The Top 10 Garbage Love Movies, ‘Companion,’ and ‘You’re Cordially Invited’

Sean and Amanda react to the ‘Fantastic Four’ and ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ trailers (1:00) before discussing the slate of movies being released that are tied to Valentine’s Day, including Drew Hancock’s ‘Companion’ (15:15), ‘You’re Cordially Invited’ (29:30), ‘Love Me’, and ‘Heart Eyes’ (40:00). Then, they mint a new bespoke subgenre called “garbage love”—romance movies that use genre as a vehicle to deliver their love stories (55:00). Then, Sean is joined by Hancock to discuss his circuitous journey to directing his first feature, ‘Companion’; casting Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher in the lead roles; working alongside ‘Barbarian’ producer Zach Cregger; the themes of the film; the difficultly of promoting a movie that relies so much on the tension in its script; and more (1:24:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Drew Hancock 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

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• 0:38Speaker 01

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• 1:42Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy.

• 1:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 1:44Sean Fennessey?

  And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about lovers and friends. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Drew Hancock, the writer-director of Companion, a clever new thriller, horror, sci-fi hybrid that I quite enjoyed. We'll talk about it momentarily. Drew has been a writer and director in Hollywood for years. This is his debut as a feature filmmaker. He's got a very cool story of getting Companion to the big screen. Great hang. Stick around for that convo, but first, I've just- Watched you, Amanda.

• 2:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 2:11Sean Fennessey?

  Watch trailers for two upcoming summer films.

• 2:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 2:14Sean Fennessey?

  Two July releases.

• 2:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:16Sean Fennessey?

  That we will be covering on The Big Picture. What were those trailers you just watched?

• 2:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Fantastic Four and Jurassic World: Rebirth.

• 2:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 2:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Brought to you by the Marvel and Universal corporations, respectively.

• 2:28Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about those things. Let's start with Fantastic Four.

• 2:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:31Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't had a chance to talk about this yet. I did get a chance to talk about Jurassic World on a YouTube video that I recorded with Bill and Chris yesterday.

• 2:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Cool.

• 2:37Sean Fennessey?

  But I wanted your thoughts as well.

• 2:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:39Sean Fennessey?

  Fantastic Four. Do you know who they are? Do you know what that's all about?

• 2:43Amanda Dobbins?

  You have explained it to me, I think, several times.

• 2:46Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:46Amanda Dobbins?

  In an attempt to get me to remember the details and invest. I have not held on to any of that information, so I did just watch the trailer. So it seems like Hallmark Jetsons? Like, but they all have special powers? But like, is this sincere? Or is this satirical? Like, what's going on?

• 3:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very good question. It's unclear the timeline in which this story is happening.

• 3:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, great.

• 3:13Sean Fennessey?

  Because there's a-

• 3:14Amanda Dobbins?

  You know what? You know what? I love the answer to any question, be like, well, we're not sure what timeline-

• 3:18Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I don't just mean that it's multiversal. I mean, I literally don't know what year it is. Because the story, as we see it, looks both mid-century modern and retrofuturistic.

• 3:28Amanda Dobbins?

  They did a nice job with the mid-century modern set.

• 3:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so some of this stuff looks cool. The Fantastic Four is one of the most legendary Marvel comics, created in the 1960s. In the era of the space race, four astronauts go into space. They then receive these powers because of this experience that they've had in space, and then they become heroes. Reed Richards, the smartest man in the world, Pedro Pascal in the film. Sue Storm, his wife, also a scientist, she's the invisible woman. Her brother, Johnny Storm, is the Human Torch. And Ben Grimm, Reed's best friend, is The Thing. Eben Moss-Bacherak playing The Thing.

• 4:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Wait, so they go to space and then?

• 4:11Sean Fennessey?

  They come back with powers.

• 4:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Do they get like hit by meteorite?

• 4:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's like an event. I forget specifically what the space event is and I don't know what they'll show us here. But you know, this is a very legendary brand. There have already been two different versions of this story in movies in the last 25 years.

• 4:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And they've been really bad.

• 4:23Sean Fennessey?

  Really bad. One by Tim Story and then one by Josh Trank. You know, they both had big stars in them. They both were big swings and misses. A lot of people have made the case over the years, Fantastic Four is not really a very modern brand. And it's a little hard to convey that story. So I think it's smart to like pitch it in the past. Here's my problem with it. It's directed by Matt Shakman, who's one of the most accomplished and successful TV directors of his generation. He's directed everything from Game of Thrones to Wandavision and everything in between. He's done lots of network dramas. He's done lots of prestige TV. This looked like TV to me.

• 4:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 4:59Sean Fennessey?

  It just like looked like TV with a Marvel budget. You know, everything's very flat, a lot of like, you know, obvious single shots with multiple people talking in them. Just didn't have a ton of pizzazz for me. I know that some fans seem like really excited about it and maybe I'm just been so down on Marvel for so long. And part of it is this is my birthday movie this year. I like to have a cool movie on my birthday weekend.

• 5:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I get the PTA.

• 5:23Sean Fennessey?

  I was hoping this would be cooler. You get the PTA.

• 5:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, technically it's one week later, but I'm claiming it as my own.

• 5:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, I think you're luckier this year.

• 5:32Sean Fennessey?

  Fantastic Four, the first steps. What do you think those steps are? Where are they stepping to?

• 5:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Wherever those like 40,000 missiles are coming from?

• 5:42Sean Fennessey?

  Could be, could be. Do you know about Galactus?

• 5:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, because Chris and Andy talked about him once. He like eats the world. He's so powerful.

• 5:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. He's pictured at the end of this trailer. We see that guy with a giant helmet. We see behind his head.

• 5:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Cool.

• 5:55Sean Fennessey?

  I think, you think it was an homage to the brutalists? He was looking at the Statue of Liberty?

• 5:58Amanda Dobbins?

  So, so this is just about like, hey, it's nice to have a family?

• 6:03Sean Fennessey?

  Family is a significant part of the story, yeah.

• 6:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I like my family too.

• 6:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 6:08Amanda Dobbins?

  But.

• 6:08Sean Fennessey?

  The family they choose too, you know?

• 6:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 6:10Sean Fennessey?

  It's a buddy and a brother and a wife and a husband.

• 6:13Amanda Dobbins?

  That's, I mean, that's beautiful, but like.

• 6:16Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of like how I think about you and Bob and Jack. You know, you guys are, you're my Fantastic Four.

• 6:20Amanda Dobbins?

  That makes me the invisible woman?

• 6:22Sean Fennessey?

  No, you're the thing.

• 6:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. What's the thing?

• 6:24Sean Fennessey?

  Doesn't that have to make you one of the four? Which one are you? I'm obviously Reed Richards, the smartest man in the universe.

• 6:31Sean Fennessey?

  Set me right up, Bob. Thank you very much, Human Torch.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  That's what I'm here for, you know? I'm here to set you up, throw you some lobs.

• 6:37Sean Fennessey?

  Appreciate that. The Invisible Woman, of course, editing video for us. Thank you, Jack. Uh, I, I wish it looked a little better. I think that our friends on, at the Ringerverse seem very excited.

• 6:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 6:48Sean Fennessey?

  Will you be covering this show on the pod with me, or will you set it out?

• 6:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, I mean, I'm here. I don't think I'm on vacation yet.

• 6:55Sean Fennessey?

  Vanessa Kirby?

• 6:55Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like, we haven't pinned it down. I, I vote for her.

• 6:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 6:58Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I'm like, is she really just playing a 50's trad wife?

• 7:03Sean Fennessey?

  She's so much more than that.

• 7:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, great. Well, aren't they always?

• 7:06Sean Fennessey?

  They are.

• 7:06Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 7:07Sean Fennessey?

  They honestly are. They contain multitudes, and we'll see. Jurassic World Rebirth.

• 7:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 7:12Sean Fennessey?

  This movie's coming out earlier in July. This is, I think, July 2nd, and this is the seventh Jurassic World film. And I know exactly what happened in every Jurassic World movie, as you know, chronologically. And it comes to us from Gareth Edwards, a very gifted director, who sometimes struggles with story. He directed Rogue One, he directed The Creator a couple of years ago, and stars Scarlett Johansson.

• 7:32Amanda Dobbins?

  The Creator was, which one was that?

• 7:34Sean Fennessey?

  John David Washington.

• 7:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, right.

• 7:36Sean Fennessey?

  And the small child robot.

• 7:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah. What do you, I want to be free. I want all robots to be free.

• 7:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 7:43Amanda Dobbins?

  What about ice cream? Oh, yeah. That was some good stuff.

• 7:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that movie was probably one of the best looking movies of that year.

• 7:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I watched it on a plane.

• 7:51Sean Fennessey?

  Very bad script. Nevertheless, he's, he's here, he's kind of born to make a Jurassic movie in many ways. He's great with CGI and, um, you know, less good with actors, but not terrible.

• 8:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:00Sean Fennessey?

  And the actors in this movie are quite good. It's Scarlett Johansson, it's Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend. Quite a cast. They've assembled. I don't know what happened to all the other people from the last Jurassic World movie. I guess they all died, like, on a, in a plane crash or something.

• 8:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Wasn't it like, I mean, Chris Ryan famously described it as sort of like a détente, right? And the dinosaurs get... You know, Costa Rica and or this fake CGI island. And

• 8:26Sean Fennessey?

  They didn't have Yalta, though. Like, I think they were just like, we'll see you later, dinosaurs. You know, and they didn't actually hash it out.

• 8:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, but then I guess everyone else moved on, you know?

• 8:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Um, but for some reason, we have to go back

• 8:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 8:37Sean Fennessey?

  To the island.

• 8:38Amanda Dobbins?

  To get DNA from a dinosaur egg.

• 8:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I wasn't paying attention because I had some notes on Scarlett Johansson's line readings. But, um, she wants to be Lara Croft. That's cool, I guess.

• 8:50Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think?

• 8:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Never seen a Lara Croft movie, so it's really just.

• 8:55Sean Fennessey?

  When we did the video, I was like, why did she do this? Like, I, she's just so much better than this movie. And she just spent 10 years in the MCU. Why are we just going back to franchises?

• 9:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:03Sean Fennessey?

  It was pointed out to me that she loves Jurassic Park and that she, when she heard there was a new Jurassic Park movie, that she wa, she like, was like, I want to be a part of this, that that's her favorite blockbuster. And so she's really passionate about it.

• 9:13Amanda Dobbins?

  That is good taste. And also, she has, uh, two children, I believe, at least.

• 9:19Sean Fennessey?

  This was Bill's point.

• 9:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Schools are expensive.

• 9:21Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think it was more that, Bill, what Bill was saying, which I, it makes sense, you know, the old Ben Affleck, I was Batman for my kids thing.

• 9:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:28Sean Fennessey?

  Where he was, she could be a hero in a Jurassic Park movie and her kids could see her be the hero.

• 9:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 9:33Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I, I wish you would just go make another marriage story or Ghost World, personally, but that's just me.

• 9:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I, this seems fine. Everyone seems slightly miscast to me, with the exception of Mahershala Ali, who just seems to be having such a fun time that it doesn't matter, but like

• 9:47Sean Fennessey?

  He seems comfortable.

• 9:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Jonathan Bailey, like, charm master is like the nerd science guy?

• 9:55Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I mean, you know, in theory, that's what Jeff Goldblum was once upon a time. Can he bring that same energy?

• 10:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I, yeah, but it's a different thing.

• 10:03Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with you.

• 10:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:04Sean Fennessey?

  So will you be seeing this movie?

• 10:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I will.

• 10:06Sean Fennessey?

  Will you be doing the podcast about it?

• 10:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I, yes. You know?

• 10:09Sean Fennessey?

  That's cool.

• 10:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I like my job. Uh, and I like seeing all of you.

• 10:13Sean Fennessey?

  Strictly to retain your position here at The Ringer, you'll be seeing both of these movies.

• 10:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Children, uh, who need health insurance, so.

• 10:22Sean Fennessey?

  Good to know.

• 10:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Sean Fennessey?

  Very happy to hear that.

• 10:24Speaker 05

  You guys remember when Marshawn Lynch showed up to a press conference and was, every answer that he gave to every, every question was, I'm here so I don't get fined?

• 10:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:32Speaker 05

  That's you talking about this movie.

• 10:33Sean Fennessey?

  You're being held against your will all summer is what you're saying.

• 10:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Just listen, I meet my obligations. And the definition of my obligations are to see these films and to talk about them and ask questions.

• 10:45Sean Fennessey?

  Well, one, I enjoyed Jurassic World, the first, the fourth movie.

• 10:49Amanda Dobbins?

  That was the first one with blue?

• 10:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, um, and it's, it's a little silly, but it was a fun.

• 10:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Sean Fennessey?

  CGI adventure movie. Um, I'm like, I'm good. I'm good now. Like, we got it. There, it's, my dinosaurs are scary. You know, and you shouldn't go near them because they might eat you.

• 11:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 11:04Sean Fennessey?

  We got, can we do more than that? Is there anything else left to say there?

• 11:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 11:08Sean Fennessey?

  Don't go near them.

• 11:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Have there been water dinosaurs before?

• 11:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, come on.

• 11:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, I mean, I don't remember, like the mor- moronosaurus or whatever it is at the end of this.

• 11:17Sean Fennessey?

  Mosasaurus. The idiot-saurus? Uh, I, the thing I didn't like about that sequence, which looked kind of cool, was it just looked like Godzilla minus one. Remember when Godzilla's like in the water chasing the boat? I'm like, we just saw this in a movie two years ago, probably a better movie, so.

• 11:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 11:31Sean Fennessey?

  That's kind of annoying.

• 11:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I, you know, I, I don't, I don't know what to say to you.

• 11:35Sean Fennessey?

  Dinosaurs are not Godzilla, I want to point that out. Godzilla is a different thing.

• 11:39Amanda Dobbins?

  They are borrowing a lot from Godzilla at this point.

• 11:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 11:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Even the whole, like, Middle Earth, where the, or like below the core, where do they keep Godzilla? Or no, where do they keep Kong?

• 11:53Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm, is it Inner Earth?

• 11:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that sounds right.

• 11:56Sean Fennessey?

  It's an inner world.

• 11:57Amanda Dobbins?

  And Godzilla, they let roam around, right?

• 12:00Sean Fennessey?

  What's, what's it called? It's like inside the earth. I'm gonna look it up, I promise.

• 12:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 12:04Sean Fennessey?

  I think it is inside the earth.

• 12:06Amanda Dobbins?

  There's a Rebecca Hall CNN appearance filmed for the movie that explains it all perfectly.

• 12:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, she is the exposition queen of the Godzilla.

• 12:13Speaker 05

  Guys, I got it. I got it.

• 12:15Sean Fennessey?

  What's it called?

• 12:15Speaker 05

  Hollow Earth?

• 12:15Sean Fennessey?

  Hollow Earth.

• 12:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Hollow Earth, sure. Well, you understand, like hollow Middle Earth, yeah, it was close.

• 12:20Sean Fennessey?

  Would you be interested if Warner Brothers and Universal could get their shit together in a Jurassic World Kong Godzilla crossover movie?

• 12:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 12:32Amanda Dobbins?

  No. I think, I think that that's like, just think about all the exposition that they would have to do, right?

• 12:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they should cast like Tilda Swinton and Mark Rylance in it.

• 12:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Team Godzilla, Godzilla is so powerful, like it just nukes everybody else.

• 12:47Sean Fennessey?

  He's a, a huge brat who always naps. That's, that's what we know about Godzilla in those films.

• 12:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, when it's time to save the day, or do whatever needs to be done, Godzilla just shows up, takes care of it, and goes back to sleep.

• 13:00Sean Fennessey?

  Not like Kong, who uses his heart and his mind to save the day.

• 13:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 13:04Speaker 05

  Wasn't there a plotline in Godzilla versus Kong where there was like a podcaster there? He was like doing content?

• 13:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, Brian Tyree Henry.

• 13:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 13:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, over multiple installments of that franchise.

• 13:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 13:16Amanda Dobbins?

  You know? And like Millie Bobby Brown was really into it in the first one.

• 13:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he was making like Last House on the Left podcast, you know what I mean?

• 13:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then her dad was Kyle Chandler, and she tried to get Kyle Chandler to listen to it, and he wasn't a part of that.

• 13:31Sean Fennessey?

  He was like, stop listening to this darn podcast!

• 13:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And they moved on. I think they like, you know, healed, like, you know, whoever was in the last three Jurassic movies, you know?

• 13:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And they like, they went to Yalta. They said, thank you. They moved on. But yeah, Brian Tyree Henry was still there, like churning out the podcast and doing pod reads. I mean, it was a really brutal parody of a podcaster.

• 13:56Sean Fennessey?

  Super into MeUndies, Bombasocks, were his other sponsors.

• 14:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Bombasocks actually do stay on a baby's foot if you need that, if you need that.

• 14:07Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting spawn from you. Thanks for sharing that. All Bombas, please send to Amanda Dobbins, courtesy of Spotify.

• 14:13Amanda Dobbins?

  All the other socks fall off.

• 14:15Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. Are you doing the read right now?

• 14:17Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I'm just like, I'm just, you know, I'm living my life. I'm sharing my personal experience.

• 14:22Sean Fennessey?

  That's good. You're retaining your position here at the Ringer.

• 14:24Amanda Dobbins?

  And now I'm available to go to Hollow Earth.

• 14:28Sean Fennessey?

  Is there anything else in the world of movies you'd like to hit before we get into the topic at hand for this episode, which was your idea?

• 14:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you want to say anything about the Academy spoiling The Brutalist on its?

• 14:38Speaker 05

  I didn't love it. I didn't, I didn't love it. Did you see that, Bobby?

• 14:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Bobby's so mad.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  I did see that. Well, number one, that's like the worst written scene in the whole fucking movie. We spent time on it on the episode, yeah. And then they scroll the script underneath it for that being nominated for Mona and Brady for-

• 14:54Sean Fennessey?

  Listeners of the show who have not seen The Brutalist, do not look at the Academy's social media handles, because in an effort to, you know, they do this, they show us the scripts of films that are nominated for original screenplay and adapted screenplay, and then they put the scenes side by side. They often do that during the telecast too, which is a cool thing. The scene that they chose for The Brutalist, pretty important scene with-

• 15:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:15Sean Fennessey?

  In, in a three and a half hour movie, it happens at like three hours and 14 minutes.

• 15:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Very true, yeah.

• 15:19Sean Fennessey?

  So, don't watch that if you haven't seen it.

• 15:21Speaker 05

  There's straight up no defensible reason for not just choosing the exchange between Adrian Brody and Guy Pearce.

• 15:27Amanda Dobbins?

  What thousands-

• 15:27Sean Fennessey?

  Totally agree. Totally agree. That should be the scene.

• 15:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I will say though, so you, you sent me this and I was driving, and so all I saw at first was like, well, my phone read to me, Sean has sent a link to X.com and the comment WTF. And I was like, oh no, they postponed the Oscars, you know, like, oh no, like something truly terrible has happened. And I was like, oh great, like someone spoiled, you know, the worst part of The Brutalist.

• 15:54Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's really more so that it's a critical moment in the movie.

• 15:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Everything is about perspective, you know?

• 15:59Speaker 05

  It is about perspective.

• 16:00Amanda Dobbins?

  The Brutalist and also your response to that tweet.

• 16:03Sean Fennessey?

  The Fantastic Four first steps, it's all about perspective. What timeline are we on, Amanda? We're trying to figure that out every day.

• 16:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 16:09Sean Fennessey?

  So today on the show, we were thinking about how just the word love appears in a bunch of movies that are being released this month, and that Hollywood is always trying to hit their marks, timing wise, for what the world is thinking about. And you know me, like every morning I wake up in February and I think Valentine's Day.

• 16:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:26Sean Fennessey?

  This is super important. It's really important that I reflect on love and those that I do love in my life.

• 16:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Sean Fennessey?

  And also go to movies with those people that are about love. And so you had the idea, as we bundle these titles together, to talk about garbage love. So, we're gonna talk about some new releases-

• 16:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:42Sean Fennessey?

  That are clearly using the love conceit.

• 16:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. Or they had some of the love conceit and then got shunted to February as a result.

• 16:52Sean Fennessey?

  Very good point. We don't know if these films were made for this calendar.

• 16:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Here is my advice to aspiring filmmakers, if you don't want your movie released in February-

• 17:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Find a different angle.

• 17:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, perhaps Christmas.

• 17:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Find a new slant.

• 17:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, or Halloween. Those might be better times in the release calendar. Nevertheless, the first movie we're talking about today, I've already mentioned, it's Companion, which is written and directed by Drew, who I mentioned, who's on the show later, produced by Zach Cregger, who directed Barbarian and Boulderlight. It's kind of the crew Roy Lee from Vertigo, the team that made Barbarian, which was one of the breakout surprises of 2022. Chris and I, at length, explained that film to you on a podcast.

• 17:31Amanda Dobbins?

  That was a fun podcast while I had a concussion, yeah.

• 17:32Sean Fennessey?

  It was fun. That's right. It was shortly after you smashed your head into a beam here at Spotify HQ. Very memorable times in America.

• 17:39Amanda Dobbins?

  That was right after my return from maternity leave number one.

• 17:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 17:44Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's like we're in a similar place in our lives.

• 17:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, let's recreate it after this pod. Smash you right into a beam. You may feel that you need to after talking about all these movies. The stars of this movie are Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid, Lucas Cage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guillen, and Rupert Friend. You know, Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid on a big upward trajectory as young stars in Hollywood. Two interesting people. I wonder would they make our 3500 35 list, given where they're going right now.

• 18:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 18:08Sean Fennessey?

  Sophie Thatcher was just in Heretic last fall, a modest success, and she's, you know, on Yellowjackets, and she's been in a few other horror movies over the last couple of years. Jack Quaid, in addition to being on The Boys and being Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan's son, has developed a reputation as like one of the good people in Hollywood. Have you followed that?

• 18:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, no.

• 18:29Sean Fennessey?

  Just that he seems like a cool guy. And Drew, even when I talked to him, was like, yeah, Jack Quaid just like met me for coffee and we just hung out and he was super cool.

• 18:35Amanda Dobbins?

  He does seem like a great guy who is also developing an on-screen persona as like, not Gen Z cuck, but Gen Z asshole of, in a really effective way. He's really good.

• 18:52Sean Fennessey?

  He leans deeply into that in this movie. So the premise of the movie is it's about a bunch of friends taking a weekend getaway to one of the girl's rich boyfriend's house, and they all get together and they make dinner together and drink, something you and I have done many times. This is a common vacation strategy.

• 19:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Not a rich boyfriend's house yet.

• 19:11Sean Fennessey?

  No. Are any billionaires that would like to host the hosts of the big picture in their homes? But don't want to murder us.

• 19:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 19:18Sean Fennessey?

  Then we're open to that, right?

• 19:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I I love a vacation.

• 19:21Sean Fennessey?

  This reminds me, if Steve Cohen, the owner of the Mets, would like to host, me at least, to talk about the signing of Pete Alonso.

• 19:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, you guys did finally sign him?

• 19:30Sean Fennessey?

  We did.

• 19:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, congratulations.

• 19:32Sean Fennessey?

  And Bob texted me late at night on the East Coast, and he was the one who made me aware of the news. Let's just say we were elated.

• 19:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, do we know anything about the financial specifics of the deal?

• 19:42Sean Fennessey?

  We do. Let's just say they are advantageous to the Mets.

• 19:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I bet.

• 19:46Speaker 05

  Two years, fifty four million, thirty for the first year, and twenty four if he opts in. Opted out after the first year. I don't know, you want me to keep going? We could get really down in the nitty gritty.

• 19:55Amanda Dobbins?

  How is that advantageous to the Mets?

• 19:57Sean Fennessey?

  Because it's short term.

• 19:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 19:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's already thirty, so. He's going down, you know, he's going down.

• 20:04Amanda Dobbins?

  At this point, does that make you feel bad? Like, you're getting there.

• 20:08Speaker 05

  Well, I'm not trying to hit ninety nine mile an hour fastballs. I'm just cutting Pro Tools sessions, you know?

• 20:12Amanda Dobbins?

  That's, I mean, listen, I just, I like.

• 20:14Speaker 05

  Still work.

• 20:14Amanda Dobbins?

  We're creeping closer. Do you know what I mean?

• 20:17Speaker 05

  I'm aware.

• 20:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:18Speaker 05

  I feel it.

• 20:18Sean Fennessey?

  Ever since you crossed forty, you just want to drag everyone with you. I see what you're doing.

• 20:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I can.

• 20:22Sean Fennessey?

  I, uh, so, companion, anyhow, shout out to Steve Cohen. Appreciate what you're doing for the Mets. Really just changed my life, if I'm being totally honest. Uh, I really like this movie. This is a perfect February movie in many ways, which is, it's like a really tidy ninety minute genre movie that is fun and feels very informed by movie history and gets great performances out of its two leads. Um, it's a tough movie to talk about without ruining. Um, it did really well at the box office and is probably going to continue to do pretty well. So some people have seen it. But the thing is, is they made a choice here in the marketing of the movie. So I wanted to ask you, did you know about the sort of first act premise twist of the film?

• 21:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I either did, or I have seen a lot of movies and it was like immediately apparent.

• 21:09Sean Fennessey?

  How immediate? How quickly did you, because this is an interesting part of the dynamic of the movie.

• 21:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Full disclosure, I saw this one at an AMC, so I timed my, um, arrival a little bit later in order to, yeah, listen, I'm, I'm a woman on a schedule.

• 21:25Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm, sure.

• 21:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And then I got there a little bit late, and then I was like, did I miss? The part of the movie where they explicitly say what's going on because it's very apparent to me, sitting down and watching it. And I would say I got there as they are driving to the vacation.

• 21:44Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so that what you missed at the beginning of this film is something that we see later in the film is the meet cute between the Jack Quaid character and the Sophie Thatcher character.

• 21:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 21:53Sean Fennessey?

  And then I think it goes right into them like packing for the trip and then going.

• 21:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:57Sean Fennessey?

  I saw this movie some, some time ago. Um, I saw it before there was a trailer. I think they're just a poster, so I didn't know anything. If you don't want to hear anything about Companion, a movie that's been out for seven days now and is also has a trailer that reveals what we're going to talk about.

• 22:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 22:11Sean Fennessey?

  Turn off the show, I guess. I don't really know how to talk about this stuff anymore.

• 22:14Amanda Dobbins?

  So here's where I don't know, like spoiler, spoiler, don't add us.

• 22:22Speaker 06

  Spoiler warning.

• 22:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know whether, like, I think it must even be in like the one line ticket description or something. I think this.

• 22:32Sean Fennessey?

  Like in the tagline.

• 22:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, this info is like so widely available that I must have somehow seen or known or even like a description of it. Like, I mean, even the title, sort of.

• 22:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 22:44Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, which, which is okay. I didn't diminish the, that reveal for me, but anyway.

• 22:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think the point is, is that that that reveal is actually not supposed to be super. I mean, it's important to the story, but it's not supposed to be some Shyamalan twist of some kind.

• 22:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:00Sean Fennessey?

  Anyhow, as you said, spoiler warning. Um, it turns out that the Thatcher character is in fact a robot.

• 23:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 23:08Sean Fennessey?

  Who has been programmed to be a girlfriend, companion, sex object for the Jack Quaid character.

• 23:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 23:16Sean Fennessey?

  You could tell basically on, on the car ride.

• 23:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, instantly.

• 23:20Sean Fennessey?

  More specifically, once they get into the house and we're seeing the dynamic in the room and how people are talking to and about each other. For example, how the Megan Surratt character treats Sophie Thatcher's character. You're like, this is just weird. Something is off here.

• 23:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And then even there's like in that conversation, they're talking about.

• 23:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Power dynamics and relationships and the Sophie Thatcher character says, I'm not built that way. And I was like, you know, and I was like, oh, so do we already know?

• 23:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 23:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And like, we don't, but it is, it is like flashing it to you intentionally, really, really brightly.

• 23:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And so the film kind of like tricks you a little bit. It is sort of a robot ex machina, you know, exploration of ethics in having a robot that you have sex with.

• 24:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 24:05Sean Fennessey?

  But not really.

• 24:06Amanda Dobbins?

  But like thankfully, not really.

• 24:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's really more of like a comedy thriller, I would say. It's like, you know, Drew has talked a lot about the Coen brothers and I think it's like a little bit Raising Arizona. You know, it's a little bit the Terminator at times.

• 24:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 24:19Sean Fennessey?

  Um, in terms of the

• 24:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:21Sean Fennessey?

  Hunt and destroy quality.

• 24:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And you're

• 24:23Sean Fennessey?

  And you're rooting for a robot.

• 24:24Amanda Dobbins?

  For a robot. Um, no, what I liked about it is that it's clever and it's like, it definitely has some ideas about like robots or, you know, power dynamics and relationships, or a generation of young men or whatever, but it's just like, clearly someone had like tiny thoughts about it as it was writing a very entertaining movie. And it's not like banging you over the head with any sort of like intense metaphor or obvious like moral lesson. It's just kind of smart and then is primarily interested in being entertaining and fun.

• 25:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, it's not a treatise on

• 25:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:03Sean Fennessey?

  Ethics in robotics or anything like that. And I think there are a lot of very funny, specific choices that are made. For example, the revelation that Sophie's character is a rental and has not been and like you could imagine in an economy like this, that a sex robot could be rented and returned, which is super disgusting.

• 25:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 25:24Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but is the kind of thing that would happen.

• 25:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And like the, the world building or the robot building of how she's controlled and like the choices that are made or that can be programmed, obviously the intelligence one is, is like very funny.

• 25:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 25:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And like, and very well communicated. You don't get bogged down in any of it, but like, how this robot operates does become intentional to the story. So I thought it was like very deft writing.

• 25:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And even though the film is, has a slightly silly tone, I felt like the actual specifics of the product and the way that the product is sort of like delivered and operates.

• 26:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:01Sean Fennessey?

  Is, feels real and absurd at the same time.

• 26:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:06Sean Fennessey?

  Like, it felt very grounded and kind of credible in an upsetting way. And we know that there is probably a, a buying base for this product.

• 26:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:15Sean Fennessey?

  You know, if this hit the market.

• 26:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:17Sean Fennessey?

  Some jackquades might, might be interested in it.

• 26:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 26:21Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and then, you know, the film kind of, uh.

• 26:25Amanda Dobbins?

  There are more reveals and more, and.

• 26:27Sean Fennessey?

  There's one particularly.

• 26:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Really good one.

• 26:30Sean Fennessey?

  Very fun.

• 26:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Really, really good one. And I did not, you know, I didn't see it coming. So.

• 26:34Sean Fennessey?

  We won't spoil that one for anybody listening at home. It's a really fun. It's just like a great genre movie for a February release. I hope more people get a chance to see it. Um, and you can, we should listen to Drew talk about it too, because he, um, the like, movies having ideas but not being obsessed with their ideas is interesting, coming out of the brutalist discussions we've been having, you know? Or it's like, this is about something, but it's not only about something.

• 26:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 26:56Sean Fennessey?

  It's about having fun too.

• 26:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm really pro that.

• 26:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I know.

• 26:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, what, like, what if we could have a nice time while also having brains, you know?

• 27:04Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with you.

• 27:04Amanda Dobbins?

  We can have it all.

• 27:06Sean Fennessey?

  What do you make of Sophie Thatcher? Does, does her flavor, uh, hit for you?

• 27:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, well, I mean, her flavor was playing a robot. So in this, and one who like, shifts, um, in programming throughout the movie. And so I thought she did a great job in that. I can't remember which one she was in Heretic. I'm, I'm sorry.

• 27:26Sean Fennessey?

  Well, she was the, I'd seemingly slightly older, slightly more mature one.

• 27:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, oh, right.

• 27:33Sean Fennessey?

  Chloe East, who's a little bit more sort of like buoyant and optimistic.

• 27:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, exactly.

• 27:37Sean Fennessey?

  And, and Sophie Thatcher, and that I think is kind of her screen persona is like, a little bit like taciturn but hardened.

• 27:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 27:43Sean Fennessey?

  And very final girl. You know, she was in a movie called The Boogeyman where she's the final girl. She's really kind of like a Jamie Lee Curtis archetype, I would say. Um, and she keeps getting cast and pursuing movies like this, which I think is often a tried and true pathway to.

• 27:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 27:56Sean Fennessey?

  Getting bigger and bigger parts in Hollywood these days.

• 27:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Anya and Taylor Joy.

• 27:59Sean Fennessey?

  A little bit.

• 28:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, about her in her, like. There's a reason she was cast as a robot.

• 28:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Yeah, there's like kind of perfect imperfections though. You know, she's like, doesn't have perfect teeth. You know, she doesn't have like a perfect complexion, but she's obviously quite striking.

• 28:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Doesn't she?

• 28:16Sean Fennessey?

  I like her a lot.

• 28:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I think she, her skin's pretty good.

• 28:19Sean Fennessey?

  One thing I've been noticing is I've been watching my high definition television and 4K stuff. Like Severance, for example. I've been watching Severance this season.

• 28:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:27Sean Fennessey?

  Excellent show. Really, like one of the first shows in a while where I'm really blown away by it.

• 28:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I'll literally never watch it. Continue.

• 28:33Sean Fennessey?

  Anyhow, uh, just the number of pores that I'm seeing on people's faces is alarming.

• 28:38Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's like, we've gone too far.

• 28:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's too far.

• 28:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and this is also my notes with like what's, whatever's going on in, in these camera rooms. It's just kind of like, we gotta like, you know?

• 28:46Sean Fennessey?

  Put some Vaseline on that lens.

• 28:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Technology is like not keeping up, or, or technology is not working with dermatology.

• 28:54Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting. Yeah.

• 28:55Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, and technology is not working with just like people trying to live their life.

• 29:02Sean Fennessey?

  I was noticing it with both Adam Scott and Britt Lauer on Severance 2. Just like very attractive, successful actors. And I was like, I can really see like all the little imperfections on their face. It's just so strange.

• 29:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I was talking to a producer friend, my friend Colin, who produced Opus. And I was bugging him about a question I've had forever on film sets, which is like, is there a like standby dermatologist? Like what happens if someone gets a zit?

• 29:28Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. What do you say?

• 29:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And he was like, he was like, a hair and makeup can like usually handle it, you know? You know, and like maybe, so he was like, he was like, no, there was like no one standing around with like a cortisol shot, which was, which is like kind of what I dreamed. You know, like when I become rich and famous.

• 29:44Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 29:44Amanda Dobbins?

  And when I'm Julia Roberts, like I will have like a derm on my rider. But listen, you know, when it's coming, what are you supposed to do? But he was like, I, no, no, most of the time hair and makeup could deal with it. So I think that's what you would do, but. I think with the new cameras, like I, you know, I don't know if that's true anymore. Like there, we're getting too good. So.

• 30:08Sean Fennessey?

  Depends on who's shooting it. I find the better the filmmaker, the more exposure on the blemishes, which is a tricky thing. That's the thing about Severance is really well made. So you can see things clearly.

• 30:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And I guess there is also some, like, you know, maybe the filmmaker wants the blemish to be out there. At some point it becomes a continuity issue, which is what my question is.

• 30:26Sean Fennessey?

  Good point.

• 30:27Amanda Dobbins?

  But I, like, I agree with you. You know, everyone, you know, we need to think about

• 30:34Amanda Dobbins?

  people and skincare and life a little bit more.

• 30:36Sean Fennessey?

  Speaking of blemishes and imperfections, let's talk about your cordially invited.

• 30:41Amanda Dobbins?

  What a segue. That was really good.

• 30:44Sean Fennessey?

  This is the new film directed by former guest of the show Nicholas Stoller, who's, you know, directed a lot of funny comedies over the years, forgetting Starrett Marshall, most recently Bros. It's streaming on Amazon Prime Video right now. It stars Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon, two very big movie stars. Geraldine Viswanathan and Meredith Hagner and Celia Westner are also in this movie. It's about two families who have double booked an island destination vacation for their weddings. For Will Ferrell, his daughter, for Reese Witherspoon, her sister. And what happens when these two crazy families get stuck on an island together when they're double booked? Will anybody fall in love maybe? And even though opposites are attracting? I don't know. We'll find out.

• 31:25Sean Fennessey?

  This movie has all of the component pieces to be good.

• 31:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 31:31Sean Fennessey?

  And yet.

• 31:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Do they need to be, here's the thing. That's what it is. It has all of the component pieces.

• 31:37Sean Fennessey?

  I'm like, good director, good movie stars.

• 31:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And it even has.

• 31:39Sean Fennessey?

  Funny idea.

• 31:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And it even has many good component pieces.

• 31:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, there's some of it is entertaining.

• 31:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And it just, it's like mismatched together. And it does really feel like the Reese Witherspoon character and family were like boiling over here is one idea for a movie. And then the Will Ferrell and Geraldine Viswanathan character were like boiling over here. And it was like, what if we just? Had them fall in love at a wedding. You know, it's like.

• 32:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 32:09Amanda Dobbins?

  We had all of the things.

• 32:10Sean Fennessey?

  Almost like two scripts came together.

• 32:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, that's kind of what I think.

• 32:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's a real, um, they forgot to put the yeast in the bread situation. Like this just didn't rise.

• 32:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yes, I think so. I think it's mushed together. I think that Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon are independently very funny and good in these independent movies.

• 32:30Sean Fennessey?

  Doing their archetypal thing and doing it well. I, my question for you about that, cause I agree with you.

• 32:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:36Sean Fennessey?

  Is, are we just too familiar with this archetypal um, performance from these movie stars? Like, that's obviously a, a feature of being a movie star is like, you have a certain kind of onscreen persona. You know, with Will Ferrell, it's like the sort of daffy, dopey, overly sincere, kind of dim, but ultimately good natured guy.

• 32:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 32:55Sean Fennessey?

  With Reese, it's like, kind of like hard exterior, go get her, go get them, you know, woman in charge. But deep down, there's a sweetness that you need to, you need to get past the exterior.

• 33:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, no, I thought that that was the good part. I think the problem is that ultimately you're supposed to, spoiler alert, they're supposed to find love. And like, no, they don't, the characters don't make any sense. Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell don't have any sort of chemistry.

• 33:20Sean Fennessey?

  None.

• 33:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, respectfully, like they are funny, isolated.

• 33:25Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:25Amanda Dobbins?

  And I like, I laughed several times throughout this movie. Also, you know, Reese Witherspoon is supposed to be, they're, they're being honest that they shot in Atlanta. And so this is all, like Reese Witherspoon is from outside Atlanta. And it's a, there's a southern family.

• 33:42Sean Fennessey?

  Did you relate at all to the southern family?

• 33:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I sure did. I was like, this is good.

• 33:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 33:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And even like.

• 33:47Sean Fennessey?

  I thought Celia Weston in particular, who often plays this part, but she's really good in this movie.

• 33:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And when Reese Witherspoon is like talking about her career and Celia Weston is like, I just never understand a single thing you say. And I was like, wow. You know, and then like all the names and the.

• 34:06Sean Fennessey?

  The three names and the families.

• 34:08Amanda Dobbins?

  The garden and gun joke, that is a real magazine. That is like, that is genuinely funny. So a lot of that stuff was very good. I mean, Will Ferrell and Geraldine Swannathan, like doing Islands in the Stream, like that was funny.

• 34:20Sean Fennessey?

  They had great chemistry too, as father and daughter.

• 34:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, all of the bits. Were like pretty funny.

• 34:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And then the actual, and even like the wedding stuff of the dueling weddings and like, I'm gonna, you know, delay the, the, my ceremony as long as possible by reading Dr. Seuss. And then there's like funny, funny stuff.

• 34:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 34:43Amanda Dobbins?

  But like the basic, we just smooshed all the, the basic structure of the movie just didn't make any sense.

• 34:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, the, the love's like the, the rom com part of it.

• 34:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the romance doesn't work as well. And we're talking about this because this is basically like a slapsticky Will Ferrell, Reese Witherspoon's, like stole or set piece comedy movie. But it's, it, it is about love and it needs love to make sense. And of course, the people who are like getting married, or maybe not the right people who could be getting married.

• 35:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 35:11Sean Fennessey?

  But the people who hate each other, the people who really love each other, tried and true convention in Hollywood romantic storytelling. But um, I, it, it raises some funny questions about like, is it better for a streaming movie to have big stars? And then you're like, that was a cool time passer with characters, like figures who, who I like. Or is it better if a streaming movie is like, maybe a little bit better, but not as relying on the fame and the recognizability as much? Because we kind of get, we're getting two versions of that right now. We're like, oftentimes the most popular movie on Netflix, it'll star two people. I'm like, who are those people? And it's like, well, they were on the Outer, Outer Banks for three seasons.

• 35:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 35:47Sean Fennessey?

  That's why this is the most popular movie in America. And then there's this where I'm like, in 24 of the last 25 years, this movie would have opened in July? And made 78 million dollars?

• 35:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Also, maybe would have been noted in a way that made slightly more sense.

• 36:03Sean Fennessey?

  Very good point. You, once again, you are standing up for the executives. Thank you very much. These creatives then have run amok in Hollywood.

• 36:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm just like, you know, some of this just didn't make sense with respect, but that's okay.

• 36:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 36:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I.

• 36:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Prefer to have the stars doing funny stuff and being themselves, even if it doesn't come together. Because the randos in, like, the randos don't cut it often.

• 36:34Sean Fennessey?

  I tend to agree.

• 36:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and I, I find myself especially watching all of this, you know, often aimed at women, like, streamer content where they haven't spent enough money on production and costume and, you know, whatever, design. So everyone, nothing looks as good as it should.

• 36:53Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And I'm just like, where did they find these people? And particularly these men? And this might just be like a me and a Gen Z issue where like, once again, like, children wake up, you know, but, uh, just like, wake up, uh, like you are all just like walking around asleep. Um, but there's just like a real lack of charisma and...

• 37:14Sean Fennessey?

  We have a lot of listeners who are part of that generation.

• 37:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and those people are on our frequency and they're dialed in and I love you guys. And I would say to you, just like gently nudge your brethren.

• 37:26Sean Fennessey?

  Have one cup of coffee.

• 37:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It's okay to have one cup.

• 37:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Or don't, and then don't be a performer, you know? Like, both are fine.

• 37:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 37:36Amanda Dobbins?

  But I, so all the randos, like the people that they keep finding, just like, are, are not there. And I noticed the cost savings. Shall we put it that way?

• 37:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. This is obviously...

• 37:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Companion actually does this, like, Companion has a twist on this in a way where for a long time, I was, you know, I was like, where are we finding these people?

• 37:56Sean Fennessey?

  Who are these people?

• 37:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and they're the right people.

• 38:00Sean Fennessey?

  There's a smart twist on that. I completely agree. There's actually an inside joke about that, that I can explain to you, but would, I would spoil part of the movie that I would tell you off mic. That makes it even funnier, honestly.

• 38:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Great.

• 38:10Sean Fennessey?

  Um, so...

• 38:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, this movie I thought was really deeply mediocre, but I didn't hate it. And I think I tend to hate a lot of the Street to Streamer movies where I'm like, this just is a real waste of time. And this was a time passer.

• 38:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 38:24Sean Fennessey?

  So it's not so bad. Um.

• 38:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I chuckled, you know, like that's the thing.

• 38:29Sean Fennessey?

  I have a big relationship to Will Ferrell, though, and I just want more for him. And he did something very funny this week where he basically said F you to the Academy for not nominating Will and Harper, which was very amusing. And he's just a significant part of my adult life as a movie fan. And, you know, this is okay.

• 38:47Amanda Dobbins?

  It's okay. Reese Witherspoon is also important to me. I guess this is like slightly better than some things she's done. So.

• 38:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Better or worse than The Morning Show?

• 38:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, way better.

• 38:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 38:57Amanda Dobbins?

  And, but like, not ultimately as like avant garde as I think that The Morning Show unintentionally is. You know, like, we are reaching new levels in something over at The Morning Show. And.

• 39:11Sean Fennessey?

  I won't be watching.

• 39:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I'll keep.

• 39:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. For what severance is to you is The Morning Show to me.

• 39:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, but this was more enjoyable, I think. She looks fantastic. By the way, I was literally like, Reese Witherspoon, you know, like, age, you know, workout, whatever. Like, what do I have to do?

• 39:29Sean Fennessey?

  Called substance, Amanda.

• 39:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, she looked, no, but she looks, you know, like, appropr, like, she looks her age-ish, but like, the best version of her age.

• 39:40Sean Fennessey?

  Sure. She's a multi-multi-millionaire.

• 39:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I do understand that. I understand she has access to, to treatments and resources that, that I do not.

• 39:47Sean Fennessey?

  Some dark arts, perhaps.

• 39:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, she's, she's using them prudently.

• 39:51Sean Fennessey?

  She looks great.

• 39:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:53Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, neither of us saw the movie Love Hurts, which is another movie that technically qualifies for this, but I had just been told by a great number of people that it's not very good.

• 40:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 40:01Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm looking at the reviews. This is the new film starring Kiwi Kwan and Ariana DeBose that comes to us from 87 North.

• 40:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 40:07Sean Fennessey?

  Which is the company that brought us The Fall Guy and John Wick. And I guess 87 North didn't make John Wick, but David Leitch, who is the founder of that company with his wife. Um, and they made Nobody, and they made Atomic Blonde. And so, you know, you know, there's going to be some really good hand-to-hand combat and fight choreography in this movie. Apparently, the story of the movie itself, the actual plot, is, uh, barely there. So we're not covering Love Hurts.

• 40:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Sean Fennessey?

  We are covering Love Me.

• 40:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I went to see it. You told me to.

• 40:35Sean Fennessey?

  I can't believe you went to see it.

• 40:37Amanda Dobbins?

  You told me to go see it.

• 40:38Sean Fennessey?

  I appreciate you going to see it.

• 40:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Like I said, I have obligations and I meet them in order to provide dentistry for my children.

• 40:46Sean Fennessey?

  Great. I'm happy to hear. It's not your passion for cinema or your friendship with me.

• 40:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Only one of them has teeth right now, but you know, we're any day now, we're hoping he's doing his best.

• 40:57Sean Fennessey?

  Any day now. Uh, one day, the one who has teeth will lose those teeth.

• 41:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. I know.

• 41:01Sean Fennessey?

  And then more will grow back.

• 41:02Amanda Dobbins?

  So I'm like, why do we really have to take him to the dentist right now? But that's another thing about like how I think dentistry is a scam.

• 41:07Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 41:08Amanda Dobbins?

  At least preventative.

• 41:09Sean Fennessey?

  This is you dangerously into the blackpilled zone as soon as you start talking. You especially should not talk about dentistry. You have a, you have a party of one in your mind about this.

• 41:19Amanda Dobbins?

  If there is something wrong and I, and there is pain, you can help me, but like I, I'm not gonna like just go to have you use an electric toothbrush on me and insult me. You know?

• 41:29Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 41:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And then charge me money for it.

• 41:31Sean Fennessey?

  This is one of those like Amanda's so crazy. I love her opinions where it's like, no, you're people like, go to England. That's my take on this. See what happens. All right. Love me. Um, I saw this movie 12 months ago at Sundance. I'll be remembering it off the top of my head.

• 41:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 41:45Sean Fennessey?

  Based on that viewing, cause I will not be watching it a second time. It's written and directed by Sam and Andy Zuccaro. I think one of the biggest reasons why I think it's worth discussing here is that it's sort of Steven Yeun and Kristen Stewart.

• 41:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, it does.

• 41:54Sean Fennessey?

  Two of the most interesting, exciting, I don't know, not quite young actors, but successful, interesting actors.

• 42:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't need to be rude.

• 42:01Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you're trying to drag the 30 year olds over the line with you. How old are they? They're 37?

• 42:04Amanda Dobbins?

  You know what? It's sort of, it's like the grownups are talking. I need the children to just sit and you know, wait.

• 42:11Sean Fennessey?

  They don't play humans in this movie.

• 42:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that, I mean, that's the question, isn't it, Sean?

• 42:17Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you, Amanda. That is the question. They play a buoy and a satellite.

• 42:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm trying to be productive. I'm trying to not be like.

• 42:23Sean Fennessey?

  The movie. I want to talk about it.

• 42:24Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I, I was, I found it very irritating.

• 42:27Sean Fennessey?

  It is very irritating. I'm with you on this. Um, they play a buoy and a satellite in a post-apocalyptic world.

• 42:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:33Sean Fennessey?

  And that they are a sort of artificial intelligence that is able to exist in a world where there are no humans. And they build a bond in this desiccated world. And they learn what life was like on Earth together.

• 42:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:50Sean Fennessey?

  Because I guess the internet has documented everything and so they can read about it and watch videos and they eventually.

• 42:56Amanda Dobbins?

  The cloud is still alive.

• 42:57Sean Fennessey?

  The cloud is alive, right? Which is why you should put everything in the cloud so that one day a buoy can learn about you and then come to represent you in a love affair.

• 43:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 43:06Sean Fennessey?

  With a satellite that looks and acts like Zack. This is, think about the possibilities here.

• 43:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:11Sean Fennessey?

  Sign up for the cloud.

• 43:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 43:12Sean Fennessey?

  Sign up for Face ID.

• 43:14Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 43:14Sean Fennessey?

  Just.

• 43:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I have to get a new phone, but I'm like, am I gonna be able to just use a passcode still?

• 43:18Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so.

• 43:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I honestly didn't go to the store because I was like, they're gonna try to put all this bullshit on my phone and I don't want it.

• 43:24Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 43:25Amanda Dobbins?

  But I'm running out of storage.

• 43:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, hard to believe. Good, good luck to you. Um, this movie is incredibly bold, takes a lot of chances in how it tells its story. I think it features actually two kind of interesting and very odd performances from the stars. Because they're trying to meet the moment of the big ideas of the movie, which is sort of like, what is consciousness? What is existence? What is, and what is love? What is a relationship? What does it mean to be connected to someone or something? All of which I think is like rich material for a movie. And yet, I did agree with you. I found this movie quite annoying.

• 43:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, one problem with it is that for, well, a couple of things. For half the movie, their, their voice performances and that is difficult and especially this type of sort of like evolving performance. Because this buoy and this satellite are learning how to be human in real time. So there, there are shades to what they're doing and Steven Yeun and Kristen Stewart are really good at that. And really good at acting. But you still only get to see these two great actors for like 40 minutes. The rest of the time, there's sort of like an animated fake YouTuber style. And then, you know, the way that they are learning, quote, how to be human is from leftover social media.

• 44:42Amanda Dobbins?

  So then, for a while, it becomes this sort of like, half-baked, like, treat us on what is social media and what does it mean to us? And how do we express ourselves? And like, look at these babies laughing. That was really cute. I liked it when the babies are laughing. And it's one of those things that is a continuing problem in movies that try to say something profound about social media, which is that the social media itself is more profound than whatever you have to say about it in your other movie. Like, it's not insightful and it's just sort of annoying watching your montage.

• 45:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It's interesting, too, that both of these movies, this movie and Companion, are both AI movies, but they're not movies at all about the evils or dangers of AI.

• 45:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 45:29Sean Fennessey?

  In fact, they have a kind of empathy for AI, at least the way that they're framed in the story. And they're not meant to be taken, you know, seriously. It's not like this is not the representative point of view of the filmmakers. But I wonder if these movies were made in different times, if they would have a different energy around some of these ideas. It's funny that, you know, while this has become such a hot debated topic in Hollywood in particular over the last 18 months, that these two movies have hit, and they're sort of like, maybe this robot is the hero. Maybe this robot is more decent than the corroded soul of this beta cuck or of this planet that has been abandoned by humanity because they destroyed it. Just notable aspects of it. Love Me, I think, was ultimately not very successful.

• 46:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, I didn't really take away anything about social media, the world at large, or like, love, I guess, besides like, I don't know, like, what was I supposed to learn about what it means to be human?

• 46:25Sean Fennessey?

  I think that there was a couple of things in their performance when things are kind of falling apart for them that felt more like a classic 70s movie about like, the difficulties of a relationship that I thought were kind of interesting. I would have liked more of that.

• 46:38Amanda Dobbins?

  But first of all, it was like, very sexist because the Steven Yeun character is just like, the person who can build a nice world and is like, I know what water is. And Kristen Stewart is then finally like, yeah, isn't water amazing? But like, she just has to be chastised into, you know?

• 46:54Sean Fennessey?

  Go off, queen.

• 46:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I mean- If you want me to like, learn something from the movie, that's what I'm learning, right?

• 47:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's legit.

• 47:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Only the man like, can knows how to live a pure life that can like-

• 47:06Sean Fennessey?

  Reed Richards, the thing.

• 47:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Find water, or whatever.

• 47:08Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 47:09Amanda Dobbins?

  So, that sucked.

• 47:13Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you quickly about Heart Eyes, which I did see, which also fits the bill here. Heart Eyes is, I guess, the horror movie of this month. A lot of, a lot of examples of these kinds of movies. We got an action movie, we've got kind of a sci-fi thriller.

• 47:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Everybody loves a tie-in, you know?

• 47:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we do.

• 47:25Amanda Dobbins?

  We gotta sell this stuff.

• 47:26Sean Fennessey?

  I don't remember having like, multiple tree movies for Arbor Day, you know? Like, this is, what is it about Valentine's Day?

• 47:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you do, though, you guys really celebrate the holidays in your house.

• 47:36Sean Fennessey?

  We do.

• 47:36Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, cuz it's like, you just gotta have something to orient around.

• 47:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And I remember Eileen explaining that to me. Like, we still have the leprechaun that you guys got us for St. Patrick's Day, like, several years ago.

• 47:45Sean Fennessey?

  Even though I don't respect St. Patrick's Day.

• 47:47Amanda Dobbins?

  That's between you and your people.

• 47:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 47:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And I just-

• 47:50Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's the problem, it's the people who are not my people.

• 47:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I just showed up-

• 47:53Sean Fennessey?

  Who are making a mockery.

• 47:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I just showed up with some cupcakes and took home a stuffed leprechaun that Knox still likes. But, we are celebrating that because, you know, it's like, gives your kids something to look forward, you know?

• 48:05Sean Fennessey?

  It does.

• 48:05Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and all human brains are like that, not just children.

• 48:08Sean Fennessey?

  You're right, I would not recommend any children watch Heart Eyes.

• 48:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 48:11Sean Fennessey?

  Which is-

• 48:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Look at you, you will not be just moved from the track.

• 48:15Sean Fennessey?

  Undeterred, no, I, you can't break me, this is, this is why this works. This is why this works, you know? I am, I am, I can only go in one direction and you can't go in any direction. Heart Eyes is a horror movie, directed by Josh Rubin. It's a pretty talented horror filmmaker, he's made a couple of movies, Scare Me and Werewolves Within, stars Olivia Holt, who I'd never seen before, but I think was also on one of those Netflix or Amazon series, and Mason Gooding, who you may recall from the recent Scream reboot movies, Jordana Brewster makes an appearance in this movie, Devon Sawa.

• 48:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Disney Channel.

• 48:44Sean Fennessey?

  Disney Channel, okay.

• 48:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Picking it, Disney Channel original movie, Girl vs. Monster.

• 48:50Sean Fennessey?

  Hell yeah.

• 48:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And Disney Channel original series, I Didn't Do It.

• 48:54Sean Fennessey?

  I Didn't Do It?

• 48:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:56Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting, that was also OJ Simpson's biopic?

• 48:59Amanda Dobbins?

  She was on Runaways, was that a-

• 49:05Amanda Dobbins?

  That was like an MCU thing?

• 49:07Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm, yes, soft MCU, it was like on freak form.

• 49:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, um, she's also a singer and she's had some voice roles.

• 49:13Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. She's a pretty good lead in this movie, which is like, I think a perfectly adequate slasher with a sense of humor about a crazy killer. I love a holiday themed slasher movie. You know, we talked a lot about them with Eli Roth back when he was on the show for Thanksgiving. This is a tried and true format. Um, in this case, Mason Gooding and Olivia Holt play coworkers who are mistaken for lovers by this crazed killer.

• 49:41Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's like a kiss cam situation?

• 49:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Well, I think they kiss, I think the premise is they kiss because she runs into her ex. So she's like, kiss me so I can make him jealous.

• 49:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, sure.

• 49:53Sean Fennessey?

  And then that leads to shenanigans. Um, and there's like a little bit of rom communist to this movie.

• 49:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Great.

• 49:58Sean Fennessey?

  Plus people getting stabbed in the head with a knife, which for me is lovely.

• 50:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:03Sean Fennessey?

  I enjoy seeing at the cinema. Um, and I thought this movie was pretty good.

• 50:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Great.

• 50:07Sean Fennessey?

  That's pretty much all I have to say about it.

• 50:08Amanda Dobbins?

  But I mean, it's, oh, Devin Saw was in this?

• 50:11Sean Fennessey?

  He is.

• 50:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 50:12Sean Fennessey?

  Who is also, obviously I'm sure lives in your heart forever.

• 50:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Hugely important. Now and then in Casper the Friendly Ghost. Like, if you know, you know.

• 50:19Sean Fennessey?

  I think also his work in, you know, Final Destination and a lot of other, the Stan video. You know, the Eminem video Stan.

• 50:26Amanda Dobbins?

  That is really important.

• 50:27Sean Fennessey?

  Um, obviously he's an icon and uh, it's nice to see him in this movie. Jordana Brewster, she appears in the worst movies ever made, the Fast and Fan Franchise, Fast and Furious franchise. Um.

• 50:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Fast Five.

• 50:37Sean Fennessey?

  You couldn't even get it out. You couldn't even get the franchise out because you don't believe it. You don't believe it's the worst franchise ever. I do. It is, it destroyed movie culture. It is literally, because we didn't have to do nine versions of those kinds of movies. You want to do it for the interconnected universe is fine. Fast, fucking terrible.

• 50:52Speaker 05

  They dragged the safe. You know, The Rock punches Vin Diesel. I don't know what else to tell you, dude.

• 50:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I don't tell me anything else.

• 50:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 50:58Sean Fennessey?

  But here's what I'll tell you about garbage love.

• 51:00Amanda Dobbins?

  There we go. You found it. I want some sort of like, like bell or thing, you know, like every time you nail it, you can just be like ding.

• 51:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 51:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's really, really good. You know, we can just like start cutting.

• 51:13Sean Fennessey?

  Can we get a chyron here?

• 51:15Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really, it's really very gifted.

• 51:17Speaker 05

  I got a college degree so that I could make a button for Sean to press when he does a good segue.

• 51:22Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I'd like to press it.

• 51:23Sean Fennessey?

  We're all monkeys, guys.

• 51:24Speaker 05

  Oh, you want to press it?

• 51:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I want to press the button.

• 51:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 51:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's what I'll do with my college degree.

• 51:30Sean Fennessey?

  So you came up with the idea of doing garbage love for this episode, which I thought was a great idea. And when you said it, here's what I thought, and tell me if you agree with this. I wrote down, it's a specific brand of genre movie utilizing the framework of classic romance stories, but usually in a craven bid to get women to come see.

• 51:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 51:46Sean Fennessey?

  Genre movies.

• 51:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:47Sean Fennessey?

  Is that right?

• 51:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, this is, this is a perfect definition because once you put it in that way and we made the list, I was like, it is crazy how many of these movies I've seen, even though they are, and you isolated three categories, like the horror, romance, action, love, and sci-fi, sci-fi sensuality, which is such a gross word. But it's like, wow, I mean, I've seen so many of these movies because I will go and put up with this shit if you have, and I think it is a little bit like the romance framework, but it is also if you're doing a love story, then you got to have two stars who you recognize. So, and, and two people. So you don't have a lot, it's fewer windows.

• 52:33Sean Fennessey?

  Right, we want to see them together.

• 52:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, it's like, it's fewer good movies, but almost all of these films star people who you would go to a movie to see.

• 52:45Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. So do you have a preference out of horror, action, and science fiction that you prefer here?

• 52:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I think the action. I also think those are like the most successful.

• 52:57Sean Fennessey?

  They're certainly the biggest of the movies.

• 53:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and I guess the horror ones, some of these are. Good in their own ways, but it's just kind of less of what I'm into. The, the action romance can, or you know, romantic action movie can tip into rom com as well. It can be funnier because a lot of the action scenes can be the sort of winking action that you hate, or you can build comedy around them. The sci fi ones are like really, really, really ponderous.

• 53:30Sean Fennessey?

  They are.

• 53:30Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 53:31Sean Fennessey?

  There are a lot of examples of this.

• 53:33Amanda Dobbins?

  There's so many.

• 53:35Sean Fennessey?

  I barely scratched the surface on this because it's always like, if you were stuck in space with only one other person.

• 53:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right.

• 53:42Sean Fennessey?

  Would you be able to discover love in an undiscoverable time?

• 53:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and like some of the sci fi stuff is like, well, we'll do like fake deep philosophy for the boys and some like romance for the girls.

• 53:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 53:53Amanda Dobbins?

  So there's also.

• 53:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Little Solaris, Little Casablanca.

• 53:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, there, there's probably also one, I think fantasy films don't qualify for this because they already have, like the romance is baked into that genre.

• 54:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so this is, the number one example of this in the culture right now is Outlander, which is a TV show, a long running TV show on Starz. My father and his wife are huge fans of this show for reasons that are fascinating to me. Because this is, has nothing to do with anything my dad has ever liked, but I hear, he's like, you caught up on Outlander? I'm like, I'm sure, I've not seen one minute of one episode. Uh, but the, those, and obviously romanticy is a huge, it's like the category in fiction right now. Yes, it's so popular, but it hasn't.

• 54:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Are they gonna make like the dragon fucking movies?

• 54:40Sean Fennessey?

  Um.

• 54:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Have they?

• 54:41Sean Fennessey?

  Mallory and I were just talking about this, I think so.

• 54:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like oinks, is that, but that's a different one. I mean, there's, there's a lot of different like dragon fucking ones.

• 54:48Sean Fennessey?

  But it hasn't really hit films.

• 54:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, well.

• 54:51Sean Fennessey?

  Which is interesting, because you think, I did, that's a great place to tell these stories, not these janky TV budgets where they can only kind of sort of do.

• 54:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 54:59Sean Fennessey?

  Some of the fantasy elements. Um, Outlander is in pure fantasy, it's, you know, it's more of like a historical amalgam, but the, there's just not a lot of those to go into.

• 55:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that, that is another subcategory that I didn't like quite think fit, but.

• 55:16Amanda Dobbins?

  There are a lot of historical dramas and like what I would describe as like dad core movies that then do also fold in a romance in order to develop the character and/or I suspect hold the attention.

• 55:31Sean Fennessey?

  I will find you, love you, marry you.

• 55:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 55:35Sean Fennessey?

  That's Last of the Mohicans. Uh, which one do you want to talk about first? You like sci-fi the least.

• 55:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so. Well, it's not that, no, no, no. It's not that I like it the least. It's just that like it gets so weird so fast. And you threw one here that like I genuinely laughed out loud when I was reminded of the existence of this movie, which is called In Time, starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried. I don't know anything. I mean, I saw this movie in the theaters. Like, and it's, and it's shot in some sort of like boring futuristic, you know, it's like a steampunk era movie and there are a lot of watches and like otherwise I don't understa- I don't remember the conceit.

• 56:22Sean Fennessey?

  The conceit is that time is currency and that you have a certain amount of time to live and that that is represented on your forearm, your wrist.

• 56:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:32Sean Fennessey?

  And the Justin Timberlake character is constantly trying to buy more time to stay alive. I don't remember much more. It's notable because it's written and directed by Andrew Nickel, who also wrote and directed Gattaca. And he is one of the, the classicists of sci-fi sensuality. He's done a lot of different kinds of movies, but those two movies to me.

• 56:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 56:51Sean Fennessey?

  Represent like the absolute heart of like, do you want to go see a romance between Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman and also?

• 56:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you want to see?

• 56:58Sean Fennessey?

  Learn about the futuristic devastation?

• 57:01Amanda Dobbins?

  One is a cool genre movie and one is garbage love, you know?

• 57:06Sean Fennessey?

  In Time is garbage. Gattaca is cool. In Time stinks.

• 57:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So that is part of it.

• 57:11Sean Fennessey?

  For garbage purposes.

• 57:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. As soon as you said in time, I thought of a contemporaneous film, The Adjustment Bureau.

• 57:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 57:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Which again, all I remember, so it was Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, John Slattery, and they wear hats for like time travel and they are, they're adjusting.

• 57:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Are they like insurance people in the future? I don't really know, but at some point, John Slattery is like chasing Matt Damon and Emily Blunt with hats. And they are in love and they have to like get away to save the world.

• 57:45Sean Fennessey?

  Matt Damon's character learns that he is facing the powerful agents of capital F fate itself. And glimpsing the future laid out for him must either accept a predetermined path that does not include the ballerina Elise, played by Emily Blunt, or else defy capital F fate to be with her. Crazy movie, absolutely crazy movie, absolutely going in the garbage.

• 58:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, like it's at 2011 or something like they were really powerful.

• 58:14Sean Fennessey?

  Absolute height of the Damon, like this guy does not miss. Like every movie he makes rocks and he made the Adjustment Bureau, which isn't bad.

• 58:22Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's not good.

• 58:22Sean Fennessey?

  It's not good. How do you feel about About Time?

• 58:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Which one is that?

• 58:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's the Donald Gleason and Rachel, Rachel McAdams, the Richard Curtis movie.

• 58:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, did I cry, but Rachel McAdams is also in The Time Traveler's Wife.

• 58:36Sean Fennessey?

  She is, yes.

• 58:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so it's.

• 58:38Sean Fennessey?

  She had a little bit of a run there.

• 58:39Speaker 05

  Someone should have stepped in and done something about that because I, how can you possibly keep these movies straight?

• 58:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. Um, I absolutely wept during About Time, but was like really mad about it.

• 58:51Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Can you remember the premise of the movie?

• 58:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, so Bill Nighy's in it. Someone's dying and goes back to like see their family, but they know they're dying, but they're like reliving their life as if they're or like trying to give more time or something.

• 59:06Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 59:07Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's like, I remember it being like very grounded time travel.

• 59:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 59:12Amanda Dobbins?

  And very like sentimental family. And Richard Curtis is a very talented filmmaker, especially at just like manipulating your emotions and making you cry over complete bullshit, which is like what love actually is and is also, love actually is like a different. I guess it's not really a romantic comedy, but I guess it would be garbage rom com.

• 59:32Sean Fennessey?

  More of a crime film to me, like a crime against humanity.

• 59:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I cry every time.

• 59:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'll bet you do.

• 59:36Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I'm just like, I'm like really angry about it, but what are you gonna do? They start doing the beach voice.

• 59:42Sean Fennessey?

  One of the worst things in that movie is that there's like. A super hot woman that works with Hugh Grant and they're like, she's too fat.

• 59:47Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's awful. Yes.

• 59:49Sean Fennessey?

  What are we talking about?

• 59:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I mean, it's fine because they end up, he does, the Prime Minister of England does end up manipulating foreign policy in order to make out with his assistant at the children's Christmas pageant in which Emma Thompson's child plays the second lobster. I've seen this movie so many times.

• 1:00:08Sean Fennessey?

  I can't talk about Love Actually, I can't, on the pod. This is more than I even wanted to do.

• 1:00:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Emma Thompson crying to Joni Mitchell because she found out that Alan Rickman cheated on her with another assistant.

• 1:00:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, just incredible acting.

• 1:00:23Sean Fennessey?

  I don't have a segue. I need you to get back on track, please.

• 1:00:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Richard Curtis, about time. So I just remember that, you know, that you gotta, you gotta go back in time because you love your family or something. Um.

• 1:00:37Sean Fennessey?

  That's not nice.

• 1:00:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I love my family.

• 1:00:38Sean Fennessey?

  Donald Gleason's father, Bill Nighy, tells him, I think at near the end of his life, that the men in this family can time travel. They can go back and they can make changes. That's the premise. And so in doing so, he goes back and he falls in love with a girl who's played by Rachel McAdams. But that still doesn't mean that just because he has these powers, he can control everything. And so there are some realizations about

• 1:00:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:00:59Sean Fennessey?

  fate, destiny, love, the power of choice.

• 1:01:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:01:03Sean Fennessey?

  Two great actors.

• 1:01:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Sean Fennessey?

  Richard Curtis, real hit or miss for me personally. Some good ones, some not so good ones. I like this one. I think it's pretty good. It's really weird that it's 40 years after The Time Traveler's Wife.

• 1:01:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I have not revisited it because I'm looking more for like, you know, blunt force sentimentality.

• 1:01:21Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:01:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Then.

• 1:01:23Sean Fennessey?

  You just want to be told, I am a woman staring at a man telling him.

• 1:01:28Amanda Dobbins?

  That is one of the best rom-coms of all time. Notting Hill is really important. Okay?

• 1:01:33Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 1:01:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Just fuck off.

• 1:01:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I did immediately think about Passengers as soon as we said Carbon.

• 1:01:39Sean Fennessey?

  This was my first thought.

• 1:01:40Amanda Dobbins?

  This is like one of the worst movies ever made and everyone was sure that they just like had it locked down. Right. And it's like Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence are, again, I didn't Google any of these. So this is just fun me recapping what these movies are about.

• 1:01:58Amanda Dobbins?

  They're astronauts or they're like, you know.

• 1:02:01Sean Fennessey?

  Space travelers.

• 1:02:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Space travelers. They're going to like start new life on some planet or Mars or there's like, there's a greenhouse. So maybe they're just living on the station. I don't really remember, but they're supposed to be like they're in cryosleep or whatever for a while. And is there like an accident? And so like someone wakes up and then he wakes her up.

• 1:02:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And then they're together, but like other bad things happen and they can't grow the garden or something. And I don't know.

• 1:02:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. First of all, retaining employment, once again.

• 1:02:37Amanda Dobbins?

  You remember that garden, right?

• 1:02:38Sean Fennessey?

  The whole, you know, the, the big nasty twist for anybody who doesn't want 2014's Passengers both for them is, you know, that he doesn't tell her that he woke her up. And he wasn't supposed to wake her up.

• 1:02:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Okay.

• 1:02:49Sean Fennessey?

  And she didn't want that. And so she gets mad at him because then they're doomed to a fate together.

• 1:02:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right.

• 1:02:56Sean Fennessey?

  And alone at the same time. And then ultimately they come to learn that they do in fact, love each other. These are two people with no chemistry.

• 1:03:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Sean Fennessey?

  I think this is like a really hot script and honestly on paper, I'm like, this rocks. This is what movies should be.

• 1:03:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, I think it was Morton Tilden was the director. He's coming off of, uh, the Benedict Cumberbatch movie about code breaking. What's that film called?

• 1:03:17Amanda Dobbins?

  The Imitation Game. That is a family holiday crowd pleaser.

• 1:03:21Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, absolutely. Whatever you say. One of the last remnants of the Harvey Weinstein era. Salute to you for shouting it out.

• 1:03:27Amanda Dobbins?

  That my in-laws and I both liked it.

• 1:03:31Sean Fennessey?

  Passengers is in. I think About Time is in. I think Time Traveler's Wife is in. I think all these movies are just like.

• 1:03:37Amanda Dobbins?

  In Time and Adjustment Bureau have to be in.

• 1:03:40Sean Fennessey?

  In, you know, Gattaca, Vanilla Sky. These movies are a little too good for this, in my opinion.

• 1:03:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Palm Springs you put on here, first of all, and also rom-com, but it's not garbage. It's just good.

• 1:03:51Sean Fennessey?

  But it is the case of a rom-com sci-fi movie.

• 1:03:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but it.

• 1:03:56Sean Fennessey?

  Because it's Groundhog Day.

• 1:03:57Amanda Dobbins?

  But I, sure, but I think Groundhog Day is also first a rom com and then a.

• 1:04:02Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, so you think if a movie is first a rom com?

• 1:04:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that's its primary genre.

• 1:04:07Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I like that. Okay, that's a, that's a good call.

• 1:04:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 1:04:11Sean Fennessey?

  Did you ever see Seeking a Friend for the End of the World?

• 1:04:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Is that the Aubrey Plaza?

• 1:04:14Sean Fennessey?

  No, Keira Knightley.

• 1:04:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I did. Yes, it did. Yeah, not good.

• 1:04:18Sean Fennessey?

  Not successful.

• 1:04:19Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:04:20Sean Fennessey?

  But kind of in the zone.

• 1:04:21Amanda Dobbins?

  What's the Aubrey Plaza Mark Duplass one? Safety Not Guaranteed?

• 1:04:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:04:25Amanda Dobbins?

  That's sort of.

• 1:04:25Sean Fennessey?

  Jake Johnson as well.

• 1:04:27Amanda Dobbins?

  There's time traveling in that, right?

• 1:04:28Sean Fennessey?

  There is, yes. That is like, that's the movie that got Colin Trevorrow, the Jurassic franchise?

• 1:04:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:35Sean Fennessey?

  That Jurassic World film we were talking about earlier.

• 1:04:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Did he make that or he got fired from that and then made The Book of Henry?

• 1:04:42Sean Fennessey?

  No, he made the first one. He got fired from Star Wars.

• 1:04:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:04:48Sean Fennessey?

  He was supposed to make, I think, the Ryan Johnson Star Wars movie?

• 1:04:51Amanda Dobbins?

  The Last Jedi?

• 1:04:52Sean Fennessey?

  Or maybe the third film?

• 1:04:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:04:54Speaker 05

  No, he was supposed to make The Rise of Skywalker.

• 1:04:57Sean Fennessey?

  The third film.

• 1:04:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that turned out great, you know, so.

• 1:05:00Sean Fennessey?

  They switched back to JJ there on that one. Anyhow, um, okay, let's pivot to action.

• 1:05:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Are Paul Mescal and Gracie Abrams still dating, Bobby? Let's just have our Gen Z check in.

• 1:05:08Sean Fennessey?

  I'm glad you asked.

• 1:05:09Speaker 05

  I'm not the man. I don't know.

• 1:05:10Sean Fennessey?

  I was just told yesterday that they are not by Magdalena, who we work with.

• 1:05:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:05:15Sean Fennessey?

  Well, now who's Gen Z? You know who Gracie Abrams is, is or isn't dating? There, there is a very specific reason for this that I cannot reveal.

• 1:05:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:05:24Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:05:24Sean Fennessey?

  Because it is related to work that should not be revealed, transpiring at The Ringer. How's that for a tease?

• 1:05:29Speaker 05

  He's the segue king and he's the teaser king.

• 1:05:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:05:35Sean Fennessey?

  Love, action.

• 1:05:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so.

• 1:05:37Sean Fennessey?

  Should this be called love action instead of action love?

• 1:05:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:05:42Sean Fennessey?

  Help me out here.

• 1:05:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 1:05:43Sean Fennessey?

  Fall Guy.

• 1:05:45Amanda Dobbins?

  But I like The Fall Guy, but I do, I know what you mean.

• 1:05:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's got a little whiff of garbage.

• 1:05:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but.

• 1:05:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's a little garbagey.

• 1:05:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, your, the other examples, This Means War, Shotgun Wedding, which honestly is like another straight to Amazon, like rom com with some elements that I chuckled at. Uh, shout out Lenny Kravitz. Um, Lost City, Ghosted.

• 1:06:05Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, The Lost City, I forgot about that.

• 1:06:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Sean Fennessey?

  Good call. Yeah, Ghosted stinks, though. I won't even put it in on any list. That movie stinks.

• 1:06:11Amanda Dobbins?

  But it was trying to do this.

• 1:06:13Sean Fennessey?

  It was, it was. Good call.

• 1:06:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I think Mr. and Mrs. Smith is too good for this.

• 1:06:17Sean Fennessey?

  The Lost City is a great call.

• 1:06:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:06:19Sean Fennessey?

  Cause it's like, definitely not bad.

• 1:06:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:21Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty entertaining.

• 1:06:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty janky.

• 1:06:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:06:24Sean Fennessey?

  But. Hit its marks.

• 1:06:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:26Sean Fennessey?

  People liked it. They went to go see it. Big movie stars. Premises goofy, but good enough. Fall Guy is like right on the edge.

• 1:06:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, I mean, like, we could do it. I think that this means War is too rom-com. A terrible movie, but.

• 1:06:40Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting, okay.

• 1:06:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 1:06:43Sean Fennessey?

  Anything else more recent vintage that has these elements? Cause it feels like these movies in particular are kinda all riffing on Lethal Weapon, but they actually just replaced Danny Glover with a blonde lady, right?

• 1:06:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Uh, what was that? I mean, Back in Action is like the family version of this.

• 1:07:00Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 1:07:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, also stinks.

• 1:07:02Sean Fennessey?

  It does.

• 1:07:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:03Sean Fennessey?

  It's a, it's not so much about love as it is about.

• 1:07:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, so.

• 1:07:07Sean Fennessey?

  The nuclear family.

• 1:07:08Amanda Dobbins?

  But, but that's what they're iter-, you know, they're iterating on that.

• 1:07:10Sean Fennessey?

  You're right. It's a subset of that for sure. Um. I, these movies are not good.

• 1:07:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's tough. I mean, the, the sick delight that Chris and I get out of, say, like, you know, trash special ops, where there's like.

• 1:07:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:07:25Sean Fennessey?

  A man with an earpiece is being told like, kill, kill, kill. And we're like, fuck, yes. Kill that guy.

• 1:07:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I got, I was delighted in my own way by Fall Guy. Fall Guy was fun. Fall Guy, but also Lost City.

• 1:07:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, these are fun.

• 1:07:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And even like, I mean, Shotgun Wedding is not going in, but I like that they, it, the streaming, you know, for the streaming category, it was a pretty good version of that.

• 1:07:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, okay. I like that. Now, now horror.

• 1:07:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean Twilight.

• 1:07:54Sean Fennessey?

  Twilight is the most important movie in garbage stuff, I think.

• 1:07:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:07:59Sean Fennessey?

  Because as much as these movies have a huge fandom, like, they're not good, they're not actually good.

• 1:08:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Twilight, the first one's good.

• 1:08:07Sean Fennessey?

  Is it?

• 1:08:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, the Catherine Hardwicke, thank you. Thanks, Bob. I mean, it's like a teen, you know, romance.

• 1:08:14Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, it's not.

• 1:08:15Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but it's like good, listen, are you,

• 1:08:19Amanda Dobbins?

  teens have feelings too. We don't always accept them at the table, you know, cause the.

• 1:08:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they gotta wake up, right?

• 1:08:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly, they gotta wake up.

• 1:08:25Sean Fennessey?

  Have a cup of coffee.

• 1:08:26Amanda Dobbins?

  They gotta listen to their elders.

• 1:08:30Amanda Dobbins?

  But, you know.

• 1:08:31Sean Fennessey?

  The people who loved Twilight when they were teens are like thirty-four now, you know? This is not, we've come a long way.

• 1:08:35Speaker 05

  What are you talking about, bro? I'm not thirty-four yet.

• 1:08:39Sean Fennessey?

  Well, not just you, you're not the only person. What year did Twilight come out?

• 1:08:43Speaker 05

  It's a good question.

• 1:08:44Sean Fennessey?

  Twenty ten?

• 1:08:46Speaker 05

  Twenty, no, earlier than that, I think.

• 1:08:48Sean Fennessey?

  Two thousand six?

• 1:08:49Speaker 05

  Two thousand eight.

• 1:08:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Sean Fennessey?

  Two thousand eight.

• 1:08:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I was like young, twenty.

• 1:08:52Sean Fennessey?

  So, two thousand eight, yeah, if you were eighteen when you saw Twilight, you're thirty-four.

• 1:08:56Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:08:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Turning thirty-five.

• 1:08:58Sean Fennessey?

  Damn.

• 1:08:59Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, well, I mean, it's just, that's like, sometimes that's a new box you gotta check.

• 1:09:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so if you're a-

• 1:09:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Thirty-five to thirty-nine, welcome.

• 1:09:04Sean Fennessey?

  Thirty-five-year-old man or woman looking at us, movie podcasters, and saying Twilight is deeply important to the American canon of cinema, to you, I say no. In this context, absolutely.

• 1:09:17Speaker 05

  Just so you know, we will have a now, a new audio drop of you saying Twilight is good and Twilight is an importance-

• 1:09:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:24Speaker 05

  Piece of-

• 1:09:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's good.

• 1:09:25Speaker 05

  This American canon.

• 1:09:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yep. Twilight is the most important movie. Twilight is deeply important to the American canon of cinema. Put it right alongside my litany of brilliant segues and me saying I'm the Reed Richards of the big picture.

• 1:09:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but so, so here's my question, because Twilight is obviously one of the first things that I thought of. But aren't all vampire stories love stories?

• 1:09:52Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm, I think they're all sex stories.

• 1:09:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, this is about sex too and not being allowed to- Well, well, it's about, it's about love, but also not being allowed to have sex and like really wanting it, which is-

• 1:10:07Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 1:10:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, every vampire story that I understand.

• 1:10:10Sean Fennessey?

  Well, maybe, then maybe it's like Twilight three and four are more-

• 1:10:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Becomes a vampire so they can fuck.

• 1:10:15Sean Fennessey?

  What's like Breaking Dawn? Remember when they were dropping like Bon Iver and Licky Lee on the soundtracks of these movies? These movies are insane.

• 1:10:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Dakota Fanning is like the Italian vampire queens.

• 1:10:26Sean Fennessey?

  So crazy. Yeah, bro.

• 1:10:28Amanda Dobbins?

  What was that baby named? Renesmee?

• 1:10:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And Michael Sheen is cooking in these movies.

• 1:10:33Speaker 05

  Some of the worst CGI ever made for the baby.

• 1:10:37Amanda Dobbins?

  So, so bad.

• 1:10:39Speaker 05

  It's worse than when they just, when Clint was like, here's this doll, you know? It's worse that they actually tried to make the baby look real with CGI.

• 1:10:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Time out, time out, time out. Let's, let's get this right. So Renesmee, the baby.

• 1:10:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that was our first choice for Alice, but our next door neighbor's baby is Renesmee.

• 1:10:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Is Renesmee the product? Is, does Kristen Stewart have her? Is she conceived before or after Kristen Stewart, AKA Bella, becomes a vampire?

• 1:11:09Sean Fennessey?

  Before, before. And then Bella critically is dying as she's giving birth and they turn her.

• 1:11:15Amanda Dobbins?

  But so then how do they arrange the having sex? Like between a vampire and a human? Because like the whole thing is like, she's so powerful that they can't fuck because like he would break her.

• 1:11:27Speaker 05

  This is when Stephanie Meyer really started punting.

• 1:11:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so, but so how do they work around that?

• 1:11:34Speaker 05

  They go on like their honeymoon and they're like, Edwards, like I've been training for years to show self restraint. And yet still she comes out of it worse for wear is what I'll say.

• 1:11:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, so it like gets a little, uh, kinky. Oh, interesting. Man, these looks are fucked up.

• 1:11:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're pretty bad. And I was just in sixth grade art class, like, let me read another one, you know? Keep them comments, Stephanie Meyer.

• 1:11:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. And so then, so she's like, uh, so the child is conceived. She's like a special human vampire doll. And so is that why the werewolf can like picks her? Does he pick humans or does he pick vampires or you know what I mean?

• 1:12:13Speaker 05

  Part is totally random, but that is why the Dakota Fanning Volturi Italian clan are pissed. Because they're like, we don't like half human, half vampire. That's bad.

• 1:12:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Are there other examples in history?

• 1:12:25Speaker 05

  Yes, they just, they kill them. They get rid of them.

• 1:12:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh no. Okay. But so, but then the, then Taylor Lautner shows up.

• 1:12:32Speaker 05

  And he's like, I love this baby.

• 1:12:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I love this. I love this baby is my soulmate.

• 1:12:39Amanda Dobbins?

  This is a baby. This CGI goblin that's a baby.

• 1:12:44Sean Fennessey?

  It's so funny that we're like, here, this one choice the filmmaker made in The Brutalist is hugely problematic and completely destroys the film. Where it's like, Renesmee is gonna get married to a giant wolf man who's 40 years her senior, and it's one of the best movies ever. It's fucking stupid.

• 1:13:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I will only defend the original Twilight. It's a good movie.

• 1:13:06Sean Fennessey?

  Well, so Twilight is not in, but the all, like, 14 other Twilight movies are in.

• 1:13:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, as garbage love? Yeah, okay, but so, anyway.

• 1:13:16Sean Fennessey?

  Breaking Dawn Part One is the most garbage love. That's when they get married. Okay. That's when they have the needle drops, you know, that's.

• 1:13:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay. All right. There we go. I accept that, but so.

• 1:13:24Sean Fennessey?

  Breaking Dawn Part One, they split it into two parts. What are we doing?

• 1:13:28Amanda Dobbins?

  We took all of Zack's young cousins to see every installment of this at Thanksgiving because they released them at Thanksgiving.

• 1:13:34Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, God. Fun for the whole family.

• 1:13:36Amanda Dobbins?

  But I think that after they ended then, like, we got to take his cousins to see Lady Bird. So that was nice.

• 1:13:41Sean Fennessey?

  I remember that, too.

• 1:13:42Amanda Dobbins?

  One year, one year we had to take them to see Allied, which does fit into garbage.

• 1:13:46Sean Fennessey?

  Garbage espionage.

• 1:13:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, garbage dad cinema, garbage.

• 1:13:50Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, but is it, is it garbage love, Allied?

• 1:13:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that is. If we're doing, if there's like a world history one.

• 1:13:56Sean Fennessey?

  Does the love come first in Allied?

• 1:13:59Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I don't think so.

• 1:14:00Sean Fennessey?

  You think it's the spy stuff?

• 1:14:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Sean Fennessey?

  I think I'm with you. Underrated, actually. I revisited it when we did the Zemeckis episode. By the way, here is streaming on Netflix right now. It was number one on Netflix for like a hot minute. I think it's good. I watched it again and I was like, this movie is good. I don't know what people are talking about. Honestly, it made me cry. I think it's really deep and interesting. I know people think it's like the worst movie of all time. I can't really argue with them, but it really, I really do think it's good.

• 1:14:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, I, I don't recall thinking Allied was good.

• 1:14:25Sean Fennessey?

  This, the revisit?

• 1:14:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:27Sean Fennessey?

  When I was less worried about why it looked so modern and fake.

• 1:14:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:14:32Sean Fennessey?

  It revealed some quality.

• 1:14:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:14:34Sean Fennessey?

  Just putting that out there. But I don't think it's garbage love.

• 1:14:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because it's like. Cold, anyway vampires.

• 1:14:41Sean Fennessey?

  Cold Melt's not like garbage love.

• 1:14:42Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but it's garbage.

• 1:14:44Sean Fennessey?

  History.

• 1:14:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and there is like a romance element.

• 1:14:47Sean Fennessey?

  Garbage Civil War is a great idea for the show.

• 1:14:50Speaker 05

  Coming up next, Ryan Rusillo, Garbage Civil War, let's do it.

• 1:14:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, like there's garbage World War II.

• 1:14:56Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, my god.

• 1:14:56Amanda Dobbins?

  There's, you know.

• 1:14:57Sean Fennessey?

  Well, one thing I want to do, I know you've got some garbage plans too. I really want to do garbage Scorsese.

• 1:15:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:03Sean Fennessey?

  For the Alto Nights, the new Barry Levinson movie.

• 1:15:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, my god, like have my dad come on.

• 1:15:09Sean Fennessey?

  He's excited about that film.

• 1:15:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:10Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it looks horrendous, but I'm into it.

• 1:15:12Amanda Dobbins?

  My dad, but my dad is just like, wow, Barry Levinson directed a movie with Bobby De Niro, who he still calls Bobby, doesn't know him. Uh.

• 1:15:21Sean Fennessey?

  That sounds like me. That's something I might do.

• 1:15:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I got a lot of text messages about that.

• 1:15:24Speaker 05

  He could provide his defense of Amelia Perez.

• 1:15:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I told him that I shared his opinion and he was like, oh, I didn't know whether that, I was like, I'm not sure that was meant for public consumption. And I was like, well, dad.

• 1:15:35Sean Fennessey?

  That's what it's like being in the blast radius.

• 1:15:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Your grandchildren need Dennis.

• 1:15:39Sean Fennessey?

  You can't reveal anything to Amanda now. I'll just text her something with some vulnerability and she's like, I'm over reading these vulnerable thoughts aloud to the listeners of this show. Your dad's on Front Street. Who else can you reveal?

• 1:15:52Amanda Dobbins?

  My friend Molly's dad, who loved Conclave.

• 1:15:54Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's, oh, yeah, that was dope. We agree with that. Conclave is great. Uh, okay, a couple other horror installments.

• 1:15:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Vampires. Are vampires eligible?

• 1:16:02Sean Fennessey?

  I think Twilight is a, is a romance ultimately.

• 1:16:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:16:05Sean Fennessey?

  And I think vampire stories are often like weird metaphors for getting syphilis.

• 1:16:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:16:11Sean Fennessey?

  Where it's like, the blood is traded and now you have my disease. You know, it's like a different kind of a thing.

• 1:16:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, alright.

• 1:16:17Sean Fennessey?

  Not all of them. There are some vampire love stories, of course.

• 1:16:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:16:21Sean Fennessey?

  But for the most part, they're about something different.

• 1:16:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Twilight and vampire movies are also about, they're both about repression, but you know.

• 1:16:31Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. Garbage repression? I would do really well with that one.

• 1:16:34Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just all American cinema.

• 1:16:35Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Warm Bodies, which is zombies. Nick Holt, our guy.

• 1:16:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Our guy.

• 1:16:40Sean Fennessey?

  And Teresa, what's her name?

• 1:16:46Sean Fennessey?

  Come on. She's a good actress, Australian.

• 1:16:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Palmer.

• 1:16:50Sean Fennessey?

  Teresa Palmer. Um, that movie's pretty good. It's like maybe a little too good.

• 1:16:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, for garbage?

• 1:16:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Amanda Dobbins?

  The, I mean, this is the thing where these are all genre movies that are so close to the.

• 1:17:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, the genre is, in fact, garbage love, you know? It's like not a bad version of it, it is just the thing itself.

• 1:17:14Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:17:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Like all vampire and even like a lot of zombie movies aren't, you know, you have Bones and all in here, which is, I think, like a good example of.

• 1:17:25Sean Fennessey?

  A good film but inherently garbage?

• 1:17:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's abusing the genre and it's like, here are two teens trying to find themselves and also they're zombies or vampires, they're vampires.

• 1:17:38Sean Fennessey?

  I think you're right about that one because there is no movie that is about cannibals that is like high class.

• 1:17:43Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right, and um.

• 1:17:44Sean Fennessey?

  That movie's about cannibals.

• 1:17:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And Mark Rylance is here and he's really creepy.

• 1:17:48Sean Fennessey?

  Deeply, very effective in that film.

• 1:17:51Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm, I put Fresh on this list, did you end up seeing this?

• 1:17:54Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:17:54Sean Fennessey?

  Daisy Edgar Jones and Sebastian Stan.

• 1:17:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:17:57Sean Fennessey?

  Also a cannibal film.

• 1:17:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Really?

• 1:17:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 1:18:00Sean Fennessey?

  And pretty fun.

• 1:18:00Amanda Dobbins?

  People really wanted us to talk about that. I got a lot of.

• 1:18:03Sean Fennessey?

  Did you?

• 1:18:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And I, and Instagram reels fed me a lot of content about the two of them when that movie was out. And we were like, ooh, Fresh.

• 1:18:11Sean Fennessey?

  It's okay, I saw it at Sundance, I think in 2022. Very, as always, very amusing Sebastian Stan performance. Not sure Daisy Edgar Jones quite up to the task of that movie, nevertheless, it's pretty good.

• 1:18:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:18:22Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Life After Beth, which is directed by the late Jeff Bena, who just died, Aubrey Plaza's husband, which is a movie that I really like, was one of the early 824 movies, if I recall correctly, but is also, I think, a zombie romance movie where Aubrey Plaza dies and comes back from the dead and confronts her boyfriend and is like, yo, I'm back, and he's like, I moved on with my life. Um, which is a kind of a funny movie that I really like. Again, maybe like not, you're right that they're kind of all garbage because of what they're doing, but they're also kind of good, like this is the next step in, because every story's been told.

• 1:19:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:19:00Sean Fennessey?

  That we need to just keep smashing genres together and making them make sense. So I don't know, I don't know, the Twilight movies might just occupy the entire horror stretch for us.

• 1:19:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:19:08Sean Fennessey?

  Is there, how many, 14, you said?

• 1:19:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, I mean Bobby's the expert.

• 1:19:12Sean Fennessey?

  How many, Bob?

• 1:19:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm just.

• 1:19:13Speaker 05

  Five.

• 1:19:14Sean Fennessey?

  Five.

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  Four books, fourth book was split into two.

• 1:19:16Sean Fennessey?

  Got it, got it. Right.

• 1:19:18Speaker 05

  At least they haven't shamelessly gone back and made like a TV series out of it, you know? They're protecting that valuable identity for people like myself.

• 1:19:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's gonna come.

• 1:19:25Speaker 05

  Oh, I know.

• 1:19:26Sean Fennessey?

  When will, when will that come? Who will be the stars?

• 1:19:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I don't know, the, the children who won't wake up, you know?

• 1:19:34Speaker 05

  Would you put Zombieland in this horror romance? It's more of a comedy.

• 1:19:40Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's comedy first, horror second.

• 1:19:44Speaker 05

  But it is a romance.

• 1:19:46Sean Fennessey?

  It is. It is. My beloveds, Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone. Really, really my faves.

• 1:19:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's, maybe Zombieland 2 Double Tap is probably a better fit.

• 1:19:57Speaker 05

  I could vibe with that. That is more garbage.

• 1:20:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's a garbagio, but it's like, pretty fun. And I want to watch it again. If you put it on, if you put Double Tap on right now, I'd be like, yeah, let's watch it.

• 1:20:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I would watch The Adjustment Bureau again.

• 1:20:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, anytime there's a movie where if I can scream into the other room, yo, can you get me a Miller Lite? Or you say, hun, can you please bring the Campari over? We're watching garbage.

• 1:20:21Speaker 05

  And that's not a diss. Amanda asks for the Campari from Zach? That's how she does it?

• 1:20:24Sean Fennessey?

  That's actually not.

• 1:20:25Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I ask him to make me a proper drink. He's, he's getting really into it. He got new glasses. Yeah. They're very fancy. And then now Max knows too. He's like, will you have a drink in a fancy glass?

• 1:20:42Sean Fennessey?

  Hey, mom, how's your crippling addiction going?

• 1:20:47Sean Fennessey?

  Any other thoughts?

• 1:20:48Amanda Dobbins?

  This was fun.

• 1:20:49Sean Fennessey?

  This is a good one.

• 1:20:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:50Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm. Bob, any additions beyond Zombieland?

• 1:20:53Speaker 05

  I don't think so. None that come to mind. I feel like I've made my peace for Twilight.

• 1:20:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. I don't think we, this is not the definitive list.

• 1:21:00Speaker 05

  I didn't have to go to the mat for that.

• 1:21:01Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe listeners want to send some, because programming reminder, we're doing a mailbag on Monday on the show.

• 1:21:08Speaker 05

  Segue, bang.

• 1:21:10Sean Fennessey?

  Don't forget, email us, bigpickmailbag@gmail. If you want to tell us some, some, some garbage love films that we forgot about. Maybe even a subcategory. Yeah, don't be rude. Amanda will be rude to you, but you don't have to be rude to us. And that'll be fun. And there's like, a lot happening over the weekend.

• 1:21:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. PGAs. Are you going?

• 1:21:30Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, CCAs are on Friday, the Critics' Choice Awards.

• 1:21:33Amanda Dobbins?

  The rescheduled CCAs.

• 1:21:34Sean Fennessey?

  But those votes all happened before all the Emilio Perez stuff.

• 1:21:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 1:21:37Sean Fennessey?

  So like, they might win a bunch of awards. Yeah, so watch out for weird CCAs on Friday, and then PGAs and DGAs on Saturday night.

• 1:21:45Amanda Dobbins?

  You going?

• 1:21:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not going. You have to enter a lottery to get a ticket to the PGAs, and I've never entered the lottery.

• 1:21:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And you don't get a plus one?

• 1:21:52Sean Fennessey?

  I think you might if you win the lottery. But it's like a thousands of people go.

• 1:21:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I assume they're like past apps and stuff, right?

• 1:21:59Sean Fennessey?

  I think I believe so, yeah.

• 1:22:00Amanda Dobbins?

  So that would be funny.

• 1:22:01Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not going. There, I told Jack Sanders yesterday, I was like, Jack, the saddest part of me wants to go live on YouTube after the PGA's and DGAs and just be like, here's what happened. It's crazy, but I'll, I'll, I'll hold it for Monday.

• 1:22:12Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a big weekend at my house, so I sort of have to.

• 1:22:16Sean Fennessey?

  Part, part of the reason why.

• 1:22:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, Sunday is like a pretty emotional roller coaster of a day.

• 1:22:20Sean Fennessey?

  We got, we got birthday party for the big guy.

• 1:22:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm hosting.

• 1:22:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:22:24Amanda Dobbins?

  A child's birthday party.

• 1:22:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yep, and then we got the Super Bowl for the other big guy.

• 1:22:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Sean Fennessey?

  And the Eagles, who, who's your pick for the Super Bowl? Who are you taking? The line's one and a half.

• 1:22:35Amanda Dobbins?

  In which direction? What does that mean? I don't know what that means.

• 1:22:37Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Chiefs by one and a half.

• 1:22:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Almost 10 years.

• 1:22:40Sean Fennessey?

  Chiefs favored by one and a half.

• 1:22:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, I, we gotta protect the heart. We gotta, I'm, I'm in a defensive position right now. I'm trying to make sure that everyone is okay and behaves and doesn't.

• 1:22:51Sean Fennessey?

  In your home, you mean?

• 1:22:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and doesn't ruin my, my sweet son's birthday.

• 1:22:55Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:22:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, with disgraceful Philadelphia behavior.

• 1:22:58Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:22:58Amanda Dobbins?

  So I'm, I'm operating from like, like a cautious pessimism.

• 1:23:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:23:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Sort of thing, but I, I would be thrilled if, if Jalen figures it out. Can he? I don't know.

• 1:23:10Sean Fennessey?

  Bob, any picks for the Super Bowl?

• 1:23:12Speaker 05

  Um, I'm, I'm not gonna make any picks for the Super Bowl. It's not my area of expertise. Go listen to the Ringer NFL show if you'd like to hear more about that.

• 1:23:20Sean Fennessey?

  Bring your gambling show.

• 1:23:21Speaker 05

  A lovely feature from Justin Charity about Kendrick Lamar.

• 1:23:24Sean Fennessey?

  There you go.

• 1:23:25Speaker 05

  That I was producing.

• 1:23:26Sean Fennessey?

  Kendrick Lamar is performing at the halftime show of the Super Bowl. Honestly is sick. Just great. Can't remember the last time I was like, this is, this is actually good. Like, I like Rihanna and I like Beyonce and everything, but Kendrick is, come on.

• 1:23:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, like, that's, all right, we're done.

• 1:23:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Kendrick's good too, but like Beyonce's Beyonce.

• 1:23:46Sean Fennessey?

  Sure, I just, I feel like I get a lot of Beyonce.

• 1:23:48Amanda Dobbins?

  That was, that was a good show.

• 1:23:50Sean Fennessey?

  It was good. I, I had no notes. Just, I'm excited about Kendrick.

• 1:23:54Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 1:23:54Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, my pick is the Jets will miss the playoffs again next year. That's, that's the only pick I'm willing to make here. Um, but I can't say the same for the Mets. Okay, let's go to my conversation with Drew Hancock now.

• 1:24:20Speaker 07

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• 1:25:19Sean Fennessey?

  Drew Hancock is here with his directorial debut companion. Thanks for being on the show.

• 1:25:24Speaker 07

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:25:25Sean Fennessey?

  Drew, there's just not a lot about you on the internet.

• 1:25:27Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:25:27Sean Fennessey?

  You've been working for a long time, but I love talking to first time directors on the show.

• 1:25:31Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 1:25:31Sean Fennessey?

  I always ask, I say, like, what were the movies you obsessed over? How did you get interested in this world? Like, walk me through how you got interested in making movies.

• 1:25:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I'm originally from Omaha, Nebraska, and the idea of working in entertainment never crossed my mind. Like, I mean, my joke, my go-to joke is like my come from a family of like life, the board game occupations, like it's lawyers and accountants and teachers and... So I grew up in the 90s, you know, I'm 45 years old, like, success came very late for me, but in the 90s was when I was like developing my taste for movies and I, you know, very vividly remember seeing Pulp Fiction for the first time and it just blowing my goddamn mind. Like, I remember being in the theater, being like, I checked my watch to be like, I want there to be so much more of this movie, like, this is like, I didn't know you could do

• 1:26:25Speaker 07

  this, I don't know if this was possible.

• 1:26:28Speaker 07

  And I was under seventeen at the time and I look young now and I look like I was like ten years old and so me and my friends would go to different theaters to just want to see it as many times as possible. I'd get turned down, like they'd be like, no, you're too young, you need a guardian. So we would drive around Omaha, like trying to see Pulp Fiction at like a third or fourth or fifth time. And I was like bringing everyone down. I'm like, I'm so sorry, guys, that I look this way. But that was like my, that was like my appetizer into like, oh, my god, like, this is amazing. And then it was just a great time to grow up as a, as a movie lover. Like, I worked in a movie theater in nineteen ninety-nine. You know, that, that's, that, that's just, you can't beat that. Every, every week, it would be like Magnolia, Bing, John Malkovich,

• 1:27:11Speaker 07

  The Matrix. It was just, you're just feasting on wonderful movies. And yeah, so it never occurred to me that I could do this, or that it was even attainable. It just feel like, felt, LA felt like a walled city that I just couldn't breach. And why try? But just by chance, I was on this track to do the, like, I was a very space cadet-y kid, and I knew I needed to do something creative. And the track I was on was like, I guess, marketing, advertising, something like business oriented. And I went to college at Colorado State University just because my cousin went there. I had no interest in education. And just by chance, one summer, took an elective. It was like editing

• 1:27:52Speaker 07

  news packages, like, you know, tape to tape editing. And it blew my fucking mind. Like, literally, I was like, oh, my god. Like, after the first class, like, what is this? Like, I need to saturate myself in this. And called my parents up. They're very supportive. I was like, I, I, I, I've been wasting my time. I need to do this. Can you, like, do you, will you support me? Just, just, just going down this path. And I have very supportive parents. They're like, yes, like, whatever, whatever you want to do.

• 1:28:21Sean Fennessey?

  Was it just the actual technological aspect of cutting that you got interested in specifically? But not like, I'm gonna make?

• 1:28:28Speaker 07

  No, no, no, no, no. It just was like, oh, being in that room and just never wanted to leave it. And just being like enamored by the process of taking clips and You know, like putting them next to each other, you know, like scrubbing through the footage. It was, you know, we wasn't even on an Avid or Final Cut Pro, which doesn't even exist anymore. That's how I'm dating myself now. But that was the the moment that was me going like, OK, I don't care. You know how this how this happens? I don't care what I do within this universe, like whether it's like produced, direct, uh, right? I knew I didn't want to be in front of the camera, but I I just I tried to cobble together a film. School at a school that had no film program.

• 1:29:12Speaker 07

  And so that we did have like Asian film studies classes. And so I'd take one of those. And then I discovered like the basement of our library had this like one shelf of screenplays. And so I would like every day go down there and just read like movies I still haven't seen. Like this script for My Beautiful Landret. I've never seen it, but I read the script in college or like A Boy and His Dog, like all these, all these scripts that just mishmash of just really weird a collected collection because they were just probably, I don't even know why they had them. And yeah, and as soon as I graduated from college, I I I packed the car up and moved to LA. And I didn't know anyone here except for two guys that worked their job, their entertainment job was they boxed porn at the Hustler Warehouse.

• 1:29:55Speaker 07

  And so that was in an inn, that was no, that was no inn. Um, but those that's the couch. It could have been, yeah, yeah, like a different career. And I just I slept on their couch and it's so funny. The night I slept on their couch, they were filming Biker Boys, the movie with a Z.

• 1:30:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:30:14Speaker 07

  That was being filmed in the parking lot. And I was like, oh, my God, they're making movies everywhere here, but.

• 1:30:19Sean Fennessey?

  What a town, Hollywood.

• 1:30:21Speaker 07

  Like some like, like shitty apartment building and link on Lankersham in the valley.

• 1:30:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, and I just PA for a bit and, you know, bought a camera and just started screwing around and, um, yeah.

• 1:30:33Sean Fennessey?

  What like roughly what years like oh, three, oh, four?

• 1:30:37Speaker 07

  Oh, three, I think is when I moved out here. And so that's why we PA for like the first two years, realized very quickly that if you're good at PA, you're just gonna get more PA jobs. And if you're, you know, you. Have to separate yourself by creating as much content as you possibly can. And so, uh, but like, you know, scrounged together as much money as I could, bought a camera and then, you know, use my friends as actors. And, um, there was this, this, this just, you know, there's a lot of luck involved in my, and or good timing, I should say, in my career and, um, finding this thing called Channel 101 that, that had just started right around the time when I was getting interested in, in, in like making comedy videos. And it was the perfect thing to discover. Um, and for anyone that doesn't know what that is,

• 1:31:21Speaker 07

  it was like a monthly film festival where you would make a five minute show, like a little mini TV show, screen in front of an audience and it, they would vote for their five favorites. And then the next month, if you got voted back, you'd have to make a second episode. So it was, um, it was like the best thing I could find because that, that really became my film school because I was just making as much, uh, uh, I was just making as many comedy videos as I could. And then you would, you know, you'd start, get that instant gratification of, uh, what works and what doesn't work, which, you know, that's the closest I'll ever be to like a standup comedian. Like, you know, I wrote Companion four years ago, you know, we, we, I finished it three years ago. We shot it two years ago.

• 1:32:03Speaker 07

  I edited it one year ago and it like now I get to see it kind of being released. But, you know, Channel 101 was you made, I would be making things that day and show and show it that night. And you would just like the, like, you know, I've never done heroin, but I imagine it's very similar. It was like the high of, oh my God, I gotta laugh. And it just, just euphoria like kicks in and you get this adrenaline rush and you're just like, oh, I can't wait for next month. And, and, and you learn, you know, you, I, that's where I learned everything about like, you know, how smart an audience is. And they'll, they'll feel when a joke is being reached for, it's still, or something is like too sweaty and, and obvious. Or if you're coasting, if you're like, get really cocky and you're like, oh, I don't have to worry. Like you, you'll, you, you could, you have that

• 1:32:46Speaker 07

  audience share, like it would, it was treated like a little, like, little, like, um, Was like the Nielsen's ratings or something. You just like, oh, I had 80% like last screening and now I have 55%. I gotta step my game up. And meanwhile, like everyone else is your age and as hungry as you and you're you're making things and trying to make them jealous and competing and, you know, just getting better together. And I'm still friends with a lot of those guys.

• 1:33:11Sean Fennessey?

  And was that, were you working on Yacht Rock at that time as part of that?

• 1:33:15Speaker 07

  Yacht Rock is part of that.

• 1:33:16Sean Fennessey?

  Part of that, yeah.

• 1:33:16Speaker 07

  So I just acted in that.

• 1:33:17Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:33:18Speaker 07

  I saw the documentary. It was fantastic.

• 1:33:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I was wondering like what your role was on it because I saw your name attached to it. But you were you just friends with those guys at that time and appearing in the series?

• 1:33:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, you would just, uh, yeah, you would hire each other. You would just ask, Kay, would you be in my thing? Like J D Risner was in a couple of my shows and I was in his, I think, because Wade, who played Hall and I and I played Oats. Um, we, I think, because we just, I was short and, you know, like I had dark hair and, um, yeah, that was really fun. Guy actually got to meet Hall and Oats because of that. That was a really fun.

• 1:33:53Sean Fennessey?

  How did they feel about your portrayal?

• 1:33:54Speaker 07

  Oats was great.

• 1:33:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:55Speaker 07

  Oats, the first thing he said to me was, you're too tall to play me. And I was like, the best compliment I could ever get from anyone. I've never been called too tall.

• 1:34:04Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Darrell, a little trickier, uh, you know, reputation.

• 1:34:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, and you felt it.

• 1:34:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:09Speaker 07

  It was, it was, we went to the Hollywood Bowl, saw them, uh, like however many years ago that was. And their manager was a big fan of us. And so we got to go backstage and meet them. And Oats was just like taking photos with us and he was really nice. And then he brought Hall over and Hall was like arms full. And I was like, and Oats goes, he thinks you guys are making fun of us. And I was like, oh, this is awkward. This is weird.

• 1:34:31Sean Fennessey?

  Hopefully, the documentary assuaged some of Darrell's concerns.

• 1:34:35Speaker 07

  Oh, I doubt it. Did you, he was on the, that, um, Bill Maher show.

• 1:34:40Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I didn't see it.

• 1:34:40Speaker 07

  He's just, he's full of bitterness.

• 1:34:42Sean Fennessey?

  It's so crazy, given the incredible success he's had. Anyway, we're down a rabbit hole that I led us to. Um, so you're, you're making, um, work with Channel 101. Like, at that time, are you thinking like, I gotta start writing screenplays to be making movies? Do you want to work in series television? Like, where did you see your career going?

• 1:35:00Speaker 07

  Well, I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do within it. Like, I loved editing. I love the editing process. I love the directing process. I love writing, um, though I never really considered myself a writer, honestly.

• 1:35:13Speaker 07

  And then, yeah, like I said, like, we were, we were all at this stage where we were young and starting out and hungry and as, as, you know, some of us are getting successes, we're pulling each other up with us. And two of my friends created this show, Blue Mountain State, and that, you know, like, they, they were looking for writers and they just asked me to, to write for it. And I was like, sure, I'll, I'll, I'll try it. And I, I still, writing was something I did. I, I, it always felt like I would either do it, be a director or an editor. The writing part of it was just like, oh, I would do it just to have content. And I enjoyed it, but I never really thought of myself as a writer. But working

• 1:35:54Speaker 07

  on Blue Mountain State, that really solidified, oh, like, I, I really enjoy this part of it. I, I, I'm a very introverted person, so I like to be, you know, in, in my office, like, by myself, like, you know, turn on, like, like dim the lights and just, like, be in my head. I, I love that. And that's, yeah, that was the, the beginning of, of my writing career. And I, and I treated it, I think because I didn't really think of myself as a writer, I treated it as like, an experiment. And that's why my IMDb is just kind of a shit show. It's kind of just like, all, every different genre, every different style, like kids' shows, animated shows. Cause I was like, oh, yeah, I wanna, I wanna write everything, much to the chagrin of my agent, who was like, you need to develop

• 1:36:38Speaker 07

  a brand. I'm like, I don't care about a brand. I wanna learn, I wanna write for a Nickelodeon, like, villain of the week show. That sounds awesome. Let's do that. Like, I'll never get that opportunity again. And so I was just taking every job to, as a way to, just, just to learn. Yeah.

• 1:36:54Sean Fennessey?

  That's really interesting, cause I, by looking at someone's IMDb, I can usually suss out sort of like, what their goals are, how they see themselves, where they're going with their career, what, what their brand is.

• 1:37:07Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:37:09Sean Fennessey?

  Did not have any success with that with you.

• 1:37:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, good luck.

• 1:37:12Sean Fennessey?

  So then, are you essentially doing that, like jumping from writing job to writing job over the course of the next 10 years?

• 1:37:18Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, and doing, I mean, there's a lot, big gaps in my IMDB, but I'm like doing rewrites for movies. I developed a show for MTV that didn't go through. So, you know, so I'm working and I'm living, living comfortably. I have a low cost of living. I don't have a family. So I was, you know, like, I could be choosy as far as like, I didn't have to take like the low hanging fruit. I could, I could be a little picky based on like the, the jobs that excited me, but still I was not getting like the, the, the, what I really wanted to write. Like, I've always been a gigantic fan of genre movies, specifically like horror, sci-fi, thriller, any of that. It needs like a, a robot or

• 1:37:59Speaker 07

  a serial killer or a ghost or something to get me excited. And I just wasn't getting those opportunities. And I was at a place in my career where there, this opportunity came. And I was like, oh my God, they're rebooting Are You Afraid of the Dark? I loved that show as a kid, please. And begging the company like every day, please let me, like, just give me a chance. I'd like, like, this is what I want to do. This is a company that knew that I like was a decent writer. I never even got a meeting about it. And that forced me to sit down and go like, what, what's going on right here? Like, people recognize that I can write, but I'm not being given the opportunities to, to do what I want to write. I just assumed if you're a good writer, you could, you know, write whatever you wanted. And that's not true. You get put in a box and, you know, it's, it's my own fault for

• 1:38:43Speaker 07

  not having a, the proof, you know, that was like the, took the pandemic for me to sit down and go, why are you creatively at least unfulfilled? And it's because I didn't have a writing sample that represented like the kinds of movies I liked. And it was, you know, it's, it's that 15 years of just bouncing around and not having a, a brand and, and, you know, I, I, but it was all learning. It was all great. I made tons of mistakes and. So when I actually sat down to write something that reflected my voice, you know, I had a, an amount of confidence to get through it because there's a lot of pain.

• 1:39:22Speaker 07

  There's a lot of, there's a lot of questioning and in the, in the process of, you know, staring at a blank page.

• 1:39:31Sean Fennessey?

  You seem very centered and reflective on the arc of your career.

• 1:39:37Speaker 07

  Self-awareness is, I think, one of the most important qualities for, for someone to have. I try to constantly take like inventory of my life, like every couple of years to, to make sure like I'm where I want to be and what I need to do to get in that place.

• 1:39:55Speaker 07

  I, I recognize that I feel very centered, but up here now it's chaos. It's crazy. There's insecurities and imposter syndrome and craziness and yeah.

• 1:40:05Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you know, from, from an outsider's perspective, like I said, we have some friends in common. So I was aware of the fact that this movie was happening, but I didn't know anything about you. And when I sat down to watch it was just incredibly impressed and would not have thought that it was a directorial debut or anything like that. And, you know, in a lot of ways, it's like, it's a high concept genre studio movie. And that's very unusual for an original to go right now. So like, maybe you can walk me through the arc of, I guess in COVID, you wrote this screenplay and it found its way into the right hands. Like what was the, how did all of this happen essentially?

• 1:40:44Speaker 07

  Yeah. I mean, everyone's going to hate me because there's a lot, there's so much good luck involved in this, but you know, just don't forget about the 20 years of toiling.

• 1:40:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's useful to hear that first. Yeah.

• 1:40:54Speaker 07

  So it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, if you, if you're, you know, put the work in, you'll eventually get discovered. It took me a long time and I made a lot of mistakes, but I'm here now and I'm very, feel very grateful to be here talking about this movie. But yeah, so, so I, I wrote this movie and it, it came from a place of like, you know,

• 1:41:16Speaker 07

  This might be the last thing I write that people read. You know, it could just, I would just think, very realistically thinking, I'm in my 40s. I went to, I remember going to a Dodger game, being like, is this it for me? Am I done? Like, and I had an editor friend, the guy, a very close friend who's an editor. I was like, should I talk to him about pivoting to editing? Like, I was very close to giving up.

• 1:41:36Speaker 07

  So I put all my eggs in my, in this one basket, which was Companion. And I think that's why there's so many tones within it. Cause I was like, well, you know, if I only get to make one movie, not even make, if I only get to, you know, write a movie that people take seriously, let's show them that I can do a heist movie. I can do a comedy, I can do a thriller, sci-fi. Put it all in one movie and see if it works out. Never in a million years thinking I would get the opportunity to direct it, which is insane. Yeah, so I spent a year writing it and rewriting it and rewriting it. And, you know, the very terrible draft, a very terrible, terrible draft, until it got to a place where I'm like, okay, I recognize that this is, this is good. This reflects like my voice.

• 1:42:18Speaker 07

  And the day I finished that, that final, that, that last draft, I, J D Lifshitz from Bold Delight, just a friend of a friend, I was like, oh, he's having a moment right now with, with Barbarian. I'm hearing great things about that. I'll send it to him. And he read it that night and called me the next day. So this is 24 hours after finishing that, this script. He's like, we want to produce this. And then he sent it to Roy Lee. And then, so 48 hours after finishing this script, I had Roy Lee attached. And then over the weekend, they sent it to Zach Krager and he read it. And like, there was a brief moment where he was gonna direct it. And so I had five producers attached within like a week of writing it.

• 1:42:55Sean Fennessey?

  That doesn't happen.

• 1:42:56Speaker 07

  Which is not something that happens ever. And I didn't think it was gonna happen. This was a, this was purely a writing sample. To get a job that was similar to Companion. I never thought that it, that it would get, get made.

• 1:43:08Sean Fennessey?

  So that happens and Zach is attached, but it's gonna be a movie that's gonna happen. His next movie, I guess, after Barbarian. And then that doesn't happen. So like, what happened? How did you become the director of the movie?

• 1:43:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I worked with Zach closely for five, six weeks, just kind of polishing it, talking about it. And A Barbarian had not come out yet. And through that process, I think that because I'm very protective of my stuff like well for making it, you know, like I'm not going to like just like just, you know, just hand it off. I I'd already seen Barbarian, I knew it was amazing, but I just was like, I you know, I've I've been burned so many times at directors kind of, you know, fucking my shit up.

• 1:43:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:48Speaker 07

  It sounds awful, but it's just it's like gut wrenching when you have an idea in your head of what it is and then you see it executed, you're like, oh, my God, like these decisions that were made, they're just they're not coming from a place of story. There's just like these you're you're putting all the energy and like these cool shots and that's not what the scene's about. So I just was I was very protective in going through each scene and being like, well, why how would you shoot this and whose whose moment is this? And he's big on POV and I'm big on POV. And I don't mean like literally like how you shoot like a POV shot. I mean, like, every scene should like you should know whose moment it is. And and and so I just wanted to make sure you like we were on the same page at that stuff. And I think through that process, he realized, oh, like

• 1:44:31Speaker 07

  maybe he'd be better suited as a as a producer and just step aside. And I didn't know this was happening. He was like wrestling wrestling with this. And I got a phone call from him like a couple of weeks after Barbarian had come out. It might have actually been the weekend after Barbarian came out. And he was like, I I'm sorry, I'm not going to direct this, but I want to stay on as a producer. I was like, OK, yeah, I understand. You can do whatever you want. And then he said, but I've talked to Boulder Light and I've talked to Vertigo and I've gotten them like their their permission to if you want to direct it, we think you could do it. I was like, oh, my, you know, like, I didn't know the movie was going to get made. I didn't know that I would ever be a director. I wanted

• 1:45:13Speaker 07

  to direct. I wanted to come back to directing at a certain point because, you know, in my twenties, I directed a lot. But I never I thought it would be I had three ideas. I thought I would write this first idea companion, maybe it gets made, maybe it doesn't. Not going to direct it. Second movie, maybe it gets made, maybe it doesn't. And hopefully the third idea I can direct. Didn't I just leapfrogged over that thanks to Zach's generosity? And yeah, like, I wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't for Craig or realizing like like, you know, this this would be better if I I directed it. And it worked out for him, too, because Weapons is is awesome.

• 1:45:46Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds like an exciting. Yeah, I love Zach. So that's very cool. I That's a pretty wild story.

• 1:45:53Speaker 07

  It's so wild.

• 1:45:54Sean Fennessey?

  Like, you weren't, would you say you were, especially since you're a self-aware type, would you say you were angling or communicating like, here's my vision, or here's what I would do, or anything to kind of signal like, in the event that, Zach, you fall out, like, because, or is it just like genuinely serendipitous and they just believed in your vision and that's why it happened? You know what I'm asking?

• 1:46:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, no, I think it's a little bit of both. I think unconsciously I was like angling for it, but I wasn't, I, you know, I, I've been in this business a long time and I've learned every, I've lived every cliche there possibly could be about like, you know, working in entertainment, everything from having my first job and, and like thinking that the jobs will never end and like getting like this paycheck and then going like, let's go to Costco with all my friends and we have like fucking grocery carts full of flats, flat screens and, and Xboxes and iPads and iPhones and, and that money's gone in three months. Like that, I've lived that. So I've made every mistake I possibly could. I truly have. Um, I, you know, like, uh, so, so when it, it started to seem like the movie was

• 1:47:02Speaker 07

  gonna get made, I, I know that like a first time director, that like you're, you're suddenly committing to a lower budget. It's gonna be harder to get a studio interested. It's just, just becomes a different movie. Um, so I didn't want to stand in its way. I just wanted it to get made. So, so I was taking a very zen-like approach, just being like, guys, like, like, getting the movie made is the most, that, like, that's the prime directive here. I don't care who directs it. Let's just, you know, it's like, if, if like the best director is the one who gets this movie made. That's, that's, that's, that was my kind of MO. Um, so yeah, so it was a little bit of, but then, yeah, like, just, just the, the battle scars from having seen my, my stuff get, get kind of.

• 1:47:46Speaker 07

  That sounds so pretentious, but just having it got burned. So I, so I am very protective and I learned, you know, very early on how to direct on the page without directing on the page. Cause I, I learned if you put like close up of a glass with like two ice cubes clinking in it, the directors immediately just screwed yourself because the director is going like, you can't tell me what to do and then you're not gonna, you're not gonna get a close up. It's gonna start with a wide. But if you, you write in like little phrases, little phrases are like, like, like the shorter the phrase, you can, you can kind of signify tempo and you can, and you can also like, like, you know, use on a, on a P and be like clink, clink, like two glasses fall into, or two ice cubes fall into a glass.

• 1:48:28Speaker 07

  And you're kind of subconsciously like planting the seeds of that's a close up, that's a close up. So like I, I just, I just wanna make sure, cause I, I, when I write, I, all the blocking is done in my head. I, you know, I don't do like chase scene happens here, action scene happens here. Like I need to figure out every punch. I need to figure out every little detail. So it's already in my brain. I need to know that, that, I needed to know Zach and I were on the same page like throughout the entire script. Yeah.

• 1:48:56Sean Fennessey?

  It's interesting cause the movie does feel very, um, it's not that it's constructed, it's very tight. You know, like it doesn't feel leaky at any point. And like a lot of, as I'm sure you know, like many genre movies are kind of notorious, even the ones that we love for having these kind of leaky components. But the movie also, it feels like a real, um, agglomeration of a lot of influences while also being its own thing. Maybe you could talk a little bit about just the actual origin of the idea, what you were thinking of and what you wanted to do with it.

• 1:49:25Speaker 07

  You know, every project is different, how it pops in your head. This one, I don't know why, but like the full log line, like day one popped in my head. Three couples go to, and I'm, we're gonna spoil it cause it's in the trailer, but three couples go to a cabin in the middle of the woods. One of them finds out they're a robot going to be shut down and things become like go haywire and you know, like I knew it was gonna have like a horror structure where every 10 pages, someone's gonna get picked off.

• 1:49:49Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:49:50Speaker 07

  That just popped in my head. Like I didn't, sometimes it's a visual, sometimes it's a character, sometimes it's a scene that that was just like the full, fully baked idea popped in my head. But the, like the, my first instinct, and this is a year and a half before Megan had come out, um, was to make her the antagonist. It just seemed obvious, like you want to make the robot like, like that's going bad be, you know, the AI gone wrong. That's my brain immediately went there. And so I'm starting to break the story and thinking about her journey. And I get to the scene where she shows up at the cabin with Josh and she's afraid to go inside. And she's feeling alienated and alone and like she doesn't belong and she's worried about, you know, just started

• 1:50:31Speaker 07

  tapping into like, the first time I made like partners, friends and families and, and I'm like, oh my God, I'm starting to relate to the robot here. And at that moment, I'm like, oh, could I do this? Could I make a movie where the most sympathetic character is a, is a robot? The most human character is a robot? And that became the, like, the kind of like, as soon as I had that, that's, that's when I like fell in love with it. And I was like, oh, I could tell a different story here.

• 1:50:56Sean Fennessey?

  It's interesting because the conversation around AI is like very noisy and very angry at times, especially from a lot of writers' perspectives. In this movie, it's not exactly AI in the traditional sense that we, that we talk about every day, but the what if like AI gone right is a risky proposition. Like, how did you think about that? Were you like conscious of it, whether you were writing or in production on any of those ideas?

• 1:51:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, constantly thinking about like, how is this going to be take? And I'm also like, AI does scare me as a writer. And, and you, I, I, you know, toy around with chat GPT just to see and it's every week. I feel like it's like getting better and better. And, you know, I dismissed it like a year ago. And, and now I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't, I don't know. It's like, it's, it's, it's improving like by the second. And so it does scare me.

• 1:51:45Sean Fennessey?

  Wait till your movie comes out and then it has all that information and then it gets to, yeah.

• 1:51:50Speaker 07

  I know. But, but, but like the, it's a metaphor in the movie, you know, it's, it's representing like the story. I never think, I didn't do a ton of research. I just needed to know if this technology could exist and when it would exist. And then as far as like, I didn't want to bog it down in technical details and I didn't want it to be like the X and the Makiina talking about Turing tests. I wanted it to be very real and like feel like characters, they're, it's like iPhone generation five or six where you just don't question it anymore.

• 1:52:20Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:52:20Speaker 07

  That's the exciting thing about it. And, and then the, the fun became, you know, telling two different stories. The one story is Iris and it's, it's, it's, it's literally, or not literally, it's metaphorically the story of like a woman in a, realizing she's in a toxic relationship. And through self-discovery, like, like, like takes agency and empowerment. And then there's the B side, and that's the Josh and his friend's side, which is, it's, it's not so overtly like said in the, in the movie. But it's what, what's, what would happen if your phone looked like a human being?

• 1:52:57Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:52:57Speaker 07

  And how would that affect your viewing, not just the robot, but all other human beings? And that like, there's no accident why like Josh is not being affected by some of the things that are happening within the story. It's because everything's been dehumanized. Because when you look at your, your, your robot and it looks like a human, suddenly everything just kind of becomes objectified. And that's, that, that was fun. Like that's, I love that part.

• 1:53:24Sean Fennessey?

  I did want to ask you about the, the specificity of the, the specs, for lack of a better word, are really, really good and really clever. And I hadn't quite thought of it like Iris is a phone, but that actually does make it more, make more sense that you would think about all of these different components.

• 1:53:39Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:53:40Sean Fennessey?

  And apps. And can you talk about just kind of like, uh, developing these very specific detailed ideas that go into building out this? Cause if, even if you didn't research it, somehow it feels like you have designed a product.

• 1:53:55Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:53:55Sean Fennessey?

  That feels legible in the world, even though the movie is a metaphor and satirical and all the things that it is. It's a lot of the details. I was like, I haven't seen this quite done this way before. And it seems like this is what it could be.

• 1:54:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I, I hope not. I mean, I don't know like what I, what the future is going to be like, obviously, but yeah, that's just, that's just what makes my brain tingle. That's like what, I just follow, you know, my first drafts are a mess because I throw every single idea I have and then it just becomes like, like refining and focusing. And so, yeah, like that's the fun stuff, this to talk about like, whoa, like filter everything through story, filter everything through character. And you talk to, you know, it's easier to talk to Jack Quaid about his, about his character and his motivation. If you, if you have reasons behind it and, and you know, you're giving him like, you know, directing is not really about giving someone a directive. It's like giving them the guardrails. Like, you know, like it's within here and within this, like, you know, here parameters,

• 1:54:53Speaker 07

  you can have as much fun as you want. And all in my job is to make sure you don't drift on either side.

• 1:54:58Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. So I feel like you got some good fortune and probably expressed some good taste by getting Jack and Sophie, I guess when you did Sophie in particular is kind of on the rise. Is this scream queen? It's a fascinating thing. I haven't seen this quite done this well in terms of the parts that she's picking and the project she's a part of. And it just feels like sometimes every, the timing just seems perfect. How did you get these? And obviously, Jack Quaid has been doing great work for like 10 years now. How, how did you get these two in the leads?

• 1:55:26Speaker 07

  You never know how it's going to happen. Like I don't write with anyone in mind because I've just been heartbroken so many times when you like have this specific actor in your head. And you're like, it has to be this character, this actor. And then they always say no. And then you're like, oh, I don't have a plan B. So I kind of want the characters to feel like, I, I use this metaphor, and maybe it's not quite right, but it's like a deflated balloon, you know? Like it doesn't have a full shape to it, but it's like enough there that then you can have, hand it to an actor and they can fill it and give it shape and shading. But I assumed wrongly that Iris was going to be really easy to cast and Joshua's going to be really hard to cast because my thought being like, it'd be really hard to get a, uh, uh, like someone, a man in his early twenties, late twenties to want to play such a toxic character.

• 1:56:11Speaker 07

  Cause it goes into like, you know, the dark places. And Jack Quaid and I have like the same agency, UTA, and his agent slipped him the script and he read it before we even started casting and requested to sit down with me. And so we met for coffee. And, you know, again, the deflated balloon to me was he needs to have, he needed to be like boyish, he needed to have a very charismatic smile, and he needed to be someone that, he's saying awful things from the get-go. He's saying, smile, act happy. Like, that's, that's, there's no version of that where it's likeable, but there is the most likeable version of that. Like, he, you know, it needs to come across not with any maliciousness. It comes

• 1:56:51Speaker 07

  from like, you know, the Jay Baruchel school of like, I'm doing this because I'm oblivious. Yeah. Like, I don't know any better. Like, I'm just like, like a man-child. And sitting across from him, I'm like, oh my god, this is perfect. Like, he's great. I love this guy. And he's nervous. I'm like, why are you nervous? You're the son of like Hollywood royalty. Like, I should be the one nervous. We talked for like 40 minutes about Jaws. We didn't really even talk about the movie. And yeah, it's just like, it's, yeah, and he, and he passes the most important test, which is he was fun to be around, because you're gonna be with these people for four months. So, you know, like, you don't want assholes. Yeah. Because that's like, you're gonna butt heads, and it's gonna be difficult for

• 1:57:35Speaker 07

  everyone. And I just could feel like he's a really good person, and I want to, want to be around him. And so, yeah, before we even started, like, the, like, the real casting, it's like, oh, we have Jack Quaid attached. He's perfect. He's great. And then Iris ended up being so much harder. I assumed that there's so many young women that are just extremely talented, which is true, but I didn't realize that the character is really two characters in one. It's the first half. She's very docile. She's very passive. You should believe that she's weak, and she's not standing up to him. And then there's like a literal moment where she like, you know, flips a switch, and she becomes like empowered and has agency. And she, you need to feel it when she's standing up to Josh in the, the second half. You need to, like, she, you know, she needed to buy it. And

• 1:58:19Speaker 07

  there were so many actors. We had 300 self-tapes. We had, we did a ton of chemistry reads with Jack. Nail the first half. Oh my God, you're amazing. And then this, then we, you know, you, for additions, you do like scenes throughout the movie. We did one in the middle, or sorry, one at the beginning, one in the middle, one in the end. And they got to the end where they're supposed to finally stand up to Josh. It just felt fake and false. And I was like, oh, I just don't buy it. And then the reverse would happen. You would find like an actor that just nailed the ending, just nailed that like, oh my God, you're badass. You're an action star. And then you tried to do the doc over and you're like, I don't buy it. I don't believe you. And then, um, yeah, Sophie, her

• 1:58:58Speaker 07

  name had been kind of bandied about and finally set up a chemistry read with her and Jack, um, which I don't recommend to anyone to do this, but we did it over Zoom, which, you know, the point of a chemistry read is to see if they have any chemistry and it's really hard to have chemistry when it's like a tiny little box. Um, but we had to because he was in London. I was in New York in pre-production and Sophie was in LA. And it's, it's like that Hollywood cliche of like, she just fucking like nailed it. And I'm so negative and I know I seem grounded, but I'm so pessimistic that I'm like, oh, we're gonna screw this up. Like she, I've fallen in love with this actor in this role and it's not gonna happen. Like, like something's gonna go wrong.

• 1:59:41Speaker 07

  Like she's gonna get a better part or what, like, like, and just immediately, just glass half empty. And luckily, it worked out.

• 1:59:51Sean Fennessey?

  She's really great.

• 1:59:51Speaker 07

  I think she's amazing.

• 1:59:52Sean Fennessey?

  She makes a movie.

• 1:59:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, I, I can't imagine anyone else in that role. And she was scared out of her mind, specifically that the, the moment when, like halfway through the movie when she, I guess it's earlier, but when she discovers she's a robot, like there is like, it's easy to write, like emotional, like, you know, swerves, but for her to like, start in like a place of fear, like, like confusion and fear and then, and then it turns into kind of a comedy because she's like, I'm a robot, disbelief. And then it turns into like, um, real pathos, like you're, you're like, oh my gosh, she's a complete, her, I think the saddest part in the movie is her, you know, I think any other movie would be like her accepting she's a robot over like, you know, Like fifty, sixty minutes, she accepts she's a robot immediately.

• 2:00:38Speaker 07

  And the important thing is like, I know, okay, I'm a robot, that's fine, but like, how is that gonna affect you and me? Like, like, I will do whatever it takes to to get you back. And and that she was really scared of and and and she nailed it. Like she makes like, you know, once we had that scene down, oh, yeah, this this movie will probably work.

• 2:00:57Sean Fennessey?

  In the back in the house when she's in the chair.

• 2:00:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's and we shot it all in one, you know, there's like a two minute flashback that happens within it. But we shot the whole scene all at once. So she's doing all the and she's speaking foreign languages and yeah, it's it's.

• 2:01:13Sean Fennessey?

  So, okay, so the last thing I want to talk to you about is um, a feeling that I had while watching the movie, which is I watched the movie, I think, before I saw, maybe I'd seen the teaser, but had not seen the trailer, had not read anything about it. And as I was watching the movie, two things occurred to me. One, in the first ten minutes, I was like, I think I know what's going on here. I'm not totally sure, but like you, I watch a lot of genre movies. I love genre movies, very interested in how they're constructed. And I was right, but I'm curious to hear you talk about how much you want us to be right as the viewer. And then the second feeling that I had was, this would be an amazing movie to stumble on cable and not know anything about.

• 2:01:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:01:54Sean Fennessey?

  But inherently, like, you gotta sell this movie, you gotta market it, you gotta give away certain things that when Zach Craig wrote it for the first time, he didn't know anything and he was like, holy shit.

• 2:02:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:02:03Sean Fennessey?

  That every ten pages construction is so mind blowing. And even in our conversation, you're just talking about the events of the film. It's still come out a little bit after the movie comes out, but not too far afterwards. And so that balance between like the reveal and this art that you've learned as a screenwriter to get people invested in what you're writing and what they're ultimately seeing versus you gotta get people to show up and understand what the movie's gonna be that they're gonna pay for. Because it's it's very delicate balance.

• 2:02:30Speaker 07

  Welcome to my life. Like, as soon as you have Warner Brothers, like, or I guess it's the new line logo at the beginning of your movie. It's it's not, you know, it can't be Don't Worry Darling, you can't, you know, you you have to like sell what it is.

• 2:02:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:41Speaker 07

  It's got, it's gonna be an IMAX, you know, you can't, it's not a word of mouth movie when it's an IMAX. Like, you need those tickets, you need to sell those tickets. So it's like, it's it's it's it's tough to talk about that part of it. But then also, like, I wasn't super precious with that, as crazy as that's gonna sound, because when I was writing it, I like, it was very important to me that we didn't fall under like the don't worry darling like, like, like, you're selling this movie as a twist movie, because one, like, I think people watch twist movies differently than they watch just a regular movie.

• 2:03:10Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 2:03:11Speaker 07

  They're watching it as like puzzle boxes and they're, they're not really getting in, they're not, they're not letting themselves get in, like, kind of immersed in the story. They're just like, every character that enters are like, who's this guy? Like, oh, he's acting weird. So everyone's under a microscope.

• 2:03:24Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like Shyamalan is so, so much is held against him now, when you sit down to watch his movies, whether you like them or not, for that exact reason.

• 2:03:30Speaker 07

  Huge.

• 2:03:31Sean Fennessey?

  I'd love him.

• 2:03:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. And I think that unfairly, sometimes they call things that happen in his movies twists, and it's just, no, that's, it's a reveal, it's not a twist. You know, the aliens being, you know, like, like, the water, like, hurting the aliens is not a twist.

• 2:03:45Sean Fennessey?

  Right, this is the part of the story.

• 2:03:47Speaker 07

  That's their weakness, yeah. But yeah, so just, you know, again, I think it's, I think when you're writing it, especially when you're writing at spec, like, you have to be very calculated, because you won't need to, like, one, you need, like, you know, even though I say that I didn't know if it was gonna get made, you also have to, you know, like, I made, speaking of mistakes I've made, like, my first spec was a hundred and fifty million dollar, like, sci-fi family movie, like, and I was like, I would, you know, I spent a year writing it, and never, nothing ever happened with it. It's like, yeah, of course nothing happened with it. It's a hundred and fifty million dollar, like, movie, like, not based on any kind of pre-existing IP. That was crazy of me to do that. So, so Companion was me being like, okay, I'm gonna engineer this to be something that could get made.

• 2:04:29Speaker 07

  So we're gonna keep it all in one location, limit the characters, and, and then, and then also, like, knowing that, like, there is, it is kind of, movies hinging on a twist, needing to kind of engineer the, like, the, the movie to still, still be entertaining after that's been laid out. And so, before writing it, like, you sit down and you go, you know, what is this movie? Do we, does she find out in the third act that she's a robot? What, what point? Is it a midpoint? And then, and then when you have that, you know what movie you're telling, you know, like, this is, this is a first act twist. This is like, this isn't like, doing anything other than getting the story started.

• 2:05:08Speaker 07

  And so, everything before that is just set up to that, to, to, to what this, like, what the, what the strangeness is. And then... You know, if it happens earlier than people expect it, that's great, because then they just turn their, they, you know, their guard goes down and they could just start enjoying it. And then a twist happens within that. And then suddenly they're like, oh shit, I don't know what this movie is. And it like, yeah, like.

• 2:05:32Sean Fennessey?

  That's exactly the feeling that I had, which was almost like, I feel like this is telegraphing in a smart enough way that I can feel like I'm ahead of the story, even though I'm not ahead of the story. And then you have other twists or reveals or storytelling moves that we don't see coming or we're shocked by. But so, bravo. I thought it was really good.

• 2:05:49Speaker 07

  Thank you very much. Yeah, I appreciate that.

• 2:05:51Sean Fennessey?

  Drew, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen?

• 2:05:55Speaker 07

  Last great thing I saw was Oddity, which I thought was unfucking believable. I saw that on a plane.

• 2:06:01Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:06:01Speaker 07

  Which is not, I just was so busy that I couldn't like go to the theater to see it.

• 2:06:05Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:06:05Speaker 07

  And I, and I heard it was great. And I watched it on a plane on an iPad and the visuals are so like, um, what is it? Just hypnotic and just draw you in that there was, there's a jump scare that happened in the first half and the guy next to me went, huh? So I was like, oh, yeah, this guy's watching my, my iPad. Um, and so I was really blown away by that. Um, so that's the last great thing that I've seen. But I've just finished William Friedkin's memoir today and that was on, I loved, like, I listened to it and it was so special to hear him talk. And I'm just a huge Friedkin fan and I feel sad that I, that I'm done with it.

• 2:06:46Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I've read that book. It's so funny that you say that because I was reading that book this week as well for something else that I'm working on. And, uh, that's just a great, the director of memoir is a bit of a tricky proposition. You know, a lot of them are like a lot of self mythologizing and his is like such straight talk. It's very, very entertaining.

• 2:07:03Speaker 07

  Like his movies, they're raw and like unfinished. And I just rewatched French Connection. It's just so sloppy, but that just adds to the charm of it. And, and you know, with this day and age where you're using AI for cleanup and you know, the movies could be perfection and flawless. It's, we're losing something a little bit with that. But I recommend listening to the audio book because he does the audio book.

• 2:07:24Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:07:25Speaker 07

  You know, he doesn't go off book, but they're like, his personality comes through and he's like, ah, this is a chapter where I talk about this. Yes, you're a great man. I loved him so much.

• 2:07:36Sean Fennessey?

  I felt very lucky to get to talk to him before he passed on the show. And he lives up. It was a really special experience. Great recommendations. Drew, congrats.

• 2:07:44Speaker 07

  Thank you very much.

• 2:07:45Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks for coming on.

• 2:07:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.

• 2:07:55Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to Drew Hancock. Thanks to Jack Sanders. Thanks to our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on today's episode. As we said, next week on the show, Mailbag Time. Email us at [email protected]. We'll see you then.

• 2:08:14Speaker 02

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