The 10 Best Movies at Sundance, and the Astonishing ‘Nickel Boys’

Sean and Amanda discuss the evolving story of Karla Sofía Gascón’s old tweets (1:00) and what it might portend for the ‘Emilia Pérez’ Oscar hopes. Then, they discuss an underwhelming Sundance 2025 (12:00) before diving deep into one of the best movies of 2024, ‘Nickel Boys’ (44:00), and discussing the excellent Michael Keaton performance at the center of ‘Goodrich’ (1:01:00). Finally, Sean is joined by director Tim Fehlbaum to discuss ‘September 5,’ how he became interested in the story that it depicts, casting the film, and the ascendant run it’s been on this awards season (1:15:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Tim Fehlbaum Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producer: Jack Sanders 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

  Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, except we did 120 songs, and now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aughts, 2000 to 2009, The Strokes, Rihanna, J Lo, Kanye, sure. And now the show is called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s. Wow, that's too long a title for me to say anything else right now. Just trust me, that's 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s, preferably on Spotify.

• 0:37Speaker 01

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• 1:12Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Sundance and many other movies. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Tim Fehlbaum, the co-writer and director of the Oscar-nominated September 5, a docu-drama about the hostage crisis at the Munich Olympics. Fehlbaum's film is a taut and well-crafted procedural about the ABC Sports producers' thrust into covering the event on live television. Fehlbaum shared how and why he made this movie, which is now available on VOD for those of you who missed it at home. So, check out the movie, listen to the interview. But first, Amanda, we have a lot to talk about today. We have Sundance, your trip to and my viewings of the films at Sundance. We have Nickel Boys.

• 1:55Sean Fennessey?

  We'll spend some time breaking down one of the Best Picture nominees and one of the best movies of the year, 2024, that is. We'll talk about Goodrich. Yup. Which comes to us from Hallie Myers Shire. Daughter of? Daughter of Nancy Meyers and Charles Shire, the late, great Charles Shire. And what else are we gonna do? You wanna talk about September 5 at all? Anything to say about it?

• 2:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, sure, yeah, I liked it.

• 2:17Sean Fennessey?

  We can dig into it for a few minutes. Couple of things to get off our chest first. Programming reminder. For those of you not on social media, we share the schedule for the upcoming episodes this month. One of the things we'll be doing this month is a mailbag. We've done many mailbags over the years. They're often fun. We often source questions for the mailbags from X.com, formerly known as Twitter.com. We're not doing that anymore. No more Twitter questions.

• 2:44Amanda Dobbins?

  That's a no.

• 2:45Sean Fennessey?

  What we're gonna do is primarily use an email address. Bob, what is the email address that people should use?

• 2:51Speaker 04

  The email address is [email protected]. [email protected].

• 2:59Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna say it one more time because people complain about us saying titles too bad.

• 3:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Say it slow, you wanna spell it out? Start again.

• 3:07Speaker 04

  B I G P I C [email protected].

• 3:11Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so my hope here is that this will elicit even better questions than we've had in the past. We do get great questions, but on Twitter, there's a kind of flip quality. I want the sickos, the psychos to come out. Don't share your deep thoughts. Bob doesn't want to read your deep thoughts, but a more-

• 3:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I do. So a couple of notes. I asked for the password and it has not been shared with me. [email protected].

• 3:35Sean Fennessey?

  I'll give you the password.

• 3:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, great. So you never know when I'll be logging on and reading and maybe even chaotically responding. Maybe that's, you know, one of the things we can offer here. Can we just, please send us your questions. You're also, we're gonna solicit comments on Instagram and TikTok. I won't be looking at the comments on TikTok because I don't have TikTok. But, and again, because we're 40 years old, but that's okay. It's, we're doing our best. You can leave your comments there, you can email us. Can you let the people know? Why the programming changed? Can we pull, you know, the curtain back a little?

• 4:10Sean Fennessey?

  Of course, yeah, I'd be happy to.

• 4:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And I, because I want some accountability and also maybe we can help you in real time.

• 4:17Sean Fennessey?

  Well, um, last month, in January, we were going to do the Paul Newman Hall of Fame. And then our schedule changed in part because of the fires and we had to move some episodes around. And so we moved that episode out of January. I had intended to do it in February, but then I was confronted with 25 new Sundance films to watch this past weekend. And I just have not had time to do what I feel is the appropriate amount of research for the Paul Newman Hall of Fame. For me?

• 4:46Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let me read the text message that I received at 9:22 PM on a Friday night.

• 4:52Sean Fennessey?

  Authorizing you to communicate this. We're going Front Street with text messages now. Damn, I didn't know this was fair. I'm gonna clock this for all future text messages from you, just so you know.

• 5:02Amanda Dobbins?

  That's great. Everything that I put out into the world is, you know, made for archiving. I'm proud of my content. Okay, Friday, 9:22 PM. I made the mistake of acquiring all the pre-Hustler, that's the Paul Newman film, movies he made. And there's a lot of them and I don't know when I'll watch them. This is definitively a me problem. So what we have here is just the Blu-ray volume is overtaking you.

• 5:28Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it wouldn't have mattered. I would have tried to watch all these movies whether I had them on Blu-ray.

• 5:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna try to watch a lot of them too.

• 5:33Sean Fennessey?

  But there's, I mean, he, Newman, who's the greatest.

• 5:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:38Sean Fennessey?

  Made like 15 movies.

• 5:39Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I know.

• 5:40Sean Fennessey?

  Before he really broke out as a megastar in Hollywood, or at least like figured out what his persona was.

• 5:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 5:45Sean Fennessey?

  And so I thought it would be helpful, because a lot of them I haven't seen, to figure out like how he misstepped or what kind of an actor he tried to be.

• 5:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 5:53Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe I don't have to watch all of them, but I would love to get into like at least five or six.

• 5:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, and how much of that was his decision-making and how much of that was him in the 50's studio system is also, you know?

• 6:04Sean Fennessey?

  I think the latter is a huge part of it.

• 6:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:05Sean Fennessey?

  Talk about it at length on the episode, but you know.

• 6:08Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, I get it.

• 6:09Sean Fennessey?

  I want in good faith, cover those movies.

• 6:11Amanda Dobbins?

  So do I. I just, you know, I was just imagining you like drowning in your, in your stacks of DVDs on Friday night.

• 6:17Sean Fennessey?

  My Newman stack is large.

• 6:19Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I know.

• 6:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's probably gonna end up being the largest stack that I've ever done.

• 6:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Sean Fennessey?

  So, and not everything is even available. Anyway, we'll talk about it then.

• 6:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 6:25Sean Fennessey?

  So we're not doing Newman this month. Hopefully we'll do it in April. I think March is a little tricky for a variety of reasons. The Oscars.

• 6:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:33Sean Fennessey?

  I'm traveling.

• 6:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 6:35Sean Fennessey?

  Bong Joon Ho. There's a couple of things going on that are getting in the way.

• 6:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Twenty-five for twenty-five.

• 6:38Sean Fennessey?

  Twenty-five for twenty-five. We're starting in March.

• 6:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:41Sean Fennessey?

  There's a lot of stuff going on then, but hopefully in April we'll get into Newman. We are still gonna do Robert Altman at a hundred this year. I think we'll do it in the fall.

• 6:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 6:47Sean Fennessey?

  To give a little bit of distance. Those will be the two big projects in theory this year. We'll do some book clubs. Like, we got, there's plenty of stuff coming, but I just don't have time to do Paul Newman.

• 6:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:55Sean Fennessey?

  In part because I was doing the Sundance thing, but before we get to Sundance.

• 6:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:59Sean Fennessey?

  You know, the Carla Sofia Gascón social media drama had like just started when we recorded Last Thursday with Joanna. And we knew that it wasn't good.

• 7:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 7:10Sean Fennessey?

  And we knew that there was some really hateful and weird stuff in her previous tweets.

• 7:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but we did not read through all of it.

• 7:16Sean Fennessey?

  Not, I don't think all of them had been fully unearthed by the time we even recorded.

• 7:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right, yes. I mean, that's true. Though, again, I, I do to some extent. I mean, like, everything that has then been circulated is just, like, vile and thoughtless and baffling. And, no thank you.

• 7:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Real moron mode for her frequently on social media.

• 7:40Amanda Dobbins?

  But I just, once again, we were saying unearthed, as if someone was like hacking for hours on end. These were just publicly available, you know?

• 7:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 7:52Amanda Dobbins?

  And this is a movie that was acquired by Netflix in May. After Cannes.

• 8:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 8:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And Netflix has been running this campaign now for, let's just count, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December, January. We're in February now. We made it. Nine months. I, I had a baby at that time, and no one could just like go think to hit it. No one checked? I, I have some questions.

• 8:18Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know what to tell you. I, it's obviously a massive fumble. When we recorded on Thursday, we thought it would affect the race. We weren't sure how much it would affect the race because it was happening in real time. Over the weekend, one. Gascon, I think, made it significantly worse.

• 8:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 8:35Sean Fennessey?

  She went on 60 Minutes and gave an interview in which she seemed defensive. She's posting again on social media about this.

• 8:41Amanda Dobbins?

  A lot of very long. And here's another thing is that I am not a Spanish speaker, you know? And so all of this is like being translated and so we aren't the authorities on what's being said, but none of it is good.

• 8:55Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Most of it is very bad and she is seemingly not helping herself.

• 9:01Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it feels like an interesting controversy as a follow-up to the brutalist AI controversy, where we're sort of like, this is a bad movie for this sort of thing to be happening to. This is obviously a bad controversy for a movie like Amelia Perez, which I think had been vaunted as this progressive ideal of acceptance and

• 9:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 9:19Sean Fennessey?

  multi-generational, multicultural, like, thinking about a world beyond our own world and the way that other people experience this world. You know, those themes were kind of like baked into the campaign as well as the movie. And so now it feels like they have been really upended and maybe completely rejected. And, okay, I'll just ask you directly. Do you feel like this movie's entire campaign, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldana, all of these things are imperiled by the comments and the controversy?

• 9:47Amanda Dobbins?

  So Zoe Saldana did win an award this weekend, London Critics Circle, is that?

• 9:51Sean Fennessey?

  Which I think was predetermined sometime.

• 9:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Which was predetermined, but in her acceptance speech, she did say, I wasn't expecting this, especially right now.

• 10:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I-

• 10:02Sean Fennessey?

  That's me every time you read one of my texts on Mike.

• 10:04Amanda Dobbins?

  So I just want to say, and also, I think she gave a quote that was like, it just, it makes me so sad because I don't support it, which is just like a perfectly ambiguous. I think she'll be okay. I think that she is-

• 10:19Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't, I have been plotting.

• 10:20Amanda Dobbins?

  She is a star and in like, in her own amazing bubble and is both like- Really aware and also just kind of cutting her own ties.

• 10:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 10:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And people like her so much that I think it's okay. I think it's sort of predetermined.

• 10:34Sean Fennessey?

  I think so, but I'm not 100% sure.

• 10:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, who else is in the running?

• 10:39Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I, I don't know if there is a strong enough competitor.

• 10:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 10:44Sean Fennessey?

  It's tricky because on the one hand, Zoe Saldana is very Hollywood. It has worked with everyone and has been hugely successful.

• 10:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:50Sean Fennessey?

  And one of the reasons why she's being celebrated is, you know, she took a chance on this movie. She works mostly in, on studio movies.

• 10:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 10:55Sean Fennessey?

  This was an independent movie. It wasn't a Netflix movie when she signed on, you know, not in English. All the things that she did, obviously learn, you know, singing, dancing, all the things that she accomplishes in the movie.

• 11:04Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, she didn't learn to sing and dance.

• 11:06Sean Fennessey?

  She didn't learn.

• 11:06Amanda Dobbins?

  She has known for many times.

• 11:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 11:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, for many years, please.

• 11:09Sean Fennessey?

  She learned the choreography in the songs and all those other things, but she's, she's really great in the movie. I keep saying that over and over again. People are like, what do you think of Millie Press? I'm like, well, I still really liked what Zoe Saldana did. I think the movie is really undercooked and overthought in a lot of ways, but I do think sometimes when something like this happens, people really back away from the project in general.

• 11:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I think after, if we did the power rankings today instead of, you know, after like the first roundup on Thursday, we would.

• 11:36Sean Fennessey?

  We would push it lower.

• 11:37Amanda Dobbins?

  What, no, or we would spend way less time deliberating. It would be brutalist at one. And may, and maybe it would be below a Nora because if someone is voting for this as a repudiation of like the world at large or as like a statement of their values, then a scandal like this probably also affects their understanding of what this movie represents.

• 11:59Sean Fennessey?

  Agreed.

• 11:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:00Sean Fennessey?

  Um, we'll see. There's still roughly two weeks of voting. I think February 18th is the cutoff. So we've still got plenty of time here to talk about these issues. Who, what, who else will get entrenched in a campaign destroying scandal? We shall see, you know? Can anyone come for a complete unknown at this point? It's possible. I wouldn't rule it out.

• 12:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean. I I hope that we don't get like the leaks of the the early vocal recordings, but you see at this point that you like anything can happen.

• 12:27Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I hope we don't learn that AI modified.

• 12:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I hope we don't either, but you know.

• 12:31Sean Fennessey?

  Sundance 2025.

• 12:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 12:33Sean Fennessey?

  Some broad strokes before we talk about our experiences from afar. I wasn't there, you were there for a brief period of time. Seemed like it was a challenging year at the festival. A lot of the energy coming out of the festival was a little miserablist.

• 12:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 12:45Sean Fennessey?

  To put a to put an adjective on it. You know, modestly received slate, sounded like slightly slimmer attendance. The future of the festival's location is in doubt because it in theory next year will be the last year in Park City unless they decide to stay in Park City because there's been some concerns about the real estate opportunities. Genuine anxiety about the future of independent cinema, both in America and abroad, which is interesting because of how many independent films are nominated at the Academy Awards this year and how vital they seem at least to that race, obviously coming off of strikes that have.

• 13:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say, I know that we keep saying that and about like everything. Any anytime it's a disappointing weekend at the box office or anytime we're like, well, not the strongest Oscar year or yada, yada, we're like, well, it was because of the strikes. But I do think that this moment in time right now, especially for Sundance, is where just timing wise, the effects of the strikes and what could get made and what could get finished is really gonna be felt. So I like I I do think it's really slim pickings.

• 13:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think I think you're right, and it is a factor. The one thing that seems to be impacting this, and as of now, as far as I can tell, there have only been three sales through Monday morning. And those movies are Together, which is the Dave Franco and Alison Brie thriller that sold that was in the midnight section that sold to Neon. There's Train Dreams, which I'll talk about shortly, which sold to Netflix, and there's Sorry Baby, which sold to A24.

• 14:14Sean Fennessey?

  In 20 When did I write this piece? In April of 2017, I wrote a long feature at the site. You might have edited this feature, I don't remember, called "The End of Independent Film as We Know It."

• 14:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Probably, yeah.

• 14:27Sean Fennessey?

  The focus of that story was Netflix and Amazon getting very aggressive at Sundance and upending the market and redefining the, kind of the purpose of the market at Sundance. And all festivals, and obviously the way that Netflix has kind of barreled through award season is a part of this story. But one of the things that I couldn't get out of my head when I was writing that story and reporting it, and I talked to like a dozen filmmakers, executives, was what happens when Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and all these other companies decide they don't need these movies anymore?

• 15:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 15:01Sean Fennessey?

  Whether they get their own production up and going, whether they decide that the taste of the culture has shifted, or that, you know, the kinds of stories that are told and often showcased at these film festivals is no longer on their programming strategy sheet.

• 15:15Amanda Dobbins?

  They have different goals.

• 15:16Sean Fennessey?

  And they have different goals now.

• 15:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:18Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, underrepresented here, studio-wise, no Amazon, no Hulu, no Paramount. I don't think any of those studios even screened any movies. Maybe there was one Republic Paramount movie that I saw, but like, they didn't bring their stuff to the festival and they didn't buy anything. Now, maybe they still will, but a lot of these companies kind of like left Sundance in the dust, and they've killed a lot of the smaller distributors in the meantime. Think of all of the smaller indie distributors that have died over the last 20 years. So now you've got this, you know, genuinely perilous moment in indie movies. And I do think, I'm not taking away from the point you're making. A lot of it is like, a lot of movies couldn't get made because people couldn't work. But during the strikes, if you were an independent project, you were more likely to work than if you worked on a Sony movie.

• 16:02Sean Fennessey?

  So, I don't know, I don't know.

• 16:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. No, I mean, I think it's not good. And I think the broader point that Netflix, you know, comes into every single market, blows up the price structure, and then moves on to, you know, wrestling or whatever. No offense, I know you love it, but, um...

• 16:20Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not offended.

• 16:21Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like, it's, you know...

• 16:22Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, that is what happened.

• 16:24Amanda Dobbins?

  We have seen this pattern again and again and again, and so they like break the model.

• 16:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Reinvent it to their needs and then move on. Uh, and it is a bummer for sure.

• 16:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's kind of a double whammy this year in particular because of the one movie that they did buy, but I'll talk about that in a second. So you went.

• 16:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I went.

• 16:41Sean Fennessey?

  You were there for a short period of time, but did you sense any of the energy that I'm describing? I'm just basing this on what I've read over the last few days.

• 16:47Amanda Dobbins?

  So I went to see like a very good Friends movie. I went to see Opus, written and directed by Marc Anthony Green.

• 16:54Amanda Dobbins?

  A24 production, like A24 brought it. So, um, I was there as a friend and with a sense of, a sense of personal joy. And that is a film that stars Iowa DeBery and John Malkovich. So also like starry, exciting, MAG, as you know, because he's also a friend is like, brings people together. So I, I was at like a fun, high energy party. Meanwhile, they have blocked, uh, vehicle traffic off of Main Street now at Sundance, which I think is, you know, good for the environment and for pedestrians, but just meant that like, it was literally empty, you know? And so Sundance, Park City, the place felt like actually empty.

• 17:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And the thing that always happens, um, a- at any festival, but felt heightened here, was like you're walking along and it's just door after door of place is closed to you unless you're there for like, you know, a car brands, like the activation, you know, party, whatever. And so there's just kind of a, a weird corporate vacuum in, in, in the place itself. So that's what I felt. Again, I was there for about 12 hours and I also hate the cold. So I was working with that personally.

• 18:11Sean Fennessey?

  Was it snowing?

• 18:13Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but it had snowed, you know? And it was cold and it was dark and, and there was mountains.

• 18:19Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 18:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, and everything is gray. And, you know, they took Santa Fe off the list of proposed next locations for, for Sundance. Yeah. It's not one of the three finalists. I think one of them is still Park City. Or Salt Lake.

• 18:34Sean Fennessey?

  Salt Lake is the second one and there's a third one I can't recall.

• 18:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, it, it is somewhere in Ohio.

• 18:40Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 18:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Which, that's cool if the people of Ohio want to host. But again, Ohio also gets snow. So Santa Fe gets snow too, but I, I don't know. The, the landscape I, it is, is more inviting to me. Anyway. So I it was like a

• 18:56Speaker 04

  Real quick, it's Cincinnati.

• 18:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Cincinnati, okay, thank you. They have the chili on the pasta.

• 19:01Speaker 04

  Correct, yes. I don't want to offend any of the fine folks of Cincinnati.

• 19:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, never been. Maybe, maybe I'll go.

• 19:08Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't been either.

• 19:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so you know.

• 19:10Sean Fennessey?

  If Sundance moves to Cincinnati, I will go.

• 19:13Amanda Dobbins?

  You're really?

• 19:14Sean Fennessey?

  I will attend, yeah.

• 19:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 19:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Amanda Dobbins?

  That's cool. I don't, I don't know if I will because it snows in Cincinnati in January, right?

• 19:22Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it's certainly very cold. I don't know if it snows. I assume it does.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  I mean, sure. I don't have like the weather reporter of the farmer's almanac, but.

• 19:30Amanda Dobbins?

  In any, in any season.

• 19:34Sean Fennessey?

  You're just, you're out on the snow entirely.

• 19:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Oceans, not mountains. That's, that's just where I am. I'm, I'm, I'm the seaside, not the mountainside. If the mountains are near the seaside, that's cool. I'll look at them from the beach.

• 19:47Speaker 04

  It's honestly alarmingly warm in Cincinnati right now. Sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, folks.

• 19:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Again, that's not my fault.

• 19:52Sean Fennessey?

  Sixty-eight degrees.

• 19:53Amanda Dobbins?

  They should pay that up with their senator turned vice president.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Okay, that's upsetting.

• 19:57Sean Fennessey?

  If it's sixty-eight degrees, I'm definitely going to Sundance there. That sounds fantastic.

• 20:00Speaker 04

  Tomorrow it's forty-five with a low of twenty-nine.

• 20:02Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I'm similarly averse to the cold, as you know.

• 20:05Amanda Dobbins?

  So I got to go to Opus. This was, this was a delight. This was the first time that I had seen the movie because Marc Anthony was keeping it from me.

• 20:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he kept it from me as well.

• 20:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but you, you got to see it as well.

• 20:16Sean Fennessey?

  I saw it the week before, yeah.

• 20:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Um, I just really liked it and it was really fun and it is what a lot of things that I want to see in a movie. It's a, a very like pop in a good way and also really strange. There are like seven or eight different moments where I was like, this is just, uh, very memorable. And I guess could only come from Marc Anthony's brain, but also I was like, this is funny that it came from Marc Anthony's brain.

• 20:42Sean Fennessey?

  I had the same exact reaction, yeah. I was like, this is so MAG, but also not, you know?

• 20:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is, which was exciting and surprising. And then also like, I don't, I, I don't want to spoil it because this movie is coming out March fourteenth.

• 20:53Sean Fennessey?

  We'll talk about it again.

• 20:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I encourage everyone to like seek it out, but, um, you know, I, I, I had it watching in real time. I was like, okay, so this is a thing, you know? And I could list the moments for you bit by bit and, and I'm sure that you have many of them and, um, and maybe also some different ones. The music is incredible. I mean, it's done by Now Rogers in the Dream, so like, that's not a surprise. Afterwards, I kept being like, and the music? And Zach was like, yeah, okay, it's Now Rogers in the Dream. Like, what did you expect?

• 21:22Sean Fennessey?

  I did tell MAG, though, that anytime there's original music written for a pop star figure in a movie.

• 21:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's always bad.

• 21:29Sean Fennessey?

  The success rate is like 14%. It's really low.

• 21:31Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I know.

• 21:32Sean Fennessey?

  So that's one of the.

• 21:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I was trying to start a best original song campaign on the ground in Sundance. Why not? Like, submit it, because it's the worst category at the Oscars. But this is one of the, there's one song in particular.

• 21:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 21:45Amanda Dobbins?

  That is like, it qualifies. It is part of the text of the film. And it just, it bumps, and I can't wait to.

• 21:54Sean Fennessey?

  We can't wait. We need Malkovich performing live at the Oscars. That's what we need. That would be amazing.

• 21:58Amanda Dobbins?

  We really, really do. So that was fun, and that was really wonderful. The other thing I wanted to say about Sundance is that I did meet a lot of big-picture listeners.

• 22:06Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, nice.

• 22:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Including, I promised Ben and Dan, I hope I got their names right.

• 22:11Sean Fennessey?

  Ben and Dan.

• 22:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, they're twins, and we talked a lot about the Eagles.

• 22:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Because, you know, I had, there's some anxiety-producing things coming up in my household in the next few days.

• 22:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 22:24Amanda Dobbins?

  So shout out to them.

• 22:26Sean Fennessey?

  Ben and Dan are Eagles fans?

• 22:28Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, that wasn't clear to me, to be honest. I didn't know whether they were Eagles fans or whether they just like, knew that they had a, like, a moment. You know, and they knew that that was like a way to speak with me and to speak about my emotions. There was another gentleman who was there for Opus, and as he was leaving, he just said to Zach, "Go Birds." And then he said, "And tell Chris Ryan, go Birds."

• 22:53Sean Fennessey?

  Was it Malkovich who said that?

• 22:54Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it wasn't. I don't know who that man was. I don't know whether Zach knew him or whether it was just like, the, like, the Go Birds has extended to people in the audience. But I met a lot of young people who were just at Sundance to see movies, like, not in the industry, which was really, really cool. And they all seemed very excited, and they seemed like they were having a great time and seeing a lot of movies that they liked. So I know everybody else came out of the festival really cranky.

• 23:25Amanda Dobbins?

  They, it was, it was really exciting.

• 23:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think that perfectly mirrors a lot of the binary conversations that we have on the show, which is that we remain incredibly excited about movies. The industry remains very dour about its future because boom time is over, right? Like the riding high on the hog of like even 2010, forget about 1987, like it's over. Like it's a smaller business than it was, but movies are still good. Actually, you know, Tarantino made some headlines because early in the festival, I think he did a talk with Elvis Mitchell and he pronounced the movie business dead. That movies are dead.

• 23:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And so now he's writing plays or something?

• 24:00Sean Fennessey?

  And so, yes, he's making, he's writing a play, which, you know, and you know, he located 2019 as the year the movies died.

• 24:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 24:06Sean Fennessey?

  Fittingly, the last time he released a movie. And, um, you know, I don't agree. Like, I just don't agree. I definitely agree that the business is way smaller and some of the things that he pointed out, that like movies get a two week theatrical release and then they go on VOD. I agree, it sucks. I think it's terrible. I think they fucked up the theatrical model. I think in some cases it benefits movies where people can't get out of their house and so they can watch on VOD after a couple of weeks and there is some benefit to that.

• 24:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:31Sean Fennessey?

  Certainly benefits a show like ours where people get to watch movies more quickly.

• 24:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say, we are in fact now scheduling like a lot of our segments based on when movies are available on VOD or on streaming for a wider audience to be able to see them.

• 24:44Sean Fennessey?

  But the theatrical movie model, it's just changed a lot and it is smaller. I, I'll use that as an opportunity to pivot to what I saw.

• 24:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:54Sean Fennessey?

  At Sundance.

• 24:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Not in a theater.

• 24:55Sean Fennessey?

  Not in a theater, although there is an app so you can watch it on your television. And so watching a movie on my TV is not quite being in a movie theater, but I got a better experience than many people did who watched it virtually.

• 25:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:07Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I haven't been to Sundance in person since 2020. One thing to caveat this conversation with is there were seemingly a few fuckheads who were pirating movies off of the app and putting scenes on social media over the weekend. Particularly the movie Twinless and the Selena documentary. And so both of those movies halfway through the fest- the virtual festival were pulled down from the app because people were pirating them. To those people, fuck off, that's not cool. And I hope that doesn't imperil virtual Sundance.

• 25:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you're ruining it for the rest of us.

• 25:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think that would actually only wound Sundance and the festival apparatus even more. So anybody who does that, whether they were stans or not, should not do that under any circumstance. I did feel lucky to see some movies, there were a bunch this year, maybe even more than normal, that were not made available on the platform. I saw Opus at a screening, Opus was not available. I believe all the A24 films were not made available. There was a Focus film starring Carey Mulligan, The Ballad of Wallace Island, that wasn't available. A bunch of stuff that were theoretically bigger ticket titles, but the titles that'll be out in the next few months. What I did see, I think that there were three big standouts, maybe four, and then some stuff I liked.

• 26:22Sean Fennessey?

  That's a small number for Sundance. I'm usually able to pull a lot out. I didn't see everything, but I did get through about 25 movies. The best thing I saw was Train Dreams. I think this was true for many people who saw it. Train Dreams is an adaptation of a Dennis Johnson novel, an author that I love, but I've not read this book. This is a really short Dennis Johnson book that is sitting on my shelf at home and I've never read it before, so I didn't know the story. And it's directed by Clint Bentley and written by Bentley and Greg Queedar. These are the two guys who made Sing Sing. So Clint and Greg, as Greg talked about on the show when he talked about Sing Sing on the pod, they basically like trade, where Clint makes a movie and Greg helps, and then Greg makes a movie and Clint helps.

• 27:05Amanda Dobbins?

  That's a nice way to do it.

• 27:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it is cool. And they obviously have this great partnership. Clint had a movie at Sundance a few years ago, or maybe it was TIFF, it might have been TIFF, called Jockey. This new one stars Joel Edgerton, your favorite actress, Felicity Jones, Carey Condon and Willie M. Macy. It's primarily Joel Edgerton. It's about a guy named Robert Grainer, who is a logger born in the 1880s. And it just kind of charts periods of his life.

• 27:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 27:35Sean Fennessey?

  I have been, I would say unkind to Joel Edgerton as a movie star in the past.

• 27:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 27:40Sean Fennessey?

  I have often said you could replace him with most other actors at his level and get a better movie. This is one of the first movies I've ever seen with Edgerton that perfectly accesses his skill, which is he is like, he has like a taciturn anti-charisma. His like internal quiet is used very, very well in this movie. Now, I'm very interested to see if you like this movie.

• 28:03Amanda Dobbins?

  What I mean, you're just like, it's about a logger.

• 28:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's very, very.

• 28:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Who has like dealings with Felicity Jones at some point. I was like, well, I'm out.

• 28:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 28:12Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I'm sorry. That's me.

• 28:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's not the most Amanda movie I've ever seen, but it is such, like a very heartfelt movie. It is very Malik, which I know you can go either way on. It does a couple of things.

• 28:24Amanda Dobbins?

  It's good and if it's not good, it's not good. That's the definition of which way I go.

• 28:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm curious to see if these guys get their Oscar revenge with the Sing Sing situation with this movie.

• 28:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Unfortunately, they were acquired by Netflix, who is, we, we have some questions. We've got some notes about the Oscar strategy.

• 28:40Sean Fennessey?

  That is the, that is the tricky part. Um, one, this movie is beautiful. The opening shot of the movie is something I've never seen before in a movie, but immediately transports you into this world. It's like a camera is affixed to a tree that is being cut down and you move with the tree.

• 28:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, now you've spoiled it.

• 28:58Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's, it's the first thing we see. Okay. Well, all right. I, I, I won't say anything more about the movie.

• 29:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Sean Fennessey?

  I only saw it on my TV and while I was watching it, I was like, God, I wish I was in a movie theater for this because it's so beautiful. And then I read that it was acquired by Netflix and I was like, what? Why? Why? Like of all the, of all the streamers and corporations, like, and why do they even want this movie? I don't. This movie hasn't, says nothing about how Netflix programs their movies. I don't, is it just an awards play? I found this very disappointing that they bought it. I hope they put it in movie theaters. I know they probably won't. It's not a perfect film. Okay. But it's very good. I was glad I watched it. Um, people should check it out whenever it's made available to the world. A movie I liked. Yeah. It's called The Things You Kill. It's a psychological thriller, uh, by an Iranian filmmaker named Alireza Katami.

• 29:48Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not going to share too much about this movie because it's a bit of a head fuck. And to give away any of its plot details, I think would ruin it. But if you like the kind of Iranian social realism, like if you like Asgar Farhadi movies, or, uh, the Panahi movies, or, um, Abhishek Rastami and the sort of like ethereal quality that he brings to his movies, it's kind of like a big stew of those movies. It's set in Turkey, it's not set in Iran. But, um, you know, you can see the major influence on Katami. And then there's like a very David Lynchian quality to it. So it's, it was just sort of well timed since we've been thinking about Lynch after he died and thinking about him, what, the way that those influences kind of collide

• 30:31Sean Fennessey?

  together for a movie that basically you're just waiting to see like what's going to happen, you know, like a kind of traditionally well told story. So I liked that. The, the best movies that I saw this year were three documentaries. They're paired together. Obviously documentary is what Sundance is doing really well these days. The names of the movies are The Perfect Neighbor, Predators, and Zodiac Killer Project. I'll tell you about them very quickly. I think you'll probably be hearing about the first two throughout the year and we'll probably be talking about them at this time next year. Um, The Perfect Neighbor is directed by Gita Gandhi here. Um, it is about a terrible crime in Florida, in a, in a small neighborhood and.

• 31:16Sean Fennessey?

  It's it's told entirely through police body cameras. But it's not a movie about police brutality. That they're basically just the vessel to tell the story of a dispute between neighbors. And it's sort of like, um, it's a portrait of community problems and the problem of stand your ground laws, which if you're not familiar with them, you know, they're about the right to a certain experience um, uh, in a home um, that Florida, I think past, I want to say 15 years ago, there's just an alarming incident rate in the aftermath of the passing of this law. I don't want to spoil anything for you. The movie is cut together like a kind of beat by beat whodunit um, and why it's like

• 32:00Sean Fennessey?

  very slow rolling, but it's done, I think, I it's right on the edge of exploitative, in my opinion. It doesn't really cross the line, but it shows just like a tremendously painful thing that actually happened and confronts you with it. Um, and then really had me thinking, a classic Sundance virtual experience of like, I watched this at 11:30 PM and then I was like, fuck. And then I couldn't go to bed and I couldn't fall asleep and I was thinking about it all day long. So um, that is the perfect neighbor. The next one is Predators. Did you ever watch the show To Catch a Predator?

• 32:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know whether I watched it or whether it became like a meme in so much, or not even a meme, but like a reference bit in so much other pop culture, you know, where like people would make jokes about it or like, I saw your headline on to, I saw your face on To Catch a Predator or whatever, like it became a reference point?

• 32:50Sean Fennessey?

  It did, it did. Um, this was a show that ran from 2003 to 2007. It was a spin off from Dateline. It was a show that was sort of, it was like, um, it was like a prank show to entrap child predators, you know, like it would-

• 33:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Was it really? Okay, then I never watched it.

• 33:04Sean Fennessey?

  It wasn't, it's not, it's not, it's not a prank show, it's just set up the same way where there's sort of like hidden cameras everywhere and an actor would portray an underage girl or boy and get into online conversations with men who were like, uh, looking for a meeting and um, and something much worse than that. And every episode was that. Every episode was hidden cameras in a home that was a rented house, a 25 year old actor dressed to look like a 13 year old or a 15 year old. And then the host of the show, Chris Hansen, who was a journalist for Dateline, would come out and confront the, the-

• 33:42Sean Fennessey?

  The criminal, I guess, about what it was he thought he was doing in that space. And it was tremendously awkward, but sort of like weirdly gratifying because you were like, "Take this guy down." And it had like a big moment.

• 33:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so I never, I never actually watched this.

• 33:56Sean Fennessey?

  The movie, the show in retrospect is like such an ethical quagmire. And the documentary goes into extraordinary depth into figuring out how and why. And it's just, it's just incredibly well done documentary. Like, I don't want to say anything else about it, but really, really probing and kind of forcing you to think about why you like the things that you like and what is really the line between an online experience versus a real world experience and mental health and basically like what TV can do to victimize everyone involved. I loved that movie directed by David Ossit.

• 34:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 34:35Sean Fennessey?

  And then the third one is kind of cool that I think you'll at least appreciate it. It's called Zodiac Killer Project. It's directed by Charlie Shackleton, really more of an essay film. So Shackleton was trying to make a regular true crime documentary about a book about the Zodiac Killer. At the last minute, the rights to the book fell through. The author decided he didn't want the book adapted. And so instead, what he did is he took all of the tropes that you would find in one of these documentaries and he starts unpacking them and analyzing them. So a lot of B-roll of locations and then he just talks over it and says, "And here's the part in the documentary where why would do this? You remember in How to Make, uh, In Making a Murderer, this scene happened and it would be just like that scene." And he kind of like showcases all of these different strategies that documentarians

• 35:16Sean Fennessey?

  use to get you invested in the worst thing in the world.

• 35:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's a clever movie. It's not on the par of the first two movies that I, the first two docs that I talked about, but this like analysis of true crime and the way that true crime is rendered on camera or on screen is a fascinating trilogy, like accidental trilogy, maybe. There were a lot of incidental or accidental like pairings across the whole festival. But, um, that one was good as well and worth watching. I'll mention a couple more.

• 35:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:48Sean Fennessey?

  Sorry Baby. Was there any talk of Sorry Baby when you were on the ground?

• 35:51Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but again, I mean, I like, I drove to Park City, went to the movie. Went to a party, went home.

• 35:59Sean Fennessey?

  I thought maybe at the party there would be because this movie was in the least.

• 36:03Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I was mostly talking to my friends. That's the other thing. Or your friends. I met some of your friends as well and they were very nice and said nice things about you.

• 36:09Sean Fennessey?

  How, how nice to hear.

• 36:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And mostly they, I, we talked about other film festivals, so.

• 36:14Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, um, and how they're superior or?

• 36:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, there was a lot of, not a lot of, but there was like, you know, come to Telluride, come to Telluride because like as soon as I go to a film festival, like the Siren Song of Venice like reaches out to me, you know? But I, I, I don't know. It's logistics are hard.

• 36:34Sean Fennessey?

  Everyone wants to be in Telluride except for you. It's a very strange, very strange thing.

• 36:37Amanda Dobbins?

  That's, that's really true.

• 36:38Sean Fennessey?

  I'm trying to get Griffin Newman to go this year. That's my, that's my new trend.

• 36:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I think Griffin should go. I think for people who like mountains, like you go for it. Me, I like the sea and a Negroni.

• 36:49Sean Fennessey?

  I'm certain that they have Negronis in, in Colorado. Nevertheless, we digress.

• 36:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I actually asked for one a few times and they don't there for a variety of reasons, but anyway.

• 36:56Sean Fennessey?

  Ah, yeah. Utah a little more challenging.

• 36:59Amanda Dobbins?

  The very nice bartender was like, we can make, it's an open bar. We can make almost anything for you. And I was like, can you make a Negroni? And they were like, ah, no. And then everyone made fun of me, but.

• 37:09Sean Fennessey?

  I'm very sorry to hear that. I thought it might come up at the A24 parties because A24 did acquire this movie. Probably the least surprising thing I heard about Sundance this year was that A24 acquired this movie. Eva Victor is the writer and director of this movie. It's about a woman in a small college town reflecting on a traumatic event in her life. To share anything more would be saying too much.

• 37:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 37:32Sean Fennessey?

  It is on the surface, very Sundance.

• 37:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:36Sean Fennessey?

  It's more clever than that, than your tropey kind of a movie. Eva Victor, a comedian, I think pretty famous on TikTok, though as you mentioned, we're not on TikTok. Lucas Hedges is in this movie. He hasn't been in a movie in some time. He's back. He's also the boy prince of A24. Naomi Akki is in this movie as one, as her friend. Eva is the star of the movie as well as the writer and the director. I think she nailed something really impressive with the tone. I think people, many of the people that I was reading out of the festival liked this movie more than I did, but it's still very good and worth recommending.

• 38:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 38:06Sean Fennessey?

  Two quick ones.

• 38:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:07Sean Fennessey?

  Andre is an idiot. Really good documentary about a guy who gets colon cancer and then just decides to let people follow him as he goes through the entire process of colon cancer. Sounds very upsetting. It is very upsetting at times. This guy is extremely irreverent. He's like an ad agency man, too. So he like knows the power of visual communication.

• 38:24Amanda Dobbins?

  So he's like, he's in on the bit.

• 38:26Sean Fennessey?

  In on the very end of it.

• 38:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's part of, part of this thing that he's doing.

• 38:30Sean Fennessey?

  This is actually also an 824 documentary, which I did not realize it won the Audience Award for US Documentary. I think people will enjoy this. 2000 Meters to Andriyevka is Manislav Chernov's follow-up to 20 Days in Mariupol. This is also a film about the war between Ukraine and Russia.

• 38:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 38:47Sean Fennessey?

  And it's very scary and sad. It's sort of like the, I don't know, kind of like the Black Hawk Down to the Children of Men in 20 Days in Mariupol. You know, like, it's just like, it's the war movie. It is, he's on the front lines as the Ukrainian army is attempting to liberate this like one mile forest from Russian forces, which is considered a very strategic stronghold in this war. And so he's just with grunts in the trenches for two hours. It's a tough watch. You know, just like 20 Days in Mariupol was tough, but worth watching. And then the saddest thing I saw was Omaha.

• 39:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, great. We saved it to the end.

• 39:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Cole Webley is the director. Robert Machoian is the writer. He's directed a couple of incredibly sad movies about men whose like lives are falling apart and the way that it affects people around them. I would say not an Amanda movie, although like it is in some ways as well.

• 39:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I just, does one need more sadness at this moment?

• 39:43Sean Fennessey?

  I feel.

• 39:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Is where I am and you and I and people.

• 39:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's been a tough year.

• 39:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Feel differently about that.

• 39:49Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I usually love to feel beat up by a movie. You know, it's been a really hard year.

• 39:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it's overwhelming.

• 39:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And so it's, I think it was a lot going through the pain cave of Sundance.

• 39:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:01Sean Fennessey?

  This movie, it's about a father who flees his Nevada home with his two young children early one morning to go to Nebraska. Why he goes and wants to go to Nebraska is revealed throughout the movie. I think some people will be very mad at this movie because of how it makes you feel.

• 40:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 40:15Sean Fennessey?

  That's certainly the point. Um, the reason I bring it up is because John Magaro, who has been my favorite actor for the last few years is at the center of this movie. He is the most sad person in movies, as we all know, fans of past lives. He's the star of September 5, which is a point of discussion on this episode.

• 40:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Have you watched The Agency?

• 40:32Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't, no.

• 40:33Amanda Dobbins?

  He's on The Agency and he's actually getting to be at least like a little stupid. You know, it's not all like deep sadness. There is even a little bit of like, he's making some blunders. I'm not caught up.

• 40:47Sean Fennessey?

  I would welcome.

• 40:47Amanda Dobbins?

  So I like, if he dies at the end and I am lying, I'm really sorry. I haven't seen it yet.

• 40:51Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I hope he survives. Um, just a terrific actor and he's great in this movie, which will mix some people. Quick roundup on a couple of things I did like. The Jeff Buckley documentary that Amy Berg made is awesome. I'm a huge Jeff Buckley fan. I've probably talked about him on the show before. There hasn't been a film about him. He died many, many years ago. This is as close as we're gonna get to the definitive story. Um, I did see the Selena documentary, which I thought was pretty good. I thought it was pretty standard, but pretty good. Prime Minister, which is about the Prime Minister of New Zealand during the COVID lockdown. Um, and how she took a very different tact during complicated times in our history than many of the world leaders. Um, that's pretty good. I watched the Marlee Matlin documentary, which also is pretty good.

• 41:34Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and kind of tracked the arc of her career and her very tumultuous and ugly relationship with William Hurt. Her, you know, many performances over the years, being forced to be the only advocate for deaf actors for 30 years in Hollywood before Coda. Um, Sly Lives, which, full disclosure, made by my friend Joseph Patel and directed by Questlove, uh, is really good Sly Stone documentary. Um, that also attempts to kind of like interrogate the challenges of, as the subtitle tells us, the burden of black genius, which is also like a big focus of Questlove's thought in the last 20 years. Um, and that's pretty much it. Most everything else that I saw was kind of mixed on.

• 42:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 42:13Sean Fennessey?

  Dylan O'Brien's really good in Twinless. I didn't love Twinless, which was one of the movies that got pulled down.

• 42:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, but it also won a lot of awards.

• 42:22Sean Fennessey?

  He won, I think he won an acting award for it. And he's great. He plays twins, two very different twins.

• 42:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. So you're on the Chris Ryan island of...

• 42:31Sean Fennessey?

  He's against that. I usually enjoy it as an adaptation stan. I think Guy Plays Twins is a funny idea for a movie.

• 42:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:40Sean Fennessey?

  We'll see it again soon in Sinners. You know, we've seen Tom Hardy do it. We've seen many actors do it over the years.

• 42:48Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty mixed bag at Sundance. Pretty mixed, pretty mixed bag.

• 42:52Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 42:53Sean Fennessey?

  Train Dreams? Will You Open Your Heart?

• 42:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Which one is that again? You just listed like 45 films. Honestly, I don't remember anymore.

• 43:00Sean Fennessey?

  That's the Joel Edgerton movie, the Netflix movie.

• 43:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, the, yeah, the Lager and Felicity Jones. Sure. You know, I will, I'm trying to have an open heart.

• 43:10Sean Fennessey?

  Where are you at on Terry Condon?

• 43:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Very pro, so that's good.

• 43:14Sean Fennessey?

  What about William H. Macy?

• 43:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Pro. But I'm still mad about the time that my dad made me see The Cooler on a holiday. And I was like, god damn it again. You know, we just like really had an incredible run.

• 43:27Sean Fennessey?

  Sick Alec Baldwin performance in that movie, though.

• 43:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of my dad just picking depressing movies.

• 43:33Sean Fennessey?

  After My Own Heart, really.

• 43:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Sean Fennessey?

  He should have been at Sundance.

• 43:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess that's another part of my issue. I'm just like, well, it's Christmas and we're watching The Savages, so... True story.

• 43:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's not ideal. Should we pivot to Nickel Boys?

• 43:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:49Sean Fennessey?

  Not a lot of people have seen this movie.

• 43:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, so we should...

• 43:52Sean Fennessey?

  This is a complicated discussion.

• 43:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, we should be measured.

• 43:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, let's be measured. Thank you. It's directed by Romel Ross. It's written by Ross and Jocelyn Barnes. It's an adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel. It is a divergence from the Colson Whitehead novel, which I have read some of and went to after I saw the movie. It stars Ethan Horace, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Heckinger, Davide Diggs, Jimmy Fales, and Angenou Ellis-Taylor. It's about two African-American boys, Elwood and Turner, who are sent to an abusive reform school in 1960s Florida. The film is inspired by the true story of the Dozier School of Boys, which was a Florida reform school that was notorious for its abusive treatment. That's not really giving anything away because that's not really, that's the story, but not the essence of the movie.

• 44:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 44:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think I came back from Telluride and was like, this is the best thing I saw. At the time when I saw it, the people who also saw it there, I could tell were very split and divided.

• 44:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:49Sean Fennessey?

  Because the movie makes some formal choices that are challenging and for some distancing. The split has basically been like, this didn't really work for me. I didn't get it. I couldn't get into it, or I thought it was boring. Or I've never seen a movie like this before. It was amazing. It took my breath away.

• 45:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:05Sean Fennessey?

  I have not really seen much in the middle. I've not seen somebody be like, it was pretty good. You know, like, that's not really the reaction that the movie tends to elicit. So what reaction did you have?

• 45:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I don't know how I pair like the exhilaration of the inventiveness. And to talk so much about form can be a little off putting, I think, until you've seen it. Because, you know, you start to, or at least I am in it, I've been start to worry about like, you know, technical supremacy and kind of like movie nerdiness. But there is something truly astonishing and revelatory about the way this movie is made and what it can, what it reveals about the way you watch a movie, the way that you tell a story, the way that you see the world and learn things that I, like, I thought was electrifying.

• 45:58Amanda Dobbins?

  And also translates into just like a, I mean, deeply heartbreaking story. Like, this is, we were talking about sad stuff before, but I mean, you, because this movie is so good and communicates like, like emotion, history, perspective so clearly that, like, it's a wallop, you know? So I was both like, oh, my God, Nickel Boys. And like, I rewatched it last night and was just like, well, and now I'm, I'm feeling it again. So a huge, I mean, it's wonderful. Like, it is definitely one of the best movies I've seen in the last year.

• 46:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I, you know, but I also, it stays with you. And that's what, I mean, that's what movies should, right? Like, it is, it's, but you know, it's tough. It's funny, you told me, and I think you came back from Telluride and you were like, it's a tough sit. And I thought that you meant that is because of.

• 46:57Amanda Dobbins?

  In many ways, it's using like a new or a new ish film language. And so you like have to focus, you know?

• 47:03Sean Fennessey?

  That's part of what I mean.

• 47:04Amanda Dobbins?

  That's but, you know, the the other half is that it is just it's it's harrowing. It really is.

• 47:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, it's a very it's a very upsetting story. And I think it's a little bit rote to say a necessary story. But I think the necessity of the movie is the way that it's being told. So like, it's easy for me to get caught up in some of the wonky filmmaking choices. I asked Ramel about most of the choices that he made when he was on the show. That was on the episode that ran, I think, December 20. If you liked Nickel Boys and want to hear him talk about it, I recommend it. He's really he's a professor and you can tell. And he's really good at communicating his ideas. I obviously like love directors who are good at communicating their ideas. But um, he is particularly adept. I've talked to him a few times now about the movie. And each time it adds to my appreciation of what he was trying to achieve.

• 47:56Sean Fennessey?

  Which is that even though I felt like the movie was distancing a little bit at first, when I first saw it, because of the kind of the difficulty of the way that you're trained to watch movies and the way that this breaks the form of what your expectations are. The truth is, is that he was obviously going for the opposite, which is that a photograph is by nature distancing. But perspective being inside of your own head through your own eyes is not distancing. You feel close to something the way I feel right now between us. I can almost touch you. When you're watching something on a screen, you can't do that. Or when you're looking at a still photograph, you can't do that. And so he's trying to break the barrier, I suppose, of experience by showing us as close as he can get and the filmmakers can get to what it was like to inhabit this world,

• 48:41Sean Fennessey?

  if not these people. And the movie does it like it does it. It takes a minute to turn the switch on. When I sat down to watch it, by the way, I didn't know anything. Like, I didn't know that they were doing it this way. Like, there was no.

• 48:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right, right. Like, and and so you're there is that moment.

• 48:54Sean Fennessey?

  What is going on here?

• 48:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And even if even if you do know, OK, it's like a different, you know, it's first person point of view or, you know. Your, our brains especially are just wired to watch movies a certain way, to look at images a certain way, to learn information. Like, in a certain way, we're trained to, um, like, expect not just like plot development, but like the accretion of detail in a certain way. And so your brain, like, that first 20 minutes, your brain is like definitely reworking. And, and it is sort of intellectual at first, right? Like, you're sitting there and you're thinking, oh, okay, you're doing this instead. And you, like, this is how you're showing me this, and I'm supposed to know this.

• 49:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought that it was done so, so deftly, and also still with such, like, artistic choice, that, to me, it was like really revelatory in thinking about, I didn't mind that I was thinking about, like, camera decision, not camera decisions, or, you know, framing, or all those sorts of things. Like, that was really adequate to me.

• 49:59Sean Fennessey?

  Why are you showing me this in this way?

• 50:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and I also, you know, as, as an adaptation, because this is an adaptation of a novel, that was also really exciting, because I, you know, as someone who loves to read novels, a lot of movies don't really, you, you lose a lot in perspective shift, you lose a lot in, um, suggestion and what, just the way you make a movie versus the way that you write a novel. So it was interesting and exciting to be thinking about, like, oh, so this is what you're communicating in this way, and this is kind of like if you're writing a novel. So I thought all of that was cool, but you're definitely, like, focusing on that for a little while until you get into the rhythm of the film.

• 50:44Amanda Dobbins?

  And the film is also structured in a way where it is really like, okay, for 20 to 30 minutes, we are going to really ground you in this visual decision that we're making, and you're gonna learn the language. And you are, like, maybe so focused on learning the language that you don't realize the emotions are seeping in. And then it makes, I mean, I don't, I mean, I don't really want to spoil it, because so many people haven't seen it, but there, there, there is a decision, there's a moment in the movie that's like, unlike anything that you've seen in some times.

• 51:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we can, we can, I think we can talk about a couple of them if we want to put a little bit of, kind of, uh, casing around it. Before we get to that,

• 51:27Sean Fennessey?

  This was sort of related to some of the things we talked about with The Brutalist, which is that, to me, it's very, very important to celebrate a movie like this that wants to break convention, to do something a little bit different. This movie is a lot different.

• 51:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:47Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm kind of astonished that it got nominated for Best Picture because of how different it is. Now, you could make the case, you know, it's produced by Plan B. Plan B is like the reigning champion of production companies that get nominated for Best Picture, and they often make movies that protect artists who have strong visions. Like, that's a thing that they're very, very well-known for, and especially DeeDee Garner and Jeremy Kleiner, the executives who run that company, like, they have a very, very, they build like a force field around creative people. Still, this movie does a lot of things. In addition to the first-person perspective, it uses archival imagery and what appear to

• 52:28Sean Fennessey?

  be kind of like found documents that are created documents, and musical, and especially in the sound design, choices that are unconventional is too soft a word to describe how it's, you know, it's a lot closer to kind of like outsider art than it is, or what you might find in a museum.

• 52:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I wrote fine art down. Yeah, like, I, yes. But I think it knows when you do need a little bit of emotionality, it knows when you need a little bit of performance, of, performance in the sense of you need human characters, like, you need a little movie.

• 53:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. There's like, you get Anjou Alice Taylor's, like, the emotion machine of the movie, right? Whenever she's on screen, you feel deeply. When Hamish Linklater's on the screen, you're furious, you're mad. Like, there, there are definitely choices that are typical of movie stuff, but many, many more that are not that.

• 53:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 53:26Sean Fennessey?

  And then there are-

• 53:27Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's just so finely calibrated that it does know when to give you that hit of, okay, so there, there's a thing where I know I'm supposed to feel right now, so I can reorient myself around that and take the rest of the information in.

• 53:42Sean Fennessey?

  There's one other thing that it does where, maybe we can start, we'll just do like five minutes of spoilers, so if you do not want to hear anything-

• 53:53Speaker 05

  Spoiler warning.

• 53:56Sean Fennessey?

  This isn't your typical plot spoiler. It's actually

• 53:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:59Sean Fennessey?

  formal spoiler, um, in terms of the way that the movie was made, but it contributes significantly to the telling of the story, which is that about 35 minutes through, once the, uh, Elwood character has arrived at the school, we see his experience through, you know, the first day or so, and he's having a conversation with a classmate in the cafeteria. And then we get pulled out of that experience and the camera essentially flips perspectives. And we go inside of his friend Turner's eyes.

• 54:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 54:33Sean Fennessey?

  And then the movie toggles back and forth.

• 54:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. But so, and so the first thing is that you see this character whose head you've been living in for 35 minutes for the first time. And at, there is just something, like jubilant isn't the right word, but you're just like, oh, like there he is. It's, um, this person that you have been like thinking about. And so, I mean, you know, it's almost like meeting your kid for the first time, sort of. You're just kind of like, oh, this is, I, I didn't have a visual on this. Um, as it's a really, really memorable, remarkable feeling. And then, um, and, and, and then because you're toggling between the two of them,

• 55:16Amanda Dobbins?

  you know, it formally creates something almost akin to like third person traditional filmmaking. So they like, you do get a conversation or two between them. You get that little thread of what, um, I think of like what we're looking for in terms of just how to watch a movie.

• 55:34Amanda Dobbins?

  But you also then get Turner's perspective, which like, um, you know, is emotionally and, uh, slightly different than Elwood's. And he sees the world in a different way. He sees Angelina Taylor, um, in a different way. And so it's like a compare and contrast as well that.

• 55:58Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just cool. Like, it's just, I mean, I can't believe they pulled it off.

• 56:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's pretty stunning. And then, I think, I won't explain how, but that choice that is made wends amazingly with the telling of the story

• 56:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:15Sean Fennessey?

  in the second half and becomes such a coherent choice. Like, when the movie flipped.

• 56:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:21Sean Fennessey?

  And the first time I was watching it. And then we start going back and forth between Elwood and Turner.

• 56:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 56:27Sean Fennessey?

  I thought, this is a surprising and interesting choice. I'm not sure justification is a strong word, but sort of like what the purpose was, other than to kind of like

• 56:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:39Sean Fennessey?

  before sunset it, you know, or it's like, he thinks this way, and he thinks this way, and they can go back and forth. And then

• 56:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 56:44Sean Fennessey?

  there's a fusion of that choice that really pays off.

• 56:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not that, I would never presume to give this a note, but I will just say from my experience the first time, it pays off in one way. There is, and we've put the spoiler things on it, but there is sort of like a, we're jumping times here, and so there's a framing device. I don't know that I like, got all the information I needed to the first time with the framing device, or I wasn't paying close enough attention.

• 57:12Sean Fennessey?

  Well, um.

• 57:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 57:14Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I think it's meant to be more of a reveal.

• 57:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:17Sean Fennessey?

  Near to the end.

• 57:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 57:18Sean Fennessey?

  Did you get the reveal, or not quite?

• 57:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Not quite.

• 57:21Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 57:21Amanda Dobbins?

  That's what I'm saying. Like, I understood basically what happened.

• 57:24Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 57:24Amanda Dobbins?

  But then I was a little confused about, like, then what I was seeing, and then I went, had to go and look it up online. And so then I watched it a second time, and I was like, oh, okay, so this was quick, you know, like.

• 57:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 57:38Amanda Dobbins?

  In, in some ways, also.

• 57:39Sean Fennessey?

  There's some giveaways in the sort of like.

• 57:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 57:42Sean Fennessey?

  Davide Diggs being cast, for example.

• 57:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 57:45Sean Fennessey?

  Is kind of a giveaway.

• 57:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:47Sean Fennessey?

  In terms of what they're doing.

• 57:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 57:49Sean Fennessey?

  Um, which I think some people complained about when I was at Telly Ride.

• 57:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 57:53Sean Fennessey?

  They were like, this kind of ruined where this was going for me.

• 57:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right.

• 57:56Sean Fennessey?

  Because I know that voice. Whereas, when you're in the film, the two young actors, we really don't, they haven't been in a lot, we don't have a big relationship with them, and so it gives you this like, you know, I should say, Romel was a documentarian, he was nominated for an Oscar for Hail County This Morning This Evening. The movie, the first half of the movie, kind of until like Hamish Linklater and Fred Heckinger show up, I was like. This is just documentary filmmaking with like Anjou Ellis Taylor in a kitchen. And the same way that that movie, the same way that Hale County felt like a guy who was hooked on Malik decided to make a doc. And this is such, I mean, this is, The Tree of Life is such an important movie to this movie. It's incredible.

• 58:35Sean Fennessey?

  Like, if you haven't seen The Tree of Life recently, re-watch especially my favorite parts of that movie, which are the scenes in Texas when he's a young boy. And the way that Malik shoots perspective and the way that Ross shoots perspective, like, they are, I know I always use this phrase, but they are talking to each other. Like, they are, it is a, it is a, it is a communication bridge.

• 58:57Sean Fennessey?

  The, the things that I, more or less the David Diggs stuff is what I struggled with, which is sort of like the revelation of the history of the experience that was had.

• 59:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:06Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't think worked as well. However, I thought the single best scene in the movie was the bar scene. Which just features like an incredible performance from Craig Tate as a, one of the kids.

• 59:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right, right, right.

• 59:18Sean Fennessey?

  Who he stumbles into and they have a long conversation in which they talk around their experience.

• 59:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:26Sean Fennessey?

  And kind of like, it just shows you, it's just a very brief period of time, but evidence of what happened to these kids. Who made it through this school. So I didn't love some of the modern day stuff.

• 59:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Same, yeah.

• 59:41Sean Fennessey?

  But I do think that there's a necessity to that part of the story that I thought had value. Again, it's one of the reasons why I'm like, you know, I know you're ragging on me for being like, it's four and a half out of five or whatever, but I'm like, these are, there are things in the plotting where I felt, what I could feel with him was like, this is an unseasoned narrative filmmaker, making a lot of bold moves. And not all of them are gonna work. But aside from that, everything that happens in Florida.

• 1:00:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Is.

• 1:00:05Sean Fennessey?

  Tremendously effective. The decision not to portray certain things, when the camera looks away, when it looks at something, the way that a person would.

• 1:00:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Sean Fennessey?

  That stuff is so sophisticated and so interesting. I really, really liked this movie a lot.

• 1:00:17Amanda Dobbins?

  It's wonderful. I mean, I hope more people get a chance to see it. I hope that you aren't listening at the, I, I mean, maybe people have skipped at this point, you know? I hope we didn't spoil it for people who haven't yet had the chance to see it.

• 1:00:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It's, um.

• 1:00:31Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, this is a movie podcast, you know?

• 1:00:33Sean Fennessey?

  It's a movie podcast.

• 1:00:33Amanda Dobbins?

  We gotta talk about our movies. This guy nominated for Best Picture. Get out there, folks.

• 1:00:37Sean Fennessey?

  I know, that's this curious thing about this time in movie history is a movie like this is, I don't think it's coming to streaming for like another month or something, which is just odd. I don't know. It was originally coming out in October and then they pushed it to December and then it came out in five cities and then they pulled it and now you can't really watch it. We're lucky that we got to watch it the way that we did. People should check it out.

• 1:00:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:00:56Sean Fennessey?

  And listen to, not just my conversation with Rommel, but I would go hunt down some of his interviews because he's a great talker for the movie. Okay, I don't know if we could pivot any harder.

• 1:01:06Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's like, it's for like an emotionally sort of downer episode.

• 1:01:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:01:11Amanda Dobbins?

  So we start high.

• 1:01:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:01:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Opus.

• 1:01:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:01:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Then just.

• 1:01:15Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we started with you acquiring the password to the email account.

• 1:01:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, sure. That's right. That's right.

• 1:01:19Sean Fennessey?

  That was, that was the highest high.

• 1:01:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Not provided it yet.

• 1:01:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, we're still in here.

• 1:01:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm just watching.

• 1:01:25Sean Fennessey?

  Is it useful if I texted you right now? Just say it on the pod.

• 1:01:28Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, another of my friends texted me about the guy from the idea of you. And so I, and I had time to respond to that. So I can, I can do a lot. We can have it all on this podcast.

• 1:01:36Sean Fennessey?

  Nicholas Galitzin?

• 1:01:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think she enjoyed the performance, not me. Uh, so password, Opus, positive.

• 1:01:45Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Then Bummer Town Sundance.

• 1:01:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:01:49Amanda Dobbins?

  An artistically tremendous but emotionally grueling film in Nickel Boys.

• 1:01:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:01:57Amanda Dobbins?

  And now we're going back up.

• 1:01:59Sean Fennessey?

  We're going back up to Goodrich.

• 1:02:02Sean Fennessey?

  Which I did tell you, I watched.

• 1:02:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you did.

• 1:02:04Sean Fennessey?

  Over the holidays.

• 1:02:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Sean Fennessey?

  With low expectations.

• 1:02:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:02:09Sean Fennessey?

  I can't say I'm a fan of Home Again.

• 1:02:11Amanda Dobbins?

  No. I had a great time at the premiere, but yeah, wonderful house.

• 1:02:15Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't, sure, that will come up again, I'm certain.

• 1:02:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and, and you know what? Maybe this is my bias showing, but the perspective of the movie obviously flatters some of my personal interests and experiences in life. But, um, this movie, which is about, uh, an art dealer in his 60s.

• 1:02:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:02:34Sean Fennessey?

  Whose wife leaves him all of a sudden to check herself into rehab and leaves him with two nine-year-old twins. And he has no idea what to do. He's obviously an older dad who is not the primary caretaker of his children. He also has an adult daughter who's going through some things of her own. She's also pregnant. And it's just a, it's your classic James L. Brooks.

• 1:02:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Sean Fennessey?

  Family kind of coming apart, but they need each other dramedy.

• 1:03:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and they say emotional things to each other in, you know, recognizable.

• 1:03:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Slice of life set pieces.

• 1:03:10Sean Fennessey?

  Correct.

• 1:03:12Amanda Dobbins?

  And the things that we don't normally get to say to each other are said.

• 1:03:16Sean Fennessey?

  What is it that you need to say to me right now? Articulate the things you need to say.

• 1:03:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Pretty explicitly, you know?

• 1:03:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so your boy, Michael Keaton, is the star of this movie.

• 1:03:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think he's everybody's boy. This is unbelievable.

• 1:03:30Sean Fennessey?

  I did, if you're gonna read text messages, you should also read the text message I sent you about Studio Ghibli over the weekend.

• 1:03:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, right, that you, okay, hold on. Oh, Bobby did just send me the password. Okay, thank you, Bob. Noted. Okay, here we go. Alice has been on a Studio Ghibli kick this week. We know that because you got angry texts from Eileen being like, where are the Studio Ghibli Blu-rays?

• 1:03:53Sean Fennessey?

  Did I say that on the pod?

• 1:03:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know, but that was like an, that was an all time.

• 1:03:57Sean Fennessey?

  That was like five minutes before we started recording. She was like, I need to know where Princess Mononoke is ASAP.

• 1:04:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:04:05Speaker 04

  That's an intense one for Alice to be requesting.

• 1:04:07Sean Fennessey?

  We didn't, she didn't watch it. It's way too grown up for her.

• 1:04:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:04:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And I realized if Knox needs an introduction, it's this one. And then you accidentally sent me the link to Greta Gerwig's Uber Eats ad. And then you sent me a link to Porco Rosso and you described it as Michael Keaton as a 1930s pig pilot. Which honestly, if Knox does need an introduction, that is what we would start with. Instead, I showed him Mamma Mia last night, so.

• 1:04:33Sean Fennessey?

  He's like an Errol Flynn Humphrey Bogart style character.

• 1:04:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:37Sean Fennessey?

  He's like a devil may care hero.

• 1:04:39Amanda Dobbins?

  At some point, at some point we will, yeah.

• 1:04:41Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I'm just putting it out there. Knox, I know, would be like, this is crack. Like, I need this. Anyhow.

• 1:04:47Speaker 04

  Amanda, I actually think you would like Porco Rosso. I think that'd be a good one for you.

• 1:04:51Sean Fennessey?

  It's good, right?

• 1:04:52Speaker 04

  It is. It's very good. It's like not really striving to be high art either. It knows that it's being silly the whole time.

• 1:04:57Amanda Dobbins?

  All right, I'll, I'll check it out.

• 1:05:00Sean Fennessey?

  Michael Keaton is terrific in this movie.

• 1:05:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Unreal. And it was, it made me think a lot about our Michael Keaton Hall of Fame and. He gets handed a lot of these regular art. He's not a regular guy. He's like a really rich, successful art dealer, but he turns it into someone you just want to be around. I think if there's a problem in this movie, it's that he makes the character too likable.

• 1:05:28Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 1:05:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm just like, everything he's doing seems fine.

• 1:05:32Sean Fennessey?

  He's supposed to be more flawed than he feels like.

• 1:05:34Amanda Dobbins?

  But he's Michael Keaton.

• 1:05:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And he's just like, he's doing good, you know?

• 1:05:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's the trick of the movie is, is that it wouldn't work without Michael Keaton. But Michael Keaton is kind of upsetting the narrative structure.

• 1:05:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:05:46Sean Fennessey?

  Because of his natural charm.

• 1:05:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:05:48Sean Fennessey?

  Mila Kunis plays his daughter in the movie. Kind of stacked cast in this movie. Carmen Ijago plays the daughter of an artist whose estate Keaton's character is pursuing.

• 1:05:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't spoil who the wife is.

• 1:06:00Sean Fennessey?

  I won't. I won't. I enjoyed that.

• 1:06:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because great, I don't want to spoil them, but great.

• 1:06:05Sean Fennessey?

  A late reveal.

• 1:06:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Great cold open to this movie. Very funny. And then.

• 1:06:09Sean Fennessey?

  I couldn't clock it when I was.

• 1:06:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Nor could I. And then, and then she shows up and I almost, I gasped.

• 1:06:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Well, there are multiple wives revealed in this movie that we don't know.

• 1:06:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's true. Also, don't spoil that one.

• 1:06:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Sean Fennessey?

  Couple of good ones.

• 1:06:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't, it has a lot of the trappings of great Nancy Meyers films, of course. Like, the production design in this movie is excellent. For me, it's even more satisfying because I'm like, if I was a rich art dealer, this is the kind of house I would have. And I lived in California, you know, Los Angeles and.

• 1:06:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Incredible house. Architectural Digest will not let me sign into my subscription in order to let you know where the house actually is.

• 1:06:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'd like to know.

• 1:06:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I would as well, and there was a piece on it. But incredible production design and costume design throughout. Like, everything just looks so good and cool.

• 1:06:58Sean Fennessey?

  Could you imagine having twins in your 60s?

• 1:07:02Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:07:04Sean Fennessey?

  It's a bit of a horror movie in that respect.

• 1:07:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, they're nine now. And he's supposed to.

• 1:07:09Sean Fennessey?

  Sixty-four? I mean.

• 1:07:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I think Keaton is in his 70s IRL. So shout out to him. But, so you're supposed to have twins. Listen, I can't imagine having twins, you know? So.

• 1:07:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. How old was my dad when he had my sister? He was in his early 50s?

• 1:07:28Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe fifty? That's fucking, that's hard.

• 1:07:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:31Sean Fennessey?

  I'm forty-two.

• 1:07:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, everything's breaking down. Nah, it's true. But I, and you know, another, uh, argument of the movie that Michael Keaton doesn't really uphold is that he's not been a present dad.

• 1:07:42Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Up until this point.

• 1:07:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:07:44Amanda Dobbins?

  So maybe it wasn't his problem.

• 1:07:45Sean Fennessey?

  What did you think about the big emotional conversation near the end with Mila Kunis?

• 1:07:52Amanda Dobbins?

  The one outside the hospital? Well.

• 1:07:55Sean Fennessey?

  Did it work for you?

• 1:07:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I have to say in general, I think that, um, you know, Mila Kunis is one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen and her pregnancy styling was, uh, A-plus.

• 1:08:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 1:08:10Sean Fennessey?

  I needed a little bit of a better actress.

• 1:08:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 1:08:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, even, even.

• 1:08:15Sean Fennessey?

  Cause it's good writing.

• 1:08:17Amanda Dobbins?

  It is, it is good writing and it did, Hallie Myers Shire is the daughter of two very successful directors. Charles Shire passed away, um, at the end of last year, which is, you know, it very sad in any context, but, but absolutely in the context of this movie. And when the, the mom character shows up and was, you know, I was like, oh, and that, and this is the Nancy part of it too. So this is fascinating.

• 1:08:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:08:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 1:08:43Sean Fennessey?

  Love that part of it.

• 1:08:44Amanda Dobbins?

  So it, it is good writing and, and again, it is like, that would never happen at, in real life, you know, those people would never air those grievances, but the grievances are aired in a night way, in a nice way. I, I did have a couple of notes on the performance. I would extend that to what I think is the best scene in the movie, which is the scene. So Mila Kunis's character, it will surprise literally no one to learn, does go into labor and, you know, her, her dad, Michael Keaton, has to be there for her. And then the husband shows up and gives a great speech. It's a, it's a really, really, really good speech.

• 1:09:30Sean Fennessey?

  And that character is framed as this sort of like the antithesis of Keaton's character. Where he's like a little bit more beta. He's more of a sensitive caretaker type. And you know, he's really there for her and you know, career second and family first. And all these things that Keaton's character views as.

• 1:09:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:09:45Sean Fennessey?

  A little modern and silly and I don't know, soft, I guess.

• 1:09:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:50Sean Fennessey?

  But.

• 1:09:51Amanda Dobbins?

  So, and so the, the baby's heart rate is going down, I think. And so Mila Kunis is like, I mean, this is one thing, she does have an epidural. I, you know, we're just, we're going to get into some nitty gritty here.

• 1:10:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Sure.

• 1:10:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I think she, they say yes to the epidural.

• 1:10:10Amanda Dobbins?

  So she could like be lying there fairly placidly. I got an epidural and then I did take a nap because I needed it because I hadn't slept in 24 hours. But um, he gives this whole amazing, like really well-written speech. And they're cutting to Keaton, who is just like having all the feelings and losing it. And then Mila Kunis is just like lying there on the pillow, just like.

• 1:10:32Sean Fennessey?

  That was good.

• 1:10:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Placid, like absolutely no reaction. She's just like smiling beatifully. And I was like, A, you're in labor, even with an epidural. And B, like some emotional stuff is happening. Maybe we could react like a little bit and that doesn't really happen, but I don't care. It was good.

• 1:10:48Sean Fennessey?

  This movie is available on Max right now.

• 1:10:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:52Sean Fennessey?

  And one thing that it had me thinking about after I saw it was I felt like I said north of 10 times, this is a movie like they used to make in 2024. And I don't know if that, I kept saying that, which I think is a generally a good thing, which is, I think actually part of the reason why last year was not a great movie year, but was good in my mind, because there were just a lot of like sixes and sevens. There were not a lot of like twos and threes, in my opinion, last year. And. I think that part of it was because the studios were like quieted for a period of time. So there was like less IP crap. There was less like, less reaching for a billion dollars.

• 1:11:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Sean Fennessey?

  And so a lot more stuff like seeped through the cracks. This movie was released by Ketchup Entertainment.

• 1:11:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:11:38Sean Fennessey?

  And so I just really, you know, I don't love these movies as much as you do. But I do really like movies like this.

• 1:11:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And we want them to exist with a stacked cast, even if we have some notes. And like good writing, even if it's a little obvious at times. Like obvious, obvious is good. Like you and I were raised on obvious studio movies of the 90s, you know?

• 1:12:00Sean Fennessey?

  There is a very strong place for them.

• 1:12:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 1:12:03Sean Fennessey?

  Also, just put Anne Hathaway in that Mia Kunis part. Tell me how much better this movie is.

• 1:12:09Amanda Dobbins?

  It's definitely better, but like I think she would probably like go a little too hard with the labor scene and the crying, you know?

• 1:12:15Sean Fennessey?

  Go for it, Annie.

• 1:12:17Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like somewhere in the middle. Also, by the way, a C-section in that situation is okay. It happened to me. We don't need to talk someone out of a C-section.

• 1:12:24Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:12:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Two healthy kids.

• 1:12:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:12:26Amanda Dobbins?

  But um, I just, I don't want people to feel bad, you know? It was set up as like some sort of disaster and it's okay. I, I think Anne Hathaway would, would, would be a lot. I don't know if she also like meets Michael Keaton's energy where.

• 1:12:44Sean Fennessey?

  I think there would be fireworks. I think there would be electrifying.

• 1:12:47Amanda Dobbins?

  That would be fine with me.

• 1:12:48Sean Fennessey?

  Michael Keaton, so he had Beetlejuice Beetlejuice last year. Did he hit something else too?

• 1:12:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Didn't his movie Knox Goes Away come out?

• 1:12:55Sean Fennessey?

  Knox Goes Away, yeah. The legendary Knox Goes Away. That wasn't ideal. But he's back. He was great in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice too.

• 1:13:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, he's a wonderful actor. I'm a big fan.

• 1:13:04Sean Fennessey?

  I'm happy for you.

• 1:13:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Great sweaters, great everything in this up, in this nice gallery space.

• 1:13:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, early 60s style.

• 1:13:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I gotta get into that. I gotta start thinking about that. Now that I'm like out of having a baby, I'm like, maybe I should start buying clothes again.

• 1:13:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:20Sean Fennessey?

  Cause you just don't need to buy any clothes when you just have a baby. It's just like, here's avocado all over your shirt.

• 1:13:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, the amount of stuff that, that was on my shirt yesterday at the end of the day at 7:00 PM. That was tough.

• 1:13:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you're in the thick of it.

• 1:13:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:33Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, anything you want to say about September 5 really quick?

• 1:13:37Amanda Dobbins?

  A great procedural.

• 1:13:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I think this movie slipped into a little bit of discourse wars. And there's obviously a reason for that because of the events that are portrayed in the movie. I saw the movie very clearly as like people obsessed with people doing things. There's like a Sorkinian quality to this. There's like a David Fincher quality to this. When I talked to Steven Soderbergh on the show, he was like, this is, I love this movie.

• 1:14:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I had no notes, which is great conversation. Thank you to Steven for saying my first name. Also.

• 1:14:09Sean Fennessey?

  Did you cut that out and like put it?

• 1:14:10Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I didn't. I just, I had a nice moment. But like, this is definitely like a Soderbergh movie too, right? I'm just like, we gotta get, we gotta do it. Like, it's all about action. And then considering the effects of the action later, so.

• 1:14:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, and there are some damaging effects. I thought that the movie did a pretty good job of showing that cavalier action.

• 1:14:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:14:33Sean Fennessey?

  This is not a movie about perfection and execution. It's a movie about people who are ill-equipped, trying their best and at times failing to do the right thing. So I thought pretty, pretty nifty movie. I did compare it on Letterboxd to an HBO original movie, which people think is meant to be a dig and is not a dig. There was a time in the 90s when every Saturday night, there would be a new, maybe it was Friday nights. I can't remember when the original movie aired. I think maybe it was Friday nights where like, it'd be like, Ving Rhames is Don King. Just two hours of Ving Rhames doing Don King. It was tremendously entertaining. It didn't quite feel like going to the movies, but it was good.

• 1:15:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:12Sean Fennessey?

  And this movie is the same. Okay. Let's go to my conversation now with Tim Fehlbaum, the director of September 5.

• 1:16:03Sean Fennessey?

  Very excited to have Tim Fehlbaum here. We're here to talk about September 5. Tim, I'm curious where this movie came from for you. Were you even alive when the events that took place in the movie happened?

• 1:16:13Speaker 05

  Sean, look at me.

• 1:16:15Sean Fennessey?

  You look like a beautiful young man.

• 1:16:18Speaker 05

  No, I'm kidding. No, I wasn't alive. Yeah, I was born 10 years after. So no, jokes aside.

• 1:16:27Speaker 05

  Yes, I first learned about what happened on that day in Munich from a documentary that I saw as a teenager in the theaters. I don't know, maybe you've seen it. It's called One Day in September by Kevin Macdonald. And this on many levels had a huge impact on me. And in addition to that, I studied in Munich. I went to film school in Munich. I was born and raised in Switzerland, but after that I went to film school in Munich. And in Munich, even after all these years, the story still feels quite present. It's like the buildings where it happened are today's student housings. And we would always, it's a very special architect that the Olympic Village has. And we would, there were many student films that we would shoot there.

• 1:17:12Speaker 05

  And you would always know, like, this is the apartment where this tragedy happened. This is the balcony where that image has been taken, that image that everybody knows of the masked person stepping out on a balcony. And I was always interested in that story and especially in that image. So after my two previous movies, we started to do research on that day. And what we then, in that process, learned more and more is what an important role the media played. And as we got deeper into that field or into that direction of the research, we were lucky enough to find an eyewitness. That is Jeffrey Mason. That is the character played in the movie by John McGaro. And he was there in this control room during this 22-hour marathon of broadcasting when this group of

• 1:17:59Speaker 05

  Sports journalists, right? That's the special thing. They were a few hours before they were reporting on the Olympics, on actually a US swim star, Mark Spitz, swimming to his seventh gold medal. And a few hours later, they had to make the switch to reporting on a crisis. And yeah, that was the initial spark for us to tell the story, that conversation, to tell the story entirely from that perspective.

• 1:18:25Sean Fennessey?

  How did you stumble upon Jeff Mason, you know, and make your way to him? And did that actually, did he become the POV character because of your access to him?

• 1:18:34Speaker 05

  I would say yes. I mean, I have to add, though, that he's also a combination of certain roles that in reality, and he also, for him, it's really important that we mention that because he wants to be respectful of his colleagues, that in real life, these were several people doing that job. Of course, we took their artistic license to some combined certain characters. But, I mean, he was essential in the project in many ways. Like, basically, the script is based a lot on his memories of what they experienced in a control room on that day. He helped us to be authentic with the dialogue. And he was also crucial when we then finally could approach or get the copyrights for the archival footage,

• 1:19:18Speaker 05

  which was not easy, but was, for us, was essential that we could actually use some real footage.

• 1:19:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I do want to ask you about the blending and where you chose to recreate versus where you chose to use archival. But maybe before that, you can talk a little bit about how you thought about shooting and pacing the film, you know, there's, you know, it's a very short period of time that you're capturing, but it's not all in real time, the entire film. So how did you think about structuring it?

• 1:19:44Speaker 05

  Then the movie would be 22 hours long. I like a good 90 minutes movie. But yeah, it's a good question. It's like... I would say, again, I would go back to that conversation that we had with Jeffrey Mason. And when we asked him how this day felt for him, he said it was just a constant adrenaline rush. And they were constant, all the decisions they made were against a ticking clock. And I don't know if you ever visited these live television studios. I've been in, when doing research, I went to a lot of sports broadcast rooms, control rooms. And everything is clocked to the minute. So you can only imagine what it means when they do suddenly report on a tragedy like this.

• 1:20:25Speaker 05

  So to me, or to us, that was clear, okay, this is also how the movie should feel. And you're in that rush and the reflection only comes afterwards.

• 1:20:39Speaker 05

  And then, so that is already, in a way, the basic structure of the script is already there. But then also, when you shoot it, we had the same approach. We wanted to, basically, we had this idea of just covering Marcus Förd, the P and I, of just covering it as if we ourselves would be a broadcast crew in that room, observing these people, observing that situation on the monitors. We just shot, and very much in documentary style also. And that this is a nice thing, because then you have these moments that feel authentic or real. But on the other hand, you create a lot of, lot of footage. And this is where editing comes into play, or is like a really important part then on shaping the movie.

• 1:21:21Speaker 05

  I think the editor, Hans-Jörg Weißbrich, has an enormous, had an enormous influence on the whole rhythm and everything. But ironically, it was more about, it was tougher to find the quiet moments. Where for a moment, the emotions kick in or so, than to find the tense moment, because the tension was there all the time.

• 1:21:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I love the balance between the conversations that can be had in the control room and the conversations that need to be had in the hallway too. And that this was not a space that was designed to cover this kind of coverage of an event, right?

• 1:21:52Speaker 05

  Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:55Sean Fennessey?

  Can you talk about why you felt the story resonated now? And why you thought it was important to do it some 50-plus years later?

• 1:22:04Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, again, to me, I mean, there are so many aspects of that day that are relevant, especially also for today. One, of course, is the ongoing crisis that is tragically not solved yet between Israel and Palestine. But... Our movie is about the media perspective and this also seems to be a very, especially from today's point of view, a very relevant question. I mean, today, everybody here has a camera and a TV in their pocket and we are surrounded by a rapidly fast, like a rapidly evolving media landscape. I myself know that sometimes I'm overwhelmed, like where to get my information from and so. And we thought that especially for today's audience, it would be interesting to take

• 1:22:49Speaker 05

  a step back and see on how a little bit more than 50 years ago, an event of this nature was covered for the first time in live television. And it is in a way about this moment that the media changed. I wanna add one thing, maybe, that even before this tragedy happened, and it might be interesting to know, this Olympics 72 in Munich have been an absolute turning point in media history because it was the first Olympics on German soil since 36, which was misuse for fascist propaganda. And now Germany wanted to send out a new image out to the world, the image of the liberal Germany.

• 1:23:30Speaker 05

  That's also why they didn't want to have any armed police in the village, which we now know was a mistake. And for sending out that image, they have set up an never-before-seen technical apparatus. It was also the first Olympics that could be broadcast live globally by satellite. And they had, everything was set up for per-optimal TV coverage, the venues, they had this Olympic, a camera on the Olympic tower that they could have access to. And then suddenly, that whole apparatus switched from reporting on the, as the Germans called it, the serene games. They wanted to almost have a Woodstock hippie-esque vibe to it.

• 1:24:12Speaker 05

  And then this whole media apparatus had to, or made the switch to report on this crisis.

• 1:24:18Sean Fennessey?

  It's fascinating. I'm curious about your decision to make a movie like this too, because it feels very different from the previous films that you've made and a docu-drama like this. And I wasn't familiar with your work before I saw the movie. And so I'm curious like how you came to something like this.

• 1:24:34Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um. Yeah, so very much see where that question is coming from. My two previous movies were in a way in a sci fi area or post apocalyptic films. I wanna add though that I had a similar approach already. I mean, maybe you haven't seen them. Um, uh, September Five is what I would say is the best one so far, I can say.

• 1:24:57Sean Fennessey?

  No, I I took a look at Tides, because I had, but I hadn't seen it before until after.

• 1:25:00Speaker 05

  Ah, yeah, yeah, Tides is, yeah, but you should maybe check out the first one. The first one is about, uh, like, uh, now thirteen years ago and is, um, is about climate change. A long time before it was an everyday topic in newspaper. Um, and in both of these films had, even though they had all these, um, futuristic scenarios, they also had the same approach to how to shoot them in this documentary style. I said, I wanna have an almost European art house feeling to a genre movie. Um, so there are many similarities, but of course, when approaching a story of this historic relevance, I mean, when you do science fiction, you also do research a lot, right? But when you do something that is so important and and people really lost their lives and and it's,

• 1:25:45Speaker 05

  uh, yeah, you do much more research before you even start to write a single bit. And that's what I also enjoyed. I mean, enjoyed might be the wrong word in that sad context, but the the whole research process, that was really something that I found very interesting. And especially then as we got deeper and deeper into that perspective, that was to me, the something that I learned from making this film in a way, that the more specific you are with your perspective, the more you can also, I don't know, I hope, I also hope that in a way the audience also when watching the movie that you learn something. You about making television back in that analog world and that hopefully you find that fascinating.

• 1:26:26Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I absolutely did. One thing that was interesting to me too as a viewer was. You know, Peter Jennings is a staple of my childhood. He is the newscaster who was on in my home.

• 1:26:36Speaker 05

  How old are you?

• 1:26:37Sean Fennessey?

  I'm in my 40s. But he was just on hosting World News Tonight every day in my house for many, many years. And so, you know, he's just a very familiar figure. But so you have this, this interesting choice you've made where you've got some well-known real-world people who you are casting as actors. And then you have the, you know, McKay-style figures who you're only using archival. Maybe you can talk about balancing that as well.

• 1:27:01Speaker 05

  I don't know. Of course, I would love to talk about this. First of all, Peter Jennings, yeah, it's, it's like, Peter Jennings also did live coverage of, of, of, as you know, I see you nodding, of 9/11 for, I think, 48 hours or so he was in the studio. And there's an interview that I saw with him once, when he was asked how he could go through with this. And he just said, well, very simple answer, I've been in Munich 72. That has been, in a way, his, yeah, training day. And in a way, it's a good question, your question, but like, because Peter Jennings in our movie is being recreated with an actor, right? While Jim McKay isn't. And there's a reason for that because in a way, our movie is about the movie, a movie

• 1:27:45Speaker 05

  about the people behind the camera. But Peter Jennings has a very special role in that team because Peter Jennings was the only moderator coming from ABC News. He was invited by Ron Arlidge, he said, come to Munich. He was the Middle East expert for ABC News. And he was invited by Ron Arlidge, hey, come to Munich, take a vacation from your Middle East job and do some pieces for us. So he did these pieces, for example, on Dachau, the concentration camp, as we showed in our movie. And then suddenly, as he says, it's also in the movie, ironically, he ends up being

• 1:28:25Speaker 05

  more close to the conflict than ever before in his, in his career, in his function as the Middle East expert. And then also since the special thing about a movie is that it is a sports crew that has to make this switch. You know, they weren't experienced or trained in reporting in a situation like this. So the one person that is coming from news and is warning them maybe about, for example, the use of certain words or something as we show it in the film should be a character in the movie. While Jim McKay is of course the face of that whole broadcast. And to us, while we recreated and we actually did recreate a lot of the archival footage.

• 1:29:09Speaker 05

  I hope it's seamless and you don't see it, but we, for example, didn't want to show out of respect, didn't want to show anyone who really lost their life on that day. And we shot a lot of these scenes, but what I really figured what we could never recreate is the human element of Tim McKay's performance. It's just a very unique way of how he talked into the camera. And so I said like this, we absolutely have to get the rights and have to be able to use.

• 1:29:38Sean Fennessey?

  It works really effectively and I'm curious to hear you talk about John McGarrett. Like I've said, John, I've said that John McGarrett is my favorite working actor like a couple of times in the show in the past. He's somebody that like in every, he kind of improves every movie. So.

• 1:29:53Speaker 05

  I'll tell him that. I see him.

• 1:29:55Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I was delighted to see him at the center of your movie, you know, he really is the engine of it, especially in the second half.

• 1:30:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:01Sean Fennessey?

  But you know, you haven't made a lot of, you haven't made any American productions or, you know, American stories or, you know, how did you go about casting this and how did you end up with this? Especially the quartet of actors who are at the center of the movie.

• 1:30:17Speaker 05

  Yes, that's a very good question because I mean, for European productions, sometimes it's maybe not easy to get a US cast. But for me, of course, it was crucial that it is in a way, even though this story takes place in Germany, it is also an American story, it is told from an American point of view. And yeah, I would say like in Germany, I'm a.

• 1:30:40Speaker 05

  Established enough name so that I can call an actress of the level of Leoni Benish and she's interested in having a conversation. So internationally, maybe not so much. And we had also a hard time to approach the cast. And then we were lucky enough that what made the change here is that Sean Penn, John Widomuth, and Sean Palmer came on board with their company Project Pictureworks as partners. They were actually really early on in the process involved and were essential collaborators on everything. They're already on the script stage. But what they, in addition to that, also helped with casting. Like, you

• 1:31:22Speaker 05

  can imagine maybe as when you can write an email with a film produced by Sean Penn, it helps to get you an answer faster because he's a very well-respected name, especially in the actors' world.

• 1:31:33Sean Fennessey?

  Were there any other POV characters that you thought about including? You know, you mentioned that you compressed some into the Jeff character. How did you think about having too many voices in those conversations to effectively tell it?

• 1:31:46Speaker 05

  That's an interesting question. Yeah, we had some. I can give you an example. So Sean McManus, who is the son of Jimmy Kay, who I was lucky enough to meet at one of these control rooms and who also was kind enough to share his memories of these Olympics because he was there as a teenager, right? His father was hosting the cameras. And at a certain point, we also made him as a character. Him, the teenager whose father is in the studio and who would... Just as much as I would have loved the movie to also be Sean McManus a part of it, it felt too private in a way. You know, this is a movie about

• 1:32:30Speaker 05

  their people in their working environment. And so it didn't feel appropriate to the biggest subject in a way. So that's why we then, as you said, so that we stay focused on the major subject and on not too many characters, we decided to not go further with this character. But he saw the movie recently for the first time in New York and he was really proud. He saw it with his son. And that was really touching because after screening, he turned to his son and said, "Wow, your grandfather." Like Jim McKay and that was by the moment.

• 1:33:02Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's fascinating too, because he has had, he had such an esteemed career at CBS and working in news and in sports and you know, they have a lineage there.

• 1:33:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm impressed by how much you know, but it's like he actually is the only person, like Rune Orlage was the first person to be that the head of a news and a sports organization, a news organization. And Rune Orlage writes in his biography, he would have never gotten that other job if, if his, his training day was also Munich, where he proved for ABC that he could, could do, handle news.

• 1:33:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, the company where I work, we cover film and television, but we also cover sports. And so somebody like Rune is like a legendary figure and somebody that we know a lot about and you know, that the closeness of sports and news and the fact that even though the teams weren't prepared to do that work, and actually, you know, I like how you show how they make mistakes, like meaningful reporting mistakes during the telling of the story, but that, you know, that that is something that happens in the process of reporting sometimes.

• 1:34:08Speaker 05

  Oh, all the time. And again, I'm getting back to also they, this was an unprecedented situation. They didn't expect that. But in addition to that, I want to say that a lot of people that work in today's news business, like television, have seen the movie now. And they came up to me after the screening and said to me, that was so astonishing for them to see that why obviously technology is completely different. Everything is faster. There's even more that you have to deal with in a way. But the bigger questions are exactly the same today, what they're discussing, like what can we show, what can't we show? How many confirmed sources do we need to have before we send something out? Uh, yeah.

• 1:34:51Speaker 05

  Do we show violence? Like, all these questions, that's uh still the same discussions today.

• 1:34:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's really powerful. Um, one thing I'm sure you feel very comfortable with, but I'm curious to hear you talk about is creating a sense of authenticity of Germany at this time, and maybe what Germany was like, and you know, the intersection between these American visitors who are making um TV and, you know, the people of the country and even just the atmosphere of the country at that time.

• 1:35:19Speaker 05

  No, that's that's very important aspect of the movie. I mean, one we just talked about that Germany that was was wanted to have this uh image change of of being the the new liberal Germany. So it was really an important event, these Olympics. It was Germany's makeover, so to say. And of course, even for us, it was essential that we um have this in a movie. Because, yeah, it it's just so such an important part of the premise when this story takes place, also that it's so close to World War Two. But then we knew, okay, our film only takes place inside that studio.

• 1:36:00Speaker 05

  How do we get that part of the story into our setting, so to say? And the actor that is the character of Leonie Benisch, Mariana Gephardt. So she represents this new generation that tries to free themselves for the past uh from the past. And she's, yeah, she's the, her character represents that whole aspect of the story.

• 1:36:26Sean Fennessey?

  Congratulations on your your Golden Globe nomination. Um, is this very strange for you? You're now thrust into an awards race. You have a big American film. It's getting released in lots of theaters. Tell me about how you're feeling.

• 1:36:38Speaker 05

  Oh, it's it's it's overwhelming, yeah, in a very positive way. I I gotta say, like, I mean, I told you a little bit on how we started this movie. We would have never thought that this this journey that we would make one time. And and yesterday morning, that was really special. We were here with my dear producers, Thomas Wapke and um uh Tom Palmer and the other producers were in the in the Zoom. And yeah, we we we couldn't believe it when we heard it. And it was uh really special.

• 1:37:05Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think this means for your career? Like, what do you, do you know what you're gonna do next?

• 1:37:08Speaker 05

  No, I don't know. I think. I mean, I have certain ideas. Um, well, I think it certainly, um, it certainly helps. That's the right story. Of course, it doesn't help to find the right story. That's silly. But it it would probably um make it, yeah, it would probably help to to for me to uh get my next project and get I I wanna go behind the camera as fast as possible again. So um yeah.

• 1:37:36Sean Fennessey?

  Have you considered like an American production, a German production, European, that is it a desire to make Hollywood films?

• 1:37:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I would lie if that was not a a dream as when I was a kid. I mean, I'm a movie uh geek. I I I love movies more than anything. And it's like, uh, I I I, of course, that was a kid's dream always to make once a film here in Hollywood.

• 1:38:00Speaker 05

  But now I see like it's it's all about the story, right? It's the story has to come from it has to that has to that's the most important criteria on what movie to make next. And this can be for a story that's coming from here, or or I also, as I say, I did this was the third movie I did in a similar constellation with a producer, DP, um, production designer, like we were or line producer. We are like what I would say a film, my film family and and I also like that. Enjoyed very much working that constellation and could just as well see to do another movie in this this wonderful constellation.

• 1:38:37Sean Fennessey?

  Very cool. Tim, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen? Have you have you seen anything great recently?

• 1:38:46Speaker 05

  Oh, yes, absolutely. Well, and then I would go with the movie of my dear colleague Edward Bear Conclave.

• 1:38:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, so you must you must know Edward has a.

• 1:38:57Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, yes. Was very kind. He called me after he got also nominated. And so, yes, that's the one.

• 1:39:04Sean Fennessey?

  What did you like about Conclave?

• 1:39:06Speaker 05

  Oh, I have to really say Edward Berger's work, The Direction. It was so wonderfully made. In a way, also, there's similarity because it's also in that Michael Cosmos and how he portrays that world of the Vatican itself. And so also that specific viewpoint and how we portray that world and the whole visual approach and music also really good. So, yes.

• 1:39:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great recommendation. Tim, congratulations. I really enjoyed September 5. Nice talking to you.

• 1:39:36Speaker 05

  I'm glad you enjoyed it and it was great talking to you. Yes, thank you.

• 1:39:48Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Tim Felboun, thanks to Jack Sanders, thanks to our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on today's episode. Later this week, it's sort of an Amanda special.

• 1:39:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Sort of.

• 1:39:57Sean Fennessey?

  So there's-

• 1:39:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, so here's the thing. Garbage rom-com and garbage love are different.

• 1:40:04Sean Fennessey?

  I totally agree with this.

• 1:40:05Amanda Dobbins?

  So garbage rom-com is where I eat, you know?

• 1:40:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:40:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And garbage love is just a thing that we experience every year around this time as people try to program for Valentine's Day.

• 1:40:22Sean Fennessey?

  Garbage love is using a love story with a genre package.

• 1:40:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:40:26Sean Fennessey?

  Basically. It can be any kind of genre, really, but it needs to be a romance inside of a movie that is otherwise appealing to audiences that like action movies.

• 1:40:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:40:36Sean Fennessey?

  Comedies, like broad comedies.

• 1:40:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:39Sean Fennessey?

  Sci-fi.

• 1:40:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:40Sean Fennessey?

  Horror, any of those things. So this week, we'll talk about Companion. We'll talk about You're Cordially Invited.

• 1:40:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:40:48Sean Fennessey?

  Which is on Amazon right now. We'll talk about Love Me. Maybe we'll talk about Love Hurts, if I see it.

• 1:40:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Sean Fennessey?

  Anything else? What else is coming out? There's another movie. Oh, Heart Eyes, I saw that.

• 1:40:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:40:59Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and then we'll make a list. We'll make a list of 10 great or essential examples.

• 1:41:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Of garbage love.

• 1:41:06Sean Fennessey?

  Of garbage love. You ready?

• 1:41:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I really am.

• 1:41:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I'm looking forward to it. I might let you drive.

• 1:41:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay. That's exciting.

• 1:41:14Sean Fennessey?

  Great. We'll see you then.