The Oscars Hangover Mailbag. Plus: Bong Joon-ho Returns!

Sean and Amanda are joined by Joanna Robinson to tie up some loose ends from Sunday’s Oscars (1:00) and to answer your mailbag questions about ‘Anora,’ Sean Baker’s huge night, snubs, ratings, the cultural relevance of the ceremony, and anything else you could cook up about the awards (42:00). Then, Sean is joined by returning guest Bong Joon-ho and interpreter Sharon Choi to discuss his new film ‘Mickey 17,’ following up the tremendous success of ‘Parasite,’ his famous storyboarding style, what he took inspiration from in the making of this movie, and more (1:30:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Bong Joon-ho and Joanna Robinson Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Jon Jones 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hello there, friends of the program. It's Tate Frazier and it's officially that special time of the year where we go on a march through madness together for the 85th edition of the NCAA tournament. What makes March so special, you ask? Well, it's the unknown. It's the fact that this is basically Survivor on a basketball court on CBS without Jeff Probst. And no matter how much you prepare, you cannot predict this kind of chaos. And that is what we will be covering on this podcast. One Shining Podcast. All the madness, all the David vs. Goliath personified. It's the best show in town. The ball is tipped and here you are with us. Come listen and join us wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:43Speaker 01

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• 1:49Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy.

• 1:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 1:51Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about life after the Oscars. A very exciting show today. Later in this episode, Bong Joon Ho returns to the show to talk about life after the extraordinary success of his Oscar run.

• 2:05Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a little embarrassing. It's like, do we really need to be here?

• 2:08Sean Fennessey?

  You guys will chat.

• 2:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I feel that almost never, but for For Bong. For Bong, yes.

• 2:14Sean Fennessey?

  Bong is here. Bong's got a new film, Mickey 17, comes out this weekend. I had a nice, long conversation with him, his first conversation on this show since 2019, when he was running shit with Parasite. We'll talk about what happens when a neon movie runs shit in Hollywood in this episode. Thankfully, Bong was as witty and smart as ever about his movie, which I hope people will see this weekend. Stick around for the conversation. But Joanna Robinson is here. Joanna has been a

• 2:40Speaker 05

  Hi.

• 2:41Sean Fennessey?

  A steady hand through this award season.

• 2:43Amanda Dobbins?

  It's so nice to see you.

• 2:43Speaker 05

  So nice to see you.

• 2:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I meant to ask you, can we have dinner next week? I didn't realize that you were like here

• 2:48Sean Fennessey?

  We are recording a podcast right now.

• 2:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And she's here for a while. It's so nice to see her in person.

• 2:53Sean Fennessey?

  I extended a lunch invite last week, actually. We didn't make any plans.

• 2:56Speaker 05

  No, we didn't.

• 2:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm booking dinner.

• 2:58Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:59Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it's great to have you back, Joanna. The Academy Awards did happen, and you did watch them.

• 3:03Speaker 05

  I did.

• 3:04Sean Fennessey?

  Um, you thought about maybe not watching them. What were you gonna watch instead?

• 3:07Speaker 05

  No, I was definitely gonna watch them.

• 3:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 3:08Speaker 05

  I was never not gonna watch the Oscars.

• 3:10Sean Fennessey?

  It was either go to a party.

• 3:11Speaker 05

  It was either go to the neon party and watch it, or watch it at home.

• 3:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:14Speaker 05

  And for content, I should have gone to the neon party, but instead I just watched it at home.

• 3:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 3:18Speaker 05

  So, yeah.

• 3:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Did you have others with you? Was it a solo viewing, like, set the scene?

• 3:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. Oh, super glamorous. No, it was just, it was just me, which is deeply unusual. I don't know, it was a really unusual Oscar viewing experience for me this year, and I actually really enjoyed it, because I felt like the pressure was lower than it usually is for watching the Oscars, for me personally, uh, because I wasn't sure I was coming on the big pick, and now that I know I'm here, I'm full of takes. But it was great, because then I was just watching it for me and enjoy, and like, not having, feeling like a need to form opinions in the moment.

• 3:49Sean Fennessey?

  Ah.

• 3:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:50Speaker 05

  That makes sense.

• 3:51Sean Fennessey?

  I, it's been about 10 years since I didn't know that pressure.

• 3:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:55Sean Fennessey?

  Nevertheless, we'll probably get into whether or not we did a good job on Sunday night of breaking up.

• 3:59Speaker 05

  You did a great job.

• 3:59Sean Fennessey?

  That's very nice of you to say, but you're also paid by The Ringer, so.

• 4:02Speaker 05

  That's another thing I did, though, was I did watch Sean and Amanda. You guys know this, because I was texting you guys about it, so, yeah.

• 4:08Sean Fennessey?

  We did have fun. Um, I wonder if all of those people at the neon party brought down the ratings just a little bit this year. They were down a little bit, not too bad, actually.

• 4:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Segway King.

• 4:17Sean Fennessey?

  Um, only 18.07 million people watching the show, down 7%.

• 4:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 4:26Sean Fennessey?

  Hi, everyone. It's me, Sean. You may be wondering why I'm interrupting myself in this lovely conversation we're having about Oscar ratings. Well, the answer is very simple. When we recorded this episode, we did not have all of the data. And now we do have all of the data, thanks to the Nielsen Corporation. They have informed us that actually, the ratings for the Academy Awards were even higher than we thought. So instead of that 18.07 million number that I just shared, it's actually 19.69 million viewers who watched this after tabulating PC and mobile viewing. Thank you to all of you who are watching on your iPhones, you degenerates. And this is great news, because this means

• 5:06Sean Fennessey?

  that the Academy Award ratings are actually up this year, over the 19.5 million from last year's Barbenheimer Oscars, which is remarkable in some ways. But also, when you consider the fact that this is the first year that Hulu is streaming the Oscars, it's not that great. It's only 169,000 viewer bump, but it's still better than being down. So as always, I am torn about how I feel about ratings that do not matter for your life. Nevertheless, I wanted to correct the record here for this episode. Let's go back to the otherwise lovely conversation we were just having on the show. Thank you.

• 5:42Speaker 05

  But isn't the caveat that the Academy wants you to know that more younger people tuned in this year?

• 5:48Sean Fennessey?

  Sure. Yes. Definitely.

• 5:50Amanda Dobbins?

  People not in our demo.

• 5:52Sean Fennessey?

  Definitely.

• 5:53Amanda Dobbins?

  In Bobby's demo.

• 5:54Sean Fennessey?

  Because they're huge Timothée Chalamet fans.

• 5:56Speaker 05

  Because, uh, Sandworm?

• 5:59Sean Fennessey?

  Sandworm, yeah.

• 6:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Ariana Grande?

• 6:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Yep. Good call.

• 6:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that's what it was. I've had a lot of conversations about Ariana Grande since Sunday night, from people who I did not realize were in any way interested in the Oscars or in Ariana Grande. And they were just like, well, she was snubbed. Just like at Whole Foods yesterday. I was like, oh, okay. Just like people I, you know, met on the streets. So I guess some young people... Cared and and were rooting for her.

• 6:24Speaker 06

  Definitely Grande and Selena Gomez as well. I mean, Selena Gomez is like one of the most followed people on Instagram.

• 6:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Unfortunately, Selena Gomez was not nominated for an Oscar, so.

• 6:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but she was there. She was not, yeah.

• 6:35Speaker 06

  Didn't she go onstage?

• 6:36Sean Fennessey?

  No, she was there.

• 6:37Speaker 06

  Didn't she present something?

• 6:37Sean Fennessey?

  There were some, I mean, Timothy Chalamet, Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande is about as good as the Oscars can ask for, for central young stars at their at their ceremony, right?

• 6:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, they could have asked for Zendaya, but unfortunately, they just completely blanked that. I don't know. The more I think about it, the more starless the ceremony and the telecast felt. And obviously, those three people are very famous. They didn't win. And so Timothy was on screen a lot. And I guess Ariana performed to open the show, but otherwise, they didn't use the very small star power that they had. And that front row was all the nominees, and there was no one else in the audience. I mean, there were, there were lots of people, and I like all of them. And poor Denis, your beloved Denis, had that middle seat, you know?

• 7:26Speaker 05

  Disrespected.

• 7:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought so, too.

• 7:29Speaker 05

  I think that's why Zendaya wasn't there, honestly. No, she wasn't there because they forgot challengers existed. But NCR texted us this this great tweet about the fact that Nolan's filming The Odyssey right now, and that's where a lot of famous people are. But yeah, if you don't get, if you don't nominate Nicole Kidman, if you don't nominate Angelina Jolie, if you don't nominate these people, they're not going to come. We've talked before on this podcast about that idea of like, the mayor of the Oscars, who's sitting in the front row, used to be Jack Nicholson, we've had Meryl Streep there, who's there sort of anchoring the star power, and you've got Timmy on the end, that they definitely cut to more than anyone else. Coleman Domingo in his red suit, front and center?

• 8:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I wanted to talk about that just a little bit, because Coleman Domingo, within the industry and amongst cinephiles, beloved.

• 8:15Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 8:16Sean Fennessey?

  Somebody everybody identifies as like, a great guy, an amazing performer.

• 8:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Incredible performance, insane thing, like, very deserving, like, creative campaigning, looks amazing in clothes, and has looked amazing at every event.

• 8:25Sean Fennessey?

  However, he's not that famous.

• 8:27Speaker 05

  Right, exactly. That's why, that's why I said Coleman Domingo, question mark, with no disrespect, because as you guys know, he was one of my favorite performances of the year, but that is, that's not a Meryl or a Jack figure. And that's sort of. Emblematic of the whole ceremony, right? Is that we are honoring cinema, we're not honoring pop culture as much.

• 8:47Sean Fennessey?

  And that has been the major shift. That has been the thing, I think, most significantly, as I think about the last five years, is that this is a much more high-minded arts ceremony and much less of a celebrity factory, which is how we understood it. You know, it's also possible that our memories are deceiving us, that in 1994, not everyone was in the room, it just felt like they were. It felt like a much more concentrated experience. I don't know, I would have to re-watch a telecast.

• 9:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you know, in the 90s, the nominees included Tom Hanks multiple times and Mel Gibson, which wasn't as problematic then as it is now, and Julia Roberts. And so, and it's true that in many ways, like, the Oscars of the 90s made those celebrities, but it was a symbiotic relationship and, like, the studio movies featuring quote-unquote movie stars that still existed, like, met with the Oscars. The Venn diagram was overlapping. Now, we have, you know, our beloved, like, extremely talented arthouse favorites, and then we have all the IP movies with, like, people you've heard of. The divide is bigger than ever. But also, I think, the ceremony, as we noted, there were only two trailers shown during the entire broadcast.

• 10:01Amanda Dobbins?

  The ceremony did not really promote any upcoming movies, maybe because there aren't that many.

• 10:06Speaker 05

  Snow White?

• 10:06Amanda Dobbins?

  But like, I guess Rachel Zegler was sort of there, though they, like, took care not to say the word "Snow White," as far as I could tell.

• 10:12Speaker 05

  They played some, you know, "Someday, Mel Prince will come," when they came out.

• 10:15Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, did they? I didn't pick up on that.

• 10:16Amanda Dobbins?

  But even in the sense of having-

• 10:17Sean Fennessey?

  But they stood her next to Gal Gadot, and she was like, she looked like a little tiny baby Rachel Zegler. That was so mean.

• 10:22Amanda Dobbins?

  They also identified Rachel Sennett as Rachel Zegler on the red carpet. Yeah, for like, a long time.

• 10:28Sean Fennessey?

  Tough. Snow White going super hard in my house right now, so we're fired up.

• 10:32Amanda Dobbins?

  All this to say, like, the promo piece of it, and even if you would get celebrities to the ceremony to promote the movie that they have coming out in April, May, June, you know, this summer. Those movies don't exist, or the, you know, the, the studios or whoever don't feel that their audiences are at the Oscars. So it's just, it's, it's a real vacuum.

• 10:53Sean Fennessey?

  I think that there, you know, I was gonna make a joke about how, why was the cast of Warfare not present onstage in their gear? But more pointedly, like, where was the cast of Fantastic Four? You know, like, why did they not present? That would have been...

• 11:05Speaker 05

  And that's a Disney property. I mean, I think that, like, I, when I texted, I'm sure, one of many group chats that you guys were in that night, but when I texted, like, "I really like these presenters," and then I actually took it back when they brought the Snow White duo out. But I really liked the presenters because we weren't getting the upcoming stars of X. We were getting much more, I thought, interesting people out there. And so for me, overall, with apologies to Bobby, who told me before we started that he thought the Oscars were quite boring this year. Am I allowed to say that, Bobby?

• 11:37Sean Fennessey?

  You can say that. Yeah. But, well, in particular, I thought the speeches were pretty boring. And like, more rambly than usual?

• 11:44Speaker 05

  I thought the speeches weren't great, but I thought, I really liked the thought they put into the presenters, to the bits. I did not think the supporting actor/actress bit worked. That was the one that I did not think it worked. But when they brought out...

• 11:56Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't like that either.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  Yeah. But when they brought out the Fab Five for, like, production design and costume, I thought that was really, really fun and thoughtful. I thought the comedy bits that they did, like Ben Stiller and Amy Poehler, were really thoughtful. So I think, you know...

• 12:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, Ben Stiller, that was funny.

• 12:08Sean Fennessey?

  We even forgot to mention that on Sunday. But that was also very funny.

• 12:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. So I think that, like, you know, I thought they were being thoughtful in terms of where they were sort of mixing things up a little bit. "We're gonna be goofy here. We're gonna be expansive here." So the cadence of the whole show really worked for me, personally.

• 12:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, everything that you just said is true and positive. And then there were, like, 45 minutes of dance and song performance.

• 12:30Speaker 05

  I have thoughts about that. That's a, that's a different thing. Yes.

• 12:34Sean Fennessey?

  Just to top off the ratings thing, I do think that there were a couple of significant factors. You mentioned the length of the show, three hours and 47 minutes, that sometimes can depress viewing. Everything is kind of settling, I think. You know, the Globes were kind of settled year over year.

• 12:50Amanda Dobbins?

  You've made peace.

• 12:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, award shows are obviously significantly smaller than they were when we were kids, but they're still much bigger than almost anything else that's on TV that isn't football. So, the show, this is gonna keep coming up, though, because the show's gonna be renegotiating in like, six months, 12 months, with ABC and/or a streaming service. And I bring that up because, of course, the show did stream. We didn't watch it on a streaming service, did you?

• 13:11Speaker 05

  I did, I did watch on Hulu.

• 13:12Sean Fennessey?

  And did you experience a blackout?

• 13:14Speaker 05

  I got the glitch, but I thought I had fucked up somehow. That's always my default assumption. So then I just went back to Hulu home base and started clicking around. I got it back up within, I would say, less than a minute.

• 13:24Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 13:25Speaker 05

  I think other people were less, perhaps panicked than I was. I just started clicking around on anything I could find and click around, and finally it came back up.

• 13:33Sean Fennessey?

  We did not even know that had happened when we were watching the show, which we watched on ABC. And we, I think it was immediately after we finished recording, I had many people in my mentions being like, "You need to talk about how Hulu fucked me, dude," which, you know, is kind of par for the course for my mentions. But I, I think it's interesting that the first time, and the first time's always tough for these services, but the first time on a big stage, when streaming is obviously the future of how we're gonna watch this stuff, to have an error. Also, coming off of, I thought SAG went pretty darn well on Netflix, you know, like, it's a pretty seamless, seamless experience.

• 14:06Amanda Dobbins?

  That's also, like, the first time that Netflix has gotten a live event totally correct.

• 14:10Sean Fennessey?

  They had their Love is Blind after-show fuck-up. They had Mike Tyson fight problems.

• 14:16Speaker 05

  The Hulu glitch, as far as we can tell, is because it went over?

• 14:19Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's because they didn't allot for the fact that at 11 o'clock Eastern, they were gonna have some resetting.

• 14:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Doesn't that make you absolutely want to scream?

• 14:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's idiotic.

• 14:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, think about, I just think about how many people worked on this and were involved in it. And it's just, you're not thinking like a consumer of the product. You're just, you're programming. And no, it's just, it happens all the time across industries.

• 14:44Speaker 05

  The one thing you can rely on for the Oscars is that they will go over.

• 14:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 14:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's just two departments not talking to each other.

• 14:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course.

• 14:50Sean Fennessey?

  The content people not speaking to the engineers, which, you know, that does happen from time to time. Joanne, I asked you to compile some observations.

• 14:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:58Sean Fennessey?

  So you've had a chance to not only watch the show, but ingest a lot of takes.

• 15:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:04Sean Fennessey?

  You know, so you've heard some stuff.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  I have heard some takes.

• 15:06Sean Fennessey?

  Did you bring some, some raw, new material to the table?

• 15:09Speaker 05

  I thought it was new and then I heard some other people say it, but I wrote these before I heard other people say it. So they're newer, they were new to me.

• 15:14Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, what's number one?

• 15:15Speaker 05

  I will say, I think a decent spread of awards is far preferable to one movie dominating, right? Would you agree?

• 15:21Sean Fennessey?

  I'm glad you brought this up. This is the third year in a row where we had a heavy concentration on one movie that became the powerhouse of the race. Enora was not as heavily tabbed as Everything Everywhere All at Once and Oppenheimer. I, I think I kind of hinted at this at the beginning of when we started talking on Sunday about how like, five awards for one movie and all being big awards is a lot. And that, that kind of flattens the, the show, I think, a little bit, where it feels like this steamroll effect.

• 15:47Speaker 05

  I kind of disagree in that almost every, except for what? A complete unknown Nickel Boys, every single Best Picture nominee won something.

• 15:56Sean Fennessey?

  One thing.

• 15:57Speaker 05

  Or two things.

• 15:58Sean Fennessey?

  There were four movies that had multiple awards, and I think that's it. Now, maybe that's roughly the average, but for, for a movie like In Order to Do, it, it never happens.

• 16:08Speaker 05

  It might have just been the way that they spread out the categories throughout the night or something like that. It didn't feel like, oh, Enora again, oh, Enora again. You know what I mean? It felt like we're, we're honoring the brutalists now. Now is the time when we talk about what Wicked did well, you know?

• 16:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Also because they only gave out like six awards in the first hour and a half or something. No, I'm, I'm, I think I'm serious.

• 16:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:27Amanda Dobbins?

  So there was a little like, one for you, one for you, one for you. And Joanne is right, the Enora steamroll only really came at the end unless you're nerds like us and, or listeners of this podcast. And as soon as editing happened, and her original screenplay, you knew what was gonna come.

• 16:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's what I was reflecting on, where that happened. And I was like, okay, they just kind of popped the bubble a little bit. And there was, there was no, nothing to do with it. You couldn't wait until the end to give out best editing. That would have been very strange, but it did feel a slightly deflating while watching it.

• 16:57Speaker 05

  But that, that feeds into my second point, um, which is... That's true. I definitely knew Enora was gonna win Best Picture early on. I still think Best Actress was up in the air until the last minute.

• 17:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, once editing and screenplay happened, he did turn to me and he said, "I'm really nervous if I'm gonna be more."

• 17:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 17:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I wasn't like-

• 17:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Agents and publicists.

• 17:20Speaker 05

  Shocked.

• 17:20Amanda Dobbins?

  You guys got a vacation.

• 17:22Speaker 05

  But there, you know, there was, there was leading, going into it before we knew that Enora was gonna win midway through the, the telecast, that what's gonna win Best Picture, what's gonna win Best Director, what's gonna win Best Actor, what's gonna win Best Actress? And I cannot remember an Oscar ceremony that I last went into not knowing for sure almost all of those categories.

• 17:44Sean Fennessey?

  That was what was so exciting to me about the last week in the run-up to the show.

• 17:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:48Sean Fennessey?

  Watching the show, I was like, ah, okay. So, you know, I, the thing I'd said where I was like, they're either going four for four or five for five, or they're going one for five.

• 17:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:55Sean Fennessey?

  And it became clear early on, there's nothing you can really do about it. It's just, it did happen more or less with Oppenheimer, and it did happen the year before that too. So, is this a trend? Is this just because people are falling in love with a movie? Or these just happened to be three very good campaigns that were executed? You could argue flawlessly. I mean, those are three campaigns that just kinda cruised very, very well through their season. No controversies, no big problems. Everyone kind of agrees, like, I like this movie, if not, you know, if not love it. And I do think the power of like over love is something that is dominating at the Academy Awards these days.

• 18:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Especially in years like this, where I don't think that there were a lot of people being like, "This is, this is my movie, this is it, I am, I am campaigning for it myself." I do wonder how much of the total tells us about, just like, how voters are watching things and what they're watching? Like, I, I have a pet theory based on no evidence that Enora is just kinda the one that a lot of people are like, "Oh, okay, like, I'll, I'll check that one out, I guess, but I'm not gonna sit down and watch The Brutalist, 'cause it's four hours long." I saw Conclave.

• 18:58Speaker 05

  I'm not gonna watch Substance.

• 18:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm not gonna watch, you know, I'm not gonna do all of this work, but seems like people like Enora, and maybe I'll watch it at home and like it too. And then they were like, "Okay, homework done, check, check, check, check."

• 19:10Speaker 05

  Funny, 'cause that feels like a slight rebranding of Enora after the awards, 'cause I feel like, leading up to it, everyone said that that was what Conclave was. That Conclave was the movie that everyone liked, and everyone felt palatable, and everyone was definitely gonna watch it. And so, that was probably gonna win on a, on a ranked ballot, because that's what, that would, would rise to the top. And then Nora, like, I was talking to someone- Who was sort of berating me forever, thinking that Demi Moore would win because he was like, the older Academy voters, we have talked about how they've diversified, but they were never going to go for The Substance. And I was like, "Anora's not a Disney movie."

• 19:42Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 19:42Speaker 05

  "Anora is an edgy movie," you know? And so it's just in the larger context of like, the punishingly long runtime of The Brutalist, or the extremes of The Substance, Anora starts to feel more normal.

• 19:57Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's what it is.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's in the context of the race.

• 20:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:00Sean Fennessey?

  It was what you're describing, which is like, this is the, maybe the second most approachable movie.

• 20:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, what am I actually, okay, my ballot's due in four days.

• 20:07Speaker 05

  Right.

• 20:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I haven't been paying any attention.

• 20:09Speaker 05

  I haven't watched anything.

• 20:10Amanda Dobbins?

  What am I actually going to sit down and watch?

• 20:11Speaker 05

  I did watch Wicked, but yeah.

• 20:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's not just The Substance. I think that's true for Dune Part II. It was pointed out that in all four of the anonymous ballots that Entertainment Weekly ran, that none of the people who were voting had watched Dune Part II, which is one of the biggest movies of the year, but I think a common refrain that I heard for the last nine months, and which you were the first person on the show to cite, which is like, is this a real Best Picture contender? I think it should be, and a lot of people agreed because they love that movie, but it doesn't really have a lot in common with Academy history and Academy love. And it didn't do that well. It's got two tech awards.

• 20:45Speaker 05

  You were the one who pointed out on Twitter about the Two Towers stats, that like, does it have a chance at the Return of the King three-peat?

• 20:53Amanda Dobbins?

  So the watch spoiled Dune Messiah.

• 20:56Sean Fennessey?

  I know, I already, I knew that thing already.

• 20:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  It's weird. It's deeply weird.

• 21:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I know that it's weird. I read the Wikipedia page.

• 21:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Sean is claiming that he won't, but he keeps insisting that we're going to have a Return of the King situation.

• 21:07Sean Fennessey?

  No, I am not insisting that, and I never did.

• 21:10Amanda Dobbins?

  How many people are going to be worms? Like, it is literally just going to be the Conan bit, but without a harp, you know?

• 21:16Speaker 05

  I really think that, that's hilarious. I really think that.

• 21:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much.

• 21:20Speaker 05

  You're welcome. I really think that.

• 21:22Amanda Dobbins?

  This is the kind of instant feedback we need.

• 21:24Speaker 05

  I think that Denis is going to make some dramatic changes.

• 21:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, but still.

• 21:29Speaker 05

  He has to.

• 21:30Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think for sure that it's going to be rewarded. I do think that part of the pattern of this year was people thinking that that was what was going to happen, because they don't know what's in that book. Okay, that's your first observation about the spread. What's your second?

• 21:43Speaker 05

  Well, I already kind of said my second, which was like, which, which categories were question marks?

• 21:47Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, the nail biters?

• 21:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, the nail biters, yeah.

• 21:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think that was good. Did we just trick ourselves, though? Like, I mean, you kind of brought that up. You were like, we kind of knew it was a Nora and we, I don't, for some reason, we backed off, but we knew.

• 21:57Speaker 05

  My friend, a couple of friends of mine were at the Neon party and during the, the screening, the,

• 22:04Speaker 05

  there was like the watch party and then the after party. And during the watch party, um, a bunch of Neon, you know, it's just Neon folks rooting for their own film, of course. And they start chanting like, "The Sags don't matter."

• 22:16Speaker 05

  Before the end of it. Um, and so, um, yeah, I mean, the SAG Awards, I mean, Demi, Demi had a narrative building up. It was really Timmy's, Tim's win at the SAG Awards that really, because we were like, oh, it's Brody, it's Brody in a Walks, Brody's Brody's Brody. And then we're like, oh, is it Tim? Is it just because we want to see him make another speech? Is it because we want to watch him?

• 22:39Sean Fennessey?

  I said you during the show. I was like, I should have changed Mikey. I should have went Mikey the whole time. I don't know why I did that. That was stupid. You were very forceful and convincing throughout that process.

• 22:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm still shocked. And I think I really just like, I am concerned for every like lower level employee at CAA, at Demi's management company, whatever, like the, the photo of her in the bathrobe with, with the, what's the dog's name? I, I never learned the dog's name and two plates of fries. I was like the, I'm okay. That was like a real, that was tough. That was, things are, things are really bad. And, and I, I wonder how people are behaving themselves.

• 23:18Sean Fennessey?

  She's gonna be okay.

• 23:19Amanda Dobbins?

  But she'll, I mean, she's fine. She's gonna be totally fine.

• 23:22Speaker 05

  I hope, I mean, I don't know how she was, like, if she was, I mean, I think about, I think about this every time this happens. When it happens to Glenn Close, when it happens to whoever, uh, that everyone told you were gonna win or you might win. And I just hope that they have people around them saying, but also you might not. But also let's look at what Mikey has also done, but also let's be realistic about this. And I don't know if Demi has a team, is the kind of star who has a team around her that is realistic with her? Or a kind of team around her that's just sort of like, you got this, babe. It's you. It's your year.

• 23:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think one of the reasons why- My Mikey one is that the more that people saw her during the campaign, the more they realized just how different she is from Annie, that she actually did have a kind of transformation performance wise, that, you know, she's much more clearly a much more retiring, soft spoken person. And so the, you know, jealousy is a disease, honey, and all that shit. Like, that's not, that's, that's acting. So, and she's, she's really great at it. And they wanted to award that.

• 24:15Speaker 05

  Guys, can you clip that for social?

• 24:16Sean Fennessey?

  I would be happy to be part of that meme. If you could make me closer inside of that meme, I would be very happy.

• 24:22Speaker 06

  Can we get a take with like 30% more Brighton Beach in it, you think, for social? To make it really go viral?

• 24:28Sean Fennessey?

  As, as, as you know, I have stuffed all of that, you know, intonation down as I get further and further from Long Island. Um, the other thing too is, you know, our friend Mike Alasker has been saying to me for the last couple of months, he's like, you called this man, you've been saying Enora for seven months, you called this. And I'm like, I can't claim calling anything because I looked at what, when Cannes happened, the only reason I was like, this is a big deal and it's gonna be a big deal movie is because the field was so weak this year.

• 24:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:54Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it's not that a Palme d'Or winner means it's gonna be a Best Picture winner. It's just that it was a weird, weak year.

• 24:59Speaker 05

  When we were, when you were out and we were ranking, I feel like the conversations we were having was, we'll put Enora at the top because we're waiting to figure out what actually is gonna go at the top.

• 25:08Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 25:08Speaker 05

  But that was like, it was a placeholder.

• 25:10Sean Fennessey?

  That's why I'm not like, you know, saying, I told you, I told you. Because I don't, if some, if Conclave did rise, I'd be like, okay, like, I guess that happened. White smoke. They, we didn't get white smoke, black smoke.

• 25:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I think you're being too hard on yourself, you know, like you have a job to do and your job is to talk about this for six months a year, you know? So it's like, you have, you gotta make content, just like everybody else.

• 25:30Speaker 05

  No, you do, yeah.

• 25:31Amanda Dobbins?

  And I, and I, and I have felt in the, in the last 24 hours, that I've heard from a lot of people who don't do this six months a year, or even three months in my case. Thank you so much again. And Feel suddenly that they like get to share their opinions and

• 25:47Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, a lot of that.

• 25:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And respectfully, no.

• 25:51Speaker 05

  A lot of people watching.

• 25:52Amanda Dobbins?

  You start your own podcast.

• 25:53Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, you're surprised Ariana Grande lost?

• 25:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 25:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, I heard from a lot of people who are basically like cramming the Oscar movies in the last like week. And I was like, you're

• 26:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, bless them for even watching them. A lot of people are just like, what's this? I don't like it. Okay.

• 26:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I hate that, as you know.

• 26:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so whatever.

• 26:12Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, last observation.

• 26:13Speaker 05

  This one actually really bothered me. So I thought Condon, I actually thought Condon was a great host. Like, I thought he really, uh, walked a great line between, uh, not saying, isn't it ridiculous for here? But also getting off some rather sharp edged zingers. Um, I thought that was really great. He starts the war, the ceremony in his monologue, which I thought overall was really good, saying, okay, fires are bad. Politics are bad. Everything is tough, but it's okay that we're here to celebrate this moment because we're celebrating the working class artists of film, not just the famous people, but we're here to celebrate the artisans, blah, blah. And then to watch artisan after artisan get played off the stage while they're trying to make their speech.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  I was like, that is not, I mean, this has always been a frustrating thing about the Oscars. I really think, I mean, I know we're moving as, as I think you and I are both really excited about it and hopefully Amanda is with us, like, towards this like niche or we love cinema. Do you, do you want that or do you want it to go back to like?

• 27:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I do. I just don't want to hear from everyone else afterwards of being like, well, I don't care about this.

• 27:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, you know?

• 27:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think that's actually where we're headed is they'll stop caring.

• 27:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, do that, like either do the work or, you know, take, you know, take my betting advice and, and move on. That's actually, Katie and Becky were very respectful and they enjoyed, um, I don't know if I won them any money, which I feel bad about. Um, but they enjoyed, uh, Paul Tazwell's acceptance speech. So, you know, and that was a good one. I mean, there were a few, there were a few artisans who broke through.

• 27:45Speaker 05

  Absolutely. But I just think overall.

• 27:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And there were some who just rested way too much time. I'm not naming any names, but it happened in the shorts category and that was. That's a tough scene.

• 27:55Speaker 05

  I just think that like when the Oscars historically have, and by the Oscars, I mean the, you know, the telecasts have tried to put these categories during the commercial break or whatever, you know, whatever the case they can do to get further and further away from actually honoring or like collapse the sound categories like year after year, they're just sort of getting further and further away from this. So it's one thing to do that. And it's another thing to make this speech about how, why we're here is to honor those people and then to not give them time.

• 28:24Sean Fennessey?

  I just think that that's something, what Conan said from the stage is something that insanely rich and famous people tell themselves to feel better about having the most public award ceremony in America, if not the world. You know what I mean? Like the Nobel is a much more important prize, but 20 million people don't watch the Nobel Prize ceremony. Like this is the biggest thing like this that we do.

• 28:45Speaker 05

  Someone was telling me, they're like, oh, you know what they're gonna do? They're gonna get Bob Dylan to come out and do the meet with Timo Schallmann. I was like, Bob Dylan did not leave his house.

• 28:53Sean Fennessey?

  He's not doing that shit.

• 28:54Speaker 05

  He's not coming to the Oscars.

• 28:56Sean Fennessey?

  That's why he's Bob Dylan.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 28:58Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, great observations. One other thing that I neglected to mention, though many people did point it out to me is no real David Lynch meaningful acknowledgement.

• 29:08Speaker 05

  I will say that he got, if it had not been for Gene Hackman, he would have had the final biggest in memoriam moment. They like ended with him and it was a lengthy moment for him. So it would have wrapped with David Lynch, this huge filmmaker that we lost.

• 29:24Sean Fennessey?

  So you're blaming Hackman.

• 29:26Speaker 05

  And Morgan Freeman, to be honest.

• 29:29Sean Fennessey?

  Morgan Freeman is an example of an older star who was there. We didn't point out the fact that, you know, he does represent that Nicholson class. And, you know, I said it to you during the show. I was like, he's 87. This is not.

• 29:40Speaker 05

  And they were apparently like bringing Goldie Hawn out with Andrew Garfield. Like they paired a lot of like older stars with younger stars. I thought the Andrew, an Andrew Garfield bit almost always works for me.

• 29:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And this one didn't.

• 29:51Speaker 05

  This one did not.

• 29:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I think.

• 29:53Sean Fennessey?

  It was a little like, I'd like to fuck you, Goldie Hawn.

• 29:55Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 29:56Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 29:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and Goldie Hawn wasn't quite on the, on the same page.

• 30:00Speaker 05

  No.

• 30:00Amanda Dobbins?

  You know? So, but that's also Goldie Hawn was like, I don't have my. Reading glasses, so I just, I, he, she, she looked great. It was, it was okay. I appreciate what he does generally to bring the energy. He also is like, to me, is the only non-nominated celebrity there, like doing the work, putting on a show. You know, we need more of that.

• 30:20Sean Fennessey?

  He was trying, he was trying.

• 30:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:22Sean Fennessey?

  You pointed out during the show that Isabella Rossellini was wearing the blue velvet dress.

• 30:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:26Sean Fennessey?

  Which was very nice, a great tribute. She did not win, so most people just did not see that or even think about it. The Lynch thing is just like, he was nominated for best director twice. Like, he's not just some guy. He's a, he's a significant part of Academy history.

• 30:40Speaker 05

  You wanted Margaret Qualley to dance to Blue Velvet.

• 30:44Sean Fennessey?

  What song? How do we get her in the roadhouse in Twin Peaks, The Return?

• 30:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:48Sean Fennessey?

  Dancing to his son's band.

• 30:50Speaker 05

  Bring out Julie Cruz, yeah.

• 30:51Sean Fennessey?

  Julie, oh, that would have been, well, she passed as well, right? Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 05

  Never mind, don't bring out Julie Cruz.

• 30:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Very quickly, before we get into the mailbag questions, we have a lot of questions. 2026 Oscar predictions. I'm not asking you to do the whole slate, though I will admit to you guys here that I did do the whole slate last night while I was bored.

• 31:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 31:09Speaker 05

  Did you?

• 31:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Did you leave that experience joyful, nervous, tired? Like, where, where were you?

• 31:17Sean Fennessey?

  You know what it is? I'm committed to the game. Like, I am about this life, and I've always been about it. So if I decide with 48 minutes on a Monday night at 10:12 PM to dig into my 2026 Oscar prediction.

• 31:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause 11 was your heart out.

• 31:34Sean Fennessey?

  I just kind of lose all brain function at that time, so I had to kind of squeeze it in there.

• 31:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 31:39Sean Fennessey?

  But, uh, I felt good about it. But I asked you guys to just do one best picture prediction, one best actor prediction, and one best actress prediction for the films that are coming out this year. How did you feel about this exercise?

• 31:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Seems a little thin on the ground right now.

• 31:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:52Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 31:52Amanda Dobbins?

  So that was, that was my concern, and that's why I asked you how you were feeling, not, you know, some meta-commentary about your job.

• 31:59Speaker 05

  His life's purpose.

• 32:00Amanda Dobbins?

  As a full-time Oscar prognosticator.

• 32:02Sean Fennessey?

  I listed 26 potential best picture nominees.

• 32:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Cool, just read them.

• 32:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, why don't you read them?

• 32:07Amanda Dobbins?

  And we'll tell you what we think of them.

• 32:07Sean Fennessey?

  I'm sure I forgot some.

• 32:08Amanda Dobbins?

  And we'll just say yes or no.

• 32:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:10Sean Fennessey?

  After the Hunt, the forthcoming Luca Guadagnino, Julia Roberts film.

• 32:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think it'll happen.

• 32:14Sean Fennessey?

  Anne Lee, Mona Fastfold's new movie, premiering later this year. Avatar, Fire and Ash.

• 32:20Speaker 05

  No. Nominated.

• 32:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe.

• 32:23Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not saying winner, I'm saying nominee.

• 32:24Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 32:24Sean Fennessey?

  I'm saying Best Picture nominees.

• 32:25Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 32:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:26Sean Fennessey?

  Um, The Bride, Maggie Gyllenhaal's Bride of Frankenstein adaptation.

• 32:30Speaker 05

  I really want this to be a yes. This is gonna get like screenplay.

• 32:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, not that, again, it's not deserving, I just, I think that it'll get crowded out because isn't Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein also coming out this year?

• 32:40Sean Fennessey?

  It is also coming out.

• 32:40Speaker 05

  But this is not real.

• 32:42Sean Fennessey?

  These are in alphabetical order for the record.

• 32:44Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, Shape of Water was about a fish.

• 32:46Speaker 05

  Pinocchio was not real.

• 32:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but he was a fascist. I don't know if he's caught that.

• 32:50Sean Fennessey?

  He was not a fascist.

• 32:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Child, Papa.

• 32:52Sean Fennessey?

  He existed in a fascist period in history. A Bugonia, the new Yorgos Lanthimos film starring Emma Stone.

• 33:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, no.

• 33:02Speaker 05

  No.

• 33:02Sean Fennessey?

  Lynn Ramsey's Die My Love, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.

• 33:06Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but can't wait.

• 33:08Sean Fennessey?

  Christopher Borgli's The Drama, starring Robert Pattinson and Zendaya. This is the director of Dreams Scenario.

• 33:15Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 33:15Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 33:15Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 33:16Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Joanna says yes, Amanda says no. Eddington, Ari Aster's contemporary set Western.

• 33:21Speaker 05

  No.

• 33:21Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 33:22Sean Fennessey?

  Father, mother, sister, brother, Jim Jarmusch's new drama starring Cate Blanchett, which may premiere at Cannes this year.

• 33:28Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but that's nice.

• 33:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 33:30Amanda Dobbins?

  That you thought that.

• 33:31Sean Fennessey?

  I love Jim Jarmusch.

• 33:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, but Academy doesn't love.

• 33:34Sean Fennessey?

  I'm just kidding, I'm just listing potentialities.

• 33:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm excited about everything that you just said.

• 33:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 33:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Keep going.

• 33:39Sean Fennessey?

  Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein.

• 33:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 33:41Speaker 05

  Nominated.

• 33:42Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Chloe Zhao's Hamnet, which is a literary adaptation.

• 33:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 33:48Sean Fennessey?

  Highest to lowest, Spike Lee's remake of Akira Kurosawa's High and Low, starring Denzel Washington.

• 33:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I'd like to say yes.

• 33:57Speaker 05

  Let's say yes.

• 33:58Sean Fennessey?

  The History of Sound, Oliver Hermanis's new film starring Josh O'Connor and Paul Meskell, about two men in the 1910s.

• 34:06Speaker 05

  I'm so excited for this one.

• 34:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  I'm so excited for this one. I'm gonna manifest it, yes.

• 34:11Amanda Dobbins?

  You could really see it.

• 34:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. J. Kelly, Noah Baumbach's new film starring George Clooney and Adam Sandler.

• 34:18Speaker 05

  So I have heard. That I've heard rave, rave, rave things about this movie.

• 34:23Sean Fennessey?

  The Sandler campaign. I've been told buckle up for the part of the reason that Sandler was there. Was that, yes.

• 34:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, then yes, let's do it.

• 34:30Speaker 05

  And I have heard, I heard it like a while ago.

• 34:33Sean Fennessey?

  Now, the problem.

• 34:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it gonna be Cannes?

• 34:34Sean Fennessey?

  Uh.

• 34:35Speaker 05

  It's Netflix.

• 34:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think it'll be in the fall and it's Netflix, so.

• 34:39Amanda Dobbins?

  So Venice?

• 34:40Sean Fennessey?

  Uh.

• 34:41Amanda Dobbins?

  We have to go to Venice. Do you want to come to Venice?

• 34:43Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 34:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, seriously, I'll write you a, you know, I'll fill out your application for you. I need people on the ground with me.

• 34:49Speaker 05

  Paperwork, so yeah.

• 34:50Amanda Dobbins?

  It's honestly pretty easy.

• 34:51Speaker 05

  Okay, great.

• 34:52Amanda Dobbins?

  And mostly in Italian.

• 34:54Speaker 05

  You don't want to go to Venice?

• 34:56Sean Fennessey?

  Not really.

• 34:56Amanda Dobbins?

  We would have so much fun. Really? Will you come to Venice? Okay, great.

• 34:59Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, great. That's nice for you guys. Marty Supreme, this is Josh Safdie's Timothy Chalamet period piece about a ping pong player.

• 35:07Speaker 05

  No.

• 35:08Amanda Dobbins?

  In best picture, we're doing best picture right now.

• 35:10Sean Fennessey?

  Best picture.

• 35:11Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 35:12Sean Fennessey?

  Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind, which is an art heist thriller set against the Vietnam War.

• 35:17Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but I can't wait.

• 35:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:19Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds very exciting.

• 35:20Speaker 05

  Sounds so good.

• 35:20Sean Fennessey?

  Materialists, which is a new movie from Celine Song, which just got a release date.

• 35:25Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 35:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Were they sending out cakes? A24, if you're listening. So there was a cake.

• 35:30Speaker 05

  Are you not on the cake list?

• 35:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I'm not always, but I don't, did they send a cake for this?

• 35:35Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 35:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause the cake was in the picture of announcing the date.

• 35:39Sean Fennessey?

  I am not casting aspersions on this movie, but I don't think it's gonna be an Oscar movie.

• 35:42Speaker 05

  Have you seen it?

• 35:43Sean Fennessey?

  No. It's got a June release date and it's got Dakota Johnson in it.

• 35:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Joanna, would you like to use this opportunity to apologize to Chris Evans?

• 35:51Speaker 05

  I would.

• 35:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, go ahead. Formally, you apologize for the things that you said and you believe that this movie with Celine Song.

• 35:57Sean Fennessey?

  Show it to me first and then we can talk about whether or not I need to be issuing apologies to anybody.

• 36:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I believe in Celine Song.

• 36:03Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh, sure.

• 36:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I think Chris Evans has made some poor choices and can make some good ones. Dakota Johnson forever and I'd like some cake.

• 36:10Speaker 05

  I feel so strongly Dakota Johnson forever.

• 36:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 36:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 36:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:14Sean Fennessey?

  Congrats, guys.

• 36:15Speaker 05

  Hey, when did Pat O'Neil come out?

• 36:16Amanda Dobbins?

  What was, what was better?

• 36:17Sean Fennessey?

  2023.

• 36:18Speaker 05

  No, but what, what month? Wasn't it like a weird?

• 36:20Amanda Dobbins?

  It was like May, June. Yeah, yeah. Yes, that's, yeah, I know they're trying to redo it.

• 36:25Sean Fennessey?

  This is a rom com. It's, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a romance.

• 36:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Say it like that in my presence.

• 36:30Speaker 05

  Anora is being called a rom com.

• 36:33Sean Fennessey?

  Um, look, if I'm wrong about this, I'm wrong. I'm just giving you a gut take.

• 36:36Amanda Dobbins?

  One more Dakota Johnson thing? Which was better? Captain America, Red Hulk, or Madame Web?

• 36:44Speaker 05

  Oh, unfortunately, it was Captain America.

• 36:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, no.

• 36:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

• 36:51Sean Fennessey?

  We got a lot of, we got a lot of movies to go here, guys.

• 36:53Speaker 05

  Of the two low bars. Okay, go ahead.

• 36:54Sean Fennessey?

  Michael, the Michael Jackson biopic.

• 36:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, God. Is this still, because they gotta redo this whole third act?

• 37:01Sean Fennessey?

  Reportedly.

• 37:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I...

• 37:05Sean Fennessey?

  Before, before Matt Bellamy's report about this movie needing to reshoot the third act, I would have said this is a locked and loaded Best Picture contender. That's not, and that's not a qualitative assessment.

• 37:15Speaker 05

  I have no idea how this is gonna land. I have no idea how this is gonna land.

• 37:17Sean Fennessey?

  Mother Mary, David Lowery's pop star portrayal starring Anne Hathaway.

• 37:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Anne Hathaway?

• 37:22Speaker 05

  No.

• 37:23Sean Fennessey?

  Park Chan Wook's No Other Choice.

• 37:26Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 37:27Sean Fennessey?

  I feel a Park Chan Wook moment coming.

• 37:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:29Sean Fennessey?

  Something that occurred to me. One battle after another, Paul Thomas Anderson's new film.

• 37:33Speaker 05

  Leo, yeah.

• 37:34Sean Fennessey?

  The Phoenician Scheme, Wes Anderson's new movie.

• 37:38Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but it's an outrage.

• 37:39Sean Fennessey?

  Coming very soon. Two, two months.

• 37:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, it can.

• 37:41Sean Fennessey?

  Very exciting. Can, yeah.

• 37:42Speaker 05

  Screenplay.

• 37:43Sean Fennessey?

  Screenplay, okay.

• 37:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, but, yeah, but not, we're just doing Best Picture right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:48Sean Fennessey?

  Chinese Master Begon's Resurrection. Okay, you guys don't have an answer on that one. Derek C. in France returns to feature filmmaking with a new film called Roof Man. It's about a roof man.

• 38:02Speaker 05

  Who's, who's in Roof Man?

• 38:03Sean Fennessey?

  I forget who the roof man, who's the titular roof man?

• 38:05Speaker 05

  Who's the titular roof man?

• 38:06Sean Fennessey?

  Who's the, who's the roofer in Roof Man?

• 38:07Speaker 06

  Oh, it's Channing Tatum. Taking place in the Chris Pine Pool Guy universe?

• 38:12Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 38:12Speaker 06

  There's a roof man.

• 38:13Sean Fennessey?

  No, no.

• 38:14Speaker 06

  There's a pool guy.

• 38:15Speaker 05

  Roof man.

• 38:15Sean Fennessey?

  There's, there's Spider-Man, there's Batman, there's Pool Man, and there's Roof Man. Yeah, all my favorite superheroes.

• 38:21Speaker 05

  I'm sorry, you said it's Channing Tatum?

• 38:23Sean Fennessey?

  Channing Tatum.

• 38:23Speaker 05

  Instead of Gambit?

• 38:25Sean Fennessey?

  And, yes, and Lakeith Stanfield, and Ben Mendelsohn, and Kirsten Dunst.

• 38:30Speaker 05

  Do love her.

• 38:31Sean Fennessey?

  Now, Derek See in France. For the boys, you know? We do love Derek See in France.

• 38:36Speaker 05

  For the boys?

• 38:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, very much. Yeah, A Place Beyond the Pines is.

• 38:41Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, Blue Valentine's for the girls, though.

• 38:43Sean Fennessey?

  It is, it is.

• 38:45Speaker 05

  I think it's a, I think it's a no, but yeah.

• 38:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's a no. Um, I lost my place on my list. Where is it?

• 38:51Speaker 05

  You can't claim Derek See in France.

• 38:53Sean Fennessey?

  I just did. The Smashing Machine. This is a true life story of a boxer, um, starring The Rock.

• 39:02Speaker 05

  No.

• 39:02Sean Fennessey?

  Directed by Benny Safdie.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  No.

• 39:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, no. Sorry Baby, which was a smash out of Sundance that 824 acquired.

• 39:12Speaker 05

  Yes. They always get one. That's their one? Well, they always get one sundance, you know? Yeah, yeah. The Sundance. Well, I guess Real Pain didn't get it this year.

• 39:20Sean Fennessey?

  This would be the real pain of the year, not to conflate the meaning of those two movies. Train Dreams, another Sundance movie.

• 39:26Speaker 05

  Oh, that's the Lager? That's the one.

• 39:28Sean Fennessey?

  That's the Lager.

• 39:29Speaker 05

  That's the one.

• 39:29Sean Fennessey?

  Clint Bentley and Greg Queedar's movie.

• 39:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:31Sean Fennessey?

  And Wicked for Good.

• 39:33Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 39:34Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I don't, Bobby, we're keeping track of how many yeses they gave?

• 39:38Speaker 05

  More than 10.

• 39:39Speaker 06

  I'll, I'll note that in post.

• 39:40Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, thank you. Um, did I miss anything? Did you think of, did you have one that I didn't mention?

• 39:47Speaker 05

  No.

• 39:48Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I feel like Wicked for Good is the easiest prediction here.

• 39:51Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:51Sean Fennessey?

  And we may be in for a wicked year. We may be in for one.

• 39:55Speaker 05

  As, as, as mentioned about Dune Messiah, Wicked for Good is gonna be a darker tale, you know?

• 40:02Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, does anybody fuck a sandworm in Wicked for Good? Can you confirm or deny that?

• 40:07Speaker 05

  I, I won't speak.

• 40:10Speaker 05

  For Elphaba and her choices.

• 40:12Sean Fennessey?

  Best actor predictions?

• 40:14Speaker 05

  Shalhoub back.

• 40:16Sean Fennessey?

  For Marty Supreme?

• 40:17Speaker 05

  Leo, Leo in.

• 40:18Sean Fennessey?

  For One Battle After Another. Wow. That's, that's also like the substance right there.

• 40:22Speaker 05

  It is.

• 40:23Sean Fennessey?

  I, I had, those were my first two on my list.

• 40:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:26Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, a wild card I'll throw out there is, this is just for a nominee. Matthew McConaughey for a movie called The Lost Bus, which is Paul Greengrass's new movie for Apple, which is about the Paradise Fires and a bus driver who got children out of the fire.

• 40:42Speaker 05

  That's like a real Viggo Mortensen Captain Fantastic sort of.

• 40:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's not quite that whimsical.

• 40:47Speaker 05

  No, no, no.

• 40:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 40:48Speaker 05

  Not whimsy, but just sort of like that level of, I could see it happening.

• 40:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Um, best actress?

• 40:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Emma Stone back for the Yorgos.

• 40:57Sean Fennessey?

  Begonia.

• 40:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:59Speaker 05

  Annie Hathaway.

• 41:00Sean Fennessey?

  Had her on the list as well. My number one pick is Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, which was at Sundance. I didn't see it, but went into tea leaves reading mode.

• 41:10Speaker 05

  Everyone.

• 41:11Sean Fennessey?

  And there's a big halo around her performance in that movie.

• 41:15Speaker 05

  On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, it feels like a thing that you make a big deal of at Sundance that does not track.

• 41:19Sean Fennessey?

  Could be. Could be. This happened to Kieran Culkin, though, and we saw what happened on Sunday. Okay, thanks for playing that exercise with me.

• 41:28Sean Fennessey?

  Let's do the mailbag, right? Any, any closing thoughts? Oh, very quickly, Jesse Armstrong has a movie coming, apparently on HBO in like two months, six weeks. The creator of Succession, one of the best TV writers of the last 10 years.

• 41:40Speaker 05

  In the wake of Sean Baker's We Need to Go to the Theaters, how do you feel about a Jesse Armstrong movie on HBO?

• 41:45Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's not what I want.

• 41:47Amanda Dobbins?

  It's also where I've consumed most of his work for the last

• 41:50Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 41:51Amanda Dobbins?

  three to however many years.

• 41:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, movies are back, but on TV. That's just how it's been.

• 41:56Speaker 05

  I don't love that.

• 41:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's not great, but I'm so excited to have a new movie. It's been, it's kind of a, kind of a meh spring.

• 42:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's tough.

• 42:03Sean Fennessey?

  So for this show's purposes, it's like, all right, Mickey 17, Sinners, some other stuff.

• 42:10Speaker 05

  Sinners.

• 42:11Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, we gotta get to May here. We really gotta get to May. So if this movie drops in April, it's very exciting for the big picture.

• 42:16Amanda Dobbins?

  We accept.

• 42:16Speaker 05

  Michael B. Jordan, Best Actor, Sinners.

• 42:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 42:20Sean Fennessey?

  It's not impossible.

• 42:21Speaker 05

  No, it's not probable, but it's not impossible.

• 42:23Sean Fennessey?

  Likely, given that it's a vampire movie.

• 42:24Speaker 05

  Golden Globes.

• 42:25Sean Fennessey?

  Golden Globes, big Golden Globes vibes. All right, Robert, hit us with some mailbag questions. How was the, how did the inbox look?

• 42:32Speaker 06

  They look good. I read over 300 emails for this mailbag.

• 42:36Speaker 05

  Hell, yeah.

• 42:37Speaker 06

  Sheesh. And I tried to drop in or respond to as many as possible.

• 42:40Speaker 05

  That's lovely, Bobby.

• 42:41Speaker 06

  So I apologize if yours is not, is not in here. And also, we have a 40-minute conversation with one of the masters of international cinema coming at the end of this, so we can't just answer 200 questions.

• 42:50Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 42:51Speaker 06

  I apologize. First question, jumping back to Sunday evening, what snacks and beverages did Amanda and Sean enjoy, and Joanna, or not enjoy during the telecast this year?

• 43:03Speaker 05

  Also, this, I heard the, the food at the Neon Party was a

• 43:07Sean Fennessey?

  No, no bueno?

• 43:07Speaker 05

  Was a bus.

• 43:08Sean Fennessey?

  Wolfgang Puck on offer there? Okay, that's too bad. Um, we had sushi.

• 43:13Amanda Dobbins?

  We did.

• 43:13Sean Fennessey?

  We had you know me hand roll, which is a downtown fixture that I'm a huge fan of. We now frequently order you know me hand roll from, uh, for award show viewing purposes here at the, on the big screen. Yeah. Spotify, which is fun. I don't know why you didn't join us. That would have been nice, actually.

• 43:27Speaker 05

  I should have, I should have come.

• 43:28Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't even think about that. Then again, Amanda and I watching these shows with one or two folks from our video team has become a tradition and it's very weird, but it's sweet.

• 43:36Speaker 05

  I saw the video of Amanda like prone at one point.

• 43:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I do. There are two like very, very oversized armchair love seat situations. But at some point, you just gotta lay back and relax.

• 43:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, just let it happen to you.

• 43:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 05

  Was it, wait, it was Mick Jagger you found particularly offensive?

• 43:54Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it was that I, one of my out on a limb predictions was that we were gonna finally take care of this Diane Warren thing.

• 44:01Speaker 05

  No.

• 44:02Amanda Dobbins?

  And it was just then we wouldn't have to talk about it anymore.

• 44:04Speaker 05

  It would have been so nice.

• 44:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Which like I should have run the campaign. Let's get this over with.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 44:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you should call her. You guys should hang out.

• 44:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Next year.

• 44:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:11Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, we didn't snack too much. I've shifted my mentality on this. I used to over order on Oscar day. Lot of snacks, lot, big meal, you know?

• 44:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:20Sean Fennessey?

  Double cheeseburger. Nowadays, I wanna be relatively light stomached.

• 44:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree. I, I also agree with that. What did you have when you got home?

• 44:29Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I inhaled a box of Annie's snack mix, which is technically my daughter's, but not anymore.

• 44:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Not anymore.

• 44:36Sean Fennessey?

  And I feel good about that choice. I also had, uh, three tall glasses of water.

• 44:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, good. Okay.

• 44:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And then I had to wake up at four o'clock in the morning to pee because I'm 42 years old.

• 44:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's really tough.

• 44:48Sean Fennessey?

  You just can't drink water after 7:00 PM after 40. Just something for all the listeners and all you fine, young

• 44:54Speaker 05

  Cannibal.

• 44:55Sean Fennessey?

  Young millennials and Gen Z. Enjoy that water while you can, guys, because it's not going to work out as you get older.

• 45:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I had half a, I had half a gummy. And then I thought that would help me sleep, like a weed gummy, obviously. And then, and then I woke up at like four o'clock and was like, hello.

• 45:12Sean Fennessey?

  We were talking about whether or not you would.

• 45:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, I tried it. It did, you know, because after an Oscars day or something, you can be a little high energy, you know, a little like jittery.

• 45:22Speaker 05

  I only know based on the texts I saw that came from you that were in all caps with so many exclamation marks.

• 45:28Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, you're trying to keep the energy up, keep it going, but then you gotta like come down. So I thought that the gummy might help and I guess it did. I properly dosed. I followed the instructions on the label. But then I, it didn't really help my sleep, so that's out.

• 45:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's hard out here. Did you enjoy anything nice?

• 45:47Speaker 05

  On theme of low key Oscars, I just did not, I usually do like themed food. This was just like a, just a casual, yeah.

• 45:54Sean Fennessey?

  All right. Well, next year we'll try to figure it out, assuming you're here covering the White Lotus, season four in Los Angeles. Okay. What's our next question?

• 46:01Speaker 06

  Next question comes from Sam. Sam wants to know, what is the next film from Sean Baker? How much bigger does he go? Many people asked us a similar question to Sean Baker cashing a blank check now. Does he continue to make films in the same register? What will happen next for his career?

• 46:17Speaker 05

  He has said specifically that he wants to go smaller. That he is committed to independent cinema and he does not want to

• 46:25Speaker 05

  do what your illustrious guests on this podcast has done, which is, uh, go, go bigger.

• 46:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Well, to me, Bong Joon-ho going bigger after Parasite didn't feel like some kind of rejection. I mean, he'd already made Okja, he'd already made The Host. He's spectacle as a part of his proposition, right?

• 46:42Speaker 05

  He's going bigger for something like Mickey 17, which is not like, I want to go make a Marvel movie. Like it's very, very different.

• 46:48Sean Fennessey?

  If Sean Baker signed on for Fantastic Four Two, that would be disappointing.

• 46:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, which grim.

• 46:54Amanda Dobbins?

  A rejection of everything we understand. Yes.

• 46:56Speaker 05

  But without, you know, I'm really, really excited for Mickey 17. This has nothing to do with that. But like the fact that Sean Baker's like, I can do it. I could do more with less. He was also talking about how he was like. Going immediately to Florida to interview the kids from The Florida Project, who are now teenagers, like for special features for The Florida Project DVD. And I was just like, that's the movie I really wish Willem Dafoe had won Best Supporting Actor for. But I, I just love that he's like, I can, I can, I can go down from here.

• 47:24Sean Fennessey?

  There's one other exciting consequence, I think, which is just that people are gonna go back and look at his older movies. Prince of Broadway is coming out in the Criterion Collection at the same, the same week that Enora is coming in the Criterion Collection. So they're coming out together, Criterion very smart, to pair those things together. People will buy them together. And that's a very little seen movie. That's a really interesting movie that has a lot of little strands that when you look through his work, you can see the resonance. So I think it's, the thing is, is it doesn't really matter how like big or not big his movie is. It's, he's, does a very specific kind of story. And if he moved significantly beyond that, it would be shocking. He's been talking about this. The other thing is like, everybody thought Sean Baker was like 38 years old. He's 56 years old. He's been making movies for 30 years.

• 48:07Speaker 05

  He does look great. I mean, the, the thing is like, could he cash in? Like, the one reason, I guess, to do it would be like a, a mountain of money. And he seems very cool and to not care about that at all, which is just another, otherwise, why would you really do it? He writes, directs, edits, puts like, he's just running his own show. He makes like amazing movies, has like built, you know, like a, a career and a oeuvre like over time. And can do it all as self, himself without other people bugging him.

• 48:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think also, all of his movies are pointedly transgressive in their themes and in what they portray on screen. And he wants control over that. He doesn't want to be told he can't do it. So of course, he's not signing up to make a movie at Warner Brothers. You know, that, that would make sense.

• 48:51Speaker 05

  Right. But there, you know, there's ideas of can I leverage this to sign a deal with Warner's where I get complete creative control over this? And I like this idea that like, you know, we'll see what he does, where he does it, et cetera. But listening to Tom Quinn's interview on The Town, like, and talking about what like Neon wants to do and all of that, I just think that that's a, a really good interview and a really good, um, support of a filmmaker, that they.

• 49:20Speaker 05

  You know, had a lot of great success with this year, but also really courted for a long time. So.

• 49:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, let's actually do the Neon A24 question then because of that, because I think that's a really good segue, Bob.

• 49:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, we got this question from Nick. Has Neon officially taken the independent film company championship belt away from A24?

• 49:40Sean Fennessey?

  So there's a lot of ways to read this, and I think it's an interesting question. The championship belt is fake. That doesn't mean anything. That's a false way of framing.

• 49:48Speaker 05

  And also, even if it's real, it's like, no, they trade it back and forth at the Oscars and in the box office and in life. Yeah.

• 49:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I fully agree. I think, at least among producers that I know, Neon is hotter. Like Neon is just a little bit hotter right now because A24 is in the middle of this transition where they are trying to and succeeding at being a bigger company that generates more success. Now, they are going to run into the same thing that every movie studio runs into, which is to try to make bigger movies. Your movies have to get riskier, more expensive, and maybe dumber.

• 50:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:22Sean Fennessey?

  And so that.

• 50:23Speaker 05

  Or broadly appealing, certainly. Yeah.

• 50:25Sean Fennessey?

  And that, so that sheen of cool that they have worked so hard to accumulate over the years is slightly under threat. If you look, though, at say, let's just say for the box office last year, what do you think, this is a game, how much money worldwide do you think Enora made at the box office?

• 50:44Speaker 05

  I feel like I should know this. Isn't it something like 50 million? No.

• 50:49Sean Fennessey?

  Any guesses?

• 50:51Speaker 05

  I was gonna say like 24.

• 50:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's 41.25 million dollars. Now, how about this? How much did The Brutalist make at the box office?

• 51:00Speaker 05

  That one I don't know, but less, right?

• 51:03Sean Fennessey?

  Guess?

• 51:04Speaker 05

  Oh, I mean, I'll guess 24 again, just to have a fun time.

• 51:09Sean Fennessey?

  41.46.

• 51:10Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 51:11Sean Fennessey?

  They are neck and neck at the box office. And I would say for both of those movies, that's a great success if you remove the context of these are the leading contenders for Best Picture. So both of these companies are doing very well. If you go through 2024, though, A24 had many of its highest grossing movies ever in 2024. Civil War, Heretic, Baby Girl, We Live in Time, and Maxine all cleared 20 million dollars worldwide.

• 51:38Sean Fennessey?

  I think just one movie for Neon did that and it was Long Legs, which was a crazy success story.

• 51:44Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 51:44Sean Fennessey?

  But was more anomalous than it was the trend. So just in that context, they're doing different things. You know, I think they both have two Best Picture winners now, right? With Moonlight and Everything Everywhere All at Once and Parasite. And now this film.

• 51:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:59Sean Fennessey?

  Neon has made this bid to basically buy every single Palme d'Or winner. I'm sure they'll try to do that again this year. They both have great taste. One is like a lifestyle brand. The other is just like, we just do movies. That's our whole thing. A lot of the, the marketing for The Monkey was literally poking fun at the candle selling for Heretic. I don't know if you guys saw that poster. They're, they're in a little quiet Cold War here that is fun.

• 52:23Speaker 05

  Can I, so to go back to that interview that Tom Quinn did on The Town, which again, I really recommend, like, he was talking about the campaign effort. And he was talking, he, he and Matt were specifically talking about the mailers. And as someone who receives, as, as do you guys, like, all of the, all of the awards season mailers, every year I look forward to two things, which is the Neon box set, because they send it out every year in a physical media, beautiful box set, not just like a random DVD that they've shoved in a random envelope that you get a million of and it's deeply annoying. And the A24 box, the A24 box, which is full of, yes, like Heretic candles and like weird swag.

• 52:59Sean Fennessey?

  I have never received the A24 box in my life. I have no idea why.

• 53:03Speaker 05

  Okay, well.

• 53:04Sean Fennessey?

  Saying that on the record.

• 53:05Speaker 05

  Those are just the two, and to your point, we do movies, we do swag. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the swag, unlike any of the other studios that sends out something completely random, disconnected from the movie, or just something really weird and useless. They're like, these are really fun, clever, funny things that are tied to, you know, one year it comes in like a Manari food crate box and like, you know, whatever it is. It's just like, it's like, we know you love our movies. Here's a bunch of stuff tied to our movies, but those are. Merged out. Yeah, but those are two, like, really smart, concentrated efforts. Who, who blitzes everyone with award tweets and stuff? It's Netflix. They send you. We were getting a Netflix package every day.

• 53:50Speaker 05

  It becomes deeply annoying. There are these huge, heavy art books. It's all this sort of stuff and it's um, it's, it's so emblematic of like how concentrated and targeted and clever the Neon and the A24 approaches are.

• 54:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that, that particular aspect of things, they still are just doing very well and they seem to be reaching people in a way that maybe all those Netflix mailers are not reaching people and some of the Netflix films.

• 54:17Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I, I think the other thing to consider is that

• 54:21Sean Fennessey?

  I pointed this out on social media. This is the first time all six major winners and best animated feature and best documentary and international feature were independently financed. None of those movies were financed by a major studio in Hollywood. That is antithetical to the origins of the Academy Awards. They were started by the studios. And so we're seeing a massive shift. And so now what you're seeing is not just A24 Neon, but I think particularly Janus Sideshow and Mubi are like real awards contenders every year in addition to Sony Pictures Classics and Focus and all the old hands who are really, who have always been really good at this.

• 55:00Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Janus just got Flo, a best animated feature Oscar. That's a crazy thing that happened. I mean, I know we don't talk about that sort of stuff that much on the show, but there's no precedent for that sort of thing happening in that category.

• 55:12Speaker 05

  I don't know what that campaign looked like at all, though. That to me all felt like word of mouth, which I guess is like

• 55:18Sean Fennessey?

  I think Gintz worked so hard. He did so many interviews. He was so present.

• 55:22Amanda Dobbins?

  But then some of that was also just it, that was a very online phenomenon also, you know, like it was, and the cat and the capybara and, and I think also like the lack of dialogue means that it, you don't have to do subtitle, you know, it does travel.

• 55:38Sean Fennessey?

  International kind of story. Yes.

• 55:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. So, and accessible and they, and they made it like very available. You could see it on, I believe, Max before the Oscar.

• 55:48Sean Fennessey?

  Like they did.

• 55:49Amanda Dobbins?

  People were into it.

• 55:51Sean Fennessey?

  So yeah, and I think Mubi, obviously Mubi picked up the substance from Universal. And if you just look at what Mubi is gonna do this year, we mentioned the history of sound already. Bring Them Down is coming out next week. It's, uh, or maybe, maybe it came out last week and it's coming to streaming soon. It's Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan in a movie. Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, the Jarmusch movie. Magic Farm, Amalia Ullman's next movie. And then The Mastermind is also a movie. So these companies like, they don't have as much money and they don't have as much clout as Warner Brothers or Universal, but in some cases, they have a higher likelihood of winning Oscars in the future. So things are just very different. And in that respect, it's fun. 824 and N are gonna be fine. They're doing great. What's next?

• 56:33Speaker 06

  Okay, we got many, many questions about Adrian Brody's speech. So this one represents that cohort of people. Tim asks, now that it's confirmed that Adrian Brody gave the longest acceptance speech in history, which we did not know on Sunday evening when we recorded. Do Sean and Amanda have any second thoughts on it? Most of the online community thought that it was scatterbrained and incohesive, Tim says.

• 56:57Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have any second thoughts?

• 56:58Amanda Dobbins?

  No, Tim, I don't. This was one where.

• 57:05Sean Fennessey?

  That was not scatterbrained or incohesive.

• 57:07Amanda Dobbins?

  So funny.

• 57:08Sean Fennessey?

  Is incohesive a word?

• 57:09Speaker 05

  Incoherent?

• 57:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Incoherent, which for the record, we did on the podcast. We were like, this was really long. Can it, he was like getting around on it.

• 57:18Sean Fennessey?

  I believe the words I used were elongated and self-regarding. So, you know, it wasn't totally praising.

• 57:23Amanda Dobbins?

  It took me a very long time. I, you know, everyone was watching. I think I, how you respond to it is like how you respond to it. And that's fine. I, I've been thinking a lot about the broadcast decision to, um, cut to Georgina Chapman as many times as they did, which is maybe like that we could Monday morning quarterback on a little bit. But, uh, no, the main thing that I've been thinking about is I'm just like, oh, so people really didn't see The Brutalist because it's like, you were expecting some energy. Like if, if you, if you had been.

• 57:56Speaker 05

  What if The Brutalist were an acceptance speech?

• 57:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Like if you had been in The Brutalist mindset, if you've been following what Brady Corbais, which is another thing, I'm just like, you guys better be glad the director went the way it did. But I was like, oh. Okay, so you all are just learning about all of this. Um, and that's, that's fine, you know, I actually, I, I definitely think that it works better in the film, The Brutalist than it did on stage, but you know, whatever, it's, it's the Oscars.

• 58:23Speaker 05

  Do you think one should physically toss one's gum before watching The Brutalist as well?

• 58:28Amanda Dobbins?

  That was tough, but, but I do also, I like, I liked that he was like, I shouldn't have gum in my mouth.

• 58:33Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 58:34Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 58:34Speaker 05

  Um, do you, do you guys talk about this on, do people know that the kids he talked about in his acceptance speech are Harvey Weinstein's kids?

• 58:42Amanda Dobbins?

  That's why I was like.

• 58:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:43Sean Fennessey?

  Popsy.

• 58:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, listen, the kids are like, and the kids are blameless.

• 58:48Speaker 05

  No, yeah, it's just an, it's just an interesting Hollywood tale.

• 58:51Amanda Dobbins?

  You can cut to the supportive partner once or twice, but the fourth time that someone is coaching him through an Oscar speech, you begin to remember when she's been at the Oscars before.

• 59:03Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 59:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I would just think twice.

• 59:05Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, here's what I will say about the speech. There's, I, I can, I'll repeat some of what I said, but one, I interviewed Adrian Brody during the campaign for The Brutalist. That's what it's like, talking to Adrian Brody. If you listen to our interview, he's incredibly deliberate.

• 59:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:22Sean Fennessey?

  He's deeply serious. If you want to say he's too self-serious and, and, and a windbag, if you want to use those words, feel free. Like, that is how he is and how he always is, um, in my experience. What I was trying to point out when I was, what I was praising in the speech was that he did something that I think good speeches do, which is that they show you what's most important to the person who won. What was most important to him was his journey, his arc as an actor, as a famous person, as a person who fell, whatever that means, in the last 20 years, and as a person who in his mind came back. All this stuff about like love, not hate, that's the same. Jeremiah ads we hear at every Academy Awards.

• 1:00:04Sean Fennessey?

  That to me, that was like, it was long, but it was the same shit you hear from actors all the time.

• 1:00:08Speaker 05

  Very, very long time.

• 1:00:10Sean Fennessey?

  Totally, and people didn't like, obviously, that he said, I've been up, I've been here before, you know, like, and I get all that. I thought that was kind of amusing.

• 1:00:16Speaker 05

  I liked it.

• 1:00:17Sean Fennessey?

  The same way I thought the Chalamet, like, I want to be one of the great things was amusing. I was like, you don't see this too often. It's nice to see something different. But specifically him talking about like, him pumping himself up in his comeback story, which is in his mind. I mean, Adrian Brody is presumably very wealthy and successful and having a good life.

• 1:00:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, but he's like, Wes Anderson bit player no more, succession guest star no more. I'm leading man Adrian Brody again. And I think what is true about the, these kinds of Oscars, these kinds of like, where you been Oscars, is that it doesn't necessar- like, ask Renée Zellweger, ask Brendan Fraser, does this necessarily translate to, you're back, baby?

• 1:00:54Sean Fennessey?

  No, it definitely does not.

• 1:00:56Speaker 05

  So that all seemed a little like, eh, I'm not sure. The point you're making is a true point, you know?

• 1:01:01Amanda Dobbins?

  He kind of used it as like a, I am committing to myself in front of all of you.

• 1:01:05Sean Fennessey?

  It's ultimately not up to him, unfortunately. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, The Penis and The Brutalist are once in a lifetime roles, and he just happened to get two. And a lot of people have-

• 1:01:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought you said something about it in The Penis.

• 1:01:14Speaker 05

  I also heard that.

• 1:01:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I was like, okay, well, I was like, I saw a different cut.

• 1:01:19Sean Fennessey?

  I think that-

• 1:01:21Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I didn't actually. I saw the, I saw, yeah. I was like, I was thinking about, yeah.

• 1:01:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, you did.

• 1:01:26Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I'm gonna move right on past that one.

• 1:01:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Why is everyone being such a prude this Oscar season?

• 1:01:32Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean, and Nora just one best picture?

• 1:01:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, and everyone's just been like, can you believe that something is like scandalous? And like, so many, like, naked ladies. I was like, it's a strip club. Like, sure, they have sex. Like, they had a lot of sex in Poor Things. Why, you know, why is everyone just being so uptight? It's fine. They're just bodies.

• 1:01:48Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Thank you very much to Dr. Dobbins for sharing, as an impromptu science corner, for health class.

• 1:01:55Speaker 05

  To go back to my earlier, like, let's not play the poor artisans off the stage, when there are like, people who didn't even get to make their speech, and Adrian Brody takes that amount of time, that's when I have a real issue, you know?

• 1:02:07Sean Fennessey?

  In the hole, I agree with you, but this was at the end of the show, and it was best actor. Like, I- Does, should best actor not talk for a longer period of time than the best visual effects team? This is the, this is the Academy Award.

• 1:02:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Read the next question, Bob. Read the next question.

• 1:02:22Speaker 06

  This is the exact next question comes from Keely. Um, on the last pod, you both mentioned varying opinions about the allotted time of acceptance speeches. Is everyone deserving of the same time slot? Or should more time be given to the big categories?

• 1:02:35Speaker 05

  Here's, here's my issue when we slot VFX artists in the, in the commercials or play them off the stage is like, this is the one time they get to be inside of it, out in like in front of an audience this big in their lives. Adrian Brody has had this opportunity and, and gotten to give many speeches at many award show at this point. And this is the one time that those people get to do it.

• 1:02:56Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, are we fighting for the democracy of entertainment? Like this is not, it's a show business. Famous people get more, they get more money, they get more time. Like this is just how it is. What are we fighting against here? This is like, I don't know. This is, feels like a very like politically brained thing that finds its way into discourse about meaningless shit.

• 1:03:17Speaker 05

  It has nothing to do with politics. This is everything to do with like, I, I just get excited for those people who have like never been on a stage, nothing in front of that many people.

• 1:03:26Amanda Dobbins?

  There was a moment on Sunday night, I don't remember which category it was, but there were three or four winners, maybe it was Sound, I'm not sure. And so the, the third winner just didn't get to speak. And that sucks. And that, that just sucks. And honestly, that is just, that can be fixed in, fixed in production. And that is like a telegast, not like in post, but.

• 1:03:47Sean Fennessey?

  There's three people on stage, wait for the third person to talk.

• 1:03:49Amanda Dobbins?

  You make the decision. Like that, that should just be the rule. There, there are people there live covering it. Like that was a fuck up. I, my thing is less about like, should we allot a specific amount of time and should, because then, first of all, that doesn't allow for spontaneity in the moment. And it does get into like weird culture wars that we just don't need to get into. Everyone needs to be prepared. This is on the winners is my thing. Like if you're nominated, do your homework, get ready, be entertaining. This is a TV show.

• 1:04:21Speaker 05

  I agree.

• 1:04:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Like it's your moment, we're going to give you the moment, use the moment. And I think if everyone used the moment, then they might not be played off.

• 1:04:30Sean Fennessey?

  I would say that that is nice in theory, but you have clearly never won an Academy Award. Because what everyone says is when it happens, you're like, fuck. I can't believe this happened.

• 1:04:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Sean fantasy.

• 1:04:40Sean Fennessey?

  Freaking out.

• 1:04:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Let me tell you right now, I would be awesome.

• 1:04:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:04:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I would be prepared, but I would also bring my natural warmth and charisma.

• 1:04:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, absolutely. Many people are saying natural warmth emanates off of you.

• 1:04:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And I would say rude things to you live from stage and it would be incredible.

• 1:05:00Speaker 05

  You'd kill. I just think, I just think that if, if our whole idea of which direction the Oscars is moving in, which is towards celebrating edgy, interesting cinema, then your whole like celebrities get more, man. Attitude.

• 1:05:16Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not advocating for it. I'm saying be realistic, like be realistic. You think they're gonna make more time for that?

• 1:05:22Speaker 05

  Can't make me be realistic.

• 1:05:24Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, you could say you wish it was this way, but it's never gonna be this way. It's the Oscars.

• 1:05:27Speaker 05

  But we can fight against it. Like when they put those categories.

• 1:05:30Sean Fennessey?

  Fight who?

• 1:05:31Speaker 05

  When we put the categories, when they tried to put the categories in the commercials, which they did, they were roundly shamed into undoing that.

• 1:05:38Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 1:05:38Speaker 05

  You can shame them into.

• 1:05:40Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not advocating that.

• 1:05:41Speaker 05

  Behaving correctly.

• 1:05:42Sean Fennessey?

  I, I think that's debatable. I think whether or not like artisans will get.

• 1:05:47Speaker 05

  It's definitely debatable. Yeah.

• 1:05:48Sean Fennessey?

  Artisans getting equal time to powerful people is not gonna happen. It's just not gonna happen.

• 1:05:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I have a quick fix for this, with the exception of the very nice Dutch couple and I, who won, I believe it was live action?

• 1:06:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:06:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Short?

• 1:06:05Sean Fennessey?

  I am not a robot.

• 1:06:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. Oh, yeah. And congratulations to The New Yorker.

• 1:06:11Amanda Dobbins?

  You guys finally won something.

• 1:06:14Amanda Dobbins?

  But I thought.

• 1:06:15Sean Fennessey?

  After steamrolling us at the National Magazine Awards for 20 consecutive years, now they have an Oscar. Those fucking bastards.

• 1:06:22Amanda Dobbins?

  And they, and that was like a nice moment. And she was like, I know that we're Dutch and we don't say this, but I love you. Good job.

• 1:06:27Speaker 05

  That was cute.

• 1:06:27Amanda Dobbins?

  The other short speeches were, I think, borderline disastrous and often are. And, and also always go on so long.

• 1:06:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38Amanda Dobbins?

  So we just, we gotta move that to another awards show. And then we can take the time that we've saved and give it to the craftspeople and let everyone who's nominated speak.

• 1:06:50Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think Academy members are listening right now? Not Academy members, Academy governors, leadership is listening right now and thinking, these guys know what they're doing and in 2026, we're coming through.

• 1:07:02Speaker 05

  I would personally cut the entirety of the James Bond tribute and that solves everything.

• 1:07:07Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we're aligned on that one. That we could have had a lot more time for a lot of other things if we had done that. Okay, Bob, what's next?

• 1:07:13Speaker 06

  Okay, important question up next. Sam wants to know, who has the best picture title belt right now? This is of course alluding to, I think, a famous Bill Simmons concept of who's carrying the belt at any moment of who is the best current NBA player and it overlaps year to year. So what movie do you think right now is holding the belt of the best best picture?

• 1:07:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's still Parasite.

• 1:07:40Speaker 05

  That's a really good one.

• 1:07:41Sean Fennessey?

  The thing is, is like, is Parasite better than like Silence of the Lambs? That's because in the belt concept, it's-

• 1:07:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just like, there's a certain posture that you take on when you're about to correct me on the rules of some made up Bill thing and I just-

• 1:07:58Sean Fennessey?

  I've been working for Bill for like 13 years.

• 1:08:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I love Bill. Bill can, Bill has made a whole world up that I love living in every day.

• 1:08:05Sean Fennessey?

  Was it the last 10 years or was it the history of the Academy Awards?

• 1:08:08Speaker 06

  Well, the concept is a historical concept. So at some point, you know, you have to say that Silence of the Lambs, Silence of the Lambs probably lost it to something else, right? You know, to No Country For Old Men or something like that, you know? This emailer did give their-

• 1:08:23Sean Fennessey?

  I would not put No Country For Old Men over Silence of the Lambs personally. So as an interesting example, would be close, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't put Parasite over it either, much as I love-

• 1:08:32Speaker 05

  I'm gonna give it to Lord's Aravia.

• 1:08:34Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, that's the thing is you could go all the way back.

• 1:08:36Speaker 05

  Casablanca?

• 1:08:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you could go all the way back, you know, all the cavalcade heads out there, you know, the Cimarron heads, you know, the Greatest Show on Earth heads.

• 1:08:44Speaker 05

  I think if you talk to any filmmaker, like anytime I've interviewed a filmmaker, almost they almost always have a Lord's Aravia poster up in their house somewhere.

• 1:08:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good question. I mean-

• 1:08:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you think they'll show it again at the 70 millimeter fest this year and can we go?

• 1:08:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:08:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:08:59Sean Fennessey?

  I think they will, and I would love to go.

• 1:09:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I really wanted to, but I was like nine and a half months pregnant.

• 1:09:04Speaker 05

  You were very pregnant.

• 1:09:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I was like, I was like, I can't commit to being anywhere for four hours at a time at this point.

• 1:09:09Sean Fennessey?

  My goal is to attend six screenings during that festival.

• 1:09:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, because you know what the lineup is and you've identified the six films?

• 1:09:16Sean Fennessey?

  Last year, there were six that I really wanted in on. Well, they just program it really, really well.

• 1:09:21Speaker 05

  It's really, it's.

• 1:09:21Sean Fennessey?

  American Cinematech does a great job year round, but that festival in particular is really great. I, would you want to just do 10 years? Would you say Parasite is the number one?

• 1:09:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:09:30Speaker 05

  Of the last 10 years, yeah.

• 1:09:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:09:32Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 1:09:34Sean Fennessey?

  What's next? You want to do like, let's do three more.

• 1:09:37Speaker 06

  Sure. Okay, we got a question here from Kyle. Interesting question, thought provoking. My question is, if we want to see, if we want people to see movies in theaters, doesn't the Academy need to require that these movies be available outside of LA and New York? Should the Academy raise the minimum threshold to 1,000 theaters? So that Oscar nominated movies get real theatrical distribution, not just token distribution for the Hollywood and New York elite?

• 1:10:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, fuck the coastal elites.

• 1:10:05Sean Fennessey?

  Well, this was.

• 1:10:05Speaker 05

  No, I agree.

• 1:10:06Sean Fennessey?

  This was a.

• 1:10:07Speaker 06

  Get wrecked, Brooklyn podcaster.

• 1:10:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Sean Fennessey?

  You were probably in the Little Gold Men time when I feel like this was a very noisy proposition, right? Like, the 1920.

• 1:10:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. We couldn't, no one could get that one. And I was in, you know, I'm in San Francisco, so I couldn't, I'm a coastal elite, but I couldn't get to Call Me By Your Name.

• 1:10:24Sean Fennessey?

  Not quite coastal enough. Yeah, I think that there was, you know, Spielberg's frustration with Netflix was a period in time. Netflix, I think particularly with the push from Roma and that kind of being a real question, that was a film where it was like, this movie's gonna win. And what does it winning actually mean for movies? Started to freak people out a little bit, and so this conversation really kicked up. Now I feel like what's happening is like a major rejection of the streamers. You know, the Netflix, the million press implosion, Amazon being the butt of several jokes during the telecast. The fact that there's new leadership at the film team at Netflix. I'm not saying that culturally Netflix is down, they're winning more than they've ever won. It's just, I think. The question of like, how many theaters a movie can play in?

• 1:11:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's Sony Pictures Classics can't get I'm Still Here into a thousand theaters. They literally can't do that.

• 1:11:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:11:14Sean Fennessey?

  So that's not gonna happen. That would be, there would be financially ruinous for them to try to exhibit the movie at that, at that level. But should it have more cities that it should play in? Should it have a longer period of time where it plays? I think these things are maybe a little bit more fungible.

• 1:11:29Speaker 05

  And isn't part of this issue, I mean, this is a larger issue, not just the Academy requirement, but the fact that because of Netflix, et cetera, so many small art house theaters have shuttered in places. And there are places where you can't

• 1:11:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:11:41Speaker 05

  find a theater that would show Sing Sing or something else, you know?

• 1:11:45Sean Fennessey?

  If you could make a change like this, what would you make?

• 1:11:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really, it's, it's tough because I absolutely agree with Sean Baker and everyone else who loves going to movie theaters, that that business really needs to be saved. But if you enacted this 1,000 theater thing, as you said, like, literally none of the movies that we like could afford to do it because of the way the business model works. And a lot of that has to do with the theater model, which is related to, I mean, like intertwined with Hollywood stuff, but like still a separate business with, with its own things.

• 1:12:23Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 1:12:24Amanda Dobbins?

  So

• 1:12:24Sean Fennessey?

  They're splitting revenues.

• 1:12:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so I just, and, and then I think the result of, okay, so if an Oscar movie has to be distributed, if you have to spend this much movie, it's been, spend this much money

• 1:12:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Amanda Dobbins?

  to make a movie an Oscar contender,

• 1:12:44Amanda Dobbins?

  then I think there are movies that don't get made anymore. You know, that's like, which is like the opposite of

• 1:12:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good, it's a good way of thinking about it, yeah.

• 1:12:51Amanda Dobbins?

  So, so, so maybe it's, maybe it's more cities? Like, maybe that's a good geographic way of doing it, you know?

• 1:13:00Speaker 05

  Not a thousand, but like at least Chicago and et cetera, et cetera. Is that what you mean?

• 1:13:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, exactly, and identifying markets.

• 1:13:07Speaker 05

  What about, um, and I don't know how financially ruinous this would be. What about an Academy sponsored, like, once? The nominees are announced. All of those nominees go into the theater.

• 1:13:19Sean Fennessey?

  That would be interesting, but then who is the Academy paying for that?

• 1:13:22Speaker 05

  That's what I think they should do.

• 1:13:23Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's a nonprofit organization, so in order to boost, that would be a clear declaration of boosting the theatrical experience, which in theory they want, but I'm not sure if they can really take aside. I know.

• 1:13:33Speaker 05

  You know?

• 1:13:34Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 1:13:34Speaker 05

  Which is amazing, but like,

• 1:13:37Sean Fennessey?

  it's

• 1:13:37Speaker 05

  ultimately, long term, would we be better served putting that money into getting people to reengage in the moviegoing experience?

• 1:13:44Sean Fennessey?

  That would be an interesting thing to, to discuss with, that would be a reason to have the Academy leadership on the show, is to talk about a concept like that, because that's really, it's a good idea. I heard from a lot of people.

• 1:13:54Speaker 05

  The way they put the shorts, they put shorts into the theaters.

• 1:13:57Sean Fennessey?

  They do, but that's a separate corporation that does that, that I think benefits from that and splits the proceeds with the filmmakers. Anyway, one thing that Brian Curtis said on the press box, actually on Monday, was that he was responding to Sean Baker's comments in the Best Director speech, and he just told the story that I heard, I saw a bunch of people on social media shared with me too, which is like, it's expensive to go to the movies. I went to go see, he said, I went to go see Dogman with my family and it cost $50.

• 1:14:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:14:19Sean Fennessey?

  And plus parking and some, we've tried to be since like practical about that when talking about it on the show, that it is not cheap to go see movies. One of the reasons why it's not cheap is because, for example, second run movie theaters don't really exist anymore. You being able to go see a movie that had been out for four months and pay five bucks to see it with your kids, that's kind of gone. That's, streaming has replaced that. That's not coming back. I don't see any world in which that framework, where you could get like the matinee ticket, or just making things significantly more affordable, especially in a metropolis, is coming back. Plus, with movie theaters closing, you gotta drive 50 miles to go to your nearest movie theater if you live in certain towns. That isn't what Sean Baker's talking about, though. He's not talking to you, Joe moviegoer, about how you're not seeing movies.

• 1:15:04Sean Fennessey?

  He's talking to movie studios about guaranteeing theatrical exhibition for the movies that they greenlight. So it's a shot across the bow at the streamer, sure, but also at like, universal 17 day window, and how movies just go to VOD after two and a half weeks if they don't cross a certain box office threshold. Seeing Warner Brothers now doing this, maybe not with an official policy, but like Companion was available to stream after two and a half weeks. And that movie did okay. It's a pretty decent business for a genre movie in January, and you can watch it at home now, so like. That thing that he said, I think he more so than us yelling on a podcast can encourage people to make change.

• 1:15:40Amanda Dobbins?

  You think so?

• 1:15:40Sean Fennessey?

  But honestly, not that much.

• 1:15:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Sean Fennessey?

  I honestly don't think what he said, and I know I'm a cynic about these things, but I really don't think what he said is gonna like really change David Zaslove and Donna Langley's point of view on the theatrical model.

• 1:15:53Amanda Dobbins?

  It is David Zaslove, unfortunately, but at some point, it's shareholders of a corporation that has XYZ, which is how all businesses and corporations in this cursed country work, but, or the world at large. But it's, I, it, I, I loved this speech and I thought it was important, but I agree with you that I think it's more effective people, to people at home, but you can't, the, the, the problem is you need to be able to change the emotions of faceless corporations and that's not really possible.

• 1:16:27Speaker 05

  But also change the mindset of so many people because of the prohibitive cost or because of the frictionless comfort of watching something at home, change people's minds about what constitutes a trip to the cinema movie.

• 1:16:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:16:42Speaker 05

  And so people, it's spectacle.

• 1:16:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, eventization.

• 1:16:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, and like, and I would hope that that wouldn't be the case. It wasn't always the case, obviously, for, for us growing up. And so, um, but this is, I guess, the moment when we once again say to me, get real, like, get real, it's not, it's not gonna happen.

• 1:16:58Sean Fennessey?

  I was doing math in my head about how, I think if you tallied up the domestic box office for the movies that we identified as like the top five contenders this year, it was still probably less than just what Rain Man made in America.

• 1:17:11Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 1:17:11Sean Fennessey?

  Which is the kind of movie that we're talking about.

• 1:17:13Speaker 05

  And it's not just that, like, Rain Man made that much money, but then like everyone had seen Rain Man and everyone could talk, and you felt like you had to see Rain Man so that you could get the jokes and stuff like that. And we are scattered and we're not all watching the same movies anymore. And I sound probably older than Sean did when he talked about how you can't drink water anymore. But, you know, it's like.

• 1:17:32Sean Fennessey?

  I gotta get all my water in my 4:00 PM.

• 1:17:37Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a good thing that you can't be pregnant because it's just like

• 1:17:42Sean Fennessey?

  For more reasons than one.

• 1:17:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Like you know, but like you just, you cannot imagine the, the peeing at night situation and how you're trying to like ration your water. It's

• 1:17:50Sean Fennessey?

  I used to just be able to go right back to bed, though.

• 1:17:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, me too. Yeah.

• 1:17:53Speaker 05

  Will you write a parenting book called You Can't Imagine the Peeing at Night?

• 1:18:00Amanda Dobbins?

  You really, really

• 1:18:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's more of a kid's book. Yeah.

• 1:18:01Speaker 05

  I would buy it. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:18:03Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Couple more Bob. Make them count.

• 1:18:06Speaker 06

  I just want to say before I read the next one, I'm not working on this show if Sean is pregnant. Pregnant Sean running this spreadsheet. I'm out. I'm out. I'm trading it off.

• 1:18:14Sean Fennessey?

  I challenge all the listeners of the show to remake the poster for Junior where Arnold Schwarzenegger is pregnant and Danny DeVito is his, Danny DeVito?

• 1:18:22Speaker 05

  Emma Thompson is

• 1:18:23Sean Fennessey?

  Emma Thompson is his doctor? Who's his doctor?

• 1:18:26Amanda Dobbins?

  No, Emma Thompson is the doctor in Bridget Jones.

• 1:18:28Speaker 05

  Emma, I believe Emma Thompson is the doctor in Junior.

• 1:18:31Sean Fennessey?

  Is she? And who is?

• 1:18:32Speaker 05

  You're thinking about twins.

• 1:18:33Sean Fennessey?

  But is, is Danny DeVito not in Junior?

• 1:18:36Speaker 05

  I, I'm pretty sure it's Emma Thompson.

• 1:18:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, she, hold on, let's see.

• 1:18:41Sean Fennessey?

  Danny DeVito is in Junior. So Emma Thompson is the moth, is the mother, the non-pregnant mother. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the pregnant man, just like I will be one day. And Danny DeVito is his doctor, wearing a stethoscope on the poster.

• 1:18:54Speaker 05

  Okay, so CR is Danny DeVito.

• 1:18:56Sean Fennessey?

  No, you are Emma Thompson. Amanda is Danny DeVito and I am Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• 1:19:01Speaker 05

  CR is Danny DeVito and he was

• 1:19:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm just reading the plot of Junior, which I guess I haven't seen in 30 years?

• 1:19:07Sean Fennessey?

  This is an Ivan Wrighton film that made a hundred million dollars at the box office.

• 1:19:11Speaker 05

  I thought Emma Thompson was the doctor. That's my political brain. Okay.

• 1:19:15Amanda Dobbins?

  She is a doctor.

• 1:19:16Speaker 05

  Okay, thank God.

• 1:19:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it says Emma Thompson, Dr. Diana Reddick. Okay.

• 1:19:20Speaker 06

  Pregnant with content, pregnant with mailbag answers. Okay, the next question.

• 1:19:24Speaker 05

  They're all doctors. Schwarzenegger is also a doctor. Wow. Okay.

• 1:19:28Speaker 06

  I'm trying so, trying so hard to read the next question. I just want to read it so bad.

• 1:19:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm ready.

• 1:19:33Sean Fennessey?

  Next question comes from Brian. Do you think the tabulations from Oscars past actually exist anywhere? Like in a vault or something? Would you support their release at some point in time? Like declassified government documents? And what time period should that be? This is such a good question.

• 1:19:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's do a heist. Let's make a movie heist. Yes, to release all, like honestly, let's start pitching this around.

• 1:19:57Speaker 05

  A Price Waterhouse.

• 1:19:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In order to get all of Oscar.

• 1:20:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. I know some people who work for Price Waterhouse. Not well, but I do know them.

• 1:20:05Sean Fennessey?

  Hook us up with that data or at least those codes to break into their.

• 1:20:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, they have to be somewhere, right? I, at some point, it becomes sort of like their data, their data security methods. Like, is it, is the hard drive in a, in a safe?

• 1:20:20Speaker 05

  The knock list?

• 1:20:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Speaker 05

  Do we have to? Okay.

• 1:20:23Sean Fennessey?

  Again, put me in Mission Impossible, leaning over on a keyboard, breaking into Price Waterhouse Cooper's data set.

• 1:20:29Speaker 05

  One single drop. Okay, would, should it be like 10 years later?

• 1:20:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I.

• 1:20:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Release it now, release it now.

• 1:20:38Sean Fennessey?

  We're still waiting on JFK, right? Like, we're still waiting on that.

• 1:20:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know.

• 1:20:41Sean Fennessey?

  It's been 62 years, so.

• 1:20:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but didn't he say that it was gonna happen?

• 1:20:45Sean Fennessey?

  We're not waiting on it. Bill already cracked the case. Like, we know this. Bill did it.

• 1:20:49Amanda Dobbins?

  What's his latest? Besides, the doctors have never wavered. There is, is he, is it two bullets? What's his thing?

• 1:20:57Sean Fennessey?

  This is neither the time nor the place.

• 1:21:01Speaker 05

  I like the idea of every 10 years.

• 1:21:03Sean Fennessey?

  That would be great. Uh, I want it on, on the show.

• 1:21:06Amanda Dobbins?

  They gotta do it on the show. Save the Oscars, let's go.

• 1:21:09Sean Fennessey?

  After 20 years, I'll, I'll take it whenever, you know? As a, as a faux historian, I'm interested in all the information I can accumulate.

• 1:21:16Speaker 05

  It would be so interesting to know, like, missed it by that much sort of stuff.

• 1:21:19Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think is the closest race of all time?

• 1:21:22Amanda Dobbins?

  God. Oh.

• 1:21:24Speaker 05

  Moonland, Lala Land?

• 1:21:25Sean Fennessey?

  It's the, it's the one that springs to mind, right? But maybe it's not.

• 1:21:29Speaker 05

  It would be fascinating if it wasn't.

• 1:21:30Sean Fennessey?

  If it wasn't.

• 1:21:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Trying to think.

• 1:21:33Speaker 06

  I think Avatar and Hurt Locker, probably.

• 1:21:35Sean Fennessey?

  That was definitely a close one.

• 1:21:35Speaker 06

  Really split contingencies of who would vote for each.

• 1:21:38Speaker 05

  A great call.

• 1:21:39Sean Fennessey?

  Definitely a close one. I, I'm sure there are many races in the seventies that were tight.

• 1:21:44Amanda Dobbins?

  But wasn't, what if it's something random? Like, if it was just...

• 1:21:49Speaker 05

  Best Supporting Actress.

• 1:21:50Amanda Dobbins?

  What was running, no, no, no. Like, what was running against Boyhood? Or, or Birdman, you know, one of those years where it's not like, it's, it's not living in our mind as one of like the great squeakers. It, but...

• 1:22:04Sean Fennessey?

  Were it, Boyhood and Birdman running against each other?

• 1:22:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, were they?

• 1:22:06Sean Fennessey?

  Or was Birdman running against Boyhood?

• 1:22:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Were they in the same, they were the same year and then Boyhood beat Birdman?

• 1:22:12Sean Fennessey?

  I believe so, right?

• 1:22:14Speaker 06

  No, Birdman won it.

• 1:22:15Speaker 05

  Birdman won.

• 1:22:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I thought Birdman won.

• 1:22:16Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Birdman won, but wasn't it, it was, it was against.

• 1:22:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, Patricia Arquette won. That's right. Okay. Well, that one. Or what won the year before?

• 1:22:26Sean Fennessey?

  The year before that was Twelve Years a Slave.

• 1:22:28Amanda Dobbins?

  That probably wasn't a squeaker.

• 1:22:30Sean Fennessey?

  Which I think probably

• 1:22:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:22:31Sean Fennessey?

  Wanted to walk.

• 1:22:32Speaker 05

  What about the Spotlight year?

• 1:22:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:34Speaker 05

  That feels like one.

• 1:22:36Sean Fennessey?

  What was the, what was the leading contender beyond Spotlight that year?

• 1:22:40Speaker 05

  People thought The Big Short might go. I remember that.

• 1:22:43Sean Fennessey?

  It won PGA that year.

• 1:22:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:22:44Sean Fennessey?

  I remember that very well.

• 1:22:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:22:47Sean Fennessey?

  That feels like the only one that was even close. I guess maybe The Revenant had a lot of support?

• 1:22:51Speaker 05

  And then there was the whole Mad Max, where he rode one at every single award below the line, but was never gonna go. I just had to represent for House of R. Doom Part Two, you should have been a bigger contender.

• 1:23:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's very sad.

• 1:23:02Speaker 05

  Doom Part Two got the like Barbie treatment, right? Where like, we, we made the sandworm jokes.

• 1:23:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:23:08Speaker 05

  That I'm just Ken sort of moment.

• 1:23:09Sean Fennessey?

  We are using you

• 1:23:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:23:11Sean Fennessey?

  to get people to care about this program while not actually acknowledging its greatness.

• 1:23:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, Wicked also.

• 1:23:15Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 1:23:16Sean Fennessey?

  Same, same. I thought they actually, very smartly, the producers did a good job with that. Like, they, they made, reminded us, like, these movies are actually nominated here tonight.

• 1:23:23Speaker 05

  I thought Ariana Grande dressed as the Ruby Slipper was one of my favorite moments of all time.

• 1:23:30Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, it was fine.

• 1:23:31Sean Fennessey?

  You're out on Ariana?

• 1:23:33Amanda Dobbins?

  No, as, as you know, I thought that she should have won Supporting Actress.

• 1:23:37Sean Fennessey?

  That's right, you did say that.

• 1:23:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, the best performance.

• 1:23:38Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you guys think about Deadpool?

• 1:23:42Speaker 05

  It's a no for me.

• 1:23:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah, he started, he did a somersault or something. What did he do?

• 1:23:47Sean Fennessey?

  Was Ryan Reynolds not at the Oscars?

• 1:23:48Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I think they put him back away.

• 1:23:51Speaker 05

  He and Blake did SNL 50 and then went back into hibernation.

• 1:23:55Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 1:23:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:23:55Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Um, last question, Bobby.

• 1:23:58Speaker 06

  Last question. Let's send these 10 movies in the 2025 Oscars off nicely. Of this year's crop of Oscar nominees, which do you expect to revisit over the years? Which of the past few years of nominees and winners have you revisited a lot?

• 1:24:12Amanda Dobbins?

  From this year?

• 1:24:14Speaker 06

  Mm hmm. Yeah. And any notable ones from the last couple of years that you found yourself coming back to?

• 1:24:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I do think Enora.

• 1:24:21Sean Fennessey?

  I think weirdly, winning hurts it. I know that that's not.

• 1:24:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean.

• 1:24:25Sean Fennessey?

  I, you know, 12 Years a Slave is a movie that springs to mind.

• 1:24:27Amanda Dobbins?

  For you. That's okay. There, there are some material differences.

• 1:24:31Sean Fennessey?

  No, but they're both complicated, traumatic stories, obviously in different ways and different modes of history. But, you know, I think when movies win, they sometimes get mothballed. And I know, obviously, my experience is different than a lot of other people's.

• 1:24:44Speaker 05

  I don't think that's true. Like, I think that can be true for something like Coda, would you say?

• 1:24:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's for a variety of reasons.

• 1:24:51Speaker 05

  But I also think, you know, and Tom Quinn said this in his interview, I'll just keep promoting the town, a great podcast, that, that it becomes a Pantheon movie, and I agree with that. You say it becomes mothballed, but I think forever Enora will be a Best Picture winning film. And in a way that it could just sort of diminish to nothing if it hadn't won, you know?

• 1:25:11Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, there's no objective way to communicate like what is thriving and what is not in the cinematic mind of history, but.

• 1:25:21Speaker 05

  Not this close to it, but I would say things like, like Banshees of Inisherin is a movie that I rewatch way more than Everything Everywhere All at Once, for example, even though I liked that Best Picture win. Do you want to look at this?

• 1:25:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you just had it up and I was like, I'm going to move this.

• 1:25:36Sean Fennessey?

  Um, here's an interesting exercise. This century, what movies have appeared on the rewatchables that have won Best Picture? A few. Gladiator.

• 1:25:48Sean Fennessey?

  Crash, most recently, with Joanna Robinson's.

• 1:25:52Speaker 05

  This is my apologies.

• 1:25:53Amanda Dobbins?

  When that text comes in, it's really special, isn't it?

• 1:25:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:25:56Sean Fennessey?

  The Departed, No Country for Old Men. Argo.

• 1:26:03Sean Fennessey?

  Spotlight. And that's it. So six movies in 25 years.

• 1:26:09Speaker 05

  2017, a 2017 Oscar, like Shape of Water winning, whatever, but Call Me By Your Name, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, and Phantom Thread are all movies that I will watch any day of the week.

• 1:26:21Sean Fennessey?

  It's when we started this show.

• 1:26:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:23Sean Fennessey?

  And we didn't really like, we didn't have like the tools to be like, what is going on here?

• 1:26:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it was very special.

• 1:26:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:32Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:26:32Amanda Dobbins?

  2019 also, a lot of, a lot of heaters.

• 1:26:36Sean Fennessey?

  19 isn't, is a great, that's the last truly great year in my opinion.

• 1:26:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:40Sean Fennessey?

  I think.

• 1:26:40Speaker 06

  I'm watching Ford versus Ferrari on a second screen right now while you guys are podcasting.

• 1:26:44Speaker 05

  I know it to be true, and you got The Irishman queued up, right?

• 1:26:47Sean Fennessey?

  Quality films.

• 1:26:47Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:26:48Sean Fennessey?

  Quality films.

• 1:26:48Speaker 06

  And Sean's heading to go watch Jojo Rabbit again after this pod, so we gotta wrap it up.

• 1:26:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's incredibly rude.

• 1:26:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, The Brutalist, Nickel Boys, I, Dune Part Two, I think you're right, though, if only to be like, where did these worms come from?

• 1:27:00Sean Fennessey?

  I think it depends on three. If three is good, it becomes Empire. Like a pretty, I think, I think generationally, and obviously not as big as Empire Strikes Back, but it has all of those qualities when you're watching that movie. I would.

• 1:27:10Speaker 05

  Conclave, I'd put Conclave on.

• 1:27:12Sean Fennessey?

  I would say the top three outside of Enora are the ones that you just mentioned. The Brutalist, uh, Dune Part Two, and Nickel Boys, because Nickel Boys has a chance, I think, to be kind of like a cinephile.

• 1:27:22Speaker 05

  I agree, absolutely.

• 1:27:23Sean Fennessey?

  Historical entrant.

• 1:27:24Speaker 05

  If you have children, Wicked.

• 1:27:27Amanda Dobbins?

  No, if, if you have my child, A Complete Unknown.

• 1:27:29Sean Fennessey?

  I, you know, I'll just say that's also contingent on Wicked for Good. I think if Wicked for Good is a smash and beloved and wins Best Picture, it changes it and makes it much more significant. Because, you know, the history of Oz-adjacent movies that are not The Wizard of Oz, a little up and down, you know, I have some affection for them.

• 1:27:48Speaker 05

  How dare you besmirch Return to Oz?

• 1:27:51Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't besmirch it. I like it, but it's quite scary.

• 1:27:54Speaker 05

  It gave me such nightmares when I was a kid.

• 1:27:57Sean Fennessey?

  Oz, The Great and Powerful, that's your fave?

• 1:27:59Speaker 05

  Obviously.

• 1:28:01Sean Fennessey?

  The Wiz, you know, people love The Wiz. We're performing songs from The Wiz on the show.

• 1:28:05Speaker 05

  Two Wiz performances.

• 1:28:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that was a lot.

• 1:28:07Speaker 05

  That was a poor choice, I think, for, just for the Quincy. That's not what I would pick for Quincy Jones, is all I'm saying.

• 1:28:13Sean Fennessey?

  We forgot that we were watching the show and they played the Austin Powers, Boston Nova thing. I didn't put together, of course, that's Quincy Jones.

• 1:28:19Speaker 05

  Yeah. You know what I won't be rewatching, and I think a lot of people won't be rewatching, is Amelia Perez, and we get to put that to bed, do we not?

• 1:28:27Sean Fennessey?

  That will actually be mothballed.

• 1:28:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:28:29Sean Fennessey?

  Into the analysis of digital storage.

• 1:28:31Amanda Dobbins?

  It will become, you know?

• 1:28:33Speaker 05

  It will become a difficult trivia question years from now. What did Zoe Saldana win her Oscar for?

• 1:28:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be a good answer to what has the second most Academy Award nominations in a single year trivia question, you know?

• 1:28:48Speaker 05

  But what, I mean, what does it mean to get nominated for an Oscar? That's a question I would like to ask you.

• 1:28:54Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's less meaningful or more meaningful than it used to be.

• 1:28:57Speaker 05

  I think it's less. I think it's less now that Netflix has shown that you can sort of buy a volume of nominations.

• 1:29:04Amanda Dobbins?

  You can't buy a win, not yet.

• 1:29:06Speaker 05

  You can't buy a win, but you can buy a nomination. Yes.

• 1:29:09Sean Fennessey?

  So what will you be winning your Oscar for?

• 1:29:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Our heist film?

• 1:29:14Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 1:29:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, when we, when we steal the, the tallies.

• 1:29:18Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 1:29:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Of the...

• 1:29:19Sean Fennessey?

  Very rare the genre gets Best Actress.

• 1:29:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, you know me, I will have artistic flair.

• 1:29:24Speaker 05

  You're gonna be, the actress, you're gonna be like, screenwriter?

• 1:29:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, I think, screenwriter, director.

• 1:29:28Speaker 05

  Yeah. And editor.

• 1:29:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:29:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:33Amanda Dobbins?

  It'll be after, after I'm nominated in the shorts category for the Odyssey R, so, um, yeah. But I won't win that one.

• 1:29:41Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think your crew will agree that your natural warmth and charisma will pervade the set of your heist film?

• 1:29:49Speaker 05

  Or will you say, you can't sit down, no smartphones, no water if you're over 40?

• 1:29:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good question. After seven. No water after seven. It's a Gremlin situation. Okay, well, this was, uh, this was nice. You guys, thanks for opening for Bong Jun Ho. I appreciate it. Great, yeah, anytime.

• 1:30:11Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to all the listeners of the show for all the great questions. I feel that the email address is working very well, Bobby. Thank you for helping out with that. I appreciate it. Now, let's go to my conversation with Bong Jun Ho.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Coca-Cola. For the big, for the small, the short, and the tall. Peacemakers, risk-takers. For the optimists, pessimists. For long-distance love. For introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers. For old friends and new. Coca-Cola. For everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you.

• 1:31:04Speaker 02

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• 1:31:25Speaker 07

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• 1:31:43Sean Fennessey?

  neighbors to nourishing food and stability. This Thanksgiving, give at feedingamerica.org/holiday. Delighted to be rejoined on the show by Director Bong Jun Ho and his translator, Sharon. Thank you so much, guys, for doing this. Director Bong, I thought we could start with the immediate aftermath of Parasite and the incredible success, a Best Picture win, international acclaim, box office success.

• 1:32:10Sean Fennessey?

  Did you feel any trepidation about following up that incredible success with a new film?

• 1:32:16Speaker 05

  지금 당신이 그런 식으로 막 나열하니까 상 받고 박서프 그 막 와 엄청난 일이 벌어진 것 같은데 물론 멋진 일이었지만 그게 그렇게 꽤 차분했어요. 침착했어. 나이가 이미 들어 50대라 그런지. When you list all the accomplishments like that, it sounds like something crazy happened. Of course, it was great, but I actually maintained pretty calm around it all. 그 2020년 2월에 오스카 캠페인이 끝나고 이제 팬데믹이 오고 세상이 되게 조용해졌죠 오히려. 뭐 안 좋게 조용해진 거긴 하지만 어쨌든 강제로 조용해졌고 그때 20년 아까 6월이라 그랬지?

• 1:33:01Speaker 05

  6월에 이제 이 소설을 미키 세븐틴 소설 받게 되고 그때부터 이제 소설이 있고 조금씩 천천히 각색했었어요. So after the Oscars campaign was over in 2020, we had the pandemic and the world was forced to go quiet because of it. And in 2020 June, I received the manuscript for Mickey Seven and that's when I started reading and slowly started getting back into the work.

• 1:33:29Sean Fennessey?

  I'm curious about this particular choice. You know, mounting a large Hollywood production of original material is increasingly risky for studios. Did you think about Mickey Seventeen as what we sometimes call a blank check? Where you get to take on a high-leverage, big-scale opportunity because of the success of your previous project?

• 1:33:50Speaker 05

  Uh, 이제 제가 미국 에이전트, 소위 말하는 에이전스에이전트가 생겼던 것이 괴물 이후에 2006년? 7년? 요때쯤이었는데요. 꾸준히 어떤 뭐 몬스터 장르나 이런 사이파이나 뭐.

• 1:34:12Speaker 05

  크라임 스릴러 이런 것들 제안이 꾸준히 있긴 있었습니다. 이제 언제나 그걸 패스하고 제가 직접 리벨로핑한 프로젝트들을 했었는데 처음으로 이 제안을 받아들였던 것 같아요. 누군가가 오프한 걸 받아서 연출한 건 처음이죠. 근데 그랬던 이유는 So I started working with an American agency in two thousand six, um after the host. And since then, I've been getting offers for monster films, sci-fi and crime thrillers, but I've always passed on those projects. And this was the first time that I've taken a material um from someone else. And the reason I took it is

• 1:34:51Speaker 05

  그 미키라는 주인공 때문이었고, 휴먼 프린팅이라는 그 사이파이 해친 컨셉이 컨셉 자체를 재밌지만 그 막상 그 컨셉 속에 있는 그야말로 출력되는 인간의 상황 자체에서 여러 가지 인간적 감정을 느꼈어서 거기에 끌려서 하게 됐었어요. 그리고 그 제안했던 프로덕션도 플랜 B라고 그 옥자 때 같이 일했던 잘 아는 사람들이었었고요. 그래서 어 뭐 기회다 스케일을 키워야 이런 쪽에 접근은 전혀 아니었고요. 이 아이디어 자체에 관한 부분들, 언제나 그냥 스토리가 얼마나 유니크할지, 또 감정, 감정이 흔들리는 부분이 있는지 그게 제일 중요한데

• 1:35:36Speaker 05

  거기에 따라서 했던 거예요. 스케일은 사실 고려대상은 아니었고요. And I was really just drawn to the character of Mickey. Of course, there's that core concept of human printing. But I really wanted to focus on the individual going through this technology and the emotions um that his story was evoking. And the project was offered by Plan B, who I was familiar with from working on Okja. And so it wasn't really about the scale. I kind of wasn't thinking about that. I was only really thinking about the idea and the unique At the story and all the emotions that it would evoke.

• 1:36:12Sean Fennessey?

  With a great novel, people often say you can see it in your head while you're reading it. And you're renowned for storyboards and your storyboarding before making films. You know, I know that you usually do your storyboards after you have a script or even a location where you're gonna set. But when you're reading a novel, do you find yourself starting to draw what the film could look like?

• 1:36:33Speaker 05

  구체적으로 진짜 이제 촬영할 때 쓰는 스토리보드는 그 공간이 설계된 다음에 만들게 되죠. 그러니까 그 그것이 로케이션 슈팅이건 아니면 셋피스를 만들건 공간이 디자인 되고서 돼야 거기에 내 카메라를 여기다 놓겠어. 여기부터 여기까지 그 트랙을 달리 트랙을 깔겠어 이런 식으로 딱 해서 설계해서 하는 거기 때문에 구체적으로 매우 실용적인 스토리보드를 실질적인 걸 짜는 거니까 공간이 디자인 돼야 이제 진짜 스토리보드 나오는 거고요. 그 전에 구상할 때나 이제 그 스크립트 쓸 때는 그냥 이미지와 사운드 아직은 제대로 카메라가 고려된 건 아니지만

• 1:37:19Speaker 05

  예를 들어 크리퍼들이 막 이런 식으로 막 불러가는 이미지들이 있었으면 좋겠어. 아니 뭐 이런 식의 어떤 카메라의 포지션과는 무관한 이미지 자체를 많이 그려보게 되죠.

• 1:37:35Speaker 05

  To get the actual storyboard that we're shooting off of, I only start that process after all the spaces are designed, whether that is location shooting or sets that we are building. Um, the the space has to be designed to know where the camera will be, how long the dolly track will be. Um, so the specific practical storyboarding process starts after the um, the space is designed. But I do start thinking about the image and the sound elements um, from when I I'm writing the script and thinking about the story without considering the camera. For example, the way the creepers move and how they all roll about on the field.

• 1:38:15Speaker 05

  That was an image I started thinking of even before the entire storyboarding process.

• 1:38:22Sean Fennessey?

  I was curious about that because the creepers in some ways feel like if Okja and the host monster had a baby and just felt like it was completely born of your imagination.

• 1:38:34Speaker 05

  좋은 아이디어인데 그런 영화를 만들면 에리언데 프레데터처럼 그런 거 하면 안 되고. That's a great idea. Maybe like Alien vs Predators that could be.

• 1:38:45Sean Fennessey?

  Bring it together.

• 1:38:47Speaker 05

  근데 이제 그 크리퍼 세 종류가 있잖아. 베이비, 주니어, 마마 크리퍼 세 종류인데. 특히 이제 뭐 베이브 크리퍼는 되게 귀엽다면 주니어 크리퍼는 이제 액션을 담당하고. 그래서 이제 그 아마딜로라 그러는 이렇게 봉처럼 뭉쳐요 실제로. 여기 불러가는. 그래서 그런 레퍼런스도 많이 봤고. 이들이 어떻게 놀라운 군무를 펼칠 것인가. 그래서 야바위 한다고 해서 컵앤볼 게임. 그 이들이 매스 게임으로 컵앤볼 놀이를 하는 것 같은. 어디에 마마가 있는지 숨기는. 그거를 그거는 시나리오 단계부터 머릿속으로 많이 부상했었어요. 그 동물 다큐멘터리 같은 것도 찾아보고.

• 1:39:31Speaker 05

  We have three different types of creepers in the film, the baby, the junior, and mama. And the babies just have to be adorable. And with the juniors, they're in charge of the action of the script. And so we referenced armadillos because armadillos kind of roll up into a ball. And they also have to show this spectacular mass choreography where they're kind of playing cup and balls with mama creeper, trying to hide her. That was an image that I started thinking about when I was writing the script. I was watching a lot of animal documentaries to come up with ideas.

• 1:40:04Sean Fennessey?

  Mickey Seventeen has some familiar elements from your other films, especially Snowpiercer and Okja. The terrain, the creature elements. Do you ever worry about repeating yourself with some of these things? Or do you see them more as similarities that are thematic recurrences that are purposeful in your body of work?

• 1:40:25Speaker 05

  변주라고 하죠 음악에서도. A가 있었다가 A다시가 있고. 변주 그런 즐거운 일이라고 생각이 들고.

• 1:40:34Speaker 05

  익숙한 것과 새로운 게 얼마나 섞이게 되는가라는 것들이 제 영화에서 늘 반복돼 왔기 때문에 그냥 저는 그 자체로 편안했었어요. 배우들도 예를 들면 뭐 러비나 마크로 팔로 토니 코렛츠처럼 처음 일하는 배우들도 있고 또 스티븐 년이나 데니엘 헨셜처럼도 반가운 두 번째 다시 일해서 반가운데 다 여러 그런 식으로 섞여 있죠. 뭐 서로 얻는 스노피어서에서 이미 한번 해본 거였지만은 이번에는 기차가 아니라 우주선이구나. 그런 믹스와 충돌.

• 1:41:16Speaker 05

  So I like to think of them as variations. You know, you have variations in music where you have the A bar and then the A dash. So it's always a mix of old and new. I think my films have always tried to do that. And so this wasn't that different from my usual approach. I had actors like Rob, Mark and Tony that I never worked with before. And also familiar faces that I was very happy to work with again, like Steven and Daniel Henshaw. So it's always a mix of what's familiar and what is new. You know, we get the snowy fields from Snowpiercer, but this time it's a spaceship and not a train. So I actually enjoy the mix and conflicts that arise from mixing familiar and new elements.

• 1:41:59Sean Fennessey?

  I found Tony Collette's character's obsession with sauces hilarious. And revisiting your work, I'm struck by how often people gathering to eat food together. You know, in Memories of Murder, in Parasite, in Snowpiercer, the actual cannibalism. These like setups, people eating together lead to explosive circumstances. There's a great one in Mickey Seventeen. Why do you keep setting these huge set piece sequences around people sharing food?

• 1:42:26Speaker 05

  너도 좀 있다 점심 먹을 거잖아. I mean, you're gonna have lunch soon too.

• 1:42:33Speaker 05

  Have lunch soon. 이렇게 열심히 하루에 세 번씩이나 하는 일이 어디 있어 솔직히. There's nothing else that we do three times a day, every day. 그래서 먹기 위해 사는 그러니까 살려고 먹는

• 1:42:44Sean Fennessey?

  먹고 먹을 기 위해 사는 건데 그러니까 거기에 여러 가지 것들이 투사될 수밖에 없는 것 같아요. 그 뭐 모든 어떤 본인의 어떤 철학이건 취향이건 그 사회의 어떤 상황이건 모든 것들이 먹는 것을 표현하면 저절로 따라서 나오는 것 같은데 그 우주선 처음 탔을 때 식사 기억나요? 미키가 매식 받을 때 우주선에 처음 타서 이제 그 갯떡 같은 카페테리아에서

• 1:43:13Speaker 05

  So we eat to live and we live to eat. And I think in that you can project so many things. Your philosophy, your taste, the the atmosphere of that society. You can express so much just by the simple act of eating. And you know, if you remember the the one of the earliest sequences in the spaceship where they're all in the cafeteria getting served food and getting served really crappy food. 미키가 식판에 이렇게 받는 게 있잖아요. 거기에 거 청 같은 걸로 찍 호리지 같아 나오는데 그거 보는 순간 정말 관객도 깨닫고 미키도 깨닫는 거죠.

• 1:43:52Speaker 05

  아 저때다 씨발 이 우주선에 뭔가 근사한 그럴듯한 expedition이라고 해서 왔는데 와 씨발 이런 음식을 먹는구나 망했구나 이런 생각이 거기서 한 번에 확 오는 거죠. And you see Mickey with his plastic tray getting squeezed out this, you know, great glob of porridge. And Mickey and the audience realizes that Mickey is totally fucked. You know, thought that this would be a fancy expedition, um, you know, this great colony expedition. But then the minute you see him getting served that crappy food, we know how his fate will go.

• 1:44:34Amanda Dobbins?

  그런 시츄에이션에서 토니 꼴레트는 소스 얘기를 하고 있는 거죠 무려. 그러니까 그 그냥 그 워킹클라스 애들들이 듣기엔 그게 어떻겠어요 그 기분이. 거기서 이제 소스를 연구하고 개발하고 그게 문명의 척도라고 말하는 게 얼마나 참 허망한 이야기일까라는 거고.

• 1:44:54Speaker 05

  복제자의 아내로서 그런 업세션을 갖고 있다는 거에

• 1:45:02Speaker 05

  오히려 그런 업세션 갖고 있다는 게 정말 복제자의 아내가 될 수 있는 자격인가 봐. 라이센스인가 그게?

• 1:45:12Speaker 05

  So, while everyone is eating that crappy food, we have Toni Collet's character, Ilf, just obsessing over sauce. And the working-class characters in the film feel so insulted to witness her obsession. You know, she spends all that time and energy trying to recreate sauces and declares it as the litmus test of civilization. And it's so pointless to everyone else who's just struggling to survive. To have the dictator's wife obsess over something so unnecessary is probably what gives her the license to be a dictator's wife.

• 1:45:50Sean Fennessey?

  The movie is very frank and funny about sex. And it's an interesting counterpoint to Parasite, where you have this sex scene as this kind of inciting incident for Kim. And in this case, it felt more like maybe Mickey is seen as like a usable disposable object in this world. Do I have that right? Is that how you were thinking about the inclusion of that element of the story? 그 마크로파로 캐릭터가 이제 처음 카페테리아에서 스피치를 할 때 자기들이 무슨 전체 커뮤니티의 섹스를 컨트롤할 것처럼 말하는 장면이 있잖아요. 법적인 커뮤니티에서 이제 레귤레이션을 만든다는 또 어떤 헛소리를 하고.

• 1:46:34Speaker 05

  If you remember Mark Ruffalo's speech in the cafeteria sequence, he declares to everyone that he's gonna control sex using legal means and the committee is going to create regulations around sex.

• 1:46:46Sean Fennessey?

  근데 사실 그 스피치를 하고 뭐 마샤는 마치 무슨 뭐 우리 인간들이 스스로 벌레가 된 것처럼 뭐 번식하라 뭐 창거라 뭐 이런 대사들을 하고 막 그러는데 그거 그 스피치를 할 때 사실 크로스 커팅 교차

• 1:47:03Speaker 05

  편집이 되는 거 그 미키와 나샤가 섹스를 하는 더 엄밀히 말하면 사랑을 나누는 거죠. 그들은 사랑에서 하는 거고 번식이나 종족의 문제가 아니라 예.

• 1:47:15Speaker 05

  Um, you know, and when he does that speech, he almost talks about human beings as insects. Talk about how we must propagate the species and infest the land. And while he's doing that speech, we cross cut to Mickey and Nasha having sex. But to them, sex is more actually just like making love. It's not just breeding or propagating. 그래서 미키에게 있어서 어떻게 보면은 그

• 1:47:41Speaker 05

  그가 단순히 뭐 프린트 잡이나 뭐 마샤리 말하는 것 같은 스팸베이비가 아니라 정말 인간이다. 원래 뭐 미키 식스 세븐 에잇 어쨌든간에 원래 미키 바인스로서 인간이다라는 거를 증명하는 그런 섹스의 순간인 것 같아요. 그 나샤와 사랑을 나누니까 이 커뮤니티 자체가 무슨 뭐 법으로 무슨 섹스를 컨트롤하고 또 아니면 뭐 도착하고 나면 엄청난 프로모션을 하겠다 섹스를 하는데 그리고 또 죽고 사는 문제도 방금 말한 게 이제 에로스의 문제라면 그 다음에 그 타나토스인가 타나토스와 관련된 부분은 또 그 죽음을 기계로 다 human printing으로 해서 이제 리프린팅하고 익스텐더블이라는 직업 때문에 죽어야 되는 직업인 것 같아.

• 1:48:27Speaker 05

  에로스건 타나토스건 다 그 커뮤니티 시스템에 의해서 통제되는 입장인데 유일하게 그래도 나샤와 사랑을 나누는 그 순간만큼은 미키 자신인 거죠. 그래서 약간 그런 맥락인 것 같아요.

• 1:48:44Speaker 05

  And so for Mickey, you know, it's not that that sequence shows that he's just human. He's not just someone with a job. You know, he's a human, living, breathing human, having sex with his partner. And so this whole community can try to control that. Through law and they talk about, you know, putting out this sex enhancement campaign once they arrive. And and we see Mickey and Nasha sort of exempt from that and having their own moment of love. And so Marshall is trying to control arrows, you know, sex and love and also tannitos, the way people die and live, you know, you they're treating bodies and death as if, quite

• 1:49:27Speaker 05

  mechanically, as if it's just, um, so it can be someone's job to go through that process. And so we have this community and system trying to control the arrows and tannitos of human existence. And only Mickey and Nasha, who are, you know, who truly love each other, are exempt from that and can can manage to, um, you know, remove themselves from that. And so we see sort of that disparity. And in in the climatic sequence, you know, Mickey shout, see three, and then bring the baby. 사실 우주 행성간 체이표에 나오는 거죠. 마지막에도 섹스로 저한테는 거죠. Mickey랑 Nasha가.

• 1:50:11Speaker 05

  So C three was part of, you know, one of the positions that they invented and assigned to each planet. And so in the end, they're fighting against evil and rebelling, um, through sex.

• 1:50:23Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, you have talked in the past about your admiration for the way Martin Scorsese works with actors and lets them figure out character. Because of this story, there's gonna, there's big performances because these are really big characters. The thing I'm curious about is how do you make sure that the performances all agree with each other? They share the same tone when you have a story like this?

• 1:50:46Speaker 05

  앙상블이라는 거겠죠, 그렇죠? 근데 이게 모르겠어요. 이게 참 여러 캐릭터들이 있고요. 여러 개의 씬이 막 흩어져 있잖아요, 그들이. 뭐 한 대 모아놓고 무슨 연구 워크샵 하듯이 막 그런 것도 아니고. 이게 참. 아, 대신에 그건 있어요. 우리가 한국 인더스트리에 되게 일반적인 건데. 온셋 에디팅을 해요. 저 그거 찍으면서 편집을 하거든. 보면 이제 연기 톤이 보여요, 이어지는 게. 그래서 매일매일 찍을 때 옆에서 동시에 누가 한 명이 편집을 하고 있기 때문에 그 흐름을 볼 수가 있어요. 그리고 아침에 이제 세트장에 도착하면 어제 찍은 분량도

• 1:51:28Speaker 05

  이렇게 차곡차곡 이어나가기가 좋으면 왜들 현장 편집 안 하지? 미국이나 다른 한국은 하는데 Yes, it's all about, you know, creating that ensemble. But with films, it's like you have so many characters and they're all spread out in different scenes. It's not like you can bring them all together for a theater workshop. But I think what helps is in Korea, we have onset editing. And so I have an editor right next to me editing as we go. And you can sort of see how the scenes and shots cut together. And you can see the flow of the tone, performance and narrative. And when you arrive on set, you can sort of watch everything that you shot the day before.

• 1:52:09Speaker 05

  And so it's it's quite helpful in trying to keep or connect the tones together. And I always wonder why they don't do this in the US, because it can be so helpful.

• 1:52:20Sean Fennessey?

  Is it because most filmmakers can't not shoot coverage and you don't shoot coverage? 어 커버리지 안 찍어. 그냥 여기서 여기까지 이렇게 하고 그다음에 여기서 이렇게 하고 머리에서 그럴려고 스토리보드를 하는 거죠. 그래서 예 그 배우들 입장에서 같은 대사나 연기를 반복할 일이 거의 별로 없는 편이고요. 그래서 설국녀차일 때 이제 돌아가신 조언 헐트워께서 이거 되게 봉 너는 약간 히치코키언인 것 같아 그런 스타일인 것 같아라는 코멘트를 해주셨어요. 촬영할 때 그래서 그때 되게 기뻤던 것 같아요. 그런 말을 들었단 말씀이에요.

• 1:53:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just don't shoot coverage. You know, I get a certain that certain moments at a time and then we immediately flip around to do the next part. I think that's why I storyboard. And so the actors never really have to repeat the same dialogue or the same situation multiple times. I remember when I was shooting Snowpiercer, John Hurt was now passed. He, you know, mentioned that my method is quite Hitchcockian and I was quite happy and pleased to hear that.

• 1:53:28Sean Fennessey?

  Um, can you talk about reuniting with Darius Kanji? I was really happy to see this. Why was he the DP on the film? 속자 때 되게 행복한 작업이었고요. 그 그가 얼마나 뛰어난 아티스트인지는 뭐 이미 온 세상이 다 아니까. 근데 이제 그 인간적으로도 인간대 인간으로도

• 1:53:47Speaker 05

  되게 재밌어요. 둘이 둘이 이렇게 꿍시혁거리면서 되게 재밌게 뭐 다리 형이라고 부르는데 어쨌든 맨날 이렇게 둘이 맛있는 거 먹으러 다니면서

• 1:54:00Speaker 05

  서로 보고 싶어하는 그런 면이 있죠.

• 1:54:04Speaker 05

  I just had such a great time working with Darius on Okja. The whole world knows how great of an artist he is. But just on a personal level, I always have so much fun with Darius. We're all kind of just like rumbling amongst ourselves and um and I just have such fun when we're together. We go to eat great food together and I always miss him and 그 우연의 일치인데 다리우스랑 두 작품을 했는데 두 편 다 크리쳐가 나오는 거예요. Okja는 심지어 거의 주인공과 가까워요. 이 영화에도 크리퍼가 많이 나오는데 사실 다리우스 콘지가 그 형님이 이렇게 VFX 쪽을 막 즐기시는 타입은 아니거든요. 그러니까 오히려 더 막 그 뭐야 그 제임스 그레이 영화 최근에 찍은 거 뭐지 아마 겟던 같은 막 그런 거 있죠.

• 1:54:49Speaker 05

  그런 거나 뭐 로스트 시리어 비지처럼 막 이렇게 클래식한 건데 정말 놀라운 아름다운 막 라이팅하고 이런 거를 더 선호하시는데 이상하게 저를 만나서 막 이제 자꾸 VFX 크리쳐가 나오고 막 현장에 막 VFX 슈퍼바이저 때문에 그런 익숙치 않으신데 또 이번에 보니까 결국은 또 그걸 좀 즐기시는 것 같더라고요. 나중에 가서는 이제는 이제 익숙해지죠. So this is just by pure coincidence, but the both films that we've done together feature VFX creatures. Okja was kind of even the main character. And actually, Darius isn't really the type to enjoy VFX.

• 1:55:31Speaker 05

  He's actually more like, you know, Armageddon Time and Lost City of Z by James Gray. These very classic films with beautiful lighting. Um and uh but for some reason, he just had to work with me and face all these VFX creatures. Um and he's not really familiar with it, but I think with this film, he actually got the hang of it and started enjoying the process. 그래서 VFX 할 때 이제 VFX 슈퍼바이저인 덴글라스랑 그 다리우스 간의 어떤

• 1:55:59Speaker 05

  호흡이 좋았었어요. 서로 되게 좋아하고 서로가 되게 사랑하는 아티스트 간의 관계였는데 그래서 VFX 쪽에는 마마 크리퍼의 눈이라든가 뭐 이런 것들을 뭐 예를 들어 되게 아름답다 뭐 다리우스가 좋아하고 VFX 쪽 팀과 의논도 많이 하고 거기에 뭐 빛이나 컬러에 관해서 다리우스가 또 코멘트도 많이 하고 되게 이제 즐겁게 작업하신 것 같아 이번에 크리퍼를 하는데 있어서 옥자 때는 좀 생소해하셨던 게 있었는데 왜 이런 걸 하는 거지 뭐 이러면서 Our VFX supervisor is Dan Glass and I think Darius and Dan had a great collaborative relationship as two artists.

• 1:56:41Speaker 05

  They had a lot of respect for each other and so Darius was quite involved in the VFX process. Just you know really appreciating how beautiful the VFX work was and also was involved in determining the light and color of all the shots. And so I think he had a really great time working with Dan on the VFX of this film. I do remember when we were working on Okja, he was a bit like new to all of it and was questioning why things had to be done a certain way.

• 1:57:11Sean Fennessey?

  Do you like that work at this point? I've read in the past that you avoid green screen work as much as possible, but this is a very big production that I assume required some of it. How do you like working with this level of VFX in a film?

• 1:57:25Speaker 05

  운 좋게 그 괴물 때도 이제 실제 서울의 도시에 이제 한강이라는 이제 백그라운드에서 괴물이 막 뛰어다니고 이런 거 그래서 크리처 크리처 애니메이션이 중심에 있었지만 그 블루스크린이나 그린스크린 쓸 일이 별로 없었어요. 그리고 옥자 때도 옥자라는 이제 슈퍼피그가 나오는데 동물이 나오는데 거대한 그린스크린 앞에서 찍고 뭐 얼굴에 무슨 센서를 붙인 배우가 뛰어다니고 이런 식의 VFX는 아니었었거든. 이번 미키 때도 마찬가지였는데요.

• 1:58:09Speaker 05

  이상하게 그린스크린을 쓸 일은 그렇게 많지 않았어요. 우주선 창밖에 보이는 뭐 요런데 조금씩 했는데 이 우주선이 또 유리창이 별로 없는 우주선이야. 그런 그런 것도 좀 있었고 저는 유난히 그린스크린을 그다지 온사방이

• 1:58:28Speaker 05

  그린스크린으로 쳐발라진 방에서만 배우들과 외롭게 찍고 아무것도 없는데서 상상하면서 찍고 이런 상황이 별로 없었다는 게 되게 행운이었던 것 같아요. 음. I think I was quite lucky in all of it in that with the host, we were actually shooting against actual soul and the Han River that split soul. And we just have this monster um in with the city backdrop. So you know, there was a lot of creature animation, but we weren't working with blue or green screens. Same with Okja, we have this super pig, but it wasn't like we had actors with sensors on their faces just acting off of nothing. And Mickey was the same, um you know, we actually didn't really shoot um with a lot of green screens.

• 1:59:11Speaker 05

  Of course, we had some with, you know, when we see out out of the spaceship window, but with this spaceship, we actually don't have a lot of windows. And so we never had moments where, you know, it was just an actor surrounded by green screen, just acting by himself and trying to imagine everything in front of his eyes. Um so we were quite lucky in the sense that we always um had a clear sense of what was um the environment of the film. 가장 챌린징한 거는 역시 그 두 미키 나오는 그거에서 한 화면에 그게 막 서로 싸우고 막 어깨동무하고 이런 장면까지 있기 때문에 이게 거기서 단 0.1초라도 어색해 보이면 그 드라마 스토리라인 자체가 붕괴돼 버리기 때문에 정말 조심스럽게 했죠.

• 1:59:54Speaker 05

  The most challenging VFX element was definitely the two Micky's. We see the two Micky's together in one shot frequently and they fight, they have their arms around each other, there's a lot of interaction. And we couldn't allow like not even a single, like a split second of awkwardness, otherwise the story would just completely fall apart. So we were very sort of careful and meticulous with that whole process.

• 2:00:18Sean Fennessey?

  Speaking of Mickey, Robert Pattinson is an inspired choice. He's very good at being both goofy and desperate, which Mickey needs to be. What did you see him in that made you think of him for this part?

• 2:00:30Speaker 05

  그 조시 사프디 그 사프디 브라더스랑 잘 아는데 그 이천 만난 지가 꽤 됐네. 옥자 때 뉴욕에서 만났던가? 그리고 다음에 또 기생충 때 그 텔레라이드에서도 만났다. 아직 잘 알아요. 근데 그 Good Times 보고 그 거기서 로버트 패틴슨이 아 저런 배우구나 우리가 알던 것이 전부가 아니다 그리고 되게 그 실험적인 영화들도 막 그 오떼르 감독들이랑 많이 하고 그래서 아 연기 욕심이 있구나 뭐 이런 좋은 인상을 갖고 있었거든요. So I'm good friends with the Sapti brothers. I first met them in New York when I was making Obja and then I met them at Tolya Red when we were doing Parasite.

• 2:01:15Speaker 05

  And I watched their film Good Time and realized that Robert Pattinson, we were only seeing very little of him and there's much more to see from him as an actor. And I know that he was doing a lot of experimental work with auteurs and I could sense that he was quite an ambitious actor. And I watched The Lighthouse in in Camp Leam Festival Director's Fortune Night. And 저거 야 저거 에이틴이네 미키 에이틴이 저거 완전 미친 새끼 저거. 그래서 아 에이틴도 잘할 수 있겠구나라는 게 이제 그 라이트하우스를 다시 되돌려 머리속에서 리플레이해 보니까 되겠다는 생각이 들더라고.

• 2:02:00Speaker 05

  So with this project, I sort of looked back on The Lighthouse and just thought, oh my god, that's eighteen right there. He's totally crazy, the character that he plays in The Lighthouse. 그래서 저의 첫 번째 초이스였고 어 랍도 되게 하고 싶어했기 때문에 잘 맞아떨어졌고 그 랍이 뭐 배트맨이나 뭐 트와일라이트 뭐 이런 했는데 그 사실은 저의 눈에는 이상하게 좀 불쌍한 청년같이 보였었어요. 약간 이렇게 아까 뭐 구피라는 단어를 쓰기도 했지만 뭔가 계속 사기당하고 다니는 사람. 사기꾼한테 계속 사기당하는 느낌 같은 사기꾼한테 두 번 사기당할 것 같더네. 약간 그런 느낌이에요.

• 2:02:43Speaker 05

  And he was my first choice and thankfully Rob also really wanted to work on this project. And you know, I know we mostly know him from like Batman and Twilight, but just to my eyes, the way he looks, I just kind of felt sorry for him. And you know, you mentioned that he has this goofiness to him, but also just always like too nice for his own good and always getting the short end of the stick. He, you know, probably hangs out with grifters and let them like take advantage of him multiple times and yet still hang out with them. I kind of just got that. Sense from Rob?

• 2:03:16Sean Fennessey?

  He's really, really well cast. You've mentioned that John Carpenter's The Thing is a big inspiration for this movie. When you say something like that, are you actually going back to look at the film before you start on this film? Or is it just an idea that you have implanted? John Carpenter의 영화들, 그리고 그 중에서도 The Thing은 꼭 이 작품을 위해서라기보다는 저희가 이제 뭐 항상 뭐 탑텐 리스트를 뽑거나 인생 영화 같은 거 뽑을 때 반복적으로 많이 나오는 영화고요. 그만큼 또

• 2:03:53Sean Fennessey?

  사이파이의 걸작이기도 하지만 좀 더 광범위한 개념이라는 생각이 들고요.

• 2:04:00Speaker 05

  With John Carpenter's films and in particular The Thing, it wasn't just a specific reference for this film in particular. It's just an overall, general influence in my life. You know, it always shows up in like the top ten my favorite films list. And you know, it's a sci-fi masterpiece that really does deserve that.

• 2:04:22Sean Fennessey?

  실제 작품을 만들 때 오는 그 구체적인 레퍼런스나 이제 프레티카 실용적인 필요에 의해서 다시 꺼내보게 되는 영화 같은 건 또 의외로 또 얘기치 못한 영화들인 것 같아요. 예를 들면.

• 2:04:38Speaker 05

  So actually, the films that are specific references for this project and the ones that I revisit specifically for Mickey Seventeen are actually unexpected, like quite surprising.

• 2:04:50Sean Fennessey?

  For example, Kevin Costner, The Dances with Wolves. 그거 다시 꺼내봤어요. 왜냐하면 그 크리퍼들 막 돌진하고 막 할 때 그 막 지축을 울리는 그 바이슨들의 소리 같은 거 막 그 어떤 사운드였지 그게? 그 사운드를 다시 듣고 싶어 막 이런 생각들이거든요.

• 2:05:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, for the creepers climactic sequence when they're all moving in a herd, I wanted to see how that film handled the bison and how like that groundbreaking. Breaking sound of the biceps moving as a herd.

• 2:05:23Speaker 05

  John Carpenter 영화에서 되게 반복되는 그런 거 있잖아요. 보면 그 Assault on uncertain street나 아니면은 그 Prince of darkness도 그렇고 The thing도 마찬가지네. 어떤 일군의 그룹의 한 그룹의 캐릭터들이 그 고립된 어떤 한 장소에 다 모여 있고 그 외부를 다 이제 사악한 존재나 괴물이나 이런 것들이 둘러싸고 있고 거기서 이제 그 안에서 분투를 벌이고 The thing은 이제 내부 안에서 또 몸의 안쪽에 괴물이 있는 케이스긴 하지만은 그런 식의 시츄에이션을 좋아합니다. 저도.

• 2:06:06Speaker 05

  There's a recurring theme in John Carpenter's films like Assault on uncertain street or Prince of darkness. You always see this group of characters isolated in a particular location and that and then being surrounded by evil beings outside and monsters. And they have this battle inside this very claustrophobic location. And the thing, you know, it's monsters inside their body even. But that's like a setup that I really like.

• 2:06:35Sean Fennessey?

  Do you see Mickey seventeen as a hopeful movie? I think about this after all of your movies. Is this optimistic and hopeful or not?

• 2:06:45Speaker 05

  상태적으로 가장 희망적이지 않나요? 그리고 미키가 좀 파괴되는 걸 보고 싶진 않더라고요. 이번에. 주인공들을 좀 잔인하게 다루는 데 있어서 제가 거침이 없었거든요. 그동안은. 근데 이번엔 좀 달랐어요. 아 미키가 좀 랍이 그렇게 되는 건 좀 싫은 거예요. 처음 시나리오였을 때부터 그러긴 했었어요.

• 2:07:06Speaker 05

  I would say that this is relatively one of my more hopeful movies. Because I really didn't want to see Mickey get destroyed until now. I've been quite ruthless in being cruel to my main characters. But for some reason, I just didn't want to do that to Rob. Ever since I started writing the script, I just didn't want to see that. 아들이 이제 미키 나이가 돼서 그런 건지 뭐 뭔지 모르겠는데 다음 작품에서 다시 또 잔인해질 것 같아.

• 2:07:33Speaker 05

  It's probably because my son is now around Mickey's age. But probably for my next film, I'm gonna go back to being just ruthless and cruel. Rob, 행운이야. Rob was very lucky.

• 2:07:45Sean Fennessey?

  I'm wondering how Sung Kang Ho feels about this.

• 2:07:49Sean Fennessey?

  Sung Kang Ho는 이걸 보고 어떤

• 2:07:50Speaker 05

  맞아요. 서울 시사회 때 와서 보기 봤어요. 가족들하고. He actually watched the film at the Seoul premiere. He brought his family to watch the film. 나한테 문자 했는데. He just texted me. 잠깐만요. Just hold on, just a second. Very simple, he does.

• 2:08:09Speaker 05

  그 상하야 게 아름답다. It's disturbingly beautiful.

• 2:08:16Sean Fennessey?

  Director Bang, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing that they have seen? I know you are still a cinephile. Have you seen anything great lately?

• 2:08:27Speaker 05

  아까 옛날 영화인 것도 상관없는 거죠. It can be like an old film, right? 어, 어, 어.

• 2:08:36Sean Fennessey?

  Do you keep a list?

• 2:08:37Speaker 05

  아니요. 메모된 게 있는데. I do have like a little note. Quite recently, I watched The Hamaguchi Ryuusuke, The Evil Does Not Exist. 그거 되게 아름다웠고. That was so beautiful. 그다음에 그 월리스 그로미 넷플릭스의 신작이 나왔다길래 옛날 거를 다시 봤어요. 그 단편을. And I heard about the new Wallace and Gromit on Netflix, so I went back to the old, old shorts. 그 롱 트라우저. 그거 역시 걸작이더라고. Yeah, true masterpiece.

• 2:09:09Sean Fennessey?

  We love the wrong trousers. That's a great one.

• 2:09:13Sean Fennessey?

  Director Bang, congrats on Mickey Seventeen. Sharon, thank you so much. It's so nice to chat with you again. Really appreciate it.

• 2:09:18Speaker 05

  Thank you. You too.

• 2:09:28Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Bong Joon Ho, thanks to our producer Bobby Wagner, thanks to Gao for filling in for Jack Sanders today, thanks to Joanna Robinson, listen to you on the Prestige TV Podcast covering The White Lotus and Severance and sometimes The Pit and what else?

• 2:09:46Speaker 05

  House of R, the show that I do.

• 2:09:47Sean Fennessey?

  House of R, I was just going through Prestige shows.

• 2:09:49Speaker 05

  That's it right now.

• 2:09:50Sean Fennessey?

  You're on House of R.

• 2:09:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:09:51Sean Fennessey?

  You're on The Rewatchables sometimes.

• 2:09:53Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 2:09:54Sean Fennessey?

  Um, what else?

• 2:09:55Speaker 05

  The big pick.

• 2:09:56Sean Fennessey?

  The big picture, yes, definitely, Ringer NFL Show.

• 2:09:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:10:00Sean Fennessey?

  Ringer Gambling Show.

• 2:10:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:10:01Sean Fennessey?

  Against All Odds, you're on.

• 2:10:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:10:05Sean Fennessey?

  You're on Sports Card Nonsense.

• 2:10:06Speaker 05

  That's true.

• 2:10:07Sean Fennessey?

  Amanda, you are starting a new politics podcast, which we're really excited about here at The Ringer, can't wait to hear that. Anything else, you're on Jam Session.

• 2:10:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 2:10:17Sean Fennessey?

  What else are you on these days?

• 2:10:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Just trying to keep up with you, Sean Fantasy.

• 2:10:21Sean Fennessey?

  Well, thanks for all your service, we'll see you next time.

• 2:10:25Speaker 01

  Coca-Cola. For the big, for the small, the short, and the tall. Peacemakers, risk-takers. For the optimists, pessimists. For long-distance love. For introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers. For old friends and new. Coca-Cola. For everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you.

• 2:10:54Speaker 02

  Sam's Club is the club for every holiday club. Guess who's joining the club this season? Walmart Plus. Yep, Sam's Club Plus membership now comes with Walmart Plus at no extra cost. Two memberships, one great price. Just $120 a year can save you time and over $700. Want to get in on the membership duo of the century? Visit sam'sclub.com. Come join us. Sam's Club.

• 2:11:15Speaker 07

  Annual plan only. Auto-renews. T&Cs apply. Estimate based on average combined Walmart Plus and Sam's Club Plus savings among members of both for 1+ year versus non-member or club member pricing/fees. Excludes membership fees. See Walmart Plus terms and Sam's Club terms for more info.