‘The Electric State’ Is a Netflix Nightmare. Plus, 10 (Better) Movies We Missed.

Sean and Amanda are joined by Chris Ryan to discuss the latest Netflix mega-budget action movie, ‘The Electric State,’ one of the worst movies of the decade so far (1:00). They discuss the state of Netflix’s influence on the movie industry and the series of disastrous movies made by the Russo brothers since they left Marvel. Then, they run through a list of other movies they’ve missed on the show, including ‘The Gorge’ (47:00), ‘Last Breath’ (56:00), ‘The Monkey’ (1:00:00), ‘Eephus’ (1:04:00), ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ (1:07:00), ‘Chaos: The Manson Murders’ (1:10:00), ‘Love Hurts’ (1:12:00), and ‘The Actor’ (1:13:00). Finally, Sean is joined by writer-director Mark Anthony Green to discuss the long journey to making his first feature, ‘Opus,’ starring Ayo Edeberi and John Malkovich (1:18:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Chris Ryan and Mark Anthony Green Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producers: Jack Sanders 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

  When you hear the word Seattle Supersonics, what comes to mind? Maybe it's Shawn Kemp, the Rain Man, or Gary Payton, the Glove, or maybe an image of a tall and skinny 19-year-old rookie, Kevin Durant. For fans in Seattle, it's something else. It's tragedy, it's theft, an iconic team with an incredible fan base that packed its bags and shipped off for Oklahoma City. From Spotify and The Ringer, I'm Jordan Ritter-Kahn, and in my podcast, Sonic Boom, I talk to players, politicians, owners, and fans about how Seattle lost the Sonics. You can listen to it on the Book of Basketball feed, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  The best part of waking up? A full cup of Folgers Coffee and music on full blast.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Shop Folgers Instant Coffee and more at your nearest retailer.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Reports due to, then meeting prep, then...

• 1:18Speaker 03

  Chronic migraine doesn't care about your to-do list. For people with chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, Botox, anabatil lineum toxine A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It is not approved for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. Botox prevents, on average, eight to nine headache days a month, versus six to seven for placebo. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's

• 2:02Speaker 03

  Disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 2:20Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessy.

• 2:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 2:22Sean Fennessey?

  And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about The Electric State and 10 movies that we missed. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Marc Anthony Green, the writer-director of the new film Opus, and one of my oldest friends. We talked about his long road to making his directorial debut and the inspirations for his I.O. Debré, John Malkovich horror film. M.A.G., real smart, charismatic guy. I hope you will stick around for our conversation. Joining us now, Chris Ryan. Chris, I have something to share with you.

• 2:49Speaker 06

  Hit me.

• 2:50Sean Fennessey?

  Programming reminder for you, a listener of The Big Picture.

• 2:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:54Sean Fennessey?

  This week, we begin 25 for 25.

• 2:57Speaker 06

  Do you think I already have it marked down?

• 2:59Sean Fennessey?

  You do.

• 3:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm already ready.

• 3:01Sean Fennessey?

  You're holding space to listen to the first episode.

• 3:03Speaker 06

  I've told my wife not to speak to me for at least 24 hours after the release of this podcast.

• 3:07Sean Fennessey?

  How many times will you listen to that episode?

• 3:09Speaker 06

  Four or five?

• 3:10Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you very much.

• 3:11Speaker 06

  Different speeds to hear different textures of your voices?

• 3:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, okay, thank you.

• 3:14Sean Fennessey?

  We've already recorded the episode.

• 3:16Speaker 06

  I've bought an Audi already. You're fucking influencing me.

• 3:21Sean Fennessey?

  This is a roughly bimonthly series we're doing on the show through the end of the year.

• 3:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, but bimonthly, every two weeks or every other month?

• 3:28Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it has two definitions. I'm glad you asked.

• 3:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 3:31Sean Fennessey?

  It is going to be every two weeks.

• 3:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, it makes sense.

• 3:34Sean Fennessey?

  More or less, with nine months to go in the year.

• 3:36Speaker 06

  You have to kind of let the movie world tell you what you are and are not allowed to do, right?

• 3:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'm ready to spoil for you right now what number 25 is. It's The Electric State, the new film from the Russo Brothers. Are you excited about that?

• 3:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, I am, honestly.

• 3:49Sean Fennessey?

  Just kidding, it's not. We'll get to the Russos and The Electric State momentarily.

• 3:52Speaker 06

  Out of curiosity, are you guys opening 25 for 25 to more people than the two of you? Like, it'll just be the two of you?

• 3:58Amanda Dobbins?

  In fact, so we recently recorded, like, a selection committee episode.

• 4:03Speaker 06

  You're Nixon, by the way.

• 4:05Amanda Dobbins?

  We all know that. We recorded a selection committee episode that it's gonna come out in December after the list has been revealed, but it was us like working through the list in real time.

• 4:16Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 4:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Like with the doc open. I believe Bobby was like recording. Is that an earthquake?

• 4:21Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's construction outside.

• 4:23Amanda Dobbins?

  All right. Well, it's a construction and not an earthquake. Okay. I just, I just didn't know whether I needed to. Like, what would we do in this room?

• 4:31Sean Fennessey?

  Die?

• 4:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Go over that way.

• 4:33Sean Fennessey?

  The lights would fall on our heads.

• 4:34Speaker 06

  This would suck to die in here.

• 4:35Amanda Dobbins?

  This would like.

• 4:36Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, my God. Not ideal. Really not ideal.

• 4:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Not, not an earthquake. So we made the list live and at some point I suggested that maybe like you could come in and give your commentary. And Sean was like, no, absolutely not.

• 4:51Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Nothing, you know, nothing against you.

• 4:53Speaker 06

  I have lots of outlets for my opinions.

• 4:54Sean Fennessey?

  Are you guys not doing a 25 thing for the watch?

• 4:57Speaker 06

  I don't know if Andy's seen 25 television shows. No, I'm just kidding. I think TV is harder. I've thought about this a lot when it comes to doing historical retrospectives because you just have to put so many hours up. So like an individual rewatch would be really fun, but it, acting as if like we have all of lost at our fingertips at all times is very difficult for.

• 5:18Sean Fennessey?

  I see. So Lioness number one.

• 5:21Speaker 06

  Look, I mean, that's what's freshest in my mind. And it's probably the most relevant show in the world right now.

• 5:26Sean Fennessey?

  Because it's how you feel about our foreign policy?

• 5:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, boy.

• 5:31Speaker 06

  Do you want me to talk to you about The Odyssey?

• 5:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 5:36Speaker 06

  Or are we on a clock? Like, when should we do The Odyssey talk?

• 5:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:40Sean Fennessey?

  Honestly, whatever you want. I'm waiting for you to schedule a like, it's the Odyssey R. time. Not like in the middle of another episode.

• 5:46Speaker 06

  Is that I, I wanted this to be a thing. You know, I wanted Odyssey updates.

• 5:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 5:52Speaker 06

  And now I'm being served Odyssey updates all the time.

• 5:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh huh. And I. Where? On Reddit?

• 5:56Speaker 06

  On Reddit, on Instagram, on Twitter. There's several Christopher Nolan like updates Twitter accounts that are just like, here's a picture of like the weather.

• 6:04Amanda Dobbins?

  So like, are you following them?

• 6:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. So you're not like really being served it. It's like you've sought it out.

• 6:10Speaker 06

  I got served them in the first place.

• 6:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 6:11Speaker 06

  You know, and then I was, I was a weak man and I clicked follow. And so.

• 6:15Amanda Dobbins?

  What is the weather in Greece?

• 6:17Sean Fennessey?

  You gotta, you need to reset your mentality on this.

• 6:19Speaker 06

  So the problem is, is I don't.

• 6:21Sean Fennessey?

  You need to be David Muir. You need to be Nicholas Kristof. Like you need to get on the ground. You need to get your gear and you need to record after you witnessed the moment. You can't be like, oh, I got served on social media. No!

• 6:32Speaker 06

  This is the Odyssey R.

• 6:33Sean Fennessey?

  So you want me to go to Greece? I'm not saying that explicitly.

• 6:38Sean Fennessey?

  I will happily stay here.

• 6:39Speaker 06

  Here we go.

• 6:40Sean Fennessey?

  I think if you want to do the work.

• 6:42Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 6:42Sean Fennessey?

  You come in whenever the news breaks.

• 6:45Speaker 06

  All right. You know, I missed the opportunity to talk about Matt Damon and Jon Bernthal arriving at the airport, which was like my favorite moment of the year so far. Bernthal's hair incredible.

• 6:55Sean Fennessey?

  Did he shave his head?

• 6:56Speaker 06

  He shaved his head, but kept the beard.

• 6:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 6:59Speaker 06

  But yeah.

• 7:00Sean Fennessey?

  And we learned who he's playing. Who is he playing?

• 7:01Speaker 06

  He's playing Telemachus, right?

• 7:05Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think that's right.

• 7:06Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 7:07Speaker 06

  Agamemnon's Safdie, right?

• 7:09Sean Fennessey?

  Agamemnon is Benny Safdie.

• 7:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 7:12Sean Fennessey?

  Clytemnestra is. We learned Clytemnestra is Lupita and Yonah.

• 7:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Rolling. Okay. Oh, okay. Exciting. Uh, let's see. No, this is.

• 7:24Sean Fennessey?

  I really was hoping for more from the Oscar.

• 7:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, I was too.

• 7:26Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like we need, we gotta get some more prep for you. We gotta figure out what the layout is on this.

• 7:30Speaker 06

  Well, I kind of anticipated you being like, no, we have a very busy show today.

• 7:34Sean Fennessey?

  We do have a very busy show, but then you launched into it. I don't know. Got a lot going on.

• 7:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Cast of charac- okay, cast characters, movie. This is harder to Google than I want it to be. Also, I just like this.

• 7:46Speaker 07

  I have what seems like an unreliable report from comicbookmovie.com. Are you guys with me?

• 7:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 7:51Speaker 07

  Okay with me spreading that info?

• 7:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, please.

• 7:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Sorry, I just clicked on the IMDB. Hold on. I just clicked on the IMDb page and the writers are Homer and Christopher Nolan, so that's pretty good.

• 8:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's accurate, I think.

• 8:02Speaker 07

  That's good shit right there. Thanks to her, Christopher Nolan's great work. Tom Holland will reportedly play Odysseus's son, Telemachus.

• 8:08Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 8:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:08Speaker 07

  Zendaya will be Athena, Charlize Theron as Cersei.

• 8:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, see?

• 8:14Speaker 07

  And Hathaway as Penelope, Benny Safdie as Agamemnon. Lupita will be Clytemen- Clytemnestra?

• 8:22Speaker 06

  Clytemnestra.

• 8:24Sean Fennessey?

  Clytemnestra, yeah.

• 8:24Speaker 07

  Clytemnestra.

• 8:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's exciting.

• 8:26Speaker 07

  Never said that out loud, but that's all we got so far.

• 8:28Speaker 06

  Okay. I, I will do more research.

• 8:31Speaker 07

  And again, this is not reliable.

• 8:32Speaker 06

  The reason why I brought this up was this movie is still 15 months away from being in our theaters.

• 8:39Speaker 06

  Is it possible to overexpose a film before that? You know what I mean? Like, should I stay away from the updates because I'm so excited about the movie?

• 8:49Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's something you've talked about in the past with not wanting to watch trailers and things like that. So this is going against, I think, some of your philosophy. I mean, for me, I love to hear an update about what's going on with the production.

• 8:59Speaker 06

  But you don't, because I don't think you've really enjoyed this one battle after another process. I don't think you've enjoyed the budget speculation. I don't think you want to see Vegas reactions. Do you? Don't you want that fresh PTA trailer?

• 9:12Sean Fennessey?

  That's not the life I chose for myself, and I have to be OK with that, you know?

• 9:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm just trying to figure out who burnt thought could be in the, so I'm just, you know, reading things.

• 9:22Sean Fennessey?

  Did you start reading The Odyssey from page one?

• 9:25Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but I did. I am on the Wikipedia page. I'm also kind of stuck on, I'm just hearing Anne Hathaway as Penelope right now.

• 9:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's an inspired choice.

• 9:34Speaker 06

  You think it's good?

• 9:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know.

• 9:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's exactly, I could imagine a long journey returning home to her.

• 9:39Amanda Dobbins?

  OK.

• 9:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:42Sean Fennessey?

  Right? That's excellent casting, in my opinion.

• 9:45Amanda Dobbins?

  OK. I'm gonna sit on that for a bet and...

• 9:50Sean Fennessey?

  Here's what you need to do. You've got to bring more to the table than Christopher Nolan Arts and Updates X.com.

• 9:57Speaker 06

  You need me to do firsthand reporting?

• 9:58Sean Fennessey?

  You need to do something, well, not necessarily, interpretive work.

• 10:01Speaker 06

  OK.

• 10:02Sean Fennessey?

  Analysis of what we're learning.

• 10:04Speaker 06

  OK, I'll do, I'll do so. Next time I'll be better prepared.

• 10:06Sean Fennessey?

  The Odyssey R is an important product on this show for the next 18 months, OK?

• 10:12Amanda Dobbins?

  And you don't have to wait for studio time, you know? You can just, like, FaceTime right in, you know?

• 10:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, voice notes. Voice notes in the middle of the night, you've awoken to learn that some news has broken.

• 10:22Speaker 06

  Will there still be movie theaters when this movie comes out?

• 10:24Sean Fennessey?

  I'm glad you brought that up. Um, not the best weekend at the box office.

• 10:29Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 10:30Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not gonna do what you all think I'm gonna do.

• 10:32Speaker 06

  I don't think you will.

• 10:33Sean Fennessey?

  Which is just freak out?

• 10:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's early March.

• 10:35Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not gonna do that.

• 10:35Speaker 06

  It's fine.

• 10:36Sean Fennessey?

  It's early March.

• 10:37Speaker 06

  St. John's was playing.

• 10:38Sean Fennessey?

  St. John's is the two seed in March Madness. I'm not gonna pretend like I've been closely watching St. John's for the last 20 years, let alone for the last three months, but as a kid who went to several games at Alumni Hall as a teenager, this is a great time for St. John's fans, and I acknowledge that. Rick Pitino, complicated figure, great coach.

• 10:56Sean Fennessey?

  Does that mean anything to you?

• 10:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, but I mean, but it's like one of the guys in suits, you know, with the hairside. Who's the other guy? Bang?

• 11:04Speaker 06

  Oh, Mike Breen?

• 11:05Amanda Dobbins?

  No, Jay Wright, but also, I know that Mike Breen is the other Bang guy. And then if you are really good, you get a double Bang.

• 11:11Speaker 06

  Jay Wright retired. His replacement was just Michael from Villanova.

• 11:15Sean Fennessey?

  But all of his children play for my New York Knicks, which is wonderful.

• 11:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, that's, that's great.

• 11:20Sean Fennessey?

  The box office, not good. $52 million across all releases. There were five new wide releases this weekend. Nova Kane came in at number one. We'll get to that momentarily. $8.7 million. That's very low.

• 11:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:33Sean Fennessey?

  For the number one film in America.

• 11:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:35Sean Fennessey?

  The box office, here's the thing. The thing I want to talk to you guys about is something that we mentioned when Sean Baker gave his speech at the Academy Awards and also at the DGAs, which is about the theatrical window. And the sense that like, cats out of the bag officially, like words out to the common person. That if you don't go to the movies in the first weekend, your movie's probably coming, the movie's probably going to be on VOD within two or three weeks.

• 11:58Speaker 06

  Mickey 17 being the obvious.

• 11:59Sean Fennessey?

  Mickey 17 is coming to VOD, according to Warner Brothers, March 25th. That's 17 days after it was released. We talked about Black Bag on Friday on the show. Did you see it over the weekend?

• 12:08Speaker 06

  I have not yet. Should see it yet.

• 12:09Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you'll be able to see it on VOD probably in 10 days.

• 12:11Speaker 06

  Right, but I'm not gonna do that.

• 12:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, you're the problem.

• 12:14Speaker 06

  I had a lot of.

• 12:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Social allegations.

• 12:17Speaker 06

  And TV work to do this weekend.

• 12:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, all right, but you know.

• 12:22Sean Fennessey?

  Nevertheless, most movies that are not Odyssey-sized events, people are just gonna wait, and that's how this is now.

• 12:32Speaker 06

  This is the point, is that 90% of people in America are like, I really want to see this. I just don't have time this weekend. That should be an allowable thing to happen.

• 12:42Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 12:42Speaker 06

  In American society. Part of the reason why I was. Oh, I have like a month and a half to see this.

• 12:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 12:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:46Sean Fennessey?

  So, Black Bag is an interesting example of this because this is a film, I think, that is meant for older audiences. You know, by older, I mean somewhere between 35 and 100.

• 12:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 12:56Sean Fennessey?

  And most of those people are not even aware of it.

• 13:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:02Sean Fennessey?

  And they'll probably become aware of it when it hits a streaming service. And so people don't watch TV the way that they used to. Viral marketing doesn't really apply for adult movies. It's very cool that Steven Soderbergh got $50 million to make a movie like this, but I don't even know how you could expect a movie like this to make a ton of money. Now, maybe it will be a huge hit on VOD. Tom Quinn noted, I think on the Town Podcast, that Enora made eight figures in VOD profits, which is obviously Best Picture winner, much buzzed about movie, but that's still a lot of money. We don't have any transparency in any of that stuff, so it's hard to know what it's making up for. But I don't think, as long as Hollywood is run by people

• 13:45Sean Fennessey?

  who are more worried about the short term, i.e. saving their jobs, than the long term, which is preserving a certain theatrical movie-going experience. Like, I don't think this can ever, is ever gonna change.

• 13:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, you'll have your good times and bad times, right? Like, you're gonna have weeks like this where, I think the disappointing part about it is Nova came Black Bag at Mickey 17, and I say this is part of the problem because obviously I haven't gone to the movies in 10 days or whatever, but like, I do watch a lot of stuff. Those are three original films, which is the thing that we're craving. Um, even though they're, you could say some of them are like, uh, a little bit derivative. They're still original stories and, and nobody showed up.

• 14:21Sean Fennessey?

  Any thoughts?

• 14:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it does almost feel at this point like there was a collective understanding between the studios of like, okay, we don't really have confidence in any of these movies, so we're just gonna put them all on, on the same day and just like, write it off as one big loss, you know? Because now we understand our business cycle in either, in terms of either it's The Odyssey, it's a huge event movie, or it's IP franchise, or it's something that's gonna put a lot of butts in theaters, or like, this is Lost Leader Weekend for our VOD and streaming business. And so we're doing like the marketing now, so you'll watch it in two weeks.

• 14:59Speaker 06

  That's, you're touching on something that I've been noting, which is like, you know, obviously, and we do it here, we do it at The Ringer a lot, is that kind of pocket watching about how much movies cost, whether movies are in the black, whether movies is like, were disasters, or like, this administration at Warner's, or this administration at Disney is in trouble for the way that they've shepherded their projects. I think that they just need to do a much better job. I think the PVOD thing could, could start to become... Though like it'll have a second life on video of our era if they did a better job communicating what you said about Enora, you know, and that this movie actually was profitable or was, it was great to have in the theaters for such a long run. Obviously, the Oscars gave it a bump,

• 15:41Speaker 06

  but for the most part, people were spending 20 bucks to watch it at home. And yeah, it would have been better if they had gone and seen it at a theater and seen it collectively as Sean Baker intended, and I'm sure Steven Soderbergh intended, and I'm sure Bong intended. But if you can get to that point of like, yeah, but it did really well. Once people were able to just click buy, I think that that would change the narrative a little bit. Or do you think that that's just like?

• 16:06Sean Fennessey?

  It benefits the winners and hurts the losers. You know, the movies that didn't succeed in theaters and also don't succeed on PVOD. How do we characterize that? Once they introduce transparency, which I don't think they ever will in this format, but once they introduce it, then you'll be like, wow, not only did this movie only make $5 million at the box office, it only made $800,000 in PVOD purchases. So if I were the studios, I wouldn't want to release that information. This like our demand for data benefits us as ostensibly journalists or at least observers of cultural information. For them, you know, it's just it's bottom line oriented and a little bit more mystery here allows them to kind of shift the playing field as they want. Like 17 days might ultimately

• 16:48Sean Fennessey?

  go back up to 50 days or 60 days, or it could also go down to seven days. You know, like this could, this is going to evolve over time. It feels like Warner Brothers and Universal in particular have kind of settled on this two and a half week model. And, you know, by all accounts that we that are shared with us, it worked really well for Universal on a number of movies over time. If everyone starts doing that, I wonder what effect that has. You know, like once Sony signs up for this, once, you know, Neon and 824 sign up for this, once Disney signs up for this, that would really be the final domino in this equation. Disney even now, they make you wait for Disney Plus.

• 17:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:29Sean Fennessey?

  And like Moana 2 just went on Disney Plus. That came out in November.

• 17:33Speaker 06

  Brave New World will be VOD, P V O D before it goes to Disney Plus, right?

• 17:36Sean Fennessey?

  For sure. Yeah, probably soon.

• 17:38Speaker 06

  That movie is like clawing its way to something.

• 17:41Sean Fennessey?

  It's gonna get barely to 400 million, which is not good.

• 17:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:46Sean Fennessey?

  In the context of Marvel movies, that's very low. It's not an out and out disaster like the Marvels was, but it's pretty bad.

• 17:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:53Sean Fennessey?

  But you know, 824 produced Thunderbolts, so we got that going for us.

• 17:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's not a mistake to me at all that this is the weekend that The Electric State was released. And in theory, a lot of the time that people would devote to watching movies or going to a movie theater could have been spent watching this movie on Netflix.

• 18:13Speaker 06

  The problem is me.

• 18:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:14Sean Fennessey?

  You watched it, you watched it, and I watched it.

• 18:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I watched it because I have this job, but I guess there are people out there.

• 18:21Speaker 06

  I watched it because I was on this pod and I wanted to talk about it and I'm, you know, the Russo's are my, are my arch nemesis.

• 18:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 18:28Speaker 06

  But that two hours I would have spent at Black Bag probably on Sunday.

• 18:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:32Sean Fennessey?

  This is, um, this is the latest in a long line of mega tent pole streaming only Netflix movies. It's the latest movie from the Russo's who of course made four Marvel films and are going to make the next two Avengers movies. It's not an original story. It's based on the illustrated novel, The Electric State by Simon Stallenhag. That illustrated novel was crowdfunded, which I thought was fascinating because there couldn't be anything less crowdfunded than The Electric State, the movie.

• 19:00Speaker 06

  Did everybody who crowdfunded it get a piece of the 320? Is that why it cost so much?

• 19:04Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think that's how that worked. The movie stars Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, Kiwi Kwan, Jason Alexander, the voice of Woody Harrelson, the voice of Anthony Mackie, the voice of Brian Cox, the voice of Jenny Slate, Giancarlo Esposito, and Stanley Tucci.

• 19:21Speaker 06

  Giancarlo Esposito playing the Butcher of Schenectady.

• 19:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Your old title. The movie is about, what's it about? What's it's about a teenage girl.

• 19:32Speaker 06

  I want you to do this.

• 19:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, um, I, cause I, I was really paying very close attention when I watched it too. I definitely was not multitasking or watching some of it with my three year old.

• 19:43Sean Fennessey?

  Who loved it.

• 19:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, he was like, what's that yellow robot doing? Where are they going? What are they doing now? What are they doing now?

• 19:50Speaker 06

  Then they've already won.

• 19:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Okay. So Millie Bobby Bobby Brown is a teenager and.

• 19:58Speaker 06

  Named.

• 20:00Amanda Dobbins?

  No idea.

• 20:00Speaker 06

  Michelle.

• 20:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, and it's 1994.

• 20:03Speaker 06

  1990 in the beginning of the film.

• 20:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I, I'm starting, let, let me do it my way.

• 20:09Speaker 06

  I just didn't know if you were starting before or after the robot war.

• 20:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I was getting there. Would you just chill out?

• 20:17Amanda Dobbins?

  It is 1994 and we are living in a, a post civil war society. The war being between the humans and the robots. And, um, Millie Bobby Brown is blonde now and, but before the war, she had dark hair and she had a little brother.

• 20:39Speaker 06

  Named Chris.

• 20:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Who she, oh, he was named Chris. Yeah. Uh, who she loved a lot and.

• 20:45Sean Fennessey?

  Little guy, little guy Chris.

• 20:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And I don't, and I don't think their parents are around anymore.

• 20:50Speaker 06

  They are. They died in a car accident.

• 20:52Amanda Dobbins?

  And, oh, that's right. That's right. That's right. Because the robots didn't, they, she didn't lose her family to the robots. She lost her family to a car accident.

• 21:02Speaker 06

  Ironically, yeah.

• 21:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And so she is now it's 1994 and she's really blonde and, and wearing eyeliner. And she's pissed off and

• 21:16Amanda Dobbins?

  then she, okay, so somehow the yellow robot finds her.

• 21:22Sean Fennessey?

  She's visited by a, a yellow robot.

• 21:24Amanda Dobbins?

  The yellow robot finds her and.

• 21:27Sean Fennessey?

  That, that robot is a, a representation of her brother's favorite TV character.

• 21:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay. And also turns out to be piloted or inhabited, or if you want to get into robot consciousness, that's your choice. By her brother, who it turns out is alive.

• 21:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And somewhere and is like powering the robot.

• 21:54Sean Fennessey?

  And trying to lead her back to him.

• 21:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, he was on. He would go, he's in Seattle.

• 22:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 22:00Speaker 06

  Just FYI.

• 22:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and so.

• 22:03Sean Fennessey?

  Great note.

• 22:04Amanda Dobbins?

  But also, robots, because they lost the robot war, are like illegal, but.

• 22:12Speaker 06

  The survivors of the robot war live in Arizona.

• 22:14Sean Fennessey?

  They've been sent to the exclusion zone.

• 22:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, which I, which like, I thought was like, you know, is references to internment camps. And I just thought was wildly offensive. Um.

• 22:24Sean Fennessey?

  That is what it is.

• 22:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Just, I just like, wanna like, you know, I was like, wow, this is extremely not okay. And then, so, but so they have these robots and she needs this yellow robot in order to help her find her brother, but you know, now they're like kinda outlaws. And then somehow she joins up with Chris Pratt, who has bad hair and another like, robot who's much bigger. And he's like a bounty hunter like type, not bounty hunter, but like he's.

• 22:55Sean Fennessey?

  I think the question was, what is this movie about? Not what is every plot detail of the movie?

• 23:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, together they're going to find her brother. And then meanwhile, Stanley Tucci is evil Steve Jobs and is trying to get everyone to wear his little helmet and live in the metaverse.

• 23:14Speaker 06

  Because he wants to be with his mother who made him stuffed peppers, but actually didn't. It's an idealized version of his mom.

• 23:21Sean Fennessey?

  Correct.

• 23:21Speaker 06

  Who was an alcoholic and a mean woman when she was sober.

• 23:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, and so Millie, so it's about Millie Bobby Brown trying to find her brother with the help of some illegal robots fighting against Stanley Tucci.

• 23:38Sean Fennessey?

  That's, that's what it's about.

• 23:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:40Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly what it's about. It's one of the worst movies of the year. Uh, it's one of the worst movies of the decade. It is hard to judge the movie in a vacuum. There are not, it's, there are a couple of things that you could say this wasn't bad, but it being a $320 million movie that is served exclusively on the Netflix service and intended tent pole, but only at home, made by filmmakers who have mistaken their caretakerdom for creativity.

• 24:07Sean Fennessey?

  It is pretty much a fiasco. It's like derivative in many different directions. It's The Terminator meets Wally.

• 24:14Speaker 06

  Ready Player One.

• 24:15Sean Fennessey?

  The Creator meets Ready Player One. Lots of stuff you've seen before. Really just some of the worst star acting you're ever gonna come across. I mean, both Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt are terrible in this movie. They are so checked out. They, you don't, they clearly are green screening, like, they have no, Millie Bobby Brown has no idea how to act opposite these characters.

• 24:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Is she checked in? Like, you know, it's, she's, she's a Netflix star that they're trying to like extend the universe. And so, and they're trying to bridge some of her younger fans into like quote unquote more grown up material, but this is rated PG 13. There is, I guess, like robot violence, but, you know, but it's, anyway. Could she ever do anything other than this? Like this, she is doing what she was cast to do.

• 25:04Sean Fennessey?

  I would, uh, I mean, if you watch Inola Holmes, which isn't good, but is, they've made two of those now. They're, they're, you know, Sherlock Holmes Extended Universe movies that Netflix makes. She's better in those movies, I'll say. I wouldn't say she's like amazing, but she's like dead eyed in this movie.

• 25:21Speaker 06

  Uh, I think that she wasn't my problem. Like, of all the things that were going on in this movie, I think that this is what happens when, uh, the Chewbacca cheat goes wide. So the Chewbacca cheat is something that I ranted about years ago. I think it's in the last of the Star Wars sequels, but I, maybe it's in Force Awakens. I can't actually remember. But, uh, there's this sequence in the, one of those movies where Chewbacca is flying away from, uh, a planet.

• 25:51Sean Fennessey?

  It's in The Rise of Skywalker.

• 25:52Speaker 06

  And he, like, his spaceship explodes and we, as a collective audience and the characters in the film are all led to believe that Chewbacca is dead. It's very sad. Chewbacca is a beloved character.

• 26:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Excuse me. I know Chewbacca is.

• 26:04Speaker 06

  I know, I'm more like podcasting.

• 26:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

• 26:06Speaker 06

  And you are basically manipulated into thinking that Chewbacca is dead, but then you get the serotonin hit because Chewbacca is still alive. And what you realize is that like, oh, this is what they're gonna do. They're gonna actually play on the idea that something real has happened, something emotional, something devastating, something consequential has happened, but not really, not really, because we could not possibly impact like, what if we want to do Wookiee World? What if we want to have Chewbacca lead this? What if we can't kill a Wookiee and then not have him be at Star Wars Galaxy Cruise?

• 26:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 26:39Speaker 06

  So this movie does that basically across the board. It's like, no one is actually ever really dead. The civil war that you're talking about takes place between animatronic logos, like Mr. Peanut, and people who are wearing Apple Vision Pros and fighting with drone robot bodies. So there, I don't even know what kind of casualties there were in this war. They never actually engage in that. Not that I want this to be like an Alex Garland film, but like, it is always basically creating an out for itself. And even like a moment towards the end of the film, where Chris Pratt's buddy voiced by Anthony Mackie, you think dies.

• 27:20Sean Fennessey?

  A robot.

• 27:21Speaker 06

  Is immediately reborn as just the littler robot inside of like the little robot inside of a big robot. And you're just like, oh, so that we had 30 seconds of grief and thinking that this character might have lost his friend, and now he's just got his buddy back. It's always cheating you. It is always bullshit. And it's always like, I don't even know if it really is offensive enough to get angry about. It just makes me bummed out.

• 27:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's because the movie is very dark and very like, attempting to be James Cameron, that we lose sight of the fact that if this were marketed more as a movie for kids, if this were more like The Goonies or more like E.T., which is really ultimately what it's in the vein of, you probably wouldn't hold what you just described against it.

• 28:08Speaker 06

  No, no.

• 28:09Sean Fennessey?

  But because it basically is like, this is a mega IP event movie, then all of that stuff comes to the fore. And so the lack of stakes feels terrible. Like in The Goonies, we're not like, why do we kill one of the Goonies? You know, that wasn't, that's not how you think about a movie that's made for 11 year olds. But this movie. Because of the incredible success the Russo's have had, because of like this long string of IP movies that we've seen from The Service Red Notice, Extraction, Six Underground, no offense to Triple Frontier, but Triple Frontier, like, there's a long chain of really mediocre, mostly, movies that are like this, that like, are meant to be like, you used to get Predator, and now you get this.

• 28:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 28:51Sean Fennessey?

  And so, it hasn't supplanted the Goonies, it's supplanted mainstream action movies, I think?

• 28:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I, sort of, sort of. I don't, I think that, I think maybe we're taking it a little bit personally. Like, because we had to watch it, and, I mean, it's catastrophically bad, I hated it. And I did take offense to Millie Bobby Brown.

• 29:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 29:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And you just like, fast forwarded through Mr. Peanut, voiced by Woody Harrelson.

• 29:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 29:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Just like, as a part of the fight.

• 29:24Speaker 06

  Just sound like Jimmy Carter, yeah.

• 29:25Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, which is just, there's just a level of, and I guess that's supposed to be some sort of like, corporate satire, but it's not, but, it's just all...

• 29:38Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, this is a bigger issue, if you want to get into kind of like,

• 29:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:41Sean Fennessey?

  The subtext of the film.

• 29:43Amanda Dobbins?

  The subtext is like, absolute total garbage.

• 29:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's just, it doesn't, it doesn't represent anything. Like, it is trying to be, I think, a kind of satire?

• 29:53Speaker 06

  Oh, I thought it was supposed to be like, an allegory about how we should be like, everybody deserves like, dignity in life.

• 30:00Sean Fennessey?

  Including our robots?

• 30:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 30:02Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, I mean, that was what the creator was as well.

• 30:05Amanda Dobbins?

  But then...

• 30:06Sean Fennessey?

  I don't really know what that means.

• 30:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I want robots to be free! Um, but then she gives a whole speech about how like, we exchange molecules as people, so there's definitely some human supremacy like, built into some of it.

• 30:18Sean Fennessey?

  We just saw this in Mickey 17. In Mickey 17, the creepers are the other, and you're meant to have, but they are living creatures. They're not robots, and they're not Mr. Peanut, or a Dr. Pepper can, or... Kurt Loder's disembodied AI enhanced voice to make him seem 30 years younger, though not showing us his face while he reads a report from MTV News about the Robot Wars.

• 30:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:42Sean Fennessey?

  The like, the kind of feint towards 90s culture, which is this interesting moment where-

• 30:47Speaker 06

  There is no feint. It's like they played Danzig once, like that's-

• 30:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's some needle drops.

• 30:52Amanda Dobbins?

  This, the score at the end, they do like the Westworld thing, but with Wonderwall.

• 30:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 30:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 30:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Into Yoshimi, and I was like, when I was ready to flip my TV.

• 31:00Sean Fennessey?

  There's all their stuff. I mean, Jason Alexander is a feint towards it. There's a, there's like a number of things-

• 31:03Speaker 06

  But it's shot like an Amblin movie in the 80s, sort of. You know, it's supposed to be like, look at like the wonder with which they view like the, the mall full of robots.

• 31:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And so like, so what I was gonna say, like, it sucks. It like really sucks. And in a lot of ways, as we were discussing at a child's birthday party yesterday, like it is a concentration of everything that is wrong with current, like, big budget, studio, like filmmaking, like everything that we hate.

• 31:30Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Including the Russo brothers getting out there and talking, you know, talking their bullshit, like all boiled down into one horrible movie. Is it like, the reason that, like, we still have action, you know, is it, is it the worst thing that's ever happened in the end of civilization? I don't know, but it's really bad.

• 31:54Sean Fennessey?

  No, I, I think I'm, I think because we know what the budget is and we know that that comes in theory, though not in actuality, at the expense of 10, 32 million dollar movies, or 20, 16 million dollar movies, you know, the whole Cor Jefferson calculation.

• 32:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, totally.

• 32:08Sean Fennessey?

  Obviously, that isn't what Netflix would do. Netflix is doing this very purposefully. They've done it over and over and over again. I forgot to mention the Gray Man, the last time the Russos did this, and they made a really awful bastardized version.

• 32:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:19Sean Fennessey?

  I think they're both pretty dire.

• 32:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, but the Gray Man, like, at least had like, uh-

• 32:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Ryan Gosling.

• 32:23Speaker 06

  Like a very open cynicism and dark, like, it was basically-

• 32:26Sean Fennessey?

  I would argue that's worse because they wasted high level talent. At least in this, it's like Chris Pratt is in the middle of one of the least interesting star decades in a long time.

• 32:35Speaker 06

  He's just playing Han Solo over and over and over again.

• 32:38Sean Fennessey?

  Over and over again. Um, I think also these movies, as opposed to like a big budget failure at the box office. They hold like a negative space in our cultural memory. They don't, they're, they're either awful or we don't think about them. They don't really have fans. They have not created any other business for Netflix, which is one of the things I find most curious about this is there's no

• 33:00Speaker 06

  Adam Project 2.

• 33:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's, but there's no attempt to like build a theme park or to merchandise these things. They exist only in this closed loop of entertainment that Netflix, and it is their business model, so I understand it. But I think the fact that it doesn't have any other relationship in the world, other than just going to this place, feels so anathema to what movies are, which is like a place for everybody to be together and have fun together. And sometimes it's in a movie theater, sometimes it's at Disneyland. I'm not saying Disneyland is like a sacred space or anything, but it is like kind of an extension of culture that allows people to feel connected again.

• 33:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:34Sean Fennessey?

  This is the opposite of that. This is a neurocaster. This is the people in this movie being locked in on this giant thing that is meant to distract you from the world. We're obviously having a moment together personally about it. I appreciate that.

• 33:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:46Sean Fennessey?

  But it's only because it's like gun to our head, you know? It's like, this is the biggest movie of the weekend by far, and so we have to talk about it. And so, you know, it's been interesting watching the Russos do the press tour. They've said a number of things that are very silly. I thought it was very amusing that they pointed out the fact that Netflix shouldn't be doing this, that they shouldn't be

• 34:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, they say that as they walk out the door to go back to Marvel to make what will probably be two of the biggest movies of the century.

• 34:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. You particularly don't like what they represent, which is interesting because they come from something that you not only cover, but admire.

• 34:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, I, and I think that what they had to me, okay, so there's nothing personal against those guys, obviously, who gives a shit. But like, I think that what bothers me is that one thing that sort of defined them on the first 10 years of their career was a very like practical humility. Like they were very good at like figuring out like, how can we elevate whatever material we happen to be engaged with? Whether it's an episode of Community or, you know, like a Captain America movie, what have you. And Then after Endgame, I think they bought into this idea that they were Spielberg and that they were going to change movie making and that they could basically start DreamWorks with Agbo, which is their company.

• 35:00Speaker 06

  And hearing them talk about like going back to Marvel with all the tools and the technological innovations that they've developed at their company, when I'm like, you guys routinely put out stuff that is the definition of slop now. Like Citadel is the worst fucking thing I've ever seen, like by far.

• 35:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's their series on Amazon.

• 35:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, and it's like, all of these things, like there's almost this weird perverse like smirk about how much they cost. And you're never like, man, I can see it. I can see how you guys spent. I can see every dime on the screen, you know, it's like, there's this weird blindfolded participation by all the creative community that comes into these films where they're just like, I'll fucking do the voice for Mr. Peanut, man. Like, just tell me where to sign, like.

• 35:46Sean Fennessey?

  I have a real like shame on you attitude about Woody and Stanley Tucci and like people who know way better than to do a movie like this. And, you know, mailing it in is mailing it in. Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt are different. They're like trying to be stars. This is a big star project. I kind of understand that. You know, Jean Carlo Esposito, this is the second movie in a row this year where he showed up to be the bad guy. And like with a nothing part and nothing really to do.

• 36:07Speaker 06

  Where he basically is like sitting at a table and having his face on a TV screen somewhere.

• 36:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and possibly filmed everything way after, you know, of like from a, like his closet.

• 36:17Speaker 06

  That's the thing about this movie is that this one didn't really feel like one of those like, oh, they didn't even have a script for this. Like this actually feels like a pretty complete story that has like a beginning and middle and end. It's so flat, it's so like, there's no dynamic range between any of the set pieces. You're never like, oh my God, can you believe it? Like this is happening. It's just like, oh yeah, you know, no shit. Like, there's a mall full of robots who are living in peace and harmony.

• 36:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Now we, now we go to the deserted mall and the like apocalypse.

• 36:47Speaker 06

  And now all of a sudden, they took a submarine to Seattle and they're, they're gonna attack the evil corporation's building. And it, I, I, you're right, like this is almost like. Would it be better not to acknowledge it at all? But I suppose the way you tied it in, which is like, it's hard not to look at the box office weekend and then assume that most people who are like, I literally have two hours. I can do one of five things. And it's like, they probably watched this. And then I think a lot of like adults or people who are looking for, I would imagine they watch Adolescents, which is the number one show on Netflix and is four hours long. So it is a really tough fight that theaters have on their hands if you, if you put it up against this.

• 37:28Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think the energy is going to be like in Vegas?

• 37:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, when we go for, um, well, my energy is gonna be, um.

• 37:35Sean Fennessey?

  I think that will be different from the theater owners and the studios.

• 37:37Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's not good because I like, to Chris's point about there, I think there were many, many people, I think a majority of America who said, I don't have time to go to the theater to see a movie this weekend. And I think that they do see it, do that most weekends. And that's bad. I don't even know if I buy that they were sitting there thinking, okay, well, I have two hours and I can't make it to the theater, but instead I'm going to turn on the electric state. I think the mentality of most people is like, I definitely don't have time to go to the theater. And I guess I'll just like click two buttons and not pay attention to something and like not remember this.

• 38:19Speaker 06

  And this thing has that Netflix movie thing where they're constantly describing what is on the screen. So you kind of don't even have to watch because all of the dialogue is just about like, I'm sad because my parents died. I'm also sad because I lost a mother. You know what I mean? Like, there's never any nuance to like, any of the drama, like it's self evident, like that everybody's like, mom's sad because of this. It's like.

• 38:40Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think an overlooked part of this in particular, if we're going to make it a binary, and it's not necessarily a binary, but let's just say for the sake of this conversation that it is, is that in people's minds, the electric state is free. That's a fixed cost that they pay every month and they look at Netflix maybe every day. Maybe they only look at it eight, eight times a month, but that's more than they go to the movie theater.

• 39:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Sean Fennessey?

  Going to the movie theater is $40, $60, $80, $100. Netflix firing it up at 8:00 PM after you put your kids to bed in our case, or after you've had a long day at work, or you have a dead afternoon on a Saturday.

• 39:13Speaker 06

  And if you go to the movie theater, there's a guy on his phone and if there's, and like the, the projection isn't great or something.

• 39:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but, but even the financial point is essential, but I do also think. They're not even, they think of Netflix as Netflix and not as like, I'm going to watch a movie on Netflix.

• 39:30Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 39:30Amanda Dobbins?

  It is, it's almost a different activity, like a different, you know, art form.

• 39:34Sean Fennessey?

  Which is what they wanted.

• 39:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 39:36Sean Fennessey?

  They wanted it to be that fixed ecosystem experience, not a wider experience. And the fact that they are like licensing fewer movies now, but the stuff that they do license is all of the stuff that they could basically like pretend like it's a Netflix original, even though it came out from Lionsgate in 2012 and it stars Jason Statham. So like, it is all part of a very, as always, a very sophisticated strategy that they deploy. But when it's in the service, especially at the highest end of the budget, in the service of something like this, I find it very, very depressing.

• 40:09Speaker 06

  I, I agree with you. So here's the one thing I will say, and it's my hope, I, I think they've gone away from this largely in movies. And I know they had turnover in the executive department of that, in terms of their film stuff.

• 40:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:20Speaker 06

  They still will do things with television that nobody else would ever get the spotlight on these kinds of shows. Whether it's Ripley from last year or Adolescence from this year. I can't believe that that many people get an opportunity to check out something so formally inventive, so beautifully acted, so beautifully written, so important. I wish that they could do that with film. You know what I mean? Like, it's almost like if we're gonna take the poison, please give us some medicine.

• 40:48Sean Fennessey?

  The thing that is missing, because they, they, I mean, look, this is Roma, The Irishman, Marriage Story. Like, they've put out a lot of great movies over the years.

• 40:56Speaker 06

  But there's something wrong with the way those movies.

• 40:58Sean Fennessey?

  The Killer, you know, The Knives Out movies, like, they put out a ton of great movies. It's, to me, it's more about shifting to being more like an old studio, which is what I want so many studios to do. Which is like, have a real development team that actually develops properties, not just with insanely powerful directors. Because for the most part, what they do is they, they, in the past, they have recruited your Martin Scorsese's, your David Fincher's, your Jane Campion's, your Alfonso Cuarones, and saying like, what's the one that nobody else will make, we'll make it for you. Which can create radical art.

• 41:34Sean Fennessey?

  But and maybe win awards, but usually not.

• 41:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:37Sean Fennessey?

  But then those movies also go into the negative zone that I'm talking about.

• 41:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:41Sean Fennessey?

  And then they start to feel as though they don't exist. There's no physical representation of them. They don't play rep theaters. They only exist inside this closed system. And so they don't feel as much like a contribution to the wider art form. That's not good. If they if they change the model, which they're not going to do, but if they change the model, obviously the movies could go into the movie theaters. They could be sold physically, whatever, all the things that I would want. But they would probably live on in a deeper and more true way. In addition to that, a movie like Novocain, I'll use this as a pivot point. To me, kind of feels like what they should be doing more of.

• 42:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:13Sean Fennessey?

  And we saw with Rebel Ridge and Carry On last year that there's a huge audience. I Matt Bellany and Lucas Shaw talked about this a few weeks ago when they were looking at like, what are the most watched movies on their service? I don't think they're gonna make a lot more $300 million movies. I do think they're gonna make a lot more $60 million movies or $50 million movies. In the case of Novocain, I think it costs like 18 million. Which is, well, you you saw it?

• 42:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. I was one of two people in a 500 seat theater on Saturday afternoon. So I think 500, I, you know, did my best.

• 42:42Sean Fennessey?

  Roughly.

• 42:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:43Sean Fennessey?

  You counted 500 seats?

• 42:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Was.

• 42:45Sean Fennessey?

  You counted 500 individual seats?

• 42:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I counted 20 in my aisle and then I started doing some multiplication and then I and then I stopped.

• 42:50Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. Math. Um, this is the new movie from Dan Burke and Robert Olsen, who made a couple of movies that I've liked. Villains, Significant Other, which was on Paramount Plus a couple of years ago.

• 43:02Sean Fennessey?

  It stars Jack Quaid.

• 43:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:04Sean Fennessey?

  America's Good Boy.

• 43:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:05Sean Fennessey?

  The nice boy of Hollywood.

• 43:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:07Sean Fennessey?

  This is his second genre movie of the year that he's headlining after Companion. Also stars Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson. I have some thoughts on Ray Nicholson. Amber Midthunder from our beloved Predator. Absolutely. Um, she also appears in Opus. Rather, Prey. Yeah.

• 43:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's about.

• 43:25Sean Fennessey?

  An assistant bank manager who can't feel pain, who, after a bank robbery, his-

• 43:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, physical pain?

• 43:32Sean Fennessey?

  Can't feel physical pain. He can feel emotional pain, for sure. We see that throughout the film.

• 43:37Sean Fennessey?

  And after a bank robbery, his budding love interest is kidnapped, and he decides that he's gonna chase after these bank robbers and try to track her down. And because he can't feel pain, he can survive on this journey in ways that others would not be able to.

• 43:53Sean Fennessey?

  When you've- I remember when you first saw this trailer, you were like, "I don't know, I feel like we got too much of this stuff." You know, like, I feel like with the like-

• 43:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, fake Wick.

• 43:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, post-John Wick.

• 44:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, nobody-

• 44:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 44:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:03Sean Fennessey?

  I just watched Love Hurts.

• 44:05Amanda Dobbins?

  The Kiwi Kwan movie.

• 44:05Sean Fennessey?

  The Kiwi Kwan movie, which I thought was very bad. Maybe having seen Love Hurts has made me like Novocain more, but I kinda liked it. I think mostly because Jack Wade is very winning. And you basically need your star to be great for this movie to work. And I- I'm just- I'm on board with him, so I liked it.

• 44:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Me too. It is amazing that- because you spend a lot of time with just him on the screen, and then you can just, like, see the Meg Ryan, it like, take over his body in certain moments in that very, like, winning way, which is just kinda fun also.

• 44:38Sean Fennessey?

  See the Meg Ryan, yeah. That's a good way of putting it, yeah.

• 44:40Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like, in the interstitial moments, and it is part of that, his ability to ingratiate you to this character.

• 44:45Sean Fennessey?

  You have empathy for him, yeah.

• 44:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I liked the first 45 minutes of it. You know, and then at some point, it's like, what's your definition of fun? And is your definition of fun watching his, like, thumb bend 45 different ways? And like-

• 45:00Sean Fennessey?

  That part was tough.

• 45:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, it is gross, and that is what it's supposed to be, but, so, like, I got over it a little bit. I liked the nepo baby, like, square off at the end.

• 45:10Sean Fennessey?

  With Ray and Jack, yeah.

• 45:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And that's another one where you can, like, see it jump out a little bit. So it it was it was fine. I think that you're quite right. It would have played very well at home on a Saturday night if I were like sitting down and like, guess I want to watch a movie.

• 45:29Sean Fennessey?

  I think it will when it goes to VOD.

• 45:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. Again, I don't think that anyone consuming Electric State is sitting down thinking, and now I'm gonna watch like a, you know, tub of popcorn and then like it's Friday movie night. It's just kind of like.

• 45:43Speaker 06

  Now I'm gonna watch a tub of popcorn. I hope we all get to that point where we're just like staring at popcorn.

• 45:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, here we go. You know, I think um that that, as Chris said, is slap is like widget content. And this feels like a fun, mid-budget movie that plenty of people could watch at home happily.

• 46:02Speaker 06

  Who are these directors?

• 46:03Sean Fennessey?

  Um, they they made the movie Significant Other with Jacob Jake Lacy.

• 46:08Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:09Sean Fennessey?

  Um, you remember the.

• 46:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, of course. In the forest, right?

• 46:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, which is pretty cool.

• 46:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, that was a real COVID era.

• 46:13Sean Fennessey?

  They're talented. They definitely, I think the movie is very episodic in the final 45 minutes, as Amanda said, where it's just sort of like, he keeps getting himself into incredibly violent showdowns with people, and they can't hurt him, um, which becomes iterative at a certain point.

• 46:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 46:27Sean Fennessey?

  Like you said, the first 45 minutes, I thought they were pretty adept at like the rom-com stuff. You know, like the this burgeoning romance between Amber Mithunder, who also I thought was very good in this.

• 46:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Good supporting cast.

• 46:40Sean Fennessey?

  Like, it worked a lot. Yeah, Matt Walsh is super funny in this movie. Betty Gabriel is super funny in this movie. I thought it was better than I thought it was gonna be, is ultimately where I landed on it.

• 46:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, also starts with a 90s kid. Um, there's, everybody hurts, are you? I'm playing like loudly throughout, which is like very funny.

• 46:55Sean Fennessey?

  A number of very good needle drops throughout this movie.

• 46:57Speaker 06

  They never address whether Kurt Cobain is still alive in the version of reality in Electric State.

• 47:03Sean Fennessey?

  Well, let's call the Russos. You have their number. Give them a call.

• 47:08Sean Fennessey?

  One last thing about this, Ray Nicholson I mentioned is Jack Nicholson's son. He's making a bid now. He's been in movies a little bit in the last five years, but I saw another movie that he was in that's come that I think came out this past weekend called Borderline. You guys familiar with this movie? Small indie starring Samara Weaving, also set in the 90s, also set in the mid 90s. She plays a pop star, I think named Sophia, and he plays her stalker, her mentally unwell stalker. And the movie is very much told from, it's like, it's very king of comedy. It's not quite funny, it's not quite scary, but it exists in that zone between those two. And he's really, really good.

• 47:52Sean Fennessey?

  And you obviously are looking at Jack Nicholson's son and he's making Jack Nicholson faces. He can't not, he can't not go crazy the way that Jack does. But in the same way with Jack Quaid where I'm like, I don't know, man, like being a nepo baby doesn't mean you're untalented. You have your face, your parents DNA.

• 48:08Amanda Dobbins?

  The essential presence, like when it jumps out, it's like, oh, that same quality that makes like the way that your eyebrows go up and you'd be like, you know, I'm leaning in. Like I'm charmed by you, Jack Quaid, like I, you know, it has, it's, it's there.

• 48:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so I, I liked that, that other film with Ray and I thought he was a really good villain in this movie. Very, very pro forma, not surprising, but very good at what he was doing. Let's go back to streaming movies.

• 48:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 48:34Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about The Gorge.

• 48:35Speaker 06

  Oh, sure.

• 48:36Sean Fennessey?

  Which we've overlooked.

• 48:37Speaker 06

  We have, we left it.

• 48:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:38Sean Fennessey?

  We, we never got to it on this show. You never got to it at all.

• 48:42Speaker 06

  That's okay.

• 48:42Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I chose to watch a different movie.

• 48:44Sean Fennessey?

  So Chris and I are going to attempt to share with you in the same way you shared with us the story of the electric state, what happens in The Gorge. See if we can do this as a duo, CR.

• 48:54Speaker 06

  I mean, Miles Teller plays a soldier, I mean, I, you would, I honestly could have my, my, all my loved ones dangling over a shark pit. And it's on me to remember the names of the characters in this movie. And they would just be chum. I would not be able to save them.

• 49:09Sean Fennessey?

  Same. I can't, I don't know what their names are.

• 49:11Speaker 06

  Miles Teller plays a soldier with PTSD who's kind of kicking around, I think like the, the sort of Ventura carpenteria area based on the skyline. And he gets hired by, he thinks the CIA.

• 49:28Speaker 06

  Just like a really overcast kind of like-

• 49:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, alright, I was just gonna say, one of the identifying characteristics of that skyline for you-

• 49:33Speaker 06

  More just that it's just like a lot, like a lot of gray, like, ooh, like, you know, beach haze, you know, like-

• 49:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, got it.

• 49:39Speaker 06

  And he gets hired by Sigourney Weaver, who he believes is CIA. There's only one person in this conference room, and she's just like, "I'm in the CIA," and he's like, "Totally believe you."

• 49:47Sean Fennessey?

  For the record, he's a sniper.

• 49:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's a sniper, my bad. Sorry, he's the best, the best.

• 49:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 49:51Speaker 06

  Uh, he's-

• 49:52Sean Fennessey?

  Except-

• 49:53Speaker 06

  What?

• 49:53Sean Fennessey?

  Well, he has some competition.

• 49:55Amanda Dobbins?

  But, so is he out of the game?

• 49:57Speaker 06

  He is out of the game. He's home, he's rotated back to the world, he's hanging out in Carpinteria, and, uh, he gets hired by Sigourney Weaver to do a job on a parallel track, another plot. Anya Taylor-Joy plays a Eastern European Balkan, uh, woman who's also a sniper, who-

• 50:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Is she in Carpinteria?

• 50:16Speaker 06

  No, she's in like Romania, or like Croatia or something. I don't know, I can't remember. Um, but they are both brought to this space called The Gorge. The gorge is colloquially described as the gate to hell, which I think would have been a better movie if it had been that. Because instead, it is a giant pit guarded by two towers on one side and the other, and you're not supposed to talk to your, your, you know, sniper over on the other side. You're just supposed to keep what's in the gorge from coming out. It's just basically like, you're like the stop-gap method from stopping whatever demonic presence is down there from getting out, and there are demonic presences.

• 50:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 50:56Sean Fennessey?

  There, the reason for this, I've been trying to think through, because it's actually a great setup.

• 51:00Speaker 06

  It's awesome. Scott Erickson has incredible first acts.

• 51:03Sean Fennessey?

  He always, I was just gonna say that, he always sets his movies up so well, and sometimes pays them off for me, not always. But this is the director of Sinister, Doctor Strange, The Black Phone. Um, the setup is that you've got these two snipers on opposite ends, essentially on opposite ends, even of the sort of like international relations, and they have made this tacit agreement- Unspoken in the shadows that they will protect the world from what is inside of the gorge. By every, I don't know how long the cycles are. Is it one year? Is it three years? However, long the cycles are. Cycling in one elite sniper to shoot down whatever would be climbing up from the gorge to attempt to get into the world at large.

• 51:43Sean Fennessey?

  The problem is in this case, that these two insanely hot people have been enlisted as the snipers. And they fall in love from across the way. They do the love actually thing. They literally love actually it. And they have like nights together where they like share wine across the way and they play music for each other.

• 52:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it like we're using like binoculars?

• 52:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Yeah, binoculars and writing on a whiteboard to be like. Cause you know, they have their scopes and everything with their rifles. And they, you know, he looks like Miles Teller and she looks like Anya Taylor-Joy. They're like, I want to fuck this sniper across the way who's from Bulgaria or whatever.

• 52:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 52:17Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 52:17Speaker 06

  That'd be like an awesome Joachim von Trier movie. I want to fuck this sniper.

• 52:22Sean Fennessey?

  The movie, the part of the appeal of the movie is part of what works against it, which is that it's five different movies. It is an elite spy sniper movie. It is a story about young love.

• 52:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 52:32Sean Fennessey?

  It is eventually a video game movie because of course they have to go into the gorge.

• 52:39Sean Fennessey?

  Well, first they have to get together. They get together. They have a magical night together.

• 52:42Amanda Dobbins?

  In whose tower?

• 52:43Speaker 06

  In Anya's and it's the sin. It's the original sin. It's Adam and Eve biting the apple.

• 52:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 52:48Speaker 06

  And it's like they take their eye off the ball, which is the gorge.

• 52:51Amanda Dobbins?

  What would the international relations like parallel to this?

• 52:53Speaker 06

  Well, it's good that you ask that because we find out as it goes on. That what's actually in the bottom of the gorge is not in fact the gate to hell, but rather a massive. Military industrial complex bio weapon experimentation zone.

• 53:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, it's gone terribly wrong.

• 53:10Speaker 06

  Labs and like they've just like all the people who've been down there since like World War Two have basically become deformed demons. So you get down there and it's essentially.

• 53:18Sean Fennessey?

  Spiders.

• 53:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Why do they have to go down there?

• 53:20Speaker 06

  Uh, they, one of them falls, right?

• 53:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 53:23Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then the other goes down after them.

• 53:24Sean Fennessey?

  To save them, yeah.

• 53:25Speaker 06

  Right. Um, when Miles Teller.

• 53:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Why do they fall? Cause they're just like really getting after it?

• 53:29Speaker 06

  From his date.

• 53:30Sean Fennessey?

  He needs to return to his post.

• 53:32Speaker 06

  His cord gets cut. His like little.

• 53:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, is he like?

• 53:34Speaker 06

  Zip line gets cut.

• 53:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Zip line over?

• 53:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Cool.

• 53:37Speaker 06

  Um.

• 53:37Amanda Dobbins?

  You guys into ziplining?

• 53:38Sean Fennessey?

  The moment all the way up until.

• 53:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Me either.

• 53:41Sean Fennessey?

  I would, I, I, I think some of the dialogue is really shoddy in this movie, but the moment up until the cord snapped. I was like, I'm pretty much in on this. Like, I really want to know where this is going.

• 53:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:51Sean Fennessey?

  As soon as they get into the gorge. I hated it.

• 53:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's like demon soldiers with like personalities and it's kinda like what it sounds like what happens with Novocain, which is a really good hour and then an hour of like

• 54:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Speaker 06

  kind of monotonous action.

• 54:06Amanda Dobbins?

  So is Sigourney Weaver ultimately not from the CIA?

• 54:09Speaker 06

  We find out that she's in fact not CIA. He just didn't ask for ID and she was, uh, she's employed or runs the bioweapon company.

• 54:17Amanda Dobbins?

  How would you appropriately ask for ID from the CIA?

• 54:20Speaker 06

  I don't know if it works like with a cop, like where you like, you could get to ask like,

• 54:24Sean Fennessey?

  License and registration, please.

• 54:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think the CIA operates under subterfuge anyway.

• 54:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 54:28Speaker 06

  So the idea of them being like, by the way, I'm CIA, you know, um, in any case, uh, this is the, when, when we write the history books about cinema, uh, this will be the purest distillation of COVID era filmmaking. It's two people who are rarely in the same scene together. There's only like three other people in the movie.

• 54:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 54:48Speaker 06

  Most of it is VFX for the second hour.

• 54:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Cool.

• 54:51Speaker 06

  I don't know why this movie took like five years to come out. Uh,

• 54:55Sean Fennessey?

  It was clearly made for the big screen and they just shuttled it to streaming.

• 55:00Speaker 06

  But it was always an Apple movie.

• 55:01Sean Fennessey?

  It was always an Apple movie, but you know, Apple released Napoleon, they released Killers of the Flower Moon. It was in this time, you know, they're releasing F1, like they're still releasing movies.

• 55:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's a big budget movie. This is a big movie. This, this movie has a Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross score. Like this is, was meant to be a mainstream movie and I could be wrong, but my gut is that they just looked at it and they're like, this isn't good enough. We can't do the typical marketing spend against this to put it in a movie theater.

• 55:23Amanda Dobbins?

  So they make it to the, to the bottom of the bioweapons and they defeat Sigourney Weaver?

• 55:28Speaker 06

  They find a old, no, she's just still up there in her helicopter, but they find a Jeep that they drive up the side of a mountain.

• 55:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 55:36Speaker 06

  Or of the gorge.

• 55:37Sean Fennessey?

  Like you do.

• 55:37Speaker 06

  Cause they have a winch and they get to the top and then they set off a bunch of charges so that Sigourney Weaver's come in her helicopter and the helicopter gets blown up and falls into the gorge.

• 55:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And then like it all explodes.

• 55:50Sean Fennessey?

  In theory, all of the testing.

• 55:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Where is the Gordon?

• 55:53Speaker 06

  And then they, you know, cause like they're separated sort of as they escape.

• 55:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:58Speaker 06

  And Anya Taylor-Joy gets to become a barmaid in like, like the Positano Coast. And one day, Miles Teller shows up and is like, I hear, I hear the rap.

• 56:09Amanda Dobbins?

  At the end, yeah, that's beautiful.

• 56:11Sean Fennessey?

  It's like a Michael Caine in the, in Italy at the end of Dark Knight.

• 56:15Speaker 06

  He didn't want to bury another Batman.

• 56:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, well, that sounds bad.

• 56:20Sean Fennessey?

  This movie's not good.

• 56:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 56:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Sean Fennessey?

  Lot of talent attached to it.

• 56:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:24Sean Fennessey?

  Sort of.

• 56:24Speaker 06

  Do you think, are you with me? It would have been cool if it was hell. It would have been cool if you were like, ah, hell is real?

• 56:30Sean Fennessey?

  Why is this not a John Carpenter movie? You know, why is it like a weird Resident Evil movie?

• 56:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 56:33Sean Fennessey?

  I don't under, they, they basically turned it into Resident Evil at the end and it's not very good.

• 56:36Speaker 06

  Um, I think we're casting too many hot people to do jobs that not hot people do. I think this is.

• 56:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 56:43Speaker 06

  Uh, a movie that I think, to your point about John Carpenter, it should have been like a James Woods kind of guy should have been doing this.

• 56:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 56:50Speaker 06

  You know, it should not be always like Miles Teller looking like pretty hot, but actually quite bored with the movie he's in. Uh, which I'm a little bit nervous about for him.

• 56:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, yeah.

• 57:00Sean Fennessey?

  He's off track.

• 57:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:02Sean Fennessey?

  He's off track. He had more momentum than you could possibly imagine after Maverick and he's way off track. So what, what are we gonna do?

• 57:08Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 57:09Sean Fennessey?

  I know the Eagles are not off track. I know that in theory, he's doing great.

• 57:11Speaker 06

  He's doing great. He was on Saturday Night Live 50.

• 57:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he was on the, at the Oscars.

• 57:14Amanda Dobbins?

  They lost their house in the fire.

• 57:16Sean Fennessey?

  That's terrible. I, I wish, in no ill will.

• 57:18Amanda Dobbins?

  People are seeing, sending him grateful shirts.

• 57:20Speaker 06

  Nobody gets his back more than me and him.

• 57:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, no, I know.

• 57:23Sean Fennessey?

  I see so much in him.

• 57:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 57:25Sean Fennessey?

  And I just want better for him. Um, let's talk about Last Breath quickly.

• 57:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 57:30Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, you didn't see this yet, right?

• 57:30Speaker 06

  I didn't.

• 57:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Um, would you recommend Chris's?

• 57:33Amanda Dobbins?

  But you're sort of, you're, so it's basically like Apollo 13 underwater.

• 57:40Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 57:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, but, but, but without, um.

• 57:45Speaker 06

  Is this based on a true story?

• 57:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. Have you seen the thing?

• 57:49Speaker 06

  The what?

• 57:50Amanda Dobbins?

  The, the documentary. Cause it's based on like a, a documentary.

• 57:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so 2019 documentary is based on a true story. Same director as the documentary.

• 57:56Amanda Dobbins?

  But didn't know how it, how it wound up. So I would say this was like.

• 58:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, Apollo 13 underwater without, you know, bigger ideas, or Ron Howard's budget, or Tom Hanks. But I definitely was concerned. I was, I didn't know what was gonna happen because I didn't know the rest.

• 58:20Sean Fennessey?

  Same, I have not seen the documentary.

• 58:21Amanda Dobbins?

  And I was very concerned for the people involved. At some points, like, really thought I was watching a snuff film. Um, I, you know, I was like, really uncomfortable, like, really, really uncomfortable in the, because of this story and the way it was being filmed. But also, it, you know, it's just fine, but...

• 58:47Sean Fennessey?

  I fully agree.

• 58:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:48Sean Fennessey?

  That I felt both enormous fear for the characters, but also walked out of the movie and was like, oh, it's all right.

• 58:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:55Sean Fennessey?

  Um, this is a common trend now. The most recent example I can think of is the Jimmy Chin, Chi Vasarelli movie, The Rescue, coming out in 2018, I want to say. And then 13 Lives, the Ron Howard movie.

• 59:10Speaker 06

  The Ron Howard, that's actually pretty good.

• 59:11Sean Fennessey?

  The Ron Howard movie is excellent. Unfortunately, I had seen The Rescue. So I, there was no drama.

• 59:17Speaker 06

  Right.

• 59:18Sean Fennessey?

  Like, I knew exactly.

• 59:18Speaker 06

  But we also knew that what happened in Apollo 13, right?

• 59:22Sean Fennessey?

  But I, the problem is, is that the, the, the actual story of that Thai cave rescue, the details of it are remarkable. Like, what they did to rescue those kids is amazing. But if you watch it completely shown in the way that, that's a great documentary, too. In this case, I just hadn't seen Last Breath, the 2019 documentary that Alex Parkinson made. So, like you, I didn't know where the story was going. And what actually happens to one of the men who gets trapped defies explanation. It's, it's just one of the craziest things that you could ever imagine happening.

• 59:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And you know, like, you're, you're watching a movie, so it, you're thinking to yourself, okay, well, like... I'm watching this movie like I I have to be watching it because of one outcome. But then the movie does sort of confound that for a while and sort of like, okay, wait, actually, what am I watching? What is it? So there is like a level of suspense that it maintains.

• 1:00:12Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 1:00:13Amanda Dobbins?

  That is pretty gripping. I would say it's like top to bottom miscast with the exception of the captain of the boat.

• 1:00:20Speaker 06

  Which is Woody Allison?

• 1:00:21Amanda Dobbins?

  No, he's-

• 1:00:22Sean Fennessey?

  No, Cliff Curtis. He's awesome.

• 1:00:23Speaker 06

  I love him.

• 1:00:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Sean Fennessey?

  He's great.

• 1:00:26Amanda Dobbins?

  But the-

• 1:00:27Sean Fennessey?

  Woody is kind of weird in it.

• 1:00:29Amanda Dobbins?

  He's, I mean, like, he's fine, but it's like another Mr. Peanut situation, like that, you know, he's mostly in one little submersible that-

• 1:00:37Sean Fennessey?

  Simuloo.

• 1:00:38Speaker 06

  Did you, were you getting Jimmy Carter from Mr. Peanut?

• 1:00:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah, you know, but like-

• 1:00:43Sean Fennessey?

  Is that who Mr. Peanut is based on?

• 1:00:45Speaker 06

  No, but he sounded like Mr. Peanut and wasn't Jimmy Carter?

• 1:00:48Sean Fennessey?

  He was a peanut farmer.

• 1:00:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, peanut farmer, yeah.

• 1:00:50Speaker 06

  So is he like, just do Jimmy-

• 1:00:51Sean Fennessey?

  You think it was an homage to the late president?

• 1:00:52Speaker 06

  Kind of wonder, yeah.

• 1:00:53Sean Fennessey?

  I think that was probably recorded some years ago before Carter passed.

• 1:00:56Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:00:57Sean Fennessey?

  Carter, his policies internationally, you agreed with them? Kind of a gorge situation?

• 1:01:05Speaker 06

  How would Jimmy Carter have handled the gorge?

• 1:01:09Sean Fennessey?

  Last breath, soft recommend?

• 1:01:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Soft recommend, yeah.

• 1:01:12Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:01:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I, you know, I think they cast people who are willing to dive for, rather than people who maybe had the emotional register, but that's okay.

• 1:01:23Speaker 06

  Before we get to the next film-

• 1:01:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Speaker 06

  I just want to address something really quickly.

• 1:01:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, is this about me and you?

• 1:01:28Speaker 06

  Nope. Nobody really knows who Burnfall is playing, which is why I don't know. There's some speculation that it's Menelaus and there's some speculation that it's Mester.

• 1:01:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I did wonder if it was Menelaus.

• 1:01:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, and so it's not my fault. I just, I walked myself into that corner. I couldn't get out, but I want to say-

• 1:01:43Sean Fennessey?

  I just need you to get your shit together, figure out what the odd of CR is. Stop dive bombing these episodes with random updates. Come in with a plan. I'll support that plan.

• 1:01:53Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:01:53Sean Fennessey?

  I, I want, there's nothing I want more than for you to be a star. A big shining star. Um, let's talk about the monkey. Uh, this is the second Oz Perkins movie in eight months. There's actually another movie coming out later this year from Oz Perkins called Keeper. Uh, it also comes from Neons, based on a Stephen King story from the eighties, which I read. Um, not recently, but when I was a kid. And I remember being very upsetting and scary. And I did not think the monkey was very scary and is not really trying to be. It is much more of a horror comedy.

• 1:02:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Sean Fennessey?

  Emphasis on extravagant, gory kills. Uh, do you know anything about the story of this movie? Do you know what it is?

• 1:02:34Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but I did recently learn that, um, Oz Perkins's great grandmother is also Scaparelli. So I, that was, I didn't know that. Yeah.

• 1:02:43Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, so there you go. I learned that from his press tour for this film. I think from.

• 1:02:49Speaker 06

  Did you have Oz on for the monkey?

• 1:02:50Sean Fennessey?

  No, I did not. Um, I was pretty mixed on the monkey.

• 1:02:54Speaker 06

  I was pretty mixed on the monkey too. It has a bunch of things that I'm not a big fan of in horror movies, both or in any filmed medium, which is twins, uh, and also.

• 1:03:03Sean Fennessey?

  Crazy times for you right now, though.

• 1:03:05Speaker 06

  Dangerous toys. I don't like.

• 1:03:07Sean Fennessey?

  Dangerous toys.

• 1:03:08Speaker 06

  Never been a Chucky guy.

• 1:03:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 1:03:10Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting. So there is a monkey, of course.

• 1:03:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:03:12Speaker 06

  A toy monkey.

• 1:03:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's a toy monkey that, um, that plays the drums. And the monkey plays the drums, I think because Disney copyrighted. What is the other monkey? Is it the, the organ grinder?

• 1:03:28Speaker 06

  This guy, yeah.

• 1:03:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the, the. I, I'm almost positive that's what happened. So in the story, that's what it is.

• 1:03:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:03:35Sean Fennessey?

  But in real life, in, in this story, they had to change it to the drums. But every time the monkey performs sort of drum solo, Knox Energy for the record.

• 1:03:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:44Sean Fennessey?

  Someone in the world is killed.

• 1:03:46Speaker 06

  In a spectacular fashion.

• 1:03:48Sean Fennessey?

  And in extract, the kills in this movie.

• 1:03:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Every time Knox drums, so.

• 1:03:52Sean Fennessey?

  It, the kills are fucking crazy. Some of them are fun. Sure.

• 1:03:57Speaker 06

  Um, I think it, it's a good testament to why kills need context. Uh, cause like just pure violence or bloodshed is, it doesn't do anything. I mean, I, I, I can admire it from an aesthetic level and there's definitely some good filmmaking in this. But, uh, if there was like some goofiness to Long Legs, it's that extracted and then blown up for an entire film. This is like.

• 1:04:23Sean Fennessey?

  Central feeling.

• 1:04:23Speaker 06

  Yeah. And I am a guy who, one of my favorite movies ever made is Maximum Overdrive, which is a Stephen King directed film about what would happen if trucks and machines took over the world for.

• 1:04:33Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of the Electric State Requiem. Yeah.

• 1:04:34Speaker 06

  Um.

• 1:04:35Sean Fennessey?

  By the way, Stephen King riddled with cocaine throughout the production of this film.

• 1:04:38Speaker 06

  Uh, but, so I, I don't mind like that. I don't mind funny horror.

• 1:04:43Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:44Speaker 06

  But this was like, kind of like just gory for gore's sake and. Um, I never really got that into like the story itself of these two twin brothers who were kind of beefing from childhood and then realized they have to rely on each other.

• 1:04:57Sean Fennessey?

  Here's the thing, this movie, just like Long Legs, the more I listened to Oz talk about it or read about the inspirations for it, the more I got it, that's not necessarily a good thing for the movie watching experience, but like Long Legs, this is very clearly a movie about processing your parents' death and the suddenness of death and how that feels to a person. Um, this movie has two very intense death sequences, um, for parents. Uh, he also mentioned Death Becomes Her as a big inspiration, which is- Now I'm listening. Now, I would not say it has quite the feminist energy of Death Becomes Her, but the tone and that approach, that horror comedy style-

• 1:05:38Speaker 06

  Extreme physical comedy, yeah.

• 1:05:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Um, made it make more sense to me. I really like, I really like Oz personally. I love talking with him on the show. I, I liked Long Legs. I'm very curious to see about Keeper. This is the third of the three movies. Um, and I've heard it's very good.

• 1:05:51Speaker 06

  Is Keeper, no, it's not also Stephen King?

• 1:05:53Sean Fennessey?

  Not also Stephen King, no. Amanda, I would not recommend The Monkey to you. Okay. Did you see Ifes? I did. Oh, cool. Okay, great. Um, let's talk about Ifes quickly. Okay. Directed by Carson Lund, was at the New York Film Festival last year. I think it was at Cannes in 2024, actually. That, I think that's- In the, in, at the Fortnite. Um, it's about, I know Bob has seen it as well. It's about, um, basically one last baseball game at a, another 1990 story, a small Massachusetts town that has a amateur baseball crew before the stadium's going to be demolished to build a new school. It has the structure of a game, but no real story. Mm-hmm. Um, is extremely durational game, takes a very long time to complete, including Into the Darkness, really much more of a character study.

• 1:06:39Sean Fennessey?

  It is made by some of the same people who made Christmas Eve at Miller's Point. This is very similar in terms of tone, in terms of like the episodic nature of it. Um, I thought it was very charming. What'd you think?

• 1:06:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Same. I mean, it is guys sitting around playing baseball and talking in the dugout. Um, and it's mostly actors that, you know, you haven't seen before of a certain age. Just like, it's not like a movie star movie. It's just a very charming slice of life of these people who do something together every once in a while and are having to say goodbye to it. Like, it is a little melancholy.

• 1:07:16Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 1:07:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, but, you know, in the way that baseball is, I don't know. I like baseball, so I was turned by it. Bob?

• 1:07:23Speaker 07

  Oh, I loved it. I thought that it was, it's one of my favorite movies of the year so far. Um, I did get a chance to see it last year at New York Film Festival. I thought that one of my favorite parts of it was that at times, in a good way, it felt like sort of a competition between the writers to see how many different baseball aphorisms they could just rip off in a row without the movie totally stalling out, and it doesn't. And then the other piece of it that I thought was amazing and captures the essence of baseball is it's so tactile. They have all these cool interstitials between the different episodic, you know, I guess, episodes of the movie.

• 1:07:55Sean Fennessey?

  The innings of the movie.

• 1:07:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, they literally break it down into innings and they show scorecards. Um, it feels kind of timeless, although I think it's intended to be said in the 90s, where they have these old Sports Authority water bottles, the jerseys are all varying different ages. It just captures that kind of like liminal and endless quality that baseball can have. It's very, very dreamlike in its execution. So, um, if you love baseball, or if you love a kind of like dreamlike descent into weirdness, I do think you will vibe with EpiS.

• 1:08:25Speaker 06

  Uh, what's going on with the, the scene? This scene of the EpiS, the Christmas of Miller's Point, like?

• 1:08:32Sean Fennessey?

  Another generation of independent filmmakers.

• 1:08:34Speaker 06

  I love it.

• 1:08:34Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think it's kind of like

• 1:08:36Speaker 06

  I really liked Christmas.

• 1:08:37Sean Fennessey?

  New York indie guys. Um, Carson Lund, I think, is just a part of that whole crew of people. Some of them are friends, some of them are not, but, um, you know, we, we kind of whinge about the perilous state of independent movies. But like, if you want to support independent movies, go check out EpiS. It's very good.

• 1:08:52Speaker 06

  I will support it.

• 1:08:53Sean Fennessey?

  Um, a few more for you guys before we wrap up and get to MAG. Uh,

• 1:08:59Sean Fennessey?

  I saw Becoming Led Zeppelin in IMAX.

• 1:09:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:02Speaker 06

  You saw it before we, it was the first part.

• 1:09:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you invited.

• 1:09:06Sean Fennessey?

  I invited you guys and you blew me off.

• 1:09:08Amanda Dobbins?

  You mostly invited Chris. I was like a last minute and I couldn't make it, but it's fine. Then we got to have barbecue and then we saw.

• 1:09:14Speaker 06

  Captain America Brave New World.

• 1:09:15Amanda Dobbins?

  A terrible Marvel film.

• 1:09:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Becoming Led Zeppelin is kind of the emotional inverse of Brave New World.

• 1:09:23Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting documentary. It only features interviews with the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin and significant archival from John Bonham. I think most of it never heard before.

• 1:09:35Sean Fennessey?

  But it's basically just a performance movie. It features like several long performances of Led Zeppelin.

• 1:09:41Speaker 06

  Good.

• 1:09:41Sean Fennessey?

  And only goes through the first two records.

• 1:09:43Speaker 06

  Bad. But not terrible. I love, Led Zeppelin's perfect art, so it doesn't matter to me, but I am a physical graffiti guy and four.

• 1:09:52Sean Fennessey?

  I was wondering if this was an attempt to make a second film, a third film maybe even. Like I could see them trying to stretch it out. I would be all about that extended universe. Bernard McMahon directed it. It's just a major sensory experience. There's a couple of performances. There's one in Sweden. There's one in England, their first big English performance when they return home from America, where they're just playing Dazed and Confused at length, you know, like eight minute version. Incredibly overwhelming and powerful in IMAX. At home, I don't know if it'll have quite the same effect, but it's still very cool to see them. Your young son, for example.

• 1:10:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm really excited. I mean, I did Google Showtimes and then I was like, I can't.

• 1:10:28Speaker 06

  When your kid discovers John Bonham, it's over.

• 1:10:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. I'm like, I have showed him, what is, what is the Zeppelin like weird film with the elves?

• 1:10:40Speaker 06

  I said.

• 1:10:40Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, the song, I mean, it's the same.

• 1:10:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, Zach showed him that and I showed him the, um, the Lincoln Center tribute where Hart plays, um, and.

• 1:10:48Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And then they, and then John Bonham's son is drumming. So he's like. Kind of aware, but I think this is the next step. I just think we have to do it at home.

• 1:10:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was really fucking loud.

• 1:11:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:00Sean Fennessey?

  And frankly, I was the youngest person in the theater by far.

• 1:11:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:03Sean Fennessey?

  Like, so many gray hairs in there rocking out to Zeppelin that they were having a ball. It's just that it's a very pro forma doc, but it's a great music experience. And in a way, I would rather this sort of thing just replace the Bohemian Rhapsodies of the world. Like, don't pretend to tell me how the story was.

• 1:11:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, just do Queen at Live Aid and remaster it.

• 1:11:20Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly. Just show us that performance. I did enjoy, I did enjoy what Jimmy Page had to say. And I learned a lot specifically about where he started as a session musician and working on Bond themes and how he kind of made his way while also joining the R. Birds and becoming a great musician. Robert Plant was like, "Then you just throw it against the wall, mate, and then it's over here. And then you just grab it over there and then you just put it..." Like, he had nothing of substance to say the entire film, but I still enjoyed looking at him. He now looks like a J. R. R. Tolkien character.

• 1:11:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:54Sean Fennessey?

  But, solid movie. Couple of disappointing movies. It breaks my heart to say that the new Errol Morris documentary is not good.

• 1:12:01Speaker 06

  I checked it out. I thought it was pretty, pretty flat.

• 1:12:04Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty flat?

• 1:12:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:12:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's called Chaos: The Manson Murders. It's based on this remarkable Tom O'Neill book about the synchronicity between the Manson murders and several secretive government operations.

• 1:12:17Speaker 06

  You a Manson guy?

• 1:12:20Amanda Dobbins?

  In a couple of different ways, no.

• 1:12:22Speaker 06

  But in like, of the 60s conspiracies of the 60s, sort of like...

• 1:12:27Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I'm like, not that. I mean, I have, I've listened to the "You must remember this" season. Like, I like "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" as much as "The Next Person," you know? I know the basics, but no, I haven't gotten, I haven't gotten deep.

• 1:12:40Sean Fennessey?

  This book, this O'Neill book, is really fascinating. It's a little bit harebrained at times, trying to draw all of these connections to things that may or may not ultimately be connected. He has a lot of source material and he's like...

• 1:12:50Speaker 06

  Charlie Day at the corkboard vibes?

• 1:12:52Sean Fennessey?

  Very much, but it's... Written with such momentum that it's hard to not get caught up in it. And I usually feel like Harold Morris is the absolute best at being like, you've got a lot of crazy theories. Let me bring them all together. This just felt like over reliance on certain kind of like archival, like zoom in photograph style. Weirdly not enough Tom O'Neill. I kind of wanted him to just be like the full blown narrator of the thing. And I maybe just know a little bit too much about this.

• 1:13:17Speaker 06

  There you go. That sometimes happens with documentaries. That's how I kind of felt a little bit. If you've watched the, um, the Ken Burns Vietnam documentary. There was another Vietnam documentary on Apple. And I was kind of like, this is, this is just like, I feel like I'm swimming with, with water wings on here.

• 1:13:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, agreed. Um, I mentioned Love Hurts, uh, terrible. Yeah. Terrible. It made, it made me, made Novocain feel a lot better. No, no offense to Kiwi Quan.

• 1:13:43Speaker 06

  Who's the other person?

• 1:13:44Sean Fennessey?

  Ariana DeBose.

• 1:13:45Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:45Sean Fennessey?

  So they just put all the Oscar winners together. Yeah. Marshawn Lynch, isn't it? Superbowl champion.

• 1:13:49Speaker 06

  Also looks like it was shot on like the Good Place set, right?

• 1:13:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Well, it's in fairness to it, it's about real estate agents selling like prefab community houses. Okay. So that kind of like fakeness that comes with it, I guess is justified. It feels like that's just like a screenwriting hack to get a movie made cheaper though. You know, directed by a former stunt man. I usually love movies like that. Um, this one. It was a no. Didn't hit. It's a big no. It's also 83 minutes. Well. Which I thought was fascinating. Doesn't make it good. Yeah. It exists. Another kind of disappointment, The Actor, which is a movie that just opened in theaters, starring, uh, Andre Holland as an actor in New York who is struck in the head after sleeping with some man's wife and then wakes up and finds himself in a small town in Ohio and he can't figure out what happened. Great premise. Thrilling setup.

• 1:14:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Based on a Donald Westlake story called Memory from 1960.

• 1:14:43Speaker 06

  And was there originally going to start Gosling?

• 1:14:45Sean Fennessey?

  I believe Gosling. So, and somebody else was, I don't know if the Duke Johnson was always attached. Duke Johnson, who worked on Anomal Lisa with Charlie Kaufman.

• 1:14:54Sean Fennessey?

  And yeah, I think there's like a filmmaking style choice that's meant to make it feel like you're in a dream the whole time that I found incredibly distancing and hard to, hard to connect with. So I had high hopes for this movie and maybe even thought about like drafting it at an auction once upon a time because it's been tabbed for a long time and it kind of just came and went. That's pretty much it.

• 1:15:12Speaker 06

  The great work continues, you know? We'll keep getting into the batter's box and Hollywood will keep pitching us.

• 1:15:18Amanda Dobbins?

  That's, that's so beautiful. Yeah. It's what, are we two weeks to baseball season?

• 1:15:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's almost, it's almost here.

• 1:15:23Amanda Dobbins?

  So excited.

• 1:15:24Speaker 06

  Not a great spring for the Phils.

• 1:15:26Sean Fennessey?

  Not a great spring?

• 1:15:27Speaker 06

  It's, it's more about the summer, but, and honestly, it's more about October.

• 1:15:31Sean Fennessey?

  What do you, what happened last October?

• 1:15:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I forgot how to hit. That's what happened.

• 1:15:36Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, who are you rooting for this year?

• 1:15:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I think we gotta do Phillies again.

• 1:15:39Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:15:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, yeah.

• 1:15:41Speaker 06

  I was worried you were gonna say Dodgers. I was worried you were gonna do-

• 1:15:43Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I mean, I do wanna, I wanna go, I'm gonna take Knox to Dodger Stadium.

• 1:15:47Speaker 06

  I hope I can be a part of that.

• 1:15:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I have, I've identified some possible times. We gotta do the 4:30 PM, you know, this week's at the post nap, pre bedtime.

• 1:15:56Speaker 06

  How close to the field do you wanna be?

• 1:15:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow, I don't know.

• 1:16:00Speaker 06

  If money was no object?

• 1:16:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I, I think he would probably be a little scared of the foul, and I still get scared of the foul ball. So, you know, and then once he's-

• 1:16:07Sean Fennessey?

  Then you have the net.

• 1:16:08Amanda Dobbins?

  He's there and then-

• 1:16:09Sean Fennessey?

  If you get close, you have the net.

• 1:16:10Speaker 06

  Did Bill say recently that he thinks the nets are bad for baseball?

• 1:16:13Sean Fennessey?

  He did say that.

• 1:16:13Speaker 07

  He sure did. Yeah, he did.

• 1:16:16Speaker 06

  Did that resonate in your community, Bob?

• 1:16:18Speaker 07

  It sure did. Yeah. I was like, that's a very specific thing to be the one thing that was the domino that crushed Major League Baseball. But maybe he has some data that I don't know about.

• 1:16:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's a few other reasons. I'm very excited for the baseball season. Clay Holmes season, as I'm calling it. Future Cy Young winner, Clay Holmes. Have you heard of him?

• 1:16:37Speaker 06

  I assume he's a Met.

• 1:16:38Sean Fennessey?

  He's a Met. He's a converted reliever that they're attempting to stretch out to become a starter.

• 1:16:42Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:16:42Sean Fennessey?

  He had a promising spring. Griffin Canning, he had a promising spring.

• 1:16:45Speaker 06

  They're not really starting the starters anymore if they only throw for four innings.

• 1:16:46Sean Fennessey?

  He struck out nine batters today. Is that right, Bob?

• 1:16:48Speaker 07

  Seven, but yeah.

• 1:16:49Sean Fennessey?

  Seven shit. Um.

• 1:16:52Sean Fennessey?

  You know, injury bug has struck the Mets, but I think we're gonna power through.

• 1:16:56Speaker 06

  March Madness, St. John's.

• 1:16:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:16:58Speaker 06

  Who are you rooting for?

• 1:16:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I only learned that it was starting this morning, so like, what are our, what are the number one seeds?

• 1:17:04Speaker 06

  There are a lot of SEC teams. I think the Vols are probably in there.

• 1:17:06Sean Fennessey?

  I believe there are 12 SEC teams?

• 1:17:09Amanda Dobbins?

  See, I, like, on the one hand of-

• 1:17:12Sean Fennessey?

  14. My goodness.

• 1:17:14Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, when I was an active member of the SEC fan community,

• 1:17:19Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:20Amanda Dobbins?

  we didn't really do basketball.

• 1:17:21Sean Fennessey?

  What did you do, run message boards? What did you do?

• 1:17:24Amanda Dobbins?

  So, I had a little cheerleading suit that I wore.

• 1:17:27Sean Fennessey?

  Did you?

• 1:17:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Sean Fennessey?

  Did you have a cheerleading phase?

• 1:17:30Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, I just had this little, I was like four.

• 1:17:33Sean Fennessey?

  But did you wear a suit, like a cheerleading outfit?

• 1:17:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was like a Tennessee Vols, I don't know, someone got it for me. I, listen, I, what, what do you want? I was, I was four, okay?

• 1:17:41Sean Fennessey?

  When the electric state happens, we're gonna get that online.

• 1:17:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, um, but basketball wasn't really a going concern, in the same way the SEC hadn't really spread its tentacles. And now I know it's just like taken over collegiate sports, and I think there are probably some, uh, some things we should investigate there.

• 1:17:57Sean Fennessey?

  Like what?

• 1:17:59Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, but, so that's fine.

• 1:18:00Sean Fennessey?

  Like human rights violations?

• 1:18:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but I don't really care about, uh, the SEC basketball.

• 1:18:05Sean Fennessey?

  Who are you rooting for?

• 1:18:06Speaker 06

  Uh, typically I root for Kentucky because I would always cheer for John Calipari's team. He now coaches at Arkansas, they're both in the tournament, so I think I might split it, not, not cheer for either and go for Oregon, because I, I love their campus.

• 1:18:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm. The Ducks?

• 1:18:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, very cool. What seed is Oregon this year?

• 1:18:24Speaker 06

  I think they're like a five seed.

• 1:18:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, it's very exciting. Um, I will be rooting very hard for St. John's. I fear tremendous heartbreak is imminent, but nevertheless, I'm very excited for them. I'm also very excited to now share my conversation with Mark Anthony Green. Let's go there right now.

• 1:18:51Speaker 08

  Reports due to, then meeting prep, then...

• 1:18:53Speaker 03

  Chronic migraine doesn't care about your to-do list. For people with chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, Botox, anabotalinumtoxin-A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It is not approved for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. Botox prevents, on average, eight to nine headache days a month, versus six to seven for placebo. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease,

• 1:19:38Speaker 03

  myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  The best part of waking up? A full cup of Folgers coffee and music on full blast. Wake me up! Wake me up inside! Wake me up!

• 1:19:59Speaker 09

  Wake me up inside!

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  Save me!

• 1:20:01Speaker 09

  So wake me up when it's all over. The moment I wake up.

• 1:20:09Speaker 09

  Oh, oh, oh, my...

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Shop Folgers Instant Coffee and more at your nearest retailer.

• 1:20:20Speaker 10

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change, your receipt did. The Sausage McMuffin with Egg Extra Value Meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time.

• 1:20:33Speaker 11

  Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

• 1:20:36Sean Fennessey?

  Marc Anthony Green is here, the writer and director of his debut feature film Opus. He also happens to be one of my oldest friends.

• 1:20:44Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:20:44Sean Fennessey?

  Somebody I've known for 15 years. How did we, what was the first meeting? Do you remember? What happened?

• 1:20:51Speaker 12

  I don't remember the first meeting. I remember the day that I realized you were a G.

• 1:20:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:20:57Speaker 12

  Which is, I pissed off Jay-Z.

• 1:21:00Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:21:01Speaker 12

  And, uh, long story short, I was, uh, Sean ran GQ's website. And I had written this story that this human being, whose name I won't say, Jamil Spencer,

• 1:21:14Speaker 12

  uh, who ran Rock-A-Ware for Jay-Z. And long story short, he came to me and was like, "I want you to write this story about Jay-Z buying BBC from Pharrell." And I was like, "Great." We did all the fact checking, went back and forth with him, uh, published the story, and, uh, all hell broke loose. Jay-Z turned, uh, this is all according to people, but Jay-Z turned his plane around mid-flight, as you can do with a private jet.

• 1:21:44Sean Fennessey?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:21:45Speaker 12

  And Will Welsh was getting calls from Jana Fleischman, who was Jay-Z's publicist, I think still is. And I had only been at GQ for like a month, and I thought I lost my job. And Jay-Z's fifth tweet, he had four tweets under his belt.

• 1:22:01Sean Fennessey?

  Total.

• 1:22:02Speaker 12

  Total.

• 1:22:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:03Speaker 12

  And they were all like, you know, "I have an album on the way." And that was it for the whole rollout for Magna Carta, Holy Gr- like, whatever the albums were. And his fifth tweet was, "I am partnering with Pharrell, not buying his company, like, GQ erroneously printed." And I saw my life and job flash before my eyes. But then Sean... It was like, send me every email. Saw all my work, saw that everything had been checked and da, da, da. And then you went to war and it was tight. So you've been my boy ever since.

• 1:22:37Sean Fennessey?

  I appreciate that. I don't even really remember what I did, but I did know some people in Jay-Z's orbit at that time.

• 1:22:42Speaker 12

  Yes, you did, you did that.

• 1:22:43Sean Fennessey?

  I did the best that I could.

• 1:22:44Speaker 12

  You were like, hey, if this is on somebody, it's not on.

• 1:22:48Sean Fennessey?

  My young reporter.

• 1:22:48Speaker 12

  Yeah, this 22-year-old who did his job.

• 1:22:51Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I've been thinking a lot about that time when we worked together, which was ultimately only like, like less than 18 months. But we bonded pretty quickly and we definitely talked about movies in that time, but I don't think we ever had the conversation like, yo, I want to be a filmmaker one day.

• 1:23:07Speaker 12

  Really?

• 1:23:08Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so. I was trying to think back to it because I was obviously, you know, knowing me back then, I was even really movie crazy.

• 1:23:14Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:23:14Sean Fennessey?

  Even though that wasn't my beat at the time.

• 1:23:16Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:23:16Sean Fennessey?

  So go to the beginning, like, when did you know you wanted to do it? You know, what, what were the, the signal moments in your youth where you were watching movies and felt transported?

• 1:23:27Speaker 12

  Man, I can remember two like young experiences. One was watching Batman where Michelle Pfeiffer straddles Batman in a theater. And I had my first crush. I was like.

• 1:23:43Sean Fennessey?

  I think that was true of a lot of people back then.

• 1:23:44Speaker 12

  Yeah, yeah. And I'm, again, I was born in 88, so I was like very young. But uh, it's like, man, movies. And then, and then when I watched The Fifth Element in a theater.

• 1:23:56Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:23:57Speaker 12

  Which I stand by. Also, uh, I'm a diehard listener. The year The Fifth Element came out, it went undrafted in a draft.

• 1:24:05Sean Fennessey?

  In 97?

• 1:24:07Speaker 12

  Uh, 97, sure.

• 1:24:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:24:10Speaker 12

  Whatever it is, it was egregious. And the fact that none of y'all drafted it. And so I, I've shown up, I might be the only director to show up at this show, but you know.

• 1:24:21Sean Fennessey?

  You, you, you're saying you want to get, you want to redraft 1997?

• 1:24:26Speaker 12

  You know, yeah.

• 1:24:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:24:29Speaker 12

  I just couldn't believe it went undrafted. What a, what an incredible film.

• 1:24:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:24:35Speaker 12

  Uh, you have Jean-Paul Gaultier, some of the best costume design ever. You have Chris Tucker, like throwing 2,000 miles an hour in a unitar. Uh, flirting with, uh, stewardesses that they casted as all mixed women with freckles and bobs.

• 1:24:55Speaker 12

  I don't know what more you could want from a film.

• 1:24:59Sean Fennessey?

  The very small gap in age that we have, though, I think explains a lot. Cause I was 15 when this came out and you were nine.

• 1:25:05Speaker 12

  Yeah, you had seen like Die Hard and all the movies that I understand. For me, that was the first time I ever seen Bruce Willis.

• 1:25:12Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting. That's a weird way to get introduced to him.

• 1:25:15Speaker 12

  I know, I know.

• 1:25:16Sean Fennessey?

  It's a cool movie. I have nothing against that movie.

• 1:25:18Speaker 12

  But that's kind of the amazing thing about depending on how old you are, your relationship with the thing. Because everything like Die Hard, like coming after that and everybody being like this movie. Like I've read some reviews from that time of that film. Cause I'm like, this was a masterpiece.

• 1:25:36Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, people were tough on it.

• 1:25:38Speaker 12

  People were tough on it.

• 1:25:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:39Speaker 12

  But if you, if I watched all the movies before it, I probably wouldn't, it wouldn't have blown my hair back. But that movie made me want to make movies. Like I left the theater as a kid being like, I want to make movies. I didn't know you could do that.

• 1:25:51Sean Fennessey?

  So you spent a lot of time in your career before making movies in the world of style. Like you meant you're already name dropped Jean Paul Gautier on this show.

• 1:26:00Speaker 12

  I didn't name drop him. I said his name. There's a difference. Name drop would be like, yo, I hang out with Sean Finnis. That's a name drop. Saying I'm a fan of somebody's, I've never met that man. That's not a name drop. I just, I gotta keep it honest.

• 1:26:12Sean Fennessey?

  That's a person you haven't met, though. Just given.

• 1:26:14Speaker 12

  I have met Jean Paul Gautier. I'm saying, I don't know him. That's not my man. I can't call him like I can call you. But you know, yeah, yeah, I have met Jean Paul.

• 1:26:21Sean Fennessey?

  That is a wonderful thing about knowing you is that I'm not surprised to learn that you know Jean Paul Gautier. Anyway.

• 1:26:27Speaker 12

  I worked at a fashion magazine forever. You know, I went to, I've been a fashion week or two.

• 1:26:31Sean Fennessey?

  When you were thinking about trying to become a creative person, like you ended up at a magazine and you spent a long time at GQ.

• 1:26:39Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:26:40Sean Fennessey?

  All that time, obviously it appears that you were plotting, scheming, creating in your mind, behind the scenes, trying to get things going. But did you see like the world of journalism and magazines as like a portal to that? Was it a, how did you?

• 1:26:53Speaker 12

  No, I, you know what it was for me? There are like four phases before I got here. There's Morehouse. Morehouse, I graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. And Morehouse taught me the type of man I wanted to be.

• 1:27:12Sean Fennessey?

  Which was what?

• 1:27:13Speaker 12

  The man you see today, somebody that is honest, that has integrity, that does things with style, that's not afraid, that has ambition, that cares deeply about his friends and family, overly sensitive, will raise his voice, will stand on a table. Way more bark than bite, but I don't really bark that much, you know what I mean?

• 1:27:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:34Speaker 12

  Um, I always smell good.

• 1:27:37Sean Fennessey?

  That I can attest to.

• 1:27:38Speaker 12

  Yeah, like, you know, just like, I think.

• 1:27:41Sean Fennessey?

  They teach that at Morehouse? They did not teach that at Ethica College, I gotta tell you.

• 1:27:45Speaker 12

  Yeah, it's a different experience, though. I will say, like, we were not, I was not in like a classroom learning. I was learning everything outside of classroom.

• 1:27:55Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:56Speaker 12

  Um, and then I worked at this clothing store, Sid Mashburn. And that's the first time I ever saw somebody do something at a hundred percent. And it rocked my world.

• 1:28:08Sean Fennessey?

  Should just briefly explain to the listeners who Sid is and what that experience is.

• 1:28:12Speaker 12

  He's a designer in Atlanta. And I worked for him for free so that he would introduce me to somebody at GQ. So he like created an internship program. And, um, but he just, this was his dream. He worked at Ralph Lauren and L.L. Bean and all these places. And it was the first time I ever saw somebody have a dream and chase it with a hundred percent like a madman. And that, oh, opened up something for me. And then GQ was, to me, it taught me about both storytelling and taste.

• 1:28:53Speaker 12

  And what my taste really was. And like, the mix of things, like if you look at Opus as a film, there's so much humor in the movie. But I think that the balance, like to me, it feels very balanced.

• 1:29:14Speaker 12

  And I don't know that I'm capable or want to make something that doesn't have that type of humor in it, or a seriousness, or like, take on something important. And there's like a mix. Like, I think GQ taught me the value of the mix, in addition to a lot of other things. So I carry that with me, but I don't know, I just, your question of, you know, did I, did I always see that this is what I wanted to do? Yeah, since I was a kid. But I don't, I don't think that like, being a magazine writer, editor, into filmmaker,

• 1:29:56Speaker 12

  that didn't, that, I didn't look at that as like a, a path.

• 1:30:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's interesting, because there is a pretty long tradition of that path.

• 1:30:05Speaker 12

  Really?

• 1:30:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You know, you have critics, like Peter Bogdanovich, or Paul Schrader, who are basically just working critics, writing scripts, getting in the good graces of filmmakers, getting opportunities. And then you also have like, folks like Robert Benton, who wrote Bonnie and Clyde, who was like an editor at Esquire.

• 1:30:24Speaker 12

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:30:25Sean Fennessey?

  And-

• 1:30:26Speaker 12

  He wrote the original Bonnie and Clyde.

• 1:30:27Sean Fennessey?

  The original, yeah, the 60s version.

• 1:30:29Speaker 12

  This is that Sean Finacy shit. This is what, this is what we're here for.

• 1:30:33Sean Fennessey?

  But I tend to-

• 1:30:33Speaker 12

  No, no, stop, Sean. This is, ladies and gentlemen, of the big picture, this is why the fuck we show up. We show up for him to do this nerdy shit right here. This is, it's happening in real time. It's beautiful.

• 1:30:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'm putting you in a continuum-

• 1:30:47Speaker 12

  I had no idea. I didn't know that.

• 1:30:49Sean Fennessey?

  Of writer, magazine writer, editor voices. And I totally relate to what you're describing, that the mix, the balance, in building the book, as we call it,

• 1:30:58Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:30:59Sean Fennessey?

  is, is an aspect, has a relationship to making a movie. You got department heads in magazines, you got department heads on your movie. You got tone in your movie, you got tone in your issue, or tone in the story that you're working on. You got photography.

• 1:31:14Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:31:14Sean Fennessey?

  You got all these different component parts. And I thought about this a lot when I was watching your movie, which I'm so, I'm just so proud of you for accomplishing, but I'm especially like, touched by it, because the movie is about a print magazine journalist.

• 1:31:26Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Sean Fennessey?

  And it's a very wry, and sly about that, and what it's like to be one of those people, which is kind of a dying breed, as a gig.

• 1:31:35Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:31:36Sean Fennessey?

  So tell me how like it informed the actual story itself. The actual like writing of Opus, the character that Io plays.

• 1:31:44Speaker 12

  I look at it like this. Well, first of all, now that Opus is in the world, it's not my place to tell people how to Opus. So like if this film to you is about, not you saying this, but if it's about journalism, then that's not, you know, my read on it and my intention on it. It's Opus is no more about journalism than it is, than, you know, White Man Can't Jump is about basketball. The basketball in White Man Can't Jump, as far as like street basketball in LA, the, you know, the deferred dream of it all, they knocked it out the park. It's accurate.

• 1:32:25Speaker 12

  And I think the journalism, that power dynamic, what it's like, what it looks like, what it smells like, the texture of it is very accurate because I lived that life for 13 years. And so that to me is like, outside of making that aspect of it accurate, the thing that it tackles, I don't have a front row seat to. I think the thing that it tackled, we all are experiencing, which is tribalism and what I consider to be a global pandemic of, you know, tribalism, this thing that has gone too far, in my opinion.

• 1:33:02Speaker 12

  So yeah, so I don't know. I just wanted it to feel accurate.

• 1:33:07Sean Fennessey?

  I felt like when I was working at GQ and even in some respects at Grantland and the Ringer. There's a part of the work that is trying to identify what is going to be next and cool. And then there's a part of the work that is trying to figure out like, what is you? What is us? Once you've determined what is cool. And so I feel like what I really like about Io's character in the movie is like. She has, seems to have like a real skepticism.

• 1:33:35Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:33:36Sean Fennessey?

  About the whole enterprise.

• 1:33:37Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:33:38Sean Fennessey?

  And I tend to find that like really good magazine editors, really good magazine writers are like really enthusiastic, but also like, this is kind of bullshit.

• 1:33:43Speaker 12

  Yeah, especially when you're the youngest in the room. And when you and I worked together, I was the youngest in the room. And then I stayed to where I was like, you know, ancient. But I was the youngest in the room. So there were things that just excited people in that room that meant nothing to me. You know, like a story I've told is, I didn't know who Bruce Springsteen was when I first got to GQ. And we were in an ideas meeting and it's like the first cover meeting and everyone's freaking out about Bruce Springsteen. I'd never heard the man's name. Now, I'm thirty-six, thirty-seven year old, I just turned thirty-seven. Thirty-seven year old black kid from the Midwest who went to HBCU.

• 1:34:28Speaker 12

  I didn't grow up in a house where we were listening to Bruce Springsteen. I didn't date girls that listened to Bruce Springsteen. I just never, he just never came across my desk, you know? So yeah, so like, you know, everybody being like, this is the cover that's going to change the world. And then there's one person in the room that's like, I've never heard of him. I didn't say that. I didn't have the.

• 1:34:46Sean Fennessey?

  That would take balls, yeah.

• 1:34:47Speaker 12

  Yeah, I didn't have to juice this to let them know I knew nothing about nothing. But, uh, but yeah, I think that there's real power in being the youngest person in the room. I think there's real power in being the person that is not intoxicated by whoever. And especially as a journalist, I think that you are able to genuinely maintain a level of objectivity. You know, like I listened to Bruce Springsteen that day and I was like, I get it. You know?

• 1:35:21Sean Fennessey?

  You didn't turn yourself over to him, though.

• 1:35:23Speaker 12

  This isn't Andre 3000, you know what I'm saying? This isn't, I wouldn't even say this is like fabulous, like, but, but I'm, I'm. I know, this is tough, I know, I know. Sean, I came here to pop, baby. I told you I'd give you my best. And I'm just saying like, you know, I listened to him and I got it.

• 1:35:39Sean Fennessey?

  Are you auditioning now for a music podcast here?

• 1:35:42Speaker 12

  Trust me, no, I will be, I'll be back on set. But, look, I, I, I get it, you know? It was, it's a thing, I told this story to, to John and to the crew, because I felt like that was the challenge with Moretti. I went, Will, I went from that ideas meeting to the next meeting, and I asked Will Welsh, I was like, who is, you know, who is Bruce Springsteen? And he looked at me and was like, Jesus Christ, who's this human I hired? But he had like 30 seconds to contextualize this person for me. And I felt like that's what we had. We had a very short amount of time to show you how big this pop star was,

• 1:36:21Speaker 12

  for you to believe that he exists amongst, you know, Prince and, and Alice Cooper and David Bowie, and he's, and, you know, Elton John, and he's in this zone. You just haven't heard of him.

• 1:36:36Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:36:37Speaker 12

  You know, and, but I need you to get it. And I got it. He may not be fabulous to you, but I get it. And so that was it, because you know, you, you get very little time to, for the exposition part of, of it. So, yeah.

• 1:36:52Sean Fennessey?

  I am very curious to hear the story of John Malkovich being a part of this movie. I'll give you an honest take, with no disrespect to Malkovich, who is a legend.

• 1:37:02Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:37:02Sean Fennessey?

  Hit or miss in the last 20 years for me.

• 1:37:04Speaker 12

  Oh, 100%.

• 1:37:05Sean Fennessey?

  Iconic actor.

• 1:37:06Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:37:06Sean Fennessey?

  Obviously, his resume speaks for itself.

• 1:37:08Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:37:09Sean Fennessey?

  But you, you never know what you're gonna get these days.

• 1:37:12Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:37:13Sean Fennessey?

  And I think he's on his like A-plus game in your movie.

• 1:37:16Speaker 12

  Thank you.

• 1:37:17Sean Fennessey?

  And so maybe you can tell me how you got him to buy into the same spiel that Will helped you explain in 30 seconds on who Bruce Springsteen is.

• 1:37:25Speaker 12

  I, I think that this is one of John's best performances in his career, and I'm honored by that. I'm a huge fan of his. But, yeah, I think, I think he would say that's fair. There was a funny moment. When, you know,

• 1:37:44Speaker 12

  there was an interview that I'm sure you saw, it went viral. And it's Matt Damon, and he's talking about John Malkovich showing up to the set of Rounders. And we shot Opus in 19 days. And so I'm now at the point of planning where all of your financial issues that are put on your plate as a director, and they're like, "Cool, you need to go figure this out." So I'm looking at the schedule that it's looking like we're gonna land on, and the lack of money that we have. And this interview with Matt Damon goes viral where he talks about John just showing up and deciding that the character was Russian.

• 1:38:26Speaker 12

  And so they had to go back and change, but Teddy KGB was just like Theodore from like, you know, wherever.

• 1:38:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Bensonhurst.

• 1:38:34Speaker 12

  Yeah, yeah, and he showed up and "I'm like, Mommy", and does the whole thing.

• 1:38:40Speaker 12

  And I'm like, "He can't do that with 19 days." Like, I'll never, we will, it'll just, we won't finish this movie.

• 1:38:48Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:49Speaker 12

  And I love to plan, and I love to rehearse, and I, and I think that it gives everyone, all artists involved in a film, the freedom to try something when everything else is where it's supposed to be. So I call his agent, I puff my chest out, and I'm like, "Yo, I need to see John right now. I'm coming, I'm gonna come see him this week. Tell me where he is, but I'm on my way to see him. If he's shooting, you know, he's gotta make time, we gotta go to dinner, but I gotta see him this week, right? Hang up." So his agent, who I love, shout out to Brent, he calls me back and he's like, "So John's in Riga, Latvia, and he says, 'Sure, you can come, but, you know, let me know if you want this to be an email.'" And so chest already puffed, can't unpuff it.

• 1:39:34Speaker 12

  So I'm like, no, no, no, tell him I'm on my way to Riga. Hang up. I Google Riga, Latvia, had never heard of it. Not quite fabulous either. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:39:46Speaker 12

  And at this time, I don't know, you know, but the war with Russia and the Ukraine is like, it's like two months in. And it is extremely dangerous. A little geographical fact for the folks at home. Russia used to own the Ukraine, I mean, used to own Latvia. And Riga is kind of a sensitive spot between the two. So when I go, I go to London first because there was an actor for a different role that I wanted to see in a play. And my flight from London to Riga, I was the only person on the plane. I had never experienced that before. Like, I got on, they closed the door behind me. It's like, Jesus Christ.

• 1:40:29Sean Fennessey?

  This was just a commercial flight?

• 1:40:30Speaker 12

  This was just a commercial flight.

• 1:40:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:32Speaker 12

  Yeah, but no one's going to the war zone.

• 1:40:36Speaker 12

  And so I got off the plane. There was a building that looked like it was from the last war and they hadn't cleaned up yet. Like, it was like blown up and they just left it. My hotel was $115 a night, it's the nicest hotel in Riga. And so, cool, you know, let's do it. And everyone's staring at me. So I go and I go to meet John for dinner. And I see him in the restaurant and he's wearing an eye patch. I don't know if y'all have seen John in my film, but he does not have an eye patch. Spoiler alert. And so I sit down with him and he's like, hey, I'm like, hey, what's up with the eye patch?

• 1:41:17Speaker 12

  And he's like, oh, you know, I had an emergency surgery on my left eye. And they say it's 50/50 if I get my vision back. And my right eye only has 20% of the vision. Never been a good math student, but I'm like, okay, so you have 10% of your total vision right now.

• 1:41:35Speaker 12

  And he's in Latvia directing a play. And doesn't speak Latvian.

• 1:41:42Speaker 12

  I swear I'm not making any of this up.

• 1:41:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:45Speaker 12

  And in fact, I'll give y'all a photo to put up. And so then he looks at me and he says, why the fuck are you here? And you know, he says it and it's Malkavalian, you know what I'm saying? And he's a Mac, whatever, however.

• 1:41:59Sean Fennessey?

  Malkovichian?

• 1:42:00Speaker 12

  Yeah, Malkovichian. And so I'm like, I need you to see how serious I am and to know you're not gonna fuck up my movie. And silent, and he starts dying laughing. He orders a bottle of wine. He didn't know I didn't drink at the time. So, you know, he didn't have, he didn't share the bottle. And, and we stayed up that whole night. The restaurant was really kind and let us just sit there. And, you know, we basically talked until the sun came up about everything. He's from the Midwest, loves basketball. I grew up playing ball. But also talked about the character, why this movie was important to me. What I expected from him, that I expected him to bring it every day.

• 1:42:42Speaker 12

  And then I went to rehearsal with him the next day to see him direct these people in a language he doesn't speak with 10% of his vision. And dare I say, he was making choices and, and, and demanding things. And I think the play was getting better. So, you know, John Malkovich? And, and we had dinner that night. And ever since that moment, he brought an intensity to set, to rehearsal. He was the best creative partner that I could have had on this.

• 1:43:21Sean Fennessey?

  I think Moretti could have been very silly, maybe even stupid. If not executed correctly, maybe?

• 1:43:28Speaker 12

  It's, it's a really tough, and like, one of the mantras that I had on set with everyone is that this film is not camp. Now, if you watch this film and you're like, this was campy to me, that's totally fine. I'm not, again, I'm not gonna tell you how to opus, but I think if you start out that way, you could never get to someplace believable. If you set out that like, we're, we have no intention on this feeling real or possible. And again, I, I watch him in this film, he is so fucking good and fearless and weird and interesting. And he's fallen on the floor and the man's 70, he was 70 when we shot, he's 71 now.

• 1:44:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very physical performance from him, very physical.

• 1:44:14Speaker 12

  And he, you know, he would, he would, he would stretch constant, like he, he had to physically get it up for this to get there. But after that day in Riga, that wonderful night in Riga, shout out to Latvia. We opened in Latvia today, by the way.

• 1:44:33Sean Fennessey?

  Really?

• 1:44:34Speaker 12

  Um, yeah, shout out to all the Latvians.

• 1:44:35Sean Fennessey?

  Are there a lot of, is there a strong theater going, movie theater going culture there?

• 1:44:39Speaker 12

  I have no idea.

• 1:44:40Sean Fennessey?

  Do we have Latvian listeners out there?

• 1:44:42Speaker 12

  Yeah, shout out to all the, the Latvian, the, the big pick, the Latvian.

• 1:44:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they're probably all like CR guys, you know, just a lot of CR heads.

• 1:44:49Speaker 12

  I could, I think especially on that block.

• 1:44:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:51Speaker 12

  Yeah, that's where, that's where they're really, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, man, it, it was, working with him, again, one of, one of the biggest honors of my 37 years so far.

• 1:45:03Sean Fennessey?

  So you and I went out, uh, a few years ago, might have been pre pandemic, I can't remember. And you were wearing Ichigo the Killer t-shirt.

• 1:45:11Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:45:11Sean Fennessey?

  And I was like, what the fuck?

• 1:45:13Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:45:13Sean Fennessey?

  And I knew you liked movies and you've been listening to the show, you sent me nice notes about the show. We talked movies, I'm sure 15 years ago we were talking about, talking about movies, but I was like, I didn't know you were about that.

• 1:45:22Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:45:23Sean Fennessey?

  And I clocked that and put it in the back of my head. And then I saw the movie and I was like, oh.

• 1:45:28Speaker 12

  Yeah, Takashi Miki is like.

• 1:45:30Sean Fennessey?

  Obviously a huge, huge thing for you. And I think if you like bring that, maybe if you just carry that knowledge to going to see the movie, I actually think it opens the movie up in some ways.

• 1:45:39Speaker 12

  Yes, especially tonally and the pacing.

• 1:45:42Sean Fennessey?

  But there's kind of like a sick sense of humor and also something very upsetting at its core. Uh, which, you know, as you know, knowing me is also a thing that I really like and appreciate.

• 1:45:52Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:45:53Sean Fennessey?

  But I was thinking about like, kind of like, what were your, did you have hallmarks? Did you have movies that you looked at or tried not to look at so you didn't rip them off or things that?

• 1:46:01Speaker 12

  The audition was a big one for me.

• 1:46:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:03Speaker 12

  Um, and that's the only like true homage in the film.

• 1:46:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's a very clear one.

• 1:46:08Speaker 12

  There's a clear one, yeah. And, um, but I love him. But like the pacing in general, if I can say, like, I set out to make a challenging film. One of the reasons I'm so excited to be here, in addition to loving you and listening to the pod, uh, every episode, is like, I think that the, the pacing, the format, spoiler alert, no one dies in the first five minutes of this movie.

• 1:46:34Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:35Speaker 12

  And I'm so deeply proud of that. I'm so deeply proud of the fact that we made a horror film that lets you live with your main character. I'm so deeply proud of the fact that that main character is a black woman and that you see her at home. You see her at work. You see her on a date with young Mazzino in one of the cutest scenes of the year. Like, you get to live with her. And another thing that Japanese horror films do that I'm deeply inspired by, when they do the gory thing, they go all the way. And so, and that's just kind of, uh, I think it's a sensibility that I share with them.

• 1:47:17Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:47:17Speaker 12

  Like, if you're gonna do it, go all the way. And that felt like, to get this message across, like a, a, a really both challenging, because it's not your traditional paced horror film, but like challenging in a rewarding way. Um, and I was deeply inspired by that. So, you know, uh, Train of Busan, uh, there's just a lot, a lot of those films I think I constantly reference, watch with my DP, Tommy Maddox Upshaw. Um, and then there were films that like.

• 1:47:53Speaker 12

  You know, I don't want to give too much away, but in the folk horror genre, you have the classics, The Wicker Mans. I put Midsommar up there as a classic, um, a modern classic. And there were things that they did that we just didn't do because they did it.

• 1:48:12Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:13Speaker 12

  Um, I, you know, they go off into a remote place and they take their cell phones. And outside of that, you know, to me, it's like, cool. You know, like those devices that are fun and you gotta get rid of the phones. Uh, so, you know, yeah, I don't want to give away too much in that regard, but I think knowing what not to do, we did that a lot with the character. You know, like if Prince was known for something or like, I took Wigs off the table because of David Bowie. I didn't want people to think, oh, he's David Bowie.

• 1:48:51Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I was trying to write down, I wrote down Prince Bowie's Sly Stone. Because of the kind of reclusive nature, but I-

• 1:49:00Speaker 12

  Alice Cooper was, was a big, and I liked his theatrics a lot.

• 1:49:03Sean Fennessey?

  Makes a lot of sense.

• 1:49:04Speaker 12

  Yeah, but also Nile Rodgers worked with Bowie. He made Let's Dance with Bowie and a bunch of other great records and-

• 1:49:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so, I mean, Nile Rodgers and the Dream write the original songs. I've said it on this show a couple of times. Um, that original songs for a fake pop star in a movie is like a recipe for disaster.

• 1:49:22Speaker 12

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:49:23Sean Fennessey?

  Um, you know, Almost Never Goes Well.

• 1:49:25Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:49:26Sean Fennessey?

  Their songs are extremely credible.

• 1:49:28Speaker 12

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:49:30Sean Fennessey?

  Obviously, you've got great, great writers and producers doing it, but, uh, how did you get them to do that?

• 1:49:36Speaker 12

  I asked them really nicely.

• 1:49:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:49:38Speaker 12

  But here's the thing, everybody that made this movie is underpaid. But nobody's more underpaid compared to what they get paid to do the thing that they do than Nile and Dream. There was a point in time where they were working with Beyonce and working with me. And then back to Beyonce and then back to me, right? True, true story. And they had just won, Cuff It had come out, the, the last, the hit that they wrote for her. And so they were working on Cowboy Carter at the time. And, um, I had, I, I don't think we paid Dream and Nile enough to cover their, like, travel. Like, the way that they normally travel. That's how little we had in the budget to pay them. So.

• 1:50:19Sean Fennessey?

  You knew, you knew them?

• 1:50:22Speaker 12

  I had met Dream a few times.

• 1:50:25Sean Fennessey?

  I profiled him in Vibe Magazine in 2007.

• 1:50:27Speaker 12

  Really, that's that Sean S. fantasy. Let's go, baby.

• 1:50:31Sean Fennessey?

  I love Dream.

• 1:50:32Speaker 12

  Yeah, yeah, and, and, and, no, but like, that's the thing that I think is a misconception about a lot of. You don't get to be that successful and that good if you're not still an artist at heart. So they read the script. Then they sat down with me. And I'm like, this is the thing I really want to do. And I believe in this, and I think John can pull this off, and I think that y'all are the people to do it. And then, to their credit, not only are you trying to do a very difficult thing, like you said, and you're doing it for, you're basically working for free. But then you gotta let me be demanding and choosy because it has to hit a certain standard. And not only does it have to hit a standard, but it has to fit in this movie.

• 1:51:17Speaker 12

  It can't just be a, a one-off. Like, it can't be its own thing. It can't just be a good record. It has to be a good record that services this story.

• 1:51:25Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:51:26Speaker 12

  And so they allowed me to be that, to direct them, to work with them, to collaborate them, with them. And the songs are fucking incredible.

• 1:51:36Sean Fennessey?

  I think that you have to be very self-possessed to be a filmmaker. I've interviewed a lot of filmmakers over the years, and I've known you since you were young.

• 1:51:44Speaker 12

  Yes.

• 1:51:45Sean Fennessey?

  And so I don't really know how you learned how to, like, fly to Latvia and tell John Malkovich, like, I need you to fucking focus. Or told Nile Rodgers, like, this song needs to work better for my movie. That is something that people struggle with, artists, and when they do do it, sometimes it comes across as, like, insecure and overbearing. So, like, how do you figure out how to do this? This is your first movie. You made short. You've been working towards this for a very long period of time, but I think actually doing that thing that you're describing, sticking to your guns, being a guy in his mid-30s, talking to people in their 70s who are legends, and telling them, I need you, this to be what I want it to be? How did you do that?

• 1:52:25Speaker 12

  I don't know. I mean, I, I don't, I, like, I don't, I don't know that I can, um. Look at, I can't step, step out and look at myself.

• 1:52:34Sean Fennessey?

  Well, this is what being interviewed is all about.

• 1:52:36Speaker 12

  I know, but I could talk to you about them. I don't know that I, I don't know. I really don't know. I think, I just believe in this movie.

• 1:52:45Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:52:46Speaker 12

  This is my favorite thing. It just is. I, I'm so deeply proud of this film. I think it's so fun, so weird. It says something. It's just so not about me. So I don't, I, I can't wait to get on that plane. To talk to whoever about it, you know?

• 1:53:04Sean Fennessey?

  When you were on set for the first time, or for any time really during the set, what was the number one thing that you were like, shit, I didn't know it was like this?

• 1:53:12Speaker 12

  I didn't know it was like this.

• 1:53:14Sean Fennessey?

  What is the sort of, I don't know who Bruce Springsteen is of film directing for you?

• 1:53:17Speaker 12

  Directing? You know, I didn't know that it, I didn't know that it was so, um, controllable. If you want your set to run like a Parisian atelier, like, it, it, sorry, this is some fashion shit, but like, you go to like, uh, uh, an atelier where they're making very expensive clothes, it's silent, like in Phantom Thread.

• 1:53:43Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:43Speaker 12

  Right? It's like, you can hear a pin drop, there's one voice at a time. And if you want your set to run like that, it can run like that. If you want people to be miserable, then it can also run like that. You want it to feel like there's always like a, a boot on everybody's neck and, and it's chaotic, whatever. It can feel like that.

• 1:54:01Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:02Speaker 12

  And I was surprised by how the tone, the, the vibe, was really a reflection of, you know, me, my DP, uh, my production designer, Robert Pizoka, who's incredible. Like, the department head, like, if we showed up and we, we had a great attitude, then everybody had a good time and the, and I believed the work was better. And that also came from the actors, you know? I O, John, Juliette Lewis, Murray Bartlett, Tony Hale. You know, none of these people brought an ego into this. And, you know, Stephanie Suganami, who this is really her first film, but like, you know, Stephanie,

• 1:54:46Speaker 12

  she's got more followers, quote unquote, than anybody in this movie.

• 1:54:49Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:50Speaker 12

  She could have come with a certain type of ego. With all the prosthetics, she, you know, she couldn't see for two days and never complained. You know, I had to go and check, just, and I think that we all kind of agreed. One, we don't have time or money to have an ego. But it felt so good making this movie. And I think I thought I was gonna feel tortured during that part of the process.

• 1:55:16Sean Fennessey?

  I've seen the film compared to this like wave of Eat the Rich movies, for lack of a better word. Like Blink Twice or The Menu popped up a bit.

• 1:55:28Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:55:29Sean Fennessey?

  And I see the movie a little differently than that. But I, and I don't want you to have to feel like you have to give it away. But when I saw it, I was like, I think I wrote, I was very impressed and I felt a little indicted.

• 1:55:42Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:55:43Sean Fennessey?

  And I think that's because the movie has a strong point of view on not just that tribalism that you're talking about, but on, for lack of a better word, the media apparatus that attaches itself to fame and power. And kind of like very, as gently as it can, siphons energy off of it.

• 1:56:01Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:56:01Sean Fennessey?

  To create their own little version of success.

• 1:56:03Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:56:04Sean Fennessey?

  This is a very small, but complex and powerful idea that I relate to and understand.

• 1:56:13Speaker 12

  Yes.

• 1:56:13Sean Fennessey?

  And I try to have some critical distance from myself, having worked in magazines, interviewing filmmakers. I do think it's a little bit of like a pipe bomb to put in front of the people who do this for a living.

• 1:56:26Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:56:27Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm curious how conscious you were.

• 1:56:29Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:56:30Sean Fennessey?

  Of that choice, and if, even if I'm reading the movie correctly, or if that's an incidental turn.

• 1:56:35Speaker 12

  You gotta opus how you opus. And I'm just grateful that, that there has been such a strong reaction.

• 1:56:42Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:56:43Speaker 12

  I set out to make a challenging film. One thing I did not set out to do, nor does Marc Anthony the human believe, is that journalists are bad.

• 1:56:53Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:56:54Speaker 12

  That critics are bad, that media is backwards or anything like that. So.

• 1:57:02Speaker 12

  That's not how I read it. It's damn sure not how it was written or the intention. And I feel like, you know, with you on here, I want, I like, I want to be honest about like, it, it did, it bummed me out for like, a week that it got mixed reviews. Yeah. And that some people, not every critic, but some felt like they were being attacked or, or challenged. No, challenged, yes, but like, they felt like they were being attacked by me. And that bummed me out, but. It's ironic, having been a journalist. Well, because I think, to me, what I think it points out is

• 1:57:46Speaker 12

  how incredibly difficult that job is. Yeah. To me, what it points out is a lot of the backwards thoughts that I had when I was 22 and ambitious and thought that I had it all figured out. If you are a critic that watched Opus and you didn't like it, I have no hard feelings. Like, I've done some interviews and, you know, it's like, fuck the critics and duh duh. And I'm like, I don't, I don't, I don't subscribe to that. Yeah, yeah. If you didn't like it, I, I, again, no hard feelings. I hope I get you on the next one. I hope you like the next one, right? But

• 1:58:26Speaker 12

  I think that the, the thing, the, the indictment is something we're all a little guilty of. Right. And I set out to make a film that challenged us all and myself at the top of that list. And so I feel so deeply proud and accomplished in that challenge. And I invite you. To go to a theater, have an amazing time, see John Malkovich dance and flail around, see Iowa Debré give a fucking incredible performance, listen to some incredible songs, do the thing that we all are listening to this pod because we love to do, which is to watch movies.

• 1:59:11Speaker 12

  And if you feel challenged in that, my hope is that it makes you ask questions. And as an artist, I don't pretend or posture to have the answers.

• 1:59:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:21Speaker 12

  And I can't think of a more rewarding cinematic experience than going to a theater and feeling challenged. That's my favorite thing. That's what makes me want to make movies. That makes me love movies. It's not when you say the thing that I agree with. It's when I feel challenged. And, um, and I think the, the reason that tribalism, which has gone well past entertainment, as we all know, I feel like it has created this, this, um, division to where there is no nuance and there is no conversation and there is no, you know, it's all my guy's bigger than your guy. And if you rock with my guy, you can do no wrong.

• 2:00:05Speaker 12

  And if you don't, then it's fuck you and you can't do anything, right?

• 2:00:09Sean Fennessey?

  Everything in sports.

• 2:00:09Speaker 12

  Yeah. And, and I just, I just don't see the world that way.

• 2:00:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 2:00:14Speaker 12

  And so this film is the most, there's so much honey with the medicine, but it's the most fun, uh, interrogation of that. And so I invite y'all to see that. And again, I come in peace.

• 2:00:26Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, um, at the very beginning of this, this, this show, the pod, um, James Gray was on probably in the, was in the first year. We'd never met before.

• 2:00:35Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:00:36Sean Fennessey?

  Got to know him a little bit since then. He's been on the show multiple times.

• 2:00:38Speaker 12

  You know, I've listened to every episode of this podcast.

• 2:00:40Sean Fennessey?

  You told me, I know. It's, it's like a little daunting.

• 2:00:43Speaker 12

  No, no, no, no, it's, it's.

• 2:00:45Sean Fennessey?

  You're very nice.

• 2:00:46Speaker 12

  Into the progression of like figuring the form out, format out, pre Amanda, you know what I mean?

• 2:00:52Sean Fennessey?

  A lot has happened.

• 2:00:53Speaker 12

  Yes.

• 2:00:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's gotten a lot worse, right?

• 2:00:55Speaker 12

  It's really sick. No, I mean, you're, you're, you're just in your peak.

• 2:00:58Sean Fennessey?

  That's not.

• 2:00:58Speaker 12

  This is the prime.

• 2:00:59Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, I'm personally not, but maybe the show is. Um, but anyway, I bring that up because. Talking to James on the show, it was going really well. It's like, he's from the same part of Queens and my family's from, same thing as when we're talking now. I'm just like, I know this guy. You know, you're just like, you're talking to somebody, you're just like, I know this guy. I know you've had this a million times with interviewing people over the years. And I asked him near the end of the conversation, I was like, you know, you've made a lot of great movies, but you've kind of like taken some hits from critics over the years too. And you're like beloved in France, but not as much in the United States.

• 2:01:31Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:01:31Sean Fennessey?

  And I was like, what is that like to read someone write so specifically? And so lethally.

• 2:01:41Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:01:41Sean Fennessey?

  About something that you poured your heart into. And he was just like, it hurts so much.

• 2:01:45Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:01:46Sean Fennessey?

  And not a lot of people had said that to me before. And then after I asked him that question, I asked a lot of directors that. And for like years, I would ask that question.

• 2:01:52Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:01:53Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, because there's like a real vulnerability to it, especially a lot of people who make, who write movies, you know, not if you're making like Jurassic World rebirth, right? If you're like, I'm a writer director.

• 2:02:01Speaker 12

  And I think that there's, there is a misconception. Again, if you didn't, like, whatever. But there is a misconception that Opus was made, I, I've heard that Opus was made in a different way. Like, uh, that it wasn't a first time filmmaker, uh, that gave everything that he had, or she had, or they had to make this thing happen. That, you know, that we didn't shoot in a 19 days. That it, that, you know, there was one, uh, report that said our budget was four times what the budget actually was. And, um, I say like, yes, uh, any negative review, letterbox, whatever. Like, it hurts.

• 2:02:47Speaker 12

  But I also feel like in my rookie season, I'm being held to a standard. That I'm, I'm okay that, I'm like, don't lower it.

• 2:03:00Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:03:01Speaker 12

  I'm okay with that.

• 2:03:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:03Speaker 12

  Now.

• 2:03:03Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good attitude.

• 2:03:05Speaker 12

  It's, it's, it's genuinely how I feel. I also think this movie absolutely slaps. And I think that when you watch this film, you will be like, wow, that was fun. And yes, he, John is incredible. I O is incredible. Uh, you know, whatever. I think that there's so much good in this, so proud of this film. Um, so there isn't like, um, I'm just excited that people are finally getting to see it. And, and I want to know what everyone thinks. I think that it's, it's a little, uh, you know, the thing that they teach you that people who love me have said before and during this process is do not read the reviews.

• 2:03:51Speaker 12

  But the film, there's like an emperor's new clothes parable inside of Obis. And it feels somewhat hypocritical for me to section myself off. And to not read reviews because some of them are mixed. Mm-hmm. Um,

• 2:04:14Speaker 12

  I think Jay, like, you know, he's a great example of a director that I think takes big swings and makes interesting things. And, um, this is what I think we're here for. We love original films and we love when people take swings and, you know, when things are a little messy and challenging. And, um, and I love this film. And so I'm not, I mean, like I said, I was bummed for about a week, truly bummed, but I was like, cool. You know, and I think every director you make, you really make the movie for yourself. Mm-hmm. You, I made the, this film for that kid that watched The Fifth Element.

• 2:04:58Speaker 12

  That's like, I didn't know you could put a blue alien onstage singing opera slash hip hop and then have somebody pull, uh, stones out of her that saved the world. I didn't know you could do that. And to that little kid, he is having the time of his life. Um, do you?

• 2:05:19Sean Fennessey?

  I always ask directors, like, what are you gonna do next?

• 2:05:21Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:05:22Sean Fennessey?

  After their movie comes out, and there's like a lot of ways this can go.

• 2:05:26Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:05:26Sean Fennessey?

  And you and I have not really talked about it. We had like a three-minute conversation about it.

• 2:05:30Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:05:31Sean Fennessey?

  At a birthday party, at a child's birthday party.

• 2:05:34Speaker 12

  Yeah, shout out to my man, Na. Okay? He is everything good in this world, and, uh, and I believe in him. He's, he's the reason. We go. We do it.

• 2:05:48Speaker 12

  Yeah, I, I promised myself, this was like, I don't know, maybe October, September, October of the last year. I have never, when I made my short eight years ago, I knew that this is what I wanted to dedicate myself to. Nothing had kinda checked every box and scratched every itch for me. And I made this short. I went into debt making this short.

• 2:06:16Speaker 12

  And never had more fun in my life, and never felt more satisfied. So I'm like, okay, cool. You found the thing. Now you gotta just figure out how to do it and how to do it enough to get good at it. And then, you know, hopefully you'll be great at it one day. And so, um, so I promised myself that I would make something immediately after, so that I, I was like working during this part of the process. So I'm making this film. It's a, it's about a, a man who's haunted by ducks. And, uh, it's a dark comedy, and I'm deeply, deeply excited and proud of it.

• 2:07:00Speaker 12

  And it's gonna be really, really fun. So I've been working on that and, and assembling the team and...

• 2:07:07Speaker 12

  Yeah, it's totally different than Opus and a very different, um, tonally, it's a, yeah, it's just a different thing and says a different thing and a new challenge. But, um... Yeah.

• 2:07:22Sean Fennessey?

  Let me ask you one last question about that.

• 2:07:23Speaker 12

  Of course.

• 2:07:23Sean Fennessey?

  So Opus, the trajectory of that movie is like over six years?

• 2:07:27Speaker 12

  Yes, six years.

• 2:07:28Sean Fennessey?

  Very long development.

• 2:07:30Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:07:30Sean Fennessey?

  Where it was, where it ended up, all that stuff takes a long period of time. Through some of that time, you were working at GQ.

• 2:07:36Speaker 12

  I do most of it.

• 2:07:37Sean Fennessey?

  At a certain point, you stopped to make the movie.

• 2:07:39Speaker 12

  Yep.

• 2:07:40Sean Fennessey?

  But now you don't have the like life raft.

• 2:07:43Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:07:44Sean Fennessey?

  Of your former career.

• 2:07:45Speaker 12

  Yeah, I don't.

• 2:07:46Sean Fennessey?

  You're like in the new era of your professional life.

• 2:07:49Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:07:50Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, Brady Corby talked about this on this podcast, that like directing movies is not necessarily, if you're doing what you want to do, the most profitable enterprise. A lot of directors, especially independent filmmakers, well, Sean Baker has obviously been talking about this quite a bit recently. It's not easy.

• 2:08:09Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 2:08:09Sean Fennessey?

  If you're a stick to your guns kind of person with a strong vision and wanting to do things with some level of control. So like, how do you make money? How do you pay your rent?

• 2:08:20Speaker 12

  I, there's two things. One, I, again, this is my rookie year. So when I drive to the paint and I get fouled, I can't, I can't bitch about that.

• 2:08:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:31Speaker 12

  When Sean Baker, who's been making interesting, wonderful, like films that really get under your skin for 20 years, he's allowed to stand on a stage and to say, I should make more money.

• 2:08:47Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:08:48Speaker 12

  And by God, Sean Baker should make more money. We should figure it out. There should be some type of governmental grant, some type of subsidy.

• 2:08:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:55Speaker 12

  Whatever.

• 2:08:56Sean Fennessey?

  Nations have this.

• 2:08:56Speaker 12

  Yes, they do. They like, it sounds crazy, but they literally do. And you're like, you add value to the world.

• 2:09:03Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:09:03Speaker 12

  And we are gonna have one less tank and Sean Baker's gonna get to make five more movies or live in a comfortable house. Like whatever you want to do with it. And so I don't think it's like. It's just not my place to be up here and to be like, I'm complaining about how much money I'm not making or whatever.

• 2:09:21Sean Fennessey?

  That's not what I mean.

• 2:09:22Speaker 12

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:09:23Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not trying to set you up for that.

• 2:09:24Speaker 12

  I know how it, no, no, no, no, I know, ain't nobody, brother, you would never.

• 2:09:30Sean Fennessey?

  I wouldn't.

• 2:09:31Speaker 12

  So I'm saying, the next thing I'm saying, I don't want it to sound like a complaint because I genuinely do not have that. I think what as a director, you know, what did Hawthorne say, you know, families always rising and falling? I feel like there was a point in time, you know, when like the American zoetrope cats, like they weren't making money at first. And before that, directors really didn't make money. And then it went crazy and you're getting paid, you know, millions and millions of dollars.

• 2:10:09Speaker 12

  And the box office is a global massive thing that we track and, you know, and and now it feels like that's less of the thing. It's like if you made jazz before the boom, jazz during the boom, and then jazz after. I say this, I'm a jazz musician, I am a filmmaker. If being a filmmaker means that I will make very little money and I'll have to, you know, figure out how to buy the clothes I want. I've done that before, yeah.

• 2:10:42Sean Fennessey?

  I knew that was the first thing you were gonna bring.

• 2:10:44Speaker 12

  You see what I'm saying?

• 2:10:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but you know how to hustle.

• 2:10:45Speaker 12

  Yeah, I'm just saying if I gotta figure it out, if I'm on eBay to get the sweater that I want two years later, because that's really the sweater that I want, and I don't have that, I'm not, it is not like some financial thing. Again, I think.

• 2:10:59Sean Fennessey?

  That is the person that I knew in 2010.

• 2:11:01Speaker 12

  That's the same.

• 2:11:02Sean Fennessey?

  In 2010, I was like, how is this broke kid so well dressed? This is insane to me.

• 2:11:06Speaker 12

  You figure out your angles and you don't accept the life you don't want. And all that I'm saying, it's just, this is the greatest gift that I've, that like I.

• 2:11:19Speaker 12

  Found a thing that makes me feel this good. And so, I don't know, if you're a young filmmaker, I think, I'm in no position to give you advice. The thing that I will say that I would just keep in mind is every day that I went to set, every day I went to the edit, every time I got a note from the studio, every time I read a review, be it good, be it bad, be it mixed, every time I got to sit down and talk to somebody like yourself, who I genuinely respect, throughout every day of this process, there is a base level of happiness that I have, because this is what the fuck I want to do. If that means that I don't make as much money as whoever who was making movies in the 90s,

• 2:12:03Speaker 12

  cool, man. You know, that's a bummer. I love money. That'd be sick, but like.

• 2:12:08Sean Fennessey?

  Oz Perkins said a similar thing when he was here. He was like, I do do this to make some money.

• 2:12:13Speaker 12

  Yeah, I need to, yeah, you wanna, you also don't want other people to make money on the thing and you not make money.

• 2:12:18Sean Fennessey?

  That's a whole other.

• 2:12:19Speaker 12

  That's a whole other, and that's not what I'm talking.

• 2:12:21Sean Fennessey?

  That is gonna happen, too, but that's a part of the game.

• 2:12:24Speaker 12

  But I'm saying like rookie season, you know, keep in mind, why you would want the money is to make you happy. And I sit here with this film out now, and I've never been happier. So, you know.

• 2:12:43Sean Fennessey?

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

• 2:12:48Speaker 12

  Yes. I wanted to say an honest answer. I've, obviously was thinking about that on the way here and then I was like, do I say something?

• 2:12:56Sean Fennessey?

  But you've tried to flex on me with something you watched.

• 2:12:59Speaker 12

  Not flex, but I was like, oh, because the, the thing isn't like out yet, but it is the answer and, and I, it should be out soon. A very talented director, homie of mine, her name is India Slim, and she made this short, it's a coming of age short, called Crust. And the BBC produced it, and it is so deeply beautiful and moving. I don't know when it's out, but I just saw, it's the last thing that I saw and it, and it really, really moved me. And she's so talented, and I love short films, and I just.

• 2:13:44Sean Fennessey?

  Have you spoken with Amanda about that? About short films and her relationship to them.

• 2:13:49Speaker 12

  She hates short films or something?

• 2:13:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. She thinks they shouldn't be on the Oscars.

• 2:13:52Speaker 12

  Well, well, I'll say this as Sergeant of Arms of the Daub Mob. Like, I'm not gonna go against my OG. So, you know, I can't, I can't do that, especially not here, you know? But yeah, it's beautiful crust and I'm excited for that to find its place in the world and for y'all to see her first kind of like narrative thing, so.

• 2:14:18Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks for being here.

• 2:14:19Speaker 12

  Man, this was such an honor to me, you know?

• 2:14:21Sean Fennessey?

  We did have a conversation about what this would be like, like, seven years ago.

• 2:14:26Speaker 12

  Would it be weird?

• 2:14:27Sean Fennessey?

  No, I wasn't worried about that.

• 2:14:29Speaker 12

  Oh.

• 2:14:29Sean Fennessey?

  I was just like, I can't wait to see the movie. I think I said that to you probably 10 times.

• 2:14:33Speaker 12

  Ah, yeah, yeah, I was.

• 2:14:34Sean Fennessey?

  And you held it for me for a long time.

• 2:14:36Speaker 12

  I did. I needed it to be right and, and to just have it done. And also, the thing that I'll say is like, it takes, there were no part of this process that wasn't like physically carrying a thing over a line.

• 2:14:51Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:14:51Speaker 12

  That was surprising to me, that it never like went into like autopilot, but that you are at every step, every filmmaker, unless you are again making like some massive thing that has hundreds of millions of dollars to throw at a problem and all the things. You were just like, cool, we have to physically carry this thing over the line. And I love that, but I couldn't have you see it until she was ready. And now all of y'all are good to see it because she's ready.

• 2:15:21Sean Fennessey?

  I can't wait to see it again. Congratulations.

• 2:15:23Speaker 12

  Thank you, brother.

• 2:15:32Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to Marc Anthony Green. Thank you to CR and Amanda. Thanks to our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on this episode. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his work as well.

• 2:15:39Speaker 06

  Thanks to Christopher Nolan.

• 2:15:41Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to the odd of CR for yet another vigilant update.

• 2:15:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It really is funny that on IMDb, the writers are listed as Homer and Christopher Nolan. I hope that that, I hope those are the credits.

• 2:15:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Story by Homer and.

• 2:15:53Sean Fennessey?

  I just hope Homer's relatives are getting residuals.

• 2:15:56Speaker 06

  I hope there is like a guy like working at a, in a like a market in Athens.

• 2:16:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:01Speaker 06

  I'm gonna go to WGA arbitration.

• 2:16:05Speaker 06

  Because my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather wrote this.

• 2:16:09Sean Fennessey?

  Could be the first shot in the Oscar campaign against the Odyssey, which is no doubt coming. Later this week, as I mentioned, 25 for 25 begins.

• 2:16:18Speaker 06

  I wish you guys the best on this project. I can't wait to listen.

• 2:16:20Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks so much, Chris. We'll see you then.

• 2:16:22Speaker 10

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time.

• 2:16:34Speaker 11

  Pricing participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

• 2:16:38Speaker 13

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple, like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive, or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting, and completely delicious. Simply. Say yes to simple.