• 33:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:06Bill Simmons?

  And even when they didn't work, it was like Black Sunday, which is like a really cool movie that doesn't totally work, but it's still fun to watch.

• 33:13Chris Ryan?

  Ebert says something earlier in his review that's paraphrasing is just like... On a moment to moment, it only matters, thrillers only, it only matters if a thriller is believable on a moment to moment basis. Like, on any thriller, you can step back and be like, "What the fuck is Vertigo about?" Like, come on. And you can do that with this movie, but when that music comes in, the Michael Small music comes in, and the shadows, and the weird moments, and just like everybody kind of milling around, and you don't know who's a spy and who's not. It's just like, who cares about the plot?

• 33:44Bill Simmons?

  It's so funny when you read the reviews, especially Pauline Gill.

• 33:48Chris Ryan?

  No, she hated this.

• 33:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they, everybody's expectations were so high for every movie. It's hilarious.

• 33:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Bill Simmons?

  Ebert's just like, "Ah, didn't quite get there."

• 33:59Bill Simmons?

  Like, Lawrence Libby playing an evil Nazi is like, "I don't know." Three stars. Solid. Let's take a break and then we'll do the categories. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Life is full of decisions, big and small, and sometimes you make one. You can really stand behind. I did this a few times in my life, especially in the mid 2010s after I left Grantland and ESPN. And I was like, you know what? I still think there's an idea for a company that could really work. And then The Ringer, and now we're 10 years later, we're still here. 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 help create an affordable price.

• 34:44Bill Simmons?

  Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to 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. All right, most rewatchable scene. We got to start with the crazy car chase.

• 35:06Chris Ryan?

  Old man road rage.

• 35:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Old man road rage. I, this also wins the Ruffalo Hannah Rubenek Partridge Overacting Award for both drivers. Hey, fuck you. Hey, fuck you.

• 35:18Chris Ryan?

  I have a different winner for Ruffalo.

• 35:20Bill Simmons?

  Okay, it's for me, it wins it. It just goes on and on. It's very 70s. I think this would be a much more exciting car accident 50 years later for filming it, but very fun to watch.

• 35:32Chris Ryan?

  The, the, the drive into the oil truck is a little like.

• 35:36Bill Simmons?

  It's a little naked gunish.

• 35:37Chris Ryan?

  You guys could have broke.

• 35:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's a little naked gunish. The hotel fight scene.

• 35:43Chris Ryan?

  Just all of the doc stuff in Paris.

• 35:45Bill Simmons?

  Roy Scheider.

• 35:47Chris Ryan?

  Looking like a bag of leather, you know?

• 35:50Bill Simmons?

  What's your move when somebody comes around with you with the piano wire?

• 35:53Chris Ryan?

  I mean, there's only one move.

• 35:54Bill Simmons?

  You just gotta do this right away, right?

• 35:56Chris Ryan?

  You gotta.

• 36:08Bill Simmons?

  Cause if you fuck that up, you're just immediately done.

• 36:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you're dead.

• 36:12Bill Simmons?

  So you gotta do this, but then what's the second move?

• 36:15Chris Ryan?

  Uh.

• 36:16Bill Simmons?

  Elbow?

• 36:16Chris Ryan?

  I hope I never have to find out what my second. Yeah. I probably go headbutt.

• 36:20Bill Simmons?

  So up, headbutt.

• 36:24Bill Simmons?

  Maybe like lifting the leg, trying to kick in the balls?

• 36:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 36:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you see the piano wire. I, I think the single most underrated movie.

• 36:32Chris Ryan?

  And then I turn around like, stop. Did you hear Denver's got traded?

• 36:36Bill Simmons?

  To the Giants, it just happened. His war was a little low this year.

• 36:42Bill Simmons?

  I think piano wire is the single most terrifying, um, thing.

• 36:46Chris Ryan?

  Next to dental equipment, yeah.

• 36:48Bill Simmons?

  Well, I'm saying like when the bad guys come in, they could give, they could do nunchucks. Like you, we've seen every sort of device.

• 36:54Chris Ryan?

  It does seem like a.

• 36:55Bill Simmons?

  Cause you're getting hurt, even if you're stopping it, you're still getting like eight stitches in your head.

• 36:59Chris Ryan?

  The way his blood is spraying out of his, oh my god.

• 37:02Bill Simmons?

  You're just slicing tendons.

• 37:04Chris Ryan?

  I also love the old guy in the balcony across.

• 37:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the watcher guy, yeah.

• 37:11Bill Simmons?

  So these are two scenes together, but I'm putting them together. They're both for Shatter. Doc drops in on Babe and then Doc goes to lunch with Babe and Elsa.

• 37:19Chris Ryan?

  Love the lunch scene.

• 37:21Bill Simmons?

  When he drops in on Hoffman, it becomes a play for like four minutes. And it's just crackling dialogue. It's just really good. Two good actors sizing each other up. Throwing some, throwing some pitches at each other. It's really good stuff.

• 37:35Chris Ryan?

  This, this, also you just learn so much about them from Doc's reaction to Babe writing about their dad.

• 37:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:42Chris Ryan?

  Just like, I don't wanna see this shit, you know, like this just, you, you, you learn everything you need to know about those guys.

• 37:47Bill Simmons?

  And then with Elsa, he's like, just rope it up, sir. And then he goes, I've made all this up. There is no verbia. There is no Mount Rosa.

• 37:56Chris Ryan?

  There's no Claude Lasser.

• 37:58Bill Simmons?

  And she's like, what? Pretty fun. Fun rope it up trick. All right. Doc goes to see Zell and then Babe and gets stabbed to death and then shows up all bloody.

• 38:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Bill Simmons?

  And get a good Hoffman scream.

• 38:12Bill Simmons?

  Here we go. Hoffman in the bathtub right into the torture scene. I think this is most rewatchable for me.

• 38:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's it's a tough watch.

• 38:22Bill Simmons?

  Him in the bathtub is about as good as it gets for a what would I do if I was in this situation?

• 38:28Chris Ryan?

  Try to crawl out the window?

• 38:29Bill Simmons?

  Everyone's fear of just being naked if you're about to be murdered. Just be like, I just gotta get some pajama pajamas on before he kill me. Hold on, can you hold on one second with the piano wire? Just give me one minute here. Just gotta get some pants on.

• 38:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Bill Simmons?

  Um, but then the the way they're screwing the door frame. That's like, alright. And then the window's not big enough to get out of. Um, and then we get right into the, uh, Olivier.

• 38:54Chris Ryan?

  It's safe. Yeah.

• 38:57Speaker 05

  Is it safe? Yes, it's safe. It's very safe. So safe, you wouldn't believe it. Is it safe?

• 39:07Bill Simmons?

  I think that's another good scary movie device. When somebody's just saying this incoherent sentence over and over again that you don't have an answer for.

• 39:15Chris Ryan?

  So Craig.

• 39:16Speaker 04

  Yo.

• 39:17Chris Ryan?

  Did you? Had you heard of is it safe before you saw this movie?

• 39:22Speaker 04

  No.

• 39:23Chris Ryan?

  What did you think of this scene?

• 39:24Speaker 04

  I thought it was incredible.

• 39:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  I thought the the I agree. I think the bathtub scene is one of the scarier, most suspenseful scenes I've seen in a long time. And for how this movie's very quiet in a lot of moments. And it's terrifying. Also, I think just I just nobody lays in baths anymore.

• 39:40Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  Nobody just ruminate.

• 39:42Bill Simmons?

  I'm the only one.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  Nobody ruminates in a bath anymore.

• 39:44Bill Simmons?

  What are you talking about? I invented baths. Didn't have them before I started taking them.

• 39:50Chris Ryan?

  19th century prostitutes didn't invent baths.

• 39:52Bill Simmons?

  No, I invented them. Baths were out before I started taking them.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  You still take baths?

• 39:57Bill Simmons?

  I do.

• 39:58Chris Ryan?

  Wow.

• 39:58Bill Simmons?

  It's good for my, uh, lower back.

• 40:00Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 40:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:01Chris Ryan?

  That's good.

• 40:02Bill Simmons?

  No, I still read there.

• 40:03Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 40:03Bill Simmons?

  Used to read books. Now I bring the iPad in there and read that.

• 40:06Chris Ryan?

  Read tweets?

• 40:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just going through Twitter. X.

• 40:11Bill Simmons?

  Did Elon do anything today? Whoa, crazy one Elon.

• 40:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the, is it safe? I love scenes in movies where you're watching going, and you know, Tarantino, I think very smartly, some of the stuff that he kind of-

• 40:28Chris Ryan?

  Some of his like torture stuff?

• 40:29Bill Simmons?

  Some of the stuff he borrowed from the seventies as homages or just things that he liked. And one of the things that he was really good at is the, I don't know where this scene is going, but um, I know I should be scared.

• 40:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:42Bill Simmons?

  And I have a charismatic somebody who's up to something-

• 40:45Chris Ryan?

  Michael Madsen dancing with the razor blade.

• 40:47Bill Simmons?

  Exactly. That's basically Marathon then, right? And you're just like, what? So in this, it's like, why does he keep asking? He said, "safe." What the fuck is this guy up to?

• 40:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. It's almost like, I don't even know if like after the first 10 or 15 times I saw this movie, if I even thought about like what he was actually asking. Cause you know, it's, it's basically like, am I gonna get robbed at the bank?

• 41:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 41:08Chris Ryan?

  But you're just like, this is such an existential, almost like unanswerable question.

• 41:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 41:14Chris Ryan?

  And this is the moment where, this is why you get Hoffman. It's like for every scene where you may be like, alright Dustin, you're dialing it up a little bit. Or like, you don't have to run Larry in circles here. This is the scene where he is as scared as any normal person would be. And him being like, I can't, how can I possibly answer a question? I don't know what you're asking me. You know, like-

• 41:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. John Henry caught, when he called me about the Devers trade, he wouldn't tell me what it was. He just kept asking if it was safe. And I was like, no John Henry, don't trade her, best hitter.

• 41:48Chris Ryan?

  Oh, fuck.

• 41:49Bill Simmons?

  Well, the other torture scene,

• 41:53Bill Simmons?

  after the rope-a-dope from William Devane, my guy.

• 41:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, two, a lot of rope-a-dopes in this movie.

• 41:59Bill Simmons?

  And Olivier says, "A live, freshly cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive." And you're just like, just fucking, can you just shoot me? How about just kill me?

• 42:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Bill Simmons?

  Please?

• 42:08Chris Ryan?

  That's because the Mookie Betts tooth was dead. And the Xander tooth was dead. So they cut a new one, Rafi.

• 42:18Bill Simmons?

  Oh man, I got the Roman Anthony Marcella Meyer teeth in the way back. Hoffman said Olivier got inspiration for the torture scene from seeing a gardener prune roses shortly before the shooting. I don't know if I totally believe this. I'm not sure Olivier needed a lot of inspiration. But he said that Olivier realized that Zell was a craftsman, that he used tools with skill. This also has a great exchange with Devane and Olivier. "I believe in my country," Devane says, and Olivier's like, "So did we all."

• 42:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:52Bill Simmons?

  Just like, oh man.

• 42:53Chris Ryan?

  Also, I-

• 42:54Bill Simmons?

  Evil Nazi with some good points.

• 42:55Chris Ryan?

  Zell's accent being kind of like from nowhere-

• 42:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Chris Ryan?

  Is so creepy.

• 43:00Bill Simmons?

  Everything about him is so creepy.

• 43:02Chris Ryan?

  He's not coming around being like, "We have ears of making you talk, Dr. Jones." Like, he's, yeah, it's like, he's been in South America for a long time. Like, it's just kind of this flat accent.

• 43:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he does an amazing job of, you can feel the baggage of all the horrible things he's done-

• 43:18Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:18Bill Simmons?

  And probably still has in him deep down, because that stuff never goes away. It's not like, "Hey, I'm not an evil guy anymore." Like, at some point, you are who you are. It's in your DNA.

• 43:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:28Bill Simmons?

  And you could feel it in the DNA still with him. And when he's torturing Babe, you can see there's 20% of him is like, "Oh, man, I'm back."

• 43:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:37Bill Simmons?

  "This is great. Just fucking with people again. I really miss this." Zell in the diamond district getting recognized. Zell!

• 43:49Chris Ryan?

  Unreal, man.

• 43:50Bill Simmons?

  The scene's just the best. The guy, first he's in there with the two guys-

• 43:54Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:54Bill Simmons?

  And one of them's kind of like-

• 43:56Chris Ryan?

  Oh, because he sees the tattoo?

• 43:58Speaker 06

  I know you. Perhaps you do. I'm pretty good at faces myself. I know this. Christopher Hess, how do you do? Christopher Hess, how do you do? Wait, wait, let me think. I think-

• 44:15Bill Simmons?

  One of them is kind of side eyeing him a little bit and we get a little wrist knife. And it all leads to him opening the security deposit box and finding the diamonds, which is an awesome Olivier scene.

• 44:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:27Bill Simmons?

  Just like, I like the camera shot too of just him opening it and.

• 44:32Chris Ryan?

  It's also just great that this incredibly evil person who you think has an ideology is just like a craven, he's just greed, you know, he just wants his money.

• 44:41Bill Simmons?

  It's hard to identify with that theme now, 2025. And then the showdown at the end would be the other one. What do you have for most rewatchable?

• 44:48Chris Ryan?

  Um, I guess is it safe? I mean, it's the most iconic scene from the film. I happen to really love everything with Doc and Paris. It's just so evocative and creepy.

• 44:57Bill Simmons?

  It's like a whole other movie.

• 44:58Chris Ryan?

  Chen and the stroller and the opera. I love all that stuff, but is it safe is the most rewatchable scene.

• 45:06Bill Simmons?

  What's the most 1976 thing about this movie? What do you have?

• 45:09Chris Ryan?

  I have OG Nazis still in the mix.

• 45:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:11Chris Ryan?

  Walking and talking.

• 45:14Bill Simmons?

  That's the answer. I will also have, uh, training for a marathon being a rogue thing. Like, what are you doing?

• 45:23Bill Simmons?

  Trying to run a marathon. People are like, a marathon, a marathon?

• 45:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:26Bill Simmons?

  What's that? It's 26.2 miles.

• 45:31Chris Ryan?

  Can you smoke while you do that?

• 45:34Bill Simmons?

  You run every day?

• 45:36Chris Ryan?

  Nobody's chasing you. You just run.

• 45:38Bill Simmons?

  It's just, so you just run and then you finish running?

• 45:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:41Bill Simmons?

  Then what do you do?

• 45:43Chris Ryan?

  Another low key 76 thing is just New York City 1976.

• 45:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the best movie location on the planet.

• 45:50Bill Simmons?

  I also have a stealth gay subplot that can't really be addressed because of when they made the movie.

• 45:56Chris Ryan?

  It's not super addressed in the novel. Like they just acknowledge.

• 45:59Bill Simmons?

  It's more addressed than the novel.

• 46:01Chris Ryan?

  Jamie and Silla are together and that, but like it doesn't, and it certainly impacts like Janeway's betrayal, but yeah, it's never explicit. This was actually.

• 46:11Bill Simmons?

  Pretty racy for 76.

• 46:13Chris Ryan?

  And also like, I think one of the first times I was like to my mom, I was like.

• 46:16Bill Simmons?

  What's going on with those guys?

• 46:17Chris Ryan?

  And like, you know, I didn't, yeah, I was like 10 or whatever, 12.

• 46:21Bill Simmons?

  What's the most 76 thing about this movie? I also have diamonds being worth 15K a carrot. Probably higher now.

• 46:28Chris Ryan?

  Probably higher. Yeah.

• 46:29Bill Simmons?

  Creepy mid 70s, everyone's up to something movies.

• 46:32Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 46:34Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, my winner. McCarthyism victims as a crucial plot device.

• 46:40Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 46:40Bill Simmons?

  You don't see this anymore.

• 46:41Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 46:42Bill Simmons?

  Be like if, if one of our relatives was a McCarthyism victim and it would just come up on the rewatchables every once in a while.

• 46:49Chris Ryan?

  Give it, give it time. Maybe we can come up with a new McCarthy.

• 46:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, maybe. There might be a new ism. What's age the best?

• 46:57Bill Simmons?

  I have a bunch. What do you have?

• 46:58Chris Ryan?

  Um, first of all, the location shooting in New York City and Paris, there's just no, this is like the ultimate, like you can't do New York and Toronto. You're like, you can't do.

• 47:08Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 47:08Chris Ryan?

  Like this stuff. I love, love, love Doc's death when he's like, frankly, I don't give a fuck.

• 47:18Chris Ryan?

  And it's outside. They actually shot that in LA.

• 47:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:21Chris Ryan?

  And they, so it's downtown LA. It's like some skyscraper down there and I love the setting for that and it's, that's like the peak creepy seventies conspiracy scene with like the red, the fountain through the glass. What else do I have for what stage the best? It's always awesome to rewatch these conspiracy thrillers when you know the plot. So you can go back and see Elsa the first time. It's like, oh, so she was stalking him.

• 47:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:47Chris Ryan?

  Like that stuff's great.

• 47:49Bill Simmons?

  When a famous star is in a movie and dies way sooner than expected.

• 47:53Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 47:53Bill Simmons?

  AKA that they called this the Janet Leigh.

• 47:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Bill Simmons?

  From, uh, from.

• 47:57Chris Ryan?

  Psycho.

• 47:58Bill Simmons?

  Psycho. But Shyder being in this movie, you just assume he's gonna make it the whole way and then he's dead 40 minutes in. Dentistry is torture. It's torture anyway, and this movie really embraced it, but it's a what's age the best.

• 48:10Chris Ryan?

  Did this movie change your relationship to dentistry?

• 48:12Bill Simmons?

  No, I disliked it.

• 48:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:14Bill Simmons?

  Anyway. How about you?

• 48:16Chris Ryan?

  It makes me

• 48:19Chris Ryan?

  think that like my physical reaction to dentistry is just like alarm and I want to fly away. Like I want to get away from it. And this movie gives it like a horror, you know?

• 48:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:28Chris Ryan?

  But I just don't like people in my mouth, like tapping at things and scraping at things. I'll do it. Gotta do it.

• 48:36Bill Simmons?

  Devane saving Babe, but not really, which I would call the fake out plot swerve. I always like when this happens in the movies where it seems like the guy is being saved or the girl. But then they're just get pumping for information and then you circle back and it's like, wait, that's where we just let, what? Oh, this motherfucker.

• 48:55Chris Ryan?

  It's such a distinctive, uh, street that Babe runs down to get away.

• 48:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:59Chris Ryan?

  And you see the graffiti and when Devane's car pulls past the graffiti again, you're like, no.

• 49:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:04Chris Ryan?

  No. And then he's like, you killed them.

• 49:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Chris Ryan?

  You killed them. It's also a really good exposition dump because Devane explains the whole diamond courier thing.

• 49:13Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 49:14Chris Ryan?

  To Babe. And then it's like, oh, but it doesn't matter because Babe's gonna get tortured.

• 49:18Bill Simmons?

  Right. I have anyone opening a safety deposit box in a movie?

• 49:23Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:23Bill Simmons?

  I'm not not watching. Doesn't matter what the movie is. It could be frigging rom-com on Netflix.

• 49:28Chris Ryan?

  Inside Man, Marathon Man, yeah.

• 49:30Bill Simmons?

  Always good. Running on a highway ramp and doing the jump to the lower highway ramp, which is also no way out. You got me every time.

• 49:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:41Bill Simmons?

  Nobody ever sprains an ankle, breaks a tibia, somehow it always works.

• 49:45Chris Ryan?

  The cab always is like, cool, I'll stop for this guy who looks like he's been tortured in his pajamas.

• 49:48Bill Simmons?

  No car ever runs a person over. Uh, this is a good one for what's aged the best. When someone's random non-fight training comes in handy.

• 49:57Chris Ryan?

  Marathoning.

• 49:58Bill Simmons?

  In an action movie.

• 49:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:59Bill Simmons?

  Where it's like, oh, the marathon. Now it's gonna pay off. I'm just gonna outrun these fucking guys. Like I'm in the Boston Marathon.

• 50:04Chris Ryan?

  They just did that with the amateur.

• 50:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 50:08Bill Simmons?

  It's a good movie. I like the amateur. I told my dad after, uh, after I told, I, I texted two people after I saw the amateur, my dad and you. And I told my dad, I'm like, better than a five o'clocker. Might be like a six thirty, seven o'clocker, but he watched it the next day and he's like, really good. Not a huge Rami Malek fan, but I really liked it. Anyway, a couple more. Marathon Man used the Steadicam.

• 50:32Chris Ryan?

  Uh-huh.

• 50:33Bill Simmons?

  It was the third movie that used it. Bound for Glory and Rocky also used it, but it was the first movie that came out that used it.

• 50:39Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 50:39Bill Simmons?

  So we had that with.

• 50:40Chris Ryan?

  This was released before.

• 50:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then, um, Goldman had a whole thing about how Hoffman objected to having the flashlight next to him, the object, and when his brother shows up.

• 50:50Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:51Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, and Schlesinger convinced him. And Goldman said it was because Hoffman didn't want to seem like he was chicken.

• 51:00Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 51:01Bill Simmons?

  And this is a big Goldman thing in all his writings about how stars want to be perceived, which is so interesting. Like, they want to be the heroes.

• 51:08Chris Ryan?

  And even though Babe is getting beaten on and through this entire movie, he's like, no, I don't want him to be a pussy when he's in his apartment.

• 51:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, meanwhile, it feels like he's half the movie. He feels like a puss. Uh, last one. William Devane's 1976 and 1977 two-year stretch. He's in Family Plot, Hitchcock's last movie. He's in Marathon Man.

• 51:31Bill Simmons?

  Bad News Bears Two, Breaking Training, one of the great performances. It's Kelly Leek's dad.

• 51:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:36Bill Simmons?

  One of the great, great, great sports dad, coach performances. Craig, check it out. Uh, and then Rolling Thunder, your movie.

• 51:43Chris Ryan?

  I love Rolling Thunder.

• 51:44Bill Simmons?

  Those four out in a row.

• 51:45Chris Ryan?

  It's incredible.

• 51:48Chris Ryan?

  I love Devane.

• 51:49Bill Simmons?

  You know, he, so I did some research because I was trying to figure out why he wasn't more popular.

• 51:53Chris Ryan?

  Big stage guy.

• 51:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but also like he, he was JFK in The Missiles of October, TV movie. That was a huge movie with him and Martin Sheen on TV, like 74. And he got kind of typecast as like the JFK guy.

• 52:06Chris Ryan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 52:06Bill Simmons?

  Was trying to break out of it. I always thought he was really good. He ended up on like Knots Landing. I also did a lot of Olivier research. I forgot to mention about his, uh, he was married three times.

• 52:16Chris Ryan?

  Joan Plowery at the end, right?

• 52:17Bill Simmons?

  Right, but he was married to the Gone with the Wind lady.

• 52:20Chris Ryan?

  Vivian Leigh.

• 52:20Bill Simmons?

  He got divorced because he started having an affair with her.

• 52:25Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 52:26Bill Simmons?

  And then they ended up together and ended up doing a whole bunch of plays together. But then, you know, occasionally she just would hook up with another guy that she was in a movie with. And then he might do the same thing with an actress, but then they would get back together.

• 52:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:42Bill Simmons?

  And then she would go off again and have an affair with somebody else. And it's just the way the 30s and 40s and 50s moved where people were like, yeah, I couldn't resist. I had to go fuck him in my trailer. Sorry. And I don't know. I don't know if it works that way.

• 52:56Chris Ryan?

  It's funny to go back and watch Mad Men and just be like, how soon would the wife just be like, you're fucking out and I'm taking half of your money to Don Draper.

• 53:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that just wasn't like that back then.

• 53:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So anyway, our guy, Bill Devane, great job by him. Would you have for Big Kahuna Burger Award, best use of food drink?

• 53:15Chris Ryan?

  I got three things.

• 53:16Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 53:16Chris Ryan?

  One, the clove oil extract that they rub on the tooth.

• 53:20Bill Simmons?

  Great.

• 53:21Chris Ryan?

  Two, truffles on croute, which is what Doc tells Elsa to get at the restaurant. But honestly, this movie gets the reverse Kahuna. You don't want to eat after seeing this movie.

• 53:31Bill Simmons?

  Oh, because you have an exposed root here, too?

• 53:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:36Bill Simmons?

  Great shot, Gordo.

• 53:37Chris Ryan?

  So many.

• 53:39Bill Simmons?

  I really liked the shot of him opening the security deposit box.

• 53:42Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 53:43Bill Simmons?

  I also like they have in the water factor or whatever the fuck that is, that wide shot of them.

• 53:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:48Bill Simmons?

  There's a wide shot of them kind of circling each other that I thought was really good, but there's a lot of good stuff in this.

• 53:53Chris Ryan?

  So I have anything from Doc's murder, the red steps, the fountain, that stuff. Conrad Hall shot this. He's one of my favorite cinematographers. Absolutely amazing. I love the shot when Doc is in Paris and he walks out onto his balcony in Paris. And the cameras goes through another window and extends out and then the Eiffel Tower is there. I'm just like, holy shit.

• 54:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:16Chris Ryan?

  This is incredible.

• 54:17Bill Simmons?

  Conrad's cooking.

• 54:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah. And then my favorite might be just for absolute total creep is when Doc is coming out of the opera and the soccer ball rolls up to him. And he's just like, and the woman is like his, his partner has disappeared and then just a soccer ball comes up. Then he's like, fuck.

• 54:35Bill Simmons?

  That's like a classic 1976 scene.

• 54:37Chris Ryan?

  That's almost like a horror movie thing.

• 54:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's just like, why is this here? That would be the conjuring.

• 54:43Bill Simmons?

  Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happyness Award for Best Needle Drop. I think it's the opera with Olivier.

• 54:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, although the score is just incredible.

• 54:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Like seeing the German newspapers. Good exposition in that scene. It was like, all right, this guy's creepy. Chest Rockwell Brocklanders were best character name. Dr. Christian Zell.

• 55:04Chris Ryan?

  It's up there. His flunkeys being named Carl and Earhart are pretty good, though.

• 55:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. We'll take a break and then you got a flex category.

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• 56:03Chris Ryan?

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• 56:43Bill Simmons?

  All right, CR's Choice Flex Category, what do you got?

• 56:45Chris Ryan?

  When would I have died?

• 56:47Bill Simmons?

  I was wondering if you're gonna do this.

• 56:49Chris Ryan?

  Probably in the bathtub. I probably like, maybe I can just drown myself. Like, I just don't want to experience this anymore.

• 56:55Bill Simmons?

  I think I'd die in the bathroom as well.

• 56:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:57Bill Simmons?

  Because you can't get out the window.

• 57:01Chris Ryan?

  Maybe cut your wrists with like a razor or something like that. I know it's morbid, but like,

• 57:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:05Chris Ryan?

  If you knew on the other side was, is it safe? You're, you're

• 57:09Bill Simmons?

  But he doesn't know that, yeah.

• 57:10Chris Ryan?

  No. I would also just have a heart attack when the dental tools got un- unrevealed.

• 57:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, dental tools and a German accent in 1977. Did I just?

• 57:20Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 57:20Bill Simmons?

  Can you just chat that out of my temple? I have no answers. Just kill me. Right here. Right here.

• 57:26Chris Ryan?

  No, I don't know if it's safe.

• 57:27Bill Simmons?

  Just right here.

• 57:27Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, I'm never gonna

• 57:28Bill Simmons?

  Let me make it X.

• 57:29Chris Ryan?

  I'm never gonna love again after this. You can just take me out.

• 57:34Bill Simmons?

  Butch's girlfriend award weak link of the film. Unfortunately for this one, it's the girlfriend.

• 57:39Chris Ryan?

  So you don't like Elsa?

• 57:42Bill Simmons?

  I just don't. It's the weakest part of the film that, uh, she's working for Zell the whole time.

• 57:49Chris Ryan?

  So in the

• 57:49Bill Simmons?

  She's very pleasant. I don't think she's kind of up to stuff enough.

• 57:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:55Bill Simmons?

  And then I have no idea why we go to the farmhouse. It's such a weird part of the movie. I just don't get it.

• 58:00Chris Ryan?

  In the book, you find out Elsa's working for Zell

• 58:06Chris Ryan?

  after the first meeting in the library. So it's an interesting difference between the novel and the screenplay where in the novel, you're like, the whole time, you're like, Elsa's bad, Elsa's bad. When Doc figures it out.

• 58:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:17Chris Ryan?

  At lunch, you're like, oh, interesting. But in the movie, it kind of comes out of nowhere when it's like, not only, like, yeah, I've like been working for Zell this whole time. I think she's good, especially to be like a German who could pass for Swiss, speak some French, that kind of thing.

• 58:33Bill Simmons?

  She's pretty. I, I don't know what a Swiss accent sounds like, but she sounds German the whole time.

• 58:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:39Bill Simmons?

  I have no idea why we go to the farmhouse. I just don't understand.

• 58:43Chris Ryan?

  I think he's supposed to be basically incapacitated. In the book, it's like she, she shows up because he's like, go get a car and meet me at this drugstore. And she's like, I got the car and the guy whose car it is, this neighbor of mine has a, like a, a house upstate. We'll go there.

• 58:57Bill Simmons?

  I get it.

• 58:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:58Bill Simmons?

  It just feels like they wanted to get out of New York City for a couple of scenes.

• 59:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:02Bill Simmons?

  But I just would have not done that at all. And I would have spent more time with Roy Shatter because we could talk about, this is in what stage of the worst. I'll just do it now, but an eight and a half minute sequence was shot of Doc fighting with some guys who killed a spy colleague. That's a huge part of the book. And Goldman thought it got cut because of the violence because they cut down the, uh, is it safe scene two?

• 59:24Chris Ryan?

  And the, and the Shider death.

• 59:25Bill Simmons?

  And the Shider death, like, because he basically gets disemboweled when he gets, so they, they, they did a lot of stuff based on this one preview screening they had where everybody thought it was too violent. And, uh, and Goldman said, we've rushed Shider, he's coming off Jaws. This was a big part of the reason why he took this role. And we cut that scene, but now we're adding eight minutes of the farmhouse for no reason at all. And the whole thing is, I'd say, it's my one thing that every time I watch this movie, I'm like, god damn it. And then he could just get away, but he's like, come on in, three evil guys. And let's talk this out. It's like, I, I just don't understand any of it.

• 1:00:02Chris Ryan?

  I would also say that, uh, especially on repeat viewings, I don't love the flashbacks. To his childhood, there's nothing in there other than Babe being there when his dad kills himself. That I didn't know from the movie itself and that you can't intuit from the movie itself. And the movie doesn't go into depth about so many things like Janeway and Doc's relationship and all this other stuff. But like, we get like five cutaways to childhood.

• 1:00:32Bill Simmons?

  It feels like they were really trying to stay faithful to the book.

• 1:00:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but that's not really even in the book. I mean, they talk about the dad in the book, but it's not like he's like always thinking. I, I don't know. I thought it was like, it's not something that worked for me on this, on this run through.

• 1:00:46Bill Simmons?

  More would sage the worst, um, stalking a girl home for the first date.

• 1:00:50Chris Ryan?

  Uh, 76.

• 1:00:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It drives me absolutely fucking bonkers that Babe doesn't keep the diamonds and the money. I just hate that in every movie where somebody's like, you know what, morally, I can't do it. It's like, just fucking take the diamonds. What are you doing? Take, there's just cash, just grab it. What are you doing? You're too good to put some cash in your pocket?

• 1:01:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:12Bill Simmons?

  Just get this guy.

• 1:01:12Chris Ryan?

  Your apartment is looking good right now.

• 1:01:14Bill Simmons?

  By the way, you need some dental work. Maybe the cash can go.

• 1:01:17Chris Ryan?

  And you let Melendez take your television.

• 1:01:19Bill Simmons?

  Right. You have no apartment, your family's dead. Maybe take the diamonds. I don't know. And then, uh, what's age the worst, just the concept of Nazi criminals in a movie. Cause in 2025, they wouldn't exist.

• 1:01:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:33Bill Simmons?

  So it's age to words.

• 1:01:34Chris Ryan?

  Unless it's a period piece, yeah.

• 1:01:36Bill Simmons?

  What else do you have?

• 1:01:37Chris Ryan?

  Uh, the way Babe's apartment must have smelled. Cause he's coming back from long distance running training.

• 1:01:43Bill Simmons?

  Smells like a hockey locker room.

• 1:01:44Chris Ryan?

  Wearing

• 1:01:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:45Chris Ryan?

  Full sweatsuit of like old school Russell athletic sweats.

• 1:01:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Chris Ryan?

  Basically wearing Adidas, old Adidas running shoes. Then he strips down sweating his balls off and he starts reading history textbooks.

• 1:01:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Chris Ryan?

  Can you imagine? Not a lot of natural light coming in there.

• 1:02:01Bill Simmons?

  Probably some fungus. Yeah. Good call.

• 1:02:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Bill Simmons?

  The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. How does take a word?

• 1:02:10Chris Ryan?

  We kind of alluded to this earlier. Uh, I would rather have Roy Scheider's 1970s than Dustin Hoffman's 1970s. Scheider's highlights for the seventies are clout, French Connection, Seven Ups, Jaws, Marathon Man, Sorcerer, Jaws Two, All That Jazz.

• 1:02:27Bill Simmons?

  Listen, I'm, I'm on Scheider Island. I've been there the whole time.

• 1:02:30Chris Ryan?

  Hoffman goes Little Big Man, Papillon, Lenny, All the President's Men, Stray Time, Kramer vs Kramer. I'll take, I'll take Scheider.

• 1:02:37Bill Simmons?

  I would take him over Hackman.

• 1:02:41Bill Simmons?

  He just gets, I remember asking Goldman about this once because he loved Scheider. We might've even talked about this on one of the other rewatchables.

• 1:02:48Chris Ryan?

  Maybe on Jaws?

• 1:02:50Bill Simmons?

  I was like, what, what was he missing? And he's like, I don't know. You know, he didn't age that great by the time we get to the eighties.

• 1:02:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. When he's in 2010, he's pretty, he's looking pretty old.

• 1:02:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. My guess is there were a lot of cigarettes. So I don't think he aged in a classic way, but I always thought he was amazing. I think he's amazing in Jaws. I don't get it.

• 1:03:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. It's like when you, he's like William Holden where you're like, are you 39 or 61?

• 1:03:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I don't, how old is he in this movie?

• 1:03:17Chris Ryan?

  I have no idea.

• 1:03:18Bill Simmons?

  I have no idea.

• 1:03:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Bill Simmons?

  My hottest take.

• 1:03:22Bill Simmons?

  It's a two parter. I think if you're making this in 1976, if we could do it over again, it's a better Harrison Ford part.

• 1:03:31Bill Simmons?

  He's young. He hasn't been in Star Wars yet. I think he's been in American Graffiti. He's got the size from the book.

• 1:03:38Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:39Bill Simmons?

  I would have believed him as a runner. Nobody's better than Harrison Ford if people are coming after him. Um, little more handsome. I could believe the Elsa thing more. I just think it's, I think it's a better movie.

• 1:03:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. So this is pre Raiders. So you wouldn't associate him with being like, oh, this guy's gonna kick Zell's ass.

• 1:03:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Chris Ryan?

  It's not like that. It's, you're right.

• 1:03:59Bill Simmons?

  He would be tall, but in 1984, this is epic Tom Cruise.

• 1:04:07Chris Ryan?

  Oh, it's TC all the way.

• 1:04:08Bill Simmons?

  This is TC fucking, he gets to run.

• 1:04:10Chris Ryan?

  He gets to pretend he knows a lot about history.

• 1:04:12Bill Simmons?

  He gets to torture. Yeah. He gets to seduce a hot foreign lady. Uh, he gets to run again. He gets to run a third time. He gets to freak out.

• 1:04:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:22Bill Simmons?

  He probably watched Marathon Man like, fuck.

• 1:04:25Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I'm sure, I'm surprised he doesn't remake it now.

• 1:04:28Bill Simmons?

  Uh, yeah, it's the most cruisiest part. That's not a cruise movie. Casting whatevs. Um, so when Olivia had health problems, they had Richard Widmark in the bullpen.

• 1:04:38Chris Ryan?

  Which I kinda like.

• 1:04:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, warming up. And then, uh, this is a tough one for both of us. Um, Sledgehammer wanted Charlotte Rampling for Elsa. Couldn't get her. Settled on Martha Keller. Marthy Keller?

• 1:04:52Chris Ryan?

  Mart.

• 1:04:53Bill Simmons?

  Mart Keller?

• 1:04:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, according to Robert Evans. The new international, how'd you do Mart Keller? You're gonna love it.

• 1:05:05Bill Simmons?

  Charlotte Rampling in this movie.

• 1:05:07Chris Ryan?

  It would have been illegal. Yeah. Also, how many times can Charlotte Rampling double cross our guys? You know, if she did this in Marathon and then did the verdict?

• 1:05:20Bill Simmons?

  I know. Now I'm happy to go to the, to the upstate New York for eight minutes with Charlotte. Yeah, let's go check out that house. Anywhere else we wanna go?

• 1:05:28Chris Ryan?

  Want a cigarette?

• 1:05:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, she's definitely smoking. Um, I could totally believe the double cross in a completely different way. I don't know.

• 1:05:38Chris Ryan?

  The other person I saw in my research was Julie Christie, which I suppose I'd bring up just because in super seventies we already.

• 1:05:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the double cross for her, I'm not buying as much.

• 1:05:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:47Bill Simmons?

  I have that in our casting couch director city too. Charlotte Rampling is also.

• 1:05:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Bill Simmons?

  Just like no question. Best that guy. Well, we have a runner up. Carlos Mendez from the Miami Vice Calderon's Revenge episode.

• 1:06:01Chris Ryan?

  He plays Melendez, right?

• 1:06:02Bill Simmons?

  When Tubbs hits the glass. At the beginning of the part two.

• 1:06:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:07Bill Simmons?

  And Philip Michael Thomas is like, "Come on Mendez! You gotta talk! Sucker!" He's doing that whole thing. He's in this movie. He's the guy that Hoffman asked to rob his place.

• 1:06:21Chris Ryan?

  It's creepy. It's creep.

• 1:06:23Bill Simmons?

  But that's not the winner.

• 1:06:24Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:06:25Bill Simmons?

  Because our winner is, of course, Al Neary from The Godfather.

• 1:06:28Chris Ryan?

  Richard Bright's in this movie.

• 1:06:29Bill Simmons?

  Richard Bright.

• 1:06:29Chris Ryan?

  Hands down.

• 1:06:31Bill Simmons?

  So. I ended up, for some reason, I'd never gone to his IMDb before and didn't realize he was the dad in Beautiful Girls.

• 1:06:38Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:06:39Bill Simmons?

  He was Timothy Hutton's dad in Beautiful Girls.

• 1:06:42Chris Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 1:06:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's Al Neary from The Godfather.

• 1:06:46Chris Ryan?

  Ah, God, I guess I have to go back and watch Beautiful Girls again.

• 1:06:49Bill Simmons?

  He was the dad of Timothy Hutton and David Arquette. "I gotta go take a shit." Those are his three biggest parts. Richard Bright. So he plays Al Neary in one and two, by the way.

• 1:07:01Chris Ryan?

  And he can play Italian-American heavy and German heavy.

• 1:07:06Bill Simmons?

  Nobody ever. Nobody ever did more with a blank face.

• 1:07:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's got like two lines across three movies there. Yeah.

• 1:07:13Bill Simmons?

  When Michael looks at him at the mom's funeral. After he's like, pretending he's getting back to the freighter and he just kind of looks at Al and Al's like.

• 1:07:24Chris Ryan?

  All right, time to go fishing.

• 1:07:25Bill Simmons?

  Gotcha.

• 1:07:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Bill Simmons?

  I got you. Don't worry. Got it. Dionne Waiters a word. Scheider?

• 1:07:30Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I think he's in too much. I have Devane in there, but I'm gonna go with, uh, Lada Palfi Andor as Zel!

• 1:07:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's it. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one. Craig's Choice. Flex category for Craig. What do you got, Craig?

• 1:07:48Speaker 04

  Um, my hot take is that Babe was just kind of dumb. Um, he was mugged by two guys in three-piece suits and fedoras and just didn't think that was weird.

• 1:07:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true.

• 1:07:59Speaker 04

  He was like, oh, I got mugged. And they're like, oh, like, what did he look like? And they're like, oh, they like two, like, you know, hoodlums? And he's like, no, they were two 50-year-old men in suits. And they were like, oh, that feels kind of weird.

• 1:08:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Speaker 04

  He also, his brother who was murdered, and then, and then he was tortured by a German man named Zell. And his brother was like, hey, I just outed your girlfriend for being a closeted German.

• 1:08:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Speaker 04

  Didn't think anything of that, just kind of kept plowing right forward with her and, and still thought she was totally innocent up until they got to the house. And then, uh, I just, I, I thought it was a weak move that he just couldn't pull the trigger on Zell at the end. What are we doing? He couldn't shoot him?

• 1:08:36Bill Simmons?

  In the, in the book, he does.

• 1:08:37Chris Ryan?

  Fucking guns him down.

• 1:08:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Speaker 04

  Well, I like, I don't understand the character choice of him not shooting Zell.

• 1:08:42Chris Ryan?

  It's a weird, I would say there's two things that happen.

• 1:08:46Speaker 04

  Cause he shoots people right before it up in, upstate New York.

• 1:08:48Chris Ryan?

  In the book, he shoots Elsa too, right? Like, he guns down Elsa. It's much more death wish at the end of the book.

• 1:08:56Speaker 04

  Cause he shoots Devane in the house. And then 20 minutes later, he can't shoot Zell?

• 1:09:02Bill Simmons?

  It's absurd.

• 1:09:03Speaker 04

  I thought it was very bizarre.

• 1:09:04Bill Simmons?

  The ending was rewritten by Robert Downe, as CR said, because Hoffman apparently didn't like it.

• 1:09:10Bill Simmons?

  Goldman thought it was a piece of shit.

• 1:09:14Bill Simmons?

  It drove him crazy. He couldn't believe it.

• 1:09:18Bill Simmons?

  In the novel, Babe leads Zell to Central Park, shoots him multiple times while lecturing him, kills him, throws the diamonds away and is led away by the police.

• 1:09:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I just, I don't know, the lead up with, with Babe, I mean, he's, he's clearly capable and willing to kill.

• 1:09:34Bill Simmons?

  Well, Goldman's up in the sky thanking us that we have Craig.

• 1:09:37Chris Ryan?

  I can't believe Tibbs got fired.

• 1:09:41Bill Simmons?

  He doesn't know what Tibbs had to do. They made the Eastern Finals.

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  Wait, can I add one more question?

• 1:09:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:45Speaker 04

  So, a lot of the movies in the seventies, eighties, but I think it starts to get better in the eighties. I personally at home have trouble hearing what the people are saying. Do you have trouble, like, just the sound mixing?

• 1:09:56Chris Ryan?

  Oh, well, I think that they do a lot of stuff, especially in these seventies movies where they've ADR'd. Stuff where it's like, so you're seeing something that you should not be able to like, like it'll be a character across the street in a diner through a window and you can hear it. As this, they're whispering in your ear.

• 1:10:12Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:10:13Chris Ryan?

  It's just a style Altman did this a lot with like a lot of his layering of sound.

• 1:10:17Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:10:17Chris Ryan?

  That is just unconventional for our modern.

• 1:10:20Speaker 04

  Like.

• 1:10:20Chris Ryan?

  Like cinematic appetite.

• 1:10:21Speaker 04

  I am very anti closed captioning. I don't, I don't support it, but I, I had a really hard time just understanding also the accents. I had like genuinely a very difficult time understanding what they were saying. So I had to turn them on. I was just wondering if that was the case, like in the theaters in the seventies, if it was muddled because sound mixing wasn't as good, or if that's the way it's translated to our TVs now.

• 1:10:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I would say sound mixing is too good now.

• 1:10:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:43Bill Simmons?

  The sound is translated, so it's probably picking up stuff from the print that wasn't even intended to really be heard.

• 1:10:48Chris Ryan?

  And I just think that they would do stuff with sound that was just way different.

• 1:10:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Like they'll do things where you're like, oh, like visually I'm so far away from this person.

• 1:10:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Chris Ryan?

  It almost feels weird that I can hear them mumbling to someone next to them.

• 1:11:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. Cause there's some under the breath conversations and really pivotal moments. And I'm like, I don't know what they're saying.

• 1:11:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:08Speaker 04

  Do you guys watch movies and TV with closed captioning?

• 1:11:11Chris Ryan?

  I try not to. I find it's really distracting.

• 1:11:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:14Speaker 04

  And sometimes the line comes up, the words come up before the person says it.

• 1:11:19Bill Simmons?

  I do. I had to use some closed captioning for Seagal when he was trying to do his Italian accent and out for justice. That was the last time I used it. Half past thirty research. So in the novel, we said, Jane Wayne, Doc are lovers. So Doc's in Paris and he calls Jane Wayne on the phone. He says, Janey, I miss you. Get your ass over here. And that's kind of the only way they allude to it.

• 1:11:44Bill Simmons?

  It's definitely more subtle in the book. It's a weird one though. I didn't, didn't even notice that in the movie until I reread it in the book a few years ago.

• 1:11:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:52Bill Simmons?

  And it was like, oh.

• 1:11:53Chris Ryan?

  In the beginning, you're like, oh, is he talking to a woman named Janey? You know, like you're just, is he got a girlfriend somewhere?

• 1:11:58Bill Simmons?

  So the, uh, the marathon runner showing him flashbacks is Adebe Bekila, who won the 1960 Olympic marathon. And ran barefoot for Ethiopia.

• 1:12:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:12Bill Simmons?

  No, uh, no shoes. Barefoot athletes have really gone out the window in the last 20 years. We had barefoot kickers all the way through like the 90s.

• 1:12:21Chris Ryan?

  Go, uh, barefoot.

• 1:12:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. We had, you, we both had Tony Franklin on our team as field goal kicker. Just such a weird era that people were like, you know what?

• 1:12:32Bill Simmons?

  I'm better off without the sneaker. Playing in the NFL.

• 1:12:35Chris Ryan?

  Pure feel. I know.

• 1:12:37Bill Simmons?

  Like Craig, that, that has to be top five weirdest things for you about sports in the 80s.

• 1:12:41Speaker 04

  What do you mean there were, there were barefoot kickers in the 90s?

• 1:12:44Bill Simmons?

  Like literally barefoot field goal kickers.

• 1:12:46Chris Ryan?

  Soccer cleats.

• 1:12:46Speaker 04

  In what, what year are we talking about?

• 1:12:48Bill Simmons?

  We're talking like 80s.

• 1:12:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Bill Simmons?

  The Patriots had Tony Franklin in the, I think in the Super Bowl season or around that era.

• 1:12:54Speaker 04

  Was out there with just no shoes or socks? Just barefoot?

• 1:12:57Bill Simmons?

  No, they'd have the, the weirdest thing is they'd have the left shoe and the sneaker.

• 1:13:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:01Bill Simmons?

  And then the barefoot on the right.

• 1:13:02Speaker 04

  Cause the plant foot you want with the shoe.

• 1:13:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Speaker 04

  For the spikes.

• 1:13:05Chris Ryan?

  But then you get pure feel. I get it on the inside of the, of the foot.

• 1:13:08Bill Simmons?

  What's funny is you go back and you look at all the field goal stats and people are like 54%.

• 1:13:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. They're, they're like.

• 1:13:14Bill Simmons?

  And they're like, I need, I need the feel of this. It's like, nah, maybe you needed sneakers. Maybe you needed sneakers. Sneakers might have helped.

• 1:13:20Speaker 04

  Broken toes all over.

• 1:13:23Bill Simmons?

  Goldman wrote a screenplay called Brothers. And, uh,

• 1:13:30Bill Simmons?

  I guess kind of a sequel, but, uh, not considered one of his better books.

• 1:13:35Chris Ryan?

  A sequel to this?

• 1:13:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's called Brothers.

• 1:13:38Chris Ryan?

  Is it a prequel about Babe and Doc or what is it?

• 1:13:41Bill Simmons?

  It's, uh, I don't really know.

• 1:13:44Chris Ryan?

  Unproduced?

• 1:13:45Bill Simmons?

  I know that it's, uh, not, not well liked.

• 1:13:47Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:13:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Apex Mountain, Hoffman. I think it's Kramer versus Kramer.

• 1:13:52Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I think it's this year. I think it's Marathon in 70, it's 76. It's Marathon Man and All the President's Men in one year.

• 1:13:59Bill Simmons?

  I think it's Kramer versus Kramer.

• 1:14:01Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:14:02Bill Simmons?

  Will greet and disagree. Dentistry?

• 1:14:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. This in.

• 1:14:07Bill Simmons?

  Dentistry is a movie device.

• 1:14:08Chris Ryan?

  Little Shop of Horrors in this. Yeah.

• 1:14:11Bill Simmons?

  Scheider.

• 1:14:13Chris Ryan?

  It's around, I mean, I would say Jaws.

• 1:14:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Devane, it's definitely Bad News Bears and Breaking Training. Figuring out how to back Kelly League five times in three innings in the Astrodome. Still don't know how he did it. We're definitely doing that on the rewatchables at some point. Kelly League just keep, uh, Craig, you haven't seen that one, right?

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:14:31Bill Simmons?

  Oh man, you're gonna love it. A lot of lineup chicanery in the big game. Uh, torture scenes?

• 1:14:40Bill Simmons?

  I think this might be the most famous one.

• 1:14:43Chris Ryan?

  If it's not, it's up there.

• 1:14:46Chris Ryan?

  It's top three.

• 1:14:46Bill Simmons?

  What do you think? What's the most famous torture scene for your generation?

• 1:14:49Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. Well, I would say the first thing that comes to mind.

• 1:14:53Bill Simmons?

  This is the end?

• 1:14:55Speaker 04

  Casino Royale, like getting hit in the balls, the thing that swings under the chair.

• 1:14:58Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Casino Royale, yeah.

• 1:14:59Speaker 04

  That one's really bad.

• 1:15:00Bill Simmons?

  That's a really good one.

• 1:15:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:15:08Bill Simmons?

  Hope is bad.

• 1:15:10Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:10Bill Simmons?

  Reservoir Dogs.

• 1:15:11Chris Ryan?

  Reservoir Dogs of the year.

• 1:15:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we probably should have picked, maybe we should have said non-Tarantino torture scenes. Olivier, no way. Goldman's in the running because he has this and all the president's men in seventy-six. He wins the Oscar. He has a book thing. His price is now, he's the biggest price of any screenwriter.

• 1:15:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:29Bill Simmons?

  I think this might be it. Mark Keller?

• 1:15:34Chris Ryan?

  I think so. She's in Black Sunday, right?

• 1:15:37Bill Simmons?

  Black Sunday, Bobby Deerfield, some movie called Fedora, and then, uh, then that was it for her.

• 1:15:45Chris Ryan?

  She was a big star.

• 1:15:46Bill Simmons?

  Schlesinger?

• 1:15:48Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Midnight Cowboy, because it won the Oscar.

• 1:15:50Bill Simmons?

  I'm walking to here.

• 1:15:53Bill Simmons?

  Jewish revenge movies.

• 1:15:56Chris Ryan?

  Bastards.

• 1:15:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's bastards.

• 1:15:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:59Bill Simmons?

  It's close, though. Evil Nazi characters.

• 1:16:05Chris Ryan?

  It's this, it's the guy who melts in Raiders, and it's, it's Christoph Waltz.

• 1:16:11Bill Simmons?

  We also have the good Nazi in Victory. He just wanted some good soccer.

• 1:16:15Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 1:16:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just needed a break.

• 1:16:19Bill Simmons?

  Break from the horrible war. Just wanted a good game.

• 1:16:21Chris Ryan?

  We're not so different, you and I. Yeah.

• 1:16:23Bill Simmons?

  But you guys see the bicycle kick?

• 1:16:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:25Bill Simmons?

  I know we're all Nazis, but you have to appreciate the artistry of that. And then, uh, diamond district scenes in a movie. It's this or uncut gems.

• 1:16:34Speaker 04

  I think it's this.

• 1:16:35Bill Simmons?

  I think it's this.

• 1:16:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, this is the easiest Cruise or Hanks we've ever had.

• 1:16:41Chris Ryan?

  It's Cruise on a walk.

• 1:16:42Bill Simmons?

  This is such a Cruise part.

• 1:16:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Bill Simmons?

  Hanks maybe is the shider part, but maybe.

• 1:16:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:50Bill Simmons?

  But not, not as good as Cruise. Spielberg or Scorsese?

• 1:16:53Chris Ryan?

  This is a hard one because Scorsese is the consummate New York director, but

• 1:16:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:56Chris Ryan?

  nobody does Jewish revenge like Spielberg.

• 1:16:58Bill Simmons?

  Has to be Spielberg.

• 1:17:01Bill Simmons?

  Who does Philip Seymour Hoffman play?

• 1:17:03Chris Ryan?

  Janeway.

• 1:17:05Chris Ryan?

  The, the Vane character.

• 1:17:06Bill Simmons?

  I had that as well. Picking nits. Why did William Devane tell Babe the entire Zell story as he's just driving around so they'll end up at the same spot? That's a classic. The screenwriter wants

• 1:17:17Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I think it makes sense.

• 1:17:17Bill Simmons?

  information out there.

• 1:17:18Chris Ryan?

  It, it's both. It's an exposition dump that does make sense. He's basically doing, he, it's a, it's an extended version of like cutting into someone and then giving them clover.

• 1:17:29Bill Simmons?

  He's like luring him into a false sense of security.

• 1:17:31Chris Ryan?

  And now he's like, I'm bringing you in. I'm telling you what your brother did. Now you're going to tell me what he said to you.

• 1:17:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:38Chris Ryan?

  But, yeah.

• 1:17:39Bill Simmons?

  So I get, I go to Craig, I'm like, so we're teaming up with Portnoy.

• 1:17:45Chris Ryan?

  Anyways, he reached out to you?

• 1:17:52Bill Simmons?

  Why did Zell go to the diamond district first? To find out about the carrot prices, whatever he was doing before he went to the deposit.

• 1:17:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he was going to get like a, a, a market setting price on a carrot.

• 1:18:02Bill Simmons?

  He has no henchmen left at that point?

• 1:18:04Chris Ryan?

  Well,

• 1:18:05Bill Simmons?

  There aren't any.

• 1:18:06Chris Ryan?

  They've gone up to the lake house. They've gone up to the country.

• 1:18:09Bill Simmons?

  Nobody else? Nobody else on Nazi slack?

• 1:18:12Chris Ryan?

  When you're one of the most wanted.

• 1:18:13Bill Simmons?

  Yo, need somebody to go to the district.

• 1:18:18Chris Ryan?

  I think when you've got yourself on like every wanted list in the Western world, like your, your circle's pretty tight.

• 1:18:24Bill Simmons?

  Do you think he disguised himself enough? No.

• 1:18:27Chris Ryan?

  Like he just shaved the top of his head. He could have done a little more, I think.

• 1:18:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:30Chris Ryan?

  Maybe grow some facial hair, change the glasses, put a hat on.

• 1:18:33Bill Simmons?

  Maybe put on a, a, like a Thurman Munson jersey. Yeah, dress like a Yankee fan.

• 1:18:43Bill Simmons?

  That made fun of him. He's wearing a Yankee hat with a Mudson jersey and like, blue jeans.

• 1:18:48Chris Ryan?

  You can't fuck, get a load out of these fucking guys.

• 1:18:52Bill Simmons?

  We gotta sign Reggie Jackson. And then why do we have the drive tub state New York, which we already talked about? Any other nitpicks for you?

• 1:18:59Chris Ryan?

  You got them all, except for when Dustin Hoffman is running to the drugstore to meet Mark. Uh, in the background, uh, the marquee, movie marquee is playing Jaws. Which breaks the Roy Scheider fantasy reality.

• 1:19:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we cross the streams.

• 1:19:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Bill Simmons?

  I have one more. I didn't, I admittedly don't know quite enough about jogging. I've never been a jogger. Hoffman's jogging to me seems, um, a little lurchy. And I didn't feel like he had, I know they said he worked on it every day. He ran four miles.

• 1:19:30Chris Ryan?

  But that's crucial. He's running four miles, not a marathon. And I feel like he was a little bit like, like when the guy who passes him at the reservoir runs by him and then he's like speeding up. It's kind of like, all right, but you're running a marathon. You would have to be like, really pacing yourself here.

• 1:19:47Bill Simmons?

  Did you like his stride though?

• 1:19:49Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it's the seventies. I, I've crushed a lot of pre Fontaine tapes. I don't know what it really looks like.

• 1:19:56Bill Simmons?

  Somebody who's running that much, and this is like, my thing is I, I run every day.

• 1:20:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:01Bill Simmons?

  I just want them, I want more efficient. Those guy, those guys and ladies, they glide.

• 1:20:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. He's running like the way his character is.

• 1:20:10Bill Simmons?

  Like he was running like, I don't know. It just didn't totally work for me. Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast or untouchable. I know we said prestige TV. Can I?

• 1:20:23Bill Simmons?

  Test drive a Zell prequel?

• 1:20:25Chris Ryan?

  You're gonna test drive by casting a fishing hook?

• 1:20:28Bill Simmons?

  Just a Zell prequel?

• 1:20:29Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh. That'll have a lot of laughs in that one.

• 1:20:33Bill Simmons?

  No, but like him trying to get to South America.

• 1:20:35Chris Ryan?

  Oh, getting out of Germany.

• 1:20:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:38Chris Ryan?

  So.

• 1:20:39Bill Simmons?

  Late forties?

• 1:20:40Chris Ryan?

  Zell is the protagonist or are we with someone hunting Zell who's trying to catch him?

• 1:20:44Bill Simmons?

  No, we're hunting Zell.

• 1:20:45Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:20:46Bill Simmons?

  We're trying to find Zell before he gets to Argentina.

• 1:20:48Chris Ryan?

  Yes, I think that's.

• 1:20:49Bill Simmons?

  You're not not watching that.

• 1:20:50Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:20:51Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Is this movie better than Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Barney Cousins, Tony Romo, Harley Mays, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley in The Firm?

• 1:21:05Chris Ryan?

  I think it's gotta be. I said, is it safe? The English motherfucker, do you speak it? Say what again? I dare you. I double dare you. Now, is it safe?

• 1:21:21Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one.

• 1:21:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I think, I think it would be too problematic for, for Wayne to chime in here.

• 1:21:29Chris Ryan?

  Goddamn, Christian?

• 1:21:32Bill Simmons?

  It's so funny you did Sam, because I was gonna do Stephen A.

• 1:21:38Bill Simmons?

  Christian Zell's asking me if it's safe? He's asking me? Because I'm gonna be here a long time after Christian Zell. A long time.

• 1:21:47Chris Ryan?

  Is Christian Zell an underachiever?

• 1:21:50Bill Simmons?

  Christian Zell, maybe you should worry about getting those diamonds for asking me if it's safe, okay?

• 1:21:56Chris Ryan?

  But then we find out Stephen A was playing Solitaire while Marathon Man was on.

• 1:22:03Chris Ryan?

  I can't wait till the, the expose about you comes out, where it's just like, you're supposed to be watching, you know, having good weight, but you're actually playing. You're doing fantasy league stuff the entire time.

• 1:22:14Bill Simmons?

  I don't, so do we know when he was what, playing Solitaire?

• 1:22:17Chris Ryan?

  Apparently it was during a meaningful moment in the game. I don't, I, but I have not been tracking this story very closely, I'm sorry.

• 1:22:23Bill Simmons?

  I'm not there to judge, I'm there studying the OKC body language, like I'm, like a detective looking at a police lineup. I'm just watching everybody, huh, Chet looks unhappy, what's going on there?

• 1:22:35Bill Simmons?

  Just want to ask her, who gets it?

• 1:22:37Chris Ryan?

  Conrad Hall.

• 1:22:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:22:39Chris Ryan?

  So, uh, this is a cinematographer. Love this guy, shot Butch Cassidy, Cool Hand Luke, In Cold Blood, Marathon Man, Road to Perdition, and American Beauty. So his career stretches across from the 50s to the 90s. And I just think that this is one of the most extraordinary portraits of New York City. I mean, it's so incredible what he does.

• 1:23:01Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna go with Olivier, but you made a good case. Probably an answerable questions.

• 1:23:08Bill Simmons?

  What kind of dental work was Babe looking at next six months there? And what's the conversation like with the dentist?

• 1:23:15Chris Ryan?

  Well, first of all, Babe's gotta go under general and ask you to get dental work done. Like, there's no way he's conscious at all for it, right?

• 1:23:22Bill Simmons?

  I mean, he has an exposed nerve for the last hour of this movie.

• 1:23:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:25Bill Simmons?

  Gotta get that fixed, I would say, pretty soon. The movie never really goes into how he eats with the fucked up tooth.

• 1:23:32Chris Ryan?

  This would be a good sequel. Babe's Dental Dream.

• 1:23:37Bill Simmons?

  What is he? He go in, like, the dental assistant comes in, is like, hey, babe, how are you? I'm Jenny.

• 1:23:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:42Bill Simmons?

  Hey, how are you? So what are you in for today? So, there's this evil Nazi.

• 1:23:48Chris Ryan?

  Have you heard of him, the Vice angle?

• 1:23:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Zell.

• 1:23:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:51Bill Simmons?

  Uh, you know, the angel of death? And, uh, he was trying to get me to tell him information and he drilled a hole. Now I have an exposed nerve in my tooth. There's tooth right here, that one that's black?

• 1:24:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so I was gonna try to get that fixed.

• 1:24:05Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, probably a fake tooth?

• 1:24:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:07Bill Simmons?

  Probably pulling that.

• 1:24:07Chris Ryan?

  I would need heroin the next time I went to a dentist's office.

• 1:24:14Bill Simmons?

  Uh, are there any unanswerables? Anything?

• 1:24:17Chris Ryan?

  I, the only one I had was, did this movie invent the trend of British actors playing supervillains in Hollywood movies?

• 1:24:23Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:24:24Chris Ryan?

  So Hopkins, director, Alan Rickman in Die Hard. Like, is there? I, I was, I, I could probably answer this question, but I didn't see any earlier evidence of it.

• 1:24:35Bill Simmons?

  It's a good one. I was trying to think unanswerable of.

• 1:24:41Bill Simmons?

  Is Babe's apartment ever rented again? There's a chalk outline in the living room. The bathroom's been demolished.

• 1:24:49Chris Ryan?

  Seventies New York.

• 1:24:50Bill Simmons?

  It smells like a hockey locker room.

• 1:24:51Chris Ryan?

  I, when I first moved to New York in 2000, there was a hole in my floor that the landlord was like, I'll get to that. And it was like, as big as this table. He was like, you're just gonna wanna walk around that? Yeah.

• 1:25:01Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 1:25:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:02Bill Simmons?

  Like, how deep was the hole?

• 1:25:04Chris Ryan?

  Well, it was, uh, it was deep. And it was, it was not, like, it was, there was something underneath where it wasn't going down into the next apartment. But he was like, I'm gonna fix that before you move in, and didn't.

• 1:25:16Bill Simmons?

  Jesus.

• 1:25:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And then it's too late. I was living there.

• 1:25:19Bill Simmons?

  This would be a good podcast. My first New York City apartment.

• 1:25:22Chris Ryan?

  I got a great one. Yeah.

• 1:25:23Bill Simmons?

  Do you?

• 1:25:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. My, my New York apartment was fucking terrible. We, uh, you couldn't even get to the toilet without like, you had to like turn sideways and shimmy past the shower because the walkway was so narrow.

• 1:25:33Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:34Chris Ryan?

  It was like one foot wide. And then our whole ceiling was completely sunken in. There was like all this leakage and the ceiling looked like a concave.

• 1:25:41Bill Simmons?

  Where was it?

• 1:25:42Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I was in Prospect, Crown Heights-ish.

• 1:25:45Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:25:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. New York's hilarious because everybody who lives there, they're always like, yeah, the first apartment I lived in, we just had an open sewage pipe that just spewed sewage. It was great. So we lived there for a year.

• 1:25:58Chris Ryan?

  I met my wife there.

• 1:26:00Bill Simmons?

  That's great. He's kind of worked around it. What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? I'm gonna go with the rarely seen not.

• 1:26:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Bill Simmons?

  The drill.

• 1:26:10Chris Ryan?

  I mean.

• 1:26:11Bill Simmons?

  From Zell. That's just a weird thing to have. You'd be like, hey, come, come into my library. I have the drill from Marathon Man.

• 1:26:16Chris Ryan?

  I guess it would be pretty antisocial, but I, the one piece of memorabilia I did want was the wrist knife.

• 1:26:22Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's a really good one.

• 1:26:24Chris Ryan?

  Pretty cool party trick. Uh, but I would not want any of Babe's running clothes.

• 1:26:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:29Chris Ryan?

  I'm good. Is there like historical accuracy to that? His like concealed knife thing? Or is that kind of a, just like a movie trope? I feel like the, the 60s and 70s were full of knives in cool places.

• 1:26:41Bill Simmons?

  Okay. So it was, it was a big metal bracelet.

• 1:26:44Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:45Bill Simmons?

  That was immediately conspicuous. You'd be like, what the fuck is that? And then he had some button that just a knife shot out of it?

• 1:26:52Chris Ryan?

  It's also like in the, it's so incredible in the 70s where they're like, thank you for flying from, uh, Paraguay to America or Uruguay to America.

• 1:27:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:01Chris Ryan?

  Get your own bags. We're good.

• 1:27:03Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:27:03Chris Ryan?

  Strike.

• 1:27:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true.

• 1:27:05Chris Ryan?

  And your, your Nazi henchmen can meet you at the gate.

• 1:27:08Bill Simmons?

  That would have been an, that would have been good for Unanswerable Questions. Was there actually a baggage strike?

• 1:27:13Chris Ryan?

  Well, also would TSA have caught Dell?

• 1:27:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true.

• 1:27:18Bill Simmons?

  Coach Finstock or best life lesson?

• 1:27:24Bill Simmons?

  Don't trust the Nazis?

• 1:27:25Chris Ryan?

  Uh, at the end of, if you kill the Nazi dentist, take his diamonds, you earned it.

• 1:27:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, take the diamonds. It's okay. Put them in your pocket. Best double feature choice.

• 1:27:39Bill Simmons?

  You go Boys from Brazil and go Olivier on the other side.

• 1:27:42Chris Ryan?

  I like that.

• 1:27:42Bill Simmons?

  Uncut Gems, if you want to go Diamond District again.

• 1:27:45Chris Ryan?

  Munich.

• 1:27:46Bill Simmons?

  Munich's a good one.

• 1:27:48Chris Ryan?

  Interesting, interesting element to this.

• 1:27:49Bill Simmons?

  Was that, would that be a weird rewatchables choice?

• 1:27:52Chris Ryan?

  I, Munich and Lincoln are the two late period Spielberg ones that I was like, I really want to do these.

• 1:27:58Bill Simmons?

  I didn't like Munich at all when I first saw it. And about 10 years ago, it kind of, kind of broke me.

• 1:28:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:05Bill Simmons?

  Now I'm like Munich.

• 1:28:07Chris Ryan?

  Do you ever watch Lincoln?

• 1:28:09Bill Simmons?

  You really want to, you want to do this. Do you want me to do this this summer?

• 1:28:12Chris Ryan?

  Daniel Day, yeah.

• 1:28:15Bill Simmons?

  If the Celtics don't trade Jaylen Brown before July 1st, I'll watch, I'll watch Lincoln again. Really worried they're going to trade Jaylen Brown. I love that guy.

• 1:28:24Chris Ryan?

  You're in such a tender place.

• 1:28:26Bill Simmons?

  I really am. I don't want them to trade anybody.

• 1:28:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:29Bill Simmons?

  Why can't they make the Eastern Finals next year without Tatum?

• 1:28:32Chris Ryan?

  It's entirely possible.

• 1:28:33Bill Simmons?

  Indiana made the Eastern Finals. They have Myles Turner's two for 10 every game and they have Nemhard playing 40 minutes a game. And Obi Toppin plays real minutes.

• 1:28:42Chris Ryan?

  Trust me, I think about this every time I watch them, but I'm just like, guess, guess the process was for nothing.

• 1:28:46Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:28:46Chris Ryan?

  Turns out we would have been fine just with like.

• 1:28:48Bill Simmons?

  Shit, you might, you might be able to take Khan Canipple with the third pick.

• 1:28:52Chris Ryan?

  You're not taking Khan Canipple with the third pick, relax.

• 1:28:54Bill Simmons?

  I do like Khan Canipple.

• 1:28:55Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:28:56Bill Simmons?

  Who do you want with third pick?

• 1:28:57Chris Ryan?

  I, I think you have to take Trey or Ace at third, but I like Edgecomb the most. I just wish we could get down to like five or six and take Edgecomb and get something else.

• 1:29:05Bill Simmons?

  We'll talk about it after the pod. Who won the movie?

• 1:29:10Bill Simmons?

  Really tough one. I, for me, it's Olivier. Because.

• 1:29:15Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna go with Olivier as well.

• 1:29:17Bill Simmons?

  Because I don't have the entry to modern movies that he made because he had, you know, he basically.

• 1:29:24Chris Ryan?

  And we don't really talk about it. It's an incredible baton pass of like an older style of acting to a new style of acting.

• 1:29:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:30Chris Ryan?

  So I think that that's.

• 1:29:32Bill Simmons?

  I think it's so cool that he's in this and just in general, when somebody parachutes into a movie, that's a super crazy famous act, respected actor.

• 1:29:40Chris Ryan?

  And does something like this. It's a brave, it's a brave performance.

• 1:29:43Bill Simmons?

  All right, Craig, what do you got?

• 1:29:45Speaker 04

  I thoroughly enjoyed it. Just a wonderful, incredibly suspense thriller, old school thriller.

• 1:29:54Speaker 04

  It's interesting that the number one takeaway I had was that I actually kind of didn't know what was going on in this movie for like the first whole hour.

• 1:30:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:02Speaker 04

  Like, I was just kind of genuinely confused.

• 1:30:04Chris Ryan?

  That's in the book itself, you don't know Doc and Sylla, which is his code name, are the same person until Doc dies.

• 1:30:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, I just think that's a symptom of like today. They would never do this today. Doc would have probably died 20 minutes into the movie. He dies, I think, 60 minutes in this movie.

• 1:30:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:21Speaker 04

  And then you get the, the William Devane monologue like 70 minutes in. And that's when you start to like, at least for me, figure out what's going on, especially me being, you know, so far removed from this era, not really knowing a ton about it. I was, it was, it was just a very unique feeling that you don't have anymore.

• 1:30:40Chris Ryan?

  There are little clues that you get when you watch it over and over again.

• 1:30:44Speaker 04

  Sure, I'm sure going back now, but in the moment, I'm just trying to like take in each scene.

• 1:30:47Chris Ryan?

  When Zell's brother leaves the bank the first time.

• 1:30:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:30:50Chris Ryan?

  And he passes off the little case, the Band-Aid case, Doc has that in Paris.

• 1:30:56Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:30:56Chris Ryan?

  So like you kind of like start to get clued into kind of sort of what he's doing. But yeah, you're right. Like you really don't know what's going on until Devane.

• 1:31:03Speaker 04

  And I kind of enjoyed that. I mean, again, it wouldn't work now because if this run Netflix, people would turn it off because they'd be confused. But if you know you have to like, having to watch this movie. And knowing like I will finish this no matter what, it's, it's, the payoff is just so much better. Having to build up this like, you know, this, this, uh, all these things and figure out, figuring out how to put them together. And then, oh, an hour in, you're like, oh, wait, okay, I'm starting to piece this together and see where things are going. It's much more fulfilling.

• 1:31:29Chris Ryan?

  It's also pretty cool. Cause like, you know, you're going along, watching Zell come back to New York, but you're kind of like, I don't really like, what's this guy capable of?

• 1:31:37Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 1:31:37Chris Ryan?

  And then when he gets, gets in that room, you're like, oh my God.

• 1:31:40Speaker 04

  And I, yeah, I think the diamond district scene is by far my favorite scene. I think that was like incredibly, uh, it, it just landed so hard.

• 1:31:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. It's so disturbing.

• 1:31:51Speaker 04

  I also like that there's another issue with movies now. I've never seen the amateur, but I, if I had to guess, I bet you the villain in the amateur is some like rogue, foreign CIA operative. And it's, I always like when movies have real villains from real life that you can actually get behind. And it's not like the faceless top ten Maverick shit.

• 1:32:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:09Bill Simmons?

  It's a good call. Um, I think he made a key Netflix point. The movie's so complicated. The first hour, people just flip right over to Love Island.

• 1:32:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:19Bill Simmons?

  They're like, I'm out.

• 1:32:20Speaker 04

  No shot.

• 1:32:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:21Chris Ryan?

  You have to almost have a captive audience.

• 1:32:23Bill Simmons?

  Love Island, they switch partners. Got to see what happened there. I'm glad you liked it, Craig.

• 1:32:28Speaker 04

  That was great.

• 1:32:29Bill Simmons?

  It was written by our guy Goldman. Uh, all right. That's it for New York City Month. So.

• 1:32:33Chris Ryan?

  It is?

• 1:32:34Speaker 04

  I thought we have more.

• 1:32:35Bill Simmons?

  No, for, we have two more left.

• 1:32:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:36Bill Simmons?

  Um, we think.

• 1:32:39Speaker 04

  That's it for New York.

• 1:32:41Bill Simmons?

  This installment of New York City Month. We, we think there's a chance next week is the 400th rewatchables episode.

• 1:32:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49Bill Simmons?

  Not positive. Um, there's, it gets weird because we had, we did like six testers on the BS feed. We did six sports movie kind of Hall of Famers that were little test cases for rewatchables. But then when we launched the feed, we put those on the rewatchables feed. But I think if we're actually talking about true rewatchables, and you include the first heat too, which we didn't do, I think this might be the 400th official rewatchables episode next week.

• 1:33:19Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:33:20Bill Simmons?

  But we're not celebrating that like an anniversary. Cause when we get to 400 movies, this was 387.

• 1:33:25Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:33:25Bill Simmons?

  Including Miami Vice called Run's Revenge, which was not a, which is a TV movie, but we're still counting it. Um, so 400, 400 movies will be the one that I think we care about.

• 1:33:36Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:33:36Bill Simmons?

  Right?

• 1:33:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Let me know.

• 1:33:38Bill Simmons?

  You like me hit those?

• 1:33:42Bill Simmons?

  And we're doing, you, me and Van are doing Miami Vice Live this summer.

• 1:33:45Chris Ryan?

  Please.

• 1:33:47Bill Simmons?

  I've just, it just gets better every year.

• 1:33:50Chris Ryan?

  I can't, I can't re-watch it too many times before that, so just let me know. Cause otherwise I'll just start watching Miami Vice.

• 1:33:55Bill Simmons?

  You'll just be like in a.

• 1:33:57Chris Ryan?

  Andy will be like, what did you watch this week? I'll be like Miami Vice.

• 1:34:03Bill Simmons?

  I showed, I showed, I told you, I showed Ben the entire stretch from when, uh, he takes, what's her name, what's the actress's name?

• 1:34:11Chris Ryan?

  Gong Li.

• 1:34:12Bill Simmons?

  Gong Li. When he, when he's like, do you want to get a drink? And she's like, I know a place. Do you like mojitos? I'm a fiend for mojitos. Or what do you like to drink? I'm a fiend for mojitos. And then they're just on a speedboat going to Cuba. So I showed Ben and Ben was just like, what? How far is Cuba from Miami? He was just so confused. It's amazing. All right, at some point, yeah, that'll be a, that'll be an LA live show.

• 1:34:39Chris Ryan?

  Not a Miami live show.

• 1:34:40Bill Simmons?

  We have to go to Seattle at some point soon. Cause there's a lot of Sonic stuff going on with them and they want us to come.

• 1:34:47Bill Simmons?

  They're trying to bring back the Sonics and get the expansion team. They want, Seattle loves us. We have to go do a live re-watchable in Seattle. Yeah. And then Indianapolis, which I had a great time, uh, clamoring for re-watchables at some point.

• 1:35:00Chris Ryan?

  We should have saved Breaking Away for them.

• 1:35:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we should have.

• 1:35:04Speaker 04

  Did you go to San Elmo?

• 1:35:06Bill Simmons?

  I did.

• 1:35:08Speaker 04

  How did you, uh, did you enjoy the cock, shrimp cocktail? Are you a shrimp cocktail fan?

• 1:35:12Bill Simmons?

  It's fine.

• 1:35:15Speaker 04

  Well, we're not going to Indianapolis.

• 1:35:17Bill Simmons?

  No, they know. They, it's, it's basically the cocktail sauce is the draw.

• 1:35:21Speaker 04

  Well, it's the horseradish. It's like the mound of horseradish.

• 1:35:23Bill Simmons?

  A ton of horseradish in it. But it's like, you know, you could do that right here.

• 1:35:28Chris Ryan?

  I've never been to Indianapolis.

• 1:35:29Bill Simmons?

  It's fine. I love Indianapolis, so. All right, next week, the 400th episode, but we're not going to celebrate New York City Month. Are you on next week? Yeah, you're on next week.

• 1:35:39Speaker 04

  Are you going to announce the movie or no?

• 1:35:41Chris Ryan?

  Tell them.

• 1:35:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah?

• 1:35:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they've already seen it anyway.

• 1:35:44Speaker 04

  If people made it 97 minutes in, they deserve it.

• 1:35:47Bill Simmons?

  All right, it's, it's Die Hard with a Vengeance.

• 1:35:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, DH with a V.

• 1:35:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's next week. DHV. Thanks, guys. Thanks to Craig and thanks to Jack.

• 1:35:56Speaker 04

  And Ronic.

• 1:35:56Bill Simmons?

  And Ronic.

• 1:36:09Speaker 07

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